A Larger Universe

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2013 by James L. Gillaspy

This novel is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to actual
events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.  All
rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

This novel would have never reached this form without the
help and honest critique of the members of the Atlanta BordersSFWriters group,
especially John Adcox and James Lock.  My wife, Elizabeth, read the manuscript
at least four times, providing English grammar assistance and supporting my
need to spend those long hours in front of my computer screen.

 The cosmology and space drive in the novel I derived from
"Warped Passages" by Lisa Randall, a book I strongly recommend if you
like your physics "out there." I don't know if any of my
"engineering" interpretations of her theories are possible, but they
do move the novel and the starships along.

I'm not in any way suggesting that this work compares to
those of Heinlein, but I wanted to write a story like those that I immersed
myself into as a teenager and still enjoy reading as an adult: adventure in space,
technology that seems possible if perhaps a little far-fetched, believable
aliens, conflict with a space battle or two, and human ingenuity winning out in
the end. I chose to do this in the context of a "coming of age"
story, which those of you who read Heinlein will recognize as one of his
themes.

If it matters, I have an undergraduate degree in mathematics
and a graduate degree in business. I worked in systems for 45 years (hence the
computer references in the story).

• Copyright
  
• Acknowledgements
  
• Prologue
  
• Chapter One: Be Careful What You Wish For
  
• Chapter Two: Not in Georgia Anymore
  
• Chapter Three: Discovery
  
• Chapter Four: You've Got To Be Kidding
  
• Chapter Five: Everything is Relative
  
• Chapter Six: And your Reward Will Be…
  
• Chapter Seven: Assignments
  
• Chapter Eight: Ride the Rails
  
• Chapter Nine: A Disagreement
  
• Chapter Ten: Something in Return
  
• Chapter Eleven: Does This Seem Familiar?
  
• Chapter Twelve: A Surprise
  
• Chapter Thirteen: A Story Told
  
• Chapter Fourteen: Value Perceived
  
• Chapter Fifteen: Bigger Things
  
• Chapter Sixteen: A Larger Universe
  
• Chapter Seventeen: Shopping
  
• Chapter Eighteen: Closing Doors
  
• Chapter Nineteen: Rebellion
  
• Chapter Twenty: The Kadiil
  
• Chapter Twenty-one: Networking
  
• Chapter Twenty-two: No Place Like Home
  

A few thousand people enjoying a warm, cloudless night under
the stars were the first to see the object.  Silver and roughly spherical, it
eclipsed the full moon between one blink of the eyes and the next.  Seconds
later, a spray of meteors streaked across the sky. 

The next people to detect the object were military radar
operators watching for incoming missiles.  Their alarms rang simultaneously
with others of the military charged with maintaining the Global Positioning
System.

Except for local programs in progress, every television
station in North America began transmitting snow as network feeds were lost. 
Satellite radios and satellite-fed televisions began to hiss in mid word.  Within
thirty minutes of the object's appearance, every device in orbit over North
America had tumbled into the Earth's atmosphere.   

As the alarms spread over the communications channels that
remained, ground-based radar confirmed the object moved under its own power. 
Telescopes resolved the single object into many:  a central sphere more than twenty
thousand meters in diameter surrounded by hundreds of smaller objects, each
less than three hundred meters long.

As the sphere circled the earth, a flat, unaccented voice
blanketed the radio spectrum, repeating a message in English, French, Spanish,
Chinese, and Russian.  The demands in that message sent heads of state to their
undersea cable, cold-war, hotlines. 

Without waiting for a response, the sphere and its escorts
vanished, leaving Earth’s governments in turmoil.

Months passed before any connection was made between the
sphere and the disappearance, four years before, of a small boy.

#   #   #

Over one-hundred light years from Earth’s sun, a blue and
white planet, accompanied by an airless moon, orbited a pale yellow star.  The
planet’s oceans were too large for it to be mistaken for Earth, and its night
side showed no sign of cities, but a closer look would reveal life in all its
myriad forms.   

Above this planet, a few hours after the departure of the
alien ship from Earth’s orbit (as near as can be measured in relativistic
spacetime) another, smaller, sphere appeared.

Bristling with antennae rising above a corroded and pitted
metal surface, the sphere gave the appearance of great age.  Occasional ports
dotted the hull.  The largest of these, a wide, transparent, window at the
“top” of the hemisphere facing the planet, curved over the heads of a score or
more tall, tailed, alien creatures sitting at semi-circular desks.  To the left
of the center, and behind an alien watching a computer screen that would look
remarkably familiar to someone from Earth, a lone human male lounged
uncomfortably in a chair made for someone much taller.

The alien sitting at the center desk leaned over to look at
the monitor, where a single dot flickered at the one light second marker.  "You
were right," the alien said to the human.  "A single Kadiil followed
us."

As the moon passed to the left of the ship, the alien seated
in front of the monitor interrupted, “Master Tommy, what does this mean?"

The human, Tommy, leaned around the mass detection operator. 
Three more dots flickered in three different directions, also at the one light
second marker.

"Ull, three other ships are already here!" yelled
Tommy.

"Master Tommy, look!"

On the monitor, hundreds of specks emerged around the edge
of the moon. 

From the radar console came a sudden cry, "Incoming
missiles in our path!" 

