The Quantum Piggyback - Chapter One (First draft, feedback welcome)

Context:

This novel follows the recent happenings of quantum physicist, Cael Cassian. Set around 2180 (still undecided), the story centres around Cael's position aboard a top-secret facility in deep-space, working for the IASA (like nasa but international). On the facility, Cael is an engineer for the first protoptype of an FTL (faster-than-light) warp drive. MAIN CONFLICT: While conflict arises between him and the IASA director, tragedy strikes Cael in the most unimaginable grief (to be revealed in upcoming chapters). Upset and determined, and guided by his idol, Dr Stewart (pioneer in time-travel research), as a mentor,  Cael defies all talk of the impossible and uses his intelligence to secretly reverse-engineer the warp drive and create a time-machine, with the goal of returning to a time before his great grief. He soon understands why Dr Stewart and many others abandoned time-travel research. Combined with this dilemma and the mounting pressure from the IASA to complete his prototype, Cael has to make decision before it's too late. Chapter one follows Cael, and opens upon an introduction to the facility and its inner-workings, as he demonstrates the machine to his IASA superiors. ### = paragraph break

Chapter One

In the ceaseless void, dark and desolate, a polished black toroidal silhouette glinted against the far reflections of the sun. Forever rotating, its contours glided along its circumference. Untouched and unconcerned, forever rotating in the confines of its Lagrange-isolation. Protruded from each bounding quadrant, white-hot spores of tiny plasma-bursts flickered adjustments in its velocity; a manifested flashing violence, wholly soundless.

A functional interior encircled within the structure, beyond its frame, withholden in secrecy. And from its exterior, detached but grasped by tendrilled robotic arms, a sizeable passenger-craft docked itself upon a quadrant. In great anticipation and outmatched by its colossal existence, six dawning figures followed behind one, and transferred themselves beyond the frame– across the docking bridge.

###

One by one they trudged uniformly up a ladder descended from the interior. Their thick boots clunked, and their coats settled as they adhered to the structure’s artificial gravity. The sound of vicious hissing came to be as the airlock cut off the passage behind them. Their feet grounded as they dismounted the ladder. Now above them, remained the docking bridge as it became the ceiling.

Inside the craft, a lone pilot awaited her duties. She clung, strapped to her gyroscopic seat as she removed her visor, and strands of soft hair suddenly meandered like the feathers of a peacock. Through a small porthole her gaze fixated upon the formidable structure as she so elegantly rotated alongside it, perturbed to what secrets housed beyond its thick frame.

###
Cael Cassian, the followed figure, the engineer, adjusted his collar as he and his partner prepared to address their superiors. The platform where they all stood suspended above the elaborate inner-workings of the structure’s secrets. Upon the ceiling, delicate quantum computers of unimaginable power hung like chandeliers, festooned with stalactites of golden alloy.

Cael’s throat cleared, ‘Once again, it’s an honour to finally share the progress me and my partner have made on this– this wonderful feat of ingenuity.’

Collectively, the group hummed and nodded in response.

Beside Cael, his partner, Adrin Donahue, fiddled with a holographic panel. Adrin turned to Cael for approval before activation; his face dimly lit in the panel’s subtle glow.

‘Hold on,’ Cael said.

One man from the group approached Cael in heavy steps and an imbalanced posture: Doctor Clement Kine. His black blazer contorted from the bulk of metallic augmentations which formed the length of his entire right-arm.

Then, stood before Cael, he hushed, ‘I hope everything is in order.’ His voice rumbled like a tremor in the earth.

‘Of course, Doctor,’ Cael tensed up, ‘I think you’ll be satisfied.’

‘You think?’

Cael mustered a lowly smile. Locked in a face-off, he watched Kine’s left eye glow a gentle green in its unnatural optical technology.

Cael’s thoughts simmered through a gentle squint, Tainted degenerate.

Kine’s glowing eye barely illuminated the stroke of his thick and furrowed eyebrows as Cael despised its enigma. Finally, he backed off in a wayward turn towards the group.

