Chapter 7 - Discovery
Sheldon could feel the electricity and ozone around him, it made every hair on his body stand up, the feeling also made Sheldon open his eyes and the wonder he saw amazed him. Sheldon was in a conduit, which he knew was pure energy, however since it was energy, its walls seemed almost clear which gave him of view of all that was outside it. He was traveling in space at what appeared to be incredible speeds, but Sheldon knew the velocity was distance over time, and time was now being twisted, so everything he was perceiving could just be an illusion. It was almost too much for his mind to comprehend, but then it got even more incredible, he could see it up ahead, a vortex, he was heading to a vortex and he knew that vortex was the wormhole, a wormhole to another universe.
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Penny, Amy and Leonard sat on the edge of Sheldon's bed as Penny opened the book to the last page, Amy and Leonard sitting on each side of her, looking over her shoulder. If they were hoping for some revelation on where Sheldon was, they were only treated to disappointment as they read his last entries. They only contained his feelings of his work finally yielding the success he always knew it would and his feelings of how he would now get the Nobel Prize he deserved. It was obviously written before Lewis published his paper and it offered no help in finding where Sheldon had gone.
The three friends looked at each other in defeat, everything had happened after this last entry, all their searching seemed to have been for nothing. Leonard and Penny both looked at Amy as she started to cry again, any hope she had at finding Sheldon now dashed, her mind now falling into despair. Penny turned and pulled her friend into her arms again, while Leonard took the journal from Penny so it wouldn't fall on the floor.
Leonard, sat there on Sheldon's bed, while Penny sat down next to him, holding Amy, it had been a huge let down, they had all hoped that the journal would somehow tell them were Sheldon had went. Leonard slowly opened the book again and started to thumb back from the last entries, a slight hope that in previous entries, Sheldon maybe gave an indication of places for them to search for him. Leonard, who could read very fast, had only flipped back about 20 pages when suddenly two words jumped out to him off the page, two words that scared him. 'Time Machine'. "Oh Shit!"
Penny was still holding and comforting Amy, so was surprised at her husbands outburst. "What's wrong Sweetie?"
Leonard took a breath and looked at Penny, "Sheldon, says here he invented a time machine."
Penny scrunched up her face and looked at him like he was nuts. "Your kidding, right?" Penny was even a little aggravated at Leonard from bringing up such crap now, Amy was really upset and they still didn't know where Sheldon was, so talking about some toy seemed wildly inappropriate right now.
Leonard shook his head, he was extremely agitated, which made Penny look at him now in concern, something seemed wrong. "Penny you know him, if anyone could do it, that wacko could. I always said he was one accident away from being a super villain. But there is another thing, Sheldon always said that solving String Theory was also part of the solution for time travel. Penny, like I said he solved String Theory."
Amy pulled her head off of Penny's shoulder, interest in her eyes now, instead of tears. "Sheldon talked about String Theory and time travel many times, when we dated. He even talked about what would be needed to build one." Amy stated to Leonard.
"Leonard, Amy, you're scaring me. I've read some of the science fiction books and seen some of the movies you took me to. Isn't going back in time extremely dangerous, for everyone and the world?" Penny now had a worried expression to match the sickening feeling in her gut and it wasn't from the baby.
"Extremely, accidentally disturbing time even has been nicknamed the 'Butterfly Effect', a small change can ripple through time, eventually changing everything, destroying time as we know it." Amy just nodded to Leonard's answer to Penny.
"Oh my God, Leonard! You don't really think Sheldon did it, time traveled into the past. Oh my God!" Penny eyes looked down to her tiny baby bump and then shot look to her husband.
The worry on his wife's face was contagious and Leonard now started to feel really worried, but thought of something to comfort her. "He still needs to have the machine, he can't do it without a time machine. He would have had to build a machine."
Penny who had now grabbed the journal from him, started to read from the top, and then pointed to the paragraph she had been reading. "It says here, he completed it in his hide-a-way."
