by J C Ryan
Chapter 6 - How to neutralize a nuke
Before they could prioritize the order in which the A-Codex was studied, they knew the plates would have to be scanned in their entirety then translated. It was a mammoth task, since there was at least thirty times more information involved than in the E-Codex.
It also required more computing power. Their own highly sophisticated computers weren’t up to the task, so Carter had a couple of supercomputers brought in at his own expense and optimized for parallel processing. Then the coding geniuses were put to work to improve and optimize the algorithms as well so one wouldn’t be waiting on the other. Once the latency problems were conquered, the translation went much faster.
At times, it boggled Mackenzie’s mind that so much money was at her husband’s disposal. She still hadn’t grasped the extent of his holdings, and truth be told, she got the impression neither did Carter have a complete grasp of his net worth. It was something that just didn’t bother him.
With the increased concerns about the ever-growing number of rogue nations and even terrorist groups trying to build nuclear weapons, President Grant had been breathing down their necks to produce the answer the Giants had found to neutralize nukes.
Carter understood the urgency, and he didn’t want to wait for the painfully slow process of securing government funding. Maybe he’d be reimbursed, maybe not. It didn’t matter.
As soon as the nuclear physics sections were translated, Carter flew to Los Alamos to present the material directly to the LANL scientists charged with discovering how the Giants had disarmed those ancient nukes.
They’d all agreed that with the use of neutrino beams it was possible to accomplish it—in theory. In practice, no one had the slightest inkling how.
Years ago, a team of Japanese scientists had postulated that a super-powered neutrino generator could be used to instantly destroy nuclear weapons anywhere on the planet. If such a generator was ever built, it could be used to obliterate the nuclear arsenal of an enemy by firing a beam of neutrinos straight through the Earth.
Neutrinos are basic particles with no electric charge and virtually no mass, produced in the nuclear reactions within stars. They pass through the Earth in their thousands every day, and as they pass through ordinary matter, they break up atomic nuclei.
The theory was the scattering of uranium or plutonium nuclei by the neutrinos would destabilize a nuclear bomb, causing the weapon to melt down, preventing the triggering of the chain reaction needed for it to fully ignite.
They speculated that the extremely high-energy neutrino beam hitting a nuclear bomb would fizzle the explosion down from what the full explosion would have been. But they were not sure by how much. The fact was there would still be an explosion.
Further realities were the generator would have to be more than a hundred times more powerful than any existing particle accelerator on the planet, six hundred miles wide, require fifty gigawatts of power, and cost in the region of $100 billion to construct.
Scientists across the world were saying, “…the maths and physics seem to be right. But it is really quite futuristic.”
But the Giants knew, and it turned out to be relatively simple.
Simple, at least, if one’s mind could make the leap and accept that the Giants had flying machines so many millennia ago. And they had the means to seek out the devices and fire neutrino beams at them with pinpoint precision. Not to mention the capability of producing those beams in a device twice the size of a large suitcase but with hundreds of times the power of a modern-day particle accelerator like the one at CERN, thanks to their mastery of the quantum physics concept of Zero Point Energy.
Clearly, there was much to learn in the Codex, and Carter had left the scientists eagerly perusing the material.
However, not before unsettling them with his sobering observation that for every piece of knowledge gained to advance science for the good of humanity, there was someone who was willing to exploit it for the opposite purpose. It sobered the scientists as it had sobered Mackenzie months before.
Perhaps their predecessors in the twentieth century had entertained the same thoughts when they developed the first nuclear weapon. Was this the right thing to do? General Eisenhower had certainly objected to the use of nuclear weapons back in the day. And his president had overruled him.
Now President Grant desperately wanted this technology as he wanted to put the nuclear genie which was let out then back in its lamp.
Over the months leading up to the meeting at Los Alamos, Carter often reflected on the conversation he and Mackenzie had that night after they had loaded the last of the ancient nukes onto the Navy vessel in the Alboran Sea, which would transport it to the US.
Carter used the opportunity to give them the summarized version of that conversation, which was, “If you manage to build the technology to neutralize nukes, you’ll have a new problem to deal with.”
When they looked at him probingly, he explained, “Just think how happy will the world’s nuclear powers be when they find out their nukes have been turned into useless toys. And that we’re back to the 1945 to 1949 era, when the US was the only nuclear power on the planet.”
The scientists realized whatever they discovered, one thing was certain; it had to be kept more secret than the strange goings-on at Area 51!
After Carter’s visit, it had taken them about eight months to figure out how the Giants did it and would take another twelve before they could develop the technology to achieve it themselves.
Chapter 7 - Progress was hampered by one man
Among their many secrets, one of the most closely guarded, which the Nabateans had been able to keep for millennia, was that among people of their bloodline, there were many who demonstrated exceptional brilliance in one or two areas while being severely challenged in every other aspect.
