The phone was filled with researchers from the facility, people I had met at conferences and business interests, nobody I could honestly say I trusted. I kept scrolling and then his name came on the screen.
Sam.
Sam went to school with me and he never liked Lara even though he had only met her a couple of times at my birthday parties. I don’t know why he took an instant dislike to her but from their first meeting he called her the ‘snob’ and the name stuck.
When we were in school Sam and I could always be found in the computer labs tinkering with gadgets my dad had left at home, being generally geeky. There was a group of us and thanks to my dad providing me with and an endless supply of strange equipment, we always had something new to experiment on.
Sam could always be trusted; we went way back. We had lost contact during the university years, occasionally catching up every so often, and even though we had grown apart I always knew I could call him any time.
My finger hovered over the dial button a moment before pressing it. Was Sam ready for what I was about to involve him in?
The phone was ringing for a good minute before a groggy voice answered.
“Dom, what time do you call this?” Sam’s voice answered.
“I thought you would be glad to hear from me.” I replied in a chirpy voice.
Forcing excitement at this time in the morning was hard but this was how we always started conversations. One person, usually Sam, would pretend not to be interested and the other, usually me, claimed to have something spectacular that they must see. This occasion was no different.
“You better be in a lot of trouble otherwise you soon will be! Why are you waking me up at this time?” Sam moaned down the phone.
“I can be at your house in five minutes if you want to hear about it.” I said.
“Sure, Sure. I’ll get up, see you in five”. The line went dead.
I stared back at the phone. Sam was a great friend and I was about to endanger his life, but I was desperate.
Out of all the people I knew Sam was certainly the most prepared for this type of thing. He was something called a prepper. Someone who prepared for the end of the world, zombie apocalypse, giant asteroid or mutated virus and I knew he had all kinds of precautions. If I remember correctly his house was full of cameras, bullet-proof glass, re-enforced doors and many more gadgets that I didn’t know about.
Switching off my phone and turning the engine back on I started to drive back to the main road. It was starting to rain hard and the thudding on the roof was louder than the radio. The weather sure did reflect my mood tonight. It had been a challenging few hours but I couldn’t wait to see Sam’s face when I show him the little orb sitting next to me and what it could do.
Chapter 4
Sam was very similar to me in appearance, his build and how he styled himself. Medium height, slim with short, brown hair. If there was such a thing as a ‘classic nerd’ look then Sam and I were the poster boys.
He stared back at me in disbelief.
I spent the previous ten minutes explaining the events of my night, but he was having a hard time believing it. The truth was, even as I explained it, I started to doubt some of the details. Neither of us could pin down why this was happening.
“Well…” Sam started. “Where is it then?”
His question caught me off guard before I realised what he was referring too.
The device, the little metal sphere that had been the cause of my troubles was sitting, alone in the passenger seat of my car. I felt my eyes grow wide as the situation dawned on me and I leapt to my feet, eyes focused on the door.
“You’re not serious, are you?” Sam questioned, reality dawning on him too. “I assumed there was more to the story, that you had hidden it somewhere, that you had not left the most important invention in human history sitting in in your car, in plain view of everybody, in the street while the world’s most powerful people are looking for it!”
I looked at Sam, he had a smirk on his face, but he was also getting to his feet with urgency.
“That is not helpful.” I muttered under my breath.
“I know, but for somebody who claims to be so smart, it’s a pretty dumb move you have to admit. We’ll have to leave this bit out of your memoirs.” Sam quipped.
We both ran towards the front door, I reached out to try and open it but it didn’t budge. Sam unbolted the many locks and cracked it open, slowly I peeked my head out revealing a fresh, chilly morning that nearly took my breath away.
The dew had started to collect on the windscreen of my car and the sun was starting to rise, casting a glowing red shimmer in sky overhead. I looked left and right twice before slowly stepping out. The sleepy little village had not awoken yet and fortunately my car was still there. Sam was close behind, wielding an umbrella like a sword.
Anyone watching would think that we were high on some substance as we slowly sneaked up on the car, ready to pounce on our prey, our eyes constantly darting around, startled by shadows and leaves blowing in the breeze.
Pressing the button to unlock the car created a loud ‘clunk’ from the central locking, breaking the morning silence. Both Sam and I jumped as it happened then we looked at each other and smirked at the absurdity of the situation.
I opened the passenger door, slowly reached in to pull out my coat and let out a sigh of relief as I felt the weight of the ball inside. I grabbed it and we both ran back into the old country cottage that Sam called home.
Sam slammed the door behind us and started clicking the various catches and bolts back into place.
“Are you sure you have enough locks?” I asked.
“Nope, but the biometric, facial detection system is being upgraded.” Sam replied and I honestly couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or serious.
We made our way into the kitchen and I put the coat on the table, unwrapped the metal ball and saw Sam’s jaw drop.
