Trinity's Fall

by P A Vasey

“Perhaps there’s a way to adapt and reshape the software to allow a more stable and precise connection between the biological tissues and the machine? Or do we just let him die?”

  Stillman looked at Cain as well, but he met her pleading eyes steadily and shook his head. I was about to object again when Cain suddenly held up a finger and turned his head as if he was listening for something.

  “What is it?” I said.

  His voice was low and emotionless, but the words came out clear enough. “I’ve just been in contact with Adam. He wants us to pick him up.”

  “What? Where is he?”

  “San Francisco.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  The ship broke orbit and powered up the Western seaboard of the United States. The flight deck was quiet and dark apart from silent concussions of lightning that highlighted lines of rain spattering the virtual viewports. We dropped below the clouds about fifty miles south of San Francisco and the apocalyptic images broke my heart again. The blood red Bay Bridge skeleton had been cleaved in two, its cables and columns fractured and its road submerged in the water. Hundreds of vehicles were piled up against the arches, some on fire and smoking, most surrounded by prone unmoving human figures. Thick smog was drifting over the bay from the city, which was flattened and burning. The sun seemed to spit feebly through the hazy atmosphere, and darkness was spreading a melancholy blanket over the land. None of the once mighty skyscrapers were still standing; every structure had been blown apart and turned into dust and smoldering ember. The docks and waterways surrounding were rank with detritus from the dead city, floating timber and plastic and bodies. The bay itself was the color of burnt sienna, waves rolling into the shoreline carrying dead fish and animal carcasses onto the edge of the fire.

  “A million people lived downtown,” said Stillman quietly.

  Cain looked up from the flight controls. “The Bay Area was hit by four Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles. These projectiles had multiple nuclear warheads, each with the destructive power of eight Hiroshimas. I estimate five million people died instantly.”

  “Jesus,” murmured Hamilton, turning away from the screen, unable to look at the images anymore. For me, I couldn’t drag my gaze away. Rage continued to build, my hands coiled into fists, my thoughts twisting and turning into very dark places.

  The ship tracked over the ruined bridge toward Alcatraz Island. The main prison building appeared to be intact although both the lighthouse and the water tower had been blown over and lay in pieces along the hillside down to the water. One of the ferries was lying belly-up at the docking jetty, a pool of black oil thickening the already murky waters.

  Cain zoomed in on the recreation yard, a rectangular space a hundred yards long surrounded by concrete walls and wire fencing where once upon a time prisoners had spent a few hours a day in the California sunshine, reminding them of the freedoms they had given up.

  “There he is,” said Stillman.

  A figure could be seen standing halfway along the concrete steps that led from the yard to the old dining hall. He was holding an arm up and staring straight at us despite the fact that the ship was in stealth mode, and invisible to the naked eye.

  “Who’s that with him?” said Hamilton, peering at the screen.

  Another figure had stepped out from behind Adam. A tall winnowy female wearing jeans and a black leather jacket.

  I sat back, almost at a loss for words. My brain stuttered for a moment while my thoughts caught up. I’m sure my eyes and mouth were frozen wide open in an expression of stunned surprise.

  “Amy,” I said. “His daughter.”

  The ship de-cloaked and extruded the silvery liquid metal tentacle again, oozing like toothpaste to touch down on the yard’s steps. Heavy raindrops struck the concrete, almost pitting the surface as if they were bullets from the gods. Lightning lit the skies in streaks of white phosphorus, blasting holes in the black clouds. A banshee wind howled and swept the pooling rain into sheets of dense water as the fences surrounding the yard bent and creaked.

  Adam was struggling to persuade Amy to climb onto the moving steps. She was soaking wet, hair plastered to her face, clothes dirty and ripped. In contrast, the rain seemed to slough off Adam like water off a duck’s back. She clung to him, tears pouring down her face, glancing fearfully at the graphite skyscraper hovering directly overhead, puncturing the low-lying clouds.

  I turned to Cain with a flash of annoyance. “How much longer can we stay here?”

