Quantum Poppers (9 page)

5693.1

Met the Prime
Minister today. He really has no idea what’s going on. The yes men - to my
surprise - were rightly the ones in control. They may not be fully aware of the
consequences but at least they’re no longer willing to turn a blind eye to my
findings. I think it was young William who swayed their decision to set us up
full time. If you can call a twenty-year-old ‘young’ that is. I was around his
age when I started developing the thesis that would result in the crux of this
journal. He’s a good kid, stumbling across him may be the greatest achievement
of all. I can sense already that he’ll never leave my side. As I said, I
believe it was him - my proof - that swayed them. There were also my threats to
expose the findings to the general public, but I recognise that they called my
bluff. If they ever thought I was capable of such a thing, they never would
have let us leave.

The room
contained the obligatory large oak desk, over which many a deal must have been
thrashed out between leaders of the world. Young William and I sat at one end,
those with power at the other: Prime Minister, Minister of Science, Home
Secretary, and four others that oozed authority but were not forthcoming in
their exact purpose within the government. It wouldn’t surprise me to discover
that they were part of a newly formed alliance to watch over myself and my
team.

Proof - that’s
all it’s been about these last eighteen months. Proof that my initial findings
aren’t nonsense but the greatest discovery of the human race. I may flatter
myself in describing it as that, but there really is no other way to put it.
What started in that basement twenty-five years ago has now grown into a fully
fathomed phenomenon. The PM signed off on our team to carry on the research, we
now have official residences, and a secrecy act so severe you’d have thought we
were doing something horrific and against the realm - and not the complete
opposite. I am donating the rest of my life in an attempt to save this planet.
It's a shame it has to be kept secret, but I suppose it’s true: we cannot let
this become common knowledge. How would the public react? Nothing they could
do, but being aware as a race that we are always one touch away from
annihilation, it doesn’t bear thinking about. I’ve started to wish it hadn’t
been me who discovered this. It must have been going on for centuries, all
signs show that things are growing worse, with ever regular occurrences -
ignorance was bliss. If I, or anyone else hadn’t discovered this and we all
woke up one day to find our world destroyed, would any of us be less the wiser?
But I do know, I did make the discovery. I now promise to devote my life to
maintaining balance.

I've been
debating over whether to include this next part within this journal but here
goes, the truth will out: I pray now that my experiments haven’t made matters
worse, that I haven’t somehow expedited events. As noted above, occurrences
have increased.

As for the
meeting. It was relatively short. Last week’s example to the PM personally (the
smashed window trick) had tipped him over from interest peaked to fully blown
acceptance. Today was about formalities, the signing of papers, the legal
trivialities of making us official. Although officially we do not exist. Crazy,
another paradox - I can’t take much more of them. It’s funny, the only thing I
can really remember about the meeting were the life-size portraits of our
greatest leaders staring down upon us from canvas. So much history, I just hope
our future history gets to look down on further generations.

Note: I really
must stop referring to the kid as young William. He wants me to call him
Bartley, from here on I will.

0001.1

Dear journal. I
always wanted to start like that. You are the first entry in what I hope to be
a series outlining the quantum experiments I will be undertaking. Maybe this will
get read if experiments are a success; they should be just as interesting even
if failures.

(I will stop
referring to this journal as if it were a person, it is not good science!)

As noted in far
too many quantum mechanics books to be listed thoroughly here (note to self:
add extensive bibliography at back) it is science-fact that time travel is
theoretically possible. The creation of wormholes are all that is necessary - I
believe I have the means at my disposal to create these, and of greater significance,
the means to retrieve and convert the electromagnetic particles they radiate. I
have created a device which bends space-time. I am not the first, and am not
arrogant enough to assume I will be the last to do this, it is just a case of
creating a strong enough signal to lock onto in the past.

It all seems so
obvious now. Just like the telephone. Our voices travel instantly along a wire.
But the most important element isn’t the wire, or even the voice - it’s the
telephone at each end! Here I am, trying to complete a journey from one
destination to the other. I have the means of travel (the wormhole) but no
coherent destination. No outpoint at the other end. If I can recreate the
outpoint - a signal I can lock onto in the past - then travel is theoretically
possible. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier. Maybe I will (a little
time travel humour for you there).

So there you
have it. I plan, at 9am tomorrow, to switch on The Device. This, if my
hypothesis is correct, will create a bend in space-time. I will then wait
precisely sixty seconds before triggering the return code on the same Device.
If my calculations are correct the newly created bend in space-time will
instantly ‘search’ for (I genuinely believe that is the correct word; time is
coherent) its mate. The bend in space-time will wrap the intervening sixty
seconds into a timeless void. I foresee two possibilities when this is done.
Either the universe will implode, or I will be able to step back through the
link connecting the two wormholes. Again this is theory (yet a leap of faith
worth taking), but the connection should hold until I am ready to return.
Remember, the wormhole isn’t a physical tunnel, it is warped space-time that my
Device (detailed instructions of which will be found in the appendix) will be
able to lock onto and return me at the press of a button.

