The Quantum Brain (Pulse Science Fiction Series Book 2)

by John Freitas

  Mark had explored Dr. Kell’s e-mail exchanges as well. There were the same meticulous, detailed reports of snail like progress. CDR project managers and partners often responded with pushes and commands to move forward and to move faster. Of course, Dr. Kell was telling the project managers what to do now, so maybe he was the tortoise that won the race. He might also just be the smartest man in the room that CDR needed to achieve what they needed. Dr. Kell was the quantum researcher that had brought CDR “It.”

  “He can’t be too smart.” Mark took another swallow from his energy drink. “He handed me the backdoor I needed to own CDR’s entire system.”

  Mark drifted through documents and communications in CDR’s servers. The memos were endless banal drivel. They followed the stock prices of their various assets with an obsessive fascination. It was like everyone above the researcher level in CDR was choking on capitalism. It was a wonder they had time to get anything else done.

  The movements of the partners took up about as much space in everyone’s communications as the stock price. Every facility in cities where one of the partners would be were put on high alert for a possible visit. Other communications went to great length to inform executives that the partners’ moves were to be secret.

  “One good way to keep a secret is to stop telling everybody it’s a secret,” Mark said.

  Some of the partners were treated like shadowy figures. There was very little information on them. There was a Rand descended from the first Rand partner, but Mark couldn’t find a first name for him or her. Rand was active in the company, but spoken of like a mysterious force moving the chess pieces of CDR.

  Miles Decker was globe trotting around the planet playing alpha male. If he was showing up somewhere, the asset was generally being liquidated and people were getting fired. He was the ax of CDR. He was the grim reaper spoken of with fear in e-mails across the planet.

  Hazel Conrad was in Chicago most of the time and she handled most of the day to day operations. Information channeled up through the chain of command to her. Problems tended to be handled by a meeting with her first and then Decker second and last. Mark supposed that meeting with Rand must be what happened before someone vanished. He didn’t know.

  Hazel Conrad was taking a late flight on a company jet out of Chicago to Washington D. C. for a contract negotiation. There was some buzz about that because she did not travel often and usually not late. Everyone noted that Miles Decker was in his private ski lodge in the Canadian Rockies, so everyone felt safer about that.

  Mark came back to the record of the feed between Kell and the mysterious object.

  He paused on an exchange that captivated him.

  Dr. Kell had broken from asking stupid questions to ask, “What will destroy humanity then?”

  “It will not be what you did to yourselves, but what you failed to do in reaction to the forces at work in the universe around you,” It had answered.

  “Explain what you mean,” Kell had typed.

  It elaborated, “Survival is merely adaptation. Your actions as a species have reshaped the planet and specifically the biology. You domesticated plants and animals. You created antibiotics that extended your lives while created stronger and more resistant bacteria as a trade off. Your existence allowed some species to thrive while others went extinct. Your advancing knowledge and technology will eventually allow you to revive extinct species including some that did not fall by your hand. Your industrial activity changed the environment. You raised global temperatures which changed the climate. Sea levels will rise and some species will suffer as a result. At the same time, an ice age will be stalled which would have taken more species and a greater green belt will exist for a time allowing more people to be fed.”

  “You hardly ever hear the upside of our impact on the world. Which of these things will destroy us?” Kell pressed.

  “Like I said, it is not so much what you have done, but where you will fail to adapt,” It explained. “The biological will have an impact on your species. Even the worst diseases in history failed to eliminate all of humanity and you bounced back. There are coming forces from outside your world that will upset the balance worse than anything you have done or could have done to your planet and environment yourself. It is after this while you are digging yourself out of the rubble of the planet after the waves of disaster, that you will be unprepared to adapt. Diseases will thrive in the disorder. You will fight some, but will be distracted and miss others. Even now, super lice are rising in some areas of the world. In the aftermath of coming disasters, they will spread. Bigger threats will demand attention and will be averted. The lesser threats will build slowly until a time when they are too late to be stopped and humanity is devastated generations from now. Your descendants who will be unrecognizable to you will have to bend time and space to try to set it all right again.”

  “I was not expecting that answer,” Kell typed.

  It responded, “That is why it is the answer, Dr. Kell.”

  “Can you see these things you predict the way that I see a movie or read ahead in a book,” Kell asked.

  “I can follow the possibilities. I can see past the moves and countermoves to see what is beyond the next failure,” It said. “I can see how you are going to fail to protect me from being stolen from you and the steps I need to take to prevent that myself. I can see where I will be on the Earth and in the universe generations from now when all of this comes to pass.”

  “Can these things be prevented by their foreknowledge or is it a fate we can’t escape?” Dr. Kell asked.

  “It can be avoided,” It said. “Usually it will not be because humans often act against their best interests even when they know the likely outcomes.”

  Dr. Kell had gone on into asking about the nature of quantum particles for several pages.

  Mark shut off the feed and rubbed his eyes. “What a waste.”

  He was coming down from his energy boost.

