The Sixth Idea

by P. J. Tracy

  Roadrunner looked over at her and gave her an apologetic half-smile. “I always expect the worst. It’s nice to be wrong.”

  Annie had half a mind to tell Roadrunner that if you always anticipated the worst and it didn’t happen, you were torturing yourself for no reason; and if you anticipated the worst and it did happen, you were just living through it twice. But now was not the time for sharing psychological chestnuts. “Are we almost there?”

  “It should be up on the left. Lydia said it was a big white one with a Grecian-style portico where the family name is. Buchanan. There it is.” He pointed ahead.

  Annie stopped the car in front of an ornate stone structure that might have once been white, but was now discolored from decades in the elements. How many decades? she wondered. More than six, for sure.

  She shivered a little as the weak late afternoon light, the softly falling snow, the shadows of surrounding trees played tricks on her eyes. She suddenly realized she had seen one too many horror movies in her life to feel good about prancing into an old mausoleum filled with the bones of a bunch of strangers. Maybe there was such a thing as ghosts, and maybe those ghosts wouldn’t be very pleased by their intrusion into their sacred place of eternal rest.

  Don’t ever whistle past a graveyard . . .

  “Annie?”

  “What?”

  “Are you ready?” Roadrunner was clutching the bouquet of flowers.

  “Uh . . . do you think it’s going to be dark in there?”

  He looked a little alarmed. “I never thought about that. We don’t have a real flashlight, just the flashlight apps on our phones, and they suck.”

  They should have thought of that at the car rental counter. Do you have a flashlight we could borrow for our trip? Because we’re going to be creeping around a cemetery at dusk and opening up a crypt and the flashlight apps suck. “We’re going to have to prop open the door and let in as much natural light as possible,” she said with false confidence.

  “There is no natural light. The sun’s setting.”

  Annie noticed sweat beading on Roadrunner’s upper lip. “Then let’s do this before it gets darker than it already is. Do you have the combinations Grace gave us?”

  “Yeah.”

  They crunched through the snow toward the mausoleum, making the only sounds in this disconcertingly silent place. No birds sang; no wind whistled through the bare branches of trees; there wasn’t another soul to be seen, at least not a living one. Annie decided cemeteries should have outdoor speakers playing Muzak at all times.

  They paused at the door; there was a keypad, just as Lydia had said there would be—a modern, aftermarket touch that made it accessible to visiting family at any time, even without an appointment. Spur of the moment, midnight picnic with dear Uncle Bob?Sure, why not?

  Roadrunner’s hand was shaking a little as he pulled a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket and started punching in the combination. A few moments later, they both jumped a little when they heard the thunk of a lock disengaging.

  They looked at each other. Annie saw fear in Roadrunner’s eyes, and it was a pretty sure bet he was seeing the same thing in hers. Which was just silly. Silly, silly, silly, she’d let Roadrunner’s superstitions and all those horror movies warp her common sense. She took a deep breath, lifted her chin bravely, and pushed open the door.

  “Agh!” she took a halting step back.

  “What? What!?”

  Annie swept her hand in front of her face, nose crinkled in distaste. “Cobwebs. God, they’re everywhere. I guess those little bastards don’t need a combination to get in.”

  Roadrunner sighed in relief, actually smiled, then warily stepped inside, his head rotating back and forth. The place smelled musty and it was frigidly cold and really gloomy, but other than the cobwebs, it seemed nice enough and well looked after. And the best part was there were no boogeymen hanging out in the shadows, waiting to ambush them. In fact, there wasn’t a sign that anybody or anything besides spiders had been in here to pay respects in a very long time.

  There were stone vases mounted by each crypt drawer, all of them empty. Roadrunner found Lydia Ascher’s grandfather’s drawer in the gloom—Donald Buchanan, a brass plaque informed—and placed the gas station bouquet in the vase. It probably wasn’t the most beautiful tribute he’d ever received, but it was something, at least, and he was glad he’d made Annie stop. “Here it is, Annie.”

