The Year of the Century

Month 1

“I will only be a year, at most,” Jonas told his girlfriend Emma as he left. And he continued: “It’s not so far away, I can visit every week.” He smiled as he added, “In fact, I think I will.”

And Jonas sat in his car and drove away, while his girlfriend waved him goodbye.

The facility he had bought for his experiment was a good two-hour drive away, in an old farmhouse. He had put the particle accelerator into the barn but hidden the old nuclear reactor in a hole nearby, with a boring, featureless building placed on top of it.

The reactor was of a Russian make, which had bought from a scrapped nuclear submarine. Smuggling it in had been murder. He built the particle accelerator by himself, with a little help from his friends. He just needed privacy for a few months to put on the finishing touches, then he would test to see if it would not go ahead and generate some energy.

Fusion power. Not the bogus cold fusion, but hot fusion, that was the goal, preferably without obliterating the planet in the process.

Month 4

Jonas had managed to put up enough of the accelerator with the help of his friend Charlie to see if it would work. Charlie had just come to see what his friend was doing, and to see the particle accelerator, but had been so fascinated by it all, that he agreed to help. And now the job went twice as quick. It was time to start the Russian nuclear power plant.

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll wake up next day, and be all microwaved?” asked Charlie as Jonas flipped the switch, turning the power on.

“No, you see, I put extra radiation shielding on the reactor. It will not bother anyone.”

Charlie looked around.

“The lights are still on, that’s a good sign,” he said.

Jonas walked to the accelerator controls and checked them out. Everything looked in order to him. It seemed that the device had been finished ahead of schedule. Jonas smiled to himself. Now he could goof off a little. If things went like this in the future, he would be finished three, maybe four months ahead of schedule.

Jonas turned to Charlie, and after telling him the good news, he asked him, “Would you like to join me and Emma for dinner tonight? We are having some people over for drinks.”

“Sure,” said Charlie, he had nothing better to do than eat for free.

Emma was furious when they appeared at the door.

“Where were you?” she yelled at Jonas.

“The same place as usual,” said Jonas, “why are you so angry?”

“Why did you not come for dinner yesterday? What were you doing that was so important that you could answer the phone?” asked Emma, and looked like she was getting ready to strike.

“Dinner? Yesterday? I thought it was today,” said Jonas. Emma calmed down a little. It was just a misunderstanding, no big deal. Jonas wondered if he had forgotten to turn on his phone the whole week. He could not check, he had forgotten the phone at the lab.

Jonas excused Charlie, for not being able to give him any food, and made sincere apologies to his girlfriend.

The next day Jonas and Emma got out of bed and did as little as possible. Emma tried to convince him to stay another night, but Jonas explained to her that he had to go and finish his work. Afterwards they would be rich, and could stay in bed counting each other’s toes for weeks.

And Emma smiled and waved after Jonas as he drove to his lab.

Month 6

It took Jonas and Charlie a whole month to finish laying in all the wires properly, and another to put in relays and a fusebox for the whole apparatus. They hardly ate or slept the whole time.

Jonas was all the more happy to meet Emma every weekend. And always Jonas promised he would come back next week.

Month 7

Finally the accelerator was ready for its first test. Jonas heated up the Russian reactor, pumping enough power into the accelerator to light up Manhattan. He ran his eyes across the gauges, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Everything looked good, all lights were green, all gauges within safe parameters. The power came steadily from the Russian generator.

Jonas pushed the button. The accelerator began humming, first low, then it picked up volume. Jonas could feel the change in the atmosphere: his skin was tingling. He checked the output.

“That’s strange,” he said to himself. He tapped on the gauge with his finger. It did not move. It did not show any output from the accelerator.

Jonas walked to the power outlet, and pulled the plug from the gauge. Now, how to check if there was power? Jonas scratched his head. That always seemed to work, and it did not fail now: he got a lamp, and plugged it into the power outlet.

Nothing happened. Jonas licked the outlet. It was dead. Jonas flicked off the power from the generator, and checked the wiring. At first glance it looked okay.

Over the next days he hardly left his laboratory, as he tried to find out what was wrong. He lost track of time, and it was Monday when he finally got bored and decided to visit his girlfriend.

Emma was surprized to see him, and a little angry at first, but when he explained why he had come so late she calmed down and invited him in. When he left, he told her that he would surely come and see her next Friday. Jonas smiled to himself, thinking: this is why mad scientists were always single.

Day 220

Jonas powered up the accelerator, and went over every wire with electric measuring equipment to find out where all the power was going. The thought did cross his mind that it all spread into the air, but he dismissed that as absurd. He would have been fried already if that were the case. But he did feel a slight tingling sensation the whole time the thing was connected to power.

