Her slender fingers hovered above the Enter key, wanting to do it and not at the same time. Despite the air-con, a bead of sweat made itself known beneath her plain blouse. The feelings never changed, no matter how many times she'd run the experiment. Racing pulse. Fluttering heart. The line between excitement and fear undefined. There was always the chance the parameters were wrong. Again. Another few hundred thousand wasted. Another thinly disguised threat from her boss about the department "running on results". Another reason to question whether the pursuit was really worth the personal sacrifices.
Peeking from the cuff of her anti-static lab coat, her hand looked ethereal in the diffused overhead lighting. No jewellery. Even if it hadn't been department policy, she had none to wear, and they didn't give out rings for being married to the job for three years.
She caught her reflection in the glossy surface of the laptop's screen, tangle of charcoal hair swept back and bunched to disguise the fact it became more unmanageable by the day. Perhaps off-brand conditioner had been a mistake. Brushing a cheek that seemed a fraction less full than it had a few months ago, she wondered if she was going to spend another night poring over the data until she fell asleep on the keyboard. Anton had once dubbed her QwertyFace. Annoyingly, the name had stuck within the department.
Data points in tiny boxes flickered in the upper-left quadrant of the glowing screen, more zeros than a corporate quote for a government project. A narrow parabolic graph was drawn alongside. She squinted at it, sure it was right. It looked right. Didn't it?
She blinked, a wave of doubt rushing in, making her cold. All of a sudden it didn't seem to resemble a graph at all. The way the narrow curve swept up and over, its tip cut by the x- and y-axes, was almost… phallic. Without invitation, and for about the twentieth time that day, her mind flashed back to the night before with Anton. Her one and only workplace indiscretion, despite the self-assurance never to mix business with pleasure.
To a degree, it was flattering that he liked her, but she hadn't encouraged anything. At least, not knowingly. He wasn't her type. Charming for sure, yet overconfident with a Mockney drawl indicative of too long spent in the capital. More like a stockbroker than a scientist, all pastel shirts with white collars, top button undone.
She figured their banter was harmless, the fact he was married and had teenage kids a strong deterrent. But caught up in the elation of her first major breakthrough in months had led to high-fives, linking arms, dancing around the lab, smiling, laughing, bodies close, then closer, his musky scent drawing her to him until their mouths were a few inches apart, held by an invisible force akin to the magnetic fields she was trying to bend in her experiments.
The distance closed. Meeting. Touching. Hesitantly at first, then firmer. A full kiss. Tongues. Before she could stop herself, it became serious and heated. Then it was too late. The taste of his lips took over, warm hands raising her laughably sensible skirt and claiming her body, before lab equipment that cost thousands was irresponsibly shoved aside on the brushed aluminium bench. She let him lift her onto its cool surface as if she were a whisper.
She warmed at the recollection of the way he buried his face in her tender neck, five o'clock shadow and kisses igniting her passion as she tipped her head back to give him greater access. There was something exhilarating about his forwardness; letting him paw and pinch her firming nipples, trail down her waist, yank her panties aside and touch her, as she moistened by the minute. It had been so long. Maybe that was the allure? The unexpected opportunity that she knew should stop, but didn't want to.
Then there was the manner in which he directed her to unzip him, both of them looking down, mesmerised as she released his sizeable staff and ran her fingers over the steely tip that resembled the graph. The confidence he exuded, bordering on arrogance, was something at which she hadn't expected to respond. But it was there, tugging at her frayed middle-class values and shredding them as she wet her palm and stroked his shaft. Adultery hadn't even registered. Nor had his age. For reasons she still couldn't explain, she wanted so much to please him, staring into his appreciative coffee irises before the need for his cock inside her welled, and she guided it to her entrance that lay open and inviting at the bench edge.
It was intense. Ragged. Unstructured. Everything she wasn’t. The way he took her completely, almost without regard, was thrilling. Repetitive and hard, her body aching for more and amping each electric sensation as he hammered and she ground against him, arms locked around his neck. Fucking like she'd been uncaged, his hands clutching at her flushed body. She was unaware at what point her lab coat and blouse had been yanked apart for access to her porcelain skin, small breasts heaving atop the functional lemon bra.
