Chapter 99 - Elasticity

  “Potentially?” scoffed Tony. “With elasticity response this strong, It’s a good bet they already know we’re here.”

  “While that’s statistically likely, I prefer not to jump to conclusions,” said Dr. Sukesh. “Do you have the data you need for the extrapolator?”

  “It’ll take a lot of compute time to crunch it, but yeah,” said Tony. He tapped his thumb on the desk. “We can run the sympathetic resonance test now.”

  “What’s that?” asked Howie.

  “Well, it’s a test to see if that bridge has already been built. If this world has touched us before, there will be evidence. Like if they snatched a kid, we’re sniffing for the exhaust fumes of their getaway car.”

  “I’m pretty sure they did,” said Cole.

  “Based on what evidence?” asked Dr. Sukesh.

  “Based on the owner of the dagger called me by my brother’s name before he died. My brother that went missing over a decade ago.”

  Dr. Sukesh and Tony looked at each other briefly, and then to Cole.

  “And you’re attuned, so… Damn,” said Tony. “That’s… huh.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” said Dr. Sukesh. He cleared his throat. “This test will try to find the scars of any previous event and attempt a minute connection. If there was prior contact, we can learn quite a bit just from how they touched us.”

  “Like a portal?” asked Cole.

  Sukesh wiggled his hand in a sort-of gesture. “If opening a door and walking through is creating a portal, this is more like tapping morse code across a string tied between two tin cans. Did you ever make a tin can phone as a child?”

  Cole answered yes at the exact same time Howie said no.

  Howie looked over at him in surprise, then pushed his shoulder. “Nerd!” he said. He looked back at the screen. “Still, a connection’s a connection. Isn’t that risky?”

  “Naw,” said Tony. “We’re barely at enough power to even send EM radiation, let alone a stable two-way gate capable of matter transfer. That Lewis Field down there isn’t even at a risk index one strength. More like risk index point two-five.”

  “Famous last words?” asked Howie.

  “Wait in the hall if you’re scared,” said Tony. “Starting the test… now.”

  Cole remained firmly where he was standing, eyes glued to a screen he had no idea how to interpret. Thank God there were people smart enough to actually do this kind of thing, because if it were up to him they’d never reach another world.

  “Looks like we’re getting a response,” said Tony.

  Cole felt the hairs on the back of his arms start to stand up. The room had somehow become slightly louder. He looked across the pit at the pair of engineers laughing at a whispered joke between them. Their voices itched at his ears, just outside of hearing—despite being at least fifty feet away and standing behind equipment with fans running.

  “Did you increase the Lewis Field strength?” asked Cole.

  Tony gave him a side-eyed glance. “No, why?”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “My enhancements are active.”

  Doctor Sukesh looked at Cole and then squinted at the monitor. “The sensors are reporting as normal, and the composition of the field in the containment area hasn’t fluctuated.”

  “Howie?” asked Cole.

  The Marine shrugged. “I don’t feel any different.” He squeezed his eyes and held out his hand. “Can’t access any charges.”

  Cole tried activating his target marking through Meteoric Leap. But it, too, failed. He shook his head. “Must be getting paranoid. Sorry, Doc.”

  “Please, don’t apologize!” said Sukesh. “You are attuned, and perhaps something in that attunement resonates with even a contained field—but you must be extremely perceptive with your senses. I’ve hypothesized this was possible but not encountered it. In fact, I wouldn’t mind conducting a few experiments while I have you in Tennessee.”

  “Sure,” said Cole. He leaned back, resting his knuckles on the railing separating the next tier of workstations. “So what comes next?”

  Tony cleared his throat. “Next we pluck at that string connecting the two tin cans, to borrow Doctor Sukesh’s metaphor. I’ll be running through a wide set of modulations based on recorded patterns to see if we get a something in the neighborhood.”

  His screen began to cycle through a list. Below it was a series of vertical bars that looked to Cole like an audio mixer. As the computer searched, a few of them jumped up just outside of the green range but never stayed there for long, until one bar jumped solidly into the midrange of the yellow area and stayed there.

  “Gotcha,” muttered Tony. “They’ve definitely touched us before. Full matter transient event.”

  Howie looked at Cole. “That probably means they took someone.”

  “Got it in one, Howie,” said Tony. He squinted at one of his screens. “Hmm… but it’s not a world we have catalogued. Powerful Lewis Field, too. I’m thinkin’ risk index four. Maybe five. Let me narrow the search band.”

  “Are risk indexes all based on the local Lewis Field strength?” asked Cole.

  “That’s a big part of it. But it also takes into account local politics, monster density and aggression, and how smitey the resident pantheon might be.”

  A glimmer of reflected light caught Cole’s eye from across the pit where Doctor Daniels, the woman he’d briefly met, was sipping on a cup of coffee at her workstation. The glimmer had come from a ring on her left ring finger. And he could almost make out… he blinked, shaking his head. The woman was thirty feet away.

  “Is Doctor Daniels’ husband’s name Henry?” asked Cole.

  Dr. Sukesh looked up, startled, and raised his glasses to his forehead. “Yes, it is. How did you learn that?”

  “I just read the inscription on her ring.”

  Tony and Sukesh looked at him. “When she took the armament?” asked Sukesh.

  “No, Doc, from here. Just now. I’m telling you, something is going on with the Lewis Field.”

  Tony pshhed again. “Not possible. With only two generators running, the field isn’t even strong enough to reach all the way up here, even without containment.”

  Dr. Sukesh pursed his lips. He looked between Cole and the computer. “Tony, stop the test. Shut down the field.”

  Tony swung his chair around. “You sure, Doc? We’re pretty close to locking down the initial XDIM coordinate. You said it yourself, he’s probably just hypersensitive.”

  “All the more reason. Disperse the field and have George shut down the generators,”

  Tony looked like he wanted to argue for a moment, but he blew out a breath and turned back to his workstation. “Yeah, Doc. Shutting it down.” He tapped a few keys and confirmed a pop-up box that appeared. “Alright, field dispersed. Lemme call—”

  The phone on his desk rang. Tony picked it up and pressed it to his ear. “Heya George. Just about to call you—what? No. We just shut the field off. No, routine armament analysis, no charged experiments. What? You know that can’t happen. Hold on.” Tony pressed the receiver to his shoulder. “Doc, he says his guys are reporting fireflies in the sub-level.”

  “Fireflies?” asked Cole. He shook his head. Something felt like a buzzing in his ear, and it wasn’t his tinnitus.

  “Brief light artifacts,” Sukesh supplied. “We get them sometimes during high-saturation experiments simulating stronger Lewis fields. We suspect they might be the source of the popular ghost orb myth among paranormal enthusiasts.”

  “Uh, guys?” asked Howie. “Is this supposed to be doing that?” He pointed to the screen showing the LF field strength in the containment area. Sure enough, the containment dome was now blank as the field was shut down. But outside of it, flashes of yellow were starting to appear. Barely long enough for the screen to register their presence. In the message log, a series of errors flooded the screen.

  Cole staggered as his senses overwhelmed him. A flood of sounds and visual information bombarded his brain. Every voice in the room, every fan, even the electrical hum of the overhead lights felt like it had been amped up to max volume. He squeezed the rail behind them so hard that it began to deform under his grip. One sound began to cut through the rest. Screaming, coming from the phone receiver pressed to Tony’s shoulder. He looked back at the screen. The motes of LF saturation were growing on the field strength measurement screen, and all the bars under the resonance test had completely maxed out.