E.N.D.A.Y.S. Read online

  “So what are we waiting for?” Hayes asked, hands itching to return to his holsters.

  'I'm picking up some weird signals...' Kali said, as she orchestrated a quick trans-dimensional scan of the area.

  “What kind of weird?” Darvish asked, waiting for her response before knocking on the door.

  'I could swear this looks like residual jump dispersal...' she pulled up a scan of a jump site for comparison, analysing the contrast and correlation between the two sets of signals. The dispersion of emissions circulating around the jump site were almost identical to those propagating somewhere in the vicinity. The signal was dissipating, weak, certainly not a trans-dimensional jump, but someone had attempted or experimented with jump technology nearby in the recent past.

  “Well let's go say hi, and ask 'what the fuck?'” Hayes said, stepping up to the door and knocking loudly on the veneer of the black-painted hardwood.

  “We don't have all the intel!” Darvish garbled as the door swung open with a soft, shrill wail of hinges begging to be oiled.

  “Can I help you?” asked a thin, pale woman. Her eyes batting back and forth between Hayes and Darvish, owl-like, behind thick glasses. Straight brown hair hung over the spectacles in a centre parting, stopping at her hip.

  “We're here to see the Professor.” Hayes said, with a big smile, his eyes wide and bright at the mousy girl standing in front of them.

  “Doctor Parry?” she asked, quizzically.

  “That's our man.” Hayes said, as Darvish held back, no words in his throat.

  “Oh, of course.” she said, with a brief hint of a smile that swiftly vanished almost instantly behind awkwardness. “And you're from...?”

  “The university.” Hayes said, smile pervading.

  “Of course. Come right this way.” she walked away from the door with small, hurried footsteps that shuffled along the lobby and up the stairs.

  Hayes shot a smile and a wink at his partner as he entered, following the girl. Darvish inspected the lobby with suspicion, then followed Hayes inside, closing the door behind him and picking up pace to catch up.

  “How did you know there was a professor?” he asked, in a hushed tone.

  “There's always a professor.” Hayes said, the confident smile still fixed on his lips. “And they always play nice with a university. Grants and all.”

  The brunette took them up three flights of stairs, the walls covered in grand paintings of esteemed scientists, fellows of the Royal Society, each with legacies of furthering scientific study in the country. As they came to the fourth floor, the young woman stopped at a large set of mahogany double doors. The colour a deep ruddy brown, texture aged and distressed by time, but veneer lovingly restored to keep the sheen. Rectangular panels were carved at every foot, the doors each standing four feet wide and seven tall. As the woman knocked, her short, shallow taps could be heard reverberating around the room contained within.

  “Come.” declared a deep, withered voice. It sounded as though it gained the strength to project through the old wood via the acoustics of the room, rather than by the speaker's own vocal chords.

  The woman turned the handles on one of the large, ancient doors, and with a heave, pushed it inwards. It swayed in an arc reluctantly, groaning whilst doing so. The two agents stood in the hallway as the girl entered, taking in the sights of the laboratory ahead of them. The original Versailles parquet flooring was covered with white vinyl, upon which stood stainless steel benches and counters, each set up as workstations for separate sections of an experiment. As Darvish scanned his eyes across the room, based on a casual glance, and unfamiliarity with the equipment, he couldn't decipher what the overall purpose of the research might be. What he was able to discern was that every item laid out was within the technological means of this reality. If there were something illicit going on, it wasn't in plain sight.

  The brunette talked in hushed tones with the sole occupant of the room, a man in a lab coat at a workstation facing away from the door. Hayes had his nanos prick up his hearing.

  “Really?” said the man, a tonal ripple on the word, as if coming from deep in the back of his throat. “Thank you, Marissa.” he said, turning from his workstation to greet them as she shuffled past Hayes and Darvish, giving them a polite, awkward smile as she turned back down the stairs, her feet pitter-pattering softly back to ground level.

