The Singularity

By Nicolas Wilson

Dr. Claire Bank's career has largely been a joke. She's derided by her colleagues for chasing a molecular component that may enable time travel, and has yet to definitively prove it exists. But when she discovers a molecular singularity inside the head of a man, Chris Mereta, hospitalized for dementia, her work kicks into overdrive.

As Chris' doctor and family wrestle with Chris' hit-or-miss lucidity, and the very real threat the singularity poses to his health, Claire will walk a fine line between the work she was born to do, and endangering the life of a man who has become a friend.

This thought-provoking science fiction romance explores the nature of the human experience, when time is not linear, and mistakes need not be final.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicolas Wilson
• Release date: Jul 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536521443

Nicolas Wilson

Nicolas Wilson is a published journalist, graphic novelist, and novelist. He lives in the rainy wastes of Portland, Oregon with his wife, four cats and a dog. Nic's work spans a variety of genres, from political thriller to science fiction and urban fantasy. He has several novels currently available, and many more due for release in the next year. Nic's stories are characterized by his eye for the absurd, the off-color, and the bombastic. For information on Nic's books, and behind-the-scenes looks at his writing, visit nicolaswilson.com.

Book preview

The Singularity

Nicolas Wilson

Published by Nicolas Wilson, 2016.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

THE SINGULARITY

First edition. July 28, 2016.

Copyright © 2016 Nicolas Wilson.

Written by Nicolas Wilson.

Also by Nicolas Wilson

Sontem Trilogy

Nexus

Nexus 2: Sins of the Past

Octopied

The Gambit

The Necromancer's Gambit

Kindred Spirits

Blood Moon

Standalone

Selected Short Stories Featuring New Corpse Smell

Selected Short Stories Featuring Cockfight

Dag

Whores

Selected Short Stories Featuring Cry Wolf

Banksters

Selected Short Stories Featuring Analog Memory

Selected Short Stories Featuring Cinderella Shoes

Selected Short Stories Featuring Save As

Homeless

Dogs of War

Euphoria/Dysphoria

Diversity Is Coming

The Singularity

Twist

Next of Kin

Watch for more at Nicolas Wilson’s site.

The Singularity

Nicolas Wilson

Table of Contents

Chapter One: The Physicist

Chapter Two: The Doctor

Chapter Three: The Football Player

Chapter Four: Moll

Chapter Five: Diagnostics

Chapter Six: Road Trip

Chapter Seven: Astoria

Chapter Eight: Patience

Chapter Nine: Seizure

Chapter Ten: Singularity

Chapter Eleven: Just Friends

Chapter Twelve: Awakening

Chapter Thirteen: Restless

Chapter Fourteen: Strange Fellows

Chapter Fifteen: Odd Couple

Chapter Sixteen: Will Out

Chapter Seventeen: Mendfolk

Chapter Eighteen: New Dawn

Chapter Nineteen: Sessions

Chapter Twenty: Understanding

Chapter Twenty-One: The Talk

Chapter Twenty-Two: Truth and Consequences

Chapter Twenty-Three: Creative Destruction

Chapter Twenty-Four: Causality

Chapter Twenty-Five: Regrets

Chapter Twenty-Six: Deserving

Chapter Twenty-Seven: There is Love

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Emergence

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Decisions

Chapter Thirty: Consensus

Epilogue

Chapter One: The Physicist

Knowles adjusted the rearview mirror to look down Claire’s shirt. "I’ve seen Goonies, she said, adjusting it back, and if you can’t behave yourself, you’ll be riding the rest of the way in the back seat."

I get carsick in the backseat. And I was just affording you an opportunity to reference that beloved movie, television show or novel from your childhood. He smiled, taking the next turn a little too wide. Claire dug her fingernails into the armrest molded into the passenger door, but the forest roads were almost entirely empty, and there wasn’t a semi waiting around the bend to greet them, so she relaxed.

Nice try, she told him. He had the acne of a much younger man, and the paunch of a man much older, and Claire might have found the combination endearing, if she didn’t find his overtures so overbearing.

She set her fingers back down in the home position on her laptop, even though she had no idea how to begin describing her research in scientific and non crazy person terms.

That was why, invasive though his voice was, she was thankful when he continued to distract her. You know, you could always drive. It’s really pretty.

You’re driving because you get carsick, she said, looking out her window.

Only when I try to read. Or look at my phone.

Which you wouldn’t stop doing. She took in the speckled sea of greens and browns of trees and underbrush barely contained on the side of the road. She found herself imagining it as a wave, and she could practically feel the dewy coolness the next moment when it crashed down on her.

