About ten years ago I temporarily had the most awful job. I doubt if it conformed to employment regulations. The job involved soldering electronic components onto circuit boards, at a place that made custom electronics for a variety of clients. I had done a bit of electronics as a hobby so I knew how to solder.
However, that wasn’t the bad part. The bad part was they had this tiny room where they dried the circuit boards after washing them in toluene.
“We’re planning to install a fan but we haven’t got one yet.” the guy told me on my interview.
One day a week each we had to stand in there performing various tasks with the circuit boards. So we were inhaling ridiculous amounts of toluene, which can eventually cause brain damage if you inhale it in large enough amounts.
I only lasted two months in that job. The toluene made me feel sick and dizzy.
The reason I mention it is, there was a man there by the name of Godfrey. Why his parents called him Godfrey, I have no idea, but I gathered they were posh. You can’t even shortened it easily, but he told me people call him Goff, which still sounded ridiculous.
“Why are you doing this job?” I said to him one day. “You’re wasted here.”
Goff had a brain like a planet and was always talking about things he was trying to invent.
“Another six months and I’ll stop.” he said. “I want to save up for some parts I need.”
“Can’t your folks help you?”
“My father’s in prison and my mother’s in a mental hospital so it seems unlikely.”
“Your father’s in prison?” I said, feeling perhaps it was best to lightly skip over the subject of his unfortunate mother. “What for?”
“He poisoned someone he didn’t like.”
They say there’s a fine line between genius and madness, and I wasn’t completely sure which side of it Goff was on, but it was clear his parents were on the wrong side altogether.
He was a little weird and his family even weirder, but I liked Goff nonetheless. His entire life seemed to be devoted to his inventions, to a ridiculous extent, because he would have had more money to spend on his private research if he’d devoted some time to actually making money, instead of taking rubbish jobs whenever he needed money.
My excuse was, I was between proper jobs.
Goff invited me to come and see what he was working on. That was a chance I wasn’t going to pass up.
In spite of the current situation of his parents, it seemed they’d made a tidy packet while still able to work, and he lived in their house, which was a beautiful old renovated farmhouse in a village on the edge of town. He had dedicated an extensive cellar entirely to his experiments.
“This is my masterpiece.” he said, waving at a large metal cube, reaching nearly to the ceiling.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a dark box.” he replied. “It’s supplied with fresh air via a system I devised—” he indicated a series of pipes going into the cabinet, stuck to one side of it “—but it keeps out just about one-hundred-percent of ambient light.”
“Not wishing to be obtuse, but what’s the point of that?”
“You see, many ordinary processes emit photons, too weak for the eye to see, even in darkness. Ordinary human bodily processes, for example. Metabolic processes. Inside this chamber are a set of extremely sensitive photomultipliers. They can detect even individual photons. Let’s say you’ve got a tumour, for instance. The tumour may emit characteristic photons, and using this device I can potentially build up an image of it.
“My hypothesis is that such a tumour might be destroyed by bombarding the body externally with photons of the same precise frequencies that it emits.”
“Have you … tested the idea in any way?” I asked, privately thinking his hypothesis sounded pretty silly.
“Sort of.” he said. “Anyway, I’ve got something rather interesting set up in there right now. Come and see.”
He unfastened some catches and one entire face of the cube swung open. Inside, at the far end, was some kind of apparatus set up on a trestle. It included what seemed to be a vial of water, with various electrical devices positioned around it.
“Is there enough space in there for both of us?” I asked him.
“Of course.” he said.
“Honestly, it looks a bit claustrophobic.”
“You can get out any time you want. Come!”
He went into the cube and beckoned me.
Rather reluctantly, I followed him in. He pulled the door closed behind us, so we were sealed entirely in the cube.
“I can’t see a damn thing in here!” I said.
“Exactly.” he replied.
But then I did see something: a couple of little blue flashes.
“What was that?” I asked, feeling rather alarmed.
“Just static. Ordinarily, to examine the human body, one has to wear special clothing to eliminate them, and I humidify the air, which helps a lot. They’re too bright for the photo sensors and they just make a mess of everything. But they don’t matter for our purposes at the moment.”
“What are our purposes, exactly?”
“First, sit tight while I set the apparatus up. Your eyes need to adjust. It’ll take about fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes?” I said incredulously. “I can’t stand fifteen minutes in here! We’ll suffocate!”
“No, no.” he said. “I told you, there’s a machine pumping in fresh air. “You’ll be fine. You can sit down if you like.”
