Shadows.(Kevin Hughes) Author’s Note: This story is Fiction, the setting and experiments are not. SnoLab is a permanent facility set deep in a mine located in Sudbury, Ontario. Originally a deep shaft was given to Scientists to find Neutrinos…those hard to capture particles that rarely interact with normal matter. Billions of Neutrinos bombard your body ever single second. Without once reacting with any atoms in your body. But they do interact with Heavy Water that is shielded by more than a mile of solid rock. One a Nobel Prize was Awarded for research carried out in the deep mine shaft, it was made a permanent laboratory to study Neutrinos. It was renamed: SnoLab. And it is still in operation to this day.

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Leslie headed down into the mine. Whistling softly as the one person elevator took him down the main shaft. His mind supplying the words to go with the whistle:

“2100 meters to go…2100 meters to go…if one of those meters should happen to fall…no more meters to go. 1900 meters to go..1900 meters to go…if one of those meters should happen to fall…no more meters to go.”

Surface dwellers (the term he used for people who couldn’t go down into the Earth) were frightened to even go in a cave, let alone a mine. Most people panicked at the thought of tons of rock hanging over their heads…or the darkness. If you turn off your headlamp…and don’t turn on the tunnel lights, the blackness is beyond description.

You can’t just not see your hand in front of your face…you can’t see anything. Along with the Blackness …comes the heat. Most caves are cold. A steady 10 degrees Celsius ( Fifty for those of you in the USA). Back in the eighteen hundreds, some lucky people built their homes over deep caverns, allowing the cool air to flood their homes with Nature’s air conditioning. Those are the caves that most tourists experience. Mines…are different. Once you get a kilometer (or more) deep into the Earth the temperature rises dramatically. At 2100 or so Meters down…well, the heat is Life Threatening.

It can vary from right around 40 C to as high as 51 C…and if water comes out of the rock, it can scald bare skin in a heartbeat. Some of that water even comes out as steam…and then you are in real trouble. Go any deeper and you need some kind of mechanical air conditioning or venting. Being caught underground in a steam filled cauldron is not the way most people want to leave the planet.

Leslie continued to whistle while he head finished the song for him:

“100 meters to go …100 meters to go, if none of those meters should happen to fall I can get to work and go home tonight.”

The elevator clanged to a halt just as the last of the song faded from Leslie’s mind. He spoke into the darkness:

“Well, the first part is done. Time to go to work.”

He headed to the huge tanks that held fresh water in the outer shell…and heavy water (Deuterium Oxide- D2O).

Author’s Note:

Heavy water ice will sink to the bottom of fresh water because of the extra neutrinos. But Humans are much more buoyant in Heavy Water than in Fresh Water because it is ten percent more dense than fresh water. You can drink some Heavy Water without any discomfort, but more than a few ounces will make you dizzy as it alters the fluid in the inner ear. Heavy water, contrary to the uninformed general Public…is not radioactive. It is stable.

Leslie stripped down to his swimsuit. Put on his goggles and snorkel an entered the Outer Shell to begin cleaning all of the sensitive apparatus lining the walls. Once he was done with the Fresh Water Outer Shell, then he had to swim in the inner tank filled with Heavy Water…then lower the water level to reach all the parts of the Sphere. Then, once the maintenance was done..he connected the Heavy Water Tank to the Refill Storage Tank, filled it back up. Did the same to the Fresh Water tank…and he was done. It would be two more years until he had to service the Twin Tanks again.

He loved his job. The quiet. The glitter of the tiny mirrors reflected in the water as he bounced about like phosphoresce in deep sea creatures made him smile.

He was alone. And loved it.

Until….

At first he thought he must have accidentally drunk some Heavy Water that seeped into his snorkel. Because he got a bit dizzy. Then he got disoriented. Then…he thought he was hallucinating. For looking back at him through the crystalline structure of the inner chamber…were dozens of people with their faces plastered up against the chamber wall. Everyone of them with a shocked expression on their face.

He fainted.

