Chapter Text
Einstein. Hawking. Ben Arnold.
The day he’d moved out for college, Ben had told his mother he was going to become a world-famous physicist.
Betty Arnold’s face had creased into a fond smile. Heedless of the box of clothes he was carrying, she reached over to wrap him in a warm sideways hug. “They won’t know what hit ‘em,” she’d agreed, before releasing him.
“Ben, my man, have you heard?”
Ben nearly choked on the dregs of his second energy drink of the night. “Chet! I thought you’d gone home,” he sputtered. It was way past the laboratory’s regular hours. He tossed the empty drink can into a nearby recycling bin and tried not to look too put out at Chet’s sudden appearance.
It wasn’t that he disliked the other man. It was just that he’d gotten used to thinking of the laboratory after hours—after the researchers and techs and janitors have gone home, and the hallways were quiet and dark—as his time. It was when he could finally sit back and work on his own projects without someone calling for him to revive some piece of ancient equipment every few minutes. He definitely wasn’t expecting to bump into anyone in the halls after midnight, least of all Chet.
Chet didn’t seem to notice anything amiss, and sidled up closer. “Why,” he crooned, “I didn’t know you paid so much attention to my nocturnal activities.”
Ben leaned away slightly. “I don’t, actually. But it’s like, one in the morning, and I figured everyone’d gone home already.” Actually, now that he was paying attention, he could see the laptop bag slung across Chet’s shoulder and the headphones hanging around the man’s neck. Chet must have be on his way out, before deciding to have a late-night chat. “What was I supposed to have heard?”
“Aw, you’re no fun.” Chet sighed, but relented. “We’ve got a new researcher joining our group. I hadn’t heard much, but according to Merv, he’s an astrophysicist from one of them big-shot national laboratories down in California.”
“And he’s coming here?” Ben exclaimed, incredulous. “Here, as in King Falls?” Sure, he liked the laboratories here, but it was the sort of isolated that was only accessible by way of helicopter or a two-hour drive through heavily forested mountains. That tended to be a turn-off for most people. “Wow. The last time we got a new hire was—what? Emily, two years ago?”
Chet grinned. “Of course, you’d remember exactly what day that pretty little lady started up.”
“I’d—what? No!” Ben protested. He decided against mentioning that he did, in fact, know what date it'd been. He had a good memory for days, that was all.
“Ain’t no shame in it, brother,” Chet drawled, and paused. “And remember, if you’re ever looking for a third body to tango with—”
Ben hurried to cut him off. “No. Nope. Not thinking about that. I keep telling you, Chet, there’s nothing going on between me and Emily! We’re just friends. I’ve just been helping her get acclimated to the neighborhood, is all.”
“After two years? Yeah, I bet you two are well and acclimated.”
Ben groaned. “Dear God, please stop. We can talk about something else. Like—uh, the new guy. So what’s his deal, do you know?”
“Nah, Merv was spotty on the details. All I know is that apparently his specialty is radio mumbo-jumbo, like you—“
“—radio astronomy. C’mon, Chet—“
“—So you’ll probably get to find out, seeing as how you’ll be working together quite a bit,” Chet finished, ignoring Ben entirely. Which was irritating, and Ben was about to say so, before his brain caught up to his mouth and registered what the other man was saying.
For a second, he just gaped. “Wait, working together? Him and me?”
Chet shrugged. “No idea. Merv’ll probably email you the details eventually. I'm just giving you a heads up.”
“But I—I’m just a technician! And this guy’s—I can’t just—“
A heavy hand clapped Ben on the shoulder, startling him out of the beginnings of a panic-spiral. “Breathe. You’re gonna do fine, Ben,” Chet said solemnly. “You’re sharp, everyone can see it. Merv saw it, s’why he’s pairing you off with the newbie. Someone’s got to show him the ropes ‘round here,” he paused, and the corners of his mouth curled up into a smirk, “if you catch my drift.”
“You were doing so well until that last bit. It didn’t even make sense,” Ben sighed, but with less exasperation than he’d normally inject into his tone. “But thanks for the confidence, Chet. I appreciate it.”
“What can I say? I’m an honest guy. I call it as I see it.”
They made their goodbyes quickly after that, and it wasn’t until he slid into his office chair that Ben realized the thudding noise he was hearing was the sound of his own heart pounding in his ears. He was excited. Here was something new, a potential chance to help out with some real research.
