Linkage: The Narrows of Time

by Jay Falconer

  "How do you control the copy?" Lucas asked, thinking about Bruno’s flying takedown of his replica.

  "During replication, we introduce new base coding sequences into his synthetic framework, which allows us to control him.”

  Lucas nodded. It sounded like Kleezebee had everything covered.

  “Any more questions?" Kleezebee asked.

  Both Lucas and Drew shook their heads.

  “Then we’ve got work to do,” Kleezebee said, walking out of the med-lab. Bruno, Lucas and Drew followed the professor into the video room.

  “Where are we?” Kleezebee asked his technicians.

  “Looks like they’re getting ready to drop a probe into the Korean energy field,” the center tech reported.

  “Put it on the center screen,” Kleezebee told him.

  “What’s up?” Lucas asked.

  “There’s an energy dome near one of the U.S. military bases in South Korea,” Kleezebee replied, before asking the tech, “Can you tap into the telemetry?”

  “You can do that?” Lucas asked.

  “Yes, the probe’s one of ours. One of our subsidiaries manufactures them for Uncle Sam.”

  Lucas was impressed by the breadth of surveillance technology at Kleezebee’s disposal. The wall of video screens was filled with live feeds from all over the world, one of which showed an aerial view of the energy field. An Air Force plane was flying over the dome when it dropped a cylindrical object from its cargo bay.

  “Probe has entered the field, receiving data now,” the tech said.

  “So I was right. It can be penetrated through the crown,” Lucas mumbled.

  “Report?” Kleezebee asked the tech.

  “Reading an incredibly dense gravitational eddy at the center of the object . . . Sensors report numerous subspace distortions around a condensed spatial pathway . . . The vortex seems to be streaming differentially charged tachyon particles.”

  “Sounds like an unstable wormhole in an advanced state of decay,” Drew said.

  “A self-contained one, at that,” Lucas added.

  “Can you extrapolate the x-vector, to see where the micro-singularity leads?” Kleezebee asked.

  “Applying a trans-vector algorithm . . .” the tech said. “Sorry, sir, but I’m unable to determine its endpoint. There’s seems to be a strange phase shift within space-time. I can’t get a lock.”

  “Have you heard of anything like this before, Professor?” Drew asked.

  “No, this is something entirely new,” Kleezebee said, before asking the tech, “Can you use the new sensors to give me an energy reading before it’s crushed?”

  “Six times 1031 terajoules.”

  Kleezebee turned to Drew. “That number sound familiar?”

  “Yes—our experiment’s energy spike. Do you think they’re related?”

  “Seems likely at this point.”

  “Probe has stopped transmitting, sir,” the tech said.

  “So our E-121 experiment spawned a bunch of artificial wormholes?” Lucas asked.

  “Sir, the logs show that the probe was scanned several times before it was destroyed by the anomaly,” the tech reported.

  “Source?”

  “It appears to have originated from the far side of the singularity.”

  “Holy crap, somebody’s on the other side,” Lucas replied.

  Drew said, “Can we communicate with them and tell them to stop? Maybe they don’t know what kind of damage they’re doing.”

  “I wish we could, but we don’t have that kind of technology. Even if we did, I doubt it would make much difference. These domes aren’t here by accident,” Kleezebee said, just as his cell phone began to ring. He stepped away to answer the call.

  Lucas whispered in Drew’s ear, “We could have used Kleezebee’s sensors to trace the energy spike. I wonder how long they’ve had them?”

  Drew shrugged. “Maybe they’re brand new?”

  Kleezebee held his hand over the phone’s receiver and told the tech, “Bring up Kunsan in Korea. Show me the airfield.”

  The tech changed the video feed for the center screen. It was now showing one of the Air Force base’s runways where a black, B2 Stealth Bomber was taxing along the tarmac. The sleek, triangle-shaped aircraft was turning into the wind and was almost ready for take off.

