Doctor Gustav Elliot Frisk stood in front of a large window pane in his office. He held a teacup in his hand, but it had gone cold. Recently, Gustav found himself getting lost in his thoughts again and again. It happened more often than he’d like.
Gustav’s office looked over a small artificial lake in the south of Sweden. On any other day, if it was sunny, the view would be mesmerizing. You could see the North Sea in the background as well. Now, Gustav’s eyes would uncontrollably wander towards a small black dome-like structure in the distance. From his office, the Dome seemed unthreatening. Gustav, and now everyone else around the world, knew that they should be dead scared of it. And they were.
The Dome, as they called it, appeared three months ago, somewhere in the north of Germany. Although it spread relatively slowly, the dome had already swallowed a large part of Denmark. The scientists had calculated that it would take another month for the Dome to overrun them. Unfortunately, Gustav only confirmed their calculations.
But the world was more worried about the nature of the Dome. It was black, completely and utterly black, with a purple hue around it. How it started and what happened inside of it, nobody knew. The Dome didn’t allow any information to escape from it. It seemed black because it didn’t allow any light to leave it. On the other hand, it didn’t have any gravitational pull, so the physicists ruled an abnormal black hole off the list.
The purple colour seemed to be coming off a mist that appeared at the edge of the expanding Dome. Nobody could take a sample of it, as it wouldn’t react with anything. If you tried to push some of it into a vial, it would just pass through the glass. The mist seemed to be unwilling to react with anything material. Gustav had even tested the impact of the mist on people. If a part of the body was exposed to it, nothing would happen. On the other hand, if the body was completely covered with the mist, the man or woman would instantly die. Gustav watched this with horror as it happened. Marlene, a volunteer, accepted to walk into the purplish mist. The moment the smoke encapsulated her completely, her heartbeat stopped. All the machines she had with her stopped working. They never found the body.
The abnormality of the Dome didn’t end there, unfortunately. Everywhere around the world, the mist would appear in certain parts of the world. And where it appeared, the physics seemed to be ‘turned off’. Objects caught in it would lose integrity and their structure would start collapsing to dust. One theory Gustav’s college, Josef, proposed is that the mist neutralised all electric charges in the very atoms. Silly idea, but since nobody was able to disprove him, it had to be considered. The mist also, seemingly, made matter resistant to the gravitational pull of the planet. With anxiety invading his thoughts, Gustav watched as a part of the submarine lingered in the air. It was kilometres above the water’s surface, and yet it continued flying slowly. Half of the submarine was riddled with holes and in some places, there were pieces of it that didn’t connect at all. Yet it stayed somewhat together, aimlessly travelling through the air.
“Sir Frisk?”
Startled, Gustav turned. Great. He got a tea stain on his lab coat. Not that it mattered.
“Yes, Nickolas?”, Gustav said.
“There are more confirmed sightings around the world, sir”, Nickolas, a young man, Gustav’s assistant, walked towards him, holding a tablet in his arms.
Gustav took the tablet. A sigh escaped his lips. He was looking at the torso and head of the Statue of Liberty slowly meandering away from the rest of its body. In the video from the local news, there were three helicopters following it. The faint purple cloud was circling it.
Nickolas leaned in and touched the screen.
A whole cruise ship was engulfed with the mist. This time, there wasn’t a video, only a few photos. The ship, for whatever reason, started sinking. Gustav looked at the photos, confused. The water around didn’t seem to be rushing into the ship. It went around the ship.
“No survivors, I reckon?”, Gustav said as he returned the tablet.
Nickolas shook his head. “Not even an SOS message.”
“That means that we should hurry and do the experiment today.”
“Sir”, Nickolas protested. “We have no guarantee…”
“So, what, we should wait for that damned thing?”, Gustav pointed at the dome in the distance, “To come knocking on our door?!” Gustav walked out of the room. “I can’t stand to look at it.”
Nervous, Nickolas followed. “You should at least wait for the press”, he said, catching up to Gustav.
“To hell with them. They’re like starving vultures, clinging onto any piece of information, no matter how absurd it may sound.”
“The people are panicking all around the world, sir! They want answers!”
Gustav stopped. “And do you know how infuriated that makes me, Nickolas? When I look upon that… that monstrosity slowly crawling to swallow us, there’s nothing I can say or do about it.”
