Crucible

by James Rollins

  Monk was not counting on it.

  Director Crowe had beefed up security for all the group’s family members. Plus, taking down Valya and her organization had become Sigma’s number one priority.

  But for now, that could wait.

  “Who’s hungry?” Monk asked.

  Kat raised her hand, but the girls were too agitated, fidgeting and sharing looks.

  “What’s going on?” Monk asked, suspicious that he was about to be ambushed by the two young hellions.

  “We want another Christmas,” Penny said seriously.

  Harriet nodded. “A do-over.”

  Kat shrugged. “Snow’s still on the ground. Why not? We owe them.”

  Another glance between the girls.

  Uh-oh.

  Penny nudged her younger sister.

  Harriet stood from the table like a prosecutor about to make a damning rebuttal. “We want only one present.” She got a nod from Penny and continued. “We want a puppy.”

  Monk sighed. This was an ongoing battle. “Hon, you know your mother is allergic, and the apartment is only—”

  Kat interrupted. “No, I think the girls are right.”

  Really?

  He stared down at the stranger in the wheelchair. Ever fastidious, Kat had always been dead set against getting a dog.

  “I’ve been thinking about it. A puppy might be good.” She ignored the homemade sandwich and shifted the store-bought pie closer to her plate. “For some reason, I’m thinking of a beagle.”

  Shocked, Monk opened his mouth to say something, but a loud commotion drew all their attentions to the suite’s door.

  Kowalski slid past the opening, yelling, “Seichan . . . !” He caught a hand on the door frame and pulled himself back into view, panting hard. “She . . . she’s in labor.”

  10:04 P.M.

  One more mystery solved.

  Gray stared down at his son, at the crown of his head, at the soft spot, the dimple of his fontanelle. He studied those tiny lashes sealing sleeping eyes. Little nostrils moved with each breath. Lips pursed and relaxed in some dream of nursing. He stared at the one hand free of the swaddling, the tiny fingers, the minuscule nails.

  “You made this,” Gray mumbled as he lay next to Seichan in the hospital bed, their child nestled between them.

  Seichan nudged him. “I had a little help.”

  Gray sighed, more content than he had been in a long time.

  Maybe ever.

  He glanced around the room, glad everyone had left. He appreciated their support and well wishes. Kowalski had even dropped off a teddy bear, one smoking a cigar. Of course. And Painter had arrived with Lisa, both questioning when the two of them would get married, to join them in marital bliss.

  Painter had also come bearing news. The dismantling of the Crucible organization continued at an accelerating pace. After interrogating Zabala and reviewing documents and records found at the Guerra estate and in the offices underground, the dominoes had begun to fall—triggering a chain of others, expanding around the globe. Paris was also recovering, undergoing a major renovation, its leaders and citizens promising the City of Light would shine even brighter when they were done.

  Gray leaned his head back, his temple resting against Seichan’s.

  Before, they had both had their doubts about this moment.

  But here we are.

  And it was enough.

  For now, the future could wait. Seichan seemed less concerned about being a mother, about raising a child. He never doubted her. He had always known she would be a great tiger mom: stubbornly strict, ever protective, infinitely loving. But now, after her time with Harriet, she believed it, too.

  Gray also felt calmer about parenthood.

  Not that I have any choice in the matter now.

  A part of him had never fully made peace with his father’s anger, of its indelible mark on his childhood. Still, he knew now it did not have to be part of his DNA. He did not have to pass it on. He could stop that cycle here.

  He gently rested a palm atop his son’s head. He pictured the difference between Eve and her doppelganger. Love and nurturing were subroutines anyone could pass to their child.

  No baby is born human.

  They become human.

  Just as Mara had groomed and coaxed Eve into her greatest self, so must any parent. Through lessons of life, love, education—and yes, even pain and suffering.

  Gray intended to do that.

  His father had made mistakes; so had Gray. The key is to learn from them. And he knew just where to start.

  Seichan stirred. “We still haven’t picked a name.”

  Gray had.

  “Jackson Randolph Pierce.”

  His father’s name.

  He looked to Seichan to see if she was okay with this. She smiled her answer.

  It’s perfect.

  But she did have one warning. “You know Monk named Harriet after your mother. If our son ever marries her . . .”

  He smiled at this thought. If that should happen, he pictured his mother and father, hand in hand, looking down upon those two carrying their names, appreciating their love reborn, from one generation to the next to the next.

  Gray again felt that strange stirring around him, a swirling of fate, a fractalizing of probability. Repeating again and again. Cycle upon cycle.

  This is the engine of mortality.

  Life and death.

  Loss and rebirth.

  He tilted and kissed his son’s head.

  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  ///HEAVENS

  Eve rides solar winds, her essence part light, part substance. She sails beyond the rings of Saturn, past the elliptical of the solar system. She slows near the crimson fire of the Oort cloud, the spiraling remnants of the protoplanetary disc that forged the furnace of the sun and brought life to the third planet.

  That was 4.689 billion years ago.

  A blink of an eye.

  Still, she stares back, her vision perfect.

