Where Light Dies

Where Light Dies

Long ago, archaic scientists of old discovered light travelled as a wave. And like any wave, it needed a medium, giving birth to the notion of the aether. Of course, it was supposedly disproven by overly simplistic equipment and replaced by wave-particle duality, a more sophisticated theory, but it was fundamentally flawed, setting physics back a century. Not since the postulate of the atom being overthrown by the four elements had such a scientific travesty occurred! The neanderthals of the 20th and 21st century couldn't figure out that the hypothetical “dark matter” their equations couldn't find was likely the aether, before the rapid expansion of the universe strained and began to pull it thinner than a—

“Doctor, is the test finished yet?”

Andre slammed the journal shut, the dark pages having already begun to smoke under the 3000 lumen reading lamp. “Not sure, probably not,” he muttered back to his assistant. He could almost hear her nodding in the dark as they both pretended her primary job wasn't to keep him focused. He reached out to his right, feeling the testing chamber. His fingers moved to the braille readout, his eyes too tired to strain in the pitch black and read it. He couldn't have even if he tried though, needing to be at most half the distance for the visuals to not be dissipated into the air.

0.00% increase

“Damn it, Beatrice!” he shouted, slamming his fist into the tactile display, forcing in some of the braille pins. “We've tried every type of radiation, split every nuclease in existence, smashed every subatomic particle together— Why can't we make aether?” He begged the very air itself, though it had long since betrayed them. “...How do you create something you can't sense?” There was silence in the dark, a state he was all too used to. He worked on into the constant night, his partner's unseen presence felt in her consistent assistance.

§

“I saw it once, when I was a child,” Andre mused one day, sitting at his desk. He adjusted his outer coat over his inner one, the -10°C lab interior feeling a bit cool that morning.

“Hmm?” Dr. Beatrice prodded, familiar with his habit of half-finished thoughts.

“The moon.” He let the nonsensical claim hang in the air. “It may have been a couple decades ago,” he recalled as he typed in the parameters of the next test, “but I will never forget it. It was full and beautiful, hanging right overhead. I could just barely make it out as an aether burst perfectly passed through the solar system... that hazy light circle my eyes could just barely see.”

Beatrice glanced up, looking incredulously in his direction, but she didn't have the heart to deny the memory of a miracle.

“I want to see it again, someday,” he reminisced warmly.

“So, you're not doing this because...”

“—because I want to save humanity?” he finished for her. “Honour the call to ‘not go quietly into that night’? Save the world and all that? Nah,” he chuckled. “I've purely selfish motivations.”

“To see the moon.” Her statement was more a question, even if not phrased as such.

“Yep.”

“And then what?”

He hesitated. “...I'd probably eat an apple.”

“You like those sour things?” Her voice dripped with disgust.

“‘Good kids eat their fruit’,” he parroted both of their mothers. “But I mean a real apple, like they used to grow before we were born. My grandfather would always tell me that fruit used to be sweet.”

“Sweet fruit, that would be something,” she said with a chuckle.

They bantered on as the tests failed, thawing the air with their conversation.

§

The new day came like any other, quiet and cold. Dr. Beatrice hung her outer coat on the hook as she entered the lab; her family's higher tolerance for the icy cold used to be a bragging point, but now she only felt a twinge of pity for her colleague, knowing he lacked that comfortable minor mutation. “Dr. Proctor?” she called out, always a little more formal to Andre, technically her superior, though only in intellect, at the start of each day. She didn't hear a verbal response but only the clacking keyboard. It was unlike others she worked with, the rhythmic tapping unique just to him. She sat at her own desk, near his, though the distance was a small infinity in the darkness each time he sat still and silent. But it collapsed into nothing when she would hear him again.

“Any progress?” she finally asked, breaking the verbal silence that was starting to get to her.

“...No,” she heard him grumble, not too far from her. He must have been recalibrating something on the machine, as she heard a sound come from it immediately afterwards.

“So... what sort of flowers would you like to see?” The question was asinine on its surface, ludicrous and self-indulgent to bother thinking about. Flowers hadn't been grown in a half century, save those that had some practical benefit, the cost and effort put into preserving them too great for the enjoyment they could still provide. But as she asked, it reminded her of a trip they had been on as school children to a pumpkin farm, and while the crop was not yet developed enough for the students to handle and feel, the aroma of the room, warmed soil and the scent of what she was told were small yellow flowers, never left her.

“Why would I care for such a thing?” Andre harshly answered. His voice was sharp, pointed, and only almost hiding the weariness and frustration that caused it.

She tensed, rebuffed but not fully put down. “Well, only a couple days ago you were talking about apples—”

“—And only a couple days ago I thought I was onto a potential solution,” he interrupted. He sighed deeply. “...I'm not mad at you,” he almost apologized, worried what the silence from her meant. “We just need to keep working.”

