Gestalt Prime

by Ignacio Salome

  “Alright, so is it aliens?” Mikhail asked with a smile.

  The man chuckled as he took a sip of his wine. “No, Major. This is far stranger than that. My name is Doctor William Wei. The lovely lady here with us would rather be addressed as Clara. That’s not her real name of course, but that’s how it works in her trade.”

  “Bodyguard?”

  The Doctor nodded and the woman did not react.

  “Okay, nice to meet you, Doctor Wei. So what is this suicide mission about?”

  “Not here,” Wei replied. “For now let’s enjoy dinner. We’ll have plenty of time to discuss the project in private.”

  Annoyed, Mikhail took another sip of his wine and reclined back. There was not much else to discuss with his guests so when the food came, they all ate in silence. The duck risotto indeed turned out to be a good choice.

  About an hour later, Mikhail and his two hosts were riding an SUV away from the hotel tower and the cluster of skyscrapers. It was a slow bumper to bumper ride in the early evening traffic of downtown Los Angeles.

  “Can we speak now?” Mikhail asked Doctor Wei.

  “Yes. I’m sorry for the theatrics but this vehicle is insulated against electronic snooping, a luxury we couldn’t afford back at the restaurant” Wei explained. “Major Novak, would you agree that as far back as human history goes, scientific research has always found a way to one battlefield or another? All the efforts put by men and women with a passion for uncovering the mysteries of the universe become hijacked by those who would use such knowledge for the escalation of warfare?”

  Mikhail chuckled and rolled his eyes as he lost a little bit of respect for the Doctor. But it hadn’t been the first time an idealist liberal had thrown a similar speech to him and so he used his standard response which for the most part worked very well against hippies. “Well, Doctor, one could argue that it is mostly during wartime that governments bother to sink money into research and development. Your opinion is usually popular amongst those who are pampered enough behind a wall of privilege to understand the world is in constant flux for power and control of resources.”

  “Ah, yes. But what if research was done only to acquire knowledge for knowledge’s sakes?” Wei countered.

  “Never going to happen. Military advancement must be ensured if you wish to guarantee the sovereignty of your homeland. You sound like an English native speaker, Doctor. As an American surely you understand it was beating everyone else to a feasible application of nuclear power that allowed your country to dictate international politics for over two hundred years and counting,” Mikhail replied. He could swear he saw a vague smirk of approval on Clara’s face.

  “Agreed. But it’s in this seemingly never ending period of Pax Americana that we should change the way the power of knowledge is acquired and kept.”

  “So, to change the corrupted way things are, you must rely on the positive results such corruption brought?”

  “Yes,” Wei replied. “And we shall never look back.”

  “Doctor Wei, as a civilian, you are allowed to have whatever opinions you may derive from the comfort of your peaceful home. As a soldier, I can never agree with your views.”

  “Major, I hope you don’t think my views are based on idealistic naiveté.”

  “I don’t care. But I would like to know how this debate applies to the project I’m here for.”

  “Tonight, you will see evidence in support of our point of view with your own eyes,” Wei said with a smile then reclined back on his seat. “I am member of the board of directors for a multinational think-tank we call the Hermes Initiative.”

  Mikhail chuckled and crossed his arms. “Really? A secret society that hoards knowledge? What, the Illuminati didn’t let you in?”

  “To call our group a secret society is an invitation for mockery,” Wei said, annoyed. “From this point onwards, knowledge must be curated and carefully distributed or else humanity risks self-destruction if its power is controlled by a politician with an agenda or a soldier looking for a final solution.”

  “Very well. Shall I assume your group has uncovered something far more destructive than nuclear power then?”

  “Potentially destructive, yes. What we discovered has been documented for hundreds of years. It wasn’t until we connected the dots that we realized its implications.”

  “Are you going to tell me what it is already?”

  “No. I’m going to show you,” the Doctor smiled.

  At that moment, the SUV pulled into an underground parking lot beneath an office building. Mikhail looked out the windows but found nothing out of the ordinary inside. Several cars were parked but there were plenty of vacant spaces. The SUV continued towards the back then stopped at a reserved spot next to an elevator door. Clara opened the door and exited the vehicle.

  “Please,” Wei said to Mikhail as he signaled for him to step out first. The Major obliged and the Doctor followed. The driver stayed put.

  “This way,” the Doctor said and approached the elevator then swiped a card on a reader which turned green. “One of our members owns this building and the construction company doing the work down there. Another is a government official who looks the other way.”

  The doors opened and Clara stepped in first so she would be on the back of the box. Wei and Mikhail followed. Once inside, the Doctor again swiped his card and the doors closed, taking the three of them further underground. For the first time since being contacted for an offer to provide test piloting services and consultation for a hefty fee only the week before, Mikhail wondered if he could handle whatever it is he was getting himself into. Nonetheless, his curiosity was now picked and so he rode the elevator in silence with his hosts.

  A couple minutes later, they arrived at what looked like an underground construction site. The air was thick with the smell of earth mixed with exhaust fumes. Immediately outside of the elevator, there were several large excavation machines parked there for the night. The massive steel behemoths were painted with the characteristic bright yellow color of construction equipment. Their front sides were fitted with drills, hoes and other accessories for removing and transporting soil.

