by Razi Imam
THE NEXT MORNING, spicy aromas of Spanish omelet, country-style potatoes, toast, croissants, and sweet maple syrup wafted throughout the hangar. Sebastian had awoken early and taken it upon himself to get groceries and cook up a storm for the team. It was the best way to wake up. He figured that the next few hours of work would lead to discoveries that would test their knowledge, perhaps pushing them further over the edge of human logic. It was important that they started the day off with a good breakfast.
One by one, the team walked up to the table where Sebastian had laid out the feast. The breakfast had the desired effect—it was helping them become a family. Maria and Fabienne were sharing a plate. Shiloh, true to his nature, was the most adventurous—he was pouring Finadene, a hot sauce from Guam, all over his helping of omelet. Michelangelo and Nidal had made their own omelet sandwiches with cheese. As they were clearing up, Poseidon’s familiar ping sounded, and the coral screen appeared on one of the monitors.
“Yes, Poseidon?” Shiloh asked.
“I have an update on the research I conducted last night to determine the nature of these particles,” Poseidon said. The team gathered around the monitors to hear the analysis. “I have reviewed well over two million scientific papers from different disciplines, from physics to quantum mechanics and almost all theoretical and physical sciences,” Poseidon began. “There is no mention—or even a hint—of the phenomenon we are experiencing. There is one area of science that is still unknown, and that is Dark Matter.
“As per known science, the majority of our universe is made up of dark matter. Scientists believe that it is comprised of particles that are at present unknown to us. We do know that dark matter has a massive effect on gravity, and as a consequence, on space and time. One can postulate that these particles emitted from the blue-green side of the nodule could be a type of dark matter particle.”
“Poseidon, we have named these particles Rahpido particles,” Shiloh said.
Sebastian added to Poseidon’s research. “If these particles—sorry, I mean Rahpido particles—are indeed dark matter time particles, then it makes sense why particle physicists have never found them. In our call yesterday with Giulia, she mentioned that some scientists at CERN believe that gravity is also made up of particles. Why would time be any different?”
The team decided to perform limited experiments testing the Rahpido time particles for the next few hours. They discovered that by changing the wavelength and frequency of the laser that struck the film, they could control the range of the time field and the strength of the time dilation.
At 11:30 a.m., they once again synchronized all the system clocks. Sebastian clicked the conference icon on his laptop and connected to Cebrián.
Cebrián appeared, reading from a stack of papers. A rather large lapis lazuli ring adorned his right index finger. “Hello, team! You’ve been busy. Hmm, dark matter particles. Fascinating!” He put the papers down and regarded the team. “So, what is the plan?”
Fabienne gestured Sebastian to take the lead. Even though she was concerned about the effect time particles may have on the team, she had helped put together the protocol for their next sets of experiments. Cebrián gave them the go-ahead and disconnected the call.
The team took their positions. Michelangelo and Nidal returned to their respective computers, ready to compile and process the data the experiment would generate. Fabienne began the delicate process of removing a thin film of cells from the second side, the crimson side of the nodule. Shiloh was on the phone, searching the base for some crystals he would need to develop the portable laser device. Maria was also on the phone, asking for a gym mat to be set up in the hangar.
Fabienne placed the single-cell layer in the electron microscope chamber. She pressed a button, and the images of the cells came up on the two monitors. Similar to the greenish-blue side, the crimson side had the round, orange and red formations that burned with a crimson hue.
Sebastian placed the thin film in the MALDI chamber and set the laser to 266nm, as before.
“Okay, folks, this is our first experiment on the crimson side. What time is it?” Sebastian asked.
Nidal spoke up. “It’s exactly 11:40 a.m.”
Just then, there was a loud knock on the door, followed by the release of the locking mechanism. Several cadets marched in holding lunch boxes. The lead cadet approached Sebastian and clicked his heels in salute. “Sir, lunch has been sent with the compliments of the brigadier general.”
