Strands (Maura's Gate Book 4)

by Rawsontile, Fiona

  “You told me they were from Earth,” she continued. “Then they should’ve noticed our houses and why didn’t …”

  Her body tensed up as she heard knockings on the front gate. How strange! Everyone in the village knew they normally used the side gate, which was closer to the house.

  “Here they are.” Grandpa put away the maps and stood up.

  Korina followed him outside. The temperature was picking up even inside the shady garden. Through the glass panels she saw two men standing there, each holding a helmet in the hands.

  “Finally decided to check on the neighbors?” Grandpa opened the gate without hesitation, as if he had been expecting them.

  The two men walked inside and wiped off sweat on their faces. They certainly didn’t belong to the eighteen villages in the community based on their outfits. Why would one need so many pockets on the pants and jackets? Korina wondered.

  “Devin Lee,” said the senior guy, extending a hand to Grandpa. He had stiff hair, a grayish brown that might have been darker some years ago. At first glance, he looked like an ordinary guy in his fifties or sixties—she wasn’t good at judging people’s ages. But soon, she began to detect a unique atmosphere around him, a subtle yet unmistakable signal indicating that this man had gone through extraordinary events in the past.

  When her gaze met the young man’s, the word, warrior, jumped into her mind. There was a fearless spirit in the way he walked and talked. A refined and educated boldness, not the type of “silly energy” carried by her brother Joey. He reminded her of Grandpa’s medieval stories, in which young knights rode on horsebacks, broke into castles, kill enemies and, sometimes, dragons.

  “Neighbors?” Matt said. “We didn’t know you guys are here. We sort of found out this place by chance. How did you get here?”

  She heard Grandpa murmuring something as she followed them inside. While the guests were getting seated in the living room, she went straight to the kitchen to make tea. When she came back with a tray, she heard Devin asking, “End of the world? Did they tell you when it’s going to happen?”

  It was a lie! Korina wanted to tell them. A device for the aliens to obtain a few human subjects while watching the rest suffer the endless desolation and loneliness.

  “Well …” Grandpa scratched his bald head. “2082, I think. What year is it now? I’ve lost track of the Earth calendar.”

  “Great,” Devin said to himself and sighed. “The third time the bad news got confirmed.” Then he looked back at Grandpa. “We have five years left … How did those people initially approach you?”

  “First, the mayor had a family visitor, who told him about the cult and the presage. Nobody took it seriously. Then mysterious things began to happen. They left notes at your home without breaking in. Your computer typed messages on itself listing what you just had for dinner. In the end, most of the families in our town were convinced.”

  “So they brought you here in a ship?” Matt asked. “What did they look like?”

  “We were actually attended by a few humans, who had been living in their worlds for a long time. They said we wouldn’t be able to see the gods.” Grandpa glanced at Korina. “Except the chosen ones. When we got here, we saw they had brought over food and supplies in advance. Anyway, after a few more trips, we ended with a community of four thousand people. Some came from other countries.”

  Korina still had memory of that trip. For a six year old, traveling in a humongous spaceship with everything automated was beyond fascination.

  “Hmm.” Devin frowned. “That’s weird. We should’ve heard about it on the news when so many people were missing … After you had settled here, did they talk to you again?”

  “We can communicate with them through letters. As I said, there are humans living in their world.” Grandpa left his chair and stopped at a drawer chest.

  “Nice people,” Matt said. “Exactly who are they, do you know? And how do they make themselves invisible?”

  Grandpa’s right hand was fumbling inside an open drawer. His motion paused when he heard the questions. “They don’t make themselves invisible.” His head turned in the direction of the window.

  Devin and Matt exchanged perplexed looks. Even Korina had no idea what Grandpa was saying.

  “You can wear these masks while you are here.” He handed a few dust masks and goggles to the visitors. “They are light.” Then he sat back in his chair, his eyes almost fully closed.

  “They are invisible. Or you could say, they’re dark.”

  * * *

  “You believe it?” Matt paced inside the bridge rapidly. “According to Lamar’s story, all those times when you thought you were sleeping at home, alone, talking to your wife, taking a bath, there could have been a few dark people watching within your reach.”

  “I don’t think my life is that interesting.” Devin smiled, relaxing in his chair. The ship had a contemporary design, a home-like interior. There were country pictures hanging on the walls, sheer curtains covering the windows, a vase glued to the table. It was supposed to ease anxiety during space travels, although the desired purpose had not been achieved with Devin until this moment.

  How he wanted to believe Lamar’s theory! They had finally traced down the intersection of the strands, but just as the government had put it, what could they possibly do with dark matter? Now he saw hope glimmering ahead. He would find those “dark” people and ask for their help.

  “Modern societies are busy,” he said absentmindedly. “We hardly spend a full day in a zoo.”

  “I still can’t imagine there are invisible worlds out there.” Matt stopped at a window and pulled the curtain aside.

  “Don’t forget they are the majority of the universe,” Devin said, mainly to tease his partner. “They must have been shocked when they first discovered us.”

  “Whatever! How are we going to find them, boss?”

  “We’ll make them find us.”

