CHAPTER 37

175 Thousand Years Ago

The Pillars of Jericho

Middle Paleolithic Era Earth

Bethany and Isaac placed four connector rods at equal distances around the sphere, with each of them twenty feet from it. With the three humans standing within the perimeter, Bethany opened her holographic display and primed the rods for discharge. Each of the rods spun so fast that they drilled into the ground, leaving half of their length above the surface. The rods sparked at their tips and shot a violet blanket of zero-point energy at each other. The energy waves spread until they connected to form a barrier around the sphere. Bethany walked to Isaac, who was squinting at the sphere.

“The barrier is ready,” she said. “Theoretically, zero-point energy should keep the sphere from expanding beyond the barrier.”

Isaac didn’t appear to hear her. He was deep in thought. He raised his hand and created a silvery butterfly drone over his palm. Isaac watched as the drone flapped its wings and flew toward the sphere. It stopped about an inch above the surface. Isaac pushed the butterfly as hard as he could but the force only crushed it. The drone dissolved into nanites and flowed back into Isaac’s armor.

“You could do that a thousand more times,” Bethany said, “and the result would still be the same.”

Isaac stroked his chin. “The data we had was almost completely different from what we’re looking at.”

“It was. The truth is that I don’t know what we’re looking at, Isaac. This much energy… how isn’t it registering anything? How did Andrews even get that data?”

Isaac shook his head. “Well, I’ve never met the guy but from how Riley described him, it seems like he’s beyond what we normally consider human.”

Bethany chuckled. “I can’t argue with that. He was pulling miracles out of his ass.”

The pair walked around the sphere until they reached Riley, who was standing with his face covered.

“Let’s go over what we know so far,” Isaac said, standing next to Riley. He wondered what the soldier was thinking within the confines of his armor. Riley was no scientist but, over the years they had spent together, Isaac had come to appreciate just how intelligent he was. In truth, Isaac considered Riley to be smarter than both he and Bethany combined. Riley would never agree with that opinion. On the contrary, Riley considered Isaac and Bethany to be the two smartest people in the world. It was why he risked everything to save them. Isaac rubbed his temples. He wished he could see into Riley’s head and learn everything he knew. Perhaps it would help him unlock the secrets of the sphere.

“We know it doesn’t have an end, nor a beginning,” Bethany said. “From the moment it appeared, it existed across all points of time. I’m still struggling to comprehend that.”

“The data from Garth showed us structure and behavior,” Isaac added. “I’ve run every scan, used every algorithm, performed every test, but still found nothing. It doesn’t burn. It doesn’t behave in any manner we expect. All we see are photons flying around. It appears to be a solid structure but the data says it’s hollow.” Isaac took a step closer to the sphere and extended his hand toward it. “It exists across time because it isn’t affected by time’s flow the way we are. We exist in a linear plane where things unfold in sequence. What if the sphere exists separate from our linear system?”

Bethany frowned. “Okay but it’s right here. We can see it, feel it. We can hear it humming.”

“Oh my God!” Isaac’s eyes widened. He hopped back from the sphere toward the barrier, then turned to face her. “Think about it, Beth. It’s just like the breach, the one at the bottom of the ocean. It had properties that bled and interacted with our dimension but only to a certain point. That must be because, in truth, it wasn’t here, it was there.”

Bethany narrowed her eyes and stared at the sphere. “You could be right. That would mean the sphere isn’t here at all.”

“I don’t think it is,” Isaac agreed. “Everything we know about physics tells us it shouldn’t be possible. I’ve come to realize that we don’t truly know anything at all.”

Bethany circled the sphere, staring at the ground, then stopped and faced it. She shook her head. “You’re saying the sphere exists outside of time.”

Isaac nodded. “You know what that means.”

“The only way to see it for what it truly is, the only way to observe it and interact with it, is from a non-linear perspective.”

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Isaac nodded.

“But how? How can we go outside of time? Is it even possible and how are we supposed to achieve it?” Bethany raised both hands and morphed them into two large cannons. She focused and unleashed powerful energy blasts at the sphere, screaming at the top of her lungs. “Just die already!”

After numerous blasts, she finally stopped. Bethany leaned forward with her hands on her knees, panting. With every shot she fired at the sphere, a deep metallic echo reverberated at her, but the energy did not disperse. It was as though the sphere absorbed it into its bright luminescence. Bethany wondered where it was going.

“Yes,” Riley said, standing beside her.

She was startled; she hadn’t heard his approach. “Yes what?”

“A place outside of time exists, and it is possible to go there.”

“How do you know that?”

Riley retracted his face armor. “Because Isaac and I have done it before.”

Bethany couldn’t believe it. She turned to Isaac, who was staring back at her with an expression that matched her own.

Isaac shrugged and looked at Riley. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” he confessed.

“I know it’s possible”, Riley said. “The question is, how? Sky and I have a theory.”

