Bypass Gemini

Chapter 20

After a few minutes, Karter finished working over the data and began to tidy up his papers.

“Well, that’s that figured out. Ma, record the design and run simulations for viability to make sure I figured it out right. We’re done here. I guess you’ll be moving on now,” the inventor said, as though nothing had happened.

“Wh- What? We’re not done here! We have to address this!”

“No we don’t. All I wanted to do was figure out what the big deal was about that data, and I only wanted to do that because Agent what’s his name didn’t want me to, and screw him. My role in this is over,” Karter said, getting up and stretching.

“But, we just figured out that a corporation is essentially about to conquer the galaxy! Two whole star systems are going to get sucked into black holes!”

“Oh, they are not. God, I hate when people say stuff like that. Listen, black holes don’t just spontaneously create more gravity when they form. They are the same amount of mass, just higher density. In fact, the formation of a black hole is usually an explosive process, so the resulting singularity usually has LESS gravity than the original star.”

“… So the planets will be okay?”

“Oh, hell no. Those things are doomed. We’re probably talking about an extremely short lived pulsar or a supernova. Either way, loads of radiation spraying out in unhealthy doses. If the planets don’t get roasted, the gravitational profile of the star will definitely have changed, so there’s a good chance that the orbit will decay, in which case it WILL get sucked in, or else it will just get hurled into space. And even if none of that happens, the source of all power for the planet will be gone. So the population of all of those planets will die, but the odds of them getting sucked in are pretty slim,” he explained, “Though it would be pretty cool, because they’d just go whipping out the other side of the wormhole.”

“And you’re okay with that? You don’t feel any obligation to help those people?”

“What are we talking about, mobsters and miners? A couple hundred thousand of each? That’s not even one decent-sized city on a real planet. Earthquakes have wiped out more. No big loss. In my experience, most people are assholes. Getting rid of a half million of them will just raise the net quality of the universe.”

“Well what about VectorCorp? You’re just going to sit idle while a company, one that is willing to kill whole planets, seizes complete control over the whole galaxy?”

“Like it is going to make any difference. And quit talking about the ‘whole galaxy.’ We’re talking about the ten or fifteen percent we hang out in.”

“We’ve got to call someone! We’ve got to warn people!”

“And how are you going to do that? VectorCorp already does all of the communication in this area, and the only encryption strong enough to be fairly sure VC couldn’t read it would have to have already been set up with the receiving party, at least with a password. And even then, you’d have to send it from somewhere besides here, because they have almost certainly cut off communication in this region.”

Lex’s mouth opened and closed uselessly as he tried to put together a valid course of action.

“At any rate, I’m going to start going over what needs to be fixed. I want you the hell out of here as soon as Ma comes up with an exit window,” Karter said, marching off, his freshly replaced Solby in tow.

Lex sat down and stared at the floor.

“It would appear that this new information has not decreased your stress levels,” said Ma.