Wormholes - Endless Possibility Ch. 01

Note: this is set in the same world as "My Wife and the Worm-holes". While the tech used here is similar, the stories are independent. This story also has a slower ramp-up than most, and is as much in the romance category as sci-fi.

Will had often wondered if he had what it took to Make It. According to his family, he had already Made It, as a key member of the wormhole research team at InterSpace, but Will hadn't been convinced. To truly ascend, he would need to create something revolutionary, an idea so out-of-nowhere, or a refinement so incredible, that children would point to him in the street, and declaim his status as a god among men. He had spent years on different teams, working long hours, weekends, dreaming of his work in snatched hours of sleep. He had made huge improvements to the wormhole technology rampaging its way across the planet, overturning ancient ways of life and upending social norms, but still the question had persisted. Until now.

Will gazed down at the two narrow wormhole rings in his hand. These represented an enormous leap forward - no more car-sized wormhole generators, no more suitcase-sized hypercomputers to manage them. The key insight had been to abstract the computation away within the event horizon, and to draw vacuum energy to power the wormholes. After a small jolt of start-up energy, they could bootstrap themselves to permanent, stable operation. Will marvelled at their beauty, the simple elegance of their design. He looked up at the late middle-aged form of their creator, Michal Wozniak, and felt a wave of relief. There was simply no way he could have thought of this. He wasn't going to Make It like Michael had, and he could stop trying. He felt the first genuine smile in years creep over his face, and passed the rings along to another of his colleagues.

Dr Wozniak continued to quaff champagne by the bucket-load as the team toasted his success. Various fungible detachments from management hovered nearby, shaking hands before presumably evaporating into a grey mist. After a while the Doctor seemed to tire of this, turned to the fabricator, gesticulated at the screen, and stepped back as the machine clunked to life, spitting out small rings like a bizarre hyper-technical slot-machine. All eyes were on this endless flow of wealth, but Will's relaxed state permitted him to avert his gaze. He saw the merry Doctor step back, pull a wormhole ring from his pocket, and stretch it to the height of his body. Will locked eyes with the Doctor, who gave him a saucy wink before engaging his wormhole, and stepping back into a room literally filled with money. As the wormhole blinked out, Will found himself stifling a laugh, wishing the man luck in any future illicit tests. Will turned back to the party, and lost himself to it.

Two months later, and Will found himself at a loose end. The core research team had somewhat disbanded in the wake of the clear redundancy of Dr Wozniak's ever working with anyone again. Will's own ambitions now had realigned - he simply wanted to work on something interesting, and make something that would help someone, somehow. He stated this to the nebulous management division. They reassigned him to Advanced Wormhole Applications.

AWA had been revolutionised along with the wormhole devices. The uses for something that could fit in the palm of your hand were endless compared to the hulking devices of the previous generations. Will's role would be to investigate the possibilities event-horizon computation could open for the AWA-Bio team. As he walked through the particular piece of glass in the enormous greenhouse he worked in which separated his old life from his new, he found himself thinking of the event horizons they knew of fifty years before. Those had surrounded the singularities within black holes, and as one approached them time would slow, gradually at first, but as the distance to the horizon closed, time would draw closer and closer to a standstill for the hapless victim about to be ripped into nothingness.

This came to mind because he found time slowing for him now. He seemed to recall that light would seem to come from a single point as well, which certainly seemed to be happening. He would have looked for any sneaky black holes in his immediate vicinity if he could have moved, but instead his eyes were glued to the vision before him. Her long red hair seemed aglow. Her pale skin stood out strongly against the shocking vibrancy of her hair, from her slender neck peeking through the high collar of her blouse to her slightly furrowed brow. He wondered if he had at last found the black holes as her warm dark eyes, stunning against the pallor of her skin, seemed to draw him past the lenses of her glasses into -

'I said, are you all right? This is AWA-Bio, are you looking for someone in particular?'

Will found himself catapulted back to full-speed life. His language centres were apparently still catching up, because all that came out was a confused 'uhm'. The woman before him furthered her brow further, and raised her tablet to press the button for medical aid. Within his mind, Will smashed some emergency glass.

