The Gravity of Anti-Gravity (6 page)

No one said anything for what seemed like an eternity. Jerry broke the silence.

“I think this calls for a beer!” He said with a grin.

At that we all started laughing and couldn’t stop. Like giddy third grade girls, we laughed, slapped each other on the back, shook hands and high-fived, over and over again. Real words seemed to escape us. Then Jerry again broke the ice.

“I’ve got to go guys. You see I have a date with a hottie, oops, ten minutes ago,” as he looked at his watch.

“I thought you were kidding.” Pops said.

“Nope, I don’t kid about hotties!” Jerry said “Got to go and I’d like to complement you gentlemen on your floor show. You should take it on the road.”

As Jerry was walking out, Pops said sternly, “Now you must remember not to tell anyone about this and I mean no one.”

“Mr. Burton, I promise you I won’t. Even if I did, as they say, no one would believe me.”

-9-

The next morning while I was still sleeping, the phone rang. It was Jerry and he sounded frantic.

“Bill, have you seen the news? You won’t believe it. I think you might have, have been responsible.” He stuttered.

“Jerry what are you talking about?”

“Just turn on the news, buddy boy.” Jerry said excitedly.

“I’ll call you back.” I said

I turned on the news. The story was on every station.

“This is KFAJ reporting,” the TV barked. “Scientists are stunned and puzzled at a phenomenon that they have never before observed. About 7:57 P.M. Pacific Time last night, the earth lost seven tenths of a second of time. Now before you go and celebrate that you are younger now than you would have been; it has caused some huge problems. All the satellite navigation systems in the world must be recalibrated. This has affected all forms of transportation. Planes have been grounded, and ships, trains, subways – all other forms of transportation have been stopped awaiting the fix to our global positioning satellites.”

“The militaries of the world have been put on high alert. No one seems to know if this is a natural or accidental occurrence or if some terrorist or rogue nation is sending some kind of message. Until the satellites are recalibrated
, most of our offensive and defensive rocket capabilities are also off-line.”

“Scientists and technicians say they will have the GPS satellite systems adjusted in the next hour. Then we should see the world return to normal in a day or two. And it’s a miracle, but so far, there are no reports of death or injury.”

“Let’s go to Norma Woodard who is with Dr. Franz Belter of MIT.”

“Dr. Belter, can you explain what just happened and h
ow the world suddenly lost time?”

“Ms. Woodard, my colleagues and I have met all night and so far, even though we have some hypotheses on this strange phenomenon, we don’t have any definitive answers yet. First we thought that it may have been a giant solar
flare, but nothing unusual emanated from there. Then we checked to see if the earth was hit with a large burst of particle radiation from outer space. We have detected nothing like that.”

“Does that mean you don’t know what happened at all?” Woodard questioned.

“Ms. Woodard, we have come only to two conclusions. The first is that something has briefly interrupted space-time. The second is that we think it originated here on earth!”

I turned the TV off and called Jerry.

“Hello, partners-in-crime anonymous.” He answered.

“Glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor but we need to get together ASAP. I’ll get Pops. You need to get over here, NOW! ”

“I’m already on my way,” Jerry said.

I went in the house and I saw Pops and Grandma looking at the news. Pops was wringing his hands, taking it all in.

“Pops, may I see you for a minute in the barn?” I requested.

He asked me if I’d seen the news and then I realized he hadn’t connected the information about the world losing a fraction of a second and our experiment last night. As we were walking out, it hit Pops like a bulldozer.

“Oh my god, Billy, this couldn’t have anything to do with what we did last night, could it?”

Jerry roared up in his parents Dodge Caravan, jumped out and ran to catch Pops and I, as we entered the barn.

I explained to Jerry that Pops asked if we were responsible for the earth losing time. “I’ll tell both of you together. “Yes. I am sorry to say I think so.”

“Billy, how in the hell does that work? How could your small device affect the whole world?” Pops asked.

“Pops, I am only hypothesizing but, remember when I bored you to death explaining that, in string theory, and some aspects of quantum physics there is a particle called a graviton. Even though there is no absolute agreement that it actually exists, I think it does. Now in the world of the tiniest particles that make up everything, from atoms to giant stars, the rules are different. It is thought these smallest of all particles can exist in many different dimensions and move about them in random ways. And in this subatomic world, how these particles inter-relate is not fully known.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, get to the point Bill.” Jerry said indicating he was beyond annoyed.

“I’ve only had a short amount of time to consider what’s happened, but I think I’ve just proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that space, time and gravity are interconnected,” I explained. “I had calculated the machine speed required to negate the wave length vibrations of the gravitons in a confined space. At some other speed and wavelength the machine must have interfered with the fabric of space-time itself. As we proceeded through the matching frequency, it created a time wave that rippled throughout the entire planet. It looks like we were in the space-time groove for seven tenths of a second.”

“Bill, do you have any idea when they’ll come to take us away?” Jerry asked. “How much time will it take until the world figures out where your space-time wave originated? You know your little ‘accident’ has caused the world a bunch of billions of dollars”

“I know, but what I don’t know for sure is if they can find this place.” I answered “We’re beyond uncharted waters here; we are in uncharted space-time. It may be possible to figure our general location by comparing the times the wave passed by different recording stations. Considering that the wave traveled at the speed of light should make it extremely difficult to pinpoint our exact location however.”

“Mr. Burton, you’ve been kind of quiet over there, what do you think of all this?” Jerry asked.

“I am trying to figure out if this is good or bad.” Pops answered. “Progress always has a price. And progress on this scale was bound to have a cost. But this much cost, this early is hard to comprehend. Do we lay low or turn ourselves in. If I trusted our government to do the right thing, I’d want us to go to the authorities right now.”

