The Strange Physics of the Heidelberg Laboratory

by David Kristoph

  The elevator car takes forever to descend, but finally it reaches your level, opening with a polite ding.

  The ride up is just as long. After several minutes the doors open on the surface. The frigid air of the Alps buffets you in the face as you jump out of the car.

  There are people waiting. A lot of people.

  Face the crowd ON PAGE 142

  122

  "Well, I know that the copper wire is the ground," you say. "So it's safe."

  "Are you certain?" Jay asks.

  "Uh huh. Positive." To show your certainty, you jump into the puddle with the copper wire. There's a small splash, and then you stand there, frozen.

  You turn back to Jay. "Told ya!"

  Jay smiles. "You're pretty smart." He follows you through the puddle to the other side.

  You reach the end of the room, where the door leads to the hallway toward the Particle Beam staging area. Something out of the corner of your eye catches your attention. It's the strangest visual sensation you've ever seen. The air seems to warp, the way the desert heat drifts off the ground in waves, distorting everything behind. Then the strange object begins to materialize, thickening into mist, then into some strange form of light. It's vaguely human-shaped, but made of what look like shards of light, angular and sharp, like chunks of jagged glass swirling in a small tornado.

  "Ohh," Jay says, "I was hoping we wouldn't see this. That's a Phase Being."

  "A what?"

  "It's complicated," Jay says. "Now, we have a few options..."

  You can avoid it by GOING TO PAGE 20

  Or, if you have the CS Rifle, you can shoot it ON PAGE 58

  123

  "You wanted us to do that?" Penny asks. "Then why didn't you say so?"

  "Well... I'll explain that later, my dear Penny." There's a weird amount of affection in his voice. "The Causality Protocol will use the CS Rifle to send an Electromagnetic Pulse throughout the facility. It will instantly fix all renegade Causality Neutrinos within a ten kilometer radius!"

  "You mean it will save all of the Phase Beings?"

  Jay says, "Precisely! You have done a wonderful job. Now enjoy the view of the Causality Protocol. It should be quite beautiful from there. And don't worry, it's perfectly safe for you two."

  Penny puts her hands on the railing to watch as a robotic arm extends from the ceiling and picks up the CS Rifle.

  "Young mister Heller? Can you hear me?"

  "Of course I can, Jay."

  There's a conspiratory tone to his voice. "Okay, good. I am only speaking to you, now. Our dear Penny cannot hear us."

  You frown. "Why? What's wrong? Are we really in danger here? Do we need to leave?"

  Jay laughs. "No, no, nothing like that. There's something I wanted to tell you, and only you. Turn to your left. Can you see me?"

  It takes you a moment, but you spot him: near the top of the wall, on the other side of a pane of glass. He's in one of the ancillary rooms overlooking the core reactor. He waves.

  "When you leave here, and return to the surface and tell everyone what happened, nobody will know who I am. They will say that no one named Jay works in the laboratory. And, frankly, they will be right."

  "Are you saying you don't work here? You're not a physicist?"

  "Oh I'm definitely a physicist. And technically I do work here at the Heidelberg Physics Laboratory. Just... not in this part of time."

  "I don't understand," you admit.

  "After everything you've seen, hopefully this doesn't come as a shock to you. Young mister Heller, I'm not from the same time as you and Penny. I'm from the year 2036."

  124

  You open your mouth but have no idea what to say to that.

  "When the Causality Neutrino became unstable, it disrupted the area around the Heidelberg Laboratory not just today, but in the future and the past."

  "Right, which is why we've been seeing Phase Beings from other places in time," you say carefully. "But you don't look like a Phase Being. You're totally normal."

  "Yes, and I suspect I know the reason for that. Have you noticed how I have been extremely careful not to make physical contact with you or Penny?"

  You think back and realize he's right. He's been avoiding any handshakes, hugs, and high-fives throughout the day. The closest he's come to touching you was handing over the CS Rifle.

