Klaus’s world had flipped in the blink of an eye, or so it seemed to him. Emerging from the debriefing room, he could barely process what had just transpired. Less than fifteen minutes ago, he had entered that room, but it felt like he had left part of himself behind in that cold, clinical space. The weight of confusion, disbelief, and exhaustion pressed down on him as he slumped into a chair in the hallway. He clutched his head, trying to make sense of it all.
Just yesterday, he'd been on the precipice of greatness, about to embark on a mission that would break the boundaries of known science. Everyone had been there, the entire team watching with excitement. Klaus himself had been exhilarated, confident. But now, just 24 hours later, he felt a despair so heavy, so profound, that the thought of simply standing again seemed like an impossible feat. What had gone wrong? How had everything unravelled so quickly?
The doctors had cleared him physically, ruling out any long-term effects of his brief catatonia. But what they couldn’t clear was the void left in his mind. Klaus had been interrogated for what felt like hours but was, in fact, a brief quarter-hour. The debriefing was part formality, part suspicion. No one seemed to believe him—not really. Not even his superiors.
Klaus had been gone for less than five minutes. That’s what his memory told him. That's what his wristwatch said. Yet, the mission clock in the lab told a different story. Six hours, eighteen minutes, and twenty-three seconds. The moment the portal shut down, the lab’s clock was frozen at this exact mark, and Klaus was already being rushed to the infirmary. How could six hours have passed when he had only been gone for four minutes? It didn't make sense. And yet, it was more than a discrepancy of time. Something deeper, something stranger had occurred.
The mission had been carefully planned. It wasn’t a military operation, after all, but a private, highly classified endeavour carried out under the radar by CERN. It had the potential to change everything—the world's understanding of reality itself. If Klaus had been successful, this mission would have shattered the boundaries of known physics. The consortium of multinational governments behind it would have reaped untold benefits. But now, the gains seemed further away, lost in the haze of Klaus’s experience and the deniability of those who had sent him.
He glanced at his wristwatch. The time read 4:16 p.m. The same time it had when he’d stepped out of the portal—or so he thought. It was proof of something, wasn’t it? His memory couldn’t be completely wrong. He couldn’t have imagined everything. The mission surgeons hadn’t taken it from him, though they had confiscated his first wristwatch as part of the debriefing as it was on the outside of the, now charred and confiscated, spacesuit. Having worn it underneath his clothing the doctors had ignored it or not noticed it, perhaps thinking it was irrelevant.
Their mistake, irrelevance was a massive understatement. Partly because he considered it his lucky charm, having worn it through countless other endeavours over the years, but most notably because it was now glowing a faint neon red.
Klaus knew better than to report this. This wristwatch was the only tangible proof that he had experienced something beyond ordinary time, beyond normal comprehension. The discrepancy in time—the hours he had supposedly been gone versus the minutes on his watch—was undeniable. But the glow…
And then there were the words. The words he had heard, still echoing in his mind.
TRY AGAIN!
Had he imagined them? Was it all a hallucination, a byproduct of the portal’s effects on his brain? No, it couldn’t have been. The watch was proof. Something had happened to him. Something unexplained. The question was, what?
Klaus stood up, though his body resisted. He knew he couldn’t stay in that chair forever, no matter how much it felt like a safe harbour. Too much was unresolved. Too much was unknown.
For the first time at CERN, he now felt ridiculed and alone. As he walked slowly down the hallway towards the elevator intending to enter and head upstairs to the living quarters, the doors opened and three individuals in dark suits stepped out. All wearing sunglasses, two of them clutching briefcases, one of which was larger than the others and metallic. His gut told him to make a split-second decision to immediately turn left and down the adjacent hallway.
As he did so he heard one of them mutter “Isn't that the operative?”, he picked up the pace his direction now heading towards the stairwell at the end of the second hall.
“Yep thats him”.
“Klaus. Doctor Klaus Gallica, we'll need to ask you some questions”.
He pretended he didn't hear them and headed through the doors to the stairwell, the smell of freshly applied paint and the faint odour of illicitly-smoked cigarettes hitting his nostrils as he did.
“You go fetch him, I'll get set up in the conference room”.
The door slammed shut behind him. Now running up the stairs, he suddenly felt deeply unsafe and rather than heading to the living quarters he opted to leave the campus altogether.
His watch seemed to approve of these thoughts, as it vibrated almost in agreement.
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