An Abyss Below Every Floor
by A.J. Payler
Born to multiracial heritage in the same Honolulu hospital as Barack Obama, A. J. Payler earned his English degree from the University of Hawai’i before eking out various livings as a musician, technical writer, radio broadcaster, military contractor, audio engineer, comic store clerk, short order cook, press clipping agent, music journalist, and congressional archival assistant, managing to shake hands with luminaries from Kurt Vonnegut to Lemmy from Motörhead along the way.
Since turning his attention to writing full-time he has released the novels The Killing Song, World of Heroes, Lost in the Red, Terror Next Door, and Bank Error in Your Favor; his short writing has been published by Suspect, Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight, Flipside, Songwriter’s Market, Creepy podcast, Cloaked Press, Short Story (Substack), Flash in a Flash, EYE, Tailspins, Razorcake and more. He has also released several albums of original music and opened for artists such as Silkworm and the Schizophonics, continuing to perform live as often as time permits.
He lives in Southern California with his family. Further detail on his writing and music is available via linktr.ee/ajpayler and ajpayler.com, where readers can get free stories by signing up for the A. J. Payler newsletter.
Roland Ohtani tugged awkwardly at the unfamiliar knot at his neck as he pushed through the glass doors encasing his boss’s office.
“Cut that out,” admonished Kurt Barthelme upon spotting his research lead arriving five minutes past their appointed meeting time. “Makes you look uncomfortable.” The beams of morning sun filtering through the transparent glass wall smart panels lit up the man’s massive glass desk perfectly, the inverse of the fabled daily Southern California golden hour.
Roland plopped onto one of the two seats before Barthelme’s desk. “I am uncomfortable,” he said. “We shouldn’t be doing things this way.”
“You’ve made your position eminently clear, Roland,” Barthelme replied, rubbing his wrinkled forehead with the tips of his fingers. “That’s why I asked you here this morning, to make sure we’re all on the same page before our guests arrive.”
The walnut and brass nameplate set atop Barthelme’s desk read ‘Kurt Barthelme, Executive Director, Allen Institute of Cosmological Studies’, as if that was a fact anyone likely to be sitting opposite him would ever be able to forget. Roland often thought the worst thing about working at the Allen Institute was being unable to get away from work in his downtime: even Barthelme’s casual comments got blown up into global clickbait as pundits scrutinized his words for any hint of what the man many called the preeminent genius of our time might have planned. And his name was plastered on all sorts of buildings around San Diego county, so even turning off the news or taking a break from social media didn’t help.
From his privileged position inside Barthelme’s flagship organization, of course, Roland’s view of the man was significantly different. He knew how much of the actual scientific work was delegated among scientists like him, toiling away behind the scenes while Barthelme jetted around meeting with heads of state and other very important people, giving endless interviews, strutting for the cameras, and keeping the Allen Institute and its vital operations uppermost in the public imagination.
Roland didn’t begrudge Barthelme his position. He had no desire for the spotlight—one of the underlying roots of their present disagreement—and he was paid exceptionally well for the work he did, which was his passion and had been for his entire adult life. Within the multiversal scientific theory and research community, he was as well known and respected as Barthelme was among the public at large.
But that community was much, much, smaller, and far less influential.
“Have a muffin,” Barthelme said, gesturing to a wicker basket stuffed with a dozen mouth-watering blueberry, lemon, and apple muffins. “They were just delivered ten minutes before you walked in.”
Roland picked up a still-warm apple muffin, bit into it and was rewarded with a burst of fresh grated cinnamon. Heavenly, though he noticed Barthelme didn’t take one. Probably getting paranoid about his waistline again, but like half the people in the world with internet access, Roland had seen the unflattering paparazzi photos from Barthelme’s trip to the French Riviera two weeks prior.
“Look, Roland,” Barthelme said, while Roland swallowed tasty bits of moist apple ensconced in artisan quickbread. “All things being equal, I’d prefer to do this your way. But in the world we live in, things are more complicated than we’d like them to be sometimes, yes?”
