Split second, p.12
Split Second, page 12
Blake nodded and exchanged glances with Jenna. “Nice,” he said appreciatively. “They found a way to cancel Nathan’s visit, discredit his work, and put you off for a few weeks, all in one fell swoop. Not only does this convince you Nathan is alive, but it ensures you don’t try to follow up on his theory.” Blake shook his head. “I know these guys are ruthless assholes, but it’s hard not to appreciate their skills.”
“Is this when you wrote back and asked for help with your work?” asked Jenna.
“Not until a few hours later, but yes. And you’re both going to find this interesting. As part of the reply, whoever was posing as Nathan told me Jenna’s computer had been infected with the mother of all viruses. The virus had invaded her contact list and was periodically sending out lethal, infected messages to her friends. He told me that I should change my settings to block any incoming messages from Jenna Morrison’s e-mail address, until further notice.”
Jenna’s face wrinkled up in confusion. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If they were monitoring you, they’d want us to connect, so you could lead them to me.”
“Remember,” said Blake, “there are two groups involved here. Maybe this is an effort by one of them to try to prevent the other from finding you.”
“Maybe,” said Jenna.
“Should I continue reading the message?” asked Walsh.
“By all means,” said Blake.
The physicist turned back toward the tablet in his hands and took up where he had left off:
“Part of me wants to wait to spring this on you in person, but there is no way I can contain myself. If I don’t at least tell someone the punch line, I’m pretty much going to explode. But even though I’ll ruin some of the surprise, the actual work contains plenty more. I think you’ll be astonished by how the math all fits together and by the underlying assumptions and logic. So here it is. The broad overview, just to whet your appetite.
Drum roll please (wow, that just gave me an idea for a gag I can do when Jenna gets back).
Are you sitting down?
We’ve both contributed to the finding that the quintessence field can’t be tamed. Not that we could ever find a way to even dip a single toe into it, but if we could, we agreed that this would destroy the Earth, at minimum, and would likely punch a hole in space-time and create a stable black hole.
Turns out we were wrong about that. Dark energy can be tapped into, and all of this crazy energy can be bottled and used after all. But only by using it at right angles to the four dimensions of space and time. By driving the energy usage through a fifth dimension.
My calculations have convinced me that you can tap into the quintessence field, and instead of releasing these incredible energies thermally and kinetically, you can harness them safely. But only to accomplish a single thing: send matter back in time.
There, I said it.
To repeat, it should be fairly straightforward to tap into the dark energy field to send matter, transdimensionally, back through time—without any explosion or other untoward effects. All of the energy drives the time travel, with none left over to cause any havoc. It will be absolutely safe. I’m certain of this.
The first stable platform for which this occurs is at T minus .00004515 seconds, or 45.15 microseconds. I am all but positive I will be able to use this theory to, with minimal trouble really, tap into the dark energy field and send matter back precisely this amount of time, and this amount of time only: 45.15 microseconds.
Just to be crystal clear and avoid any possible confusion, I am not saying I can send matter back in time hundreds or thousands of years—but that this matter can only remain in the past for forty-five microseconds. I am saying I can only send matter back to forty-five microseconds ago.
One interesting aspect of this work is that it appears I should be able to go back even farther, at 45.15 microsecond intervals exactly.
Why this interval? I don’t know, but the math here is beautiful, and this is what the results are. I’m only 95% certain of this right now, but I think I’ll be able to firm this up soon and be able to state it with absolute certainty as well.
If this is true, going back five thousand of these intervals will be just as easy as going back one. But there is one final catch. After going back a bit over ten thousand of these 45.15 microsecond steps, when you reach about a half-second into the past, you’re done. No power in the universe can take something back any further.
This falls out of the equations as a barrier that’s as absolute as the speed of light. I can’t say why this ultimate limit is what it is any more than I can explain why the speed of light limit happens to be 186,283 miles per second.
When you see the theory you will appreciate how revolutionary it really is. It will open up all kinds of theoretical avenues, and will be a totally new window on reality, like relativity and quantum physics before it.
I haven’t had a lot of time to think of practical applications as I’ve been consumed with perfecting the theory, but quantum physics didn’t have any practical applications either—until it became the heart and soul of all modern computers and electronic technology.
If this allowed one to send a stock tip or a lottery number back even an hour, the practical implications would be obvious. But a half-second doesn’t give you enough time to act on any information.
At the moment, all I’m certain of is the feasibility—the fairly straightforward feasibility—of sending something back exactly 45.15 microseconds. I’d say the blink of an eye, but I looked it up, and it turns out that an eye blink takes almost eight thousand times longer. So this will be challenging to work with. Even designing experiments will be challenging, but I’m assuming I’ll figure it out. And this will provide me with a tool that will enable me to answer so many questions.
Do we live in a block universe? Is Hawking’s chronology protection conjecture correct? How will gravity affect the transference? Does time branch, or is there only a single timeline? And these few profound questions—answerable questions!—are just off the top of my head.
