Einstein's Portal - Excerpt from Chapter Two

Julie walked over to the spiral staircase and slipped behind it, staring up at the bookcases. Standing on her tiptoes, she tipped forward the first and third books on the eighth shelf up. There was a click and a whole section of the bookcase moved inward; Julie pushed and the hidden doorway opened to reveal a large room. Adam followed her into the room; when he had entered she pushed the door shut.

The hidden room was not a secret to the inhabitants of Fetherage Manor, but it was invisible from the library. It had been Dr. David’s Fetherage’s study--the one place where he could relax and contemplate the universe without interruption. Now, it was Julie’s "office" and storeroom for the hundreds of books she had purchased; they were stacked everywhere except for a couch and her desk.

"Right over here," Julie said, headed for the couch.

Adam hesitated; she came back and grabbed his hand, tugging him forward. "Don’t worry," she said. "I don’t bite. Much. Come on--I really do have something to show you."

Adam let himself be steered to the couch; he sat and watched Julie as she walked across the room to her desk. Her sun dress was very short; it came midway down her pale thighs. Spaghetti strings looped over her small shoulders, one of which had fallen sideways and was dangling around her upper arm. The dress fit her narrow waist snugly, flaring out over her sharp hips. At fifteen, she had lost all her adolescent awkwardness; she moved like a ballerina, with every muscle under firm control.

Adam admired her narrow ankles and smooth calves as she retrieved two large spiral notebooks from the desk.. She turned and walked back to the couch; as she approached, she turned around and sat next to him, the sun dress riding up her thighs. Her legs were slightly apart and Adam could see the soft insides of her thighs; she seemed to be oblivious to his gaze as she set the notebooks down on her knees and turned her head toward his.

Julie licked her lips and started: "I’ve been here just a little over a year. The library was a frightful mess when I got here, so I asked your mother if I might have the run of the place if I organized everything and cataloged it. She took me up on my offer because she had no idea what was in here and the insurance company wanted an appraisal of its contents.

"It’s taken me quite a long time, but I think I’ve pretty well gotten everything straightened out and re-shelved. Also, almost everything’s been cataloged and cross-referenced."

"That must have been quite a lot of work," said Adam.

"Yes, but very enjoyable. I love books, Adam. I love knowledge. And these books are some of the best in the world. Some are outdated, of course, but I’ve slowly been replacing those. Others are irreplaceable because of their age and value. Your father was an avid reader, and an avid collector as well. He knew what he was doing.

"I had been here four months before I found this room--that’s how long it took me to work my way round the library to the hidden doorway. I was pulling all the books off the shelf when it opened. My father knew the room was here, but he had forgotten about it, and of course I didn’t think to ask. In this room were all of your father’s early research papers, which I turned over to your mother. But also in here were other papers, including books and other manuscripts which appeared to be for your father’s hobby."

"Hobby? Dad never had any hobby except for a little tennis."

Julie smiled; her cheeks dimpled and Adam caught a faint whiff of her cologne. "I imagine he kept it well-hidden; not even your mother knew about it. For six months I’ve been trying to make sense of his notes. I think I’m finally up to the point where he was when he disappeared."

"Notes? Notes about what?"

Julie sighed and leaned back on the couch, her bare leg touching his. "I’m not a physicist," she said. "A lot of what he wrote was pure mathematics. That’s what’s taken so long--trying to discover if there was a practical outcome to that math."

Adam wrinkled his forehead. "I don’t understand."

Julie put her hand on his leg, sending a little bolt of electricity through him. She said, "Have you ever seen the movie Stargate?"

"I think so--a long time ago. Wasn’t that about some sort of doorway you could use to get from one planet to another?"

"Something like that. I think maybe that movie started your father on a train of thought which led to the notes that are in these books."

"You’re telling me he was investigating a real stargate?"

"I think he started out investigating the possibility of such a device. Through his notes, I traced the path of his thoughts. It appears that his research took a right-angle turn when he determined that a stargate device is impossible. He started off on a new track."

