He looked up. “I’m still getting reports, but I’ll do my best to answer any questions you may have.” The first hand went up in the back, and he pointed.
“What about the reports of mass hysteria? There are recordings and images all over the internet of people running toward the place where the flare hit. Like they were drawn to it.”
The president’s palms felt like they were dripping with sweat, but there was no way he’d wipe them on national television. He placed them calmly on the top of the podium. “I’ve been told prior to this flare, there were a large number of smaller microbursts. They reverberated through virtually any electronic device relying on radio or wireless signals within reach. This was nothing more than radio interference, solar static.”
The president raised his hand and pointed to his right. “Yes?”
“Can this happen again? You mentioned microbursts leading up to the large flare. Is this like a volcanic eruption or an earthquake? Should we expect more?”
He swallowed again. They’d rehearsed this, several times. The delivery was key. He lowered his voice and looked just a little to the right of the central camera. “This has happened before. At four fifty-one p.m. EDT on Monday, April 2, 2001, the largest flare previously on record left the sun and just missed our planet. On March 6, 1989, another did reach us, and knocked out half the power grid in Canada. There are hundreds of smaller ones on record. This is not a rare occurrence. That in mind, we are a difficult target to hit. Like asteroids and meteorites, most pass us harmlessly by or jettison out into space with little or no impact on our planet. Can it happen again? Absolutely. Is it likely? No, it is not. I’ve been told the events on the sun leading up to this flare are currently waning. It may be millions of years before something like this happens again.”
“Any idea when the power grid will be restored? We have reports of outages nationwide. More than a hundred million homes. Well beyond the Pacific Northwest—most of the country appears to be in the dark.”
He nodded bleakly. “I’ve been told there was a cascading effect and residents should check with their local municipality for restoration estimates.”
“How do you expect them to make those phone calls without power?”
He caught someone from the corner of his eye giving him the signal to wrap things up. Turning, he placed both hands back on the podium. “We have many questions at this point, and I’d love to address all of you, but as you can imagine, I’ve got a lot of people vying for my attention this morning. We will continue to release information as it comes in. We Americans are strong. We’re resourceful. And we are never deterred. An obstacle is something to be tackled, overcome, and conquered. While this event is devastating, I have no doubt we will not only persevere, but we will thrive in the wake of this disaster. We will prosper because we are Americans, and that’s what we do. We owe that to the people we lost.” He forced a smile out over the seats. “Thank you for attending at this early hour.”
The president stood there for a moment, gripping the podium.
Off to the side, someone said, “And…we’re out.”
The bright lights switched off, and the president looked out over the empty chairs. Other than a handful of his staff tasked with shouting out prepared questions, there was nobody in attendance.
The briefing room set was quickly dismantled—the backdrop, the podium and stage, the walls—all of it would be back aboard Air Force One within ten minutes.
Samantha Troy took him by the arm. “We need to get you back on board, sir. We’ll be airborne again as quickly as possible. We need to keep moving.”
They had landed at Fort Wainwright in Alaska.
“How long can we keep the nation’s power grid off?” he asked her. “There must be a better way to block the internet.”
She directed him toward the stairs leading back up into the plane. “We’ll discuss options once we’re back in the air, sir. We need to move.”
“Where are we going?”
“We plan to remain airborne for the foreseeable future. Refuels will be in the air. Until we understand the implications of what’s happening and how best to avoid it, we’ll stay out of harm’s way.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“No, sir. I did not,” she replied.
1 WEEK LATER
Chapter One Hundred Two
Martha
“The president’s speech was bullshit. You all know that, right?”
Senator Michael Raffalo rolled his eyes, scratched his thinning hair, and took a quick drink of water before responding. “Dr. Chan, you’ve been told twice now, we’re on the record here, there’s no need for that kind of language.”
She glared up at him at the center of the large oak monstrosity of a desk, flanked by Senators Greg Hastings and Amber Roush on his left and George Lummin on his right along with an empty chair and a nameplate for Rosario Cortez, who had yet to arrive. Aside from a few whispered comments to Raffalo, the other three had remained relatively silent for the several hours they’d already spent in this room deep in the Capitol building. Martha was beginning to wonder what any of them were doing there. “Come on, solar flares?”
“He was…is, trying to avoid a panic.”
“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”
“Can we please just stay on task? Your outbursts are only prolonging our time together.”
“My outbursts—”
Harbin reached over and squeezed her wrist. He shook his head softly.
The two of them were seated alone at a long conference table facing the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, their backs turned on a galley designed to hold at least a hundred people but today stood completely empty due to security concerns and the varying degrees of secrecy all these people insisted on continuing.
“‘Give General Westin my best.’” Raffalo cleared his throat. “Dr. Harbin, those were Dr. Cushman’s final words to you?”
