Squaring the Circle

by B K Brain

10

  David led the others to the control room, taking the long way around so to avoid the horrible laboratory, a fifty-foot length of video cable in hand. Doug found it at the bottom of a box he’d carried in from the van yesterday. Without proper rope, it would have to be good enough.

  They rounded the corner and saw the ivory vortex churning, as always. David looked to the stairwell door and realized he wasn’t hearing Susan anymore. She’d gone quiet. Was the awful experiment over? Had Sam killed her? When would he be coming for the next victim?

  We need to do this right now.

  He tied the thin cable around his waist. Handed a loose end to Doug. “Hold tight. Brace yourself in the doorway. Don’t let go until I say. Got it?”

  “Got it, Dave. Be careful, man.”

  “Once I’m there, I’ll give you a thumbs up or something. Cathleen goes next.”

  Cathleen threw arms around his neck. She was beautiful, puffy red eyes and all.

  “Don’t forget about us, David. I mean it.”

  “What are you taking about? We’re all getting out. All of us.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Last week, his employee, his friend. How did he feel about her now? Would this be his last chance to tell her? Say it, you wimp.

  “I love you.”

  She smirked, slapped him on the arm. “I knew this was all so you could profess your undying love to me. I fucking knew it.”

  He leaned in for a kiss. He closed his eyes, determined to lock every detail of this moment into memory. The softness of her lips, the warmth. The faint smell of perfume. Light fingers on his neck. A tickle of hair against his cheek.

  The details. Just in case.

  He forced himself to let her go, sucked in a breath, stepped closer to the spiraling storm. Gravity yanked him closer, same as before. The cord at his belly tightened like a noose; Big Doug wasn’t letting go, not yet.

  “See you in a minute,” he said. A second of bravery and it would be done.

  Deep inside, the girl’s face. Her arms, reaching. He tossed the opposite end of cable through, watched her grab hold.

  A voice echoed up the stairwell. He paused, turned, listened.

  Susan.

  Sam hadn’t killed her, not yet. How long did she have? Could she still be saved? David gritted teeth, swung back to the task at hand.

  This was going to work. No problem. He couldn’t breathe.

  This isn’t brave, this is stupid.

  Too late.

  11

  If only Dr. Thatcher could see her now.

  Eddie stood in the middle of a dirt road in rural Pennsylvania, waiting for a tornado. A man whom she’d never met, not traditionally anyway, would be coming through the storm like Judy Garland over a technicolor rainbow.

  Maurice rubbed up against her leg as he made yet another frantic lap around the women. He stopped to wag his tail, then barked.

  Eddie scowled. “No barking.”

  He cocked his head, awaiting further instructions.

  She leaned down close and whispered. “If anything happens, protect Rachel. You got that?”

  “What did you say?” Rachel asked.

  “Nothing.” Eddie’s gaze ascended into a brightening sky. “Should be any second now.”

  “Ed, I think we-”

  Without warning, wind. Tearing at the ground in a perfect ten-foot circle, with two sisters standing in the center. Her purpose, at last, would be fulfilled.

  Rachel wrapped Eddie up in a sudden, jolting hug. “Please be careful. I love you.”

  Above them, a glowing galaxy full of diamonds. Deep inside the tunnel, hazy and distorted, Mr. David Sandoval. Creator of her favorite show. A show about science and possibilities, a weekly invitation to ask the question, What if?

  The answer, it seemed, was right in front of her.

  He tossed something through, a thin black cord. It slapped her on the chest and went unwinding to the ground. She grabbed hold, wrapped two lengths of it around her hand for a better grip. Rachel, a step behind, did the same. Sneakers dug in.

  David’s voice, in her head. This isn’t brave, this is stupid. Too late for that shit.

  “Pull!” Eddie yelled.

  She gave it all she had. Rachel did too. The rope wouldn’t budge.

  Then another voice, as if from inside a tin can.

  Brittle thread.

  A surprise increase of gravity yanked at Eddie. She stumbled forward, her shoes skidding over gravel. Rachel’s arms had her around the waist in an instant. She threw the weight of her body back, shoes grinding, lungs heaving.