“Oh, good!” Shiloh said. “Is it okay if we have lunch before we kick off the experiment?”
The cadet’s eyes darted around their setup of monitors, computers, and lab equipment. Sebastian noticed that they lingered on the incubator. He was glad it was opaque, and that the specimen, for the moment, was hidden. He made a mental note to inform the guards not to let anyone enter when experiments were being performed.
“Let’s break for lunch,” Sebastian agreed. “Please express our sincere thanks to the brigadier general. The lunch boxes can go on the kitchen table.”
The cadets set up the lunches and requested that the big hangar door be opened so they could install the gym mat Maria had requested. In about twenty minutes, as the team sat enjoying their lunch of assorted sandwiches, chips, and chocolate chip cookies, the cadets had set up the mat toward the center of the hangar. Between his bites, Sebastian kept looking at them—he wasn’t very comfortable with them working in such close proximity to the equipment, let alone the specimen.
Once they were done, the lead cadet walked over to Sebastian and clicked his heels again. “Sir, we’re done. Would you like us to clean up the kitchen?”
“No, thank you. We’ve got it,” Sebastian said, smiling.
The lead cadet nodded and they all made their way out of the hangar, closing the main hangar doors behind them. Sebastian was relieved they had gone.
After clearing up the kitchen, the team returned to their stations. It was now 1:20 p.m., Thursday, May 6th. Sebastian set the laser to fire every minute for the next twenty-two minutes, similar to the first experiment, to keep all the variables exact. If this new particle was identical to Rahpido, then after twenty-two minutes, they would find the time outside of the hangar to be 11:20 a.m. on Friday, May 7th. Meaning the time would have once again jumped ahead by twenty-two hours.
Sebastian gave a thumbs-up and pressed the red button on the MALDI. The familiar click was heard and particles were registered. Two Poseidon server clocks were displayed on the monitors—one showing the server time on the plane and the other beaming in from the system clock on Andersen Air Force Base.
“Particles confirmed,” Fabienne shouted. “Okay,” she continued, “the first minute has passed. Here we go again.” She pointed toward the edge of the hangar. “Look!” A halo of red mist floated, fiery, luminescent and opaque. They couldn’t see through it, yet it was brilliant and captivating. She then pointed to the clocks. “It appears our time is moving forward by one minute, and normal time outside the hangar isn’t moving at all.”
The experiment came to a close, and the red mist vanished. Eyes wide, the team passed glances back and forth as they pondered the effects of the new particle. They had experienced the full twenty-two minutes in the hangar, yet the world outside moved forward by only twenty-two seconds. The server clock in the hangar was showing 1:42 p.m. and the base server clock still showed 1:20 p.m.
“Guys, how come time didn’t move outside?” Shiloh asked.
“Shiloh, time did indeed move outside—it just moved by twenty-two seconds,” Poseidon answered.
“What do you mean? Did we just create time for ourselves?” Shiloh asked, his voice taking a higher pitch.
“I think that’s exactly what happened,” Nidal agreed, looking at his computer. “We could be inside this red mist for minutes, hours, even days doing our work, while outside, time would move at an alarming slow pace. This particle is the exact opposite of the first one.”
“I think we need to run th
is experiment for a longer period of time to confirm,” Sebastian said.
“Are you sure we should do that?” Fabienne asked.
Maria whispered to her, “We’ll be fine. Relax, Fabienne.”
Fabienne nodded, her eyes worried.
Sebastian called Cebrián, who listened to the results of the new experiment. “I thought the first particle, Rahpido, was game-changing,” Cebrián said, “but this particle is even more amazing. A time particle that creates time in situations where we don’t have any.”
Sebastian nodded. “I’m recommending we push the envelope. I say we run the experiment for five hours. According to our calculations, we’d use five minutes of real time.”
“I agree, if you’re up to it,” Cebrián responded.
“I believe we are,” Sebastian said, looking at Fabienne.
