EDGE (45 page)

“What you’re seeing is an image focused on the center of the Milky Way, looking out towards Sagittarius.”

The mention of the Milky Way always reminded Hashiba of the summer and the festival of Tanabata, when Hikoboshi and Orihime were said to be reunited among the stars. The Milky Way was a stage for romanticism and dreams, a celestial corridor of light.

At the same time, our solar system was just a tiny portion of the Milky Way galaxy, which consisted of over 200 billion stars and was shaped like a saucer with a swelled center. The radius spanned 100,000 light-years, and the center was 15,000 light-years thick. At the edges, where the solar system was located, the galaxy was 5,000 light-years thick. A photograph of the center of the Milky Way from earth revealed the central bulge of the galaxy from a flat perspective, overlaying innumerable numbers of stars atop one another. It was because of this dense overlap that the galaxy was named the Milky Way—a veritable river of stars.

Isogai enlarged part of the image on the screen and played through a series, explaining that they had been taken over one-hour intervals. He played through fourteen images and then stopped.

“So, what do you think?”

The first to answer was Hosokawa. “It grows darker over time?” Hashiba sat back, impressed by his cameraman’s ability to pick up on detail. The pictures did seem to darken somehow. It was as though each successive image revealed a gradual fading of the light of the Milky Way.

Isogai nodded silently. He proceeded to enlarge the image even further and replayed the fourteen slides. This time, it was clear what he wanted them to see.

“The stars are disappearing,” Kato whispered in a flat tone.

One star had gone blank, then another, and a third. The phenomenon was plainly visible. That was why the images seemed to grow darker over time. Isogai closed the window and continued to explain.

“As you saw, stars have begun to disappear around the area at the center of the Milky Way known as the bulge, an area around 50,000 light-years away. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about that alone, stars are born and stars die. We’ve already observed and recorded the deaths of many stars as they burn out their own supplies of fuel. Our sun is a star, and in 5 billion years it too will burn out. The important difference here is the manner in which the stars are disappearing.

“There are essentially two ways for a star to die. Light stars, namely stars up to three times the size of our sun, first become red giants. They then become white dwarfs and die out slowly and quietly, without fanfare. Heavy stars, far larger than our sun, however, go supernova after becoming red giants, blazing out in a huge, showy explosion. We’ve been able to track such events from earth by observing the sudden disappearance of light that has, until that point, been constant in reaching us. In the case of a supernova, we would expect to detect the release of X-rays, gamma rays, and other forms of electromagnetic energy. We can, in other words, ascertain the mode of death through the use of radio telescopes. We can work out which of the two ways any given star met its demise.

“And here’s the problem. When the telescope in Hawaii attempted to record the electromagnetic emissions of the stars that had vanished, it didn’t find anything. Let me stress this: they were unable to find any emissions around the vanished stars. In other words, no one could hear the death cry of these stars.” Isogai looked as though he was listening for something and fell silent.

“So these stars died, but not in the way you would expect them to?”

“Exactly.”

“Then how?” Hashiba had to know the mechanism of the disappearance.

“All I can say is that they vanished. Quietly, suddenly. There’s no other way to explain it.”

The image on the computer had shown multiple stars disappearing as though the lights of the Milky Way were being switched off, one by one.
If more and more stars continued to vanish, if they all did so without any trace of electromagnetic emissions, then it was clear that something out of the ordinary was happening. If it was strange to Hashiba, he couldn’t begin to imagine how strange it must be for the professionals.

Disappearing stars …

The possibilities of a link to the show were obvious to everyone. They had been investigating the disappearances of people around the Itoikawa-Shizuoka Tectonic Line, here at the park, and had witnessed the sudden appearance of a huge crater. Now they were being told that the very stars that made up the Milky Way seemed to be vanishing as if they were being eroded away by the very darkness surrounding them. Could that be put to simple chance?

Hashiba couldn’t be sure what kind of causal relationship was in place here. The scale was completely different: localized disappearances here on earth, the same happening to stars tens of thousands of light-years across the galaxy. Was a change in the whole disturbing the parts, or were anomalies in a part influencing the whole? Hashiba suspected it was the former.

