Linkage: The Narrows of Time

Chapter 6

Vexation





The security systembuzzed, but no one moved. The double doors opened and Dr. Kleezebeeentered, carrying a black three-ring binder with the phrase PROJECTAG-356-12 written on a white label affixed to the cover. He joinedthe group at the worktable.

“How are thingsprogressing?” Kleezebee asked with an unlit, stubby cigar hangingfrom the corner of his lips. The professor stood next to Lucas.

“Perfectly,” Lucasreplied. “We’re just about ready to load the core.”

“Excellent. Let’sget to it,” the professor said, placing the binder on the table.“I’ve finished reviewing your work, and everything appears readyto go. Nice work you two. I only changed a few things with respect topower utilization. Let’s begin with the flow regulator set to fiftypercent. We can always increase it from there if needed.” Lucas andDrew nodded. Kleezebee winked and smiled at Drew. “Time to man yourstation. Abby, you go with him to observe.”

Drew gave the E-121container to Trevor and wheeled himself to the Primary ControlStation. He sat in front of the right console; Abby sat down to hisleft. When she scooted her chair closer to his, he could smell herstrawberry-scented perfume. It reminded him of his mother’sbackyard vegetable garden.

Abby was looking overher right shoulder when she whispered to him, “What’s the dealwith Trevor? He gives me the creeps.”

“Trevor? Oh, he’sharmless. He’s a big teddy bear and would never hurt a fly.”

“He just stands therewith his arms folded and never says anything.”

“That’s just theway he is. Sometimes he goes an entire day without saying a word.”

“I’m glad you’renot that way,” she said, touching her hand lightly on his shoulder.

Drew felt his faceflush when she smiled at him. He had difficulty stabilizing his lefthand when he reached for a series of red switches located on theriser panel in front of her. When he pulled back his arm afterenabling power to the chamber’s video system, his forearm grazedher shoulder. The tiny black hairs on his arm tingled, sending a waveof shivers throughout his body. He waited for his LCD screen to fillwith four equal-sized windows. Three of them contained camera feedsshowing the exterior of the reactor; the fourth was a shot of thereactor’s core.

“So what happensnext?” Abby asked, opening her documentation journal.

He changed theupper-left video feed to show Trevor and Lucas standing inside thedecontamination chamber. Lucas was holding the E-121 container whileTrevor put on his triple-XL hazmat suit.

“It’s time to loadthe core,” Drew told her.

He brought up a commandwindow on his computer screen, obscuring the video feeds except theone monitoring his brother. He waited until he received the thumbs-upsignal from Lucas before entering a series of programming constructsinto his wireless keyboard. Thirty seconds later, the decontaminationsequence was complete.

* * *

Lucasstepped through the inner door first and led the way back to thereactor. He unscrewed four wing nuts securing the reactor’sprotective shroud and slid it open. He stood aside and waited forTrevor to place the E-121 container inside the core’s main housing.The container fit perfectly inside the precision-made receptacle.

“The material’s inplace. Closing the core now,” he announced over the communicationsystem.

Lucas closed the heavyshield, secured it, and the two scientists headed for the exit. Theyfollowed established air-lock decontamination procedures beforeremoving their safety gear and leaving the chamber.

“All set, boss. We’regood to go,” Lucas said, sitting down in front of the left console.He was only a few feet to the right of the chamber’s door. Abby wasseated to his right with Drew on the other side of her.

Lucas spent the nextseveral minutes preparing his workstation for the experiment, but wasdistracted by Abby and Drew babbling away. Occasionally, the chatterwas interrupted by one of Abby’s giggles. He looked back to seeKleezebee talking with Trevor near the center worktable. Lucascouldn’t hear their conversation, but based on Kleezebee’s bodylanguage and the professor’s frequent glances at Drew, he suspecteda problem.

Lucas leaned around thefront of Abby and quietly told his brother, “You need toconcentrate on the work. Kleezebee’s watching, and he lookspissed.”

“Sorry,” Drew said,straightening himself up in his chair.

A short while later,Kleezebee and Trevor had finished their conversation and joined theRamsays at the Primary Control Station. “All right, then, let’sfire this baby up,” Kleezebee said.

Drew opened theprocedure manual, licked his forefinger, and used it to turn to thefirst page. It contained almost forty pages of instrument checks,startup protocols, calculations, and notes to run the experiment. Thefirst order of business was to boot the various systems and reset theinstruments. Kleezebee’s procedure manual included extensive notesregarding startup protocols and baseline readings.

“Control systemsinitiated. Stage one complete,” Lucas reported after calibratingthe final set of instruments.

