Golem 7 (Meridian Series)

by John Schettler

  To create the Arch it was necessary to complete the last leg of a physics problem that had never been solved—how to relate all the fundamental forces in some unified theory? Paul had begun with Loop Quantum Gravity theory, working with the Schrodinger equation and testing a number of new analogues built from Ashtekar variables and simple spin networks. Spin was in for a good many years, and Paul had a major breakthrough that eventually allowed him to create a controlled quantum singularity within a low gravity environment.

  It was an arcane science bridging electro magnetism, special relativity, quantum field theory and finally quantum gravity was demonstrated to exist—and more than this—Paul discovered it could be controlled. These breakthroughs led him to experiments in space-time applications, and the Arch was quietly built to begin testing. The first object that had been successfully moved in space-time was an apple, but Paul soon found that technology had enormous new potentials where Time theory was involved.

  His unique view of Time was that any given moment was simply a specific arrangement of every quantum particle that made up the universe. The particles, always in motion, created the perception of a forward progression in the flow of Time, which was really nothing more than the constant variation of those particles, morphing from one state and position to another. To be in any place, or any moment, all one had to do was find a way to tell all the particles of the universe to assume a given state or position in relationship to one another. Any reality that was ever possible could become this moment; this reality. The realization of the theory seemed impossible, however, for one could never know how to arrange each particle of the universe just as they were at a given event in history. It was challenge enough to understand even one particle of the universe—but science held that the whole of the universe had sprung from one single point. If that were true, then any possible universe might arise in the same way.

  While it was impossible for humans to physically re-arrange the particles of the universe into a new pattern, a quantum singularity achieved this result effortlessly. Humans only had to tell the universe what they wanted—what shape and time to assume on the other side of the singularity. Mathematics was their voice, and the universe, being about nothing of any particular importance at any given moment, was kind enough to heed them and comply.

  Yet from the first moment they eagerly spun up the Arch in Lawrence Berkeley labs the project team had been locked in a life and death struggle, engaged with two opposing forces in the future who were now using the same theory to wage war. Paul’s team had first thought they could remain stubbornly neutral, taking some moral middle ground between the two sides and striving only to preserve the history they had stored and preserved in their RAM Bank data library. But when they discovered the true scope of what the enemy was planning, and beheld the merciless nature of their designs, they decided that they had to take sides after all.

  Yet their sole ally, a future group they had come to call the “Order,” had suffered a severe blow when their enemies, the Assassin cult, had managed to reverse the intervention Paul’s team made to prevent the collapse of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of Palma—the very first intervention run by the Berkley Arch facility. Now Paul and his small project team found themselves manning a front line outpost, a temporal fortress from which they, and they alone, could act to defeat the enemy plan. Recent missions to the past had achieved much, but the disaster of Palma still stood as one last obstacle to be removed. They had all spent the last three days desperately trying to gather the resources they would need to continue the struggle—food and fuel becoming really urgent needs now as the nation reeled from the shock of a devastated eastern seaboard.

  Paul had been out negotiating delivery of a small cache of gasoline for their emergency generators when his Golem alert cell phone call came in. “Not now,” he said aloud, opening the phone. They were tired, and hungry, and needed rest. But time would not wait on the weakness of human frailties. Something was happening in the deep recesses of the Berkeley Hills, and he had to get up there as quick as he could. Something has come unglued again, thought Paul. Someone is up in the Arch complex at this very moment, spinning up the Arch. What is it this time, he thought as he rushed up the steps from the lower parking garage, a sick queasy anxiety building in his gut again. He wondered whether he really wanted to know.

  Chapter 3

  Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Arch Complex – Tuesday, 6:20 PM

  Paul arrived moments later, somewhat bedraggled and out of breath after rushing up from the underground garage. He threw off his leather jacket and draped it over the back of a chair, reflexively running a hand through his hair to chase the wind from his locks as he did so.

  “It’s crazy out there,” he said.

  “Fearless leader!” Kelly greeted him.

  “You’ve got the Arch up,” Paul noted. “I heard the generator down in the garage. What is it this time? And why aren’t we on city power? Hell, it took me all day to arrange a fuel shipment, and the bastards hit me for $20 per gallon. But at least I got hold of a hundred gallons, which is more than I expected to find. There isn’t a station open within ten miles of here now.”

  “Wow…two grand? That’s going to put a real crimp in the budget, but thankfully, we’ll be back on the grid in a few minutes. It’s after six now, but I’m just giving it a few more minutes to be sure we don’t catch any more flack from FEMA or the local power Nazis. Don’t worry about the generator. I had ten gallons stored in a survival jug at my place and I brought that in this morning. We’re covered.” Kelly rubbed his hands with satisfaction. “But the professor here insisted I establish a Nexus Point, so I did. Feel anything coming in through the perimeter just now?”

  “What? No, I didn’t notice anything unusual.” Paul was at the main consol now, settling into a chair next to Kelly. “So what’s up? My alert cell call came in just as I was finishing up this fuel delivery deal. I got over here as fast as I could. Christ I hope we don’t have to save Christendom and Columbus all over again…Do we?”

