The Long Day Read online

  The Long Day

  Robert Harrison

  Copyright © 2020 Robert Harrison

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 9781234567890

  ISBN-10: 1477123456

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

  Printed in the United States of America

  Chapter 1: The End

  Earlier that morning someone had mentioned it was June 21st, the longest day of the year. At the time they couldn’t have possibly understood the irony in that statement. Dr. Avery looked up at the clock on the wall and noted it was 3PM, but he knew it was much later than that. Much, much later. It had indeed been the longest day.

  He labeled a package and dropped it in the mail chute, then he looked around the lab. It was just as he left it all those years ago. Hastily drawn diagrams and disorganized notes were still scattered all across his desk, and next to them, a cup of coffee. He reached out and touched it. It was still hot. It was his coffee. He picked it up and took a sip. He savored the flavor for a moment and remembered how much he had once enjoyed coffee. It had been years since he’d last had a cup. He took another sip.

  In the center of the lab sat his creation, the sphere. It was about two meters in diameter and filled the room nearly from floor to ceiling. It floated in the containment ring like a globe sitting in its stand. It had a shiny surface that reflected all light like a mirrored ball, or maybe, an iridescent soap bubble. A perfect glistening sphere. Perfect, except for one square smudge on its surface where they had added a viewing portal.

  He wanted to look one more time. He stepped toward the viewing portal, then saw something he’d never seen before. On the floor about two meters before the portal was a tear shaped indent. It looked as though it had simply been scooped away. And there beside the indent lay a foot. A human foot, wearing a sneaker and a sock, fresh blood still running out of the stump where it had been severed from Jason’s leg years before. He jolted. He had forgotten about that.

  Now he remembered why he was here. He stepped forward and took one last look through the portal. There, inside the sphere was the universe, and all his friends, and a life he was about to leave behind forever. He gazed for a moment and thought to himself, “What a beautiful thing,” then he pulled away the four quantum rods from the corners of the portal. The portal disappeared.

  He was about to create a rift in space-time. One that would completely envelop the sphere, the containment ring, and all the equipment, then isolate them from this universe and send them to another dimension. He had done this many times before and knew it would take at least six rods to configure. He only had two spares, so with the extra four from the portal it gave him the six he needed.

  He placed the rods around the exterior of the sphere, being certain he encircled the entire containment ring and the control mechanisms. He took the notes on his desk and his laptop and pushed them forward to be sure they were also in the evacuation zone. He wanted none of this technology left behind. It was far too dangerous. Humans were not ready for this type of power. He took one final look to be sure there was nothing else.

  Yes, that was it. He’d covered a wide enough area.

  He sat at the console and entered a new program, then he brought up a command prompt. He typed RUN: GOODBYE1. He pressed {Enter} and took several steps back from the console. The screen counted down. Four, three, two, one…

  There was a blinding flash of light. A sphere formed around the evacuation zone and around the control rods he had just laid out. That cut power to the rods and the sphere collapsed with a loud pop. It was an odd, hollow sound like the sound a light bulb makes when it breaks. It was the sound of an implosion.

  The lab’s windows shattered and flew inward. There was a quick gust of wind. Glass flew into the room from every direction and dust and floating papers filled the air. For a moment he couldn’t see, but as the dust settled the air began to clear and the room came back into view.

  There in the center of the lab he could see the void of the evacuation zone. The sphere, the containment ring, the quantum rods, and half the console were gone, now separated from our universe. A perfect circular sphere of emptiness filled the room. It cut into the ceiling above and the floor below and cut through half a chair and a file cabinet in a perfect arc. Everything was gone; everything except an irregular gash in the floor and a bleeding, severed foot. He had missed that in the evacuation.

  “Oops,” he thought when he saw the foot, then he said out loud, “That is it. It is done.”

  *****************

  The implosion had shaken the entire building and was heard over the whole block. People rushed toward the lab to see what had happened. The first to arrive was Evelyn Katz from the lab next door. She’d been in this lab several times but knew little of the experiments that were going on here. She was on friendly terms with the scientist in charge, Dr. Bishop Avery, but she did not recognize the man standing before her.

  She had seen Dr. Avery only this morning, and the man in front of her, while he bore a resemblance to Bishop, was thinner, more muscular, and several years older. He also had long hair that had a pronounced shock of gray running through it. Dr. Avery had jet back hair and a short cut, and he like an academic, always dressed in a lab coat and tie. This man wore strange attire and had the appearance of someone who knew how to rough it, someone who’d been through a lot in life.

  “Who are you and what happened here?” she asked.

  “I am Bishop Avery,” he said. “I remember you,” he followed. “You are Evelyn Katz from the lab next door. It has been years, but I do remember. I suppose this is quite a shock for you seeing me this way.”

