The Field of Reality

by Aditya Deshmukh

  “Can you turn on the reactor?” Madden asks. “Lights and gravity will help us work faster.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Omar says.

  “If your theory is correct, we are standing in a landmine. We don’t want to trigger anything we don’t understand. Besides, if someone from New World Systems is on their way, we need to work faster,” Cap says.

  Cap approaches the dashboard.

  “Don’t know. There’s definitely something weird going on here,” Omar says.

  “It’s just the reactor. Don’t see anything wrong with it—there would have been messages on the screen,” Cap says.

  Omar shows a thumbs up. Cap presses a few buttons. The reactor hums back to life.

  White ambient lights lining the ceiling and the floor at regular intervals glow, sending warmth and comfort across the humongous deck. The airlock door closes. Madden removes the goddamn claustrophobic helmet as soon as pressure stabilizes and fills his happy lungs with one fresh wave after another. He puts the helmet back on as there may not be an air supply throughout the ship. Gravity returns, and the sense of weight lightens up Madden’s mood. He takes a step forward.

  If he can walk, there’s nothing he can’t do.

  The Mammoth,

  At the Fringes of the Solar System

  OMAR ACCIDENTALLY BANGS HIS HEAD ON A TRUSS STRUCTURE OF THE LOW CEILING AGAIN. It’s been a quarter of an hour and what feels like miles after they left the control room. The reactor section of the engineering bay is still further away.

  “If you kept your head glued to the map instead of walls, we would already be there,” Madden says, then freezes when Omar glares at him.

  “Almost there,” he says.

  Madden thought the lights and gravity would make their journey comfortable. But the passageways seem to get more and more narrow. No wonder the big guy is having trouble keeping his head straight.

  “God, this ship is so fucking huge and they couldn’t build decent-sized passageways,” Madden says.

  “It’s because the Mammoth is built around something, and the designing of the passageways must be low priority,” Cap says in the comms. “Look at the map. Those loops in the middle, that’s what occupies most of the space. It’s a particle accelerator.”

  Omar suddenly stops. Madden almost runs into him.

  “What?” Madden swallows. “Please tell me we aren’t lost.”

  “Particle accelerator…I don’t like the sound of that.” Omar shakes his head. He swivels to face Madden. “You’ve been to a lot of ships, right? When you’re on a different ship, one you have never seen before, do you ever get a feeling…I don’t know…a deja vu or something?”

  “I won’t say deja vu, but well, most ships have the same design. So, yeah, you can say that.” He stares at Omar’s puzzled face. It’s kind of unnerving. “Why?”

  “Are ships with particle accelerators common?”

  Madden chuckles. “I think you know the answer.” He places his hand on his shoulder. “What’s bothering you, brother?”

  Omar stares at him for a long time, then he shrugs. “I bet it’s nothing.”

  They walk in silence for three more passageways, before Omar stops again. “Yeah, something is definitely weird.”

  “What?” Madden sighs. He really wants to get this job done so he can go back and take a much needed bath. He would also add some essential oils, like some Earthers do. They smell awesome.

  “I’m not following the map, yet I know exactly where we are going.”

  “Well, you guys are trained in this stuff. When you practice so much, you’re bound to get a sixth sense, right?”

  “No, man. This feels different. It’s as if the structure is twisting itself to align with my thoughts.”

  Madden bursts into laughter.

  Omar casts him a deadly look. “This isn’t funny.”

  “Oh yeah, then build me a slide from here straight to the reactor chamber,” he says, laughing. “Use your telekinesis. Come on!”

  Omar turns red, and walks taking two steps at once.

  “Hey, listen, big guy. Didn’t mean to tease you. You’re just overthinking. You guys were fighting for three days straight and now this…the brain can only keep up for so long. A nap and you’ll be as good as new.”

  Madden hopes Omar listened to him. But if he did, Omar gives no kind of acknowledgement.

  “Savitri, found anything?” Cap asks.