Sky’s complete hologram appeared and flickered next to Riley. She walked toward the sphere, staring at it as though gazing at the stars.

“I’ve been analyzing the recordings Riley made from when we first arrived, and since. The songs the natives sang did something to the sphere. They made it behave like a breach. I compared the two songs and found similarities.” Sky pressed her palm against the surface of the sphere, but her hand passed straight through it. “There was more to the songs than you could hear, frequencies inaudible to the human ear. Fortunately, I’m not human.”

“What did you mean when you said it behaved like a breach?” Bethany asked.

Sky walked around the sphere, running her hand over its surface. “It manifested the properties of a temporal breach across its surface. In essence, it became energy.”

“Are you sure?”

Sky nodded.

“Sky can replicate the sound,” Riley said. “She thinks it should keep the sphere in a state that would allow us to observe and manipulate it.”

“Not that it would be much use,” Sky added, “because it wouldn’t be in its original state.”

Bethany glanced at Riley, then Sky. “If you’re right and it is a breach, where does it go?”

Sky tightened her lips. “I don’t know.”

Isaac stepped away from the sphere and looked at Sky. “Let’s do it.”

Sky started the song, playing it from Riley’s armor. It began as a low humming sound that grew louder with each passing second. Soon after the music started, the sphere began to act like a liquid, bubbling slowly on the surface. The small bubbles grew into thousands of flowing spikes as the song shifted to a higher pitch. Soon, the sphere was vibrating so intensely that it was shifting out of focus. When the volume reached a particular strength, the vibration stopped. The spikes melted down into spiral vortexes spread across the sphere’s surface.

“It’s working!” Isaac grinned. “The sphere is changing, but…”

“I don’t understand,” Bethany said. “It’s behaving like a temporal breach but with none of the corollary energies of one. It’s just as useless as before.”

Isaac moved closer to the sphere until he was about a foot from it. “Do you hear that?”

“I can’t hear anything,” Bethany answered.

“Listen,” Isaac insisted, with the side of his head inching closer to the sphere.

“Isaac, you’re very close,” Bethany warned. “Be careful.”

Isaac stepped back. “How are you not hearing that?”

Bethany moved a little closer to the sphere and finally heard the sound. It resembled the heartbeat of a fetus during an ultrasound scan, except that it was deeper and more intense.

With every beat, Bethany felt her body tensing. “Is that a heartbeat?” she asked.

Isaac, with a determined look, created another butterfly drone in his hand, then watched the drone flap its wings toward the sphere. This time, when the butterfly reached the surface of the sphere, it passed straight through it and vanished.

Bethany gasped and turned sharply toward Isaac. “Can you still feel it?” she asked.

Isaac shook his head. “I lost connection,” he said as he walked toward the sphere. “It isn’t solid anymore. Could it be?”

“Could it be what?” Bethany echoed. “An actual breach?” She reached out and started walking toward the sphere.

“Bethany!” Riley called after her.

Bethany stopped and looked back at him.

“Are you sure about this?”

Bethany nodded, then gave a faint smile. She turned back to the sphere and continued walking. She stopped a few feet away and slowly reached out toward it. When her hand reached the surface, it passed through it and vanished from sight, while the rest of her arm remained visible. She couldn’t feel her hand in the sphere but somehow knew it was still connected to her. There was no pain. Bethany pulled her hand back and it emerged intact. She stared at her hand. It felt cold and numb for a few seconds, then she regained her sensation and control of it. Bethany turned to the others, all of whom were eager to hear her feedback.

“I’m fine,” Bethany muttered, struggling to believe it. “I’m all right.” She wiggled her fingers to prove it.

“How did it feel?” Sky asked.

“Strange, like nothingness. I have my hand back, so at least we know that’s only a feeling.”

Isaac approached Bethany, looking at her hand. He ran his hands over it and performed some tests. The results were normal. “We need to know,” he said. “We have to go in and find out.”

“Find out what?”

“We need to know where it goes. Did your hand simply go into the sphere or somewhere else? If we agree that it might be possible to observe from a non-linear perspective, that breach could provide our non-linear perspective.”

Bethany nodded, then turned to Riley. “What do you think?”

Riley ground his teeth. Most of the time, when Bethany and Isaac were talking, he had no idea what they were discussing. As far as he could tell, they didn’t have enough data to determine whether or not it was safe to go inside. Then again, it wasn’t up to him. He was never the hero of the story. They were. Riley sighed. “It’s not up to me.”

Isaac and Bethany looked at each other, then they both nodded.

“We’re going in,” Bethany said.

Riley created a cube drone the size of a basketball. The drone moved away from him and continued playing the sound. Riley sprouted two tethers from his armor. One connected to Bethany’s armor, while the second connected to Isaac.

“What’s that for?” Isaac asked.

“So we stay together,” Riley answered.

They each extended their armor over their face. Together, they walked into the sphere as the singing cube remained outside, holding the breach open.