WORMHOLES
David Hitchcock
First Edition
Front Cover Art:NASA
Back Cover Art:NASA
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Hitchcock, David, 1956-
Wormholes
Copyright © 2017 by David Hitchcock
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher and the author.
Dedication
This text is dedicated to my wife, Cornelia, with love.
Introduction
No one believes ten-year-old Patricia Cromwell when she says that her parents were killed by a mysterious wormhole that disappeared as quickly as it formed. Likewise, twenty years later, no one believes thirty-year-old Patricia Cromwell, Ph.D. in radio astronomy, when she gives a presentation of her research into Long Delayed Echo (LDE) radio signals indicating alien transmissions.
Patricia quickly discovers that Earth coordinates hidden in the radio message point to a Zinc mine in Alaska. Determined to see this through, Patricia cashes out her life savings and with some “borrowed” lab equipment, heads for the frozen northland.
Sneaking into the Alaskan mining complex at night, Patricia discovers a hidden entrance leading to an underground alien ore processing center. Her insatiable curiosity leads her on an unimaginable trip through space and time to an Alien world on the brink of destruction.
Ultimately, alien and human conflicts put the survival of both worlds in Patricia’s hands.
David Hitchcock
August, 2017
David@DavidHitchcock.com
FADE IN:
EXT. ALASKA - FROM HIGH ABOVE - DAY
Desolate splendor. Jagged snow-covered peaks sweep past.
EXT. ELMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE
Far below, an airport violates the natural landscape. A jet fighter THUNDERS into the sky.
FADE UP TITLE:
Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, 1965
EXT. ELMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE - FROZEN POND
The jet noise echoes against the distant mountains. Air Force Captain EDWARD CROMWELL, mid-thirties, extends his hand to his daughter, TEN-YEAR-OLD PATRICIA.
EDWARD
You've got to trust us.
TEN-YEAR-OLD PATRICIA
I'm scared, Daddy.
MARY CROMWELL, thirty-two, reaches out for her daughter's other hand.
MARY
We'll do it together.
The pretty blonde girl smiles bravely and the family pushes off together onto the ice.
EXT. ALASKA - HILLSIDE - EVENING
A jeep plows through some brush and charges up a hill. Edward is behind the wheel, with Mary at his side. Patricia clings to a rollbar in the back.
TEN-YEAR-OLD PATRICIA
Yippee!
They stop at the top of the hill. A magnificent panorama of green ribbons stretch across the sky.
TEN-YEAR-OLD PATRICIA
Wow!
EDWARD
I told you this was the best spot for northern lights.
MARY
Is that part of the aurora?
There is a glow from behind a nearby hill.
EDWARD
That's odd.
Edward cranks the ignition and the vehicle surges forward. As they charge up the backlit hill, the light suddenly goes out.
The jeep crosses the crest and rolls down onto burn grass, busted rocks and broken trees.
TEN-YEAR-OLD PATRICIA
Daddy, what happened here?
EDWARD
I don't know, sweetheart.
MARY
Plane crash?
EDWARD
I need to report this.
Edward hits the gas. He spins the steering wheel and does a one-eighty. Suddenly, he slams on the brakes in horror.
A spherical black void hangs over the ground, sucking in torrents of air. The jeep is jerked forward, its tires leave furrows in the ground.
Edward slams it into reverse and floors it. The wheels spin uselessly, throwing up arcs of dirt and mud.
MARY
Eddie!
The black void is mere inches away. Headlights burst. The grill rips off and disappears into the blackness. Edward and Mary are pulled forward against the windshield. Patricia SCREAMS.
TEN-YEAR-OLD PATRICIA
Mommy!
Patricia reaches out for her mother and the intense pull grabs her. Her father presses her back with his leg.
EDWARD
Grab the bar!
The ten-year-old wraps her arms around the rollbar, holding on with all her strength.
The jeep's hood flies off. Edward and Mary are sucked outside, hanging on to the windshield, legs dangling in mid-air.
Mary can't hold on and is sucked into the void.
TEN-YEAR-OLD PATRICIA
Mommy!
The windshield breaks loose and Edward plummets after his wife. The black void suddenly shrinks into a point and vanishes.
SILENCE surrounds the ten-year-old seated in the back of the half-eaten jeep.
MAIN TITLE CARD: "WORMHOLES"
EXT. HARVARD UNIVERSITY - OBSERVATORY - DAY
A fifteen-foot high dome protrudes from the roof of a two-story building.
FADE UP TITLE:
Harvard Collage Observatory - 1985
A cardboard yard sign reads: SETI Conference.
INT. OBSERVATORY
Doctor PATRICIA CROMWELL, now thirty, stands at the base of a pillar that supports a massive optical telescope. Two dozen of her peers sit before her.
PATRICIA
How would an advanced race of extraterrestrials communicate with us? They would need a common frame of reference.
