It was too late to worry about Liza Banks running with scissors without Kate around to, what? Supervise? Truth be told, Banks had come around in a big way. Maybe it was time that Kate recognized that. Maybe everything didn’t rest on her shoulders.
The thought was kind of nice. She had to admit that their cause was incredibly important, and was very much in need of competent help. As much as they could get.
Kate finally said, “That sounds great, Liza. Good thinking. Can’t wait to meet Hertzfeld, if he checks out.”
“Excellent. So how, how are things going in Brazil?”
“We’re just about to find out.” Claudio glanced around and nodded, obviously half-listening to her conversation on the phone. He probably thought she was talking to her investment partners back in the USA. So she said, “Yes, Senhor Rodrigues is a prince, like you said, Liza. I’ll let you know how our preliminary look at the facility goes in an hour or so. So far, so good!”
“He’s listening, isn’t he?” asked Liza.
“Yep.”
Banks said, “OK, bye. Good luck,” and hung up. What Kate assumed the woman had meant but didn’t say, was “Good luck destroying the facility.”
“Goodbye.” Kate slipped her phone into her purse as Claudio led them up to another security check. This time, each of them had to submit to having their picture taken by a wall-mounted sensor. “Just to maintain a record of visitors,” Claudio explained. Then they proceeded into a larger chamber, one with no other obvious exits.
The chamber had been recently retrofitted. The detritus of quick construction was everywhere. Kate recognized electrical, phone, and data fiber cables, pallets filled with construction materials, and the smell of new paint once common to internet startups before the bubble burst.
“Sorry, it’s cold in here,” said Claudio. Several computer workstations, mostly powered down except for one display featuring a naturescapes screensaver, were crammed around the edges of the room, leaving the center open. Claudio led them across the chamber toward the far wall. “It’s even colder in there, where we’ve got the machine running.” Their guide gestured to a wide viewing window set in the wall.
Raul and Kate moved up and peered through. A chunky piece of hardware was installed in a custom rack, occupying most of the sealed room. A subtle vibration, presumably from its operation, tickled Kate’s soles. A jumble of cables splayed out from the base, and slithered to various outlets and other ports along the walls.
“Impressive,” said Raul.
Claudio nodded. “You want to see what it can do?” His eyes sparkled with excitement.
“That’s why we’re here,” Kate said.
The three gathered around one of the monitors. Claudio entered a password at the prompt too quickly for Kate to catch it. The screen saver cleared, replaced by a clunky input interface.
“Everyone who works in the field tells you that quantum computers are the secret to creating unbreakable encryption,” began Claudio, who navigated through a series of menus as he talked. “Or maybe, the secret to breaking normal encryption.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Others explain how quantum computing unlocks vast new processing power to use on various problems, so that we can finally model complex rocket equations, actually predict weather, or make self-driving cars even safer.”
“That’s mostly theoretical,” said Kate. “Lots of companies have made claims, but few have delivered anything.” She was goading Claudio purposefully.
Claudio glanced at her and winked. “Watch this!” He tapped in a few more commands, and one of the screens next to him lit up. It showed what was, apparently, a real-time camera feed of the room in which they were standing. She looked around. She didn’t see a camera. From the perspective, she figured it must be concealed over the door where they entered. She waved, and her image on the screen waved in synch.
She said, “I don’t understand. You can control spy cameras with your computer?”
Claudio laughed, “No! Well, yes. Like I said, breaking normal encryption is theoretically pretty easy for us. But what true, unlimited quantum computing actually offers is almost limitless processing power for use in simulations. What you’re looking at on the screen isn’t a camera feed. It’s a simulation I’m running on the computer based only on the real-time sound cues we’re providing, a layout map of the lab, and the pictures I had the system take of us as we entered. It’s extrapolating everything else. Isn’t that incredible?”
“Extrapolating? Like, how I’m moving my hand right now? How I’m twiddling my hair? How could it possibly do that? You’re having us on.” Despite her protests, Kate’s skin prickled. What if he was telling the truth?
