A sample from FOR A BETTER YESTERDAY

This (first draft) chapter drops you right in the middle of an experiment. The goal is to create a micro-star with all the properties of a super gas giant only on a smaller scale, and then collapse it down to a pair of pulsars. At that point, the scientists intend to squeeze the pulsars until they create an artificial black hole.

One of these scientists is cautious, patient, by the book. The other is impulsive, risk-taking, and improvisational. They are combustible elements that have no business playing with fire the way they are. What happens is nothing short of the worst-case scenario. This sample is the fifth that I’ve written and takes place early in the timeline of the book but since the novel is not going to be presented in a linear way, this might be a chapter that doesn’t appear until over halfway through the finished product…

First, Walter did a sweep of their entire wing of the underground facility. The janitor who had informed them of the worker’s impending arrival was gone, and no one else could be found. “I took the liberty of resetting the access code to this floor of the compound.”

“You did what?” Quincy said, lifting his head from the viewfinder of the ultra-narrow microscope.

“The code is TR0O01-GF9XB,” he answered with a proud smirk. “I thought the zero followed by the O followed by another zero was especially devious. Of course, they could always hack into the system and reset it themselves but the beauty of it is when someone at the entrance selects this floor in the lift, it will first redirect them to the floor directly above us, which is basically identical to this one. My bet is no one will even notice.”

“You did all that…” Quincy checked his watch, dumbfounded, “in twelve minutes?”

“The security in this place is astoundingly poor,” Walter replied with a shrug. He quickly threw on his lab coat and began double-checking the instruments on the console. “Still, I want to be knee-deep in this thing before anyone stumbles into the lab. I want to be past the point when shutting it down is the best idea.”

“Right,” Quincy said. “Once the collapse has started, and assuming it is stable, there’s not a scientist on the planet that will shut it down. They’ll want to see it through for curiosity’s sake, if nothing else.

Once the final checks were complete, the pair threw back a shot of the strongest drink they had brought with him: A bottle of Nahuatl Chili Tea, a non-alcoholic, but highly potent, drink from New Guatemala. They wanted their wits about them so they eschewed the bottle of maple-infused saké that Quincy kept in his cupboard. Of course, the Chili Tea was hardly a refreshing beverage fit for a sunny day. The drink burned going down and then burned their insides.

The lingering effects of capsaicin on the tongue were chemically removed before bottling, leaving only a lingering, pulsating, wave of heat coursing through them. The drink was a marvel of plant-based genetic modification and organic engineering, something Walter studied as a hobby in whatever free time he had these days.

“I’m ready when you are,” Quincy said after taking a second shot of the hot tea. He hissed as it went down and felt his mind focus and his eyesight sharpen. “Geez, this stuff is wild.”

“It’s a special additive of my own design,” Walter replied casually. He took a second shot himself and winced after swallowing. “It could use a different flavor, maybe, but it does the job…Do you feel it?”

“The heat? Yeah. And my heart rate has definitely increased.”

“That’ll pass. What about your eyes?”

Quincy peered into the ultra-narrow microscope’s viewfinder and was amazed at the results. “Amazing. Some of these images were blurry just a minute ago.” He raised a hand to stop whatever Walter was about to say. “I don’t want to know what you did. Just tell me if there are side effects.”

“It’ll wear off in a few hours,” Walter answered nonchalantly. “You’ll have a migraine maybe, but it’ll pass. In the meantime, our brains will never be more alert. Let’s get to it.”

Half an hour of quiet work followed, with both men too focused (and mentally stimulated) to engage in idle chit-chat or even to offer status updates from their respective workstations. Finally, with their preliminary work done, they started the fusion reaction process and sat back to wait for the fruit of their labor to burst to life. For three minutes, only the hum from within the containment chamber was heard in the room. Both men sat quietly, their legs bouncing in place, releasing nervous energy (a side effect of Walter’s special additive that he forgot to mention).

