Fundamental Force Episode One

FUNDAMENTAL
FORCE

episode one

by

Albert
Sartison

Published by
Albert Sartison at Smashwords

Copyright 2016
Albert Sartison

1.00

Smashwords
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Prologue

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The bright beam
of a projector cut through the darkness of the lecture theater.
Thousands of dust particles floated lazily in the air, dancing on
the almost tangible draught in the room. They jumped upwards then
fell gently back down, the shaft of light illuminating them like a
galaxy of microscopic stars as they continued to cavort in the air,
skipping in every direction.

“Gravity is a
great mystery of nature. From a physical point of view it is just a
force, one of the modes of interaction. It is the weakest that we
know of, but it is dominant in space and is the only one that
changes space-time itself...”

The lecturer’s
voice gradually softened as it became tinged with emotion. He
walked slowly around the podium, his head occasionally illuminated
by the beam of the projector aimed at a large canvas screen. At
such moments, his eyes were lit up by the reflected light. He could
not conceal his passion for the subject and nor did he try to.

“What’s so
special about that, you may ask? Gravity is the only force capable
of slowing down, stopping, and even turning back time...”

The noise of
someone getting to their feet broke the silence in the hall like a
clap of thunder, cutting the lecturer off mid-sentence. Out of
sight of the podium, a tall lanky figure stood up in the
semi-darkness of the back row. Clearly not considering it necessary
to apologize for such a noisy departure, he turned around and
headed for the exit.

The lecturer
sighed disappointedly at such tactlessness and turned to face the
screen onto which his slides were being projected, gathering his
thoughts for a few seconds so he could continue from where he had
been so rudely interrupted. It’s just sacrilege to make so much
noise, breaking the magical atmosphere of a lecture theater holding
its breath. Especially when the subject is the most cryptic, the
most powerful property of the Universe. Some people just don’t
appreciate the fascinating mystique of Nature. They don’t even know
how much they’re missing...

Meanwhile, the
tall man was hurrying up the stairs toward the exit, a phone in one
hand and his other covering the microphone. Opening the huge door,
he stepped out into an empty corridor and the lecturer’s voice and
the silence of the dark hall were left behind, as if in another
world. He removed his hand from the microphone.

“Half a
second?” he asked, pressing the phone to his ear.

“Yes, sir! 480
milliseconds, to be exact. It’s even visible to the normal
eye!”

“And when will
I be able to see it first hand?”

“Whenever you
like, sir.”

The man glanced
at his watch, looked around for the nearest door and moved quickly
toward it. With his long thin legs and awkward gait, he looked like
he was walking on stilts.

“I’ll be there
in three minutes.”

“Oh... so
soon?”

“Is there a
problem?”

“No, sir. It’s
just...”

“I’ll see you
shortly.”

Outside, the
weather was already heating up. The morning air of the emerging
summer’s day was still heavy with dew not yet evaporated by the hot
rays of the rising sun. A cobbled path snaked through leafy trees,
their sprawling branches creating a canopy that offered dense shade
to the people walking beneath.

The path was
too narrow for the crowd of students streaming towards the man, but
he did not slow his pace. He walked purposefully with rapid steps,
but there was nothing hurried in his manner and the crowd heading
towards him parted instinctively to make way. It seemed that even a
brick wall would have been incapable of stopping such a
force...

Turning onto a
deserted path leading downhill, he found himself alone. Unlike the
crowded cobbled path he had just left, there was not a soul here.
He quickly looked behind him to check he had not been followed then
stopped, took out a cigarette and stuck it in the corner of his
mouth. He flicked the lighter he was holding, but did not raise the
flickering flame to the end of his cigarette.

After waiting a
few seconds and still not having lit up, he took a few steps back,
slowly this time, and rang a bell next to a door made of cracked
wood.

“Yes?” came a
voice from the entry phone. “Who is it?”

A camera above
the door came to life and diodes lit up around the lens. Rather
than turn his face towards it, the man lowered his head and
examined the shadow of his silhouette on the building’s stone
façade.

“It’s you,
sir... Please, come in!”

The
contemporary interior was in sharp contrast to the building’s
decaying exterior, the walls and ceilings a dazzling white.
Flickering paths of LEDs embedded in the floor showed guests the
right way to go and on either side of the corridor were small rooms
crammed with scientific equipment. People in white coats bustled
around him, paying no attention to the tall man walking by.

At the end of
the corridor, one of the doors was open and in the doorway stood a
man in a white coat thrown over a crumpled shirt that had been
hastily tucked into jeans. The collar was buttoned all the way to
the top, where a clumsily knotted tie was visible.

The tall man
entered without bothering with a greeting and the man in the white
coat moved to let him in then closed the door quickly. The glass it
was made of darkened immediately, cutting them off from the goings
on outside.

The scientist
shrugged his shoulders uncertainly and, after taking a huge breath,
he froze, clearly not knowing where to start. Unlike the scientist,
the visitor was completely at ease. He took off his jacket and
threw it carelessly over the back of the nearest rolling chair.

“You said the
results were visible to the normal eye...” he said.

The man in the
white coat came back to life.

