“Suffice it to say,” said Donati, “that our experiments were figuratively based on leaving bumps in the night. Until something bumped back.”
At that point, the principals of Janus had requested a complete report on what exactly had transpired in Laboratory Z, leaving Donati utterly perplexed. Didn’t these people understand the gravity of what was unfolding? Is this how they or their counterparts in the Near-Earth Object office would react if informed that a potential planet-killing asteroid was on a collision course with Earth?
A bad metaphor, really, considering that this threat was potentially just as bad and far more immediate than that one.
Donati, though, had no choice other than to succumb to the bureaucracy, the Janus board not seeing any harm in putting off action for the few hours it would take to consider his full report on Laboratory Z before reconvening. He knew this was a stall tactic as much as anything, since there was really no action they could take if what he suspected turned out to be true.
Indeed, what action, exactly, could the Earth take against a possible alien invasion?
No copies remained of his original report, but Donati was able to re-create the most salient facts from a memory that had never relinquished its hold on them. He kept it short and sweet, not wanting to burden the Janus board with too much technical or scientific jargon. And when they finally reconvened three hours after the initial call concluded, Donati sensed a different attitude and approach from the four voices, which had now been joined by a fifth in the center. More somber and inquisitive, while less confrontational, all the participants’ comments and questions laced with something as clear as it was undeniable:
Fear. Of facing an actual threat, at least within the realm of statistical probability, for the first time.
“I think you need to better explain whatever it was that bumped back,” said the fifth member of the Janus board, his voice grid dancing in the center of Donati’s screen.
“I would if I could, sir,” Donati told him. “But I’ve got to back up a bit more first. Laboratory Z was dedicated to finding more expeditious ways of exploring the universe.”
“And by ‘expeditious,’” Center interjected, “you mean—”
“Practical, given the limitations of space travel eighteen years ago as well as now. By the time Laboratory Z became operational, the logistics of mounting even a Mars mission were incredibly daunting. If travel to a planet within our own solar system was deemed infeasible, what did that say about the prospects of traveling light-years to reach new and potentially habitable worlds? My question is rhetorical because the answer was and is obvious. Working in conjunction with officials and scientists at both Goddard and JPL, Laboratory Z’s purpose was to explore alternative means of space travel.”
“Your report goes into some detail about wormholes,” said the lone female, still in the top right corner of the screen.
“Because, ma’am, that’s where we’d made the greatest degree of progress. Simply speaking, a wormhole is a postulated method, within the general theory of relativity, of moving from one point in space to another without crossing the space between. Picture a typical sheet of paper. Laid flat, to go from the bottom to the top you’d have to travel eleven and a half inches. But fold the paper in half and the top and bottom portions become connected with virtually no space between them. The overarching principle of a wormhole is to displace massive amounts of energy to create the same effect in space along the time-space continuum. To effectively shrink the distance of travel from light-years to distances of time and space that would be quantitatively comparable to the Gemini and Apollo flights to the moon.”
“But we can’t even approach or envision such technology now,” Top Left started, “never mind eighteen years ago.”
“Approach, sir, no, but we can envision anything. It’s what makes us scientists. And envisioning what is deemed currently impossible has defined NASA since the beginning.”
“You’re not saying you actually constructed a wormhole at Laboratory Z, are you?” asked the new voice perched in the center.
“We started, as we always do, with models. Miniature re-creations and simulations of what we’re actually striving to accomplish. It’s the way pretty much all of NASA’s greatest achievements have begun. And you are most correct in your assumption that we didn’t have the technology then or now to fold space over to create a wormhole. Let me explain how you’d build a wormhole if you had absolutely everything you needed to turn theory into practice. First, a disclaimer: Although Einstein’s theory of relativity forbids objects to move faster than light within space-time, it is known that space-time itself can be warped and distorted. It takes an enormous amount of matter or energy to create such distortions, but such distortions are possible, at least theoretically.
“So if the sky was literally the limit, you’d collect a whole bunch of super-dense matter, such as matter from a neutron star, enough to construct a ring the size of the Earth’s orbit around the sun. Then you’d build another ring where you want the other end of your wormhole. Next, just charge ’em up to some incredible voltage, and spin both of them up to near the speed of light. Of course, we weren’t capable of doing any of that back at Laboratory Z, but we were able to construct what was in essence a particle accelerator to at least mimic the effects and experiment with the possibilities. Even then we lacked the ability to generate enough energy to go through the door from the point of origin to the destination, but our particle accelerator proved able to build that door and approximate the aggregate amount of energy it would take to fashion at least one side of the doorway.”
“I don’t believe I understand the distinction,” said Bottom Left.
“Building a wormhole, folding space, essentially creates a tunnel, a void in space—actually, between space—that in the theoretical realm makes traversing impossible distances possible. Call it a bridge through space. We were able to figure out how to simulate that void and enter the space bridge, but not achieve the means to actually travel through it.”
