by Ike Hamill
“Listen, David? It’s David, right?”
He nodded.
“Honestly, we need the whole amount of substrate or we can’t start our experiments. I understand your complaint, but you’ll have to work with us if we want to continue this relationship.”
He seemed to be considering her statement, like he could determine the truth just by watching her squirm.
She offered a compromise. “But we’ll bring your penalty next time. We can bring twenty-percent more than agreed next time to make up for the people who were following you. And we’ll tell everyone not to follow you anymore or the deal is off. Like I said, I’m sure it was just a miscommunication.”
“Fifty,” he said.
Amelia pause and tried to appear conflicted.
“We’re short on everything, David. I might be able to get you twenty-five percent more. I’m afraid to promise any more than that. I’m not even sure that it’s possible.”
“Fine, but if you try to cut me out again…”
“No, of course not,” Amelia said.
David nodded. “Where’s the produce?”
“Would you mind setting down your weapon first?” Amelia asked.
David frowned at his hand, like it was a surprise to him that he was still threatening them with the device. It disappeared into his bag, but the bag didn’t leave his hand.
Amelia gave a nod to Niren. He retreated into the woods and came back struggling under a big box of vegetables. David’s eyes were locked onto it. He was already taking inventory of the food. Niren set the box down halfway between Amelia and David.
The man eyed them.
“You remember, you cross me again and this relationship is done,” David said.
Amelia nodded.
“Leave me communication at the old barn on Route 2 when you want to meet again,” David said.
When he reached into his bag, Amelia flinched. He pulled out a mason jar. She saw globs of wax around the lid, sealing it. Amelia frowned. The jar looked empty. He stepped forward and tossed it. In her surprise, Amelia let out a little yelp, but she caught the jar.
David was smiling.
“How do I know there’s anything in there?” she asked.
David pulled another thing from his bag. A blue-green beam of light shot from the device and Amelia had her second scare of the day. When he aimed the beam on the jar, the contents lit up in a swirling cloud of silver.
“Wow,” Niren whispered.
It was beautiful. When David snapped off the light, the silver cloud in the jar disappeared again.
“Argon laser. Four-eighty-eight nanometers,” David said. “Well, good doing business with you.”
He picked up his box and left.
Amelia stood perfectly still, looking at the jar in her hands. They had come on a strange mission to retrieve a mythical substance and she had just seen the stuff with her own eyes.
“That guy is creepy,” Niren said. “Let’s get back.”
She needed a second to put her world back together into something that made sense.
“Amelia?”
When he grabbed her arm, he startled her back into reality.
“Yeah, sure,” she said.
She held the jar out in front of herself as they trekked back towards town. It should have been easier going—they didn’t have the heavy box of produce to carry between them—but it was actually harder. She was so focused on not dropping the jar that her arms and shoulders were in knots by the time they saw the buildings on the edge of town.
When she finally set the jar down on the desk in their lab, Amelia let out a huge sigh and closed her eyes.
“I suppose we need to start building some kind of containment apparatus, right?” Niren asked.
Amelia slumped into a chair.
“Like a tank or something. We can build an acrylic tank and create a vacuum so the stuff doesn’t get diluted with too much air,” Niren said.
“No,” Amelia said. “The first thing we need is an argon laser. He said four-eighty-eight nanometers.”
“Where are we going to get one of those?”
“I’m guessing the hospital. A lot of that equipment has lasers.”
A voice from the doorway surprised them. “There’s an ophthalmologist on College Road. They’ll have one.”
Amelia turned to see Caleb look at their jar.
“Come on, Niren, I’ll show you,” he said.
Amelia started to get up as well.
“No,” Caleb said. “You stay here. You look wasted. Besides, someone has to watch the jar.”
Amelia nodded. After Caleb and Niren left, the tension began to return to Amelia’s tired muscles. It was only a mason jar. At least it should have been. She pushed her chair back from it. Evil radiated from the invisible substance inside the jar.
But the stuff inside there wasn’t even supposed to exist. It was a theoretical construct. The idea of it was a placeholder that people used in complex equations. The only way to balance those equations would be if the substance was cancelled out from both sides by the end.
Where was the balance if she was looking at a jar of it?
“You okay?” Brook asked.
Amelia let out another surprised cry.
“Whoa. Sorry,” Brook said. “I didn’t mean to startle you like that.”
“It’s okay,” Amelia said. She slouched down farther in the chair. “I was lost in thought I guess.”
“What happened to Caleb and Niren?”
“They went after a laser.”
“Huh,” Brook said. She took her own chair. Brook glanced around. Their lab was terrible. Actually, the whole building was terrible. The lab was just the worst part. Amelia saw it with fresh eyes as Brook looked around.
The ceiling was cracked. The water that dripped down the walls had inspired an invasion of black mold. The floor was buckled over on the south side. Walking on the far side of that hump was lunacy. The one time Amelia had strayed over there, it felt like she could fall through to the lower floor at any time.
