S.O.S

by Will James

  When he had finished, Molly said; “What does this all mean? How can the Koreans make a bomb out of this dark matter stuff, how is that possible?”

  Dev, who had been deep in troubled thought, suddenly became animated.

  “My God, I can see how it’s not impossible!” he exclaimed. “It makes sense, if all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. He stood and went to the desk for a pad of post it notes and began scribbling numbers down. He was completely absorbed for some time and Molly and Zack watched silently.

  Finally, he looked up and, choosing his words carefully so that his audience would understand, he said; “We don’t exactly know what dark matter actually is – its emitted radiation is undetectable – we only know it’s there due to the gravitational pull it has on visible matter. In theory it could be reacted with matter to produce an explosion.” The others looked at him, and he shrugged.

  Zack decided to step in. “Anyway, there’s one thing that we know for certain, whatever they’re doing they don’t want the rest of the world to know because it was all hidden underground. Also, there’s one more thing that is interesting. There is some kind of light that interferes with this dark matter, a light a bit like the one that priest described. Whatever that is, the North Koreans are very worried about it.”

  Molly relayed all this to Dev who directed a question straight at Zack.

  “Why?” he asked him, scratching his head. “What significance does the light have?”

  “I don’t know, but I think that it makes it disappear.” Zack said. He shut his eyes in an attempt to remember the conversation he heard. “I don’t think they said how...”

  “This light then,” Molly said, “seems to make dark matter disappear. I wonder if it’s the same light as the one that we’ve been looking at Dev...” She turned to Dev, but he was writing furiously.

  “Dev?”

  Suddenly Dev jumped up. He began striding towards the door.

  “Dev? Where are you going?”

  It was as if he had completely forgotten that they were both there. He looked back.

  “Oh, I have to go and check that this all makes scientific sense,” he said, turning for a moment. “Let yourselves out. OK?”

  Molly stared at him but he hardly saw her; his mind was somewhere else. He left the door open and disappeared. They heard his feet on the stairs, the opening and closing of the front door and moments later he was gone.

  Molly looked at Zack.

  “What now?”

  Zack was thinking. “Now,” he began, “we need to get onto a PC and start searching.”

  “Searching for what?”

  “For any information, anything at all linked to what the light is. What it means.” He looked right back at her, “And how it could possibly be connected to dark matter.”

  “Easy,” Molly said. She stood and pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands.

  “Easy?”

  She smiled. “Just kidding. Come on, let’s get out of here. I don’t think Mrs Pathmajaren is going to be too happy to find me here talking to a dead person.” She held out her hand and with a huge effort, Zack willed himself to take it. Molly felt a gust of cold air and then she shivered. She looked down and with his hand in hers, they left the room.

  *

  Dev raced his way through London, running down to the tube, jumping on and off trains and hurrying up the steps of Green Park onto Piccadilly and then down Old Bond Street. As he ran, he turned everything he had heard over and over in his mind. Regardless of whether it was true or not, he needed to be sure that it was scientifically sound before he could believe further. With that in mind he headed for the Royal Institute of Great Britain – a place he had once revered, now tainted in his memory. It was here that he had come to first with his theory, and it was here that he had been laughed off and humiliated. Yet he didn’t know where else to go. If what Zack said was going to be viable, he would be able to find out here. He needed answers and he needed them quickly.

  He strode up the steps of the grand building with its magnificent classical columns, pushed through the doors, through reception, flashing his old pass at the security guard and hurried up the staircases. He traced the familiar route to the research facility, trying to compose an argument in his head that would seem plausible to the established scientists that he was about to confront. He didn’t rate his chances too highly. There was one thing in his favour; it was nearly lunchtime and the place may, if he was lucky, have emptied for lunch. Approaching the lab, he slowed and, using his pass again to enter, he pushed open the heavy oak doors as the lock release went and walked in.

  It took him a moment to glance round and see that the place was empty; he had judged it right. He made his way quickly across to the bank of computers and sat down. He entered his user name and pass word, but within seconds his access had been denied. That wasn’t a problem; he’d been here often enough to know that a few of the more careless scientists left their work open when they took a break. He moved onto the second PC, it was off and then darted across the lab towards three other PCs on the far side. The first one, one he recognised belonged to a young Oxford PhD student, had been left on. Dev sat, opened the system up and began to trawl back through the files he had left on the shared drive on dark matter. He opened the PhD student’s email account and began loading the files onto an email to himself. He heard a movement in the lab next door and froze. There were footsteps and the interconnecting door swung open.

  “Pearson?”

  Dev remained absolutely still. It was Professor Wilkins; he knew the voice without having to turn around. His hands on the keyboard started to tremble. He pressed send.

  “Where the devil has that bloody man got to?” The footsteps came closer. “Excuse me? You haven’t seen...” Wilkins stopped. “Dev?”

  Dev turned and faced the Professor. The man he had so admired and respected looked at Dev with a mixture of initial pleasure, quickly superseded by fear.

  “Dev, what are you doing here?”

  “I needed some files, Sir.” Dev closed the internet window and turned. “I couldn’t find them.”

