Greg Krojac - The Schrödinger Enigma

“Exactly.”

Mr Anderson showed no emotion but inside he was secretly excited. The information that he was about to become privy to was extraordinary. He would love to have been able to tell his wife about his day when he got home that night, but he knew he couldn’t. He turned back to face Jonas.

“What is this proof, Mr Wade?”

Jonas knew that he was about to cross a line, that he would be unable to retract what he was about to confess, but his daughter needed certain house conversions to be made in order to make his disabled granddaughter’s life more comfortable. He knew what he was doing.

“May I have a cigarette?”

The interrogator’s assistant pointed to a no smoking sign on the wall. Jonas shrugged his shoulders.

“No harm in asking.”

The interrogation continued.

“How can you prove that the space probe we have in custody is the original Voyager One?”

Jonas grinned. Not a sardonic grin but more a grin of self-indulgent pleasure as he remembered what he had done on that day over forty years ago.

“I left some of my DNA on the inside of one of the panels. Just a small speck of blood, you know, but still enough for part of me to go into space.”

The Administrator and the Deputy looked at each other aghast. Did he really just say that? Surprised as Mr Anderson was at this revelation, he didn’t react and he simply continued his line of questioning.

“How did you do that?”

“I was responsible for mounting the communication subsystem into one of the Bus compartments. It was a simple thing to nick my finger and leave a tiny bloodstain on a mounting bracket before attaching the subsystem to the back of the compartment. Especially back then.”

“What do you mean, especially back then?”

“Well, security is much better now. I’m sure I couldn’t do it these days without being spotted.”

“Tell us how you did it.”

Jonas’s confidence was growing.

“There’s no point in telling you now. It was forty plus years ago. Systems and processes have completely changed. I did it. That’s all you need to know.”

The interrogator changed the direction of the questioning.

“Why did you do it?”

“Call me a fool if you like, but I’d always wanted to be an astronaut. I also knew that was never going to happen. I was never fit enough, not even then, when I was younger. So I thought I’d do the next best thing and send a bit of me into space.”

Administrator Healey wanted to know how his staff hadn’t spotted the bloodspot during their forensic investigations, but that would have to wait. He took his phone from his pocket and sent a text to the investigating team supervisor to stop what they were doing and remove the panels from the communications subsystem compartment for more intensive screening.

The interrogator felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and took it out, tapping the touchscreen to activate the display. He read the message silently and then repeated its content.

“We’ll need a sample of your DNA, Mr. Wade. Do you agree to us taking a saliva sample?”

Jonas felt that now he was in control of the situation.

“It’ll cost you another fifty thousand bucks.”

The interrogator’s phone vibrated again.

“Agreed.”

Jonas was happy with that.

“Fifty grand, just for spitting into a test-tube. That’s what I call a bargain.”

The Administrator returned to his office with his deputy, leaving Mr Anderson to identify the source of the leak, and poured a couple of large scotches for himself and Roger Nelson. He sat down in a burgundy leather armchair, his favourite of the two that were in his office, and rested his glass on the coffee table that separated the two men. His deputy, sitting opposite him in a matching chair, took a sip of his own drink and placed it back on the table. Tony Healey leaned forward a little.

“So Roger. What do you think? Do you think that this may be the proof we’re looking for?”

The Deputy nodded.

“It looks like it, Tony. It all depends if the DNA has survived the rigours of space. There was a recent experiment that proved that genetic material could survive a flight through space and re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, at least for a short journey. It was proven by a team of scientists from the University of Zurich. But we have no idea if DNA could have survived for this long and over such a large distance. But – and it’s a ‘but’ with a capital B – if there’s enough of it still intact, and it matches that of Jonas Wade, a whole new can of worms will open up.”

The Administrator took his first sip of whisky.

“I don’t know what I fear most, Roger. That the probe here is an elaborate hoax, or that it is the same probe we launched forty years ago. If the DNA matches, it’ll raise so many questions like how did it get here? Why is it here? What does that mean for the Voyager we’re still getting signals from, the one that’s over thirteen billion miles away? Is that a phantom? Is our equipment faulty? And what about Voyager Two for that matter?”

The Deputy needed another sip of whisky.

“Or, even scarier, what if they’re both the real Voyager One, like Doctor Khan suggested? That would suggest technology that defies the laws of physics as we understand them. And, if that’s the case, what the hell do whoever the hell they are want?”

At a maximum security JPL laboratory in Pasadena, a small group of men and women were gazing through a toughened glass window at a physically impossible sight, the Voyager One space probe. All were dressed in full biological insulation protective garments and had undergone a rigorous decontamination process, just as the spacecraft had done before the JPL technical staff began their analyses and investigations. The fear of cross-contamination in either direction was very real, and nobody – not even the President of the United States – was exempt from the process.

As Voyager One had returned to Earth from deep space it had been automatically designated a Restricted Class V contamination risk, in line with the “Outer Space” Treaty of 1967.

The President had, naturally, been kept informed of the recent return to Earth of the space probe and had been advised not to visit the laboratory where it was being examined, but, being the type of person he was, he had ignored the advice of his advisors and insisted on making the trip to the laboratory to see the celebrity spaceship (as he liked to call it) for himself. He pointed to the object on the other side of the glass.

“I want to go in there and see the spaceship close up.”

Gerald Rickman, the Director of JPL, shook his head.

“I’m sorry Mr President, but I’m afraid you can’t go in there.”

The President gave the Director a steely stare.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, Gerald. I assume all decontamination protocols have been followed to the letter?”

“Well, yes Mr President. Of course. But that doesn’t mean – “

“Doesn’t mean what, Gerald?”

“It doesn’t mean that it’s one hundred percent safe.”

The President gestured to the half a dozen technicians working on the space probe.

“If it’s not safe, then why are they in there?”

The Director was becoming flustered. How do you say no to this President of the United States and keep your job? Men in higher positions than him had been dismissed from their posts, for far lesser reasons.

“But you’re the President. You’re the most important man in this great nation; you’re the leader of the free world. We can’t risk anything happening to you.”

The Director hoped that this blatant display of sycophancy might win the day. The President loved to be flattered. However, on that day, the President was not to be dissuaded.