Parallel inversion, p.1
Parallel Inversion, page 1
part #1 of The Parellyrian Chronicles Series
PARALLEL INVERSION
a novel
J.S. RYBOLT
Parallel Inversion
Copyright © 2020 by J.S. Rybolt. All rights reserved.
Parallel Inversion is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover image: Mandana Khalili
For any who seek an escape.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My parents, who fostered in me a love of reading and a passion for writing.
Kim, who first gave me an idea.
Josh and Scott, who read my novel and provided invaluable input.
Mandana Khalili, for her wonderful art.
My loving wife, who encouraged me every step of the way, and pushed me to publish.
Prologue
After ten years of research, Professor Harry Romanbak seemed no closer to a breakthrough, and he was growing desperate.
He was shuffling through his dimly lit laboratory, carrying a clipboard to gather notes on his most recent experiment, when there was an unanticipated knock on his door. Undeterred, and determined to remain uninterrupted, the professor continued on his course. He reached a table and was closely surveying the subject of his experiment when he heard yet another, more forceful knock.
Romanbak considered his options. He'd had some issues with vandals and belligerents when his laboratory had been on the University campus, and he had insisted on being relocated. He now worked in a building opposite a nature preserve, more than a mile away from the rest of campus. Decades ago the building had been a popular observatory. It was later abandoned, and it remained that way until Romanbak renovated it into a fully functional laboratory.
Romanbak looked out the singular, sound proof window, high on the slanting wall opposite the door, and saw that a major thunderstorm was nearing its crescendo. A glance at his watch indicated that it was just past midnight. The professor waited another moment, but only heard the splattering of rain on the roof of his lab. He supposed his unexpected visitor had probably given up and turned around to wander back through the woods toward--
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The third set of knocks was by far the loudest. Romanbak begrudgingly decided to answer the door. His visitor's persistence might correlate to the importance of their visit. But the professor took precautions. He pulled an eye patch out of his pocket and put it on, mussed up his hair, and put a bundle of shirts up under the back of his lab coat to simulate a hump. He was now ready to frighten any undesirables with visual confirmation of his reputation, which was known to him, as a mad scientist.
With fortuitous timing, an enormous flash of lightning lit up the sky as he opened the door, enhancing his menacing appearance to his visitor. But the individual standing in the doorway was far from undesirable. With an open umbrella in one hand and a water resistant notepad in the other, a woman in her mid-twenties, likely an enthusiastic science student from the University, stood outside in defiance of the weather. She shielded as much of her slight, five and a half foot frame from the storm with her umbrella as she could, although her red-brown hair was already darkened to nearly black from the rain. As the lightning flashed she looked up and gave the professor an earnest smile, knowing that the same smile had often been a precursor to a pleasant conversation. Upon seeing what at first appeared to be a hunchback with an eye patch, however, she quickly took a step back.
Inaudible over the power of the storm, the professor noticed the woman shy away from the doorway. Thinking quickly, he threw away the eye patch before motioning for her to come inside, which she did hesitantly. He shut the door behind her.
The woman, happy to be free from the seemingly unending downpour, looked on in surprise as the man before he increased the illumination inside the building. He then proceeded to remove his lab coat, shedding his makeshift hump as he did so, which greatly altered his appearance. A far cry from the old, disheveled man worn in both body and mind she had first espied, the professor appeared to be a man in his early forties, with chestnut brown hair, and one or two days of stubble. He stood just shy of six feet tall, held himself upright, and aside from a slight shuffle in his step indicative of a lack of sleep caused by a dedication to his work, he appeared to be in good spirits and health.
“My apologies,” he said. “I have had some recent problems with troublemakers around my laboratory. I came up with this costume to scare away anyone trying to break in. One can never be too careful.” He sighed, frustrated with the measures to which he had been forced to resort. He then turned his attention back to the young woman, and smiled. “How may I help you?”
The woman struggled to gain what little she had lost of her composure as a result of a forty minute walk around the outskirts of a nature preserve in a thunderstorm, followed by her encounter with what had at first appeared to be a crazy old man, but what recent observations suggested was instead a pleasant scholar. She moved her notepad from her right hand to her left and extended her arm towards him to offer a handshake.
“My name is Karen,” she said, stepping forward into her still open umbrella, which jammed between her legs and those of her host while she extended her hand to shake his, causing her to drop her notepad. Karen tripped over the umbrella and fell forward, but was caught by the professor's strong, surprisingly quick arms. He gently kicked the umbrella aside and helped her back to her feet.
Karen stood awkwardly in front of the professor, pulling a few stray hairs away from her eyes and mouth, uncertain as to how to continue the conversation. Before the silence became too awkward, Romanbak filled it as pleasantly as he could.
“Why don't I go make us some coffee,” he offered, “and let you gather yourself?”
Karen smiled. “Coffee sounds great.”
Romanbak nodded politely. “Feel free to look around,” he said as he made his way through a small door opposite the entrance. “But be careful what you touch.”
