2008 November 26

I continue to fall further behind as far as the constantly updating quota is concerned. I'm probably going to have to do very little but write on the Sunday afternoon when the last meet-up for the month is finished. Even if I wanted to repeat last year's final day push I still need to write 3,000 words a day for the next three days.
My cold seems to be at least part of the reason I haven't been motivated this year, I think knowing I can do it has also affected me. The first years it was a challenge and thus worthy of time, now it doesn't seem so important.
Having put it up here online may also be impacting my writing, I can't just go off on all the tangents I had in other years.

Words today: 2463
Total for the month so far: 31,130

Kris decided that the radiation shielding should be improved in the experiment room itself, and the surrounding rooms as well. As such I got to help a little in the construction of better shielding, mainly just lugging lead plating and metallic nets around. Having no idea what the point of all the stuff I'd been carrying around was I decided to do a little research, and realised why my first cell phone had never worked in a couple of places my current one did without any trouble.

With the improved shielding in place we had a Saturday set aside for a lot of tests, not just one or two like we had been doing. The extra time wasn't really needed though, test number one on that day brought results, the modulation of growth changed almost as soon as the first signal was directed through the wormhole. Moments later we started receiving a signal in an unfamiliar modulation but it was obvious there was something intelligent at the other end. Cutting the power to the wormhole, as had been agreed for potential safety reasons, didn't result in quite what had been hoped for. The size started to decrease, and then stabilised at about twice the maximum size it had been reaching before tests started happening in the dedicated room.

Kris and Dan panicked for a moment, rushing around trying to find the power circuit that hadn't disconnected. Kevin just looked at the reading with an expression of wonder on his face. Ben started writing furiously on his notepad and started flicking a few switches, switches I hadn't seen used before. The wormhole immediately began to shrink again and within a minute was completely gone, even from the sensors.

People all through the room began to speak then, until Kevin raised his hands and people started to realise he wanted their attention. The first thing he said was that he was pleased beyond words to be a part of such a momentous occasion. The second was his questioning of Ben to find out how he'd shut down the wormhole, it seemed like information that more people should have in case things went wrong again. Basically, Ben told us, he'd set up a feedback loop that directed power to reversing the polarity. It sounded like technobabble to me but Kevin and a couple of others were nodding their heads so it obviously made sense to at least them.

The next hour was spent looking over the readings from several different recorders, including the ones from outside, the records of which I was sent to get. I don't remember who had the idea but it was decided early on to have a couple of recorders set up outside and a fair distance from the labs to see how much, if any, effect the tests were having on the outside world. I managed to open up the devices and get the records copied to the portable data pad I had but when I tried to put the casing back on I noticed that both of them were a little warped.

Kevin agreed that it was odd both had warped, especially when they'd both been checked the day before, and instructed a couple of the researchers to go and check in the stores to see if the spares had been affected at all. He himself had a look at the casings on the recorder immediately beside where he was sitting and found there was deformation of it. More than the two outside had undergone as well. When all the scanners in the immediate vicinity had been checked we spread around the neighbouring rooms and found the same had happened to those scanners as well.

The two that had been to check on the spares in stores returned while everyone else was in the neighbouring rooms so when everyone returned there was reporting back and forth about the status of things. Every recording device that had been powered when the wormhole was created had warped, depending on it's distance from the point of origin, equally, those that weren't powered had remained unaffected. That didn't extend to the other device for some reason though, many of the researchers had looked at other equipment and found no problems with anything that wasn't a recorder.

With it only being the cases that seemed to be deforming nobody felt any real need to take any significant precautions before we ran the second wormhole test and so, where possible, the recorders were removed from their cases and Kevin flipped the switch to start another wormhole forming. Once again the growth was as it had always been to start and then suddenly the growth became regular so the transmit switch was thrown and we waited for a response. Again we got a disjointed echo and then something new. Even I could see that it was readable as one's and zero's which made me think of computers. Two of the less involved researchers had been sitting at not yet utilised PCs until that point and they started feeding info from the return transmission into programs I was unfamiliar with. It didn't take long for them to realise that there was a progression in those numbers as well.

Kevin had decided that it wouldn't hurt to send actual signal through instead of just modulated static so he picked up a microphone, hooked it into the outgoing transmitter and began to speak. There wasn't anything exceptional in what he said, unsurprising when you consider his job, but he did express joy at communicating with unknown entities through a previously only dreamed at medium. There was also mention of a desire for co-operation and exchange of knowledge but mostly it was how he felt about the contact.

Nobody expected what happened next, there should have been a language barrier after all. A voice came through from the other side, modulated in the simple manner we'd sent Kevins words through. The words I heard then will remain with me forever, even if I forget everything else in my life.
"Greetings to you all. We welcome your entry into the brotherhood of universal travellers."

Everybody stopped what they were doing the moment they heard the first syllable come from the speakers, by the time the entity on the other end had finished speaking there were tears on a few faces, massive grins on most of the rest and Kevin had gone completely blank at the overwhelming nature of what had just happened.

After about a minute of silence the voice started speaking again, obviously having realised that we'd need time to adjust to the surprise. The first thing was to tell us our progress from first test to this stage was faster than normal but by no means exceptional and then it went into detail about the wormholes and what could be done.

