American Nocturne

by Hank Schwaeble

  Across the street, he saw where his favorite lunch spot used to be. It had been an old-time deli run by a cranky Jewish man who gave a free soft drink to anyone who could name the tune playing on the radio when they placed their order and a colorful berating to those who couldn’t, which meant most everybody. The station was always tuned to non-stop oldies, and they were usually songs Adam had never heard before. The lot had already been bulldozed, and a for-sale-or-lease sign was posted. It was like the place never existed. No doubt a new building would be going up soon, one equipped to handle the virtual maitre d’s and interactive holographic dividing walls everybody wanted. Perhaps there would be one of those coffee shops he read about where each table offered a projected keyboard and three-dimensional image. A few strokes, an expensive swipe of your AmEx, and you could sit across from your friend who was two thousand miles away in an almost identical booth, but was supposed to seem real enough to reach out and touch as you conversed. The world marches on.

  Cassie said nothing as they turned the corner and headed toward the lab. Normally, Adam would expect to hear a diatribe about capitalism and free-market exploitation, reflexive haranguing triggered by the commercial activity around them. Her politics were one reason he was sure the juice just wasn’t worth the squeeze. Cassie was a self-described nihilist. She believed the history of humanity was simply a chain of events in the evolution of oppression and corruption. In her world, no institution was worth preserving, no culture worth sustaining. She favored a radical socialism, where the government was given the power to destroy every source of inequality in society. He was glad she wasn’t talkative right now. He was a libertarian who just wanted to be left alone. The last thing he wanted to hear about was how blacks were freed because the landed gentry were an obstacle to industrialization or how women were only given the right to vote to ensure their permanent subservience. The oppressor-class of every society wants to create the illusion that they have the consent of the oppressed, he recalled her saying. More than once.

  The lab was in a building over fifty years old, so its appearance was much more ‘modern’ than the new structures on the main drag. The building was a quad with three other units, but none of them was leased out. Adam pressed his thumb against the key fob and slid the thin rectangular key into the lock. A sound of something heavy sliding into place leaked through the door. A green light came on over the entryway a moment later. Adam stepped back and let Cassie go in first. He assumed she didn’t like that, but he did it anyway.

  A long hallway led to a set of offices and a file room. The actual laboratory housing the project was segregated through two sets of reinforced steel doors accessible through another hallway that bisected the first one to the right. No viewglass entries here. The professor hated them; made sure he found a building that didn’t have any. Most did, since owners got a healthy government subsidy to install them, due to the material being not only stronger but supposedly more environmentally-friendly than wood. That was the claim, at least. The jury was still out on that. It occurred to Adam that the jury seemed to still be out on most things.

  “Are you ever going to tell me what you all were working on here?” Cassie asked stopping as they walked past the hall leading to the lab. “You and Dr Andrews were always so vague.”

  Cassie did not know about Prometheus. Adam was reasonably certain no one at the University did, either. Professor Andrews was working on a grant from a private foundation, using Adam to teach his classes and writing an occasional journal article to keep up appearances. Adam only became involved with Prometheus after the professor’s prior assistant quit to pursue his doctorate at another school. The project was outside Adam’s field of study, but the professor tracked him down to offer him the senior assistant position anyway, saying he liked the questions Adam had raised in his physics class. Adam had signed several confidentiality forms. Absolute secrecy was always insisted upon. That was probably still the case. He supposed the rights to the project belonged to the underwriters now, and they were likely to be just as adamant about non-disclosure.

  “I could show it to you, if you’re interested,” he said. In what seemed like a natural progression, he pictured them fucking right there in the dead professor’s lab. Panting, grunting sex in creative positions, all hands and tongues and thrusting loins, his body pleasuring itself off of hers in every way imaginable. He tried to excuse himself with the thought he hadn’t planned for anything to happen, but he realized that wasn’t true. He had avoided driving because he wanted them to be able to go their separate ways afterward.

  Adam unlocked the exterior and interior doors to the lab and led her inside. The room had been rearranged a bit, with the primary device moved out of the direct center of the floor, a bit closer to the door, and the control console relocated to the far side of the room. Otherwise, it looked more or less the same.

  “This is Prometheus,” he said, gesturing casually.

  Cassie took a step forward and gave a contemplative look at what she saw. A framework of spheres mounted on concentric metal circles surrounded a ringed tube that pointed directly upward. Each sphere was lined with convex mirrored plates. The ringed tube appeared aimed at a large mirror directly above it, the reflective surface positioned as high as the frame seemed to allow. A colorful array of cables led from the base to a bank of monitors and a digital holographic projector. Next to the arrangement was a lighted platform with a mirror of its own.

  “So this is your time machine, huh?”

  Adam did not respond. The statement caught him completely off guard.

  “Oh, come on,” Cassie said. “I’m not stupid. I was here a few days a week. I used to hear you talking. And I’d occasionally see the professor’s notes. I could tell something like that was going on.”

