Jack Falcon and His Quantum Singularity, Chapter 5

THE BEHEMOTH LEFT Myra late that afternoon. With the mayor’s permission Jack stocked the starship with eight weeks’ worth of supplies. He hoped that the mission would be over far sooner than that, but once they got into deep space and dismantled the ship’s engines they would have no way to return home and get more supplies. They would have to stay there until they finished their mission.

Jack didn’t like the idea of taking a one-way trip but there was nothing that could be done about it. There just weren’t any other starships on Myra and the black holes made it impossible for any ships from Earth to reach them. He would just have to make it work.

As soon as the starship had cleared Myra’s atmosphere and was out in space, Irene plotted a course to the intersect point while Jack contacted Falcon Enterprises on Earth. After a few minutes he was able to reach his friend Daniel Hollins.

“So have you fixed the problem yet?” Daniel asked, as soon as he appeared on the viewscreen.

Jack shook his head. “Not yet, but I’m working on it.” He briefly explained their plan.

“I knew you’d come up with something,” Daniel replied approvingly. “I’m sure you’ll have no trouble getting it to work. I just have one question, though – if you’re going to dismantle your ship then how are you going to get back to Myra?”

“That’s where I need you,” Jack explained. “As soon as we finish this project we’re going to need a ride home. Do you think you could come and rescue us? I know you can’t enter this area right now, but once my invention is activated it should quiet things down and allow the kronolator on the Liberty to work again. In theory.”

“Sure thing,” Daniel replied. “When do you want us to be there?”

Jack thought for a moment. “Well, at sublight speeds it will take us four days to exit Epsilon Eridani and get the ship into position. Then it’ll take us some time to get everything set up and tested…”

“I’ll just plan on being in the general area four days from now,” Daniel said. “That way if you’re done early you don’t have to wait around for me to get my bags packed.”

Jack laughed. “You may have to wait a while, buddy. This whole process could easily take weeks. After all, I’ve never built one of these things before.”

“Not a problem!” Daniel replied. “That’ll give me plenty of time to get caught up on my champion ping-pong skills.”

“You installed a ping-pong table on the Liberty?” Jack asked, surprised.

“It was your sister’s idea,” Daniel explained. “We just took out the foosball table and rearranged the rec room a bit. It works great! Let me tell you, your sister is really good at it, too.”

“Sandy was always better at that than me,” Jack admitted. “She’s just a lot more athletic than I am. Personally, I’m more the couch-potato type. As a kid she would be outside doing things while I dreamed up new labor-saving devices.”

“It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it,” Daniel quipped. “Is there anything special you want me to bring?”

“A matter transporter would be nice,” Jack replied. “I’ve always wanted one of those.”

Daniel laughed. “Sure thing, boss. Just let me know when you’ve invented it and I’ll ship it right over.”

“I’ll get back with you in a few months,” Jack said. “Maybe after I get this wormhole project finished I can look into it.”

“Are you serious? Do you really think it’s possible?”

“It might be,” Jack said slowly. “One thing this whole episode has made me realize is how fragile Star City’s link with Earth actually is. It would be nice to have an alternate way of traveling between Earth and Myra. Right now all I have are ideas but I’ll let you know if anything comes of them.”

“Sounds good,” Daniel agreed.

Jack gave him the coordinates that the Behemoth would be waiting at and then signed off. “So how’s it going?” he asked his wife.

“We’re all set,” she replied. “As you predicted, it’ll take about 4 days to travel the twelve billion miles to the intersect point.”

Jack nodded. “I just hope it works. After all, once we get there and take everything apart we’re not going to have the option of moving the ship again. We’ve got one shot at getting this right.”

“I think the location is a good one, especially when you consider the location of the black holes. It’s close enough to attract their attention while being far enough from the colony to keep it out of danger. I’m more concerned about what happens after we get everything working.”

“What do you mean?” Jack asked.

“Well, think about it. The colony is only going to be safe as long as your quantum singularity device is running. That means that it will have to keep running forever. Someone’s going to have to maintain it. This isn’t like a lightning rod, where we can just set it up and forget about it.”

“I admit there is some maintenance here, but it’s no different from our undersea cities,” Jack pointed out. “The only way the Aquapolis can survive is if people continually maintain the undersea domes. It’s just part of the cost of having a city at the bottom of the ocean. Likewise, Star City will just have to commit resources to maintaining this new piece of machinery. It’s either that or move the colony, and I don’t see them moving the colony.”

“That’s true,” Irene agreed. “But this is going to have to be reliable, Jack. You’re going to have to add all kinds of failsafes.”

“I’m already on it,” Jack replied. “After the Behemoth is in place and operational I’m going to have a little miniature space station built out here. I’m sure we can design something that is easy to maintain and largely automated. All of that comes later, though. Right now we’ve got our hands full with other problems.”

“So where do we begin?” Irene asked.

