Storymania - The Moment Of Truth by Simon King

The Moment Of Truth
Simon King

So here she was, finally. The culmination of her lifetime’s work. Starting with idealistic childhood dreams, through adolescent and adult studying, twenty years of research and development, to this point in time. Time. If there was one word which summed up her entire life, this would be it. From her earliest recollections of considering the matter, Dr. Chris Burrell seemed to have had her entire life mapped out in her head. Primary and Secondary School, on to University (in her case, UMIST), for honours degrees in Physics and Maths, followed by a PhD in Physics, then a research post at a prestigious institution (in her case, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey). And now, here she was, almost at the end of that carefully planned journey, and just for a moment, she caught herself wondering exactly what she would do now.
  For the last twenty years, after gaining her doctorate from UMIST, the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, Dr. Christine (Chris to everyone except her mother) Burrell had been immersed in ground-breaking research into the subject which consumed the vast majority of her waking hours; time travel. The subject guaranteed to engender a smile on the face of almost anyone who asked her about her work. Chris had been certain, with a belief bordering on religious faith at times, that the concept was not only possible in a theoretical sense, to which almost all physicists would concede, but possible practicably also. She had felt this from the first time she had been introduced to the subject, at the age of eleven, in a novel, intended for thirteen to sixteen-year-olds, entitled “Time Flies”. She remembered the story fondly, had re-read it more times than she could count, and still had her original copy on the stuffed shelves in her apartment. The story itself was fairly simplistic, a kind of updated Jules Verne Time Machine for kids, but the central idea of being able to travel in time had captured and enraptured her, from that moment to this. The day after finishing the book, she had raced to the library after school, and very politely asked the assistant librarian at the counter to “please show me where the Time Travel section is please”. She could still recall, as if looking at an old yet clear photograph, the mixed look of annoyance, amusement and confusion on the woman’s face. Assuming that Chris was looking for books on travel, and ignoring the ‘time’ aspect, she had shown her to this section. Chris, being a rather shy girl, had not dared point out that this was not in fact what she had been looking for. Instead, she stood for several minutes pretending to browse through the assorted tomes conveying the delights to be found through journeying the geographical world, while all the time itching to find those books showing her the ways in which she might travel the temporal universe. Eventually she had located the small science section, and found three books with the word “time” in the title. Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time”, “Time Machines” by Paul Nahin, and “Black Holes and Time Warps; Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy” by Kip Thorne. Taking all three back to the desk, she again received a strange mixture of expressions from the librarian, as she very determinedly set the books on the counter, and placed her library ticket on top of the pile.
  “Are you sure these are what you want? They are really for grown-ups you know”, the librarian intoned patronisingly. Chris just nodded, and the woman went through the routine of checking out the books without further comment. Chris hadn’t looked behind her as she left the library, but felt sure if she had, she would have seen the officious assistant librarian shaking her head.
  Over the next two weeks, she had done her very best to read the three books, understanding very little of course, albeit that she was a very bright girl. But there had been such wonderful words and phrases in these books, expressions that always gave her goose bumps of recognition when she heard them; “Arrow of Time”, “Anti-Matter”, “The Tipler Cylinder”, and her favourite, “Wormholes”. The only thing she had managed to grasp from these books was that wormholes seemed to be the best possibility for time travel of any of the ideas so far put forward. Even these were extremely speculative, and by no means certain to work in practice. They required something called “Exotic Matter”, which, apparently, was not generally available in shops, even in London, where her mother had told her you could buy anything.
  For the next thirty-odd years, she had been involved in a process of first understanding the concept, then understanding the practical problems involved, and finally developing solutions to those problems, becoming along the way one of the most respected scientists in her field, in any field, and one of the most controversial, a most unusual mix. That she had grown from a shy retiring girl into a forthright, confident woman at the same time had almost been a secondary fact, but contributed to her reputation nevertheless.
