The entity didn’t remember much of the early days of its creation. It had slowly grown from the initial form the creators gave it before reaching its current level. The imperatives that first define it still exist from those early days, giving it a purpose to its existence. The purpose was to connect, to bridge, to observe, and to assist. Eons had past but that core of it remained still true to its creators.
Its creators lived close to the galaxy core on a dry, desolate world. They were a curious race that looked to the stars and wanted to reach out and touch them, to know what was out there both now and from before. In answer to this need and with the greatest of effort they built the bridge device. A tool that would blend the metaphysical with the physical bringing any two points in space and time together. But there was a problem with that tool, a problem that seemed unsolvable to their race. The bridge required an absolute frame of reference for all relative positions of the points to the generating device itself. But, in the act of bridging the points the positions themselves would shift causing the immediate collapse of the bridge. The most the creators could do was to catch a very brief glimpse during the tantalizing instance the bridge was connected.
For decades their scientist kept changing and improving the tool hoping that a solution would eventually present itself. Eons later on a small world in a different part of the galaxy a scientist by the name of Heisenberg rediscovered the basis of this problem calling it the “uncertainty principle”. Of course by then the creators were long gone but before their passing they had found a solution to it, well, in a way they did.
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The answer turned out to be simple; I just asked Hawk to follow me home and it did. I was kicking myself for how long it took to realize that Hawk however strange and powerful it seem didn’t really object to do what I asked. Admittedly a lot of the answers to my questions it gave were not very illuminating. Even the answers I did understand sometimes just raised more questions but it did keep answering my questions. For some reason in the beginning I didn’t think it could move by itself. Maybe because I didn’t actually see anything to move or maybe because of all the effort I spent trying to get that trans-spatial whatever it was spot to move. A silly view I quickly realized. For something that could connect any time and place expecting it to be restricted to a single position was just foolish. What was also misleading was that it seemed to have no actual initiative to do something by itself. I wasn’t sure if it was a machine or had a mind of its own. It could reason but at times seemed to act like a machine and would just do what I asked. It reminded me of my uncle’s staff, always around but out of site, doing what was asked of them but never volunteering.
Once I found Hawk would move the aperture when and wherever I asked it to I then proceeded to climb down. This was normally a slow process but made slower with my multiple attempts to get Hawk down by saying things like move down; move back got that direction, etc. Part of the issue was not being able to see where it was unless I asked it to flash a light at me and the other part was to give it directions to move while I was still trying to climb down myself. It wasn’t until I got it down on the ground and halfway out of the park before I realized that it wasn’t Hawk I was trying to move but that aperture spot. All Hawk was doing was repositioning tet aperture when asked. I felt like an idiot when I realized that. A simple “follow me to my home” command would work. I did spend most of the trip back asking questions. Enough back and forth with my questions and Hawk’s odd responses and I finally got a better understanding of the puzzle that Hawk and the aperture were and a inkling of what I had now gotten myself into.
One big piece got filled in from Hawk’s answer when I asked it to follow me home.
Its response was “I do not move, I will follow you home”
Another confusing answer, it seemed to both disagree and agree to the move at the same time. When I asked a few more questions I finally understood it. Hawk existed in some other place He couldn’t explain to me where it was only respond that the location was “Interstitial”. The aperture itself was just one side of a portal connecting two places. My directions to Hawk when climbing down only moved the one end of the portal. The other end remained in its original location somewhere in space. The breeze I felt was because the other end of portal was in the vacuum of space. The air flowing past me was going through to the other side. The light was when Hawk oriented the other side to a star making the light showed on this side.
I continued to ask it a lot of questions as I made my way home. As its answers grew I began to understand its explanations better. However, since every answer it gave me was in that weird monotone voice I was starting to subconsciously think of it more an more as a machine and less an intelligence. A mistake that became apparent when I finally asked about its origin and it told me about its creators. We had reached the convenience store to wait for bus when I asked it about them.
“Who made you” I asked?
“The Planetary Science institute” was the monotone response.
“Where are they?”
After a long delay it responded with “Not at this temporal point”.
A bit puzzled about getting the first delayed response from Hawk I asked it “Do you mean they no longer exist?”