“Can we turn it on?” He asked with all the excitement of a child on Christmas morning. It got me excited too, finally someone else shared my enthusiasm.
There was a small screen, just above the equator. It displayed numbers representing the heights, distances and various co-ordinates. Twisting a few of the dials I watched the numbers change.
Getting the right settings was important. It was all about relativity. Floating a metre off the ground is not as simple as is sounds. You must isolate the main source of gravity, the Earth, then it needs to detect was you mean by ‘ground’. Was the ground Sam’s kitchen floor? The tabletop? The roof of his cottage or the underground cavern a mile below us.
I had already setup the astronomical settings back in the lab. These accounted for the Earth moving around in space, not just spinning and orbiting the Sun, but moving around the Milky Way and the expansion of the universe too. If these were not taken into account the orb would remain stationary as the universe moved around it resulting in the device slamming into the ground, a nearby wall or, as was the case with one of the prototypes, an entire lab of glass test tubes that had been painstakingly set up for days prior.
It’s remarkable how quickly you learn from your mistakes when you ruin a multi-million-pound biology experiment.
After a few moments I was happy that the orb would not punch a hole in Sam’s roof and pressed the button on top. The orb slowly rose above the table and settled at eye level.
Sam was struck with awe. Slowly he reached out his hand to touch it, pressing his palm against the metal, the ball stayed there, unmoving. He put two hands against it but still the ball remained still. He started to lean against it, giving it little shunts but still the ball remained in place like he was pushing against a brick wall.
Finally, content that he was not able to move it Sam stepped back.
“So how does it work?” He asked.
“It’s actually really easy.” I replied and I let a smile grow over my face.
“Really?” Sam queried with doubt in his voice.
/> “No! Of course not. It would take me a month just to write down the maths and physics equations.” I laughed back at him.
Quantum mechanics, astrophysics and the past decade of my life and Sam wanted it summed up in a single sentence to explain it.
“I don’t need to know the details.” Sam insisted “Explain it like they do on a TV, just the basics.”
I looked at the orb and thought about how best to explain it. I had never had to explain it in simple terms before.
“Okay.” I said as I grabbed a towel from the sink.
I gave one end to Sam and I held the other. We looked like we were folding laundry.
I put an apple in the middle and the towel sagged under its weight.
“You all know how gravity works. It the apple is the earth, it’s large, heavy and anything that goes near it gets pulled towards it.” I explained and to prove my point I put an orange of the edge of the towel and watched it roll down and bump into the apple in the middle.
“What if we could find a way to stop things from rolling towards the apple? What if we could push from the other side?” I grabbed the orange again, put it on the edge of the towel and watched it fall inwards but this time I raised my knee underneath it, flattening out the towel and the orange rolled to a stop.
“The orange no longer wants to fall down to the apple, something has cancelled out the gravity, it is effectively floating. In simple terms that is what is going on here. We found a method of penetrating gravity wells by pushing up from the other side. The metal ball is not creating anti-gravity it is just not being affected by gravity. Something is getting in the way and cancelling out the force.”
“Okay, sure.” Sam said and I could tell from the worried look on his face that he only slightly understood and was nodding along out of politeness.
Sam was capable of understanding this, he was smarter than he looked. When we were younger, we were high school friends and rivals. I was always able to beat him in tests, but never able to beat him at games, especially the ones involving strategy and tactics, card games were his speciality, his poker face was too good. In the end I also stopped playing chess with him too, just when I thought I had him he would launch a humiliating defeat on me.
We both went off to University, I studied the sciences and Sam studied Economics. While I was working in a research lab Sam was negotiating takeover plans for billion-dollar acquisitions. He was an excellent strategist and could easy call out people on their bluffs, double dealings and misinformation while setting up all kinds of traps and loopholes of his own.
“Just one more question then.” Sam said as he turned to me. “Where does force come from that holds up the metal beach ball?”
It was a simple question that was going to be much more complicated to answer.
“The answer is…” I paused while I thought about it. “It’s from several tiny dimensions and from the entire universe all at once. It is impossible to locate the source and if we did it would change; therefore, we will never truly know.”
With this last comment Sam’s eyes glazed over; I had lost him.
“Pixie dust! Understood!” Sam said. “What’s the plan now? You know that she will be coming for you. She might already be on her way here.”
“I doubt that, I turned off my phone before I set off, she doesn’t know where I am.” I said confidently.
Sam looked me up and down and I could tell that he was about to lecture me on something. What had I missed?
“Okay, so one of the most powerful women in the world wants you dead and you think just because you turned off your phone, she can’t track you?” Sam started to explain.
“Yeah, I don’t think so.” I replied.