“Sometimes,” Roland mumbled through a mouthful of muffin.
Mostly, he thought.
“Look,” Barthelme said, looking up at Roland from under his furrowed brow. “I don’t have to explain to you or anyone the historical importance of what’s happening today. There just aren’t many true once-in-a-lifetime moments, not in today’s world. And the political and social capital these people stand to accrue simply by being present for the first contact between our world and a parallel universe is incalculable.”
“I know, but—” Roland sputtered.
Barthelme held up an index finger, rolled on. “Do you, though? By tonight, the names in every person in that gallery today will be as ubiquitous as Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin. Ohtani.”
“Barthelme,” Roland said.
Barthelme smirked. “That was always a given,” he said. “But no one is overlooking the fact that it’s you who has brought us to this point, Roland. All I’m asking of you is that we share this final moment with a few onlookers.”
“It’s not a question of sharing the glory.”
“Or of safety,” Barthelme declared. “You wrote the protocols yourself. Every possible issue has been accounted for, twice over. So tell me, just what are you afraid of?”
“It’s—” Roland started, then cut himself off. He had been about to say it wasn’t a question of fear. But was it?
He held his hand up, cleared his throat. “Let me start again,” he said.
“Please,” Barthelme said, leaning back in his chair and spreading his arms expansively.
“Look,” Roland said. “I’m not immune to recognition of the realities surrounding this project. A lot of people had to use up a lot of capital both political and economic simply to allow this research to happen in the first place, and I know that’s what’s allowed us to get to this point.”
Barthelme tented his fingers, raised one eyebrow. “But?”
Roland took a breath. “The other thing that’s let us accomplish what we have is maintaining consistent procedures, no matter what. That means strict parameters, strictly defined and documented. And to add untrained observers to the equation at this point is changing horses in midstream, in my opinion. It adds another random uncontrollable factor to what is already an incalculably complex undertaking.”
“You’re making too much of it, Roland,” Barthelme said. “All they’re going to be doing is watching. They won’t be involved at all.”
“They’re involved by watching,” Roland said. “It may introduce quantum variations we can’t account for.”
Barthelme drummed his fingers on his thick glass desktop, looked at Roland. “I studied quantum decoherence under Doctor Quansah, and the chances of that producing meaningful effects are exceedingly small if they can be said to exist at all. Again, Roland, I ask: what are you afraid of?”
Roland’s stomach churned, gurgled. “I feel like it’s a violation of protocol to perform any experiment in which we don’t know exactly what is going to happen before outside eyes. Look, just let me run the sequence once, now, before anyone gets here. They don’t have to know—”
“The data will know,” Barthelme interrupted. “If it shows they weren’t here for the first contact, then you make a liar out of us for no damn reason at all, throwing the blanket of suspicion over everything we’ve worked so hard to accomplish. And in any case, we do know exactly what is going to happen once we pierce the multiversal veil. All extant theory—much of which you personally had a hand in, I remind you—points to either the synchronous or the divergent case, depending on what we learn about the effects of causality today. And again, you personally designed the procedures for either outcome. Given that it’s an utter impossibility for anything physical to pass through from one universe to another, and the transmitted images you access will tell us in an instant which situation we’re facing, the whole thing is as closer to a benign data collection than an exploratory mission.”
Roland squirmed in his seat. “I understand,” he said quietly, looking down. “I just wanted my objections on the record.”
Barthelme sighed. “Roland, you know I respect your opinion on these matters more than anyone else on the planet. But I’ve read all the same material you have, reviewed all the data personally. If causality is divergent in nature, then every choice sends another parallel spinning off where that choice went the other way, in which case you might see a very different Earth on the other side. And if causality is synchronous, our choices work out basically the same in all parallels, and you pierce the veil to see another version of yourself staring right back at you. But either way, all our visitors are here to do is see what’s on the other side at the same time you do, then leave. You think I’d put the lives of the most powerful people on the planet in the path of any real danger? Not a chance.”