“But how are you going to set your stuff up in the dark?”
“I’ve trained myself to do it by touch alone.”
And so I sat there in a corner of the cube while he tinkered with something in the pitch-black darkness.
After a while I said to him, “I can see something. Weird patterns.”
“That’s just your brain playing tricks on you. When the retinas receive no stimulation, the brain starts inventing stuff. If you were to spend a few hours in here you’d start hallucinating wildly.”
“Oh, crikey.” I said.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be out of here in half an hour at the most.”
I began to find the little flashes and spiral patterns quite interesting, once I’d got over my initial reservations. I wasn’t sure which were caused by static and which were purely in my mind, but I figured I could stick half an hour in the interests of getting to see something that would hopefully be rather unique.
After some time—perhaps fifteen minutes—he said, “It’s ready. Stand up.”
I stood up, keeping my hand on the side of the enclosure.
“Look here.” he said.
“Where?”
He took my arm and pulled me slightly over towards the middle of the cube. Then, feeling for my head, he positioned it at a point that I guessed to be directly in front of the glass vial.
“Watch.” he said.
“I don’t see anything.” I told him.
But then I saw it: a tiny, rather beautiful point of light, glowing white in the darkness.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“It’s called sonoluminescence.” he replied. “I’ve created an ultrasonic standing wave in the water in the vial. For unknown reasons, this causes the water to emit light.”
“Amazing.” I said. “Why does it happen?”
“There are various theories but no-one’s sure.” he said.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Isn’t it? It’s as if I’ve caught a star in a bottle.”
I watched it quietly for a bit, then I said, “Is it any use for anything?”
“I’ve been analysing the light with my photomultipliers. I think I’ve detected something extremely unusual.”
“What?”
“Helium.”
“Is there helium in the water?”
“No, that’s the amazing thing. The only way there could be helium in there is if two hydrogen atoms have fused together. A nuclear reaction.”
Goff switched into lecture mode, as he was prone to do.
“You see, helium was first discovered on the sun, not on Earth. When gasses are excited by electricity or extreme heat or some other form of energy, they emit very specific frequencies of light, and that’s how helium was first discovered: by observing light from the sun. Then later on they found it in some rocks thrown out by Vesuvius. I’ve detected it via the same method, in pure water undergoing sonoluminescence.”
“Isn’t it possible the water had helium in it to start with? Trace amounts?”
“No. I’ve purified it with incredible care, and there are no gasses dissolved in it. Do you see? This could form the basis of a new form of nuclear energy.”
He rattled on for a bit about helium and nuclear reactions. I didn’t understand much of it but it was interesting to hear him talk. I suppose enthusiasm is always contagious. It did seem as though he’d really discovered something new and quite exciting.
When we were leaving the box and he was swinging the door open, he said, “I need to make the star bigger and more powerful. Then maybe I’ll be able to figure out exactly what’s happening.”
“How will you do it?”
“I have some ideas involving magnetic fields.”
The light in the cellar, which was relatively dim, seemed almost blinding after half an hour in the cube.
Once our eyes had adjusted again, we went upstairs and sat in the kitchen, around the little table there.
“I’ll make us a tea.” he said.
I noticed there was a photograph on a shelf of a rather attractive girl.
“Who’s that?” I asked, expecting him to say that it was his sister—although he’d never mentioned any sister—or perhaps his mother when she was young.
“Oh, that’s Abigail.” he said. “She was my fiancé.”
That was the first time Goff had ever mentioned any fiancé. I had always assumed he was so focused on science that he had no time for women. In fact, I couldn’t imagine how he could possibly have found the time to have a fiancé.
“What happened to her?” I asked him.
He stopped what he was doing and smiled sadly, a pained expression on his face.
“She died.” he said.
“I’m so sorry to hear.”
“Well, it wasn’t your fault. She developed a tumour on her kidney. That’s why I got interested in the photons emitted by metabolic processes. I thought I could help her.”
“But you couldn’t.”
He shook his head, staring down at the floor. I had the impression he was holding back tears.
“I’m sorry, Goff.” I said gently. “You’re not superhuman. You can’t fix every problem.”
“True.” he said, with a sigh, and he resumed making tea.
—
Goff didn’t see through his proposed six months in our crummy job. He left soon after that. For a while I didn’t hear from him very much. I quit myself a couple of months later and took other some soul-destroying job involving spreadsheets, but at least it paid well and didn’t mess up my health.
