The Edison Rift

Originally Published under my Sci-Fi Pen Name S.D Williams

Warren Edison had no idea what he was looking at when he first discovered the colourful, world-changing Rift on a mild early July morning. A light dusting of mist had settled across his wheat field, and he believed the phenomenon was an extension of the morning haze, a bit of scattered light from the rising sun. It looked beautiful. Poetic. A lovely way to start what would be a long day.

The Rift was a swirl of blue and pink with a milky white core. It reminded Warren of his wife’s bath bombs, the expensive ones she treated herself to when she’d lock herself away in a candle-lit bathroom for an hour. It was close to three meters tall and wide enough to drive a car through. They weren’t colours Warren normally associated with a misty morning, but he didn’t know how these things worked. He was a simple third-generation farmer. He enjoyed pretty sights and the wonders of nature, but never gave them much thought. He was always too busy. Warren took a few moments to admire the gorgeous mixture of floating colours from afar before moving on to his many morning chores.

He only became suspicious of the Rift after the fog lifted and the tear remained. It was the damnedest thing. His brain couldn’t pass the curiosity off as an extension of the haze anymore. A clear, sunny day had begun to take hold, and there was no godly reason for the colours to still be floating in the middle of the field like that.

Back at the farmhouse, he roused his wife Claire from her sleep. Monday was her day off, her one lie-in. Warren was always under strict orders not to wake her. She quickly forgave him, however, when he drew back the curtains to show her the flat spiral of colours floating in the middle of their wheat field. Even Claire had to admit it was unusual. More than a trick of light.

They approached the Rift together, both feeling the static in the air as they drew nearer. A tingling sensation, not unpleasant or painful, but not something which could be described as normal, ran across their skin. A faint pulsing sound emitted from the oddity, like an electric heartbeat. The air around the Rift appeared suspended. It wasn’t something the pair could necessarily see, just feel. Both had an urge to touch the centre of the Rift, but refrained. Everything about the swirling colours defied logic, and both Warren and Claire were cautious people by nature. Curious, but cautious.

They invited Earl over from a neighbouring farm, but he too was flummoxed by the weird occurrence. Like Warren, he would have thought it was a reflection of the morning sun on the mist, but there was no longer any mist. Could colours just… remain?

Their next port of call was the nearby school’s science teacher, Mr. Thompson, or Andy to Warren and Claire after they struck up a relationship with him. He was a regular visitor to their market stall, and had even once brought his pupils to the farm for a school trip. They all lived in a small village by the name of Watersfield, and Andy’s knowledge of science by default made him one of the smartest people Warren knew. If anyone knew what was happening in the middle of his field, it was Andy.

… Andy couldn’t explain it.

He circled the Rift several times as his hair stood on end from the static. It had looked like a colourful cloud when he first arrived on the Edisons’ farm, but up close it was the flatness of the phenomenon which really confused him. The colours weren’t in the least bit translucent either, despite their lack of thickness. While it looked like some kind of refraction of light, none of its properties matched that theory. It didn’t make sense.

Andy was the first to touch the curiosity. He couldn’t not when it was right there in front of him, an intriguing mystery waiting to be solved. He gently placed his hand on the central milky core of the swirling colours as Warren and Claire watched from several feet back. When he pushed his hand forward, it sunk into the strange colours but didn’t appear the other side. Instead… it briefly disappeared. Like a magician’s trick, only Andy believed in science, not magic.

He held the disturbing pose for a moment before yanking his hand back. On examination, there was no damage, just a coldness from the lower temperature wherever his hand had been. He couldn’t quite believe it, and wouldn’t have if someone else had told him about it rather than experiencing ‘whatever this was’ for himself.

It was then that Andy theorised the mysterious swirl of colours lingering in the Edisons’ wheat field was some kind of Rift, and he informed Warren and Claire that this was well above his pay grade. It was time to call in the experts.

Within twenty-four hours, the Rift was global news. After way too many phone calls and the same redundant questions being asked over and over, a trio of skeptical scientists finally arrived at the Edisons’ farm. One disbelieving look at the extraordinary Rift later, the military and a full research team arrived shortly after.

The entire farm was cordoned off, with Warren and Claire relocated to a local guesthouse for the foreseeable future. A mass of activity descended onto the previously nondescrifield, a blend of unbridled excitement and grave concern. Either this was the greatest discovery of the modern age… or something sinister and potentially world-ending was about to happen.

Any attempts to keep the Rift under wraps failed before the military even arrived. Word about the unusual swirl had spread across the small village and neighbouring towns during the time it took Andy and the Edisons’ to convince someone important to come and take a look.

