by W D County
A condescending smile lit her face. “That’s exactly what I expect to happen. If my equations are correct, and they are, the K-rays will focus on a distant preselected object and instantly bring it here. It’s all defined by the magnetic flux vector. The process is completely safe and self-contained.”
“There’s a world of difference between theory and practice. Your theory is new, your equipment unproven. We all make mistakes. It’s prudent to delay while other scientists review your equations and validate your conclusions.”
“Gordon did send you!” Her face twisted into a snarl. “Tell him I’m not surrendering control of my discovery to him or his cohorts. Get out. Get out!” She attacked with a flurry of ineffective blows, which I fended off while backing out of the lab. She slammed the door.
With time and options growing short, I hurried to the biolab, hoping to enlist Doc’s support. With two strikes against me, this swing had to connect.
Doc stood in the so-called “cold” lab watching a television monitor and using remote control arms to draw blood from a monkey inside the “hot” lab. Doc listened patiently to my request for a delay and the justification for it. I dared hope he agreed.
He didn’t. “Sergeant, Sonja’s the expert. If she says there’s no danger, I believe her. Furthermore, if some accident were to occur and injure someone, my supply of gray goop would instantly heal the person. I don’t see a problem?”
My severe but vague apprehensions refused to translate into convincing arguments. Zita could have done better, but she still didn’t answer her phone. Colonel Hauser should never have put me in a situation that couldn’t be solved by force. Trying to do so would only get me court-martialed, and Hauser would simply send in a replacement grunt.
I kept trying anyway. “My gut tells me Sonja’s demo means big trouble. Trust me on this. Without you to set up the MRI, she won’t be able to proceed.”
The frown tipped me off before the words provided confirmation. “Miles, I want to see what happens. We’re on the verge of momentous advances in medicine, physics, psychology, even paranormal phenomena. You’re the only one who isn’t eager to advance mankind’s knowledge. In fact, you’re doing your damnedest to prevent it.” He gave a noisy sigh. “I can’t help you.”
Doc turned back to his work. He maneuvered a stethoscope into position to check the heartbeat of the monkey. He tested its reflexes and murmured something like “You’re going on a little trip.” He draped an opaque cover over the cage.
“That monkey’s in Sonja’s demonstration?”
“Right through a wall. Videotaped,” Doc said.
“Walking through walls—” It suddenly hit me. “That’s what Fletcher needs to escape the vault!”
Doc hesitated. “Sonja assures me the max range of this jury-rigged device is ten meters. That falls well short of the vault. Besides, Curious George is going in the opposite direction.”
“Doc—”
“Relax, Miles. Join the others in the conference room. Gordon put monitors there to display output from the infirmary and the pharmacy cameras. Demo starts in ten minutes.”
I’d gone down swinging. I trudged to the security office, feeling like the losing team’s pitcher heading for the dugout. From here I didn’t have to face anyone and could monitor the infirmary and pharmacy, and also the conference room, biolab, and most importantly, the vault. The office allowed me to take certain precautions as well, such as sealing off portions of the facility or killing power to specific rooms.
I watched Doc carry the covered monkey cage to the infirmary and place it against the wall shared by the pharmacy. Brainiac adjusted dials and switches on the control panel.
The conference room camera showed Kingpin, Slick, and Zita. Seeing her brought a surge of relief, which meant I was getting too attached. Slick changed seats to move closer to her. I grimaced. Yeah, way too attached.
The vault camera showed Choirboy sitting cross-legged on the bed, eyes closed, and—thankfully—not hovering in the air or doing other weird shit. The observation room was empty. That left Mopes unaccounted for. I reached for my cell to call her and stopped when she exited her room and hurried down the hall to the conference room. Once she arrived, Kingpin used the PA system to tell Brainiac to proceed. She gave a “thumbs-up” to the camera.
I flipped three switches on my console, closing what the colonel affectionately called Blast Doors—airtight, remote-controlled barriers located strategically throughout the hallways for use in sealing off any contamination. Two of the doors sealed the segment containing the infirmary, doctor’s office, and pharmacy. A third barrier sealed off the biolab. If Brainiac’s demo released anything harmful, it would be trapped inside one of the segments. Unless the experiment failed in an unknown manner, in which case we all might be screwed.
