The Null Prophecy

by Michael Guillen

  Dang, this guy is good.

  But what a brat.

  “Two minutes!” Eva said into her ear.

  AA: “The idea of a quantum processor isn’t new. Scientists first started trying to build one more than ten years ago. How have you managed to do what others have failed at doing?”

  JK: “Because we’re smarter than they are?”

  She expected Kilroy to chuckle, or at least smile, but he kept a straight face.

  AA: “How are you smarter? What was the key to your succeeding?”

  JK: “Since anyone can and will reverse engineer Quantum I to find out, I might as well tell you. There were two huge problems we managed to solve. First, we found a way to cram one million qubits—one million quantum bits of processing power—into a tiny chip. No small feat. Second, everyone thought quantum chips needed to be kept super cold, at or near absolute zero. But we got around that by inventing a superconducting organic polymer that lets Quantum I operate at room temperature.”

  AA: “Jared, let me ask you about—”

  Her IFB filled with static. She glanced at the TV monitor: the picture was breaking up. Moments later visual snow gave way to the cool, calm image of Brett Halsey in New York.

  Allie turned to Kilroy. “Jared, I don’t know what—”

  But the Henderson woman, who’d been standing in the wings, barged in and hurriedly began removing Kilroy’s mic. “Sorry, but this interview is over. Mr. Kilroy needs to leave—now.”

  Allie, opening her mouth to protest, watched helplessly as the hyper-efficient sidekick spirited Kilroy out of the room.

  EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 23 (9:49 P.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME)

  FAST NEWS BUREAU; SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA

  The executive jet landed at Santa Monica Airport and taxied to a waiting limo that whisked Allie to the network’s LA bureau, a short distance away.

  She strode into the newsroom. “Hey, ’mano!”

  She was hailing David Rodriquez, the young production manager on duty sitting at the rim—a circular arrangement of desks at the center of the newsroom. David was a devoted family man who, lacking seniority at Fast, had to work the swing shift, a sacrifice that endeared him to Allie.

  “You guys figure out what the heck happened with my live shot?”

  He stood up. “Yeah. The uplink people said it was a magnetic storm. Messed with the bird for a full hour. It’s still not completely back to normal.”

  “Terrific! Que mala suerte.”

  She stomped off to her office.

  “Yo, Allie!” David called after her. “Is that guy really gonna give away all that money?”

  Without looking back, she threw up a hand. “That’s what he says. We’ll see.”

  Inside her office she dropped heavily into a pink leather chair—a gift to herself the previous Christmas—and started fiddling nervously with her hair. Her stylist gave up long ago trying to break her of the habit.

  A moment later Eva strode in and plopped into the King Louis XV chair facing Allie’s antique painted desk. “Did you hear?”

  Allie preferred to forget the entire miserable day. “About the magnetic storm?”

  “No, China. It’s a go.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “Have you checked your voicemail lately?”

  She gave Eva a snarky look. “Sorry, no. I’ve been a little busy, in case you hadn’t noticed. Any more brilliant questions?” She caught herself. “I’m sorry, chica. I just wanna go home and eat my way through a box of See’s. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Just that the government’s agreed to let you interview Dr. Tang about the unintended consequences of computer technology. The only thing is, you can’t ask her any questions about accusations that China’s military is developing secret plans for cyberwarfare.”

  Zhaohui Tang, one of the world’s foremost experts on cyber security, rarely spoke to the press. Getting an interview with her was a major coup.

  “Ay! But everyone knows the Chinese are up to no good.”

  “Yeah, but we’ll have to live with it.” Then Eva gave her a mischievous smile. “We’ll figure out a way around it.”

  Allie stood, more than ready to call it a day. “Lord, this is frustrating.”

  “Let’s sleep on it,” Eva said, rising from the chair. “We’ve both had a tough day.”

  Putting on her coat, Allie shouted to her young AP, who sat in a cubicle just outside the door. “Amy! How’s the G-20 story coming?”

