As Justin approached the vehicle, the passenger door began to open. The white van accelerated and rammed the rear of the black sedan, pushing it into a row of parked cars. Justin jumped to the side and stared at the accident open mouthed. “Justin, get in! Now!” He looked around for the familiar voice but couldn’t see where it was coming from. The white van suddenly accelerated again and hit the black car once more, jarring the passengers and causing white steam to shoot from the radiator of the black sedan. “Dammit boy! Get in here now!”
Justin looked at the driver of the white van. His uncle Stan was practically hanging out the window waving at him. “Now!”
“Uncle Stan?” Justin slowly approached the van as his uncle tried to back it away from the wrecked car. The van screeched loudly and backfired.
The door to the van shot open and Stanwick emerged, haggard and rougher than Justin had ever seen him. “Back to your car! Now! Go!” The old man waved him on and Justin slowly turned, his eyes glued to the wreckage. Two men in dark suits were trying desperately to escape the wrecked sedan and Uncle Stan was running for all he was worth toward him. “Go now! We have to get out of here.” He grabbed Justin’s arm and practically pulled him from the scene.
“Where are we going. Who were those guys? What are you doing Unc? What the hell is…”
“I’ll explain once we’re on the road. For now, just drive!” He pushed Justin toward the door of the Volvo and jogged to the other side. He jerked on the door and had to wait for Justin to unlock it. “Drive. Drive!”
Justin started the old Volvo and pulled out of the parking lot, his uncle urging him to drive faster in case there were others following them. “What the hell is going on, Unc?”
“They somehow knew you went by the house. I guess you called and said something that intrigued them.”
“Who are those guys?” Justin turned toward a side of town that was away from home.
“They’re…security from a place I used to work.” Stanwick continuously glanced over his shoulder to look for a tail. “They tried to grab me. They trashed my place. They’re looking for something.”
“What are they looking for? Does it have anything to do with those gold needles?”
“Gold…what gold needles?” Stanwick was staring at him angrily.
“When I went by your place. Sam scared me and I fell. I got these gold colored tiny needles stuck in my hand.” He held his palm up to show the angry red dots.
“Son of a…” Stanwick shook his head and sighed heavily. “Justin, I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”
“Unc? What the hell is going on? What have you gotten me into?”
Stanwick nodded. “I guess I need to explain a few things to you.” He pointed to the left. “Turn here. Go about two miles. On the edge of town is a storage rental place.”
“The Hop-N-Lock?”
“Yeah. I have a unit there. It will be a lot easier if I just show you.”
****
“Jeezus, Unc. It looks like a gold golf ball…only bigger.” Justin held the sphere up to the weak light bulb in the storage locker. “This is what they’re after?”
“Son, that unassuming little ball that you hold in your hand may be the single most powerful weapon in the universe.” Stanwick nearly collapsed into the fold out chair.
“How?” Justin continued to stare at the sphere then suddenly stiffened. He held it out at arm’s length. “This isn’t a nuclear bomb or something, is it?”
Stanwick laughed and shook his head. “No, son. Much more powerful than that.” He held his hand out and Justin placed it carefully in his palm. Stanwick rolled it around his fingers a bit and sighed again. “Knowledge.”
Justin’s brows furrowed. “Excuse me?”
Stanwick met his gaze and smiled. “You heard me son. Pure fucking knowledge.”
Justin leaned against the bulkhead of the storage unit and crossed his arms. “Come again?”
Uncle Stan slipped the ball into his shirt pocket and leaned back into his chair. “Let me tell you a story, son. Pull up that chair.” He reached into the dorm sized fridge and pulled out a soda and cracked it open. “Want one?”
“Is this going to take a while?”
“Probably.”
“Then yeah.”
Stanwick handed him a soda then leaned forward. “Have you ever heard of a fellow named Leonard Susskind?”
“Can’t say that I have.” Justin took a long pull on the soda and let loose a belch.
“This fellow is a post-modern Einstein. Actually, when it comes to theorizing, he’s probably smarter than Einstein. But the thing is, he postulated all action is energy. All knowledge is energy. Therefore, all action is knowledge.”
“That’s bologna.” Justin snorted.
“Not really. When you consider that every action can be known, it becomes knowledge.” Stanwick raised a brow at him and smiled. “Starting to get the picture?”
“I suppose. Theoretically speaking, anyway.”
“Exactly. Except…the thing is, all knowledge IS knowable.”
Justin shook his head. “No, it’s not. Nobody can know how many times I’ve masturbated. Hell, I don’t even know and I was the one who did it.”
Stanwick held up a finger. “Ah! That’s where you’re wrong. It is knowable. You see every action takes energy and that energy is spent. Sent out into the ether that is…the universe, if you will. All you need is something that can detect that energy, translate it into where it originated from, correlate it and viola! You have your information.”
“You’re full of crap, Unc.” Justin set his soda down and stared at him. “Once something is done, it’s simply done. You can’t measure an action once it’s been done.”
“But you can.” He pulled the gold sphere out of his pocket and held it in front of his nephew’s face. “With this.”
Justin’s eyes widened. “How?”
“That’s where things got…hairy.”