  “We’ve done that,” said Maeve as she entered through the main door. “And I managed to save the three loaves of fresh baked bread I had in the oven as well before I rushed over here. So what is it this time?”

  Kelly looked at Robert, then simply extended an arm, pointing at the professor where he was busy with something on a computer screen at the Golem module.

  “Robert?” said Paul. “Care to tell us why we’re here?”

  “Oh, he says you’ll love this one,” said Kelly with the hint of a spoiler in his voice. “But I better let our Chief Historian tell it.”

  Robert looked over his shoulder at them. “Give me a second here.” He waved at them to be quiet.

  “Is he monitoring variation reports?” asked Maeve.

  “I have no idea what he’s monitoring,” said Kelly. “He just wanted me to fire things up and establish a Nexus.”

  “Then there’s no alert?” Paul had a peeved expression on his face. “And you went up on auxiliary power?”

  Kelly extended his arm yet again, pointing at Robert, unwilling to take the heat this time, and they all looked at the professor where he was still squinting at the computer monitor over his reading glasses. The silence pulled at him, and he looked over at the other three, raising his eyebrows with an obvious ‘I have news’ in his eyes.

  “What?” said Paul, still upset over the fuel situation.

  “Well I’ve got him,” said Nordhausen. “And it seems he had a bone to pick.”

  “Got who?”

  “The man responsible for Palma this time around. His name is Kenan Tanzir in data I gathered on this altered Meridian. It took a while, even using the Arion system at UCB, but I eventually ran him down.”

  Paul thought for a moment, wondering if this was going to be another Nordhausen wild goose chase. But he remembered how he had worked to convince the professor that Kelly was alive just days ago, grateful that he finally had his support, albeit grudging
ly at first. He decided to return the favor and give the man the benefit of the doubt.

  “Go on,” he said, wanting more information.

  “It was really fairly basic,” said Robert. “I scoured everything I could find on events leading up to the eruption of Cumbre Vieja—down to the most minute and seemingly routine occurrences—news bits, blog entries, even the nonsense sites like GodlikeProductions with all their intimations of doom. Eventually I culled the search down to the last 24 hours before the eruption, and then used pattern recognition software with the Arion to isolate any oddities. My attention was drawn to that story of the Algerian air charter that overshot its approach to La Palma airport that very night, and I became convinced that it was no ordinary flight. Well, I couldn’t recall any such news, though I admit that we were a bit preoccupied that night.”

  “To say the least,” said Maeve. “If I recall, you were kibitzing with Paul over whether the mission to see Shakespeare’s The Tempest was going to happen, and scheming on how to get backstage if it did.”

  “Right you are, my good lady. But that said, I decided to see if we had anything on that story in the RAM Bank here, and was very surprised to find the plane was reported to have landed safely at La Palma an hour before the eruption—the incident we prevented perpetrated by Ra’id Husan al Din. Yet the history as it stands now reports that flight crashed. The Golems put me on to it. Useful little creatures, eh?”

  “Golem Bank 7,” said Kelly. “The same group I called my lost sheep on the last mission. They’ve been pretty industrious these last few days.”

  Maeve raised her eyebrows, immediately interested. “You’ve got my attention,” she said, waiting.

  “So I got data on the passenger manifest and began checking all names against established records. In our RAM Bank data there were fourteen passengers on that flight, and they all seemed to be checking out—a few business travelers, tourists and all. But on this altered Meridian there were fifteen passengers, and the odd man out turned out to be a Mr. Kenan Tanzir, an Algerian Berber. So I immediately focused all my search efforts on him.

  “A proverbial Person of Interest if ever there was one,” said Maeve.

  “Exactly!” The professor’s cheeks reddened with obvious excitement. The search quickly produced conflicts between data in the altered Meridian and information we have in the RAM Bank here. Thank God for Golem 7 and the RAM Bank.”

  “Well, you can thank me first,” said Kelly with a smile.

  “It seems there is no Mr. Kenan Tanzir in our RAM Bank data—at least no inkling of the man as he presents himself in the altered Meridian. He was supposedly just another business passenger, a realtor actually, representing a buyer for a villa on the island. Yet in the history we know, what we want to call our Prime Meridian now, this man simply doesn’t exist—and I found out why.”

  Paul swiveled his chair, directly facing the professor now, as Maeve folded her arms, waiting.

  “I had to do genealogical searches, and I was vexed by the possibility that this name was merely an alias, but enough clues turned up in the data stream. I followed him backwards from the time of the flight. It originated in Oran, you see, and that evening he spent the night in Le Méridien Oran Hotel.”

  “Le Méridien?” said Paul. “How ironic.”

  “Yes, I found that amusing as well,” said Robert. “It’s a fairly new property, an elegant hotel and convention center owned by the Starwood group. Well he booked a room there, suite 911—another little twist in the gut, eh? I worked backward from that point—meals, phone calls, the works. It seems he was telephoned by a Mr. Kasim al Khafi that very night, and his data trail also had no corresponding information in our RAM Bank for the time period in question. It was as if he was a ghost.”

  “You’re suggesting he was an operative from the future?” asked Maeve.