“Oh... yes!
Here’s the microscope, sir. Take a look...”

The tall man
sat down and bent over the eyepiece. His jaw muscles could be seen
moving under the skin of his cheeks, which were covered with deep
pockmarks, either as a result of teenage acne or smallpox. With his
left hand he held onto his black tie to stop it hanging loose. The
focused light from the microscope’s lenses, compressed into two
circular beams, fell directly onto his pupils. He froze, examining
the image.

“Is this it?”
he asked after a few seconds.

“That is just
where the anomaly occurs. Now pay attention to the laser light
spot...”

The man’s
pupils moved upwards slightly and froze.

“I’m going to
shift the angle and move the beam, but you, sir, will see it before
I do it...” The man in the white coat touched a lever carefully and
moved it upwards. “See?”

The tall man
pulled away from the lens slightly and threw the scientist a quick
glance.

“Again,” he
said. Even an ordinary request sounded like an order from his
lips.

“Of course,
sir.”

The man in the
white coat touched the level again, this time pushing it
downwards.

The tall man
smiled.

“Let me
try...”

The scientist
took a step back, clasping his hands behind his back
self-consciously. The feigned enthusiasm in his voice was unable to
hide the relief with which he moved away from his guest, who held
out a long skinny hand and took hold of the lever with bony
fingers. He moved it carefully upwards. Then downwards. And then
upwards again. Letting go of the lever, he continued looking into
the eyepiece. He then took hold of the lever again.

“Your light
spot is hard to deceive,” he said, moving it in all directions.

The man in the
white coat smiled, adjusting his glasses.

“No, sir. It is
impossible to deceive...”

“Are you
sure?”

The man pulled
away from the microscope lens and turned to the scientist. There
was a look of interest on his face. The scientist fiddled with his
collar. It was clearly too tight and was digging into his neck, the
shirt itself being slightly too small. But people of science can be
forgiven such things...

“The threads
you passed on to us are forming a local anomaly, folding space-time
into a microscopic tunnel. It is through this tunnel that we pass
the laser beam. You saw its tiny spot... But the beam leaves the
tunnel before it enters it at the other end...” The scientist
paused to take a deep breath. “The image in the microscope precedes
what is happening in our Universe by 480 milliseconds...”

How do you know
which moment in life is the most important? It’s hard to say, there
are so many... At the time they happen they do so without fanfare,
quietly, unremarkably... They just happen, that’s it! Nothing
special.

The true value
of such a moment can only be realized after some time has elapsed,
after they have been absorbed in the mind, after they have ripened,
after they have sunk to the bottom of your memory and been covered
with a deposit of recollections. And then, in retrospect, maybe 20
years later, you can say with absolute confidence that that moment
was really the most important moment of your life.

The president’s
limousine, surrounded by an escort of honor with various colored
lights winking, drove swiftly away from the crowd and the
light-flooded platform. Outside, engines were roaring and sirens
were howling, but inside silence reigned, apart from some soft
light jazz and the barely noticeable rustle of the cool breeze from
the air conditioner.

Now he could
relax. The president removed his jacket, threw it onto the opposite
seat, took off his shoes, loosened his tie and stretched out to his
full length. His part of the work on this, the greatest project of
his life, had finished. He had done all he could, now it was just a
technical matter, boring routine. And that part of it he could
delegate to others, people below him in rank. He opened the bar and
took out a glass. After putting in three ice cubes, he splashed in
a generous amount of bourbon, not worried about overdoing it. When
such an important project went into the fulfilment stage, it was a
good excuse for a drink, even if he was on his own. The president
only had a few friends with whom he could discuss important
matters, and none of them were around at the moment. And he needed
to rest. Thinking the drink must be cool enough by now, he took a
large gulp.

So, back to the
important moment. The most important in his life. Had it only
happened just ten minutes ago? Or had it been the greatest mistake
of his career? Time would tell. It was funny how bad he was at
recognizing such moments when they occurred. But there was no doubt
that this was one of them. The completion of such an important
project would be a turning point in the life of any politician,
whether a president or someone lower down the scale. You could say
that life had existed before it, but everything after it was
another world, another man, another universe. Well, in the
political sense at least.

It had all
begun five years ago, when aliens had suddenly arrived from space
and, in doing so, had turned the normal course of life in the Solar
System upside down. Unfortunately, the first attempt at
interstellar diplomacy had not been altogether successful and soon
afterwards, the uninvited guests disappeared. But it got really
interesting when they returned a few months later, bringing with
them the idea of a very exciting joint project. And what a project!
The terraforming of the Solar System’s inner planets and the
creation of a gigantic Dyson sphere around the Sun, capable of
giving people more energy than they had ever imagined possible.

Even according
to modest estimates, the economic benefits and scale exceeded all
previous projects since the building of the Great Pyramids of Giza.
People had received a huge amount of top-class living space. Not
like on Mars, where, with Earth’s technology, life was possible
only inside hermetically sealed premises and special cunning
medical tricks were required to alleviate the problem of its low
force of gravity, but the same living space quality as on Earth!
And, in addition to this, half of all the energy radiated by the
Sun! Just think, the power of a whole star!