Darla Pittman nodded.
“From examining those reconstructed computer records,” she said, “I think it’s safe to assume that Barry is planning on extending the metaphage reconstruction work I had already done.”
Brescoll nodded, then turned their attention to a related matter.
“Dan here followed up on Levitch’s sudden leave-taking.”
“Turns out he mentioned—to a young female colleague of his—that he might be going to the Middle East,” Amaral said. “Travel and flight information suggests the same general destination for both Levitch and Doctor Jeremy Michelson.”
“Who’s this Michelson person?” Susan asked. “How does he fit in with what’s going on?”
“We’re not absolutely sure that he does,” Brescoll said. “Steve and Bree here, they think he may have reason to want to work with those Mawari children. I’ll let them explain.”
Using the volumetric display dome on the conference desk, Wang and Lingenfelter did their show-and-tell. Michelson, they explained, had been peripherally involved in the Kwok-Cho matter as a result of his work in quantum computing and quantum cryptology. His particular work with W Group, before he went out on loan to the Telemorphy Lab at Fort Mead, had involved biological approaches to those same crypto issues, particularly quantum computational properties inherent in DNA.
Like Levitch at Rocky Mountain, Michelson also had tried to destroy the records of his work at Fort Mead by blanking his computers’ memories. NSA teams had been able to reconstruct Michelson’s data and notes there, too—although with much more difficulty than in Levitch’s case.
Lingenfelter and Wang explained to them what “telemorphy” and “neuronal space” and “conjoint consciousness” meant in the context of Michelson’s work. The recovered notes and data also suggested why certain nanotrode arrays, computer wave analysis programs, and other pattern-recognition hardware and software went missing with Michelson at his disappearance.
From a search of Michelson’s reconstituted records, Wang and Lingenfelter gathered that he had been working on “quantum neurocryptography,” unbreakable mind-to-mind and mind-to-machine communication, involving quantum teleportation of neuronal space-state configurations—something the bleeding-edge of military experimentation had also been exploring (under a slightly different name) for potential battlefield use. Michelson had also begun work on what he called “quantum telemorphic effects” involving neuronal space-states and manipulation of the fabric of spacetime at the quantum level.
“How would those work?” Susan asked. “What would be the mechanism?”
On the table’s volumetric display dome, Wang called up pseudo-holographics illustrating the quantum foam and holographic field distributions, then nodded to Lingenfelter.
“Theoretically,” Lingenfelter said, “our brains’ cerebral hemispheres are capable of acting as interferometers responding to the presence of scalar waves. The chaotic attractors in the human brain function as a holographic field. The quantum foam, the tiniest possible scale of physical reality, also functions as a holographic field. From that fundamental similarity, Michelson was attempting to exploit a possible deep link between physical states and mental states.”
“Not only the quantum foam’s scalar topology affecting neural-net action potentials,” Wang said, “but neural-net action potentials affecting the scalar topology of the quantum foam, too. From his understanding of that link, he was working toward what his notes call ‘a technorationalized telepathic and psychokinetic capacity.’”
“But what does that have to do with the Mawari children?” Susan asked at last, sounding frustrated.
“Michelson’s notes indicate that to achieve what he was after,” Lingenfelter said, “he would need ‘to be able to make the brain function like a room-temperature quantum computer’—”
“‘Enhanced neural sensitivity throughout the cerebral cortex’ is how his notes put it,” Wang interjected.
“‘Chaotic, spontaneous neural activity, hypersensitive to quantum effects.’”
“Heightened or paranormal abilities, then,” Michael said flatly, “connected to the consistent, sustainable, high-percentage brain activity made possible by the full myconeural complex.”
Lingenfelter and Wang nodded.
“But would that be enough to ‘show the stars where to fall’?” Susan asked.
Lingenfelter and Wang glanced at each other.
“Director Brescoll has informed us about his experiences under the dome,” Lingenfelter said, “and about what Doctor Miskulin remembered concerning the children’s interest in earth-crossers, the Apollo and Aten asteroids.”
