Runneth Dry

Published in Schlock! Magazine

"Hole's dried out"

"What do you mean, 'dried out'? Hole's just a hole."

"Yeah, um, it's still...out, though."

"Did you check inside?"

"Yes, yes, we did."

"You need to go way in there, you know."

"We did that, yeah. Came back with nothing."

"Did you try a drone?"

"We tried drones, we tried clamps, we tried periscopic robot arms. We even brought in Kevin, that weird guy from Logistics..."

"Kev the Noodle? Did he get anything?"

"Not a damn thing. So we got to digging. Sent in a few boys with jackhammers, then a couple of excavators, then we blew the rest of the way down, and still got nothing."

"Did you send Kevin in after that?"

"He was the first one in, last guy out."

"Good man, Kevin."

"Point is, there was nothing don there. Just dust and empty air. We found another pocket on a depth reading, but we haven't gauged the distance."

"Well blow it out, then!"

"If we do, the government suits are gonna know. Besides, one of the guys in the prospecting team thinks we're about to hit a sandstone bank. If we keep going, the sinkhole could swallow up HQ in the blink of an eye."

"What if we made a new Hole?"

"What in god's name are you talking about?"

"Simon and I, we didn't...find this hole. We dug it, dack when we were kids. It's how we found the perpetual battery prototype. If we could just..."

"I don't think you made the Hole, sir. It was probably there all along and we've been milking it for 60 years but I think we...what are you doing?"

"I'm ringing Margaret. She ought to know where Simon kept his toy shovels. He loved those things to bits, God bless his soul..."

"Sir, perhaps it would be best if we just...came clean."

"No. No, no no no..."

"If you will let me finish..."

"No. Out of the question."

"Sir, if we make the first move, we can control the narrative. We can spin this in our favor."

"What the hell is so favorable about 'fraud finds tech in Hole'?"

"Try 'young dreamers stumble upon the future.'"

"Try 'high school dropout steals tech he dug up and hires nerds to reverse engineer it.'"

"Try 'tech giant proof of many-worlds theory.'"

"You sure the auditor will buy that? When they decide to contest our patents or start looking into where those R&D subsidies really ended up? Unless you think I bought the board all those Bermuda vacation homes out of my own pocket."

"Oh."

"Damn right, oh. So I suggest you get digging."

"Unless..."

"No more of spin, please."

"Unless it's not just a Hole."

"Of course, it's not just a Hole, damn it. How many Holes can do what this one's been doing?"

"What if it's a wormhole? An Einstein-Rosen Bridge? "

"Uh..."

"What if it's traversable? I mean, where the hell else did all those thingamabobs come from?"

"Then how come nothing else is coming through? How come no one else came through?"

"Could be, whoever's on the other side was treating this like the Voyager. One-way communication, real slow-like, God I don't know but it's worth a shot, isn't it?"

"So what, we just slip through and ask? What if they refuse?"

"We'd still have proven the existence of parallel worlds, get a Nobel, and live off the book royalties. And if push comes to shove, we can always just let the board buy us out."

"DeVries was a bit eager to see me off this company last quarter...you think he'd make a good fall guy?"

"The best, sir."

"How soon do you think we can get a man down there?"

"Kevin should be good to go; it should take a couple more hours if we fit him with an EVA SUIT, for good measure."

"No, might as well rip the bandaid. Get our man down there to get to the bottom of this."

"Thank you, sir. Honestly, I'd taken the liberty of doing so before reaching you. I was hoping you'd agree to this."

"So Kevin..."

"He crossed the threshold an hour ago contacted us through his attached tether. He made contact, sir. Kevin made contact with another universe!"

"So reel him in, then! Let's see what our boy's got for us!"

"We're doing it as we speak. Sir...site-team says Kevin's come back with a message."

"Well send it over!"

"Site-team hasn't even had a chance to quarantine this yet..."

"Then get a damn picture, send it to my phone, beam it to my damn brain, just do it now, goddamn it!"

"Right. I'm bringing it up on the conference monitor and...oh."

OUT OF FREE STUFF. BRING VIRGINS.

"Get DeVries on the phone."

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