Faller

by Will McIntosh

  After he’d been working for a while, Storm said, “It wasn’t the same person.”

  Faller looked at Storm, questioning.

  “Moonlark spoke to the woman you thought you knew. She’s never seen you before.”

  Faller grunted a laugh. Moonlark was thorough, that was for sure. Or he had been thorough. “Well, that answers that question.”

  “What question is that? Whether you’re delusional?”

  “Very funny.” Faller wondered if she would ever forgive him, whether she would leave him at the first opportunity. Maybe when they found another world and landed safely she’d realize he’d saved her life.

  XI

  PETER’S HEART leaped when Melissa was led into the lab by three members of his security team. She looked scared. Wait until she got a look at the thing in the basement.

  She ran ahead of the security people, into Peter’s arms.

  “I missed you,” Peter said into Melissa’s hair. It had been three days since he’d seen her, and four days since he’d slept.

  “I was afraid you’d done something stupid and injured yourself.”

  Peter leaned back so he could see her eyes. “But I wrote in my e-mail, ‘Everyone is safe, no one’s hurt. No one’s in danger.’”

  “What else are you going to say?” She laughed. “‘I’m wounded, and in terrible danger. More in a few days’?”

  Peter put his hands on his hips. “Have I ever come across as one of those ‘I didn’t want to worry you’ guys? If I’m wounded, even if it’s just a bad cut I get slicing tomatoes in the kitchen, I want credit for my suffering. I want sympathy.”

  “That I can’t argue with. Remember when we had to prick our fingers in bio class to do that blood typing lab? I had to do it for you, and you carried on like I’d shot you.”

  “I did not.” Peter laughed. “I didn’t even flinch. I wanted to impress you with my bravery.”

  She grimaced. “Hate to break this to you, but that ship sailed when you couldn’t prick your own finger.” Melissa looked around the almost empty lab. “So what did happen?”

  Peter took her hand. “It’s downstairs.”

  “Your hand is all shaky and sweaty.” Melissa lifted their clasped hands.

  “Too much Zing. Not enough food.” Peter headed down the long hallway.

  “What have you been eating?”

  Peter shrugged. “Mostly pizza and Chinese. I don’t ever want to smell sweet-and-sour pork again.”

  At the end of the hall he flicked on the hastily installed lights in the stairwell, led Melissa down into a long-abandoned locker room. Filthy orange rubber raincoats hung in a row along the wall like skins. Rustling came from one of the bathroom stalls lining the wall. A rat, probably.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise. But I’ll say this much: it’s unbelievable. The world is never going to be the same.”

  “This from a man who created a duplicator. Now my palms are sweating.”

  Down another concrete staircase, where the air was danker, cooler. Through a largish room piled neck-high with World War II–era howitzer tires, with a narrow trail through the center.

  “God, this is creepy.”

  “We had to store it somewhere no one would ever look.”

  Down another stairwell. At the bottom, Peter squatted to plug in two strings of Christmas lights. The long hallway glowed a ghostly blue and red.

  They reached the doorway, its heavy steel door swung open, leading onto the cavernous factory floor.

  “Hey, Melissa.” Harry whisked toward them. “Wish I could stay and watch your reaction, but your husband is running me like a nine-year-old in a sweatshop.” Peter tried to kick Harry’s behind as he passed, but missed.

  The factory floor was concrete, half the size of a football field. The foot-thick door suggested that back when this was a munitions factory, the room had been utilized for sensitive projects. Deep shadows hid the corners and ceiling. In the center was the isolation tank: eight cubic feet of space surrounded by a thick layer of military-grade blastproof glass. Peter’s handpicked team—four physicists he both respected and trusted—were working around instruments set on tables they’d lugged down from the lab on the first day.

  Melissa went straight to the glass, peered in, then jerked away like she’d been stung. “What is that?”

  No matter how many times Peter looked at the thing, it never failed to fill him with awe, dread, excitement.