  “Hmm,” Savitri says. “It’d take a scientist to understand all these equations and calculations, but looks like they were working on particle collisions. So they took a neutrino and blasted it with…a bunch of crap. They got some kind of quantum soup. They played with the new particles and kept going. Finally they settled on something called as Realions—don’t know what the fuck that means.

  “They conducted the same experiment over and over again, and I mean same, down to time and velocity and all that crap. Wait, doesn’t this violate Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle? Anyway, they repeated the experiments with the same parameters, but got widely different results every single time. Different velocity, different decay time, different heat map, different mass readings.

  “These seven scientists come from Mars and Earth—”

  “Wow,” Omar says. “That’s something new.”

  “—Brightest of their kind. Each had a different take on Realions. Each came up with their own theory. I went through all the books and their hand terminals, but couldn’t find any conclusions. It’s just raw data and these really crude results like ‘Numbers don’t match, but each theory seems to be working.’ They didn’t agree on anything except—the name of the project, as mentioned on the first page of the observations book, is “Reality Field.” And beneath these bold letters is scribbled: ‘Reality is subjective?!’” Savitri takes a deep breath. “No idea what this is all about, but I really feel like we shouldn’t stay here for long.”

  “Agreed,” Omar says.

  Several minutes later, when the narrow passageway gives way to an open space with a steel bridge, Madden inquires about how he’s feeling. “So…are we good?”

  Omar gives him a blank look. “When were we not good? And yeah, you’re right. These strange thoughts. I just need a nap.”

  “Hmm. And a nice bath with essential oils.”

  Omar raises his eyebrow. “Dude, almost forgot. I need an opinion on something. Shit.” He curses and closes the outgoing side of comms.

  “Dude, you’re kind of acting weird.”

  Madden watches him with squinted eyes as Omar announces, “Savitri and I, we are going to marry.”

  Madden knows the timing is wrong and they should be focusing on the mission, but he can’t help but pull Omar into a hug. A genuine smile spreads on his face. “Wow! I always knew there was a thing between you two. Congratulations, mate!”

  Omar nods excitedly, putting his hand in his pocket. He produces his wedding ring. A plain golden ring with an aesthetic outer curve.

  Madden is more amazed by his skill of fishing out something that small from those small pockets with the thick gloved hands. He likes the ring too. “Looks good, man! I’m sure Savitri will love it.”

  “Look closely,” Omar says, grinning. “Wait, let me show you. It’s a projector. Shows our first date!”

  Omar presses a tiny button on the inside of the ring and is about to hand it to Madden, when the lights go off and Madden can feel he is losing weight.

  “The particle accelerator was sucking tons of energy. I have killed it. No need to panic, will start the reactor as soon as I block the accelerator’s supply. Gimme a minute,” Cap says over the comms.

  Before the lights and gravity return, the ring clinks as it falls on the side of the bridge, bounces off and disappears.

  “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit…"

  Omar kneels and starts looking for the ring. They search for a while, but the ring is nowhere.

  “I shouldn’t have removed it in the first place
,” Omar says, dejectedly putting his fingers in his empty pockets.

  The steel beneath them rumbles. They shudder with the bridge as it oscillates. Madden accidentally glances below, at the numerous linkages of steel, the truss structures going down and down as though there is no end. The idea of falling all the way down makes him want to puke.

  “WHAT’S GOING ON?” Omar shouts over a thunderous voice that erupts somewhere deep in the Mammoth.

  It’s coming from the center, one surge after another. Then all waves interfere to form a stable force that keeps the entire ship groaning.

  “The controls are bad. I did disable the reactor, but it is active again, sending enormous energy to the particle accelerator. Looking into it again. Prepare for zero g.”

  The lights die. Madden floats again. But the particle accelerator keeps vibrating. Maybe it has an independent system to store the energy it got from the reactor. In any case, Madden wants it to die soon. The idea of a mechanism this humongous working without them knowing much about it is unnerving. Fortunately, the vibrations stop in a minute.

