Jessup, MD
Ansem pulled into the restaurant with a brand new
Mercedes-Benz. Rebecca loved it. For a second, on the car ride over to the
restaurant Ansem thought about giving her the car as a present. But in better
judgment, he decided not to bring it up. Rebecca was having a good time so far
on a date with her next door neighbor. The neighbor she knew practically
nothing about except his truck was recently repossessed. And what kind of
jumping off point is that? So besides friendly banter and questions about the
new Mercedes, they really didn’t have much to talk about.
Rebecca searched in silence to talk about something. As a
female doctor she took great pride in handling the situation and calling the
shots, in everyday life she also felt the need to take the lead, to show that
women can do it all, and be good at it. In a year’s time she will have proven
that but to a dead audience and a hollow legacy.
“Where are you from?” she began.
“Montgomery.”
“Where’s that?”
“East of here, near Baltimore.”
“Is your family still there?”
“My family is … gone. My mother died of cancer and my father
short after died of a heart attack.”
“Oh…” Rebecca choked, “I’m so sorry to bring it up.”
“It’s okay, Rebecca. You were going to find out eventually.
I’m glad you know about my past, now you see me for who I am.”
“…And where you come from.” She finished for him.
Ansem reached across the table of bread and water and held
her hand. Rebecca blushed as she looked down at her white napkin on her lap
contrasting with the black dress she was wearing. She looked back up at Ansem,
into his eyes. The way he talked to her, it was as though they had been
lifelong friends, as if they already knew everything about each other, as if…he
had been waiting to talk to her for twenty years. Rebecca felt connected to
Ansem, and it was only their first date. Something was rushing her feelings for
him, and she was scared what.
They ordered dinner, and enjoyed their meals shortly after.
The night went off quite nicely after a stumbled opening. Ansem drove Rebecca
back home. She lay back in her seat and moaned about how full she was. Ansem
used every fiber of his being not to let the car crash while failing to refrain
from checking her out. Rebecca looked at him and Ansem shot up, putting his
concentration back on the road.
“…So…what happened with your truck, Ansem?”
“That’s a long story with a happy ending. What if I just
told you that instead?”
“The ending?”
“It’s a really good one.”
“Okay.”
“I now own the biggest stake of manufacturing shares and the
largest number of factories in the country. I’m worth over five hundred million
dollars.”
“Oh my god.”
“Will you marry me?”
Rebecca froze.
“I’m kidding.”
Rebecca did not look relieved.
“Wait a second…were you going to say…yes?”
Rebecca looked at Ansem in the eyes. Words were lost.
The door to Rebecca’s bedroom burst forth as they scrambled
in, quickly making their way to the bed and peeling off each other’s clothes.
Ansem was doing it. Living the dream he kept kindled in his heart for years. He
was fulfilling his own desired destiny. This would go down as the best night of
his life as he made love to Rebecca Pratt, his undeniable one true love.
New York, NY
The laboratory was now fully active, it was in procedure mode.
Every available hand came in to help Samuel.
He had finished schematics of what he named, “The Tachyon Resonator.”
The Tachyon Resonator is a device that turns the particles surrounding it into
tachyons. On the third day of manufacturing it was finished. As it is in its
prototype form it took up the majority of the laboratory. The only way they
could successfully test it is if they recreated Dr. Samuel Gordon’s Chase’s
original sketch of a portable amplifier ring that turns everything inside the
ring into tachyons.
When it was finished the next step was to test different
items inside the room. Samuel knew what had to be done when nothing responded
to the phase change inside the room, not wood, not metal, not plastic, not
glass, not meat, not a fish, not a mouse, not even a chimpanzee. Where did they
get the chimpanzee you ask? That was a different story…
Dr. Samuel Gordon Chase waited until no one was looking and
accessed the automated features; he turned the locks off and started the
tachyon reactor. Once it was charged enough he turned on the resonator and the
rays filtered into the room. Samuel ran down the walkway. When his assistants
and grad students saw what he was doing they were terrified. Samuel risked all
their lives opening the doors to the test room. As he slid in and closed the
doors the machine finished its start-up process and the vents opened to release
the Tachyon Resonator’s sonic ring of ray-waves. Samuel stood in the center of
the room, the only one within the rings, and this was what he saw…
A scattered grid vibrating and getting closer, netting his
vision. It came at him slowly; gradually. It opened Samuel up from the inside
and connected him to the outside. He was still in the fishbowl, but could see
both ends of the spectrum. And then Samuel realized it was a reflection. He was
on the outside looking in. Samuel was looking at his entire life in the
confines of a cube. But when his eyes got past this point it went grey. Some great
schism blocked his sight.
“Do I die?” he said on the floor as the vents cleared the
room.
Soon the doors opened and his crew came in with the
paramedics. Dr. Samuel Gordon Chase was rushed to the nearest hospital. By the
time his wife had gotten there he had slipped into a coma. They were doing
everything they could but because of the unknown conditions of the accident
they had little experience or knowledge on how to treat him. Vanessa was going
to lose her husband. She demanded answers.
When the fifth year intern told her of the experiment and
his need to see and experience it for himself Vanessa became hysterical. She
had always feared a day would come when his obsession would take over Samuel so
completely that he endangered his own life and those around him, putting
himself before his family. Now her worst fears were reality, and she was
helpless in the aftermath. Vanessa prayed because that was all she could do.
She prayed that the Chase family would not lose everything.
to be continued...