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Part I: Letters from Jack - sixteen Ficlets in the form of letter from Jack Crichton to his lost son John.
Part II: The Other Side - fifteen Ficlets that describe what Jack Crichton and Andrea Walker find when they go through a wormhole they created by duplicating John Crichton's experiment.
Part III: Reunion - twelve Ficlets telling how Jack Crichton finds his son and the dangers in the UT.
The Hardest Week; Prototype; Getting Ready; The Test;
Son,
Your sisters and I are devastated. It’s terrible to lose a loved one. When your mother died I was able to turn to you and your sister for consolation. This is worse. Your sisters are taking it very hard, as am I.
Your memorial service was yesterday. We didn’t have a funeral. We just could bring our selves to do it without any remains. I hope against hope that you are alive, but the logical part of me says that’s impossible. The entire team at IASA has been reviewing the data from the moment you disappeared. They cannot find any trace of Farscape I. None. They are studying the phenomenon present at the time you disappeared. It has very unusual properties, DK tells me. From what I learned, it winked out a few minutes after you disappeared.
They are starting a new project. The team at IASA is going to explore what happened from the data they have. I hope to be part of it. I feel you are still alive, but that is my heart talking. I am going to talk to the director of the team Monday; DK is recommending me.
I can’t hope you will ever see this letter, or that I will ever see you again, but right now, this is all I have.
Your loving father
Son,
Thanks in part to DK’s help and my connections, I started working with the IASA team today. They were very skeptical about hiring an old hack like me when I interviewed Monday, but I managed to convince them I would be a valuable member on the project. We are reviewing millions of bytes of data collected at the time Farscape I disappeared.
Although the increased solar flare activity was known at the time you took your test flight, DK assured me the flares were not unusual, and the readings fell within the safety parameters for the experiment. The findings are preliminary, but it looks like an unknown phenomenon appeared as Farscape I was starting the acceleration using Earth’s gravity. At that moment, energy and photons from exceptionally strong solar flares reached the stratosphere of Earth.
DK tells me the scientists will be examining the data for months to come. They do not know what they are dealing with, and don’t know how to recreate the event with any degree of probability. Right now, we are all guessing.
My role on this project is to train the astronauts who will be on the mission. And so I have to learn as much as possible before the astronauts are selected. But I want to fly again. I hope to be part of the mission that finds out what happened.
There is absolutely no trace of your module. We can’t even find an energy signature once you disappeared. This is the one hope I cling to. Without any solid evidence to the contrary, I will continue to hope you are alive, somewhere.
Your loving father
Son,
I’ve been able to pretend you’ve just been away for the past couple of weeks because I’ve immersed myself in the Farscape II project. Farscape has come to symbolize much for the team, and for me it embodies who you are (I can’t use the past tense). But the dreadful time of year is upon me, and I must do my taxes, and yours. I’m turning everything over to the accountant; it’s too much for me to handle at the moment.
The data analysis hasn’t been going well at all. The numbers are all over the place. Some of the scientists think a black hole formed, others do not. The data will start to fit one theory, and then disprove itself.
They are designing a probe to try to duplicate what happened to Farscape I. The design hasn’t taken form yet, but they need to meet a window of high solar activity expected this fall. They are wrestling with the issue of whether to make the probe the same mass or less than Farscape I. I hope the budget doesn’t steer them into the wrong decision. Both DK and I think it should be the same mass as your module plus your mass.
Your sisters don’t know I’m writing to you. I think this would disturb them a great deal. I am able to function thanks to the project at IASA and writing these letters.
Your loving father
Son,
The probe’s design is being finalized this week. We anticipate a prototype will be ready to test some time in June. Everyone agreed the probe’s mass needs to be equal to Farscape I plus the mass of a human. There was never any issue. The data we do have indicate we must use an object of at least equal mass.
There is some question of what kind of measurement devices we should install, and perhaps design. On a hunch, DK has gone back over papers from JPL you researched together on wormholes. A major concern he has is if a wormhole did form, and we can duplicate the conditions, how will we detect it. We don’t have the technology in place as yet to detect it.
A second team is pinpointing the trajectory Farscape I was on before you disappeared. It is extremely important we know where to look for the phenomenon and the correct path to send the telemetry.
My friends and neighbors are avoiding talking about you, and I don’t encourage it. They think I am being stoic, and don’t want to upset me. If they knew I was writing these letters they would probably pack me off to the funny farm. I have been busy enough at Cape Canaveral that I don’t write as often as I’d like, but that is probably a good thing. I try not to dwell on this, but it is very hard sometimes.
Your loving father
Son,
This has been the hardest week since you disappeared. Your sister, Allison, and I had to pack up your apartment. Everything I touched reminded me how much I miss you. She feels the same way. I am somewhat happy Emma didn’t have to go through this, I think she is taking it the hardest. But her senior projects are due, and finals are coming up, so she begged off helping us clean your apartment out. There were times we could barely look at each other. At other times we are our only consolation. DK also came over to help at night and I could see he was as affected as we. I am putting everything that doesn’t fit in the garage, into storage. I keep hoping that you will appear just as suddenly as you disappeared. I know I will have to sell the furniture eventually, but not now.
