Chapter 9 - Preparation

   Joe took his time. Deciding. He had to decide. How could he sit and do nothing, knowing not only his world, but his entire universe? Was doomed. True, he could simply ignore it. But how would that make him feel. It made his guts hurt to think about going down that road. He found he had learned this before. Like any young man, coming out of his local state university? He had been eager to get to it. Success. Get that great job, do that big work. It hadn't been like he thought, and he was now happy he had learned that lesson early enough.

   Success? What was it. It wasn't making more money. It wasn't about being more important, and reminding everyone around and under him about it, either. He had seen the VP was like that. Lots of money, a high level of importance. Yet, he was ugly. No one is perfect, but... that was too much.

   You could be too practical. That? That comes long after my death. That just isn't my problem. My problems, were in the here and now. Be practical. How could it be more important, to worry about what clothes you were going to wear to what daily function that day. The hell did that matter in the long run. He remembered being young, and so concerned he had shoes and clothes the other young kids his age had. It was all so earth shattering important to a child back then. What had his mother said? She smiled. These things are important now, they won't be when you're a man. And if they are still this important? Then I didn't do my job as your mother very well. Then? She had hugged him and sent him off to school.

   Older? He had come to realize his mother's wisdom. When your peers teased you about what you wore or had? It was reassuring. You were a member of the group. He sometimes wore things no one else did, and invited it as an adult. He smiled, it didn't bother him. Mom had been right. He liked it now. He had been raised right, he saw now. He wasn't selfish and spoiled.

   He searched his character, his soul. How could he sit back, and know he might have been able to save everything, and let it pass. He had a sense of calm come over him. An easy, quiet calm he hadn't known in a long time. The nervous, restless energy subsided to a low level that was quite nice. He sat and spent time with Adelaide. His little Ada.

   He thought he was deciding, but part of him knew he had already decided. He couldn't live with himself, with that on his conscience. If he did nothing, it would eat at him and devour him slowly, from the inside out. Human nature is many things, and while they are capable of great selfishness and even cruelty? They're at times capable of great kindness and self sacrifice.

   "Ada?"

   They were sitting watching the sunset. Summer break was coming.

   "I love you. I tell you, and I mean it."

   "Okay. I love you too."

   He sighed.

   "Honey? If... even if you didn't understand. If I ever went away? It wasn't because I didn't love you. I do."

   "Where would you go? For how long?"

   "I can't explain. But... I love you. If something needed done. Something important. You'd want me to do it, wouldn't you? To help everyone else."

   "I mean, I suppose."

   "Ada? I don't have much. I don't have a lot of money, I don't have great possessions. In fact? Probably the most important thing I own? Is in my notes. My work. The research proposal. I made a will. Didn't cost hardly anything, I don't have much. But. If anything would ever happen? There's letters you'll get. I would hope, that... if that ever happened? The instructions... its nothing hard that you couldn't do."

   "Joe... what brought all this on..."

   "I love you, and that's all there is to it."

   He eventually realized he had come to his decision, before he had actually made it. Eventually, he realized. He had to just do it. If he waited until the time seemed right? It would always be next week, next month, next year. It would go on like that, until he was dead and buried. He had once read words of some great man, that came back into his head.

   "If not me? Who. If not now? When."

   Since late 2047 and into now 2048, the people scurried around like ants going about their lives. The government and NASA and whatever else was involved with things at those levels? Organized and sent out a probe. It was impossible to determine the distance of the anomaly, the mysterious black square. Its direction was obvious. No telescope no matter how powerful could produce anything else. It had no energy or radiation it gave off. A laser bounced off it didn't even reflect.

   Was it close and tiny? Or was it large and farther away. Either condition would block the same stars from view behind it. The first probe approached it slowly, to great fanfare and news coverage, as would be expected. They now had the reported distance though, and they could get its size. That was all they knew that was new, though. Nothing else had changed. It appeared. It did nothing. It one day suddenly grew in size, all at once. Then it just stayed like that. It seemed to have no purpose, good or bad. It just... was.

   The probe went around it. It was invisible from the side. It had no thickness. The probe looked from the top, the bottom, every side. It could only be seen from the front. When the probe went behind the mysterious black square, they were shocked. It wasn't there, either. They were prepared for it to now block the probes view of earth, because it was behind it. It was invisible and more than invisible, simply not there from behind, or from any side. Only front on, was it simply a black region of nothing.

   After several of these probe runs? They edged the probe up closer, slowly. They sent it closer. Then? They sent it forwards. Was it a solid object?

   The probe simply disappeared.

   Another probe was immediately sent out. The original probe was not behind it, it was gone. They lost any signal from the original probe, once it disappeared. They promptly lost this second one as well. Only after coming through the probe so to speak from the back. Though it wasn't there that way. When the probe had passed "through" from the back? Its rear mounted cameras saw the square up close. Same thing from the sides. It had no thickness, it was gone from any direction but straight on from the front. The probe passed "through" it from any side it passed through on. Then? They lost that probe as well, when they sent it in as well.

   There was a rash of explanations what a four dimensional object was. Thought to only exist as some intellectual distraction, this clearly was one.

   Joe knew what it was. It had been explained to him. It wasn't an antenna, of course. His voice and whoever was with him? They could easily monitor communications from here. Internet and telephone and broadcast and everything else? Went through satellites. That wireless communication was easily picked up. The signals that hit this close by black square? Joe knew appeared right by them, as if they were here. They could see out of it as well. They knew the earth was a big blue marble of a planet.

   Joe had made his decision, this was just following through. He eventually acted.