Strings: something big is about to happen...

Strings

something big is
about to happen...

by

B. A. Spicer

Copyright 2012 B. A.
Spicer

All rights reserved.
This material may not be duplicated, in any form, without express, written
permission from the author.

Strings

The night sky was littered with bright points of
light.
 
In the countryside, if you
stopped to look, there was a whole different universe above your head.
 
Most people didn’t stop, or look.
 
Madeleine Happer tapped out a cigarette and,
taking a long drag on it, shook her head, blowing the smoke out between her
teeth.
 
Only now could she feel her
muscles soften and the knot in her brain loosen.
 
She was thirty, exceptionally clever, and in her element out
here, leaning against the bonnet of her car, watching the imperceptible progress
of the constellations, identifying stars with a familiarity that would impress
any amateur astronomer.
 
But Madeleine
was no amateur.

She groaned and put her head back, feeling the
stretch in her throat, the crackling in her neck, squeezing her eyes shut.
 

“Where are you?
 
What are you!
 
What the hell is
going on?”
 

She knew that no one was listening.
 
That her questions would go unanswered.
 
For now, at least. The silent night closed
in around her and eventually she shivered, pushing off the car to feel the
earth balance beneath her feet.
 
She
made one last circular sweep of the sky before sighing deeply and climbing back
inside the car.
 
Her body felt heavy and
her mind was exhausted from going round and round, chasing an idea that would
not come to her.

She checked her watch - 1.00am. Hugh would be
waiting up.
   
He would ring soon.
 
She looked at herself in the rear view
mirror.
 
Was she losing it?
 
The engine coughed into life and the lights
of the dashboard flashed on, making Madeleine stare and frown for a moment
longer.
 
In the pit of her stomach was a
feeling she could not explain.
 
It was
as though everything around her had suddenly become more precious.
 

“God damn it!”

As she drove, the shadows changed from lumpy ground
and strangely lit undergrowth to the grey-black sheen of pleasant country roads
lined with tangled trees and the mysterious spaces between. Still she struggled
to bring her thoughts out into the light.

She took the next turn to the right and, two
minutes from home, the telephone rang.
 
There was no point in answering.
 
Hugh was waiting, a slight, comical figure in the open doorway, his
dressing gown tied loosely, his feet bare on the pale step.
 
Madeleine killed the engine and saw him
wave.

“Hugh, you have to believe me!” she murmured to
herself.

And then he opened the driver’s door.
 
Hugh would never believe her.

*****

“Ratch nor dwl!
 
Ratch!”

“Maddy.
 
Wake up.”
 

Madeleine opened her eyes and
burst into tears.
 
It wasn’t like
her.
  
It wasn’t like her at all.

Hugh put his arms around her.
 
“It’s all right.
 
Come here.”

Madeleine sobbed uncontrollably,
not because she was upset, but from sheer frustration.
 
She knew that, if she looked into her
husband’s face, all she would see would be fear and concern.
 
Fear and concern for her state of mind, when
there was something so much bigger, so much more important for him to worry
about.

“We’re going to see the doc
tomorrow.
 
I’ve got the morning
off.
 
Best get this sorted out. Come on,
I’ll make the coffee.
 
Come on.”

With a final deeply felt shudder
and a strange, low growl, Madeleine allowed her husband to help her up and put
a dressing gown around her.
 
Hugh was
having a hard time believing her.
 
Hell,
she was having a hard time believing herself!
 

Outside, the sky was white.
 
Cloud cover was complete.
 
She scanned for breaks, unable to resist, in
spite of the fact she knew that Hugh was watching.
 
She craned her neck and thought about going out into the garden
to see the clues she was missing.
 
It
was foolish not to be looking out.
 
Looking out for signs of… what?
 
What exactly was she expecting to see?
 
Still she searched the sky, but found nothing.

“Christ!”
 
She felt as though she were the only person
in the world who knew something was happening.

Hugh lit the stove and set the kettle
on the hob.
 

“Soon have some heat.”

The banality of his comment made her wince and she
sat down reluctantly in the chair he had pulled out, tapping her fingers on the
table while he sliced bread for toast, found the butter and jam in the pantry
and set two cups next to the kettle.
 
Spooning coffee into the pot, he stared out at the Shropshire
countryside, rolling hills and forests.
 
Maddy knew what he was thinking: beautiful.

He didn’t speak again until the
coffee had been poured.
 
“There.
 
Drink some of this.
 
The toast’ll be along in a sec.”

She looked at him with the
expression that she knew he dreaded.
 
She could see him thinking:
If only she would not say anything.
 
If only this morning, she could keep quiet.

But how could she ignore this
certainty inside her?
 
“It won’t be
long, now. You’ll see.”

Hugh nodded, pulling out a second
chair and sitting close.
 
Too
close.
 
He took her hand and she shook
it off.

“Are you working again today?
 
You could go back to bed and rest for a
while.”
 
Maddy’s jaw tightened.
 
He knew she wouldn’t reply, but he always
asked, anyway.
 
He knew that she hated
him to interfere, so why did he do it?
 

“I won’t be back until seven
tonight.
 
Got a meeting.”
 
He told her this as though he were speaking
to a child.