Karen breathed a sigh of relief, pleased to have the opportunity to sort herself out after the series of awkward moments. She was also excited for the opportunity to investigate the professor's laboratory unobserved. She, like every other student on campus, had heard many of the rumors concerned with this particular building. She had been assigned to seek out any evidence that suggested its resident did indeed fit the description of a mad scientist. He was known to be employed by the University, but anything else supposedly known about him seemed to always be contradicted by another rumor Now that she had met him, she had already begun to hope that her investigation tonight would be able to help her write an article that would exonerate him of his reputation.
At first glance, while containing some oddities, there was nothing innately suspicious about the lab. It was set up inside an old, abandoned observatory, with a semi-spherical, domed ceiling that curved down toward the floor. The white walls were contrasted by a large window that remained black, save for the occasional flash of lightning, close to the top of the dome where an opening for a telescope had once been. The telescope itself had been removed some time ago and set up in a newer, more conveniently located observatory.
The north side of the room, to the right of the entrance, was populated primarily by a large, oak desk, which itself was framed by an even larger blackboard. Both the blackboard and the desk had numerous notes scattered about them, and the desktop also held the typical computer, stationery, and framed personal photographs common to any professor's office. Romanbak's photos included one of himself in a forest, one of a calico cat looking out a window, and one of a large waterfall that Karen did not recognize.
The south side of the laboratory had three stations from left to right. First was a table with a large, complex metal machine, rectangular in shape, and mostly self-contained apart from a few pulleys, belts and springs. It was connected on the right side to the second station, a plexiglass enclosure containing an eight foot tall potted tree with numerous jagged branches sticking out at all angles. For a moment Karen thought she spotted something moving near the top of the tree, but upon closer inspection she saw that there was nothing there. Finally, there was a second table, this one holding a tray of test tubes, each containing a liquid of a different color, and an equal number of larger flasks, presumably for mixtures of the colorful liquids.
In the middle of the room, six feet from anything else, a thin, metallic cone had been fastened to the floor. It was about five feet high, and was topped with a sphere a little larger than a baseball.
In a few moments the professor returned with two cups of coffee. Karen had heeded his word and avoided touching anything unfamiliar. Noticing that her umbrella still lay open in the middle of the floor, she picked it up to close it, but she found the task to be impossible. Romanbak saw her struggling, placed the two cups of coffee on his desk, and stepped over to help her. He pulled out the notepad she had dropped into the umbrella earlier, and she closed it easily.
“Oh geez,” she sighed, feeling almost as embarrassed as she had before he left. She took a deep breath and leaned her umbrella against the wall. The professor pulled one of two chairs out from behind the desk, placed it on the other side, and offered her a seat and her notepad, both of which she graciously accepted. While she opened her notepad and pulled out a pen, he took a seat behind his desk.
“Well,” Karen began, “as I was trying to say before, my name is Karen Volar, and I work for the student newspaper at the University. I've been assigned to write an article on your work, but I must admit, I know very little about it. I was hoping you wouldn't mind if I asked you a few questions.”
“Go ahead,” Romanbak replied. It wasn't quite what he had expected considering the young woman's determination to traverse the forest in the pouring rain to write, what turned out to be a simple, amateur newspaper article, but it wasn't unwelcome either.
“All right,” Karen continued, “let's start with your name.” She paused, realizing he probably would have expected her to already have this information. “You're something of a mystery on campus,” she explained.
The professor did not mind at all. "My name is Professor Harry Womanbak," he answered, mispronouncing his own surname without even noticing.
Karen began to write this down, but then stopped to question what she had heard. “Harry... hairy woman back?” She scrunched her forehead. “Is that a joke?”
“No. Sorry. I mean Romanbak.” The professor opened a drawer in his desk, pulled out his faculty identification, and placed it in front of her.
“Ah...” she said, now pleased that she was not the only one embarrassing herself this evening. “Romanbak. Got it.”
“Please,” he said, “call me Harry.”
“All right, Harry. I know you're employed by the University, but you don't teach?”
“I started teaching here ten years ago, in 1982. I taught for eight years, but for the last two and a half years I've been on leave under a research grant.”
“Oh, interesting. So you've been off campus that whole time?” Karen casually sipped her coffee, and then continued to take notes.
“I had a private lab on campus for two years, but after some break-ins and issues with vandals, I requested a move. A colleague suggested this abandoned observatory. Apparently, it hadn't been used by the school in thirty years. I spent a month cleaning it out and doing a few simple renovations. Since I moved the problems have mostly disappeared.”
“Well, that's good.” Karen felt that she had enough background information, and decided to be blunt with her next question. “So, are you aware of your reputation with the students on campus?”
Romanbak made a weak attempt to feign ignorance of this fact. “Reputation?” he said.
“Yes, well, to be frank, it's not uncommon to hear among students on campus about strange things going on out here. Unusual noises and lights. Secret experiments. Some even go so far as to call you a mad scientist.”
