Escape: Fighting the Machines, #1

Title Page

ESCAPE

Fighting the Machines - Book 1.

Copyright

All rights reserved

Copyright © David Geoffrey Adams, 2020

The right of David Geoffrey Adams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

1st Edition – published by Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd.  May 2020

2nd Edition – November 2022

Cover Artwork

Based on images found on internet. Original design of ship originates from NASA.

Dedication

This work is dedicated to my darling wife, Marion, without whose support and encouragement I would never have finished it.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface.

Prologue.

1. Cambridge

2. Geneva

3. Eureka.

4. Exotics Harnessed

5. Houston

6. Three years on.

7. Discovery on the Red Planet

8. Buried

9. Fuelling the Warp Drive

10. Interstellar Probe.

11. Now for the Stars

12. A Change of Plan.

13. And a Change of Course

14. This is Why.

15. Urgency

16. On the Way

17. To Warp

18. Alarm

19. Onward

20. In the Void

21. Centauri.

22. Solar System - First Contact

23. Amongst the Stars

24. Personal Concerns.

25. Horror in the sky.

26. Danger in Hyades

27. Dissension

28. Eden lost - again.

29. Land Ahoy!

30. A Watcher Awakes.

Acknowledgements

There are a number of people whom I should thank. My Creative Writing tutor, Dave Copson, who gave me the confidence to believe that I could write a book. Those many authors over the years whose books helped me. The greats H G Wells, Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov and John Wyndham to name but a few.

The characters in the story are, of course, completely fictional but the brilliant work of two real scientists gave me the idea for the Einstein and its fellow ships. Mexican theoretical physicist, Miguel Alcubierre, whose design, adapted by the NASA scientist Dr Harold White forms the structure for the ships in this story.

Professor Stephen Hawking has been an inspiration to many people. The references to him are, again, fictional and there is, as yet, no such award as the Hawking Medal.

Preface.

This book was ten years in the making. An avid science fiction fan myself, I have read hundreds of books over the years. When thinking that I had a book in me to write the ideas were many though most centred on what might happen if we could build a starship. After retirement from the full-time job I still struggled to work out how to proceed. Then a local adult education class in Creative Writing caught my attention.

Two years on the first book is done. Other authors have been quoted saying the characters took over. Well, they did and the story line developed well beyond the original idea as well.

It is a story of success tinged with sadness at times. To quote one character Why me? well you will need to read on and, I trust, enjoy.

Prologue.

New Orders

Ellen sat in her quarters gazing at, but no longer seeing, the visage of Titan below. Her entire world had been turned upside down with the new orders from Earth.

Why me? she thought. Captain of a starship, yes. But responsible for the survival of our species?

One hundred years earlier.

The fleet continued to follow its course powering ahead at three quarters of light speed seeking another target. Sensors alerted the outliers to primitive radio noise emanating from a system almost eighty light years to the right of its course. The command craft recognised evidence of an intelligent civilisation. Instructions flowed and some one hundred ships started a turn towards the system leaving the rest of the fleet to continue on its original track.

1.  Cambridge

Not for the first time Megan struggled to sleep. This time it was not the regular student party. Her mind was still operating at full speed after the morning’s events when she had learnt that her dissertation had met the standard required by her college and that she had achieved her degree with first class honours.

As she waited for sleep to claim her, she let her mind drift back to the first time she had heard about particle physics.

She had still been at primary school when the Large Hadron Collider had been scheduled to be downgraded to a slipway for the new, one hundred kilometres long, accelerator. The LHC, as it was known, had led to the discovery of the Higgs Boson which had been the fundamental issue first targeted by the early researchers and evidence of its existence had been found in 2012 shortly before she was born.

What’s a God’s particle, Daddy? she had asked her father, after seeing news reports about that earlier discovery.

I don’t really know. He answered. It’s something very small but it must have been important because lots of clever people called physicists were searching for it for a long time.

I think I want to be one of them. She said with all the confidence of a bright youngster aged just ten.

You will have to work very hard at school to do that. Her father replied with a smile.

As time passed, she had become more and more interested in the science of physics and eleven years after that earlier conversation she had now completed her degree course. During that period the LHC had delivered some amazing results even if there seemed to be more mysteries and unanswered questions than could have been thought of back in 2010 when the first near light speed collisions had been instigated. 

