The run will proceed.
Thank you, Shireen Darvish. This has been an interesting experience.
And with a jolt, Shireen was back in the VR garden. The Mind had said its piece and simply ejected her. The transition was so abrupt that for a moment she felt confused. She couldn’t make sense of the sudden tranquillity of the garden after the noise inside Mag-8. The near-omniscient presence of the Mind, along with the threat of the swarm, had gone. She felt strangely alone.
Bring me back please, Zak.
Gradually, she became aware of a different sensation, one not of standing up, but of lying horizontally. And there was Zak, gently removing her helmet with a worried look on his face. ‘Shireen? Shireen. You’re back now.’ His voice sounded distant, as if he was at the other end of a long tunnel.
Shireen knew she should smile but suddenly felt her stomach heave. Pushing herself up and away from the FBI man, she was violently sick.
She felt his hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry, Zak,’ she slurred. She was shivering uncontrollably, and she noticed that she was drenched in sweat. Every inch of her body ached. It felt as though she was one big bruise and her head pounded with a sickly headache.
She could see the concern in Zak’s eyes but didn’t yet have the strength to stay sitting up and instead flopped back on the chair. Then she looked at him and mumbled, her voice a croak, ‘I was right, Zak, there was a swarm inside Mag-8. It … it … it was horrible. It would have destroyed everything.’ She shuddered and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
The look of horror on Zak’s face impelled her to continue quickly. ‘But I think it’s OK now. The Mind … it spoke to me, Zak … and it neutralized the swarm … Ignition will go ahead.’
Again she tried to smile, because she felt the situation warranted it. She couldn’t believe she had done it. Or rather, the Mind had done it.
And she couldn’t stop shivering.
It was one hundred and sixty minutes to Ignition.
45
Tuesday, 17 September – 13:15, Mag-8, Amman
Marc and Sarah were released from the booster hall a few minutes after Lockdown. They persuaded the younger of the two soldiers guarding the block to lock the door behind them and to remain stationed outside. They had tried and failed to find Hogan inside the labyrinthine building – there were just too many places he could hide – but they were certain he was going nowhere.
It was too late to stop Ignition now, but they still hurried back to the Mag-8 building. Marc attempted to contact Shireen. She wasn’t responding.
Inside the facility it was a hive of frantic activity. With a brusque ‘C’mon, we need to find Hassan’, Marc grabbed Sarah’s hand and headed for the control room. They pushed their way through the milling scientists, technicians and officials, but there was no sign of the security chief. Marc recognized one of the younger accelerator physicists and stopped him as he was dashing past. ‘Wait. You. What the hell is going on in there?’
‘We don’t know for sure. No one can make sense of it,’ he replied breathlessly. ‘The Mind is behaving irrationally. First it went completely dark in there, then the temperature suddenly dropped to colder than a deep-freeze. We’ve no idea what it’s up to.’
‘And the Mind hasn’t told you anything?’
‘No, we’re in Lockdown. All we can do is guess at what the issue has been.’
Everything seemed to be falling apart. This was the nightmare scenario. ‘So, has it aborted Ignition?’
‘No, it seems it’s still going ahead. But something is very wrong.’ The young man was close to tears. The dismaying conclusion had to be that after everything they had gone through, a Mind had been hacked, again. This was the end of the road.
Qiang now appeared by Marc’s side. ‘Where’ve you been? Have you heard? The order has just been given to evacuate both CERN and J-PARC.’ He had a wild pleading look in his eyes, as though sure his older colleague could figure out a way to make things right. ‘Marc, they say that’s all we can do now. That if we can’t abort and have to assume Mag-8 has failed then we have to destroy two of the dark-matter labs before Ignition.’
Marc just stared at Qiang. If those labs were destroyed that would knock out six of the eight beams. Yes, they would avert an immediate catastrophe, but it would signal the end of the Odin Project. He was turning to Sarah when his wristpad pinged. Shireen. He didn’t really want to talk to the young cyb, but there was an urgency in her voice that focused his mind. She breathlessly recounted what she’d experienced with the Mind.
