Brooke had a searing pain in her left shoulder and was on one knee trying to raise her weapon. She saw the face of the woman as she was also struggling to raise her own weapon. Brooke managed to flop her almost-dead hand onto her knee, adjusted her aim from her hip, and hit the woman dead-center. The woman fell back as her gun fired, the bullet perforating the ceiling. The SWAT guy jumped over Brooke, ran to the downed woman, and kicked the gun away from her lifeless hands. In short gasps, Brooke demanded the phone from the woman’s hand. When she got it she told the SWAT man to squat next to the hostages. Brooke fumbled with her good hand and pressed the FaceTime icon. She had the camera pointed at herself and could see her own image on the screen. The call was answered by Raffey. Through short labored breaths she said, “Mr. Juth…your family is safe…with the Swiss…police.” She turned the camera around and showed him the two of them with the Swiss SWAT guy as she reiterated, “Again, they…are safe this…is real time, they have been…rescued.” Then the camera hit the floor as Brooke collapsed.
Watching all this on the cloned phone one room away was Bill, who looked at the clock as it clicked under five seconds to the collision, ‘2:59:55:54.’ “Let’s go!” he said to his military guy, and they entered the room where Juth was seated at his workstation holding the phone. Immediately, Bill had a bad feeling about what he saw.
The screen showed the video that proved his family was safe and there were tears in his eyes, yet he busily typed away. Three seconds.
“Raffael Juth! It’s over! Your family is safe — step away from the console,” Bill barked as he approached.
The soldier drew a bead on Raffey. “Put your hands in the air, now!”
One second.
Juth looked to Bill; there was a small smile of satisfaction breaking as he pushed the enter key. The blood from his head wound splattered over the workstation and the keyboard before the alarms started sounding.
Bill grabbed a supervisor who stood nearby, stunned by the gore, and snapped him out of it. “What did he do? Can you reverse it? Hey! What did he do?”
Cautiously, the supervisor looked at the blood-spattered screen. All he could say was, “Oh, my God.”
Bill pushed him aside to see if he could reverse whatever Juth had just done when everything started shaking and a low rumbling growl enveloped the room. It was like an earthquake. Every screen and meter flashed and pinned against the maximum range.
A moment of extreme terror froze Bill’s mind and body as he looked at Juth’s lifeless body and realized that he had been wrong — it had been Juth all along.
A technician three positions over yelled, “Ring temperature critical and rising…off the scale.”
The supervisor, now engaged in the drama, looked over Bill’s shoulder and flatly and without emotion said in a small voice, “He overrode our simulation with his own; he’s melting the machine.”
Bill’s mind raced, it didn’t go off! Everything is still here. Everything should have been atomically disrupted, a cloud of plasma to dissipate into nothingness. Yet we are all still here. Then he got it. Juth made his own play, a master’s gambit to rob from anybody else the opportunity to destroy eternity. Bill looked down at Juth’s lifeless body and was caught by the now frozen smile of satisfaction on his face. “Well played, Raffey. Sorry you didn’t get to call ‘Checkmate!’”
XXXII. GIFTS BOTH BIG AND SMALL
Brooke returned to consciousness on a gurney outside the factory, her shoulder bandaged. On a gurney to her right were Leena and Kirsi. She called a SWAT guy over and whispered something into his ear, and he trotted off. Leena was crying — her ordeal was over and her emotions flowed. Through her sobs she saw the cop come back carrying something. She wiped her teary eyes and saw that it was Kirsi’s ‘beebeebear.’ The mother started heaving deeper sobs as the magnanimity of the gesture released even more torrents of emotion. She looked to Brooke and said, “Vielen Dank, Vielen Dank.”
Brooke managed a half smile, but the strain of holding her head up took over and she lay back down. She rolled her head sideways and saw the little girl squeal with delight as she hugged the worn, ratty stuffed toy almost as tightly as her mother was hugging her. Brooke closed her eyes as the IV of painkillers kicked in, her last thought being that this was the best way to end her career and start her new life with Mush.
“Seventeen years!” was what Bill told President Mitchell over his secure phone when he asked how long the collider would be out of commission.
“So we all dodged a bullet then?” the president said, not hiding his relief.
“It seems that Juth outsmarted everyone. He paid for it with his life, but he took away the biggest target any terror group could hope for, and maybe saved the known universe as well.”
“How’s Brooke? I heard she was shot.”
“She’s good; the bullet was slowed by the back of her vest and lodged in her muscle. She’ll be sore for a while but the docs here say no permanent damage but she’ll know when it’s going to rain without a forecast.”
“Thank God.”
“What do we know about who was behind this?”
“We’ve got The Engineer and The Architect. So far they seem like our worst nightmare: brilliant, insane, and bent on a religious belief that if they destroy everything, their God will be able to rebuild a perfect new universe — without infidels.”
“So detonating the collider was the only way they could have ever even dreamed of achieving that madness.”
“Again, Juth has made sure that no one else in the foreseeable future could ever get that close.”
“The man gave his life to see to it; to some he will be a hero.”
“I can live with that, sir,” He smiled at Janice as she walked over to him. His attention returned to the phone as the president’s tone changed.
“Bill, you and your team performed above and beyond any expectations a commander-in-chief could wish for. Hell, you’ve already got lots of medals you can never show anyone. Is there something else our nation could do for you?”
“Two things, sir.”
“Name ’em.”
“Can Janice, Joey, Phyllis, Brooke, Mush Morton, Kronos, and whatever he is dating these days book in for a weekend at Camp David? That was awesome.”
“That’s easy. Done. Next?”
“A full scholarship and the full death benefits befitting a staff officer for the family of Corporal Deon Bradley; a good man, a patriot-warrior and loving father who died too soon, sir.”
“Great idea Bill. In fact, I’ll cover the scholarship myself and Congress will enact the annuity to his wife and kid.”
“Then I’d say we are even, sir.”
Bill slipped the phone in his pocket.
Janice was beaming at him. “That was the best thing you could’ve asked for. And you, my dear husband, are the best thing I could ever ask for.”
She turned and leaned back against Bill. He put his arms around her as they enjoyed the silence and the exquisite storybook beauty of the lake. It seemed unreal that five hundred feet below, the rings had melted and collapsed. Thankfully, the machine’s demise did not mar the beauty of Lake Geneva and this picture-perfect setting… or the universe.
“Mmmm, beautiful isn’t it.” Janice said as she sighed.
“Yes, you are.” Bill nuzzled and kissed her neck.
“Okay, I’ve had enough of this place, lets grab some chocolate and go home.”