by Peter Clines
“We can figure it out,” said Arthur. “Nothing’s unknowable.”
“Except all those things men weren’t meant to know,” said Jamie.
Arthur glared at her. Mike held up his palm. “Forget how. Why is it growing bigger?”
“What’s the difference?” said Sasha. “We don’t know either.”
“How might be beyond us, but we should be able to come up with a why. Something’s changed. There’s a new variable that’s causing all this.”
“Weak logic,” said Olaf. “Whatever caused the Door to stay open this long could also be what’s causing the expansion.”
“They’re two different things, though,” said Jamie.
Olaf shook his head. “They appear different because they seem to be two separate effects, and we don’t know what’s causing either. It’s just as likely this is the same effect, building in force or intensity.”
Mike looked up and took in the room. The five of them were standing around the table. Him, Jamie, and Olaf on one side, Arthur and Sasha on the other. A chair lurked by each of them, plus the ones on either end. An image blossomed in his mind, his first time in the conference room, the Albuquerque Door team filling every chair except the one at the far end. The one beneath the clock with its ticking second hand.
There was only one spare chair.
Arthur had omitted Koturovic from his book because of the early scientist’s bizarre theories.
“How much time did Ben Miles spend here?” he asked.
Arthur and Olaf traded a look. “Four days,” said Arthur.
“But how much of it was here? Was he staying in one of the trailers?”
Sasha shook her head. “He had a room at a hotel down in Mission Valley. The Sheraton, I think.”
“So he wasn’t here a lot of the time?”
Olaf shook his head. “It was more like two days here, with a travel day on either end. On the first day he stopped by for about an hour, just to meet everyone.”
“The other days he spent maybe eight or nine hours on site,” said Jamie. She looked at Arthur. “I don’t think he actually came here on the last day.”
Arthur shook his head. “He and I had breakfast together at his hotel and talked a bit. He had a morning flight out of Lindbergh.”
“The guys at the gate would probably have his exact in and out times,” Sasha said, “if that’s important.”
The ants took note but he waved it away. “Who watched the timer tests?”
Arthur looked up from the blueprints. “Timer tests?”
“When you tried to run the Door on automatic,” Mike said, “was anyone watching?”
Arthur, Jamie, and Sasha passed a confused look back and forth among themselves.
“Simple question,” said Mike. “Was anyone on the main floor or Site B when you ran the tests?”
“No,” said Sasha. “We just watched the video logs the next morning.”
“We ran them at night so we could get more work done,” said Olaf. “The whole point was that it was an automatic test.”
“And you never found out why it didn’t work.” It wasn’t a question. He stared at the blueprints.
“To be fair,” Jamie said, “we didn’t try that hard.”
“I looked at your code for the timer,” Mike said. “There was nothing wrong with it.”
“Thanks.”
“It didn’t work,” said Arthur, “because of how it interacted with something else.”
Mike shook his head. “It wasn’t the timer. It was the Door itself. It was missing one key element.”
Sasha frowned and looked at the blueprints. “What?”
“People. The Albuquerque Door only works when there are people around it.”
“Again, weak logic,” Arthur said. “That’s like saying the refrigerator only works in the kitchen because you’ve never seen it work in my office.”
“Except we all know the refrigerator would work in your office,” said Mike, “and you can’t get the Door to open if there’s no one around.”
Sasha put her fists against her hips. “Are you trying to say it knows when there are people around it?”
“No,” said Mike, “no more than a flashlight knows it has batteries in it. But it still won’t work if they’re not there. It’s not a consciousness thing, it’s just mechanics. A boat doesn’t know it’s in the water, but it only works there, not on land.”
“That’s kind of a big leap,” said Jamie.
He looked at Sasha, then Arthur. “You said Aleksander Koturovic had a hypothesis about gestalt minds. That’s why you didn’t use him in your book, because his ideas sounded too crazy.”
“Not exactly a gestalt,” said Olaf. “More of a mental energy-critical mass issue. It was nonsense.”
“Did it relate to the equations you used for the Door?”
Olaf stared down at the blueprints. Another look passed between Jamie and Sasha. “Yes,” Arthur said. “All of his work was based around the same ideas.”
“So you got the Door working by programming it with equations that somehow involve levels of mental energy, and when there’s no one present, the Door won’t work.” He looked at each of them. “Does that still sound like much of a leap?”
Arthur’s eyes fell to the blueprint.
Mike waved his hands around the room. “There’s only one spare chair,” he said. “It’s just for visitors, right? You’ve been so secretive, you’d never have any sort of temps or extra personnel. Except for an odd day now and then, like with Ben Miles, there’s never been more than the six of you around the Door for any length of time.”
“No, not until Magnus sent you,” Arthur said.
“It was me,” said Mike. “I was here long enough and helped the Door hit critical mass, or some level of it. Now there were seven people here all the time.” He glanced toward the front of the building. “Maybe eight if Anne’s desk was close enough to count.”
Olaf shook his head. “It’s nonsense,” he said again. “There’s no such thing as ‘mental energy.’ The brain gives off weak electrochemical signals that barely reach a few inches.”
