]Chapter One
The night’s cool met my bare face with a chilling embrace. It broke the silence of the windless air with the frantic rubbing of gloved hands, the uneven shivers in breath, and the staggering steps - all requisites of its new lodger. The distance slowly grew between my shuffling feet and the still steaming vehicle that was left curb side. No lamps lit the street on which I had parked, and so the vaporous air that sheathed the small motorcar gradually solidified into a looming icy clinch, slowly pushing the dark shape of the motorcar into the deeper gloom and swallowing the sounds of my approach to the building. Beneath me, wet grass sloshing the rubber soles of my boots was as slight in volume as was the echo of a whisper. But still, the electric lamp above the building’s entrance took life – flickering a few moments – before setting immense light to the darkness and illuminating its silent prowler.
The frost of mid-Winter held my gaze, but only until a blurred head filled the frozen glass square through which I had been peering. The door opened silently and I stepped inside, met with no greeting. Still dressed in his lab uniform, the Professor did not spare a glance as he began his return to the physics lab, forcing me into a hasty pursuit. Despite their silence, his steps betrayed a feeling of urgency.
Click.
The latches on Professor Ralms’ briefcase snapped upwards loudly, drawing my attention away from the lab room, which I had never before seen so lifeless. It was empty, save for the physics lab equipment that always cluttered the benches on the far side of the room, and our two quivering bodies. However, what would take place in that room would be larger and more momentous than any other thing I had experienced.
I watched Ralms’ hands tremble as he fastened a vial of dark liquid to the metallic device. Light seemed to gleam on the weapon - the “injector” - in a peculiarly particular fashion, but the buzzing lamps seemed insufficient for such a sight at that hour. I rolled up my sleeve, reassuring Ralms despite the lack of any verbal protest to what was about to happen on his part. The weapon was poised an inch away from my skin, a chrome wasp aiming its stinger, and Ralms’ trembling finally ceased. The needle protruding from the body extended slightly, and my arm tensed in anticipation. It jabbed. In, and then out - one swift motion, and the dark substance within the vial now spent.
Nothing happened.
Moments passed, but I barely noticed Ralms fidgeting over other instruments that whizzed and whirred as he shook his head. Taking one long last look at my face, a look that shifted – he tried to hide it, but like his hasty steps, in those grey eyes a sense of uneasiness was betrayed to me. Packing his device away, relatching the briefcase, and still shaking his head. Another moment, and then Ralms was gone. I began to shake mine also.
“It didn’t work.”
There was no way I could know that I was wrong, at that moment in time, in that place. My own position in the world had shifted, had been altered so drastically that, in my shock, I accepted the illusion that I was the same person, the same Liam Barkley, twenty years old, studious, reserved and a human – a physical being.
Far away, beyond the presence of the physical entity most distant from the centre of our universe, something stirred amongst the empty space. As I imagine it, a spark – a spontaneous rift in the physical laws that governed our realm – burst outwards into a cataclysm of flame and ice as the vapour continued to splash like thick globules of paint and depict a great battle between the cool of space and the heat of new life. From the struggle something unseen, unheard and untouched rent its way through the recesses of outer space, and took form in the only place that could house something so difficult to describe - an abstract world for an abstract entity. It was an essence – my essence. But I was yet to know that all of this had occurred, or something of equal importance, and that my presence had extended beyond my world – that I was part of something bigger than life, bigger than existence and bigger than the mystery that pervaded the human purpose.
For this reason, it is understandable that I decided to return home that night, the motorcar still steaming as I pulled away from the curb outside the college. My shivering receded as I readily absorbed the vehicle’s interior heat, but my mind was not so at ease. The final attempt, the measure of last resort upon which Ralms and I had agreed in a few words over the phone that same night, it was a failure like the rest. Although, there was that look in the Professor’s eyes, as though the man knew something else, something troubling – too disturbing to be hidden by even his steely countenance.
I recalled my first day at Relringbrook College. I was driven there by my foster brother Clarke – a resentful fellow whose gloomy presence seemed strangely repulsive in interacting with my own reserved manner. It was with great effort on his father Paul’s part that the boy was coerced into giving me a ride. I believe Paul had an arm injury at the time and it was for that reason that I was to spend some twenty minutes in a vehicle with … him.
My thoughts were interjected with a chuckle.
“Fellows like you don’t just get a scholarship.” Clarke’s face was void of emotion, gazing forward at the line of traffic crawling across the intersection.
