Large meetings tend to inducedrowsiness and the Pentagon war room was packed with enough top brass to sendMegan into stupor. It didn’t help that she’d stayed up late to review the latest fiascowith Patient Zero where he’dallegedly trashed his school’s chemistry lab. Megan sighed. That kid attracted trouble like a magnet, which was perversely appropriate consideringhe was bait for GORGON. Covering her yawns with one hand, Megan’s attention wasdrawnto the wall screen which flickered and updated toa satellite image of Europe. Colonel Griffin was seated in accordance to military pecking order,flanked by Megan and Jonathan West. Officially they were both here as Griffin’s aides, but in her dark moments Megan wondered if Griffin simply neededa female presence todistractquestions away. The old goatalways treated her with grudging respect, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be sexist.
“...NRO just forwarded a newconsideration for target development,” Brig.General Stapleton of the Marine Corps waved thelaser pointer, as a large circle appearedoverlaidon Eastern Europe, “...heavily shielded underground butfinally resolved from magnetometry once NROknew what to look for.”
”GORGON has built itself a particle accelerator,” Griffin grunted, it wasn’t a question.
Megan stared, sleep instantly forgotten. The inscribed circle skirted Warsaw, Budapest and Chisinau. If that was a collider, it was largest on the planet.
”How... when did they start building?” sputtered GeneralBriggs, commander of US-NATO Air Forces in Europe.
“Weestimate thatconstructionbegan almost two decades ago,” anNRO analyst swallowed nervously, “soonafter GORGON annexed territories to establish Ostland. At least ten percent of Ostland''s population must have been consumedin constructing the collider.”
"Ten percent," Jonathan muttered.
”And it took you PHOTOINT typesthis long to see it?”Briggs looked outraged, “the damn thing is literally bigger than Texas.”
”That was part of the problem, sir,” the NRO analyst stiffened, “we weren’t looking for anything on that scale. And soilshielding made it hard to connect the dots.”
“It does coincide withGORGON’s primary defensive perimeter,” Jonathan nodded almost to himself, “Can someoneplease overlay the CERN collider for scale.”
A tiny circle, a dot utterly dwarfed by the larger circle, flashedon the border between France and Switzerland.
”What the heck doesGORGON wantwith a collider that big?” Stapleton posedthe obvious question. Megan and Jonathan traded glances. There was one thing Sybilline couldwantit for, buteven she wasn’t that suicidal, was she?
”How long before it’s operational?” Griffin sounded hopeful.
”Uh...sir, it alreadyis,” the NRO analyst licked his lips, “has been readyfor the past twenty-two monthsif dummy-firespikesin the magnetic data are anything to go by.”
Megan frowned.
”But what is it for?” Briggs sounded frustrated, “How do we assigntarget priority without knowing that?”
“Speaking of which,” Ariana Folgers, Program Manager, DARPA Strategic Technologies Office, cleared her throat, “are we sure we can penetrate GORGON air defenses this time? Not sure what Colonel Griffin has been up to since the fiasco at Brookhaven, but I don’t have much confidence in his pet projects.”
Griffin scowled. Megan wondered if Folgers had eversmiled in her life. That OAT, rather than the STO, had been assigned Project Omega-Delphi was still a sore point with Folgers. Inter-agency politicssimmered beneaththe surface, kept aliveby old resentments.
A series of numbered asterixsappeared in the map on the collider rim, like beads on a ring but irregularly spaced. One of the asterixs blinked and thedisplay zoomed into an aerial shot of a grey building like a step-pyramid rising from a valley floor with snow-cappedmountains in the background. Rail lines radiated out, dwarfed by the scale of the pyramid. Megan recognized SAM launchers on the terrace. The corner of the image was labelled ‘Zig-14’, along with a date stamp.
“Nearest practical target ison the Czech border,” Stapleton commented, “in occupied Slovakia. Everyonehere is aware of GORGON’s network ofsubterranlabor camps. What''snot obvious is that the pattern of camps forma circle... talk about hiding in plain sight. The camps sit over excavation shafts andtherefore structural weak points. Collapsing one ofthe pyramidsshouldputthe collider out of comission for some time.”
"A GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator ought to do it," Briggs rubbed his chin, "assuming ourbombers reach target."
"Can they?" Stapleton echoed Ariana''s doubt.
The screen switched to a photo of a B-2, presumablytaken from another B-2. The bomber was being swarmed by what appeared to bemetallic gnats. A smaller photo appeared inset, awasp-waisted drone disturbingly insect-like with articulated delta wings and compound lenses. The captured drone had GORGON insigna painted onflanking intake nostrils and was only about a foot long going by the ruler placed next to it.
