Bücher online kostenlos Kostenlos Online Lesen
The ELI Event B007R5LTNS

The ELI Event B007R5LTNS

Titel: The ELI Event B007R5LTNS Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Dave Gash
Vom Netzwerk:
smooth outside of the chamber and trailed his fingers along its surface as he slowly circled it. Passing the chamber’s entrance panel, he noted with detached satisfaction that his fingertips failed to even register the door’s edge, so perfectly fitted was it to its opening. What had Val-Nar said when she installed it? Oh, yes. Not merely air-tight, she had laughingly called it “time-tight,” allowing no matter, particles, or waves to enter or escape during transmission.
    Denes pictured Val-Nar. Sweet Val, quietest and kindest of them all, the gentle genius who had over two decades ago independently developed the molecular parsing algorithms that made the rest of the thing work. Without her brilliance, none of it would be possible.
    But now she was gone, along with Argus, Kyr, and their leader and mentor, Borok. All gone, murdered by the tyrant Lokus, their precious lives wasted.
    No, not wasted! What his friends had believed in, what they had dreamed of, what they had lived for was far too important to be abandoned.
    Now on the side of the transmission chamber opposite the control room, Denes slowly turned to face it. He raised his other hand to the surface and rested his forehead on the chamber wall. His eyes began to well; his face twisted as he tried to fight the pain, but he could not. Finally, the tears came, and with them great, racking sobs. Thankful that Pan-Li could not hear him from the control room, he slowly banged his fists on the chamber wall.
    With everything powered up, Pan-Li began to run diagnostics. He glanced up once and noticed he couldn’t see Denes, but thought nothing of it.
    Although they had not been to the laboratory in several weeks, Pan-Li noted with satisfaction that the environmental filters were doing their job. There was not a speck of dust anywhere on a panel, screen, or instrument. The coordinate processor diagnostic came back clean, and he started it again just to be safe. Nothing happened in a temporal displacement without precise space-time coordinates. At least, nothing good.
    Pan-Li sat and adjusted the angle of the diagnostic program’s monitor. In a half dozen separate frames, it presented volumes of information—columns of numbers, charts and graphs, three-dimensional models—at incredible speed, most of which he absorbed in real-time.
    As the diagnostic ran and settled into a normal, error-free pattern, Pan-Li became almost mesmerized by the colorful, active display. Watching the screen, he relaxed a bit and found himself reflecting on the path that had brought them to this point.
    It was only a few years ago that Borok and Aurora had brought Pan-Li, Denes, and a few other respected researchers into the small, nameless, more-or-less secret society of government dissenters. They were not, as many characterized them, categorically opposed to everything the government stood for, only to the unjust practices carried out by a few local tyrants such as their own Vice Governor Lokus.
    Neither were they always united in every cause. Some, especially the younger ones like Kyr, were often sympathetic to the Federals. This was due in large part, Pan-Li believed, to their having been born into a civilization already controlled by that institution. While this caused dissention among the dissenters, it was allowed, even encouraged. The society had always recognized the scientific value of honest debate.
    The development of practical time travel brought with it the particularly critical choice of whether to use the technology for the betterment of the world or to ban its use altogether. There seemed to be no middle ground; scientific thought was polarized on the issue as though it were the only one that mattered. Perhaps it was.
    Borok’s group had been at the forefront of development, conducting highly successful experiments in their own laboratory, when the government issued the ban on upstream research. The edict shook the scientific community to its core and forced every researcher to side either with the government or against it, to choose between the government’s version of “patriotism” or actual independent thought. Sadly, only a few chose the latter.
    Those few had all but divorced themselves from mainstream science. Before the Federals could do it, they dismantled their own laboratory, collected their records, and moved everything into this private underground site far outside the city’s shielded perimeter. Against the government’s edict, against the advice

Weitere Kostenlose Bücher