Split second, p.25
Split Second, page 25
I look forward to meeting you in person.
Lee
Blake glanced once again at the cameras facing him, and then at the door. As much as he was tempted to try to escape, he believed Cargill’s message. After all, the man could have easily chained him to a wall. He didn’t need to bluff.
But Blake had to admit, being held prisoner within America’s premier fortress was the last situation in which he had ever expected to find himself.
He sighed. Maybe cheating spouse cases weren’t so bad, after all.
45
True to Cargill’s word, the moment all three prisoners were awake a man named Joe Allen arrived to escort them to a large conference room within the mountain.
Blake couldn’t help but gawk at a site he never expected to see, and Jenna and Dan were doing the same. They first passed a wide tunnel protected by a famous twenty-five-ton blast door that was only shut in times of crisis. Blake estimated that the steel door was over three feet thick, ten feet tall, and slightly more than ten feet wide.
After this they continued on through several sections of the complex, including a glossy paved concrete road as wide as a runway, claustrophobic corridors dotted with doorways, and expansive brown, unfinished caverns, in which the mountain ceiling and walls had been smoothed but left natural and uneven, in case anyone had any doubt where they really were.
They finally arrived in a standard conference room that would have been at home in any Fortune 500 company in America. Opulent leather chairs surrounded a never-ending lacquered redwood conference table, so smooth and shiny it almost seemed radioactive. Oversized plasma television monitors covered the walls, and a clean, overturned drinking glass had been placed at each spot around the table, waiting to be filled by one of several evenly spaced pitchers of icewater perched on large lattice coasters.
When the three prisoners had taken a seat next to each other near the center of the table, their armed escorts left, and Joe Allen took a seat across from the trio. Seconds later Lee Cargill entered and extended his hand.
Blake ignored it, focusing instead on the man who had entered next to him: Greg Soyer.
The PI shot up from his seat and looked ready to leap over the table, causing both Cargill and Soyer to reflexively step backwards.
“You son-of-a-bitch!” hissed Blake at his former friend. “Were you with them from the very beginning?”
Soyer shook his head and looked physically ill. “How could I be, Aaron?” he barely managed to croak out.
Here was a man who had battled vicious terrorists with courage and calm, but seemed to be unraveling when confronted by a friend he had betrayed. “I knew nothing about this until you brought me into it.”
Soyer took a deep breath. “But after they captured me,” he continued, “they were very persuasive. You’ll see. I don’t blame you for hating me right now. But everything I did, I did with your interests at heart, and with good intentions.”
Blake bored deep into Soyer’s eyes and saw nothing but hurt and sincerity. He unclenched his fists. He had been too close to this man not to at least hear him out. And he would believe almost anything before he would believe Soyer would purposely do him harm.
He sat back down beside his two companions, who had been tensely observing the altercation and who seemed relieved that this powder keg had not gone off, at least for the moment.
Cargill gestured to Soyer, still standing by his side. “I know what you must think of this man,” he said to Blake. “But put yourself in my shoes, in your friend’s shoes. Edgar Knight is good enough to convince you that he’s Mother Teresa and I’m Darth Vader. I have no idea what he told you, how much he’s poisoned you against me. All I know is that you refused to even let me make my case.”
“You could have told me you’d won Greg over. He could have told me. That would have changed things.”
“Maybe. I considered this. But over the phone, you might have convinced yourself he was being coerced. Or that we had fed him nothing but lies, and he was being duped. You had no idea who to trust. You still don’t. And Greg Soyer was my ace in the hole. If I would have let you know he was siding with me, and you refused to come in, I couldn’t have used the tactic that did get you here.”
Blake glared at Soyer once again, but remained silent.
“Edgar Knight is the wrong man to underestimate,” said Cargill. “I’ve made that mistake several times now. He’s brilliant, competent, and has unlimited resources. Believe me, there is no doubt he was closing in on you fast. If he found you, as I said, the consequences for you, and the world, would be catastrophic. For all I knew he was minutes away. I explained the danger you were in, and Greg believed me.”