  Maurice, growling, barking.

  Wind, howling.

  The wormhole, churning.

  And Sis screaming, not giving up. Not letting go.

  A dark blur fell through the storm. A strobe of light, stinging Eddie’s eyes. A surprise collision. She went tumbling, across the road and into a patch of crunchy yellow weeds. A jolt of pain pounded every inch of her frame. She clutched her chest, gasped for air, spun to see. Holy shit, it worked.

  The old man was out.

  12

  As a kid, David watched a lot of TV with his parents, as so many did in the years before Kindles and iPads. It was a simpler time, to say the least - only four channels to choose from, unless you had cable. Nobody had cable. Three networks plus PBS, that was it. Shows like The Six Million Dollar Man and Happy Days ruled prime time. Carol Burnett. Columbo. The Waltons.

  And an hour-long documentary series that began airing on Sunday nights in March of 1974. Channel 8, PBS. A British program called Nova.

  Episode four, titled The Search for Life, explored the Viking Lander’s journey to Mars, how life had begun on Earth, and the likelihood of intelligence elsewhere in the universe. A thirteen-year-old David soaked in the possibilities with mouth-gaping amazement. He was hooked.

  If there was a perfect age for awe and wonder, thirteen was it. Old enough to grasp basic scientific principles, young enough to still think like a child - unencumbered, free of the annoyances that come with logic and practicality.

  By the end of Nova’s first season, David decided to be a scientist when he grew up, or maybe an astronaut. Probably both. Why not?

  The dream persisted for more than three years, until he started failing algebra. He wasn’t a dumb kid, far from it, but he just couldn’t wrap his head around the math. And as he’d come to realize, science was all mathematical equations.

  Nonetheless, he never stopped watching the show. And they never stopped making it. Forty-four seasons the last time he checked, and still going strong. STC wouldn’t have happened without Nova. It was the reason David went to film school.

  Now that he thought about it, without Nova he wouldn’t be here either.

  Sometimes even the best things have the worst consequences. And just when you think things are finally going your way, life throws you a curveball.

  Marriages fail. Plans fall apart. People die.

  Luck runs out.

  David and a girl named Eddie officially met in a painful impact of two bodies striking each another, then the ground. He - terrified and confused, scrambling to make sense of what had taken place. She – tumbling into a weedy ditch. He was outside, for Christ’s sake. He spun to grab Cathleen’s hand, pull her through, but the wormhole was gone.

  Sometimes shit just happens, and there isn’t a goddamn thing you can do about it.

  13

  The loose cord dropped to the floor and Cathleen fell back into Doug. She gasped and looked up to see the center of the wormhole had gone ink black.

  Doug pushed her aside and stepped up, still intent on escape.

  She grabbed his arm. “No! Don’t!”

  “David made it through. I’m going.”

  “It’s gone dark. It doesn’t go to the same place now.”

  “I don’t care where it goes. I’m getting the hell out of here.”

  She tightened her grip. “David got out. He’ll go get help. He won’t
leave us here, I know he won’t. If you go through now you’ll die.”

  Doug turned back, scowled. “How could you know that?”

  “Because,” she said gazing into the storm, “The girl is gone. It only went to her for David. It doesn’t go anywhere good for us. We need to wait, keep each other alive until he comes back. That’s what we need to do.”

  His face softened, muscles went slack. His eyes filled with tears. “I can’t be here.”

  “I need you, Doug. Please?”

  He snapped a look to the stairwell. Looked back. “Okay, but we’ve been in this hallway too long. We need to go.” He took Cathleen’s hand and led her away, toward the opposite corridor. She followed, hoping to God David made it out okay.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: GRAVITY

  1

  A voice in his earpiece. “Closing in on your position, Director.”

  “Copy.”

  He squinted down the dark corridor ahead and spotted an approaching silhouette. The agent moved through the darkness in perfect silence. “This way, Sir,” he whispered. “I’ve located target one.”

