17

Shivering space and time

Pardon me, but we ought to depart if we are to observe the other dimensional tear. I’ll drive,” the Commodore said firmly, but then he made one of his chuckling sounds and the other two joined in. Some private joke about driving, I guessed.

I imagined that we would get back in the car that was parked downstairs in the garage, but the Commodore just stood there. They all just stood there. Suddenly the wall came to life, glowing faintly violet. Symbols came and went so fast they looked like pulsing static.

Citizen Lady glanced our way. “For your health, you must stand in the field-shower.” She pointed to where Albert was already standing. On the floor, a large violet square lit up. Brit and Lars and I checked each other with anxious expressions and then hurried to stand in the square. I looked up to see an identical square on the ceiling, and between the two, a faint light shimmered—as if we were in a Star Trek transporter. It made my gums itch.

“So this isn’t just a lab, is it?” Brit said. “It’s a spacecraft, right?”

“It is both,” said Med Tech Tek.

“And are these squares some kind of electromagnetic shield?”

“A photon shield for your health,” Med Tech Tek affirmed.

“Citizen Lady, shouldn’t you guys get in your squares, you know, for your health?” I asked.

“We are SMHR units and one with our craft, so of course there is no bother.” She smiled to reassure me. “I devised this apparatus for human health,” she added, obviously proud of her invention.

I half expected to be transported somewhere, but we just stood there in the violet light. There was a whirring and a pulse on one of the wall screens. Minutes passed and I watched a steady rhythm of yellow to violet ticking away on the screen; it gave me a sleepy feel. There was that low hum I’d felt in the Volkswagen, along with the drowsy buzz of the “field-shower.” I tried sticking my finger outside of the shimmering square and I felt a bit of a shock. I decided to keep my hands and feet inside and not mess around.

“The Commodore is an excellent navigator,” Citizen Lady said. She smiled at the small, pale man who appeared to be concentrating on the wall screen. He began to recite some techie lingo in a blank, mechanical tone: “Engage torus drive—space/time shiver enacted—field density accomplished—proceed.”

I heard no engine and felt no thrust; I was a little disappointed.

“I would nudge it 0.02 percent in the forward field for maximum efficiency,” Med Tech Tek suggested.

The Commodore ignored him; all his attention was on the screen.

“Don’t be a backseat driver,” Citizen Lady scolded. But then she made a chuckle to show she was teasing Med Tech Tek. Her lilting squawk made me want to laugh, too. I wondered if she borrowed the term from me—backseat driver—had I said that out loud in the Volkswagen? I couldn’t remember.

“Mr. Commodore, what do you mean by a space/time shiver?” I asked. “It sounds neat.”

He didn’t answer. He was absolutely frozen, concentrating on the screen.

Med Tech Tek answered instead. “Shiver is a colloquial term—Citizen Lady coined it.” He smiled and clicked his teeth. “We excite the space/time around our craft with an oscillating pulse. Using this method our craft merely parks within a shivering pocket of manipulated space so that it is the space that moves us. That’s how we cheat the speed limit.” He grinned and nodded, amused with his explanation, which I really didn’t get.

“It’s warp speed,” Brit said. “It’s like you compress the space in front and expand the space behind really fast—like a pulse—and inside this bubble the craft is floating on a wave of rolling space/time. Something like that.”

“Whoa, that’s cool,” I remarked.

“Indeed, for superconductivity, it must be.” Med Tech Tek was done conversing, and he, too, turned his attention to the screen.

Time passed. It seemed like after a while the SMHR units began to look transparent, and so did the walls of the craft. I rubbed my eyes. Yes, I could see stars out there—only they looked watery and they seemed to stretch around our “bubble.”

It was hard to figure how much time went by. Albert wasn’t sending me memos; I guess his mind was elsewhere. He loved this sort of thing. I was startled when Citizen Lady said, “Here we are!”

At once the SMHRs and their lab became solid. Now the wall screens were showing what appeared to be a giant movie of a planet. The movie made it look like we were moving from dark space to atmosphere and the atmosphere had a reddish hue. On the round planet below, there were no oceans and not much variance in color, and not a hint of civilization.

I started to think that I wasn’t watching a movie, but that I was looking out of a window. “There’s no ocean down there,” I said. “That can’t be Earth.”

“Correct,” said the Commodore. “That is not Earth.”

The land got larger. We seemed to be descending but it didn’t feel like we were. I knew that in an elevator or on a ride at the carnival, my stomach would be lurching upward.

“If we’re going fast, how come we’re not feeling any, you know, butterflies?” I asked.

“She means g-forces,” Lars said. “Why aren’t we feeling them if we really are accelerating and moving through atmosphere?”

“We are still in a pocket of shivering space,” the Commodore explained, “but the energy requirement is a mere fraction of our intrasolar-system jaunt.”

“It’s efficient and comfortable,” Med Tech Tek added, sounding a bit like a dorky advertisement.

Brit was staring at the screen. “It looks like a desert down there.”

I could make out hills and rocks of ruddy red and bland pink with subtle tones of brown and beige. “Hey, there’s something moving.” I pointed to an object in the middle of a rocky field.

A tiny vehicle was inching across the landscape. It had lots of tires and flat square plates like solar panels on the top. We came in closer and closer. The thing looked familiar. I felt like I had seen it on the news.

“It’s the Rover,” Brit said, “or a simulator.”

“Try not to leave a shadow,” Med Tech Tek advised. “Shadows always get those NASA transmitters buzzing.”

“And dusting off the panels certainly raises a commotion,” Citizen Lady added.

At that, they all made the chuckling sound—I checked on Brit; her eyebrows were raised as high as they could go.

“The only Rover I can think of is the one they put on Mars,” I said sarcastically.

“Precisely,” said the Commodore.