Friday, November 30, 2012

1.4.0 Taking a Leap of Faith



















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...


Tuesday, November 13, 2012

1.3.0 A Step Forward for a Step Back

















 



Jessup, MD

Ansem Weathers signed off on the deal and they drove his truck away. He stood on his front lawn and took a deep breath. After they drove it off, he found that Rebecca had wandered over behind him. Curious of what was happening to her neighbor she asked, “Where are they taking your truck, Mr. Weathers?”

“I sold it.” He said without a hitch.
“And please,” he continued, now turned towards her, “call me Ansem.”
“What are you going to do now…Ansem..?”
“I bought my own warehouse in Montana, the largest shipping and receiving hub in the entire country.”
“Sounds…expensive…” Rebecca tried to wrap her mind around it.
“Ought to….cost me about fifty million dollars.”
Rebecca’s jaw dropped so low it almost hit the grass. “Ansem I had no idea you were rich!”
“I’m not rich. I’m just a good saver.”
“How much have you saved up?”
“Since…”
“I don’t know… two-thousand-five?”
“Close to a hundred million dollars.”
“Oh my god! You’re taking me out to dinner,” Rebecca demanded as she punched his chest playfully.       

What?

Ansem started following her to the car. Rebecca turned around and laughed, “Not right now, I’m going to work. But how about Saturday at eight?”
“Okay.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Rockefeller.”
“Oh…you can just call me- oh…right...bye.”

Rebecca shook her head, still giggling as she got in her car and drove off. Ansem stood in her front yard. He jumped up and down. Did he just? Was that? Did he really get a date for Saturday night with Rebecca, the love of his life? All he needed was a car. He had five days and millions of dollars to get a car before Saturday.
    
       
New York, NY
           
Manhattan Tech looked closed for the night. One window stayed lit. Samuel did not leave his laboratory for some time. His family went on without him. They were very much used to this by now. Both they and he knew he was on the verge of one of his breakthroughs. No intern or grad student could help him now. His co-workers had long given up on Dr. Chase’s theories. If it wasn’t for his small steps and logical backing Samuel would have been kicked out of the scientific community years ago. As he became world-renown for his proofs in nuclear physics out of school, Samuel’s tastes evolved and he became fixated on theoretical physics. And overnight he went from a scientist handling uranium to a professor pushing term papers. 

He never lost his knack for the field though. Dr. Chase only agreed to come to Tech because they were the only ones who would accommodate his demand for a lab. Although most of his work was done on his chalkboard, every so often the next step in his theories would call for a lab procedure or field experiment. The first time Samuel sat in his laboratory he got this feeling. He knew this would be the place where he makes history. 

Since then, he has faced much ridicule in the science community for his beliefs in tachyons and time travel. Everyone considered the notions, but no one ever tried to prove it. That’s just career suicide. Once Samuel took up this mission he knew he would have to sacrifice certain things, and so he did. He knew the last of them would be his integrity. Now that time was at hand and Samuel was pinched by his lurking failures to come up with a suitable formula. 

Samuel sat up in his seat. He stared down at his notes. It was an empty stare. Most of the equipment was off in the laboratory. He sat as his cluttered desk with the only light on over him and the chalkboard. The chalk was almost spent as most of it was on the board already in equation form. Samuel reached into his suit jacket, from the inner breast pocket he pulled out a golden pocket watch. Samuel clicked it open and admired it; a gift from his wife. 

Sam knew tachyons were integral in the equation but he could not find a way to apply them without having the same effect as every other scientist who tested them. Samuel concentrated on one of his best tools, his ability to see outside of the box. Perhaps there was a second piece to this puzzle that he had never considered. What if the tachyons are nothing but a secondary effect? 

Samuel got up from his desk and grabbed the chalk. He cleared some space with his sleeve and drew a circle. He wrote “tachyons” inside the circle then stepped back. He used his sleeve again to erase “tachyons” from the inside of the circle. Samuel then wrote “tachyons” along the outside of the circle. That was it. He stepped back again and wondered what was to go inside the circle…

 to be continued...