Come Friday, Jonas switched off the power, and went to visit his girlfriend to unwind.

Jonas tapped on Emma’s door. Emma came to the door, and her eyes grew to the size of saucers as she saw Jonas. Then she reached out and slapped him before she slammed the door. Jonas knocked on the door a few more times, but after getting only angry calls from Emma in return, he decided to leave her alone this weekend and visit the bar.

“Nice seeing you again,” said the bartender, “what have you been up to?”

“Not much,” said Jonas.

“Come on, it has to be something, you have been gone such a long tme,” said the bartender. “Long time? I was here last week,” said Jonas.

“If you say so,” said the bartender, and gave Jonas a glass of beer.

“Those scientists,” said the bartender to another barfly, “they are so absent-minded sometimes.”

Day 227

Jonas made a few adjustments to his machine before he fired it up. But it all went as before, nothing came out at the other side. The accelerator literally ate the power.

After a week of trial and error, Jonas was beginning to get frustrated. And come Friday, he wondered whether his girlfriend was not a little happier. He hoped she would be, he felt he needed her company.

Jonas turned off the power and walked out to his car. When he drove to the city he saw that something was different, yet he could not place what it was exactly. It was like every other house had been painted over the last week, and they had put up more street lights. Joans was happy with that. The city needed more lights.

When he came to Emma’s house, he noticed that she had gotten herself a new car, of a model he was unfamiliar with. It looked very avant-garde and outlandish to him. She had also taken time to have her house painted, even though the difference could not be fully apreciated in the dark.

Jonas knocked on the door, and a man answered.

“Hi,” said Jonas, a little surprized, “is Emma in?”

“Emma? No, I am not familiar with the name,” said the man, “are you sure you have the right address?”

Jonas gave the man a distrustful look. Someone was pulling his leg. It was not a nice thing to do to a man who has had as little sleep as he had.

“Yes, she lives in this house,” said Jonas, “I know her very well.”

The man shook his head. “Not any more,” he said.

The thought entered Jonas’ head that Emma was still pissed at him for something, although he could not for the life of him imagine what it was. And since he had always slept with her, he had to make do with a motel room this weekend. He went to see a movie, and was back at the lab four hours later.

Day 234

Jonas could not get any work done for almost the entire week out of general loss of spirit. Finally on Thursday he forced himself to do another test. He was at it for the whole night, keeping himself awake on coffee until he finally gave up and fell asleep.

He woke up Saturday morning, and decided to head to town to investigate what Emma was thinking.

The city looked very different in daylight. Jonas was almost shocked at how much it had changed over the last couple of weeks. He rolled by Emma’s house, and saw the man he had met earlier lead some children into the car. A woman came after them, carrying some cases.

Jonas was stunned. Had Emma actually moved during the week? Damn, she was fast! Jonas was impressed. He went to the nearest gas station to check the phone book and get some fuel while at it.

He found Emma’s address, but he also got the shock of his life when he saw how much the fuel cost. They were charging almost 50% more for the damned stuff than anywhere else he could remember.

Jonas paid the bill, intent on taking his business elsewhere in the future.

Jonas drove to Emma’s new house. There was an unfamiliar looking car parked in front of it. Come to think of it, there were a lot of strange vehicles in traffic. Jonas wondered where they came from. He had never been much of a car guy, but he did recognize the most common models, and he did not see much of them around.

Jonas left the car and went to ring the bell. He heard calls from inside, children scurrying around while their mother commanded them to behave while she checked the door.

Jonas was visibly shocked when the door was opened. It was Emma who answered the door, Jonas recognized her in a second, but she was different, different in the most disturbing way.

Emma squinted her eyes at Jonas, like she did not recognize him straight away.

“Emma?” asked Jonas, trying not to look as taken by the state of her as he really was.

“Yes? Do I know you?” she asked, still loking at him like she was trying to remember who he was.

Jonas was speechless. The woman standing front of him looked so haggard and tired somehow, most unlike how a 25-year old woman is supposed to look. She, who had always kept her hair so tidy, looked like se had a bird’s nest on her head, and she had somehow managed to lose her form, and it was quite visible even though she wore more loose-fitting garments than she did just last month.

“What happened to you?” Jonas finally blurted out.

“What do you mean?” asked Emma, “who are you?”

“Don’t you know me? I’m Jonas, your boyfriend, remember?”

“Jonas?” Now it was Emma’s turn to look surprized. A child leered from behind her. And she continued: “where have you been all these years?”

“What?”

“And you still look so young. Come in, talk to me, have some coffee.”

Jonas was stunned. But he did enter the house, and have some coffee.