“I’m not saying you would,” Roland said.
“So what am I missing, then?” Barthelme replied, palms up. “Come on, I’m listening. Explain it to me. Make me understand what your concern is. Give me a reason, something I can work with. But with everyone already en route, I can’t shut it down because of an unfounded queasy feeling, man.”
Roland wrung his hands. “It’s too late, then,” he said.
“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” Barthelme said. “Come on, straighten up your tie,” he added, rising from his chair and beckoning for Roland to do the same. “Let’s you and me go look everything over one more time. See if we can’t set your mind at rest.”
He clapped his well-muscled arm across Roland’s back. “You’re just getting cold feet because this is going to be the greatest moment of your life,” he said, his voice smooth and comforting. “Self-sabotaging behavior. Seen it a million times. Perfectly natural. But I’m not going to let you do that to yourself, Roland. You deserve every bit of glory that’s coming your way. Sure, it’s my name and the Allen Institute’s that’ll be in every headline tonight. But it’s your name that’ll be in the history books.”
Roland shuddered involuntarily at the thought. But he allowed Barthelme to lead him back to the lab for one last run through the pre-experiment checklist.
They checked the entire lab, twice over. It didn’t take long—despite the size of the gleaming white laboratory itself, only the control stations were housed in the building itself—so they followed up by running diagnostic routines on all connected systems, in the interest of thoroughness. After all, the experiment represented an entirely unprecedented worldwide fusion of collaborative technology; lots of places for things to go wrong, even assuming everyone involved had the best of intentions. Multiple particle colliders located all over the globe were synced together, interweaving with data streaming down from an array of hundreds of geosynchronous satellites and up from sensors sunk to the bottoms of the world’s oceans, all feeding into a concatenated supercluster of zero-generation processors overclocked to work a hundred times faster than the most advanced military systems.
Everything was exactly as it should be, down to the most infinitesimal degree. Instruments specced for a dozen decimal points of calibration accuracy measured out to a hundred or more. Communications were error-free. The assistants knew their roles better than Roland did. The soundproofed viewing gallery was situated behind polarized one-way safety glass, so none of the researchers would be distracted by unfamiliar sights in their peripheral vision. All the action would be taking place on their screens anyway, including the small ones at each workstation and the big wallmounted display mirroring whatever appeared on Roland’s screen for the benefit of the dignitaries seated in the gallery.
All systems were exactly as specified in Roland’s own documentation, ready and waiting for the stroke of noon. Roland had argued for the experiment to kick off at five thirty AM on July sixteenth, especially as that date fell on a Monday that year, but Barthelme had thought he was joking and scheduled it for twelve noon on the twentieth instead. “That way everyone can celebrate with a nice lunch and a long weekend afterwards,” the man had said, and Roland couldn’t argue with that, especially as he wouldn’t be the one paying for everyone’s lunch.
Barthelme would be in the lab for the experiment himself, of course. He was even personally manning one of the workstations, undoubtedly a performative gesture for the benefit of their observers—but Roland couldn’t deny that it felt good to have him by his side, the way it had been back when they’d founded the Allen Institute together. Since those days their lives had gone along different paths, each specializing according to his particular set of strengths, but what they shared was a deep commitment to furthering our understanding of the world we live in and sharing that knowledge with all who inhabit it.
And now, perhaps other worldsfull of knowledge. Who knew? The possibilities were infinite, incalculable. Even assuming the rules of physics stayed constant between planes, the ways those laws had been bent, twisted, forced to work for humankind’s benefit could vary in endless ways. Whatever they learned in the aftermath of the experiment could only further humankind’s understanding of the universe—the multiverse—and their place in it.
