Flash Fiction Friday (Cycle 33) The Unseen Frontier

Flash Fiction Friday Prompt: Write a story based on a common conspiracy theory
Genre: Any
Word Count: 1000 words
Deadline: Thursday, June 2nd, 2011, 4:30 pm EST

(Author's note: Excuse the typos, I couldn't sleep this morning and did this after working all night.) 

The minute I saw Admiral Hank Wallace, the US military’s 21st century version of General Leslie Groves of Manhattan Project fame, step onto the stage with three other major league theoretical physicists I should have immediately walked out the auditorium. That the Secretaries of the Navy and Defense were present and already seated only added to the seriousness of the classified briefing about to begin and whatever dangers were associated with Wallace’s latest classified high tech adventure.

My major during my Naval Academy days was physics with an emphasis in quantum mechanics but there was little use for it after graduation. The fickle lady called Fate pushed me into guided missile destroyers as a career path and as the years passed, I worked my way up to the ranks to navy captain commanding several of the most advanced ships in the fleet. Still, my curiosity never strayed far from my original studies and I did my best to keep up with the latest research, just the idea of working with those physicists on stage was the main reason I did not leave.

“Welcome everyone,” the admiral said after nodding to the Secretary of Defense, “you may be wondering why you were personally selected for this briefing. Each of you have talents that will be very useful should you choose to participate in an upcoming experiment that will shake the foundations of science and reality itself.”

While grander words have been said about far lesser plans, watching Wallace on stage there was a look in his eyes suggesting to me that he was not overstating the matter. Nevertheless, an unbelieving murmur rippled through the room, enough that I began to look around at the others in the audience. I noticed immediately I was the senior officer with the highest ranking after that being a female Commander who I knew designed nuclear reactors but whose degree was in high-energy physics. I also recognized several others as being the best in their navy professions covering all aspects of running a ship.

Admiral Wallace was clearly enjoying the stir he created but eventually raising his right hand, signaling everyone to quiet down. “Simply put, he began again, “the best way to introduce the subject is to ask how many of you have ever heard of something called the ‘The Philadelphia experiment’?” My jaw nearly fell to the floor but over the course of several hours we were briefed that long laughed at conspiratorial myth, spoken of these days on insane late night radio talk shows actually happened and that while the results were disastrous navy scientists had spent decades trying to figure out what happened.

During the Second World War a collection of Allied scientists were playing around with various theories trying to make a test vessel, the USS Eldridge, invisible both on radar and visually. While a very long shot, the War Department back then liked the idea of cloaked warships and freighters on the high seas invisible to German and Japanese submarines.

As the briefing continued, with Wallace giving up the stage to the civilian scientists, we all learned that while the crew of the Eldridge suffered greatly with many horrible causalities the ship did in fact disappear, only to reappear hundreds of miles away. After decades of research into what happened, the consensus was now that the Eldridge slipped into another Earth in a parallel universe and its uncontrolled return was the actual cause of the horrendous effects on the crew.  Making matters more interesting, the chief scientists told us the experiment had recently been repeated with no ill effects on the small patrol craft and crew sent across.

Wallace returned to the stage saying that he had won approval to send a larger ship across with far greater range to begin exploration of whatever Earth lay on the other side. Wallace’s reputation was only whispered about and none of it was good, but my initial reservations be damned, this was an unbelievable dream come true for me and I was ready to do anything it took to command that ship going into the unknown.

***

A year later I am sitting in the captain’s chair on the bridge of the USS Pathfinder, a guided missile destroyer armed with the latest weapons, looking out the windows watching the very fabric of reality twist. The Pathfinder sat in the middle of a circle of fifty buoys each with a powerful electromagnetic generator pulsing in a complex rhythm that would drop us into the parallel Earth it was our mission to explore. For a while, I did not believe the experiment was working until I noticed the buoys and support ships that surrounded us had disappeared leaving us alone in open ocean.

“Transition complete Captain Matthews,” my executive officer Commander Maggie Oliver said after reviewing the data on a computer, “we have reached normalcy.”

It was the understatement of all of human history but I let it go and began ordering all hands to inspect the ship and equipment. Most importantly, we dropped the locator buoy, which would mark the exact spot we would need to be when the Wallace reversed the pulses to bring us back home in thirty days. Until then we were completely on our own.

We were soon underway after using the stars to fix our position heading towards whatever existed on this Earth’s North American continent. My hope was a healthy and welcoming version of the United States for which we had elaborate documents from our president hoping for good relations. However, scanning the radio frequencies we heard only distorted voices, mostly in Russian, that raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

Two days later our worst fears were conformed as we sailed into what remained of New York harbor, the city was blasted with Lady Liberty a melted pile of slag. Instead of being totally boxed in I launched the helicopter for a more detailed reconnaissance, of immediate concern were the radiation levels, which were slightly elevated suggesting whatever war had been fought was long over.

“Captain,” the radar officer screamed suddenly, “I have two targets just coming into view near Montauk. Sorry sir, it must be the radiation playing hell with the radar.”

“This is new to all of us,” I said growing more concerned by the second, “helmsman lay in an intercept course, full speed.”

An hour later, the two ships came into view, both were designs unknown to us but the red flag bearing the hammer and sickle was easily recognized. “General quarters,” I yelled, “all hands battle stations.” We had twenty-eight days left before Wallace called us back; I prayed my ship and crew survived that long.