Louis Dubois had come to despise Donald Stephenson on a personal level. But he had to admit the man had intellect and drive that went beyond any conventional definition of genius. He was an asshole who unveiled glorious theoretical and practical breakthroughs, seemingly on an as-needed basis.
The latest scientific marvel was a design for a device that Dr. Stephenson called a stasis field generator that, if it worked as the theory predicted, could create powerful force fields, manipulating them with incredible precision. Louis had worked around the clock the last forty-eight hours reviewing Dr. Stephenson’s white paper, trying to find something wrong with his theoretical derivations, but all he’d done was confirm Stephenson’s work.
And Dr. Dubois wasn’t alone. He’d had another team going over the equations at the same time. Louis had just returned from a meeting with Dr. Freidrick Haus, Nobel laureate mathematician and team lead. As he’d expected, Dr. Haus’s team also confirmed Dr. Stephenson’s work.
Louis leaned back in his chair, shoving his fingers under his reading glasses to rub his red eyes. As hard as it was to believe, the American physicist was rewriting the world’s understanding of physics at a pace that had shocked the thousands of scientists working on the ATLAS project to their core. And Louis had no doubt that, when those papers were released to the public, they would have the same shocking impact on the scientific community at large. If the world survived the current crisis, there’d be a lot of textbooks heading directly to trash bins, which was precisely where they belonged.
Louis rose from his seat and walked across his office, pausing to retrieve his black London Fog raincoat and umbrella before heading for the building exit. A cold, steady rain had drenched most of Europe for the last three days and the weather report held little promise of improvement. A massive cold front cut its way across the EU map, its blue curve sporting eastward, facing blue triangles stretching from Finland down to Italy’s booted heel. Right now it was stalled, blocked by a massive high-pressure system that had set up shop over western Russia.
Nodding at Elynn Stadich, the front desk security guard, Louis pulled up his raincoat collar, unfurled the umbrella, and stepped out into the gray wetness of the Swiss morning. He’d decided to make the walk to the ATLAS facility to clear his mind. Five minutes into the hike, he regretted his decision. The temperature hovered in the low forties, which wasn’t so bad, but the whirling wind made his umbrella less than useless. As one of these gusts almost succeeded in springing the umbrella inside out, Louis gave up, stowed it into its handle, and accepted that his head was going to get a thorough drenching. He didn’t really think it could get much wetter anyway.
As he stepped into the entrance to the surface facility that led to the ATLAS cavern, Louis removed his raincoat, then leaned over to wipe and shake the moisture from his head and neck.
“Dr. Dubois, I thought they provided you with a car and driver.”
Louis turned to see the grinning face of Gary Levin, one of the top graduate students assigned to the program.
“Looked like a nice day for a stroll.”
“Guess I don’t want to walk with you on a bad day, then.”
Gary handed him a white hard hat, waiting as Louis adjusted it to fit his head. “Guess I should have brought you a towel too.”
“I’ll dry off on the way down to ATLAS.”
The smile faded from Gary’s face as if it had been wiped from a blackboard. “When was the last time you were in the ATLAS cave?”
“Tuesday. I’ve been holed up reviewing Dr. Stephenson’s latest paper for the last couple of days. Told Sophia I didn’t want to be disturbed unless a critical problem came up.”
The grad student inhaled deeply, frowned, and then continued. “I probably shouldn’t be the one to tell you, but you’re not going to like what’s happening down there.”
The cold hand of dread grabbed Dr. Dubois’s esophagus and squeezed. “What do you mean?”
“I guess I’d better show you.”
Passing down a narrow hallway with a silver conduit running down the center of the eight-foot ceiling, Louis paused at a locker to hang his raincoat and umbrella inside. Turning, he followed Gary through several more rooms and hallways, the noise of heavy construction equipment growing in volume as they made their way toward the ATLAS cavern.
