Linkage: The Narrows of Time (7 page)

Lucas activated the electromagnets
surrounding the core by lifting eight toggle switches
simultaneously. Within milliseconds, everyone could hear the
reverberating hum of the superconducting magnets starting their
power-up sequence. The low-pitched rumble shook the console desk,
sending a jar of pencils and a pad of sticky notes off the edge.
Abby bent down in her chair to pick them up off the floor.

Kleezebee said, “This is the point of no
return. Let’s have a full systems check before we proceed.”

Drew reviewed each system. “Calibrations are
. . . good. Power levels . . . check. Monitoring and safety systems
are active and ready. E-121 is stable and pressures are holding. It
looks like everything is working perfectly and within specs. I
think we’re good to go.”

Lucas’ watch said 10:24 PM. He enshrined the
time in his mind.

After a long exhale, Kleezebee said, “Set the
beam’s power to Level One. When the capacitor is charged, let ‘er
rip.”

Lucas reached forward and unlocked a
palm-sized black control knob attached to the vertical portion of
the control station. He twisted it counterclockwise and set its
indicator to
LEVEL ONE
before locking its protective cover
back into place. He pushed a neighboring red
CHARGE
button
and waited for the capacitor’s power meter to increase. When it
reached capacity, a green
READY
light lit up on his panel.
He looked back. “Are we ready?”

Kleezebee nodded. Trevor scrunched up his
face and took a giant step backward, as if he expected the chamber
to explode.

Lucas steadied his finger and pressed the
green
READY
button. A short, pulsating whirr resonated from
deep inside the chamber, signaling that the capacitor had released
its stored energy. “Almost there,” he mumbled with excitement. He
could feel his chest tightening, making it difficult for him to
breathe. Soon, the monitors began to stream multiple columns of
numerical data up from the bottom.

When the final set of results appeared, Lucas
stood up and yelled, “Shit!” and threw his safety glasses across
the room with a side-armed throwing motion.

Abby flinched. “What’s wrong?”

Lucas raised his hands against the sides of
his head. While looking to the heavens, he said, “Nothing. That’s
what happened. Not a goddamn thing. Two years of work, and
then—
DICK.
”

Kleezebee touched Lucas’ shoulder. “Patience.
It’s only our first attempt.”

The professor turned to the other Ramsay
brother. “What’s the status of the core?”

Drew checked the reactor instruments. “Looks
good. E-121 remains viable and the core’s adequately pressurized.
Should we try again, possibly at full power?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. At this
point, there’s no guarantee that doubling the power will accomplish
anything.”

Kleezebee began to pace the room while
everyone else remained silent. He shuffled to the far wall and
back, looking immersed in thought, his hands folded behind his
back. Then he stopped pacing and addressed the group. “Before we do
anything, I need you to perform a complete systems analysis of the
available data. Let’s see if we can tell what, if anything,
happened. For now, let’s power down the EM system but leave the
core pressurized.”

Kleezebee’s cell phone rang. He opened the
phone’s flip cover. “Go for DL.” Partway through the conversation,
he held his hand over the phone’s microphone and told the crew, “I
need to take this call outside. I’ll be back in a few.”

* * *

Half an hour later, the team was huddled
around the center worktable after concluding their detailed systems
analysis. Kleezebee still hadn’t returned.

“So what do we have?” Lucas asked.

Drew read from a list of notes. “I checked
the core’s internal data feeds and didn’t detect anything
anomalous. The core’s material remained viable throughout the test
and the internal housing was structurally sound. The core’s
internal pressure held steady and was right on mark. Yet, our
instruments failed to show any notable change in E-121’s EM
field.”

Lucas sensed his brother had more to report.
“Anything else?”

Drew nodded. “The really odd thing is that,
with all the energy released, you’d think our instruments would
have recorded something. If nothing else, it should have at least
registered a power spike when the core was bombarded. But zilch.
All that energy had to go somewhere. It’s as though the beam never
fired.”

“Drew had me review the operational logs,”
Abby said. “According to the project specs, the capacitor’s power
level was precisely where it was supposed to be, and the beam
frequency was tuned perfectly. All readings indicate that the
energy was discharged and the beam fired.”

