Thank you so much for reading my story, I hope that you enjoy it. Love Mica xx Yorkshire, England
You might want to read Time Bubble first, it sets out some of the background to the events here.
John, Sakish and Glen, now very wealthy were sitting in John's conservatory, mulling things over with a jug of fresh pressé.
"I think I have an idea," John said as he sipped his drink.
"Is it as crazy as your first one?" Glen asked, "only we now have several outposts on planets in nearby star systems, have met aliens, who happen to be ancient Earthlings, and know that there is a more advanced alien society somewhere that took a few thousand people from Earth and just dumped them on other suitable planets and then ignored them. That crazy idea has meant I have some dosh in the bank."
"I am guessing the electronics for this are going to be wild? Go on, share your idea."
"Well, the time bubble, the BTD, allows movements in any direction that you point. What if all you sent was a little packet saying 'Hello', and that was in a specific direction, and when the hello was received it opened a bubble between the two locations. Say here and the moon."
"What? Like a doorway?"
"Yeah, dial a number, link establishes, walk through, arrive at the far end almost instantaneously."
"Fuck off."
"Er, well, no, the more I think about it, the more doable I realise it is.
"We are going to have to demonstrate it, and that means building two doors, I wonder if there are limits to distance? Too near, too far?" Glen said, obviously thinking through the engineering logistics.
"The first issue I think is that you have to get to the other end to install a door." Sakish said, "and then you have to have a computer capable of understanding interstellar movement such that it knows where every other door is at any given moment, the universe is still expanding relative to everything else."
"Can we do it do you think? If we can get a prototype working we can use the BTD ships to get them to the other locations, and we can leap frog from them, forever moving further from Earth."
"Another thought," John said, "we could use the same principal to send voice messages from the BTD ships back to Earth, keeping communications open."
"They are crying out for that now, perhaps we should focus on that first. They have a need for that, they will pay handsomely, especially if we don't detail how it actually works, just that we have a solution for their communications need."
"I think we will need to do both at the same time, the principles are the same." John decided.
Over the next few weeks they worked on the BTD radio and door, testing was their concern, could they go enough distance to verify it worked. First they bought a remote farm in Australia, a few thousand acres, that would give them the privacy they needed. They then flew to Australia on a private jet with all they equipment they needed to install a door as far away from Yorkshire as they could. After a few days of hard work the door was up along with a solar array and battery bank to power it. They left a small camera aimed at the door that was streaming, at low power, a video of the door.
Back in England they hurried to John's workshop and 'dialled' the door in Australia, the connection made, they then scanned for the video image that could only come through the doorway.
"Oh yes," Sakish cried, "we've only gone and done it.
There was the image on their tablet of the door in Australia.
"Sod it," Glen said, "We need a better test."
He walked through the door and appeared in Australia, picked up the camera and walked back through the door.
"That was incredibly foolhardy," John said.
"Someone at some point has to walk through the door. Now we have to go and sell these to SpaceX."
SpaceX people were sceptical at first. They could see the benefit of the BTDradio, and in fact had a real need for that, but unsure of the doorway, they couldn't see how they could monetise it.
John shrugged and said, "no worries, I know for a fact that Boeing are very keen for an alternate technology that they could use to clip your wings. Imagine a hotel on the moon, just a doorway away from New York City. Oh they would make a killing, and as it would be exclusive to them, they could charge what they like. Marry on the moon, honeymoon on Mars, I can just see their slogans now."
SpaceX remained unconvinced, so John just packed his presentation up.
"If you gentlemen and ladies would care to follow me to the parking Lot, I may have something to show you."
In the Lot was a semi with a grey forty foot shipping container with Bottomley written on the side, there were steps at the back, which was open, but it was quite dark inside, outside the sky was cloudy and rain was promised.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, if you could all just go into the shipping container and move to the rear, yes, I know it looks dark, but all will become clear as you step to the back."
The executives climbed the steps, accepted the glass of champagne that they were offered, and all thronged to the rear. More than one nearly dropped their champagne when they stepped to the rear and found themselves under a glaring sun, not a cloud in the sky and a marquee set up with drinks and sizzles for them to enjoy.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Bottomley farm near Alice Springs in Australia. You didn't even know that you were travelling thousands of miles, yet you did it in one thousandth of a second. Tell me that you cannot exploit this, and hell, I'll give to Boeing."
There was some anger at having been duped, some concern that their health may have been compromised. The CEO sat to one side in a chair and was obviously mulling things over.
He called John over.
"Say we go for this, what are we looking at cost wise, we have already paid you a lot for the Time Bubble drive."