Then he emailed me out of the blue and asked if I’d like to meet up with him, because he wanted to tell me what he was working on now. That was Goff all over. No superfluous enquiries about my health or happiness; he just wanted to tell me about his research.
I suggested we meet in a cafe in town, and I told him I’d like to pay, to celebrate my new job. The actual reason I wanted to pay was because I knew he didn’t have any money, but I wanted to spare his feelings.
When he turned up at the cafe, he looked like he was skimping on the washing a bit. His sandy-coloured hair seemed unusually lank, and he was even paler than previously.
“I’ve discovered something incredible.” were the very first words out of his mouth, as he marched up to the table where I was already sitting, nibbling on a croissant that tasted like it had passed several uncertain days behind the counter.
“You can tell me all about it.” I said. “I’ll get us some coffee first. What are you having?”
He seemed like he was going to argue with me, but then he said “Yes, OK.”, apparently accepting the necessity of the coffee, and he added, “Black. No milk or sugar.”
But I knew Goff was just trying to save money, was afraid he’d end up paying, and was, in reality, a sucker for the fancy lattes, so I got him one of those instead.
He started up again almost as soon as I’d sat down.
“I’ve detected anomalous radiation.” he said excitedly. “Spectra of foreign substances!”
“Do you have a new job?” I asked.
“No. I can’t spare the time anymore.”
“Are you eating properly and stuff?”
“Never mind about that!” he said, as though I ought to understand that him eating was of little or no consequence. “Listen, I’ve thought about it and I want to show you the new machine. There is some danger, but probably no worse than the danger of inhaling toluene one day a week.”
“I told you, I’ve left that job, same as you. I work in an office now.”
“I’ll try to explain. Have you got a car? I’ve detected actual spectra of elements that don’t exist in any quantity on the Earth. We can take the bus if necessary.”
“Will you please calm down!” I said to him. “Start at the beginning.”
As it happened my car was in a nearby car park and he insisted I drive straight to his house, although I insisted we finish our coffees first. He gulped his down, ignoring to the heat, and waited impatiently while I finished mine.
All the way to his house he rattled on about “parallel spatial coherence” and “inverse temporal manifolds” and what-not.
Once at his house he practically dragged me straight down to the cellar. Only when we were standing in front of the cube did he force himself to calm down.
“There is risk.” he said. “I can’t deny that there may be some risk. Are you willing to accept the danger in order to witness the greatest scientific innovation of our time?”
“You’ve witnessed it yourself, haven’t you?”
“Many times, now.”
“You seem to be in one piece. Will we get exposed to radiation or something?”
“It’s possible.” he said. “But probably not.”
I took a deep breath.
“OK then, let’s give it a shot.”
We went into the cube and I was relieved to find he’d fixed a purple light in there this time.
“Watch.” he said, and he began to fiddle with some kind of apparatus, this time consisting of a large cylindrical tank with wires and other things around it.
“Don’t we need the light off?” I asked him.
“No, it’s clearly visible now.” he said.
As I watched, a bright star-like object began to appear in the middle of the cylinder. It grew and grew, until it was dazzlingly bright. It was accompanied by a loud crackling, fizzing sound.
“My God!” I said. “Is this the same thing as before? It’s huge!”
“It’s the same thing via a different technique.” he replied. “But here’s the thing: I’m detecting light from it that’s characteristic of a star. Maybe I can even figure out which star.”
I turned to him, shocked.
“What are you saying? It’s some kind of portal?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” he replied. “It’s bending space, transferring light here from who-knows-where. Perhaps even a distant galaxy.”
“You’re sure?”
“No doubt about it. The chances of producing this exact kind of a spectrum by coincidence somehow are infinitesimally small.”
“Could it be light from our own sun?”
“Nope. Spectrum doesn’t match. It’s from some other star entirely.”
He flicked a switch and the light abruptly vanished, leaving me almost unable to see in the dim light, so bright was the after-image.
We talked excitedly for a while. He explained the apparatus to me, although I didn’t understand much of what he said. We were still discussing the possibilities as we exited the cube.
“Imagine!” he said. “I may be able to turn this entire enclosure into a kind of matter transference device.”
“Do you really think that’s possible?”
“Entirely possible. The thing is, Joe, I need funds. I remortgaged the house but I’ve spent most of that now.”
“Surely if you tell people about this, the funding will flood in.” I said.
“Probably, but I really want to keep this to myself for a while, just until I’ve figured out exactly what’s going on.”
