The deep rumbling of the machine made the floor vibrate slightly as the large chamber began to slowly spin. Behind a thick glass shielding embedded in the interior walls of the chamber stood a man dressed in what looks like a stiff red tuxedo, complete with tophat and a red bowtie befitting someone far more advanced in age. As the spinning chamber picked up speed the man's grin grew. “How long until it reaches target velocity?” he asked, his eyes glued to the window. “Not yet possible. I’m still waiting for the reports on the new generator. Unless we manage to siphon off more of the gravitational potential the chamber will rip itself apart before we can stabilize and maintain the event horizon.” The words came before any of the technicians could even turn around to face the man. The speaker sat in a chair to the man's left side, filling out a sheet of paper in neatly written notes. She looked up at him and adjusted her glasses. “Here.” She handed him a bundle of papers. Across them were dozens of calculations, diagrams, measurements, and tons of text blurbs next to drawings of squares and numbers, so minute in size that it was hard for the man to read what was even written there. “My dear Doctor, what am I looking at here?” He asked. She stared at him for a second, but when his smile refused to dip even a fraction, she blew out a breath and rose to her feet. Her intense eyes bore into his as she took back the notes. “Never mind, I’ll handle it myself. Now, if we’re all done here, I need to finish designing the containment spheres. Marcus, you may cancel the spin cycle, we’ve seen enough.” One of the technicians, presumably Marcus, hit a few buttons and slowly pulled a lever all the way down until a soft click could be heard. Lights turned on as the hum from the machine died down, and people started exiting the control room. The Doctor stared out into the large chamber through the blast shield in front of her. Her black hair was pulled tight into a bun behind her head except for a slightly curled lock that fell from either side of her temples, that framed her face in a way that made her almost look seductive. 

“For the record, I think you’re insane. And not just the kind other people call each other when they act outside the socially accepted norm, I mean properly clinically insane. It’s the only logical explanation I can come up with for this entire venture.” She turned to look at him again, feeling inadequate in such an intimate social interaction. His eternal grin was stretched across his face, just a few degrees beyond what any natural smile would do to a person's lips. “I’m sure you mean well, but do remember that words can hurt, Doctor.” The words came out in a chastising tone, but the man's demeanor was as optimistic as ever. He pushed a button on a panel and a door opened into the large cylindrical chamber. “Come” He said. “Let’s pop the hood on this bad boy.” 

The two of them stepped into the large machine. Teams of technicians, engineers and assistants were filling the chamber all around them, taking notes of structural damages and repairing them in turn. In the middle of the machine, on the floor, there was a crater about ten feet in diameter. “You know what I feel every time we walk in here, Doctor?” asked the man.

“Yes.” She answered, not bothering to stop walking. “Oh come now, is that all? No wistful repetition of my emotionally charged words that you probably memorized the first time you heard them?” he asked, the offended tone of voice entirely overshadowed by the fact that his bright teeth were reflecting multiple lights from workers and the walls. The doctor turned her head slightly. “No.” She said, “Now be quiet.” They came up to the crater on the chamber floor and looked down. Inside it was a floating, rotating set of rings on top of each other, with a smaller disk in the middle of it all. A small rod was punched through the small disk, and was currently a few inches off from pointing straight up and down. The woman stared silently at it for a moment before making a quick sketch in her notes. She put a date next to it, and folded the paper in half and stuck it in a pocket on her lab coat. The man looked at the floating instrument. “You deserve praise, Doctor, you know that?” he asked. She ignored him. “Right, of course you do, you know everything.” He raised his right hand towards the outer ring of the instrument, but before he could touch it, the woman slapped it away and glared at him. “No touching!” She practically spat the words at him. “You have no idea how delicate those are, and I have spent way too much time calibrating them for you to undo all my work because you couldn’t contain your curiosity.” The words came quickly, and suddenly she had a very sharp pencil pointing directly at the man's eyes. He held up his hands, palms out in a placating gesture, and backed off a few steps. “Mreow, I love the intensity!” He said, grinning. “I wish you would bring that energy to the bedroom.” He winked at her, still holding his palms out. The woman sighed and let her hand fall. “Sir, that is highly inappropriate” She turned away from him and continued in her toneless voice, “Expect to receive a report from the HR department on my behalf before the night is over.” The woman raised an eyebrow at him and added, “is that understood, Director?” His grin grew another half inch as his dark orange eyes sparkled. “Aw, what’s a little flirting between coworkers?” he laughed. She ignored him. “Fine, I understand, no more flirting with my staff. Not even my dear mad scientist.” His grin shrank into a mischievous smile as he spoke. The woman whirled back towards him with surprising speed and precision, staring icy daggers into his eyes. “Mister Director” she said. Her voice was absent of any emotion, however the tone was so cold it could have kept a nuclear reactor running safely for years. 