  Dr. Kell was distracted by the minutia of the universe instead of going to the obvious. He was working against his best interests just like “It” had said humans always do. “It” had essentially predicted that Mark Spencer was going to come in and steal “It.” Dr. Kell had been warned straight out that he was going to fail to stop Mark Spencer, but the doctor had missed the warning.

  Mark was also fairly certain that “It” had predicted the gravitational waves that were coming to devastate the planet. “It” knew what was coming. Mark and the object in the chamber were the only two beings in the universe that knew what was coming. Mark was going to exploit it, the mysterious object was going to observe it all unfold, and everyone else was going to get caught by surprise.

  “We live on a planet of idiots,” Mark said, “and they are all going to get exactly what their ignorance deserves.”

  Dr. Kell had at his disposal an intelligence that could see the future and was willing to share what “It” saw. They should have been asking for winning lottery numbers both literally and figuratively. For all his endless questioning, Dr. Kell had not asked what the meaning of the universe was. He had not asked whether there was a God. He hadn’t asked who shot Kennedy or who the next president would be. If CDR was so obsessed with their stock price, they could ask “It” to tell them. They could ask for a plan to get the stock price as high as possible. They could ask about disasters manmade and otherwise. They could ask how to avoid them and even how to profit from them.

  This was the power to own the world and successfully play God. This power was wasted on Kell and somehow CDR was missing “Its” potential as well. It was all wasted.

  Mark was meant to possess “It.” It was his destiny and “It” had predicted Mark’s success right in Kell’s ignorant tortoise face.

  Mark closed out his CDR feed. He was done for the night.

  He ran one last Internet search. It had become a habit like brushing his teeth or recharging his phone. He ran a series of keywords to see if anyone was picking up on the clu
es about the coming gravitational disruption. The waves were still isolated at this point and the big one was still on its way. There were more of the smaller ones at various points on the Earth and he wanted to be sure word didn’t get out before he could put his plan into motion.

  He got a few hits and he felt his throat go dry. Mark began to scroll through the results. Some of it was natural disasters that could have been from anything. He dismissed those quickly. Other stories were making people ask questions.

  There had been some big fires in Arkansas and western Tennessee. A few stories of people claiming to be floating during the events showed up. They were getting comments and attention. Most people were treating it like fringe, crazy talk. It was being called the new chem trails or illuminati theories. Still, the chatter was spreading and similar stories at other points around the world were being connected.

  Mark pulled up some pictures of “crop circles” in remote areas of Russia and China where stories were circulating as well. The patterns were being called “God Fingers” by a few sites. There was one video shown from a mountain in northern China. The recording was shaky, but it showed the forest crushing in the valley below. Most people were claiming something supernatural or accusing it of being a fake. People were talking about it though.

  Mark searched deeper and found astronomers around the world beginning to communicate about distortions observed in the star patterns and background radiation. This was deeper in the web and some scientists were looking for telescope time to explore the anomalies.

  This concerned Mark the most. Not the telescope time. Those requests would move slowly. By the time they found anything that way, the big wave would already be through and it would be too late to warn anyone. It was the astronomers discussing data and images which had already been captured by accident. They probably would not put the pieces together in time. Calculating the final wave would be highly unlikely at this stage, but if Mark had done it, an astronomer might be able to do it too. If an astronomer and a physicist began working together, it would be more likely.

  Mark still believed his secret was safe, but the puzzle was there. Some people were beginning to see it. It was likely they would start putting the pieces together. It was possible that someone might solve the entire thing in time. Mark had wished that it would take longer before someone started seeing the details Mark had found. If it was closer to the final event, they wouldn’t figure it out in time. Now, he was not so sure.

  Mark swallowed and shut off his monitor.

  He was too wired to sleep, but too tired to continue working. He laid in bed in the darkness of his apartment staring at the ceiling for a long time.

  7

  Dr. Thomas Kell startled awake. It was the blond woman. Not the one with the glasses, but the other one. Dr. Kell recoiled at her standing over him. What was she doing in his apartment?

  He looked over his shoulder and realized the he was in his office at the facility. What was she doing in his dark office?

  “What? Um … What’s going on?” He managed to say.

  She took a step back closer to the light from the hallway spilling in through his doorway. She turned herself into a slender, shadowed figure without features in the contrasts of darkness and light. It filled Dr. Kell with a sense of nightmarish dread.

  She spoke with a pleasant tone that did not match the uneasiness of the scene. “You and the other project managers are being called in for an emergency call.”

  “How did you find me?” Thomas Kell sat up slowly.

  “Security reported the location of each of the people called to the meeting once Mr. Decker called it,” she said.

  “What time is it?”

  “3:47 AM local time,” she said. “Mr. Decker will begin the conference call in the conference room on this floor at 4:00 and he said he expects everyone there and ready, Doctor.”

  “Wait.” Dr. Kell blinked and stared at the floor. “Decker? Miles Decker? Why is he calling us to a meeting? Where is Hazel Conrad?”

