Sam was genuinely surprised. “What did we want with such a ghastly device?”
She smiled. It was patronizing, and at the same time, appeared endearing to him. “A naturally occurring phenomena capable of destroying an entire naval fleet in one go? Think about it, not only could we wipe out entire navies, but where are the largest cities found around the globe?”
“Near water?”
“Exactly, so we could wipe out major cities with such a weapon.”
“Okay, so we funded it. What the hell went wrong?”
“It didn’t work. Despite research and development to the tune of nearly a hundred billion dollars, the project came up as infeasible.”
“Well someone worked out how to do it!”
“Yes, and we’re going to need you to find out who they sold their research to, before it is used to cripple our shipping lanes and brings our nation to a halt.” She smiled at him. “I want you to contact Vanessa, now that you’re on such friendly terms with her. Find out who else was involved in the original research, and who she could think of that would have been interested and capable of buying the product.”
“Senator Croft?” Sam looked perplexed. “What does she know about the research?”
“Everything. She was the Senator who lobbied for the proposed research in the first place. I assumed you knew.”
Sam swore. “She never said anything about that to me. Which means she lied to me — she’s behind this.”
“Samuel.”
“Yes?”
“Have you been following the election?”
He shook his head. Still dazed by the latest deception. “No. I’ve been trying to save everyone’s asses! I don’t have time to follow the stupid election. Why do I care which politician gets in and maintains the current status quo of lies and deceit?”
“Because Senator Croft is about to become our next President.”
The words struck him like the final shot. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Croft had betrayed him, while playing straight into his generosity. He’d kept her in the loop, and the whole time she’d been planning the attacks.
“Now what?” he asked.
The Secretary of Defense looked at him. Smiled wickedly and said, “Now you find me the evidence. Give it to me and only me. I don’t want the word to get out that we’re having trouble with our own government. Christ, the backlash if the general public knew we spent 100 billion on research into a devastating weapon, which is now being used to hold us hostage, would be terrible. Let alone that it was orchestrated by our next President.”
Chapter Ninety Eight
Sam couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “But Luke Eldridge was involved in alternative energy sources! I was told that he had discovered a new source of energy. Something so plentiful that the oil companies had joined together and offered him and his partners something to the tune of 20 billion dollars to crush the research lines. I was told that was why he was killed.”
“What you were told was wrong. We gave him a 100 billion dollars to build a weapon that could sink an entire navy. Think about it. He was a leading expert in environmental manipulation. He employed oceanographers, hydrologists, meteorologists. If anyone could build a rogue wave, Luke Eldridge could. And a rogue wave could wipe out an entire navy at one hit. Every sailor knows the ocean is bigger than any ship — and we were going to own the ocean.”
“So what went wrong?”
“He came to us after two years of research and told us he was having trouble. The nanobots were having problems maintaining their programing codes.”
“Of course they did. We just didn’t have the technology to produce such complex devices. He must have been feeding you his ideas knowing that Defense has an unlimited budget.”
“No. His ideas were simple. The programing was to be simple. They would encode solid and fluid states of being. A radio device would activate their density control and several miles of fast growing plankton flagella would sudden tense up. A wall of water would be created. Then, another radio wave would transmit a message to tell the nanobots to deactivate, causing the water to become fluid again.”
Sam recalled Veyron providing a similar theory. “And by choosing which side to render inactive first, he could manipulate the direction of the wave.”
“Precisely.”
“But somewhere along the way it evolved. It decided it didn’t just like changing from a solid state to a fluid one. It wanted more. And now it’s at war with us, and owns most of the east coast of America.”
She clenched her jaw. “Yes, and I would like you to get it back for us.”
“Are you kidding me? After all this, you want to capture it so you can continue your research and development?”
She didn’t hesitate with her reply. “If you knew the Atomic bomb was out there, would you ignore it, and hope that it would go away? Or would you spend every last dollar making sure that you were the one who wielded it?”
It was common military rhetoric that Sam had heard his entire career. The winners have the biggest, newest, best weapons. Entire nations have gone bankrupt with the concept. It’s a self-fulfilling cycle. Each country spends more on its military, which means its neighbors have to follow suit in fear of getting left behind. It was proof that mankind was driven by fear. And if it never learned to evolve from that stance, Sam figured, it probably didn’t deserve to survive.
He wasn’t sure where he fitted into this stance, but either way, he had a lot of work to do if the human race was going to survive this round.
“Good bye, Madam Secretary.”
Chapter Ninety Nine
Senator Croft picked up her office phone and dialed a number from memory. It rang three times before a man answered.
“Hello.”
“Timothy, where have you been? I’ve been trying to call you all day!”
“I’ve been busy rallying the college students to vote, that’s all. I hear you’re in the lead. Why? What’s going on?” He sounded worried.
“Your Frankenstein creation just tried to fucking kill me!”
“Oh my God. I’m sorry Vanessa. Jesus, where were you?”
“East of Fort Lauderdale in a Coast Guard vessel, campaigning at the site of the near disaster of the supertanker Mississippi! Timothy. Why would it even want to attack a Coast Guard’s ship?”
Timothy ignored her. “Really? I thought you destroyed the Bimini Road?”
“We did. I certainly wouldn’t have gone anywhere near the area if I thought your wretched things could form a rogue wave without the Bimini Road!”
“They can’t, as far as I knew.”
“So what went wrong?”
Silence.
Despite being one of the brightest minds on earth, the 76-year-old professor of nanotechnologies was too shaken to speak. “Christ! Timothy, they’re your creation — you don’t have control of them anymore, do you?”
He started to talk and then stopped short. “No, they took out a couple of cargo ships before I could stop them. At first I thought they were working off their simple programing, then when they took out the third cargo ship, I realized they were picking their targets, growing their numbers, and literally waging a war on all other lives in the ocean.”
“But you still had enough control to lead them to target the oil tanker?”
“Yes, but that was good luck more than any actual control. At that stage I still duped myself into believing that I was in control. By surrounding the ship with smaller vessels the nanobots assumed it to be their greatest threat.”