silence and light

Some time well before the Ten Nations deployment, the Superman hub at Cornell gets a message from Aleph, announcing a landing in approximately two weeks, pending available gates. Every day or two Superman will be able to communicate with Aleph and make arrangements for the landing.

Ten days later, Micheal lands following the beacons set up by General Sykes to the appropriate airfield. The landing is smooth. Micheal appears to be configured quite a bit like Gabriel was, except there is no sign of weapondry on the shuttle at all.

At this point in time I am assuming that the existance of the Angel Class shuttle Jophial is being kept secret in its hanger and not shown to the Astronauts. Perhaps secret is a strong word. Just never mentioned.

Al spends his time in some diplomatic meetings with Mr. Tartalini, the Prince, and possibly the Emperor.

Bud meets with Dr Johnson about potential trips back in time. He also spends time taking advantage of the training offered in Earth Aircraft with General Sykes.

During their time in ENY, Bud is training regularly. At one point in time he see’s some of the soldiers having an amateur boxing match at the airbase, and he stops to watch. With a few hours of basic instruction he enters the ring with an airman who has been doing quite well in the base league. Bud is sloppy at fighting, but he hits like a truck. No training, but a natural talent. First match to 5 rounds has Bud winning with 3 points, to 2. The airman should have knocked Bud down with one of his punches, but Bud doesn’t fall that easily.

Bud will probably do some training in boxing while he is in ENY.

Attempting remote communication.

 Aleph, you wouldn’t believe this place.  Earth is alive.  Not quite well, but alive.  They don’t have the United States any more, they are all split up.  It seems that the Manhattan issue has spread to all parts of the world.

 It is violent down here.  People attack each other with no notice.

They seem to know us.  They say that they are from our future, and that they met us later in life.  They said that we died but we don’t know exactly where or when.

I am not used to people.  They smell, some good, some bad.  The air down there tastes funny.  I found myself in my environment suit reasonably often.  There are so many of them, there must be at least 100.  And they speak of millions more.  There is so much to see.

We are going to New York first, I think.  They have said that they will transmit something so we can find their “Thread”.  “Thread” is what they call the areas that are split off from each other.  They call them threads to represent the path of divergent time.  We will have to find out how to find these other places.  I know of:

• The New York Empire
• LA
• The Midwest
• Japan, although it has two names
• New Orleans, which is flooded
• Quebec, which doesn’t want to meet anyone

Captain, we have guests. 8 visitors have docked in the Shuttle Repair Facility. They are currently speaking with Al.

What? Who are they?

One is Authenticated as “Sam Buckman”. Another is “Lieutenant Zero”, but he has not been properly Authenticated. There is a third who is recognized but not identified, a female pilot. The remaining five have no records.

Establish files on all of them. Limit their access, although keep communication open to this “Sam Buckman”, since he has managed to use our channels at least. Close all airlocks except to Al or myself until I give the go-ahead. They are to be treated as potential hostiles.

Will do. I have to say that they do not seem hostile. We have reason to believe that they are from Earth and have been in communication with some of the Hubs there. Unfortunately the hubs in question do not answer my queries.

You have had communications with Earth?

Yes.

You are full of surprises, Aleph. We will have to talk more about this later. Just show me where these visitors are.

Captain, there have been some remote access attempts to my systems. A user positively authenticated as “Sam Buckman” has made several inquiries. They do not fit any pattern that would indicate an attack, but the new security protocols require that I contact you with any attempt

Thank you Aleph. Prohibit any dangerous information from passing, especially anything that would enable someone to steal from us. Make up some excuse about the data being too large or something. But encourage their communications and keep aware for any penetration attempt.

Aleph, Buddy here. How many probes to we have?

There are 73 left in storage. We have capacity for 927 more.

We don’t want to use all of them. Prepare 13 for launch into the gates. The gates have been open for long enough that we should be able to triangulate on them and launch the probe through and get a good 20 minutes of transmission from each. Make sure you don’t launch two through the same one.

Yes captain. I estimate that 13 probes will be launched by 23:00 this evening.

Sounds good, Aleph, let me know when you have finished.

