WORLD
BRANE
Book 2
D.W. PATTERSON
Copyright © 2025 D.W. Patterson
All rights reserved.
First Printing – September 2025
Future Chron Publishing
Cover – Copyright © 2025 D.W. Patterson
Cover Image – ID 305930513 | Futuristic © Vampy1 | Dreamstime.com
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.
Hard Science Fiction – Old School
Human Generated Content
To Sarah
“One man's 'magic', is another man's engineering.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
But something had gone wrong, ships had been lost in the bulk and now there was a danger that the settlements founded throughout all those universes would be cutoff and isolated. Something had to be done.
The essential problem was time, frozen time spheroids which like a submerged reef, could sometimes trap an unwary ship and sometimes destroy it. To solve the problem humanity would have to learn what was causing it, and if it were a natural occurrence or human created.
CHAPTER 1
Mark Dreyer had been working on the problem of the frozen time spheroids for months now. Mark, a physics professor at Pacific Tech, with the help of Dr. Ed Balmer, had come up with a method of dissipating the spheroids when in normal spacetime.
The method involved the use of the spin-two generator, which was a form of wormhole generator, as an intense plasma generator. According to the equations of wormhole generation, which Mark taught to his students as follows:
“These are the equations of a wormhole generator,” Mark said. “They come out of the solution of a particular configuration of spacetime which is called the Mach metric, after the nineteenth century physicist Ernst Mach. They describe the geometry of a wormhole, a path through alternate physical dimensions that can be used to bridge distances in our universe.
“Now look at the solutions of the field equation, what I call the Mach equation.
“As a physical analogy, think of it this way, say you have some bathroom scales. Now those scales are only accurate when you are standing still on them. If you start jumping up and down, they will read either more or less depending on how fast you jump. And the response time of the scales. This is how the first term in the equation works.
“This first term reduces or increases the mass according to the driving frequency as long as the mass is accelerating, in our case the sphere of the generator is spinning so it has angular momentum, remembering always that a change in direction is also an acceleration. All this is experimental fact.
“However useful this term of the Mach equation may be for accelerating a mass it is not actually the effect we want to use, that is in the second term of the equation.
“Note that the second term is divided by the square of the mass density. Also note that it has a second derivative with respect to time, and a minus sign. All this means that if we ramp up the power of the generator fast enough the second term will dominate the first term and create a negative or exotic mass according to the Mach equation. And that is just what is needed to open and hold open the throat of a wormhole.
“By the way, the twentieth century physicists Kip Thorne and Mike Morris first wrote the metric of a wormhole and postulated the need for negative mass to hold the throat open.
“But there is one problem, or in our case, one advantage with using this term. As you can see the mass starts out positive, or ordinary mass, goes through zero and becomes exotic, or negative mass. You have to be careful to drive it quick enough through zero to avoid the equation becoming singular.
“If not you can create an infinite mass and a black hole. A small black hole develops and then immediately dissipates. As you know, small black holes less than the size of the Sun will radiate away their mass rather quickly as Hawking radiation. The smaller the hole the faster it radiates. And that creates an intense plasma which can be directed by magnetic and electrical fields against a target, in this case, a frozen time spheroid.
“The spheroid is pierced and the internal time rate, which is almost zero, and external rate must equalize.
“Any questions?”
A student in back raised their hand.
“Yes.” said Mark.
“But the wormhole generator and therefore the modern spin-two drive operated on the Mach principle, correct?”
“That is true,” said Mark. “I think I know where you are going and you are right. The Mach principle, which states that the inertia of an object depends on all the other masses in the universe, is not valid in the bulk because there are no natural masses there.”
“So, how do we get the spin-two drive to work in the bulk?” the student asked.
“I've been working on that for some months and the answer to your question is, we don't, at least not yet.”
The class ended and Mark was off to a lunch date.
“Hey Laine” he said to the woman at the table.
Lainey Johnson was a corporate lawyer who had worked for one of the transport companies operating in the bulk before taking a job to be nearer Mark. She had short brown hair and was slim and a few inches shorter than Mark who was six feet.
