Purssell - The OLeary Enigma

THE
OLEARY
ENIGMA

Bob Purssell

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

THE OLEARY ENIGMA

Copyright 2011 Bob Purssell

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4620-1501-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-1502-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-1503-0 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 07/12/2011

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Without my wifes steadfast support and critical review, I would not have written this novel. Thank you, my love, for your hard work and tolerance.

A thank you to the members of my writing group for reviewing and critiquing this work. Barbara Barker, Robert Desbiens, Samantha Do, Joanna Stone Herman, Allison Kohl, Morleen Novitt, and Sandra Vazquez your comments were most helpful.

To Laura Zinn Fromm, my writing instructor, thank you for the guidance and instructive analysis that helped to shape this work.

To Anne Barcelona, Krista Hill, and Laura McGinn for their assistance in editing the manuscript.

INTRODUCTION

My brother-in-law opened the sliding door to the barn. I followed him inside and then up a flight of stairs to what had been a hayloft. As I watched, he moved some boxes, exposing the one on the bottom. Still bent over, he looked up at me and said, I picked this up at an estate auction two weeks ago. At the end, they let people take stuff away that hadnt been sold. Stupid, huh?

I nodded, wishing I were somewhere else. But I wasnt. Once again, the traditional family get-together, held every Thanksgiving at my sisters place, had ensnared me. I didnt think much of her or her husband. He was a wheeler-dealer, and she was the wheeler-dealer ess . And, for them, Thanksgiving was a celebration of all their triumphs in expanding their wealth and their collection of possessions.

I figure, he explained, that since youre an engineer, youd know what all this means. When I nodded again, he removed a three-ring binder from the box and handed it to me. Read it. It looks important. We could make a fair penny if it is.

My sisters husband automatically characterized any of his schemeslegal, ethical, moral or otherwisethat resulted or could result in money flowing in his direction as making a fair penny.

Ill read it during the game, I replied, feigning enthusiasm.

Happy at the thought of increasing his prosperity on a holiday, my sisters husband led the way back to the house. Carrying the binder, I dutifully followed behind.

* * *

Following the tradition that allowed the women to complete preparations for our Thanksgiving dinner, I joined the other males in the living room. They were watching the first of the two nationally televised football games. At the beginning of the second period, fearing the dull game would put me to sleepas it so often had done in the pastI opened the three-ring binder and began reading the first document written on the letterhead of a middling defense contractor.

To: Ms. Alice Conklin

Director Special Research Projects (EM)

Advanced Research Projects Agency

From: Dr. Reginald Hoffman

Subject: Anomalous Signals Intercepted During Initial Test Phase of Igloo Warrant

Date: April 27, 2005

Enclosed is a partial decoding of a long intercept we processed on March 4, 2005. While most of the intercept remains un-deciphered, I have forwarded to you, under this cover, the portion of the transmission that Muriel Walensky, my assistant, and I were able to decipher. Considering its specific, potentially verifiable content and its most detailed predictions, we have kept the information separate from all other Igloo Warrant documentation. Although this document and the un-deciphered intercepts are currently unclassified, this situation should not continue. Therefore, I am asking for your guidance and instructions in this matter.

The intercept raises some questions. First, what is the source? Our measurements indicate the transmissions are emanating from a region near the star Arcturus. The source is definitely not terrestrial or satellite.

Second, since the transmission clearly references earthly events occurring decades in the future, how can the transmissions exist now? Here is our hypothesis: Igloo Warrant technology, in order to transmit information faster than the speed of light, effectively shifts the time of signal origination backward. Therefore, we surmise that people in the future, using a variant of the Igloo Warrant technology, transmitted the message we have deciphered. Somehowpossibly by reflecting off dark matterpart of that transmission bounced back to Earth. This of course raises all kinds of causality problems for which I do not have an answer.

In closing, I would like to emphasize that work on Igloo Warrant continues. Although we have gone over budget and are considerably behind schedule, I feel the results to dateparticularly this resultare most encouraging. I assure you that we intend to heed your advice and present a strong technical case for continued funding during Igloo Warrants Phase III review.

Signed Dr. Reginald Hoffman

Interested, intensely interested, I turned the page and read a series of memos between Dr. Hoffman and Ms. Conklin. The correspondence focused on DARPAs increasing exasperation with the management of the Igloo Warrant project. The last memo written on DARPA stationery was the kiss of death from Conklin. She was cancelling the funding for Igloo Warrant because the project had not met its scheduled milestones. None of the memos, except the first, mentioned transmissions, deciphered or otherwise, from the future.

* * *

Out of habitparanoid behavior can have its advantagesI looked around the living room. The men and their sons were still focusing on the game, in spite of its dullness. No one was paying me the slightest attention. Why should they? I was the geek/nerd. It would come as no surprise that I would read from a binder while they did the manly thing and watched football.

I leaned my head back so it rested on the couch and thought about what I had just read. Transmitting information faster than the speed of light: What would that mean? For one thing, it would change some deeply held scientific beliefs. I smiled at the thought of professors scrambling to explain how bedrock truths had now become examples of hidebound thinking. But then I focused on the practical. Transmitting information faster than the speed of light would make extraterrestrial communication across the cosmos possible. Able to surpass the speed of light, communication systems would have vastly expanded bandwidths. Superfast electronic devices, in theory, would be possible.

Getting back to the reality of the memos in the binder, I refocused. Igloo Warrant was dead. Alice Conklin, she of the bucks, had killed it. How does the line go? No bucks, no Buck Rogers.