Chinelo crouched over her workstation, brow furrowed as she adjusted the magnetic field coils. Her tiny lab, really just a repurposed storage room in her apartment, was cluttered with salvaged equipment: oscilloscopes, power supplies, a makeshift particle accelerator cobbled together from scraps bought at Abuja’s tech market.
For years, Chinelo had balanced her obsession with her teaching job at the Open University, sacrificing weekends, relationships, and sleep for the sake of one dream. She wanted to prove that wormholes could be generated at a subatomic level under controlled conditions.
That dream materialised, literally, as a faint ripple in the vacuum chamber. Holding her breath, she leaned closer as it expanded into a shimmering point of light, no larger than a grain of sand.
Her laptop beeped, flooding the screen with data: gravitational spikes, quantum fluctuations, readings that defied explanation. Chinelo grabbed her recorder, voice trembling.
“Experiment 37-Alpha. Wormhole successfully generated. Diameter approximately 0.3 millimetres. Duration stable for thirty seconds and counting.”
The shimmer pulsed. Then, from the lab’s battered speakers, a voice crackled.
“Chinelo. Can you hear me?”
She froze. The voice was hers.
“Hello?” she whispered.
“Good. It worked,” the voice said, calm but laced with exhaustion. “I don’t have much time, so listen carefully. Your wormhole connects to my world. It’s collapsing.”
Chinelo’s mind raced. A collapsing universe? How? Why?
“Who are you?” she asked, though deep down, she already knew.
“I’m you,” the voice replied. “From another version of reality. And I need your help.”
✦ ✦ ✦
For days, Chinelo analysed the data, barely eating or sleeping. The wormhole appeared intermittently, each time transmitting fragmented messages.
The other Chinelo described a world spiralling toward entropy, its laws of physics unravelling.
My world is dark and cold. The stars are gone. The sky is silent.
At first, Chinelo focused on the science. How had the wormhole formed? Why their two universes? Could it be stabilised?
But over time, the messages shifted.
“You still have time,” the other Chinelo said during one transmission. “Time to fix things. Time to live.”
“What do you mean?” Chinelo asked.
“You’re always in this lab. Always chasing the next breakthrough. But when it all ends… what was it really for?”
The words cut deep. She thought of the friends she’d pushed away, the family gatherings she’d missed, the life she’d postponed. All for this.
But this wasn’t the time for regrets. Another universe was dying.
✦ ✦ ✦
One night, the wormhole flared brighter than ever, casting the lab in molten gold. The other Chinelo’s voice came through, frantic.
“It’s happening. The collapse is accelerating. I need you to—”
The connection crackled violently.
“What? What do you need me to do?” Chinelo shouted.
“Open… stabilise…”
The transmission fizzled into static.
Chinelo stared at the wormhole, heart hammering. Stabilising it would demand far more power than her cobbled-together lab could supply. She’d need access to the university’s particle collider. Risking that could shut her down permanently.
But doing nothing wasn’t an option.
✦ ✦ ✦
The next morning, she stood before the university’s head of physics, data clutched tightly in her hands.
“This is groundbreaking,” the professor said, flipping through the notes. “But you’re asking for access to a multi-billion-naira facility based on an unproven theory.”
“It’s not unproven,” she insisted. “I’ve already generated the wormhole. I just need more power to stabilise it.”
The professor sighed heavily. “If this fails…”
“It won’t fail,” Chinelo said, even though doubt gnawed at her.
✦ ✦ ✦
Three days later, she stood inside the collider control room, nerves frayed, heart pounding. The facility thrummed with energy. Magnets aligned. Systems primed.
She activated the collider. The wormhole bloomed into existence, larger now, its edges shimmering like liquid metal.
The other Chinelo’s voice crackled through the speakers, faint but clear.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered. “Even now… with everything ending… it’s beautiful.”
Chinelo’s fingers flew over the controls. “I’m going to stabilise it. Just hold on.”
The collider roared. The floor trembled as surges of energy flooded the system. The wormhole expanded, its light saturating the room, brilliant and blinding.
For one breathless moment, it held.
Then the alarms blared. Red lights flashed. The wormhole’s edges twisted, fraying like torn silk.
“It’s not enough,” the other Chinelo said, her voice calm, almost peaceful. “You can’t save me.”
“No!” Chinelo shouted, adjusting the settings desperately. “I can fix this!”
“Chinelo…” the voice whispered, fading. “It’s oka—”
The wormhole collapsed in a blinding flash.
When the light faded, the lab was eerily silent. Chinelo stared at the empty space, the silence roaring in her ears.
She had failed.
Or had she?
Among the final data logs, she found a set of coordinates. Numbers and equations she didn’t recognise. A final transmission buried in the noise.
The other Chinelo had left her something. A message. A clue.
Chinelo picked up her pen, heart still pounding. Grief and hope warred inside her chest.
She opened her notebook, copied the coordinates carefully, and smiled. Small but fierce.
The experiment wasn’t over.
Not yet.