Suppressed want flowed with every thrust, with every touch, neither of them able to get enough until the inevitable climax took hold as his fingers pinched and twisted her rigid nipples, somehow knowing exactly what turned her on. The orgasm paralysed her for a short while, rippling through the depths of her body until it surfaced, crossing her skin like a desert sidewinder, triggering his completion too. Filling her.
It had been impulsive. Reckless. Seemed so right at the time. Now less so, like the graph, but nothing she yet regretted. Maybe regret came later. If anything, the encounter had unleashed something that she'd thought long since dormant, the blinkers torn from her along with the buttons of her blouse. She'd felt it all day, fizzing beneath her skin. The remnants of the orgasm. Of lust rekindled. The realisation she wasn't a lost cause, destined to play out her days slave to the lab; that she was attractive. A woman. Flesh, blood, needs, desires. Oh desires, reawakened.
Her body and mind craved more. Wanted to feel that exhilaration again, that loss of control at taking a risk and not caring about anything but the moment. She'd almost forgotten what it was like. Been rational for far too long among the comfort of the numbers and theories, as London life continued outside without her.
Shaking her head a fraction to clear the thoughts and sexual flotsam drifting through her body, she tried to focus. Equations lined the lower half of the display. Symbols. Numbers. Calculations that she'd spent the day tweaking, hazel eyes now nervously flitting from one to the next. Checking. Running through the sequence. One last verification.
The nagging doubt that this run would be any different from the last, bubbled beneath the blood she swore was hissing through her veins. It mixed with the excitement that this could be it; could be the one. Nobel prize in Physics at twenty-four. The youngest woman to receive such an award. Her acceptance speech would have to be gracious of course, to strengthen the admiration exuding from half the audience. Deep down, the other half would probably be desperate to stick pins in voodoo effigies of her at beating them to the discovery. But that was the cutthroat nature of science. Nothing she could do about it.
She imagined the podium. The eager faces stacked in neat rows ahead of her. Pictured her opening words. 'Standing on the shoulders of giants' was too cliché, even if it was true. She needed a new phrase. One they'd remember. One they'd…
"Karen!" She jolted as the voice barked from the tinny laptop speakers. His accent was clipped. "You gonna do this, or do I have to sit here and twiddle my dick all day?"
Straightening and tabbing to the Facetime window, she saw Brett grinning at her, his shock of jet-black hair barely above his eyes, visage slightly pixelated from its digital journey halfway round the world. With his geek slogan T-shirt, he more resembled a boy band member than a brilliant, if rather unorthodox, scientist. Karen swept back a few stray dark strands that had escaped her bun and tucked them behind her ear, flashing him a smile.
"Sorry, Britt. Just checking parameters. You'll get to your Cheetos and video games in good time," she teased.
"Cheetos or not, this Kiwi'd kick your pretty Pommie ass. Counterstrike. You and me."
"Too macho."
"Bet you love a bit of it. The quiet ones always do, right?" He winked.
She felt herself colouring. Had he talked with Anton already? God, how embarrassing. If not, why was she the go-to girl all of a sudden? She wracked her brain. Maybe Brett was always this obvious and she'd been too blind to notice until her intuition had been rebooted last night? Granted, there weren't many women in the company, and fewer in the labs. Was her recent success an attractant, or was it something else? She checked the laptop reflection once more to confirm 'available and desperate' weren't tattooed on her forehead.
Maybe there were other signals that had been stirred by the events of the previous evening? Subliminal ones, like her aura broadcasting that she needed to get out and live a little. Did men pick up on stuff like that? She honestly didn't know. Couldn't remember the last time she'd let her hair down, hit a club, got wankered and ended up sharing coffee and awkward silences the morning after. Uni, probably.
The lack of excesses might be a good thing; more undamaged brain cells for science. But what if increased levels of sex-infused serotonin boosted her ability to make further breakthroughs? What if today's experiment worked? Would it be attributable to her liaison with Anton? Would she have succeeded sooner if she'd been more relaxed? Would more sex be a worthwhile pursuit, in the name of science? She stared at Brett. Pictured his body gliding against hers. Holding her close. His scent. His kiss. If only he wasn't half a planet away.
