Adam's Grand Machine
“Time…time is treated like some cosmic force to be reckoned with. But time is the fourth dimension. I’m sure you’ve all heard that at some point. This means time follows the same rules as space. Vectors can move you through space or time. Gravity affects space and time equally. I know Picard says space is the final frontier, but my friends…the only thing left to conquer is time.” Dr. Adam Lorenzo finished his speech on the nature of time and stepped down from the stage as the audience applauded not only his research but his confidence in it. He was surely bound to win the Nobel Prize this year. He was sure of it.
He went and sat down among his fellow physicists. The man to his left leaned toward him and said,
“I liked the Star Trek reference.” Adam thanked him and continued to listen to the rest of the presentations. Virtual Particles, Positrons, Absolute Zero space travel, all things that are very intriguing, but Adam could tell none of them have the same pizazz as his Einstein-Rosen Bridge Generator, or ERBG. He had explained in the presentation that just as wormholes could connect two points in space through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, you can also connect two points in time.
After the last presentations were done, the crowd slowly began to flow out the door. Adam talked with some of his colleagues until he finally exited the conference hall, he bypassed the crowd and went directly to his car. Adam was normally a social person, but he had a lot of work to do on the ERBG. He finally reached his place of employment, Leviathan Labs. Adam always thought that it was an ominous name. When he asked the owner, all she said was “it sounded cool.”
Leviathan Labs was the Athens of the modern scientific community. It was the first place where Superhumans were created. It was the birthplace of Megaton, aka Robert Vaudeville. Adam knew Robby personally, but they never got time to hang out, on account of Robby always having some crime to stop, and the occasional world ending event. Just last year, Robby had saved the world from an alien race threatening to blow up the planet. The alien race is now extinct.
Adam entered the lab and walked past the security guard.
“Burnin the midnight oil, are we?” he said. Adam replied with,
“Oh, it’s not that late, it’s only ten o’ clock!”
Adam continued into the laboratories and saw one of his fellow scientists, and very good friend, Grace Warren. He stood in the doorframe and knocked on the open door.
“Why are you here so late?” he asked.
“There’s some last minute things I was hoping to work out before I head home for the weekend.” Grace replied in return. Adam looked at her for a moment. He liked her, but he was hesitant on saying anything, due to the fact that they were coworkers.
“Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer”, she said, noticing that Adam was staring. Adam didn’t know what came over him, but he blurted out,
“Do you wanna get dinner with me tomorrow night?” The instant those words came out of his mouth, he started to apologize. But Grace replied with,
“Yeah, I’d love to. I’ve been waiting a while for you to ask.”
“Oh, uh, ok. I guess we can work the details out tomorrow. I’ll uh, see you later then.” Grace and Adam give each other a little smile before Adam leaves her office. The interaction ran through his mind repeatedly, until he walked into the extension that the board had built specifically for his ERBG (patent pending). He looked around the gymnasium-esque room and spotted his usual crow’s nest up in the rafters. He climbed the stairs up to the observation platform that overlooked the donut-shaped, Einstein Rosen Bridge. He then climbed the ladder that led to the very top of the room. There was a very wide ledge of concrete that had enough room for an entire living room, let alone the small little camp he set up.
He had a couch up there, which had been taken apart when being transported up there. He had a coffee table that was moved in the same fashion, and some bottles of alcohol that nobody but a select few in the lab knew was up there. He sat down on the couch and grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels. He opened it and poured some into a red Solo cup. He sipped on it as he reflected on his path to where he was now. His time in college nearly put him in the ground. He studied relentlessly, sometimes to the point where he forgot to eat.
He heard footsteps coming into the door. He looked down and saw Grace looking up at him.
“Should’ve known you were up there. Mind if I join you?”
“Sure, come on up.”
Grace climbed up the ladder and sat down next to Adam on the couch. They both stared at the ERBG for a while before Grace said something.
“You know, I was a doubter too, Adam. I thought that you were chasing a pipe dream. You just seemed so adamant about it, that failure seemed like the only way to get you to stop. But I was wrong. We all were. Now we’re about to watch you realize your pipe dream and travel through time.”
“You know, my mom was the same way. My dad was a little more outspoken about it. He would say ‘It’s impossible, stop wasting my money that we’re using on you.’ I guess this is also sort of a ‘fuck you’ to him. My mom though, she would encourage me. ‘Honey, you do what you need to do. Make us all proud.’ My dad died before I could finish this. My mom and I had a falling out years ago. So I guess I’m just doing this for myself.” Adam zoned out looking at the ERBG until he felt Grace grab his hand.
“I’d say you made them proud. I’d say you made all of us proud.” Adam and Grace looked at each other for a minute before moving closer to each other. Right before their faces met, they heard a hissing noise coming from the platform that stood directly in front of the entrance to the ERBG. Grace jumped and started to freak out, but Adam stood and stared with curiosity. There was no way someone could’ve snuck in, security was too tight. The only way something would be in there is if…
“Something’s coming from the other side,” Adam said out loud. Adam and Grace climbed down the ladder and rushed to the machine that had steam billowing from the entrance. A figure slowly appeared in front of them. The figure finally left the fog that enveloped its face. And the face belonged to Dr. Adam Lorenzo.
