by Mark Wandrey
“I want that spraycrete dome installed overnight,” he told his assistant.
“That’s going to be very expensive to arrange, sir.”
“Does it look like I care what it costs? Find a contractor that says they can do it; then tell them what’s at stake if they fail to follow through and see if they say they can still do the job. Make it happen.” The man said he would and quickly left to make arrangements. Volant plopped into his chair in the commandeered command trailer and rubbed his eyes. It was more than 24 hours since he’d last slept. In prior years he could have done a day without sleep and never batted an eye, but now he was pushing fifty. “Getting old,” he mumbled as he rubbed his red eyes.
“You say something sir?” asked another assistant.
“No, just talking to myself. I’m getting loopy.”
“There’s a cot in that room. No one’s using it right now.”
“
Thanks, son. I think I’ll take you up on that. Wake me up in four hours.” The young agent nodded his head and Volant shambled into the room where he found a metal frame cot as promised. Simple and far too narrow for his widening frame it nonetheless felt like a feathered four-poster bed. Like Harper, his mind was alive with whirling possibilities and questions, but unlike the restless police officer that was a normal part of his job. He was asleep in minutes. “I do my best work when I’m asleep,” he often bragged to his agents. As the powerful man dreamed he began to work through the confusing problems and look for ways to use them to his nation’s advantage.
April 10
For Dr. George Osgood this had become the most frustrating job he had undertaken thus far in his career. Half of his staff from Houston was now in New York working out of trailers and offices of the nearest university. He had access to all the state-of-the-art equipment possible under the current circumstances. The greatest minds in the country were at his disposal via e-mail and indirect personal inquiries. After working for almost three weeks on this mystery, he was no closer to a reasonable conclusion than the day he started. All that remained was an unreasonable conclusion that he was not yet prepared to embrace.
“The latest particle physics reports just came in from Caltech,” informed a physicist working under Dr. Osgood. Caltech was not “in the bag” as they had come to refer to a scientist or institution that was aware of what had been found here.
“Did they have anything useful to say?”
“Mostly they wanted to know where we came up with such a unique set of readings, and they accused us of making up data to run them in circles.”
“Figures. It’s their way of not admitting defeat.”
“They said the readings from the particle target are indeed indicative of high energy neutrons.”
“Well, we knew that already. Can they explain why we would be getting flashes of gamma rays almost sideways off the target?”
“The description on that question is the most protesting of all the replies.”
“Protesting?”
“It almost sounds to me like they are whining about having to postulate on those sorts of particle emissions.”
“Well, what did they say, besides protesting?”
“They said it seemed to be indicating that both high energy neutrons and anti-neutrons were present.”
Osgood put his pen down and turned to face the younger scientist. “I see why they were whining. It’s a violation of a couple laws of physics to suggest the same source could emit both neutrons and anti-neutrons.”
His assistant chuckled as he read a line on the report. “To even suggest such emanations were possible from any source would be to put forth the premise that the laws of physics as we know them are nothing more than rules to be bent and broken as the situation dictates.”
Osgood had a good laugh at that. His assistant was right, that was a protest all right. Well, if he’d been forced to come to any sort of conclusion based on the data they'd sent, he doubted if he would have sounded any more mature either.
He thanked his assistant and got up to stretch his legs. Once again it was nearly noon and he was going on eight hours straight without a break. He took a bite from a sandwich lying on the workbench, grimacing as he chewed. He washed it down with some hours-cold coffee and walked out.
The compound, or Portal City (as some of the scientists had taken to calling it) now held twelve semi-permanent structures, a trio of trailers containing powerful scientific apparatus and a varying number of buses that served as bunkhouses for the personnel. Osgood called a fifty-foot long motor home parked a short distance away his temporary home. He was one of only two people in Portal City with personal accommodations. The other being the disagreeable NSA director Volant.
He maneuvered around a few of the buildings and came within view of the central structure. The twenty-meter wide spraycrete dome was painted a neutral brown and built low so as not to draw attention from a distance. There was only one exit but dozens of cables and hoses emerged in different places where they lead to the various trailers surrounding the dome. And inside was the reason they were all here.
As he made his way to the dome entrance he recalled the story they fed to the press. An incredibly valuable satellite had landed in, of all places, Central Park. It was supposed to be nuclear powered and the government was carefully recovering the dangerous fuel elements. The New York media not only bought the story and all the inconvenience that went with shutting down access across the park, they practically fell all over themselves thanking the government for saving them from a radiation induced hell. It was amazing what people would believe, even with a complete lack of supporting evidence.
“As if a satellite could crash into Central Park without fifty thousand people seeing it,” he laughed as he reached the door. The entrance to the dome was an airlock that had originally been kept closed against possible contaminations. Except for the small amount of radiation leakage, there had proved to be no danger. In total radiation exposure it was more dangerous to stand in front of a television set for a year. The guard stopped him and examined his ID. The door was propped open, but security was tough. The guard was dressed in a conservative suit but the bulge of a sub machine gun under his coat was unmistakable. Osgood found himself more threatened by the street-dressed agents with their hidden weapons than he had by the camouflaged and openly armed FBI.
