Zero Point

by Tim Fairchild

  “Only a diseased mind would ever think of doing something that terrible,” Turner said, wanting to put this maniac out of his misery.

  “Speaking of minds, you bring up a good point, Mr. Turner. I failed to mention that we can even affect the mind with a little device I have in the next room. You will have the pleasure of seeing it demonstrated first hand,” Osama said, motioning the guards to take him.

  “You cannot hope to stop the mega-slide now, Mr. Turner,” Osama said, as Turner was dragged forcefully into the corridor and toward the adjacent room. “It's over, Turner. You and your rag-tag group of soldiers below are hopelessly outnumbered by my men and shall all die in vain.” He laughed loudly as Turner, hearing the sounds of the firefight below the complex, was dragged into the room.

  “Where are your two friends, Mr. Turner? Telling us may save you a great deal of suffering,” Pencor said as they entered the room with a warning placard similar to the one where the Scalar weapons were deployed.

  “They went down through the supply room entrance to the lava tube to help our friends below,” he lied, still hoping to buy Yashiro and Samuel precious moments. He looked around the large, sparsely-furnished room and saw it looked part laboratory, part medieval dungeon. On one wall, where he was now led, was a series of leather straps mounted head and chest level, with more along the floor. Turner was callously strapped to the leather bindings. He struggled to free himself to no avail.

  “I’m sure that you are lying about the location of your friends, Mr. Turner,” Osama said smiling. “We will no doubt find them, and soon they can join our little party.”

  He walked over to the other side of the room, to a long bank of control panels with cabling similar to the ones Turner had seen in the Scalar weapon room. He saw the familiar, snake-like power cables descending from the ceiling into a large metal box affixed with built-in dials connected to what looked like an oscilloscope. Another smaller cable, similar to a black coax cable, fed into the back of what looked like a ray gun bolted onto a metal table. The gun was about three feet in length and looked like a conventional weapon, except for a conical barrel the size of a pocket mirror at its end.

  “This is one of my favorite Scalar toys, Mr. Turner,” Osama said proudly as he toggled the power switch on at the control box and caused the gun to pulsate with a loud hum.

  “Electromagnetic weaponry has a multitude of applications, Mr. Turner. One of them is this device, which uses the science of longitudinal waves to affect the mind,” he said, gently stroking the top of the barrel with his hand. “This is my psycho-energetic stimulator or, what I prefer to call, the Mind Snapper gun. That has a nicer ring, doesn't it?”

  “Your twisted mind snapped long ago, Osama,” Turner said, angry that Osama continued toying with him. “You, and that other piece of shit,” he said, shooting a glaring look at Pencor, who smiled with growing anticipation.

  “I’ve become quite adept at its many uses, Mr. Turner,” Osama continued, ignoring the insult and aiming its laser targeting system at Turner. He was helpless to resist, as the red targeting tracer cast its glow on Turner’s forehead. Osama continued his emotionless rant. “I discovered that when the offsetting EM wave patterns are used at the lower levels, it renders a victim’s mind open to any suggestion. I can persuade even the most stalwart mind to kill a friend, or their entire family. I can even induce you to believe that you are on fire, Mr. Turner. In your mind you are burning alive, though in reality, you are quite safe and comfortable,” he said with a shrill laugh. “You’ll experience the pain and horror associated with literally being on fire for as long as I see fit to indulge myself.”

  Pencor, with his back facing Osama, watched in rapt fascination and smiled at Turner’s torment. He had not seen the Mind Snapper gun at work, and looked forward to the demonstration.

  “You two,” Osama yelled in Japanese to the guards standing by the door. “Find the other two intruders that were with him and bring them to me. If they resist, kill them.” The two men quickly obeyed, exiting the laboratory in search of Samuel and Yashiro. Only the three of them remained. “I must say, Robert, it was fortunate that I came down when I did and discovered the main doors barred shut from the inside,” Osama said to Pencor, who merely grunted in agreement as the red tracer laser disappeared from Turner’s forehead. Osama quickly swiveled the gun’s tracer onto the back of Pencor’s head, and simultaneously powered up the longitudinal wave generator. Turner saw, to his horror, Pencor’s face go expressionless. It was like staring into the face of a department store mannequin. Osama began to laugh loudly.

