Code to Extinction

by Christopher Cartwright

  Adrian tried to swim, but even larger bubbles broke directly below him. The surface tension broke way to the gas filled liquid below, and he sank.

  Airlie watched, helplessly, as he fought to reach the surface again.

  When he did a few moments later, his face was bright red and he was screaming again. Airlie wanted to yell at him and tell him not to make any more jokes, but even after the first glance, she knew that he wasn’t joking. His skin was blistering over. His face aghast with horror.

  Airlie’s dark brown eyes fixed on him and she wanted to scream. His eyes stared vacantly back at her, and she knew there was nothing more she could do – Adrian was already dead.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  University of Arizona – Tucson, Arizona

  Sam walked along the northwest corner of Mountain Avenue and Speedway Boulevard. He glanced at the large building on the right. It appeared to have been designed to look more like an oversized aircraft hangar than a university building. Over the main door, were the words, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering.

  He stepped inside and gave his name to a receptionist.

  The receptionist, a twenty-something-year-old man with a poorly grown blond beard, glanced at him with recognition and said, “Professor Capel is waiting for you inside the metallurgy labs on level E. I believe your associate is already with him.”

  “Thank you.” Sam ran his eyes across a map of the building.

  The receptionist noticed, and said, “If you take the stairs down three flights, the metallurgy labs are the first on the right.”

  “They’re underground?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah, it’s a precaution. Some of the experiments performed here can be dangerous.”

  Sam nodded. “Thanks.”

  He found the metallurgy labs a couple of minutes later and tried to open the door. It was locked. He glanced at the obvious security camera fixed on him and then knocked loudly at the door. Another minute later, the door opened.

  Professor Douglas Capel greeted him. He was tall for his generation, standing eye to eye with Sam. Wiry gray hair sprouted from his head, and made his eyebrows look like those of a mad scientist. The same hair sprung from his ears like coiled antennae. His skin was surprisingly smooth in contrast. His blue eyes twinkled with good-humor. A ready smile, somewhat crooked, gave him the appearance of smirking below a large, well-shaped nose.

  “Ah, Mr. Reilly, I’m so glad you could make it.” The professor offered his hand.

  Sam took it. The man had a firm handshake. “Thank you for your hard work, Professor Capel.”

  “Not a problem. Come with me. There’s a lot for us to get through with, and your associate, Dr. Billie Swan, tells me that time is… how did she put it?” He sighed. “Of the essence.”

  Sam followed the man through a series of long, empty passageways. The professor carried his head at a slight tilt, as if questioning everything about the world around him. At the end of the third corridor, the professor put his ID card to yet another security barcode reader, and a heavy steel door – the sort you might find onboard a space-shuttle – opened.

  Inside, the room was a perfect sphere. Stainless steel metal shined from every end of the room like the inside of a giant globe. A thin sheet of see-through cargo nets – made of cotton rope that appeared like a direct anachronism in the otherwise space-aged lab – cut the sphere in half, providing a means of reaching the center of the room. There, the Göbekli Tepe Pillar Number 44 stood, suspended by a series of ropes, like an island at the center of the Earth. Next to it, Sam spotted Billie already examining the markings.

  Sam turned to the professor. “What’s the story with the stone’s new storage facility?”

  Capel grinned. “Ah, you’ll see.”

  They walked across the cotton-mesh rope to the tiny island at the center.

  Sam looked at Billie. “Find anything new?”

  She shook her head. “No. It’s amazing, but I haven’t seen anything I couldn’t get out of the multiple photographs I’ve seen of it. But professor Capel tells me he’s been waiting until you get here to reveal the most amazing thing about it.”

  He turned to the professor. “What did you find?”

  Professor Capel grinned. “I can’t tell you. This, you have to experience for yourself.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sam asked.

  “You’ll see.” The professor squatted down, behind the large T-shaped astronomy stone. Four openings had been meticulously cut into the back of the Mesolithic stone. “Here, Mr. Reilly, slide one of these out, and place it on the scale.”

  Sam glanced at the digital, scientific scale. “Okay. Can I examine the four stones, themselves?”

  The professor nodded. “In due time. You won’t find anything extraordinary by looking at them. You already have the photos I sent you, and so you know of the pictographs depicted on them. Just go weigh it for me, will you?”

  Sam nodded. Older people in general were rewarded with the respect of a greater amount of his patience, but once-in-a-generation experts like Professor Capel were granted an infinite amount of his tolerance. Instead, he turned to Billie. “You know what he’s getting at?”

  “No.”

  “All right. Here goes.”

  Sam carefully reached into the opening. A hollow section, like a handle, had been cut into the stone inside. He slowly pulled it out. The image depicted on the outside was that of the Horseman of the Apocalypse known as Famine, below which was the Greek letter, Theta. He braced for the weight of the stone, but found it surprisingly light in his hands, as though it was made out of some sort of porous material. It was lighter than that. More like a feather. Certainly, no more than a few grams, at best.

  “What is this made of?” Sam asked, staring at the strange material.

