INTERIM BOSS

INTERIM BOSS



At three o’clock in the morning Sam was too tired to put up with Rainey’s hypotheticals. She begged him to cool it, pleading, “I just want to get this done. Please, Rainey.”

“My side’s almost done.” Rainey continued to wire the gravity amplifiers together as he chattered.

“Good. Finish it.” Her red spool of thirty gauge went empty. Frowning, she shoved the linesman’s pliers into her tool belt and trudged back to the supply table.

“Are we taking a break?”

“No.”

“I was just saying that the gravity wave we interact with will have originated in the past. It’s a consequence of negative repulsion. I can show you the mathematical proof.”

“Rainey,” she whined. “Please.”

“Well, you should know it was Einstein who came up with—“

“Rainey!”

“I would think you would want to know this, Samantha. After all, you’re—“

“Interim project supervisor, right.”

“And Dr. Ingram asked me to familiarize you with all aspects of our procedure.”

“I don’t think he meant you have to explain E=mc2.”

“No, no.” Rainey popped up to his full six-foot-four and adjusted his glasses. “That’s Einstein’s special theory. It’s his general theory of relativity which would pertain to our work.”

“Right.”

“Of course my own reference to Einstein concerns the cosmological constant. Not familiar? I’m not surprised. An obscure theory which languished for a century and is only now coming to be validated.”

“You know I’m basically just a tech.” She sauntered back to her side of the room, flicking out a screwdriver.

“The cosmological constant is the macroscopic aspect of negative repulsion. All mass, whether electrically inert or not, demonstrates this anomaly.”

“Tech, remember?”

“Now that’s funny, wouldn’t you say?”

She fell into a crouch. She had one unit left on this table and four gleaming silver cubes waiting on the last, five altogether, and Rainey only had three more to go. There was an edge in her voice. “What’s funny.”

He wagged a length of wire at her. “I mean you being the tech and I’m just a maladroit physicist. And yet, I seem to be more adept at practical application.”

She spat, “Too bad Max didn’t leave you in charge.”

“Just what I was thinking.”

“You may think I’m here just because Max and I are friends but that’s not true. What do you think is going to happen if this—gravimetric radiator?—actually works?” She continued with her work. All this banter slowed her down. The problem with Phillip Rainey was that he didn’t know how to have a casual conversation. Everything was universal-constant this and general-relativity-theory that. And his innuendos concerning their respective qualifications were annoying at three in the morning.

“We’re not scheduled to run any tests now,” he said slowly.

“I know that. I mean when Max gets back from vacation and you turn it on. You register a discernible gravity flux and then what happens? MIT, Cal Tech, and my house, Fermilab, will all want in. You just spent—what, ninety thousand dollars?—to do what it cost CERN three billion Euros to do. Every lab on the planet is going to try to build one of these systems. And I’ll have a leg up. That’s why I came out here.”

“So—your specious appellation notwithstanding, you are actually here to learn from us.”

“Now you got it.”

“Then I’m rather like your mentor, I suppose.”

“Thanks for that.” How cute was this? Maybe now he would stop bugging her about who was in charge. He could strut all he wanted but she had spent the last week doing much more than just lab work. As de facto administrator for Harmon Technologies her daily hurdles included budgets, scheduling lab time, and the PR person was on maternity leave so that too.

They worked for a few minutes. He noticed she was fidgeting with the spools of wire on her little cart and observed, “Blue, blue, green,”

“I am just tired.” She proceeded to make the connection properly. “I can’t see the colors anymore.”

“Why are we still here again?”

“You don’t have to be.”

“And have you tell Dr. Unger I abandoned you? No thank you.”

“I don’t think you usually work all night. Go. The schedule is screwed up because we ran out of fasteners. Which is technically my fault.”

“You may be right about that.”

“Go home. I’m good for another hour. Then I’m done.”

“Fine. One more hour. We’ll be caught up.”

“Thanks, Phil.”

“In regard to your opinion that this experiment will elicit a reaction in the scientific community, I concur. However, I believe you’re expectation is exaggerated. As you mentioned, CERN has already created W-bosons and we’re not even doing that. We are merely manipulating the field they generate. Infinitesimally, I might add.”

She looked over. “You really don’t see the difference.”

“Oh, the cost, of course.” He bent down out of sight as he continued to work.

“This system is much more manageable with the interchangeable equipment. You can easily change configuration. You’ll be able to do things we haven’t even figured out yet.”