###
Cael looked over the railing through the narrow gap between him and the sea of particle-cables below. With precise alignment, they twisted into darkness around the subtle bend of the inner toroidal frame– He thought about home; about his wife and the child they were expecting. He wondered how she carried herself, being in her third-trimester, far away back on Earth. Since assuming his role in the facility, Cael only happened to see her upon a quarterly rotation with Adrin. And those three months back home, as short as they went, fulfilled him the tenderly passion to keep on pushing, no matter the distance between them.

###

Cael turned and nodded to his partner with a bittersweet smile; he knew his time to swap with Adrin was almost up. As Adrin activated the mechanism, a brief beep echoed throughout the hull, then a swift silence.

Suddenly, lights and displays whirred to life among the vast interior. Divided into segments, the facility’s rooms were unconventional in their gravitational conformity. Wires hung from all planes, control panels decorated each axis of their surroundings, and the floor at their feet paralleled to the bottom of large glass apertures which curved onwards above their eager heads.

The clunking of retracting metal shutters provided a view to the distant central core; hung isolated in empty space, it boasted a spherical frame. The frame attached to each outer-quadrant by four long intersecting corridors. It was enormous. It was fantastical. And its form remained still while the frictionless bearings of the connected corridors orbited independently around its spherical frame.

###

Doctor Kine and his unnerving posse ardently awaited the demonstration. His foothold in the experiment garnered from the wealth of badges and pins rigorously imbedded into the fabric of his blazer; the biggest of them all, outlined in polished purple-gold, and iconography of graceful wings embellished the lettering: I.A.S.A. - Director.

Beneath them the ramping acceleration of particles so faintly engulfed the soundscape of the reverberant interior. Cael watched a holographic panel as a percentage hurried its way to 100. Within each far quadrant of the interior, four great reactions began place.

He relayed to Adrin, ‘Anti-matter reactors are siphoned. Charge the core.’

With the poise of a javelin, Adrin flipped open the latched casing of a bright-red button, and with sudden hesitation, pressed upon it. Before his jittery fingers could release themselves, four bright streaks of white-light ejected down each corridor. Once more, then again, and again.

Kine’s group squinted and awed in attempt to comprehend what they were witnessing. Not even the vast distance or the thick aperture between themselves and the reaction could muster the feeling of safety. And though Cael and Adrin had grown accustomed to its nature, their teeth too did grind.

###

On and on the streaks of light carried through the long corridors, and not a sound was heard.

One man from the group addressed the engineers, ‘What is taking place?’ He presented stubby and bald, and his voice apprehensive.

Adrin turned, ‘The conduction of energy. The core itself has no generators.’

The man didn’t reply; instead he continued to observe.

Once more, Cael addressed the group, ‘In a moment the core will be ready. It’s uh– quite the sight,’ he paused to look back at the lights, ‘the energy required is immense. As of now we’ve only sustained the drive for–’ He looked to Adrin.

‘About three hours.’

‘Right, my partner once noted three hours, but it’s very unpredictable at this stage–’

Doctor Kine eyed Cael like the crack of a whip. The slightest hint of incompetence boded vexing against the grain of his authoritative spirit. Cael perceived Kine’s omnipotent gaze and heeded his words.

Again, a brief beep sounded from the interior; the conduction was complete, and the streaks of light halted. Beside the first button, a switch began blinking.

‘The Alcubierre drive is operational,’ Cael declared.

In a brief moment, Cael and Adrin shared an assuring glance. Cael trusted Adrin had made the necessary checks before he and the group arrived. And this time, without hesitation, Adrin grasped firm upon the switch and twisted.

###

With instance, a cautionary alarm blared; interior LEDs turned a subtle red, and one final bright light flashed from within the central sphere. Then as it subsided, and their pupils adjusted, engulfed around the core was the image of itself warped against the very fabric of space-time. Every curve and every groove, manifested the divine complexity of everything which it was, wrapped, intertwined, against the fabric of it all.

The warped bubble expanded as the group reflected upon who they were, and what they stood before. All at once, every idea and every concept of what Kine and his posse had conjectured about the machine, shattered in the wake of it all. For no words, nor feelings, could decipher the reality at which they now faced. A fabricated projection? A glitch in the universe?