"USAF does NOT have air-superiority over Ostland," Briggs spat sourly, "None of our bombers have made it back. The enemy always seems tospot ourstealth aircraft, which woud be patentlyabsurd if it wasn''t true. Those damned hypersonic drones simply fly into our jet intakes. Griffin here thinks theswarm is driven by actual insect minds. Whatever they are doing, its damned effective. ICBMs would work, but damnedNATO politics..."
"Chairwoman Katrina Malenkov, or Sybilline as we call her, is nigh omniscient," Griffin nodded bluntly, "which means GORGON defenses are airborne even as your B-2s are taxiing for takeoff. We need to blind her, if our bombers are to stand a chance. Which is where Patient Zero comes in..."
"Pl...eease," snapped Folgers, "Using a high school junior against an enemy with super-Bayesian reasoning? Like that''s going to work."
"Since we thinkPatient Zero''s actions are inscrutable to Sybilline," Griffin suppressed his temper "all we are doing is mappingthe kid''sactivity to a decision tree..."
"Why notuse a random number generator?" Briggs frowned, "Or just toss a coin?"
"None of those methods are truly random," Jonathan spoke up, "Unlikely as it sounds, Sybilline can foreseeany deterministicprocess we use against her. The CIA has enough dead agents as testimony."
"What about quantum processes?" Folgers raised perfect eyebrows, "Aren''t those supposed to be truly random? We do haveprototype qubit processors. Not big enough for code breaking. But adequate for random numbers."
"Good point, Ariana," Stapleton looked surprised, "Yes, Griffin, why haven''t youused quantum computing?"
There was a pause. Griffin turned to Jonathan.
"We did attempt to use a qubit-based dice in the beginning," Jonathan nodded reluctantly, "but they didn''t work."
"How so, Dr. West ?" Stapleton sounded skeptical.
"The qubit dicenever did choose any offensive action against GORGON," Jonathan shook his head, "no matter how long we waited. The bloody thing always deffered military action. It was baffling and we eventually gave up."
"What?" Megan stared at Jonathan, "How is that possible? That''s like flipping a quantum coin and always coming up with heads, right? When was this?"
It was bad form to question Jonathan in an inter-agency meeting, but that bit of revelation had spooked Megan.
"Right," Jonathannodded uneasily, "It was a year ago. The odd thing is it worked fine in test scenarios, but whenever we tried to use the qubitdice to greenlight an actual bomber mission into GORGON territory, it would never give us the go-ahead."
Megan felt her gut clench as dread jogged her memory. Something Patient Zero had mentionedinone oftheir interviews. Something she''d dismissed asludicrous, but Jonathan had warned that Sybilline was unlike any enemy they''d faced...
"It''s a doomsday weapon," Megan blurted, "GORGON''s collider is a doomsday weapon which Sybilline triggers whenever you try to foil her Oracle-vision."
"And you know this, how exactly?" Stapletonseemed unimpressed.
"This video explains it better than I could, sir," Megan pulled out her phone, "if I may?"
Stapleton gave a long-suffering sigh, butindicated for her to go ahead. Megan synced her smartphone to the wall projector, scrolling through her video logs till she found the right one, and clicked Play.
#
She adjusted her hairpin - with its built in video cam - as she rang the doorbell while awkwardly squeezing a briefcaseunderherarm. The surveillance-friendly hair accessory was geared toward female agents, and would record whatever Megan happened to be looking at, provided of course it was aligned correctly. Better than a fish-eye lens sewn into her suit lapel. The colonial home was located in a subdivsion thatwas decent without being upscale. Megan noted the stucco facade was crumbling in places, with acouple of sparrow holes that hadn''t been patched. And if one looked closely, wood rotwas seen eatingaway at the window frames. Weeds sprouted through cracks in the drivewaywhich was blocked by an official-looking SUV, forcingMegan to park on the side of the road. Megan frowned at theHomeland Securitylicense plate. She slowed her brisk walk, pulling out her phone to snap a photo and run the plate through a Federal database, then walked up to the porch.Loud voices sounded from within the house, muffled by the door.
"... if you''d drag your worthless ass out of bed before 9 AM..." a woman''s voice was raised.
"... drove all night to get here, you unreasonable harpy..." a man''s voice snarled.
A typical suburban weekendof domestic bliss, then. The door was opened by ascowlingsomewhat plump man with bloodshot eyes and a harried expression, "Can I help you?"
The man''s eyes flickered with recognition and he smiled, "Oh, hi... Megan... Miss Murphy, isn''t it? Come on it."