Various media outlets took the unusual gossip seriously when a video of the Rift was uploaded to social media by a local school kid who’d skipped afternoon classes that day, a decision that would change her young life. Everyone converged on the Edison Farm. The press fought for coverage. Influencers fought for hits. Scientists fought for their place in researching the phenomenon, all while the military tried their best to keep everyone under control with the minimum of fuss.

The headlines were sensational, but not without potential truth, even if most believed it to be a Rift rather than a rip: A RIP IN THE EARTH.

Worldwide panic erupted before the first tests even took place. Many public figures and susceptible citizens announced the end of days and declared the planet was collapsing in on itself. Experts (of what exactly?) speculated that more of these Rifts would occur as the Earth tore itself apart, while more sensible heads took a ‘wait and see’ approach, explaining that we knew nothing about the Rift and its significance. Let the scientists do their job. Some blamed fictitious government experiments for breaking the laws of physics and causing the Rift, while others turned to more biblical explanations. Everyone had an over-the-top theory, but no one had any real answers.

The Rift was renamed the Edison Rift after its discoverers and location. While scientists conducted their tests behind closed doors over the following day, the Edisons became overnight celebrities, giving round-the-clock interviews about the unusual world-shifting discovery. Andy joined them, seeing as he was the first person to ever touch the Rift, while Earl wanted nothing to do with the media circus and went back to his farm.

The hastily put-together interviews tended to be both dry and boring. The Edisons didn’t have much to say outside of chronologically recounting the morning’s events, and none of the trio had an entertaining enough personality to satisfy the media’s insatiable needs. When asked what they believed the Rift was, Warren simply shrugged his shoulders, while Claire continued to say how strange it felt. Andy, on the other hand, could only repeat how the Edison Rift felt cold inside so many times in his monotonous voice before his lack of showmanship grated on the interviewer. They were giving them nothing.

Still, they were well paid for their comments, and the various interviews quickly became some of the most-watched videos of all time, just behind Amy’s (the local school kid) original Rift video, which had now seemingly been watched by everyone on the planet. Unlike them, she had become a true overnight celebrity, embracing the attention and newfound fame with her cheeky, infectious personality. The first question asked was always whether her mum had forgiven her for skiving… she had. The rest of the interview tended to just be her causing chaos, but the public ate it up. She had an agent by the end of the day, and there were rumours of her hosting some kind of talkshow, if the Edison Rift wasn’t the beginning of the apocalypse.

It didn’t take long for the scientists to officially confirm that the phenomenon was some kind of Rift in space, despite how unbelievable that seemed. They sent several probes into the centre of the colours, and the information and footage they brought back was remarkable. The Rift appeared to be a passageway of sorts, as a second Rift stood exactly twenty metres beyond the first within this mysterious space. The passageway inside the Rift was as colourful as the unexplained exterior, giving the impression you were entering a rainbow. The colours seemed to be a result of some kind of non-toxic gas, which acted as its own light source, making the passageway not only colourful but remarkably well lit.

The probe could fly ten metres in the air inside the passageway, but no further. There didn’t appear to be anything solid stopping the ascent, but ten metres was the limit. They sent several different probes inside to make sure it wasn’t a mechanical issue, but all met the same problem as the original, hitting an apparent invisible barrier at ten metres. For now, they theorised that the passageway in its entirety was twenty metres long, ten metres high, and five metres across, with a Rift at either end. One led to Earth, and they looked forward to finding out what lay beyond the other. That would happen soon enough, but first, they wanted to know exactly what the passageway was, and why the probe reported that the air inside was breathable.

Three days after the Edison Rift’s sudden arrival, no more Rifts had been reported, and no change to the Earth’s integrity had been discovered. It was spinning and behaving the same as it always did, despite any online chatter suggesting otherwise. Gravity hadn’t changed. Sea levels hadn’t risen. The poles were still where they should be. No natural disasters related to the Rift had been reported.

The immediate worldwide panic, however, hadn’t calmed. People were still frightened, and doomsday theories were being thrown about. Supplies were being hoarded by every household, and survivalists were safely in their reinforced bunkers. There was chaos in the streets, and people were protesting and demanding answers from their governments, who knew as little as they did. Everyone had stopped going to work, and people were emptying out of the big cities, fearing that if something did happen, films and books often suggested they’d suffer the worst.

Reports from the scientific team in charge of working out exactly what the Rift was were being issued on an almost hourly basis to keep the public up-to-date and help ease any immediate fears, but so far, they hadn’t helped. News that the air was possibly breathable inside, however, had caught everyone off guard, even if they weren’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.

When the time arrived to finally send a probe through the second Rift within the passageway, the results were disappointing. As the probe vanished into the second Rift, the signal was immediately lost, and the device was unable to be recovered from the team on Earth’s side. The cause for the loss of signal was unknown, but the more optimistic among the team of scientists theorised that it may have to do with distance. If that was the case, all hope might not be lost. There was a chance the probe could still be recovered… from inside the passageway. The first manned mission into the passageway was agreed upon, exactly four days after the Rift’s discovery.

