Well, I finally started on my newest novel. It's tentatively titled The Onyx Cluster, although that could change if I discover something more appropriate over time. The first chapter is posted below for your amusement.
1
MAN
IN MOTION
John
Forsythe smirked. It was something he
did a lot, especially when he felt he was dealing with an idiot.
He
waited several seconds for the windbag to burn himself out before
responding. After a pause designed more
to create the impression of weary patience rather than that of thoughtful
response, Forsythe said, “I’m not surprised by your close minded view of
things, Dr. Strassen. However, your
insistence on Presentisim, as well as your adherence to the outmoded belief
that time is illusory, ignores the basic fundamentals of Relativity that have
guided physics for the past century.”
Forsythe
was a young man, at least insofar as how those in the Eastern
Mountain University’s Physics Department measured age. At 32, he was far more accomplished than
those more than a decade his senior. He
was published in several journals and recognized as one of the leading minds of
the next generation of physicists. Unfortunately
for him, his was not a field that appreciated youth. Such adherence to rumpled old men in horn
rimmed glasses was one of the reasons he maintained a light beard and wore
sports coats with the patches at the elbows – they gave him the appearance of
being older and more distinguished, helping him gain street cred in a world
dominated by dinosaurs.
Still,
not all dinosaurs approved. One of them
was the gasbag seated in the auditorium’s first set of seats, and his name was
Jim Strassen.
“What I
think you’re forgetting is that even Einstein said that time is illusory. Our perception of time can be altered by the
curvature of space, but the passage of time itself cannot be altered, for it is
not a force that truly exists.” Strassen
was a fat old man, with thin wisps of hair combed over a shiny bald spot. He and Forsythe had been sparring ever since
the younger man arrived four years ago.
“The
curvature of space/time here is not an illusion, and its existence is
acknowledged in any number of competent journals. I think it’s the uncertainty of overlapping
strands of time and the implications of that which makes you uncomfortable.”
Strassen
chuckled. “I can hardly be made
uncomfortable by that which is not real.”
Forsythe
knew he could continue sparring here for another hour, but that would drive the
audience to boredom. Granted, there may
not have been many here today – the auditorium held over 600 seats, but
everyone who attended today’s lecture could easily fit in the first few rows –
but Forsythe knew they were eager for a show, so a show he would give them.
On the
stage behind him sat his white boards filled with the calculations he’d made,
as well as a rectangular table where his department chair and two other
colleagues sat to help with questions.
It was his department chair, Dr. Harold Liscewski, who broke in to calm
things down.
“Dr.
Strassen, I don’t think this is the forum to continue your feud with Dr.
Forsythe. His equations are here for
everyone to see, and if you have issue with where he’s going with them, then I
suggest you take issue with that.”
Forsythe’s
smirk returned as Strassen looked briefly nonplussed, though he quickly
recovered. Strassen remained standing
and adjusted his glasses before saying, “Okay, let’s assume for a moment that I
bought into this outlandish theory of the curvature of space/time allowing for
travel along its axis, absurd though it may be.
The equations themselves are fuzzy even in accordance with the theory. For example, you’ve calculated the variable
coefficient too high. Even if you could
produce the power necessary to warp time and travel through the breach, the
point in time you’d reach would be in motion, making it impossible for you to
return to the present. Further, the
power levels as shown are insufficient to store enough for the return trip –
temporal radiation levels, if they existed, would drain what you had.”
This was
the moment Forsythe had been waiting for.
Scratching his chin, he said, “You know what? Let’s find out.”
The
boards behind him split, and a spotlight from the rafters lit up on the
platform now advancing towards the front of the stage(at least Carol, his
graduate assistant had gotten that one right; she might not grasp String
Theory, but she had a penchant for the dramatic). On the raised platform stood a thin silver
sphere suspended by metal poles between a pair of curved metal rods. A series of wires ran from the back of the poles
and towards an unseen destination.