  Despite having come out of the duplicator, it wasn’t alive. It didn’t breathe, or have bodily fluids. It wasn’t composed of living cells. It wasn’t composed of anything, in the sense of being constructed of smaller particles; it was one unit, indivisible, like some enormous quantum particle.

  “I was experimenting with the duplicator.” As he looked in at the thing, his voice was soft, respectful, like he was in a church. “This came out.”

  “Oh my God,” Melissa whispered. She covered her mouth, unable to take her eyes off the pitch-black sphere. “What is it?”

  “Now you see the reason for all the secrecy. If the feds get word of this they’ll seize the lab.”

  “What is it?”

  That was the question, wasn’t it? “We’re pretty sure it’s a singularity.”

  Melissa gawked at him. “You mean, like a black hole?”

  “Not exactly. Black holes are one form of singularity.”

  “You were conducting an experiment and a black hole dropped out of your duplicator? From where?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “Did it come from outer space? Through time?”

  Peter put a hand on her shoulder. “You need to reread your Einstein. Space is time, more or less, even though you can only move forward in time.”

  Melissa folded her skinny arms, bent one knee. “I didn’t read my Einstein in the first place, as you well know.” She stared at the singularity. “What sort of experiment were you conducting?”

  Peter shook his head. “It’s better if you don’t know. Safer for you. We haven’t recorded a thing, in case someone hacks our computers.”

  “Give me some sense of what you think happened. Is it dangerous?”

  “Up to now, I thought of that portal as a simple loop—a wormhole that comes right back here a fraction of an instant earlier than our subjective time.”

  Melissa pinched the bridge of her nose. “Right, I got that.”

  “But I was wrong, because if that were the case, this couldn’t come out”—he pointed at the singularity—“because there couldn’t be anything in the wormhole beyond what we send in.”

  “So what do you think now?”

  “I think the duplicator is a portal backstage. To the beginning of things, and the end. To the source.” Peter closed his eyes. Images, impressions swirled. “But in the end, I don’t really know.”

  Staring in at the dark sphere, Melissa pressed a trembling hand over her mouth. “It’s too much, Peter. It’s like you’ve summoned a god.”

  Two of the physicists—Jill Sanders and Natalia Komolov—passed, looking both exhausted and excited. Peter nodded. Despite being fairly good friends with Jill, Melissa didn’t seem to recognize her.

  Peter put his arm around Melissa, coaxed her to turn away from the glass. “Here’s the important part: it contains a staggering amount of energy.” Peter raised his hands, fingers spread. “I mean, a breathtaking, miraculous amount of energy. We’ve been experimenting on it with lasers: it turns out the center is rotating. You wouldn’t believe what we’ve been able to do.” He pulled a black felt-tip pen and a notepad out of his shirt pocket, leaned the notepad against the glass and sketched a circle. “This is the singularity.” He added an ellipse around the circle. “This is the transition region surrounding it.” He drew a series of dots entering the transition region. “We sent a stream of nanobots into the transition region, designed to break into two parts.” He drew a line of smaller dots dropping into the circle,
another line continuing out of the transition region. “One part falls into the singularity, the other comes back out.” He looked at Melissa, aware that he was speaking way too quickly, but unable to slow down. “The part that comes out contains more energy than the entire nanobot that went in.”

  Melissa nodded. “You’re saying you can use it as an energy source.”

  Peter nodded. “It contains enough energy to power the entire world for a decade. Just this one. And we don’t have to settle for just one.”

  Melissa looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “If we want another, we can repeat the experiment. Create another paradox.”

  Melissa stared in at the thing, biting her lower lip. “No more oil, or coal, or nuclear to fight over,” she whispered. “They could run everything.”

  “We could end the war in a day.”

  He was in possession of an inexhaustible, carbon-neutral supply of energy. His duplicator was, as Kathleen had pointed out, an inexhaustible supply of food. Between the two, so much would change.

