“Tell me the good news.”
“I’m sorry, Prime Minister, but there isn’t any.” The British government’s chief scientific advisor, Dr Matthew Harlow said to his ultimate boss wearily. “The gamma ray wavefront from the supernova is going to arrive in just over six months.”
“And there’s no way to survive the blast, or whatever it is?” The question had the hope of the scientific layman. Dr Harlow shook his head sadly.
“It’s not like a solar flare that might just knock out electronics and make birds fall out of the sky, Prime Minister; this is a high-intensity burst of gamma rays, the sort that will strip the atmosphere of all the ozone, leaving the earth unprotected. Anyone on the planet will be exposed to horrendous amounts of UV unless they live underground. It will also cause a new Ice Age that will severely disrupt the planet’s ecosystem and our food chain. You know all those post-apocalyptic movies; well it will be like that but without Hollywood’s saccharine veneer.”
“Can we build underground bunkers or cities, or something?” This question came from Sir Reginald Dower, the Cabinet Secretary.
“We don’t have time, Sir Reginald. Oh, a few people would be able to survive in old Cold War bunkers and I expect the American survivalists will be fine for a while, but the majority of the earth’s population is going to die in one way or another. We have six months, and we only know its that long because we got lucky with the new detector array under Ben Nevis and picked up some rogue particles travelling faster than light that CERN didn’t create. Normally, the first you know about a star exploding is when you see it. As a gamma ray travels at the speed of light, along with all that visible light and radio waves you are looking at with your telescope is the nasty stuff too!” Dr Harlow’s voice rose a bit.
“Calm down, Doctor.” said the Prime Minister, “Tell us what can be done.”
“Nothing, there is no good news! It is the end of the world!”
The Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary shared a glance. Sir Reginald cleared his throat.
“Thank you Doctor, you may go. And we don’t need to impress on you the need for secrecy?” His dark eyes bored into Dr Harlow’s. “We can’t have the public finding out and panicking, can we? You will need to make sure everyone on the research team and anyone else who might know about this signs the Official Secrets Act. Keep them quiet.”
Dr Harlow nodded reluctantly and left the room. Sir Reginald looked at the Prime Minister.
“When I first heard about this, I took the liberty of getting the bunkers online. I told them it was a drill, of course. There will be continuity of government, Prime Minister. Where there’s life there’s hope.”
“Keep a lid on the crisis please, Reggie; do whatever you need to stop people from finding out they are all about to die and can do nothing about it.”
“Yes, Prime Minister, I will keep them distracted with the Olympics.”
No End
There was something there. Angela could see an image of a mouse but it was more like a ghost. It wasn’t coming and going like those old Star trek re-materialisations. No, but Angela could see through it.
“How long does it take?” she queried, looking puzzled.
“Just a minute, I mean, it should be . . .” Frank’s voice tailed off. He looked hard into his controls. This hadn’t happened since the early days. Frank’s mind went back to some of the early tests where things would hang, half returned to reality, half lost. They got some of them back – in time. Others remained half gone, like a sort of image of the real thing. They’d sorted it out long before trying living creatures.
Angela shrieked. The half transported mouse was twitching. It was moving, but at the same time was rooted to the spot. Frank turned his controls and the image got stronger. Angela could still see the wall of the crucible on the far side, the mouse was twitching more strongly when there was a “pop”. A small curl of smoke came up from the machine. They both stared at the mouse. It did look OK. The device might have struggled but it did seem to have move the mouse from one place to the other.
Frank collected the mouse in his hands and placed it in a small cage. Angela was full of questions. “How far can it go? Have you tried it with people? What happened when the mouse was half here? . .
“Hold on, slow down” said Frank. “There’s a lot we don’t know. No-one knows how something can be half here, or where the other half is. We did a lot of early work on cheese. It’s organic material and helped us sort out the details, but there are several pieces we lost, don’t know where. We had a few half lost, but generally stuff either eventually arrived or didn’t make it at all. Mind you, in the early days there was some funny stuff arriving.”
Angela shook herself as Frank stopped speaking and decided the time had come to go home. It was clear there was a lot more work to do if people were to be moved. It was also apparent that Frank’s prototype had machinery at both ends. I distant planet would not have that apparently vital bit of kit.
As she opened the door to leave, there was a man standing outside. Angela stared at him, but he didn’t speak.
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