“Let’s start by dismantling the ship’s kronolator. We’re going to need its parts. We’ll also need parts from the sublight engines, but we can’t tear it down while we’re using it. Same goes with the fusion reactor – it’ll need modification, but we can’t do that until the ship is in position. So the kronolator is the place to start.”

“Will we need to dismantle anything else?” Irene asked. “Food processing, maybe, or perhaps the sensor arrays?”

“We probably will, but I haven’t gotten that far yet. I’ve brought the blueprints for the singularity machine and the schematics for the Behemoth. It’s going to take me a few days to get everything together. If you could go ahead and start taking apart the kronolator, that will give me time to finish my designs and figure out what else we’ll need to take apart.”

“I can do that. What do you want me to do with the parts, though?”

“Let’s build the singularity machine in Storage Bay 12,” Jack said. “It’s a large, tall room right next to the fusion reactor at the rear of the ship. Plus it’s empty, so we don’t have to move anything.”

Irene stood up. “I’ll get started, then!”

Over the next four days Irene spent long hours taking apart the kronolator and carrying its many pieces into the storage bay. Meanwhile, Jack finished the design of his quantum singularity device. The principles of the machine were similar to other inventions he’d built in the past; it reminded him of his early experiments with faster-than-light travel.

His biggest concern was stability. The ship’s fusion reactor would be able to supply the necessary power to create the singularity, and once it was formed the energy from the incoming wormholes would be enough to sustain it. What worried him was what would happen when dozens of wormholes began interacting with his artificial singularity. Would it remain stable or would the stresses tear it apart? And what would happen to the ship when all of this was going on?

The worst part was that he didn’t have years to spend experimenting. He just had to try something and hope that it worked the first time. He didn’t like working blind but they didn’t have the luxury of time.

By the time the Behemoth reached the intersect point Jack had finished his blueprints and Irene had dismantled the kronolator. Jack completed his work in time to help his wife carry the last pieces of the kronolator into the storage bay.

“That machine has a lot more parts than I remembered,” Irene remarked, as they surveyed the mass of components that littered the floor.

“Altering the flow of time is complicated!” Jack said. “I’m surprised it can be done at all.”

“Technically, altering the flow of time is easy,” Irene replied. “After all, time slows down as you start going faster. All you really have to do to modify the speed of time is to step on your car’s accelerator.”

Jack grinned. “That’s true – only that’s not going to help you get to the stars. Even at the speed of light it would still take 11 years to reach Epsilon Eridani and another 11 years to get home. Sure, for those on board it would only take a split second, since time doesn’t pass when you’re traveling at the speed of light, but that doesn’t change the fact that by the time you got back to Earth everyone else would be 22 years older! That’s where the magic of the kronolator comes in.”

“So what do we do now?” Irene asked.

“We take apart the ship’s sublight drive,” Jack said.

“And by ‘we’, you mean ‘me’.”

Jack grinned. “Hey – you can always stay here instead and use these parts to build a quantum singularity! You do have Ph. D. in nuclear engineering, after all. It’s entirely up to you.”

Irene shook her head. “I’ll leave that mess to you, dear. Just hand me a wrench and I’ll be on my way.”

Over the following week the singularity generator gradually took shape. Jack constructed a large torus on the floor of the storage bay, which was roughly fifteen feet across. Rising up out of the torus were four pillars that were forty feet tall and three feet in diameter.

“The quantum singularity should form in the center of the pillars,” Jack explained. “I’m hoping to use high-energy collisions to create a submicroscopic black hole, and then use gravity to manipulate the black hole into position.”

“But what about the event horizon?” Irene asked. “Don’t you need to somehow get it out of the way?”

Jack nodded. “That’s the next step. If I can spin the black hole rapidly enough it should morph into a ring-shaped singularity. Then, if I keep spinning it faster, the outer and inner event horizons should merge and leave me with direct access to an object with infinite mass. That will give me something I can work with.”

“But how are you going to get the other black holes to interact with it?” Irene asked.

“That should happen automatically. You see, right now the black holes in this area of space don’t really have anything else to interact with so they just link to each other. By putting this object at the intersect point between them I’m hoping they’ll connect to us instead of themselves. At least, that’s the theory.”

“So we could have achieved the same results by moving one of the black holes to this point in space,” Irene replied.

Jack laughed. “Sure, I suppose. Only I have no idea how to move a black hole.”

“But if you could figure it out that would solve our maintenance problem,” Irene said. “It would be a permanent solution.”

“I’ll let you invent that,” Jack replied, smiling. “Let me know when you’ve worked out a way to move stars around.”

“I’ll do that,” Irene said.

As work on the invention progressed Jack kept in touch with Star City. So far there had been no further earthquakes, but the planet was being bombarded with solar flares. None of them had been as bad as the one that had nearly killed him and his wife, but the mere fact that the colony had been hit eight times in the past week concerned him. Epsilon Eridani was growing increasingly unstable, and their time was running out.

