by Hugo Navikov
The scientists motioned for them all to have a seat at the large polished conference table at which Nadia sat without further display of human emotion, and Brett and Ellie held hands at the table, freshly enamored even though there was very little chance they or anyone else would be making it back home alive.
Once they were all settled, Merco clicked a few buttons at a console in front of the table, and a large screen came up from the floor. From some automatic control, at the same time as a projector illuminated the screen, the lights in the huge space dimmed enough for Merco to begin his presentation. Brett saw that it had to have been prepared in advance, maybe to show the world the destructive power of his “super-savior” superweapon, maybe just to show Merco’s visitors once he knew the expedition was truly on its way to see him.
The first slide that came onto the screen showed a section of the island from a three-quarter angle, a scene obviously constructed from the game Mineshaft. It took a moment to see why, but then the graphics choice made total sense. “My plan to save the world from itself began with a completely unrelated discovery. This is what the Organization is after, no doubt, since it could make for an interesting weapon, although to call it a ‘superweapon’ without the concomitant use of Tristan da Cunha would be a bit of an overstatement.” Merco addressed them as if they were a college class: “Now, is anyone here familiar with what physicists call ‘zero-point energy’?”
Ravi and Stefan, both dedicated pseudoscience geeks, raised their hands immediately. Brett had also heard the term but had absolutely no idea what it meant, so he kept to himself. Given the TMI Team’s enthusiasm and Merco’s garrulousness, he knew he’d learn exactly what it was in short order.
He was right. Ravi immediately offered, “Big Science won’t admit it, but zero-point energy is basically an unlimited, completely free source of infinite power. See, in quantum field theory, the vacuum or ‘zero point’ state is the quantum state having the lowest possible energy. It doesn’t have any mass within it, and Einstein showed that mass equals energy, so it’s just the energy of the ground state, which is zero. Hence, ‘zero-point energy.’”
“Yes,” Merco said, “exactly. And how does it produce this possibly unlimited amount of free power?”
Ravi’s expression remained the same, but his eyes went as blank as a corpse’s. “I … don’t have the exact numbers in front of me.”
Merco laughed. “This is why I love The Mysterious Investigators! Yes, I watch your show, don’t look so surprised—to me, science is just the shadow cast by mystery.”
“I have no idea what that means, but I like it,” Stefan said as he videoed the entire thing.
“That should be the motto of your program!” The scientist laughed again. “In any case, I have been able to use the aether equations of Nikola Tesla—‘zero point’ is really just the modern term for aether theory—to create a zero-point volume out of any region of space. Within the limitations of current technology, of course. This allows me to use the energy of empty space to create another volume of utterly empty space.”
The smooth walls and precise cubes cut out of the landscape suddenly made sense to Brett. “You’re excavating regular blocks of matter by reducing them to the zero point of the vacuum?”
“Exactly! Well done, sir! This would make a formidable weapon, indeed, and I knew the Organization would fund me well in order to have such an innovation in their power-mad hands. I’m talking about billions of dollars here, which the Organization was only too happy to supply as long as they saw consistent progress.” He smiled and spread his hands to make a gesture of generosity. “So I gave them consistent progress! As soon as I had the breakthrough and bought the first round of equipment for my laboratory in Switzerland, I was able to create zero-point fields as large as a city block! But I didn’t tell the Organization this, of course; I had received only two hundred million dollars or so at that point.”
“Only,” Lathrop repeated in a rancid tone.
“Galling, isn’t it?” Merco said with a huge grin. “That money was used to build the equipment, obviously, but also to set up an escrow fund for my Swiss assistants Knisper, Knasper, and Knusper, whom you see here.” The assistants, whose names were without a doubt not what Merco said, waved hello with big smiles of their own. “They didn’t have to be sworn to secrecy anymore. All they had to do was see this through to the end and the legal team would release their funds. And secrecy has been incredibly important! I made the mistake of telling my daughter, who was how I knew about the existence of the Organization and their unlimited appetite for power and money in the first place, the location of Phase II of my plan. Accessing this subterranean space and carving out my workspace even underneath that is what has taken the lion’s share of the four billion dollars the Organization was good enough to provide me with.”
“Five billion,” Lathrop corrected. His tone remained nasty. Brett couldn’t say he blamed him, although he could say he was enjoying this immensely.
“I know. I just wanted to make you say it, you war-mongering son of a motherless goat.” Now Merco pointed out a section of the Minecraft Landscape and said, “Once I had the hydrargyrum plates in place, I just cut blocks out of the biomass, blip blip blip, and made this entire substructure.” Slightly underneath the ground in the cross section on screen, cubes of matter disappeared and were replaced by blackness. “This is how I cut the tunnel down here in the first place. I knew it was going to be a hostile environment, but hoo boy, this place is something special. We were able to get through by simply cutting out blocks ahead of us as we moved, but it took a while to charge up the plates every time. Had to evaporate a few dinosaurs and a whole lot of those miserable man-eating plants.”
Brett spoke up. “How did you know this was all down here in the first place?”
