Chapter 2

Chapter 2

As the months passed Eli had grown used to the chaos of the physics lab. He leaned against the doorframe, mop in hand, and watched as the group buzzed around a large, ominous-looking machine in the center of the room.

It seemed like every time Eli walked into the lab the conversations were more chaotic than the experiment that just blew up. As usual the conversation in the lab had veered into chaos again, as it always seemed to when Marcus was involved.

“Okay, so hear me out,” Marcus said, dramatically sweeping a hand toward the smoldering remnants of their experiment.

“If this thing actually does what it’s supposed to, we’re basically opening a portal to another dimension, right? You know what that makes me think of?”

“Let me guess,” Sarah said without looking up from her tablet. “Something nerdy.”

Marcus grinned. “Obviously. I’m talking Planes of Existence. You know, like in D&D. Imagine if we actually end up in, like, the Shadowfell. Or better yet, Sigil. Eli, you’d love it—”

“The City of Doors,” Eli said without missing a beat, his voice calm as he swept debris into his dustpan.

“Ruled by the Lady of Pain. Kind of chaotic-neutral, depending on who you ask.”

The room went dead silent. Marcus froze, his jaw hanging open like someone had just disarmed him mid-monologue. “Wait. Hold up. You know about Sigil?”

Eli shrugged, dumping the dustpan into the trash. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Marcus repeated, his voice rising. “Dude, you just casually dropped a Lady of Pain reference like it was nothing. That’s hardcore D&D lore!”

Sam, who had been leaning against a counter, tilted his head. “You play D&D, Eli?”

Eli’s broom paused mid-sweep. His expression softened, the faintest flicker of a smile crossing his face. “Used to. Every weekend, actually.”

“No way,” Marcus said, practically bouncing. “What was your character? Were you a fighter? Paladin? Oh, wait—don’t tell me. A rogue, right?”

“Wizard,” Eli said simply.

Marcus’s jaw dropped further. “What was his name?”

Eli chuckled, leaning on his broom. “Varandor the Bold. Half-elf Wizard. Big on melodramatic speeches, terrible at picking spells.”

Sam squinted, intrigued. “Wait, like... how terrible?”

Eli shrugged. “If there was a ‘wrong’ spell for the situation, I probably cast it. Fireball in a crowded room? Check.”

“Sleep spell on an already unconscious enemy? Check.”

“And don’t forget the speeches,” Eli added, smirking. “Varandor didn’t fight without delivering a stirring monologue about heroism or destiny first.”

Sam grinned. “So, basically, you were the guy at the table. The one who drives everyone nuts but somehow saves the day?”

“Usually saved by what I did to put us in that situation to begin with,” Eli said. “Though if you ask my dad, he’d tell you I almost got the party killed more times than he could count.”

“Wait, you played D&D with your dad?” Sam blurted out.

“Every Saturday,” Eli said, leaning on his broom.

“Him, his best friend Miles, and a few of Miles’s buddies. Always at Miles’s house. My dad was the Dungeon Master.”

He chuckled softly, shaking his head. “He ran the most ridiculous campaigns—classic save-the-world stuff, but with the most unhinged NPCs you’ve ever seen. He was really good at it, though. Knew how to keep everyone engaged.”

Marcus whistled, clearly impressed. “Man, I would kill to play with someone who actually knows how to DM. Our campaigns always fall apart because Raj won’t stop trying to steal from every shopkeeper we meet.”

“I don’t try,” Raj called from the other side of the room.

“I succeed.”

Marcus ignored him. “So, what happened? Why’d you stop playing?”

Eli looked down at the broom in his hand, the humor in his expression disappearing. “Just... life,” he said after a moment, his voice quieter.

“Things got busy, I guess.”

The room fell into an awkward silence, but Marcus, thankfully, didn’t push. “Well, for what it’s worth, you’re always welcome at our table. If we survive this experiment, anyway.”

Eli snorted. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The tension dissolved, and the group returned to their usual banter, but Eli’s mind lingered on the memory of those Saturday nights.

The warmth of the room at Miles’s house, the sound of dice clattering on the table, and his dad’s voice, weaving stories out of nothing.

Late one Thursday night, Eli had spent most of the first couple hours cleaning up after a home basketball game.

Calderwood got smoked by 50, but that didn’t stop the fans from making the stands a disaster. When Eli finished up, he almost went back to his apartment, but thought he would check on the physics lab.

