Only a Wild Theory

Sarah Cormorant swore as her new pair of sunglasses slipped from her grasp, falling to the sidewalk. As she bent to retrieve them, another hand swept them up. She squinted, gazing up at a lanky man in his early thirties.

"I'm still picking up after you," said Dr. Brian Case, handing the glasses to her.

Sarah smiled before standing up and eagerly accepting his embrace. She pecked him on the cheek.

He continued, "You left so many socks lying around, I didn't need carpeting."

She put on the shades, which softened the glow of the bright yellow sun shining over Brian's head. Behind him stood the Red Facility, a low building made of crimson bricks used by scientists at the Mohawk Valley Gravity Wave Interferometer Laboratory to monitor test results. To Sarah's left, as far as the eye could see, extended one of the pipe-like arms of the Interferometer itself. Recently, the Laboratory made a breakthrough in its search for the existence of gravitons, the particles that do for gravity what photons do for light. Sarah, who worked for The Sunny Day, was continuing a series of interviews with Brian, the project manager of the Graviton Project.

"If you're ready, I thought we'd go to the lab," said Brian, extending his arm toward the red building. "Show you what all the hoopla is about."

"'Hoopla?' Is that a technical term?"

"Actually, the technical word is 'hullabaloo.'"

Sarah smiled, walking alongside him. Sarah and Brian attended high school together, had even been lab partners for four years. They found each other again after college, deepened their friendship into a frantic romance with hot nights and hot showers. Brian's exceptional ability to think beyond the parameters of accepted theory launched him into further study and a career in experimental physics. Sarah studied journalism in graduate school with a focus on science writing. Long separations when he worked abroad and she traveled on assignment convinced her he would never give her the time and attention she wanted from a mate. He returned to New York to teach at Cornell, then joined the Interferometer Lab. She settled down at the local newspaper.

Sarah gazed around the well-manicured grounds surrounding the Facility and the larger building beside it where the scientists kept their offices.

At the lab, Brian led her past a security check into a large, dimly lit room filled with casually dressed men and women staring into black flat-screen monitors and wearing headphones. The scene was reminiscent of a submarine command center.

"Everyone's a little tense these days after the graviton discovery. It's exciting, but a little nerve-wracking making sure we document our test results precisely for the scientific community--not to mention the press." Brian winked at Sarah. "We've had some computer glitches recently. Nothing we can't fix. Just annoying sudden-stoppages in the data flow." He paused.

"What is it?" Sarah asked.

Brian looked at her, his hazel eyes clouded under a furrowed brow.

"Let's step outside," he said, cupping her elbow to steer her toward an outdoor observation area. He slid the door shut behind them. They stood alone before a concave window through which they could see the L-shaped Interferometer stretching west and south for miles in each direction. The laboratory worked like a giant ruler gauging infinitesimally small spaces by shooting lasers through a vacuum then measuring the interference patterns they create to determine the effect of gravity waves on matter.

"What's wrong, Brian?" Sarah asked, her heart beating faster. He leaned his hands on a railing, flinching and gripping his left arm. He turned to her, rolling up the sleeve of his sky-blue shirt. Sarah stared at long, deep gashes, healing slowly, leaving scars. She locked eyes with him. "What happened to you?"

Brian rolled down his sleeve. "I'm not sure, Sarah. But, I think it has something to do with our experiments."

"What do you mean? Did you stand in front of a laser?"

Brian laughed, then looked up when the door opened.

"Dr. Case, you have a call from a Nick Morgan. Should I take a message?" asked a slim young woman in jeans and a t-shirt.

"No. I'll take the call. Sarah, can I come to your office later for this interview?"

"Of course. Brian, should I be worried about you?" Her stomach tightened when he looked at her.

"I honestly don't know."

Sarah returned to her newspaper, poking her head into the editor's office. "Is this a good time, Jack?"

"Yeah, come in, come in."

Sarah sat with folded hands and a fixed expression as her editor recommended strategies for reporting on the graviton discovery. As he began to repeat himself, Sarah's mind wandered into a vivid daydream. She shivered in a cold mist, staring at the suggestion of a figure reaching out to her. The image was curvy and grotesque, yet oddly compelling in its entreaty, its outstretched limbs. The mist turned into a cold frost, creeping up Sarah's nose. She stared at the figure whose outer layer looked like human skin, but seemed injured, marred, even bloody. Sarah tried to pull away from it.

"How's that grab you?" her boss asked, leaning back in his leather chair.

Sarah looked up, staring for a moment at Jack's muscular arms, bared by rolled up sleeves; his watch showed the time was 10:45 A.M. She looked into his piercing gray eyes, which waited eagerly for her reply, then quickly put her hand over her nose to catch the blood that dripped from it. She grabbed a tissue from a box on Jack's desk.

"Since when do you get nosebleeds, kid?" he asked.

Sarah wiped her nose, reaching for another tissue. "I never get nosebleeds, Jack. I must have a cold coming on or something." She steadied herself in her seat.