  He pulled a face. “We shouldn’t be here at all. It won’t take long before they detect us. There are probably Vu-Hak in the city just over there.”

  And it would only take one Vu-Hak in a fully enabled Electromech for this to all be over. I pushed myself out of the seat that melted back into the floor of the flight deck. “Leave it to me.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  Incoming!

  Cain’s voice boomed around my head as I met Adam and Amy at the already sealing doorway, an explosion as loud as any sky-born thunderclap.

  I helped him yank her into an ascension tube back up to the flight deck, sensing increased anxiety from the ship as we soared upward. The journey seemed briefer this time, the hull bending and morphing to make the transit shorter. A low propulsive beat was coming from the engines, which sounded like they were powering up rather than idling.

  Stillman looked up as we entered the flight deck. Her hands were curled around the armrests, fingers gripping tightly, bony knuckles protruding. Next to her, Hamilton was as white as a sheet, hugging his knees, one leg tapping out a nervous rhythm on the floor. Cain was standing in front of a huge hologram projecting what was left of San Francisco and the Bay area. Adam and Amy appeared at my shoulder, his arm still around her, protecting her. Neither Stillman nor Hamilton seemed to notice she was there.

  We hadn’t spoken.

  “What’s going on?” I said, all business.

  Then I saw them. Like Valkyries from a Wagnerian opera, multiple silver streaks were approaching, silhouetted by stratocumulus clouds towering into the sky, lightning strikes cascading and rending the air behind them.

  “How many?” Adam asked, peering at the image.

  Cain inclined his head slightly and zoomed the picture. Lines and circles appeared around each of the converging Vu-Hak, counting and calculating distances and trajectory.

  “Fifty-four,” he said. “They have been tracking us.”

  “What are we waiting for?” I yelled. “Get us out of here!”

  Cain held up a hand. “I cannot. I do not have any destination co-ordinates. As I said earlier …”

  “I don’t fucking care! We need to go! Right now!”

  Some form of synthetic adrenaline was activating my system, and it felt as if I was on fire. My arms were moving on their own, and I felt disconnected from everything but images of the approaching Vu-Hak.

  Adam turned to me, his thoughts sweeping through my mind.

  Kate, it will take time to make the calculation. A wormhole this size has never been generated. A simulation is one thing but there are many potential problems if we do not test it first. As Cain says, we cannot navigate blindly as we could end up anywhere. In the middle of a star, for example …

  Stillman gasped and put her hand over her mouth. A distortion had appeared in the sky between the Vu-Hak and us. It was swirling and tumbling and forming a vortex and was rapidly moving toward us.

  Cain’s hands flickered over the hologram. “The three leading Electromechs have each fashioned a pulse of gravitational waves and they are converging on us.”

  “What exactly are gravitational waves?” I said.

  “Artificial ripples in the shape of space. They will reach us in fifteen point four seconds.”

  “Can we survive the impact?”

  He turned to look at me and the sadness on his face said it all. “The intersection of each wave has synergistically increased their strength. It is too late.”

  A sharp, broken sob pierced the
air as Stillman broke down, her hands feebly reaching out and finding Hamilton. “It can’t be over. Not after everything.”

  She was right. We’d come too far to just roll over.

  I sat down in one of the flight deck chairs and sensed Adam reading my thoughts, becoming alarmed.

  Kate, you must not … think about what you are going to do …

  Too late.

  Time to step up.

  “You told me I could save everyone,” I said softly. “Did you mean it?”

  Before he could answer I closed my eyes, crossed my fingers, and entered the ship’s cognitive network.

  My mind soared through its systems, arteries, conduits and powerlines, through the plasma fields and gravitational anomalies that powered its vast and incomprehensible engines and into its brain. There, I found the software and synthetic neuronal connections that controlled the wormhole generator. The formula was elegant, the equations beautiful, aesthetically perfect. The ingredients for generating the detonation that would open the portal out of our galaxy were all present in the belly of the ship, dormant and sleeping.

