Chapter 12

  SHHNAP

  It had taken a split second longer, and the ‘snap’ sounded a little different, but there stood a perfectly black 8-foot cube in the garage. It looked like a bottomless hole. He poked at it with a pen. It was as impenetrable as ever. With this whole force, he swung a hammer into the nearest face of the cube. He felt the impact shoot through his wrist and arm, but the hammer blow made no sound at all. He made a couple of quick notes in his journal and clicked on the ‘stop’ button.

  Clicking on the stop button initiated a countdown clock in the new software. ‘687’ appeared on the screen and slowly began ticking down. He continued making entries in his journal.

  Although he hadn't consciously formed the plan, as he made notes, he knew it had been inevitable that he was going back in the box. In his heart, he had known it even before he had been scavenging at Jimmy Bob’s. Now, he had admitted it to himself. The countdown seemed to go on forever. His chest burned with the need to continue exploring the unseen universe. While he waited, he put away the tools and swept the clutter from the floor with one eye on the countdown clock. He sat on a stool to watch the clock decrement for the final 37 seconds. The seconds ticked off one by one. When it reached 3 seconds, he turned to look at the new box. He had seen it wink out many times on video. This would be the first time he actually watched the field dissipate in real time with his eyes. 3-2-1-0.

  Nothing happened. The field persisted. The box stood in front of him. Perplexed, he checked the wiring to the power supply. The power indicator light was out, confirming there was no energy being applied to sustain the field. He checked the laptop. The seconds display was incrementing. He rechecked everything. Everything was as it should be. “What is going on here?” he asked aloud.

  The counter reached 582.

  SSCHNAP!

  Kelton snapped his head around to see that the framework now stood empty. The thought occurred to him that maybe the larger the field was, the longer it took for it to dissipate. It was as good a theory as any and a good place to start. He hurriedly recorded his thoughts in his journal. He was anxious to get back in the box.

  Addressing his laptop once again, he toggled the manual controls to the Start / Stop timer function. He smiled, thinking how Beta had used a Clapper and a lamp timer to start and stop the field. It was that kind of resourcefulness that made Beta so valuable to the team. Now, the tools had to become more sophisticated. Kelton felt a little surge of pride as you looked at the elegant controls he had built into the system. This sort of thing I've gotten so easy in the last few years instead of having to create software from scratch. A programmer could now just borrow snippets of code from here and there and end up with a very attractive user interface. One didn't even need to be much of a programmer. Just tell the AI what you wanted, and it did most of the work.

  With the touch of his finger, he set the hour, minute, second, and date for the start and stop time. The last two times in the box, he had been frustrated because the field had dissipated, and he had been pulled back to the box just as he was about to learn something important. He wanted to give himself more time to explore and more time to learn from his guides. He set the start time to 5 minutes from the current time. He spun the counter on the stop time one hour and five minutes later. He would explore for 1 hour.

  He checked around the room one last time. On a whim, he grabbed an Adirondack chair and placed it inside the framework. He might as well be comfortable while he waited for the field to engage. He sat in the chair; from his seat, he could see the timer counting down. It was just 7 seconds until the field engaged. He relaxed into the chair.

  SSCHNAP

  The room went completely black. He strained to see anything. The only illumination was a faint glow emanating from his solar plexus. He rolled out of the chair and looked back at his body, completely motionless, seated in the chair. A silver thread of light wafted like a cobweb between the crown of his head on his body and his… what?... current point of view? He drifted to the outside of the box. Everything was still dark, but he could see the workshop. He glanced quickly at the laptop screen. Everything appeared nominal. The timer continued counting down. He looked at the box. The sight gave him overlapping emotions: excitement at the box’s prospects, pride of accomplishment, and guilt; Gillian was going to be angry about this. He hadn’t actually promised not to go in the box, but he knew she had very strong feelings about it.

  SIZZLE

  Deke found himself in Gillian’s mother's house in the kitchen. Gillian and her mother were seated at the kitchen table, just finishing their tea. Deke’s full concentration was on his wife. He was so happy to see her face. The flurry of activity over the last few days had helped him keep his mind off how much he was missing her. The accumulated distress hit him all at once.

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  Though she was smiling now, the puffy red eyes were evidence that she had been recently crying.

  Gillian's mother was in an attitude of trying to comfort her. She leaned across the table with her arms stretched towards her. Her mother had a sad smile on her face. “Your husband still doesn't know, does he?”

  Gillian shook her head. Deke could tell that another surge of anger had welled up in her. The glow in her chest took on a different energy.

