Secret Development

Where are we? Not the location of where we are, but where we stand in the Universe or an entity that is bigger than what we know. We are small and irrelevant, but we think of ourselves as important. But the truth that no one wants to admit, the truth about us all, we are as important as a small grain of sand, small and unimportant. The difference between us and a grain of sand is that we can think. Thinking allows us to achieve greatness but also cause devastation. As humans, we have the power to destroy ourselves or to advance us above and beyond the importance of a grain of sand.

Dr. Evelyn Bennett, a brilliant but young scientist with big ideas and even bigger goals is working on her first breakthrough with her assistant Victor Kane. They are working on a project that will change how we see ourselves. ‘Come on Victor, hand me the soldering iron!’, orders Dr. Evelyn as she hammers a piece of glowing red metal into a shape with hammer and tong. They are in a run-down warehouse abandoned since the 19th century with light only shining in from the windows surrounding the ceiling. Victor responds in a quiet but hasteful fashion, ‘Yes Dr. Eve, please remember to set up the quantum computing computer to make sure randomness, chaos and entropy don’t occur.’

She discovered that everything is made out of photons and other particles like photons and don’t exist due to Quantum mechanics stating that nothing exists at the size of photons unless you look there, Dr. Eve has proposed a theory that when these appear, they come from another reality or universe. This caused outrage in the scientific community, so she continued to pursue her interests for herself. Dr. Eve and Victor have been building a device that could transport their own particles to the other reality that they were borrowed or shared from. They have been working on this circular device, with one piece lying on the floor. The other hanging above it from the ceiling, which will transport them to another reality like a pad. Due to this warehouse being abandoned due to its former scientific use since the 19th century, in the other realities, they are most likely to be abandoned as well due to them being parallel universes. They had almost finished the machine, a grey-steel, circular gate, Dr. Eve glanced at the lifeless metal she was hammering, although lifeless, beautiful it was as the steam rushed up into the air as she dipped it into the water.

Victor hands her the soldering iron and she attaches it to the machine. With solder weeping off the soldering iron, everything she has worked on has come down to this. The machine has been completed. The device now ready to be activated stands tall with pride, Dr. Eve and Victor head to the console placed in front of the machine. With many colourful buttons that had no purpose yet, except the big red button, to activate and deactivate the device. She presses the button with hope, and hope does present itself. A 4th dimensional portal rips through space. The swirling, colourful portal gets bigger until it fills the machine, it then shows the warehouse, again abandoned, but no one is there. ‘Yes,’ she cries with happiness as her life’s work so far has been a success. Victor asks, ‘Shall we proceed Dr. Eve?’. Dr. Eve responds after calming down, ‘We shall, I have prepared this device to open the portal for our way back to our reality which I have named reality 0, this device will tell us which reality we are in, realities are numbered by which one we have discovered 1st’. A shadow catches the corner of her eye, and she turns around to look at one of the filthy windows.

‘What is Dr. Eve?’ Victor asked as they slowly walked to the portal, ‘Nothing, must be all that caffeine!’ she replied holding a device that looked like a car key with a red button which is blinking and a small screen which says, ‘Reality 0’. They then enter the portal with utmost caution. In an exactly identical room, they look around as the 4th-dimensional portal turns off behind them. She states, ‘This button will reopen the portal, but only here, future advancements may change this. The button blinks red when a portal has been opened in the reality we are in.’ They see the front door and exit the building. They open the door and are met with chants, ‘Long live the Emperor!’.

As their eyes adjust to the bright light, they see a glorious parade with people cheering. The people marching held red banners with an eagle and a laurel wreath with the letters SPQR below, they were in a reality where the Roman Empire never collapsed!

Dr. Eve and Victor stare in awe behind the crowd as they are amazed at what they are seeing, and after a while, they begin walking and exploring this alien world. As they make their way behind the crowd, they are confronted by 2 guards, not police. They come to realise that in this reality, there are no police forces, but rather the streets are patrolled by soldiers. These soldiers carry a riffle, wear round helmets with traditional chest plates and have a red cape. ‘Halt, mandatory viewing of the parade!’, one shouts. The other orders, ‘Identification!’ as he prepares to grab into the pockets of their jackets to be left empty-handed, and replies, ‘Please remain calm in the order of the glorious Roman Empire and the Emperor will look down at you in favour! You two are under arrest for the failure to bring identification and may be fugitives, criminals and even terrorists. For this petty crime, your punishment will be a fight to the death in the Amphitheatre tomorrow morning at sunrise, where the gods rise!’.