  “Guys, I don’t want to risk that again. It’s best if we carry out in the current conditions.”

  Omar switches on his comms. “Copy that.”

  Omar and Madden float across the bridge, their hands on the railing.

  “The bridge opens up to the reactor chamber,” Omar says, disabling the holographic map projecting from his suit’s forearm.

  At the end of the bridge, there is a pressure door. It is also unlocked, like all the pressure doors before, which is not just weird but also creepy. Usually, when stuff goes wrong—which certainly did here—the standard protocol is lock down. So why are all these doors open? It’s as if someone wants them to go to the reactor chamber.

  Madden wants to think this through, but his eyes that are jumping here and there frantically catch a glint of gold. Before Omar walks in, Madden grabs his shoulders and jerks him back.

  “Dude, your ring!”

  The ring is lying at the side of the door. Omar snatches it up and grins at Madden.

  They enter the reactor chamber. There are five reactors arranged as vertices of a regular pentagon. At the center is the feed, which separates into five separate channels. As the reactors would consume their pellets over time, the central feeder will feed the replacements immediately.

  “Five reactors! That’s an unusual design,” Omar says.

  “Glad your deja vu is over,” Madden says.

  Both chuckle and get to work. They hover over the central feeder, a tall cylinder. Madden fishes a few spanners from his pocket. He undoes the feeder’s housing and exposes the fuel, safely contained in inert casings. The fuel is a shade darker from what they are used to. Madden reads the serial number inscribed on the casing. It’s the finest quality. Both smile at the sight. The back of their suit expands like a balloon. They fill it up with the fuel. Madden screws the housing back. He didn’t have to, but it’s a nice feeling to not leave behind unfinished things. They soon exit with enough fuel to sustain a one way trip to the sun.

  All reactors start whirring. Lights return. Madden lands on his feet and feels his full weight. This natural state of the human body, of feeling weight, no longer satisfies him. He stares in the direction of the particle accelerator, which pounds and pounds. The bridge rattles. The deck vibrates. His spirit shakes.

  “Cap? It’s happening again,” Omar waits. “Cap? Do you copy?”

  “Guys,” Savitri says. “You need to evacuate ASAP. I came across a file that states the objective of these experiments. It’s to—"

  "—find the very substance the world is made of,” Cap says, her voice shaky. “Particles of reality. And figure out how to manipulate them.” She coughs and the shakiness disappears. “I went through the recent logs. The reason observations were coming different is because different people were working on it with different expectations. And the reality particles made those expectations real for that particular individual.”

  “Yes. Guys, I uncovered a video.”

  The screen embedded in the visor becomes active. A skinny man with black circles beneath his brown eyes is looking at them. “Chief, sorry I’m calling late, but this is urgent. We have to stop the experiments,” he says. “Each of our theory agrees with the readings doesn’t mean that the theories are right. I just finished running the data through the supercomputer. Guess what? The data fits none of the theory. There is no pattern in the data, only chaos. Yet when we manually work them out, everything works. Don’t you find that exciting?” He pauses. “I did, until I realized it wasn’t excitement I felt, but dread.” He swallows. “Realions produce reality fields that either alter just our perception of things or reality itself. The reason our theories work when we do things manually is because we want them to work. They fail when we perform automatically because machines are neutral. The computer cannot project its expectations and emotions on the data like we do.”

  The video pauses.

  “You mean these particles can read your mind and can project something from your thoughts in actual reality?” Madden holds his breath. “That’s insane!”

  “The Chief,” Cap says, referring to the lonely corpse in the control room. “This is her final log.”

  The previous video fast reduces opacity. For a moment, Madden sees Omar’s pale face. Then Cap’s video occupies the screen.

