The Flag on Gorbachev Crater

8. The Workshop

For az-Zahra’s workshop Beckwith cleaned out the storage room near her bedroom and installed various facilities, including an electric induction furnace for melting alloys, wire drawing equipment, computers programmable for auto-weaving, lapidary tools, a Verneuil furnace for making synthetic gems, plumbing, an exhaust hood for fumes.

When all was ready he watched with great interest as she connected the twenty-one shuttles with the different metal filaments into the coarse woolen weft of the little protoloom, plugged the circuitry program into the robocomputer, and flipped the switch.

The assembly came alive. Threads ghnted and vibrated and sang, and a handkerchief-size mat began to grow, centimeter by centimeter.

They watched in silence.

Soon, the loom shut off. Save for jewels, the thing was finished.

Beckwith studied the newly created artifact. “There seem to be several loose filament ends.”

“I know. They are to be interconnected in specific ways, depending on the location intended for the transported objects, and whether you are going backward or forward in time, or simply moving in the present. As you can see, it all depends on the wiring.”

He took a deep breath. “Of course.”