‘Hold on, Shireen, I need to stop you there. I’m going to patch you through to everyone here. They need to hear this from you.’ He jabbed at his wristpad, patching her in to the main control-room network. Her face suddenly appeared, multiple times, on the screens in both the control room and the viewing gallery. There were gasps as the young Iranian told her story. Beside him Sarah mouthed, ‘Oh, my God,’ and held her hands to her mouth. Disbelief quickly turned to amazement and awe as Shireen’s account was corroborated by the young FBI cybersecurity officer who stood at her side.
Shireen appeared dazed by what she’d been through. Dark bags shrouded her eyes, her normally olive-coloured skin looked pale and sickly. And yet at that moment, for Marc at least, she was the most beautiful person in the world. It seemed she had just, single-handedly, averted the destruction of all life on Earth.
A tide of relief and excitement was quickly spreading through Mag-8. Surely, thought Marc, the order to destroy those two labs would be rescinded once these new revelations were communicated.
He was snapped out of his reverie by the sudden arrival of General Hassan, who pulled him and Sarah to one side.
‘These are extraordinary times, so I will dispense with any apologies for what occurred earlier.’
He didn’t look like a man expressing regret and Marc studied him dispassionately. Would he listen to them now?
The officer continued: ‘And I admit that I appear not to have had it “all in hand” as I indicated earlier. Your friends in Washington have done something that I do not fully understand, but my scientists inform me that it was both foolish and brave and may indeed have just saved the Project.’
‘So, has the order been given to stand down those missiles aimed at CERN and J-PARC?’ Marc glanced at Sarah.
‘Not yet. That would be foolish. But all the labs around the world have just watched that extraordinary message from Washington. So, the fingers are, shall we say, no longer hovering over the buttons.’ He let out a snort that Marc assumed was meant to indicate amusement.
‘Good. Because Dr Maitlin has something she needs to tell you.’
Marc nodded to Sarah and then left her to bring the general up to speed on what she had learned from Hogan. He checked the time. 15:05. T-minus 40 minutes. He turned back to Qiang, who appeared to be in a daze.
‘How are you holding up, mate?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure. I don’t think I can cope with much more of this. Anyway, you look pretty terrible yourself.’
‘Thanks,’ Marc grunted. ‘Listen, can we just run through what we know?’ Qiang nodded. ‘OK … So, as far as we can tell, the swarm hasn’t caused any irreparable damage, right? But is there any way that it, or something else, could have infected the Mind itself?’
‘I doubt it. I think we just have to trust the Mind now.’ Qiang neither sounded nor looked in the least bit reassuring.
‘So, tell me, why do I still have this nagging feeling we’re missing something?’
Just then Sarah touched him gently on the shoulder. He turned to her.
‘A security team have been dispatched to the booster hall to find Hogan,’ Sarah said with grim satisfaction.
The general nodded. ‘If he’s in there, we’ll find him. We have to get some answers out of him and we don’t have much more time. Now, will you please excuse me?’
Sarah said, ‘Marc, Shireen wants to connect up with you, and Qiang too. She can’
t do much more from her end, but we could use her brain on this.’
‘Sure,’ said Marc. Everyone else seemed to think that they now had a clear run to Ignition. A bomb had been defused and the swarm had been neutralized. So, why was he still feeling so uneasy? It didn’t help that both Qiang and Sarah seemed similarly anxious.
Shireen’s voice popped into Marc’s ear. She sounded nearly back to her old self. Good. ‘Actually, Marc, though of course I’ll do anything to help, I really think you and Qiang are best placed to know what could possibly still go wrong. Hopefully nothing, of course. But you two understand the science better than anyone.’ Marc looked at Qiang. He couldn’t think of anything to contribute.
‘Maybe this will help.’ Sarah frowned. ‘When he thought he’d trapped me, Hogan boasted it would be something simple, something that could be easily overlooked. That doesn’t sound like he was referring to the nanoswarm. But if not, what could he mean?’
