HomeNuclear Static Matter
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Nuclear Static Matter
Damxge Sat Jun 09, 2012 9:29 pm
“We are pleased to announce our next speaker, Malkiv Manderkiln. He’s worked tirelessly on Dark matter research, and today is here to report on a recent breakthrough,” Boomed the voice over the intercom, the words heavy with static, the old speakers straining under the volume they were set to. The crowd, possibly thirty scientists, milled about the small university classroom. The walls were yellowed plaster and the grimy floor was made of greyish tiles, filth and dirt clogging the gaps between tiles; the ceiling was pure white tile, obviously redone recently. Light fixtures hung from old rusty disks attached haphazardly to the ceiling tiles, the dim fluorescent lights casting an odd glow over the room.
Along the left wall was set a folding table, one leg nothing but a baseball bat with the corner balancing on it. Atop the table were assorted refreshments, mostly cheeses and crackers, but a few slivers of meat could be seen, hidden away under the untouched wheat crackers. A coffee machine sat at the end, the pot empty to the last drop; people huddled about it, waiting for it to resume its tireless efforts of sustaining the caffeine addicted room of scientists.
A small table sat at the head of the room, a red plastic tablecloth draped over it in an attempt to make it look slightly less pathetic. A microphone stood on its surface next to a glass of water, lipstick stains ringing the rim. A pile of papers, at least a foot high resided next to the water, on the top piece the blueprints of some machine could be seen along with the big red word ‘COPY’ written over the center of the page.
From the left, a pressed sawdust door swung open, the old hinges creaking with the strain of holding the mold infested door upright as it pivoted. A tall man, at least six foot five, stepped through the doorway, stooping slightly to avoid his fedora from catching on the trim. His hair was long and white, his face wrinkled and a deep tan color; his hands clutched a small briefcase, a light fixture fastened to the outside in an odd fashion. He stumbled slightly as he made it to the makeshift podium and snatched the case to his chest, ready to protect it should he trip.
Slowly and reluctantly, he sat the case down on the table, right next to the papers, his hands shaking as he relinquished the black leather briefcase. Reaching down, he picked up the glass of water and brought it to his lips before noticing the marks across it and sat it down rather abruptly, sloshing the contents slightly. He looked about ready to faint as he tapped the mic, the thumps echoing across the room, snagging the attention of the men grouped around the coffee maker, which had just begun expelling dark black coffee.
“Hello everyone,” he said, his voice deep and smooth, his wrinkled face obviously not a testament to his voice, there wasn’t a shake as he spoke, though his hand could barely hold the shaft of the microphone, “My name is Doctor Manderkiln, I’ve been working nonstop for the last ten years on dark matter research,” he went on, stepping away from the podium as he spoke, trying to get out from under the harsh, bright light blaring down on him. Several men in the audience scoffed audibly at the mention of dark matter.
“But it is not my research on Dark Matter that has brought me here today,” he continued, ignoring the sounds from the men, “Now before I go on about my new discovery, I’d like to tell you how I came about it,” he said, drawing is speech on, the interest in the room mounting. While many of the scientists were skeptical or even dismissive of dark matter research, they were still interested in hearing about Malkiv’s discovery.
A boy, only ten years of age, sat in the corner, a large camera positioned in front of him, pointed straight at the speaker. He was fascinated by any of the speeches his father took him to; he would bring his grandfather’s tape camera to them and tape the entire event, then at home, he would watch them over and over again as he read books on the things the people spoke of. His father, however, did not approve of his boy’s dedication to learning about the theoretical or experimental sciences. He preferred his son read about chemistry and biology, the solid sciences. Even as he tried to get the boy interested in them, he could not and gave up, allowing him to learn about whatever he wanted.
“I was in my laboratory one evening, trying desperately to capture and contain dark matter; I would filter out all particles, leaving only space before removing any gasses. My problem came when I found that my methods of filtering were removing the dark matter along with the dust particles,” the Doctor went on, pacing back and forth behind the red table, “And so I changed my method of filtering, I misted the entire inside of the container with an acid solution, the weight of the liquid drug all of the impurities out of the air, leaving the dark matter behind, or so I thought,”
“When I went to observe the remnants of what was in the container, I was disheartened to find that there was no dark matter that I could find, nothing. Though, inside of the vacuum, I did find something else,” the scientists, all now seated in rickety old folding chairs leaned forward slightly, “I discovered a new kind of matter, something visible, not to the eye, not even with the most powerful microscope in my lab; but when I went to empty the container, I felt something, almost like static electricity,” Murmurs now spread through the crowd.
“And so I repeated my process, only this time, I ran the entire experiment in a static free environment, and again, I felt the static. After a few days of constant experimentation, I realized that what I had trapped inside of the container had the same properties of radiation and electricity, combined into its own space. That is when I found that this matter is everywhere, it is responsible for everything,” He said, finishing with a dramatic hand movement, as if plucking an apple from the air. Several people in the audience began to laugh, and slowly, the laughter spread until the only two people not laughing were Doctor Manderkiln and the boy with the camera.
“And what proof have you that this new ‘matter’ exists?” asked a man as he stood, turning to get another cup of coffee.
“I’m coming to that,” said the doctor, glaring around at his colleagues, most of who were still recovering from the fit of laughter. He drew the briefcase roughly into the middle of the table and flicking a switch in the top of it. The light bulb atop the case lit up slightly, but was drown out by the blinding light above the table.
“And what does that prove?” asked a woman who was walking briskly toward the door.
“It proves that this matter is in the air! It proves that it is everywhere and can be harnessed and used for power!” he said loudly, pointing to the dim light.
“Come now Malkiv! This is a bigger waste of time than your last ‘discovery’,” Said a man in a white lab coat as he passed by with the other scientists on their way to the door. Malkiv just stood there, staring at them as they passed, the look of anger on his face slowly replacing itself with sadness, and then, after the room was empty, to complete misery.
Slowly, he walked back to the table and picked up the briefcase and papers before heading toward the door, not seeing the boy sitting in the corner. With a sigh, he dropped the briefcase, as well as the pile of papers into the trashcan next to the door and exited. The boy in the corner stood up, tears dotting his eyes as he saw the complete rejection of the man’s life work, how he’d been crushed so completely by his so called colleagues.
The boy flicked the camera off and hauled it up and ran to the trashcan. Taking the backpack off of his back, he tossed the bent and messed papers into it, along with the case and ran out the door. His father was probably almost done in the lab.
Eight years later.
Tommy picked up the cell phone; its screen covered with tape where it had been cracked repeatedly, the antenna replaced by a coat hanger wire with a ball of tin foil tipping it. Sighing, he wiped the grime from its surface and stuck it back in his pocket, the figures of three larger boys walking away. Slowly, he stood up, his arms and stomach aching here he’d been hit, some blood running down from a cut under his bruising eye.
With a groan, he picked his backpack out of the muddy puddle where he’d been thrown and limped away, back to his apartment, only a block away. His hair was colored a bright blue and was spiked backward, making his head look like a blue hedgehog. He was regular height, only six foot, and was thin and wiry; his skin had a nice tan from his hours outside doing research.
He’d graduated from high school four years ago, and when he was fifteen was accepted into a state college. He’d earned his bachelor’s degree in four years and was now after his masters. His mind worked quickly and efficiently, his bad memory his only hindrance, forcing him to study constantly. He found that being yong in college was not fun, most of his classmates rejected him because of his age, and the others hated him for being smarter than them. He learned quickly to stay away from everyone and do his own thing, he was never invited to parties and was abused constantly by the people who were still working on the degree he’d achieved quickly and smoothly; his classmates were much, much older than him, all of them in their mid-thirties or forties, and though he was more intelligent than any of them and consistently came out at the head of the class in grades, they wouldn’t come near him because of his age. The people his own age would abuse him simply for being smart, which is why the three brutes had roughed him up.
He made it back to his small rental trailer and climbed in, avoiding the rotten stair as he passed. With a sigh, he tossed his backpack onto the small brown love seat, the only piece of furniture in the one room trailer. The kitchen consisted of a microwave and a counter, the refrigerator was outside, the size making it impossible to fit it inside. With a louder sigh, he drew the cellphone from his pocket and looked down at the grimy screen, a small number six flickering on the glowing blue surface.
Smiling for the first time that day, Tommy laid the phone down next to an old leather briefcase on the floor almost covered by mountains of papers. A classic, non-energy efficient, light bulb protruded from the top, glowing gently. Tommy lowered himself down next to it and drew a thin laptop from his backpack, fortunately unbroken. The screen lit up bright blue as he opened it gently, watching the windows logo pop up. He tapped out his password and opened one of the hundreds of Word documents littering his Documents folder and began checking it over, speed reading over the mounds of text.
With a click, he closed it out and switched to a different document, this time, one bearing a blueprint. Slowly, he checked it over before smiling again, it was so close, victory was so close. Jumping up, he closed the laptop and grabbed a pile of papers, all connected by a paper clip. He tossed the papers and laptop into his bag before grabbing up the odd cellphone and dashing out the door.
He made it halfway across the campus before seeing anyone, and it just so happened that when he did see someone, it was too late to stop and he crashed full force into a girl walking along with ear bud in her ears. She came around the corner so suddenly that Tommy didn’t have time to stop, so he reached out and wrapped his arms around her, spinning around her to fall backward onto his backpack; unfortunately, the girl came down too, a scream catching in her throat as she fell backward.
An elbow jammed into Tommy’s gut as she landed on him, squashing the thin boy into the concrete. A stream of profanities came from the girl as she struggled to get off of him; once she was off, she jumped up, glaring down at the boy.
“What the hell are you doing you dipshit?” she yelled, kicking him hard in the shin as he tried to get up.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t stop!” he said, dodging another kick as he stumbled upright.
“The hell are you running from?” she asked, glancing around, she seemed to be getting over being thrown down.
“Nothing, I’m just in a hurry,” he said, edging away, anxious to get moving again.
“Oh? And where are you going at seven at night?” she pressed, stepping closer and poking him in the chest. She glanced down at his mud covered clothes and scowled.
“I just, the, uh, the shop,” he said, taking a step away from the girl.
“The shop is closed after five,” she said, speaking slowly as if he were retarded.
