62
Joaquin Abell stood behind a raised control panel that was located on one side of the dome. Ethan saw immediately the large plasma screens arranged around the walls, and the huge metallic sphere in the center.
‘Welcome,’ Joaquin said, spreading his arms wide to encompass the dome around them, ‘to the beating heart of IRIS.’
Ethan saw another man sitting near Joaquin. He was small and bespectacled, and Ethan guessed that he must be Dennis Aubrey, the scientist that Joaquin had effectively abducted.
Ethan, with Lopez and Katherine either side of him, was prodded to stand before the control panel as Joaquin stepped jauntily down to meet them, his face plastered with a bright smile.
‘I must say,’ he began, ‘that I wish this meeting could have occurred under more cordial circumstances, but alas, such is life.’
‘You saw us coming,’ Lopez muttered.
‘Of course I saw you coming,’ Joaquin replied and gestured to the giant sphere nearby. ‘I have foreseen everything that is about to happen here. I should thank you, both of you, for locating Charles Purcell on my behalf and providing me with the camera he stole. It has proven remarkably entertaining, I must say, to watch the pair of you die, and yet it simply cannot be as satisfying as watching it happen for real.’
Ethan shook his head.
‘I think your ego is so inflated that you can no longer see where you’re going.’
‘Is that such a bad thing?’ Joaquin wondered out loud. ‘So many people are so meek, so mild. Our society has taught us to be conservative, to be magnanimous in defeat, to bow to the wishes of others. Crap, I say. Grab everything that’s yours, do anything you can to achieve your goals, even if it means pushing others out of the way, because when it comes down to it they’d do the same to you in the blink of an eye. This is a dog-eat-dog kind of world, Mr. Warner, and I am a wolf.’
Lopez’s face twisted into a grim smile.
‘You’re only a wolf in that you’re a cunning animal who is brave in a pack but a coward alone.’
Joaquin smiled pityingly.
‘And yet such a wise and rapid wit as yourself was not able to enter this facility and achieve her objectives without being caught by this sly, cowardly animal’ he said. ‘You may enjoy your insults, but they will be the last you’ll ever cast in this life, you little—’
‘What’s the point of all this, Joaquin?’ Ethan cut across him. ‘Your device lets you see into the future. It could have won you a Nobel Prize, changed the future of humanity for the better by foreseeing and then preventing natural disasters. You’d have been adored by millions, gotten everything you wanted. Instead, you’re stuck down here on the seabed with your machine, like an overgrown teenage computer geek, planning apocalyptic disasters. Why?’
Joaquin appeared confused.
‘Why?’ he uttered. ‘Why? You’ve come all of this way to stop me and you don’t even know why I’m here?’
‘You’re here because you’re a fucking lunatic,’ Lopez shot at him. ‘A sane man would be using this contraption of yours for good.’
‘For good,’ Joaquin echoed. ‘That word, it’s so subjective. What’s good for one person may be lethal for another. I’m doing this because our world is in a mess, crippled by economic fallout from unregulated capitalism, dogged by climate change, scoured by over-population. It needs strong leadership, and within a few years I, and IRIS, will be able to provide absolute control over not just government, but over our own futures. We will be able to shape this world precisely as we wish.’
Ethan chuckled bitterly.
‘I doubt that very much. Life just doesn’t fit into boxes, Joaquin, no matter how much control you think you might have.’
‘Control,’ Joaquin growled and clenched a fist between them, ‘is everything.’
‘You’re not controlling anything,’ Ethan pointed out. ‘That thing you’ve got in that chamber, it’s not a weapon: it’s a force of nature, more powerful than any bomb mankind could build and capable of bringing about the end of the world. If it gets out, there won’t be a world left for you to manipulate. Everything will be gone. Your control is a fantasy and you’re as much at the mercy of fate as the rest of us.’
‘And what would you know of it?’ Joaquin snapped. ‘I did a little digging of my own, after you visited my yacht. Look at you. You’re a washed-out soldier and journalist, a lowly gumshoe from a two-bit detective agency buried in Illinois. What possible difference can you make to this world compared to IRIS?’