“Hello honey,” she said as they kissed. “How's your day.”
“Oh, I don't know. I just had a class in which I was explaining how to neutralize a frozen time spheroid and one of the students pointed out that the method wouldn't work in the bulk, where it's needed, and I had to agree. I just wish I could find a way around the problem.”
“You'll find it, you've been working so hard on it, every spare moment,” she said.
“I hope you're right but sometimes it seems the solution is going to elude me forever,” he said.
“How about you?” he asked.
“It went well,” she said. “The university law offices actually do a lot more different services than I expected.”
“So, you think you might be interested?” he asked.
“Yeah, it would be interesting and varied work, so we'll see if they make an offer,” she said.
“For you? I'm sure they will,” he said, reaching for her hand. “I did, didn't I?”
“Yes honey,” she said, taking his hand.
Lunch finished, Mark went to his lab. After his experience with the frozen time spheroid brought back by the Space Force's ship Liberator from bulk space, Mark became one of the leading researchers on the phenomenon. He was able to get support from the government and some of the leading space transportation companies for the lab's establishment.
Mark had recently been studying the work of the scientists the previous century who had developed the theory of Quantum Temporal Dynamics. QTD had treated time like a quantum field theory in which it was a consequence of a particle called the chron. The chron particle, similar to the Higgs particle before it, which gave particles their mass, created time which had a smallest possible interval called the Planck interval.
Because time was now a quantum field theory, scientists learned how to manipulate it through the manifestation of two other particles, the chron-minus and the chron-plus. A preponderance of chron-minus particles caused time to slow down, a preponderance of chron-plus particles caused time to speed up.
Mark and another scientist, Ed Balmer, had studied the frozen time spheroid on the Moon and found that it had given off almost equal amounts of the two chron particles, instead of a preponderance of chron-minus particles as had been expected. QTD almost fit the phenomenon but not quite, Mark's experiments were aimed at understanding why.
The earlier experimenters had been able to create spheroids of slowed-down or sped-up time with the spin-two drive. By creating, or casting as it's called, a sphere of negative mass energy and giving it a spin, the internal area of the sphere would hollow out and begin excluding the quantum fields of normal spacetime.
The remaining temporal field inside the bubble can be modified to increase or decrease the “ticking” of time. Currently, it was the only way to study the mechanics of QTD.
This afternoon they would be doing another test run. Mark started the experiment by pressing the button on his Emmie's screen. The spin-two generator in the next room started up, it soon had reached a point where the shielding of the Mach layer of the generator was generating a large and negative mass-energy as the electrons, shielded from the swarm of virtual particles that always surrounded them, expressed their true mass, which was large and negative.
The generator “cast” that negative energy by warping the spheroid which caused it to “flow” across the room and converge. The test was going well. The bubble, twenty feet in diameter had been spun up into a thin-walled, slightly-flattened spheroid in the large lab room. Some small six-legged robots about the size of dogs had been outfitted with the necessary sensors and were walking back and forth through the wall of the spheroid which was surrounded by scaffolding and crosswalks that also penetrated its periphery.
Because of the spin, a slight flattening at the poles of the bubble occurred and at the inner walls of this spheroid chron- particles increased in number. This had the effect of slowing down time inside the spheroidal region. The robots were confirming the changing rate of time inside the bubble.
Mark looked at the numbers and shook his head, it was just as QTD predicted, the chron-minus particles were predominant, and it wasn't at all like the readings he and Ed Balmer had taken of the frozen time spheroid. Mark pressed the screen again to stop the test.
His graduate student, Garrett, looked up from his computer screen and said, “Looks like it confirms QTD, again.”
“Yeah Garrett, I don't see any new physics. How about shutting down the experiment, I'm going to my office,” said Mark.
Mark's office was on the fifth floor of the physics building and was small and simple with one window, one desk, and some bookshelves along each wall. He sat down behind his desk and stared out the window at the sunny California sky and thought.
