Alicia Jones 3: New Frontier Read Online Free PDF Page A

directly measure.  However, I’d suggest using
the comparative concept of charging a battery, rather than filling a pool.”
    Kristi and I stared at each other.  Sometimes, since
the upgrade, Al’s suggestions seemed a little bit too human.
    “That… sounds like a plan Al,” and then added banally,
“Let’s do that.”
    I took a deep breath, “So what do you think now?”
    Kristi shrugged, “It could be dark energy, or it could be
something else, completely different, that we can’t scan for or measure for directly.”
    I shrugged, “I guess we’ll find out.”
    Hours passed, and the data just kept getting more
skewed.  According to the data, there was more energy contained in the
singularity than any reactor known.  It was a huge leap from the fusion
reactors that powered the ship.  If the fusion reactors were a candle, the
singularity, or dark energy reactor, would be a volcano.
    Of course, I had no idea how to tap that power.  No
more than we knew how to tap gravity.  We could convert all sorts of
things to power systems, heat, pressure, motion, magnetic fields, and much
more.  But like gravity, we didn’t really understand how dark energy
worked, it was like trying to build a puzzle around a missing piece.  I
wasn’t giving up, all that power, there had to be a way to convert it to usable
energy.
    Kristi broke me out of my delusions of grandeur, “This is…
crazy.  I can’t believe you were right, but based on the indirect
evidence, you built a dark matter reactor.  Or is it a black hole
reactor.”
    She laughed a little bit, it sounded unsure.
    “Both.  Yeah, we have a lot of work to do as
well.  We have to one, figure out how to tap the energy, and two, we need
to figure out how to safely shut it down.  If it was shut down now, I
imagine the dark energy would tear the ship apart.  That’s why I put in so
much redundancy, and an ejection system.  I think to start I’m going to go
over the gravity equations, dark energy isn’t really energy at all, it’s more
like a force, like gravity.  So, we’ll see.”
    She frowned, “How about adding shields and weapons? 
Dark energy would ignore all shields, and tear a ship apart.”
    I snorted, “Sure, and while I’m at it, I’ll build a wormhole
device, after all there is more than enough power to do so.”
    We both frowned and looked at each other, as we realized my
sarcastic joke… wasn’t really out of the realm of possibility.  The
biggest restraint on opening a wormhole through space and time was lack of
power.  Let me amend that to the biggest restraint to trying to
open a wormhole, and testing those very old theories, is lack of a power source
that even came close to the theoretical requirements.  Of course, this
brought us back to actually figuring out how to extract the fantastic amount of
power we’d just discovered.
    Kristi lost her mirth, “Umm, we shouldn’t share this with
anyone, at all.  This isn’t something we’d ever build on Earth anyway, so
when we come clean we should specify space only if the powers that be aren’t
smart enough to.  You realize we slanted the balance of power with Shield
defense missiles, and especially the gravity anti-FTL missiles.  This will
turn balance on its head.  I’m not saying we shouldn’t do this, but we
need to be wary about how we present it.”
    I nodded, “Maybe even military only, civilians don’t need
it, at least not right away.  So you can run with the weapons and
shields?”
    Kristi frowned, “Fine, I’m the weapons person anyway, and
our projects aren’t interdependent anyway.”
    I shook my head, “How so?”
    Kristi shrugged, “You want to build some kind of power
converter right?  To power the ship, which by the way makes you evil to
want central power like that.  To make it a weapon or shield, I’ll need to
manipulate the dark energy itself.”
    “Right,” I said softly, “That hadn’t occurred to me
yet.  Don’t worry, we’ll keep the