FSE

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Chapter three

She sleeps there in her crib, resting on her back with her legs and arms curled up. At this age, she still looks just like a puppy- the relative sizes of the various parts of the body, such as the arms relative to the legs, are slightly different, though at this age you can’t really tell. Her coat is a beautiful melange of black and blue merle and her ears are tiny and floppy. She sits in a comfortable mass of light pink blankets, soft and warm and comforting.

“Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce plays softly in the sterile room; it is her favourite song. She doesn’t understand what any of the words mean, for she is not old enough yet, but she nonetheless finds it soothing. Her little tail twitches slightly as she dreams about catching butterflies.

Her caretaker looks at her and smiles, the wrinkles worn into his knowing face. He takes a hand a gently rubs her head between the ears. She moves slightly and her tail keeps twitching slowly, but she doesn’t wake up. He smiles at her and sings the lyrics alongside the recording in his quiet, pleasantly quavering voice, as soft and warm and comforting as the blankets she sleeps in.

“But there never seems to be enough time, to do the things you want to do, once you find them. I’ve looked around enough to know, that you’re the one I want to go, through time with.”

And then, on the other end of the room, the door slams open. A woman in a lab coat steps through, and she angrily rips off her surgical mask, letting it hang down by her neck. The Augmented dog snaps out of sleep, her eyes wide open, and she makes a confused groan, as if she’s asking what is happening with a confused, “Mrr?”

“Drescher!” she says, shutting of the speaker projecting the music. “What the hell are you doing? You can’t let it imprint on you! Think about when it gets owners!” She grabs him angrily by the arm and forces him to walk away.

“I’m sorry, pup,” he says, but she doesn’t understand. The door closes and she sits there, all alone.

***

Catherine awoke that morning in her empty bed, lying on her side while clutching part of the covers. It was a ‘twin’ size, and seeing as she was only one point five metres tall and took up a minimal cross section, it was more than big enough for her. Briefly, she wondered if she would ever see anyone else in that bed with her, but ultimately she shuddered at the thought. The documentaries taught her that mating was a ghastly, traumatising event that no animal ever desired. It was simply a consequence of hormonal activity in the brain caused by oestrus, as was everything else any living thing did. Conscious will was an illusion perpetuated by the brain, they taught her, and every action was ultimately subconscious.

Those thoughts made her sad, but she accepted them without inquiry, just as she was supposed to. Biology leaves no room for free will, she heard the instructors saying. You are a dog. You are beneath. You are an ‘it.’ She sighed and clutched the lifeless covers a little harder, wanting them to respond but she knew that they would not. They had as much will as she did, she supposed, and were therefore as lifeless as she was; just a tad warmer, perhaps.

She sighed and rose out of bed into the frigid air of a February morning. Her apartment was neat and orderly; clean as a whistle, so the saying goes. Luckily, it was not as though she had much to worry about even if the apartment was unclean. For nearly thirty years now, the population on Earth had grown so rapidly that risk of disease transmission grew exponentially. As a result, the United Nations developed and released highly discriminatory, genetically engineered pathogens into the environment to combat harmful diseases and parasites. The bedbug, some species of flea, and virtually all parasitic species which fed on humans or pets were quickly driven to extinction. Some- like the ant and the bee, obviously- had to be kept alive because of their environmental contributions, but as pests they were dealt with easily enough even without specifically targeted pathogens.

She stared out the window longingly, how the little flicks of sunlight trickled through the trees, though it had not come up past the horizon yet. A faint dash of sleet fell from the sky, darkening the morning and dampening the orange light rays peaking past the trees. Such was the morning in Richland, and she had become accustomed to the sight, but she still enjoyed it. Then she turned back to her bed and looked at the electronic clock. 06:00 it read, which gave her ample time to shower, dry her fur, dress, prepare her suitcase, and hail a cab at 08:00. She was due by 08:30, and the journey was only around twelve kilometres, a drive of only a few minutes.

