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Science Fiction and Fantasy
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| Depth Perception (1 of 2) | |
| By JackThursby | ||||||||||
| 11 June 2008 | ||||||||||
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OK, this is an attempt at a more sciencey-science fiction. Set in the near future, the Earth is being exhausted and two scientists meet to discuss a permanent solution. But at what cost does this solution come? And it is a solution to save humanity or doom it? Do I just really like rhetorical questions? Geneva had retained its beauty through the years. Sure the lake with which it shared it's name was neither clear nor safe, and the pretty old townhouses which sat at it's banks were replaced with hulking concrete monstrosities, but the charm of the city remained in parts. Under this great old city, burrowed a mile beneath it, what was left of CERN operated where the great particle accelerators it built once rushed and whirred. When the first was built in the 1970s, some thought it would create a black hole under the city, destroying not just the Earth, but perhaps the whole solar system. At this moment, the elevator which descended from the surface was a quarter-mile from its destination. Inside stood an impatient man, arms folded and foot tapping. Professor James Smith had come from Oxford for this, his flight was cramped and now he was stuck in a lift for the last half-hour. He had a right to be impatient, but was even when he didn't. He was tall and handsome, a playboy sub-atomic physicist, with a dry wit and an arrogance which his colleagues despised, but tolerated. The lift reached the bottom, and the pneumatics let out a sigh. The doors opened out onto a long dark corridor. The clean chrome sheen the walls once had was faded, and the deep brown of earth gathered in growing patches. The smell of dank earth saturated the air. James stepped out confidently, flashing his pass tersely at the guard and continuing down, each successive light clicking on and off above him. "Rather cute, don't you think?" Spoke a chubby man who opened the door at the end of the corridor. he looked nervous, and his glib comment tried to hide it. "Well Philip, you must have a lot of time on your hands and I assume you didn't call me all the way out here from England to show me a cheap party trick. The way you sounded on the vidcall it was like you had disproved general relativity." James said, handing his coat to his fellow professor, who laughed: "No, it's not that big, well perhaps, but..." "I'm disappointed...I would have liked to prove you wrong, like I did with dark energy, white holes and general lepton diffraction, but I won't lie," "Well that's a first!" Philip's nervousness presented itself again. "I won't lie, I am quite excited. Physics has become boring since we found out what makes the universe tick, I mean it was never the same after we discovered Higgs' Boson. Finding the source of all mass and subsequent parallel universes really only left our lives empty." Philip nodded and opened a door, it read 'Authorised Personnel Only-Maximum Security'. The colossal metal door closed behind them and they entered a workshop. It was disorganised, to use a polite term. From electron guns to hyper sensitive oscilloscopes, equipment dating back to the 1950s cluttered the desks. Wires and crumpled pieces of paper littered the floor and a black banana sat festering on a bench. " So what have you discovered then? Stop stalling. I know you've called a press conference this afternoon, and you want me to check it before you go in front of the press and look like an ass." James said flippantly, checking his fingernails for the omnipresent dirt. Philip grabbed some papers and excitedly drew some images on his whiteboard. He began to talk with authority, but a squint in his eye showed it was all memorised. "The Earth is to put it politely, buggered. Any kind of scientific or technological advances in America are impossible because of the civil war. With no American aid, the whole damn world is suffering. China has nearly 3 billion people and enough dirty industry to make the Victorians look like Greenpeace. Africa is starved, and most of Eastern Europe has been turned into farms to deal with the demand for food. The population problem has turned open spaces into holiday destinations, no matter where they are. Fortunately, our ability to harness anti-matter and particle anti-particle annihilation for energy has allowed me to continue my research." "So my discovery is powering your crap? Oh god I wish I'd never got that Nobel Prize now." James spoke with disdain. Philip was always a dreamer, not a worker. His research was fantastical: Wormholes, going faster than the speed of light, time travel. he read too much science-fiction and not enough science. Philip cleared his throat to start again. "So I was looking into wormholes. Yes, you don't believe in them but they are valid solutions in general relativity. We need to get off of this Earth soon. At the moment we have nowhere to go, but if I could find somewhere through a wormhole..." "Please. Wormholes first require some kind of curvature in spacetime, otherwise you could take no shortcuts, have you proved that yet?" "No. But this is what my discovery is. A quirk, an amazing physical anomaly of wormholes!" he said. "This is definitely a physical anomaly Philip, but it isn't impressive." James said, hoisting the banana aloft. "Yes, very funny, you always were the joker back at Oxford. How is it back at the old place?" "Better than here, that's for sure. CERN can't afford anything anymore. You know why? Because they can't offer anyone anything. Just the other day, I spoke to some airhead actor who wanted to know about Einstein. I humoured him for some time and once I talked about the photo-electric effect and photoelectron emmision he said 'So if you can lose electrons, can we use it to fight obesity?' Can you imagine that?" James picked up a ball bearing, throwing it into a cup of cold coffee, which was probably days old. " Someone once asked me how we could use beta decay to save the Earth, some people just don't realise modelling black holes is much more difficult than producing bloody biofuel. I can predict the behaviour of five electrons in a box! That's blooming amazing! What can biologists do? Create horrible, tasteless soy based foodstuffs. And this is what we can avoid! My discovery will save humanity forever, look!"Philip reached for a button, and in front of him and James a screen lifted. Behind it, a perfect black sphere sat majestically. Around it, the air looked warped, wrong. James gulped and stepped forward. "What is it?" he asked. "It's an omniwormhole. Inside is infinite extra dimensional space, from the inside you can go wherever. It is linked to every possible time and space in the universe. Don't you see, I've created a Tardis!" "I don't understand..." James looked perplexed, his tone uncertain, his voice wavering. "How does this save humanity?" "Everyone on Earth can step inside," Philip explained "It is Noah's Ark. From inside, we can expand out infinitely, we can live forever, we won't worry about the sun expanding, resources running out." "Everyone on Earth, do you really want to save everyone on Earth? With their dead end jobs and small-minded ambitions? Do they deserve another chance?" "Of course they do." Philip scoffed. "But inside it is nothing, infinite nothing, where will people live?" " We have all of space and time to gather land and materials." Philip replied. "And by putting a 'bumper' on the back of it to absorb energy, you can power it." "Yes, I suppose." Philip answered, puzzled. "And by the same token, the heat energy from your huge internal lights is pushed out by the 'bumper'." "How do you know all this, I didn't think all that up for months. The maths..." James reached into his pocket past his 20th generation iPod to a ceramic laser tube. It's inability to be picked up by metal detectors had made it the terrorists weapon of choice. James twisted it, it was loaded. Philip saw it and froze. "Please, you think this is your discovery? I found it a decade ago. I'm sorry Philip, but I can't let you do this. You obviously haven't thought of the consequences."
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