All That Sparkles is Not...



  All That Sparkles is Not…

  Steve Simons

  Copyright 2012 Steve Simons

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  INDEX

  Chapter 1 – Bright Start

  Chapter 2 - Discoveries

  Chapter 3 – The adventure begins

  Chapter 4 – Dark is not the word for it

  Chapter 5 – Like Waves

  Chapter 6 – Reaching an Understanding

  Chapter 7 – Expected?

  Chapter 8 – Take me to your master

  Chapter 9 – Day One

  Chapter 10 – Impressive or What?

  Chapter 11 – Call this Entertainment?

  Chapter 12 – Escape plans

  Chapter 13 – What is going on?

  Chapter 14 – From bad to worse

  Chapter 15 – Where are you?

  Chapter 16 – Teamwork

  Chapter 17 – In search of the unknown

  Chapter 18 – It feels like progress

  Chapter 19 – All is lost

  Chapter 20 – Return

  Chapter 21 – Dilemna

  Chapter 22 – Five Years On

  Introduction

  Let me take you on a journey and in so doing let’s go on an adventure. You have got a few hours to spare haven’t you? Often such stories stem from magic, this one involves the magic of science; a scientific discovery, to be more precise. Let us see where this discovery will take us, certainly out of the hum drum of normal life. I can promise keen explorers, an alien planet, some aliens and adventure. As for the rest you will need to read on.

  This book has been rated as suitable for age 12+. Enjoy. Feedback welcome.

  Chapter 1 – Bright Start

  The room is well lit, I don’t know why, but I expected it to be dark, with some sort of large device in the centre, well, these things usually start off bulky and large; then after several months, if not years, improvements kick in. Instead there’s just a small bench tucked away in the corner with a collection of boxes, connected by a rats’ nest of cables. “Rats’ nest”, a phrase one of my professors used to use, when he inspected our work and saw wiring like this. He’d add, “How the ‘eck can you expect to be able to make ‘ead or tail of this mess?” Well his critique certainly had the desired effect on me, but from the bench opposite, the same can’t be said of Phil and his team.

  “What did you call it?” I ask, looking back at Phil.

  Phil, looking slightly nervous, as if I were a senior judging his work, replies, “Well we are working on a better name, but working title is SLEB, standing for Super Light Emission Beam.”

  “Yes I can see why you are looking for a better name, it doesn’t sound very elegant, but as you say, it is a working title. So what is its USP?”

  “All in good time,” Phil still looks nervous as if I am going to swallow him whole at any moment. I smile, hoping that it will set him more at ease, Phil continues, “I just thought I’d give some background.”

  I glance at my watch. A bit stupid really, after all, I have only just arrived; but I did tell Phil I had another meeting this afternoon.

  Phil smiles, “It’s OK I’m not about to deliver a paper, I haven’t written it yet mate.” My thoughtless action could have made Phil more nervous, instead it sparked up the old friendship, Phil waves at the bench and continues, “I just wanted to show you what we have, I know I can trust you and I’m bursting to show someone outside the team.”

  Feeling guilty now, my arm drops quickly, “Sorry, old habits….”

  “No probs mate, you never had much patience.”

  “Yeah, dead right, it’ll be my undoing one of these days. I’m not too big though, to spare some time for my old mate, so do you charge for use of the chairs, or can anyone use them, it was further from the station than I thought, I’d have taken a taxi if I had known.”

  Phil smiles, “Sorry, please take a seat, you sure you don’t want that tea? I can get Gavin to fetch us one, he won’t mind.”

  I accept, and Phil pops out. I take off my jacket, relieved to do so. I had not realised until now how warm I was.

  The stuff on the bench, so small; as if it is a hoax and not worth coming all this way. I am tempted to wander over to take a closer look, but I remind myself that it is Phil’s project.

  I jump like a guilty schoolboy, as Phil enters the room and announces, “Right that’s sorted, take a seat.”

  Phil grabs the nearest chair to me, swings it round and plonks it down with the back facing me, he sits astride, hands on top and his chin rests on his hands. Reminds me of old times and the many chats we had at Uni.

  Phil launches straight into, “We were looking for some new materials to produce us a high power output but low power drain communications standard, laser device. Then someone came up with a crystal that they found in a cave in Peru, or somewhere like that. The materials bods crawled all over it, but found nowt of interest to them and tossed it over to us, thinking it might be of interest, as the atomic structure was somewhat ‘unusual’, as they put it. Unusual, darned right it were unusual; I ‘ave never seen owt like it.” Phil’s excitement not only evident through his voice, but he is standing now and his arms are waving around.

  Phil pacing up and down, continues, “Anyway the upshot is, we were playing around with exciter circuits, trying to get some sort of reaction out of it and nothing, not a photon. The team were about to give up, when I had one of those, what do you call it, moments?”

  “Eureka?” I offer.