I'm getting nowhere with this line of research. I've got to try something different. You can't get to frozen time with this method. I also know that frozen time was originally created with AdS space between two negative energy bubbles. But that stuff is dangerous, still it might be the only way.
Mark pressed the button on the screen of his Emmie and the spin-two generator powered up. The whompf of the power supply could be heard through the bullet proof glass as the huge input capacitors of the supply charged. After a few seconds the generator started spinning the wheel made of the three materials (a lead-zirconium-titanate composite) supporting the Mach effect. The outermost layer was capable of the greatest internal energy fluctuation and when accelerated and driven by the supply voltage would almost completely decouple the innermost layer from the rest of the universe. Then the large negative mass-energy necessary for opening a wormhole mouth, or in this case assembling a bubble of such mass-energy, would be available.
The spheroid of negative energy that appeared beyond the machine was opaque and shimmered in the lights of the lab. Mark had seen such bubbles before and he always thought they had a kind of sculptured beauty as the surface dimpled and changed continuously. Such a sight was common in space travel before the boundary drive replaced the wormhole drive as the preferred method of transport.
At this point instead of applying small corrections to the energy spheroid to get it to spin up, Mark started to cast a second bubble, slightly smaller, to the same location.
Now the shimmering, opaque spheroid in the lab began to darken below the surface. Soon streaks could be seen swirling and pooling at different places in the ten feet wide bubble. Then, Mark started the process to spin-up the bubble. By focusing the spin-two generator on the edge of the large spheroid he cast smaller amounts of mass-energy at those areas. The resultant absorption along with the momentum of the smaller bubble transferred to the larger one and it began to rotate. As it rotated, it also shrank somewhat, speeding up its rotation more, like a figure skater pulling their arms in during a spin move.
“What have you got Garrett?”
“Sensors show a layer of AdS space, 50 millimeters thick, just below the surface,” said Garrett.
“Okay sounds like we've got a target, first I'm going to try to dissipate the usual way by configuring the generator as a plasma gun,” said Mark.
As Mark busied himself with the reconfiguration of the generator he wasn't watching what was happening in the lab, but Garrett was watching.
“Professor Dreyer,” he said. “We've got something happening to the bubble.”
Without looking up Mark asked, “What's that Garrett?”
“It's growing in size, fast” said Garrett.
Mark looked up immediately from his Emmie. It took a moment for him to realize that Garrett was right. He had expected some change in the size of the spheroid during the experiment but hadn't expected it to change so quickly. It was growing and seemed to be picking up speed.
“Okay Garrett, I'm shutting down the drive, get your Emmie and get out of here,” said Mark.
Garrett didn't wait to be told again; the dark menacing sphere of negative mass-energy was not something he wanted to encounter. He did as Mark said as quickly as he could.
By the time Mark was finished he noticed that the lights in the control room had darkened. He wondered if it was a power failure but soon realized that it was the bubble, it had expanded beyond the lab and the outer surface was in the room with him. Mark felt the hairs on his neck stand up, he didn't know if it was fear or a reaction to the nearness of the negative mass-energy. He didn't want to know, he grabbed up his Emmie and fled the room.
He was soon at the stairs which would lead from the sub-basement to the basement and then to the first floor of the building. He raced up the stairs as fast as he could, almost at the top he heard the strange sounds not far behind and below him. Popping and a dull screech, like two cement blocks being rubbed together, were coming from the building. The growing spheroid of negative mass-energy and its thin layer of AdS space was stressing the walls, causing them to shift and settle.
By this time, Mark had reached the first floor, someone had pulled the fire alarm and a crowd of people were trying to exit through the front doors of the physics building. Mark was almost the last one, as the group pushed forward and slowly two and three at a time made it through the doors.
Then he could feel his neck hairs standing again, but now it was his whole body that was affected. Those around him felt it to, the sense of fear became predominant. Mark wasn't sure if it was the negative mass-energy, the AdS space, or if they were experiencing the change in the rate of time, but it was uncomfortable, and almost maddening.