"Mr. Cook," Megan nodded, stepping into a foyer where a corridor terminated, "I work for the DOE, as you may recall. I''d like tospeak to your son regarding the... incident last night at Fuller Dynamics. Can I come in?"
"Who is it?" A slender woman with Native American featuresstepped into the corridor from the kitchen at the far end, her eyes narrowing as she spotted Megan, "Oh, it''s you... the DOE investigator. What do you want now?"If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Her tone was less friendly than her husband''s
"She wants to talk to Sean, dear," Andrew Cook spat out the last word.
"Take a number and get in line," scoffedMrs. Cook, "there''salready one of you government types interrogating my son right now. And before he showed up, FBI and cops were here takingstatements."
"I''m sorry for the trouble, Mrs. Cook," Megansmiled reassuringly, "I''ll make sure Homeland Security doesn’t bother you any more. Is it OK if I chat with Sean, though?”
Winona looked doubtful, if slightly mollified.
“It’s mostly forhealth insurance,” Megan spoke the magic words, “The DOE is willing to cover medical expensesstemmingfromyesterday''s incident. I understand Sean''s arm was badly injured."
Fuller''s surgeon, Dr. Sinclair,had requested access to Sean''s medical history, which had triggered a notification to OAT. Megan was pleased with herselffor setting that alarm.
"Fuller''s damn machines nearly killed my son," Winona clenched her fist and paused suspiciously, "You''re not here to press charges, are you?"
Megan frowned, wondering why this woman would imagine that. If anything, the boyshould filea lawsuit againt Fuller for endangering life and limb. Megan wasn''t getting the full picture...
"I’m not law enforcement," Megan shook her head, "Nothing he tells me can be used in court.” BesidesOAT doesn’t need any stinkingcourts to lock your son away if we need to, she didn''t say.
"Of course,Megan, you can talk to Sean whenever you want," Andrew nearly simpered, "not a problem."
“In the living room,” Winona pointed, rolling her eyes behind her husband, “past the kitchen.”
Winona found Sean sitting on the coffee table, surrounded by bits of unfamiliar electronic gear, a laptop, a voltmeter and a soldering iron. An empty shippingcarton lay openon the floor. His left arm was in a cast, and his face looked the worse for wear. A man in a suit and dark glasses stood witha clipboard, scratchingoff questionsas he worked his way through the list.
”You’re certain it said ‘Hail GORGON’?” the agent paused, turning at Megan’s approach.
”Well, not certain,” Sean shrugged with his good arm, “My broken arm was distracting. It might have meant‘HailBourbon’ or ‘Hail Gordon’ though it seems unlikely given the geopolitical context.”
”Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence DOE,” Megan flashed an ID, glancing at the search result on her phone, “I’ll be taking it from here, Agent Young.”
“Excuse me?” the man frownedtaking off his glasses, giving an excellent impression of Hollywood’s image of a Federal agent, “Have we met? The DOE has no jurisdiction here.”
“The President disagrees,” Megan pulled out an official looking memo and dropped it on his clipboard, “And pleasesend me a copy of your transcript on Monday."
”Is this ajoke?” the agent sneered, flexing his shoulders, his eyes insolently tracing the contours of her suit, “Nationalsecurity is what we do, girl. Let the big boys handle it. Run along now.”
“Take the call,” Megangestured.
"What call?" the agent frowned and then gave a startwhen his phone rang three seconds later, "Agent Young, speaking. Yes? Oh... yessir. She''s here. No, sir... there''s no problem. I was just handing off the investigation."
"You have thePresident on call?" Agent Young looked a shade paler, "Who are you?"
"A girl who knows the stakes, buh-bye,” Megan smiled sweetly, as Agent Young departed. She turned to Sean who was eyeing her warily, "Got a few minutes, Sean?I''d like to catch up on what you''ve been up to.Since your... incident at Brookhaven."
"Counterintelligence? You''re not really a liason, are you?" Sean sounded tired, "So why don''t you cut theBS and tell me what you want."
There was a manicgleam in Sean''s eye. Megan wondered if the kid was lightheaded from medication.Thatcould be exploited.
"Well," Megan drawled with a smile, "since we''re being honest, why don''t you start with anything you haven''t told me about Brookhaven."
"Don''t you want to ask about what happened at Fuller Dynamics last night?" Sean raised a brow.
"We''ll get to that," Megan waved, making a mental note to requistion the police & FBI for their transcripts, "but I''m sure you''re tired of repeating that story today. Have youexperienced any changes since the accident with the subatomic wormhole?"
