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Chapter two

LIGO was built as an observatory- Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, to be precise. Since the observation of the first gravitational waves in 2015, several other gravitational wave observatories had been built over the years. A notable one, known as eLISA, consisted of a team of satellites placed in orbit between Earth and Mars, whose sensitivity was unrivalled. It had aided in the detection of numerous black holes and other cold, dense astrophysical bodies, whose primary radiative emissions are gravitational.

LIGO, so it would seem, faded into the background of observatories, considering how it was essentially inferior compared to eLISA. And that wasn't to mention any Chinese observatories; ever since the start of what the popular media liked to call the 'Resource War', China had ceased sharing astrophysical data to the United States and their allies. Since the United States contracted China to construct eLISA, China had full rights to discriminate who the data went to.

The United States bit the hand that fed them, so to speak. Consequently, the US lost one of its most prized scientific possessions. The scientific community revolted on both sides of the proverbial fence, insisting that science should not have been interfered with through petty politics, though these flurries of outcry were eventually put to rest as the war raged on. Hate and nationalism were all that people needed, and with that, science and intellectualism as a whole reached a depressing flaccidity.

That was one of the reasons, Catherine admitted to herself, why she was so intent on getting the job at LIGO. She wanted to prove that she could do it- that an Augment could handle the challenge. The entrance examination was gruelling, by far the worst she had ever undertaken. And she had nought but a master's degree and her wits about her. Somehow, whether it was through sheer luck that she passed or her natural (or artificial?) neurological advantage to mathematics, it was official. She was a member of the LIGO team.

Over the next month she went through training, learning how to use the software which monitored the interferometer. It was a rather simple set up, really. How LIGO, or, for that matter, all contemporary gravitational wave observatories operated was a simple matter of laser optics and the principle of Lorentz covariance. Due to the latter, the speed of light was the same as measured in any reference frame. You could accelerate all the way to just under c and light would still be rushing away from you just as quickly, around 300,000 kilometres per second.

This, of course, necessitated that space and time compensate to maintain the speed of light in every frame of reference. If you were travelling at just under light speed, distance, relative to your reference frame, would compress, allowing light to keep its speed. Time would also dilate and run more slowly in said reference frame, keeping the laws of physics the exact same. However, since space and time had to distort and warp themselves to maintain the covariant laws of physics, light's path would become distorted and avoid travelling in straight lines.

That was critical for observing a gravitational disturbance. In the case of the Advanced LIGO, in Washington where Catherine worked, two laser beams were projected off of a series of hypersensitive mirrors in a tunnel ten kilometres long. Since gravitational waves were simply energetic distortions of spacetime, they, by their very nature, distorted space and time. Owing to Lorentz covariance, they would bend light as they passed through a laser beam, whose angular frequency distortion could be recorded with sophisticated photon detectors. Running that distortion of light back into the geodesic equations of general relativity, one could know exactly what sort of gravitational disturbance had passed through: Its magnitude, phase, frequency and, if the detectors were sensitive enough (which LIGO's were), polarisation and even direction of origin, up to a certain limit of uncertainty, of course.

The reason that Catherine was so astute at analysing gravitational waves was because of her implanted ability to deconstruct signals and patterns into their simplest components. Normally, her engineered nature bothered and vexed her greatly, but in this regard, she compared herself to the great mathematician Fourier, which eased her mind to some small degree.

Being a signal analyst, her job was to monitor the interferometers for any variance in phase, frequency and various other properties. Because of the extreme sensitivity of the equipment, it was extraordinarily simple to give a false positive on the readout. An earthquake in Japan, a car accident in Seattle, even a cat walking next to the exterior tunnel of the interferometer- all of those could introduce contaminating vibrations into the laser beam, giving false positives for the detection of a gravitational wave.

True waves, however, are periodic phenomena- they have regular properties which repeat themselves, like a pendulum that swings to and fro regularly. If a signal had no periodicity, then it was considered false- but ruling out each little vibration was an incredibly tedious job, and the computers were not always correct with identifying patterns. It required an organic touch, someone to see and feel the patterns, and algorithms simply wouldn't fit.

