Should you give water to an unconscious person? I don’t know. Probably not.
“Fuck!” she said under her breath and then screamed out, “I wish I had some help here.”
Communicate. Find out what happened and where you are. Get some help. They must be looking for us. But where are we?
She recalled the circular hole that had shredded her lab and sucked everything into its darkness, unmistakably a dimensional aberration. It was certainly no closet they’d fallen into.
If this was 3-D space, her handheld radio would still work. Even if it was 4-D space, it still might work if she could successfully point it back to 3-D.
However the fuck you do that. She shook her head. Girl, you’re in a world of hurt. Find the fucking radio.
She searched, pushing through the debris and examining each object in the low light. Most everything was broken, bent or shattered. The remains of a voltage meter, wires, neon light tubes, smashed. She found a sweater she kept in the lab to keep warm on cold winter days and placed it over Thomas’s legs. After a few minutes without finding the radio, she stopped and stood straight up.
“What the hell am I even walking on?” she said aloud. She swiveled to the bright light. “And what the hell is that?”
The “floor” wasn’t like any of the floors at Fermilab. Even in the dim light, she could make out stripes and other markings in it. The stripes weren’t debris; they were part of the floor, but they were irregular, not like tile or carpeting. The markings were mostly gray and tan, but there were some other colors.
She did a quick three-sixty. The debris field had a teardrop shape, with its apex near the light and spreading out radially from there. It also looked like there might be two vertical edges, a sizzling wall of death on each side of the debris field. Only one direction was undefined—away from the light. It was just darkness out there; no debris, no sign of any vertical walls and no indication of any further lights.
Something on the floor wiggled, and her heart nearly jumped out of her chest. “Shit!” It wiggled again. A rat? She slowly reached down and picked up a large splinter of a two-by-four. She threw it at the wiggling thing. The wood bounced across the floor and stopped, but the wiggling continued.
Whatever it was, the thing wasn’t running around, it was just wiggling in place. She stepped closer. It looked like a shred of cloth blowing in the wind. But the air around her was completely calm. In fact, the air felt no different from being indoors. She reached down to grab the cloth, but her fingers simply touched a hard surface. The cloth wasn’t a cloth at all—it was an image, a video of a cloth blowing in the wind like an animated GIF that repeats indefinitely. She stepped on it and the cloth stopped wiggling.
“What the hell?”
She lifted her foot and it started waving again. “Okay, this is freaking me out.”
She turned to the bright light hanging above Thomas and screamed as loud as she could. “I want out of here!” She hardened her lips and yelled again at the light. “And so does my friend.”
She stepped purposefully over the debris, marching straight toward the light. As she walked, it seemed to recede. She walked past Thomas and past most of the debris, yet she was no closer to the light. Ahead was a smooth surface of the mottled gray and tan stripes with only a few bits of the debris, mostly smaller stuff. She took ten more paces and stood on a clean surface. The light was still no closer.
The proverbial distant light at the end of a dark tunnel. Am I dead?
Nala wasn’t superstitious. This was not a passageway for spirits. No ghosts were floating by, heading to a mythical heaven around the next corner. Her mind had little room for baseless supernatural claims. But humans are hardwired for fear, particularly of the unknown. A shiver passed down her neck and legs.
Focus. You’re smarter than this.
The light must be the same aberration she’d seen in the lab, and probably related to the hole they had passed through. Both were a byproduct of her manipulation of 4-D space. Her thoughts clarified.
We’re on the other side.
They were in a space she’d created, or maybe some blast zone created during the explosion. Wherever it was, that light sure looked like the one she’d seen hovering in her lab. Brighter, maybe bigger. But just as unexpected.
Fucking HP bosons.
She’d been playing around the edges of spatial instability, testing, probing. She’d certainly prodded the beast awake. It was an implosion, not an explosion. A collapse of four-dimensional space that had taken a chunk of three-dimensional space with it.
But why now? What had she done differently? The collapse rate? Jan’s concern about the density? She would need to study it further. Ratchet up the 4-D volume in smaller steps to see exactly when things became unstable.
Nala slapped her forehead. Oh yeah, I blew up the lab.
No more experiments, ever. If Jan was here, he’d have some insight. He might even have an idea on how to reverse the problem, assuming they had any useful equipment left.
The bright, shining light was the key. I tried to tell you, Jan. There was no doubt in her mind: the light was a singularity, though it was hard to see how that bit of information could help.
Nala dropped to her knees. Thomas was badly injured. Both of them were stuck in an unknown kind of spatial aberration with no exit and no way to get help. The outlook was bleak and emotionally draining.
Damn, I wish Jan was here. Or Daniel.
19 Thoughts
Daniel sat at the desk in his Chicago hotel room and wrote a brief note on a sympathy card. He stuffed the card in its envelope and addressed it to Mrs. Esterline Pasquier in Port-au-Prince, adding the address a Fermilab HR administrator had provided for Nala’s mother. Wholly insufficient, but it would have to do.
It felt odd to perform the required steps of condolence and healing when he still had doubts about the conclusion. In the 4-D sense, Nala could be standing right next to him and he wouldn’t know it.
