<< | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | >>
The team approached the checkpoint which consisted of a shoulder high chrome post around thirty centimetres in diameter. The top of the post was angled at 45 degrees. As they approached Ed’s I.D chip was recognised and a digital screen on the wall displayed the message ‘verify identification’. Despite knowing his own DNA had been loaded into the security profile, Ed felt a twinge of anxiety. He leaned towards the angled section of the post. As he did, the post used temperature sensors to detect his presence and a small hole opened. Ed breathed heavily into the hole for four seconds, long enough for a small sample of cells in his saliva to be carried down into a DNA purification and amplification device below the floor. Just two seconds had past before the screen changed its message to ‘access permitted’. Ed grinned with his apparent success. It doesn’t matter how much hi-tech you throw into a security system, the flaw is always the same - the computer. The three slipped through the newly opened steel doors in to the apparatus room.
Now, after simply cruising on autopilot for the last fifteen minutes of the journey across station, Tim’s focus sharpened as he found himself staring into the face of a machine capable of parting space-time like Moses had the Red Sea. Biblical in its power, but, numbed by the influence this thing was having on the planet, Tim saw no miracles. In front of him was a grey, brushed metal cube, at least eight meters square. Chrome tubes led out from the cube and into the walls and ceiling above. It reminded Tim of an old Harley Davidson motorbike he’d once seen on some environmental site on the uninet. The site had depicted the archaic monster as their symbol for all vehicles with an inefficient combustible fuel source - contraptions which ‘must be banned before our planet spirals out of control’ (environmentally speaking Tim assumed). In stark contrast the mechanical and relatively simple function of the Harley, the wormhole apparatus was responsible for maintaining the steady stream of negative energy plasma used to hold back the foam of spacetime. The plasma was channelled to the terminus room a floor above where the Morris Thorne wormhole throat was maintained and prevented from collapsing.
“I heard that if the apparatus was destroyed it would leave behind a black hole?,” Tim had been desperate to ensure Aide had all bases covered.
“Yeah, I fired some questions about that to some guys I met from the physics department. They say the wormhole is generated from a microscopic black hole. They use some sort of ‘exotic energy’ to enlarge it and keep it open. He said something about ghost radiation? Anyhow, if you remove this exotic energy the wormhole collapses back to a black hole, a microscopic one, which will then collapse on itself and disappear. All will be fine!’, replied Aide excitedly.
“You sure about that? We are blowing this thing up y’know – can’t we just turn it off?”
“No Tim, because they’ll just switch it on again. Is it going to help our cause highlighting the fact the bloody thing can be switched on and off like a light bulb?” Aide shot Tim one of his patronising looks.