“Here, have another gummy bear!” Brian told me, and he pressed the small red button protruding out of the garish plastic box-like contraption he had put on the table. There was no sound, no sign of any motion. Except that almost right away another gummy bear appeared and fell on to the table below. I was left bewildered. “Can you tell me what’s going on here?” I asked. “It’s beyond my wits either”, he replied, shrugging. “It works. I don’t know how. Each time you press the button, a gummy bear pops up. Always the same size, same colour, same shape. And they’re good also.” He picked up the newborn one and swallowed it whole. “Yummy!” he said. I couldn’t believe it. I went ahead and pushed the button. Another sample jumped out of the box on to the table. I grabbed it and examined it: it was perfectly fine. I cautiously bit it. A pleasant taste of red berries overwhelmed my tastebuds. It was excellent, more so than any of its commonly available relatives. In all the years I’d been teaching physics, this was the first time I was confronted with a phenomenon I couldn’t at least vaguely explain. “Not that I made it on purpose,” Brian continued. “It was just sheer luck.” “Mind if I take the box away for analysis,” I asked “Of course not,” he replied. “Go ahead. I’m curious to know what you’ll find.” I brought it home. I tested it, and was rewarded with another sweet. [hr] I took the gizmo to my lab, X-rayed it, and recorded what was happening inside. It was baffling. The bear literally sprung out of nowhere. There was nothing to see up to a given frame. But on the next one, the bear was there, wholly formed. Its creation was instantaneous, or nearly so. Nothing I knew could explain that. I forwarded the box to colleagues in other universities. They all recorded the same thing, to the general amazement. At last, a possible explanation emerged, but it was too fantastic to be true. Fowler, working at MIT, hypothesised that the mirrors lining the inside of the device were responsible for a Casimir effect. Pushing the button somehow boosted the effect, until the accumulation of negative energy opened a wormhole to somewhere, in this universe or another one. The gummy bear was somehow sucked up through it. That explained its sudden appearance. But why a gummy bear? The most logical explanation was that the wormhole led to a gummy bear container, or a sweet warehouse. I know, this sounds ludicrous. But it was the only “rational” explanation we could hold onto. Now Fowler elaborated that if the size of the box was slightly altered, maybe the wormhole would contort and something else would appear. So I told Brian to build a new box, changing the dimensions of the inner cavity. It goes without saying that we kept all this under wraps. There was no question of telling the press or anyone else about it. When it was ready, Brian invited me to test the new device. He pressed the button and a stream water sprung from it. We looked at one other breathlessly. [hr] I went back home, and told Fowler of what we had found. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I was too excited. Maybe this was [i]the[/i] answer to every food and water supply problem we were facing on Earth. A set of such devices in every house, every desert village, dispensing food and water at will to everyone. The energy of the void harnessed to the benefit of humanity. No more shortages. No more pollution. No more transportation. No more need to slaughter cattle. Clean food for everyone, everywhere. Humanity freed from the spectre of famine. But now, I’m afraid: Brian has vanished. I keep ringing him, no response. And I’m too chicken to go and knock at his door. I know he was working on a new design. What could have happen? What if he’s been kidnapped by the army? This could be too sensitive a discovery. Or maybe the army want him to craft a box able to create weapons? But what if he hasn’t? What if… What if something intelligent had popped out of the wormhole? What if Brian opened a tunnel for a hostile extraterrestrial force to invade us? What if those gummy bears were just a bait? I wriggle in my bed. I’m terrified.