After three minutes, just as it had in their previous experiment, a flicker of light appeared in the chamber. The first time around, neither man was looking inside the chamber; they missed the nigh-miraculous event. This time, their heightened senses were fixated on the containment area, and they saw the exact moment when the micro-starburst appeared. It looked like the spark of a flame exploding from the end of an invisible lighter. Tiny little bursts of gold and green (a byproduct of the artificial helium) exploded away from the central hub of light, like the explosion of a tremendously small firework. In its wake was an orb of light, a perfect sphere of nuclear energy, exploding outward and yet never dissipating.

“Hydrogen levels stable,” Walter said, breaking the silence and ending the quiet, almost reverential moment. “How does the helium look?”

“So far the board is green,” Quincy said. “Looks to be at 93%.” Neither of them stopped anymore to admire the would-be celestial body they brought to life. It was already mundane.

The star grew from the size of a burning matchhead to the size of an apple, at which point the two scientists strapped the orange goggles over their eyes. It continued to grow, blossoming to the size of a human head, before holding its shape at about the size of an overinflated beach ball. With the amount of hydrogen and artificial helium they had injected into the tank, and assuming it remained untampered, the star could have continued burning for a century.

Tampering with it was the object of the experiment, however. “Ready for compression?” Walter said, hovering near the terminal that controlled the release of beta radiation into the containment chamber. There was a lot packed into that simple question. It would not be Walter who would be in charge of regulating the stability of the star as it received the beta rays.

It fell to Quincy to control the dials, increasing and reducing the parts per million that their micro-star would be struck by, to allow the star to “breathe” naturally and not collapse prematurely, potentially destroying not only the star but the entire laboratory (and them in it). It was no small question being asked, but that fact was wholly lost on the one who asked it: “Quincy? Good to go?”

Quincy did not respond immediately. He eyed the bottle of tea, wondering if a third drink might sharpen his senses that much more. He needed all the help he could get. “Okay,” he answered with an uncertain tone.

Instantly Walter went to work, overriding the computer’s safety protocols. He had not told Quincy this, but it took a fair bit of technical wizardry to shut down every possible impediment to what they were about to attempt.

The underground facility might have had substandard security systems, but their safety parameters were some of the most sophisticated Walter had ever toyed with. There were redundancy checks to the redundancy checks, backdoor measuring sticks, and shutdown triggers that affected seemingly innocuous aspects of their work. If just one of them had escaped his notice and failed to be deactivated, the computer could have had the power to override their commands and shut the whole experiment down.

Still, Walter’s skill did not betray him. He had to completely wipe the lab’s entire safety protocol subroutine and rewrite a few hundred lines of code, to restore the most essential systems (to protect things like reactor leak warnings or emergency manual shut down controls), but once he was done, he breathed a sigh of relief and nodded to his partner. “Ready on three.”

Quincy nodded in reply. “Three…two…one…”

Walter executed the command to release the first batch of beta rays into the chamber. On the monitor in front of him, he could see the star was already reacting to the change. The core of the micro-star shrank by 8% within a few seconds of the first wave of beta rays.

Quincy’s monitor, to which his eyes were glued, showed him a detailed breakdown of the artificial helium stability level, that much Walter could tell, but the details and specifics were obscured. His monitor had only the most basic levels of data: He could see the percentage of stability and nothing else. At that moment the helium was hovering between 91-93%.

Walter dared not ask if his partner was ready for the next burst of beta rays. He simply eyed Quincy’s body language and went for it. “Round two,” he said softly, and then fired a second blast of radiation.

The star’s core shrank another 17%. Based on their calculations, determined by the size and density of their star, the core would have to shrink by 46% before an irreversible collapse was assured.

“Whoa…” Quincy muttered, catching Walter’s attention. The board flipped from green to yellow, flashing the warning that the artificial helium was approaching the point at which it would be unstable. Walter could see only the raw number in the corner of his monitor: 89%. He opened his mouth to speak, to remind him that 88% was the absolute floor of stability but, before a word could escape his lips, the number climbed back to 89% and then to 90%, flipping the color from yellow back to green.

“Ready for round three…” Quincy muttered, afraid to make it sound too much like a question, in case his partner started to get cold feet. He fired a third blast of beta rays at the star, shrinking its core by 39%. One more blast would move them past the point of no return. Quincy just needed to ride the waves, as the helium stability numbers danced from the high-80s to the mid-90s.

