Unparalleled

by D. S. Smith

  “You were both already in danger. Bringing you in is the best way to protect you. It was our intention to bring Stuart in anyway but we decided your exposure to him made you vulnerable also. Besides, Stuart has been through so much of late having his doctor with him makes good sense.”

  “Danger, what kind of danger? So our lives are at risk?” she repeated exchanging a concerned glance with Stuart.

  “Very much so doctor, there are agencies out there who will stop at nothing to get their hands on the technology we have developed. Through no fault of his own Stuart is a key part of all this and now by association so are you. The best environment for both of you is with us. We can protect you.”

  “You didn’t protect your colleague so well,” Catherine replied but immediately regretted it. For the first time, the professor’s cool facade slipped, revealing a concealed anger. “Jim failed to protect himself. He was weak-willed and vulnerable and the people who killed him knew exactly how to exploit that. I can assure you we will not lose anyone else from our team which, like it or not, you two are now part of.”

  The professor’s sudden outburst had a strange effect on Catherine. It was almost as if this show of emotion made him more credible. She had not been taking any of this seriously enough. A man had lost his life as a result of what the team were doing here. His calm delivery of the mind-blowing revelations he was asking them to accept made him seem like a madman, but this outburst made him seem human. This is really happening, she thought to herself. This is all real. There is nothing wrong with Stuart. Oh my God, what have I put him through?

  “Stuart, I am so sorry. I got it all wrong. I’ve put you through so much heartache for nothing. I thought I was doing the right thing, there was…” Stuart interrupted her and the sincerity in what he said touched her deeply. He reached across the table and took hold of both her hands. “You were doing your job Catherine and you were doing it well. I would not have gotten this far without your help and support. All the conflicting evidence would still have been there but without you, there would have been no explanation for it. You made the right diagnosis. You just had the wrong person.” He flashed her a smile and let go of her hands. He held her gaze for a moment longer, saying with his eyes what she already knew. That he was glad they had shared their short time of intimacy. He turned to the professor. “Professor, wherever this is leading I’m ready to assist.” The professor looked to Catherine to gauge her reaction to Stuart’s announcement. She just smiled and nodded. “I do believe you are, Stuart,” he said cheerfully, the anger he had demonstrated just minutes before now having left him. “Now, how about I show you what this is all about.”

  Chapter 25

  “Beijing?” Dave paced up and down the room talking to himself and trying to get his head around what was going on. “Beijing, China? No, maybe Beijing Hotel or Beijing… London. Is there a Beijing in London? There’s a Chinatown.” He walked over to the bell on the wall and pressed it. After another ten minutes of pacing no one had appeared so he pressed it again. A further fifteen minutes passed before he heard the lock turning in the door and in entered an incredibly beautiful Asian woman dressed in a white blouse and tight blue jeans. “What do you want?” Despite her looks her accent was pure American and her tone petulant. “I want to know where the hell I am and why I’m locked in here,” he shouted. “You’ll find out soon enough Stuart, in the meantime just chill.” With that she turned to leave but before she got through the door he stopped her in her tracks. “Stuart? You think I’m Stuart? Is that what this is all about? Well you got it wrong sweetheart, I’m Dave Milton, Stuart’s brother.” She froze for a moment before slowly turning back to him. “You had better be shitting me.”

  Her demeanour changed from apathy to grave concern and to anger. She removed a pistol from the back of her jeans and raised it to Dave’s head. He retreated from her but she followed with the pistol touching his forehead until his legs met with the edge of the mattress and he fell backwards onto the bed. She climbed on top of him straggling him with the gun still pointed at his forehead.

  “Tell me you are fucking shitting me or I will kill you right here.”

  Dave tried to turn his head away from the gun pointing at it. He was wincing as he replied. “I don’t know what you want but you’ve got the wrong guy. I’m David Milton. Stuart’s my brother.” She jumped off the bed cursing to herself while pacing up and down with the pistol waving in the air as she gesticulated.

  “Fuck, fuck. How could I be so fucking stupid? Shit, you look just like him. Oh shit, now we’re both fucking dead.” She continued to pace, tapping the silencer against her head trying to induce an idea. She paced for a few more minutes before turning the pistol back on him. “Ok, there’s one way out of this for both of us. As far as they are concerned you are Stuart Milton so that’s what we’ll let them believe. If you don’t go along with this they will kill you anyway and me also.”

  Dave agreed to what she was asking of him as he didn’t see he had much choice. “What is this all about anyway?” he asked her as his heart rate slowed. “Nothing for you to worry about. They just need you to calibrate their machine.” She replied fixing her hair in the mirror. “Well there is something to worry about actually because I’m not an engineer.” Dave snapped. He thought he may have gone too far with the sarcasm but she didn’t even turn away from the mirror.

