Centrifugal force - by Alynna Trypnotk
Dr. Alice Katz stared out the window of her research office, in the currently early morning, looking over the research data and the papers of theory and explanation of the terrific device of her design, the "matter accelerator". Its principle turned out to be very simple. Deep in the forest, the root of her machine, where she conducted her research with a team of scientists, was the axis of the largest centrifuge ever known. At the end of a very dense matter rod, one hundred miles long, a sphere made of Tuffak Plexiglas, a clear plastic so strong and dense that it is used on fighter aircraft, and is always found intact when the rest of the craft is destroyed.
The concept, simple also. At 100 miles long, the sphere rotates at pi times 100 times 2 or just over 628 miles per second. Bump that up to 300RPS, and its 188,495 miles per second, or just over the speed of light. She grinned to herself privately, thinking to herself how humans as a race had finally achieved the ability to move matter at faster than the speed of light. Then she began to think with worry about all the test subjects, all animals, thus far, that have been placed in there. Physical, non living items, seemed to have no perceptible change, Plants sometimes had minor changes, but animals were a different matter. There had been such varied results that she could not determine what actually happened in there. Of the last 11 experiments, three subjects simply dissappeared. Two subjects came out, in a state of matter-energy flux, appearing positively ghostlike. They seemed to know they changed, but it didnt seem like a significant one. One cat that was placed through came out a German Shepard, and there was a stack of papers dedicated to theorizing what happened in there. And then there was the rabbit that came out of the machine super-intelligent. Intelligent enough to soon be able to communicate that he was, but not even he could tell what happened in there. He "just didnt understand it" as he put it, and not by talking, but by operating a electronic signalboard. Yet three others showed no more change than when they went in.
She turned to contemplate, gazing upon a pair of foxes out the window. Some part of her fancied them to be her foxes, because she kept kibble on hand to feed them, therefore they would hang outside the window alot. She thought of the day. She was ready to do it, because she absolutely had to find out for herself what was happening in there. There was no other scientific methods available to her, yes, some quantum physicists theorized that at the speed of light, time and space might alter in some tangible way, and that probability could be tied to that somehow. She thought to herself at this time that she really didnt think there would be any quantum effects with lightspeed travel, but clearly, she was proven wrong by her own experiment. This was a point of shame for her, she built it to prove that there wasnt. Maybe if she went on the ride herself, maybe she could truly see if there were any quantum effects herself.
And thats why, waivers of responsibility in hand, she was ready to take the step, to go into the machine herself and to be the first human to travel greater than the speed of light. While she wasn't terribly worried about physical harm, as the matter stabilization field would make sure she didnt get splattered against the outermost end of the sphere to a point the size of a quarter, the last 11 experiments, none can have been proven to have died, three came out as if nothing happened, and the rest had strange "quantum effects". That put her chances at about 1 in 4, but of what? She didnt even know. She did not think the trip would kill her.
She began to think aloud, to her dictation machine. "What is 'quantum mechanics', beyond the strict definition? Is it magic? Is magic equivalient to a breakdown or manipulation of probability? Or is it a different cause altogether, that causes the 'transformative effect'? Ultimately, the question we have asked ourselves for the last year is, "Why does travel at or greater than the speed of light cause the 'transformative effect'? We are never going to find out without a thinking, sentient being, that can experience the effect and explain it in detail afterwords, even facing the consequences. I simply feel that this is something we as a species must know. You may reprimand me for my action later, after I have answers for our questions. The signed documents on my desk should absolve our organization from any responsibility if something should go amiss."
Going silent again, she turned to the foxes outside her window that were just relaxing after their offered meal. Clearly, she thought to herself, they are a pair, a couple. Then inside her mind she changed the subject again, contemplating theories. <<Clearly such stable, complete manifestations of, 'quantum mechanics', 'breakdown of probability', or 'magic', caused by the effect, are linked with biological organisms. Could our own ability to think have something to do with it? If so, I should try to keep my mind free and clear and stick to research.>> Finally she got up and made her way towards the spindle.
Passing many checkpoints and confirming her identity, she makes her way to the control room of the centrifuge, where she proceeds to program the system, with a few different parameters. Accelerate to 300RPS over the course of one hour, hold for 15 minutes and then return to stop over the course of 45 minutes. She thought to herself, <<In two hours, I'll have answers.. I hope. I may be me, may be different, but, I'll have answers...>> With the program in place, she stepped onto the car that travelled at high speed to the end of the spindle, riding it to the center.
During this time she considered the foxes again, considering at the same time her life in comparison to theirs. <<Foxes don't have to worry about making or doing something big, research projects that halt under their own immenseness, and most of all, about finding someone to settle down with.>> She considered her mostly lonely life, dotted with many short, ultimately failed relationships, and considered that vixen outside her window, had it easy, an admittedly cute male accompanying her all the time and food set out for her. She sighed softly as she compared the two in her mind, but then before she could really debate the pros and cons any more, she arrived at the end of the pole, clear sphere in front of her.
She removed all her clothing, placing it in a nearby locker. After all, it was totally unpredictable what clothing would do if attached to a biological organism at the speed of light. Pressing a button, the sphere opened and she entered the sphere naked, the program audibly indicating that it had started. Rather quickly, the matter stabilizers kicked in, leaving her in a zero-g environment, her naked body floating in a clear ball, high above the ground. She knew matters of modesty didnt matter, because over the course of the next hour, she would be moving faster than the naked eye could see.