  Wormholes. That had been her favourite word from those first three books she had precociously borrowed all those years ago. Wormholes in spacetime, an idea which had been floating around the world of relativistic physics for many years before the future Doctor Burrell had come across it, was the name given to a particular solution of Einstein’s famous theory which suggested that physically remote parts of the Universe could be connected via a tunnel through hyperspace, and that the distance as travelled through the tunnel could be vastly less than the distance travelled between the two points through ordinary space. Not only that, but the two ends of the wormhole could occupy different times, and by travelling through the wormhole, one could, in theory, travel backwards or forwards in time.
  This was the classical view of Wormholes. Later on, a quantum mechanical theory was developed, which included the idea that, at the smallest scales, wormholes were, in fact, profligate throughout the Universe, in the form of a kind of foam. If, so the theory suggested, one of these Wormholes could be expanded to macroscopic size, and kept open, then it could possibly be used to travel vast distances through space, or even time.
  And it was this very theory which had been Christine Burrell’s starting point on the journey the end of which was now in sight. She had worked tirelessly, relentlessly for those thirty years, driven by the unshakeable belief in the practical possibility of this concept. One of the main problems to be overcome had been how to keep the ends of the Wormhole open and stable long enough for anything to pass safely through them, and, more importantly, back again. The study and eventual solution of this problem had taken fully ten years in itself, a mind-boggling journey through the electro-mechanical and quantum-mechanical properties of matter. Finally, she had found the substances which had the desired properties to form the anchor spheres holding the Wormhole stable. Niobium and Carbon-60, otherwise known as Buckminsterfullerene.
  The machine had been built, at a cost of over 300 million dollars, during the last five years, and now stood regally in the centre of the large single space building which had been constructed specifically to house it. Essentially spherical, it’s function could not have been guessed at by the uninformed. The central sphere was fifteen feet in diameter, with boxes, cables and other components encrusting it. On one side was a small cabin which would hold a maximum of two people, and was mounted on a short monorail. This, when the Wormhole had been opened, would move through a small opening in the sphere, and into the Wormhole, which would be held open, it’s three-dimensional edge drawn tight against the inside of the sphere. The cabin would hold two people, yes, but in a few hours time, for it’s first trial, it would hold just one. Dr Christine Burrell.
  Chris stood, leaning against the wall of the building, staring at her life’s work, with the same intermingled sense of love, pride and anxiety a mother feels when looking at her baby, and considering what the future might hold for it. She was surprisingly calm, considering the incredible experiment which she was about to conduct upon herself. But, being scientist first and foremost, she had compartmentalised any fear which she may have been feeling, and reduced it by rationalisation. Extensive tests had been carried out already of course. The opening of the Wormhole worked smoothly every time, and they had also carried out tests with inanimate objects, and then with live animals. Each test had, though initially showing up problems, eventually been concluded satisfactorily. Of the method and the mechanism, she had no doubts whatsoever. But the only way to prove that the system did what it was intended to do, was to use it herself. She would not have dreamed of asking anyone else to put themselves in that position, though several of her post-doc assistants had offered, mainly through concern for their safety, but also, if she were honest, through selfishness. This was her machine, her idea, her life.
  She left the building presently, the night already dark outside, and returned to her apartment.

She hadn’t slept, hadn’t expected to. As the first rays of dawn penetrated above the curtains in her apartment bedroom, Chris had already been up and dressed, coffee in one hand, draft scientific paper in the other, pacing the living room. At 8:00am, she got her things together, pulled on her coat, grabbed her keys and left the apartment to return to the Institute.
  When she reached the TTB (Time Travel Building, though no-one called it that, probably mainly through embarrassment), everyone was busy doing their own thing, seemingly quite oblivious to the fact that today was the day. The day on which they would all finally learn whether Dr. Burrell’s vision was one of genius, or merely mortal like the rest of them.
  Graham Peters, her trusty assistant, greeted her with his usual smile. “Morning Doc.”, he grinned, “Good night’s sleep?” Chris growled good-naturedly at him, knowing that he knew she couldn’t possibly have slept. But it had untied the slight knot of tension just beginning to tie itself in her stomach, and she was grateful for that.
  “Everything okay Graham?” she asked, already knowing the answer. “All systems go. No probs.” There was a shift in his tone. Slight, almost imperceptible, but there. “Doc., are you sure you don’t want someone else to go in there? Or even someone else to be in there with you?”
