Chaos bloomed behind me. A literal ending of the world. I paid it no mind. I instead stood at the threshold to the divide and stared deep into its turquoise depths and considered all the possibilities laid out before me. I could go anywhere. To any point within the known universe, or, if I was brave enough, into the unknown.
I went to the one spot I was always going to go. I went home.
+
I stepped out of the cold of the divide and into the heat of a thirty five degree day in Melbourne, Earth. Brown grass crunched beneath my feet, scratching my skin. When had I lost my shoes? I wondered, more with curiosity than any feeling of concern.
‘Bernice,’ a voice said from behind me. I turned, my mind still a whirl after passing through the divide, and saw a woman looking at me, a house behind her. Her forehead was creased with worry and her eyes leaked tears over her dark skin.
‘Nora,’ I said with a smile, not really sure who she was but happy to see her.
‘What? Where?’ she started, but her words became drowned in a sea of heavy tears. She rushed towards me and threw her arms around my shoulders, burying her head into my shirt. I put my arms around her.
‘My sister.’ I said, the fact returning to me.
She pulled back and looked into my still smiling face and in a rush asked, ‘What the fuck happened to you? Where have you been? Are you okay?’ A blinked against the barrage of questions as a flurry of knowledge drifted down from somewhere in the upper reaches of my mind like an autumn tree losing its leaves. The knowledge settled and returned me to me. I was Bernice Jarrin, I had crossed the divide.
I looked into Nora’s eyes feeling more like myself. It must have showed because some of the worry fell away from her face. ‘Yeah. Yes. I’m okay,’ I said. ‘As for what happened, I…’ I trailed off, not sure how to explain it.
‘Why don’t we go inside,’ she suggested. ‘Get away from this heat.’
‘Actually, can I take you somewhere?’ I said. ‘There’s something I can show you that might provide context as I answer your questions.’
+
‘I don’t know what I’m looking at?’ Nora said, her voice echoing through the large and mostly empty warehouse.
‘It’s…well, it doesn’t really have a name yet. I’ve just been calling it the UD. Unknown Device. I, well, I built it.’
She ran her hand across one of the three curved pillars of brass, then gave a hard flick to the dome on top, causing it to let out a hollow ding that hung in the room. ‘You built it but it’s unknown?’ She asked.
‘No. Well, yes. I built it, but it’s not my design.’
‘So who’s design is it?’
‘I don’t know.’
She turned to look at me, eyebrow raised, all sass. It was good to see her usual manner had returned after the short car ride. ‘You realise how unsatisfying these answers are, don’t you?’
‘Right, sorry. It’s from a design I found.’
‘That’s it? Bernice, I swear to god, you are the worst story teller.’
‘Sorry. Sorry. It’s been a long…how long was I actually gone for?’
‘Just over a week,’ she said, some timidity returning to her voice. ‘The police thought you might have been killed. Either that or you’d ran off somewhere. We should probably call them. Let them know they can call off their investigation.’
‘Umm, it might be best to hold off on that for now.’ I said.
Nora whipped her head toward me, eyes penetrating, and I felt the desire to rub my hands together. ‘Why? You planning on leaving again?’
I did rub my hands together. ‘Well, possibly. It might be necessary to-’
‘No, I don’t want to hear any wells, or possiblies, or mights. Tell me straight where the hell have you been?’
‘Luyten b.’
‘What? The exoplanet?’
‘That’s right.’
‘How is that even-? ….and it imploded. It’s been on the news.’
‘Really? For how long?’
‘A couple of days.’
‘So, the crossing isn’t instantaneous. Interesting.’
‘Bernice! What is going on?’
‘Right. The machine, the UD. It’s, for lack of a better word, a transporter. But it’s also so much more than that. It took me to Luyten b, I watched the world implode. It was…beautiful, terrifying. I, I really don’t have words for it.’
‘I don’t care about the description, Bernice. What do you mean it took you to Luyten b? That’s impossible. That’s…holy shit, I need to sit down.’
I dragged over two old stools I had found by a dumpster when I was first putting together this workspace, and, after a look of reluctance, Nora sat in one. I took the other and spoke.
‘I’m sorry, I really am doing this badly, I know it sounds crazy, but that’s why I wanted to show you the UD, so you could see that this is real. This device, it created a divide between here and Luyten b. All I had to do was step through and I was there. The planet was habitable, just like they thought it might be. I could breathe and it had this kind of odd grass that felt like silk against my feet. Well, at least until it all imploded.’