There was much to process from the day’s events, and he needed a mental shift. He started a shower and let steam fill the bathroom. Stripping down, he stepped in and allowed the water to pour over his head. Personal chaos doesn’t mean your job can be ignored, and his current assignment had both technical and political challenges. With the accident at Fermilab, the stakes in Texas had just gone up.
Suspending the power plant operations, even if only temporarily, was the right thing to do, but the best approach would require some thought. The shower had always been the best place to do it.
EPA regulated air and water quality. NRC regulated the safe storage and use of nuclear materials. FEMA stepped in to protect and recover from natural disasters. They were all useful for their defined purposes, but the authority of each agency was limited to the ordinary world. Where were the interdimensional regulators when you needed them?
In any new technology, regulation lagged technological advances; safety concerns were often discounted—until an accident occurred. But even after an accident, it was never easy to draw a clean dividing line between acceptable risks and irresponsible practices. EPA administrators weren’t likely to revoke or suspend a permit unless they had better information, including a direct tie to the Fermilab disaster. Even the president would hesitate to step in. He had won the last election, but not in the state of Texas. In this case, with both industry and state agencies in alignment, the political fallout of overruling them could be high.
Finding connections is what any investigator does, and Daniel was unquestionably good at it. But if an investigator assumed a connection existed without evidence, the case would be easily picked apart by industry lawyers in court. Fermilab was an aberration, they’d say. They were pushing the envelope, probing for the breaking point. There was no connection. And those lawyers might be right.
The teams of DOE and IAEA accident investigators swarming over Fermilab, along with Jan Spiegel and Jae-ho Park, would need to find the root cause of the accident. As Jan had pointed
out, they were still collecting basic data. Any conclusion based on solid science would take time.
With Fermilab in ruins, their ability to retrace their steps was compromised for the foreseeable future. They would be wholly dependent on facilities elsewhere in the world, requiring still more time. But there was another source of information—if Core would cooperate. The alien intelligence certainly knew more than it had shared, especially when it came to quantum discoveries.
Warm water dripped from the end of his nose in a rhythm that helped to concentrate his thoughts and focus toward a purpose.
Daniel was as frustrated with Core as anyone. It was time to challenge the evasiveness that had characterized so many of their conversations. No more too soon. Get past you’ll learn.
Core was right to point out that humans had a long way to go in our understanding of the universe, but if we were treading dangerously close to disaster, a simple warning wasn’t too much to ask. Only a sociopath watches a child playing with matches without comment.
No more weasel words. If you’re friendly, prove it.
It was, of course, a very human reaction based in frustration and anger. Core was not human in manner or mindset, nor should anyone expect it to be. If Daniel wanted to make headway quickly, the next conversation would need to challenge some of the rules. But it was time. Two scientists may have lost their lives.
Daniel resolved to confront the all-powerful alien. How Core would react was impossible to know. But to get to Core, he’d need a facility with the technology to compress space. CERN was probably out of the question; Geneva tended to conform strictly to the rules as defined by IAEA. He could make some calls as he’d promised Jan to gain cooperation from the Chinese. And there was always this rogue lab in Romania. There were possibilities, but all were probably long shots and would take time.
The hot water poured across his shoulders and he wiped water from his face as another thought came in from left field. There was another path.
Aastazin.
He had never met the artificial intelligence, but as far as Daniel knew, he, she or it was still at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. For that matter, the portal the katanaut team had used to get to Ixtlub should, theoretically, still be operational. Even if the android was the only one who knew how to operate the system, it was a potential path to Core.
Daniel shut off the water and stepped out into the foggy bathroom. He wrapped a towel around his waist and grabbed his phone from the counter. He could have called the White House or the main number of KSC, but there was a better way, faster and more reliable. A former partner and a good friend.
She was still in his list of contacts. Daniel dialed, and Marie Kendrick answered.
20 Void
Nala sat cross-legged next to Thomas, a water bottle in her hand and two more unopened. She gently lifted his head and dribbled a bit of water into his mouth and then carefully lowered his head onto a sheet of bubble wrap that she’d found. She stroked his hair and ran the back of her fingers across the stubble around the edges of his beard. The color had left his skin and his moans were less frequent.
She’d found the first-aid kit, battered but usable. Thanks, DOE safety guy. I owe you one. The job of properly dressing the wound had taken time, but she hadn’t shrunk from the task, even when an artery had opened up again. At least it showed his body was maintaining blood pressure.
She’d done the best she could with the materials she could find. Thomas lay on pieces of carpeting. He looked comfortable, even though his condition was clearly critical.
Wherever this place was, it was cold and getting colder. With most of her pants used for the initial bandage, all she had left were ripped shorts and bare legs. But the floor felt warmer than the air. Why? The difference in temperature was data… and data could always be leveraged.
Heat is transferred in three ways: radiation, conduction and convection. Radiant heat transfers via photons. We feel the radiant heat of the sun on our skin. Conduction occurs through direct contact. Her legs were warmer where they touched the floor. But more commonly, heat transfers by convection—air movement. Warmer and more energetic molecules of air physically move from one place to another through currents in the air.
