EXCERPT FROM TRANSCRIPT: "All Things Considered", 
WOSU 89.7, 28 Jan 2013 16:05 


ALISHA CLARK, HOST: While the President works to stem unrest in 
the Middle East, NASA is talking with people from an entirely 
different world. Since Project Gateway went public last November, 
all eyes have been on the conversation going on through the Hartle 
Anomaly. This afternoon, NPR's Stephen Fleischer took a closer 
look. 


STEPHEN FLEISCHER, BYLINE: The mood in this antechamber to 
NASA's Gateway Contact Center is surprisingly ordinary, 
considering the literally out-of-this-world activities going on inside. 
Analytical equipment lies ready on the long countertops, but most of 
the lab's contingent is gathered around one of the laptops against 
the back wall. Dr. Andrea Tang types a few more words into the 
bare-bones terminal program, nodding and chuckling at the reply. 


TANG: Syrti says they're ready any time. David, are we done 
compiling? 


FLEISCHER: One of her assistants holds up a small metal tube. 
TANG: Great. Send that through decon, and let's suit up. 


FLEISCHER: Tang is the head of the Gateway Contact Center's 
Direct Hartle Exchange Team, the scientist in charge of sending 
packages back and forth through the Hartle Anomaly. She and her 
team stay in constant contact with their counterparts on the other 
side through a specialized telegraph line, but they've also 
exchanged thousands of packages since the project went public last 
November. 


TANG: When the anomaly first opened, all our communication was 
on paper, and we passed it through by hand. The terminal's faster 


for a lot of things, now that they've learned English and we speak 
Stola, but there's still great value in sending physical items. 


FLEISCHER: Full-sized books won't fit through the anomaly, but 
Tang's team has sent and received hundreds of thousands of rolled- 
up pages. They've traded photographs, maps, biological specimens, 
art objects, and many stranger things. Richard Goldstein, sociologist 
with Tang's team. 


GOLDSTEIN: Once, we opened a message tube and found 
something that looked just like a taquito. Fresh and hot, full of this 
spiced vegetable hash. (LAUGHTER) It looked delicious. I'd like to 
have tried it. 


FLEISCHER: The researchers on Hartle are enormously interested 
in Earth's culture, and vice versa. The teams have traded books on 
everything from theoretical math to pop culture. 


TANG: We have so, so much we can learn from each other. With 
what Hartle’s physicists have taught us about space travel, my 
colleagues at Johnson say we'll make Mars by 2020. In return, 
we've taught them about vaccines, and they're already halting a 
pandemic in its tracks. And if you've checked the Top 40 charts 
lately, you know what the cultural exchanges are doing for us both. 


(SOUNDBITE: "EISH MEKA EISH (LOVE FOR TODAY)", RIHANNA 
COVER) 


FLEISCHER: Not everyone is as excited as the exchange team, 
though. At a press conference Thursday, Indiana Senator Adam 
Wright urged caution. 


WRIGHT: I'm just saying, maybe we should be a little more careful. 
Maybe we should find out what they're really going to want from us, 
in the end, before we just give them everything. If we teach them 
about germs, are they going to cure cancer, or are they going to 
build bioweapons? 


FLEISCHER: Others are less concerned with what the Hartleites will 
do deliberately and more worried about the Anomaly itself. Dr. 
Turner Velasquez, professor of physics at the University of 


The Investor dreams of war. A most profitable 
venture. This explains the current demands. | 
don't know where they are being sent. The 
Investor prefers to keep me in the dark. I've 
become a cog in his machine and have grown 
dreadfully bored. This factory is bound to me! 
It grows too efficient, too perfect; | have no 
place in its future. 


Have | become obsolete? 


Suicide Note: Randolph T. Metzger, 
1915 


THIS WASNT [sic] WHAT | WAS PROMISED 


Addendum: On 05/14/1996, a blockage of bone and scrap metal 
was removed from several large pipes used throughout the complex. 
This removal caused the pipes to flood with water, resulting in the 
loss of eleven personnel. Following this incident, electrical lights 
were enabled throughout the complex (flickering and dim, 
suggestive of low power) and an aperture opened where the central 
elevator shaft had previously terminated, connecting to an additional 
floor. 


The fourth subterranean floor is a spherical chamber accessible via 
the central elevator shaft. Metal signs designate the floor as 
“Management 03/1200 - A : 586”. Contained within this floor are 200 
pillar-shaped machines attached to one another via copper wires, 
bronze pipes, and vacuum tubes. Each device houses a glass 
cylinder containing an unidentified green liquid and one preserved 
human brain. These brains are biologically alive but have suffered 
damage consistent with lobotomy. These devices are classified as 
SCP-748-3 and connect to a large and intricate apparatus at the 
northeastern section of the floor which has since been classified as 
SCP-748-4. 