"Okay, well, let me know if Brian cancels again. I know you're old friends, but sometimes these physicists prefer talking to national media. The Sunny Day is low on their event horizon," he said, chuckling at his own wit.

Sarah ignored the joke. "I'm going to write up what you just suggested. I'm sure Brian will be over later for the second interview."

"Great. Send me a draft of your next article before you leave."

Sarah hurried to her office and speed-dialed Brian.

"Hi," said Brian.

"Hi," she said, then realized his voice was coming from her office door.

"I am so glad you're here," she said as she rushed to close the door.

Brian reached for her face. "You've got blood under your nose, Sarah."

She allowed him to wipe her lip with his handkerchief and was pleasantly surprised that Brian's touch was still electric. She wondered if chance was forcing them closer. He smiled shyly and pocketed the cloth as she relayed her experience in the fog.

"I'm sorry this is happening to you," he said. "Let's go see Nick Morgan.

The pathologist looked up from his paperwork and frowned. "Dr. Case, you've brought me a visitor."

Brian introduced Sarah, saying, "I want you two to swap stories, Dr. Morgan."

"I told you to call me Nick." The physicist and the medical examiner had enjoyed a bantering friendship ever since they met at a local radio show. Nick was fascinated by Brian's outlandish theories of reality and bought him a beer afterward.

Nick listened carefully to Sarah's tale, running a hand through his thinning, gray hair as she spoke. "Well, I don't know what happened to you, young lady, but I respect the PhD here. So, let's go look at the bodies."

"What bodies?" Sarah asked.

"Well, you undoubtedly read about them in that rag you call a newspaper, since it was a pretty important crime story a couple of weeks ago. But they only reported the basic facts. They didn't mention the funny stuff." Nick raised his head a notch and narrowed his eyes as if to reassure Sarah his gruffness was meant as a jest not an offense. She liked him.

"Let's go," she said.

He led them down a flight of stairs to the morgue. Sarah slipped behind Brian and guided him so that he stood partially in front of her as Nick opened a steel drawer.

"This was the first one the police brought in. They found three more."

Sarah peeked from behind Brian at the corpse.

"Looks like trauma to the head. That's a normal cause of death for a crime scene . . . isn't it?" she stammered, moving closer.

"Yes, it is," the pathologist replied.

"So, what's the 'funny stuff'?" she asked.

"The funny stuff is that these bodies just showed up one night from out of the blue," Nick said, closing the drawer and opening the one underneath.

Sarah pulled back at the sight of a more badly damaged body.

Nick closed the drawer, and they made their way back to his office.

"You did pretty well for a reporter who doesn't work the crime beat, Ms. Cormorant."

"Call me Sarah. I read that story about unidentified victims. Sounded like professional hits. I figured the cops and the FBI would identify them eventually. But I don't remember anything about the bodies just showing up out of nowhere. What did you mean by that?"

"Sgt. Bellingham is an old friend of mine; we've seen more bodies than either of us wants to remember. He told me how he and his partner were walking a beat through that parking lot on the corner of Broadway and Main one night; the lot was empty, except for some broken bottles and cans. They started to go through an opening in the chain link fence when they heard a 'swishing' sound. They turned and saw a body, drew their pistols in case there was a perp close by, and called for backup. All they found was a body--that was the second one I showed you with the severe facial bruises. The last two are worse; you don't need to see everything."

"I don't get the connection, Nick."

"I'm not saying there is one, Sarah. But, after the cops brought in the fourth body with the same story about how it showed up in a place that was empty the moment before, I got very curious. Again, the body lacked identification. I called Bellingham and asked him if the cops or the Bureau had anything on the others. He told me they had absolutely nothing. It was three in the morning when I finished the autopsy, and, it being so late, it was easy to turn on my imagination. I got to thinking about Brian and his wild theories, the ones you hear only if you listen to late-night radio."

Sarah laughed. "Oh, I've heard his theories. You mean worm holes, parallel universes, that stuff?" She sobered when Nick didn't share her mirth. "Now you're scaring me."

Nick raised his palms. "I'm not saying I believe any of this stuff. Like I said, I was in a three-in-the-morning state of mind, I get a little attached to the PhD's theory that universes can share matter on the quantum level, and I wonder if that's what's happening here in Small Town, New York. I mean, the cops have no clues regarding who harmed these people or why. The Bureau can't identify any of them. No one has come forward looking for missing persons who fit their descriptions. And I have added nothing to this stunning failure of detection. All I can tell you is that they were all beaten up and/or mutilated and died from their injuries."

"And you think that something from another dimension attacked four people in our world . . . and me . . . and Brian?" she asked, turning to Brian.

"Actually," said Brian, "I think the bodies were placed here from a parallel universe."

Sarah's mouth opened involuntarily. She closed it, sitting back to think.

"Are these bodies human, Nick?"

"I have found no evidence to contradict that assumption."

Sarah took Brian's hand. "Are we under siege from an alternate universe?" she asked.

Brian squeezed her hand, dropping it as he stood. "Thanks, Nick," he said. "I'll be in touch if anything comes up."

