Quantum Void

by Douglas Phillips

  Garrity looked slightly perplexed, like he’d been asked to name the capital of North Dakota. “Uh, right. Coherent neutrinos.”

  Daniel leaned forward in his chair. “Can you tell me what kind of positioning accuracy you have for a neutrino beam that is targeting Austin, Texas, all the way from Romania?” Neutrinos stopped for nothing, not even the bulk of the Earth, so there was no reason to doubt that the Romanians could send a beam through ten thousand kilometers of rock. Accuracy was the only question.

  “Oh, the lab handles all of that,” Garrity said, very sure of himself. “I couldn’t tell you how many miles we are from Romania, but I do know the scientists over there are very accurate.”

  Daniel stepped up to the next level but still stuck to a question that anyone creating 4-D space would need to understand. “Okay. There are a couple of techniques for maintaining a permanent 4-D bubble. Are you locking the phase oscillation or using the newer harmonic resonance technique?”

  Garrity’s face went blank. “Uh… I know we have that covered, but I’d have to ask my colleagues in Romania to be sure.”

  The pattern was plain—a test was in order. “How about the chakra of the phlebotinum atoms?”

  “Don’t worry, Romania’s got that covered too. They take care of it all.”

  Daniel nodded. “Mr. Garrity, how well would you say you understand the process of redirecting effluents into four-dimensional space?”

  “I’ve got a patent pending on it. I invented it.”

  “Nicely done, it is a clever idea. But I’m a little concerned about the basis in science. Mr. Garrity, there’s no such thing as phlebotinum and atoms don’t have chakras. People don’t either, by the way.”

  Garrity shrugged. “So what? Like I said, Romania handles it.”

  Daniel took a deep breath. He wasn’t going to let this slide. They’d already seen a major blunder from the Chinese attempting to use this technology. “I understand your reliance on your partner in Romania. But it’s clear that you personally don’t have any knowledge of the process or even the basic facts of the science.”

  Ralph Lewis interrupted, holding up a hand in front of Garrity. “Dr. Rice, let’s not talk about your facts or my facts—it doesn’t get us anywhere. Let’s talk about what works. Go out to the Bastrop facility and see for yourself. It works.”

  It was always astonishing how badly mangled the meaning of words had become in the modern world, especially those words related to science. There was a time when a fact had been an accepted truth. Not anymore. For some, the word fact had become synonymous with a claim or assertion. Any person offering an argument could simply stack up their own set of alternative facts and, in their mind, be entirely justified. It often left Daniel wondering if there was any hope for the evolution of the species.

  Daniel glanced at Finch, who just shrugged. He probably dealt with this type of ungrounded argument all the time. It wasn’t the time for confrontation; this was a mission to gather information.

  “Okay,” Daniel said. “I’ll take you up on your offer to visit the plant.”

  “Stan Wasserman’s your man,” Lewis said. He nudged Garrity, who wrote a phone number on a business card and handed it to Daniel. “I’ll let him know you’re coming.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Daniel sat alone at an Austin hotel bar, absorbing the events of the day. A late-afternoon tour of the Bastrop facility had provided an opportunity to witness firsthand the remarkable application of 4-D technology. The plant manager had walked him through the combustion building, where pulverized coal was blown into a firebox that boiled water to steam and spun huge electric turbines. Inside, the facility was hot and noisy, but outside, the towering smokestack looked unused, capped at its top without a trace of smoke coming out.

  Clean energy from coal. It would certainly make a good brochure or television commercial, but it didn’t sit right with Daniel’s wider view of how things should work. Somewhere out there in the weird world of four-dimensional space was a cauldron of exhaust. Maybe it would remain safely tucked away in its own corner of the universe, but the number of unknowns was disturbing.

  Daniel picked up his vibrating phone from the bar counter. A call from Spencer Bradley, probably to see how the initial meeting had gone.

  “Hi, Spence,” Daniel answered. “I’ve made contact, but I can’t say I have any answers yet.”

