Soulbreakers

Forbidden Lab

Staples School

They crossed the empty and dark campus and walked up a flight of stone steps that led to the school's main entrance. It was already closed, but Rod had already come to work several times late at night, so he had the keys. He unlocked and pushed the heavy wooden door ajar until they could enter.

"Before working here, I used to work on the other side of the city. I participated in the production line of alephcarbons at the Gate Research Tech Division, a private contractor for the government. After a while, I started a research on alephgraphenes. That's when things started to get weird. In the same week that one of my best friends died in a car accident, the government decided to shut down the project and end the contract. The company closed soon afterwards.

"Everyone at the company was devastated. At least the board members were kind enough to let me carry all the material and equipment necessary to continue my research.

"When I landed a gig here at the school, I brought it all to this lab, since I spend more time here than at home."

They entered a room with glass cases filled with chemistry materials standing unashamedly next to electronic chips, gadgets and, over a long table, several scale models for physics experiments. The disparate, multi-disciplinarian objects clearly indicated a high school laboratory.

Rod inserted his key into an unmarked door and turned it open. They all descended through a stair entering a spacious dark chamber.

"This annex is rarely used," Rod said, turning on the lights. "It's almost a personal lab," he shyly smiled.

He took a glass case from one of the lockers and put it on a table. The glass case contained a scale model of an interdimensional gate: two metallic spheres stood separated by an expandable cylindrical grid.

"Looks like a standard gate to me," Danita said.

Outside the glass case, there was a knob on the base. "Try it, if you like," Rod said, pointing to it.

When Danita barely touched the knob, both spheres disappeared.

"Hey!" she yelled. "Why the grid didn't expand first?"

"It did," Rod said, "but so slightly that you couldn't notice it."

"I think Baun and Davi would love to see that," Jeb said. "Could I do a video call to show it to my colleagues?"

"Sure, go ahead," Rod replied.

Jeb grabbed a tripod from his bag, mounted a camera over it, and started a video call with the Space Team.

"Folks, take a look at this." Jeb made a series of discreet movements on the knob, making the spheres appear and disappear.

"That's certainly odd," Baun said over the phone. "The grid should expand way more before the spheres could disappear. With the grid contracted like that, its standard matter should be enough to counter the negative gravity between the two spheres. The grid should expand completely to make its standard gravity sparse enough to let the negative gravity between the spheres repel each other."

"Fine..." Diane leaned toward the glass case, "...but this grid barely moved and the spheres already disappeared."

"Either this grid has a weaker gravity than standard gates, or the spheres have a stronger negative one," Baun said.

"Yes. Here, it's the second case," Rod elucidated. "The expandable grid was constructed using all the norms and standards required by a traditional interdimensional gate. The spheres, however, were built using a new technique."

Rod turned on a notebook at the side of the glass case and opened an application that displayed a lot of information about the gate. "There is a spectrometer installed inside the capsule. It transmits its data to this app, if you wanna see more details."

Jeb looked at the displayed information and frowned in surprise. "But there are measurements here of several other universes, not only the two known..."

Rod reached the keyboard and opened a file that displayed several stages of the new gate construction. "When I was still in my former job, working for the private contractor, I discovered that, when working with alephatoms, they can establish interdimensional chemical bonds, forming a four-dimensional stable structure that has an extremely high negative gravity potential.

"At the time, we were searching for ways to produce new forms of alephcarbons that would yield a higher negative gravity and still be stable. That's when I discovered that, if we put alephcarbons in a neighboring dimension very close to ours – less than one nanometre apart – then the alephcarbons can establish chemical bonds through the dimensions.

"This forms a four-dimensional alephcarbons' chain that boosts the teleporting speed in ways that no traditional gate could, because the capsule is continually accelerated through several neighboring dimensions. With these successive boosts, the teleporting capsule can reach parallel universes that couldn't be reached before."

Diane turned to the intercom that was linked to the space station. "Got that, Davi?"

"Yep. Now the reasons for the Soulbreakers to persecute him are becoming more clear. A teleporting capsule built with this new material could teleport us to more distant dimensions that we haven't visited yet."

"Where all the fun happens," Viatriz giggled.

"Don't hold your breath," Danita said scowling. "Soulbreakers are probably messing things there already."

"Yeah, indeed..." Viatriz sighed, realizing it.