He opened another portal, and it was only a matter of minutes before he, Juliette and the spark generator were standing in the sitting room of the MacMahon house. They looked around. It was three in the afternoon in Boston and Sol knew from his experience of the past six weeks that the young agents would already be in bed asleep. If there had been anybody ferrying Founders out, they’d have been sitting in one of the comfy chairs, immersed in their own brainwaves. There was nobody.
‘Looks like we’ve missed today’s fun, Jules,’ he said. ‘What say you and I go and get a bite to eat. This’ll have to keep until tomorrow.’
In fact, it didn’t. Sol and Juliette had no sooner fixed themselves some food from the automat and settled down in front of the tri-vid, when Josh and Tao appeared, closely followed by Deira. They were still slightly bleary-eyed from sleep and stared at the large crate uncomprehendingly. Sol wasn’t entirely surprised, since neither Josh nor Tao had seen it before, though he was a bit disappointed that Deira didn’t seem to recognise it. She glared at it disapprovingly.
‘What the hell’s that thing sitting on my carpet?’
‘Not much.’ Sol continued smugly munching on his hamburger. ‘Just my contribution to the evacuation process.’
Josh and Tao exchanged baffled glances, but Deira had finally recognised it and a look of amazed comprehension came over her.
‘The spark generator? You’ve got the spark generator? Hell, why didn’t I think of that?’
Sol smiled at Juliette and continued munching happily while the others put it all together. Tao was the next one to understand.
‘Of course! That’s what helped me escape the first-time round. We’ve been looking at this problem all wrong.’
‘It’s all to do with the energy levels in sub-quantal space,’ Deira said excitedly. ‘We know there’s a massive energy gradient between the two spaces and we also know the longer you stay in sub-quantal space, the lower your energy levels become. The Founders have been there for billions of years, so they exist at incredibly low energy levels. No wonder they’re so difficult to extract.’
‘That’s pretty much what Chayka thinks too.’ Sol was milking this for all it was worth. ‘I put the idea to him and he seemed very taken with it. He’s going to do some more work on it, but I thought we ought to just give it a try. Nothing to lose, after all.’
Josh had finally got it now and was grinning broadly.
‘Dad, you’re amazing. If this works, you might be the one responsible for saving the universe. What made you think of it?’
‘Well, Jules and I were laughing about when Tao had appeared in Markus’s lab, and Jules thought it was Adam. Then it struck me – came out of nowhere, really. So, we hopped over to see John Kendrick, and he arranged for us to have this.’
Deira was pacing up and down, looking more excited than Sol had seen her for weeks, and Josh was clearly thinking hard.
‘How are we going to use it?’ Deira said. ‘With Tao, it was easy, we just aimed at her virtual body. Do we just get the Founders to do the same?’
‘That won’t work this time.’ Josh was frowning, clearly trying to work through the problem. ‘Their energy levels are far too low for them to create a virtual body in normal space, and they’d need far more than an exajoule to free themselves. Best we can probably hope for is that giving them what energy we can will make the piggy-backing process easier. Suppose we get each founder to come to the designated piggy-backing spot, and then we fire the energy pulse at that spot?’
‘Could work,’ Tao said. ‘I’ve had experience generating a virtual body, so I’ll go in and repeat the performance. Then you’ll have a locus to aim for. Shall we give it a try?’
‘Might as well,’ Josh said. ‘Keep your fingers crossed, Dad.’
Sol said nothing. He was basking in the rosy glow of having thought of something none of the others had – as well as continuing to enjoy his hamburger. It was enough for him that he’d been useful at last. That is, if this worked. For some reason, he was quietly confident that it would, and he watched with enormous pleasure as the other three attacked the box and dragged the spark generator out.
It took some time to set the thing up properly, Juliette trying to remember how Dr Markus had done it, and Deira insisting that she knew best. Sol stayed out of it and let them fight over it for a while before wondering over and calmly doing the job himself. Once again, they all looked at him as if he were some alien being, and he grinned contentedly. It was no mystery, it was just that, unlike Deira and Juliette, he had taken notice of how Markus had set the thing up the first time.
