"Wondering the same thing," said Mae.
"Then I guess we'll have to find out," replied Griffin. He raised his boot from her face, and she felt indentations that had been pressed into her skin.
But instead of putting his foot on the floor, he reared back and stomped her head with his heel.
Her world went dark again.
Chris' head rolled around, uncontrollable on his neck. For a long time, despite his best efforts, he simply didn't have the strength to stop it.
Finally, his mind clawed its way into consciousness. This time, his head was leaning far back against a headrest, and Trisha was applying a bandage to the cut on his forehead. When she was done, he sat up straight, and the movement made him feel light-headed again.
He was strapped into the back of a jeep. Trisha was next to him. And the two men from his vision on Mars were in the front seat, the one with the ponytail driving.
"What are ... ?" Chris tried to ask, but found the words difficult to generate. "Who-where ... where are we?"
"Everything will be explained, Commander Burke," replied the chubby, white-headed one in the passenger's seat. He wasn't looking back, only facing the road ahead. "Colonel Roston and his men have ways of monitoring us, so we're taking you to a place that they can't monitor."
"Where?" Chris demanded.
A government facility," the white-haired man went on. As you know, since the war, all government installations have been outfitted with protection from all forms of surveillance."
"We escaped from Roston three days ago," added the ponytail 11 man. "Since then, we've been waiting for you to arrive in Houston.
"I saw you," Chris blurted out, trying to shake the cobwebs from his head. "On Mars! Who are you?"
Ponytail man gestured to himself and said, "Parks. And this is Rowley." He pointed at his white-haired friend. "We've got a good drive ahead of us, plenty of time for you to rest. Please do. You're safe for the moment; they don't seem to be following us."
"I want to know who you are!"
Rowley, the white-haired one, replied, "We are the reason Colonel Roston was able to do what he's done. We helped him do it."
The vehicle's engine rumbled along the freeway, but no other sounds came from the jeep's interior. It felt as if a collective breath had just been sucked in and was now being held.
Helped him do it? How?
A flood of nausea washed over Chris, but he fought it off.
Parks and Rowley. Chris turned the names over in his head. They were unfamiliar.
Before he could reflect on this further, he blacked out.
Twenty minutes later, Chris awoke again, and felt a bit more coherent than before. The bandage on his forehead was damp but crusty; the bleeding had stopped.
He sat up taller than before and got his bearings. Trisha still sat next to him. She looked like death, drained and weary. The two strangers were in the front seat. Terry was in the back seat with Owen, who was putting the finishing touches on patches applied to both the entry and exit points of Terry's leg wound. Terry was awake and looking around, but not managing to cover the fact that he was in a lot of pain. Owen himself had a number of nasty cuts and scrapes.
Chris could feel Trisha watching him, but he didn't feel like looking back at her just now. Instead, he searched beyond his window. He saw that they'd left downtown far behind. He thought they might he headed south, but was too tired and unfocused to think of where.
Mae.
What had become of Mae? He remembered her in the firefight, but she'd been left. And had to be in Roston's custody. What would they do to her? Surely they wouldn't kill her. Did they know she existed? Would they try and figure out why she'd been left behind?
Chris deliriously wished the colonel good luck at figuring that one out.
He glanced to his right, his vision dark and hazy. Trisha hadn't stopped staring at him. For the first time in a long time, he couldn't read her expression.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she whispered, the rumble of the jeep chewing up pavement, keeping the others from hearing her. He got the impression that she was trying to be gentle or tactful, but he saw through it-her gaze was hard and unblinking, and he knew that look.
Chris wasn't surprised she asked this question. He'd known it was coming. It was inevitable. It was the only thing left that she could say to him, before either of them could talk about anything else. But he'd hoped she might put it off until he was a little more coherent.
What was he supposed to say? She'd been seeing someone for years; it wouldn't have been right to butt in. And she was Chris' best friend. He had no idea how to tell his best friend something like this without overstepping his bounds.
"Because you were happy ... Already .. " The words came out lazily, and Chris found it hard to stay awake again. "And I care about . . . your . . .
His voice trailed off, and he was asleep.
Chris had no idea how much later it was when he was stirred awake again. This time by Trisha prodding him. His mind and vision were clearing now, but his head still throbbed. His feet ached from the frostbite, but he found that he was able to walk.
The jeep was stopped. He looked out to see where they were, and he was both surprised and unsurprised at what he saw.
Johnson Space Center.
Their old stomping grounds. It didn't really look any different from the last time he saw it, before he traveled down to Kennedy for the Ares launch. Fresh paint had been applied to some buildings that he remembered as peeling. Plenty of overgrown shrubs, trees, and grass. And though the light coming from the beacon made it hard to see into the distance, he thought he spotted a new building or two around the campus.
Parks had left the jeep right at the front door to Building 2, home to a large auditorium where NASA had conducted employee meetings and large media briefings in the past. It wasn't far from Johnson's outer periphery.
The front door of Budding 2 was locked, but Rowley unlocked it and the six of them filed inside. Parks and Rowley pulled up the rear, closing the door behind them and relocking it. They went straight to the large auditorium, which they found dusty and stale-smelling. The room was so old that even when Chris was in training here, he'd seldom seen Building 2's auditorium put to use. It was kept up mostly for its historical significance.
