It's not a normal way to start a story. But the Prophet Yeap wrote: the poor man hands down his belt... his watch. Timothy, let's call him Timmy, was raised by his father, International InterFaith commissioner Booker Mormon, to be ecumenical and fluent in humanistic logic, in the art of debate.
But one day, Dad left Timmy to go on a soul fishing trip deep into the Kuiper belt. He didn't say why or when he'd be back. And so he left his son a $20 woven stretch leather belt and his $90 Casio Edifice.
His mother held out a travel cloak that belonged to her husband in his youth as an IF pastor. He put it on, tied the belt round his waist and buckled on the shiny silver-black watch.
"One last thing, Timmy," said his mother, "This was your father's pen"
It was a much scuffed plastic-steel Parker Jotter with black lumpy ink supposedly made in France. It's clip was shaped like an arrow. He slid it over and into his tunic pocket.
His mother kissed him on the forehead before he left. Truthfully, he didn't know where he was going or why he was leaving. When someone is given option to go anywhere and everywhere, then why not stop and think? And what was soul fishing anyway?
Timmy started off down the gravely road, boots kicking up loose stones. He walked a long time, not feeling the noonday heat as he was shielded by the pastor's cloak. Then he suddenly realized he hadn't brought his IF Bible. He checked the cloak pockets and found only a single ration of manna-filled dorayakis. He bit his lip and carried on.
There was work going on in the city but the city was a sleazy, dangerous place -even for a pastor wannabe. Are they thrown off the deep end? Not told? Questions he couldn't answer.
"Hey," came a shout over his shoulder, "InterFaith?"
"Somewhat -yes"
"Come, there's work for you -and reward from the Lord"
*They think I'm a pastor -oh no*
"This is Stephen"
A lanky slender man in a polo neck sweater reached out his hand and Timmy shook it.
"Pastor, what we're trying to do here is create a small singularity"
"It will exist for a split second then disappear, the way it's made"
"And this is antimatter"
"It will be passed through the singularity, but we're not sure..."
"What of?" Asked Timmy.
"That it might destroy the universe"
"We've brought you here to okay the experiment"
They brought him to the location of the perpetual piledriver.
"As you can see, a mass is being pounded by itself, mechanically"
Timmy looked over the machine. It consisted of a flywheel whose edge encountered a folding mechanism that bent a foil of tungsten. It wasn't infinitely long or wide but it was getting denser every turn.
Stephen interrupted his thoughts, "This works because the rotation of a circle is equivalent to continuous acceleration. Plus the density of the tungsten sheet expands the flywheels on both sides of the wad"
"How do you drop in the antimatter?"
Stephen wrung his hands, "It won't be easy to get perfect but at worst, there will be a small explosion -destroying the research block," he flung his head back and laughed out loud.
"Does antimatter have time?"
"Space time?"
"Yes..."
"Space is the past, space-time is simply the present, and antimatter is the future"
Stephen looked sullen, "I suppose you won't approve. We know FIST will clamp down hard on us when you tell them"
"If you mean you're trying to time travel, to open the door to another dimension, the standard InterFaith doctrine is that it is unlawful"
"Nobody ever explained it to me"
"Every soul alive, with the breath of the Spirit, has a future already prepared. A ball of antimatter surpasses hope, having nothing prepared. The future is what God makes it"
"We have every sensor ever invented trained on the future -of what it will be like from now till the end of the Universe. We have to press forward"
The 1kg of tungsten had by then become smaller as a speck of dust that might be invisible afloat in the air they were breathing. Robotic arms positioned the antimatter below the drop point and the flywheels separated.
They held their breaths. It sounded like a pin falling in a sound chamber.
"Oh no!" Shouted Stephen, cowering. But Timmy walked over to where the sound came from. He picked up the fallen object with a field yoke hanging on the wall.
It was like a flame that gurgled garbled words and flashed forms organic and contrived as it flicked in every direction.
"Shall we talk to it?"
"What's your religion?"
"Yarrrwhh..." came the reply, "Looouhm!"
"Stephen, how do you extinguish the future?"
"By merging with it"
"FIST will be notified"
"Yes, Pastor," he sighed.
"There's more," said the one who called him. On a television screen, video from the Kuiper belt streamed live, of Booker Mormon's Albatross light schooner approaching the location of Biblical Sheol -the grave where souls of the lost gathered.
"Hell is a physical location in the solar system," said Booker, "Space may be a vacuum but it isn't silent"
Timmy knew then what his Father was about to do: to bring back Prophet Yeap. Then send the blessed man into the spark of future.
"I'm Han," the caller introduced himself, "When Yeap enters the future, all possible futures will be won for God"
"Obviously, you're wondering why we would do this," said Stephen, "God has failed -don't you feel it?"
Alice had prepared a space for Timmy to eat and sleep. She was a deaf mute serving girl who had slit-like eyes behind overlarge Graphene polymer glasses.
"Thank you," he said to her. She nodded, reading his lips, then disappeared somewhere into the cavernous experimentation block.
Timmy lay in his cott, sucking on a sliver broken off his manna dorayaki. He needed no other nourishment though a paper cup of water stood on the table beside.
He rolled his pastor's cloak into a pillow and fingered his father's belt. It was well worn but still integritous, those interlocking strips of reinforced hide. He checked his father's watch, with its strange 10 minute chronograph function. It was 9pm. He turned onto his side and sighed. His first day away from home.