A heavy silence descended as everyone struggled under the weight of what Isogai was suggesting. Whole stars were disappearing, one by one; the Milky Way was going out. The atmosphere in the room grew strained, the air stagnant. Isogai was dangling his legs off the table he sat on, lost in thought. Quite suddenly, he looked up as though he had remembered something.

“Chris, Chris …” His voice was tender, as if calling out to a beloved pet. “How’s it going? Have you found anything?”

“Faine Goes and Jack Thorne have joined the group in Washington.”

“Faine and Jack? Are you sure? No mistakes?”

“Certain.”

Isogai nodded at Chris’ decisive reply and turned back to looking at his feet as they dangled in the air.

“The national observatory hasn’t been able to work out the reason for the disappearance of the stars. They don’t know the cause, meaning they don’t know how to deal with it. On the other hand, NASA seems to have gained some level of understanding of the phenomenon. That’s why they’ve started to take steps to address the problem—assuming it’s the type of problem that can be addressed, of course. They’ve gathered the best scientific minds they could find and brought them together in Washington. The problem here is the exact lineup of these minds.”

Isogai stopped and glanced meaningfully in Chris’ direction. Hashiba realized that Chris was trying to find out exactly who had been summoned to Washington.

“The team has been assembled under top-secret conditions. The issue itself is being treated in the same way. But we have some leads we can follow. We know that one of Chris’ friends, David Fontana, has been called to Washington. Apart from him, we also know that Dine Parker-Holmes and Landau have been called up. So, how do we work from this?

“When people are summoned in an emergency, there’s bound to be some strange bits in their movements. If a university professor is called, for example, he or she would have to cancel lectures, probably without warning. If the same person is then seen in Washington, we can be pretty sure this person was among those called on by the government. Scientists have always liked to network with each other. If nothing else, it helps us to keep our research rational and objective. Thanks to our current technology, there is a vast library of mail bouncing around the internet. Fortunately for us, Chris here is not only a brilliant physicist but also a genius hacker. He’s currently hacking into people’s mail accounts to try and get us information on the situation.

“If we follow up on the leads we have already, it’ll only be a matter of time before we get a pretty good idea of the general composition of the team. Once we know who’s there, it will be much easier for us to take a decent stab at figuring out what exactly the problem is.” Isogai picked a printout off the table and read out some lines that had been underlined in red ink. “David Fontana, Dine Parker-Holmes, Landau, Faine Goes, Jack Thorne … We’re already quite certain that these five people have been called to Washington. And we know that they all specialize in fields within particle physics and quantum gravity theory. Jack Thorne’s specialty is in general relativity; more specifically, he studies anything to do with black holes. His inclusion seems a bit out of place. There’s also Dine Parker-Holmes, who specializes in pure mathematics and mathematical physics. Why would they include a pure mathematician? The only reason we can think of is that there is a link between the disappearance of the stars and the changes we’ve seen in Pi and Riemann’s hypothesis. I don’t get a good feeling from this.”

Hashiba still found it difficult to get a sense of reality for the whole thing.

“Let’s say, for example,” Isogai resumed, “that a giant meteor was approaching the earth and that there was a real possibility of collision.
It’s a situation we’ve all seen in the movies. The U.S. President assumes the position of world leader and calls together an elite team of scientists to tackle the problem. The team would consist of specialists in rocket science, space exploration, nuclear physics, etc. If you add someone that can excavate oil, then you know which movie.” Isogai chuckled to himself. “Seriously though, if you looked at the composition of that team you’d be pretty sure that the crisis we faced was a giant meteorite collision.”

Hashiba understood what Isogai was trying to say. If anything, it seemed like he was now trying too hard to get his message across in simple terms. “So can you tell from the roster so far what NASA is trying to keep a tight lid on?”