  “This can’t be safe for ground stability at surface level,” Mikhail observed.

  “Trust me, everything has been calculated to account for soil composition, limestone and even potential seismic activity,” Wei said. “This dig site has been running for a few years now and it extends far beyond what you can see here,” the Doctor then flipped a large industrial power switch a few steps away and the scale of the chamber became evident when the lights were on. It was circular in shape, at least two hundred meters wide, about thirty meters high. There was a tunnel directly across from the elevator door and two more on each side.

  “There are others like this?” Mikhail asked, dumbfounded.

  “Yes. This is only a junction where the tunnels meet. We’ll one day use them for housing, research labs, testing facilities, warehouses, you name it.”

  “Why here though? Right underneath Los Angeles?”

  “It’s the only place in the planet where it would make sense. You’ll know what I mean in a moment,” Wei replied then motioned for him to follow as he walked away. He obliged and Clara followed him as it had been the pattern all night. They walked to the other side of the vault and entered the tunnel in the middle. It was a concave passageway lined with concrete walls and pipes running overhead.

  “Your group seems to have invested quite a lot of money to build all this,” Mikhail pointed out as the three of them walked down the tunnel.

  Neither the doctor nor the bodyguard commented and so they continued until they reached a service elevator. Wei swiped his card again and its wire mesh doors opened.

  “How far down are we going?” Mikhail asked.

  “Don’t worry, we’re almost there, Major,” Wei replied.

  The elevator ride felt as if it went on for longer than it had to and without a floor or level indicator, Mikhail
felt unnerved from not knowing how far down they had descended. Finally, he saw an opening below. The elevator stopped then its wire mesh doors opened. The three of them walked out and Mikhail found himself in a large natural cave at least fifty meters tall. It wasn’t as wide as the vault Wei had called ‘the junction’ but it still accommodated several computer equipment racks on the sides. On the other side of the cave, there was a metal surface elevated from the ground which Mikhail could only think of as pedestal. Several computer workstations were arranged around this pedestal as if it was some kind of control center.

  “Tell me, Major,” Wei said as he stepped on top of the pedestal and Mikhail observed him. “What do you know about gravity?”

  “Gravity?” Mikhail asked while he looked up to face him and struggled to recall a physics lesson from grade school but when nothing came to him, he decided to go for the universally accepted empirical definition and answered “you mean the force that keeps our feet on the ground?”

  “Exactly!” Wei said, turning around to face Mikhail. “Not only that but keeps our planet orbiting around the sun and the sun around a much larger star and that star around another. Gravity keeps the observable universe in balance. It even bends light.”

  Mikhail listened in silence and nodded, if only to give Wei the satisfaction of thinking he cared about the middle school level explanation for such a complex subject. With the corner of his eye he saw Clara stand with her arms crossed, uninterested in the lesson and focused on him instead.

  Motioning as if holding celestial objects in his hands, Wei continued and said “and yet we understand so little of how it fundamentally works. But very soon, we will be presented with an extraordinary opportunity to observe its effects very closely in this room, on this very platform.”

  “Here?” Mikhail asked, raising an eyebrow then looking around the otherwise unremarkable cave. “What’s so special about this place?”

  “Gravity, of course,” Wei answered with a wide grin, greatly pleased with himself. “Ever since we started peeking at the deepest points of the universe beyond with the Hubble back at the end of the twentieth century, astronomers of the time saw the incredible event that was to come. In two weeks’ time, the Earth will align with several other celestial bodies. The gravitational interactions between them will create the conditions for opening a large, stable wormhole.”

  Mikhail looked down at the platform Wei was standing on. “There?” was all he could manage to ask.

  “Yes,” the doctor replied. “When this Orbital Synchronization Event occurs, this cave will be at one end.”

  “And the other?”

  “Based on our calculations, a distant planet on the other side of the galaxy.”

  “You mean you want me to-“

  “Yes, Major Novak. We think you could be the ideal candidate to traverse this Celestial Gateway and report back what you find. You’ll be history’s first man to set foot on the surface of an extraterrestrial world.”

  Wei looked at Mikhail expectantly, as if waiting for a reaction but the Major found himself at a loss. As he looked around the natural cave, he realized the computer stations were all pointed towards the platform much like in a control center similar to the ones used by NASA only there, people would monitor the mission of a man going through a wormhole across interstellar distances.

  “I’m sorry,” Mikhail finally said. “I thought you wanted me to fly some super-secret prototype spy plane. I didn’t expect this.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “I don’t know…” he replied, shaking his head.

  “Do you understand now?” Wei interrupted, almost dismissing Mikhail’s shock. “Can you even imagine the probabilities of such an alignment to naturally occur and not only that but for it to happen in the relatively short span of time the human race will exist? And on top of that, to occur at a point in our history when we have the tools to predict and study it? The numbers are so absurd, it all borders on divine intervention!”

