DAY 38: Torn Apart

Jaeger was two minutes ahead of the police when he ran up to the lab, against the tide of panicking students.  He reached the door as the security guard was about to chain it..  "Let me in, Carl!  Let me through!"

"Dr Jaeger, it's not safe!  The police'll be here-"

"I know about Morgan!  I need to try before he gets shot!"  Jaeger stared Carl down.  "Lock up behind me!"

Jaeger kept up with the Twitter feeds of some of his cuter students, including Janelle Foster, who subsidized her education with provocative selfies sponsored by a domain website and a field-hockey league team.  But six minutes prior, she had posted the first words about Dr Whittier's rampage., across the quad from Jaeger's office.  

In the time it had taken him to run from his desk to the lab, Jaeger had rationalized how unsurprising Morgan's behavior was.  Morgan had grown more silent and possessive with the data coming in from the Swift satellite.  There were 47 scientists around the globe monitoring the results; he was performing due diligence, testing redundencies, seeing what others had seen.  But the man who lived and breathed his work had stopped talking, had stopped going home, had stopped visiting his friends and colleagues.  He had taken a deep dive.

Jaeger made it to Morgan's desk.  Morgan was sitting there, head in his hands, gun off to one side.  The phone was shot to pieces; his monitor had received similar damage.  Jaeger said Morgan's name, too softly at first, until he recognized Jaeger's voice and looked up.

"Are there any casualties, Morgan?"

"Jaeger, I'm sorry.  I'm sorry about all of this."

"What's this about?"

"I'm not sure I can do this anymore.  There's too much to see..."

Jaeger sat down.  "I remember a lecture in my second year.  Someone told me that we are not conquerors.  We are stewards of a infinite inheritence, and our greatest achievement is to contribute to that inheritence.  We struggle not for our persistence, but the persistence of truth."

"Well, that sounds pompous," Morgan chuckled.  "Jaeger, I am arriving at the conclusion that some things are beyond examination."

"Well, we can't know everything.  Not enough time, right?"

"That's not what I mean."  The faint echo of stomping boots came from down the hall; Morgan placed his hands over his head.  "I leave my work to you; you're too obstinant to accept otherwise.  And if you see what I've seen, please forgive me.  The abyss has looked back."

The police swarmed in, forcing Jaeger and Morgan to the ground, restraining them.  Morgan ignored their warnings, telling Jaeger, "The abyss is looking back!  The abyss is looking back..."

Inspired by Discover Magazine article, "Our Black Hole Lights Up"

DAY 18: Let's Hit the Wall

Jaeger was happy to accompany Emily to the Institute, if only to break the news to Qadir.  The Voyager crash had been disastrous for everybody on the team, and now he was visiting the kid genius that stole his dream job before they even graduated.  It was Qadir's unabashed adoration of Planck theory that assured his residency at the ESA.  And spreading the misery by telling Qadir that everything he believed was a lie... that was the most silver of linings Jaeger could imagine.

Once again, Jaeger was disappointed.  After the shock, Qadir laughed even harder than Jaeger had ever heard.  "You realize what this means, don't you?"

"No!" Qadir said, between laughs.  "No one does!  Isn't that great?"

The laughter was starting to grate Jaeger; he pointed to the wall.  "How long were you guys working on that picture of the universe there?"

"I helped with the last couple of years - but so what?  If your Jesus knocked on my door today, saying 'Here I am, you are wrong about everything'- I would offer him a beer.  Everything is wrong, and that is wonderful!  No more re-proving generations-old theories - we are discovering now!
"I will share with you a koan, a Buddhist fable:  once there was a fish that was the smartest fish in his school.  He taught them all about their world.  Being fish, their world was water.  They breathe it, are surrounded in it, move through it, they think they know everything about water... and this fish, most of all.  'Fish that leave the water?  That's myth!  Things living above the water? Lies!  And so he believed, until the day he got caught on a hook, and pulled into a boat.  And as he lay dying on the floor of the boat, withdrawn and separated for the water he had known all his life - he began to understand what water was..."

Emily was shuffling through the thermal photomontages on Qadir's desk.  "I guess you understand why we're talking with you, Dr Tinibu.  Is there any work your facility's doing here that might-"
"Oh, no, this is all useless, at the moment.  I want to see the Voyager first, to see what undid it.  We build another one. And whatever wall we hit, we have to hit it again."


inspired by Discover Magazine article "Baby Pictures of the Cosmos, Now in HD"

