Dark Constellations

By Joseph O’Connor

 ‘You’re familiar with dark constellations?’ John shot the question over his shoulder as we approached the heavy, blue door at the end of the corridor.

            ‘Did them at Harvard,’ I said. ‘The very latest stuff, and most of the research came from here.’

            ‘We don’t release the latest stuff to universities. You’re at least two years out of date. Today is when you get up to date.’

            At last. This shit was why I joined NASA; although to be fair, they only let me in after a series of tests that made my brain hurt. And that doesn’t happen very often. Now after only eighteen months, I was being promoted and John was going to explain my new job. I knew it was connected to The Euclid Dark Matter Probe, or DAMP as it was known to its friends, which had been launched five years ago and the readings were monitored here. My degree in astrophysics was built on those findings. This was the coolest possible job I could ever do.

           John pressed three fingers onto the keypad and looked up for the obligatory retinal scan. He keyed in a seven-digit code and turned to face me. ‘Put all five fingers of your left hand on this pad,’ He pointed down.

            I did as I was told. ‘Ouch!’ I withdrew my hand quickly. ‘It took a chunk out of my finger’

            ‘Yeah,’ that’s for the DNA analysis, just in case someone cuts off your fingers and gouges out your eyes to gain admission. If they do, you can spit on the pad, and you’ll still be able get in…if you’re still alive, that is.’

            I said nothing. John was Australian and I was never sure when he was joking. The door slid open with a metallic whisper.

            John ushered me in, and the door closed with a hiss behind us. There was no door handle on the inside either. I looked around; the room was big and rather comfortable. There was a small computer terminal on the table, with a very large screen set into the wall above it. A comfortable bed nestled in one corner with a door leading off to an ensuite bathroom. A sofa, chairs, wardrobe, fridge, microwave, and bookshelves were scattered tastefully round: all life’s amenities for a discerning minimalist. The colour scheme was muted blues and greys, very tasteful. The vast screen dominated the room, a supersize example of a suburban home theatre. No corner was hidden from its blank, black gaze.

            ‘This looks like a cross between a gamer’s dream apartment and a five-star nuclear bunker,’ I said.

            ‘Oh, more than that, I’ll give you a full tour once we get the important stuff out the way. You’ll be spending a lot of time here,’ said John responding to my unspoken question. ‘You’ll have some social life, but not a lot. You’ve seen and signed the heavy-duty documents; you’ll be working here for at least the next six months. After that, we’ll review. Sit down.’

            I sat. John hit several computer keys and the screen sprang to life.

            ‘Summarise what you know about dark constellations in thirty seconds for me.’

            This I could do.

            ‘Dark Constellations are a click bait name for patterns of dark matter. We’ve been able to map patterns of dark matter in the universe with DAMP over the last couple of years and some quantum clowns in the media started giving them names like our visible constellations. There’s the Helix, the Drone, the Big Mac etc. Of course, it’s just our brain imposing its hunger for meaning on a random Universe. There are even dark astrologers and dark horoscopes.’ I snorted. 

            ‘Carry on,’ said John.

            ‘Dark constellations are a pattern of a pattern. They’re constructs made of local accumulations of dark matter, and black holes which are entangled with it. Dark matter is something that must exist to explain how matter exists. It’s like looking in a mirror and trying to discover the reality of the reflection. The dark constellations are the furniture you see through the looking glass.’ I glanced at John, I was proud of my literary metaphor, but he didn’t seem impressed.

            ‘Don’t get poetic; tell me what you know.’

            ‘OK. Dark matter makes up about eighty per cent of the mass energy of the Universe. That’s five times more than our matter. We can’t detect it directly because it doesn’t absorb, reflect, or give out EM radiation. We know a few of the subatomic components but have never been able to isolate them for more than a millionth of a second. The best approach pioneered here, was scintillating targets, which can detect dark matter in the sub GeV range by the emission of photons when it strikes a target. Those we can detect. Do I pass?’ I peered at John. ‘My doctoral thesis, as I’m sure you know, was on the hypothetical interaction of dark matter with living tissue.’ I regretted that as soon as it came out of my mouth. Guys like John have seen it all, read it all and have all the T shirts. He probably had a dark matter particle named after him.   