And that is exactly where Catherine came in. Her ability to deconstruct and see patterns in even the most discombobulated of data streams was unmatched. She could rule out a signal in mere seconds, whereas a computer and triplicate of scientists could take several minutes to an hour for each signal. Within that first month of training, she quickly learned how to differentiate the fallacious signals from the genuine ones.

When there was a periodicity in a data stream, she didn't merely see it; she felt it, as though it were a sixth sense. She felt the same thing when she was performing a calculation in her head: She didn't necessarily 'see' the numbers, per se, but she felt them in her brain. Her favourite number, for example, was eight; for reasons unknown, she associated the number eight, perhaps because of its curvy leminescate appearance, with a shy, feminine intelligence.

Was it bad that the only thing with which she could feel any commonality were numbers?

***

She always felt so distinctly alien around people. Five weeks after her initial conversation with Professor Weir, after all training had been completed and passed with exemplary mastery, she came back to that fateful office. She was rather surprised at the informality of the office- or, at least, what she deemed to be informality. Business casual clothing was required, but their definition of 'business casual' seemed to be on the more liberal side; a more likely explanation would be that no one really cared.

In Washington, this time of year, the incessant rain gave way to incessant sleet, blanketing the sky in the stuff. While it was nothing compared to, say, Alaska, darkness and the associated seasonal depression still plagued the state. Ever since the 2050s, when the polar ice caps were nearly two-thirds depleted and the weather became noticeably more unpredictable, Washington had been receiving rain and sleet of worse and worse quality in this time of year. Seattle had the highest suicide rates per capita in the United States, a 'record' they had kept for nearly twenty years now.

She wore a black trench coat with black 'busijamas'- popular trousers which resembled business slacks but were stitched with a NASA derivative fabric, which kept in body heat and were, for all intents and purposes, ostentatious pyjama pants. Though unpopular in tropical places like Florida or Georgia, they were quite popular in the frigid, wet place she called home: Washington.

The black and white colour combination matched well, she observed, with her blue merle fur, and they complimented one another quite nicely. She had a short, playful bob of silver hair atop her head, running down to her jaw, not quite wavy and not quite straight either, and her black ears poked out the top smugly. She wore a custom-made pair of dress heels, since the human-made ones did not fit, and she could not wear dress flats because she was digitigrade.

When the elevator doors parted and she stepped through, no one seemed to notice. Good; she didn't need any more human attention. She had already gotten more than enough strange looks in town when she went shopping for groceries without an owner. A few places turned down her business, actually, primarily locally-owned mom-and-pop establishments, placing 'HUMANS ONLY' signs in their businesses immediately afterwards. Luckily, Professor Weir cared little for such trivialities, and was very pleased to have her work for him. Suddenly, she heard Scott Kean- the employee from across the Professor's office- scoff, and in that instant she knew she had been spotted.

“Right on schedule, eh, Fido?" he teased. “Good job!" He had obviously seen the work schedule; he knew exactly when she would arrive. Through the hole she cut into her trench coat, her tail sagged and hung lifelessly between her legs.

“Hello, Scott," she said in a slightly deflated tone, suppressing her instincts and submitting to him like a good little doggy, just like how her trainers indoctrinated her. “How are you today?"

Your sole purpose is to please the master, she remembered them saying. The master is always right. You are a dog. You are beneath. You are an 'it.'

“Me?" he laughed sarcastically. “Oh, me- I'm great! I remember the good old days, when people did people things and animals did animal things. I remember when the U.S. of A. still meant something. I remember when China wasn't shoving nuclear ICBMs right up our asses. And I most definitely remember when NASA still gave a shit about who they hire for the Advanced LIGO programme. So go ahead and sniff someone else's asshole, will ya, Fido? Mine just smells like nuclear-grade plutonium and egg rolls, with a nice little hint of Chinese duck sauce."

A few of his co-workers looked up at him with their eyes wide and a shocked but nevertheless happy smile on their faces, like when the bully lashes out a brutal insult against the scrawny kid in class. And what she did is exactly what the stereotype of the scrawny kid does. She mashed her tail between her legs and padded across the office to what the staff liked to call the G-Station. She navigated past a few hallways, watching all the people either clustered into cubicles or discussing things in conference rooms.

