The 9/11 Machine

by Greg Enslen

  Lin smiled. “This seat will be fine.” He climbed up into the folding chair that had replaced the pilot’s seat, nodding as the other Koreans gathered around the door. Hyun finished and slammed the passenger door closed, coming around the plane to join the others.

  “Good luck,” they said together, and Lin smiled again and nodded.

  “What should we do about the Americans?” Hyun asked quietly.

  “Wait until you’re ready to leave, and then kill them,” Lin said. “And burn the hangar and the van as well. It might have some residual radiation. Take Tuan’s van and go north.”

  Hyun glanced outside. “The prevailing winds are to the southwest. We’ll be fine. Are you sure you don’t want to use the remote? I spent a lot of time making it work, and I’m sure—”

  “No, no. We’ve wasted too much time as it is,” Lin said, patting his friend on the arm.

  Lin started up the plane and expertly taxied it out of the hangar. He spoke to Tuan in the tower, who had already informed the Houston Air Route Traffic Control Center of the incoming flight, working to clear the airspace. Remarkably, there didn’t appear to be any additional precautions from Houston. Lin and his group had assumed that, with today being the tenth anniversary of 9/11, there might have been a few additional hoops to jump through. They had prepared a back story and sufficient paperwork, just in case they were questioned by Houston. But Tuan had said nothing was out of the ordinary; he’d gotten Lin a clear corridor all the way in.

  Finally, Lin throttled up the engines and the plane raced down the runway, picking up speed. It took a moment or two longer than Lin had expected, but the overweight plane finally nosed up into the sky. The rickety pilot seat leaned back as he pointed the plane into the sky. The seat wasn’t at all comfortable, and it wiggled around a lot from the vibration of the engine, but Lin didn’t really mind.

  He knew the discomfort wouldn’t last long.

  1.3

  A Warehouse in Red Hook

  Dr. Donald Ellis drove into the city on the Long Island Expressway. The tall buildings of the Manhattan skyline, forever altered, took up the entire front window of his car.

  For years before 9/11, he’d driven into the city and never thought about the World Trade Center buildings. They were just there, two more tall slabs of metal and concrete in an uneven skyline. Now they were gone, but he still glanced in their direction. Sometimes he saw a shadow of them in the corner of his eye, a reverse image memory of where they had been, like when you stare at a dark object in front of a light background. For him, there would always be a dark smudge of an afterimage in his vision where the two hulking towers had stood.

  He passed through two U.S. military checkpoints between his home in Jericho and Queens, with a third one at the interchange from the LIE onto I-278. It was overkill, to say the least. The backups were just a fact of life now, but there was always a longer backup at this checkpoint than most—it was the last one before the Brooklyn Bridge. The military never moved the checkpoints—in fact, the “temporary” buildings the Army had put up to house security personnel were starting to look like permanent additions to the urban landscape. Atop one of the military buildings, Don saw a menacing machine gun pointed down at the highway full of Volvos and Hondas and Mercedes, each inching their way to the checkpoint.

  After posse comitatus was suspended as part of the First Patriot Act, the U.S. military had been called in to assist police forces around the country with various security operations, including checkpoints, airport and seaport security, and border patrols.

  While he waited in line, Don got out his USID, the American eagle hologram reflecting in his eyes. There had been so many “show us your papers” jokes at the beginning, all uttered in horribly fake German accents, when Homeland Security had begun instituting the U.S. Identification System, but Don didn’t think the jokes were funny. It was just one more personal freedom gone, one more thing about American life that had been surrendered to the terrorists. What had Ben Franklin said? “Those who would give up liberty to purchase safety deserve neither,” or something like that.

  And it wasn’t even real safety—it was an illusion. Folks sitting in their cars at checkpoints, or lined up at the airport for screening, felt better, right? “Well, look at how much effort the government is putting into protecting me. Wow. That really does make me feel safer!”

  It was crap. In Don’s mind, it was the terrorists’ way of destroying the United States from the inside. They couldn’t beat us with guns, or bombs, or invade the country, so they had to get at us another way—turn us on each other.

  It sickened Don, but there was nothing he could do. All of the people around him were just a product of their times and their circumstances. For things to be different, history would have to be different. Army checkpoints and USID and war—it was just the logical outcome of the events of 9/11. Don could see that now.

  Don shook his head and glanced over at the other cars around him. Most of the other drivers were on their cell phones—he saw several Apple iPhones and smiled. Don couldn’t control the Army or national politics, but he could certainly try to watch the trends and make money. Money was one of the few things he really needed—money and time and privacy.

  Apple had hit it big, and that stock had done very well for him over the last six years, especially since they’d launched the iPad. It was taking the tech world by storm, which surprised him, considering it had been a rumored product launch for a year and a half. Didn’t everyone know it was coming? Hadn’t everyone seen the brewing excitement? Making money on Apple stock seemed like a no-brainer. Apple’s iPhone was cleaning up at the market as well as people snapped up the handsets. Apple was on its fourth version of the phone, and new versions of the iPhone and iPad were scheduled to come out in 2012.

