by John Hunt
The climate was perfect year round. It seemed it was always sunny and seventy degrees. At first Jeff listened to the weather forecasts daily — a habit learned from his father — but after a while he realized there was no point. San Diego meteorologists had the easiest job in the world. “Today, you can expect clear skies, gentle winds, with temperatures in the low to mid seventies. Excellent beach weather, and the surf is up.” The only variability was the scuba diver’s underwater visibility forecast, which was rarely very encouraging, as the water suffered from the effluent of the Tijuana River twenty kilometers to the south.
Jogging seemed to be a common pastime, appropriately, for there was always some soothing place nearby where people from all sorts of backgrounds could exercise and let their minds wander. La Jolla, to the north, had a beautiful coastline and attractive waterfront homes, and it had a long jogging path by the water. Quiet and secluded desert trails interconnected the resort-style townhouse communities in the eastern part of the county, where so many of the young professionals lived. The navy officers and enlisted men would run for miles at what was once the Naval Training Center and never lose sight of the beautiful San Diego Bay. Jeff, who lived on Pacific Beach, could run on the boardwalk.
Any time of the day or night, you could find stunning young women walking, jogging, or roller skating along this stretch of concrete and wood that ran parallel to one of the finest beaches in southern California. In the evening, the colored lights of the amusement park reflected off the incoming waves, highlighting the couples as they ambled along the beach. Parties were common on the sandy and raised wooden verandahs of the houses that lined the boardwalk. If you looked at all respectable, you were welcomed at most all of them.
And Jeff had been welcomed. Usually a beer, poured from a keg or tossed from a cooler, was in his hands before he had even reached the top steps. He could strike up conversations easily, and he usually approached the first woman he ran into. Sometimes the woman was lovely and sophisticated; sometimes plain and ordinary, although that was uncommon here. It did not matter much what she looked like — the conversation was the vital part. He enjoyed meeting normal people. His primary purpose when he was off assignment was to get far away from the cretins whom he dealt with every day. Normal people — healthy, young, enjoying life: it did not matter what they did for a living, or if they were just beach bums — they were alive.
The contrast between last night and his night in Tijuana twenty-four hours earlier was remarkable. He had struck up a conversation with a very interesting woman, who was also thin and tan, and possessed features that made her face utterly lovely, like a painting, framed by silky blond hair. She also had a quick wit and a pleasant, frequently-displayed smile. Her name was Sophia Bjarnasdottir, and she was from Iceland.
Jeff had never met anybody from Iceland before, and he was extremely curious about the place, but instinctively avoided that topic of discussion. He was sure she had plenty of opportunity to discuss her home with people, and he did not wish to bore her. So they had talked of other things. Travels, and sports, and hobbies, and books. He had learned that she had lived in San Diego for nearly three years and had recently received her doctorate at the university. She was also somehow tied into the navy, but then so was everyone in this town, in one way or another. Sophia did not want to say more about the navy, so they moved on.
At one point they had set off together for a walk on the beach, and as she flipped off her sandals to wade in the surf, she had reached out for his hand for support and had not let it go. They had strolled hand-in-hand along the moonlit beach, adjacent to where Jeff was walking now.
She was a physicist, the hard-core kind. Theory — long mathematical proofs and equations — was her forte. She mentioned nuclear energy and fusion research, but again, at first, she seemed evasive. He had no need to push. Lots of people kept their work secret. He certainly could not tell her about his own.
But, nonetheless, in roundabout ways he had told her about his life. Maybe it was the beer, or the mesmerizing sound of the surf rising onto the beach, or the warmth of her hand as a gentle breeze blew her hair against his shoulder. Maybe it was just that he was tired. Tired of the game. Fighting a battle he couldn’t win, against drug dealers whom he feigned friendship with. He had really wanted out, all the way out, that other night, when his brother had barely saved his life.
He had talked himself into staying for now though. For one thing, he was good — very good — at what he did. He was a manipulator and a confidence man. This was not admirable when taken by itself. He had used his skills for what he had thought were benevolent purposes, however, and he never considered the possibility of being drawn to the dark side. He had indeed been very successful at decreasing the number of drug shipments to the United States. There were dozens of people that the government wanted out of commission who were behind bars or worse because of him. For another thing, his brother needed him. There were reasons to stay on and fight.
Mainly, though, he could not think of anything better to do.
Jeff had been walking briskly while stretching his muscles, still tight from the night’s sleep. Now he began a slow jog. The boardwalk was quieter than usual. There were several women running in a group several hundred meters ahead of him. A young man with scraggly hair and what looked like hospital scrub pants was walking his sheepdog toward Jeff. The dog stopped to defecate, and its master bent over dutifully to pick up the dog’s waste with a plastic sandwich bag, which he then inverted and tucked into his pocket. Jeff involuntary shivered.
His mind drifted back to Sophia. She was truly lovely. They had walked in the dim light of the beach for what seemed like hours, hand in hand. Mostly, they talked. But there were long quiet spells. Not awkward — just quiet — both appreciating the company and the peaceful sound of the waves rolling up the sand. The water was warm between their toes and the sand was soft. They had, of course, kissed. Several times. How could they not in such a perfectly romantic setting?
