“Gravity is different here. We’re gathering more data, but we still don’t know exactly what’s going on. Or why.”
Jan pocketed his phone and backed away to a safe distance from the edge. He grabbed a piece of rebar sticking out from the shredded wall and pulled like he wanted to tear it out. “It’s absurd that we’re still struggling with this. For months, the whole world has shouted its praise for the great discoveries at Fermilab. Talk even of a Nobel Prize. But you see the reality.” He waved toward the destruction. “I feel like an undergraduate student who has only barely scratched the surface of the subject. We were playing with fire, all of us. I shouldn’t have allowed Nala to continue to test.”
He picked up a loose pebble of concrete and tossed it into the open pit. The rock made an unusually elongated arc in the disturbed gravitational field before finally turning down to the bottom of the pit. “I’ve spent most of my time since the accident searching for someone to blame. This was not an accident. It was inevitable. Entirely predictable. Much of the blame falls on me. I left everything in Nala’s hands, even after the instabilities started showing up. I’ll be second-guessing myself for a long time to come.”
Jan turned to Daniel, his anger showing. “But I also lay blame with this so-called friend of ours, Core. This intelligence out in space knew exactly what we were working on. This thing even pointed us toward HP bosons as the answer and expected us to study further. But where was the warning of the danger?”
“You’re right, we need to ask,” Daniel said.
“And we will,” Jan said, determined. “Unfortunately…” He pointed to the destruction.
“There’s CERN. You could go to Geneva. We could reach Core with their help.”
“I’ve already asked. Unfortunately, the IAEA has asked government particle acceleration labs worldwide to suspend operations until the Fermilab investigation is complete. Several weeks, minimum. I’m in touch with several sympathetic colleagues at CERN—and they are considering my request—but the bureaucracy over there can be slow.”
“How about the Chinese?”
“We’re working that angle too, but so far they haven’t responded to our request.”
“I can help,” Daniel said. “I’ll make some calls.”
“That might help, yes. If we can reestablish the communications with Core, I have a lot on my mind that I’d like to discuss.”
“You’re not the only one. I’m sure we can find another accelerator that can connect us to Core. Heck, they’re even creating 4-D space out of Romania now.”
“Romania?”
Daniel started back down the corridor, and they continued talking as they walked. “Yeah, that’s the case I was working on before I came here. A guy in Texas has a contract with a private Romanian lab. Apparently, the Romanians have your coherent neutrino beam all figured out.”
Jan rubbed a hand across his forehead. “It wouldn’t be hard. The word is out. With the classification lifted, we shared our techniques in a series of published papers. Any decent physicist with a gigaelectron-volt accelerator could reproduce it.”
They took an elevator to the lobby of Wilson Hall, its interior atrium soaring far above. “Based on what you know about the accident, should we shut this kind of business activity down?”
“Is your Texas guy a decent physicist?” Jan asked.
“He doesn’t know a proton from a coconut.”
“Better shut him down, then. I’m still dealing with a lot of unknowns. If we get some answers from Core, maybe we’ll be in a better place. Otherwise, it could be weeks, even months, before we know how to prevent this from happening again.”
“Getting the answer out of Core will be tough. Like squeezing juice from a rock.”
“Now you’re starting to sound like one of us,” Jan said.
Daniel shook his head. “I can only imagine what Nala had to say about Core.”
“A barrage of profanity that would singe your ears.”
“Yeah,” Daniel sighed. “She always was a delicate thing.”
18
Isolation
Nala woke to a sizzling sound and the smell of something burning. A foul smell like oil or creosote. Her head throbbed.
She opened one eye. Darkness surrounded her, but a dim light came from somewhere off in the distance. She lay on her stomach, her chin and open mouth pressed against a hard floor. A large piece of broken wood rested just in front of her face. She pushed it away.
A groan, a man’s voice, muted and far away, brought her back to reality. “Thomas!” she cried.
Nala could hear him, but pain and disorientation made it difficult to get up off the floor, much less find her colleague. He was alive; his moans verified that much. She was surprised to be alive herself.
She pushed up from the hard surface onto her knees. A wooziness in her head made the simple task a major effort. There was something about the air that didn’t feel right, but at least there was air.
A pinprick of light hovered in one direction, dimly illuminating a sea of debris all around. Shattered wood, bent metal, piles of broken wallboard and glass shards were everywhere. She recognized a portion of the workbench and a metal frame filled with smashed electronics that at one point had been part of her lab.
She inched forward on hands and knees toward the light. Pain shot up one knee, and she lifted it from the floor. There was enough light to see a small piece of glass that had punctured her pants and buried in the skin. She pulled it out and a spot of blood appeared. She examined herself. Both pant legs had rips, and her bare arms were cut in several places, but the blood was already congealed. Nothing appeared to be broken, and except for a throbbing headache, she felt no other pain. Thomas moaned again.
He’s hurt. I’ve got to find him.
She tried to stand; shoes would spare her hands and knees from the broken glass. The ground felt uneven, and her head spun. It was like trying to stand on a half-inflated beach ball. “Hang on, Thomas, I’m coming,” she shouted. Her voice disappeared into nothingness.