  “I thought I’d told you that you weren’t welcome here Dev. You’ve had your internship here revoked; you do understand that, don’t you? You are not allowed to come onto the premises and certainly not allowed to...”

  He was interrupted by the lab door opening and a large man in a suit walked in. The Professor suddenly changed. He turned his back on Dev, blocking him from view.

  “I did say that the lab was off limits to non-scientific personnel,” he said sharply.

  “I don’t think you’re in a position to make the rules Professor Wilkins.” The large man said. Dev couldn’t see what was going on, he kept his face towards the computer screen - he didn’t need to be caught by anyone else - but he could hear the change in Wilkins’s tone.

  Wilkins said; “I’ll have the report with you by mid-afternoon as promised.”

  “Make sure you do,” the man said. The door closed and the Professor turned to Dev.

  “Leave now Dev and don’t think about coming back, not at present. Is that clear?”

  Dev stood up. He hoped that the files had gone and that he’d got enough information in them. He said; “Yes, that’s clear.” He wanted to ask why? He wanted to know what the hell was going on, but he simply made his way cross to the door with Professor Wilkins’s eyes on his back. He opened the door and turned.

  “My theory is right, isn’t it Professor?”

  The professor looked hard at Dev and then he shrugged. “That’s not for me to say,” he murmured.

  Dev closed the door behind him and was hurrying out of the building before anyone else had a chance to catch him.

  *

  Molly and Zack sat at a PC in the local library– well Molly sat there, Zack could not be seen – and searched online for any mention of odd sightings, be it lights or space ships, crop circles or small alien men in green suits. Within an hour
they had sourced forty nine articles from all over the world and discounted forty five of them. Molly had made notes and she spread them out all over the work station and tried to piece them all together. The atmosphere between them was tense and slightly strained. They couldn’t seem to solve it and she was drawing wild circles on the paper in frustration.

  Suddenly Zack stood up.

  “They all involve danger,” he said, “someone in danger.”

  “What?” Molly whispered, conscious of the other people in the library. She looked up from her doodles. “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Every time the light has been spotted there has always been some kind of threat or danger and every time the light appears the danger disappears. Look, look it’s all here...”

  He pointed to the screen where the Metro story of Father Tom was up. “Father Tom was being mugged, the place in Berlin where I went, you know, in the park, the child had been assaulted, the riot, the police were under attack... Look! It’s all there; we have to join the dots!”

  Molly stared at the screen and then at Zack and something exploded in her brain.

  “Danger...” she murmured. Someone turned to look at her; she ignored them.

  Danger. If Zack had been in danger when he had seen the light and he had been in danger out in Korea when the scientists had deployed that device to capture dark matter, did that mean that Zack was somehow connected with dark matter? He even said that the Koreans were worried that the light made the dark matter vanish. Yet it was impossible. How could dark matter be Zack?

  Slow down Molly, she told herself, this is mad. But she had started this chain of thought and she couldn’t stop it; it was like a run-away steam train. Dark matter and dead people - it couldn’t just be Zack, Dev had spoken of a build-up of dark matter after all. And yet, and yet... Molly thought about what Zack could see, the ghostly outlines of other souls like him walking the earth, and she thought about what she could hear, the voices in her head that grew stronger each day, and she could suddenly see it all. It made sense, incredible though it may seem. Dark matter was made up of souls.

  This revelation was so fantastical, so outlandish that she very nearly considered not voicing it. Dark matter was some kind of energy that’s what Dev said and it was increasing. Souls trapped in this world were spiralling in numbers; they had to be if the voices were real, if Zack’s figures were real. Dark matter was becoming denser, increasing because trapped souls walked the earth.

  It sounded mad, but she had to tell them; she had to hear what it sounded like out loud. Zack might sneer, and Dev might even laugh at her. Even so, it made increasing sense the more she thought about it. She went through the steps in her head one more time. Zack had seen a device that collected dark matter and he nearly got sucked into it. Ergo Zack was dark matter.

  Molly jumped up and then sat down again. She had to tell them, and she was convinced that she was right. The thought was electrifying. Suddenly the conviction of it was so strong that it was impossible to her that they could not see what she could. She whispered to Zack that she needed to tell him something, and her voice seemed strange, not hers at any rate. They stepped outside the library and on the High Street, as she heard herself explain to Zack what she had just worked out, it was as if she experienced an out of body sensation – and she took in the whole scene from a different perspective. What she saw pleased her. Far from being disbelieving Zack went very quiet, and looked at her with a dawning realisation etched on his face.

  “It sounds incredible,” he said slowly, “impossible to believe and yet I just have a feeling that it might be true.”

  Molly stared hard at him. “Really?” she murmured.

  He nodded. “Really.” he said. “Call Dev.” He smiled at her. “He’ll know for sure.” He touched her hand and again Molly felt a shiver. “Dev will know what’s right.” he said.

