The Atopia Chronicles (Atopia series) by Mather, Matthew
Prologue
“Are you sure?”
Atopia wasn’t only about perfecting synthetic reality. As senior researcher, my own pet project was the deep neutrino array. We’d seeded the Pacific Ocean basin with a vast carpet of sensor-mote networks of photoreceptors, searching out the blackness of the depths for flashes of Cherenkov radiation that signaled the passing of neutrinos. The POND—Pacific Ocean Neutrino Detector—was our part of the quest to verify predictions of neutrinos from parallel universes passing through our own.
“The signal is there, Dr. Killiam,” replied my researcher.
“Don’t release any results. Not yet. Run all the tests again and see if it stays. Not a word to anyone, you understand?”
Neutrinos were maddeningly difficult to work with. Even with a planetary-scale telescope like the POND, it wouldn’t have been the first time an experiment with them had gone wrong.
My researcher nodded earnestly, keeping her eyes on me. I’d better keep an agent watching her. The slightest leak to the press of something of this magnitude would be sure to destabilize the timeline we were trying to follow.
“Are you sure this isn’t coming from a terrestrial source?”
“We’re sure, Dr. Killiam.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” I repeated. “Keep this absolutely secret to us three.”
“Not even Kesselring?”
“Especially not Kesselring.”
How is it possible this is happening now? I cringed thinking of what Cognix might do if they heard of this. “Once you’ve run the tests again, shut it all down.”
“Yes, Dr. Killiam.”
I was about to let my primary subjective leave this space when the researcher grabbed my arm.
“One more thing,” she said.
I waited, watching fear creep into her eyes.
“We applied the full battery of communication memes to the signal to see if we could decipher anything.”
“And?”
“It’s not really clear.…”
“Out with it,” I encouraged.
She took a deep breath. “It seems to be some kind of a warning.”