Supersymmetry

by David Walton

  “The varcolac is back,” Alex said.

  That earned her another look. “I never understood why you called it that,” Jean said.

  “It’s what destroyed the stadium in Philadelphia. It killed my dad.”

  Jean shrugged, a slow and barely discernable gesture. The empty expression on her face didn’t change. “You expect me to weep for him?”

  “I thought you could help me understand it. Specifically, how it changes things in the past. I know you once used a Higgs projector to do that, but we don’t know the principle behind it. I need to stop the varcolac before it kills any more people.”

  “Are you a physicist?”

  “Yes,” Alex said. “I work for Lockheed Martin, but I’m assigned to a project that runs in the NJSC’s High Energy Lab.”

  Jean sniffed, an ambiguous expression that could have been grudging respect, but was probably disdain. “In that case, you already know more than I do. I’ve been out of the field for fifteen years. I spend my time washing laundry and scrubbing floors now.”

  Alex leaned close to the table. “Are they treating you well? Where in the prison do they have you, right now?” She assumed their meeting would be monitored, but it seemed an innocent enough question.

  Jean smirked, the first actual facial expression Alex had seen her make. “You didn’t come here just to ask questions. You came here to break me out.”

  Alex jerked up. “What are you talking about?”

  “If the creature is back, that means there’s a Higgs projector. You knew you might need to barter for my help. You mean to offer me my freedom.”

  Alex was disconcerted by the woman’s perceptiveness. Surely there would be someone listening to their conversation? Or did they just record them for later review?

  “So where is he?” Jean asked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The real physicist. You didn’t create the projector.”

  Alex was astonished. “How could you know that?”

  “You’re too young and stupid to have invented it yourself. Bring him, and maybe we’ll talk.”

  “Excuse me,” Alex said. “I’m not the one who’s in prison.”

  Jean raised her hands mockingly. “Well then, get me out of here, if you can. What are you waiting for?”

  Alex glanced at the door, which remained closed. Were they just letting her talk, to see if she would incriminate herself? Or was there truly no one listening? They could hardly imagine the technology she had available, so perhaps they were just biding their time.

  The network that was feeding her the image of Jean was simple enough, just a standard web protocol. Alex could trace it, and get a location for Jean. She could teleport to her, and then all she would have to do was touch Jean’s arm and teleport away again.

  Her presence—as Sandra—would be on all the surveillance tapes, and so would her disappearance. It would make Sandra a felon, and place her squarely in the conspiracy in the minds of law enforcement. It would be the end of her police career. But she wouldn’t have much of a police career if she died. It was the best option Alex had.

  The door opened, and instead of the friendly warden, a tall, official-looking man came through, followed by four armed guards with pistols drawn. “Sandra Kelley?” the official said.

  Alex sat alert, ready to teleport away at any moment. “That’s me.”

  “We have been instructed to detain you for questioning. Please come with us quietly. The checkpoints you entered through are locked. There’s nowhere to go.”

  Alex was surprised to feel a small smile form unbidden on her face. She hadn’t wanted to stain Sandra’s reputation; now she wouldn’t have to. “Actually, my name’s Alex,” she said. “Sandra had nothing to do with this.” She teleported. Jean’s room was identical to hers, so from her point-of-view, the five men disappeared, and Jean solidified into a real woman instead of a computer image. “Come on,” Alex said. “We’re getting out of here.” She flicked her eyes to choose the coordinates for the peak of Hawk Mountain, seized Jean’s arm, and teleported.

  Only she didn’t. Nothing happened. She was still in the prison.

  Jean laughed. “I told you. Stupid as dirt.”

  Alex couldn’t understand it. “It worked the first time. Why won’t it work now?”

  “You can’t get any signals out of here,” Jean said. “You think they want their inmates making calls on contraband cell phones? The whole place is shielded.”

  “But the projector doesn’t work on—”

  The door crashed open, and three guards rushed in. Two of them trained their weapons on her, while the third advanced.

  “On any electromagnetic bandwidth?” Jean said. “Of course not. It’s extra-dimensional quantum tunneling on a large scale. You can’t stop that with a bit of copper shielding.”

  The third guard turned Alex around and yanked one arm up painfully behind her.

  “But,” Jean continued, “I’m willing to bet the software driving it assumes the presence of a network connection, or at least GPS, for accurate targeting,” Jean continued. “But of course, you didn’t write it. So you don’t know.”

  Alex didn’t answer. She wasn’t worried about getting Jean out anymore. She just wanted to get away herself. It hadn’t even occurred to her that she might not be able to teleport out. She cursed herself for not reviewing the code, or at least for not interrogating Ryan about its limitations. She had no doubt that, given an hour with the source code, she could have modified it to allow teleportation to known locations, even without external network connectivity. But it was too late for that now.

  She could still teleport line-of-sight, though. And she still had other tricks up her sleeve.

  Through the open door, she could see a corridor. She focused on the place she wanted to be, and the eyejack automatically measured the distance. She initiated the teleportation module, and in a moment she was there. She heard sounds of consternation and shock from the guards, but she didn’t dare pause to look. She initiated the invisibility module and disappeared.

