The Orthogonal Galaxy (41 page)

Late one evening, Zimmer
sat in his office reviewing media coverage of Congressional debates
regarding the mission. Irritated with the press’ coverage of the
matter, he closed the lid on his laptop.

Shaking his head, he
muttered under his breath, “Why does politics always have to get in
the way of science?”

He stood up and walked
over to the window of his office. He looked over the quiet campus.
Sidewalks were illuminated in bright blue light, shadowed
occasionally by the overhanging tree standing motionless in the
still of the night. Near the circle of ground lights illuminating
the planetarium bearing his name, he caught a movement out of the
corner of his eye. Easily recognizable in contrast to the perfect
stillness of the night, he saw the backs of a pair of students
walking together along one of the walkways. Their path curved
towards a building, and as the students approached, he smiled as he
saw the distinct profiles of Joram and Kath. Joram held the door of
the building open for Kath, who smiled and nodded as she crossed
the threshold. Joram stepped in behind her and allowed the door to
swing shut.

Zimmer looked at his
watch. 9:43 PM. “Those two seem to always be in that lab these
days, and with the evening growing late, they return for more.” He
would have to stop by on his way to the parking lot now—just to
make sure that everything was going well with their research, and
to ascertain whether they had any questions for him.

Just as he grabbed his
coat off of his office chair and headed for the door, his ear
implant rang softly. He wasn’t used to getting any phone calls this
late, but he tapped his ear to answer the call anyway.

“
Carlton Zimmer speaking,”
he said while beginning to put his coat on in hopes of being able
to dismiss the caller quickly.

“
Carl,” sounded an
exuberant voice on the other end of the call. “How are you
doing?”

“
Little brother?” Zimmer
was pleased to hear the pleasant voice.

“
Little brother, indeed!”
exclaimed Warron Zimmer. “Little enough to be in your shadow, as
always… I keep hearing about you from the media these
days.”

Shrugging off the praise,
Carlton spoke warmly, “It’s been a while, Warron. I’m glad to hear
from you.”

“
Well, I do apologize that
it’s so late… I’ve been busy reviewing a new case, and time ran
away from me. I couldn’t miss the opportunity to wish my big
brother a happy birthday.”

“
Ah, yes. I should’ve
known,” Zimmer nodded and smiled while taking his coat off and
reclining in his office chair with his hands clasped behind his
head. “You never miss calling me on my birthday… even though I
almost always find an excuse to miss yours.”

“
Excuse… is that what you
call unraveling the mysteries of the universe these days, Bro? How
is the sleuthing going anyway?”

“
Well, it’s been an
exciting year, to be sure.”

“
No kidding! You found
your parallel Earth, and you’ve discovered something moving faster
than the speed of light! And now, I hear you’re working with NASA
on a mission to the other Earth?”

The older Zimmer sighed
audibly and paused, weighing his response to this
question.

Warron probed, “At least I
thought I heard about a mission.”

“
Oh, yes… you heard,” the
astronomer confirmed. “It’s just not going very well at the
moment.”

“
You talking about those
critics? It’s nonsense. The American people are behind you on this.
We all want to know about this place and you know how impatient we
are when we want something. Nobody is going to stand for waiting an
extra five years, when we have the time to prepare now.”

“
I only wish those guys
were our biggest problem right now, but we have an even bigger
problem at the moment—something that I did not foresee, and which
may scrap the entire effort altogether.”

“
I’m sure it’s nothing you
won’t be able to solve,” Warron encouraged. “You’ve solved all
sorts of tough scientific challenges in your life.”

“
No, this time it’s out of
my hands. I was in a meeting with NASA earlier this week. Turns out
we can’t find any astronauts who are willing to take the job. None…
not one. And for this mission to succeed, we need two.”

“
You gotta be kidding?
This must be the most exciting mission in the history of space
exploration. Talk about making a name for yourself. I mean, we
still read about that Ned Armstrong guy who was the first to land
on the Moon. Imagine how famous the guy will be who first lands on
Earth2?”

Zimmer corrected quickly,
“Neil!”

“
What?” asked Warron in a
state of confused misunderstanding. “Can’t I just sit?”

“
No,” Zimmer rolled his
eyes. “I didn’t mean for you to kneel. I was referring to Neil
Armstrong, who was the first man to walk on the Moon.”

In his career as well as
in personal conversations, the successful defense attorney was not
one to be allowed to get off onto irrelevant tangents. “Oh yeah,
right… but you get the idea, Carl. The thrill of the adventure.
Going somewhere nobody has ever been before. The fame. Maybe you
should increase the salary?”

“
It’s already at
twenty-five million, Warron,” the professor answered flatly, and
then heard a startled whisper on the other end.

“
So, what’s the problem,
Carl? I just can’t believe you’re not getting any
bites.”

“
It’s actually very easy
to understand. You travel through space at over 25000 times the
speed of light for more than a year, hoping that the speed of light
won’t adversely affect you physically. Then, you stay on a foreign
planet for six and a half years waiting to hitch a ride on the next
lap of the comet. What if they get there and find that humans
aren’t exactly friendly to them? What if they land in a Jurassic
era of dinosaurs excited to feed off of an exotic meal? And if
you’ve actually managed to survive Earth2 this long, then you have
to hope that NASA didn’t botch one of the coordinates or round off
any of their math to the wrong decimal place while trying to
rendezvous with a massive object that it hurtling towards you at a
pace that is faster than anything you could conceive. What if you
get flung off of the comet prematurely on your return home, and you
get stuck in the vastness of space with no hope of return to either
Earth.