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

1.2.0 Love and Tachyons





















Jessup, MD

It was time for Ansem's daily routine of crossing paths with Rebecca as he got home from work and she was leaving for her shift at the hospital. 
“Hi, Mr. Weathers.” 
Christ, she called him mister. If he only just opened his mouth and talked to her she would find that he was not that much older than her. The beard throws people off. Every time he tried to talk his voice would drop out, but he went for it anyway, “Hi, Reb…” his words dissipated into the air as he tried to pick it back up with a wave, “...becca.” Ansem smiled like an awkward idiot and was unsure if she even heard him; another squandered moment.

He walked into his house and made himself dinner. Later Rebecca would get home at four in the morning. The only light that was still on in Ansem’s house was coming from the basement window. Rebecca was so tired she thought little of it. The next day Ansem finished his truck route to the pharmacies and sporting goods stores and looked forward to his daily moment with Rebecca. All the way home he practiced different ways to say hello, “Hi Rebecca!” “ Great Day today!”  “Hey neighbor!” “Same shit, different day!”  That last one might leave too much of an impression. But maybe that’s exactly what he needed to do.

When Ansem got home and parked his enormous truck out on the street instead of in his drive, as he was known to do, he saw Rebecca talking to someone else. It was the mailman. But it was too late for him to still be making his rounds. This could only mean one thing... He was there on a personal call. Ansem walked down the stone path to his front door facing them the entire way. It wasn’t so bad, the awkwardness was cut with a brown bag of groceries he was holding, blocking any potential eye-contact. He thought about waving but that seemed silly.

Ansem rushed into his house and closed the door. When he turned his head to have a look out the window, he tripped on the ottoman and spilled his groceries all over the floor. The carton of milk broke open. It was a mess. Ansem got up and screamed. He pulled the fireplace spike out and slammed it into the ottoman, cutting holes in it, carving out the stuffing. Ansem got all his pent up frustration out. He briefly fantasized about them hearing him and coming over. Ansem’s paranoia then got the best of him and he immediately calmed down, cleaned the mess, and fixed the ottoman before hiding down in his basement for the rest of the night.


New York, NY

Samuel was spending days on end at his campus laboratory. He kept telling Vanessa that he was on the verge of a breakthrough that could save his career. He was not able to give up this theory. They were threatening to take away his grants and tenure. Samuel didn't want to go home because he feared they would change the locks on him.

“If I can just make the tachyon converter work…” Samuel muttered to himself in front of the chalkboard. It was almost two in the morning. He was staring through over-tired eyes and blotchy glasses. Only one thing could break him from this spell... Vanessa walked into the office. “You can make it work tomorrow, honey. Let’s go home.” She brought his jacket over and covered him with it.
“Oh, Vanessa, I think I screwed up bad this time.” The bourbon was heavy on his breath. The empty bottle went unnoticed on the floor between the couch and the wall.

Vanessa Chase drove her husband home and he did not lose his job, for the time being. Thankfully, nobody saw her drag his drunk-ass out of there. The next day Samuel woke up and saw his last dream echoing in his mind. It looked like the formula to the tachyon converter, but then it became a silver box with an indented curve riding down both sides of it to a point, at the point there was an opening that light was pouring out of...

Every time the light broke his vision the feeling remained the same. This was the tachyon converter. Vanessa was right; he did find it the next day. What they both did not know, what they could not know, is that time travel required more than just particles that travel backwards through time. Samuel would have to find that out the hard way in the days to come. 

to be continued...

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

1.1.0 Two Di Are Cast



















Two truths will always be... You cannot put chaos in a formula, and man will never be able to see what is coming next. Make no mistake, the latter follows the former.
                        -Doctor Samuel Gordon Chase (Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics) 

Jessup, MD

He had a good life. He had a good job. Driving while he works everyday was a plus for Ansem. He never thought he would have this much to begin with. He owned the truck and basically had his own shipping company. Right off Route 1, Ansem was not twenty minutes from Washington, D.C.; the center of it all. There was always business in the capital. Ansem was swelling with jobs. He had no real family. He could drive all across the country if he wanted.

Ansem instead lived in his late parents’ house, the house he grew up in. He stayed in crowded Maryland and made thousands and thousands of dollars over the years of getting contracts. Ansem did not do much. He never went out nor had people over. He had very few hobbies. When he was a kid, the only thing he played with was his chem-set.