Merco continued to smile as he addressed Lathrop. “Would you care to handle this question on behalf of your employer? No? All right, then: The Organization has long known there was a kind of ‘lost world’ down here, written about by Conan Doyle and others through secondhand accounts by Pacific Islanders. Don’t ask me how they knew in the first place! Perhaps it was open to the rest of the world at some point; I haven’t any idea. But the Organization knew, and that information found its way to me, and the information that I had this information found its way back to them via the dastardly Nadia.”
Everyone looked at the slim woman, who said nothing.
“Yes, in any case, I knew that the Organization had long been planning to utilize the horrors found beneath the volcano here for paramilitary purposes as they continue to assemble their New World Order.” He shook his head at Lathrop, who looked like he was going to explode with pent-up fury. “Alas, I got here first and was able to access the found world by use of my zero-point matter remover. The very inaccessibility of this realm was all that had kept the Organization from harvesting and breeding dinosaurs and giant killer bugs and such to sell to the highest bidder, whether a sovereign government or terrorist group or other unsavory collection of psychopaths.”
“I’m not the psychopath here, Merco,” Lathrop said. “All I see left from the first commandos who came here is tattered uniforms at the bottom of that monster pit of yours.”
For the first time, Merco didn’t smile at something Lathrop said. “That is regrettable, although they arrived in this place with every intention of subverting my ultimate plan through violence, so I’m not as worked up about using them as I might otherwise be.”
“Using them?” Brett asked.
“Yes. I needed to train the wendigos to do what I needed—they are insanely huge and strong, as you saw for yourselves—and feeding them the troop of mercenaries was my only option. But you soldiers needn’t worry; everything is finished now, and I have no need of any of the creatures that live down here.”
Brett looked again at the cages of strange animals and insects held behind the bars of the cages in the walls of the immense room. “Then why are they here?”
Ravi, Stefan, and Ellie practically drooled at the thought of all that material for the next ten years of TMI episodes. It was probably all they could do not to blurt out their emails right then and there.
“So, if the superweapon—or super-savior—isn’t the cool zero-point block vaporizer, then what is it?” Brett asked, and he could see that everyone in his group had the exact same question.
“The five billion dollar question, eh?” Merco said with relish as he teased the miserable Lathrop. “You may find it hard to believe, but I have devised a way to give humankind an extra two to three years of survival, two to three years during which global warming will be put on hold and the countries of the world will be given this time to come to some workable strategy to stop climate change. It’s increasing exponentially, as I’m sure you know, but my idea is about to not only flatten the rate of growth flat or even make it arithmetical—it will stop the growth in its tracks for, as I say, long enough for the nations of Earth to overcome their folly and save the human race from extinction.”
Brett blinked and looked at Ellie, who also seemed completely taken aback by the scientist’s assertion. “That, um, sounds like a tall order.”
“Doesn’t it? But it’s all based on much more solid science than zero-point energy, and I was able to make that work!” He advanced the presentation slide to one showing the island with its volcano as it would appear from a ship a few miles offshore. The diagram showed the massive lava tube stretching up from the superheated magma chamber directly to the top of the volcano. There were also secondary vents in addition to that epically huge main vent. “This volcano last erupted in 1961, but before that had never gone off in modern times. This eruption was only through the secondary vents you see here; the main vent has been building in pressure since the advent of humanity. There isn’t much chance of a major eruption for decades, if not centuries, if not millennia, due to this thick blockage of rock below the surface of the island—just east of us down here, in fact. This illuminated tube points straight at it.”
In a flash, it dawned on Brett where this was going … or at least most of it. “You’re going to disintegrate the rock so that the magma can flow and the volcano will erupt.”
“It’s not disintegration so much as complete removal, but yes. With the amount of pent-up energy contained within the magma chamber, tens of thousands of years’ worth, it will be an explosion to rival that of Krakatoa. And that, my friends, is the whole point of this entire escapade: when Krakatoa blew, it sounded like a cannon being fired to people in England, seven thousand miles away. It threw up so much ash into the atmosphere that the average temperature everywhere on the planet increased by three degrees Fahrenheit. There were record snowfalls around the world, and things didn’t heat back up to normal for two to three years.” Merco smiled as he saw it click with each person there (except Crane, who obviously didn’t know what Krakatoa was). “I’m talking about Krakatoa because it’s the most famous giant volcanic explosion, but in 1815, the Indonesian volcano Mount Tambora cooled the world even more, completely vaporizing its home island. So powerful was this eruption that the next year, 1816, is known as ‘the year without a summer.’ My Tristan da Cunha eruption will rival even Tambora. If this intermission in warming doesn’t provide a chance for the people at the top to make a change, then nothing will. It’s the least I can do as a member of the human race.”
“And all the nations of the world will just cut emissions because of this? Will they even think of this as an opportunity to do that?”
“I have little faith in nation-states and even less in NGOs like the Organization to figure out any positive in the world for themselves. No, I have an automated transmission that will be sent out starting an hour before the volcano erupts: it will announce to every news outlet, big or small, why this is being done and the unique, unprecedented opportunity this represents. It’ll also go out to the public directly via the Web,” Merco said. “I will ask my assistants to leave the island so they are not killed. Unfortunately, Vulcania and everything living on, under, or near it will be destroyed along with the island itself. That’s why I was so careful to collect and preserve the data from these strange animals and plants.