  Dev was sitting dejectedly on a park bench, his head bowed when his phone rang. Seeing Molly’s name he answered straight away and hearing her voice he almost forget about his failure at the Royal Institute. She sounded strange though, a buzz of nervous excitement as she explained that she had worked something out, and that he needed to come quickly. Slightly bemused, he pocketed his phone and set off to the library, his gloom and humiliation fading quickly with the walk. He made good time on the way, not really noticing where he was going and was met by a breathless Molly who had run to meet him halfway. They sat on the wall and Molly began to explain her theory. He struggled not to laugh. Was this really what she had been so excited about?

  “Molly this is bananas,” he said, “you’re living in a dream world. What you’ve just told me has no grounding in science at all. It just isn’t scientifically sound.”

  Molly looked down at her hands. She was suddenly embarrassed and hurt.

  “Just think about what you’re saying,” he went on a little more gently to spare her feelings. “Souls can’t be scientifically proven – hell, I don’t even know if Zack really exists. I can’t see him for myself; I have to take your world for it.” At this Zack kicked him hard on the shin, but Dev felt nothing. He took off his glasses, wiping them on his sleeve.

  “All you’ve got is a feeling, a theory without proof.”

  Molly shrugged, there was a pause and then she looked up. She said; “Well, you’ve told me what a genius you are and how you can prove most things...” she stared at him. “Take my theory and prove it!”

  Dev frowned and was suddenly hit by the reality of it; it wouldn’t be too hard to find out if it was right. “OK,” he agreed. He smiled. “Hand me that notebook in your bag and a pen.” He replaced his glasses, settled onto the wall and began work.

  CHAPTER 20 - London

  Still seated on the wall where she had found him, Dev continued to scribble down reams of calculations while Molly watched him. He needed to check the density of dark matter and the reaction of anti-matter. Molly was amazed that he could carry all this in his head. The traffic roared behind them as she stood, almost struck dumb by the complexity of the maths. He wrote and wrote, turning pages in the note book, sometimes ripping them out and screwing them up into a ball. He dropped them onto the ground and before long there was a litter of tiny crushed balls of paper around him, covered in numbers that only he could understand.

  Molly grew tired and climbed up on to the wall next to him. Then she grew bored and sat down on the ground, leaning up against the wall, but it was cold, so finally she stood and stamped her feet rubbing her hands together to keep warm. Dev was oblivious to all of this. He kept going until it grew so cold that Molly’s fingers were stiff and sore from the icy air; she could hardly move her hands. Suddenly, he looked up and stared at Molly.

  “You know, I think...” He shook his head and looked down at the numbers again. He just couldn’t believe it, it was too fantastical. Yet the maths was right and somehow showed that the impossible was entirely possible.

  “What? What do you think?” Molly was impatient. Zack glared at her.

  “Let him explain,” he said, “please Molly, let Dev explain in his own way.”

  Molly glared back, but she stopped fidgeting and waited.

  Dev felt his head swim as he tried to process what this might mean. “I think,” he began again, “that there is a strong possibility that you could be right Molly. That this dark matter could be – and I say could be, because I still can’t see these dead people you say you know are there – it could be another form of energy, something we haven’t encountered before, like spiritual energy.”

  Molly stared at him.

  “Dark matter, as I believe, is made up of some kind of sub-atomic particles, but different particles to those composing atoms that are all around us. These are sub-atomic particles that we haven’t discovered yet. However, from my calculations, it is feasible that these new particles could represent the energy of once present human bodies – an energy that is given off because these once present bodies are still lingering in whatever f
orm it is that you suggest they are in.”

  “Ghosts.” Molly said.

  Dev raised an eyebrow. “Hmmm, if you want to put it like that then yes, perhaps, ghosts...”

  Molly shook her head. It was too much to take in. To have a crazy theory which you think is true is one thing, but to see it proven before your eyes is quite another. The cold deepened as the afternoon drew in and they sat there for a long time, the magnitude of what they were thinking of sinking into each of them. None of them knew what to do next; they were all completely at a loss. They needed someone with more experience, someone with empathy and who knew the situation well enough, a sort of father figure...

  *

  Father Tom hurried across the entrance to the church, switching on the electric lights. The afternoon was closing in and it would be dark in an hour or so. He did not relish the thought of what he had to do in the dark.

  He checked the floral arrangements and darted into the sacristy to put on his robes. Funerals were always hard at the best of times, but for parents to lose a child, well that was just terrible. He was dreading the next hour or so.

  Once ready, he came out into the church and the organist had arrived; he was seated at the organ, warming up with some chords and bars. Tom didn’t care much for the organ, he was a guitar and tambourine man when it came to music in church, but it was what the parents had requested. He took his place at the front of the church, just inside the entrance and waited for the hearse. He was cold already; the burial was going to be freezing in just his robes. He sighed as the big black limousine approached the building, slowly, with a procession on foot behind it and he blessed himself.

  *

  Molly, Zack and Dev rounded the corner and saw the church up ahead. The day had begun to close in and there was a damp drizzly mist that hung in the air. They walked fast, feeling a sense of urgency now, to try and reason all the things they had been thinking about with Father Tom. But as they drew nearer the church they saw the hearse parked in front of it and the cars lining the side street.