  At the end of the corridor, she saw a light and teleported toward it. This was not the way she had come in, so she had no idea what direction to move or how far she was from an exit. She found herself in a central room, from which a series of cells branched like the spokes of a wheel. The arrangement allowed a guard to see every inch of the cells from a single vantage point. The cells were full, two women to a room.

  It was a dead end. She jumped back the way she had come. Which way was out? She didn’t know how thoroughly they could lock down the facility, or to what lengths they could go to capture her. Her main advantages at this point were that she couldn’t be seen and that she could move faster than the guards, but they would have procedures to completely lock down sections of the prison in case of escape attempts or riots. She had to get out fast, if she was going to get out at all.

  A few more jumps, and she reached a guard station separating two sections. The guard sat behind a pane of glass, and controlled another gate of interlocking steel bars. She could see through to the other side, which meant the bars were no barrier. In an instant, she was through. A klaxon blared suddenly, hurting her ears. She wondered if the station had sensors that had detected her, or if someone had manually sounded the alarm from elsewhere in the prison.

  She teleported again, halting when the corridor ended in solid metal doors topped with flashing red lights. She threw herself against them, but they wouldn’t open. Her heart hammered, and she felt cold, trapped. Of course, she could estimate the distance and jump to the other side of the doors, but she didn’t know what was there. If there was another set of doors, or a person, or just a stairway, she would kill herself by jumping into it.

  Teleportation, however, was not her only trick. They couldn’t do this to her, not with the power at her disposal. She spotted a trashcan, a large metal one, against the wall. It would do. She backed away and teleported the trashcan into the center of the metal doors. T
he doors tore apart with an explosion of rending metal, and she jumped through to the other side.

  A guard blocked her path, aiming a pistol at her and shouting for her to stand down. He could see her! She realized he must have an infrared sensor, possibly on his gun, probably synched to his eyejack lenses. He was certainly communicating with the other guards, so now they would all know how to see her, too.

  From ten feet away, she ripped the gun out of the guard’s hand and snatched it out of the air. Caught up in the moment, she almost shot the man, like he was a generic character in a first-person shooter video game. A chill went down her back at how easily it came to her, and she took her finger off the trigger. She had almost forgotten that her other adversaries had been varcolac puppets, empty shells controlled by their host. This man had a name, a life, a family, and she had almost shot him for no good reason, just because he stood in her way. Without his gun, he was no longer a threat. She didn’t have to kill him.

  The door beyond him was glass, and she teleported beyond it just as she registered a sharp jab of pain in her back. On the other side of the door, she looked back and saw that two other guards had run up behind her while she hesitated. In the seconds she had delayed, they had shot her with something. Her vision blurred. They had hit her with some kind of tranquilizer. She had to get away, now.

  The noise of the klaxon was relentless. She could hardly think. She spun, her balance wavering, and saw that the décor had changed, from institutional cinderblock to stone and paneling. She was back in the original prison building. A glass window revealed a view of the outdoors: maple trees, the road, a high external fence. All she had to do was make it out there, and she was free. One more jump.

  She teleported out into the open air, but this time the shift in perspective threw her completely off-balance, and she fell to the ground. She was beyond the shielding now, and her system was connected; she could teleport anywhere she wanted. The blare of the alarm was muted now, but it seemed to be spinning all around her, to be inside her head. She tried to navigate the eyejack menu, but her eyes wouldn’t focus, and the menu options slipped away. The klaxon was her heartbeat, pounding through her veins.

  Footsteps thundered on all sides, and she was surrounded, men shouting at her, weapons aimed. All she had to do was one more thing, but she couldn’t remember what it was. It was tremendously important, but she was so tired. She would remember what it was after she slept.

  CHAPTER 19

  Less than two hours after Alex walked into the prison, the news feeds gleefully announced her capture. She was the perfect news story—it was hard to beat a young female assassin for ratings—and they had hardly stopped talking about her since Secretary Falk had died. Now, there was fresh grist for the mill, and the talking heads could barely contain their delight. A female murderer caught visiting another female murderer! And both of them physicists! Was there a conspiracy? Had the older one trained the younger? Old footage of Jean Massey’s trial and conviction were replayed, and the speculations were as varied as they were ridiculous.

  Sandra didn’t know what to do. All her friends were policemen, likely to side with law enforcement and the justice system. But Sandra wasn’t about to trust the courts with this; there were too many witnesses who had seen Alex pull the trigger. For her to be exonerated, she would have to prove the existence of the varcolac, and prove that Falk and his agents had been killed by it not by her, and there wasn’t much likelihood of that. No, the only way for Alex to get out of prison was for Sandra to break her out. But none of her cop friends would help with something like that. The ones who had been most likely to support her—Danielle and Nathan—had come to her dad’s funeral, and now they were dead.

  Her phone chimed. It was Ryan Oronzi. She thought about ignoring him, but he might know something. “What is it, Ryan?” she said.

  “Alex isn’t picking up.”

  “She’s a little busy right now, being captured and interrogated. Don’t you watch the news?”

  “Not much. I guess I have to talk to you then.”

  “I guess you do, then.”