  Lin Lee gazed at her reflection. She looked herself in the eye and smiled at the thought of putting a bullet smack in the middle of the annoying man’s forehead. The thought would keep her going until she had chance to do it for real. She removed a speck of mascara from the corner of her eye before turning to address him calmly. “You don’t need to do anything to the machine other than get in it. I’ll come to get you when they are ready. As long as you go along with what they ask of you, everything will be fine.” She poked him in the middle of the forehead as she said the word fine. She left the room with a provocative swagger never looking back.

  Dave felt like he had just been hit by a bus. He tried to piece together the sparse information he had but could not make anything of it. Why did they want Stuart and what was the machine she talked about? It was obviously important if they were willing to drag him, rather Stuart, to the other side of the world to get into it. Was this something to do with the way Stuart had been acting lately? Was he involved in something he was not telling him? He lay back on the bed, his head swimming with a thousand questions, all drowning unanswered.

  Chapter 26

  Catherine Carson had not known what to expect when she entered the lab, but she had expected more than this. Other than the presence of a large bank of computers and some kind of booth that looked like an airport body scanner, they could have been in any laboratory in any scientific establishment. As incredible as it all seemed she now accepted there had to be substance to the professor claims. But her senses still betrayed her. Why did everything look so ordinary? They were privy to the most significant discovery in the history of the human race, yet it felt like the induction at the start of a night school class. If they had entered the room to find something akin to the Large Hadron Collider it would have felt more appropriate, but this! She noticed Stuart was staring at the booth; the professor had noticed this also. He was clearly a very intuitive guy as once again he had gauged their thoughts exactly. “It doesn’t look very impressive does it?”

  “I’ve come to realise of late that perception often defies reality professor,” Catherine offered, looking to Stuart. Stuart said nothing. He had not yet been informed of the true purpose of his being there but it wasn’t difficult to work out what that purpose was. The simple looking booth he now stared at in the middle of the lab could be a doorway back to Lauren and the life he had all but given up on. He looked back at Catherine and the life he might have had.

  The professor looked at his watch and then at Dr Cooper who was sat in front of a computer monitor. Dr Marks was stood by the booth taking readings from a digital display moun
ted on the side of it. “ETA five minutes, professor,” Dr Cooper informed him.

  Professor Humphries walked over to the booth and beckoned Stuart and Dr Carson to join him. They stopped about a metre away from it and the professor explained to them the equipment they were now looking at was known as, for reasons that would soon become apparent, ‘the Harmoniser’. On closer inspection, it looked to Stuart like a shower cubical complete with a tray at the bottom and several rows of small fluorescent lights at the top where the spray nozzle should be. He received a tap on the shoulder as Dr Marks handed them each a pair of sunglasses and suggested they put them on immediately. “ETA one minute,” Dr Cooper announced. They put on their glasses and waited. Dr Cooper started a countdown.

  “Ten, nine, eight…………………………………………zero”

  Right on the count of zero the booth filled with a brilliant white light which lasted for about thirty seconds before dying down again. As the light faded they noticed something moving in the tray at the bottom of the booth. When it had dispersed completely the source of the movement was revealed. A small, white guinea pig scampering around the tray, nostrils twitching frantically.

  “Right on time,” the professor declared through a smile. Dr Marks pressed a button mounted below the display she had been monitoring. The doors to the Harmoniser opened with a hiss. She reached in and scooped up the guinea pig with her hands. She gave the animal a thorough inspection before declaring it intact. She took it over to one of the benches were she pricked the pad of one paw and squeezed out a drop of blood on to a microscope slide.

  “So, is that from my universe?” Stuart asked demonstrating he had grasped exactly what the purpose of the Harmoniser was.

  “It may have been to your universe Stuart but its originating point was here. We originally sent this animal through two days ago. Before we sent it through Dr Cooper inserted a genetic marker into its chromosomes. Within four hours of it disappearing from the Harmoniser another guinea pig appeared. It did not carry the marker. We returned that animal three hours ago. Hopefully this is our original animal back. If it turns out to be the case we can calculate with confidence that the corresponding points in each universe are coming closer together. At the point when the time difference between the two is zero we will have the optimum chance to guarantee we can put you back in the correct location. We expect that to be in about two days’ time.”

