Quantum Void (Quantum Series Book 2)

by Douglas Phillips

  Could Marie visualize the link between quantum-entangled particles? Could she slow time and observe the nearly instantaneous process of radioactive decay? The headband could be an incredibly useful device in a variety of scientific fields. It was a fine gift, even if it produced some disturbing side effects. Maybe they could be controlled.

  The physiological impact on Marie was real—she had passed out in front of him. Until they had a better handle on it, NASA should study the headband’s capabilities under medical supervision. Marie should set the headband aside; it wasn’t worth further risk. He resolved to reinforce his recommendation when they met in the morning.

  Daniel pulled up the first text message, a simple note from the night operator at the White House.

  Priority message. Please check your voicemail.

  The second text was similar, and the third was from Spencer Bradley, the White House science advisor and Daniel’s boss. It provided a phone number.

  Something was going on. Daniel dialed into voicemail. Message one of two:

  “Daniel, Spence here. I’ve called a few times but I guess your phone was off. We’ve got a problem developing down in Texas. We’re getting credible reports of unusual disturbances just east of Austin. I’ve got one description from a certified meteorologist of a ‘swirling vortex in the sky,’ as he called it. The USGS is also reporting ground tremors in the same area, and I really doubt it’s from fracking. Something big is happening. I don’t have all the details, but based on the location, you and I could both take a guess who might be responsible. Get on-site as soon as you can. I’ll text you a contact number for more information. And Daniel, the governor may be deploying the National Guard in the Austin area as we speak—it’s that serious.”

  Holy hell. Not good.

  He checked the second voicemail. It was from the EPA district manager, Jeffrey Finch, Daniel’s point of contact in Austin. He needed a callback as soon as possible.

  Both calls had been placed within the past forty minutes. He’d switched off his phone to be sure there were no interruptions while Marie was using the headband. Bad timing, but at least he wasn’t too far behind the curve.

  He’d have to leave, and right away. He shoved the thoughts of Nala to the back of his mind, even though it felt wrong.

  His next step was a call to Janine’s mobile phone. After several rings she answered, groggy, but there. “I always know when it’s you, Daniel… the ringtone. Kind of late, isn’t it?”

  “So sorry, Janine,” Daniel said. “It’s an emergency and I need to get to Austin. Can you do your magic?”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  The Cessna Citation lifted above the lights of Chicago and turned south. Daniel connected to the plane’s Wi-Fi to finish his to-do list. Three a.m. It was going to be a long night.

  He had already returned the call to Jeffrey Finch before takeoff. Strangely, the man had answered his mobile phone and offered to meet Daniel at the airport—even with an estimated five-thirty a.m. arrival time. Working all night wasn’t exactly normal government bureaucrat behavior. He hadn’t said anything more about the strange goings-on around Austin, but his voice was agitated.

  Marie was next on the list, and Jan after that. He composed a short text to each, taking more time and care with the message to Marie.

  Sorry, I’ve been called away to Texas. The power plant issue I told you about has escalated. Wish I could help at Fermilab, but you and Jan have far more to offer. Tell him what you saw, he’ll make sense of it. Then put that device back in its case—you’ve done your job. No more risks. Q: You described a distant bubble—the one you said was bulging. Any idea how far away? As far as Texas? Stay in touch. D.

  He attached the recording he’d made of her visualization and sent the message. It was up to her now.

  The connection between the distant bubble that Marie had seen and the event in Austin was purely a guess, but hard to ignore. You don’t need evidence to identify a suspect in a case. Evidence is uncovered during the investigation.

  Whatever was going on, Daniel didn’t doubt the reports of ground tremors and swirls in the sky—they had come from trained scientists who, like any police detective, understand the difference between a witness who tells a good story versus one who provides a factual accounting.

  Finally, there was Nala. Alive and communicating—all good. Better than good. Fantastic, unexpected and an instant flood of relief. His intuition that she was never dead had served him well.

  But communicating from where? A reality beyond our senses, yet a physical place. Daniel was leaving her fate to others, but what else could he do? His note to Marie was only partially accurate. True, Daniel had little to offer, but he wasn’t sure if Jan or Park had anything better. Even if Marie could help pinpoint Nala’s location, finding the technology to return her to the three-dimensional world was going to be a tall order.

  They’d been in this position before. Just eight months before, three astronauts had been lost in four-dimensional space with no practical way to return home. Daniel hadn’t solved it. No one had. Those guys would have been dead if not for the intervention of Core and alien technology.

  This time the alien savior option didn’t seem as likely. Core didn’t seem to be the least bit concerned that human scientists were in danger—or dead. It was almost an expected side effect in our efforts to manage the new science and technologies related to quantum space. People die. You will learn, and all that BS.

  Still, it could be worth another appeal, especially now that they knew Nala was alive. Maybe Thomas too. Daniel sent one more message to Marie. Maybe the diplomat, Zin, could pave the way.

  We’re in over our heads.

