by Jay Falconer
L took a deep breath, then exhaled a rush of wind across the roof of his mouth. He mumbled quietly, “Don’t think about your groin . . . You don’t need its contents melting down your leg . . . Concentrate on your ear canal . . . You can do this.”
L continued his efforts and eventually succeeded in converting his left ear to the native BioTex. He was able to hold the semi-liquid state long enough for the technician to insert the probe and complete the fifteen-second programming update.
“Okay, you’re good to go,” the balding tech said.
“Glad that’s over with. It’s harder to do than it looks,” L said, feeling his ear return to normal shape. Without thinking, he inserted the tip of his index finger and began to rub the inside of his left ear, making the moisture squeak. He removed his finger and checked it for earwax, realizing his new ability would make removing the water from his ears much easier after his daily shower. Things were looking up, he mused.
“Gentlemen, it’s time to start our mission,” Bruno said.
L stuffed four extra ammunition clips inside his vest pockets. “You can never have enough ammo, even if they’re only blanks.”
“Lock and load,” Bruno2 replied.
Bruno escorted L and Bruno2 down to the ground floor, where Brunos 3 and 4 were waiting in front of the silo’s entrance. Two lumbering tanker trucks and one unmarked sedan with tinted windows pulled up in front of the group.
* * *
Drew leaned back in his wheelchair to watch the array of video monitors in the surveillance room. The screens were filled with energy fields wreaking havoc across London, Moscow, Las Vegas, and New York City. Densely populated neighborhoods, and even entire cities, were being razed without mercy. He had seen enough. “Lucas, we can’t just sit here while thousands of people are being murdered in their homes.”
“I agree. But what can we do?”
Drew furrowed his brow, pretending not to know the answer to the question he was about to ask. “Remind me again, how big was the energy spike in our lab?”
“Six times 1031 terajoules, but I’m sure you remember that.”
Drew’s concentration drifted away from his brother. He stared straight ahead at nothing in particular, while the tip of his tongue pushed at his lips, protruding out of the corner of his mouth. His head bobbed like it was ready to join the crowd on a dance floor.
“Hey, I know that look,” Lucas said. “You’re on to something. Come on, spill it.”
“Assuming we could generate enough energy, and then somehow channel it into the dome’s vortex, do you think it would be sufficient to destabilize the wormhole?”
“In theory, yes, it might work. But the energy requirement would be huge.”
“What would be your estimate?”
“At a minimum, we’d have to match the energy field’s total output.”
“Which is six times 1031 terajoules, same as the E-121 energy spike, right?”
“Of course, but where are you going with this?”
“I’ve been thinking about the government’s Big Ivan idea,” Drew said, opening the red-and-blue theory notebook from his knapsack. “Remember those equations I saw the two NASA techs working on, when we followed Mary to the conference room?”
“Vaguely. Wasn’t it something about controlling virtual protons in a quantized field?”
“Exactly,” Drew answered, pointing to a set of equations on page fifteen, with the letters QED written above them.
“Quantum Electrodynamics?”
“Do you remember the tremors in our lab right before the E-121 vanished?”
“Sure, but I don’t see the connection.”
“What if NASA was running a vacuum energy test at the same time we were running our experiment?”
Lucas nodded his head several times and smiled. “Okay, I see what you mean.”
“What do you think? Would it be enough?”
“It’s possible. But we should run this by DL to get his input.”
Drew followed Lucas to Kleezebee’s location across the room.
“Excuse me, Dr. Kleezebee, but Drew has an idea you need to hear,” Lucas said.
“Okay, shoot,” Kleezebee said.
Drew said, “When we were on NASA’s Sublevel Twenty, I saw something in one of the labs. Two techs were standing in front of a grease board, working on a set of equations. I could only see part of their work, but I’m sure it had something to do with Quantum Foam.”
“What’s Quantum Foam?” Bruno asked.
“It’s a subatomic storm of creation and destruction that takes place constantly inside empty space,” Drew replied.