Brainiac donned protective clothing. Doc did, too. He said, “We aren’t expecting any color drainage, but as a precaution I’ve minimized color sources in this room.”
“The wall next to the cage will become permeable,” Brainiac said, “as will the back of the cage. The near side will remain solid. I will push the cage and the monkey through the wall into the pharmacy.” She nodded to Doc, who removed the cover from the cage, revealing a sedated monkey within.
In the vault, Choirboy lifted his head, opened his eyes, and said, “Let it begin.”
The words gave me a chill, and my inner demon, born of fear and fed by helplessness, tried to escape. I forced it back into the subconscious pit where it belonged.
In the conference room, Zita said, “I have a bad feeling about this.”
Kingpin said nothing. Brainiac pressed a button.
It wasn’t too late for me to shut off power to the MRI, but I didn’t know for sure anything bad would happen. After all, the smartest brain on the planet swore this was safe. I held my breath to see if Brainiac was right and told myself to stop being a coward.
The lights dimmed. A low hum filled the infirmary, and the wall behind the monkey glowed. The MRI emitted bangs and clangs. Doc shouted that the noise was normal. The glow intensified. The MRI vibrated and the noise intensified as if metal nuts and bolts had been dumped in a laundry dryer. The hum grew to a whine, punctuated by deep bass thrumming. My head throbbed in sympathetic rapport.
Slick’s face scrunched and he closed his eyes, probably feeling as uncomfortable as me. Hopefully worse.
The vibrations became violent shudders that jerked the multi-ton machine off its platform. Sonja used a wooden crutch to push the cage, which vanished into the wall. Then the wall rippled. Bulges appeared as if something were trying to come through in this direction. The glow flared into a blinding flash followed by a thunderous crash. A wave of nausea rippled through me. The infirmary lights went out.
I dashed to the electrical box in the utilities closet at the back of the office, found the tripped breakers, and reset them. The monitor showed Doc and Brainiac coughing. Smoke filled the room like a heavy fog. As it swirled, I scanned for the monkey and cage. They hadn’t appeared in the pharmacy or anywhere else.
An alarm began to blare. “Smoke alarm in the infirmary. Smoke alarm in the infirmary. Fire brigade—” I killed the alarm and set the ventilation fans on high. I wasn’t about to respond in person with the infirmary potentially compromised by Brainiac’s boondoggle.
The rapidly clearing air revealed three men dressed in thick cold-weather clothing. They surrounded the MRI but neither spoke nor moved. The angle of the camera prevented me from seeing their faces, but I had a damn good idea who they were. A glance at the conference room monitor showed shocked faces on the rest of the team.
In the vault, Choirboy smiled.
I pulled my cell and called Colonel Hauser. “Sir, we have a new problem.”
Chapter 40
“I have a bad feeling about this.” No one in the conference room responded. Zita shifted her gaze from the monitors to Laura. The shrink bore the nervous, giddy attitude of a mischievous adolescent who’d pulled off some forbi
dden prank. Knowing the truth behind that look made Zita embarrassed, and she moved away from the shrink. Zita expected Nathan to follow, because he acted like a moth attracted to her flame, but the magician stayed put and stared with rapt attention at Laura. A smile creased his lips. Poor Laura. So much for privacy of the mind.
Zita wanted to warn Miles about John’s arrival, but time whizzed by without providing an opportunity, and this was something she didn’t want to discuss over the phone, and now the demonstration demanded her attention.
The monitor showed Sonja press the button. Seconds later the infirmary went dark and a ripple passed through Zita’s entire body as if she were a bed sheet being snap-waved over a bed. The analogy failed to capture the three-dimensional nature of the disturbance; the simultaneous up-down, forward-back, left-right, inward-outward oscillation that could be felt but not seen. A quick look around the conference room convinced her that everyone experienced a similar disorientation. Without the racket of the MRI coming through the speaker, the conference room seemed preternaturally quiet.
