User:Narc/Unnamed Story Codename Experiment

Basic Overview
TBD

Chapter 1 or Intro or something
"Aren't you excited?" Jonas asked.

Adam laughed. "Of course I am!" he replied. "But it's been three years of simulations, designs, small-scale tests... Considering all the work that went into getting us to this point, I'm not even sure we still need a full-scale test anymore."

"Now hold on there," Jonas said. "You know as well as I do that any system is more than just the sum of its components. I may not have any idea what your particular form of magic is like, but I doubt it's any different."

"That's true," Adam admitted. "But everything has been going exactly according to theory so far. If there was anything unexpected, I'm pretty sure we would've run into it already."

"Maybe. Or maybe not. That's why you're running the test today, isn't it? To be sure?"

"Yes." Adam sighed. "Yes, it is." He looked at his watch. "And I think it's about time we get going, or else we'll miss it!"

"They wouldn't start without you."

"Sure they would! You know Sheanna, Jonas -- you know she won't be able to contain her excitement!"

Jonas smiled. "Right, forgot about that. Let's go."

More than 30 light-years away, Protector Z'hira sat (as much as a creature formed entirely of energy could sit), and observed the events taking place. In her mind, a dialogue was taking place that most sentient creatures would deny was even physically possible.

They are thorough, she thought. It is now certain they're on the correct path.

It had taken her two years of continuous observation to determine this, and she ran down the logic chain once more in her mind. She could not afford to be mistaken, for what she was about to recommend could only be backed by the firmest of evidence of necessity.

A reply formed in her mind. You must do it, the disembodied voice said. There can be no mistakes, no survivors.

Z'hira did not quite shiver, but she paused for a few seconds and considered what she was about to do. Steeling herself, she responded. It will be done.

"Adam, how nice of you to join us!" Sheanna said, grinning at the slightly labored breathing from the man who had just entered the room. "I was beginning to think we were going to have to start without you!"

"You would, too." Adam turned to present his guest. "You remember Jonas?"

"How could I forget?" Sheanna's grin disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared in the first place. "You really should visit more often, you know. I don't think you had this many gray hairs the last time I saw you."

"That was five years ago, Sheanna. People change, they get older."

"Not me, I'm going to live forever!" Adam quickly interjected. "You two play nice now. I don't know and it's none of my business what went on between you, but that's all water under the bridge now. Right?" He looked at Sheanna.

She hesitated. "Sure," she replied eventually. "It doesn't matter anymore, really."

"Right," Jonas added. "Just water under the bridge, like you said."

Adam frowned. Could it have been a bad idea to bring the two of them together like this? He could've stayed with Jonas in the observation room, kept him out of the way. Sheanna knew how to run the equipment as well as he could, anyway. He snorted. Probably better now. But... it was his baby, and he wanted to see it through to the end. And if they're both agreeing to live and let live, that should be okay.

"All right, places, everyone!" Sheanna announced. "We're almost fully spun up, green across the board. Maybe a minute or two until we can fire it up."

Jonas looked around for a seat. Adam caught his eye and directed him to a comfortable chair positioned right beside Adam's own 'command chair' in the center of the room.

"30 seconds," Sheanna said, "preflight finished... now."

Adam bit his lip to keep from laughing. Sheanna had a knack for bringing completely unrelated terminology into everything she was doing, and it took a very broadly-educated mind to keep up with her sometimes. At first, this had been incredibly irritating -- infuriating, even -- but now it was just another fun quirk of the many she seemed to have. He smiled. It certainly didn't keep her from doing her job expertly, which was why he'd brought her into the project in the first place.

"Five seconds, four, three, two, one..."

Over a dozen screens that had been idling up to that point suddenly came alive with real-time feeds of data from the prototype detector and the many sensors attached to it. They showed everything: vibrations, radio interference, heat... and, of course, the most important part of all: the readings the sensor was taking (in real time!) of an anonymous patch of space 30 light-years away...

Z'hira felt a shiver like nothing she'd ever felt before. It froze her solid and simultaneously made her feel like her entire body was burning... which made no sense to a being who'd lived almost all of her life as disembodied energy. She turned her ethereal eyes in the direction she had been observing for the past two years -- and screamed!

"That's not right," Adam said, looking at the bigger of three monitors directly in front of him.

"What is it?" Jonas asked.

"These readings -- they make no sense," Adam replied. "There's nothing in that patch of space, we made sure of that, but the sensor detects energy there, much higher than baseline." He turned to Sheanna. "Are you sure you've tuned the gravitics correctly?"

"One hundred percent, boss-man," Sheanna said. "And there's no interference that could register on that scale. There's something there."

Jonas interrupted, "Could there be, I don't know, some shipping through the area that you've forgotten about? A lost probe?"

"No, that's not what it looks like," Adam replied. "There's no mass reading, nothing that could be generating that kind of power."

"And there's not enough power for it to be a ship, either," Sheanna interjected. "See, it's maybe what you'd get from a human in an escape pod. Not much more than that."

"There's a human in an escape pod there?" Jonas asked.

"No, dummy, there's nothing there," Sheanna replied. "It would've showed up as mass -- very little mass, to be sure, but enough to register."

Adam frowned. "Tune it half a degree left, let's see what happens."

Sheanna poked her touchscreen a few times, and a second later, the central display changed.

"Not a measuring error," she said.

"No." Adam replied. He looked at Jonas, who was frowning as he tried to interpret the change. "It's reading as expected now -- flat, empty space. There's something there, at our original coordinates."

"How is that possible?" Jonas asked. "Energy without mass, just sitting there in some anonymous location in space?"

"I don't know," Adam said, "but I'd very much like to find out more about it. Sheanna, turn that detector back and let's have a closer look."

"Already on it," Sheanna replied as she poked at her touchscreen again. "I'll ramp the sensitivity up while I'm at it, maybe see if we can get a picture or something."

The display changed again to show the earlier aberrant reading, and began to refine: still the same data, but now becoming more refined, sharper. A secondary screen changed to an initially blank picture that began to fill in... TBC