Truth

The setting sun bathed The Villains’ Lair in hues of orange and gold, the floating city’s sleek, metallic surface gleaming against the deep blue of the ocean. On the observation deck, a gentle breeze whispered through the air, but it wasn’t enough to cut through the tension that hovered between them.

Sara leaned against the railing, the sharp lines of the city stretching out behind her. “So, you really believe there’s an absolute truth out there?” she asked, her voice teasing but challenging. Her eyes glinted with the confidence of someone who had just laid out an argument she was sure would be hard to topple. “After everything we’ve learned, you still think it’s that simple?”

Felix stood beside her, his arms crossed, looking out over the water. He took a breath before answering, knowing full well where this was heading. “I’m not saying everything’s simple. But yeah, I think there are some things that are just… undeniable. Fixed, no matter how much we think we can change them.”

She tilted her head, her dark hair catching the fading light as she studied him. “Even after studying quantum mechanics? You’re still clinging to that? When we can literally alter outcomes just by observing something?”

He finally turned to face her, his expression calm but with a spark in his eyes. “You’re talking about observation on a quantum level, Sara. Subatomic particles that change because we’re looking at them. But that’s not the whole picture.”

She smiled, sensing the challenge, her tone light but with a hint of provocation. “It’s enough of the picture to prove my point. Everything is relative. Nothing is fixed. Our intentions and energy influence what happens. That’s just how it works.”

Felix uncrossed his arms and leaned on the railing beside her. “You’re taking relativity too far,” he said, his voice steady. “Sure, on a micro level, particles do weird things when we observe them. But look at the macro. Look at the stars.”

Sara raised an eyebrow, intrigued but still skeptical. “Stars?”

“Yeah.” He pointed up, gesturing at the darkening sky. “Our planet’s spinning. The sun is moving, and our galaxy is hurtling through space. Everything’s in motion relative to something else. That’s true. But it doesn’t mean there aren’t absolutes.”

She leaned in slightly, her curiosity piqued despite herself. “Go on.”

Felix’s voice grew more animated as he explained. “Take Einstein’s theory. E=MC². It’s a universal truth. The speed of light is constant no matter where you are in the universe or how fast you’re moving. It’s an absolute.”

Sara gave him a knowing look. “But isn’t that still relative to the speed of light? It’s just another form of relativity.”

He shook his head, his expression serious but not harsh. “No, that’s the point. You could take two signalers and send them in opposite directions from Earth, or a spaceship. If they both shine a light at the same time toward an observer in the middle, the observer would see the light coming from the direction they’re traveling toward first, even though both lights were emitted at the same moment. The speed of light is fixed, but our motion changes how we experience it. It proves that while things are relative to each other, there’s still a universal truth behind it.”

Her lips parted slightly as she processed his words, and for a brief moment, the intellectual sparring shifted into something more intimate, something heavier. The weight of their conversation seemed to fall away, leaving only the tension between them, the energy sparking in the narrow space that separated their bodies.

“You think that proves there’s some kind of… truth out there? Something that can’t be bent or changed by perspective?” she asked, her voice quieter now, almost unsure.

Felix looked at her, and for the first time that evening, he let the conversation dip into something deeper, something less about physics and more about them. “I think… we need something to be absolute. Otherwise, what’s the point? If everything’s relative, then what are we even standing on? What’s keeping us anchored?”

Sara’s gaze flickered away, her thoughts spinning. For so long, she had reveled in the idea that reality was malleable, that everything could shift based on energy, intention, and perception. But now, Felix’s words planted a seed of doubt, a question she hadn’t been willing to face.

“Maybe,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “Or maybe we just create our own truths. Maybe that’s the only thing keeping us anchored—our belief in something that feels real.”

Felix stepped closer, the space between them charged with both the unresolved argument and something more primal, more personal. “But maybe,” he murmured, his eyes locked on hers, “there are some things that don’t need to be created. They just… are.”

For a moment, the world seemed to pause around them. The ocean stretched endlessly into the horizon, the sky darkened into twilight, and The Villains’ Lair, with all its innovation and ambition, felt far away, as if they were the only two people on that island. The debate about truth lingered, unresolved, but neither of them cared in that moment.

It wasn’t about who was right or wrong. It was about what lay beneath the words, in the glances they shared and the spaces between them, charged with the potential of something they both feared and craved to understand.

Sara met his gaze one last time, her lips curving into a small, reluctant smile. “Maybe. But I’m not conceding.”

Felix grinned, stepping back slightly, though the tension between them remained. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

They stood there, side by side, the argument still hovering between them, but now, it felt like something else entirely. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and the stars began to twinkle in the vast sky above them—small, distant, but undeniably real.

Weeks had passed since their conversation on the deck of The Villains’ Lair, but the debate about truth—absolute or relative—had been simmering beneath the surface ever since. It lingered in their passing conversations, in the way they teased each other, and especially in the way Felix found himself thinking about Sara when she wasn’t around.

Tonight, though, was different. For the first time, he’d asked her to join him at a lecture. Not just any lecture—one by his favorite mathematician, Dr. Patrick Krell, who had, supposedly, cracked the theoretical framework for wormholes. Felix couldn’t help but feel a little nervous, not about the lecture itself, but about whether this counted as a date. He wasn’t sure if Sara saw it that way, but the fact that she’d agreed made his heart beat a little faster.