  “Send it back,” Melissa whispered.

  “What?”

  “I’ve never seen anything that scared me so badly.”

  “You know I can’t. If I put it back in the duplicator it’ll come right back out, and it might bring a friend.”

  “I know.” Melissa couldn’t take her eyes off it. “How would you use it to supply the world with energy? Are you going to run power lines from the lab door out to India? Maybe hand out free singularities to Russia and North Korea?”

  Peter smiled. “Far-field wireless power transfer. It’s been around for a decade. We aim beams of electromagnetic radiation at fuel cells set on platforms. Anyone, from any nation, will be free to tap the fuel cells and help themselves to as much power as they want.” He raised a finger. “As long as they agree to an immediate cease-fire and come to the table to negotiate an end to the war. If any country balks, no free power. They’re cut off for some predetermined amount of time.”

  Tentatively, as if expecting a shock, Melissa touched her finger to the glass.

  “The war would become moot in any case,” Peter said. “It would be like fighting over seawater, or oxygen.”

  “You think you can do it?”

  “I know I can. But I’m going to need billions. Quiet billions. I’ll hire engineers to design the fuel cells and platforms without telling them what they’re for.” He took a swig of Zing. He felt exhausted, shaky, slightly headachy, like he might be coming down with something. “Kathleen is going to help me raise money through her connections.”

  Melissa stepped away from the isolation chamber. “Maybe I can help her. I’m barely able to work as it is now anyway.”

  Peter gave her a big hug. “Thank you. Thank you for believing in me. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  23

  FALLER DREAMED a thousand people were charging at him with axes and shovels. He was holding a gun. He lifted it, but instead of aiming at the mob storming at him—which was now led by Moonlark, clutching a machete—he pointed the gun at his own temple, and fired …

  He woke with a jolt, which startled Storm and woke her as well, because their wrists were lashed together.

  “Sorry. I had a nightmare.”

  The grogginess in Storm’s eyes vanished, as if she’d been slapped. Faller didn’t understand her reaction, then realized she wasn’t looking at him, she was looking past him.

  He turned.

  In the distance, a world the size of his fist hung partially obscured by clouds in an evening sky.

  “Hah!” Grinning, he looked back at Storm. “I told you. Didn’t I?” They were lucky she’d spotted it.

  “It’s too far away.” She stared at the world, seemed unable to take her eyes off it. “We’re going to fall past it.”

  Faller twisted to appraise the distance. It was indeed far away, but it was also far below. Worth a try. They’d been falling for over two days; he’d rather not have to fall that long, or longer, before chancing upon another.

  “Hold on to my feet.” He shifted onto his stomach to get the full force of the wind. Once Storm had a grip on his ankles, he spread his arms and legs and began to glide. Maybe it was an illusion, but it felt like their horizontal movement was remarkably swift. Maybe two bodies created more pressure on the wind.

  * * *

  IT WAS dark by the time they made it over, and the world below was nothing but an ever-growing starless patch of black in the sky.

  “This is perfect,” Faller said. “No one will see us land. We can parachute into a quiet part of the city and blend in.” He could barely contain his excitement at the thought of seeing another world. The darkness blanketing it added a sense of mystery, of diving headfirst into the unknown.

  Soon there were no stars at all visible in the blackness underfoot. Faller fumbled with the harness, cinching the buckles so their bodies were squeezed together, face-to-face, her body pressed tight against his.

  It was unsettling, to fall toward a world in darkness. It was impossible to know how close they were to the ground, but if Faller deployed the parachute too soon they might drift right past the world.

  Finally, he spotted a pinprick of orange light, then another. Fires. The reflected moon and starlight began to reveal more detail: vast fields and forests separated by strips that he guessed were roads. They were more than close enough to deploy the chute.

  “Get ready for a jolt. Wrap your arms around your head. Try to keep your neck from snapping too violently, and your head from colliding with mine.”

