by Peter Clines
Arthur’s lips twisted into an unfamiliar shape. Mike realized the man was almost smiling. “It cuts down on joyriding,” he said. He leaned his cane against his body, pulled his glasses off, and polished them on his tie. “Once we’d established the Door was safe, more than a few team members decided to try it.” He gave a pointed look at Jamie.
“Just once,” she said. “Don’t act all high and mighty. You did it, too.”
Mike smiled.
Down in the chamber, red safety lights flashed over every door. One was just beneath the window. The men stepped back, clearing a space around the rings. A series of relays clicked around the room, followed by a buzz, as they activated the device.
Down on the floor, Olaf set a finger against his flatscreen. His voice echoed through the speakers. “Sasha’s on the other side. Power is good. Flux density is steady.”
The chair coasted by, carrying the blonde to another monitor. “Ready in three,” she announced into her headset. She grabbed a pen from the console and spun it twice around her thumb before shoving it behind her ear. Her fingers danced over the keyboard and she pushed the microphone a hair closer to her mouth. “This is Jamie Parker, it’s June twenty-second, twenty-fifteen, and this is run one-sixty-eight. Traveler is, for a change, Olaf Johansson.” She pulled the pen back out from her ear, and jotted some quick notes on a clipboard.
A hiss of steam echoed up from the main floor as the heavy hoses frosted over. The buzz became a full hum, shaking the air. Mike watched the set of double rings and waited for them to light up or spin or do something impressive.
“We still get power spikes sometimes,” Jamie told him, shifting her attention for a moment. “They don’t affect the Door once it’s open, but they play hell with the components, especially up here. Every spike costs us about four days of work and something like fifty thousand in replacement parts. Ready in two.”
“Closer to a hundred thousand, actually,” murmured Arthur.
Mike peered down at the rings. The space between the twin circles seemed to shift and ripple like the air over hot pavement. He took a step to the left and confirmed the effect was only within the rings.
Arthur nodded. “It’s also one-sided,” he said. “You can see the formation of the Door here, but if you were on the other side of the rings you wouldn’t see anything. Perfectly clear.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
The ants filed it all away with quick notes and first impressions.
The computer screen in front of Jamie stopped scrolling and flashed a string of numbers. “We’ve got a solution. Ready in one.”
“Power is good,” said Olaf down on the floor. “Flux density is good. Opening the Door.”
A faint crackle of light raced around the rings, a sparkling St. Elmo’s fire. There was a crisp hiss that reminded Mike of a fresh glass of soda being poured, and the sound settled to the constant bubbling of carbonation. Then the sparkle of light faded and the rippling air between the two off-white rings grew still.
“Field has cohesion,” said Jamie. “The Door is open.”
Two timers appeared on a screen close to Jamie. Each one extended to hundredths of a second, where the numbers flew by in a blur. One counted up from zero. The other counted down from ninety-three seconds.
Nothing happened. Mike stared down at the lab, waiting for a flash or a crackle or a bang. The rings seemed as inert and lifeless as they had when he first saw them.
Olaf stepped away from his station, and Bob slid in to take his place. He walked up to the expanded steel pathway, stood between the two white painted lines, and gave a curt nod up to the control booth. Then he marched up the ramp and through the rings.
And vanished.
“No way,” breathed Mike.
Arthur smiled. “Three years now and I still love watching that.” He punched an extension number on the phone, tapping the speaker mode button at the end. “Have him, Sasha?”
“Of course.” Olaf’s sneer echoed over the phone.
“Yeah,” said Sasha’s voice. “Without a hitch.”
Arthur pointed at a bank of monitors. “He’s over at Site B, on the far side of the property. You can see him there.”
Mike bent to the screen. It showed Sasha in the foreground at another workstation while Olaf stood by an identical set of—
On screen, it wasn’t a pair of rings. It was a trio. Behind Olaf, through the three-ringed Door, Mike could see Neil and Bob working at their own stations.
