Whiskey Romeo

by James Welsh

  And there were some colonists who wanted to end their lives on their own terms. They too had heard the stories of what could happen after falling into a black hole, how the monster would pull and crush you for all eternity. They wanted to die in the truce of their homes – as chaos spilled into the streets of the colony, those homes shrank down to their warm beds. There were at least a handful that had gone to bed with a book of whiskey and a syringe of cleaner, knowing that they weren’t going to wake up in the morning.

  And there were some who didn’t know what else to do but pray. And so droves of people made their way towards the Connections, the temple built by the architects and the only sacred spot left in the colony. Usually, whenever someone had gone to pray at the Connections, they would bring a mat to sit on. But in their hurry, many had forgotten, and so they sat down on the hard floor in the temple’s lobby.

  Nash was among those who entered the Connections, and he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t know what to pray for – all he knew was that he needed somewhere quiet to think. Nash didn’t understand that sometimes prayer was the same as reflection. As he sat down on the cold floor, he glanced around, recognizing some of the faces: most of the miners were there, and so were a few pilots. They were there because they had seen the evil that their star had become, and they needed to wash themselves of the memory somehow.

  But before Nash could even close his eyes and think, there was an eruption as the main door suddenly swung open, not stopping until they smashed against the wall. Startled, the colonists in the lobby turned and saw Chief Latch walking down the aisle towards the center of the room. None of the colonists had ever seen her like this before – normally, she was soft and bending like grass in the wind. But now she walked with hard steps and fire squeezed between her fists – she was a heated stone dropped into a freezing pond.

  When she reached the center of the room, she turned and called out, “Citizens, I know you’re here because you’re looking for an answer! Well, I am here to give you that answer. It’s going to sound impossible, but it won’t after I tell you I’ve already performed one miracle today! Your friend and neighbor Jules Khunrath vanished years ago, and many of you have thought that he died. Well, I am here to tell you that he’s still very much alive!”

  Waves of gasps rolled over the audience. None of the people could believe what they had just heard, that Khunrath was far from dead. Over the shouts, Latch continued, even louder than before, “He’s been hiding under our feet for years, in a cave that had been forgotten since the colony was built! And if you feel that he’s betrayed you by pretending to have died, know that I’m guilty as well! I’m the one who’s helped hide him from a life that was too painful for him to live, because he is my friend, and that’s what friends do!”

  The crowd immediately quieted – they weren’t sure how to react to the news, that their own guard chief had been an accomplice to the greatest mystery in the colonial history. With the room now as soft as a library, Latch continued, quieter than before, “And so I hid him, even when the charter demanded that he stop the magic trick and reappear, even when the charter asked me to investigate his disappearance, and even when I realized that facing life would do him more good than hiding from it.

  “But even lies die, and this one died today. When I found out that a group of miners had been attacked, and all fingers were pointing towards Jules’ ghost, I knew that it had to stop. I was walking over to flush him out and arrest him when I heard the news of the black hole. And that was when I experienced my second of clarity – I knew then that Jules was the only one who could save us all!”

  This was all too much for the colonists to process. One of them abruptly stood up and demanded, “How could he possibly save us? He was a computer technician for crying out loud! There’s nothing he could do, there’s nothing he knows that could save us!”

  “An imagination will do you some good, Jarl!” A voice cracked over the heads of the audience. “My imagination’s been the only thing keeping me alive all of these years!”

  The crowd of many turned as one, recognizing the voice. Nash couldn’t place the voice, though, and turned to see who the stranger was. And that was when Nash saw Jules Khunrath for the first time. Khunrath looked like he must have been handsome earlier in his life – but now he was a man who was halfway towards becoming a monster. One of his eyes was glazed over with blindness, and the other was bloodshot. He swayed like a scarecrow harvesting a cornfield, and he winced with every step as if he was walking on gunfire. He once had a full head of hair, but there were patches missing now – his beard too was beginning to fade away. Khunrath looked far from alive – if anything, it looked as if he had died years ago and had been decomposing since. And this made Nash think of the night when he and the other miners were attacked by a shadowy figure that they now believed to be Khunrath. And Nash wondered how such a sick man could have possibly been the one who knocked down the entire group of miners.

  As Khunrath hobbled onto stage alongside his friend Latch, someone from the audience wondered out loud, “Am I seeing things? Are you really alive, Jules?”

  “Well, I guess it depends on how you define living.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “So tell us, Jules,” Joyce asked, “what makes a computer guru so important that the charter would hunt you down?”

  Khunrath sighed. “The truth is I’m not what you all think I am. While my specialty is computers, I have never worked on any of your systems the whole time I’ve been here. That’s all been handled by technicians back on Earth.”

  “I always wondered why it took a genius like you days to fix my computer,” Bach said.

  Khunrath gave a tired smile. “That job title they gave me, of lead computer technician, it was just a cover story, a ruse. If I had to boil my life down to a word, I would say that I’m an inventor. I’ve had a hand in every single advance in quantum computing in the past twenty years.