They couldn’t afford to work in one of the better buildings. Those other buildings had too many visitors. In their line of work, they weren’t allowed to entertain visitors.
“What’s the laser for?” Brook asked.
Amelia raised an arm to point at the jar. When she did, a shock of pain zapped her shoulder. She rolled her head from side to side until it dissipated.
Brook’s chair scraped as she scooted forward to get a better look.
“That’s it?”
“As far as we know,” Amelia said.
“I thought you said that the stuff didn’t exist.”
“It’s not supposed to. I still have my doubts.”
“No. That’s not true. I’m pretty good at telling when people are lying. You believe in that stuff.”
“I believe there’s something in there. I’m just not sure it’s the stuff that we need. Caleb was right about that David guy. He does seem to know things.”
“If it’s the stuff, then it will be easy to prove,” Brook said.
Amelia looked at her. Brook claimed to be good at reading people. Amelia had no evidence that she was right. One thing was for sure, Brook herself was impossible to read. Sometimes Amelia felt that the woman was a genius. Other times, she appeared to barely have a sense of what she was doing. As far as Amelia could tell, Brook was so specialized in her studies that she had major gaps in her understanding of the world. In some ways, she should have been a lot like Niren. But the two couldn’t be more different. Niren’s naiveté was charming. Brook’s was aggressive.
“How would you prove it?”
“Just put it close to a console. Anything that interacts with the ether is going to inspire sympathetic waves in the space around itself. The stuff in that jar would have to repel those waves, right?”
“I guess?”
Truthfully, Amelia had no idea.
“So you put another console on the other side, and it won’t be able to connect. It
will be in a dead space.”
“Oh.”
“Come on. Let’s try it,” Brook said.
# # # # #
In their cramped research room, Brook set up a console to stream video footage from some underwater camera. Once it was going, she moved the jar next to the console. While they watched the screen, she slid the jar closer to where the ether interface resided.
“Should have no effect,” Brook said.
“Wait!” Amelia said.
“What?”
“I thought I saw it jitter. Just for a second.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
It wasn’t the best video to use. The view was mostly static. There were a few waving leaves of seaweed, and every now and then a bright spec would travel by the lens. Other than that, the camera showed nothing but deep blue emptiness.
“Let’s see,” Brook said. She went to a shelf and sorted through devices. “We just need something else that will try to uplink.”
Most of the things there had been modified to specific tasks. They didn’t have a lot of use for general-purpose consoles in their research.
“Here,” Brook said. She pulled a box with a folding screen attached to it. “I’ll put it on the other side of the jar and then it won’t be able to connect because of the induced wave.”
Amelia folded her arms and waited. There was something off about the experiment, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Brook knew the theory better than she did. She would feel stupid if she objected without a specific reason.
Brook set up the device and flipped the switch.
The screen lit up. The device began its boot sequence.
“It’s initiating a connection to the ether,” Brook said. She was leaning forward, reading the screen. “Failed its first attempt. The power is increasing and it’s trying to make another connection.”
“How long will the batteries last if it doesn’t get a connection?”
“I’m not sure,” Brook said. “It typically doesn’t have to wait more than a few seconds.”
The device began to emit a hum.
Amelia unfolded her arms and leaned forward. “Where’s that noise coming from?”
“I guess from the speakers. It’s weird though. There’s nothing playing so I don’t know why…”
“What are you doing?” Caleb asked from behind them.
Brook was preoccupied with the screen.
Amelia turned to answer. “Testing the substrate. It’s between two connections.”
“Are you crazy?” Caleb screamed. He pushed past Amelia. “Turn it off!”
Brook leaned forward and swept the little device to the floor. It continued to hum. Amelia reached down and shut it off, but the humming still came from the speakers. Caleb was at the controls of the big console. Amelia realized that the underwater video feed had frozen. The console’s speakers had picked up the hum as well.
“It’s in a feedback loop!” Caleb shouted. “Get that out of here.” He gestured towards the jar. His hands were on the console, initiating an emergency shutdown.
Brook picked up the jar like it was a bomb. She began to walk it carefully out of the room.
It didn’t help. The hum grew louder despite Caleb’s efforts.
“It’s not working,” he said. “I’ve shutdown the connection but its still feeding back somehow.”
Amelia looked down at the device on the floor. That one was completely shut off and it was still humming. The circuits were powering themselves. She imagined an induced current racing through the boards and building with each pass. Shutting the machine down wouldn’t have any effect. There was only one way to stop it.
“Break it!” she yelled over the deafening hum. As she shouted, she brought her foot down on the device on the floor. All of her instincts told her to revere the electronics. There were certain things in their world that they couldn’t recreate, and the thing she was stomping on was one of them. But Caleb’s panic was contagious. She didn’t know what the ramifications of the feedback would be, but it certainly sounded bad.
Caleb understood the logic instantly. The only way to break the cycle was to physically interrupt the path of the current. He picked up one of the chairs.