  According to Lamar, the dark people must be living on one of the strands, because, well, nothing else could have supported them. And naturally, they must have chosen to build their home close to an intersection. “Think about it,” Lamar had said. “A single strand may extend over hundreds or thousands of light years before it meets another one. If it got hit by a flying dark object—whatever that might be—intense vibrations could travel along the strand. Thus the most stable points would be where they twist with one another.”

  “They are here,” Devin heard Matt saying. “Is it cold outside? I’ll get the door.”

  Devin walked over to where Matt had been standing and surveyed the land in the dusk. What a long day they had gone through! The sun was lingering just above the horizon, larger and redder than what he was used to seeing. The part of the rings next to the sun had become a series of dark lines with glowing edges. A flock of birds with bat-like wings and bright-yellow eyes hovered in the sky, sent a few scouts to check out the ship, but eventually decided to move on.

  “Mom and Dad said okay.”

  Hearing the girl’s voice, Devin moved away from the window and saw Korina and Lamar undressing their winter coats.

  “Interesting design,” Lamar commented while looking around. “I guess home offices are no longer the trend. Now it’s the other way around …”

  The girl knelt on the floor and fetched out a brown bag from her backpack. “Mom made some cookies for you guys.”

  “Thank you.” Devin smiled and took over the bag, looking at her in a close distance for the first time. She had a bony profile, overall not on the pretty side, but gave off the impression of a diligent student. Quiet, stubborn, and maybe a little squeamish. Devin knew it because he was the same type. Since normally they were calm and agreeable persons—as long as things did not infringe on their principles—few people had witnessed their stubborn side.

  “We’re ready to take off,” he heard Matt announcing, and went on to help the guests get seated.

  * * *

  That night, Devi
n stayed in the bridge to keep track of the strand, but the image on the screen remained a smooth cable. Meanwhile, even though he was eager to find out more about the dark world, its existence unsettled him. To someone who had been an active astronaut for thirty-five years, space was his workplace, or he could say, a friend who preferred to keep a few secrets but was nonetheless reliable and sincere. Now facing the deceptive emptiness among stars, nebulas, and galaxies, he had to admit that one cannot always trust one’s eyes.

  And can we trust our knowledge then? All the golden laws, the infallible principles, rules we have to follow … Could the invalidation of a fundamental theory dismantle an entire system?

  “Were things a mess at home?”

  Startled by the voice, Devin looked around and found Lamar walking in with a roll of paper in his hand. Unlike during the day, the old man’s eyes were widely open.

  “Did we … meet before?” Devin asked. He had seen that piercing gaze somewhere.

  “I don’t think I know you. Did you go to University of Chicago?”

  “No.”

  “Then you might have been to one of my guest lectures.”

  “That’s right!”

  Now the memory came back. Lamar Holmwood was the inventor of the Dark Black Hole Theory. Unlike the majority of astrophysicists who claimed that dark and Byronic matter are incommutable and only interact through gravity, Lamar hypothesized that a portion of regular matter falling into a black hole would be transformed into dark matter to feed the galaxy filaments.

  “I liked your theory,” Devin said. “I had always wondered if a black hole can infinitely absorb stuff. I remember in your theory a black hole is called a Leaky Singularity.”

  The old man’s smile indicated he was genuinely happy with Devin’s recount.

  “So according to your theory, there should be less dark matter when the universe was younger?”

  Lamar nodded and walked to the navigation monitors. “Are we tracing the strand that’s going to break?”

  Devin opened his mouth, paused, and chuckled. “I was stupid. We should search on the other one.”

  Why didn’t he think of it earlier? The dark people knew 102 was going to break years ago. If they had initially built their homes on it, they would’ve moved by now.

  Devin modified the ship’s route, and the two of them left for the kitchen.

  “If you ask, why should black holes serve as dark-matter converters?” Lamar picked up their earlier topic. “Remember that space is expanding. Galaxies can simply run away from one another, but if the amount of dark matter remains the same, wouldn’t the filaments become thinner with time? That’s why they need continuous supplies.”

  Lamar’s words stirred an idea inside Devin’s mind, but it was too elusive for him to catch.

  “That’s how the universe is going to end.” The old man heaved a sigh. “Now that I think about it. As more blue giants die, the number of black holes in the universe will keep increasing. Initially that means more Byronic matter will be converted into dark matter; but at some point, those black holes will run out of food within their territories and can no longer meet the need of the growing filaments.”

  “Strands overstretch and break, one after another,” Devin continued on the idea. “Space becomes instable everywhere, until it collapses.”

  Back to the point prior to the Big Bang. Well, that wasn’t something he should be worried about. For now, all that mattered was to save one of them.

  “Heineken!” The old man exclaimed as he took the beer out of the cooler. “Never thought I’d taste it again.”

  He sat at the table, and his eyes opened more when Devin threw him a bag of roasted peanuts. “Do you know why I came here?” he asked after he had gulped down the beer.

  Devin was confused. “You mean you didn’t believe the prediction?”