One of the few people that she had become accustomed to over the two years of life in Washington was her taxi driver, Bernie. He was a young, portly fellow with a swept back haircut of brown complexion, what he identified as a ‘mullet.’ It never quite fit his head precisely, however, and he later told her the reason on one of his cab rides when she had known him for a suitably long time. His prices were very agreeable, especially considering that vehicular operation cost nearly naught of what it did the prior century. Most cars these days were driven either by fusion cores or hydrogen chemical engines, but hydrogen was an abundant element. The most expensive part of owning a car was simply maintaining it.

The nearby Hanford Site was one of the major research facilities used during the century-and-a-half old Manhattan Project; consequently, many of the streets in the nearby Tri-City region were named after important scientists or concepts from the field of quantum mechanics. Catherine stood on the corner of Proton Lane and Centre Street, feeling the sleet slowly melt and roll off of her waterproof trench coat and busijamas. As she gazed at one of the many mountains in the background, which she believed to be Mount Baker, she wondered about the state of the world. Surely, she knew, the Chinese were not completely at fault, and that the United States had grown extremely imperialistic in the past century with the growing threat of terrorism and resource depletion. That vexed her little, however; she did not really feel much commonality with the United States in any front. Ostracising one’s citizens based on heritage did little to boost their patriotic disposition, something that reminded her decidedly of the immigration debate.

A very faint hum, almost imperceptible, reached her ears and she turned to her left and saw the taxi approaching, an angular vehicle of a mustard yellow complexion. At this point, Bernie knew her route reliably enough that calling him was not required, for he came and picked her up at the same time every weekday. She waved to him and he waved back from behind the dash, pulling up alongside her. She stepped into the back and placed her suitcase alongside her. As she closed the door Bernie accelerated, already knowing where he was going- where he had been going for two years now.

“How are we today, Catherine?” he asked in his New York accent.

“I’m good today, Bernie. Yourself?”

“Ah, well, you know. All things considered, I’d say I’m having a good day.”

“How’s the cancer?” The question was a tad blunt, she knew, but they had known each other long enough to the point where it was a conversational topic. Bernie sighed and adjusted his hairpiece so it looked more natural.

“It’s alright. It’s reached my prostate, lungs, liver and brain, but those are all things I can live without, right?” The morbid joke he told would be true, for the organs could simply be printed and implanted, or replaced with cybernetic counterparts, but Bernie had an autoimmune disorder in which his body rejected augmentations, something known to the medical community as ‘Dreiberg syndrome.’ True, the printed tissue could allow him to survive without rejection, but only if they contained the exact same chromosomal set as Bernie’s tissue, and that meant running the risk of cancer relapse. On top of that, though the brain could be printed, there was a certain probability that it would not contain the same memories of the brain it was emulating. Bernie ran the risk of losing his identity, and that was something he struggled with.

“I’m so sorry, Bernie,” she said, and placed a hand on his shoulder. With one hand on the wheel he returned the dog’s gesture, squeezing her hand.

“Hey,” he said, “Don’t be sorry for me. I’d rather die than lose who I am. You see this?” He tapped on his forehead. She nodded, yes. “Well,” he continued, “That is everything; everything you ever were, everything you are, everything you ever will be. The decisions you make are ultimately your choosing, but everything that impacts what decision you choose, what choices you make, what’s right and what’s wrong… that’s all up here. I would rather die than lose that. And that is my choice.”

He looked at her through the rear view mirror and her bright blue eyes avoided his gaze as if he were a sentinel. Her muzzle canted slightly, as though she wanted to say something, and she did, but in regards to what she was devoid of an answer. She finally looked back at him and opened her mouth to speak.