‘Ready to go,’ he said. ‘What sort of output do you reckon we’ll need?’
That was the crucial question, of course. All they were trying to do was speed up the evacuation, so anything would be better than nothing. More would be better still. Josh looked doubtfully at the spark generator.
‘The more, the better, obviously, but I don’t know how this machine will hold up if we continuously use it on maximum output. We need a balance, something that’ll make bringing the Founders out a lot easier but doesn’t risk overloading the generator. I don’t know how we quantify it.’
Deira was still pacing. ‘We need to work backwards. We have about fourteen thousand Founders left, I think. So, if we aim to have them all out in another twelve weeks, that makes … seven per hour, fourteen per day per agent.’ She looked doubtful now. ‘That’s a hell of a lot. Fourteen trips to sub-quantal space per day! Is that possible?’
‘I think it might be if we keep each trip as short as possible,’ Tao said. ‘I suggest we leave ourselves a bit of headroom, too. You’ve based your calculation on twelve more weeks, Deira. That brings us to around five months for the whole exercise – very close to Chayka’s deadline. What do you say we shorten that to ten weeks? It’d only add one more Founder per hour. So, eight Founders per hour – one every seven and a half minutes.’
‘Agreed!’ Josh said enthusiastically. ‘Let’s get this thing done. Over to you, Tao.’
Tao took up position on the sofa and closed her eyes. ‘Immersing now.’
She didn’t waste any time and dived straight down into sub-quantal space. Barth arrived soon after and enquired about the unscheduled visit. He listened incredulously to her explanation.’
‘I can’t believe I didn’t think about the energy gradient. So much wasted time.’
‘We don’t know if it’ll work yet. Barth, I’m going to need some Founders to volunteer for this. Could you find some while I fix our coordinates?’
Barth immediately disappeared to find some of his colleagues, and Tao cast her mind back to the time she had first been stuck down here, trying to recall how she’d gone about contacting Juliette. It wasn’t as easy as she’d first thought, and she had a few halting starts before she remembered. She focused on Josh’s DNA instead of Juliette’s and initiated the procedure she thought she’d used before. Sure enough, she was suddenly aware of looking into the MacMahon living room, as if through a window. Juliette gave a little shriek and pointed at her, and Sol manipulated the spark generator so that it would fire directly at her image. He stepped back, ready to fire on her command.
At that moment, Barth appeared with a Founder, and then ensued a complicated little dance whereby Tao moved away slightly, and the Founder was placed in exactly the spot she had previously occupied. She waited for Sol to fire, and then realised she’d discontinued her virtual body when she’d moved the Founder, so Sol had lost his cue. She cursed silently and re-initialised her virtual body, appearing once more in the living room, but in a slightly different position.
‘Keep the stimulator focused where I was, not where I am now.’ She said quickly, seeing Sol about to fiddle with the machine. Then fire.’
Sol had decided that, for a machine that could deliver a shock of one exajoule, a hundred terajoules shouldn’t put too much strain on it, so he fired. The spark flew out of the generator – and neatly blew-up the tri-vid. Ther
e was no apparent response in sub-quantal space.
Tao swore again. This was proving to be far more troublesome than she’d imagined. The problem now was related to the separation of sub-quantal space from normal space. For this to work, the Founder had to do what she had done and punch a hole between the two to provide a conduit for the spark. And that simply couldn’t be done – the Founder had been in sub-quantal space for billions of years and its energy level was so low it couldn’t physically create a virtual body in normal space.
Tao looked at Barth for help. ‘We’re stuck. You need a certain energy level to be able to punch the required hole between spaces, and you simply don’t have it. Any ideas?’
Barth was frowning and occasionally running his hand through his hair in a gesture that Tao found very human.
‘Perhaps you should do your virtual body thing after my colleague has piggy-backed onto you. Then they’d be in the right place.’ He looked doubtful. ‘It might work.’
