Young Writers Society

Chapter Five

Temples and Terror

"And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven"

- Genesis 11: 4

Now, the true sin of building a tower to heaven was not that of wanting heaven, but thinking Man could get it on his own

- Paul Meyers, The Worshiper's dilemma

When I was eleven, my dad took me to New York. I remember feeling so small compared to the buildings, and in awe of how large humanity's creations could grow. I remember I felt like I was merely an ant in a great anthill. It reminded me of the larger churches that I had been in, but the larger churches had made me think how small and weak man was, but these buildings made me think how small and weak a man was, and how great men were.

The buildings of the greatest cities were but ants themselves the structure of Project Athena.

As we drove up, I felt a giddiness coming over me. I couldn’t stop staring at it, this huge white dome, seeming to be made of concrete, rising so high it ate up the sky. The closer we got, the more of the sky became the white plane. We approached a tall barbed-wire fence. Behind which were tanks and men patrolling with machine guns.

In front of us was a small gate, and a small building - well both were quite large compared to most buildings and gates, but everything looked small compared to the dome.  The car pulled up next to the building and a metal post with various buttons and sensors. Avery pulled out a card, inserted it into the post, and then scanned his thumb on a small pad. A polite ding sounded from the post, and a man in a military uniform stepped out from the building, a shotgun slung around his shoulder. As I looked at him I realized he had an American flag on the shoulder of his uniform. Of course, the only way to get this kind of funding is to have the US military involved.

He leaned over and looked at Avery. “Avery Tillard, transporting Mathew Meyers to Project Athena for an interview,” Avery said.

The man looked around the car, nodded, and straightened out. “Looks good, go ahead when the gate opens” He stepped back into the building, and the gate slid upon, and the car started forward.

“Avery,” I said as we entered the dome's shadow.

“Yes?” He responded not taking his eyes from the road.

“How are they keeping this a secret?” I also didn’t tear my eyes from the dome, it now consumed half of the heavens, dwarfing all clouds that floated around and below it, and making the mountains look like children's sand mounds. There was no longer a sun, there was only the dome.

“With difficulty.” He responded curtly.

“How are people not seeing it?”

“All the land within sight of it is closed and heavily protected, we just went through the second layer of protection, the first is miles away, we entered it on the first day well you were asleep. They are saying it is being used for government mining.”

I was in too much awe to respond, eventually, we pulled into a huge parking lock, and then stopped.

I stepped out of the car and stared at it. Immensely large, but besides that, simple, concrete, white, and almost perfectly round. But it was just there, definitely artificial, too perfectly round, smooth, and white to be natural, but almost too large to be man-made. 

Avery chuckled, “It is quite large, no?”

I looked away from it and to him, though I didn’t really look away from it since no matter where I looked it or its shadow would exist on the periphery of my vision. I stumbled away as if that would help me from falling into its infinity. “How…” There were fourteen hows on my mind, “did they build it?”

“Do you know of the great American space race?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“This was the work of the great Allied time race. No one wants to be the last one to affect time.”

On the side of the huge dome, looking like a fleck of dust on an elephant, was a door, it swung open. Out came four men, two of the men looked like security guards of some type, in the front was a man with strong eyebrows, and dark hair, seeming to be of Italian descent. He was dressed in a suit so well-tailored and built it made all my clothes look like potato sacks. He wore a couple of gold rings, and a pair of golden spectacles.

Behind the well-dressed man was a welcome sight. The old friendly face of Charlie, he had grown up a bit since I had last seen him, but he still had a little of his baby fat, he was his same short self, if balding now, and wore a large smile that brought me right back to college.

The well-dressed man threw out his arms and addressed me. “So what do you think?” He said in an accent like rich fudge.

“It’s the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen!” I said as they arrived in front of me.

“Glorious, is she not?” he agreed. “Largest man-made structure in human history, your car is to the pyramids of Giza as the pyramids are to this. And unlike the pyramids, who sought and failed to break the chains of time and death on man, this will succeed!”

“How big is it?” I asked dumbfounded.

“It’s a sphere, with a 1.5-kilometer radius, half of a spere forms a dome, the other half is underground. The half emerging from the ground taller than most mountains.” Charlie said, smiling the way he would when he announced our good grades. A sort of half-smirk trying to hide childlike giddiness.

One and a half kilometers tall, I thought, dumbfounded. 

“God shrinks in her presence.” The well-dressed man said. He came out and shook my hand with his soft gold ring-covered fingers. “I am Gabriello Carnazza, and you are Charlie Stucker's friend, Meyers, are you not?”

I nodded, “Yes, I’m Mathew Meyers’s friend,” I paused, he was still shaking my hand, “I mean I’m Charlie’s friend Mathew Meyers.”

