Isobel put her hand on Laurence’s upper arm as she slipped the phone back into a hiding place in her purse. But all she said was, “Tell nobody about this phone.” Laurence nodded.
Milton surveyed a roomful of geeks from his Herman Miller throne, ankle crossed over thigh and lips pursed as if he’d just finished a slice of the tartest Meyer lemon pie. Laurence stumbled over the limbs of a dozen of his colleagues, seeking a corner of a beanbag to occupy. Someone gave up his folding chair for Isobel. They were in an old server room, with no windows and only one thick door, so it would be hard to eavesdrop. Nobody was talking, and Laurence realized they were in the middle of one of Milton’s dramatic pauses. As soon as Laurence got settled, Milton restarted in the middle of an unfinished sentence, about the crisis in the U.S. government, the possibility of a new civil war, martial law, the deterioriating international situation in the absence of American military resolve, all the ways this could soon turn to hellshit. Something in Milton was pessimistic to the point of brokenness, and yet he was usually right. Listening to Milton’s dark litany, Laurence felt a surge of affection for the nearly bald man with his moth-wing eyebrows. Part of Laurence still wanted to be Milton Dirth when he grew up.
“All of our unpaid bills are coming due at once,” Milton was saying.
Laurence and Sougata kept looking at each other and half-grinning, because as soon as Milton got done talking about the collapse of civilization, he would move on to the fact that they had actually built it, the machine, and it seemed like it might work. Milton wanted to remind them all of the reasons why this could be humanity’s last hope, and then they would get on to the good part.
“All of this just makes this project even more urgent than we already thought,” said Milton. “Isobel, where are we with that?”
“Very preliminary tests on the equipment are looking good,” said Isobel. “It could be months before we’re ready to try anything more serious. Meanwhile, the most promising exoplanet candidate continues to be KOI-232.04. The Shatner Space Telescope has gotten some very promising readings as it transits its star, and we know it has oxygen and liquid water. And we’re pretty sure that if we create a stable wormhole with an opening near to KOI-232.04’s gravity well, the mouth of the wormhole will be drawn down to the planet’s surface. But there’s no guarantee it would be pulled down onto solid land.”
Laurence couldn’t believe they were talking about visiting another planet. This was really really happening. He kept falling off his half beanbag with the giddiness. Every time Isobel said something about the evidence for KOI-232.04’s habitability, and the other exoplanet candidates they’d identified, he had to sit on his hand to keep from pumping his fist. Even with so many people dead and dying, even with the world on the edge of ruin. This was straight-up amazing.
“Thank you for that update.” Milton stared into his own lap for a moment. Then he looked up, in every direction at once. “There’s been a wrinkle. Earnest Mather has been running some numbers, and he has a … let’s say a concern. Earnest, can you share your findings with the group?”
“Umm.” Mather looked as though he’d been through a lot since Laurence dropped out of the sky and bought his company. He’d cut off his exuberantly frizzy hair and started wearing chunky engineer glasses. His shoulders were permanently hunched as he sat on a stool. “I have done the math about two thousand times, and there’s, well, a possibility. Let’s put it between ten percent and twenty percent. A possibility that if we turn this machine on, we’ll start a reaction that would lead to an antigravity cascade, which in turn could tear the Earth apart.”
“But tell them the good news,” Milton said quickly.
“The good news? Yes. The good news.” Earnest did his best to sit up straight. “First, we would probably have about a week, between turning the machine on and the Earth being obliterated. So, with efficient crowd control, we could get a lot of people through the gateway before Earth was gone. And there’s around a fifty percent chance that if the destructive reaction started, we could stop it by turning the machine off.”