  Storm did as he instructed. Her elbow pressed against his ear.

  “Okay, on three. One, two…” He glanced down one last time, saw the ground fast approaching. “Three.”

  Storm let out a clipped shriek as the parachute snaked out and opened in one fluid motion.

  As he and Storm were crushed together, it was like being squeezed by a giant hand. His vision went spotty.

  Then they were drifting serenely under the stars, a new world below. Faller could make out smallish buildings spread here and there, with a concentrated cluster along one edge. The dark corner of his mind that housed the words grudgingly offered up town.

  “It’s like a picture in a book.” Storm’s tone was somewhere between fear and wonder.

  A cool breeze blew them in the general direction of the town. A cylindrical building—a silo—passed below. The word sent a chill of pleasure through Faller.

  “I think all the pictures in books are real places,” he said.

  Storm looked at him like he was nuts. “Have you seen a picture of an ocean? It would take up the whole sky.”

  That was true. There were also pictures of mountain ranges that went on and on until they disappeared in the distance. The world wasn’t made to hold things that big; only an artist’s imagination could hold them.

  They were dropping toward a forest, which wouldn’t do at all, so Faller spread his arms and coaxed them toward a weedy field. A hard breeze pulled them on a swift horizontal.

  “Don’t try to land on your feet,” Faller said. “Just topple over as soon as we touch ground.”

  Weeds snapped against their shoes, then whipped their legs. Storm squealed as they hit solid ground and fell, tumbling in a heap.

  Faller undid the clasps lashing them together, then stood, brushed himself off. The night was wonderfully silent, save for the chirp of crickets. Nearby, the parachute deflated.

  There was a house on the edge of the field, partially enveloped in vines with big, teardrop-shaped green leaves. He pointed to it. “Why don’t we rest in there until morning?”

  “We’ve had plenty of time to sleep. Let’s look around.”

  Faller had assumed that, as the person with the most experience falling onto unknown worlds, he’d be calling the shots. “I’m not sure it makes much sense to stumble around in the dark.”

  “Well, I don’t care. I’m going to look around. If you want to hide out unt
il morning, go ahead.”

  Faller was tempted to take out the photograph, to remind himself that the two of them could look happy together, but it was too dark for him to see it in any case, so instead he trailed Storm along a dirt path skirting the edge of the field, past a truck rusting beneath a blanket of vines, then some big piece of machinery rusting next to the truck.

  They found a wider dirt road that led through the woods, away from the house.

  Every so often they passed houses, most of them small and seemingly constructed as a single piece, like they came out of a mold. None appeared occupied.

  The woods opened up, giving way to fields. They passed the silo and barn Faller had spotted from above, next to a big house with a long porch wrapped around it. The scene was beautiful. Together the trio of structures created a balance, a harmony he couldn’t put into words.

  “Are you crying?” Storm asked.

  Faller wiped the back of his hand across one cheek. It came away damp.

  “Why are you crying?”

  Faller shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just, seeing that farm. It gives me this warm feeling, and I feel like I should know why, but I don’t.”

  Storm studied the scene. “But you’ve seen pictures of farms before, haven’t you?”

  “It’s not the same.”

  Storm studied the farm for a moment longer, then pushed on.

  The horizon was turning pink with the dawn when the dirt road intersected a paved road. They took the paved road toward the town.

  24

  THE TOWN lay at the bottom of a long, sloping hill. The buildings on one side of the main street hung right over the edge, some reinforced by steel beams sunk into the side of the world. Houses were sprinkled haphazardly around the rest of the small valley.

  “Maybe we should stroll down the main street of the town, as casual as can be,” Faller said. “See what we can see. Avoid talking to anyone until we learn how to blend in.”

  Storm gave him a bemused look. “No one saw us land. Who’s going to suspect we dropped here from another world?”

  For Faller, the memory of a man standing over him clutching a half-brick was still fresh.