She cleared her throat. "Shall I do this then?"
"Does a bear shit in the Vatican?"
Karen smiled. "You ready?"
Brett glanced to one side a moment then returned to set his piercing green eyes dead centre of the webcam. "You bet. Cameras rolling?"
Karen looked back at the tripod, its payload pointing at a blank segment of smooth white wall to the left of the bench, equipment still bunched to one side after… well, last night. She rummaged for the remote and hit a button, ensuring the red light was blinking before clearing her throat again. "Gravity warp, attempt fifty-two. It's-" she checked her watch and reeled off the time and date like Captain's log, then winked back at Brett and smiled. Unable to resist another dig, she continued: "At this band meeting are Karen Porterhouse: prisent and Britt Jackson…"
Brett sighed. "Present."
Karen grinned. "Okay. Let's whip up a storm."
She stabbed the Enter key. Heard the familiar whine as the electromagnets charged like oversize flashguns. Her stomach knotted and she focused on the space where the camera and the ion cannons were trained. Watching. Waiting for the ions to separate. She flicked her gaze to the laptop readout, noting the numbers racing up: 15T, 20T, 25T, 28T, 30T, slowing as they reached her pre-calculated maximum, close to the largest continuous field ever created on Earth. The digits slowed further, then stabilised and she read them out, all factual:
"Thirty-two-point-four Teslas of induction." She gritted her teeth, adding, "Come on. Come ooon."
The space in front of the wall shimmered as gravity broke down and reformed under the immense strain of the magnets and cannons. She'd seen it before in various distorted shapes, but it had never formed a perfect halo. Until now. A disc about the size of a bread plate was suspended a foot or so from the wall. Impossibly dark in the centre as light scrambled to get out and failed.
She pushed back a pace from the bench and stood straight, mouth agape, staring at the portal. "Uhhh, Brett? You getting this?"
He was silent.
"Brett?"
"Loud and fuckin' clear. It's incredible." He went quiet another moment. "It's in the wrong spot, but it's… beautiful."
"How far off?"
He paused. "Half a metre to the left maybe."
She did a quick calculation in her head. "I can fix that. Close enough for now."
Karen stared some more, still barely able to comprehend she'd done it. Eight months of hard theory, harder maths and failed practice culminating in one of the most important discoveries of the century. The excitement flooded her system and she had to steady herself against the bench.
Brett's voice filtered into her conscience. "How long will it stay open?"
"In theory, indefinitely."
"In practice?"
"No idea. As long as the national grid can continue supplying us power, I guess."
"Wouldn't want the electricity bill."
"Me neither. I'd better call Anton."
"Why, is he paying?"
Karen laughed. "No."
"Fuck him, then. Let's test it before it collapses."
"But he needs to see this. Validate the findings this end. You know how it works. It'll just take a minute."
She picked up her phone, put the PIN in wrong twice then prodded and swiped impatiently at the device before holding it to her ear, tapping her foot on the non-slip linoleum and chewing her nail, staring at her creation. He answered on the fifth ring. A little smug, she thought:
"To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Anton. Get here now."
He breathed out, long. "Who ate your manners? It's gone eleven. Cindy'll be pissed off."
"Anton," she said firmly. "You're going to want to see this."
She couldn't say anything more detailed over insecure channels. Heard nothing but his breathing for a few seconds as he processed the weight of her words. "Wait… you didn't… you did? Jesus, I'll be right there."
The line went dead and Karen let the handset slide to the desk as she watched the circle shimmering in the air. "He's on his way."
"Can we test it then? I'm dying to find out if it works."
Karen slowly nodded her head. "Okay. Throw something at it. Nothing metal," she reminded him.
The laptop speaker rustled as she heard Brett ferreting around in his lab. "How about a tennis ball?"
"How come you have a tennis ball in the lab?"
"Emergencies."
"What kind of an emergency requires a tennis ball?"
"This one, dummy. You ready?"
She moved in line with the halo. "As I'll ever be."
Karen focused on it and held her breath as Brett counted down in the distance. He reached zero. She waited. The ball arced into the room and bounced twice before rolling towards her, and she let out a shrill cry. "Oh my God, it works. It actually fucking works!"