  “Gentlemen. A pleasure to have you visit.” he said, with a big smile, his voice guttural and hoarse. He walked over from the counter, steps laboured, bones almost audibly creaking as he approached them to shake their hands. Thin, grey hair clung to the top of his head for dear life as he turned from Hayes to Darvish, his wild eyebrows full of life above bright blue eyes. “Come on in, take yourself a seat.” he gestured for them to walk ahead as he wrestled the door closed, an intricate network of lines across his cheeks narrowing as he exerted himself. “What can I do for you chaps?” he asked, amidst recovering his breath. “Cup of tea? Coffee?”

  “We're fine.” Darvish said, with a polite smile.

  “I could do with a coffee...” Hayes said.

  “We're fine.” Darvish repeated, adamantly.

  “Very well.” said Parry, taking a seat on a stool opposite them. “How may I help you?”

  “We have some questions about your research.” Darvish said.

  “Oh, of course!” said the old man. “Always happy to oblige, what may I enlighten you upon?”

  “All of it.” Hayes said, before Darvish had a chance to form a more refined question. “Broad strokes, if you don't mind.”

  “Oh. But don't you already know --” the professor started, Hayes cutting him off.

  “Humour us, please.”

  “Of course. Anything for the university.” Parry said, as Hayes shot a knowing glance at Darvish, who ignored him completely. “Well, as you know, we're working alongside the London Centre For Nanotechnology to investigate the possibility of leveraging meta-connectivity to establish a baseline from which future technologies might emerge--”

  “Did you say 'meta'?” Hayes asked, interrupting.

  “Yes?” Parry said, a quizzical expression forming on his brow.

  “As in the meta?”

  “I don't follow.” the professor said, looking over to Darvish for an explanation.

  “Could you remind us of your background?” Darvish asked.

  “I... but of course,” Parry said. “My original PHD was in theoretical physics, formulating potential applications for supersymmetric quantum mechanics.”

  “Those words all make my brain hurt.” Hayes said, the professor's qualifications going straight over his head.

  “It's probably just the concussions.” Darvish said, absent-mindedly, his attention fixed on Parry.

  It wasn't the first time Hayes had to listen to a spiel about supersymmetry that caused him cerebral anxiety. He was once on a mission to a dimension in which supersymmetry was not only the basis for the leading scientific research, but also established in law. The population had theorised that not only do particles have supersymmetric partners, but human beings also. This lead to all in-world dating to be based entirely on the belief of finding one's sym-mate, at which point they were married and expected to live happily ever after.

  Jump Division found no evidence to prove that sym-mates did in fact exist, but the entire reality's divorce rate was so remarkably low, that nobody thought it was worth raining on their parade.

  “You're talking about quantum fields?” Darvish asked.

  “Quantum field theory, yes.” Parry confirmed.

  “Theory, right.” Hayes said, rolling his eyes. He didn't know much about how jump technology worked, but knew enough to be able to assert that anything the mundane inhabitants of this reality deemed a 'theory' was, assuming it was correct, likely a fact.

  “Have you done any research into dark matter?” Darvish asked.

  “Not of late,” said the professor. “This study in particular is focussed on nanotec
hnology and the meta –“

  “There's that word again...” said Hayes, hand shifting up his thigh slowly, resting at his hip.

  Kali's voice chimed out over the top of the conversation. 'Guys, we've got trans-dime activity.'

  “Here?” Hayes asked. The professor looking at him with yet another confused glance.

  'No. One sec...' she pulled up the in-world map and found the location. 'What the fuck?'

  “Don't make me 'what the fuck' your 'what the fuck'.” Hayes said.

  “Is your associate quite all right?” Parry asked Darvish.

  “He's just... on a call...” Darvish spluttered, ushering Hayes to his feet, heaving the door open and pushing him out into the hallway, slamming it behind him. “So, you were saying?” Darvish said.

  'It's at your point of arrival.' Kali said.

  “Sorry,” Darvish blurted, before Parry could continue. “Actually, I've got to be on that call too...” he said, making his way back to the door “We'll pick this up...”

  “Ok?” said Parry.