“We are all desperate, sir, but the press-“
Gustav waved his arms, cutting Nickolas off. “I’ll record myself. And then you can give the press the recording. Post it on Facebook, for all I care.” They went downstairs. Gustav’s office was on the third floor of the facility. The laboratory was in the basement.
Gustav never took elevators down. He hated being placed in small confined spaces. How ironic, he thought.
“Sir”, Nickolas trailed behind him. “If you are going to record yourself, don’t forget to talk about the last experiment with ND-2104! I think that it’s time for the world to know.”
Gustav stopped. However, he couldn’t find an argument against his assistant’s wish, so he just continued downstairs.
“Sir”, Nickolas started again.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, what now!?”, Gustav lashed out.
Nickolas stopped, shocked. “Um…”
“Sorry”, Gustav said, slouching. He felt exhausted. He didn’t have a good night’s sleep in so long. “I’m… I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright, sir. We’re all on the edge these days.”
Gustav raised an eyebrow. “So?”
“Um, there’s something more I’d like to show you, sir”, his assistant started fiddling with the tablet. “Here you go, sir.”
Gustav started at the screen in silence. The lighting at the staircase was faint, but the tablet’s screen still shined.
“Is-is this real?”, Gustav asked. There was a satellite photo of Jupiter on the tablet. The planet had five unusual black spots on its surface, all arranged in a slightly curved line. “Are these…”
“Domes, sir? We suspect so”, Nickolas said, his voice falling to a whisper.
“What does that mean? Why did they appear on Jupiter? And why four more than here?”
Nickolas shrugged. “Nobody knows, sir. There’s more that you might want to see, though.” Nickolas pressed something on the screen. “Look at this, sir”, he said and handed Gustav the tablet.
It was a short repeating video of the Moon. There was a large ‘play’ button on the screen. Gustav pressed it. The Moon was the same as always, Gustav noticed. Only the shadows moved on its surface. “I don’t see anything wrong here, Nick. What’s-“
A large dark line appeared instantly on the grey Moon. It looked as if the Moon’s surface shattered, just like the surface of the ice. Then the Moon was separated into two halves. Gustav stared in shock as the video started from the beginning. Again, he looked at the Moon being cut into two parts like an apple.
After a moment of shock, Gustav finally spoke. “I don’t know how to process this.”
“Luckily, the two halves of the Moon remained in the orbit. Only a few relatively small chunks of the Moon are hurling down to the Earth’s surface… Sir?”
“I-I just can’t. Not now. My head’s already filled with nonsensical appearances in the world. I can’t possibly handle this.”
“But sir, what am I to do?”, Nickolas asked. A hint of desperation appeared on his face.
“Go to Emma or Miriam with that. They’ll know. They-they’ll know…”, Gustav went downstairs. He heard Nickolas linger behind him, before moving up to the offices of the astronomers.
Gustav realised he was practically running down the stairs. The world was coming to an end and it made Gustav panic. He stopped himself and sat on the stairs. He placed his head between the knees. Everyone in the facility expected him to be a know-it-all, always in control of the situation. Gustav slowed down his breathing.
And they were right, for the most part. Throughout his life, Gustav made sure that he was always the one in charge; always the one who controlled everyone and everything. That didn’t make him popular among his peers, but social acceptance didn’t matter that much to Gustav.
But now, possibly for the first time in his life, the world was going to hell and he didn’t know why.
He forced himself to stand up. Gustav had a job to finish. And he just might be the last hope for this illogical world.
#
“Is it working?”
“Yes, sir. As long as this red lamp is blinking, it will record.”
“Thank you, Mikaela.”
“You are welcome, sir.”
“Hello. My name is Gustav Elliot Frisk and I’ve been working on this project for well over seven years now. I have a doctorate in quantum mechanics and applied electrodynamics. Today, I am going to try something stupid and not nearly enough thought out. However, I think, and I take it that you will agree, that the time for experiments is well behind us. The abnormality, or the Dome as many call it, is steadily encroaching on us. All attempts to understand it have failed miserably and I find it that we do not have any other options but to try the extreme.”
“Mikaela, you can start the machine.”
“Yes, sir. Beginning the operation Salvation now.”
“Thank you, Mikaela… Damn, that thing is loud. Anyway, let me continue. The machine we’re talking about is called ND-2104. As much as I’d like to, I can’t take the praise of being its sole creator. My team and I have finished it, but it started as the idea of late professors Abernathy and Garza. Anyhow, ND-2104 is a machine that can produce oscillating electromagnetic waves, imitating the sequence originating from the residual Big Bang radiation. At first, this might sound like a waste of time to you; a fantastical and desperate attempt. But, mind you, I also believe we are in desperate, and frankly, fantastical times. The Dome cannot be explained by physics in any way known to us.”