Their thoughts betrayed them– for their eyes did not. Enamoured, their innate bonds for existence itself only strengthened with each second of bear witness projecting through their minds, and as the bubble fell, so too did their fleeting jaunt with the face of the universe itself.

And docked in space as she was, the pilot remained oblivious to the reality-altering machine just beyond the outer-ring.

###

After the demonstration had ended, and the group settled, the atmosphere of the room dwindled to a stark unease. There was a moment of silence which felt like an eternity as every person tried to evaluate what they had just witnessed. Cael and Adrin too found themselves affected and struggled to fill the air. Cael noticed Doctor Kine’s gaze appeared transfixed upon the floor beneath his feet; his chin cupped in his hand.

In the span of just over a century, the bounds of human ingenuity had reached lengths of unimaginable scale. Far beyond even the understanding of those brilliant enough to propose such technologies. Cael knew it; Adrin knew it– they all did. And all at their disposal remained the science and mathematics, as strange as it was. Leaving only what were left to the unforeseeable, insurmountable will of the universe as it responded to the infinite curiosity of those which it birthed. Nonetheless, adaptable beings they were, and their feelings soon waivered.

###

With their tempers equalised, Cael found himself mingled with Kine’s people. He hadn’t recognised them and missed the chance to properly meet them before they arrived to greet Adrin inside the facility. Only one stood out to him; Doctor Vauban Stewart, whom Cael idolised as a pioneer of sorts. There gleamed a passionate twinkle in his matured face as he approached Cael.

‘Mr Cassian,’ he shook Cael’s hand, ‘I apologise we couldn’t speak sooner. We find ourselves in quite the extraordinary place.’

Cael nodded with pride, ‘It’s an honour, Doctor. I never would’ve thought you’d attend the demonstration. Hell– I thought you were retired?’

‘Officially, yes. Though who’s to say I can’t enjoy myself?’

Cael was charmed by his idol. The thousands of hours he’d spent consuming Stewart’s work paled to the real thing.

Cael concurred, ‘I suppose it is your work too. I’ve read it all, Doctor. You inspired me.’

‘Then it seems we’re alike in that way.’

Cael faltered at the idea of Stewart reading his work, unsure how to respond.

‘Cael? Do you live in the Wilson district?’

‘Yes, nearby.’

‘Perhaps when you find yourself back on Earth, I’d like you to visit me.’

‘Of course– yes.’

He grasped Cael’s hand in attempt to transmit his address, but nothing happened. Stewart appeared confused.

‘I don’t have a transmitter,’ Cael confessed, somewhat ashamed.

Without judgement he resumed, ‘Wilson-Tower seven, unit four-nine-one. Yay?’

‘Right, yes,’ Cael nodded.

###

As everyone prepared to return to the pilot, Cael found the courage to confront Doctor Kine. In his hand he felt he held the right to witness the birth of his child.

With his hand clenched, he thought: I will be there.

Cael stood with apprehension behind Kine’s shoulder, ‘Doctor?’ Kine turned, ‘my wife, she’s– there’s not enough time for me to see her– to see my child, Doctor.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Kine replied in a bleak tone.

‘She carries-child, remember? I want to be there for her.’

‘Your quarter is due. You must be here to take Donahue’s place.’

‘I understand, but I can’t miss this, Doctor. I’m not that kind of father.’

‘You should have thought about that when you volunteered for this role. You signed the contract– you will be here.’

Cael’s demeanour shifted, ‘No. I’m only here today to assist the demonstration. My turn isn’t for another day. At least grant me passage back to Earth.’

Kine thought for a moment, ‘Fine. You’ll be authorised, but I’m coming with you. I will be there to bring you back. Is that clear, Cael?’

 ‘Why can’t you extend Adrin? It would only be for a few weeks– when she’s due.’

Kine grew impatient, ‘Because he signed the contract, same as you. Now is that clear?’

Cael reluctantly agreed. Kine felt the hatred in his eyes and disregarded Cael as he mounted the ladder to join the rest. Cael waved goodbye to Adrin as he hunched and followed Kine towards the dock.