2008 November 28

I had hoped to write quite a bit more than I managed, mainly so I'd have less to write today and tomorrow. I did manage to get to less than 10,000 words behind for the first time since the middle of the month though, which is good.
As it stands currently I'll need to write at least 3,000 again today just to be in the same position I was at the end of last year, and that won't be good enough as I'll have less time tomorrow than I did on the last day last year.
What I find a little annoying is the fact that if I'd written consistently over the month, the way I did over the past 7 days, I'd have managed 70,000+ for the month.

Words today: 2915
Total for the month so far: 37,064

Most of us were surprised to find that it had arrived while Kevin was informing them that we'd sent it through. Dan just nodded though, obviously having realised that the transmission time would be the same, or almost the same, for physical objects and radio frequencies. The description Styler gave us was not encouraging though, the paper had been shredded by the journey and had become a green colour if the spectrum matching we'd done previously was accurate (it had been plain white paper).

That duality regarding that transmission was an unusual feeling for me, knowing we'd been able to send something somewhere completely new was amazing, knowing it was damaged on the way was disheartening. Kris asked to talk with the Styler for a moment, asking for a few specifics about the paper instead of the generalities that had already been mentioned. He asked for actual dimensions of the strips, whether it would be possible to reassemble them to make a normal piece of paper and what the edges of the strips were like.

I understood why he'd wanted dimensions, after all, if everything sent through was to come out a different size we'd not be able to use the wormholes for travel on a regular basis even if we did sort out the problem of the journey shredding them. (Then again, if the size change was exactly reversed upon returning it wouldn't be much of an issue.) The edging I could sort of understood the questioning about, clean cuts would indicate a different problem to jagged edges. It took a little while for me to realise the importance of the reassembly potential though, but when I did I realised it was, by far, the most important question of all that Kris had asked. If it wouldn't be possible to reassemble the pieces that would be an indication that not everything had gone through completely and even more than the other problems that would prevent transit of physical objects, especially people.

I don't remember the specifics of what Styler told Kris but he did seem to be pleased about the answers. Which I took to be an indication that he was coming up with possible means to alleviate the problems already. He did ask a couple more questions before handing the microphone back to Kevin. How much help were we going to get in coming up with shielding for transit? Would they be willing to advise on possibilities that were speculated on so we didn't waste time on prototypes that just wouldn't work?

Cerebros told us then that we would be told whether certain assumptions were correct, for example trying to dampen certain frequencies. But mostly we'd have to come up with a theory and a way of preventing that particular issue and then we'd be given the benefit of their insight. We wouldn't be told how to build anything or what materials to use or anything else truly helpful. There wasn't going to be any issue with us testing things though, they had plenty of room at their end and were more than willing to have us send test rigs through for as long as we wanted to try. Styler even commented that they could push the wreckage back through a wormhole of theirs once a week or so, so we could see for ourselves how ineffective the devices had been instead of relying on their descriptions.

The rest of that evening was mainly more conversations between Styler and Cerebros and whichever of the researchers was wanting to talk to them. The only other thing that seemed to be actual work to me was the short time Ben talked with the two of them about how video would be exchangeable. Having given it no previous thought I started thinking about why we had the ability to exchange voice communication, even discounting the issue of how they were able to speak our language.

I interrupted one of the minor researchers that I'd seen working on the radio to ask her about that issue. Basically it came down to the way AM broadcasts were encrypted and decrypted. The audio fed into an AM device was pretty much all that the device needed to make the broadcast signal. Decryption would be simple as well, the signal strength as it was received was all that was needed for turning signal back to audio. It was a very simple system that would likely be discovered by any intelligent group of people (or whatever) as they begun their research into radio systems.
Video signal on the other hand required a lot more effort to transmit. For a start there was typically a need for both audio and video for it to be used as a communication device. Each of which would need to be encoded and decoded separately. Getting video transmitted also required a lot of pictures to be taken each second and then each picture needed to be sent, in chunks, to a receiver. The trouble involved in that was ensuring the receiver was set to take the right number of chunks for each picture, and probably even more important, how to decode the information as far as colour, brightness etc. was concerned.