  Just waiting for the spark.

  I lit the fire.

  FORTY-SIX

  I accessed the Trinity proof from the formula derived by Lindstrom in 1953, and the untested wormhole generator exploded into life.

  In the deepest, most heavily shielded recesses of the ship, exotic elements at the far end of the periodic table collided in a controlled nuclear explosion. A singularity the size of a pinhead was created, instantly collapsing in on itself, unable to withstand the force of its own gravity. At the same time, an artificial white hole was manufactured, spinning and pulsing, light and matter being repelled in equal amounts. As it bent and warped space around it I sent it colliding into the black hole, producing a roaring vortex that sucked all matter toward its event horizon.

  Before this unholy creation could destroy the ship, I ejected it at a fraction of the speed of light to a point half a mile off the bow. There was a burst of radiation and light as space and the very fabric of the universe in that small area of the sky was ripped apart. A liquid-looking mirror-like ball appeared, about a mile and a half wide, and a wormhole was born.

  A tunnel in space-time, huge and terrifying.

  I took a deep breath and pointed the ship directly into the maw.

  Moments before we crossed the event horizon I activated an energy shield comprising entirely of dark matter. Invisible and undetectable, this substance counteracted the gravitational force of the vortex, stabilizing the cataclysmic pressures inside and keeping the newly produced tunnel open. The ship rattled and groaned and twisted but remained intact. As we passed through the event horizon there was an impression of billions of stars spinning around us, forming an unbroken and intensifying ring of light. Inside the tunnel, starlight streaked past, the ship stretching like a rubber band, our individual molecules threatening to be ripped apart by the pressure of the tidal forces.

  Cain’s voice pushed through my awareness. This is called spaghettification. Do not be alarmed.

  I pictured my ankles stretching away from my knees before my neck elongated into a strand of linguini. I hoped this was a reversible event, or better still, just a subjective hallucination trying to make sense of the utter weirdness that was happening.

  Cain’s voice whispered through once more, this time with undisguised urgency. The gravitational waves generated by the Vu-Hak have been sucked into the wormhole with us. They have created instability and are threatening the tunnel.

  That didn’t sound good. I flicked the sensors aft and watched the data flowing in. A colossal pressure wave was advancing on the ship, producing shearing forces registering way off the scale.

  If the tunnel collapses while we are in it, we will not survive.

  No shit, Sherlock.

  The event horizon would become so small that not even a single wavelength of light could squeeze inside. All the radiation associated with our remains would be burped out leaving nothing but empty space where the black hole used to be.

  The velocity of the approaching wave was such that we had only seconds in which to act – and I had no idea what to do. I asked the ship’s AI to come up with a solution, but there was nothing but silence from the ether.

  Then Adam’s voice floated in, calm and collected. Kate, get the ship to trap the Hawking radiation produced by the vortex and eject it directly back down our long axis.

  Hawking radiation – entangled and intrinsically linked particles and antiparticles being randomly generated by the wormhole – was yet another bit of quantum physics that was just a little bit too surreal to try and decipher. I bit back a reply, which would have been sarcastic and something along the lines of ‘You’re attempting to violate the laws of quantum physics, choose immediately between these three options …’

  But I didn’t question him. I just did it.

  The ship’s dark matter shield focused the Hawking radiation and expelled it forcefully at the gravitational wave. As they collided, space-time bounced back and outward, creating yet another white hole. The gravitational wave was sucked into this new singularity and froze like a snowflake. I watched it falling behind, becoming smaller and more distant as we continued to plough forward through the tunnel. Behind us, the wormhole started to collapse, but directly ahead it appeared to be stable and wide open.

  Well done, Kate, you created a quantum tunnel. The gravitational wave should re-emerge back on Earth and destroy any Vu-Hak attempting to enter the wormhole.

  Two for the price of one then, I thought grimly.

  But were we out of danger?

  I sent a message to Cain. Any idea how long before we arrive, wherever it is we’re going?