Cargill finally took a seat next to Joe Allen, facing the three prisoners, and Soyer followed suit.
“So if you were in his shoes,” continued Cargill, “what would you have done? You believe that your best friend might be one step away from a landmine, but has been lied to and isn’t in the mood to trust anyone, or anything. Do you risk taking the time to try to win him over to your point of view, while he continues to traipse through the minefield? Or do you tranquilize him before he can take another step and airlift his ass to safer terrain?”
As Cargill finished, Blake noticed that Soyer’s eyes had moistened, indicating he was experiencing emotions too powerful to fully contain. Apparently, Soyer’s betrayal had been as hard on him as it had been on Blake.
But this still didn’t mean his friend hadn’t been duped.
“You’ve made an interesting case,” said Blake, “but it all hinges on how real or imaginary this minefield is. So I’ll postpone judgment—for now.” He waved a hand at Cargill. “You wanted to tell your story. Okay, you have the floor.”
“Before I begin,” said Cargill, “I need to know everything Edgar Knight told you.”
“And if we refuse?” said Blake.
“Then you refuse. I won’t try to coerce you. But knowing what truths, and untruths, you’ve been told will allow me to proceed more efficiently, and I’ll be able to tell which parts of his story I need to demonstrate are lies.” He shrugged. “But it’s your choice.”
Blake glanced to either side of him, and both Jenna and Walsh nodded their approval. “All right, we’ll do as you ask,” he said. “Why not?”
The three prisoners took turns covering the tenor of their conversation with Edgar Knight, as much as they could collectively remember. Soyer appeared fascinated, while Cargill and Allen remained poker-faced throughout.
“So that’s everything,” said Blake when they had finished.
“Thank you,” said Cargill.
“So now I suppose you’re going to tell us it was all lies, right?”
Cargill smiled wearily. “No,” he replied, “because it wasn’t. What Knight told you about going back in time forty-five microseconds is accurate. So is his depiction of Q5’s initial mission, and how this changed once he found a way to tap dark energy and send matter back in time.”
He shook his head adamantly. “But it was Knight who went off the reservation. Not me. He broke off from Q5, killing some very valuable people on the way out the door. He had become paranoid, with delusions of grandeur, although I didn’t recognize this until later. He is no doubt brilliant, every bit the inventive genius of a Faraday, as he told you. But there can be a fine line between genius and insanity. Years ago there was a guy named Ted Kaczynski, a brilliant mathematician accepted into Harvard at sixteen, who became a crazed recluse, killing three and injuring dozens in bombings over several years.”
“Was he the guy they called the Unabomber?” asked Blake.
“Exactly. And Bobbie Fischer was considered the greatest chess player who ever lived, and he ended up losing complete touch with reality. John Nash, a brilliant mathematician who developed game theory, was debilitated by paranoid schizophrenia. There are numerous other examples of brilliant people becoming deranged.”
“So what?” said Blake bluntly. “I can give you more examples of stupid people becoming deranged. This doesn’t prove anything.”
“I didn’t say this proved anything. I just thought I’d point it out.”
“And now you have,” snapped Jenna. “So Knight says you’re the rogue, and you say he is. So how do we know who’s lying, and who’s telling the truth?” She shook her head, a dark scowl on her face. “The only thing I know for sure is that your side killed Nathan in cold blood.”
“For one, I have a video of Knight trying to convince me of his perspective, before he took matters into his own hands. The video that, among other things, convinced Greg Soyer. But even without that, from what you’ve told me about your conversation with Knight, I know he lied about several other things, and I can prove it.”
“And these things are?” prompted Jenna.
“First, he lied about the maximum physical dimensions of his time travel devices. You can construct them as big as a room. Second, he lied about his reason for wanting Dr. Wexler’s work. He didn’t want it to improve the process. It’s already seamless.”