In centuries past, the Nabateans were forced to hide these individuals from grisly fates when society still viewed them with superstition, accusing them of sorcery and persecuting them. Only in modern times had scientists made some progress in analyzing the phenomenon. However, it still wasn’t well understood. Now termed “savant syndrome” had gained prominence through popular culture and movies such as Rain Man, Phenomenon, and A Beautiful Mind.
The Nabateans understood long before modern times, however, that these members of their bloodline were to be protected, valued, and used. They considered them a gift, a blessing bestowed on them from their ancestors, and treated them as deities. Significant numbers of their bloodline were blessed in this way at birth, demonstrating exceptional skill in music, art, mathematics, science, and many other disciplines.
From the moment the Council was formed in the distant reaches of time, they recognized the need for special care and treatment of their savants. Despite their special brilliance, such children were difficult for families to raise, especially in early times, when they were the targets of hatred and discrimination. Thus, the Council established special accommodations and developed programs to provide them with everything they needed to practice their skills.
As time passed, the Council learned more and more from those who ran their savant program and the associated schools. Only over the last half-century or so did the rest of the world start to develop a better understanding of savants.
However, by then, the Nabateans were lightyears ahead of them, having already been exploiting their gifted members for millennia, with great effect. This program was what had given them the significant technological advantages they had over the rest of the world.
Highly-qualified scientists of specialized studies were recruited to think tanks where they were given free rein. “Think outside the box. Dream. Let your imagination run wild. No restraints,” were the words used at those dreamtime sessions, as they called it, to get the scientists to play “what-if” without having to worry about derision by peers and superiors.
And the ideas from these groups were fed to the savants, no matter how farfetched.
Many were germinated between the pages of science fiction. Others required solutions to problems that scientists in the rest of the world were working to solve as well. When the savants came up with the answers, instead of publishing them, the Nabateans kept them secret. Their scientists gained more than the prestige of a Nobel prize. They gained unlimited power and wealth for their people—the Nabateans.
In a modern world, it is difficult to maintain a secret of this magnitude for long. By now, the savant labs were known as special needs centers, and outsiders knew them as places where people on the autism spectrum especially were treated with the latest methods. The Nabateans operated their centers on a by-invitation basis, and each application went through an extensive vetting process before the child would be accepted.
Occasionally, a child not of the bloodline would be admitted so no one could ever trace the admissions policy to the bloodline. Such children would inevitably “wash out” of the program before they reached the stage where they would be put to work. Only savants of the Nabatean bloodline remained to work on the technologies that the Council of the Covenant of Nabatea had at their command.
Among the many astounding proficiencies were mathematical algorithms that could predict weather patterns and the behaviors of stock markets with breathtaking accuracy.
By studying hundreds of thousands of the strangest possible correlations over many decades, they found profound patterns, tantamount to insider information, except they had the information before the insiders had it. They exploited this to build their wealth with shrewdness and unobtrusiveness. It was impossible for anyone, other than Mathieu Nabati and one other on the Council, to ever uncover the vast wealth of the Nabateans and the power they could wield over the world’s financial markets.
If they wanted to, they could collapse the world economy within twenty-four hours.
Other advantages included the ability to predict election results, the outbreak of war, or acts of terrorism. Not only could they do so with astonishing accuracy, they could with equal precision predict the outcomes. Pollsters, had they known of it, would have sold their own mothers for the technology.
A secret that explained the extraordinarily long lives of the Council members lay in their medical advances. While the scientists themselves, the doctors, and even the savants enjoyed the same benefits, ordinary Nabateans, like the rest of the world, knew nothing of it. They kept their ability to extend lives to the human maximum, an average of one hundred twenty years, strictly to themselves.
They used some of their medical knowledge to infiltrate and control most of the pharmaceutical industry. However, certain discoveries, such as the cure for the common cold, all autoimmune disorders, dementia, and cancer were all withheld from the world, to be used by them when the time was right to restore the kingdom of Nabatea.
Had the world known that the means to relieve the atrocious suffering from so many “incurable” diseases existed, but were kept secret by a small group of people for the sole purpose of world domination, the Nabateans would have been wiped out in a blink of the eye.
Advances in energy technology gave them another domain of unfair advantage. Their plan for world domination included at some point collapsing other energy source markets to replace them with their own. Meanwhile, some of their secret facilities enjoyed free energy sources. They found ways to tap into the magnetosphere and were on the verge of cracking the unlimited energy potential of Zero Point Gravity. Nuclear fusion, the subject of great controversy among the physicists working to crack the technique, was already theirs, as was the ability to generate vast quantities of energy with microbial fuel cells.
Not to be outdone by such marvels, their computer scientists had supplied them with the best computer technology on the planet. The Holy Grail of computer technology, quantum computing, was not only routine for them, the savants had solved the problem of what to do with it. And it involved the optimization of when and how to roll out all the other technological advantages to give the Nabateans what they’d always desired. Total world domination.