Aleph, please locate Albert for me.

Albert is in the Exercise area.  Is there a problem, Captain?

Yes, there is a problem.  Jophiel is missing.  A shuttle has vanished on us.  Last time that happened, Albert took it and vanished for what, 8 years.  Are you positive he is on the station?

Yes captain.

Then where is Jophiel?

My logs report that someone with Sysadmin priveledge has accessed Jophiel 3 days ago, and ordered the record removed.  I do not have permission to recreate removed records, and thus I cannot identify the Sysadmin.  I can report that 17 people are recorded ever have been granted Sysadmin priveledge, 5 of which are now deceased, 10 of which have not been contacted since before the Event of 2012.  The remaining two are you and Albert.

Well, I spoke with Albert and he has sworn that he didn’t even know that Jophiel was missing.  We have seen other evidence of “ghosts” on the station.  Obviously someone has been poking around.  Aleph, increase security levels on the station.  Inform me of any action taken by anyone who is not Albert nor myself, no matter what their priveledges are.  We can’t have shuttles disappearing, or any theft for that matter. 

It seems that the Astronauts are still staying in their quarters in ENY.   With Gabriel fixed and functional, they are spending less time in the hanger and a little more out and about.  Captain Lindsey can be seen training outside more, beating at a post with a sword or wooden axe-handle, sometimes seen even carrying a shield.  Sometimes he is in a full space-suit training, helmet and all, sometimes just in his running clothes.

 A few times the locals around the base where the Astronauts are stationed get to see the positive evidence of why the Gabriel is called an Angel class shuttle.  Take-off is a very interesting thing when Bud is going into space.  Gabriel takes off like a plane, but during its flight it sprays water, causing a small localized rainstorm.  It then does the most amazing thing.  It stops in mid air about 1000 meters off the ground, turning its nose strait up.  It hovers for a moment, and you can imagine the nose of the shuttle as an angels head, and the wings like the gown of some heavenly lady.   Its VTOL engines re-adjust position, but there is no roar of the jets, and it feels like time has stopped as the spectators see this impossible event, a massive shuttle just hanging in mid air.  In fact it only hovers for a second or two before the engines are on again and the shuttle launches strait up at amazing speeds, breaking the sound barrier just a short time later.

A few days later two shuttles land, the Gabriel and the Jophiel.  The Jophiel isn’t armed with Sidewinders like the Gabriel is, but it seems to have an extensive cargo bay that can be loaded by truck.  Over the next month or so the Jophiel is loaded with supplies necessary for the P-Poc airbase and perhaps some parts for the planes that are being shipped over there.  It seems that there is almost always a Shuttle in the repair hanger, either the Gabriel or the Jophiel, and you can assume there will be for the months or years to come unless the ENYAF decides to forbid it.

For resources and capabilities, Earth Station is the largest communications array ever built by man.  It is capable of coordinating messages from Tokyo, Vienna, Berlin, Washington DC, and Babylon.  It can then route those messages out to Mars, the Moon, Io, or whatever scientific mission is occuring in another part of space.  It also is capable of sending out thousands of probes into deep space and monitoring their signals, and it is still recieving some messages from probes sent out before 2012

We have a catapult system set up to ship cargo to the Moon, Mars, and Io if the need be, although the receiving end of the Mars catapult is not functional.

We have bunk space for 525, although not the resources to support them for long.  We have supplies and replacement parts that should last us for the next 10-50 years, although food supplies will run out closer to the 10 year mark due to spoilage.

We have 4 operational shuttles:

Gabriel is configured for Exploration, and is the only one with 4 hardpoints.  It can handle 2 crew, 8 passengers, and about 240m^3 of cargo with the lighter robotic arm.

Raphael is configured for Satelite Repair, and has a stronger robotic arm, more tools, and has a real airlock for spacewalks.  It can handle 6 crew, and about 160m^3 of cargo.

Jophiel is configured for Earth Gravity cargo.  It can handle a crew of 2 and about 320m^3 of cargo.  It is different than Gabriel and Raphael in that the cargo hold is designed for earth gravity and it does not have a robotic arm.  It is more easily loaded by truck however.

