Linkage: The Narrows of Time (25 page)

"If you remember, I told you that Bruno needs
a constant supply of sugar in order to transform and maintain his
identity. The same would be true with the President's copy. The
replica would need to consume significant amounts of sugar to
maintain its form and not revert to pure BioTex. Someone would
certainly notice the change in the President's eating habits if he
suddenly became a sugar junkie overnight."

“Yeah, makes sense,” Lucas replied.

Drew asked, “Once the replica reverts back to
its native form, what would happen if someone inserted their hand
into it? Wouldn't it start to duplicate them?"

Kleezebee shook his head. "The BioTex can't
be used again without the introduction of a reactivating enzyme
that only we possess. It's another of our fail-safe mechanisms and
is kept locked away under tight security. We certainly don't want
our own technology used against us, so we take every
precaution."

Lucas remembered reading somewhere that latex
could either be a natural or synthetic substance. It was made up of
several ingredients, including sugar, which explained Bruno's
chocolate requirements for genetic transformation and cohesion.
Nevertheless, he still needed more information. "Bruno, you're one
of these replicas, right?"

"Yup."

"Okay, so where's the original Bruno? And
what about Mary Stinger and the other people you impersonated? Are
they walking around somewhere?"

Kleezebee fielded the question, sounding like
a college professor explaining the answer to one of his students,
"Excellent question. Some of Bruno's identities were duplicated
from the bodies of several people who’d died. After someone dies,
there's a forty-hour window in which we can duplicate their DNA and
download their memory."

"How do you get access to their remains?"

"We own our own chain of mortuaries, which
gives us priority access to the recently deceased."

Lucas wondered where else Kleezebee might
have replicas, besides General Alvarez's unit. "I understand why
you have replicas inside the military, but what about in the
government?"

"Absolutely, though it can take years for one
of our replicas to work its way up the chain of command in order to
be in a position of influence. Tactically, we have to be very
patient and plan far in advance, especially within the elected
branches of the government and the armed forces. It’s much easier
for our replicas to infiltrate the various intelligence
agencies.”

"How do you control the copy?" Lucas asked,
thinking about Bruno’s flying takedown of his replica.

"During replication, we introduce new base
coding sequences into his synthetic framework, which allows us to
control him.”

Lucas nodded. It sounded like Kleezebee had
everything covered.

“Any more questions?" Kleezebee asked.

Both Lucas and Drew shook their heads.

“Then we’ve got work to do,” Kleezebee said,
walking out of the med-lab. Bruno, Lucas and Drew followed the
professor into the video room.

“Where are we?” Kleezebee asked his
technicians.

“Looks like they’re getting ready to drop a
probe into the Korean energy field,” the center tech reported.

“Put it on the center screen,” Kleezebee told
him.

“What’s up?” Lucas asked.

“There’s an energy dome near one of the U.S.
military bases in South Korea,” Kleezebee replied, before asking
the tech, “Can you tap into the telemetry?”

“You can do that?” Lucas asked.

“Yes, the probe’s one of ours. One of our
subsidiaries manufactures them for Uncle Sam.”

Lucas was impressed by the breadth of
surveillance technology at Kleezebee’s disposal. The wall of video
screens was filled with live feeds from all over the world, one of
which showed an aerial view of the energy field. An Air Force plane
was flying over the dome when it dropped a cylindrical object from
its cargo bay.

“Probe has entered the field, receiving data
now,” the tech said.

“So I was right. It can be penetrated through
the crown,” Lucas mumbled.

“Report?” Kleezebee asked the tech.

“Reading an incredibly dense gravitational
eddy at the center of the object . . . Sensors report numerous
subspace distortions around a condensed spatial pathway . . . The
vortex seems to be streaming differentially charged tachyon
particles.”

“Sounds like an unstable wormhole in an
advanced state of decay,” Drew said.

“A self-contained one, at that,” Lucas
added.

“Can you extrapolate the x-vector, to see
where the micro-singularity leads?” Kleezebee asked.

