Near Future 1: Awakening (6 page)

Caitlyn had admired Zeke for some time, but they seemed to run in different circles. It wasn't that Zeke wasn't athletic, because she had seen him playing sports at times, and he was really good. But he was also very smart, and she admired that in him. She had seen him at their soccer games and he seemed to be cheering them on enthusiastically. But then she had the opportunity to spend time with him, when Emily had "volunteered" him to carry her to the therapy sessions. She had thought she was making a connection with him, at least on the way over there. He had even agreed to go on a real date with her sometime later after she was over her ankle injury.

She would have to keep working on it. She was usually able to get what she wanted when she set her mind to it. Maybe when she got back out on the soccer field. She would just have to work even harder at her game.

#

Over the next week, Miranda continued to "run" into Zeke several times, although never again quite as literally. She had learned in talking to him that he was a self-proclaimed computer geek, a student at the nearby Space Academy. One day, she noticed he was drinking a cup of coffee, and without thinking she said, "Oh, that smells so good. I think I like to drink coffee, if only I could remember for sure."
 

About that time Emily came up to Zeke, "Caitlyn has gone to X-Ray. When she is finished we will be ready to go." She stopped, looking at the two of them. "So how about introducing me to your friend," she said pointedly to Zeke.

"Sorry. Miranda, this is Emily, my sister. Emily, this is Miranda Summerlin. She is a patient here at the hospital..."

Realizing her poor brother was stuck, Emily quickly chimed in, "Miranda, I am glad to meet you. My big brother is a good guy, but he's not much of one for conversation, although it looks like you have pulled him out of his shell."

At that Zeke tried to do his turtle imitation, and everyone laughed. "I'll have you know that I can easily carry on a conversation. I really don't know much about Miranda. We only just met a few days ago after all."

Miranda felt like she needed to get out of her shell too, but she didn't think she could pull off a turtle imitation. So instead, she decided she had to explain things a little. "Well, I don't know that much about Miranda either," she laughed. "I woke up from a coma a couple of weeks ago, and I have no memory of my past. So I guess I'll just have to make it up as we go along. But you two already are a healthy percentage of my new memories, so you're ahead of nearly everyone else."

They talked for a few minutes until Caitlyn came up and they had to leave. But Emily now knew for sure, and the little wheels were already turning.

The next day when Zeke dropped them off, he headed for the coffee shop. There was a long line, but he didn't care. This time he bought two cups of coffee, then headed out to find Miranda. She, of course, was in her usual spot, sitting and reading in the little area with the water fountain surrounded by plants and sunlight filtering in from above. "For you," he said, handing her one of the cups of coffee from the coffee shop. Her eyes lit up at that and when she took a sip of the coffee, she gave a small sigh of pleasure.

"Thank you so much." Miranda set the coffee down and looked back up at a smiling Zeke. "This is so good!"

"Good," he said and gave her a thumbs up. "It was my great pleasure to help you create a new good memory."

About that time, Emily and Caitlyn came up. When Caitlyn saw the two of them, she rather loudly said, "We have to go. I'm done here, and I have an appointment with the coach to talk about when I will be able to practice with the soccer team." She started toward the door, walking as if her ankle was suddenly magically healed.

As Zeke turned to leave, he gave Miranda a poor me look and she laughed. Miranda had begun to think that Caitlyn maybe thought a lot more of Zeke than he thought of her. She couldn't help but wonder if Zeke was only being nice to the girl with the crutches, or if it was more than that. She guessed that it probably didn't matter, since she didn't expect she would see him again.

Of course, Emily saw it all and decided she would have to go to Plan B.

#

Zeke had finally thought he was making a real connection with Miranda. And then Caitlyn had to show up and mess it all up. He knew it was his own fault, too. He should have told Caitlyn that she would have to wait to leave. As usual, he merely attempted to avoid conflict and went along with her. He was going to have to do something about that, but not today. He looked over at Emily and saw that she had that look she got when she was scheming something. He wondered what she was up to now. When he dropped Caitlyn off in front of the building that housed the soccer team coaches, he wasn't surprised when Emily moved up to the front to ride with him.

"What are you up to, my favorite sister?" he asked her. He figured he would get the first word in, since it would probably be his last for a while. He knew he was in trouble when Emily ignored the setup. Her usual answer was, "But I'm you're only sister..."

"I was just thinking about Miranda. I haven't seen anyone there visiting her, and I don't think she has any close family here. I bet she could use some help from some of the local kids about her age. If you are willing to help out, chauffeuring us when needed, I want to call the hospital to see about helping out in any way that I can."

Zeke was caught completely by surprise. "Close your mouth, brother. You look like a fish." Emily was back to her usual teasing self. "I noticed how much attention you were paying her, and I really do think she could use some help. Do you know the name of the doctor on her case?"

"No, but I saw the name badge on the patient rep who was with her the other day. It was Andrea James, and if we contact her, I bet she will get us in touch with the doctor."

"Ok brother. You just relax. I will take care of this. I believe you will owe me one, though."

"Not after the Caitlyn thing. That one was points off if I say so myself."

"Ok, we are even on this one. Of course, I'm so far ahead, it doesn't matter."

Zeke had to agree, so he wisely kept his mouth shut. Besides, he was getting what he wanted. He had been trying to figure out a way to be able to see Miranda again. And as usual, his sister was way ahead of him.

#

Caitlyn now knew for sure that something was going on with Zeke. She thought it had something to do with that girl at the hospital. Zeke had sure been paying her a lot of attention. Even Emily was warming up to her. She couldn't understand why they would be interested in her. She probably hadn't ever even touched a soccer ball. She figured the girl was using some kind of poor me routine on Zeke to get his attention. Well, she would show them. The therapist had finally agreed she could get back to practice with the team if the coach allowed it, so she was going to get back out there and show everyone what she could do. At least no longer having to go to the hospital would get Zeke away from that other girl.