  So much for the moment of shock and awe he had counted on. Prometheus may not have been an actual time machine, but Adam considered it to be the next best thing. It was an attempt to peek into the future, to bend time by accelerating light. The theory behind it was that even if the speed of light was a practical, if not an absolute limit, the speed of light varied. Gravity exerted an influence on it, which is why gravity and time were so intertwined. Earth’s gravitational field was only strong enough to affect it by perhaps a few millionths of a second, but that was enough. Prometheus was designed to overcome that lag using a laser and precision reflectors moving at a high rate of speed – in effect, the device would attempt to slingshot light. If it worked, the professor hoped to photograph an object one-millionth of a second into the future. The photo would have to be taken at the sub-atomic level, using state-of-the-art microscopic imaging.

  “It may not have impressed HG Wells, but it would have been a big deal,” Adam said, after he explained the theory to her.

  “Why? I mean, why such a big deal? The human brain can’t exactly process millionths of a second, can it?”

  “Well, no, but that’s not the point. It would prove Einstein’s general theory of relativity once and for all. If the relative speed of light dictates the causal relations between objects, then light dictates time. Time travel would have been proven, in fact, not in theory. At that point, it merely becomes a matter of supplying enough energy.”

  Cassie nodded. “So the government or some multi-national or someone will eventually figure out a way to use this to control the rest of us, huh?”

  It was a typical Cassie reaction. Everything in her view was another step in the progression of humanity’s subjugation. It was annoying, but workable. He knew if he challenged her without disagreeing with her, then conceded the merits of her position, chances were high they would be shedding their clothes before too long. He stopped pretending he wasn’t planning on it.

  Before he could craft a response, Cassie pointed to a display screen in the corner, part of the lab’s security system. “Who’s that?”

  The screen showed the front of the building. A man in a dark suit was standing at the entrance to the facility, a box or pack
age tucked under his arm. He appeared to be waiting, confident that the motion sensors had announced his presence. The tone set off by the sensors was not audible in the lab.

  “I don’t know,” Adam said. “Might be a delivery. Stay here. I’ll go check.”

  The man at the door stared at Adam as he opened it. He was tall, with a thin, almost gaunt face. His slick black hair came to a peak near the middle of his forehead. His eyes were a mustard shade of brown and seemed frozen in place behind narrow lids.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Professor Andrews.”

  “I’m sorry, but Professor Andrews, he, well, passed away yesterday. It was… sudden.”

  The man showed no reaction. He did not even nod an acknowledgement.

  “Who are you?” the man asked.

  “I’m the professor’s lab assistant.”

  “Why are you here if the professor is dead?”

  Adam blinked at the man’s directness. “Sir, would you mind telling me who you are?”

  “I’m from the Foundation.” The man glanced past Adam, peering down the hallway. He did not seem to care if Adam noticed. “Did the professor ask that you take his place?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, are you supposed to operate the machine for me?”

  Adam thought about the letter. He was certain it did not say anything about a demonstration, but he supposed that could have been the professor’s intent. He had wondered why the professor had wanted him to attempt a test run the day after he killed himself.

  “Maybe you should come inside.”

  The man stepped out of the afternoon sun and into the hall. He stood there without speaking, a restive air about him despite his poker face.

  “I’m afraid the professor may have… not been in his right mind lately,” Adam said. “The project is simply not ready for testing. The photographic and imaging equipment isn’t supposed to be delivered until July. Whatever he told you, well, it just isn’t possible.”

  The man looked at Adam without expression.

  “Take me to it,” he said.

  “Look, Mister, I don’t know who you are. I don’t even know what your name is. I shouldn’t even be talking about this with you. You say you’re from the Foundation. If I could somehow verify that, talk to someone on the phone maybe.” Adam ran a hand through his hair. “This is complicated.”

  The man glanced down the hall again, then reached his free hand behind the lapel of his jacket and drew a pistol. A small tube was mounted along the slide like a scope. The man pointed the gun at Adam’s head, and Adam saw a brief flicker of red light come from the end of the tube as he flinched and drew back.

  “Now, take me to it,” the man said.

  Adam nodded, catching his breath. His racing pulse pounded painfully in his ears. A surge of adrenaline seared through his chest. He had seen enough movies to know he had been tagged. The bullet would find his head now anywhere within a thousand feet or so, even if it had to round several corners to get there. The man wouldn’t even have to aim.

  He led the man into the lab where Cassie was sitting on a table. She hopped off, appearing surprised that Adam brought the man with him, but then paused at the look on Adam’s face.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  Adam patted the air in a calming motion. “Just do what he says, Cass.”

  The man told them to stand in the far corner, away from the doors and near the control panel, gesturing with his gun. Cassie’s hands sprang to her mouth at the sight of the pistol. The man placed the box on the table and set the gun next to it, its barrel pointing generally in their direction.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said without looking up.

  The man opened the box and removed another, slightly smaller one from within. The second box was made of wood, ornately engraved with symbols Adam didn’t recognize. The man removed the top of the second box with much more care, slowly, almost reverently, lifting it from its place.