Some in the crowd started pushing those in front of them, people were falling and getting trampled on, others were pushed into and through the windows on either side of the doors. But that may have been what saved their lives as the crowd now had a wider opening they could flee through.
Mark kept his feet and stopped to help one of the students that had been knocked off hers. He helped her through the open window without getting cut by the glass shards and they hurried off across the plaza in front of the building. On the other side, near the fountain they stopped.
“Are you okay,” he asked the girl.
“I think so, Professor Dreyer, I just sprained my ankle a bit,” she said.
Mark was sitting by the girl watching the physics building for any sign of the negative mass-energy bubble. He could hear the building groaning as if it were undergoing an earthquake even though the rest of the campus was unaffected. He also thought he saw the area around the door darkening, but it cleared up almost immediately, then the building was quiet.
By this time the campus fire department was on the scene. Mark left the girl after she assured him, she would be fine and went over to talk to the firemen and campus police.
After talking to the fire chief and explaining what he thought had happened, the chief allowed him to go with his men into the building to see his lab. Two of the firemen led the way as they descended the stairs that Mark had recently ascended with the utmost speed.
The control room and lab were dark except for the subdued emergency lighting. The firemen looked around for any problems and to judge the safety of the building. Mark looked at the damage to the rooms and the equipment.
Close to where the spheroid was formed there was a great deal of damage. The sensors and robots that had been used to monitor the bubble were almost completely destroyed. It was as if they had never existed. As Mark followed the path of destruction out of the lab and through the control room and outside, the destruction became less and less. Mark knew the bubble of negative mass-energy had not dissipated until it was outside the building, it must have been that the AdS region dissipated more rapidly.
Mark knew a little about the AdS space that had formed between the inner and outer spheroids. It actually resisted expansion with its negative curvature; the gravitational repulsion of the negative mass-energy had to overcome this tendency. Mark also knew that in an AdS space, nothing could exist, no mass, no energy, just vacuum and non-existence.
There was one other manifestation of an AdS space that so far, fortunately, Mark so no sign of. When mass is introduced into an Anti-de Sitter space it is like dropping a rock into a pond, the resultant waves of spacetime will reflect completely at the borders of the space and build and reinforce at the center until the concentration becomes great enough to form a black hole.
Though there were obvious signs of AdS space forming, the complete loss of sensors and robots, there was no indication that the threshold of black hole formation had been reached. If so, then a lot more, maybe the whole building and everything it, would have disappeared into that blackness.
By the time Mark came out of the physics building again, Lainey was standing across the plaza where he had been sitting just before. When she saw him, she ran up to him.
“Mark, are you okay?”
“Yeah honey, but I'm afraid my experiment is a total loss.”
“Okay, let's get you back to your apartment where you can clean up and then we'll get some dinner,” she said.
“Sounds good,” he said.
Mark was in the apartment when he got a call from the Dean of the College of Science. Lainey could overhear Mark's side of the call.
“Yes sir,” said Mark. “Yes, I understand, and I agree.”
Mark stopped to listen.
“Yes, I will do that tomorrow,” he said.
After another moment he said, “Thank you Dean and goodbye.”
“What is it honey?” asked Lainey.
“Let's get to the restaurant and I'll tell you all about it,” he said.
At the restaurant Mark and Lainey ordered the spaghetti. They were sitting at their favorite table which was in the back and around a corner. It was usually quiet unless a family was dining nearby.
After the waitress brought their beers Lainey asked, “Okay, about that call.”
“Yeah, well Dean Nagata just expressed his concern about any future experiments, and I agreed. I'm going to have to find another place if I continue the experiments,” he said.
“How dangerous is it Mark?”
“Well, it obviously was dangerous in this case, but I think I can make it safe. There are ways to safeguard the experiment, to terminate it immediately if needed, kind of like a kill switch,” he said.
“You promise to do that?” she asked.
“Yeah, honey, I promise,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment