Extinction Machine

Chapter Seven

VanMeer Castle

Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Thursday, October 17, 7:22 p.m.

Howard Shelton loved to blow things up.

Everyone needs a hobby, a passion, and that was his.

When he was eight he did it the wrong way. Firecrackers duct-taped to the butler’s cat earns you a beating. A rather savage beating, in point of fact. When his mother was not in diamonds and a ten-thousand-dollar Dior gown she was a heavy-handed witch who knew where to hit and how to make it last without leaving visible bruises. And, thereafter, Howard was fairly sure that the cook—who rather fancied the butler—spit in his food.

So, Howard did not blow up any more cats.

Not unless he was traveling. Then, for recreation, to let off a little steam, sure. F*ck it, it’s a cat.

In high school they gave him awards for blowing things up. Science fair judges loved that sort of thing. People stood and applauded, they gave him trophies. Mom kept her hands to herself.

In college it was hit or miss. A lot of it depended on what he blew up, how controlled the explosion was, and who was in the lab when it happened. If it was Bryce Crandall—the math stud who was putting it to Howard’s girlfriend, then that was bad. That was a police report, black armbands around campus, and a bad breakup with Mindy who, Howard guessed, never quite believed that it was all an accident.

On the other hand, if the explosion was in the firing vault and the people in the lab were those cold-eyed men from the Department of Defense … well that was a whole different picture. That was pats on the back, job offers, and grant money. That was egregia cum laude, a level of graduation honors rarely seen even at MIT.

Mom actually hugged him that day.

The people from the DoD brought along a couple of stiffs from DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Lots of handshakes, more serious job offers, and doors blown completely open.

Not that Howard Shelton needed to work. Dad was two years dead by the time Howard got his Ph.D., and Mom was one shove down the stairs away from leaving Howard six hundred and twenty-two million dollars.

Shame about those steps, that loose bit of carpeting.

All things considered, though, Howard would have preferred to blow her up.

But … you can’t have everything.

On Thursday evening, Howard Shelton sat on an exercise bike in his personal gym, pedaling and sweating and watching the TV news coverage of the massacre at his laboratory in Wolf Trap, Virginia. There was different coverage on each of the four big screens mounted on the wall. Howard watched the news for two solid hours.

“Perfect,” he said aloud.

He never stopped smiling once.





Interlude One

New Technologies Development Site #18

One Mile Below Tangshan, Hebei

People’s Republic of China

July 28, 1976, 3:38 a.m. local time

General Lo peered through the foot-thick glass, his lips pursed, eyes narrowed to suspicious slits.

“What guarantees do we have this time?” he asked. “I would be disappointed with another failure.”

Lo deliberately pitched his voice to be cold and uncompromising. That made these scientists jump. It reminded them that they worked for him and he was the face of the Party here. Just because they were afforded more personal freedom and greater comforts because of this project did not mean that they were untethered from the chain of command. If they were as smart as they were supposed to be, then they would realize and accept that their comforts were the equivalent of clean straw and fresh water in a pet rabbit’s cage.

The scientists straightened respectfully even though Lo was not looking at them. But he saw it in the reflective surface of the window.

Good, he thought.

The chief scientist, an ugly fat man named Zhao, said, “Everything is working normally, General Lo.”

“You said that last time,” said Lo, continuing to study the machine that squatted in the stone chamber on the other side of the glass. It was a bulky device, awkward in appearance, looking more like a haphazard collection of disparate pieces rather than one integrated machine. And, to a great degree this was true. Only six of the machine’s ten components were original. The others were copies made from pieces or from schematics bought from the Russians or stolen from the Americans. The last of the ten pieces, which was one of the very best recovered components, was held suspended over the device by chains. It was the master circuit, a metal slab eight inches long and four inches wide; slender as a wafer but improbably heavy. Once that piece was fully inserted the machine would become active. It would growl to life.

The Dragon Engine.

Lo privately scoffed at the name. Dragons were part of the old China mentality. Hard to shake from the more practical and far less romantic communist way of thinking. But his superiors had liked the name. Ah well.

Ice crystals glittered like diamond dust on the Dragon Engine’s metal skin. Lo glanced at the thermometer mounted on the inside of the glass. Minus 160 degrees.

“Yesterday’s pretest was a—” began Zhao, but Lo cut him off.

“Yesterday was very nearly a disaster.” Lo turned to face Zhao and the other members of the science team. They flinched under his stare. “During each of the three calibration tests the well water in the local villages visibly rose and fell.”

“Yes, General Lo,” agreed Zhao nervously, “but it was not at all like what happened before.”

That was true enough, and even Lo had to admit it to himself. On the twelfth of last month superheated gasses suddenly shot from wells in two other villages. On the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth gas erupted from another dozen wells during tests of the power couplings connecting the device to the gigantic batteries built to store the discharge. Five civilians had been seriously burned and one killed.