Madeleine Happer, astrophysicist
and, apparently, as mad as a March hare, waited until she could no longer hear
her husband’s car and then she started to laugh.
 
She needed to explode, now that there was space to do so.
 
To let herself go.
 

A few minutes later, still
smiling, she left her toast and carried the coffee to her office.
 
Her expression, when she surveyed the
clutter of papers on her desk, became less frivolous. There was so much to do
and yet, what was the point, when no one would believe a word she said?
 
But study and research had been her
life.
 
She didn’t know whether she could
imagine not going on with it.
 
No matter
what.

String theory.
 
It wasn’t a new idea by any means.
 
Matter smaller than the smallest
microscopically visible quanta, unproven and yet irresistible, essential, if a
theory of everything were to be possible.
 
A unification of all the laws of physics.
 
An explanation that held true for the visible world, with its
laws of cause and effect, and also for the world of the quantum universe, where
matter could appear and disappear seemingly at random.
 
String theory was the answer.

And so, as she had done every
morning for the past six weeks, she went over the equations that had led her to
the vision which had brought clarity and yet could not be recorded in any
meaningful form.
 
Ha!
 
Vision!
 
An eminently simple model, and yet, after getting so far on paper,
impossible to tie down, like the laws of the quantum universe, in fact,
constantly contradicting themselves.
 
If
she presented such a paper to the department, she would be laughed at.
 
Especially now that her husband had actually
made her an appointment to see the local quack!
 

She pulled out her chair and put
her head in her hands.
 
Every great
discovery in science went back to basics.
 
The most elegant laws were the simplest.
 
And so…
 
from the very
large, to the very small there must be a bridge, a connection…
 
For years, physicists had tried, with
varying degrees of success, to divide particles into their component
parts.
 
Splitting the atom had just been
the beginning!
 
So, she took up her
pen.
 
If the final divisions were beyond
the capabilities of current instrumentation, how could any scientific investigation
be continued?
 
Once the particle
accelerators had done all that could be done and the tanks buried deep
underground had detected evidence of quanta so tiny that they could pass
through the earth in a flash, what next?
 
More experiments?
 
More use of
the massive to detect the practically massless?
 
No.
 
The human brain was the
only instrument for the job.
 
Madeleine
had seen the answer, and that meant others had too.
 
The fact that it had come and gone so quickly, that it was
impossible to describe, was a hurdle that would have to be overcome.
 
But, above all this, there was the
terrifying knowledge that it was too late.
 
Something was coming.
 
Of this,
she was certain.
 
Something that the
planet, even the solar system, would not survive.

What had she got?
 
Strings.
 
Coils of elementary particles (as yet, unseen, unproven) lit (yes, that
was the right word), lit with apertures, infinite in number, which led
 
(led – was there a pathway?) to an infinite
number of universes.
 
From the
unimaginably tiny, right back to the unimaginably large.
 
Coil upon coil.
 
Apertures.
 
Portals to
worlds so different from the one human beings were familiar with.
 
Unimaginably different.

Even in the known universe there
were objects so miraculous as to be beyond belief.
 
There were suns hundreds of times bigger than the earth’s star,
some so massive they could contain the solar system and all that was in it,
from the centre to as far as Jupiter or beyond.
 

Maddy thought about her
dream.
 
Of the strange shapes of one
kind or another, which travelled at impossible speeds and filled the sky in a
final flash that woke her.
 
If, in known
universes, scales could vary so much, who knew what could happen in so-called
parallel universes?
 
The possibilities
were limitless.
 
Maddy shuddered.

*****

They didn’t exactly run, it was
more of a freefall, curling and zipping like birds, chasing after each
other.
 
The boosters they used to change
direction left trails, so they wrote messages across the sky to each
other.
 

In space there is no sound, but
inside their protective forcefields, music played.
 
They had no need of radios, as thoughts passed between them more
easily than words.
  
Ti selected a
hologram and played her favourite game.
 
La bombed into it and a new chase began.
 
Rim and Lon laughed and joined the battle, until Sim alerted
them, with important news.

“System choice update.
 
Approaching small collection.
 
One hot, four solid, four gas. All require
enhanced magnification.”

The players viewed the screen that
Sim had illuminated, zooming in and out at various magnifications, to reveal
the next solar system along their route.

“The blue one is pretty,” Ti
communicated.

“Granted,” the others agreed. “But
you’ll never catch it.”

“Why not?
 
Are you forgetting we have the new
equipment, numbskulls?”

“How many hots do we need?” asked
Rim.

Sim put up the targets: one hot,
two gas, one solid.

“Distance to system?”

“Nine blips.”

The players checked their nets and
made their choices.

*****

“Tell me about your visions,” said
Doctor Fielding.

Madeleine had only agreed to the
visit to satisfy Hugh.
 
Perhaps, if she went
along with the consultation, he would leave her to finish her work in
peace.
 
If there were time.

“What do you want to know,
doctor?”

“You could tell me when they
started.”
 
He crossed his legs and took
off his glasses.

“Around a month ago.”

“I see.”
 
He waited.

Madeleine saw what was
happening.
 
If she didn’t speak up, they
would be there all day.