The Breach

by Patrick Lee

  Graham and I just stood and looked at it for I don’t know how long, after we took the body down to the chamber. Then Graham went around the far side of the rip, and called out for me to follow. I went, and here’s where it’s craziest of all, you can’t see the rip from the other side. As soon as you go past it, it’s gone, you just see the empty air over the crater. Edge-on, you see those blue-purple flames licking out of the opening, but a step farther back and there’s nothing.

  The sound is still there, too, different now, like the light is different. I still have no good way to describe the sound, except . . . it’s like voices. I mean, it’s not, but that’s what comes to mind. Voices singing from out of the opening. There’s something bad about the sound. It does something to your mood. Not sure what it is, but it makes you feel very wrong, in a lot of ways. Graham felt it, too, and when we got back to the room, the others had changed their minds about leaving the door open. They wanted to shut the sound out, even if it meant keeping the smell in. I agreed.

  Since then I’ve been sitting here just trying to come to terms with what we’ve created. What the hell is it? I keep thinking of all the concepts I thought were five hundred years down the road, Einstein-Rosen bridges, that kind of thing. Not even going to guess, though. I’d just look stupid later. It has to be studied by experts in a range of fields, measured, tested. Data first, theories later. Wow, though. Wow squared, Ruben would say.

  I just realized I can still hear the sound, even with the door closed. Maybe it’s because I know what I’m listening for now.

  HALF A DAY OR SO AFTER LAST ENTRY

  I woke up in the hallway, down at the end where it widens into the chamber. I did not remember walking out there, and would never have chosen to. I was shivering hard when I woke, could feel the sound from the opening, like it was going right through my body and making my bones hum. Got up fast and saw that Graham was out there, too, and the fat guy who works for him, Kurson, I think his name is. Both asleep. I woke them and they were as surprised as me to find themselves there.

  Back in the room with the door shut, could not seem to relax. A woman from DOE, someone’s assistant, spilled a few Cheez-its and tossed them in the trash, and I blew up at her, seriously thought I would physically attack her until the others calmed me down. I apologized later.

  What the fuck is up with someone coming to get us? What is it, a couple days now? I don’t even know. This is bullshit. When this is over someone’s getting an earful from me and probably legal action. Seriously, what the fuck?

  QUITE A FEW HOURS AFTER LAST ENTRY

  I sat next to Ruben a long time and read to him from a paperback he had in his desk, in case he can hear somehow. Maybe I just did it to try blocking out the sound from the chamber.

  Then, I don’t know why, but I got up and went out there, out into the chamber. Stood staring at the rip/opening. It’s beautiful, and you know what else? When you’re looking at it, the sound is not entirely bad. I’ll probably tell Graham to try it for himself, I think he’d be able to appreciate it.

  I GUESS A DAY LATER

  Pretty bad tension among the people down here, I guess it is to be expected with us all crammed in like this. I am not fitting in with the group much at all. I can’t wait to get out of this place and never see these people again. Another bad argument a little while ago (the third or fourth one) this time with me against almost all of them, except Graham and Kurson.

  A few of the guys teamed up and tried to demand that we stop going to the chamber to listen to the sound up close. They are saying that it does something to us, and that we’re causing grief as a result. But we aren’t causing ALL the arguments, I don’t think. So nice try, but you guys can fuck off. I shouldn’t get pissed like this.

  The sound is pretty soothing now. It’s all that keeps me in my wits down here. When will they come for us?

  TIME IS HARD TO FOLLOW LATELY, I THINK IT IS A DAY LATER

  I have this weird, shitty hunch about Ruben Ward, but don’t want to write it down.

  Also, I have to admit, I’m having a hard time staying focused, and today my right arm was shaking for like an hour when I was out in the chamber. But it’s not from the sound. I really do like it quite a bit.