  "Firstly, I've been avoiding physical contact for fear that it would cause what happens with the other Phase Beings: disruption of your Causality Neutrinos, sending you spiraling through time. The second reason, however, is more theoretical. I've been specifically avoiding touching you, because I fear doing so would rip an entire hole in space-time through which all matter would be destroyed. I told you my name is Jay, but that is not entirely true. J is the first letter of my name, which I gave you because I could not tell you my true name. My name is... Jeremy Heller."

  You nearly fall off the catwalk. You grab the railing to steady yourself, and Penny gives you a curious look.

  You turn away from her so she can't see you talking inside your suit. "Pardon me?"

  "My name is Jeremy Heller. I am you, from the year 2036!"

  125

  You stare across the room at the window where he is. His hair is much greyer than yours, but it has the same straight consistency. And his face does seem similar, you guess. Another thought creeps into your head. "Young mister Heller... you've been calling me young mister Heller all day! Because I really am the young version of you!"

  Jay laughs. "Yes, I felt weird calling you Jeremy. I was afraid my nickname for you would be too obvious, but I suppose it was fine. Anyways, when the Causality Neutrino went haywire during the test, and I suddenly appeared in the Control Room two decades in the past, I didn't understand what happened. But I believe being near you, my former self, somehow stabilized my own atoms. It didn't stabilize them completely, and if I touched either you or Penny things would really become chaotic, but it stabilized me enough to appear normal and touch regular objects. And, my presence near you kept you from being hurtled through time as well! We balanced each other out, young mister Heller, in a strange way."

  "But if you knew all of this," you say, "why didn't you tell us? Why did we have to run all around the facility searching for the abort sequence if you knew it all along!"

  "Well, that's the thing about time travel," Jay muses. "If I outright intervened, instead of allowing you to make the decisions for yourself, it could have had wide-reaching effects on the future. So I did my best to nudge you along the way, but all decisions and information gathering had to be done by you and Penny."

  Before you, the coolant continues dumping into the core, and slowly the glow emanating from it begins to lessen. It goes from neon, to the color of summer grass, to a rich, deep green. Above the core, the robotic arm maneuvers the CS Rifle until it's pointing straight down into the core itself. Next to you, in a pleasant sounding motherly voice, the computer announces: "Beginning Emergency Causality Protocol."

  A beam shoots from the CS Rifle; it's one continuous laser, instead of just a single shot. Energy pulses through the beam and into the center of the core. A strange bubble begins to grow from the core, expanding outward like a balloon.

  "So this Causality Protocol is going to send you back to the year 2036?" you ask.

  126

  From the window across the room, Jay nods. "It sure will. If you hadn't been able to find the special code, I would have probably shot myself with the Causality Rifle to send me back. But it's better this way, because now you'll save everyone else in the facility! As soon as that bubble expands and passes through the facility, all the physicists and engineers and workers will pop back into the correct time."

  You watch as the bubble continues growing, a few feet at a time. Penny points and makes an excited face.

  "I understand how everyone became displaced in time," you say. "And I understand how you, specifically, remained relatively stable because you were near another version of yoursel
f--me, that is. But there's one thing I don't understand at all."

  "Yes?"

  "Penny Kessler. She's the only other one who wasn't catapulted into another time. And I know she's not a stable Phase Being, because she's touched my arm and hugged me several times now. So why was she immune from the Causality Neutrino's disruption? It doesn't make any sense at all."

  Jay waits several seconds before answering. "Well. I have a theory on that, but it's not as scientific as the other explanations."

  "Everything else you've said has been correct, so I'm all ears."

  "Penny Kessler remained stable in this timeline because of her close relationship to you--that is to say, her close relationship with us."

  "What do you mean? I just met her this morning. I barely know her!"

  "Yes, that is true. However, in the future, you and Penny have a far more thorough acquaintance."

