Quantum Void (Quantum Series Book 2)

by Douglas Phillips

  Partners at CERN were also busy experimenting with techniques for bringing living things back from 4-D space. Collapsing the space would hardly be a solution if it shredded every cell in their bodies. The plan would require more research, but the situation wasn’t hopeless. In the meantime, they had already found ways to keep Nala and Thomas alive.

  “It’s going to be complicated from here,” Jan said. “I’m not sure when we’ll have the answer.”

  Jan was up to his neck in the rescue effort, but Daniel couldn’t avoid the dangerous-looking cloud circling above his head. A call between physicists was essential if they were going to prevent an even greater catastrophe. “Jan, I need your help. The situation here in Austin has a lot of similarities.”

  Jan’s voice was strained. “Things are pretty crazy here, Daniel.”

  “I understand, but you’re the right person. I just need you to make one call to a physics lab in Romania. Explain to them what you know but they don’t. You help them, and maybe they’ll have resources they can offer you.”

  The last point seemed to resonate, and Jan agreed. Daniel gave him the contact information. One step complete.

  Daniel pocketed his phone and stared up into the sky. The cloud was a natural phenomenon in that it was made of condensed water vapor. But it came with an unnatural structure… and a human origin. This cloud hadn’t arisen from a natural process any more than global warming had. Humans had done this, not only through their natural curiosity, their creativity and ambition, but also through their neglect. Would we ever learn? Or would advances in technology forever come with an illustration of how deadly the world can be? Core had said we would learn in time. Daniel was not so sure.

  He headed back inside and passed state troopers, who accompanied Davis Garrity down the hallway.

  Garrity flagged Daniel down. “Dr. Rice, they said you would call Romania. Did you get the problem fixed? I know it’s something small. They probably just have some knob at the wrong setting.”

  Ignorance is bliss.

  “Yes, Mr. Garrity, I did call. But you should know it’s going take more than a few adjustments. This is a serious business with a lot of unknowns.”

  One of the troopers put a hand on Garrity’s elbow. It was clear they would be leaving the building regardless of what hallway conversation their suspect was interested in having. “Uh, yeah,” Garrity said, noticing the tug. “They want a deposition. I’ll be at the state courthouse today but available if you need me. I want to make sure we do everything possible to get this little problem cleared up so ElecTrek can get back to normal operations.”

  “I wouldn’t count on normal operations anytime soon,” Daniel said, as the trooper guided Garrity down the hallway.

  Normal? If we get to sunset without an apocalypse it’ll be a good day.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket, and Daniel ducked into a side room off the hallway. The call was from Marie, and she sounded more agitated than Daniel had ever heard her.

  “Daniel, I know you just talked to Jan, and that you’re putting all your faith in him,” Marie said. “But in my view, none of these so-called geniuses has any idea how to fix this. They’re arguing the minutiae. They’re absorbed in their theories and their math, but they’re running blind. They can’t see what I see. They just wave me off as a nutcase with a toy crown.”

  Even over the phone, it was clear that she was upset. “You explained what you saw to Jan?”

  Marie nearly exploded. “Don’t you do it too, Daniel. Of course I explained it! Why does everyone think I’m so incompetent?”

  Daniel waited without response. This was unlike the Marie he knew.

  “Sorry,” she said eventually. “I know you don’t mean to be condescending, but sometimes you are anyway. I’m calling you to coordinate, assuming you ever get back to Fermilab. Look, Jan doesn’t have the answer. Park doesn’t either. But I do. I’ve seen it.”

  She was angry, upset and probably on the verge of doing something irrational. His assessment was, of course, condescending. An emotional woman about to do something rash. But she was in possession of powerful alien technology, and he wasn’t sure how far she could go with it. “What are you proposing?”

  “I’m tired of sitting around listening to them. I’ve told Jan. I can solve this. Me, alone. I’m going in.”

  “In? Where?”

  “There’s an opening. I can see it with the headband. It might be dangerous… well… it’s going to be dangerous. But once I’m in, the headband will tell me everything we need to know. Of that, I’m sure.”

  “Don’t.” He couldn’t articulate why, and any justification would likely be thrown out anyway as yet more condescension from the male who knew everything the female couldn’t possibly fathom.

  Her response was just as simple. “Bye, Daniel. Watch for messages.” The phone connection ended.

  35

  Resolve

  Marie ran down the empty corridor and skidded to a stop at the edge of the yawning cavity. Her chest heaved with deep breaths as she studied the scene once more. The bright light in its center beckoned.

  She turned the headband over in her hand and examined the electronic components along its sides. An amazing device that could provide such a wealth of information. She had no doubt there was more information waiting to be discovered on the other side, but it was impossible to guess how she would use it.

  She looked past the crumbled edge of the corridor into the zone of destruction and began to wonder if she was doing the right thing. Jan had said it was a terrible idea. She dropped to her knees, feeling vulnerable.

  Do you have any idea what you’re doing?

  With the headband off, everything seemed so confusing. The images it created in her head, the ideas that appeared from nowhere. The horrifying hallucinations. How and why any of this had occurred was still a mystery, magnified once the headband was off and her mental abilities reverted to those of any mortal.