  Leaders and their entourages from twenty countries were flying to California to meet at the San Diego Convention Center over the forthcoming weekend. It was a huge news event in her own backyard; its timing would help promote her and the TV special, set to air in just three weeks.

  Historically, G-20 summits were also a boon for protesters because of the enormous media attention they attracted. Usually, the demonstrations were desultory and disconnected; but not this time. According to special agent Mike Cannatella of the FBI, a person or persons unknown were secretly trying to organize the protests into one massive, violent rally against what anarchists called “The Machine,” the totality of everything they considered wrong with today’s mechanized, unfeeling, uncaring world.

  Amy scampered in, notes in hand, and spoke rapidly: “We’re getting the official agenda this week. Cannatella’s flying in from DC tonight. I’ve confirmed your interview with him tomorrow morning. He can only give us a half hour because he’s heading down to San Diego to set up shop. He’s says there’s definitely a secret agent provocateur.”

  “Great,” Allie said. “I mean—you know what I mean. Great job. And stay on the Kilroy story. I want you to dig into this whole privatization scheme of his.”

  Eva agreed. “Get ahold of his peeps and tell them we want another bite of the apple, this time longer and taped, not live.”

  “One other thing,” Allie said, watching Amy struggling to write everything down. “Get your hands on a PC with one of those chips in it. Give our IT guys a heads-up: I want them to check it out, put it through the mill. Let’s see if it can do half of what Kilroy claims it can.” She made a scoffing sound. “Predict the future! Yeah, right, we’ll see about that.”

  She started twisting her hair again.

  “What about Sinclair?” Eva said.

  “What about him?”

  “Are you gonna give him a second chance? My gut says walk away for now. You’ve got way bigger fish to fry and besides, he almost killed you yesterday.”

  CHAPTER 6

  DESTINY

  EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 23 (10:30 P.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME)

  LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA

  Calder, still wide awake, was sitting up in bed, stewing over Hero’s near-disastrous voyage the previous morning. Despite his plea to Allie for a second chance he hadn’t heard anything from her or her people.

  He slapped the bed.

  Call her! Pester her!

  He turned to the bedroom window and stared at his reflection.

  Forget it; just let it go.

  Trust in fate.

  His eyes fell.

  No, he didn’t dare do that.

  THIRTY-THREE YEARS EARLIER

  SEVILLE, SPAIN

  Francis didn’t realize how much noise he and the two dozen or so other kids were making until Sister Yolanda asked them to quiet down. She was the reverend mother’s assistant and his favorite teacher.

  “The bus driver can’t hear himself think, children,” she said. “We don’t want to get into an accident, do we?”

  “No!” they shouted.

  A moment later the old bus squealed to a stop. Francis’s best friend, Marin, twirled around in his seat and pointed toward the front. “Mire el caballo!”

  Francis turned to look out the windshield. A bulky brown-and-white horse with hairy ankles was crossing the road, pulling what looked to Francis like a colorful circus wagon. Driving it was a sad-faced, dark-skinned man with shiny black hair. He was wearing an old suit
without a tie. He glanced in the direction of the bus but didn’t smile. Seated next to him was a dirty-faced boy about Francis’s own age—seven or eight.

  After crossing, the wagon turned onto a cart path paralleling the road and lumbered past the side window where Francis was seated. He pressed his nose to the glass and waved, but the boy looked away.

  “Gitanos,” he heard one of his foster siblings remark. “I wonder where they’re going?”

  “Maybe to get an ice cream cone, like us,” Francis said.

  “I don’t think so, niños,” Sister said. “Gypsies do not have money for such things. They’re probably heading for their camp. It’s not far from our convent, you know.”

  Francis turned to Sister. “Can we give them some money to buy an ice cream cone? For the little boy, at least. He looks sad.”

  “It’s a very kind thought, Francis. You’ve made Jesus very happy.”

