Bell, Puskas, Gross, and Cooper call a bar

The next few days Alex couldn't help the excitement she was feeling. Her invention was aboard the resupply mission, and the day after she was summoned to the Deans office and then the Dean, her mathematics, comp-sci, and physics professor had all departed for the airport to go to the space administrations mission control center. The resupply pod would be rendezvousing with the space station in several hours, and then they would likely be conducting the tests with the communications device the following day after.

Inside the mission control room the atmosphere was slightly tense. Word got out that there would be a new communications test on the space station today, though the public at large was not all that interested in it even with the periodic reports from the media. But the media themselves also weren't all that interested in it so they only made the bare minimum of references to it for the new cycle. The science community at large also was not all that interested, in that they weren't watching the proceedings with rapt attention. For a technology that would in just a few hours take the world by storm. It was being introduced with the most mild of a reception.

Alex chuckled at this thought to himself about the lack of fanfare that would be around this, But then slowly as the weeks drag on from today, the fervor over this technology would ramp up to a fever pitch. They weren't excited for it right now because they all did not know what it signified. Alex was waiting for this, as were her professors that joined on this trip, arguably they were more tense than Alex was.

Of course this had to do with them not being sure that it would actually work as intended, or as the technical documents indicated it would work. Alex however did not share this concern, her concern was in that she hoped this test would not inadvertently alert the more advanced civilizations out there. She could imagine just how unkindly they would take to someone effectively stealing their technology. If human society was anything to go off of with espionage being one of the key reasons for why secrecy existed. And why countries and companies jealously guard their technological secrets.

The time felt like it was excruciatingly long, The resupply pod had made it to the station the previous day. The crew aboard had spent the day unloading the pod and getting all the new science devices and experiments offloaded, and the ones to be sent back stored. So nothing eventful took place from Alex's point of view. Today though the crew was instructed that one of the first tests they should run for the day was of the communications device.

Alex had felt that they were taking too long to just test it out. But the crew was busy reading the instruction manual, and another couple of people on the crew were reading the technical information, about what the device was, and what it was supposedly capable of doing. Alex simply had been loosing pace with the speed of which most normal people read, even some of the most avid readers just simply did not have her speed reading capabilities, curtesy of the system she was now the sole recipient and user of.

After standing around the mission control area, off in a corner so as to be out of the way of the staff, the radio buzzed. "Mission control, this is station we are ready to carry out the tests of the new communications device. Installation was successful, and operation seems to be all nominal."

A guy at the radio control station turned on the comm device and replied back to the crew "Station this is mission control, you are good for test."

A few moments later as everyone paused and looked at the communications desk, and at the communications device on top of the desk activated "Mission control, Station here, Radio check." The sound came in with a clarity as if they were right next to you, It far surpassed the standard radio transmission that they regularly used. This fact amazed the mission control staff, "Station, Mission control, Loud and clear, proceed with concurrent tests, hook up the communications device to the laptops and send the same files from yesterday."

"Station copies, Moving on to concurrent tests." At this time the person manning the communications station proceeded to connect the communications device to a provided laptop "Station, Mission Commend, proceed when ready." the radio controller told the station.

"Station copies, Station sending files now" Right after the station sent the files "Station, Mission control, Files...Received!?" the radio controller responded with abject shock as he looked at the screen of the comm device as it had the full reports from the previous day from the station. There was no time lag with the file transfer that anyone noticed, it had appeared to for all intents and purposes Instant.

This sent a wave of fervor through the command center. "Station, mission control, Standby for information transfer." The computer was stuck copying the files from the computer over to the comm device, In stark contrast to the file transfer from one device to the other, the transfer to the computer seemed to be taking forever. After five minutes the file transfer was complete having transferred several gigabytes of data. even the file upload from the computer to the device seemed slow. "Station, Mission control, we are standing by to send information packet, advise when ready."

"Mission control, we're ready go ahead." The button was hit "Mission control,.... we... we've received the info dump..." Their was a pregnant silence permeating the room. Several gazes looked over towards Alex. Alex stood there with a confident smirk on her face, and left the room. Her professors were ecstatic at the success and excused themselves from the command room having seen that the tests succeeded.

They moved to congregate in the breakroom and Alex speaks up "So how much do you think this is going to change things? I would say the world just changed to no fanfare whatsoever." she smirked. Greg just stood there looking lost "I honestly doubted that this would succeed. But now I believe what you were saying, that this might actually do what you claim it will do.

I think this is going to be added to the next planned rover missions, of course we will still have the original radio devices, but this will be the next best test, then we can test the theorized lack of time lag that you claim. But I would have to say that the main aspects of it as an improved communications and information transfer device, It is a landmark success."

The level of excitement over the device was slowly gaining momentum now outside of the command center. Most still not quite understanding what the excitement was all over about as most were not watching or present during the test, Alex looked around "I believe that this now warrants publishing this in a science journal now no?" she looked at the group "I mean, I wanted to do it earlier, but also knew that having some test of it done was going to be more important than the journal publication. But now I want to see how fast this revolutionizes things."

The professors and Greg all agree with the dean speaking up "Yes, I will take a look at having this published as soon as they can, it will certainly jump the que sort of, but no one when they see the material, will care that they got pushed to the side in favor of this. You are correct in that this will revolutionize things. Both in communications technology and with computer technology, Congratulations you have just put yourself on the same level as Bell, Puskas, Gross and Cooper."

Everyone nods at her, Alex just rubs the back of her head. "Really, I just had an idea and didn't stop to think if it were impossible and just put the idea to paper, and then built it. I was lucky that it worked like I intended it to work, really I think that anyone else in my position could have and would have achieved the same. And I'm sure there will be many that improve upon what I just introduced."

The conversations continued for a while longer, Eventually everyone agreed that it was time to leave and head back to the hotel for the flight home the next day. Alexia laid down in her bed in the hotel room and thought about the day 'Lex, your absolutely sure that no other civilization will detect the transmissions? I mean now were working with FTL tech without the rest of the world realizing it is FTL at the moment. At least those that haven't seen the work, and we haven't done any tests capable of verifying this aspect of the devices yet.'

[Yes, I'm confident that the program I wrote for this will mask the FTL signals of the communications devices, enough to such a way that they will not know that your society has this tech until you make deliberate contact with them and they see you are traveling among the stars. The federation will be rather shocked that they didn't know about you before hand, They like to think they have all of the galaxy within their view.] Alex spends a few more minutes thinking over what Lex just said, and then goes to sleep.