“With the right starting conditions, we can simulate and extrapolate in real time. It’s uncanny. And as I’m demonstrating, worth your investment.”
Raul looked worried. “How far beyond this room have you extended this simulation?”
“How far would you like me to pull back? We’ve done some limited tests, and have managed to simulate the first floor of the university. But hypothetically, we could increase the scope by an order of magnitude. Maybe even more!”
Kate said, “I can’t believe that a piece of hardware, however advanced, has the horsepower to accomplish even a fraction of that.”
“Before working on this project, I’d have agreed with you,” said Claudio. “But then we, um, learned of an entirely new way to control nuclear and electronic spins in diamond crystals. That allowed us to create a next-generation of quantum computing chip. Now that it’s running, it’s almost as if we’ve tapped into some larger network! The more processing power we ask for, the more we get.”
It reminded Kate of Carter’s story, the one about his VR simulation going so disastrously wrong. “Shut it down,” she said. “We’ve seen enough.”
“But I was just–”
Raul yelled, his old accent back, “Turn it off, you fool! Every second it runs, we risk forging a permanent connection directly to the dark energy network!”
“Do as he says,” a new voice behind them instructed. “Shut it down. Then explain why you’re running unsanctioned simulations in here, let alone with strangers present?”
A bulky man in a suit stood in the center of the room. He wore red sunglasses. Pale amber light hazed the air around him, making the room behind him seem blurry and unreal.
Claudio gasped. “Mr Coleson! I didn’t know you were here today.”
“Answer my question,” replied the suit, taking a step closer. Kate reached for Malcolm before remembering she hadn’t checked her pistol on the international flight. Too much could’ve gone wrong. Unfortunately, things were going wrong in a different fashion now.
Claudio typed a command on the workstation keyboard and the simulation on the screen died. Raul, who obviously understood more than her, literally breathed a sigh of relief.
Kate decided to ignore the haze for the moment. She addressed the newcomer with red shades. “Mr Coleson? Would I be correct in assuming you’re the one who supplied the schematics to the university? Presumably you found those schematics somewhere online?”
The man’s scarlet gaze settled on her. Something about him was sort of familiar. His mouth quirked up one side of his face in a sardonic smile. “Nope. Claudio here found those himself. I only appeared on the scene, so to speak, after he turned on the machine the first time. Let’s just say that I serve the interests of Jason Cole.”
“Who’s Jason Cole?” asked Claudio. Everyone ignored him.
“Coleson – Jason Cole!” hissed Kate “It’s you!” The man’s features strongly resembled the face they’d all seen on the screen in Liza Banks’ office. Although, not exactly.
“No. Not the original, anyhow.”
Then she understood.
“You’re another fucking copy!” she accused. She remembered how the man she’d encountered in the server room of BDR so many months earlier had slumped like hot candle wax into a slurry of pink goo. He’d been a sort
of clone-envoy of Jason from Ardeyn. “So, when are you going to melt?”
He laughed. “Not going to happen. Think I’d risk a trip and maybe end up the same way? Nope, thanks to the new regime operating here, I’m every bit as real as you are. I’ve translated. Assuming Claudio doesn’t fuck everything up.”
“Hey!” said Claudio.
“We’re going to shut you down,” said Raul.
Red glasses said, “Fine. We don’t even need this place, not anymore. We’ve perfected translation initiation from our side. Witness the mouth of this translation gate.” He gestured behind him.
Kate’s eyes flicked to the vertical hazing in the air. Shit. Coleson was intimating that the lightshow was, what, some kind of physical gate into Ardeyn? And that they could open gates back “there” and reality at will now?
“Why are you telling us this?” asked Raul. “You know we’re here to stop it.”
“Because you can’t stop it,” Coleson said. “And I’m bored. You try talking only to yourself for decades at a stretch and tell me if doesn’t drive you insane with boredom.”
“Listen,” interrupted Claudio. “What the hell are you talking about, Coleson? What’s this business with a translation gate? And what the hell is that?” He pointed an accusatory finger at what Coleson called the translation gate.
Coleson glanced at the university man. “I’m not talking to you.”
