Chapter 3: Hopes and Fears
Once the news broke the reporters descended on the discoverer. And now Little Timmy is on TV.
Timmy is a natural on the silver screen. They’ve dressed him in long grey shorts which extend below his knees and a matching grey jacket. It’s the kind of school uniform popular in the 1930s.
He wears thick glasses and has buck teeth. His thick hair sticks up oddly and he has spots. His persona is articulate, friendly and serious. Delivered in a piping voice.
Interviewer: "Is it natural?”
The boy-genius speaks.
Timmy: “No, that’s quite ruled out. It hovers and no-one knows how. That’s got to be artificial.”
Interviewer: “How long has it been there?”
Timmy: “Well, you can’t tell from the sphere - it’s changeless. But the lunar surface is not constant. There’s a continuous barrage of micrometeorites - along with infalling ejecta from larger impacts from time to time. It all piles up. Underneath the sphere there’s a depression, the sphere makes a shadow. Looks like the object has been hovering there for a billion years, soon after the late heavy bombardment ended.”
The lunar exploratory rovers have a fun feature. There’s a screen in the front of the mobile device which shows a live image of the current remote pilot. It’s to help with identification and PR. So when Timmy discovered the sphere, there was an image of Timmy (without the VR helmet - technology!) brilliantly reflected off its front surface.
Interviewer: “What has most excited you about this whole thing?”
Timmy: “When the rover juddered to a halt in front of the sphere, it was like there was this huge distorting mirror right ahead of me. And all I could see were my teeth!”
(He points.)
“And I thought, ‘It’s just like Bugs Bunny!’”
---
There’s talk of giving Timmy his own TV show to host.
---
Dr Kramer works in his room, researching and writing his report all afternoon and early evening.
His phone does not ring.
He carefully reviews the voluminous scientific and technical data, then gets down to the meat of his analysis: geopolitics.
His phone does not ring.
He concludes that since America has a monopoly on sphere studies the opportunities for suspicion and worst-case analyses are considerable. He thinks how destabilising that could be. He writes recommendations which he will present tomorrow.
His phone does not ring.
At 9.30 pm he goes down to the bar to grab some supper. Dr Joanne Polinski, looking absolutely gorgeous, is drinking with a handsome middle-aged officer in a dimly-lit alcove.
He’s talking; she smiles in rapt attention.
Is that two stars on his epaulets?
Lawrence quickly finishes his snack and leaves.
---
Jane and Joey walk the streets of Manhattan, arms linked in the joyous company of their tribe. Eight-persons wide and a mile long, the demonstration winds its way towards Central Park.
Their slogans denounce the military-industrial complex.
- “Free the Sphere!”
- “Cosmic Karma for People Not Profit!”
- “Spread the Stardust!”
It’s generally believed, here on the march, that the Sphere has messages of unbounded wisdom from an ancient, benevolent, stellar civilisation. That these are being suppressed by a baleful conspiracy of elderly, malevolent, white male Republicans.
They march for the people, the dispossessed!
The demonstrators demand that the sphere be brought to Earth and installed in a public place - probably Central Park.
Where its wisdom can be manifested to people seeking enlightenment - such as themselves.
When told that the sphere is in fact inscrutable and resists all attempts to move it, they respond with anger, stones and molotov cocktails.
Down with the fascist Junta!
And in China leading cadres prepare for a meeting of the Politburo.
---
The meeting is held in Zhongnanhai, Beijing.
Huo Yuanjia has been called to address the Politburo standing committee prior to a meeting of the Politburo itself, China’s de-facto ruling body.
Huo Yuanjia is a technical consultant to the Ministry of State Security, China’s intelligence service, where he helps evaluate new technologies from the capitalist West.
“What have the Americans discovered about the sphere?” asks the chairman of the standing committee.
“We have access to the evaluation team but they appear utterly baffled. The artefact can engineer aspects of reality which we have always believed are completely determined by the natural environment.”
“Such as?”
“The spacetime curvature tensor, the QFT state vector, some mix of the two? It's plainly an expert in quantum gravity, something we've never understood.”
The committee chairman moves rapidly on.
“Is there any chance the Americans are farther along with their analysis than we think?”
“Yes, of course. They'll be running black programs alongside this relatively open NASA study. We don't have visibility.”
“And if the Americans make progress, what are the implications?”
Huo Yuanjia breathes out. Phew! Where to start?
“The list is endless: invulnerable armour, moving weapons from place to place at enormous speeds. With control like the sphere, the capabilities are boundless.”
“And have our own theoreticians made any progress?”
“Without the opportunity to experiment it’s really impossible. We know the Americans are doing clandestine tests. We haven’t been able to get any details on their results.”
The chairman closes his tablet with a decisive move and thanks their guest. As the advisor leaves, the chairman addresses his colleagues.
"Rarely has the People’s Republic seen greater dangers. How long before America can weaponise what it learns from the sphere? And during that period, what are our strike options?"
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