“Those earth-crossers could be used as brilliant pebbles to destroy missiles as they approach suborbit,” Dan Amaral said. “When it first came up in our discussions, I didn’t think it was possible. Then I remembered that there is a precedent.”
“‘Brilliant pebbles’ was a concept developed during the cold war,” Brescoll said. “It didn’t involve asteroids or meteors. It was about small, smart kinetic-kill vehicles in space, as part of a defense shield against missile attack.”
“You could conceivably achieve the same effect,” Wang said, “if you could move around rocks in space, at will. Even small ones.”
“How could you move them around, though?” Darla asked. “Dragging them around with your mind, or strapping the equivalent of a ‘mental rocket’ to them—that seems like an awful lot of work.”
Lingenfelter nodded.
“It’s a big hypothetical, I know. Still, if those kids, through these ‘quantum telemorphic effects’ might someday be able to ‘manipulate the fabric of spacetime,’ as Michelson puts it, then they wouldn’t need to drag asteroids around or strap a mental rocket to them.”
“Gravity is the only machine you’d need in such circumstances,” Wang said, “and gravity is the product of the curvature of spacetime. If those kids could shape the curvature of spacetime around those rocks, they could speed them up, slow them down, alter their orbits, do just about anything with them.”
“The precedent for it is what astrophysicists call a gravitational keyhole,” Michael said with a nod. “A smallish patch of space where orbital resonance effects bend the trajectory of an object passing through that space.”
Darla looked worried, but Brescoll still had questions.
“But those small stones wouldn’t be big enough to account for the nuclear-blast scale of the effects I saw, in one of the possibilities under the dome,” Brescoll said.
The mention of that particular N-word—nuclear—jogged something in Michael’s mind.
“Do any of you know anything about something called Argus?” he asked. “Or Project Argus? Or something involving Argus points? The Mawari kids were really interested in something with that name.”
Brescoll and his people began calling up classified information at lightning speed, then scanning through it almost as fast.
“We know it was a series of clandestine nuclear tests back in the late 1950s,” Michael said into the professionals’ sudden silence, “and that it took place off South Africa, but that’s about all.”
The preoccupied Brescoll and his colleagues all seemed to come to similar conclusions at about the same time, at least judging by the way they glanced at one another.
“Do you know what those Argus tests were about?” Dan Amaral asked.
The three non-NSAers in the room shook their heads.
“Three rockets were launched from the USS Norton Sound, “ Brescoll said. “Each with a one-point-seven-kiloton nuclear warhead—rather small, actually. Each nuclear warhead was detonated at very high altitude, in the region known as the South Atlantic Anomaly.”
“What’s that?” Susan asked.
“The area where the Van Allen Radiation belts are closest to the earth,” Wang said.
“The purpose of the test series,” Brescoll said, “was to determine the effects of high-altitude nuclear explosions on the earth’s m
agnetic field and the impact to military radar, communications, satellites, and ballistic missiles electronics.”
“Why the South Atlantic?” Michael asked.
“The South Atlantic Anomaly was chosen because it’s a potential doomsday point,” Lingenfelter said.
“Generate an electromagnetic pulse of sufficient magnitude there and you get global spread. Worldwide EMP propagation. It would kill all unshielded electronics over the entire surface of the planet, as well as in near-earth orbit.”
“Dropkick us back to the technological level that prevailed in Thomas Jefferson’s lifetime, is what it would do,” Amaral said. “Shut that eye of Argus, and everything else goes dead.”
“But that’s crazy,” Darla said. “Who would want to take out everyone’s electronics, including his own?”
“Someone in need of a doomsday defense,” Brescoll said. “That’s what caused initial interest in it, nearly sixty years ago.”
“‘Doomsday defense’?” Susan asked.
