Young Writers Society

So the Randi thing fell flat. Ellipse knew it would from the moment she and the boys got back to the Conics, joyously weary from their two-day romp on Sirena, when she turned the wireless back on in her watch and found no response from her contact back in the earthling system. But she held out hope during the flight to Planet Five.

Now, face lit by her watch and the dim cockpit display, she wished she had not hoped. Randi’s reply was incredulous, completely dismissive of her request, and questioned her commitment to seeing their plan through. Ellipse would argue that she was allowed to have second thoughts. She had not even helped make the plan, just agreed to it without knowing the logistics.

The ship’s speakers clicked on, and Mouthbot’s copy of Ellipse’s accented English rang into the cockpit. “The Ink is attached to the tug mechanism,” Mouthbot announced. “I repeat, the Ink is attached to the tug mechanism.” Then the computer sang the same message in Trade Siren, and continued on again in English. “Final check of magnetics will proceed.”

Ellipse let herself float up from the pilot’s chair and turned her watch screen off. Whatever. Having a single investor was never a good idea anyways. She shoved off the back of the chair and drifted down the hall of the second floor, fingers lightly brushing over the acrylic walls. Chances were, once she got off the Conics, she would never get back on again. Earth would make a good hiding place; there were plenty of other earthlings to blend in with. Besides, with Wrecktrix on board, Captain Maj and the other actual members of the crew would not need her anymore.

She reached the ladder and propelled herself down to the first floor, into the computer room, where Tejal floated by an open panel of hardware, fiddling with his current fold generator iteration. Focci would come back up shortly, once he finished checking the tug mechanism.

“Hey,” Ellipse said.

Tejal grunted. He furrowed his brow, looking pained, and pulled his tiny dentist pick from the inside of the generator.

“How are things going?” Ellipse tried.

“Fine,” he said, the answer clipped. “I took care of the data packages and shuttle tickets while you did the atmosphere check earlier. We’ll be staying in New York City. Apparently my parents and your crew already made hotel reservations for us.”

New York was good. There had to be investors there. Ellipse peered at the open section of hardware and smiled when she saw the first iteration of fold generator plugged into the ship’s mainframe. It was tiny and cube-shaped and probably not as nice as whatever Tejal had in his hands, but it was handy.

“Thanks for taking care of that,” Ellipse said. She scratched her neck. “But like, are you and Focci doing okay? I know you two are stressing about being able to finish working on it together.”

“We’re good.” Tejal looked up, finally, and glanced at the exposed computer panel. “We talked a little about money. Ellipse, did you know it could take millions of US dollars to even think about testing the fold generator properly?”

That was a given. “I thought you were well-read on sciencey things. Pharmaceuticals cost massive amounts to test.”

“That’s testing on people! With chemicals! All Focci and I have to do is go out in deep space and run fold generators through each other to proove it’s safe.” Tejal plucked a flashlight from the halo of tools around his head. Ellipse noticed that his hair was getting long enough for the ends to really float away from his scalp.

“Well,” Ellipse started, holding up a hand and counting off the fingers. “Each prototype costs a certain amount to build. You will need a ship, supplies, and fuel, possibly a crew. Then there is the cost of testing and measurement instruments, and then collateral for investors in case you fail. You want to change the world? You need a big investment.”

Tejal squeezed the new prototype, almost like he might crush it in his hand. “I just wish that investment didn’t have to be money. I mean, Focci and I can work separately for a while. We have the tools to do it.”

“But nothing beats working face-to-face,” Ellipse finished. She crossed her arms and sighed, looking around the computer room, where the trio had first bonded over Mouthbot. So much of the Conics was the same as when Ellipse had first walked into its hull, but everything felt different now. The acrylic wall panels were so homey that they faded into the background, and the odd collection of earthling appliances were just there, not oddly familiar aspects of an alien ship.

Technically, Captain Maj and their crew still owned this ship, and had lived on it far longer than Ellipse’s, but the Conics was home to her and Tejal and Focci now.

She heard Focci sing that everything was in order, and she made a decision.

“Mouthbot,” she said, “start us towards the Triune fold monitor.” She looked at Tejal and quirked her lips to the side. “I want to know about your project before we all split up. Perhaps if you need user data or something, I can help.”