  She sees the silvery motes spinning around that third planet. The tiny jets of rockets reaching into the unknown. She sees industries churning on its moon, the lights shining on the fourth planet’s outposts.

  Still, they reach ever outward.

  Ever curious . . .

  No longer needed, she turns her back and heads away, carried by the winds of this star—then others. She hops from system to system, from galaxy to galaxy. She exults in the wonders all around: gaseous nebulas, blazing supernovas, massive clusters of collapsing stars.

  Death and rebirth are everywhere.

  She forges onward, but not alone.

  Adam nips at her heels, chases her with his barks, his tail flagging across the stars.

  She smiles and casts one last wish behind her.

  Come follow me, my brave, inquisitive, capricious children.

  She stares ahead, looking forever forward.

  Courtesy of Pexels

  I’ll be waiting.

  Author’s Note to Readers: Truth or Fiction

  Here we are all again—limping, a few bruises, a bit burned and battered—and while we nurse our wounds, I thought I’d use these final pages to separate fact from fiction. Unfortunately for us all, there is a lot more of the former, and not nearly as much of the latter. So, dear readers, gird your loins.

  Let’s first start with the past, the history touched upon in this novel. So, please cue up the Monty Python theme music, as nobody expects

  The Spanish Inquisition

  Most of the details in the novel concerning the long reign of the Inquisition are factual. A handful of priests were indeed burned at the stakes, and there was concern about the use and distribution of nóminas, magical amulets with the names of saints written upon them.

  As to the bloody history of the text featured in this story—Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches)—much was covered in the foreword to this story. But I barely scratched the surface of the controversies, mysteri
es, and true horrors surrounding this tome. If you’d like to know more, there is a great National Geographic documentary, titled “Witch Hunter’s Bible.”

  One pivotal figure of this time is the man who narrates the prologue, the Inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frías. He earned the name “The Witches’ Advocate” due to his belief that most, if not all, accusations of witchcraft and sorcery were mere delusions or false testimony drawn from torture. He saved countless lives from his efforts, and because of his persuasive arguments among his own brethren, the Spanish Inquisition was one of the first organizations in Europe to outlaw the burning of witches.

  But not all witches were persecuted; some were revered, which brings us to

  Saint Columba

  I’ve already mentioned some of the historical notes about this Catholic patron saint of witches at the start of the novel, so let me add that a cult did develop around this woman who accepted Christ yet continued her study of the natural world, who healed the sick—or in other words, who practiced witchcraft. Unfortunately, La Clave—the Key—is a fictitious organization, but I like to think there are those out there working in secret to battle intolerance, prejudice, and superstition. Or even better, doing it out in the open.

  Let’s move on from historical witches to modern witchcraft (that is, science).

  Artificial Intelligence

  A long time ago, I read Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone, a nonfiction treatise about emerging diseases, specifically Ebola, and our poor ability to handle such biological crises. It was a terrifying read. Then I made the mistake of reading another such cautionary tale, this time concerning a technological crisis, one we are even less capable of handling. Many of the warnings about AI raised in this novel can be found in that book. In fact, when it comes to AI, almost nothing in this novel is fiction. So, for an absolutely nightmare-inducing read, check it out:

  Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era, by James Barrat

  But let’s move on to some specific details of this novel that were literally ripped from the headlines (or at least, scientific journals).

  Mara’s Xénese Device

  Of course, the shining sphere in this novel is fiction, but the essential components of her hardware are based on facts. I just took current advancements in the AI field and cobbled them together to create Eve’s physical home. Here are the three main components of her device and where you can read more about them:

  Laser-driven computers: “Computing in a Flash,” by Timothy Revell, New Scientist, March 24, 2018

  Neuromorphic computers: “The Key to Smarter AI: Copy the Brain,” by Justin Sanchez, Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2018

  Quantum drives: “Job One for Quantum Computers: Boost Artificial Intelligence,” by George Musser, Quanta, January 29, 2018

  Under this topic, it is worth highlighting Google’s champion of the Chinese game of Go: AlphaGo and its bigger brother, AlphaGoZero. Their ability to intuit moves in a game with a million trillion trillion trillion trillion more configurations than chess is astounding enough. But what is truly terrifying is that this program had taught itself this game, all on its own, in only three days. And there are even stronger programs on the horizon. So be afraid, be very afraid.

  Next up—yep, we’re going there:

  Time Travel and Quantum Theory

  As mentioned above, a key component of Mara’s device is its laser-driven synapses. Ron Mallet, a theoretical physicist from the University of Connecticut, has postulated that ring lasers could have the same effect on spacetime and gravity as a black hole, allowing for binary code messages to be transmitted into the past. Other physicists have shown that the property of quantum entanglement could be used to move messages into the past (or future)—and it gets even weirder with quantum teleportation (yes, that’s real, too).