The first manned entry into the Edison Rift was to be televised in real time, as requested by just about everyone. Whether the signal would hold or not was unknown, but the team agreed to try. Everyone had now seen the videos captured inside the Rift by the drones, but this was to be an altogether different historic moment. Speculation was rife. It somehow felt different sending a human being into the colourful passageway, like we’d have a better chance of discovering something unique that the probes couldn’t unlock on their own. Maybe our presence inside could make the passageway react differently, or at least aid in answering certain questions, the biggest two being: why had the Rift suddenly appeared, and what was on the other side of the second Rift? Where did it lead? Could we recover the lost probe? What would it show?

Every theory seemed possible. Some believed the Rift would lead elsewhere on Earth, while others believed it to be a direct link to Heaven or Hell. Some thought it would take us to Mars, the Moon, or some distant planet, while others suggested it could lead us backwards or forwards in time. The most skeptical believed it to be some kind of weapon, and that our intrusion would lead to catastrophe, with another frequent suggestion being that it led nowhere and should be left well alone. Was God waiting for us? The Devil? Aliens? A long-lost civilisation on Earth? Other endless unexplainable colourful passageways? Or simply nothing?

Commander Deakin Spencer cautiously entered the Edison Rift at eleven a.m. on July the seventh, wearing a full-body space suit as recommended by the experts. The whole world watched. Both the signal and his wire tether held as he stepped through the swirl of colours in the middle of the Edison’s farm into the rainbow passageway. The gravity inside the passageway replicated Earth’s, but there was a tingle in the air, similar to that at the entrance, and the temperature felt several degrees lower than the weather back at the farm. Visibility was fine, despite the floating gases taking up every square inch. It was like the colours were the air itself, rather than some dense gas obscuring Deakin’s view.

He took several small steps forward in his full astronaut gear, noting the lack of a pathway beneath him, just more bright colours. They held firm with every step, and Deakin suspected that whatever lay beneath him also made up the impenetrable ‘walls and roof.’

There had been some debate as to whether he should keep the helmet on at all times during the excursion, even after confirming the presence of breathable air, with the decision ultimately left to him. The Commander had been reluctant to remove it prior to the expedition inside the passageway, but now that he was there, he instinctively took the helmet off and reported that the air was indeed perfectly breathable. It even felt fresh, he remarkably noted.

After several more tentative steps forward, Deakin directed the lost probe’s transmitter towards the second Rift. Nothing happened. The world continued to watch as he took several more steps forward, getting closer to the end of the passageway. The science team at the other end became nervous that he’d do the unthinkable and enter the second Rift, but Deakin stopped short and tried the transmitter again. Still no signal.

A final option to regain control of the probe had been previously discussed and shut down, but no one was around to stop the Commander now if he tried, despite the protests in his ear. He continued his journey to the end of the passageway with the intention of sticking his arm through the Rift and directing the transmitter. Maybe it would reestablish a connection, or maybe he would lose a limb. Either way, he felt compelled to try.

Deakin could feel a gentle tug on his tether, along with more persuasive words rattling away in his ear, strongly advising him against the course of action. But he also thought he could detect a hint of them secretly urging him to go ahead. According to the rules, they had to advise him against sticking his arm through an unexplained portal, but the reality of the situation was that they wanted to know what was on the other side as much as anyone else. And, although not possible, he could sense the desire from the public to try too. It was palpable. They wanted to know, and he was determined not to disappoint them, even if his thinking wasn’t altogether rational.

Reaching the second Rift, the Commander pushed his outstretched arm through the swirl of colours and immediately felt the temperature difference on the other side. While he couldn’t see what he was doing, he pressed the control to retrieve the probe, and moments later the device returned to him through the portal. A relieved but loud cheer echoed in his comms. He imagined the amazement in every household across the planet too, as he inwardly smiled at his bold decision. He’d made the right choice.

The probe appeared undamaged as Commander Deakin Spencer watched it fly back through the Earth-side Rift, and no doubt into the hands of the team of eager scientists waiting on the other side. He stood staring at the second Rift as astonished reports almost instantly came back that the probe had been to another world. There was tons of data and imagery to go through, but there was no doubt that the Rift led elsewhere in the universe. They didn’t know the how or why, but the Rift was undoubtedly a doorway to a different planet.

Hearing the remarkable news, the Commander put his helmet back on his head and took a deep breath before doing the only thing he considered anyone would do in his situation: he stepped through the second Rift.

The excited chatter in the Commander’s ear immediately stopped. The signal was cut, along with the tether. Everything went silent as he arrived on the other side of the Rift…