‘Just preventing you from gaining a position of power would be a great service to humanity,’ Ethan replied. ‘That’ll be more than enough.’
Joaquin’s face twisted upon itself in apparent frustration.
‘You don’t understand. You’re just tiny little people, insignificant parts of a giant machine that cares nothing for your opinion or actions. I am in a position to change this world for the better, for all humanity, and it requires such a small sacrifice.’
‘Sure,’ Lopez smirked, ‘what’s a few thousand lives here and there for your greater good?’
‘Opportunity follows crisis!’ Joaquin shouted. ‘There is never gain without loss. I have built this, all of this, to gain the faith and trust of humanity. Mankind does not move forward in small and gradual steps. It takes a revolution to drive our progress, and I am producing one right here. This is more than just the future: this is control of the present, to bring all countries into alignment, to provide equality and safety for all.’
‘And if people do not want you to control them?’ Ethan asked.
‘Everything I have done,’ Joaquin shot back, ‘every single action, has been with the intention of helping humanity climb out of its self-destructive existence and move toward a better future. Idle government will be replaced with proactive IRIS rule that protects us all against tomorrow. I built this place to protect humanity!’
Ethan finally got it, in a brief flash of clarity that shone through the gloom of Joaquin’s warped ego. In a moment of inspiration he glimpsed Joaquin’s vision and the fragile state of mind that harbored it.
‘You haven’t built a thing,’ he said.
Joaquin sneered at him.
‘This entire facility was built by IRIS, under my command, the better to—’
‘You’re nothing, Joaquin, nothing at all,’ Ethan interrupted. ‘This is all about little Joaquin living up to his daddy’s name. You’ve spent your life trying to emulate a great man, but in doing so you’ve done nothing but revealed what a hugely inadequate son you really were to him.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Joaquin stammered. ‘You never even knew—’
‘Everybody has heard of your father,’ Ethan replied, ‘of the things that Isaac Abell achieved. But you? Everything people think they know about you is a lie, a mask. You’ve spent your life trying to convince people that you’re some kind of great philanthropist, but in truth you’re nothing but a spoilt little psychopath. Even this facility we’re standing in was built by your father, not by you: all you’ve done is stand on his coat tails, adding little bits and pieces to what he himself created. Everything you are is a scam, a theft of other people’s ideas.’ He stepped closer to Joaquin. ‘Tell me, little man, of one single item in this facility that you built or invented all by yourself.’
Joaquin stared at Ethan, his jaw agape and his skin flushing red.
Ethan took another pace forward, standing just inches from him.
‘Tell me, Joaquin, what’s it like to be a billionaire who can see into the future, and yet to still feel so totally and utterly inadequate?’
Joaquin quivered as psychological tremors wrought havoc in his mind. The tycoon whipped one small fist up at Ethan. The blow landed on Ethan’s cheek with a sharp crack, but it lacked force. Ethan barely flinched, and smiled.
‘Not much weight to anything about you, is there, Joaquin?’
Joaquin trembled with fury, as though he were struggling to keep the lid on a boiling cauldro
n of anger.
‘You’ve a nerve, Mr. Warner,’ he uttered, ‘to insult me when your life is in my hands.’
‘It’s not in your hands,’ Ethan replied. ‘Like everything else, it’s in other people’s hands, because you can’t do it for yourself In one way you’re just like your father, Joaquin -he wasn’t able to commit murder himself, either.’
Joaquin’s expression fell flat, his eyes uncomprehending.
‘Didn’t know about that, did you, little Joaquin?’ Lopez chimed in with a brittle grin. ‘That your wonderful daddy murdered Montgomery Purcell all those years ago.’
Joaquin’s jaw opened and closed like a beached fish as he struggled to speak.
‘That’s insane! You’re making this all up!’
‘Isaac Abell first tested the device that he built here in 1964, on the very same evening that Montgomery Purcell flew home from a meeting with him,’ Ethan said. ‘It was timed perfectly by Isaac, so that the magnetic fields generated by his fusion chamber would wreck the instruments in Monty Purcell’s airplane as he flew overhead. The man didn’t stand a chance.’
