CHAPTER 15
We landed a few hours later. Where, I have no idea. When we debarked the plane we were inside a very large hangar. There were other aircraft and vehicles inside the hangar, so it was a big place—wherever it was. I tried to be useful, but I was beginning to feel very tired and sore.
Jim had never left 'Becca's side throughout the flight. She seemed to have had no changes, good or bad. We all had hopes that there was something, anything that we could do for her. I hoped that the crazy quacks had just not been smart enough to figure out what was wrong with her and it was still a straightforward medical issue. I hoped so, anyway.
As we debarked I followed the group in a daze. We entered an elevator, a large elevator, and descended for what seemed like a full minute or two. The elevator doors opened into a large bright room. The wall directly to the right had a large red "Floor 31" painted on it. I did later find out where we were, but the location was classified even higher up than I realized existed. I was beginning to learn that there were many more levels of "Top Secret" than just the ones I had experience with.
"Anson, are you okay?" Sara asked as she approached the group.
"I'm . . . just a little tired." I would live for now I told myself. I was trying to focus on my breathing, but since I'd had the damage to one of my lungs, breathing was more labor intensive. Just sitting still seemed like work. It reminded me of a comic book character I used to read a lot of. This guy had some sort of "techno-organic virus" that there was no cure for, but fortunately he had superpowers. He used his superpowers constantly to hold the virus at bay, yet he was still one of the most powerful superheroes in his universe. His friends would always mention that he was so powerful while fighting the virus that they couldn't imagine his strength if he were cured.
Well, I don't have superpowers. I wish I did. And I'm definitely not one of the most powerful people in my universe. I was tired and in pain.
"You just look a little pale is all." Sara laid her hand on my shoulder.
"I agree with you, Sara. He could use some sun. And maybe a haircut. At the very least run a comb through that unruly mop," Anne Marie added as she approached.
"Annie! How are you? It's good to see you." Seeing my future stepdaughter bolstered my morale a bit. It felt as though I were given a jolt of caffeine and epinephrine all at once.
"From the looks of it," she said, "a helluva lot better than you."
"Have you seen Tabitha?" I asked.
"Just for a sec. She's really busy right now. You know, saving the world and everything." Anne Marie laughed and patted me on the back as she gave me a hug. "It's good to see you, Anson." She looked into my eyes and smiled. "Did you force her to pick a date yet?"
I was confused at first. "A date for wha— Oh, when did she tell you?" We had only been groundside a day or two before all hell broke loose again. It is hard to believe Tabitha had much time to chat with her daughter.
"Mom always calls me immediately, or as soon as possible, after each mission. You guys had me real worried on this one. She says you saved her life, twice."
"She's just modest. It was a team effort, both times. She is too much of a handful for one person to save." I laughed and felt a twinge of pain in my chest. I grimaced at it but it soon went away.
Several days had passed and we settled into the underground Air Force facility—wherever it was. Tabitha made sure that we all had the bare necessities available to us and the facility seemed nearly endless. I was feeling much better, although we still were no closer to helping 'Becca or finding the identity and purpose of our attackers. Jim and Sara had conducted several experiments on 'Becca's invader and had concluded that the attached dumbbells were indeed Casimir-effect type devices. Or at least they had been at one time in their lives. Why they hadn't gone chaotic yet was a mystery. Perhaps the attached influenza virus was responsible for that, or perhaps being suspended in a liquid matrix that allowed them to align themselves to each other had something to do with it. I don't know for sure. Could've been just plain dumb luck. Sara had suggested that we try the simple electric discharge method on a small sample of 'Becca's blood. Why not? It had worked on all previous configurations of the dumbbells that we'd seen.
So, we took a sample of Rebecca's blood and prepared to electrocute it in the same manner we had used on a macro level, before. Sara had run the show at the ECC manufacturing facility back in Huntsville, Alabama, so I let her run the show now. We carried out the process on a very small sample, via robotic remote, on the lowest abandoned level of the facility, which turned out to be an old abandoned mine shaft. For extra safety, we added a solid, steel reinforced concrete wall. Things went well for the first ninety-three nanoseconds. Then the mineshaft was fused together with a fireball explosion from the Casimir effect devices going hypercritical much faster than they had in any previous experiments with the original configurations. These new viruslike dumbbells were much more energetic than the standard Clemons Dumbbells. We obviously couldn't just electrocute 'Becca. We had to be sharper than that. Hard problems are never easy to solve.
Jim and I had the idea of flowing 'Becca's blood through a filter that was electrically polarized in just the right way to attract the dumbbells out of the blood and capture them. The -inspiration came from an old Skylab experiment that astronaut Owen Garriot conducted. Dr. Garriot used some sort of filter, flowloop, and microgravity to remove tumor-causing things from blood. I didn't remember what the tumor-causing things were, but the concept was all I needed for the current inspiration.
We modeled the new "flubells," as Sara had started calling them, and developed a map of their electromagnetic signature. Once that was done, we designed the filter, during about three days of nonstop effort. We were all beginning to get a little edgy and very tired. The long hours and my labored breathing was keeping me from doing my most creative thinking. Jim was really carrying me mentally. We looked to Sara for fresh innovations. Youngsters are good at that.
The idea worked! Well, sort of. It worked well enough that we could keep the virus in check, but, the virus replicated far too fast for us to filter it completely. What this meant was that we could keep 'Becca alive through constant filtration as long as the virus didn't mutate again. It was a simple Malthusian Population differential equation, or a damped forced oscillator in engineering terms. Filtering out the virus as rapidly as we technically could would act as a predator to the virus population. The virus was reproducing at an even rate with its death rate now. Previously it had been unchecked. When I had the energy, which was rare those first few days, I would take Sara to the whiteboard and work through the math with her, making sure she understood it well. Occasionally, one of 'Becca's physicians would join us but he never really seemed to grasp the dynamical systems analogy. He sort of got the population models. Anne Marie also joined us often. She was as sharp as a tack and never got left behind. Then again she hoped to fill her mother's shoes one day, so she had better grow some big-ass feet. She was well on her way.
Testing of 'Becca's blood did reveal some useful information. We found that outside of the blood the virus could be destroyed via an electric discharge without catastrophic circumstances. This at least bought us some time. We could filter the blood and then remove the filters and destroy them with an electric discharge.