Not having anything I could really work on, after all I was just there as a reward for catching a couple of small issues, I left the lab area and went back to my office to research the video transmission issue. I also figured I'd make some notes about what I'd seen happening and heard discussed in case my perspective could help Kevin or the others in what they were trying to do. I was also wanting away from the wormhole for a time. Unexpectedly it shut off after another half hour or so, I noticed by the lights getting brighter not the lack of vibration. Since the relocation of the experiment it hadn't been possible to notice the vibration while in the offices unless you were using equipment. The lighting however would dim dramatically when the wormhole started to form and once it stabilised they'd still be dimmer than normal.

I headed back towards the lab when the shut-down occurred, figuring there would be another debriefing session, before I got halfway there however Kevin met me and let me know I could just go home. They'd had a quick debrief before shutting down the wormhole so they could keep Cerebros & Styler involved. I'd have a copy on my desk soon after I returned to work but for now I might as well go home to my fiancée


I wasn't much later than was normal for a test night so Veronika was still up (although I didn't see her there were a couple of lights on) and there was food left for me to eat. Not having to cook that late at night was just one of the many reasons I had to be thankful for her shifting in. I didn't expect to find her where I did, out in the hot tub with a book, but when she told me I should join her I went and changed, quickly finishing the first of my food as I did so. We ended up spending nearly an hour in the tub, talking about what she'd done at work that day, and me avoiding talking about what I'd done, although I did mention I knew more about radio and TV broadcasting than I'd ever expected to.

Again, as I had the previous night, I left the water in the tub, obviously Veronika liked it being available, and we went inside to get away from the rapidly cooling air. And Veronika wanted me to eat more, she had started complaining about the rumbling of my stomach while we were talking. Getting the rest of the meal she'd made I went to sit down at the table and found her setting out the game we'd played with Laura what seemed like a year ago. Apparently I'd promised a rematch at some point and the time had come for me to make good on that promise. I wondered if she'd picked that time as she could see that I wasn't really at my best but I figured it didn't matter. Win or lose I was going to enjoy the game, I wasn't tired enough that I'd rather be sleeping and if she said I'd promised her a game then I must have done so.

We ended up playing a couple of games, mainly because I wasn't spending any where near as much time thinking about moves as normal, both of which Veronika won, although the first was very close. It was obvious to her at the end of the second that I wouldn't last through a third game though and we packed it up, I dealt with my dishes and we each went to bed.


That following morning I went in to work expecting to need to read the report on the previous nights activity before dealing with the 'normal' aspects of my job. Instead I found three separate reports to read through, and a note from Kevin saying to head to his office when I was done reading them. The first was from Kevin, with new (to me) detail on the research going all the way back to the first test. The other two were predominantly from Kris and Dan respectively and had far less information in them but a lot of it was more technical. Actually getting through the two smaller reports took me almost as much time as Kevins did because of the technical aspects.
I had no idea how much of what I'd just read was actually going to stay in my head but after getting to the end of Dan's report I picked them up and headed to Kevin's office. The only person I was surprised to see there was Kevins boss that had been at one of the earlier tests. Dan, Ben and Kris were off to one side of the room arguing over equations on a white board that had been brought in from somewhere. Kevin and his boss were looking at each other across the desk between them, Kevin tapping his fingers on the desk.

The boss had only just been informed about my involvement in the research effort, and was not pleased about Kevin recruiting me, even after Kevin explained how I'd noticed things the others had not. Now I was to justify my own involvement in the continued efforts, or I was going to be put back into the boring office and left to do that simple work again. I had no idea what good reasons existed to keep me on and in the interest of not drawing things out into an uncomfortable conversation I said that first up. There were some reasons however, first being the fact I already knew what was going on, sending me off wouldn't change that fact so there was no increase in risk to the companies bottom line. Second was the fact I had, like Kevin mentioned, helped with the work, even finding issues that had been missed by the others. The third and final reason I could come up with at the time was the fact Kevin had hired me to help and as long as my performance was what I'd been hired for there wasn't a good reason to effectively fire me. I wouldn't have been able to sue for wrongful dismissal though and I acknowledged that; doing so would necessitate breach of contract with regard to the confidentiality of the research.

