The Infinity Program

by Richard H Hardy

  “What’s this all about?” Jon asked, but no one would answer him.

  The first MP frisked him while the second MP shut down Jon’s computer and pushed his chair back six feet into the far corner of the office. The two of them escorted him over to the chair.

  “Sit down,” said the first MP.

  Jon continued to stand. “What’s this all about?” he asked again. Instead of answering him, the two men forced him down into the chair.

  The civilian stepped around Jon’s desk. He was a tall, slim man in a three-piece suit.

  “Are you Jon S. Graeme?” the civilian asked.

  Jon nodded, but his response proved unacceptable to the civilian. “Are you Jon S. Graeme?” the man repeated.

  “Yes,” Jon managed to choke out.

  “You live at 772 Northrop Way?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a close associate of Harry Sale?”

  Jon paused a moment longer than on the previous question but finally answered in the affirmative.

  The man leaned back and perched on the corner of Jon’s desk. Jon watched him as he pulled up his pant leg so that it wouldn’t wrinkle at the knee. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that the two MPs had stepped slightly away but were both in an obvious state of readiness. The colonel was content to remain in the background. His arms were folded and he stood with his legs wide apart as he stared intently at Jon.

  The civilian addressed Harry again. “My name is James Nodgren. I’m with the National Security Agency. We want answers. I’ll warn you at the beginning, if you don’t respond truthfully, things could go very badly for you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” said Jon. He was embarrassed by the sound of his voice, which was suddenly reedy and high.

  “How long have you known Harry Sale?” Nodgren asked.

  “Since I started working here. Six or seven months, I guess.”

  “Were you aware that Harry Sale was a member of Greenpeace?”

  “I guess I knew that.”

  “You guess?” Nodgren said as he raised his eyebrows.

  “Yes, I knew he was a member of Greenpeace.”

  “And how long have you been a member of Greenpeace, Mr. Graeme?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Jon asked with more than a touch of exasperation.

  “We ask the questions,” Nodgren said in a hard voice, “and you answer them. You got that?”

  Nodgren leaned back against the desk and his features relaxed.

  “I’ll repeat,” he said smoothly. “How long have you been a member of Greenpeace?”

  “I joined in my senior year at Dartmouth,” said Jon. “That would be about seven or eight years ago.”

  “Have you ever attended Greenpeace meetings when Harry was present?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” Jon answered. “Maybe before we met.”

  “How active are you in Greenpeace?”

  “I’m sort of a lapsed member,” Jon replied. “I get their Newsletter. That’s about it.”

  “How about Harry?” the civilian said. “Is he active in Greenpeace?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” said Jon truthfully.

  The next question froze him up completely.

  “Have you ever been to a small town in West Virginia called Tartan’s Crag?”

  Jon hesitated, turning over the possibilities in his mind. He was absolutely certain that there was no way they could know about his trip to Tartan’s Crag. But it was very disconcerting to him that they were able to zero in on the place where it had all begun.

  “Not that I can recall,” Jon lied.

  Nodgren suddenly changed direction. “Do you go to Harry Sale’s residence often?”

  “Not often,” Jon answered.

  “When did you last visit him there?”

  “I can’t remember for sure,” said Jon. “Quite a few weeks back.”

  “What were the circumstances of your visit?”

  Before Jon could answer, an almost inaudible sound caught his attention. It was a faint whir. He looked toward the source of the sound and saw that the small security camera Harry had placed above his door had repositioned itself. Its new focus was on the corner where he was sitting.

  “What were the circumstances of your visit?” Nodgren asked again.

  “Just a friendly visit,” said Jon.

  “How long were you there?”

  “Maybe an hour or two,” Jon replied.

  “And what were you doing during that time?”

  “It was ages ago,” Jon said. “I’m a little vague about the details.”