DK thinks we will get the probe launched on schedule. We will be using this first one to test the remote guidance, the instrumentation and to gather as much data as possible without actually trying to recreate the event. June is not the right time for the solar activity. We expect it to pickup in the fall, reaching some peak activity towards November.
We ultimately want to control the probe from MIR, as the international space station won’t be ready for at least another year. We are working through that now. If we can use MIR, then we will be able to use the unmanned cargo ships to MIR, and they can launch the probes and control them from there. Otherwise, we will have to schedule shuttle launches, which will be more difficult to schedule, and a good deal more expensive. And we want to be able to control it from orbit because of the time delay between issuing the commands to the probe, and the probe executing the commands is smaller than from mission control.
Why am I going into all this detail? You know all this, and you won’t even see these letters. Some days I find it easier, I immerse myself in the project. Then I find I am feeling guilty for enjoying the day. Both Allison and Emma are recovering. They are starting to accept life without you. I don’t think I’ll ever get to that point. What do they say the five stages of grief are? Well, I’m still in denial.
Your loving father
Son,
The test probe went beyond our expectations. We were able to launch it from Earth, and control it here. The telemetry worked perfectly, and we are able to calculate the needed angle and acceleration for the real probes which will be launched in November.
We couldn’t use MIR after all. Aside from its unstable condition, and that it will soon be abandoned, there was too much politics involved for us. IASA finally put the kabash on using MIR at all. The Russians are falling woefully behind on their module for the international space station, and they argued any money that would go to MIR would just further delay the new station. I suppose they’re right, but I selfishly am only focused on this project.
There are effectively only four and a half months left before the first probe is launched. We have a lot of work to do, and DK is working on extending the signal range. We really need to get solid readings from the phenomenon. We absolutely need these readings if we are to have any hope of following you.
We were going to spend a week in Maine this summer. I don’t want to go by myself, what would I do? Your sister is thinking of going with me, but I think I’d rather keep working. There is a lot for me to do. There are days where I think of you, where my heart doesn’t feel tight in my chest, and I can smile. I find I am saving stories for you. I’ll see something or someone, and think, I should tell John about this. I’ll have to keep it in mind. Those are good days.
Your loving father
Son,
This is the longest I’ve gone without writing to you. I’ve been extraordinarily busy working on the probe. DK has developed some ideas about how we can get information once the probe enters the phenomenon. He is designing small capsules that will eject from the probe every three minutes starting at the time of entry. He reasons that while it may be impossible for our technology to radio back from within the phenomenon, a solid object might be able to be sent in an opposite direction from the probe. Each capsule will contain the data collected to nearly the point of launch. All the teams are very excited about this idea.
We are starting to recruit astronauts to fly into the phenomenon. I hope to be one of the ones to go. If we get the information we need, we hope to be ready to go early in 2001. Now that seems an eternity away, but I know we will not have enough time to design a two man module that will take us to an unknown destination. I hope it finds you. The recruiting is going slowly, not too many want to fly into the unknown as you did.
Emma graduated from RPI with honors. I had hoped she would want to work at IASA, but for now she is working at a dotcom to make lots of money. She has many student loans to pay off and her company has lured her with a huge sign on bonus and more stock options than I can think about. She hopes to go to graduate school in two to three years and is considering going to MIT to study Robotics. Her grades are good enough that they would take her now, but she wants to pay her own way. She knows I’d help her in any way I could, but she says she’s been sponging off me long enough, and it’s time she earned her keep. You would be very proud of your kid sister.
Your loving father
Son,
We had to launch a second probe to get the data we needed, but it worked in the end. Fortunately, our contingency plan provided for a second launch. We paid the Russians a prearranged amount to launch the second probe. It wasn’t hard to get their cooperation as their space program has really suffered financially since their break up. It came down to we needed a rocket, and they needed the money.
We decided to make the probe equal to the mass of the module we intend to launch. DK worked miracles with the bean counters. I don’t know how he convinced them to put out for the first module, let alone having to go through it again, and at a much higher cost. I’m not going to ask.
We were unable to recreate the phenomenon with the first probe and it burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere. We did get the data we needed for corrections to the second probe. We think the phenomenon is a wormhole, but we are not sure. The capsule idea worked brilliantly. It’s a good thing too, because we lost all contact with the probe as quickly as we did with you. We hope the data from the capsules will allow us to design communication systems that will allow Earth contact continuously, but we don’t know.
Emma tells me she is making piles of money from her stock options. I keep telling her to sell, but she says not to worry, as she will cash in as soon as she is allowed. She has to be with the company a full six months before she can exercise her options.
Your loving father