  “It’s not that,” Bradley said. His voice was serious. “It’s news. Very bad news, I’m afraid.”

  Daniel felt his body tense. “I’m here.”

  “There’s been a terrible accident at Fermilab. An explosion of some kind. There were casualties.”

  A chill ran across the back of his neck. He felt he knew what Bradley might say next.

  “One of them was Nala Pasquier. I know the two of you became close. I’m so sorry.”

  The phone slid down Daniel’s check as his grip loosened. He stared straight ahead, absorbing the meaning of Bradley’s words. Tears began to fill his eyes.

  17

  Fermilab

  Missing and presumed dead.

  Bradley’s information was not likely to be wrong. Fermilab had reported a massive explosion that had produced a forty-meter hole in their underground facility. Expressions like presumed dead always left a door slightly ajar to allow for hope, no matter how slim the chance. But when crisis comes, rational people force their intellect to dominate emotion and reckon with reality. Daniel was not there yet.

  She couldn’t be dead, he thought. Daniel recognized the symptoms of denial. The psychiatrists would probably label him as a textbook case. Nala wasn’t just a lost colleague, she was a lost lover. And not just any lover, a regret. A relationship full of mistakes. A woman he had wronged through neglect.

  You’re compensating, the therapists would tell him. Your personal guilt is clouding your normally analytical mind.

  Beautiful, bright, talented Nala. A ballet dancer with an attitude. A brilliant physicist with a wicked tongue. Silenced. When had he seen her last? It was March… no, April, at a Fermilab communication session with Core. He had stayed in the office for only a few hours and given her no more than a light hug. Just a shadow of the burst of intensity their relationship had enjoyed a few months prior.

  The guilt poured over him. He had abandoned the relationship, and he was still not sure why. Some of it had been the logistics of busy professionals living in two different cities. But it wasn’t just that. Daniel couldn’t put a finger on it, but it was hard to imagine how any psychoanalysis mattered now. Nala was dead.

  But no… she isn’t.

  His analytical mind wouldn’t permit the conclusion. There simply wasn’t enough evidence. Yes, an explosion. Yes, missing people presumed dead. But this was Fermilab, where alternative explanations were entirely possible. When Soyuz astronauts had disappeared, everyone had jumped to the same conclusion. Missing and presumed dead. There was a lesson to be learned. In the insanity of the four-dimensional world, things disappeared routinely.

  The hotel bar was nearly empty. Daniel took a sip from his glass of bourbon. He pushed the chunks of ice around with a finger. Nala used to do the same thing, an endearing quirk. She’d said she didn’t even notice she was doing it, perhaps just a nervous thing.

  He remembered the first time he’d met her—an interview at her office and a clandestine meeting at a bar later that night. She was nervous then. He was the investigator and she was the informant. He’d been tough on her.

  Daniel’s eyes teared up and his throat tightened.

  How things had changed since that first night. Nala was the kind of person who held you at arm’s length until she knew you. But once that barrier dropped, she didn’t hold back. Laughs turned to playfulness. Sweet kisses escalated to aggressive sexuality. Any hesitation she displayed in public was quickly abandoned once things were private. Clothes and inhibitions disappeared quickly. Daniel had soaked it up. Every man wants to be wanted, and Nala seemed to have learned th
at lesson early in her adult life.

  He wiped away a tear rolling down his cheek. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. True words. As life clicks by, the missed opportunities and the unspoken words are things that stick with you, often painfully.

  His mistakes were obvious now, even if he still didn’t understand why he’d made them in the first place. Text messages that he didn’t take the time to answer. Busy—will get back to you. More than one phone call that he’d cut off to rush off to… what? Something more important? At least, it had seemed important at the time. He’d missed her birthday even though she’d told him twice.

  And then there was Haiti, a missed opportunity if there ever was one. She’d invited him to join her on a trip ostensibly to visit her mother in Port-au-Prince. Contrary to most people’s expectations, including Daniel’s, Haiti wasn’t a vast slum among the palm trees. Luxury resorts dotted a coastline of white-sand beaches and turquoise water. They would stay together in a beach cottage, she offered.

