The Deplosion Saga

by Paul Anlee

  The phone transcripts indicated LaMontagne denied the church’s involvement in the shooting, at least to Pratt, but Darian wasn’t convinced. Even if the shooter wasn’t an official member of the Church, it felt like something that this fundamentalist group might facilitate.

  He turned his focus to the public and a few private records of Jeremiah Falton, the man who’d shot him. Collectively, the records pointed to the kind of person who would join and rapidly rise through the ranks of the YTG Church: outspoken, deeply religious, and passionately nationalistic.

  He was a resident of Austin, Texas, the heart of the New Confederacy and the headquarters of Yeshua’s True Guards. He had written a number of prominent public commentaries over the years that were timely and favorable to positions held by the Church. He had served in one of the most active wings of the New Confederacy Militia, where publicly professing one’s faith was a requisite of acceptance into the ranks.

  Darian found it more than curious that Falton had never joined the Church. Yet the name didn’t appear on any of their membership rosters. Sure, it was possible, but it seemed highly improbable. Maybe he’s listed under another name, or he’s a sleeper.

  Darian tried casually to penetrate the private files of the YTG Church, to see if he could find any hidden information about Falton. To his surprise, the sophisticated security around YTG’s system was even tighter than NCSA’s.

  Their server was easy enough to locate but none of the conventional back doors would open. All of the files, including filenames and sizes, were heavily encrypted. Even with my lattice, this could take a while to crack, especially if they’ve used a good algorithm.

  He moused around the system a while, hoping his activity went undetected. With this level of paranoia, they probably keep a log of all system-level commands. They may even be trawling communications, activity looking for anything suspicious.

  He tried a different approach, injecting a monitoring virus at the router level. Routers usually had more conventional security software and could be more easily bypassed. The virus would alert him to activity over the web and, hopefully, allow him to record the required decryption key.

  While he waited, he returned his attention to the NCSA recordings, expanding his search to all calls made by Reverend Alan LaMontagne. There was a lot of activity, but it was annoyingly uninformative.

  An alarm chimed softly in his head, interrupting his perusal of the NCSA recordings. His internal RAF antennae were finally complete. Excellent! I can finish the search later. Although the machinations of church and state were intriguing, his top priority was to get the RAF generator working.

  Darian sat down at one of his dining room chairs. He loaded a standard control program into his lattice and initiated the antenna array in his skull. He ran through a quick series of tests to ensure individual elements of the array were transmitting properly. Everything checked out. He set the array to ACTIVE and fed it the settings from the first series of calculations.

  A tentative bluish spherical region flickered into existence over the table a meter in front of him, sputtered for a second or two, then fizzled out and disappeared.

  Darian’s heart raced. It works! It actually works! Not perfectly, but that was something! Something real. I mean, unreal. I need to send the team a message! No, they deserve to hear this in person.

  His mind raced as fast as his heart. Focus! Focus! He made a conscious effort to slow his breathing.

  The test wasn’t perfect. Given the configuration, the equations should have created a stable four-inch microverse. They didn’t. So why was the sphere so small and unstable? Think. Think! What was standing in the way? Of course! The settings weren’t adapted for the presence of real matter. The air in the room would have destabilized the field. I’ll need to move to the vacuum chamber in the lab to get proper results.

  He looked at the time. Somehow, 4:30 in the morning didn’t seem too early to start the day, especially not when it was going to be so amazing.

  The young professor threw on some clothes and headed out into the crisp pre-dawn air. The lab was only a short walk away. As he reached the edge of campus, he sent out a wake-up call through the lattice net to Greg and Kathy.

  Kathy answered the call within seconds. Darian? What is it? What time is it?

  It works—he replied, trying to keep the tone of his transmitted voice as level as possible.

  It works? What works?–she transmitted. Then she realized. It works? It works! Several kilometers away, in the suite she shared with Greg, she squealed, “Greg, wake up! It works!” and shook her slumbering partner awake.

  Kathy kept the channel open so Darian got to watch as Greg blinked sleep from his eyes and Kathy repeated the news. Greg came online instantly.

  I’m sorry to wake you up—Darian said. No, actually, I’m not sorry at all. I was going to tell you in person later this morning but I couldn’t wait. We did it! Without waiting for a response, Darian sent a synopsis of everything he’d been doing, the internal antenna array he had been growing in his cranium, the crude test that had generated a sputtering microverse in his dining room a few minutes before—everything.

  I’m on my way to the lab right now. I need to use the vacuum chamber and the laser interferometer–he sent. Can you meet me there?

  It’ll take us about forty minutes but we’ll get there as fast as we can–Kathy replied. Can you wait 'til we get there before you run it again?

  Every extra minute will be torture but, for you guys, sure. Get here as fast as you can, though, okay? It was only then he remembered the fourth member of the team. Hey, can you pick up Larry along the way? I’m sure he’ll want to be there too.

  Sure—answered Greg. I’ll call him, and we’ll cruise by his place. I don’t think his bus will be running at this hour, and he’s not going to want to miss this. They took a collective deep breath and recorded the moment in their memories.