"Raj and Howard checked that, the first day, he wasn't there, and there was definitely no time machine."
"Yes but did they look for clues, did they search it?"
"No, they were looking for Sheldon, not clues. It is in the basement of the University."
Penny nodded. "Sweetie, lets go check it out." Penny then looked at Amy who just nodded in agreement.
The three of them told their friends their plan and agreed to notify them if they found anything. So it was only a few minutes later, after Penny relocked the door, that they were wished luck by, Raj, Alex, Howard and Bernadette, and headed off to Cal Tech. Penny drove, and it was creepy how no one, in the car, said a word the whole way to the university, even her, because honestly she didn't know what to say.
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Sheldon had been terrified as the energy stream had approached the wormhole, only to have it open up to swallow him, but then nothing changed, he was just traveling in it instead of space, everything was the same. The amount of perceived time was actually short, if time meant anything now, because as far a Sheldon understood, the wormhole was a timeless place, so it wasn't very long before the energy conduit left the wormhole and dumped him back into space again, only this space was different. Sheldon immediately recognized the colors were wrong, instead of space being black and stars white, space was now purple and stars yellow. However he didn't have much time to dwell on it as he now discovered the energy conduit heading directly to a planet and he became scared again because at the speed they were traveling, he felt they would never be able to stop in time.
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It was an hour later when security opened the door to the room, in the basement of the university building, Penny's badge and Leonard's position getting them immediate support by campus security. Penny made Leonard, Amy and the guard stand outside, she had training in crime scene search, so she went in alone. A couple minutes later she came out, dejection on her face. "No one has been in this room for months, there is a fine layer of dust over everything."
Leonard shook his head, "So it is not here, it is not this room."
"No." Penny then walked over to Amy to put a hand on her shoulder for comfort.
Penny then suddenly looked at him, "No not this room. Sweetie has Sheldon ever tried to deceive you, or the guys?"
"Yeah, several times."
Penny nodded and looked down the hallway, then at the guard. "Do you have the keys to all these rooms?"
The guard nodded then looked to Leonard, who nodded back looking at the rooms. "Please, open them, open them all."
It was the fifth room, it was full of equipment and it was obvious it had just been used, the computers were still on. Leonard looked at Penny, then Amy, his face both in awe and fear, "Crap."
Penny couldn't keep tears forming in her eyes as she rubbed her very small bump and looked at her husband. She loved her life, her husband and the little baby in her, she didn't want it to change, 'Please don't let it change'. she thought.
Leonard quietly said to Penny and Amy, "We need to determine what happened and how bad it is."
Penny pulled herself together and put herself into Officer Hofstadter mode, turning to the guard and holding up her badge. "This is now a crime scene, for the missing person case of Dr Sheldon Cooper. No one goes in here without my permission, I am officer in charge. Contact who you need to, but this room is to be secured. Dr Hofstadter, Dr Fowler and I are now going inside to investigate. Again, no one comes in here without my permission. Please give me the key."
The guard looked to Leonard who nodded and so he gave Penny the key. As they went in the room, they heard the guard on the radio explaining the situation and the shift supervisor telling him to do what Penny wanted. The farther Leonard got into the room, the more he knew Sheldon had done it. Sheldon had talked for years about time travel and even discussed what was needed to accomplish it. Now as Leonard looked at the components around the room he could see that some of them matched what Sheldon talked about. What really caught Leonard's eye was the four field generators, they were set up in such a way that a man with his equipment could easily stand with them around him. They looked like four poles with wires coming from them, but Leonard knew they were the devices that would generate the actual field to allow the traveler to move in time.
"This is incredible." Amy's words surprised Leonard, she had not said anything for a while and her words were perfect to describe what Leonard himself was thinking.
"Yeah, I guess it is." However Leonard couldn't feel any elation in what he was seeing. He felt sweat drip down his back, this was bad, really bad, he was now only very scared and he looked at Penny, he didn't want time to change, he didn't want to loose her.