Mach's Metric NWE - Excerpt

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They hugged each other sitting there on the curb in front of the family home. Jean's mother, Harry's wife, had died in an accident the previous year. One thing that had come out of the sorrow of her death was that father and daughter were closer than ever.

Harry looked up into the distance. A strange checkerboard of irregular shapes seemed to be coming towards him, as if the habitat were breaking up into pieces about the size of a few city blocks. Whatever it was it was coming fast. He didn't mention it but just held her.

Suddenly he got a headache, but he continued to stare at the approaching chaos. Jean gasped as she too experienced a sharp headache.

As the phenomenon got closer the puzzle pieces were breaking up into smaller patches. Harry started feeling sick, he hugged his daughter tighter.

Then, when it was only about a half mile away, smaller and smaller the pieces became and just before it reached Harry and his daughter, he had the distinct impression that only a kind of confetti was left in that direction.

That's when Harry and his daughter's bodies “unraveled” at several tenths light-speed.

The habitat ceased to exist, waves of disintegrating spacetime passed, slowing momentarily when encountering the matter of the habitat before rushing onward to their next target of destruction.

But the waves were just a side effect of an invention that would change the world if it didn't destroy it first.

Excerpt from Mach's Metric. Release date on Amazon & KU Sunday, July 20.

In Mach's Metric I tried to realistically develop the technology of the wormhole drive, which is a way of taking “shortcuts” through space to overcome the speed limit imposed by relativity.

The modern science of wormholes starts with a paper by Kip Thorne and Mike Morris in 1988. I used the book “Making Starships and Stargates” by physicist James Woodward to extrapolate from theory to working (extrapolated) technology.

In a side story, an archaeologist, centuries before, discovers indications of “bridge footings” on both sides of the Red Sea, miles apart. She also discovers a model of a mysterious machine which dates from the sixth millennial. It later plays an important role in the development of the wormhole drive.

Besides science and technology, there is a kidnapping to solve, a corporate race to develop the drive, a serious, cataclysmic side-effect of the drive that must be resolved, and four young friends in a space habitat affected by the apocalyptic results of a battle between opposing political forces that causes a breakdown in spacetime (see excerpt above).

A little romance, two marriages, quantum computers, and helpful robots, round out the story.