The Breakthrough

The Breakthrough

D. A. Ratliff

Time had not been kind to the building that once housed the laboratory where we made the breakthrough. The breakthrough—it sounds so commonplace after thirty years.

The ink on my astrophysics Ph.D. diploma hadn’t dried before Doctor Julius Wagner insisted I join his research team. Little did I know at the time what the research he conducted concerned.

I should have had a clue from the razor wire and steel fence erected around the grounds where several buildings sprawled across the barren plains of Montana. I sat for hours in a little concrete block hut while I read and signed documents swearing my allegiance to my country. After the third dude in a black suit grilled me on everything from my political affiliations (I had none) to my favorite breakfast cereal, a line from The Wizard of Oz rattled in my head. I had a feeling I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. No, this was not Kansas, and I was far from being Dorothy.

The guards, all dressed in black with weapons I didn’t recognize, escorted me to a small, windowless cell furnished only with an upholstered chair, a twin-size bed, and, thankfully, a small adjoining bathroom. There was a digital military time clock on the wall. I wondered if I hadn’t passed the security test. To be honest, I was scared.

Two hours passed before a guard delivered a steak dinner. At least they were keeping me fed. The guard who came for the tray gave me a tablet with pre-selected movies and nothing else on it, a carafe of coffee, and a bag of cookies and told me breakfast was at six. I didn’t sleep well, but the cookies were great.

I woke up well before six to a knock on the door. A guard brought me a pair of black overalls, underwear, and slip-on shoes and told me to get dressed. I took a shower, dressed, and waited. At six sharp, the door opened, and a guard led me to an elevator where we went down, exited, and took a long corridor to another elevator and back up. The building had windows, revealing several industrial buildings spread across the terrain.

Dr. Wagner sat at a table with several other people. He motioned to me. “Dr. Crane, please join us.” He quickly ran through the names of the four people with him and then introduced me. “Everyone, this is Doctor Maxwell Crane. He’s going to solve our little problem.”

I felt a chill rush through me, and my expression must have given my shock away as the others chuckled. I had yet to find anything amusing. I sat down, and a server brought me a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast. As I ate, he began to tell me why I was here. After three bites, I laid my fork down. Food was the furthest thing from my mind.

Wagner spoke softly. “We have brought you here because your Ph.D. advisor, who is familiar with our work, recognized a formula in your thesis. Something you couldn’t or shouldn’t be aware of, yet you were. It was then that we decided to bring you here.”

“Which is?”

“Just what it looks like—a secret government installation.”

“And? What’s the secret?”

His eyes twinkled, and a grin flashed on his face. “Aliens, of course.”

~~~

For three years, I worked in a large industrial chamber among the remains of an alien spacecraft that crashed ten years before after being chased by military stealth aircraft. The crew died in the crash, possibly by their hand. They were humanoid and breathed a similar mix of oxygen and nitrogen as we did. The scientist suspected that an explosive device set to blow up the ship did not detonate.

Scientists evaluated and tested every piece of equipment on the ship, including reverse engineering weapons, but were most intrigued by a device that they thought was for navigation. It activated unexpectedly, and an adjacent platform lit up. Following the code in the alien version of a computer, they found my formula for energy expansion in a black hole, and they sent for me.

Experiments led to more experiments until one day, in frustration, I tossed a trash can onto the glowing platform, and it disappeared. For months, we continued to place objects onto the platform, never to be seen again.

Then, the breakthrough happened. I discovered the secret of the code. What we thought was a navigational device was a transport system. We crafted a message in code that we hoped they understood. They did. We received an invitation to visit, and one snowy Montana morning, I stepped onto the platform and met our new alien friends.

~~~

A cryptic note arrived asking me to come to the old compound, and as I stood inside, I was surprised to find it abandoned. There had been talk of turning the location of first contact into a national monument. However, enthusiasm for vacationing on Maloran’s tropical beaches, hundreds of light years away, outweighed interest in a windswept plain in Montana.

Mother Nature had claimed her land, and the once sterile, shiny laboratory looked desolate and shabby. Soil blown through broken windows covered the floor, and buffalo grass grew abundantly.

I had no idea who invited me. As I debated leaving since no one was there to greet me, I felt a familiar tingle on my skin from charged particles. I knew that sensation. I’d felt it the day I entered the portal. A slight metallic pop sounded behind me, and I whirled, shocked to see a white upholstered chair had appeared.

It was not just any chair. It appeared to be the chair from my room the first night I was in the compound. I began walking toward it but stopped as another burst of energy occurred, and an older, gray-haired Dr. Wagner appeared.

I stumbled backward. “What? How?”

He smiled. “While you have been working with the Malorian scientists on new technology, I continued to study your work. You are somewhat of a genius, and I have found many hidden pathways in your mathematical calculations.”

I shrugged. “What pathways?”

“See that chair? That is the chair from the compound.”

“It looks new.”

“It is new. At least it was then.”

The grain of an idea began to grow in my thoughts. “You—you’ve been there.”

He threw his arms apart and grinned. “That’s the scientist I know. Yes, from a small part of your calculations, I applied Malorian math and made the breakthrough—your breakthrough.” He pulled a small device from his jacket pocket. “This is the time determinator. All I have to do is set the increments, and we can go anywhere along the timeline.”

I stood motionless, too stunned to move. Dr. Wagner came to me and placed his hands on my shoulders. “Max, you must come with me. I have been to both our past and our future. If we do not change something in our past, our future and that of Maloria are doomed.”

I locked eyes with a man I considered my mentor. His eyes spoke the truth, and I had no choice but to go with him.

“Set the time, Doctor, and let’s go.”

He inputted numbers into the device, grabbed my forearm, and we disappeared into the void—the day of another breakthrough.

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