Challenges: SciFi Short Stories

Relative relativity of relativity

In the middle of nowhere inside a derelict bunker is hidden the laboratory, where one of the most eminent scientists is at the dawn of a new breakthrough. All the furnitures are broken upside down, cracked plates on the floor, half-eaten half rotten sandwiches, torn posters on the wall, all witnesses of a falling zenith.

Only artifact that stood the test of time is a crystal globe, cleverly enclosed inside a glass cube, meticulously fixed on the wall at eye height, a trophy awarded to the best scientists, and just below it the next big thing. A massive silver-veined cylinder of bronze whose surface is shaped like three stacked tractor tires and a flat top on which lie a sandal. In the middle of the room, a rectangular steel lever stuffed with cogs.

The scientist pulls the lever with all his body then a violent air suction happens on the cylinder, dust waltzes, plates flies, tables on the ceiling. After the poltergeist calms down, the scientist remains standing, minutes passes as his heartbeat grows, the sandal had vanished but nothing appears on the cylinder. Taken back by anger, he grabs a table feet, throws it on the cylinder and pushes the lever another time. Another poltergeist, lost wood, and nothing more. Patience consumed by anxiety, he doesn't wait anymore for the dust to reach the floor, snatches broken furnitures on the fly, throws them on the cylinder while pulling and pushing the lever like a madman creating a vortex inside the laboratory.

No ammunitions left, exhausted, the scientist lies down on the floor. The silence is broken by the hum of the ventilation doing its best to keep up by the successive air suctions and the rasping voice of the scientist:

"Good side of this experimentation, I can still promote it as a vacuum cleaner, or for easy relocation once i find out when or where all my junk went."

His stomach growls as he barely stands up to walk out of the, now empty, laboratory. Near the exit, above the sink torn from the wall, his face calls him out from broken mirror, cut through time, remorse drowning his eyes, he gazes one last time at the machine, once too often as sadness evolves into madness, last breath for a daredevil.

"What is the use of ending my days full of regret, with what I have left, I might as well try everything for everything?"

The scientists removes his greyed coat, tears it in the length, ties one end to the lever and grabs the other, sits down on the freezing cylinder with nothing more than his clock print fetish boxer shorts, white winter socks embroidered with green christmas trees, and a tank top yellowed by sweat. After a long breath, he pulls the coat in one swing, ripping it, leaving the lever at half way. Pissed off, he puts on his left sock on his hand to shatter the box holding the crystal globe.

"I won't be needed it in the future", he shouts as he throws the globe in a perfect curve so it lands and explodes on the tip of the lever, giving the last little push to starts the machine.

In a split seconds, he ends up tousled, floating in a transparent tube, right in the middle of space. Tingling runs all along his body as he comes to his senses just to find himself confronted with the third kind. A humongous worm drops slowly in front of him. In shock, the scientist's eyes search the other end and realize that the intertwined worm is as large as a stormy sea upside down.

A sizzle echoes through the tube, several familiar sounds pass by. First a bee, then a snake, a cat, an unrecognizable noise. When he heard a human voice calling for help, he exclaimed "Hey, can you hear me?" Voices fell silent and a human face devoid of any soul appeared before him in holographic form.

"Good day, human. This is the... universe police. For several... thousand years now, we have been receiving complaints of garbage, extra-spacial ones, adrift that appear out of nowhere. Fortunately we have identified a trajectory, recovered the waste and found the source planet. Our analyzes conclude that you are the perpetrator, do you confirm?"

The scientific plunges his hands in his face before screaming with all his lungs.

"Oh you moron! But of course! I was relatively in my laboratory, on a planet which revolves relatively on itself, which revolves around the sun, which itself revolves relatively to something else which is relative to something else that is relative to... Ah big dumb! All of my time jumps were successful, which means the jump keeps its coordinates in space on a larger scale... Quick, help me go back to Earth! Time for humanity to take a new turn!"

"Humanity has already taken a new turn, human. Has been... hundred of years, since every species of... Earth have been... assimilated to the closest sector. Your sector was under... environmental protection like a... animal reserve, but since you discovered the time jump technology, your case has been re-assessed. For your understanding, the time jump on universe scale can be compared with... the atomic bomb on a planet scale, and we can't have too many entities, with different points of view, possess such... end game power."

His strengths abandon him, as torment penetrates his soul. "Its my fault" sighs the scientist.

"Nothing is to blame, if everybody plays the game" finishes the soulless voice, before the worm swallows the tube.

Among the stars, the loneliness lurks in the scientist's soul, all fame and friends devoured by greed, he searches to be more than human, a flicker of hope for a dying body, a last trophy for a tombstone, another scale on the worm.