‘That’s bullshit!’ Joaquin shouted. ‘My father was an honorable man!’
‘Yes, he was,’ Lopez said. ‘It’s why he took his own life nine years later. He could not deal with the grief of having murdered a man. He killed for what he thought were good reasons, because he believed that Montgomery Purcell’s mission was to make money from building weapons. But in fact Purcell simply understood that mutually assured destruction could prevent a nuclear holocaust.’
‘Point is,’ Ethan said, his face inches from Joaquin’s, ‘your father killed a man whom he thought was trying to dominate the world by using weapons against it. How do you think he would have felt about what you’ve done with his work since?’
Joaquin’s skin flushed an unhealthy pallor, but he forced a feeble grin onto his face as he spoke.
‘You’ll find, Mr. Warner, that I’m made of a little more than you give me credit for.’
‘Surprise me,’ Ethan said.
Joaquin held out his hand past Ethan.
‘My dear?’ Joaquin asked.
Katherine stepped forward, and, to Ethan’s dismay, turned to face them as she stood alongside her husband. Ethan saw in her features a bizarre mixture of relief and shame, as though she had been handed the secrets of the universe and then destroyed them out of spite.
‘Katherine?’ Lopez uttered.
‘Is with me,’ Joaquin said, his features locked into a smile that seemed more like a grimace. ‘No matter what you may think of me, my wife has stood by my side for fourteen years and stands with me now. My dear, are they alone?’
Katherine nodded.
‘It is just the three of us,’ she replied. ‘The other one, Bryson, quit. The marines on the yacht are under orders to stay put.’
‘As I suspected,’ Joaquin said. ‘Your friend walked, didn’t he, Mr. Warner, just as soon as you were reunited in Miami. I have been watching. The news reports on the survivors flown in to Miami – you were all in the background, standing around that truck.’
Ethan shook his head slowly, ignoring Joaquin. ‘This is a mistake, Katherine, and you know it.’
‘There is nothing that I will not do for my children,’ she replied.
‘This isn’t about your children!’ Lopez said. ‘Thousands will die because of this!’
‘And thousands more will live,’ Katherine shot back. ‘Criminals captured, lying politicians exposed, corporate greed slain, all by IRIS’s ability to see into the future. This is the greatest opportunity in the history of mankind to cleanse the legal system of its corruption and the distorted motivations of its practitioners.’
Ethan let a bitter smile curl from his lips.
‘By using fraud, corruption and the manipulation of government to get your own way?’
‘What I’m doing,’ Katherine uttered, barely able to meet his eye, ‘is morally wrong here and now, and will cost lives. But it will save countless more in the future. The needs of the many always outweigh the needs of the few.’
‘Bet you’re glad that Bryson and I didn’t feel that way when we got you out of Puerto Plata,’ Lopez spat at her. ‘Did you forget your husband tried to kill you there?’
Katherine refused to meet her accusing glare, but it was neither Ethan’s nor Lopez’s tortured cry that challenged her.
‘Katherine!’
They all turned, to see Dennis Aubrey’s face crippled with dismay and horror. Joaquin glared at the scientist but it was Katherine who spoke.
‘I’m sorry, Dennis,’ she said softly. ‘This is the only way.’
‘No!’ Aubrey yelled. ‘Think of what’s really best for your children!’
‘Our children are not your concern!’ Joaquin snarled. ‘Olaf, take him to the chamber. Take them all to the chamber!’
Ethan was prodded forward as Olaf shoved him toward the giant sphere in the center of the hangar.
63
‘Joaquin, what are you doing?’ said Katherine.
Ethan thought that he heard the first ripple of concern in her voice as they were led toward the giant sphere in the center of the dome. Nearby, he saw Dennis Aubrey being lifted out of a chair by two IRIS soldiers and dragged toward the sphere.
‘It is time,’ Joaquin announced grandly, ‘to demonstrate the power that I hold over time itself.’
Joaquin reached the sphere just before Ethan and Lopez, and turned to face them.
‘Because,’ he said, ‘I hold the ability not just to see into the future, but also to erase any trace of the past.’