'Sorry, I haven't had my coffee yet this morning. I'm Will Nevin. I'm here to liaise with the Bio team? My contact is Dr. Fiona Evans'. This last was after a brief pause as Will checked his tablet.

The woman looked relieved that he wasn't suffering from anything more significant than being, perhaps, a little bit useless. 'Hello Dr. Nevin, I'm glad you could join us. I'm Dr. Evans, but I'd suggest we dispense with the titles. I'll call you Will and you call me Fiona, all right? All right. Let's start with the tour then'.

Will found himself rushing to catch up to Fiona, as she click-clacked her way across the long hallway leading to the application research area proper. Will found himself staring at her legs, stocking-clad and whisking past one another beneath her pencil skirt. He chastised himself, thinking back to the various company anti-harassment training sessions with all the forced, white-knuckle piety of a priest in a whorehouse. Fiona stopped abruptly, and he caught himself before he walked into her.

'Here is the main lab', she said, gesturing through yet another endless expanse of glass to a veritable playground. Will studied the view before him. Pairs of researchers were encouraging whole snakes to slither through the wormholes, forming them into loops, or carefully tossing one end of a paired set of rings at birds in flight, or gently dropping a cat through a wormhole to see if it could land on its feet. Others were using the wormholes more functionally, moving them slowly along animals and tissue samples to identify medical issues or perform live, harmless vivisection. The researchers dressed like most people here, indeed like Will himself, in casual clothing. Aside from Fiona's business wear, the most formal wear in the room was Will's jeans and a button-down shirt, which only added to the playground-like feel of the work.

'This is remarkable! When can we -'. Will cut off as he looked back to Fiona, who was already striding away from the room, past the large doorway to it, and further into the hallway. Will had to jog slightly to catch up, after which he walked in silence behind Fiona as she delved deeper into the bowels of the building. They passed the last of the glass walls, as they merged into shiny polished stone. Then less polished. Then unpainted. Will had the sense he was slipping backwards through time, and made himself ready to duel any and all Neanderthals who assailed them.

Fiona eventually stopped by a battered wooden door in a brick wall, some ancient part of the facility which had been forgotten as it was expanded and expanded again. 'This' she said 'is where we work'. She gestured to the sign on the door that read SPECULATIVE RESEARCH, before opening the door and walking in. Will followed. His confusion deepened as he looked around the room. It was a large room, but ninety-five percent of it was occupied by an ancient decade-old wormhole manager. The cramped remaining five percent was barely enough to fit two desks, facing one another, with tablet mounts and rickety-looking chairs on ancient horsehair carpet. Will looked to Fiona and offered a hopeful laugh, as if he was in on the joke. It came out as a wheeze. Fiona sighed, and sat on the edge of the desk.

'I think I am the bearer of bad news, Will. You signed up for new research in any division, and I can tell you this was a mistake. I am painfully aware that this was a mistake because eleven days ago I made that very same mistake, and found myself here, in purgatory. We are tasked with coming up with, and I quote, "whatever, you know, some wild shit"'. Our division head, and my former direct superior, was Aysun Kaya, who is quite brilliant. We can expect to see her sometime after the heat death of the universe. Our direct superior is Konstantin Volkov. He has sent me exactly one email, which I just quoted to you in full, when I asked him what I should work on'.

Will took a moment to absorb this. 'Why does this research office exist then? And why are we here?'

'The office exists because of a quirk of the company founder. When he sold the place, he added a non-amendable clause that there should be an office of at least two people, of at least a certain large size, in each research division. In this office, people should be free to do whatever they want, in the hopes they will one day create something wonderful'. She paused, and rubbed the bridge of her nose under her glasses. 'I am here because I foolishly asked to move to something where research could be free and inventive, as I had created and been working on the same method for half-open wormhole surgery for years -'.

'I think I had that surgery on my knee recently, it's revolutionary!' Will interrupted.

Fiona pinkened slightly at the compliment. 'Thank you Will, but I felt like there was something more I could do. Something that would really change the world. And so I asked for more freedom. And here I am'.

Will thought for a moment. He recognised the same relentless drive in Fiona as he did himself up until quite recently. He thought of their new working arrangement. He knew that two people per division was nothing to this company. Ten times that would still be nothing. Clearly InterSpace were bound by the letter of their agreement, but did not cling closely to the spirit of it. They would be allowed to slip through the cracks, no funding, no resources. 'Can we collaborate with other people in the division?'

