“I can’t be sure it was him, but, yes, it’s possible.”
From that moment on, they had been going nonstop.
It had taken them three days to modify the Message, since they had to add the enormous amount of information required for a Receiver three decades in the past instead of three years. The technology that existed thirty years ago versus three years ago meant that many of the assumptions they had made in the original Message needed to be expanded upon. And it was, of course, all done in a panic. They had to get the crystal before anyone else could examine it and discover the Message—the very one they would hopefully send—and, given how they were going to go about obtaining that crystal, they knew it wouldn’t be long before the FBI came knocking on their door.
And somehow, they’d pulled it off—everything was set into place.
But that had been the easy part. Now Tyler had to decide whether or not to send the Message—an act that would surely change, if not destroy, a man’s life.
“Excuse me, sir. Sorry, but Dr. Carrols says to tell you that she desperately needs an answer from God.”
He turned from the window.
“That’s what she told me to say.” Sue blushed.
“Tell her that her prayers will soon be answered.”
“Yes, sir—Tyler, I mean.”
Minutes later, Tyler entered Dr. Carrols’s lab. Scientists at various locations around the room looked up. At a workbench toward the front, Dr. Carrols set her coffee down. “Well, thank the Lord.”
“Jane.” He nodded.
“Tyler.” She returned his nod. “I hate to be a pain in the butt, but another ten minutes and we’ll have to change the Message’s reveal time.”
He went over to the AWX data injector—a vacuum chamber mounted to an isolation table—and looked through its four-inch porthole at the small crystal suspended by 24-micron gold wires.
Dr. Lee’s crystal.
He pulled out a keyboard from an electronics rack.
Everyone dropped what they were doing and rushed over.
“It’s a hard thing to do—screwing with a man’s life like this.” Tyler stared at the keyboard. “It might be easier to just shoot him.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Jane said. “Just press the damn—”
He pressed the enter key.
On the screen just above the keyboard, statistical information about the transfer was presented in an array of colorful graphs.
“Four minutes, thirty-seven seconds,” Jane said when the transfer was complete.
Tyler stared through the porthole at the crystal. Jane sidled up to him.
“The weird thing is,” she said, “we could destroy it right now and it wouldn’t make any difference. The Message went the other way.” She tugged on his sleeve. “Come on, no point dwelling on it now. Let’s go see ‘What hath God wrought.’”
Minutes later, the entire Iceland crew, including the bush pilot, who had made the 143-kilometer flight from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station to deliver Dr. Lee’s crystal, gathered in the Communication Room. The room had been cold and dark since the lockdown, but with sixteen Iceland Group team members present, it warmed up quickly.
Tyler switched on a computer at the front of the room while Jane turned on the holographic projection unit. A 3D wall of static, roughly ten foot tall, appeared above the floor.
Tyler typed in a command to establish their satellite connection, then addressed the Iceland team.
“Whichever way this goes,” he said, “you should all be proud of yourselves. This was a team effort.” He turned to Jane. “But none of it would have been possible without the ingenuity and determination of our fearless leader—”
“And your additions to the Message regarding computational analysis,” Jane countered. “And Dr. Weaver’s database of microbiology and immunology; and Dr. Saunders’s papers on material analysis; and—screw it, I’ll make a list and email it to everyone. I’m too excited…”
Laughter erupted throughout the room.
“But—” She held up an index finger, glancing over her shoulder at the wall of static. “—if this doesn’t work, we simply press on.”
“That’s right,” Tyler agreed. “‘They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.’ Sir Francis Bacon.” He turned to Jane. “You should do the honors.”
She inhaled deeply, and with a trembling finger pressed the touchscreen link to bring up CNN’s website.
The holographic display flickered, swirled red and white like a barber’s pole, then formed the headline:
SPACE STATION BOMBER ALIVE!
CLAIMS SECRET UNIVERSAL FLU VACCINE
WILL SAVE MILLIONS!
About the Author
John McWilliams is an entrepreneur who has established business ventures working in the fields of microelectronics, software design, and high-energy physics. Mr. McWilliams lives in Orlando, Florida with his two sons. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
About the Author
Landfall Page 20