“I’m an attendant, I’ve got a key,” he said, turning to walk away. She snorted and followed him as he walked, making him increasingly nervous.
“Where are you going?” he asked, slowing down to walk next to her.
“Same place you are, unfortunately,” she said angrily.
“But the shop closes at,” he started to say but she interrupted him.
“I’m an attendant,” she said, picking a key from her pocket.
‘Great,’ Tommy thought, ‘I gotta spend the evening with this girl,’ He walked on in silence, staring at his shoes. Not soon enough, they came to the shop; Tommy reached into his pocket and drew out the key to the old rusty door and entered, flicking the lights on as he passed. The girl headed for the opposite side of the shop and began sorting out lengths of piping. Tommy avoided her and went to the electronics parts section, which was closed off with heavy metal fencing and padlocked gate.
Quickly as he could, Tommy grabbed the parts he needed, relying on the papers in his bag at times to find the exact piece. After he’d gathered an armful of pieces, he returned to the main shop and laid them out on one of the work tables, as far away from the girl’s table as he could get. After several hours of soldering and tinkering, he’d finished several large speaker-like funnels, long red and black wires extending away from them. It was almost midnight by the time he had them set up on microphone stands, pointing at a concrete wall.
With shaking hands, he drew his laptop from his back and opened it on the desk, hooking the wires from the speaker like devices into a USB port. He crossed his fingers as the computer searched for the new equipment, the software he’d designed in his advanced programming class a few mother earlier working hard. With a loud ding, the hardware was recognized and the control panel popped up on the screen. While graphically unappealing, the simple command prompt was beautiful to Tommy.
As he typed in the codes for activating the installed software, he didn’t notice that the girl had sidled over and was not peering over his shoulder.
“The hell is that thing?” she asked rather loudly into Tommy’s ear. The boy jumped back, stumbling on some circuit boards he’d left on the floor. He spun around to look at the girl, actually seeing her for the first time. She was slightly shorter than him, shoulder length red hair, freckles strewn across her cheeks and nose. Her eyes were ice blue, made even more shocking by black eye liner.
“It’s, uhh, nothing, just a project,” Tommy stuttered, turning back to his computer, where the options menu had appeared. He pressed a few buttons activating the pair of devices. There was a low hum as they came to life, vibrating gently on their stands. The girl stood behind Tommy, staring at them, a look of amusement on her face.
“So, you made a pair of low frequency speakers?” she asked skeptically, watching the boy as he stared hopefully at the odd looking device.
“Just wait for,” he started, holding a hand up, just as the room was lit by a bright light, like the sun had just risen suddenly. Tommy grabbed a welding mask off of the table and covered his eyes with it. At the spot on the wall where both of the speaker devices were pointing had appeared a baseball sized hole, which looked out on what appeared to be a desert. Slowly, the hole got bigger, getting to about the size of a basketball, the surface wavering and shimmering like water, distorting what was beyond. The girl had stumbled back during the flash, but now stared at the hole, her eyes wide, mouth hanging open slightly.
Tommy lowered the mask and stared at the bright sunlight coming through the hole, just as it began to close, slowly but surely, it returned to a baseball sized hole before disappearing completely, leaving the room strangely dim.
“It worked,” he whispered, his voice cracking. The humming from the speakers faded slowly as they lost power, “I-I can’t believe it worked,” he stuttered, supporting himself on the desk next to him.
“What in god’s name did you just do?” the girl asked, finding her voice.
“I just proved that he was right,” Tommy said, a grin spreading over his face.
“Who was right? About what?” she pressed, completely confused. Tommy didn’t reply, instead, he packed his laptop and papers before plucking the cone shaped devices from the stands and running out the door.
Two days later, Tommy sat on the hard floor of his trailer, staring at the papers covering the space around him. The original papers from Malkiv’s lab lay strewn about, the big red word ‘COPY’ stamped onto each one. They outlined possible uses and theories for the matter, one of which outlined their use in teleportation. Every spot on earth was covered by this matter, some places contained more than others, but it was everywhere. Malkiv had outlined the possibility of travelling along with the matter as it moved like the tides and winds, changing and moving constantly, though much faster than the wind or tides.
Tommy had elaborated on this theory and found that every square foot of space was occupied by the matter, this square foot of space contained an exact amount of the mysterious matter at one time, this amount could only be changed by a massive boost of radiation being applied to the space it occupied, which would then increase the capacity of that space to house more of the matter. Tommy had theorized that these spaces were all separate from the one next to them and ran around the earth in a constant stream, the matter squeezing down to fit through more limited space, and rushing along when it came across higher capacity space.
Tommy had named the matter Nuclear Static Matter, since none of Malkiv’s papers defined it. He called the pathways the NSM followed NSM Channels. He’d also worked on converting physical objects to NSM, though with limited success. It appeared that the more NSM in the air around where you tried to make the transformation the more successful the transformation was.
Now, Tommy had discovered a way to focus the NSM, the speaker like devices would pull the NSM out of the space around them and forcefully direct it at a single spot, the more NSM, theoretically, the better the outcome. The opening of the window had been completely unexpected; especially when it returned to its original form after the NSM Projectors had lost energy.
Tommy’s thoughts were brutally interrupted when someone took to banging on his door. Scowling, he jumped up, no one ever came to visit him. He yanked the door open to find the redhead from the shop standing on his rotten wooden stairs.
“The hell do you,” he started, but she cut him off as she shoved past him into his small trailer.
“Not the most luxurious of trailers,” she criticized, glancing around at the mid-1960s styling.
“It’s all I can afford,” Tommy said, closing the door and running a hand through his hair.
“So your parents couldn’t set you up with an apartment?” she asked, sitting down on the love seat, the cushion squashing out a cloud of dust.
“I don’t speak to my dad, and my mom’s long gone,” Tommy said, stooping to gather up his papers into rough stacks, “Now what do you want?” he asked abruptly, turning to her, his arms full of research documents.
“What do you think I want Porcupine?” she asked sarcastically.
“I can’t explain it, okay?” he said, exasperated, he was rather aggravated that she’d crashed his train of thought, “Now if you’d just,” he motioned at the door but the girl didn’t move.
“How about this, you tell me who was right about what, and I’ll leave,” she said, standing up and walking up to him, grabbing his papers and sitting them down on the floor. His arms hung like limp noodles, unsure of himself without papers or a book clutched in his grip as he spoke to someone.
“Alright, Doctor Malkiv Manderkiln was right about NSM,” he said before motioning at the door.
“Okay,” she said, ignoring his hints for her to leave, “So what did you do to the wall in the shop?” she flopped back down onto the love seat and looked up at him expectantly. He groaned and sat back down on the floor.
“I focused Nuclear Static Matter into a small spot on the wall, opening what I hope, was basically a wormhole,” he said, shuffling papers, trying to keep his hands busy.
“This Nuclear Static Matter, what is it?” she pressed, drawing her legs up under her to sit cross legged.
“It’s matter, you know, like what everything is made out of, only, you can’t see it; it’s similar to dark matter, only it can be converted into energy if there’s enough of it, and its affected by radiation and sound waves,” Tommy explained.
“Don’t patronize me kid, I know what matter is,” she said, her voice taking an edge, “How old are you anyway? Sixteen?” she asked.
“I’m eighteen, and I just wanted to make sure you understood,” he said, scooting away from the girl a little bit.
“Alright, well, this wormhole, can we go into it?” she asked, changing the subject.
“That’s what I’m looking into,” he said, motioning at the papers, all written by him during different stages of his research.
“Well why don’t we just test it?” she asked, looking at the NSM Projectors hanging on a coat hook next to the door.
“Its not that simple,” Tommy said, frowning, “What if its not a wormhole and it just kills me when I touch it, what if it is a wormhole and it closes off when I’m on the other side?”
“That’s why you don’t go through it yourself, mother of Jesus, you’ve figured all this out and can’t understand what lab rats are for?” She said, flashing a bright white smile at Tommy.
“Well, I guess,” he started hesitantly.
“Great! Meet me in the shop in an hour!” she said, jumping up.
“No, wait!” Tommy said, as she opened the door.
“What?” she turned and looked at him, the excitement clear on her face.
“I don’t know if,” he started, but the girl interrupted him.
“Then we’ll find out,” and she was gone.
Tommy grumbled the whole way to the shop that evening, the sun was going down quickly and soon the entire campus was cast under the shadow of night. He had the two NSM Projectors slung over his shoulder in a wal-mart bag, papers from the last four years of his research were jammed into his flimsy backpack next to a large video camera, the only expensive thing he owned, even his little trailer had cost less. His laptop was tucked under his arm, still warm from its recent use.
As he opened the door to the shop, he came face to face with the shop teacher, a tall, burly man, who hated most of the shop attendants, the students with access to the shop out of hours.
“Tommy boy!” he exclaimed as he stepped out, clapping the boy on the shoulder, “What brings you to the shop this late at night?” he asked, glancing at the NSM Projectors in the bag.
“Just some experiments,” he said, the man was his favorite teacher, and the only one who liked him.
“Ahh, so that’s why Miri’s got lab rats in my shop,” He said, frowning, “Be sure not to make too big a mess,” he warned before smiling again and walking away, whistling What’s Cookin’ Good Lookin’ . Tommy shook his head and stepped inside.
“There you are!” The redhead yelled as he stepped inside, she was just adjusting the microphone stands in the same spot as they’d been a few days ago when the wormhole had been opened.
“Sorry, I lost track of time,” Tommy replied, sitting his stuff down on the table.
“Alright! So I thought we could try to toss some stuff through the hole, and if that goes well,” she said quickly, standing up, “We could try these,” she held patted a cage with several large white rats inside of it. Tommy didn’t reply, instead he went about setting up his rig.
“So, Porcupine, what’s your name?” she asked, leaning against the counter to watch what he was doing on his laptop.
“Tommy Theode,” he replied, tapping out the codes to open the menu for the projectors.
“Wait, wait, wait,” she said, grabbing his arm, he stopped typing and looked up at her, “Not the son of Alex Theode?” she asked.
“He’s my father, yeah,” he said, brushing her hand off to continue typing.
“No way! His foundation gave me a scholarship!” she said happily, leaning over further to watch what Tommy was typing.
“What’s your name, by the way?” Tommy asked, pressing enter before looking up at her.
