by Paul Anlee
The Reverend stepped back. “And you say this was among the simpler of the equation series?”
“Yes. I’ve gained a lot of experience since this level, with much more complicated sets of equations.”
“Is that how you killed Dr. Leigh? Or did you use more traditional methods and hide the body?”
“No,” Larry answered, a little uncomfortable talking about such things so openly. “I can show you the field I used, but I don’t think you want to be anywhere near where I project it.”
LaMontagne quickly took position just behind the desk where Larry sat. “I’ll make it big enough so you can see it, but not as big as the one I used to hold Darian. It has very strong boundaries against the matter in this universe so once I’ve set it up, you’ll be quite safe. You can even touch it if you like.” He pushed a few buttons and the little blue bubble disappeared, but was soon replaced by a one-meter gray sphere.
LaMontagne rushed over to examine the new globe. He glanced at Larry, curiosity burning in his eyes.
“Go ahead. It’s safe to touch,” encouraged Larry.
The Reverend extended a finger to poke the bubble. The surface resisted depression where his finger prodded. He pushed a bit harder then tried to shove it, first with one hand, then with both. It wouldn’t budge.
Larry laughed. “The field is referentially locked to the entire planet. You would have to be able to literally move the Earth to budge it. Its boundary is made up of the difference in natural laws that exists between our two universes. Except for what the equations allow to pass, it’s impenetrable.
“A force field,” gushed the Reverend.
“Well, I hadn’t thought of that use but, yes, it could be,” replied Larry. “Right now, it’s set to allow light and sound to penetrate so it wouldn’t be a very good force field but we could probably adjust that.”
“Amazing! But how did you use this to do away with Dr. Leigh?”
“The sphere was just the trap. I set up a series of equations to slowly reduce the size of electron orbitals inside until they collapsed completely, and chemistry became impossible. The microverse that held Darian shrunk until it stopped supporting the chemistry of life and then even farther. As far as I know, it still exists; it’s just smaller than a proton.”
“Did he suffer? Or did he just…disappear?”
“For the way he treated me—all because I chose not to take his lattice virus and become something inhuman—and for his arrogance toward God’s Creation? Yes, he suffered,” Larry confirmed. His defiant chin and indignant tone challenged the Reverend to fault him.
“May his soul find peace,” said the Reverend.
Larry frowned for a second but backed down, subdued by LaMontagne’s humility. “Whatever is left of his soul.”
LaMontagne waited for Larry to continue, expecting there to be more, but that was all Larry would say. He set the RAF generator back to INACTIVE and closed the lid.
“I hope you’re satisfied; I’ve done what I said I’d do. I trust I will be properly compensated.”
“Mmm,” replied the Reverend moving toward the door, “indeed you will be, Dr. Rusalov. Although one might argue that upholding God’s laws in the universe and vanquishing those foes who would seek to irresponsibly change the natural way of things might be reward enough.”
Larry brows furrowed and he was about to respond when LaMontagne laughed. “Fear not, Dr. Rusalov. Larry. We deeply appreciate what you have done on behalf of our Lord and His People. You will be suitably rewarded, as we have discussed, with a tenured position.” He called “Jeff” back into the room.
“Please take Dr. Rusalov to the Private Guest House so he can clean up,” he instructed. “See that he is comfortable there until lunch is served.”
Larry picked up the laptop back in one hand and his backpack with the other.
“Why don’t you leave that here?” LaMontagne suggested. “We’ll have a chance for further demonstrations after lunch.”
Larry stopped mid-action, “Sure, why not?” He set the laptop back down, zipped up his backpack and slung it over his shoulders. Following “Jeff” out of the study, he turned back to LaMontagne. “See you soon.”
The Reverend smiled and nodded but said nothing. He returned to his desk as “Jeff” escorted Larry to back to the car.
The gray sedan stood in the driveway where they’d left it about an hour earlier, but someone had popped the trunk. “Jeff” opened the driver’s side door and started to get in. As he did, he asked Larry, “Would you mind closing that for me?” Larry walked around to the back of the vehicle.
As Larry reached up to close the trunk, “Jeff” hesitated and held up an index finger as if he’d just remembered something. He stepped out of the car. “Do you see a leather bag in there? Could you bring that up front for me, please?”
Larry could see the bag pushed to the back of the trunk. “This black one?” he asked. “Sure.” He put down his backpack and reached for the other bag. He heard footsteps behind him and turned. A gloved hand held the biggest pistol Larry had ever seen, and it was pointed directly at his head. A shot rang out.
The Reverend Alan LaMontagne gazed out the window of his study in time to see Larry’s lifeless body slide down the back end of the car. He watched as Jeff–that was, indeed, his real name—bent down and lifted the body into the trunk, tossed the gun in after it, and slammed the lid closed.
He continued to watch as Jeff started the car, backed up a couple of meters, turned off the main driveway, and headed toward the lush gardens at the rear of the estate.