As Eli walked into the building he could already hear the group knee deep into tonight’s mishap.

He opened the door and he could already tell the tension was more than normal. The machine in the middle of the room sat, pieced together from scavenged components, borrowed equipment, and parts pulled from storage.

The machine itself was a ring-shaped array of superconducting coils—salvaged from a decommissioned MRI machine, according to Raj—glowing faintly blue from liquid nitrogen vapor trickling along cooling pipes. The coils hummed with a low, rhythmic pulse, indicating that the system was maintaining its cryogenic temperatures.

Inside the ring, suspended within a cylindrical vacuum chamber, two plasma injectors were positioned at opposing angles, their electrodes crackling with arcs of artificial lightning.

Thin copper wires snaked from the injectors to a central control unit, where Liam monitored the power draw on a series of flickering screens. The vacuum chamber maintained an ultra-low pressure environment, reducing particle interference and allowing the plasma streams to remain stable during injection.

"You’re telling me that thing’s supposed to open a portal?" Eli muttered, watching a spark shoot from one of the electrodes.

Liam barely looked up, too engrossed in the data. "If we can generate a stable quantum field resonance, yes. The coils induce a magnetic containment field while the plasma injectors introduce charged particles. Theoretically, if we can reach the necessary energy threshold and synchronize the oscillations..."

Eli shook his head, still not fully understanding. "Sounds like a recipe for blowing up the lab."

Marcus, wiping sweat from his brow, shot Eli a grin. "Or a shortcut to the other side of the universe."

The machine let out a high-pitched whine as Kelly made adjustments from the control panel, tweaking the plasma injector’s alignment. Thin tendrils of ionized gas snaked through the vacuum chamber, glowing faintly purple.

"Pressure’s stable," Sarah reported, glancing at the monitors. "Magnetic containment is holding, but we’re pushing the power limit. If the superconductors quench..."

Liam waved it off. "Then we’ll recalibrate. The important thing is maintaining resonance. Once the plasma density reaches critical mass, we’ll introduce a harmonic frequency through the coils to force a dimensional oscillation."

Eli just stared at the machine. Whatever they were doing, it looked more likely to launch them to kingdom come than open any portal.

Sarah, her eyes glued to a tablet. “Okay, Marcus, double-check the input voltage, we’re not blowing another breaker tonight.”

“I did double-check it,” Marcus shot back, crouched beside a tangled mess of wires. “It’s fine.”

“You said that last time,” Sarah retorted. “And then half the lab ended up looking like a fireworks display.”

“Need me to grab the fire extinguisher?” Eli asked dryly.

“Not yet,” Sarah said, giving Liam a warning glare. “But don’t go far.”

A snap of wires and Sarah looked at Eli, to say, “See, I told you.”

Nina stood up from behind a panel of wires, “Let me look at it. Raj, come over here and pull the cable if I need more.”

“That was Liam’s fault,” Marcus said, pointing an accusing finger. “He’s the one who insisted on overclocking the oscillator.”

“Which worked, by the way,” Liam said from behind a cluttered workstation. “For about ten seconds, but that’s progress.”

“Progress toward what?” Raj muttered as he dipped behind the panel. “Electrocution?”

“No one’s getting electrocuted,” Liam said, waving him off. “This time, everything’s dialed in perfectly. We’re generating a stable quantum field.”

Eli stepped further into the room, raising an eyebrow. “Stable enough that I don’t need to call the fire department or Darpa?”

“Relax, Janitor Supreme,” Liam said with narrowed eyes. “This is the culmination of months of work. We’re about to change the game.”

“Or break it,” Sarah muttered under her breath.

Eli paused, leaning on the mop. “So, Professor Barlow’s about to be famous?”

“Probably.” Sam said.

“I don’t think anyone is doing this to be famous, we want to rewrite the laws of physics.” Marcus said.

“Exactly,” Liam said, beaming. “Teleportation. Instantaneous travel across vast distances. You could go from here to the other side of the planet in the blink of an eye.”

“If it works,” Sarah added, shooting Liam a pointed look. “Which it hasn’t yet.”

“It will,” Liam said confidently. “We’ve worked out all the kinks. This is the run that’s going to change everything.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Raj asked, arms crossed. “Because I don’t think I have the stomach for another ‘learning opportunity.’”

“Everyone stop being such pessimist,” Liam replied, waving him off. “Great discoveries require great risks.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Nina muttered. “You’re not the one fixing the wires every time this thing melts down. Input voltage is good.” She said to Sarah as she walked back to push Raj out of the way.

