Jenevieve, A Story in Physics (941 hits)
Category: GeneralLabels: SciFi
Rating: 1.95 on 28 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by shadow (View user info) at 2007-09-14 15:11:10 EDT
Genevieve stood in the back of the crowd, wearing a dark wig and thick make-up. She wore a scarf over her head and face and large sunglasses. Her cloak draped down below her knees where it cut away over an overlong skirt. All in all, she looked nothing like herself, which was of course the idea.
One by one mourners walked across the blueish grass of the cemetery between a number of white and gray markers, and said a few words. Genevieve listened intently, making a mental note of who felt obliged to speak and who looked bored at the whole affair. She had to bite her finger at once to keep from laughing when an old boyfriend stood up to say that she had been the only woman he had ever loved. What a selfish thing to say, to gain the pity of the crowd she thought.
She wished she had a camera for this; after all, it's not everyday you get to witness your own funeral.
For a moment she thought she had been discovered; the the man wearing a heather-gray suit topped with receding gray hair, who had been a professor at the university, had stared intently at her for nearly a minute, but he finally dismissed his thoughts as passing fancy. As the mourners and well-wishers began to make their way across the lonely field of stones and back to the parlor and warmth of the funeral home's fireplace, Genevieve felt compelled to stay and say goodbye to her other half. She though better of this however when she noticed that the only people lingering by the grave were members of her immediate family, who would be most likely to discover her.
___________________________
Two weeks pass in the usual fashion, one day following the other in a pattern of perfect repeated logic. The sun rises, the sun sets, nothing unusual there. Genevieve watched these markers of time through the motel widow with unease, each day passing too quickly for her liking. She knew the time had come to let her father in on the big secret, the one she had held diligently in the face of interrogation, intimidation and mental torture. The secret made unbearable by her own untimely demise seventeen days ago.
She grabbed her purse from the dusty table, and called for a taxi.
Her accounts had been frozen and to make the money necessary to pay for things like cabs and food, she had resorted to panhandling on the corner of US Rt 1 and Whiskey Bottom Road. She intensely hated this for it was a blow to her pride firstly, and she despised the filthy men who constantly tried to proposition her. Nevertheless, desperate times call for desperate measures, and she had enough for a few more nights, and a few more taxis.
The cab stopped on the end of Sea Pearl Lane and Genevieve gave the driver exact change. He scoffed at her and shook his head, mumbling something about "cheap hoes" and "don't get paid enough for this shit." Just to further ingrain his point, he squealed bald tires as he tore off in the direction of Highway 32. Genevieve watched him go, dreading the next few moments, wishing that things had gone differently, that Jenevieve was still alive.
She walked the short driveway up to the beige house with brown shutters. She stood on the concrete steps and drew in a long ragged breath. She hesitated, steeling herself, then pulled the handle of the brass door knocker bearing her family's name, and slammed it three decisive times.
At first, there was only silence. Slowly a door creaked open somewhere in the interior, and a set of tired feet shuffled wearily down the steps of the split foyer and to the door, where they rested, their accompanying body leaning heavily on the steel front door. An exhausted man turned the knob and pulled the door open. Genevieve's father slowly looked her over, standing in the doorway.
There was no movement, no recognition. He stared blankly at her, as if lost in reverie. Slowly tears leaked from his eyes, carving tiny streams through the foothills of his wrinkled face. He stood barely breathing, eyes wide and mouth hung open. "wh-wha-what?" he asked weakly. It seemed he had aged thirty years in only a few days; even his chestnut hair seemed thiner and more gray.
"Dad, it's me." Genevieve said softly.
"A dream," Her father replied, "another dream." The tears flowed freely and he gasped for air in spite of himself, spewing a little white phlegm. "Why?" he choked, "Why did you have to go?"
"Dad, I'm not dead. I'm standing right in front of you. Today is Tuesday. You are-"
"Enough!" He cut her off, shaking with sobs. "My daughter is dead! Why am I haunted by these dreams? I buried you! I BURIED YOU!" He collapsed backward onto the stairs. Genevieve looked around to see if anyone had witnessed the spectacle. Sighing angrily she walked through the doorway and slapped her father across the face. He stared at her, unbelieving. His face turned red with sudden anger and confusion.
"Dad! Get ahold of yourself!" She looked down at him. "I'm not dead. This is not a dream. That slap I just gave you was as real as the scene you're making!" She closed the door and walked past him up the stairs and into the dining room where stacks of newspaper littered the rectangular table and two chairs lay broken against the wall. The place was a mess. She took a seat beside the head of the table and waited. Her father composed himself and still shaking, followed her up the stairs.
"How is this possible?" He asked gravely.
"The girl in the casket was a copy." She replied flatly.
"How?" He asked again.
"Do you remember when I got the internship with Dr. Rothenstein?"
"Yes..."
"Remember when I told you we were researching Quantum Physics, for Goddard?"
"Yes." He was calming down but still uncertain if what he was seeing was real.