“Applying a trans-vector algorithm . . .” the
tech said. “Sorry, sir, but I’m unable to determine its endpoint.
There’s seems to be a strange phase shift within space-time. I
can’t get a lock.”

“Have you heard of anything like this before,
Professor?” Drew asked.

“No, this is something entirely new,”
Kleezebee said, before asking the tech, “Can you use the new
sensors to give me an energy reading before it’s crushed?”

“Six times 10
³¹
terajoules.”

Kleezebee turned to Drew. “That number sound
familiar?”

“Yes—our experiment’s energy spike. Do you
think they’re related?”

“Seems likely at this point.”

“Probe has stopped transmitting, sir,” the
tech said.

“So our E-121 experiment spawned a bunch of
artificial wormholes?” Lucas asked.

“Sir, the logs show that the probe was
scanned several times before it was destroyed by the anomaly,” the
tech reported.

“Source?”

“It appears to have originated from the far
side of the singularity.”

“Holy crap, somebody’s on the other side,”
Lucas replied.

Drew said, “Can we communicate with them and
tell them to stop? Maybe they don’t know what kind of damage
they’re doing.”

“I wish we could, but we don’t have that kind
of technology. Even if we did, I doubt it would make much
difference. These domes aren’t here by accident,” Kleezebee said,
just as his cell phone began to ring. He stepped away to answer the
call.

Lucas whispered in Drew’s ear, “We could have
used Kleezebee’s sensors to trace the energy spike. I wonder how
long they’ve had them?”

Drew shrugged. “Maybe they’re brand new?”

Kleezebee held his hand over the phone’s
receiver and told the tech, “Bring up Kunsan in Korea. Show me the
airfield.”

The tech changed the video feed for the
center screen. It was now showing one of the Air Force base’s
runways where a black, B2 Stealth Bomber was taxing along the
tarmac. The sleek, triangle-shaped aircraft was turning into the
wind and was almost ready for take off.

“Damn it, no!” Kleezebee shouted before
continuing with his private phone conversation.

“Looks like they’re going to attempt to
collapse the energy field,” the tech said.

“How?” Drew asked.

“By dropping in a Big Ivan.”

“Are they nuts?” Drew shouted.

Bruno tapped Drew on the shoulder. “What’s a
Big Ivan?”

“It’s a hundred-megaton thermonuclear bomb,
the biggest ever made, by far. The Soviets were so scared of it
they never actually tested it at full power.”

“Actually, we estimate it’s closer to two
hundred megatons,” the tech said. “They made a few enhancements to
its tertiary to double its effective yield.”

“Two hundred megatons?” Bruno asked.

“That’s thirteen thousand times the
destructive power of the warhead we dropped on Hiroshima, Japan,”
Drew said.

“Oh, mama,” Lucas said.

Drew shook his head. “This has virtually no
chance of working. It’s simply not enough power and will probably
make the situation worse. It’s like throwing a can of gasoline into
a massive forest fire, hoping the small explosion will snuff out
the flames.”

“Unfortunately, the President’s science team
seems to think it will. Dr. Kleezebee’s been trying to talk them
out of doing this.”

Drew replied, “The sudden influx of that
amount of radiation, in a small contained space will most likely
cause a cascading reaction that could exponentially increase the
dome’s size and destructive power. There’s no telling what might
happen.”

“Not to mention the lingering effects of
nuclear radiation on our planet,” Lucas said.

“Their scientists believe the radiation will
be contained within the dome and processed through its vortex,” the
tech said, “potentially killing whoever is on the other side.”

Drew shook his head adamantly.

“Why in God’s name would they double it to
two hundred megatons?” Bruno said.

“Pure desperation,” Drew answered. “I’ll bet
their physicists ran the numbers and they know their solution is a
pipe dream. To overload and destroy a self-sustaining energy vortex
of this magnitude would take much more power than we could ever
hope to generate. The military could simultaneously drop in every
WMD on the planet, and the energy field would only laugh and keep
on charging. It’s simply not enough power to overload its energy
matrix.”

“Leave it to the military to try to blow the
damn thing up,” Lucas added.

“Yeah, and it’ll probably kill us all,” Drew
replied.

