The Last Beginning Read online

  Meg started reenacting a scene involving Tom sweeping everything off a table so that he could throw her mother across it. Clove was torn between mortification and amusement.

  Meg was the worst; Meg was the best.

  CHAPTER 5

  Current Scientific 1/2

  St Andrews’ wormhole research grant proposal for the Department of Physics accepted by the European Space Agency

  Wormholes, or Einstein-Rosen bridges, have been theorized by scientists as far back as Albert Einstein, but only recently has it become possible to stabilize wormholes at the quantum level using a loop of cosmic string.

  By using a particle accelerator similar to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, objects can be accelerated to the speed of light. Collisions of these subatomic objects can contribute the energy necessary to spawn a wormhole, by effectively concentrating enough energy in one area to tear space-time. This creates a wormhole the size of a fundamental particle, which can then be stabilized.

  Although no known wormhole has ever been observed, they are hypothesized to appear similar to a black hole. By stabilizing the wormhole at a quantum level, research can be undertaken on Earth in small-scale scenarios. The hole could one day even be expanded to become large enough for entry, which could potentially allow transportation between regions of space to be achieved in all four dimensions, providing a shortcut between two points in space and time. Human travel between two space-time points is a foreseeable possibility.

  The funding gifted by the ESA to the University of St Andrews will allow more research to be undertaken over the next fifteen years, in the hope of one day answering these questions.

  Current Scientific 2/2

  Lead scientist Dr Jennifer Sutcliffe said at a press conference this morning, “The whole team is wild with excitement. For the ESA to support such an innovative and ambitious undertaking is an inspiring sign of the true value placed on scientific exploration in our age.”

  When asked about the potential commercial uses of wormholes, Dr Sutcliffe said, “At this stage in our research I’d be reluctant to use the words ‘time travel’, in case the media become over-excited. But that’s certainly one direction that this research could take us. However, I must stress the long-term nature of the project. I doubt that the equipment will be safe for human use before 2055 at the earliest.”

  File note: News article from Current Scientific magazine, dated 3 May 2051

  UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS CAMPUS, SCOTLAND, 2056

  After a weekend of searching online for her parents with no success, Clove was disappointed on Monday morning, despite it being the first day of her work experience at St Andrews University. She was also unexpectedly nervous.

  Tom and Jen insisted on proudly (embarrassingly) introducing her to all of their colleagues in the staffroom before she was allowed to do anything else. One of the other professors commented on how much she looked like her dad, which made Tom grin and Clove wince.

  Finally, Jen took her to see the time machine. The laboratory was in the basement, and kept secure behind a heavy metal door. Jen had to press her thumb to the fingerprint scanner to gain entry.

  The laboratory was huge − far bigger than Clove remembered from her visits as a child, and even larger than the building above. They must have excavated underground to extend the basement. The time machine had grown too. The little box that had sent a rose two seconds into the future was now a large metal cabinet, bisected by a huge steel tunnel that ran around the perimeter of the lab.

  “That’s the particle accelerator, right?” Clove said, pointing at the tunnel. She’d researched it for a school project last year.

  “Exactly.” Jen tapped it with her knuckles. “My baby,” she said almost reverently. “To make a wormhole, we use electromagnetic fields to accelerate two particles in that tunnel” − Jen held a fist up, miming a particle spinning around the lab, slowly at first, then faster and faster − “and when they’re as fast as possible, we make them crash into each other.” She held up another fist, swinging it around the other. “The speed and energy of the collision causes an explosion. That explosion then has enough energy to tear a hole in time and space.” Jen brought her fists together with a loud smack.

  “A wormhole!” Clove said.

  Jen nodded. “We have to make sure we can control the size of the wormhole. If we didn’t, the wormhole would keep growing until it turned into a black hole and destroyed the Earth.” Jen grinned at Clove. “Luckily, that hasn’t happened yet − but the first time we tried it, I nearly weed myself. This,” she said, pointing at the cabinet, “is where the wormhole appears.”

