Resilience (Warner's World Book 6) by Dave O'Connor Read Free Book Online Page A

1600.”
    “That’s a bit cruel on you” sympathised Charles.
    “I’ve gotten used to it. Thanks for sharing that” she said as she stood up.
    “Will I see you tomorrow morning?”
    “Hopefully” she said and gave him a smile before leaving.

Chapter 21. Washington DC 1000, 10 September
    Chief Scientist, Obeida Mbone, shifted her large frame in the chair opposite Julian Morrow’s. The Defence Minister was reading the section of the report she had highlighted. Glen McKlusky sat next to Obeida. He was tall and thin and going bald. He knew that much depended on this meeting and convincing the minister to back his plan.
    Glen was gifted but not stellar. He was a solid scientist, not the leader in his field. But Glen understood that to bring any field of scientific research into a practical outcome you needed cooperation, collaboration and a willingness to compromise. It was the compromise he had proposed that Julian was now pondering.
    “So you want to test this thing in the original test site?” asked Julian. Glen nodded. “Am I right in understanding that you can no longer warp in and out of that system?”
    Glen took a deep breath in. He knew he had his job cut out for him now. He had to try and explain a lot of very complex scientific theory to a virtual layman. He had rehearsed this bit over with Obeida before they had come in. Even Obeida thought his effort wasn’t too bad. But neither had felt that confident about it. Right now Glen’s confidence deserted him.
    “Yes and no” said Glen. “You can warp in but you may not end up where you had intended. The real problem is warping back out again.”
    “The gravity” proffered Julian.
    “Yes.”
    “So whoever goes in, isn’t coming back?”
    “More or less.” Julian frowned. “It’s a lot more complicated than that. Look Minister I could wax on about a lot of stuff you would struggle to comprehend. I don’t mean that with any disrespect. But would you grant me the favour of placing your trust in me if I said we can mount an unmanned mission to activate our device.”
    “How can you? It’s how many light years away?”
    “One hundred and forty three. But yes we can. We have this experimental AI system that was developed for terra forming…”
    “Hold on. Those still rely on human initiation within the system.”
    “The ones that have been announced, yes. But they have another that’s being developed by a team headed by Nancy Ku. She reckons it can be fully automated and activated without human input.”
    “What is its operational status?”
    “They have a working prototype as of two years ago but they lost funding last year and it’s in mothballs at the moment.”
    “Have you reviewed this? What do you think?”
    “Yes, I met with Nancy in Seattle. Her demo was impressive, but that’s all simulated.  We need first to test that this delivery means works and then modify it so that instead of initiating a terra forming device it initiates our new mass exchanger. I think it’s our best hope.”
    Julian looked into Glen’s eyes. He saw no doubt within them. He liked that. “All right, tell Nancy she has her funding back on line. This takes priority over anything else she’s doing.” Julian flicked through the report to the recommendations. He’d already read them. He wasn’t perturbed at the cost, though he knew his cabinet colleagues would be. “Why do you need six devices?” he asked.
    “So we can bracket. We have to work out how to calibrate this device so it will work in Qwantum. In effect we change the polarity of the device so it either converts energy to mass or mass to energy. But we need to know how much by and while we can do a lot in simulation there is really only one way to be sure.”
    “And if you reverse it too far?”
    “We may get a supernova.”
    “Shit. Just as well it’s fully automated then.”
    Obeida smiled. Glen remained serious. He felt like a salesman about to reveal a shortcoming in his product.