Special Light

Special Light

Special light, for the want of a better term, that’s what he had dubbed it. Albert stood, his heart racing with excitement. “ I think I may be sick.” He thought. His life work depended on this one moment. “Fly, or crash and burn” his mind told him.
Miles of fiber optic cable encased the underground bunker giving a surreal sheen to the surrounding equipment. The instrument panel was almost at the end of a ten year count down. A constant humming of fans, motors, along with the chattering of hard drives beat out a subtle rhythm.
Ten years of waiting, ten years of hoping, ten years of pure anticipation. He had achieved successes, over and over again with microorganisms, insects, and vegetation, but mammals age so slowly. “Would the “Matter Reconstitution Condensing” unit handle something as complex as the simian anatomy?”
Three, two, one…….Albert’s fingers fumbled for an instant at the keyboard until he found the proper soft key. His eyes tightly shut, he struck the key and listened for the condensation to begin. The familiar sound of the restructuring began. “ Two hours, two hours and the world will be a changed place. “ mused Albert.
Of course he should have called his assistant, and let her share in this moment, but something deep down, something personal, told Albert that this was his moment, and his alone. His mind wandered back to when he first made his discovery. The super strings which constituted matter could be excited to an extremely frenzied state, their natural vibrations enhanced to achieve speeds faster than the linear speed of photons. Faster than the speed of light. How fast he could not measure, there was no method he could develop which would accurately do the job. The obstacles which he first had to overcome were great, how do you contain such pure energy ? Once the matter was in this state of hyper energetic oscillation how did you bring the “special light” back to it’s original state intact? The fiber optic cables had been the answer. Not only did the “ special light” contain well in the cable it also kept it’s order. Once the matter was released into a specially designed chamber for condensation, the cycle was complete. The first few experiments with viral specimens surprised, and excited Albert. Upon condensing the minute specimens after only ten minutes of flowing through the network of fiber optic cables, he had discovered a pronounced change in the virus’. Years of study led him to accept what he believed to be the inevitable truth. The organisms had gone back in time. Not just their lifetime, but several generations back. The change in the viral strain demonstrated a reverse evolutionary cycle. The changes were subtle but very convincing.
Betty was a very old chimpanzee when he put her to the chamber ten years ago. He wondered what her age would be now. Would the ten years spent inside the system be enough to cause the reverse evolution he had witnessed with the other short-lived organisms? Will he be the first to look upon a long-extinct primate inside the chamber? How many hundreds of thousands of evolutionary cycles would Betty have gone backwards through?
The condensation would be complete now. Albert switched on the cams. There was still a shimmer of heat within the chamber caused by the high energy from the condensing “ light”. The view cleared. Albert’s jaw dropped open. His mind swirled with confusion, and finally upon grasping and evaluating what he had seen, his face was alit with irony.
The cams had revealed the distant ancestor of the chimpanzee. No one would believe him! He’d be accused of another cold fusion boondoggle. Albert resigned himself to his responsibilities at hand. First he must find clothing for the ten year old girl within the chamber.