by Sesh Heri
“Yes, “ Gabriel Kron said, “a crystal ball to end all crystal balls.”
“Perhaps,” John Von Neumann said, “with the Oracle Code we might even be able to reconstruct the Table of Destinies itself.”
Kron looked over to Vannevar Bush who was studying Von Neumann.
“Perhaps,” Bush said.
“The Table of Destinies,” Gabriel Kron said. “As I understand it, according to ancient Sumerian texts the Table of Destinies always drove the possessor mad.”
“That is only a superstitious view of a scientific reality,” John Von Neumann said. “A superstitious fear of power.”
“Great power,” Gabriel Kron said.
“We should investigate the Oracle Code a bit further,” John Von Neumann said.
“How?” Vannevar Bush asked.
“There is a question we should submit to it,” John Von Neumann said, “and correlate it with all the texts we have thus far produced.”
“What is the question you propose?” Vannevar Bush asked.
“The question,” John Von Neumann said, “is: How does one reconstruct the Table of Destinies?”
Bush stared at Von Neumann for a moment and then turned to Gabriel Kron who now sat unsmiling, his eyes fixed to the side, staring at Von Neumann.
“What is it?” John Von Neumann asked. “Why is everyone looking at me like— like— ”
“Like you have spoken the unspeakable?” Gabriel Kron asked.
“Superstition!” John Von Neumann snapped. “What are we? A bunch of trembling old wives afraid of our own shadows? What stupidity!”
“It is only information,” Bush said.
“Nothing is ‘only’ information,” Gabriel Kron said. “Especially with this time code.”
“Oracle Code,” John Von Neumann intoned.
“Whatever,” Gabriel Kron said. “I’d think twice before I would ask the computer that question.”
“Precisely why we should ask it,” John Von Neumann said. “Before the Nazis ask it. Right now the Nazis may be creating their own Oracle Code. They have already attempted to steal the Houdini journal. And Professor Miethe had been working in this area with his teleporter.”
“KA Projector,” Gabriel Kron said.
“Silly name,” John Von Neumann sniffed. “Surely the Nazis know something about time codes, perhaps even know about the Oracle Code itself.”
“According to our best intelligence,” Vannevar Bush said, “the Nazis only knew a little about the time code— the Oracle. They had learned something of it from the spiritualists who had been spying on Harry Houdini back in the 1920s.”
“The ones who killed him?” Von Neumann asked.
“Yes,” Vannevar Bush said. “We suspect that some of the spiritualists may have been poisoning him slowly. Then it appears that they sent a hypnotic subject to attack him, to puncture his stomach so as to rapidly spread the poison through his bloodstream. Make it look like an accident. They knew he had been taking challenges to be struck in the abdomen.”
“The spiritualists knew what Houdini had?” John Von Neumann asked.
“So it seems,” Bush said. “They knew that he was using the time code to gain information about their activities. They had intercepted a letter he had sent to H.P. Lovecraft in which he described some of the basic formulae of the code and how he had been using it against the spiritualists. The writer Clifford Eddy also received a similar letter. Information from these letters passed through various channels in the spiritualist movement and eventually ended up in the hands of the Nazis.”
“If the Nazis know that much,” John Von Neumann said, “then they may have already developed part of the time code, if not all of it.”
“I’ll admit that’s possible,” Vannevar Bush said.
“Then there is no question that we must proceed,” John Von Neumann said. “We must ask the question— we must submit it to Oracle: How does one reconstruct the Table of Destinies?”
Vannevar Bush looked over to Gabriel Kron who was shaking his head.
“All right,” Vannevar Bush said, “ask Oracle the question.”
“Ask the question,” John Von Neumann said to the technician at the keyboard of the computer. “Ask Oracle: How does one reconstruct the Table of Destinies?”
The technician nodded, looked down at the keyboard, and typed.
All the men at the table watched the movement of the technician’s fingers. The technician finished typing the question. There was silence.
Then in the distance, lights flashed. Then, closer at hand, more lights blinked on.
The men at the table still sat in silence.
Then suddenly, Gabriel Kron said, “I think I— I think I smell— smoke.”
An instant later, a horn sounded, blaring out a shock of sound. It was a fire alarm.
“Everyone!” a voice shouted, “Outside!”
All of the men at the table scrambled to their feet. An emergency door slid open, and Bush, Kron, Von Neumann, and all of the other scientists poured through it and into the outer hall. Before the last man could get through, great billows of black smoke rolled out of the door. The last man was pulled through the door by several outstretched hands and as soon as he cleared the threshold, the door slid shut and sealed off.
In the hall, the voices of the scientists raised to a cacophony.
“Silence!” Vannevar Bush shouted.
The voices stopped, like a recording being switched off.
“What’s happening in there?” Vannevar Bush asked.
“Fire,” a guard replied.
Then the floor beneath their feet rumbled and the walls and ceiling rocked to and fro. The rumbling and grinding went on for several seconds, and then abruptly stopped.
Hours later, when the big room filled with the computers had cooled a technician pried its door open. Another technician held an air sensor in his hand and extended it through the doorway. He brought the sensor back out, looked at the numbers on its face, and said, “Air all clear.”
Vannevar Bush, Gabriel Kron, John Von Neumann, and the blank-faced man stepped inside the room, flashlights in their hands. The beams of light probed the darkness beyond. The computers were now only melted, distorted mounds of metal.
“Tremendous heat for an electrical fire,” Vannevar Bush said.
“This was no electrical fire,” Gabriel Kron said.
“No?” Bush asked. “Then what was it?”
“I think,” Gabriel Kron said, “it was a…cosmic fire…fire from…the Neniu.”
THE END
Table of Contents
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