Then another driver to the left suddenly swerved ahead and cut him off, and he threw the vehicle to the side to avoid being impacted. Bernie slammed on the brakes and Catherine’s muzzle struck the back of the driver’s seat. He laid on the horn and moved his head out of the window, yelling expletives at the other vehicle, which soon passed out of sight along the winding road. When he felt satisfied with his rebuke at the driver’s incompetence, he looked back into the rear view mirror. “I’m sorry, Catherine. Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” she said, rubbing her nose. “You know, you could get a car that drives automatically. You’re one of the few people who still choose the manually-operated ones.”

“I’ve thought about that, you know. It would probably benefit me since it could react so much faster and avoid traffic. But then I couldn’t appreciate the real thing, the real skill of driving. I guess that’s the price I pay.”

“Beats having an accident over some asshole like that, in my mind, anyway.”

“True. But, sometimes, it’s just best to spread your wings, Catherine.”

The pair drove in silence after that, until they arrived at the familiar edge of the Hanford Site, its imposing security fences plastered with warnings of radioactive contamination and trespassing signs. Bernie pulled up at the edge of the security checkpoint, flanked by two security robots, and stopped just short of it. The automata were ugly things, clad in gunmetal armour with blocky components along their arms and legs. From a sufficient distance, of course, they resembled armour-clad humans, but from anywhere decently close one could easily discriminate their inhumanity, with their body parts that were simultaneously too blocky and too angular, with hydraulic lines visibly threading along their limbs and connector sockets. In their metallic arms they carried laser rifles, with thick barrels and cooling struts extending along the weapons. They were not designed with recoil in mind since, as given by the Poynting vector equation, photons produced laughably small amounts of recoil when their energies were of terrestrial scope.

Catherine grabbed her suitcase and stepped out of the cab, producing a ten dollar bill. It was two more dollars than what Bernie’s prices demanded, but she had no misgivings about his use of it.

“Cat,” he said, “You know I can’t take this. Keep your money; I’m happy to drive you here.”

She reached through the window and grabbed his hand out, smacking the dollar bill in it and closing his hand. “Thanks for the drive, Bernie. Have a good day, all right?”

He blushed and, with a mock sense of begrudging hesitation, accepted the money. “Thanks. You too, now, you hear?” He drove off of the Hanford Site lot and back onto the winding road while the robots looked on facelessly. Their metal heads turned and watched her approach on the dark, rocky gravel, covered with a modicum of sleet and cold water.

“Identification, please,” one of them said in a monotone, electronic voice. Catherine pulled her identification tag from out of her trench coat and placed it in front of the robot, and it quickly scanned it with a blue laser beam projected from the central slit which was its eye socket. A moment later the slit chirped blue and Catherine placed the ID tag around her neck. “Identification accepted: Catherine Alexeyevna- Gravitational Wave Monitor. Have. A. Pleasant. Day.”

The way it spoke, the slow, electronic and emotionless way that thing spoke disturbed her, like it always did. But, she reasoned, she was just as much of a robot as they were, when you really got down to the fundamentals. She did not know if that was the right way of thinking, but whoever decided what was right and what was wrong, what was the ‘correct’ way of thinking and what was not?

She did.

***

When she arrived at her workstation, she clamped on her headphones, as usual, and listened for any gravitational disturbances. Over the two years of working at LIGO, she had discovered nine binary neutron star systems, four black holes, and two instances of stellar collision. Because of her impressive work, she had already risen above the ranks of Day and Keyes quickly. She now acted as manager of her department, which, although it gave her command privileges, also entailed with it the responsibility of presenting all new findings to NASA.

It was a rewarding feeling to find a new signal, knowing that that detection would improve the understanding of the greater universe. All too often the signals were spurious and caused by simple interference, and that disappointed her to no end when it happened. She had grown used to it now, which is why, when she detected this signal, she mentally already began typing the observation report. Signal GW(21)040213 was caused by a seismic anomaly resulting from… she began to write in her head.

But that was decidedly what this signal was not. The amplitude, she observed, rose in unison with the frequency in a sharpened bell curve distribution, but, unlike even with normal gravitational waves, this one did not reach a maximum crescendo and taper off. It simply kept increasing its amplitude, far, far past the exponential scale the computer was accustomed to using. She performed a change of basis on the spherical coordinates, increasing the maximum range of the display so as to fully view the distortion.