“Wait a minute. If it has a storm in it, how can it be empty?”
“The laws of QED say that on average the vacuum of space is empty. That means there are other times when empty space is not empty. It all depends on when you happen to look at, or sample, the empty space. The storm happens so fast, sometimes you’ll see it and other times you won’t.”
Bruno shrugged. Obviously, the information confounded him.
Drew tried to dumb it down a little. “Think of it like the percolating foam on top of a bubble bath, except it takes place at a subatomic level. The storm is always churning away, creating particles of matter and anti-matter, which instantly destroy each other and give off energy. Now imagine you’re in that same bathroom, but it’s dark, and all you have is a strobe light that’s flashing slowly. If you happen to open your eyes at the same moment the light is on, you’ll see the foam creating and destroying virtual particles. If you look when the light is off, you won’t see it even though the foam’s still there, doing its thing.”
Bruno stood there with a puzzled look.
Drew continued, “The way it works is empty space borrows energy from the future to create one particle of positive mass and one of negative mass. When these two particles meet, they annihilate each other and release tremendous amounts of energy. This, in effect, pays back the borrowed energy to the future. This constant creation/destruction cycle is what we call Quantum Foam.”
“Okay, I think I’m starting to get it,” Bruno said, rubbing the top of his glistening skull.
Lucas added, “It’s like on Star Trek, when there’s a breach in the engine room’s anti-matter chamber. When matter and anti-matter meet, they instantly destroy each other and everything around it. We think this is where all the excess interstellar radiation comes from.”
“Ah yes, Gene’s show,” Bruno replied, smiling at Kleezebee.
“And the relevance of all this, is what?” Kleezebee asked.
Drew answered, “The night the E-121 vanished from the core, we felt underground tremors. If NASA was running a Quantum Foam experiment at the exact same moment we fired up our E-121 experiment at full power, then maybe—”
“The zero-point energy produced by their experiment was drawn into yours. Like interstellar light being sucked into a black hole,” Kleezebee interrupted, combing his unruly beard with his fingers. “You think NASA’s experiment caused the energy spike.”
“Yes, sir, we do,” Lucas said. “And that’s not all. Go ahead and tell him, Drew.”
“Professor, I don’t think it’s purely coincidence that these domes are using the same amount of energy as the energy spike. I think they’re related in some fashion. We might be able to use the energy produced by NASA’s experiment to overload a dome’s power matrix and collapse it.”
“How?”
“That part I haven’t figured out, yet. I’ll need a better look at their work.”
“If I can get you back down there, do you think you can show me where you saw those equations?”
“Not a problem. I have the location memorized.”
“How are we going to get past the soldiers?” Lucas asked.
“By killing two birds with one stone,” Kleezebee said, before asking his tech, “Where’s the squad?”
“Ten miles out, sir.”
“Then we still have time. Get him on the
horn for me.”
Chapter 22
Misdirection
Even though the city streets were mostly abandoned, Bruno waited for the green arrow to appear on the traffic signal before turning left onto 22nd Street from Kolb Road. Now only five miles east of campus, he was driving the lead car of their three-vehicle convoy in the right-most lane, keeping under the posted speed limit. L was to his right, staring out the passenger’s window, while the other two Bruno copies were directing the lumbering tanker trucks following behind him.
His handheld, ten-watt Motorola radio squelched from inside the middle console, startling him for a moment. “Rabbit, this is Base, do you read?”
Bruno dug for the two-way radio, taking his eyes off the road.
“Hey, watch out,” L said, snapping out of his trance.
One of tanker trucks blew its horn three times when Bruno’s black, four-door sedan drifted to the right, nearly hitting the curb. Bruno swerved the car to the left, just missing a newspaper dispenser chained to a light pole. His heart was pumping full steam when he rolled down his window and gave the other Bruno copies a courtesy wave. He picked up the radio and pressed the talk switch. “This is Rabbit, I read you loud and clear, over.”