“I was concerned,” Merco continued, “about how I might be able to convince the residents of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas to leave their homes, but it seems that the idiot mercenaries removing the gate to the surface has allowed our cryptid predators to decide those unfortunate people’s fates. I, of course, will die in the explosion, but I’d be a dead man anyway once the volcano blows its top. I would be hunted by every country in the world and the Organization. It’s better to go down with the ship, I think.”
“This is preposterous,” Lathrop said, and took to his feet. “You aren’t blowing up this island for some idiot scheme to save the world. Do you have any idea how much the Organization has invested in the current energy paradigm? I ask this rhetorically, because you wouldn’t believe it if I told you. It makes an amount almost equal to that initial investment every single year. They’re not going to let you ruin that—I won’t let you ruin it. Crane, you and your man take this bastard into custody after he tells you where the plans are for his zero-point energy apparatus.”
“I have a large speedboat on the other side of the island, Mister …”
“Lathrop.”
“Splendid. Greetings, Mister Lathrop. As I say, I have a means to get away from the island in a hurry. Captain Bantu won’t have to wait a month for a ship to take you back to Cape Town—I designed a special fuel cell that will take that speedboat all the way for my assistants to escape, but there would be room for the rest of you as well. It might be a little cramped, but well worth it to save your lives, hm?”
“I’ve been living inside of a wasp shell,” Ravi said. “I don’t know about anyone else, but at this point I can take a close boat ride.”
“Crane, do I have to do this myself? This is what you’re getting paid for! Now! Seize him!”
Crane and Flattop obeyed this time: they stood, pulled out their sidearms, and moved toward the scientist. He saw this and leaned down to the computer on the table next to where he was standing. He clicked a couple of times with the mouse, then, oddly, turned his head to the side while he typed madly and randomly on the keyboard. Then he looked back, punched a series of keys and clicked twice with the mouse, then straightened. “Do with me as you will, gentlemen. But only I know where the keys to the speedy Organization-funded watercraft are located.”
“Don’t worry,” Lathrop said with a renewed sneer of confidence, “we’ll get that information out of you in due time, Doctor.”
“Time.” Merco laughed. “Time is not on your side, Mister Lathrop. I just activated the timer for this gargantuan zero-point machine. It’s set for three hours, just enough time to get off this island and sail far enough away not to be completely erased from the face of the Earth along with Tristan da Cunha.”
Lathrop turned pale and said, “You’re bluffing.”
“Bluffing? I don’t really see what the advantage would be to misrepresenting the situation here, but as you can see behind me, my assistants are already gathering their things to move out.” And Brett could see that this was true. He highly doubted Merco was bluffing, and he also highly doubted anyone could get back through Vulcania and off the island in the time allotted by the zero-point machine’s countdown. They were all as good as dead … unless Merco was bluffing. Which, again, Brett really didn’t think he was.
Like Crane, Flattop hadn’t moved an inch since Merco made it clear only be could stop the island from blowing up now that it was on its way. He now asked, “Even if we’re far enough away not to get wiped out by the explosion itself, won’t, like,
a giant tsunami come and wipe us out anyway?”
“Excellent question!” Doctor Merco cried with glee. (Brett suspected he had been a teacher at some point in the way to his PhD.) “Actually, miles away from the epicenter of the eruptive earthquake, the sea will rise a few meters, but the wavelength of a tsunami is so long that nobody on the boat will probably even notice. Tidal waves in the movies are these sharp peaks, but no tsunami is like that in real life.”
Sure, Brett thought, because the rest of this place is SO like real life.
“Anyway, you’d all better get going, then,” Merco said, literally making the motion to shoo them along. Crane and Flattop, who each held in their hands a locked-and-loaded Kalashnikov purchased from a Ukrainian dealer in illegal arms, just nodded and turned to go before Lathrop completely lost his cool.
“Goddamned idiots!” he screamed, then stepped up and grabbed Flattop’s AK-47 from his hands. He pointed it at Doctor Merco and commanded in a voice quavering with anger and frustration, “Turn that off right now and get the goddamned plans and notes for the zero-point weapon. Then get your ass out that door.” He motioned at the entrance to the enormous space from where they had come.
“Your fancy talkin’ seems to have taken a coffee break,” Brett said with a mocking smile.
Lathrop let loose a string of expletives that no one would have called “fancy.”
“You kiss your money with that mouth?”
The barrel of the AK-47 swung to point at Brett. “You know this is loaded, right? I don’t actually have any further need of you, Mister Russell. It would be nothing to me to pull this trigger and kill you and your ex-wife.”
“Aw,” the old romantic Merco moaned.
“It’s okay,” Brett said. “I think we might be giving things another try.”
“Huzzah!”
“Shut the hell up, all of you!” Lathrop shrieked, looking ready to pull the trigger on all three of them.