“You can go in, Dr. Osgood.”
The scientist nodded and stepped over the door frame. The decontamination area was lined with yellow biochemical suits and steam spray booths. He was grateful they'd moved past the stage of needing the cumbersome and time consuming suits, to explore the Portal.
The inside airlock door stood open and he stepped through. The inside was brightly lit from all directions. The pearly white Portal dais stood in the center of the dome surrounded by scientific instruments and researchers (the work went non-stop around the clock). By the looks of the current instruments they were using, this was another materials analysis run.
A pair of men was working with a five hundred kilowatt laser flown in last night. It had charged off city utilities all night until it was ready to be used to try cutting a sample. Darkened black glass shields surrounded the work area and still flashes rebounded from the walls bright enough to make him squint. After a minute, the light stopped flashing and the men came from behind the shield, opening their reflective face shields and shaking their heads in disbelief.
“No luck?” he asked.
“Dr. Osgood? Not really your area of interest, is it?”
“No, I usually keep to the pure physics of the problem. This cursed thing is defying all attempts to make any progress. I would give all I have to get at the insides of this thing.”
The laser scientist chuckled and took out a cigarette. He produced a nifty little laser lighter and lit the cigarette. “Dr. Osgood, if we ever got this thing opened up there’d probably be a significant percentage of the Eastern Seaboard missing.”
Osgood looked over at the
dais just as a technician stepped on the top step. The Portal in its sparkling brilliance popped into existence. He scratched his chin in contemplation. “What do you imagine is the power source at work here?”
“You were wondering if we had any luck? The answer is a resounding no. That’s the biggest portable high photon xenon laser in the western hemisphere. I’ve used that to cut through half a meter of tungsten carbide steel in under a second. Its cousin, based on a chemical configuration instead of electric, is mounted in five converted 747-200’s. They use them to shoot down ballistic missiles thousands of miles away. We fired a dozen pulses into the material on the dais of that Portal. Not only didn’t it leave a mark, it didn’t warm it up, it didn’t even reflect any of the coherent light.”
“None?” Osgood said incredulously.
“None.”
“If you had to guess, what do you think it’s made out of?”
“Neutronium?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Osgood grumbled at the incredulity.
“You said if I had to guess. The only problem with that theory is that if the Portal were made of neutronium it would weigh more than the planet. My other theory is this thing is pure energy.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I think this thing might be pure energy held into this shape by some kind of a force field.” Osgood could see the other two laser scientists nodding their heads in agreement. “It answers all the questions. Remember the weird energy emissions? You can’t keep a couple dozen cubic meters of pure energy contained without bleeding some random high energy particles. And add the fact that you can’t affect it in any way, well, if it’s just a force field you see here then no matter what you do, as long as it still has power, it will continue to refresh itself.”
“We’ve picked up a sort of radio signal in the terahertz band,” Osgood mumbled.
“Could well be the refresh rate of the force field. If my theory is right the only thing solid in there would be the brain, or computer controller. The Portal, when active, would have a nearly infinite power source from the dais itself.”
“Why make this thing of pure energy? What would require so much energy?”
“That’s another mystery; I don’t really have anything to add in solving that one.”
Osgood and the laser scientists talked for a while as crews broke down the laser and carted it from the dome. None of the scientists liked working under the all-powerful eye of government agents, but they were too excited to care. “At least that jerk Volant isn’t here today,” one of the laser technicians said. As if conjuring a demon, the portly agent strode through the dome’s door.
“So what did the fucking laser beam do?” he demanded.
“Not a fucking thing,” replied the head laser scientist through exhaled smoke.
“I thought all you eggheads didn’t smoke?” he scowled at the insubordinate scientist.
“We laser jocks are an exception to the rule. The lasers are invisible to the naked eye, you see?” He’d removed his laser cigarette lighter and fiddled with it. Volant hadn’t noticed the movement but as the scientist took a puff and exhaled smoke toward Volant it revealed a flickering laser beam pointed squarely at his crotch. Volant looked up from the laser to the scientist with a laser-like look of his own. It had its effect and the man put his toy away. “Anyway, we failed to get any results whatsoever. Zero residual radiation, zero effect on the surface, zero reflection.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Look at it; it’s reflecting all the light in this room.”
“That’s just regular visible light. Coherent light of the type we use doesn’t act the same. Shit, it really doesn’t even follow the same rules, other than the speed of light, of course. Officer Einstein enforces that regulation.”
Volant snorted and looked from the Portal dais to the scientists. “So we’ve spent almost three weeks and about thirty million dollars on the glowing piece of shit without learning a thing? I need to know what the hell it is!”