They stepped onto scaffolding high up on the cavern wall. As always, the scene affected him on multiple levels. All those years building this place, and now they were working at breakneck speed disassembling the massive detector and enlarging the cavern to make room for Dr. Stephenson’s wormhole generator, all the while making sure nothing disrupted the containment field isolating the November Anomaly.
Suddenly Louis froze. One large section of the ATLAS detector’s massive end cap dangled from a ceiling crane, trailing metal scraps and cables, as if a gigantic maw had grabbed the device and ripped out a huge chunk.
“What in God’s name?”
A wave of nausea and dizziness almost buckled Louis’s knees.
“Dr. Stephenson’s order. He’s personally supervising the dismantling operation.”
“Dismantling?” Louis sputtered. “That’s wanton destruction. Where the hell is he?”
As Gary pointed to a tiny figure gesturing to the construction crew on the far side of the cavern, Louis cursed, then clambered down the stairs leading to the cavern floor. By the time he reached Dr. Stephenson, his breath hissed out in short, ragged gasps.
Grabbing Dr. Stephenson by the shoulder, he spun the American scientist to face him.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Stephenson’s gray eyes took in Dr. Dubois as casually as if he’d just asked to schedule a meeting.
“The crew was falling behind schedule. I am changing that.”
“By destroying billions of dollars in instrumentation? We’re supposed to be dismantling ATLAS so that it can be reconstructed once we’re done here. You’re ruining decades of work.”
Dr. Stephenson pursed his lips. “Dr. Dubois. What portion of this piece of junk do you think needs saving? Since you probably haven’t understood a word I’ve presented in my papers, this may not have occurred to you, but your little science project is over. The technologies and energies we are about to create in this cavern go so far beyond anything ever contemplated on earth; they make the Large Hadron Collider laughable.”
Dr. Dubois’s eyes widened as if he’d been slapped in the face.
“Face it, Louis,” Stephenson continued. “No need to search for more standard-physics-model validation. That model is dead.”
With that dismissal, Dr. Stephenson turned to yell more instructions at the foreman. Behind him, Dr. Louis Dubois stood frozen in place. As he stared up at the beautiful, intricate machine that was ATLAS, his eyes misted over. Stephenson was right. Like Louis, in the blink of an eye, it had become a dinosaur.
Dr. Rodger Dalbert slid into the indicated seat in the small breakout room adjacent to the White House Situation Room. President Jackson was seated in the opposite chair, Cory Mayfield, the director of national intelligence, sat to his right, and James Nobles, the National Security Advisor, sat on the president’s left. The arrangement had Rodger seated with his back to the door, a position that left him feeling exposed and vulnerable.
The breakout room was normally used for occasions when the president wanted to pull a couple of key staff members out of the Situation Room for a private side discussion, while the rest of the staff cooled their heels and waited for the president’s return. To be brought here directly, while the Situation Room sat empty next door, raised Rodger’s hackles, making him feel like closing himself inside one of the nearby high-security Plexiglas phone tubes.
“Rodger. Glad to see you,” the president said.
“Always a pleasure, Mr. President.”
“I imagine you’re curious as to why I had you brought down here.”
“The question came to mind.”
President Jackson leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head. “You understand that what we are about to discuss is top-secret SCI?”
Rodger nodded.
“You’re not to discuss anything we talk about with anyone but me. Is that clear?”
Once again Rodger felt the uncomfortable tensing of muscles between his shoulder blades. The president did tend to repeat himself. “Yes sir.”
The president smiled that broad smile that had eased his ascension into the political stratosphere, and leaned forward to rest his forearms on the table. “Good. Then let’s get right to the meat of it. You know Jim Nobles and Cory Mayfield. They have come to me with a proposal that impacts the construction being done at the ATLAS site. As chairman of my council on science and technology, and since you were the first American to be briefed on the November Anomaly, I wanted to get your opinion before I make a final decision.”