In her ears, the passing wave resembled a jet engine screaming towards her. At first it was far away, a slight ‘tickle’ and wobble of the gravitational potential, but it quickly grew to monstrous proportions. The deep bass hum of the wave increased only further above the medium line; if analogised further, it was as if the wave of a nuclear explosion was reaching out to impact her. Slowly the air would move, and she would feel the slight burn of the distant manmade supernova; then the wind would pick up, the termination shocks of a great, great, inconceivably powerful wave, the air being forced out of the way by the rapidly encroaching fire; and then it would hit her, drowning her in heat and disintegrating her, only tapering off once the blast travelled a sufficient distance and the inverse square law had seen to its premature extermination. All the time the amplitude of the sound being generated would only increase until the inverse square law performed its geometric duty of suppression.

She had to map this thing; this was an unprecedented amount of gravitational energy passing through the detector, and she had to know from where. “Day,” she said, ignoring their mutual dislike of one another, “Are you seeing this? Can we attempt a triangulation?”

His eyes were as wide as hers, as much as he would have liked to keep his body language, or any interaction with the dog, nondescript. He glanced at Keyes, but she responded with a face of incredulity. “Is our detector malfunctioning?”

Catherine brought up the diagnostics to both detectors. All mirrors were properly aligned; the targeting lasers were at optimum performance; no faults were detected in any atmospheric systems, nor were there any in the cryogenic batteries which ensured that the mirrors would remain only slightly above absolute zero. Nothing.

“No faults detected in any detectors,” Catherine said slowly. She then switched on the security feed, going one by one through each one of the cameras on the exterior of the laser tunnels. “No vehicles are present anywhere near the detectors, either.”

The bass in her headphones from the gravity pulse continued to rise to the point of being painful, so she removed her headphones and placed them on the metallic workstation surface. Day and Keyes did the same in timely order. “Triangulate and find the source.”

“Roger,” Keyes said begrudgingly; she hated being bossed around by a dog. The triangulation process was rather simple because it relied on little more than trigonometry. The distance and angle between the detectors and the Sun was always recorded precisely, as was the distance and angle between both detectors, leaving the only remaining leg of the triangle extending from the gravitational source to the detectors. When Keyes’s computer chirped, her eyes narrowed at the screen and she scoffed incredulously. “This is bullshit,” she said flatly. A few people in the other workstations looked at her curiously, but, to be fair, it was not their concern to be interested in her befuddlement. They were the IT team, whose jobs were to maintain the room’s computers, and with that thought in mind they quickly turned back to their work.

Catherine shot Keyes a curious look with her ears folded asymmetrically, so the human swept her hand across the holographic screen and projected it onto the dog’s display. Examining the data, she decided that it was indeed bullshit- Grade-A bullshit, as Bernie liked to call similarly unbelievable things. 0.0001411(7) parsecs; that is how distant the gravitational source was, with the parenthesised digit indicating digit of uncertainty. Bullshit. Grade-A, unadulterated, unequivocal bullshit of the highest calibre.

“Where is that?” Day asked while gazing at her screen. Catherine shrugged and punched in the spherical coordinates of the anomaly to a graph of the known visible universe, and the three dimensional graph quickly zoomed into the Milky Way and into the solar system. As it neared Neptune it ceased, highlighting a rough spheroid of yellow where the gravitational waves had been calculated as emerging from. Catherine stared at the screen curiously, both ears in antiparallel directions.

