Challenge everything.
These two simple words were a mantra, a creed by which Melissa lived her life. From a young age, she sought to unravel the secrets of the world and determine the truths that governed the universe she lived in. There was so much to know, so much to learn. While this obsession to know more made the young genius strive for greatness, it led to some of her more unhealthy habits, none of them as rampant as her inability to accept certain things as they are.
The earth is round, but how could she know that if she's never seen it for herself?
Truly, there was not an argument in the world, nor enough photo evidence or basic theory on the fundamentals of the solar system to change her mind. Once the notion that the world was actually flat entered her complicated mind, and that the governments of the world were putting forth a lie to cover up a great truth, there was nothing that would convince Dr. Melissa Thorne otherwise until she saw for herself.
But how would one go about that? A trek across the surface of the planet would be costly and time consuming. Melissa had heard stories of ley-lines and dimensional folds that trick travellers into thinking they've rounded the “globe”, more chicanery to support the prevailing narrative spoon-fed to the indoctrinated masses. Perhaps an exo-atmospheric expedition, surely being able to see the planet rotate from a distance would be enough to settle the score, right? Wrong. Melissa had studied the world's history of aeronautical advancements and knew it all to be bunk. Humanity had never left the ground, not in the way the history books had claimed, and they never went to the “moon”. There was simply no way to pierce the thick radiation shield keeping the flat earth magnetically stable with a man-made craft. So how, then? How would the young radical finally prove herself and lift the shackles of intellectual slavery that had burdened the people of earth for centuries?
Well, Dr. Melissa Thorne had an answer, the same answer she had proposed time and time again.
It had been a few weeks since she had left Dr. Steinberg's office in a frustrated fit. The outburst hadn't helped the situation, but Melissa had managed to dodge some of the scrutiny by keeping her head down and working on other projects the company was involved in. She submitted no project proposals, she never even saw Dr. Steinberg, she simply put her nose to the grindstone and continued the work that Art claimed he was so proud of. To her, it was drivel, all of it. Pharmaceuticals, bionics, needless trite that did nothing to expand our collective understanding of the universe, but, nevertheless, she completed her work and flew under the radar. Biding her time, her machinations would come to fruition soon.
“Ah, there you are.” My voice filled a dark storage closet lined with dusty shelves and boxes of ancient paperwork. Closing the door, Melissa flicked on the lights, her eyes adjusting to the brightness as I sat at a lone computer desk and continued.
“I wondered if you would be coming today.”
“I wouldn't miss it, Ken.” The young scientist replied, smiling warmly at the me. Clad in a pockmarked lab-coat adorned with an old STS nametag that read “Hello, my name is Kenneth”, I stood up from the desk to greet my peer with a frazzled grin. Here, deep within the recesses of Steinberg Technical Solutions, in a long forgotten storage room, Melissa and I had been meeting, discussing clandestine plans of action. In a short matter of time, we were able to quietly sequester resources and equipment down into our little clubhouse, turning the small space into a makeshift lab. It wasn't much, but it got the job done and soon enough, Melissa's plan was ready. To Dr. Thorne, I'm sure she saw me as some sort of kindred spirit, perhaps an ally in her strange pursuit of “truth”. Quite frankly, I thought she was just straight up and down crazy, but I'm something of a habitual opportunist through and through, and her ideas reeked of potential. Whether or not they had any practical application or value remained to be seen, but I was content to tag along in her plans and see where we wound up, supplying my knowledge and support wherever it was necessary. And so, for months we met, even before the mess in Steinberg's office, back when the approval of such an outlandish project still seemed so hopelessly possible, we collaborated in secret on Melissa's project anyway.
“Do you think it's ready for showtime?” Melissa asked, reading a spreadsheet that illuminated the old CRT monitor on my computer desk.
“I do, Mel. The fabricator spit out the node this morning. We have it, the scanner and the controller. Everything we need to launch phase two of the plan.” I explained calmly, focused on her. The news was music to Melissa's ears, that much was apparent. She tried to maintain some composure but could barely contain an excited squeal as she began to jump up and down, clasping her hands with giddy enthusiasm. The node, the scanner, the controller, this was what she had been working for in the dark for so long, this was the solution she had proposed all this time. The mechanics were relatively simple. Using the scanner, Melissa had discovered a way to render objects outside of quantum space, up to and including living organisms. Together, we developed the node and the controller as a means alter aspects of these scanned entities in real time. When the node is implanted within an object, or person, the size and dimensions of that entity could then be changed. Dr. Steinberg was right to challenge her on the square-cube law, that pesky bit of physics was enough to make her and I scrap and restart the project several times, but this new method rendered the entities affected outside the laws of regular physics, and the square-cube law would have no effect. Having scanned herself last week, the node was the final piece of the puzzle.
“I've loaded the applicator, the node is ready to be implanted and then we're good to go.” I said, pulling the syringe-like device from it's case. Melissa eyed it with endless fascination, unable to take her gaze off it.
“I can't believe this is real, that we're really going to do this.” She said in an almost trance-like tone. She stepped further into the already-cramped room and reached for the device in my hands. I had half a mind to pull it away, something within me screamed to just wait, but I made no such movements and the applicator was snatched from my hands. In retrospect, this was a poor decision but at the time, it was like watching a child with a new toy. Melissa was so enraptured with what we had made, the groundbreaking leaps in technology we had pioneered, and the only feeling I was left with was how foolish the pursuit of it all was. All this work to inevitably end in disappointment. Nevertheless, our test date was chosen and in a week's time, we'd ship out to a remote, uninhabited location to do a dry run of her plan. Or she would, at least. By that point, I would be long gone. I wasn't keen to stick around and see Melissa's plan fall apart. Call it pessimism but even with the science behind her being technically sound, I just had a nagging feeling that something was going to fail spectacularly. And, besides, the work she did, WE did, as I said before, there was potential. I had been keeping copies of it all. With a portfolio full of schematics and equations like these, I was guaranteed to find someone willing to pay top dollar. To do what with, I didn’t know or care.
At least, that's how things were supposed to go, but life seldom follows the plan.
It was later that day. I had gone home, settling in to a nice evening on the couch, when the walls shook, and the world felt like it was going to implode. A destructive tremor, far greater than anything I had ever felt resonated through the area like a bomb, rattling the walls of my modest home to their near-limit. In an instant, my life, and the life of everyone in the city, was upended by this violent crash that left car-alarms ringing for miles, and as quickly as it came, it seemed to subside just as swiftly. I was startled, but quickly found some composure and headed for the door. I was fortunate enough to have a home up in the hills, one with a decent view of the city center in the valley below. If the origin came from there, I may be able to see it, that was my thinking and, perhaps unfortunately, my thinking proved correct. I wasn't certain what I expected to see, an explosion, a plane crash perhaps? My mind had spun with logical explanations as to what caused such a large and sudden tremor in a city with no fault lines. I tried to rationalize the situation, but nothing I considered prepared me for what I saw.
There she was. Silhouetted against the lazily setting sun, Dr. Melissa Thorne knelt on the heart of the downtown core, clad in casual clothing, her dark, auburn hair neatly tied up in a bun. She was huge, far larger than we had planned to go with the dry run. By my estimate, she must've been at least 3000 feet tall, maybe more, and the look of utter confusion on her face screamed to me that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. Unmoving, she tilted her head to survey her surroundings, peering down over the skyscrapers and offices that barely challenged her size. I'll never forget the sight. While she internalized her situation, there was no dramatic gasp, no horrified realization.
As she sat amidst the cramped urban sprawl of the city, Melissa merely looked down and muttered a simple “Oh, fuck.”