Lighter Than Dark

By Washington Laws

A BALLOON TRIP THROUGH OUTER SPACE.

In the far future, space travel is ordinary and so is the life of Penelope James, a clerk living on the obscure little planet Polonic. What isn't ordinary is Penelope's friend The Professor, an energetic scientist (or mad scientist, depending on who you ask) who won't take an uninteresting universe lying down.

One day The Professor explodes into Penelope's office with a new invention: a gas that is 'lighter' than the dark matter that makes up most of the Universe. When The Professor intends to build a hot air balloon to travel upwards in space and find the Top of the Universe, Penelope decides that the idea is just impossible enough to be interesting. Accompanied by The Professor's long-suffering bodyguard Selena Delgado, the three women travel upwards in the space-time continuum, encounter the strange marvels that hang over humanity's understanding of existence, and make their way to something that shouldn't exist: The Top of the Universe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Washington Laws
• Release date: Feb 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386679721

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Myra, who kept me sane.

Stuart, Patrick  and Sean, who kept me the opposite.

Lily, who helped inordinately with my last attempt at a book, which prepared me for this one.

Haydn Bray, who designed the cover.

Augustin Kendall, my editor. Those interested in their services can find them at:

www.clarify-editing.com

1

THE PROFESSOR

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The Professor crashed through the doors of Penelope’s office like a comet and destroyed the universe.

Up until then it had been a quiet day in the city of Caslor. It was the largest city on the planet Polonic, a planet that had scarcely any history and mostly just soaked up starlight and exported the excess. The Node of Sciences that Penelope worked in was a beige dome of plastic clay among many others, and they had passed many an uneventful day.

Until today, when The Professor ran through the streets into the Node, rushed down its sterile white hallways which were polished to help information more easily flow through them, and slammed through Penelope’s office door.

Penelope looked up and said, Oh.

Hello, Professor. Penelope said to the woman standing in the doorway, who had an armful of what appeared to be small helium tanks with a tentacled mass of hoses dangling from them.

I've done it. said The Professor. I've changed the entire universe.

Have you? said Penelope, putting down her mystery novel and politely folding her long fingers across her lap. She pushed away slightly from her desk. She quite liked The Professor, and was always ready to listen to her. It often brightened up the day. Most people liked The Professor. She tended to give the art of knowledge a new polish, even if sometimes it also acquired a layer of soot in the process.

The trouble with working in a place like the Node of Sciences was that new knowledge was getting rather hard to come by these days. Lots of important stuff was very much figured out. Most people were content with this, because there was still lots to do: food still tasted good, games still had colorful new beeping noises, old songs were still a joy. More easily dissatisfied people like Penelope read mystery novels, seeking slight surprises. Some people even routinely got their memories wiped and happily enjoyed spending years figuring out who they were, finding themselves over and over again.

And then there was The Professor.

The Professor was often described as plump, or curvy when people thought they were being flattering, but this was a cursory observation because the first thing most people saw was her brain. It was hard not to, the way it crackled and buzzed behind her wide, wide eyes. It was why she had to keep her kinky hair tied back, because otherwise all the static build-up from thoughts rubbing together caused terrible frizz. When she looked at people they felt like they needed to get out of the way of her thoughts.

The Professor was never content with what was already discovered. She would load the periodic table of elements into a random number generator and mix random quantities together while eagerly watching the results. Nine times out of ten the result was a different variety of semi-colorful dirt, other times it was an even more colorful explosion.

She would do similar with stellar coordinates, visiting random spots of space and then leaving radio buoys in them to mark them out. People would say to her that she was pointlessly marking sections of empty space, and she would say, Yes, but these are chosen sections of empty space, this is empty space I have decided to mark out, and however little, that lends them more significance than before.

The Professor was composed of the same stuff everyone else was. She had genes and clothes and audio-recordings and degrees like everyone else and she was quite intelligent, but then so were many people. But her behavior was her one unmeasurable curiosity. Her hunger for innovation and her excited hypotheses were what people found novel, and most people would at least give a mildly respectful nod when she passed by, which she often did very quickly and on fire.

Penelope was used to this. She was The Professor's best friend by happenstance, because by dint of her job at the Node of Science it was to her The Professor usually ran with the latest observation.