LHC’s replacement had been due to start operating at the same time that she completed her A-Levels and obtained, to her delight, a place at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. While studying for her degree in Theoretical Physics, she had kept a close watch on the results of the research being carried out at CERN. The scientists there, however, were struggling with frequent difficulties in the mechanical operation of the new particle accelerator and new steps forward in their research were lacking.

By 2033 there was still one event which had been seen on multiple occasions in LHC runs and on a few of the early runs of the new accelerator. The latter was continuing to suffer repeated mechanical failures so new data was still severely limited. Despite that, the event could not be, or at least had not been, explained. The particle which caused the events, did not fit with any existing theory and was in danger of being consigned to the status of an unexplainable error in the data.

Megan had an intuitive ability to think outside the box which had, at times, led to, it must be said, heated discussions with her tutors and professors. As she looked for a subject for her dissertation in the particle area which was unexplained, the experiences at CERN kept her attention. After spending some time considering the options she settled on the new particle – what might it be or what was causing its all too brief existence?

She reviewed the research papers which had been written in the early days of the discovery including two papers by Stephen Hawking himself. One paper, written in the 1990s before the LHC had been completed, had considered how energy and particles might be able to escape a black hole and it had been this which provided Megan with an idea for her own paper.

The idea of parallel universes remained an unproven if not largely fictional idea but at the same time her fellow students studying mathematics and or theoretical physics were quite ready to argue that the idea of multiple dimensions and thus other universes could not be denied as a part of the solution to some of the more esoteric research problems.

Megan wondered, was there a process occurring at the temperatures in the collider which weakened the space between such parallel universes so that a particle from another domain might, briefly, break through only to return nanoseconds later? If so, what implications did it have for future particle accelerators then being built to accelerate not just particles but light weight molecules such as hydrogen and helium to close to light speed?

Then she had had a sudden premonition – had the particle event been examined to see if it was possible to identify any structure? A swift search of the various papers written in the early days of the occurrence of the events had indicated that the particle had not existed long enough to be examined, even via the recordings which had shown it to occur. 

She was unhappy that it was, in her view, necessary to leave open such uncertainty and had decided to review and then to simply, to the initial horror of her tutor, change her approach midway through her paper – scrapping it and starting again from scratch.

In her new paper she surmised that the event and/or particle in question might be tied to an application of string theory - supersymmetry. This theory required that different particles, bosons and fermions, had to be matched on a one to one basis, but that it had not been possible to find the additional particles needed. The accepted theory was that their existence required such heat and energy that they would have decayed almost immediately after the Big Bang had occurred.

Her paper concentrated on two points. First that the LHC had, possibly, for a few nanoseconds replicated the local conditions of the Big Bang and that the larger more powerful accelerator would, she theorised, produce further events similar in nature but that the particles would also not disappear so quickly. Secondly, and when writing this part, she held her breath, if and it was a big if the energy contained within the particles, as predicted, could be harnessed then immense clean power might be available. As a postscript to the main paper she suggested that such research would be enhanced if heavier atoms or molecules could be used.

Now she knew that her college considered that such an outcome of her paper warranted high enough marks to allow her to achieve her degree with first class honours. It had not occurred to her that refusing to lay down a definitive outcome was that essential part of winning the argument.

A few days later the email invitation she received was so totally unexpected that her first thoughts were that it must be an elaborate hoax. As she considered how to question its validity without looking a fool, she received a call asking her to attend the Chancellor’s office urgently.

The Chancellor’s PA showed her into his office as soon as she arrived with a beaming smile, which was in itself a little unnerving. Miss Newcombe to see you, Chancellor, as you requested.  The two men present rose to greet her.

Megan, thank you for coming so quickly. I did fear you might have gone home for a break before Thursday’s ceremony. the Chancellor said, I believe you will remember Professor Lawrence from your first-year studies?

Yes Chancellor, of course. Professor – welcome back to Cambridge.

The tall scientist and scholar shook her hand. I am glad to be back if only for a few days and even more pleased to hear the news regarding your success.

Sorry?

