| Forbidden Knowledge |
At the age of twenty-two, Dr. Joseph Cozan was already widely known throughout the field of physics as the greatest mind since Einstein. At twenty-five he won his first Nobel Prize for his work in Unified Field Theory. He discovered a way to unify gravity with the three other fundamental forces. He won a second time when he was thirty-eight for finding a way to isolate a single quark, which was widely believed to be impossible. Afterwards he took a job at Berkley and was told he could work on whatever he liked and that the university would give him all the funding they possibly could. He started working on an idea of his called a Gluon Microscope, which would allow him to see inside an atom. Within the first few months he had gathered all the funding he needed and designed the heart of the machine. He nicknamed it The Epiphany. After a few more months he even found a way to control the gluon flow. These gluons, one of the smallest and most mysterious particles known to man, would allow him to see the quarks inside the protons, inside the atoms, inside all the matter we see around us, to the very core of the universe. However, every time he thought he was almost there something else would come up. He had troubles with everything from the gluon generation filament, to the quantum tunneling equation (in which he found a flaw and spent two years reworking). Fifteen years later, it still didn't work. He had made steps forward, but still couldn't get his new microscope going. At Fifty-three he looked old and disheveled. He never seemed to smile anymore and was nearly always late for work. He was the complete opposite of the dashing young scientist who won two Noble Prizes. All of the men who used to think of him as the greatest scientist of his time had lost faith in him. They said he'd lost it in his old age. He could hear their whispers about him as he past them in the hallways in the morning, and he could feel their stares when he ate lunch on campus. It bothered him more than the microscope not working. Just because he had the determination to see this through to the end they thought he was a quack. Sometimes it frustrated him so much he just wanted to quit, but Joseph Cozan never quit anything in his life. "Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not worth doing," he'd say. On the fifteenth anniversary of his first day at Berkley he was called to a meeting before the University Finance Board. The University was sick of giving money to a scientist the rest of the world called a "has-been". They'd given him over a billon dollars in the last fifteen years and he had nothing to show for it. They wanted proof it would work, and they wanted it now. Dr. Cozan tried to explain to them the work he had done, things he had sacrificed, and the advancements he'd made. But he was never very good at persuading people. When he realized he wasn't going to get anywhere with the board he begged for one last night to work on his machine. One last chance to give them proof it will work. They gave him twenty-four hours. He had until 10:30 the next morning. He rushed back to his lab. He began rifling through his papers, running three and four computers at a time, and furiously pounding out equations. If this was his last chance to get The Epiphany going, he was going to put everything he had into it. The hours whittled away as he cursed himself for every mistake he found. He re-checked fifteen years worth of work in fifteen hours. Finally, exhausted and half crazed, he read the last line of coding and fixed the last mistake. Dr. Cozan was positive he'd thought of everything. Every last variable was accounted for, every computer bug worked out, and everything that could possibly go wrong already had. He walked towards The Epiphany and began the start up sequence. He flicked switches, turned dials, and pushed buttons like a scientist gone mad. This was his last chance and somehow he knew it was going to work this time. You could see it in his eyes. After years of waiting, he got an image on his monitor. The first glimpse of a world no human has ever seen. As he reached to focus the gluon beam so he could see the image clearly, a bright flash bathed the room in light. At first he thought the fission reactor overloaded and his life was over, but then, in the light, a form began to appear. The form was stepping out of the light and as it came closer Dr. Cozan was able to make out features. It was a human. It was a man. He stepped out of the light and Dr. Cozan got a good look at him. He was completely naked. His hair was long and wavy and jet black. It hung around his shoulders like a cape. His skin was a dark tan and had the brilliance of a precious metal. But, it was his eyes that Dr. Cozan couldn't look away from. His eyes were dark, yet seemed to have a light of their own. As Dr. Cozan stared into those eyes he nearly felt at peace and could have stared into them forever, until the being spoke and snapped him out of it. "I am the lord your God. The creator of all things, the beginning and the end." As He spoke Dr. Cozan could see the words leave His mouth, as though reality itself bent around the words. He could feel every word in his chest and head. "What do you want with me?" Dr Cozan asked the being in front of him. "I am here to ask you not to turn that dial. I am a benevolent God, Joseph. I gave you, my people, free will and intelligence. I made you in my image, as a piece of myself, but I underestimated you." "I don't understand. What does any of this have to do with me?" "You are about to make a step your race was never meant to make. You are about to give your race the power to destroy your universe, all that I have created, even me. You are a great man; one of the greatest minds humanity has been given. Others have had the ability, none have had the determination; but I must ask you to stop." "I mean no disrespect, Lord, but why should I stop? We could have destroyed our own planet long ago and yet we haven't. What is the difference?" "I am not an omnipotent God, Joseph. That is an impossible concept. Reality bends to my will, but even I cannot tell what the future will bring. If I did why should I ever let anything happen?" "Then why not give us a chance? Perhaps this is just the advance humanity needs to move out of its aggregation and greed." "Joseph, I created all you see in seven days. I gave you a light, I gave you land, I gave you beauty, and I gave you curiosity. Perhaps that was my mistake. I didn't explain all of this for there was no need to. What I said the universe obeyed, that's all there was to it. Yet it still took me seven days to speak the words that brought all of this into existence. But, I never thought you would ask the questions of the world that you did and when you asked, who was to answer but me? I'm tired now. I've been creating and answering questions for the last thousand years." "Are you telling me you made everything up as you went along?" |