The Yellow Room

by submission | Feb 2, 2008 | Story

Author : Seth Koproski

“Mr. Jones, is it?”

“Yep.”

“Hello. I’m Doctor Jack Worth, head of the research team. Do you have any questions you’d like to ask?”

“So how much ‘compensation’ will I receive for this?”

“Enough to last you and your village a lifetime, however long that may be.”

“Alright. Must be an important study.”

“It is. Now shall we get started? I want to start this briefing with a question. Have you ever thought about time travel, Mr. Jones?”

“When I was young we used to have some science fiction books with time travel in them, but my mother threw them away when I was real young. Never thought of them much afterwards.”

“Well, I’ve always loved a good science fiction read. What if I told you that we have discovered a way to travel through time?”

“I’d be surprised, but I’d believe you. You’re a scientist.”

“Now what I am going to tell you is completely confidential- in no way can it leave this room. Is that clear?”

“Alright…”

“We, indeed, have found a way to travel through time and return to the present, but! at a certain… cost.” He left his seat and stood up. “Imagine, if you will, a bare room. A husband wants to paint it blue, the wife yellow. The wife, as usual, wins out, and they paint it yellow. The husband hates the color so much that he eventually gets agitated enough to leave her.” He paused. “Imagine these are dramatic people.” He chuckled. “The wife, realizing that all the anger could be traced back to that one decision, decides to time travel backwards and somehow paint the room blue. She does so, and returns to the present, where she is still married to her husband, and they have a happy blue room.

“Now there is one question I’d like to ponder: Did the yellow room ever exist? Surely no, but in actuality- it must have. The wife distinctly remembers it. It was there, she knew. Or did she? It’s all rather absurd and utterly impossible to prove one way or another. Or so we thought.” He was pacing across the room at this point. “Then we found a girl named Dana. Dana Aude. Perhaps you’ve heard of her?”

“Never in my life.”

“Oh yes, I forgot you’ve been with your village. Dana is a peculiar girl. Very peculiar. She has a mental consciousness that is unheard of. It’s a trait that she alone has, a power to use a special part of her brain to connect to and find any human that has ever existed. She is, although I hate the term, equivalent to a scientifically proven psychic.”

“Huh.”

“Now you’re probably wondering what this has to do with the experiment and all- or have you made the connection? A yellow room cannot tell us if it has existed or not- there is no way to know. However, with a human being and Dana in our laboratory… it’s very possible.”

“But that human would… like the room…”

“Cease to exist. It’s regrettable, but my colleagues and I are willing to push forward. Many lives have been lost in the pursuit of a better world. What was your mother’s name, again?”

“Christy. Christy Jones before and after she was married. Hey, wait… You aren’t going to…!”

“Of course not! We would never dream of it.” The doctor shot a smile. He then tapped his hand on his watch. “Oh, is it that time already? Well, we’ll continue this in an hour. I’ll let you… digest.”

~~~

“Get the machine ready.”

“Of course, Dr. Worth.”

Fiat Undo

by submission | Jan 29, 2008 | Story

Author : Luis Barjo

“It’s not a scam,” Robin explains as he plugs the cloning tank into the wall. “It just grows in there for a few hours and, when it’s ready, just hop right in. They proved it, man, they proved it with science and we’re gonna be rich.”

Picture a hallway with an infinite number of unmarked doors. Well, it took a few years to get there and a few more to find someone willing or capable of conversation. And, would you believe it, the very second we did, a couple of scientists became millionaires. Whoever is out there wants what we know, and knows plenty we don’t; all we had to do was ask.

I’m sitting here memorizing equations. I just have to run them in my head at the right time, with some provided variables, and I’m back on terra firma. At least that’s what the box claims. You can find these kits anywhere: a few hundred dollars, an empty basement and a friend a big brain and balls to match and you’re an official member of the TransGalactic Couriers.

“How’re you coming along with those numbers?” Robin is busy plugging what seems to be a large gas canister into the tank. That little box on the side, the one the outer controls are wired into, shocks the gases just the right way. Amino acids turn into DNA turn into a functional body. Sure, it’s practical immortality in a sense, but after the novelty wore off no one bothered. This isn’t the most exciting of galaxies.

“I’d be a little better if you’d shut the hell up for five minutes. Why am I the one going through all this trouble again?”

“Because I flunked Holonomic Calculus more times than I could count. In fact, I think you were the only one in that class that made any sense of that blackboard after two weeks.”

When he’s right, he’s right. I read over the documents I need to ferry; they compute out into a series of equations that become the variables to the one I’ve memorized. You’re not supposed to remember anything when you come back, when you wake up in that homunculus body the tank is welding together out of thin air. Thanks to the calculus, I’ll remember a few numbers. Feed them into some more equations and we’ve got a chunk of data TGC will pay a bundle for. Sounds easy enough, right?

“Okay. It’s all set. You remember what to do, right?”

I sit down on the stool. Behind me is a foot-thick slab of concrete. Beneath, some bunched-up plastic sheeting. If this goes well we’ll rent out somewhere with a drain next time. I inhale deeply and try to remember: they’ve done this a million times before. It’s perfectly safe and more than worth the money. It’s just like a photo booth.

Robin aims the revolver dead at my third eye chakra.

“Feelin’ lucky, punk?”