Seeing that made her feel somewhat depressed. It was 2102, and she remembered the celebrations that happened those two long years ago. Everyone on Earth, seemingly, was rejoicing that humanity had ventured into the next century 'unharmed.' Both of the superpowers held immense celebrations and, even if temporarily, ceased their hostilities towards one another and their proxy partners. It reminded her of the tomes of the First and Second World Wars she read when she was much younger. British, French and German troops, during Christmas Day and New Year's Day, would occasionally wave a white flag and rise out of the trenches, whereupon they would celebrate with each other, play sports, and eat and drink with one another. And on the next day, they would go back to their trenches and resume firing at one another.

Now everyone had seemingly forgotten those times. They simply sat dejectedly in their offices, performing the same tasks again and again and again, incessantly. When the war really started taking hold a decade ago, she noticed that everyone seemed… depressed, and paralysed by fear, too frightened and too anxious to do anything out of the ordinary. She wondered if there was more to being human than that.

Catherine arrived at a sealed, metallic elevator door. Off to the right of the door lay an ocular scanner, and below that lay a fingerprint scanner. Such was the security of these days; she could have been a Chinese spy, for all anyone could have known, and they had to be certain of her identity. Necessity was the mother of invention, she reminded herself, trying to remain in a positive mood.

Her muzzle was too large to fit in the tight space between her eye and the scanner. She attempted many times, going so far as to jam her muzzle into the rubber padding, and the piercing red of the laser finally activated and seared into her retina. Her perception of colour was somewhat dull normally, being less vivid than a normal human's, though with the laser beam diving into her rods and cones she could decipher it with crystal clarity.

Contemporaneously she placed a finger pad on the fingerprint scanner, and a green light came from beneath it, glowing through her fur like a verdant ghost. It seemed to pause halfway through, as did the laser burning in her eye, and then they both chimed in unison, a pleasant electronic hum. It reminded her of when she was a pup, and a similar humming signalled that it was time to eat. How different everything looked now, the facility compared to the real world. She honestly did not know which she preferred: The illusion of love she received at the facility, or the harsh truth of reality.

The metal doors slid open horizontally and she stepped into the elevator. As soon as she was about to punch in the button for the first floor, leading to the underground G-Station, Professor Weir rounded the corner of the far hallway. He waved to her and she returned the gesture, pulling her hand back away from the console and waiting for him to arrive.

“Hey, Catherine," he said in a friendly voice. He always spoke to her like a friend, and that served to make her at least a little happier than she was before. Her tail wagged slightly.

“Hello, Professor," she replied shyly in her Russian-accented voice.

“I'm sorry for holding you up. A man has to get his coffee, after all, right?" He held up his mug and took a happy swig from it. The cup had an image of a black hole on its surface, with an arrow pointing to it and the words Gravity sucks! written next to it. At least he had a sense of humour.

“It's no trouble, sir."

“Thank you. First floor, please." She hit the button and the doors sealed shut again. The sudden lurch and reduction in gravity told her they were accelerating downwards. They stood there awkwardly until Weir hit the stop button, and the sudden lurch returned and the gravity made her lean towards the floor slightly.

“Sir?" she asked. “Is there a problem?"

He looked down at the floor, deep in thought, with a hand going through his silver hair. “Catherine?"

“Sir?"

“Do you have a family? Any close friends?"

The question bored into her. She remembered her caretakers, but she could not remember their names. At the time, her parietal lobe wasn't developed enough to comprehend written or spoken language- beyond simple tones and body language, of course- so she could not have known in any case. But their faces were always etched in her mind. One of them, an older gentleman with a slight red complexion and grey hair; the other, an older woman of a smooth brown complexion, with silver hair and a short, little smile.

Then she remembered Samantha, a poodle Augment she had met a few years ago. They were inseparable, so it would seem, but quickly enough they had to part ways when Sam was sold to a wealthy family on Luna. Catherine liked to imagine that she looked down from the Moon's surface to try and see her, though she knew that would never happen.