“Okay, I’ll let you guys make the call,” Cebrián concluded.
The team gathered around the center table. “Boss,” Shiloh said, “I recommend we start our experiment at 3:00 p.m. Guam time. We’ve come up with a busy schedule for the five hours. At Maria’s request we’re going to start off with a two-hour self-defense training session, something called Krav Maga. She feels that given the nature of our discovery, it’d be good to get the team familiar with some basic self-defense moves. After showering and changing, that should take us to 6:30 p.m. hangar time. We will discuss the time particles, and once time in the hangar reaches eight in the evening, the time outside the hangar should only be 3:05 p.m. We’ll also have Fabienne’s fungal experiment to validate that we in the hangar experienced the full five hours, whereas outside the hangar, time moved forward by only five minutes.”
“Sounds good,” Sebastian said. “Let’s do this.”
“COMBAT NEVER HAPPENS in perfect stances like you see in the movies,” Maria began, not a hint of a smile on her face. “You don’t just walk into a bar with your hands up in a boxing stance. In real life, combat happens when you least expect it—walking home, texting, talking to a friend in the safety of your own home. Krav Maga is an Israeli martial art focused on winning in real situations.”
She stood at the center of the mat, looking straight at Sebastian, Fabienne, and Shiloh. “What I’m about to teach you could incapacitate someone, maybe even kill them.” Sebastian was surprised that Michelangelo and Nidal had opted out of the training session.
“The main goal of the technique,” Maria continued, “is to focus on finishing a fight as soon as it begins by attacking the most vulnerable parts of the body.”
Shiloh and Fabienne once again surprised Sebastian. They seemed quite comfortable, performing the difficult, aggressive moves. At one point, Shiloh rushed toward Maria to see if she was able to employ her own training. She caught his approach out of the corner of her eye and drove her elbow into his solar plexus. Shiloh lost his balance, buckled with pain, and fell straight to the mat. She knelt next to him and placed her hand on his stomach, applying steady pressure instructed him to breathe. “Never expose your most vulnerable parts to your opponent,” she instructed, leaving him to catch his breath.
Sebastian gave him a hand up, leaning close. “What were you thinking?” he whispered.
“Hey, she touched my stomach,” Shiloh whispered, grinning. “It was worth it.” Sebastian couldn’t help but chuckle.
The team then had dinner, showered, and gathered around the conference table to discuss how the particles operated. It was clear they created some form of time field, evident with the red mist that surrounded them.
“Guys,” Shiloh offered, “what about near-death experiences? When you’re about to get into an accident, people say time slows down. What if that experience is due to this time particle hitting you?”
“Or the opposite, when you’re having fun and then realize that three hours have passed,” Maria added, “when you feel it should have only been like thirty minutes.”
“Exactly,” Shiloh agreed. “What if all our lives, we have been experiencing these time particles and never realized it?”
The team continued to share their collective experiences, each one reflecting some strange effect on time. Before they knew it, Nidal yelled. “Team, it’s now almost eight p.m. hangar time. Five hours have passed.”
The team emerged from the hangar and walked out into the bright sunlight, squinting. They could see it was not even close to being 8.00 p.m. The sun was high in the sky. Shiloh spoke to the guard and verified that it was indeed just after three in the afternoon.
Fabienne picked up the Petri dish from its place outside the building and took it back inside, placing it next to the one on her table. The dish from inside showed fungal growth conducive to five hours. The blue color of the fungi had spread across the entire sample. The dish from outside had a small portion of the blue color, confirming only five minutes had passed.
The team gathered around the conference table, resetting their watches to the correct time. “We worked on the particle, had dinner, cleaned the dishes, got some serious ass-kicking combat training, and showered, all in five minutes of normal time!” Shiloh cried. “We created five hours for ourselves!” He let out a happy whoop, and it echoed up into the beams of the hangar. The team celebrated the experiment’s success despite the worry of any unknown effects the time fields might be having on them.