“There’s been a change in plans,” Kleezebee said. “I need you to deploy to checkpoint Alpha. You’ve got forty-seven minutes.”
“Roger that, Checkpoint Alpha,” Bruno replied, adjusting the angle of the camera mounted to the dash. It was disguised as a portable GPS unit. “How’s the reception, sir?”
“We’re receiving you five by five. Is L ready for this?”
“I think so,” Bruno replied, looking at L.
“Excellent. Make sure you’re not captured.”
“Will do, Chief,” Bruno said before hearing Kleezebee’s sign off.
“Are we going to make it there in time?” L asked.
“Yes, if I can keep this thing off the sidewalk.”
“So we’re really going to do this?”
Bruno nodded. “DL’s counting on us.”
Bruno pressed the transmit button on his radio. “Chase One and Two, this is Rabbit. Did you guys copy that? We’re redeploying to the Checkpoint Alpha. You guys continue on.”
“Understood,” one of the Bruno copies reported.
“Ten-four,” the other said.
Bruno looked into his rearview mirror as they drove through the next intersection. The tankers behind him slowed down, then turned left as expected. “Good luck, guys,” he said.
* * *
“What’s their ETA?” Lucas asked one of the video surveillance techs, keeping his eyes on the video monitor just below the center screen. It was streaming live from the camera hidden inside the GPS unit mounted on Bruno’s dashboard.
“Approaching the checkpoint now,” the tech said.
“Are the tankers in position?” Kleezebee asked.
“Yes, sir, location confirmed.”
“Go ahead. Call the press.”
The video screen flickered twice as Bruno’s sedan inched forward toward Checkpoint Alpha, which controlled access to the campus from 6th Street. The wide-angle camera was aimed straight ahead, out over the hood, not allowing Lucas to follow the guard as he walked up to the driver’s window. Both the miniature U.S. flag mounted on the left side of the hood and the two-star command flag on the right were flapping in the breeze.
“Here we go,” Kleezebee said.
“Too bad we don’t have audio,” Drew said.
“If Bruno does his job, we shouldn’t need it.”
The screen showed Bruno’s vehicle quickly backing away from the checkpoint, providing an underside view of the lower concourse to the university’s 58,000-seat stadium to the right. The vehicle spun ninety degrees counterclockwise, then accelerated west along 6th Street.
“ETA to the tunnel?” Kleezebee asked.
“Four minutes.”
Lucas checked the video feed monitoring the open stairwell shaft above NASA’s bunker and the one in front of his apartment complex. The soldiers guarding both locations scrambled away from their posts. “Looks like the chase is on.”
“What about Mom’s house?” Drew asked.
The tech changed one of the other monitors to show Dorothy’s neighborhood. The soldiers were no longer positioned along her street.
“Wow, better than we hoped. Looks like they all got the message,” Lucas said.
“What’s the lead separation?” Kleezebee asked.
“Two minutes, sir.”
“That’s too close. Notify the tankers and show me the tunnel feed.”
The center screen switched to a lengthwise view of a two-lane road. The camera was mounted deep inside a tunnel whose surface had been desecrated by a blanket of brightly colored graffiti. Two military tankers were sitting at the far end of the tunnel, just outside the entrance, parked on opposite sides of the street. Clouds of white and blue smoke were puffing out of their tailpipes.
“Can you zoom in?” Drew asked. “I can’t see Bruno’s car.”
“He’ll arrive in a moment,” the tech answered, not changing the camera’s focus.
“ETA to the flash point?”
“Twenty-seven minutes, sir.”
“That’s cutting it a little close, don’t you think?” Lucas asked.
“We should be fine,” Kleezebee said, before asking his tech, “Are the big-rigs in place?”
“Ready and waiting, sir.”
* * *
“There’re the tankers. Looks like they’re in position,” Bruno told L, checking the sedan’s jittery rearview mirror. The swarm of vehicles chasing him was growing larger in the reflection.
“Dude, the access ramp is coming up fast,” L said, tightening his seatbelt before gripping the top of the dashboard with both hands.