Before she could continue a group of technicians and engineers approached them at the crest of the crater in the floor, one of them holding a bundle of papers in his hands. “Excuse me Doctor, Mister Director. We have finished the post-cycle diagnostics and have the reports ready for you now.” He looked nervously back and forth between the smiling man and the glaring woman. He gulped. “We uh… we need to repair approximately 8 percent of the inner chamber wall to get the grav-shield functional after today's test, and it’s going to take about 6 weeks according to our calculations. …is that going to be okay?” The group of workers cringed slightly when the man presented their reports, and some even took an unwilling step back as The Doctor sighed and reached out for the bundle of papers in the team leader's hands. She skimmed the first few pages, and in the few seconds it took her to read her demeanor changed from the coldly furious visage she bore a second ago, into a more relaxed professional mood. The woman looked up from the papers back at the team lead and said “I’ll check your numbers later and see if I can expedite the repair estimates somehow. You’re dismissed.” The group of workers quickly dispersed, except for the team leader, who shakily took back the stack of notes The Doctor just finished skimming through. He gulped once, then said “Thank you, Doctor. We greatly appreciate your work.” He was about to continue with something more, but the dead stare from the Doctor made him shut his mouth and turn to walk away. 

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

The Director, who had watched the exchange quietly until this point, took a deep breath and said “Well, that was fun! Don’t you think it’s just great to be surrounded by such dedicated and talented people, who you can rely on to get the job done, no matter what?” The sound of his words came out a bit louder than they needed, if the Doctor was the intended listener, however he saw the stiffening backs of technicians and engineers as he spoke. They were all listening. That was good, they should be.

The Doctor wasn’t paying much attention to the people around them anymore. The comment from the director was too overt for her taste, and she found it easier to just ignore it when he got mischievous. Which was often. Instead she looked up through the ceiling skylights. Above them all was the night sky, vibrant with stars dotting the darkness of space. Out here, far from people in cars, buildings with their light pollution, and factories that spewed out smog, it was as if the stars were more alive. She knew of course such notions were cosmic nonsense, for many of the stars she could see tonight had burned out millions of years ago. But it looked pretty. All the stars looked beautiful in the clear sky, with colors ranging from white to green and red, blue and purples and.. she saw the hole. Guilt came over her as she couldn’t help but notice it. A spot in the sky where just a few months ago there had been another bright light, just like the millions of others around it. Now there was a hole instead. She looked away, trying to find something else she could focus on, something that would challenge the vast capabilities of her brain, anything that could take her thoughts away from the hole. She saw the Director, standing with his back to her, facing the center of her floating machine. He raised his hand and waved at someone far away. The few lights still turned on in the chamber dimmed and turned off, and the two of them were once again alone in the darkness. Alone except for a tiny spark of light, shining from a small hole in the middle disk  at the center of the doctor’s strange machine. The director stood, straight and tall, his face illuminated by the light of the small orb, smiling steadily. “It still amazes me, Doctor, how much one can achieve with enough dedication and faith,” he said. She scoffed slightly. “Faith, is that what you’d call it? You had me design a device that frankly spits in the face of physics and then you did it again when you gave me the tools and manpower to build a large gravity collider the likes of which mankind has never seen. You dare call my genius a work of some unoriginal deity that’s worshiped by sheep too afraid to realize their faith is misguided and idiotic? ” Her words were soft, but steady. “I built this. This is my achievement, as much as it is yours. For whatever good that might be.” She paused for a second, then in a small whisper she said “I’m responsible for what happens next.” 