The group settled in one corner of the big room. Chris didn't feel like sitting anymore, so he stood. The pain in his feet wouldn't allow him to do it for too long, but for now the pins and needles of blood flowing again felt good. Owen and Trisha did likewise, positioning themselves with their backs against the corner walls. Terry was provided with two chairs-one for sitting, and one for propping up his injured leg. Parks and Rowley stood opposite them, out in the middle where there was nothing to lean on.
"Everybody okay?" Chris asked quietly, ignoring their rescuers for the moment and focusing on his friends. "Terry?"
"I'll live," Terry replied.
"Trish?"
She looked dreadfully tired, but fighting through it. "Fine"
"Beech?"
"Good to go, Commander."
"They got Mae," said Terry.
"I know," replied Chris. He nodded at something in Terry's general direction and said, "Gimme"
Terry pulled the pistol out of the back of his pants without argument the same pistol he'd used during the flood in Biloxi-and tossed it to Chris.
Chris grabbed it out of the air with one hand and slipped the safety off, aiming it at the two newcomers.
"Whoa, whoa, wait-" started Parks.
"Before. You said you helped Roston to ... to do whatever he's done with everybody. So tell me why I shouldn't shoot you in the face?"
"Do you really think," said Rowley, "we would have risked our lives coming to you if we didn't think we could help you?"
"Why were you helping him?!" Chris demanded.
Rowley was unmoved, his stature rigid as he said, "Because he paid us."
Chris ran his free hand through his hair, not
believing what he'd heard. He looked at his friends. Mixtures of incredulity and outrage showed on each face.
It was a very long time before anyone spoke again. Chris barely trusted himself not to pull the trigger that his finger trembled on. And he knew his friends were thinking similarly murderous thoughts. Yet each of them held his or her ground in the face of this admission of guilt.
"Should we assume, then," said Owen in his most controlled and modulated voice, "that since you came to us, whatever deal you had with Roston went bad?"
"We didn't know what Roston wanted us to do when he paid us. We thought it would be something smaller. We had no idea it was going to be anything like this. Once we agreed, we had to either obey and be rewarded, or his men would kill us. We chose to live."
Chris closed his eyes and looked down. This was madness.
"Let me see if I've got this straight," he said. "You came to our rescue, after jumping ship on Roston ... because you figured that his mission was no longer a guaranteed success, and therefore you might end up on the losing side?"
"Hey," Parks protested, "you wouldn't even be alive-!"
"We saved you," said Rowley, "on Mars. We are the only reason you didn't die in that tunnel."
"You're pathetic!" Chris shouted. "You helped Roston wipe out the entire human race, and I need one good reason why I shouldn't kill you right here and now."
"No one has been wiped out, Commander Burke," replied Rowley. `And you should let us live because we are the only two people alive who know how to bring everyone back."
Slowly, Chris lowered his arm, set the safety, and slipped the gun into a pocket. "I saw you. Both of you. I saw you on Mars. Or from Mars. How is that possible?"
Rowley sighed.
"We helped you during your experience under the Martian surface," explained Parks, who was clearly the more excitable of the two. He talked much faster than his friend, and seemed as eager to put the puzzle pieces together for Chris and his friends as they were to see the puzzle assembled. "If we hadn't, you'd be dead now."
Chris swallowed this slowly. `And did this help of yours include erasing my memories of everything that happened in that tunnel?"
Parks frowned briefly. "Yes, but it was absolutely-"
"Please," Rowley interrupted. "Let us start at the beginning. We have an extraordinary story to tell you. I know you're tired and hurt, and you want answers now. We're going to give them to you. But the answers you seek are not simple ones. How we have arrived at this place in history cannot be explained quickly. So please, extend to us a little patience-"
"Patience is something we're fresh out of," said Terry. "Tell us where everyone is, or Chris'll shoot you. And if he doesn't, I will."
"They are nowhere, Mr. Kessler," Rowley replied. "Strictly speaking, the ten billion inhabitants of this planet no longer exist."
"What do you mean?" asked Trisha.
"They've been erased," replied Parks. "Every living person on this planet excluding us and Roston's people-they've been removed from reality."
"Please," Rowley said again, "allow us to explain properly. It's the only way you'll understand."
Chris leaned back against the wall and folded his arms. Trisha sank down until she was sitting against the same wall. Terry tried to get more comfortable in his chair, but couldn't keep from wincing at the pain in his leg. Owen stood at attention, perfectly rigid yet perfectly relaxed, and absorbing every word that was said.
"What we're about to tell you may be difficult to accept, so please, try to keep an open mind," said Rowley. "Back in the 1960s, when JFK challenged the nation to put a man on the moon, NASA began examining all sorts of methods for making that happen. All methods, including a search for solutions that went beyond conventional branches of science.
