by A. G. Riddle
“I don’t favor it. More people, more military presence—and more likelihood of being captured.”
“Right. What’s the total distance on the flight path to Mar del Plata?”
Avery tapped the screen. “It’ll be close: 5,960 miles. About ten or eleven hours in the air.”
The plane would be about ninety percent out of fuel when they landed. Not ideal, but doable, assuming they didn’t run into trouble.
“Okay. When you get the autopilot engaged, join us in the cabin. We need to talk.”
She nodded and returned her focus to the flight instruments.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “It’s good to see you.”
A coy smile crossed her lips. “I know it is.”
Desmond couldn’t help but shake his head as he walked back down the aisle. When he looked up, he found everyone studying him expectantly: Ward, Peyton, and Lin.
“We’ll refuel in Argentina in about eleven hours,” he announced.
Lin spoke first. “How far to your camp in Antarctica after that?”
Desmond had flown there from Buenos Aires a few times. Mar del Plata was close to Buenos Aires, the flight times likely the same. “Six hours, give or take.”
“Well,” Lin said, “seems we’ll be on this plane for quite a while.”
“Plenty of time to talk,” said Ward.
“And we will. When Avery joins us.”
Desmond walked to where Peyton was seated.
Lin eyed him a moment, then stood. To Ward, she said, “Let’s take stock of our provisions, shall we, Mr. Ward?” The two of them walked to the back of the plane, leaving Peyton and Desmond alone.
Peyton motioned to the seat beside her, and Desmond sat down. She held out her hand, palm up, and he took it and interlocked his fingers with hers. For a moment, he thought she was going to lean close to him, but she held her distance.
Her voice was soft, revealing a vulnerability he had only seen a few times. “After the battle on the Isle, when we didn’t find you… I was so worried.”
“Me too. They held me captive for a while. I wondered what happened to you. And Avery.” The last part came out before he could even think about it.
She blinked several times. “You have a history with her.”
He hesitated, unsure how to answer. He settled for the simple truth. “Yes.”
“And now you remember it.”
He nodded.
Her hand loosened and gradually let go of his. He felt himself hanging on, squeezing tighter than her.
“It’s okay.”
He didn’t know whether she was urging him to let go—of her, or her hand, or both—or forgiving him. Or maybe just filling the painful silence.
“She and I—”
“You don’t have to explain, Des.” Peyton looked out the window. “We were together a long time ago. I only want you to be happy.”
The truth was, he didn’t know what he wanted. Whom he wanted to be with. It’s like he was starting over in life—and the looming battle with Yuri was the only thing he could see.
“I want to talk about this when everything… is over. Can we do that?”
“Sure.”
“After the Isle, what happened?”
“Avery was injured.”
“In her abdomen.”
Peyton nodded. “How did you know? Has she re-injured it?”
“Yes. She’s bleeding.”
Peyton moved to get up. “I need to take a look.”
The relationship between the two women had certainly improved. Or maybe it was just Peyton being Peyton—always a doctor first. Or both.
“She’s all right,” Desmond said. “And I think she’s got her hands full at the moment.”
“Okay.”
“What happened after?”
“My mom wanted to find the Beagle. And we did. In the Arctic. We searched it for weeks. Found bones from extinct species. Humans, animals. It was like Noah’s Ark.”
“What did she do with them?”
“Sequenced their DNA.”
“Interesting.”
“We found a message that led us to more bones—hidden in a cave in northern Spain. Her father, Dr. Paul Kraus, had hidden them there. He was a member of the Citium, one of the original architects of the Looking Glass—one of the people Yuri killed.”
“You’re kidding.” Desmond remembered reading in the pages William Shaw left for them that Lin’s father was on the Beagle, but he never knew any more about the man. “Why did he go to so much trouble to hide the bones?”
“Kraus believed they were bread crumbs, pieces of a larger puzzle—a code hidden in the human genome.”
“What kind of code?”
“Evidence that evolution was a more complex process than previously believed. His theory was that it was interactive—that as humans developed consciousness and more powerful brains, evolution accelerated. New mutations appeared.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” Peyton thought a moment. “When we got the samples from Spain, she had me deliver them to a supercollider in Texas.”
“Like the LHC at CERN?”
“Yes, but bigger.”
“So you’re saying the code in the human genome is somehow related to a quantum particle, or…?”
“Yes. I think somehow the pattern is the key to accessing a quantum process related to evolution.”
Desmond turned the facts over in his mind. “And this is your mother’s end game?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
It didn’t make sense to Desmond either.
He realized Avery was standing in the aisle. Lin and Ward fell in behind her. The three took seats across from Desmond and Peyton.
“Okay,” Ward said. “What exactly is the Looking Glass?”
Chapter 68
“They’ve left US airspace,” Yuri said.
On the other end of the line, Conner’s voice became reflective. “Could be looking for asylum somewhere. A nation with limited internet access. Maybe try to convince them to fight.”