  A brief smile flashed across Nodgren’s face. He leaned back and rubbed his hands together slowly. “So, you’re a little vague about what you were doing. It didn’t by any chance have something to do with the sixteen PCs that were stacked up in Harry Sale’s living room?”

  Jon hesitated. He realized there was no way to lie. Obviously they had checked out Harry’s place thoroughly. His fingerprints would be all over those machines.

  “Yes, now that you mention it,” said Jon. “That must have been the day I helped him load some software on the PCs.”

  “What kind of software?” Nodgren asked.

  “The Linux Operating System,” Jon answered.

  “And why were you loading Linux on sixteen different PCs?”

  “Harry was building a Beowulf cluster to test his new operating system,” Jon replied.

  “Beowulf cluster,” Nodgren said, “Is that some kind of computer jargon?”

  “It’s a bunch of machines wired together to solve a problem,” said Jon. “The problem is broken into pieces and each machine works at solving one of the pieces.”

  “What was this problem?” Nodgren said, more than a little irritated.

  “I don’t know.”

  “So,” said Nodgren, “You spent the whole day loading up an operating system to solve a problem you don’t know anything about. Is that correct?”

  “You’re twisting my words,” said Jon. “We were testing a new operating system Harry designed.”

  “And did it test out okay?”

  “The test failed because there wasn’t enough power to run all the machines,” Jon answered.

  “Was there anyone else with you and Harry that day?”

  It was crunch time. Jon realized that any answer he gave would put Lettie right in the middle of things. Since he was sure they already knew she had been there, he decided to answer truthfully.

  “Yes. Lettie Olsen was there.”

  “What was she doing there?”

  “I asked her if she could bring some pizza over,” said Jon.

  Nodgren snorted, feigning amusement. “So this Lettie Olsen is your personal delivery person?”

  “Not exactly,” said Jon. “She’s a close friend.”

  “Yours or Harry’s?” Nodgren asked.

  “Mine,” said Jon.

  Once again Nodgren feigned amusement. He stepped away from the desk and crossed the room to where the colonel stood. For a moment or two Nodgren and the colonel conferred in a whisper. After they finished speaking, Nodgren reached inside his pocket and removed a cellphone. He punched in a number and spoke softly. Jon could not make out a word. After mere seconds, Nodgren lowered the phone and returned it to his pocket. He crossed the room and resumed his perch on Jon’s desk. He stared into Jon’s face for several minutes without speaking or blinking once. His eyes were a cold gray. Jon finally had to look away.

  “Your pizza delivery person, Miss Olsen, will be down here shortly,” he said sarcastically. “I have a few questions to ask her. Just so you know, if I don’t get the answers I want, it’s going to go hard on her. In the meantime, here’s a little something for you to think about.” Nodgren removed a folded piece of paper from his pocket and unceremoniously dumped it into Jon’s lap.

  Jon unfolded the paper slowly. It was a credit card receipt from a gas station in Tartan’s Crag. The license plate listed
on it was Harry’s and the signature was his.

  Nodgren continued to stare at him before he stood up from the desk and walked over to the colonel. Once again the two men whispered inaudibly. Out of the corner of his eye, Jon could see that the two MPs standing to his right and left were watching him intently.

  A sick feeling started to churn in the pit of Jon’s stomach. A few minutes before, he had been fairly certain that he could manage the interrogation. But the addition of Lettie raised his anxiety level in the extreme, sucking away all hope.

  Jon looked up from the credit card receipt and stared at Nodgren and the colonel. The two men were still talking in subdued tones.

  A deafening alarm sounded in the corridor outside—a hard metallic scream well past the threshold of pain. For the first time Jon could see uncertainty creep into Nodgren’s face.

  “You two stay where you are,” Nodgren shouted at the MPs. “Don’t let him move out of that chair.”

  Nodgren turned to the colonel. “Let’s check this out,” he screamed over the siren.

  The two men walked to the door and exited into the hallway. The moment the door shut behind them there was a complete power failure in Building C. There being no window in Jon’s office, the darkness was absolute.