If her employers were anything like his, then she had probably revealed more of her work than she should have. She had talked of an expansive program dealing with nuclear fusion research.
“It’s mostly not secret,” she had said. “Fusion research in general has been an international cooperative effort for decades — flavored with friendly competition. Even at the height of the cold war, there was very little classified material about fusion. American plasma physicists visited the United Kingdom’s facilities. Soviet scientists visited the American labs at Princeton, Los Alamos, and M.I.T. British physicists worked at Moscow’s Kurchatov Institute for several years, long before Gorbachev had been heard of in the West. There was almost complete and free exchange of knowledge.
“But certain portions of our research have been kept classified. Anything that might have some weapons potential, really.” She had sighed. “Unfortunately, that includes my work.”
They had walked along in silence for a while when she spoke again.
“It is all so frustrating! Other countries freely publish the same things that my coworkers discovered five years ago but got no credit for, because of the secrecy concerns. I have not been able to publish my work at all — except in internal documents. The weapons potential is such an unfortunate coincidence. It hinders advances in the most important part of physics research today!” This last observation she had said with passion.
Jeff had admitted that he knew essentially nothing about her field. Fusing the nuclei of two hydrogen isotopes, she had explained, would release rapidly moving neutrons, which could be captured and their energy converted to electric power. It was clean and safe, and the fuel was abundant and cheap: seawater.
There would be some radiation, but never outside the reactor, and nothing like what one found in the fission plants in the United States today. There would be minimal radioactive waste, and what was created would clean itself within a century, instead of the thirty millennia that radioactive waste of the fission plants ta
kes to fade away. There was no chance of meltdown. This was assured not by humans, nor computers. If anything went awry with one of these reactors, the laws of physics themselves would stop the process and prevent any harmful effects.
She had told him how Ansel Adams, the famous photographer, had lobbied successfully to take pictures of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s machinery in an effort to publicize fusion and garner popular support for it. He had been a long-time and dedicated member of the Sierra Club and supported its environmental goals. Adam’s encouragement of fusion helped assure that it would not be lumped together with fission in the editorial sections of the fear-spreading media.
“The problem,” she had said, “is that no one has really figured out how to make it actually happen. Fusion is not just theory. It is what happens inside the sun to make all its energy, or when we explode a hydrogen bomb. But we need to get temperatures upward of 100 million degrees to be able to harness the energy in a sustained and economical manner. What oven do you know that can stay intact at 100 million degrees?”
Jeff, like the physicists who had been working on the problem for years, had been unable to answer that question. They had been using powerful magnets to keep the hot material, known as plasma, inside the reactors and away from the cold metal walls. But they were not very good at it. They could get the temperatures hot enough, but they could not keep the plasma superheated for more than a few millionths of a second. It would always break out of its magnetic confinement and cool down in an instant. It was as if the powerful plasma spited the researchers and their billion-dollar machines.
Some researchers had skipped the magnets and aimed powerful lasers at little nuggets of frozen hydrogen. The hydrogen was supposed to fuse, just like a miniature H-bomb blast. But there were problems with this technique — including that it required billion-dollar lasers. There was also no proof that it would work.
People had tried fusing atoms together at low temperatures, even at room temperature. There had been a huge increase in the price of palladium when it was used in an attempt at cold fusion in 1989. That had proved to be a false hope, and people turned back to trying to recreate the conditions inside the sun, which they knew would bring about fusion — if it could be done.
That left Sophia’s work, which she had said was unique. But she did not tell him more. She had changed the subject, as she motioned toward the waves and commented on the hypnotic effect of the surf on the gently sloping beach. The breeze had become cooler. She had moved in very close.
Jeff had said goodnight to her a little before midnight. She had run up the wooden stairs to the porch door of her house on the boardwalk. She had dropped a sandal on the first stair — the polished white leather shining in the moonlight like Cinderella’s slipper. He had picked it up and carried it home with him.
He smiled as he jogged past her house. He knew that he would be thinking about her all day. He would also, once again, be rethinking his commitment to his current career.
Otto Wagner was nothing if not a complicated man. He had been born into wealth, and he had multiplied that wealth. He was universally respected by his business associates and his employees. Indeed, in a continent where unions were reasonably strong, there were none in his corporation, for there were no adverse relationships. The employees were part of the team, and reaped the benefits of the corporate success.
He was a single man — never married — and had no children, and no heirs. He was respected and cared about by a large number of people. But he had no family to love him, and he was acutely aware of that fact from time to time. He did not know why he had never found anybody to marry. Perhaps it was his looks, his size. Perhaps he was too self-conscious in his younger years, or lacked confidence. As he passed through his own middle ages, he had become resigned to his state of affairs, and he no longer even sought to have a true family.