The Chancellor interrupted. Take a seat Megan. Geoff, Miss Newcombe is not yet aware of what is to occur at the graduation ceremony. I wanted you to be present when we told her.

Megan’s mind was in a whirl – how could they know about the invitation – unless? Sir, I received an email this morning that purports to be from CERN – is that what you mean? And may I ask how you might know? Especially as I had not applied to them. She felt forced to be honest enough to add Yet anyway.

Geoff Lawrence laughed. Tony, it seems the CERN bureaucracy has worked quickly for once!

I suspect that, once you and your colleagues had concurred with our thoughts, the back office felt they needed to move quickly to ensure that Megan did not accept any of the other invitations I am sure she will receive after Thursday.

Megan struggled to breathe – just what were the two men referring to?

Three days later her success hit the headlines as the first recipient of a new award, the Hawking Medal, awarded for exceptional and thought-provoking work in theoretical physics by an undergraduate.

2. Geneva

Megan had aimed high and now she was in Geneva.

The physical size of the new particle accelerator was invisible from inside the operations room deep under the Alps. Yet here was one of the world’s most expensive scientific experiments and nobody who entered that room could fail to be affected by the nature of such a human venture. And if they were there as newly graduated physicists, then they had often made it through an exhausting and highly selective process which reduced the hundreds of applicants from across the globe to a handful. Only a very select few received a direct invitation such as Megan’s.

You didn’t think I would make it here, Dad, did you?  thought Megan as she entered the room before coming to a sudden halt as the importance of the location to her sank in.

What am I doing here? Among so many real scientists? She almost panicked with the realisation that she really would be working at CERN.

M’selle. The greeting startled her and she realised that, to her chagrin, she had daydreamed her way across the room. She recognised the person immediately and her face reddened as it always did. Professor, I am so sorry – it is so overwhelming....

Her new boss grinned It gets any serious individual in exactly the same way. If you weren’t overwhelmed then we would have been wrong to invite you to join us! Even Professor Hawking admitted to a highly emotional response when he visited the site in the days of the LHC.

Sadly, he passed away while I was at infant school and I never had the chance to meet him but he was my inspiration to study Physics. That and the discovery of the Higgs Boson!  she admitted.

Stephen always kept in touch with me and my predecessors on a private level rather than official. Most of us attended symposia at which he spoke and met with him out of the public view. I was in London earlier this year and I met his successor who passed on the final draft of your dissertation. He made a quiet suggestion that we would benefit from your ability to think outside the box or, as he put it, outside of the circle.

Megan gasped. B-but she stammered, he never said a word to me and certainly did not suggest my dissertation was anything but a bit above average! I know it was published within the Cambridge group and thought that someone here must have seen it there. But the direct invitation was a complete shock.

Yuri Lentenov laughed again. He and his colleagues hold you in very high esteem, not least because you were prepared to put forward a logically argued process that, even if it seemed close to science fiction to others, touched legitimately on mathematical research and recurrent theories and elements of the Big Bang. And that, naturally, led to you being awarded the Hawking Medal. That also, in his view, supported the idea that you have the courage often needed in our research areas to put up fresh ideas in front of your peers and argue their validity against sceptical responses. Tomorrow I shall enjoy hearing your thoughts on these indefinable particles. As an invited newcomer we ask that you make a presentation of your paper to an audience made up of the rest of the team.

Later in her room Megan’s thoughts went back to the past few years of her degree studies and the frequent need to argue her views on the current state of research into particle physics. Now it would be her chance to air her theories, in her presentation the next day, directly to experienced scientists, who lived with that research every day, and she expected to have to justify her views to the full.

After a restless night she was up early walking over to the main building for breakfast receiving a friendly welcome from those people who were in the staff restaurant. She was glad to be able to sit with one of the still relatively few female researchers present who introduced herself as Elena Gallo, an Italian from Milan. After the self-introductions the conversation moved on to Megan’s presentation.

Nervous? Elena said, continuing as Megan nodded. I shouldn’t worry too much. Most of the team will have read a synopsis, if not the full paper, already. I am sure they will want to challenge your views, after all your ideas cover an area most had filed as not worth spending time on. But you will have faced that sort of challenge back at Cambridge I am sure.

True, said Megan, But that was quite a protective environment.