You are an 'it.'

“Not really, sir," she sighed. “I- uh…" She wanted to say why she was without friends and family, but she couldn't get the words out. She had a feeling he already knew the answer, though.

“I'm sorry to hear that, Catherine. But- well, I suppose this will be easier now. What you see in this room- any people, equipment, data, documents- you are not to divulge anything. With anyone. Do I make myself clear?"

Her eyes widened and her tail went limp. “I- uh- yes, sir."

He took a long swig of his coffee and exhaled; her sensitive nose detected the flare of coffee and creamer, which, although she thought they tasted horrible, had quite a pleasant aroma. “Thank you. I'm sorry about all this, by the way. With the war and all, well, you can never be too careful."

“I understand, professor." He smiled and hit the button for the first floor again, and presently they lurched towards the ground and quickly arrived at the nadir of their journey. When the doors parted, it was as if she had stepped into a NORAD facility. A tremendous central monitor, filled with myriads of different boxes of text and strings of data, was on the far side opposite the elevator, and a ring of workstations circled around it. There was a circular railing above the workstations, where she could see men and women dressed like her- in 'business casual' clothing- scurrying across to other doors and rooms, carrying suitcases and personal computers with them.

“This is the LIGO monitoring station?" she asked with incredulity.

“The G-Station, yes," Weir replied.

“Why is there so much activity? This is only an observatory."

Weir sighed, trying to think of something to say. “We are on the Hanford Site, you know that. With the war going on, I imagine the government has reinvested in some of the old nuclear stations we have here." That seemed to make sense; the Hanford Site was still one of the most contaminated nuclear dumps in the United States. It would make sense that they try to harvest the old reactors from the Manhattan Project, since Earth was relatively bereft of plutonium.

But why were they at LIGO? Shouldn't they have been at one of the nuclear research facilities? Furthermore, fusion power had already been achieved for more than twenty years, making the old radioactive isotopes redundant for a bomb or even a power source… unless, that is, additional loss of life was desired via radiation poisoning; the thought made her shudder. Then again, after being purchased by NASA, LIGO received substantial upgrades to its equipment; perhaps a nuclear laboratory was one of them?

“It seems like that's all we ever talk about anymore," Catherine said. “The war, the war, the war. If we do something that doesn't directly aid in the war effort, we're scorned for it."

“I know. But we have to face the reality of things. Anyway, come, let's look at your station." She did as requested, and joined him at the workstation. She already knew all the controls; the training took care of that. The introduction to the other members of her team was more difficult.

Weir made the introduction, but it was her turn to speak and find a seat at the station. There are only two of them, she tried to reassure herself, come on.

“H- hi. I'm Catherine. You- um..." and she lost her train of thought. Her tail was mashed between her legs and she was shaking ever so slightly. Why was she getting so nervous over two people?

“Professor," Patricia Keyes said, wearing a blue dress with red, curly hair. “Are you serious? I thought we had a 'no animals allowed' policy." The man in the seat adjacent to her, who Weir identified as Isaac Day, simply snickered under his breath.

“We do," Weir said.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?"

“We're not in the military, Pat. Speak your mind."

“What is that thing doing here?"

The professor sighed and took another swig of his coffee, glaring at Patricia. “Look," he finally said, “I'm not too happy about it either, Keyes. But I'm not about to throw away a valuable asset, either. You'll see that her performance far exceeds her cost. Now get to work." He added that last part with a stern, fatherly tone, and glared at Keyes and Day before leaving the station and departing back up the elevator. Both of them begrudgingly sat back in their seats, adjusted their headphones around their ears and got back to work.

Catherine felt vulnerable and exposed, so she hurriedly grabbed the empty seat next to Day and plopped down into her workstation. In doing so, so very absentmindedly and focused on her social anxiety, she crushed her tail beneath her rump and it bent sharply. She yelped loudly, and at once all the typing around her stopped.

You are a dog.