“Define ‘hairy’ please.” Justin leaned forward and stared at the older man.
“It was Susskind that also theorized that all information from a universe is still held, albeit in a different form, once that universe collapses into a black hole.”
“Woah. Black holes? I thought they ate up everything and nothing escaped?”
Stanwick nodded. “True. Except…I think it was Hawking that postulated that information was lost in a black hole and then physicists debated it for a few decades before they realized, the information isn’t lost, it’s simply stored differently. And it was later discovered that singularities are actually connected to each other in a subspace plane.”
“Okay…you lost me.”
Stanwick nodded and scratched at his forehead. “Think of it this way. All action is energy. That energy is information. Information is never erased. It can be weakened over time and diluted over space, but it’s still there. Are you with me so far?”
“Okay. But this is all theoretical, right?”
“Yes…and no. Just, try to stay with me for now. Now try to consider that even the information lost in a black hole, isn’t truly lost. It’s simply not visible.”
“Okay. I guess I can see that.”
“Okay. Now, consider that all black holes are connected by a subspace connection.” Stanwick watched at Justin’s face twisted into confusion. “Think of a string between two paper cups. It connects two distinct objects, but information can be passed back and forth.”
“Oh, okay. I gotcha.”
“Now, imagine, if you can, that a particle collider was able to not only create a miniature singularity, but once that singularity was measured…they began to try to create a singularity on purpose in order to capture it.”
“Wait! You mean to tell me that they purposely tried to create a black hole?”
“Not the first time. But after they measured the first one…yes. It lasted for a few hundred millionths of a second. Then it popped out of existence.”
“Then they tri
ed to create more?”
“In order to capture it. And feed it.” Stanwick inhaled deeply and began again. “Once it was roughly the size of a dust mote, they encapsulated it and held it in a central position using magnetics.”
“You’re talking science fiction, Unc.”
“I’m talking modern science. He held up the sphere again. “The goal wasn’t to try to reach unlimited knowledge. It was to try to tap into zero point energy. Free energy, if you will. But, instead, once the connections were made and this…hodge podge of feedback was received, it took months to realize that it was data we had tapped into. Not entropic energy from other black holes, but the data that had been lost since the Big Bang.”
“Okaaayyyy…”
“Right. What to do with unlimited, garbled data, right? All the supercomputers in all the world, couldn’t put it into any kind of order.”
“Sort of what I was thinking, Unc.”
“Except.” Stanwick smiled and held the sphere up again. “Something happened. Something I can’t explain.”
“What’s that?”
“It spoke to me.”
****
“We’ve lost them sir.” The man spoke into a cell phone while holding his badge out toward the police officers at the scene of the accident. “No idea where they went. The agents at the kid’s house report that he didn’t return there. The agents at the Doc’s house say they didn’t go by there either.”
“It was a white van. It rammed the rear of our car and pushed us into the parked…” The other agent tried for a third time to explain what happened to both the campus security and the local police. “No, we didn’t get a description of the driver. Look in the damned van. Maybe he left his wallet!”
“We’re getting heat from the locals, sir. Do you think you can get this cleared up and have someone picked us up? We can canvas the area quicker if we’re back in the field.”
“We’ve got to have those spheres back. I don’t care if you use every satellite, traffic camera, security camera, cell phone…do what you have to do. Get us those spheres back.”
“Yes, sir. Understood, sir.” The agent snapped his phone shut and motioned to his partner. “We’re done here.” Both men simply turned and walked away from the scene, leaving the police to deal with the wreckage on their own.
“Hey, you can’t leave the scene of an accident.” An officer called out.
“Subpoena me!”
****
Justin held the sphere in his hand and stared at it. “So, you’re telling me that inside this golden golf ball, there’s a tiny black hole?”
“Yup. Itty bitty one, but there is a singularity inside there.”
“And if it was broken open…would it swallow up the earth?”
“Nope. It would just >pop< out of existence. There isn’t enough matter to continue feeding it.”
“Then why doesn’t it just pop out while it’s in there?”
“The magnets.” Stanwick said matter of factly. “They hold it in place, it’s kept in the exact center and the gravitational forces hold those ‘needles’ as you called them, in place.”
“And wires feed through each tube and transmits data.”
“You got it, buster. See? You can be taught.” Stanwick reached for the sphere and slipped it back into his pocket.
“Is that the only one?”
Stanwick looked up at Justin and shook his head. “We had three. You stuck your hand in the remains of one. I destroyed it just before they came to my place.”
“And the other one?”
Stanwick grunted as he lifted himself from the chair. “It’s imbedded in this unit.” He pulled what looked like an aluminum suitcase from a shelf and placed it on the table. “Think of this as a Toughbook. A mega sized one, but pretty much the same idea. An oversized laptop with a supercomputer inside.” He lifted the lid with the flat screen inside it and pulled two metal poles to prop it. Pulling a power cord from the body of the main case, he ran it along the side of the table and plugged it in. “It draws too much power to use batteries.”
“Is that liquid cooled?”
“Oh yeah.” After a few moments, the screen came to life.
“And how did this thing speak to you?”