“Perhaps, but I doubt that. Desmond and Lin both play to win. They’re going for Rendition. If they destroy it… it would set us back years. Decades, perhaps.”
“We need to know where they’re going.”
“I’m working on it.”
“What’s the status of Rook?”
“Operating perfectly. It works, Conner. Two million lives and counting. Waiting for Rendition.”
At CDC Headquarters in Atlanta, Elliott Shapiro and Phil Stevens were studying the fatality statistics. Reports were sporadic at first, but X1 treatment centers had alerted county and state health departments of increased mortality rates among their older population. There was a strong correlation between the mortalities and those affected by Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and dementia. Casualties continued to rise at a steady rate—a pattern that was too consistent to be a natural phenomenon.
EIS agents were en route to investigate when the president of the United States and the governors of all fifty states collapsed. Autopsies revealed the same cause of death in each case: brain aneurysms that ruptured, causing a subarachnoid hemorrhage. Death was nearly instantaneous. The event left little doubt that the fatalities were a coordinated attack. Assassinations. But why target the elderly population affected with neurological disorders? An experiment, perhaps? A sort of trial balloon?
The warning came soon after: the vice president would be next, unless he handed over Peyton Shaw, Lin Shaw, and Desmond Hughes. The news had been a punch in the gut for Elliott.
“What do we do?” Phil asked.
“Start trials. Begin monitoring patients with neurological and other terminal illnesses. When they take the next group, maybe we’ll learn something. There could be a key to slowing the process down, or stopping it.”
In truth, Elliott counted that as unlikely. Their best chance of stopping this was the people their enemy was after: Peyton, Lin, and Desmond.
Chapter 69
“The Looking Glass,” Desmond began, “is… a very complex device.”
Ward rolled his eyes. “So give me the Looking Glass for Idiots version.”
Desmond looked over at Lin.
“Perhaps I should begin,” she said. “First, please realize that the Citium you all have come to know,” she gestured to Ward and Avery, “is not the same organization I joined—in focus or methods.”
“Yeah,” Ward grumbled, “we know that. Ancient Greek philosophers on the island of Kitium, Zeno, blah, blah, blah. Just get to the part where you all ripped the world a new one and what to do about it.”
“We,” Lin motioned to Desmond, “didn’t. The Citium is in a civil war. That war began in 1986 when almost every scientist was killed at the Citium conclave. That background is important for you to understand. You’ve only seen pieces of the whole, Mr. Ward.” Lin fixed Ward with a stare, silently daring him to challenge her.
Desmond sensed that she had an ulterior motive for telling this story: she wanted to explain herself to Peyton. It was as if she was confessing to her daughter—on the off chance that it was her last opportunity to do so.
“Central to their work,” Lin continued, “was the theory that our world was not as it seemed. That the myths everyone believed—myths that explained existence—were merely placeholders, fictional explanations that gave people peace of mind until science could fill in the blanks.
“They watched as, one by one, those blanks were filled in. The sun was the center of our solar system. The Earth orbited around it. The moon orbited around the Earth. Gravity—an invisible glue—held them all together. And there were countless other solar systems and galaxies. Billions of suns and worlds. Some worlds were billions of years older than our own. This implied a simple truth, a statistical certainty: there was life beyond our world. And there had been millions, possibly billions of other civilizations long before us.”
Lin took a deep breath. “But the most surprising revelation was that there was no evidence of those civilizations.”
“No space junk,” Peyton whispered, as if reciting from memory.
“Correct. The moon should be littered with probes from ancient civilizations—it has existed in its current state for billions of years. Yet it is bare. That paradox—now called the Fermi Paradox—consumed the group for a very long time. They believed that this was the greatest mystery of all time. Why are we alone? Where is everyone?”
“Are you telling us you figured it out?” Avery said.
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
Avery’s eyes went wide. “Didn’t see that coming.”
Lin continued. “Many theories were tested and discarded over the years. Finally, thanks to Occam’s razor, the truth became clear: the path of advanced civilizations does not lead to space.”
“You’re saying they go extinct?” Ward asked.
“That was posited and explored. Indeed, it’s a possibility. But surely extinction events wouldn’t occur one hundred percent of the time—or even a majority of the time. We theorized instead that sentient species at some point make a discovery that enables them to survive—to continue their evolution and to secure themselves—without leaving their home world. A discovery that would make the rest of the universe utterly irrelevant to them.”
“Interesting,” Avery said.
“The most interesting part is that the universe seems finely tuned to exactly this purpose. Consider this: if a species that emerged ten billion years ago had left their home world, they would likely inhabit every viable planet in the universe right now. There would be no room for us—no chance of biological diversity.”
“Impossible,” Ward said.
“Hardly. The Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago. We believe the first life-friendly star systems appeared 10.4 billion years ago. For perspective, the Earth is only 4.56 billion years old. The moon was formed 30 million years after that. On a cosmic scale, we’re new kids on the block. The universe has supported biological life for a very long time. And as I said, it is tuned—tailor-made—for our kind of biological life. The Citium has always wondered why that is.”