  “What the fuck!” someone shouted in the hall outside.

  Jon’s skin had begun to crawl. It was as though a legion of tiny insects was biting at every square inch of his body. In the next instant it seemed that a thousand flashbulbs went off simultaneously. All Jon could see was an explosion of white light. The light then dissipated, replaced by total darkness. Jon kicked out wildly, sensing that he was falling. He thrashed so violently that he fell out of the chair, unconscious before he hit the floor.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  James Nodgren and the colonel stepped out into the corridor and shut the door to Jon Graeme’s office behind them. The screaming alarm was even more deafening in the hallway. “What the hell’s going on?” the colonel shouted at the MP standing guard outside Jon Graeme’s office.

  Before the MP could answer, the alarm went silent and all the lights in the building winked off.

  “What the fuck!” the colonel shouted.

  Nodgren blinked his eyes and tried to adjust to the darkness, but it was all-consuming. After a moment the MP who had been standing guard turned on his flashlight. The three men outside Jon Graeme’s office became visible to one another.

  “I think we’d better get back inside and secure the prisoner,” said the colonel.

  “Right,” Nodgren nodded immediately.

  The colonel turned to the MP. “Give me your flashlight.”

  As soon as they entered the office, the colonel pointed the beam of the flashlight at the corner of the office. Jon Graeme’s chair was still there but he was gone.

  “He’s not here,” the first MP said. “He just disappeared.”

  “Look under the desk,” Nodgren shouted.

  The two MPs checked the space beneath the desk but found nothing there.

  Nodgren’s cellphone whirred. Its electronic signal seemed abnormally loud in the silence of the office. Nodgren pulled it from his pocket, opened it up and held it to his ear.

  “Yes, Sir,” he said into the phone and then thumbed it off.

  “We’ve been ordered to evacuate the building by Command,” he said in a loud voice to everyone present.

  After they left the building they found themselves among several hundred others who had also been evacuated. Nodgren and the colonel made their way quickly to the Mobile Command Center about fifty yards from the building. Its rear door swung open and General Rockaway stepped out.

  “Who the hell gave the order to evacuate?” he shouted.

  “No one in our group,” said the Director of the NSA contingent.

  “Look!” Nodgren called out as he pointed toward Building C.

  The building was blurred about its edges. An odd mist had settled around it and its upper stories were engulfed in a shimmering fog. Within seconds the building began to fade away, as though it were made of sugar and water was being poured over the top. It collapsed in on itself in slow motion, but with none of the destructive consequences of demolition. It seemed as though its very molecules were being disassembled and sucked away.

  Five minutes later, Building C was completely gone. Even its foundations had vanished. All that was left was an immense hole in the ground. The crowd of people who had stood and watched was silent, their faces pale with slack-jawed disbelief. All were shaken by what they had witnessed.

  General Rockaway took his cellphone out of his pocket and held it in his shaking hand before holding it to his ear. “Get me a secure line,” he barked. “And get me through to the president, priority alpha alpha alpha one.”

  The cellphone tight against his ear, General Rockaway stepped back into the Mobile Command Center. The doors slammed shut behind him.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  For a long time Jon Graeme wasn’t sure whether he was awake or asleep. He was suspended in an eerie, hypnagogic reverie. What finally woke him completely was an intense itching that covered every square inch of his skin, from his feet and shins to his face and forehead.

  He was lying on his back in a pitch-black room. The floor was cold, almost chillingly so. He shuddered, not from the cold but the horrible feeling that insects were crawling all over him. He sat bolt upright and began scratching furiously. When the itching finally subsided, he pulled himself to his feet and found that he was weak and unsteady. The itching had lessened but there was still a curious tingling.

  Jon tried to gather his thoughts. The last things he remembered were the alarm, the sudden power failure, and the intense light that had burst about him. He wondered if he was still in Building C. The air didn’t smell right and there was a definite difference in its quality. Damp and musty.