“Miranda Alton,” she said, still watching the numbers and letters dart across the screen, “But you call be Miri, and if you ever call me by my real name, I’ll bust your little blue balls,” she warned, glancing up at the Tommy, who had gone slightly pale.
“Okay, uhh, are you ready?” he asked, changing the subject, the software finishing its loading and prepping.
“Yeah! Let’s do this!” she said, putting on some heavy gloves and standing behind the projectors. Tommy drew his odd phone from his pocket and tossed it to the girl.
“That will tell you how much NSM is in the space, when the numbers start going down, the wormhole will begin closing,” he explained, pointing at the phone. She nodded and he turned back to the laptop and pressed ‘Start’.
It took the projectors almost a full minute before the wormhole appeared, flashing into existence as it had done before. Immediately, the girl tossed a baseball through, followed by a shard of metal and a candy bar. The hole was about the size of a basketball when she grabbed up one of the rats and tossed it through as well. She ran over to an IPad lying on the counter next to the rat cage and tapped it.
“Its alive! It made it through!” she said loudly, looking up at Tommy, who had his camera in hand, filming the whole thing. Then, with an odd sputtering sound, the blindingly bright hole vanished. Tommy ran around the desk and grabbed up his phone and held it out next to the wall, a big number one lit the screen. He turned to look at Miri, who was beaming.
“Well?” he asked, glancing at the Ipad.
“It’s either somewhere satellites’ signals can’t reach it, or it completely vanished the second the wormhole closed,” She said, holding up the screen, it displayed the vitals of the other two rats in the cage, but all of the vitals of the third rat were zero, even its temperature. After a moment, a popup appeared, asking to turn the microchip back on.
“And you’re sure that it couldn’t be out of signal range?” Tommy asked staring at the screen, his mind spinning through thousands of scenarios.
“It’s linked up to a system of government satellites; there isn’t a place on earth that is undetectable,” she said, her smile faltering as she realized what that meant.
“It’s not on earth,” The pair said in unison. Tommy spun to his bag, pulling out papers and shuffling through them, searching for the one he’d written on the paths of NSM ringing the earth. After a minute, he found it and read over it quickly, looking at all of his figures and logic. Miri idled about the room as he read and thought, petting the rats and playing with bits of machinery.
“I’ve got it!” Tommy said, jumping up, Miri jumped as well, startled by the sudden outburst after an hour of silence.
“Well?” she asked walking over.
“There are two possibilities,” Tommy said, turning a piece of paper over to draw on the other side, “These pathways, or, uh, streams of NSM cover not only earth, but the entire galaxy, and to think of it, probably the entire universe,”
“Streams? You mean they go to the same place every time?” she asked, glancing at the paper where he’d drawn up some circles for earth and other planets.
“Yes, the NSM travels over space in a long bands, each square foot, to the best of my estimates are part of a different band, some parts are wider, others thinner, depending on radiation and such,” Tommy explained, “They change like the wind, sometimes going this way, another time that way, but they always loop around and connect to their own tail, in a constant loop, they intertwine and cross over, but they’re all distinct and separate, like wires in a cord,” He’d drawn lines wrapping around the earth and moving on into space, to other planets.
“Alright, so how do you explain there being an end to them? How does the wormhole open, if it’s one continuous channel?”
“I think that it opens the hole when it reaches a place too thin to transfer the needed amount NSM to keep it open, it drops you off there,” He said, working from his mind now, trying to puzzle it out.
“Alright, then what’s the second possibility?” she pressed on.
“That NSM doesn’t react upon solid matter, that it works upon other currently theoretical matter,” he said, drawing a new diagram, this one of a wall, “It won’t do anything to solid matter directly, but will affect other matters, such as dark matter and time,” he explained.
“So, that would mean that it’s a portal into the past?” she said, leaning against the counter.
“Not necessarily,” Tommy said, tapping the eraser of the pencil against his forehead, “It didn’t do anything to the concrete, if it worked on time, it would have reversed the concrete’s life, returning it to its base elements, which means it has to work on one of the predecessors of time, something more basic,”
“What if NSM is as basic as it gets?” Miri asked, starting at the blue haired boy.
“What if,” he mumbled, staring at his piece of paper. Then a crazy idea hit him, “Have you ever seen the Land of the Lost? An old movie where they went to an alternate universe,”
“Yeah, a long time ago,” she replied, beginning to get the gist.
“What if NSM is the glue holding reality together? What if, we could take NSM and separate reality from whatever else is out there? What if there are other realities, other versions of history, other,” he stopped, staring at but not seeing Miri, his mouth slightly open.
“Tommy! Earth to Tommy!” she said, waving a hand in front of his face.
“The big bang, it was so spontaneous and sudden, or so the story goes,” he said quietly, “What if, our world wasn’t the only thing created during the big bang, what if there are other realities all smashed into this one planet,” he returned to his drawing of the wall and drew another, “Look, if we can just break the wall separating our reality from this other one, we can,” he drew a line through one wall, to the next space, “Reality is like a room in a house,” he started on a different point without finishing the last, “You can’t see the other room unless you add a window or open a door, if you didn’t know any better, you could think that the walls are the edges of your universe, of your reality and that there was no way to get past them,” His eyes widened as he reached his realization.
“You can’t be serious,” Miri laughed, standing up and stretching, “I only believed the teleporting because of the weird wormhole thing, but other realities? Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself, Tommy?”
“Yeah, probably,” he said, straightening his papers and returning them to his bag. He didn’t believe it though; he knew he was right, that he had stumbled upon the peak of matter research. He big Miri adieu and returned to his trailer where he spent the rest of the night running scenarios on his computer, watching the video of the wormhole over and over.
A few weeks passed and Tommy had quit going to classes, one of the teachers became concerned.
“Hey! Miri! You still dating Tommy?” the bulky shop teacher asked as she left class one morning.
“What? No! I mean, we were never dating!” she said loudly, rather flustered by the sudden question, “I helped him with some experiments like, twice,” she grumbled, turning to leave.
“Well, he hasn’t been to class for two weeks now, and I’m really concerned about him, I didn’t get a reply when I knocked on his door,” the man continued, drawing the girl’s interest.
“What do you want me to do about it?” she asked, turning in the doorway.
“I don’t know, see if you can get him to answer the door,” he said, turning off his laptop.
“I thought you said he wasn’t in his trailer?” she asked.
“He didn’t answer, but I heard him moving around inside,” the man replied.
“I’ll see if I can talk to him,” She said, her mind racing about wildly, all of the different things he could be absorbed with shooting across.
She decided to skip English and headed straight for the trailer park reserved for students just outside of the school grounds. The refrigerator outside hummed away happily as she made her way up the stairs, the rotten stair catching her by surprise. With a yelp, her leg went through the rotten wood, sending her crashing to the grounder, her knees hitting the gravel hard, her elbows smacking the stair in front of her.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Tommy yelled, throwing his door open and rushing out. He hopped back as he saw who it was smashed through his stairs.
“Are you going to help me, or just stand there staring at me?” Miri said angrily, trying to get up.
Tommy grumbled inaudibly as he helped her out of the mess and into the trailer. She flopped down onto the loveseat and glanced around. She gasped at what she saw. The walls were lined with papers, all linked together by red marker drawn across their curfaces, stacks of papers lay about all over the floor, a laptop buzzed away on the floor next to an old briefcase and the NSM Detector cell phone.
“What the bloody,” she started, but Tommy held up his hand, cutting her off.
“I was right,” he said, pointing at a piece of paper, it was different from the others, it was pinned up with a green pin instead of the yellow ones and a small diagram had been drawn up on its surface, covering the letters.
“Tommy, I think you’ve,” she said slowly, picking her way carefully past the stacks of papers and discarded food garbage. The remnants of a few pizzas, sandwiches and multiple energy drink cans littered the floor.
“You don’t understand, do you Miri?” The boy said, cutting her off. She looked up at him, away from the debris strewn about her feet; his blue hair was disheveled and unwashed, his eyes bloodshot and tired.
“I understand that you’re taking this way too far Tommy,” she said, walking back over to him, firmly, she grabbed his shoulders and forced him to sit down on the loveseat.
“Listen to me Miri,” he said, his voice hoarse, “I’ve been working to prove Doctor Manderkiln’s theories for the last four years, he was thrown brutally from the world of science for thinking this way; I couldn’t even experiment because no one would fund my projects, I’ve been doing theoretical work for so long, and I finally have a chance to move my projects somewhere. I can’t stop now,” he said forcefully.
“Listen to me Tommy, this whole alternate reality thing is going nowhere, there’s no way another reality exists, the rat was disintegrated, easy as that, the wormhole ground it up and obliterated it,” Miri said, “All of this talk of NSM is nonsense, how do you know this matter even exists and your machine isn’t acting upon something else, like sound waves?”
“If you don’t like it, then mind your own god damn business,” Tommy growled, standing up and pushing by the girl.
“Alright, how about this then,” she started again, her temper flaring, “What the hell are you going to do with your wormhole? Where are you going with this?”
“I’m going to use this,” He replied, lifting the cushion on the loveseat. Underneath it was a backpack, a simple soldier pack. With a grunt, he hauled it out and held it at chest height so Miri could see it.
“You’re going for a hike?” she asked, pressing her right hand to her forehead, her impatience clear.
“This pack contains a setup for my NSM Projectors, smaller and simpler, I’m going into the alternate reality,” He said. Miri’s eyes went wide.
“You can’t be serious, what about the rat?” she asked, completely astonished by his apparent lack of self-preservation.
“The rat is in the alternate reality, we lost connection with it because no satellite we have can penetrate the wall,” He explained, pointing at his old wall example, which hung on the wall above the loveseat.
“What the hell are you thinking Tommy!” she yelled, finally snapping, “You’re going to go through your little wormhole, you’re going to die, and what? For what?”
“For myself,” he said, smiling eerily.
“Yourself? You’re going to die! Do you not understand that?” she yelled, grabbing the sides of her head before turning away to pace.
“Maybe, but it’ll be worth it, to see what’s out there,” Tommy said, his grin growing.
“Do you really have so little to live for that you’re willing to throw your life away for some scifi dream?” She asked, spinning to face him.
