***Unable to compute probability of specified transfer event…quantum systems are inherently unpredictable***
Winger gave up. “I guess we’ll just have to chance it.”
Singh cringed as the first impacts from the meteors slammed into the ground a few kilometers away. The floor of the hut trembled with the shock waves. Feathered masks and headdresses fell from the walls of the hut.
The nanotroopers gathered around the Sphere and glared at the thing with a mixture of dread and anticipation.
“We can’t stay here, Skipper,” said Barnes.
Just then, a terrific BOOM! overhead nearly flatted the hut with a shock wave. Singh chanced a look outside, saw the largest meteor now erupting into a red-white fireball, tumbling, roaring and hissing as it headed down, headed for Earth. Impact was only seconds away.
“In the name of Almighty Vishnu…this is the big one, Major! It’s going to hit in a few seconds…the village, the whole area may be—“
“And the volcano—look!” cried Barnes.
A massive explosion had just blown off the top of Kipwezi. Wreathed in reddened smoke and steam, rivers of white hot magma churned down its slopes, scalding and vaporizing trees, rocks, anything in its path. Through the clouds, it was clear that Kipwezi was no longer a semi-conical mountain, but was now sheared off at the top into a flattened boiling crater, vomiting spouts and geysers of magma as it crumbled down in all directions.
White-hot torrents of scalding magma were coursing through the fields and trees, heading straight for the village of Engebbe.
“Doc, prepare for containment…assume config C-1 immediately!”
The swarm sloughed off most of its replicants and the master bot homed on the shoulder capsule in Winger’s shoulder. Moments later, Doc II transited the open port and drifted down into secure containment. The capsule port snapped shut with a slight sting.
“We’ll need Doc, wherever we wind up.” Winger looked at Barnes and Singh. “We don’t have much choice. This place is done for.”
He mimed with his hands and fingers what they should do. Standing straight over the Sphere was a challenge, with rolling shock waves slamming into the village, flattening everything. Hurricane force winds were building outside and in a great crash, the mud walls and thatched roof of the shaman’s hut collapsed and were quickly blown away. Beyond them, the village had simply disappeared in the winds, leaving only smoldering stones where the central fire pit had once been.
“On my mark…and make sure we touch at the same time!” Winger yelled over the maelstrom.
The nanotroopers each took a breath, flexed their fingers and lowered them as close as they dared to the Sphere’s surface, poised scant millimeters above its glowing curve.
Inside Winger’s shoulder capsule, the Doc II master bot was still computing probabilities on likely transfer locations, given different types of physical contact they could make with the Sphere.
Doc chimed an alert on the coupler link in the back of Winger’s head.
***Base, I have finished one sequence of computations, correlating proximity ops with transfer probabilities…analysis shows that--***
“Three---“
“Two---“
“One—“
“Mark!”
As one, the nanotroopers of Quantum Dawn swiped their index fingers across the slightly warm, still glowing surface of the Sphere.
In an instant, they were transported…but to where?
Doc knew the most probable result but the comm link was broken and all of them went hurtling at breakneck speed down a long, curving corridor, flying through a sleet of polygons and triangles and pyramids and tetrahedrals and things they couldn’t name until at long last, they came to a teeth-rattling, bone-crunching stop right on their butts and the universe was still spinning for a long time afterward before it finally began to slow down…
They knew they weren’t at Kipwezi anymore.
Or at Engebbe village.
Or at the swamp….
Only Doc had the vaguest idea of where they had gone.
TO BE CONTINUED
About the Author
Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses…just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He’s been happily married for 25 years. He’s also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Keeshond dog named Kelsey.
To get a peek at Philip Bosshardt’s upcoming work, recent reviews, excerpts and general updates on the writing life, visit his blog The Word Shed at: https://thewdshed.blogspot.com.
Nanotroopers Episode 19: Mount Kipwezi Page 19