We could tape my eyes shut, Knowles suggested, bringing her back into the overly warm car.

Wouldn’t be the first part of you I’d tape shut... she muttered, and lowered the heat blasting out of the vents, and that would probably only make you carsick again. She brushed a strand of strawberry hair from her forehead, and tucked it behind her ear.

Yeah, he admitted. Probably.

Something about his immediate lack of forethought made her concerned over their plans. You made sure you cleared our little trek with the head of the clinic, right?

Uh...

She nearly dumped the laptop off her knees. What’s ‘uh’ mean?

It means as your unpaid intern, sometimes I, uh... don’t remember to do everything I was supposed to.

She sighed in frustration, trying to shove her head through her headrest, and finally resigned herself to not getting any more work done, and closed up her laptop. "If this trip is a bust, you’re paying for the gas home."

I’m not sure how you think you’d accomplish that. You can’t dock my pay—since I’m not paid, and as a college student I actually make negative money every month.

She ignored him. "So we’re going to show up just to get shot down. Terrific. Maybe we should turn around, now; we might be able to make it back home in time for me to catch a Daily Show rerun."

"We’re like ten minutes outside town. And you’re a pretty girl—for a physicist. I bet, you show up, bat your eyes, and there’s no way they could say no. Who says ‘no’ to a pretty girl?"

First off, it’s doctor semi-respected physicist pretty girl, and second, that never actually happens to me—being positively discriminated against for being a pretty girl.

Huh. They returned to uncomfortable silence, and Claire was on the verge of being lulled to sleep by the thrum of the engine and the hypnotic blur of colors by the road when they passed a sign indicating that Cannon Beach was only six miles away. It reminded Knowles of a way to get back on her good side. Cannon Beach has a pretty cool history. The area was originally named Ecoli or something by Lewis and Clark. The city changed the name to Cannon Beach when a cannon was discovered here, they think from a shipwreck on the bar near the mouth of the Columbia River—which is called the Graveyard of the Pacific.

"So this is what you were doing instead of making arrangements with the clinic staff so we didn’t get bounced the moment we showed up?"

"Hey. If you remember, you asked me to do some research on the local area so we wouldn’t sound like uninterested out of towners, and to call ahead. And I did both. I just never follow-up called ahead to make sure they were cool with it."

"Make sure they were... God, you left a message? You didn’t even talk to a living human being?"

I thought I was, at first. The message just droned on, and on. I think I talked to it for three minutes before I figured out that he wasn’t just constantly interrupting me. But I left a detailed message, and your number. I kind of figured, when you told me we were on for the research trip, that they’d called you back.

She wanted to be upset with him. But it all seemed like an innocent enough series of misunderstandings. And the only other possibility was that he’d nefariously planned the entire screw up, just to share a hotel room with her in a secluded Oregon beach town—and that thought skeeved her too much to contemplate.

The spot where the clinic is was nicknamed the ‘cannonade,’ because when they were first clearing the area they found another cannon from that same wreckage, in the hills overlooking the beach. They think it must have been deposited there by the Good Friday earthquake in ‘64—or by the accompanying tsunami, at any rate. The cannon’s in a museum in town, but it’s... well, it’s just one of the cooler places you could build a rehab clinic.

Claire turned her head with one eyebrow raised, and had to hold it longer than she wanted since his eyes were focused on the road. "Not that kind of rehab, he said when he finally noticed. Like a physical rehabilitation clinic. It’s kind of pricy. Most of the patients are old athletes, with a bias towards football players, since it specializes in traumatic brain injuries."

Like Chris Mereta, Claire said, squinting at the horizon. And we’re sure this is where he’s headed?

One of my dorm mates had a girl doing her residency at OHSU on the hook, and, you know, presuming she hasn’t realized that she’s just his favorite drunk dial and is circuitously trying to screw with him by screwing with us, um, yeah, she said he transferred here from there.

I still can’t believe I missed him. I’ve been tracking these kinds of manifestations—

"It’s hot when you start to talk like we’re in Ghostbusters."

"I will douse you with cold water. She realized he wasn’t just being difficult; he probably hadn’t finished reading all of the documentation she gave him. We’re tracking virtual particles, which don’t actually exist, but which manifest interactions with our real, physical world. These manifestations are tell-tales of what I think are worm-holes—but not just the garden variety wormholes that dot 4 dimensional existence—they’re part of a network of wormholes that connect various points in time and space together in a single, semi-traversable moment. It opens up the potential for limited time travel, at least to pass information between times."

The singularity. I know.

She blinked at him.

I read the executive summary of your thesis. And skimmed the table of contents.

I hate that you were my best candidate for this internship.

I was your only candidate, he said smugly.

