by Graham Brown
Danielle seemed to have caught her breath quickly. Her eyes were bright in the dimly lit wine cellar, and there was a sense of accomplishment about her, a sudden aura of success, as if the burden she carried had been lifted. He understood it: Their search had not been in vain. The pain, the suffering, the carnage all around them — most likely she felt as if there was some reason to it now. Some destiny beyond it. And that was what scared him.
Hawker didn’t believe in the concept of destiny. Certainly it had its value. There were occasions where it gave people the will to push on, to succeed against monumental odds. But more often than not, Hawker had seen the concept as a destructive one.
Those who thought they were on a mission from God — any god — were capable of horrendous things. All actions and atrocities could be rationalized if they were the will of some supreme being.
For the arrogant and power hungry there was no better rallying cry. It was a lie that made even the good people of society capable of carrying out acts of an evil nature.
And for oppressed peoples it became the mantle of fate; their lot in life to suffer; defeat preordained and thus accepted and unchallenged.
As he thought of these things, he wanted to point them out to both Danielle and McCarter, but he could already see the fever burning in their eyes.
CHAPTER 53
Deep within Yucca Mountain, the scientific arguments continued. Despite all the technical data regarding the stone, neither Moore, nor Stecker, nor any of the scientists could say exactly how it worked. Nor what it was meant for.
As a result, the teleconference had turned into a grilling, with questions fired at Moore from all angles. It could mean only one thing: The burden lay on him. Either he would sufficiently justify the stone’s existence or the defense would fail and the stone would be destroyed.
“Where is the energy coming from?” President Henderson asked point-blank. “How is this stone creating the type of power you’ve described? Is it nuclear? Is it through some type of fusion process?”
“It’s not, Mr. President. The stone is not radioactive. It’s not a process of cold fusion, as we once thought. It’s certainly not hot fusion. In fact, there is no process we know of through which this stone can be creating energy in the magnitude we have seen. Which leads us to believe that the stone is not creating energy but is actually drawing it from somewhere. Acting as a conduit.”
“Explain this to me,” the president demanded.
“Think of a wire in your house,” Moore said. “You stick your finger in the socket, you get shocked, but neither the socket nor the wire create the energy; they’re merely conduits. The electricity is created in another place, at a power station, probably many miles from your house. We now think this stone is receiving energy from somewhere and disbursing it.”
“Where?”
“The place it originated in,” Moore said, wondering if the president would grasp what he was saying, without elaboration.
“The future?” the president asked.
Moore nodded. “It’s not as far-fetched as it seems,” he said. “Even in the original example I gave you, the energy was created in a different time, albeit milliseconds before it reached your house. The difference is only one of magnitude and direction. In this case, the time displacement is farther away.”
The president seemed to understand what Moore was telling him but he clearly remained suspicious. “How good is the science on this?”
Moore didn’t hedge; no time for that now. “Most physicists are certain that the universe is made up of more than three dimensions. String theory and quantum mechanics currently suggest eleven dimensions, but at the very least we know of four: the three spatial dimensions — height, width, depth — and the fourth, time.
“In general, we consider time as unidirectional, moving forward and not backward, but we know for certain that it can be distorted by relativity, and if we’re correct about where and when this stone came from, then we can be fairly certain that that unidirectional concept of time is wrong. If that’s the case, then the transfer of simple electromagnetic energy through time would likely be far easier to accomplish than the safe travel of a human person through it.”
“Why don’t we see any other manifestations of this?” the president asked.
It was a difficult concept to explain. “Maybe a demonstration would work better,” he said.
He grabbed a foot-long piece of metal that had broken off of some cabinet. He placed it on the ground, its curving, silver shape looking like a flatter version of the St. Louis arch.
“Can you see this?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay, now imagine a two-dimensional world,” he said. “Flat, like this floor. If there are two-dimensional beings living there, they would only be able to see what exists within their two dimensions: things that exist on either the north-south or the east-west axis. But nothing up or down. Anything going vertically above or below this flat plane is literally beyond their ability to perceive.”
Moore pointed to the arch/handle. “So if we place this three-dimensional arch in their two-dimensional world they see only the points that intersect their.”
Moore touched the base of the curved metal handle. “Here and here,” he said. “They would identify each point as an independent two-dimensional object. What they would not be able to recognize is that the two objects were connected and were in fact one.”
He ran his hand along the arch.
“Now, if this were an electrical circuit and there were a power source attached to it, they would be able to sense the output at both ends, and they might even be able to determine that the two things were acting in concert, fluctuating at identical moments, but they would have no way of knowing where the power was coming from or why, because their entire plane of existence is contained in the flat two dimensions of the floor.”
President Henderson seemed to grasp this. “What you’re saying is that these stones are the same as those intersecting points on the floor, only in four dimensions.”