  There was a dumpster behind the building. She could throw it in and no one would ever know. She could tell people that she’d lost it. Daniel would come back to Fermilab and figure out this mess. He’d find a way; he had last time.

  The guard will be here soon.

  Jan had rejected her proposal. She had told him she was tired of waiting and would go ahead anyway. As she’d left his office, he’d called for security.

  Now, at the edge of the precipice, nothing felt right. She wasn’t herself and probably hadn’t been since the first day she’d worn the headband. It was affecting her, altering her personality, changing her thought processes. She’d never in her life been so rude to people, lashing out at Stephanie at the end of the mission, at Daniel on the phone, and yelling at Jan just now.

  The creepy-crawlies hadn’t surfaced for a while, but she knew they were still there. She could feel them hiding just beneath the surface, ready to spring when she least suspected it. They’d come again. Of course they would.

  Footsteps echoed in the corridor far behind her.

  The power she could summon from the headband was breathtaking, but the courage to use the alien device was becoming harder to find. She’d have to reach deep. There was danger, both physical and mental. But two people were trapped. They needed help, and all that she’d seen in the past twenty-four hours had led to one inescapable conclusion: Marie was the only person who could save them.

  I volunteered. I’m the highest probability.

  The footsteps were getting closer. “Ms. Kendrick!” a voice yelled. “Wait.”

  She stood up, put the band over her head and backed up a few steps.

  “No, don’t!” the security guard yelled.

  Marie took three long strides, and with every bit of energy her body could muster, she leaped into the void.

  36

  Rabbit Hole

  The fall should have killed her. Her body should have been found among the tangle of twisted rebar and broken concrete at the bottom of the vast hole. But gravity no longer f
unctioned as expected here. Space warped into a direction other than down. It wasn’t surprising. In fact, it was completely expected—she’d already visualized the lines of gravitation, and they pointed in an altogether different direction.

  She passed through darkness and landed with a jolt. Unable to stay on her feet, she tumbled. Pain shot up her arm as she hit something hard. Her knee scraped against a sharp point. She came to rest among piles of broken wood, bent metal and shredded carpet, the debris only dimly illuminated.

  She lifted herself onto her elbows, allowing her eyes to become accustomed to the dim light and taking stock of what hurt. Her shoulder ached, but not enough to worry about. The sharp sting in her knee demanded greater attention. She reached down and felt blood just below the hemline of her skirt.

  Pants. From now on, always wear pants.

  It was a scrape, deep, but she’d live. She sat up and looked around.

  Where am I?

  The headband would tell her everything she’d need to know. She reached up to tap it and was surprised to feel only hair. The familiar ring was gone, and panic quickly followed.

  It must have fallen off in the leap. There was so much debris around, it could be anywhere. Without it, she’d be lost.

  Marie stood up—really stood up, for the first time in her life. It was as if she’d been lying down forever, unaware of the more vertical position that was available. Up wasn’t up. It was something else, not describable but felt in the inner ear. Her balance was tenuous, like being on ice skates for the first time.

  She took a step. Not easy in the darkness, but at least she didn’t fall. Another step, easier. And another. A slight dizziness filled her head, and she began to regret her decision to make the leap. If standing and walking were this hard, what chance did she have of helping anyone else? The headband was the only reason to be here, and it was lost.

  This was a one-way trip with only one destination. She’d assured herself of that before she’d made the leap. Wherever she was, the headband had to be here too.

  Marie walked, tentatively at first but with increasing confidence. The material was scattered everywhere, requiring that she step over boards and twisted metal. The balance required to stand on one foot, even for just a second, took some concentration.

  Just as she was stepping over a large plank of wood, she noticed a body. A person, lying perfectly still among the debris.

  Oh God, I’m too late.

  The light was better as she approached. It was a man lying on his back. Red hair and a red beard. Part of his leg was missing, the stump wrapped in a bloody bandage. Thomas, no doubt, though why Nala had failed to mention his grave injury was a shocking oversight.

  Marie bent down and felt for a pulse in his wrist. Nothing. The body was cold; another discontinuity from Nala’s notes. She’d just told them that Thomas was with her.

  Marie took a deep breath and shouted. “Nala!” Her voice sounded dampened, like she was deep inside a clothes closet.

  From the periphery of her vision, there was a flash of light, startlingly bright. With the flash, everything went black.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Marie awoke. Her body was tilted at an odd angle, her feet above her head. The heap of carpeting she lay on was twisted and torn, but soft.

  She shifted her weight, lowering her feet to the surface and standing up, not sure why it seemed easier. Her balance was still off, but those first steps now seemed like a faraway dream. She reflexively touched her knee, half expecting to feel a painful scrape, but there was none. No blood either.

  Very odd. Surreal, like a dream.

  Her shoulder didn’t hurt, though it was hard to remember why she’d thought it would. She lifted the alien band from her head and examined it for damage. It looked intact, though there was something not right about it—a vague feeling that she shouldn’t be holding it at all. She finally remembered.

  The headband was lost.