Since it was getting colder, that probably meant there was little or no warm air coming in, coupled with radiant cooling, probably radiating out through the dual sizzling walls of death. She could stay warm against the floor, but the lack of fresh air coming in was beyond her control.
Not so good for those of us who like to breathe.
But why was the floor warmer? She had no answer. She leaned forward and studied it closely. A patchwork of colors, mostly gray, black or off-white. A stripe of light blue here, a circle of brown there. A jumble, like layers of shapes laid on top of each other, but flattened into a thin sheet.
She stood up and felt dizzy. The act of standing was extremely disorienting. Up didn’t feel like up, and down didn’t feel any better. It was an off-balance experience, wobbly and unsteady.
Like being drunk.
Or worse, like being a drunk gymnast doing a balance beam routine. Some of it might be the stale air but she couldn’t help but think the floor itself was the primary culprit. Nothing felt right.
Nala picked up a broken length of wood and stepped closer to the vertical wall, still sizzling with tiny sparks, still looking rather deadly. She was thankful the smell of burning meat—Thomas’s leg—had dissipated. Bending down, she pushed the stick into the wall. The wood crackled like a campfire, and smoke poured away from its edges, but without any flame. Withdrawing, the end of the stick was cleanly sliced, just like Thomas’s leg.
Hell, no. We’re not getting out that way.
More information. A boundary she could not cross. Even the floor ended, and whatever was beyond was clearly inhospitable to life, or maybe anything. What were the sparks? Bits of dust vaporizing as they touched a wall of high energy? Air molecules exiting this bubble of reality?
Nala stood again, still dizzy. Keeping the bright light behind her and the sizzling wall of death to her right, she proceeded directly into the darkness ahead, kicking debris as she went to clear a path. After thirty paces, she turned around to gauge her position. Debris was spread across a large area and the light remained motionless above it all. The light’s position hadn’t changed in the slightest. It felt like walking away from the sun hanging in the sky. Another data point to consider.
She kept walking and soon found the edge of the debris field. Beyond it, the floor continued, and without debris covering it, she realized that the floor itself was a secondary source of light—it glowed. She walked on, noting the floor patterns changing as she walked. Above and ahead, there was nothing but a void of darkness. No stars in the sky, if it was a sky. No other light at all. Just black.
The walking was easier without debris. Just ahead, she noticed movement on the floor. It looked like running water swirling in a basin. She stopped and bent down. Definitely water; it shimmered and splashed even while remaining strangely flat. Like the fluttering cloth she’d seen before, it looked like a video embedded in the floor. A children’s swimming pool as seen from above.
She touched it with the tip of her finger. The watery floor was hard, but her finger came back wet. A circular ripple expanded from where she’d touched. She touched again and produced another ripple. “Okay, this is just too weird,” she said aloud.
“Thomas,” she yelled. “You’ve got to see this.” Her voice sounded muffled. Thomas was clearly not getting up to run over.
Sigh.
She ran back toward the light, along the same path she’d cleared. When she reached Thomas, she stopped. The dizziness returned, much stronger.
“Okay, running might be a bad idea. Avoid that, if you can, Thomas.”
The white bandage on his leg had turned red on the end. Was that a good sign? Blood pumping, tissues around the injury getting what they need?
“Who am I kidding? I’m no doctor.�
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She bent down next to him and listened to his shallow breathing. Thoughts of their work together entered her mind. They’d been a good team, for several years. She planned, he executed. Together they’d made history, exposing the underlying structure of the universe and even figuring out how to manipulate it. Quantum space was an entirely new branch of physics.
That was all in the past. She looked around the debris field that had once been their laboratory. Smashed chairs, broken electronic components. A family photo that Thomas kept on the workbench. Tears ran down her cheeks and her throat tightened. “I’m really sorry, Thomas. I totally fucked this up. Everything. It’s all my fault.”
She leaned over and laid her head on his chest. His heart still beat, but it didn’t sound very strong. “Can you ever forgive me, my friend?”
She reached across him and picked up his Viking hat. It had been buried under a pile of broken wood and wall insulation. She put the slightly crushed hat on his head and smiled. “You look great, Thomas. If I had my camera…”
She wiped the tears from her cheeks and stood up again. The dizziness returned, stronger. There wasn’t much time left.
This is going to end badly.
She walked toward the light—the singularity. Whatever it was, she was determined to meet it head-on. She tripped on some debris, caught her fall, and continued. Woozy now. Her head felt very light, her vision blurred and spinning. Her legs felt wobbly, each step shakier than the last. Her fingers tingled.
The world began to spin. Nala let out her last breath and collapsed to the floor.
21 Florida
Tires squealed as the military Gulfstream G300 touched down on the world’s longest runway. The Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center hadn’t seen a shuttle for more than a decade, and though the enormous runway more often provided a sundeck for alligators, it still occasionally served as a gateway to and from space. Commercial operators had taken over, launching tourists to twenty-five miles above the atmosphere for a quick look-see and a brief period of weightlessness. For the wealthy, it made a good add-on after taking the kids to Disneyworld.
The Quantum Series Box Set Page 44