*Beginning of Red Channel Recording*
“Hello, hello, is this working?”
“It is indeed, doctor.”
“So all the leaders can hear me? Oh, you just heard that then. Uh…I’m sorry, Um, Hello. I’m sorry to take up your valuable time, I just, I know that you are doing important things but this is very important and we were told at school that if something like this ever came up to use the red box so I did that.”
“Thank you doctor, we are always delighted to hear from the scientific community. In fact, the war effort is at a bit of a critical period right now, so it is difficult to properly express how glad we were to receive a red channel request from a leading weapons researcher.”
“Oh, yes. Um, I’m not actually that. Or, rather, I am her, I mean, I’m Dr. Sarah Fitzpatrick, but this isn’t a weapons breakthrough I want to talk about. I don’t actually like to work on weapons.”
*Silence*
“Oh, I mean, I do. At work. But when I go home I don’t do more weapons work. I don’t think that what we are trying to do can really succeed? I mean, Ultrahuman powers defy physics, it doesn’t seem like devices that do not do so can be of any, well, I mean, I’m sure that you have your reasons for pressuring us so hard, but my curiosity has always gone in a different direction.”
“Us?”
“Um, sorry. I mean, I. I definitely disobeyed the rule that I am supposed to work on war stuff on my own. I am the only one at fault.”
“Dr. Fitzpatrick, what area of research is this red channel call regarding?”
“Oh, in my spare time I researched the Process. I know it is supposed to be a dead end, but I’ve never believ-”
“Please hold”
*Silence*
“Dr. Fitzpatrick, are you still here?”
“Oh, yes sir. I am right here. Am I in trouble? You sound more serious than the last voice.”
“A zipper is on its way to bring you and your loved ones into state security. Please explain as much as possible of your discovery into this channel immediately, in case the enemy strikes before security arrives.”
“Oh, oh. Um. Oh. Ok. Well, how much do you know about cargo cults, and the CC/P hypothesis? Sorry. I’ll explain like you don’t know. Ok, so people that undergo the Process, the successes, we are able to record them. Those ghastly Company Men try to stop it, but they don’t know about how clever we are about hiding sensing apparatus.”
*silence*
“I’ve hidden myself in the bathroom. That ought to be harder to find me in. If anyone is looking for me, which I don’t think they are. Anyway, the point is that we can do the Process just as well as the Company, but it never works unless they do it. There are a lot of explanations for this, but CC/P is the most widely believed.”
(muffled) “Mom, I need to go number 2!”
“The idea of CC/P, basically, is that we are like the natives with the cargo cult, merely aping a signal. But no matter how well we make our runways, nobody has sent a plane. You see? No matter how well we prepare our subjects to receive an Ultrahuman ability, the problem is that no one has sent any. The Company is somehow sending the abilities, and the Process merely guides them in.”
(muffled) “Go downstairs honey, Mommy is busy!”
“This has all been gone over for decades. No one can detect this signal, or gift, in transit. One working theory is that it propagates along the same physics defying continuum as the gifts themselves. A subproblem of this space, the one that my team came up with the discovery in, was the Timing Problem.”
*flushing noise*
“I came up with the measurement that led to the Timing Problem, must have been a decade ago. Or less, or maybe more. You can look it up. Anyway, I basically put a pin in people who were being Processed. It was more complicated than that, but not much more. The ones that got enhanced durability ejected the pin. So I could tell the exact moment that they became Ultrahuman.”
*running water over the following*
“The Company Men perform the procedure in exactly the same manner, every time. It follows, then that the effect would show up after exactly the same duration, ever time. But it didn’t. It followed a seemingly random timing, and I became obsessed with trying to work out what was causing this delay, and why it varied between subjects.”
*comband notification beeping*
“I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but I finally stole some time on SPARTACUS, and it came up with the connection right away. I hope you can forg-, sorry, I know I am supposed to just say this right out.”
*throat clearing*
“The time from the completion of the Process to the onset of Ultrahuman durability varies in exact and direct proportion to the distance between the subject and a point in the center of the fissure on the moon. It is highly likely that the ‘transmitter’, of Ultrahuman gifts, is a machine located on the moon.”
*indeterminate thumping noise, child shouting*
“It sounds like your security personnel are here. I guess we don’t need to use this silly dramatic box anymore. I’ll be filing a full report very soon.”
*End of Red Channel Recording*