“
Remember, also that all
of this will take 13 years away from your personal life. That alone
will take out every family man on the planet, but it is also a
significant reason for rejection among bachelors as well, who view
this time in their lives as significant for settling into family
life or the pursuit of any other personal activity. The 23-year
olds out there have a hard time coming to grasp with the fact that
they’ll be gone until they’re 36. Would you want to give up your
twenties for a likely suicide mission?

“
Well, if you put it that
way…” Warron’s voice trailed off in a tone of defeat and
discouragement—not only out of empathy for his brother, but also
out of disappointment for his own curiosity. Everybody wanted to
know what—or more importantly—who was on this other
earth.

“
Basically, we have
conflicting requirements in the person that can fill the job. We
need somebody who is intelligent enough to understand the science
and engineering of the mission, and yet stupid enough to not figure
out that we’re asking 13 years of their lives for a suicide
mission, or somebody who has absolutely nothing to
lose.”

There was a long pause in
the conversation at this point. After looking at his watch, Zimmer
broke the silence. “Did you fall asleep on me during that
explanation, Warron? It is getting awfully late there in
Atlanta.”

“
Um… no, actually I was
just… thinking about something.”

“
What’s that?” the elder
Zimmer asked.

“
Oh, sorry… it’s nothing…
ludicrous really… but then again…”

“
Go ahead.”

“
It’s just something you
said that made me think… You said you need ‘somebody who has
absolutely nothing to lose’, right?”

“
That’s right,” Zimmer
said with full, albeit reserved, attention.

“
It’s going to sound
crazy, Carl, but I might be able to help you out.”

22

The two prisoners sat
quietly in their cell. Paol Joonter was writing a letter in
response to the one he had received from his family. Every Tuesday,
Paol anticipated that weekly letter. It was his only link to the
family. After reading the letter three times and memorizing every
detail of the picture of his children, who appeared to be enjoying
themselves at the Seattle Mariners baseball game, Paol sat down on
his chair and began to write his weekly response on his
clipboard.

Three feet away, he could
hear the occasional deep and raspy breath of his cellmate, Blade
Slater, who was enveloped in his reading “All Quiet on the Western
Front.” An occasional muffled vocalization was heard in response to
Blade’s reading, followed by the soft sound of the pages turning.
Echoes of other prisoner interactions could be heard through the
halls of the cell block.

Only Paol noticed any of
the noises, as Blade was consumed by his book. For that reason,
Paol’s head was the only one to raise from his letter writing as he
heard the growing thump of footsteps approaching from down the
hall. A guard emerged in view and approached the cell.

“
Joonter!” the guard
barked into the cell needlessly, considering that the two had
already made eye contact. Unlocking the cell with his laser key,
the guard announced one last word “Visitor.”

At this, Blade’s focus
returned to the present with a nearly imperceptible raise of his
eyebrows. Without lifting his eyes from his book, Blade
congratulated his partner for his break in the doldrums of the
regular routine and bid him farewell for the moment.

Paol quietly followed the
guard, remaining ten feet behind as required by security
regulations. Prisoners cooed and jeered at Paol as he walked by,
voicing resentment through phrases too indecent for print. Paol
ignored it all, fixing his gaze to the back of the guard leading
him to the visitation room, a small five-foot square box of
concrete with aged fluorescent lighting. A 12-inch thick glass
separated him from his lawyer, Warron Zimmer.

Paol was always encouraged
by these visits, since he remained hopeful that Zimmer would bring
some significant news in his parole process, but generally, all
updates were less than encouraging. The process was moving forward,
at a typical judicial pace, but Zimmer was still seeking a
significant piece of the puzzle that would help accelerate the
process. After months in prison, Paol was growing frustrated and
hopeless.

After briefing his client
on the current status, Paol could tell that there was no reason to
get his hopes up during this visit either. After a typical exchange
where Warron gave Paol details, and Paol gave Warron his
appreciation, Paol felt something a little different in the
countenance of his lawyer during a pause in the
conversation.

“
Paol,” began Zimmer, not
knowing exactly how to begin.

“
I don’t think I’ve ever
told you that my brother is Carlton Zimmer, the
astrophysicist.”

“
No, I don’t remember ever
hearing that. I read in the news that he has been involved in some
pretty amazing discoveries this year.”

“
He is working presently
on a mission to Earth2.”

“
Yeah that sounds quite
wild.”

“
Actually, everything is
proceeding quite nicely, as far as the mission is concerned, but
there is one snag that is jeopardizing his efforts of ever getting
to explore this new Earth.”

“
What’s that?”

“
Nobody seems willing to
accept the mission.”

“
I thought NASA was
stacked with astronauts and candidates ambitious to become
astronauts.”

“
Well, I think the Mars
scare has been effective at keeping astronauts on pins and needles,
and frankly, every astronaut—as I understand it from my
brother—feels that the mission is simply suicidal. They see too
many unknowns that could easily go wrong, and the commitment is
large. It will be 13 years before the astronauts return. So there
they are. NASA needs a pair of astronauts for the most exciting
mission in the history of our planet, and they can’t even find
one.”

Paol gave a low whistle.
“I guess I hadn’t been following closely enough to realize the
specifics. That is a long time.”

Sitting forward in his
seat, Warron spoke intently. “I’d like to make a suggestion,
Paol.”

Paol’s face contorted, not
knowing where this was going. He indicated to his lawyer to proceed
with the suggestion.

“
NASA is very eager to
find individuals to fulfill this mission. The United States—heck,
the world—is very eager. I could get you out of here, Paol, if you
would accept to do this.”

Paol blinked rapidly and
cocked his head to the left. Measuring his response, he continued,
“I’m not sure if I understand what you’re saying.”