That was when the dragonflies fled into the forest. Although Lo would never admit it to anyone else, he personally believed that the sight of thousands of dragonflies fleeing the towns was a bad omen. That happened with earthquakes and the worst storms. The dragonflies knew.

They always knew.

And they had not yet returned from their leafy sanctuary.

Lo glowered. “What assurances can you give me, Scientist Zhao, that turning the complete device on won’t set the countryside on fire?”

“No, no, General Lo,” insisted the scientist, “we have solved those problems. We have reinforced and triple insulated every coupling. We have coated the seals with nonporous clay, and the temperature in the chamber has been lowered to well below the safety level. We’ve added nonconductive baffles to soak up any resulting static discharge. We have learned so much from each of those tests and we are confident that the Dragon Engine will work perfectly this time.”

Lo stepped close to Zhao. He was a very tall man, so the closeness forced the scientist to crane his neck in order to look up at the general. That created a position of weakness and subservience that Lo found very useful.

“You will be held personally responsible for any further delays or accidents,” he said quietly.

The fat scientist’s body trembled as if he wanted to shift from foot to foot, but discipline required that he stand and endure. Sweat beaded Zhao’s face.

“Are we in agreement on this?” asked Lo.

“Y-yes, General Lo. I will not fail you.”

“Then, for the prosperity of the Party and the enrichment of the people, you may continue.”

With that General Lo turned and walked back to his spot in front of the glass. He ignored the bustle of technicians moving to their places and the low chatter as orders were given and information shared. If the Dragon Engine worked, then so much would change. The world itself would change. That thought made Lo feel like a giant. It made him feel like all the potential energy promised by that machine coursed through him. Lo imagined that America and its many allies were already trembling, aware on some deep spiritual level that their political, military and economic domination of the earth was a button push away from ending.

“We are ready, General Lo,” said Zhao. “All indicators are green. Dampeners and buffers are functioning at one hundred and fifteen percent. We have a wide safety margin.”

“Very well,” said General Lo. “Turn it on.”

Zhao exchanged a quick, excited smile with his colleagues.

He touched the button that would lower the final component into place. That was all it took. No bolts or screws. The machine’s parts adhered to each other using a unique form of magnetic assembly.

The master circuit descended on its slender chains, pulled into its proper place.

Sparks danced along its bottom edge. Tiny arcs of electricity leaped between the circuit and the rim of the slot. General Lo bent forward, suddenly fascinated by the process. Until today the entire Dragon Engine had never been fully assembled. The disruptions of the last few weeks had all occurred at this point, with the board not quite in place.

“All readings are still in the green,” said Zhao. “We are already past the disruption point.”

The board slid down, vanishing millimeter by millimeter into the slot. Snakes of electricity writhed along the whole machine now. Then the master circuit clicked into place within the heart of the engine. There was a moment—a millionth of a second—where the machine seemed to freeze in place, the arcs of electricity vanishing.

“Scientist Zhao…?” murmured Lo.

“The readings are still in the green. Dampeners and buffers are functioning at ninety-two percent. That is more than enough to—”

General Lo did not hear the rest of Zhao’s sentence.

The Dragon Engine exploded.

General Lo saw a shimmering bubble of energy balloon outward from the device, and on the other side of that millisecond, he was vaporized.

The lab—all thirty-two rooms that comprised the New Technologies Development Site #18—became extensions of the blast.

The force punched like a fist down into the heart of the bedrock, smashing along the twenty-five-mile Tangshan Fault, causing the Okhotsk Plate to grate against the great Eurasian Plate. The whole earth recoiled from that blow, shuddering from the impact. Waves of trembling power shot through the entire region.

Some seismographs metered it as 7.8 on the Richter magnitude scale; on other machines it was measured at 8.2. The unbridled ferocity of it shot upward through the earth, tearing apart thousands of buildings. There were no foreshocks to warn people. There was no hint at all that this was coming. It was incredibly fast and without mercy. Virtually none of the structures in this part of China had been designed to withstand such fury. Hundreds of thousands of buildings were destroyed. Tremors were felt as far away as Xi’an, nearly five hundred miles from the blast. Closer cities—Qinhuangdao and Tianjin, and even Beijing—shivered as the shock waves hit, shattering glass, cracking walls, tearing up the streets.

So many people were asleep when it happened. Nestled in bed, unaware that hell had come to their part of the world. Houses and buildings crumbled to become tombs for more than half a million.

The New Technologies lab had been built there because Tangshan was a region with a relatively low risk of earthquakes.

And yet this was the worst earthquake of the twentieth century, and the third deadliest in all recorded history.

Nearly seven hundred thousand people died.

Within a month teams of diggers had burrowed beneath the rubble of houses and the bones of the dead and were inching their way down into the troubled earth. Not in hopes of finding survivors. Not in hopes of recovering General Lo or Scientist Zhao.

However, if there was a chance—a single chance—to recover even a piece of the Dragon Engine, then nothing could be allowed to interfere.

That excavation continues to this day.





Part Two

Taken



Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth


Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.

—ANNE FRANK