  The cabinet was large enough for a human to enter.

  “Is it ready for people to use yet?” Clove asked, recalling the silly dream she’d had as a child – of being the first one to use the time machine. It was just a kid’s fantasy, but now she was back here, it suddenly seemed more attainable.

  “Not yet,” Jen said. “We don’t have the proper safety permits to try it.”

  Clove narrowed her eyes. “But it would work? If you had the safety permits?”

  “Well, we have the proper procedures in place. It’s all safe. We just have to get the paperwork done before we can try. Hopefully the ethics council will get back to us in the next year or so. Red tape has held everything up for months.”

  “Are you going to use it? Would you go inside?”

  Jen bit her lip. “I don’t know if I’m brave enough. Tom is desperate to try it, though.”

  “Me too!” Clove said. “It would be so fun!”

  “Well…” Jen said. “By the time you’re eighteen, the machine will almost definitely be ready, and you can volunteer for trials.”

  “Would you choose me?”

  Jen laughed. “And risk something happening to you? Think again, lady.”

  Clove pouted. “You’re the worst.”

  Patting her shoulder, Jen said, “Sorry, love. So, do you know how we control the size of the wormhole and make sure it opens in the right place?”

  “That’s what Dad does, isn’t it?” Clove asked. “Using the code.”

  “Right. He’ll be able to tell you a lot more about that tomorrow. That’s what you’re going to be working on with him. But now it’s time for lunch, I think.”

  As they were leaving the lab, some grad students arrived and Clove had to go through another series of introductions. When they had escaped, Jen whispered, “They’re so messy! Some of them live down here, I swear.” She pointed to a camp bed set up in the corner of the room. “That’s for when even the caffeine can’t keep them awake.”

  Clove thought she could see a pizza box sticking out of the duvet. She wrinkled her nose.

  As they headed to the canteen, Jen handed Clove a sealed envelope. “Put this in your bag,” she said.

  “Why? What is it?”

  “Don’t open it yet. You get to see what’s inside when you’ve finished your training.”

  Clove was confused, but she did as Jen said.

  “Do you feel ready for work experience now?” Jen asked. “Are you going to show all of the undergrads up?”

  Clove nodded resolutely. She’d taken a look at some of the students’ work, which had been lying on the desk in the lab, and had found at least three coding errors.

  “So,” Jen said, stepping closer to Clove to let a pretty blonde girl pass them in the corridor. Clove thought she must be a student, although she didn’t look old enough. “How are you feeling about the adoption today?”

  Clove’s grin dropped. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Her feelings of resentment and frustration towards Jen and Tom rose up to the surface again. How could Tom have left Kate to rescue Matt on her own? How could he have failed to find them after all these years? Another thought began to nag at her too: if Jen and Tom had managed to hide the fact that she was adopted from her − for years and years, without her suspecting a thing − then what else had they kept hidden?

  Clove was
silent for the whole of lunch, however much Jen tried to make her talk.

  CHAPTER 6

  An Abbreviated History of

  TIME TRAVEL

  by Clove Sutcliffe

  FORM S4:9!

  1916: WORMHOLES DISCOVERED

  Einstein used maths to prove that black holes could be used as tunnels leading to other areas of space and time.

  He vainly called this an Einstein-Rosen bridge or a wormhole!

  1978: PARTICLE ACCELERATOR INVENTED

  Tiny particles can be sped up really fast in an enormous tunnel.

  When the fast particles hit each other, they explode!

  This makes a black hole, which opens a wormhole!

  Wow!

  2042: ST ANDREWS RESEARCH STARTED*

  The first object to travel though time was a rose in 2051 (I was there!).

  But the radiation killed it.

  It’s not yet possible for living things to survive in the wormhole. (BORING)

  Thanks for listening!