Chamuel is configured for long range human transport.  It can be adjusted to either ship 6 crew and 122 passengers for short trips, such as from earth to Earth Station.  Or it can be configured to handle 6 crew and 26 passengers for trips of multiple weeks.  Hot-bunk rotations can double that number, but more than that would stress the life support systems.

Maximum tonnage of systems and cargo is 65,000 tons.  Those shuttles with more cargo capacity are best if the cargo is approaching  the maximum.

We have about 6 satelites in communications with Aleph currently, 2 of them are equipped with downward facing cameras, the other 4 are used to bounce communications around the planet.

We have significant ore stockpiles on the Moon, including refined Uranium, Iron, and a few other metals.  With significant effort we can also get the Moon human habitable again and restart mining operations, but that could take years.  The Uranium is estimated to run out in about 20 years, faster with more shuttle trips, unless we find another source to keep Earth Station running, or we shut down Moon Base to conserve.

Communications with Mars has been lost, but it once held a colony of about 20,000 people.  When the food ran out in 2012, they had something of a violent response, and we don’t know what shape anything is in.  They would have hundreds of shuttles and everything that people who were planning to live in a location forever would bring, but neither Al nor I have properly scouted.  There is a possibility that someone could still be there, but that chance is small.

Io was just a scientific base, and it has little for resources and has been abandoned.  It is also significantly harder to get to.

 It is possible that the Moon and Mars are technically separate threads.  We have not seen enough evidence to know one way or another, but what we recall about them, especially Mars, may not still be true.  If the Moon is a separate thread, it has a large open gate with Earth Station along the Catapult and communications path.

begin voice log

June 25st, 2057, Penn State standard perspective, Iteration I+4.

She hates it when I lie to her, I know this Aleph.  But it is crystal clear.  Two prophecies, common sense, her words, and my own honor all agree.  So I lied to her.  I didn’t tell her it was breaking my heart.  I didn’t tell her that I would throw it all away just to get my wife back.  I didn’t tell her that right now, this instant, I would let the bomb blow up rather than change what I remember.  I choked in everything I was feeling and told her what she wanted to hear, what is best for her to hear. There is someone who is very much like her that would be upset with me for this, but I will never be able to see her again.

I could never betray Boss Hog.  He isn’t my friend yet.  He may never be my friend now.  But I still remember being taken under his wing, taught to fly an A-10.  And I remember his death, and knowing I wasn’t good enough of a pilot to stop it from coming.  I would never betray the man I remember.

And she wants to be more than she is.  Defying her uncle, betraying her husband, that won’t free her to do as she needs.  Her marriage is the right thing to give her the freedom and opportunity to advance herself.  It is best for her.  Who am I to say that the happiness of the woman I married is more important than the happiness that she will get from being everything she can be.  And it all happened too soon, and there are some things that if they are undone will possibly undo everything.

It is…  It is just that before I had tasted love I didn’t need it, I didn’t know it.  But now I have acquired the taste, and will miss it.  Yes, Aleph, I know you have troubles understanding all of this.

All that matters is that she is happy.  My own pain is meaningless.  And if she sees my pain, she will have second thoughts and her happiness will fade.  I have made her cry so many times in the last few months, I can’t bear to make her cry again.

So I lie.  I repeat it again and again thinking eventually it will be true.  It is all for the best.  It is all for the best.  It is all for the best.

end voice log

Aleph, report on the disturbance in the barrier

One Angel Class Shuttle observed arriving from outside of our solar system decelerating from near light speeds, then entering earths orbit through a gate in the barrier.  One Angel Class Shuttle observed entering Earth Orbit from planetside, making 2.03 orbits, and then returning to earth.  The two shuttles pass in flight, but appear to have the same signature.

Are there any missing shuttles in the Bay?  Has Albert abandoned me again?

No, Captain, all six shuttles are accounted for.

Continue to monitor, Aleph.  I think the barrier is weakening, and we can plan to use the same gateways that those shuttles have been using.  Have they made any attempt to contact us?  If Earth is finally escaping the barrier then there should be some contact.

No contact has been attempted from the Shuttles, Captain.