  “But that wasn’t enough. I didn’t want a page in the history book – I wanted the whole history book. I wanted people thousands of years from now to remember my name because that’s the only way you can live forever. And that’s when I drew up the blueprints for Project Marlin.”

  “What’s that?” Joyce wondered.

  “Well first, remember how the quantum computers of today made the classical computers of yesterday obsolete. Before, a computer had to move in a linear fashion through its computations. Now, with a quantum computer, you are making a series of computations at the same time, speeding up the computer in unheard ways. The fastest computer we had was built just a few years ago, one that utilized 760 qubits. That’s a lot of power right there, but all it can tackle is mathematical theory. Project Marlin is a brainchild of mine, a quantum computer that is packed with over 180,000 qubits.”

  “What does that get us?” Bach asked.

  “What does that get us?” Khunrath asked, incredulous. “Why, it gets us anything we want. Back on Earth, they could predict weather patterns decades in advance, easily and accurately. Our astronomers could map out the entirety of the observable universe, down to a star. And our philosophers could finally look past the plane of our existence. Before, the many-worlds theorem, or the idea that every action breeds infinite timelines, was a theory impossible to prove. Now, we have the power to understand it. Theoretically, it could even provide the answer to the question of life.”

  “Why haven’t you tried asking the question then?” Nash wondered.

  Khunrath shrugged. “Because I don’t know how to word the question.”

  Nash realized that he wouldn’t know how to ask the question either. Around him, the colonists were silent as they struggled to grasp the implications of the miracle that Khunrath was describing. But Joyce was sharp as always and reasoned, “If you had actually built this computer, we all would have heard of it by now. Where is it then?”

  Khunrath laughed humorlessly. “Well, I’m afraid a computer like that is too big for its shoes. A quantum computer
is just like the old computers – you have to keep them cool, or otherwise they overheat and break down. And when I say cool, I mean it has to be cooler than anything else in the universe. And it has to stay at the exact temperature for as long as possible. Given how ambitious Project Marlin was, I knew that the second I turned it on, it would break. I needed something capable of simultaneously draining away the heat from the computer and converting the heat into energy that could power it. And that was when I realized what would work: a quark-gluon plasma battery.”

  Chroma, who was in the crowd, couldn’t help but laugh. “You have got to be joking.”

  “Why would I joke about that?” Khunrath asked.

  Nash felt confused. “What can that battery do?”

  Not taking his eyes off Khunrath’s face – as if trying to find some sign of lying on the mad scientist – Chroma explained, “It’s a theoretical battery – if built, it is capable of burning at trillions of degrees Fahrenheit and weighing a possibly countless amount when fully activated. It’s a fairy tale, and Khunrath is getting too old to believe in those anymore.”

  “Dr. Chroma, for being such an unconventional man, you have so little faith,” Khunrath said, indignant. “It is as possible as you or I, and the charter certainly thought so too. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have financed my experimentation here at the colony. But, it came with a catch – they didn’t want the computer, but the battery instead.”

  “Why would they want the battery more?” Rego asked.

  “Pilot Joyce,” Khunrath said, turning suddenly to the lead pilot. “How fast can a starling engine propel a ship?”

  “A third of the speed of light, at the most,” Joyce said immediately.

  “Well, this battery can make a ship travel much faster than that,” Khunrath told Rego.

  “How much faster?”

  “I calculated four times the speed of light, maybe more,” Khunrath said. “Imagine taking a mountain and throwing it into an ocean back home, and then riding the tidal wave. This engine is so absurdly dense, it can do just that, but with space. It shatters physics and glues the pieces into something new and exciting. But that’s not enough. If you harness the marlin battery right, you can turn it into a power plant, with enough energy to power an entire galaxy.”

  “That sounds too good to be true,” Rego mused.

  Khunrath nodded. “In a way, it is. The battery is a blessing if it’s powered up to less than a tiny fraction of its potential. If you were to throttle it, though, it quickly becomes a curse. And by that, I mean it can collapse under its weight and trigger a black hole of its own. That is why the charter sent me out here, so that if I made a mistake, only the colony would be annihilated.”

  “You mean to tell us that the charter could live with us getting wiped out?” Rego asked with fire – it was the first time anyone had ever seen him angry, and it caught them off-guard.

  “But that wouldn’t have happened,” Khunrath insisted. “I would never let the engine get out-of-control. I’m too careful – that’s why it took so long for me to finish it. I’m not about to destroy my best chance for immortality. For years, I had a nearly completed model, but I refused to turn it on because the intake valve made me nervous.

  “It wasn’t until my dear Anzhela arrived that I found my way. You see, we had been married for a few years before I took on the assignment of the marlin battery. I wanted her to come with me, but she had business to take care of before leaving Earth. She was a botanist, specifically working in pollination. She was looking into a new way of pollinating plants, since all of the bees died out decades ago. At first, she didn’t know what I was working on here, only knowing it had something to do with computers.

  “It wasn’t until she arrived that she learned the true purpose for me being here. We had been apart so long, I didn’t want to keep any distance between us with secrets. It was then that she gave me the last piece of the puzzle: nectar guides. Years ago, back when bees were still alive, the plants back on Earth needed the bugs to find their pollen reserves. Otherwise, the bees wouldn’t spread the pollen and the plants would die out. And so the plants use nectar guides or ultraviolet patterns to beckon bees to their pollen.”