  “I did, but at my age, I probably wouldn’t live to that day. I came here because I wanted to experience space travel and extraterrestrial worlds.” He beamed at Devin. “Which is an ordinary part of your job.”

  “Yes, I’m lucky.” Even if it ended today, Devin could proudly conclude that he had lived a meaningful life.

  They quietly consumed the food and drinks for the next few minutes. Then Devin realized he shouldn’t be wasting the opportunity. “Exactly what do you think dark matter is?”

  “To me, the macro world always resonates with the micro world.”

  “What?” Devin was lost.

  “When we study fundamental particles, we saw them spin or orbit one another. Same thing with planets and stars. The macro world seems to reflect characteristics of the micro world.”

  Devin nodded.

  “On the other hand … How much do you know about the String Theory?”

  “Oh! Don’t remind me of my college nightmare!” Devin rubbed his forehead.

  The old astrophysicist chuckled. “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum mechanics has not fully understood it. Niels Bohr said that.”

  Right. Devin wasn’t a man who lacked imagination, but particle physics exceeded his capacity. “It tells us that each fundamental particle is essentially an open or closed string …”

  Strings? Strands? Now Devin knew what Lamar was trying to say. On the macro scale, dark matter existed in the form of strings.

  “That made me wonder,” Lamar said. “Are dark and ordinary matter really that different? We can’t see dark matter simply because it doesn’t generate photons. But there could be other photon-like bosons we don’t know exist. In fact, if the photoreceptors in our eyes were replaced with molecules that are sensitive to gravitons, shouldn’t we be able to see both worlds?”

  Devin found the argument hard to dispute. Although gravitational lensing could provide rough estimates of massive and distant filaments, to closely trace individual strands, they had to make a graviton detector based on the knowledge obtained from Jupiter. Theoretically, nature could have constructed similar detectors in human eyes—it had done more incredible things than that—but he still couldn’t accept the notion that dark matter was just as “regular”. “We can fly through strands, which means they don’t have charged particles to repel or attract our electrons.”

  “Repellence, attraction …” Lamar played with the empty plastic bag. “To me, polarity is simply a reflection of the string’s mode. I don’t consider polarity as something special. Only through opposing forces do things obtain balance. In that sense, dark matter must have its own polarized particles, or it would have remained a lifeless muddle, as we used to believe. ”

  Devin stared at the old man for a few seconds, and particle physics suddenly began to make sense. “Back to my initial question, can I say that seemingly diverse particles, dark matter included, may well originate from the same subunit that operates in different states?”

  “I think you can add energy to the list.”

  “I’m here.” Matt appeared at the entrance. “You should take some rest, Devin.”

  Devin was tired, but he hated to end the moment with the old astrophysicist. Experience had taught him that the more extraordinary a friend was, the less likely he’d see him again.

  “Go get some sleep, Devin,” Lamar said as he picked up the paper roll from the table. “I’ve got work to do.”

  * * *

  “They are not going to talk to you,” a voice whispered in the dark.

  Devin shifted in his trunk bed. When he was tired, he sometimes had those “loud dreams”, in which imagined sound seemed to have left his head and echoed in the room.

  “They have done enough,” the young man’s voice continued. “Even when they had their own problem to deal with. Why didn’t you come earlier?”

  We couldn’t have, Devin wanted to say but found his voice stuck in the throat. We learned about your world only recently. He made another attempt but only heard himself uttering an uh.

  “I miss home.” The voice quavered. “I was too young to remember much, but I still got a few cousins in Cali
fornia. And Miya … I don’t think any of them can afford it.”

  Gathering his strength, Devin sat up on the bed and saw the back of a man who stood in front of the window. The stranger had short blond hair and a slim figure. There was a faint glow surrounding his body, but after a while it was no more than reflected starlight.

  “Who are you?”

  “What a shame … Wasted your time because you couldn’t trust another race, when more people could have been saved. Lucre, hierarchy, dominion, those are what you could never let go.”

  “I need to talk to them, please!” Now Devin had fully woken up and realized this young man must be a dark agent. “We aren’t coming this far to find out there’s nothing we could do.”

  The warning from the Megrezese. The technique provided by the Jupiter people. All the efforts would be lost if he gave up now.

  “There’s nothing more they could do.” The young man finally turned around. He had an aristocratic kind of look: thin lips, a straight nose, deep-set eyes that were rather gloomy. “Just … go.”

  With that said, he vanished from the room.

  Devin sat on the bed for a while before he fell back to sleep. He would make them talk, now that he knew he was not far from their world.

  * * *

  When Devin entered the bridge on the following morning, he realized he wasn’t the only one who didn’t get much sleep. Matt and Lamar were talking in front of the navigation panels, both red eyed with mustache that seemed to have grown an inch overnight. Korina stood in front of a window with her forehead pressed on the glass. Devin smiled. A typical human behavior. If we know something is out there, we would never give up looking regardless of how many times we have been told otherwise.

  He walked over to Lamar and Matt and described his encounter with the young man.

  “Philip!” Korina turned around and shouted. “It must be him! He used to be our neighbor, the first so-called college student in our community. Did he look all right? You should’ve told him Grandpa and I were here.”