“Here we go,” Roland said as the bright red digits on the wall read eleven fifty-five. The two assistants, Perez and Kaminsky, clacked away on their keyboards, nodding to Roland to indicate their systems’ full readiness and compliance. Barthelme too was hunched over his workstation as if he could feel the eyes of their guests upon his back, but his work was as impeccable as always.
“Good to go,” Barthelme said, flashing Roland a thumbs-up sign. For a moment Roland was afraid the man was going to roll into some ‘monumental’ speech marking the gravity of the occasion—he knew Barthelme had already had his copywriters work up public statements ready for release immediately after the experiment, regardless of the results—but instead, he ceded the floor to Roland with a surprising amount of graciousness and even humility.
“All yours, buddy,” Barthelme said with a wide grin, nodding towards the blank mirrored gallery surface. “Let’s blow some minds up there.”
Roland nodded, bent over his workstation, glancing up momentarily to confirm the large display was replicating the output of his screen. Most of the systems were automated with machine learning, of course—no human could react on the nanosecond response level necessary to keep everything in sync—but the systems still required human input and guidance to focus in on a selected target.
Barthelme and Roland had jointly decided on what they assessed as an accessible goal for the day’s experiment: transmitting visual and auditory data from the universe directly adjoining theirs, only a few wavelengths away on the multiversal axis. In theory, the system would eventually allow them to access any universe at any point along the continuum, but there would be plenty of time for that later. All they needed to do that day was prove their system worked. Then, while the implications of what they had discovered were digested and debated by the rest of the world, they could proceed about their business undisturbed.
Once more, Roland rechecked all indicators, looked to Kaminsky, to Perez, to Barthelme, up at the gallery, back to his display.
Eleven fifty-nine. This was it.
Roland could sense the people in the gallery staring down at him, watching his fingers fly across the keyboard, the display lighting up in response. Across the world, gears made minute adjustments to bring multiple systems into precise alignment, generators powered on to full capacity, teams of personnel standing at the ready for any eventuality.
Thirty seconds.
He forced himself to recheck all indicators yet again, eyes flickering across his screen anxiously. He wondered if any in the gallery possessed a smidgen of the background necessary to understand any of the meters and feedback flowing in.
Probably not. In those exalted spheres, even those with intelligence sufficient to grasp the relevant concepts were reduced to consuming them via briefs, summaries, and synopses filtered to them through multiple layers of subordinates. At a certain point, one had to decide whether to be a specialist or a generalist, and all figureheads had to be generalists by nature.
Like Barthelme.
Fifteen seconds.
He glanced over at Barthelme, chest up, shoulders back, smile fixed in place. But Roland had known him a long time, and recognized the flickers of terror deep in his eyes.
The sight of that fear was reassuring. It meant Barthelme was still human. Not to be apprehensive at this moment would make one either a fool or a narcissist, or both.
The countdown was ridiculous, he thought. Drummed-up drama for the benefit of the onlookers. The command was already entered, waiting only for him to submit it for the process to initiate. And whatever they would discovered would have been there all along. Nothing would really change, other than in the understanding and perception of humankind.
Five.
His hand trembled, hovering over the Enter key, and he breathed deeply, struggling to steady his nerves.
Three. Two. One.
He entered the command. The meters and gauges disappeared from his screen, shunted off to Perez and Kaminsky to monitor. The flickering display lit up his skin with an ultramarine cast reflecting the flashing cobalt rectangle blazing from the large wall monitor above their heads as the system labored to process the zettabytes of data pouring in, yottaflop processors running algorithms capable of resolving the chaotic torrent of ones and zeroes into a two-dimensional window on another universe.
Roland bit his lip. The flickering slowed, stopped.
The blue faded, giving way to an unbearably brilliant pure white, pouring forth from the monitors as if a camera had been pointed directly at a bank of xenon lamps.
Instinctively, he raised his forearm—but before he could shield his eyes, the white vanished, replaced by the deepest obsidian darkness imaginable, so black it was as though it was actively absorbing light from the room.