“Speaking of wires,” Sarah cut in, pointing toward Marcus. “Did you reconnect the auxiliary output to the regulator?”

“Almost,” Marcus said, fumbling with the cables. “But if someone would let me breathe for five seconds—”

“Hey, tall guy!” Liam called out, interrupting. “Can you grab the spare cables from the top shelf? We’re running low.”

Eli sighed but set down the mop, heading toward the shelf.

As he handed over the cables, he caught himself watching the group.

There was something strangely familiar about their dynamic—the way they bickered like siblings but still worked seamlessly together.

It reminded him of his old team.

The way his teammates used to yell at each other on the court but always had each other’s backs when it counted. A pang of something sharp and hollow settled in his chest, and he turned away quickly, focusing on the cables.

“Uh, is it supposed to hum like that?” he asked, glancing at the machine as it began to emit a low, vibrating sound.

“Yes,” Liam said, adjusting a dial. “That’s the entanglement field stabilizing.”

“It’s fine,” Sarah said, though she was watching the screen of her tablet like a hawk. “As long as the power stays consistent—”

Eli raised an eyebrow. “And what happens if it doesn’t work?”

“Best case?” Sarah said. “The field collapses, and we lose power to half the building.”

“And worst case?”

“Again, think positive,” Liam said, his grin widening.

Sarah sighed and shot Eli an apologetic glance. “This is why I double-check everything. Liam’s idea of preparation is plugging things in and hoping for the best, but worst case uh, vacuum decay, Singularity, Time paradox.” She shrugged at Eli.

“None of those are going to happen.” Liam said

“Hey, it’s called taking risks,” he replied. “That’s how science works.”

“That’s how lawsuits work,” Raj muttered.

Kelly cleared her throat, her fingers still flying over the keyboard. “The sync’s ready, but the system’s detecting instability in the containment field.”

“See?” Sarah gestured toward the console. “What did I say?”

Liam waved her off, leaning over Kelly’s shoulder to look at the screen. “It’s just noise. Once we fire it up, the system will self-correct.”

“Famous last words,” Marcus said under his breath.

Eli stepped further into the room, watching the glowing machine in the center.

The humming noise it emitted seemed to resonate in his chest, growing louder with each passing second. “You sure this thing is safe?”

“Totally,” Liam said.

“Probably,” Marcus added with a smirk.

“Statistically, yes,” Kelly murmured without looking up.

Eli crossed his arms, his skepticism mounting. “That’s not exactly reassuring.”

“Relax,” Liam said, flashing him a grin. “You’re about to witness history. This is going to work.”

“It has to,” Sarah muttered, her voice quieter.

She stared at the machine, her expression tense. “If it doesn’t, we’ve wasted months of work—and funding we’re never getting back.”

The group fell silent as Kelly hit a final key.

The machine screamed like a jet engine. The vortex in the chamber snapped into focus—a perfectly circular rift, its edges shimmering with Hawking radiation--or so Liam claimed. Inside, the void wasn’t empty: it refracted light like a funhouse mirror, showing distorted glimpses of... something.

"Holy shit," Raj breathed. "We did it. We actually—"

Kelly’s monitor chirped. "Field stability at 98%. It’s holding!"

Liam wiped sweat from his brow, grinning. "Told you the exotic matter injector would—"

Then the lights died.

The lab plunged into darkness—except for the wormhole, which brightened, its edges bleeding from blue-white to a shimmering purple. The machine’s power readouts flatlined,

Emergency lighting came on, casting the entire room in a weird dark red hue.

"Shut it down!" Liam yelled, fumbling for the kill switch.

"It is shut down. We’re at zero input. But the wormhole’s energy signature is... increasing—fast!” Kelly shouted over the noise. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, her face illuminated by the sickly glow of the monitor. “We’re at ninety percent! Feedback’s spiking!”

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Sarah yelled.

“Containment field destabilizing!” Kelly’s voice cracked with panic. “The feedback loop’s overloading!”

The smell hit Eli next—a sharp, acrid tang of burning wires mixed with the metallic scent of heated steel. It filled his nose and throat, making it hard to breathe.

Sparks erupted from a nearby console, showering the floor in orange and white embers.

Liam didn’t move. He stared at the core, transfixed by the swirling energy within it.