SCP-748-4 is a 275 metric ton bio-mechanical machine related to 
the control and management of SCP-748. SCP-748-4's mechanical 
component is comparable to an analog computer (albeit one of 


California, Berkeley, urges caution. 


VELASQUEZ: According to absolutely everything we know about 
physics, the Hartle Anomaly should be impossible. A wormhole that 
size, unless it's at the bottom of a black hole, should require a truly 
enormous energy input to keep it open, and it should be releasing all 
kinds of exotic radiation. We have no idea how the Hartleites 
created the Anomaly, or how they're maintaining it, without either of 
those things happening. For all we know, it could be quietly 
destabilizing local space-time, or even hastening the heat-death of 
our universe. Whatever else we do, we need to make it our very top 
priority to learn how we can close the wormhole permanently. 


FLEISCHER: While Tang doesn't dismiss those concerns, she 
argues that her team is taking plenty of precautions. 


TANG: Our physicists are studying the Anomaly constantly and 
intensively. We run every exchange by the NSA officials working 
here with us. We have strict decontamination protocols in place. 
We've never sent anything that even looks like a weapons design. 
Besides, it's awfully hard to really hurt one another through such a 
tiny aperture. 


FLEISCHER: Back in the lab, the team scrubs up and climbs into 
bunny suits to enter the clean room surrounding the anomaly itself. It 
looks like nothing so much as a hole in the air, barely an inch wide, 
with cables running through it and disappearing. Glimpses of green 
walls are just visible on the other side. Tang picks up the sterilized 
message tube and carefully pokes one end through. 


TANG: [SPEAKING STOLA] 


FLEISCHER: She lets go, and the tube is pulled through the hole. A 
moment later, another one is pushed back towards her. The 
exchange is finished. 


Before leaving the lab, though, Tang kneels to look straight through 
the Anomaly. On the other side, her counterpart does the same. 
From what's visible above his own sterile suit, he's a very ordinary- 
looking man. 


TANG [THROUGH TRANSLATOR, SPEAKING STOLA]: Hello, 
Syrti. How's Reh doing? 


FLEISCHER: Astronomer Syrti Koll, lead scientist for the Earth 
Exchange Study Group. 


KOLL: Much better. He'll be back at school tomorrow. 


TANG [THROUGH TRANSLATOR, SPEAKING STOLA]: | sent a 
little something extra through for him. We all know how he loves 
comics. 


FLEISCHER: When they've finished their brief conversation, Tang 
raises her forefinger to the anomaly, and right through the hole 
between worlds, the two scientists touch hands. 


From the Gateway Contact Center in Terre Haute, I'm Stephen 
Fleischer. This is NPR. 


Da Capo al Fine 


On her fifth birthday, Sigurrés Stefansdottir looked down at the cake 
that her foster mother had baked for her and wished that her real 
parents had never died. 


She blinked her eyes and found herself in a strange house, with a 
man and woman whom she had never met before in her life. The 
man was shouting at the woman, who wept and hugged herself 
tightly. There was a bruise high on her cheek, and she was rocking 
back and forth like a child as the man heaped abuses upon abuses 
on her, ranting and raving angrily. 


On her sixth birthday, Sigurr6és Stefansdottir whimpered and covered 
her ears as she heard her mother scream and wished that she had 
never made the wish that she had made last year. 


She blinked her eyes again, and found herself back at the foster 
home. It was her fifth birthday again, and her foster mother was 
waiting for her to blow out the candles. 


She did so. This time, she decided to wish for a pony instead. 


On her (second) sixth birthday, Sigurréds Stefansdottir hugged her 
favorite stuffed pony and wished that she had ten thousand friends. 


She blinked, and suddenly realized just how many people "ten 
thousand" really was. She wondered how she was going to find a 
cake big enough to feed them all. 


Then she did have a cake big enough to feed all of her friends, but 
there were angry people outside her house trying to break down the 
walls and get a piece of her cake, because it was the only cake in 
the world and everyone else was hungry. 


She blinked again, and she found herself back in her foster home, 


looking down at the small, normal cake, and surrounded by her 
usual six so-called friends who really weren't. 


She blew out the candles a second time, and this time, decided to 
wish for a fairy princess dress-up set. 


On her seventh birthday, Sigurr6és Stefansdottir wore her favorite 
princess tiara and blew out the candles. (Her favorite stuffed pony 
sat on top of her dresser, in a place of honor, but she'd outgrown 
carrying a stuffed animal everywhere she went.) 


She didn't know what to wish for this time, so she didn't. 


It was then that she saw the old man sitting at the foot of the table, 
where no one should have been. He had thinning, grey hair, and he 
smiled as he got to his feet, leaning heavily on his cane. 


"Come with me," he said. "I think you're ready for your first lesson 
now." 


She took his hand, and he took her away from the foster home and 
into a different world. 


On her eighth birthday, Sigurrés Stefansdottir learned about the 
Ways. 