“There is a black hole in our solar system,” she said quietly. “There is a black hole within the vicinity of the Neptune’s orbit.” She closed her eyes and swallowed, taking it all in, contemplating every little datum and what they each entailed. A black hole within any vicinity of the solar system, even within one light year, would have disastrous effects on the delicate solar dynamics which all of the planets enforced. The Sun, no longer being gravitationally superior to any other nearby celestial body, would lose its dominant position in the solar system. The outer planets would be pulled away from their contemporary orbits and objects in the Oort Cloud would be sent rocketing throughout the system. Jupiter would be thrown out of its orbit and its gravity would consequently be unable to protect Earth from asteroid impacts. Even if the inner solar system could survive, life on Earth certainly would not. A much more likely alternative, however, would simply be that the entire system would be consumed in a matter of years.

But how likely was this scenario to occur? A black hole required an extreme quantity of mass compressed to an unimaginable density to form. An object would have to warp spacetime so powerfully that no force could prevent its collapse- it would have to surpass a volume requirement known as its Schwarzschild radius, whereupon its escape velocity would equal the speed of light and the object would become what is colloquially known as a black hole. With that logic in mind, Catherine performed the calculations based on the energy density and attenuation of the gravitational waves, which she could insert into the stress-energy tensor. Then she could solve for the mass fluctuation via mass-energy equivalence, which would then allow her to use the Schwarzschild equation to determine the hole’s radius. The only variable in the Schwarzschild equation was mass, so, once she had the mass from the stress-energy tensor, solving it would be trivial, especially for a well-trained and cognitively-dispositioned dog.

When she felt the answer in her head, after no more than one second, the solution for the mass was odd, to say the least; one hundred and ten million solar masses, to be precise. The radius solution was equally bizarre, at approximately two point one six three four astronomical units- more than double the average distance between Earth and the Sun. At its predicted size, the singularity should have already begun consuming the solar system immediately upon its detection. Earth should have already been violently ripped free from its solar orbit and begun hurtling towards the black hole at extreme velocity. Colossal tidal waves would have ravaged the surface; great earthquakes would fracture the planetary crust; the jet streams would have been destabilised by the sudden acceleration and the weather would have become catastrophic; the dreaded “End of Days” would have finally occurred.

Furthermore, how could the black hole have formed? Even the mass of the entire solar system, if compressed past the Schwarzschild limit, could only form a black hole slightly larger than six kilometres in diameter, over fifty million times smaller than the detected black hole. No amount of mass in the local galaxy could have explained the hole’s presence, and yet, the instruments were telling her that it was there, despite all contradictory higher thinking which told her that such a thing was impossible.

She had to know for certain.

***

“Professor,” Catherine said, closing the office door behind her, “I have something I must discuss with you.”

“Absolutely,” he said in a fatherly voice. “Is there something wrong?”

She sat in the office chair ahead of his desk and placed the papers on its wooden surface, noting the presence of multiple coffee stains and what appeared like sparse water damage, old tears, perhaps. He took the data in his hands and looked it over sternly, noting the screenshot of the gravitational anomaly in Neptune’s orbit, the big yellow sphere of intersecting lines where the computer had registered the origin of the waves. He placed the papers down and stared concernedly at his desk, his hands folded and fingers interlaced painfully. He took a very liberal gulp of his coffee, and she again saw the Gravity sucks! emblem written on the side. Only now did she fully appreciate its irony.

Rubbing his temples, Weir reached into his desk and produced a small, rattling bottle of alabaster pills, one of which he consumed with another swig of his mug. “Catherine,” he said, “When was this data recorded?”

“Today, sir, one hour ago. The first signal was detected at 9:02 a.m.”

“I imagine everyone at your station knows about this data.”

“Yes, sir. I imagine all stations monitoring LIGO’s gravitational sensors detected it. The data indicates that a black hole lies near Neptune, but I don’t know what to believe. The pulse was extremely strong and fit the profile of a black hole collision in all manners except for its distance. We registered no faults on the detectors. I wanted to know what you thought of the data; it may be of great importance.”