Raul said, “I’ll tell you this for free, Coleson: you’ve got to keep this machine off, and destroy it. Both Ardeyn and Earth are vulnerable while it’s on. Tell your boss he doesn’t really understand what he’s messing with.”
Coleson shrugged, “Knowing Jason – and trust me, I know him – it’s possible he doesn’t understand. But it’s a gamble we’ll have to–”
“Hey,” said Claudio. “You’re all having me on, right? What are you talking about? Where’s Ardeyn? Through the, um, gate?”
“For the love of Christ, shut up, man,” Coleson told Claudio. “Can’t you see I’m trying to have a conversation?” Coleson pulled a gun from his suit and shot Claudio. He swung back to Kate and Raul. “Now where were we?”
Raul yelled “Take cover!” as he followed his own advice, ducking behind a monitor.
Kate dove behind a workstation.
“Hey, now why’d you go do that?” Coleson yelled. “It was rude. Don’t you want to talk anymore? Fine. You were starting to bore me anyway.”
Shots, fired in rapid succession, echoed like cannons in the small room, followed by the sharp din of shattering glass. Shards of broken window hit the floor around her. After a few seconds of utter silence, she peeked around the edge of a partition.
Claudio was slumped on the floor, blood pooling around his unmoving form. Shit! He’d seemed like a genuinely nice guy.
Raul crouched behind a workstation two down from Kate. He produced what looked like a slender silver flashlight from his pocket. He pointed one end at Coleson. A ray of purple light flashed from it. The ray missed Coleson, but only because he leaped like a man-sized insect from one side of the room to the other. Upon landing as easily as a ballet dancer, he spun and fired his gun yet again. This time, one of his shots grazed Raul, who fell back with a yelp.
Fuck. They’d all be dead in less than twenty seconds at this rate. She had to do something! But what? No gun; that’d been established. But she had the ring that Jason had sent across with his first, failed clone. The same ring he’d used to get inside Raul’s head.
Maybe if she flashed it, she could trigger some kind of hesitation on Coleson’s part. He was a clone of Jason, after all. Then she’d try to tackle the bastard. She pulled the ring from her pocket and slipped it on.
It was oddly cool to the touch. Unexpectedly, the contact calmed her. Somehow, she knew it was all going to be all right. She just had to concentrate on what she wanted. So what did she desire? She wanted Coleson gone, that’s what.
So she focused on the man. It suddenly struck her just how out of place he was. He shouldn’t be here. He’d just stepped through a portal from some other world – a world that wasn’t even actually real! It wasn’t right. The hairs on her arm rose like they sometimes did when she watched electrical storms.
Before her better sense could convince her she was committing suicide, she rose, pointing at Coleson with the hand wearing the ring, and said, “You’re not welcome here.”
A confluence of fundamental forces – she wasn’t sure what else to call them – jolted him from all directions, curling out of dimensions normally too small to be seen. Coleson went rigid, as if held in place by a massive electric current running through him. His wrongness, she knew, his presence on Earth when he was native to Ardeyn, added to the effectiveness of what she’d done. Whatever that was.
The weird bubble of calmness she’d been acting in popped. What the fucking hell? She glanced at Raul.
Raul said to her, “See? I told you didn’t need a gun, mi chula. You’re quickened.”
“I didn’t do that,” she said.
“Well, I didn’t do it,” said Raul, his tone reasonable.
Kate looked back at Coleson. He was still rigid and vibrating, but she sensed that whatever effect she’d triggered, it wouldn’t last long. They had a minute at most. Or maybe far less. “What should we do?”
“What we came to do.” Raul produced another device from his pocket. A miniature grenade? “This should do the trick.” Raul pressed a contact on the side. He tossed it overhand through the broken window, at the machine that still vibrated there. An iridescent green explosion of light consumed the grenade, the computer, and half the side-room. The roar of the explosion was loud, but not as loud as Kate would’ve expected. It was over before Kate even thought to move back.