  The lattice did a terrible job of transmitting emotions, so Darian just sent one of his favorite stock photos, a projection of the Milky Way with an arrow pointing to the tiny region just in from the outer edge labeled, “You are here.” It was meant to convey how insignificant he felt before the mysteries of the universe.

  Kathy laughed. I feel like we own the entire galaxy right now.

  I know what you mean. I’ll be at the lab in a few minutes–said Darian. Get here as soon as you can. Then he signed off.

  Darian entered the nearly deserted building and practically ran down the corridor to the lab, his mind already playing out the vast number of experiments the group would perform. They’d lost some time, but they’d make up for it quickly. He realized they still didn’t know why the laptop RAF generator hadn’t worked. We’ll figure that out when we make the second one. If that doesn’t solve it, I’ll just get Greg and Kathy to grow the antennae internally like me.

  His old confidence and determination returned; it felt good to be moving forward again. He fiddled with his key in the sloppy lab-door lock–Why do we still have this ancient technology? He knew the answer. Everybody did. Budget cuts over the last decade had brought modernization of university infrastructure to a screaming halt. That’s going to change, too–he promised himself.

  Darian entered the darkened lab, letting the door close on its own behind him. He only caught a quick glimpse of the three small spheres floating inside the vacuum chamber, one yellow, one red, and one blue. They disappeared so fast he had to replay the last few milliseconds of visual input to be sure they had ever existed.

  Then he noticed Larry sitting at the control console, his face lit by the eerie glow from the display, and everything fell into place.

  28

  Larry stood up and opened his mouth to explain.

  “Don’t bother,” said Darian. “I know the RAF generator works. I know the theory is correct. And now, I know you know, and you’ve probably known for some time. What I don’t know, is how you kept this from us.”

  Larry regained his composure.
His eyes flicked over to the empty hallway and back to Darian. He’s alone. He locked eyes with his mentor and supervisor. “You all thought you were so smart. You kept looking in all the hard places and you ignored the simple explanation—that someone was sabotaging the experiment.”

  Darian nodded. “So you altered the operating system?”

  “The BIOS, actually. It overrode parts of the O/S in RAM after booting up. I figured you were less likely to look there than in the O/S itself. Anyway, it wasn’t that hard to do. I just added a little redirection to certain interrupt handlers. You would have had to follow the machine language byte by byte to notice it.”

  “I was almost at that stage. I decided last night to just start over and build a second generator.”

  “I would have just made the same change to that one too.”

  “Why?”

  Larry shrugged. “Lot of reasons, really. For one, I don’t like the way you’ve all been treating me, like some half-witted lab monkey at the beck and call of geniuses.” His voice shook with barely-controlled emotion.

  “Larry, everything we are, everything we know, everything we can do, all of this was offered to you.”

  Darian’s voice was little more than a whisper, so quiet that Larry had to strain to hear it. But instead of the calming effect that he was aiming for, Darian’s words only fueled the rage welling within his colleague.

  Larry sat back down, putting the control console between Darian and himself. “You guys think you’re some kind of young gods, altering the human brain, playing around with the laws of nature. It’s just too much.”

  “Scientists have been doing that kind of thing for centuries.”

  “Well, maybe we’ve gone too far, too fast. Maybe there are some things we aren’t meant to know.”

  “You don’t really believe that.”

  “How can you claim what you’re doing is for the good of humanity? None of you are even human anymore! Why should we trust you to do what’s right for the rest of us?”

  “The hardware may be different, but the program running on it is still human,” replied Darian evenly.

  Larry’s fists clenched, and the veins in his neck and forehead bulged as he fought to control his fury.

  Darian was ready to bolt. He searched his lattice for some basic self-defense moves; he hoped it wouldn’t come to violence.

  Larry hunched over the keyboard and tapped a few keys while Darian looked on, dumbstruck. What’s he up to?

  “I only wish the other monstrosities were here with you,” Larry spat. “You are abominations before God. Someone needs to put an end to this.”

  “We are many things, Larry, but, come on, really? Abominations? Who are you getting this from?”

  “If you’d had any shred of humility, I might not have been forced into this. But you think you know everything. I’d destroy this machine and all your notes, if I thought it’d do any good. But you'd just recreate it all, wouldn't you? How can humanity trust you to develop this for the good of all of us? You just don’t know when to stop. Will you only be happy once you become immortal and all-powerful? Is it your goal to challenge God, Himself?”

  Larry took a shuddering breath. His eyes, which only moments before had been projecting bitterness and raw fury, now reflected only deep sadness. The sadness worried Darian more than the anger.

  “Goodbye Professor,” Larry said. “Oh, and don't worry about Greg and Kathy. I have plans for them, too. And then I’ll make sure the RAF generator ends up in more responsible hands than theirs. I’m sorry, but you’ve forced me into this. It’s been nice knowing you. Or maybe not.” He pressed the ENTER key.

  A hazy gray field materialized around Darian, encapsulating him from the bottom of his shoes to the top of the last stray hair on his head.

  Darian threw his arms out to both sides, feeling the unyielding boundary of the containment field. He tried to take a step but his foot slid down along the inside surface. He was trapped.

