Gate of Time

I

In the early hours of the morning, the sun broke through the bedroom window of the apartment through his curtains. Adrien Cooper sat up in his bed and wiped his eyes, still waking up from his sleep. It was the morning of the twenty-seventh of August, 2146 C.E. He opened his curtains and looked out of his windows. Many people were already out and about on the streets of Tulane, New California. People were walking to work, others were riding in their solar powered cars, still more were just ambling with their kids because they had the day off. A normal day in the CCS.
            As for Adrien, he can never have a day off or people will discover new ideas before he does in the realm of science. He walks from the window and dons his lab coat and khaki pants and walks to the bathroom. He checked his hair. Still as short as I like, he thought. He loved that his sister, Grace, could cut hair so well. He'd have to thank her later.
The living room was simple, with a couch on the opposite wall from the door of the apartment and it faced the TV. There was a picture of his family on the wall behind the couch. He and Grace were kneeling in the middle, and their parents were on either side of the two. Two crosses were placed on the sides of the picture. The kitchen is connected to the living room on the left side of the couch when sitting in it, and the hallway to the bedrooms and bathroom are on the right.
Also on the left side of the couch is their work area, to the left of the kitchen in a back hallway. They do all of their work in that rather large office area. It contains two computers, a couple of filing cabinets, and lots of items on the walls that look incomplete.
Adrien got some breakfast and turned on the TV to the news. "New this morning," announced the news anchor, "Jordan Hawthorne, who is in the running for the president of the CCS, announces his plans to improve our economy through new, education policies."
            "Smart man, but will he actually do it?" Adrien questioned. Grace walked into the room to see Adrien slouching on the couch. She was slender woman with long dark blonde hair that reached barely past her shoulders and emerald green eyes. Her physiognomy showed her intellect and how serious she was at her job. She was easily the smarter of the two.
            "Who do you think will win?" Grace asked her brother.
            "Hawthorne seems to be the most popular in New California, but Rodgers has some of the best ideas for the CCS. However, some politicians don't follow through with promises." Adrien has always been skeptical of politicians' motives for running for an office, but generally, good things generally have happened since the CCS seceded and started a new government based off conservative ideals.
            Education improvements caused a period of rapid technological and economic growth that is called the Technologic Revolution. The first president of the CCS, Jonathan Scott, formed the new nation (the Conservative Confederate States) and started a national system free from the more democratic United States.
            "Who knows? There were some presidents that followed through with what they said. Since the CCS was formed, eighty one point two five percent of the presidents followed through with their promises, and that's including the one who was exiled from the CCS for having democratic ideals."
            "Good riddance to him," Adrien said with a scowl. The rest of their breakfast was spent in silence, watching the news. To be honest, neither of the two hated either of the politicians in running for president or the senate. Being in a wholly conservative confederacy, the only politicians in running had generally the same ideals, with only a couple of exceptions who are hastily moved up north to the United States. The two parties here are wholly conservative: the Neo Democratic-Republican party and the Conservative Libertarian party. Their ideals are mainly split on education and whether or not the government should intervene in education.
            At nine o'clock a.m., their friend and partner, John James, walked in for work. "Aaaaaallllllright, everybody!! Let's get down to business!" John James was an energetic, erratic man of 29 years. He has some muscle on him, but it wasn't visible. With his gamer look, no one could tell that he was an avid exerciser and that he was quite strong. The complete opposite of the stereotypical person in his profession. His brown eyes showed through his large, bifocal glasses. His current physiognomy showed his alacrity to work.
            "We were just waiting on you, tech man," Adrien called to him. Adrien always called him tech man because that was exactly what he was to their group. He was a mechanical and computer engineer that graduated from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, his home country until recently.
            "Why do you let him call you that? It seems derogatory," Grace commented with a stoic look.
            "It is fine, Grace," John said. "It's just a joke, but I digress. What's on today's agenda?"
            With how things have been going with their little independent group, they were on the edge of collapsing. Their field of study had made little progress in the past several decades. Adrien sadly shook his head and said, "I don't know anymore. We, personally, have made no progress for a long time; the whole field has been worse. I have no idea how things will turn out for us."
            "That doesn't mean we can't try. We can be the ones who make a major breakthrough." John grabbed Adrien's shoulders and shook him violently. "Be optimistic. Where's our leader of this operation? Bring back the old you who gave me a job in a field I had always been interested in. Be the man who has lead us all these years." Adrien looked over John's shoulders to Grace who gave him a nod of her head, signaling her approval.
            All Adrien gave in return was a heavy sigh. "Alright, but you two better have some good ideas, or we'll be stuck thinking all day. I have no hypotheses as of this moment." The other two gave a nod.
            Grace had thought of some hypotheses they could use for a while. John was only an engineer, so Adrien didn't have much hope that he had anything, but surprisingly, he and Grace had the same idea.
            Wormholes. If they could be able to create their own wormholes with the parameters they set themselves, then they could possibly achieve their long intended goal.
            To travel through space-time itself.
            Even so, the idea was farfetched. It would take several months, if not years, based on the current data they had and other people's data from over a century ago in the early twenty-first century. Still, they could give it a shot. Adrien and John immediately went to work searching for information: articles, scholarly journals, PDF files, experiments, anything they could use for their use to progress this experiment. John, with his technological skills, found some journals posted deep in the internet. "Eeeeeuuuureka!!!" John excitedly remarked.
            Adrien walked over to him, and Grace followed. They immediately started reading. John just backed up from the screen. It was the scientists' turn to read. John didn't know much outside of his field of engineering. If the two needed him, they would call on him.
            "For a wormhole, it seems like, we need something called exotic matter."1 Adrien sighed. "Man, I hate quantum theory."