“But you can build voltage by connecting weak sources in series,” said Sasha. “That’s basic electronics.”
“This is a bunch of unconnected guesses based off the ravings of a Victorian madman.”
“A madman who you proved right,” said Mike. He tapped the Door blueprints. “At least partly. We know there’s something to his ideas about other dimensions. And it would explain why you lost control of the Door after I arrived.”
A loud honk came from outside the conference room. It rose and faded, then rose again. If it had been from the other direction, Mike would’ve assumed it was passing cars blaring their horns out on the street.
Arthur’s brow wrinkled up. Then his eyes went wide. His eyes flitted from Jamie to Sasha.
“What?” asked Mike.
Arthur strode out into the hall, with Olaf a few feet behind him. Sasha followed, pushing past Mike. Jamie grabbed him by the arm and dragged him along.
THIRTY-EIGHT
The sirens were louder in the hall. The emergency lights had switched on. They made bright patches in the already-lit hallway.
Arthur was at the front desk looking over Anne’s shoulder. There was a flashing icon on the screen. “It’s at Site B,” she told him. Her eyes were wide.
Olaf and Sasha ran past the desk and out the door.
Mike looked at Jamie. “What is?”
“Hazardous material leak,” she said. “Coolant, welding gas, radioactive material. Something bad’s happened and it’s warning us all to stay out of the area if we’re not in hazmat suits.”
They headed out the door and caught a glimpse of Sasha sprinting down the path toward the trailers and the golf carts. Mike and Jamie dashed after her. Olaf was already around the corner and out of sight. Some of the overgrown branches along the path reached for them, pushed out by the wind.
The sirens were s
ounding outside, too.
They ran around the corner and collided with Sasha. Jamie caught Mike before he fell. Mike grabbed Sasha. The older woman regained her balance and pointed across the gravel lot. “What the fuck?” she yelled over the building wind.
They followed her gaze and her finger.
Olaf had made it halfway across the lot before stopping. Past him Mike could see the bulk of Site B. It was shaking. The corrugated sheets that made up its roof rippled and buckled. One of the domed skylights shattered. The cinder-block walls trembled and cracked.
Sasha lunged back into action, running across the lot. Mike and Jamie followed. Their feet crunched in the gravel, then scuffed on the dusty supply road. They were five hundred feet from the building, then four fifty, and then four hundred.
This close, Mike could see even more fractures on the walls. What he’d thought were cracks at a distance were large breaks up close. Another one formed while he watched, crisp and clean even at this distance.
The black ants brought out a few memories, but the red ants overwhelmed them.
Olaf grabbed Sasha’s arm as she tried to pass him. “Wait,” he yelled. She yanked it away but now Mike was close enough to grab her. “Wait, goddammit,” Olaf snarled.
“Neil’s in there!” She waved her free arm at the bicycle parked by the door.
“Where’s the dust?” asked Mike.
She stopped, just for a second. The groan of the flexing metal roof echoed over the wind. “What?”
“There should be dust,” he said. “From all the breaking cinder blocks.”
Sasha gazed past him, and then her head tipped back and up. “Oh, fuck,” she said.
Mike and Olaf looked up. Clouds were gliding across the sky. Not rushing, but their movement was apparent. They were closing in from every direction, moving with the wind.
The wind was blowing toward Site B. All of it.
Arthur and Anne caught up with them just as the roof of Site B buckled again. One section sank low, as if an invisible weight was pushing it down. The bolts snapped with a gunshot noise and the section of roofing tumbled away inside the building. Two more panels broke free and vanished, then a third. The low roar of the wind became a howl.
“Is it a hurricane?” asked Jamie.
“We don’t get hurricanes in California,” said Anne.
A shriek of metal came from the building. They looked back in time to see Site B’s security door crumple inward and vanish. Clouds of loose sand and leaves raced after it through the door frame. A moment later two more roof panels tore loose and plunged inside.
“I think we should back up,” said Arthur, taking a few steps away and leaning on his cane.
“I agree,” said Mike.
“What about Neil?” asked Sasha.
Mike glanced at her and gave a small shake of his head.
“Half the building just collapsed,” Olaf said.
Mike took a few steps back. Jamie followed him and pulled close, calling into his ear over the tumult. “What is it?”
Mike opened his mouth and thunder rumbled above them. They all looked up. The clouds were building up, blocking the sun. Drops fell on their faces.
“What the fuck is going on?!” shouted Sasha.
“It’s raining,” said Olaf. It was more a general statement than a response. He sounded confused.
“I think it’s decompression,” said Mike.
“What?”
He raised his voice over the low howl. “The whole building’s getting sucked into the rings. Everything is. It’s creating a huge low pressure zone in the atmosphere.” He gestured up at the sky. “It’s changing the weather.”
The wind rippled their hair and clothes. Arthur stepped back again. Mike and Jamie did the same. Anne stumbled after them. Sasha and Olaf stood where they were, staring at Site B.
Then it stopped, like a fan being unplugged. The wind died down. The air grew still. The rain continued to patter down, slowly darkening the pavement.