Once Gabriello finished shaking my hand Charlie came up and shook mine warmly. “Good to see you again old buddy.” He said. 

"You too charlie. Thanks so much for the job opportunity." I said, trying to keep my eyes on him, but they kept sliding back to the dome. 

Gabriello turned, “Well, the outside is just the beginning, it can do much more than be large, come, come.” He said, making his way back to the door. 

***

Inside they took my thumbprint to confirm it was me, checked my passport, and then took a DNA sample, apparently drawing on the government records. Which governments? I wondered as I walked through a metal detector and signed a lot of paperwork. All of the halls were large, echoey, and cold. They were brightly lit and the walls were smooth and bare.

“So where are we going?” I asked as they led me down the hallways.

“We are seeing if you are up to snuff for the job,” Gabriello said. I felt a pang of fear.

“What exactly is the job?” I asked.

Gabriello smiled, “Extremely important.”

I decided that though my curiosity was gnawing at me, Gabriello obviously didn’t want to answer questions. The hallway expanded out into a small room with a secretary desk, a couple of chairs, and four doors.  Charlie spoke to the woman behind the desk, who I soon learned was the same woman who sent me my email, Gertrude. She pulled out non-disclosure agreements for me to sign, a couple of medical documents, and then pressed a button that opened the door.

We came to a large metal door. Gabriello pushed through. Inside was a large office, made of dark greys and browns. Hanging on the walls were signed pictures of astronauts on the moon, and sitting on one corner was a spacesuit helmet. On the opposite side was a dry erase board, with some math and statistics written in bad handwriting.

In the middle of the very large room was a huge oak desk, it almost looked more like a table. A wide-faced man was sitting at that desk, flipping through a paper memo, he was clean-shaven but it looked like it would be better suited with a beard.

“Find a chair for everyone,” He said without looking up.

Charlie pulled up chairs from the wall for him and me, and Gabriello grabbed his own. The two security guards left out and closed the doors.

The man looked up, “Okay, Gabriello, I know you wanted to hire someone else, but I decided to go with Charlie's judgment on this one, especially because he saw the man in Destiny's Touch.”

He swiveled in his chair and looked at me, “Mercer was it?” He said.

“Meyers, Mathew Meyers,” I mumbled.

“Matt, yes, I have your file right here. Impressive education,” he said, putting the memo down, which had a picture of me, and pages of information. “A degree in biology, another in English, and a doctorate in mathematics and quantum physics. You switched majors a couple of times in there, but that’s no biggie, could even be a help to us.” I nodded nervously.

He pulled out a piece of paper, “I’m just going to ask you a couple of legal questions, failure to answer these truthfully will immediately disqualify you from the job and could end in fine or even federal prison, so please stick to honesty.” I nodded, thinking of the two security guards outside.

“Have you ever been tried for any crimes?”

“No,” I responded. He checked a little box.

“How many speeding tickets do you have?”

“What?”

“Speeding tickets, Meyers.”

“Umm, three I think, but that’s not like a fact, I’m just guessing.”

“The number is three.” He said, checking a box. “Have you ever been affiliated with or worked for a foreign power?”

“Umm, no.” Another check.

“Have you been to therapy?”

“No.” Another check.

“Are you affiliated with any organizations which wish to see the end of the US government?”

“What? Umm, no.”

“What political party are you a member of?”

“What?”

“It’s a simple question, who did you vote for in the last election?”

Isn’t it my right not to tell them that? I wondered, but answered nonetheless.

We went down a long list, asking seemingly unconnected questions.

“Have you ever been exposed to Gamma rays?”

“Do you have stage fright?”

“Have you ever been a part of a workout program?”

“Have you ever tweeted anything that included any word on this list of offensive slurs?”

And I just kept mumbling my replies. I was sweaty, though the room was cold, my back sticking to the chair. My suit felt like it was a straight jacket, holding absurd amounts of heat in. I felt like I was burning up, and my mouth felt like it was filled with dry sand.

He finished up and put the list back in the memo. “Looks like as we expected,” He said. “Really just a precaution,” he added, leaning back.

He looked at me with intense blue eyes, scanning me for my value. I couldn’t maintain eye contact and looked at the two men on either side of me as if they might provide an explanation for all of this. He sighed, and pulled out another piece of paper, and handed it to me. 

“Could you read that out loud please?”

I cleared my throat and held the piece of paper up. You don’t deserve this. A voice whispered in my mind as I opened my mouth, You think they’re going to hire the guy who's been spending two weeks laying in bed? The college dropout? The man whose book sales are only falling? The man even Jenna couldn’t love?

