It was odd. Entirely odd. Yet not as odd as fascinating. Something occurred that mere moments before he would have thought nigh inconceivable.

A single particle, one quantum particle out of the dozens he had selected for his research, without any prompting of his own, reacted. It vibrated. It shimmered. It defied the bounds of his logic.

The morning started normally enough. The daily routine of self-grooming, attending to the scientific inquires of investors and miscellaneous mail, yet none of it so important as to compare to his work. Efficiency in the name of science.

He had to check. He just had to. Twice. Thrice. One more time. The volt meter read zero. It laid there, this red sliver still on its side pointing to a gaping number. Yes, he finally accepted, most assuredly dead. The generator was not turned on. No electricity stimulated his atom. Well, not any of his.

His atom flashed on and off, at varying intervals. Random but impressive. He suppressed a small chuckle. His body heaved back in his chair. The metal feet scraped back against the linoleum floor. He took quick glances around his surroundings. This was no dream. This was real. His mind exploded with sudden theories and possibilities.

He bolted from his chair and strode across the room to the generator. A massive monolith of cold grey steel sat before him. He checked the nearby dials and started to pull some of the levers. Instantly the dials jumped to appropriate levels, much to his satisfaction. The generator whirred as the magnets and coils worked to power his means of affecting his atom. The dead machine in the midst of the laboratory hummed into life. Making way to a cluttered wood desk, Robert glanced ambitiously at the newly awoken machine safely warming up before rummaging through his files. He tore through his drawers to find a battered and tarnished red leather folder. It was filled to the point it could never be properly closed. The brass clasp swung uselessly, clinking softly against its catch as his removed the folder from the dark hole of his considered fruitless theories. He dove into its contents and seized his calculations on the frequencies of his particle.

He swiftly scanned the mathematics and principles, the pending Lutece Field. What would happen, he hypothesized, if he interacted with the particle while it was flashing, while it defied the laws of his understanding. Would it simply stop, become as still and composed as before denying him its secrets? Disappear into nothingness, into somewhere he could not follow? Transpose itself into another dimension?

I have to act now, he thought. What is happening might not last forever. Will not, perhaps then. But it is now and now was what he could do with.

"Haha," Robert laughed as he ran, carefully avoiding the loose tumble of wires upon the floor, to his seat by the machine. "You, my little quantum particle, you will reveal everything you have to me. I know. I just know it. You will be my valet a new world." An ambitious grin splayed itself across his face. He spread out the calculations on an aluminum table beside him. He knocked away a nearby stack of papers to reveal a small assortment of pens, some leaking, others quite empty. The excited force at which he seized one rolled the others off the table. On the last, nearly empty sheet, he jotted down the first of his data.

"August 23rd, 1891 11:57 AM." He started; the pen scribbling furiously as he composed the beginnings of his findings. "Particle 47 has shown unusual signs of activity. The particle changes frequency without any visible prompting. As the particle changes frequencies, the particle-"

A knock on the doors stopped him abruptly as well as unleashing an immediate torrent of frustration. He turned from his work to the mahogany doors of his laboratory. He scowled.

"Go away. Gerald, escort him out! I will have none of this person's business today or any day from this day whatsoever. A Lutece will not be disturbed," scolded Robert. He gave the doors a moment to reply before engorging himself upon his work once more. He maneuvered towards his machine, now awaiting his commands. The particle was no longer flashing. It was still, a tiny sun-like entity, bathing the innards of his machine in a low, pale light. The light, however as beautiful as it was akin to the soft draping of a white fog about a spring morning, it obscured his observations. As he watched, recording its frequencies and energy levels, it blinked.

Robert paid slight attention, his efforts consumed entirely by recording the gigantic influx of data graphed nearby. It blinked again. Robert casted an eye and wrote faster. Once more, it turned itself off for that fraction of a moment. Robert forced himself away from the view, back to the table for more calculations. The knocking of the doors returned, much more vigorously. Robert proclaimed once more.

"Enough. Gerald, you are my butler, and I expect you to follow my orders the first time round! Whoever that is that needs my attention is not welcome to-day!" Robert dropped everything he held and strode back to the particle. Particle 47 blinked at regular intervals, about once a second, a pattern, not entropy.

Almost like a signal, he concluded. A signal, he mouthed. His brow furled in thought. If it was indeed a signal, then from where? How? Yet, more pressingly of all, by who? His musings never made it farther than that. A thundering crack tore him away from his privacy. The splinters of wood scattered at his feet. Robert stared, mouth gaping at his missing doors. His butler cowered in the corner.

A burly, heavyset man lumbered in. His fist slightly bloodied by the brute force of punching down inches of thick hardwood. Behind this humanoid beast came a smaller, leaner man, dressed in a tallowed tailored great coat and a mustard vest with a crimson necktie. His ebony cane tapped the linoleum. One. Two. Three. The leaner man confronted Robert Lutece, only inches away. His pencil moustache twitched upwards as the lean man made a wry smile. The dark eyes gleamed malevolently behind the shadows. Robert knew him. He stifled a sigh, a boiling frustration, and composed himself, proudly and gentlemanly, letting the lean man meet a tightlipped, straight-faced Lutece.

