Vortex

I was awoken by the sound of the phone ringing. It was late. I checked my alarm clock — 3am. “Who could be ringing at this time of night?” I thought. I cursed and fumbled for the handset.

“Who’s this?”

“Jack? Is that you?” said the voice. It was the Professor, he sounded agitated.

“Professor, have you any idea what time it is?” I protested.

“I know, Jack. Look, There’s no time, I need you come down to the Lab. Immediately!”

“What is it?”

“You need to come now. I can’t explain over the phone. Please, come as quick as you can, it’s… it’s the Vortex Machine. Something… something is happening!”

The phone went dead.

I hurriedly pulled on jeans and a t-shirt and raced down to the car. I slammed my key in the ignition and put my foot on the gas, spraying gravel everywhere as I tore up the driveway.

On the drive over I reflected on how long I’d known the Professor and what could possibly have gone so wrong that he needed to call me at three in the morning.

The last time I’d seen Professor McGillan was over three months ago and you could definitely say that our relationship had become strained. The Professor has been researching a poorly understood, some would say ‘dangerous’ branch of particle physics. What was worse, he’d begun to use himself as guinea-pig. His ideas became more and more outlandish: Time-travel, parallel dimensions, matter transformation. At one point he even claimed he’d opened a portal to God. Over time he began to alienate his colleagues. I defended him as long as I could but in the end it became too much and he was suspended from his post at the Institute. He continued on regardless. Using private funds, he hired a disused aircraft hanger in the desert and continued his work. It was there that he made a ‘breakthrough’ — The Vortex Machine.

***

An eerie glow emanated from the professors laboratory. I stepped through the doorway and was bathed in a bright green light, so bright that it was hard to make sense of what was going on. At first, in the center of the room there was a glowing green object, it looked like the surface of the sun, a boiling, seething mass of energy and fire. Surrounding it, banks of instruments and control panels. Then I noticed the Professor. He was dripping with sweat, there was a madness in his eyes and his face was etched with fear. He turned to me:

“Jack… It’s the Vortex machine… I think something is… coming through.”

Heat Reducers

As those words reverberated throughout my head, I was thankful for the Heat Reducers. An extremely expensive set of elements that I had insisted upon installing during construction of the lab all those many months ago.

They started against the wall behind where I was standing and reached far above my head. They were wide, iron-colored polymers (at least 5' at their base, against the wall) and tapered off to a finer point just above the Vortex Chamber. The idea was that convection from the chamber would dissipate while traveling down through the heat conducting Heat Reducers, and all remaining heat would escape into the ground. This made the ground outside of the hangar very warm when the professor was hard at work.

Had it not been for the Heat Reducers, everything within the immediate vicinity of the vortex at this stage of heightened agitation would be reduced to gravy: this hanger, the professor and me.

For now they were holding. “Thank the Science Gods for that,” I thought. Residual heat was still a very real and potentially dangerous problem if the Heat Resistors were to give out.

“Can you see it?” yelled Professor McGillan.

Sweat poured off his face, and his look of madness intensified as he jerked around violently to get a better look at the opening of the device.

The glow was unbearable but there was something. A dense shapeless mass of particles seem to hang in mid air. I grasped for understanding, but there was none. I tried to speak, but I was breathless.

Welcome to the Metaverse

A great sound similar to a train coming to a sudden halt reverberated throughout the building. It grew in intensity until the sound actually felt like a fluid. As the shapeless mass started to take shape the sound began to dissipate in its intensity. A veiled luminescence filled the room with an almost calming glow. Suddenly a humanoid figure emerged from the chamber, and proceed to fall down to the floor with an impressive thump

It..

Shocked and silent I looked around to where the professor was standing, he was no longer there.
A quick scan of the room revealed that he had vanished! In addition, what was left was a heap of humanoid lying on the floor in what seem to be a translucent sack of its own bile.

My mind raced as I thought of ways to escape, yet I felt no real fear. The space was totally quiet and bathed in a glow that had a definite calming effect. This was perplexing and my analytical mind scrambled to comprehend.

It began to move, slowly it clawed to free itself from the cocoon-like structure. I watched frozen in place as it squirmed and struggled with ever-increasing ferocity.

It wanted out!

Out of the frying pan….

I started to back away but as I did so my foot became tangled in some cables and it sent me crashing, arms flailing, into one of the instrument panels.

I had bashed my shoulder badly and pain was shooting up my right arm. From my new vantage point I could see the creature struggling and squirming even more violently than before. Then, the cocoon exploded, showering me with foul smelling liquid. I coughed and spluttered as I attempted to extricate myself from the tangle of cables and slime that covered me.

A shadow fell across me and it was then that I got my first look at the occupant of the cocoon. I gasped in horror. It was like nothing I’d seen before, part reptile, part man, it must have been nearly ten feet tall. It was muscular, its skin a dark leathery green. Its eyes glowed white like hot coals. It’s fingers tipped with vicious looking claws and a long reptilian tail that swished from side to side in a menacing fashion.