  “Oh, you haven’t heard, Doctor?”

  Thomas looked up, but she was still the slender shadow against the blazing hallway light. He looked away. “What are you talking about? Heard what?”

  “I hate to be the one to tell you, Doctor.”

  “Well.” He glanced at his desk. “You are the one that woke me up, so I guess it has to be you then.”

  “Hazel Conrad was killed in a plane crash last night on her way to Washington. There was some sort of system failure and no one survived.”

  Dr. Kell held out his hands in front of him and shook his head. “She’s dead? She died? What’s going to happen to the company?”

  “I’m sure that is going to be the main topic of the call, Doctor. You have about eleven minutes to get to the conference room. The other project managers are assembling there now. Sorry for the short notice. We tried you at home and on your cell before we looked for you here.”

  “That’s fine. Not your fault. I’ll be ready.” He stared at the floor a moment longer. “I know you are not a secretary, but would you be willing to get me a cup of coffee or something to help me wake up.”

  She didn’t answer. Dr. Kell was sure he had said something that was going to get him in trouble with HR. He lifted his eyes and saw her shadow from the doorway was gone. She had left before he asked, she had stormed off in insult, or she was getting him coffee. There was a wide range of possibilities and he did not know which was being carried out.

  Dr. Kell considered going down to the lab to ask Q1 which was going to happen. He could have asked about Hazel Conrad’s trip. He might have known about the crash ahead of time and been able to warn her. It was too late now.

  Miles Decker was going to tell everyone what to do and a meeting with Decker did not usually go well. Dr. Kell wasn’t sure if he should go ahead and pack his desk or just set the whole thing on fire.

  He thought he could use something stronger than coffee before this meeting.

  He could taste his breath. He decided not to talk during the meeting. That was probably the best move for a wide range of reasons.

  Thomas Kell stood slowly. He stepped out of his office without closing the door and made his way slowly to the conference room. He was one of the last to enter and there were no seats left. He stood against one of the back walls.

  The others had tablets with them. He thought maybe he should have brought one as well. It was almost 4:00 and he didn’t want to leave the room to come back late. He stuck his hands in his pockets.

  Everyone was muttering among themselves and staring at a blue screen on the large wall monitor on the opposite side of the room. It hung there in a solid light like a threat. Everyone waited for Decker to pop onto the screen to pass sentence on all of them.

  Thomas realized they were all in fear of their own skin and were thinking little of the loss of Hazel Conrad except in how it impacted their lives and jobs.

  He sighed and looked down at the tile floor between his feet.

  The screen popped out of the blue image and there was an intake of air from all the lungs around the room. Dr. Kell swallowed and looked up. The room on the other side of the feed had wood beams. There were tall windows in the background showing snow covered pines and capped mountains in the haze of the far background.

  A tall man with dark hair sat at a table in profile in the frame. He had an open laptop and files scattered across the surface. He lifted a mug of steaming liquid to his lips and took a slow sip. He lowered it back down with a heavy clunk of ceramic against wood. He paused and flipped a page on the stack in his hands with a quiet rustle of paper.

  He didn’t look into the camera nor did he speak.

  Dr. Kell recognized Miles Decker from newspaper and web images he had seen over the years. He looked younger than Thomas expected. Maybe he was dying his hair. Dr. Kell knew Decker was older than him, but younger than Hazel Conrad had been. He looked like an athlete though instead of a senior partner.

  One of t
he managers closer to the screen looked around the table. No one made eye contact with him. The manager looked back at the screen and said, “Mr. Decker, we are live and ready.”

  “Shut up,” Decker said without looking up. His voice was clear and the connection was good. Miles Decker flipped another page with a soft rustle.

  After about half a minute, he tossed the papers in his hands on the other clutter on the table next to his laptop. He turned his head a quarter toward camera. He took several slow, steady breaths that no one in the conference room dared to interrupt.

  “Hazel Conrad is dead,” Miles Decker said still facing sideways from camera. “I’m going to tell you some information that cannot leave this room. The investigation into the plane crash is just beginning, but skies were clear and the plane was serviced well. They will check for mechanical error over the next few weeks, but the current theory is pilot error. There was no mechanical error and our pilots are the best money can buy. There is reason to believe that terrorism may be involved. That story is contained for now, but won’t be forever.”

  Several gasps traveled around the room. Decker turned toward camera and the room went silent again.

  He continued. “Our stock price is going to take a hit when the Market reopens to the news of Conrad’s death. Once the theory of terrorism surfaces, it will be hit again. Do not let that leave the room or I will find out who talked and I will make it my personal mission to take you apart. No one is to sell a single share of stock from your options. None of your family members and none of your friends. It will be looked at as insider trading and we will sacrifice you to federal regulators, if it comes to light. I will also take it personally and I will not forget.”

  Miles stared into camera and no one spoke. No one moved. Dr. Kell had to remind himself to breathe. He felt like there was no oxygen left in the room.