“Hmm,” he sighed. He swivelled around in his chair somewhat aimlessly, deep in thought, with his eyebrows furled and his forty-something face scrunched into wrinkles. Then he began mumbling, more to himself than anyone else, though with Catherine’s sensitive canine ears she heard every note of it. He pulled up the holographic keyboard and began typing on his computer, finally hitting the Enter key and closing it down. Then he suddenly, but not spasmodically, flicked his fingers and rose out of his chair. “Ms. Alexeyevna, I’d like to take you for a ride. Are you comfortable with that?”

“Yes, sir,” she said submissively. Her inability to say ‘no’ to anyone- especially Weir, who fulfilled her pack mentality role as the ‘master’- was becoming quite disappointing, in her eyes, and she could not help but blame herself for it.

“Sounds good, then,” he responded, grabbing his mug and walking out into the hallway. Catherine reflexively rose out of her chair and followed him. Weir turned his head around the corner of the cubicle wall. “Scott? Can you cover for me until… I don’t know, actually. I’ll call you by two o’clock this afternoon.”

“You got it, boss,” Scott Kean responded, his tall form protruding awkwardly from the cramped grey cubicle. “May I ask-” but then he saw the collie standing beside Weir, the thick coat of blue merle fur making her appear almost corpulent in contrast with her petite business clothing. When he saw her he scoffed slightly and nodded respectfully towards the professor. Weir simply turned about and faced the elevator.

***

“I’m sorry about that,” Weir said as they approached the security checkpoint in his car; it resembled the taxi that Bernie had, but was a cool grey colour instead of the mustard yellow typical of cabs.

“Sorry for what?” Catherine asked. The professor drew the window down and flashed the security robot his ID card. The gate promptly opened, giving him leave to accelerate onto the gravel road.

“For the people like Scott, you know. I don’t like seeing people being beaten up for being themselves.” He looked at her and rose up his wrist, showcasing his dark skin. “A black man who grew up in Jacksonville. I know what it’s like.”

“I’m sorry, professor.”

“It’s no worry, Catherine. You have it much worse than I ever did, I know that, and I offer my commiseration. But that’s not why I brought you into this car, anyway.”

“May I ask why you did, professor?”

“Certainly,” he said smugly. He drove steadily down the main road until he reached another gravel path, this one hidden in a wealth of tall evergreen trees. “I want to show you something; it relates to the data.”

“That data,” she said, slightly trailing off, “It felt real. We didn’t detect any faults with the detectors, but I know what I saw; what I felt.”

“That’s because there were no faults to be found, Catherine.” He shut off the hydrogen engine outside of what appeared to be a nuclear bunker built into the ground in a flat field of smooth dust and snow, and they exited the vehicle. The bunker consisted of a set of metal doors beneath of short flight of dark-coloured stairs. Out in the distance of the field, she could see a few small, circular pivots extending shortly from the ground, not more than twenty centimetres tall, distributed in a massive circle at least a hundred metres wide. She pondered it with her ears cocked out to the sides before she heard a pneumatic hiss coming from the foot of the stairs.

She looked down and saw that the doors had parted, and the professor was standing there patiently, waiting for her. She cautiously walked down the steps and looked down the corridor that the door led to. “What is this?”

“This is a NASA facility, Catherine. I have access, and because you’re with me, as do you.” She groaned in uncertainty, but begrudgingly accepted his lead when he walked in. The door shut behind her a short time later, and she looked around the bare grey of the walls for any prying eyes or any security cameras. She imagined that her face was plastered on several different monitors, and the thought noticeably unsettled her. With her fur slightly bristled, her ears splayed and her tail hanging between her legs, she followed the professor down the long, winding halls.

“This is an alternate entrance, actually,” the professor said, “Mostly used for maintenance and other housekeeping duties. That’s why we haven’t seen anyone yet.”

“This unnerves me, professor,” she said quietly, almost afraid someone would hear her. The stark walls, the sterility and the quiet of the facility reminded her decidedly of the facility she was raised in; perhaps that could explain her rather superstitious nervousness.