Ansem wanted to be a scientist his entire life; not just any science, but one remembered and rich, with his own laboratory, someone who cured something major, like cancer or AIDS. And yet his life did not lead him there. Out of high school he went away to college and was called home halfway through his first year when his mother fell ill. It took her nine months to die, the same amount of time he grew to live inside her womb. Ansem never returned to school. Instead he stayed home and took care of his heartbroken dad. In five years their lives were beginning to get better. Ansem’s father then died of a heart attack.

He had no chance to get him to the hospital. The heart attack took three seconds, three seconds… one moment’s thought…that is all it took to kill his dad. There was nothing anybody could do. In all honesty, his father was dead the moment they lost his mother. Ansem was left alone, and with this big empty house. There was only one reason he did not move and start his life over. Instead, it has been over twenty years and Ansem is a quiet millionaire living amongst normal people, maintaining his guise as the blue collar delivery guy. He did all of this, all these years, for one person in mind, the reason he stayed...

There is nothing in this world that he would not do for her and she had no idea. They barely even knew each other. But Ansem had lived next to Rebecca for seven years now, and he knew enough about her to know that he loved her. Now all he had to do was talk to her.



New York, NY

The Manhattan morning was clear with a bright blue sky. The kids were all up and getting ready for school when Samuel came downstairs. “Did I miss breakfast?” Samuel asked his wife.
“No darling, the girls just wake up early with Mommy. And Warren!” Samuel’s wife banged on the wall, “…is going to be late!”            
Just then a bedroom door opened and the front door slammed shut. Their oldest was in his last year of prep school. Samuel walked up behind Vanessa. 
“Could it be, Doctor Chase…that we have the house to ourselves?”
"I wouldn't say that..." remarked Samuel as the neighbor's dog came running into the kitchen, looking for some breakfast.
"Warren keeps letting him in and not taking him back to Allen," Vanessa explained.
"Go home, Jackson!" Samuel shooed the pup out the back door.
“You’re going to be late too, Doctor.”
“They can wait for me.”

An hour later, Doctor Samuel Gordon Chase entered his research company’s funded wing at Manhattan Tech. He was late for his presentation on his latest theory. Dr. Chase was the head of his department, albeit the smallest department in the field of physics.

Samuel got through the door of his office and switched out of his jacket and into his blazer. He slid his already-knotted tie around his neck and under his collar. A quick brush to the hair and he was back out the door. Samuel ran back into the office to get his notes and finally got to the meeting in the lecture room over twenty minutes late.

When Samuel opened the door the clocks were rolled back. He laughed and to cover catching his breath he scoffed, “Now suppose I just went back in time.” Everyone had a laugh or a gasp at the reality and comfort with Samuel’s tone. They talked amongst themselves as he got ready. He got his stuff together and onto the podium and started up his laptop. He turned on the projector and opened the slideshow he had ready.

Doctor Samuel Gordon Chase was a leading mind in theoretical and quantum physics. Today his lecture was on the theoretical analysis of whether time travel was possible and/or achievable. There were six representatives from the pentagon present at the lecture. All but one got up and left during it. General Saarsgard of the Air Force stayed and let the eccentric doctor of science finish what he had to say.

The other representatives shrugged it off as nonsense, but in reality they were listening to a man far ahead of his time. He was talking about cracking the scientific code of chaos and unlocking the space time continuum. The general took away one important fact over all of them when he left, exactly what Samuel intended, Traveling to the future was impossible, you could not be able to tell what would be there waiting for you; but a carefully constructed window into the past could be ascertained. Unbeknownst to anyone, a squad of pilots was chosen and issued orders by General Saarsgard to begin top secret training in Cheyenne Mountain for navigating through “deep space”.

It was a hard couple of months after that for Doctor Chase. From how the Pentagon reps had reacted to the lecture to the talk around the institute, rumors of his theory had turned Samuel into a social pariah. His field was always on the edge of fact and fiction. This might have put it over the top. He continued his research with his grad students, but even they started to dwindle in numbers. He was losing his integrity as a scientist. Soon he would have to make a decision…call off this crazy hunt for time travel or risk losing his career and family over it. Samuel could always see down the line; no matter how thick the fog got…

to be continued...