“However, what gives me a hint of hope with ND-2104 is an accident that took place here, at the Jörlgard Institution, three years ago. During the earlier testing of ND-2104, a titanium tray that held the sample which was being exposed to high-frequency EM waves had jammed. The process was stopped, and since I was impatient, I volunteered to fix the tray myself. We couldn’t wait for the engineer to arrive, and I thought that it was fairly simple to return the tray to its original place. A breach of protocol, I was highly aware. Served me right.”
“Sir, phase one has successfully finished. Starting phase two.”
“Thank you, Mikaela. This buzzing is driving me insane. Anyway, as I was fixing the tray inside the machine, for still unexplained reasons, ND-2104 fired up seemingly on its own, hurling EM waves at me.”
“That was the closest I ever got to be religious. Ha! However, instead of the usual symptoms, like nausea, headaches, tumours, and cell death, I experienced something… different. For a moment, which seemed like an eternity to me then, I became aware… of everything around me. It is very hard to explain, you see. All my memories from my childhood became crystal clear, even ones that should be impossible for me to remember. And to make things even more complicated, I saw myself dying on a deathbed. However, when I lingered on the ‘memory’ of my death, it changed. I was now dead in a wheelchair. The more I tried to see the ‘memory’ of my death, the more it changed.”
“I suspect that my brain had produced some extreme visual hallucinations. After that accident in ND-2104, I’ve been in a coma for three months. Doctors expected me to die from exposure to high-frequency electromagnetic waves. However, my physical body seemed to be perfectly untouched. There wasn’t even a melanoma or hair loss.”
“After that long sleep, I continued my work. ‘How can exposure to EM cause such vivid hallucinations?’, I asked myself. My colleagues, and some close friends, had different ideas. They didn’t think that they were mere hallucinations. Some saw a possible explanation that I temporarily elevated my being to a higher dimension. I became aware of time as a… well as another dimension. Silly, I know. Eugene Solis took my constantly changing visions of death as proof for the many-worlds theory. He also said that it disapproved of the pre-deterministic world theory. Eugene, if you’re listening to this, I then considered you a fool, and I do still. But I genuinely hope you were right. I am going to reattempt the accident, hoping that it might offer us some information about the Dome’s origin and nature.”
“There were others-“
“Phase two is done, sir. Starting final phase of ND-2104 initiation, sir.”
“As I was saying, there were others that considered my experience in ND-2104 to be more… of a religious nature. My sister, for example, thought God had made contact with me. That he had sent me a message I am yet to understand. As usual, I never took my sister seriously. It made me furious that I couldn’t prove to her just how irrational she sounded. The accident was made an utmost secret, and only-“
“Sir!”
“What, Mikaela!?”
“There seems to be a problem… with system GM-2. It is failing to-“
“Increase the pressure in chamber 2 and keep the energy flow consistent. Reduce the output of systems GM-3 and GM-4.”
“…”
“Is it better?”
“Um… yes. Yes, sir. Everything is working as intended. ND-2104 is operational.”
“Ah, very well, Mikaela. Thank you. As for you… whoever is listening to my mumbling, I’m afraid our little one-sided chat has come to its end. If you want to know more about our little experiment Salvation, contact my assistant. If you are all alive by then. I hope, for everyone’s sake, that this little experiment will turn out successful. Mikaela, can you take this?”
“Yes, sir. You can leave it there on the counter.”
“Okay then. As soon as I close the lid of the chamber, start the experiment.”
“Yes, sir… And sir?”
“What?”
“Good luck.”
“I never believed in luck… But thank you either way.”
“…”
“Oh, Nickolas, you’re just in time. Sir Gustav is just about to enter ND-2104.”
“May God watch over him. Did he leave you the recorder, Mikaela?”
“Yes, it’s just over there on the table. Hmm. Is he in?”
“Yep. He’s waving us to start.”
“Oh well. And… it’s done.”
“Damn this thing is loud. Has it been this loud before?”
“I-I don’t know, honestly. Should we-“
WARNING WARNING WARNING
“Holy shit, what happened? Mikaela, are you alright? Mikaela, you’re bleeding!?”