“Project Athena,” I started, pronouncing it like Projector, not a project. “Sorry,” I mumbled, “Project Athena has braved the ummm, the scientific horizon and broken into a new world of discoveries. Athena projects protons at one small spot in her center. They collide while going 80% the speed of light and as a consequence, they compress, and due to quantum gravity fall into a singularity. Since the protons are projected at a forty-five-degree angle, the singularity is also spinning. This spinning soon collapses with the collapsing of the singularity and... and exceeds light speed, causing an anomaly in space-time. The consequences of this anomaly were previously completely unknown, but now, for the microseconds before the anomaly is destroyed, we have been able to detect it releasing a new type of particle in the billions. This particle is believed to be a new Fermion that affects the human mind exclusively.”

I put the paper back down. Gabriello chuckled. “Yes,” The man responded, standing up and shoveling all the papers together. “Thank you for coming, Matthew, we’ll get you a flight home soon and compensation for your trouble. Gabriello, we’ll fly in your man tonight, you're correct, we need someone who is already in the industry.”

“Wait, so I don’t have the job?” I asked.

“Sadly not, Gertrude will get you the paperwork and everything, we'll-” He began, not looking at me.

The wave of terror rose, blocking out the sun, and then crashed down on me. For a moment the thoughts of my utter worthlessness filled me, but then the wave flowed away, the sea was calm, and the voices of doubt quiet now that they had been proved right.

“Why not?” I cut him off.

He paused and looked at me. He was not used to being interrupted. “Excuse me?”

“Why didn’t I get the job?”

“I’m sorry you're just not the right fit.” He began, but I cut him off before he could continue with the nothing talk.

“Right fit for what? I was never told what the job was! I was marched out here, answered your random questions, and then I will be sent right on back, without ever even knowing what I was being interviewed for? I never even learned your name. Tell me what the job is! And I’ll tell you if I can do it.”

The man looked at me, he seemed to be considering calling security. I challenged him to do it with my eyes. He plopped back down, “Okay, Charlie, tell him what it is, and then he’ll at least know why.”

“But sir,” Gabriello began, the man raised his hand and silenced Gabrellio.

“Charlie, go ahead.”

Charlie nodded and turned to me smiling nervously, “When we first successfully created the spinning nacked singularity, it released waves of energy that have been able to tell us a lot about the nature of spacetime. But the energy all appeared in forms we’d seen before, Gravitational waves, and various photons, but then there was this other particle we didn’t recognize. It seemed to be a boson, and at first we thought it was an extremely energized electron. But it’s spin was a bit different, and it created little magnetic fields with no outside help, we noticed the magnetic fields were quite similar to those fields that brains create. We also noticed that many people working here were reporting headaches and strange dreams and images in their mind while trying to work. So we realized that maybe if we hooked the particles up to a human brain-”

“Charlies to humble. He put the mad in mad genius when he and he alone had the idea of pumping someone's head of unknown particles and then volunteered himself.” The man interrupted. 

“And it kinda worked, it pumped chaos into my prefrontal cortex like a firehose. I saw visions and felt ideas, but it was all too confusing. It was like a terrible fever dream, overwhelming, painful, and essentially useless. After that experiment, we tried to do the same thing to a couple of other scientists, to a similar effect. But then Dr. Scizon, who was working on our publicity team, caught word of the problem he volunteered. We tried it with him, and it worked great, he was able to make sense of the images and pull out some real math and physics. Our theory became that people who have only been trained in the hard sciences - math and physics - have brains that can’t take the overflow of chaotic unsorted energy, so we tried with some poets and artists. They saw even more, but they could only describe it as beautiful and interesting, and paint it or write verses about it, which were entirely useless to us. We decided we needed someone who had enough education to make sense of it, but was used to working with abstract ideas.”

The man reached out his hand, signaling for Charlie to stop, “Yes, and Gabrellio is in charge of getting funding, so he saw this from a whole different angle, he realized that whoever was the person inside = seeing this stuff - would be seen as a hero - an explorer if you will. They would be the person that when this goes public, the masses would see as a time traveler. The people would want interviews with them, would want to hear from them, they’d shake the president's hand. They would in all likelihood, be the face of the exploration of the next frontier. We were fine with this when Dr. Scizan was the one doing it, he had plenty of experience being on TV, explaining things, and was a charming and amazing face of the project, but when he quit, we were in a pickle. We needed to find someone who could not just do his job, someone who would not just understand science and art, but also hold their own in a TV interview. And you now see why you're not the right fit Meyers, you are an author, not a celebrity.”

I stood up, “No celebrity was born one, if you want to make me into a celebrity, I’ll comply. No, I’ll do more than comply, I’ll become the most damn charming celebrity you’ve ever met.”

He blinked in surprise, “I’m sorry, you just don’t have enough experience.” The man said.

