Linkage: The Narrows of Time

Chapter 7

Fortitude





After Abby left, Drewopened her note and saw a phone number with a heart symbol drawn justbelow it. He memorized her number before stuffing the slip inside hisshirt pocket.

“So, what do youthink we should do?” Lucas asked.

Drew knew there was noguarantee that Kleezebee would ever be get approval from thecommittee. They had to try again, right then, before they were lockedout of their own lab. His Quantum Energy Thesis was due in less thana month, and he needed the neutron beam technology to show positiveresults. He wanted it now.

“Well, I don’t wantto quit now. We’re so close I can taste it. We’ve worked too darnhard for too darn long. If they shut us down now, our project will bea total failure. I’ve never failed at anything in my life, and I’mnot about to start now. If it were up to me, I’d re-engage the EMsystem, charge the capacitor, this time to full strength, and hit itagain. Unless someone checks the power logs, which is highlyunlikely, nobody will ever know about it unless we succeed.”

“I don’t know,brother. Kleezebee was very specific.”

Drew had never used anobscenity in his life, but was ready to if it would persuade hisbrother to try again. “You know as well as I do, we may never havethis chance again. There’s no guarantee that Kleezebee will ever beable to get the committee to give us the go-ahead.”

“I hear what you’resaying, but—“

“You know what Dadalways said? Don’t be afraid to go after what you want, becausenobody else will do it for you.”

Lucas sighed but didn’tanswer. He shook his head slowly.

“Please, we’rerunning out of time. We have to try before they lock us out of ourown lab.”

Lucas still didn’trespond.

“If we’resuccessful, we can sell the patent and payoff Mom’s medical bills.”

Lucas appeared to beconsidering the idea. After a short minute, he said, “It would benice to get rid of those f*cking vultures, once and for all.”

“Then you agree?”

Lucas nodded. “If youthink full power is the way to go, let’s try it.”

The brothers spent thenext forty-five minutes preparing for their next attempt. Theycrosschecked and completed each step in the procedure manual, exceptthis time around, they charged the beam’s capacitor to full power.

Drew completed the laststep and was ready to begin. He recorded the new time into thelogbook: 11:52 PM, December 21.

Just then, Drewwondered if Abby’s suggestion to reverse the polarity mightactually work. He knew her proposal was a long shot, but it was worthconsidering. He flipped through the procedure manual, stopping onpage sixteen to review the equations. “Wait, that can’t beright,” he mumbled. He reached into his backpack and pulled out acopy of their original work. After comparing the two versions of themanual, he said, “Holy cow, DL changed our calculations.”

“What?”

“How the heck did Imiss this?” Drew asked, using a yellow marker to highlight thechanges. He handed both copies of the manual to Lucas. “Here, seefor yourself. He changed our wave displacement factors.”

Lucas spent a minutereviewing the calculations. “You’re right. But why?”

“I have no idea. Butthis may have caused the failure.”

“It certainly wouldexplain the conflicting data.”

“We should use ouroriginal equations and run it again.”

“Do you still want touse full power?”

“Yes, definitely,”Drew said, plowing forward on his keyboard to enter the correctcalculations.

They spent the nextfifteen minutes reconfiguring their experiment.

“Okay, we’reready,” Drew said.

“Then make it so,”Lucas replied, using a decent imitation of Captain Picard’s voice.

Drew pressed the greenREADY switch to fire the charged neutron beam, listening forthe beam to pulse. Once it did, he sat back to watch the steadystream of data fill the center monitor.

At first, everythingwent according to plan, but then a few of the readings changed, thenmore of them did. Something wasn’t right. He wasn’t sure what atfirst, until he looked closer at the data values in the columnfarthest to the right. His heart skipped a beat. The reactor’sinternal mass readings were low—much too low. No, this couldn’tbe.

Maybe the monitor wasmalfunctioning. That would explain the change in numbers. Hescrambled to enter commands into his keyboard, trying to validate thereadings. But the checksums validated—the numbers shown on themonitor were correct. He sat up and leaned in close to the screen,looking over the data values one final time, making sure he was notmisinterpreting the results. He wasn’t. There was no denying it—themass inside the reactor had dropped by almost a hundred percent.

He changed the screento show the video feed from inside the core. He was afraid to look,but did anyway. “Oh, no!”

“What’s wrong now?”

Drew pointed his fingerat the screen. “Look, it's gone!”

“Could you bea little more f*cking specific?” Lucas asked with a snarl, scootinghis chair closer to Drew’s station.

