Inversion - 1

Book I: Before the Fall

Chapter 1

The silence of the midnight lab was broken only by the mournful song of the equipment. Laurel had been there since dawn, hunched over equations describing how matter might dissolve into information and reconstitute elsewhere. The coffee beside his keyboard had gone cold hours ago, a film forming on its surface like ice on a pond.

“Still here?” Maya’s voice came from the doorway.

Laurel glanced up, blinking against the sudden awareness of his surroundings. The fluorescent lights cast everything in surgical white. Cable runs snaked between workbenches like black intestines. “You’re here too.”

“I forgot my notebook.” Maya stepped into the lab, her presence somehow making the sterile space feel less hostile. Even past midnight, she looked composed – dark hair pulled back, lab coat crisp over jeans and sneakers. “How long has it been since you went home?”

He glanced up absentmindedly, his mind still on his quantum field equations. “I dunno… Tuesday?”

“It’s Thursday.”

“Ah.” He turned back to his monitor, where matrices described the mathematical underpinnings of teleportation. “Time becomes vague when you’re working on something real.”

Maya moved closer, near enough that he caught the scent of her shampoo. It reminded him of gardens, which seemed absurd in this stuffy, windowless basement room. She peered at his screen, though he knew the equations would be meaningless to her. Her expertise lay in the wet chemistry of metabolism, not the crystalline abstractions of quantum mechanics.

“What are you working on then, Laurel?”

The question hung between them. He’d grown tired of explaining his work to colleagues who nodded politely while their eyes glazed over. The theoretical framework for quantum teleportation had existed for decades, but actual implementation required precision that bordered on the mystical. Every parameter had to align perfectly: entanglement protocols, measurement sequences, rematerialization algorithms. A single error, and the system collapsed into noise.

“Moving things from here to there without the inconvenience of space between,” he said.

Maya laughed, a sound that was somehow both skeptical and gentle. “Teleportation.”

“Eliminating the arbitrary distinction between location A and location B.” He gestured at the apparatus dominating the center of the lab: a maze of lasers, mirrors, and detection equipment that resembled modern sculpture more than functional technology. “Distance is just another variable.”

She studied the setup. Maya understood precision, even if the specific application fell outside her field. “And you think you might be close?”

“I think the universe keeps secrets.” Laurel saved his work and turned to face her properly. Small conversations demanded effort he usually reserved for larger problems, but Maya deserved better than his usual autopilot. “Every equation balances. Every simulation run is clean. But something’s missing, some element I can’t quite put my finger on.”

He was doing it again – talking past the person in front of him toward some abstract listener who might actually comprehend what he was attempting. Even to him, the habit felt like a form of intellectual masturbation, somewhat satisfying but ultimately solitary.

“You should go home,” Maya said. “Sleep. Eat something that didn’t come from a vending machine.”

The idea sounded strange to him. Home was a one-bedroom apartment filled with books he’d already read and silence that amplified his restlessness. Here, the work provided direction. The equations demanded attention in ways life outside never could.

“I’m fine,” he said, which was technically accurate, like everything he said. Fine had become his default state: functional, focused, alone.

Maya’s expression shifted, and for a moment, he thought she might press the issue. Instead, she retrieved her notebook from a nearby bench. “Try to remember you’re human, Laurel. The universe will still be mysterious tomorrow.”

After she left, the lab felt larger and more hollow. Laurel returned to his calculations, but could not regain the necessary concentration. Maya’s presence created just enough temporary warmth to make the subsequent cold more noticeable. He’d known her for three years, since she’d been recruited to the biology department, and had developed what might be called friendship, though the idea of friendship implied reciprocity he wasn’t sure he provided.

The pattern of their conversations tended to repetitiveness: she would ask about his work, he would explain it, poorly, she would express concern for his well-being, and he would deflect with intellectual abstractions. It was a comfortable ritual, like morning coffee or checking email. He wondered sometimes if she expected more from him, but couldn’t imagine what that might look like.

The teleportation project had already consumed two years. What began as a theoretical exercise had evolved into an obsession with experimental proof. Grant money helped, but real motivation ran quite a bit deeper. Laurel had spent much of his life studying reality’s fundamental structure, and teleportation represented something approaching mastery over the fundamental nature of existence. If he could show that space was merely another parameter to manipulate, perhaps he could prove the universe was less mysterious than it pretended.

His phone buzzed with a text from his mother. “Haven’t heard from you in weeks. Have you forgotten I exist? Are you eating? Call me.” He deleted it immediately. Family obligations were interruptions from another, less important, life, and he had no time for conversations serving no apparent purpose.

Through the lab windows, mountains rose like dark monuments against a sky beginning to pale toward dawn. Boulder spread below like a circuit board, geometric patterns and orderly connections. Laurel had chosen this place specifically for its isolation from major physics departments on the coasts. Here, he could work without constant pressure to publish, present, or play academic networking games that turned science into social climbing.

He’d been a prodigy once, the kind of grad student who solved problems that stumped full professors. Livermore had recruited him straight from his postdoc at MIT at the ripe age of nineteen, and for several years, he’d contributed to projects that lurked in classified shadows. But that work felt stifling, channeled toward applications he couldn’t discuss and discoveries that vanished into bureaucratic black holes. When the university position opened, he’d left the weapons lab for pure research.

The transition had not been seamless. Academic freedom came with academic responsibilities: teaching undergraduates who cared more about grades than understanding, serving on committees that achieved nothing through elaborate procedures, writing grant proposals that translated actual problems into fundable buzzwords. Laurel adapted by minimizing exposure to these necessities, teaching minimum course loads, and avoiding administrative duties whenever possible.