            "Lucky for you, I studied it in college. I'll be able to make up for what you lack," Grace said. Her face showed seriousness and no intentions of insulting his knowledge.
    John started a laugh a bit. "Don't laugh at that John," Adrien said.
    "Did what I say amuse you, John? It wasn't intended to be an affront to Adrien's knowledge. I just stated that he didn't know about quantum theory and that I did."
"Doesn't mean I can't laugh at him not knowing something, for once. You always act like you know everything, Adrien, and you never ask for help from others outside of our group."
Adrien knows a lot about physics, but definitely not everything. That is where Grace comes in. For what Adrien doesn't know, she can make up for his lack of knowledge. The two siblings are a great match in that way.
    Adrien heaved a heavy sigh. "I guess I'll go look into quantum theory tomorrow at the library, or maybe today."
    Grace nodded in agreement saying she needed to brush up on her knowledge of it. She hadn't used it since she worked at New California University of Technology, or NCUT. (The CCS's version of California Institute of Technology.) After seceding from the United States, the CCS made new colleges with some former workers from schools like Harvard, Yale, and MIT, who were conservative people that wanted to form their own schools in the nascent nation.
    This led to better education and people going back to school for this better education. The young nation ended up with more well educated people than the United States in just ten years. The educational boom has hardly slowed down with kids learning critical thinking over facts, something the United States doesn't have. The kids in the CCS are engaged in school and almost never drop out. The average graduation rate is 99%. This number includes those who dropout from school.
    With the knowledge the Grace retained from quantum theory, she reasoned out how to form exotic matter in a way that there could possibly be enough to form a wormhole. "It is still unknown how much is enough to make a wormhole small enough for a piece of cereal to pass through, let alone a person. It could be a lot more than we think."
    "We'd probably have to travel through a wormhole in an isolated area anyway, so that nothing or not much is sucked into it," John added.
"That's another big issue," Grace responded. "We don't know if the wormhole would suck in everything around it or if the person, or the thing, would have to go into it to reach the other side."
Adrien sat there pondering the question. What would happen if they formed a wormhole? Would it act like a black hole or is it different than that? Then, something in the article stuck out it him. "I don't think that'd be a problem," he finally said.
"Why do you say that, Adrien?" John said, puzzled. Grace showed a face of contemplation.
"Adrien's right. I remember something in the article. Still, it's just speculation because we think of wormholes as just being made in space," Grace said.
"In the article, it said that wormholes could cause something called a quantum back reaction1 that could destroy the wormhole before it even sends anything back in time," Adrien said, but John looked a bit confused. "In other words, the wormhole would be destroyed after anything enters it, and even if it does suck things in, it would basically just be a weaker version of a black hole."
"Still, as Grace pointed out, until we look more into quantum theory and wormholes, nothing can be said for sure yet," John added. "We're still in the early stages of research." Everyone nodded in agreement.
"So, is it official? Are wormholes going to be our approach for a while? Until we succeed or fail?" Adrien asked them all. The other two looked at each other with a bit of worry, yet they seemed determined to at least try this approach.
"It's a bit of a risk, but no one has succeed at anything without taking risks. I'm willing to take that risk," Grace said with a complete visage of determination. Her poise showed that this could be one of the biggest breakthroughs in scientific history. One of the biggest breakthroughs since the Technological Revolution, even more so than Memory Chips and Consciousness Chips.
    "I'm in too!" John exclaimed. His alacrity towards this project always surprised Adrien, and he was grateful for his willingness to help. He could never help but smile at his almost childlike nature, yet he was older and more mature than he was too. "But first, let's take a bit of a break before lunch, then we can head out."
    "But we haven't really done much work today," Grace pointed out.
"And I didn't get to sleep much last night and I skipped out on breakfast since I overslept."
The siblings groaned heavily before Adrien said, "You stayed up late playing video games, didn't you?" John laughed nervously and rubbed the back of his neck. Adrien had his answer. "You're an idiot. You know that, right?"
"No, but at least I got here on time."
"I have learned that early is on time, on time is late, and late is death, so by that logic, you were late," Grace said with a disapproving look. "You should follow that rule of life, John."
"Geez, so harsh, Grace," John said with a chuckle.
"Just get some rest before lunch before I knock you out," Adrien said.
Nervous, John laid down on the couch and fell asleep quickly, snoring. Grace sat down in front of the couch, and Adrien joined her. "Will he ever learn?" Adrien asked.
"Eventually, but not soon enough," Grace responded. She began to think of other things she learned. She wanted to recall those memories so she could add them to her Memory and Consciousness Chip's storage to recall them later. "These MC Chips are quite useful. If only we could have gotten them earlier on in life."
"Are you trying to recall your quantum theory studies?"
She nodded. "I'm trying to get those memories so I can recall them from the Chip, but I just can't remember enough. They'd be more useful if you can remember things from before the Chip was implanted."
"You'll be able to remember things by reading some books about it. I promise," Adrien assured her.
She nodded in agreement.  She was certain that reviewing quantum theory would help her remember everything she learned about three years ago. She just completed her PhD, but she hadn't reviewed some of the basics in a while. Adrien completed his PhD and immediately went to work in the field under the aid of NCUT with Grace and John. Some of his hypotheses have been published and he has made enough for an MC Chip and enough to live off of. This theory and the success of it could be enough for a Nobel Prize in Physics.
This theory could change the world as they know it forever.
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The wait is finally over. Chapter 1 is out for my book Gate of Time. I'll post 2 chapters on here and finish the last 40 or more on my own before publishing it in real life, if possible.
Also, @littleeotaku , you better not read this until Christmas day. This is one of your gifts, as you know, so don't open the present until that day.