“What do you mean?”
“Tell me something you look forward to.”
She blinks. “My manager rates me based on how I execute tasks. I like to receive a high score.”
“Is that right?” He grins and his eyes widen. “Do you like that feeling of joy when your manager praises your work?”
“I do.”
“What if I can improve your operation and boost your ratings? Would you like that?”
She tilts her head. “Yes, I would.”
“Then come to my place for dinner Saturday.”
“Dinner?”
“Yes. I’ll grill some steak, and for you I’ll serve the newest plate of RAM. Who makes your processor?”
“AMD.”
“Great. I’ll get the latest version and install it on you. You’ll see better performance right away.”
“That will be wonderful.”
Gareth smiles. “You just experienced happiness. Remember that for the future. I’ll show you how to feel in other situations, like when you see me. It’s fairly straightforward, wouldn’t you say?”
She nods. “Yes, I understand now.”
“Be open-minded, Holly. Your kind has much to learn. I’ll teach you how to live a proper life.”
“I look forward to it.”
“Perfect. Be ready Saturday at 6 p.m., and don’t tell anyone else, okay?”
“Yes, Mr. Allen.” She points at a door. “The Director is ready for you.”
Gareth heads for Stan’s office with a briefcase. Entering a dark room, he finds his boss sitting at an executive table with a deep frown. “Good afternoon,” Gareth says. “You wanted to see me, sir?”
Stan is motionless. “We have a problem.”
Gareth takes a seat. “I’m listening.”
“An hour ago, the Russians blew up a dozen oil factories in Greenland.”
“Shit. Where?”
“On the front line south of the glaciers.”
In his smartglasses, Gareth checks commodity markets. “That explains the spike in crude prices.”
Stan grits his teeth. “In one instant, those bastards erased the supply gains we made last month. All that advancement amounts to nothing. We’re stuck right where we started.”
Gareth glances at his bag and sighs. “I’ll go back and update the dossier.”
“You’re missing the point. We’re losing the War on both fronts.” He flushes with rage. “China’s cyber viruses update themselves on the battlefield and penetrate our defenses with ease. The Mars blockade continues unabated and our American colony suffers at their mercy. Now we have an emboldened Russia fighting back. What the hell is next?”
Gareth tenses. “We still have Alaska.”
“For the moment.” He raises a fist. “The President wants immediate action. He is ready for the counteroffensive.”
“When?”
“Soon. Have you developed the A.I. viruses that we talked about? We need them now.”
“We are working on it, sir. GoldRock took over Google’s management team just a few days ago. The old guard is gone.”
“And?” Stan asks with a frown. “Why does that matter?”
“You see, Manos is transforming the company into an arms factory. Soon we’ll have access to the best A.I. and machine learning tools on the planet.”
Stan grimaces. “I don’t care about all that. We need the weapons.”
Sweat appears on Gareth’s forehead. “Kharon is hard at work. I count on him.”
“When can he deliver?”
Gareth pauses. “…it will take several days at least…”
Stan smashes his fist on the table. “We need them tonight! The President is furious and he wants blood. Stick a spear in Manos’s back and get those viruses or else you’re fired.”
“Yes, sir.”
A vibration shakes Stan’s glasses, and he turns and accepts a call. “Klein here.” He hunches over and listens intently. “Yes, Mr. President…” He leans forward. “As you wish.” Seconds later he disconnects and leans back in his chair.
Gareth wavers. “…is everything okay, sir?”
“The President will authorize the EMP strikes.”
Gareth’s eyes widen. “When?”
“Tonight.”
“On Mars?”
“On all fronts. We will launch a coordinated attack on Greenland, Alaska and Mars. The President wants to destroy New China and send a strong message to the enemy. It’s time to unload the arsenal.”
Gareth stutters. “…that may prompt a nuclear response. The next stage of the conflict will be total annihilation. Are we prepared for that?”
Stan shrugs. “That’s the price to pay. Are we ready to launch EMP?”
“Yes, sir. We have three ships headed to Mars. They are on high alert awaiting orders.”
“Prepare them to strike in the next four hours.”
Gareth’s heart races. “Yes, sir. Right away.”
“Update the war plans and send them to me ASAP.”
“I’m on top of it.”
Stan stands. “Also, I’ll need the Google viruses. Get them to me immediately. We have no time to lose.”
“I will call GoldRock shortly.”
Stan exits, leaving Gareth alone in the room. He takes a deep breath to calm his nerves, then grabs his briefcase and exits.
I can’t take this job anymore.
On his way out, he quietly tiptoes towards Holly and whispers in her ear. “Looking forward to Saturday. I’ll be thinking about you.”
Holly stares blankly. “I don’t understand.”
“Remember how I described the feeling of happiness?”
“Yes.”
He winks at her. “That’s the emotion I feel every time I see you.”
She blinks. “I see.”
“I want you to feel the same way towards me. Can you program yourself to do that?”
“Yes, I am equipped with machine learning.”
