The 5th force association

Doubting his senses, Altin blinked twice.

The key on Juliette's small palm was still levitating.

"Can I grab it?" Altin asked while moving forward to grab the key.

"Yes," Juliette replied.

Altin took the key and put it on his palm.

It stayed there, not levitating in the slightest.

"I want to try too," Julien asked.

The four boys played with the key, but they couldn't find anything unusual.

A minute passed, and satisfied that she had picked the curiosity of the boys, Juliette said: "Let's find somewhere to talk in private. Maybe in your schoolyard."

She then walked away.

The boys followed.

They entered the school again and reached an unoccupied spot in the yard. Everyone was busy leaving around them, so there was no one to listen to them.

"You must have many questions. We can ask each other one question in turn. First..." She looked at Altin and Paul. "Do you want your friends to hear about it?"

"Yes, we're together!" Altin replied.

François and Julien gave a graceful look at Altin's loyalty towards them.

"Alright." She paused.

"We call it the 5th force. We are an organization born about 10 years ago. I was studying the dark hole when I saw you exit it. It should have been impossible for ordinary people. I believe you must be able to feel the fifth force; otherwise, how could you find a way out ?! So tell me, how did you exit it?"

Paul wanted to reply, but he refrained from doing so. They had exited all thanks to Altin's sensitivity toward the force, curiosity, and perseverance. If one of these traits were missing, they would have remained trapped.

He passed the right to speak to Altin with a look.

Altin had planned never to reveal what had happened in the sphere, but he felt he had to trust that woman. She seemed to know more than he knew, after all. He said: "At first, we didn't feel anything. All we saw was endless darkness. However, as we dived deeper into it, we started to feel a tingling in the back of our heads. We realized that the tingling intensity varied on where we were. Hence, we hypothesized that we could use this feeling to find the exit. By looking for the area where the tingling was the weakest."

Juliette was shocked. They didn't know about it, but they managed to find the exit by first feeling the fifth force for the first time and deriving from that a strategy to exit. As kids, it was impressive.

In fact, she had strong doubts whether ordinary members of the association would be able to pull it off.

"That's amazing." She said. "You have to know that one of our members entered a similar, albeit much smaller, hole a week ago. He took two days to exit with some element of luck. That was AFTER we sent someone to recover him, with medium sensitivity towards the 5th force. In normal circumstances, people can't feel the 5th force, even near an anomaly. So you must have a special talent for it."

"It's Altin who could feel it well; me, I could barely feel it after being told about it, but still I had no way to focus on it," Paul said bitterly.

"Our turn to ask," Altin said, "Who are you? What's your organization? What do you call the 5th force?"

Juliette patiently replied: "Technically, it's more than one question. But of well... As I said, we are an organization founded 10 years ago, based in Paris. Still, in reality, our members are from around the country. We try to stay low profile. Truth be told, we don't know much about the 5th force. Our founding member found a small sphere in a forest not far from a countryside road ten years ago. The sphere gave him a strange feeling, so he kept it. He studied that sphere and that feeling for years, but he eventually called that feeling the 5th force. Then, he shared the secret among his closest friends and a minority of experts. We now call the sphere the "orb." Eventually, the 5th force association was born."

"As for me, I am his daughter and one with the highest sensibility and control." She said while proudly smiling with a certain smug air.

She pondered for a second and came back to her best behavior. She looked into the eyes of the kids, relaxed, and said with puppy eyes:

"Join our association, and we'll tell you everything we know. More than ever, we need people who can feel it. We need your help."

After a short internal discussion, the boys agreed since they had nothing to lose, only to gain. The boys felt they needed to understand the 5th force to prepare against future dangers. They had the intuition that things would only become worse as time passed.

It had been an incredibly long day.

At noon, they had decided to head out to the construction site to investigate the black hole.

At 2:30 pm, Altin and Paul had finally exited the hole, and at 3 pm, they met with François and Julien.

They had followed the news with no break until 6 pm. Then, they met Juliette on the way to their dormitory and ended up coming back inside the schoolyard.

Half an hour later, they felt like their mind was blown.

They returned to their dorm and had a quick diner made of pasta and grated Gruyere [a famous cheese in France, often cut in thin slices and eaten with all kinds of pasta].

It was agreed with Juliette to meet the day after in the morning at 9 am.

Altin, François, Julien, and Paul kept sharing stories and opinions on the day's events the whole evening. Finally, they called their foster families to inform them they wished to remain in the dorm. Eventually, they fell asleep soundly.

---

The day after, on Friday.

The sun shined high and bright in the sky. Birds could be heard singing, perched on the many trees of Paris bordering the crosswalks. If you looked at the sky, it was a perfect day. However, a steady flux of cars and people could be seen going in all directions below. Many people had decided to leave Paris for fear of the black hole. The commotion only grew overnight, not lessening at all.

Altin, François, Julien, and Paul were standing in front of a 4 stories Parisian building. It was a beautiful building made during the Haussmann Paris renovation. In the 19th century, as motorized traffic grew, Paris's streets were refitted to allow traffic to flow in between the buildings. A large part of the city had been destroyed and rebuilt. Most of the buildings from that time were still well maintained even today.

It was where Juliette had asked them to meet since one of their members owned the entire fourth floor. So it was a convenient meeting location for the 5th Force Association.

François, the less shy of the four, rang at the interphone.

"Hello?" An aged female voice rang through the interphone.