Moore felt he was getting somewhere. “Exactly. We can see and sense only the parts connected with our three-dimensional world, but if we’re right, there is some invisible conduit going through time that leads back to a power source, one that is pumping energy into the stones in massive quantities.”
“Okay,” the president said. “For the first time some of this is starting to make sense.”
Across from Moore, Stecker rose to his feet.
“Mr. President, there’s another possibility to consider here,” he said. “One that relies on more than a wild theory, and in fact actually comes with direct evidence linking it to these stones.”
“Which is?” Moore asked, aggravated by Stecker’s untimely interruption.
Stecker didn’t respond directly to Moore. Instead he spoke into the camera lens, focusing on Henderson. “Mr. President, have you ever heard of the term geomagnetic reversal?”
“North Pole shifting?”
Stecker nodded and motioned for his scientist to make their case. “Talk to the president, Ernest.”
The man in the lab coat got up and cleared his throat. He seemed a little nervous in such company, clearing his throat twice before speaking.
“Over the last hundred million years the north and south magnetic poles have switched places dozens of times. The most recent shift occurred seven hundred and eighty thousand years ago, in an event we call Brunhes-Matuyama reversal. But in the billion years before that, the poles reversed on an almost random time frame, sometimes as quickly as forty or fifty thousand years, in other cases remaining stable for fifty million years or longer. Periods we call superchrons. The truth is that no one understands the timing or mechanism of these reversals.”
Moore studied the man, considering what he was saying and wondering where this was going.
“Now,” the man continued, adjusting his glasses and beginning to sweat, “for the past several years, research specialists from NOAA an
d other organizations have been actively studying the magnetic field in an effort to better understand this phenomenon.”
The president interrupted. “All very interesting,” he said with undisguised frustration. “What the hell does it have to do with the stones?”
The CIA’s scientist gulped at a lump in his throat. “I’ll show you,” he said meekly and then went back to the computer and began tapping at the keys. A graph appeared on one of the flat screens in the lab; a remote screen in the White House displayed it as well. Across the bottom axis was a timeline, beginning in 1870 and ending in 2012.
Even before the CIA’s man explained the graph, Moore began to feel sick. What the hell were they getting at?
“There are fairly accurate measurements for both the field strength and the position of the north magnetic pole since the late eighteen hundreds,” the scientist explained. “This graph displays the magnitude of the pole’s movement by year.”
He pointed to the thick red line, cutting across the chart. “What we see here is the beginning of a more rapid phase of movement. The movement, already in effect in 1870, accelerated sharply in 1908 for reasons unknown.”
He traced the line with a pointer. “And from there we see a continuing slow deterioration, with the north magnetic pole moving southward, approximately seven or eight miles per year over most years of the past century. A pace that quickened to over twenty miles per year in the last few years.”
A few more clicks on the computer and a second graph appeared, this one representing field strength, with the timeline now stretching back some three thousand years.
“As you can see, the field strength has decreased almost continuously from a high point achieved roughly two thousand years ago. As of last year, the earth’s magnetic field had weakened thirty-five percent from its peak, with almost half of that drop coming since the falloff in 1908.”
The year 1908 was reverberating through Moore’s mind, but he couldn’t say why.
A third chart with a more volatile line popped up on the screen. The time frame on this chart extended back only through 2009.
“This is the field strength over the last three years.”
Moore stared. There were two more dramatic drops and two minor spikes, but if the time index was right, he now knew what the CIA was getting at.
The field strength had dropped an additional 5 percent in the winter of 2010, the exact time when Danielle and what was left of her team had recovered the Brazil stone and brought it to Washington.
A small spike could be discerned, near the end of November of the current year, perfectly coinciding with the burst over the Arctic. And an additional large drop occurred at the far right edge of the chart. Moore guessed that would be tied into the event that had occurred a few days earlier, the same moment that Danielle had pulled the second stone from beneath the Gulf of Mexico.
After that latest drop, the earth’s magnetic field was down almost 50 percent in relative terms, and sitting at an all-time low for the last fifty thousand years.
Unless the data had been faked, even Moore could see that the stones were intimately connected with the weakening of the magnetic field. Their current estimation of the stones’ arrival even coincided with the beginning of the drawdown, around 1000 B.C.
Just in case the president hadn’t seen it yet, the scientist lowered the boom.
“As you can see, Mr. President, these dramatic reductions in field strength coincide exactly with two events: the NRI recovery of the stone from the Amazon and the event that took place here forty-eight hours ago. And just as incredibly, the survey data tells us that magnetic north has traveled south by over a hundred and forty miles in the past five months, ninety miles of that since November twenty-first.”
With Moore struck silent, Stecker took the spotlight.
“In one sense,” he said smoothly, “we think the NRI is actually right. The stones are drawing energy through some conduit beyond our understanding, beyond our ability to see, but I assure you, Mr. President, it ain’t coming from the future. It’s coming from right here, right now, in our current time frame. These stones are draining our magnetic field. It’s virtually collapsing before our eyes. Every time Moore’s people recover one of these stones and bring it out into the open, the situation grows a hell of a lot worse.”