“Why did you slap me?” said Jonas after having the first sip of the coffee. “Is that why you never returned? That was so long ago,” said Emma, “I was young and foolish. I was just a little pissed off because you had been gone for over a month, and I was just in a bad mood at the time, you know how it goes.”

“A month?” Jonas decided not to piss the woman off by contradicting her, since she had deteriorated so much in such a short time. It was possibly terminal, whatever it was. Jonas’ heart slowly sank at the thought.

He looked around, and at the two children who took turns watching him from around a corner; one maybe five, the other perhaps nine or ten. The third one was around fourteen. He just shrugged and returned to his room, from which there issued some truly strange sounds.

“Whose are those?” he asked, pointing at the children.

“Oh, those are mine, the oldest one is Thomas, then there is Elizabeth, and the youngest is Terry,” said Emma with a smile.

Jonas was about to say something in return, when it occurred to him that the children did actually look a little bit similar to Emma. A nasty thought came to him. He quickly thanked for the coffee and hurried outside. He needed a newspaper.

He found a few papers lying around at a coffeeshop, along with a selection of magazines. He looked over each and every one of them three times, and they all confirmed what Emma had said: he had somehow spent over sixteen years working at the farm without noticing.

Jonas went to the liquer store and bought a whole case of vodka, which he brought with him to the farm. He drank until he puked, went to sleep, drank more, passed out and when he woke up he was in very real pain.

Day 241

Jonas woke up from his binge sure that all of what had happened earlier had been just a dream. He decided to just forget Emma. After he had managed to make the machine work he would become rich, and he could buy himself a harem.

And Jonas worked day and night, fuelled by coffee laced with vodka, until he was sure that nothing was wired as it had been before, but still in such a way that it would not blow up.

Finally it was all ready. All the gauges looked good, all the lights were green. And Jonas threw the switch. The accelerator began humming, but in a slightly different tone. There was that electric feeling in the air again again. Jonas could feel the hairs stick up on the back of his hands. He looked at the output gauge. He wanted to take a hammer to the damned thing; it showed nothing. It looked like his estimate would be right, and he would end up spending a year on the machine.

Jonas called it a day. He would look into the matter in a couple of days. But first he needed to go to town for supplies.

Day 248

Jonas ran his car into a ditch and fell asleep. When he woke up he cursed his stupidity. He should have waited until he sobered up, he knew that now. But no matter, he was not far away.

When Jonas got out of the car, he felt strange. The surroundings were all wrong, somehow. He looked back. There was the farm, looking like it always had. He looked at the car in the ditch. He had only managed to get out of the driveway, pass over the road and that simple fence. How come then that he was at the outskirts of the city already?

Jonas was still kind of intoxicated, his head was spinning and he had hardly slept for a week, so he thought nothing of it. Delerium tremens, that was what it was. Delerium. He had never had that before, but he was sure he was suffering the effects.

He walked into town, and went to the nearest shop to buy water. He could not afford it, so he went to the lavatory instead and drank from the tap. He needed that. When he came out, the damned reality was still shifted. He had no idea where he was or where to go. So he picked a direction and walked.

He had walked around for an hour and a half when he spotted someone he knew:

“Charlie! Hey!” Jonas called to the man he saw walking across the street.

Charlie looked back, with a surprized look on his face. Jonas crossed the street to have a talk with his friend.

“Who are you, and why do you call me Charlie?” asked Charlie.

“Stop with the jokes, Charlie, and talk to me,” said Jonas.

“I’m not Charlie, you must be mistaken,” said Charlie, backing away from Jonas.

Jonas sighed. “Look, Charles, I am in no mood for this.”

“My name is not Charles, it’s Fred,” said Charlie.

“Okay, “Fred,” why are you acting as if you don’t know me? You can hardly have forgotten me after two months?”

“I have never seen you before,” said Fred/Charles.

“Yes, you have, fool, you are Charlie Morrow, my assistant,” said Jonas, beginning to get visibly annoyed.

“That’s my grandfather’s name,” said Fred.

Jonas stood on the sidewalk without moving for two hours after that, just looking around. So that is how the future looked, he thought.

After he came to, he decided to check out what he had in the bank. The teller was a bit surprised when he showed her his bank book, as it had not been used in a while, and times had changed. For instance, nobody had bank books any more. But his savings were still there. As it turned out, he could afford water after all.

Jonas bought some provisions and returned to his farm to continue working.

* * *

In the middle of the city there still stands that strange old house with the large yard. It is not affected by day or night, but has its very own cycle of light that is independent of outside conditions.

It is not advised to approach the house, since all who do so disappear for years only to come back to a much changed world. Inside it is rumoured that there lives a man who does not age: an immortal who only comes out once or twice each century to do his groceries.

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