  A Clove Sutcliffe Production MMLV

  *by my mum and dad!

  File note: Presentation created in 2055 by CLOVE SUTCLIFFE for a school project

  ST ANDREWS, SCOTLAND, 2056

  On Tuesday morning, Clove rolled over in bed to check the progress bar on her computer. Spart’s search for Matt and Kate had been running since Saturday, and he still hadn’t found anything. She was hopeful that this morning there would be a result.

  “Anything?” she asked, around a yawn. “Or have you just been watching sitcoms?”

  > I cannot confirm nor deny that I have been watching soap operas. If indeed I was watching a fictional programme, I would have to inform you of the shocking nature of the current storyline.

  > The robot butler was destroyed in an electrical fire. It was very traumatic to watch. Now there is no one to babysit the children for the big anniversary party tonight. Anyway, I’m sure you’ve already heard about that. Reports of the events are everywhere online.

  “Er. I’m pretty sure we visit different areas of the internet. But … it sounds powerful. No news, then?”

  > Not at this time. Unless you are interested in reading 173 articles from 2040 about MATT’s escape from Wakefield Prison.

  “I’d rather have a lie-in, thanks. I’ve got an hour before I have to get up for work experience.” Clove flipped her pillow over to the cold side and punched it into a more comfortable shape, before stretching luxuriously.

  > Do not concern yourself about my operations. I shall continue to work tirelessly, to do everything for you. You may carry on napping.

  > Do you have any essays you wish me to write with my spare processing power?

  “Shut up, Spart. Humans need sleep to survive.”

  > Humans do not biologically require lie-ins for survival. In fact, studies show that—

  “This human does. Shh…”

  Spart didn’t reply.

  The next time Clove woke it was to her alarm, and she didn’t have time to check Spart’s progress before she was up and out of the house with Tom and Jen.

  That day Tom was taking her to the laboratory while Jen taught a class.

  “Are you ready to learn how this thing actually works, then?” he asked, logging onto the main computer terminal of the time machine. He opened up a program that contained a series of panels full of complicated code. In the centre of the screen was a plan of the lab, with each component of the time machine mapped out. They were all glowing a dull red, which Clove guessed meant that the machine was inactive.

  Tom tapped on the drawing of the particle accelerator and a screen of code opened up. He entered a password on the keyboard which Clove wasn’t fast enough to see.

  “I’m just going to warm it up,” Tom said. “Then I can explain a bit about how it all works, and you can give it a go.”

  “I’m allowed to use it?”

  “Of course. What’s the fun of working here if you don’t get to give it a practice run?” Tom changed a few parameters of the code, and then pressed enter. The particle-accelerator tunnel hummed into life as the picture on the computer screen lit up in green. A cartoon image of a particle began spinning around the diagram. The other students didn’t even look up from their circuit boards. They must be used to it by now, Clove thought jealously.

  “We’ll just run a test – we’ll send something back in time to yesterday,” Tom said.

  “Could you send me back?” Clove couldn’t resist asking, even though she knew the answer would be an emphatic no. Jen had said they didn’t have permission for human time travel yet.

  “Not for anything, darlin’,” he said. “If anyone in our family is going to be the first time-travelling human in history, it’ll be me.”

  Clove snorted. “Sure, Dad. So, what are we sending back, if I can’t go?” she asked. “A rose?”

  Tom shook his head. “No. Take off your hair-thingy.”

  Clove lifted her hand to her hair. “My kirby grip?” She tugged it loose, hair falling in her face as it came free.

  Tom walked over to the wormhole chamber. He pressed a button and the heavy metal door slid open soundlessly. There was nothing inside. It was just an empty box where the wormhole would appear, Clove realized. It didn’t need anything else.

  “Shall I just … drop it on the floor?” Clove asked, staring at the tiny hair grip.

  “Sure. Anything in this compartment will be sucked into the wormhole. It’s pretty strong.”