That’s true. But I was the only teacher who would give you an extra credit to be able to keep your financial aid.

Also true. And depressing. I vote we skip this whole science thing, and get a gallon of ice cream and sadness binge in our hotel room while working on our social skills.

My problem isn’t social skills, Claire said, taking as much offense as she could at being lumped in with Knowles—even though she knew by virtue of them both being in that car together they deserved to be, my problem is that I just told you I believe in time travel. Not as a theoretical possibility. But in its reality. And I’ve been hounding manifestations around the country like a... like a psychotic tornado chaser.

"Hey, Twister was—actually, for a movie about tornadoes, and the crazy people who chase tornados, it was actually pretty meh—which makes it de facto disappointing."

"But my point, which I’m pretty sure entirely eluded you, was that I’m an intellectual joke to my colleagues. An ice cream pity party isn’t going to fix that, though maybe getting myself some useful and maybe even verifiable data would have."

Sorry, Knowles said, and for a moment she felt something like affection for him. The moment didn’t last long before he combatively blurted out, "But will it be verifiable? This singularity we’re chasing, if it’s actually inside Mereta. And from what you’ve said in the past, they tend to be, uh—"

"Transient. So that instance of the singularity isn’t likely to be verifiable. But if we can collect data about this instance, we can craft a strong enough hypothesis that it can be tested and retested by people who find other instances. Or, at least, so goes the theory. Even if I’m right about everything else, it’s possible that the way these instances manifest, no two may be anything alike. I mean, the physics don’t change drastically, so the manifestations should be similar, but we’re talking the absolute margins, here, they’re barely causing ripples in our world, so even the slightest changes could completely alter the measurable effects."

His phone beeped to life from the dashboard, and displayed two red dots over a map of the city as Knowles drove past a sign that said, Now Entering Cannon Beach. He reached for his phone, but Claire slapped his hand away. "It’s a rental, and I’m not going to help you clean vomit out of it a second time this trip."

Okay. But that alert, it means we’re in town, and have to make a choice. Should we go straight to the clinic, or stop at our hotel?

She pondered, and said, Clinic. Definitely. ‘Cause when they shoot us down, we might be able to get a partial refund on our hotel room if we haven’t checked in yet—if I pretend to cry on the phone.

He reached for the phone, and she slapped his hand again.

Well, unless you know the way there by heart, one of us is going to have to pick up my phone.

Then I’ll navigate, she said and leaned forward. She gave a little grunt as the gymnastics necessary to not drop her computer and to reach the phone made it hard to breathe. You just focus on not plowing over any pedestrians and not exploding oddly seafood-smelling hork onto the driver’s side floor mats. Possibly not in that order.

She swiped her fingers over the screen, and stared intently.

So? he asked.  The suspense is killing me. Where to?

Just follow this road. Eventually we’ll be taking a right once we get to the other side of the city, and then it looks like more winding, hilly roads.

The road through Cannon Beach rolled over hills, wending past bakeries and saltwater taffy shops. The main stretch was largely a tourist trap, speckled with mom and pop restaurants and shops.

At the edge of town, Knowles turned up the hill, and immediately their rental car slowed to a crawl, and the engine complained loudly about the strain. He popped it down into a lower gear, and the engine quieted. This reminds me of every rollercoaster ever, he said, where there’s the long, click-clacking hill you’re dragged up to get enough momentum for the actually rolling part of the coaster. I hope there’s a loop de loop.

You get carsick, but ride rollercoasters? she asked, astonished.

I’ve never gotten carsick on a rollercoaster. Of course, I’ve never tried to text on a coaster—I’m afraid my phone would go flying.

She wanted to take that for a suggestion, and throw his phone out the window, but it was the only thing keeping them from being completely lost—not that his map app was helping much on that account. Where the hell is it? she asked impatiently.

Do I look like Google maps to you? he shot back.

You kind of resemble one of their vans, maybe.

He didn’t have time to complain, because the forest cut suddenly out, and Knowles pulled their car into a gravel driveway. He stopped in front of a heavy metal gate. Claire got out of the car first, drawn by the way the lawn seemed to glow with reflected sunlight, and the way that the clear, blue sky framed the eccentric architecture of the building, combining an art deco facade with a baroque tower.

The manicured property stretched several acres, and was rimmed on three sides with a wrought iron and rounded stone fence that culminated in the gate in front of them. The fourth side was dominated by a steep, rocky cliff punctuated with bursts of green trees pushing fragile tendrils out from the rocks, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Claire pressed her face into the metal gate, and checked the corner of her mouth to be certain she wasn’t drooling. I would let Bruce Wayne do me in an uncomfortably warm batsuit to live in that Manor.