Harbin turned from Martha and looked back up at the senator. “Her final spoken words to me were, ‘Let me show you how to stop it,’ she then shot herself. She wrote the message about Westin on the document I surrendered to the soldiers I found graciously waiting for me outside of that DARPA black site.”
Raffalo glanced at the notepad on the desk in front of him. “Renton Forty-Nine.”
“Yes.”
“The location Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Fraser transported you to?”
“Yes.”
“A location that does not exist.”
Two days ago, Harbin had taken Martha to Renton 49. They’d found the remains of the building in the middle of a dead-end street in Seattle, surrounded by a ten-foot chain-link fence. A homeless woman had told them the property was an abandoned textile factory, vacant for nearly a dozen years. Construction crews had imploded the structure a week ago, within twenty-four hours of Harbin’s visit. The homeless woman said she’d watched the building come down, listened to the workers complain about the excessive amounts of concrete and how much time it would take to haul it all away. A sign on the chain-link fence advertised the future location of six luxury lofts, expected completion in two years. It had been hanging sideways, one of the bolts meant to hold it in place missing.
Raffalo continued reading from his notepad again, “You’re referencing the document you said was titled ‘DARPA INITIATIVE 769021473, ANAlog Symbiotic Human Interface Mechanism. Ana Shim.’”
“Yes.”
“The document nobody on this committee has seen or heard of even though the people you see before you control all of DARPA’s funding.”
“Maybe you should ask General Westin about the program.”
“In due time, Doctor. Today we’re here to talk to you and your colleague and, like uncontrolled outbursts, chiming in with unsolicited commentary will also extend your stay. So, let’s focus, shall we?”
When Harbin didn’t reply, Raffalo scribbled something down on his notepad and continued, “Dr. Cushman
told you this program was a means to connect the human brain to the internet through the use of sound, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And she said they succeeded in this endeavor?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s your belief, the belief of your team, that success led to the destruction and loss of life you followed in the Pacific Northwest?”
“Yes.”
He turned back to Martha. “Dr. Chan. As the only remaining medical doctor from your team, can you explain to the committee, in your own words, how exactly this worked?”
“No, sir. I cannot.”
“Why not?”
“Because medically, it shouldn’t work.”
“But it did, didn’t it? So give us your best interpretation.”
She looked to Harbin again, who only gave her a soft nod. Martha placed both her palms on the table and explained as best she could. “As we currently understand it, the noise itself is an acoustic virus and can be generated in one of two ways—electronically, as a reproduced recording meeting very specific standards, or by a human host infected with the virus—vibrations on a cellular level that generate an audible signature. In both instances, the virus is capable of spreading, infecting others with a near one hundred percent success rate. This…sound…contains information. That information teaches the human brain how to connect to the internet using any available carrier signal—cellular, wi-fi, Bluetooth, possibly others unknown to us. Once…connected, the brain—which tends to starve for information—suddenly had an unlimited source of data, and it only wanted more. This caused transmission speeds to increase, and like any computer taxed heavily, this created heat, and that excess heat became energy the body was compelled to burn. Had to burn.”
“By running?”
“Yes. By running,” Martha replied. “As we saw with several test subjects, when they stopped running, the heat—the energy—became unstable, perpetual. They created more than they used, which eventually led to combustion.”
“Even after death?”
“Especially in death,” Harbin interjected. “This connection didn’t just occur in the brain but in every cell, every molecule of the infected individual. And it didn’t stop with what we consider clinical death. The sudden stoppage of motion brought on by clinical death left no place for the energy to go. I guess, to put this in the simplest terms, this would be like disabling the radiator in a car while the accelerator is held to the floorboard—the engine would burn.”
“Like a nuclear reactor in meltdown?”
“Exactly.”
Senator Roush leaned over and said something to Raffalo behind a cupped hand. He nodded and said, “If this infection had a near one hundred percent success rate, and you, Dr. Harbin there, and those girls from Mount Hood were all exposed, why weren’t all of you infected?”
Harbin leaned forward. “When initially exposed, Tennant Riggin had wax in her ears. She was…checking rabbit traps…and put it in purely by happenstance in order to block out their cries. Her sister, Sophie, did not, but both girls were rushed into an underground shelter by their father before the noise hit them in full force. Some combination of these circumstances limited their exposure on varying levels, Tennant more so than her younger sister. Dr. Hoover believed exposure in small doses could possibly build a tolerance in some people, maybe even an immunity.”
At this, Raffalo raised his index finger and silenced Harbin as he conferred with two of the other senators for nearly a minute, wrote something else down, then looked back at him. “Have you been able to replicate this…immunity?”