She places a transparency on a projector. An image of the night sky appears on the curved wall of the observatory.
PATRICIA
The stars, ladies and gentlemen, would look very much the same to our nearby stellar neighbors. A recent analysis of long-duration radio echoes transmitted by my team at Green Bank has yielded some remarkable results.
Seated in the back row is Air Force Captain ETHAN STEWART, late-twenties. The woman next to him sounds off to the gathering.
BACK ROW WOMAN
Radio echoes are old news. They just reflect off charged particles in the ionosphere.
Patricia removes her stellar overhead transparency.
PATRICIA
I thought these did, as well. Until the signal delays started changing.
She places another transparency on the projector. An x-y graph is shown against the wall, with individual points marked in red.
PATRICIA
I graphed each pulse against its delay time. Does this pattern look familiar?
She reaches for another transparency.
PATRICIA
Maybe this will help.
Patricia lays the second slide on top of the first. This one has the dots connected with straight lines. All but two of the stars from the x-y plot line up.
A man from the front row pipes up.
FRONT ROW MAN
Is that Orion?
Captain Stewart touches the arm of the woman sitting next to him. He nods toward Patricia.
STEWART
What's her story?
BACK ROW WOMAN
Had a tough childhood. Her parents were killed in some sort of car accident. She turned out brilliant though. Could have gone into any field. Why she chose this SETI stuff is beyond me.
FRONT ROW MAN
What about the two stars that don't line up? Don't your aliens have accurate star charts?
He gets a couple laughs from the crowd.
PATRICIA
This is the way these stars look today.
She removes the first overlay.
PATRICIA
If you go back twenty-four thousand years, the constellation Orion looked like this.
Patricia places another overlay on top of her x-y chart. This time all the stars line up.
BACK ROW WOMAN
Why would aliens send us a picture of the past?
PATRICIA
I don't know. What I can tell you
is that from the direction and timing of the radio echoes, there has to be an alien spacecraft orbiting the Earth at around
Half-a-million miles.
The audience breaks into a dozen conversations.
FrONT ROW MAN
Preposterous!
BACK ROW WOMAN
You are just forcing your data to support a ridiculous conclusion.
FRONT ROW MAN
Have you received any other radio signals?
PATRICIA
No.
FRONT ROW MAN
You never will.
PATRICIA
I realize these results are shocking, but we can't just ignore them. We have to conduct a space-extensive radar search.
FRONT ROW MAN
Impossible! There will be too much noise. You'll never read anything.
PATRICIA
We might have to send a probe.
BacK ROW WOMAN
Do you realize what that would cost?
FrONT ROW MAN
This is absurd.
Captain Stewart stands up.
STEWART
Suppose you are right.
Dead SILENCE.
STEWART
How do you know that these aliens will be friendly?
PATRICIA
Why wouldn't they be?
STEWART
PATRICIA
They should be morally as well as technically advanced.
STEWART
Remember the Cowboys and Indians?
EXT. BUS STATION - DAY
A poster of a Native-American Indian with a single feather headdress. A teardrop is under one eye. "Keep West Virginia Beautiful" is written underneath.
A greyhound bus rolls past, belching black smoke. Patricia carries two suitcases toward a smiling, JOSH ABRAMS, early twenties.
JOSH
Hey, boss, did ya blow em away?
PATRICIA
Like the Hindenburg.
Josh grabs one of her suitcases and they walk toward a parking lot.
JOSH
What about HD38529?
PATRICIA
I didn't tell them.
JOSH
Why, not? All the data points to it.
PATRICIA
They were already laughing their asses off.
JOSH
Man, that sucks!
They throw the suitcases into a beat up station wagon.
JOSH
Bet you're ready to crash?
PATRICIA
Let's go to work.
EXT. GREEN BANK RADIO TELESCOPE
A giant dish of steel mesh towers over a weather-worn two story building.
INT. GREEN BANK RADIO TELESCOPE - CONTROL ROOM
Bulky, mono-colored computer monitors glare outward from racks of test equipment. Cabling is splayed about, reminiscent of a 1950's telephone switching center.
GLORIA RENOLDS, early twenties, no makeup, hair pulled back in a pony tail, twists around in her chair as Patricia and Josh enter.
GLORIA
Hey, Blip. The anisotropies in your CMB measurements are all screwed up.
JOSH
No, way!
He drops down in front of a console and starts pounding the keys.
Patricia heads for her desk. A large photograph of the constellation Orion is pinned against a wall.
INSERT: A straight line of four stars is circled with an arrow drawn at the end. The tip of the arrow points to a faint spot of light with the name, HD38529, written below.
JOSH
It's got to be interference coming from the dish.
Nearby, DAN JACOBS, mid-forties, uses a multi-meter to check a connection. He looks up from an exploded maze of wires.