Mike looked down through the window at the two men. He could clearly see two rings on the main floor, but if he craned his head to look through them, he could see the base of a third ring.
He looked at Arthur. “Where does the third ring come from?”
“It doesn’t come from anywhere,” said Arthur. “There are two rings at each location. You’re seeing the point where the sides of the Door connect.”
“How far is Site B?”
“About a quarter mile away. The rings are sixteen-hundred and three feet apart.”
“Is that significant?”
“No. Just where they ended up.”
Mike pointed at the monitor. “This is real time?”
The older man nodded. “You can talk to them through the god-mike, if you want. They’ll hear you in both labs.”
Mike leaned into the microphone. “Olaf, could you raise your right hand?”
On the screen, Olaf muttered something the speakerphone couldn’t catch and put his right hand up at shoulder height in an annoyed salute. Sasha chucked, and her tinny laughter bounced around the control room.
Mike glanced down at the floor. “Bob, could you stand up please?”
The redhead glanced up at the booth and pushed his chair away from his desk. On the monitor, through the rings, Mike saw him rise from the chair before Olaf’s body blocked him.
“Olaf, could you lean to the left a bit?”
“No,” growled the scientist. “Are we done yet?”
Down on the lab floor, Bob stretched out his arms and did a little dance, rolling his shoulders as he pointed up at the booth, through the Door, and back. On screen, the distant Bob through the rings did the same, but with Olaf hiding him for the most part.
“Forty-five seconds left,” Jamie said.
Arthur leaned into the microphone. “Want to do a walk-back?”
“If it gets this over and done with, fine.” There was a faint ripple down in the space between the rings, and Olaf reappeared on the walkway. He marched down the steel ramp and back to his station.
“Wait,” said Mike. “One more time? Can he go back?”
Arthur smirked and nodded. “Back to Site B, Olaf.”
“What? Are you joking?”
“Come on,” said Jamie into her headset. “Play nice for the guest.”
“This is ridiculous!” Olaf snarled up at the booth. “I have things to do.”
“I’ll go,” said Bob.
Jamie glanced at the timers. “Twenty seconds.”
“Olaf, please,” said Arthur. “Back to Site B.”
The scientist shot an angry glare at the control booth and marched through the Door again. On the monitor he barked an order at Sasha and slashed his hand across his throat. The intercom clicked off and he began to vent at her in silence. She studied her instruments and made one or two gestures of casual agreement.
“It’ll take him ten minutes to get back here,” said Arthur. “Let’s go to my office and talk, if you’ve seen enough.”
Mike stared back at the monitors, soaking up every detail. He gave a nod, which Arthur echoed to Jamie. Her fingers ran across the keyboard and the bubbling noise rose back to a hiss before going silent. Down on the floor the red lights stopped spinning.
NINE
Bookshelves filled most of Arthur’s office. About two thirds of the contents were old science books on astronomy, physics, and biology. Many of them had faded spines and cracked bindings. Mike recognized eleven of the autho
rs. One of them was H. G. Wells, printed on four black-bound volumes of The Science of Life.
Twenty copies of The History of What We Know formed a bright block at the center of the bookshelf to the left of the desk. Ten hardcover, ten paperback. Ten weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list, too. All of Mike’s fellow teachers had read it and sung its praises.
The rest of the shelf space was filled with binders, random electronics, and a few framed photographs. On a rare section of exposed wall a large poster showed Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote, and other Warner Bros. cartoon characters. An overstuffed Bugs Bunny made of smooth fabric and loose stitching was seated on the bookshelf to the left of the poster.
The laptop on the desk was at least three years old. A stack of dark brown file folders was piled next to it. The only other item was a photo of Arthur embracing a woman with strawberry-blond hair.
Across from the desk was a CAD blueprint of the twin rings of the Albuquerque Door, packed with notes and insert diagrams.