  Cain’s voice returned after a few seconds. Our final destination is unknown … but forward projections of the vortex’s degradation indicate a time in tunnel space of seventy-three minutes.

  That was a long time.

  Plenty of time, in fact.

  I messaged Adam on a private channel. We need to talk.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  I waited for Adam in one of the ship’s hangars: a huge chamber with walls of half polished steel, half carbon nanofiber, dark and foreboding. I stood on a catwalk bisecting a wall of machines that blinked and flickered with a life of their own. There was a thrum of power felt through the handrails, and the pull of gravity seemed to ebb and flow as the ship continued its journey through the wormhole.

  To say I was disappointed was an understatement. It was more like a betrayal, selfishness on his part that I hadn’t anticipated given everything I’d seen him do and everything he’d said. His footsteps clanged on the catwalk as he approached and I folded my arms and set my face into neutral, fighting my emotions.

  Kate, I know what you are thinking, but I can explain.

  I bit back my first reply, unable to get my head around what he’d done, the risks he had taken with his own life, and ours. He’d put the survival of the human race at risk – and for what? So he could selfishly save his daughter. I recalled the last meeting he’d had with Amy, when he’d discovered her role in the death of his wife. He’d tried to kill her, though was distraught when he thought he’d succeeded. It wasn’t until just before he entered the wormhole on his suicide mission that I told him she’d survived.

  “I blame myself, you know,” I said, tautly.

  He looked perplexed. “For what?”

  “I tried to convince you to forgive her, and that some sort of reconciliation was possible. Fuck me if I didn’t also offer to help. But this …” I glowered at him, my eyes burning with anger. “You could have doomed us all.”

  His face remained expressionless and vacant, but a profusion of emotion was hidden behind. I detected pain, not physical but emotional. He looked earnestly at me and gave a half smile. I felt his mind probing, gazing into my soul. He accessed a memory in there, and let it run free. Black booted feet stepping over my prostrate form. Acid burning the inside o
f my mouth. Coppery smelling blood trickling down my face and pooling under my head. Arms grabbing hold of me. My ear-curdling screams. A little girl, lying on her side, her head turned toward me, unblinking eyes open.

  “That’s not fair,” I said tightly.

  He moved closer with eyes that seemed to look deeply in my own, into my very soul.

  “Kate, you made me understand that here is nothing I shouldn’t do to keep Amy safe from harm. You taught me that. Wouldn’t you have moved mountains to get your daughter back?”

  “Don’t you fucking dare go there,” I snapped, starting to pull away. But he reached out and took hold of my arm.

  “Unconditional love for your children means you care about them more than you care for yourself, yes? We want our children to have everything, things we never had. A better life than our own. It does not matter how destructive it could be, or how it could hurt us. When you love them, you don’t stop loving them. Never. Not even if they hurt us. Especially not then. You don’t give up because if you give up and move on then it would not be love. If it isn’t love, then it’s just another worthless thing. You taught me all this, Kate. And you were right.”

  I bit back a sob and closed my eyes. Kelly appeared before me, but not as a little girl, as a vivacious young woman. The adult she would never become.

  I was supposed to be there for her, wasn’t I? To keep her from harm. To protect her and then be there for her when she fell. To keep the monsters at bay …

  “I couldn’t save her …” I managed.

  “I know,” he said softly. “But you saved me. You saved your friends. Help me save everyone else.”

  Then he leaned forward and kissed me. It was just a kiss. Not a passionate one on the lips, but a simple cheek kiss. It was just a kiss, but it was one that made my virtual heart seem to beat a million miles an hour. One that left me weak at the knees and made my brain freeze.

  I wondered whether I loved him.

  When I’d first met him I’d already lost my entire world, and he’d lost everything, and more. And yet … How long does it take to fall in love? A heartbeat? A week? A month? A year? Inside my synthetic body my human mind was convincing me that my face was flushing and something was fluttering in my stomach. Time juddered to a halt as if the world had stopped spinning on its axis.