Chrome Symphony - Chapter 5

Camay finished up some work in her office at the L1 colony before locking the door and heading back to her quarters.

She sent a quick message to the other scientists at the colony, informing them that she would be absent for a time.

After sending the message, Camay lay down in her bed and shut her eyes. Her mind drifted away from the android body and back into the vast wireless network, residing on countless servers on various space stations throughout the solar system.

A few moments later, her eyes opened again. She was now in a different android body, located on Earth. It had her typical appearance: long, straight black hair, thin-rimmed glasses, and a long lab coat over a mini-skirt and a sweater. Detecting the temperature inside the dusty warehouse, she changed into a more appropriate outfit and put her lab coat back on. It was a fairly warm night and she had to make sure she could move around easily.

Leaving the warehouse and engaging the security locks, Camay took the nearest transport rail to the observatory, which was a few miles away.

She arrived at the observatory moments later and buzzed the door. Chester opened the door.

"Dr. Thameh!" gasped Chester.

"Nice to see you in person again," replied Camay. "I've decided that matters have become serious enough to warrant in-person consultation."

Chester led her inside and up to the telescope deck, where Shell and Jax were studying the images onscreen.

"Good evening, Jax and Shell. I'll be planet side for a while. I've also asked Duncan to join us," said Camay.

"Dr. Thameh," said Shell, "Duncan's tied up with work..."

"Please, call me Camay from now on," replied Camay. "Whatever Duncan's working on, I'll see to it that he's compensated for his time."

After about twenty minutes, Duncan arrived and Chester led him up to join the others.

"Now that everyone's here," said Camay, "Let me begin."

Camay looked at the monitors and eyed the images for a few more seconds.

"We need to find a way to positively identify that object out there," said Camay. "Furthermore, we need to figure out what, if any, connection it has to the sudden loss and resurgence of the adepts phenomenon. No connection has yet been proven, but part of Firewall's core mission is to ascertain the cause of the adepts. We may well have the root cause staring us in the face."

"Since there are patterns in the signal that match the data that Shell and I extracted from the mystery sphere on NEA726," said Duncan, "We at least have a good chance that this object might be part of NEA726, or something else that was hidden inside it before it disappeared."

Camay nodded. "I think we should send some automated probes to it," she said. "There's no sense in a manned expedition just yet, especially considering the danger you encountered on NEA726."

Shell and Duncan both looked around awkwardly.

"Yes," replied Duncan, "I would prefer to avoid any more life-threatening adventures if at all possible."

Duncan studied the image on the telescope's screens.

"It's considerably smaller than NEA726, being only a mile long," said Duncan. "I thought we had destroyed the sphere in the asteroid's core but..."

Duncan trailed off, having an incomplete thought.

"Well," continued Duncan, "It's not like we verified its destruction, anyway."

Camay was silent for a moment as she sent some messages back to the L1 Colony.

"Okay, some probes are en route," said Camay. "Let's see what they can find. At the very least, we'll get some up-close images of the thing."

After a few minutes, the probes appeared in the telescope's monitor. They approached the object from the direction of the L1 colony and sped toward it with an unusual velocity, as though they were being pulled by the object.

Suddenly, the two probes exploded, as if they hit an invisible barrier.

"What?!" exclaimed Chester. Camay shook her head silently, as if she were not too surprised this would happen.

"How are we supposed to examine it further if it destroys our probes?" asked Chester.

Chester walked over to his terminal and attempted to run what limited analysis he could. He was not able to perform a spectrum analysis because the object didn't seem to emit or reflect any visible light, ultraviolet, or infrared.

"This is going to be really tough," said Chester. "The only thing we know right now is its size and that it's probably what's sending out that beacon signal that hasn't been decoded yet."

"Hmmmm..." Chester scratched his head for a moment. "If we could try to hit it with some other forms of radiation somehow..."

"Chester, please send me all of the image data you've obtained of the object so far," said Duncan.

Duncan started to walk toward the stairs. "The only thing I can suggest right now is that we continue to analyze that beacon signal. If there's some kind of barrier around that thing preventing probes from approaching, I'd imagine it's set up as it is deliberately."

Duncan looked at Jax. "As far as the link to the adepts, I have to wonder if it's related to quantum entanglement in some way."

Duncan started to walk down the stairs. "Please excuse me. I hate to run off like this but I have to attend to some other matters. Good night, everyone."

Duncan left the observatory and took a transport rail back to his house.

Chester nodded. "I'll continue to monitor it from here. In the mean time, we might want to look into how it's detecting and destroying probes. If it's manned, perhaps we could try to communicate with it and find out who they are."

Camay, Shell, and Jax waved goodbye as they left the observatory. Chester sat back down at the table and quietly finished his pizza, which had gotten cold. He didn't care; he ate the rest of it anyway.

We're at a dead end with this stupid thing, he thought to himself. If it destroys probes like that, approaching it with a manned vessel is out of the question. It might be a threat to nearby space colonies, too, if it's doing things like that.