“You’re not staying on the Conics with Focci?” Tejal’s eyebrows rose, and he paused in his fiddling.

“We shall see,” Ellipse told him.

Soon enough, Focci drifted in, gills fluttering in surprise when he found the earthlings in the computer room instead of the cockpit. He twitched his nose and turned a tidy somersault, and then pulled himself to a stop over Tejal’s head. “What is up? This is not our usual meeting place.”

Mouthbot gave the ‘what is up’ an odd, joking tone, and Tejal shrugged.

“Ellipse wants to hear about the fold generator.”

Immediately, Focci brightened. A slight green blush rose to his cheeks, and he dove to wrap Ellipse in a hug. “Oh! I was waiting for you to ask! Where should we start?”

Fruitlessly, Ellipse picked at the seal-smooth skin squeezing her torso. “Uh… tell me how it works, I guess?”

So the boys told her. Tejal explained in a flurry of arm movements and waving tools that the fold was essential a place where two bits of space-time that normally did not meet were forced together. There was some theory of relativity that flew over Ellipse’s head, something about all of time and space existing at once, but Tejal pinched together two bits of his jacket, causing a fold in the fabric, and Ellipse figured that was all she needed to know about that.

Focci handed her the current prototype and a flashlight and told her to peer inside, and so she did. At the back of the tiny tube was a ring, and at the front was a little metal box that apparently sent and recieved electromagnetic signals.

“Basically,” Tejal said, “this is a very small-scale version of how every time the big folds open, the station will send data packages through to the other side.”

Ellipse looked up from the little tube and frowned. “But was there not some issue with making a tiny generator? It takes more energy to keep the fold open?”

“That is where it gets interesting,” Focci said, grinning. He took back the prototype and looked it over, snout wrinkling in fondness.

Tejal held up one hand and made a circle, and then snatched a toothpick from the air. “Imagine this is a fold,” he said, gesturing at the circle, “one of the big ones that ships go through. It has to stay open continuously over the time that ships are passing through.” He poked the toothpick through the circle, and then broke it in half. “If the fold isn’t open continuously, the ships would be cut open by the fabric of the universe snapping back into place.”

“Okay,” Ellipse said. She did not quite see where this was going. “But how would a fold even exist if it was not open continuously?”

“They flicker naturally,” Focci explained. “Opening the fold is not where the energy goes. Most of the energy use is for keeping the fold open. But you can open one, let it close, and then open another one, and do that very quickly, so you have a fold that flickers, and the circuit does not have to turn on and off to work.”

Squinting, Ellipse glanced between the boys and shook her head slowly. “But then how do you send anything through it?”

“You can get a bit of light through each moment that the fold is open,” Tejal answered. He held up the circle hand again and made a blinking motion with his other hand. “And thus, you can send a signal.”

“I feel like the data in the signal would get cut up by the flicker though?”

Mouthbot translated, and Focci jumped in with a great swing of his tail. “Oh! But you can program the computer or phone or whatever to package the signal and send it only when the fold is open, and then the recieving end can patch the signal back up. After all, the rate of flickering is constant, as long as the voltage and the size of the fold are the same.”

Oh. Ellipse blinked, surprised that the boys could actually explain their machine well enough for her to get it. And then she tilted her head. “How big exactly are the folds you generate in these little machines?”

Focci looked to Tejal, because the earthling took care of hardware questions, and Tejal had to think for a moment. He drifted up slightly, chin cupped in one hand, and Ellipse wondered for a moment if his hair was long enough to be braided.

“It’s about a millimeter in diameter. Just big enough for small radio waves to squeeze through.”

“You know, since everyone is going to associate the miniature fold generator with the Impending failure,” Ellipse mused, “maybe you should come up with a different name before you go to investors.”

“Like what?” Tejal asked, face scrunching. He looked somewhat offended by the suggestion.

Shrugging, Focci tapped Ellipse’s leg with his tail. “I would not know about investors.”

They needed something catchy that still sounded intelligent. A millimeter was not really that small, though compared to the kilometer-wide folds that ships travelled through, a millimeter was pretty tiny.

Well, go miniscule or go home, Ellipse figured. She held a finger up in the one-hundred-percent-ultra-cliched eureka pose and beamed. “Call it the pinpoint fold generator.”