  “This is Sunita Harington, lead scientist on Project Reality Fields. This is a warning to anyone who boards our ship. We were working on a dangerous project. I tried to stop it.” The woman in the control room, very much alive, goes out of breath and sobs. “Realions are intelligent. When I tried to kill the reactors to stop the supply to the accelerator, the controls instead opened the airlock. My colleagues were having a meeting in the airlock,” she chuckles and sobs. “Yeah, realions made them think the airlock was the conference room. And they made me think the release control of that pressure door actually governed the reactors.” Her hand goes to her face as tears fill her eyes. “I killed my friends.” She wipes her tears. “I also simultaneously killed the air supply of the control room. And I’m too scared to switch it on. What if I trigger something else I totally didn’t mean to?”

  She cries for a while, then takes a couple of deep breaths. “Don’t feel sad for me. In retrospect, I think I did anticipate this scenario. My soul is at peace.” Several tear drops float in front of her eyes. Her hair is reaching in every direction. Her eyes are calm and focused. “If you’re V. K. Narayana, go fuck yourself. Do yourself and the world a favor and nuke this damn ship. If you’re a space pirate, wow, congrats on finding this ship despite all the stealth tech. But don’t dare steal anything. Everything here is infected. Realions are very unstable and decay in a matter of nanoseconds. But a cluster can survive, as long as they have a power supply. Otherwise, they will become dormant. But your mere presence, the heat you radiate, can stir them up. So whoever you are, get the fuck out immediately.

  “I’m doing you a favor. When I die, the ship controls will return to default and that means the reactors will die along with the accelerator. It’s an automatic setting, one realions can’t govern.” She smiles and shows a middle finger behind her back. Then she glares at them. “Yet. They are constantly learning. And I don’t think I need to say: Don’t you dare turn on the reactors.” She clears her nose. “Tell my family what you can. Tell them I miss them.”

  The video ends.

  “Wow,” Omar says.

  “Return to the control room ASAP. We are leaving the Mammoth. Forget the fuel.”

  “We got the fuel.”

  “Great,” Cap says, her voice still going up and down with anxiety.

  Madden hurries toward Omar, away from the reactor chamber. He feels something small but rigid under his foot. He lifts that foot and gasps at the piece of jewelry.

  “Omar! You lost your ring again.”

  Madden kneels and picks it up. He shows it to Omar, whose brows are furrowed. He raise
s his hand. Something golden glints on his index finger. Both stare at each other with wide eyes.

  “Which is the real one?” Omar asks urgently.

  “How the fuck do I know!” Cold sweat forms on his forehead. Madden cannot stop looking at the ring. The mere sight increases his blood pressure.

  “Madden, RUN!” Omar yells.

  Madden follows his gaze. He looks over his shoulder. At first, he sees nothing unusual. The reactors start glowing white, emitting red particles. As Madden’s heart beats increase, a legion of strange red fireflies gather in the reactor chamber.

  “Madden!” Omar yells.

  Madden keeps watching the beautiful scene with his mouth wide open. The red fireflies are advancing. Wherever they reach, the space develops a reddish glow, until the very membrane of reality warps. One moment the reactor chamber is a reactor chamber. Suddenly, it’s a warm sunny Martian beach. With Saturn hovering right above it.

  The Mammoth,

  At the Fringes of the Solar System.

  “OKAY, LOOKS LIKE WE NEED TO TELL THOSE REALIONS OR WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY are that they are messing with the wrong people,” Cap says, after hearing the duplicate ring story. “How far are you from the reactor chamber?”

  “Far enough,” Omar answers.

  “Good, brace for impact,” Cap says. “Let’s give the Mammoth a little scratch.”

  “You can’t do that!” Omar shouts.

  “The particle accelerator is a sensitive device. The logs indicate that whenever something goes wrong, the system default kicks in. Which is to shut down everything, including the reactors, to prevent further damage. When the accelerator stops whirring, it means no realions. Most will decay in nanoseconds, the rest will be in the reactor chamber, dormant as the reactors would be dead.”

  “Cap, weren’t you listening?” Omar says. “If I hadn’t dragged Madden back, he would have walked into the reactor. He might have opened the casings, thinking he is only building a sand castle. He would happily absorb a ton of radiation, thinking it’s just sun giving him a nice tan.”