"Remember when I told you the project was top secret, and I couldn't tell you anything except that we were on the verge of a breakthrough?"
"Yes," he said, taking the seat at the head of the table, "I was so proud of you."
"I'm ready to tell you about that research. It started when the PHOENIX and StAR proton accelerators were put on line in 2005. Dr. Michaels and Dr. Hubbard detailed what they believed to be the most basic subatomic particle interactions. That set of documents opened the door to dozens of other men and women exploring the relationships of energy at a scale never seen before. Dr. Rothenstein took his research in an uncommon direction, testing the theories behind teleportation."
"No, that's science fiction." Her father replied, listening intently to the solid ghost before him.
"Correction, it was science fiction, back in the 60s when Star Trek came out. Now it's a little closer to reality. The catch is, you can't just compress molecules and shoot them across a room visa vi a beam of light, the way the writers would like us to believe, you have to make a copy of the item that is atomically perfect, accounting for Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, allowing an acceptable variance of .0002%, then in the space of a fraction of a fraction of a second, project the copy and destroy the original in the process."
"I don't understand," he began, "what does this all mean?"
"I'm getting to that. The point is, 'teleportation' is not actually possible because that would imply that the object is sustained in whole and transported in tact from one location to another; the reality is that the object would have to have its atoms blasted apart into their simplest energetic components and then reformed perfectly from some kind of energy blue print, therefore the object that reappears is a copy. We don't have anything sophisticated enough to track on that level, let alone the fact that Heisenberg comes into play dictating that we cannot know where every atom is at any given point in time, thus the acceptable variance. Then there's the problem of the magic disappearing/reappearing atoms."
"What?" He was having trouble following her words, between his grief and her winding notions of energy and theory, he could hardly understand a word she was saying.
"As it turns out, we don't live in a universe per se, it's actually a multiverse. The theory is that atoms can and do slip out of existence and come back. Sometimes new atoms come back, sometimes they never reappear. It's a fascinating phenomenon, but we should stick to the problem at hand; phasing."
"What does this have to do with you? Who was the girl in the casket?" He was becoming frustrated with her winding explanation.
"The experiments we were performing in lab shifted to phasing, the phenomenon of an object out of sync with reality. Our research relied heavily on understanding the behavior of atoms on subatomic level."
"Please get to the point, dear." He was beginning to look better, the proper color had returned to his face and though he still bore the obvious signs of a person who had suffered terrible loss, he was no longer the devastated man crumbled onto his own stairs.
"The point is, we succeed. We forced objects out of sync and brought them back. Here's where is gets tricky though; Dr. Kenter from NASA believed our research could unlock the key to teleportation, which was ultimately the goal. He pointed us in the direction of Projection, and the results were amazing. In Dr. Rothenstein's office, there are... or at least were... photographs of objects occupying TWO spaces at the same time, atomically identical copies existing IN THE SAME SPACE AND TIME. Dad, do you understand what that means?" She looked at him intensely, expectantly. He poured the possibilities over in his mind, reaching for the conclusion she was hinting at. "The girl in the casket was a copy of me!" she exclaimed. "Or I was a copy of her, either way."
"A copy?"
"A copy!"
"What?"
"Dad!" Now she was frustrated. "In the phasing experiments, we moved from raw materials to complex objects, to living animals, then to humans. During the human experiment, I was projected successfully three times and it was documented on very high speed film. It was the most important breakthrough in the last ten years of research!" She was very excited and gesticulating wildly, throwing her hands up and slamming them down on the table. "But then... something went wrong. I'm still not sure, maybe a power surge, maybe a computer glitch... Dr. Kenter theorized that if it had been a power surge, there may have been enough juice to create a pocket of negative gravity, perhaps making an eddy in space-time."
"Huh?"
"Instead of just projecting me, solidly, into two spaces, the machines actually copied me... but without destroying the original... We had all but achieved teleportation... but with an unexpected outcome. It wasn't supposed to happen, it wasn't supposed to be possible, but it did, and it is."
"So why didn't I hear about this?" He asked, beginning to comprehend.
"Imagine the possibilities! Of course there were potentially beneficial applications; making surplus food, raw materials, but then there were the dangers... imagine if a madman could project a limitless number of bombs, if you could copy stacks of gold or clone an entire army! The technology simply could not be trusted to the United States Government, not after Oppenheimer, poor man... not after the Atomic Bomb..." Her voice trailed off as she looked out the window, rubbing the tips of her fingers against the table.
"So, what happened? You- I mean she- died in a car accident."
"So it would seem. We hid the research for our findings and though Dr. Kenter felt it necessary to report the event to the higher ups, without the documents nobody believed him, at first anyway. Dr. Rothenstein went missing four months ago and Jenevieve and I went into hiding. We couldn't be seen at the same time anywhere, and we were identical copies of one another, so I picked up a night shift job and she worked a day shift. No one ever saw us together because one of us was always home while the other was out, except when switching the car. It was actually kind of nice, we shared everything... it was like having a best friend, or a sister. It was rough sometimes too, we had to check for spies and clockers around every corner, and without being able to contact Dr. Rothenstein, we just had to stick it out and see what would happen."