And then the white, and then the black.
Roland pored over his auxiliary displays, glanced to Kaminsky, to Perez. Everything was running properly. Barthelme sat gaping openly at the monitor on the wall above their heads, but a glance at his workstation showed the minor processes Roland had allocated to him were also functioning at full capacity.
Roland felt dampness at the back of his neck, straining to catch his breath, both hands running through his thinning black hair. What had he missed?
Nothing. Everything was working properly, all the instruments said.
It couldn’t be. But there it was.
“Shut it down,” he barked at Barthelme. “Get those assholes out of here, now.”
Barthelme’s eyebrows shot up. “Shut it…?”
“Down. Do it now,” Roland said.
Barthelme’s eyes flicked up at the gallery window. “But what should I—”
“Tell them whatever you need to,” Roland said, simultaneously gesturing to Perez and Kaminsky. “Just get them the fuck out of here!”
Barthelme dashed from the room as Roland pressed a button desyncing the large monitor from his display, causing the massive rectangle to return to neutral blue.
Roland swallowed, his mouth bone dry. It was going to be a long day.
By the time Barthelme returned to the lab, Roland was on his fifth cup of bitter laboratory coffee. Kaminsky might have been a great lab assistant, but he made a pretty awful barista.
Barthelme poured himself a mug from the simmering pot nevertheless, swallowed a mouthful with a grimace as he planted himself at Roland’s side.
“What did you end up telling them?” Roland asked without turning his attention from the monitor before him.
“Technical snafu. Lots of apologies, vague promises to reschedule at an unspecified date. It took hours of gladhanding to smooth over all the injured egos. But I think they bought it.”
“Good,” Roland said. “That’s good. Do you think anyone up there is close to smart enough to understand what they were seeing?”
Barthelme rubbed his temples. “I sure as fuck hope not. I’m not sure I am.”
Roland grimaced. “You mean you wish you weren’t. I certainly do, now.”
Barthelme held his head in his hands. “Is there any chance it could have been something else?”
Roland shook his head. “I spent the entire time since you left running up and down the dial. The theory is sound. Those universes, the space for them to exist, that’s where it should be. Only there’s nothing there.”
“Anywhere?”
“Anywhere. Any frequency, any wavelength, any dimension. This is the only plane where anything developed, where matter resolved into energy and vice versa. All the others remain in potential states, oscillating endlessly between nothing and something, eternally unable to commit to energy or matter.”
“Jesus,” Barthelme muttered, overcome. “God. If this is all there is…”
“Exactly,” Roland said. “Everything changes. Everything.”
“There’s no hope,” Barthelme said, wiping his eyes. “Bound eternally within the limitations of this four-dimensional plane of existence, stripped of the illusion that there might be some path beyond?” He shook his head slowly, sadly. “They’ll kill each other. Once the implications sink in, really sink in, they’ll all just kill each other.”
“Or they’ll realize what they have to do to survive,” Roland said. “But either way, I’m in no rush to find out.”
Barthelme looked at him. Roland looked back.
Eventually, Roland brushed off his lap, stood up. “There was a technical error, something the public can understand like a sheared bolt or a blown fuse. The data gets held until the experiment can be rescheduled and completed properly. Once it seems like people have moved on and forgotten, we can delete it all and shut it down for good.”
“Right,” Roland said, nodding, knowing that all research into multiversal theory, the field to which he had devoted his life, had reached its conclusion with a definitive final answer, and he wondered what he would do to fill the hours remaining in his life. Maybe marble collecting. Or perhaps he’d take up the guitar.
The only problem was something neither he nor Barthelme had wanted to bring up. That being, they were only the first. And no matter what they did, the truth laid in wait for someone, anyone to discover. So what happened when someone else inevitably succeeded in breaching the wall between universes?
He shuddered, praying with every fiber of his being that he wouldn’t live long enough to find out.
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