“Trevor? Oh, he’s harmless. He’s a big teddy bear and would never hurt a fly.”
“But he just stands there with his arms folded and never says anything.”
“That’s just the way he is. Sometimes he goes an entire day without saying a word.”
“I’m glad you’re not that way,” she said, touching her hand lightly on his shoulder.
Drew felt his face flush when she smiled at him. He had difficulty stabilizing his hand when he reached for a series of red switches located on the riser panel in front of her. When he pulled his arm back after turning on power to the chamber’s video system, his forearm grazed her shoulder. The tiny black hairs on his arm tingled, sending a wave of shivers throughout his body.
He waited for his LCD screen to fill with four equal-sized windows. Three of them contained camera feeds showing the exterior of the reactor; the fourth was a shot of the reactor’s core.
“So what happens next?” Abby asked, opening her documentation journal.
Drew hadn’t looked closely at her journal before. This time, though, he noticed it was a blend of normal and unique: the notebook inside was filled with typical college-ruled paper, something anyone could buy at a store that sold school supplies. But the cover was made of tanned leather, with faded Asian characters stenciled into the front. It was dark and worn, like an old saddle. He wondered where it came from. It was clearly old—a family heirloom, perhaps? He’d have to ask about it later.
He changed the upper-left video feed to show Trevor and Lucas standing inside the decontamination chamber. Lucas was holding the E-121 container while Trevor put on his triple-XL Hazmat suit.
“It’s time to load the core,” Drew told her.
He brought up a command window on his computer screen, obscuring all the video feeds except the one monitoring his brother. He waited until he received the thumbs-up signal from Lucas before entering a series of programming commands into his wireless keyboard. Thirty seconds later, the decontamination sequence was complete.
* * *
Lucas stepped through the inner door first and led the way back to the reactor. He unscrewed four wing nuts securing the reactor’s protective shroud and slid it open. He stood aside and waited for Trevor to place the E-121 container inside the core’s main housing. The container fit perfectly inside the precision-made receptacle.
“The material’s in place. Closing the core now,” he announced over the communication system.
Lucas closed the heavy shield, secured it, and the two scientists headed for the exit. They followed established air-lock decontamination procedures before removing their safety gear and leaving the chamber.
“All set, boss. We’re good to go,” Lucas said, sitting down in front of the left console. He was only a few feet to the right of the chamber’s door. Abby was seated to his right, with Drew on the other side of her.
Lucas spent the next several minutes preparing his workstation for the experiment, but was distracted by Abby and Drew babbling away. Occasionally, the chatter was interrupted by one of Abby’s giggles. He looked back to see Kleezebee talking with Trevor near the center worktable. Lucas couldn’t hear their conversation, but based on Kleezebee’s body language and the professor’s frequent glances at Drew, he suspected a problem.
Lucas leaned around the front of Abby and quietly told his brother, “You need to concentrate on the work. Kleezebee’s watching, and he looks pissed.”
“Sorry,” Drew said, straightening himself up in his chair.
A short while later, Kleezebee and Trevor had finished their conversation and joined the crew at the Primary Control Station. “All right, then, let’s fire this baby up,” Kleezebee said.
Drew opened the procedure manual, licked his forefinger, and used it to turn to the first page. It contained almost forty pages of instrument checks, startup protocols, calculations, and notes to run the experiment. The first order of business was to boot the various systems and reset the instruments. Kleezebee’s procedure manual included extensive notes regarding startup protocols and baseline readings.
“Control systems initiated. Stage one complete,” Lucas reported after calibrating the final set of instruments.
Abby documented every facet of the experiment in precise detail. As was true with most scientists, Lucas despised the tedious documentation requirements mandated by the advisors and often chose to shortcut the process by avoiding it altogether. He was pleased to see direct evidence of Abby’s detail-oriented nature, knowing she would save him a tremendous amount of grunt work.
Kleezebee was standing watch over Lucas’ shoulder, his arms folded high across his chest. He was grinning and seemed proud of their accomplishments. Lucas felt the same way. They both had good reason to be proud. They’d worked their asses off to get to this point, and if everything went the way they thought it should, their team was about to rewrite the laws of gravity.
“Go ahead and remove the atmosphere from the core,” Kleezebee said.
Drew started typing into his keyboard and seconds later, the custom-built reactor engaged, filling the lab with a momentary swooshing sound.
Lucas’ pulse began to race as excitement took control. He checked his instruments to verify the reactor’s core had transformed into a space-like vacuum. “Core’s ready, Professor.”
“Now let’s flood it with the gas,” Kleezebee said.
Drew turned to another page in the procedure manual and pressed a series of bright yellow switches in order from left to right. Then he twisted two quarter-sized control knobs and pressed a black button labeled FLOW. “Flow regulators are set. Releasing the Radon gas now,” he said, typing commands into his console.
“Radon gas?” Abby asked Drew.
“We use pressurized inert gas to stop unwanted chain reactions from occurring.”
“Status?” Kleezebee asked.
“Seals holding. All systems report green,” Drew replied after checking his instruments.
“Lucas, fire up the EM system, and make sure it’s calibrated properly,” Kleezebee said.