So that’s it for now. I’m pretty fried, and I’m about to become unconscious whether I want to or not. So I’m not going to reread this to see if it makes any sense. If it doesn’t, just know that we’ll have many, many hours to discuss all of this, beginning Monday when I see you at UCLA.
I hope all is well. Can’t wait to have a second pair of eyes (connected to that massive brain of yours, of course) look this over.
Nathan.
Walsh stopped reading and there was an extended silence in the car. Jenna’s mouth had fallen open halfway through the recitation and had remained there. Blake was just as stunned by the revelations in Nathan Wexler’s e-mail as was Jenna, but was forced to keep some of his focus on the road.
“What in the world?” said a wild-eyed Jenna Morrison. “This is beyond extraordinary!” But a few seconds later her expression turned pensive. “But at the same time, what about it could possibly be important enough to kill for? Nathan was right. Going back in time far less than the blink of an eye is useless.”
“Apparently not,” said Blake grimly. “We must be missing something. Something big.”
“Well, we’d better figure it out,” said Jenna with a sigh. “And we’d better do it quickly.”
PART 2
Mystery
Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow is a mystery.
But today is a gift.
That’s why they call it the present.
—Unknown
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit
shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”
—Omar Khayyam
20
Lee Cargill waited impatiently for Joe Allen to arrive, repeatedly delaying the departure of his private jet.
What the hell was keeping him?
Cargill had wanted to arrive in DC in time to catch some quality sleep before his private meeting with Alex Janney, President of the United States.
Cargill checked the time once again and cursed loudly. Finally, ten minutes later, Allen arrived, expressed apologies for his tardiness, and was ushered onto the plane for an immediate takeoff.
The Gulfstream accelerated along the runway and streaked relentlessly to thirty thousand feet before leveling off. While the jet was on the extravagant side, considerable work had been done to give Cargill the cover of a wealthy tech entrepreneur, running a private company called Q5 Enterprises, so a military jet was out of the question.
The plane seated twelve people in such spacious luxury that first-class passengers on commercial flights were like peasants crammed into a third world bus by comparison. But for this trip, Lee Cargill and Joe Allen were the only passengers. The pilot was in the cabin, which had been made totally soundproof so Cargill could carry out business during flights without privacy concerns.
After they had leveled off, Allen began his report. “We found our mole,” he reported, but with less enthusiasm than Cargill would have expected, and an instant later he found out why as Allen added, “but I’m afraid we still have one left.”
Allen was seated in a cushioned captain’s chair that he had swiveled to face the one Cargill was in, a small table between them. If not for the round windows and thirty-thousand-foot drop below them, the meeting could well be taking place in an expensive apartment or an executive lounge.
“One thing at a time,” said Cargill. “First, who is the mole you found?”
“Jack Rourk.”
“You’re positive?”
“Absolutely.”
Cargill thought about this. Jack Rourk was a good man. At least this is what he had believed a second earlier. “And your evidence?” he said.
“I realized after the team disposed of Mark Argent’s body that they hadn’t recovered his phone. So I pinged it. I found it about ten feet away from where he was shot, hidden in a mat of pine needles. He had set it to audio recording, so we have a record of everything that was said.”
Allen produced a black custom cell phone, a little worse for wear, and handed it to Cargill. It was the same custom phone Rourk had been issued. While it was an untraceable, no frills variety, it still contained a camera and retained the ability to take audio and video recordings.
“I know you’ll want to listen to this yourself,” said Allen, “but let me give you the shorthand version. Seems that Mark Argent spotted a guy surveilling our clean-up crew on Palomar Mountain. Argent held him at gunpoint. The guy claimed to be a private detective, working for Jenna Morrison. Which means she did get off the mountain alive, after all. He may have been attempting to capture one of our crew. A more charitable interpretation is that he was there to examine what he thought of as a crime scene.”
“What’s his name?”
“Don’t know. Argent never used it, at least after he started recording.”
Cargill frowned. “Go on.”
“The PI had a camera on him. He claimed Jenna Morrison kept her whereabouts secret, even from him, but he claimed his camera had footage on it that would lead Argent to the girl. But when he was handing over the camera he somehow got the drop on Argent. Not sure exactly how it happened, but he took control.”
Cargill nodded thoughtfully. This was a surprise. Like all the men on the team, Argent was top drawer.
“Not much later, Rourk arrived on the scene,” continued Allen. “Argent thought he was there to help him.” He blew out a long breath. “Until Rourk shot him to death.”
Cargill’s stomach tightened. Argent’s death was bad enough, but a death caused by a betrayal was even worse. “You’re positive the PI didn’t shoot him?”
“Positive,” said Allen. “First, Rourk made the PI drop his gun, and was holding him at gunpoint. And just in case there was any doubt remaining, Rourk later called in a report to a superior, who I’m assuming was Edgar Knight. Rourk admitted in his report that he had been, in his own words, ‘forced to kill Argent.’”
Allen gave Cargill a few seconds to digest this and then continued. “Rourk also requested to come in, and reminded Knight that they still had one man on the inside.”
“Exact words?” said Cargill.