She bent to pick up the ball. Squished it. The structure was intact. She broke out into a grin. "This is amazing!"
"Throw something back. Come on, this is fun."
Karen scanned the untidy lab, eyes coming to rest on her rucksack containing her forgotten lunch. She grabbed an apple from the bag. "Ready?"
"Hit it."
She tossed the apple underarm towards the hole and marvelled as it disappeared. No flash of light. No Stargate special effects. Just vanished. She checked the area behind to be sure. Stepping across to the laptop, she saw Brett holding the fruit up jubilantly. He took a bite. "Mmmm, delicious." He finished his mouthful. "Hey, you just contravened a whole shitload of biosecurity laws in this country. How does it feel to be the most amazing woman on the planet and a criminal?"
She chuckled and glanced at the floor. "Wasn't me. You imported it."
"A technicality." He took another bite and looked at her, eyes sparkling. But there was a hint of something in his voice. "Don't want to rain on this spectacular parade, but you know that governments are going to fuck this up don't you?"
She sighed. "You mean humanity?"
"Nah, the power elite. Think about it. A world truly without borders. Pop one of these… what the hell are we gonna call it? Doesn't matter… pop up a wormhole and be able to pass anything from country to country undetected."
Karen surveyed the equipment. Coils. Accelerators. Probes. Wires. "Undetected? It's hardly inconspicuous."
"Well, y'know. Just sayin'."
Karen rubbed her temple. "I think we're okay for a while. I doubt it'll transmit metal until we figure out shielding. SkyNet's a way off yet."
Brett nodded, chewing. She could almost see his brain working. Knew what he was thinking even before he said it: "Wanna take it to the next level?"
"No fear. You first!"
"Nah, ladies first, right? Chivalrous to the core, me." He gave her a lopsided grin, indicating the almost spent apple core. "Besides, it's your baby."
She rolled her eyes and he finished the fruit, tossing the uneaten centre off-camera.
Reaching for her right cuff, she peeled the sleeve up past her elbow. Stared at her arm, wondering if she had the mettle to seriously become the first person in history to send part of their body through a wormhole. A rift. A gravitational anomaly she'd conjured. Her hand shook. "Okay. Make sure the camera gets this."
"Just a sec." She heard Brett rustling the other side of the world. "Okay. Ready. No, wait."
"What now?!"
"Is anybody gonna believe this? I mean, people'll think it's camera tricks. CGI, movie stuff."
"Probably. But we'll know. That's what's important. And Anton'll validate it."
"True dat."
"Ready?"
"Ready."
Karen took the remaining few steps towards the hole. The hum was much louder, and nerves tattered her insides, excitement and fear colliding once more. Her heart must have been doing double time. With deliberate slowness, she crouched and reached towards the portal, fingertips inching towards the inky centre. What would it feel like? Would she feel anything at all? Would there be a delay or instantaneous delivery?
Five centimetres separated her from either the greatest experiment on Earth or a lifetime without her fingers. She changed her mind. Pulled her hand back and regarded each digit in turn. Which one was expendable? The pinkie, maybe? Yeah, the pinkie. She extended it, burned the image into her mind just in case it was the last time she saw it, and stretched her arm out again, creeping it forward.
Four centimetres.
Three.
Two.
She felt the pull of the field, maybe the ions exerting pressure on the trace elements of metal in her body. Cadmium. Copper. Zinc. Iron. Fractions of fractions of a percent, but still there.
One centimetre.
She held her breath, drawing level with the plane of the disc and touched it. Met no resistance. No pain. Drew her finger back. It was still there. Intact. Emboldened, she pressed it through to the first knuckle. Then the second. She heard Brett squeal:
"Holy crap!"
She wiggled her pinkie and heard him chuckle from the laptop on the bench to her right. Outstretching the remainder of her fingers, she pushed her whole hand through and waved. It was so surreal seeing her arm cut off at the wrist, yet to know it had appeared on the opposite side of the planet.
The excitement in Brett's voice was obvious. "Can I be the first person to congratulate you on your achievement?"
"Sure," she called across to the microphone in the laptop.