  Jon searched his pocket for his key chain. When he found it, he turned on the small flashlight attached to it. He was still in his basement office, but the four men who had been there only minutes earlier were gone. How could that be? he wondered.

  He left his office and moved down the hallway toward the elevators, walking in the narrow beam of his pocket flashlight. The oddness in the air became more noticeable. Maybe it’s just because the air conditioners are off, he thought.

  Halfway down the corridor he came to an abandoned security desk. Jon rummaged through its drawers until he located a large emergency flashlight. When he flicked it on, a huge beam lit up his path.

  The elevators were not working. Apparently the backup emergency power, which was supposed to ensure their reliability, had also failed. He proceeded to the emergency staircase.

  Ascending the stairs in the emergency exit was oddly dream-like. Motes of dust floated in front of the wide beam of his flashlight and his heels clicked against the steel steps, resonating through the circular stairwell with an unearthly clatter. The atmosphere was even more foreign. It reminded him of the Catacombs. Definitely damp and musty, as though emanating from deep in a cave.

  At last he came to the first floor. He threw the door wide and stepped out into the main corridor near the reception area. He was surprised to find it completely deserted. Even the receptionist and the security guard had abandoned their posts. He was also surprised by the fact that it was still dark. There should have been some natural light from the first floor windows. Even at night, there would be some ambient light. Maybe the power failure affects more than just Building C, he thought.

  Two minutes later he reached the main entrance. Unconsciously, his pace had quickened. He threw open the main door and stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of Building C. Raising the flashlight high, he surveyed the lot in front of him.

  “My God!” he said, as he swept the flashlight in a wide arc. What he saw before him seemed impossible. Somehow Building C had been moved into a huge subterranean cavern. The inverted bowl of rock above was mottled with stalactites. Below the high vault of i
ts ceiling were walls that seemed almost mirror smooth.

  “Where the hell am I?” he said aloud.

  He directed the flashlight toward the front path and found that the fountain that used to be in front of Building C was gone. It had been replaced by an odd sort of parking lot. Even from a distance, something did not look right about the vehicles parked there.

  He moved toward the parking lot, probing its entire area with the beam of the flashlight.

  “Oh my God,” he said when he came close enough to see the first row of cars. He focused the beam on the car closest to him. It was a 1947 Hudson in mint condition. Next to it was a 1948 Kaiser Frazier, also in pristine condition.

  Further investigation revealed that lot contained row upon row of classic automobiles, all in pristine condition and all either of 1940s vintage or earlier. Jon thought he recognized a Pierce-Arrow. As he recalled, they were from the 1920s. Like all the others, it appeared to have just rolled off the assembly line. Jon was at a complete loss as to what had happened but he now knew one thing for sure. Whatever was going on, Harry Sale was right square in the middle of it.

  He turned the flashlight off, curious to see what else might be visible in the darkness. For a moment it seemed that the dark was absolute, but as his eyes adjusted he saw a single exception. About a hundred yards to his right was a soft haze of light. It seemed to come out of nowhere, as though the air molecules themselves in that one small region were luminescent. He moved toward the light.

  Jon made his way slowly through the lot of antique cars. The magic of the perfectly made machines was muted by the strangeness of his predicament. He framed a number of questions in his mind, but he had no answers for any of them. In addition to the fruitless questions, anxiety over’s Lettie’s fate gripped him. What had happened to her?

  When he reached the far side of the lot he saw a path before him. He shone his light directly on this path and it glittered with a golden sheen. When he reached it, Jon knelt down and ran his fingers over what appeared to be yellow bricks.

  “Follow the yellow brick road,” he said out loud in a flat, sarcastic voice. It was even more obvious to him that every detail of this environment was marked by Harry’s fingerprints. Harry had always been a sucker for cars and movies from the thirties and the forties. He had a crazy notion that he should be singing “We’re Off to See the Wizard.”