  Don glanced over at Queens and Brooklyn beyond, stretching off to the south of the freeway. There were blocks and blocks of apartment buildings, intermixed with warehouses, restaurants, and a few parks.

  His car edged up to the checkpoint and, after a short conversation with a soldier, he was waved through. Big dogs were led around his car, sniffing at it from all angles at a secondary bomb check, and then he drove on. Don shook his head and continued on 278 South, heading toward Brooklyn. Off to his right, downtown Manhattan disappeared as his car weaved through low tunnels and overpasses.

  He took 278 through Brooklyn Heights and got off at Columbia Street, heading south. All of the property to his right, along the waterfront, was owned by the Port Authority. Don made his way through the neighborhoods and cut over to Van Brunt, passing the beautiful red Friends of Firefighters building—they were a nonprofit organization set up after 9/11 to help care for the families of lost firefighters. Over the past nine years, they had grown into an organization dedicated to helping firefighters and their families through community support and fundraising. A lot of people didn’t realize that many retired FDNY members volunteered to return to service after 9/11 and the devastating losses inflicted on the number of active firefighters in New York City. It made Don happy to know that there were so many good people out there in the world.

  But the 9/11 attacks had changed everything for so many people. So many lives were changed—loved ones lost, lives disrupted forever. Entire families killed.

  After abruptly leaving the university after 9/11, he’d set up shop in a quiet warehouse in Red Hook, a run-down neighborhood on the west side of Brooklyn. The ugly-looking building was located among a dozen others, but it afforded him three things that would be essential in his work.

  The first was unfettered access to the high-power electrical lines that his equipment would require: power lines and transmission lines.

  The second thing he needed was privacy; the warehouse district was notorious for being full of crime-ridden lairs for squatters and troublemakers. He had been careful to choose a location that could be easily secured, with no large windows. The entire facility was surrounded by razor-topped fencing.

&
nbsp; The third reason he’d located in Red Hook was that the row of warehouses afforded an exceptional view of the Manhattan skyline. Governors Island stood in the water just offshore, and no bridges or towers obstructed the view of where the World Trade Center had stood.

  A last, important detail he’d considered might not have made any sense to an outside observer, but to him, it was very important. When he’d been negotiating with the local commercial real estate agent to secure a location in the blocks of warehouses, he had asked to see the lists of previous tenants in the buildings. She’d looked at him strangely—clearly, she wondered why he would care. He’d explained that he was concerned about contaminants from previous tenants interfering with his chemical experiments, and she’d bought the story. But he was actually researching previous tenants, or lack thereof, and factoring them into the purchasing decision.

  Don continued down Van Brunt Street and turned on Wolcott, following it until he reached the waterfront and a nondescript warehouse that sat next to the water. He used the remote on his keychain to open the security gate. A security guard appeared as soon as the gate began to open—one area where Don had spared no expense was on facility security. It was no secret that he was working on some type of physics experiment inside the warehouse, and he’d hired the best security agency in the area to keep the curious away—and anyone looking to strip out two hundred feet of copper tubing to sell for recycling.

  Of course, no value could be placed on the machine inside the building, if things went as planned.

  Don nodded at the guard and directed his Volvo around to the large parking lot. At one point, this building had been a cannery, so the parking lot could hold eighty or ninety vehicles. On this sunny morning, as was usual, it was only his Volvo, Terry’s red truck, and a dozen more cars for the other technicians and security personnel, surrounded by a weedy expanse of empty spaces. Beyond the East River stood the Manhattan skyline.

  Don climbed from his car and headed inside. The front reception area held a guard desk, where two guards checked IDs and waved people through a small metal detector. They waved at Don as he passed them and unlocked a set of doors marked with signs that said Power Blossom Physics Research Facility—No Guests or Visitors Allowed.

  Beyond the locked doors lay the expansive main floor of the warehouse and several small rooms that he had had built on the main floor, including an office for himself, a large computer lab, a galley and break room, and a small machine shop for fabricating parts. Above these was a small, second-story apartment where he occasionally slept when he was too tired to make the drive home. Even the top of the second floor was dwarfed by the high warehouse ceiling, and the constructed rooms on the eastern side of the main floor took up only a small portion of the space.

  The rest of the main floor was taken up by a massive machine. As Don passed through the working spaces and out onto the main floor, he stopped to look at it, a massive assemblage of tubes and structural components and hundreds of miles of thick cabling, running off to various parts of the warehouse.

  Don was really only using about a tenth of the space, but he had been unable to estimate the exact size of the project when he’d been shopping for locations. He walked across the wide, concrete floor, stacked with massive wooden crates that had held many of the specially built parts he had procured from all over the world. Now, the packing crates and boxes served to fill the empty rooms and visually block the machine from prying eyes.

  He passed the last of the boxes and saw their working area—he’d essentially built another small building on the main floor of the warehouse and housed his equipment, offices, and support systems inside it. Another guard stood outside as he waved and entered, then went down a small hallway and into a room marked Office. He sat his briefcase and keys down on a desk covered with electronics. He glanced at the September 2011: We’ll Never Forget! calendar on the wall and left, heading out into the larger open room.