  He waited for Sister’s further reply, but gave up when she turned away and began chatting with another boy.

  He looked out the window again, but the wagon was nowhere to be seen.

  You didn’t answer my question.

  During the rest of the trip into the city Francis wondered what his biological mother looked like. According to the sisters she was a gitana who died while giving birth to him. He tried picturing himself in place of the little boy on the wagon, but it was hard to do because his own hair and skin were so much paler than the boy’s.

  The summer sun was high in the sky, and hot, when they finally arrived in downtown Sevilla. Francis was mostly happy and certainly grateful to be living in the orphanage. The sisters were strict but kind. Yet sometimes it felt like a prison. He was looking forward to spending the afternoon walking around freely, the way normal kids always did.

  And of course there was the helado to look forward to.

  Before they exited, Sister told them to stay together or she’d have to cancel the field trip. They promised to obey.

  Francis followed the others onto the crowded sidewalk of Calle Sierpes. They oohed and ahhed at everything they saw around them. His own eyes went straight to the pastries displayed in the large windows of La Campana right in front of him.

  If only . . .

  They’d been walking for only a few minutes when Francis heard a child’s loud voice say, “Mommy, look! Who are they?” He caught sight of a boy—again, about his age—strolling with his family and pointing in their direction. Francis watched the mother bend to speak to the boy, who immediately lowered his arm but didn’t stop staring. Francis didn’t like it and looked away.

  A few moments later the family and his own group passed one another on the sidewalk. “Huérfanos,” the boy said with a sour face; the mother shushed him. Francis felt a warm flush and was tempted to say something back. But he bit his tongue because he really wanted that ice cream cone.

  By the time they reached Helados Rayas, its line of customers extending out the door, Francis was suffering a king-sized hunger. But he’d learned to be patient. With so many kids at the orphanage, you usually weren’t able to get what you wanted exactly when you wanted it.

  “Now remember, children,” Sister said, “each of you can have one scoop of your favorite flavor. But only one. Entiéndenme?”

  “Sí, Sister,” they answered in unison.

  They began telling one another what flavors they were going to get, some changing their minds based on what others were planning to have.

  “I’m getting a scoop of Turrón,” Francis declared.

  “Not me,” Marin said. “I’m getting nocciolossa. It’s got big globs of Nutella. Hmm.”

  Francis batted his hand at him. “Yeah, but Turrón has two kinds of nougat.”

  The back-and-forth continued while Francis and his siblings gradually worked their way forward. When his turn finally came, Francis announced his choice—he hadn’t changed his mind one bit—and took hold of it with great care when the young woman in a white shirt and blue apron handed it to him.

  Sister led them and their frozen treats to a nearby garden park. Some of them chose to sit on benches and others, like Francis, stayed on their feet. He laughed at a small, wiry dog doing tricks for his owner. He and everyone around him roared especially hard when the scruffy little choo-choo finished a backward somersault, then trotted over and shook his owner’s hand.

  Minutes later, when Francis was using his tongue to push the remaining ice cream into the cone, he felt a sharp pain in his left heel. It made him drop his cone.

  “Sister! Sister!” he heard Marin cry out. “A dog has bitten Francis!”

  Francis kicked at the mongrel, who was wolfing down the remains of his ice cream cone, scaring it away. Sister rushed over and squatted down to look at the wound. It was bleeding badly.

  “We need to get you to a doctor!”

  After a long, hurried, painful walk to a medical office, Francis sat nervously with Sister in a small, un-air-conditioned examination room as the doctor inspected the wound. His siblings remained outside in the waiting room, where the receptionist could watch over them.

  “I was just eating my ice cream when he bit me,” he whimpered to the doctor. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I swear.”

  The doctor, a fat man with a small mustache, said, “Of course not. Nobody thinks you were. We have too many strays in the city. Don’t worry; we’ll fix you up.”

