Razing Beijing

by Sidney Elston

  Thackeray rolled his eyes and led them to a tall cabinet housing an assortment of drive access doors and flat-screen displays. He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder and raised his voice above the buzzing drone. “All our daily product runs through the console you see here. During the day the software’s written in ‘source code,’ then we back-up all of it by running it through this machine.” He looked at Stuart. “Do you have any idea what source code is?”

  “What’s this got to do with the vault?” Stuart asked.

  “I’m getting to the vault.”

  “Weren’t you worried about missing the test?”

  “This is actually important. Come 6 o’clock, and depending on the day of the week, we conduct either a full or incremental back-up of the day’s work onto tape drive cartridges. These represent the latest revision of the project’s executable object code. Usually I and another guy take the cartridges downstairs to the fireproof vault on sublevel four, where we each enter a code—”

  “We were just down there.” Stuart shook his head.

  Emily cast him a frown. “You’re making him nervous.”

  “That’ll be the day. What are we paying data operators to do while you gopher this stuff around?”

  “You’ll have to ask the FBI boys who helped revise the procedure. Anyway, each night—”

  “FBI? What are you talking about?”

  Thackeray began tugging absently on his beard.

  “Exactly what happened here?”

  “Somebody screwed up,” Thackeray finally admitted. “And for once we actually had to restore the previous day’s modules with back-up copy. Low and behold, the cartridges from the vault were blank—the back-ups were blank! We’d lost two or three days worth of work. But can’t you see how something like that could happen? All we did was somehow mix up the data cartridges with blanks. They all look alike. Anybody can get blanks from office stores. Okay—it was sloppy. We had to report what happened to security. One of the Boy Scouts up there called in the FBI. ‘Procedural protocol,’ this illiterate snipe kept whining. Perry just exploded, went utterly freekin’ berserk. He demanded that the FBI be discreet. I guess we raised a few eyebrows at DOE.

  “So, what’s the FBI do but bring in some pricey D.C. consultants—greenhorn, pointy-headed nit-picks who didn’t really know anything. They sat down and created this big goddamn laundry list of procedures I’ve been leading you through. All we ever used to do was back-up a copy of the raw source code.”

  “Without first compiling all the modules into object code?” Emily asked Thackeray. “Couldn’t you back-up both?”

  “Maybe.” Thackeray’s expression soured. “Some good did come out of the exercise. The full source code, uncompiled, filled up a dozen cartridges. We got that down to five, plus we get sort of a daily quality check. But the bureaucracy... Do you mind not telling Perry where you heard this? Better yet, tell him you heard it from Reedy.”

  Stuart was perturbed by the whole arrangement. “Somebody’s been pilfering software, is that what they think?”

  “If Perry thinks so, he will never admit it. And I sure don’t think so. Perry’s worried about the way it could make the company look.”

  “How would someone get the cartridge past the metal detectors?” Emily asked. “Won’t they set off the alarm?”

  “That’s a question that hasn’t been answered. Besides being bulky the aluminum back-plates would have set off the detectors. That’s why you won’t see any portable hard or flash drives around. From the beginning, security insisted we only use these tape cartridges.”

  Emily shared an uncomfortable look with Stuart, who turned to ask Thackeray, “Were any theories tossed around as to who and why somebody might be stealing software?”

  “If I had to guess?” Thackeray’s expression hardened. “It was the French. Those brie-blowin’ frogs are always trying to pry their shit-hooks into our master code. One good call Perry made was not negotiating away CLI’s authority to manage all the code. Still pisses ’em off.”

  Stuart glared at Thackeray. “As this thing doesn’t actually work, why would anyone risk serious prison time going after the software?”

  “Beats me! Oh, they should be about ready. We ought to get to the well.”

  “WHAT YOU’RE ABOUT to see requires an ungodly surge of electrical power,” Thackeray explained to Emily and Stuart. Shouldering their way against the flow of foot traffic, it became obvious not everyone was cleared to witness the test. Identification badges clipped to breast pockets of white-smocked technicians bore designations of various corporations; ‘TRW,’ ‘UTRC,’ ‘CLI.’ A profusion of brown badges attested to the international representation on the project; these individuals quietly discussed preparations for tonight’s demonstration in German or French. The trio passed through a set of revolving doors at the facility entrance.