“Say your opponent got off some of his retaliatory missiles and aircraft just before the missiles of your preemptive attack destroyed his civilization,” Brescoll explained. “He’s utterly in ruins, but his retaliatory strike is now rising toward you. If you could use the Argus Point to kill his attack before his weapons could get to your country, would you do it? Being kicked back to the eighteenth century is better than being kicked back to the Stone Age, or destroyed utterly.”
“I don’t see how a killer EMP is related to meteors, though…” Amaral began.
“I do!” Michael and Darla both said simultaneously.
The others looked at them blankly.
“Meteoroid EMP,” Darla said.
“Explosive disruption of a large meteoroid generates EMP,” Michael said, nodding in strong agreement.
“The shock wave of a meteor or meteoroid’s explosive braking,” Darla said, “propagates in the plasma around the skystone as it shatters.”
“You get lots of ionizing radiation—lightning, thunder, elves, sprites, the works,” Michael said. “Very low frequency and extremely low frequency electromagnetic transients of many kinds.”
“Those sorts of effects were seen with atmospheric nuclear detonations of a given size, too,” Jim Brescoll said, clearly pondering it. “So shooting stars, thunderstones, and mushroom clouds can all be one and the same, after all. Nothing nuclear required. Just a big enough rock, moving fast enough.”
Darla and Michael agreed that that was essentially the case.
“How big a rock?”
Michael and Darla made some quick calculations.
“A stony or stony-iron meteoroid about a football field across should do it,” Darla said.
“That would yield something in the thirty-to-fifty-megaton range,” Michael said, nodding.
“How common are stones of that size?” Wang asked.
“There are plenty that size in the Apollos and Atens,” Michael said. “Even without human meddling, rocks in the ten-to one-hundred-meter-size range come shooting into earth’s atmosphere a few times a century.”
“And with human meddling?” Amaral asked.
Michael glanced at Darla.
“If those kids can create targeted gravitational keyholes, then we’re a bull’s-eye in a shooting gallery.
You could probably fire one of the right speed and size into the right part of that South Atlantic Anomaly with very little advance notice required. I’d say we’re far higher on the Torino impact-hazard scale than we’ve ever been before.”
“Would you give me some numbers, please?” Wang asked. “Besides the skymaps, NASA also sent us a program they did in conjunction with the National Reconnaissance Office. It plots satellite reentry burn-up, but we can tweak it for our purposes. I’ll need size, mass, velocity, angle of entry, altitude.”
“I’ve got a simulation of global EMP effects running on one of the big parallel machines,” Lingenfelter said. “If you can give me those same numbers, we can narrow down the megatonnage and get a better handle on the effects.”
“Here,” said Wang, “I’ll replace the satellite graphical object with one that looks like a space rock, and give it the parameters you give me.”
“Since they’re compatible programs, I think we can combine the reentry and EMP graphics to give us an overall view,” Lingenfelter said.
Michael and Darla began suggesting numbers. In surprisingly little time, Wang and Lingenfelter, wirelessly routing information back and forth, had put together their little simulation. It was quite the horror show.
Inside the display dome on the desk, a rock from space nearly a hundred yards across came hurtling in at more than ten miles per second, on a relatively shallow angle of entry. Some tens of miles above Earth, where the lower Van Allen Belt dipped closest to the planet’s surface at the South Atlantic Anomaly, the rock underwent explosive braking and catastrophic breakup in a blast of light, heat, lightning—and a spectrum of other electromagnetic radiations far less visible.
A wave of graphical lightning spread across the globe from the South Atlantic Anomaly. This EMP lightning wave left in its immediate wake a flood of darkness, as all the lights of all the cities on the nightside Earth went out.
“Presumably the same global blackout passes over the dayside, just not so obviously,” Lingenfelter said, as the scenario stopped and restarted, playing itself over again in an endless loop.
“Takes out all satellites in low Earth orbit as well,” Wang commented, watching the replay.
“Of course, it would probably be more complicated than that,” Lingenfelter said, gesturing at the dome display. “Especially since the South Atlantic Anomaly in the upper atmosphere currently coincides with an RFP.”
