A blinding flash followed by a soft pop startled Dr. Magigate. He lurched, teetered, then fell back with a clatter. Lying on his back, his feet tangled in the stool, it took Magigate several moments to orient himself and verify that no bones had been broken and that the flash had not burned him. Then he noticed the light. Just as he'd predicted: a floating orb of cool pastel colors, predominantly blue, throbbed and flashed nearby. But the gentle pulse did not come from his apparatus; it emanated from the center of the room, where a glowing bubble glided slowly but steadily away. He rubbed his eyes; the sight remained. A genuine smile—the first in countless days and nights—swept his face. Otherworldly it looked, something straight out of a fairy tale. A vessel Glinda the Good might favor.
He couldn't help but admire the beauty, the perfection of the small globe of light, buoyed like a Lilliputian sun by its own physics: at its center nothing more complex than a speck of polymeric substrate generating concentric quantum rings charged and oriented precisely to counter the burden of Earth's gravity. Magigate wallowed in the elegance of invention, which, at its best, could train nature's most elusive laws to defy themselves—at least, in appearance.
With the slightest breath of air, he pushed the bubble around the room; it glided like a puck on ice. Magigate imagined a world where cars, buses, trains, and planes glided to their destinations without the roar of combustion, without the noxious plume and squeal. He imagined massive turbines fueled by nothing more than a trickle of water, spinning out enough electricity to power cities. He imagined shuttles traveling to the moon and beyond with the regularity and accessibility of cruise ships to the Bahamas.
His eyes grew glassy as he allowed himself to fantasize a world no longer confined by the yoke of gravity. Possibilities rushed at him with the tumult and festivity of a parade. A new industry—the Gravity Reduction Industry, or, better yet, the Glide Industry—would be born. Raw material suppliers would continuously improve upon Magigate's superconductive sample. New pharmaceutical divisions would be dedicated to improving his Polyena virus. Glide cell manufacturers would pack these gyroscopes into bikes, cars, boats, and planes—all of which would need to be reinvented too.
Without gravity, a calculator-sized solar cell could supply enough energy to propel a family sedan or even a taxi from New York to London at Mach speeds—no need to travel by plane. And the best part: besides a small charge injected into the Glide cell just before it left the loading docks, there would be no other energy requirements and no waste. No oil, no gas, no carbon dioxide, no ozone.
As Magigate's first wave of thrill receded, into its wake washed the dark curls of doubt. He imagined energy cartels seizing his invention. Even worse, and more likely under his present circumstances, he glimpsed its pernicious military exploits in the hands of the Academy and Biggs Industries. If concealed by an elite axis of leaders, the balance of power might be forever skewed. The dark side of antigravity could easily eclipse nuclear fission's. He imagined armies marching—no, gliding across broken, smashed plains, over smoking hills, and through burning cities with terrible speed and fury; he saw a black web of tropospheric satellites choking the earth, lasers like deadly red eyes staring down from the sky; he saw missiles hurtling around the planet, unhindered by distance or speed, arriving at their targets with silent and merciless precision. Magigate could not bear these visions. Though he had tried to prepare for this moment of success, he had never willed himself to acknowledge the reaches of an invention that reduced gravity to near zero. Now that it was upon him, he could not accept that he might be responsible for spawning such a dark and dastardly world.
Just then, another blast, louder and more violent, blew his lab door from its hinges. For an instant, Magigate thought his experiment had gone terribly wrong. Then he saw three silhouettes rush in through the smoke-filled doorway.
Sleepless days on end caught up with him. Was he hallucinating? Had agents really been lurking outside his lab, ready to invade at any moment, to steal his invention, to put it to sinister uses? Impossible. But the coincidence—then it clicked.
The Academy. The Prophet.
What a fool I am, he thought. This was no mirage; he had been in far more danger than he ever imagined.
Magigate dropped to his knees behind his workstation, knowing he had only moments to escape. "LUCKI," he said breathlessly. "Clear the latest entries. Lock down data stores. Implement defensive procedures."
As his lab's private supercomputer acknowledged his request, Magigate stuffed his notebook into his nearby backpack. His mind raced. He would need a diversion to escape.