  “Before I have my fun with you, Mr. Turner, I wanted to let you see the full capabilities of my beautiful device. At half power, the mind begins to lose all concepts of memory, feelings, or desires,” he said as he inched up the power on the wave generator. Turner watched in revulsion as Pencor’s eyes began to bulge horrifically from their sockets, followed by uncontrollable drooling from the corner of his mouth.

  “Pencor has outlived his usefulness to me, Mr. Turner,” Osama stated, gently toying with the EM wave’s power dial. “I tolerated his insolence long enough to gain my power from his financial backing. The fool doesn’t realize that while he was in Morocco, I had the original patents to his ZPGs transferred to my name and my operatives there took over his production facility. Robert was graciously going to let me have a percentage of the profit, but I prefer to have it all.” He smiled, staring at his motionless one-time benefactor. “Once the completed industrial ZPGs now loaded on container ships in Morocco are commandeered by my men, they will be safely transferred to my production facility in Japan. I will have complete control the world’s newest and most profitable power supply.”

  “You’ll never get away with it, Osama!” Turner yelled in protest, struggling frantically at his bindings.

  Ignoring the outburst, he said, “At full power, Mr. Turner, the cells of the mind are completely and utterly destroyed.” He slowly turned the dial on his instrument of death to its optimum power.

  Pencor’s sickly, bulging eyes went dull and lifeless. In an instant, the rich, maniacal corporate leader fell to the floor like a rag doll. Osama slowly backed the longitudinal wave generator down to its lower level, laughing as he did so.

  “Why don’t you just get it over with?” Turner yelled in defiance, knowing that he would never see his father, Samuel, or Maria again. He now resigned himself to his fate, and was saddened that he had dragged Samuel into this nightmare. However, he was relieved that Maria was still with his father somewhere on La Palma. Anywhere was better than here, he thought, as once again Osama leveled the tracer laser onto Turner’s forehead.

  “A most effective device wouldn’t you say?” Osama said, tormenting Turner even more. “Unfortunately, it has limitations in preciseness at a distance. I would have loved tormenting Robert longer but, sadly, I must leave. You, however, will be able to enjoy my little toy much longer than Robert did. I’m sure someone will find you eventually, but by then I’m afraid you will most assuredly be insane,” he said as he powered up the EM wave to a lower output level.

  Turner instantly felt his mind disconnect from reality. He felt nothing; no pain, fear, joy, or malice. He just stared, sightlessly and thoughtlessly, at his tormentor across the room.

  “Mr. Turner,” a voice boomed in his mind. “The room that you are in is ablaze. The flames are getting closer and closer to you. You cannot move.” The echoing voice screamed in his mind as he suddenly felt the heat and saw flames about him. He wanted to scream, but found he could not as the inferno engulfed him. “You are burning alive, Mr. Turner.” The echoing words roared in his mind and it seemed as though blinding, agonizing pain erupted through Turner’s body. Nevertheless, his body was perfectly still in its bindings. There was no escaping this horrid torment. This was indeed hell and he was right in the heart of it. His mind tried to scream in agony, but it did nothing to relieve his distress.

  Osama walked to the door and looked at
Turner one more time saying, “I leave you to your karma, Mr. Turner. I have a plane to catch.” He then left the lab and headed back up the stairwell to his office. Osama casually gathered his papers and prepared to vacate, while his expendable mercenaries took care of the intruders below.

  ***

  Upstairs on the main level, Samuel had heard the voice on Turner’s VHF telling him to drop his weapon, but after that all had gone silent. He knew his friend was in serious trouble, but he could do nothing to help as long as the guards still occupied the atrium. Peeking out the door and down the corridor, Samuel saw at least ten armed men milling about in the atrium. They were talking excitedly among themselves, and it appeared as if they were waiting for orders.