To Walter’s pleasant surprise, Quincy seemed to be getting the hang of it. He was starting to sense the rhythm and flow of the star’s “breathing,” in a way a computer never could. “Outstanding…” he whispered as he watched the little number in the corner of his monitor climb from 92% to 94% to 95% to 96%, a new record of stability for his artificial element. He was just about to congratulate his partner when the board changed to yellow. In an instant, the number fell from 94% to 89%.

“What h—” Walter began, but before he could even finish the question the number dropped to 88%.

“I don’t think I can keep this up…” Quincy confessed. His face was tight and his jaw was clenched. Visible panic was in his voice.

“Try and relax. You were in a groove just a second ago. You just need to—”

“I can’t. I can’t hold it.” The number had climbed back to 90% before falling again to 88%. “We can still abort.”

Walter looked at the data before him: The micro-star’s core was at 42% of its original density. Another 4% was all that was needed before they crossed the threshold. To Quincy, that meant the line before they could no longer escape. To Walter, it meant the point at which they would have to carry on, as he had no interest in being talked into aborting the experiment. “Just hang on. I’m going to transfer stability controls to my station.”

To his surprise, Quincy did not object. Either he was too focused on his task or he was relieved not to bear the burden anymore, it didn’t matter to Walter; he had always been prepared to take over if necessary. He triggered a quick “takeover” command and watched as his screen flickered and transformed into the detailed readout Quincy had been staring at just a moment before.

“Watch the core and get ready to release the next wave of beta rays,” he said to Quincy. Soon, the helium had climbed back to 90% stability and the board changed from yellow to green. A small smile inched across his face. “Okay, dump it.”

Quincy injected the final round of beta radiation into the chamber, which reacted as intended to the micro-star’s core of helium and hydrogen, shrinking it like a tumor amidst chemotherapy. The core’s size shrank to 44%, beyond the magic number needed to produce a cascade effect. There was only one end in sight now, the core would collapse.

“Just have to keep it steady for a minute or so and inertia should take over…” Walter said, confidently. There were two roads in front of him, one which ended with a micro-version of a supernova, and another which would result in the core collapsing in on itself until only the bare pulsars remained, ready to be squeezed into a small, stable black hole.

“Core is down to 41%,” Quincy said, sounding better than he had since the experiment began. “Numbers are falling at a pretty steady clip…maybe even a hair faster than we expected.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“Still, I don’t like unexpected events.” Quincy grabbed the notebook next to him, filled with data and conclusions, to try and understand why the process of collapsing the star was happening roughly 25% faster than they initially calculated.

“Almost there,” Walter said, watching the helium stability numbers dance between 91-95%, he was hoping to see 96, or even 97% before the star’s natural collapse took over for him; he wanted that personal best since it was, after all, an artificial element of his construction. It’s not right that someone else should get the credit for stabilizing it to a degree higher than—

“Whoa!” Quincy blurted, interrupting Walter’s train of thought.

Walter didn’t see the number, but he did see the color on the board in front of him. It lasted only for a millisecond; the green tint that indicated all was well flashed red. The stability number, which had been at 93%, dipped to 73% for less than a thousandth of a second before jumping back to 89%. The whole thing was over before either of them could comment on it, but a millisecond was all it took.

Everything happened all at once. Alarms started blaring, red lights started flashing, and monitors started rapidly printing pages of error report logs. All the while, the small celestial body inside the stasis chamber began to pulsate and reduce in size before their eyes. A process that should have taken a year instead occurred within the span of a few seconds. Quincy and Walter stood dumbfounded, too shocked and perplexed to react to the spectacle before them.

Not ten seconds after the first alarm sounded did the star disappear into nothingness, leaving only a swirling vapor of electric blue in its wake. Pulsars orbited around the collapsed speck of an imploded star, leaving the scientists observing the afterglow of blue energy both stupefied and mesmerized by the spectacle.