He looked at me for a while, how I managed to return the gaze without blushing, turning away or starting to stammer I do not know. Turning back to Kevin he said I could stay and then he picked up the few sheets of paper that were in front of him and left the office.

Pointing me to the chair just vacated he asked the other three if they'd actually discovered anything useful yet. Each of them started talking at once which was enough of a tension relief after the possibility of me being let go that I laughed for a moment. Obviously familiar with the three of them Kevin told them he wanted the bad news first and then waved his hands to the remaining seats.

Kris remained standing and started talking about the issue of actually using the wormhole as a transport mechanism. So far there had been nothing in his calculations to show a way of getting the object shielded effectively, mostly because he still didn't know what he needed to be shielding against. None of the devices in the lab had ever recorded anything that could tear up a person and even the worst of the readings would barely have had any impact on a piece of paper. There was certainly nothing we had the means to detect that was going to destroy paper as effectively as passage through the wormhole had done.
As things currently stood he figured the best (as in quickest) idea was going to be sending some sort of measurement rig through with it set to transmit back to us everything it could as long as it could so we could get the most accurate and in-depth readings we could. The cost of such a test was prohibitive though, all the equipment would probably be more than Kevin was earning in a year.
I interjected then, suggesting that if we were going to be sending anything through it might as well be a cheap video camera first, if for no other reason than to confirm that there was actually a need for shielding. It seem like everyone had been taking Cerebros & Styler at their words since we first made contact but there wasn't actually any proof of the paper being ripped as it passed through the wormhole. Technically, we weren't even sure it had passed through. My cynicism surprised me, I was usually a lot more trusting of strangers than I was able to be regarding Cerebros & Styler. Even knowing that I was probably being unfair, I couldn't bring myself to put aside the doubts I felt.
The doubts I voiced did convince Kevin that the next test should involve a couple of cameras sent through, one oriented forwards to see where it was headed and one back so we could (hopefully) see how long it took to pass from where you'd been to the mid realm of the wormhole.

Dan had been looking at the possible ways of tracking the wormhole passage, we still didn't know if it was going to somewhere in our universe that we'd be able to reach with enough time anyway or if we'd found a reality bridge that was connecting us to somewhere we could never have otherwise reached. Even scanning it, and the surrounding area with every scanner type available in the factory he'd found no traces of anything to indicate directional vector. Not knowing enough about wormholes however he was unwilling to speculate as to the likelihood of that meaning we'd connected to another reality.

Ben had managed to find a very simple video encryption method that he thought could be sent in the same way the audio had been so far. Transmitting the specifications would probably be the longest part of the process, Cerebros & Styler seemed to have the means to interpret whatever we sent through. Wanting to understand the problem I asked what had happened when we tried sending video through in whatever manner we normally would have. All four of them looked at me for a little while and then at each other. After the months I spent with them I realised fairly quick that there hadn't been any attempts to send through signal in the 'normal' way, they'd assumed that it wouldn't be decipherable and had instead tried to find a simple solution.

Kevin let me know that once again I'd earned a bonus, for pointing out the foolishness of my colleagues. He also let me know that I was going to be doing less in the research area than I had been for the past few weeks. Even after the confrontation with his boss there wasn't actually much for me to be doing, and instead of me just sitting around in the office I was going to be going back to where I had been for half the week. How I split my time would be up to me but he suggested just doing whatever amount of the old time work was needing done when I got in each day and then coming through to the fun side as I finished it.

Before I left there was a short discussion about the three reports I had read, none of which I had any real insights into. I hadn't come across any mistakes and there wasn't anything else that seemed to have been forgotten along the way which I'd figured might be one reason for me being told to read them.

Once I did leave I ended up walking to the testing area, wanting to look at it all without anyone else around. I expect that me going through the checkpoints let Kevin (and others) know that I was there but there would have been plenty of other means to stop me getting through if he wanted so I was obviously not interfering where he didn't want me.