Rodger glanced at Cory Mayfield, but the intel man’s gray eyes betrayed no hint of emotion. But James Nobles’s mouth held a tension that matched Rodger’s.
“I’m listening.”
“Go ahead, Cory.”
“I’ve recommended to the president that, through our ties with the Geneva-based construction company Dietrich and Hoechner, we install some tactical nuclear weapons within some of the prefabricated supports destined for installation in the ATLAS cavern.”
Rodger’s jaw dropped as he struggled to parse the words he’d just heard.
Regaining his voice, Rodger consciously released the pressure in his clenched fists. “Mr. President, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Motioning for the other two to remain silent, the president looked directly into his eyes. “OK, Rodger, make your case.”
Rodger struggled to bring his thoughts to bear on the problem. It boggled his mind that the president of the United States had even entertained the proposal, much less give it enough credence to warranted Rodger’s debunking it. He inhaled deeply.
“Mr. President, I assume the purpose of these devices would be to form some sort of backup plan whereby they would be triggered in order to destroy the nascent black hole?”
“That is correct.”
“That’s just wrong. As I already briefed you and the entire staff, the anomaly exists at an inflection point and is gradually tilting into a state where it is likely to become a black hole. We’re struggling to slow that process by surrounding it in as perfect a low-temperature vacuum as can be created on Earth, all in an attempt to keep the thing from absorbing additional matter and energy, just trying to give the November Anomaly Project time to build the Stephenson device. Any explosive addition of energy to the anomaly will greatly accelerate its progress in becoming a black hole. If you set off a nuclear explosion, you’ll be destroying the Earth as surely as if the sun went supernova.”
“You’re certain of that.”
“As sure as I’m sitting here.”
“Cory?”
“I understand Dr. Dalbert’s scientific analysis. But Mr. President, the fact remains that something might go wrong with Dr. Stephenson’s device. It might not work as his theory predicts or it might not get done in time. There’s also the side issue of how much we trust Dr. Stephenson. There’s no doubt he’s a genius, but our sources say he’s rolling out theoretical applications that he never revealed to others at Los Alamos or to the rest of the government team. If something goes badly wrong, we can’t afford to go without a fallback plan.”
“Fallback plan?” Rodger sputtered. “Didn’t you hear anything I just said? If you nuke it you get an instant black hole. No need to add water or stir.”
“And if we do nothing, we get a black hole anyway. Isn’t that right, Dr. Dalbert?”
Rodger felt beads of sweat pop out on his brow. “Probably, but not as quickly. We might have time for another try.”
Cory Mayfield laughed, a harsh, guttural rasp that hurt Rodger’s ears.
“Another try? There’s not going to be another try. The world is committing every bit of its scientific and engineering might into Dr. Stephenson’s plan. Not that we wouldn’t spin up a backup project if someone came up with a competing idea, but the sad truth is that nobody’s got another reasonable idea. We’ve been all through the launch-it-into-space thing. All the top minds say that’s a no-go for a host of reasons, chief among them the problem of maintaining the isolation and containment field throughout the launch process. Then there’s the issue of this approach being incompatible with our best bet, which is building Dr. Stephenson’s Rho device around the thing. So, unless some religious group manages to pray the anomaly away, we’re left with Stephenson’s Rho device or bust.”
Rodger opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again.
“So,” Mayfield continued, “if all else fails and the thing’s getting ready to eat us anyway, it won’t hurt to roll the dice.”
President Jackson turned to face his national security advisor. “James?”
“I don’t see a better alternative.”
“Mr. President! Give me a month. I’ll assemble another team, give it one more look, see if we can come up with another fallback option.”
President Jackson smiled a sad smile. “I don’t have another month to give you, Rodger. If we want to get nukes put in the prefab construction, I have to make a decision now. I’m sorry, but I’m giving the go-ahead for Director Mayfield’s approach.”
Turning to his smiling DNI, the president nodded.
“OK, Cory. Make it happen.”