  “Our first experiments practically knocked out the whole west suburban D.C. power grid,” Thackeray continued. “We eventually worked out a deal with VP&L where—”

  “Excuse me, Thack,” Stuart interrupted him. “What’s with the breeze?”

  “Oh, that. We introduce a slightly positive pressurization into the lab in order to purge aerosol-borne biohazardous agents.”

  Stuart and Emily shuffled to a stop.

  Thackeray’s face broke into a devilish grin. “Jeez, Stu. I’ve never seen you so gullible. We purge dust and small particulate matter out of the lab, that’s all.” Thack and Emily laughed.

  A small observation deck sign appeared above the next doorway; they followed Thackeray inside. The room in certain respects was similar to a theater balcony, poorly lit and complete with several elevated rows of folding chairs. The observation deck overlooked the laboratory floor some twenty feet below through a wall of wire-reinforced plate glass, against which the control console provided the three men hunched over it with an unobstructed view of the ‘well.’ A young man wearing headphones turned to see who had entered the room—he tapped the dial of his watch, and returned his attention to the panel of instruments. Thackeray politely excused himself and headed for the console.

  Stuart accompanied Emily to the glass partition. The polished white floor of the ‘well’ below appeared to be the size of a basketball court. Attending to tall banks of electronic instruments lining the floor were dozens of technicians making final adjustments. Two technicians appeared amid the activity, each wheeling a cart toward the center of the floor. The surface of one cart was bare, on the other a small box. Emily watched with growing interest as the woman pushing the cart with the box stopped to carefully align it within a set of dark lines painted on the floor. Checking further to see that the cart was properly positioned, the woman arched her neck to look over her head at the ceiling.

  Stuart and Emily followed her gaze. That the ceiling was another twenty feet over their heads explained why the peculiar sight had slipped their notice. Suspended from the ceiling high over the floor of the well were two massive, inverted conical objects, their fiberglass exterior surfaces smooth and white. Each cone measured roughly six feet in diameter at the base and ten feet in height. The apex of each was directed straight down at the floor and truncated to reveal a dark, open recess like a gaping mouth. Aerial catwalks allowed for servicing the devices; technicians reached over their heads making adjustments within the open cowling of one of the huge cones. Hydraulic actuator rods spaced evenly around its base indicated the capability to directionally articulate.

  “And those are the lasers,” Stuart told Emily, stating the obvious.

  “With some elaborate modifications.” Ralph Perry said, appearing behind Stuart and Emily. “Which somebody else will have to explain.” The three exchanged hellos.

  Perry asked, “What do you think so far, Emily?”

  “Very exciting,” she said, returning his smile. “There’s quite a lot to absorb. I’m overwhelmed.”

  “A little too exciting.” Perry gestured over their heads. “As big as they are, the
y’re proving every bit as temperamental as our early medical guns.” He described a litany of problems with the megawatt-class free-electron lasers, culminating with their decision to deposit a 10-angstrom layer of gold on the observation windows in order to reflect lased radiation.

  “That,” Perry somberly observed, “should prevent a repeat of some of the earlier injuries. I’m surprised you haven’t asked about the source of that humming sound.”

  “Now that you mention it,” Stuart said, “it’s annoying as hell.”

  Perry gestured toward a heavy, windowless door fixed with an OSHA placard displaying the words liquid nitrogen. “Behind there is the largest super-conducting capacitor in the world. We can discharge enough megawatt-hours in the blink of an eye to power the city of Richmond for nearly an hour. We began charging it several days ago during off-peak periods, and still we draw down the power grid.”

  Stuart shook his head in disbelief. Twenty years to launch all this claptrap into orbit seemed wildly optimistic.

  A shrill klaxon and rotating amber lights flooded the well’s interior. Perry gestured them back the way they had come.

