The Gemini Effect

by Scott Jarol

  That was a little too dramatic.

  “Have you not carried burdens you could do without?”

  “I guess so.”

  “And have you noticed a change in yourself since the incident that occurred last evening?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Mostly, I’m angry.” He lifted his gaze. Dr. Willis stood exactly as he’d been before the lights went out, as if he had never moved.

  “Perhaps your anger is an expression of strength,” said Dr. Willis. “When the body has a sickness, we can cut it out. But when the spirit is sick, it festers and haunts and possesses us until our final day.” Dr. Willis pushed a green button and the elevator resumed its descent. “Today we’ll share an opportunity unavailable to any other human, past, present, or future.”

  Warning bells went off in Ezekiel’s head. “What kind of opportunity?”

  “You will recognize it when it presents itself,” said Dr. Willis.

  The elevator descended for another three or four minutes. Ezekiel tried to guess their depth underground. He looked up through the rectangular shaft overhead, but the light from the elevator’s single lamp failed to reach the top. It wouldn’t be easy to get out of there on his own—probably another part of Dr. Willis’s plan. But once Dr. Willis finished his business with Doc, Ezekiel would grab the QuARC and find some kind of access shaft where he could climb back to the surface.

  The elevator finally sank to a stop. They exited to face another pair of doors, heavy steel, fifteen feet high and wide. Willis felt the breast pocket of his coat. “Do you have the security card I gave you?”

  “It was in my backpack,” said Ezekiel. “Someone stole it.”

  “Unfortunate,” said Willis. “We shall see which of your associates takes advantage of the situation.”

  He stepped up to a panel beside the doors, placed his hand on a touchpad and lifted his dark glasses just enough to look into an eyepiece. A wave of red light crossed his face. A moment later, the doors retracted to either side.

  At first Ezekiel thought his eyes needed to adjust. Blackness and silence enveloped him, as if the air itself had died.

  “Watch where you step, and stay close to me,” warned Dr. Willis.

  Chapter 27

  Triton Core, North Star Laboratory

  The room Ezekiel and Dr. Willis entered was better lit than it had seemed from outside the door. A thick layer of clear glass covered the otherwise opaque walls of a spherical chamber, at least one hundred yards in diameter. Embedded lamps dotting the walls caused the glass to glow from within. The center of the room, however, was pitch black, occupied by a dark orb that floated like a disembodied planet shadow, eclipsing the far walls. It left a gap of about seventy-five feet all around the chamber.

  Ezekiel and Dr. Willis joined Dr. Steiner on the floor, which was just a steel mesh platform, a convenient flat surface fitted above the bowl-shaped bottom of the spherical room. At least a hundred evenly spaced holes, each about an inch in diameter, perforated the domed wall. Above the platform on which they stood, three catwalks appeared to ring the chamber, one around the widest point, the room’s equator, and two smaller loops above and below the middle. Steep stairs linked the walkways together at multiple points. Ezekiel could only assume the structures continued all the way around, because most of each walkway lay out of sight behind the orb.

  “What is that thing?” he asked.

  “That,” said Dr. Willis, “is the opposite of a thing. Nothingness in its purest form. The void that lies beyond the boundaries of our universe.”

  “How can it be nothing?”

  “Time for explanations later,” said Dr. Willis. “Dr. Steiner will help you complete the adjustments. Dr. Steiner, please provide Ezekiel with anything he requires. I’ll see you both shortly.”

  After Dr. Willis had left, Howard showed Ezekiel how he had centered the QuARC on the platform directly under the dark phenomenon. The floor was an open grid suspended over the bowl-shaped bottom of the room.

  “Call me Howard,” said Dr. Steiner. “We can save the Dr. stuff for Willis.”

  Ezekiel nodded. He didn’t really care one way or the other what Howard called himself.

  “So you’re one of those power vampires,” said Howard.

