A Pause in Space-Time (A Stasis Story #1) (The Stasis Stories) Read online

  A Pause in Space-Time

  A Stasis Story #1

  Laurence E Dahners

  Copyright 2019

  Laurence E Dahners

  Kindle Edition

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  Author’s Note

  This novella is the first book of the Stasis stories

  Other Books and Series

  by Laurence E Dahners

  Series

  The Ell Donsaii series

  The Vaz series

  The Bonesetter series

  The Blindspot series

  The Proton Field series

  The Hyllis family series

  Single books (not in series)

  The Transmuter’s Daughter

  Six Bits

  Shy Kids Can Make Friends Too

  For the most up to date information go to

  Laurence E Dahners website

  Or the Amazon Author page

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Other Books and Series

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Epilogue

  Author’s Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Kaem Seba’s junior year

  To Gunnar Schmidt’s surprise, the kid took off an old-fashioned wristwatch—not just old-fashioned Gunnar thought, but truly old—and laid it inside the mirrored chamber of the device Gunnar’d assembled. Gunnar studied the kid for a moment, thinking that he somehow seemed older than the college junior he claimed to be.

  The distractingly pretty Arya Vaii bent down and used her phone to take a picture of the watch sitting in the chamber.

  “Wait,” the kid said. “Set your phone so the picture displays the time.”

  “I’m pretty sure I can change the settings and have it display the time later,” the girl said, starting to close the door on the chamber.

  The kid said, “And if you can’t? Why not make sure it’s working right? Now. Before we send the watch forward?”

  The girl rolled her eyes and said, “Come on Kaem. This thing isn’t going to work the first time we try it.” Sotto voce, she followed with “If ever.” But she started talking to her phone’s AI, asking it to display the time.

  Send the watch forward? Gunnar wondered. The watch was sitting at the front of the chamber. Forward where? He shook his head. The kid alternated between seeming like a complete ignoramus and knowing bizarrely esoteric stuff. A brilliant moron. A genius with no common sense. The kind of guy who could build the world’s most exotic car but wouldn’t be able to drive it.

  While Gunnar’d been mulling the kid’s idiosyncratic intelligence, he and the girl had worked out how to have the camera display the date and time the way they wanted it. Then she’d taken another picture. Now it was the girl’s turn to say, “Wait, I’m going to video this, so we can show the watch was running when we closed the door.”

  In a snarky tone, Kaem said, “I thought it wasn’t going to work the first time.”

  She replied, “It isn’t, I’m practicing so I’ll know how to do the recording right, someday in the future. If it ever does work.” She snapped the phone onto a mount, positioned the mount, and checked the image the phone was displaying.

  “‘Ever does work?!’” the kid quoted, sounding astonished she could think whatever was supposed to happen to the watch might not.

  “Ever,” she replied with a roll of her eyes. “The chance this smoke-and-mirrors theory of yours is going to work has to be infinitesimal.” She closed the door on the chamber and flipped the latch. Turning back to the kid, she said, “Everything’s set.”

  The kid nodded and pushed the button on one of the units in the pile of electronic equipment he had on the cart. Gunnar heard the whine of capacitors charging. A moment later, there was a snap as they discharged. The girl looked at the kid and then winked at Gunnar. “That’s it? No drumroll? No ascending series of notes performed by a hundred voice choir?”

  The kid said, “Come on Arya. We’ve worked so hard for this moment. Don’t ruin it with your pessimism.”

  She shrugged, “Pessimism wards off disappointment when everything goes to hell.” She checked the image on her phone. “What do we do now? Check back in… what’d you set it for?”

  The kid looked surprised. “No! Open the door and see if the watch went forward.”

  Gunnar finally spoke up, “‘Gone forward?’ What’re you meaning by that?”

  Arya answered, holding her hands up and using her fingers to make little air quotes. “Gone forward in time.” As she spoke, she used one hand to flip the latch on the door to the small chamber. She continued, “The genius here thinks his theory let you build us a time machine.” She tugged at the door but it didn’t open.

  Astonished, Gunnar said, “Time machine?! You’re kidding, right?”

  The girl shook her head, tugging harder on the door of the chamber, though it still didn’t open.

  “Who’s funding this?!” Gunnar asked, unable to believe anyone would waste money on a freaking time travel project. Or waste my time on it! Not that anybody gives a damn about my time.

  “I am,” she said. “Or maybe Richard Curtis,” she continued, naming an immensely wealthy hedge fund founder. “You could say he funded it by giving me a full scholarship with a big enough allowance that I could save money from it.” She eyed Gunnar, “This door’s really stuck. You have any ideas?”

  This finally got Gunnar’s attention. He stepped over and tugged on the door’s handle himself. The handle felt like it gave a tiny bit but certainly didn’t give the sensation it was about to pop loose and come open. He tugged on the top and bottom corners of the door. They gave a little bit as well. “It’s as if the radar emitter’s caught on something…” he said, mostly speaking to himself.

  “What?” Arya asked, though the question seemed rhetorical because she immediately followed up with, “That emitter’s in the middle of the door. There’s nothing in the chamber for it to catch on.”