“Yes.”
“So he never said the name of our second mole?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Would it have been too much to ask for Rourk to use his partner’s fucking name?” thundered Cargill in frustration.
Allen swallowed hard. “On the bright side, at least we know exactly what we’re up against. Instead of thinking Rourk was the last of Knight’s moles, or wondering if we were infected with several others, now we know the score.”
Cargill nodded. “Yes, at least we have that.”
“Unfortunately, you’re going to like this next part even less,” said Allen.
“Are you going to tell me, or just warn me?”
“Rourk was after Jenna Morrison,” began Allen, wincing uncomfortably at having to be the bearer of even worse news. “But the PI told Rourk he was carrying a flash drive, which he claimed the girl had given him. One with Dr. Wexler’s recent work on it. And now Rourk has it.”
Cargill felt as though his heart were being squeezed in a vise. Could it be?
He considered this further and then shook his head. “I think it’s fifty-fifty that the PI was bluffing,” he said finally. “Our intel was certain that no trace of Wexler’s work remained.”
On the other hand, thought Cargill, even as he said this, garbage in, garbage out. Why should he trust his intel any more than he could trust his team? He had been told Wexler’s work had only been backed up on a single hard drive, and they had obliterated Wexler’s cloud storage account just to be certain.
But were there additional copies he had not been told about?
“It might have been a bluff,” said Allen. “You can listen to the recording and make your own judgment. But from what I heard, Rourk was taking the guy very seriously. I even got the sense that Rourk had pre-knowledge that such a flash drive existed. He agreed to let the detective go in exchange for it.”
“Still could have been a bluff. Rourk had to explore the possibility it was real. Just because he pretended to be willing to free the PI means nothing. I doubt he had any intention of keeping his word.”
Cargill wondered whom he was trying to convince, Allen or himself. If the private eye had been telling the truth, this was an unmitigated disaster. Cargill realized he was grinding his teeth, a subconscious manifestation of his tension.
How had that fuck-head Knight gotten to Rourk, anyway?
Cargill turned his head toward the window and the dark skies beyond, deep in thought. He then turned back toward Allen and locked his eyes onto his subordinate’s for what seemed like an eternity, not blinking for an inhumanly long period.
Could he trust this man? He had thought he could trust Rourk, after all. And while Edgar Knight had always been a strange duck, he had trusted him as well. Until he learned otherwise—the hard way.
Men were snakes. If God himself could be betrayed by an angel in Heaven—an angel named Satan, whom he was forced to cast out—certainly any man could be betrayed by any other man at any time.
He continued staring at Allen, who met his stare calmly, although he was forced to blink half a dozen times.
When Cargill had first learned that the men extracting Wexler had been ambushed, he had asked Allen point-blank why he should trust him, and Allen had reminded him of their history together. But now Cargill had even more reason to continue to trust this man. Hadn’t Allen found Argent’s phone? If he, too, were in league with Knight, he could have ignored the recording on the phone or deleted it. Instead, he had brought the recording to Cargill’s attention, fingered Rourk, and given him Argent’s phone.
And Allen’s earlier response had been on point, as well. Cargill had known him longer than any of the other men now under his control. Allen had proven his loyalty time after time. Which were the very reasons he had chosen him to be his second-in-command. If Cargill had to choose someone to trust, he couldn’t do better than Joe Allen.
Cargill finally broke eye contact with the man seated across the small table from him. “Is that everything?” he asked, breaking the long silence. “I assume Rourk and the PI both marched off into the night so Rourk could check out this supposed flash drive. Or did Rourk cap this unlucky bastard right after he got the drive? Have you looked for this PI’s body in the woods?”
“No. Believe it or not,” said Allen, shaking his head in wonder, “I’m all but positive the guy escaped. He was apparently throwing the flash drive to Rourk when a gunshot sounded. Loudly. Had to have been fired from the PI’s gun, since the shots Rourk fired to kill Argent were silenced. And then Rourk cursed, the kind of screamed profanity you might expect out of someone who had just been shot.”
“I assume you looked for Rourk’s body as well.”
“Yes. There was no evidence of either body anywhere within a half-mile radius of Argent’s phone. My guess is that the PI escaped and Rourk got the flash drive.”
“But you can’t be certain of this.”
“No.”
Cargill paused to consider what he had just learned. Whoever Jenna Morrison had hired was very good, and the more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that the man was not a private investigator. He wasn’t sure how the girl had dug him up, but he was quite formidable.
Argent and Rourk were seasoned pros, and being able to generate a brief distraction and then take advantage to turn the tables on each of them in turn demonstrated a level of skill, of real-world experience, that was even greater than theirs.
The range of skill between practiced experts and novices in every human endeavor was immense. A weekend tennis enthusiast could play a hundred games against Roger Federer and lose every point, every time. An average private investigator could try to slip the noose when held at gunpoint by the likes of Argent and Rourk, but he would lose every time, just as surely. He wouldn’t have the practiced movements, the speed, the decisiveness, the boldness. This man had to have been supremely well trained and extremely experienced.