The Reverend sat down at his desk and opened the lid of the laptop. He replayed his lattice recording of Larry’s fingers as they moved over the keyboard to enter the password. The display stopped at the RAF generator control program, ready to accept his command.
The Very Reverend Alan LaMontagne smiled as he loaded a file with a simple set of equations into the generator’s parameters. He pressed ACTIVE, and a small blue sphere appeared in the air a few meters in front of his desk.
- The End -
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The Reality Incursion
Book Two in the Deplosion series
The Reality Incursion (preview)
Deplosion: Book Two
One in a thousand will be saved. Are you on the list?
Dr. Darian Leigh is missing, presumed dead, and the “Eater” microverse he created is about to destroy Earth. His protégés, Kathy Liang and Greg Mahajani, race to solve the mysterious anomaly. If they can’t figure it out, they’ll need to convince world leaders to colonize the asteroid belt and save as many people as they can. Will Alum, ruthless leader of the powerful YTG church, use his resources to help, or will he exploit the growing chaos to launch his reign as the Living God? There isn’t much time and they can’t save everyone.
Chapter 1
The 4:30 a.m. lattice call jarred the couple out of their dreams.
For crying out loud, it’s not even morning yet. And, it’s Sunday—Kathy groaned.
It was Darian—no surprise—calling through their private lattice network. He’d never been much for preamble or propriety.
Hi, Darian, what’s up? What time is it? Kathy dragged herself toward consciousness and rubbed her sleep-crusted eyes.
It works—was all he sent; his transmitted voice was quiet and matter-of-fact.
It works? What works?—her brain pushed through the mental fog to process what her boss was saying. She sat up and stretched her neck. Then it hit her. IT works!
“Greg,” she hissed. “Wake up! Darian got it working,” she squealed. She shook her
unconscious partner’s shoulder. “Greg, it works!”
Greg was fully awake in a flash.
I’m sorry about calling so early—Darian said. No—he laughed, almost giddy. That’s not true, I’m not sorry at all. I was going to tell you in person later this morning but I couldn’t wait. Look at this!
Without waiting for a response, he sent the two of them a synopsis of everything he’d been doing, the internal antenna array he’d grown in his cranium, and the test he’d run, the one that generated a sputtering microverse in the middle of his dining room only a few minutes before.
I’m on my way to the lab right now. I need to use the vacuum chamber and the laser interferometer–he sent. Can you meet me there?
That’s fantastic! Yes, of course. We’re on our way. It’ll take us about forty minutes but we’ll get there as fast as we can–Kathy replied. She waggled a free hand at Greg, the universal sign for get up and get moving.
Can you wait until we get there before you run it again?—she asked.
It’ll be torture but, sure. For you guys, anything. I’ll give you 45 minutes. Only then did he remember the fourth member of their team. Hey, can you pick up Larry along the way? I’m sure he’ll want to be there too.
No problem—answered Greg. I’ll give him a call and we’ll cruise by his place. I don’t think his bus runs this early, and he’ll kill us if we do this without him.
In the pause, all three took a collective deep breath.
Kathy shook her head. Wow, right this second, I feel like we own the entire galaxy. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, I think I do—Darian replied. I’ll be at the lab in a few minutes. Get here as soon as you can—he said, and disconnected.
“You know he’s not going to wait, right?” she said to Greg. “He’s going to fire it up as soon as he gets there.” She couldn’t blame him. If she were in his shoes, she wouldn’t be able to resist playing with the most important physics discovery of the century, either. “Wow! Can you believe it? It actually worked,” she said, and shuffled around the bed and into the bathroom.
Greg stumbled to the closet and pulled on a pair of jeans. “It’s about time something went right,” he said. He grabbed a fresh t-shirt and pulled it over his head. He poked his head through the neck hole, and the significance of what they were doing sank in.
The Reality Assertion Field, the RAF, had finally been proven. Their theories on the origin of the universe, on why the laws of nature were the way they were, and how they could be changed, it was all true. Science had opened the door to the powers of the gods.
“This is awesome. Can you imagine what that must have been like? He produced a micro-scale universe in the middle of his dining room. A little piece of space with its own distinct physical laws, right in his apartment. Can you believe it? A freaking microverse!”
Feeling more energized than he had in weeks, Greg reviewed the lattice conversation. His glee turned into a pensive frown.
“Uh, hey, Kath? I didn’t know Darian was growing an internal RAF antenna array in his own head. Did you?”
She reviewed the clip he sent her. “No. No clue at all. But I’m not surprised. I mean, it makes sense he’d do something like that as his next step. Think about it. Our original RAF generator should have worked. Everything checked out—hardware, software, theory—everything, right down to the last detail and yet it still didn’t work.”
She passed her toothbrush under the running water. “So what does a good scientist do? He starts all over, clean slate, and goes through it all again, item by item, step by step, with a completely independent approach.” She squeezed a pearl of toothpaste onto her electric brush and laughed. “That’s so Darian. Instead of building another device, he grows the friggin’ hardware right in his own brain.”
