“We have to cancel the demo,” Ryan said without preamble.
“Oronzi, you’re as predictable as a solar eclipse,” Babington said. “Every time there’s an important event, you start imagining the worst. Can we just get through this one without the drama?”
“This isn’t like that.”
“You have half an hour to get changed, and then I need you at your polite best.” Babington pointed to a coat rack, where an expensive-looking black suit hung in a thin plastic sleeve. A purple tie was draped over the hanger. It looked like Ryan’s size.
“You bought me a suit?”
Babington gave a wry smile. “I know you too well. You’re my celebrity, Oronzi. You’re my Einstein. Everybody knows you’re a little eccentric; it’s part of your charm. But I can’t have you seen in that.” He waved at Ryan’s clothes.
Ryan had no intention of putting on the suit. He had read once, years ago, about an undertaker who stripped corpses of their clothes just before burying them and then sold the clothes on consignment. He hadn’t worn a suit since. “You’re not listening to me,” he said. “We have to cancel. We had another incident last night. It’s the closest it’s ever come to breaking out.”
“What are we talking about here? Worst case scenario?” Babington studied himself in a mirror and adjusted the knot of his tie.
“I don’t know,” Ryan said. “That’s just it. It’s unstable. What will happen if it ruptures? There’s no precedent.”
Babington sighed. “Look. This demo is everything. All our funding is riding on this. The Joint Chiefs are here already. The Secretary of Defense is on his way. I should already be downstairs shaking hands. You come in here every other day with a new Chicken Little story. Your little phobias play well in the media, and that’s all fine. But your fears usually come to nothing. So tell me, should I really cancel the most important demonstration of new technology in a decade? Is it that important? Are you that sure?”
“Of course I’m not sure. This isn’t something anyone has ever studied before. But hear me out.”
Babington picked up a leather binder from the desk. “There’s only so much Danish and coffee the Joint Chiefs can consume before they start to feel slighted. You have thirty seconds to convince me.”
“There’s something alive in there.”
That stopped Babington short, and he made eye contact for the first time. “Alive? Is somebody hurt? One of your people? Tell me the media doesn’t know.”
“No, no, not like that. There’s something alive inside the wormhole. Something not human.”
He saw the concern drift out of Babington’s eyes, replaced by annoyance. “This gets old, Oronzi. I need you to just do your job.”
Babington strode out into the hallway, but Ryan walked after him. “I am doing my job. Listen, the baby universe stays connected to ours through the wormhole, but its energies are always fluctuating. There’s always the danger it will detach, and we’ll lose it, or else that the particle stream will increase drastically, causing widespread destruction.”
Babington stopped at the elevator and glared at him. “You told me you had that under control.”
“Well, sort of.”
He crossed his arms. “Explain quickly. Use small words.”
“I manage the baby universe by projecting energy fields through the wormhole. The shape of the fields is governed by certain equations I control. But the energy pattern mutates, so I have to change the equations all the time to keep up. At first, I thought it was just the normal change pattern as the universe grows; it’s not like we’ve done this before. But—I know this sounds crazy—the energy pattern has been changing specifically to defeat my equations, forcing me to make them more complex. There is something solving those equations and shaping the wormhole accordingly. It’s like I’m setting puzzles for it, rather than actually controlling it. And it’s getting faster at solving them. It’s so quick now that I have to have several new equations in reserve, programmed to apply as soon as one fails.”
Babington’s voice was disbelieving. “You’re telling me the wormhole is sentient.”
“No. I’m telling you there’s something sentient on the other side of it. Something very intelligent. And it’s trying to break through.”
Babington punched the elevator’s down button. “I should have seen it coming,” he said to the ceiling. “I ignored all the signs, and now, at the worst possible time…” The elevator arrived with a ding and the doors opened. Babington stepped in and turned back to face him. “You’re not going to do anything stupid like try to destroy it, are you?”
“I already tried.”
“You did what?” A flash of pure anger passed quickly across Babington’s face.
“I couldn’t do it.”
“Well, thank heaven for small favors,” Babington said. “Look, I need you to hold yourself together, just for today. Don’t talk to any media. Tell them you’re busy or something. Tomorrow, once we get this demo out of the way, we’ll talk. Maybe you should take some time off.”
“I’m fine. I don’t need time off,” Ryan said, walking toward him. “I—” He stopped short at the elevator doorway. The floor of the elevator was a centimeter lower than the floor of the hallway, and he could see a little light through the gap. He tried to take another step, but his legs wouldn’t move. The elevators doors started to close.
Babington rolled his eyes. “Right. See you at the bottom of the stairs. Remember, no media.”
The doors slid shut, leaving Ryan staring at his own reflection in their mirrored surface.
CHAPTER 3
“Is that him?” Alex Kelley asked. She had only been at the NJSC for a week now, and it was her first glimpse of the famed Ryan Oronzi.
Tequila Williams looked where she was pointing and nodded. “In the flesh. Smartest guy in the world, so they say. They also say he’s cracked.” Tequila was tall and slender, partial to platform heels, low necklines, and neon eye shadow. When Alex and Tequila walked across a room, it was Tequila who drew all the looks. Alex didn’t mind. She dressed for comfort, not to draw attention, whereas Tequila always wanted attention.
They were both physicists-turned-engineers, here at the NJSC with the Lockheed Martin contingent to demonstrate the latest technology to representatives of the military and intelligence communities. The demo would take place in the NJSC’s High Energy Lab, the largest facility on the Lakehurst complex. The name was a misdirection, intentionally benign, to distract attention from the armed guards and oversized power conduits that screamed Secret Government Facility. It was an enormous building, surrounded by cameras and two layers of fencing and razor wire. Alex doubted the public was fooled by the name.
The technology they were demonstrating had been built by Alex and Tequila’s company, but that the technology was possible at all was due to Dr. Ryan Oronzi. Rumor in the media was that Oronzi was on the cusp of discovering the elusive Theory of Everything, finally reconciling gravity with particle physics and finishing what Einstein had started more than a century before.
In the flesh, Oronzi was at least a hundred pounds overweight, his hair askew, dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of worn jeans that would have benefitted from a belt. “He looks like a plumber,” Alex said.
Tequila stifled a laugh. “I guess if you’re smart enough, you can do and say what you like, and people just call you eccentric. It’s like being old.”
“Or rich,” Alex said.
The demo was staged in a huge, warehouse space that would give them enough room to demonstrate the new technology in dramatic style. All of the guests were milling in one corner, near a lavish breakfast spread—far nicer than anything Lockheed Martin ever provided just for their employees. Oronzi’s arrival quickly attracted the attention of the generals and executives, who shook his hand and made small talk. Alex and Tequila made their way through to the tables. Tequila piled her plate high with eggs, bacon, and a Danish, but Alex just poured some coffee into a disposable cup and leaned against the wall, sipping it.