The CANONICALS

ORIGINS; An Incomprehensible, Fourth Dimensional Object.

Years Earlier.

A man with short, black hair stood at a chalkboard, dragging a piece of chalk across it, forming equations and symbols. He let out a huff and then stepped back, as another man with dark brown hair stared at the equations being written.

"Whaddya think, David?" the first man asked.

"Michael," David began, shocked. "I think you're a genius! We solved it with string theory, string theory!"

Michael laughed sheepishly, scratching the back of his head, "It's entirely theoretical..."

"It's entirely theoretical!" The college professor yelled, slamming the sheet of paper onto the desk as David and Michael sat across from him. He then spun around in his chair, taking a large gulp from the coffee pot that was sitting on the desk. He set it back down right after spinning to face the two again. "Seriously, STRING THEORY?!" The plaque on his desk has his name, "Professor Jameson Stigley," etched into it. The plaque shook as he slammed his hands onto the desk once more. "Does this look like the Maryland University of Theoretical Science?! It's the Maryland University of Real Science Application!" He grumbled angrily before shuffling a book off of his desk and flipping it open. "Come back to me when you've made some real progress!" He moved his attention back to an assortment of unsorted papers laying all over his desk.

The two walked out of the office and Michael slumped over, absolutely defeated. David patted him on the back, reassuringly.

"Look man, Professor Stigley can suck it," David stated. "We've made some serious progress, he just doesn't see it." David stepped away from Michael for a second. "We just have to figure out how to show Stigley that the multiverse is real..."

"It's not about the proving part," Michael stated. "Like he said, it's theoretical. There's no other way to solve the equation..." Michael looked up thoughtfully. "We need a new project. Stigley obviously isn't taking the whole multiverse stuff."

"So aliens?"

"No... We need someone who can think outside of the box."

"So aliens?" David repeated himself, half jokingly.

"Not an alien..."

David and Michael made eye contact. David squinted, confused. And then his heart sank.

"Just a really heckin' smart nine year old."

"No, No, Not him!"

"So we need a new project idea," Michael stated, leaning on the desk next to the chalkboard as he twirled the piece of chalk around in his hand.

"I still think aliens should be on our list," David commented.

Michael rolled his eyes before jotting the word "aliens" down onto the chalkboard. And then his eyes motioned over to the small, nine year old boy, with dirty-blond hair and green glasses. He looked uninterested.

"Probability," the boy stated. "Everything is equally as probable as everything else, so if we were to construct a machine to change the probable chance of an outcome..." He trailed off, losing Michael and David quickly.

He wrapped up and Michael jotted "probability" onto the chalkboard, a bit confused.

David thought about it, "Okay, what about light speed?"

"Maybe..." Michael muttered, jotting "light speed" down onto the board.

And then Ethan chimed in again, "Infinite clean energy."

"What, are we just gonna create a perpetual motion machine?" David sneered. "Kid, I don't know if you know this but infinite energy is impossible."

"So is travelling at the speed of light," Ethan stated. "With the sciences that we can comprehend, that is. If we could tap into another dimensional plane, however, like one above ours, then boom. Infinite, clean, energy."