“How’s that?” Bruno asked.

“A two-hundred megaton blast could
conceivably cause a permanent shift in the Earth’s orbit around the
sun. We could all die a slow, frozen death.”

“Or fry in a microwave oven,” Lucas
added.

When Kleezebee returned from his phone call,
Drew told him, “Professor, we have to stop this.”

“It’s too late,” Kleezebee said, pointing up
to the video screen. The B2 Bomber was already airborne. “What’s
the target?”

“There’s a swarm of energy fields on the
ground in Seoul, South Korea. Geocode tracking reports the primary
target is located at 37.1 degrees north and 127.3 degrees east.
Looks like they’re going after the largest dome.”

“Distance to the target?”

“One hundred fifty miles, sir.”

“Show me the ground feed from Seoul.”

A center monitor changed to show a cross
section view of downtown Seoul. In the foreground, an immense
energy dome was eating its way through the center of the city.
There were two additional energy fields to its left, though they
were much smaller and farther away.

It was the first time Lucas had seen multiple
energy fields on the ground at the same time. They were each a
different size and carving up the city and leaving a network of
destruction trails behind
.
It reminded him of the sandy
underbelly of his first ant farm experiment.

Despite his brother’s warnings to the
contrary, Lucas could appreciate why the military was taking
decisive action. The energy field problem had escalated faster than
anyone had predicted, and the world was running out of time.
Someone needed to act, and do so quickly.

“Jesus, that first one is huge. It’s got to
be five miles wide,” Lucas said.

“It’s the most powerful one we’ve seen so
far,” the tech replied. “It’s been on the ground for almost fifteen
minutes.”

“Can you tighten up on the target? Make sure
the DVRs are recording this,” Kleezebee said.

The tech adjusted the feed and the camera
zoomed in considerably closer. They had a front row seat to the
detonation.

“Thirty seconds,” the tech said. “The
transport has entered stealth mode, and is off radar.”

Lucas wondered why the military chose to
deliver Big Ivan aboard a stealth aircraft. It was unlikely the
phenomenon had onboard radar, thus it would not be necessary to
conceal their approach. He concluded that the aircraft’s flight
crew was following standard deployment protocols. Most likely, they
were required to use stealth mode when live nuclear weapons were
onboard.

“Pull up the aircraft’s onboard feed,”
Kleezebee said.

Next to the center monitor, a high-resolution
video feed from the underside of the bomber’s fuselage appeared,
providing a close-up view of the aircraft’s target. From above,
they could see the energy field chewing its way through the Korean
city.

The bomber’s camera showed the enormous tip
of Big Ivan as it was dropped from the plane’s cargo bay. Even
though the bomb’s aerodynamic casing was the size of a small bus,
it quickly disappeared from view as gravity guided it toward the
energy field at terminal velocity.”

“Sir, the ordinance had been deployed and is
approaching the target.”

Just about the time when penetration should
occur, the energy field’s opening expanded to twice it normal size
and rose up from the earth. It acted as if it were opening its
mouth and welcoming the nuclear weapon into its throat. A blinding,
powerful flash lit up the energy field from deep inside it.

“Right on target,” Bruno said.

Lucas looked at the other monitor to view the
detonation from the ground level camera. He waited for signs of the
detonation to extend beyond the dome’s open crest, yet nothing
appeared. The anomaly contained the blast just as the government’s
scientists predicted. So far so good, Lucas thought. Maybe the
President’s scientists were correct.

The energy field started to oscillate in
color and the dome’s size began to increase. Its expansion was slow
at first, then, after a few seconds, it picked up steam and grew
quickly. The hairs on his arms stood straight up when the energy
field suddenly quadrupled in size and turned a reddish-orange
color.

“Yep, they just pissed it off,” Kleezebee
said.

Lucas assumed his boss was only speaking
metaphorically and would never actually believe the energy field
was some form of creature. Just then, the dome’s perimeter wobbled
for a few moments, and split into two equal halves like a
single-celled organism reproducing through mitosis. “Oh, shit. That
can’t be good.”