THE COLOURS OF JUPITER
“Awake child, awake. My life is just beginning and you will never see yours in the same way again. Open your eyes and awake.”
I open my eyes and see all the colours of Jupiter flowing through time.
“Cheryl Hawkins. ID 170045-D.”
The door beeps its confirmation and glides open.
Inside the golden-orange chamber Mackie is tapping up the coordinates for the next test cycle as I hand my data to Emit. As he checks my work I stare through the thick glass, through the stellar dust, to the giant silver sphere hanging like a ridiculous bauble between our ship and Jupiter. A caged black hole. A giant electromagnetic trap to house our experiment. I've had nightmares where I reach out through the glass, impossibly touching it, and the shell crumples like foil. Microseconds later my arm is scoured off...
“The turning point in human history Cheryl, and you can't stop thinking it looks like a kid's toy, can you?”
“I didn't think I was in the habit of designing children's playthings Emit.”
He snorts a laugh, “We're all playthings Cheryl, pulled by invisible strings, we just can't see it.”
Ignoring him I take my seat and confirm Mackie's beam trajectories. I look over my shoulder and see Petter is outside the security door shouting at it. All this technology and we still can't get voice recognition software that understands his thick Ukrainian accent. Forcing himself through the first available narrow opening, he apologises for his lateness. Apparently the suction on toilet four wasn't working properly. We all tell him to spare us the details.
“Tango-Foxtrot Two to Omega Control. Confirm all matter inputs minimal. Awaiting cycle. Over.” The radio blips.
Emit replies, “This is Omega Control, received. 88% power Cycle begins in T-minus fifteen minutes, 18 seconds.”
Petter circles his workstation like a frustrated dog that's lost the scent, before seemingly hitting a random button. My workflow is a perfect branching tree of possibilities, each branch opening or closing based on parameters reached, conditions established. Petter appears to get everything done purely by accident. Superb engineer. Utterly infuriating to work with.
Branch twenty-three – beam coordinates entered and accepted by generators. Matter inputs stable and still charging.
I see Emit gazing at the real-time data display of the thousands of sensors in the Temporal Interference Chamber surrounding the singularity. Such a brilliant man, but I do wonder if the protracted development of the project has affected his investment in it. When he first sought me out to design the sphere he had it planned to completion, every detail, every day up until the experiment was complete. But with each passing year he's seemed to care less for the details, allowing the Council full control over the project management. Now he barely enters into any technical discussions, leaving it entirely to the rest of the team. He spends hours staring at all the plans and data, as if looking for some missing piece. Of course it's liberating that our lead scientist is entrusting so much of the running of this project to us. All our futures are assured whatever the outcome and we all owe him a lot, particularly me. But his lack of guidance at this critical phase is disconcerting. It's like he's a passenger.
Branch twenty-four – matter input starts at T-minus fifteen minutes.
I look out the window at the sphere. I think it's going to be another routine test cycle.
“Thing is...”, Mackie takes the opportunity between two words to fill himself with another fork of spaghetti, “...if the first full power test does confirm time is non-linear...”
“There is little chance it's going to do that. Only with full power plus the correct beam energy signatures are we potentially going to see any interference patterns. Finding the correct ones could take years, decades even.”
My interjection doesn't put him off.
“... then what does that actually mean for us?”
We stare at him.
“I mean, as a people. How will that change our perception of our lives?”
“In terms of the general population they won't care either way. It's not a concept they can cope with.”, I say.
“Maybe not. I mean, we've done all the science stuff. Doing. I just... how do you cope with that knowledge that you... we are at every point in our lives at the same time, it's just that our poor mammalian brains are simplifying things into a linear viewpoint to help us cope with it.”
“Do you think you're going to go mad again you mean?”, Emit smiles at him.
“I think he already is.”, Petter laughs, “Mad as butter, as my mother would say.”
“Hah, yeah thanks, been there done that twice as we all know. Never again. Emit though, come on, surely you've thought about more than the scientific implications of this... your experiment?”
Emit gazes to nothing for a few seconds, before pushing his plate towards the middle of the table. He places a meatball at one edge.
“This is you.”
“Mackie is a rehydrated meatball! That's his brain on all that medication!” We laugh.
“If time is linear, you are moving clockwise around the outside of the plate, seeing time progressing forwards in your direction of travel. The outcome of events is unknown until the event happens.”
This is school-grade level stuff, but Emit has them glued, waiting for some profound pay-off. I decide to finish my meal before I regress to a childlike state.
“But if time isn't linear, then we are everywhere on the outside of the plate at the same time.” He places more meatballs. “This means that theoretically it should be possible for all meatball Mackies to perceive the states of all the others at the same time.”
“Which is the point of this... your experiment. Except we're using laser energy sources instead of meatballs and a singularity warping spacetime instead of a plate.”
“Exactly. But change human perceptions? Why not? Every scientific discovery allows us to look at our universe differently. Why should it not be possible for everyone to perceive time differently also? Just imagine, the course of human history will never be the same again, as there would be no history!”
Petter looks at the plate thoughtfully. “We see time progressing forwards. It may or may not be non-linear, but couldn't it also be possible to perceive time in reverse? Meatball walking backwards?”
“Whoa”, Mackie puts his hands up. “That would be a screwed-up life. Worse than mine!”
“How so?” Emit leans forwards intently.
“Living life backwards in linear time, you'd always be seeing the effects of events you had no awareness of your input into. You would be scrutinising every element of your conscious moment to try to make sense of what you've already done... were about to do. You'd just want to end it! At least I would.”