“So why then?” said Blake.
“Because he’s only ever been able to get his device to push back forty-five microseconds. But he desperately wants it to be able to go back the full half-second Dr. Wexler indicated should be possible.”
“I still don’t get it,” said Blake, shaking his head. “Why does any of this matter?”
“I agree,” said Walsh. “How did lying about these things help Edgar Knight in any way?”
“Because it allowed him to accomplish exactly what he accomplished,” said Cargill. “As always, he did a brilliant job of it. He managed to freak you out about the possibilities of time travel, of duplication, to justify why this discovery needed to stay hidden forever, and convince you my actions were due to megalomania and greed.”
Cargill leaned forward, and his voice took on a new intensity. “But Knight didn’t even scratch the surface of what is possible. He made you think the device was the size of a suitcase, and limited his examples to cell phones.” He paused. “And he did this for a very important reason.”
“What reason?” said Blake, still not seeing it.
“To distract you. Like a great magician, he focused you on the small so you’d never consider the big. Why? Because a human being can’t fit inside a suitcase,” pointed out Cargill. “If he started you off thinking the device could be as large as a room, you would soon ask the question: can you send people back in time? In essence, can you duplicate not just phones, but human beings?”
Blake’s jaw dropped, and his two companions both reacted with equal dismay.
“In case you were wondering,” continued Cargill, “the answer to both questions is yes. If you think duplicating octa-nitro-cubane, enriched uranium, and complex electronics opens up some serious cans of worms, spend a few days thinking through the implications of copying people.”
All three prisoners remained absolutely dumbfounded, too much in shock to attempt speech.
“And, yes,” said Cargill, “I can show you a device much bigger than Knight said was the theoretical maximum, and give a demonstration, proving that he lied.”
Walsh was beginning to recover his mental equilibrium, and his shrewd scientific mind was coming back to life. “Okay, this explains why he had to pretend the device was small,” he said. “But why the half-second? This doesn’t help him duplicate matter any better than forty-five microseconds does.”
Cargill raised his eyebrows. “One word,” he said evenly. “Teleportation.”
46
This word hit the room like a fifty megaton bomb. Blake’s mouth hung open once again as he tried to steady himself.
Teleportation?
Of course, teleportation, thought Blake. How had they missed it?
Because Knight had done a brilliant job of misdirection, as Cargill had said. Getting them to think small, and solely about phones, really had prevented them from taking the next logical leap. As magicians had learned many ages earlier, human beings were easy to misdirect.
“The Earth moves through space at a rate of two hundred and forty-two miles per second,” mused Walsh, as if talking to himself. “So in half of a second, we’d be looking at . . .” The physicist paused, reluctant to even finish.
“About a hundred and twenty miles,” whispered Jenna, completing his sentence.
All three newcomers to Cheyenne Mountain began speaking at once.
Cargill held out his hand as if it were a stop sign. “Before we get too far ahead of ourselves,” he said loudly to be heard above the clamor and to stifle the excited cross-talk, “let me start at the beginning.”
“Good idea,” said Blake after the commotion from his side of the table had died down.
Blake rose and poured himself a glass of water from a nearby pitcher, and then poured one for each of his companions. Walsh took a long drink immediately, with an expression suggesting he wished it were alcoholic.
“We began with the goal of tapping dark energy, as you know,” said Cargill. “And then Edgar Knight made his discovery, and we started considering the possibilities. Including human duplication. But before we wasted any time discussing this further, we conducted a series of experiments.”
“Right,” said the UCLA physicist, “because you couldn’t be sure anything could live through the time travel process.”
“Correct. We had no idea what effect this might have on life, and especially sentience. So we began by sending back an assortment of bugs, one by one. A pill bug, an ant, a spider. We ended up with perfect copies, and none seemed to be any worse for wear.” He paused. “And just to be clear, the words copies or duplication are just used for convenience.”