She swivelled around, holding her tail furiously in her hands, nearly ready to dismember herself. The claws in her fingers extended outwards in anger. That was another odd feature her designers implanted her with: Black, retractable feline claws; she had no fingernails like humans possessed, and when the claws were retracted into her flesh, the surface was smooth and soft, very much like a cat. She never understood Sony's motivations, and they sure as hell weren't intent on disclosing all of their corporate agendas just to appease some little Augment… some little dog.

Day removed his headphones and glared at her. “Will you knock that shit off? I'm trying to listen." Her ears drooped pathetically and she turned away. Catherine glared angrily at her tail, as though she wanted to rip it off, and a large part of her did. Along with the fur, the ears, that inhuman face…

But she had a job to do. She fit the headphones to her ears- or tried to, at the very least. The only solution she could find was to adjust them to a rather uncomfortable tightness, upon which they flattened against her ears and secured them. Pulling a few knobs, she activated the computer display and a holographic screen appeared before her, and on it laid several strings and clusters of numbers and waveforms projected onto a three-dimensional graph with spherical coordinates.

Her job was to identify and listen to gravitational wave sources. As it would happen, gravitational wave astronomy had discovered hundreds of new black holes and neutron stars over the last century, whose electromagnetic emissions were far too weak to detect from Earth. It was one of the few things related to outer space which weren't part of the war effort.

Was that thought supposed to make her happy or sad? She couldn't really distinguish the two, at times; the distinction humans placed between specific emotions were fuzzy and indistinct, at best. It was like the distinction between the past, present and future, even if they all were bound by the uncertainty principle as string theory and Professor Weir suggested: A stubbornly persistent illusion, as Einstein liked to call it. Einstein believed in determinism and fate.

Was Einstein a happy man?

The console chirped in her headphones- a choppy, electronic chirp. Then another, higher in pitch but lower in phase angle. More soon flooded the channel, pitch and phase angle reaching a rhythmic correlation but in the decidedly wrong direction. True, she knew, something was oscillating the detector laser at a regular pace, which is what the computer was projecting on the screen, something which felt like a trigonometric oscillation, but she had never seen an oscillation of spacetime produce that sort of phase angle correlations. But the way it pinged at her, the way the data felt… an ovular distortion, she knew it, she felt it. A circle that was bent out of shape and sending out vibrations, that had to be it.

“I think we have something!" Day said to Keyes enthusiastically.

“No, we don't," Catherine replied, even though she knew his statement was projected to Keyes and definitely not to her.

“Did anyone ask you, dog?" Keyes said with a hint of irritation. No, they had not, but it was their job to communicate, like it or not.

“It's a…" she said, holding a hand to her muzzle, thinking, trying to put the feeling to words. “…truck, outside the exterior laser tunnel. I can feel it."

Patricia simply looked her way and gave a harsh laugh- a one-noted, angry bark. “Oh, bullshit. Sure, the correlation isn't perfect, but we've got to account for changes in energy density and phase angle." She snorted again.

“God, look at this, the FNG is telling me how a signal looks when it's been here for five seconds. A dog FNG, at that." Catherine opened the command prompt system and altered the feed of the central monitor in the room. The security feed of the exterior laser tunnel suddenly appeared. There was a faint snowfall occurring in the limited sunlight, but one could easily make out the distinct white concrete tunnel of one the LIGO's laser tunnels, extending well past the horizon of the frame considering its ten kilometre length. On the right of the tunnel lay a utility truck, moving slowly across the snowy ground.

“One of its tires is misbalanced," Catherine said, “and its sending vibrations into the ground near the laser tunnel. The laser is vibrating ever so slightly, so the computer spuriously detects it as a change in the local gravitational potential." She switched off the security feed, never taking her glare off of Keyes. “A false signal confirmation."

Isaac and Patricia glanced at each other incredulously. “You Augments," Day said bitterly, “You think you're so smart. I bet you're also faster and stronger than me. Too bad you don't consider the fact that you're augmented to all bloody hell."

“Not nearly. Instead, I only consider the idea that I shouldn't let the computer be smarter than I am." She flashed him a toothy grin and turned back to her console.

That was, for all intents and purposes, how the next two years went by.