“You’re completely sure you’re getting light from a distant star?”
“Completely sure.”
“I could loan you maybe a grand a month, plus ten grand up front from my savings. You can pay it back when you’re rich and famous.”
“Would you?” he said eagerly.
“Sure.” I said. “If this is really what you say it is, I’ll have the honour of funding one of the greatest scientific discoveries in history. Will it be enough?”
“It will.” he said.
“How long do you think it’ll be before you’re ready to tell the world about it?”
“Six months.” he said. “That’s all I need.”
I dutifully transferred ten thousand pounds—all of my savings—to him, and began stumping up a thousand quid a month. I could barely afford it and I’d been hoping to put a deposit down on a tiny flat somewhere, but it seemed like the circumstances called for sacrifice.
As I left I noticed another photograph of the pretty young woman, this time on the mantelpiece in the living room.
Poor Goff, I thought. That must have been hard. But sometimes, it takes a tragedy to make a genius, probably. At least, there must many instances of it in history. Edgar Allan Poe lost his wife before writing his stories while descending into alcoholism and paranoia, Mary Shelley lost her first child before writing Frankenstein, Van Gogh did arguably his best work in an asylum, and so on. Doubtless there are instances one could cite from the scientific world also.
About two months later, during which time Goff was reporting steady progress, although he didn’t feel ready to give me another demonstration, something happened that really changed my perspective quite a bit.
I was walking in town with no particular aim, but heading in the general direction of my favourite cafe, the one where I’d met up with Goff, when a woman caught my eye. Not just any woman: this woman distinctly resembled the one in Goff’s photographs.
I was so gobsmacked that she walked clean past me before I could say anything. I turned and, raising my voice a little so she’d hear me above the noise of the crowd, I said, “Hey, do you know Goff?”
I half-expected her to assume I was addressing someone else, the resemblance being purely incidental, but instead she froze, and turned around slowly. Then she walked right up to me and said, curiously but not very enthusiastically, “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of Goff’s.” I said. “It’s just, he has photographs of you all over his house and he told me you’d died.”
A surprised expression appeared on her face and she laughed.
“That’s absolutely typical.” she said. “What else did he say?”
“He said you’d developed cancer and he’d tried to cure you but he’d failed, and you died.”
She was clearly amused.
“He just can’t bear the fact that I left him.” she said. “Seems like he’d rather think I was dead. Goff’s not right in the head. You might want to reconsider the company you keep.”
“It’s all a lie?” I said, horrified.
“I did have a tumour. The doctors cured me. It wasn’t malignant. Goff made me stand in his stupid machine in the dark for hours on end and it did nothing useful at all. Surgery fixed it.”
“Good God.” I said.
“So what’s he up to now?” she asked. “Not that I really care.”
I started telling her about Goff’s alleged spacetime portal. Goff wanted it kept quiet but I felt he’d forfeited the right to his secret, in view of the facts that he’d lied to me about something quite major and I’d given him twelve thousand pounds by then.
I asked her if she’d like to get a coffee with me at the cafe, and she agreed.
We talked a lot about Goff’s research, and whether Goff could really be trusted or not. Neither of us really knew. Was this particular lie one big astonishing exception, or was Goff, in fact, a habitual liar? Even she didn’t know.
“Is it true that you were his fiancé?” I asked her.
She spluttered slightly.
“For all of about a week.” she said. “I realised I’d made a mistake almost immediately.”
“Why did you leave him?”
“Goff doesn’t have time for anything or anyone but his research.” she said. “I barely actually saw him, the whole time we were supposed to be together.”
I don’t quite know how it happened but somehow, I ended up seeing her myself. I mean, dating, as the Americans say. We had a similar sense of humour and it seemed we might also both have one other thing in common: some lunatic, namely Goff, was giving us the runaround.
Of course I knew this would be devastating to Goff if he found out, but he’d lied to me, even though I was paying for his research, so I didn’t care all that much.
Several weeks went by, then Goff sent me an email asking me for more money. I told Abi I was going to his house to discuss it with him.
“I’ll come with you.” she said.
“Now that’s hardly a good idea, is it?” I said to her.
“Why not?” she said, bristling. “He’s been telling people I’m dead. I want to confront him.”
I tried to persuade her to let sleeping dogs lie but she was obdurate.
—
And so it was that we turned up at Goff’s house together. I rang the doorbell and Goff appeared.
When he saw Abi he turned pale.
“What’s this?” he said, faintly.
“I need to have a word with you, Goff.” she said, icily.