  Being out of control is a humbling experience. But it wasn’t just Daniel, or even Fermilab. Maybe it was all of humanity. We’d stumbled into a brand-new science that we barely understood but, instead of carefully studying it, we were dashing as fast as we could toward its promised benefits—and directly into its dangers. Even Nala. She’d probably gone too fast, cutting too many corners. It was just like her.

  Nala. Beautifully exotic. Magnetic.

  With each passing minute, the jet put more miles between Daniel and Nala. It wasn’t the first time he’d left her. Duty called once again, just as it had when he’d declined her invitation to Haiti. Both times, he’d responded by choosing duty over Nala.

  She was still alive, but there were no guarantees she’d survive. This was no Haiti, no waving it off with a “we’ll get together another time” excuse. This time it was life and death… and yet, he’d still left her.

  The guilt felt like a knife twisting in his belly.

  28

  Huddle

  Marie set the bag of groceries on the break room table along with a bottle of vodka and a small bottle of pineapple juice. The juice was intended as nourishment, not a cocktail mixer.

  “Should we leave everything wrapped?” she asked Jae-ho Park. There was no telling how Nala would manage to access any of it.

  Park pulled several bottles of water out of the kitchen’s refrigerator and set them on the same table. “I don’t think it matters. If she is dimensionally offset, Nala would see everything all at once. The outside of our bodies and the inside too. It would be the same with the food, the table, the building. Whatever view she has of us may be quite complex.”

  “Then I guess we just leave it all on the table?” Marie asked.

  “I could just as easily have left the water bottles in the refrigerator and she’d still be able to pull them out without even opening the door.” Park had a tendency toward fascinating explanations that never answered the question.

  “So… table?” Marie asked again.

  “It’s as good as anywhere,” Park said. He glanced at the clock on the break room wall. “It is nearly eight a.m. We will soon see what happens.”

  They stood around the table and waited. Jan came running down the hall carrying a bundle under his arm, which he dropped on the table. �
�I thought of a few things she might need… assuming she has some way of taking them.”

  He unrolled a blanket with a first-aid kit and a flashlight inside. He also set a pair of handheld radios on the table. “Her lab was already supplied with most of this, but I’m guessing it was all vaporized in the explosion.”

  “Then how was she not vaporized?” Marie asked.

  Jan held up both hands. “We’re dealing with a situation that none of us understands. This was not predicted by theory. I can’t even tell you where she is with any certainty.”

  “Our best guess,” Park said, “is that the hovering light is a singularity, a zero-dimensional point. She may be quite literally inside that point, but only from our three-dimensional perspective.”

  Marie shook her head. These were top physicists, but they were just guessing. She’d already seen more with the headband than they were able to explain. “Spheres,” she said. “I saw multiple iridescent spheres with sparkling surfaces. Some that were very large, and at least one that was very far away. They had numbers associated with them.” She was repeating herself; she’d already given Jan a detailed description the night before, but Jan had asked few questions.

  Jan and Park didn’t speak for a moment of awkward silence. “I’m not making this up,” Marie finally said.

  “I’m sure you’re not, Ms. Kendrick,” Park said. “But what does this add to our understanding?”

  You’re the quantum geniuses, you tell me, Marie could have said. But she didn’t. Two people were trapped and needed help. Any squabbles with the physicists would just make the dilemma worse.

  She wished Daniel were there. He should have been. Called away, he’d said in his message.

  Really? Called away? You couldn’t have delayed your Texas thing by a few hours?

  Lives were at stake, and one of them was a person Daniel supposedly cared very much about. What was in Texas that could possibly be more important than that? Marie wasn’t in any mood to be magnanimous about Daniel’s priorities or Park’s wandering soliloquies. This rescue team needed a little more focus. There were two people somewhere in that mix of iridescent spheres.

  They waited. Marie pulled out a chair and sat, holding the headband in its carrying case on her lap. Daniel’s recommendation that she avoid using it was about as useful as him jetting off to Texas in the middle of the night. She’d do what was needed and nothing less.

  The clock read ten after eight. Nala was late for her own appointment. Unless, of course, she had already arrived. There was no sign of her presence, but the ghostly idea that she might be standing in the same room but offset in another dimension of space was more than unsettling.

  Marie wasn’t helpless. She unzipped the case and pulled out the headband. Jan and Park stared at her as she put it over her head.

  Park held up a hand. “Ms. Kendrick, an alien device…I’m not sure…”

  She gave him her best pissed-off-female look and Park backed away. Jan didn’t say a word. She reached up and tapped twice on the side.

  The spheres materialized before her but shifted in position—lower. It made sense. She was now high up in Wilson Hall, not below ground at the site of the accident. The bubbles were clearly associated with the underground lab.

  “The spheres are still there,” she said. “I think we’re actually inside the biggest purple one. It’s all around us now.”

  Neither man said anything. Maybe they thought she was conjuring the spirit world and their words would break the spell. As the famous futurist Arthur C. Clarke had once said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The capabilities of the headband were exactly that.