“Your telling me that she doesn’t have the ability to recognise your voice from one of the many microphones that is in this house? She doesn’t have the ability to listen to your phone calls and hear our conversation this morning? Better yet, she doesn’t have a satellite in space looking down at her facility that she could use to follow your car journey from the lab to my house.”
The contents of my stomach suddenly tried to escape as reality dawned on me.
“She knows I am here!” I screamed. “How could I be so stupid!”
“Don’t worry, you’ve come to the right place.” Sam said with assured calmness.
“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice growing weaker as my mind started to grasp the situation.
“I know a place we can go.” Sam said with energy and optimism. “After all, I have been preparing for a day like this. When you screw over as many people as I have in business it is just a matter of time before someone comes looking for you.”
Sam walked into the hallway and opened the door under the stairs.
“Bring the orb.” He ordered “And put these slippers on, your feet are going to get cold!”
I followed him down a small staircase into his basement. It was dark and damp. The mould was clearly winning its war against the foundations and they were starting to crumble. There was a musty smell in the air and I started to question if this was actually safe.
Sam quickly made his way over to the far side of the room where, without warning he took a running leap straight through the wall. It had looked like brick but was made of very thin wood. I followed, stepping through, watching him disappear into a long, dark tunnel.
“Keep up” he said, “We haven’t got much time.”
Dim lights dangled from the roof of this narrow cave. The tunnel was about a hundred and fifty metres long and ended in another wall. This time I could see that it was made of wood and once again Sam threw himself at it, crashing through like it was made of paper.
We emerged in an old garage. Dust had settled on every surface and natural light flooded through the windows in the roof. In the middle sat a very boring, simple, hatchback car, about five years old with a simple, silver paint job and standard body work. By all accounts the car was completely unremarkable.
Sam opened the rear passenger door and climbed in the back.
“Hurry, get in the other side.” He barked.
Once inside I slammed the door and looked at Sam with a puzzled expression on my face that Sam immediately understood as ‘Please explain what is going on!’.
“This is a self-driving car.” Sam started to explain. “Every weekday for the past six months it has been driving to a local shopping centre, waiting there all day and then returning home in the evening. If anyone is using satellites to track us, and I think Lara will, then this car is not going to be noticed. Even if she runs it through a computer looking for unusual activity in the area. The perfect escape plan, as far as Lara is concerned, we are still in my cottage.”
“And what about that tunnel? She’ll find it.” I argued.
“Very unlikely, right now the hole is being bricked up by a little robot. Trust me, by the time she realises we are gone, it’ll be too late to trace us.”
In front of us several screens hung from the back of front seats. Sam flipped a switch and they all flickered into life displaying cameras from around the local village.
Over the next few minutes, I watched as several of the locals came out of their houses, got in their cars and drove away. One man walked to the local shop with his dog, went inside and came out holding a newspaper and under his arm and a milk carton in his hand. Then, without any warning the garage door in front of us opened and the car engine roared came alive.
“Now it’s our turn.” Sam stated with a smile. I could tell that he had been wanting to do this for quite some time, he truly was prepared for all situations.
“Sam, before we leave, two questions are buzzing around my head.” I said. “Firstly, do I want to know why you have been preparing all of this? Secondly, where are you taking me!”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to either.
“As I said, I have screwed over a lot of influential businesspeople, politicians and even some small countries. It is only a matter of
time before they realise what I did to them.”
“Sure.” I agreed.
“I have a small barn about twenty minutes away. We’ll be safe there.” Sam answered.
The car pulled out of the garage and I held onto the leather seats, unsure about the ability of the car to drive itself.
Slowly the car edged forward and made its way on to the road, driving away down the country lane.
“What’s wrong? You act like you’ve never been in an autonomous, robotic car before.” Sam said.
“It’s not something I do on a regular basis.” I replied. “It just makes me a little nervous.”
“Well, if you’re scared of this technology, wait until you see what’s in the barn!”
Chapter 5
This place was awesome!
From the outside it looked like an old, abandoned barn. Something that hadn’t been used in decades. Parts of the walls were crumbling, there was moss and ivy growing in the rafters and the road leading up to the barn was so overgrown that it was clear nobody had visited here for some time.
Sam wanted the barn to remain looking exactly like this which was why we parked the car in an old stable house and walked the final few hundred yards to the building.
As we approached, I failed to spot any doors or points of entry. I trusted Sam but there appeared no way into the barn. As we got closer it became clear that we were not going into the barn but under it. There was a small set of steps that ran down underground and at the bottom were a pair of huge, thick metal doors.
As I climbed down the stairs the doors opened automatically.
“That’s cool.” I mentioned.
“Yeah, you’re going to want one of these.” Sam replied and handed me a small pin to stick to the collar of my shirt. “This will let you wander around without setting off alarms.”
“Handy.” I said and I took the pin and stuck it to my shirt.
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