28 Dec 2007
Final Destination, Chapter 14: August 21, 3094
Al and I worked together to find the secret door that I had been searching for. I really had to hand it to Al: he may be annoying but he’s hard to live without. I would never have opened the door if it hadn’t been for him.
What he discovered was that the door wasn’t a door in the normal sense of the word; instead, the security mechanism interacted with the active material of the wall itself to cause a portion of the wall to either dissolve or reappear at will. It turned out that the door was only held open by an electric force, so once we cut the power to that section of the wall the particles collapsed and the hallway was revealed. I would never have figured that out on my own: why, when I was a kid, doors were just holes in the wall. How times have changed.
Down the hallway was the pot of gold, all right: the wormhole transporter research center. This is where they did all of their experiments in wormhole transport. I was thrilled.
“This is terrific, Al. If this equipment works it would be a huge discovery.”
“Perhaps, Miles Porter, but it would not solve your planet’s problems. You need to find the citizens of this planet, not its machinery.”
Unfortunately he was right. “Well, maybe we’ll discover if they were able to get off the planet or not. If they were able to get the wormhole transporter working then they just might have survived.”
“Perhaps,” he said.
“You have been able to find the coordinates of the planet that they were trying to reach, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have,” Al said. “It no longer exists as it, too, was destroyed in the shockwave, which was far more extensive than they estimated.”
“Oh.”
Right next to the room with the wormhole transporter equipment was a room filled with large, strange electrical devices. They looked something like storage capacitors, although I’m sure they were more complicated than that. Al told me that they were used to store up the tremendous surge of energy that the transporter needed in order to build its wormhole. The process was similar to the one used by the Silver Star: it would build up a huge reservoir of energy and then discharge it all at once to create the wormhole. Considering how much raw power the zero-point-energy plant could generate, these capacitors (or whatever they were) must have been able to store a truly fantastic amount of power.
We were able to find a message on one of the consoles:
I’m having a lot of trouble keeping the heat down in this room. The energy stored in these batteries is pretty intense (more than has ever been stored in a battery, I’ll wager), and the cooling systems continue to fail. I have established a system that will pump the excess heat into the ventilation system, so whenever there is a failure the heat can be siphoned off, but it’s only a stopgap measure. I’m just going to have to find a better way to keep this room cooled. At least the door fields are keeping the heat from escaping the room and warming up the rest of the base!
I really wish that Charlie wasn’t acting crazy, but ever since the overclocked matrix became unstable he just hasn’t been the same. We tried restoring the default settings, but even a normal matrix isn’t stable for very long. Flora would definitely be able to restore the matrix stability, but of course she’s dead and isn’t able to help us.
Boy, did her death ever raise problems! Her friends were livid and demanded an investigation into Arnold Brandon, asking why only she died of food poisoning when everyone on this base ate the same food. What nerve they have, making such an accusation against Arnold! Besides, they’re always saying how they’re ready to die and meet their Maker, so I don’t see why they should be so upset when someone helps them along. You’d think they would be thrilled. Fortunately no one listened to the little whiners, and it all died down after a few weeks.
It’s becoming more and more obvious that the wormhole transporter isn’t going to work: it just doesn’t have the range, and with Charlie’s matrix shot to pieces there’s no easy way to find out how to give it more range. They might still work something out, though – but if they don’t, at least we have a backup plan, so it’s no great loss.
Before Charlie’s matrix collapsed a few of us ran some calculations to find out what parts of the planet would remain intact when the shockwave hits. Once we found out we started building a base there. We’re stocking it with equipment and have hit upon an idea: the wormhole transporter that we’ve built so far could be modified and placed on a spaceship to make a faster-than-light propulsion unit. It would take a few years, but since the underground base will survive we ought to have the time.
Since not much of the planet will survive when the plasma hits us the base can’t be very large; it’ll hold 50 of us at most, and there are thousands of people on this planet. I agree with Arnold: only the fittest should survive, and that would be us.
Posted by Charles Brandon on February 8, 2815
“Interesting,” I said. “Hey, Al, do you have any biographical information on Charles Brandon? He isn’t related to Arnold, is he?”
“I have found this entry,” Al said, and he read off the following information:
Charles Brandon
Born: July 18, 2776
Died: —-
Physical Appearance: Thinning gray hair, gray eyes, 5′ 11″, strong build. This person is the brother of Arnold Brandon, and he looks it.
Discipline: Has a degree in cooling systems and theoretical chemistry.
Occupation: Spends most of his time maintaining the capacitors at the Larson’s Folly Spatial Mechanics laboratory and ensuring that they don’t melt down and destroy half the planet. His official position is chief chemical engineer, and is responsible for the chemistry department on this research station.
Security clearance: Gamma Prime.
Last updated: January 1, 2815
“This is all getting very interesting, Al. Let me know if you are able to decrypt any more messages.”
“I will,” he said.