“Explosion?” Nathan said and looked around the table as if seeking confirmation.
Gordon shook his head. “We would have heard it. The microphone is still working.”
He was right. As Zita’s ears recovered from the MRI’s final bellow, she heard muffled coughs from Doc and Sonja. What she didn’t hear was the screech of the monkey. She turned to the second monitor, the one showing the pharmacy. No monkey. No cage.
“Probably a small quake,” Nathan said.
Laura shook her head. “I lived in California for fifteen years. That was no temblor.”
Were they really that dense? “Sonja’s demo did it,” Zita said. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Ah, the demo,” Nathan said, also looking at the second monitor. “Call Sonja. Let her know the monkey didn’t arrive.”
Gordon grumbled and said, “They don’t have their phones. Doc didn’t want any excess metal in the room with the MRI amped up.”
“Call Miles,” Zita said. “He needs to investigate what tripped the breaker.”
The PA system announced a smoke alarm then cut off in mid-warning. The lights in the infirmary flickered to life, and in that light, the first monitor showed a smoke-filled infirmary and the shrouded white shapes of Doc and Sonja. As the ventilation system cleared the smoke, three more figures became visible standing next to the MRI. Each man wore a heavy, gray thermal coat.
Zita jumped with excitement. “The missing explorers!” She hadn’t expected this development and welcomed it. The missing men could authenticate Barry’s video and more importantly describe their experience after vanishing from the polar cave. She wondered if Barry knew this would happen or even caused it to happen. She’d get with Miles later to review the various recordings of Barry during the event.
Her excitement waned as she noticed something odd. The explorers neither moved nor spoke. They stood motionless around the still smoking MRI.
“Son of a bitch,” Gordon muttered while staring at his phone. “Miles’s phone’s busy.”
Sonja approached the camera and said, “Has the monkey appeared in the lab? I need confirmation. Gordon, use the PA system to respond.” She seemed oblivious to the new arrivals.
Doc joined her at the camera. “Gordon, are you getting this? These have to be the missing explorers. Alive. They appear to be catatonic. Can you send Laura to examine them?”
Gordon nodded to Laura. “Go.”
Doc said, “Sonja, help me move these two over to the beds. We’ll put the third on the MRI patient table until we decide what to do with them.”
“My demo... did the monkey make it through the wall? I need to know.”
“We’ll know soon enough. Help me move these men.” They each took an arm of the first explorer and walked him to the first of the infirmary’s two beds. The man didn’t resist, but neither did he show initiative. He shuffled as if heavily drugged. Doc removed all the man’s clothing and did a visual exam.
Nathan pressed a tripod of fingers to his forehead, closed his eyes, and grimaced in concentration. He lowered his hand. “They have no thoughts,” he said with a look of surprise. “Their minds are gone, wiped clean.”
Zita shivered. The balance of power is shifting. The explorers are reinforcements for Barry. She approached Gordon and leaned close, head tilted up to meet his downward gaze. “Try Miles again. Those men need to be separated and confined until we know more.”
Gordon’s cell chirped. He turned away from Zita and spoke quietly into the phone for a few seconds before returning his attention to Zita. “Laura says she can’t get to the infirmary. Seems that someone lowered the isolation doors.”
Sonja helped Doc walk the second explorer to the remaining bed. As before, they stripped the man of all clothing, allowing a complete visual examination. Afterward they covered the man’s nakedness with a sheet. Doc managed to get the third explorer to lie prone on the MRI bed, then performed the same strip and examine procedure. Each exam produced the same results. The men were gray, entirely gray, down to every square inch of skin, every hair, every finger and toenail.
Doc removed his protective clothing and faced the camera. “They’re totally gray and no trace of taint. No sign of physical trauma, but definitely catatonic. Where’s Laura?”
Gordon tapped a number into his phone. “Miles, open the damn isolation doors.”