Bruno waved to his brethren as the sedan blurred past the waiting tankers. He eased off on the gas pedal, preparing for a sharp left turn once they cleared the thousand-foot tunnel.
“I sure hope this works,” L said.
“It should, there’s no other way onto the Interstate from here.”
Bruno’s mirror showed the tankers pulling their front bumpers together, blocking his view of the oncoming procession. Bruno changed lanes and flipped on his left turn signal.
“Do you really think that’s necessary?” L asked.
“Sorry, old habit,” Bruno said after a short chuckle. He turned off the blinker and peeked again into his rearview mirror. All he could see were the tankers blocking the tunnel entrance.
As his sedan turned left and approached the incline to the freeway, Bruno looked to his left. The two Bruno replicas were standing together just inside the tunnel’s entrance, on his side of the tanker trucks.
“Thanks for the help, guys,” he told them on the radio.
“Good luck and God speed,” one of the Bruno copies replied.
* * *
“How many copies of Bruno are there?” Lucas asked Kleezebee when the video feed showed two of them standing together just inside the tunnel entrance.
“Eleven in all.”
“Couldn’t afford an even dozen?” Lucas joked.
The video tech laughed. Kleezebee sneered at him.
“Sir, the sedan’s made it onto the freeway and is headed south,” the tech said.
“Give Bruno Two the go ahead.”
The screen showed one of the Bruno replicas attaching a tan-colored object to the rear section of both tanker trucks.
“C-four?” Lucas asked his boss.
“Something like that.”
“I know you want to delay the soldiers, but won’t that take out the tunnel completely?”
“It shouldn’t. We only partially filled the tankers. But if it does, there’s always the news helicopter,” Kleezebee said, pointing to the upper right screen. A circling aerial view showed the tankers facing each other outside the tunnel’s entrance.
“Oh . . . the phone call to the press,” Lucas repl
ied, nodding to applaud Kleezebee’s strategy.
Lucas looked at the tunnel feed just in time to see the two Brunos crowd together, then vanish from sight. The tankers exploded into a billowing cloud of smoke and fire.
“Where’d they go?” Lucas asked.
“Nowhere, they’re still right there,” the tech replied. “Well, sort of.”
“Are they using some kind of personal cloaking device?”
Kleezebee shook his head. “That wouldn’t have protected them when the trucks exploded.”
“Then what happened, Professor?”
“They slipped into an inter-dimensional rift in subspace.”
“They did what?”
Kleezebee motioned for one of his video techs to join him. The professor grabbed hold of the tech’s forearm, just above the man’s watch, then held the arm close to Lucas’ face.
“I’ve seen Bruno wearing that same watch,” Lucas said.
“Well, it does a lot more than just tell time,” Kleezebee said. “It contains a subspace rift regulator that the wearer can use to hide inside a subspace flap. That’s where the two Brunos are right now, waiting for the area to clear. They’re perfectly safe.”
“Unreal,” Lucas said, fiddling with the orange buttons around the perimeter on the device. “Can you show me how this thing works?”
Kleezebee nodded to the tech before returning his eyes to the video screens.
The tech put his watch hand on Lucas’ shoulder, then pressed a combination of buttons on the device with his other hand.
A moment later, Lucas was standing in a dark space, wishing he’d brought a winter coat and flashlight with him. He could only see the glow of the tech’s watch to his left; nothing else. He extended his hands and tried to walk forward, but couldn’t move. He felt like he was trapped inside a locked refrigerator with the light off. “Why is it pitch black in here?”
“There’s no light source in subspace,” the tech said with a patronizingly superior attitude.
Lucas felt like an idiot for asking such a stupid question. Of course there’s no light in subspace. Stars only exist in normal space. “Right. I get it. We’re in subspace. But where exactly?”
“We’re inside a subspace bubble that is straddling the interconnecting membrane between two parallel universes. It’s like an envelope wedged into a door jamb.”
