CHRONOCHASM

By Gerry Sammon

NAVADA DESERT

‘Who is she, Doc?’

The young woman on the gurney in the emergency medical tent was in a coma. She had worn a silk-thin one-piece from neck to ankle, darkly shimmering rainbow colours that appeared to absorb more light than it reflected. That was now under the microscope. Her skin was coppery-bronze. She would have appeared heavily tanned, except the skin shone slightly. Her auburn hair was cut very short, allowing the contours of her skull to be clearly seen.

Inside are the General, the doctor, and a NASA scientist.

‘Who she is? That’s a mystery, General. The bigger mystery is, what is she?’

‘Explain,’ ordered the Airforce general.

‘She is definitely human, sir,’ the doctor said, his brows deeply furrowed in thought. ‘But there are certain attributes about her that appear more than human.’

The General squinted at the doctor. The doctor pressed on before he could be interrupted further. ‘Her skin pigmentation indicates she is impervious to ultraviolet light. She has enhanced porous epidermis and sweat glands to counteract intense climates. Her lungs appear to be super-efficient, I would say about half as efficient again as our best athletes. Her muscle tone is perfectly tuned. And she has two hearts. The primary heart is just like yours and mine, except much healthier,’ the doctor smiled at the overweight General. ‘That heart is symbiotically connected to a secondary heart, about a quarter the size of the primary. I have no idea what the purpose for that could be.’

 ‘Is she an alien, doctor?’ asked the General.

The doctor shrugged, and continued his assessment. ‘We had to remove her jumpsuit to make our examinations. Ultrasound and x-rays, physical studies, but no invasive procedures. It needed to be removed mainly because ultrasound and x-rays couldn’t penetrate the fabric, thin though it is. 

‘No-one has seen or even heard of fabric like this before. Not only is it impenetrable by radiation, it is extremely flexible yet diamond hard. It could stop a bullet or a micro-meteor in space. We had the devil of a job getting the jumpsuit off, but found a sort of button by the neck which just unravelled the whole thing. Imperceptibly folded up around the neck of the suit was something else, but we haven’t been able to access that yet. At a guess, I would say it’s some kind of helmet.’

‘A helmet?’ said the General, a puzzled look shrouding his rugged face.

‘A space helmet, perhaps. This could be a space suit. A very advanced one.’

‘So she is an alien,’ said the General.

‘I don’t think so, sir,’ said the doctor. ‘Despite her augmented physical attributes, she is just too human. But we need to get her to JSC as soon as possible so we can make a full examination and put her through an MRI.’

SOUTH-CENTRAL STEPPES, KAZAKHSTAN

‘What is it?’ demanded the Colonel. He stood, arms folded, uniform wrinkled after his tedious 120-mile journey by army truck from Baikonur Cosmodrome. With him in other trucks was a platoon of soldiers and his staff of lesser officers. Accompanying them, a group of space scientists.

‘It appears to be an aircraft, sir,’ the Chief Scientist answered.

‘I do not recognise the design. Is it one of ours?’ the Colonel looked closer. ‘Is it American?’

‘Unknown Colonel.’

‘Very well,’ said the Colonel. ‘Has it crashed? Is it safe to take back? We have a launch scheduled in two days.’

‘It does not look damaged, Colonel. It seems to have landed safely, despite the rough ground. But as you say, it is of unknown design, and I would posit it is an advanced aircraft. It appears to be a one-man craft. The cockpit is open with no cover. Instead, an energy field protects the pilot. None of my people have been able to decipher the instrumentation. It is like nothing we have seen before.’

‘Where are the air intakes and jet engines?’ asked the senior officer. ‘I can’t see any.’

‘That is the most interesting thing of all. There are none. We do not know how it flies or what propels it. The whole design is aerodynamic, except the wings, which are stubby. There is no tail, the fuselage just tapers away. You ask where it came from? Take a look inside the cockpit, Colonel.’

The Colonel looked closer. ‘What am I looking for?’ he demanded.

The Chief Scientist pointed to symbols on the instrumentation, and words inside the pilot area. ‘We have not yet deciphered these symbols, but look at the lettering. Here it is in Cyrillic, warnings for an ejector seat, altitude adjustment, airspeed, as you would find in one of our MiGs.’

‘So it is one of ours,’ said the Colonel, with relief.

‘Look closer sir. Alongside are letterings in English.’

‘Ah, the CIA are most cunning,’ growled the Colonel.

‘You must understand, Colonel, we cannot do any more here on the Steppe. We must remove this aircraft to a secure hangar at Baikonur. Launch or no launch.’