At the Surface, dozens of alarms rang all at once. Technicians and Scientists stared in horror at the Video from the Capture Chamber. Leslie was floating face down in the inner chamber..and was either drowning or unconscious. The Rescue team descended with grim faces. 2100 meters down was a long way to go at three or four kilometers an hour. The cage (as everyone working on the Project called it) could be hauled up at better than forty miles an hour in an emergency…but it can only be lowered at slow speed.

And so they waited with grim faces and deep dark thoughts as they went down through the rock. They knew from experience that they would change from a Rescue Team to a Recovery Team when they hit the Chambers. They all knew Leslie…and the burden of a funeral weighed down any hint of conversation.

Each 100 meters was marked by a large yellow number…and a “ding” from the accelerator control. The numbers were to small, and the ding’s to slow to encourage any sign of hope. Down they went.

Leslie opened his eyes. He was on his back in the Heavy water. Somehow, somebody…or some thing…had rotated his body so he was no longer floating face down in the heavy water. He lay on his back looking up. He almost panicked. There were those same faces plastered against the ceiling looking back at him with some concern. They were people. Well…almost.

Leslie smiled. Then he felt a tear form in the corner of his eye, for when he smiled he saw the relief on all the people on the other side of the glass container…some were smiling back, others were hugging each other, some collapsed in joy. Leslie simply waved at them. They waved back.

And then…it got interesting.

Author’s Note: Dark Energy and Dark Matter are misnomers. For the Majority of Matter (and energy) in our Universe is not “Dark” it is transparent. Five times the amount of “Dark Matter” exists than the measly fifteen percent of matter we call “Normal Matter”. Same with Dark Energy…it is most of the Energy in our Universe and it is equally dense in all SpaceTime.

“Dark Matter" can’t be seen by us under normal circumstances - nor can Dark Energy be felt, seen, or heard. Normal matter interacts with Light (electro magnetic Radiation) …Dark matter…does not. As far as the Dark Energy and Dark Matter are concerned, we are the Invisible Stuff in their Universe. For they can’t see, or interact with us in any way. Just hints showing them that something…is out there. Us.

Think about Dark Matter or Energy like being out in the woods. You hear a sound, you see some animals run, and you see birds take flight…but you don’t see what caused them to startle. Then you creep forward on the path only to see huge paw prints in the mud. You know some big animal, a bear, or maybe a mountain lion must have cut across the trail in front of you. But you never saw it…but you know it was there. You could tell by the reactions of the woodland creatures and the footprint in the mud. But you never saw what caused all the ruckus. That is how Scientist know about Dark Energy and Matter. It leaves clues.

And now…back to the story.

Leslie didn’t know what to do. If he was hallucinating …well it was a doggone good hallucination. He could see the people on the other side. And they were people. They looked just like…well, us. Some women, some men, all adults. They were gesturing at Leslie with delight. He just kept smiling and waving. He had no clue what to do…or say. So he said the first thing he could think of:

“Hello, my name is Leslie.”

And he pointed to his own chest.

Immediately all of the people on the other side of the Crystalline glass gestured back. Each pointing to their own chest and repeating a word or a couple of words. He pointed to his ears and shook his head:

“I can’t hear you!”

He could see their mouths moving, but no sound was coming out. They could see his mouth moving, but he didn’t think they heard him either. It was eerie. For they looked like people made out of bubbles, or hollow crystal of the finest craftsman ship. Finally his mind came up with what they looked like: Crystal Shadows. He could see right through them, but their form was clearly outlined. They were wearing clothes, but he couldn’t see any color…just the bubble like texture of their shapes.

One of the Shadow People pushed some of the other folks aside. She bent down and did something. Then she held up what Leslie could only assume was a piece of paper. She pushed it against the wall of the chamber on her side. She pointed to the sign and then to herself. Leslie almost fainted…again. Clearly printed were the words:

“I am Marry.”

Leslie reached for his grease pencil and grease tablet. He quickly wrote:

“I am Leslie!”