“My father has disowned me simply because of the area of science I study, my mother is a drunk and a drug addict living in Minnesota, I have no friends, everyone in my class hates me because of either my age, or my intelligence. The scientific community will not accept NSM as a real category of matter and won’t even allow me to show my findings; and yes my dear, I have tried to report my findings, and no one will listen,” He said, turning to set the backpack down.
Miri stood there, stunned at how easily he’d torn down everything that would have made his life worth living, and without flinching. As if he was stating fact.
“I’m actually surprised at the coincidence of this,” he said, turning back to face her, his smile returned.
“Of what?” she asked, still dazed.
“That you should come here this afternoon, I actually planned on leaving tonight,” he said, smiling at her.
“So, you’re going through with it no matter what I say?” she asked, sitting down slowly next to his laptop, a new PDA plugged into it, some sort of file transfer in progress.
“If anything, I’d like your help in making the trip a bit smoother,” he said, coming to sit down next to her. She looked up at him, completely awestruck at both his determination and his insanity.
“What do you need?” she asked, shaking her head.
“I only need a few things,” he said, jumping up, his energy renewed, “But, uhm, pardon my enthusiasm, I worked on my NSM theories for four years before you came along and got me to talk about it; and now, I feel a bit crazy not talking about what I’m setting up,”
“So, I’ve set up an entirely new system, I’ve got four, much smaller NSM Projectors, all placed perfectly to target the exact same spot. The multiple projectors should increase the amount of NSM being thrown at the wall and will cause the wormhole to be considerably larger, though it will only be open for a matter of seconds, as far as I can estimate judging from the past tests, it will last about ten seconds,” He explained, holding up microphone looking devices, each with a folding metal cone around the tip. They each had one wire that led to a larger one with a micro-USB plug on the end.
“That plugs into my PDA, which I’ve programmed the activation menu into, though I’ll still need my laptop to change certain program options,” he went on as he noticed Miri playing with the micro-USB plug, “So I’ve made three sets of the projectors and a PDF for each one with different passwords for each one,” he explained, opening the backpack to make sure it was all there.
“What else are you taking?” she asked, helping him pack everything away neatly.
“I’ve got a small tank of oxygen and a gasmask, some solar panels with charger cords for all of my hardware, a gps mapping device that maps based on location rather than satellite position, so that I can leave a trail of breadcrumbs and make notes on specific points along my way,” he spoke quickly, his hands shaking dramatically, “A few hard disks and flash drives, some food and water, a hatchet and this,” he drew a small pistol from a side pocket on the bag. It was a pocket size revolver, firing only four shots.
“You might want to pack a blanket,” Miri warned, “As well as some rope,”
“Of course! I’ll run to the store, be right back,” he said, running out the door, leaving the girl alone. Slowly, she sat down and stared at the wall, covered in research papers Tommy’s fellow scientists refused to read, of diagrams of his equipment and theories. She reached up and wiped a tear away from her eye, she hated people who threw their lives away, and beyond that, she’d actually developed some feelings toward the devoted nerd.
An hour later, Tommy returned with fifty feet of rope and a thermal blanket as well as a few more bottles of water.
“It’s seven ‘o’clock,” Miri said as Tommy finished packing his stuff away.
“Then it’s time to go,” He said, his voice shaking a bit, he was beginning to panic, and Miri hoped he’d chicken out. But no luck so far, they walked quickly to the shop where Tommy had decided to open his wormhole.
Silently, Tommy set up his projectors, this time using a premade folding frame to point them perfectly. At last, the time had come. It was almost nine in the evening when he plugged his silver PDA into his device and began tapping away on it.
“Miri,” he said, pausing in his tapping, but not looking up. The redhead was leaned against the wall in the corner, watching him carefully, “If you could, take the projector somewhere safe after the portal has closed,” he said, closing his eyes and bowing his head.
“Anything else?” She asked, straightening up and walking over to him.
“Keep this with you,” he said, laying the PDF down to reach into his pocket. He drew out a small black box, a green screen on one side of it completely blank. Slowly, he handed it to the girl, who took it gingerly, turning to over to inspect it.
“A pager?” she asked, looking up at Tommy.
“If you press the blue button, it shows you the level of NSM in the air space around you,” he said, pointing to the big round blue button on the top, “If you could, keep it with you,” he said, smiling at her.
“Alright,” she said, returning his smile.
“Wish me luck!” he said as positively as he could, but he voice shook badly. Quickly he hauled his backpack onto his back before pulling the gasmask, a classic WWII mask, down over his face. He pressed a final button on the PDA and unplugged it from the projector. He wore a long sleeve black wool coat with gold buttons, thick black leather gloves covered his hands and a pair of fire retardant blue jeans covered his legs. From between the straps on his mask, his spiky blue hair stuck up in all directions.
After a moment of waiting, the wormhole flashed into existence on the stone wall, this time it was the size of a hockey goal, on the other side the desert looking landscape could be seen as if under the surface of water. With a grunt, Tommy hurled himself through, crashing into the ground on the other side. What he’d expected to be sand was instead stone; the hard earth was sculpted into sand like patters, wavy like a wind ravaged dune.
As quickly as he could, he rolled to his feet to see the watery surface disappear in a flash, the sandstone wall it had formed on returning to its grainy texture. Slowly, he looked up. The sky was bright blue, like on earth, the odd sandstone earth swept on infinitively in every direction. Right in front of him was a round tower, stretching into the sky, so high that the top could not be seen from that angle. It was made of the same stone the ground was made of, only carved into bricks and laid with some sort of sandy cement.
While it looked like a desert, the temperature was low, almost freezing, even though the sun was high in the sky. After a minute spent staring at the wonder before him, Tommy snapped into action, drawing his camera from his bag and turning it on.
“Looks like I was right,” he said, grinning at the camera, even though his mask covered the smile. He slowly scanned his new surroundings before turning the camera off and tucking it back away. As slowly and casually as he could, he circled the tower, staring up at its unimaginable height. It couldn’t have been more than ten feet across, though it stood tall and straight. On the opposite side of which he’d arrived, he came to a tall wooden door, rounded to fit with the curve of the tower. It was made of a dark, gnarled wood, seemingly a solid piece without a handle or knocker. Carefully, he reached up and tapped the surface.
From the other side, there was a loud clunk and murmuring before it went silent. Tommy could hear the breathing of someone, or something, on the other side as they pressed their ear to the opposite side of the door, the same as Tommy was doing now.
“Hello?” Tommy said loudly. Whoever was on the other side of the door was obviously startled as there was a cacophony of crashing and thunking as they fell from wherever they were standing.
“Depri catsu balda!” came a smooth, deep voice from the other side.
“Uhh, hello! My name is Tommy-,” He cut off, about to say his last name. Here, he was Tommy, just Tommy.
“Stle cau pousi,” came the reply, this time a little quieter.
“Could you open the door please? Its freezing out here,” Tommy pleaded, knocking on the wood. The door was yanked open so abruptly, that Tommy didn’t have the time to react as a hand shot out of the darkness on the other side and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him violently through the doorway.
“Who are you and how did you get here!” Hissed the voice, Tommy lay on his back, staring upward, the hand still on his chest, something sharp pressed up against the side of his neck.
“I said it before, my name is Tommy,” Tommy said calmly, trying to quell the urge to scream.
“How do you speak English, and how did you get here?” The voice pressed, the outline of a man’s head came into focus as Tommy’s eyes adjusted, the dim candlelight not allowing him to see well enough to define facial features.
“I speak English because I am from America, and I got here through an inter-reality portal,” Tommy explained, still struggling against his urges to flail and scream.
“No, no one knew about, but how?” the voice said, the man stumbling upright and away. Tommy sat up quickly, taking his backpack off to stand up faster. He found the man slumped against a small seamless wooden table against the wall, the candle on its surface burning happily. The side of the man’s face was illuminated, a wrinkled hand covering his eyes and forehead.
He had a strong jawline and long white hair tied back in a ponytail, his face was tan and wrinkled, he must have stood over six feet tall when upright. He stood there for at least ten minutes, leaned against the wall, his hand covering his face.
“It’s your turn now, who are you and how did you get here?” Tommy said, getting his nerve up.
“My name is Malkiv Manderkiln, I am an American –Russian scientist,” he said calmly and slowly, “I was transported here during an experiment gone wrong,” he said, standing up straight, his dark blue coat shimmering gently in the low light.
“No, no, no, no,” Tommy said, finally recognizing him. He stumbled back against the opposite wall, pressing firmly against it, “You died, they said you died, you blew up,” Tommy said, his eyes widening further. He couldn’t breathe and was becoming claustrophobic. He reached up and tore the mask from his face and glanced around, for what he didn’t know.
“I was in Chernobyl, researching the link between a new form of matter I discovered, and radiation. My theory was that radiation strengthened the matter and would make it possible for me to gather and harness it,” he explained, folding his hands behind his back.
“It does,” Tommy said quietly, interrupting the man.
“What?” he asked, frowning.
“The more radiation that has passed through a space, the more NSM that can fit into the area, making it easier to harness it,” Tommy said.
“What is NSM?” Malkive asked.
“Nuclear Static Matter, your papers never defined it, so I gave it a name,” He replied.
“How, did you get my papers? I burned them, every last one after I was rejected by the council of theoretical science,” He asked, leaning back against the wall.
“After the speech you gave to the council, you dropped your papers into the trashcan, they were all copies, but they were valid, I picked them out,” Tommy explained.
“And you, you came here?” he asked, becoming confused.
“I studied on your matter discovery for four years of college, I wrote a multitude of research papers, ran thousands of theory experiments, I pawed over your papers, and later my papers, constantly theorizing and trying to figure it all out,” Tommy said excitedly, his fear replaced by the amazed admiration he was feeling.
“You furthered my research?” Malkiv asked, stepping forward slowly, “You believed it? And you devoted four years of your life to it?”
“Once I understood the basics of your papers, it wasn’t hard to theorize, it was more difficult to try to prove anything,” Tommy went on, grabbing his back and pulling out a pager. He clicked the button on the top and the screen lit up with an odd green glow, a bright number five displayed, “I made these, they measure the amount of NSM in the space around it, each number is undefined as a measurement, since you can’t measure NSM, but it shows how much is around you at any given time,”
He’d gone from fearing for his life, to showing off his advancements in the field of NSM research to his idol. His mind reeled and the possibility that Malkiv could have been there by accident, in the exact place as he was.
