Reading: "Cataclysmal" (A.Glass 2017)

The Professor points up at the sky, he tilts his head, turning to Ginette. “I suspect it has to do with the military.”

“Yes...” She also looks up at the sky as Tori walks into his house, she follows behind. The Professor closes the door behind her. “... phone and GPS jamming.”

“I hope level-heads prevail,” he replies

“Me too”

“Ok well, I was briefed, in a casual meeting whilst I was in New York, and I was told that you would be attending to see me here in Georgia...Presumably due to secrecy...Please take a seat,” Professor Tori says, sitting down as does Ginette.

“Yes, this is the new Cold War style now, GPS will sporadically go down over certain areas of Europe, even the US particularly the West Coast. Internet outages, email...It is better that we meet face to face,” she replies.

“Some tea?” The Professor says handing Ginette a cup.

“Thank you.”

“I remember the first Cold War, it feels the same, although back then it was tangible, the Berlin Wall, a divided Europe, the Russians retracting back into the Eastern bloc. The Cuban Missile crisis...Now with the Internet, digitized communication, cyberspace it's a new dimension. That in someways will eventually lead back to what it felt like the first time. So may I ask. What is all this about?”

Ginette sits back into the Professor's modest couch, a woman in her mid thirties, mid-length brown hair, an attractive woman with green eyes.

“Niles did show you the report?”

“Yes, an unusual Gamma Ray and Neutrino reading from the North and South Poles...He didn't elaborate nor allow me to take a copy of the paper. Still, there is chatter in the physics and astronomy community. It is understood that this is a military investigation. Detectors, non military, have followed up on the civilian received data. That these readings are not related to anything on Earth, as in man made.”

“That is correct.” Ginette replies.

“The assumptions are of an exploding Neutron star or...” Tori reaches down a picks up a cup of tea. “...the Milky-Way's super-massive black hole emitting a significantly large x-ray flare. Of course this still needs to be calculated and verified.”

“We have a plane awaiting for us at Vaziani Military Base in three hours. It will fly both us to L'Aquila Preturo airport, from there I will then take you to a classified research area.”

“The Neutrino detector in L'Aquila?”

“Very close to it...”

“I understand due to the tensions with Russia and America and also China...but as physicists, can we not talk rationally about the findings, without the politics?”

Ginette places her cup of tea down and exhales. “I know...I have so much respect for you, not just as a colleague but as a person that is admired greatly in the physics community. I, like others are under military jurisdiction now...I promise everything that we know will be disclosed to you at the L'Aquila facility. What I will say Ivane...We have detected something big, beyond anything we have seen or speculated to even exist.”

Professor Tori also puts down his tea, he looks to his right at his rear open kitchen door, he sees the olive tree, that sits within a small backyard which was planted five years ago, beneath it rests a small granite memorial. He turns and faces Ginette.

“As in a threat?”

___

Reading:  "Cataclysmal" (A.Glass 2017)