‘Not bad, but piggy-backing itself takes up considerable time and energy.’ Then it hit her. ‘Shit, it’s obvious. The problem’s the energy gradient. To be successfully evacuated, a Founder must increase its energy potential to that of normal space, the energy coming from us, the agents. That’s why we find it so exhausting, right?’ Barth nodded. ‘Right, so instead of trying to supply the Founder with the extra energy directly, which seems impossible, the agent takes it. The Founder then extracts it during piggy-backing and evacuation. Make sense?’
‘Sounds reasonable.’
Tao formed her virtual body again and re-appeared in the MacMahon suiting room, where Sol was looking mournfully at the exploded tri-vid and being scolded by Deira for being so petty.
‘We’ve had one or two problems,’ she said. ‘Other than an exploding tri-vid, I mean. Sorry about that, Sol.’
Sol shrugged his shoulders and settled himself at the spark generator again. ‘Needed upgrading anyway. What do you want me to do now?’
‘Focus on me and fire again. I’ll absorb the charge and we’ll see where it takes us.’
Sol did as he was told and re-focused the generator. ‘Firing in three … two … one … fire!’
This time the spark leaped across the gap between spaces into Tao’s virtual body.
‘Yes! Piggy-backing now.’
Her image disappeared from the sitting room and everyone watched for any signs of her emerging. After ten minutes, her eyes opened, and the Founder’s energy body appeared briefly before heading off. She looked tired but pleased.
‘That was easier than normal, but still damned tiring. How long have I been?’
‘Ten minutes,’ Josh said. ‘We need to improve on that for this to be successful. ‘However,’ he slapped Sol on the back, ‘I think we have proof of concept. Well done, again, Dad. You’re vindicated.’
They spent the next hour fine-tuning the spark. Tao went back four times in all, and brought four Founders out, each faster than the one before. Finally, she managed to carry out the whole process in seven minutes. She looked exhausted but hugely pleased with herself.
‘So, what size does the spark have to be?’ she asked.
‘Five-hundred terajoules,’ Sol said. ‘We could go higher, but that seems to do the job. We’ve cracked it.’
‘Only three things to consider now,’ Deira said, and everyone looked at her. They thought the problem was solved. What else could there be? ‘One – we’ll all need instruction in how to create a virtual body; two – someone will have to be on permanent station to fire the generator; three – if we’re shifting Founders at the rate of one every seven minutes, we’ll need to stagger work periods, or we’ll be falling over each other to get a charge.’
Josh stared at Deira in something approaching awe.
‘God, Mum, you never stop amazing me. Your organisational ability is staggering. You and Dad together are a real force to be reckoned with.’
Deira glowed, and even Sol found himself feeling better than he had for several weeks at this sudden praise.
Deira laughed. ‘You’re altogether too kind. I’m only talking about a few practical details.’
‘Whatever! I’m not going to say it again. Just take it from me that you’re both something else – and I can see Tao agrees.’
Indeed, Tao was smiling and gently nodding.
‘I do agree. However, I don’t want to be the one to make your heads too big to get through the door, so I think I’ll say no more.’ She turned to Josh. ‘I’m feeling pretty done in, but I think I can knock-off number one on Deira’s list before I collapse. If I show you, Josh, you can show the rest.’
‘Sounds good to me.’ Josh was all enthusiasm and efficiency now. ‘Then we’ll rouse the others and sort out items two and three on Mum’s list.’
Chapter 46
Now they had the spark generator, the pace of the Founders’ evacuation speeded up immensely. Including Deira, there were eight agents capable of contributing to the effort, and the spark size of five-hundred terajoules appeared to be just about right to enable one Founder to be freed every seven minutes.
Sol decided that, since he couldn’t actively assist with the evacuation, he’d take responsibility for firing the energy pulse, though he felt a little embarrassed that he seemed to have nabbed the easy option. It turned out to be anything but. With eight agents, each doing a shift of two hours, he was working a sixteen-hour day, and with only seven minutes between sparks, he had no real chance of a decent rest during those sixteen hours. After a few days, the continuing grind was obviously taking its toll, and after a week, it became obvious he couldn’t continue. It was simply inhuman.