  “Yes that’s it, a Eureka moment.” Phil sits down again, resuming his previous pose, “I was thinking back to the atomic structure and the patterns, when suddenly it hit, me, throw something with a similar disjointed pattern and it just might, have the desired effect. I can tell you, never had so much fun in my life with the maths afterwards; trying to prove why it worked the way it did and in fact, explain, what it was doing.”

  “Hey steady Phil, you’re in danger of losing me. I gather you hit on the trigger mechanism, but what was the result, the product, was, er…… is it a comms grade laser?”

  “Sorry, I just get so excited about it. Come and see for yourself.” Phil leaps up again, the chair falls over and crashes to the floor and Phil ignores it and heads straight to the bench. I am right on his heels.

  In moments, Phil has the kit on the bench making some squealing noises and just in front of the short round shiny tube is the sparkliest thing I have ever seen. I walk behind Phil to get a better look down the end of it. Although from the side view the tunnel looks quite short, looking straight down it, from behind, it looks like a very long tunnel, what is more it is a bit like looking down a telescopic tube, the end closest to me looks small, but the end furthest away is much larger, or at least, that is the impression it gives. What is more there seems to be something at the other end, but quite what it is I cannot make out. Whatever it is does not appear to be moving, but is quite blurred, like looking through an unfocussed lens.

  “Wow!”

  “You can see why I am so fascinated by it now, can’t you?”

  “Is it safe to….”

  “We don’t know, yet, at least the maths seems to indica
te that it isn’t stable and you could do untold damage to yourself if you attempted to touch it. What is more, I do not recommend looking back up from the other end, we’ve blown several cameras trying it. We even put detectors in the path and they all seem to just disappear, probably vaporises them instantly. The reason I wanted you to take a look, is because, you were always better at the maths than me and I wondered if I had missed anything, that explains what this phenomenon is or does. Great isn’t it?”

  “Great? It’s incredible! I would be honoured to look over your maths.”

  Chapter 2 - Discoveries

  A month has passed and Phil standing at the entrance, smiling starts chattering as soon as I am within earshot. You would have thought we had not spoken in months, yet we had a phone call only two days ago.

  “Hey steady, let’s wait until we are in your lab. You never know who is listening.” I feel for him though, I am as excited as he is.

  We do not have long to wait though, we soon arrive at the lab door. Phil opens the door and immediately I notice there are three others in the room. I recognise Gavin, he had brought me tea last time, he is a tall thin lad with black hair, this time, I notice that he is a rather spotty face youth, he has designer glasses, is dressed quite casually, as if he had just come back from doing some surfing, his black hair reasonably short, but in quite a degree of disarray.

  Phil sees my surprised look and says, “I thought it best to have the whole team here, this is Gavin, Rachel and Anile.” Phil spins round and hand directed to me, he announces, “And this is my old Uni mate Bill, Bill Prescott.”

  Anile, not as tall as Gavin, has quite a roundish face, dark skin and dressed as if he had just come from a meeting of executives, he even has a tie on. He seem to be studying me closely.

  Rachel, what can I say about Rachel? If only I were a few years younger. She is drop dead gorgeous, looking more like a model than a scientist. I am conscious of the fact that I must be staring, as she is looking quite embarrassed. I look back towards Phil.

  Phil turns back to face me and asks, “So what did you er…” He pauses as he scans my face, then to add to my embarrassment, he looks at Rachel, then back at me, he smiles and continues, “What did you find?”

  I avoid looking directly at Phil’s face, “Well essentially, your maths was reasonably sound; you just didn’t go far enough in terms of the products.” I glance back a Phil’s face, he has lost the dumb smile and is concentrating. I resume, “You only took things to the 2nd level. I took it onwards and found the reason for the appearance of a tunnel and why the image at the end appears to be out of focus. I also know why stuff that you put in the tunnel disappears.”

  “Great, are you actually going to tell us?” Phil asks.

  “Now who is being impatient?” I ask smiling, then continue, “Of course I am, that’s why I’m here. Still charge for use of the chairs?”

  Phil smiles and points to the nearest chair. Then does his chair swinging around bit, he’s right in my face, I feel a bit uncomfortable. I throw him one of those looks and he immediately gets the message and bumps his chair backwards. He glances back at his team and indicates that they sit also. The two lads grab chairs and assume the same position as Phil, whereas Rachel sits conventionally like me. This is awkward, as the semi-circle ends with Rachel and she is sitting right beside me. I being used to addressing an audience, know that I am going to have to make eye contact with the whole group, including Rachel. I must put out of my mind, her looks and treat her like one of the lads. No easy to do I can assure you.

  “OK the fact that you have reached a kind of harmonic, if not disjointed frequency, but with a rotating waveform superimposed, is causing the crystal to not only excite and emit a beam, but because of the rotating waveform the emissions are coming from more than one point source. This is causing the hollow tube like appearance. Add to that the underlying disharmony in your trigger signals; this seems to be causing a disturbance in the fabric of space.”

  Did I have to glance at Rachel just at that moment? Rachel is staring at me with those gorgeous blue-green eyes, wide with excitement and wonder. Her lips parted, just forming a slight ‘o’ shape; the o of fascination. Her lips, sparkling, sparkling just like the tunnel itself; the one that I am describing, in such soulless language, not worthy of such a response. Did I have to look in this particular direction right now?