“Without elaborating, though,” inserted the new voice in the center, “your report indicates that Laboratory Z’s destruction was directly related to hostile action from beyond our universe, this alien invasion you’re hinting at now. That would seem to be a contradiction, a discrepancy at the very least.”
“Not at all, sir. The key is the pattern of seismic-type events following an elementarily narrow, even microscopically contained, line of the Earth’s curvature. Eighteen years ago I uncovered this pattern but didn’t, couldn’t, grasp exactly what it meant.”
“Which was?” two of the voices asked at the same time.
“Someone had honed in on the precise coordinates of our bridge, essentially followed the directions we provided in quantum space. The pattern of events, I believe now, was emblematic of them breaking through, folding space over from the other side to complete that bridge and erect a tunnel through space.”
“But by your own admission,” the woman’s voice blared in clear argumentative fashion, “the events forming that pattern took place over an extended period of time. How can you reconcile that with the immediacy suggested by this space bridge of yours being completed?”
“Precisely the question I’ve asked myself a thousand times, until I came up with an answer that made sense. If we accept the pattern as an early warning sign, then we’re suggesting the events are directly related to the space-time continuum, which must be manipulated in order to create what is essentially a rudimentary wormhole. And in that continuum, time gets skewed between chronological and effectively practical. In other words, what transpires over a week or a month in our time might only be a blink, a moment or a minute, within the void itself once the door on the other side of the space bridge was opened.”
Donati assumed Top Left would offer the first response to that and he was right. “And you believe that’s what happened eighteen years ago. Someone or something came through that door you built from the other side.”
“I can’t say with any certainty that anything came through per se, sir, but I can say they opened the door we’d built from that other side—blew it open, to be more accurate, with enough quantum force to destroy the entire facility.”
“Get back to the present, Dr. Donati,” said Bottom Right. “You’ve already detailed your evidence of this pattern reoccurring. But this door you built has been closed for some eighteen years—not just closed, but obliterated when Laboratory Z was destroyed. I imagine you and your director, this Orson Wilder, were lucky to survive.”
“Indeed,” Donati acknowledged. “Just because we didn’t build the door this time, sir, doesn’t mean somebody else didn’t. And maybe it’s taken all of those eighteen years to achieve.”
“By which you seem to be suggesting something may indeed have come through that door eighteen years ago and has been laying the groundwork for whatever’s coming all that time.”
“The thought had crossed my mind, sir,” Donati affirmed in obvious understatement.
“The question,” said the woman in the top right, “is what, or who, exactly? And where?”
“I can expound forever on who or what, but can speak more authoritatively on where,” Donati explained. “See, if you continued along the line of the Earth’s curvature as suggested by the original pattern, you’d cross right through Laboratory Z. Follow today’s pattern in the same manner and you’ll end with a grid that contains the new doorway with a reasonable degree of certainty.”
“I’d strongly suggest,” said Top Left, “that there can be no degree of certainty of any kind pertaining to this topic.”
“We’re talking in theoretical concepts here,” Donati reminded him, “not absolutes.”
“I believe we all understand that much,” the lone woman chimed in. “Much harder to grasp is precisely what all this portends and what exactly we’re supposed to do about it.”
“I don’t have answers for either of those questions at this time, ma’am,” Donati conceded. “If whoever was on the other side of that door eighteen years ago is coming back, though, I can tell you one thing with a reasonable degree of certainty.”
“And what’s that, Doctor?”
“That this time they’re going to get it right.”
NINE
END OF THE ROAD
Blessed are the hearts that can bend;
they shall never be broken.
—ALBERT CAMUS
67
THE WOODS
ALEX AND SAM HUDDLED against the cold, tucked into the lip of the coast redwoods forest, safe from sight of the road.
“He’s not coming back,” she said softly between quivering lips.
“I know.”
“What are we going to do?”
Alex hugged her tightly in response but didn’t answer, because he didn’t know. Somehow the canopy provided by the towering redwoods made him feel safer. The trees of this forest were some of the tallest and oldest in the state, but little known to nonresidents compared to the more famous forests farther north. As a boy, he’d often imagined them coming to life, unhinging their roots from the ground and moving en masse to save the world from monsters making war on it.
If only they could do that now …
“The sun’ll be up soon,” he said finally. “It’ll get warmer.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s something.”
Sam continued to tremble against him, whimpering softly.
“I’m scared,” she said, voice hushed and cracking.
“I know.”
“I mean really scared. If they know who I am—”
“They don’t know who you are.”
“But if they do, my parents…”
She left the thought to dangle, hanging in the crisp air.
“When I was a little girl, I’d wake up scared like this some nights and wait for the sun to come up. Because I knew once it did, everything would be okay. But it’s not gonna be okay this time, is it?”