It was Chard who came up with the obvious solution – he would fire the device himself. From that moment on, the PWC was left permanently propped up in the living room, next to the spark generator. The AI had been suffering his own version of Sol’s melancholia for some time, castigating himself for his frequent mistakes, and feeling increasingly useless. Although firing the spark generator was repetitious, it was apparently something only he could do for any protracted time and that made him feel good about himself again. Everybody was happy.
After fourteen weeks of unrelenting toil, the evacuation finally looked as if it were coming to an end. Deira’s quick calculations, modified by Tao, had proved not to be too far off the mark. However, they’d assumed that eight Founders would be freed every hour, and that sort of effort proved just a little too much, especially for Pyotr and Chloe, who’d only just become proficient with the time fold. There were still about six hundred Founders left, though everyone was feeling relatively upbeat, expecting that those would be freed within the next few days. Everything was looking good.
Then it happened.
Josh was currently on work duty and had just immersed and joined Barth in sub-quantal space. Back in normal space, Deira had recently woken up and joined Sol for some breakfast. They called it breakfast, but it could have been any time of day, varying between the agents according to their sleep periods. As it happened, Deira’s breakfast happened at six in the evening, which corresponded to the time Sol fancied some dinner, so the two ate together – just slightly different meals.
They were sitting over coffee at the end of the meal when the whole house suddenly shook. It felt very like an earthquake, but it was accompanied by a dimming of the sunshine that had been streaming in through the window, and a vague “opaqueness” to everything. It lasted perhaps two minutes, then it was over. Sol turned to Deira.
‘What the fuck?’
‘Don’t know, but I don’t like it.’
Deira went over to the window and gazed out at the street. It was a scene of complete chaos. People were running here and there, trying to get out of the street, and masonry from nearby buildings was strewn across the road as if a bomb had gone off. One or two trees had come down and one had fallen across a nearby ground vehicle, pinning the single occupant in his seat.
‘A minute,’ Deira said, and folded out
to the scene. Quickly, she folded the tree away a couple of metres and helped the elderly man out, grimacing when she saw the state of his right arm. She didn’t hesitate but formed a portal to the nearby hospital and took the man through to the accident department, before folding home again. Sol had roused the other agents and they were all sitting waiting for her return – all except Josh.
Where’s Josh?’ Her question was answered almost immediately when Josh appeared in his usual flash of yellow. He looked grim.
‘We’re out of time. I’ve just been to see the Eich and they confirmed what Barth and I thought. That was what’s called a “universe quake”.’
‘You mean it wasn’t just Boston that was affected?’ Sol said.
‘No, Dad, I meant what I said. The whole damned universe felt that. Hell, we even felt it in sub-quantal space. The constants have begun to degrade rapidly. I don’t know how much time we’ve got left, but we need to get the rest of those Founders out now.’
‘Don’t you even have an estimate?’ Deira said. ‘Is it hours, days, or what?
‘Barth thought no more than a few days. The Eich say it’s probably more like forty-eight hours, maybe less. Guys, this is still do-able, but we need to up our game again. There are five hundred and sixty Founders left to evacuate, and I want them all out in forty hours. That means fourteen per hour minimum, one every four minutes. I think our shifts have just doubled in length, and we need to start immediately.’
‘Then come on!’ yelled Deira. ‘Let’s get going.’
They had a swift discussion about work schedules, then Victor and Dominique returned to the rest that had recently been disturbed. There were six others, including Deira. Up to now, they’d been working on sequential two-hour shifts. With so little time left, that had to change, so it was agreed that two agents at a time would now complete a four-hour shift, the first two being Josh and Tao. Although this was a little out of phase, Josh said he needed to brief Barth about the new arrangements so elected to advance his work schedule slightly. Tao wasn’t going to be separated from him.
Gods of Titan- The Cosmic Constants Page 39