Romanbak laughed. “Really? Secret experiments? Mad scientist? That's ridiculous.” They both laughed. “Actually I have heard a few things like that, but I didn't know it was all over campus.”
“Honestly, I don't think I've talked to anyone who hasn't heard something like that about you,” Karen admitted.
“Well, I can assure you, everything I do here is known, and has been approved by the University board.”
“What are you doing over there?” Karen turned and pointed toward the two tables and the plexiglass enclosure behind her.
“Ahh, yes. Well, that's probably easier if I show you.” Romanbak stood up and motioned for Karen to do the same. She took another sip of her coffee and followed him to the table with the test tubes and flasks. The professor opened a small cupboard on the wall and retrieved a pipette and a stopper. He measured twenty milliliters of a blue liquid, then he poured it into a flask under a fume hood, while Karen watched closely. She put her pen to her notepad to continue taking notes.
“What is that?” she asked.
The professor knew some of the chemicals he was using were controversial, and he was reluctant to divulge their true names to his visitor. He guessed that Karen's academic background was not in chemistry and, thinking on his feet, tried to come up with a name for a chemical that would sound plausible to a journalist. “That,” he replied without much hesitation, “is trioxycarbozolinone.” He immediately felt proud of his invented answer. “Each of these liquids can be combined with any of the others to produce a previously unknown chemical.”
“Isn't that dangerous?”
“None of these compounds are volatile, so it's unlikely any combination will produce anything especially hazardous, but don't worry, I always take precautions,” Romanbak assured her. “Why don't you choose a compound to add to this one?”
Karen hesitated. She was reluctant because her educational background, as the professor had guessed, excluded science. But the professor seemed confident in his experiment, and she already felt confident in the professor. Her instincts told her she could trust him.
“What are my options?” she asked.
“Let's see... we've got helitinutonium, tungsamalichloride,” he motioned to the corresponding test tube as he began to list them, coming up with names by combining ingredients he'd seen on the back of shampoo bottles. Then he paused. “Are you familiar with any of these compounds?”
“No,” Karen admitted. “Why don't we just go with the orange one?” she suggested.
“Ahh, methylhydroxyluminominium. Excellent choice.” Romanbak took the pipette and extracted a small amount of the orange liquid. With the pipette in his right hand and the stopper in his left, he released a single drop of the liquid into the flask containing the so-called trioxycarbozolinone, and sealed it. The solution began to bubble and foam inside the flask. Karen continued taking notes as the professor carried the solution past her to the table with the large, complex machine, opened a hatch on the left, placed the flask inside, and closed the hatch.
“What does this thing do?” Karen asked.
“This machine, which I constructed myself, takes the solution in the flask and electromagnetically combines it with a nutritional compound and compresses it into a solid form,” Romanbak explained. Karen nodded, pretending to understand.
“Would you like to flip the switch?” Romanbak offered.
“Sure,” Karen replied. Romanbak directed her to a singular, inch-long switch that Karen found to be reminiscent of the one she had on her desk lamp in her dorm room. The professor pointed to it, and Karen flipped it. The machine whirred to life, and a pulley on the outside of the machine began to turn. Through a small, plexiglass window, Karen could see the flask being carried on a belt until it fell out of sight. The machine clicked and beeped as it continued to function. After a few moments, a small, cylindrical object, roughly the size and shape of a hockey puck, dropped out of the right side of the machine and fell into the enclosure with the tree.
Karen was confused. She turned her attention to the professor with an expression on her face that matched her feelings, but he just directed her attention back to the tree. She looked back and saw a cat pounce down from the highest branch of the tree. Karen had failed to notice it previously, as it was exactly the same color as the tree itself. It approached the cylinder that had emerged from the machine, sniffed it, and then quickly consumed it.
Karen once again turned to the professor. “You feed that shit to a cat?” she exclaimed. Before the professor could make an attempt to explain, Karen felt her arm being pulled back forcefully against the plexiglass wall. She dropped her pen and looked back to her arm and saw the cat sitting on a four foot high branch, somehow reaching through the plexiglass wall and grasping her arm. Karen attempted to pull away, but found she did not have the strength to do so.
The cat pressed its head against the glass above her hand. The structural consistency of the section of wall it touched started to change, and the cat pushed its head through as if nothing solid stood in its way. Karen watched this happen in shock, her eyes agape. The cat bent its head down and viciously sunk its fangs into Karen's thumb. This time, when Karen jerked away, the cat released its grasp.
Karen looked at her bleeding thumb as she stumbled toward the middle of the room, placing her uninjured hand on the metallic cone in the middle of the room for balance. At her touch, it began to hum and glow red, gradually growing louder and brighter. Karen stared at it, but before she could remove her hand, lightning came crashing through the building's only window, striking the ball at the top of the cone, and Karen disappeared in a puff of smoke.
