I first became friends with Bill what feels like a lifetime ago, back when I was working as a bored, frustrated creative writing teacher and technically out-of-work author. Memories of those days are easy to come by, as the era can be divided into the only two significant things I had going for me then: trying to keep a class of starry-eyed students focused on the fundamentals of doing something worthwhile with the written word while failing, night after night, to do so myself.
At the time, I was more or less going through the motions and doing the bare minimum with classes, trying my damnedest to stay focused on the new book thing: my publisher had undergone a major staffing change since my last release, and it seemed the new head honchos weren’t all that enthused about my work, using the “going in a new direction” mantra to justify passing on most of the prose I proposed. Do something different, they said. Something fresh. But no matter how far I felt I strayed from what they thought was my usual style, they shook their heads without giving a single specific on what their definitions of ‘different’ and ‘fresh’ were. It had been going on for close to a year, and I had to say that the well was dry. I had no ideas left.
Anyway: I knew about Bill, of course - every faculty member knew about Bill. He had something of a reputation around the school for very strange, very complex, very expensive and very secretive ideas that he would not discuss with the esteemed members of the board, who he liked to call ‘senior management’. By all accounts - and my own personal eyewitness - Bill was not the type of guy you typically kept employed if your long-term plans as an academic institution included being taken seriously.
It wasn't a question of intelligence - the man was a modern-day name-your-famous-scientist - it was the fact that he frequently refused to change anything about the way he did anything, which irked the University for the fact that any public fuck-up on account of his research and experiments would tarnish their respected academic name. He wasn’t tenured, but they refused to fire him. I never did ask him why he thought that was. I suppose, perhaps, they also expected the opposite of their fears could happen - that Bill would make a discovery that shook the foundations of modern science as we know it, and bring nothing but glory to their respected academic name.
If only they had known.
Bill claimed that his goal as a scientist was to “look past time and space.” Nobody knew what that was supposed to mean, and he would never elaborate on a single syllable of it, simply shrugging, smiling and saying in a sly sort of voice, “You’ll need to see for yourself, when I do it.”
How he and I became friends is a short and simple story, and has everything to do with the fact that I was more than desperate to meet the criteria of ‘new’ that my publisher had set out and get something to print. I found him in the cafeteria one day, and after making as much of the usual idle small talk as was allowed by social law, the question spilled out of my mouth before I was able to stop and think it through.
“Do you think I could interview you about your work for some sci-fi story ideas?”
As soon as I realized what I had said, I expected him to take great offense, tell me I was a lunatic, and make a dramatic exit, but to my shock he simply looked curious, if not a bit taken aback, before making a cautious reply.
“I...suppose,” he said, slowly. “I’d want to deem the terms of limits on how the work is used, of course?”
“Of course,” I said blankly.
And that was it: from there we were friends.
Why he let me do it? I don't know – he definitely wouldn't have for many people, I can tell you that. Maybe it was my genuine interest in the subjects he studied, maybe he wanted a creative outlet to counterbalance the constant research with which he busied himself, maybe it was just the fucking acid, I honestly don't know.
Whatever his logic, Bill let me into this wildly unpredictable world of his, and in a short time – and to my great surprise – he shared the deepest details of the research he conducted in his lab (a detached garage on his ranch's property) with me, keeping me up-to-date on his latest works and discoveries before asking me to tell him about a new idea about which I wanted to write. I didn't actually end up using any of his experiments as story material in the end - save for this one, though I would classify this as more of an account - although I did record several notebooks with his work, which I still have to this day.
Anyway: the way he woke me that fateful, life-changing night was conventional by Bill's standards, and it wasn't the clatter of rocks against my bedroom window at 2:30 AM that made me wonder what the hell was wrong with him, although it did still scare the everliving shit out of me. But that was normal Bill. He had done this many times before, and it always gave me a start.
However, having not actually gotten a good look at him from my bedroom window, I was not prepared for the mess that greeted me when I trundled downstairs and answered the door.
I didn't manage to get a word out as I opened my home to the shocking sight of a bearded, bleary-eyed Bill, a look of raw, unhinged distance on his face, several lines under his eyes and a strong smell that I suspected was -
“Scotch!” he shouted, confirming my suspicions and stepping immediately past me over the threshold to make directly for the sitting room.
I followed him, watching with anticipation as he poured two glasses – forgoing his usual ritual of on-the-rocks, an alarming sign – and downed both, pouring himself a fresh one as he paced around the small coffee table, his face still showing that same detached insanity. I felt a strong mix of bewilderment and fascination that prevented me from speaking, so I simply sat down in silence, wondering what this latest mess of his was.
If only I had known.
“I...” he began.
He took another full swig of scotch, filling his glass again.