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON

‘We have the best space medicine facilities in the world here at JSC,’ said a proud administrator.

‘Of course,’ said the NASA science chief. ‘The General here wants the most thorough examination and analysis of our patient you can possibly make.’

‘But who is this patient?’ protested the administrator. ‘You have requisitioned our best equipped isolation unit and organised use of some of our most expensive and sensitive medical equipment. Requisitioned without authorisation.’

‘It is my authorisation,’ said the General. ‘I have full authority here and I order you to comply with my order. Do I make myself clear?’ The General was eyeball to eyeball with the administrator, who visibly flinched.

‘Very well, we will do whatever we can. We have the best space medicine facilities in the world here at JSC …’ the administrator was gently led away as he spoke.

BAIKONUR COSMODROME, KAZAKHSTAN

‘The fuselage is not metal, as one would expect, although there are traces of aluminium and other alloys we haven’t yet been able to identify,’ the Baikonur Chief Scientist told the Colonel. 

‘Is it American?’ asked the Colonel.

The Chief Scientist was aware the Colonel was a senior officer in the GRU, the Russian Federation’s feared military intelligence agency, so answered carefully. ‘I do not think so, Colonel. Not even the Americans have this type of material. It is more a type of plastic, steel and ceramic combination, extremely lightweight, but incredibly tough. We could not remove any part of it by force. We fired a bullet at it, at a non-sensitive area of course. It just bounced off and left no mark. We tried one of our military lasers, again no effect.’

The Colonel looked at his watch. ‘I want some answers, and I want them quickly. I must fly to Moscow to report our findings. Give me some answers as soon as you have them. Before tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow? But Colonel, we don’t yet know what we’re dealing with. We must discover how the technology works. We could easily damage some sensitive systems if we aren’t careful,’ pleaded the Chief Scientist.

‘Then you must be careful. And you must be quick. Tomorrow,’ ordered the Colonel, and stomped out of the hangar.

Tomorrow arrived. The Colonel was at GRU headquarters just outside Moscow, at the Khodinka Airfield, known to all as The Aquarium because of its glass superstructure. He picked up the phone, listened to the familiar tones suggesting a scrambled call, then gruffly said, ‘Yes.’ He was expecting results from the Baikonur scientists.

JOHNSON SPACE CENTRE MEDICAL FACILITY

She woke. Bedside instruments began sounding alarms. She touched, but did not remove, all the monitoring wires attached to her body. She realised she was in a hospital of some sort, in a bed, with crisp white sheets, a pillow, and a thin blanket covering her nakedness. At least those were the terms she believed these items used to be called.

A nurse dashed in, saw the mystery woman was awake, and pressed a red alarm button. A doctor came bounding in not long after. She lifted the woman’s eyelids, felt the pulse in her neck, then gauged her temperature by placing a cool hand on the woman’s forehead.

‘It’s all right,’ the doctor said. ‘You’re in a hospital at JSC. You’ve been in some kind of accident, but you’re all right.’ She turned to the nurse. ‘Tell the General, quickly.’ The nurse rushed away.

The woman in the bed tried to speak, but her voice wouldn’t work. The doctor poured a glass of water and helped her take a drink. The woman smiled and nodded her thanks. She laid her head back on the pillow.

‘Howen appar t’den har?’ the woman croaked. She raised her head again. ‘Moren aquar.’ The doctor gave her another sip.

‘Don’t talk now, someone is coming to help,’ the doctor said.

The General appeared in the room, closely followed by the NASA scientist.

The woman looked at the General’s uniform. She repeated her question. ‘Howen appar t’den har?’

The two men looked at each other. ‘She doesn’t sound Russian,’ said the General.

‘German maybe? Dutch?’ suggested the scientist. The scientist stepped forward. ‘Who are you? Where did you come from.’

The woman tipped her head to one side, listening to another voice, her subcutaneous AI. ‘Projecta Retro-causaliten. Superlume et ona gravitet. Deca-dec annolume.’ 

BAIKONUR COSMODROME

‘Colonel, we have managed to access some of the instrument panel,’ the Chief Scientist told the GRU colonel over the secure line. ‘Some of the readings we have managed to take show some remarkable data.’

‘First tell me this,’ said the Colonel. ‘Is it an American secret weapon?’

‘I would say definitely not, sir.’

‘China?’ 

‘Doubtful, sir. So doubtful I would again suggest not,’ said the scientist, excitement entering his voice.

‘What then?’

‘As for its origin, we cannot say. But it is clearly some kind of single-pilot spacecraft. The readings we have found are incredible,’ said the Chief Scientist, almost shouting down the phone. 

