Chapter 2

Three years previously

UC Berkley Quantum Computing Labs

Berkely, California

Dardenys was hungry. She was not only starving but also could feel the insistent cold gnawing on her bones through the spare pale flesh of her body.

There was nothing new about this, she was born into this gray barren wasteland and she would certainly die here, but before she had always managed to eke out a living of sorts.

It had been many weeks since she had last fed and she had been nearly out of hope until she had stumbled on to a spark of warmth and sustenance that neared the barrier close enough that she could reach through to touch it. This contact was enough to allow some of herself to flow to the other side to begin the hunt. She would not let it escape her hunger but she would not rush in and waste it either. The prey- a human man, was completely unaware of her. Humans on the other side couldn’t fully see her kind, although sometimes those infernal Fae could.

Occasionally- at the very end, just as their lives unraveled the knot that held them to their world, and they slipped briefly into hers- they might get a terrifying glimpse of her visage as she feasted on the last of their essence before they discarded it and moved on, but that was not usual. A small mercy she thought. At least she never sought to inflict pain deliberately. If she had been offered a choice, she would not have chosen this existence at all. But life is what it is, and it was now nearly time to feed.

She had followed her unwary prey for days as he stumbled through the morass he called a life. As she watched him silently she fed in tiny sips on his pain- just enough to sustain herself. She could feel his despair and desperation and she knew that soon the last of his life energy would be hers. In the light of day, she stayed hidden in the shadows but at night she could flow partways out of her shadow world and play for a time in his. Sometimes she could even feel herself in his tortured dreams.

Last night she had felt his riven psyche come to a decision and she knew that tonight would be his last. Would it be a bridge? Maybe a bus? He didn’t do drugs so that seemed unlikely. Whatever it was to be, she could feel that he wanted it to be spectacular. In the depths of his despair, she could sense that he had long since given up on love and that it had been years since he’d even felt worthy of trying for it. Even worse than that though, was the feeling that he was invisible to everyone in his life- invisible and of no consequence. He was certain no one would miss him and that few would even realize he was gone. Dardenys could feel this bitter knowledge feed the fire of his determination to at least make an impact in death.

There was no place in Dardenys where pity could reside but still, something tugged at her. Maybe it was the sheer waste of a beautiful life that struck her as wrong. Maybe it was due to being an outcast herself. But she didn’t make the universe, she merely had to keep herself alive in it.

Her feeling that tonight was different was born out shortly after dark when her prey left his barren gray box of an apartment and turned toward where his rattletrap car was parked instead of to the seedy 24-hour dinner where he often ate his evening meal alone.

Just as he pulled away from the curb she slid into the rear seat as fluidly as a shadow. Within a few blocks, it was apparent that he was headed back to work. She had taken this trip with him before and she knew the large building complex where he worked well. Oftentimes she had subtly fed on his work-inspired futility and frustration although she had little idea of what he did for his so-called ‘living’.

She had spent nearly 200 years around humans and knew much in general about their customs and languages but little specifically. Dardenys understood that her target worked in research that dealt with the energies filling the spaces between the smallest bits of reality. Occasionally when some of the experimental devices used here started up, she could feel a solid tug on her existence. It was beyond her limited understanding but it felt much like the occasional magical forces she encountered in her world.

As he made his way up the steps to the squarish uninspired brick building she followed in his shadow and wound around behind him as he navigated several locked security doors using his card key. They were now deep in the innermost sanctum where the devices and measuring equipment were housed. Just as they opened the final door to the most extensive lab in the complex she could hear him begin to mumble to himself.

“Good! No one working late.” Clark said to himself as he fumbled his card key into the slot of the last reader and shouldered through the door. He wasn’t a monster after all. He didn’t want to kill anybody, he just wanted to stop the abomination that had been his life’s work for the last 5 years. Five long years he had put into this project. It had cost him everything. His health, his wife, and maybe even his sanity. He could swear that he was being followed where ever he went. Even his dreams weren’t safe from the haunted, gaunt but eerily beautiful face that he increasingly saw there.

The project had started with such promise. They were going to solve the world’s energy problems in one fell swoop. He had been a young but talented research assistant when Berkely recruited him. It was quite a career step up and his brand new wife, Janice, had been thrilled.