Lucas activated the electromagnets surrounding the core by lifting eight toggle switches simultaneously. Within milliseconds, he could hear the reverberating hum of the superconducting magnets starting their power-up sequence. As expected, a series of low-pitched tremors started in the floor and tickled his feet. Within seconds, the vibrations intensified, shaking the console desk and sending a jar of pencils and a pad of sticky notes off the edge. Abby bent down in her chair to pick them up off the floor.
“This is the point of no return. Let’s have a full systems check before we proceed,” Kleezebee announced to the team, his voice unsteady from the mounting rumble in the room.
Drew reviewed each subsystem. “Calibrations are . . . good. Power levels . . . check. Monitoring and safety systems are active and ready. E-121 is stable and pressures are holding. It looks like everything is working perfectly and within specs. I think we’re good to go.”
Lucas checked his watch: 10:24 p.m. He enshrined the time in his mind. This was it. The moment of truth. If this worked, all would be right with the world—his world—a world in which Drew and his mom were the two most important things. The fact that he’d royally screwed up by impulsively submitting the paper to Dr. Green’s journal wouldn’t matter anymore. His mistake would quickly disappear into the background and be buried under the enormous success of this project. It would make their entire team famous and bring instant respect among their peers. He’d be able to take care of his brother and his mother for as long as was necessary—no more living in a rent-free apartment and eating cafeteria food on a meal plan.
Lucas put a halt to his runaway excitement, returning his attention to the chamber. First things first. Prove the theory, verify the results, then report the success. That’s the order a true scientist follows.
After a long exhale, Kleezebee said, “Set the beam’s power to Level One. When the capacitor is charged, let ‘er rip.”
> Lucas reached forward and unlocked a palm-sized black control knob attached to the vertical portion of the control station. He twisted it counterclockwise and set its indicator to LEVEL ONE before locking its protective cover back into place. He pushed a neighboring red CHARGE button and waited for the capacitor’s power meter to increase. When it reached capacity, a green READY light lit up on his panel. He looked back at his boss. “We’re all set, boss.”
Kleezebee nodded.
Trevor scrunched up his face and took a giant step backward, as if he expected the chamber to explode. Trevor’s movement surprised Lucas, because he’d never seen Trevor scared of anything. He couldn’t think about that, though. He needed to focus on the task at hand.
The project comes first. Everything else comes second.
Lucas steadied his finger and pressed the green READY button. A short, pulsating whirr resonated from deep inside the chamber, signaling that the capacitor just released its stored energy. “Almost there,” he mumbled with excitement. He could feel his chest tightening, making it difficult to breathe.
Soon the monitors in front of him began to stream multiple columns of numerical data up from the bottom. The numbers crawled up the screens like a swarm of digital army ants on the march toward imortality.
When the final set of results appeared, Lucas took a double-take to make sure he was reading the results correctly. He was—there were no results. He couldn’t believe it. Not a goddamn thing. He stood up and yelled, “Shit!” and threw his safety glasses across the room with a side-armed throwing motion.
Abby flinched. “What’s wrong?”
Lucas raised his hands against the sides of his head. While looking to the heavens, he said, “Nothing. That’s what happened. Two years of work, and then—” He struggled to bring his emotions under control, but they were too powerful to hold back. “Nothing! We got nothing!”
Kleezebee put a firm hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Lucas. Have patience. It’s only our first attempt with E-121.”
The professor turned to Drew. “What’s the status of the core?”
Drew checked the reactor instruments. “Looks good. E-121 remains viable and the core’s adequately pressurized. Should we try again, possibly at full power?”
“No, not yet. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. At this point, there’s no guarantee that doubling the power will accomplish anything.”
Kleezebee began to pace the room while everyone else remained silent. He shuffled to the far wall and back, looking immersed in thought, his hands folded behind his back. Then he stopped pacing and addressed the group. “Before we do anything, I need you to perform a complete systems analysis of the available data. Let’s see if we can tell what, if anything, happened. We might have missed something. Remember—details are everything. For now, let’s power down the EM system but leave the core pressurized.”
Kleezebee’s cell phone rang. He opened the phone’s flip cover. “Go for DL.” Partway through the conversation, he held his hand over the phone’s microphone and told the crew, “I need to go take this call. I’ll be back in a few.”
* * *
Half an hour later, the team was huddled around the center worktable after concluding their detailed systems analysis. Kleezebee still hadn’t returned from his private phone call.
“Let’s run through it one step at a time,” Lucas told his team after a long exhale.
Drew’s shoulders slumped as he read from a list of notes. “I checked the core’s internal data feeds and didn’t detect anything anomalous. The core’s material remained viable throughout the test and the internal housing was structurally sound. The core’s internal pressure held steady and was right on mark, but our instruments failed to show any notable change in E-121’s EM field.”
Lucas sensed his brother had more to report. “Anything else?”
Drew nodded. “The really odd thing is that with all the energy released, you’d think our instruments would’ve recorded something. If nothing else, it should’ve at least registered a power spike when the core was bombarded. But zilch. All that energy had to go somewhere. It’s as though the beam never fired.”