Arthur followed his gaze to the blueprint. “Eidetic memory,” he said. “How does that work?”
Mike shrugged. “When I was ten I started having this visual of ants carrying around pictures in my mind, like frames of a film. It’s like having instant access to a time-stamped DVD of everything I’ve ever seen. I can replay it, rewind it, slow it down, freeze frame. The only limit is if I actually saw something or not.”
“Ants?”
“My fourth grade science teacher, Mr. Tall, showed a movie about insects in class. There was a war between two ant colonies, and I thought, ‘That’s just what it’s like in my head.’ Thoughts and memories pouring all over each other in this big, boiling mass.”
“That’s an interesting metaphor.”
“Yeah. And I can’t get rid of it because I can’t forget it. Odin has ravens, I’ve got ants.” He saw Arthur looking at the blueprint. “Sorry. That’s not really your concern, is it?”
“Not exactly, no.”
They studied each other for a moment.
“I’m not here to steal secrets or learn your methods,” said Mike. “I could’ve kept quiet, let you think I was an idiot, and just stored up everything for the trip back. But that’s not what this is about. Reggie just wanted someone who’d be able to get a larger sense of how things are going out here. I can take in more and get up to speed faster than anyone he’s got on staff.”
“Of course.”
They stood across from each other for a few more moments. Mike glanced at the picture next to the laptop. “Your wife?”
“Yes.”
Mike weighed his options for a moment, then let a few ants loose. “Violet. Married in nineteen ninety-eight, while you were both doing postdoctorate work at MIT. You were already a bit of a scientific celebrity.”
“You’d make a fantastic stalker.”
“Reggie gave me dossiers and copies of all your files to review. Well, all the files you’ve given him.”
Arthur’s shoulders shifted a bit. His lips pulled into another faint smile. “I do envy your memory. I forgot my anniversary last month. Could’ve sworn I had another week, and now I’m still in the doghouse.” He pulled a bottle from his desk drawer. “Scotch?”
“Love some.”
“I have options.”
“Scotch is fine.”
Amber liquid splashed into the glasses. “This has been my life for the past decade. Four years of work before we even started on SETH. Two years of that and then we carried a good chunk of it over to the Albuquerque Door. Three years of testing and refining since then. It’s been all-consuming, to say the least.”
He handed a glass to Mike. They raised them politely to each other and then each man took a sip.
Mike lowered his glass. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Why do you think Reggie’s worried something’s gone wrong here?”
Arthur laughed and swirled the scotch in his glass. “Not much for small talk, are you?”
“It comes from spending too much time with sixteen-year-olds.” He sipped his scotch. “So, why, do you think?”
The older man shrugged. “Well, you may not have noticed, but we’re a bit insular here. You get a group of people like that, put them under a lot of stress—most of it self-imposed, granted—and then start peering over their shoulders. It doesn’t help that we actually were hiding a secret for a while.”
“The animal testing they mentioned at the review board?”
Arthur settled into the chair behind the desk. “How much do you know about the whole incident?”
“Not much,” said Mike. He tugged one of the spare chairs closer to the desk and sat down. The ants carried out the seventeen reports that mentioned the incident and set out the relevant lines and paragraphs. “All the reports seem happy to brush it under the rug, so I just know the very bare facts.”
The older man nodded. “I suppose we might as well begin at the low point.” He took another taste of his drink. “This was all originally the SETH project, a straight teleport—”
“What the hell is this?” barked a voice behind Mike.
Olaf stood in the doorway, his icy glare shooting back and forth between Mike and Arthur. “Is this another one of Bob’s stupid jokes? Where are my things, dammit?”
Arthur looked from the other scientist to Mike, and then to the glasses of scotch. “What are you talking about?”
“What did you do with my computer? And all my files? I swear to God, if that idiot has messed up any of my files, I’ll smash his head in.”
Arthur stood up. “Bob did something to your office?”