Alex eased Sam from his embrace but still held her tight. “I don’t know.”
“If I got home and found my parents like…”
“Mine?” he completed, when her voice drifted again.
She swallowed hard, or tried to. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“I don’t know if I told you that, after what happened.”
“You don’t have to.”
He hugged her to him again.
“We have to do something,” Alex heard her say in his ear. “We need help.”
“Raiff will find us.”
“If he’s alive.”
“He’s alive.”
“And what if those things find us again first?”
“Then you’ll taser them again.”
She almost laughed. Almost. “I lost my taser.”
“We’ll buy another.”
“With what?”
“You ask too many questions.”
She slipped away from him, smoothed her hair and took off her glasses. “You said that to me in the hospital.”
“Because it’s true.”
“I’m not your tutor anymore, Alex. I think … I think it’s more like you’re mine.”
He reeled her back in against him. “Now, that’s a scary thought.”
Sam smiled and pressed her head against his heart.
Well, she thought, at least it’s beating. That’s something, anyway.
“Alex?”
“What?” he said, stroking her hair.
“It’s not a scary thought at all.”
Sam tightened her arms around him, feeling warm and safe in his grasp.
68
GROUND ZERO
LANGSTON MARSH WALKED ABOUT the ravaged FedEx Office store in Santa Cruz, awash in the spray of revolving light from the police vehicles still securing the scene with sawhorses. Dawn was just breaking, a beautiful sunrise starting to fill in the sky as if it were a coloring book. Marsh turned his gaze on that sky and envisioned what no one else did.
What was coming.
His identification listed him as Homeland Security, the catchall most guaranteed to keep other officials quiet and deferential. He didn’t have much time, knew real agents from Homeland Security would likely be here soon to try and make sense of the evidence and witness statements, which made no sense at all.
To everyone but him, that is.
Rathman trailed him at a safe distance, arriving here what might have been mere minutes after this, whatever this was, had happened. He watched Marsh retracing the same path over and over again, as if wondering if seeing the very same things might change his view of them. He let his gaze linger on the security cameras.
“Anything?”
“Just static. Nothing but snow, sir.”
“Our enemy is formidable, Colonel. We must give them that much.”
Marsh surveyed the scene once more, feeling as if it were the first time again. The shattered remnants of severed robotic parts, with wires running through them instead of veins and current instead of blood, that lay strewn all over the store’s interior was final proof, provided undeniable affirmation of the merits of his life’s work.
“A war zone, Colonel; that’s what this looks like. A war zone pulled from the future.”
“A war requires two sides, sir. And these … things aren’t what your Trackers have been pursuing.”
“Not at all,” Marsh acknowledged, looking at the upshot of the battle that had been fought here, again. “You’re reading my mind.”
“Just stating the obvious.”
“Which would imply these machines came after the boy. Are we to assume, then, that he’s the one who did this to them?” Marsh knelt and ran a finger sheathed in a plastic glove along the innards exposed by one of the robot’s heads being lopped off. “This cut is totally clean. There’s minimal scoring, suggesting the weapon that did it utilized heat or some kind of energy. A laser, maybe.”
“
I’m seeing something else, sir.”
“What’s that?”
“A professional, capable of taking out the three in here and two out back. That’s not this boy.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How?”
Rathman crouched on the opposite side of the robot’s remains. “Because I know my enemies.”
“We need to collect some of this evidence, Colonel, before anyone is any the wiser.”
“Already done, sir.”
“And we need to find this boy,” Marsh said, his knees cracking audibly as he rose. “He’s the key. Find him and we’ll find the answers we need. I’ve already summoned all our teams to the area. Ground Zero—that’s what we’re looking at here.”
Rathman rose too, Marsh not liking something he saw in the big man’s eyes.
“What’s wrong, Colonel?”
“It’s all a bit hard to stomach, that’s all.”
Marsh knew there was more, even thought he knew what it was, but let it pass. In that moment, he felt like a frightened, bitter little boy again, angry over his father’s death and finding solace only in a resolution to seek revenge on his killers. From the first moment he’d glimpsed the wreckage of his father’s fighter plane, now displayed in his Memory Room, he’d known his murderer was something from beyond this world. Just as he’d known this day would come, the day for which he’d dedicated his entire life to preparing. Behind the vast success he’d attained, behind all the money he’d made, this day had been lurking. Soon the world would know what he had known for sixty years.
That we aren’t alone.
That they were here once.
And would be coming back.
Marsh’s mind drifted, leaving him feeling almost disembodied. Trapped somewhere between the past and present. A sad little boy certain of things no one else believed trapped in the body of an old man. As an adult he’d built a private army, a modern-day Fifth Column, tasked to exterminate the vermin but had fallen short. Just like the time as a boy he’d doused his plastic toy soldiers with lighter fluid and lit them on fire, only to have his mother extinguish the flames before they burned.
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