  “I know that much!” Gunnar said, irritatedly. “I built the damn thing and saw you put the watch in there. I’m just saying that, when I pull on the door, it feels like the part that’s being held, i.e. the part that’s keeping the door from coming open, is in the middle of the door.” He shrugged, “And, that’s where the radar emitter is.”

  “Could it be that running the radar and the laser simultaneously heated the chamber enough that when the air cooled it created a vacuum?” Arya asked.

  Gunnar shook his head, “When I pull hard on the corner, I see a little crack open at the top of the door. It isn’t big, but it would’ve broken the seal.”

  “Well, it can’t be the microwave emitter,” Arya said with certainty. “There’s nothing for it to catch on. It must be something else with the door. Was it catching at all before? Maybe the radar or laser caused some part in the hinge or closure to expand a little?”

  Frustrated, Gunnar ground out, “The only thing that was catching was the latch. You want me to pull hard enough to break whatever’s holding? If whatever’s got it caught is something I did wrong, I’ll fix it for free. But, if whatever is wrong isn’t my fault, it’s gotta come out of your budget.”

  The two young people looked at one another. Kaem shrugged, “We’ve gotta know what’s
going on in there. If the watch didn’t jump we need to know about that too.”

  Arya frowned, “But, what if something about the jump froze the door? Maybe all we’ve got to do is wait for the watch to arrive in the future and we’ll be able to open the door? How long did you set it for?”

  “Half a kilosecond. But I really don’t think our equipment is going to be very accurate on the times.”

  “So that’s about… eight minutes or so?”

  Kaem snorted, “About, yeah. Plus or minus about sixty minutes I’d guess. Our components aren’t exactly the highest quality, you know?”