  Garret aimed a pistol down a subdued hallway, following his agent, closing in on a pair of voices. The first calm, the other distressed. A man hurting a woman, bad by the sound of it.

  They reached an intersection and went flat against the wall. To the right, a corridor leading north. Straight ahead, a staircase to an upper level. To the left, the entrance to the main lab, where the men were. A strange blue light reflected over the floor and opposite wall, at the open doorway.

  Garret crouched down low, peeked around the corner. He’d never seen anything like it, not in ten years of special forces, nor in the following eight under General Mitchell’s command. A blue galaxy of color filled the entire room, like some kind of hologram. White pinpoints of light zipped across the space in blurred streaks. It almost looked…alive.

  He couldn’t begin to imagine what he was seeing, but that didn’t matter now. The pistol’s bead was clear all the way to Jacobson, and that meant a decision needed to be made. Right now.

  The agent’s sight moved with the doctor. A whisper. “Unobstructed kill shot. Should I take it?”

  “Hold.” Garret lowered his pistol, scanned the area for the other scientist. Nothing.

  Seconds ticked as Garret considered his options. Killing him before they had control of the machine was a risk. A huge damned risk.

  Jacobson moved. The bead followed. A big, empty room. Nowhere to hide. This might be their best, perhaps their only, opportunity.

  Garret clenched his jaw. Sometimes you gotta go with your gut.

  “Take it.”

  His agent squeezed the trigger.

  2

  The tornado. The escape tunnel. Gone. “No!” David yelled into vacant, calm air.

  It would’ve worked if I hadn’t been so stupid.

  He had the connection to Eddie. Not Doug, not Cathleen. Him. Without David at the other end, the wormhole went nowhere.

  Well, he reconsidered, it goes somewhere, just not here. To get here the others would’ve needed to go first. But it was too late for that now. Too damned late.

  This entire trip to Pennsylvania had devolved into an exercise of trying to figure things out after the fact. He, once again, was playing catch up. If he couldn’t find a way to get ahead of this thing, well then…

  Then you can stick a fork in it, cuz we’re all done. All of us.

  “My fault,” he said with arms falling limp at his sides. His knees hit the middle of the road, his head went low. “If she dies it’s my fault.”

  He felt hands at his arms, pulling. Nothing like Doug’s thick grip, hairy tree trunks that held him up with ease. No. There was no strength in these arms, no power. Doug wasn’t here because he’d been left behind to die.

  David took in his surroundings. Hard packed dirt. Dense forest. Above, only sky. He spun around to see a sister named Rachel. Behind her, a younger and even skinnier girl, the one from his dreams.

  He stared with dumbfounded amazement. She’d been real before, but now… Now she was tangible, undeniable, standing right in front of him in the flesh. Her face downturned, fearful eyes hidden behind a mess of dark hair, yet fixed on him.

  Eddie, not Edith Ann. He frowned. Who the hell did she think she was? Was she even aware of what they were up against?

  “I’m Eddie,” she said. “And you’re David.”

  “I know who you are. I’ve…seen you. And your sister. I have to go back right now.”

  Eddie said, “For Cathleen and Doug. I know.”

  “And Susan. She’s still alive.” He put a hand over his eyes, squeezing. “I heard her….”

  “You need to explain some things first.”

  “There’s no time.”

  “David, if you don’t tell me I can’t help. That’s why I’m here. But you already know that.”

  She was right, naturally. If there was one thing he knew, it was that she’d come to help. Could she? How? She was skinny. Scrawny. Weak. Sam would chew her up and spit her out, like any of them. Damn, his back hurt. The sciatic hip burned like Hell.

  In that moment he saw something unbelievable, a light from Eddie’s left side, like a bulb just under her shirt and blue jeans. She was…glowing.

  “Jesus,” he said pointing. “What is that?” He got to his feet, stepped back, stretched around the sister to see. The pain in his hip went sharp and he grimaced. Eddie’s hip brightened, as if cranking up the wattage.

  She looked down at herself and squealed. “What is it? Get it off me!” She flailed in circular chaos and Rachel followed, trying to get hold of her.

