Momentum. A simple Newtonian force. Mass times velocity.
Marie leaned over the edge and looked down. A person falling five hundred feet would produce the same momentum of a car hitting a wall at sixty miles per hour. The human body plus gravity could create a lot of momentum.
Marie turned to Nala. “If we jump, how fast do you figure we’ll be going when we hit 3-D?”
“I don’t know, ten meters a second.”
“All parts of us?”
“Sure.”
“Every atom?”
“Of course.”
“And what’s on the other side of this plane of Kata Zero?”
Nala furrowed her eyebrows. “Nothing, assuming they created the 4-D bubble in only one direction, not two.”
“Is that the way it’s usually done?”
Nala slowly nodded. She seemed to be listening.
Marie wasn’t sure if this was coming from the headband or her own brain. It was hard to tell the difference anymore. Maybe she’d already crossed the line into crazy and the idea was entirely psychotic. “So, if there’s nothing beyond it, then we just splat against the plane of Kata Zero. Every atom. We jump off this wall, and just like the coin, our momentum carries us into 3-D.”
Nala scratched the back of her head. “I don’t know, it’s not that simple. You’re betting your life on it.”
On impulse, Marie pushed herself to the top of the plastic rim, first on her knees and then standing erect. She teetered on the edge of the five-hundred-foot abyss.
Nala ran over. “Jesus, this is fucking crazy. You’re guessing. Let’s try the clothes rope and lower ourselves down.”
Marie stared into the distant darkness below. Her heart pounded. “Won’t work. There’s no momentum in it.” She glanced at Thomas and smiled. “Besides, you’d see me naked.”
Marie held both arms out like a platform diver. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is it. This is all I’ve got. I came here to find a way out, and I have done exactly that. Here it is, this hole at the top of a smokestack. There’s nothing else, so it’s time to take that one-in-five chance to survive.”
Marie looked down at Thomas and Nala standing respectfully on each side. Her feet wobbled on the narrow rim; her toes stuck out well beyond its edge. “Just so you know, that’s not the headband talking, that’s me. And, yes, I might very well be fucking crazy.”
Thomas took off his Viking hat and covered his heart. Nala bit her lip and acknowledged the decision with a dip of her head.
You’re in way over your head.
Marie pushed off and plunged into the shaft.
45
Kata Zero
There was a clang of metal and pain in her head. Marie lifted herself up, winced and fell back to her side. Sharp edges of a metal grating pressed into her right arm. She touched her free hand to the pain in her face and withdrew, revealing blood-covered fingers.
The pain centered around her nose and cheek. There was also something wrong with her eyes. She blinked, and the inside of an enormous circular chimney came into focus. The curving wall of gray concrete was streaked with black soot, to be expected for the inside of a smokestack.
But the waves were unexpected.
She watched, oddly entranced by the wavy movement of what should be a solid structure. It wasn’t her eyes, she quickly decided. The metal grating where she lay also pulsated along with the concrete walls. The waves even passed through her body, making the pain in her head throb with each crest and trough and verifying that the undulating scene was not just another hallucination.
Rolling onto her back, Marie searched for the smokestack’s rim with Nala and Thomas peering over its edge. Instead, twenty feet above, dirty white plastic sealed the top of the huge cylinder. There was no sign of the bubble of extradimensional space above it. No sign of Thomas or Nala, either. She hadn’t really expected to see them. Three-dimensional eyes wouldn’t be able to see around a four-dimensional corner. The peculiar world of quantum space was once again sealed off.
Back in the page, as Thomas had described. Kata Zero.
She reached up, grabbed the railing and pulled herself up to a seated position. The platform was no more than a ledge, perched on a curving vertical wall. The railing extended on three sides, bent in one place. Probably where she’d hit. Her head ached.
Holding tightly to the railing to steady herself in the unnatural waves, she peeked over the edge. The huge structure dropped into darkness far below. Air rushed upward, bringing with it greasy smells of the power facility somewhere in the depths.