Peyton bunched her eyebrows. “You’re saying the universe is a nursery for sentient species?”
“In effect. It is a medium, a chamber, but not just an isolated chamber. We believe our universe is a chamber in an endless ring of chambers. What we called the cycle of existence.”
Ward closed his eyes and rubbed his eyelids. “Stop for a minute, I think my head’s going to explode. And it’s not the altitude.”
“I’ll simplify,” Lin said. “Long-term, the survival of the human race depends on making this fundamental discovery—the same fundamental discovery that countless species have made before us.”
“The Looking Glass,” Ward said.
“Yes.”
“Then what is all this chamber in a chamber, endless cycle stuff mean?”
“Let me put it this way, Mr. Ward: we’re already in a Looking Glass.”
Chapter 70
Yuri studied the map. The plane was turning south, hugging the coast of South America. The Gulfstream didn’t have the range to make it to Australia, or even Hawaii; they would have to land somewhere in South America. But the Citium had very few assets on the continent, and Desmond had no investments there. They had checked Lin’s ties as well and found none.
The conclusion was clear: it was a stop-over. Or a diversion to buy time. But time wasn’t on their side, it was on his. Lin and Desmond would know that.
Yuri scrolled through Melissa Whitmeyer’s analysis and recommendations. Desmond had a single investment with ties to the region: Charter Antarctica. That was it. Brilliant. It was off the grid—and beyond the reach of the X1 pathogen. No chance of being discovered.
He dialed the Citium Situation Room and requested Whitmeyer.
“It’s Antarctica,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”
He could hear her typing on her computer. “Best rendezvous point for you and Mr. McClain is Buenos Aires.”
Yuri got up, walked to the cockpit, and asked the pilot to alter their flight plan.
“I want the fastest jet you can find waiting for us,” he said to Whitmeyer. “And a team of our best. It’s imperative that we get to Antarctica first.”
In the CDC’s Emergency Operations Center, Elliott Shapiro was reviewing the latest casualty reports. The mortality rate was going down. It was as if they were reaching the end of an experiment—running out of eligible patients. Or pausing before they started the next phase.
The entire world was at their mercy. These people, whoever they were, had conquered the human race. Not with guns or airplanes or battleships, but with science so advanced it looked like magic.
Chapter 71
Ward shook his head. “What do you mean, we’re already in a Looking Glass?”
“What I mean,” Lin said, “is that something happened before the Big Bang. That something was a Looking Glass event. It was likely very different from the Looking Glass we’re creating.”
“Why?” Peyton asked.
“Because the preceding Looking Glass was tuned for its universe, just as our universe—the physical laws—dictate the creation of a specific kind of Looking Glass here in this universe.”
“Specific how?” Avery asked.
“One built for data processing and simulation.”
Desmond glanced at the others. This was the part where the rubber met the road.
Lin pressed on. “If you look at the broad arc of history, it is toward greater data storage. Writing, agriculture, the information age—they all increased our data processing and storage capacity. And not only that, our ability to simulate realities. Consider the most successful people in the world—in any walk of life. They are the ones who can, in their own minds, imagine the future. This is what visionary business leaders do. And professional sports stars. Politicians. Writers. Investors. But we are currently lim
ited by physical constraints.”
“Our bodies,” Peyton volunteered.
“Correct. Our minds are progressing faster than biological evolution can keep up with. The next step in humanity’s journey is to free ourselves from our biological constraints—and eventually transcend the limits of this universe.”
Peyton was stunned. “Are you serious?”
Lin stood and paced the aisle. “Entirely. Consider this: the human brain has one hundred billion neurons. There are roughly a quadrillion synapses—that’s a million billion—interconnecting these neurons. For years now, organizations outside the Citium have had computers with the data storage and processing power to simulate human thought. But that’s the easiest part of the equation. If you built a computer large enough, you still couldn’t transfer yourself to the machine, because the brain is more than simply a data processing device. It is connected on a quantum level to some force that permeates the universe. That was the crux of Paul Kraus’s work. That’s how our tribe of humans was different. We are connected to the quantum fabric of this universe in a symbiotic relationship.”
“Okay,” said Peyton. “So you’re talking about putting human consciousness in something other than the human brain. But if you can’t store consciousness in a computer, then what sort of device would you use?”
Lin held a hand out to Desmond, silently yielding the floor.
“A quantum computer,” he said.
Peyton stared at him blankly. “I don’t know what that is.”
“Me either,” Avery mumbled.
“Goes without saying,” Ward added.
“A quantum computer uses the state of subatomic particles to store information.”
Ward nodded theatrically. “Jeez, why didn’t you just say so, Hughes.”
“Current computers are binary,” Desmond said. “They store data in bits—digits that are either zero or one. Eight digits form a byte, a kilobyte is a thousand eight-digit pairs, a megabyte, a million. But quantum computers operate completely differently. They store data in qubits.”