“‘Request for proposals’?” Susan asked, puzzled. Bree laughed.
“Sorry. RFP stands for ‘reversed flux patch’ in this context. RFPs are spots in the earth’s magnetic field where the field, instead of flowing outward from the Southern Hemisphere and inward at the Northern Hemisphere, as it usually does, flows in just the opposite direction, despite what prevails in each hemisphere overall. RFPs are looped holes in the geomagnetic field. They originate in the core-mantle boundary.”
Wang glanced at parameters on his blinks, shaking his head at the thought of such complexity.
“But to model the interaction, if any, between the Anomaly and the reversed flux patch,” he said, “we’d need to incorporate observations from the Magsat, Oersted, and CHAMP satellites, supercomputer simulations of the Earth’s geodynamo, laboratory fluid-dynamo experiments, the whole works. I think we’ve shown you the basic gist without all that.”
Darla glanced at Paul, Michael, and Susan.
“Those kids are potentially dangerous, just as I told you,” she said. “Especially if they hold us responsible for the murder of all their friends and families—their entire people. What better way to punish the technologically advanced than a global EMP that knocks us all back down to their tribe’s level?”
“Dammit, I wish my uncle Paul were still with us,” Michael said. “He knew more about those children than anybody alive. His read on Jacinta’s notes was that the Mawari might have stayed childlike longer than the rest of us, but what does that really mean? Does it imply they’re even less emotionally mature than most kids their age?”
“A global EMP would be one helluva temper tantrum,” Darla said, shaking her head. “It might result in the deaths of tens of millions of people.”
“I remind you again: they’re just kids,” Susan said. “And these are all huge hypotheticals, as Bree herself called them.”
Jim Brescoll cleared his throat, looking away from the private data streams clearly scrolling across his ARGUS blinks.
“I would agree, Ms. Yamada. Then again, Goliath probably thought David was ‘just a kid,’ too. He didn’t see his ‘hypothetical’ coming.”
“Judging from intelligence community threat evaluations,” Amaral said, scanning the data
, “no one’s been paying all that much attention to old EMP test data lately.”
“Why not?” Darla asked.
“No matter how much we try to be like all-seeing Argus,” Brescoll said, “we still have our blind spots.
The thinking has been that it’d be unlikely that terrorists could loft a multimegaton nuclear warhead on a rocket into the Van Allens.”
“You’d need a nation-state to do that,” Amaral said. “With ships, and missiles, and probably hydrogen bomb capability. Not too many organizations have all that. When it comes to terror and vengeance, nation-states are still the best in the business.”
Michael noticed that Brescoll, though he said nothing, frowned deeply at Amaral for that comment.
“But if those kids are after some sort of vengeance,” Darla said, “and if they potentially have these sorts of powers—”
“Then they could pose the ultimate asymmetric terror threat,” Brescoll said.
“Hijacking asteroids,” Amaral said, shaking his head. “They’d just be throwing rocks, but those rocks could bring down twenty-first-century civilization.”
“But we don’t even know where they are, “ Susan said. “Or even if they’re still alive.”
“Our best guesses are that they are still alive, and they’re in South Asia, or the Middle East,” Brescoll said.
“Where people had a tradition of throwing stones long before anyone coined the phrase asymmetric conflict, “ Amaral added. “And where things are already strained to the breaking point by the Temple Mount mess. Just from that the Syrians and Iranians are already saying they’ll view any large-scale Israeli attack on the Palestinians as an attack on all followers of Islam, including their own peoples.”
“We’d best crank up the pressure on the Saudis to implement maximum security measures for the Hajj,” Brescoll reminded himself, “and accept our support in that effort, no matter how reluctant they might be to do that.”
“If you’re going to attribute all these potential powers to the kids,” Susan said, sounding annoyed, “then maybe you ought to consider this, too. Maybe they aren’t being used by terrorists. Maybe they aren’t little terrorists themselves. Maybe they’ll surprise all of us with what they might do. Even if they are still just children, why not assume they might change the world for the better?”
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