  The observation deck filled with engineers and technicians clearing the laboratory floor. Affixed to the opposite wall of the well, large red digits descended through four minutes on the countdown toward zero. Soon there was standing room only; thirty or so people jostled to see through the glass to the floor below. Stuart nudged Emily and pressed a pair of foam earplugs into her hand.

  A bone-rattling alarm sounded and the crowd inched closer to the thick plate glass. An electronic display flashed ‘warning - prepare for discharge.’ The console operators sat motionless as the automated sequence advanced. Down on the floor of the well in place of the box stood a crystalline pyramid, diffracting a pastel splash of color onto the surface of the cart. A buzzer sounded—the timer digits counted down through thirty seconds.

  Stuart and Emily glanced overhead in time to see both lasers conduct a rapid actuation test—the massive conical objects gimbaled wildly before again coming to rest, like witnessing an elephant break into a sprint and then stop on a dime. Spectators shifted anxiously; three green laser-targeting reticules converged slowly on the pyramid and then vanished.

  The lead console operator announced over a loudspeaker, “EPR correlation in ten—mark.”

  The digits on the timer descended through nine, eight, seven...

  Emily glanced to her right. Stuart was watching with arms folded, an apprehensive crease in his brow. “Keep your eye on the pyramid,” he said.

  Four, three...

  The ambient light dimmed and fluctuated.

  Two, one...

  KABOOM—Emily flinched as the loud thunderclap rumbled the floor beneath her feet and a bright flash of light filled the well. The glass partition rattled angrily in its frame—her mind’s eye relived the scene at Mojave, shards of glass would shower over them any second...

  Instead, there rose a chorus of disappointed sighs. On the surface of the cart below was absolutely nothing—the crystal pyramid was nowhere in sight. Emily’s first reaction was that it had obliterated into tiny particles, but the surface of the cart looked perfectly bare. So, too, was the other cart, positioned several yards to the right.

  Already the crowd was dispersing. “What did we just see happen?” Emily turned to gauge Stuart’s reaction in time to glimpse him following Perry out through the door.

  48

  JOANNE LEWIS’S ENTRY to the room caused the usual lull in the conversation, her sleek gabardine suit not quite crossing over the line of professional etiquette. Retained with the Washington, D.C. lobbying firm Smolowitz & Leininger, Coherent’s acting chief counsel took her seat, smiled across the table at Stuart and tossed back her hair.

  Seated beside Ralph Perry at the conference table was CLI’s chief financial officer, along with Steve Reedy, Stuart’s predecessor in charge of the Project. Ralph Perry appeared to Stuart’s eye pale, perhaps even ill. It was obvious that the picture was bleaker than what Perry had painted. He would certainly expect delays and burdensome technical problems plaguing any ‘tele-transportation’ project worthy of the name. That these were inevitably quantum related could not, however, justify the monetary black hole draining the company’s coffers faster than even the spend thrifty Department of Energy was prepared to replenish. As a consequence of CLI falling behind on key milestones, the government contract stipulated that progress payments be ‘evaluated’ on a monthly basis until such time that CLI rectified their problems. Meanwhile, the company was poised to report a serious quarterly loss.

  “Okay...” Perry let out a breath. “Joanne?”

  “I’ve got a bit of encouraging news,” their lobbyist began cheerfully. “Your ‘friends’ appear to be applying some pressure—the ice at DOE is beginning to thaw, as are those mixed signals coming from Senator Milner’s office. His staff have supported us in the past, but until yesterday, I couldn’t even get back onto their calendar.”

  Perry mulled her appraisal. “Milner has the clout we’re going to need. He’s the one I told you about, Stu, who replaced Wendell on that green initiatives committee. And he chairs budget appropriations.”

  “So I finally managed a meeting tomorrow with Kenneth Hobbs, his senior aide.”

  Perry narrowed his eyes. “You know, Milner did express his desire to witness a demonstration. That might just be an opportunity to orchestrate a little goodwill. I’m thinking of inviting him soon, so you ought to feel free to bring it up.”