“I check magnets and calibration matched.
Power okay. No failure,” Trevor added.

“Okay, then, let’s recap what we know,” Lucas
said. “Everything was calibrated perfectly. The core and the E-121
were stable. We had the proper amount of power. All our readings
were normal before, during, and after the test. The capacitor’s
energy discharged and engaged the core, but no power was
registered.”

Lucas rubbed his temples. “Damn, that makes
no sense. What are we missing?”

“Nothing, it should have worked. What do we
do next?” Drew asked, looking as perplexed as Lucas felt.

“The obvious next step is to run the test
again, but this time we use full power. It’s entirely possible that
the beam’s energy level was not sufficient enough to morph E-121’s
EM field.”

“We could also try reversing the EM
polarity?” Abby asked with a look of confidence.

“Maybe use inverse wave frequency?” Trevor
added.

Lucas took a minute to consider the merit of
each suggestion. After a short pause, he decided a politically
correct answer was in order. It would help cover up his
indecisiveness. “Hmmm, all three ideas have potential. But we need
to run them by DL to see what he wants to do, if anything. I
will—”

The room started to shake. The procedure
manual slid off the console desk and the storage cabinets’ metal
doors rattled and flung open. Several items fell off the shelves
and landed on the floor. Abby grabbed Drew’s arm.

The tremor lasted less than ten seconds.

“Was that an earthquake?” Abby asked, letting
go of Drew.

“It felt like one, but it’s not. When it
first started a month ago, we checked with the USGS, but they said
there hadn’t been any seismic activity in the area,” Lucas
replied.

“We think the NASA group must be firing up
one of their experiments. Some type of underground experiment,”
Drew said.

“What are they working on?” she asked.

“Nobody knows,” Lucas said. “If you continue
down our hallway, around a few more corners, you’ll see their
security station. It’s staffed with a full complement of security
personnel.”

Drew added, “We call it ‘the Zone.’ If they
think you’re a threat, they’ll charge at you with their guns drawn.
We’ve heard several people have been arrested.” Drew grinned at
her. Before anyone could respond to Drew’s comment, the lab’s
telephone rang. It was mounted on the wall, next to the
entrance.

Lucas sprinted over to it and snatched its
receiver from the cradle. “Dr. Ramsay speaking.” He turned sideways
and leaned his right shoulder against the wall. To balance himself,
he crossed his right leg over his left. He remained silent until
the very end of the conversation. “Okay, I’ll let the team know,”
he told the caller before slamming down the receiver. “That was
Kleezebee. He said our project is on hold, indefinitely, at least
until he can convince the fucking Advisory Committee to let us
continue our work.”

“What? How can that be? They already approved
this project,” Drew snorted.

“Apparently, Larson just got in touch with
the committee’s chairman and somehow convinced him to suspend our
experiment, pending a formal review. Kleezebee said it has
something to do with government liability and the E-121 samples.
All I know for sure is Kleezebee told us to shut down for now. He
thinks this could take a while, and we might as well head home for
the holidays.”

“But we‘re so close. How can they do this to
us now?”

Lucas figured his Internet humiliation was
the reason. He wanted to tell Drew the truth, but couldn’t bear to
disappoint him, especially not in front of the techs. “Could be any
number of reasons.”

“I can’t believe this is happening. We
deserve better than this.”

“I hear you, bro. But we’ll have to wait a
few days until Kleezebee gets back. He said he was heading to
Washington right away to meet with the entire Advisory Committee. I
guess they’re at some technology conference in the Pentagon.”

He turned his attention to the techs. “You
two can leave, if you want. There’s nothing more for you to do
right now. We’ll call you when the project’s back on.” He told
Trevor, “Kleezebee wants you to call him right away.”

Trevor nodded.

Abby gave Drew a folded slip of paper before
gathering up her belongings and walking to the door. Trevor held
the door open and waited for her to walk through.