"They saw the need to capitalize on every possible advantage they could get their hands on, because space exploration, as you know, is the most dangerous undertaking mankind has ever attempted. Anytime there's a manned vessel being sent into space NASA's top priority is to see that their astronauts return safely to Earth, and that means attempting to think of every possible detail that could place astronauts in danger while offworld. Any and all factors. Which, of course, is an impossibility.
"Finding a way to forecast every possible harmful thing that could happen to our astronauts and prevent those things from happening became regarded as the holy grail of astrophysics, and it still is. NASA was willing to try anything to achieve a greater level of prediction, even if it meant working in arenas that reputable scientists wouldn't ordinarily touch, because the public would not react favorably to a government agency dabbling in `alternative science.' For that reason, the project was kept entirely off-the-books."
"What project?" Owen asked.
"It started by accident," continued Rowley. An early group of NASA scientists got the idea that quantum physics-a relatively new field of science back then-could hold the key to more accurately forecasting potential mission failures."
"Quantum physics," Trisha repeated, "is a highly respected field of study; there's nothing `alternative' about it. It's the study of the subatomic particles that form the building blocks of everything in the universe."
"Well, in this case, we're talking about a specific branch of quantum mechanics," said Rowley. "One that many scientists believe to be impossible. Are you familiar with the concept of determinism?"
Trisha leaned her head back, starting to understand. Chris glanced at her. They were moving away from concepts he understood completely.
"Sure," Trisha replied. "It's about using quantum data to predict the future. But it's not possible."
"Somebody please translate all this into English," requested Terry.
Trisha sat forward a bit, her eyes dancing as she formulated her response. "Imagine if we knew everything about the chair Terry's sitting in right now, from a subatomic perspective. I mean everythingthe number and types of particles it's made of, even the molecules from Terry's clothes and skin and hair that have rubbed off on it while he's sitting there. If we had a complete picture of all that information, down to the last particle, and we applied scientific laws like gravity and thermodynamics to that picture ... then determinism says we could forecast exactly what will become of that chair in the future."
Owen nodded. "Right. But it can't be done. There are too many random variables in nature to allow for accurate forecasting."
Parks and Rowley exchanged a significant look.
"NASA decided it was willing to settle for less than perfect," Parks said, taking up the story. `After all, they weren't looking to predict the future, just forecast as many possibilities as possible.
"This early group of scientists at NASA-they conceived of a device. It began as a pet project conducted by a handful of NASA employees. But over the next seventy years, the torch was passed down from one generation to the next, to specialists in various scientific fields like me and Rowley. And the device eventually grew into something those early NASA scientists could never have imagined."
Chris believed he was starting to understand, but he still didn't believe. `Are you saying you built a computer capable of predicting the future?"
"Not the future. Probabilities," Parks corrected. `And yes, we built it. About two dozen of us, over seventy years' time. It's not a computer as you understand the word. It's far more advanced than that the most advanced computational apparatus ever created. The Waveform Device is a quantum machine."
"Waveform?" Owen repeated, throwing a look at Burke.
"Yes," Parks replied. "NASA eventually pulled the plug on the project, but the scientists had grown attached to their work. And there were enough interested parties that funding could always be found. So they very carefully and very quietly took what they had of the machine-which at the time was about the size of an RV-and relocated it from Johnson Space Center to a more remote setting."
"Years went by," Rowley said, "and their clandestine work passed through various hands recruited from
numerous fields of science-all sworn to silence. Only a handful at a time have ever been allowed to know of its existence, and work on it. But in all these years, the work never stopped. The machine grew and grew and grew, until they had to place it in a specially designed facility.
"But you need to understand, our goals for the machine were honorable, always. The men working on the Waveform Device were patriots who believed in the possibilities offered to the world by quantum determinism. Imagine being able to save lives all over the world because global catastrophes, crises, and even wars were predicted before they happened, giving the world time to prepare."
"I'm a theoretical physicist," said Parks. "I was recruited to the project eleven years ago. Rowley predates me by about eight years. He's a world-class mathematician. We've overseen the greatest fundamental leap forward the Waveform has made since the transistor. Three years ago, we pioneered and cloned an advanced neural circuit board capable of processing exabytes of information instantly. Even today's computers haven't caught up with that kind of processing power yet. We installed the circuit boards throughout the machine, just like the hundreds or maybe even thousands of pieces of experimental technology that the device's caretakers have continued adding to it over the years."
Chris was getting a sick feeling at what they were saying. `Just how big is this thing?"
"It has roughly the same dimensions as Rice Stadium," replied Rowley, "which was built over top of it, thanks to the involvement of one of the university trustees in our program. But it's much taller than the stadium. The device is housed in a special facility just below ground level under the arena that we call `the Vault.' The machine itself is more than twelve stories high-or deep, depending on how you look at it."
A twelve-story computer?" asked Terry. "Let me guess, it's shaped like a great big stainless-steel Apple logo."
Rowley rolled his eyes, but Parks answered first. "Don't be absurd. We've already told you it was built from the inside out, with no blueprint or plan, and it was never intended to become as big as it's become. The machine is a maze-a web of processors, transistors, wires, circuitry, conduits, terminals, screens ... Trust me, you don't ever want to go wandering around inside there. You could get lost for days-one of our predecessors actually did."
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