Reality Zero

Chapter 3

  The following morning, Angela, Dev and Billy were sat in the office of Admiral Reeds Scorah, along with Commodore Eleanor Powell, Angela’s line manager.

  As Angela was finishing off her verbal report to the Admiral, his assistant opened the door and said ‘ I’m sorry to interrupt, Admiral, but I have an urgent message for you from the head of the team investigating the two ships that Captain VanDelden’s crew brought in.’

  ‘Patch it through, please, Jon. Captain Moser, please explain what is so important to interrupt my meeting,’ said the Admiral, looking into the screen.

  ‘Certainly, Sir. A short while ago, we discovered the controls that allow the ship’s Captain to change realities. Because of the work being done by Angela Loughlin and her team, we thought that both you and she be advised of the discovery, rather than investigate further. The controls are built into the armrest of the Captain’s chair. Because we had been looking at the rest of the bridge, we hadn’t looked there until today.’

  ‘How do you know that’s what the controls do?’

  ‘Sir. This morning, between tests, one of the pilots was awaiting instructions before we moved onto the next test when she discovered the cover and was, to be blunt, fiddling with what she found. In doing so, she accidentally triggered the controls, resulting in the ship changing realities. After a short while she, with others, managed to identify what had happened and got them back to this reality. They were somewhat taken aback.’

  ‘How did they know that they had changed realities?’ queried the Commodore.

  ‘Initially, all we noticed was that all the usual radio traffic vanished, as did Columbus. We had a quick look at New Oregon but couldn’t see any sign of life down there, though a small settlement could be hidden amongst the trees and we wouldn’t be able to see it from out here. Of course, any settlement could have been around the other side of the planet. We weren’t there long enough for a complete look at the surface. Fortunately, she had only moved the control one position, so it wasn’t too difficult to retrace our steps, so to speak. The dial, by the way, has a total of twelve positions.’

  ‘That’s an excellent development. I’m relieved the crew are safe. Thank you, Captain. I’ll get Angela to come and see you immediately this meeting finishes. Please let Jon know your location, so that they can find you.’ With that, the Admiral terminated the call and looked at the others.

  ‘The work you’ve done has been of enormous value but I think this new development takes priority. Hopefully, what you’ve learned and developed will be invaluable in investigating these new controls. It means there are more realities that our friends have been visiting and this might be to our advantage. Angela, I’d like you and your team to join Captain Moser and his team and get to the bottom of this new set of controls. This could be even more critical to our success than the work you’ve done already.’

  ‘Certainly, Admiral. Before we start, I see two primary tasks. One is to look at the circuitry and controls, with a view to being able to reverse engineer it and, hopefully, improve it. Our work on the hand-held device showed us that we can make big improvements to what they produced. Their approach was amazingly crude, electronically speaking, with an amazing amount of redundancy. The other thing we need to do is more positively examine the realities that the controls can switch us to. For all we know, there’s a whole load of these ships and bases such as Billy found on Astraeus 5 ready to attack us. I wonder if these other realities are aware of the danger, assuming they’re inhabited’ replied Angela

  ‘Anyone else have any thoughts?’ asked the Admiral.

  ‘I agree with Angela, Admiral but I think our first priority is to visit the realities that the controls have switches to. If we start to pull the thing apart, we may never be able to get it going again. Although we have two ships, so could work on one ship at a time, I think it would be helpful if both were used to scout the alternate realities we know that General Gott’s crews have access to. Once we have a clearer idea of what we’re up against, we ought to be able to do something with the controls. While they’re going to be a lot more sophisticated than the hand-held device, I doubt they will be difficult to improve upon. After all, if the controls are fitted into the ship, space and weight aren’t so critical as for a hand-held device, which needs to be portable. I would also suggest that, even though we’re trying to understand what the device does and appreciate that time is fairly short, longer term we should be looking at a device which is software controlled, as this will offer even greater opportunities for shrinking the equipment, as well as, potentially, open up yet more realities. Reverse-engineering what we have should be seen as stage one of our understanding but the software route should be a longer-term aspiration’ replied Billy.

  ‘Good points, both. I favour Billy’s version of exploring first, then examining the controls in detail. Now we know that there are more realities and that it’s possible to move between them, I agree that we should keep an eye on the longer-term options. For now, Commodore, I would like you to go with Angela and her team and lead an expeditionary force to explore these other realities and identify what the risk is and whether we can improve our chances of victory’ instructed the Admiral.

  ‘Certainly, Sir’ replied the Commodore.