_______________________________________________________________
Hope you guys like it, wrote it up one long, sleepless night. I think I'll continue it.
[bspoiler="Spoiler Alter"]Malvik is the protagonist.[/bspoiler]
Along the left wall was set a folding table, one leg nothing but a baseball bat with the corner balancing on it. Atop the table were assorted refreshments, mostly cheeses and crackers, but a few slivers of meat could be seen, hidden away under the untouched wheat crackers. A coffee machine sat at the end, the pot empty to the last drop; people huddled about it, waiting for it to resume its tireless efforts of sustaining the caffeine addicted room of scientists.
A small table sat at the head of the room, a red plastic tablecloth draped over it in an attempt to make it look slightly less pathetic. A microphone stood on its surface next to a glass of water, lipstick stains ringing the rim. A pile of papers, at least a foot high resided next to the water, on the top piece the blueprints of some machine could be seen along with the big red word ‘COPY’ written over the center of the page.
From the left, a pressed sawdust door swung open, the old hinges creaking with the strain of holding the mold infested door upright as it pivoted. A tall man, at least six foot five, stepped through the doorway, stooping slightly to avoid his fedora from catching on the trim. His hair was long and white, his face wrinkled and a deep tan color; his hands clutched a small briefcase, a light fixture fastened to the outside in an odd fashion. He stumbled slightly as he made it to the makeshift podium and snatched the case to his chest, ready to protect it should he trip.
Slowly and reluctantly, he sat the case down on the table, right next to the papers, his hands shaking as he relinquished the black leather briefcase. Reaching down, he picked up the glass of water and brought it to his lips before noticing the marks across it and sat it down rather abruptly, sloshing the contents slightly. He looked about ready to faint as he tapped the mic, the thumps echoing across the room, snagging the attention of the men grouped around the coffee maker, which had just begun expelling dark black coffee.
“Hello everyone,” he said, his voice deep and smooth, his wrinkled face obviously not a testament to his voice, there wasn’t a shake as he spoke, though his hand could barely hold the shaft of the microphone, “My name is Doctor Manderkiln, I’ve been working nonstop for the last ten years on dark matter research,” he went on, stepping away from the podium as he spoke, trying to get out from under the harsh, bright light blaring down on him. Several men in the audience scoffed audibly at the mention of dark matter.
“But it is not my research on Dark Matter that has brought me here today,” he continued, ignoring the sounds from the men, “Now before I go on about my new discovery, I’d like to tell you how I came about it,” he said, drawing is speech on, the interest in the room mounting. While many of the scientists were skeptical or even dismissive of dark matter research, they were still interested in hearing about Malkiv’s discovery.
A boy, only ten years of age, sat in the corner, a large camera positioned in front of him, pointed straight at the speaker. He was fascinated by any of the speeches his father took him to; he would bring his grandfather’s tape camera to them and tape the entire event, then at home, he would watch them over and over again as he read books on the things the people spoke of. His father, however, did not approve of his boy’s dedication to learning about the theoretical or experimental sciences. He preferred his son read about chemistry and biology, the solid sciences. Even as he tried to get the boy interested in them, he could not and gave up, allowing him to learn about whatever he wanted.
“I was in my laboratory one evening, trying desperately to capture and contain dark matter; I would filter out all particles, leaving only space before removing any gasses. My problem came when I found that my methods of filtering were removing the dark matter along with the dust particles,” the Doctor went on, pacing back and forth behind the red table, “And so I changed my method of filtering, I misted the entire inside of the container with an acid solution, the weight of the liquid drug all of the impurities out of the air, leaving the dark matter behind, or so I thought,”
“When I went to observe the remnants of what was in the container, I was disheartened to find that there was no dark matter that I could find, nothing. Though, inside of the vacuum, I did find something else,” the scientists, all now seated in rickety old folding chairs leaned forward slightly, “I discovered a new kind of matter, something visible, not to the eye, not even with the most powerful microscope in my lab; but when I went to empty the container, I felt something, almost like static electricity,” Murmurs now spread through the crowd.
“And so I repeated my process, only this time, I ran the entire experiment in a static free environment, and again, I felt the static. After a few days of constant experimentation, I realized that what I had trapped inside of the container had the same properties of radiation and electricity, combined into its own space. That is when I found that this matter is everywhere, it is responsible for everything,” He said, finishing with a dramatic hand movement, as if plucking an apple from the air. Several people in the audience began to laugh, and slowly, the laughter spread until the only two people not laughing were Doctor Manderkiln and the boy with the camera.
“And what proof have you that this new ‘matter’ exists?” asked a man as he stood, turning to get another cup of coffee.
“I’m coming to that,” said the doctor, glaring around at his colleagues, most of who were still recovering from the fit of laughter. He drew the briefcase roughly into the middle of the table and flicking a switch in the top of it. The light bulb atop the case lit up slightly, but was drown out by the blinding light above the table.
“And what does that prove?” asked a woman who was walking briskly toward the door.
“It proves that this matter is in the air! It proves that it is everywhere and can be harnessed and used for power!” he said loudly, pointing to the dim light.
“Come now Malkiv! This is a bigger waste of time than your last ‘discovery’,” Said a man in a white lab coat as he passed by with the other scientists on their way to the door. Malkiv just stood there, staring at them as they passed, the look of anger on his face slowly replacing itself with sadness, and then, after the room was empty, to complete misery.
Slowly, he walked back to the table and picked up the briefcase and papers before heading toward the door, not seeing the boy sitting in the corner. With a sigh, he dropped the briefcase, as well as the pile of papers into the trashcan next to the door and exited. The boy in the corner stood up, tears dotting his eyes as he saw the complete rejection of the man’s life work, how he’d been crushed so completely by his so called colleagues.
The boy flicked the camera off and hauled it up and ran to the trashcan. Taking the backpack off of his back, he tossed the bent and messed papers into it, along with the case and ran out the door. His father was probably almost done in the lab.
Eight years later.
Tommy picked up the cell phone; its screen covered with tape where it had been cracked repeatedly, the antenna replaced by a coat hanger wire with a ball of tin foil tipping it. Sighing, he wiped the grime from its surface and stuck it back in his pocket, the figures of three larger boys walking away. Slowly, he stood up, his arms and stomach aching here he’d been hit, some blood running down from a cut under his bruising eye.
With a groan, he picked his backpack out of the muddy puddle where he’d been thrown and limped away, back to his apartment, only a block away. His hair was colored a bright blue and was spiked backward, making his head look like a blue hedgehog. He was regular height, only six foot, and was thin and wiry; his skin had a nice tan from his hours outside doing research.
He’d graduated from high school four years ago, and when he was fifteen was accepted into a state college. He’d earned his bachelor’s degree in four years and was now after his masters. His mind worked quickly and efficiently, his bad memory his only hindrance, forcing him to study constantly. He found that being yong in college was not fun, most of his classmates rejected him because of his age, and the others hated him for being smarter than them. He learned quickly to stay away from everyone and do his own thing, he was never invited to parties and was abused constantly by the people who were still working on the degree he’d achieved quickly and smoothly; his classmates were much, much older than him, all of them in their mid-thirties or forties, and though he was more intelligent than any of them and consistently came out at the head of the class in grades, they wouldn’t come near him because of his age. The people his own age would abuse him simply for being smart, which is why the three brutes had roughed him up.
He made it back to his small rental trailer and climbed in, avoiding the rotten stair as he passed. With a sigh, he tossed his backpack onto the small brown love seat, the only piece of furniture in the one room trailer. The kitchen consisted of a microwave and a counter, the refrigerator was outside, the size making it impossible to fit it inside. With a louder sigh, he drew the cellphone from his pocket and looked down at the grimy screen, a small number six flickering on the glowing blue surface.
Smiling for the first time that day, Tommy laid the phone down next to an old leather briefcase on the floor almost covered by mountains of papers. A classic, non-energy efficient, light bulb protruded from the top, glowing gently. Tommy lowered himself down next to it and drew a thin laptop from his backpack, fortunately unbroken. The screen lit up bright blue as he opened it gently, watching the windows logo pop up. He tapped out his password and opened one of the hundreds of Word documents littering his Documents folder and began checking it over, speed reading over the mounds of text.
With a click, he closed it out and switched to a different document, this time, one bearing a blueprint. Slowly, he checked it over before smiling again, it was so close, victory was so close. Jumping up, he closed the laptop and grabbed a pile of papers, all connected by a paper clip. He tossed the papers and laptop into his bag before grabbing up the odd cellphone and dashing out the door.
He made it halfway across the campus before seeing anyone, and it just so happened that when he did see someone, it was too late to stop and he crashed full force into a girl walking along with ear bud in her ears. She came around the corner so suddenly that Tommy didn’t have time to stop, so he reached out and wrapped his arms around her, spinning around her to fall backward onto his backpack; unfortunately, the girl came down too, a scream catching in her throat as she fell backward.
An elbow jammed into Tommy’s gut as she landed on him, squashing the thin boy into the concrete. A stream of profanities came from the girl as she struggled to get off of him; once she was off, she jumped up, glaring down at the boy.
“What the hell are you doing you dipshit?” she yelled, kicking him hard in the shin as he tried to get up.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t stop!” he said, dodging another kick as he stumbled upright.
“The hell are you running from?” she asked, glancing around, she seemed to be getting over being thrown down.
“Nothing, I’m just in a hurry,” he said, edging away, anxious to get moving again.
“Oh? And where are you going at seven at night?” she pressed, stepping closer and poking him in the chest. She glanced down at his mud covered clothes and scowled.
“I just, the, uh, the shop,” he said, taking a step away from the girl.
“The shop is closed after five,” she said, speaking slowly as if he were retarded.
“I’m an attendant, I’ve got a key,” he said, turning to walk away. She snorted and followed him as he walked, making him increasingly nervous.
“Where are you going?” he asked, slowing down to walk next to her.
“Same place you are, unfortunately,” she said angrily.
“But the shop closes at,” he started to say but she interrupted him.
“I’m an attendant,” she said, picking a key from her pocket.