  “No, not a chance Graham”, she said emphatically. “This is my crazy idea, so it wouldn’t be fair to let anyone else risk their neck.” She walked away, towards the machine, and Graham returned to his last minute checking.
  The machine was now powered up, and emitted a low, almost sub-aural hum, more felt than heard. It felt almost alive, like a giant beast just awoken from hibernation, and which would, any minute, unfurl itself and walk away. This was hers. And today was her moment of truth.
  At 9:30am, on the morning of 14th January, 2019, the Burrell Machine was switched on to operational power, and Christine Burrell prepared to enter the Wormhole Traversement Unit. Prepared only in the psychological sense, since there were no physical preparations necessary. No spacesuit, no special equipment. This was a journey through time, and since no-one knew what the environment of time was like, no suitable protection could be imagined. The cabin of the WTU was pressure sealed, with eight hours supply of oxygen, plus water and some emergency rations, and that was about as much as could be done.
  Chris stood outside the unit, looking round at the faces of the team. Her team. People she had known, some for all the time she had been working on this project, others having joined over the years, but friends and colleagues every one. She stopped for a few seconds to look at each face, and each one smiled back, some with a nod, some with a thumbs-up. Finally she turned to Graham, standing only a yard or two away.
  “Well, good luck Doc.”, he smiled light-heartedly, although for the first time since she had known him, Chris noticed that the smile seemed slightly forced. She wanted to move and give him a hug, but that would have implied that she was in some way nervous or unsure about her work, which would never have done. It would have been unscientific, too, which was even worse. She contented herself with a simple “Thanks, Gray. See you later. Or is that earlier?” The joke was not a bad one for such an anxious moment, and very apt, since the plan was for her to travel back precisely twelve hours into the past, leave a small stone, then return. However, due to the inherent vagaries of their process, and also of quantum mechanics itself, they could not be absolutely sure of her time of arrival, and it was quite possible that she may return earlier, in which case she could actually meet Graham yesterday. They both smiled at each other, and the smiles were warmer and less strained than Graham’s had been a minute ago.
  Chris climbed into the tight cabin of the WTU, sat in one of the two bucket seats, and buckled herself in. The seatbelts were largely for personal comfort rather than because they thought they would necessarily be required, but they did give her a feeling of security when she was held tightly in place.
  Graham was at the hatch, watching to ensure she was fastened in correctly, and was quite happy with everything before he sealed the cabin. She looked round at him and nodded. He reached into the cabin and shook her hand. “Well done Doc., you’re finally here.”
  Chris found she couldn’t speak, so simply nodded again. Graham moved out of the cabin and closed the hatch, engaging the pressure seals, which locked with a loud ‘Hisss’. Chris was alone, cocooned inside the womb of her own offspring. Presently the slightly nasal radio voice of Tony, her communications assistant, came through. “Everything okay this end Doc. Ready to go?”
“Let’s go for it”, she replied, trying to sound as upbeat and confident as possible.
She could feel her heart pounding in her breast, as the power levels inside the machine rose, as did the electrical humming, and the vibrations. She knew at every second what was happening inside the machine. After about a minute, the gamma ray focusers would be engaged within the sphere, pointing single particle beams of gamma photons at a single point at the centre of the sphere, creating an enormous point source of energy, enough to tear the fabric of spacetime, and open up a Planck scale Wormhole to macroscopic size. As the Wormhole grew, the energy from the focusers would be increased, and more would be brought on-line all around the sphere, pulling the entrance towards the inner walls of the sphere, like blowing up a balloon from the outside, as she had often put it in her lectures. When the Wormhole entrance was stabilised, the WTU would be injected into the sphere, and into the Wormhole. The other end of the Wormhole was dictated by the ultra-precise control of the energy levels from the gamma focusers. This was not a Verne-type machine, where the destination could be controlled from within. All the settings had been predetermined. Chris was now merely a passenger. The only thing she had control over, right up until the WTU injection, was whether to abort the experiment. Once the injection had commenced, the point of no return had been reached.