Without
waiting for Strassen, or anybody else, to say anything – their bewildered
silence was enough for the moment – Forsythe announced, “Allow me to introduce
you to my latest project, a device that will change the way we perceive time. I call it TADS, or the Temporal Adjustment
and Displacement System. I believe the
hipper amongst us would simply call it a time machine.”
He
spread his hands and bowed while moving several steps to the rear. He was expecting applause, so when nothing
but silence greeted his bow, he looked back up at the audience. Some were fidgeting with their chairs,
looking almost embarrassed for him, while others had wide eyes of wonder.
Strassen
was the first to speak. “Is this
supposed to be a joke? I thought this
was a lecture on the anomalies of time and its points of intersection, silly as
that may be, but have we moved into some elaborate prank?”
“I can
assure you that this is no prank,” Forsythe said while doing what he could to
keep the glee out of his voice. “Once
the equations were complete, building the machine to act on them wasn’t hard.”
Liscewski
broke in again. “I know this sounds
crazy, but this is as real as it gets.
Assuming Dr. Forsythe’s calculations are correct, you are about to
witness the world’s first confirmed time travel event.”
Now
applause broke out, even if they were scattered. Strassen looked at Liscewski and said, “Were
this real and not some elaborate ruse, why are we the only ones in attendance
for this supposedly monumental event?”
“This
lecture was open to everyone,” Liscewski reminded him.
“You know
what I mean,” Strassen replied shortly. “Where
are the reporters? Where’s the
fanfare? If this could plausibly be
real, why the no muss, no fuss attitude?”
Now it
was Forsythe’s turn to break in. “Because
this isn’t the big event. I plan to
depart today, but in order to prove that this is real, I won’t rematerialize
until next week at exactly 1pm. One week
will have passed for you, but for me, the trip will be instantaneous. I believe that will be when the pomp and
circumstance you desire will be present.
Am I right, Dr. Liscewski?”
The
department chair nodded. “Upon Dr.
Forsythe’s departure, we will be sending out press releases to all the relevant
organizations.” Left unsaid was that if
things didn’t go as planned, not having the press here didn’t open them up to
an embarrassment.
“The
amount of energy required for such a foolish venture is extreme,” Strassen
noted. “Where are you going to get that
kind of power?”
“We’ve
been siphoning small amounts out of the university’s cyclotron for weeks,”
Forsythe said with a wave of his hand.
Nodding towards Liscewski, he noted, “All with the university’s
permission, of course.”
Anticipating
Strassen’s next question, Liscewski said, “Don’t worry – we haven’t endangered
the cyclotron or the research into small particle collisions. That’s why I’ve allowed Dr. Forsythe to take
small amounts at a time – so that he could store the necessary power without
interfering in any research.”
There
was a new silence in the auditorium.
Strassen looked nearly beside himself, which Forsythe took no small
amount of pleasure from. Finally, the
rumpled old professor said, “I don’t think anyone doubts that I find this whole
project silly, and that I think Dr. Forsythe is a buffoon who wastes his talent
on fantasy, but that doesn’t mean I want him vaporized. If you’re wrong, the energy output alone will
tear through him like a hot knife through butter.”
Liscewski
shifted uncomfortably. However, his
voice was steady as he said, “We’ve considered that and think the risk is
small. Dr. Forsythe has demonstrated
enough safety features that let me know the machine itself will trip like a
breaker before it reaches that point.
However, if he’s correct, and I’ve always been impressed with the amount
of detail he puts into everything, most especially his calculations, the
rewards for the university will be extreme, to say nothing of the impacts on
the world at large.”
Forsythe
knew but ignored the implication in Liscewski’s voice – if this should fail – a
ludicrous notion in his eyes – then the university loses next to nothing. The safety features will prevent harm, and no
reporters were yet on scene to witness any failures. In fact, it wasn’t until after Forsythe
suggested that they wait until he vanished that they call the press that
Liscewski dropped his final objections.
Before
Strassen could say anything else, another audience member called out from her
seat. “Dr. Forsythe, what if Dr.