Abby documented everyfacet of the experiment in precise detail. As was true with mostscientists, Lucas despised the tedious documentation requirementsmandated by the advisors and often chose to shortcut the process byavoiding it altogether. He hoped Abby’s detail-oriented naturewould save him a tremendous amount of grunt work.

Kleezebee was standingwatch over Lucas’ shoulder, his arms folded high across his chest.He was grinning and seemed proud of their accomplishments. Lucas feltthe same way. Their team was about to rewrite the laws of gravity.

“Go ahead and removethe atmosphere from the core,” Kleezebee said.

Drew started typinginto his keyboard and seconds later, the custom-built reactorengaged, filling the lab with a momentary swooshing sound.

Lucas checked hisinstruments to verify the reactor’s core had transformed into aspace-like vacuum. It had. “Core’s ready, Professor.”

“Now let’s flood itwith the gas,” Kleezebee said.

Drew turned to anotherpage in the procedure manual and pressed a series of bright yellowswitches in order from left to right. Then he twisted twoquarter-sized control knobs and pressed a black button labeled FLOW.“Flow regulators are set. Releasing the Radon gas now,” he said,typing commands into his console.

“Radon gas?” Abbyasked Drew.

“We use pressurizedinert gas to stop unwanted chain reactions from occurring.”

“Status?” Kleezebeeasked.

“Seals holding andall systems report green,” Drew replied after checking hisinstruments.

“Lucas, fire up theEM system, and make sure it’s calibrated properly,” Kleezebeesaid.

Lucas activated theelectromagnets surrounding the core by lifting eight toggle switchessimultaneously. Within milliseconds, everyone could hear thereverberating hum of the superconducting magnets starting theirpower-up sequence. The low-pitched rumble shook the console desk,sending a jar of pencils and a pad of sticky notes off the edge. Abbybent down in her chair to pick them up off the floor.

Kleezebee said, “Thisis the point of no return. Let’s have a full systems check beforewe proceed.”

Drew reviewed eachsystem. “Calibrations are . . . good. Power levels . . . check.Monitoring and safety systems are active and ready. E-121 is stableand pressures are holding. It looks like everything is workingperfectly and within specs. I think we’re good to go.”

Lucas’ watch said10:24 PM. He enshrined the time in his mind.

After a long exhale,Kleezebee said, “Set the beam’s power to Level One. When thecapacitor is charged, let ‘er rip.”

Lucas reached forwardand unlocked a palm-sized black control knob attached to the verticalportion of the control station. He twisted it counterclockwise andset its indicator to LEVEL ONE before locking its protectivecover back into place. He pushed a neighboring red CHARGEbutton and waited for the capacitor’s power meter to increase. Whenit reached capacity, a green READY light lit up on his panel.He looked back. “Are we ready?”

Kleezebee nodded.Trevor scrunched up his face and took a giant step backward, as if heexpected the chamber to explode.

Lucas steadied hisfinger and pressed the green READY button. A short, pulsatingwhirr resonated from deep inside the chamber, signaling that thecapacitor had released its stored energy. “Almost there,” hemumbled with excitement. He could feel his chest tightening, makingit difficult for him to breathe. Soon, the monitors began to streammultiple columns of numerical data up from the bottom.

When the final set ofresults appeared, Lucas stood up and yelled, “Shit!” and threwhis safety glasses across the room with a side-armed throwing motion.

Abby flinched. “What’swrong?”

Lucas raised his handsagainst the sides of his head. While looking to the heavens, he said,“Nothing. That’s what happened. Not a goddamn thing. Two years ofwork, and then—DICK.”

Kleezebee touchedLucas’ shoulder. “Patience. It’s only our first attempt.”

The professor turned tothe other Ramsay brother. “What’s the status of the core?”

Drew checked thereactor instruments. “Looks good. E-121 remains viable and thecore’s adequately pressurized. Should we try again, possibly atfull power?”

“Let’s not getahead of ourselves. At this point, there’s no guarantee thatdoubling the power will accomplish anything.”

Kleezebee began to pacethe room while everyone else remained silent. He shuffled to the farwall and back, looking immersed in thought, his hands folded behindhis back. Then he stopped pacing and addressed the group. “Beforewe do anything, I need you to perform a complete systems analysis ofthe available data. Let’s see if we can tell what, if anything,happened. For now, let’s power down the EM system but leave thecore pressurized.”

Kleezebee’s cellphone rang. He opened the phone’s flip cover. “Go for DL.”Partway through the conversation, he held his hand over the phone’smicrophone and told the crew, “I need to take this call outside.I’ll be back in a few.”

* * *

Halfan hour later, the team was huddled around the center worktable afterconcluding their detailed systems analysis. Kleezebee still hadn’treturned.

“So what do we have?”Lucas asked.