Drew wished he had hisbrother’s cuss word vocabulary so he could respond in kind.Instead, he kept quiet. He used the frame-by-frame mode to replay thevideo recording from inside the chamber. They both saw that justbefore the E-121 and its container disappeared, an instantaneousflash had filled the core. It had originated as a microscopic pointof light near the center of the container, before expandingvertically and then horizontally like a four-pointed star. A fewframes later, the brightness subsided. The E-121 and its receptaclewere gone.

“Where the hell didit go?” Lucas asked.

Drew zoomed in thecamera. “Beats the shi—snot out of me.”

“What’s that shitcovering the base?”

“Looks like some typeof black film.”

“I need to get inthere,” Lucas said. “Prep the chamber.”

Drew flipped severalriser panel switches to power down the reactor’s subsystems.

Lucas rushed to getinto the safety gear, before snatching two electronic devices fromthe equipment cabinet, and a plastic sample container from the supplycabinet.

He stepped inside thechamber, completed decontamination procedures, and rushed back to thereactor. He hesitated for a moment, taking a deep breath beforeopening the core’s protective shield. When he looked inside, heconfirmed the reactor was empty. There was no sign of E-121 or itscontainer, only the black residue remained.

He used the portablemulti-spectrum analyzer from storage to scan for all known forms ofradiation, but found none. He turned to Drew and gave the thumbs downsignal. Next, he used the Radon detector to check for signs of thetoxic gas. He held up its sensor probe while walking the length ofthe chamber. Once again, he gave the all clear signal to Drew. Heopened the plastic container and used his glove-covered finger as ascoop to retrieve a sample of the black powder for Drew. He left thereactor with the specimen in hand, completed decontaminationprocedures, and changed back into his clothes.

He put the samplecontainer on the desk in front of his brother. “Here, don’t say Inever gave you anything.”

Drew picked up theplastic container, held it close to his eyes, and shook it gently.“What do you think happened to E-121?”

Lucas leaned back inhis chair and rubbed the back of his neck and shoulders. “I have noclue. Do you think we used too much power and vaporized it?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Kleezebee’s goingto be royally pissed.”

They spent the nexthour checking the available data logs, instrument readings, and videofeeds.

“The answer has to bein here somewhere.” Lucas flipped through the final few pages ofdata on the computer screen. He sat back in his chair, yawned,stretched, and then rubbed his watery eyes. When he looked back atthe computer screen, he noted a single, nonconforming data value justbelow the top edge of the screen. He had almost missed it. Hescrolled back a page and found another strange value just above it.He was suddenly wide-awake.

“Holy shit! There wasa massive power spike inside the reactor.”

“How massive?”

“According to thereadings, about a trillion times the level we were using at thetime.”

“That’s notpossible. You must be misreading the values.”

“Hey, all I can tellyou is what the log says. Somehow, the reactor was hit with a hugepower spike.”

Drew tilted thecomputer screen toward him and stared at it for good minute, beforeflipping through several of the data pages. “You’re absolutelyright. The spike’s timing does seem to coincide with E-121’sdisappearance.”

Lucas had intended tosee if they could recreate the accident. However, with the discoveryof the unknown energy spike, it was going to be difficult to do. Hehanded the black powder container to Drew. “Go see if Griffith canidentify this stuff.”

“Why me?”

“It’s your turn,”Lucas said, smiling. “Have fun, little brother.”

* * *

Forty-fiveminutes later, Lucas was leaning back in his chair with his eyesclosed when he heard Drew come through the lab door. “What’s theverdict?”

“It doesn’t exist.”

“What the f*ck doesthat mean?”

Drew gave the containerto Lucas. “It doesn’t register at all. Griffith ran it throughhis mass spectrometer, but it didn’t detect any chemical orbiological compounds. It’s as though the stuff wasn’t eventhere.”

“So I take it thisstuff is safe?” Lucas asked, not waiting for confirmation beforeopening the lid. He retrieved some of the black substance and rubbedit around between the tips of his fingers. It felt smooth, almostlike baby powder, but heavier. He held his fingers up to his nose andtook a whiff. “Kind of smells like . . . oranges.”

“So what’s next?”Drew asked.

Lucas reattached thecontainer’s lid and cleaned off his fingers with a paper towel. “Idon’t know about you, but I’m spent and can’t think straight.It’s been one brutal night. Let’s close up shop and come backtomorrow to see if we can figure this out before DL gets back fromWashington.”

“Did you forget aboutthe mainframe’s servicing tonight?”

“Oh, shit, that’sright. Okay, we’ll come back Sunday, then.”

Lucas backed up theirinstrument readings and data logs onto a USB flash drive in case hewanted to review it later. He unzipped Drew’s backpack and put thethumb drive and the black powder container into it.

The brothers followed established shutdown procedures for theirequipment, before returning to their apartment.