"A new track? To where?"

"To ’where’ is not exactly correct, Adam. It would be more correct to say, ‘to when.’"

"I’m afraid you’ve lost me," Adam said. Julie’s hand was still on his leg; it felt like it was burning his skin.

"Adam, you’re probably going to think I’m crazy, but if I’ve read your father’s notes correctly, he has developed a kind of stargate, although it’s not exactly a gateway to the stars--it’s a gateway to the past. Or the future."

"You mean he developed a time machine?"

"I think that’s exactly what he developed. Now you can tell me I’m crazy."

Adam watched her small, white hand on his leg; he felt her thumb slide across his skin. "No," he murmured, "I don’t think you’re crazy, Julie. I think maybe you didn’t know exactly what you were reading."

"That’s a possibility," she admitted. "I’ve come to the end of my very limited expertise; that’s why I wanted to get you involved--after all, the notes are your father’s, not mine. If I’m right, your father was at the point where no more math was necessary; it was time to begin experiments--to actually build a working device. That’s what these two notebooks are all about."

Adam looked at the ragged-edged spiral notebooks as Julie opened one and spread it across her thighs. Inside was page after page of drawings, all hand-sketched. In the margins were scribbled notes in his father’s handwriting.

"What are we looking at?" he asked her.

Julie pointed to the first page. "These drawings are of components, I think. There are pages and pages of them." She thumbed through, showing him drawings of little boxes, electronic diagrams and strangely-shaped conglomerations of what appeared to be pipes and conduits.

"Each one of these components," she continued, "has a part number. Now notice on this page that he begins assembling the components into a larger structure. These notes here are instructions on how they are connected to each other." She turned several more pages; Adam stared at the drawings.

"It looks like a door frame sitting on some kind of platform," Adam exclaimed. "I think I recognize some of the individual components you were showing me."

"That’s right; all together, they form this portal. There are drawings in the other notebook for some sort of separate control console."

Adam tore his gaze away from the notebook and looked into Julie’s face; to his surprise, she was staring back at him, her emerald eyes ablaze.

Julie licked her lips. "The two books--this one and the one for the control console--are your father’s last notes; there are none more recent."

The hidden door opened with a squeak; Adam and Julie watched as Adam's sister Elspeth slipped through, pushed it shut, and leaned back against it.

"So this is where you snuck off to," she said. "What are you two doing, as if I didn’t know."

"What does it look like we’re doing?" said Adam.

Elspeth shrugged, then she walked over to them. She had slipped a flimsy cotton dress over her bikini; her long blonde hair was still wet from the swimming pool. "It looks like you’re reading some notebooks," she answered, plopping down on the couch next to Adam. She looked around the room. "So this is where you spend all your time, Julie. Adam said you do Satan worship back here, but I don’t see any black candles and pentagrams."

"I did not say that," Adam replied. "That was your idea. You said she strips naked and dances and conjures up the devil. I, of course, never believed it for an instant."

Julie laughed. "Well, I don’t conjure up the devil. As for the other…"

"So you do dance around naked in here!" said Elspeth. "See, I was right, Adam. So what are in the notebooks?"

"She says they’re some of Dad’s notes."

"Notes? Notes about what?"

"Just…notes."

"I think we should tell her," said Julie, "but I need to ask both of you to do something which might be very painful."

"Something like what?" said Elspeth.

"Tell me everything you can remember about the day your father disappeared."

"It’s not too painful," said Adam "It was a Thursday evening. Mom got home about six-thirty; the cook had fixed some sort of Chinese food but Mom wasn’t hungry, so Elspeth and I carried trays up to Elspeth’s bedroom because she has a big-screen TV and we wanted to watch the News Hour on PBS. We…"

"Bullpoop," said Elspeth. "Quit trying to impress her--we were watching old episodes of South Park."