  Ezekiel went into a defensive stance.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to report you. It was just an observation.” Howard ducked down and kneeled to reach the QuARC. “I connected it to the Faraday cage. It’s a steel mesh embedded in the walls that’s supposed to block external interference from getting in and keep internal electromagnetic radiation from getting out. It covers the entire facility. I don’t know exactly what this thing of yours does, but the shielding didn’t block it.”

  The darkness hanging above them crackled here and there, spitting tiny sparks.

  “That’s not going to fall on us, is it?” asked Ezekiel.

  “It hasn’t moved so far, other than to get bigger.”

  “It’s growing?”

  “The only time it stopped growing was when we detected this thing of yours—”

  “The QuARC. My dad called it a Quantum Resonance Coil. I added ‘Atmospheric.’”

  “Whatever you call it, for thirty-seven minutes, while you had it turned on, the void didn’t budge, like it was frozen.”

  Howard moved over to make more room for Ezekiel under the void.

  Ezekiel took no chances. He slid into position on his stomach. Cynthia’s PTab was still strapped to the QuARC and connected by a few thin wires.

  “It needs a power cell,” said Ezekiel.

  “I thought this thing made its own juice,” said Howard.

  “It will once it’s working. I need power for the PTab. The cell is dead.”

  Howard backed out from under the void. “Should be some batteries in one of the emergency lights. Be right back.”

  Howard left Ezekiel to tighten up some of the repaired connections, which he did with his bare fingertips, twisting them tightly.

  * * *

  Howard climbed the stairs up to the upper catwalk. When Doc popped out of the maintenance tunnel to intercept him, Howard stumbled backward, nearly tipping over the side. Doc caught him by the wrist with his good hand.

  “Geez, Doc, you scared me to death.”

  “I need your help.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  “Gopher hole,” said Doc. “This place has changed. Willis has done some remodeling.”

  “He’ll be back any minute. You have to get out of here.”

  “If you and the boy get the QuARC working, we’ll be fine. But that’s just the first step. I need you to help me with something once Triton powers up.”

  “It’s too late,” Howard said.

  “It’ll only take a minute,” said Doc. “I just need you to keep an eye on Triton and make sure the QuARC keeps it stable.”

  “That’s what I mean,” said Howard. “It’s going to crash.”

  “I tested it,” said Doc. “The QuARC does the trick. It’s a field damper—suppresses the side effects.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” said Howard. “I mean, I know for certain it’s going to crash.”

  Doc paused to register the implication of Howard’s words. “You mean you monkey-wrenched it?”

  “Shhh,” said Howard. “He can hear anything everywhere. I swear he’s got bat ears. We can’t let him push it to full power. If he does, the void’s going to swallow everything.”

  “Not if Zeke’s gizmo is in place,” said Doc. “We have to fix whatever you’ve done and set this thing up.”

  “What for?”

  “Got a little problem,” said Doc.

  He turned around and waved. Zeke stepped out of the maintenance tunnel into the dim light.

  Oh no, not again! Howard rubbed his forehead anxiously. Maybe Ezekiel had simply followed him undetected. He leaned over the railing and called out to Ezekiel below, “Hey, how’s it going down there?”

  “Still
need a battery.”

  Howard groaned. “Please tell me they’re twins.”

  “It was an accident,” said Doc. “The wrong cat nabbed the bait. I was trying to get Willis’s attention. Hoped to keep him from doing any more damage. Looks like I made things worse.”

  Howard’s eyes widened with panic. “We need to get one of them out of here.”

  “It’s okay,” said Doc. “As long as you get the QuARC running, everything’s good. Gotta make it work because my shop is gone—kablooey!” Doc waved his arms to imitate an explosion. “Triton is the only place to put them back together. I need you to help me get them into position.”

  Howard squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. This had gone downhill quickly. “We don’t have enough time to fix it. You’ll get maybe three minutes before the coolant blows and the gamma beam shuts down.”

