Iris Rising

by Charles Hubbard

  ‘I’ve made my decision, John,’ Nash says. ‘Made it a long time ago. Let’s leave it to history to decide whether we did the right thing or not.’ He pulls out a chair. ‘If it weren’t for scientists to push boundaries and dream of better days, we would still be cooking by fire and living in caves.’

  ‘Maybe this will send us all back there…’

  ‘Lets see first if we can entangle an Bose-Einstein condensate bubble,’ Mooney says, ‘around a superposition soup of matter and teleport it across space-time before we need to worry ourselves about the philosophical aspects.’

  Nash picks up a covered wooden crate down by the table, surprisingly warm to the touch. A tied up chick is taken out, limp, and dangling by its feet as Nash walks over to a hanger and takes a sheet and drapes it over his arm and hands both to Masen. ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

  Masen takes both and looks at the glowing magnets. Walking into the void with gown covering him, he is careful not to expose skin as the outermost edges erupt in golden sparkles like a mini fireworks that help light the way.

  ‘Keep going…a few more steps,’ Nash says then looks over to Mooney and back to Masen. ‘Three more steps…okay, put the test subject down.’

  Masen cranes his head back. Sparks is busy studying and working a keyboard. Bradbury and Pak are also busy looking at their stations’ monitors. Then looks forward into complete darkness.

  Unable to see anything in his immediate vicinity, the sensation is strange and unnerving, as if he will fall. He holds a hand not an inch from his face, but can’t make it out. The cluck of the chick is the only sense that hints at distance. And it is going to get a lot darker, for the briefest of seconds, and the temperature will all but disappear, the target disintegrated and entangled as the magnets fire, ripping apart molecules and atoms disassembling, scattering, destroying them into a cloud only to be reassembled at another location.

  The test seconds away. The hissing from the tanks increases, the subtle background noise now drenches the building with rumbling noise like a low volume kettle boiling, screaming to be switched off. Any moment now the quantum computers will track the position of every molecule, every atom, every electron, so the information can be sent instantly and intact.

  Somewhere.

  Masen closes his eyes and crouches holding the chick in one hand, the other fumbling and briefly brushing against the plastic bio-suit around his waist.

  ‘Whenever you’re ready. Put the target on the floor and walk backwards.’ Nash’s voice just audible over the hissing. The floor is located, but it isn’t concrete, a slightly course, almost sandpaper like surface contacts his fingers. He pushes up with his hand and drags his feet backward, careful not to tread on the chick.

  Moving backwards, his vision starts returning.

  ‘Target in place.’

  ‘Quickly.’

  Masen sees a dying reddish glow sensed in the corner of his eyes and turns around. Sparks, Bradbury, Pak and Mooney are all busy looking at the array of instruments. Nash sits quietly and looks surprisingly calm. As soon as Masen is clear from the immediate area Nash asks if they’re ready.

  ‘All readings within tolerances,’ Sparks says.

  ‘Me too,’ Pak says watching a reading hovering high but still within range.

  ‘Confirm,’ Bradbury says remembering the last time she gazed so intently at a reading was just before a building blew up.

  ‘Initiate,’ Nash says.

  A low bass whomp resonates, hissing increases, then silence, nothing. The hissing stops, the fog starts to recede, blotches of concrete floor reflect a reddish glow.

  ‘Is that it?’ Pak asks.

  ‘Yep, pretty anticlimactic,’ Mooney says.

  ‘We need to confirm with building 7 if they’ve received the target.’ Nash says.

  A skeleton detail guard building 7, Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Mostly emptied of the technology that was shrouded in secrecy only two days ago. Two infantrymen sit idly in a jeep, feet occasionally finding the dash for a few minutes of rest outside the huge hanger door while they enjoy a game of cards. The men discuss the recent shooting. Talk amongst the base about the happenings at the hanger range from an execution of a Russian spy to a rendition interrogation gone wrong. However, the story always ends with General Mooney pulling out his cannon and blasting away.