What was left of Site B stopped shaking. Concrete dust and gravel poured from the cracks in the wall. A section the size of a small car slid free and crashed to the ground. It took half of the green letter “B” with it. One of the surviving roof panels squeaked as it swung back and forth on its last bolt.
They stared at the remains of the building for a moment. Then Sasha ran forward. “Neil,” she yelled. “Neil, are you okay?”
They headed for the building. Anne stayed where she was, staring at the ruin. She had the blissful but vacant look of soldiers after surviving an artillery barrage.
Sasha paused at the doorway and then headed inside. The others stopped to look at the damage. Mike touched what was left of the hinges. Two of them had torn free of the door and swung loose. The third was twisted and snapped at the pin.
Jamie stepped inside. “All the wiring’s gone,” she said. “The conduits are stripped right off the walls.”
Olaf’s head craned back. “The lights are gone, too. Hell, almost everything’s gone.”
“Neil,” shouted Sasha. Her voice echoed in the cavernous space. “Neil, where the fuck are you?”
Arthur walked forward and looked at a fallen piece of machinery. It was one of the huge resistors. He tapped it twice with the end of his cane. There was a path of scratches in the concrete behind it.
They walked deeper in. Only the heaviest and most solid items had made it through the incident. Anything small or loose was gone.
The rings stood in the center of the barren space. Patches of frost covered the steel ramp. It let off puffs of steam as raindrops hit it through the open roof. All but one of the carapace sections had been stripped away, exposing endless loops of copper wire. A few cables hung loose. The connecting hoses were gone.
“I don’t see anything,” said Arthur. He pointed at the rings. “On the other side of the Door, I mean. I don’t think it’s working anymore.”
Mike looked. The view through the rings was the side wall of the ruined building. He took a few steps and checked from a different angle. The view stayed the same.
Sasha finished her circuit of the room and joined them. “I can’t find him,” she said. She gazed at the dead rings.
“Let’s not give up yet,” said Jamie. She looked at Mike. “Do you think he’s still here somewhere?”
“I hope so,” Mike said. “I don’t want to think about where else he might be.”
THIRTY-NINE
They didn’t find Neil.
Arthur reported the building collapse to DARPA. He said nothing about Neil’s disappearance. Then Mike talked to Reggie and tried to get him as caught up as possible.
“So Ben’s not crazy?”
“No,” Mike said, “he isn’t. But Becky isn’t an impostor, either. It’s a point-of-view issue.” He settled back in his chair. He’d propped the tablet up on the table so most of the trailer would be visible behind him.
“Which means what?”
“Going through the Albuquerque Door changed him,” said Mike. “Just not in the way we’ve been thinking.”
“So he’s changed, but not crazy?”
“Yeah. This Ben had slightly different memories and experiences.”
“This Ben?” Reggie looked at him for a moment. “I take it there are a few things you’re not telling me.”
“For the moment, lots of stuff,” Mike said. “There’ve been some…developments.”
“Are they cloning people or something?”
“No.”
“Seriously, is everything okay out there?”
Mike didn’t look at the screen. “It’s what you were worried about.”
“I was worried about a couple of different things.”
“There are some complications with the Albuquerque Door. With the Door itself.”
“What kind of complications?”
“I’d rather not say at the moment. We’re still trying to figure them out.”
“We?”
“Yeah. Me, Arth
ur, the rest of the team.”
On the tablet, Reggie leaned in close. “You haven’t gone all Stockholm Syndrome on me out there, have you?”
“Cute.”
“Answer the question.”
“No, I have not.”
“You’re okay? No stress? No pressure?”
“No more than you’d expect in this situation, I guess.”
“So what’s going on?”
“I don’t think I can really explain it like this.”
A scowl washed across Reggie’s face and was gone. “Why not?”
“Because it’s complicated and because I know you,” said Mike, “and I know how you react to things. Charging in with a lot of people and micromanaging isn’t going to help anything right now.”
“And you think that’s what I’d do.” It wasn’t really a question.
“I know that’s what you’d do.”
“So why shouldn’t I? You’re telling me a building’s collapsed, a bunch of very expensive equipment’s been destroyed, one of my assistant directors isn’t crazy, but he’s been changed into a different person somehow. And that charging in would be my normal reaction at this point.”
“Because you told me to take care of things out here,” Mike said. “I’m taking care of it, and then I’m going to tell you everything. Just like we talked about when you hired me.”
They stared at each other through the screen.
“I need you to find a way to salvage this,” said Reggie.
“I’m not sure that’s possible, at this point.”
“You’ve got until the end of the week.”
“Okay,” Mike said. “Thanks.”
“And you’d better have a ton of answers by then. Or else.”
“Or else what?”
Reggie didn’t smile. “Or else.” He reached out and the screen went dark.
In the kitchen area, Jamie sighed. “That could’ve gone better.”
Mike flipped the tablet down on its face. “Better than I thought it might.”
“Yeah?”
He dipped his head at the tablet. “Worst case, I could’ve seen him taking control, ordering us all off campus, and launching a full investigation.”