  Annie was looking around, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. The light from the open door was meager, but it was a godsend all the same. “So . . . I guess we open it.”

  Roadrunner gulped audibly. “Yeah. But there’s nothing inside, remember? It’s just a memorial.”

  “Well, if there’s nothing inside, then why are we opening it?”

  “I meant there’s no dead guy inside. But there might be something else in there.”

  And if there is, what the hell are we going to do with it? Does it come with instructions? Annie’s breath was coming quicker now, and it sounded loud in her head in the absence of any other sounds. Neither of them moved for a moment, they just stood there and stared at the name plaque by the drawer, gathering their courage to either violate Donald Buchanan’s final resting place, or fulfill a plan he’d conceived sixty years ago.

  “Roadrunner, just open it.” Annie started stomping her feet back and forth, trying to warm them up. “It’s freezing in here, it’s getting darker by the minute, and I would dearly like to get out of this place as soon as possible.”

  Roadrunner took a deep breath and let it out in a frosty cloud. “Okay.” His fingers were cold-stiff and shaky as he punched in the second code. Another lock disengaged with a click that echoed eerily in the closed space. “I’m going to open it now, Annie,” he whispered, grasping the handle and slowly pulling out the drawer.

  Annie pinched her eyes shut. Would bats fly out? Would there be bones, ashes, rats, mice, giant spiders, maybe some ungodly demon that would rise up and begin Armageddon? Or maybe a deadly fungus or mold spores that would kill them on the spot. The archaeologists who’d opened up Tut’s tomb didn’t fare so well.

  “It looks empty,” he whispered.

  Annie opened her eyes and very bravely stepped next to him, holding up her phone. The flashlight app was weak, but it was a little extra light all the same, just enough to illuminate something at the very back of the drawer. “Looks like some kind of a portfolio. Grab that thing, honey, and let’s hightail it out of here.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  Annie had a death grip on the steering wheel of the rental as she squinted through the driving snow that was turning the expressway back to Rochester into a luge course. Her stomach flip-flopped every time she saw the traction control light flash on the dashboard, but at least Roadrunner wasn’t freaking out, which he usually did during difficult driving conditions—he seemed totally preoccupied with the documents from Donald Buchanan’s portfolio. Occasionally he would make little sounds and carefully shuffle the fragile old pages around, holding them closer to the faint library light above his visor.

  “Don’t hold out on me, Roadrunner. Did you figure out what the Sixth Idea is?”

  He sighed and gently lowered the pages to his lap. “It’s a theory. These are notes, schematics, formulas—I’m no nuclear physicist, so half of this stuff might as well be Sanskrit.”

  “What about the half that isn’t in Sanskrit?”

  “It’s all about the electromagnetic pulse the bombs generated. He was trying to find a way to harness the destructive energy and direct it specifically to selected targets. Wipe out the electrical and communications grid of a city, a country, a continent, without the mass destruction and toxic fallout of a multimegaton bomb. It would have been pretty bad news back in the fifties—nothing electrical would work. That’s probably why Lydia’s grandfather focused on building a generator in his book.
But can you imagine an EMP strike today? The entire world runs on electronics and computers, and they’d be fried in an instant. Planes would literally be falling out of the sky, and that’s just for starters. It would be catastrophic.”

  Annie caught her breath. “Oh my God. Everything would be gone in a heartbeat. No air travel, no transportation of any sort, no phones, no food, no water, no medicine, no money.”

  “Yep. The supply chain would be toast. We’d be thrown back two hundred years. You take away electricity, computers, electronics, it would be the end of the world as we know it.”

  Annie grunted. “You’ve got that right, and people have been paranoid about it for years. And hackers have been threatening to do it for years.”

  “Yeah, but if hackers took down a big power grid, they’re just temporarily immobilizing the software that runs the system. Like the Stuxnet virus that shut down Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. Iran eventually got them back up online. EMP destroys the hardware, the electronic components, from computers to transformers to cell phones. Everything would have to be rebuilt, and if you had a weapon like Donald Buchanan was theorizing . . .”