  QUITE A LOT LATER

  My hunch is Ruben is faking now. Was really unconscious at first, of course, but faking now so that he can stay out of the arguments and not have to side with me against all of these fucking people. It pisses me off if it’s true. I tried really hard to wake him up just now, hitting him in the face even. Then many of the others pulled me away from him (of course they would if he’s on their side the cowardly piece of shit). Now I am out in the hall by the chamber writing this.

  Only the voices from the breach (we started calling it the breach, we like that name for it) make it better.

  I will tolerate these people, but I know I would not lose sleep if they all got hit by a goddamned bus.

  MANY, MANY HOURS (IT MIGHT BE A DAY OR MORE) LATER

  Why? Why are you doing this? You don’t have to be doing this.

  Graham and Kurson and I were in the chamber for a long time and came back to find the rest had jammed the door shut with one of the desks. Graham was rightly upset and tried to break in through the glass, but the polycarbonate is very strong.

  Not even kidding, I would love to kill all of these people, and Graham is the same. Kurson just nods, I wonder if he is only telling us what we want to hear.

  I like the blue and purple there is a dance to it.

  HOURS I THINK BUT TIME IS GETTING IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW

  Kind of losing the knack for keeping all that stuff straight, hours and minutes. I think I’ve taken for granted all my life how hard time is to keep track of. Quite hard. Quite a trick to it, I think.

  STILL DAVE HERE DID I MENTION THAT?

  No desire to go back into the room with the others, but just the principle involved drives me mad. I stand at the glass and look in at them, and they won’t look at me, and fucking Ruben you fake coward motherfucker, I swear you are going to pay.

  But mostly I am calm. Never been calm like this and I love it.

  GRAHAM HAD A VERY GOOD IDEA

  he broke off a metal conduit in the back of the chamber (took him forever kicking to break it) and is using the sharp break point to scratch a line through the polycarbonate window in the door. it’s working, too!!! he has carved half an inch into the window on one side, and then this is great, he carved just the shape of the whole square he’s going to cut into it, so those assholes can see what he has planned. he is a very smart man, it makes sense that he is secretary of the department of energy.

  we are going to get in there within a couple days and then ruben i am going to mount you like a fucking baboon i swear.

  THE BREACH GAVE US SOMETHING

  it must have come out a little while ago, a piece of green fabric the size of a napkin, did not see it come out, but I noticed it lying underneath the breach, and it had not been there before. tried to pick it up, but this makes no sense at all . . . it weighs hundreds of pounds, i just cannot lift it. graham and i together were able to slide it, try to smooth it out on the floor, what the hell is it??? i am not going crazy, it really weighs hundreds of pounds, this tiny little thing!

  GRAHAM IS AWESOME

  he lost it for a while and was pounding the conduit against the door window and then noticed a huge (huge) flap of his palm had torn away and was hanging, and right in front of them watching he took it in his teeth and ripped it free. he is an awesome man

  we killed kurson, not really a choice, we just set on him all of a sudden, it happened. no one’s fault really, so it’s fine.

  WHO IS IT SINGING IN THE BREACH?

  voices are so beautiful please i need to know who it is.

  RESCUE!!! HAHAHAHAHA

  (graham died this morning, don’t even know how, someone had torn out his throat while he slept.)

  later two men in yellow suits and mountain climber gear
pried open the elevator doors just like that, no warning, i was able to kill one with the conduit but the other was weasel quick and got away through the top of the elevator cab screaming don’t.

  BULLHORN ALL DAY

  they are talking from high up in the elevator shaft i don’t care just shut the fuck up, goddamn all of you.

  very upset that the window is still intact and these people may survive especially ruben he was supposed to die.

  sitting at the breach makes it okay.

  it is a day at the breach get it?

  i should be fine after all this, if i can stay here.

  I THINK I KNOW WHO

  ghost little girls. that’s who is in there. that’s who is singing in the breach.

  Travis closed the bloodied notebook and caught the end of one of Paige’s calls. The plane was twenty minutes away.

