When
Neil got back, Mary was looking at her phone and Dani was recounting everything
she remembered from the last physics article she’d read and was trying to think
of how she’d explain all of it to someone who hadn’t read the vast breadth of
science texts that she had. She was failing miserably in proving to herself
that she understood physics as well as she thought she did.
What Mary did not know was that Dani had
already begun to doubt some things since seeing her GPS after leaving the
tunnel. Science seemed to not contain a rational explanation for how they’d
traveled such a distance in such a short amount of time.
Dani wondered if she understood
science incorrectly, or if science understood the mysteries of the world
incorrectly. She began to wonder if she understood the mysteries of the
world incorrectly.
Mary had always taken the world in
stride; she did not know how black holes functioned in the grand scheme of
things. She knew that they were greedy things, eating everything they came
across, light included. She knew that they floated in space like celestial
krakens, threatening to destroy anything that crossed their path. But she did
not know why they were as they were,
and she did not overthink that fact.
Dani would never be content to
simply know. She had to understand. She required her seventh grade teacher to
explain why no one had ever gotten to
the end of Pi, and was then unsatisfied with her teacher’s answer. She asked
her father, an unlearned factory worker, who then told her not to wonder about
such things. And because of this, Dani did
wonder about such things. She became more and more curious of the things
around her because she wanted ever so desperately to spite her father. To shove
his ignorance in his face some day. Even though Dani knew such a chance could
never occur now, she still held onto that dream.
She’d placed it onto her adoptive
parents now, the Prestiges, and it turned from a task within reach to a task
whose goal seemed as infinite as the horizon.
When Neil told them that his x-ray
scan had revealed nothing, they piled back into his car, and he drove Mary home
first, her home being further away, and then drove Dani back to her home in
silence.
When Mary unlocked the front door of
her house, the lights were out. Her father’s car was still gone, as it usually
was on weekends. She turned on the living room light long enough to stand in
the brightness for a moment, and shut it off, walking upstairs with her phone
as a flashlight to show her the way. She changed into a pair of pajamas and
fell asleep after thirty minutes of pondering on the mysteries of the tunnel
she’d been inside. She dreamed of a number of horrible things, clicking through
her nightmares like fingernails on the insides of coffins, waiting for the day
they may return to the surface.
When Dani returned home, her
adoptive mother told her to explain why Dani was coming home at one in the
morning. When Dani told her about the tunnel underground, her mother
immediately asked her where it had been. She grabbed her laptop and recorded
Dani’s testimony with the laptop’s microphone. By three in the morning Dani had
sufficiently met Mrs. Prestige’s expectations, and allowed Dani to brush and
shower and to climb into bed. Dani remained awake until the sun rose, trying to
explain to herself how space and time might fold like two points on skin
pinched together. She tried to remember what wormholes were, and where the
evidence for them was.
But she was tired, and her tired
mind did not think as quickly as she desired.
Neil made it to the couch in his
living room before collapsing. He did not think. He did not dream. But he awoke
in a cold sweat, shaking, his heart pounding, looking around.
He was sure he’d heard something. His face
was throbbing still. The sound of his heartbeat echoed in his ears.
NEXT CHAPTER
NEXT CHAPTER
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