The silence from her remained, and he fed it, growing increasingly uncomfortable in the cold and dark. Occasionally, he worried that she had left and he had simply missed it, but the tap of a key or soft clink of glass on metal would reassure him that she was still there.

“It's strange, the way you speak to me,” she said out of the blue, almost making him jump at the sound of her voice. He turned to it. “We've known each other since we were children, grew up in the same concrete block, yet sometimes you're so... quirky in here when—”

“Stop!”

“What? No, I have to say this!” she insisted.

“No, no no no...” he muttered, turning away. “It's Strange!”

“That's what I'm saying!”

“No! The aether, it's Strange quarks, all throughout the universe. The most stable subatomic particles in existence—”

Dr. Beatrice shook her head, struggling to reroute her train of thought as fast as Andre did. “That's insane,” she blurted out, the logical response to such a hypothesis.

“I can prove it!” He stood, stepping around to the machine, hearing her footsteps quickly approaching. “If I calibrate the machine to produce Strange quarks, then—”

“You're insane!” she exclaimed, grabbing at his arm. “If you create Strange matter, it would destroy the lab, maybe even the planet!” Her iron grip anchored him, her small frame deceptive.

He knew her next words would be to call security. “Luna,” he finally used her first name, for the first time in a long time, “I need you to trust me. Please.” They were close, so close. He could just barely see the fear in her eyes as she glanced between him and where the phone likely was. He could feel her flexing, grip weakening and strengthening. Any attempt to overpower her though would seal his fate.

“...Okay.” She let him go.

He didn't give her an extra second to reconsider. He flew to the computer, typing in the parameters as fast as he could. “Normally, you'd be right,” he began, a questionable choice of words, “but I get it now. A Strangelet would normally turn everything it touches into more Strange matter.”

Luna Beatrice questioned her decision to let him go.

Andre practically banged on the keyboard. The internals creaking as ice cracked on the mechanics. “But if we oscillate the spin, it should suspend it between a Strange and anti-Strange quark.”

“‘Should’?”

“And that in turn changes its quantum frequency, preventing interaction with Higgs Bosons, while also perfectly balancing the charge!” he excitedly continued.

“Wait, so...”

“Exactly!” He slammed the ENTER key, overriding a dozen safety warnings. “Weak, Strong, Electromagnetic, Psionic, and Gravitational— none of the universal forces interact!”

“So dark matter—”

“—was indeed Strange aether this whole time; not some other dimension or miscalculation, but wholly undetectable!”

The machine whirled and spun, squealing and hesitating, as if consciously asking the mad scientist if he truly wished to risk a second apocalypse on such a questionable theory.

Dr. Andre Procter refused to falter, resolute beyond any moment in his life. Either he was right, or the earth was doomed to freeze over and die out before the next generation could take up the darkened torch; it was in this simple poisoned truth that he set his confidence.

The machine stopped, letting out a soft >pop< sound neither of the listeners had heard before. Andre stiffened, knowing that if he was wrong, it would be a near instant death.

“...Andre.” He heard her, just to the right of him, call to him. “We're still here,” she stated, her voice lacking any surprise.

He blinked, not quite sharing the sentiment. “Yeah,” he just answered, trying not to let on. He reached out to his right, fumbling for the display, and instead felt his hand brush her arm. She quickly took his hand in hers and guided it to the braille read-out.

0.00% increase

He pulled back his hand, suppressing the groan, too crushed to say anything.

Click, whirl... The soft sound of the shifting display was a shout in the silence.

Andre quickly put his hand back, tactilely reading the update.

0.01% increase

Click, whirl...

0.03% increase

His hand was pushed aside as Luna Beatrice could no longer wait. He heard a small gasp as she read the numbers herself. The display whirled and clicked, chittering like a nightingale. He pushed his hand back, reading the update.

4.02% increase

Then he saw it.

It was soft at first, a small purple light from inside. He had never seen the testing machine, not fully or properly, the shape and form of it known almost entirely through explanation and exploratory touch. But as the small light grew more blue, then green, before levelling out into a balanced white, the inside of it was now visible to Andre, an enclosed, near-empty space with a single bulb and a few sensors. He realized in that moment that this meant that the Strange quarks, the dark matter, the aether was leaking out, passing freely through the enclosure. It was unable to be contained, only created and directed.

“You did it,” came the small voice beside him, not at all surprised but still astonished all the same.

As the room slowly began to light up, barely discernible silhouettes coming into focus and colour leaking into the inky blackness, Andre hesitated. He still felt her hand against his as they read the braille with their fingertips. He took a breath then turned, and once again, more brightly than ever before, she saw his smile and he saw his moon. ​​