I feel like I should be grateful and that everything could have been so much worse. But the thing is…
The experiment worked. In a way. And now I know.
The conductor of the experiment, Professor William Harden, was known around campus as the “Hard Drive.” He was blessed with an incredible ability to process and retain information of every kind.
Though he was primarily a physics professor leading infamously difficult courses on thermodynamics, analytical mechanics and quantum entanglement, he held PHDs across multiple STEM fields and his interests continued to expand from there. Some of which was allegedly solving the issue between the differences in teleportation of information and matter.
It was also rumoured he’d been awarded multiple government grants from the defence, energy and health sectors.
Of all the things he was known for, one of the more interesting was that every year, Harden held interviews for whatever personal experiment he’d been working on that semester.
It was always an open offer to any PHD students at the school, whether they were studying a course in his department or not.
There were English Lit PHD’s lined up next to PHD’s in Philosophy, Mathematics, World History and Religion, as well as both MD-PHD’s in Medicine and Healthcare for dual physician-scientists.
Harden didn’t discriminate. He wanted people from everywhere.
Harden was an optimist and the goal of the experiments were to inspire. He’d always felt incredible gratitude when he was present and able to witness the research, trials and experiments of other scientists. Especially those in other fields. He wanted others to have that same opportunity and experience.
Ultimately, Harden believed in humanity and was infinitely hopeful for our future. And he knew that successes in the future laid with us, the next generation of students.
It was said that Harden always found ways to incorporate his dynamically diverse volunteers into his experiment. The whole process was incredibly secretive though, and the students had to sign NDA’s before they went through the rigorous screening methods to choose the candidates.
Therefore no one outside of the experiment ever knew what happened in it. Ever.
There were rumours of how that was achieved. Some were related to the extensive violation penalties in the NDA’s that would essentially sign your first born child away if breached.
Then there were rumours about how Harden had figured out a way to identify, select and permanently erase memories.
If you asked any of the students who were involved, they’d genuinely say they remembered every second. But they were Fort Knox after that. They wouldn’t budge on giving any details or even hints. The NDA’s held them tight lipped.
This created more fascination and wonder with the experiments, so being selected was considered a deep academic and personal honour.
I was in the last year of my Doctorate Program in Clinical Psychology, specializing in Neuropsychology and Psychopathology. So I had no link to Harden or his classes. My only knowledge of him was word of mouth.
It was nearing the end of term, and the flyers for Harden’s new experiment were found scattered across campus.
I didn’t expect to get picked, but threw my hat in the ring anyway.
Then they called me.
I was told to come to the mathematics building, where I’d need to sign an NDA before anything went further.
This is where I met Liz, Harden’s assistant. After the NDA, she hooked me up to a polygraph and pointed several cameras from different angles on me. I assumed they were monitoring for changes in facial expression or body language.
Liz started off with a modified and highly advanced Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, that focused heavily on mental processing speed and the Perceptual Reasoning Index.
As I went through the first portion, it was apparent they wanted to specifically measure my nonverbal abstract problem solving abilities and quantitative reasoning.
They wanted to know how well I could make sense out of the senseless.
I was then put through a series of three heavily-modified Emotional Intelligence tests relating to Trait EI, Ability EI and Mixed EI.
Personally, I wasn’t a fan of EI tests before the adjusted and somewhat provocative ones I went through in that room. They’re manipulative by design. They work the same as most IQ tests in that there is one predetermined answer for each question, but with IQ tests you have to do the work to provide the answer.
A skilled sociopath could game EI tests by knowing and giving the correct answer, even though they might do the opposite in the given situation. Which is why measuring EI is incredibly hard.
I was then asked to talk about myself, in great detail, fractioning my life into two year segments moving backwards. There were deep, personal questions. Questions about my philosophy and views on humanity.
It was more difficult than my Master’s Thesis Defence, but I felt like I answered everything clearly and honestly.
Then they asked me the final question… why was I there?
I blanked. Seconds passed and I had nothing. Liz stared at me, waiting.
Finally, an answer came to me. And it was truthful.
I said, “because I want to be a part of something larger than myself.”
Three days later, I received a phone call from Liz. I was told to come back to the mathematics building.
When I arrived, I was greeted by Liz, Professor Harden, and Harden’s older brother Bryan. If Harden looked good for 75, Bryan looked like an Olympian at 78.
They had similar faces, but vastly different builds. Harden was your typical looking but healthy physics professor. Bryan looked more like an explorer. Sun-kissed skin and muscles hardened by time. They both carried the same welcoming smile.
I was informed I’d been selected to participate in The Damocles Experiment, and that it was the culmination of Harden’s life’s work. All the experiments he’d been performing for the previous seven years had led to this.
It would be taking place that weekend. I’d be picked up with the other participants that Friday afternoon, where we’d be taken to Harden’s property in the mountains.