"It’s not that impressive, Knowles stared, you know, unless you’re into palatial chateaus with a gorgeously high overlook of a beautiful beach on the ocean, with that big, cool, weird rock jutting up out of the sand... okay, yeah, the Batman thing you said, for me, too. Hell, I’d let him make me his Robin—tights and all."

"That image is never getting out of my head, is it?"

Or mine. The deep, resonating bass of a barrel-chested man came from behind them.

Claire spun around, defensively curling her fingers around the bars on the gate as the man neither of them had seen stepped closer to them.

This is private property, which I’m going to have to escort the both of you off of. The man was taller than Knowles by six inches, and heavier by fifty pounds. But he carried most of the extra weight in his belly, and in combination with the beige shirt and pants he wore, it made him look like a cartoon sheriff.

Wait, wait, Knowles said, squirming out from between the larger man and the gate. We’re researchers. We called in advance.

Researchers? the man asked suspiciously. Claire bobbed her head enthusiastically. Give me a second. He crammed his hand into a breast pocket and it came out with a phone. He dialed it, and it rang for a second, before it was picked up. Kevin? he asked. Caught a couple of weirdoes peeping through the front gate.

Press? Or the passing-by curious? Claire heard from where she stood.

The man, whose engraved brass name tag said, Sam on it, seemed to recognize that she’d heard the other man on the line, turned away and covered the phone in his large hand. They claim to be researchers. A pretty lady and a fat kid.

I remember a voice mail, from, uh, a physicist? Kevin said. Crap, did I ever respond to it? Sam could hear papers shuffling around in the background. Um. You know what? You can bring them up to my office. I’m sure they’re harmless. And if they’re not, I’ll let you rough up the fat one on the way out.

Deal, Sam said, smiling at Knowles. The intern shifted uncomfortably under his gaze.

Chapter Two: The Doctor

This is awkward, the doctor said, and smiled nervously from behind his desk. It was covered in papers, none of them neatly stacked. Instead, it looked like at some point in the now distant past, several chest-high stacks of papers had been organized, and time and occupation had seen them fall and mix and intermingle into a maelstrom of documents that encompassed the desk, like a freeze frame of a hurricane destroying a Kinkos.

As you can see, I need a secretary, and a housekeeper, and probably a professional assistant for each of them. But like I said, it’s awkward. Because I don’t remember anything about you coming here.

Claire sunk down in her seat.

So tell me what you do.

Claire looked to Knowles, who she assumed would have this kind of speech down patter than she did, but he was hardly paying any attention to either of them, and was instead watching seagulls circling outside the doctor’s window. The doctor had kind but sharp eyes, and without his earlier smile tugging their corners, it was difficult for her to make eye contact, let alone speak. Um, she started, "I’m a quantum physicist at the University of Oregon, and actually, my desk looks about this bad—and my car, worse. My particular area of expertise is temporal anomalies, specifically, I try to use virtual particles to track them, or rather, the manifestations of virtual particles, since they themselves can’t be seen—only their effects on other particles can."

So you’re studying the wind by watching the movement of the leaves on the trees?

She was surprised; no one had ever explained her research that concisely before. Yes. Exactly. And I may steal that description for my paper.

That’s... really cool. His eyes lit up, making him seem less foreboding. A weight lifted off Claire's chest, and she began to relax. But I’m not sure I understand how that brings you to my little coastal clinic. 

Well, it shouldn’t have. I tracked a manifestation to OHSU. But I missed it by something like five and a half hours.

Missed it? the doctor asked, leaning in and uncrossing his legs.

My research is cutting edge, like Galileo figuring out it’s a heliocentric system after all, Charlie Brown. Even the science undergirding my monitoring equipment is still fairly experimental. So it’s kind of like trying to track malaria through mosquito farts—only a million times more subtle. A note of pride stirred inside her. Much of the time, talking about her work stressed her out. But something in the doctor's demeanor encouraged her; maybe it was that he seemed like he actually wanted to understand it.

But apparently less impossible than it sounds.

I don’t think so. I’ve... had my moments of doubt, of course. I’ve gone as long as eighteen months without so much as a blip on my equipment. But this instance, the one we tracked here, it’s... it’s a hundred times stronger than any other readings I’ve ever gotten. Strong enough that it was worth our time to track the patient we think is responsible for it from OHSU to your clinic.

"So the manifestation is inside one of my patients. He stroked his chin, and Claire recognized a day’s worth of beard growth catching on his fingers. The light in his eyes changed from enthusiastic curiosity to clinical concern. And what are you proposing for this patient?" he asked.

"The