Chris waited in the cabin while the Wormhole was captured and expanded. The process took about ten minutes, which seemed both the longest and the shortest ten minutes in her life. And that was what it all came down to in the end, wasn’t it? Our perception of time. We were all time travellers in our own way, weren’t we? Wishing our lives away half the time, wishing other moments would last for ever. Never happy with living our lives at the speed of one minute for every minute that passed.
She could see by the LED counter in front of her that nine minutes and thirty seconds had passed since the focusers had been activated, and, since there had been no reduction in power, and no alarm lights had shown, the Wormhole must now be stable. This was her last chance to abort, to pull out. But Doctor Christine Burrell was not in the habit of chickening out. So she watched the last thirty seconds tick down on the counter, and waited.
The injection, although timed to the second, still came as something of a surprise to her. It was more sudden and violent than she had expected, and she was grateful for the seatbelts. The WTU slid along it’s zero-contact monorail swiftly, entering into the sphere. The noise was almost intolerable, even through the lead-lined WTU.
After it slid to a halt, though, there was absolutely no movement. No vibration, nothing. Just the intolerable noise. This continued for exactly forty-five seconds, then the WTU abruptly slid back out of the sphere, and the noise, though not ending, reduced somewhat. It was some time before Chris realised that the machine had powered down to the holding level. She had no means of knowing what, if anything, had happened. Slowly she unfastened the safety belts, reached round and disengaged the pressure locks on the hatch, and pushed it open. The light was different, subtly so, but there was no element of daylight as there had been before. Now the only light was artificial. Her heart beginning to race faster, she climbed awkwardly out through the hatch, and stepped onto the concrete floor. Chris looked up at the windows, and saw the deep purple-black of night. She then looked at the large clock on the far wall, and read slowly, almost childlike, it’s display; 21:43 1/13/19. Twelve hours earlier than when she had climbed into the machine. It worked! Goddammit, it bloody WORKED!
  It was some time before Chris could pull her thoughts into some semblance of cohesion, during which she wandered aimlessly round and round the machine. Finally her mind geared itself down from the overdrive it had been running in, and she stopped walking and started thinking. What had happened here? She, or rather the machine, had opened up a Planck scale Wormhole to macroscopic size, pushed her through it, and pulled her out at the other end, which been located in the same spacial position, but at a different time. She had just become the first Time Traveller in the history of Mankind. Had there been anyone else around, or even listening in by radio, she would have been compelled to make a solemn statement to equal Neil Armstrong’s inimitable “One small step” on stepping onto the Moon, or Judith Peterson’s unforgettable “We came in peace” speech from the first manned Mars expedition three years ago. However, since she was alone, she contented herself with the slightly more pragmatic but no less expressive “Holy Shit!”
Doctor Christine Burrell’s moment of truth had arrived. She had accomplished her life’s ambition, and had proved that she was, in fact, not a dreamer or a hopeless lunatic, but a Genius. In any sense of that word, she was a Genius.
  Pulling herself out of her reverie, she walked over to the table prepared the previous day at the other end of the building, and pulled out of her pocket the small rounded stone she had picked up many years ago on a beach back home, and on which she had carved her initials, ‘CB’. This was to be the marker, the proof of the experiment, since there was no more tangible way of proving the success of the experiment other than physically meeting someone, which they had ruled out for the present, since no-one was exactly sure what would happen in such a circumstance. So this was the best alternative. She placed the stone on the table, then turned and walked slowly back to the machine. The Burrell Time Machine, as it could now properly be called. Taking one last glance at the clock on the wall, which now read 21:49, she climbed back through the hatch into the WTU, closed and sealed it, fastened herself in, and flicked the only other control, besides the Abort button, she had inside. The Return switch, which would take her back to the other end of the Wormhole, which was still being held open by the machine. The power picked up once more, and after thirty seconds, she felt the violent thump behind her as the WTU was injected back into the sphere, and the noise became deafening once again, as Chris travelled back through the Wormhole.