“I was so frustrated…running algorithms and feeding the data to every known decryption program. Then one day, out of total frustration, I typed, ‘what am I doing wrong’ and hit enter.”
“You’re shitting me. The thing answered you?”
Stanwick nodded and shrugged. “Yes, it did. At first I thought somebody was messing with me. I really thought that another of the researchers had somehow tapped into the system and was typing replies, but…no. It was something else.”
“What was it?”
“I still don’t know. As soon as I realized that it wasn’t another researcher, I started asking questions. Questions that nobody else could have known.”
“Like what? Math questions?”
“At first. Then programming questions. Then…”
“Then what?”
“Then I started asking it off the wall things. Things that…nobody but me and God could know. It answered them correctly.”
“Lucky guesses.” Justin smirked.
“No, son. Not this.” Stanwick’s face went slack and he stared off. “Things that nobody could know.”
“Like what?”
“Like have I ever cheated on a test.”
“Lucky guess, Unc. Everybody has at some point in their…”
“It told me which tests and who I cheated from.” Stanwick interrupted. “You don’t remember Alice, do you?” Justin shook his head. “She and I were married for less than a year. You were maybe three at the time.”
“I had an Aunt Alice?”
“I asked how we broke up. It told me. Then it showed me pictures. I had to make it stop.”
“Unc, what…”
“She cheated on me.” He stated flatly. “With my best friend.”
Justin swallowed hard. “Can it predict the future?”
“No. It can only tell what has happened in the past.”
“I don’t guess you asked it stuff like…is there alien life? Who killed Kennedy? Is Bigfoot real?”
“Seriously?”
“Duh! Let me at that thing. I need to know.” Justin slid his chair up beside the computer and Stanwick sighed as Justin stared at the screen. “How do I make this work?”
“Just type.”
HELLO
Hello Justin.
“Holy shit. It knows it’s me.”
“Don’t ask it to do card tricks.” Stanwick glanced at his watch.
WHO ARE YOU?
I am me.
“Well, that’s a hell of an answer.”
“Apparently it has a concept of self but no way of identifying itself.” Stanwick moved in closer and stared at the screen. “I couldn’t get a name from it either. I tried for what seemed like hours.”
“Okay. Let’s get down to brass tacks.”
IS BIGFOOT REAL?
Identify Bigfoot.
BIGFOOT=SASQUATCH
Identify Sasquatch.
“Shit. Unc, I think I broke it.”
“Or your world champion hide and go seek player isn’t real.” Stanwick gave him a wink.
“That ain’t funny. Bigfoot is real.”
“Try another question.”
ARE ALIENS REAL?
Identify aliens.
“Well shit. Okay, I quit. This thing sucks.”
“Move over. It’s all in how you ask the question.” Stanwick slid in behind the computer. “I can’t believe I’m asking this. With all the knowledge of the universe at our fingertips and you want to know…”
“Just ask it.”
HOW MANY FORMS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE ARE IN THE MILKY WAY GALAXY?
There are over 3.7 trillion forms of life that could be considered intelligent within the galaxy known as the Milky Way.
“Holy shit, Unc. I kn
ew it. I freakin’ knew it.”
“That doesn’t mean that any of them have…hold on.”
OF THE 3.7 TRILLION FORMS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE MILKY WAY GALAXY, HOW MANY HAVE ADVANCED FORMS OF SPACE TRAVEL?
193.
ARE HUMANS CONSIDERED ONE OF THE 193 FORMS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE TO HAVE ADAVNCED FORMS OF SPACE TRAVEL?
No.
“Well, there you have it, Unc. We’re stone age compared to those guys.” Justin slapped his uncle on the back. “I bet those anal probing sons of bitches won’t know what hit them when this thing tells us how to hold them back.”
Stanwick raised a brow at his nephew. “Really? Let’s try this then.”
OF THE 193 FORMS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE WITH ADVANCED FORMS OF SPACE TRAVEL, HAVE ANY VISITED EARTH?
No.
Justin stood up, his mouth hanging open. “Aw, bullshit.” He edged closer to the computer and began typing.
THEN WHAT ARE THE ALIEN GREYS?
Define Alien Greys.
Stanwick burst out laughing as Justin plopped back into his chair and pouted. “I still don’t buy it.”
“Hey, you asked.”
Justin suddenly brightened. “I know.” He leaned over and began typing again.
WHO WAS BEHIND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY?
The United States Central Intelligence Agency working in conjunction with-
Stanwick mashed the button to turn off the monitor and turned on his protesting nephew. “That’s the kind of information that will get you killed by the very same people who are looking for this thing.”
“Well if I’m gonna die anyway, I’d sorta like to know.”
“If I can keep you alive, I’m going to.” Stanwick stood and began taking apart the computer.
“Hey, Unc, no! Please! There’s so much I want to ask it.”
“Not now.” He pulled the prop rods and laid them inside the lid.
“No, questions like, is there a God. What’s the one true religion. Stuff like that.”
Stanwick turned and raised a brow at his nephew. “Really?”
“Well…yeah. And…maybe…if it has pictures of Mary Beth Parker naked.” He smirked.
Fight the MonSter: Find a Cure for MS Page 13