“So do I.” I said, a little more kindly.
He gawped at us like a frozen fish but then arrived at a decision and said, “Come in then.”
Inside, we started interrogating him about his behaviour.
“I’m sorry.” he said, mainly to Abi but glancing at me too. “It’s not that I wanted to tell people you’d died. It was just quicker than explaining the whole thing. I didn’t want to get into it.”
“You can’t expect me to be stumping up your research funding when you’re not honest with me.” I said. “How do I know you’re not lying to me about the research as well?”
He seemed to cheer up suddenly, and a strange light appeared in his eyes.
“Actually I’ve got something to show you.” he said. “Come down to the cellar.”
We went down to the cellar, Goff leading the way. The door to the cube was open.
“Watch this.” he said, and he began fiddling with the machine inside the cube. As he worked, he began to explain.
“I figured out what determines the range and trajectory of the device.” he said. “I hooked it up to a computer and had it scan trillions of locations, searching for certain specific spectra. And I’ve enlarged it. Massively. I’ve found something quite remarkable.”
“What?” said Abi, somewhat nervously.
“Prepare yourselves.” he said, dramatically. “You’re about to witness the greatest scientific discovery ever made.”
He pulled a lever and the far wall of the cube—the entire wall—seemed to shimmer and dissolve, to be replaced by a picture of a forest, with bits of the apparatus still standing in front of it. At least, I thought it was a picture of a forest.
Goff stepped forward, and walked clean into the picture.
“It’s a hyperspace portal.” he said. “I’m now standing on another planet.”
For some moments, neither Abi nor I were able to speak. We were absolutely astonished, as you might imagine.
It was Abi who spoke first.
“It looks like somewhere here on Earth.” she said.
“Convergent evolution.” Goff replied, expansively stretching out his hands, palms facing us, as though he was the architect of a whole new planet, showing us his creation.
“Convergent evolution?” I said.
“Yes.” said Goff. “Look.”
He plucked a leaf from a nearby tree and held it up.
“It looks like a leaf. It is a leaf. But this particular leaf is not found anywhere on Earth.”
The leaf he held was curiously veiny, with four spiked tips. Indeed it didn’t look like any leaf I had ever seen, but then, I haven’t seen all that many leaves in the great scheme of things.
“It’s incredible, Goff.” I said. “You’re a genius.”
He smiled broadly. But then something caught our attention behind him. A vast shape was rapidly making its way through the trees towards us.
Goff saw the expressions on our faces and spun around.
He froze in horror.
“Goff!” I said, “Get back in here!”
But he didn’t respond.
The thing, whatever it was, was huge and covered in thick hair. I couldn’t properly make it out, and I couldn’t see a face or any eyes. But then it roared, making a deafening noise, and I saw something that distinctly resembled the spiky teeth of a shark, except they were arranged in a wide circle with a dark red interior.
I ran forward to pull Goff back inside, but as I did so, I tripped over a cable and instead of running onto the surface of Goff’s planet, I came up short against the interior far side of the cube, smacking my head painfully. I had disconnected something, and the portal had disappeared in the blink of an eye.
“Are you all right? Get it back!” said Abi wildly. “We have to switch it on again.”
We reconnected the cable, which had simply become unplugged from a socket at one side of the cube, but nothing happened. We fiddled with the levers and switches, desperately attempting to reactivate the portal.
Nothing worked.
After two hours I fell back against the side of the cube, despairing, and slid to a sitting position.
“It’s no good.” I said. “We’ve no idea what we’re doing. We’ll have to get some actual scientists in here.”
“We can’t do that!” Abi protested. “They’ll just think we’re fantasists. If they believe us at all, they’ll bundle this thing away in some government facility and we’ll never be able to get Goff back!”
I groaned and put my head in my hands.
She was right.
I thought it best to refrain from mentioning the distinct possibility that Goff had now been eaten by an alien forest creature.
Pulling myself together, I looked at her and said, “Then we’ll have to figure it out ourselves.”
—
That was five years ago.
We transferred the apparatus to a warehouse, before anyone could realise Goff was missing. When people did realise he’d gone missing, which wasn’t until two months later, the police interrogated us thoroughly as the last people to see him alive, but of course we had to feign ignorance, since they never would have believed us anyway, and they gave up pursuing us pretty quickly.
Since then we’ve made progress and we understand some of what Goff’s apparatus does, but we still fundamentally don’t understand how it works.
We haven’t been able to reactivate the portal.
