Linkage: The Narrows of Time

Chapter 19

Wednesday, December 26

12:30 AM





The authentic Lucaslooked at the puddle of BioTex lying underneath Bruno on the floor.“Glad that’s over with. I sure can be one stubborn son of abitch, can’t I?”

“For a moment there,I thought he was going to shoot us all,” Drew said.

Lucas laughed. “Hesure was one mixed-up dude.”

“Wouldn’t you havebeen, given the circumstances?”

“I suppose. But I’msure I could tell which one was the real you.”

“I doubt that,considering replicas are perfect copies right down to their syntheticDNA.”

“Trust me, I couldtell. No problem.”

“Guys, can we getback to business?” Kleezebee asked.

“Sure, Professor,sorry,” Lucas said.

“Before we wereinterrupted by L, you said you still had questions?”

Lucas had to think fora minute. With everything that just happened, his memory needed awake up call. "Oh yeah, now I remember . . . Does it always taketen minutes to replicate someone?"

"Yes, but only thefirst time it duplicates someone new. After that, as long as thereplica maintains its sugar supply, its bio-mimetic programmingremains intact. It only takes a few seconds to resume any of itspreviously copied identities."

"Even clothes?How?"

"From theAuthentic's memory. The BioTex scans the subject’s mind anddetermines what the donor was wearing at the time of replication. Itthen synthesizes the clothes just like the rest of the body."

"What aboutmemories and emotions? Are they replicated, too?"

Kleezebee nodded. "It’sa perfect replica of the original, right down to the cellular level.Blood, bodily fluids, voice, brain patterns, and memory are mimickedperfectly. Even a human DNA analysis wouldn't be able to detect thedifference. Only a bimolecular resonance scan can distinguish thereplica from the original."

Lucas thought about hisbrother's disability and wondered about a cure. "What aboutgenetic defects, and things like injuries and diseases?"

"We could programthe BioTex to repair any physical defects during the replicationprocess. However, we usually leave the imperfections in place to helpsell the impersonation. Diseases are irrelevant and don't affect thereplica, since it's not a real human being."

"Can youimpersonate anyone? Like the President?"

"Well, we could,but there are issues when replicating a high-profile individual.First, we need prolonged contact with the donor to process itsgenetic makeup and download its mind. With someone as well protectedas the President, that wouldn't be possible. Then you have the issueof what to do with the original. We wouldn't want to have two of themrunning around the White House.

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

“Yeah, makes sense,”Lucas replied.

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

Kleezebee shook hishead. "The BioTex can't be used again without the introductionof a reactivating enzyme that only we possess. It's another of ourfail-safe mechanisms and is kept locked away under tight security. Wecertainly don't want our own technology used against us, so we takeevery precaution."

Lucas rememberedreading somewhere that latex could either be a natural or syntheticsubstance. It was made up of several ingredients, including sugar,which explained Bruno's chocolate requirements for genetictransformation and cohesion. Nevertheless, he still needed moreinformation. "Bruno, you're one of these replicas, right?"

"Yup."

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

Kleezebee fielded thequestion, sounding like a college professor explaining the answer toone of his students, "Excellent question. Some of Bruno'sidentities were duplicated from the bodies of several people who’ddied. After someone dies, there's a forty-hour window in which we canduplicate their DNA and download their memory."

"How do you getaccess to their remains?"

"We own our ownchain of mortuaries, which gives us priority access to the recentlydeceased."

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

"Absolutely,though it can take years for one of our replicas to work its way upthe 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 thearmed forces. It’s much easier for our replicas to infiltrate thevarious intelligence agencies.”

"How do youcontrol the copy?" Lucas asked, thinking about Bruno’s flyingtakedown of his replica.

"Duringreplication, we introduce new base coding sequences into hissynthetic framework, which allows us to control him.”

Lucas nodded. Itsounded like Kleezebee had everything covered.

“Any more questions?"Kleezebee asked.

Both Lucas and Drewshook their heads.

“Then we’ve gotwork 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’regetting ready to drop a probe into the Korean energy field,” thecenter tech reported.

“Put it on the centerscreen,” Kleezebee told him.

“What’s up?”Lucas asked.

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

“You can do that?”Lucas asked.

“Yes, the probe’sone of ours. One of our subsidiaries manufactures them for UncleSam.”

Lucas was impressed bythe breadth of surveillance technology at Kleezebee’s disposal. Thewall of video screens was filled with live feeds from all over theworld, one of which showed an aerial view of the energy field. An AirForce plane was flying over the dome when it dropped a cylindricalobject from its cargo bay.

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

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

“Report?” Kleezebeeasked the tech.

