“A good start,” Paul agreed. “We’re close now.”
“Now we escalate further. Your announcement was released minutes ago to all the major news agencies from an anonymized address.”
The wall switched, this time to a single image: Paul Serene, behind him two men in the black garb and smiley masks of the ghostly Peace Movement.
“I am speaking to you.
“I am Paul Serene. I am listed among the dead.
“My life ended last night, along with many others, on the campus of Riverport University. Murdered by men and women like those standing behind me. Or so it was reported.”
Subwindows flashed open, showing a collage of newsfeeds and Web sites sourcing information on Paul Serene, recent photos of a younger man compared to the older one doing the talking.
“The Meyer-Joyce field. Familiarize yourself with that name. It will soon become the focus of what little remains of your life.
“The Meyer-Joyce field maintains causality, the flow of cause and effect and the linear passage of time. Early yesterday morning, on Saturday, October eighth, at four twenty-two a.m., I modified an experimental Monarch Solutions device… and mortally wounded the Meyer-Joyce field.
“Some of you have already witnessed the early effects of this: power fluctuations, visual anomalies, lost time.
“Before long you will all experience the consequences of M-J field degradation. Reality, causality, probability… all these things will soon begin to forget their own rules.
“Close to the end will come escalating horror the likes of which you are ill-equipped to imagine. Trapped and isolated within a shrinking, schizophrenic reality-a reality just for you-lovers will forget you. Mothers and fathers will not know their children. The dead will return as if they had never left. Legions of the living will vanish. That which was will have never been. Your tiny souls will unmoor, to drift and drown upon a sea of Everything.
“Die alone in perfect lunacy-or live forever within a horrifying final moment that never, ever stops. The choice is yours.
“This is the cessation of all things. The dying of time.
“We are Peace, and Peace we bring you.
“It is time for suffering to end.
“The universe has five years to live.
“You will not hear from us again.”
Martin clicked the wall to silence.
“The terror will amplify as events play out. The world will not be able to deny that reality is slowly unraveling. When the public learns that there is no solution-”
“Monarch appears at the gate carrying the Grail.”
“Project Lifeboat: the only viable way to survive-and undo-time’s end.”
“But only with the combined and unquestioning support of governments worldwide.” Paul took a deep-chested breath. “I’m ready.”
Martin crossed to his friend, laid both hands on his shoulders. “You are performing the greatest kindness, Paul. You are saving all that was, is, and shall be. And these people”-Hatch pointed to the wall screen and its two dozen talking heads-“will live to revile you for it.”
Paul smiled, but not with joy. “Only if I succeed.”
“I’ll leave you to prepare.”
“You’re going?”
“Not for long, old friend. Never for long.”
Saturday, 8 October 2016. 9:56 P.M. Monarch Tower. Chronon Labs, Floor 50.
Horatio had taken Nick to a bank of elevators away from the chaos of the atrium, straight up to floor fifty. They stepped out into what Horatio called the chronon labs. The place was a mess. Glass everywhere, the cross-hatch frame of the utterly destroyed false ceiling empty within a larger, vaulted chamber of ceramic white. At the far end of the chamber that contained the labs, above the frame of the false ceiling, the smoking wreck of an expensive demountable was being picked over by yellow-suited technicians. Nick kicked a flimsy mound of fire retardant foam, watched it scatter and drift.
“I’ve been inside Monarch’s system for months,” Horatio was saying. “Installed a rootkit back when the Tower’s systems were still being finalized. Even so I haven’t been able to get a lot of dirt on the chronon division or Hatch.”
“Why did you think there was dirt?”
“Beth made a convincing case.” Horatio headed left, away from the burning demountable and fire crew. “Beth and I both know Hatch and the chronon division are up to hinky shit, but I’ve never found anything really mediapathic, anything Reuters would pull a muscle to grab.”
Aside from the thick frosting of busted glass, the lab seemed intact. Horatio was fumbling in his pockets as he walked, pulled out a crumpled note, checked it.
“Stuff related to C division and Hatch exist on a separate server that I’m not privy to, that exists only on floor fifty, but I do have the big man’s password. This has been my only chance to get onto fifty, and it took the whole tower shitting itself to make that happen. The meeting room up ahead was reserved for daily powwows between Hatch, Sofia, and C division. Daily updates, daily course corrections. Any terminal there would have access to the C div server.”
Nick caught up to him. “You think there’s stuff on there that might… bring Monarch down?”
Horatio shrugged. “Been here a few years. It’d be shitty timing to find something now, don’t you think? But… yeah, I think so.”
Nick glanced around, not liking this at all. “How long you need? We get caught we’re goin’ out a window.”
Horatio pushed open the meeting room door. “After today I’m out of here. This is my last chance.”
Long mahogany table. Whiteboards on two walls. Central teleconference dome. Five-thousand-dollar seats. Vidscreen.
Terminal. Built into the flat of the table, right in front of the door.
Horatio sat and got to work.
“Listen, Horatio-”
Horatio slapped his security card on the desk, kept typing. “Five minutes.” He took a thumb drive, jacked it into a slot in the table’s polished surface. Smoothed his note, typed.
Waited.
The screen lit up with Monarch’s geometric logo.
“Yes.” Horatio dived in, keyboard clattering.
Nick took the card. “I’ll keep the elevator ready. Five minutes.”
If Horatio heard, he didn’t respond. Nick was just out the door when Horatio said, “Jesus H. Macy.”
Nick came back, peered over his shoulder. “What?”
“Wait. I need to… I need to copy this. And… fuck me. Wait.” Keys clattered. Files were copied to the thumb drive. “So Hatch has been pushing for the development of Project Lifeboat-this grand plan that’s already racking up cost overruns and has a five-year dev schedule it is never going to meet. The Lifeboat team is talking chronon harvesting and storage technology orders of magnitudes more efficient than what we currently have, technology to allow whole teams of specialists to move through chronon-free zones for months or years on end and pylon technology to preserve causality within a much wider radius than what we’re currently-”
Nick twiddled the security card. “And?”
“And there’s a second group involved with the project. From outside Monarch that nobody but Hatch seems to know about. Hatch has been corresponding with them since day one. Project Lifeboat is above top secret, but this other crew-and it looks like they’re scattered all over the planet-are getting regular updates. From what I can tell nobody in Monarch knows these guys exist. What the fuck is Hatch up to?”