They sat side by side in the lecture hall, the sleek, modern room filled with brilliant minds from the floating city and beyond. Dr. Krell stood at the front, his voice reverberating with excitement as he explained the equations on the screen behind him.

“It’s all about folding space-time,” Krell said, his hands animated as he described the mechanics of wormholes. “A wormhole is essentially a tunnel with zero distance, connecting two distant points in space. What’s revolutionary here is that we’ve proven it’s mathematically possible to move these endpoints.”

Felix stole a glance at Sara. Her focus was intense, her eyes reflecting the glow of the screen as Krell continued to explain the implications of manipulating these spatial endpoints. She was beautiful when she was thinking—though, to be honest, she was always beautiful to him.

After the lecture, they walked out of the hall into the evening air. Felix could feel the anticipation of the conversation to come, and he invited her to a small dinner spot on the quieter side of the Lair, one with a view of the ocean and the stars just beginning to blink into view.

As they sat down, the tension of the last few weeks seemed to melt away, replaced with a comfortable rhythm between them.

“That was impressive,” Sara said, breaking the silence as she set her napkin in her lap. “I mean, theoretically creating a wormhole with movable endpoints? That’s the kind of thinking that could change everything.”

Felix nodded, still buzzing from the excitement of the lecture. “Yeah, Krell’s been working on that for years. It’s insane to think we might be able to manipulate space-time like that.”

Sara smiled, and it was the kind of smile that told him she had something on her mind. “I couldn’t stop thinking about our last discussion during the lecture.”

Felix raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” she said, her fingers idly tracing the rim of her water glass. “You remember how we were talking about whether everything’s relative? Well, the idea of moving the endpoints of a wormhole kind of throws that into chaos, doesn’t it? If you can move the exit and entrance of a wormhole, it means the very concept of location is warped. It’s all… relative.”

Felix chuckled, but his mind was already racing. “I was thinking about that too, actually.”

She looked up, her eyes curious. “Really?”

“Yeah.” He leaned forward, his voice soft but filled with excitement. “During the lecture, I was thinking about this idea. What if you had the two wormhole gates really close together, and then you ran a large ring through both of them?”

Sara tilted her head, listening intently.

“The ring,” Felix explained, “would go through both gates and extend outside. Now, imagine you started spinning the gate around the ring, like a hula hoop. If you could spin it fast enough, you’d hit relativistic speeds, and that could theoretically move the gates in time, right?”

Her eyes lit up. “But the ring would hold the gates together.”

“Exactly.” Felix smiled. “Since the ring is passing through both gates, it creates a connection. They can’t move independently because the ring would keep them locked in place. So, while you’re warping space and maybe even time, those gates would still be stuck together. They’d be at a fixed location in space, regardless of the relative movement of everything around them.”

Sara was quiet for a moment, her mind clearly working through the concept. “So what you’re saying is that, even if we’re moving at relativistic speeds and warping everything, that connection—the ring—would hold the wormholes in an absolute location?”

Felix nodded. “Yeah. It’s like proving that there is something absolute, even when everything else seems relative.”

Her smile deepened, and she shook her head lightly, impressed. “That’s… kind of brilliant.”

He grinned, feeling a rush of satisfaction. “Well, I have my moments.”

Sara looked out at the ocean for a moment before turning back to him. “So, in the end, both of us were right, weren’t we?”

Felix leaned back, pretending to consider her words. “Maybe. Or maybe I was just more right.”

She laughed, a soft, melodic sound that sent a shiver down his spine. “You wish.”

Their food arrived, but the conversation didn’t stop. As they ate, they continued to bounce ideas off each other, their intellectual back-and-forth mingling with the unmistakable chemistry that had been building between them for weeks. There was something electric in the air between them tonight, the debate about truth serving as the backdrop for something more, something deeper that neither of them had yet put into words.

By the time they finished, the night was fully dark, and the stars glittered above them like distant promises. They stepped outside into the cool night air, the ocean lapping softly against the base of the Lair.

Felix glanced at her, feeling the weight of everything that had gone unsaid. “You know,” he began, his voice quieter now, “this whole thing… truth, relativity, absolutes… it’s not just about science.”

Sara stopped walking and turned to face him, her expression unreadable. “No?”

“No,” he said, stepping closer. “It’s about what we believe, about what we think we’re standing on. I think… there’s some kind of absolute out there. Something we can hold onto. Maybe it’s not always obvious, but it’s there.”

She stared at him for a moment, her breath catching slightly. “And what’s your absolute?”

His eyes locked on hers, and for once, he didn’t have a clever answer. “I don’t know yet. But I’m hoping I’ll figure it out.”

For a moment, neither of them moved. The stars above, the ocean below, and the city around them—all of it felt distant, like a backdrop to this singular moment. Then, slowly, Sara reached out and touched his arm, her voice soft but steady.

“Maybe we’ll figure it out together.”

Felix’s heart skipped a beat. He smiled, and the tension between them—the weeks of intellectual duels and unspoken attraction—finally gave way to something more.