She recoiled slightly at his touch, then held her hand out for him to shake. He was warm, which proved nerve endings still worked across the gulf of space-time. Thrilling. They'd been working together a year, maybe two and had never met in person, yet their work had allowed them to touch one another. Her smile turned into a grin, then a laugh as they shook hands, gently at first then with a little more vigour. She imagined him standing there, gripping a disembodied hand.
"Is it weird?" she called out.
"A bit. It's like… meeting Thing from the Addams Family."
"Oh, thanks!"
"No, I mean, your hand is nicer of course. Prettier. And a whole heap softer."
"You can't backtrack now, mister."
"I'm not backtracking. It's true."
Karen laughed. She enjoyed their banter more than Anton's. More natural. Brett was easy to tease, but could dish out as good as he got when necessary, and had a crazy sense of humour.
She pulled back a little and released his hand, feeling suddenly cold. "Hold your palm up."
"What?"
"Palm up," she called over her shoulder. "I'll read your fortune."
He did as he was told and she felt around in the air for him, her fingertips brushing his palm. She traced the warmth of his hand. It felt good. Firm. Probably like the rest of him. He worked out, she knew that much; to counter his 'sedentary lifestyle' as he put it. She adopted a croaky voice. "I see great things in your future, young man. Awards."
It was his turn to laugh, so she continued. "Yes. Plenty of admiration too. Maybe the cover of New Scientist. Brett Jackson: the face of wormholes." She both heard and felt his laughter. "Wait, what's this?" she traced her fingertips along the edge of his palm, up to his thumb then back to the centre, feeling him shudder. "Yes, yessss," she croaked. "I see a girl in your future. Pretty young thing she is too. Hazel eyes. Long, black hair. No pets. Spends too much time at work. Some say she's too dedicated, but it's probably because she's only there to give her colleagues… a hand."
Brett roared with laughter. "Stop it!"
"Does my reading disturb you, Mr. Jackson? Does my… " she traced all the way to his index fingertip and back, "… hand disturb you?"
"Not exactly."
"So what is it, hmmm? Tell Thing aaaall about it." She rested her fingertips in his palm and idly tickled it.
"Full disclosure?"
"Full disclosure. We're all friends here."
"Well, my… I'm. My pants have a zipper. Metal. So I…"
He didn't finish. Karen had a strange feeling of power surge through her, followed by a wicked thought that surprised her with its clarity. An unholy one. A temptation she knew she shouldn't follow, but found impossible to resist. She continued in her faux voice:
"How very safety-conscious of you. Let Thing see."
She reached her arm a little further through the wormhole and brushed the hairs on his leg with the back of her hand. Turned it over and rested it on his thigh, as warm as his hand. Maybe warmer. More muscular than she expected. Her mind flashed back to the previous evening again. The heat. The intoxicating passion. Then to Brett's smile every time he saw her. The one he couldn't disguise, its meaning glossed over on so many occasions by her overloaded brain. It was the look she was now convinced gave away how he really felt. The fact he hadn't recoiled from her touch added further credence.
She imagined him standing there in his underwear and T-shirt while she stroked his leg. His physique formed easily in her mind; she'd awoken a few nights to racy dreams involving the pair of them entwined, then used the latent scenes to fuel her fingers and drive herself to completion. Thousands of miles of sexual tension, now conquered by science. By her. The opportunity of a lifetime just a few centimetres above her resting hand. Could she do it? After all the rhetoric, could she do something not for the good of humankind, but for herself, using the shoulders of giants to explore the roots of desire?
The feel of his skin elevated her heart to its thunderous beat from earlier. She wondered if he could hear it as her hand crept up his thigh, to the leg of his underwear. Boxers. She touched the cotton. Paused. Breathed in. Continued a little further, then across, his flinch electrifying as she made contact and felt him surge.
"Uhhh, Karen…?"
She was barely listening. The blood rushing past her ears obscured everything, her primary focus the blood rushing to fill his manhood. She squeezed gently, acknowledging its power, feeling it stretch the fabric as it grew. She became bolder. Rubbed it a little. Traced her way up the bulge to his straining waistband and scratched the head through the material.