The path of gold bricks led directly to the area of ambient light. As he approached, the quality of the light took on a greenish tinge and the light grew less diffuse. While it did not seem to originate from any special source, it shone through the immediate area around him and made it visibly brighter. He turned his flashlight off.
Another five minutes of walking brought him to a narrow passageway, a small tunnel that seemed to lead into an entirely different area of Harry’s subterranean domain. The tunnel was short, barely sixty feet. As he walked through it, the light at the end intensified.
On the other end of tunnel, he looked carefully about and saw that he had arrived at a vast underground arcade. The smooth vaulted ceiling was hundreds of feet above him. The floor beneath was silver, metallic and as smooth as glass. It extended for miles and miles, as far as the eye could see. The landscape was filled with machinery of some kind. There were huge ceramic pods surrounded by cones of light and sculpted, intricate metallic shapes graceful enough to feature in a modern art exhibit. Patterns twisted through the cones of light, whirling faster and faster, almost into invisibility.
The central walkway through the gigantic arcade was lined with row upon row of black crystalline slabs. They seemed to get smaller and smaller in the distance until they disappeared into mere dots. Jon examined the nearest of these slabs. Complex patterns of color danced across its obsidian surface, vanished and then re-appeared again. It was obvious to him that the machine was not a product of the human mind. Was it the quantum computer or something else altogether?
He kept walking through the maze of alien machinery. After a while he stopped and cupped his hands to his face before shouting in his loudest voice, “Harry!” His voice echoed back to him across the huge cavern. No response. He pressed on.
A half-hour later, Jon saw where it all ended. The machinery and the obsidian slabs thinned out and he came to a smaller alcove within the immense cavern. Its ceiling was only about fourteen feet high and its area was about the size of a football field. The lighting was brighter, as bright as noontime on a clear August day. The damp, musty air was gone. As he entered the alcove the atmosphere became clean and dry, with the faintest trace of ozone.
He walked through the main corridor between large servers that had a more conventional design. Within minutes he spotted Harry. He was sitting at his command chair in the horseshoe-shaped control area Jon had seen previously. In fact, Harry looked exactly as he had on Friday and on Sunday. He was so totally caught up in what he was doing he was oblivious to everything else.
The monitor in front of Harry matched the horseshoe-shape and was at least twenty feet wide and five feet high. Harry’s chair moved smoothly back and forth and his hands shot out over a vast keyboard containing thousands of keys.
“Harry!” Jon shouted out.
Harry could have been a deaf man.
Moving closer, Jon shouted at his friend, “What the hell is going on, Harry?” Still no response.
Jon walked up to him and placed his hand on Harry’s left shoulder. Harry was so startled that he nearly jumped out of the chair.
“I didn’t know you were there, Jon. Can you give me a few minutes to wrap things up?”
“Harry,” Jon replied with more than a little urgency, “I really need some answers.”
Harry looked up impatiently. “I’ve got to finish what I’m doing or some servers are going to crash and they’ll know I’ve hacked into them. I need a few minutes.”
The few minutes turned into nearly half an hour. Jon grew so impatient that he seemed to be testing the confines of an invisible cage behind Harry.
Finally, Harry’s chair stopped moving back and forth on its track. Harry stood up and faced Jon. His eyes glittered feverishly and his face seemed leaner and more drawn than it had on Sunday. There were dark circles under his eyes. Jon wondered how long it had been since he had slept.
“How did you bring me here?” Jon asked.
Harry looked rather sheepish. “I don’t think you want to know about that,” he said casually.
Jon stared at Harry in disbelief. A cold fury rushed through him. How could Harry treat him so dismissively? Friend or no, he’d had enough.
For the first time ever, Harry seemed to sense that he had riled his friend. “Jon, I didn’t mean to show disrespect. It’s just that there are a lot of other issues here—”
“What do you mean, ‘issues’?” Jon shouted. “This is my fucking life!”
“Just let me explain a few things, Jon.”
“You’re going to have to do more than explain, Harry,” Jon shouted. “I’ve got the National Security Agency breathing down my neck, thanks to you. Then you go and transport me and all of Building C down to your fucking bat cave! You’ve smashed everything, Harry. I don’t have a life to go back to.”
“If you’d let me explain—” Harry tried again.
Jon ignored him. “What about Lettie? They’re probably water boarding her right now.”
“Believe me,” said Harry, “Lettie will be okay.”
Harry’s calm assurance did nothing to assuage him. “How can you know that?” Jon shouted.
“Will you calm down and let me explain?”
Jon backed off and tried to regain his composure. “Okay, Harry, I’m listening.”
“At this moment,” said Harry, “Lettie is sitting in the back seat of a car with two MPs heading toward Washington. They already know that her information is limited. At this point they are concentrating on you and me.”
Jon’s anger spiked again. How could Harry possibly know all this? He started to say something, but Harry pushed on. “Don’t interrupt, Jon. I know what’s happening to Lettie because the quantum computer is tapped into every electronic information stream in the world. And I can instantly access every bit of information it has. I also have programs running that can analyze all this information selectively and break it into meaningful patterns. I can even predict with accuracy events that have not yet happened.”
