Since the beginning man has gazed toward the stars and wondered what marvels they contain. But the unimaginable distances laugh at his puny velocities. One day he’ll discover the natural doorways that can place the universe at his doorstep.
Of course, doors are two-way devices.
At the bell’s ring he rose and strode past the clock without glancing. It had to be 4:30pm. Singaporeans valued punctuality. His hand stopped short of the knob. Once he turned it, the life he’d known would end. A deep breath swelled his lungs. Before the finger on the other side reached the chime, he exhaled and opened the door.
Two short men stood on the porch. The shorter one allowed a bright, eager smile to emerge. “Dr. Ang? Dr. Joshua Ang?” Joshua bowed deep in respect then stepped back to permit entry. With two hands the shorter one extended his business card English side up. It identified him as Wei Xuan Chan of Singapore Worldwide Capital. His eyes beamed.
“We are very grateful you could see us on such short notice.” His colleague extended a card and bowed again. Feng Tan’s gentle voice bespoke good breeding and gracious manners. “We thank you for the opportunity, Dr. Ang. I trust our arrival is not an imposition.” Twenty-two years had passed since Joshua left Singapore. Without conscious effort, he slipped into equally flawless Mandarin.
They made short work of the simple dish allowing Joshua to lay plates of almond jelly and sweet potato cubes soaked in coconut milk for them to sample. Halfway through the California white that accompanied dessert, Feng turned the conversation to the topic at hand.
“Are you personally acquainted with Nicholas Koh?” Joshua shook his head. His identity as Singapore Worldwide Capital’s Director came to him only after a series of careful and discreet inquiries made by family members still on the tiny island. In Singapore, many companies met his criteria for global reach and deep liquidity but only Worldwide specialized in international transport and could appreciate his discovery’s implications.
Joshua looked away and scanned across the well-manicured garden’s plants and trees. “What I’ve discovered will overnight make every form of transportation obsolete. History, commerce, and societies will change in ways we cannot yet predict.” His gaze returned to the seated men. As if long accustomed to exaggerated claims, their expressions remained impassive. Joshua interpreted Wei Xuan’s next question as a test.
“Five billion US dollars.” Neither man blinked. Joshua relaxed.
The three stepped around the house to a side entrance. Wooden stairs led down to a massive steel square framed by solid concrete. He stood before a retinal scanner and the door rolled outward on noiseless bearings to reveal an eight-inch thickness. Interior lights sequenced on, casting a gentle glow over an advanced-state laboratory. Joshua turned to motion they should enter first.
They stepped through the long side of a one-room rectangle. The short-side wall on the right stood bare except for a floor-to-ceiling, four-sided steel frame at its center. Black cables extending from the edges snaked along the floor to connected equipment none of which the two men could identify.
“That, gentlemen, is what I believe to be the world’s only working model of a Morris-Thorne traversable wormhole. It permits a person or spaceship to move from one location in the universe to another instantly—without regard for the intervening distance.” Joshua paced about the large room flipping switches, turning dials, pulling knobs.
“Besides General Relativity, Einstein’s equations implied the existence of wormholes. His colleagues however described a wormhole as short-lived. Gravity would collapse the tunnel before anything could move through it. Along came two physicists, Michael S. Morris and Kip S. Thorne, who in a famous white paper, proved that negative energy’s repulsive properties would counteract gravity and keep the wormhole open.
The first problem? Negative energy, though infinite, exists only in the sub-atomic world. I needed some natural phenomenon that could bridge the gap between the infinitely small and the world in which you and I exist. An arduous process of elimination left only one possibility: a black hole. Not the monsters we see in the universe. Tidal forces would crush anything approaching them. But microscopic black holes fit the bill nicely.
All black holes emit radiation that would cause them to evaporate. For the ones typically lurking in the center of galaxies, the loss is more than offset by the enormous quantities of matter they consume. Microscopic black holes on the other hand, aren’t big enough to prevent their winking out of existence within a billionth, of a trillionth, of a trillionth of a second. Enter the second problem. How to keep a microscopic black hole stable long enough to do something useful? Answer. Absolute zero.
Joshua ambled toward a computer terminal and began finger-tapping the screen. Feng recovered from jaw-dropping shock. “Where does it lead?” Joshua looked up from the screen and smiled at him.
Back at the lab Joshua offered the men, still trying to recover their land legs, glasses containing three-finger scotch pours. Neither declined. Two gulps drained the brown-gold liquid. Feng remained quiet, contemplative. Years before, Joshua had made his first entry as an eager, curious scientist. He returned in Feng’s mood, well aware the world he knew had ended. They didn’t know it yet, but the airline, shipping, aerospace, rail, and commuter industries would shrink to local service only before disappearing altogether. Society would undergo tremendous upheaval. Earth had evolved a species poised to colonize the stars.
Wei Xuan’s hand reached inside his jacket and emerged holding a silenced automatic. Joshua felt as if a sledgehammer slammed his chest twice. He fell flat on his back. Wei Xuan bent down and placed a third bullet in his head.
Joshua’s eyes fluttered open. He looked about but had difficulty focusing. Something about the empty concrete room seemed vaguely familiar. He wondered why he found it so hard to think. Arms and legs wouldn’t move. He didn’t feel any pain but nothing worked. Joshua shifted his eyes left and right. His head lay in a pool of dried blood. His own? He tried to shout but no sound emerged. The concrete wall before him stood bare except for a floor-to-ceiling rectangular outline. Where was he?
The air began to shimmer, formed a glowing circle, then tunneled into the wall. Inside, a two-legged creature covered with iridescent feathers appeared. Its round head, with owl-like black eyes, sat above a black beak, ten-inches long, that tapered to a sharp point. Flush against either side of its chest, what appeared to be clenched fists protruded from under a fold of feathers.
When it emerged, its head brushed against the ceiling. The feathered folds around its trunk opened to reveal wings with a black, leather-like underside. They draped from its arms which spread bat-like and terminated in three-fingered hands with an opposable fourth. It folded its arms back against its torso and when the wings creased around, once again only the clenched fists jutted out.
Its neck and head bobbed pigeon-like as it moved about. Every few steps, it bent low to the ground and ingested a huge volume of air. It stopped at Joshua’s feet, leaned down, and inhaled. The creature sniffed twice more, then unfolded its arms. With its wings spread, Joshua had the impression he lay under a tent.
It pressed one hand against his chest while the other tore off his arm at the shoulder. It switched hands to tear off the other arm. Joshua felt nothing but watched in horror as blood gushed from the mangled holes. Still bent, a long, slender tongue flickered out from its beak. Underneath, a narrow tube opened from which a clear, molasses-like fluid oozed out to spread across Joshua’s face. He had to be dreaming. Joshua smiled and closed his eyes. They never opened again.