Prologue

The newly minted Doctor Yi had been in the bunker throughout the previous night. Excitement drove her in a series of coffee powered tweaks and nob tickles through the darkness of a desert plateau night because right before she’d been planning on going back to her apartment the previous evening the sphere had formed and remained stable.

The sphere shimmered under the fluorescent lighting, a bubble lacking all substance repelling protons as they collided with nothing. Yi Dae marveled at the void that she’d bent in space-time.

A thick metal door on the far side of the bunker opened, scraping over the threshold as it went. The noise startled her, and she looked up from her control console to see her former advisor walking through the noisy door.

“Oh! Excellent Doctor Yi. You’ve formed it,” said Doctor Nestor Grant.

“I did,” she said touching controls on the panel before her. “But there’s a problem that I can’t seem to figure out. The math just doesn’t tell me how to solve it.”

“Well, what’s up?”

“Translation. I’ve been able to identify a pair of bound particles on both ends of the fold then, as my paper predicts, I’ve amplified the void in the origin.” She paused gesturing at the shimmering bubble floating in the air before them.

Doctor Nestor Grant, nodded his head in quiet appreciation of the problem. “But you can’t fold the projected void back on the paired particle?”

“Yes, the pinch in space-time is there. I’ve created the bubble and I hold it there indefinitely. I can even very its magnitude. With enough energy I could push matter away from the zero point of the sphere, but I can’t manage to collapse the pinch back onto its origin.”

“Hum,” Doctor Nestor Grant pondered the situation. “How long have you been at it? You came in mighty early.”

“All night,” she said. “Once I got the pinch I didn’t want to leave it until I understood how to control it. I’ve been at it all night.”

“But you’re tired, yes?”

“Incredibly,” she agreed Doctor Yi agreed.

Doctor Nestor Grant set his backpack down on the control console and then looked over Doctor Yi’s shoulder. She’d gone back to her original math on the topic. Reviewing the particulars of her prediction that a pinch of nothing could be passed back and forth between two atoms with positionally linked electrons. He’d heard her explain it before, he even understood her hypothesis and could see how these electrons weren’t so much distinct things as they were points in space-time that shared an event horizon in this instance of a universe.  Or multiverse, he still wasn’t convinced one way or the other. She’d argued, successfully in fact, that anything with mass in their universe also had the potential for its own event horizon — no more need for approaching black holes — and that by detecting parity in these subatomica we could warp space time and pass matter between those points. Her predictions were solid, mathematicians with far more insight than his had reviewed her theoretical and been unable to poke even a single hole in her work. But here they stood, looking at a shimmering pinch of space time, unable to collapse it back through its origin.

“Can you collapse the projection?” Doctor Nestor Grant asked while reaching into his backpack. He pulled out an insulated carafe of coffee.

“Yeah sure,” she said tweaking a dial on the control panel. “As long as I’ve got the pairs locked I can open and close the pinch at will. Just, only on this side.”

The bubble gradually shrunk, then disappeared. Doctor Grant unscrewed the cap of the carafe and then poured coffee into vessel.

“Here, drink this. It will help.”

Gratefully, Doctor Yi accepted the cup and took a sip.

“I know you’re not going to go home until you fix this,” Doctor Grant continued. He approached the table where the bubble had been. “And, as I’ve explained before, you’re too often wrapped up in the theoretical predictions of your math to see the practical or applied aspects of your work.” He situated the carafe on its side so that its base touched the origin plate of zinc she was using to locate paired her paired electrons.

Doctor Yi drained the cup, feeling the caffeine flush through her tired head. “I think I see what you’re about.”

“Yeah, when you cast the pinch, this time leave the bottom of my thermos sticking out the far end.”

“I may owe you a new thermos,” she said adjusting the the control panel. “Stand back while I do this.”

“Oh you know it,” said Doctor Grant.

“Doctor Grant,” began Doctor Yi while she waited for him behind the control console. “If this works we’re going to push this everywhere. I mean everywhere. Completely open source.”

Doctor Grant sighed. “I know how you feel about this Dae, but you know the foundation is going to want to monetize this. They’ll fight you on it, not me.”

“I’m not going to fight them Doctor Grant,” she said as she created a new fold in space time.

Doctor grant approached the bubble cautiously. The bubble was silent and small. Inside it he could barely make out the lower half of his steel thermos.

“Huh, I can see inside, just barely. When the field projection is breached, some light can get in and out.”

“Do it,” commanded Doctor Yi.

Tentatively Doctor Grant landed over reached out a slender finger and touched the top of the thermos. Nothing happened. He held his breath as he applied the gentlest of pressures to the carafe, momentarily feeling the resistance of the zinc plate on the far side of the bubble. Then he watched in amazement as the bubble collapsed. With his finger still touching the cap, he involuntarily blinked.

“Oh shit!” Exclaimed Doctor Yi. “Oh shit,” she said running toward him. “Are you okay? Oh shit, are you okay?”

Doctor grant stood back up. A moment before he’d had his back to Doctor Yi. Now he faced her.

“Say something. Oh my god! Doctor Grant, oh my god.” Doctor Yi’s voice was hysterical.

“I’m fine,” said Doctor Grant patting his chest. “What went wrong?” He asked bewildered.

“You went with it,” Doctor Yi said gesturing the origin plate. “You went through the pinch.”

“Well then …” he said. “We apparently have an application for your theory.”