           ‘Yeah, I read it. It was the main reason we recruited you.’ John sat down at the table and motioned me to join him. ‘Let me fill in the gaps and give your job description for the foreseeable future. Two years ago, we found a pattern of interactions in the dark matter of the black hole in the so-called Scissors dark constellation. It generated a stream of dark matter particles in a tight beam. This group, beam, pattern, whatever you like to call it, of particles has been detected on Earth, but not anywhere in surrounding space, which suggests it’s somehow aimed at us.’

            ‘A kind of black searchlight?’

            ‘Sort of. The phenomenon is monitored on the screen here in real time, and continuously analysed by us and our closest allies.’ He pointed to the screen that seemed to show a multicoloured space laser battle. Real and unreal particles collided and exploded in jagged green and blue and purple streaks. Underneath them, the math scrolled down remorselessly, safely insulated from the chromatic chaos in its separate screen section. It was beautiful.

           ‘Back door channels to other less friendly countries suggest they have detected and are also analysing the signal. We haven’t been able to figure out how it works, and certainly not what it means, but we can make some educated guesses based on what we know.’

            ‘This is incredible,’ I rubbed my eyes. ‘There’re several Nobel prizes here, and a fundamental breakthrough in quantum physics if we can disentangle this. What’s our best guess to date?’

            ‘It’s a target designation.’

            ‘What…do you mean?’

            ‘We’re being painted as a target. You know how aircraft will direct a radar beam towards an enemy to track location and movement so it can be accurately targeted and destroyed? That’s what I mean. Here’s a cruder explanation. This signal is like the red dot that appears on your head when an unknown sniper has you bang in their laser sights.’

            I stared at him, until my mouth caught up with my brain. ‘Shit. Sorry. Are you sure?’

            ‘We aren’t sure of anything, but we must act on the possibility. That’s where you come in.’ John pointed to the screen. ‘You’re the designated watcher. Your job is to familiarise, analyse and collate the signal data as it comes in and to alert us at once if the pattern changes.’

            ‘How?’

            ‘With this.’ John pointed to a thin metallic bracelet on the table. ‘You’ll wear this at all times. Eat, sleep, and fuck with it on. If you take it off, agents will be all over you in three seconds flat. You have the day shift. Someone you’ll never meet covers the night shift in another room. You tell no one what you do. This job does not go on your resumé. If you are outside and this bracelet vibrates, you come immediately to this room and wait for your orders. If you detect a pattern change when you are here, you will press this button under the desk three times in a pattern short, short, long. Then pick up the phone and wait for your orders.’

            ‘What does the button do?’

            ‘It alerts me, the White House, and a few other agencies you don’t need to know about. You will undergo a psych eval and an fMRI every fortnight.’

            ‘Can’t AI do this stuff? Why does it need a human?’

            ‘AI is online the whole time with you, but it’s not reliable. It reacts based on previously analysed patterns and we don’t have enough of those yet. Your results and the results of your predecessors are fed in as we go.’

            ‘What happened to my predecessors, as a matter of interest?’

            ‘Classified.’

            ‘What do I do when I finish my stint?’

            ‘Classified.’

            I looked at the screen. ‘Are we expecting the signal to change any time soon?’

            ‘We don’t know. The Scissors dark constellation is about five light years away, but we can’t rely on that. Dark matter is all around us. Maybe never. Maybe in a thousand years. Maybe in the next five seconds. These are questions you can help us answer.’

            ‘Do you think we’re in danger?’

            John sighed. ‘Look, if you wake up one morning and find there’s a red dot projected on your forehead, you don’t assume someone has mistaken you for a power point slide and carry on with your day as usual. You act. That’s what we’re doing.’

            He clapped me on the back, a little harder than was comfortable. ‘You were handpicked for this job. Don’t let me down. Make yourself at home here. You should be familiar with most of what this display shows, any questions will have to wait. I got another meeting now. I’ll be back in an hour and take you through the display in detail.’

            I stared at the screen. The door hissed shut behind him as he left. Shit. I’d forgotten to ask how to open it from the inside. I looked back at the screen. The display was incredible. Artists talk about the beauty of the world, trees flowers, sky. Well, each to his own. For me this was more beautiful than the most magnificent sunset. It was like opening a special window into everything and anything. A magic mirror. And…somewhere in the reflection is a sniper with a gun pointed at my head. He’s not behind me. He’s in the mirror. I hope he stays there. At least for six months.

© Joseph O’Connor 2024

joseph@lambent.com