Like a guardian angel, the orb floated out of the plume of smoke. Magigate grabbed it and, standing to take aim, hurled it at his attackers, but not before marveling at how unexpectedly cold it felt and how his hand sprang back as if it had closed around a balloon. His fingertips tingled.
On instinct, the two agents, flanking their lieutenant, began firing at the bright, scintillating light.
"Dee, Dum, cease fire! Holster those weapons," Stringer shouted. She glared at her men. "We need him alive."
The orb ricocheted around the room, momentarily confusing the agents, pinning them to their positions.
The diversion was enough for Magigate to scramble toward the lab's emergency exit—a tempered-glass kick-out window. He tore off his lab coat as he ran. Along the way, he pushed bottles to the floor, smashing them and spilling their toxic contents. Crouching beneath the window, he used a nearby flint gun to light his chemical soaked lab coat. He threw it into the puddles, which roared into flame, blocking the intruders from reaching him.
"Damn! We can't let him escape," Stringer barked. "Hatter, pull the van around the south side. And move it! There's a dummy window we didn't catch on the prints." She cursed again, angry that she'd relied on surveillance findings. If the Academy had given her more time she would have cased this place with her own team—run through some drills. Still, she should have had that window covered. If the scientist escaped...she refused to consider the consequences.
"Move out!" She waved to her agents, who began circling the flames.
"Fire your weapons but we want him alive!"
All around Magigate, bullets smacked the wall. Scared, but determined, he stood and kicked the window hard. As designed, the window popped out with his first effort. The bright orb flew over his shoulder and shot through the opening as if sucked out by the small change in pressure.
Encouraged by the orb's escape, Magigate pulled himself through and fled into the cool night air. Before he reached the surrounding woods, a van squealed around the corner. He crashed into the dense brush and raced toward the estate's wrought-iron fence. Adrenaline-charged, he scaled it with ease, oblivious to the scratches and cuts he suffered clearing the sharp spikes.
He ran. Tears welled in his eyes. Tree branches and low brush clawed his arms and face, but he pushed on, knowing only that he must get away. Paralleling the road, but keeping out of sight, he slipped and slid down a shallow slope. He tried to hurdle a log, but misjudged his speed, caught his foot, and fell.
He lay on the damp pine needles, panting, unsure how badly he was injured. His most palpable feelings were fear and remorse. After a few minutes, he pulled himself up and sat on the log. He needed a plan. But he had to think fast.
In a few hours, the sun would rise. Behind him his lab—and just about everything he knew and represented—rose into a blazing inferno. With his life on the line Magigate now saw that his blind faith in the virtues of science had made him vulnerable. Whatever his unstained childhood dream had been about, he knew it was not to become a victim of his own ambition or others'.
Now and then history lurches this way or that, derailed by the least perturbation, by a thing that would ordinarily fall in line unnoticed amongst an infinite throng but, because space and time collude, finds itself situated to capsize the laws of probability. Such had been the timing of the orb floating by in Magigate's moment of need and his instinct to grab it. Or, maybe it had been a gift from the gods, as rife with portent as Prometheus' fire. Either way, the brilliant sphere had flashed to life like a beacon illuminating the treacherous way to something more fulfilling, if only he could see clear to follow. Plus, against all odds, it had enabled his escape.
Magigate smiled as he realized that the fugitive globe would eventually drift off into space, unencumbered by earth's gravity. He wondered if anyone would see? A falling star rising, he thought. Like the orb he too must flee and leave no trace.
Tightening the straps on his pack, Magigate stood and moved on through the scrub pine forest, keeping a wary eye on the road. As he picked his way through the gloom, he felt like the events in his lab had lifted more than gravity's yoke. It had lifted the curtain on his enemies.
The Academy would have to answer for its actions. And that meant the Prophet. The thought saddened Magigate. For the last few weeks, he'd allowed himself to fantasize a life with Samantha Biggs. In fact, he'd barely been able to contain his desire to see her again. Now, however, there was no going back.
Magigate was not a man of war, he was a man of science, but that did not mean he could not stick up for himself and for the principles he believed in.
Faced with sudden purpose and with his back to the flickering glow of his past, Dr. Magigate disappeared into the waning night.