“We’ll be fine.” They continued walking until they came to a wooden door with an electronic screen squarely in the centre, marked with the words Conference in progress written in a light blue. The professor placed a hand on her shoulder and kneeled slightly to better accommodate her very small stature. “I’ve known you only for two years, Catherine, and yet you are one of my most accomplished employees. I trust you because I know you value your word and you understand that respect is something earned. I trust you because you are an honest, good woman. I’ve told you before about confidentiality at LIGO; the same applies here. No one is to learn about anything discussed, heard or witnessed here. Can I trust you with that?”

She swallowed and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Excellent.”

Weir grabbed the handle and opened the door, revealing an ovular room with wood panelling along the walls, along with several soft lights in the ceiling, giving the room a cosier, well-lit and laid-back appearance, though it was still quite large and imposing. In the centre of the room was a round wooden table with twelve office chairs seated around it equidistantly from one another. Eight of them were filled with various well-dressed men and women, all with faces she did not recognise. Photos of various astronauts were framed along the walls, with a NASA logo on the wall on the other side of the room; most of the faces she did not recognise, either, but she could make out Buzz Aldrin and Sally Ride in particular.

“Hello, Professor Weir,” a man at the end of the table said. He vaguely resembled Weir himself, a tall, lanky gentleman, though he had less hair and his skin was slightly darker. “Hello, Ms. Alexeyevna.”

“Hello, Dr. Rodney,” Weir said.

“Hello,” Catherine offered with a gentle nod.

“Please, join us. We have much to discuss.”

And that is exactly what they did. Catherine told them of the anomalous signal, how it was more than seven orders of magnitude higher in strength than any previous detection. “The data points to the presence of a black hole, in between the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. A black hole with more than one hundred and ten million solar masses; with its mass, it should have already destabilised all planetary orbits across the system.”

“Could it have been due to an equipment error?” a man adjacent to her asked. He was clearly of Asian descent, probably Chinese, and it made her feel a little empathetic for him knowing the hostilities between China and the United States. Earlier he had introduced himself as Miles Lee, and he seemed friendly enough.

“LIGO’s laser interferometry detectors are monitored by several micro-drones and redundant systems,” she said. “If there was an equipment error, it would’ve had to be widespread across multiple systems. We registered no equipment faults, and, frankly, failure seems highly unlikely.” That statement made her think of her and Weir’s conversation inside the car. That’s because there were no faults to be found, Catherine. The clever bastard still hadn’t explained what he meant by that; internally she growled.

“Come on,” an auburn-haired woman said, who had introduced herself as Dr. Elizabeth Lareau. Her French accent was quite thick. “I believe we all know what really caused it. I don’t believe there’s any further need for disinformation. Rodney?” Her statement was met by several nods from the men and women in the room.

Dr. Rodney leaned back in his chair a little, putting a hand to his chin in a mimicking of The Thinker. “So be it. Phillip, dim the lights, please.”

“Roger,” an electronic voice registered from the speakers in the ceiling. It was more human-sounding than the emotionless robots guarding the security checkpoints, but still she found it lacking that certain je ne sais quoi one could associate with an organic voice. “Dimming lights.”

Quickly the room was drenched in darkness. A small blue glow appeared above the middle of the round table and a spherical hologram quickly appeared. “Load the signal, Phillip,” Elizabeth said.

“Roger.” The familiar waveforms and spherical coordinate system from the LIGO monitoring station appeared on the hologram’s surface. Contemporaneously they began to oscillate in regular rhythms, increasing extremely rapidly, exactly as she had seen earlier that morning. The sound of the waveform was also projected through the room, growing louder and deeper in bass just like the freight train of waves she had detected. Before it grew to an uncomfortable volume, Lareau snapped her fingers and the replay ceased.

“That’s the signal you detected this morning. The only explanation you could come to was that it was caused by a black hole collision in extreme proximity to the solar system, non?”

Catherine nodded her head. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You are correct.”