  She nodded at the notebook. “What followed is what you imagine. The next team that roped in had guns.” She was quiet for a moment, then said, “The Breach Voices are just one of a thousand things we’re completely in the dark about. Their origin, their meaning, the reason for their effect on people. We just don’t know, probably never will. I think about David Bryce often. Top of his class at MIT, father of four, respected by everyone who ever met him. He couldn’t see the danger, even sitting in front of it with his eyes wide open. I sometimes worry that’s the only story the Breach knows how to tell.”

  She led him back into the hall, and toward the open space at the end. The darkness there looked wrong: given what Travis had read, the Breach should be visible from right here. A few steps later he saw why it wasn’t. They entered the cavernous chamber to find a hulking black shape nearly filling it, a dome the height of a three-story building.

  To the right along the dome’s base was an entry channel like that of an igloo. As they approached it, Travis saw the ghostly blue and purple light Bryce had described, projected through the entry onto the concrete wall of the chamber. Ten feet shy of it stood a simple metal table. Paige left her phone and watch there. Travis followed suit with his own watch.

  He thought she’d head for the entry then, but she stopped, stared at him, her eyes working something out.

  “You were a cop,” she said. “A detective.”

  He nodded.

  “Were you good?”

  He breathed a laugh. “By no stretch was I a good cop.”

  “I know you were corrupt. I meant good at it. Were you good at detective work? Did figuring things out come naturally to you?”

  He didn’t hear judgment in her voice. Something else. Contemplation, he thought. He wondered why.

  “Yeah. I was good at it.”

  Her eyes on him, unblinking. Then narrowing in thought.

  “That might end up being useful,” she said. “It’s not often we get fresh eyes around here. I’ll explain a lot more on the plane. For now I just need you to know what’s at stake.”

  With that, she led him to the dome’s entry, and through its heavy glass door.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Like looking into a depth. Into a furnace. As Bryce had written. The Breach was an oval ripped open across thin air, ten feet wide by three high. Blue and violet tendrils of light, flamelike in their substance but not in their shape, capered along the length of the tunnel, which was three feet in diameter and receded to infinity. Only in the nearest yard did the tunnel flare out to the wide oval.

  Within the giant dome that shielded the rest of the building from who knew what, a much smaller containment system encased the Breach to protect anyone who entered this space. This smaller enclosure was a rectangle made of more thick glass, with an airtight door at the front. The glass cage’s purpose was as obvious as the library silence of the room. Travis watched his faint reflection blurring rhythmically on the vibrating glass, and imagined the malignant Breach Voices encased within it, just a few feet away.

  He refocused beyond the glass to the Breach itself, the tunnel stretching away to a vanishing point. He felt his perception bend toward it like a row of iron filings to a magnet.

  “There’s only so much to say about it,” Paige said. “It leads somewhere. We don’t even try to guess where. Nothing can go through from our side. And no living thing has come through from the other side. But objects do. Three or four a day, on average, for over three decades now. Entities.”

  Directly beneath the Breach stood something like an industrial-strength trampoline. It was square, five by five feet. Its fabric looked both flexible and strong, and its legs were wrapped with shock springs. It was positioned to soften the fall for anything that came out of the opening, whether it weighed an ounce or a ton.

  Cameras just inside the glass casing covered the Breach from two angles. No doubt someone watched their feeds day and night, from somewhere in the floors above B51. It would only be necessary to come into this space when things actually emerged from the Breach.

  “Certain entities we see all the time,” Paige said. “The twenty most common probably make up ninety-nine percent of the traffic. A few of them are behind you.”