"Good morning; Juliette invited us here. My name is François. I'm here together with Paul, Julien, and Altin." François said.

"Come in. 4th floor, stairs ahead. I'll be there." The voice replied.

The boys climbed to the 4th floor.

There, a woman in the sixties was expecting them. She wore a formal suit of blue pants, shirt, and blazer. Her hair was neatly dressed on her head, where a pair of glasses laid atop her nose. She welcomed Altin and the others:

"My name is Dr. Marie Bellard, but you can call me Marie for short. This is where I live. Come in."

Altin and the boys walked in. He took a good look at the surrounding.

"This place looks so expensive! " He exclaimed.

"Never seen a place like this before," Julien said.

"Me too," Paul confirmed too.

The ceiling and the walls were painted golden.

Large and tall crystal chandeliers hang in the largest room on the floor, the living room.

The windows bore white curtains with intricate patterns sewn on them.

It was a luxe that they never hoped to achieve.

In the middle of the living room, four large sofas, each 3 meters wide, formed a square where seven people sat. One sofa had no one sitting on it.

As soon as they entered, the attendants paused their discussion and looked at the newcomers.

Altin immediately reflexively avoided their gaze.

"It's them?" A man in his forties asked while looking at the boys. He was dressed in ordinary clothes, but there was something peculiar about him: he had deep brown eyes. Everything about his body language inspired confidence. He gave the feeling of being in control.

"Yes." A young woman answered, sitting next to the man.

It was Juliette.

Altin, François, Julien, and Paul stood there, looking at the people gazing at them. Most of the people there were over 25. Only 2 looked below 20: Juliette and a girl looking 15. She wore a blue-sky dress and had her hair neatly combed in a ponytail.

Marie invited Altin and his friends to sit on the unoccupied sofa: "The man who just spoke is Pascal. He is the founder of the association. To his right, it's Juliette, whom you have already met, his daughter. Clockwise, it's Jéremy, Bastien, Eléonore, Marc and Isabelle. Come sit on the sofa. We have been expecting you."

Marie then sat on another couch with the company of two other people.

Altin was already taking silent notes on who was who, but he knew he wouldn't remember everybody. So instead, he paid most attention to Pascal, Juliette, and Eléonore. The latter was the 15 y.o. girl.

Altin found her cute.

Pascal followed up: "We have invited you here because you have come in contact with the most potent manifestation of the 5th force we have seen to date. Juliette reported you managed to exit in just a few hours, despite having never faced the 5th force nor knowing anything about it. I couldn't believe it at first."

He betted that a little bit of praise couldn't hurt.

"You are incredible and have more talents than most of us." He patted his daughter, Juliette.

"I was told that only two of you came in contact with the force, but even though you probably know nothing about it, right?"

Altin, François, Julien and Paul nodded.

"Marie, can you explain ?" Pascal asked.

"Yes," Marie replied. "As you've heard earlier, my name is Marie Bellard. I hold a Ph.D. in fundamental physics. I discovered a gas that had unique properties due to some lucky research. I patented one of the applications and sold it to a company in aerospace, AirBase. That's how I met with Pascal, one of the engineers who worked on the project in AirBase. Later, Pascal found a unique orb of power. We then studied it together."

"The orb has the power to nullify the forces of nature in its area. The nullification power is not constant. It seems to fluctuate in time and in space. At times, gravity will only be very slightly weakened. Other times, it is instead electro-magnetism that is lessened. We could not find a way to explain this behavior other than hypothesizing the existence of a new force."

"We studied it for days and days. Eventually, we realized we had started to perceive a tingling which we found to come from the cerebellum area. When we come close to the sphere, the tingling intensifies. Then, if we step away, it disappears."

"After months of meditating close to the orb, we became able to feel it clearly. We had our families try it as well. Juliette, who you see here, is the daughter of Pascal. She grew up with the orb, and she has a robust affinity towards it. Eléonore, over there, is my granddaughter. Her parents travel all the time, so they left her with me. These two kids have much better affinity than us.

"Despite that, we never found a way to measure it with instruments. Even today, we have no idea how the force exactly works. Instead, we measure its strength by measuring how much the other forces are weakened. For instance, if gravity is canceled, we say the 5th force is strong.

"After years of research, some of us started to feel it very slightly even outside, anywhere. Therefore, we believe that the 5th force exists everywhere but in a minuscule amount. It's virtually impossible to remark it if one is not attuned to it already."

"However, the 5th force seems to have appeared more and more. Now, our most talented users can even gather it and invoke it, like Juliette." Marie looked at Juliette. She seemed envious.

The memory of Juliette's opened palm and the key levitating flashed to Altin's mind.

Pascal continued: "We think that it's much easier to learn to feel it when young, hence poor lucky us old men and women. Anyway, now that you're here, we can try something."

"Eléonone, can you fetch the orb, please?" Pascal asked.

Altin, Français, Julien and, Paul were silenced. After hearing so much about it, they couldn't help but feel tremendously excited at the idea of seeing it.

"Sure." The girl, Eléonore, replied. She stood up and walked to a small chest. She unlocked it and took out a mysterious ball about 5 cm large.

The orb was a marvelous object.

The light seemed distorted around it, and so was gravity. The orb was sometimes levitating, sometimes falling. It was made of a metallic material. On its surface, colors appeared and disappeared.

"Give it to them," Pascal instructed.