"And then?" he asked, thoroughly intrigued.
"And then she was coming to pick me up from work, and got creamed by a semi, no company markings, no trailer behind it. I think it was a set-up, somebody wants the information we knew, or rather I know, to be buried."
"But why if it's so valuable?"
"It's only valuable if you're the only one who knows it."
To be continued...
Maybe, depending on whether or not I get distracted between now and Monday...
User Reviews
Submitted by bruzwuld (user info) at 2007-11-09 10:27:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Brilliant piece of writing.
Submitted by zwerg (user info) at 2007-10-02 11:22:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Hilarity_Ensues (user info) at 2007-10-01 14:38:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You know, I'm amazed at how many good stories I miss.
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2007-09-18 14:13:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
inion, I am interested in that story you read, the one that this reminded you of?
I'd like to read it if you can give me an author... title, something. Personally I think that a number of my ideas could be written better by other authors and if someone out there had this thought come up I would very much like to see what he/she did with the concept.
I wish I had more time for ubershorts, but you guys will just have to settle for the stuff I can write on my lunch break at the moment. When the home/office move is done I should have a bit more time... I hope.
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2007-09-17 10:20:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
i'm only giving this a +1 because the description and concept of the teleportation too closely reminded me of a scifi story i read a few years ago. it was good though.
Submitted by firefly (user info) at 2007-09-17 09:29:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by RabiedRooster (user info) at 2007-09-16 09:21:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by ilikesteak (user info) at 2007-09-16 04:00:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Not impressed with the writing, but I like something about it.
Submitted by Ducky (user info) at 2007-09-16 01:43:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Zebra (user info) at 2007-09-15 14:43:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-09-15 13:22:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
interesting concept, but really hard to read for some reason, like slogging thru mud.
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2007-09-15 12:45:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
woo woo wooooo
Submitted by Progr3ss (user info) at 2007-09-15 11:31:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I <3 Physics
Submitted by St_Jimmy (user info) at 2007-09-14 20:40:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Enjoyable.
Submitted by scourge (user info) at 2007-09-14 18:43:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by ChaosJester (user info) at 2007-09-14 15:24:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Hey Shadow.
*waves*
------
If you like sci-fi, this guy ---> http://www.ubersite.com/u/Coyote does it exceptionally well. I'm not sure if he has posted since you've been around. If you have read his stuff ...whatever, go read it again.
Submitted by rorrim (user info) at 2007-09-14 17:13:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Will read in the morning.
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2007-09-14 16:48:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-09-14 15:31:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
eddy's in space time? what's he doing there?
---------------------
The Time Warp, I presume.
THE TRAAAAAAANSDUCER WILL SEDUUUCE YA
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2007-09-14 16:21:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by FALLEN (user info) at 2007-09-14 15:46:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
good read.
will the next part have clone-on-clone lesbo action?
please?
Submitted by SunnyG (user info) at 2007-09-14 15:42:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Good sci-fi, your science facts are not bad...I can tell you did some research, but you throw too many of them in and it loses the authentic feel.
A tip: cover entanglement, it's spooky science.
Submitted by ChaosJester (user info) at 2007-09-14 15:34:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Please do.
Looking forward for more.
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2007-09-14 15:33:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
damn.... spotted typos.... ocd flaring up....
anywho, it doesn't necessarily have to be a gov't conspiracy, could be insane billionare researcher Mr. Whothehellever or even Time Cops from the future!
Well, that sounds pretty weak, but I'll think it over.
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-09-14 15:31:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
eddy's in space time? what's he doing there?
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-09-14 15:29:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2007-09-14 15:27:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
would you believe the University of Maryland Department of Computer, Mathematic, and Physical Sciences said I had "no potential for success" in science?
I hope the dean chokes on those words someday soon....
Then again, Doctor Holtz did tell me I should be writing instead of researching... he was a cool guy, that one was.
Submitted by ChaosJester (user info) at 2007-09-14 15:24:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Hey Shadow.
*waves*
Good story. I think that this is the only sci-fi stuff I've seen recently besides my own.
You sound smart.
Anyway, the only sticking point I have here is mostly a matter of taste. I dislike conspiracy thrillers 'cause I often find myself sympathizing with the shadowy government men.
Also, remember that what one man can dream through genius, another can accomplish through hard work.
Please continue this.
Submitted by DirtyHarry (user info) at 2007-09-14 15:23:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"Gordon Freeman to the Courtesy Desk, Freeman to the Courtesy Desk. Thank you."
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2007-09-14 15:20:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
sorta hard to stay interested, but it contained physics, so +2.
BTW: Has anyone seen the news about vibrating saltwater to create fuel?
Fucking AWESOME.