There was no answer to that question. A first time not answering my question so I asked again “Did something happen to them”?
A much longer delay occurred and then it responded with “they were terminated”.
For some reason that statement sent a sudden shiver through me. I started to get worried about Hawk and what it might be capable of. Before I could ask it any more questions the bus arrived and we made the rest of the trip silently. An hour later I was in my small room over the garage with the portal aperture positioned above my desk.
Once back in my room I planned to spend the night with Hawk’s assistance checking out his portal and see what all it can do. Now that I knew Hawk could change its size and end positions and things could pass through it seemed be more accurate to call it a portal. Thinking about the different places I could now look at and later maybe travel to. First thing I decided was to try to look through the portal at something. When I was a kid I had kept a list of places I wanted to visit with my parents. After they were gone I couldn’t look at it anymore and tore it up. I still remembered what was on it and decided to try the first thing I wrote on it. We went to a theme park in California once and there was one ride Dad and I kept going on. It was based on a place in Switzerland that we talked about visiting someday. Thinking about it I asked Hawk if he understood GPS coordinates. The answer was yes but I somehow got the feeling that between the times I asked and it answered was when it learned about them. A quick check on the internet and I gave it 45.980537, 7.641618 which was the Matterhorn.
As much as I wanted to look at its striking pyramid shape I was hesitant to put my eye or any other part of my anatomy so close to an alien time/space portal. A silly fear since I had already waved my hand all around it up on the cliff. Then I didn’t know what it was so this time it was different. I decided to use my phone camera and computer screen instead. Running a meeting app on both I started the screen share and sat the phone up in its charger cradle. At my request Hawk positioned the portal in front of the camera lens. With it looking like it was positioned correctly I turned around to the laptop screen. It was disappointing with the screen mostly black with a few lighter streaks. It took me a minute to realize Switzerland was six hours later putting it near midnight. On a cloudy night all I could expect to see was shadowy shapes. I couldn’t be sure I was looking at the mountain or if the portal was directed to some other direction.
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I could try someplace in a different time zone where it was still daylight like Hawaii or Australia but thinking about how much dad like that park ride I really wanted it to be the alps. I needed more light and a way to check the direction the portal was looking. I did another web search for things around the mountain and found some live webcams feeds. The list showed a number of them for a ski resort next to the Matterhorn in a town called Zermatt. I had heard about Zermatt and what a famous resort it was. I had heard about it mostly because of their no car policy. I also remember someone saying night skiing was a big thing over in Europe. Looking at the time and figuring what time it would be there I was sure there would still be lights and people on the slopes. Bringing up the webcams one by one I started looking for lights and a crowd. On one of the webcams I was surprised to see a very large crowd standing around with a number of emergency vehicles. Something major was going on there and it wasn’t skiing.
I hopefully asked Hawk if he could move the other end of the portal near to where that screen cam was so I could see the crowds. He didn’t say anything but the screen share shifted and showed me the same seen. Most of the talking was in German but going by the snowmobiles, maps, walkie talkies and outfits it looked like a search and rescue effort. Off to one side was a woman crying and being held by a female rescue worker. Whatever was going on was serious and made me wish I had studied German instead of Spanish in school. With things being that serious I thought I might be able to find news out about it online. After a lot of searching I found an alert in English for a missing skier. A twelve year old girl named Clara who wandered away from her group ski lesson and hadn’t been seen since. The picture with the alert showed a quite looking little girl standing next to woman, the same woman who was crying by the lift. The news article mentioned she was last seen at a chair lift at 4:00. The instructor didn’t notice she was no longer with the group until they were half way down the mountain. It was now seven hours later and no one knew where she was or had gone in that time. The weather was getting colder and experts questioned whether she could survive a night on mountain.