“Damn,” the president said, clearly disturbed.
Stecker wasn’t done. “What really scares me is this, Mr. President. These stones are drawing all that energy to themselves, storing it perhaps, and when they release it … I don’t know about the end of the world, but it could be the end of the modern, electronic world as we know it.”
Moore felt like a lawyer who’d just been blindsided, wanting to know why this information hadn’t been disclosed. But this was no courtroom and no one cared if he was surprised. In some ways it made things worse. For the CIA to come up with something he and his team had not found made him look incompetent.
“Fine,” the president said. “Now, in practical terms what does a failing magnetic field do to us? It’s obviously happened before. Do we see any die-offs, any great extinctions like the dinosaurs?” He paused. “Arnold?”
Moore looked up, still reeling. “No, Mr. President,” he mumbled. “But our world is different than theirs. Our world depends on electrical power for absolutely everything that matters. And with no magnetic field, we are exposed to the solar wind.”
“Meaning?”
“An unending torrent of charged particles that will, over time, affect human tissue. But at a far quicker pace it will destroy the electrical grids, computers, processors, and any other device with modern circuitry. While it will not melt the earth, as some in Hollywood have suggested, a large solar flare or an event known as a coronal mass ejection could set us back to the stone ages. Or at least the late eighteen hundreds.”
The president went silent. He seemed to be mulling this over. And then he offered the drowning man an unexpected branch.
“I’m guessing you think these stones were sent back here to prevent that?”
Moore perked up. “Yes, Mr. President. Seeing this data, I would come to that conclusion.”
Stecker scowled. “Oh, Arnold, you are naïve. After all this, you think these things are a blessing?”
He pulled out a printed sheet of paper. “From your own man’s translation: ‘The children won’t learn so they must be punished. War of man and man, food no more shall grow, blood shall endless flow, disease shall take the most. The day of the Black Sun has brought the doom of man. Five Katuns, a hundred years, of endless killing, Fifty Katuns, a thousand years of disease and dying. To stop it there must be sacrifice for all.’”
Stecker dropped the paper. “Millions killed in war, billions from disease and starvation. These things are weapons, Arnold, bombs sent to destroy us quick and clean before we do it in a way that will ruin the world for them.”
Moore fumed. “It’s patently illogical to think you can go to the past, destroy a huge section of society, and not have it affect you down the line. Your argument makes no sense, Stecker, and if you were actually smart enough to understand what you are saying, you’d see that.”
Stecker bristled but he didn’t back down. “If these things are supposed to help us, then why’d they hide them?” Stecker asked. “You ever hide a first-aid kit? A fire extinguisher? Of course not, but you hide mines and booby traps and bombs. Hell, if this thing were meant to help us they would’ve dropped it in our laps, not buried it in some ancient temple three thousand years ago.”
With that statement all hell broke loose. In a minute Moore was shouting at Stecker, the two scientists were arguing, and the president was repeatedly demanding calm, like a judge in a courtroom gone wild.
“This is goddamned ridiculous!” Moore shouted. “The most incredible journey in the history of mankind, quite possibly the single greatest achievement of all time, and you think they did it to destroy their ancestors?”
“Stop deceiving yours
elf,” Stecker retorted. “Man’s greatest achievements are the efforts put forth in war. Countries, continents, and religions mobilize everything they have, every ounce of physical, mental, and spiritual energy in the struggle for survival.”
Moore felt himself on the defensive, wanting to shout back but having nothing intelligent to say. In the absence of any defense, Stecker pressed the case.
“And yet you have these people of yours from the future, sending something back to our time, something that seems to be affecting us negatively, and you believe they come in peace? If they wanted to help us why not just send the stones to our time? I’ll tell you why: because these things needed time to load themselves up. They sent them to a time before ours so that they can gather energy unto themselves, store it in this four-dimensional loop you keep talking about, and then unleash it on us all at once. To teach us the error of our ways.”
Moore burned with the temper of his youth, but restrained himself from physically striking out at Stecker.
He turned to the screen. “Mr. President, we’re not talking Arnold Schwarzenegger, H. G. Wells, or Star Trek here. We’re talking about an act of supreme effort, one that taxed and debilitated and mutated the men and women who undertook it. One that eventually left them here to die on what is essentially a foreign shore.”
“Suicide mission,” Stecker interjected blithely. “You ever hear of the kamikazes?”
“This isn’t a damn joke,” Moore said.
“No, and it’s not a puzzle, either,” Stecker said. “That thing is a danger. It’s a ticking bomb that we don’t know how to defuse. And your messing around with it is going to get us all killed.”
A quick study of the president’s gaze told Moore that he was losing the argument. And yet he couldn’t throttle back. He found himself railing further at the director of the CIA despite the president’s urging, despite his own realization that he must have looked like a lunatic by now.