Marie carefully stood up without releasing her grip on the rail. She looked up to the white cap overhead and called out. “Nala! Thomas!”
It wasn’t a cap, it just looked that way with three-dimensional eyes. Somewhere up there, around the 4-D corner, they waited, perhaps even able to hear her through the interdimensional hole.
“They’ll need room,” she said to herself and pushed herself as far against the wall as she could. It was remarkable that she’d managed to land on such a small platform. Maybe it was the headband.
The headband.
She reached up, but even before she touched her head she knew the headband was gone. She looked down into the depths below. The headband was most likely at the bottom, probably destroyed forever.
There was a blur and a scream, and a large man slammed into the metal deck, hitting on his feet and bouncing into the wall just inches from Marie. Thomas dropped to his knees and rubbed a hand on the back of his head where he’d hit.
“Thomas!” Marie shouted and hugged him. “Are you okay?”
“Didn’t quite stick the landing,” he grunted, rising back to his feet. He looked at her face. “You’re bleeding.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Thomas looked around, observing the pulsating interior of the smokestack. “Damn. It’s that wavy thing.”
“I have no idea what’s going on,” Marie said.
“I do,” Thomas said. “And it’s not good. This place is about to turn into rubble.” He looked up, unshaken by the view of the solid cap just above. “Nala!” he yelled. “Quick. Jump!”
They waited. “Hurry!” he yelled again. “You can do it.” He held out both arms and as they watched, another blur dropped from above. She was off target and Thomas leaned far over the railing to catch her. Nala’s leg hit him first, twisting her fall. He managed to get both arms around her torso but momentum carried her through his grip. His body bent over the railing, and one hand caught her forearm, stopping the plunge.
“Got you,” he grunted. Nala dangled in midair with Thomas bent in half across the railing. His large hand squeezed her thin arm.
She looked up with desperation on her face and nothing but darkness below her. “Don’t let go,” she cried.
“Don’t wiggle,” he said through gritted teeth.
Marie put all her weight against Thomas’s back and gripped the rail on either side of him. She had no way to reach Nala, but she could keep Thomas from slipping over the side. The waves passing through the structure were only making matters worse.
Thomas grunted and heaved himself upward, dragging Nala up with him. With one more mighty pull, the big man stood up straight and threw the much smaller woman over the railing and onto the metal platform. All three of them fell backward against the wall and slumped to the deck, Thomas heaving with each breath.
Nala wrapped herself around his neck, hugging him tight. “Damn, I’m glad you’re here,” she said. When she released him, tears were streaming down her face.
Thomas gently lifted her arm, bright red where he had gripped her. “I didn’t break anything, did I?”
Nala shook her head and hugged him again. “It’ll bruise. I can live with it. You saved my life.” She reached over and touched Marie’s chin. “You’re bleeding.”
Marie felt again. “Yeah, I know. Does it look bad?”
“Coming from your nose,” she said. “Does it hurt?”
�
�Yeah, my nose and cheek.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Yeah, it means you’re bleeding because you hit something in the fall, not because your cell walls ruptured.”
“Then we made it back to 3-D okay?”
Nala smiled. “I think we did.” She looked up at the solid cap and shook her head with amazement.
“We’re not out of here yet,” Thomas said, motioning to the waving surfaces all around them. “You know what this means.”
Nala nodded. “Yeah, I noticed. Bad shit. How do we get out?”
Marie stood up. Behind them was a door with light coming in around its edges. There was no doorknob, but Marie pulled on a metal handle welded to its surface. The door wiggled but didn’t open. “Locked, probably from the outside,” she said.
“Stand back,” Thomas said. The two women squeezed to one side of the platform and Thomas backed up to the railing. He threw his weight into the door with a loud bang. The metal bent, but the door remained in its frame.