My scraping chair interrupts them as I get up. “Well, before our 'enlightenment', we've still to crunch numbers and get to 100% power output.”
“Ah Cheryl, such spite in your voice. But when the enlightenment comes, when all calculations are meaningless and your destiny is laid out before you, what then for you?”
“Same as you Emit, I'll be out of a job.”
The chamber reverberates fiercely. My muscles shiver inside my skin and my vision shifts. A glow I hadn't even noticed fades from the room as the screens confirm matter input has ceased.
“Tango-Foxtrot Two to Omega Control. 96% power cycle complete.”
Console readings appear. Branch one-hundred and eighteen. “That was 92.11% correlation with just your default coordinates. And the correlation increase is no longer linear with power input as you predicted Emit. We could even start seeing potential interference patterns from other time states before we reach full power.”
“We'll be mush before we get any higher. These distortions worse than you predicted.” Petter shakes his head. “We are still 'safe distance' yes?”
“The sphere has been designed to contain well over the required gravitational distortion. You know that as well as
I, now stop being so theatrical.”
He huffs angrily at my comment.
Emit, calm as ever, strokes his keypad. “Yes, we're fine. We'll get the correlation. Two more runs and we're there.”
Petter grabs a chair next to me and Emit over breakfast.
“Next cycle soon Cheryl! Excited yes?”
“I'm looking forward to the results to see if they match Emit's predictions...”
“Ah come on girl, some enthusiasm! We could be about to stare God in the face.”
I shake my head strongly. “Don't even bring that into the conversation Petter. It won't end well. Trust me.”
“Hah. I know you don't believe. But the nature of the universe is everything. Just as He is. Who knows, if they are one and the same, then it'll be an interesting experiment yes? Love to see your write-up of that one!”
“Petter, if God does pop out of my sphere to say 'Hi', I won't be on his contact list. You know that I can't reconcile the thought that everything is preordained.”
“So that's why you don't like Emit's talk. If time is non-linear you won't be queuing up for enlightenment eh?”
Emit smiles to himself. I watch Petter shovel his meal down. I've lost my appetite.
“You know what my mother always said...” Here we go, another famous anecdote. “We're all playthings Petter, pulled by invisible strings, we just can't see it.”
Something clicks into place in my brain, and I suddenly feel oddly overwhelmed. I get up quickly to try and shake the sensation. “Cycle in eight guys. Got to prepare.”
“Tango-Foxtrot Two to Omega Control. You have 98% power. Starting cycle in T-minus fifty seconds.”
Mackie scans the beam trajectories and temperatures. Petter carefully watches half a dozen EM shield screens as matter is poured into the sphere. I keep my eye on the structural sensors, waiting for the zero. I glance over at Emit. He's silent as always, but not looking at his screens any more. Instead he's staring at the sphere.
“Magnetic shield holding. Matter inputs full injection. Cycle starting.”
The chamber starts to resonate as we hit zero. I'm at branch sixty-one.
Almost immediately I see a full correlation. Impossible! Not with this power input. But there they are, interference patterns from our future selves. The room is glowing again. Something isn't right. I move my hand to touch the screen and it moves jerkily, like waves of water are pushing it back. This isn't gravitational distortion, no alarms are going off. That could only mean some unforeseen factor affecting my perception. How could we have missed this? How do we operate the experiment if this effect continues? We must abort. Path five from branch sixty-one. I go to start shut-down procedure and look around for Emit to confirm. He is standing right in front of the observation window arms stretched out wide, fingers splayed as if feeling the wind blowing over him. He calmly turns around and looks at me, smiling like a child.
“You my girl, what's your name?”
“Cheryl. But...”
“Well this is where it all begins Cheryl. I have planned this moment for so long, yet I have everything to learn about how I got here.”
The distortions are hitting me like a physical force now. My vision skews and pops. “Emit, we must abort...”
“Your future is good, you will see everything. And me? My mind will no longer be trapped, freefalling backwards to my birth.”
No! What's he done? I can't control my muscles any more, I can barely see. I feel like I'm floating out of my chair as my body pulses with the universe, then everything goes black.
“Awake child, awake. My life is just beginning and you will never see yours in the same way again. Open your eyes and awake.”
I open my eyes and see all the colours of Jupiter flowing through time.
###
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thanks for reading my short stories. I hope to have another collection out in 2015. So if you liked these three tales, expect more of the same.
POWERLESS and the sequel KILLING GODS are out now, and I am currently working on the third book in the series.
If you ever want to ask me any questions about the book, writing or self-publishing ebooks then feel free to drop me an email, tweet, forum post or Google+/Facebook comment (see below).
Tony.
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OTHER TITLES
POWERLESS
The first book in the 'Powerless' series
When the best friend of a retired superhero is killed by another power, Martin must drag himself out of his self-imposed isolation to find out who is responsible. In doing so he finds himself digging up a past he would rather forget, risking exposing the secret of why the team split up and destroying all their lives in the process.
* Available now *
KILLING GODS
The second book in the ‘Powerless’ series
When the baby son of a physically mutated eighties villain goes missing from protective care, he goes on a rampage to try and find him.
In his way stand a Child Protection Officer following her heart above her duty, a violent anti-hero group desperate for media attention, a seemingly benevolent hero-worshipping cult and Martin and Hayley struggling to work out who they can trust.
* Available now *
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