  The doctor turned to Sister and whispered something. Whatever it was, she seemed upset by it. They both asked him to stay in the room and went outside.

  While he waited, his thoughts returned to the well-dressed boy on the sidewalk who’d pointed at him. In his mind’s eye Francis studied the kid and his family with more than a twinge of envy. And resentment.

  During the following weeks, the pain of that Sunday afternoon was multiplied manyfold on account of a series of shots he received in his upper leg. The doctor, Sister, everyone assured him the shots were for his own good and he wanted to believe it. But on those nights, when all the other kids were sound asleep, as he rubbed the swollen and sore needle marks and gritted his teeth against the burning pain, he gradually developed a theory about himself. He became convinced he was not only different from other kids but something about him—something beyond his control—caused God to be angry at him. It explained why he was born without parents. Why he had to live in an orphanage. Why he was bitten by a dog and dropped his cone.

  He concluded he was being punished. Doomed to a life in which things, even when they started out happily, always went wrong.

  EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 23 (11:54 P.M. MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT TIME)

  PARKER CENTER FOR BEHAVIORAL HEALTH; DENVER, COLORADO

  Inside the center’s acute care unit Lorena was in bed having a nightmare about the end of the world. Her eyes flew open.

  “Please!” she shouted into the darkness. “Help!”

  The lights came on. It was her nurse. “Mrs. O’Malley, what’s the matter? You’re waking everyone up.”

  “It’s coming to an end!” she said frantically. “I have to leave before it’s too late.”

  The nurse, now at her bedside, tried taking her hand.

  “Get away from me!”

  “Shhh, please, Mrs. O’Malley, the world is not coming to an end. You were just having a bad dream. Now, pl—”

  Lorena threw back her covers and pushed past the nurse. “I need to get out of here!”

  “But it’s the middle of the night.”

  “What’s the matter with you?! The Bible says the end will come like a thief in the night. I need to get to Jerusalem!”

  The nurse left the room in a huff and Lorena frantically began putting on her street clothes. Her stomach felt sick, but she ignored it.

  Oh, how these people will regret their ignorance!

  When she was finished dressing she grabbed her handbag and headed for the door. But just as she reached it, it flew open, knocking her backward onto the linoleum floor.

  Nooo!


  As the orderlies poured into the room and set about subduing her—when she felt the sting of the needle in her arm—she knew she was done for.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus!” she screamed. “Wait for me! Wait for me!”

  MONDAY, APRIL 24 (3:45 P.M. AUSTRALIAN CENTRAL STANDARD TIME)

  CHARLES DARWIN UNIVERSITY; CASUARINA, AUSTRALIA

  Sara, looking about desperately for help, spotted her intern partner.

  “Dirk! Get the vet! Fast!”

  A few moments earlier the animal she and Dirk were assigned to rehabilitate—a juvenile short-finned pilot whale named Lulu—began thrashing around in her holding tank. Lulu was injured in a fishing net accident in Beagle Gulf and brought to the university’s marine mammal rescue center for mending and subsequent rereleasing.

  Sara raced around the tank trying to keep up with Lulu. She could see and hear similar crises flaring up in tanks throughout the vast outdoor facility.

  “Please, Lulu! What’s wrong, girl?”

  When help finally arrived Sara and Dirk steadied Lulu while the doctor injected her with a sedative.

  “She’ll be fine now,” the vet said before dashing off to the next frenzied patient.

  Without thinking, drenched and sobbing, Sara turned and locked Dirk in a bear hug. An instant later, she pulled away.

  “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!”

  Dirk grinned amiably. “No worries, mate. I needed that.”

  CHAPTER 7

  ANONYMOUS

  MONDAY, APRIL 24 (7:30 A.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME)

  FEDERAL BUILDING; LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  “Cut!” Eva called out. “Thanks, Mike, that was great.”

  Allie beamed at the mother lode she’d just received from Mike. There was enough here for a meaty segment on tonight’s Special Report.