  He instructed his lattice to connect to the laptop controller but it was already too late; the communication lines were inactive. Every system that should have been connected to the controller was offline. There was no way in.

  He found a stray open line leading from some other equipment to the outside world and connected to the local power grid. Working furiously, he bypassed the university’s Systems security and killed the electricity supply to the lab.

  The hall light streaming in through the observation window cut out, and was replaced by the harsh glare of an emergency backup. In the lab, however, nothing changed.

  He’s really thought this out—Darian realized. Well, at least the outage will trigger a maintenance alarm. They take power outages seriously in the science buildings. Frantically, he searched for other alarms he could activate remotely—smoke, heat, water—but Larry had beat him to it. How is that even possible?

  Larry laughed—a deranged, heartless laugh, full of hatred. “That won’t do you any good. The RAF generator will work for hours on battery. In a few seconds, this microverse holding you is going to collapse. Every molecule, atom, and particle making up the great Darian Leigh will disappear from this universe forever, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

  He came around the desk, bringing his face within inches of his mentor. The transparent gray barrier was all that stood between them.

  “Do you see what you’ve done? Do you see?” he yelled. “You created this…this affront to nature. You! And now, through me, the universe—the one true universe created by God Almighty—is going to take its vengeance and erase you from existence. Can you feel it closing in around you?”

  He stepped back and pointed an accusatory finger at Darian. “I, Valeriy Illyovich Rusalov, having found Darian Leigh guilty of the greatest arrogance and hubris against God, banish you from His universe!”

  For a moment, Larry’s eyes softened, and Darian thought he might be feeling remorse for his actions, for his colleague’s impending fate.

  “Enjoy your sentence in Hell,” Larry finished, his voice disturbingly devoid of emotion.

  Darian struggled as the sphere began to shrink in on him. He tried unsuccessfully to control his terror. Using his lattice to clamp down on his emotions, he allowed himself to go numb. He ignored his imminent death, and filled his mind with RAF equations.

  He’d learned a lot in the past few hours: the basic RAF theory was correct; fields could be formed even in the presence of matter. The fields Larry was generating permitted selective interaction between the enclosed and external universes while preventing other actions. He could hear and see through the bubble that held him captive, but he couldn’t push through it.

  He hoped what he’d learned could somehow save his life.

  He sped through the hundreds of thousands of equations that he and Greg had devised over the past few weeks, looking for anything that might fit what he now knew to be true. There had to be a way to nullify this field before it destroyed him.

  He had enough computational power to work with the equations or to operate his own internal RAF controller, not both at the same time. Whatever he came up with, there’d be no second chances.

  At last, he found a set of equations that might work. A pitifully small one, but that would make it easier to generate the required field. The parameters showed enough flexibility to allow a few changes on the fly. He hoped it would be enough.

  Outside, in the larger universe, Larry looked several inches taller than he’d been a couple minutes ago. This confirmed Darian’s fears. Larry isn’t trying to trap me or kill me; he wants to obliterate me.

  What else have I got to work with? The laws of this microverse started out similar to our own universe, except this one is shrinking with me inside it. Oddly enough, it doesn’t feel any more limiting; I must be shrinking along with the sphere. The space between electrons and the nucleus is compacting. Normal biochemistry still seems to be functioning. Electrons aren’t being squeezed out like in a neutron star, not ye
t.

  He must have set the generator to step down through a series of standing wave functions that determine the size of electron orbitals. And because atoms are mostly made up of empty space, there’s potential for a lot more compression before electron shells start overlapping with protons and neutrons. At some point, though, there’s not going to be enough room for everything; life-supporting chemistry is going to become impossible. Unless Larry has figured out how to convert me into a nuclear being—and I doubt that—I am going to die.

  He wondered if Larry intended to keep him alive long enough to feel the electrons being crushed out of his molecules or if he’d stop before that point. His best guess was that Larry could shrink him by a factor of more than ten thousand without completely eradicating him. Is he going to keep me alive inside this bubble or destroy me?

  Darian wasn’t sure which would be worse. Either way, he would be dead pretty quickly. I have to reverse the collapse, and now.

  He shut down the search programs and brought his RAF-generator control program to the forefront. He set his internal generator to ACTIVE, and projected fields that he hoped would return his prison to conditions more similar—according to his frenzied calculations—to the natural universe in which he belonged.

  The fields he cast wove in and around the ones Larry was using to produce the collapsing bubble. Amazingly, the shrinking halted. It started to reverse. In spite of his lattice-dampened emotions, Darian was elated. His computations must be close; he’d bought himself some time. Darian felt a wisp of hope.

  “What the…? Oh, no! No, you can’t! No, no, no, no!” Larry babbled when he noticed the sphere growing larger. “What are you doing?” Changes were no longer being mediated through his machine alone. He ran behind the desk and sat in the operator’s chair, furiously stabbing away at the laptop.

  “Ahhh, very clever, Dr. Leigh! You’ve been busy!” He thrummed his finger on the keys. “So that’s how you figured out the RAF theory was correct. You found a way to implant or grow an internal RAF generator. I’m impressed! But I imagine the amount of energy you need to power those computations must be making you very hungry by now. Isn’t it?”