Alex frowned, and Michael could see he wasn’t buying it, at least, not yet. But he was thinking about it, so that was a start.
“Okay, but every time we talk about my protocol, you start talking about the Ether…”
“Right,” Michael said, nodding, “but it isn’t actually the Ether that you manipulate. You punch holes in reality, Alex, in whatever separates our universe from the Ether itself. Depending on how you do it, that creates a vacuum on one side or the other. When the vacuum is on our side, Etheric energy comes rushing over into our world to fill it, thus, the catalytic effect. When you create the vacuum on the Etheric side, matter and energy from our universe is pulled into the Ether, like water down a drain, or a hole in the side of spaceship. If the hole you punch is small, only energy can escape, and that creates extreme cold, and eventually kinetic stasis, on our side. A bigger hole and matter will be pulled through it. A big enough hole…”
“And the whole universe goes down the drain?” Alex asked, trying to sound contemptuous, but looking a little worried at the possibility.
“I don’t think so, but let’s not tempt fate, okay?” Michael said mildly. He had to give Alex time to wrap his head around it, he reminded himself, even if it meant going slower than he would’ve normally liked to. This wasn’t like teaching the kid to square his shoulders when he threw a punch, after all. “Besides, I think that a small hole, a little pinprick, might actually be more useful than a big one. I think even a tiny breach will be enough to pull most of the radiant energy, all of the heat and motion, out of the surrounding area. Do you know what happens when absolute zero is reached, Alex?”
“It’s impossible,” Alex said, with surprising firmness. “Anastasia told me so. You can only get so close, and then you’re always a fraction short. You can reduce the fraction, but you can’t make it go away.”
Michael covered his alarm with an indulgent smile. Why, he wondered, was Anastasia talking to Alex about absolute zero?
“True. But, if it was possible, do you know what would happen?”
While Alex considered it, Michael’s mind was elsewhere. Could Anastasia somehow already be aware of Alex’s affinity for the Absolute Protocol? Was that even possible? Rebecca’s notes, circulated only through the upper levels of the Academy’s staff, should have been the only source for such information. But, how could Anastasia have gotten access to those kind of documents?
From a staff member. That was the only way.
“Um. Everything would freeze…?”
Alex guessed more than he stated, not willing to fully commit to his answer, frowning and wrinkling his brow.
“Well, yes,” Michael said hastily, putting aside his suspicions. “More importantly, however, everything would stop. Alex, absolute zero is a completely non-energetic state — no motion, even on a molecular level. So, potentially, you could freeze things in more ways than one.”
Alex nodded slowly, but looked doubtful at best. That was alright with Michael, though. Everyone had to start somewhere.
“Okay, so, what do I do?”
Michael smiled encouragingly, doing his best to put aside his concerns about Anastasia.
“Rebecca already implanted the Absolute Protocol in your mind. Do you remember how to activate it? The routine?”
Alex nodded slowly, clearly going over something in his head.
“Okay, then let’s try it. Go ahead and focus on that end of the quarry,” Michael instructed patiently, pointing at the opposite side of the depression, close enough to see, far enough to be safe. “You don’t need to do anything fancy. Let’s see how far you can reduce the ambient temperature.”
Michael wasn’t sure what the activation routine Rebecca implanted was — they varied, after all, depending on the protocol and the Operator involved. His own routine was loosely based on some Tai Chi movements that he found helpful when he was trying to focus. Whatever it was that Alex did, it was subtle. All that happened outwardly was that Alex sighed, shook out his hands, and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them again, took a couple deep breaths, and squinted at the rock face on the far side of the quarry as if it were very far away.
He was prepared to wait. Protocols were tricky to use, and even with the hypnotic routine implanted to make them easier, students often struggled for weeks before they got the hang of doing it on command. Alex apparently did not have that problem. Michael was considering saying something encouraging, maybe suggesting a second try, when he noticed the frost sparkling in the sun; a light, uniform coating, glistening across the dull face of the rock.
“Excellent, Alex!”
Michael almost shouted, he was so excited, but Alex didn’t even appear to notice. He just continued trying to bore a hole in the rock with his eyes, and all around where he stared, the rock creaked and moaned while the air filled with a sound like tiny bells ringing. It took Michael a moment to realize that he was hearing the water in the air spontaneously freezing and then falling to the ground in crystals that shattered on impact.
“Okay, Alex, that’s good. Shut it down.”
Michael waited for a moment, but the kid seemed to be unaware of him, locked into his bizarre staring contest with the wall of the quarry. Amazingly, Alex seemed to be gaining ground, as the scree slope made ominous settling noises, and then parts of it started to give way, small rivulets of gravel and sand running down channels in the stone as the wall itself shifted to accommodate ice crystals forming where water had been trapped inside the stone.
“Alex, stop. Stop now.” Michael hoped that his voice sounded firm, not worried. But whatever it sounded like, he was fairly certain that Alex didn’t hear it. Michael reached for the boy’s shoulder, meaning to shake him, but his hand stopped of its own accord halfway. He looked closely at the wall, trying to confirm what he thought he’d seen.
The rivulets of sand and pebbles, the streams of earth that had threatened only moments before to become a small avalanche had halted in mid-air, halfway to the ground, hovering uncertainly, each fragment slowly rotating in midair as it was caught in the impasse between two opposing forces. Even though he knew immediately what was happening, it took a moment for Michael to process it.
Something inside the rock face, something Alex was doing, had created a force powerful enough to counteract gravity, and the forces were balanced perfectly enough that the dirt dislodged from the rock face was held in suspension between them, waiting for the situation to resolve itself, equally pushed and pulled. And then, almost as soon as he put a name to what he was seeing, the equation unbalanced, in favor of the force Alex was generating, and the dust began to drift upward, back toward where it had fallen from. The complaints of the rock face itself grew louder and more urgent.
“Alex, stop this right now!”
Hoping to break the visual contact and disrupt his protocol, Michael turned Alex around forcefully, grabbing him by the shoulder. But the boy almost fell over when he put pressure on him, and the eyes that he turned on Michael were blank and unseeing, rolled so far back in his head that only the whites were visible. Michael lowered Alex carefully to the ground, then turned back to the slope, in time to see it draw in on itself, the rock fracturing like glass and then disintegrating into sand. It was drawn to an invisible core somewhere within the rock, draining down into itself, and then disappearing. All around the collapsing quarry wall, frost had taken hold, expanding out to cover half of the quarry with a furry white blanket. Michael realized with a certain inevitable horror that he could see his breath, despite the warmth of the day.