The Quantum Connection

Okay, Mike. Where is Tabitha? 

She is in her quarters. 

What time is it? 

It is about three in the morning Luna City time, Mike responded.I touched the intercom switch on the nightstand and keyed in the Clemons's quarters. A grumpy-sounding Anson answered.

'Ahem, hello?'

'Anson, this is Steven. Is the general available?'

'I'm here, Steven. What is it?' she replied.

'Mike has detected four Gray ships trailing us. He just alerted me to this a few seconds ago,' I told her.

'Okay, thanks, Steven. Meet us on the bridge in five minutes,' she ordered.

'Yes ma'am.' I saluted the intercom. Tatiana giggled at me.

'You know, you are kind of goofy sometimes,' she said in her thick Russian accent.

'Yeah, but you know you love it,' I laughed.

We got up and stepped into the shower for about a minute and a half. With the nanomachines we didn't really have to shower, but we enjoyed it anyway. On the way to the door of our room we each had the nanomachines fix us up and dress us. Without missing a stride we were dressed and ready. Tatiana insisted on wearing the molecule-thick—or thin I should say—condensed matter suit and sky-blue camouflage U.S. Air Force battle dress uniform pants. She wore black canvas combat jump boots. Just above her right breast was a name tag reading Montana, on her left shoulder was an American flag and on her right was the W-squared insignia. Her hair was pulled up behind her head and held together by the deadly metal throwing pins that she so preferred. I followed suit and wore the same outfit, minus the hair pins of course. Both of us had miniaturized warp armor belts and double shoulder-harnessed nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistols—we both preferred Glocks.

Tabitha announced over the intercom of the ship that all hands were to report to the bridge battle-ready. A few minutes later the crew filtered in. The total crew complement including Tatiana and myself was twenty-four. Interestingly enough, the whole crew had adopted the uniforms, although some of the crewmembers wore the camouflage battle dress uniform top or the black Air Force sweater vests as well. Tabitha and Anne Marie, of course, wore the complete official Air Force battle dress uniform, although they had the armor underneath their uniforms and their sleeves were rolled up military style. Tabitha had the uniform requirements for the W-squared mission teams modified to allow for the under armor. Everybody was also wearing their warp armor belts and I did notice that most of them had either shoulder-holstered or belt-clip-holstered pistols.

Tabitha barked orders to several of the crew and had them take their battle stations. She sent the night crew to bed and told them to be prepared to alternate on eight-hour rotations. There would be eight members active at all times from here in. Before, only a skeleton crew of four was on duty at all times. So, shift one started and the others were put on standby. We weren't sure what the aliens were planning or what they could actually do to us while we were in warp.

'Mike, display the locations of the alien vessels with respect to our own on the main monitor please,' Tabitha ordered.

'Yes, Tabitha,' Mike acknowledged.

The image of our warp bubble and the Phoenix in the middle setting in the flat-space region of the modified Alcubierre warped spacetime appeared on the monitor. Flanking the Phoenix's warp bubble were Gray spacecraft immediately in front, behind, above and below us. The ships were just outside the van den Broeck warp bubble region and were maintaining our velocity.

'How did they detect us, Mike?' 'Becca asked.

'They detected the variation in the spacetime energy density in and around the warp bubble. The expansion in the spacetime behind the Phoenix causes an increase in the quantum fluctuations, while in front there is a decrease. SuperAgents like myself likely detect this through changes in data rate flow in this region,' Mike explained.

'Uh, Mike, that sounds like they are simply measuring the curvature of the spacetime to me,' Jim said.

'You say tomayto and I say tomahto,' Mike offered. He must have been investigating humor again. Or perhaps that was the best way to explain it. After all, some of Earth's physicists have quibbled over quantum theory versus General Relativity for more than a century now and they both say basically the same thing—if you do the math correctly.

'I understand, Mike,' Anson interrupted. 'But tell me this: How the hell are we detecting them through the warp field? We've always had to stop to detect them before.'

'I am detecting them by sending out pings through the alien Framework and timing the return. I'm not actually reading the return information so returning data cannot compromise my programming. Rather, I am simply timing the return like a radar system that actually sends a standing wave out through the . . . there is no human equivalent explanation here . . . but I think that Hilbert space is similar . . .' Mike paused for a second.

'Allow me, Mike.' I knew what he was trying to say. 'Anson, the Grays have some other model of the universe that is not really in line with our so called Standard Model. All of the universe is tied and connected through the infrastructure for this alien Framework. Their universal internet isn't artificial, it actually is part of the fabric of the universe. The Grays just figured out that it was there and how to use it.'

'Is this Infrastructure something like Superstrings or quantum filaments?' Anson asked as he stared at the alien ships on the monitor. The ships looked pretty much the same size and type as the Phoenix.

'As far as I can tell, superstrings are a very very distant cousin to the concept,' Tatiana added. 'The interesting thing is that the Infrastructure and the Framework do require many more dimensions, like the infinite orthogonal dimensions of Hilbert space or of string theory.'

'I see.' Anson nodded and thought for a second. 'You know, this is no different than the concept of quantum consciousness. Physicists have been considering the idea for decades. Basically,