“Reading anincredibly dense gravitational eddy at the center of the object . . .Sensors report numerous subspace distortions around a condensedspatial pathway . . . The vortex seems to be streaming differentiallycharged tachyon particles.”

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

“A self-containedone, at that,” Lucas added.

“Can you extrapolatethe x-vector, to see where the micro-singularity leads?” Kleezebeeasked.

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

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

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

“Six times 1031terajoules.”

Kleezebee turned toDrew. “That number sound familiar?”

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

“Seems likely at thispoint.”

“Probe has stoppedtransmitting, sir,” the tech said.

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

“Sir, the logs showthat the probe was scanned several times before it was destroyed bythe anomaly,” the tech reported.

“Source?”

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

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

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

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

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

Drew shrugged. “Maybethey’re brand new?”

Kleezebee held his handover the phone’s receiver and told the tech, “Bring up Kunsan inKorea. Show me the airfield.”

The tech changed thevideo feed for the center screen. It was now showing one of the AirForce base’s runways where a black, B2 Stealth Bomber was taxingalong the tarmac. The sleek, triangle-shaped aircraft was turninginto the wind and was almost ready for take off.

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

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

“How?” Drew asked.

“By dropping in a BigIvan.”

“Are they nuts?”Drew shouted.

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

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

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

“Two hundredmegatons?” Bruno asked.

“That’s thirteenthousand times the destructive power of the warhead we dropped onHiroshima, Japan,” Drew said.

“Oh, mama,” Lucassaid.

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

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

Drew replied, “Thesudden influx of that amount of radiation, in a small contained spacewill most likely cause a cascading reaction that could exponentiallyincrease the dome’s size and destructive power. There’s notelling what might happen.”

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

“Their scientistsbelieve the radiation will be contained within the dome and processedthrough its vortex,” the tech said, “potentially killing whoeveris on the other side.”

Drew shook his headadamantly.

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

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

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

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

“How’s that?”Bruno asked.

“A two-hundredmegaton blast could conceivably cause a permanent shift in theEarth’s orbit around the sun. We could all die a slow, frozendeath.”

“Or fry in amicrowave oven,” Lucas added.

When Kleezebee returnedfrom his phone call, Drew told him, “Professor, we have to stopthis.”

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

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

“Distance to thetarget?”

“One hundred fiftymiles, sir.”

“Show me the groundfeed from Seoul.”

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

It was the first timeLucas 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 anetwork of destruction trails behind. It reminded him of thesandy underbelly of his first ant farm experiment.

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

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

“It’s the mostpowerful one we’ve seen so far,” the tech replied. “It’s beenon the ground for almost fifteen minutes.”

“Can you tighten upon the target? Make sure the DVRs are recording this,” Kleezebeesaid.

The tech adjusted thefeed and the camera zoomed in considerably closer. They had a frontrow seat to the detonation.

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

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

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

Next to the centermonitor, a high-resolution video feed from the underside of thebomber’s fuselage appeared, providing a close-up view of theaircraft’s target. From above, they could see the energy fieldchewing its way through the Korean city.

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

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

Just about the timewhen penetration should occur, the energy field’s opening expandedto twice it normal size and rose up from the earth. It acted as if itwere opening its mouth and welcoming the nuclear weapon into itsthroat. A blinding, powerful flash lit up the energy field from deepinside it.

“Right on target,”Bruno said.

Lucas looked at theother monitor to view the detonation from the ground level camera. Hewaited for signs of the detonation to extend beyond the dome’s opencrest, yet nothing appeared. The anomaly contained the blast just asthe government’s scientists predicted. So far so good, Lucasthought. Maybe the President’s scientists were correct.

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

“Yep, they justpissed it off,” Kleezebee said.

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

The twin domes startedrevolving around each other, cutting a deeper channel into the earthas if they were solidifying their traction. After five revolutions, acrescent-shaped energy field appeared just above the swirlinganomalies, growing brighter until it discharged a glistening orb ofenergy. The energy blast resembled a giant Tic Tac breath mint andtraveled swiftly away from the twin domes, toward the upperatmosphere. Seconds later, the bomber’s video feed went offline,filling the screen with random flickers of static.

“Not so stealthafter all,” Lucas mumbled.

The two domesprogressively slowed their rotation and merged into one super-sizedenergy field, before resuming its original course and speed.

“That should put anend to the Big Ivan idea,” Drew said.

“And to Seoul,”Lucas replied.

“How will we know ifEarth’s orbit was changed?” Bruno asked.

“We’ll have to runa few calculations,” Drew answered.

“Or just wait for theweather patterns to change,” Lucas said.

“Boss, what would youlike us to do next?” Bruno asked.

“Let’s get some shut-eye and start fresh in the morning.”