“Are you just about ready? We’d better get moving,” Greg said, pulling on his running shoes. “On the off chance that he is waiting. And we still have to swing by and pick up Larry. I’ll call him right now.”
Larry didn’t answer the lattice calls or his door when they banged on it some twenty minutes later.
“Larry!” Kathy huffed in exasperation, and tapped the door with her foot.
Typical—she thought, but kept the comment to herself.
They rapped a few more times and tried the window before giving up and heading to the lab without him.
Greg pulled the car into the nearly empty parking lot near the Physics building, and headed for a choice space along the perimeter.
“So, are we ready to be famous, hon? This research is going to rock the world. It really is.” Greg guided the car toward the parking spot.
The grin taking up half his face was replaced by a surprised yelp of pain as an incomprehensible torrent of Darian’s knowledge and memories —everything that made Darian who he was—slammed past the couple’s internal neural-lattice security and gushed unfiltered into their minds like a tsunami.
The influx of data from Darian rolled over their minds, overwhelming and clashing with their own thoughts and senses. As they struggled against the excruciating intrusion, the car rolled to a stop against a pliant sapling in a shallow drainage ditch.
In a final, desperate move to stem the flow, Kathy disconnected her communications port. Physically incapacitated but at least back in control of her mind, she created a rudimentary cutoff routine and piggybacked it onto the data surge still streaming into Greg’s lattice.
She reached feebly for his hand. “Greg,” she gasped, and gave in to unconsciousness.
When they came to, morning light was peeking through the misty mountain air.
“What…was that?” Greg cradled his head in his hands.
Kathy groaned. “I think something happened to Darian. Something bad,”
“He blasted through our anti-virus protection like it was nothing,” she marveled, and rubbed the back of her aching neck.
“How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know; we’ll look into that later. Are you okay? You got a little more of it than I did.”
Greg stretched his neck from side to side, blinked a few times, and tried to focus. “Yeah, I think so. My head hurts, and I ache in muscles I didn’t know I had.”
“Me too, but I don’t think there’s any permanent damage.” Kathy opened the car door.
“What are you doing? I think we should stay put for a few minutes.”
“I can’t. I think Darian might be dead, or in serious trouble. I don’t know why, but that’s what it felt like. Underneath his data, there was a lot of fear. Didn’t you feel it? The fear?”
She stepped out of the vehicle, and winced as she stood up.
“Yeah,” Greg admitted, “I guess.” He gripped the doorframe and eased himself upright. “Oh, man! I feel like I ran a marathon,” he moaned.
“Worse,” Kathy replied. “A marathon, carrying a backpack full of rocks.” She started to laugh and stopped; it hurt too much.
They left the car sitting halfway in the ditch and hurried to the lab, expecting to find Darian dead or in desperate condition.
Their footsteps echoed down the Physics wing hallway.
That’s weird; there should be light coming from the observation window—Kathy thought. She braced herself for the worst, opened the door, and turned on the lights.
Where’s Darian? He should’ve arrived long before us.
They walked around the workspace and checked the shared office. Did he even make it to the lab? Where was he when he sent his message?
Greg dialed Darian’s cell phone. Six rings. Seven rings. Eight rings. No answer.
Don’t jump to conclusions—Greg reminded himself. Darian rarely turned on his phone. No need, when you carried a built-in connection to the internet in your head. Well, I’m not going to call him through the lattice, that’s for sure, not after what happened in the parking lot. He wasn’t going to risk opening himself up to the flood of Darian’s memories again.<
br />
Dazed and unsettled, they conducted a more thorough inspection of the room. Kathy’s eyes sought the hardware project she’d spent the last six months designing and troubleshooting. In place of the Reality Assertion Field generator, the harsh overhead lights illuminated an empty frame and rectangular patch of dust.
What the….? “Greg? The RAF’s gone!”
Darian would not have taken the RAF out of the lab; he was adamant about it staying in the sturdy anti-theft frame, and well-secured to the counter at all times. The empty frame was intact. The RAF generator, however, was nowhere in sight.
The server! Greg tried to log on with his lattice to make sure their repository of theoretical work was intact, and hit a security wall.
Kathy must’ve added that to the comm-activation protocol when she buffered us from Darian’s thought storm. A pop-up message reminded him of the danger of opening his lattice to external communications. Yep, definitely Kathy’s work.
He walked into the office area and clumsily tapped in his user ID and password using an external keyboard. Like any other mortal.
The screen refreshed, and a conspicuously empty blue screen replaced the log-in box.
Where did all my folders go?
He opened the systems directory. Nothing. Hundreds of folders containing their theories, schematics, and half-written papers awaiting data were all gone.
“Kath? Why is the directory empty? You didn’t do this, did you?”
“What? No, of course not. What do you mean?” she answered. She walked up behind him and peered over his shoulder. Sure enough, the drive had been wiped clean.
“This doesn’t make any sense. Darian called to say he was on his way to the lab. Even if he’d taken the device home last night, he wouldn’t have taken any of this with him. There’s no reason to remove it.”