Jack also sent a copy of his blueprints to his father Leon, who was on board the Liberty. Besides being a famous inventor his father had also played a role in designing Earth’s largest particle accelerator, so he was somewhat familiar with what Jack was trying to do. His dad looked over the plans and gave him a number of helpful suggestions regarding the initial creation of the singularity.

By the time Irene finally finished dismantling the Behemoth‘s massive sublight engines, Jack had most of his singularity generator assembled. The two of them then switched roles – Irene added the finishing touches to the generator while Jack shut down the ship’s fusion reactor and laid down new power cables. The storage bay already had some wiring that connected it to the reactor, but the connections didn’t have enough capacity to handle the singularity generator’s immense load. So Jack spent two days ripping wiring out of the ship’s walls and laying down massive amounts of power cabling.

“I wish I had some superconducting fiber,” Jack remarked, as he soldered the final connections between his invention and the reactor.

“Doesn’t the fusion tokamak have some?” Irene asked. She had completed the machine’s assembly earlier that day and was watching her husband lay down the new power cables.

“Sure it does, but I can’t take that apart. We need it to run at full capacity. The problem is that it’s the only source of superconducting material in the entire ship, and I don’t have a way to manufacture more. I’m just going to have to do without it.”

“Why do you need it?” Irene asked.

“Well, here’s the problem. Before we can start attracting the attention of black holes we have to have a singularity to work with. In order to create a singularity we’re going to need a particle accelerator – which is what that torus-shaped thing is at the bottom of the generator. Dad has used accelerators to create black holes before so I’m pretty sure this will work. The thing is, particle accelerators use incredibly powerful electromagnetic fields to accelerate particles. Those magnetic fields are usually generated by superconducting magnets, but since we don’t have any of those we’re going to have to go to Plan B.”

“What’s Plan B?”

Jack sighed. “Do without them, I’m afraid. It won’t be nearly as efficient. I just hope the fusion reactor can handle the load. The power draw is going to be pretty significant.”

Irene nodded. “I’m sure it will be fine. But let’s say that all of this works and you get your singularity trapped in there. What happens then? Will we be able to stand in here and look at it?”

“Definitely not! This room is going to be bathed in all sorts of unhealthy radiation and high-energy particles. After we turn it on we’ll need to leave the room and control the experiment from the power plant’s control center.”

“How will we know if it’s working?” Irene asked.

“We’ll be able to tell that from the readings the generator will relay to us. Plus, the colony should see a definite change – the solar flares should stop and no more earthquakes should happen.”

“Then we can just call Daniel and have him come rescue us,” Irene finished.

“Right!” Jack agreed. “Then we go home.”

* * * * * 

After Jack finished running the power cables he and his wife performed a thorough system diagnostic. They checked the wiring, the machinery, and the design itself. When they had done everything they could do Jack looked at his wife. “Are we ready to turn it on?”

“I think that’s the next step,” she replied. “It’s either that or go home, and without working engines I don’t think we can go home.”

After initializing the singularity generator the couple left the storage bay, secured the door behind them, and walked to the power plant. Jack sat down in front of a control panel and his wife stood behind him. He nervously cleared his throat, looked around, and powered up the fusion reactor. Once it had reached its peak capacity he switched on his quantum singularity generator.

Jack watched anxiously as the generator’s miniature particle accelerator came to life. It quickly put a tremendous load on the fusion reactor, pushing it to its limits. Jack dialed back the accelerator and allowed the stored energy level to build. The particles it was accelerating quickly built up speed and increased in mass. Then, just as his father had predicted, the mass changed and became a singularity.

The young inventor carefully moved the singularity into the gravitational well that he had prepared for it. This is it, he thought. Can the singularity be altered or will this machine fail?

Jack began applying gravitational pressure to the singularity, causing it to rotate at an increasing speed. Ever so slowly the singularity began to morph into a ring – the first step of the process.

Then, all at once, the numbers on the screen changed. The whole ship shook, as if something had struck it. Then it shook again.

“What’s happening?” Irene asked.

“I don’t know,” Jack replied. “It’s not drawing power from the reactor anymore, but yet its energy level keeps increasing! I’m losing control of the singularity.”

“What could be causing it?”

Jack studied the numbers. The Behemoth shook again, and this time groaned ominously. All at once he realized what had happened. “It’s the other black holes!” he gasped. “They’re starting to interact with it!”

“Isn’t that supposed to happen?” Irene asked.

“Yes, but it’s happening too soon! The singularity isn’t stable yet – I haven’t been able to hide the event horizon and get it properly tuned. Since it’s not stable the incoming connections are collapsing!”

“We should have seen this coming,” Irene said. “Of course they would start interacting with it as soon as it existed. But what do we do now?”

“I don’t know,” Jack replied anxiously. “But we’ve got to do something – and fast! If we can’t finish creating the quantum singularity then this whole ship is going to get destroyed. It wasn’t built for this! If the planet Myra just barely survived interacting with an unstable wormhole, can you imagine would happen to the Behemoth?”