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Posted on 25 Aug 2017 @ 7:56pm by Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Calaban Bel Asher

2,054 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Episode 15 - Emanation
Location: Danube Shadow on route to Akkadia
Timeline: MD 41 0200

ON:

HG sat with a PaDD on the floor of the Danube near enough the cockpit and was busy working on an idea, her idea, or at least that was the way she though about it. She liked these times, nothing much going on, and in this tiny ship, very little other then a few snores from the back, or the occasional murmur of voices from the cockpit which she ignored.

She was tapping away and musing out loud. "Now special relativity describes spacetime as a manifold whose metric tensor has a negative eigenvalue. Since this corresponds to the existence of a "time-like" direction. Thus a metric with multiple negative eigenvalues would correspondingly imply several time like directions, that is, multiple time dimensions. So if thе special theory of relativity can be generalized for the case of k-dimensional time (t1, t2, ..., tk) and n-dimensional space (xk+1, xk+2, ..., xk+n), then the (k+n)-dimensional interval, being invariant, is given by the n2 = (cdt1)2 + ... + (cdtk)2 − (dxk+1)2 − … − (dxk+n)2.

The metric signature will be (+....,+,-....-) time like sign convention and
k n
(-...-,+...+) for the space dimension
k n


So for transformations between the two inertial frames of reference K and K′, which are in a standard configuration without translations and/or rotations of the space axis in the hyperplane of space and or rotations of the time axis in the hyperplane of time , are given as follows....."

"Did I hear a Minkowski signature?" A blonde head put itself through the door. the broad bearded face of the Risan scientist, Calaban Bel Asher, the long strands of hair at the front pulled back into a scruffy little bun, and his goatee sprouting several days of stubble around it. Seeing HG, he stepped more fully into the cockpit area with a large coffee mug in his hand. "Are we going to poke some spacetime and see what it does?"

HG looked up and put the PaDD down with the face downward. She looked up at the big guy standing there whose head could have easily banged the ceiling. "Closer to a Calabi-Yau manifold. A bit of thought experiment on some ideas that float around in my head. Sorry, I do not think I really got to meet you before we left, Doctor Asher was it not?"

He sat down in one of the pilots chairs. "Call me Cal. Bel Asher are my parents." He nodded at the padd. "n-dimensional spacetime for your personal Rubik's Cube? Awesome. Better than the damn cat."

"Helena but I prefer HG," she nodded and smiled. "Sort of, I am trying to formulate some ideas on multi-dimensional time. Cat?"

"You were mentioning thought experiments. I was referring to the most famous one in Quantum Physics. Erwin's undead kitty? Which just proved that Schrödinger never actually owned a cat. Because I know for a fact that if you ever put a cat in a box all you'd end up with is a pissed off cat, and dead or a alive, in all possible permutations of the math, you end up with a very scratched face."

HG laughed and then stifled it so as not to wake others that were sleeping. "I suspect that you are correct even if the mathematical proofs say otherwise. So tell me Cal what has got you interested in this little trip to outer nowhere?"

"For science, dude," he said raising his coffee cup in a toast. "Go where no one has gone before? Explore a hidden part of the galaxy, and examine its weird shit? Who wouldn't want to be here?" He swigged a mouthful from his cup. "What about you? Of all the things to do in the universe, why are you heading out to an obscure, secretive civilisation filled with unknown wonder?"

"So I am not tied behind a desk and a lab. My philosophy has been in order to understand the universe you have to be a part of it." She waved a hand toward the window. "Well that and at one time at least those people, if the stories can be believed, had something that was similar to the Icconian Gates. Not only would one have to compensate for the two points moving constantly but also compensate for the time differential. Even travel through a wormhole there is a passage of time. The Gates and this Fold whatever they called it, is by all accounts near instantaneous. Somehow either they discovered an extra dimensional time or....well not sure what, nothing makes sense that I have discovered."

"Or it incorporates time travel as well as space travel," Calaban shrugged. "If they're stretching space, they're stretching time as well. Its Spacetime, not Space and Time. Just because our warp technology primarily works on the Space part doesn't mean they haven't found a technology that makes the time part just as fluid. Of course it means they've found some way of controlling the move through Time. Every incident of space travel initiated by current technology and not orbs and gateways or future tech, well, where they landed was a bit of a crapshoot. But what's to say these Akkadians haven't managed to control their position in time with as much ease as they control their position in space." Calaban spread his arms expansively. "Or they're running an Infinite Improbability Drive."

"I read that book. Interesting, still I guess fascination with time runs in my family. My oh so great grandfather wrote a book on that subject." HG nodded toward the Risian. He seemed pretty well read.

"That Wells?" Calaban grinned. "A distinguished pedigree." He drank out of his mug again. "I'm afraid I'm not quite the devotee of time that you are. I'm out here for the particles. The strange-er the better." He made a rim shot sound. "Seriously though. I'm hoping to have a good look at their local space, see what those sexy propulsion systems leave behind. If they are doing something with time we don't understand, there should be plenty to see in the chroniton radiation densities."