  She described a tropical heaven, a winter getaway. But from Daniel’s perspective it was much more. It was alone time with Nala. He imagined days walking barefoot on the sand and nights unwrapping the pleasures of this unpredictable woman.

  He’d been ready to book the flight when all hell had broken loose at work. An email from a prominent scientist had accused the administration of covering up the real purpose of their sessions with Core. An alien weapon had been offered, the scientist had said. It was described as a miniature hydrogen bomb that could be embedded almost anywhere without detection and would render nuclear détente irrelevant to whichever country could grab the technology first. Many had believed the story.

  It had taken Daniel several weeks to uncover the source of the misinformation and dispel the rumor. In the meantime, the personal opportunity had slipped by and Nala had gone to Haiti alone. Another time, they’d both said, but time has a way of pushing forward and leaving those opportunities behind.

  Her texts had become less frequent and then stopped altogether. He would give anything to speak with her once more. To apologize. To start over, if he could.

  Daniel picked up an extra napkin from the bar and dabbed his eyes. The analysis in his head would no doubt go on for months. In the end, if acceptance of Nala’s death was required, it would be the hardest thing he’d ever done.

  But the next step was easy—and essential for his peace of mind. He picked up his phone and searched for the next available flight to Chicago.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Fermilab was familiar ground, particularly Wilson Hall, the towering office building in the center of the accelerator complex. Daniel had lost track of the number of times he’d been here since their first contact with Core.

  Except for the emissary robot, no alien lifeform had visited Earth in the eight months since that day. Most people saw this as a positive sign—at least the aliens weren’t attacking. But it also meant that if humans had questions—and there were many—it required a trip to a star nearly four thousand light-years away, where Core was located. The only way to get there was through compressed space, and the only way to compress space was with a high-energy particle accelerator. For the first few months, Fermilab had had a monopoly on interstellar space travel.

  But by January, the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva had duplicated the technology, and Europeans had hosted two of the scheduled sessions with Core. Later, the Chinese, having admitted their responsibility for the Soyuz mishap, had offered the world’s newest and most powerful accelerator in Qinhuangdao. It had been used on one occasion, mostly a symbolic gesture of international cooperation.

  Daniel knew things had changed the moment the taxi entered the Fermilab parking area, filled with police, fire and US government vehicles. Both the atrium and the top floor of Wilson Hall were busy with activity. Many of the new faces were people wearing uniforms that displayed arm patches from the Department of Energy or the International Atomic Energy Agency.

  Daniel walked down the corridor of interior offices on the top floor of Wilson Hall. He slowed as he passed the one office that was empty and dark. The plaque by the door read Nala Pasquier. Several bouquets of flowers were stacked along the bottom of the office window, and someone had written We love you, Nala on the glass. A lump formed in Daniel’s throat. This trip wasn’t going to be easy.

  He continued down the hall and stopped at Jan Spiegel’s office. The slender man with light blond hair looked up from his work and waved through the window for Daniel to come in.

  “Daniel,” Jan said. “Good to see you again.” He stood up and shook Daniel’s hand with a solemn face. “I wish the circumstances were better.”

  “Good to see you too, Jan. I’m sure you’re busy, but I wanted to come by and offer condolences to the staff.”

  “Thank you. We’re all still in shock.” Jan eyes fixed on Daniel’s. “Condolences to you too. I believe you have lost as much, maybe more.” Jan motioned to a chair, and Daniel took it. Jan closed the door and leaned against the edge of his desk. “She loved you.”

  The words were unexpected. Nala had never said them, and even if she’d felt that way, how would Jan know? Daniel had never mentioned his relationship with Nala to Jan or anyone else at Fermilab. They’d been discreet, or so he thought.

  “She told you this?” Daniel asked.

  “Not in those exact words, but I could tell. You’re surprised, Daniel. At her or me?”

