Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 77 - Beta Test

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“Too bad none of us have a cell phone to test it on,” James said, then turned to Olivia. He knew he’d hurt the girl when he hung up the phone, and when he was in the wrong, he often overcompensated with attempted levity. “Unless you’re hiding one of those mammoth gray brick phones in your purse?”

Olivia recoiled, rubbed wrong by James’ curt and accusatory stabs at humor. He smiled, but Olivia thought his grin was vacant, lacking any sense of genuine joy or anything faintly resembling humor.

“No, of course you don’t,” James said. He coughed uncomfortably and then attempted another failed joke. “Why else would you keep using the phones on the wall and make black holes pop up to try to eat us?”

Olivia scowled at him.

“So tell me again, who was responsible for all the research that caused this in the first place?” Olivia jabbed back.

“Thatta girl,” Frankie said with a grin.

“So…uh…so now we need to test it,” James stammered, side-stepping Olivia’s returned barb. “How should we, then?”

“A phone call caused it before,” Tabitha suggested. “Let’s go ahead and test it with one of the landlines.”

“Right,” James said with a forced cough. “Fair enough.”

“But that doesn’t happen all the time,” Tony said. “I just used a phone this morning. Or was that yesterday? The days are starting to blur together. Is anyone else as exhausted as I am?”

“Just so I’m clear,” Frankie said, ignoring Tony. “Do we literally want to force a black hole to show up? That’s our big play here?”

“It’s not about making a full-scale black hole,” James said. “If this works, we’ll be able to stop it before it gets to that point. If anything, this would be a beta test for what we may be forced to do later.”

“Later?” Tony asked.

“There are signatures, electronic patterns, and signs that are precursors to the formation of a black hole,” Tabitha said. “We hit it with this portable EMP when it’s in that state — still small — and we should be able to stop anything before it goes full scale.”

“And if it goes full scale anyway?” Frankie asked.

“There may be other options,” Tabitha said.

“Well, I’d feel a lot better if we explored those options first before playing with earth-swallowing magnetic forces beyond our control,” Frankie said.

“It’ll work,” James said, then to Olivia again, almost apologetically, he invited her to participate in the next stage of their endeavor. “Why don’t you try calling your husband again?”

“You hung up on my husband before, and now you want me to call him back?”

James smoothed out the front of his shirt.

“I…” he started, then took a deep breath. “I’m afraid I’m struggling to act like myself. Since we arrived here, I have to admit I’m quite scared. It’s making me hasty. It needed to be done - disconnecting the line — but you deserve more compassion than I’ve shown, and I apologize.”

Olivia was taken aback.

“Well, thank you,” she said. She believed the sincerity in his voice. “I appreciate that.”

She looked at the group, which all stared back at her.

“You don’t think I should?” Olivia asked, directing the question to Frankie.

He gently rubbed at his arm, the bandage from his bullet wound poking out from under his short sleeve shirt.

“Ah, what do I know?” he asked. “And what does it matter? Make the call, I don’t care.”

In an awkwardly tight cluster, they scuttled their way across the room to the phone Olivia had used briefly before to miraculously hear her husband’s voice again. When she’d made that last call, the realization hadn’t even occurred to her - the possibility — that using the phone could produce enough electrical charge to shimmy a black hole into existence before their very eyes. But now, having watched the hasty assembling of a portable weapon, she was apprehensive about touching the phone. Hesitant.

Taking a deep breath, she reached for the receiver.

“Wait!” James unexpectedly barked.

Olivia jumped, surprised at her level of anxiety, how on edge she now found herself, nearly shaking, somehow even more so after hearing David’s voice just a short while before. It was as if knowing he was still alive was too good to be true, so much more than she deserved, and she was riddled with the fear that somehow it all still wasn’t true as if the phone conversation had been no more real than a recorded voice on a tape recorder.

“Watches,” James said, removing the band from his wrist. The group - except Tabitha, who began rummaging through her hastily compiled handbag - looked at him curiously. “Anyone wearing a watch? Anything metal on you? Fillings and the like? We don’t want any of that near this.”

They all looked at each other, patting down their own pockets.

“Money clip,” Tony said, pulling a thin wad of bills out of his pocket. He removed the dollars and dropped the clip into James’ pudgy hands, cupped together in a fleshy bowl.

“And your wedding ring there,” Tabitha said, pointing to Frankie.

Frankie curiously looked down at his left hand, almost surprised to see the ring on his finger.

“What on earth would it do to my ring?” Frankie asked as he slid off the gold band and handed it to James.

“Better safe than sorry,” James said. “You’ll get it back, of course.”

James shuffled quickly to the opposite side of the warehouse lab, dropped the contents in his hands onto a small metal cart, and scooted back across the room.

“Very good, then,” he said to the group gathered in a semicircle around the phone on the wall. “Go ahead and make the call.”

Olivia pushed a length of hair behind her ear and dialed the number from memory as they all stared wide-eyed, waiting for something to appear.

In her ear, the phone rang once, then again, and was picked up with a rattle on the third ring.

“Hello?” a breathy voice asked.

“Dad?”

“Olivia, stay put,” her father quickly said in a near gasp. “If we get disconnected again, stay where you are at that ENH place. You’re still there, right?”

“Yes, that’s where I’m at,” she said. “Are you okay? You sound out of breath.”

“I just don’t want us to get disconnected like before.”

Olivia looked over at James, who was moving his head around circularly, searching around the phone on the wall for any signs of an errant anomaly.

