Breaking Reality

Joe stood at his counter, looking down at the envelope, and the text that was now visible on the paper within. He could only make out the first couple of words and the big BOLD letters in dark red ink that said: TOP SECRET.

His brain was running faster than it had ever run before, assuming, thinking, coming to infinitely detailed conclusions. The way his brain worked, was one of the very few reasons why he'd ever been accepted at the prestigious college, and probably the sole reason why he'd been allowed a part in the cutting edge experimental High Energy Photon Array Research Department.

He didn't need to touch the envelope to incriminate himself. He'd already held the thing a number of times. His fingerprints were all over it. He'd handled it so much, his prints were probably the only prints remaining on it and forensics wouldn't bother to try and find prints underneath prints, underneath prints. So the case of "who touched it last" was undisputable... Or was it?

Joe's brain and stomach churned at the same time. Was it possible? Could this be Mary's doing? He'd gotten her number, not the other way around. How did she get his number? Joe shook his head stupidly when he realized his name, his social security number, his cell phone number, were all public record here at the university. They were displayed on his ID badge, on his credentials, on most of his personal items in case they got lost... including his lab coat. If she had half a brain cell, she could have glimpsed his number many times before, memorized it. She did seem awfully infatuated with him, contrary to the demeanor she showed in front of her co-workers, but not his. And... they had just spent the night together. The longest, most glorious night Joe had ever spent with anyone, much less a woman.

Deciding Mary was not part of whatever this "situation" was, he removed her from his mental line up of unusual suspects. So then, was it Wallinger? It could very well be Wallinger, although, he seemed to be surprised, irritated by Joe's lateness, and showed genuine confusion when he announced that their higher-ups had known, and approved, of his tardiness. So, if it wasn't Wallinger, then who? Who wanted to destroy him? Who wanted to ruin his life, his career, his entire future here at the university?

He glanced down at the papers and saw a word he hadn't previously seen. It was printed in large black letters, all capitals, and it read; SHEPARD

He considered the word for a moment. Was it was a code word? The name of a mission, project, or operation? He reached down and touched the words, ran his fingers over them, brushed them back and forth quickly, hoping to feel something out of the ordinary. He considered the possibilities again. Was this some sort of hazing attempt? Sabotage? Was someone setting him up for something else? Blackmail? Was someone trying to infiltrate the university? He inched the letter out of the envelope. He slid the folded papers across the countertop and somehow, in thsat instant, the envelope slid the opposite direction and fell to the kitchen floor. He ignored it. He'd grab it later. The letter was what he wanted to see now. Joe picked the papers up and gently unfolded them.

SHEPARD

Super-High Energy Photon Array Research Department. Joseph cocked his head to the side. Super-high? Really? Everything they did was above and beyond anything anyone else was doing. That's why they did it. But super-high? They could have made it sound cooler, used a better word like, ultra, ultimate, beyond ultimate, or pretty much anything other than super. Super made it sound like they were trying, but really didn't care to go all out.

He skimmed over the rest of the cover page, saw that there were blatant similarities to documents he knew were the real thing... and then there were red flags. Things that indicated that this might not be legit after all. He continued, now doubting, hopefully, the letter's authenticity. He quickly held the paper up, to see how transparent it was, and was surprised that absolutely no light shined through. He turned the paer right and left, and then looked at it up close. He ran to the bedroom, grabbed his phone, and thumbed the screen as he came back into the dining room. He held the phone about six inches away from the paper, thumbed the icon for the photo app, and then yelped in pain and alarm as sparks and fire suddenly shot out all over the place.

"Son of a bitch!" He shouted, trying to toss his phone into the sink, while juggling the papers, and trying to not get burned, or burn the papers, in the process. His phone clattered to the counter, skittered and rebounded off the back wall's splash guard, spun sideways, smoke now billowing out of every crevasse in the device. Joe grabbed an oven mitt, slapped the phone into the sink with it, and then turned on the water, full blast. His phone was a complete loss, he knew, and his only goal now, was to keep it from catching the rest of his apartment on fire.

After plugging the drain and half heartedly splashing water onto the phone's screen, eventually the basin filled enough to submerge the device, and the smoke was reduced to greyish bubbles that foamed out of it, rose to the surface, and popped to give off little puffs of smoke, but nothing compared to it's previous hellish cacophony of fumes and flame.

