Chapter 2 - Unwanted transportation

- “Hi Vince.” Everybody at work was greeting him.
He was quite a well-liked figure in his work facility and people respected him as well as treated him as a close friend for he never let down anyone.
- “Morning.” Vincent said to one of his lab partners by the name of Duke.
- “Today might be the day.” Duke said happily.
- “Oh really? How’s the portal stability?” Vince asked.
- “It might be high enough to last a few seconds.” Duke replied.
- “That’s good news. Let’s fire it up in half an hour then.”
Vince, Duke and a couple of other guys set up the new device for desired conditions. The device occupied nearly a whole room and could’ve only been designed by rare geniuses. The time to start it up finally came. Now was the moment of truth, to find out whether the 3 years of their research was a success or whether they had to go back to the drawing board.
Duke pressed the ‘on’ switch that initiated the main mechanism and looked anxiously at Vince. In front of Vince was a complex electronic board full of various buttons and switches, but he knew his way around this for he contributed to 50% of the machine’s design and build. He began firing up the main engine, getting the device to increase the voltage very gradually so not to cause it to shut down suddenly or worse - to backfire.
By the sound of it the engine seemed to be working well. Vince now initiated a special command – the one that will help to create a small wormhole.
20 seconds have passed and nothing yet.
- “We probably need a bit more voltage.” Duke suggested.
- “That’s too risky. The wormhole should appear any second now. We can’t predict when as it’s a very fragile process.” Vince disagreed.
About a minute has gone now and Vince decided to add a tad bit of voltage. Suddenly something began to form at the heart of the machine.
- “I think it’s working!” Vince suddenly said.
Everyone looked at what he was pointing at and for real – a small wormhole formed. However it kept on increasing in size.
- “Vince, this is even better than we thought. It’s getting larger and seems to be very stable.” Duke said.
- “How much is it lasting already?”
- “15 seconds.”
The wormhole kept on growing. It now was the size of an apple.
- “That is one big wormhole.” Duke commented.
- “How long now?”
- “30 seconds. I think we can call it a success. Perhaps good to switch the machine off now.” Duke suggested.
- “Just give it a few more seconds. Let’s see if it can last a minute.” Vince was curious.
The wormhole was starting to grow faster now. It now filled the whole space of the inner chamber of the device.
- “All right, let’s turn this thing down.” Vincent said.
He began decreasing the voltage, but the wormhole didn’t decrease. Instead it continued increasing in size.
- “Vince, what is going on?” Duke asked.
- “Hang on a second.” Vince began pressing some buttons that will help cut power to the wormhole.
However the wormhole had itself up and didn’t need any more energy. In fact it had an excess energy, which caused it to keep growing.
- “Damn. We should’ve left its voltage as it was initially.” Vince said with frustration.
The wormhole now emerged from the inner chamber and outwards into lab space.
- “This isn’t safe. We need to evacuate the room, or possibly even the whole building.” Vince said anxiously to Duke.
- “Are you saying this wormhole will continue on growing?” Duke asked with fear.
- “It will stop eventually when it runs out of energy, but I don’t know how large it will be before that will happen. For the safety reasons we need to evacuate the area.”
The two other scientists who were in the room helping Duke and Vince have now run out in panic.
- “What will happen to our machine?” Duke asked.
- “We’ll be lucky if it remains undamaged, but if not at least we can recreate it again, but we can’t recreate human lives if this thing causes some casualties.” Vince replied.
- “OK, as you say.”
Duke began nervously storming out of the room. Vince was behind him, but then turned out and headed back for the machine.
- “I made you. This means I’ll be the one to unmake you.” He said under his breath and approached that electronic board again.
The wormhole now grew to be the size of a bus wheel and began eating the whole machine from inside.
- “This isn’t good.” Vince knew that he couldn’t do anything else here anymore.
He still was persistent enough and kept on trying to decrease the size of the wormhole at least if he couldn’t destroy it.
However the wormhole suddenly exploded and Vince got blinded.
The blinding light of the explosion was pure white. Vince’s ears also deafened even though there was no loud noise to have caused that. It seemed to him that all his senses began to fail. He now couldn’t feel his arms and legs. He thought to himself that he must be dying. He thought that this is perhaps how quick death feels like.
He tried to scream, but no voice came out. It felt as if he got cleanly wiped out from the face of the Earth, like a tiny dirt smudge from a clean surface.
He started hearing very peculiar voices suddenly. Those voices seemed to be his thoughts. He could’ve never imagined that he would be able to hear his own thoughts like that.
The amount of voices in his head was overwhelming and he couldn’t catch up. His brain felt like it was freezing over and finally switched off for eternity.
But as if by a miracle Vince heard the usual sounds again and his eyes suddenly opened to see a beautiful blue colour. He could now feel his limbs again and felt a breath of fresh air. After breathing in a few times, he looked around and realised he is lying face up into the sky. He still felt slight tingling in his muscles and so barely sat up. He didn’t know exactly where he was, but it definitely wasn’t his home town. It was time to find out the truth.