Relativity (32 page)

“You think your brain injury made you special? You're special because that's who you are. Your injury and your father had nothing to do with it.”

“That's not true.” Ethan was getting angry now. She wasn't listening to him and he was right. “You don't understand.”

“It's not that I don't understand, I just don't agree with you.”

“Then you really don't understand. Anyway, you called him too. You're not allowed to be angry with me. I know you did. I saw it on your phone. You've been speaking to my father for weeks.”

“That's different,” Mum said. “That was—”

“And I know everything about Will's dad too. That's why Will's mum was so angry. That's why she said those mean things.” Ethan knew he was twisting the knife now but he couldn't stop. “Everybody knows what you did. All the boys at school called you a slut.”

Mum didn't react straight away. She became very still, so still it didn't look like she was breathing. Her eyes narrowed. Suddenly, she didn't look like his mum anymore.

“Go to bed, Ethan.” There was a wildness in her voice now, something primitive, close to a growl. “I don't want to look at you. I can't even be in the same room as you right now.”

Ethan watched her storm off, shielding her face to hide that she was crying. Good. She deserved to cry. It wasn't fair Mum was angry with him for things she'd done wrong. She was meant to be the grown-up but she was acting like a child. Keeping secrets. Telling him lies.

He put on his pajamas and returned to the time-machine plans. Ethan knew he'd hurt her feelings, said things that made Mum sad. But she'd made herself that way; it wasn't his fault. She was trapped, collapsing under her own weight. Only Mum could drag herself out of the darkness. He couldn't believe anything she said anymore. Once he traveled back in time and could prove Mark was innocent, she'd realize Ethan was right.

T
HE INGREDIENTS
were almost ready now: a dash of energy, a sprinkle of time. Ethan had carefully picked steps from every recipe—general relativity for mixing the batter of space-time; special relativity to whip tachyons faster than light; quantum theory to chop particles into the past.

The time machine would fix everything: a wormhole leading to a critical moment outside the present's mess. But after what had happened last night, Ethan needed to push the schedule forward. He needed to go back now.

Ethan picked up the phone. “The plan's changed,” he said. “It has to happen today.”

“Why? What happened?” Alison asked.

“Mum knows that I've met . . . you know.”

“How? Did you tell her? Oh my gosh, did he tell her? He totally told her, I bet it was him.” She took a deep breath. “What does she know?”

“Not everything. She doesn't know about the time machine. She only saw the phone calls. Anyway, it'll take too long to explain right now. Come to my place. We're pushing the schedule forward.”

“But you haven't finished the design yet! Do we have everything we need?”

“Almost. We'll figure it out. But you need to come over right now.”

“Ethan, I don't know if I'm allowed,” Alison whispered. “Mum won't let me if there's no parental supervision. She'd freak out.”

“Make something up. Try and get here as soon as you can. I can't do this without you but time is running out. It needs to happen today.”

Ω

IT WOULD TAKE
at least 1.21 gigawatts to travel back in time, according to the flux capacitor. Ethan needed to collect all that power and channel it into one place—energy. E=mc
²
. His father's tattoo. E for Ethan. M for Mark. C for Claire. Ethan had to get this right, so he could fix everything.

He closed his eyes and pictured the glimmering black hole. He'd be able to enter it from any direction, so he pointed the time machine at the back garden. Mathematically, the white hole was just a black hole under inverted time. All he needed to do now was find the right light-cone coordinates. Ethan sat up straight and stretched his arms.

Alison arrived, dressed in a navy-blue jumpsuit that was far too big, and plastic goggles on her forehead. “Okay, let's travel back in time!”

“What are you wearing?”

“These are my dad's coveralls. If I've learned anything from watching all those time-travel movies, it's that you need to wear protective clothing to shield yourself from radiation. Safety first.” She put the goggles on her eyes.

Ethan scratched his head. “I'll need to record a video for proof. Can I borrow your phone?”

Alison took her phone out of her pocket and rubbed the screen on the coveralls. “It was my birthday present. I'll be in so much trouble if I lose it, so you have to be really careful. What if you accidentally leave it in the past?”

“I promise I won't. I'll be super careful. But I have to show everyone that my father didn't actually shake me. I need to collect evidence.”

“Wait a sec,” Alison said. “What if my mum calls you when you're in the wormhole? Or in the past?”

“Then I won't answer. Maybe I'll send her a text message? To be honest, I don't think there'll be good reception inside a wormhole. But I promise I'll take really good care of your phone. We SOOFed, remember? Our oath bound in spit.”

Alison handed the phone to Ethan. “Okay. Only because we SOOFed.”

She pointed at the time machine. At least a dozen extension cords ran from the machine to different power sockets in the wall. Ethan had put a blanket on the top of the machine. “What's that, the fabric of the cosmos?”

He frowned. “It's really called the fabric of space-time.”

“Sorry,” Alison said sarcastically, putting a hand on her hip.

“We'll be able to open the wormhole right here. But before we can power up the time machine, I need to find the rabbit.”

Quark was hiding in a cardboard box in the kitchen, chewing on a parsley stem. He looked up at the children, twitched his nose, and turned away. His tail wiggled briefly. Then the gray rabbit licked his paws and pulled his ears down across his face, carefully cleaning his fur.

Ethan tapped his fingers on the ground. “Quark. Come on, come out here.” He offered the rabbit a tiny piece of biscuit. After a while, Quark sniffed the crumbs and hopped toward them.

Alison kneeled on the floor and scooped the bunny into her arms. The rabbit quivered for a moment, before relaxing into her embrace. “Good boy,” she said, nuzzling her nose into the top of Quark's head. “What does the rabbit have to do with time travel?”