Jon was completely bewildered by what Harry was telling him. Before he could absorb one impossible statement, Harry was piling on another.
“Jon,” said Harry, “you look absolutely shell-shocked.” He paused, and for a moment there was only the whirring of machinery between them. “I know how hard it is,” Harry continued. “It shook me up, too, when I finally saw what was going on. We’re on a whole new level now, Jon, and words just won’t do. Let me show you.”
Harry started to walk away, back toward the tunnel.
“Follow me,” said Harry. “Let me show you what’s been happening.”
Jon followed. What else could he do? He felt dazed, unable to absorb anymore. Only a deep-seated trust in Harry kept him moving.
For nearly twenty minutes they followed a path that ran parallel to one of the rows of crystalline slabs. They exchanged no words. The only sounds were their footsteps and the unworldly hum of alien machinery.
Their destination proved to be a large, quasi-geodesic dome, which rose up in the midst of the crystalline slabs as they thinned out. It was asymmetrical, as though some of its tetrahedral sections were folded in on themselves. The sections were mirror-bright but did not reflect what was in front of them. It was as though a prism was embedded deep within each one, showing a discrete portion of the visible spectrum.
Harry moved closer to the structure and made several odd hand gestures. As soon as he did this, the mirror-like sections of the dome became transparent. Inside was a replica of a human brain, complete in every detail. It was huge, at least a hundred times larger than a normal human brain.
“It’s a replica of my brain,” said Harry. “It’s copied down to the minutest structural detail. The only difference is its size.”
Jon did not speak or move. He knew that anything he said would be beside the point.
“Remember when I said the machine was testing me? This is what it was doing—it was modeling my brain, analyzing how it would approach any conc
eivable problem, how it would respond to any imaginable situation. It was an immense task, even for a quantum computer. The process nearly killed me.” Harry waited for Jon to react, but his friend was still dumbstruck, so he went on. “This copy of my brain is rapidly becoming a sort of CPU for the quantum computer. Before, there was only machine logic and the instructions that had been built into it. Now the system can imagine and create and respond in an original way to any conceivable event. This is the turning point, the culmination of its sixty million year plan.”
Jon blinked. A few of the implications began to dawn on him. “Does this mean the quantum computer doesn’t need you any more, Harry?”
Harry smiled. “I guess you could say that. I’m becoming redundant. There are just a few more things I need to finish up before my work is complete. I still have access to the lower level directories, but the brain is already beyond the hundredth level of the directory structure. And it will keep growing. Its potential is immense. It can grow beyond anything we can imagine. In fact, it already has.”
“Are you saying it will run the whole show?”
“Indeed, it will, Jon. In just a little while it won’t even need my input. At that point, I’ll just be along for the ride, like everyone else.”
“It’s taking over?” Jon asked incredulously. “And you’re just going to go ahead and let it run the world and push us in any direction it wants?”
Harry held his hand to his face and began to laugh.
Jon was stung by Harry’s laughter. He was furious. “You don’t have to mock me!” he shouted.
“I’m sorry,” Harry replied between laughs. “I’m not mocking you, I’m really not. If you could just see things from my perspective …. There wouldn’t be a human race if it weren’t for them. If they hadn’t interfered, we never would have evolved, never would have gotten past our primitive beginnings. You’ve got to understand, Jon. This machine has guided us from the beginning. We owe our origin and survival as a species to it.”
“But it’s interfering with our development,” Jon insisted.
Harry grimaced and did his level best to suppress more laughter. He put a hand on Jon’s shoulder, looked deep into his eyes, and said, “If your two-year-old child was running headlong toward a cliff, would you consider trying to stop him interference?”
“It’s not the same,” Jon protested. “It’s not the same at all.”
“Isn’t it?” Harry replied. “I’ll tell you exactly what is in the works now and you can tell me if it’s good or not. The machine is ending our dependence on fossil fuels once and for all.”
“That’s absurd,” said Jon. “How could it do that?”
“Nanotechnology can work on a planetary scale and with incredible rapidity. The hydrocarbons in fossil fuels will be converted to water and inert byproducts. They will virtually disappear overnight.”
“But that will plunge us back into the dark ages.”
Harry ignored Jon’s comment. “The system will replace our entire energy grid with what I call quantum mini-black hole technology. It’s a clean energy approach a thousand years ahead of our current technologies. The system will end the production of fossil fuels and plug in a new, abundant energy source that will be freely available and accessible to everyone on this planet. We’ll have wireless, point to point transmission of energy—at no cost! And there will be all kinds of new technology to go with it. There will be engines the size of a grapefruit that can drive a 747. There will be no emissions, no byproducts, no waste. A total revolution in transportation.”
“You’re going to bring our whole economic system crashing down,” said Jon, incredulous.
“You’re right,” said Harry. “But what would you prefer: a temporary economic upheaval or the destruction of the human race within the next hundred years?”