“I’m not prepared to make any conclusions,” Osgood stated flatly, “there is far too much research left to do.”
“I’m afraid I need an answer of some sort. The president has been sitting on that initial report for weeks now. We need more.”
“What’s the hurry? We’re gathering data, which should be all that matters. We’ve just had a sound hypothesis put forward by one of these guys and-”
“The hurry is that this isn’t the only one.”
“What?”
Volant stepped forward and handed Osgood a clipboard. The pictures it contained sent his mind racing. “There are nine others that we are sure of, located in Moscow, Beijing, Sydney, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, London, Berlin, and Johannesburg. There might be one in Paris but the frogs are not being very forthcoming.”
“Ten of these Portals. That’s stupendous!”
“And ominous. What are they here for? What do they mean? And what do they do?”
“Well,” said Osgood, stepping up on the first step of the base of the dais, “some centaur-like alien dropped it off then stepped through it to disappear.”
“I’ve read that account and tried to get this witness in the bag. The NYPD let him go three days after this appeared. He’s some street thug, no address and no way to find him. There’s an APB out and we have agents scouring all the usual drug user haunts throughout the burrows.” Volant shrugged for emphasis. “So far, no luck.”
“It was probably just a story told by a nervous police officer.”
“We considered that, but the account still stands as the only story of this thing being delivered. Some of those other Portals are in less than friendly countries. Is this thing some kind of gift from galactic neighbors, a way for them to invade our world? Or the alien equivalent of a Chinese finger puzzle? What can you tell me that’s substantive at all?”
Osgood sighed and told Volant about the laser scientist’s idea. Volant listened intently, taking mental notes as Osgood elaborated. When he was finished Mark Volant did something that he rarely did, he smiled.
“Now that is the kind of decisive thinking I’ve been begging to get for weeks! What took you so long?”
“And you could have done better?” scoffed Osgood.
“Absolutely not, that’s what I have you for!” he laughed. They all scowled back at him, offended, but none of them said anything. Volant snorted dismissively and stepped to the top of the dais. The Portal image sprung to life and he leaned close to try and get a better look at the cryptic markings in the small circles around the edges.
“What are those anyway?” he asked and pointed at one of them.
“We haven’t a clue,” Osgood said and stepped up to stand next to the agent. “Some of them seem quite obvious, others are a mystery.” He pointed to some of the images. Volant leaned still closer, eyeballing the glowing white thing suspiciously. Osgood noticed his reluctance and enjoyed a little sport. “Come take a look at this one; I think it’s pretty obvious.”
“Are you certain we should be standing on this thing if it’s made of pure energy? I mean, if what he says is true, your kneeling on more energy than was released by the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Osgood knew from weeks of working with the agent that while he was no scientist, he was also no fool.
“Well, if we couldn’t scratch it with a one half megawatt laser, I think walking on it is probably safe.”
Volant grunted and stepped up without further hesitation. The laser scientists were impressed and climbed up to create a crowd on the dais top.
“So why don’t you know anything about the markings?”
“Well,” explained Osgood, “concentrating on these markings while we didn’t even know what this was made out of seemed rather like taking time to read a Chinese instruction manual on a rocket ship when the most advanced thing you’ve ever seen was a horse and buggy.”
“Cute.”
“You’ve seen these images, I’m sure,” Osgood pointed. “I wou
ld think the meaning is difficult to misconstrue.” The picture showed the Earth, its continental layout obvious, being destroyed by a celestial impact.
“But is it a threat, or a warning?”
“Well, this might have something to do with it,” said another of the scientists who walked around to the other side. “These are the only items that have demonstrated any life at all.” Everyone came around to that side. “These lights that circle the dais perimeter: there are one hundred forty-four of them. This one here is glowing, you will notice, the one next to the base on the right side. Now back on the other side-” The scientist turned and took a step to point, and that’s when he made a big mistake.
His team had only been in the bag for two days, arriving for the laser experiments. Like all the other new technical teams they were given the standard warning about what not to do around the Portal. The most important was not to interact with the center of the Portal itself, the ghostly disappearing archway. Objects tossed through it landed unharmed on the other side, but it had not yet been tested with a living person. Too many questions still remained unanswered.
The scientist who had been talking was completely wrapped up in the favorite hobby of all scientists, demonstrating how intelligent they are. The man was having such a good time he forgot the rule about interacting with the Portal. He casually took a step sideways to demonstrate the lack of lights on the other side, and stepped through the center of the archway. Mark Volant was standing edge on to the glowing portal projection, maybe a fraction of an inch thick from his view. The scientist stepped in one side, and not out of the other.
The dais gave a deep base hum, like plucking a cord on a cello, and the entire structure under their feet glowed purple for a second. Everyone on the dais scrambled to get off as fast as possible, led by Volant who performed a spinning backwards leap that would have made any Olympic gymnast proud. The dozen other scientific staff in the dome all yelled and at least one person screamed.