Swearing about the loss of his phone, Joe turned and regarded the papers, now sitting on the countertop as if they were innocent of any wrongdoing. He snatched them up, and made as if to rip them in two. He could do it. There was nobody there to stop him. Jack... Oh, he'd come back and ask what had happened, but without the papers, he could easily play dumb. Say he lost them, or... someone stole them. If he needed, he could even do something more extravagant. He could burn them, mix the ash with epoxy resin, and then discard it as something broken, or better yet, something meant to be discarded, like something he had 3-D printed by mistake.

Oh! 3-D printing supports! He thought suddenly. He could be rid of this paper and nobody would be the wiser. He could be rid of it. Now.

He held the paper up, not flipping to the next page, but just staring at the cover for a long time. Could he really get rid of it that easily? The university was known to check everything, but checking something meant they had to know about it and the only people who knew he had this letter were Jack, himself, and possibly Mary. He considered his options again. If he was going to get rid of it, he had to do it now. Right now.

He took three steps to the sink, and almost pushed the papers under the stream of water. The edge of the paper fluttered and for a moment he thought his eyes were deceiving him. Was the paper repelled by the water?He brought the edge of the paper closer, saw that it did not bend away from the stream like he'd thought. He found himself standing there, holding his breath, watching, while the paper stood a fraction of an inch away from complete and total annihilation.

Complete and utter irreversibility. Was there such a thing? All his life, since he was old enough to understand that matter, and energy, can neither be created from nothing, nor destroyed into nothing, but only converted from one form to another... so too did this ideal hold true for information. He slowly pulled the papers away from the water faucet, and then shut it off.

He had the papers. He had them. What harm was there in reading them? He sucked in a deep breath, weighing what he was about to do. This was the moment. He was now within the paradox of choice. The moment of differentiation between having free will, and being a construct of a pre-determined universe. Wasn't choice an illusion anyway? In the bigger scheme of things, everything and everyone, all time, all instances of all existence, would be recorded as information on the edge of universe's event horizon.

What harm... If he read the pages, he would know what they contained. He wasn't naïve enough to think that there could be no harm in knowing. There was always a risk. There was always some level of harm in knowing. The gamble was, you never knew just how much. Ignorance of a thing, did not guarantee bliss, and knowing the truth did not always set one free. Often, it was the exact opposite.

But Joe knew, Jack was expecting him to "analyze" the pages. Did he consider reading them as analyzing them? And what if he did? Was there some sort of enigma to figure out? And what if it wasn't jack who came to retrieve the papers, but someone else? What if they meant to do him harm? What if this contained national Security Secrets? What then? They would surely assume he had read the papers, even if he hadn't. Nothing would stop their assumptions of what he had, or had not done.

"Jesus Christ Joe!" he said to himself, and then he slapped himself across the face, hard. He was not a six year old boy, frightened of school bullies, or given into flights of extreme anxiety and paralyzing fright. He was a scientist! And what did scientists do? "We figure it out," he said to nobody in particular. And so there was only the choice for him. When faced with curiosity, or purity, he would satisfy his curiosity first. Knowledge was the key. It was always the key. Knowing something allowed a person to make an informed decision, and therefore, allowed a person to make choices, rather than step blindly with nothing but faith or taboo to guide them. Knowledge was power, and knowledge made choice, a reality.

He flipped the cover page over, revealing the first page of the document and read it out loud;

Monday, December 5th, 2022. Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, have accomplished the impossible. They have re-created the Sun.

Joe smirked, but continued reading. This was surely some sort of a joke. Nobody had done anything of the sort, otherwise, he would have heard about it, and besides, the date was wrong. It wasn't even close to December, and this was 2020, not 2022.

By focusing 192 high energy lasers on a tiny bit of deuterium and tritium, and heating it to 3 million degrees Celsius, they created a condition that previously had never existed anywhere other than the Sun itself. In doing so, they also broke the fabric of time and space, although they did not know what they had done.

Joe shook his head and scoffed. Did they have the date wrong? Now this was reading like some sci-fi rag, and the wording insinuated that whoever the author was, they were referring to this event, as if it had happened in the past. There was no way this was real. Joe turned back to the paper and continued reading.

Please, continue reading. I understand this takes a lot of time, but fortunately, we have plenty of that on our hands.

Joe chuckled. Extremely well written, he thought. Obviously the author assumed whoever was reading, would start asking questions about the papers authenticity, and that was the perfect time to slip something queer into the mix. Something to trick the reader into thinking that the author knew that they would pick that exact moment, to question it. Omnipotence. But Joe knew better. Nothing was omnipotent.