DAY 6: Boomerang

Emily swirled the chardonnay, compelling it to climb to the lip of her snifter, without allowed thing it to escape.  She had heard it was what one does with a good chardonnay, and so she did, carefully.  She placed it under her nose to experience the bouquet, but the smell reminded her of communion wine and one of her preferred disinfecting cleaners.
The others had opted for hardier spirits.  Jaeger was drinking vodka, which was supposed to be funny, but no one told her why.  Harold and Li were working on a bottle of Jack Daniels.  Stu drank nothing, but stared at the shadows in the corner, wearing his calculating glare...
Finally, Morgan hoisted his beer in the air, calling their attention.  "Gentleman and lady, I don't think we've yet given a proper toast to Chuz, our fallen colleague.  As we chase after the secret he kept - the secret that killed him - I ask that we remember the man who brought us together, and allowed us to be our best.  We've had some vigorous discussions, but I think we can come to agreement that it was a burden he should not have borne alone.  As he brought us together, so he is among us.  As we see this through, so shall he.  To Chuz!"

The team downed their drinks and bowed their heads.  Lorraine the waitress took the empty bottle, and brought new shots.  "Sorry, boys, here's your last call.  And I'm sorry to hear about your friend.  What are you, hunters?"
"Actually, miss," slurred Harold, "we're rocket scientists.  But we are hunting tonight-"
"-for a meteorite!" Li interjected, stepping over the rest of Harold's words.
"You mean, that meteor coming down tonight?  I saw on the news a little bit ago..."
Harold grinned deeply.  "Yeah, your government's closing the forest for us, since it'll probably land there. Got our nets and yellow tape, and we'll see what the heavens brought down to us poor souls."
"Are you guys Americans?"\
"Yep.  You wanna do something a-boot it, eh?"
Li was patting himself down for his wallet.  "We'll be out of your hair in a bit."  He wandered over to Morgan.
As the waitress was about to walk off, Harold whispered, "We're not going after a meteorite."
He showed Lorraine his wristwatch, and pointed to its center.  "We're here.  We shot something all the way over here-" dragging his finger to the 3- "and it's coming at us from here."  He placed his finger on the 9, pulling it back to the center.  "Ain't that wild?" Lorraine shook her head, offering no response.
Stu returned his attention to the team.  "If you're all done, it's entered airspace. should be on the ground in two minutes."

The team climbed into the van: Stu at the wheel, Morgan navigating, the others doing final checks on equipment and watching the skies.  Emily was sitting next to Jaeger, whose lower lip was jutting out and resting against the window.  In a low voice, she asked, "Are you mad that Chuz didn't tell you?"
Jaeger collected himself, and measured his answer.  "No.  I mean, he inherited it, y'know?  He was still interning when the signal went crazy.  There wasn't any proof to call it anything besides mechanical failure, so that's been the truth enough.  No other answer made sense, so there's no reason to think of anything else without the data.  That's what messed Chuz up."
"That way lies madness," Morgan offered.
"And we have plenty of time to go crazy," Jaeger joked.  "First things first."

Harold's mouth diarrhea kicked in.  "Guys, I'm renaming the stars.  As long as all bets are off, I'll calling dibs on a couple of them.  I already bought one for my daughter, so she would think my job was cool.  I think I'm going to rename a closer one; maybe it'll work this time...  oh shit, are we still going to have jobs?  I'm serious, guys!  The universe - our universe is like, 85 years across!  We're living in a donut!  A dark jelly donut!"
"I think you're panicking, Harold.  I'm considering a wormhole as our culprit," Li countered.  "The theory's been around, it's suggested on the atomic level; if we find evidence of temporal irregularities, I think this discovery could be a real positive."
"Sure, you and the Mario brothers!"
Emily put her hand on Harold's shoulder, trying to calm him.  "Look, we're all thinking about it, let's just get it out there.  Now, I'm thinking it's premature to presume one dominant factor put it so off course.  We've got other scouts out there, after all, and they haven't returned.  It could have caught onto another current, and been redirected naturally."
"I'm considering intentional alteration," Stu said.  "Statistically, it's impressive that we send it out one direction in uncharted territory, and it happens to intersect our path, but not where it started, and do that unassisted.  I don't think it's an accident; I think it's a response."
Morgan moaned, "My wife will tell you who's responding: it's God.  He's swatting us back down where He wants us to be.  We asked our big question, and we got our answer: No."
Emily accepted the map, and took over navigation.

At the site, the authorities had already cordoned off the area; the team had it to themselves.  The radiation it had absorbed in space was distinct enough to find it in the forest, but Harold assured that it wasn't at lethal levels.  He and Li worked the perimeter to locate the smaller significant pieces; Jaeger and Stu loaded up the bulk of the guts, leaving Emily and Morgan to catalog.  Morgan was all business until Jaeger brought him the pieces of the gold disc; then, he cried like a baby.
But even as the autopsy continued through the night, Emily would still steal glances at the stars, and wonder what she was seeing.


inspired by the Discover Magazine article, "Voyager 1 Goes Interstellar"