Hey there guys. I haven't submitted anything for a while and this is something I just whipped up tonight. Wanted to know what you guys thought. I like it so far and plan to continue writing it so give me as much advice as you want! There is a fair bit of text there so read as much or as little as you'd like. Please try to read the whole thing. Cheers.
“I’m not quite sure you understand this fully Jack,” he said, pushing me inside the door and closing it behind him, “The tech that could evolve from this would change everything. It would change the way we eat, the way we entertain ourselves, hell it would definitely change the way we fight.”
“That’s the part I’m most concerned about. If this research gets out into the hands of the military, it could be catastrophic!” I said, not backing down from Dr. Carter. Although Steven Carter was at least half a foot taller and double my breadth his pleading eyes gave me some kind of reason to not feel fear.
“Please, I can’t take this to the Council without you, I’ve got no cred with them,” said Carter, moving deeper into the lab and turning on the lights.
“For good reason Steve, I’m not taking this data to the Council or the US Military,” I said, picking up my bag and heading towards the door. The lock on it flicked to red. “Unlock the door Steven, don’t be so childish.”
“Jack, this is 2056! We’ve been working on this for ten whole years and now it blossoms and you’re going to walk away? You’d walk away from something that would put us in the history books forever?” asked Carter, sitting down at his desk.
“Yeah, I would, without a second thought. Steve, this could be devastating, look at what the Manhattan Project did to the world all those years ago,” my hand had dipped into my bag, gripping the pistol inside tightly. In the mirror behind Steven I could see him gripping a revolver under the desk.
“You think blackmatter would do that to the world now? We’ve got global peace Jack! You see it every day with all the GCC soldiers on the street.”
“Bullshit,” I said, drawing the gun and letting him know I was serious, “The Global Confederate Council is nothing but a mass propaganda factory.”
Now Carter had his weapon in plain view, “You’re such a stubborn asshole Jack, and you’ll be remembered for it. Imagine that, poor Professor Jack Thane dies in a blackmatter energy detonation in the Global Confederate Council’s labs on Orion Five.
“Now that would be quite the uproar for the GCC to handle; their leading scientist, killed by his own experiment on the largest orbit colony of Earth.”
I lowered my gun, “Think about that Steven, you have no idea what blackmatter energy does outside mass transport. A blackmatter fuelled detonation could destroy Earth for all we know!”
“You just don’t get it!” Carter yelled, waving his gun threateningly, “I don’t give a shit! If I can’t take this tech to the Council with you, I’ll take the data I need, totally discredit your name with a horrific accident and then in five years time,” he waved his hands as if to imitate his name in lights, “Dr. Steven Carter discovers the secrets of blackmatter energy manipulation.”
“Go to hell,” I said, and pulled the trigger.
Click.
“That might have stopped me,” said Steven with a laugh, “Shame it’s not loaded.” He tossed my empty magazine across the lab. The door behind unlocked from the outside from someone using their key card and Carter stashed the gun.
An Asian scientist whose name I couldn’t remember came inside and I dashed out, walking briskly down the hall to the elevator, Steven’s laptop clunking into mine in my shoulder bag.
As the elevator descended my heart rate began to do the same. My temples stopped throbbing and my breathing came back to normal, all very slowly.
For ten years, Steven and I had been working on a new kind of energy sourced from a dying star twenty years before. This energy, known as blackmatter energy, had no mass, no set width and did not reflect light. The only way to view pure blackmatter energy was by pumping electricity through it.
We had discovered that blackmatter energy could transfer its properties to other objects when stimulated correct by nuclear fission. Once an object had no mass, it could travel faster than light itself and this had been a tremendous breakthrough.
Neither we nor the Council had the guts to attempt any FTL travel with humans involved so the project ended there, officially. Unofficially, we had been recommissioned to investigate the potential military applications for blackmatter energy and out discoveries were phenomenal.
Blackmatter was able to not only eliminate the mass of an object, but increase it, and due to this the GCC developed the first ‘shielded’ armour suit. This suit, which bore more resemblance to a NASCAR racer’s getup than medieval armour, was powered by blackmatter energy, and also created a bubble of air with increased mass around itself. Although prolonged exposure to gunfire, electricity and natural fire wore down this barrier, it was put into global military practice a year after its conception.
Just after this, I had found that using a small amount of blackmatter, projectiles could be fired from a conventional firearm. Not only did this provide caseless ammunition it allowed the bullets to be fired at speeds never even comprehended before. In some cases, the bullet hit the target before the shooter felt the recoil. Needless to say, this came to be used by the GCC even quicker than the armour augment.
Then, one month before now, Carter used my findings in combination with his own research on black holes to find a way to funnel blackmatter energy down a pre-defined route. This created the first weapon grade laser.
That project was called, ‘Kratos’ and sealed by myself under an administrative code that no other could open. I saw Kratos as too dangerous to be released to the GCC, especially since we discovered that Kratos could burn through any material known to man. In theory, if a large enough versions of Kratos was created and used, it could create a blackmatter energy field, found in the dead centre of black holes. The field would subsequently create a black hole down which the laser would travel.
If Kratos was directed down a funnel with the infinite size of a black hole, it would expand perpetually. This meant that if it came out the other side, the universe would simply cease to exist.
So now I jogged towards my car. It unlocked automatically thanks to a microchip inserted in my left forearm. Everyone on Orion Five had one. They did everything, from hold passwords to unlocking doors and even making telephone calls for you.
I got in, panting heavily. I had to stop Steven but I couldn’t do anything that night, it was too late, almost midnight. I decided to go home, sleep and visit the Council in the morning with the request of a partner change.
Then I could even destroy all evidence of Kratos on each of our computers, leaving no trace of the awesomely powerful project. With shaky hands I slipped the key into the ignition and turned it. The car thrummed to life and I began to drive home just as Steven emerged at the base of the building.
Hatred burned in his eyes.
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