The Babel Tower

by J. B. Simmons

  9

  Jax strolled through the open warehouse, watching the engineers code and the marketers market. His tech company had grown from four to forty-three employees in two years. This was success. His last company had made it only six months. But he’d written the Babel code. He knew he’d find the next big idea. He just needed time. He could always spot the little opportunities that others missed.

  This one was fire hydrants. He and his team were turning every hydrant in the country into a spy, and he sold it first to the FBI, then to the CIA. Now FireSpy had contracts with five other U.S. agencies and two other nations. With face recognition software, they could know where everyone was, or at least the last fire hydrant they passed. In a year, maybe he’d sell the company for a few hundred million and move on to the next thing. Maybe robotic asteroid mining. Matter was overrated, but add a little code and you could change the world.

  But today was about skyscrapers.

  Because that’s what Liz wanted.

  Jax pulled three engineers into an impromptu meeting. Beck and Roger perched on stools across the ping-pong table. They ran FireSpy’s innovation for sprinkler systems in buildings. Veruca leaned back on the exposed brick wall, her red curls almost matching the brick. She was FireSpy’s steel expert, the one who installed undetectable cameras in metal, the final link for making hydrants spy.

  Jax bounced a ping-pong ball and called the meeting to order. “Who wants a million dollar bonus?” he asked.

  Postures straightened, eyes widened. “I’ll take it,” Beck said.

  “We’re going to build a tower. A really tall one.”

  “Nice,” Veruca said. “Why?”

  “It’s for my friend, Liz Trammell. And for fun. I told you we’d push the envelope here.” Jax bounced the ball up to the ceiling, then caught it. “We’re going to help with construction, materials, and finding the best builders. The question is, how tall can we build it?”

  “If Liz is funding it, we can build it out of the atmosphere,” Roger said. “There’s a company in Montreal that’s working on a space elevator. Something to make launches easier. They want to tether it to a tower. Does that count?”

  Jax had thought of that. “It can be the cherry on top, but the main goal is to make the tower the tallest in the world, by far.” He laid down a copy of the design that Liz had given him. It was only a sketch, but it was stunning all the same. The group of them were quiet, studying it. Fine lines of metal arching up like someone had jabbed a pin up through the surface of the earth, only the surface had risen with it instead of breaking.

  “Looks like steel,” Veruca mused, looking up from the drawing. “Lots of it. We have a steel company in China. They’re fusing metal in new ways. Really thick beams, 3D printed on the spot. If you build with that, go deep with the foundation, I bet you could go a mile high.”

  Beck was nodding. “It’s all about the base. It would have to be really wide. Where’s the tower going to be?”

  “Nebraska, middle of nowhere,” Jax said. “The land’s already bought.”

  Veruca laughed. “Random, but whatever. It’ll cost a fortune to ship the materials. What’s the budget?”

  “No budget. Just think big.” Jax looked to the two guys. “So Veruca leads on the steel, what do you want to tackle?”

  Beck sipped kombucha from a styrofoam cup. “The problem isn’t the materials,” he said. “Think about our hydrants. That little hunk of red metal doesn’t matter. What matters is the pipe underneath. Let’s dig deep, like into the earth’s core. We need a place with stable rock underground.”

  “That might be a problem in Nebraska. And there’s another issue.” Roger tilted his head back, speaking to the ceiling. He was dark and brooding and disagreed with everything. But Jax liked him. He kept FireSpy honest. “It’s not the materials. It’s not the foundation. It’s the air.” He lowered his gaze, leveling with the group. “You know which state has some of the worst tornados in the world?”

  Jax listened, amused, as they talked on. Nothing like a million dollars to make three engineers tackle a problem.

  He slid off his stool. “I’ve gotta handle some emails, but I like the ideas. Keep driving on your issues. Let’s meet again after lunch.”