Amelia ducked out of the way as Caleb swung the chair towards the console. The energy built up inside the machine erupted when the chair hit it. It exploded in a fountain of green sparks and bursts of red energy. Caleb fell back into Amelia. They both collapsed into the wall.
After a few snaps and buzzes, the console fizzed and fell silent.
Niren poked his head through the doorway. “What happened?”
“We almost lost Fairbanks,” Caleb said. He got up and helped Amelia to her feet.
“You’re being dramatic,” Brook said. She came back in without the jar. “At worst it would have fried the machines. You reached the same outcome by destroying them.”
“No,” Caleb said, “at worst it would have created a loop that fed the ether into the ether. At worst, it would have exploded with the energy of the sun.”
Brook shook her head.
“You want me to write up the equations?” Caleb asked.
“It’s all theoretical. We could write equations for a week and we wouldn’t come to any consensus on the energy discharge potential.”
“You want to position that jar in between a couple of other consoles and we’ll find out what it does?”
Brook looked down. She shook her head.
“Exactly,” Caleb said. “Now let’s go hook up that laser and see what we’re working with.”
# # # # #
Amelia was closest, and she was still two meters away. The stuff was hypnotizing, but she hadn’t forgotten the danger it represented.
“It’s beautiful,” Caleb said.
“I don’t know if I’d call it beautiful, but it’s definitely mesmerizing.”
“Is it alive?” Niren asked.
They all turned to look at him.
“What? It’s a reasonable question. You see the way it moves, right? Not a whole lot of inanimate objects move like that.”
“I assume those are natural currents,” Amelia said. “Like clouds in the sky.”
“They don’t look much like clouds,” Brook said.
Caleb stood up and started pacing near the door.
“So if that David character is correct,” Caleb said, “then this stuff is the connective tissue between the Hunters in our world and the ether.”
Brook picked up the narrative. “Instead of a circuit board with an ether resonator, the Hunters use this medium to both communicate and draw their power.”
“That’s how they’re able to stay invisible to us. Everything they’re made of is transparent in the visible spectrum,” Caleb said.
“No,” Amelia said. “I think you’ve both got it wrong.”
Caleb stopped pacing. They turned to her.
“If what you’re saying is true, there would be a million ways for us to detect them. We could set up ultraviolet imaging, detect microcurrents in the air, or electromagnetic emissions. But we haven’t seen any of those. The only device that picks up anything is the reverse kinetic display, and at best that gives rough approximations. People think of these things as invisible machines, but they’re not. They are machines that are only an idea until they attack. The only physical manifestation is barely enough to rattle a few air molecules together.”
Caleb was rubbing his chin. Brook looked towards the ceiling.
“What do you think, Niren?” Caleb asked.
“I don’t know any theory. You tell me what to build and I build it.”
“Give an opinion. We won’t judge you. Tell us whatever you’re thinking. We’ve got a limited number of minds to throw at this problem and we need a fresh perspective. Tell us what you think about the Hunters.”
Niren stared at the jar as he thought. He appeared to be lost in contemplating the endlessly-shifting silver structures that lived in the jar. The shapes were bri
ghtest where the laser hit the glass, but the whole jar was full of the twisting ribbons.
“They’re ghosts,” Niren said.
Nobody said a word.
Niren continued. “My mom said they were ghosts of everyone who died. All those people gave their lives so the planet could keep going, but a lot of them weren’t at peace with their decision. After dying, instead of moving on, they came back to torment those of us who stayed behind. My mom said that the only people who didn’t choose the cull were criminals or cowards.”
“What’s the point of a planet without people?” Amelia asked.
“The Optioners were supposed to be the only people who lived. They paid for the planet and they were entitled to it. They could have lived forever if all the selfish people hadn’t stuck around,” Niren said.
“Your mom has some pretty dangerous opinions,” Caleb said. He took a seat.
Niren’s face turned red immediately. His embarrassment quickly shifted to anger.
“Relax, Caleb, she passed away years ago,” Amelia said.
The young men were locked in a staring contest until Brook spoke again.
“But they’re not ghosts,” Brook said. “We know that. They were created by people and they can be defeated by people. This stuff is the first physical part of them that anyone has ever captured. We just have to figure out how to use it.”
Amelia slid a tiny bit closer to the jar.
“What if we got an ether interface on either side of a Hunter. It could create the same feedback loop that we saw. The explosion could destroy the Hunter, right?” Amelia asked.
“That would be like cutting off your head to get rid of a cold,” Caleb said. “Maybe a little too effective.”
“You said you wanted to starve them,” Niren said. “You said you wanted to starve them from energy. And our best guess is that this stuff acts as an interface between the Hunters and ether, right?”
“Right,” Caleb said. He sat up a little straighter.
Amelia took over the line of reasoning. “So all we have to do is figure out how to disable this stuff. And that means we have to reverse engineer how it works.”
“Easier said than done,” Brook said.