“Shall we continue?” Sebastian asked.
They were tired, but also curious about the next side of the nodule. “Let’s keep going,” Michelangelo said. “It’s only three p.m. We still have a lot of daylight left.”
“Wait, what do we name this particle?” Shiloh asked.
Nidal spoke up. “How about Lentio?” he suggested. “No real meaning, except it lengthens our time to be able to do more stuff.”
A smile spread across Shiloh’s face. “Lentio it is!” he said.
This was too much for Fabienne, who had been fuming as they talked. Raising her voice she said, “Guys, why don’t you see the ramifications of this particle on our bodies? We all operate at a set circadian principle. There’s a biological clock by which our body functions. It’s precise and important for the normal functioning of our internal systems. Our heartbeat, our muscles, our senses, even our ability to think operates on an internal body clock. We just spent the last five hours working, eating, and training. Our bodies think it’s nighttime, and in a few hours our pineal gland will start secreting melatonin, which will reduce our blood pressure and slow our systems down, preparing us for sleep. We are being too careless.”
“I’ve been thinking about it too, Fabienne,” Sebastian said. “I believe this specimen has evolved in a way that allows it to reset its circadian clock to be in sync with the time fields it creates. I’m sure that one of the sides of the nodules will have particles that align our circadian clocks.”
“How can you be so sure?” Fabienne said.
“I don’t know,” Sebastian said in a calm voice. “Let’s do the best we can to get through all of the nodule’s sides. We have four left. Your anxiety is justified, but we can’t afford to panic. We can’t be afraid of what’s going on here. If our circadian rhythms are off for a while, then we’ll have to live with it.”
Although the effects of the time particles disturbed Fabienne, the scientist in her was still curious to find what the other sides of the nodule did. “Fine,” she said, pulling on a new pair of surgical gloves. She started to peel the single cell layer from the third side of the nodule, the maroon side.
They set up the MALDI to fire for twenty-two minutes. The hangar server and base server clocks were synchronized. Nidal and Michelangelo assumed their stations. Shiloh stared at the clock. Fabienne’s hand rested on the red button, ready to press on Sebastian’s signal.
Sebastian gave the thumbs-up. The laser clicked. They were engulfed in a maroon mist and no time distortion or dilation had taken place.
No one in the hangar was prepared for what happened next.
***
BACK IN SAN Diego, Cebrián
was in the midst of calling the Secretary of Defense, Richard “Dick” Richardson, to brief him on the latest findings from the Paramarines. He had a feeling they would need heavy security as research progressed. His call was brief and to the point, and the secretary listened. He knew of Cebrián’s work—and knew that something extraordinary must have happened for Cebrián to call. The team had uncovered something big.
It took some time for the secretary to get his head around the time dilation phenomenon. “How is something like this even possible?” he asked. “If this discovery is what you’re saying it is, we should move fast to bring it to the U.S. and have our military experts look at it.”
Cebrián wasn’t too fond of having to deal with the secretary, but he did have to brief him, since that was the structure the President had set up. Dick was a bit too nationalistic for his taste. Cebrián didn’t trust him. Keeping the conversation polite, Cebrián said, “We’re still investigating the phenomenon. And let’s not forget the core agenda of my research—it’s for the citizens of the world.”
“Yes, of course,” Dick agreed.
The call ended with the secretary agreeing that the team should remain situated at Andersen Air Force Base, with the security they needed. “Keep me updated on their experiments,” he stipulated.
He then pressed a button on his intercom and asked his assistant to set up a time with the president. “Please tell him that his friend Doctor Alveraz has found something he needs to be briefed on.” Dick could never understand why the president had such a soft spot for Cebrián.
He then pulled out his cell phone to make another call.
“Ready our team at Andersen Air Force Base. I might need them to extract a specimen there.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Quantum Entanglement
“Observe the wonders as they occur around you.
Don't claim them. Feel the artistry moving through and be silent.”