“One more try,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. He backed up again and slammed into the door, further bowing it outward, but leaving it intact. The gap on one side was larger now, and daylight streamed in. A dead bolt was visible between the door and its frame.
“Hmm,” Thomas said, inspecting the bent door and frame. He took off his Viking hat and pushed one of the horns into the gap, twisting hard to one side. The door frame bowed outward, increasing the gap. With a loud crack, the horn broke in half and Thomas lurched forward.
“One down, one to go,” he said, sticking the other horn into the gap. He twisted again, putting his weight into it. The frame warped further, popping the dead bolt from the frame slot. The door burst open, swinging outward, with Thomas and the Viking hat following into the glare of day.
Nala grabbed the belt on his pants and Marie grabbed one arm, barely preventing him from sailing out into open air. He grabbed the door frame and pulled himself back in. Five hundred feet below, his Viking hat smacked the ground.
There was no corresponding balcony on the outside, nothing but a sheer drop. A gust of wind blew in through the open doorway.
“Holy shit, that was close,” Nala said, peering outside. Marie peeked over her shoulder, thankful for the fresh air.
The countryside of Texas spread out before them. Trees, pastures, farmhouses. It would have been a lovely scene except for the wavering. Everything moved with ripples that spread in every direction. It was like looking into a pond disturbed by a thrown rock.
Far below, industrial buildings and a parking lot wavered too. The branches of nearby trees bent violently in the wind, with dust and debris blowing across the pavement.
It was a long drop, and there didn’t seem to be any way down. “Jesus. Can we get a fucking break, here?” Nala asked.
Thomas grabbed the door frame, hooked his left foot on its edge and swung out into the air with his right leg and arm.
Nala yelled, “Wait! What are you—”
He reached into a recessed space, barely noticeable on the smokestack wall, and grabbed a bar inside. His foot found a step just below in another recess. The bars he’d found were embedded directly in the concrete structure, and they continued one after the other, hundreds of steps all the way to the ground five hundred feet below.
“Come on,” he said. “A ladder.”
The whole structure wobbled, more like a strand of spaghetti than a concrete building, but Thomas managed several more steps down the outside. He seemed unconcerned. “I’ll go down ahead of you. Don’t worry. If you slip, I’ll catch you.”
Nala looked at Marie, incredulous.
“Well, he’s caught you once before,” Marie said.
“Let’s get out of here,” Nala said. She reached out and grabbed the first rung of the ladder, carefully placing one foot below it and then a second. “Kind of scary getting to the first one,” she yelled back to Marie over the wind. “But it’s sturdy once you’re on.”
The workers who used this ladder probably wore a climbing harness and hooked carabiners into each bar on their way up and down. No such luck for the three of them. Marie reached out, taking care not to look down. A gust of wind blew the door, and it clanged against the frame just as she retracted back inside.
And, of course, the whole world is blowing up around us.
Nala was already ten feet below and descending. Marie held on tight to the door frame and reached a shaky hand outside, feeling for the recessed space. Another gust knocked her off-balance, and she desperately grabbed for the rung, barely holding on.
“You can do it,” Thomas called up from below.
She’d have to; climbing down the outside of a shaking industrial smokestack seemed to be the only option. She closed her eyes and swung a leg out, scraping across the surface to find the recess. Her foot found the solid bar, and she shifted her weight from the relative safety of the interior platform to the insanity of hanging on to the outside of a five-hundred-foot tower.
With both hands and feet now on the ladder, she looked up. Just above was the lower edge of a blue-and-orange cap with bold lettering across its surface: Garrity Enterprises.
Thank you, Mr. Garrity, Marie thought. The man who’d created this industrial device had certainly never expected it to act as an escape route, but here it was, functioning as a tunnel from four-dimensional space.
A huge swirl of clouds filled the sky above the smokestack. A slash split the swirl near its center, with smoke and debris spilling out. It was almost certainly the same jagged hole they’d seen from the inside, but without the headband, she had no way to validate her suspicion. Whatever it was, it didn’t look good.