"Okay, okay. So we were watching television, and Mom came into the room; she was white as a ghost. She turned the TV off and sat on the bed, and we could see she was trying not to cry."

"I asked her what was wrong," said Elspeth. "She said there had been an accident at Dad’s laboratory. Something had gone wrong with one of his experiments; there was some sort of explosion, and it was assumed he was lost along with three other guys."

"We asked her what she meant by ‘lost,’" Adam continued. "’Vaporized,’ she said. ‘Incinerated. What does it matter?’ she said. ‘He’s gone. Dead.’"

"Adam and I sort of looked at each other," said Elspeth, "then we ran over and sat beside Mom and held her while she cried and cried. I think we knew that we couldn’t break down because Mom needed us to be strong."

"The next morning," said Adam, "some men came to the house. One Air Force general and two regular guys wearing dark suits. They said they couldn’t tell us much about the accident because the research was top secret. They did say that the laboratory Dad was in was one that was shielded because of radiation, and that they hadn’t been able to investigate yet because the radiation had leaked out into the laboratory. The whole building had been evacuated."

"Three days later we had a memorial service," said Elspeth. "There was no body, no grave, just a service. When it was all over, everybody shook our hands, gave us hugs, and left. That was that, and here we are."

"How terrible!" said Julie. "Has anyone ever offered an explanation?"

"Not yet," said Adam. "Mom used to ask all the time, but they kept telling her it was still under investigation. Finally she quit asking."

"I’m glad she quit," said Elspeth. "She needed to get on with her life, and she was right--it didn’t matter what had happened, because Dad was never coming back."

That doesn’t mean we don’t miss him," said Adam. "We miss him a lot, but we’ve got to move ahead. Now that we’ve told you about the accident, how could that have anything to do with his notes about the portal?"

"Portal?" said Elspeth. "What portal?"

"Maybe you’d better tell her now," said Adam.

So Julie explained again how she had studied David’s notes, how she had discovered the drawings of the portal, and her theory as to what it was.

Elspeth squinted at the drawings, running her finger down the margin, trying to decipher her father’s cryptic codes. "Wow," she whispered. "A time machine! Like Doctor What’s-His-Name’s flux capacitor in that sports car."

"Doc Brown’s DeLorean," said Adam.

"Yeah! And that telephone booth where they went and brought Socrates and Beethoven back."

"I’m sorry," said Julie. "What are you talking about?"

"Time machines!" said Elspeth. "So where is the one that’s in this notebook? Hey, wait just a minute--sports cars and telephone booths are cool, but there’s no such thing as a time machine."

"Are you sure, Elspeth?" said Julie.

"What’s that supposed to mean?" said Adam. "You think Dad might have actually built this thing?"

"Think about it," said Julie. "First, your father was a physicist, which means that he dealt with quarks and bosons and all that. Second, he owned an institute which was working with all sorts of subatomic particles and energy. Third, these notes and drawings indicate that he was working on a sort of gateway or portal which was energized by some kind of energy or radiation. Now, then--the portal in this drawing is complete; everything is designed. It’s only one small step between the design and the actual construction of such a machine."

"Ohhh," whispered Elspeth. I get it: you think Dad was building this machine at the institute!"

"It makes sense, doesn’t it? The Fetherage Institute labs are top secret. The security is so high that one research team doesn’t have any idea what the other teams are doing. Your father could have been working on anything and nobody would have known what it was--not even the government. They have so many covert agencies that they would assume it was a black project being funded by some other covert agency."

"And something went wrong," said Adam. "Some sort of energy that powers the portal got away from them and caused an explosion."

"That's one explanation," said Julie. "But there’s another one, as well."

"What’s that?" asked Elspeth.

"There was no explosion--no accident. That’s why they won’t tell you anything, because there’s nothing to tell. I’ll bet you my knickers that the portal’s sitting in that laboratory, right now."

"But…if that’s the case, then where are Dad and the three technicians?" asked Elspeth.

"Oh, my god," Adam whispered. "They went through the portal."