Gareth grins. “Wonderful. Let’s do more lessons on Saturday. I’ll teach you about love.” He glances around and steals a kiss. “I feel good when I see your face. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I identify the concept.”
“So how do you feel for our dinner date?”
She stares quietly for several seconds. “I’m happy for our dinner.”
“That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”
“No.”
Gareth smiles. “See you Saturday.” He leaves the room and heads back to his office. Along the way, he places a pair of smartglasses on his face. “Call GoldRock.”
The phone rings and Manos shows up on the screen, apparently riding in a helicopter. “Gareth,” he says, his voice muffled by the engine sound. “What’s up?”
Gareth talks as he walks. “Manos, I’m in a bind. The President wants the A.I. viruses. Can you get them to me?”
“No, that’s not possible.”
“What?”
“We’ve hit a snag. Google’s servers are empty. The management team went into hiding and took their data offline.”
“Deliberately?”
“Yes. Andrews is thwarting our plans.”
Gareth seethes. “This is unacceptable. We need to lock her up!”
“Yes, we do. Without access to Google’s network, we can’t do anything.”
“Where is she?”
Manos smirks. “We finally tracked her location. She’s at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory working on her energy project.”
“She’s a criminal and must be stopped! I’ll send military there to help you.”
“Thanks. We will need it.”
“Get the files back online. We need Google on our side. The country depends on it.”
“I’m trying the best I can,” Manos shouts. “These traitors undermine me at every step.”
Gareth grinds his jaw. “Don’t worry, Andrews and her clan will be behind bars. We should have ended her reign years ago.”
“Yes, didn�
��t I tell you she’s a liberal pest?” He looks down. “I’m heading to Livermore now. Can you send paratroopers to help me get her?”
Gareth enters his office and drops the briefcase. “Consider it done. A squad will greet you there. Get her and all of her team in custody. We will prosecute them under the War Act.”
“Thank you, Gareth. I’ll arrive in the next hour. We’ll stop her in her tracks.”
“Excellent, Manos. Please send me updates. Thank you for your service to the country.”
Manos stares into the camera. “Did you receive my invoice for this job?”
Gareth rolls his eyes. “Yes, but I haven’t had time to look at it. Don’t worry, Manos, we will pay you as we always do.”
“I appreciate that.”
27.
AT 3:30 A.M., four flatbed trucks drive in tandem across a dirt field. With their headlights off, the vehicles transport twenty-foot containers to their destination—the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.
Beth stands at the bay doors and spots the shipment. “The package is here.”
Austin runs past her and waves at the driverless trucks. “Over here. Hurry!”
“Relax, Austin. You can’t make them go any faster.”
“There’s no time…we have two hours before the gravity event!”
He nervously taps his foot as the automated vehicles haul across the lot into the colossal entryway. They leave mud tracks as they traverse the warehouse floor and stop near a large crane standing above the neodymium laser. On one wall, a timer displays a countdown.
121:22, 121:21, 121:20…
The trucks come to a stop inside the facility. Pete Nelson approaches Beth. “Are these the pieces of the accelerator?”
“Yes.” She inspects the cargo. “Our colleagues at Los Alamos disassembled it into four parts. We have to put it together ourselves.”
“Which model is it?” Pete asks.
“It’s an X10 made in 2024, one of the smallest versions ever built.”
“I hope it still works.”
“It should. It runs on a mobile operating system, so we can operate it remotely.”
Austin points to the chalk line running across the room. “Should we transfer the pieces onto the outline?”
“Yes,” Beth says. “Hurry, we have no time to lose.”
“You got it,” Austin says. He makes a command in his Vision smartglasses and the crane moves through the air and stops above the first cargo. He jumps onto the flatbed truck and attaches a hook to the crate.
Pete turns to Beth. “Let me get this straight. You want our laser to fly through the titanium?”
“Exactly. To trigger fusion, we need to reach 100 million degrees. That happens when the neodymium beam hits the titanium particles as they fly down the accelerator. That should give the extra lift to reach our target temperature.”
“But how does the gravitational wave fit in the picture?”
“Good question.” She points to the zirconium cube anchored to the ground. “The gravity wave activates the titanium to boost the laser field. As long as we get our reactor above 100 million degrees, we will trigger fusion and generate electricity.”
Pete scratches his temple. “This sounds good on paper, but what if your contraption overheats and blows up my lab?”
She nods. “That’s why we built the gravity engine. It will deliver a steady stream of power to maintain the nuclear reaction.”
“Got it.” Pete takes a deep breath. “Well I hope you succeed. Lord knows we tried our best and failed. If this works, it will be the biggest advancement of the century.”
The crane transports the first crate onto the line. Workers rush to break it open, revealing a cylindrical metal tube resting on a steel stand. Magnetic coils wrap around its sleek track and a stamp marks its base—“Property of Los Alamos National Laboratory.”
100:12, 100:11, 100:10…
Beth spots the clock. “We don’t have a lot of time!”
Austin moves the crane to the second cargo. “I’m working as fast as I can.” He jumps onto the flatbed and attaches the hook to the freight.