“Drew had me review the operational logs,” Abby said. “According to the project specs, the capacitor’s power level was precisely where it was supposed to be, and the beam frequency was tuned perfectly. All readings indicate the energy was discharged and the beam fired.”
“I check magnets and calibration matched. Power okay. No failure,” Trevor added with his thick accent skewing some of the words.
“Okay, then, let’s recap what we know,” Lucas said. “Everything was calibrated perfectly. The core and E-121 were stable. We had the proper amount of power. All our readings were normal before, during, and after the test. The capacitor’s energy discharged and engaged the core, but no power was registered.”
Lucas rubbed his temples. “Damn, that makes no sense. What are we missing?”
“Nothing. Everything went perfectly according to plan. It should’ve worked.”
“I know, this whole thing is fucking nuts.”
“What do we do next?” Drew asked, looking as perplexed as Lucas felt.
“What about full power?”
Drew hesitated, his eyes tightening into a long stare. “Worth a shot.”
“Yeah, it’s possible the beam’s energy level wasn’t sufficient enough to morph E-121’s EM field. But we’ll need to crunch a whole new set of numbers.”
“We could also try reversing the EM polarity?” Abby asked with a look of confidence.
“Maybe use inverse wave frequency?” Trevor added.
Lucas took a minute to consider the merit of each suggestion. After a short pause, he decided a politically correct answer was in order. It would keep everyone happy and help cover up his indecisiveness. He wasn’t ready to make a decision. Not one of this magnitude.
“Hmmm, all three ideas have potential. But we need to run them by DL to see what he wants to do, if anything. I will—”
Before he could finish the sentence, the room started to shake violently. The procedure manual slid off the console desk and the storage cabinets’ metal doors rattled and flung open. Several items fell off the shelves and landed on the floor. Abby grabbed Drew’s arm.
The tremor lasted less than ten seconds.
“Was that an earthquake?” Abby asked, letting go of Drew.
“It felt like one, but that’s not what it was. We started feeling those tremors about a month ago. We checked with the USGS, but they said there hadn’t been any seismic activity in the area,” Lucas replied.
“We think the NASA group down the hall must be firing up one of their experiments. Some type of underground test, mostly likely,” Drew said.
“I wonder what they’re working on?” she asked.
“Nobody knows,” Lucas said. “If you go past our lab and around a few more corners, you’ll see their security checkpoints. There must be something big going on there, because they have a full complement of guards on duty around the clock. I’m pretty sure it’s the most secure place on campus.”
“So I take it you’ve never been down there?” she asked.
“No. Never. Those guards and their assault rifles are a great big sign that says stay the hell away.”
Drew added, “We call it ‘the Zone.’ If they think you’re a threat, they’ll charge at you with their guns drawn. Several people have been arrested for just taking a wrong turn and not following their commands quickly enough.”
Before anyone could respond to Drew’s comment, the lab’s telephone rang. It was mounted on the wall, next to the entrance. Lucas sprinted over to it and snatched its receiver from the cradle.
“Dr. Ramsay speaking,” he said, turning sideways and leaning his right shoulder against the wall. To balance himself, he crossed his right leg over his left. He remained silent until the very end of the conversation. “Okay, I’ll let the team know,” he told the caller before slamming down the re
ceiver. “That was Kleezebee. He said our project is on hold indefinitely, at least until he can convince the damn Advisory Committee to let us continue our work.”
“What? How can that be? They’ve already approved this project,” Drew snorted.
“Apparently that shit stain of an attorney, Larson, just got in touch with the committee chairman and somehow convinced him to suspend our experiment, pending a formal review. Kleezebee said it has something to do with government liability and the E-121 samples,” Lucas said, figuring there was more going on behind the scenes than just that. Probably had something to do with his paper to Dr. Green. “All I know for sure is Kleezebee told us to shut down for now. He thinks it might take a while to talk some sense into the group. He said we all might as well head home for the holidays.”
“But we’re so close. How can they do this to us now?” his brother asked.
Lucas was sure it was his fault. He’d give anything to go back in time and stop himself from hitting the ‘send’ button on his laptop, but it was too late now. His heart had been in the right place. He was trying to take care of his family, but it completely backfired. He felt like such an idiot. Now his actions were going to affect everyone involved in the project, not just him. How could he have been so stupid? He wanted to tell Drew the truth but didn’t want to disappoint him, not in front of the rest of the team—especially not in front of the new girl, Abby.
“There’s no way to tell with these bureaucrats,” Lucas said, choosing to keep his secret quiet for a bit longer. “Could be any number of reasons, and probably nothing to do with science either. Let’s hope DL finds a way to work it out.”
“I can’t believe this is happening. We deserve better than this.”
“I hear you, bro. But we’ll have to wait a few days until Kleezebee gets back. He said he was heading to Washington right away to meet with the entire Advisory Committee. I guess they’re at some technology conference in the Pentagon.”
He turned his attention to the techs. “You two can leave, if you want. There’s nothing more for you to do right now. We’ll call you when the project’s back on.” He looked at Trevor. “Kleezebee said he wants you to call him right away.”
Linkage (The Narrows of Time Series Book 1) Page 6