The computer was simply gone, as was the floor in a roughly circular area around where it had been. That’s when Kate realized that she hadn’t been flung back by a grenade blast, a blast that had essentially happened only about fifteen feet in front of her. Grenades normally killed within fifteen feet, and sometimes a lot farther.
“Cypher,” said Raul, as if that explained things. It didn’t.
Then he walked up to the blur hanging in the air. It was noticeably smaller than before. “C’mon, mi chula. We must to go through and destroy the sister facility. Before this translation gate collapses. It could take us months to find where we need to go if we don’t go through now.”
Her head was spinning, but she knew exactly what Raul was proposing, so she didn’t ask him if he was insane, pretend she didn’t understand his intent, or otherwise try to fend off the inevitable. Because she suspected he was right. But if she thought too much about it, she still might not agree.
But first…
She picked up Coleson’s gun, and aimed it directly at Coleson, who still wasn’t moving. Her finger touched the trigger, then fell away.
What had she done to him, when she’d pointed at him? Now that she had a gun, part of her wanted to shoot Coleson, not so much because he probably deserved, but because she wanted to negate what had just happened, what she’d just done.
She wanted the crazy to go away.
Raul looked at her. “I don’t blame you for not shooting a defenseless man. Nor will I think any worse of you if you do. But decide!”
“Fuck it,” she whispered.
Kate lowered the gun and jumped with Raul through the rapidly closing translation gate.
23: Expedition
Jason Cole
The last hints of Ardeyn’s atmosphere whispered away. Jason plunged into a sea of spiraling fractal patterns iterating upon themselves like snakes forever eating their own tails. A shock of bluish-purple color dazed him. Flashes of gold, orange, and blood-red light seared his retinas. He blinked repeatedly. The twists and turns of the shapes shimmering all around him seemed chaotic, but when he followed any single edge, his mind picked out maddeningly complex patterns that threatened a headache like nothing he’d previously experienced. If Jason hadn�
�t been mounted on the dlamma, he would’ve foundered.
Merid had sent the Ring of Silence into the Strange to keep it out of his hands before she and he reached detente. He didn’t fully trust her, so he’d suggested they retrieve the Ring together, despite the fact that Jason had never previously dared to enter the Strange. If the kray found him in their domain, without the Rules of Ardeyn to enforce their mutual agreements, they’d consume him in an instant. Well, probably not instantly. He was War, after all, even out here. It was the kray matriarch he feared. The longer he stayed out here, the more likely she’d come for him.
But he needed the Ring of Silence. It was go after it, or give up on a century of effort. Even so, he might not have risked the trip if Merid hadn’t agreed to guide them safely. In return for the Ring, he’d promised to reward her generously after he entered the Maker’s Hall.
The dragon had warned that his senses would be confused in the alien environment. So he’d been ready. He just hadn’t realized that the Strange was going to be like this. The visual phenomena were gut-churning. But it was the unexpected odor that left him gasping.
Jason smelled a dusty, slightly mildewed basement bedroom. The odor triggered his childhood memories with the vividness of a bullet through a window. He was back in his bed in his parents’ drafty house, hearing the sounds of the ghost that had tormented him.
Remembering which were “real” memories wasn’t easy for Jason anymore. He suffered from recollection overload. In addition to his actual childhood experiences, all those imposed by the Incarnation of War’s fake history also flooded his head. Not to mention all memories he’d earned the old-fashioned way in the last two-hundred odd years he’d been marooned in Ardeyn.
The rare times Jason tried remembering being a kid in Kansas, the memories cross-circuited. Instead of green grass and trees, he saw one of a hundred apocalyptic battles between dragons, qephilim, humans, dlamma, demons, and Incarnations that had happened during the Age of Myth. Sometimes he remembered plunging a burning blade in the Maker’s back. Or he’d recall some other detail of his existence as an Incarnation that had nothing to do with the ranch-style house where he actually grew up. When it came to his mother, Nancy Cole, or his father, Avery Cole, Jason came up almost completely blank. He could barely remember their names, let alone their faces, how they’d treated him, or any formative childhood lessons they’d provided. All except for the ghost thing, of course.
The Myth of the Maker Page 19