  I stumble on my words, “I er, would, surmise from this, that what we can see down the, the er, tunnel is some object at some other point in space.” I pause and resist the temptation to look back at Rachel to see her reaction.

  I am wrenched back to my presentation, as I catch Phil’s ‘so what’ look. Phil says, “OK so my maths covered the tunnel formation, but where did you get the fabric of space bit?”

  I reach into my pocket and pull out the rather battered looking note book that I always carry with me. I thumb through the pages and after what seems like an eternity I eventually reach the page I need, “The third series, right there, the annotation refers to Stephen Hawkin’s notes, you know the ones that I emailed you.”

  Phil studies my scribble for what seems like ages, turning the pages forwards and backwards multiple times. I dare to glance at Rachel and am relieved to see that she is studying Phil and my note book.

  Lip gloss. The thought detached from anything else, anything else, but the comparison of Rachel’s lips to the sparkle of the tunnel.

  What is it about a scientist, that we have to analyse everything, have an explanation for everything?

  “That is amazing!” Phil exclaims, making us all jump, me especially, as Rachel is now looking back at me, she sees that I am studying her and she blushes.

  “You have even worked out the exact extrapolation of the point in space that the beam is terminating at.”

  Looking back at Phil, I smile and reply, “I knew you would appreciate that one. I hope you haven’t adjusted anything on the kit.” I nod in the direction of the bench.

  Phil stands and walks briskly to the bench, fetching a tape measure, he measures from the end of the beam to the wall. Then Phil walks out of the room. We can hear the tape measure being extended and then Phil’s plea, “Well is anyone going to help me?”

  Gavin being closest to the door bobs up off his chair and darts for the door quickly disappearing through it.

  Feeling obliged to find out where Phil will end up and keen to see if my calculations are correct, I too head towards the door. I reach it at precisely the same time as Rachel; Anile had been just that little bit faster.

  I stand back and point to the door, Rachel looks at me and mouths the words thank you, but the utterance is so quiet it might as well be silent. She still looks embarrassed. Her perfume is intoxicating, as she walks on through.

  As I emerge into the corridor, I see that Phil is some way down it, with tape measure still in hand and being stretched even further, whilst Gavin is holding the other end close to the wall, being careful to keep it dead still. We walk quickly on past Gavin and catch Phil up.

  Phil, makes a pencil mark on the wall. Anile protests, something about the faculty staff, but Phil waves a dismissive hand. Then he waves to Gavin, indicating that he join us.

  Gavin and phil measure from the pencil mark to the next door post. Phil opens the door and marches in.

  Luckily the room is empty, well of people anyway.

  Phil and Gavin measure from the end wall. Glancing across to a bench, Phil exclaims, “Hey it’s the globe!”

  “Look”, Rachel says, “You can just see the sparkle of the end of the tunnel in front of the sphere.”

  I look across and sure enough I can just make out the sparkling circle. It is just in front of the sphere. Furthermore, just below it I can make out a pile of stuff. I walk closer to the bench and I see a hand written note that reads ‘To the joker who keeps leaving things on our work bench, very funny, but it is annoying now, please stop or I will
take the matter up with the Dean. We have serious work to do you know!’

  Looking across to the base of the sphere I can see now what the pile is made up of, a tiny camera and various parts of similar cameras and other equipment.

  Chapter 3 – The adventure begins

  I feel very self-conscious, dressed in this protective suit, looking like someone heading for a fancy dress party, dressed something like an astronaut. I always thought that this was over the top. The many probes we sent through, have all confirmed that there is a breathable atmosphere, but Phil insists, something about corporate culpability or some such legalistic nonsense.

  So here we are: Rachel, Anile and myself, all dressed in these daft suits, standing on the equivalent of a plastic box and waiting for the giant 5 metre high metal donut to fire up. Below us, inside the box are the foam sheets that we will land on, if we manage to get back.

  Butterflies in my stomach, I cannot wait to get the journey out of the way.

  Although we had sent some animals down and observed them after arrival, there was no way of telling whether they survived in the longer term, there could have been irreversible damage done by the travel, that only showed up much later.

  I am regretting volunteering now. Then I catch Rachel’s smile, my courage returns. To think if we had not been involved in this project, we would probably not be engaged now.

  It has been a crazy but busy fourteen months to get to this state. Not being engaged, I mean, but standing here now, waiting, waiting for….here it comes…. I recognise the sound, having heard it so many times before. Quickly I look around us, checking that we have all the equipment that we should have with us, a bit late I know.

  The warehouse around us disappears, replaced by the bright swirling patterns.

  Suddenly it hits me, the tremendous pull away from the shimmering donut, with its black disc in the centre. The same disc, that is rapidly shrinking.

  My stomach and head feel very strange, as if I am being spun in a centrifuge. I cannot tell if I am spinning or not, all the visual clues are so confusing.