"Do you have anything to say for yourself, Mr. Lutece?" The lean man spoke, softly, whispering. He took a handkerchief from his coat pocket and started to clean the ruby knob of his cane, idling ignoring Robert as is he expected the reply to come from someone else. As if I would be disarmed by such petty attempts of distraction, Robert seethed.

"My laboratory is not a place for you to polish your broken ego." Robert stated. The lean man shrugged and replaced his handkerchief, slowly, deliberately, yet his gaze never left Robert's. As for Robert, he broke contact for a second, eyeing the large beast outline by the door arch, waiting.

"Oh, always the kidder aren't you? But your laboratory is where I fill my coffers, understand? You have provided me with your patents, your trifling inventions, your dubious theories, and I in turn, provide you with silver. Lots of silver. Quite a lot these past few months," the lean man laughed, shrill and short. Robert stood there, unflappable at the man's attempt at camaraderie. The lean man lifted his arm and motioned the beast forward. His smile melted into an acerbic frown. "Quite a lot Lutece, for nothing. What are you doing here? I expect means for profit. If I'm happy, you get to be too with your damned experiments and numbers. So, do you think I am a happy person right now?"

"No, not you, but the man you gambled with last night though, yes. Yes, he is." The lean man growled. Robert was unfazed by the malcontent. It's a shame, he thought, that this brute never bets his life away. In fact, I might even enjoy being betted away. Robert heard the cracking of knuckles much too clearly for his liking.

"I want money, Lutece."

"It's not my head that will be rolling by the end of this week." Robert fired back, his frustration of abandoning a new quantum prospect burned down his better intentions and tact. The lean man pushed Robert against his machine.

"I own you," the man threatened. Robert gave a snide laugh in return.

"No you don't." The man raised his cane in attack, but left it there, hanging above them. I knew it. I am his only source of income, Robert assured himself. He wouldn't dare. The lean man dropped the cane and instead made a quick motion with his hand. The beast perked to attention.

"Wreck the place, only slightly though." Robert's stone façade shattered. A startling fear gripped his heart. He protested.

"No, what are you doing?" Robert watched helplessly as the beast overturned nearby tables, trampling valuable research and ripping apart folders. Robert confronted the beast only to be pathetically thrown aside. "No!"

"Stop." The lean man pronounced. The beast obeyed and lumbered back over to his master. "You have a week Lutece." They left him in the midst of destruction, shaking and pale. Robert scolded himself. I should have kept my mouth shut. That was all I needed to do. Robert swore under his breath and surveyed the destruction around him. Most salvageable, hopefully. He stirred to his feet and went on recovering his notes. In his duty, Gerald approached.

"Sir, shall I aid you?" Robert sighed.

"No, no. Just get out Gerald. Attend to something," Robert huffed. "Anything but me." Gerald made a shallow bow and exited the laboratory. Robert replaced an aluminum table and piled the better notes upon it. He at last smiled. Most of the notes for the Lutece Field were intact. Nothing he could not replicate with the particle. Robert started and ran towards the machine. The particle was no long aglow.

Robert clenched his fist and rested on the steel coverings. Sullenly, Robert closed his eyes and thought. He always thought, mostly upon possibilities and probabilities. Would he ever get that chance again? A possibility, he thought, but not probable. His hand moved to a knob and he watched. He watched as his particle glowed, only this time by his hands. He repeated the signal, one blink every second. There is always a possibility, no matter how slight. He tried this for a time he did not count. There must be. At last, he stopped and the particle lay as comatose as before.

The laboratory was set back to working order, crudely as many papers still littered the grounds. A dull moonlight filtered in from the shuttered windows. A dim lamplight illuminated his hands as they replaced the tattered research of the morning. While his hands busied themselves with menial work, his mind set off entertaining an idea that had plagued him since the inconceivable discovery. What makes it possible for a particle that had been observed for months to be considered relatively stable to act so irrationally? If nothing affected it, then what made it change? To change, it must be affected by something.

"But that something is not here," Robert whispered. "Then it must be somewhere else, wherever else is. So where else is my particle?" He had read about it so long ago, a theory that everything in the universe was the creation of a single electron. That everything was connected in such a way, protons and neutrons created the atom cores yet shared among all of them was a single electron defying space and time to be everywhere and everytime at once. Robert scoffed and lay back in his chair. His gaze moved to the machine that housed his particle. If his particle worked like the single electron, where else was his particle? Who else had found it?

Could he contact this person? Robert held that idea on the tip of his tongue. I would think it highly probable. The laboratory once more hummed to life and Robert checked the gauges on the generator. Soon particle 47 flickered on, dispelling the darkness in its cage. He had an idea, an absurd idea. Morse code. It could work. It must.

It was a short message, clear and straight to the point. "I am Robert Lutece. Who are you?"

x-x

It's something different, a fancy really. I hope I do justice.