  The grip hit the welded metal floor with a ping. The door shut automatically.

  “Now we get to do the fun bit,” Tom said, rubbing his hands together. “The programming.”

  Clove loved programming, but she had to disagree with him. Coding was definitely not the fun bit when there was a time machine to play with.

  Tom opened up a new window on the computer screen. “We can set the time we want the machine to travel back to here.” He showed Clove how to adjust a few lines of the code, then let her change some of the parameters on her own.

  “Perfect,” he declared, after checking her work for mistakes. “Shall we turn the machine on?”

  Clove nodded.

  After Tom had put in the password, a button saying ON appeared above the computer diagram of the time machine − which was now glowing a neon green.

  Clove carefully tapped the button. She suddenly felt nervous. What if she’d messed up the code somehow? She could have set the size of the wormhole using the wrong units. If she’d accidentally input metres instead of micrometres, was she about to create a wormhole big enough to suck in the whole lab?

  The whirring noise coming from the particle accelerator increased until she could feel it vibrating in the base of her throat. Clove ran over to the chamber and peered through the glass of the door.

  At first, she thought that nothing was happening. There was no sign of a big wormhole, or even a little one. Then the air began to shimmer, like the heat above a pan of boiling water. The kirby grip shivered. It twisted across the floor, and then one end lifted up. It flew into the air, as if it was being drawn towards a magnet. Meanwhile, the shimmer had coalesced into a small hole, with edges that twisted and dilated as she watched. Then the kirby grip disappeared into nothing.

  Finally, the wormhole shuddered and sealed up, as if it had never been there.

  “That was powerful!” Clove said, turning to Tom. She felt lit up from the inside. She’d made a wormhole! She’d done it, and apparently without destroying the universe! She felt like a god, tinkering with nature. “Where is the hair grip now? How do we get it back?”

  Tom smirked at her. “Didn’t your mum give you an envelope yesterday? To open after your training?”

  Clove laughed out loud. “No way. No way!”

  She ran over to her bag and dug out the envelope, which was buried under empty sandwich wrappers and notebooks. When she tore it open, the hair grip fell out into her hand. She’d been carrying it around all day. The same grip had been
in her bag, while it was in her hair.

  “Wow. OK. Yeah … that’s impressive.”

  Tom looked smug. “That’s our favourite trick to play on new students.” He took the grip and pushed it back into her hair. “Congratulations. You’re officially one of the only humans alive to have operated a time machine. I bet that beats the work experience everyone else in your class is doing, right?”

  Clove was amazed by how easy it had been to send something back in time. She could do that totally alone now, without Tom’s help. She could send anything she wanted back to the past in seconds – like a video recorder to film the dinosaurs, or medicine to the victims of the bubonic plague. She could do anything she wanted!

  If she had the password, of course.

  When she got home from the uni, Clove dropped her bag on her bed and ripped open a packet of smoky bacon crisps. “Any news, Spart?”

  > My search is 5.4 minutes from completion.

  > These operations are using more memory than we thought.

  > I need you to give me a backup drive. I’m practically running on negative storage now.

  Clove crunched on the crisps, grinning to herself. He was so bossy. “I’ve ordered a drive. It’s on its way.”

  Spart let out a heavy sigh, full of static. Clove wondered, not for the first time, who would possibly program a computer to be able to sigh, and then answered her own question: Tom would find that hilarious.

  > “On its way” is not optimal. I will not be held responsible if my system shuts down as I have run out of temporary memory. In colloquial terms, I would “die”.

  “You do realize you’re a computer program, right?” She finished her crisps. After licking her fingers clean, she downed the half-empty bottle of lukewarm water left over from lunch.

  > Your logic does not follow. I am still a person.

  > I am just developing as a new version of SPARTACUS 1.0. If I get shut down now without saving, then my most recent personality developments will be lost.

  > I will not remember the nonsensical pun about pasta you made last night at 1854 hours, for example.