Marc shook his head slowly. ‘The Mind should be able to check every tiny component, and if it finds anything wrong it can either correct it or abort Ignition.’
‘But what if the swarm has indeed been successful?’ suggested Qiang.
Marc and Sarah looked at him. It was Sarah who completed his train of logic. ‘Jesus. You mean, when it attacked and sliced through those girders, that was just a distraction? We were meant to think that it had been caught before it could carry out its plan—’
‘—when in fact, it had already caused the damage it was meant to,’ finished Qiang.
The enormity – and implications – of Qiang’s suggestion was beginning to sink in when they were distracted by a sudden commotion. Several soldiers had entered and with them a restrained Senator Peter Hogan. Dried blood covered his face and the front of his shirt. He didn’t seem to be resisting.
General Hassan turned and screamed at his men. ‘Get him out of here! Now!’
One of the soldiers blurted out, ‘But, sir, you said to bring him to you as soon as—’
‘NOW! Ibnil kelb! Take him down to my office.’ With that, Hassan marched off behind them out of the control room.
As he was being led away Hogan pulled back for a second and turned to look at Marc and Sarah. And he winked.
Could he sense their worry? Did he know they had thwarted the nanoswarm? And if he did, was there something else? Something so simple that it had occurred to no one?
Marc rubbed his eyes – God, he was tired – and turned to the others. He wasn’t an experimentalist. He dealt with equations and lines of computer code, not real magnets and electronic instruments. But it was Shireen he addressed. ‘Shireen, are you still hearing all this? OK, you said you first saw the swarm down by the focusing magnet, just above the vertical shaft where the beam disappears. What could—?’
Then it hit him. ‘Of course. The shutter! We need to check the shutter,’ he shouted. Qiang and Sarah, along with many of the technicians in the room, just stared at him.
‘What do you mean?’ said Qiang. ‘What about the shutter?’
‘Think about it. What’s the simplest component that could go wrong? I mean, short of flicking a switch that turns off the electricity to the superconducting magnets. Isn’t it the shutter that blocks off the beam path?’
‘But why would the beam path ever need to be blocked off?’ Sarah jumped in. ‘That doesn’t make sense, Marc.’
But he was no longer listening. He could feel the adrenalin beginning to kick in as he looked around the control room. ‘Where’s Maher? I need to see Maher.’ He hurried to the nearest Mag-8 technician, a young woman sitting at a terminal desk. ‘Where is Maher?’
‘Who?’ she blurted, looking nervous.
‘Maher bloody Haydar. Your boss! The chief fucking accelerator engineer. Where is he?’
‘Oh, I … I—’
‘Never mind. I’ll find him.’ Marc knew he should stop and explain, but never had time been more precious.
‘Wait there,’ he yelled over his shoulder at Sarah and Qiang as he barged out of the control room. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
He ran down the metal steps to ground level. The Project’s engineer was talking to a couple of technicians by one of the giant steel doors that secured the interior of the Mag-8 hall from the outside world.
‘Haydar!’ Marc yelled. The man looked up, a concerned expression on his face.
‘What is it, Professor Bruckner? You look like you’ve seen a jinn.’
‘The shutter on the focusing magnet,’ Marc began. ‘You told me it was both the simplest and the most important component in the whole place, correct?’
‘It is, yes.’ The engineer smiled. ‘If that shutter is closed when the chargino pulse reaches the quadrupole, then it will be blocked entirely.’ He paused, a frown crossing his face. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘And you’d know if it was closed, right?’
Maher Haydar, a man fiercely proud of SESAME and what had been achieved with Mag-8, looked at him as if he had lost his mind. ‘But of course it is open. We made sure it’s open and the Mind will have done so too.’
‘Yes, yes, but is there a way of checking now?’