  Travis drew his eyes from the Breach and turned around. A dry-erase board on the wall proclaimed, NEXT UNIQUE ENTITY WILL BE DESIGNATED 0697. Below the board and to the left was a set of steel shelves. Arrayed along them were a few duplicates of three separate items. One was a kind of string, bright white and a little thicker than floss. Each strand, about a foot long, had been trapped on one end by a paperweight. They’d have floated away otherwise. The strings trailed lazily in space, neither heavier nor lighter than the air. Gravity seemed to just not affect them. On the next level down were a few pink crystals, the length and width of fingers. Travis could see nothing special about them. Beneath those, on the lowest shelf, were two examples of what Bryce had described. Green rags. Travis dropped to a crouch and studied them. They were lying mostly flat. The few wrinkles in the fabric were tight and sharp, like hardened veins. Like the material had been drawn to the surface by vacuum pressure.

  “Try to lift one,” Paige said.

  Travis tried. He grabbed for the nearest as if it were a washcloth, palming it in the middle to gather it in a handful. It was like trying to grab a handful of the shelf surface itself. The cloth didn’t budge. He took the corner of the rag between his thumb and forefinger and found he could lift the first inch. Beyond that, it was just too heavy. He wondered for a moment how the technicians moved these things around, and then he noticed a wheeled chainfall a few feet away, with a vise-grip claw hanging from a cantilevered arm. Built to hoist engines out of cars, it was probably just about suited to lifting these rags.

  “Bryce wasn’t crazy,” Travis said.

  “Not about that.”

  She picked up one of the pink crystals from the middle shelf.

  “For all that we don’t know about the Breach,” she said, “this much is certain: in terms of technology, whoever’s on the other side is as far ahead of us as we are ahead of Java man.”

  She let go of the crystal, shoulder height above the floor. It plummeted. Then, in the last foot of its fall, it slowed and came to a stop a quarter inch above the concrete. Sharp little beams of light shot from it, projecting onto the floor. The object seemed to be measuring its own position and rotation. After a second the beams switched off, and the thing set down with a ting that reverberated through the room.

  “Everything that comes through is baffling to us,” Paige said. She nodded at the green rags. “The best materials scientists in the world have studied that fabric using our most advanced tools, scanning-tunneling microscopes that can isolate atoms. They’ve learned nothing. Not a single thing, in over thirty years of study. They tell us the material doesn’t even seem to be made of atoms. They nicknamed it a quark-lattice, but that’s a wild guess, not a testable theory, and it’s almost certainly wrong.”

  Travis found his eyes drawn back to the Breach.

  “Once or twice a month,” Paige said, “things come through that are either rare or
unique. Things like the Whisper. We never understand how they work, but we can usually get a sense of their purpose. Not always, but usually. Some of them have good applications, like the medical tools that were used on me over the past several hours. Others are so dangerous, we just focus on keeping them safe, keeping them dormant and locked away. And that’s more or less what Tangent was created for. To shepherd what comes out of the Breach. To distinguish the good from the bad, find uses for the former, and contain the latter.”

  She paused and turned to him. He looked at her and saw in her eyes the same vague trance effect he felt in his own. In the Breach’s presence there was no avoiding it.

  “In the first year after March 7, 1978,” she said, “when the government was trying to figure out what to do with this place, there were proposals to fill the elevator shaft with concrete and leave this chamber sealed forever. Whatever showed up could just stay down here, however helpful or dangerous, and we could simply not tinker with any of it. At the time, those proposals were thought to be the most prudent. My father didn’t think so. He argued that eventually something might come out of the Breach that was effectively a ticking bomb. Something that if left alone would be so destructive that five hundred feet of dirt wouldn’t protect the world from it. He was right. In the time since then, at least three entities have arrived that fulfilled that criteria. The point is obvious enough. It takes the smartest and best people in the world, working as hard as they can, just to prevent the Breach from triggering a nightmare. Imagine what the worst people could do with it, and you understand what’s on the line here.” Her eyes went back to the Breach. “This building is the most secure site on Earth. It protects the Breach and all that’s ever come out of it. All that ever will come out of it too. And right now, it’s all in play. The security isn’t enough. The people who tortured me and killed my father, the people who now have the Whisper in their arsenal, want control of this place, and if things go wrong for us in the next day or so, they’ll have it.”