“But Pops, if we lay low and they don’t figure it out, we can continue with our lives. If we confess, there are two things that will happen. The government will keep it all quiet and deny everything. Then I’ll become a prisoner living in a windowless room at Area 51 in the Nevada desert.”

“You might even have one of those alien copses as a roommate,” chided Jerry.

“Hah, Hah, Jerry,” I said, “and if they let the world know of this discovery, I’ll become another kind of prisoner. Becoming a prisoner of the media, or some huge corporation, country or cartel is not my idea of a fulfilling life. I vote we lay low.”

Pops asked, “And what do think we should do Jerry.”

“I’ve been in combat before.” Jerry said as he pondered the situation. “Right now I’m getting that same nauseous feeling I get before I go into battle. Trusting my gut has kept me alive until now and my gut is telling me to lay low and let the enemy, whoever that is, make the next move.”

“OK then. We all agree. We tell no one anything. Our collective traps must remain shut!” Pops repeated. “Now let’s get the machine hidden in the bomb shelter.”

“Bomb shelter, what bomb shelter? There’s a bomb shelter?” Jerry said in confused mumbling.

Pops proceeded to go through the steps of opening the shelter. All three of us grabbed the machine and carried it downstairs and set it onto the platform before the door into the shelter.

“I think it’s OK here for now boys.” Pops said. “Let’s go upstairs, lock up and see if the scientific community has figured out what’s happened.”

Jerry, who had been quiet during the last several minutes, looked at us and said “I feel like I’m a supporting actor in some lousy science fiction movie. All we’re missing are a few gorgeous alien babes who at the point of a ray gun are trying to whisk us away to their home planet for reproductive experiments.”

“Jerry,” I said. “I thought I was the one with the vivid imagination. You know, I think I like your version better.”

-10-

The next Monday, I went back to work at JPL. The media had been reporting that the time change issue was determined by scientists to be an anomaly and at best it was a once in a million year occurrence. I liked the sound of that until Dr. Blackburn came up to me and said, “Mr. Burton, please meet me in the conference room in ten minutes, we’ve got some important things to discuss with you.”

Oh my God, I thought. They know! How could they have figured it out so quickly? Well, they are some of the smartest people on the planet. They do have all the cutting edge equipment. If anyone could figure it out it’s these guys. “Damn it!”

When I entered the conference room, not only Dr. Blackburn was there but his supervisor, the Division head, Dr. Arnold Brooks was sitting at the head of the table. In addition there were two other men in suits staring intently at me as I entered the room. I had never seen these men before.

Dr. Brooks stood up and introduced me. “Mr. Burton, I’d like you to meet Agents Bain and Reynolds from the FBI.”

“What have I done?” I blurted out before I had time to think.

That comment caused chuckles from everyone in the room but me.

“Well actually, you are here primarily because you have done such an exemplary job so far at JPL.” Dr, Brooks explained. “Dr. Blackburn has had nothing but great things to say about your work.”

Dr. Brooks’ words were nice to hear but the fact that no one was going to take me away in handcuffs made me almost giddy.

I had the broadest smile when I stuck out my hand. “It’s nice to meet you Agent Bain, nice to meet you Agent Reynolds. May I ask why I’m here with the FBI?”

At this point Dr. Blackburn took over. “I am sure Bill that you’ve heard about the time the world lost over the weekend.”

“Yes sir, it’s been all over the news. Real strange, don’t you think?”

“Yes it’s beyond strange,”
Blackburn said. “These gentlemen are here from the government to enlist our assistance in finding out what happened. They are aware of the kinds of theoretical research we do here and they figured that if anybody could discover the truth, we could. And our association with NASA and the government helped too.”

Then inspector Bain stood up and spoke. “We are setting up a task force here at JPL to look into the matter. We understand other governments may be doing a similar investigation but we are focusing all our efforts here. This project now has the highest priority in the government.”

“We need our U.S. task force to figure this thing out. If there is someone or something behind this, we’ve got to find who or what and we need to find out first!” bellowed Reynolds.

“Why me?” I asked.

“You are young and if you can get through Cal-Tech, you’re no dummy,” said Bain firmly. “Both Blackburn and Brooks say you, shall we say, ‘think out of the box’ and you tend to come up with unexpected solutions to problems. They say you’d be a tremendous asset to this team. I certainly hope they are right. Now you, along with Blackburn are team members and you will report directly to Brooks. We’ve been given an unlimited budget on this project so you must leave no stone unturned.”

Then Dr. Brooks turned to me and in his typically firm yet direct style said “Bill, we will be adding just a few more people to the team. We are vetting candidates now and should have a full complement of scientists assembled here by the end of the week. Now remember, this is as secret a project as any in our government. It’s really beyond top secret. Just so you understand, you tell no one!”

“But Dr. Brooks, I’ve still got three weeks left at school and then I’ve got finals.” I added.

“Bill, we will take care of that. Consider yourself a graduate of Cal-Tech. Don’t you remember you got straight ‘A’s on all your finals the last quarter of your senior year? That’s what the records will show young man and congratulations. You start tomorrow.”

I drove home, came into the house and said ‘Hi’ to Pops and Grandma and went straight to my room to think. Pops knew everything but technically I couldn’t tell him about the Task Force. Finally, I could afford to move out with the huge raise I’d just received but doing that would be like leaving the scene of the crime. Pops would be blamed if anyone tracked the source of the space-time ripple here. I couldn’t do that to him. I had to stay for the time being. I just laid there in my bed and marveled at the irony. I was being paid a handsome salary to find myself! When the phone rang it jolted me out of my thoughts.