“I...I've really done it now, I really have. I've...”
He shook his head, his eyes unfocused, his gaze tired, looking as though he had reached the last day of his life and knew it – had been waiting a very long time for it.
“I...okay, see, I wanted to make this, uh, this...simulation, I guess you could call it. A much smaller, much more restricted version of the LHC...something like that, along those lines. Ambitious, but ambiguous. All I knew was that if I could get a...a re-creation of the events that lead to creation – again, on a much smaller scale – I mean, who knows what I could do with that, right?”
He paused, drinking still more deeply, his speech slurring.
“I busied myself with - with studying everything we know about physics and the Big Bang – Einstein, Hawking, Faraday, Freeman, all of 'em, all that shit, and I put aside all my other projects, save for - save for teaching classes – and I dedicated all of my time and all of my energy to this idea. I had to do it, I couldn't get it out of my head, you know, you know what that's like, don't you? You get that with an idea for a story, no?”
“Not lately,” I said dryly.
He drained his glass and poured himself another as though he had not heard me. I found myself getting mildly annoyed at the fact that he was drinking all of my good scotch, but I was far too fascinated by his erratic behaviour to press the point. I had to know what the fuck he was on about.
“What the fuck are you on about, Bill?” I asked.
Drinking more slowly now, as though he had sensed my momentary irritation, Bill continued.
“Just this past week I finished it. I was ready to test it Sunday afternoon, but first...first I knew I had to drop.”
This was another thing about Bill: he often brewed his own blend of LSD and got fried out of his fucking head when he ran experiments in his lab. I had tried some of the stuff he made once and didn't come down for 14 hours, four of which I spent navigating my own home like a labyrinth, convinced I was trapped within ever-changing rooms and walls. I had never even left the kitchen.
“I waited until I peaked, gave the machine a go, and...”
He stopped, very suddenly, as though he had walked into a wall. He was shaking his head again, slowly. As he tried to compose himself, his eyes finally met mine, and I saw for the first time that night just how far gone he looked.
“At first I thought it was the acid,” he said quietly. “I mean, it had to be – it had to be. How else could I have seen..”
He paused again, his silence stretching longer.
“I thought I was just...I thought I was just on a really bad trip, you know? I convinced myself that I was just on a really bad trip, because that was honestly the only thing I could think of that...that could have....so I waited two days before I could even look at the machine again.”
Finishing his scotch and putting the glass down without reaching for another, he leaned forward in the chair, head in his hands.
“It was two more days before I tried again. Sober as a judge this time. I swear it. I swear it. And I...I saw it all again...I saw them all again...”
He leaned back in his chair. The look on his face suggested he had been questioning the state of his own sanity for days.
“Who, Bill?” I asked. “What happened?”
He looked directly at me again.
“I found myself in a colourless room. Simple as that, a colourless room. And...and…”
He sighed.
“I don’t know how this happened. I truly don’t. But, I...I think...I think I went to, um, wherever is...next.”
I let the silence hang, knowing he would elaborate. His gaze had gone completely unfocused now. He really did look insane.
“I...I woke up in this colourless place, and...and...and they were all there. It was...it was everybody I’ve known that’s...that’s gone...that I’ve lost. My mother, father, grandparents, a few old friends. Uncle Pete, he was there, too, you know, the uncle that recently passed, that one that left me the money he said to use on my work? They were all here, in this place, waiting, and they...talked to me. And not just family and friends, either, but people I had known long ago...old classmates, acquaintances, people from different periods of my life, people with whom I had long ago lost touch. They were all there…”
His stare was haunting.
“They were...they were all so happy to see me, and I them, once I realized what this must be, but not the first time. The first time...I was terrified, the first time. I completely lost it, and they...they comforted me. Told me it was okay. Like I said, I thought the whole thing was the trip, but that second visit...it has to be real. It has to be. And, uh, when I came back, they freaked out, because they had no idea where I had gone when I left - apparently this thing I built can only keep you in this, this place for a few hours, although it had been a fucking week out here when I got back both times!”
I wanted to ask more questions than my head had space for, but he continued on after a quick breath. This time, his tone was the most somber it had been all night.
“I don’t know how I did this. I probably won’t ever be able to tell you how how I did this, but I did this, man. There’s something after this life, and I’ve somehow discovered a way to get to whatever and wherever it is.”
A maniacal grin suddenly appeared on his face, and he added, “I finally did it, didn’t I? I finally got to look past time and space.”
The questions knocked at the edges of my skull, all of them vying to be screamed out, but I could not put my thoughts together enough to ask a single one. I simply sat there, staring blankly at Bill’s utterly insane, faraway look, unable to put a proper sentence together, unable to think of a single word for what I had just heard.
And I called myself a writer.