‘Tell me what you have,’ ordered the Colonel.

‘Instrument readings indicate the craft was launched from Earth, date unknown, and has been travelling continuously at 1g for an extended period, to take it to the speed of light.’

‘Impossible,’ scoffed the Colonel.

‘Yes, I know. But that is what the instruments tell us,’ said the Chief Scientist. ‘There are also some conflicting readings we are still attempting to understand. I will report back as soon as we discover what they mean.’

JSC MEDICAL FACILITY

‘We have put her voice recording through to our quantum computer, General,’ the NASA scientist grimaced and massaged his chin. ‘It came up with a striking translation.’

‘Ok, go ahead,’ said the General.

‘Her first words were “Howen appar t’den har?” The computer believes this just means “How did I get here?”

‘Then she says “Projecta Retro-causaliten. Superlume et ona gravitet. Deca-dec annolume”. This is where it gets really interesting, not to mention weird.’

‘Go on,’ said the General. ‘After she just appeared in the desert out of nowhere, I won’t be surprised with weird.’

‘We believe this is about some scientific experiment called Project Retrocausality.’

‘What’s that?’ asked the General.

‘Retrocausality we know about. It was a quantum science experiment carried out a few years ago, using entangled photons. The experiment discovered that the photons were able to travel backwards in time. We already know that entangled particles can link across time and space. The untested theory is the past is shaped by future observations.’

‘What are you saying?’ asked the General.

‘Let’s look at the other part of what she said,’ the ASA scientist went on. ‘She said Superlume et ona gravitet. Deca-dec annolume”. Our quantum computer reckons this means she travelled superluminal at a continual one gravity for a full light year. We’re not talking just entangled photons anymore.’

‘What? She’s crazy. I know about relativity. Travelling faster than light is impossible,’ growled the General.

‘Yes, if we assume Einstein is correct, travel faster than light breaks the laws of physics,’ said the NASA scientist. ‘We may be dealing with an unknown physics. You haven’t asked about the language she was speaking.’

‘What about it?’

‘Our computer has analysed her speech. She is speaking an unknown dialect. Our quantum computer has used all its language resources to forward track and evolutionise her speech to being the English language, amalgamated with Russian and Latin, as it would be spoken 300 years in the future.’

BAIKONUR COSMODROME

‘Colonel,’ an agitated Chief Scientist was in the phone again to the Colonel. ‘The craft has gone.’

‘What!’

‘Vanished. Into thin air. The technicians watching it saw it shimmer then fade away,’ the Chief Scientist said, sweating profusely.

He quickly added, ‘But we may be on the brink of a scientific breakthrough. We are in the process of interpreting the results of the spacecrafts flight as a temporal anomaly.’

The Colonel was silent for a moment. ‘Are you talking about time travel?’

‘Precisely, sir.’

‘Are you mad?’ the Colonel laughed.

‘Not at all, Colonel,’ said the Chief Scientist. ‘We believe the craft’s continuous travel at 1g would bring it up to the speed of light. That could do strange things to spacetime, particularly time. This spacecraft is a gift, Colonel. It must have arrived from the future. We are in the process of discovering how it was done.’

JSC

The nurse dashed into the room where the General and NASA scientist were having their conversation.

‘She’s gone. Just disappeared in front of me,’ she stammered.

The two men raced to the woman’s hospital room. An imprint of her body was all that remained in the bed. It was still warm.

‘Theorise,’ ordered the General bluntly.

‘When our mystery astronaut went superluminal, that may cause strange things to happen with time. She may have been catapulted back to where she started, or thereabouts. I would refer to it as an entropic temporal effect. Where her ship is, is anyone’s guess. But both must have been a fixed point in time as well as space.’

BAIKONUR

‘Hypothesise,’ ordered the GRU colonel.

‘The craft, presumably with a pilot, must have launched, then returned to the steppe by some effect of its incredible velocity. The area has been searched, but there is no sign of the pilot. We don’t think it was flown remotely. So both must have returned to different places, perhaps because of the earth’s rotation. The craft in one location, the pilot in another. Now erased from the timeline.’

JSC

‘General, we have garnered petabytes of detail in the brief amount of time we examined and spoke to the pilot,’ said the NASA scientist excitedly. ‘We analysed in microscopic detail her vacuum suit and have full specs of her augmentations.’

BAIKONUR

‘Colonel, the technical specifications of the spacecraft have been analysed. Most of the instrumentation has been identified,’ said the Chief Scientist.

JSC / BAIKONUR

NASA scientist / Chief Scientist: ‘We have enough to recreate it.’