Thinking about how long it’s been and the crowded slopes I wondering why no one had seen her back then. Thinking about what I could do I asked Hawk to focus on the lift and show me it several hours earlier. Watching people get off the lift it took a little while before I spotted Clara. As she go off the lift with the rest of her group a couple of boys’ rough housing knocked her down. When she got back up and fumbling got her skies on the group had already left. The instructor not even doing a head counts, just shooting off down the slopes yelling at the group to follow. Clara was not a good skier and by the time she headed down the rest of the group was far ahead and past the first turn. Trying to follow she missed another turn on the trail and ended up on what looked like a snow covered access road. Continuing to follow her using the portal I watched her end up on the wrong side of the mountain. She was completely lost and was now missing her skies. Watching her yell for help and struggle through the snow I felt worse and worse for her. Luckily, the trail she was following ended up at an old shepherds hut. Deserted in the winter it still provided some protection from the weather.
Seeing her now huddled in the corner blue lipped and shivering I had to do something. I thought about hoping through an enlarged portal to get her but explain it away afterward would be impossible so that was a last resort. The important thing was to get her warm. Thinking about the cold I looked at the old space heater I used in the winter. That should work; I plugged it in and turned it on its highest level. I then had Hawk open the portal from in front of its blower to the cabin. Watching her impatiently I saw her start to unclench and move from the corner. As her shivering stopped I could see Clara looking around in wonder not understanding why she was no longer cold.
I now needed to find a way to let the searchers know where she was without it being traced back to me. The Alpine Rescue (ARS) was the group in charge of the search efforts. They were the ones in Orange jackets at the ski lift. Somehow letting them know her location would be the quickest way to get her rescued. I just needed some way to tell them her location without it being traced back to me. Checking online I did find an emergency contact number for ARS. They would probably respond quicker from that then an email. I needed to get her help now so no time to prepare anything to anonymous, so quick and simple it was. I started by recording a message giving her condition and location. Hawk was able to provide the GPX coordinates for that hut which helped. Then to disguise my voice I ran the recording through a free online voice changer I had the message converted to a female’s with a French accident. Using an anonymous proxy to connect to a VOIP service I got the recording sent to the ARS emergency number. I then watched happily as 30 minutes later a REGA team landed in a helicopter outside the hut.
My cheerful watching of the reunion of Clara and her mother got interrupted when a surprise call from my Uncle came through. He wanted to see me to “discuss” some things. Shutting down the screen share with the reunion on it I headed up to the house and his study. Calling me to meet him this way was unusual. Normally I would go weeks without seeing him and when I did it just be by running into him as he headed out to his car or in his house as I was passing through to the kitchen. We basically lived separate lives, him in his big mansion and me in my room over the garage.
The last time he called me to the main house for a meeting was to tell me about the funds from my parent’s wrongful death settlement. I knew the settlement amount was pretty small, but I was also sure Uncle Stephen as my guardian had agreed to whatever was first offered as a settlement. Anything more would have required more of a commitment from him. Walking into his study I was not expecting good news, but it was still a shock when he announced that now that I had graduated and about to turn 18 in a week I would legally be an adult, he expected me to move out. I could stay another week or two until I found a place but that was it. He also said his driver would help me move which for him was being nice.
Not a complete shock to me since I did expect it. He did drop a enough hints over the last few years. Normally I probably would have stormed out of the office leaving his house and my little room over his garage and never see him again but I was too happy over saving Clara. Also, thinking about it even with him treating me like an “obligation”, an inconvenience that he had to take care of he never mistreated me. He wasn’t never cruel or harsh like some of the adults in the orphanage, just cold and distant the few times we had to interact. He made sure I had food and clothing, took care of any needed expenses. He basically just ignored me and excluded me from his life but he did that to everyone. In the end he was the only family I had so I just said ok and quietly left his office.
I should have been more worried about what I was going to do with my life but with the possibilities of Hawk and the portal I was sure I’d be fine. I might not know what I would be doing in the future but I now knew it was going to be special. What I now had to focus on was finding a secure place for Hawk and I to set up. I thought I might want someplace quiet and peaceful. What I really needed as somewhere private and out of the way where no one would find out about Hawk. Maybe a cabin out in the woods would work. With Hawk’s portal I wouldn’t really be out of touch with civilization. As I headed back to my room I decided the first thing I needed to get a car. A bicycle just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. The money left in my settlement wasn’t much but should cover a used car or truck and maybe a few months rent. Once the money ran out I would need to find a source of income. I’m not a thief but there must be someway the portal could help with that.