“We understand,” said Walsh. “You aren’t making a copy, per se. You’re taking an older version of something and sending it back in time to join a version that is a split second younger.”
“Exactly. So after we tried this on bugs, we sent back hamsters. They did fine, also. Finally, we made a copy of Joe’s dog, a black cocker spaniel and poodle mix named Dash,” he explained, nodding toward Joe Allen seated beside him. “It was the most important test of all.”
“Why?” said Blake.
“Because if anything had changed in Dash’s brain,” guessed Walsh, “it would manifest itself behaviorally. And a man knows his own dog. Joe would know if there was anything different about him.”
Cargill nodded. “That’s right.”
“You’ll be happy to know,” said Allen, “that Dash made it through with flying colors. The trip through forty-five microseconds of time had absolutely no effect on him whatsoever.”
“And the duplicate is still alive?” asked Jenna.
“Absolutely. Dash and Dash have become the best of friends with himselves.”
Jenna couldn’t help but smile. “This isn’t the first time you’ve used that line, is it?” she said.
Allen grinned. “You caught me. But I still find it amusing every time.”
Walsh turned once again to Cargill. “So did you then try it on a human?” he asked.
“No,” said Cargill. “That’s where Edgar and I stopped seeing eye to eye. My feeling was that duplicating a person wouldn’t be stepping onto a slippery ethical slope, it would be rocketing down an ice-cliff.”
He paused. “Imagine there were two of any of you. Two exact copies, both of them you, just taken from different frames of your life. Since forty-five millionths of a second is too short to even notice, it’s as though two of you budded off into identical copies in an instant. So what if one of you commits a murder and leaves a fingerprint behind? Can you get off, claiming your other self did it? And who has signature authority? Which one of you owns your money and car? Your kids? Your girlfriend or wife? Who is the real Daniel Walsh, or Aaron Blake, or Jenna Morrison?”
Blake whistled. “I can see where this could be tricky,” he said. “And I’m sure the more you think about it, the more complexities arise.”
“Absolutely,” said Cargill. “Imagine making ten copies of yourself. Just as easy with Knight’s process as one.”
“But you’re saying Knight wanted to try it anyway,” said Jenna, “despite these issues.”
“Yes. He acknowledged the issues existed and needed to be addressed. But he became obsessed with the promise. His intuition told him that he should be able to configure the device to go back further than forty-five microseconds. He saw that as the holy grail. When he realized that Nathan Wexler had almost certainly cracked this nut, he must have been ecstatic.”
“But it’s still only half a second,” noted Walsh. “And, apparently, Nathan’s equations show that this is an absolute limit.”
Cargill shrugged. “He’d like to be able to go back even further,” he said, “meaning, of course, a greater distance, but a little more than a hundred miles would still suit his interests perfectly. He was a Star Trek fanboy as a kid, and of all the technology on this show, the transporter machine ignited his imagination the most. He fantasized about perfecting a technology that would allow him to beam from place to place. He spent years working on such a device, but decided it couldn’t be done, at least not for hundreds of years.”
“Until this came along,” said Blake.
Cargill nodded.
“But this device isn’t a Star Trek transporter machine,” protested Walsh. “Yes, you can send yourself a hundred miles away, but you duplicate yourself in the process. So every time you beam yourself to the grocery store, you create the pesky problem of having another you with a claim to all of your possessions.”
“I agree,” said Cargill wearily. “But Edgar didn’t. He envisioned a machine that would do time travel and incineration in one fell swoop.”
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” said Jenna.
“I’m afraid not. Let me explain how he envisioned this working. Say this room is a time travel device. Imagine you stand here with an electronic transmitter in your pocket. One that is programmed to trigger the instant it detects that you’re no longer at the GPS coordinates of this room. Now you send yourself a half-second back in time, which effectively moves you over a hundred miles in space—although it’s really the Earth that’s doing the moving through space, not you.”