Jon made no immediate reply.
“Now that the system has its own brain to direct it,” Harry continued, “it’s entering its mitotic phase. It’s reproducing, making complete working copies of itself in strategic locations throughout the world. After that, it will no longer be vulnerable to human intervention. All it needs is a few more hours. That’s my last job. I’m buying it the time it needs to replicate.”
For the first time since his arrival in Harry’s underground domain, Jon understood the enormity of what was now in motion. Within hours a transformative event would send shockwaves through the lives of billions of human beings. The old world order would be dissolved forever and something entirely strange and new would be born out of the wreckage. Jon could not help but wonder if Harry was a Judas, the ultimate betrayer of the race, or its savior.
He could stop Harry now. He was larger and stronger and more physically fit. He could wrestle him to the ground and prevent him from doing anything further.
For the longest minute of his life, Jon wrestled with his conscience. What finally decided him was his belief in Harry. If the machine had interceded at every critical point in human history, humanity had to have arrived at another perilous junction. If the human race was to move forward, the solution Harry proposed must be the best possible.
Just as Jon formed his resolve, he became aware that the background noise of the machines had started to rise in volume. Also, he was starting to perspire. The temperature of the surrounding area had risen at least twenty degrees.
“I’ve got to get back to my workstation,” said Harry, already on his way.
Jon followed after him, closing the distance between them with a long stride. “What’s going on?” said Jon. “It’s getting so noisy and hot. Has something gone wrong?”
“My program kicked in faster than I thought. I’m using the heat and noise as a signal. This will allow the Pentagon to pinpoint our location.”
“My God, Harry, why do you want them to find us?” When Harry didn’t respond, Jon grabbed his arm. “What the hell is going on, Harry?”
Harry did not break his stride. That odd half-smile was on his face. “They’re planning to drop a nuclear bomb right on top of us. I don’t have time to explain now.”
Harry broke into a run. Jon had no choice but to follow on in silence.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
After their hasty take-off from Andrews Air Force Base, Colonel Randall followed the coastline north, keeping the B-2A Bomber steady at 10,000 feet. He reviewed his mental checklist, more carefully than usual, since it quieted a nagging voice in the back of his mind. It temporarily took him away from the fact that one of the two bomb-rack assemblies was loaded with an armed B61-11 nuclear bunker buster. He knew he would follow orders when the time came, but he still found it hard to accept that he would be dropping a nuclear weapon on American soil in less than twenty minutes.
When a quick glance at the coastline below confirmed that he had entered the air-space above the state of Maryland, he looked at the LCDs of his tactical air navigation system. The displays for the TCN-250 were state-of-the-art. His first glance was reassuring, giving him immediate feedback on his position relative to the target area. For a second he turned away, then turned back to verify his first glance. His jaw dropped open and he heard the rush of his own breath over the throat microphone. Every light on the TACAN display winked out at exactly the same moment. Instinctively he counted out the seconds—one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand four ….
“What the fuck,” he said under his breath. His throat mic amplified the signal so that the profanity screamed in his ears. The display suddenly lit up again. It’s almost like the computer system re-booted, he thought, knowing that such an event was a theoretical impossibility.
He turned immediately to the displays for GWIS, the Generic Weapons Interface System. He was fast enough to see it blink from dormancy to life. Again, he could not help but think that somehow the software had forced a re-boot of both the navigational and weapons system.
He cleared his throat and flicked on the radio with his thumb. “SB-77 calling AB-22,” he said.
Randall explained what had happened and requested permission to abort the flight. After five minutes of dead air time, he had his answer. “Proceed as ordered,” said the voice succinctly. It was followed by a brief hiss of static, then nothing but dead air.
His target was a wooded area about twenty miles west of a large corporate complex. Even as his finger hovered above the launch button, an inborn instinct made him rebel against what he was about to do. He circled the target and radioed again. “SB-77 requesting final authorization.”
He waited for the tinny voice to say, “Copy.” Instead there was an odd popping sound of a microphone at Andrews Air Force Base. “Just follow your goddamn orders!” General Rockaway screamed.
“Yes, sir,” he barked into the mic. He flicked off the radio and swallowed. His throat was dry and there was a knot in the pit of his stomach. Against his better judgment he did what his training told him to do—he followed orders and activated the servo-mechanisms in the bomb-rack assembly. In less than fifteen seconds he launched the missile armed with the 1,200 pound nuclear bunker buster.
***
General Rockaway was concerned when the pilot reported the problem with his instruments. He quickly consulted one of the software engineers, who hemmed and hawed as he tried to explain what had happened.
“Even if there were a temporary power fluctuation, the software would be reinitialized correctly,” the engineer finally said.
Rockaway was not reassured but felt he had no choice but to proceed as planned. Barely half an hour ago sensors and heat detection equipment had located a huge underground industrial complex twenty miles west of HTPS Industries. The readings had been off the scale. Experts had been called in to interpret the data and for once they agreed unanimously.
The Infinity Program Page 27
