Below is a sample of my new novel "The Realm." I will be adding to this sample soon. It is not published yet but has had a couple of edit passes. Also, it is finished and will be published in the next few months if you would like to read the rest.

THE

REALM

A Novel

D.W. PATTERSON

Second Printing – , 2025

Future Chron Publishing

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission, except in the case of brief quotations for the purpose of review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author's imagination and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events and people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Future Adventure SF

DEDICATION

To Sarah

I find that people who want to “change the world” really want to change the way others think, to make others think the same as they do. But people that want to improve the world want to make it better, like improving agriculture to support another billion people, or improving medical knowledge to save another billion lives. So, improve the world, don't change it.

The Great Gramps

3000.1 AD

Chapter 1

Sci-pedia - The Online Resource for Science – Spin-two Drive or Link Drive

The Link Drive came out of the science of Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG). LQG was developed in the twenty-first century by physicists to meld quantum mechanics and general relativity into one. Just as in quantum mechanics, which describes the smallest quanta, the photon for instance, loop quantum gravity describes a smallest quanta of volume (and area). This idea has great appeal because if there is a smallest quanta of volume then it would be impossible for a singularity to form, and physics would still apply even inside a black hole and at the big bang (which wouldn't exactly be a big bang but a big bounce).

Another aspect of loop quantum gravity is that the links (based on quantum entanglement and action-at-a-distance) that make up the loops stitching together the quanta volumes of spacetime are usually local. But not always. It is possible that a link between nodes of volume could have been established and then separated. Somewhere across the universe then could be an entangled quanta of volume corresponding to a local quanta of volume . . .

Spin-two is a reference to the particle of gravity, the graviton, although spin one-half particles (fermions) are more important to the drive's operation.

To develop the spin-two drive Dr. Dagmar Mach used the previous space drive, the wormhole drive invented by his mentor Elias Mach, to cast exotic mass-energy (which has a repulsive gravitational effect) into nonlocal links which for all intent and purposes act like narrow wormholes.

The cast energy of the link drive causes fermionic particles, particles with one-half quantum spin, to flip their spin (say from up to down). The nonlocal partners to these fermions, entangled particles in other words, assume the opposite spin state. By modulating the mass-energy, a pulse can travel down the nonlocal link at a frequency determined by the spin-two drive.

Using the drive's ability to create pulsating “bubbles” of negative mass-energy a ship inserted into the nonlocal link is pulled and pushed along to the far end.

Once the ship enters the link the drive shuts down and the decaying pulses eventually allow the link to “relax” to its original state. By that time the ship has already emerged at the nonlocal destination. The link portals now decay completely and the nonlocal tunnel closes.

The advantages of the spin-two drive over the earlier wormhole drive are many. Because the spin-two drive is opening an already existing mini-wormhole link the exotic mass-energy needed is one-tenth that of a wormhole drive which must force the wormhole open from beginning to end in the wormhole dimension.

Another advantage is that the nonlocal links are by definition usually connecting regions of space that are far removed. Jumps of a thousand light-years are common compared to the forty light-year jumps possible with the wormhole drive. In fact, there is no limit to the jump distant but because the distribution of jump lengths is gaussian, very long links are harder to find in the quantum foam and therefore it takes a longer and longer time to find the link and make the jump . . .

“That's impossible,” said Captain Henderson, the graying thirty-year veteran of the space lanes who would be retiring soon.

“I know sir, but the navigational Ems aren't able to find any references,” said his First Officer, Brandon Sykes, called “Handsome Brandon” by some.

“Well, run it through again F.O. We couldn't have linked so far that the Ems are lost.”

“Yes sir, I'll double check,” said Sykes.

Sykes knew it was impossible, just as the captain had said, but he also knew that the Ems were lost.

The Emulated Brains, Ems for short, handled most of the tasks aboard the fusion ship Starflyer. Such artificial intelligence had handled similar tasks for humans for over a thousand years. If stumped by a problem or task, an Em would bud itself, that is create more Ems in the computer, to help with the task. But this time it was no use; the ship really had linked beyond any possibility of assigning coordinates to its location.

It was impossible, but it had happened.

“Okay Brand, I believe you,” said the captain when presented with the results of the re-analysis. “We better have a meeting.”

“I don't know Captain,” said the resident astronomer, Jackson Jones.

The officers and other specialists were having a meeting in the wardroom.

“We know they can navigate out to fifty thousand light-years for sure and I would think double that at least,” he said.

“So that puts us beyond one-hundred thousand light-years?”

“Sorry I can't be more exact sir,” said Jones.

“Okay Dr. Jones, I want you to work with Commander Sykes to see if you two can get a better estimate for me. Meanwhile, I see no reason to link someplace else until we know where we are. But I do want some scans of the local space. Find the nearest stars and star systems. We need to look for a port that will at least provide us with the light energy we need to renew our isotopics. You can help Dr. Jones with that task,” said the captain to the man sitting next to Jones.

As Jones knew, a fourth generation-plus fusion spaceship was almost completely self-contained as long as a source of energy could be found to renew its isotopics, the nuclear energy storage system that acted like a battery bank.

The captain continued, “Everyone else, I need you to watch the crew, make sure you head off any unwanted action.”

“What do you mean Captain?” asked someone.

“I mean that when the crew find out that we are lost in space they may react in a way that endangers themselves and, or the ship.”

“When will they find out sir?”

“Immediately, I intend to announce it right after this meeting. I don't want them speculating that we are keeping something from them.”

After looking around the table the captain dismissed the meeting before getting on the comm to announce the ship's predicament.