No. The paper is not all knowing. Neither were the scientists who performed the experiments. They didn't understand it back then, like we do today. You have to know. I have to tell you.

Joe smiled. Fabulously written he decided. He went to the fridge, grabbed a soda and then frowned at the temperature. He ducked his head down, saw the light was out, the fridge had stopped working. "God damn it," he said, closing the door and then rummaging around in a drawer for the bottle opener. He popped the cap off one-handed, and then flung the bottle cap into the trash with a flip of his fingers. He took a big swig from the bottle, and then went back to reading.

With the development of wormhole drives and dark energy engines, scientists were eventually able to discover, or rather, detect, what they had done. But they had no idea how to fix it. Even worse, even after they found the source, their mistake, they couldn't believe it. No, I take that back. They could believe it, but they couldn't accept it.

Joseph stopped reading, and took another swig of soda, nodding to himself. The information was bullshit. A prank. He knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt now. But it was beautifully written. December 2022. Either the person setting him up had miss-typed, or he'd gotten the date wrong. Or maybe, it was on purpose. Whatever the motive, December 2022 was over two years into the future. Wormhole drives and dark energy engines were nothing but fantasy and theoretical impossibilities.

Jow knew plenty of crazy people. They were quite common in his field. You had to be a freaking quack to understand half the theories in play about quantum energy production and theoretical energy production devices, but the real geniuses, were absolutely insane.

Enjoying the science fiction more now that he understood what it was, he went back to his bedroom and laid down in bed before continuing. He was naked, after all.

Once they realized what it was, what they'd done, and once it got out and the public forced them to accept it, that they were responsible, that they were the ones who had broken everything... they tried to cover it up. Of course that didn't work. A cover-up is always a temporary thing. Sometimes it works in the short term. People forget. But when you break the universe... nobody forgets. And once the coverup was exposed, there was no place in the universe they could go. No escape.

Joseph shook his head and flipped to the next page. The words "no escape" echoed in his head. No escape. Cover-ups are always temporary. But not his. He decided right then and there, when he was done reading this piece of fan-fare, he'd get rid of it. He'd burn it, and then put the ashes down the garbage disposal. Quick and easy. No muss, no fuss. Nobody would know.

Fusion is nothing new to the scientific community. It had been done for years prior to the breaking, but the result, the net energy and the reaction that it created, back in 2022, was. It was completely new. Nobody even knew what it was, or that it had happened. It was a silent killer. Completely silent.

Joseph scoffed. "Back in 2022," he mumbled as he put his soda bottle on the nightstand. He looked out the window and noticed it was getting dark. Ws there a storm coming? He hadn't heard about one, and as far as he knew, it was supposed to be sunny for the next couple of days. He turned back to the paper, eager to read some more. He quite enjoyed the author's attempts to insinuate that he was from the future. It was much better than saying something along the lines of, "a long time ago, in a laboratory, far, far away," and he chuckled sarcastically. "Oh, please continue," he said, and he read on.

It created far more energy than it used. It was ground breaking. It was unprecedented. It was, impossible. In layman's terms, this was considered, "limitless energy". In scientific terms, we now call it, "playing with God's fire".

"It is impossible," Joseph said, and then he shook his head. "Well, right now it is." Wasn't that one of the goals of what he'd been working on? Wasn't that the primary goal? Limitless energy? And now, this letter, written specifically for him, addressed to him, setting him up. Now he knew it was a set up. A bit of science fiction, meant to steer him in one direction or another. He wondered what rival colleague had dreamed this up. How long it must have taken them. How much they'd had to plan, and the expense. Jack, obviously an actor, must have been making bank on this.

Soon after the breaking, things began to happen. Large areas of information began disappearing. It's hard to describe it, even now. Aside from a lot of people dying much earlier than they should have, there were other things. Conditions that were previously thought impossible, suddenly seemed to start becoming the norm. I can't give you specifics, but know this. Every time we tried to pin point something specific, it changed. That's the thing. Everything changes. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. But back then, with all the scientific breakthroughs that were happening, everyone just thought that we'd stumbled upon life's holy grail. Quantum entanglement. Quantum fusion engines. Limitless energy. All of the sudden, we'd figured it all out. We were so naïve. Everything! I... I can't say I knew it happened right away. Most people failed to notice... until it was too late.