Sarah sat silently as Brian drove them back to his office for the interview. He pushed on the accelerator, forcing his old Civic up a steep hill. The long southern arm of the Interferometer loomed into view on the horizon.

"Pull over a minute," she said. The journalist in her was desperate for some logic.

When the road reached a plateau, Brian pulled into a rest stop. They left the car to walk along a cliff edge overlooking the blue Mohawk River.

"Let's do our interview here," Sarah said. Brian sat on a tree stump and rested an ankle over his knee.

Sarah pulled out her mini tape recorder and set it next to her on a boulder. She clicked it on, then off.

"I'm sorry, Brian, I need to ask you something off the record. You described your findings in our first interview as a clear demonstration of the existence of gravitons, the messenger particles for gravity, the smallest particle of the weakest force in nature. Then, at Nick's, you implied by your silence that we're being invaded by a parallel universe. You also implied earlier that your experiments might be the cause of your injuries. Have you found the holy grail of physics uniting cosmic and quantum theories?"

Brian laughed. "Oh, no. I'm not that good. I'll tell you what I think, though. Keep in mind, it's only a wild theory. We now have overwhelming evidence that gravity waves created in a distant supernova or black hole pass through our little corner of the galaxy. Gravity may be a weak force, but it holds our universe together. If the Big Bang created multiple universes, then gravity might be the connecting factor. By slicing a vacuum with a laser, maybe we cut through space-time, connecting with another world."

Sarah nodded. "So you're building on the notion I've heard other physicists discuss that the old experiment with light passing through two slits is not necessarily light acting as a wave, but another universe pushing back."

"That's right."

"Brian, that's pretty wild."

"Like I said." He lowered his head.

Sarah missed his company. Who said universes can't converge?

"Why are you laughing?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing," she began, then her head started to swim as mist began to swirl around her. She focused on a hand with long, thin fingernails reaching toward her arm. Sarah leaned forward, trying to grasp it with her right hand. She brushed against it, then felt a tug, the hand grabbing at hers, finally locking in place. Sarah cried out in wonder and pain as the sharp fingernails dug into her palm. For what seemed like an eternity, she pulled at the hand, falling backward as its body sprang from the grip of whatever had been holding it back. She heard a whoosh, then pressure on her chest as the hand let go of hers and pushed against her, forcing her backward before falling away.

The mist dissolved and the forest returned. She looked down to see Brian holding a young woman, a young human woman, bleeding from a head wound. He stared wild-eyed at Sarah for only a moment, then pulled out his cell phone and called 911.

Sarah knelt next to the visitor, holding her hand, avoiding the sharp nails.

"You're going to be all right now," said Sarah. "You're safe with us."

The woman blinked frightened eyes and mumbled in a language Sarah could not understand. "Quiet now. Talk later."

Sarah sat by the young woman's bedside, holding up the centerfold of a glossy nature magazine. The girl's deep-set, indigo eyes relaxed. She smiled at the pictures of playful polar bear cubs climbing over and under their lumbering mother. Communication was limited to the sharing of names and a discussion, via rudimentary sign language, of the young woman's injuries and treatment. Sarah looked up as Brian opened the door.

The girl shrunk back. Sarah touched her gently on the chin, guiding her face to look at her. Then the reporter touched the middle of her own chest, pointed to her smiling face, then Brian.

"He is my friend," she said in a soft, comforting voice, hoping the tone if not the meaning of her words would draw calm.

Brian smiled, but did not enter the room. He motioned for Sarah to join him in the hallway.

She closed the door quietly behind her. Brian led her toward the visitors' lounge. He bought her coffee and sat next to her on a long, black couch.

"I'm still amazed anyone believed us," Sarah said. "If our contacts had ignored the story we might have lost some of the other ones reaching into our dimension for help. How many have been pulled through?"

"I've heard about two dozen people. But I'm sure there were people on our side who couldn't get themselves to reach out and pull someone into our dimension. It was a weird thing to ask of the general public."

"What did the director at the lab say to you this morning?"

Brian laughed without humor. "He asked me to discontinue my experiments for now. He said he didn't hire me to breach a dimensional divide."

"I'm sorry, Brian, but we did the right thing pulling those people through to our universe."

"Absolutely," he agreed, staring straight ahead, sipping coffee.

Sarah hooked her arm through his. "You could not have known your search for gravity waves would connect us to another dimension. The director has to take a safe course until all of you have a chance to investigate what happened."

Brian didn't answer. Sarah pulled her arm back. "You didn't know, right?"

Brian glanced at her, finished his coffee, and crushed the empty cup. "We know that experimentation itself affects the objects of our investigation. The first results I saw suggested we were opening random pockets of space-time, but I continued with my project. I wanted to know how far we could go."

Sarah nodded. "Okay. So, now we know. Maybe some good will come out of this. Your director will meet with the governor, who'll talk to the President and some security people, et cetera. If they don't want to continue contact, you can close the door to this parallel universe."

Brian stared at her, eyes filled with anguish.

"No, I can't."