by W D County
They examined the numeric pad. Zita immediately grasped the significance of the wear pattern on the keys, which drastically reduced the number of possible combinations.
Nathan said, “Only three keys are worn. If it’s a four-digit code like the vault, then one number is repeated. The seven looks slightly more faded than the two and five.”
She said, “There are twelve combinations. There’s probably an alarm for multiple wrong attempts, probably three, as people seem to have a preference for that number.”
“Instead of ten thousand combinations. You are fast,” he said. “Don’t worry about an alarm, I have a knack for this sort of thing.” He punched in 2-7-7-5.
The lock clicked and he pushed the door open. Her relief at success proved short-lived. Immediate success engendered anxiety. How did he get the fingerprint? How did he know the code? She stepped past Nathan and blocked the way. “I’ll take it from here.”
His face darkened. “Don’t be rude, Zita. I’d also like a look at the videos. In particular, the one with Laura’s husband.”
She cocked her head. “Weren’t you there, watching on the monitor?”
Nathan raised both hands. “Guilty as charged. But we both know, especially after Laura’s warning, that memories are deceptive. I need to compare my remembrance with objective evidence.” The impish grin returned. “Please?”
She chewed her lip. It wasn’t the video she needed to see, it was the software code for the computer operating system. She couldn’t let Nathan witness her sabotage. Nor did she want to tell him that the videos couldn’t be trusted—he’d want to know how she came by that tidbit of knowledge.
He regarded her quizzically. “Ah, but you’re not here to look at the surveillance records.” His tone turned conspiratorial. “I can help. I’m very good with computers.”
“You read people like I read puzzles.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” His voice lowered to a whisper though they were alone. “What’s your plan?”
“How do I know you won’t tell Gordon?”
“I’d give you my word, but I doubt you hold much stock in it. So...” He handed her a pair of thin white cotton gloves. “From the dressing area. Thought they might come in handy.”
Her anxiety increased. Nathan seemed as much a spy as a magician. Maybe more.
“Plus, my prints are on the number pad, although I doubt that Miles is smart enough to check that.”
She didn’t see a better, faster alternative. “Okay.”
“So, what’s the plan?”
“Making us safer.”
Nathan laughed. “And how will you do that?”
“I saw a button marked failsafe. I got the distinct impression that if activated, very bad things would happen, as in nobody gets out of here alive. I’m going to disable that bit of the code.” She hoped Nathan couldn’t tell where the truth became the lie.
“Good idea,” he said dryly. “But let’s watch the video first.”
Zita cued up the recording of Laura’s husband. Nathan leaned over her shoulder and said, “There he is, just as I remember.”
Zita again saw only Laura, Barry, and the ghost. The psychiatrist spoke to the ghost, and reached out as if to touch it. More talk, invisible hugs, and then Laura gave a start. The ghost vanished. Laura ran to the exit and hit the emergency button.
Nathan said, “Proof! Physical manifestation of a dead spirit.”
Zita couldn’t suppress a shiver at Nathan seeing something that wasn’t there, and she hid her inability to see the apparition. “It’s terrifying,” she whispered. “The dead can’t come back.”
“It’s not a poltergeist,” Nathan said. “Only a friendly spirit.” He placed a hand on her shoulder and gently squeezed, which triggered another shiver for a totally different reason.
She turned off the video. “The world isn’t ready for this. For the taint.”
“Not yet,” he agreed, “but soon. After I teach Barry to master his abilities.”
She forced a nod. “Let’s make sure the base doesn’t blow up first.”
Nathan’s claim of technical prowess proved to be correct. He identified and disabled the internal firewalls and hacked into the operating system. She took over and paged through thousands of lines of code, absorbing the meaning of the patterns until she found what she needed. She edited a few lines—more than a few actually—as Nathan watched. She hoped he couldn’t tell that the portion she worked on had nothing to do with the failsafe.
“You could have been a programmer,” he said.
“I’m much better at understanding and breaking a code than writing one. It’s like the difference between reading a novel and writing one.” She saved the revised code, erased the evidence of her tampering, and erased the last hour of hallway surveillance. She deactivated the corresponding cameras and set a timer to turn them on in five minutes, long enough for them to enter their rooms. “Done! Let’s get out of here.”
“Let’s go to my room,” Nathan said. “Time to lay my cards on the table.”
She rolled her eyes, and when he wasn’t watching, she stuck out her tongue.
***
Nathan drew the first card from the deck, holding it so he could see it but she could not.
“Red cross?” Zita said.
Nathan placed the card, a yellow circle, face up on the table. She felt something touch her and jerked her head around. Nathan’s room was empty.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing. I thought someone was watching me.” She tried to smile but failed. “I’m still spooked from the video of Laura’s husband.” The feeling of being watched passed.
Nathan pulled out the next card.
“Black square,” she said.
Nathan placed the card with blue wavy lines on the table. Zita shivered as the feeling returned. She could swear she was being stalked.
“I’m not able to focus. Maybe we should do this another time.”
“Nonsense. You’re doing great.”