“It didn’t nova,” Walter said, breathless. “This can still happen. We can squeeze the pulsars and get a black hole to—”

“Your data did not match the experiment,” Quincy said. “The star collapsed faster than we anticipated.”

All Walter said in reply was an incomplete statement: “I don’t know…” He could have told his partner how he input some last-minute changes to the helium/hydrogen mixture, hoping to accelerate the process in case someone else came into the lab and discovered what they were doing. There would be a time to reveal that secret. Now was not the time. He wasn’t even sure his minor changes had caused the sudden collapse. After all, nothing in his calculations should have caused a sudden drop to 73% helium stability. That was an unforeseen fluke occurrence, and he wasn’t going to take the blame for an unforeseen fluke.

“Let’s worry about what happened after we start the pulsar compression,” Walter said, eager to change the subject. “We’ll have to write a new batch of code because we weren’t expecting to do this for another y—”

He stopped abruptly as the room began to tremor around them. For half a second the duo believed an earthquake was rocking Kathmandu, and shaking the mountain in which their laboratory was located. That initial thought soon changed as the swirling afterglow of the pulsars began to accelerate their movements. No longer were they moving in a slow, elliptical formation; now they were racing around one another in a seemingly endless game of tag. The stasis chamber began to vibrate, as did the inner layer of aluminum, galvanized steel, and lead that wrapped around the top and bottom of the tall chamber.

Within, the two could see the metal plates buckling and peeling at their corners, as the central point between the spinning pulsars began to affect the gravity within the chamber.

“This chamber won’t protect us from what’s happening in there…” Quincy remarked.

“No but physics will…” Walter said in response. Sure enough, as the plates and strips of metal broke free and smashed into the center of the chamber, they formed tightly into the shape of a ball, forming a compound no larger than an overinflated beachball. Once it did, the metal sphere began to rotate, content with its existence and drawing no more metals toward its center.

“I’m getting a reading from the pulsars in the core of the…ball,” Quincy said, examining the monitor in front of him. “This is weird…”

“I’m getting a printout myself…” Walter said, examining the computer’s report of what exactly happened in the experiment. “According to this, the helium lost stability just long enough to trigger an accelerated collapse. It didn’t create a black hole. Instead, it sucked in all the material it could toward its center. It pulled in whatever it could find, all the particles within the chamber, even to the subatomic level, as well as the metal it could strip away from the inner lining. Fascinating.”

“The core is dead,” Quincy said flatly.

“Dead?”

“The pulsars are gone. Zeroed out on the screen.”

“So what are we left with? Just a dead rock?” the disappointment on Walter’s face was obvious. And yet, as soon as it came did it fade, replaced by the spark of an idea. “What if we created another spark of helium and hydrogen within…that?” he wondered aloud, gesturing toward the metal sphere inside the chamber.

“It would effectively jump-start the pulsars and eventually burn hot enough to melt the metals of the sphere. I don’t see what that would help since we can’t maintain the stability of the helium long enough to force a safe collapse.”

“Sure we can. The dip to 73% was a fluke. We can do it again.” And then, before Quincy could interject and try and warn him off, Walter input the commands into the computer to restart the experiment. In an instant, the new batch of hydrogen and artificial helium fused and sparked to life and, just as instantly as it began, the chamber began to rumble.

“Oh no…” Quincy said. Those were his final words. The pulsars within the metal sphere were not, as presumed, dead. They were merely obscured from the instruments due to the density of the sphere around them. When the new star burst to life, so too did the pulsars, whose hydrogen elements split, being simultaneously attracted to two cores in such close proximity.

 The result was a miniature supernova.

 A flash of white exploded around them. Walter, who was sitting, fell to the floor under the large console that surrounded the stasis chamber. Quincy, who was standing, took the full brunt of the explosion that followed. His body fell limply to the floor, as the room continued to rumble. The stasis chamber cracked. The laboratory began to flood with radiation.

As I’ve written in other updates, this is a 39 chapter book (plus a prologue and epilogue). It’s going to be a big one. After writing the prologue and five chapters I’m already at about 20,000 words. I don’t plan on being finished until September.

More updates to come!