‘Great,’ Tommy thought, ‘I gotta spend the evening with this girl,’ He walked on in silence, staring at his shoes. Not soon enough, they came to the shop; Tommy reached into his pocket and drew out the key to the old rusty door and entered, flicking the lights on as he passed. The girl headed for the opposite side of the shop and began sorting out lengths of piping. Tommy avoided her and went to the electronics parts section, which was closed off with heavy metal fencing and padlocked gate.
Quickly as he could, Tommy grabbed the parts he needed, relying on the papers in his bag at times to find the exact piece. After he’d gathered an armful of pieces, he returned to the main shop and laid them out on one of the work tables, as far away from the girl’s table as he could get. After several hours of soldering and tinkering, he’d finished several large speaker-like funnels, long red and black wires extending away from them. It was almost midnight by the time he had them set up on microphone stands, pointing at a concrete wall.
With shaking hands, he drew his laptop from his back and opened it on the desk, hooking the wires from the speaker like devices into a USB port. He crossed his fingers as the computer searched for the new equipment, the software he’d designed in his advanced programming class a few mother earlier working hard. With a loud ding, the hardware was recognized and the control panel popped up on the screen. While graphically unappealing, the simple command prompt was beautiful to Tommy.
As he typed in the codes for activating the installed software, he didn’t notice that the girl had sidled over and was not peering over his shoulder.
“The hell is that thing?” she asked rather loudly into Tommy’s ear. The boy jumped back, stumbling on some circuit boards he’d left on the floor. He spun around to look at the girl, actually seeing her for the first time. She was slightly shorter than him, shoulder length red hair, freckles strewn across her cheeks and nose. Her eyes were ice blue, made even more shocking by black eye liner.
“It’s, uhh, nothing, just a project,” Tommy stuttered, turning back to his computer, where the options menu had appeared. He pressed a few buttons activating the pair of devices. There was a low hum as they came to life, vibrating gently on their stands. The girl stood behind Tommy, staring at them, a look of amusement on her face.
“So, you made a pair of low frequency speakers?” she asked skeptically, watching the boy as he stared hopefully at the odd looking device.
“Just wait for,” he started, holding a hand up, just as the room was lit by a bright light, like the sun had just risen suddenly. Tommy grabbed a welding mask off of the table and covered his eyes with it. At the spot on the wall where both of the speaker devices were pointing had appeared a baseball sized hole, which looked out on what appeared to be a desert. Slowly, the hole got bigger, getting to about the size of a basketball, the surface wavering and shimmering like water, distorting what was beyond. The girl had stumbled back during the flash, but now stared at the hole, her eyes wide, mouth hanging open slightly.
Tommy lowered the mask and stared at the bright sunlight coming through the hole, just as it began to close, slowly but surely, it returned to a baseball sized hole before disappearing completely, leaving the room strangely dim.
“It worked,” he whispered, his voice cracking. The humming from the speakers faded slowly as they lost power, “I-I can’t believe it worked,” he stuttered, supporting himself on the desk next to him.
“What in god’s name did you just do?” the girl asked, finding her voice.
“I just proved that he was right,” Tommy said, a grin spreading over his face.
“Who was right? About what?” she pressed, completely confused. Tommy didn’t reply, instead, he packed his laptop and papers before plucking the cone shaped devices from the stands and running out the door.
Two days later, Tommy sat on the hard floor of his trailer, staring at the papers covering the space around him. The original papers from Malkiv’s lab lay strewn about, the big red word ‘COPY’ stamped onto each one. They outlined possible uses and theories for the matter, one of which outlined their use in teleportation. Every spot on earth was covered by this matter, some places contained more than others, but it was everywhere. Malkiv had outlined the possibility of travelling along with the matter as it moved like the tides and winds, changing and moving constantly, though much faster than the wind or tides.
Tommy had elaborated on this theory and found that every square foot of space was occupied by the matter, this square foot of space contained an exact amount of the mysterious matter at one time, this amount could only be changed by a massive boost of radiation being applied to the space it occupied, which would then increase the capacity of that space to house more of the matter. Tommy had theorized that these spaces were all separate from the one next to them and ran around the earth in a constant stream, the matter squeezing down to fit through more limited space, and rushing along when it came across higher capacity space.
Tommy had named the matter Nuclear Static Matter, since none of Malkiv’s papers defined it. He called the pathways the NSM followed NSM Channels. He’d also worked on converting physical objects to NSM, though with limited success. It appeared that the more NSM in the air around where you tried to make the transformation the more successful the transformation was.
Now, Tommy had discovered a way to focus the NSM, the speaker like devices would pull the NSM out of the space around them and forcefully direct it at a single spot, the more NSM, theoretically, the better the outcome. The opening of the window had been completely unexpected; especially when it returned to its original form after the NSM Projectors had lost energy.
Tommy’s thoughts were brutally interrupted when someone took to banging on his door. Scowling, he jumped up, no one ever came to visit him. He yanked the door open to find the redhead from the shop standing on his rotten wooden stairs.
“The hell do you,” he started, but she cut him off as she shoved past him into his small trailer.
“Not the most luxurious of trailers,” she criticized, glancing around at the mid-1960s styling.
“It’s all I can afford,” Tommy said, closing the door and running a hand through his hair.
“So your parents couldn’t set you up with an apartment?” she asked, sitting down on the love seat, the cushion squashing out a cloud of dust.
“I don’t speak to my dad, and my mom’s long gone,” Tommy said, stooping to gather up his papers into rough stacks, “Now what do you want?” he asked abruptly, turning to her, his arms full of research documents.
“What do you think I want Porcupine?” she asked sarcastically.
“I can’t explain it, okay?” he said, exasperated, he was rather aggravated that she’d crashed his train of thought, “Now if you’d just,” he motioned at the door but the girl didn’t move.
“How about this, you tell me who was right about what, and I’ll leave,” she said, standing up and walking up to him, grabbing his papers and sitting them down on the floor. His arms hung like limp noodles, unsure of himself without papers or a book clutched in his grip as he spoke to someone.
“Alright, Doctor Malkiv Manderkiln was right about NSM,” he said before motioning at the door.
“Okay,” she said, ignoring his hints for her to leave, “So what did you do to the wall in the shop?” she flopped back down onto the love seat and looked up at him expectantly. He groaned and sat back down on the floor.
“I focused Nuclear Static Matter into a small spot on the wall, opening what I hope, was basically a wormhole,” he said, shuffling papers, trying to keep his hands busy.
“This Nuclear Static Matter, what is it?” she pressed, drawing her legs up under her to sit cross legged.
“It’s matter, you know, like what everything is made out of, only, you can’t see it; it’s similar to dark matter, only it can be converted into energy if there’s enough of it, and its affected by radiation and sound waves,” Tommy explained.
“Don’t patronize me kid, I know what matter is,” she said, her voice taking an edge, “How old are you anyway? Sixteen?” she asked.
“I’m eighteen, and I just wanted to make sure you understood,” he said, scooting away from the girl a little bit.
“Alright, well, this wormhole, can we go into it?” she asked, changing the subject.
“That’s what I’m looking into,” he said, motioning at the papers, all written by him during different stages of his research.
“Well why don’t we just test it?” she asked, looking at the NSM Projectors hanging on a coat hook next to the door.
“Its not that simple,” Tommy said, frowning, “What if its not a wormhole and it just kills me when I touch it, what if it is a wormhole and it closes off when I’m on the other side?”
“That’s why you don’t go through it yourself, mother of Jesus, you’ve figured all this out and can’t understand what lab rats are for?” She said, flashing a bright white smile at Tommy.
“Well, I guess,” he started hesitantly.
“Great! Meet me in the shop in an hour!” she said, jumping up.
“No, wait!” Tommy said, as she opened the door.
“What?” she turned and looked at him, the excitement clear on her face.
“I don’t know if,” he started, but the girl interrupted him.
“Then we’ll find out,” and she was gone.
Tommy grumbled the whole way to the shop that evening, the sun was going down quickly and soon the entire campus was cast under the shadow of night. He had the two NSM Projectors slung over his shoulder in a wal-mart bag, papers from the last four years of his research were jammed into his flimsy backpack next to a large video camera, the only expensive thing he owned, even his little trailer had cost less. His laptop was tucked under his arm, still warm from its recent use.
As he opened the door to the shop, he came face to face with the shop teacher, a tall, burly man, who hated most of the shop attendants, the students with access to the shop out of hours.
“Tommy boy!” he exclaimed as he stepped out, clapping the boy on the shoulder, “What brings you to the shop this late at night?” he asked, glancing at the NSM Projectors in the bag.
“Just some experiments,” he said, the man was his favorite teacher, and the only one who liked him.
“Ahh, so that’s why Miri’s got lab rats in my shop,” He said, frowning, “Be sure not to make too big a mess,” he warned before smiling again and walking away, whistling What’s Cookin’ Good Lookin’ . Tommy shook his head and stepped inside.
“There you are!” The redhead yelled as he stepped inside, she was just adjusting the microphone stands in the same spot as they’d been a few days ago when the wormhole had been opened.
“Sorry, I lost track of time,” Tommy replied, sitting his stuff down on the table.
“Alright! So I thought we could try to toss some stuff through the hole, and if that goes well,” she said quickly, standing up, “We could try these,” she held patted a cage with several large white rats inside of it. Tommy didn’t reply, instead he went about setting up his rig.
“So, Porcupine, what’s your name?” she asked, leaning against the counter to watch what he was doing on his laptop.
“Tommy Theode,” he replied, tapping out the codes to open the menu for the projectors.
“Wait, wait, wait,” she said, grabbing his arm, he stopped typing and looked up at her, “Not the son of Alex Theode?” she asked.
“He’s my father, yeah,” he said, brushing her hand off to continue typing.
“No way! His foundation gave me a scholarship!” she said happily, leaning over further to watch what Tommy was typing.
“What’s your name, by the way?” Tommy asked, pressing enter before looking up at her.
“Miranda Alton,” she said, still watching the numbers and letters dart across the screen, “But you call be Miri, and if you ever call me by my real name, I’ll bust your little blue balls,” she warned, glancing up at the Tommy, who had gone slightly pale.
“Okay, uhh, are you ready?” he asked, changing the subject, the software finishing its loading and prepping.
