Paul Melko - The Walls of the Universe

“You’re a bumper,” Henry said to Grace. He bounced his hip off hers and said, “Boing!”

“Funny.”

One of John’s purchases was a set of vises. They took the device and placed it in a vise that gripped the base of the device. The vise had rubber grips that squeezed the thing evenly. John then lowered a similar vise from above. This vise was attached to a lever and pressure gauge so that they could measure the exact force they were applying to the device.

“We’ll start with twenty newtons of force,” John said.

“This is just like physics lab,” Grace giggled.

“Applying twenty newtons of force.”

Henry watched the seam on the device. They had precision calipers on both sides to measure its width.

“Nothing.”

“Applying forty newtons.”

“Nothing.”

John worked slowly to 200 newtons, with no change in the width of the seam.

“Maybe we need to relieve the pressure inside before it comes open,” Grace said.

“But how?”

“Cracking it open is probably not an option,” Henry said.

“Not yet,” John said.

“Lubricant?” Henry suggested.

They sprayed a liquid lubricant along the edge. “Not too much.”

Then John tried 200 newtons of force again. Then 240. “I can’t do any more than that evenly,” he said.

“Then let’s use pulleys,” Henry said. “You have a four-pulley assembly.” With four pulleys they could quadruple John’s force.

They hung the pulley assembly from the crane.

“Three hundred newtons. Three fifty. Four hundred.”

“Stop!” Henry cried. He slid the caliper against the line. “I’ve got half a millimeter movement here.”

“Me too,” Grace said from the other side.

“Now that it’s started, you may not need as much force,” Grace said.

John tried 80 newtons, then 120. With a soft pop the front of the device came off.

“Hold it.” The two halves hung separated by a small crack.

“Flashlight, please,” John said.

He shined the light at the crack but could see nothing.

Henry said, “There’s hinges on this side.”

There were, small hinges where the two halves came together.

They disconnected the upper vise and moved the pulleys out of the way. Gingerly John lifted the upper half away, and it opened like a compact mirror, revealing the inside of the device.

Inside were what looked like two marshmallows covered in mold.

“It was meant to open like that,” Henry said. “If it has a hinge.”

John looked into the inside of the device and examined the marshmallow things closely. “Take a picture from every angle, of everything. Use two rolls. I want redundancy.” If he screwed it up, he wanted to know how.

The fungus attached to the two shapes was actually tiny threads. As he looked closer, he saw that the marshmallows themselves were made of tightly bound layers of the stuff.

“That doesn’t look like anything made by a human,” Grace said. “It looks alien.”

John had seen the diversity of the human universes and he was willing to bet that humans, however bizarre they might be, had built this. It just didn’t look like anything Grace knew of in her universe.

Henry loaded a new roll of film and repeated all the same shots.

Dozens of threads ran between the two marshmallows, connecting them. Threads also ran from the marshmallows to the hinges and then to the back sides of the controls on the device’s lid. Threads ran to all of the buttons, dials, and switches. In fact, below each of the buttons were smaller fuzzy marshmallows.

“The threads comprise the control system,” Grace said. “They must be the electronics of the thing.”

Of the two fuzzy marshmallows, one was near the center of the device and the other was to the upper right. That one was the source of the gamma radiation. John noted that there was a white spine, perhaps a half centimeter in diameter, jutting into it. The center mallow had no such spine.

“That’s the power source, I assume,” John said. “Maybe that spine houses the antimatter.”

“How can you house antimatter?” Henry asked.

“Magnetic field, I assume.”

Grace pointed the flashlight at the edge of the bottom half. “Look there.” John peered closely and saw a small strand of the fiber lying unconnected. “Do you think it fell off? Do you think that’s why the device is broken? Or perhaps you’ve come around to my hypothesis of sabotage!”

“I don’t know. Do you have… something?” He made gripping signs with his hands.

Grace handed him long, thin tweezers. Carefully, John slid the thing through the web of threads and caught the stray thread. He pulled it out and put it in a plastic bag.

“Let’s see what this is made of,” he said.

He placed it under the light microscope, and they took turns looking at it.

“Fiber?” Henry asked.

“I have a laser,” Grace cried. “For presentations.” She held it carefully to the end of the small thread. John couldn’t see coherent light coming from the other end.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Maybe it will run current,” Henry said.

They attached a voltmeter to the ends of the thread. It showed a few ohms of resistance. “Maybe they’re like wires,” Grace said. “That whole mass is a large electrical circuit.”

“That doesn’t get us anywhere,” John said, sighing. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected inside the device, but the mass of threads wasn’t it.

“Why not?” Grace cried. “We just have to figure out what these balls do.”

“And fix where it’s broken,” Henry said.

“How?”

“I dunno,” Grace said. She peered closely at the masses. “If we could map it out…”

Henry clicked a few more pictures. “There’s no way to figure out what’s connected to what.”

Grace shook her head. “There’s always a way.” She pointed to the single thread that they had retrieved from the device. “We’ll start with this.”

There wasn’t anything else for them to do with the device, so John closed it back up.

“I’ll send the thread to a lab and get an analysis done,” Grace said.

Charboric called three times that week asking for a meeting. John dodged the call all three times, having the secretary say he was in class, though he wasn’t. Grace called him on Saturday just as he was getting ready to head into work.

“Charboric is here,” she said. “Head to the old factory instead. I have news.”

John sped to the old factory. He couldn’t continue avoiding Charboric. The man would grow suspicious, if he wasn’t already. The man was paranoia incarnate.

Grace was already at the old factory. She handed John a stack of paper. “Lab report,” she said. “This stuff is cool.”

“Did the lab technicians have any questions?” John asked. “Were they suspicious?”

Grace shrugged. “Who cares? This stuff, its walls are a dielectric material. Its inside is glass.”

“What does that mean?” John asked. In his universe, he knew fiber-optic wiring was common. Here most electronics used copper.

“Who knows?” Grace cried. “But that’s not the cool part. I mean, it’s cool, but it’s not the coolest part. Hit the lights.” John turned off the overhead fluorescent bulbs while Grace pulled the shades down to the room. She clipped a wire to the end of the thread. The other end of her wire was attached to a nine-volt battery.

The thread glowed a ghostly blue.

“Cool, but so what?”

Henry slammed through the door. “What’d I miss?” he said, puffing.

“Lab report, glowing thread,” Grace said. “But not the climax.”

“Go!” Henry said.

“We can map out the marshmallows with this,” Grace said.