  “So that’s what you put in this miracle battery of yours, these nectar guides?” Bach asked.

  “It really is that simple – that’s why I had such trouble figuring it out. But really, all I needed to do was infuse the veins of the battery with ultraviolet absorbent liquid. And so I had to, ahem, borrow, some of the sunscreen injections that the charter gives to the miners. That liquid truly is something else – it can channel incoming UV light, focusing it into a circular laser that increases in power over time by means of a positive feedback loop. As long as that intake valve is open, the rush of UV light from any source is sufficient to power up the engine and allow it to maintain that unfathomable heat and density. And it’s all thanks to my love, Anzhela.”

  “And a lot of good she did,” Bach said bitterly. “We’re hurtling towards a black hole and the only thing the charter’s going to hold a funeral for is your bloody battery.”

  Khunrath looked around the room and noticed that everyone had the same look of defeat in their eyes. Curious, Khunrath asked, “Why are you all so sad? Haven’t you been listening to a single word I’ve said? I told you that I built the strongest battery in the entire universe.”

  “Good for you. And how would that help us?” Joyce asked.

  “It’s like I already said – the battery weighs a potentially infinite amount when fully activated. You could outfit one of the launches with the battery and fly it into the black hole. Provided that the launch can dodge the debris as well as aim straight for the event horizon, you would then charge up the battery. The battery would then collapse into a dense dot, one powerful enough to devour entire stars. There would then be a loop between the two black holes, with one eating the other. In just a few short hours, the black holes would eat themselves down to nothing, and we would be saved. Again, it really is that simple.”

  Seeing the audience of skeptical eyes, Khunrath added, “Trust me – before Latch dragged me out of my hiding-place, she let me run a simulation on my computer. It’ll work – it can do nothing but work.”

  “I just wish I had as much faith in you as you do in your machine,” one of the colonists standing behind Nash said.

  “Here, let me prove it to you then,” Khunrath insisted. He turned to Latch and repeated to her, “Let me prove it to them.”

  Latch nodded.

  ***

  As Khunrath led a parade of colonists along Canal White Clay, the people whispered amongst themselves. The urban legend that they had kept alive through rumors was not only real but walking in front of them. And they had so many questions that they wanted to ask. Perhaps the most important demand was where Khunrath had been hiding all this time. They thought they had known every inch of their colony like the wrinkles in their mind. The notion that there were still places left to hide was as disturbing as finding a dark thought.

  But where the colonists were nervous about what this meant, Nash’s face twitched with excitement. Before Khunrath had taken the stage, Nash did not see any hope in their future. All he could imagine was the colony being crushed and devoured by Hellmouth in days, maybe hours. But then he heard Khunrath’s plan, as mad as the scientist, and that was all he needed for an antidote. Where there is no hope, man creates it, as strong and beautiful as rebuilding a city from its ruins. The humanity he thought had died years before was still alive, just a lonely pulse in the basement of the heart, but alive.

  Nash was so deep in thought that he almost didn’t realize that they had suddenly halted. He shook off his daydreams and looked ahead. They were standing in front of a large boulder, one that overlooked the canal just a foot away.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Wolfmouth said, shaking his head. “Don’t tell me you’ve been living underneath the granary all this time.”

  In order to ope
n up the boulder, one had to write out the password on a touchpad. Only a few of the colonists had the microchip – one that was buried in their fingertip – necessary to write out the password. But Khunrath had to be different. He took a handheld wireless transmitter out of his pocket and held it up to the touchpad. A few seconds later, the password appeared on the screen and a door suddenly opened in the boulder.

  Khunrath turned to Wolfmouth and said with a little smile, “If I were you, I’d pretend I didn’t just see that.”

  “How could I not? I’ve spent a year of my life just unlocking doors around here, and you have a skeleton key?”

  “Do you like it?” Khunrath asked, holding the transmitter up. “It’s my own design – I got the inspiration from my quantum encryption projects.”

  As Khunrath and the other colonists stepped through the door, Nash heard Wolfmouth grumble something unprintable while massaging the fingertip that his microchip had been painfully embedded in.

  The group walked down the long tunnel to the pit of their world. As they walked, the pressure plates under their feet switched on the overhead lights. This only fed Nash’s growing hope that man was shining again. As they walked, Joyce asked, “So, Jules, let’s say this idea of yours works…”

  “It will.”

  “If it works, where does that leave you? The way you tell it, that battery is your life’s work. Why are you so eager to give it up after all of that time?”

  “Because no matter what you think, you all are worth saving,” Khunrath said simply.

  As they entered the granary, many of the colonists were startled by what they saw. They had never set foot in the colony’s harvest before, and here they were, overwhelmed by the meat printers whirring, the overhead lights blazing, and the waterfall in the center of the room roaring. After being suffocated with order for so long, they found it hard to believe that the heart of the colony was just another word for chaos.