“Yeah! Let’s do this!” she said, putting on some heavy gloves and standing behind the projectors. Tommy drew his odd phone from his pocket and tossed it to the girl.
“That will tell you how much NSM is in the space, when the numbers start going down, the wormhole will begin closing,” he explained, pointing at the phone. She nodded and he turned back to the laptop and pressed ‘Start’.
It took the projectors almost a full minute before the wormhole appeared, flashing into existence as it had done before. Immediately, the girl tossed a baseball through, followed by a shard of metal and a candy bar. The hole was about the size of a basketball when she grabbed up one of the rats and tossed it through as well. She ran over to an IPad lying on the counter next to the rat cage and tapped it.
“Its alive! It made it through!” she said loudly, looking up at Tommy, who had his camera in hand, filming the whole thing. Then, with an odd sputtering sound, the blindingly bright hole vanished. Tommy ran around the desk and grabbed up his phone and held it out next to the wall, a big number one lit the screen. He turned to look at Miri, who was beaming.
“Well?” he asked, glancing at the Ipad.
“It’s either somewhere satellites’ signals can’t reach it, or it completely vanished the second the wormhole closed,” She said, holding up the screen, it displayed the vitals of the other two rats in the cage, but all of the vitals of the third rat were zero, even its temperature. After a moment, a popup appeared, asking to turn the microchip back on.
“And you’re sure that it couldn’t be out of signal range?” Tommy asked staring at the screen, his mind spinning through thousands of scenarios.
“It’s linked up to a system of government satellites; there isn’t a place on earth that is undetectable,” she said, her smile faltering as she realized what that meant.
“It’s not on earth,” The pair said in unison. Tommy spun to his bag, pulling out papers and shuffling through them, searching for the one he’d written on the paths of NSM ringing the earth. After a minute, he found it and read over it quickly, looking at all of his figures and logic. Miri idled about the room as he read and thought, petting the rats and playing with bits of machinery.
“I’ve got it!” Tommy said, jumping up, Miri jumped as well, startled by the sudden outburst after an hour of silence.
“Well?” she asked walking over.
“There are two possibilities,” Tommy said, turning a piece of paper over to draw on the other side, “These pathways, or, uh, streams of NSM cover not only earth, but the entire galaxy, and to think of it, probably the entire universe,”
“Streams? You mean they go to the same place every time?” she asked, glancing at the paper where he’d drawn up some circles for earth and other planets.
“Yes, the NSM travels over space in a long bands, each square foot, to the best of my estimates are part of a different band, some parts are wider, others thinner, depending on radiation and such,” Tommy explained, “They change like the wind, sometimes going this way, another time that way, but they always loop around and connect to their own tail, in a constant loop, they intertwine and cross over, but they’re all distinct and separate, like wires in a cord,” He’d drawn lines wrapping around the earth and moving on into space, to other planets.
“Alright, so how do you explain there being an end to them? How does the wormhole open, if it’s one continuous channel?”
“I think that it opens the hole when it reaches a place too thin to transfer the needed amount NSM to keep it open, it drops you off there,” He said, working from his mind now, trying to puzzle it out.
“Alright, then what’s the second possibility?” she pressed on.
“That NSM doesn’t react upon solid matter, that it works upon other currently theoretical matter,” he said, drawing a new diagram, this one of a wall, “It won’t do anything to solid matter directly, but will affect other matters, such as dark matter and time,” he explained.
“So, that would mean that it’s a portal into the past?” she said, leaning against the counter.
“Not necessarily,” Tommy said, tapping the eraser of the pencil against his forehead, “It didn’t do anything to the concrete, if it worked on time, it would have reversed the concrete’s life, returning it to its base elements, which means it has to work on one of the predecessors of time, something more basic,”
“What if NSM is as basic as it gets?” Miri asked, starting at the blue haired boy.
“What if,” he mumbled, staring at his piece of paper. Then a crazy idea hit him, “Have you ever seen the Land of the Lost? An old movie where they went to an alternate universe,”
“Yeah, a long time ago,” she replied, beginning to get the gist.
“What if NSM is the glue holding reality together? What if, we could take NSM and separate reality from whatever else is out there? What if there are other realities, other versions of history, other,” he stopped, staring at but not seeing Miri, his mouth slightly open.
“Tommy! Earth to Tommy!” she said, waving a hand in front of his face.
“The big bang, it was so spontaneous and sudden, or so the story goes,” he said quietly, “What if, our world wasn’t the only thing created during the big bang, what if there are other realities all smashed into this one planet,” he returned to his drawing of the wall and drew another, “Look, if we can just break the wall separating our reality from this other one, we can,” he drew a line through one wall, to the next space, “Reality is like a room in a house,” he started on a different point without finishing the last, “You can’t see the other room unless you add a window or open a door, if you didn’t know any better, you could think that the walls are the edges of your universe, of your reality and that there was no way to get past them,” His eyes widened as he reached his realization.
“You can’t be serious,” Miri laughed, standing up and stretching, “I only believed the teleporting because of the weird wormhole thing, but other realities? Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself, Tommy?”
“Yeah, probably,” he said, straightening his papers and returning them to his bag. He didn’t believe it though; he knew he was right, that he had stumbled upon the peak of matter research. He big Miri adieu and returned to his trailer where he spent the rest of the night running scenarios on his computer, watching the video of the wormhole over and over.
A few weeks passed and Tommy had quit going to classes, one of the teachers became concerned.
“Hey! Miri! You still dating Tommy?” the bulky shop teacher asked as she left class one morning.
“What? No! I mean, we were never dating!” she said loudly, rather flustered by the sudden question, “I helped him with some experiments like, twice,” she grumbled, turning to leave.
“Well, he hasn’t been to class for two weeks now, and I’m really concerned about him, I didn’t get a reply when I knocked on his door,” the man continued, drawing the girl’s interest.
“What do you want me to do about it?” she asked, turning in the doorway.
“I don’t know, see if you can get him to answer the door,” he said, turning off his laptop.
“I thought you said he wasn’t in his trailer?” she asked.
“He didn’t answer, but I heard him moving around inside,” the man replied.
“I’ll see if I can talk to him,” She said, her mind racing about wildly, all of the different things he could be absorbed with shooting across.
She decided to skip English and headed straight for the trailer park reserved for students just outside of the school grounds. The refrigerator outside hummed away happily as she made her way up the stairs, the rotten stair catching her by surprise. With a yelp, her leg went through the rotten wood, sending her crashing to the grounder, her knees hitting the gravel hard, her elbows smacking the stair in front of her.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Tommy yelled, throwing his door open and rushing out. He hopped back as he saw who it was smashed through his stairs.
“Are you going to help me, or just stand there staring at me?” Miri said angrily, trying to get up.
Tommy grumbled inaudibly as he helped her out of the mess and into the trailer. She flopped down onto the loveseat and glanced around. She gasped at what she saw. The walls were lined with papers, all linked together by red marker drawn across their curfaces, stacks of papers lay about all over the floor, a laptop buzzed away on the floor next to an old briefcase and the NSM Detector cell phone.
“What the bloody,” she started, but Tommy held up his hand, cutting her off.
“I was right,” he said, pointing at a piece of paper, it was different from the others, it was pinned up with a green pin instead of the yellow ones and a small diagram had been drawn up on its surface, covering the letters.
“Tommy, I think you’ve,” she said slowly, picking her way carefully past the stacks of papers and discarded food garbage. The remnants of a few pizzas, sandwiches and multiple energy drink cans littered the floor.
“You don’t understand, do you Miri?” The boy said, cutting her off. She looked up at him, away from the debris strewn about her feet; his blue hair was disheveled and unwashed, his eyes bloodshot and tired.
“I understand that you’re taking this way too far Tommy,” she said, walking back over to him, firmly, she grabbed his shoulders and forced him to sit down on the loveseat.
“Listen to me Miri,” he said, his voice hoarse, “I’ve been working to prove Doctor Manderkiln’s theories for the last four years, he was thrown brutally from the world of science for thinking this way; I couldn’t even experiment because no one would fund my projects, I’ve been doing theoretical work for so long, and I finally have a chance to move my projects somewhere. I can’t stop now,” he said forcefully.
“Listen to me Tommy, this whole alternate reality thing is going nowhere, there’s no way another reality exists, the rat was disintegrated, easy as that, the wormhole ground it up and obliterated it,” Miri said, “All of this talk of NSM is nonsense, how do you know this matter even exists and your machine isn’t acting upon something else, like sound waves?”
“If you don’t like it, then mind your own god damn business,” Tommy growled, standing up and pushing by the girl.
“Alright, how about this then,” she started again, her temper flaring, “What the hell are you going to do with your wormhole? Where are you going with this?”
“I’m going to use this,” He replied, lifting the cushion on the loveseat. Underneath it was a backpack, a simple soldier pack. With a grunt, he hauled it out and held it at chest height so Miri could see it.
“You’re going for a hike?” she asked, pressing her right hand to her forehead, her impatience clear.
“This pack contains a setup for my NSM Projectors, smaller and simpler, I’m going into the alternate reality,” He said. Miri’s eyes went wide.
“You can’t be serious, what about the rat?” she asked, completely astonished by his apparent lack of self-preservation.
“The rat is in the alternate reality, we lost connection with it because no satellite we have can penetrate the wall,” He explained, pointing at his old wall example, which hung on the wall above the loveseat.
“What the hell are you thinking Tommy!” she yelled, finally snapping, “You’re going to go through your little wormhole, you’re going to die, and what? For what?”
“For myself,” he said, smiling eerily.
“Yourself? You’re going to die! Do you not understand that?” she yelled, grabbing the sides of her head before turning away to pace.
“Maybe, but it’ll be worth it, to see what’s out there,” Tommy said, his grin growing.
“Do you really have so little to live for that you’re willing to throw your life away for some scifi dream?” She asked, spinning to face him.
“My father has disowned me simply because of the area of science I study, my mother is a drunk and a drug addict living in Minnesota, I have no friends, everyone in my class hates me because of either my age, or my intelligence. The scientific community will not accept NSM as a real category of matter and won’t even allow me to show my findings; and yes my dear, I have tried to report my findings, and no one will listen,” He said, turning to set the backpack down.
Miri stood there, stunned at how easily he’d torn down everything that would have made his life worth living, and without flinching. As if he was stating fact.