***
While continuing to monitor the team, I briefed Hauser on the experiment and the unexpected appearance of the missing explorers. He asked few questions and seemed unusually calm. Maybe he had nerves of steel. More likely he had no idea of the how serious the danger had become. Snatches of conversation from the monitors suggested that Zita shared my apprehension. I tried to impress the colonel with the gravity of the situation.
“Sir, I’ve locked down the infirmary and the doctor’s office. We should keep the new arrivals in isolation there until Doc can assure us that they don’t present a biological or physical hazard.”
“Hmmm. Well, that’s Gordon’s call.”
“Keeping them in the infirmary makes it easier for Doc to monitor vitals.”
“The infirmary’s too small for three. Might be better to move the men into three vacant residence rooms. Nine, ten, and eleven are next to your room.”
“Moving them outside the infirmary compromises security. There are no blast doors to isolate those rooms from the offices, mess hall, and other residence rooms.” My cell beeped and showed Kingpin trying to call me. I ignored it.
“Put them in the residence rooms,” Hauser said.
Orders are orders. “If you restore my override authority, I can keep the doors locked and restrict access.”
Harshness crept into Hauser’s tone. “Gordon will manage access to the rooms.”
I winced, acutely aware of not having returned to the colonel’s good graces. In the infirmary, Brainiac demanded to know if the anyone had seen the monkey.
“Colonel, the monkey in the experiment disappeared. It doesn’t appear on any of the monitors.”
“It may have swapped places with the three explorers.” He paused. “Is there anything else, Sergeant?”
“Sir, one other thing. With three additional people to watch, I respectfully request additional security personnel to assist me.”
“I’ll send in a squad of Army Rangers. They will arrive at 0700 tomorrow.”
I’d grown accustomed to disappointment. His answer surprised the hell out of me. Before I could thank him, he broke the connection. My cell rang again. Kingpin.
“Reardon here.”
“Miles, open the damn isolation doors.”
“The newcomers could be contaminated. Boss.”
“Doc says they aren’t. Open the doors.”
My finger hovered over the switches as instinct warned me not to comply. The hesitation didn’t make sense. The men were slow, mindless, unarmed zombies uncontaminated by taint. They appeared to be harmless.
Then the story of the Trojan Horse came to mind. Could they be harboring a hidden threat? Maybe. But I’d been given an order.
I flipped the damn switches and watched the heavy, airtight doors retract into their ceiling niches. I grabbed a couple extra pairs of handcuffs, checked to make sure the Taser held a full charge, and jogged toward the now-crowded infirmary.
Moving the zombies to their quarters got delayed because Doc insisted on taking blood samples, checking pulse, respiration, temperature, and checking reflexes first. Mopes performed an EEG on each one. Kingpin ordered me to stand guard in the infirmary while the tests were performed. The strangers needed to be watched, no argument there, but the delay gave Choirboy an hour free from observation—more than enough time for Nathan or anyone else to feed color to the monster. I could look at the surveillance videos later, but by then the damage would be irreversible.
I bitched silently. This situation required more than a single guard. 0700 couldn’t come soon enough. I thought of telling Kingpin about the Rangers, and decided not to. Besides, Kingpin had cornered Brainiac in a none-too-friendly manner.
“Why didn’t your demo work as predicted?” he demanded.
She waved a hand in dismissal. “The answer requires an understanding of underlying quantum theory. Which you lack.”
“Give me the CliffsNotes version.” His voice held a clear “don’t fuck with me” tone.
“All right,” she said. “At the tiny scale where subatomic particles exist, matter doesn’t behave the way it does at our scale of existence. At this tiny, quantum level, particles aren’t really discrete. They exist simultaneously at multiple locations and energy levels, with a probability distribution defined by an equation called the quantum wave function. This multitude of superimposed realities exists until someone actually observes the system containing these realities, at which time the wave function ‘collapses’ into a single, discrete result.
“An example often used is Schrödinger’s cat. Imagine a cat placed in a sealed box along with a canister of poison that has a random chance of being released. If this closed system were governed by quantum mechanics, the cat is both dead and alive while the box is sealed. It stays in this limbo until we open the box to observation. Then the probability function resolves to a single outcome. We see the cat as either dead or alive, not both.”