  “But, a wormhole, here,” Mikhail said looking up at the excited Doctor. “Underground. It can’t be safe for the city above us. Even the country or the entire planet…”

  “Oh, please,” Wei interrupted again with condescending disgust. “Spare me the doomsday scenario. What you see here is but one of the last phases of planning that has been going on for almost a century. I guarantee you some of the most brilliant minds that have lived ever since have contributed one way or another in planning how we’re going to use this event. And the consensus is that it will be safe.”

  “But still,” Mikhail said. “This little experiment of yours does have much more destructive potential than the atom bomb.”

  “That’s right,” Wei said, as he calmed down a little and stepped down the platform. “Now you understand why whatever knowledge we acquire here must be curated, controlled even. Anything we learn about the fundamentals of our universe or the things we bring back from the other side could be used for unspeakable evil. Biological agents, extraterrestrial beings, exotic elements and such.”

  “I’m sorry, Doctor. This is too much, I need some time.”

  “Sure thing,” Wei said. “I understand it can be a little overwhelming but the reality is we’re running out of time and we’ll need to contact the next best candidate down the list. Go back to the hotel and order room service, think about it. But we’ll need an answer in twenty-four hours.”

  “Yes. That is sufficient,” Mikhail said then then turned towards the elevator. Wei stayed behind, admiring the product of his work. “The other chambers you’re building, like the junction. What are you going to do with those?” Mikhail asked as he stopped and faced Wei.

  “Who knows what we’ll find on the other side,” Wei replied, crossing his arms. “We’ll probably bring back bio samples so we’ll need quarantine spaces, research labs, waste processing and so on and so forth.”

  “So I would be doing reconnaissance. Making sure it’s safe on the other side?”

  “Correct. Once you return, we would come up with more elaborate exploration plans.”

  “If I come back.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first explorer risking everything for the advancement of the human race.”

  Mikhail nodded and stepped away with Clara following closely behind.

  Once back in the comfort of his suite, Mikhail took off the jacket and sat on the chair by the bedside. He recalled the hundreds of times in his youth when he had reveled in the danger of flying prototype aircraft, risking his life without much thought. And now that he has was an old man with pretty much nothing to lose, the prospect of going back to that kind of uncertainty terrified him. Delicately, he pulled out the wallet on his chest pocket and opened it. The only picture in it was of a girl in pajamas sitting on a hospital bed with a confused expression looking back at him. He had taken the last picture of his only daughter Haya in the final stages of leukemia by surprise and in doing so, he had captured the agonizing pain and confusion she had gone through in her last weeks. He held the picture as if asking for a revelation or a signal that told him what to do but the girl with the medical tubes on her arm and nostrils, her hair missing from head and eyebrows only looked back with scared eyes. Haya had been his only family and after she passed away, in retirement he had become a recluse, determined to live out his days in the house by the air force base that had once been his home.

  The prospect of possibly dying in the next two weeks eventually became too overwhelming and he put the picture back in the pocket of his shirt near his heart. He stood up and made for the small kitchenette. In the fridge, he found a bottle of Svedka. Thankfully someone had realized the fancy wines he had been offered were meaningless and had instead treated him to a taste of the homeland. He grabbed the vodka and a clean glass from the counter then returned to the comfort of the recliner. Pouring a couple fingers, he recalled he had never been a man of faith beyond the rituals of catholic first communion imposed by his mother. As much as he had toye
d with death his whole adult life, not once had he stopped to wonder how it would be like. All it would take was a failed calculation by an engineer or a loose bolt somewhere and down he would have gone in flames. Shuddering, he took the first sip of the beverage. The strong, dry taste of it went down burning his throat. It wasn’t long before the desired effect kicked in. Then, as he continued to sip, he reminded himself he had nothing to lose and so Mikhail made his choice.

  *

  “You know, this thing was designed for you to put it on by yourself,” Robert said as he adjusted the seams on the front of Mikhail’s Hostile Environment Mobility suit. Or as the Major had simply grown to call it, the space suit.

  “Well, I’ve got to find good reasons to keep you around you know,” Mikhail said with a smile. Robert scoffed and shook his head then continued to make sure the multiple parts that composed the suit were properly sealed. The Major stood there in the middle of the changing room, lifting his arms so it would be easier for the technician to do his job. He had been trained on the proper use of the HEM suit over the last few days but even with all its fancy life support systems and actuator-assisted limb enhancers, he couldn’t shake the feeling it was going to be all for nothing. The several training sessions he had been put through by Doctor Wei and his small army of science advisors boiled down to the simple fact no one knew what to expect on the surface of the planet that would await for him on the far end of the Celestial Gateway. For all they knew, the Major could walk onto a place with such extreme temperatures he would either evaporate or freeze in place. Or the anomaly could simply throw him off in the vacuum of space. If it came to that, Mikhail had concluded he would probably just float around to see how it felt but eventually, unsealing the space suit would liberate him. His body would drift out there for the rest of time, thousands of light years away from home. A fitting burial for a lifelong daredevil.

  “What’s in this for you, Robert?” Mikhail asked, looking down.

  “What do you mean?” Robert replied, puzzled. The Major couldn’t make out his country of origin by accent or name but his facial features were definitely Hispanic. By then he was too embarrassed to ask.