Her motivation to get to the ground was strong, but the shaking tower and gusts of wind were stronger, and she was completely exposed. She lowered her foot to the unseen rung below, trusting there was one.
The wind suddenly changed directions, blowing across the wall of the stack and upward to the cloud. Its intensity increased to a gale and it carried leaves and twigs. Below her, an entire tree branch slammed into the side of the tower, sending a vibration up its length.
One step at a time. She lowered herself down one more rung. And again. I just jumped into the throat of this monster. I can climb down its outside too.
Somewhere at the bottom, a car horn honked. She squeezed the rung tighter and dared to look down. In the parking lot was a lone white van. Two people stood outside, waving their arms. It was the most welcoming sight she’d ever seen, even if they were still hundreds of feet below. Nearby, a portion of the roof of one of the buildings ripped off and blew past the stack. She had to will her foot down to the next rung.
The rest was like a slow-motion nightmare that never seemed to end, with the waves and shaking growing stronger as she descended. With shouts of support from below, the final rung came, and Marie stepped onto solid ground. Thomas and Nala were there, and behind them stood Daniel.
Daniel wrapped his arms around Marie. “Message received, I’m meeting you at the stacks,” he said. The tower groaned, and Daniel took her by the arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
They ran to the van and piled in through an open side door. The other man, whom Daniel identified as Parker, hit the gas and the van squealed out of the parking lot. Crammed into the back of a van full of electronics equipment, with the asphalt bucking up and down, Marie thought real-world space had never looked so good.
A whole tree was uprooted on one side, and Parker zipped around as it crashed onto the road. “Welcome to Texas!” he yelled to his backseat passengers. “Sorry about the weather.”
Daniel handed several tissues to Marie, and she dabbed at the blood that had now run down her neck. “I think they have a medical person at the command center,” Daniel said. “From there we can get an ambulance.”
“I’ll be alright,” Marie said, even though her nose still shrieked in pain. “It could have been a lot worse.”
“Any one of us could have va
nished,” Nala said without a hint of exaggeration. “The dice fell into place as soon as we jumped.”
“Our external observer,” Marie said, pointing at Daniel.
“I’m still here,” Thomas said, checking his body with his hands.
“Thankful for that,” Nala said, grabbing him around his neck and hugging him.
“Uh-oh,” said Parker, looking in his rearview mirror.
They turned around, peering out the back windows of the van. In the distance, the smokestack they’d just climbed down leaned first one way and then the other and sheared off at its base, collapsing onto the neighboring building in a massive cloud of dust. The deep rumble caught up to them like thunder after a lightning strike.
As they watched, a second smokestack collapsed, taking out several electrical towers as it went down.
“We’ll be alright if we can get out of this zone of turbulence,” Daniel said.
“Working on it,” Parker said, and he pressed the accelerator pedal down further. The wind still whipped trees around, but the waves dampened as they drove. A minute later, they skidded into a dirt parking area. Dozens of people watched the unfolding spectacle from a nearby patio.
“Medical assistance!” Daniel yelled as they stepped out of the van. A woman came running carrying a first-aid kit. Marie sat on a picnic table as the woman donned rubber gloves, checked Marie’s face and wiped away blood.
Daniel sat next to her. “We have a telescope set up here. After your message, we kept an eye on the stacks. Still, it was crazy to see the three of you climbing down.”
With her face mostly cleaned of blood, Marie turned to Daniel. “Thanks for paying attention, partner. That was close.”
While the medical tech hovered over Marie, Daniel held out a hand and she took it. “I felt bad leaving you alone at Fermilab. And worse when you decided to go rogue. Looks like you got pretty banged up in there.”
Marie laughed. “Stories to tell.”
“I’d love to hear them. Buy you a beer?” he asked.
Quantum Void Page 28