  “Damn it, no!” Kleezebee shouted before continuing with his private phone conversation.

  “Looks like they’re going to attempt to collapse the energy field,” the tech said.

  “How?” Drew asked.

  “By dropping in a Big Ivan.”

  “Are they nuts?” Drew shouted.

  Bruno tapped Drew on the shoulder. “What’s a Big Ivan?”

  “It’s a hundred-megaton thermonuclear bomb, the biggest ever made, by far. The Soviets were so scared of it they never actually tested it at full power.”

  “Actually, we estimate it’s closer to two hundred megatons,” the tech said. “They made a few enhancements to its tertiary to double its effective yield.”

  “Two hundred megatons?” Bruno asked.

  “That’s thirteen thousand times the destructive power of the warhead we dropped on Hiroshima, Japan,” Drew said.

  “Oh, mama,” Lucas said.

  Drew shook his head. “This has virtually no chance of working. It’s simply not enough power and will probably make the situation worse. It’s like throwing a can of gasoline into a massive forest fire, hoping the small explosion will snuff out the flames.”

  “Unfortunately, the President’s science team seems to think it will. Dr. Kleezebee’s been trying to talk them out of doing this.”

  Drew replied, “The sudden influx of that amount of radiation, in a small contained space will most likely cause a cascading reaction that could exponentially increase the dome’s size and destructive power. There’s no telling what might happen.”

  “Not to mention the lingering effects of nuclear radiation on our planet,” Lucas said.

  “Their scientists believe the radiation will be contained within the dome and processed through its vortex,” the tech said, “potentially killing whoever is on the other side.”

  Drew shook his head adamantly.

  “Why in God’s name would they double it to two hundred megatons?” Bruno said.

  “Pure desperation,” Drew answered. “I’ll bet their physicists ran the numbers and they know their solution is a pipe dream. To overload and destroy a self-sustaining energy vortex of this magnitude would take much more power than we could ever hope to generate. The military could simultaneously drop in every WMD on the planet, and the energy field would only laugh and keep on charging. It’s simply not enough power to overload its energy matrix.”

  “Leave it to the military to try to blow the damn thing up,” Lucas added.

  “Yeah, and it’ll probably kill us all,” Drew replied.

  “How’s that?” Bruno asked.

  “A two-hundred megaton blast could conceivably cause a permanent shift in the Earth’s orbit around the sun. We could all die a slow, frozen death.”

  “Or fry in a microwave oven,” Lucas added.

  When Kleezebee returned from his phone call, Drew told him, “Professor, we have to stop this.”

  “It’s too late,” Kleezebee said, pointing up to the video screen. The B2 Bomber was already airborne. “What’s the target?”

  “There’s a swarm of energy fields on the ground in Seoul, South Korea. Geocode tracking reports the primary target is located at 37.1 degrees north and 127.3 degrees east. Looks like they’re going after the largest dome.”

  “Distance to the target?”

  “One hundred fifty miles, sir.”

  “Show me the ground feed from Seoul.”

  A center monitor changed to show a cross section view of downtown Seoul. In the foreground, an immense energy dome was eating its way through the center of the city. There were two additional energy fields to its left, though they were much smaller and fart
her away.

  It was the first time Lucas had seen multiple energy fields on the ground at the same time. They were each a different size and carving up the city and leaving a network of destruction trails behind. It reminded him of the sandy underbelly of his first ant farm experiment.

  Despite his brother’s warnings to the contrary, Lucas could appreciate why the military was taking decisive action. The energy field problem had escalated faster than anyone had predicted, and the world was running out of time. Someone needed to act, and do so quickly.

  “Jesus, that first one is huge. It’s got to be five miles wide,” Lucas said.

  “It’s the most powerful one we’ve seen so far,” the tech replied. “It’s been on the ground for almost fifteen minutes.”

  “Can you tighten up on the target? Make sure the DVRs are recording this,” Kleezebee said.