  “Thank you for your time.” he said, as he wrenched the door open and ran down the stairs, trying to catch up with Hayes. “Kali, direct me!” he shouted, unable to see Hayes.

  'Sending route to your lens.' she said.

  Darvish burst along the street, turning a corner to see Hayes ahead of him by two blocks. “Is it a jump?” he asked, between heavy breaths.

  'No. Maybe. I don't know, these readings are off.' Kali said, scrolling through the data feeds.

  “Find the fuck out.” Hayes said.

  Running through west London at full pelt, it took Hayes just over fifteen minutes to get a block from the alley that functioned as his point of arrival. He ordered his nanos to oxygenate his blood, and made his lungs work overtime at catching his breath. As he approached, Darvish was waiting outside the alley.

  “What the fuck?” Hayes said.

  “Took a cab, idiot. Your fifteen minute run was a four minute taxi ride.

  “That's just lazy...” Hayes said, wiping the sweat from his brow, resting his right hand on the holster at his hip, making to step into the alley as the shimmer of the pocket dimension formed against his thigh. Darvish stood in his way.

  “Not so fast, cowboy.” he said.

  “Cowboy?” Hayes scoffed.

  Hayes was unfamiliar with the concept of the wild west definition of 'the cowboy', and was instead thinking of the population of a reality he once visited in which cows were the dominant lifeform. Every building had flaps for doors, ramps instead of stairs, and grass was pretty much everywhere. It set off his allergies, and Hayes spent most of the mission sneezing.

  “Kali, scan it.” Darvish ordered, holding back at the mouth to the alleyway.

  'Already on it. These readings don't make sense.'

  “What kind of sense aren't they making?” Hayes asked, taking a moment after speaking to pull the sentence apart in his head to turn it into English.

  'It's not a jump...' Kali said. 'I mean, it is, but it's not right. Get visual confirmation.'

  Darvish took a moment to ready himself, then turned into the alley. The walls of the buildings surrounding it were glimmering, surfaces shifting, as if refracted in a moving fluid.

  “I've never seen anything like it...” he said. “It's like a jump that's... ongoing...”

  'That's pretty much what these readings say...' Kali said. 'It's like a feedback loop. The energy cycling, but it's not being released into the meta.'

  “This is all very interesting...” Hayes said, joining Darvish at the mouth of the alley “By which I mean it's fucking boring. Can I shoot someone yet?”

  'No signs of life other than you two... But you're welcome to shoot yourself.' Kali said, trying to work out what was happening. 'I need a visual inspection, there's nothing happening on the grid, it's got to be an in-world phenomena.'

  “Right...” Darvish said, nervously. He took small, anxious steps deeper into the alley, trying to peer through the ripples for signs of an explanation. Reaching in to his pocket, he pulled out a penny and flicked it at the surface of the warping space. It slipped through effortlessly and coasted through the air, losing speed as it got deeper into the anomaly. As it gently descended to meet the ground, it casually kissed the cobblestones and began a graceful, slow-motion leap to another, then another, each pounce taking longer and longer to accomplish.

  'Time dilation.' Kali said, hearing the first clink of the coin ring out, long after the impact with the ground. 'I'd estimate twenty-five percent a metre. Maybe thirty.'

  “Well how the fuck do we shut it off?” Hayes asked, fingers twitching at his hip, very much wanting to have something to shoot.

  “I'm going in to get a better look.” Darvish declared.

  “The fuck you are.” Hayes said, grabbing for him, but Darvish had already crossed the glimmering threshold of the aberration in spacetime.

  “Kali, still reading me?” Darvish asked, looking back at the surface swelling and surging behind his entry point.

  'Dilated, weak signal, but it's coming through.' Her response came through crackled, words faster than normal, pitched half an octave higher than her natural voice.

  “I'm taking another step.” he said, doing so, peering deeper into the folds and furrows of the warped path ahead of him. Something was lying at the centre of the alley, the very point of Hayes's arrival. “Are you seeing that?” he said, taking another step. The light distorted round his body, everything around him undulating as if he were wading through an ocean, forcing the current to shift past a solid object. There was a cardboard box sitting on the cobbles, light emanating from the folds at the top, alternating between red and blue.