Chapter
7

Fortitude

After Abby left, Drew opened her note and saw
a phone number with a heart symbol drawn just below it. He
memorized her number before stuffing the slip inside his shirt
pocket.

“So, what do you think we should do?” Lucas
asked.

Drew knew there was no guarantee that
Kleezebee would ever be get approval from the committee. They had
to try again, right then, before they were locked out of their own
lab. His Quantum Energy Thesis was due in less than a month, and he
needed the neutron beam technology to show positive results. He
wanted it now.

“Well, I don’t want to quit now. We’re so
close I can taste it. We’ve worked too darn hard for too darn long.
If they shut us down now, our project will be a total failure. I’ve
never failed at anything in my life, and I’m not about to start
now. If it were up to me, I’d re-engage the EM system, charge the
capacitor, this time to full strength, and hit it again. Unless
someone checks the power logs, which is highly unlikely, nobody
will ever know about it unless we succeed.”

“I don’t know, brother. Kleezebee was very
specific.”

Drew had never used an obscenity in his life,
but was ready to if it would persuade his brother to try again.
“You know as well as I do, we may never have this chance again.
There’s no guarantee that Kleezebee will ever be able to get the
committee to give us the go-ahead.”

“I hear what you’re saying, but—“

“You know what Dad always said? Don’t be
afraid to go after what you want, because nobody else will do it
for you.”

Lucas sighed but didn’t answer. He shook his
head slowly.

“Please, we’re running out of time. We have
to try before they lock us out of our own lab.”

Lucas still didn’t respond.

“If we’re successful, we can sell the patent
and payoff Mom’s medical bills.”

Lucas appeared to be considering the idea.
After a short minute, he said, “It would be nice to get rid of
those fucking vultures, once and for all.”

“Then you agree?”

Lucas nodded. “If you think full power is the
way to go, let’s try it.”

The brothers spent the next forty-five
minutes preparing for their next attempt. They crosschecked and
completed each step in the procedure manual, except this time
around, they charged the beam’s capacitor to full power.

Drew completed the last step and was ready to
begin. He recorded the new time into the logbook: 11:52 PM,
December 21.

Just then, Drew wondered if Abby’s suggestion
to reverse the polarity might actually work. He knew her proposal
was a long shot, but it was worth considering. He flipped through
the procedure manual, stopping on page sixteen to review the
equations. “Wait, that can’t be right,” he mumbled. He reached into
his backpack and pulled out a copy of their original work. After
comparing the two versions of the manual, he said, “Holy cow, DL
changed our calculations.”

“What?”

“How the heck did I miss this?” Drew asked,
using a yellow marker to highlight the changes. He handed both
copies of the manual to Lucas. “Here, see for yourself. He changed
our wave displacement factors.”

Lucas spent a minute reviewing the
calculations. “You’re right. But why?”

“I have no idea. But this may have caused the
failure.”

“It certainly would explain the conflicting
data.”

“We should use our original equations and run
it again.”

“Do you still want to use full power?”

“Yes, definitely,” Drew said, plowing forward
on his keyboard to enter the correct calculations.

They spent the next fifteen minutes
reconfiguring their experiment.

“Okay, we’re ready,” Drew said.

“Then make it so,” Lucas replied, using a
decent imitation of Captain Picard’s voice.

Drew pressed the green
READY
switch to
fire the charged neutron beam, listening for the beam to pulse.
Once it did, he sat back to watch the steady stream of data fill
the center monitor.

At first, everything went according to plan,
but then a few of the readings changed, then more of them did.
Something wasn’t right. He wasn’t sure what at first, until he
looked closer at the data values in the column farthest to the
right. His heart skipped a beat. The reactor’s internal mass
readings were low—much too low. No, this couldn’t be.

Maybe the monitor was malfunctioning. That
would explain the change in numbers. He scrambled to enter commands
into his keyboard, trying to validate the readings. But the
checksums validated—the numbers shown on the monitor were correct.
He sat up and leaned in close to the screen, looking over the data
values one final time, making sure he was not misinterpreting the
results. He wasn’t. There was no denying it—the mass inside the
reactor had dropped by almost a hundred percent.