Don’t worry. They will give you a fair hearing, as I said, while wanting to challenge you. Now I must go. The latest test run is due in an hour and I need to be in place.

Megan finished her meal and returned to her room to complete her presentation notes before walking over to the auditorium in time to set up before the 11 am start. To her amazement the room was already almost full. With more than 500 people present it meant that the audience included members of other research teams.

At 11 o’clock sharp Yuri Lentenov, as leader of the new accelerator operations team, opened the session with the announcement that the test run had been completed successfully. He then turned to Megan, introducing her to the audience and reminding them, to warm applause, of her exceptional award.

Megan then commenced her presentation outlining why she had chosen this particular aspect of the LHC data. She touched on how her initial thoughts had changed to the idea that the particles might be a supersymmetry solution. At this point, there was an outburst from the audience.

Herr Lentenov, is it necessary that we waste time on this rubbish? This poppycock? We know that these particles are almost certainly random muons! This...this...science fiction approach to our research will simply make us look fools to the outside world!

Professor Lentenov responded. Grigor, I am well aware of your views on the issue and still await some supporting research from you and your colleagues. In the meantime, please give Miss Newcombe the courtesy of hearing her full presentation.

However, Megan herself also responded directly to the challenge recognising the man in question. Herr Professor, I understand your concerns and you are not the first to suggest that my work sounds like science fiction.

It is. Rarely have I heard such propositions within the science community. Perhaps you should write a book!

Unused to such harsh and venomous criticism Megan paused for breath. Then she decided to take the bull by the horns. Herr Sokolov, I am prepared to have my theories disproved if they are wrong. Are you prepared for yours to be wrong? Would you be ready to work with me to find the correct answer?

There was a stunned silence amongst the onlookers.

Her challenger stuttered. You have only just graduated. You have no experience. Do you really believe that we could work on equal terms?

The silence was replaced by a murmur of disapproval from the audience which buoyed Megan as she realised that they did not all agree with the Professor’s attack.

You work with other graduates as part of your team. How would this be different?

Yuri Lentenov rose to his feet. Professor, we have limited time here today. Please allow Miss Newcombe to complete her presentation and to answer other questions. We can follow up on this conversation later.

Sokolov subsided grumbling quietly to himself. It would not be the end of this Megan realised but she would just have to fight her corner more than ever before.

The next day a meeting between the two professors and Megan resulted in an agreement that she and Grigor Sokolov would jointly investigate the issue of the particles, if they did occur, using the data provided by the operations team. Sokolov agreed with as much good grace as possible following the reaction of the rest of his team to the idea of having Megan join them.

As a part of the discussion Megan also found out that plans were already afoot to take up her suggestion of using heavier atoms, in the first case ferric oxide molecules were to be tried.

3. Eureka.

Several months of hard work, mixed with frustration, followed as the accelerator runs were frequently cut short due to various equipment failures. It did not seem that it mattered which starting molecules were used. There was some data but rarely did the runs reach the planned peak velocities needed for Megan’s theory to be tested. After a month of zero data the teams met for a brainstorming session to try and identify the causes.

Grigor commented. These issues seem to keep happening at around seventy per cent of the planned run times. What is it that is affecting the magnetic fields?

It was, as Megan called it later, a eureka moment. Suddenly, turning to the operations team, she asked Do we have records of the changes in temperature as each operation progresses?

Why might that be important? asked both of the Professors.

We believed, or expected, that if we were able to run the accelerator to its full extent we might, for the last 50 nanoseconds or so, replicate the velocities of particles believed to have occurred in the aftermath of the Big Bang.

And? Grigor interrupted.

Those conditions must have involved ultrahigh, though cooling, temperatures. Megan continued. But the projections of temperature growth have always suggested a steady state until the very end and then a rapid, short term, peak. Are we seeing this peak reached much earlier and could that be triggering the shutdowns?

Yuri, can we adapt if that is the case? Grigor asked of Professor Lentenov.

I’m sure we can but it won’t be easy. We will need to amend the cut-off levels, adjust the magnetic field strengths and look at how maintaining those temperatures for longer periods might affect the structural integrity. This will not be a swift fix I’m afraid.

"Sounds like we may have been too successful in achieving