Everyone on the other side of the Chamber jumped with glee. Soon names were plastered all over their side of the Chamber. Then the woman who called herself “Mary” made everyone on her side stop writing their names. Instead they wrote questions”

“Are you Human?”

Leslie laughed even as he scribbled (he hoped legibly) on his grease board:

“I was going to ask you the same thing!”

He could see all the laughter on the other side…the side where the shadows lived.

“Where are you from?”

Leslie answered quickly:

“Earth. A place called: Canada.”

There was complete shock on the other side of the glass chamber. Then with a trembling hand…Mary wrote slowly and deliberately:

“WE live on Earth ….in Canada.”

Leslie responded by instinct…not really thinking it through:

“WTF?”

The people on the other side dropped their puzzled looks and exchanged them for laughter. Mary wrote out their communal feelings:

“Yeah, WTF?”

Two hours went by. Leslie both heard and saw the Klaxon and Light go off as the Rescue Team entered the Laboratory. He yelled out to them:

“Kill the lights! Now, turn them all off! Do it now!”

Everyone looked at Leslie waving and yelling inside the tank…but they heard him. Captain Mayer signaled his Team…the lights went out. Leslie was lightly illuminated inside the inner chamber. He yelled out to them all:

“Strip to your Civies and climb in here with me…I have some people I want you to meet!”

“Is he crazy? Maybe he drank to much heavy water?”

Captain Mayer looked at his assistant…Amanda.

“No, he seems just a bit excited. Drinking that stuff will make you so dizzy you can’t speak….or stand up. He really wants us to climb in there with him.”

“Then let’s go! I always wanted to see what it was like to float in Heavy Water.”

With that, Amanda dropped her tanks and medical kit, and stripped down to her sports bra and shorts…and climbed in through the opening. She tried to dive, but the heavy water pushed her back to the surface in an instant. She sputtered and then turned…her mouth opened but no words came out.

She saw them all. They all wore a stunned expression on their faces. She yelled out loud:

“My god, they look like crystal shadows of Human Beings!”

Leslie smiled. Those were his exact words too.

Then a second splash spoiled the moment, as Captain Mayer dropped in the chamber behind them. He treaded water in a semi-circle unto he too faced the shadowy forms on the other side of the chamber wall. His mouth just hung open. A third Splash brought the last of the rescue team, Leo…into the chamber. The four of them floating in awe as they looked out of the chamber into a room full of bubble formed human beings staring back at them.

Leslie took out his grease board and started writing, putting down a name…and an arrow the pointing with his hand.

“This is Amanda (point)…this is Captain Mayer (point) and this is Leo ( Point) …they are my friends.”

Laughter broke out inside the chamber as the other side of the wall became a fury of activity as name after name was plastered against that side of the chamber.

Amanda took the grease pencil from Leslie and wrote out her first question for them:

“What do we look like to you? To us, you look like crystal shadows made out of bubble stuff.”

Mary…first to think of writing as a way of communication wrote back words that became famous:

“You look Beautiful!”

And so it began. Leslie became the first Normal Matter Ambassador. Amanda the First secretary. And Captain Mayer and Leo became the head of the new Institute of shared knowledge. Known colloquially as: “The Shadow Institute.”

We always thought that Aliens would come from Outer Space…and another Planet. Only to find out they live here…on Earth. Five times as many of them, as us. Five times. Yet their world is pristine. We are learning from them daily. The chamber is bigger now. Filled with three heavy water inner meeting rooms, and three outer shells for fresh water.

Sweden and Germany have begun building their own meeting rooms, deep below the surface. And the one in Antartica is cored through solid ice. We remain but shadows to them, and they to us. We can’t interact except through writing…but it is enough. We are learning…and they are too. Pictures don’t work. Our light just goes right through them…and they can’t scan us either.

Only in a Heavy Water chamber can you see them…or they…us. The handful of people who have seen them all say the same thing when asked what they look like:

“They are beautiful shadows."

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