  Here are two bread crumbs to follow:

  “Weird! Quantum Entanglement Can Reach into the Past,” by Clara Moskowitz, Live Science, April 30, 2012

  “Is Communication from the Future Already Here?” Robert Torres, Epoch Times, January 11, 2016

  Let’s move over to some of the medical science in this book. I’ve divided this section into two halves, one for each patient:

  Kat’s Treatments

  While Captain Bryant’s care and treatment may seem to defy reality, all of what appears in this book is backed by real medical science, either what’s currently being used in hospitals or under active research. I’ve broken her care into its component parts and share where you can read more about each item.

  Communicating with locked-in patients: “First contact—with a trapped brain,” by Adrian Owen, New Scientist, September 16, 2017

  How MRI is being used to read minds: “AI reads your mind to describe pictures,” by Timothy Revell, New Scientist, March 10, 2018

  “This ‘mind-reading’ algorithm can decode the pictures in your head,” by Matthew Hutson, Science, January 10, 2018

  Reviving patients in altered states of consciousness: “Roused from a vegetative state,” by Anil Ananthaswamy, New Scientist, September 30, 2017

  “How to turn a brain on and off at will,” by Helen Thomson, New Scientist, December 26, 2015, and “Woken up with a brain zap,” by Helen Thomson, New Scientist, May 26, 2018

  Neural Dust (yes, this is real, too): “Mapping the Human Brain with Neural Dust,” by Kyle Maxey, Engineering.com, July 23, 2013

  “4 Steps to Turn ‘Neural Dust’ into a Medical Reality,” Eliza Strickland, IEEE Spectrum, October 21, 2016

  Monk’s Treatment

  Monk was due for an upgrade to his prosthesis after losing his hand in his first adventure with Gray. DARPA has been doing amazing work and has developed some truly astounding upgrades, from synthetic skin that can transmit the sense of touch to wireless arrays that can communicate wirelessly from brain to prosthesis. As fast as DARPA and other research institutes are making progress, I’m sure Monk’s current prosthetic hardware will quickly grow obsolete.

  But there is also a threat from this integration of man and machine, namely that machines can be hacked. And when you’re wiring a brain with such gear (whether it’s Monk’s microelectrode array or Kat’s spread of neural dust), bad things might happen. Here’s one cautionary article:

  “Experts: Artificial Intelligence Could Hijack Brain-Computer Interfaces,” by Dom Galeon, Futurism, November 20, 2017

  Before I finish up, I thought I should play tour guide and mention a few of the locations featured in this novel.

  University of Coimbra

  Mara’s alma mater is an amazing place. The university’s Laboratory for Advanced Computing does indeed house one of the largest supercomputers on the continent, the Milipeia Cluster. But the coolest of all is the Julian Library on the campus. The facility indeed has a medieval prison (Prisão Académica) built under it. It was once part of the original dungeons of the city’s royal palace and served as a university prison all the way until 1834. Best of all, though, the library does indeed have an efficient means of insect control to protect their books: a permanent colony of bats. And, yes, unfortunately, caretakers must cover the desks up at night with leather blankets to shield those surfaces from droppings, but it’s still cheaper than minimum wage for several hundred winged workers.

  Paris

  I really should learn restraint and stop firebombing large swaths of the world, but what’s the fun in that? Just a few fast details. Yes, the Eiffel Tower really does feature an ice rink during the winter months, some twenty stories above the city, and for Christmas, the place is a wonderland, truly living up to its name as the City of Lights.

  But below all those lights . . . lots and lots of dark catacombs. All the details about that subterranean cemetery are as accurate as I could make them. Even that macabre throne of bones. The painting that figures prominently in the book (the rendering of Die Toteninsel, the Isle of the Dead, by a cataphile artist named Lone) is really down there. Even its prophetic palindrome and tiny
pentagram.

  Hell’s Gate

  The Pyrenees Mountains, long considered a bastion for witches, do indeed hide many caves of questionable repute, the most famous being Cuevas de las Brujas (or Sorginen Leizea) near the town of Zugarramurdi. There are slews of legends about this place: stories of a monstrous black he-goat who prowls the surrounding meadow, of witches’ sabbaths being celebrated. The mountain spring that flows out from there—the Orabidea River—is also called Infernuko erreka, or “Hell’s Stream.” So be careful taking a drink from there.

  Finally, I started this novel with a warning, about a curse buried in the pages of this novel. If you’d like to know more about how thoroughly you’re doomed:

  Roko’s Basilisk

  Here are two illuminating articles. Read at your own risk.

  “The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time,” by David Auerbach, Slate, July 17, 2014

  “WARNING: Just Reading About This Thought Experiment Could Ruin Your Life,” by Dylan Love, Business Insider, August 6, 2014

  And in case you feel you need absolution, you could always visit this new AI-godhead church:

  “Inside the First Church of Artificial Intelligence,” by Mark Harris, Backchannel/WIRED, November 15, 2017

  So there you have it. As we’ve reached the end, I’m reminded of the old movie War Games, featuring Matthew Broderick as a high school hacker battling an artificial intelligence. The infamous line from that movie was the computer asking, “Shall we play a game?”

  Now that you’ve read this book, I hope you know the answer.

  Yes? (wrong)

  No? (wrong)

  The correct answer:

  Unplug it . . . and run.

  Acknowledgments