‘How? How can this device do that?’ She said, pointing at the statue of brass. ‘That’s science fiction, I mean…how?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know? You built it!’
‘Yes, but from a set of instructions, the science of it is…unexplained.’
‘Okay. So where did these instructions come from?’
‘Space.’
‘Space?’
‘Originally, although that’s not where I got them from. I found them in one of Marie Moreau’s notebooks.’
‘Okay, and who is she?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Seriously, Mona? I’ve told you about her a million times.’
‘You talk about a lot of old people!’
‘My thesis was based off her work! My career is based off her work! I went to France last year to visit her ancestral home!’
‘Oh, the one who went crazy.’
I sighed. ‘Yes, but that’s the least of what she-’
‘Wait. If you got the instructions from one of her notebooks how come no one’s ever discovered this before?’
My cheeks flushed. ‘Because no one knows this particular notebook exists. I noticed an image of a book hidden in one of the many paintings she did of her garden. So, last year, on my trip, I had a look, and sure enough in the hollow of this elm tree was a notebook–
‘And you stole it?’
‘I discovered it!’
‘Bernice, come on. Shouldn’t it go to her family trust? Or some scientific society, or something?’
‘I am her scientific society. There is no one else on this planet who knows her work as well as I do. Most academics simply think of her as crazy, dismissing her work entirely. Trust me, the best hands the notebook could possibly be in are mine.’
‘Okay, putting aside your theft for the moment, how is it that you don’t understand the science? If you have the notebook wouldn’t it explain it?’
I blushed again and looked away, knowing Mona wouldn’t like what I was about to say next. ‘Well, the notebook’s a bit hard to understand. It came from later in her career so a lot of it is more, ah, raving, than coherent thought, or written so messily that it can’t be read. But the instructions were clear, as were the descriptions of how she got them.’
Nora gave me one of her classic hard looks. ‘So, let me get this straight. You found the notebook of a woman who was clearly losing her mind, in which was the blueprint for a device that the crazy lady said she got from space, and you decide to build it? Not to mention go to a planet that you thought was habitable. You realise how dangerous that was? How irresponsible?’
‘Yes. Well, no. More risky than irresponsible. But being a scientist is about taking risks.’
‘Controlled risks, that you tell your sister about. Not hide up in a secret warehouse somewhere like some mad doctor. I thought you were dead, Bernice. Hell, if this device had been designed for something else, if anything had gone wrong, you could have been.’ Her voice had risen to a shout, and there were tears in her eyes. Her breath was coming fast and I realised mine was too. I took a deep breath and apologised.
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I…I should have told you. I just, I didn’t know how to. It was all so crazy and exciting and…I was selfish. I’m sorry.’ I climbed off the stool and hugged her. After a second she returned it.
‘You’re all I have, you know. Ever since we lost Mum and Dad…well, I thought I was alone.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I repeated. ‘It was dumb.’
She pulled out of the hug and looked at me. ‘But you’re planning on using it again.’ She said, more statement than question.
‘Not without you.’ I told her, meaning it.
‘You want me to go to an alien planet with you?’ She asked.
‘Yes, I mean, sure, why not? There are still a number of planets that have been discovered that scientists are confident are habitable. We could visit any one of them. Be the first sisters in space.’
She wiped a tear from her eye as she shook her head. ‘Bernie, you know how crazy that sounds. You don’t know that this device will even work a second time. And what if the scientists are wrong? What if these planets aren’t habitable.’
‘Like I said, the UD can do more than just transport. Moreau wrote that it also provides a protective barrier around you that contains the properties of wherever you’re transporting from. Basically, a little pocket of Earth. And I think that’s just the start of what it can do. It’s not as dangerous as you think, Nora, trust me.’
‘And if I say no? What then? Will you still leave?’
‘No,’ I said, but with a moment’s hesitation.
‘Fine,’ she said, hearing it. ‘But we’re doing it right. Bring supplies, plan ahead, and get you some shoes. And I need to know everything I can about this device. Just explain it in as non-crazy-smart person as you can. For starters, how does it even work?’
‘Like this,’ I said, and placed my palm wide over the dome. With a twist clockwise, turquoise bloomed around us.
++++
Thanks for reading
Damian
Photo Credit: 