  “Okay, just keep that one busy,” said Doc. “When Triton hits full power, I’ll need you to give him a little shove.”

  Howard gaped at Doc. “Shove? You want me to push a kid in there?”

  “It’s the only way.”

  “Do you think Willis knows?”

  “Knows what?” asked Doc.

  “About the kid, about what you’re doing here?”

  “Could be. He’s a clever cat. Probably got something up his sleeve. Got to beat him to it.”

  Howard nodded with resignation. “I hope it works.”

  * * *

  Ezekiel was lying on his back gazing into the dark void when Howard returned with the battery.

  “Do you think it goes anywhere?” Ezekiel wondered aloud.

  “No way to tell,” said Howard.

  Ezekiel slid himself to the side to make space, while Howard shoved the battery ahead of himself as he crawled back under the void. “When it first appeared, Willis sent in some probes, but the telemetry went dead the moment they crossed the boundary. It was much smaller then.”

  “Is that where my dad went?”

  “Not exactly,” said Howard. He avoided making eye contact with Ezekiel. “Your dad closed that one. He kind of sacrificed himself to fill it in. After the accident, when Willis built Triton, he added a containment vessel. It was supposed to prevent it from happening again.”

  “Guess it didn’t work.”

  “The thing kept growing and swallowed the vessel. I think it just made it worse. The more matter it consumes, the faster it grows.”

  “Like a black hole.”

  “Worse. A black hole has to wait around for stuff to come close enough to fall in. Once it devours all the matter in its neighborhood, it’s kind of harmless. But the void eats away at its edges. It feeds on space itself. It’s unstoppable.”

  The intercom crackled. It was Dr. Chang. “What are you guys doing?”

  “Hold on,” said Howard. “Almost ready.”

  Ezekiel handed Howard two wires. “Wrap these around the battery terminals.” The PTab’s screen lit up, and Ezekiel adjusted the frequencies until they both felt the tingling under their skin.

  “I guess that means it’s working?” asked Howard.

  Like a giant satellite dish, Triton’s miles of woven steel shielding concentrated cosmic rays and feral electrons into QuARC’s interwoven coils. Once Ezekiel had tuned the frequency of each circuit, the QuARC emitted a flood of photons, enveloping the void. Complex interference patterns sharpened the void’s boundaries, containing it like a force field.

  “Gary, what’s it doing?” Howard called to Dr. Chang over the intercom.

  Up in the main control room, Gary was rapidly touching some buttons on his console. Even from here, Ezekiel could see a complex graph painting itself across the screen that covered the wall at one end of the room. Lines of red, green, blue, yellow, and white traced rhythmic paths from left to right.

  “It’s stabilizing,” Gary said. The undulating lines folded themselves into a spiraling, circular pattern. “Looks good.”

  “What’s the beast doing?” Howard asked over the intercom.

  “No growth.” Gary leaned back in his chair and looked down at them. “Stopped dead.”

  * * *

  Looking down on the void from the upper catwalk, Zeke asked Doc, “Is that where my father went?”

  “Not exactly, but something just like it.”

  Zeke watched Doc uncoil the rope he’d been carrying with thick fingers, barely managing to thread it down through the narrow opening between the wall and the catwalk’s steel frame and back up around a support beam. He tied a hitch and tested its strength with his weight. “That’ll hold.”

  Zeke wished he could tie up all the loose ends of this mess as easily as that. “So you knew him?”

  “Ever since graduate school,” said Doc. “He had this idea about how to save the world. He liked to think big. He asked me to help him. Couldn’t turn him down.”

  “What was he like?”

  Doc straightened and paused in thought before replying. “He was a good man, but different. Like, he never said anything bad about anyone else, and he was always willing to help if you asked him, but he was spacey, you dig? Mostly in his own world. If he didn’t know you, he wouldn’t notice you unless you found a way to grab his attention, and then his curiosity would take over and he’d pepper you mad with questions. He wanted to know everything—where you grew up, what your parents did, where you went to school, what you liked to eat, anything that popped into his head. That’s what made him a great scientist. He couldn’t stop asking questions. Once you took his attention away from his work, the questions just started firing in your direction.”