"So what's the point?" Joe asked the open doorway to his bedroom. "Is this some lame attempt to make me mess things up? What? Am I supposed to just up and quit?" He looked back down at the paper. "I've read better shit in Scientific American," he grumbled and he ran a finger down the paper, finding the place he'd left off.

It starts off with the breaking. That is the key. After that experiment, the world will begin so many experiments, with absolutely no regard for the previous boundaries. Who needs to worry about global warming, when you can use limitless energy to make every structure on earth, heat proof? Air conditioning and purification units in every home. Recycling plants, powered by the new deuterium regeneration engines, begin digging up old landfills and breaking down material into basic components.

"Yeah. Recycling. Bad recycling," Joe chuckled. Was there any such thing as bad recycling?

With limitless energy, matter and antimatter experiments became common place. Every scientific community was rushing headlong into every experiment they could, not because they knew what they were doing, but because they could. Everyone wanted notoriety, and then, if they discovered something new, something they could market, propriety. Fame. Fortune.

The deuterium drives, an improvement on the experiment that was used to conduct the breaking, were downsized, improved, and intensified. They replaced all other forms of energy production. Hydroelectric, wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, everything. They took down the dams. They trashed the solar fields. They ripped out the oil wells and the gas rigs and tore down the refineries. Deuterium drives. Jesus, what were we thinking. Thank God they- they didn't get rid of them all.

Get rid of them all? All of what? Joe thought. He looked to his right, out the window, and noticed that it was getting brighter now. The clouds must have passed by without casting their rain down, which was a disappointment. Joe liked the sound of rain falling. It was soothing, like the flow of water in a river, or the sound of a waterfall. He reached over, grabbed the soda and raised it to his lips before he saw a large blob of something floating in the liquid.

"What the fuck?" He spat, jumping out of bed and holding the soda up to his face to inspect it. The liquid looked thick at the bottom, and thin, like water, at the top. Mold floated on the surface, its edges curling up when Joe jostled the bottle. "Ugh!" Joe bemoaned, thinking and then feeling he would be sick. He hurried into the kitchen, upended the bottle over the sink, and then noticed his phone was gone.

"What the fuck?" He said, turning around and then around again, seeing the phone nowhere. He set the bottle on the counter, then started looking around, and began to notice things looked different. His phone was gone, the sink was empty, dry. The sink drain stopper was set on the back edge of the sink, indicating someone else had been in here, and someone else had drained the sink. That same person, undoubtedly, had taken his phone.

Joe remembered the envelope from the letter, and then bent over to look for it under the counter, but it was also gone. He got down on his hands and knees, searched everywhere for it, but it was nowhere to be found. He got up, rushed back to his bedroom, and started dressing. He wanted to know what the hell was going on, and he wasn't going to figure it out here, in his apartment, naked, without his phone.

Joe yanked the nightstand drawer open, tossed the letter inside, and slammed it shut. Then he opened it again, reached under the letter, and grabbed his wallet. Without his campus ID and credentials, he had no way to show anyone who he was. Swearing, he stuffed the wallet into his pants pocket and turned to leave.

"Joe?"

Joe turned, saw Mary in the doorway to his bedroom, her face looked shocked, hurt, and surprised, all at once.

"Mary!" Joe said, and he walked towards her to give her a hug.

The expression, the emotion on Mary's face, changed. She looked happy to see him, upset, shocked, confused, and then... angry. He stopped a foot from her, feeling something was different. Something about her had changed.

"Where... the fuck... have you been?" Mary said, her tone running icy cold.

"What do you mean?" Joe asked, confused. "I've been here. You just left a couple... not even a couple hours ago. Maybe an hour ago."

"I haven't been here since last night," Mary said, and then she added, "and you weren't here. You haven't been here in three months! Three MONTHS Joe!" She said his name with an air of absolute authority that told him he better not question her words, but he had to.

"You just left, an hour ago," Joe said. "We had-" he stopped himself, knowing that ladies did not like it when men referred to their sexual encounters as "having sex". "We... made love, all night. And then you hod to go to work. You left an hour ago. I... I just sat in bed and read-"

"That was THREE MONTHS AGO!" Mary exclaimed and she sounded extremely confused, and upset now. "Three months Joe! I left to go to work. You ghosted me! You didn't call, you didn't answer your phone. You shut your number off."