  The stone itself was an intense shade of darkness, as though without the direct light shining on it, Sam wouldn’t have been able to see anything at all.

  Capel ignored the comment, and urged him onward. “Okay, put it on the scale, quickly now.”

  Sam carried the dark stone the three or four feet required, and then waited while the professor zeroed the scientific scale. A slight nod from Capel indicated that the machine was ready, and Sam placed the dark stone gently inside.

  “Good!” The professor was grinning now. “How do you feel?”

  Sam was slightly taken aback by the question. He merely carried something light across a few feet. He was even going to say so, and then he noticed the strange feeling in his fingers. They were tingling. The sensation ran right up each arm, kind of like that time you fell asleep on your arm or leg for too long, and when you woke up or tried to move them the entire thing felt like it was full of pins and needles. He wondered if he should have been wearing gloves when he handled the strange stone. It could be toxic for all he knew, emitting some sort of radiation.

  The professor glanced at both of them as though they were his students. “Come closer, so you can get a good look.”

  Sam and Billie both stepped right up to the scale and looked at the reading. It was set to metric, the universal measurements of science, and read less than ten grams.

  “Woah, that’s amazing!” Sam shook his head in surprise, and turned to Capel. “How can it weigh so little?”

  The professor ignored the comment. “Just watch.”

  The scale hadn’t quite balanced, yet. The number was going up already. Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen grams. It increased slowly at first, but as it gained mass, the counter started to take-off.

  Twenty-five grams.

  Fifty grams

  It was a parabolic curve – getting faster and faster.

  Sam was holding his breath in disbelief. Next to him, he noticed the examination light flicker. It was so subtle, it wasn’t until it did it the fourth time that the sight caught his eye. The light was bending, only slightly, but it was being pulled toward the dark stone.

  He glanced at the scales.

  500 grams.


  “That’s quite enough,” the professor said. “Let’s put it back inside the Göbekli Tepe pillar before we can no longer lift it!”

  Sam reached in and grabbed the stone. It instantly felt much heavier, like carrying a brick instead of a feather. He worked quickly, and slid it back inside the ancient astronomer’s stone.

  “Are we safe?” Sam asked.

  The professor, now grinning like a mad scientist, nodded. “Quite safe. The Göbekli Tepe pillar appears to neutralize the stone, allowing it to return to its nominal weight of less than a single gram.”

  Billie shook her head in awe. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Sam eyes narrowed. “What the hell is it?”

  The professor stared at them both, wonder filling his intelligent blue eyes. “This, my friends, is the first physical evidence of the theoretical particles named Blackbody.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Sam turned to the professor. “What the hell is Blackbody?”

  “It was first theorized in 1860 by a man named Kirchhoff, who predicted what he called then as perfect black bodies.” Capel took on his lecturing voice. “Basically, a blackbody is an idealized physical body that absorbs all incident electromagnetic radiation, regardless of frequency or angle of incidence.”

  Sam and Billie stared at him, without speaking.

  “Does that clear it up for you?” Professor Capel asked.

  “Not really,” they both replied.

  The professor sighed. “All right. Imagine there is a single hole in the wall of a large enclosure.”

  “Okay.”

  “Any light entering that hole is reflected indefinitely or absorbed inside and is unlikely to re-emerge, making the hole a nearly perfect absorber. The radiation confined in such an enclosure may or may not be in thermal equilibrium, depending upon the nature of the walls. In this case, the dark stone holds everything. Think of a sponge. Bereft of water, it is light. Leave it next to water and it absorbs as much water until its full.”

  Sam asked, “What’s the dark stone absorbing?”

  The professor smiled. It was cheerful and entirely indifferent to any real concerns they may have for destroying the planet with such a bizarre and alien material. “Why everything of course.”

  “Everything?” Billie asked.

  Capel nodded. “Yes, yes. Everything that has any mass.”

  “It was stripping the electrons straight out of my hands, wasn’t it?” Sam asked, in awe. “And bending the light from the examination beam?”

  “Yes, and yes.”

  Billie took a deep breath and said, “It’s a little alien black hole, isn’t it?”

  “I like that,” the professor said. “It’s a little dramatic, but mostly accurate.”

  “When would it have stopped?” Sam asked.

  The professor answered without hesitation. “When the sponge was filled, I suppose.”

  “How long?” Sam persisted.

  “It’s hard to guess, but each of these stones could conceivably end up weighing a hundred thousand tons or more.”

  Sam let that concept sink in. “There are more of these stones hidden out there in space. One of them is heading toward us right now. That’s why it’s going to flip the magnetic poles.”

  “What?” Billie asked.

  “Think about it,” Sam said. “The asteroid has been following the same trajectory around the sun for the past thirteen thousand years… and yet no one has been able to see it with modern technology.”

  “What are you getting at?” The professor asked.

  “I’m saying the stones have been out there all along, plain as today, yet no one’s seen it because the damned thing absorbs all light around it.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then how do we locate it?” Sam asked.

  The astronomer sighed. “We don’t.”