DAN
There's nothing wrong with the equipment.
On Patricia's desk, a post-it note decorates a thick tractor-feed, computer printout.
INSERT: See me when you get in. Leonard
Patricia glances at a nearby windowed office door. LEONARD BALDWIN, mid-fifties, is on the phone.
Josh shuffles up to Patricia's desk.
JOSH
Doctor Cromwell, my readings of the cosmic microwave background near the Virgo cluster don't make sense. I allowed for the inhomogeneities caused by quantum fluctuations, but the temperature is still wrong.
PATRICIA
Did you subtract out the Doppler shift for our peculiar velocity relative to the co-moving rest frame?
JOSH
Ah... no.
PATRICIA
The Earth moves at six hundred twenty-seven kilometers per second toward the constellation Virgo.
JOSH
Shit!
Josh hightails it back to his seat. Gloria gloats at him.
GLORIA
Dork.
Patricia grabs the printout and heads for Baldwin's office.
INT. BALDWIN'S OFFICE
Large windows reach upward to join wide skylights that look out and upward toward the towering form of the three-hundred foot radio disk antenna.
A harangued Leonard Baldwin is still on the phone when Patricia enters.
LEONARD
Yes, I know. Instrument time is our most precious commodity.
Leonard gestures toward the chair in front of his desk. Patricia sits down with the printout in her lap.
LEONARD
Certainly. I will.
Leonard makes eye contact with Patricia.
LEONARD
I will take care of it.
He hangs up.
PATRICIA
You wanted to see me?
LEONARD
How was the conference?
PATRICIA
Leonard just nods and looks past her.
PATRICIA
Go ahead, say it.
LEONARD
When you propose something radical, you need bulletproof data to back it up. You should know that.
PATRICIA
The chance of contacting another intelligent life form-
LEONARD
Will just have to wait. Doctor Cromwell, this facility is used by over three hundred researchers from more than forty universities and laboratories.
PATRICIA
I'm aware of that.
LEONARD
The printout in your lap represents the backlog of observing time caused by your... SETI observations.
PATRICIA
The SETI work is just as important-
LEONARD
(exploding)
It's got to stop! You've become obsessed with this.
(beat, calmer)
I think we can both agree, I've been very accommodating. But, this facility's primary mission is to survey the northern hemisphere for quasars and galaxies.
PATRICIA
The galaxies aren't going anywhere.
LEONARD
Let me make myself clear, I want you to cease all SETI observations until your other work is caught up.
PATRICIA
We'll never be caught up. There's always a backlog.
LEONARD
Regardless, we have a responsibility to the National Radio Observatory. They're paying our bills. We all have to work together on this.
PATRICIA
Leonard, you're killing the project. Don't you realize the implications of these radio echoes?
LEONARD
Don't your realize the implications for your future?
EXT. PENTAGON - DAY
Establishing.
INT. PENTAGON - HALLWAY
Captain Stewart approaches a door emblazoned with the blue shield and stars of the Air Force Space Command.
INT. GENERAL HACKETT'S OFFICE
Stewart enters. General HACKETT, early sixties, looks up from a pile of desktop paperwork.
HACKETT
Ah, Stewart.
They exchange salutes.
STEWART
Sir.
HACKETT
At ease. So what's the story? Anything to worry about with this Crumwell dame?
STEWART
Begging your pardon sir, it's Cromwell. There is a remote possible she has discovered a transmission from extraterrestrial sources.
The General studies Stewart for a moment, weighing his options.
HACKETT
Review all the data we have on the suspected space sector. Optical, radar, infrared..
STEWART
Yes, sir.
Stewart makes a move to leave.
HACKETT
Setup a standard surveillance. Wiretaps, track her movements... You know the drill.
STEWART
Yes, sir.
EXT. GREEN BANK RADIO TELESCOPE - FROM ABOVE - AFTERNOON
CLUNK. Drive gears engage. Looking down, the massive steel dish rotates to reveal the diminutive building below.
INT. GREEN BANK RADIO TELESCOPE - CONTROL ROOM
Michael Jackson does the moonwalk on a television set in the background. Patricia hands Josh a 3 1/2 inch floppy.
PATRICIA
Before you start the pulsar search, I want you to slew to these coordinates and transmit this.
JOSH
Transmit? I thought the SETI program was on hold?
Gloria looks up from her console and cocks an eyebrow at the radio astronomer.
PATRICIA
We are probing the same sky region anyway.
GLORIA
Funny how that particular search got pushed up on the schedule.
Patricia ignores the comment.
PATRICIA
(to Josh)
Record for sixty minutes after the transmission. Then, move on to the pulsar measurements.
EXT. PATRICIA'S RESIDENCE - EVENING
Patricia's station wagon pulls into a driveway. Light leaks out from several windows in the house beyond.