  “Isn’t that a little bit risky?” Lewis studied Perry a moment. “What if the test doesn’t work?”

  Stuart looked at Perry and laughed.

  “All right, ha, ha,” Perry said to Stuart. “Look, Joanne, we don’t expect it to work, not by then. The idea is we bring him down here to schmooze, show him what we’ve got, to demonstrate the earnest folks that we are.”

  “I still don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “For Christ’s sake, everyone’s aware that we’re having problems. Speaking of which, I almost hate to ask. When’s the next status review?”

  “With DOE? Three weeks.” Lewis leveled her gray eyes on Stuart. “For my meeting with Hobbs in the morning, I’ll need to know exactly how much program tinkering you think we’re going to need.”

  “Exactly?” Stuart asked. He looked around at the others. “Legally speaking, how exact do you need it?”

  Lewis folded her arms but struggled to suppress a smile.

  Stuart flashed her a grin and left it at that. He opened his folder and passed to each of the others a copy of the hand-written charts constructed last night after putting his daughter to bed. “You remember those old blue-team, red-team competitive run-offs we used to do?”

  Perry stared down at the charts, tapping his fingers. “They ate up a lot of time and money.”

  “They also produced results, if that’s what you want. Nothing produces better than unleashing two opposing camps, each armed with a sufficient level of talent, and allow a little competition to synthesize a direction. I know it’s going to be expensive. Given the lack of clarity, I don’t see that we have much choice.”

  “Sounds sort of archaic,” Lewis offered.

  “Keep going, Stu.”

  Stuart proceeded to explain the three separate options he had prepared with the help of his staff. The first was to continue down the current path of further refining anode detector accuracy. With the exception of Reedy, this option was the least favored by virtually all who were associated with the Project. On the basis that recent testing and analysis had proved ineffective, Stuart recommended they sideline further efforts.

  “I’m still not convinced the software changes were properly executed,” Reedy interjected. “Until we’re certain, I’d like to continue studying it with a low level of activity.”

  Reedy’s statement angered Stuart—continuing that effort was not what the two had agreed. Ralph Perry fixed his stare at a point on the tab
le and listened, nodding occasionally as Reedy defended his position. Stuart had decided that such a decision risked the diffusion of precious engineering and said so. He privately recalled Thackeray’s words: Reedy insists on polishing the head of a pin.

  Before Stuart could say anything more, Perry looked hard at Reedy. “I’m afraid I agree with Stu. We’ve already spent nearly fourteen million on that. We’re in no position to carry any sort of expensive insurance policies. If we hit a wall later on, we’ll consider going back to examine it.”

  Reedy only shrugged.

  Angered by Reedy’s blatant disregard for their agreement, Stuart breezed over the second option and that most favored by two key Swiss and French scientists. Citing work performed at the CERN institute, both were insisting on the need to develop more highly refined entanglement factors and Podolsky-Bell constants—concepts which Stuart had not understood without a heavy dose of tutoring. Even though the option’s cost and schedule alone disqualified option two, the fact that both Reedy and Thackeray weighed in so heavily against it accounted for most of what he needed to know. For at least the time being, given his illiteracy of reducing quantum physics to practice, Stuart had no choice but to rely almost totally on such inputs. At other times it seemed that the more he understood, the more disturbed he became.

  The third option combined elements of the second with modifications conceived by Thackeray and engineers on his staff. Steve Reedy—whose opinion Stuart heeded only because Perry still seemed to respect it—remained notably unenthusiastic about this option.

  Stuart said, “In order to execute option three, Steve and I agree that we could set up two teams comprised of members from each of the delegate countries.” There was no point feigning esprit de corps over his next point; Reedy had argued staunchly against it. “I want Thackeray to head Red Team. We’ll let Keilig, the Swiss rep, choose who to head up Team Blue.”

  Stuart tried to ignore Joanne’s attempt at appearing stunned. Perry displayed deep creases of concern on his forehead as he flipped back and forth through the pages of Stuart’s pitch.