I shifted in my seat, but didn’t respond. Clarke’s southern accent had always made me grind my figurative teeth, but still, I can remember the nervous energy that was pulsing though my body that Wednesday morning. How it built up around my jaw, pushing its way into my skull – it wasn’t natural.
“It isn’t natural.”
The pressure was building. I couldn’t shift my body anymore.
“You know what I think?”
The feeling of this tenseness forcing itself between my temples, clogging my thoughts, paralysing my body, it made my face burn and my mind approach the verge of eruption.
“I think you’re taking advantage of that there thing you got.” The older boy jabbed my chest with his finger.
I still cannot remember what happened after that. But there’s a good reason for this – Ralms. His experiments were, I suspect, the main factor in my repression of such … confrontational memories. He was the key and I was the lock. What lay behind the closed door would reshape existence, redefine humanity, reignite the spark…
Another laugh shook my body, as I steered the motorcar into a dimly lit street. My thoughts were tainted by fatigue and despair and at the time, I knew that words were petty in the scheme of all that was to occur. So I reminisced that afternoon in Ralms’ class. Aside from my final confrontation with Clarke, that day had marked my first encounter with the unforgettable enigma that was Roman Ralms. The man behind the curtain - the first of many curtains to be drawn back during our exploits.
That same day, the middle-aged Professor was lecturing us about the forces underlying everyday life. However, my level of attention on that Wednesday afternoon in Spring was dwindling. I believe what happened that day went something like this:
“Gravity,” Ralms’ stern expression was unhindered by the descent and inevitable splatter of egg yolk, which was now largely residing on the leather shoes peeking from beneath his white full-length coat. “It is but one of a large number of crucial forces at play in our Universe.”
Almost immediately, the girl sitting to my left raised her arm with startling enthusiasm, causing Ralms to pause before he had even begun. He stared at the girl – Melanie – who at the time I had no affiliation with, and he said nothing.
A few giggles broke the silence, and then Melanie lowered her arm, still smiling.
“Sir, the proton-neutron ratio is a crucial force,” Melanie spoke softly, yet with volume and clarity.
Ralms said nothing. Seconds ticked away. I shifted in my seat, managing a sideways glance at Melanie whose smile was still there, and freezing as the girls lips opened once more.
“We also need to consider electromagnetism, and nuclear force, and–” Melanie’s voice was drowned out by the startling sound of beaker meeting hardwood. Peals of shattering glass echoed in the large room, overwhelming the gasps of some fifty students as Ralms looked up from the remains of the beaker he had pitched downwards. The Professor pointed the index finger of his right hand directly at my seating place, almost immediately. At the time, of course I was too shocked to realise that there was more than incidence in the room’s attention being directed at me. Ralm’s mouth slowly opened.
“Find a dust pan.”
Silent seconds passed by, and then I awkwardly rose from my seat, double-stepping my way to the door behind the now serene man.
It took me a long time to navigate the endless halls of the lecture building. My thoughts were plagued by the words of Mr. Mark Laws, the faculty coordinator. He had spoken conceited words of the direction science was taking and of the great men who would carry forth the light of human knowledge, exploring the dark void of existence. The same girl who I would learn to be named Melanie made a rather audible and clearly disproving sound, glancing over the heads of all the shorter members of the student congregation.
I laughed out loud at the irony in Laws’ “inspiring” speech, pulling up outside my flat and yanking up the handbrake as I remained seated within the motorcar.
My thoughts lingered on the momentous day. Ralms was the key. Oh I’d already reiterated the key-lock analogy in my head several times. Aside from this, I remembered how it was upon my return, wielding a dust pan and a nervous demeanour, that I had my first conversation with the most infamous physics Professor at Relringbrook. The session bell had rung, and I was due for another class, but the determination in the aging man was too great.
“I see. Well why on earth would you select a Physics course then?” Ralms’ face did not spoil the question with amusement, but rather injected it with venom.
I hesitated. I knew I was now a couple of minutes late for my next class, so I thought about a way of coercing the man into a conversational dead end.
“I chose Physics because it is so relevant.” I smiled, pulling my backpack over my right shoulder in suggestion.
“Ah,” Ralms’ countenance had simmered somewhat, like the old man had dipped himself into a cool bathing pool. He chuckled, almost in a comforting manner, and then looked down at my feet. “Elaborate.” His gaze snapped back at my own eyes, his eyes steady and cold.
