Part XIX

    It all started with a weekend phone call to the FBI's Cyber Crime Task Force in Philadelphia.  Jarvis' apartment was indeed emptied.  Clothes, food, furniture, everything that wasn't attached to the ground was removed for processing.  It became immediately clear that the FBI didn't have the resources necessary to crack the computer code Jarvis had used, so they set about investigating the audio files for any amplifying information.  That was when they contacted the NSA and DARPA.  While the FBI was interested in threats closer to home, other agencies had far more outreaching ambitions.  By the end of July, the nation had been convinced that a new threat had surfaced from a crumbling community that had lain dormant for years.  After an "exhaustive investigation" had led to the discovery of his home and equipment, he was on the run.  It was a ploy, bait.  If someone has something the government wants, you either give it to them or they make you an outlaw until you do.  In this case, Jarvis had the key to it all.  Even though he had recorded nearly everything, the reasoning behind hauling him in was easier than having technicians, specialists, and outside contractors come in to do it themselves.  It was a break through the government had been looking for to maintain their relevance in space exploration in the wake of the shuttle decommissioning.  The Russians were now in first place and that was something Washington would not tolerate.  The existence of technology that would prove extraterrestrial life beyond a shadow of a doubt was more than the government could pass up.  There was one problem.  Jarvis was missing.  He was wanted nationwide, yet had not been seen outside of Southside at all since his disappearance.  That compounded the issues in an already complicated era of inter-agency cooperation.  The Uncle Sam Bureaucracy with its unrestricted access to money and minds, could not work together to duplicate the theories to which Jarvis had documented.
    The logic was there.  The belief was not.  To first understand the mind of someone who knows he is right, you have to face the fact that the technological bar, relative to humankind, has not been raised to any great height.  In fact, as far as the western world was concerned, the technological bar was roughly knee high.  Getting over that hurdle is easy if you see a piece of equipment that has never existed before.  Ask DARPA.  The technicians partially grasped the concept of what Jarvis attempted but really didn't believe it was possible.  They worked around the clock for three weeks into August to decipher his audio files and narrowed it down to concepts that ranged from plausible to preposterous.  
    The solar power theory opened their eyes although it was only a matter of time before such breakthroughs in the industry occurred.  A signal from a system thought to harbor planets similar to Earth was a matter for NASA.  The use of 4D laser imaging was plausible in smaller objects such as an apple he reported used for a prototype experiment.  However, mass displacement and replacement was a harder pill to swallow.  The theory called for electro-laser conversion which Jarvis defined as the displacement of physical matter by the use of pulse laser technology in order to convert an object into energy for transmission to an alternate location whereby a secondary electro-laser converted said energy back to its original, physical form.  The theory to make it more efficient was to cut out a certain common denominator from the conversion process that would be reintegrated at the alternate destination.  In the case of people, water composes 75% of a human body.  Jarvis' rationalization was that by eliminating H20 from the conversion process, the space and time needed for data transmission would be cut by that 75%.  So he had a theory on an alternative type of teleportation.  He had attempted to leave Earth.  The destination as he described was just as unexpected and even more uninspiring.