Drew read from a listof notes. “I checked the core’s internal data feeds and didn’tdetect anything anomalous. The core’s material remained viablethroughout the test and the internal housing was structurally sound.The core’s internal pressure held steady and was right on mark.Yet, our instruments failed to show any notable change in E-121’sEM field.”

Lucas sensed hisbrother had more to report. “Anything else?”

Drew nodded. “Thereally odd thing is that, with all the energy released, you’d thinkour instruments would have recorded something. If nothing else, itshould have at least registered a power spike when the core wasbombarded. But zilch. All that energy had to go somewhere. It’s asthough the beam never fired.”

“Drew had me reviewthe operational logs,” Abby said. “According to the projectspecs, the capacitor’s power level was precisely where it wassupposed to be, and the beam frequency was tuned perfectly. Allreadings indicate that the energy was discharged and the beam fired.”

“I check magnets andcalibration matched. Power okay. No failure,” Trevor added.

“Okay, then, let’srecap what we know,” Lucas said. “Everything was calibratedperfectly. The core and the E-121 were stable. We had the properamount of power. All our readings were normal before, during, andafter the test. The capacitor’s energy discharged and engaged thecore, but no power was registered.”

Lucas rubbed histemples. “Damn, that makes no sense. What are we missing?”

“Nothing, it shouldhave worked. What do we do next?” Drew asked, looking as perplexedas Lucas felt.

“The obvious nextstep is to run the test again, but this time we use full power. It’sentirely possible that the beam’s energy level was not sufficientenough to morph E-121’s EM field.”

“We could also tryreversing the EM polarity?” Abby asked with a look of confidence.

“Maybe use inversewave frequency?” Trevor added.

Lucas took a minute toconsider the merit of each suggestion. After a short pause, hedecided a politically correct answer was in order. It would helpcover up his indecisiveness. “Hmmm, all three ideas have potential.But we need to run them by DL to see what he wants to do, ifanything. I will—”

The room started toshake. The procedure manual slid off the console desk and the storagecabinets’ metal doors rattled and flung open. Several items felloff the shelves and landed on the floor. Abby grabbed Drew’s arm.

The tremor lasted lessthan ten seconds.

“Was that anearthquake?” Abby asked, letting go of Drew.

“It felt like one,but it’s not. When it first started a month ago, we checked withthe USGS, but they said there hadn’t been any seismic activity inthe area,” Lucas replied.

“We think the NASAgroup must be firing up one of their experiments. Some type ofunderground experiment,” Drew said.

“What are theyworking on?” she asked.

“Nobody knows,”Lucas said. “If you continue down our hallway, around a few morecorners, you’ll see their security station. It’s staffed with afull complement of security personnel.”

Drew added, “We callit ‘the Zone.’ If they think you’re a threat, they’ll chargeat you with their guns drawn. We’ve heard several people have beenarrested.” Drew grinned at her. Before anyone could respond toDrew’s comment, the lab’s telephone rang. It was mounted on thewall, next to the entrance.

Lucas sprinted over toit and snatched its receiver from the cradle. “Dr. Ramsayspeaking.” He turned sideways and leaned his right shoulder againstthe wall. To balance himself, he crossed his right leg over his left.He remained silent until the very end of the conversation. “Okay,I’ll let the team know,” he told the caller before slamming downthe receiver. “That was Kleezebee. He said our project is on hold,indefinitely, at least until he can convince the f*cking AdvisoryCommittee to let us continue our work.”

“What? How can thatbe? They already approved this project,” Drew snorted.

“Apparently, Larsonjust got in touch with the committee’s chairman and somehowconvinced him to suspend our experiment, pending a formal review.Kleezebee said it has something to do with government liability andthe E-121 samples. All I know for sure is Kleezebee told us to shutdown for now. He thinks this could take a while, and we might as wellhead home for the holidays.”

“But we‘re soclose. How can they do this to us now?”

Lucas figured hisInternet humiliation was the reason. He wanted to tell Drew thetruth, but couldn’t bear to disappoint him, especially not in frontof the techs. “Could be any number of reasons.”

“I can’t believethis is happening. We deserve better than this.”

“I hear you, bro. Butwe’ll have to wait a few days until Kleezebee gets back. He said hewas heading to Washington right away to meet with the entire AdvisoryCommittee. I guess they’re at some technology conference in thePentagon.”

He turned his attentionto the techs. “You two can leave, if you want. There’s nothingmore for you to do right now. We’ll call you when the project’sback on.” He told Trevor, “Kleezebee wants you to call him rightaway.”

Trevor nodded.

Abby gave Drew a folded slip of paper before gathering up herbelongings and walking to the door. Trevor held the door open andwaited for her to walk through.