by B K Brain
Sam walked to the back wall, claimed something that was leaning there, and walked back. He held it out to David, as a squire might offer a broadsword to a knight.
David looked down.
Okay…What the hell does he want me to do with that?
“A hockey stick?”
“Yes. I’d like you to use it to knock the ball off the table.”
Cathleen stepped between the men. “Wait. I thought you said moving the ball would be dangerous.”
“It is. That’s why I want him to use the stick.”
“Oh. Okay.” She turned to David and patted him on the shoulder. “Go ahead. I’ll be standing back there.” She wasted no time backing away.
David hesitated, looking to Sam. “What’s going to happen?”
“I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise. Please, go ahead. You’ll be fine.”
David sucked in a deep breath, mulling over the day’s events. If anyone had suggested he’d be skipping work today and flying to rural Pennsylvania to knock a baseball off a table with a hockey stick, he’d have told them to go sleep it off. But, well, there he was.
He gripped the handle tight. Reached out slowly. Paused.
“You’re sure about this?”
“Yes.”
He eased the stick close.
Closer.
Wood and leather, inches apart.
Sweat trickled down his cheeks. Was this really happening? Could any of this be real?
Closer.
Just as the gap disappeared, so did the hockey stick.
Cathleen’s piercing scream echoed across the lab. David gasped, jumped back, and opened his grip. Nothing fell to the floor because he wasn’t holding anything. Not anymore.
David’s pulse shook his entire body. Did that just happen?
Yes, yes it did.
Sam may have been sleep deprived and somewhat crazy, but he was definitely not full of shit. Good thing. That made David not stupid by way of association. Gullible, maybe. Desperate to believe, sure. But not stupid. He could breathe easier knowing the trip home would be ridicule free.
But he wasn’t going anywhere yet. He still wanted to see a black hole. And after what he’d already witnessed, an event horizon in the lab not only seemed possible, but probable. He couldn’t help but laugh.
Sam said, “Excuse me for a moment.” He hurried out the door and up the stairs, back to the control room.
Cathleen walked up and slapped her boss on the arm. “Holy shit, David. I mean, holy shit.”
“I know,” he said. “Are you glad you came now?”
“Do you know what this means?”
David grinned. “Morgan Freeman can suck it?”
She put an arm around his shoulders and squeezed. “Damn right he can.”
Sam reappeared behind them. “I have now shut down the simulation. The cameras are off. As you can see, the ball still exists.”
The twin to Cathleen’s baseball sat quietly on the table, just like before.
“As long as the quantum algorithm continues to compare the last values it received from the detectors, the ball will remain real.”
“What about the hockey stick?” Cathleen said. “Where’d that go?”
Sam’s grin went wide. “It ceased to exist.”
“You mean forever? It’s…gone for good?”
“I believe so, yes. I ran the experiment three times this morning. None of the test items have come back.”
Cathleen wrinkled her nose. “How many hockey sticks have you killed, Doctor?”
“I only had the one. I’ve also gone through two metal rulers and a tire iron.”
“My condolences.”
Sam snatched the ball off the table as the others watched in awe. “It can be moved now. Obviously.”
“How did you-”
“The recording is no longer being fed into the computer. Therefore, the ball’s position in space is no longer fixed. We could go outside and play catch, if you’d like.”
David held out his hand. “May I?”
“Of course.” Sam dropped it onto his palm. Cathleen held up the original to compare. The scrawl of Clemens’ signature. A smear of dirt across the side. A broken seam below. The baseballs weren’t similar; they were identical, in every perceivable way. Even the weight felt right.
“Follow me,” Sam said. “And bring the ball.”
Back in the control room, Sam sat at the quantum interface monitor, checked the readout, and then turned to David. “I assume you’re convinced it’s real?”
David held the original and the copy up, one in each hand, both of them as real as anything he’d ever seen. “I don’t know how it’s possible, but yeah, I’m convinced.”
“Good. Now watch closely.”
Sam typed in a command and hit the enter key.
The ball in David’s right hand disappeared. He’d expected something like that, but jerked in surprise anyway. The noise that escaped Cathleen wasn’t a scream, not that time, although she was looking pale enough to faint.
David turned his empty hand over and back again, amazed. A silent moment lingered as he considered the world’s reaction to such a thing. His viewers’ reactions. This would be the biggest event ever televised. Everyone would soon know the doctor’s name. And his.
How can you think of fame at a time like this?
How could he not? His entire life had been about ratings. Demographics. Advertising dollars. Success and, in turn, his own happiness, had always been in the numbers. And the numbers were about to explode.
“This is the craziest shit I’ve ever seen,” Cathleen said. “I have about a million questions, and I’m sure David does too, but-”
“But you still want to see a black hole,” Sam said.
She nodded, looked to David, nodded again. “A black hole. Yes please.”
“And I assure you, you will. But first let’s have a chat in the conference room. I assume you’ll want to take some notes?”
David glanced around for his duffel bag. “Yes. Of course.”
David couldn’t write fast enough to keep up with Sam, but that didn’t stop him from trying.