  “Both, I guess.” They had never declared their relationship to be a secret, but it was hard to picture Nala divulging personal information to Jan.

  Jan seemed to understand the issue. “Nala and I shared a connection deeper than you might know.” He held up a hand. “Only as colleagues. But an intellectual connection to a person can be profound. The pain of her loss is very personal to me.”

  “Her loss, as you and everyone says,” Daniel said. “I was told that no bodies were found. How sure are you?”

  “Daniel Rice, the skeptic in all things.” Jan thought for a minute and then stood up. “To be honest, no, I’m not certain. But come with me and judge for yourself. I believe this is why you came to Fermilab today, is it not?”

  Jan walked out of the office, and Daniel followed him down the hall. There was only one possible destination, and Daniel realized that Jan was right—it was the reason he had come to Fermilab.

  They called the elevator and dropped past the ground floor to level B3, deep underground. They exited to a concrete corridor that Daniel knew well, but the corridor was now blocked by a barrier and what looked like a hastily erected guard station. Jan signed a log and the guard waved them past the barrier.

  As they turned a corner, the familiar pathway changed. The right side of the corridor was gone. Twisted rebar protruded from the smashed concrete wall, and the broken floor fell away into an enormous pit. Security tape hung from the intact wall on the left to the cracked remains on the right. Beyond the tape and destruction, a single bright light hovered in empty space.

  “Jesus,” Daniel whispered. A spotlight had been set up on one side and shined into the dark cavity. It illuminated a rotating disk of dust at least ten feet across.

  “The blast shook the whole building,” Jan said. “Pictures fell off the walls up on the fifteenth floor.”

  Daniel peered over the edge of the broken floor into a deep pit. He couldn’t see the bottom.

  “Thirty-five thousand cubic meters of reinforced concrete was pulverized to dust,” Jan said. “The fire department sent some guys down there. They found a few scraps of materials that may have come from the lab, but no bodies.”

  Daniel continued staring into the scene of destruction, feeling numb. “I see your point. Thanks for showing me.”

  “If it helps, it was probably over quickly. Our systems operations guy was caught in it too. Thomas, I think you may have met him?”

  It took Daniel a minute to register the name and to tear his thoughts away from what the blast must hav
e been like. “Uh, yeah. Thomas. Funny guy.”

  “He was; a very funny guy. He’d worked here for more than ten years. Always happy, always ready to try something new.” Jan’s features tightened, looking angry. “But he’s dead now, and so is Nala.”

  A strange mix of emotions filled Daniel. Grief, skepticism, denial, all tangling with one another. Perhaps it was simply his ability to logically analyze anything, including his own emotional struggle. He hoped so, but he recognized he’d need to set that struggle aside for now.

  Daniel pointed to the strange light in the center of the pit. “What is it?”

  “We don’t really know,” Jan said. “It’s one of the things I’m working on.” He pointed to a metal stand set up near the edge of the pit. Several electronics boxes were stacked on top and an array of antennae and sensors of unknown function connected to a pole that rose above. “We’re monitoring everything we can to try to make sense of it. No doubt it’s a byproduct of the collapse of quantum space, unintended. Before the accident, Nala told me she created a smaller version of this in her lab. She thought it was a new type of singularity.”

  “A singularity? But not a black hole?” Daniel asked.

  “No, definitely not a black hole. That would involve enormous mass, and any particle accelerator works only with quantum-sized particles. But singularities may come in different forms. This might be a singularity formed by bosons alone and related to the collapse of four-dimensional space. It may share some properties with a black hole.”

  Jan pulled out his phone and picked an app that drew a large purple arrow on the screen. A label next to the arrow marked it as Gravity. “The app is using the accelerometers in the phone to point straight down.” He tilted the phone and the arrow twisted, continuing to point down. “But watch this.”

  Jan stepped closer to the edge of the pit and reached out as far as his arm would allow. The arrow on the screen wobbled, pointing more toward the light hovering in the center, as if it were a compass needle drawn to a nearby magnet.