The Director stared at her. “Are you quite finished?” He asked, his tone of voice not quite matching the smirk he wore. “I was just remarking on how far we’ve managed to come, and how very special I think your work is. I could never have done any of this without you,” he said, his smile growing with every syllable that left his lips. While he spoke though, something strange happened with his eyes. The Doctor thought for a second it must have been a trick of the light, but a quick calculation on angles, brightness and photon behavior standards told her otherwise. The Director's eyes shone. It was just a dim sparkle on the outer edge of his pupils, but there was no mistaking it from her point of view. He kept talking. “In fact, my dear doctor, I do believe there are even more exciting things coming our way, I can feel it! It’s true what you said. No mere deity could have accomplished our goals. I dare say no creature anywhere has ever tread the path we’re about to blaze! Nothing among the stars  has my ambition! The stars themselves would never even see it coming!” He was almost shouting the last words, and his mouth split open into a laugh that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than humanly possible. Somewhere dense and heavy. The light in the doctor’s machine flickered in time with his laughs, and as he laughed the Director slowly turned around to face the light. He stretched a hand out towards the disk, and this time the Doctor didn’t stop him. As his hand got closer to the device, it began moving, seemingly on its own. It tilted its middle rod at an angle towards the director’s hand, and the two orbiting rings began slowly spinning in opposite directions. The floor beneath the device shook violently for a second, then quickly faded. Loose wires and tools left behind by workers shuddered, then began sliding on the floor towards the device. It happened very slowly, and all the while the Doctor stood there, calculating everything from random objects' mass and trajectory to the alignment of the planet in comparison to the moon, all in an effort to stay calm. The Director inched closer to the shining orb. “Imagine my dear Doctor. With the power of these tiny things, we can change all the rules. We can bring light to the world, fix everything! I could go home.” The Director’s voice cut clear through the distance between them, as if he stood just inches from the Doctor's ear. She cleared her throat. “Yes, that’s all well and good, sir, but I feel I must warn you. If you move any close to my Well it’s going to break every bone in your arm. Without the chambers effect to aim the Gravity Well mixed with you affecting its magnetic field with your mass, we have no way of knowing how it will react,” The doctor said, trying her best to make it understandable for someone without her brain. Then after a brief thought, she added “Although I’m not opposed to sacrificing your well being to see what would happen.” 

The Director took a step back, and half turned from the device known as the Well. “Of course, my dear, of course. I got a bit carried away for a second. Next up is stabilizing the centrifu-whatever, correct? Ah, and your new power source, right?” He looked at her expectantly. She could see the glee in his face as he smiled at her, but his eyes were lit up with something she could only describe as…hunger. She hesitated for a second, then answered him. “Yes, that’s correct. As soon as I can replicate the properties of our first…source, I can produce a duplicate source to support the first, and potentially double the output. From there I can stabilize the chamber's centrifugal forces. That should in theory be enough.” As she spoke The Director walked up to and past her, humming softly to himself, a jaunty melody she couldn’t place. “Thank you ever so much Doctor! I think this is enough for one night. Good work. I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning to attend to some personal matters, but I’ll see you sometime before our next test. Handle everything until I’m back, okay? Goodnight,”, and he walked into the dark doorway that led back into the control room and eventually out of the facility itself. The Doctor stood there, looking after him, asking herself, not for the first time, what it was they were doing.