The Twin Paradox by Charles Wachter

Author:Charles Wachter [Wachter, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Trevaney Bay
Published: 2020-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

FIVE SECONDS AND COUNTING

Before Alastair could formulate a complete thought about the downed helicopter and the terrible consequences of what it meant, something else happened.

Something terrible.

It had only been seconds since he lost sight of the helicopter when sharp staccato concussive booms rocked the plateau behind him—a new, more immediate threat to his quickly unraveling decision. Alastair flinched instinctively with each explosion, searching for the source. Kat and Zack were frozen in place. Then he saw it through some foliage at the fringe of the cliff. The explosions seemed to come from the base of the great barrier dam that held back the ocean in the distance.

It was breaching.

The scale of the disaster—miles of ocean barrier dam giving away all at once in some sort of giant, impossible action movie—was too much to register for Alastair. It was like the entire universe was telling him he was wrong to stay, and now he would have to settle his bill immediately.

The Gulf poured into the Crypt, angry at being held back by something as insignificant as dirt, cement, and hubris for so long.

Its rage exploded into the jungle, but from the distance, it looked like water pouring into a giant’s salad bowl. The dam fought back with diminishing reservoirs of strength. Skyscraper-sized chunks of cement loosened, first by tendrils of water and then torrents—all sent by nature to exact revenge, for no dam of this size had ever been built, and never had humans so brazenly broken their implicit contract with the universe.

The terrible beauty of an ocean pouring into the infinite hole of man’s greed spoke truth to power.

***

“Breach, breach, breach, breach!” screamed an automated warning.

Isaac fell out of his chair, bug-eyed at the screens.

Three p.m.

Back at the barrier wall facility, the accelerator control room sprang to life. Technicians ran up to their computers.

“Emergency cycle protocol. Set the countdown!” Isaac yelled.

“Dr. Ralls isn’t out yet,” said Sheila, the cycle manager.

“He’ll make it. Thirty seconds! Emergency protocol approval: FMLISAAC2. Prime the coils,” Isaac screamed.

“The helicopter’s disappeared,” someone said staring at her screen.

“Magnets online,” another technician said. The team had practiced this hundreds of times. In case of a dam breach—or any number of other emergency issues, like a nuclear attack—the protocol was to immediately trigger a time cycle to slow it down at the perimeter, giving the people inside enough time to store research and information, head to high ground before the water that did make it in flooded everything, and prepare for long-term survival.

“Come on!” yelled Isaac.

“Twenty seconds,” someone yelled.

“Coolant charged. Releasing the particle.”

Isaac slapped his hand down on a button. A countdown on the screen came up with a graphic that tracked the speed of the growing infiniton particle as it raced around the property, gaining mass and speed.

He twisted a knob. On a digital panel next to it, the number of years climbed from ten to one hundred.

Isaac ran out of the room into the atrium and then outside onto the overlook, eager to see the barrier dam breach with his own two eyes.

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