  The equipment transported off sight, the hanger lays dormant; cables and mist replaced by barren polished concrete floors and a faint glow of the outside world through diffused opaque panels high above.

  Inside an army captain is stationed at a desk. Not far away is a metal room, a box. Measuring twenty feet wide and deep, and ten feet high, it is smooth and black with a two-foot thick slinking cable connecting half way up one side of the wall and disappears into a wall cavity, like an umbilical cord. Connected to the other end is a box. A computer terminal is connected via a thin cable to this box and sits on a desk with a green and red button.

  The captain sits and watches. A half-eaten sandwich on the desk next to a can of soft drink and his rifle. Behind is a single mattress and towards the door a bucket—exchanged each morning and evening. Food arrives on a metal tray via a small side door.

  His mission hasn’t changed: press the green button if the computer screen flashes and there is something inside the room, and red if there’s nothing, or something unrecognizable. All other times the room is to be sealed shut. No interpretation of the orders are necessary. The boredom is hard to deal with.

  Unsure at first if it was some kind of psychological experiment. Hours were spent counting lights; one hundred and twenty-eight in total, counting the three that hung over the two doors. Earlier he counted the folds in the corrugated iron sheets that run across the width of the hanger. This proved too difficult: the folds morphed into each other after a few minutes and he was unsure if he was double-counting. But using two fingers squeezed together, he counted the folds that covered fingers and moved them along; north of one thousand is the current estimate.

  The sun is setting, and guessing the rate at which the shadow retreats across the roof and its color, judges it’s just after 5 P.M. Soon the bucket would be swapped and a meal placed on the floor.

  Feeling neither hungry or the need to relieve himself, the captain gets up, arches his back with hands pressing into his sides and stretches. His yawn echoes in the metal hanger. Towards the end, he intentionally increases his pitch and hears it rattle around and eyes widened as he twists side-to-side.

  Releasing, he notices the monitor flicking to life. Glad for the distraction, walks over to the door not knowing what to expect. He grabs the handle—like the ones you find on walk-in refrigerators used in commercial kitchens. A slight puck is heard as the seal pulls from the cold metal frame. A blurred arc of ambient light spills in. Immediately the colonel knows something isn’t quite right. Convulsing on the floor is a mash of bloody flesh and muscle the size of a dinner plate. Amongst what look like feathers infused with bent bones and veins is part of an eye, and a beak slowly pulsing. Blood spurts with rhythmic pulses, spewing an arc half an inch into the air.

  Unrecognizable. He closes the door and walks over to the desk and presses the red button and resigns not to eat dinner.

  36

  The Barn, Technology Square, Boston

  The shot reverberates in the corridor. Black drops and drives his shoulder hard into the floor. Wrestles the gun clear to take a shot. Not a clean shot, but a slender chance of survival, if he is quick enough. He rolls as a bullet explodes beside his head, another ricochets off the floor whizzing past his ear. Ignoring the fire in his shoulder, shoots in the guard’s direction. Misses. The guard throws himself against the wall. Black hobbles onto a knee and moves his head as the guard aims and fires. Again misses. Returns fire stumbling to stand and runs towards the stairwell, blindly firing behind and bursts through the stairwell door. His shoulder goes flaccid, like a dead twig.

  Inside, grabs hi
s throbbing limb, sticks out his head and sees the guard running toward him, a bullet hits the doorframe. He slams the door and runs up the stairs.

  Blood runs like warm honey over fingers and puddles on the concrete step. Lying down the rise of stairs, face planted in a step looking around at the door, his aim where he estimates the guard’s chest will be, feels his body rise and fall as chest pumps air at a pace that is a ghost of what was needed in the corridor. Gun trembles in his hand as he tries to quieten himself. Focuses. Extends his other hand and grabs his wrist. He winces and screams silently.

  Just one shot.

  An almost palpable anger brews, devouring him, that if he could break off a piece he would cough it up and mould it and press it hard into his shoulder to stop the bleeding. He doesn’t want to be still, cowering in the stairwell like some loser, like prey, like the waitress.