Listen. said The Professor. I need you to hold some of these. She started clearing papers off of Penelope's desk with her elbows, tanks slipping out of her arms and making metallic pang noises against the hardwood. They spilled and rolled, some onto the keyboard of Penelope’s antique-style computer where their heavy movements hashed out a string of vaguely obscene characters.

Penelope politely started setting the tanks on her desk on their ends like wine bottles to keep them from rolling off. The Professor pulled something out of her pocket. It appeared to be a deflated party balloon.

What's that? asked Penelope.

A party balloon. said The Professor. A blue one. Now, help me connect these hoses to this mixing nozzle.

The hoses leading from the tanks were a tangle that reminded Penelope of some deep sea creature. She shrugged and obliged the request, connecting the hoses up to a single metal spigot that had multiple pipe openings leading into its circular sides, a plumbing-silver metal crown with a hollow-tipped cone nozzle on top.

The Professor screwed the last hose into place and stretched the balloon over the nozzle. Penelope decided to ask: This isn't going to explode, is it? She thought of the Instant Expanding Miniature Architecture Capsule from last year. She had been picking stray balustrades and buttresses out of her hair for weeks afterwards.

What? No! No, of course not. The Professor said dismissively. The balloon began to inflate, and in doing so danced back and forth in jerky, violent motions that made it look alive. Although, she continued, seeming to remember something, Come to think of it, I do recommend holding on to anything that could be knocked over.

As she said this, she clipped a metal sealing band around the balloon's opening, and let it go.

The balloon dropped to the ground, and then rushed along it in a rolling motion to the wall and began to climb up it. Then it abruptly changed course, zig-zagging along the wall and knocking a painting askew.

What- what is it doing? asked Penelope.

It's trying to follow the rotation of the planet, as well as its orbit, as well as the movement of our galaxy!

They both watched the balloon continue in its mad, random circuit through the room. It bounced off Penelope's shoulder, and she was surprised at how much force was behind it.

Hm. said The Professor. I should probably stop it. Do you have any sharp objects?

Penelope looked around her desk, shoving air tanks aside as the balloon continued to make its trip through her office. There was a crash behind her as she found a pair of scissors. She had a pensive look as she handed the scissors to The Professor, but she sat down and watched. Penelope had gotten used to a mess following The Professor (there once had been a need to disinfect the whole office... and herself), and frankly a balloon with a mind of its own may have ranked as the most benign incident she'd seen yet.

The other woman took the scissors and held them at the ready like a switchblade, eyes following the balloon's movements. At that moment, it flew out the open door, and The Professor's keen-eyed look turned to one of surprise.

We've got to follow it! she cried, and rushed out. Penelope found herself rising and following as if pulled in her wake.

They rushed down the hall just in time to see the balloon exit the front door, and as they emerged into daylight it was already a speck vanishing into the sky, though it appeared to be going towards it at an odd angle. The Professor watched it go with one hand over her eyes.

Damn. she said. Well, I guess it gets to go on ahead first.

And where is it going? asked Penelope. She was leaning against the doorframe now, feeling strangely tired. Although she hadn’t been consciously worried, she realized her body had been tensing up, just in case. It wasn't like usual to have one of these incidents end so... calmly. It left her body crashing from energy that it hadn't needed.

Up. said The Professor, eyes still towards the sky.

Well, of course. said Penelope, feeling a little embarrassed now.

No no no. she stopped looking up and turned around. I mean... UP. Not up in the world's atmosphere. But upwards in the universe itself.

Penelope tilted her head with a polite smile. I'm not sure I get what you mean.

It's- The Professor paused. It's something we should talk about over breakfast. I think I may have forgotten to eat for the last couple of days.

Penelope James looked like she was draped onto the world. Her bones were like coat-hangers from which the rest of her long body dangled. Her thin braided dreadlocks hung without bounce. Even when she stood up unsupported there was an impression that one of her bony elbows or shoulders was leaning on something. She was now laying her long arms across the back of a plush chair in their local diner, watching The Professor swipe sauces up with her fries.

Okay. the latter said, wiping her fingers and taking a drink of a soda. Okay, so- the universe is made up of dark matter. It's what everything's swimming around in, what all our orbits are spinning through, what our worlds spin along in, through and through.

