Jim escorted the group out into the corridor and pointed in the direction of the men’s bathroom. “The men’s room is down there,” he said to the cameraman. Looking back into the room as the door closed behind them he caught sight of a fuming, visibly shaking, Professor Lorentz speaking angrily to Mina.
When will this day be over? he wondered.
Forty
Something was happening with the crowd outside the security fence.
From his position within the security-booth at the complex’s front gate, Corporal Robert Parsons heard the murmur of a thousand voices whispering as one. It sounded like the distant rumble of half-heard thunder.
Glancing at his watch, the young guard saw it was nearing twenty-five minutes to midnight. Outside his warm booth, the overhead security lights illuminated the darkness to only midway across the perimeter road. It was too dark for him to make out the massed church demonstrators who had set-up camp on the opposite side of it. They remained hidden from him in the darkness of a starless night.
Opening the door to his security booth, Parsons stepped outside into the cool night air. The noise from across the road was louder outside of the sound proofed glass booth, but it was still little more than an unintelligible murmur to him; like a conversation heard through the plasterboard wall of a cheap motel.
But the young soldier could sense something was going on and it set the hairs on the back of his crew-cut head tingling. For a moment, Corporal Parsons felt a creeping unease claw its way up his back, but then his training kicked in and he took a step closer to the closed security gate.
The twenty-acre lot housing the Project Tach-Comm team and its precious experiment remained secure on all sides thanks to the miles of deadly high-voltage electrified fencing surrounding the complex’s perimeter. If anybody was stupid enough to try to gain access to the facility through the fence, well, they would be in for the shock of their lives: literally.
The gate the young soldier guarded was the only entrance into the complex, so if there was going to be any trouble, it would be focused here. He was confident he could call up sufficient reinforcements to hold the gate from any kind of assault, if the need arose. Within a few minutes he could have thirty-plus heavily—armed soldiers at his side, all it would take was a simple radio call from him.
Suddenly, the rhythmic sound of the chanting voices ceased, replaced by a silence broken only by the chirruping background hum of a thousand cicadas.
Corporal Parsons took another tentative step closer to the gate. There was something moving out there, he was sure of it, out there deep in the shadows beyond the security lights. His eyes strained to see past the umbra of the high—intensity floodlighting, but he could not make out any discernable shapes.
When they finally stepped into the light, the startled soldier let out a sharp gasp of shock. A thousand men, women and children were walking purposefully from the darkness across the road toward him, their arms interlocked with their neighbor’s in a line which stretched off in both directions along the road.
He staggered back as their collective voices suddenly cut through the air. The night was abruptly alive with a mass of voices singing as one, praising the glory of God on high as they marched in unison across the road towards the security fence.
Shaking off the shock of what he was witnessing, the Parsons sprinted back to the security booth, grabbed the red emergency phone and quickly dialed in a four-digit number.
“Sir!” he shouted into the phone, trying to make himself heard over the rising surge of voices outside. “We have a serious problem out here.” Parsons quickly relayed what he was witnessing to the person at the other end of the line who in turn told him exactly what he should do. “Yes, Sir,” he replied and slammed down the phone.
Grabbing his M16 from the rack, he rammed home a magazine of live ammo and hit the large red button fixed to the wall near the door of the booth. Immediately the Waaaa-Waaaa drone of the emergency klaxon began ululating through the still night air of the base. Parsons knew that right now all off-shift security personnel would be frantically throwing on their uniforms, grabbing their weapons and making their way to his location. It was a reassuring thought for the young man.
He could see the glare of the lights from the mobile security patrol’s electric carts already heading his way.
Glancing at the front gate, and the approaching hoard of protestors beyond it, he chambered a round into his weapon and stepped out to face them.
Forty-One
“What exactly are you trying to do?” Jim tersely asked Simone, as he escorted both her and her soundman, Beaumont, down the corridor toward the room housing the project’s receiving equipment.
“I’m just trying to do my job,” Simone shot back.
“You do realize what’s at stake, don’t you? Nothing less than the future of humanity. For all we know, the future of the damn universe is in the balance here tonight. If we don’t get this right, that’s it… it’s all over.”
“Well perhaps if you hadn’t seen fit to meddle in the first place we wouldn’t be in this situation, would we? Have you thought about that little gem?”
He wanted to fire back some pointed comment, but instead Jim fell silent. He had forgotten how infuriating his ex-wife could be sometimes. But, she was right of course; science was responsible for the Slip, and now they were frantically scrambling not just to try to repair the mess they had made, but to also try to stop the disaster from becoming even worse. It’s hard to be a hero when you’re also the villain of the piece, he realized.
Rather than replying, Jim fixed his gaze straight ahead, and continued on his way to the receiver room.
The room was even more cramped than the transmitter room. Rebecca and Adrianna were busy setting up the receiver and the recording equipment they would use to monitor the effect of the transmission, when Jim popped his head around the door.
“Stupid question, but are you busy?” he said, smiling at the two women.
Rebecca looked at her watch. “With less than twenty minutes to go before we begin the experiment that will determine whether we save the world or help plunge us back into nonexistence, you ask ‘am I busy?’ Come on in,” she said, matching his smile with one of her own.
Jim walked into the room, closely followed by Simone and Beaumont. He was sure he felt the temperature of the room drop as they entered.
“You’ve met Simone and her crew?” he asked.
“Yes, we met earlier today, when she interviewed us. Nice to see you again Simone,” said Rebecca.
Simone smiled perfunctorily back at the younger woman and then turned her attention to the equipment scattered across the table.
Adrianna did not bother to fake any esteem for the church team. Instead, she regarded the interlopers with a patent disdain that bordered on open hostility. Mumbling something under her breath, she climbed back onto the specially made raised dais that allowed her to reach the workbench and its equipment.
“So, tell me,” said Simone. “What is the purpose of this equipment?”
“It’s the sister—unit to the transmitter you saw in the other room,” explained Rebecca. “When the signal is sent at midnight we will pick it up here and be able to confirm its success. This other equipment,” she pointed at a bank of electronics near the far wall, “will record the data for us for later analysis.”
“Assuming it works of course,” said the soundman.