'In theory, yes. In practice, we are a personae non grata, and it is thought we would simply be a drain on the time of others. The only thing we have now, thankfully, are a limitless supply of the new wormhole rings, like everyone else here. Other than that, it's just you, me, and Ivan here'. She kicked the enormous, Soviet-looking wormhole manager for emphasis.

Will looked around at the musty room. He already needed a break. 'Well, want to grab a coffee?' He reached for the door handle, and jerked his hand back as a shock leapt from his hand to the cold metal. He glared at the ancient carpet, mentally chiding it for messing with his electrons.

He looked back to Fiona. She had already settled into work. She needed to Make It.

The days after blurred into one. Will felt tormented. He was content, now, to not strive too hard. He spent the day trying to imagine new and interesting ways to use the wormholes, either for biological purposes or not. However, he was distracted, endlessly, by the radiant beauty of Fiona before him. Once, a few days after reassignment, they had met on the way in. He had made an agreement with himself not to stare at her, so after his personally allotted three seconds, in which time he drank as much of her perfect face down as possible, he was forced to look elsewhere.

He noticed something bizarre. No one seemed to be even giving Fiona a second glance! Other people walked by and seemed not to see her. He suspected, briefly, a larger-than-average portion of homosexual or asexual men in the division, and a secondary lack of lesbians, but put that theory to rest when he noticed two of the male researchers checking out the ass of a woman in the main research room. It seemed that either they were truly invisible to others, or Fiona just happened to hit all of his buttons at once. Either way, he was happy not to have competition beyond her insatiable appetite for success.

Every time he started to think about his job, a Fiona-shaped intrusion would alluringly enter his thoughts. For her part, she seemed not to notice him any more than she noticed, say, the chair she sat in, or the enormous wormhole manager they shared the office with. He tried valiantly to engage her in small-talk, eventually inferring through a complex web of questions that she was single, and, probably, straight. He lamented this information as much as he delighted in it. His life would have been simpler had she been completely inaccessible to him. Even if she could see him in the category of potential romantic interests and reject him, he could move on. But she seemed to be as interested in him as their eighteen-ton office-mate.

He thought of his own appearance. He wasn't bad looking. Probably. He was a little taller than average, he kept himself trim. Before he had lost himself to the world of twenty-four seven work, the few girlfriends he had had seemed to like him, and his looks. Maybe he had forgotten how to be attractive in the intervening years. Perhaps it was a skill.

Once, Will sent her a meme over their office chat. She had looked up at him, and smiled radiantly for a microsecond before getting back to work. Will had levitated out of the room, buoyed by his own swelling emotions, and drifted to the bathroom to pour cold water directly into his pants.

Will had more than simply lust for Fiona. He admired her. Her drive was incredible, and the work she had done with allowing surgery through the back-end of a wormhole was remarkably brilliant. He could see that she was upset that she had only used someone else's discovery (the backdoor access to wormholes having been discovered some years before), and this left him concerned. He recalled how unsatisfying life had been when he was consumed with Making It. He knew that he could do nothing more than help her work through the drive, and hope she didn't burn out.

It was weeks, and a number of failed memes, later. Will was on the verge of giving up hope both for romance and Fiona's prolonged sanity as she worked herself to an early grave, when a company-wide memo went out. Dr Wozniak had apparently dropped by, sporting an incredible tan and a much younger, scantily-clad pair of models, and dropped a chunk of memory on the desk. This contained instructions for his new revelation - fully event-horizon computation, programmable beyond wormhole management. Reality at the interface could effectively be reconfigured as desired. Every molecule passing through could be examined, and with the right energy input, changed.

Will and Fiona's tablets chimed at the same time. Will read the memo with raised eyebrows, unsurprised at the good Doctor's brilliance. He risked a final conversational gambit, still looking at his tablet. 'Did you see Wozniak's latest?' He looked up to see Fiona grinning wildly. Even with his obsession, seeing that many of her teeth unnerved him. 'Fiona, are you ok?'