  “How will he know unless you tell him? And how can you tell him unless you talk to him?”

  “But I'm so angry with him. He knows better. He knows I didn't want him experimenting on himself. He can't conceive how any of this affects anybody but himself. All he can think about is his work. That stupid box. His stupid team. The stupid university politics.”

  “And he hasn't even tried to contact you in four days. Your husband is a beast. I was against this marriage. A nice Indian boy would never have treated you like this.”

  “He has tried to call me,” Gillian defended. “I just haven't been picking up his calls. He has left me messages. But you know that... Oh, Mati, you're just trying to get me to see his side.”

  Gillian's mother smiled and waggled her head. “You see right through me. But if you had married VJ...” Her voice trailed off with her eyes beaming brightly at her daughter. She put her hand on her daughter’s hand and looked deeply into her eyes. “You must take advantage of every minute together. You never know…” she whispered.

  Deke knelt on the floor in front of Gillian. He looked into her face. Feelings of love and concern washed away the resentment he had been feeling. “What do you need to tell me, Rani?” he reached to touch her face and move the hair from in front of her eyes. He could do neither.

  “I want to tell him. I wish he would call me right now. I really need to talk to him. I need to tell him how angry I am that he got in that box again. He has no idea what the long-term effects might be. I asked him to promise me he wouldn't get back in, but he is so stubborn. I need him around. For a long time. We both need to be there for...” Gillian’s fingers stroked her slightly swollen tummy.

  Deke looked at Gillian. He had never looked at her like this before. He couldn't really identify how it was different, but it was different. He saw more than he had ever seen before. He looked at her fingers. He realized that there was a second flicker of light glowing beneath her hand. It all came together. Her appetite and fatigue. She had been so emotional lately.

  “Are we having a baby?” Deke asked. “Is it a boy or a girl?” He wanted to throw his arms around her and feel her arms around him, to smell her perfumed hair. He needed to put his hand on her hand. A confusion of feelings wheeled within him. He called out, “Dev, are you here?”

  Gillian's father appeared behind her as though he were walking in from an adjoining room. “I can't bear to be too far away.”

  “Did you know about the baby? Did you know Gillian was going to have a baby?”

  “Baby! Is my baby going to have a baby? I'm going to be a grandfather?” Dev delighted.

  “ I'm definitely not going to be getting any new information from you.” Deke turned his attention to Gillian. “How long have you known? When were you going to tell me?”

  Gillian drew in her breath and opened her mouth as though she were going to say something, then shook her head and let out a sigh.

  “I'm going to be a grandfather!” Dev repeated ecstatically. There was a hopeful look of long-absent joy on his face. Deke looked about the room. It began filling with a warming glow. Without seeing them, Deke somehow sensed the presence of hundreds of mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, and brothers and sisters, all of them contributing to and taking part in Dev’s and Deke’s experience.

  Deke tried to identify what he was feeling and experiencing. He tried on thoughts: his heart was full, or his chest was bursting with feeling, but those descriptions really didn't apply. He had no heart; he had no chest. His entire being was irradiated with feelings of love, fulfillment, connection, peace, and comfort. He knew what it was like for a moment, an all-too-brief moment, to be a member of always, a part of the eternities.

  He listened to Gillian and her mother converse and tried without success many times to join the conversation. It wasn’t unusual for Deke to just sit and listen to a conversation at family gatherings. He was often at a loss for things to contribute to the conversation, and because of his native ADD, he often lost the thread of the conversation because his mind wandered so readily, but he loved being part of the group. Listening to their conversation didn’t feel like eavesdropping. It felt warm and familiar.

  Deke basked in the family glow for more than half an hour. He expected to be pulled back to the box at any minute. He needed to tell his wife something before he was pulled back. Deke put his face just inches from Gill’s. He focused on her eyes. “I won’t get in the box again. I won’t leave you again,” he promised.

  The conversation between Gillian and her mother lulled. Gillian put the teacups in the sink. “I hope he calls again soon. I’ve been hoping he would show up at the door. I want to talk with him. It’s time to make up,” Gillian told her mother.

  “Look at the time! We have been talking for almost 2 hours!”

  Deke had been expecting at any moment to be pulled back into the box. In each of his experiences he had been interrupted from learning something important. He was grateful that he had enjoyed the full experience this afternoon. He glanced at his wrist. There was no watch there. He went to the stove. He had to get very close to the digital clock to be able to see the time. He felt a flush of concern. He had been in the box for more than 90 minutes. What had gone wrong?