  Catherine asked the professor how the Harmoniser could open the wormholes in the first place. He explained that by measuring the amount of light absorbed in the black spots appearing when one of these events occurs naturally, they could calculate how much energy would be required to cause a quantum collapse. He went on to explain how the required energy is drawn from the environment and focused onto a single point by the resonators which are the glass tubes at the top of the Harmoniser. To simplify this he asked them to imagine the two parallel universes being separated by a pane of glass. When the required energy is drawn by the Harmoniser and focused onto a single particle the strings of that particle unravel and collapse. A chain reaction then occurs affecting all the neighbouring particles which also unravel and collapse. When this occurs they momentarily stop vibrating and lose all their mass. This continues to spread through all the particles in the vicinity until all of the energy available is used up. Initially all of the resulting collapsed particles exist in a single plane at their origin and are completely inert unless a catalyst is introduced to the reaction. The professor sat down on the edge of a computer consul to continue his explanation. “Using the pane of glass analogy, this can be visualised by picturing a two-dimensional patch of condensation on the glass. At this point unless a catalyst is introduced the particles remain inert for a period of time before they start to vibrate again and regain their original mass. However,” he offered, pausing for effect and brushing back his hair in the manner they had become familiar with, “if DNA is introduced into the mix it acts as a catalyst and the particles behave very differently. Due to the way DNA can modify the particles making up its structure, it has an amazing effect on the chain reaction. Instead of collapsing into a two-dimensional form devoid of mass, the particles form a multidimensional form of incredible mass.” He threw his arms out wide to illustrate incredible mass. “These particles stretch the pane of glass from their point of origin into the next universe. This creates a harmonic imbalance between the two universes which triggers an identical reaction in the opposite direction. So the particles in the alternate universe stretch the glass into this one. When the harmonic imbalance has been addressed the extensions in the pane of glass bud off and everything returns to normal but the two sources of DNA have swapped universes. Stuart felt like he wanted to clap at this point but refrained. “In the event you’ve just witnessed the catalyst used was the guinea pig,” the professor concluded.

  “I’m guessing you want me to be the next catalyst?” Stuart asked. “We would like to carry out a few more animal tests first but we do want to send a human through and you are the ideal candidate Stuart. The black spots indicating the events are generated as a result of the energy from the formation of the wormhole and the energy of anything passing through it. We can make a fairly accurate guess as to what portion is from the quantum collapse and what portion is the matter passing through but it’s not exact. This means we can’t be sure where we are sending our subject. If we have a subject that has already passed through,” he pointed to Stuart, “our calibration will be much more accurate. Once we have a true calibration we could set up something in both universes and transfer subjects between the two with total confidence.”

  Stuart considered the implications of what the professor was suggesting. He had imagined that once through he would get back to a normal life, but what the professor was asking clearly involved him being instrumental in the development of the technology in his own universe. He had many questions needing answers before he could contemplate this further. As usual the professor seemed to read his thoughts suggesting they should all freshen up and meet for dinner later at the refectory where they could discuss matters in a relaxed environment.

  Chapter 27

  Director Zang tapped his fingers on the desk and stared at the phone, willing it to ring. They had built their Harmoniser according to the plans from the stolen laptop and were now ready for the first test. The country’s top physicists had been persuaded to oversee the build and to check out the algorithm needed to replicate the conditions. They had managed to get to this stage in less than one week. That was quite an achievement by anyone’s standards, anyone’s but the Chairman’s. He was not interested in the complexity of the equipment, or the difficulty of getting the parts they needed to build it, or even recruiting the expertise required to ensure it worked. He was only interested in saving his son’s life and time was just about the only thing he could not buy. The boy had leukaemia and was not expected to live beyond the next six months. The Chairman had learned of the technology through an agent in the Chinese government. The man had told him that if the machine worked it could completely cure his son of the dreadful disease killing him. This was the only option left available to him to save his only child.

  The director turned his attention back to the phone and hoped that when it did ring it would be good news. Anything less was unacceptable.

  Lin Lee was not easily shocked but when the body in the Harmoniser exploded in front of her it sickened her to the point of vomiting. Not so much the sight of blood and guts dripping down the inside of the glass but the implications of having to inform her bosses the test had failed. They already had a setback when it was discovered the coding sequence for the initiation of the Harmoniser was a tertiary sequence and not a single one as she had originally reported. Fortunately for her the Agency had access to mathematical minds that made reverse engineering an algorithm seem like balancing a chequebook so the setback had only been a minor one. She looked back at the booth and the remains of what just minutes ago had been a perfectl
y healthy snub-nosed monkey. This was not a minor setback; this was a catastrophe and one that could easily lead to her demise.

  Chapter 28

  All the now familiar faces were gathered around the table in the refectory; Dr Carson, Professor Humphries, Dr Cooper and Dr Marks. The table was covered in a white, lacy cloth with a placement of fine silver cutlery demarking each setting. The lights were dimmed and classical music was being piped in through hidden speakers. One place at the table was empty, soon to be filled by Terry the security agent, who had volunteered to cook dinner. “Terry is a magnificent cook,” the professor offered. “If it wasn’t for him we would have been living on snacks from the vending machines and takeaways during our time spent here.”

  Right on cue Terry appeared from a door behind the servery pushing a trolley containing several plates of food. He placed a plate in front of each guest, apologising for the meagre offering. The offering was far from meagre and they all tucked into a generous offering of baked monkfish thermidor with fresh, green beans. The food was delicious and a far cry from the dishes normally served in these surroundings. The professor’s contribution to the meal was several bottles of South African cabernet sauvignon which he also apologised for, stating it was all he could get at the local convenience store. Having paid a round of compliments to the chef and spent ten minutes discussing Terry’s cooking prowess, the conversation turned to the matter at hand. The professor, who by now insisted on being addressed as John, invited them to ask anything they liked and promised to be as open and accurate as possible.