  A shadow creeps under the door. He strengthens his grip. A salty bead of sweat stings his eye. The shadow grows as the guard moves into the door, fades then disappears as he steps aside to open the door.

  Black slows his breathing. He knows manpower is stretched, but soon there will be more security looking for him.

  He has to think. ‘Come on, come on…Steady.’

  The door cracks open. A head jerks through and retreats as fast. Black smiles as his prediction plays out. The guard had read him well, too well. Now his training does him a disservice. His moves, easily anticipated.

  ‘One more second.’

  A radio. ‘Coming to your location. Keep him in the stairwell. I’m heading your way.’

  ‘I have to get back to my post,’ the guard replies.

  The fading sound of footsteps.

  After a few deafening seconds Black awkwardly turns, pulls himself up. Panics for a solution, for a secure place to hide so he can stem the blood and to think of his next move. Struggles up stairs constantly looking and listening for opening doors. Heavy legs stumble and strain the short distance into the corridor one floor up. Sees a different guard looking the other way and waits for him to turn. A cupboard is only a few steps away. He has to be quick. The guard moves.

  37

  U.S. Naval Base, Sasebo, Japan

  ‘Building 7?’ Masen looks over to Nash.

  ‘Kennedy, Florida.’ Nash raises an arm and touches the back of his head. The words focus on the light panel in front, waiting for confirmation the teleportation was successful.

  ‘You’ve teleported an object that far?’

  ‘No,’ Nash says. ‘Theoretically it’s the same as teleporting across a room.’

  For his own selfish scientific curiosity Masen wants the technology to work. The previous test proves it does, however a complex living organism is on another scale.

  ‘Remember the day I handed in my thesis?’ Masen asks thinking by keeping Nash talking some sense might get through.

  ‘I remember,’ Nash says irritably keeping his stare on the table. ‘A flight of fancy.’

  ‘Right, that’s what you said. You were distracted, like you are now.’

  ‘I was completely absorbed with the possibility of the technology, and how to make it work. Just think what can be done.’ Their eyes meet. ‘That’s why I don’t understand your reluctance. There are safeguards built into our democracy.’

  Masen registers his bewilderment. Takes it as a start.

  ‘Your blind—’

  ‘Sacrifices have to be made.’ Nash folds his arms and looks at the table. ‘How many astronauts died putting man on the moon?’

  ‘Is that how you justify the people around you dying?’

  ‘I’ve made my bed.’

  ‘How many deaths are acceptable?’

  ‘Be grateful,’ Nash looks at Masen. ‘I’ve kept you out of this a much as I can.’

  ‘You’re deluded if you think this has anything to do other than you own selfishness.’

  ‘When you came to see me…that late night phone call.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It nearly got me killed.’

  ‘And what does that tell you?’ Masen sighs trying to think of what to say. ‘You’ve shut your mind professor. Something you told me never to do.’

  Outside, a guard restrains his K9 who turns suddenly and pulls hard against the lead, snarls and barks at a person walking towards the quarantined building. The guard jolts the lead, leans down and grabs his partner’s muzzle, forcing the dog’s attention back to its task of protecting the border of the Naval base.

  ‘More training for you,’ he reprimands and turns semi-circle to walk in the opposite direction along the fence.

  The person ignores the fracas and pushes past the two bio-suits hanging on the rack, billowing in the wind. The orders are specific. The handle twists and with the spare hand placed carefully on the door to provide a counter force, quietly levers it open.

  Everyone turns as the red button glows, watches in quiet contemplation as Nash’s face glows: red means stop, danger, failure. Something went wrong with the test.

  ‘I don’t know what could have happened?’ Nash says to himself, hands weighing an invisible weight. ‘I checked everything myself.’ Eyes dart side to side as if his mind searches a blackboard full of instructions, for a clue, for that one thing that didn’t fit.

  ‘Everything’s within operating parameters,’ Sparks says shrugging shoulders, feeling the heavy breath of Mooney behind. Bradbury and Pak nod in agreement that everything is correct.