  “We can’t?”

  The professor nodded as though it were obvious. “No. We have to look for signs of light being taken away.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Yes, and I already have.” The professor’s blue eyes glistened with his own grandiose vision of his greater intelligence and discovery. “Using a database of astronomy charts with a new search input, specifically looking for light being distorted, I was able to track our devastating asteroid.”

  “And?” Sam asked, excited.

  “It was there, plain as daylight for us all to see.”

  “How close is it?” Sam and Billie asked.

  “It’s close. It should enter our orbit before the end of the week.”

  Sam swallowed hard. “The question is, now that we know that it exists, is it too late to do something about it?”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The Secretary of Defense listened as Sam Reilly relayed all the new-found information regarding the asteroid, the strange material named blackbody, and their theory that the four dark stones could be used to somehow re-establish the correct position of the magnetic poles.

  She offered him any resources he required and then hung up.

  A moment later, she dialed a new number by heart, and relayed the information to one of her leading scientists.

  The man had listened intently, letting her speak without asking any questions.

  When she was finished, she said, “Well, what do you think?”

  “If the original meteorite is still out there, we’ll find it, ma’am.”

  “And if you do. Then what?” she persisted.

  “Assuming your man, Mr. Reilly manages to correct the magnetic poles, and there’s still a U.S. government left to protect, we’ll be able to use the material.”

  “But, will it be enough?” she asked.

  The scientist thought about it for a moment. “We won’t need much. If it’s as powerful as Reilly told you, a small collection of the material should be enough to complete it.”

  “Good.”

  “One more thing, ma’am.”

  “Yes?”

  The man paused and then said, “Given what we now know about what is rapidly approaching, should we really be focusing on the Omega Project?”

  The Secretary of Defense’s response was immediate. “Even if Sam Reilly can decipher the code to extinction in time, it will change nothing of the fact that the Master Builders are still preparing for war – and if we don’t intend to become extinct, we’re going to need a secret weapon.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Sam stared at the professor’s world globe.

  It was six feet high and constructed using accurate proportions based on recent satellite imaging. Shaped much like a sphere, but with flattened poles and bulges at the equator, it depicted a more realistic image of Earth as an oblate spheroid. Throughout the globe, the locations of known Master Builder temples had been set using orange flags.

  The current location of the two magnetic poles had been marked using a red flag, and purple flags were used to represent their daily positions for the past six months. Contrary to what people might assume, the magnetic poles were far from static. Instead, their position was dynamic – shifting upward of fifty miles daily, in fifty-plus mile oval shaped loops. The center of those loops indicated the real magnetic poles, but even that position was known to move roughly twenty-five miles a year.

  He glanced at the data from the past week, which was marked with yellow flags. They showed that the south pole had shifted nearly five hundred miles north and the north pole had drifted six hundred miles south.

  Sam looked at Billie and the Professor. “Okay, we know that the four sacred stones need to be placed inside four hidden temples, in order to reset the position of the magnetic poles. That part seems simple enough.”

  “What makes you certain that the dark stones will even have enough weight to shift the magnetic poles?” Billie paused, and then looked at the Professor. “You said that once each stone has absorbed as much as they could, their maximum weight would still only be a matter of a hundred thous
and tons. That weight seems trivial compared with the mass of Earth.”

  “It is trivial,” Sam agreed.

  “Then how can it work?”

  “I’ve been thinking about this for some time now. What if we’re overthinking the process? We’re thinking that we need equal weight to move equal mass, right?”

  “It’s called kinetic energy.”

  “Sure. So, how do you overcome a weight that is heavier than you?”

  Billie answered immediately. “You need to exert additional effort.”

  “And how do we do that, when the weight is so much larger than our weight?”

  She sighed, and understanding dawned on her. “You need a mechanical advantage or leverage.”

  “Exactly. I’m thinking that these magnetic poles are balancing on a fulcrum. We don’t need to shift the weight of the Earth, we just need to tip the scales so that they return to their rightful places.”

  The professor looked at the globe. “Based on that, your hidden temples must be somewhere closer to the equator where their mass can exert the most effect over the movement of the poles.”

  Sam thought about that for a moment. “Wouldn’t they have more leverage toward the poles themselves?”

  “No.” The professor was defiant. “The widest point on Earth is at the equator. That’s where you want to move the most amount of energy.”

  “All right,” Sam said. “Let’s bring this back to basics, and go from there. Maybe something obvious will be staring right at us.”

  Billie smiled. “You start.”

  Sam said, “The Earth spins on its axis. The inner core spins as well, and it spins at a different rate than the outer core. This creates a dynamo effect, or convections and currents within the core. This is what creates the Earth's magnetic field – the same way a giant electromagnet works.”

  “So then why do the poles shift?” Billie asked.

  “No one really knows. It’s thought that the poles move because the internal core’s rate of spin and the currents within the molten material move, causing the convection in the core changes. Irregularities where the core and mantle meet make changes to the Earth's crust, which can also change the magnetic field.”