“Yeah, someone did that on purpose,” Olivia said. “Hung up the phone, that is.”

“What on earth for?” Mickey asked.

“Trying to avoid those black hole things.”

“They’re on the way.”

“What?” Olivia asked. “David?”

“And Jeremy,” Mickey said. “Left, oh, what? About a couple of hours ago already, right after we lost your call.”

“And they’re heading here?”

“ENH Initiative,” Mickey said. “That’s what you told them, right?”

“Yes, that’s right. That’s where I am.”

“Well, sit tight,” Mickey said. “We got the address from a phone book. Hopefully, it’s the right address. But they’ll be there soon. You’re safe?”

“As safe as any of us can be with all this.”

“I hear you,” Mickey said. “Those dang black holes sucked up my radio, and then this afternoon, one ate up my television. Guess now I’ll have to be forced to talk with your mother.”

“Your phone,” Olivia said. “They come through the phones, too.”

“Then why the hell are we using this?” Mickey said, and Olivia heard him rattle the phone in his hand.

“I’ve met some people who think they might know how to stop all this.”

“Your mom is hung up on the kids,” Mickey said.

“So am I.”

“But first things first.”

“Right.”

“I love you, girlie,” Mickey said, then again: “You’re safe?”

“I’m safe,” she answered. “And I love you, too.”

She hung up the phone and turned to face the others, waiting and watching with wide eyes.

“So nothing, then?” Frankie asked.

“My husband is on the way,” Olivia said, tears brimming. “He’s on the way here!”

“The phone,” Tabitha said. “Anything?”

Olivia stepped to the side, away from the phone.

“I…I wasn’t paying attention to that,” she said. “My father…It’s…it’s all too much.”

“I’m thinking I should zap it just in case,” James said, ignoring her.

“Just wait a moment,” Tabitha said, stepping toward the phone and holding up her hand.

“Did the phone feel hot to you when you used it?” she asked Olivia.

“Hot? No.”

“James, feel this,” Tabitha instructed her former mentor.

Tentatively, James stepped forward with an extended hand.

“Yeah, I feel it, too,” he said, and without another word, the two astrophysicists took a step backward in line with the rest of the group.

“Are you both messing with us?” Frankie asked.

“See for yourself,” Tabitha said.

“On second thought, I’ll take your word for it,” Frankie answered.

“The phone’s hot?” Tony asked. “What does that mean? Does that mean a black hole is forming? Is that what that means?”

James glared at Tony, his thin black eyebrows forming a V above his eyes.

“It’s a reasonable question when we can do nothing but watch you create an electromagnetic pulse gun and then tell us the air around a telephone is getting hot,” Tony chided.

“There!” Tabitha said as a black pinprick appeared out of nothingness in the center of the phone dial.

At first, it looked like nothing more than a dot from a magic marker. It hovered in the center of the device like an errant mark, stagnant and unmoving. But the longer they stared at it, the more obvious it was that the circle’s impenetrably dark blackness was rotating.

“It’s a vacuum,” Tabitha said.

“You’re right,” James agreed. He pointed at the black dot spinning in a surprisingly rapid clockwise circle. “It’s sucking inward upon itself!”

“I don’t believe it,” Olivia said, staring intently.

“Well, zap the damn thing!” Frankie commanded.

“Just wait a moment,” James said, holding the EMP device in one hand with his finger held precariously over the trigger button that once commanded a circuit board to do nothing more than take a simple photograph. But now, holding down the button would send a minor surge of power through the circuits, which would then run upward through the copper wiring wrapped around the metal rod and effectively wipe out any electrical current within a few feet of the device.

“Press the damn button!” Tony squeaked at him.

“Just wait,” Tabitha urged.

“What did you make the thing for if you’re not going to press the button?” Tony screamed, his voice cracking with fear.

Despite the rising panic, they were all immobilized as they gazed at the circle, spinning like a dilating iris.

“There!” James said, and they all watched in amazement as the spinning orb flickered, dancing in place, and doubled in size.

“It’s feeding upon itself,” Tabitha said. “The electrical current is just the impetus.”

“Exactly,” James said, stepping quickly forward and pressing down on the EMP’s makeshift trigger.

There was an audible hum, a crackling of static, and for an infinitesimal second, it seemed as though the light in the room was somehow irradiated, brighter, a solid white flash as if from a camera that illuminated the entire room in a spark of momentary lightning.

James stepped closer, pressing his hand out with the EMP device mere inches from the spinning black circle, and watched in amazement as the black hole stopped its rotation like someone had slammed on the brakes of a car. It hung, suspended in the center of the telephone, as if frozen in the space it occupied while the rest of the world moved on.

“What now?” Frankie asked.

“Wait for it,” Tabitha said, and as she spoke the words, the entire circle, now the size of a quarter, vanished and disappeared.

“Where’d it go?” Tony asked breathlessly.

There was no gradual dissipation or subtle fading away. It was a blink, an ephemeral floating phantom that may as well have been nothing more than a group hallucination. But they all knew what they’d seen. There was no questioning of that. In the same building where the world’s first man-made black hole had been originally brought to life, the world’s first EMP weapon had neutralized a black hole before it amassed the gravitational pull to destroy much more than the circuitry within a circa 1986 telephone.

They’d destroyed a black hole.

“And just like that,” James said with amazement, “it’s gone.”

Photo by Chaitanya Tatikonda on Unsplash