With any luck, the new researcher would be someone reasonable, who’d let him get involved more than just flipping a few switches here and there. He hoped they’d get along…
With a groan, Ben realized that he’d never asked Chet for a name.
It turned out, the new guy was tall. Tall, and younger-looking than Ben had expected, probably just a handful of years older than he was. Dressed in skinny jeans and a red plaid shirt, he slouched apologetically in the doorway like a particularly hipster bean pole, and grinned wryly when Ben greeted him as ‘Samuel’.
“You can just call me Sammy,” he said, extracting his hand from Ben’s enthusiastic handshake. “Uh, sorry I’m late. I got a bit lost, somehow, getting from the lobby to here.”
“Ha!” crowed Troy from somewhere behind Sammy. He stepped around the other man, chuckling. “A little lost, he says. I found him walking in circles ‘round the east wing. Just circlin’ and circlin’ the reactor rooms there.”
“Oh man,” Ben said. “Don’t tell me—the Jensens've started up their wormhole experiments again?”
“You betcha! 'Bout time, too. I've been pickin' up their equipment deliveries for the past six months. By my reckoning, they've enough amplifiers and field generators by now to power a small city!"
“I’m sorry—“ Sammy suddenly cut in. “Wormhole experiments?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Ben reassured him. “The Abaline Project gets all of us at least once. The good news is, Mary’s said that they're working on perfecting the reactor design, so the spatial warping should improve soon.”
“Spatial warping?”
Troy shook his head despairingly. “Man, what do they teach you folks in the big city? Warping, y’know, the thing where spacetime distorts around unstable endpoints? I’m just a security guard and even I know that!”
“Aw, play nice, Troy,” Ben said. “Not everyone was practically raised in this place like you were. The Jensens’ve been pretty hush-hush about their project—stands to reason Sammy’s never heard of a working Einstein-Rosen generator before.”
The man in question blinked, looking somewhat faint. “An Einstein-Rosen…that’d be amazing, if you’re telling the truth.” Sammy squinted at them. “You aren’t pulling my leg here, right? This isn’t a joke? ‘Ha ha, we pranked the new guy into thinking he walked into a wormhole?’”
“Not into a wormhole, dude. Beside one. Uh, wormhole-adjacent.”
Sammy raised his eyebrows, skepticism written clear in every line of his face. Ben patted his shoulder sympathetically. It’s been a few years, but he remembered going through almost the same disbelief when he first arrived at King Falls. “Mary and Tim are great people,” he said. “They’ll explain the whole concept to you, if you ask. This all probably seems a bit overwhelming, but don’t worry. You’ll eventually get used to it all.”
“There’s more?” Sammy demanded, looking vaguely scandalized.
Ben grinned, and spread out his arms. “Welcome to King Falls Laboratories,” he said with a flourish. “The foremost center for extradimensional research.”
Here’s the thing: Ben still wanted to be a world-famous physicist. That hadn’t changed.
But something definitely broke in him when he’d accepted the position as a lab technician at King Falls, a few months out of college with no other job prospects on the horizon. He’d packed his bags, promised his friends he’d keep in touch, and moved to some mountainous middle-of-nowhere to join what had to be the most obscure scientific institute in the country.
Honestly, he hadn’t really had a plan then, beyond getting some lab experience and something to put on his resume. But then, that was before he’d gotten lost in the building and met the Jensens. And then he’d met Merv, and Chet Sebastian, and nearly lost a finger in the cafeteria to runaway quantum foaming, and seen Dr. Rosenblaum neatly slice open the fabric between worlds with all the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel—for a second, only for a second, before the whole structure collapsed in on itself. But that was enough. Ben was hooked.
There were discoveries being made here. Groundbreaking, world-shattering discoveries that somehow never made it past the front door of the institute. Three years later, and he still didn’t know why that was.
That was alright though, because Ben had known by the end of the first week that he was going to stay and be a part of it all.
The sky was different here, among the mountains that sheltered King Falls Laboratories. He’d seen the radio imaging, and seen how curiously quiet the maps here were at all electromagnetic frequencies; it was nothing like anywhere else in the world.
Ben hadn’t yet figured out why that was. The moment he did, he was going to be famous.