Hi readers! A few of you might recognize the story. And for good reason. I posted this chapter on my old account but unfortunately a few days after I did, I mistakenly signed out of it and couldn't get back in. So I've finally got around to making an alternate account so I can post this. I made a few changes and replaced a few characters here though after I got a few more ideas.
Enjoy!
Somewhere in Finland.
Ilma Loyola stood looking down on the Cylinder behind the giant shatterproof glass with her team of scientists. To think after 3 decades of work, blood, sweat, and lots of tears, it was finally almost finished. And she was the one to spearhead it. This was her brainchild. Her greatest accomplishment right here on her native soil.
People had died for this. A lot of people. For the first few years, the deaths of every security guard, engineer, and scientist had struck her like a hammer to the face. It all came to a point with the death of her wife Yaretzi, blasted by a wave of radiation set off by sabotage by a group of fanatics. She no longer had any emotions after that for a while.
She still couldn't understand. Didn't they know that this would help all of mankind? No more fighting over limited space or wasting time preparing to establish space colonies or making population control conspiracy theories. With this, people can go anywhere in the Universe, and humanity would have all the resources and space it could ever need. No more wars because it just wouldn't make sense.
They hadn't cared.
Yaretzi's death had filled her with an emptiness unlike anything she had felt before. She had stopped research for a year in her obsession with killing those who had torn her life to shreds. She found them, had them arrested, and watched as the leaders were executed for terrorism. Turns out, almost causing a nuclear explosion is grounds for a lethal injection. They hadn't suffered enough.
The void that had been filled with vengeance was empty. She hurled herself back into her work to refill that void. She'd since made her peace but it still hurt like a bitch often. As she stood traversing nightmare lane, a voice called timidly from behind her.
"Miss Loyola?" Mufasta Baumhauer called. Ilma turned and strode over to his desk.
"Yes Baumhauer?" she said coldly.
He flinched. He still took her usual icy demeanor as displeasure. He motioned her to look at the screen. On it, a diagram of the Cylinder rotated, surrounded by a mass of machines and equipment. The Cylinder itself was an anomaly. She'd found it almost completely buried on a research trip to this exact location decades ago. She'd had it excavated and planned to move it to a museum. She had needed the brownie points with them anyway for some objects of interest.
But it resisted. Oh, it was possible to move but even for a 10-foot tall stone pillar it was abnormally - no - impossibly heavy. Then her interest was sparked. She had it examined from every angle but couldn't find what made it so heavy. The strange markings on them were unimportant and untranslatable anyway.
Then she brought more sensitive equipment. And had nearly run away screaming. The amount of radiation coming from that thing should have been killing everything within 10 miles. But it wasn't. She looked deeper and found out that the particles were simply vanishing before they could do any harm and leaving behind almost infinitesimal traces of energy that she'd so humbly called "Loyolan Particles."
Nothing, nothing barring a black hole should have been able to simply erase something from existence. It was amazing. And it could only mean one thing. The radiation particles were being transported somewhere. The possibilities excited her. Teleportation. Wormholes. All that power just waiting to be harnessed by the right person.
Ilma never knew she was making a horrible mistake until just now.
She took one look at the screen and felt the blood drain from her face. Her heart seemed ready to explode from fear.
"Oh shit," she whispered. "Shut it down! Shut it down and get out!"
There was a pause as everyone's brains took a frustrating few seconds to process what she said. Then there was a rush as everyone closed down computers and a few made calls to the engineers below to disconnect everything. She opened the fire alarm box and yanked the lever and then rushed out of the room and called Alex Van the Head Engineer.
"Is everything shut off?" she said unable to hide her fear.
"No, not yet," Alex replied. "I can't just unplug it; there's a process."
"Hurry it up woman!" she growled before hanging up.
She made it to the front lobby when the whole building shook. She fell to her knees before scrambling back up. She shoved a man out of the way and sprinted for the doors where a large town of tents and campers had been sprung up around the lab by people anxious to get the first glimpse of the experiment when it was finished.
There was a low hum. The world seemed to flicker. Someone screamed.
Hell washed over her.
Antarctic Research Station
Jupiter Agostini sipped from his mug and watched as snow fell outside the window.
Two more months* he thought to himself.
Dipali Krupa's voice cracker crackled over the radio.
"Solar panels are gonna get covered soon so bring me the generator."
He suited up and met Dipapi outside. Together they hauled the generator out of hooked it up to the power. Jupiter headed back inside while Dipali double-checked the cord. There was a low hum. There was a flash of light and a scream that was cut off. When he blinked away the afterimage, Dipali and the generator were gone, leaving him alone in the snow.
In a space station orbiting Earth.
Patrice Wendal gazed at the Earth in awe. Even after 3 weeks aboard the station the sight of the planet was still breathtaking A small blue flash fight caught her eyes. She looked at where it came from and frowned. Finland.
Has the Cylinder been activated? she wondered. It's not due for another few months.
Another smaller flash came and another and another until her eyes were dazzled. They were coming from all over the world! She kicked away and called Control. Static filled the radio. There was a low hum. The lights flickered.
No, she realized. It was like the sun-
The universe became pain.
Los Angeles
Ethan Rust glared at the carefully made cuts on his arms with frustration. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his knife til it shook hard enough that a few more drops of red fell. He'd been trying to make himself feel something as usual but lately the satisfaction had diminished. He needed more.
Not that he dared go further of course. He'd never do anything to himself that made him vulnerable in the slightest way. Never again. With a snarl he walked to the kitchen section of his apartment, tossed his knife on the counter and whipped open the fridge. He brushed aside the cupcake. He'd got it for himself for his 19th birthday a few weeks ago but had never gotten around to eating it. He didn't now what he'd been thinking. He hated sweet things.
He shuffled things around as he looked for the venison. Then he got an idea. A dangerous one. One that could fix his problem. He turned to eye the knife. He imagined blood flowing over his hands. He'd killed animals before but... He took his time pondering how to pull it off before a shrill beeping startled him.
He grimaced. He closed the fridge and snatched up the knife. A weakness of his that he despised. Sometimes when he allowed himself to be lost in thought, he blanked out, usually for a few minutes and sometimes for hours. He started for the door.
There was a low hum. The world seemed to flicker. His last conscious thought was that he'd got the feeling he was craving.
A forest in Connecticut
Kyle Black stalked through the woods with care. His breathing was steady and shallow. In front of him, a buck grazed. He raised his hunting rifle and aimed at its head.
Bang
The shot cracked the air and the deer fell with a crash and birds squaked in indignation and fear. It was remarkable how similar killing people was compared to this. It scared him. He flicked on the safety and let the gun hang off its strap before walking forward and slinging the carcass over his shoulders with a grunt.
He walked back to his cabin and his eyes automatically darted everywhere, taking in everything and searching for threats. He paused and squeezed his eyes shut. No enemies, just wolves which were unlikely to get within a quarter mile of him and bears which he would hear coming a quarter mile away.
He marched on until he came to the security camera he'd installed and turned left into his backyard. He dumped the body on a table in his garage and turned for his tools.
A low hum filled the air. The world seemed to flicker. He envied the buck.
Around the world, people, vehicles, objects, and even entire buildings and two cities vanished off the face of the earth. No one knew how or where but one name was on everyone's lips. Ilma Loyola.