“Gravitons make up a kind of eternal circuit board stretching outward in all directions. The particle serves as both memory and processor in the infinite machine.” Sam tapped an index finger on his temple. “It’s what allows the universe to think.”
David looked up. “The universe thinks? You’re saying it’s…alive?”
“Consider this. Your brain is fifteen centimeters long and weighs about three pounds. The tasks it performs are limited to your own personal experience and nothing else. And you’re conscious; you know you’re alive thanks to the network of synapses inside your brain. Yes?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s compare, shall we? The universe is also a network of information, infinite in size and complexity, transmitting unbelievable amounts of data and performing unfathomable calculations at faster than the speed of light, every second of every day. Without those calculations, nothing, including the brain that you agree makes you conscious, would exist.” Sam paused, turned away. Turned back with a smile at first amused, then deadly serious. “And you’re asking if the universe is alive. Let me ask you, how could it not be?”
“If that’s true the universe would know everything, like God.”
“Not like God. I’m saying the universe is God.”
All knowing universe = God, David wrote in a sloppy scrawl. Crazy.
Cathleen said, “So it’s like you’re hacking into a database?”
“Yes. With command over the Graviton, I can speak directly to the cosmic circuits and manipulate them. I can change the reality of this dimension.” He leaned forward and clasped fingers together. “I can tell God what to do. Pretty cool, huh?”
Cathleen leaned back in her chair, amused. “Ever worry about going to Hell?”
Sam laughed. “If there is a Hell I suppose I can manipulate that too. So, no worries.”
>
Questions poured into David at lightning speed. “If the universe is a thinking, reasoning entity, wouldn’t someone messing around its circuit board send it into panic mode? Wouldn’t it seek self-preservation by trying to stop you somehow?”
Sam said, “You think creating a baseball will incite retribution from the cosmos?”
“I think creating black holes might. If you lost control of that power. Or if you started abusing it. Honestly, there are tons of risks in what you’re doing here.”
“I agree. That’s why I had to keep it out of the Government’s hands.”
“Fine. But wouldn’t the universe want to keep it out of your hands as well? And if so, have you thought about what it might do to stop you?”
Sam rubbed at weary, bloodshot eyes. “That’s an interesting question, Dave. I must admit it’s one I hadn’t considered.”
There are lots of things you haven’t considered.
David said, “It’s my understanding that once created, information cannot be lost. Even a black hole can’t destroy the things it swallows, not completely. The data has to exist somewhere.”
“That’s the current scientific consensus.” Sam shook a finger at David, grinned at Cathleen. “Your boss is a smart guy. That’s why I called him.”
David said, “So where did the hockey stick go, Sam?”
The doctor’s grin melted. He looked to David, then to the ceiling. “I honestly don’t know.”
At nine pm David stood at the east end of the main parking lot, the only place he’d found on the property with a single bar of cell service. Cathleen was at the car, digging through her enormous purse.
“Yeah, Tim. You heard me right. Pennsylvania. I’ll need a location crew here tomorrow… A unit manager, yes. Send Steve if he’s available.”
Cathleen shut the door and walked up chewing a fresh piece of gum. She held out the package. He waved her off.
“No, I haven’t lost my mind. I’ll explain everything, I swear… Oh, and tell Jeanne were gonna need a press release. I’ll call her with the details on Tuesday… This is huge, Tim. Massive. Enough to save the show… Yeah… Well, who gives a shit? If that happens we’ll go to another network… Okay. I know, Tim. Thanks.” He hung up.
“He doesn’t believe you, huh? Neither would I.”
“I didn’t tell him anything. I just said I needed a crew. He thinks I’m nuts.”
“He’s probably right. You can’t see what we just saw and not go a little bonkers.”
David wiped a hand down his face. “When that stick disappeared from my hand I thought maybe this whole trip had been a dream. It just couldn’t be real, you know?”
“Oh I know.” She took her boss by the arm, leading him back inside. “You ready to see a black hole?”
This technology was about so much more than a single experiment. With a direct line of communication to the universe, Sam could do anything. Literally.
But that didn’t keep David from wanting to see a black hole. It’s what he came for, after all, and he’d be damned if he was gonna leave without seeing one.
6
Eddie sat on her bed holding a clipboard from a research center in Chicago. Next to her lay the broken chair leg she’d found on the living room floor. Rachel believed her now, where they’d come from. Which was nowhere, of course.
“So you’re saying these things just appeared, like the chair in the kitchen?”
“I didn’t see them show up. I found them. But I did see the paper and the chair at Mom’s house appear. And the stupid dog.”
Rachel took the clipboard, looked it over. “Do you know anything about this Norritech place?”
“Only that it burned down the other day. It was on the news.”
Rachel said, “We need to get online right now.”
A search for Norritech brought up the story about the fire, and a list of names of people who worked there. Scientists, grad students, management, even maintenance workers. Rachel checked each one on Google, then on Facebook.