Harbin shook his head. “Not with any kind of regularity. In studying people around the Portland area, we have learned that younger individuals seem to be more adaptive. When exposed in limited doses—doses low enough to avoid infection—they recovered faster. This could be due to their ability to hear a wider range of audio frequencies—we lose that as we get older. I don’t really have an answer there. Both Dr. Chan and I were exposed numerous times and don’t seem to suffer from any lasting ill effects, same with Tennant Riggin. With Lieutenant Colonel Fraser, well, we’ve all seen the recordings.”
“So you don’t believe he removed his headphones because they were ineffective?”
Harbin considered this, choosing his words carefully. “I honestly don’t think he needed them anymore. In the video captured by the Humvees, he leaves the downed helicopter and gets into another vehicle without showing any signs of discomfort from the noise even though it was at its strongest all around him. I think he became one of the connected while also remaining in control of most, if not all, of his own faculties.”
“He didn’t feel the urge to run,” Raffalo stated flatly.
“I think he managed to make the connection Dr. Hoover and the people at DARPA had hoped to create in everyone without the adverse effects, yes.”
“Is that what you saw in the child? Sophie Riggin?”
Martha reached for the pitcher of water on the table, refilled her glass, and took a drink. The water was warm; dust floated across the top. “Sophie was different.” She set her glass back down on the table. “We now know she did connect—that was how she knew the names of my children, the names of many of the infected, knew a number of things she shouldn’t have—the hive mind, the collective consciousness of all the connected, used her as a conduit in those final moments as a means to try and communicate. But it was all too much, her body couldn’t handle it.”
“She burned.”
“Yes, she burned.”
Senator Lummin raised his hand. “If you would have allowed her to run rather than lock her in a cage, would she have survived?”
Martha felt her face flush. “It wasn’t my decision to—”
Lummin waved his hand dismissively. “If anyone would have allowed her to run, would she have survived?”
Martha leaned forward, glared at him. “I don’t know.”
“But it’s likely she might have managed this perpetual heat you mentioned and found a way to survive?”
Harbin cleared his throat. “I don’t think any of us can be one hundred percent certain she is dead.”
He’d brought a metal case with him and he reached for it now, setting it on the table before him. He gave Martha a glance before pressing the buttons on either side, releasing the latches.
He lifted the lid and turned the case toward the panel.
Senator Roush jumped up out of her chair.
The others remained still, their faces going ashen.
Raffalo was the first to speak, his voice cracking. “Why the hell would you bring that in here?”
Inside, set in black foam to hold it still, was the old tape recorder Tennant had used to record a message to her parents in the shelter back on Mount Hood.
Chapter One Hundred Three
Martha
“I’m not comfortable with this at all,” Senator Roush said. “How did you even get that past security?”
Harbin carefully lifted the tape recorder from the case and set it on the table. From his pocket, he took out four batteries and began inserting them into the recorder.
“Okay, now you’re going too far,” Raffalo said. “Somebody take that from him and escort him out!”
One of the Capitol security guards watched from the doorway but made no attempt to approach him. Instead, he took several steps back.
Harbin said, “It’s fine.”
Senator Lummin clearly didn’t think so. He shoved his notes into his briefcase, got up, and started for the door. “I’ll be in my office. Have someone get me when this is over.” He was gone a moment later.
Hastings was the only one who didn’t appear nervous. “You’ve done this before?”
Harbin nodded, inserting the last battery and slipping the plastic cover back in place. “Several times. I assure you, it’s safe.”
“Give us a moment,” Hastings said, turning to his two remaining colleagues. They began to speak in hushed whispers.
<
br /> Martha looked over at Harbin and although he was attempting to remain collected, his temples glistened with sweat.
Raffalo made another note and said, “Proceed with caution, Doctor. You’re on very thin ice.”
Harbin nodded.
The volume control on the tape recorder was a small wheel on the side. Martha watched as he turned it from four to ten, the highest setting. Then he pressed the bulky Play button.
Static poured out from the speaker, followed by Sophie’s voice, sounding distant—
“Tell Tennant to go to big rock.”
This repeated two more times.
“Tell Tennant to go to big rock.”
“Tell Tennant to go to big rock.”
Harbin pressed the Stop button.
“I don’t understand,” Raffalo said. “What is big rock?”
“We didn’t know, either,” Martha replied, “so we asked Tennant. She said big rock was an outcropping a short walk from their village on Mount Hood. Someplace the girls would go to play or to hide from the adults.”
“I still don’t understand.”
Harbin said, “We provided the coordinates to the Army and they dispatched a team to investigate. They found the Riggins’ dog hiding there—dehydrated, malnourished, impossibly thin. Another day or two and he may have passed away. Sophie saved him.”
The three representatives fell silent for a moment. It was Amber Roush who first realized the significance. “When exactly did she record that?”
Harbin eyed the three of them. “The message first appeared two days after she combusted, after she was gone.”
The Noise Page 34
