Special thanks to Malady for his help in editing and ideas.

The Letters Chapter 7

When they got to the car, Greg asked, "Isn't there any other way to get power?”

She punched in the code for their next destination, the answered. “If I knew of any, I would’ve done it long ago.”

“There are lots of ways to get power using the technology you have," he told her.

“Like what, Mr. Mensa?” she asked sarcastically.

“Just remember. I'm a copy of you too.” He grinned at her.

Sigh… “What do you have in mind?” This time she asked nicer.

“How much power does it take open a wormhole?”

“None. It's already open. Wormholes exist on a quantum level. I just find the one I want and hold it open long enough to use it. A single wormhole only gets a negligible amount of power through it, but since they exist on a quantum level, there are millions – billions in a space the size of a postage stamp, all going to where I want.”

“So wormholes always exist, from and to every where?”

She nodded. “And every when too. “

“So let's find one to somewhere else.”

“And use someone else's star?” She looked angry at the suggestion.

“No," he said. “Let's not use a star. At least, not one that has a populated world around it.”

“How do we know?”

He grinned. “We use one being pulled into a black hole.”

“If it's being pulled into a black hole, what good is it to us?” Gracie asked.

“Think about it. It's being affected by incredibly powerful gravity, so for it, time is slowed down. It will take forever for it to cross the event horizon.”

“Right. So how do we fish plasma out of it?”

He sighed. “With a wormhole.”

“If I open a wormhole to a star in the gravitational well of a black hole, anything could happen.”

You said it exists anyway, so what harm is there?”

She sighed in frustration. “You're asking me to hold it open. That's a whole different thing.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, I’m not, and therein lies the problem.”

He though for a moment. “What if we pulled power from it in spurts? Don’t actually hold the wormhole open, but pull power for the duration of time that it’s naturally open?”

“That’s already happening.” She giggled for a moment, then said, “Scientists looked for the answer to dark matter for years. I figured it out. It’s the effect of matter being transferred through wormholes that makes it appear as though there’s more matter than should be in any given place.” She became serious again. “Energy comes through the wormholes too.”

“If energy comes through the wormholes naturally, then why can’t you obtain it, then?”

She looked down at her hands which were in her lap, fidgeting. “I tried, but the computer has to detect the source, then pull it in.” She looked out the windscreen as they flew and said, “I had to find the signature of a star for the computer to lock onto, then extract power after it held open the wormhole.”

“Okay. Obviously, there’s power that you can detect coming from all the wormholes naturally occurring. Why can’t you just indiscriminately pull that power for use?”

“I did. That was my first idea. Detecting where the energy is coming from uses up almost all of of it. There is a surplus, however. You get some!” She laughed darkly again. “It’s almost enough energy in a cubic mile in five hours to boil a quarter teaspoon of water.”

Greg sighed. It was obvious Grace had thought things through.

He thought for a moment, then said, “Okay. We know where a suitable star is. We’re using it right now.”

“But we can’t continue using it,” she said, shaking her head.

Greg nodded and said, “I realize that. We can’t continue using it, but we can start again.”

She cocked her head, looking at him like he was completely mad. “What are you…” She stopped, realising what he was suggesting.

“How do we know they won’t be using it in the same or a similar way, then?”

“We don’t, but at least it will give us a bit of time to find something else.”

“What if we can’t find a time that we can use it without bothering them?”

“I don’t think they’ll be living in orbit around a supernova. Do you?”

Slowly, she nodded, having to acknowledge that he had good idea.

Looking at the world around them as they flew, she knew there were billions of inhabitants, but gone were the days when it looked crowded. She was able to look at it through Greg’s eyes. The Greg she had been – yesterday? What she saw was a marvel, but at what cost?

There weren’t the cities below that were producing smog. In fact, the last of the smog had disappeared nearly fifty years before. She knew from driving over a city at night, light pollution was virtually gone as well.

When a car drove, there was at least ten miles between it and any other. In theory, the computers controlling a modern car could allow it to pass within millimetres of another with the occupants barely noticing, but it wasn’t necessary. People rarely left home anymore. There wasn’t any need.

The car started its decent and she glanced over at Gregory. She wasn’t sure precisely what he was thinking, but he seemed to have a good idea. She just hoped it could be carried out.

The light in the car suddenly changed, flashing to bright red, and then back to white. Back and forth several times!

Greg had been staring out the side window, but at the first sign of strangeness, he jerked around to face her.

“What’s that!?” he barked.

“I’m not sure,” she answered. Damn! She should have put some type of easy to access interface into this car. Her office had one, but the car didn’t!

“Any guesses?”

“Don’t be sarcastic, Greg,” she said as she called up a screen and began circumventing security.

Something felt strange. Like a movement where there shouldn’t be any. It was almost like a whisper at the edge of her consciousness, but it was…

She reached into her pocket and pulled the dead-man switch out. It was pulsating. Not with light, but one of the many sides was moving in and out of being, the surrounding sides rearranging to fill in the space.

She stared at it.

“What the…?” Greg gave the classic, interrupted swear.

They watched as the side vanished one more time, but didn’t reappear. The lights stopped flashing as well.

Gracie forced her eyes to move away from the device and look at Greg. She had made the thing, but had never expected it to do something like that.

“I’m assuming,” Greg said, deadpan, “that that isn’t s’posed to happen.”

“That’s a good assumption,” she answered.

“If you lost one of the sides, did you lose a line, or the ability to destroy a line?”

She glanced down at the deadman switch, and then back at Greg, almost panic striken.

“Turn around!” she ordered the car.