He steps over to an easel stencilled ART ROOM! DO NOT REMOVE! and flips back the cover to reveal a star map. ‘Allow me to introduce Cygnus X-3.’ He levels his pointer at one among an innumerable array of dots and splodges. ‘What it is we are not quite sure. Maybe a large, spinning neutron star. Maybe a black hole that is devouring a sun. What we do know is that it emits gigantic quantities of radiation that bombard the Earth’s atmosphere daily, at energies ranging from 100 million electron volts to 100 billion billion electron volts. In approximately –’ he glances at his watch ‘– twelve minutes, we’re going to have the biggest radiation burst since the summer. On the school clock, a specially adapted receptor is waiting to harness that energy.’
‘Like in Back to the Future!’ Geoff exclaims.
‘From the receptor –’ Ruprecht ignoring this ‘– the radiation will be fed into this Escher loop.’ He indicates a heavy-duty cable that snakes over the floor, under the boys’ legs and out the door. ‘The loop has a radius of approximately a quarter-mile, taking it around the rugby pitches and back. The cosmic rays are cycled around the loop using the Escher free-acceleration process, building up more and more energy until enough has been created for our purposes. Then it comes back in here, into this Cosmic Energy Compressor. Having achieved optimum capacity, the gravitation chamber in the pod will be activated, allowing us, if all goes well, to create a tiny rift in space. Effectively, what we’re doing is borrowing energy from a large, distant black hole to create a small, local and controllable black hole, right here in the basement.’ He allows a moment here for awed murmuring, then resumes: ‘We know from Einstein’s equations that for a black hole to make sense mathematically, there must be a mirror universe on the opposite side. We also know that the infinite gravitation of the hole will instantly crush anything that enters it. However, by aligning it along the exact trajectory of the axis, it may be possible, in the moments before the rift repairs itself, to pass an object through the centre of the hole unscathed and into whatever lies on the other side. Tonight this toy robot will be our Columbus.’ From a schoolbag he produces a plastic red-and-grey android about ten inches in height.
‘Optimus Prime,’ Geoff whispers approvingly. ‘Leader of the Autobots.’
A low hum emanates from the foil-covered pod. Beside it, the computer screens throw up impenetrable screeds of numbers, like digital incantations, or the ecstatic babblings of some distant reality now very close –
‘Hey, Ruprecht – these other universes – will we be able to go there? Like, if your portal works?’
‘If the portal works,’ Ruprecht says, solemnly handing goggles to each of them, ‘it’ll be a whole new chapter in the story of humanity.’
‘Holy smoke…’
‘Goodbye, Earth! So long, you piece of crap, except for Italy.’
‘Think of it, Skip, there could be millions of parallel Loris out there! Like whole universes full of them?’
‘Oh, sure,’ Dennis chips in. ‘And planets of lingerie models addicted to sex? Galaxies of girls who have built their entire civilizations on the moment the Virgins from Outer Space arrive in their little jumpsuits?’
Ruprecht glances at his watch. ‘It’s time,’ he says. ‘Witnesses, don your goggles, please. For your own safety, I must request that you keep your distance. There may be some radiation emitted by the vortex.’
Skippy and the others lower their masks, and even Dennis is not immune to the pregnant tingling that pervades the dingy basement, the undispellable sense that something is imminent. Ruprecht inputs some last figures into the computer, then gently lowers Optimus Prime into a kind of metallic crib. And there, for a moment, on his knees by the foil-lined pod, he bides – like Moses’s mother, perhaps, with her bulrush basket on the banks of the Nile – gazing reflectively at the robot’s painted eyes, thinking that to do anything, epic or mundane, bound for glory or doomed to failure, is in its way to say goodbye to a world; that the greatest victories are therefore never without the shadow of loss; that every path you take, no matter how lofty or effulgent, aches not only with the memory of what you left behind, but with the ghosts of all the untaken paths, now never to be taken, running parallel…
Then, rising, he throws the switch.
What seems like a long moment elapses in which nothing happens. Then, just as Dennis is about to emit a caw of triumph, the pod begins to thrum, and very quickly the room fills with heat. Geoff looks at Skippy. Skippy looks at Geoff. Mario gazes intently at the tiny screen on his phone, where the scene is reproduced in miniature as it happens, although there is nothing as yet to actually see, there is only this hum, which is getting louder and louder and also with every passing instant less smooth, more of a judder, accompanied by disconcerting whines and rattles… The heat, too, increases by the second, pulsing from the cable beneath their toes, until rapidly it is almost insufferable, like being in a sauna, or an engine room, or an engine, like being inside an actual engine; foreheads drip with sweat, and Skippy is just beginning to wonder exactly how healthy a state of affairs this is, when he chances to glance over at Ruprecht, nibbling the ends of his fingers, nervously eyeing the humming pod – and has the sudden and extremely disquieting intuition that his friend has no idea whatsoever what he is doing – when there is a loud electrical zap! and an eyeblink of blinding white light, as if now they’re inside a lightbulb, and then absolute darkness.
For an alarming spell the darkness is also a silence, with only the hiss of the Escher cable to assure Skippy he is still in the basement and not himself in a black hole, or dead; then from somewhere over to the right, Ruprecht’s voice rises quaveringly: ‘Nothing to worry about… please remain in your seats…’
‘You fat idiot!’ Mario says invisibly from Skippy’s left. ‘Are you trying to kill us?’
‘Perfectly normal… small power outage… no need to be alarmed…’ Noises issue from Ruprecht’s portion of the darkness, as of someone picking himself up from the ground. ‘I must have… the, ah, limiter seems to… bear with me for one moment…’ A narrow shaft of torchlight appears and waves about the room as Ruprecht attempts to get his bearings. ‘Very strange.’ He clears his throat officiously. ‘Yes, I’d imagine what happened is –’
‘Ruprecht – look!’
The beam whips around to pick out Skippy’s thunderstruck face, and then back in the direction he’s pointing in: the open door of the pod, where the ellipse of light hovers for an instant before dropping to the floor as Ruprecht’s hand falls slackly to his side.
‘He’s gone…’ Mario whispers.
Optimus Prime is no longer in the crib.
‘Holy shit, guys,’ Geoff Sproke breaks in urgently, ‘Dennis is gone too!’
‘I’m over here,’ a faint voice calls from the far side of the room. With his keyring-torch, Ruprecht illuminates a pile of dusty cases and motherboards, from which Dennis comes clambering out.