  “I just wanted to let you know . . . the varcolac is out again.”

  “What?”

  “I just thought you should know.”

  “What do you mean, it’s out? You mean it’s loose? I thought you said you could control it!”

  “Not indefinitely. It defeated its protocol and escaped.”

  “Ryan, this thing is trying to kill us. You have to capture it again!”

  “It’s not an animal. It’s a thinking being. We can’t just keep it caged up forever.”

  Sandra took a deep breath. “It’s a killer. If you can’t control it . . .”

  “It’s not my fault. I’m not a miracle worker.”

  “Not your fault? Are you kidding me?”

  Ryan’s voice took on a childish whine. “I’ll do what I can, okay?”

  “You’ll do better than that, and do it quick, or there will be more deaths on your head.”

  “I’ll try, all right?” He sounded affronted. “I’m not powerless. I still have some tricks up my sleeve.”

  “If that’s true, then how did it escape? I thought you had them set to apply automatically.”

  “Well, I may have accidentally . . . look, never mind.”

  “Accidentally what? Accidentally let the varcolac loose?”

  “Never mind. I’m sorry I called. I’ll fix it.”

  “Where is it now? Can you at least tell me that?”

  The line went silent for so long that Sandra thought he had disconnected. “Well,” he said finally, “I can tell you what its next target will be.”

  “What, it sat down and shared its plans with you over coffee?”

  “I can see it in the logs, just like I did with the funeral home. Its attacks leave residue both forward and backward in time.”

  Sandra didn’t care about the science. “Where?”

  “Tomorrow morning, 5:46 AM, at the Muncy State Prison.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No. Why, what’s there?”

  For a moment, Sandra couldn’t speak. She suddenly knew, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that Alex was still being held in that prison, and that at 5:46 the next morning, she would still be there. Why else would the varcolac attack at that place and time?

  “You bastard,” Sandra said, and cut the connection. She lashed out, knocking a picture frame and a clay dish onto the floor.

  How did the varcolac know where Alex would be? She felt like she was playing a deadly game against an opponent who kept changing the rules. Was it attacking from the present or from the future? One thing seemed clear: it was trying to track down and destroy her family. Sandra had originally assumed that the attack on Alex at her demo hadn’t been personal, just an opportunity created by the use of Higgs technology, in which Alex’s presence had been entirely coincidental. But since then, its attacks had been purely against her family, as far as she could tell. What did it have against them? Was it afraid that the people who had banished it fifteen years ago could do so again? If so, she thought it had overestimated them.

  Alex was captured, her eyejack taken away. Sandra didn’t realize how much she had been relying on Alex, both intellectually and emotionally, until she was gone. She beat her fists against the bed and buried her head in her pillow, repressed tears lodging painfully in her throat. What chance did they have against such an enemy? They couldn’t kill it, and they couldn’t reason with it. Now Alex was trapped, an easy target for its next attack.

  The tears broke free, and she sobbed silently into her pillow. Her phone chimed again. She growled, expecting it to be Ryan again with some inane comment. But it wasn’t. It was Angel Gutierrez.

  “I saw the news,” he said. “I thought you might need someone to talk to?”

  Ryan tried to shake away the sense of guilt he felt after talking with Sandra. It was why he didn’t like people very much. They were always finding ways to make h
im feel bad. Why should Sandra shout at him? It wasn’t like he’d wanted those people dead. He hadn’t killed them himself. He was trying to stop the varcolac, too. They were on the same side.

  The best thing he could do now, he thought, was to put Alex and Sandra out of his mind. Either the varcolac would kill them or it wouldn’t. There wasn’t much he could do about it. The only thing he could do was try to capture it in the wormhole again, however long that took. He didn’t want them to die, but it wasn’t his problem. The most important thing was to get the varcolac back under lock and key.

  Which wouldn’t be easy. The equations Ryan had created previously were compromised. If the varcolac had been in his mind, then it would already know the solutions. That was the only explanation Ryan could think of to account for how it had been able to unravel the Riemann function pattern so fast. If it had truly solved it from scratch, then it had just been playing with him all this time, and it could escape whenever it wished. He didn’t think that was true. Which meant he had to devise a new equation, a tough one, and hope it would hold the creature better than the last.

  Ryan considered a Maass wave form approach, but discarded it. He had used non-holomorphic L-functions in a previous pattern, and the varcolac would be ready for it. He needed something that would last. Perhaps a Navier-Stokes equation instead. That would take a little extra work on his part, but it would be worth it in the long run. No sense formulating something fragile and having it unravel again.

  He took a pencil and paper and started crafting the general shape of the equations he wanted. He had several software suites designed for higher mathematics and visualization, of course, but when he was inventing something new, he always liked to start on pencil and paper. It gave him a freedom of expression that someone else’s software package didn’t allow.

  Of course, it was all just a stopgap. No matter how brilliant the problem he set, the varcolac would defeat it sooner or later. Could he really just continue to devise new equations indefinitely? Eventually—and quicker than Ryan liked to admit—he would be out of ideas, and there would be nothing to stop it from running loose, killing and destroying whatever it wished, remaking the world into whatever form it thought appropriate.