  You look at Penny. She's still watching the bubble expanding from the core. "Jay, are you saying that in the future you... I mean me... do Penny and I become more than just friends?"

  "Something like that." Across the room a big grin splits Jay's face.

  "What do you mean?" You feel a flurry of nervousness in your stomach. "Tell me!"

  "Let's just say yours and Penny's futures are irreparably bound together. And don't worry, Doctor Kessler warms up to you eventually. In fact, running the emergency abort sequence and saving the Heidelberg Laboratory is one of the things that finally gets him to like you. Oh, and go easy on him in the aftermath of the disaster. He was the one to overpower the Particle Beam, causing the unstable Causality Neutrino, which you'll soon discover, but he learns his lesson and is more careful in the future."

  127

  "Hey, you're not being very specific about me and Penny! Tell me more!"

  "I'm afraid I can't be too specific, or it might interfere with your futures. But I think you understand what I'm saying. You're a smart guy, after all!" He chuckles at his own joke.

  The bubble continues expanding until it approaches the catwalk. Penny takes a nervous step backwards but you put a hand on her arm.

  "Don't worry, Penny dear," Jay says, reenabling Penny's communication. "The Causality bubble will not harm you. It might tickle, though. So don't fall!"

  You watch as the bubble drifts closer. You brace yourself as it nears, touching your face and hands. It passes through you like a cold wind, touching your skin as if you're not wearing any suit at all. It leaves a tingling sensation across your body.

  "That was cool!" Penny exclaims.

  "Very cool," Jay says. "Now, Penny, I'm afraid I need to leave now. I'm going to return to the surface, but I will meet up with you later. If you don't mind, I'm going to talk to Jeremy one last time, privately."

  Penny spins around to watch the bubble continuing to spread. "Okay," she says, enraptured by it.

  "You will have to make something up about me," Jay says to you. "You cannot tell her the truth, or it might scare her away. Do you understand?"

  You think she would handle the truth well enough--she's pretty level-headed--but you nod. "I understand. I'll tell her you were called away quickly to help with the clean-up of the facility."

  "That will work." The bubble is quickly nearing Jay's location up in the window. "It's time for me to leave now. Oh, and one last thing."

  "Yes?"

  "When you and Penny go skiing in 2024, avoid the slope with all the moguls. Those are the bumpy spots that are difficult to navigate. Trust me!"

  As he says that, the Causality bubble passes through the glass and into the room. Jay raises his hand in a final wave.

  128

  129

  "Goodbye, young mister Heller."

  Jay looks blurry and bright, like a photograph out of focus. He begins to split apart into mist, first at his legs, then moving up his torso into his head and arms. You know it's his atoms being reset, their Causality Neutrinos returned to normalcy. Being thrust forward in time, back to the year 2036 where they belong. The atoms continue to dissipate into the air, into a cloud, then a mist, then nothing at all.

  "Goodbye, Jay," you say.

  Penny turns toward you. "Did you say something?" It looks like your communications are connected again.

  "Nothing. Come on, let's get out of here."

  You head down the ladder and across the room to the blast door. It's closed, and there's no control panel or anything to open it.

  Penny presses the button to the PA next to the door. "Hey, Jay? Before you go, can you let us out of here?"

  Jay's not there, though she doesn't know that. How are you going to get out? Are you stuck in the core?

  But the PA crackles and someone answers. "Penny? Is that you?"

  "Dad!" Penny cries out. "It's me! Jeremy and I are inside the reactor core."

  "The core? Oh no. Oh nooo this is very bad, Penny, why did you..."

  "It's fine, Doctor Kessler," you speak up. "We came in here to initiate the emergency reactor abort sequence."

  "The sequence... how could you possibly..." He cuts off and you hear the sound of keys being typed. "Stand back. The blast door is going to open."

  You do as your told. The huge locks disengage, and the door opens wide enough for the two of you to slip through. Penny runs down the hall, and you follow her into the Control Room.