  The meeting broke off and Jax went to his office. He started doing his own research on the tower. He thought about what Liz wanted. She wanted to make everyone feel a sense of looking up, a tilting back of the head in wonder. Jax had always been short—five feet, two inches…three if he stretched—so if anyone could replicate that feeling, he could.

  He scanned a few articles on Babel. More lies and slander about Liz. They’d just started to pick up hints of the tower idea. Hard to hide it now that a Babel lawyer was buying huge swaths of land in Nebraska. One reporter claimed Liz was building a statue to spite a farmer in Nebraska who had spurned her advances. The press ridiculed her, and it made Jax furious. Sure, she could have given her fortune to fight cancer or something, but who were they to judge? Did they have a father who jumped off a building? Did they lose their mother at seventeen? Did they drop out of school to work all day and build a company from scratch that changed the world?

  Media pricks.

  They would always fire shots. They didn’t have any stake in this. They just wanted to sell words, and right now no one played better in the news than Elizabeth Trammell. At least every takedown story showed Liz’s face at the top. Her bright, smiling, blue-eyed face. They could hurl sticks and stones, but everyone who knew Liz loved Liz.

  Love, Liz. Two words that haunted Jax.

  He dug into more research. Towers and space elevators. Steel and foundations. He found some interesting information on the Eiffel Tower. Four hours later he was back at the table with his team.

  Veruca reported on materials. “Add some advanced composites,” she said, “and we can go ten miles into the sky, maybe more.”

  “Seriously?” Jax asked.

  “Yep.” Beck, the foundation guy, confirmed Veruca’s estimate. He said they could dig deep for stability, and make it even stronger by spreading out the base. “You know the Burj Khalifa?” he asked.

  Veruca and Roger shook their heads.

  “I’ve been to the top,” Jax said.

  “Right, so it had a long run as the world’s tallest building,” Beck said. “Almost three thousand feet into the sky. It has a buttressed core, because the base is like a three-winged spear.”

  “Spear?” Veruca asked.

  “Imagine a triangle, put a dot in the middle, then draw a line out to each corner. The base is like that. Each wing helps stabilize the skyscraper, and it deflects some wind.”

  Jax liked the idea of a deep foundation. Maybe they could put the Babel data servers down there, instead of hidden in the middle of a desert. It was one thing he’d never agreed on with Liz. They should keep the data close so they could keep an eye on it.

  “Wind is still the biggest problem,” Roger said. “If the tower goes up four miles, it will be facing regular gusts over a hundred miles per hour. The building will need large internal counterweights that shift weight to the building’s center whenever the wind hits. Otherwise, it’ll lean. Towers four miles high don’t lean well.”

  Veruca nodded. “We’ll also need steel shafts down the center of the building. Where else do we put the elevators?”

  “You’re missing something,” Jax said. “The design by Liz’s dad looks a little like the Eiffel Tower. Anyone know where its elevators are?”

  “On the sides?” Beck asked.

  Jax nodded. The Eiffel Tower was once the tallest structure in the world, and its engineering secret was a wide base. He remembered riding up an elevator along one of its curved edges. He remembered standing on the top, feeling tall. “Liz’s building won’t be used like others,” he said. “She wants it to be a place where people could live, without needing to leave. That means high volume ground access isn’t a big deal, and not every elevator has to rise from the ground floor. I
magine a wide, hollow base, sky lobbies, and a narrowing top.”

  “I like it,” Veruca said. “All steel and glass.”

  “Really strong glass,” Roger added.

  Jax’s gaze shifted to the ceiling, as if trying to envision the tower. “There’s going to be a big construction team and builders, but they’ll be stuck inside the box of what’s been done before. You three keep pushing the margins, okay? Whoever has the best idea gets the million bucks.”

  “And what if we all have a good idea?” Roger asked.

  Jax smiled. “You can split it.”

  “How long do we have?” Beck asked.

  “Probably a few weeks.” Jax glanced down at the calendar on his phone. “Liz wants to break ground this fall. So let’s plan on September 15.”