“Quark is the final ingredient.”

“You're not going to hurt him, are you?” She held the bunny protectively, pulling him closer to her chest.

“No! He's my pet. I need to send Quark to the past first. According to quantum theory, during the time-travel process quarks are decomposed and then duplicated. If he gets out of the wormhole in one piece, then it's safe for me to do it too.”

“That's horrible. It's basically animal testing.”

Ethan took the bunny from Alison's arms. “Quark will be fine. You can only destroy a quark with an antiquark. Quark just needs to keep rotating.” He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down. “I think we're ready.”

Alison nodded. “Good luck.”

Ethan held Quark in his hands and took his position at the gate of the wormhole. Excitement surged through him—he was moments away from confirming the truth. This was going to change everything. He felt that pulse-quickening thrill of anticipation, like opening presents on a Christmas morning, pushing the paper back to see what's been wrapped up inside.

He looked at the time machine. This was a big deal. Ethan wasn't just about to change his life, he was about to change the universe, change the laws of physics. With the truth of the past, he could take right now and bend it back into its intended shape.

“Now,” he said. “Turn the power on.”

Alison flicked the switches. Electricity surged through the wires. Motors started to run, blades rotated, fans whirled. The hoover sucked in air, creating vacuum energy and strengthening the quantum field. Its Casimir effect would stabilize the wormhole, allowing Ethan to travel faster than light.

A deafening roar reverberated through the room—1.21 gigawatts of energy amalgamating to crack space-time apart. Normally Ethan could feel time, but now he saw it too. It was right in front of him; he could touch it. Time was a grid, an intricate web, an elastic sheet spreading before his eyes.

Suddenly, time opened up and rippled through his skin. Ethan saw lengths of time warping and looping toward him. Seconds flew at him and bruised his skin, tiny moments that ripped his veins apart. Ethan's muscles contracted and his teeth clenched. Collagen and calcium buzzed inside his bones. Sparks flew from the time machine and then a big bang sounded, echoing through the floor. Quark wriggled in his arms.

A crease of light appeared, underneath the fabric of space-time. He drew in his breath and felt a rush of heat through his body. Negative energy was pulling him into the tunnel through time. This was it.

Ethan looked up.

The mouth of the wormhole opened above him in a blinding flash of white.

Ω

CLAIRE RAN UP THE SIDEWALK
and hailed a taxi, jumped inside, and told the driver to hurry. She crossed her arms over her chest; she needed to stop her internal organs from falling out and onto the floor. Her mouth was dry and her throat felt blocked. Her lungs didn't want to stay inside her ribs; her heart wanted to leap out of her skin. She rolled down the window and stuck her head into the wind, seeking the sustenance of air.

She dialed Mark's number. “What happened? Tell me what happened.”

“Claire, what are you talking about?”

“Ethan's in the hospital.”

“What?”

“In the ER. You didn't know?”

“Of course not, what's wrong?”

“But I thought . . . Mark, could you meet me there?”

“I'm leaving now,” he said.

Ω

IN THE HOSPITAL FOYER,
a mother was breast-feeding her baby, her face down and shirt lifted to one side. The baby ran her pink tiny fingers up and down her mother's arm. Each time someone walked through the automatic doors, the mother looked up, protective and alert. Plastic butterflies dangled from the foyer ceiling. Claire felt a pain in her chest. She longed for that unparalleled intimacy with Ethan again, when he'd needed her more than anyone else.

Claire thought she knew every hallway and wing of the Sydney Children's Hospital but in her rush, she'd walked the wrong way. There was a new extension that made the old orange columns of the original hospital look run-down. She found the ER and the nurses took her to Ethan's bed. Hot-air balloons were painted on the wall of his cubicle. Her son was unconscious but breathing. He was hooked up to several monitors; their screens flashed and beeped.

When Ethan was in the hospital when he was a baby, Claire remembered staring at the machines that kept track of his heart, his breath, his life. As long as they kept the same rhythm and sang the same tune, she could convince herself he was okay. Now, the nurse reassured Claire that Ethan's condition wasn't critical and his life wasn't under threat. But the color had drained from his face and his hands were cold. Claire leaned over her son and kissed the top of his head. His hair smelled of smoke and chemical fumes.

“What happened to him?” she asked, stroking his forehead.

“Your son suffered an electric shock. We've been monitoring his heart rate and everything seems stable so far. From the sounds of it, it could have been much worse.”

“What do you mean? How did he get here?”

The nurse flicked through Ethan's chart. “His friend called the ambulance. There was an electric surge, according to the ambulance officers. She said they'd switched on every electrical appliance in the house.”

Claire looked down at Ethan's closed eyes. “Is his friend still here?”

“She's in the waiting room.”

“Thanks, I'll be right back.”

The ER waiting room was full of kids with makeshift slings made from tea towels, others who groaned with stomachaches, and their panic-stricken parents flicking their eyes across the room.

Alison sat by the window, rubbing her hands up and down her thighs. She was wearing a blue jumpsuit but her hands were stained black. She looked up. “Mrs. Forsythe, I'm so sorry.”

“Alison, are you all right? Please call me Claire.”

The little girl shifted the weight of her body to one side. “Claire, we didn't mean to hurt anyone. I promise. It was an accident. I didn't think Ethan would . . . he said he knew what he was doing. That it wasn't that dangerous. He told me it was safe, that he wasn't going to get hurt.”

“It's okay,” Claire said. She put a hand on the girl's trembling knee. “You did the right thing. Thank you for calling an ambulance and getting Ethan here.”