We Were Once Like You: Chapter 2 - by Adam Carlton

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Chapter 2: Dr Joanne Polinski

Dr Lawrence Kramer looks at his reflection in the mirror, combs his hair carefully. He assesses his thirty-six year old self: lean and lanky; the picture of a New England academic. He's in the Ritz-Carlton hotel at Tysons Corner. It's on the outskirts of Washington DC, close to the Beltway.

He’s just breakfasted on egg and bacon, served with grits and toast.  He doesn’t think he has to worry too much about the calories; he checks his belly again, it's firm enough under the waistband of his slim-fit chinos.

He could have arranged this meeting at the Pentagon but he’s strangely allergic to that place, much prefers an anonymous meeting room here in the hotel. Although there’s so much military through-traffic that this place might be mistaken for an annex to that establishment anyway.

He’s Professor of War Studies at MIT. He secretly delights in that title. Almost any of his colleagues would have chosen Peace Studies - but Kramer is an iconoclast, a contrarian. He has no moral objection to war, understands it as Machiavelli did, as a tool of politics. 

Diplomacy by other means.

When the Pentagon has an off-the-wall problem, something which needs thinking outside the box, someone who can see sideways, the professor is their go-to guy.

In twenty minutes he’ll be meeting Dr Joanne Polinski, the woman in charge of the NASA science team set up to investigate the object.

Polinski is said to be a high-flyer: a quantum physicist with a gift for communication, a gift for networking, a gift for ambition. When his colleagues heard about the meeting they were quick to smile; their suppressed amusement was just as quickly turned off.

He’s looking forward to their meeting.

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The DoD sweepers have finished with the small Ritz-Carlton conference room which is located at back up a couple of stairs. It features a small conference table, office chairs and a screen for projection from laptops and phones. In the front of the suite - where you come in - there's a lounge with minibar, hot drinks, biscuits. Three comfy armchairs companionably surround the coffee table.

When Lawrence enters, she’s already sitting in the lounge area, nursing her coffee and looking like she owns the place, the perfect hostess, relaxed and in control. He sees a small woman about his own age. She's wearing a blue dress just long enough to be professional and lustrous black tights which subvert the message. She shakes the long black hair which curls over her bare shoulders; gives him a measured smile.

“Lawrence,” she says, after the pleasantries, “I was asked to meet with you, but no-one seems very sure why?”

“The way we conceptualised War Studies," says Lawrence genially, "takes in economics, politics, science and technology. The secret is the way we put it all together at MIT; I guess it's attracted some notice.”

He smiles: ironic faux-humility.

“Sometimes the agencies come up with something they can’t solve by the book. Something which requires a little creativity mixed with esoteric knowledge. I’m well connected and I tend to get the call.”

“So someone in NASA or the Government has asked you to consult?” asks Joanne.

Lawrence sidesteps with a wave of his hand.

“I read the NASA report. I saw what the on-site team found. The object is levitating about a foot above the lunar surface. Since it reflects all incoming radiation, you haven't been able to image the interior. It seems to be massive - at any rate, when you tried pushing, it didn't move. In a certain sense it’s uninteresting; it doesn’t seem to do anything.”

Joanne  nods like a TV interviewer, drawing him on.

“But from our masters’ point of view, all that's irrelevant," Lawrence continues, "What they care about is this: can it harm us, how does it work, is there technology we can use, how does it affect the balance of power, and perhaps most importantly, what are its intentions - if any?”

Just the slightest expression of irritation crosses her face. To be patronised is not her thing.

Lawrence misses it, continues patiently: “Perhaps you could give me NASA’s best current understanding of what this thing might be?”

Joanne slides effortlessly into lecture-mode. “The sphere is impossible to understand with our current science. It’s impossible to levitate an object of almost infinite mass. It’s impossible to reflect back not just electromagnetic radiation but also the particle beams we’ve applied. No material can do that.”

 “But I understand your team has speculated?”

“Sorry, this is going to get a little technical," she says, "When something is hovering like that it means it's interpreting its local environment as a flat space, the absence of gravity. It’s not completely flattening the space around it, otherwise it would go zooming out of the solar system. It’s just rearranging the local curvature to negate the Moon’s gravity field.”

“Do we have any idea how that could be done?”

Joanne shakes her head: “No. 

The discussion ranges widely over fundamental physics, alien intelligence and possible covert research programmes. Lawrence and Joanne, working together, pushing the envelope. Who knows where that could lead?

Lawrence checks the subliminal channel. The chemistry feels positive, there is a certain sparkle in the air, he feels sure. And he’ll be spending the afternoon working here, with meetings in Washington tomorrow.

It’s worth a try.

“Dr Joanne Polinski, I’m sure we could have some more catching up to do. It so happens I’m at a loose end here tonight. I wonder if you’d be free for dinner?”

She looks at him intently for a second, smiles sweetly and says, “I’ll call you.”

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