Greg Krojac - The Schrödinger Enigma

Sitara mouthed hello to several of the attendees as she made her way to a vacant chair, which was positioned in front of the monitors and upon whose desk sat a name plate with the word ‘PRESENTER’ etched in silver capital letters on a black background. She wasn’t going to be the most important person at the meeting by rank – that would be Anthony Healey, the Administrator of NASA, but, as the NASA representative at the scene of the salvage, her input would be the most valuable. The task of chairing the meeting fell to the NASA Deputy Administrator, who, along with the Administrator, and the respective Directors of JPL, the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), the Langley Research Center, and the Independent Verification and Validation Facility (IVVF), were anxious to hear Sitara speak.

Sitara settled into her seat, and smiled at the three other members of the Voyager One Project Team representatives; the Project Manager, the Voyager Spacecraft Team Chief, and the Telecommunications and Mission Systems Manager, She didn’t normally occupy such a high profile position in meetings, but this time she held a unique position in the chain of evidence. She was a little nervous, in awe of being in the presence of so many high-ranking NASA officials at the same time, but did her best to conceal it. The Deputy Administrator rose to his feet, adjusted his suit jacket, cleared his throat and began to speak.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming here at such short notice. However, when you hear what Dr Khan has to say, I’m sure that you will agree that it was well worth the inconvenience. So, without further ado, I would like to hand you over to Voyager Project Scientist, Dr Sitara Khan.”

The Deputy Administrator retook his seat as Sitara stood up. She had given presentations dozens of times since she had joined the agency, but this particular presentation had been hastily prepared. Fortunately everybody in the room knew this and certainly wouldn’t be judging her on the slickness of her performance. Sitara pressed a key on her notebook computer and the left hand screen displayed a website entitled ‘Voyager, The Interstellar Mission’. To calm her nerves, she took a sip from the glass of water that had been provided for her on her desk. Her throat moistened; she felt more confident.

“Good morning Administrator, Deputy Administrator, ladies and gentlemen. What I am going to say will seem impossible but I ask you all to keep an open mind. May I first draw your attention to the main screen? You’ll see three measurements for each of the two Voyager spacecraft; note the distance of the Voyager 1 space probe from Earth, in both kilometres and AUs, its distance from the Sun, and the roundtrip light time from the Earth. It’s nothing unusual. We’ve all seen these figures and watched them as they increase by the second. We’ve seen them hundreds of times. Thousands. But I want you be aware of them while you listen to what I have to say.

“Twenty-four hours ago I was up to my neck in the icy waters of the Bering Sea, behind a fishing trawler, examining an object that had been caught in their nets. I’d been visiting my aunt in Anchorage, when I received an urgent phone call from NASA to drop everything and go investigate an unidentified object. I fully expected it to be sunken space debris or perhaps, a fallen satellite.”

Another key press and the advancing distances were replaced by a photo of the object trapped within the trawler’s netting. This then dissolved to reveal another image of the object, this time sitting captive in a JPL laboratory at Pasadena. Her audience murmured as Sitara took a deep breath, knowing that she was about to say the unthinkable.

“The spacecraft that we recovered from the sea is Voyager One.”

A hush fell over the room. The assembled scientists knew what the object looked like, but Sitara had said the unutterable. She continued.

“I had my suspicions as soon as I saw the object, but they were confirmed when I began to examine the Bus at the base of the High Gain Antenna. I noticed that there were other mountings with nothing attached to them. That’s when alarm bells really started ringing. I opened each of the ten compartments in turn, expecting to find electronic subsystems and instrumentation – but they were empty. They were all empty.”

Administrator Healey interrupted Sitara. The very thought that the vehicle in their labs being examined by their scientists could be Voyager One was absurd, but the empty compartments of whatever the spacecraft was concerned him too.

“Doctor Khan, are you saying that these compartments had been opened, the contents deliberately removed, and then resealed?”

The Administrator listened to the words as he said them, thinking how preposterous they sounded when spoken out loud. Whatever it was, the object couldn’t be Voyager One.

“They certainly appear to have been, yes.”

“Could they not have been damaged by collision with a foreign object wandering the Solar System?”

“There was no evidence of any impact, sir. The Bus is intact. The compartments do seem to have been opened and resealed.”

“Could they have been interfered with here on Earth?”

“Of course, there’s always a small chance that they were, but I don’t believe that happened. Why would anyone remove some parts and leave the others? Surely it would make more sense to take the whole spacecraft.”

Sitara knew how crazy she sounded. Voyager One was well over thirteen billion miles away, and getting further away with each passing second. Another murmur flowed around the room, as the audience tried to process what they had just heard. The objective of the two Voyager missions was to explore the Solar System, and then to seek out new horizons and possibly encounter new civilizations. Nobody wanted to say the words but everybody understood the implications of the missing parts having been removed, and not broken off. Sitara waited for the hubbub to die down.

“I suspected that I was looking at Voyager One, but didn’t want to believe it myself. I mean, it’s crazy. Isn’t it? But several other pieces of equipment were clearly missing, among them several Subsystems, Spectrometers, Antennae, and Thermoelectric Generators. None had been broken off; they had all been deliberately removed.”

The audience watched as photos of the anchor points to the supports upon which the equipment had been mounted zoomed into view. The items had definitely been carefully removed, not broken off. The Administrator stood up.

“This is impossible. It can’t be Voyager One. It must be a copy, although I can’t for the life of me think why anyone would want to dump an imitation space probe into the ocean.”

He turned and pointed to the smaller screen, which was still showing the two Voyagers’ distances from the Earth. The values were still increasing.

“Look. There’s the proof. Both Voyagers are still there, travelling away from us. Voyager One can’t be in two places at the same time. It’s impossible. This has to be some kind of hoax. What other explanation could there possibly be?”

The Director of the IVVF offered a possible explanation.

“Perhaps we’ve unknowingly suffered a cyber-attack, perhaps our network’s been hacked. Perhaps those numbers changing on the screen are false.”

The Administrator shook his head.

“No, it can’t be as simple as that. Firstly, we have one of the most robust IT security systems in the world. I hesitate to say we’re 100 percent safe but we’re as close as it’s possible to get without calling ourselves perfect. And, even if that scenario were true, it would mean that Voyager One has turned around and returned to Earth in a matter of a few days. Considering that it’s been travelling in the other direction for over forty years, I think we can rule that one out, don’t you?”