  “There’s one sphere that’s far away and badly misshapen. Daniel thought it might be 4-D space over Texas, but I can’t really tell. It’s bigger than it was before. Not sure why.” She flipped through several other data layers. “No sign of Nala.”

  I need that people layer. But it simply wasn’t there. The magic had its limits, and if Nala was nearby, Marie had no way to know. She removed the band and returned it to its case. “Sorry, I wish I had more.”

  As she zipped the headband’s case, there was movement on the table. Marie turned quickly. “Did you see that?” She stood upright and stared. A box of crackers trembled and slid, no more than a half inch, but without anyone touching it. “There.”

  They all gathered around the circular table covered with supplies. The box of crackers wiggled again and then slowly vanished in a wave that started at one end and finished at the other, as if someone had erased it from existence.

  Jan dropped to his knees, his eyes level with the table. “Wow. Interdimensional kinesis. Maybe the new-age nutcases weren’t so nutty after all.”

  “It’s Nala,” Park said. “It must be.”

  It had better be, Marie thought. Because this is pretty freaking weird.

  The pineapple juice bottle began to shake. It slid one way and then the other and then disappeared in the same fashion. Three intelligent people with significant training in skeptical analysis had witnessed what anyone would describe as supernatural.

  Even the rational explanation was a tough sell: Nala stood among them, but in some other space, unseen. It was an explanation that could make you crazy.

  The vodka bottle wobbled and fell over, rolling off the table before anyone could catch it and crashing to the floor. Broken glass and the smell of liquor made the absurdity very real.

  Jan pushed the broken glass away with his foot. “That didn’t seem intentional. She’s struggling.”

  “Two for three. I’d say she’s doing pretty well.” Marie picked up a jar of peanut butter and held it in the air. None of them spoke as the jar wiggled and then vanished.

  Marie wrapped both arms around her as a chill shivered through her body. “Wow. It felt like someone pulled it right out of my hand.”

  The blanket shifted slightly and brushed against the radios that stood next to it, causing one radio to fall on its side. “Perhaps we should hold each item up,” Park suggested. “It might be easier for her?”

  “I’d be careful,” Jan said. “Remember the Flatland story.”

  “Which is?” Marie asked.

  Park nodded, apparently comprehending Jan’s oblique reference. “A-sphere pulls A-rectangle from the two-dimensional page.”

  Jan nodded in agreement. “It may not be that simple, but there’s the potential for injury, for both you and Nala.”

  “Sorry, what?” Marie asked again. Why was it so hard to get a simple answer from these guys?

  Park spoke while Jan remained deep in thought. “Jan is suggesting that Nala might unintentionally pull on your finger or hand and drag you in.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Marie said.

  Park shook his head, his expression no less serious than if he were delivering a eulogy for an interdimensional death. “Jan might be right. Assuming we are adjacent to space that we can’t see, who is to say how much effort it takes to release us from our normal 3-D space, in whole or in part? Nala seems to be pulling small objects out with very little effort. It may not be that hard to pull you in too. We might think the dimensional boundary is impenetrable, but the dividing line between our space and this other space may be nothing of consequence.”

  The magenta spheres that Marie had visualized were held together by the flimsiest of surfaces, looking very much like giant soap bubbles. I could put my hand through it.

  Even without the headband, Marie could almost see the dimensional sphere that was unquestionably surrounding them. She lifted the radio into the air and held it by her fingertips.

  “Careful,” Jan advised. Whatever that meant. There were so many unknowns in this scenario that it was impossible to describe what being careful even looked like. Nala needed that radio, and if no one else was going to do it, Marie would hand it to her.

  The radio wiggled. For a moment, Marie thought she felt something brush against her wrist and then the radio disappear
ed, starting from its base and going all the way to its antenna.

  “Yes!” Marie shouted.

  Jan switched on the second handheld radio. “There’s no guarantee a radio communication is going to work. Part of it depends on how Nala holds it.” Marie was familiar with the issue. Antenna gain, or directional control, varied depending on the equipment. NASA high-gain antennae focused the electromagnetic transmissions in a specific direction. It was how a spacecraft orbiting Mars could communicate all the way back to Earth. But radios used for short-distance communication were low-gain, meaning the transmission would broadcast in a disc in all directions perpendicular to the antenna.

  “How would she even know which way to point it?” Marie asked.

  “She might not,” Jan answered. “I’m not sure I would either, but depending on how she holds it—and a dozen other variables—we might receive her transmission.”

  “But not vice versa. Right?” They’d had the same problem trying to communicate with the missing Soyuz spacecraft. One-way communication only.

  “Right,” Jan said. “We have no way to point our antenna in her direction. All we can do is wait for her to call.”

  And so, they waited. But the radio produced nothing, not even static. Jan adjusted the squelch, but the radio remained silent.

  “You sure it works?” Marie asked.

  Jan nodded. “I tried them out when I picked them up. Fully charged. They work fine.”

  There was no way to know what problems Nala might be having on the other side of this strange boundary. Their wait ended with a crash that came from somewhere down the hall. When Marie looked up, Jan was already heading out the door.