  The tech adjusted the feed and the camera zoomed in considerably closer. They had a front row seat to the detonation.

  “Thirty seconds,” the tech said. “The transport has entered stealth mode, and is off radar.”

  Lucas wondered why the military chose to deliver Big Ivan aboard a stealth aircraft. It was unlikely the phenomenon had onboard radar, thus it would not be necessary to conceal their approach. He concluded that the aircraft’s flight crew was following standard deployment protocols. Most likely, they were required to use stealth mode when live nuclear weapons were onboard.

  “Pull up the aircraft’s onboard feed,” Kleezebee said.

  Next to the center monitor, a high-resolution video feed from the underside of the bomber’s fuselage appeared, providing a close-up view of the aircraft’s target. From above, they could see the energy field chewing its way through the Korean city.

  The bomber’s camera showed the enormous tip of Big Ivan as it was dropped from the plane’s cargo bay. Even though the bomb’s aerodynamic casing was the size of a small bus, it quickly disappeared from view as gravity guided it toward the energy field at terminal velocity.”

  “Sir, the ordinance had been deployed and is approaching the target.”

  Just about the time when penetration should occur, the energy field’s opening expanded to twice it normal size and rose up from the earth. It acted as if it were opening its mouth and welcoming the nuclear weapon into its throat. A blinding, powerful flash lit up the energy field from deep inside it.

  “Right on target,” Bruno said.

  Lucas looked at the other monitor to view the detonation from the ground level camera. He waited for signs of the detonation to extend beyond the dome’s open crest, yet nothing appeared. The anomaly contained the blast just as the government’s scientists predicted. So far so good, Lucas thought. Maybe the President’s scientists were correct.

  The energy field started to oscillate in color and the dome’s size began to increase. Its expansion was slow at first, then, after a few seconds, it picked up steam and grew quickly. The hairs on his arms stood straight up when the energy field suddenly quadrupled in size and turned a reddish-orange color.

  “Yep, they just pissed it off,” Kleezebee said.

  Lucas assumed his boss was only speaking metaphorically and would never actually believe the energy field was some form of creature. Just then, the dome’s perimeter wobbled for a few moments, and split into two equal halves like a single-celled organism reproducing through mitosis. “Oh, shit. That can’t be good.”

  The twin domes started revolving around each other, cutting a deeper channel into the earth as if they were solidifying their traction. After five revolutions, a crescent-shaped energy field appeared just above the swirling anomalies, growing brighter until it discharged a glistening orb of energy. The energy blast resembled a giant Tic Tac breath mint and traveled swiftly away from the twin domes, toward the upper atmosphere. Seconds later, the bomber’s video feed went offline, filling the screen with random flickers of static.

  “Not so stealth after all,” Lucas mumbled.

  The two domes progressively slowed their rotation and merged into one super-sized energy field, before resuming its original course and speed.

  “That should put an end to the Big Ivan idea,” Drew said.

  “And to Seoul,” Lucas replied.

  “How will we know if Earth’s orbit was changed?” Bruno asked.

  “We’ll have to run a few calculations,” Drew answered.

  “Or just wait for the weather patterns to change,” Lucas said.

  “Boss, what would you like us to do next?” Bruno asked.

  “Let’s get some shut-eye and start fresh in the morning.”

  Chapter 20

  Wednesday, December 26

  7:02 AM

  Lucas and Drew rode the elevator down from Sublevel 2, where they found Kleezebee and Bruno standing together in the middle of the surveillance room. Lucas took the last sip of his soda and tossed the can away in the trash bin next to the elevator.

  “That food was pretty good, considering,” Drew said.

  “I thought the eggs were a little bland, but the bacon was just the way I like it—extra greasy.”

  “Mom didn’t seem to like it much. She barely touched her food.”

  “She said she didn’t sleep well last night, being in a new place and all.”

  “We should go back up later to check on her.”

  “Yeah, for sure. Did you bring your notebook?”