It would be possible for us to choose the destination of our wormholes after a few modifications but we would have to figure out the specifics of that ourselves. Actual travel through the wormhole was also going to have to wait until we figured out how to shield things from the magnetic and electromagnetic fields far more effectively, which we all took to mean a very long delay, the basic message was that unshielded travel would prove very painful for anyone that went through and they'd die within a couple of minutes of getting through. And even that was only going to be the case if we could get the wormhole big enough to travel through. Right now it was apparently big enough for electromagnetic signals and physical objects no larger than 1 10,000th of the currently used transmission wavelength. Looking around I saw people doing quick calculations and a couple of people raised their hands with their palms no more than a hand span distant.

The voice then asked for some information about us. First on the list being a question about time, namely what percentage of our normal day had been taken up so far during this wormhole experience. Kris worked it out quickly in his head as having been approximately 1 40th of our day so far. Even using the computer I was beside I took twice as long to figure that out. The second piece of information he? wanted was about our periodic table, how far we had found elements. I shut down the communications at the next question. What were the most common elements in our atmosphere and bodies? Kevin started to ask what I'd done that for and the light went on in his eyes as he realised the significance of the information he'd been about to provide. Most of the others didn't realise what was so important though and most of them did ask, with confused and angry tones. Kevin deferred to me which put me on the spot far beyond what I was comfortable with but I did my best to explain the situation as I'd seen it.

If they (whoever they were on the other end) found out what our atmosphere was mainly composed of and what our bodies were mostly made of as well, there was a very good chance that they could send some biological or chemical agent through their own wormhole that would kill us off. I wouldn't have thought that if not for my reading months back on potential uses of wormholes and the militaristic nature of most of the stories. Kevin took the time to compose himself before he turned the transmitter/receiver back on.

There was no voice coming through from the other end at the start but after Kevin asked if they were still connected we heard the same voice we'd heard before. It turns out that the lack of diplomats was probably a good thing, Kevin admitted straight away that the disconnect hadn't been an accident and mentioned that one of the staff had shut down communication for fear of attack. The voice laughed, or at least we all thought was laughter, and then told us that that staff member was wise. At least one other group had just handed over the information when asked and then, presumably after communicating with other end points had failed to contact them again. It seemed likely that there had been some sort of accident or attack.

Other questions of a far less potentially devastating nature followed the most surprising was the nature of our bodies. He wanted to know if we were bipedal, tripedal, quadrupedal or something else. I was momentarily confused as to what that was a reference to and then Kevin answered bipedal and held up two 'walking' fingers in my direction. He gave most of the other information that the voice asked for but only after getting similar information in return. There were differences, mainly in things that a few hundred years ago might have been accounted for by regional differences. It seemed that they had hair of different colours than was normal here, and the figuring out of that fact took a number of questions.

Even with him seemingly having a complete understanding of our language we all, on both sides felt it imperative to check that our understanding of things was concurrent. Getting colours across required quite a bit of back work, dealing with the spectrum of light and such forth. The issue of physical dimensions had already been dealt with when we were warned to not send anything through but the exact size required some more calculations.

The rest of that afternoon went by with more information exchange until the wormhole had been present for a period of just short of three hours. The voice then informed us that the wormhole was about to collapse and all contact would have to wait for what he believed would be three of our days.

The debriefing after the wormhole did collapse lasted until quite late in the evening. At least six hours worth of talking, going over the records and coming up with plans for what we'd do when we had contact with him again. We were all of course told that nothing we'd heard that afternoon could be spoken about with anyone that wasn't in the room right then.

I was permitted to let Veronika know that I wasn't going to be home anywhere near the normal time, and while she heard something in my voice I managed to keep specifics from her. Getting home the house was dark so it seemed obvious she'd not waited up and I simply went the computer and spent some time reading up on some of what we'd dealt with that afternoon. I had picked up on a lot more than I'd previously had expected to but was still well behind pretty much everyone else on the team.


Waking up to the smell of food cooking was a very welcome surprise, as was having Veronika bring me that breakfast in bed. I did get something of an interrogation as she tried to find out what had kept me out so late. I let her know that I'd probably be getting another bonus and that it seemed that the breakthrough yesterday had been the big one to eclipse all previous breakthroughs. I didn't mention that I was going to be able to tell her everything in little more than a month, it was obvious that was still not a good idea.

After eating breakfast, which I was grateful for but not wanting a repeat of, eating in bed just seemed like a bad idea, Veronika left me alone to get dressed and we spent the rest of the morning going over plans for the wedding. The minor problems that had recently developed had been dealt with but we were preparing for more. It seemed that we had sorted pretty much everything that was going to need sorted, I'd even found a best man. During the two months immediately following the announcement of our engagement Veronika and I had spent a lot of time with my eldest sister and her husband as they provided the benefit of their experience.

It wasn't really surprising that the two of us would get on that well, I'd been hearing that we had a lot in common from soon after the two of them started dating. It was just that on the occasions we'd spoken at family gatherings neither of us had had much to say, mainly because he was more interested in being with her and I wasn't a talkative person anyway. Having the both of them in the wedding party was easier as well, neither would be spending a lot of time on their own waiting for the other to finish up with 'responsibilities' or the like.