The Illuminati (3 page)

“Probably not,” the overweight scientist said with a grunt. Rhinehart could almost see him shifting his sagging paunch under his belt. The man had always eaten entirely too much cafeteria food. “But who knows when it comes to computers? I still don't really trust 'em. One of these days we'll all be taking orders from one of 'em if we're not real careful.”

“Probably so,” Rhinehart agreed. “Idiot,” he said aloud after he hung up the phone.

Two days later Jack Rhinehart was roused out of a sound sleep by the electronic beeping of his telephone.“Yes, who is it?” he growled into the receiver.

“Rhinehart, it's Eison. That kid who ran these numbers . . . who is he?”

“He's a doctoral candidate by the name of Jeff Wells. Why? Why are you calling at six in the morning anyway?”

“We've been at these numbers for the last twenty hours and we can't find a flaw in his logic. It looks like your whiz kid has hit upon the greatest discovery in seismology since the seismograph was invented.”

“You mean to say you believe his calculations?” Rhinehart shouted as he bolted upright in bed. “But that's nonsense. He doesn't know beans about earthquakes.”

“Maybe not, but I can tell you this, his insight is like none I've ever seen in my sixty-two years. We need him here as quickly as possible.”

“Th-that's impossible,” Rhinehart sputtered.

“Never say impossible,” Eison said with an air of contempt in his tone. “We're sending the jet down to John Wayne Airport to pick him up in an hour. Have him there.”

Depression swept over the scrawny instructor as he heard this news.
A dumb kid is going to get the recognition I should have
, he thought as he slipped his heavy glasses on. “I'll come up with him, Bill.”

“Sorry, we don't need more hands right now, and we're gonna be overrun with reporters and politicians when this news breaks.”

After hanging up the phone, Rhinehart sat in numbed silence. Then he called one of his lab assistants and told him to notify Wells of the waiting plane. He was fuming when he slammed the phone down. “There's no justice,” he shouted to his empty apartment. “No justice at all!”

That plane ride to the Livermore Laboratory would change Jeff Wells' life forever. For the next three days he was bombarded with questions about how he had devised the equations used to integrate all the billions of bits of data used in his calculations.

Jeff spent hours sitting around the big conference table in the “think tank” room at Livermore, trying to explain his equations to the top physicists at the research facility. Often in frustration they would throw up their hands and demand that Jeff diagram his concept on the chalkboard. More often than not, all this accomplished was more frustration.

“But I don't understand, Dr. Wells,” one of the obviously frustrated mathematicians said gruffly as he leaned forward in his chair. “Who taught you to do this?”

“No one taught me,” Jeff responded as he sat back down in his chair. “And it's not ‘Doctor.' It's just plain Jeff.”

The red-faced scientist sat back in his chair, careful not to notice the smirks on the faces of several of the less-stuffy scientists.

The focus of the conference shifted from questioning Jeff on his formula to why he predicted the earthquake to be imminent and centered in the Tokyo area. He explained his computations to the small group of scientists, who were transfixed at not only what they heard but what they saw.

Jeff pushed a button recessed into the table top, swinging a hidden computer keyboard into position. As he began to type in the commands that initialized his program, the only sound that could be heard in the room was the slight mechanical ring of the plastic keys as he punched in the data. As if in unison with his actions, the wall on the opposite end of the room divided and began to retract into a hidden cavity, revealing a wall-sized flat-screen display.

Dr. Eison, along with Jeff, had labored several days to convert Jeff's program to operate on the massively-parallel computer system nicknamed “Gerta.”

The display screen, covering nearly the entire wall, sprang to life. A computer-generated model of the earth was displayed in full color: The oceans were painted a light shade of blue and the land masses reflected variations of green and brown. The known geological faults were displayed as red dashed lines, and small glistening satellites circled the globe at all heights and directions.

Jeff began to demonstrate his program while Dr. Eison discussed the concept of using variations in the satellites' orbits to monitor changes in the earth's magma. By the end of the thirty-minute session, those in attendance were believers.

Later that day, Jeff was asked to repeat the demonstration for the benefit of the entire Livermore scientific team and the reporters who had been invited.

“No one can be absolutely certain of the timing of a major earthquake,” Jeff said as he sat down at the computer console and began initiating his program once again. “The difficulty is that the forces are released as the earth's plates slide past each other. Friction can cause the force to build up and suddenly release or skip, much the same as when you press chalk against a chalkboard. Sometimes it slides along; other times it grates and skips.”

When he heard Dr. Eison clear his throat and noticed the frowns from some of the attending seismologists, Jeff realized he had committed a
faux pas
; he had taken a complex technical subject and reduced it to laymen's terms. That made a big hit with the press, but it rankled those who made their living by keeping things complicated.