  She had lost it and panicked. Yet now it was back in her hands.

  The body.

  She hopped over some debris to where she’d seen the red-haired man lying on the floor and scanned the area. No man, no sign of blood, just the dark floor covered with debris. Had he really been there? The image of the injured man was now as fuzzy as a childhood memory, that mental image of the essence of the event but with none of the detail.

  The confusion was disturbing, and in another time and place she might have allowed it to overwhelm her, forcing her to seek the safety of reality. Those days were over.

  I have a mission. People need me.

  She tapped twice on the side of the headband, and it lit up the darkened space as if someone had powered up a searchlight.

  “Oh, wow,” she whispered.

  She twisted her head in all directions, absorbing the nearly magical scene it displayed. A purple glow came from everywhere, creating an elegant spherical dome that intersected the flat floor just as a soap bubble rests on a surface. The glow from its edge pulsed, first from the left and then from the right, as if the bubble had a life of its own. Its surface was translucent, and additional blue bubbles hovered beyond. It was the same collection of spheres she’d seen before, but she was now on the inside.

  The floor provided its own magic, very different from the bubbles. Its position was not below her, but somehow next to her, above her, and even within her simultaneously. The limits of human eyes could detect only a surface, but the headband expanded the view to the full complexity of the 3-D world. It was almost like one of those pop-up paper cutouts that when unfolded turned flat paper into the Eiffel Tower or a three-dimensional garden of flowers. The view below was both complex and beautiful.

  But she sensed yet another layer, beyond the colorful bubbles and pop-up paper cutouts. It showed yet greater complexity. The layer represented time, and she flipped to it.

  The visualization was still of her surroundings, but with the movement of objects and people in a jumbled blur. The motion overwhelmed the detail, making it impossible to see a specific person or object, but each became a set of related images. It was like a photograph of a busy street scene where the photographer had left the shutter open for several minutes, causing the motion of every car and pedestrian to become a blur in the final image.

  The layer was a portrayal of time, that much was clear. But unlike a timeline of what had happened in the past or would happen in the future, the blurs showed a set of probabilities of what might happen. Each portion of the blur was a conceivable position without giving away the actual result.

  Like rolling dice, she thought. A shiver ran down her neck. They were words that Nala had written on the wall. Words that had suddenly become visual. Marie could see the options playing out right before her eyes, each outcome, each position of the rolling die equally valid.

  As she watched, one of the blurs began to throb in a pulsating rhythm. Fear and nausea surfaced quickly, and she realized the pixels and insects would be next.

  “Oh, no,” Marie yelled. “No, no, no! Not going there.”

  Marie pulled the headband off, but awful feeling didn’t subside. She squeezed the metal band hard enough to put deep creases in the palms of her hands. The band was surely off her head because both hands were in pain. Still, the pulsating scene began to separate into pixels.

  “Stop it!” she yelled and fell to her knees, her heart racing. “Go away, go away, go away.” Tears filled her eyes, and she squeezed the headband ever tighter.

  Concentrate on reality.

  She thought of home, of ordinary things. Her kitchen, the coffeepot by the stove, the magnets on her refrigerator, the view outside to the garden. She closed her eyes. “I’m home. Not lost. Home. My home.”

  Her breaths came in uncontrolled bursts of air, and her chant continued until the feeling finally disappeared. Her heart calmed, and her breathing shallowed, finally finishing with a deep inhale and a long exhale.

  Marie opened her eyes. She kneeled on a darkened floor with debris a
ll around. No pixels, no insects. Of course, they’d never been there, it was all in her mind. Concentrating had helped. Even the chanting had helped, banishing the frightening feeling of being out of control and allowing the more reliable conscious mind to take over.

  Marie put a hand on her forehead. You can do this.

  Her determination had renewed, just as it had when she’d made the leap into the pit. She rose to her feet and walked with purpose, pushing debris out of the way as she went.

  “Nala!” she called. She repeated it several more times as she walked, eventually leaving the debris field altogether.

  Far in the distance, two figures emerged from the darkness.

  37

  Probabilities

  The two women almost bowled each other over in an enthusiastic collision in the most improbable of settings.

  Nala embraced Marie, grasping both of her arms. “I thought I recognized you. You’re Daniel’s partner!” A broad smile and an expression of pure joy spread across her face. They’d only met once via videoconferencing. Nala was darker and more beautiful in person, though she looked like she could use a shower and a cup of tea.

  “Marie Kendrick, at your service. We finally meet. Odd circumstances, but it’s the best I can offer.” Nala turned Marie’s hand over and touched the atomic drawing still visible on her palm.

  “It turned out better than I thought,” Nala said.

  “I knew it was you drawing on my hand,” Marie said, “but to tell you the truth, it was still pretty weird.” Marie reached out to Thomas and hugged the big man. “You gave me a scare when I first arrived.”

  “Uh-oh,” Thomas said. “What did I do this time? Hopefully no zombies involved.”

  Marie laughed. “It was just a dream, I see that now.”

  “I wasn’t, like… dead, was I?”

  His guess was uncannily accurate. “Um…”