Nathan kept drawing cards. Whether she guessed right or wrong, every time the card was revealed, the feeling returned, but in a slightly different spot, like a blind elf surveying with a tiny cane. Or Yoda, probing with the force.
***
Colonel Tyrone Hauser picked up his secure phone and punched in the number for the National Security Advisor, Richard Tombs. The two men were friends from way back, college days, in fact. Hauser thought their friendship probably had a lot to do with Richard including him on this project, although being in charge of the biohazard facility certainly helped.
He needed to leverage that friendship now. Relations between the NSA and the DoD were strained when the army had to surrender control of the biohazard facility and was nearly kept off the research team. Hauser lacked the clout to rein in Maxwell, but Tombs, in overall charge of the project and outside both bureaucracies, had plenty. Hauser had no qualms about bypassing normal inter-agency communications and asking his friend for help.
“Tyrone! How are things in Ft. Detrick?” Tombs said in a neutral tone.
“Maxwell is undermining security protocols at the facility. I think you should yank his chain. Remind him that he’s a cog on the wheel like everyone else.”
Tombs chuckled. “Straight to the point, as always. A trifle slow, though. Gordon already called.”
“Doesn’t matter. Those safety protocols are in place for a reason. Flaunting them risks lives, sanity, and God knows what else. It also jeopardizes success of the mission.”
“The way Maxwell spins it, Reardon is the problem.”
Hauser fumed. “Afraid of another Hobart? I assure you that will not happen.”
“Actually, I’m concerned the sergeant is overcompensating for that screw-up. Your sniper wants to prove he can still take the shot. But if Fletcher dies, so does our chance at understanding and harnessing his abilities.”
Hauser hesitated before continuing. “Dick, what happened to Dr. LaFontant?”
Tombs answered dryly, “We knew the woman had data in her briefcase. Killing her wasn’t necessary, but the CIA doesn’t work for me.”
“Did she make it back to France?” Hauser asked, wondering if the CIA had continued to blunder. He wasn’t sure Tombs would answer, even on a scrambled secure line.
“They grabbed her briefcase when she changed planes in Abu Dhabi.”
He’s being evasive. “Reardon did everyone a favor, Richard. He may see things more clearly because he isn’t distracted by ambition and agendas. I’d hate to see Maxwell discount that soldier’s objectivity, dedication, and talents.”
“You didn’t mention his color-blindness.”
Hauser chuckled. “I lumped it under talents.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to Quell. The reprimand will have more effect coming down from Maxwell’s normal chain of command.”
Chapter 21
Sleep came as a welcome end to another long, full day. As consciousness dimmed in the minds of the team, the Awareness quickly found the reflections of itself in their memories. The rich, dynamic patterns of organically stored memories made them easy to distinguish from static images captured on silicon chips or displayed on LED screens. As organic memories became more numerous and more deeply integrated, it also became easier to plumb subconscious depths and meld with nascent dreams.
Gordon dreamt of leading a team of spelunkers through a vast cave system. The central vault of the cavern held a multifaceted jewel that sparkled in a way no diamond could match. He stared at it now and felt an almost hypnotic attraction to it. The gem, utterly unlike anything previously discovered, wrapped itself in mystery. Literally, for the cubic facets of the gem appeared and disappeared as it folded through hyperspatial dimensions.
What knowledge can you reveal?
A vast amount, certainly, which was why he had bribed, threatened, and called in a ton of favors to get himself assigned as team leader. Few people knew as many political tricks as he did, and he used them effectively. Then he used a few more tricks to assemble a team of experts with divergent skills intended to encompass a broad range of possible explanations on the nature and capabilities of the gem. His team seemed certain that the object possessed mind-boggling capabilities in such wide-ranging fields as teleportation, mind control, accelerated healing, and encryption technology. His editorial enhancements of their reports emphasized his own contribution to their work, and added suggestions on how the taint’s capabilities might be weaponized. Discussion of weaponry always grabbed the attention of high-level officials.
He expected the findings of the team to converge on a single overarching theory, but that hadn’t happened yet. The damn thing behaved like a high-tech chameleon, generating camouflage to conceal its true nature. Such action implied a hostile intent. An objective review of the gem’s brief history confirmed his opinion. The colored hypercube had captured or killed three earlier explorers and infected a fourth man with taint.
However, his major concern wasn’t the tesseract per se, but his dependency on the surface. A bucket on a rope passed supplies and messages between the cave and the outside world. It gave the man at the top overriding editorial control over the content and dissemination of information as well as who received credit for it. Gordon needed that control to advance his political career, but the top man scrutinized the bucket before and after each transit. There was no way to bypass that choke point.
Or was there? The bucket didn’t traverse the gap alone. The rope came with it.
Ideas sprang to mind of manipulating the link to the outside world.
The dream faded. The Awareness moved on.
***
Sonja dreamt of being a guest lecturer at the University of Cambridge. Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking had studied and spoken in this same packed hall that now echoed with the click of her heels crossing the stage. An assistant followed a moment later, wheeling a tall wooden crate on a flat cart. The room dimmed as a screen descended and a hidden projector displayed the interior of the crate. The audience gasped as the image of the tesseract appeared, rotating slowly within the box.