Eddie sat quietly beside her sister for more than two hours, as she looked for anything important. Then they got to a person named Bonnie Newman, a woman that died in last week’s tragic incident.
Her Facebook page had lots of pictures, some more interesting than others. Rachel clicked on one to expand the size. She gasped at what she saw.
Eddie pointed at the screen, scowling. “Oh look. There’s that rotten dog.”
CHAPTER FIVE: ENTRÖPY
1
At midnight David stood next to his makeup artist Cathleen in a research facility in rural Pennsylvania, peering through a laboratory observation window to witness the impossible.
His reaction to the baseball had been disbelief, amazement, and then anticipation as he imagined his viewers’ reactions. But this. This skipped the disbelief, jumped straight to the amazement, and held.
In that moment it made no difference what others might think, nor did it matter if anyone else saw. He was seeing and that was enough. If he was the only one ever to see this, that would’ve been fine by him.
By comparison the baseball had been a clever trick, the impressive sleight of hand of a street magician. But a black hole? That was the magic of God himself.
White light from fixtures at the ceiling twisted and spiraled, broke into particles like firefly explosions. Stretched. Thinned. Fell into the nothing of a little black orb hovering only thirty feet away. Light from the room where he stood radiated inward through the glass, darkening the world behind.
David couldn’t look away, couldn’t blink. There was a span of time, perhaps seconds, perhaps hours, where he didn’t know if he was still breathing. Everything, including the thumping secondhand in his chest, stopped. Time had been put on pause just for him, like a favor. Or a curse.
He could only stare.
What pulled him back to life was not a revelation, but a touch. Warm, smooth, sweet, over his wrist and in the palm of his hand. Her fingers, sliding between his, squeezing. Cathleen had taken hold of him, gently, like a lover. Another hand rested over his arm. Her cheek found his shoulder.
“A deal’s a deal,” she said. “So I love you. Tell anyone I said that and I’ll punch your lights out.”
He was pretty sure she meant it. All of it.
2
Rachel finished taping a sheet over the inside half of the chair and onto the window frame. She then stood back to admire her work. They had to get rid of the monstrosity and breaking the glass was the only option. She didn’t want broken shards all over her kitchen. So, a sheet. To keep the glass from falling inside.
She hoped the neighbors weren’t watching. What would they think?
“Okay. One big shove should do it. Stand back, Ed. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“You already called the glass place. Shouldn’t we let them take the window out?”
Rachel turned to her sister, scowling. “And what would we tell them? Hmm? That this chair magically appeared out of nowhere? Maybe they’d like to hear about the shadow man too. That would make a nice story. Don’t you think?”
“I was just asking. Jeeze.”
“Well, ask from over there. I need to get this done.”
Eddie went to her room. Was she upset? Probably. Rachel didn’t have time for upset. She was too fucking busy getting a fucking chair out of a fucking window.
I can’t believe this is my life.
She was right. One shove was all it took. She stumbled forward, caught herself from falling out, and cringed at the crash over the front lawn. What was she thinking? Shattering a window at midnight?
Maurice, still closed in her bedroom, barked and scratched at the surprise sound, nearly losing his doggy mind.
Great. The cops should be here any second.
She went out front, turned the chair onto its wheels and pushed it inside, careful not to cut her legs on glass still protruding from the plastic. She rolled it to a closet and closed it in. At least the stupid thing was out o
f sight.
Back at the front door she squinted down the dark street, one direction, then the other. No police and no sirens. Maybe she’d gotten lucky.
A mess below the window reflected moonlight like a heap of polished blades.
I’ll clean up the glass in the morning. The repair guys won’t be here until nine.
Rachel went inside, to her sister’s door, and knocked. “Eddie?”
No answer.
She tried again. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m just a little stressed out right now, that’s all.”
Not a word. Not a moan. Not a growl. Nothing.
“Come on. Don’t be like that.”
She tried the knob. It wasn’t locked. “Sis?” Rachel opened the door to reveal a nightmare.
Eddie’s body twitched and jerked in a violent seizure. Her eyes had rolled upward, showing only the bloodshot whites. That wasn’t the scariest part, though. What made Rachel lurch away in terror was the fact that it was happening three feet off the floor, in midair.
Something unseen had taken hold of her little sister.
It was killing her.
3
Once again Eddie found herself in the suffocating void. But something was different this time. Somehow she could see through the black, to the outside.
She saw a large room. And strings of light stretching, spiraling, breaking apart. Beyond that, a window. Three figures stood on the other side of the glass, all looking out to her. She saw him, the guy from the picture, the bar. David. He was one of those people.
She tried to say something, anything, but her voice couldn’t move. It was trapped, just as she was, at the bottom of the horrible inkwell.
4
Sam shut the machine down, paused for a moment, and then looked to his guests. They stood side by side, still staring out to where the anomaly had been, as if trying to wish it back to life. It was gone now. They’d seen enough for tonight.
He could barely hold his eyes open. It was all he could do to remain upright in his chair. For more than twenty-four hours he’d been at typing at keyboards and gazing into monitors, writing code, testing systems, preparing for his visitors.