  After what seemed an eternity, he heard the sound of someone in authority yelling orders in Japanese, which sent the Yakuza soldiers quickly down the staircase. He could see, through the slight crack in the open door, two guards heading his way and readied his weapon. As they got closer, he gently closed the door. The two shadowy figures passed by his darkened hideaway and went directly to the doors of the control room. Samuel heard the men begin to shout when they saw the shattered access card unit dangling uselessly against the doors.

  Bursting out of the door, Samuel fired at the two mercenaries just as they began turning their weapons on him. With the guards now dead, Samuel quickly grabbed an AK-47 from the floor and then ran down the corridor to the stairwell that led to the lower level.

  As he bounded down the stairs, he prayed he wasn’t too late to help Josh. He was going to find his friend, and God help anyone who got in his way.

  Samuel assumed the guards that preceded him went down the access hatch in the supply room to aid in repelling Captain Saune and his men. He quickly looked into the room as he heard the firefight raging below. Seeing no one, he moved across the hall to the next room. Looking into the room through the small glass pane, he saw a strange looking weapon with a red tracer laser that emitted a reddish glow from the barrel. He slowly opened the door, 45-automatic at the ready and the AK-47 strapped over his shoulder. Slowly stepping inside, he was stunned to see Turner strapped to the far wall by leather restraints. He hung suspended and motionless; his eyes staring wide as though he was in pain and afraid. The laser tracer centered on his forehead.

  Samuel quickly ran up to the weapon and, using the full force of his powerful arm, ripped the entire unit off its mounts. The force of the blow sent the gun and its equipment crashing to the floor with a loud hissing sound. He ran back to Turner who now, with his eyes shut, slumped lifelessly in his leather confines. Samuel feverishly removed the bindings and carefully lowered Turner’s limp body to the floor. As he did, he heard the excited voice of Yashiro shouting over the VHF radio.

  “It’s working! It’s working!”

  29

  As Yashiro celebrated his successful attempt at reversing the effects of the exothermic waves from the Scalar weapon, Eli Turner, Maria Santiago, and Alton Burr were on La Palma moving deep within the bowels of an ancient lava tube under the monolithic, hand-shaped rock formation.

  Using the rope, the trio managed to descend into the tube through the skylight that opened as a result of the earlier seismic tremor. Once inside, they discovered the lava tube had collapsed centuries ago in the direction leading up to the caldera. The solid basalt barrier had effectively sealed the chamber, allowing them only to proceed on a downward trek. They now traversed the slope with the aid of a single flashlight.

  Eli felt the seismic shocks increasing in frequency and in strength, but after traveling over one hundred fifty feet inside the lava tube, the heat was much worse than the tremors. It was becoming unbearable as the three, drenched in sweat and eyes burning, continued slowly forward in the darkness.

  Eli grabbed on to Maria as another violent tremor shook the earth beneath their feet for the duration of ten seconds. This caused Burr to lose his footing and crash headlong onto the floor of the chamber.

  “This is a fool’s errand, Turner,” Burr yelled in painful anger after his knee smashed into the tunnel’s floor. “We need to get out of here before we’re all killed.”

  “As I recall, this was your idea, Burr. There’s nothing stopping you from going back and waiting for us,” Eli yelled in response, steadying himself now that the tremor had subsided.

  “He may be right, Eli,” Maria said, agreeing with the lawyer. “This is becoming too dangerous. The tremors are getting worse by the minute, and I’m worried about poisonous gases in here.”

  Pausing in thought for a moment, Eli finally said, “You may be right, Maria. I don’t have the right to endanger your lives looking for something that may not even exist. It’s a shame that we have come so close to discovering something amazing, but now it may be lost forever because of this damned volcanic activity. Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said in frustration as he turned and started retracing his steps toward the opening.

  Burr, now elated and relieved that nature was about to do his dirty work for him, led the way back through the tunnel. He was thrilled that any religious artifacts, if here, would be entombed for all time. His future plans could go on unimpeded.