  Kessler is waiting on the other side, and wraps his daughter in a big hug. "Oh, Penny! My sweet Penny. I was so afraid you weren't safe."

  Your mouth hangs open as you survey the room. Although it looks the same as before--debris everywhere, computers and desks damaged, with a thin layer of water on the ground from the sprinklers--now it's filled with all the physicists from before. Many of them are holding their heads, looking confused.

  Doctor Almer, your boss, is sitting at the computer Jay was previously using. He says, "Doctor Kessler, he's right. They successfully entered the sequence!"

  130

  Penny lets go of her dad. "Jeremy did it, I just went in with him for support." She looks around the room. "Hey, where is..."

  You realize she's wondering about Jay. You unzip your HAZMAT suit and quickly say, "He's gone now. He'll meet up with us later." You turn to Kessler. "Sir, you and the other physicists were stuck in time after the Causality Neutrino test. I gathered the six steps in the sequence and reset everything."

  Kessler looks you up and down. "You did this? An intern?"

  You nod.

  "What an amazing feat! The emergency abort sequence has never been run in the history of the lab, and you carried it out and saved my daughter in the process. Doctor Almer, why is this young man just an intern?"

  Almer looks embarrassed. "I don't know, sir."

  Kessler puts a hand on your shoulder. "We're going to change that. We need more physicists like you, Jeremy. I want to hire you full-time. Your first duty will be to figure out how this mess happened!"

  You remember what Jay--your future self--said: how Kessler was the one to overload the Particle Beam and cause the disaster in the first place. Awkwardly, you say, "Of course, I'll get to the bottom of it."

  He leaves you then, and goes to examine some of the data on one of the computers.

  Some fingers find your hand. You look down and see they're Penny's, wrapped in your own. "I think my dad likes you. And he doesn't like anybody." She's smiling happily at you.

  You're not sure what to say. "Yeah, I guess you win a lot of friends when you save an entire physics laboratory from disaster."

  She laughs a carefree laugh at your joke. "Are you hungry? You're coming to our house for dinner tonight. I insist. My mom makes the most amazing spaetzle. German noodles, cooked with butter. My dad usually hates when I bring boys over for dinner, but something tells me he'll be fine with you. So you'll come? To dinner?"

  131

  "Of course I will come to dinner!"

  "Great. Then it's settled. I want to get out of this crazy laboratory, but I don't want to go alone. Will you take me up to the s
urface?"

  You give her the most charming smile you can. "Penny, I'd love to escort you there."

  "Hopefully we'll see Jay up above! I really liked him."

  You walk toward the Decontamination Chamber, hand-in-hand. "Oh, don't worry. I'm sure you'll see Jay again in the future."

  CONGRATULATIONS!

  YOU HAVE REACHED THE ULTIMATE ENDING!

  In recognition for taking up the gauntlet, let it be known to fellow adventurers that you are hereby granted the title of:

  Causality Crusader!

  You may go here: www.ultimateendingbooks.com/extras.php and enter code:

  EZ68591

  for tons of extras, and to print out your Ultimate Ending Book Four certificate!

  And for a special sneak peek of Ultimate Ending Book 7, TURN TO PAGE 153

  132

  "...and unfortunately," Jay says, "we just don't have enough steps."

  "Why not?" you ask. "We have time to look for them. I know we can!"

  Jay says, "It's too risky. We need at least ten minutes to get inside the core and run the sequence. That leaves twenty minutes to scour the entire facility for the steps we're missing."

  "Twenty minutes seems like enough to..." Penny says.

  "It's just not enough time. Don't you understand that? It's not enough time!"

  You fumble around for an excuse. "Can we guess the missing sequences? We have to try!"

  Jay rolls away from the computer. "Entering the sequence wrong will cause it to meltdown early. You two have to get out of here. Now. Get to the surface, and I'll do what I can to delay the meltdown. Leave the CS Rifle here. Go, come on! GO!"