He had learned to think of his corporation as his family, and that was perhaps why everyone was so well treated. Each employee was his son or daughter, in his eyes. He was saddened that he did not have time to even meet some of his “children.” The job application process was rigorous. But once hired, you were considered family until you elected to leave, and even thereafter. If you had a drug problem, assistance would be offered to you. If you were lazy, people in the organization would provide encouragement and seek your strengths. If your family was sickly, Otto or one of his people would make arrangements. This was all possible because of the dedication of the leader to his people. Otto did not measure profits by the bottom line, but by the overall good achieved, the overall wealth created. Wealth was the ability to pursue happiness. To Otto Wagner, wealth therefore incorporated money, freedom, health, wisdom, friendships, and all else that assists in the pursuit of happiness. It was not the law that created this relationship between employee and employer, but rather it was Otto’s entirely voluntary choice. Had it been a law, he would have fought it.
And it was this broad concept of profit, the expansive concept of wealth, one shared by Petur, that drew Otto Wagner into the fold. He, like Onbacher and Standall, was more than enthusiastic. He was almost boyish in his excitement about the possibility of being involved in such a grand scheme as the one proposed by the young man whom he had just met. And he eagerly offered to support “the Cause,” as he referred to it.
Although Petur usually used the term “Project” when presenting his plan, in his own mind he always thought of it as “the Island,” for three reasons. First, it would be a society distinct and separate from the world. Second, it would be built on a tropical island. Third, “Island” was the Icelandic spelling of his own home country, and to Petur the term was nearly synonymous with “home.” But if Otto wished to call it “the Cause,” that was fine by him.
Petur had left Otto with a two-hundred page copy of his project plan. He almost hoped nobody else would throw money at him right now, for he was simply too tired to travel any further on this persistently eastward trip around the globe. But there was something different about the climate of money now than in the past. It seemed like the wealthy were realizing that the money itself was fragile.
He waited in the plush modern living room of Otto’s castle as the two other men conducted the business that prompted Standall’s visit here in the first place. Their transaction went surprisingly quickly, Standall telling him later that Otto had just said “sounds great” and signed his name on the dotted line. Apparently, Otto was rather caught up in “the Cause,” and other small business matters had suddenly seemed of less immediate import.
As Wagner and Standall entered the living room and walked toward Petur, Wagner paused. He said he had one important question.
Petur nodded. “As long as you don’t ask to be the Project’s doctor…” He winked at Standall.
Wagner chuckled while shaking his head. “I look forward to reading the full plan, but for now, I do need to know: Is this going to work? Can you throw the required wrench into the impending process of collapse?”
Petur responded, “No sir. I cannot. But perhaps we can.”
After bidding a fond farewell to his enormous new benefactor, Petur slumped down into the seat of the tiny Fiat and shook his head. “This has been an amazing few days,” he told Standall. “I had almost given up on the whole thing.”
Standall smiled and squinted into the sun as he drove down the steep hill from the castle. “Once the financial avalanche starts, it keeps on accumulating snow until it becomes an incredible force. Your avalanche has started, my Icelandic friend. More people like me will join in this effort soon. And perhaps even some more like Otto. All those dozens of people to whom you have presented your plan may simply have been unwilling to take the first leap alone — that leap of faith. The leap has been taken, nearly simultaneously, by three of the wealthiest men around. More will certainly follow. Now, it is time for the real work to begin.”
Petur pondered that for several minutes. Yes, indeed it was time. He had enough money promised to m
ake this adventure happen. All the time and energy, all the money he had spent, especially Isaac’s money, would finally amount to something. At least, it could amount to something. His plan required luck to succeed in time to prevent the cataclysm that he hoped to avert. He probably had less than a decade to accomplish his mission. That was not a lot of time.
The next day, Standall bid him adieu at the train station in Mannheim. Petur had been running late and boarded the train just before the whistle blew signaling its on-time departure. Somehow, with all the excitement of the huge forward motion in the last day, he had forgotten to ask Standall about the woman — that incredibly attractive woman he had bumped into twice in the last two days in two separate countries. Turning, he called to Standall just before the doors of the car began to close. “Hey, Thomas! Why did you never introduce me to that lovely young brunette woman you’re traveling with. She is gorgeous!”
Standall looked perplexed and shook his head slowly. But it was clear he knew whom Petur was talking about, for he replied, quizzically, “I thought she was with you.”
The door closed then, and the train whistle was blowing. With a jerk, the engine tugged the cars forward. Petur furrowed his brow in confusion, and waved goodbye to his new partner.
6. Recruitment
IT WAS very dry in this room. It had to be, for the delicate instruments could tolerate no moisture. There likewise could be no fluctuation in temperature. It stayed at a constant 26 degrees Celsius, which was fortunately a very comfortable room temperature.
Professor Evan Harrigan stuffed the last of his papers into the cardboard box, turned from his desk, or what used to be his desk, and walked out the door, sealing it carefully behind him. He wondered how long the laboratory would sit idle. Technicians would probably come in from time to time, to assure that the climate controls were adequate, and check the filters in the air circulation ducts. Probably. It wouldn’t take long before the dean assigned the space, and the machines, to one of the new junior investigators. More than likely it had already been assigned. Vultures.