“You are correct that there will be many applications possible. It will be practicable to study the interaction of multiple gravity waves, which I’m interested in. Of course this location is necessary for that, I’m sure you’re aware.”

They were four floors underground, quartered in the sub-basement annex. The long room was isolated from external influences like manmade electrical fields and shielded as well. Unlike most of the team she appreciated the solitude. “I like it here.”

He narrowed his eyes as he always did. “So you’ve said.”

“Once I get down here,” she added. Nobody enjoyed the interminable ride on that service elevator.

“Hopefully this site will enable us to go one step further and develop prognostic analytical protocols to better understand the interaction of gravity fields. You’re probably aware that Newton’s Laws cannot precisely describe what happens at the point of interface.”

“I am now.”

“Quantum physics predicts some intriguing potentials, Samantha. There may be time dilation involved, although it’s unlikely we’ll be able to detect it with this system. A surge in static energy is also possible, constituting an unexplainable increase in mass.”

She was dubious, to say the least. He had failed to mention that the litany of possibilities matched the myriad theories describing the fundamental makeup of the universe. Even the standard model had a dozen plausible interpretations.

“When you’re done there we can run a weak charge through the system,” he said.

She was working on her last connection. “Is that a good idea?”

“Just a few millivolts to assess the linkages. It won’t precipitate anything.”

“Are you sure?”

“What harm could it possibly do? Samantha, I appreciate that you are technically senior staff. But I think I know what I’m doing.”

She didn’t like varying from the timetable. Shouldn’t they be running this through a computer to check the math first? “I don’t know.”

“Are you really going to pull rank? Why can’t you just trust me?”

She jammed her pliers into the tool belt and stood. “And what if something goes wrong?”

“I’ll take full responsibility.”

“All right. Go ahead.” What could go wrong? It was only nominal test of the equipment.

He flicked a switch.

The universe exploded. The floor tilted and dropped, and there was dust everywhere. “Phillip!” She couldn’t see a thing. What in the world had happened?

“Over here!”

“What happened?”

“Are you all right, Samantha?” The only illumination came from emergency lights and dust clogged the air. She spotted him near the wall. He was covered with a film of dust.

“Yes. What was that?”

“I believe we witnessed the cascade effect. I never expected anything like this.”

“What is that?” She had no idea what he was talking about.

“The diode boosters.”

“Those striped dealies?” She didn’t know exactly what the heavy fittings were for.

“They revitalize the system as its running. To increase the available power. Apparently they magnified the small charge we used.”

“Okay, you accidentally turned it on. But what happened?”

“According to this—“ He was at the control console. “—the gravimetric interaction was converted into a spacetime deviation. That’s why the room moved, because we were shifted through space. And—“

“What?”

“We shifted back in time approximately eighty years. I can’t believe it. This is incredible!”

She looked at the door. He obviously didn’t see the big picture here. Stepping over the papers and things that cluttered the floor, she moved to the door and grasped the handle. It was wedged tight. She heard dirt and rocks shifting on the other side.

“Samantha, this is fantastic. Time travel? We’ll be famous.”

“One thing, Phil.” She tugged on the door handle. “They won’t build the tunnel to the surface for another eighty years. We’re stuck down here.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll handle this.” He examined the equipment. “Everything seems to be fine. We’ll simply reverse the magnetic field and create a shift in polarity. I am confident that will send us right back to our own time. I suggest you hang on to something.” He made the necessary adjustment and flicked the switch. Nothing happened.

She sighed. “The generators are gone too, Phil.”

“The generators? Oh.”

Like the tunnels, the generators wouldn’t get there for decades. Without those generators they had no juice. They couldn’t turn the equipment back on. They weren’t going anywhere.

He gave her a sympathetic shrug. His voice got a bit squeaky. “Well, interim project supervisor, what do you think? This certainly is a dilemma.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it.” She unhooked her tool belt and dropped it.

“I extrapolate that we only have two hours of oxygen left in this room.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that either.” She sauntered towards him.

He wiggled behind a table. “Two hours isn’t much time.”

“Oh, Phil. You’re not going to make another ten minutes.” She grabbed his arm and tugged.

“Samantha! What are you doing?” He twisted away and slid along the wall.

Brushing a table aside, she followed him with her fists clenched. 

“Please, Samantha!” He ran to a corner. “Please!”

She stalked toward him. She wasn’t really going to hurt him. But he deserved a little payback. Samantha would chase him around until she wasn’t mad anymore. Two hours? It was going to be close.