  “Got it in my backpack. Did you need it?”

  “Yep, let’s show DL your QED equations.” Lucas walked up behind Kleezebee, where he overheard part of the professor’s conversation with Bruno.

  “By the time you get him outfitted, I’ll have its location and the rest of the assets in place,” Kleezebee said.

  “What are the ROE’s, boss?” Bruno asked.

  “Stun only. There had better not be any casualties this time.”

  “Count on it, sir.”

  Lucas looked up at the middle row of video screens, which showed activity at three locations he recognized. The first was his apartment complex, where military troops had surrounded the building. A squad of men was approaching the front entrance.

  The second location was a lengthwise view of his mother’s neighborhood. The camera was too far away to see much detail, but Lucas could see soldiers and Humvees lining the street.

  The third screen contained a high-angle feed, possibly shot from the clock tower of the Student Union, showing a platoon of men guarding the open shaft leading down to NASA’s underground facility. Two soldiers were standing next to the opening, prepping their climbing gear.

  Kleezebee looked at Lucas and said, “It’s General Alvarez. He’s searching for you.”

  “Where? I don’t see him,” Lucas said, checking the three middle screens.

  “He’s outside your apartment.” Kleezebee asked his techs, “Can you give me a close-up? I want to see who he’s talking to.”

  The camera zoomed in on General Alvarez standing near the door to the manager’s office, then panned to the right, showing a shorter man with two black eyes and a heavy gauze bandage taped over his nose, and another covering the center of his forehead.

  “That guy’s a mess,” Lucas said.

  “Must be the guard L overpowered in the desert,” Kleezebee said. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  Lucas smiled with pride.

  “Alvarez is never going to stop until you’re dead, too,” Bruno told Lucas.

  Lucas agreed with Bruno—Alvarez was never going to stop looking for him. “So what’s the plan, Professor?”

  “I’m afraid we have no choice. We’re going to have to kill you.”

  Lucas wasn’t sure what to make of the remark. “You’re just kidding, right?”

  “I’m dead serious. You need to die a horrible, public death or else the general will never stop gunning for you. Follow me.”

  Kleezebee used the hidden access panel inside the fire extinguisher to open the secret entrance to the med-lab where Trevor was w
orking inside.

  “Let’s get started,” Kleezebee told Trevor.

  Trevor retrieved a bucket of BioTex from the shelf and poured it into the middle recess of one of the medical tables.

  “Ah, you’re going to duplicate me again?” Lucas said.

  “Precisely,” Kleezebee said.

  “But what about my replica’s body dissolving into BioTex?”

  “You mean like what happened to D in the desert.”

  “Yeah. We don’t want the general getting suspicious.”

  “That obviously didn’t go according to plan. We had no idea Alvarez would incapacitate them, which didn’t allow ‘em to refuel for the rest of the day.”

  “So D ran low on sugar reserves, which is why he dissolved too quickly.”

  Kleezebee nodded. “Temperature and humidity can also affect dissolution time which is normally several hours. This time we’re not taking any chances by letting the general capture you. Instead, he’s going to see your replica die, but we’re not going to leave any forensic evidence behind.”

  Trevor reached above the medical table and lowered a retractable arm with a flat, four-pronged electronic probe attached to its end. A bundle of multi-colored wires connected the probe to the retractable arm’s housing which Lucas presumed was used for the programming download. Trevor checked the contents of a four-inch gray plastic tube that was attached to the side of the electronic probe. The plastic tube resembled a tube of caulk and had a funnel-shaped tip.

  “What’s that?” Lucas asked.

  “It injects the BioTex with the activating enzyme.”

  Trevor inserted both the electronic probe and the plastic tube tip-deep into the surface of the BioTex, then entered a series of commands into a handheld device. The area around the probe’s submerged tips began to glow like an underwater diver’s flashlight, only this one was orange. A minute later, Trevor removed the probe and allowed it to retract to the ceiling.