Strassen is right about the coefficient calculations? If time, per your theory, is moving, then won’t
the points of intersection also be moving?
You could get caught up in a slipstream of some kind and be deposited
anywhere along the space/time continuum.”
“Janice”
– he thought her name was Janice and that she was an adjunct professor in the
physics department, but she hadn’t been around long enough for him to know or
yet care – “don’t you think I’ve considered that? This has been my life over the last three
years, and I’m certainly aware of the danger in the slightest calculation. Don’t worry – I promise that this will work
as advertised.”
He
smiled at her. He was sure of what he’d
done. Yes, he enjoyed a martini on
occasion while working, but the values always came out the same(or close enough
as to make no difference). Instead of
questioning him, they should be congratulating him.
Stepping
over to the table just as the three behind it stood, he shook Liscewski’s hand
before turning back to the audience and saying, “Now witness our next step into
the future, this one quite literally.”
Liscewski
and the others strode off of the stage and Forsythe stepped to the platform and
his baby. He unlocked the highly
polished yet transparent metal – an aluminum oxynitride compound – and climbed
inside the machine. There was but a
single seat, and that barely wide enough for one man(Strassen, with his girth,
would never have fit). At his fingertips
was a control panel for him to control the energy flow and manipulate the
breach he wanted to create in space/time.
Over his head and behind him, flowing into the poles that held his
device, were a series of wires designed to warp space/time so that the machine
could slip through it and spin towards its new destination.
He keyed
the startup sequence and the display in front of him lit up. Most of what he saw were readouts – power consumption,
temporal velocity, space/time conjunctions, etc – as well as a series of dials
that would allow him to manipulate the energy so he could control where he went. Those dials would allow him to funnel the
necessary 297.4 terajoules of energy required for the palladium loops to crack
space/time and allow the machine to slip along the coils of the fourth
dimension(for contrast, the bomb that leveled Hiroshima exploded with 63
terajoules of power).
He knew
that the department chair and his associates were now off the stage and gaping
at him from the seats. Assuming his
calculations were correct, and they always were, they should be far enough back
to not be caught in the torrent of dangerous but well contained energy that
would follow his trip.
Forsythe
manipulated the dials and began pumping energy stored from the university’s
cyclotron into the coils. The outer ring
of the silver sphere began to spin, slowly at first, but with increasing
momentum. He couldn’t bring in the
energy too quickly, for that would indeed risk either vaporization or a much
wider breach in space/time than he wanted, so he inched the dial around.
The
first indication that his experiment was working was a blue pop outside the
machine that he saw from his seat. A
second, much louder pop followed a few seconds later. The ring around the machine was now spinning
at a rate approaching the speed of sound, and it would soon approach the speed
of light(where the magic would really happen).
The sphere lifted from its position to a place in parallel with the
rails that held it. A low hum was now
audible, and the blue flashes of light outside the machine were growing more
frequent.
All at
once, Forsythe felt himself pulled forward at the chest, as if a series of
hooks were latched underneath his ribcage and pulling him towards an unknown
destination. At the same time, he felt
as though his head was being squeezed through a small pipe. The hum he heard previously was now a ringing
of deafening proportion.
And the
lights! A blue glow pervaded everything,
while spirals of red and yellow seemed to emanate from his hands and feet. Outside the machine, streaks of green and
blue flew past like he was passing the reflectors on some blackened highway.
However,
at the end of the journey, Forsythe would say that the strangest sensation he
felt was that of being in several places at once. He brought his hands up to plug his ears
against the ringing he heard, only to see that his hands were also still on the
dials in front of him. He looked out of
the window to see the streaks of light, only to discover he was also still
looking at the controls.
The
feeling of traveling was also an unpleasant surprise. He felt like someone was trying to turn him
inside out while jabbing needles into his flesh. Suddenly, as if someone slammed on the
brakes, he lurched forward and everything stopped. He knew that if he survived, this would not
be an experience he would care to go through again.
Then
there was silence.
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