This continued for exactly forty-five seconds, then the WTU abruptly slid back out of the sphere, and the noise, though not ending, reduced somewhat. It was some time before Chris realised that the machine had powered down to the holding level. She had no means of knowing what, if anything, had happened. Slowly she unfastened the safety belts, reached round and disengaged the pressure locks on the hatch, and pushed it open. The light was different, subtly so, but there was no element of daylight as there had been before. Now the only light was artificial. Her heart beginning to race faster, she climbed awkwardly out through the hatch, and stepped onto the concrete floor. Chris looked up at the windows, and saw the deep purple-black of night. She then looked at the large clock on the far wall, and read slowly, almost childlike, it’s display; 21:43 1/13/19. Twelve hours earlier than when she had climbed into the machine. It worked! Goddammit, it bloody WORKED!
  It was some time before Chris could pull her thoughts into some semblance of cohesion, during which she wandered aimlessly round and round the machine. Finally her mind geared itself down from the overdrive it had been running in, and she stopped walking and started thinking. What had happened here? She, or rather the machine, had opened up a Planck scale Wormhole to macroscopic size, pushed her through it, and pulled her out at the other end, which been located in the same spacial position, but at a different time. She had just become the first Time Traveller in the history of Mankind. . Had there been anyone else around, or even listening in by radio, she would have been compelled to make a solemn statement to equal Neil Armstrong’s inimitable “One small step” on stepping onto the Moon, or Judith Peterson’s unforgettable “We came in peace” speech from the first manned Mars expedition three years ago. However, since she was alone, she contented herself with the slightly more pragmatic but no less expressive “Holy Shit!”
Doctor Christine Burrell’s moment of truth had arrived. She had accomplished her life’s ambition, and had proved that she was, in fact, not a dreamer or a hopeless lunatic, but a Genius. In any sense of that word, she was a Genius.
  Pulling herself out of her reverie, she walked over to the table prepared the previous day at the other end of the building, and pulled out of her pocket the small rounded stone she had picked up many years ago on a beach back home, and on which she had carved her initials, ‘CB’. This was to be the marker, the proof of the experiment, since there was no more tangible way of proving the success of the experiment other than physically meeting someone, which they had ruled out for the present, since no-one was exactly sure what would happen in such a circumstance. So this was the best alternative. She placed the stone on the table, then turned and walked slowly back to the machine. The Burrell Time Machine, as it could now properly be called. Taking one last glance at the clock on the wall, which now read 21:49, she climbed back through the hatch into the WTU, closed and sealed it, fastened herself in, and flicked the only other control, besides the Abort button, she had inside. The Return switch, which would take her back to the other end of the Wormhole, which was still being held open by the machine. The power picked up once more, and after thirty seconds, she felt the violent thump behind her as the WTU was injected back into the sphere, and the noise became deafening once again, as Chris travelled back through the Wormhole…….

Graham waited the whole of that day, and the whole of the night, along with the rest of the team, for Chris’ return. But she did not return. He argued with the Institute Directors who, after a week had passed, requested that the machine be shut down. Eventually they agreed to let him keep it running for one month, in the hope that somehow they could find a way to retrieve her. For that month, the team spent almost all of their time at the TTB, working on ideas and theories as to what had gone wrong, and what they could possibly do to bring Doctor Burrell back, but in the end they had to admit that they knew too little about the subject to even understand what had happened, let alone how they might possibly get her back. At the end of the month, with no proposals to put to the Directors, no real strong theories as to what had gone wrong, he had to accede to their request, and on 21st February 2019, the Burrell Machine was turned off, and Doctor Christine Burrell was pronounced missing presumed dead.
  Left alone in the TTB for the first time since the start of the experiment, Graham looked back at the machine one more time before leaving, and as he did so, he pulled out of his pocket the object which he had been carrying with him for the last month. The object he had picked up off the table early on the morning of 14th January. A small smooth pebble with the letters ‘CB’ carved into it.
  “You did it Doc,” he whispered into the empty building. “Wherever you are now, I hope you know that. You actually did it.” He put the stone back in his pocket, switched off the lights, and went home.
  He never knew what had gone wrong. He never found out that somehow the Wormhole had twisted around onto itself to form a closed loop, and that Doctor Christine Burrell’s Moment of Truth would now be repeated over and over again, essentially for ever. Fortunately, she would have no knowledge of this either, as each time would be identical to the first, down to the configuration of her neurons. Every time she left the WTU, her excitement would be identical to the first moment.