Raj yelled to Nina to release the pressure building in the machine. Sam looked on, lost on where he needed to be.

The pulsing light had turned erratic, flashing faster and brighter, the colors shifting wildly from green to yellow to an ominous red.

“Guys,” Eli shouted, his voice tight with alarm. “We should definitely go!”

The machine screamed, a piercing whine that shot through the air like a knife, making Eli clap his hands over his ears. The floor beneath him shuddered, and the vibrations traveled up through his legs, shaking him to his core.

A loud crack split the air, deafening and sharp, as if a massive tree had been snapped in half. The core pulsed violently, and arcs of blue electricity shot out from its surface, striking the walls and equipment.

The acrid smell of ozone filled the room, sharp and biting.

“Shut it down!” Sarah screamed, her voice barely audible over the chaos.

“The power is shut down!” Kelly shouted back, her fingers flying across the keyboard. “It’s pulling power from someplace else!”

Eli stumbled backward, his instincts screaming at him to run, but his legs felt heavy, rooted to the vibrating floor. His eyes stayed locked on the core, now a swirling storm of light and shadow, spinning faster and faster, growing brighter with each pulse.

For a heartbeat, Eli saw a purple light glowing, not in the hole, but on the other side. Then the air itself twisted, and the room became a hurricane of loose paper, tools, and screaming grad students.

"It’s pulling power from somewhere else!" Kelly shouted as she began to get lifted from the ground.

Eli grabbed a table leg as his feet left the ground.

The last thing he saw was the core flaring brighter than the sun, a blinding white-hot burst that swallowed the room. The heat was unbearable, feeling as his skin was going to burn off, the light burned into his retinas, even as he squeezed his eyes shut.

As the blinding light from the experiment engulfed him, another memory surged forward, sharp and inescapable.

Rain streaked the windshield, each drop illuminated by the car’s headlights as they snaked around the curves of the road. The wipers worked overtime, swiping at the rain hammering against the glass. Inside, the warmth of his parents’ voices filled the small space, a contrast to the storm outside.

“You’re going to have to pick eventually, you know,” his dad said, his voice calm but edged with impatience. His hands gripped the steering wheel firmly, his gaze fixed on the slick road ahead. “Putting this off doesn’t help anyone, Eli. Least of all you.”

Eli leaned back in his seat, staring at the raindrops racing each other across the window. “I know, Dad. I just… I’m thinking about it, okay?”

His mom, sitting in the passenger seat, glanced back at him with her usual calm smile. “It doesn’t matter where you play, sweetheart,” Emma said gently. “You’ll do great no matter school you pick. Pick a school that feels right for you.”

“Your mom’s right,” his dad said after a beat, letting out a long sigh. His grip on the wheel relaxed slightly. “I just want you to go where you want to go. Be where you want to be. That’s all, Eli.”

Eli looked away from the window and met his dad’s eyes in the rearview mirror. The sincerity in his voice hit him harder than he expected. “I know, Dad. Thanks.”

“You know,” Arthur began, glancing at Eli in the rearview mirror, his tone casual but teasing, “what about Calderwood? You know they could use you.”

Eli met his mom’s eyes, and she rolled hers, her lips twitching with suppressed laughter.

“Dad,” Eli said, dragging out the word like it was a chore, “they haven’t won more than ten games since you left there. Are they even still Division II?”

“That hurts,” Arthur replied, clutching his chest with mock offense. “I’ll have you know, we used to be the pride of the conference.”

Emma snorted, covering her mouth as laughter bubbled up. “Used to be. Arthur, that was twenty years ago. Let it go.”

Eli couldn’t help but laugh, the sound joining his mom’s. Arthur gave an exaggerated sigh, shaking his head like a man wronged. “No respect for history,” he muttered, but his lips twitched with a grin. “Fine, go to a small school like UNC and live in your mother’s shadow.” Arthur mumbled to loud enough so they both could hear it. Another round of laughter broke out and this time Arthur couldn’t help but join in.

The car felt like a bubble of light and joy in the middle of the storm.

Then the headlights appeared—blinding and fast, cutting through the rain as the car rounded a bend in the road.

“Arthur!” Emma’s scream cut through the laughter, raw with panic.

“Hold on!” Arthur shouted, his voice sharp as his hands gripped the wheel.

The tires skidded on the slick pavement, the car jerking sideways as the rain hammered down. The light grew impossibly bright, and the deafening sound of metal folding tore through the night.

And then…. nothing.