Chapter 2

"Hi, you can call me Patrick. Dr. O'Mennemen is too formal after all. You must be Gina?"

The scientist shaking her hand was a thirty-somewhat old man, speaking with a slight Irish accent. Gina had expected a man at least sixty years old to be the leading scientist.

"Hi. Yes, I'm Gina. Glad to meet you."

After having unloaded her belongings in one of the stations guest quarters, Gina got her writing equipment and went to work. The tour was boring her to death, but she kept feinting interest and wrote about subjects she never had heard about.

One of the more interesting things she had been shown was a stasis chamber were three TV sets and recording machinery stood, surrounded by a field of what was called "chroniton particles". It had something to do with time disruption, as far as Gina could understand Patrick‘s story. But otherwise, talk about quarks. Something called a Higgs-Boson. Boring, boring.

When the tour and questioning finally ended, she prepared to go back to her room. But Patrick had more to say.

"There is something else...." He was hesitating. Gina expected him to ask her for a date, or to have dinner together. Men usually did.

"We are working on a secret project. I don't know if I should show you...it could change the world...." Patrick looked a bit shy. Gina became interested. She could smell a sensation ten miles downwind. Sensations were good, for they attracted the attention of "upstairs". She re-readied her writing equipment.

"Tell me."

"I'd rather show you. It's in a secured room. One needs an ID card to get in there. Authorized personnel only, you know," Patrick said, showing her his ID card.

"Great!" Gina exclaimed, and five minutes later, the two stood in front of a large steel door. Warnings about security and authorized personnel only were written everywhere. Patrick put his ID card in an electronic reader, and the door opened.

Inside the room, a truck full of lab equipment stood. There were small screens showing moving lines in all colors, lights flashing, machines humming.

In the middle of the room stood a tube, about as thick as an arm and a foot tall. In it, a bright white light shone. It was like a miniature sun, save that it was perfectly white. The source couldn't be seen, it shone too bright. It made Gina's eyes water.

"This," Patrick said, "is our newest discovery. Or should I say invention? You are looking at a white hole."

"OK...." Gina never heard about a "white hole" before and didn't know what to make of it.

"Well, what do you know about white holes?" Patrick asked.

"Nothing, really. I heard of black holes, but never of white ones. I don't know much of black holes either."

"Well, a black hole is a pack of matter of infinite density. A so-called singularity. It sucks all matter towards it; nothing can escape its gravity well. Not even light, hence its name. They usually come to exist if very heavy stars implode at the end of their existence."

"Right..." Gina was writing like mad.

"It attracts everything, sucking it into its core, the gravity creating tidal forces that tear everything apart. It slows time too, since time and space are both influenced by gravity as well. Only X-rays emerge from it."

"X-rays..." Gina repeated, writing.

"Well, there was a hypothesis that the matter the black hole attracted didn‘t become part of the black hole itself, but went somewhere else. Into another part of the universe, or maybe even another universe. And that place was called a "white hole". It would spit out the matter coming from the black hole. Black holes swallow, white holes spit."

Gina chuckled. "Spit" and "swallow" were things she knew. It had nothing to do with physics, though.

"Six month ago, we were able to create a black and a white hole. The black one's location is unknown, but the white one is here. In that tube. The hypothesis was thus confirmed, white holes exist."

"Yes," Gina said, waiting for the clue to come.

"What comes out of the white hole is not the same matter that went into it anymore. Because of the huge gravity workings of the black hole, the matter absorbed has been processed beyond recognition, like meat in a La machine. What emerges from the white hole is a mixture of pure energy and something we call proto-matter. And the latter is a substance that can be converted into virtually everything. It can become hydrogen, oxygen, carbonate....like loose Lego stones; we can build everything we want with it."

"Everything? That'd be great!" Gina was excited. This story could give her an important edge over Mandy and Bianca. A significant step closer to the President's bed.

"Yes. Imagine, enough food for everyone! We can, for example, increase a tiny piece of meat to a size it could feed dozens of people. Or, if we want fruit or vegetables, we can grow them to giant proportions. Enormous apples. Medicine ball sized cherries. Peas, the size of...." Patrick looked at Gina's huge bust.

She didn't notice. Her mind was too occupied with a sudden idea. An exciting idea.

"Can living beings be increasing in size?" Gina asked.

"Yes. Even living beings. All kinds of matter."

"And they could survive?" She had to be sure.

"Yes. The energy from the white hole provides sustenance. That is the greatest part of it. We might breed..."

"To what maximum size?" Gina wanted to know.

"Uhh, I think as big as we want it. Black holes can swallow an infinite amount of matter...."

Gina smiled. That was all she needed to know.