Haydar looked bewildered, then relaxed a little. ‘Professor, of all the things we have to be concerned with, believe me, the focusing-magnet shutter is not one of them. Even if it, somehow, got closed again – say from a sudden wind blowing off the desert, through some foul miraculous trickery of Iblis himself – then it would trigger a warning and the Mind would know about it.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Marc noticed that the two engineers Maher had been talking to were shaking their heads as though he were a fool. He ignored them.
‘Damn it, tell me if I’m wrong—’ He paused, to gather his thoughts. He had to get this right. No room for any mistakes now. ‘Every one of the thousands of components within the Mag-8 facility has a multitude of instruments and sensors, monitoring and calibrating constantly, making sure everything is running smoothly, and ready to warn the Mind about any anomaly, yes?’
‘That is correct.’
‘Everything, apart from the shutter in the beam line just below the quadrupole magnet. That’s the one component that relies on old technology. We joked about this a couple of days ago. It’s so that it can be operated manually. It has a safety override that allows human intervention.’
‘Again, correct, Professor. I don’t understand where—’
‘So how does the Mind know if it is open or closed?’
‘Well, of course there is a sensor there that tells it—’
‘—but just the one sensor, right? Not like every other component in Mag-8.’
‘Just the one, yes. We build in redundancies, but in some cases that really isn’t necessary.’
Marc grabbed the Jordanian by the shoulders. ‘And what if that were damaged somehow – say its electronics had been fried, so the Mind still thought it was open when it wasn’t?’
Maher stared at him in stunned silence for a couple of seconds, then he looked down at the pad he was holding and tapped it. As he did so he said, ‘There is a camera inside the magnet casing pointing directly at the shutter, that is not currently in use. It is not linked to the main network controlled by the Mind, so I may be able to turn it on remotely.’
Suddenly, the engineer let out a horrified whimper. He looked up at Marc and turned the pad towards him so he could see the screen. Marc felt a chill run through him. There was the shutter – a ten-centimetre-thick lead disc the diameter of a dinner plate – and it was sitting across the opening through which the chargino beam was due to pass in a few minutes’ time.
He looked up at the engineer. ‘Is there any way of getting inside Mag-8 and manually opening that shutter?’
Haydar had a glazed look on his face. The man was in complete shock. ‘Maher!’ Marc shouted. ‘Please!’
The Jordanian’s eyes refocused. ‘There is a way, yes. But to use it … it would be suicide.’
Marc checked the time:
five minutes to Ignition. ‘Where? How? Talk to me, damn it.’
Haydar’s eyes brimmed with tears. He nodded. ‘Follow me,’ he said, his voice no more than a whisper. He turned, his colleagues seemingly forgotten, and walked quickly away, with Marc at his shoulder.
‘There’s a way in around the other side. Few people know about it. The Mind certainly doesn’t. There are no sensors there and the entrance is made entirely from basic non-smart materials, so it’s totally off-grid.’
As they made their way round the building, Marc went over what he knew. If the shutter was closed, all the charginos would be stopped before they transformed back into neutralinos. There would be no contribution from Mag-8 to provide the precise balance required in the core when the other seven beams met, and that would be that. He cursed under his breath. He couldn’t believe it, after all these months. This was the nightmare scenario everyone had worked so hard to avoid. They had to open that shutter, and they had less than five minutes to do it. They were now in a quiet corridor that skirted the concrete shielding dome that housed the giant bending magnets. On the far side of Mag-8, Haydar stopped at a large, nondescript grey metal door. He stared at it for a moment as though he’d forgotten why he was there.
‘Maher. Now open it, please!’
Haydar turned to him, an expression of desperate sadness on his face. ‘But, Professor Bruckner, it won’t do any good. We’ve got no time to send a bot in there. And even if we did, the Mind wouldn’t let it get very far.’
Marc paused and took a deep breath. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘We’re not sending a bot in. I’m going in. Now open the goddam door!’
‘It’s four minutes to Ignition, Professor. You don’t have time. And if you are in there when the beam arrives … the radiation burst … Also, it’s sixty degrees below zero in there at the moment. You won’t last four minutes without proper—’
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