Read No Early Birds: A Short Story for Free Online

one observation satellite to another, all the way around the black hole, suggests there is a time differential, because it goes around faster in the direction of rotation than the other way."
    "When I was in school they jumped all over me for saying a black hole rotated," the young woman said. Vi found it charming she wasn't afraid to contradict her.
    "Let us say angular momentum then. A distinction lost to my understanding," Vi said.
    "Yes, and it isn't making any sense to us. I mean, not just me, but the people who have been working with the hole for decades." That still seemed a long time to the girl.
    "Has anybody taken measurements the other way, across the poles?" When she could see from the girl's face that she was going to argue it didn't exactly have poles, Vi altered her statement. "In a plane containing the axis of angular momentum that is." Violet said, holding up a thumb with curled fingers to illustrate.
    "No. We don't have the equipment to do that," she said sadly.
    "Is it conceivable such equipment can be fabricated in the future?" Vi asked.
    "Oh, it could be, right now. But it would take a tremendous amount of money."
    "Is that all?" Vi said laughing. "Well that's a problem I've already learned to solve."
    * * *
    When she retreated to the rather compact room they provided for the night Vi was tired. She took a long time in the shower and let it pulse on her neck set on high. It was almost as good as a masseuse. She was afraid to ask if they had one here, least she sound like a pampered urban girl.
    All the data was interesting, but she wanted to see how their little machine reacted to being near the black hole. In the privacy of her room there shouldn't be any problem. She would simply look at the com screen clock and set the machine to take her forward five minutes. They'd learned to do that within a month of finding it, and it worked flawlessly with them all sitting at Anna's table in her courtyard.
    Violet enter the small time shift and looking at the room's time display pressed the enter icon. The screen went blank for at least three full seconds. It had never worked that long before. Then their little machine displayed an error message just like it had before:
    Temporal potential and energy level too high to process. Extremely dangerous local complexity of branes and branching. Too close to primary locus and power source.
    Device has defaulted to safe mode. Please remove from the present location before pressing the reset button under the back cover.
    The case had a visible seam around the perimeter. All these years none of them had suggested opening it up. The possibility they could learn anything from such a casual examination seemed to be close to zero, and the slimmest chance that they would make it stop working and lose every benefit had seemed far too great a risk to take.
    But here it was telling her it was made to be easily opened. If there was a reset button she could just look for now, and not actually push the button until later. After careful thought Vi couldn't see any hazard to satisfying her curiosity.
    The seam was tight but not so tight she couldn't get a nail in it near one corner. The she got another in beside it and ran it to the opposite corner. With two points along one side held open it released with and audible snap. She carefully tilted the back off and put it aside.
    Inside there was a button deep in a protective recess to protect against accidental activation. There was also a rectangular area of contrasting color with deeply engraved printing. It made Violet gasp in shock, but it was very satisfying, because it made everything clear to her.
    This device is registered as a protected design and item of intellectual property in all jurisdictions of the Worlds of Man.
    Rights holder Violet Jeanne Collins & Associates.
    Use and possession restrictions are automatically local law by treaty.
    - END –
    Link to Mac's current releases, both novels and collections of shorts on