We shall see.
Let’s hope I get to write a second entry in this journal - at the very least
that will prove I haven’t destroyed the entire universe and the space-time
continuum. Wish me luck!

 With the phone
at his feet, Tony grabbed the first thing to hand: a porcelain mug. He threw it
with full force at the kitchen wall - a way to make it all not true, a way to
take it back.

He pounded the
counter top and roared at the top of his lungs. He couldn’t care less what Troy
upstairs thought. These worries were minuscule specks on life, the needless
by-products of an existence which occasionally exploded in your face. There
were no tears, but his heart was pounding as though it were attempting to expel
something from within. Panic resided in him but at no point did he doubt the
truth. As his heartbeat intensified, miraculously his breathing calmed. This
conflict brought a piercing headache which gave him pause: to take a second,
breathe, and calm down. He looked to the broken fragments of the mug which lay
like ice caps upon his black kitchen floor. He spread them out with his foot,
crushing a couple of larger ones to see what shapes they would produce, all the
time forcing his mind blank. He didn’t want to think, didn’t want anything to
bring back the fear and panic that was subsiding within. But he couldn’t do it.
His mind fell to Emma.

Despite the
jokes and insinuations of Andy and Simon about his relationship with Emma - insinuations
he’d regularly brush aside with a forced laugh and a second pint - he couldn’t
help admit that hearing her name was a ray of sunshine in his otherwise cloudy
world. He could remember the first time he had ever seen her, the way that door
had briefly opened and shut on her was imprinted in his memory like a
photograph. The Hamiltons supermarket in Posslingford had hardly brought many
positive things into his life, but an everlasting friendship had been one. He
had already been working there on and off for six months whilst whiling away
the remaining college months before embarking on a university course he had
realised wasn’t going to be the passport into a successful career his parents
would have hoped. But back then he had been living in the here and now, the
only thing that mattered was the job and ensuring shelves remained stacked,
floors remained swept and floats remained accurate. He was aware how pathetic
this all sounded but the complete and utter lack of responsibility of those
days created a freedom he would never attain once his true working life began.

He had been on
the search for Bob the caretaker when it had happened. Tony's main
responsibility for that Wednesday (it was definitely a Wednesday, strange how
random specifics lodged in the memory) was to ensure the delivery driver for
that day could get access to the back door. What he was delivering was not
recalled, but only because Tony never bothered to find out in the first place -
the joys of a total lack of responsibility. The backdoor bell rang and fists
pounded the steel door, but without Bob the caretaker’s keys, that delivery was
not coming in. He had searched the staff room, the kitchen, and swept
throughout the central aisle of the shop on the lookout for Bob before making
his way to the main office. Bob the caretaker was unlikely to be there but a
call could be made to track him down and provide the elusive key.

The office lay
in the corner of the shop accessed by a door many customers had aimlessly
wandered through with expressions as blank as the door itself. It must have
been quite late in the afternoon as one of the few memories of that moment that
struck Tony now was the yawn and the pause he took before opening the door. He
stared down at his feet, stifling the yawn with one hand on the handle. Just as
he pushed it open he looked up and saw Bob approaching the office and let the
door instantly fall shut. But as it did he glanced into the office, and made
eye contact with Emma. The door opened and shut in half a second. It was at
shutter speed and it caught the connection forever. She was there for an
interview and three weeks later she had the job. Maybe if they hadn’t have made
eye contact he never would have made that bond. Maybe if the delivery had been
twenty minutes earlier she would have just been another employee in the
revolving door of teenage staff at Hamiltons Posslingford. And maybe if Bob had
been where he was supposed to be, and seen to the delivery, then Tony would not
be standing in his kitchen now, hoping his heart rate would calm whilst kicking
pieces of broken crockery, picturing that photograph of a memory he would
treasure forever.

As was the way
most evenings panned out these days, he had been playing his video game when
the phone rang. It was the landline, which often got ignored. But occasionally
Tony felt the need to justify the £70 he’d spent on the cordless device by
answering it. With the game paused, he had headed to the phone which lay in its
cradle by the lounge door, a clear sign it wasn’t used too often. Regularly
used cordless phones like this were never on the cradle when it rang.

