The Loop: Just Add Water : a short story by: GF Willmetts
The first Loop appeared outside my city. A massive structure covering several acres and extending high into the sky. It contained a monorail system next to a pavement and series of doors. Many doors. It was only when it was viewed from above that it was actually a mobius strip making maximum use of its space above and below. Quite why no one fell off when upside down was put down to the technology that put it there in the first place. Across the world more of these loops appeared outside every city. The name ‘Loop’ stuck and was probably better than calling them a ‘Strip’. Sounded too much like Las Vegas.
Before there was a thought of protecting these Loops, a few climbed on and went through the doors. Someone else opened the doors but there was no one there. That immediately got both the military and local police involved and kept people away. No one knew what was happening. For all we know, they could have been disintegrated or caught in a spider-trap.
A week later, these same people came out of these doors. They had been off-planet and had been offered a week’s work. They hadn’t been paid in the planet’s currency but in something that could be used back here. In that case, a variety of jewels that was evaluated as worth several thousand. Not bad for a week’s work. They had learnt that each doorway led to a different planet and where they could always provide some work. Unemployment would be a thing of the past. A lot of it was physical labour but occasionally there were intellectual jobs. Apparently, the Loop could return you where you came from, sort out local languages and seemed miraculous. What could go wrong? It seemed even these other worlds had their own protocols for employment. About the only thing they couldn’t do is come here looking for jobs. They were just employers.
Hardly surprising that the military and police had to step away and let anyone interested use the Loop looking for work. Which was most people. Unemployment was rife until the Loop. The length of these jobs varied, as did the work they did. A lot of the time, when the various alien species asked what we were capable of, they found something along those lines. It seemed some alien race had decided there was an unemployment crisis and come up with this solution. Assuming they weren’t extinct, somewhere they were making a profit somehow.
So were we, as these people were getting untaxed earnings. Once taxed, this could be fed into the economy to benefit us all. The materials some of them returned also had potential as fuel and other things and many became self-made millionaires. Governments just needed to be in on the action and there were already existing rules for taxation.
Thing was we couldn’t understand why there weren’t other aliens looking for work. They couldn’t all have become employers. So we sent our own agents looking for work and build up a picture of what was going on. I mean, had they all became rich enough on earlier door jumps not to want to go to work elsewhere and could afford not to go. Would our own developing wealth allow us to do the same?
One of the aliens showed they couldn’t pass through the door anymore. That threw that idea on its head. They were literally physically stopped, even if they just wanted to be tourists. There was a worry how many times we could pass through before that happened to us. As someone pointed out, we could be left in a situation where extra-terrestrials could come to us for work. What could we offer them in terms of compatible money? We would also lose the ability to visit the cosmos. Maybe whoever designed these Loops got caught out by their own invention and trapped themselves. In the meantime, these Loops would appear on other planets and drag other races in. Like ourselves. We gave work to our travellers in asking for specific payment. Not to steal but trade for technology and anything advanced for the work they do.
Getting them to do questionnaires was a little more difficult until we offered tax concessions and warned they wouldn’t be given access if they lied. Even so, we crossed-checked where people went through the same door. That quickly moved to the next stage and getting literature and the means to translate where possible or view brought back. Far too much for just human teams to go through and AIs were employed to make the information digestible. For each alien race, we wanted to know when they first used the Loop because whoever was the first might well have been its creator. If they couldn’t remember they made it and got trapped, that would explain a lot. We might be able to stage an archaeological investigation and find the original blueprints. Returning the ability for these alien races to pass through the doorways themselves would open things up a lot. A wishful dream but we had to have some ambition.
Again, that was thrown on its head again when various alien species pointed out that their own Loops didn’t necessarily go to the same worlds our Loops went to. More like a network of connections that rarely crossed each other. More so when we found the few doors they had wouldn’t open for us. So much for using them to travel across the cosmos. Whoever the inventors were, they had set their own limitations so no species could dominate.
Profiling them would be hard but we drew some conclusions. They solved an unemployment situation across the worlds and allowed some commerce along the way. Magnanimous aliens. We always thought there might be alien invaders looking for real estate not to prevent wars. Certainly not ones who might be generous and fair. But how much wealth would we be allowed to gather before we wouldn’t be allowed out anymore?
It would also explain why we never saw generation spaceships or any other sort of alien species visiting our worlds. We knew the limitations of space travel. No one could beat the speed of light but these Loop creators had side-stepped that but weren’t prepared to share everything. It didn’t dispel the idea that they could be through any of the doors and hiding how inventive their ancestors had been.