  'Stop.' Kali instructed, but the words came through to Darvish a shriek of static.

  “I'm putting a stop to this.” said Hayes, reaching into the pocket-dimension and pulling out a gun.

  'No! We don't know what that will do...' Kali said.

  “What do your readings say? Is this stable? Is it going to contract, expand, explode, do we know fucking anything?”

  'It's...' she started, glancing over the readings trickling in from Darvish at a snail's pace. 'It's fluctuating, it's not stable, but it's not unstable.'

  “Not a fucking answer, Kali.” Hayes spat back, as he watched Darvish almost frozen in time, moving fractions of an inch every second as he approached the box. “I want to shoot the fucking thing.”

  'Give him another minute...' she said. 'Well, give him another five minutes... He's almost there.'

  Hayes pulled up scans in his lens, layering all the data that was being accrued by his senses, that wasn't within the visible spectrum. A wash of lines and pulses hovered over his sight, spectroscopes and radiation detectors, metameters and analysis graphs.

  Darvish looked back over his shoulder at Hayes, who was moving erratically, ten times faster than normal speed, then with the next step, twenty times faster. The time dilation was increasing every moment he got closer to the box.

  Darvish could hear beeping from the device, it was intermittent, but increasing in pace. The blue and red flashes in unison with the tones, faster and faster, until the light and the tones were a solid hum of sound and colour.

  “Shit.” he said, turning on his heel and running back towards the mouth of the alley. But it was too late. It had been activated.

  A pillar of light burst forth from the device, but rather than tentacles of light forming for a jump, the light was sucked straight back in to the tear in reality. Hayes watched from outside the bubble as the light crawled out of the box, the machinery that lay inside beginning to launch itself across the alley. “What's happening?!” he asked, raising his gun again.

  'I...' Kali watched the feed from Darvish's lens as the light encroached towards him, fingers arcing out from the box as its contents burst out. Then the light and components stopped moving in mid-air and started making their way back to their point of origin. 'It's...' She watched in horror.
>
  Darvish slowly tilted his head down as the light was pulled back into itself. He looked to his hands, as they contorted against his will, stretching towards the light, pulled along as the blinding rays disappeared into their point of origin, revealing a rough rip in the fabric of reality. The edges of the tear waved as if each were flags in the wind, matter sucked deep into the meta.

  'It's a singularity...' she said.

  “How do we stop it?” Hayes asked, putting the gun back into the holster, standing impotently at the mouth of the alley behind the rippling surface of the breach. He felt a knot in his throat as he watched his colleague fight helplessly against the pull of the vortex. His fingers were already at the event horizon, bones of his hands ripped apart at the molecular level to dust, then smaller than dust. The skin tearing as his wrists and arms followed their digits, blood coalescing around him, painting the path the rest of his body would follow. “I said what can we fucking do, Kali!” Hayes shouted.

  'I don't know... I... I've never see anything like this before...'

  The cobblestones and buildings surrounding the alley were beginning to be sucked into the mouth of the singularity, atom by atom. Tornadoes of brick particles dancing through the air from either side, to join the infinitely disseminating molecules of Darvish. When the brickwork was sucked through, the pipework was next, then the foundations. Hayes took a step back and looked at the buildings on either side. They were beginning to subside towards the rift.

  “Give me some fucking options! Now!” he shouted.

  'Ok. Give me a second... this is fucking unprecedented, so give me a fucking moment to process it.'

  “These buildings are going to collapse, people are about to fucking die, and more will fucking die if we don't close this thing.

  'Fine, fucking fine.' Kali shouted back. 'Shoot the fucker!'

  “For real?” Hayes asked, taken aback.

  'Explosive rounds. This thing wants energy, let's give it fucking energy. How many guns do you have?'

  Hayes glanced at the holsters, 'IV' marked on their chrome clips. “Four a piece.”