  “You could strike again and again, as soon as there was something rebuilt.”

  “Right.”

  “But that’s impossible. Nothing but a huge nuke can generate that kind of destructive EMP. Making a stealth, precision weapon out of it is science fiction.” Annie stole a glance at him. “Isn’t it?”

  Roadrunner tipped his head. “Well, the concept of a nuclear bomb was science fiction at one time, too. So was space travel. Science has a way of eventually catching up with fiction. And I could point out the obvious—people who had anything to do with the Sixth Idea or even any mention of it are suddenly getting killed. Why would you kill a bunch of innocent people over something that doesn’t exist?”

  Roadrunner had made a good point, but Annie didn’t like the nihilistic tone their conversation was taking. Then again, she hadn’t liked much about this entire day, especially the cemetery visit. “Why do you think Donald Buchanan left all these cryptic notes for his daughter? What would she do with them? We don’t even know what to do with them.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he thought these papers would be some kind of leverage in the future. He was working for the government. Maybe he didn’t trust the government any more than we trust it now.”

  “Well, that’s some solid thinking in any era.” Annie finally exited the freeway and headed toward their hotel. As she pulled into the parking garage and nosed into a slot, Roadrunner made a strange sound.

  “What is it?”

  Roadrunner flicked on the overhead dome light and handed Annie a sheet of paper with a hand-drawn schematic. “What does that look like to you?”

  Annie studied the paper for a long time. “It looks like a crude version of the first logical map of ARPANET.”

  Roadrunner bobbed his head. “One of the progenitors of the Internet.”

  Annie scowled. “This doesn’t make sense. These guys were building bombs, not computers.”

  “What if they’re one and the same? Computers produce electromagnetic pulses.”

  “Yes, but we’re talking millivolts, not megatons. The only thing a computer’s EMP can hurt is its own motherboard if it’s not arrayed properly.”

  Roadrunner shrugged nonchalantly, but Annie could practically hear the wheels grinding in his head. “Yeah. I suppose you’re right. But what if you could tie millions of computers together all over the world and plant some kind of a doomsday switch, a chip or a virus or something, that would consolidate and amplify each computer’s electromagnetic pulse? You could push a button, and boom—game over.”

  “That is something I don’t even want to think about. Come on, let’s get up to the room and send this to Harley and Grace. I’ll call and let them know.”

  Annie dialed the Monkeewrench office as they walked through the lobby, her eyes lingering on the bartender, who was opening a bottle of champagne for a young couple, which seemed like a great idea at the moment. If anything warranted a glass or two of champagne, it was surviving a visit to a creepy mausoleum at dusk and retrieving a possible blueprint for a modern apocalypse. She shivered, still imagining the ghosts of cobwebs dancing around her face and neck. “Gracie?”

  “Annie. Are you back at the hotel?”

  “Yes, and we had quite the excursion, thank you very much. We picked up a little present for you and we’re sending the package. Are you up in the office to get it?”

  “Yes, send it as soon as you can.”

  “Give us ten minutes, we just got to the room. But don’t get your hopes up too high. We have notes and sketches and that’s about it. No answers.”

  “That’s fine, Annie. Thank you. Thank you both.”

  Annie let out a dramatic sigh. “Well, I’m not going to lie—you and Harley owe us.”

  “It was that bad?”

  Annie heard the smile in Grace’s voice, which made her smile, too. “We endured unimaginable horrors, and as it turns out, Roadrunner is extremely superstitious. He made me stop at a gas station to buy flowers for a dead man who wasn’t even there. Is Lydia all right?”

  “Safe and sound. She’s resting in the bedroom next to the office.”

  Roadrunner held his hand out. “Let me talk to Grace for a minute.”

  “Roadrunner wants a word, sugar. We’ll see you in a couple days.”