The creature appeared to smile revealing a set of criss-crossing teeth that looked like the Devil’s own stalactites. Then it turned to look at me and roared.

The Professor returns

The pain anesthetized me; the creature however was another tale all together,
I thought of the professor and my own pending mortality.

What was this thing? Where did it come from? These were questions that only professor McGillan could answer and he had vanished “to where?”
All I had at this point was questions and now with the creature peering in my direction I had to find a way out of my present dilemma.

After a brief moment of stillness, the monstrous beast again started thrashing! Destroying the space the, thing sought to annihilate everything in its path I shrank back against the wall hoping to blend in I know this was a frivolous thought but it was all I had.

I felt a tug on my arm and was spirited from the room into a passage in between the walls.

“Jack” A hushed worried sounding voice stammered it was Professor McGillan “The Vortex, it it’s out of control” he went on incoherently but I could not understand his ramblings.

One moment this man was a genius in his field and now he seems to be a blubbering idiot, this only heightened my need for answers.

Heaven and Hell

I grabbed the lapels of the Professor’s shirt and shook him.

“What is that thing? What have you done?” I demanded to know.

The crazed look disappeared from his eyes and for a brief moment he appeared lucid and coherent again.

“Jack, I..I’m sorry,” he stammered, “I never meant for any of this I-“

“There’s no time for that now, tell me about the Vortex machine. Tell me what you’ve done!”

The professor ran his hands through his receding hair.

“There is a theory, that we are but one of a multitude of universes.” He began “Some like our own, others very different. It’s all true Jack! The Vortex Machine, it opens a portal to these other worlds.”

“You mean that creature is from another dimension?” I said incredulously.

“Yes but that’s not all, Heaven and Hell, they’re real places Jack, I have seen them with my own eyes. I’ve been there! They are just other dimensions of the Metaverse much like our own except the normal laws of physics don’t apply. Things we take to be myth and superstition are real. As real as you and I. That creature for example is from the place we know as ‘Hell’. It must have come through when the portal was open”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Had the Professor lost his mind or was I losing mine? Under normal circumstances I would have dismissed his ramblings as fantasy but I had the evidence of my own eyes and ears to contend with. If I was in any doubt another loud crash and roar emanated from the other side of the wall. The creature appeared to be getting restless.

“That creature is contained within the walls of the Vortex field. They will hold it for now” said the Professor “but we’re running out of time. Should it escape who knows what damage it could do? We have to find a way to send it back”

Then a thought occurred to me.

“Professor, is it possible to re-open the portal?” I asked

“Why yes but I would need to be at the control panel and with the creature I -”

We looked at each other. We both understood what it was we had to do.

“Jack,” said the Professor solemnly “you do realise if you go through the portal, I may not be able to bring you back”

I nodded. I understood perfectly, we were about to play a game of cat and mouse and I was going to be bait!

The Plan

The more he spoke the more anxious I got, “Other Worlds, Heaven, Hell, Portals, Time Travel, Metaverse” his words replayed in my mind.

“This is crazy!” I thought aloud.

“I know,” said the Professor “Jack you of all people should understand that I never meant for any of this to happen”.
“Things just got out of hand”

“Is that what you call that object in the next room, out of hand?” I barked with disdain.

“The Vortex can help as well as hurt Jack; you will notice that things move in a different way within the Vortex. Objects like that monster are attached to the Vortex it’s their umbilical cord. Please be careful, and what ever you do, do-not get too close to the machine”

“Wh-Whudda you mean?” I stammered

“Anyone or any thing that comes in close proximity to the machine will be sucked into or crushed by the Vortex; its power is astonishing!”

“Thanks for telling me Professor; remind me that when this is all over we need to get you a new hobby”

He managed a tight smile but I could see that he was petrified.

He had a strange look in his eyes, one that I had never seen in the ever-confident Professor Mac. I had known him a long time, and this was not the outgoing Professor I knew.
This one was worried, and this was all new to me.

When we met way back in College he was always the stronger, faster, better one. This was a seemingly shy timid man that I really didn’t recognize.

The plan was simple.

I am to divert the creature and draw him out of the Control room while the good Professor makes his way through the lab and into the C.R…
Once inside the Control room he must log on to VO-CCOM (Vortex Control and Command Module), all while not being killed by the creature, or being crushed by the Vortex.

Our hope is that if the Professor reverses the Portals matrix and opens it in reverse field, it will cause the Vortex to pull in on itself and close.
Taking the creature with it.

“Jack” sigh the Professor
“We only get one shot at this”

“I know” I grunted while readying myself

We looked at one another as if for the last time held our breath and calmly slid the panel aside.

The room was in shreds; the smell alone was retched enough to make you choke. I pushed part of the Professors half-tattered shirt up against my face to stifle the stench and made it through the narrow opening.

A dark smoky haze filtered throughout the lab and a heavy musk hung forever in the nostrils as lights flickered. Wires that had been abruptly torn from their hiding places buzzed and arced with deadly excitement.
It was if a bomb had detonated but this bomb had the dubious distinction of being “Hell spawned”.