“I’m actually surprised at the coincidence of this,” he said, turning back to face her, his smile returned.
“Of what?” she asked, still dazed.
“That you should come here this afternoon, I actually planned on leaving tonight,” he said, smiling at her.
“So, you’re going through with it no matter what I say?” she asked, sitting down slowly next to his laptop, a new PDA plugged into it, some sort of file transfer in progress.
“If anything, I’d like your help in making the trip a bit smoother,” he said, coming to sit down next to her. She looked up at him, completely awestruck at both his determination and his insanity.
“What do you need?” she asked, shaking her head.
“I only need a few things,” he said, jumping up, his energy renewed, “But, uhm, pardon my enthusiasm, I worked on my NSM theories for four years before you came along and got me to talk about it; and now, I feel a bit crazy not talking about what I’m setting up,”
“So, I’ve set up an entirely new system, I’ve got four, much smaller NSM Projectors, all placed perfectly to target the exact same spot. The multiple projectors should increase the amount of NSM being thrown at the wall and will cause the wormhole to be considerably larger, though it will only be open for a matter of seconds, as far as I can estimate judging from the past tests, it will last about ten seconds,” He explained, holding up microphone looking devices, each with a folding metal cone around the tip. They each had one wire that led to a larger one with a micro-USB plug on the end.
“That plugs into my PDA, which I’ve programmed the activation menu into, though I’ll still need my laptop to change certain program options,” he went on as he noticed Miri playing with the micro-USB plug, “So I’ve made three sets of the projectors and a PDF for each one with different passwords for each one,” he explained, opening the backpack to make sure it was all there.
“What else are you taking?” she asked, helping him pack everything away neatly.
“I’ve got a small tank of oxygen and a gasmask, some solar panels with charger cords for all of my hardware, a gps mapping device that maps based on location rather than satellite position, so that I can leave a trail of breadcrumbs and make notes on specific points along my way,” he spoke quickly, his hands shaking dramatically, “A few hard disks and flash drives, some food and water, a hatchet and this,” he drew a small pistol from a side pocket on the bag. It was a pocket size revolver, firing only four shots.
“You might want to pack a blanket,” Miri warned, “As well as some rope,”
“Of course! I’ll run to the store, be right back,” he said, running out the door, leaving the girl alone. Slowly, she sat down and stared at the wall, covered in research papers Tommy’s fellow scientists refused to read, of diagrams of his equipment and theories. She reached up and wiped a tear away from her eye, she hated people who threw their lives away, and beyond that, she’d actually developed some feelings toward the devoted nerd.
An hour later, Tommy returned with fifty feet of rope and a thermal blanket as well as a few more bottles of water.
“It’s seven ‘o’clock,” Miri said as Tommy finished packing his stuff away.
“Then it’s time to go,” He said, his voice shaking a bit, he was beginning to panic, and Miri hoped he’d chicken out. But no luck so far, they walked quickly to the shop where Tommy had decided to open his wormhole.
Silently, Tommy set up his projectors, this time using a premade folding frame to point them perfectly. At last, the time had come. It was almost nine in the evening when he plugged his silver PDA into his device and began tapping away on it.
“Miri,” he said, pausing in his tapping, but not looking up. The redhead was leaned against the wall in the corner, watching him carefully, “If you could, take the projector somewhere safe after the portal has closed,” he said, closing his eyes and bowing his head.
“Anything else?” She asked, straightening up and walking over to him.
“Keep this with you,” he said, laying the PDF down to reach into his pocket. He drew out a small black box, a green screen on one side of it completely blank. Slowly, he handed it to the girl, who took it gingerly, turning to over to inspect it.
“A pager?” she asked, looking up at Tommy.
“If you press the blue button, it shows you the level of NSM in the air space around you,” he said, pointing to the big round blue button on the top, “If you could, keep it with you,” he said, smiling at her.
“Alright,” she said, returning his smile.
“Wish me luck!” he said as positively as he could, but he voice shook badly. Quickly he hauled his backpack onto his back before pulling the gasmask, a classic WWII mask, down over his face. He pressed a final button on the PDA and unplugged it from the projector. He wore a long sleeve black wool coat with gold buttons, thick black leather gloves covered his hands and a pair of fire retardant blue jeans covered his legs. From between the straps on his mask, his spiky blue hair stuck up in all directions.
After a moment of waiting, the wormhole flashed into existence on the stone wall, this time it was the size of a hockey goal, on the other side the desert looking landscape could be seen as if under the surface of water. With a grunt, Tommy hurled himself through, crashing into the ground on the other side. What he’d expected to be sand was instead stone; the hard earth was sculpted into sand like patters, wavy like a wind ravaged dune.
As quickly as he could, he rolled to his feet to see the watery surface disappear in a flash, the sandstone wall it had formed on returning to its grainy texture. Slowly, he looked up. The sky was bright blue, like on earth, the odd sandstone earth swept on infinitively in every direction. Right in front of him was a round tower, stretching into the sky, so high that the top could not be seen from that angle. It was made of the same stone the ground was made of, only carved into bricks and laid with some sort of sandy cement.
While it looked like a desert, the temperature was low, almost freezing, even though the sun was high in the sky. After a minute spent staring at the wonder before him, Tommy snapped into action, drawing his camera from his bag and turning it on.
“Looks like I was right,” he said, grinning at the camera, even though his mask covered the smile. He slowly scanned his new surroundings before turning the camera off and tucking it back away. As slowly and casually as he could, he circled the tower, staring up at its unimaginable height. It couldn’t have been more than ten feet across, though it stood tall and straight. On the opposite side of which he’d arrived, he came to a tall wooden door, rounded to fit with the curve of the tower. It was made of a dark, gnarled wood, seemingly a solid piece without a handle or knocker. Carefully, he reached up and tapped the surface.
From the other side, there was a loud clunk and murmuring before it went silent. Tommy could hear the breathing of someone, or something, on the other side as they pressed their ear to the opposite side of the door, the same as Tommy was doing now.
“Hello?” Tommy said loudly. Whoever was on the other side of the door was obviously startled as there was a cacophony of crashing and thunking as they fell from wherever they were standing.
“Depri catsu balda!” came a smooth, deep voice from the other side.
“Uhh, hello! My name is Tommy-,” He cut off, about to say his last name. Here, he was Tommy, just Tommy.
“Stle cau pousi,” came the reply, this time a little quieter.
“Could you open the door please? Its freezing out here,” Tommy pleaded, knocking on the wood. The door was yanked open so abruptly, that Tommy didn’t have the time to react as a hand shot out of the darkness on the other side and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him violently through the doorway.
“Who are you and how did you get here!” Hissed the voice, Tommy lay on his back, staring upward, the hand still on his chest, something sharp pressed up against the side of his neck.
“I said it before, my name is Tommy,” Tommy said calmly, trying to quell the urge to scream.
“How do you speak English, and how did you get here?” The voice pressed, the outline of a man’s head came into focus as Tommy’s eyes adjusted, the dim candlelight not allowing him to see well enough to define facial features.
“I speak English because I am from America, and I got here through an inter-reality portal,” Tommy explained, still struggling against his urges to flail and scream.
“No, no one knew about, but how?” the voice said, the man stumbling upright and away. Tommy sat up quickly, taking his backpack off to stand up faster. He found the man slumped against a small seamless wooden table against the wall, the candle on its surface burning happily. The side of the man’s face was illuminated, a wrinkled hand covering his eyes and forehead.
He had a strong jawline and long white hair tied back in a ponytail, his face was tan and wrinkled, he must have stood over six feet tall when upright. He stood there for at least ten minutes, leaned against the wall, his hand covering his face.
“It’s your turn now, who are you and how did you get here?” Tommy said, getting his nerve up.
“My name is Malkiv Manderkiln, I am an American –Russian scientist,” he said calmly and slowly, “I was transported here during an experiment gone wrong,” he said, standing up straight, his dark blue coat shimmering gently in the low light.
“No, no, no, no,” Tommy said, finally recognizing him. He stumbled back against the opposite wall, pressing firmly against it, “You died, they said you died, you blew up,” Tommy said, his eyes widening further. He couldn’t breathe and was becoming claustrophobic. He reached up and tore the mask from his face and glanced around, for what he didn’t know.
“I was in Chernobyl, researching the link between a new form of matter I discovered, and radiation. My theory was that radiation strengthened the matter and would make it possible for me to gather and harness it,” he explained, folding his hands behind his back.
“It does,” Tommy said quietly, interrupting the man.
“What?” he asked, frowning.
“The more radiation that has passed through a space, the more NSM that can fit into the area, making it easier to harness it,” Tommy said.
“What is NSM?” Malkive asked.
“Nuclear Static Matter, your papers never defined it, so I gave it a name,” He replied.
“How, did you get my papers? I burned them, every last one after I was rejected by the council of theoretical science,” He asked, leaning back against the wall.
“After the speech you gave to the council, you dropped your papers into the trashcan, they were all copies, but they were valid, I picked them out,” Tommy explained.
“And you, you came here?” he asked, becoming confused.
“I studied on your matter discovery for four years of college, I wrote a multitude of research papers, ran thousands of theory experiments, I pawed over your papers, and later my papers, constantly theorizing and trying to figure it all out,” Tommy said excitedly, his fear replaced by the amazed admiration he was feeling.
“You furthered my research?” Malkiv asked, stepping forward slowly, “You believed it? And you devoted four years of your life to it?”
“Once I understood the basics of your papers, it wasn’t hard to theorize, it was more difficult to try to prove anything,” Tommy went on, grabbing his back and pulling out a pager. He clicked the button on the top and the screen lit up with an odd green glow, a bright number five displayed, “I made these, they measure the amount of NSM in the space around it, each number is undefined as a measurement, since you can’t measure NSM, but it shows how much is around you at any given time,”
He’d gone from fearing for his life, to showing off his advancements in the field of NSM research to his idol. His mind reeled and the possibility that Malkiv could have been there by accident, in the exact place as he was.
_______________________________________________________________
Hope you guys like it, wrote it up one long, sleepless night. I think I'll continue it.
[bspoiler="Spoiler Alter"]Malvik is the protagonist.[/bspoiler]
Damxge- Rook
Legotransform- Everlast
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