  ‘At the risk of sounding stupid,’ Masen says, ‘what constitutes a failed test?’ And stops his train of thought seeing Sparks rubbings his nose. That’s what you do when you lie, Masen thinks of the time Sparks lied about leaking Bradbury’s rescue to the media back at the Barn.

  ‘If the observer doesn’t recognize an object,’ Nash says. ‘Or there is no object after the collection computer senses an event.’

  ‘So information has been lost?’ Masen asks.

  ‘Or the wave function wasn’t set up correctly after the magnets fired, or there is something wrong with the processors. We’ll know more when the inspection team reports back.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘We can expect a call within the hour.’

  ‘We stay until we get an explanation,’ Mooney says irritably.

  The person quietly slips through the small gap between the door and metal frame, careful to limit the amount of light, closes the door and twists the handle so the latch doesn’t drag across the metal plate and make a noise.

  Inside is cold.

  The person creeps closer, careful of familiar cables that snake the floor, careful to maintain the element of surprise. Quietly inching forward. Fingers grip the cold steel handle of the holstered weapon. Breathing is controlled drawing in air like a silk handkerchief gliding out of a shirt pocket. The gun is brought up head-height and points at the back of Mooney’s head. There is no turning back now, there is no other choice, this simply has to be done.

  Mooney hears a footstep. Outmaneuvered and no time to pull out his gun says, ‘Welcome to the party.’ The rest of the room turn to Mooney. ‘You know everyone here.’

  The person is out of context. Sparks mouths a greeting but never speaks it, realizing what everyone is puzzling at.

  ‘Click.’ The gun’s safety makes a distinctive sound in Mooney’s ear.

  ‘Bitch,’ Mooney says without turning to see who’s pointing a gun at the side of his head. ‘I don’t like being shown up.’

  ‘Now General,’ her voice soft, casual. ‘Don’t be a sore loser. Can’t expect to have the same reflexes you used to have.’

  ‘Dr Carlton.’ Nash’s mouth hinges open. ‘…Olivia!’ Struggles to understand why she has a gun in her hand. Leans slightly to one side as if a new perspective might reveal a different reality.

  ‘You’re late, Lane,’ Mooney says.

  ‘I was having an interesting chat with Mr Shào.’ Amanda Lane lowers her gun and notice
s Mooney has a hand resting on his. ‘Says he’s spoken with Black about securing the data.’

  ‘A minor complication,’ Mooney replies, his voice stiffening, ‘What’s his take about the attack on the data facility?’

  Lane smile is unconvincing. ‘So long as he gets the data uplink for DUST, and the hardware, he doesn’t care who the seller is.’

  ‘Very good.’

  Masen looks past Lane to Bradbury who stands like a statue, hands frozen in a half measured raise.

  Lane pauses looking at the red light on the desk. ‘I have to report back.’

  ‘The test.’ Mooney walks over to the table and picks up the phone with a fist pushing into the table. ‘We don’t know what happened.’

  ‘Don’t be long,’ Lane says. ‘I have a plane for Shanghai to catch. An appointment for an expensive bespoke handbag I had to reschedule because of Zane Black.’

  So I was right, Masen thinks. The night Black was in my apartment and I mentioned your name. Black knows you.

  Mooney holds the phone to his ear. ‘Let’s see what the inspection team has to say.’

  ‘You have the technology…you don’t need to…to steal it,’ Nash says. ‘No one has to get hurt.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Lane says and turns to Masen. ‘How did you know my name?’ Eyes narrow. ‘You didn’t over hear it.’

  Masen pauses trying to piece together the reason for killing De Luca and his dog.

  ‘Answer me.’

  ‘You work for Assistant Director Zane Black,’ Masen says.

  ‘Worked. I contract out my services.’

  ‘And now the army.’

  Lifts an eyebrow. ‘Used to be CIA.’

  ‘Yes,’ Masen says realizing. ‘…That’s why Pascal and Black were having an argument on my first day.’ Then to Lane’s confusion: ‘Black wanted you as a mole in the Barn, but Pascal refused.’