Gant wondered about Liz Thunder. Her interest appeared genuine, her concern for the safety of the team sincere, and their trip to The Tall Company clearly did not sit well with General Borman. If she played a hand in this, she held that hand close.
"I appreciate your concern, Doctor, and I will file it away for future reference. For now, we have bigger problems. I guess the first question is, do you think it could be God?"
Twiste shook his head in disbelief. "No, I can’t believe God is like this. This thing is brutal, unforgiving, and arrogant. It sees us like insects to play with, maybe like plucking the wings off a fly."
Gant remembered the medium — the girl — and what she had done to herself.
"It gets off on hurting people."
"If that’s God, then there’s no hope. It’s something else, but what?"
Gant perked up and said, "Your friend Colonel Thunder and I went to see a researcher over at The Tall Company who had been on Briggs’s team. She described the experiment as if he were ripping up the floorboards of the universe. I remember what Liz said. She said, ‘what happens when you dig at the floorboards when you live in an apartment?’"
Twiste answered the question: "You break through to another apartment."
"Right."
"Right," Twiste went on. "So maybe Briggs ripped open a hole. Wow, now that makes some sense."
"Ouch! Mother — what makes sense?"
"Those two little puppets it’s got. I bet Roberts has a headache or something right now. I bet it went and got in his mind and copied what he knows about shooting a handgun and put it into Ruth’s mind and that’s how she could shoot you in exactly the right spot to damage you but… " and Twiste touched parts of the knee, considered, and told him, "… not cause permanent damage. You'll need surgery, but I think the bullet missed the good stuff."
"I suppose I should be thankful."
"It said something like it was going to completely — I think it said ‘fully’—come into this world. As if it’s not already here."
"I must have missed that part."
"You were busy being shot."
"Okay," Gant tried to recap through gritted teeth. "So this thing can put ideas into a person’s head or make a person see things or do things. You say it still has to come into our world. What do you mean by that?"
"I didn’t say it," Twiste corrected. "It did. Let’s say Briggs poked a hole into some kind of other dimension, some place where things are like pure mental energy, where things are made up of pure thought."
"The scientist we spoke with at Tall compared the infinite of space to the infinite of the small. She suggested that there’s an entire universe of the small."
"Jesus," Twiste said. "Now you’re talking over my head," and he chuckled.
"So this Briggs punches a hole into another universe or dimension or whatever."
"Maybe like the God particle is supposed to be, maybe this is a pocket of what was here before the universe, before the big bang." Twiste’s curiosity grew, and Gant saw that, despite the circumstances, he enjoyed indulging his curiosity, as opposed to locking the enigmas away in a containment cell. He resolved that should they make it home alive, he would push for Twiste to have more access to the fruits of their labors.
Brandon's theorizing, however, appeared on the brink of running amok.
"This raises a bunch of interesting theories about—"
"Doctor," Gant took one hand away from his knee and held it aloft in a "stop" sign. "I am more concerned with the theory of operational awareness. Let's call it staying focused on what is important to the mission. Theories are great, but I have a feeling time is short."
"Why’s that?"
"Because It seems really interested in the V.A.A.D. Campion is carrying."
Twiste asked, "Do you think he can get it here in once piece?"
"You have known Campion for a while now. He is a skilled and capable soldier. Besides, that thing appears to control those creatures. He will find his way here, sooner or later. My concern is that our host will grab the V.A.A.D. and dismantle it before it can reverse the situation."
Twiste shook his head. "I don't know about that, Thom. We may be better off if Campion doesn't make it down here."
"What are you talking about?"
"I think Dr. Briggs broke through those floorboards and this thing tried to crawl into our apartment, except it got stuck because the hole wasn’t big enough."
"I assume the V.A.A.D. is designed to repair that hole."
Twiste, however, saw things differently.
"I don’t think so. I think the V.A.A.D. is going to rip open that hole and let that thing all the way in."
26
It had taken all day, but Colonel Thunder finally reached Dr. Doreen McCaul.
Liz sat at her desk and after accepting McCaul's long-winded apology revolving around a research project that could not be disturbed, Liz dove right in to the particulars of her problem, without any concern as to whether the call was monitored.
"Yes, it’s called a variable accelerator antimatter delivery device — V.A.A.D. for short."
"You say it will bombard the area with antiparticles?"
Liz replied, "That's my understanding, yes."
"You think this is all about Briggs’s experiment. Maybe his experiment worked a little too well, maybe he created some sort of rift — is that what you're thinking?"
Liz rocked in her chair and said, "Based on what you told me and what I’ve heard, that’s what I’m going on. Is it possible he punched a hole into another dimension? I know that sounds crazy."
"The idea of multiple dimensions is far from crazy, Colonel. It is the basis for string theory. Of course, there is also the theory of a multi-verse: an infinite number of parallel universes where the physical laws are quite different from what we know here."
"Okay," Liz stopped rocking, leaned on her desk, and grabbed a pencil, which she proceeded to chew on. "It seems as if someone at Tall thinks this variable accelerator antimatter thing can repair the damage."
"Well, I don’t see how. What you’re describing is the idea of projecting antimatter at the affected area. Maybe an area as small as one atom, I don’t know."
"So what?"
"So when antimatter hits matter you get annihilation: the destruction of the particles when they collide. It will result in the release of gamma rays."
"Again I ask, 'so what?'"
"No need to be agitated, dear. As I told you and your major friend last time, you can’t expect me to boil decades of subatomic research into a few clever sound bites or a nice, tidily packaged metaphor."
"Yes, of course, I’m sorry. You were saying?"
"If you believe a hole has been ripped open at the subatomic level and you then bombard that area with antimatter, I can't see how you’ll have anything other than more destruction, not less."
Colonel Thunder summarized, "You mean the hole will be ripped open even more?"
"I suppose that could very well happen. That’s assuming your thinking is accurate. I’ve never heard of such a situation outside of science fiction stories."
Colonel Thunder said, "But no one ever thought they could do what Briggs was trying to do with his lasers either, right?"
"Not at that scale, no. I told you there is a project in the works to use lasers but on a much larger scale, with tremendous energy requirements. If his project worked, he accomplished a lot more with a lot less."
Liz tried to hurry to the point, saying, "Let's assume his experiment worked."
"Okay, if his experiment worked and he was able to tear apart the fabric of space at the subatomic level he’d be playing with the parts that make up the building blocks of our reality. Who knows what could happen or come of it."