Twin Earth

Chapter 11

"Tom, wake up!" a dishevelled looking Rachel shouted into my ear causing me to groan and cover my ears.

"What is it?" I mumbled, "and what have you been eating?"

"Drinking actually, and it's black coffee. Look, you need to get up now."

"Ugh, where's James?"

"He's with Yuki in the lab."

"What time is it?"

"It's four in the morning, will you please stop asking questions and just come with me."

I reluctantly pulled off the duvet and scrambled to find my trousers on the floor. Thankfully I had fallen asleep in my t-shirt although it didn't stop Rachel from staring at my pants.

"Do you mind?" I complained, turning away.

"Sorry."

"This better be worth it."

"It is, I promise."

I followed Rachel out through the door and back down to the lab and immediately wished I had put on my jacket as it was freezing. Rachel on the other hand looked like she had managed to find time to put make-up on, do her hair and dress as if she was off to an important meeting in London. Maybe it was a young person city thing, but to me it was too much and just looked out of place for what we were dealing with.

'Maybe I'm just getting old,' I thought to myself grumpily.

"Why is it so cold?" I asked. "It didn't seem this cold yesterday!"

"There's a freezing cold front coming in from the Middle East. It's all over the news. They've been having snow in Dubai!"

"In Dubai? What the hell..."

"On the opposite end, Iceland have been experiencing a heatwave when they should be well into winter by now. They'd usually be having blizzards at this time of year, but apparently people have been able to sunbathe on the beach. The weather has gone crazy."

"It must be the magnetic field shifting, causing unusual weather conditions."

"Extreme more like and it will undoubtedly get worse if we don't figure out what's going on up there in space," Rachel declared.

It was the first time I had seen her looking so serious and it took me aback a little, but I was too cold to think much more about it and pulled my arms tighter around my chest and followed her into the lab.

"Thank God you're here," James remarked as I walked in squinting from the bright lights. "We've been trying to call your father, but we can't get through."

"The WiFi is also down," Rachel replied.

"I'm more concerned about the cold than our WiFi," I mumbled sarcastically walking over to James and Yuki. "Did you guys even go to bed?"

"I tried, but I couldn't sleep so I came back down here. Yuki was still working so I decided to help," James replied.

"I was going to analyse the samples you brought over, but then the probe sent back some new data. The anomaly seems to have grown bigger," Yuki stated.

"I thought we couldn't see it?" I asked confused.

"Now we can, or at least parts of it. We've detected some light reflecting of what looks like a... I'm not sure how to describe it, a ripple?" James replied, looking at Yuki.

"A ripple? In space?"

"Here, take a look."

I leaned down and still trying to focus I scanned through the various photographs on the computer by James and for a moment was confused.