Right. said Penelope. The food had gotten her a bit drowsy, and the coffee had woken her up just enough to be relaxed but not asleep, relaxed enough to weather the rapid words streaming from her companion.

Okay! Now, that means all movement in the universe follows along with this! It's like if a fish swims in the sea, it goes with the way the water moves, you see? Even if it moves against currents, it’s still using that medium to define its efforts, understand?

Sure, said Penelope, meaning No.

We are mired in this and obey these movements at all times. All motion we indulge in is really just going faster in the big direction we were always moving in- like, being on a train track and running around in the train cars, you can leap over the seats and get to the dining car and back faster than someone walking, but you're all still going in the same basic direction!

Right. Penelope took another sip of coffee.

Ah! The Professor pushed her glass of soda forward. But then there are air bubbles!

On a train?

No no no! In the sea! There are bubbles that happen, and while everything else stays in that medium, they go UP, they defy the usual conventions of their universe!

Penelope blinked. Through the haze of over-sweetened coffee and breakfast grease, a faint glimmer was forming. She thought about the balloon and its odd movements.

Wait. Just what was in those tanks?

The Professor raised an arm, pulling up a handful of the tanks that were dangling by their hoses from her belt. They'd been making an awful clatter under the table.

These! she said. These are my newest mixture! When they're put together here- she indicated the connecting nozzle. It makes a gas that is lighter than dark matter!

Her eyes glittered, their attention rising from the tanks to Penelope, and then up to the ceiling. And anything filled with it will rise through the weight of the universe's fundamental fluid and go up! Up! To, to the top of the universe!

Penelope stared over her coffee. The universe hasn't got a top.

That gave The Professor pause. She bit at her lip in thought. Well. she said, settling back down in her chair. Maybe.

She watched the last few bubbles in her soda rise to the surface.

Penelope said her goodbyes, finished up a bit of work, and went home. It was always nice talking with The Professor, no matter how little sense she made. And sometimes The Professor did make sense, and she had quite a few science prizes to prove it. She’d helped plan Polonic’s update to its mag-rail system, she’d improved the efficiency of the solar power plants, and she’d once reinvigorated the planet’s agricultural breadbasket, bringing new life to exhausted soil.

Of course, her design of the rail system, if nobody else had tweaked it, had been arranged to turn the entire planet into a hyperspace bubble. The solar power plants had been so efficient they had created a layer of darkness for miles around after absorbing all the sunlight in their vicinity. The new farmland had sprouted a rainforest full of enthusiastically carnivorous plants. They’d had to politely ask her to re-exhaust the soil until it was down to a level that could support, say, a cultivar of mildly aggressive turnip.

Penelope glanced up at the stars outside her house. They were as pretty as ever. She found her eyes wandering to the black spaces between them. She thought she was familiar enough with dark matter theory that she was fairly certain The Professor had been talking nonsense. I mean, it couldn’t work that way.

That night Penelope had a dream. She dreamt she was at the bottom of the ocean, but it was still full of her familiar neighborhoods, including one she'd lived in on another planet when she was a little girl. People walked along the streets in a slow, dreamy pace, and the buildings waved like seaweed. Galaxies roamed down the middle of the lanes like cars, with people sometimes sitting in them like they were papasan chairs and riding them along at tilting angles that threatened to tip them out of the cushioning stars. It was night, a night without stars. All the stars were in the streets instead, but everything was lit like daylight. She could not breathe, but she did not drown, did not feel the pain of suffocation; she simply didn't breathe and that was that.

Then suddenly a bubble came up from a crack in the ground, enveloped her, and she found herself breathing inside of it. Somehow her breathing made the bubble bigger instead of smaller, and it rose up through the black sea, and she watched her composite neighborhood shrink away.

Then there was a harsh light above. It was unnaturally, painfully bright, and she emerged into it. Her bubble popped, and she was surrounded by a roar, and she was floating in air, and somehow the floating felt like she was sitting on a hard surface, and there were fish swimming around her, and their movements were not drifting but cutting, they had diamond-faceted scales and they moved with deliberate geometric purpose, and black water spilled from their gills