An alarm sounded.

"Lord Tommy, more are coming from behind us," the
operator said, "over the top of the moon."

On the screen, behind the missiles, three much larger
objects emerged.  Radar and gravity sensors quickly confirmed them as ships.

"The raiders went to our first trading stop and waited
in hiding for us," Ull, the captain, said.  "Even with your new
computers, the missiles are too close.  We cannot transit in time to escape."

“Wait,” Tommy said, as he dove, feet first, through a
trapdoor in the floor. 

A few seconds later, Ull leaned down into the opening. 
"What are you doing?  The insystem drive has stopped responding."

Tommy didn't look up.  "I know.  I have control."

On the monitor on the main deck, a red dot appeared and
swept across the path of the incoming missiles, then disappeared.  For an
instant everyone in the ship felt a pulling sensation as if their heads were
being pulled away from their feet.  Another red dot appeared on the screen
behind the ship and swept the paths of the missiles coming from that
direction.  Again the appearance of the dot was accompanied by a stretching
sensation. 

On the monitor, the smoothly curving paths of the incoming
dots became chaotic. 

Ull stepped down the ladder.  "What did you do?"

"I used the drive to create two small black holes and
disrupted the incoming missiles.  We have time now to transit now."

"You did...," the rest he lost as Ull ran up the
ladder, tail jerking from side to side.

"Master Tommy!  Master Tommy!"  The mass detection
operator knelt on hands and knees, shouting through the trapdoor opening. 
"Look on the monitor!"

The screen displayed the characteristic moiré pattern of
five incoming wormholes, none farther than ten thousand kilometers away.

Tommy opened another window on his monitor to show the
transit entry status.  Ull had initiated the five-second countdown.  The ship
should be gone before the Kadiil ships arrived, but they would follow. 
Creating
black holes must be included on the Kadiil’s list of forbidden technologies!

He ran up the ladder.  As he climbed, he looked up at the
dome in time to see it turn black.

The director moved to where he could be seen by the man in
the wingback chair and the three people seated on the sofa that dominated the
small living room.  He counted down from five with his fingers and, at one,
pointed to the man in the chair who looked at the television camera and said, "Hello,
I'm Bob Wilson for Channel Nine News.  Tonight, we're in the home of Atlanta’s
newest millionaire, Tommy Yates.

"Atlanta is home to many software companies and the
entrepreneurs whose computer skills made them rich.  Tommy also made his money
by creating a new software program.  If that were all there were to it, we
wouldn't be here tonight.  Tommy’s unique.  He's only thirteen years old.” 

He turned toward the group on the sofa and the red light on
top of a second camera gleamed. 

"With Tommy tonight are his parents, Tom and Rachel
Yates.  Tommy, tell us about the program you wrote.”  He indicated the box in
the boy’s hand.  “Is that a sample?”

Tommy tried to moisten his mouth with his tongue as he
rotated the box to face the camera and stared, blankly, at the reporter.

Tommy's dad leaned forward and pointed at the brightly
colored box.  "That's how the program will be packaged in stores.  It will
also be available as a download."  He took the box and held it closer to
the camera to show Tommy's picture on the front.  "Tommy's written a file
compression program that cuts the time to download movies and other files by
seventy-five percent.”

Tommy shook his head and found his voice.  "That’s not
quite right," he said with a slight squeak.  "The program’s only for
downloading movies." 

He took a deep breath and looked toward his mom.  Her fixed expression
almost made him freeze again.  He felt himself begin to tremble as he
continued.  "And it’s not really a compression program.”  Tommy looked
over at his dad who nodded encouragement.  “It does reduce download time by
seventy-five percent, though.” 

The interviewer looked down at his notes.  “Can you tell our
viewers something about how it works, Tommy?”  He leaned forward and added, “Without
giving away any trade secrets, of course.”

“It works like a hologram.” Tommy shrugged.  “Well, not
exactly, but that’s how I got the idea.”  He shifted toward the camera,
breaking out from under his mother’s arm.  “A hologram is made by shining a
laser on an object and recording the light that bounces off onto film.  Shine
an ordinary light through the film and you see nothing.  Shine that same laser
through the film and the original object seems to appear.” 

Tommy grinned. 
I can do this
, he thought.
I know
what I'm talking about.  Why should I be afraid?
  "My program has two
parts,” he continued, pointing at the box in his father’s hand.  “The part that
will be on your home computer and the part that the supplier uses to create the
download file.  The supplier will have a regular compression program to make
the movie file as small as possible, and then my program makes it even smaller
by extracting a standard reference file from the data stream.”  He smiled
again.  “That’s the secret part.  The reference file is like the laser and
what’s left is like the film the hologram is stored on.  On your home computer,
an identical reference file is applied to the download, and then the file is
decompressed.”  He leaned back into his mother’s arm.  “And you have the
original movie in a quarter of the time.”

The reporter looked blankly at Tommy for a moment, and then
recovered.  “Very interesting, Tommy.  I’m sure some of our viewers understood
that.”  He smiled.  “Even if I didn’t.  How did you get started with computers?”

Tommy looked at his father.  “Dad gave me a computer when I
was nine.  All I did was play games until I found a book on programming at the
used book fair.  Programming is a lot more fun than games.”