Katherine stared at her husband. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The black hole,’ Joaquin replied ecstatically, all of his previous rage forgotten now as he returned to his scripted plan. His mood swings were like those of a child, Ethan realized, erratic and unpredictable. ‘Nothing, not even light, can escape from its grasp. Even suspended within this chamber, protected as we are from its influence, time still runs slightly slower in this facility than it does in the outside world. It’s a shame for our guests, because were they not about to cease to exist I would have done them a favor. They would have aged a little less than the rest of the population of our planet during the time they’ve spent down here.’
‘Sadly,’ Lopez uttered, ‘the time hasn’t exactly flown by.’
Joaquin grinned, not letting her jibe contaminate his obvious enjoyment.
‘But it’s about to,’ he said. ‘As one gets closer to a black hole, so time flows more slowly. If you travel to the edge of a black hole, the famous event horizon, time will seem to flow so fast outside your frame of reference that, as you pass through the horizon, it is said that you will witness the entire future of the universe outside.’
Ethan scowled at Joaquin.
‘Why don’t you take a running jump into it and find out?’
Joaquin let out an abrupt burst of laughter.
‘An excellent idea, except that once material is inside a black hole it can never leave. Information cannot escape the event horizon, at least not in the same form as it entered. It can be released only as pure energy over time, as the black hole evaporates. And that, my friends, will take billions of years.’
‘We’re in no rush to see you again,’ Lopez said.
‘Good, because soon you’ll be lost to history,’ Joaquin said. ‘But let me first demonstrate to you just how efficient this process is. Olaf?’
Joaquin clicked his fingers at the giant, who turned without a word and lumbered across to Dennis Aubrey. Olaf stooped and in one motion hefted the scientist onto his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Aubrey began screaming and pummeled Olaf’s muscular back with his feeble fists. Katherine stepped into Olaf’s path, forcing him to stop.
‘No, please, Joaquin, don’t!’
The giant turned idly to look at Joaquin.
‘This is for the best, Katherine,’ Joaquin said. ‘Dennis betrayed us and tried to send word to th
e outside world about my work. Fortunately for me, it was you he chose to contact. He has to go, for the benefit of us all.’
Katherine’s features were suddenly taut with horror, as though, despite everything that Joaquin had already done, she had not imagined him doing this.
‘He’s innocent, Joaquin! He doesn’t deserve this!’
Joaquin shrugged his shoulders, as though he were considering nothing more important than what to have for lunch.
‘That is a matter of personal opinion,’ he replied. ‘But right now I cannot take the chance that he won’t betray us again.’
Olaf waited for no further encouragement and shoved his way past Katherine with the scientist writhing on his shoulder. Ethan watched as two IRIS soldiers opened a hatch attached to a small chamber on the side of the sphere. Olaf stepped onto the edge of the hatch and pitched the screaming man inside before stepping back. The two soldiers slammed the chamber door shut and sealed it.
Joaquin turned and gestured to Ethan and Lopez.
‘Make sure they see everything,’ Joaquin snapped, his voice taut with excitement. ‘I want them to see how they’re going to die in just a few moments’ time.’
Olaf lumbered up behind Ethan and with a weighty shove propelled him up against the side of the sphere. One shovel-like hand twisted his wrist up into the small of his back as the other clamped the back of Ethan’s head and shoved it forcefully against a glass porthole looking into the chamber’s interior.
Ethan gasped, his guts convulsing with a mixture of vertigo and fear as he looked into a sphere of endless blackness suspended within, a void of such unimaginable depth that it made him feel as though he was already falling into oblivion. Flares of plasma snarled and snapped within the chamber, flashing out toward him.
Somewhere behind him, he heard Joaquin’s voice.
‘Open the inner hatch!’
Dennis Aubrey lay curled up on the cold metal floor of the chamber. His guts had turned to slime within him, his bowels loosening as they gurgled and writhed, infected with a fear far beyond anything that he could have imagined possible. Every muscle in his body was locked in a spasm of primal terror, his throat constricted and his eyes wet with tears that flowed beyond his control.
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