They were marched hastily to the arena to keep the unsuspecting crowd calm as Victor cried, ‘I did do nothing, what did I do? Screw you Eve, everyone is right about you being a nut job!’. The trek to the amphitheatre was not long, the arena stood tall and wide with Roman pride, like a rugby stadium, but a lot bigger. Dr. Eve and Victor have been separated as the stadium got insight. She was admiring the architecture that had come when the Roman civilisation had never collapsed nor turned to Christianity, but also the advancements in technology as there never was a dark age. That made her think, ‘Advancements?’. Their reality is almost as advanced as ours, why is it not one of the most advanced civilisations that never collapsed, yet they are lacking. ‘The Renaissance, of course!’ she thinks as without the collapse of the Roman Empire the Renaissance would have never happened, which would have led to nothing to be rediscovered, meaning the advancements of the Romans would have been slower.

They approach the arena and are met with 2 huge steel gates which lead to a dark, long hallway. As they walked down, there were people screaming in terror in the distance. The hallway was bland and the floor was cold. The guard stopped at a cage-like cell, in it was a large, cold metal gate. ‘Come on, in you go!’ orders the guard after he unlocks the box. She goes in and notices that weapons are on racks by the walls and a small straw bed on the floor, which looks dirty but smells sanitised. The soldier locks the gate and leaves.

The device in her pocket vibrates and she takes a look at it, the red button is flashing, ‘Someone must have come through from another reality or mine!’, she uses the device with some spare wires she had leftover in her pocket and the soldering iron she forgot about from earlier to modify the device to send out a signal which may reach the travellers. Dr. Eve wakes up in a sudden roar of excitement, the crowd outside cheers, and an announcer announces, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, today is an unfortunate day, the Emperor could sadly not make it as his peaceful delegations in keeping down insurrections in Australia are keeping him busy due to unexpected executions of rebels, so our lord and saviour will not be with us today. In other news, our gladiators aren’t very glad because they are suffering from the Black Death, so the two criminals who were meant to fight to their deaths with the gladiators will now fight a genetically enhanced giant snake with 8 heads. Cut off one head, two more shall take its place, of course, I am talking about the beloved public entertainer and undefeated criminal killer, the Hydra!’ as the crowd burst out in excitement again.

Her gate begins opening revealing a bright, blinding light. ‘Our two criminals have both committed petty crimes and will be punished severely as an example to any other perpetrators!’ shouts the announcer over the speaker, ‘Criminals, draw your weapon!’.

As her eyes adjust, Dr. Eve sees a protective metal grill. Behind it is a monstrosity straight from hell, a giant purple snake with eight violent heads entangled. “Release a prisoner!” she hears as the crowd roars, her grill does not open, and she sees a figure approaching the monster. ‘Victor!’ she screams as he is brutally torn apart by the serpent.

She hears something behind her, metal colliding. She turns around to find a group of soldiers with bullet holes in their uniforms and their faces hidden away on purpose. ‘We are here to rescue you and bring you back through the portal, the boss wants to speak to you!’ their leader explains hastily as they open the cell door and escape the Amphitheatre. She is shocked by this and asks in confusion, ‘Who are you, who is this boss of yours and how do you know about my project?’ as they are running back to the abandoned warehouse through the crowd. One of them responds, ‘We are a secret organisation that has been observing your project due to concerns, our boss wants to meet you as they think you are either a threat or an asset, you have time to choose as we return to our reality as you would call it!’ as they run through the door with Roman Guards shouting, ‘They went this way!’ as panic begins in the crowd which is not helped with the sounds of helicopters in the distance.

Inside, Dr. Eve presses the button which had flashed earlier and it begins flashing as the four-dimensional portal opens, joining the two realities. They run through the portal, Dr. Eve notices that there are multiple people with weird equipment set up with big white tents in the warehouse on the other side as she crosses back into reality 0.

‘Welcome back Docter!’ exclaims an unfamiliar, strained voice as she turns around quickly to an old man with grey hair wearing a suit, like the others. ‘My assistant, he was brutally torn to pieces by that monster!’ she exclaims shocked after the events that have occurred. The old man says, ‘We are S.H.E.E.P., Society of Human Expansion and Extinction Prevention, we have been around for centuries and we control almost everything now, we have the goal to unite the world in the future which we have slowly done. Events such as WWII were not orchestrated by us as there were uncontrollable forces which we tried to prevent and take control of the situation. Using your device we can gain knowledge from other realities and unknown technologies, this can be used to prevent our extinction and war with other realities as well as defend Earth from outer space. If you consent that we can use your device, we will give you a permanent position in our agency as co-leader of a task force collecting artefacts and knowledge, while cataloguing their advancements to make sure that reality 0 as you call it stays safe. We will provide everything you need, including housing, food, a team for your travels and so on. You can also send in requests for things that you may need as you should continue advancing your technologies.’

She waited, everything that she knew about her world was going to change and she knew it. She had lost her friend, these people are the only people who care for her advancements in her technologies and they don’t call her insane or criticise her.

‘Let us get going’ she states.

THE END for now.