"Mary," Joe began to say, and then he stopped. He turned to the nightstand, wondering if he should tell her about the letter, but then thought better of it. "My phone caught on fire," he said, hoping the information might help her understand. "I was in the kitchen, I went to take a picture," he made a motion like he had when he'd tried to take a picture of the paper, mimicking his actions, as if he had his phone.

"You tried to send me a dick-pic, and your phone caught on fire?" Mary asked incredulously, and then, the serious look on her face cracked. Joe was confused. He hadn't tried to take a dick-pic. But now that he thought about it, without his phone and without the letter, it kinda looked like that was what he'd been explaining. Mary opened her mouth, trying to rid herself of the smile that was growing, but couldn't help it. "Yeah, okay, your shit is fire, but no man's dick ever caught a phone on fire!"

"Mary, I swear to god. You just left an hour ago. Maybe less. I've been laying in bed, right there, re-"

"Right there?" Mary asked, pointing. "The same place I've come and laid down, thinking, wondering, where the hell you went. I've been here Joe. Everyone's been here."

"Everyone?" Joe asked. "What do you mean, everyone?"

"Everyone. NSA, FBI, CIA, Homeland, The directors. They brought me in for questioning, made me sign a bunch of statements. They're still watching the place."

"How are you here?" he asked then, still not believing a word she was saying.

"I-" Mary paused, and then gave him one of those, "well what did you expect" type of looks. "I told them I moved in wit you."

"You what?" Joe asked, dumbfounded.

"Well, what did you expect? You up and left, didn't say a word. I thought you might come back, and..."

"And what?" Joe asked. Mary looked down. "And what?" he asked again.

"You can't see it?"

"See what?" Joe asked, stepping back and looking down.

"The baby. Our baby," she said, putting her hands down to her lower abdomen.

"Our baby?" Joe asked, and then he stumbled, his legs going weak.

"I don't know how it happened but, yeah. I found out a couple weeks ago."

Joe sat down on the edge of his bed, shook his head. This had to be some sort of a prank. Another prank. A devious, poorly thought out, prank.

Mary walked over to him then, reached down and picked up his hand, pressed it against the side of her abdomen. Joe's eyes widened in shock, surprise, and disbelief. There was no way she was faking it. Mary pulled up her shirt, baring her flesh and he saw there was no way this could be a hoax. He turned, looked at the nightstand drawer, still hanging open.

"What is it?" Mary asked.

"My letter," Joe replied flatly.

"Your letter?" Mary asked. Joe looked at her, and then saw she was looking at his nightstand. "What letter?"

Joe stood up and went to his nightstand, withdrew the letter, and turned. Mary vanished. Joe dropped the letter. "Mary! Mary!" he started forward, and a second later, before he could get to the end of the bed, she reappeared. A sound hit him like a thunderclap. "JOE!" He slapped his hands over his ears, and then removed them a second later.

"Where did you just go? What happened?" Mary stepped forward, looking at him from head to toe. "What the hell is going on?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing," Joe said and then quickly added, "I grabbed my letter, and turned to show you, but you disappeared!"

"I didn't disappear. You disappeared!" Mary said accusingly.

Joe turned, looked down at the letter, and swallowed. There was no way. It wasn't... possible.

"What's going on Joe. You gotta tell me. This is some fucked up-"

"Time travel," Joe said then, not knowing what else to say.

"Time travel?" Mary repeated in a disbelieving tone. "How is that-"

"Possible?" Joe finished for her. "It's not. Not yet anyway. But in the future, it might be. My letter might explain more."

"You letter explains time travel?" Mary asked then. "Joe. You sound... crazy."

"Help me," Joe said, walking over to the letter. "I want to see if this works."

"What?" Mary asked, stepping forward, but then stopping a foot away. "What are you going to do?"

Joe turned, looked at the clock on his nightstand. "It's nine fifteen. I'm going to pick up the letter. As soon as you disappear, I'll drop it again."

"I didn't disappear!" Mary argued.

"Okay, well one of us does. It's either me, going back in time, or forward, or you. Just... just help me. Nine sixteen. Watch the clock. and me. Alright?"

"Okay," Mary said.

Joe picked up the letter. A second later, Mary disappeared. Joe let the letter drop. He covered his ears. A few moments later, something slammed into him, throwing his against the wall. As his back slammed home, he saw Mary standing where he had been crouched, her feet standing on the letter, and then, Mary disappeared.