About a decade ago, the Council ordered an acceleration of one of their neuroscience programs. Their advances in neuroscience had given them two advantages. First, their savants were now able to understand their own uniqueness. Second, even though it didn’t cure their autism, it did mean they could give the answer to acquired savant syndrome.
While the autistic savants were born with the seeds of their abilities programmed into their DNA, people with the much rarer condition known as acquired savant syndrome were made that way by an outside event.
Modern-day scientists know that acquired savant syndrome is caused by trauma in the brain—either a head injury or disease that causes neurological disturbance, such as a brain tumor, but they still didn’t know how it happens.
On the other hand, the Nabateans’ savants had given their scientists the ability to replicate what happens and how it happens.
They were now able to produce savants on demand! It was a thrilling breakthrough for them—and highly unethical for the rest of the world.
But the world didn’t know.
In much the same way as quantum theory postulates that an object can exist in two states at the same time, the Nabatean savants now had the ability to be both normal and savant at the same time.
It was this plan of world domination that Graziella, Mathieu, and the rest of the Council were committed to following. However, to their frustration, of late, their progress was hampered by one man—Carter Devereux.
Chapter 8 - Your task is done here
When Kelly and her team finally arrived in Germany, they had all managed more or less four hours of uneasy sleep. They suspected it was probably going to be the last they had for a while.
Kelly was briefed by the senior investigator on site.
“Was it nuclear?” she asked, reflecting her earlier question to Terrance Ham about an EMP.
“No, we don’t think so. We haven’t detected any radiation. But you need to know the media is going nuts and speculating the same thing. Can I take it that you and your team are going to take on the media duties from now?”
“I’ll speak to my superior officer and get back to you. But if there’s no radiation, we need to determine what else it might have been. I have two forensic experts with me, so that will be their first task. Can you take me to the epicenter?”
“No need,” he said, pointing to an area where no buildings, trees, or anything else could be seen. “The weird thing is there’s no hole in the ground. But you’ll see that for yourself. If you’ll excuse me, I need to let my superior know you’re here.”
Kelly nodded and quickly dispatched her team according to their specialties, sending some to interview witnesses and others to analyze residue, blast pattern, how the buildings were destroyed, and any other evidence they could collect.
It started almost immediately and became nauseating over the course of their two-week investigation—the incessant harassment by media, foreign governments, and their own command. What the hell happened there?
To dispel the speculation and thriving conspiracy theories about a mini-nuke, along with the frank disbelief when they said it wasn’t, Kelly was allowed to invite nuclear scientists from four countries to conduct tests. The scientists, shocked when they saw Kelly’s crew combing the ruins sans protective gear, were finally convinced when their own tests revealed no radiation.
However, they couldn’t answer the next question. If not a nuke, then what?
There was no residue indicating chemical or conventional explosives, either.
If not for the magnitude of the destruction, Kelly might have advocated trying to sweep it under the rug and deny there’d even been a blast. However, there was no way to hide three-hundred and fifty deaths, nor to prevent Russian and Chinese satellites from photographing the devastated area and publishing the photos.
The world demanded an explanation. The headache had turned into a migraine.
The fact t
hat Kelly and her crew, and by extension, the US government, couldn’t explain it would leave everyone from the President of the United States on down to the lowliest military PR flak with egg all over their faces.
No explanation was not an option.
The German government, the European Union, NATO, everyone demanded answers.
It’s a well-known phenomenon that the most ridiculous tale will be believed by everyone provided it is repeated often enough. The professional spinners within the US government went to work and came up with something everyone could at least understand.
It was a meteorite strike, like the one that hit Russia at almost the same time of year in 2013—but smaller.
On the surface, it was logical. At least now there was an explanation. All they had to do was repeat it until everyone stopped asking.
Closer examination, however, showed the meteorite explanation had a few critical holes, unlike the epicenter of the explosion at Patch Barracks. That didn’t matter much, though. The explanation pacified the public, and that’s what was important for the politicians.
Kelly and her crew had a different role to play in this drama, and making politicians and the public happy was not it—they had to find the true source of the explosion and the perpetrators.
None of the eyewitnesses saw or heard anything coming from the sky. In fact, that was the one thing they were consistent about, the weird blinding flash of blue-white light preceding the explosion rose from the ground up to the sky—not the other way around.
There was no impact crater. The devastation was circular, so it hadn’t been caused by a near-miss.
Kelly and her team remained perplexed and had to call for reinforcements in the form of nuclear physicists from the US when one of her crew mentioned the possibility of a fusion explosion.
When she spoke to her first choice of expert, a leading researcher from Princeton University, he offended her before she’d finished explaining what she wanted.