  “We’re on it,” Roger said, holding out his lanky arms. “We can outdo Mt. Everest if we make the base just as wide.”

  “Great, just don’t think small,” Jax said. His life was a defiance of size. “Think about reaching the stars.”

  10

  Owen waited for Liz at the airport in Lincoln, Nebraska. He stood beside the private jet runway, studying his reflection in the tinted glass of the black sedan. The thick-rimmed glasses and fresh new haircut did little to hide his fatigue. He straightened his pink polka dot tie.

  The surrounding land was brown and flat. So flat it made him nervous. There was nowhere to hide. No trees, no dips, no knolls. No wonder Midwesterners came out honest and plain.

  A jet appeared on the horizon and as it drew closer Owen recognized the colors of Babel. Only one plane had the bright stripes of a rainbow. The dose of radiance in this barren land made him smile.

  He read through his briefing again. He’d already bought almost all the land they needed, and a couple weeks ago Liz had given him a new assignment: get the governor’s permission to build however we want. The governor had been a tough opponent, sly and ambitious. He’d told Owen that he would agree to Liz’s terms, but only with lots of publicity and tax revenues. He also demanded that Liz come herself to sign the deal. Owen thought it was pretty fair, and he hoped Liz would agree.

  The Babel jet landed and rolled to a stop near Owen. The ladder opened to the ground.

  The first person out surprised him: Katarina.

  Liz had said nothing about her coming, but Babel’s second-in-command had been joining Liz more and more lately. Today Katarina wore a black skirt suit, revealing supermodel pencil legs and a catwalk stride. She had style, but something about her gave Owen the chills. She always seemed a little too perfect for the job.

  Liz followed after her, wearing her signature jeans and blue sweater for Tuesday. She smiled and waved. “Hey, Owen. Nice car.”

  “Welcome to Nebraska.” Owen opened the car’s back door. “The governor insisted we use his official limo.”

  Liz paused before getting in. “The governor’s?”

  “His driver, too. Be on your best behavior.”

  “Duly noted. I left my champagne at home, anyway.” She eyed the limo. “Anything we need to cover before we get in?”

  Owen shook his head. “The governor already stocked the bubbly, on ice, and my memo should give you the information you’ll need. You got it?”

  “I’ll read it while we ride.”

  “Sounds good,” Owen said. “One other thing. I’ve made no progress with the Conrad family. They won’t budge. It’s not about the money. I can’t figure them out.”

  “Where cash fails, the state prevails. I’ll raise it with the governor.”

  “Just make sure he signs the rest of the package first. Make them an afterthought.”

  “Sign first. Conrads next. Anything else?”

  “Nope, we should go before we’re late.”

  The three of them loaded into the black limo. Liz sat in the far back seat, reading Owen’s report on her tablet. Katarina and Owen sat across from each other on the bench seat, like two competing advisors to the queen. Their eyes met awkwardly a few times. Owen skimmed the local paper that had been left inside—the front-page news was corn prices falling, and farmers looking for other work.

  It was a short drive to the stately governor’s mansion. The limo passed the white columns and black gate in the front and turned into a discrete driveway in the back. A group of men in suits approached.

  Liz looked up from her tablet and met Owen’s eyes. “Thanks for the report. Why does he want my support for campaign contribution limits?”

  Owen glanced out the window, spotting the governor. “The last election was pretty close. He won by a few thousand votes. The tower could bring more people than that to the state. New voters, you know. But I think he’s more worried about how you’ll use your money.”

  Liz laughed. “That’s easy—I’ll use it on the tower. I’ve never given a dime to a politician.”

  “Don’t tell him that,” Owen said. “Better to let him think he might get something.”

  Liz agreed, and the three of them climbed out of the car. The governor and his entourage introduced themselves. They shook hands and exchanged formalities.

  The governor motioned to the car. “Let’s get going. We’ll have plenty of time to talk on the drive.”