Caitlyn was also thinking about reminding Zeke of the date he had agreed to go with her on. She had great plans for that. She already had her outfit picked out at the mall, and it didn't matter what it cost. She had her dad's platinum account, so she was going to splurge. She knew just where they needed to go, that new high-end Italian restaurant where no one was able to get reservations. She knew her dad would get her in if she asked him. And, she would go in her BMW that her dad had bought her. Before she was done, Zeke wouldn't be thinking about that other girl!

CHAPTER FOUR

Plans and Theories

A new scientific team has announced that they are making a new attempt at discovering the particle that could be the source of dark matter. So far, none of the attempts made to date have been able to identify such a particle. Some scientists are suggesting that maybe something else is the source of the effects of dark matter, although no one has yet to come up with a theory to explain the effects.

#

Doctor Ted had given Miranda a number of tests to determine her mental agility, her short-term memory, and finally a full IQ test. When she asked how she was doing on her tests, he would only say, "Good. Good." Because of her memory loss, she had no idea how good she was really doing.

Besides her boredom with being trapped in a hospital room most of the day, Miranda was struggling a lot with her lost memory. She looked at the pictures of her mother, and she still felt nothing. She was really bothered by that. Yet she was able to play a VR game that was popular two years ago, and she remembered all of the details about it. The thing about it, she was able to progress through the game at a high level, and it seemed ridiculously easy to her.

And that was another thing that Miranda was confused about. She was absolutely certain that she was able to do stuff better than she should be able to do. She didn't have a frame of reference to know how much better she had become. She guessed that it had to be because of the nanites that she had been treated with, and she wondered if it was a temporary or permanent result. She had debated whether she should share it with Doctor Ted, but she was too uncertain about the whole thing to bring it up with him.

To relieve her boredom and because she was really interested in learning new things, Miranda had discovered a number of online university level courses, and she had been madly dashing through them. Truthfully, she had been devouring anything available in the VR system, and she was beginning to wonder what she would do when she ran out of courses to study.

She had also been researching the new program at the nearby university called by everyone the "Space Academy". She really liked their combination of hard science and practical technologies. She even felt that it was good they had a military training aspect, and that cadets were considered military officers while in training. She wasn't sure about having to serve a military obligation, but then she saw that students on academic scholarship were treated as reserve officers instead of having to serve for a service term. It was only those students that were attending on a military scholarship that had to serve a term. Even if she had wanted to do that, she suspected that with her physical condition she would not have been accepted to serve. But there was no way she could afford to attend without a scholarship of some type. She didn't have any idea how to go about applying for an academic scholarship. It would probably take months, even if she could get one, and what would she do during that time?

Some of the other local schools had good programs too, but nothing like the Space Academy. They just could not get her interest. Not that she had a clue what she could do about any of it.

Miranda knew that modern education had drastically improved for her generation. School years were more compressed than they used to be. They still got breaks, but not the extended summer-long breaks they used to get. By the age of 16, most kids would be graduating from high school. Secondly, they had compressed university level course work into six terms instead of eight. Most university's classes went right through the summer, too. So an average student could graduate in two years. Miranda had checked on her high school, and she had seen that she had just completed her high school work right before her accident. Based on her work she had completed in the hospital VR system, she believed that she could test out for her beginning classes. That meant that she could probably complete her work in a single calendar year, three terms.

She had discovered that she had an interest in Astrophysics. Scientists had really changed their view of the universe in the last half-century or so. First, it had been determined that not enough ordinary matter could be detected to explain the gravitational effects within the galaxies. Physicists had invented the concept of dark matter to handle this missing gravitational effect. However, after considering the amount of ordinary matter and dark matter, the calculated effects of those gravitational effects should be decreasing the rate of expansion of the universe, but instead the latest measurements seemed to indicate the rate of expansion of the universe was increasing. Scientists invented the concept of dark energy to explain this effect.

Neither dark matter nor dark energy had ever been detected by scientists despite considerable efforts directed toward finding them. Miranda had an idea that maybe both of these could be explained by the structure of the universe instead of undetected particles and some strange form of energy. Miranda's idea was that dark matter was the effect from an accumulation of the fabric of the universe, what Miranda named the subspace fabric. This effect would somehow be related to the amount of mass in the area of space. The dark energy relationship appeared to be the opposite effect when the lack of gravity in the large areas of empty space between galaxies allowed the subspace fabric to become thinner. The thinner it became as space expanded, the stronger the force became.
 

Miranda wondered if a properly manipulated superconductive electromagnetic field such as that used by Space Tech for their fusion reactor could be used on a much smaller scale to produce a tiny change in the subspace fabric that could be detected as a corresponding tiny increased gravitational effect. This would allow her to demonstrate the properties of the subspace fabric.

The other big question mark in the understanding of the universe was related to antimatter. When the universe was first created, it should have contained both matter and antimatter. Under normal physical conditions, the two would have completely annihilated each other, leaving the universe without either one. For some reason, instead the universe was left with matter and no antimatter. What if the subspace fabric was in fact produced from the special conditions during that tiny fraction of a second when the universe first came into existence, and the matter and antimatter had in fact "spun" to opposite sides of the interface? Then the areas where the interface was "thickest" were the areas where the matter would accumulate more, and the areas where it was thinnest would attract the matter less so. And the antimatter on the other side would also behave similarly, not that the two would remain exactly symmetrical to each other due to the quantum nature of the universe. Not a parallel anti-universe, but nevertheless a complexity of a huge magnitude.