“Experience?!” I shouted, “We’re talking about time travel, no one has enough experience! But if you mean talking in front of a crowd, I grew up watching a public speaker in my pastor of a father, I went into teaching and public speaking after college. If I have one skill it’s talking, I’m no Chris Hemsworth, but that’s not anything some dental work and pushups can fix. And how many people out there will you find with both a degree in English and a doctorate in quantum physics?”

They stayed been stunned into silence, so I kept going, I felt like I was picking up speed. With the worst already true, there was nothing to be afraid of. “I may not be a super genius or the hot charmer, but I have one talent, I can explain anything. You need me. That paper I just read was an ugly mess, the public will hate that, it will confuse them, and when people are confused, they resort to anger and fear. They will hate you, they will see this project as the ultimate example of government overreach and military force. But if they can understand it, they’ll love it. I can take whatever complex mathematical gobbledygook explains time travel and turn it into something everyone can understand, and something everyone will open their pocketbooks for. Something that will make them feel smart and patriotic. My best-selling book was about Bosons and fluid dynamics, nobody cares about bosons and fluid dynamics! They're boring as cow pies! But guess what? My publishers didn’t find that my books were just selling well among all the nerds and scientists! No, the normals liked my book, the everyday working man and women liked to see science that wasn’t condescending or boring. That’s what I can do. And if you don’t trust me, I’ll prove it, tell me the science behind this all, send me a paper full of graphs, math, and big words, and I’ll write a one-page email that explains the bones of it all.  An email that even my brother who works in human resources and last did math in high school will understand and be able to repeat back to you." I paused and leaned towards him, so we were only a couple of inches away. 

“Hiring some hotty with a mathematics degree would be the biggest mistake of your career. Don’t make that mistake.” I sat back down, taking a deep breath. “So yeah.” I finished weakly.

The man chuckled, “My name's Josh Brown, previous head of NASA, I now run Eos.” He reached out and shook my hand, “You can sit down. You can have the job… for two weeks. We’ll see if you're all you’re saying you are. You have two weeks, and if in those two weeks you don’t prove Gabriello wrong, you’ll get sent back to America, with a large check as a thank you for your future silence on the matter.”

“But-” Gabrello began,

Josh cut him off again, “Keep your guy on stand by, Gabriello, if Matt isn’t up to snuff, we’ll call him in.”

Charlie sighed in relief, “I think you made the right decision Josh, that other guy doesn’t seem to care a hair about the science.”

I was dumbfounded, it had worked, yelling at him had worked. I just sat there in awe as he explained more specifics to the job. I smiled and agreed to it all, still recovering from the speech. 

Eventually, Josh dismissed us, giving me a piece of paper to give Gertrude, and then she’d explain what I’d have to do.

We left Josh's office. “Good job back there,” Charlie said. “Josh is a powerful guy, but really good at his job, he’ll see that you were the right guy soon.”

“Thanks,” I said. Charlie said he had to get back to work, wished me luck, and rushed off. I gave the paperwork to Gertrude, who refused to laugh at my nervous jokes as she explained I needed to get some medical testing done. She gave me directions, and I then walked off, weirded out they were just letting me wander around alone.

And then suddenly I was not alone, Gabriello was leaning against a wall, typing something on a slick smartphone. When I entered the hallway he stepped in front of me and locked eyes with me, I stopped and smiled. He did not return the gesture. He took a step towards me. I took a step back and hit the wall behind me. He reached out and placed his hand on the wall behind me, so his arm was caging me in and he could lean in close to me.

“Matt, let me give you a piece of advice, take that check to quiet. You’re a little fish in a very big pond. You will be overwhelmed, and you will probably be fired anyway. This work is of national importance, some of the biggest people ever are working with this, and you don’t want to be the reason it messes up. This could end in national war, this isn’t just some silly game about all fun little discoveries. This ic changing reality forever. It is a weapon, the greatest weapon of all time. It is the weapon to transcend all weapons. You could be responsible for the deaths of the allies or the enemies. So if I were you, I’d just take that nice five thousand, and go back to Chicago or whatever.”

“Charrelett," I corrected, and then paused, and narrowed my eyes as if I was thinking, " And I don’t think I will,” I said. “

He leaned closer, until I could feel his breath on my face, “Then you're going to be fired, and I will do everything in my power to insure it. You may be Charlie's friend, and you may have tricked Josh, but I know what you are. You're nobody. You are useless and this is too important to base this on scientific superstition. You will not pull in funding, and soon everyone will realize that, and you will be dropped like the fools gold you are.”

I stepped forward, forcing him to move or collide with me, he stepped back. “While trying that, why don’t you just remember that once this is all said and done, my name will be in every history book for the rest of time, and no one will even know who you are.”