Chapter 7. New Possibility.

Charles, Carl and Dave were down in the engineering deck trying to find some clue that would explain their present situation. They had no real idea of what caused the blackout incident, but they were hell bent on finding something that could explain it.

Carl was the first to say anything. "I found something in the record that might be a clue to what happened when the blackout occurred."

Charles looked over at him with a confused expression. "I thought that we already checked those records."

"This was in the energy profile," Carl replied. "It wasn't included in the sensors list. It was in the temperature record. During the blackout, the temperature of the sensor array increased several hundreds of degrees. In fact, it reached a peak of 1080 degrees C."

Charles's brow furled. "That's weird. That would suggest a powerful beam of energy struck the sensor array."

"If you do the math, the temperature array heated up to that temperature in just a few seconds. That indicates that it was a very powerful microwave blast."

"That doesn't make sense. A beam of that intensity would have to be focused, like from a weapon."

"We experienced the same heat intensity," Dave said. "Since we were separated from you by four light years, that would mean it was a collective attack."

"From whom?" Carl asked.

"Or from what?" Charles added. "Let's say that it was a powerful microwave beam. How did that cause a blackout that sent us into this weird situation?"

"Good question," Carl responded. "String theory says that gravitons are massless but still carry energy. Maybe they have a little bit of mass that could interact with photons at microwave energy levels. That could cause some sort of change in our perception of reality."

"Yes, but our perception of reality doesn't change reality," Charles suggested.

"Or, maybe it could," Dave said. "It wouldn't take much to have us in a phase displacement. I realize that that idea is only theoretical, but it's a possibility that we could consider."

"Even if that is an explanation," Charles said. "We don't have any way to create a powerful microwave beam, and even if we did, we have no idea how to control it to extract us from our situation."

"That pretty much sums up our collective belief in that theory," Carl said.

He didn't get any argument from Charles and Dave.

Alice, Judy, Vicky, Hilary, Beverly and Mary were on the command deck trying to argue out ideas that would explain their situation, but their discussions were more personal.

"I think that we're stuck living with the guys for a long time," Vicky conjectured. "I don't think there's any possible way out of this disconcerting situation."

"I don't think that's a problem," Alice replied. "We can work out a reasonable process that will allow us to enjoy their sexual favors."

"The question is, will they go along with us making the rules?" Beverly asked.

"We really don't know much about them," Hilary said. "It would end up making us behave as if we were prostitutes."

"Charles seems to be the one that they align with," Mary said. "What sort of guy is he?"

Alice sighed. "He's had a rough time when it comes to women. He was married and had a child, a boy, but both his wife and kid were killed in a stupid car accident. I remember that he was devastated and considered dropping out of Space Academy. He connected with another woman, but she cheated on him. I think he joined the Proxima B mission because he didn't care what happened to him."

"What about Carl?"

"I don't know much about him, other than the fact that he was caught having an affair with a female cadet, which is a no-no. That could be the reason he joined the mission with Charles."

"So, they were allowed to go on the mission because they were expendable."

Hilary suppressed a smile. "We were all questionable candidates when we joined. I suppose it was Space Command's way of guaranteeing that we wouldn't object to going on a very dangerous mission, because otherwise we would have been expelled."

"What about Dave?" Alice asked.

"We don't know much about him," Beverly replied. "He was the backup engineer. He doesn't seem to be a dick."

Alice chuckled. "Yeah, they all claim they're goody two shoes."

They all agreed with that assessment.

Later that day, when they gathered for supper, Charles decided to reveal the new theory. "We've discovered that both us and our rescued crew experienced a very powerful microwave energy beam exposure that could be the reason we're in the situation we are. It's possible that the microwave beam interacted with the graviton system to cause the blackout. Admittedly, this is just a theory, but it does have enough physical evidence to suggest that it was the cause of our quantum diabatic change of state."

"Are you suggesting that we're in some sort of phase transition like the Schrödinger cat experiment?" Hilary asked.

Charles smiled. "I know it sounds crazy, but it could explain our situation. It would constitute an allotropy of sorts, but maybe it would make more sense to term it polymorphism, which is usually associated with molecules but could apply to a physical entity."

"Maybe it was a superposition," Alice offered. "It caused us to be in two places at the same time."

"I'm not sure how that could explain how we're changed," Charles replied. "We're made of particles but having all of them change would be a stretch."

"How could we be changed, when it's the universe we see that's changed?"

"The universe wasn't blasted with a microwave beam, but we were. I don't know why we were targets, but it's the only explanation I can come up with, given the situation."

"That doesn't sound like we could use this idea to change our situation," Alice said. "We're not a combat vessel capable of shooting a microwave blast, and even if we were, we're not sure it would solve our situation."

"How could we verify that it was a weapon that caused the blackout?" Beverly asked.

Charles rubbed his chin. "Maybe we could try the AI system in this vessel's computer array. We can give it all the data we have and let it use its perception algorithms to come up with possibilities."

"It's worth a try," Dave said. "It can't be any worse than us trying to figure it out."

The guys went to the engineering deck to attempt using machine AI to ponder the data and propose a possible explanation. Once they started the process, which would take hours, all they could do is wait for the result.

"What if we can't find a way out of this," Dave conjectured. "What are we going to do?"

"We're stuck living on this vessel until we die," Carl proposed. "Although maybe that wouldn't be so bad being stuck with the women."

"I'm not so sure that would be as pleasant as we would imagine," Charles suggested. "They outnumber us."

"Do you think that Space Command actually authorized including so many women on dangerous missions like the ones we went on?" Dave asked.

"In other words, did they recruit them to be entertainment?" Carl proposed.

Charles smiled. "Maybe we can run that through AI."

"That would be a very interesting experiment," Dave said with a smile.

"If the gals find out we did that, they would be royally pissed," Charles suggested. "I don't believe that they were added for entertainment purposes, because that would have been a waste of resources. My guess is that personnel was aware of the age problem and did it to ensure that the mission would be a success even though it might not have been as scientifically precise."

"Well, whatever they thought, it's no longer valid," Dave said. "We're in a situation that no one expected. We're on our own here with no possible backup. Our best plan is to remain hopeful. The last thing we want is to become despondent."

Charles and Carl were in full agreement with that plan.

Later, after several hours of computing, the guys finally had their answer to the AI project.

"It says that it's a 95.6 percent possibility that it was an alien attack." Charles reported.

"Oh, that's just great!' Carl said, sounding bitter. "We have no idea what alien species could have done this, and even worse, why they would do it."

"I don't understand why they attacked both of us," Dave said. "We weren't doing anything that would justify that."

"Yeah, why didn't they just attack Earth and leave us alone?" Carl asked.

"We were out in space," Charles said. "The people on Earth weren't."

"What's that mean?" Carl retorted. "Aliens suddenly don't want us to be doing space exploration?"

Charles shrugged. "Could be. Or maybe the AI idea came up with nonsense. Look, I'm not Hari Seldon. I can't predict the future using math, and I don't think that AI could either."

Dave grinned. "That's ok. Let's run the AI anyway to determine if the women were recruited for entertainment. Maybe that would tell us what we're faced with."

"Yeah, that's scarier than the alien attack idea," Carl said.

They laughed.