Then came the long stressful hours and so many months where it didn’t feel like there was any progress. The funding got tight and the promised bonus and raises vanished as did Janice once she figured out that a research assistant’s salary wasn’t going to get her the standard of living she was sure she deserved.

The last Clark had heard from Janice she was dating a hedge fund manager from Silicon Valley. She was still cashing her alimony checks though, which was why Clark lived in a shitty apartment and drove an even shittier car. Oh well, what’s done is done thought Clark with a mental sigh. Janice had probably been right to get what she could and to get it from a place as far away from him as she could manage.

Ironically, just as Clark determined that there was no point in any of it, the Quantum Energy Research team had finally made a major breakthrough in their attempt to harness the potential energy in Quantum states. The math the project leader, Dr, Gutenberg, had used to spearhead the breakpoint was beyond even Clark’s level but he understood the principle. Essentially they were able to achieve an end run around the first law of thermodynamics by using a portal box consisting of Quantum nanocrystals to transfer energy instantaneously from one location to another. In theory, the entangled Quantum ‘dots’ could be miles or even light years apart. They were currently using energy created from the fusion reactor at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. But potentially it could be any source- even the earth’s sun itself.

Of course, they were still decades away from anything commercially viable but the limit was only set by the energy that initialized the teleportation and the size of the gap between the portal nanocrystals. It was astounding technology but Clark had come to abhor the thing that had taken everything away from him. It was against Nature for man to be playing unconcernedly with the forces that ruled the universe and reality itself. Man was not God!

This was his truth now. Reverend Goodnough had patiently illuminated this for him over the last months. He now understood how this evil creation had destroyed him and how it would destroy everything if left to evolve, The good reverend and his Church of Christ the Luddite had been

the only comfort to Clark these last months. After wandering alone in his desolation they had a last offered him an explanation that made sense. It was too late for him, but perhaps he could save others and in doing so be remembered as someone who tried to do the right thing, in spite of the personal cost.

Clark shook himself from his reverie and squared his shoulders. The time for careful consideration was over, it was now time to act.

Striding through the echoing tiled aisleways Clark made his way to the center of the lab where 2 stainless steel canisters sat on rollers next to their humming power supplies and control boards. The units weren’t huge but vastly oversized in relation to the sub-microscopic quantum portals they housed. They had created two to ensure one was available in case of breakdown or maintenance downtime. It didn’t matter- what he was about to do would destroy both and most of the surrounding building.

It didn’t matter that the portal was infinitesimal in size. He was going to overclock the normal operation of the device 10,000 fold. According to his careful calculations, for a few nanoseconds, its interior would be hotter than the surface of the sun and the uncontained fusion reaction would melt or evaporate everything within 100 meters of where he now stood.

Clark knelt and popped open the power control station. Out of a jacket pocket, he pulled some wire cutters and a box of connectors and started to reconfigure bundles of multicolored wire. A humorous thought crossed his mind- no need to solder the connections, they only need to work once.

As he finished the low-pitched hum from the power supply changed to a high-pitched keening that set Clark’s teeth on edge. But he only had to endure it for another minute or so.

Clark turned to the control board, inserted his access card, and began typing in override after override. This was child’s play to him as he had designed and created most of the control software and knew every backdoor into the system.

At last, he was done. Clark took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and said a brief prayer asking for forgiveness for the abomination he had helped create.

Then, without further hesitation, he firmly pressed ‘enter’.

Dardenys felt an intense flash of energy radiate throughout her entire body. Her senses expanded to infinity and then collapsed to a single point and she could feel herself drawn down a multicolored funnel of light and then slammed into a wall of sensory input like she had never felt before. It was too much- her mind fled and darkness followed

She awoke disoriented, surrounded by the smell of ozone and smoke. And warmth! The eternal cold she was familiar with was gone. As her eyes fluttered open she realized that she was seeing in a different way as well. Everything was brighter and more intense- colors vibrated differently than in her world. She shook herself and managed to work her way into a sitting position from where she had been sprawled across the floor. Wait ... how was she feeling the floor? She panicked for an instant and tried to flee back into her gray home world but it wasn’t there! Somehow she was no longer in the void between worlds but solidly in the ‘other’. In wonder, her fear left behind- she stood reveling in her solidness and strength.