//------------------------------// // C.O.N.T.A.C.T. Instant Messenger // Story: Arrow 18 Mission Logs: Lone Ranger // by AdmiralTigerclaw //------------------------------// C.O.N.T.A.C.T. Instant Messenger Conversation Log: July 10th, 2258 * Ernest Hart (EGSA Engineering) has made contact * Dan Hawking (EGSA Operations) has made contact Conversation is being recorded. Ernest: Hey, Dan. You there? Dan: Greetings! - What can do do for you? Ernest: It's about secure file 'Nightcrawler'. Dan: What about it? Ernest: Is it authentic? Dan: The file? Yeah, as far as I know it's authentic. Ernest: Open it up for me real quick then. I have to show you something. Dan: I have a meeting with Bobby in ten minutes. Can this wait? Ernest: This might just make the cornerstone of your meeting, so... No. Dan: Okay, I have Nightcrawler open. What do you want to show me? Ernest: Take a look at O-scope data point one, at the 24 second mark. Dan: Okay... got it. - What am I looking for? Ernest: Look at that waveform. Are you seeing what I'm seeing. Dan: I don't know ernest. What am I supposed to be seeing? Ernest: Okay... I forget you're not engineering sometimes. My bad. - At 24s, and 480ms, you see that wave? The one that looks like a sideways S-bump? Dan: I see it. Ernest: That's not normal. That's a positive AND negative voltage curve occurring at the exact same time. - There's only one other natural electromagnetic signature known that does that. Displacement flux. Dan: Wait... Displacement flux? Are you sure? Ernest: Yeah, I'm pretty sure. When you use a displacement drive, there's some simultaneous stretching and squeezing of spacetime involved. Usually that produces small electromagnetic waves in the UHF band. One wave from the stretching produces a negative voltage flux. Another from the squeezing produces a positive voltage flux. Dan: Shouldn't that cancel them out? Ernest: The waves are out of phase by a few pico-seconds. One occurs at the departure point, the other occurs at the destination point. When they hit the o-scope, they arrive slightly apart. Think of it as digging a hole. In order to dig a hole, you invariably have to create a small mound of dirt next to it. - We call them 'digger-waves' and they're unique to displacement drive flux. - I thought I was seeing things at first, but I checked every recorded instance of this 'teleport'. - Every single time it occurs the o-scope picks up the digger-wave. Dan: So what you're saying is that the teleport isn't a teleport, but a subspace displacement hop? Ernest: Well, yes and no. As far as we're concerned, the mechanics of a subspace displacement drive is effectively teleportation occurring 64,000 times a second. But very simply put, the creature being catalogued in this file is a living subspace displacement drive. Dan: Is that even possible? Ernest: Nobody said it wasn't. If you have a means to curve space, the amount of curvature depends on what energy you have available. A ship like the Arrow covers 22,000 miles in a single pulse of the SDD. Theoretically, a creature can do the same at much smaller distances. Dan: Here's a question then. Could a subspace displacement affect things other than point to point travel? Ernest: Like what? Dan: Like moving external objects, levitation and that kind of thing. Ernest: Well... if you can sustain the curvature in a small enough area, it could create a pseudo-gravity well strong enough to overcome natural gravity. Then all you do is move that point, and the object merely 'falls' into it. - Unlike teleportation though, the precision needed for such a thing is like the difference between a human's ability to walk while remaining balanced, and teaching that to an early robot. - So far, we've only managed to succeed at hurling bobble-head dolls across the room at half the speed of sound. That wasn't pretty. Dan: But it's possible? Ernest: Theoretically, yes. But it's not easy. Dan: How large can you scale something like that? Ernest: How much energy do you have? Dan: I see... * Bobby Brookshire (EGSA Operations) has made contact. Bobby: Okay Dan, I'm here. What's so important that we're pushing this meeting back? Dan: Ernest, tell Bobby what you just told me. Ernest: Which part? Dan: The whole thing, but shorter. Ernest: Oh boy... - Well, I was going over the data from secure file Nightcrawler when I ran into digger-waves on the o-scope readings. Bobby: Digger wave? Ernest: The telltale signature of a subspace displacement. It's all over the o-scope recording. All instances of this creature, Twilight Sparkle, 'teleporting', give off a digger-wave. Bobby: Are you saying she's displacing rather than teleporting? Ernest: More like displacing and teleporting are the same thing, but yeah. Dan: Ernest also said that levitation might use the same mechanic, but with more precision. Bobby: Really? Scalable? Ernest: If you've got energy, you can move it. Bobby: Ernest, I want you at our meeting. Dan, can he be in this meeting? Dan: Ernest, drop what you're doing and meet us in room 403 in five minutes. Ernest: You realize I'm four miles away in the assembly building, right? Dan: Oh... yeah. Well, get to room 403 in the main complex ASAP. I think you're on to something. Ernest: Nice. Consider me there. * Dan Hawking (EGSA Operations) has suspended contact * Bobby Brookshire (EGSA Operations) has suspended contact * Ernest Hart (EGSA Engineering) has suspended contact *Sub note: 3750 ly = 22 quadrillion miles. (To be precise: 22,044,845,779,681,532) 6 months = ~15,552,000 seconds Thus Arrow travels 1,417,492,655.5 miles a second. OR: 7,609.4 times C Divided by 64 kHz SDD cycles = 22,148 miles per pulse.