  Evelyn looked perplexed. She saw the gaping void and the spherical excision cutting through the lab, then she gasped as she noticed a severed foot lying in a pool of blood on the floor. She hesitated for a moment then began to reply, “How could you possibly be Dr. Avery? I know Bishop Avery and…” but as she spoke she looked into his face and recognized that it was indeed Bishop Avery. She halted and asked, “What happened here?”

  “I will explain as best as I can,” said Bishop. But the room was beginning to fill with a crowd of people as those who’d heard the explosion rushed in, and he cut himself off. “I think for the moment we should secure this area and address the situation at hand. I’ll speak afterwards.”

  The emergency crews had arrived and the crowd cleared way as firemen and paramedics came on the scene. Several men rushed in with fire extinguishers in hand, and behind them came a crew pulling a hose, but there was no fire, no rubble from an explosion, and no smoke. Instead there was only a void in the corner of the lab. The only disturbance in the room was from loose papers and shards of glass strewn all about, and a severed foot lying on the floor.

  Dr. Avery tried to explain that no one was in danger or in need of medical attention, but the severed foot and the fact that his two co-workers, Dr. Jason Smith and Karen White, were missing, as well his own greatly altered appearance made that argument less convincing. And the inexplicable void with its near perfect circular cuts through cement and steel and furnishings, left those in positions of authority perplexed.

  The room was cleared, secured and locked. The foot of Jason Smith was put in a body bag and placed in cold storage. This was a government facility that did a lot of secret work and research for the Department of Defense,
and this incident was a matter of national security. Almost immediately two agents dressed in nondescript black suits showed up and took Dr. Avery into their custody. This could have been a lab accident, but sabotage or negligence were not out of the question. There was to be an immediate inquiry into the incident.

  There was a murmur of quiet whispers as the two agents escorted Dr. Avery into the board room and placed him in a seat at the end of the table. Then all fell silent. In the room was Dr. Everett, the head of the institute and several department heads. Except for the two security agents, they were all scientists.

  Dr. Everett, was the first to speak. “So,” he said, “Please confirm who you are.”

  “My name is Dr. Bishop Avery. You all know me, but I do realize you’re not accustomed to seeing me this way. You’re perhaps trying to grasp how this could happen to a man in a single morning.” He chuckled to himself and followed, “Well, what happened to me happens to us all. It’s called life and aging. But I do understand that from your perspective it only been a few hours since many of you last saw me. From my point of view, it’s been years. I don’t know exactly how many, it’s hard to tell.”

  This man sounded like Dr. Avery, but something was different in his tone. His manner was calmer and more tempered and with a sense of humor that Dr. Avery seldom showed. Usually Dr. Avery spoke in an excited, rapid paced voice, especially when he was talking about science. Now he seemed more introspective.

  He continued, “As you may know, my work dealt with the underlying nature of space and time. It was highly theoretical. The kind of science that, while interesting, had only the vague promise of practical applications in the real world.”

  “What does this have to do with what happened in the lab?” Dr. Everett queried impatiently. “And what happened to Dr. Smith and Karen White?”

  “They are both fine, and I’m getting to all that,” Bishop answered. “Just give me a moment. The explanation requires some understanding of the science.”

  Bishop took a sip of coffee then went on. “Many know my work dealt with fundamental physics: the nature of gravity, black holes, quantum singularities, time distortion. All theoretical stuff. And while that made it difficult to acquire funding, it also freed us to think unencumbered by the traditional theories. We considered some wild ideas which we explored mostly through thought experiment, and it was of those thought experiments that led us to an unprecedented rethinking of the nature of the universe. In fact, I would say, it was my graduate assistant, Karen White, who first saw an alternative view. She’s actually quite brilliant, you know.

  “I will say this, that alternate view has been proven out by the events that recently occurred in my lab, and the story of which you are about to hear. But I must add, you will hear no detailed explanations and no new theories. The only physical evidence you will be provided with is my own changed self and the inexplicable nature of the disappeared sections of my lab. My lab was purposely evacuated as it was to ensure that our theories and our methods remain undisclosed.”

  “So this was sabotage,” said one of the men at the table.

  “Not sabotage, and not my decision alone. Jason Smith, Karen White, and I all agreed this technology poses to great a danger to not only our world, but other worlds, and indeed, other universes.”

  One of the men asked, “If this was not just your decision, then where are your associates? We surmise that leg is the leg of Dr. Smith. Where are they?”

  Bishop replied, “That is the leg of Jason Smith. And as for my colleges, they are in an alternate universe, and they choose to remain behind.”

