Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 73 - Caged In

The randomized black holes now appearing across the country, Becca hypothesized, were attracted to electric stimulus.

Their initial appearances in Key West and other bodies of water — as constantly reported on the news — could easily be attributed to lightning strikes. More precisely, the fact that lightning stays primarily on the surface of the water when it strikes rather than penetrating it. And because the surface of the water itself is such a strong conductor of an electrical strike, keeping the current mainly on the surface level, it, in effect, acts quite a lot like a Gaussian surface — the three-dimensional electrical or gravitational closed surface through which a vector field’s flux is calculated. Depending on the total power of a bolt of lighting, coupled with other variables such as wind force, overall temperature, wave current, and strength, this Gaussian surface could help to generate a natural Faraday Cage.

Usually manufactured from mesh but also from something such as the radiated skim from a lightning strike upon the surface of a large body of water, a Faraday Cage is an enclosure used to block electrical fields where an external field causes electrical charges — like the output from a lightning strike — and distributes the charge within the cage’s conducting material to cancel the effect of the bolt itself.

But it was more than just lightning bolts far out over the water that were causing the random anomalies to appear. As Becca and Gordon traveled cross-country to Chicago, at stops along the way, they listened to frantic claims and apocalyptic warnings from gas station attendants beset on making sure everyone who passed by avoided their radios and Walkman headsets but conveniently neglected to dissuade customers from using their electric-powered gas pumps.

“I threw my television in the dumpster,” one overly freckled brown-haired attendant told them as they passed through Kentucky. “And if you knew me, you’d know that was no small feat. I love my television.”

The attendant’s eyes were dark and sallow, sunk deep into his skull, making his buck-toothed grin more pronounced. His unsettling gaze made Becca squirm, and she could barely make eye contact with him because it was so uncomfortable.

“I’m telling you,” the attendant said breathlessly, “I saw one of those black hole things pop up in the middle of the screen and it woulda killed me if I hadn’ta unplugged the set so quick.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Becca said.

“I’m telling you,” the attendant cautioned. “Don’t turn the radio on in your car, neither. People have about died just doing that. You’ve no idea the stories I’m hearing.”

“I’m sure,” Becca said pointedly.

“Sometimes they go away, I’m told,” the attendant said. “But sometimes they don’t.”

“Do you suppose that was true?” Gordon had asked her once they were back in the car. “About the black holes everywhere?”

“That’s what we’d heard on the news back at Charlie’s.”

“But do you believe it?” Gordon asked.

“You want to turn on the radio and find out?”

As they closed in on Chicago, their conversation fell nearly silent.

While Gordon slept, Becca took her turn behind the wheel and engaged in an unending interior debate with herself. Why had she agreed to bring him along? What purpose could this man from Pennsylvania possibly play in all this? If anything, he helped make the drive, taking shifts and making it unnecessary to stop for rest. But what would she do with him once she arrived at ENH?

By the time they arrived at the apartment she’d long ago shared with Frankie, she was determined to move on solo. Anyone else was disposable, anyway, at least in this timeline.

Even Frankie.

What was important was getting back to before this started.

As she soon found out, Frankie had taken their gun and emptied their petty cash emergency fund. Knowing her husband, he could be anywhere. She shouldn’t have been surprised that he was nowhere to be found. He’d had it with her, for relatively good reason, even before she did what she did, throwing the world into an upheaval. Once he came to, she thought, surely he would realize what had happened and that the mess was her fault. He most likely took cover somewhere, hiding himself to avoid any association with her and, therefore, any blame.

She was somewhat surprised — but relieved — that thus far, she hadn’t read or heard one word anywhere with even a remotely close estimation of what had caused all of this. No one, at least not yet, had come forward from ENH to place the blame on Becca.

But again, she shouldn’t have been surprised. Their work with ENH was as confidential as it could have been. They certainly didn’t advertise to the world that their colossal scientific research facility was the largest in North America and lived under the belly of one of the largest metropolitan cities in the nation.

Secrecy was paramount. The work was everything. Their research would change the world more than any scientific breakthrough ever known to humanity. Becca had believed and held those facts from the beginning of her career. Not only would she and ENH make it possible to navigate lightyears in the flicker of a second, but Becca always believed the same technology could be used to manipulate seconds themselves. And in controlling time, she could control so much more. She could travel to future years, procure scientific research that had not been considered, and bring those findings back to the present, thereby circumventing years of halted or stilted development. Her research would radically speed up scientific developments to nearly unimaginable levels.

The cure for cancer? Now.

Interstellar colonization? Now.

Endless renewable energies? Now.

Fix the broken points along the timeline of her marriage? Now.

The world could have everything now.

She could have everything now.

Her obsession with work was not a new development, but one Frankie had patiently borne for years on end — at least forty years — which made even more sense as to why they’d all ended up in 1986. This wasn’t just a random year. This was the year when Becca’s work truly began.

For Becca, that’s what it all weathered down to — the work.

She was no fool, blind to her folly and drunk on her ambitions. She was highly aware of the faultiness of her character and the obsessiveness of her desire for knowledge of everything there could be to know. This was a dangerous personality trait as evidenced by the already wrecked severe damage in her relationships and now the world. She’d validated her faults by her imprudent actions that launched the first two black holes. She’d proven just how dangerous she could be.

Why not throw all caution aside, then? What would it matter if she tried to fix it in her way? What would it matter if she cleared the valium left in her bathroom cabinet and ground it up while Gordon waited in her living room? What would it matter if she forged forward, set out for ENH, left Gordon passed out behind her, and somehow initiated another of the astonishing black holes? And what would it matter if she was then the lone venturer into what was generated — as she had intended the first time?

What would it matter?