She took faltering steps toward the light. The moans seemed to be coming from that direction. Several chairs were overturned, the mini-fridge sat on its side, and piles of books, broken pipes and many other obstacles made the going slow.
Now standing, she could see that the debris field ended abruptly on one side, with nothing beyond but jet-black darkness. At first, she thought it was a shadow cast by something large blocking the light, but as she came closer, a very definite edge became apparent. The surface that she walked on and the debris that covered it ended at a vertical wall of darkness. The wall was speckled with thousands of tiny sparks randomly distributed across its surface. The sparks popped and crackled like drops of water in hot grease.
She didn’t dare touch the dark surface. Danger is obvious even when its form is entirely unknown. She searched along the sparkling wall toward the bright light in the distance and finally found him.
Thomas was on his back, arms splayed, and eyes closed. He lay among splintered boards in a pool of blood. She climbed over the debris and bent down by his side. His left leg protruded into and beyond the black vertical wall. A ring of sparks around the perimeter of his leg sizzled and popped where it touched the wall. It smelled like bacon frying.
“Holy shit. Thomas, this looks…” Bad. Worse than bad.
She grabbed him under both arms and dragged his heavy body a few feet until the sparks stopped. The lower portion of his leg was missing where it had touched the wall. His pants were soaked in blood.
She pushed aside more debris and kneeled next to his face. His breathing was shallow. She spoke gently in his ear. “I’m here, Thomas. I’ve got you.” She patted his arm and steeled herself to the task she knew would be gruesome. She carefully lifted the ripped pants to reveal a bloody leg cleanly sliced at midshin. Nausea was immediate, along with a dizziness that weakened her resolve. She took a deep breath.
You can do this. Thomas needs you. Stanch the bleeding.
Your first-aid training, remember?
It seemed like ancient history, but portions of the training surfaced to her conscious thoughts. A tourniquet. She looked around and found a roll of masking tape. Not much strength in paper tape, but it might help. Her thoughts clarified. Use clothing strips instead.
Thomas was too heavy to turn over; she’d never get his pants off, so she removed her own. They were made of light material and already torn in places, making it easier to get a rip started. A minute later, she had produced several long strips of cloth from one leg. The tinny smell of blood was strong closer to his severed leg, but she held her breath as she wrapped the strips just above the slice and tied them off as tightly as she could manage. The pressure of the binding did seem to slow the bleeding.
She ripped off the other leg of her pants and wrapped it around the end of the stump, then tied her belt loosely around the whole package. A primitive bandage, but it would have to do. If the first-aid kit was buried somewhere under all the debris, she might find it and do a better job of nursing later.
Nala scanned his body for other wounds but found nothing obvious. Except for the leg, he looked uninjured. His face was pale from blood loss, but he had fewer scratches from flying glass than she did.
She leaned in close. “Thomas, can you hear me?”
He moaned slightly.
“You’re alive. Alive is very good.” She pushed her cheek up against his and spoke into his ear. “Thomas, I’m going to take care of you. You’re going to be alright. Okay?”
He opened his lips slightly, but no words came out.
“Don’t try to talk. It’s okay. I’m going to try to find some medication and water for you.” Blood loss meant fluid loss. He’d need water. She’d remembered that much from her training. He was also in shock. She couldn’t remember the procedures for shock, but keeping him warm seemed like the right thing to do. She stood up and looked around for anything that might help. There were no blankets or towels, but she did find some shredded carpeting. She grabbed a large piece and laid it gently over his chest. She took another piece and placed it under his head.
Water. I had some in the fridge.
She made her way back into the darkness and located the mini-fridge. The dented door was jammed closed, but she managed to pry it halfway open. Inside were three water bottles, undamaged. The simple success made her smile. She carried the bottles back to Thomas, lifted his head and poured a small amount of water on his lips. Most of it dribbled onto the floor.
Should you give water to an unconscious person? I don’t know. Probably not.
“Fuck!” she said under her breath and then screamed out, “I wish I had some help here.”
Communicate. Find out what happened and where you are. Get some help. They must be looking for us. But where are we?
She recalled the circular hole that had shredded her lab and sucked everything into its darkness, unmistakably a dimensional aberration. It was certainly no closet they’d fallen into.
If this was 3-D space, her handheld radio would still work. Even if it was 4-D space, it still might work if she could successfully point it back to 3-D.
However the fuck you do that. She shook her head. Girl, you’re in a world of hurt. Find the fucking radio.
She searched, pushing through the debris and examining each object in the low light. Most everything was broken, bent or shattered. The remains of voltage meter, wires, neon light tubes, smashed. She found a sweater she kept in the lab to keep warm on cold winter days and placed it over Thomas’s legs. After a few minutes without finding the radio, she stopped and stood straight up.
“What the hell am I even walking on?” she said aloud. She swiveled to the bright light. “And what the hell is that?”
The “floor” wasn’t like any of the floors at Fermilab. Even in the dim light, she could make out stripes and other markings in it. The stripes weren’t debris; they were part of the floor, but they were irregular, not like tile or carpeting. The markings were mostly gray and tan, but there were some other colors.