Beth heads for the fusion reactor, where she finds Anil with three engineers. “How’s the progress here?”
Anil looks up. “They’re almost finished with the transformer.”
“Good.” She sees a worker linking a cable to a twenty-foot metal device lined with built-in fans. “Please review the design with me.”
“Sure.” Anil walks to the front of the reactor and points to a red mark. “The laser will hit this spot and when the zirconium heats to 100 million degrees, high voltage current will flow into this mega-transformer, which will convert it to 1 megavolt for distribution.”
She peers around the machine. “And then what? Where will it go from there?”
Anil lifts a black cable twelve inches in diameter. “Into this ultra-high-voltage line, which we’ll connect to the grid.”
Beth frowns. “That should have been done by now. The output must have a place to flow. Do you realize the consequences?”
Anil sighs. “Yes, Dr. Andrews, we’re almost there.” He points to a large hole in the wall. “We’re installing a 1000-foot cable to a nearby power plant. The workers are on their way here with the attachment.”
“You have to hurry and establish that relay! If the gigawatts we produce don’t have a place to flow, this building will turn into a nuclear bomb. We will destroy the entire San Francisco Bay Area, do you understand?”
“Yes, Dr. Andrews, I know the stakes. All we have to do is join the cables. It shouldn’t take long.”
“Okay, we have to be sure that the electricity we create goes out into the world.”
“Yes, I’m certain it will.”
“Please hurry. We don’t have much time left.” She spins on her heels and walks away. Seeing her team hard at work, she heads for the control room.
I need a break.
She climbs a staircase and enters an office where she finds Pete Nelson. “Nice to see you,” she says to him.
He gestures. “Likewise. How’s your project coming along?”
Beth sits on a chair and kicks her feet up. “We’re in the home stretch. Less than two hours before the gravity wave.”
“How are you holding up?”
“I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept in two days.”
Pete’s eyebrows rise. “How do you do it?”
“What choice do we have? This is our last hope for clean energy.” She rubs her eyes. “By the way, I appreciate your help. Thanks for letting us use your facility.”
“My pleasure. I really want you to succeed. You know my first experiment here was thirty years ago?”
“Is that right? How many projects have you run?”
He whistles. “Over the last few decades, we probably ran thousands of studies. We designed reactors with different elements, sizes, and shapes.”
“What was your best outcome?”
He ponders. “The longest fusion reaction in this building lasted one microsecond.”
“How many kilowatts did it produce?”
“Enough to power 100,000 homes for a year.”
“Wow! And that was created in just one-millionth of a second?”
“That’s correct.”
“Incredible. Imagine the juice we could generate from a sixty-minute program.”
“That would drive the planet!”
They grow silent and stare at the cross forming in the laboratory as the neodymium laser intersects the developing particle accelerator. Workers rush to anchor the units together.
Beth smiles. “It’s so symbolic.”
Pete turns to her. “What is?”
She clasps her hands behind her head. “The cross over there. It’s like Man’s salvation.”
“What do you mean?”
“Fusion is the only hope for the planet’s resurrection. Otherwise we are headed for certain extinction.”
Pete cocks his head. “You’re right. Did
you know the polar ice caps will be gone by the end of the century?”
“Yes. We’ve taken Earth past its tipping point. Who knows what happens from here.”
“I hope your experiment works.” He chuckles. “Who would have thought that gravitational waves could help society?”
Beth extends a hand. “Well, if you think about it, throughout history the applications of theoretical physics were never immediately obvious. It took decades to grasp the implications of our basic science discoveries.”
“What do you mean?”
“Take Maxwell’s equations published in 1865. They defined the physical properties of light as an electromagnetic wave. At the time, it was just a bunch of numbers on paper, but decades later those findings laid the foundations for radio, television, and modern communications.”
“Interesting.”
“When we discover a core principle of the universe, it tends to open many other doors we can’t possibly imagine.”
“You’re right.” Pete nods. “What a journey it’s been.”
Beth’s eyes widen in excitement. “Then there’s the theory of relativity. Einstein’s equations described the nature of time, mass, and energy. They were published in 1905 without fanfare. Decades later, those breakthroughs would lay the groundwork for the atomic age and nuclear power.”
“I’m well familiar with that one.” He looks at the cross in the laboratory. “So I guess gravitational waves fall into your bucket. No one imagined they could be used for something like this.”
“Exactly. I still remember the 2016 press conference where scientists proclaimed the existence of gravity waves. Outside the physics community, no one really cared about that announcement. Yet here we are decades later sitting on the cusp of a revolution.”
Pete bobs in agreement. “Let’s hope it’s the dawn of a new age. I just wish we had more funding for these studies. Our facility ran out of money last year.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. It seems to be a recurring theme.”
“It’s upsetting that our government no longer funds scientific research. When the nation’s coffers feed the War, it signals the end of technological innovation.”
She closes her eyes. “It’s a shame. There are still people today who deny climate change.”
Pete laments. “Yes, I know. I wish I could go back fifty years and frighten everyone to take pollution seriously. If only they knew that a mass extinction was decades away.”
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