Chapter1: The Encounter
Crash
Adrian feels the light flash pass through her as it slams her down to the ground. The pain is excruciating. She lies on the ground, unable to move for what seems like hours but is only seconds.
“What the hell just happened?” she thought.
Everything is jumbled in her head, and she strains to organize her thoughts.
“Ok, breathe deeply.”
She concentrates on her breathing, which helps her calm down.
“Am I injured?”
She starts to slowly raise her head. Her whole body aches, but there is no blood. While still lying on her back, she moves her arms to the left and then to the right. She raises her legs and then repeats the same left-right motions with her legs. Nothing appears to be broken.
She sits up and looks around.
“Where am I?” she wonders. She says to herself, “You were about to open the door to the physics lab when there was a deafening bang and a flash of light. Then, everything went blank.”
As she looks around, she knows she is no longer on campus. Instead, she is sitting in a large grass field that flows up a hill and then disappears over the horizon on one side and is edged by a forest on the other side. In any direction she looks, nothing looks familiar.
Off in the distance, she can see two small silhouettes running up the hill. They are yelling something at her.
As they get closer, she hears, “Lady, are you alright? Are you alright? You fell out of the sky.”
She now can make out that they are two young boys, no more than about 12 to 14 years old. They aren’t speaking normal English but rather some odd variant. But somehow, she can understand them. Their clothes look crudely made and are quite dirty as if they had been wearing them for many weeks.
As they continue to run up the hill toward her, the older-looking boy repeats himself, saying, “Are you alright?” He stops to catch his breath and then continues, “I am John, and this is my brother Arthur. We just saw you fall out of the sky.”
She stands up and dusts herself off as they approach. As the boys get closer to Adrian, they become apprehensive and stop and stare at her. Their prime focus appears to be her feet. They slowly take a step back and look like they are positioning themselves to pounce if needed.
Then Arthur asks, “What are you wearing?”
Adrian Mendelson is dressed in her usual manner for going to the Physics Lab. She is wearing a grey hoody, a light pink t-shirt, black leggings, and black socks. She has on her hot pink, sparkled tennis shoes. She loves her hot pink shoes, especially as they get her attention. But the most important item she is wearing is the building badge around her neck that advertises to other students she is a physicist, which is important to her.
The badge gives her entry to the physics building and the wormhole lab at CalTech, where she is pursuing a PhD. in atomic, molecular, and optical physics (AMO). Her prime focus area is quantum mechanics, and her primary method of exploration is experimental physics, testing theory through experimentation. This differentiates her from the theoretical physicists who dominate the wormhole project she is working on.
The wormhole project is trying to find evidence of the existence of wormholes. The presence of wormholes is based on mathematical models that suggest a network of connecting tubes run throughout the universe. These tubular wormholes connect distant space-time coordinates to one another with tunnels that are only a few steps long. Although rejected by most physicists as not possible, some new mathematical models support the conclusion that wormholes could also allow backward time travel. If one end of the wormhole is moving close to the speed of light, it will experience time dilation — that is, inside the wormhole, time will run slower than the rest of the universe. That will cause the two ends of the wormhole to exist in different time periods. The wormhole then could be a portal to our own past.
To obtain evidence of the existence of wormholes, the project combs the universe for gravitational anomalies, a potential marker for a wormhole. But in addition to scanning the skies, they also follow the implications of her advisor’s theoretical work that wormholes can move and are attracted to high concentrations of radiation. The project launches periodic radiation bursts into space to see if any movements occur in its path.
From Adrian’s viewpoint, showing that wormholes exist based on a mathematical model makes it nothing more than an unproven theory. Proof only comes through the findings of experimentation. If wormholes exist, their gravity should affect the light that passes near them, resulting in odd movements in star orbits. The wormhole project is observing star orbits and seeking to identify any with odd movements. The team is very excited about the latest data they have, as it looks like they may have found something
Adrian had just gotten a call from one of the other graduate students telling her she needed to come to the lab immediately. She practically ran the entire way and was a bit winded when she got to the front door of the building. Then the sky lights up, followed almost instantaneously by a loud boom. She is thrown backward and lands on her back in this field.
She does not answer the boy’s question about her clothes but rather asks, “Where am I?”
Somewhat surprised by the question and her odd accent, John says, “You’re just off the road.” He points and says, “It is down at the bottom of the hill.”
“No, I mean at a bigger level. Where am I? What towns are nearby?”
“Well, the road takes you to Doncaster in one direction and York in the other. The biggest town is York. It is about an hour’s ride to the northeast.”
York? York, England? Or York, Pennsylvania?”
The boys look confused.
Then John says, “I have never heard of York, Pennsylvania. There is only one York, and it is here in Northumberland, England.”
She looks around to see if there are electric wires anywhere in sight or if the road is paved. Her heart sinks as there are no signs of modern life. She takes a deep breath and momentarily closes her eyes
She exhales and asks, “What year is it?”
The boys look at each other, seeing if the other one knows the answer.
John starts to respond that they did not know the year when Adrian reframes the question as, “Who is the King?
“King Richard,” John says with a snicker, given the simplicity of the question.
Adrian drops to the ground. Having taken two semesters of British History in her junior year while at the University of Edinburgh, she knows that the Danes had controlled York starting in the 800s and lasting until 1068 when the Normans conquered it. Although she did not know the exact year, she knew that Richard I, known as Richard the Lionheart, came after the Norman Conquest and before the Tudors. She is in Medieval England.
She thinks to herself, “Could the wormhole project have caused a wormhole to move and connect to the physics lab? Could I somehow have gone through it?”
John presses her again and says, “Hey, you did not answer me about where you got your clothes. I have never seen shoes like those.”
Adrian responds, “It is part of a costume I sometimes wear. I perform in minstrel shows occasionally.”
She thinks to herself, “Why did I add that part about minstrel shows? There is no need to add that to my story. The less I say, the less likely to get caught in a lie. Do they even have minstrel shows in Doncaster, England?”
The boys seem to accept the costume story, but John, the dark-haired boy, comes back to the original question, “How did you fall out of the sky? We both saw it.”
Arthur follows with, “You also speak like no one I have ever heard talk before. Are you a witch?” Adrian thinks, “Oh shit.”