Amateur Experiments

SD Radhakrishnan, bespectacled, gazed intently at a display board of a large machine. We called her Elizabeth. He noted down a few things on his notepad as I cleaned the floor. I brought some more hydrogen peroxide from the cabinet and poured it into the bucket. He noted some more. He went back and opened the panel and calibrated the readings. I, on the other hand, cleaned the floor with utmost sincerity. Radhakrishnan vented out frustrating groans every now and then. His job among the two was clearly the more difficult. But make no mistake; the floor was very clean now. It has never been so clean, as a matter of fact. But it’s not every day that graduates manage to send things through time. If our calculations are right, today would be that every day. As Radhakrishnan would say, “Science that!”

“Is there any chance that we might hit someone out cold?”

Radhakrishnan dismissed my question with amusement again. I didn’t really like him when he got all smug up but that’s that.

“Three point eight four three three five into ten raise to the negative sixteen”

That was the probability we would hit someone he would say incessantly.

Radhakrishnan and I are Physics and Electronic graduates from MIT respectively. It all started with a random brain storm session with a few of our classmates in a cafeteria and all the notions discussed lead us to this garage. It wasn’t that we are particularly thrilled. Deep inside we know this exercise is nothing more than futile scavenging of theoretical applications. But we are at least a bit proud making this far. Radhakrishnan might be grumpy and shake his head in denial but it was me who triggered the very foundation of our experiment. Radhakrishnan managed to actually implement it.

The garage looked unusually elongated now, after we cleared it. The floor reflected light for a change. The area starting from the device to the garage shutter was our experiment zone. We aligned Elizabeth centrally to cater to her needs.

“Science that!” Radhakrishnan exclaimed.

This usually would mean that the thing was done.

Radhakrishnan stood looking at me, in a dirty white shirt and a bright floral trunk, with a faint smile that did not necessarily convey relief. I cleaned the last square inch, earnestly, got up, wore my slipper and went behind Elizabeth and checked her out. She did not in any way look amateur.

Elizabeth was a huge, almost square box made of polished tin. It had a black electronic panel that gleamed out primitive LEDs. The front looked rather sober. It was covered entirely but for a small vent. Inside among the other details contained the two most important ingredients of our experiment; a propulsion cartridge containing a bullet and a vertically aligned laser, a real one. The laser would not emit the way it was suppose to. In that laid the foundation of our time-travel hullabaloo.

Wormholes are the theoretical entities that we assumed would exist, as a basis of our little experiment. Science Fiction over the ages has twisted and dried down its relevance. In actual sense in theory of technicality, wormholes are entities that get created every now in then in space and last for a time that cannot be measured in any scale known to humans. They are born and then they die in a time frame so miniscule that nothing can grasp it. However if wormholes are caught, stretched and traversed, time and space can be theoretically manipulated. If traversed, they can lead to a time or a universe completely different than ours. It can be any time in the past or the present or the future in this universe or any other, in case there are indeed multiple universes.

This basic assumption was the core that we hoped would sustain. With that we needed a negative particle that would hold and stretch a wormhole. This unknown element was the key and somehow Radhakrishnan manage to accommodate this element in the laser. His basic notion was to change certain polarities which, he presumed, would do the job. And the bullet was supposed to be our time traveler. The laser would be emitted out of the machine with a bullet that would be fired a quarter of a second before. They would align together and if this, presumed negative, laser can tear out any nearby hole, the bullet might tailgate through time for a meter and then come back here. The bullet, irrespective of the outcome, was calibrated to a short projectile. The video camera that I would hold will check its motion through the experiment.

Throughout the process, Radhakrishnan remained adamant and always, spoke with conviction – “We won’t succeed in this lifetime”. Nevertheless he didn’t waver off the path and we did complete the implementation as we wanted, with my A negative electronic wizardry coming to good use.

We stood there for a moment or a thousand as if lost for words. I positioned myself in the corner to capture our amateur experiment. The joy was not in the result but in the process, I convinced myself into believing it. Because irrespective of the result, the satisfaction lies in creating a plot and a story that tries to waver off the routine.

Amidst my philosophical consolidating reverie, Radhakrishnan pressed the start button abruptly and turned Elizabeth on. I hated the fact that no punch lines were made. The device whizzed while I switched on my camera and wore the glares Radhakrishnan told me to wear. The whizzing continued for a minute or so and hopes wandered elsewhere. Then suddenly, a sound of a chisel hitting tin was heard.

A bright light spurted out of the device in sync with the bullet. The light was reminiscent of an Avada Kevadra ejaculating from Voldy’s wand. It started and finished in a blur and we heard the bullet hit the floor. The first attempt at least worked in doing what was expected. The experiment has started and that was a good sign.

We turned off the device and went with tepid feet to pick up the bullet.

Did we start the World War? Did we hit Kennedy or Gandhi? Or was it a peasant or a mafia or Radhakrishnan’s dad in the war? What did we change?

We gasped in horror as the bullet lay on the floor soaked in blood and history.

Radhakrishnan hurried to check the camera as I sat on the floor, on my knees, checking the ghost bullet intently, as a small puddle of blood formed in front of me.

I smiled.