  “I had my suspicions,” said Robert. “No one lives and moves through the world these days without leaving some kind of data trail. And there was nothing whatsoever on the man in the data stream the last six months or so. I thought he might be an Agent in Place, but I kept digging and that did not turn out to be the case.”

  “So we apparently have two conspirators here,” said Maeve, “and neither man existed in the Meridian prior to Palma?”

  “Not exactly,” said Robert. “The man who called Kenan did have a history in our RAM Bank, only it ended in November of the year 1942—with an obituary.” He let that sink in, folding his arms with some satisfaction, pleased that he finally had the undivided attention of everyone present.

  “Well don’t leave us hanging,” said Paul. “You’re saying this Kasim fellow died during the war?”

  “Precisely,” said Robert. “In the Meridian we come from, he dies. And the interesting thing is that he’s alive and well in the altered Meridian, and then I discover that these two men are connected by much more than apparent conspiracy. Kenan Tanzir is his son. Yes, the name was altered, probably to try and foil this sort of research, but with enough computing power it’s amazing what you can find. I’ve got a certificate of birth on this Kenan, in the city of Oran, some twenty two years ago.”

  “Then he was born well after his father died!” Kelly objected. “How is that possible?”

  “Yes, I immediately asked myself the same thing, and so I focused all my attention on the father after that, Kasim al Khafi, and I discovered some very interesting facts. He was an Algerian Berber, living in Oran as a younger man during the second world war. I said he had a bone to pick earlier, and this is what I meant… In July of 1940, just after France capitulated and signed an armistice with Germany, there was a question of what would happen to the powerful French fleet. It was scattered over several North African ports, but it’s nucleus under Admiral Gensoul was at the harbor of Mers-el-Kabir at Oran.

  “The British commander, Admiral Somerville, received instructions to deliver an ultimatum to the French fleet to either join Britain and fight on or pursue any of a number of options to demilitarize the ships. Somerville was forced to take reluctant action, and he ordered his battle fleet, Force H, to bombard the French ships at anchor in the harbor. Needless to say it precipitated a lot of bad blood between France and England for a time, but it prevented the Germans from eventually capturing those ships.”

  “So what does this have to do with this Kasim fellow?” asked Paul.

  “Well he was there,” said Nordhausen quietly. “Yes, he owned a small shop near the harbor, and his home was just a few blocks away when Force H opened fire on the French fleet—and the harbor area as well. There were shore batteries there that responded to the British attack. To sum up, the man’s wife and daughter were killed in their home when a fifteen inch shell obliterated the place. And there you have it.”

  “Have what?” asked Kelly. “The guy lost his wife and kid, but I don’t see the connection to Palma.”

  “Patience, my good man. There’s more. You read mystery novels, do you? What we have here is motive. Kasim was justifiably embittered over the loss of his family, and he left Oran and became an Axis sympathizer. More than that, he went so far as to sign on with Rommel’s Afrika Korps as a Berber scout the following year. I dug up everything I could find on the man, and it seems he was killed in action at Bardia when Royal Navy commandos launched a raid there during Operation Crusader in November, 1942. You’ll be familiar with this history, Paul. Well, to put a fine point on it all, I did exhaustive research on that incident in our RAM Bank data. I traced down every man from officers to enlisted ranks, and again found that one man assigned to the Royal Navy Commandos was a replacement who shipped in on a steamer the previous year, in August of 1941.”

  “What were you looking for?” asked Paul.

  “Why, the man who killed Kasim, of course, as least as our history records it. And it seems that a squad leader by the name of William Thomason was responsible. Kasim was with a detachment of German light armored cars who were responding to the raid, and he was gunned down. T
he narrative indicated three German vehicles, seven men and a Berber scout were KIAs in that action. The Royal Navy Commandos ambushed the lot of them.”

  “So our data shows this man Kasim dies in 1942,” said Maeve, “but the data from the altered Meridian has him telephoning his son at a hotel in Oran on the eve of the Palma attack? You’re sure it is the same man?”

  “I knew you would tip toe into that,” said Robert. “I can show you at least twenty data points on that. I’ve got passports, photos, fingerprints, bank records, deposit trails—even a DNA record from his blood. It’s the same man, my good lady. Yes. That’s about the size of it. But the point is, how did he survive to make that telephone call?”

  “Do go on, my friend,” said Paul.

  “I thought this would interest you. Yes…If Kasim al Khafi is alive and well then it practically seals it that there was some deliberate intervention to spare his life. So I kept looking, and it gets even better.” The professor rubbed his hands together.

  “Suffice it to say I wanted to immediately know something more about this Lieutenant Thomason and his background. He was late to the party, as I say, shipping out from Britain on a steamer in August of 1941. In our history his convoy makes the journey to Alexandria uneventfully. But in the altered Meridian, the world we’re living in now after Palma, the data shows that his convoy was attacked by a German surface raider, and this ship, the Prospector of Convoy OS-85, was one of four ships sunk on August 11, 1941. The raid occurred in the Atlantic, just two days sailing time from Gibraltar. There were twenty-seven survivors, but Thomason went down with the ship.”