Isogai wrinkled his nose as though he were about to sneeze. His eyes darted left and right, evasive, but he met Hashiba’s gaze for a brief moment. The hesitation he saw was enough for Hashiba to realize that the two scientists already had a good idea of what was going on. They just didn’t want to commit to anything until they found proof. No, that wasn’t it—he saw the tension in the two men, how Isogai’s hands trembled slightly. The goose bumps on their necks. It came to him in a flash: Chris was working so frantically because he was trying to find evidence to contradict the truth of whatever conclusion they had reached. As though to confirm Hashiba’s fears, Chris let out a cry.

“Shit. Jeff Adams has canceled a lecture at the Max Planck Institute. It was supposed to be on quantum cosmology.”

“Jeffrey too?” Isogai jumped off the table and rushed across to Chris’ side, leaning forward to read the screen. Impatient to learn more, Hashiba and the others followed and gathered around the two of them, craning to get a look at the computer.

“It’s basically unheard of for someone as stubbornly passionate about his research as Jeffrey to cancel a lecture. Especially if his talk was scheduled at the Max Planck Institute.” Isogai nodded his head, seconding Chris’ alarm.

Chris continued to type at a ridiculous pace. “It looks like he went to Frankfurt after canceling the lecture. He flew direct to Washington from there.”

“To Frankfurt, then Washington.”

“What kind of research does he do?” Hashiba cut in.

“He’s young and talented, only in his mid-thirties but already highly respected. His niche is Loop Quantum Gravity.” Isogai continued talking, but more to himself. “So that means his research is somehow
related too … It must be, otherwise he would have told Washington where to go. There would have to be something in it for him, something he was hugely passionate about. Maybe something that could potentially confirm a theory of his …” Isogai seemed to be leading up to something. He turned to his lover. “Chris, didn’t Jeff present two papers in a row over the last couple of years?”

“I was just thinking the same. If I remember correctly, he published his research in
Physical Review D
.”

“Can you find out the titles?”

Chris was already searching for the publications and in a few moments pulled up a page that had two English titles. Hashiba leant forward to read them and saw that they had two words in common:

“Phase Transition.”

Both papers contained the term so they must have shared a common theme. Hashiba had no idea what the words meant in this context, but he had a sense that they would be key in working out the pieces of the puzzle.

Chris pulled up another couple of pages, this time from a different scientific journal, the
Physical Review Letters
. Isogai explained that the journal published summaries of new papers. The hope was that Jeffrey’s research would be available here in digest format. Having pulled up the content of the papers, Chris stopped typing and took his glasses off. He leant forward and made to read the small text on the screen. As though forcing himself to concentrate, he blinked rapidly for the thirty seconds it took him to read the document. All the while, a look of astonishment crept across his features. Isogai stood next to him, his face pale and tilted to one side. Color drained away from his face as he absorbed the content.

Finally, Chris closed his eyes. He sat back and clasped his hands together as though in prayer. Then he pulled Isogai closer and buried his head against the other man’s chest. His shoulders were trembling; after a while it became evident that he was crying. The sound of his sobbing filled the room. Kato and Hosokawa looked somehow offended by the sight of a grown man crying. Kagayama sat staring at his hands. The two scientists must have simultaneously come to the same conclusion, their two minds working as one.

Hashiba considered what he already knew: the mysterious disappearances of both people and matter near tectonic fault lines on days when high sunspot activity had been recorded. Astonishingly, the same phenomenon seemed to be eroding the stars of the Milky Way.
Irregularities had appeared in the fields of physics and mathematics. And now Isogai and Chris may have succeeded in pinning down the cause of all of this.

“It’s some alien race attacking us with some unknown weapon, I tell you,” Kagayama blurted out yet another UFO theory. He sounded feverish.

Hashiba was about to respond but Isogai beat him to the punch. “Enough of that. UFOs and aliens don’t exist; they’re just figments of our imagination. However, we might end up wishing that Kagayama was right. Compared to what we’re facing, an alien invasion or meteor collision would be nothing. It’s hard to explain the potential impact of what might happen to us, to the solar system—maybe to the whole universe. Right now, I wish it was just an alien invasion.” As he spoke, Isogai continued to comfort Chris, holding his left hand over his shoulders, stroking his hair with his right.