“Anyway,” he continued, “Dr. Landill of JPL Labs documented minute changes in the orbits of several satellites throughout the last two decades, which were unaccountable except for changes in the earth's gravitational field. These were thought to be random changes and largely ignored, except by the satellite trackers. I felt they might be related to earthquakes on the surface, so I programmed an equation to factor in these changes with the known epicenters of recent quakes.”

“Impossible,” argued one of the scientists who had missed the earlier session. “We have been trying for years to accumulate and process that kind of data.”

“I believe you can now,” Jeff responded confidently as he pressed the “enter” key on the big console. Instantly the full-sized screen on the wall blossomed into a scaled replica of the earth in three dimensions, just as it had in the earlier demonstration. With each stroke of the keys, more detail came into focus. Suddenly satellites began spinning around the globe, each in its own unique orbit.

As Jeff manipulated his program, the red lines began to appear once more on the earth's surface. “These represent known active faults,” he explained for the benefit of the reporters and scientists who had missed the earlier session. “Notice how the orbits of the satellites crossing over the fault lines cause them to shift.”

The shift in the orbits of the low-altitude satellites was the most dramatic; the high-altitude satellites had the least reaction.

Jeff explained, “I have exaggerated the orbital variations to make them more measurable. The satellite orbits you see on the screen are amplified by a factor of ten to the fourth power.” Even the most stoic scientists stared in awe as they watched the computer-enhanced graphics display the orbits of several hundred satellites superimposed over fault lines in the earth's surface. Each knew that what he was seeing was as revolutionary to the field of geology as the splitting of the atom was to physics.

“How can we be sure that your program is accurately depicting these changes and not creating them?” someone in the group asked.

“I thought that might be a possibility too,” Jeff replied patiently, “so I applied the equation to some past seismic activity to verify the results.”

Swiftly moving his fingers across the keys, Jeff initiated another subroutine. The screen shifted from a total Earth view to the continent of Asia. A dark red line dominated the landscape.

“This was the site of the 2010 earthquake in Beijing, China,” he said, still typing commands. “It measured 6.7 and, as we all clearly remember, resulted in the loss of approximately 1.5 million lives. As you can see, the actual date and magnitude are displayed on the screen. Thus far, this is historical data gathered from seismographic devices in the area. Now we'll roll the program back and use only the data known before November 16, 2010—the actual date of the disaster.”

Jeff ran his program, using only the information available before the actual earthquake in China. The results were inconclusive. Then he punched up another overlay that included the satellites passing over the area. “This is data from Dr. Landill's observations,” he noted. Suddenly, the program came alive. A warning indicator flashed on the screen with an arrow pointing directly at the city of Beijing. The program then showed a steadily increasing probability of a major earthquake, predictable as much as two years in advance. As time progressed, the calculations became more and more precise until one month before the disaster the warning shifted to an alarm predicting an earthquake on the order of 6.5 to 6.8 on the Richter scale. The orbit of a low-orbit U.S. spy satellite developed what looked like a wobble on the expanded scale of the computer-enhanced program.

Finally, using data from several other lesser quakes, Jeff demonstrated the capabilities of his program. “It is not as accurate with smaller quakes,” he apologized.

“That's like apologizing for the brush strokes in the Mona Lisa,” one of them muttered, setting the entire room into laughter—with a few exceptions.

“With some more refinement, I believe we will be able to predict major earthquakes accurately, both in time and magnitude,” Dr. Eison added from his position next to Jeff. “We'll take this prototype program and work out the details. Show them the real thing, Jeff,” he said somberly.

As his fingers flashed across the keyboard, Jeff progressed to the last stroke necessary and then halted.

Dr. Eison announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, what you are about to see has already been screened and verified by members of my staff. For the immediate future, it cannot be made public. That is the responsibility of President Kilborne and his national security adviser. You will be advised when the information can be announced.”

“Okay, Jeff. Proceed,” Dr. Eison said as he sat back down.

The screen shifted back to the global picture of the earth. Then, as it rotated slowly, the image first zoomed in on the North American continent. Then the United States. Finally, the state of California filled the entire twenty-foot screen.

Jeff clicked on several more keys and small red lines began to appear on the outline of the state.

“These are fault centers,” Dr. Eison explained. “At present, they have not been given an intensity value.”

As Jeff tapped more keys, the red images shifted to bright and dark shades. The brightest appeared in the lower third of the state's image, very near Los Angeles. A second lighter red image appeared in the upper third of the screen, near San Francisco.