The following morning, the Commodore, Captain Moser and Angela informed the Admiral of their findings on the expeditionary visit to the alternate realities.
‘Thank you for the report. I think we need a plan to investigate these other realities more fully. I shall be making recommendations to an emergency meeting of the Admiralty Board I have requested for this afternoon. For my part, I think there are a few basic things we need to do. Firstly, we send a military force to the first one or two versions of Astraeus 5 and investigate whether they also have bases like the one we had in our version. Once we’re in these realities, we need to clear any bases of anything we find there and bring them back here. We need to be wary of overstretching ourselves, as we don’t have enough people capable of piloting the ships safely as yet, so we just need to get enough for now to allow us to train further crews. I suggest that we try and get no more than five or six ships at this stage, assuming we can find that many, or we’ll struggle to deal with them all. We can then start to visit further realities and get more ships, assuming there are more in these realities. Either way, I think that we should stay clear of the German, Chinese and Esperanto speaking realities for now, as they might be hostile to us. Once we have enough ships available, we can review that position. I would rather be over cautious than risk our people unnecessarily. Before we continue, I think we need a better name to refer to reality zero than ‘Gott’s reality’. Any thoughts?’ responded the Admiral.
‘I suggest we refer to Gott’s reality as simply Zero, since that’s their position on the RSC dial. Another thing, Admiral, is that Billy Hunt seems to think that two is the one that Will Hunt came from. If that’s the case, it may be worthwhile starting there. Angela, can you check with him if there is any way of identifying that it is Will Hunt’s reality without the locals being aware of our presence?’ responded the Commodore.
‘Zero works for me. What would be helpful is if we could have devices fitted to all of our existing ships so that we can present a sizeable force to Gott and his cronies, as well have some ready to let any allies utilise. Is there any chance of that happening?’ asked the Admiral.
‘So far, we’ve held off disassembling the Captain’s controls, for fear of reducing our inter-reality capabilities, Sir’ replied Angela.
‘How long might it take to produce more switching devices?’ asked the Commodore.
‘Ones that only switch between our reality and Zero could be produced now. We’ve already made a prototype. While we’re sure it can be improved upon, it’s a massive improvement over the Zero version, which was most inefficient electronically. At present, it’s all hardware switching. Once we understand exactly what’s happening and how, we want to move over to software switching, as we think this will offer far more versatility longer-term and be much more compact. We’re not ready for that just yet. As regards the Captain’s controls, it will depend on whether it’s more of the same or whether it’s a completely different design in terms of electronic complexity. Until we get to analyse one of them, I can’t advise further. That said, based upon what we’ve done already with the hand-held unit, we may be able to put together a first prototype within a week or two. It would need testing, however, as I’m not sure I would want to risk the lives of a whole shipful of people gambling that it works first time. Until I get to see it, though, I’m only guessing, I’m afraid, Admiral’ replied Angela.
‘Understood, Angela. Once we have another ship, you’ll be free to work on the problem. It’s also occurred to me that we also need to be able to communicate between realities. Has anything been found on the captured ships that would suggest that such a technology exists?’
‘We haven’t found anything like that, Sir’ replied Captain Moser.
‘OK everyone, thank you all for your feedback. There’s obviously plenty to do. Although it isn’t as important as getting the switching devices problem resolved, I would like inter-reality comms to be the next priority after the Captain’s controls. At this stage, we don’t need to have instantaneous two-way communications but we DO need to have some means of communicating across the realities, so that we can keep in touch with our fleet and to allow our crews to contact us if there’s a problem. Once time permits, I would like someone to start work on considering how we might be able to do this. Unless anyone has any other suggestions, dismissed’ said the Admiral.