WARNING WARNING
“Mikaela?”
“I’m fine. It’s just…”
WARNING WARNING
“Where’s Gustav?”
“What do you mean, Nickolas?”
“Where’s… The chamber… It is empty?”
“Empty? How? The sensors in ND-2104 are… oh shit, you’re right. How can it be empty?”
WARNING
“Gustav?”
WARNING WARNING
“GUSTAV!?!”
#
It was painful. Being born. So loud and bright, blindingly bright. It felt as if he was pushed through an impossibly small opening, into an infinitely small place. After that, he spread everywhere.
He
He? Yes. He. Gustav. Gustav Elliot Frisk. His own name seemed elusive. Out of reach.
He was here before. He remembered. He tried to. Although something was different. There wasn’t blood like before. And there wasn’t a doctor’s face, partly covered up with a mask, looking down on him.
Did… did he see that the last time? Did he imagine it?
There was only dust now. Flowing and whirling everywhere. He panicked. Gustav wanted to sit down, place his head between his knees, and focus on his breathing. But there wasn’t anything to sit on. And he didn’t have knees, or hands, or even a body. He… he wasn’t even breathing. There wasn’t anything yet to breathe.
Yet
He knew, somehow. The oxygen wasn’t formed yet. He was too early. The Sun was millennia from being formed and the Earth’s atoms weren’t even created yet. Gustav was… too early.
Colours blurred and the immense light faded. There was now only one yellow dot in front of him. He tried to squint, only remembering that he didn’t have eyes. He moved closer. The yellow dot increased. Is this our star? Our Sun? And where did all that light and dust go? They were still in front of him, just on the other part of his body.
His body
He didn’t have a body anymore, at least not in the traditional meaning of the word. Body. What was his body? It started at the beginning, where he was born. When he was born. His thought raced all around, trying desperately to form questions and give answers to them. It was hard to remain human on such a grand scale.
What was his name again?
His mind was without a form and it was crumbling to oblivion. He had to know. He had to give answers to… others? Who were the others?
Home
Home. Yes. The Earth. It was slowly being destroyed. He had to act fast. Grasping at his conscience was hard and it led to failure. But he had all the time there ever will be, didn’t he?
He narrowed in onto a small spec travelling around the furious Sun. Earth. Third in line. But… It wasn’t green and blue. It was red.
Still too early
He moved to a later point. The planets started orbiting the Sun so fast that they looked like rings. He acted on instinct and landed just in the right time frame.
I need to save…
Who?
Earth. He needed to get to Earth. Slowly, he was losing his own mind. What will be left of him if he just gave in to the universe’s vastness?
Who am I
He needed to get back. In that chamber. That was the last thing he remembered; being in a small space. Did he feel… fear?
What is fear?
He rushed towards the small green rock, however, he didn’t move. He didn’t have anything to move with.
Feeling a trace of anger, he pushed on. I need hands.
He reached again towards the Earth. He scraped the fabric of space as he moved through the solar system. It left purple scars. The universe seemed to resist him, but he tore through it either way. More. He reached towards Jupiter, surprised that he saw a purple silhouette of a hand appear in front of him. He grabbed Jupiter with his five fingers, pulling himself more towards the Erath. There. He pointed at the sea between Sweden and Denmark. Now! The Moon moved in front of him, obscuring his vision. I have eyes! he realised.
I have… no… who am I
What am I doing…
What am I…
He, or the entity that he was becoming, became aware of the unending eternity in front of him.
No…
NO
Fear
It couldn’t allow that. It hurt. It was frightening. It was frightened.
He
I am a he! I am human!
It hurt so much, clinging to the notion of being human.
He glared at the moon, wishing it away. It ruptured at the equator. The Earth was in front of him. He stretched his arm, making it appear again. Where he moved, the space collapsed into itself, leaving purple scars but allowing him to move. His fingers were almost touching the place where the institution was. He tried again, missing and hitting something south.
No
I won’t… give up
I’m
Afraid
He saw himself dying. What was he trying to do before? It didn’t matter. He looked at himself, at the idea of himself, being obliterated. It was impossible for him to remain in this form. The idea of dying was also illogical. Something so eternal cannot die. Can it?
But he was dying. Gustav felt no emotion about it. His continuously vanishing mind has lost the ability to feel. What did dying mean?
He pictured a man in a bed. No, in a wheelchair, unable to walk. Unable to think. Unable to speak. Unable to breathe.
