He checked his status board for the computers that were linked to the tube. The spools ran the tapes through, loading the program. The system was ready.
A red light began flashing in the ceiling and a buzzer sounded. The mission was a go.
Vasilev looked across the control panel. He tapped a technician on the shoulder. “The emergency neutralizer. Is it functioning?”
The technician nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
A door on the far side of the experimental chamber opened.
On the other side of the globe and in a more temperate zone, the USS Thresher, the American Navy’s most advanced nuclear attack submarine, was preparing to conduct its own set of tests: a series of deep-sea dives one hundred miles to the east of Cape Cod. On board were sixteen officers, ninety-six enlisted men, and seventeen civilian technicians to monitor her performance.
The Thresher was the first in a new line of submarines. It was small, less than three hundred feet long by thirty-two feet wide, and all those extra personnel made working inside quite cramped. Today the new ship was going to be tested to see how deep it could dive and operate. This new breed of attack submarine had been developed to directly counter the Soviet threat of ballistic missile submarines.
After getting approval from the commanding officer aboard the Skylark, the surface ship monitoring the tests, the Thresher began its first descent. Just over the horizon to the east, a plane circled.
Soldiers came through the door, pushing four gurneys on which were strapped the other critical component of the SD8 project. IVs ran into the arms of each of the four prone men, and sheets covered their entire body. Of all those stationed at Special SD8, these men knew they were never going to leave October Revolution Island. At least not in the way that one would normally expect.
The soldiers wheeled a gurney next to each coffin. They pulled the sheets aside and Vasilev could hear the gasps from the hardened GRU officers in the control center.
Each of the four men was horribly disfigured. All four were blind, their eye sockets empty, the gaping holes red and scarred. On each man’s head four metal sockets extended out, having been surgically implanted through the skull directly into the brain. It had taken the scientists at SD8 many years to perfect the technique of implanting those sockets and to determine the correct location for each. Fortunately, they had had hundreds of prisoners to experiment on, all of whom had joined the German soldiers in their watery grave.
“Was the blinding necessary?” One of the officers had stepped back from the blast glass.
“It allows focus, Comrade Colonel,” Professor Sarovan replied. “Also, you can appreciate that these men can never escape in the condition they are in.”
General Vortol, the head of the GRU, gave a nasty laugh. “If only we could do such to all our prisoners. A most effective anti-escape device.”
Vasilev could not control the choked noise he made, and the others heard it.
“Do you have something to say, Comrade Scientist?” General Vortol demanded.
“I don’t believe it was necessary to blind these men,” Vasilev said. He knew with that simple statement his career, if not his life, was over. But he could sense the mental power that was coming out of the test chamber as the soldiers lifted each of the four men into their coffins. Vasilev had no desire to be here any longer or be a part of this.
“Vasilev!” Sarovan snapped, but the general’s voice overrode his.
“These men are criminals, are they not?” Vortol stared at Vasilev. He waited. “Are they not, Comrade Scientist?”
“Yes, General,” Vasilev finally answered.
Vortol had a file folder in his hand, and he glanced at it. “And we could not be assured of their cooperation, correct?”
Vasilev could see that each of the four men was inside his case. Scientists were hooking wires to each body, picking up different colored leads that looked very similar to those going to a car’s spark plugs. The colors corresponded to those on the four metal sockets. They attached the leads to the sockets and screwed them down tight. None of the four men moved; they were guinea pigs used to being treated as such.
“Comrade General,” Vasilev said, “perhaps then we should have waited until we found four men whose patriotism we could be assured of?”
“And who would volunteer to allow this to be done to them?” Vortol laughed. “You scientists are quite naive. This is still in the experimental stage. If you succeed today, then perhaps we could allow you to use different subjects.”
“Sir, we— ” Vasilev began.
“Enough!” Sarovan snapped. “You are to stand down, Comrade Vasilev. We will deal with you later.”
Vasilev looked into the chamber once more. Earphones were securely fastened onto each man’s ears. Rhythmic music was being pumped in through the wires at a very high volume. Vasilev knew the purpose of the music was to keep each man’s attention and also to prepare the harmonics of the brain. He had spent three years simply determining what type of music worked best, amid all the other aspects of this project he had worked on.
The red flashing light ceased its activity, and the experimental chamber was plunged into darkness except for a single searchlight, centered on the metal tube. At a signal from Sarovan, the lids on each of the coffins slowly swung shut. Fluid pumped in, floating the men inside, while air from the chamber was delivered to them through a tube clamped onto their mouths. The liquid was heated to exactly body temperature and furthered the subject’s sensory deprivation.
Vasilev was ignored as the party gathered around a machine in the control room. Sarovan placed a photograph of a submarine, the Thresher, on a piece of plate glass that was on the top of one of the machines. A light glowed upward, taking in the picture.
“This image is being fed through the machines directly into the occipital lobes of each of the four men,” Sarovan explained to the military officers. “They see it as if it were before their eyes. It is the only ‘light’ they have seen in weeks. They have to see this image. They have no choice. We are also intermittently sending them the location of the submarine in a series of image stages from large scale to small— Atlantic Ocean first, then narrowing down to the exact location.”
“So they see it and they have the location,” Vortol growled. “I still do not understand how this works.”
Sarovan did his best to swallow his sigh. “Comrade General, what we are dealing with here is a new physics. We call it the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. We have been studying it for a while.” He spoke from rote memory, while the active part of his mind focused on the equipment in front of him.
“In normal quantum mechanics, you have electricity, which is the emission and absorption of virtual photons. You have AM radio, which is electromagnetic modulation of photons, and you have FM radio, which changes the frequency of the photons into what you call radio waves.” He glanced up. He knew he’d already begun to lose the general, but he always believed in starting from a known before moving into the unknown.
“But can you see a radio wave?” Sarovan continued. “Feel it? It is the virtual photon that propagates these waves. This virtual world is all around you, the waves passing through you all the time, yet you are not aware of it.