2008 November 13

Much of this was written on my Palm Pilot while I was traveling to Hanmer Springs and I then typed it into my laptop before I begun to write normally from that point. Unsurprisingly I found other things more interesting and I didn't spend much time writing while there on the first evening.

Words today: 804
Total for the month so far: 12704

The light continued to grow in size for a couple of minutes but the intensity of the light remained constant the entire time I watched it. After another minute of that the light began to fade in as unspectacular a fashion as it had initially appeared and grown. It wasn't what I had been expecting, not that I had really been expecting anything specific. Kevin saw the mildly incredulous look I would have had upon my face - he smiled in response and told me there wasn't any more to see.

There was however a recording that had been made a few months ago showing the reactions of the other researchers on what I was told had been the first successful test of the newly completed equipment. It started out in what seemed to be the same way as the test I'd just been shown, nothing seemed to be happening initially and then there was suddenly a green point of light in the middle of the room. The reaction of those watching was markedly different though, practically everyone in the room had burst out cheering and/or clapping.

Thinking about it there wasn't any surprise to their reaction, if they hadn't seen anything in previous tests the sudden appearance of something would have been worth applauding. Kevin told me then that the researchers had been working toward that test for 45 days and were getting more and more frustrated with no apparent result. The prior research had taken a couple of years before that first successful test and there had been many people think about quitting as they begun to think that nothing was going to come of what they were doing.

If not for Kevin being so sure that there would continue to be developments he said there would have been a loss of funding from the higher ups, he was given extra time because of his past history. Even with that though he'd been considering ending the attempts when they finally managed to first make the green light appear. As I was shown around I was told they had managed to make it slightly bigger over time, at the beginning it was only just visible and they'd actually gone over footage of the first few tests and found that a couple of them may have actually succeeded but not produced a large enough light to be seen by them.

During the next 30 minutes I was shown around the equipment that was used to create whatever it was they had been creating, even after a few months they still weren't sure what it was. The favoured speculation seemed to be the possibility of wormholes faster travel of some sort, the only other idea put forward was that of alternate realities although it was obvious no-one felt that a likely option. The alternate reality was also one of an Earth type world more along the lines of alternate history than actual completely different world.

I paid attention, the best I could, to what was involved in each of the stages of producing the light show. Some of it was simple, like the need to regulate power, some of it was far less simple, like the mass of crystals that looked like something out of a sci-fi show you won't have a clue about. I did manage to understand most of what each individual thing was used for though, but, much like the initial reports I'd been reading the connections completely eluded me. I enjoyed the tour and explanation from Kevin about everything that was involved in what I'd just recently seen but was even more convinced that I was going to be useless in developing anything useful for the project.

Getting home that night I was a little depressed about the seeming futility of my involvement so I rung Veronika to talk for a while. It was difficult to talk about things without being able to talk about things but the conversation helped me to feel better. I also confirmed that I'd accumulated all the needed things for our upcoming walk in the bush.


The day of the walk dawned dismally, rain seemed to have been coming down for several hours and didn't seem likely to stop that day. Veronika was undaunted though and so the two of us headed to her friends place so we could all pile into the same vehicle and head east to the house that had been rented by the couple that wasn't interested in time tramping but wanted time away from work.

The back of the van was cramped but I felt very disinclined to complain when I was not only getting driven around instead of driving like I'd expected I would be, but I was also sitting in close proximity to the woman I loved.