We didn’t like to think we couldn’t solve the same problem. Some how they latched on to some scientific law that we hadn’t. Maybe we should keep researching and see what else was out there. A lot of that depended on what these Loops were composed of. The fact that once on it, you could follow the Mobius strip around and defied gravity by being upside down meant there was something we had missed when we defined gravitation had to mean something we had missed. Moreso, as it was right in front of us but having no effect on our world. No pulling the earth up or pushing down. These Loops just stood there defiant.
With science stalling on Earth, we sent our scientists out on work detail and see what they can discover on other worlds. Oddly, on many worlds it wasn’t what they had but what they were missing. As if some species had come in and ransacked particular ore. How they could get it all was a bit confused. Not as though the other alien species needed it. There was the assumption these ores were stolen but the way trade was done, it could easily have been that.
The scientists spent a lot of time pondering over these missing ores. Very specific ones with no idea on composition or quantities. None of the current alien species out there didn’t have anything like it in their chemistry books. The word ‘book’ is an operative word. They all had different mediums and the weeks various scientists spent there too what night classes they had to widen their knowledge. This belies the time. We’re talking a few years. Our most brilliant scientists. Even so, this was quantity science and the first thing was to find other planets and get similar quantities of the same ores, purify and blend but we still needed to find the missing ingredients beyond the metallic elements, let alone the science that would make it work. It’s like making a cake without knowing all the ingredients. The most we could figure out was whatever contained it assuming that was it without the power source, None of the isotopes made any sense. Working out the common materials could take forever. The scientists were still puzzled and having some of the materials just added to the confusion.
This time we also ensured archaeologists had a look in their downtime on other planet jobs. Mostly because we couldn’t believe the originators of the Loops to suddenly vanish. If things weren’t in any older species history what about legends? They would have to go back that far and be some sort of mythology on the subject. Surely some of the other species out there must be attempting what we’re trying to do and build the Loops themselves.
In that respect, we finally had some success when some of the archaeologists gained access to ancient writings and relics. One of which was a chemical formula which the scientists with some helpful translators made sense of and needed to add salt water which we had plenty of. A different sheet showed how to mix the various chemicals together and a moulding design. We thought it would take longer to make the mould until someone realised it was an extruder of a 3D design. The Mobius design was an accident of construction than deliberation but explained nothing of the gravity defying as the material in a somewhat liquidy state sped up into the air in a brief test.
Even so, the only way to see what would happen is to build a Loop and then see if the science would follow. An odd way to do things but the construction and comparison to a working model might be the only way to go. There was enough consensus from different planets to see this was the common thing but not why they stopped. No warning messages that it was wrong to do it.
So we put everything together in an open space equivalent to what one of the Loops was already taking and turned on. Unlike our own 3D modelling equipment, the moulder built another mould that contained doors on each side of a small road and then all the material went through. How the creators of our existing Loops added a monorail beat us. Don’t think of the Loop as being especially thick with material. If anything it was micro-thin. Not quite as thin as graphene but certainly not transparent. It went up into the air, pushing the material into the familiar Mobius strip. The smiles and back-slapping all round stopped when someone asked what would happen when the end came back to its source. The growth of the Loop was going too fast to stop.
We needn’t have worried as when it returned to earth, the loop faded away as it met itself. There was clearly a very fine gap there. A check to one of the original Loops revealed a similar thing. Somewhere the loop was appearing elsewhere and creating another Loop. Was this how the Loops appeared outside our cities. Were we doing this to another world or worlds and our doorways give access to them as well. There was still no idea how they were activated or how the Loops stayed liquidy enough to pour off to anywhere. We only assumed it was growing on other worlds not how it selected.
On common consensus was let it to what it wants and sort out any kind of logic later. It would have to stop when the ingredients ran out. With the thinness of the Loop…Loops, who knew how far it would go. We compared measurements of depth with the established Loop and noted it was twice as thick. Would that happen when it solidified or would it attract matter where it appeared? Mind you, if we didn’t know what would energise it to work, it would be just one big dumb object. Passing across to other worlds, it was a lot bigger than we ever imagined. Other questions came up. Would the Loops connect to other Loops or create a separate strand? Would we be able to use the doorways to where our Loops went? Was this the way the original creators went across the galaxy? Would they come to Earth to use this one or one of the other planets our own Loop would appear in? The exact science was still not known to us. Would we ever discover their identities?
A month later the ingredients ran out and water just pumped into the tank. We decided against putting in a monorail until we could figure out how to attach one. Its energy signature matched the original Loop so passing through to other planets must have powered it up. Opening a doorway would mean we could travel ourselves.
Still as employees but with a lot more job opportunities. All of us coming home after completing our contracts. Just that our benefactors couldn’t beat our curiosity. We needed to know more. In the meantime, time to go back to work.
end
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