From there, the experiment would be revealed and everything would be explained. And that was it. I left, beyond thrilled and felt like I floated out of the building after the news.
Friday arrived and a large Greyhound bus picked me up. There were what I counted out as fourteen other student volunteers, making fifteen of us in total.
The drive up to Harden’s property in the mountains took almost two hours. It was filled with winding roads through forests and hills. We passed through the gates of two sets of electrified fences.
It was another half hour from the fences to reach Harden’s house. There was more than just a house though.
I didn’t see it at first because it was painted the same mixed-green colour pattern as the leaves in the trees surrounding it. There were several structures built together into a large research compound in the shape of a hexagon.
Harden, the frazzle-haired professor with a patch covered sport coat, stood in front of his old Ford Focus, excited for our arrival. Brian and Liz joined us and the three led us into the compound.
It was a state of the art facility with bunks, bathrooms, showers and fully stocked kitchens to match the advanced RnD tech Harden had been messing around with.
We were shown to the large sleeping quarters where we were to get settled before the introduction meeting.
Liz and Brian came to round us up and we were each given a full body heat protective suit with breathers and air tanks. We were then led to the main chamber of the compound which looked like a mad scientist’s wet dream.
There were grand, retracting doors on the ceiling that opened to allow what at first looked like some kind of futuristic telescope to peer up and out.
But it wasn’t a telescope.
Harden joined us. He started off by giving a brief but detailed history of his former occupations and research.
It was fascinating.
Harden started working for national defence with the Glenn L Martin company in the early 1950’s. After several mergers across decades, the company became known as the weapons production juggernaut, Lockheed Martin.
Confidentially, Harden headed the Skunk Works division at LM, which was an advanced aircraft manufacturing facility in the California desert.
It was rumoured he’d been working on antigravity technology for travel, developing aircrafts without wings or classical propulsion systems.
Harden led a team of US Aerospace Engineers in the revisiting of an unconventional type of force referred to as Electrogravitics. It was an antigravity force created by an electric field’s effect on a mass.
The team spent years seeking out the source of gravity and its control.
Objectives for the team were obvious. The military was only interested in using the technology for weapons. The government was like-minded.
Harden was far more interested in creating permanent, fuel-less heating units for homes and industrial establishments, as well as for deep space travel.
His aim wasn’t so much about making materials weightless, but about giving them negative weight. This would act similarly to a reverse magnet and would create a repulsive force that would send them in directions contra-gravitationally.
In the late 50’s, Harden was simultaneously consulting with DARPA on a project codenamed “Seesaw.” It was focused on charged-particle beam weapons and brought the professor into contact with some of the government’s acquired knowledge on Nikola Tesla.
Seeing that funding was only flowing into defence and weapons tech, Harden left the Skunk Works and DARPA, but continued his own research on gravity knowing the harnessing of its power could be world changing.
But it wasn’t just gravity that interested him. It was also vibration, frequency and energy. Three solvable secrets of the universe, according to Tesla. Harden had spent his entire life studying the work of the inventor.
In fact, Harden had created an advanced form of ground penetrating radar pulse technology that used electromagnetic radiation waves to generate detailed profiles of subterranean structures. He attached the sensors onto low-flying drones that canvassed from above.
Harden’s vision was hyper focused on Colorado Springs. But it was Pike’s Peak, Colorado, eight years ago, where the discovery was made.
There’s long been a rumour about trunk loads full of Tesla’s technical and scientific papers and research being hidden somewhere near his property, or in the vast mountains beyond.
Amongst the trunks, were Tesla’s secrets and knowledge on everything.
Using his new radar pulse tech, Harden and his brother found one of Tesla’s trunks. And this particular trunk, focused on the fluid electrical charges that ran under the Earth’s surface. Notebooks filled with equations and explanations on how to harness the grid as a limitless, free power supply.
There were designs and diagrams for large mechanical oscillators that could’ve powered entire countries.
Four years ago, Harden had built his own oscillator. It’d worked as his property’s only energy source since then. Everything in the compound ran off of it.
The trunk also filled in large gaps Harden had on theories of vibration and frequency. He built his own, much larger oscillator with a design using two massive, solid copper pillars that rose twenty feet off the ground. They were perfectly cylindrical in shape. The two prongs pointed to the sky, parallel to one another.
Harden told us to put our full head masks on and seal them to the suit. When everyone had, he turned the machine on.
The pillars shook, then vibrated so quickly a frequency was created between the two. Electric bolts shot between them and multiplied until there were hundreds of threads connecting the conductors.
Five minutes at this rate could produce enough power for our county’s grid for a month, Harden said.
And there weren’t any storage needs, because the oscillator was channelling it directly from the Earth’s endless natural grid.
But this was only a portion of why we were here. Harden needed copious amounts of energy for the real experiment.