  Inside the second box was an object shaped like a pyramid, only inverted. The man cradled it in both hands as he lifted it, raising it above his head in the manner of an offering. Its sides bore symbols similar to those on the box. It glistened slightly in the light as the man whispered a few words Adam could barely hear and could not at all understand.

  “Adam, what does he want? What’s happening?”

  “Quiet!” the man said. He glared at both of them. His stare lingered on them for a pregnant moment, boring into their eyes as a warning, then he turned his attention to the object again. After a few moments, he placed it on the platform next to the machine. It stood on its pointed end, perfectly balanced.

  “Turn it on,” the man said, stepping back.

  “Turn what on?” Adam said.

  The man shot Adam another threatening glance. “Turn it on,” he repeated.

  “If you mean Prometheus, there’s nothing to turn on yet. Not really. I don’t even think the laser’s engaged—”

  “Turn it on,” the man said again. He picked up the gun from the table. “And you had better hope that you’re wrong.”

  Adam moved to the console where the control panel was set out. He wondered whether the professor had somehow managed to transform Prometheus into a working prototype in the last few weeks, those weeks that found Adam being excluded from the professor’s work more and more, culminating in a forced vacation. But there was so much that had to be done. The professor would have had to have worked at feverish pace to accomplish even a fraction of it.

  Taking in a deep breath, Adam pressed the touch pad at the base of the console, calling up a menu. He touched a selection on the screen. A rhythmic hum began to emanate from machine. The tubes around the laser encasement pulsed with orbits of light.

  I’ll be damned, Adam said to himself. The professor must have had himself one hell of a vacation. Still, there was no way the machine could be functional. He was certain of it. Almost certain.

  The screen displayed a series of input fields, hundreds of them, to be filled in with precise settings. The code, Adam realized. The code the professor supplied would initiate a program. The program would fill in the fields with a predetermined set if inputs. The fields determined the exact specifications for every aspect of the protocol. Rate of rotation, rate of precession, angle of attack, moment of inertia – everything was independently set, and almost infinitely adjustable.

  He shifted his attention to the pulsating rings of the laser. Just what were you up to, professor?

  “Do it,” the man said.

  Adam glanced at Cassie, who looked both frightened and confused. The man knew about the code, he was certain of it. That meant the professor had indeed arranged this. Then he had killed himself. Adam had no idea what that meant, and could not think clearly enough to try to sort it through. He reached into the pocket of his jeans and removed the folded piece of paper containing the seventeen-digit alpha-numeric code. He tapped it out on the keyboard screen, hesitated a moment, then pressed a button on the console.

  The concentric circles of the framework began to move slowly, rotating in opposing directions like a gyroscope. The speed of their rotation increased steadily until the circles were spinning so fast they appeared as a giant, semi-transparent globe.

  The screen on the console displayed a list of settings next to a moving diagram of the machine. Each number blinked and turned green as the particular target setting was achieved. When the entire list was that way, the blinking stopped. Adam raised his eyes. The man prodded the air with his gun and gave a curt nod. Not knowing what to expect, Adam flipped open a panel and pressed another button. A high-pitched whine became audible over the hum. A few seconds later, a burst of light shot from the reflector above the spinning spheres to a reflector above the platform, which redirected it at the inverted pyramid below.

  The object glowed brilliantly for an instant as the humming and whining receded. The rotation of the circular framework began t
o slow, the moving parts spinning themselves out. The glow of the object settled briefly into a blue aura. A second later, the aura disappeared in a tiny flash. For an instant, the object looked as it had before. Then the three triangular side-panels of the pyramid flipped up, revealing identical panels beneath them and forming a new pyramid on top of the existing one. Adam thought he felt a tremor beneath his feet as the two pyramids separated.

  “The gate is opening!” the man said. His expression was filled with awe and anticipation, and a hint of what Adam thought might even be fear. “Hail Yog Sothoth!”

  A dark circle appeared in the middle of the room. It began to expand, and Adam saw it was flat, a two-dimensional hole stretching vertically and horizontally. The man noticed it too, and took a step back, watching it intently, his lips stretched tight in an expectant grimace. It continued to expand, a growing, empty hoop, and soon Adam could see right through to the man standing on the other side. They seemed to be separated by a gossamer film, like gauze over a camera lens. The circle expanded until its edges filled the room. It molded itself around the contours of the walls, hugging the ceiling and floor, still visible, but no longer expanding.

  The man stepped forward, studying the field between them, marveling at it. His mouth broke into a toothy grin as he locked eyes with Adam. He reached forward, extending his arm, and pressed his hand through. A skeletal hand emerged on the far side, completely fleshless and ivory white. The man yanked his arm back and screamed as he dropped to the floor. It was a high-pitched, visceral scream, so piercing and so loud that Cassie’s hands shot up to cover her ears.

  Several seconds passed while the man rocked back and forth on his knees, shaking his head, cradling what remained of his right hand and forearm in his left. All signs of flesh and blood and even clothing were gone, a brownish-black mass resembling a dry stump of tar having formed a few inches below the wrist. The man’s radius and ulna protruded from it like some alien growth. The bones of his hand dangled uselessly, clicking against themselves every time he shifted his arm.