Over the course of the first 15 minutes, even though a display near the door showed her speed creeping up towards the speed of light, the matter stabilizers did their job, and the only thing she noticed was that the color of the sphere became a solid grey, an average of all the light outside that she could see, because at her speed there was no fixed source of light anymore. As more time past, however, the display confirmed more and more speed, and the world seemed to return outside, only in a highly compressed way. At first it seemed that the world was going hyper fast, and then it started to slow, and slower... she realised she was experiencing subjective time! She could see everything for over 500 miles around as if it were close or far.
She instructed the computer to hold her at the speed of light even before she reached it, and she watched the world become slower until it stopped. Looking up, she saw that she would be held at the speed of light. At the exact moment she looked, a surge of energy like a wave of strong tingling passed over her body as she felt her body cease to be. She noticed that she herself was no longer corporeal, and the camera of herself on the monitor only showed a bright ball of energy filling the entire sphere, something that had been chalked up to 'spectral effect' in previous experiments. It was proven before that matter becomes energy then reverts to matter again after the slowdown.
As she wondered over her body, she saw right through her own translucent body and underneath her, in dead stop, were the foxes. The todd had hopped up in the air and the vixen, stretched out upward to nosetouch her mate in midair. And through the sphere, it was strange and disconcerting to see this pose frozen in midair, as she was not traveling through time. Yet the sphere's program continued, and the pose started to unravel in reverse, she watched the world and these two foxes walk backwards as she went closer and closer towards a speed somewhere over the speed of light which was only indicated by "300RPS".
She gazed upon this wonder, for a moment envying the vixen below her, who seemed to be enjoying a great deal of social success with her todd, and indulged herself in a fantasy of being that vixen. At that very moment she felt something soft and furry behind her back, and when she looked, she saw she had a foxtail. In her mind, she started to take notes, looking at the rest of her body, and every time she looked at a part of her body, it began to change. She started to panic, trying to figure out for herself what was happening, she started calling out to the computer that she knew was recording everything.
"What is this? Is this magic or is it a probability breakdown?" The computer emitted a series of tones that basically indicated it was thinking. She started to explore the non-corporeal soft fur with a hand, which she guessed, only she could feel right now. She closed her eyes as she percieved seeing something as being the enabler of the transformation. She thought to herself, <<Hmm.. However will I explain this particular thing to people? Well, the company will know why..>> and she trailed off as her hand started to hurt for a few moments, and then worked its way into a paw.. All over minor pains overtook her body as she floated there, changing into a vixen...
At this point she really didnt know what was more important to consider, the facts of her research or the personal consequences of it. She looked down at the vixen and todd again, and saw that she had gone far enough back in time that she was able to watch them mate. After a few moments, it was at a full stop again and time started traveling forward again, from her perspective and she watched them mate eachother until they tied together, and at the very point of the fox pair's climax, she felt a tug, from nowhere she could actually tell. She felt her energy being pulled out of the sphere and towards a very bright light she had not noticed before...
Back at the spindle of the centrifuge, Dr. Alan West, cohead of the project, was just arriving to find an unexpected use of the centrifuge. He immediately advanced towards the office of his partner, and looked on the desk where the waivers were prominently displayed. Noticing the flashing red light of the active dictation machine, he set it to play back and listen
to the message. It only took a few short sentences before he muttered, "Oh, shit." and took off running to the spindle.
Alice, found herself literally flung out of the sphere as if she lost a game of 'break the chain', and flying towards the light faster than she ever moved. She thought back to descriptions of "near-death" experiences and wondered if she died. She realised, that she was still moving faster than light. The light pulled her close but either her speed or the will of this great light did not pull her in, instead, light painless waves of flame coarsed over her body as she slingshotted around this huge ball, and passed it on the other side, heading back the way she came, and everything for her went black and slow..
Alan, back at the spindle, called "code red" immediately, and within minutes, the team of normal staffers of the facility appeared on the scene. They put an end to the experiment, instructing the computer to engage its "stop" cycle early. Alan took the waivers and held them tight, looking at the screen through the sphere camera at an empty sphere, he knew he would be needing them very much.
Over the course of moments, Alice's vixenated energy body crashed back to Earth, scaring a pair of foxes she landed on, deep into the forest. When she was aware of herself once again, she felt as if she has nothing but a cluster of cells for a body, floating in nothing at all but a warm fluid. She could feel slight variances in temperature, they were frequent at first, but then they slowed down.. She also felt her body growing also. She couldnt believe how fast she was growing, or maybe she was just perceiving things at a much slower rate.
Over what felt like the course of days, she contemplated the experiment, and still couldnt decide whether it was quantum mechanics, magick, or screwed up probabilities. But at least she knew what happened to the people who disappeared, although she never got her answers to her associates. But even as she felt the passage between being slightly warmer and slightly cooler getting closer and closer together, she felt the importance of that fading, because she noticed as she had been growing, that she had a tail, and ears, that all resembled that of 'vulpes vulpes', the Red Fox, in its earliest stages of development. Clearly, she had become the daughter kit of the two foxes she had observed mating while she was in the sphere.
After the short months went by, less and less of her previous life seemed relevant anymore, and recognizable sentience soon slipped away, and very few concerns remained or were even remembered when her birthday came. After the vixen gave birth to her, her two sisters and her two brothers, her mother groomed her quietly and tugged her to a nipple. The warmth and comfort of her new mother vixen, and the thoughts about her new life were among the last things she thought in the english language as she suckled quietly, she had started thinking in vulpine much earlier before, listening to her mother while she was still unborn, she was lost to her new life.