  The three had covered the first thirty feet back when a bone-jarring seismic quake hit them without warning. It sent them cascading to the floor as ancient fissures in the walls on either side of them began fracturing. The black basalt crumbled away from the wall, allowing jets of super-heated steam to escape through newly-formed fissures.

  Eli looked nervously at the others as he noticed that the path ahead of them had partially collapsed, threatening to seal them all in a permanent tomb. All that remained was a narrow opening just large enough for one person at a time to squeeze through. The scattered basalt dust settled all around them as Eli heard the ominous hissing sound of steam being released in the dark recesses of the lava tube behind them. He projected the beam from the flashlight around the tunnel to survey the damage, but stopped when the light reflected off something glimmering on the wall.

  “Maria! Look!” he yelled in excitement, pointing the beam at a large section of basalt that had fallen away from the side of the tube. A natural ledge was revealed, and sitting on the ledge was a small rectangular box.

  “Oh my God, do you think we’ve found it?” Maria asked as the two made their way over to the narrow, waist-high ledge.

  “It must have been buried by past eruptions, sealing the ledge with loose basalt rock and protecting it,” Eli said as he gently grasped the object. He pulled it free from the crumbling rock that entombed it for almost twenty centuries.

  The ancient wooden box was encased in copper sheathing. Oval shaped handles, forged from bronze, were what reflected the light from Eli’s flashlight. It measured approximately eight inches high by fourteen inches long. One of the wooden knobs at its base had broken off.

  Eli brushed the dust off the top of the small chest. The structure of the chest was still intact, but its copper exterior was dulled by the centuries of dirt and debris lying atop of it.

  “Leave it,” Burr protested from the narrow opening that led to the entrance. “We have to get out now, before it’s too late.”

  “Let’s take a look,” Eli said, in childlike amazement, oblivious to their present danger. He ignored Burr, who had moved to the other side of the tunnel.

  “I just wish Josh were here to see this,” Eli whispered, smiling at Maria, who was now soaked with perspiration from the intensifying heat in the lava tube. He slowly lifted the lid to the small ancient chest and placed it at the side of the box.

  Shining the light inside, the two saw an ancient woven fabric covering something. Maria, ever so carefully, lifted the woven material off its contents and gasped in awe. They looked at each other for a moment and Eli could see tears mixed with sweat running down Maria’s face.

  There, on the left side of the chest lying on its side was a wooden cup made of olive wood. The cup was simple in design and measured barely five inches high, w
ith a deeply carved bowl that had no stem; its base was the same diameter as its top. Delicately hand painted designs inscribed on its side were still discernible after almost two thousand years. In the center of the chest was a roll of copper sheathing, which Eli identified immediately as a copper scroll. “Look, Maria,” he said excitedly. “It’s just like the ones found in 1952 in the cave at Khirbet Qumran on the shore of the Dead Sea. The copper scrolls found there were scribed to preserve religious text.”

  “Look at this,” Maria said, pointing to the opposite end of the box. “That's the remains of euphorbia milli, a thick, thorny brush plant that grows throughout the Dead Sea region, and was common to the vicinity of Jerusalem.”

  Eli marveled at the remains of the thorn brush. Although fragmented through the centuries, the interweaving of the thorny brush could be clearly discerned.

  “We found them,” Eli said joyfully. “After two thousand years of speculation, stories, and myths, we have factual proof.”

  “Imagine what could be written on that copper scroll,” Maria said as the two archaeologists stood, mesmerized by the treasures that lay before them.

  They gazed in amazement for a few moments until the silence was broken by Alton Burr.

  “I’ll take those now, Turner, if you don’t mind,” he said. Eli and Maria looked at Burr to see him brandishing a gun.

  “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing, Burr?” Eli said. They were suddenly stunned back to reality by Burr’s action.

  “What I originally came here to do; make sure that free-thinking people are not subjugated back into the stone ages from the likes of these superstitious symbols.”