"They're the Places Between Places," Teacher explained. "They are 
how you get from the Places That Are to the Places That Could 
Have Been." 


When he said that, Sigurr6s Stefansdottir realized exactly what he 
meant. She brushed her hand over the manhole in the middle of the 
Los Angeles intersection, and climbed through into a place filled with 
books and learning. 


"Happy Birthday," the Teacher said. "Now it's time to get you your 
Library card." 


On her ninth birthday, Sigurrés Stefansdottir met The Fox. 


Everyone always spoke of The Fox in all capitals. She wasn't sure 
how or why this was, or even how one could even convey capitals in 
normal speech, but they did. 


The Fox was a tall, beautiful woman with eyes like daggers and 
teeth like knives. She smiled at Sigurrés Stefansdoéttir and licked her 
lips with a cruel, carnal hunger. 


Sigurrés Stefansdottir wasn't afraid, though. No one could harm her 
while they were in the Library. The Docents wouldn't let them. 


That wasn't true everywhere, though. Later, Sigurrés Stefansdottir 
heard that The Fox had been shot by some people while she was 
trying to skin and eat people who, for some reason, liked to dress up 
as animals. Some people were very sad when they heard this had 
happened. "You see," Miss Midnight explained patiently, "even 
though she wasn't a very nice person, she was the Last Fox. It's 
always sad when something disappears from this world." 


On her tenth birthday, Sigurrés Stefansdottir learned about 
mistakes. 


She had been looking up at the sky and wondered what it would 
look like if it were pink instead of blue. And then it was. 


In a panic, she tried to change it back to blue, but she could never 
get the color quite right. It was either too dark or too light, or it was 
too green or too purple, or too bright or too dark. She was in tears by 
the time The Teacher set things right again. 


She expected to get scolded for nearly messing up the sky forever, 
but the Teacher was sympathetic. "We all do things like that 
sometimes," he explained. "The important thing is to learn how to 
set things right again." 


Some men in black suits came a few days later, and they talked to 
The Teacher at length. The Teacher seemed upset by those visits, 
and he muttered to himself a lot. But in the end, it seemed that 
things worked out. 


On her eleventh birthday, Sigurrés Stefansddottir met the Ukelele 
Man. 


He came to the Library with a briefcase and some papers, and 
although everyone else in the Library didn't seem to like him, they 
left him alone. He sat down with her in one of the side rooms, and 
he asked many questions, and did many strange things, like asking 
her to pick up a pencil that he had knocked off the table himself, or 
asking her, very suddenly, how many friends she had. 


Sigurrés Stefansdottir followed her Teacher's advice, and told the 
truth every time. She also picked up the pencil herself, because the 
Teacher had taught her that one should always try to be as ordinary 
as possible, whenever possible, because that caused less trouble 
for other people. 


The Ukelele Man seemed pleased by this. He had a talk with the 
Teacher afterwards, and told her that she was a "Phase Two, 
Transitioning into Three with little chance of a Four." Whatever that 
meant. He also claimed that she had been designated "Response 
Level 1," and he patted her head and told her Happy Birthday. 


The Teacher seemed very relieved once the Ukelele Man had left, 
and he gave her a hug and then they had cake with all her friends. 


On her twelfth birthday, Sigurrés Stefansdottir kissed a boy. 


On her thirteenth birthday, Sigurrés Stefansdottir decided to try 
being a boy and kissing a girl. 


On his fourteenth birthday, Stefan Sigurrésson decided that he 
preferred being a girl, all things considered. 


On her fifteenth birthday, Sigurrés Stefansdottir started to wonder if 
this "sex" thing people talked about was really worth it. 


Shortly after her sixteenth birthday, Sigurrés Stefansdottir and the 


very nice boy she'd kissed four years ago finally figured out the 
whole "sex" thing. 


By her seventeenth birthday, Sigurrés Stefansddéttir had grown 
bored of this "sex" thing and decided to try all of the other deadly 
sins in order to see if they were really as fun as people seemed to 
think. She started with Pride. 


Just before her eighteenth birthday, Sigurrés Stefansdottir had tried 
absolutely every single sin known to humanity (and a few that had 
not yet been discovered) and had grown bored of them all. She 
decided to try the virtues next, starting with Charity. 


By the time she was nineteen, even virtue had grown boring for her, 
especially since it turned out to be a lot harder than expected. She 
could have waved her hand and done it easily, but her Teacher's 
lessons had driven home to her that something like that often 
caused more problems for the people who weren't like her than it 
was worth. So she decided to give up both virtue and vice and 
decided to try wisdom instead. 


At around twenty years of age, Sigurrés Stefansdottir had learned 
everything that was possible to know, and started on the things that 
were Impossible. 


She figured out the Impossible shortly before she turned twenty one. 
She toasted the beginnings of her research into the Things That 
Were Not with her first drink as a legal adult.