‘Hello,’ he
said, answering the phone whilst walking over to the lounge window to close the
blind. It overlooked the street where late night joggers passed, kitted out in
black and yellow Nike gear. He dropped the blinds to hide any chance of seeing
a Repeat Other. It was as he did this that he realised he hadn’t seen any for
at least three days. Perhaps ignoring things and hoping they would go away
really was the correct course of action. ‘Hello,’ he said again, there had been
no response.

‘Oh, hi, is
that Tony?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Hi Tony, it’s
Terry here.’

The name struck
a nerve. Terry; sounded familiar in a far off kind of way. Whoever it was, the
tone in which they were talking indicated that who this person was might not be
as important as what he was about to say. There was a pause as Tony
contemplated how to respond without sounding rude.

‘Terry, Emma’s
dad.’

‘Of course,’
said Tony. ‘I was miles away there for a second. All ok?’

There was a
choked pause as though he had moved the phone away to cough or emit some sound
he didn’t want Tony to hear.

‘I thought you
should know.’ He spoke slowly and sounded drained, nothing like the eager
viewer who had poked his head continually around Emma’s lounge door the other
night in hope of seeing some slasher film violence. ‘Also, please know that I
have phoned you first. Before Trevor.’

‘What’s the
matter?’

‘I know you and
Emma were close.’

‘What’s the
matter?’ Tony’s heart was already beginning to beat in an erratic movement and
the more Terry delayed assuring him that there was no problem only increased
the anxiety that welled within, threatening to explode from Tony like vomit.
And then came the words that literally took Tony off his feet: ‘there has been
an accident.’

Tony dropped to
the sofa and stared at the blinded window which was keeping out what little
moonlight there was. At first, thoughts of a planned surprise birthday party,
or present ideas had flooded his mind as for a reason for the call. Terry had
never phoned him before; maybe he needed present advice for his daughter and
he’d tried him before Trevor. He had known her longer, he may have had a more
personal example of gift ideas. He ignored the fact that her birthday was six
months away, and even then, not a particularly significant number. But those
words - there has been an accident - brought only one thought to Tony's mind:
how bad?

‘What do you
mean?’ said Tony. His voice had dropped to almost mimic Terry's. He was on the
verge of cracking, not wanting to know how severe said accident could be. It
couldn’t possibly be the worst kind.

‘She...’ and
then there was definitely a cry. Terry had been caught out and not had time to
move the phone away from his mouth. This triggered something inside Tony; he
was losing control of his own breathing and knew he too was close to tears. He
needed to know the details. What exactly was he on the verge of crying for?
‘This afternoon...’

‘This
afternoon, I was with her; she picked me up from town. She dropped me home.’
Tony hoped the pleading he sensed in his voice wasn’t too clear. They’d met up
that afternoon, so how could there possibly have been accident.

‘At some point
this afternoon, Emma,’ - Tony had never hated the name being spoken so much
before - ‘Emma was involved in a car accident.’

It was Tony's
turn to struggle for words. He remained silent, still half praying this was a
sick joke, a wrong number, or a twisted and heightened version of his recent
visions.

‘We don’t know
the details. On the A98, about 5 o’clock. There was a head-on collision with
another car. She wasn’t wearing her seat belt...’

‘She always
wore her seat belt,' Tony whispered.

‘...and she.’

Just say it
, thought Tony,
his eyes now clamped shut, blocking any tears.

‘Tony, she died
this afternoon. Instantly we’re told. I don’t know how to feel about that bit,
but I know the rest has torn me apart.’

Tony remained
silent. She must have crashed after dropping him home. Terry no doubt had
worked this out, perhaps it was irrelevant.

‘I thought you
should know. You’re welcome to come over if you like. I’m sure Pam and I will
be up all night. I don’t know yet whether we need to be alone or not but if you
need someone to talk to, we’re here.’

Tony suddenly
stood, needing a physical sensation to wake him. This had to be a dream, Emma
couldn’t die. But of course, he knew there was no logical reason why this fact
could not be true. He headed towards the kitchen, drawn by the bright light.

‘Thanks, I, I
don’t know what to say. I think I’ll stay here for now, and work things out.’
Tony didn’t know what this meant but Terry seemed to understand and began to
cry freely on the end of the phone. He could hear more muffled cries as Pam
joined him in the room.

‘You know where
we are if you need us.’

‘And if you
need me.’

‘She was a good
girl wasn’t she?’

‘She was the
best.’

The first tear
broke from Tony and he hurried his goodbyes, Terry appreciating his acceptance
of the news. He would now be informing Trevor. Despite how faceless and
fleeting within their lives he had been, it was not a call anyone would want to
hear.

Tony stared
blankly at the phone for at least five minutes before dropping it to the floor.
He then grabbed a mug.