“Don’t patronize me! Are you part of this nonsense, Arthur?” He shot a frosty look at Mike. “I thought we were all supposed to be on best behavior.”
Arthur locked eyes with Mike for a moment. Then he marched past Olaf to the door across the hall. He swung it open and glanced inside. “Everything looks fine to me.”
Olaf glanced over his shoulder. “Switching offices? What the hell! Is this a freshman dorm?”
“Just calm down,” Arthur said, walking back into his own office. “Bob knows the rules, and if he did something wrong, he’ll be disciplined.”
“If?”
“You know where the professionalism forms are, Olaf.”
“Did I mention I have a conference call? I don’t have time for this juvenile crap!”
“Make your call. Let me know if anything’s damaged. I’ll talk to Bob.”
The scientist stomped into the hall and a door slammed.
Arthur settled back behind his desk and had a longer drink of his scotch. “Sorry about that.”
Mike looked back at the door. “Is that normal?”
“He’s a pain in the ass, but he also has one of the greatest theoretical minds on the planet. I’d put him in a class with Hawking. We’re under a lot of pressure here, and sometimes a little mistake can set any of us off. Olaf just goes off more than most.”
“Doesn’t deal with the stress well?”
“That is how he deals with stress. He runs and he complains about everyone. Pretty much the only reason we have professionalism forms is for Olaf.”
Mike turned to look at the blueprint again. “Is Reggie after you that much for results?”
“Not that bad, but we’re also pressuring ourselves. What we’re doing here is going to change the world forever. A lot of people say it, but…well, we’re actually doing it. And we all know it.”
“Understandable,” said Mike.
“Where were we?”
“The SETH project.”
“Right. At that point we were working on pure teleportation. We had a series of breakthroughs. Some huge intuitive leaps. It was the fastest and furthest our work had gone to date. Over three weeks or so, we became convinced we’d cracked it, that we’d made a true IMT system.”
Mike nodded. “So you wanted to start animal testing.”
“We couldn’t wait.
Honestly, we couldn’t. After three weeks of nothing but leaps and bounds, the idea of waiting months to get approval seemed ridiculous. After all, we knew it would work this time.”
He took a sip of his drink.
“Tramp was a stray who’d been hanging out around the trailers. He’d sort of been adopted by the whole team. We fed him and played with him sometimes. He trusted us. And we put him on the platform, turned on the machine, and…killed him.”
“Just like that?”
Arthur gave a grave dip of his chin. “He looked like…like road kill. Just a hunk of gristle and fur spread over the receiving platform. We were all…We were so caught up in being right we hadn’t considered how dangerous it could be if we were wrong.” He paused for another drink. His glass was almost empty. “It was a horrible way for anything to die. Anything.”
He swallowed the last of his scotch.
“You tried to hide it,” said Mike.
“At first, yes.” He reached across the desk and poured another half-inch of scotch for himself. “It was clear to everyone that SETH was going nowhere, so we weren’t worried about a bunch of intense scrutiny. As our focus shifted to the ideas behind the Albuquerque Door, though, we realized we had to come clean, so there was no chance of animal-rights groups spinning it into a scandal later on.”
“Over one test animal?”
“One that we hid. Too many people would think, ‘Who knows how many are still hidden, that died in even worse ways.’ ” He shook his head. “We wanted the Door to be as clean as possible, so we just confessed to everything. Olaf and Neil insisted on it before we moved forward.”
Mike glanced across the hall. “Olaf insisted?”
Arthur nodded. “He doesn’t make a good first impression, I know, but he’s a good man at heart. I think the whole thing bothered him more than any of us. We had a long talk with Magnus—Reginald, paid some hefty fines, and we each ended up making a sizable donation to the Humane Society. With all that in mind, it’s understandable that he’d continue to see problems here. Which just breeds more resentment and pressure from us, of course.”
“Of course,” agreed Mike.
They sat and looked at each other for a few moments.