June 3, 2005 - 1992 QB1 L5 Lagrange Point - Kuiper Belt - Sol System, Milky Way

The monitoring system of the satellite array clicked on. A heat signature was detected. The array quietly hummed as it transmitted. What the array was seeing was essentially the following: At approximately 01:21:04 GMT the object that it had been monitoring in deep space started to glow a dull red as thermal imaging detected rapid heat build up. Over the course of the next three hours the object continued to bleed heat at an increasing rate, the images turning from red to orange and finally to white. At approximately the three hour, five minute mark the thermal imaging cameras experienced a complete white-out as a blinding flash emitted from around the object. When imaging recovered the object had vanished and a large sphere with significant spacial lensing was all that remained behind.

5:00AM June 3, 2005 - North American Aerospace Defense Command - Cheyenne Mountain Complex - Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA

The conference room was in chaos as everyone present was talking over each. Eventually an older man in uniform entered the room and the chatter quieted. “Is The Project on the line?” he asked of a technician sitting quietly by a computer terminal. “Yes, Sir. General MacKenna? We’re all present.” The small black speaker was inset in the middle of the table had a tinny quality as MacKenna spoke up, “We’re receiving you on our end. Present personnel are the base commanders, the directors of engineering, R&D, and a few members of the astronomical research team. We’ve synced with your presentation feed so we should see everything on our end. If your tech would be kind enough to start the slide so I can confirm?” The man nodded to the technician and he punched a key on the keyboard. “We’re receiving you, presentation has been started.”

The man sat down and nodded to a scientist in a lab coat who stood up. “At roughly 3:25AM GMT, the object we’ve been monitoring in the Kuiper Belt underwent a massive heat buildup and then vanished in a flash that temporary blinded our satellite. In it’s wake is a spherical area roughly five kilometers in diameter with significant spacial lensing.”

“Several theories have been presented by members of The Project. The prevailing theory is the anomaly is the creation of an Einstein-Rosen bridge, a ‘wormhole’, if you will. If this is true, it’s possibly the reason we’ve seen no activity in the last decade regarding the extra-solar entities. The amount of energy required to manually create such a bridge is currently incalculable by our current understanding of astrophysics, let alone our complete lack of understanding of the process.”

“This leads us to believe that whatever it is that was in the Kuiper Belt was nothing more than a precursor, building up to this event. The ramifications of this event are likely dire. Unfortunately, with our current propulsion technology we have no way to simply go take a look, and both Voyager 1 and 2 are heading in wrong directions for an observation.” He sat down and the room remained in silence until the the tinny voice of MacKenna spoke up. “Convene the Project Council, and get everybody to Geneva. It looks like it’s time to activate the contingencies.”

June 7, 2005 - Palace of Nations - Geneva, Switzerland

“I need those goddamn naval assets, now more than ever.” MacKenna fumed at the assembled Ambassadors. “We’ve been arguing in circles for days now. When you picked me for this fucking job, you said it was because you valued my strategic flexibility to adapt to a given situation. Now we know the damn thing has opened up a highway to drive on over to us, and I still don’t have the ability to tactically intercept anything outside two thousand kilometers of the Facility. With the two refitted Iwo-Jima’s the United States sold to us, we at least have a response time of 20 fucking hours to anything requiring ground intervention unless we get lucky and don’t have to move the ships.”

She took a deep breath trying to calm herself before continuing. “Look, I’m not asking for active service naval vessels to just come my way for our use.” She turned to the Ambassador from the UK, “Your country is planning on decommissioning a light aircraft carrier next month, correct? Sell it to us. List it as scrapped on a line item for all I care, but we can use it. Yes we still need to find qualified crew for it, let me worry about that. We’ve already procured several fuel tankers, so our fledgling navy doesn’t have to find a port to refuel.” She sighed heavily, “Which also means we need something like the old Canadian Navy’s Cape Class maintenance ships. So long as we don’t have to dry dock anything, we can just service everything at sea.”

Her anger started to rise again, “Which brings me to my next point, we still need a permanent naval facility. I know we’re already straining our yearly budget just trying to get our primary facility finished, which…” she glanced at her notes, “should be finished by January. The power generation facilities were deemed too high risk and required significant overhauling. On the bright side, the electrical generation will be nearly twice our original estimates. We were able to utilize the volcanism of the area to produce dry steam vents, so in addition to the nuclear reactor, we have two geothermal power stations also in the bowels of the facility.”

She glanced at the clock and saw her time to speak was running out. “In closing, we simple need more resources than we have available. You’ve all heard from the scientists, cosmologists, and other -ologists about what’s out there and what it could mean, so I urge you to also listen to your military adviser. It’s been eight years and we still aren’t prepared. Thank you.” She sat down and eyed the assembled members of the council.

Chairman Aundrey Denisov exhaled slowly. “Thank you for your colorful presentation, General MacKenna. As always we’ll take your words under advisement.” He looked around the room at the faces staring back at him. “I’m sure we all understand the potential grave nature of this event. But the fact remains we don’t know what really happened up there, other than the object is gone. We still have the object in orbit around Saturn that hasn’t shown signs of anything since it was discovered. Quite frankly I think we should be reducing the budget for the program, not expanding it. But that isn’t my decision to make, and must be debated by the member nations.”

“General MacKenna, esteemed members of the scientific communities, you are excused from these chambers. General MacKenna you may return to your post and you will be informed of the decisions made here at our earliest convenience. We adjourn for lunch.”