  Don had managed to convince the university and some of its donors to fund the initial phase. He had been convincing in his presentations, promising a whole new field of energy production resulting from his experimentation. The university had been sad to see him leave the teaching position but had supported him in his new work, going so far as to allow him to poach most of his staff and research assistants from the school.

  Now, years into the project, many of his recent successful experiments had added greatly to the bottom line of Power Blossom, LLC, the corporation that he had set up to hold all of the assets and financial interests of this new venture. The LLC was doing well now, fully funding the operation. He still owed the university a sizeable amount of money from the initial investment, but he didn’t think they would see their money. It was for the greater good, what he was doing here, and he hoped, on some level, they would understand.

  Don smiled, remembering how he stifled a crazy grin when sitting across the desk from his lawyer as they set up the LLC and its component parts. Don had explained the structure, including the fact that he was donating his personal accounts to the venture. Don had then added another mortgage to the house and had taken out several other personal loans in the last two years, over the protestations of his lawyers and accountants.

  Of course, the men were not working with the full knowledge set. They didn’t have the whole picture and, as a result, didn’t understand the full implications of Don Ellis donating his personal fortune, as it was, to an LLC. Don had given the accountant enough of an explanation to make the transfer of funds palatable, not going into the details. And Don had hidden a smile when he’d explained that he wanted to call his post-university research venture Power Blossom. He hinted at the idea that the research might result in a radical new power source. It was the same explanation he’d given to the university and the donors.

  He hadn’t explained to his lawyer that Power Blossom actually came from the Powerpuff Girls and Tina’s favorite member of the cartoon superhero team, Blossom. He’d assumed that working in the names of the other two characters, Bubbles and Buttercup, might raise too many eyebrows, so he’d left it at that, content in the knowledge that, in the end, the entire multi-million dollar project was dedicated to his young girl.

  The machine stood in the center of the huge warehouse. It was an impressive sight, even if it was impossible to guess what the machine did just by looking at it. The central particle accelerator stood in the middle, surrounded by support structures and scaffolding, and Don could see two of the research assistants climbing on the outside of the accelerator. Large pipes and tubes and wires ran across the floor to a large computer terminal.

  The machine itself, coincidentally, resembled pictures he had seen of the Large Hadron Collider, now under construction in Switzerland. Of course, Don’s machine was much smaller and almost eight times as powerful. The LHC, funded by an international coalition of governments and research facilities, was being built to test theories about physics and quantum mechanics on a subatomic scale. The Ellis machine was being built for a much more specific purpose. But only Don was privy to that information.

  He found Terry sleeping on the couch in Don’s office.

  “Terry?” Don asked, waking the man. “Seriously, you shouldn’t be sleeping here. The others won’t respect you, and it’s my office. I prefer to keep it locked up, you know.”

  The large man sat up, rubbing his eyes. Don saw a plate of pizza crusts on the side table, next to the remote for the large-screen TV that hung on the wall of the break room.

  “I know, boss. Sorry. The testing team stayed late, running that last set of figures,” Terry said, nodding at a sheaf of large computer printouts on a table in the center of the room.

  Don nodded, taking the papers and flipping through them.

  “Plus,” Terry continued, “I’m in trouble at home. Too many late nights.”

  “Katie giving you a hard time?” Don asked, not looking up from the figures.

  Terry nodded. “Yeah, she thinks I work too much. We had a dat
e last night—it was a Saturday, but I forgot. And I can’t really tell her a lot about what we’re doing here, so it’s hard for her to understand. You know what I mean…” he began, but stopped abruptly, looking at Don.

  “No,” Don said quietly. “I don’t.” His voice sounded tired, even to himself.

  Don knew the technical support staff avoided the subject of his family—everyone knew what had happened to them. But people often brought up the subject of their own families and then hurriedly stopped talking. Whether out of guilt or embarrassment, Don couldn’t say. Either way, he didn’t really care.

  Terry looked at him strangely, but Don knew he wasn’t going to say anything.

  “Just be glad you have someone to worry about you, Terry. It could be worse,” Don said, looking at Terry.

  Terry nodded slowly, his eyes wide.

  “Now,” Don asked. “Are the calibrations done?”

  Terry nodded vigorously.

  “They’re complete,” he answered. “The last three tests we ran last night were in the green. The margin is now down to 0.52 percent, which is within acceptable parameters, based on the planning documents.”

  Don walked out of the room, not saying anything, and Terry followed him to the computer lab, where Don sat at a large monitor and began tapping at the keyboard. Presently, a set of schematics for the machine appeared, spinning slowly. Don tapped at the keyboard, stopping the schematic and zooming in on the round red object in the middle of the machine. “And the accelerator—how did she do?”

  “Great, boss,” Terry answered, excited. “I think we got those wave formation problems solved, and it’s taking in all the power it can. ‘We’re giving her all we’ve got, captain!’” Terry said weakly, but Don didn’t smile at the Star Trek reference. One thing he would not miss about Terry would be his cheesy movie references.