  “Eddie, stop,” she said.

  David scrunched up his face, cocked his head. An incredible thought had begun to simmer. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t, but-

  “Wait a minute. Stand still.”

  Eddie froze with a handful of shirt pulled up to expose luminescent skin. David raised a hand to squeeze at the right side of his neck. He wrenched down hard, enough to make his eyes water. It really, really hurt. The left side of Eddie’s neck went fluorescent white. Again she flailed, shrieking.

  Rachel grabbed her by the wrists. “Are you okay? Does it hurt?”

  “No. It – it doesn’t. It feels…”

  “Good,” David said, breathless. “It feels good, doesn’t it?”

  Eddie’s eyes went wide. “Kinda, yeah. It’s freaky.”

  He smirked, looked to the ground, shook his head. “We’re entangled, just like two photons. Our spins are opposite.”

  Rachel stepped up, her nostrils flaring. “What the crap does that mean?”

  His eyes narrowed on her, then Eddie. “It means if I get hurt she gets better. You know, like healthier…or something. It probably works both ways.”

  “One way to find out,” Eddie said. She walked to the side of the road, hopped the ditch, and continued on to a tall, fat Elm. A glance to David, then a clenched fist. She punched the tree. Hard.

  Rachel exclaimed, “Ed!”

  Eddie exclaimed, “OW! Shit!” She cringed, bit her lip, doubled over and tried to shake off the pain in her right hand.

  Like a miracle, David felt a new warmth growing in his left hand. He looked down and realized the muscles below his knuckles were shining bright. The bones in each finger glowed like an X-ray under his skin. His entire hand felt denser somehow, stronger.

  Holy shit that’s weird.

  “Did you actually feel that?” Rachel asked.

  He nodded, opening and closing his hand. “Yeah.”

  Connected, he thought. Entangled, just like two fundamental particles.

  Maybe it was time to stop thinking like a television producer, and start thinking like a researcher. Figure out how this connection worked – then use it against Sam.

  Who are you kidding, Dave? You aren’t a scientist. Like the bastard said, you’ve never actually done anything. You’re just a guy who points cameras.

  May
be Sam was right. But David had picked up a lot of knowledge along the way, and not just from a science program on PBS. You can’t spend six years consulting with experts, interviewing physicists, and putting together hour-long episodes without learning a thing or two. He understood entanglement pretty well, probably better than most. Surely he’d be able to figure something out.

  Time to think, David. But not like a scientist. Like a kid. Because at this point, anything is possible.

  “This is all the nothingman’s fault,” Eddie said. She began pacing the length of the car and back again, frantic, like a mental patient. Still rubbing at her sore hand, muttering under her breath. Her knuckles, bleeding.

  David watched her for a moment, trying to decipher the ramblings. She seemed to be having a conversation with someone neither present nor accounted for. Someone that pissed her off.

  “No,” she said. “Stop saying that…No I didn’t. Shut your stupid face.”

  “Eddie?”

  “Stop lying. Rachel never said that, asshole.”

  “Um, Eddie?”

  She stopped, turned to David. “I thought I knew, but I don’t. Do you know?”

  “Do I know what?”

  “My purpose. Did he tell you?”

  “We need to talk. Let’s take a breath and figure this out, okay?” Good advice, not only for the girl. For him too. Take a breath, dude. Chill. That’s what a thirteen-year-old David would say, right? God, that was a long damn time ago.

  Eddie’s muscles eased. Her face softened. “Your name is David Sandoval. You are the creator and executive producer of the original TechNet science program, Squaring the Circle. The host’s name is Randal Brickman. He’s British. His glasses don’t work. How do I know that, David? Who is Vice Dickhead? Why do we hate him?”

  “Slow down, please. Let’s start at the beginning.”

  “Answers, David.”

  “Okay. Vice Dickhead is the guy that just cancelled my program. He’s a real asshole, therefore I hate him.

  “Randal doesn’t need glasses, but he thinks they make him look smarter. He’s shallow like that, and kind of a douche.