She did a quick three-sixty. The debris field had a teardrop shape, with its apex near the light and spreading out radially from there. It also looked like there might be two vertical edges, a sizzling wall of death on each side of the debris field. Only one direction was undefined—away from the light. It was just darkness out there; no debris, no sign of any vertical walls and no indication of any further lights.
Something on the floor wiggled, and her heart nearly jumped out of her chest. “Shit!” It wiggled again. A rat? She slowly reached down and picked up a large splinter of a two-by-four. She threw it at the wiggling thing. The wood bounced across the floor and stopped, but the wiggling continued.
Whatever it was, the thing wasn’t running around, it was just wiggling in place. She stepped closer. It looked like a shred of cloth blowing in the wind. But the air around her was completely calm. In fact, the air felt no different from being indoors. She reached down to grab the cloth, but her fingers simply touched a hard surface. The cloth wasn’t a cloth at all—it was an image, a video of a cloth blowing in the wind like an animated GIF that repeats indefinitely. She stepped on it and the cloth stopped wiggling.
“What the hell?”
She lifted her foot and it started waving again. “Okay, this is freaking me out.”
She turned to the bright light hanging above Thomas and screamed as loud as she could. “I want out of here!” She hardened her lips and yelled again at the light. “And so does my friend.”
She stepped purposefully over the debris, marching straight toward the light. As she walked, it seemed to recede. She walked past Thomas and past most of the debris, yet she was no closer to the light. Ahead was a smooth surface of the mottled gray and tan stripes with only a few bits of the debris, mostly smaller stuff. She took ten more paces and stood on a clean surface. The light was still no closer.
The proverbial distant light at the end of a dark tunnel. Am I dead?
Nala wasn’t superstitious. This was not a passageway for spirits. No ghosts were floating by, heading to a mythical heaven around the next corner. Her mind had little room for baseless supernatural claims. But humans are hardwired for fear, particularly of the unknown. A shiver passed down her neck and legs.
Focus. You’re smarter than this.
The light must be the same aberration she’d seen in the lab, and probably related to the hole they had passed through. Both were a byproduct of her manipulation of 4-D space. Her thoughts clarified.
We’re on the other side.
They were in a space she’d created, or maybe some blast zone created during the explosion. Wherever it was, that light sure looked like the one she’d seen hovering in her lab. Brighter, maybe bigger. But just as unexpected.
Fucking HP bosons.
She’d been playing around the edges of spatial instability, testing, probing. She’d certainly prodded the beast awake. It was an implosion, not an explosion. A collapse of four-dimensional space that had taken a chunk of three-dimensional space with it.
But why now? What had she done differently? The collapse rate? Jan’s concern about the density? She would need to study it further. Ratchet up the 4-D volume in smaller steps to see exactly when things became unstable.
Nala slapped her forehead. Oh yeah, I blew up the lab.
No more experiments, ever. If Jan was here, he’d have some insight. He might even have an idea how to reverse the problem, assuming they had any useful equipment left.
The bright, shining light was the key. I tried to tell you, Jan. There was no doubt in her mind: the light was a singularity, though it was hard to see how that bit of information could help.
Nala dropped to her knees. Thomas was badly injured. Both of them were stuck in an unknown kind of spatial aberration with no exit and no way to get help. The outlook was bleak and emotionally draining.
Damn, I wish Jan was here. Or Daniel.
19
Thoughts
/> Daniel sat at the desk in his Chicago hotel room and wrote a brief note on a sympathy card. He stuffed the card in its envelope and addressed it to Mrs. Esterline Pasquier in Port-au-Prince, adding the address a Fermilab HR administrator had provided for Nala’s mother. Wholly insufficient, but it would have to do.
It felt odd to perform the required steps of condolence and healing when he still had doubts about the conclusion. In the 4-D sense, Nala could be standing right next to him and he wouldn’t know it.
There was much to process from the day’s events, and he needed a mental shift. He started a shower and let steam fill the bathroom. Stripping down, he stepped in and allowed the water to pour over his head. Personal chaos doesn’t mean your job can be ignored, and his current assignment had both technical and political challenges. With the accident at Fermilab, the stakes in Texas had just gone up.
Suspending the power plant operations, even if only temporarily, was the right thing to do, but the best approach would require some thought. The shower had always been the best place to do it.
EPA regulated air and water quality. NRC regulated the safe storage and use of nuclear materials. FEMA stepped in to protect and recover from natural disasters. They were all useful for their defined purposes, but the authority of each agency was limited to the ordinary world. Where were the interdimensional regulators when you needed them?
In any new technology, regulation lagged technological advances; safety concerns were often discounted—until an accident occurred. But even after an accident, it was never easy to draw a clean dividing line between acceptable risks and irresponsible practices. EPA administrators weren’t likely to revoke or suspend a permit unless they had better information, including a direct tie to the Fermilab disaster. Even the president would hesitate to step in. He had won the last election, but not in the state of Texas. In this case, with both industry and state agencies in alignment, the political fallout of overruling them could be high.
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