The time had come the Professor was in place. On cue, I began to yell and make all the noise I could.

“HEY! HEY!” I shrieked at the top of my lungs the frantic cry resounded and bounced from room to room.
“Here I am you… you big ugly”

Before I could utter another word it seemed as if the room had taken a big deep breath; my ears popped and for a split second I was blind.

The pressure inside the room increased dramatically in a matter of microseconds.

Everything went in slow motion, and all at once Professor Mac was sprinting towards the keypad on the door of the C.R…
The creature was charging towards me in a slow lumbering fashion…
And the Vortex, which seem to sense our intentions, was tightening it’s hold on this world…

Turmoil ruled the moment… I faintly remember hearing the numbers beeping as the Professor punched them in on the keypad.
Just as I rolled under a desk to evade the creature’s unwanted advances.

It moved at odd angles; even the ceiling was not off limits to the monster. It bullied its way over a counter and was right on my heels when the Professor yelped, “I’m in Jack!”

Now all I had to do was double back and make my way into the reinforced Control room and close the door before the creature with it’s razor sharp teeth could get there.

The only redeeming aspect of this whole fiasco was the abnormal fact that material attached to the Vortex moved in this odd sideways manner. The creature was attached thusly, and this allowed me to out maneuver it.

And then we were inside the C.R. and the door was shut and locked.

I could see the frustration in the Professor’s face, as outside the angered beast pelted the door with assault after assault of brutal savagery trying to get to us.
I watched as the Professor pulled knobs and pressed switches trying to get the machine to reverse itself; this was not an easy task the machine fought us.

With all this going on, I almost missed the computerized voice echoing over the communication network.

“THIS IS A WARNING!”. it was a woman’s voice, meant to instill calmness in anyone listening it. It only managed annoy me. It went on,

“You have one hour twenty seven minuets before permanent lock-down mode”

Things just took a turn for the worse, permanent Lock-down meant that the place would shut itself off from the rest of the humanity.
Effectively becoming a non-entity…
In short, it predestined no one or no thing would ever get out of here… at least not by the usual means.

Inside the Contol Room

Outside the creature continued to vent its frustrations on the exterior of the control room. Instead of battering it, it sounded as if it was trying to peal the metal panels away from the outer casing. The control room began to creak and groan in protest and I wondered how long it would be before the creature had us in its grasp.

“-one hour twenty five before permanent lock-down mode” announced the voice. I tried to ignore it.

The professor was now on autopilot instead of panicking as I had expected he was now measured and calm. He continued to work at the control panel his gnarled hands manipulating the dials and switches like some demented composer.

Something appeared to be happening, the Vortex was stabilising. Once again we were bathed in the familiar green glow. Even the beast seemed to have stopped its hammering.

With his back to me, the Professor sighed and let his hands drop to his sides.

“It is done,” He said finally.

“You mean it’s over? We can go home?” I asked.

A mixture of relief, happiness and exhaustion washed over me. I suddenly realised how tired I was.

“Yes Jack, It’s all gone according to plan” said the Professor.

I was puzzled. What did he mean?

“Plan?” I said.

Surely this was some kind of joke.

The Professor continued: “The cycle is almost complete, the vortex has stabilised. All I need now-“

The professor turned to face me. He was holding a gun.

“- is a sacrifice!”

The Revelation:

“A Wha!”

“You need a what?” I said with utter disbelief

“A sacrifice Jack, we must complete the stabilization process, if not this thing could carry on
Indefinitely.”

This was not what I wanted to hear.

After all the stuff we’d just been through I could not even consider what he was saying
This thing, this Vortex was a nightmare that had no end, it was like I steped outside myself and just as soon I was back in side that green light filled room hearing but not really understanding, his voice grew more animated as time went on.

“ Imagine, Jack a life where travel between worlds is the norm! my research has shown the existence of multi worlds just outside of our physical sight but inside the realm of possibilities”

“Realm of What!”
I struggled with this new revelation, the Professor spoke as if he were a robot, calculating every word.

“It has always been my ambition,Jack, my life’s goal! to discover new worlds, new plateaus! Just think of the- the positive aspects of a find like this.”

This guy I thought, was not the same guy I have known for all these years, this was a mad man consumed by ambition, what happened to him at the control panel? his cool light grey eyes were now large and fixed it was as if I was watching him loose his mind I could literally see his wheels turning, maddness had taken a hold of him.

“Jack! My vision is clear”

His speech was cold and deliberate.

“I know wh-aat it needs to survive!”

Before I could say another word in that split second he turned the gun on himself and in a flash and a puff of bright powdery light he was slumped over the control panel, blood pouring from a purposeful placed shot to the temporal lob.

Gasping I turned away as the spray hit me, my friend was dead!I flicked many pieces of him off my face and upper body as
A frigid chill seem to seep into my being the room began to demonstrate
Signs that my ordeal was not over.

Story by SeeArc, bigvgriz (Griswold Verlin), godel (Tom Mot), sammysunset (James Jackson) · October 2007–December 2007 · Originally published on novlet.com