  Liz, Owen, and Katarina climbed back inside, followed by the governor, his chief of staff, and a security guard. The driver wheeled them out and within minutes they were cruising down a straight highway through an ocean of cornfields under a wide-open blue sky.

  Liz followed Owen’s script. She told the governor about how she had looked into alternatives. They’d considered Kansas, Oklahoma, and eastern Colorado, as all those states sat over the same aquifer. She told him about her hometown of Arthur, Nebraska, where she’d been born and lived until she was eight. “No traffic light. Lots of farms. Population of 145 when my family moved.”

  They’d been driving west almost an hour, well into the middle of nowhere but still three hours short of Arthur, when the governor’s voice went from friendly politician to business. “Owen and I have been through the terms. My people wrote it all up, and last night I was ready to sign. But my gut was tied up in knots this morning. Lots of people are upset. Just today I got a letter from the elevator inspectors’ association. They’re beside themselves that they won’t get to inspect your tower. What if I give you some special incentives to allow at least periodic inspections?”

  Liz arched her eyebrows. “Elevator inspectors?”

  “It’s not just them. There’s cops, firefighters, teachers. In Nebraska we try to give everyone an equal stake, fair dealing you know? Then you come in and want exceptions.”

  “You know how many jobs I’m bringing to your state?”

  “Yeah, and that’s great. You’ve got my support. But I can’t just let you build unchecked. How about two days of inspections per year.”

  Liz shook her head. “No inspections.”

  “Owen says you’re going to be building over a mile high. If something bad happens, if people get hurt, it’s not just on you. People are going to blame me.”

  “No.” Katarina spoke up for the first time.

  The governor turned to her, his eyes lingering. “Katarina, right?”

  She nodded. “If you let Liz’s tower stay outside your control, you’re shielded from blame for any specifics.”

  The governor didn’t bat an eye at her Russian words. He wore a Babel like everyone else. “What kind of specifics?” he asked.

  “Safety concerns, security issues, you name it.”

  The governor frowned. “Why should I be worried about security?”

  “Just normal stuff,” Liz answered quickly. “Nothing to worry about, but you know, people will come from all over the world. They won’t vote in Nebraska, but they will bring lots of tourism money, and taxes.”

  “Tourists are still in my jurisdiction,” the governor said. “I can’t just create a new nation within Nebraska. This is still America.”

  Owen had an idea. He wished Katarina hadn’
t brought up security, but there was a workaround. “How about a waiver?” Owen asked. “You know how people have to sign a paper before they go rafting or skiing or whatever?”

  “Yes.” The governor paused. “But this is a building, not an adventure sport.”

  “It will be an experience,” Owen said. “So we can do something similar. Anyone who comes to the tower will have to sign away certain rights.”

  The governor sat quietly for a moment. The corn stalks behind him blurred into a golden streak. “It might work, but…I read about how you might move the company’s servers to the tower. So what about people who don’t visit in person, but visit by Internet or whatever?”

  “There’s no risk,” Liz answered. “It’s just a few underground servers, and everything is encrypted. The real attention will be on the tower. That’s the whole point. That’s why I want to build in Nebraska, near where I grew up.” Liz had fixed her bright smile on the governor, her voice sincere. “You care about your hometown, right?”

  The governor’s shoulders relaxed. “Sure do.”

  “So you understand why I want to honor the place?” Liz asked. “To help others see how great Nebraska is?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Trust me, I would never put my hometown, my tower, or my company at risk. Our goal is nothing but success. We are going to bring the world’s best to Nebraska, and we want your support.”

  The governor was quiet a moment, studying Liz. Then he turned to his chief of staff. “Okay, Greg, the agreement?”

  As the chief of staff retrieved a paper from his briefcase, Owen marveled at Liz’s disarming charm. She’d done more with a single smile than he’d done in three days of negotiation. The governor pulled out his pen, scribbled a note about the waiver at the bottom of the agreement, signed it, then handed it to Liz.

  She glanced at the new note, then at Owen. He nodded. She signed it without reading a word.