  “Grace, is Harley there with you?”

  “I’m right here, buddy. We have you on speaker.”

  “Good. Listen, I’ve spent the past two hours going over the paperwork we picked up in the tomb. It’s not exactly light reading, so I wanted to give you a leg up on what I got out of it: it looks like Donald Buchanan was trying to weaponize EMP.”

  “EMP was a result of big-ass nuke detonations,” Harley said. “You can’t get more weaponized than that.”

  “No, I mean he was trying to figure out a way to generate EMP without the big-ass nukes and use it as a precision weapon to strike specific targets. You know, like destroy Moscow’s power grid without the fallout and destruction of a nuclear strike. At least that was an example in Donald Buchanan’s papers.”

  Harley grunted. “So basically, bomb whoever your enemy du jour is back to the Stone Age without the bomb. Damn. Donald Buchanan was a hacker at heart back when computers were just little infants.”

  “Funny you said that. Because in all this theoretical physics stuff I found something we all know—a rudimentary schematic of ARPANET. Donald Buchanan was working on the basis for the Internet a full decade before it was even on anybody’s radar.”

  In the Monkeewrench office, Harley and Grace were silent for a long moment.

  “Hello? Harley? Grace? Are you guys still there?”

  “We’re here,” Grace said quietly.

  “Listen, I know it sounds a little wacky, but what if computers could be engineered to become a delivery system for EMP? Like through the Internet?”

  When Grace finally hung up, she and Harley stared at each other as mental tumblers clicked into place. “Silver Dune. They’ve been giving away computers all over the world for decades.”

  “And manufacturing processing chips at American Iron Foundry up in Cheeton. The government took over American Iron Foundry during World War Two so they could build their bombs. What if the government is still running the place under the Silver Dune umbrella? Holy shit, Grace, ninety percent of the computers in the world use their chips. What if those chips are doctored up? Everybody in the world with a computer or a cell phone is potentially sitting on a mini version of an EMP bomb, and if you could link them all together through the Internet . . .” Harley took a deep breath. “Man, is this the greatest, most insane conspiracy theory ever?”

  “It’s definitely insane. And totally improbable.”

  They both flinche
d when the security alarm tripped.

  Downstairs, a soft alarm sounded through Harley’s mansion and Gino and Magozzi froze. “What does that mean?” Gino asked.

  Behind them, the elevator door opened and Harley clomped toward the computer station set up in the foyer. “It means the security program picked up an anomaly on one of the cameras. Threat assessment is low, which means it’s outside the immediate perimeter.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because if the threat was imminent and inside the gates, you’d be hearing an alarm louder than a Metallica concert.” He poked at the monitor. “Okay, here it is, live feed on screen sixteen.”

  Magozzi and Gino crowded behind Harley. The security monitor showed a man walking down the empty sidewalk on the mansion side of the street. He slowed, then stopped as he approached the edge of Harley’s property. As if posing for cameras he knew were there, he tipped his head upward in their direction. “What the hell?” Gino finally whispered. “This guy wants to be seen or what?”

  Magozzi’s borrowed shoulder unit squawked—one of the officers keeping an eye on Harley’s and the neighborhood in general. “Detective? I’ve got eyes on an individual approaching the gate.”

  “We see that, Officer. Keep your position and keep watching.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Gino, Harley, and Magozzi continued to stare at the screen. Bizarrely, the man on the sidewalk suddenly looked up directly into one of the cameras positioned on the gate, then raised his hands palm-out to indicate he had no ill intentions. Presumably.

  Gino’s brows crept up his forehead. “Holy shit. That’s Arthur Friedman, our BOLO. Just a wild guess, but this guy didn’t just stumble on us and Monkeewrench in an Alzheimer’s stupor.”

  “Jesus Pete,” Harley muttered. “The last of the original eight. And he’s a dead man walking out there on the street. We’ve gotta get him in here. Just make sure he’s not carrying a nuke or a death ray gun in his pocket.”