  Gasps were heard around the room. He could hear the whispers: “Other worlds? Other universes? Fringe science!”

  “Or maybe ancient aliens,” someone added. There was muffled laughter around the room. Several people began to rise to walk out.

  Bishop stood up and slammed his hand on the table. “In 1874 Philipp von Jolly told Max Planck not to study physics because almost everything had already been discovered. Planck later went on to discover quantum theory. If you want to be Philipp von Jolly, walk out that door.”

  Everyone hesitated. After a moment, Dr. Everett, at the head of the table said, “Dr. Avery. Please do continue. We will hear your story.”

  Those standing returned to their seats.

  After a breath, Bishop continued. “I will tell you what has happened, but for reasons that will become apparent later, I will not tell you how. While this technology has great potential for abuse by humans, it also has the potential to expose humans to things we are not yet equipped to face. For that reason, I must be vague on the science. Now let me proceed.

  “The theory that Karen suggested lead us to believe it may be possible to pull space-time apart and create a, sort of hole, or interdimensional rift. Based on the new concept, I envisioned a mechanism to do it. We weren’t sure of the applications. Maybe stealth technology, maybe inter-dimensional travel, maybe access the multi-verses.”

  “Multi-verses?” someone said. “That’s totally theoretical, and if it were real, traveling to another universe is far beyond our current capabilities.”

  “Your current capabilities” Bishop followed. “You all saw the void in my lab. Where do you think it all went? It’s in another dimension. Now just let me continue.

  “Once we had the concept, we built the machine to try to open a hole. That machine sat in the section of my lab where the hole now resides.

  “The machine consisted of a circular ring we called the containment ring and several ‘quantum rods,’ which I will not describe. The rods were placed at evenly spaced intervals around the containment ring. The theory was we would pull open a spherical hole in space-time, contained inside the containment ring. Seemed simple enough.

  “We developed the software and the containment ring, and a couple of weeks ago we ran a test. We engaged the machine. It seemed to be working. It created the hole we predicted, only one of the quantum rods suddenly failed. The sphere became misconfigured and the software indicated we had mostly a sphere, but also a wormhole extending away from the sphere at the point of the failed rod. The software indicated the depth of the wormhole was infinite.

  “This seemed like a dangerous situation. It had to be stopped immediately. Fortunately, we had made several spare rods. I stuck my hand into the containment ring and replaced the failed rod with a new one. That solved the problem, and the wormhole retracted, but it caught part of my hand along the way and took my little finger with it.”

  He held up his right hand to show them the missing finger. No one had noticed that before, but there is was, a long-healed stub where his little finger used to be.

  One of the observers moaned. Another audibly said, “Ouch.” The wound was real and the wound was obviously healed. It focused their attention more deeply on what he was saying. Bishop continued.

  “We now had a sphere trapped in the containment ring. An iridescent orb, unilluminated, but completely reflective. It was clearly visible. We had not anticipated that. We were elated at our success, but because of the incident with the worm hole and my injury, we thought it best to shut the machine and re-evaluate.

  “We powered down the machine, but the sphere did not collapse. We were uncertain as to why it remained, but Jason quickly surmised there was something inside the sphere exerting an outward pressure. We had assumed the read-out of a ‘wormhole to infinity’ was an error in our software, but it was not. The wormhole to infinity was real. It was a wormhole that extended beyond our universe, and it had captured something from outside and pulled it into the sphere.

  “We did not know if the sphere would stay in place with the containment ring powered down, so we reactivated the ring and re-established the field. It locked the sphere in place and, for the time being, the situation stabilized.

  “We knew we needed to figure out what was in the sphere. We also knew we couldn’t leave it unattended, so we decided to take shifts monitoring the device until we could decide o
n the next steps. Jason volunteered to take first nights shift. Karen took me to the trauma center to get my hand sewn up.

  “You know,” Bishop interjected, “when I went to get my hand treated they wanted to know where my finger was. I think they thought they thought they could reattach it. I had to tell them my finger went through a meat grinder and was now hamburger - I couldn’t exactly tell them my finger was in an alternate dimension now, could I?”

  That caused some laughter and lightened the mood a bit. The room had become very tense as Bishop continued his story. The humor was well timed. Dr. Everett suggested a short break so people could use the facilities, get coffee, or whatever.

  The room emptied for a few minutes as people took a break. Dr. Avery asked to use the restroom. He was escorted there by the two agents. While he used the facilities one agent stayed outside the door, the other followed him in and stood right beside him as he relieved himself. This was serious business. He was in trouble, and he knew it.

  When they returned, Aaron James, head of the physics department, returned carrying full bottle of Scotch. He placed it on the table squarely in front of Bishop.