Our attention was directed to the telescope-looking machine, and Harden finally explained what it was.
We were looking at the most powerful light ever created. On Earth or otherwise. Harden had created a laser that produced a light beam exceeding one trillion times that of the brightness of the sun.
Not only that, but it moved faster than the technical speed of light, at over five hundred million miles per second.
He called the light system, The Arc.
Because of the endless energy source, the perfect design and construction of the oscillator and light beam, Harden could continue to push the limits of what was previously settled science.
In last year’s experiment, the group were present for contact with an alien being. They’d turned on The Arc for twenty minutes, pointing it up and into the Coma Supercluster.
In that time, strange sounds were recorded.
It appeared to be white noise at first. But then it turned into something alive. Something aware. And it wasn’t produced by vocal cords.
The volunteers all gave different statements on what they’d experienced. Some claimed the sounds contained certain notes, tones, peaks and valleys. Other’s that the sounds came from inside their heads. Inside their chests.
Some heard languages they didn’t know, but somehow understood.
Some said the sounds were positive. Others said they were negative and frightening.
No one knew what the sounds actually were, but Harden had ideas. He believed the light from The Arc had reached somewhere with intelligent, extraterrestrial life. The beings they heard travelled using light avatars along the beam being produced and had tried to communicate.
And for those few minutes, it almost seemed like they were.
But the connection was lost. There was an issue with the oscillator and the experiment ended there.
Now, a year later, Harden had fixed the problem and was ready to try again.
With eighteen people present including the professor, Bryan and Liz, we were lined up in groups of three, six and nine. I was in the last row at the edge.
We waited a few minutes for overhead satellites to clear the skies, then we had a half hour window to aim into the Coma Supercluster.
The oscillator, which had been humming idly by, was given more energy. We watched the electrical bolts dance and surge between the copper rods, channeling downwards and converting into energy to push the light threshold further and further.
The overhead dome opened, revealing the clear night sky above.
Harden increased the power to The Arc, then turned the beam on. It was immediate and overwhelming.
Even through my suit, I felt the heat being given off by The Arc. The light beamed upwards, cutting through the darkness. I couldn’t look directly at it, it was impossibly, painfully bright.
Harden increased the power again, sending the room into a new level of illumination. The ground under our feet was vibrating.
Everyone was looking up into the sky, but my attention was on the ground and the small electric swirls dancing and curling up from under the floor panels.
I didn’t feel right. Everyone else stared straight up and seemed fine. But I felt nauseous and dizzy. I felt a shock under my feet. The blue electrical currents from the ground were starting to shoot up the lengths of my legs.
I stepped back, not wanting to look up. I knew everyone was fixated on the beam, but I couldn’t be here anymore. I needed to lay down.
I backed up, slowly making my way to the door leading to the hallway. As I did, I decided to look back.
Just inside the ceiling doors, sparks were spraying out from a pure white electrical cloud. From inside it, a chasm was tearing open the fabric of our reality.
I could see through it. Into it. And I could see our world all around it.
It was bright white and filled with clouds and large, hulking figures. From their backs sprouted grand sets of wings. They wore plates of gold around their necks and moved with unimaginable grace.
Until they saw us.
It became clear to me that what I was looking at weren’t aliens. We hadn’t contacted some extraterrestrial race in a distant galaxy. Maybe the group from last year had… but this felt more like a Biblical Wizard of Oz.
Those hulking figures weren’t aliens. They were angels.
And there I was, with the curtain pulled aside, staring into Heaven.
No one was moving. Everyone was in a trance, staring up in awe.
Then, one of the Angel’s looked down, and saw the group staring up through the hole.
And all of a sudden, the grace the Angel carried disappeared.
The Angel’s massive hands grabbed the sides of the tear and pulled it further open. He pushed his gargantuan head through the opening, snarling down at us in our reality.
Heat pulsed from the Angel’s aura as his upper body entered into our world. The heat was unbearable. I watched as the other fourteen volunteers and the Professor, Bryan and Liz melted down into a goopy pile of unrecognizable flesh.
Seeing all the witnesses dead, the Angel reached down and grabbed ahold of The Arc with one hand and the oscillator with his other. The Angel’s large muscles rippled and tensed as he tightened his grip. And just as he was breaking the machines and closing the tear… his eyes locked with mine.
The Angel saw me there, one more witness, cowering in the hallway entrance.
The next moment, he was gone and the room was dark. The power was completely out.
The machine Harden had created was dead. Crushed and melted down into an unrecognizable heap. Just like him.
On the walk back to civilization, I thought about Harden. How he’d wanted to change the world. To save it. There were so many ways his technology could have helped us all.
Instead, he’d accidentally proved there was an afterlife.
There was a Heaven.
And it was not the place of love and welcoming we were hoping it was.