  “I don’t remember him,” said Zeke.

  “You were only two when it happened.”

  Nearly every single day, Mom had told him his dad might come back some day, but by his eighth birthday, Zeke had stopped believing he’d ever see him again. In some ways, his dad existed only in the little artifacts he’d left behind, and in his mom’s memory, which haunted them like a ghost, neither malicious nor benign, yet demanding acknowledgment.

  “Mom said he disappeared.”

  “He did,” said Doc, “but not like someone nabbed him or he decided to get lost. It was an accident—or more like a situation, you dig?” The words stuck in his throat. He took a breath and wiped his glasses with the corner of his shirt. “When we began this project, we ran into that little side effect.” He nodded in the direction of the void.

  Zeke stared into the massive sphere of nothingness. It seemed like more than a little side effect to him.

  Chapter 28

  Dr. Willis’s Office, North Star Laboratory

  When the door to his private office shut behind him, Willis woke Triton’s main computer.

  “Control system.”

  “Command mode,” the system enunciated in his earpiece.

  For ten years he’d dedicated himself to the Triton project. Even Kapopoulos and Freeman had failed to land on the cosmic principles that would make Triton the source of unlimited energy. After the accident, he’d managed to convince the trustees to press on. He’d appealed to their arrogance by overwhelming them with convoluted mathematics and fundamental physics. None of the trustees would dare admit that they were unable to follow his logic, and they let themselves be led to the conclusion that Triton was viable and worthy of their unconditional support.

  With the one missing piece of the puzzle in place, he’d now prove the infallibility of his theories and take his own place in history.

  “Proceed to full power.”

  “Acknowledge command: Proceed to full power. Voice match to Dr. Nigel Willis. Please provide positive identification.”

  Willis pushed his dark glasses up on his forehead, located the detector with his hand, and guided his left eye in front of the retinal scanner. A low-powered laser swept across the pattern of blood vessels in his nonfunctional retina. Although he couldn’t see the infrared light, he imagined it. He tried to remember what it was like to decode patterns of photons richly filtered and re
flected by the textured contours of the physical world, to perceive forms, especially the shapes and lines of images beyond the reach or recognition of his fingertips or cane—from vibrant paintings to soaring architecture.

  “Identity confirmed. Activating all systems.”

  Thanks to dark matter and its mysterious properties that he alone knew how to harness and manipulate, once the Triton process was underway, no one would be able to stop it. The only path was forward. The next era of human civilization would be his legacy.

  Above them on the surface, the lights in Harmony Village dimmed as hundreds of distant windmills pumped a current of electrons through humming power lines into the miles of wire strung throughout Triton’s accelerator rings and control systems. Intense bursts of microwave energy began to kick protons into faster and faster orbits. In less than an hour, the protons would flash their telltale positive charges past the sensor array at more than ninety-nine percent of light speed, over 180,000 miles per second, signaling Triton’s computers to release the protons from the enormous rings. It would divide them among ninety-nine tightly twisting guide pipes, squeezing them into focused beams with house-sized magnets so powerful that without their shielding, they could rip the steel skeleton out of a skyscraper. Finally, deep underground, the intensely energized particles would reconverge, streaming into Triton’s heart in the core.

  Willis polished his obsidian-colored glasses with a small cloth he kept in his coat pocket before replacing them over his blank eyes. He straightened his necktie, feeling the knot with the fingers of both hands to make it symmetrical, and finally left to join the others.

  Chapter 29

  Triton Control Room, North Star Laboratory

  Lucy squirmed and tried to unfold her wings inside Margaux’s coat, so Margaux set her on the floor, where she clucked quietly and pecked at specks in the concrete. An idea was coming together in Margaux’s head, and she couldn’t afford to be distracted right now.