Patrick Lee - The Breach

We took a vote and have decided to open the door, and send someone to check if the elevator is working. (I'll go.) It's a dozen yards or so farther from the chamber than this room, maybe there's a chance it wasn't affected. Scary to open the door, if it's possible the air is bad outside the room, though I don't know why that would have happened. (But who knows about anything down here now?)

APPROX. HOUR AND A HALF AFTER LAST ENTRY

It took us half an hour to get the door open. The metal had fused to the frame at several places like a weld. If it'd been a tighter fit to the frame, the whole thing would have fused, and we'd have been trapped. Sure as hell would not have broken through the 2-inch-thick polycarbonate window in the door.

No use anyway. I went out to the elevator and it's dead. Pulleys are probably welded solid even if the electrical was working.

When I was in the hall, I could see into the chamber, but could make out no detail except the light, which I couldn't look right at. In peripheral, it seems like a single point of light out in the middle somewhere, bright white. It felt like sunlight on my skin, maybe even a little warmer, which is scary. I came back in the room quickly.

Also, some kind of sound is coming from the chamber, very faint, could almost be imagining it, but I don't think so. Hard to describe it, sort of like a tuning fork. Back in the room with the door shut, I couldn't hear it anymore.

Someone will have to come for us soon. Ruben is still not responding. I keep thinking about all the precautions I might have recommended, all these years while this place was being built. Maybe a medical staffer down here, if nothing else. Just never thought for a second something like this (whatever this even is) would happen. I take responsibility for whatever happens to these people. This is still Dave by the way.

FIVE TO SEVEN HOURS AFTER LAST ENTRY

I dozed off. Secretary Graham woke me up and I saw that the light in the hall had changed. Much dimmer, and blue instead of white. Everyone's nerves have had it, mine too. Why the hell isn't someone down here to get us yet?

Ruben still unconscious. Wonder if he is in a coma, but have no idea. Porter's body bloating a little, smells terrible, really bothering us in this unvented space.

I am pissed off, I'll say that. Maybe unprofessional, and maybe I'll tear out these pages later, but right now I'm pissed and want to say so. Ruben Ward is my best friend and one of the smartest men in the world, he has so much to offer science, and he might be experiencing brain damage by now because these fucking assholes are doing what up there? Having a luncheon and setting a date for a formal meeting about how to get us out of here? I know I'm being unfair and stupid, I'm sure they're up there figuring it all out, but I'm stressed and really pissed. This room smells like roadkill but we're afraid to leave it. Wish I knew what the hell that light from the chamber was. Dave.

TWELVE HOURS AFTER LAST ENTRY, GIVE OR TAKE

Can no longer handle the smell. Graham and I have volunteered to take the body out into the hallway at least, maybe farther toward the chamber. Majority have voted to leave the door open for a while after that, let the room air out if that will even happen.

Light is a bit dimmer now, and purple, projecting ripples in the hallway like you see on the bottom of a pool. Have to admit I'm afraid to go out into it, just don't know what it is, what is out there in the chamber.

But curious, too, no doubt about it. We're going now. Dave.

ONE HOUR AFTER LAST ENTRY

The interacting point at the center of the chamber is gone. The whole assembly, and the magnets too, just gone like they were never there. Some amount of the floor they were sitting on is gone as well. There's a kind of crater in the floor, not blasted there, but more like machined there, like a giant with a disc sander honed it out. It's maybe a foot deep in the middle, shallowing out to the edge at a radius of, I don't know, twenty feet.

Above the crater, perfectly centered where the interacting point used to be, is what I can only call a rip in midair. The rip is an oval, some ten feet wide, maybe three feet tall in the middle, purple and blue light filling it and curling like flame at its edges. When you look into the rip and move back and forth sideways, you realize you're looking into a depth, an opening. It's like looking in through the hatch of a deep coal furnace.

Graham and I just stood and looked at it for I don't know how long, after we took the body down to the chamber. Then Graham went around the far side of the rip, and called out for me to follow. I went, and here's where it's craziest of all, you can't see the rip from the other side. As soon as you go past it, it's gone, you just see the empty air over the crater. Edge-on, you see those blue-purple flames licking out of the opening, but a step farther back and there's nothing.

The sound is still there, too, different now, like the light is different. I still have no good way to describe the sound, except… it's like voices. I mean, it's not, but that's what comes to mind. Voices singing from out of the opening. There's something bad about the sound. It does something to your mood. Not sure what it is, but it makes you feel very wrong, in a lot of ways. Graham felt it, too, and when we got back to the room, the others had changed their minds about leaving the door open. They wanted to shut the sound out, even if it meant keeping the smell in. I agreed.

Since then I've been sitting here just trying to come to terms with what we've created. What the hell is it? I keep thinking of all the concepts I thought were five hundred years down the road, Einstein-Rosen bridges, that kind of thing. Not even going to guess, though. I'd just look stupid later. It has to be studied by experts in a range of fields, measured, tested. Data first, theories later. Wow, though. Wow squared, Ruben would say.

I just realized I can still hear the sound, even with the door closed. Maybe it's because I know what I'm listening for now.

HALF A DAY OR SO AFTER LAST ENTRY

I woke up in the hallway, down at the end where it widens into the chamber. I did not remember walking out there, and would never have chosen to. I was shivering hard when I woke, could feel the sound from the opening, like it was going right through my body and making my bones hum. Got up fast and saw that Graham was out there, too, and the fat guy who works for him, Kurson, I think his name is. Both asleep. I woke them and they were as surprised as me to find themselves there.

Back in the room with the door shut, could not seem to relax. A woman from DOE, someone's assistant, spilled a few Cheez-its and tossed them in the trash, and I blew up at her, seriously thought I would physically attack her until the others calmed me down. I apologized later.

What the fuck is up with someone coming to get us? What is it, a couple days now? I don't even know. This is bullshit. When this is over someone's getting an earful from me and probably legal action. Seriously, what the fuck?

QUITE A FEW HOURS AFTER LAST ENTRY

I sat next to Ruben a long time and read to him from a paperback he had in his desk, in case he can hear somehow. Maybe I just did it to try blocking out the sound from the chamber.

Then, I don't know why, but I got up and went out there, out into the chamber. Stood staring at the rip/opening. It's beautiful, and you know what else? When you're looking at it, the sound is not entirely bad. I'll probably tell Graham to try it for himself, I think he'd be able to appreciate it.

I GUESS A DAY LATER

Pretty bad tension among the people down here, I guess it is to be expected with us all crammed in like this. I am not fitting in with the group much at all. I can't wait to get out of this place and never see these people again. Another bad argument a little while ago (the third or fourth one) this time with me against almost all of them, except Graham and Kurson.