She slumped backwards in her chair, still grinning. She sat bonelessly, as if every drop of tension had been squeezed from her. After a moment, Will recognised the look, and found himself beginning to grin back, both at his own memory and his happiness at Fiona's revelation. He let her speak first, as she sat back in her chair, eyes to the ceiling.

'You know. I always thought I could do it one day. I could be that person, the one who took our tech to the next level. I worked so hard, I tried dressing the part, but this guy. This guy. He's done things, twice now, that might as well be the work of aliens. I can't be him. And that's... ok'. She let her gaze drift down. 'Sorry, I'm talking nonsense aren't I?'

Will shook his head. 'I know exactly what you mean'. He relayed his own experiences with Dr Wozniak. Afterwards, Fiona's glowing smile had only deepened.

'It's good to know someone understands, Will. I could use a break. Want to go grab a coffee?'

'I would love to'.

They stood to leave. Fiona looked at him, as if seeing him for the first time. 'Did you do something with your hair? It looks good'. She walked out, and Will followed her, struggling to keep his grin from causing the top of his head to slide off. He reached for the door-handle to close it behind them, and suffered another shock for his pains. He closed the door, and joined Fiona, waiting for him in the hall.

Their first attempts at conversation as normal people with lives outside of work withered on the vine. Both had spent so long throwing themselves over and over into their careers that home life consisted of watching TV in their (admittedly luxurious) apartments. They danced around the topic for a while, but eventually they began to discuss their one true love.

'Listen, the best thing about wormholes is they represent a total mastery over space. Humanity cannot be stopped. The sun could explode and someone could take a few of these rings and go to the next galaxy'. Fiona was sitting on the edge of Will's desk, ranting excitedly. Will responded in kind.

'Yes! Exactly! Sometimes I think everyone here forgets that we're not just trying to make money or find the next big thing. We have the next big thing! It's more wormholes! It's a revolution! The possibilities are endless.'

'Yes! Amazing! So... what are they?'

'What are what?'

'The possibilities'.

Will paused. Only weeks before, this question would have been laden with real, crushing expectation. Fiona would have needed to hear an idea to take them both into the technological stratosphere. Today, he recognised it as an invitation to brainstorm.

'All right, Wozniak's latest update lets us totally analyse anything passing through the event horizon, and if we need to, to change it right? What are other teams looking at?'

'Most teams are using it to try to reconfigure matter. This is basically molecular alchemy. We can't quite turn lead into gold, but we can program existing atoms into any form'.

'So we could drop flour and eggs through a programmed wormhole, and make a cake?'

'Yes. I think.' Fiona paused for a moment. 'Don't cakes have more in them?'

'Er. I've never made a cake. We'll look at that once we solve wormholes'.

This brought a low laugh from her. Will struggled to keep his face from beaming as he was overtaken by visions of them together, illicitly holding hands and possibly even kissing on the mouth. He forced himself to respond. 'Has there been much success?'

'Not a lot - they have to examine and change every single atom. It's a lot of work.'

'I'll bet. They'll get it though. Sooner than we will. No, we need something else. What can we look at through the event horizon?'

He slumped forward slightly in his chair, and Fiona leaned back across his desk. Her hands slid across the wooden surface, to within an inch of his. He watched it close in on his own, as Fiona seemingly gazed off in thought.

'Gah!'

They both jerked away as the static shock leapt between them. After a second rubbing their hands, they looked at each other, slightly wide eyed. They moved closer. Fiona reached out to grab his arms. He slowly leaned in, and together, they whispered 'energy'.

There was no time to waste. They pulled together the equipment they needed from the scraps in the office, and ran the experiment on the table. First, they checked simple wires. With a cable running through a portal-pair, they could successfully modulate the voltage in the wire, causing it to drop or spike as they wanted. Both knew that the real goal was far more complex. They set the management computer in the rings to analyse all flow, from atoms to photons. Moving atoms was tough, but blocking or moving energy was simple. They turned the rings on their side, and Fiona blocked all energy through them. Will waved his hand over the rings, and let out a slightly delirious giggle. His arm was weightless. The wormholes successfully blocked the gravity of the earth. Giddy with excitement, Fiona hammered a few buttons on the interface, and Will felt his arm drawn sharply downwards. He looked at Fiona, who grinned back.