"If they are doing anything. Every time I try to get an answer from any of them they all just say, 'we put such things away'. Shame if they lost it all, who knows, maybe they figured best to leave such things before everyone else got upset. The Icconians came to a bad end. Just in case though, best brush on a secondary field. There is going to be lot of work load for this little group."

"Madam, I am a Gentleman of Science!" he beamed at her. "And you do not become on of those without picking up all manner of knowledge. From the purest mathematics to the dirtiest biology, I can throw in wherever's needed. I suspect we'll have more need of a lab tech than anything else. You'ld be surprised how many people I've worked with who don't know how to run a centrifuge."

HG laughed. "I remember some kid that came through the lab. It was the director's kid and run up the ultra centrifuge. Thing started to bounce around like a jack rabbit with a burr in its paw. Bounced right through a wall before the legs broke off and it dug into the floor. Turns out she just eye balled the amounts in the tube instead of weighing them. Kid's high school science project ended up costing many thousands of credits."

Calaban laughed, a deep gruff chuckling. "Well, learning is about making mistakes. It teaches you all sorts of skills. When I was doing labwork for a chemistry unit for my undergrad minor I managed to let some Nitrogen Triiodide dry out. Just a tiny amount. It caught fire, and I grabbed the nearest thing to put it out. But what I thought was a beaker of water turned out to be ethanol. Lost my beard, my eyebrows and a very fine moustache."

"Indeed, lucky that is was not your handsome looks as well," HG winked. "A shame to science, not many smart and handsome around."

"Well, that's very kind of you to say so." Cal gave her a little bow. "On a more serious note, I have to ask, what are the Akkadians getting out of our little field trip?"

"Not a clue in the world, and I do not really care. Some sort of diplomatic maneuver is the gist of it but I avoid all that messy stuff. I like things that can be measured and weighed and proved with math." HG made a face. "Oh I am not Daystrom crazy, but rather would focus on science."

"Sounds good to me. It'll be nice to go visiting without having our hosts breathing down our necks trying to tell us what to investigate. Science for diplomacy is my kind of deal." He paused, sipping thoughtfully from his cup. "Though I'm guessing you'd give up a firstborn for a peek at one of those folding drives?"

"Don't even get me started on children! Messy, mewling things...sorry not much maternal in this soul." HG replied. "If one exists, virtually any reference to them that the archeologists have put together get the same response, 'such things were put away', but the emphasis is like destroyed." She shrugged. "No one is talking, no one indicates any records and if there are they are not sharing. However," her grin got a little mad scientist. "By the same token, they seem to have abandoned those places they once where. That moon was more than likely visited early enough on and perhaps something left there. One reason I requested an archaeologist. Beyound officially I am to ascertain that the moon is stable enough and no particular hazards would affect the placement of a station."

"Officially huh? Interesting choice of words there." Calaban shrugged. "Well, people are lazy, they don't give up something that useful without good reason. Something that useful gets used a lot. And things that get used leave traces behind. I'm sure that, unofficially, we'll find something worth buffing up those maternal feelings for."

"If that is the case, I think I would rather we did not find a thing." HG made a face thinking about dirty diapers and all. "Well, first off let's see what is there before we snoop on the inner system too much. Shoot, we have not even been allowed to send probes in so we are pretty much going in blind though I am sure we will do some orbital scanning." HG changed the topic, "Say I am curious on a moon that far out from the main stars what is keeping the place warm enough to be M class. Guessing right now, probably some of the gravitational tidal forces, but maybe atmospherics as well. Think that might be enough challenge for you to work on when we get there?"

"I'm sure it will keep me busy. And if not, well, then I'll get a holiday somewhere new. Where I come from, folks call that a win-win," Cal winked at her, the action crinkling his clan mark so it looked like it was winking too."

"Oh trust me, we can always find something for you to do..." HG replied and then winked.

"As a great man once said, before I achieved enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water. After I achieved enlightment... I chopped wood, and carried water."

HG nodded. Well her attempt to flirt had gone as flat as a collapsed Bose-Einstein condensate. "Good enough, well I best be off to get a little sleep. Think I will leave the pondering of the universe until another time."

He waved her goodbye with a gesture from his cup and gave a wry smile. "People who end up out here, on the far edge of known space, enjoying the beauty of it, don't generally have much luck leaving off the pondering. If you can't manage it, I'll be right here."

HG nodded, "yet the mind needs rest as well, get some if you can."

"Oh, I will." Calaban assured her and raised a hand in a wave goodbye "Good night, Doctor Wells. I think the next few weeks are going to be a lot of fun."

"Let us hope!" HG waved back.

[OFF]

Calaban Bel Asher
Particle physicist and Gentleman of Science!

HG Wells
Scientist in charge

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