She stared as well, feeling paradoxically both proud and insignificant. The taint was a mountain with rich veins of scientific facts and insights ready to be mined. Her study barely scratched the hypercubic surface of its hidden wealth.
What knowledge can you reveal?
She took a breath and began her talk, outlining the branches of physics most affected by her discoveries: optics, quantum entanglement, n-dimensional space, and radiation. Once the background was established, she launched into the meat of her talk: the discovery and unique properties of K particles and K-rays.
The talk was well received, but the audience included some of the sharpest minds on the planet, and they recognized the hole in her theory. They asked questions regarding a minor footnote in her written paper: the discrepancy of direct and televised visual observation of the patient’s untainted skin being in color while reflections of it appeared in gray tones. This question she could not answer, and she fled the stage in embarrassment.
Once outside, she walked for some distance without any clear destination in mind. She stopped atop a small hill overlooking a broad distant valley, and there she stared at the sky. Today must have been some sort of festival, for thousands of kites jostled for positions above the field of operators and spectators. Each operator focused only on his or her own kite, a colored universe untouched by and unaware of the many other versions of itself.
An errant gust of wind pushed many of the kites together; their strings became entangled. The myriad colors became a gray mass as the colors overlapped and balanced out. The transformation stirred something in her mind, suggesting a new explanation for K-rays.
The dream faded. The Awareness moved on.
***
Nathan dreamt of being the keynote speaker at Univ-Con, the national paranormal convention held at University Park, home of Penn State University. His talk, “How I Found and Mastered the Philosopher’s Stone,” received so much pre-opening press that the event sold out months in advance. Thousands of ticketless people showed up anyway. Projection screens and loudspeakers had been set up on the lawn to accommodate the standing-room-only crowd.
A spotlight followed him across the darkened stage as the auditorium erupted in deafening applause. A second spotlight flared to reveal a gray silk sheet hanging vertically at center stage. He grabbed the sheet and pulled it free with a flourish. The tesseract rotated slowly, a kaleidoscopic film of colors covering conjoined cubes that appeared and disappeared in regular cycles. “Behold the Philosopher’s Stone!”
The tesseract filled him with desire and envy. Desire because this artifact, this miracle, was an amplifier, if not the source, of paranormal supernatural abilities. Envy because it had chosen someone else as the recipient of those abilities.
What knowledge can you reveal?
He had spent years learning how to read people, how to direct where their attention went. He spent years studying tricks and illusions to mimic abilities like telepathy, clairvoyance, and telekinesis. He believed such powers truly existed although a lifetime of searching failed to find a single genuine instance of paranormal ability. Until now.
The crowd parted and Barry approached. Vibrant colors shimmered beneath his white toga. “You need a teacher,” he said. “Kneel.”
Nathan did so. Barry’s hands surveyed his scalp, probing with tendrils of energy. Dormant areas of his brain awoke. A Zen-like awareness of knowing without knowing shook his preconceived notions until they fell into a dream of their own.
The dream faded. The Awareness moved on.
***
Tom dreamt of an epidemic ravaging the world. It infected tens of millions of people and threatened to infect hundreds of millions more. This modern-day plague swept like a wildfire whipped by dry, unrelenting wind. It jumped mountains and crossed oceans. If spurned every antibiotic. It seemed unstoppable.
Except fo
r a mysterious town that reported no cases. No cases at all. Tom went there hoping to find the secret of their immunity.
In the center of the town stood a church, and in the church a tesseract hovered above the altar. The glittering multicolored hypercube teasingly offered and then withdrew the answers to untold mysteries.
What knowledge can you reveal?
The tesseract surely held the cure, but he needed details. He set up a lab in one corner of the sanctuary and ran test after test of the environment and the townspeople. All his knowledge of biology, physiology, genetics, chemistry, virology, and infectious diseases failed to cure outsiders of the plague. He began to despair of finding an effective treatment.
A murmured prayer came from behind the tesseract. Tom investigated and found Barry sitting cross-legged on the floor. The taint covered nearly all his body. Eyes full of compassion, Barry said, “There is healing in the blood of the lamb.”
The dream faded. The Awareness moved on.
***
Laura dreamt of a funeral home. The widow of the deceased man sat alone in a dim, windowless room, staring at the multicolored hypercubic casket at the far wall. The tesseract’s boundaries cycled in and out of our existence, a metaphor for... what? Death? Resurrection? God? Did a magic land exist over the rainbow?
What knowledge can you reveal?
The death of a loved one usually produced five stages of grief, and Laura wondered which one the widow currently endured. Probably not anger. Nor bargaining. It was too soon for acceptance. That left denial or depression, both of which seemed to fit her withdrawn, detached air. Laura sat beside the woman. “Would you like some company?”
The widow turned her face slightly toward Laura, but her gaze remained fixed on the tesseract. “I’m dreaming this. He can’t be dead.”
Denial then. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“But it’s more than a dream, isn’t it? Because we’re both in it, and when our realities diverge, each of us will wake up without the other.”