4
Saturday, 8 October 2016. 4:07 A.M. Riverport University, Quantum Physics Building.
Jack had left behind the relative safety and calm of Thailand for this. Not only was he involved in the commission of at least one felony, his best friend was acting weird and Jack was already being dragged back into Will’s mess of a life. What’s more, he hadn’t even seen Will yet.
Something hard-kicked beneath the floor. As Jack backed away from the machine, the hair on his arms tickled. Thick cords of cabling spasmed, like living things.
“Paul-”
“Here’s the deal,” Paul’s tinny double voice piped over the intercom. “We hired Will as a consultant on this project. It’s supposed to do that, relax. So we hired Will. And things were going pretty great. He seemed stable, not too much of that muttering-to-himself stuff, kept a reasonable focus and he ironed out kinks like nobody else on the team.”
“But…”
“But he became erratic.”
“Define ‘erratic.’ Erratic like that time at Walmart, or erratic like that thing with the council planners?”
“More like that time he found us playing with his stuff in the barn.”
Jack closed his eyes and swore. That had been the bad one. It had been pre-medication and Will had really gone off the deep end: a daylong fit of rage, followed by an inability to process it. Will had disappeared into the barn for forty-eight hours, muttering and shouting. When Jack tried to make peace, Will had thrown a plate at him, mashed potatoes flying everywhere. It was the only time Jack hadn’t felt safe around his older brother.
“You could have told me that in an e-mail, Paul.”
If there was one thing he learned from the episode with the two women in Belize it was that nothing is more important in this life than happiness-whatever it looks like, wherever you find it. This was no way to live.
Paul leaned against the console. “What did we always say?”
“C’mon…”
“What did we say?”
“We stick together or the bastards win.”
“Right. Tonight is the most important moment of my life. I wouldn’t be here without you, so I couldn’t have done this without you.” He turned and popped the clear Perspex idiot shield from an oversized black punch-button. “I want you to be able to say you were in the room when the world changed.”
Paul’s palm came down, gently, and the room outside blasted to electric life. Mechanisms activated beneath the curved walkway that circled the core, and from beneath the walkway flat double-hinged sections swung up, opened, and clicked into place. In a single wave corridor sections unfurled around the circumference. In seconds the walkway had become a sealed corridor circling the crackling geometric sphere at the chamber’s heart.
Jack stepped back.
Paul said, “Put these on,” tossing him a pair of photoreactive goggles.
“Shouldn’t you have given me those before you hit that button?”
A monitor suspended from the roof flashed a green alert. “The ground security door’s been opened. We’ve got about three minutes.” Paul ran up the steel-mesh stairs to the entry door, slashed his card through the reader, and locked it down tight. “Call it five. Follow me.”
The machine was vibrating. The core threw off sparks. The air smelled like burned hair. A shimmering corona, like a heat mirage, rose from the corridor-ring.
“Will bulk e-mailed the entire project mailing list-investors included,” Paul shouted above the din, coming to a stop before the gangway. “He expressed his lack of confidence in the project in a very detailed manner. In short he freaked the investors right out. Funding was pulled, Jack. They shut the entire project down.”
Jack nodded, understanding, checked the door, glared at Paul. “They fired you. They fired you, and you’re in here with a hacked code key about to fire up a reactor that your only real expert thinks is massively dangerous. With me.”
“C’mon. We’ve done worse.”
“I don’t think we have, Paul.”
Something under the floor belted against itself, and the sphere at the center of the room started thrumming.
“This is six years of work, Jack! People trusted me to guide this to the finish line. People with families. Once administration sees that it works safely-”
“You’ll go to jail!”
“It’ll be worth it!”
Jack took that in. “This is just like that time with that girl from summer camp.”
“I don’t deny that Heather had a few problems-”
“You’re white knighting, man! Again! Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
“This is about families, Jack! And futures! The future! Lives will change if I can make this happen.”
Jack pointed straight at the machine. “This is based on Will’s work, isn’t it?” Jack insisted. “He knows what he’s talking about. I mean, before he went off the rails, before our parents were gone, he was doing good work, right? He might be nuts but he’s not an idiot.”
“The team’s been over it and over it and there is nothing, and I mean nothing to Will’s accusations.”
“Maybe so, but I didn’t come back to get arrested. Shut it down, okay? It sounds… really pissed off.”
Paul shook his head. “Too late. Once the core’s activated there’s no way to turn it off, short of finding some way to collapse the black hole.”
The machine stabilized, soothed; the vibration dropped to a low, comforting hum.
“‘Black hole’?”
Paul held up his damp fistful of Post-it notes. “I told the team: We’ve done good dev. We know it works. Show me how to start it and I’ll take the fall. I’m sure that once the committee-”
“‘Black hole’?”
A sharp quad-tone snap fired off as four safety clasps detached from the airlock, the sound finding a dozen flat surfaces to reverberate from. The airlock seal on the circular corridor cracked and heavy hydraulics hauled the blast door aside, venting atmosphere. The distortion around the core at the center of the machine dimmed.
“I should never have turned you on to The Smiths.”
Through the airlock door came a shape. A person.
Someone has been in the corridor the entire time.
The figure braced itself against the wide lip of the airlock’s seal before taking one trembling step onto the ramp and into the lab. It gasped, chest heaving, and exited the machine entirely.
“Hey me,” the figure said, to Jack. “It’s you.” Then shook his head. “Damn.”
Jack took off his goggles. There was no mistake: Jack was looking at himself.
“Holy shitballs,” Paul said.
Jack’s clone-all smiles-held his palms up good-naturedly. “Hey, it’s cool. This all works out. And Paul…” His expression darkened. “You still owe me a fucking explanation.”
Paul shook his head to clear it, checked his watch, now a man back on mission. To Jack: “Get in the machine.” He was at the L-console next to the gangway, making adjustments.
Jack didn’t hear him.
“Hey,” Jack’s clone said to Jack. “Want to see a trick? Watch this.” He directed Jack’s attention to Paul.
“Paul…,” Jack said, deeply unsettled yet unable to take his eyes off the doppelganger on the ramp.
“And go,” said Jack’s clone.
“What is it,” Paul and Jack’s clone said, together.
“Wait,” Paul and Jack’s clone said, simultaneously.
“We don’t have time for this,” Paul and Jack’s clone shouted.
“Knock it off,” they chorused.
Paul stepped forward, stabbing a finger at his watch.