Colleagues thought him antisocial, which was not at all inaccurate. Social interaction required energy that he preferred to save for more productive activities. Small talk felt like wasted brain cycles. Professional networking rituals – conferences, departmental parties, collaborative lunches – struck him as elaborate ways of avoiding real work.

Real work was the one thing that remained pure. In the lab’s controlled environment, variables could be isolated and manipulated with precision. Cause led to effect through mathematical relationships, as elegant as they were inevitable. The universe might be vast and mostly opaque, but small portions could be understood in their entirety.

The teleportation apparatus represented months of painstaking fabrication. Each component had been selected and positioned according to specifications derived from his calculations. Laser systems generated entangled photon pairs with world-class precision. Detection equipment measured quantum states with minimal disturbance. Rematerialization protocols had been tested in countless simulations.

He’d been postponing running the experiment for weeks, partly from caution and partly from odd reluctance to actually complete the project. Once the experiment succeeded, the mystery would be solved, and he’d need another problem worthy of obsession. Once he pushed past his hesitations and actually ran the first experiment, it failed to work, regardless of the subject he was sending. It should have, but it didn’t. It was maddening.

A reminder about a faculty meeting interrupted him – was it already morning? Another two hours of administrative tedium to muddle up his thoughts. Colleagues discussed budget allocations and curriculum changes with the passion he reserved solely for physics. The distinction between the urgent and important had been completely flipped, creating a world where science and discovery took second place to procedural compliance.

“Dr. Zivon,” the department chair said as the meeting concluded, “could I have a word?”

Laurel waited while other faculty filed out, their conversations shifting seamlessly from official business to personal gossip. Professor Yang had been his nominal supervisor since arriving at the university, though their relationship was more administrative than collaborative.

“Your research grant expires next month,” Yang said without preamble. “Any progress worth reporting?”

The question irritated him more than it should have. Progress in theoretical physics couldn’t be measured in quarterly reports. Discovery required patience, persistence, willingness to pursue ideas that might lead nowhere. But funding agencies demanded concrete deliverables, measurable outcomes that were justifiable to bureaucrats who treated science like any other business.

“The theoretical framework is complete,” Laurel said. “I’m working on experimental verification.”

“Good. The review committee will want results.” Yang gathered papers with brisk efficiency. “I don’t need to remind you how competitive renewals have become.”

Alone in the conference room afterward, Laurel stared at the whiteboard covered with budget projections and enrollment statistics. Science’s institutional apparatus felt increasingly divorced from discovery’s actual practice. Research had become performance art, where the audience consisted of administrators valuing productivity over insight.

He walked back to his lab with a purpose that’d been absent for weeks now. The experimental apparatus waited exactly as he’d left it, each component aligned and calibrated according to specifications he had developed. It was entirely novel, this contribution to human knowledge: a machine that could disassemble matter at the quantum level and reconstitute it elsewhere without losing any information.

The theoretical elegance was undeniable. Quantum entanglement would create correlations transcending space, allowing information transmission instantaneously across arbitrary distances. By carefully measuring every particle’s quantum state in an object, that information could reconstruct an identical copy somewhere else. The original would be destroyed in measurement, but the copy would be perfect down to the last up quark.

Laurel had solved technical challenges one by one: maintaining coherence during measurement, preventing decoherence during transmission, ensuring perfect rematerialization at the receiving end. Each solution required months of work, but the underlying physics was sound; he was sure of it. Mathematics had been checked and rechecked until every variable was accounted for. It should be working, but it wasn’t.

Maya appeared carrying two coffee cups, an act that seemed almost supernatural in its timing.

“Thought you might need this,” she said, offering him the less battered cup.

“Thank you.” The coffee was exactly the right temperature and strength, suggesting she’d been observing his preferences more carefully than he’d realized.

“So,” Maya said, settling into a chair beside his workbench, “are you going to tell me what’s really happening here?”

It was a simple question, but Laurel struggled to respond. The teleportation project had become more than research; it was proof that the universe could be understood and manipulated down to the most fundamental level. Success would validate his entire approach to existence.

“I’m trying to solve a problem everyone thinks impossible,” he said.

“And if you succeed?”

“Then impossible becomes improbable, which is the first step toward inevitable.”

Maya smiled, though he couldn’t determine whether the expression indicated amusement or concern. “You make it sound philosophical.”

“All physics is philosophy. We just use math to disguise the metaphysics.”

The conversation moved on from his work to Maya’s research on metabolic pathways, strange weather patterns affecting the region, a book she’d recommended that he’d forgotten to read. Laurel found himself enjoying the diversion, though he couldn’t shake the feeling he was wasting time that could be spent much more productively.

As soon as the door closed behind Maya, he returned to calculations with reinvigorated concentration. Experimental parameters had been optimized to the current technology’s limits. Rematerialization algorithms had been tested millions of times in simulation. Every possible error source had been identified and eliminated.

And yet, experiments kept failing, objects arriving distorted beyond recognition, or failing to materialize at all.

He realized suddenly just how exhausted his body was. Maya’s visit refreshed him, but the energy had faded, and Laurel’s brain started to get foggy. Maybe she was right, maybe he really needed to get some sleep.

The lab fell silent around him as he gathered papers and locked equipment. Outside, mountains waited in ancient patience, indifferent to human concerns like ambition and discovery. The universe kept its own schedule, revealing mysteries when it was ready, regardless of the number of all-nighters researchers would pull.

To be continued...