  “Bitch, bitch, bitch,” Arya said. “You’d complain even if your executioner’s ax was sharp. Let’s at least give it ten minutes before we break the door.”

  ~~~

  Twenty minutes had passed. The door still wouldn’t open. Resignedly, Arya waved a hand at the little box, “Go ahead, break the damned door.”

  Gunnar had pulled on the top corner of the door and was forcing a blade screwdriver into the crack that appeared when the kid said, “Oh, crap!”

  “What?” Gunnar said, wiggling the screwdriver back out a little way and hoping he hadn’t cracked the glass of the mirror in the door. It’d be especially irritating to have broken it moments before Kaem said not to open the door.

  Sheepishly, the kid said, “I made a math error. I set it for half a megasecond instead of half a kilosecond.”

  “And how long’s a megasecond?” Gunnar asked.

  “11.6 days,” Kaem said morosely.

  Gunnar leaned up away from the box, pulling the screwdriver out of the crack. “You wanna wait for 5.8 days?”

  “No,” they said simultaneously.

  Unhappily, Arya said, “go ahead and break the door.”

  Gunnar sighed, hoping they understood he was upset that they were wasting all the work he’d put into building it. He reinserted the screwdriver in the crack at the top of the door and twisted it. He heard the glass of the mirror crack with several sharp pops. The door sagged open just far enough for him to get his fingers in.

  But it still didn’t swing freely.

  Peering in the small opening, Gunnar saw wire stretched from the center of the door to the opening of the chamber. More interestingly, somehow, the mirror seemed to have come free from the door and was stuck in the opening of the chamber. Or, he thought, when he saw that the door itself still appeared to be mirrored, just part of the mirror’s stuck in the opening of the chamber. This was possible, since the mirrored lining of the inside of the chamber consisted of glass silvered on both sides. This trapped the light from the lasers between the two mirrored surfaces of the glass that completely surrounded the chamber. As Gunnar understood it, the differences in EM wave frequency between the laser light trapped in the glass and the radar frequency waves bouncing around inside the chamber was supposed to produce the effect Kaem was hoping for.

  Gunnar shook his head disgustedly, Time travel! Who would’ve thought I was wasting my time on some idiot’s attempt at time travel!

  “What do you see?” Arya asked.

  “Part of the mirror’s stuck in the opening of the chamber,” Gunnar said before he realized that having a mirror on the door and the opening would mean that the glass of the mirror in the door had been split down its middle to provide a mirror in the opening and still leave mirror on the door. “Um…” he said as his mind tried to catch up with what he was seeing.

  “Well, it’s already completely ruined then,” Kaem said. “Go ahead and pull it the rest of the way open so we can see better.”

  Gunnar did so. It came open with some ripping and popping. One of the first things he registered was that the radar emitter head was still stuck in the mirror in the chamber’s opening. A couple of bits of wire trailed from it. The wire ripping out of its opening and then breaking probably explained the ripping and popping sensations. The mirror around the radar head—the mirror still stuck in the opening of the chamber—looked perfect.

  When his eyes turned to the door he saw cracks in the mirror where the emitter head had broken free from the glass of the mirror. Bits of wire trailed from that opening as well, but other than that and the cracked mirror, the door looked fine. Unconsciously, Gunnar reached up to scratch his head.

  It registered on him that a piece of the cracked door mirror was tilted out so he could see it edge-on. He moved his head back and forth to see that bit of mirror from both sides.

  It was full thickness glass, silvered on both sides.

  His eyes turned to the mirrored surface filling the opening at the chamber. It was perfect. No pieces were missing. If it wasn’t for the emitter head and its trailing wires he would’ve thought… Oh, hell, I don’t know what I would’ve thought and I sure as hell don’t know what I think now.

  Arya stepped closer and frowned. “It looks like the mirror just pulled off the door and stayed stuck in the opening.”

  “No,” Gunnar said, tapping the door with a finger, “the door’s mirror is still mounted in the door. It would seem that Mr. Seba’s little invention makes mirrors.” He glanced back at Kaem, wondering how he was taking this. The kid had his head tilted back and his eyes closed. Gunnar wasn’t sure what that meant. Is he thinking? Having a petit mal seizure? Feeling disappointed? Depressed? He caught Arya’s eye and pointed at the kid, lifting a questioning eyebrow.

  Arya glanced at Kaem, shrugged and turned back to the box. She touched the mirror in the opening. “It’s warm,” she reported.

  Gunnar’d been reaching for the torn wiring. He pulled back. “Wait! We’ve got bare wires. Is the power still on?”

  They both turned to look at Seba. He didn’t appear to have heard Gunnar’s question. “Kaem!” she said sharply.

  Opening his eyes wide and blinking, the kid returned his head to vertical looking dazed. “What?” he asked, sounding puzzled.

  “Is the power off?” Arya asked. “We’ve got bare wires dangling here.”

  “Yes, the power’s off.”

  “It’s okay for me to unplug your cart full of electronics then, right?” Gunnar asked pointedly, not willing to trust the imbecilic Einstein on life or death matters.

  “Yes,” the kid said, starting to tilt his head back again.

  “How can I be sure the capacitor’s discharged?” Gunnar asked as he reached over and unplugged the cart.

  The kid tipped his head back down to give Gunnar a curious look, “How’d you know there’s a capacitor?”

  “Heard it charge and discharge.”

  “Well then, you should know it’s discharged.”

  “Well then,” Gunnar said exasperatedly, “I’d like to be sure it’s fully discharged and hasn’t been slowly recharging.”

  “It hasn’t,” the kid said, but he reached out and pushed a button. “There. If it had any charge on it, it’s just been discharged.”

  Grumpily, Gunnar wished he’d been able to hear a little snap when the kid pushed the discharge button—indicating that there had been some charge left and he’d been right to insist. Arya was reaching for the chamber again so he displayed his irritation by picking up a meter and saying, “Wait till I check to be absolutely sure those wires aren’t carrying any juice.”

  Gunnar checked the wires. They were dead.

  Arya touched the surface of the mirror in the opening of the chamber. Puzzled sounding, she said, “Still warm. I swear it’s just as warm as it was before.”

  Gunnar walked over to his workbench and got his infrared thermometer off its hooks on the wall. Walking back, he pointed it at the mirror in the chamber. He said, “Seventy-five degrees. Room temperature. Not very warm.”

  Arya was mumbling notes to her phone. To Gunnar, she said, “What’s that in Celsius?”

  Gunnar flipped a switch on the temp-gun. “Twenty-four Celsius. Doesn’t matter what the measurement scale is, it isn’t ‘warm’ in either one.”

  Touching it again, Arya said, “Feel it yourself.”

  Gunnar d
id. It felt warm. Like touching a person, not a mirror. And slippery as if it were lightly oiled. “I’ll be damned.”

  Kaem, still not lifting his head, said, “Do you have a contact thermometer?”

  “No. Are you thinking something’s wrong with my temp-gun?” He surreptitiously pointed the gun at his forearm, getting a reading of ninety-two F (33C). Not the famous 98.6 F body temperature, but those kinds of temperature readings were obtained inside body cavities like the mouth or rectum.

  Kaem said, “No. Infrared thermometers measure the ‘emitted’ infrared energy. That energy’s partly what’s emitted by the object and partly what’s reflected by the object. When you point an infrared temp gun at a highly reflective surface, like what you’re seeing in the chamber, the gun mostly reads photons reflected from the room and not so many photons emitted by the object. Ergo, room temperature.”

  Gunnar turned to stare at the kid. He still seemed to be in some kind of trance. Who the hell knows that kind of stuff?! Gunnar wondered.

  “Are you saying I’m feeling my own heat reflected back at me?” Arya asked.

  “Maybe?” the kid said, still sounding flat.

  “But if I took its temperature with a contact thermometer, I’d get room temperature just like Gunnar did with the infrared gun, right?”

  “No, then heat could move to the thermometer by direct conduction. If the mirror in the box is actually hot, you should get a higher temp than seventy-five.”

  Arya said, “Well, I think it’s about a hundred degrees. Something close to body temp anyway.” She turned back to the box. She tried to stick her fingernails in around the edges, between the mirror and the box. “I can’t get a grip.”

  Gunnar got out his pocketknife. Showing it to Arya, he said, “You want to try this?”

  She stepped aside, “Go ahead.”