"Changes?" Sean''s tone was neutral, his expression rigidly blank.
"Difficultywith school work. Psychological shifts. Even new... abilities," Megan nodded.
"What... like superpowers?" Sean''s laugh was forced, "I wish."A transparent lie, thought Megan, his school work has improved dramatically. She would keep him on a long leash, for now, without pressing him. From her briefcase she extracted a manila folder sandwiching a sheaf of documents.
”Before I forget,” Megan waved the folder, “here’s a bunch of papers I need your folksto go over and sign. Your MRI had some interesting results. If you stillaren’t experiencing any changeswe need to understand why. We may need to take you in for extensive testing.” The threat was subtle but unambiguous. If Seanwasn''t forthcoming, he’d be handed over to government scientists to be probed indefinitely.
"You want toaskabout the alien," Sean studied her reaction.
"Aa... alien?"Megan flinched despite herself.
"Ihad a dream when I was unconscious," Sean leaned back on his good arm, "A dead universe... allthe galaxies burned out. But there was something in there. Analien intelligence that was part of spacetime itself."
"Tell me everything," Megan''s knuckles whitened on her briefcase. An eyewitness account of First Contact, in parallelto what the Russians had uncovered at Protvino, was invaluable intel.
"That''s about it," Sean nodded, nervously running fingers through his hair, "I had a feeling I was lookingat the other side of that wormhole. Then a blank."
"Ok, cool," Megan nodded casually, "if you recall anything else, anything at all, just call me... hold this for a sec, will you."
She''d dropped the suitcasetodiscard her suit in the stuffy room . Her arm stuck out, her suit trapped by the manilla folder. Sean reached out instinctively to assist and shudderedwhenhis fingers touched the thin cover of the folder. He groaned and rubbed his eyes.
”Are you OK?” Megan’s eyes narrowed.
”Unggh...shit... I’m fine,” Sean’s eyes were glazed, as if forced tomake sense ofgovernment forms at gunpoint, "Really."
"School project?"Megan pointed, dropping into a couch set against the window. Inthe daylight, Sean''s facelookedeven more haggard, lines of pain evident. He had a black eye and his lip had recently been bruised. If not for recent events, she''d have thought the kid had gotten into a fight. For some reason his hair was glossier than the last time.
"Oh... this?" Sean glanced down at the hardware strewnon the coffee table, sounding relieved at the change of subject, "um, no. Just an idea for an experiment."
"What does it do?" Megan feigned curiosity. She had enough experiencedealing withher nephews'' hobbies, toknow how to get a teenager talking.
"It uses a photon to simulate a coin toss," Sean sounded embarrased, "A way to potentially get rich by eliminating observations in unfavorable quantum histories."
"What?" Megan sounded nonplussed. Her electronically giftedniecehadn''t mentioned anything like that. Even OAT threat assessments on exotic emerging tech, whichMegan was required to read, hadtalked aboutpractical quantum computers as being a decade away, at least the ones bigenough to worry about.
"You remember the classic double-slit experiment, right?" Sean got up and began to pace, "Pass lightthrough a pair of diffraction slits and you get an interference pattern on a wall."
Megan nodded brightly, dredging vague memories from her old high school physics class and half-digested OAT reports.
"The mindblowing thing is werecord the same interference pattern on photographicplate even if we use only one photon at a time," Sean exclaimed excitedly, "Almost like the photon is splitting itself to go through both slits. But nointerference pattern if one of the slits is blocked, by say, a photon detector."
"Isn''t that because a photon is both a particle and a wave?" Megan sounded pleased at recalling that particular piece of academic trivia.
"That''sthe De Broglieexplanation," Sean nodded, "which is weird if you think about it. The photon somehow decides to act like a wave if its sees two slits, but acts like a particle otherwise? Then there''s the even weirder Copenhagen interpretation, which implies it isn''t meaningful to ask which slit the photon went through. The path that the photon took supposedly exists only as probability that then gets finalizedwhen we tryto detect it. Which leads to nonsensicalimplications when you imagine the photon having macroscopic consequences like killing a cat. Is the cat dead or alive?"
"Yeah, so?" Megan was losing interest. Was there a point to this kid''s rambling?
"There''s a simpler explanation," Sean smiled wryly, "The photon is interfering with a different version of the same photon. The one that took the other slit in an alternate quantum history. An alternate copy of our universe cloned when the photon passed through the slits."
"What?" Megan frowned, wondering if the kid was pulling her leg, "that''s just... silly."
"It''s called the Many Worlds interpretation," Sean looked unfazed by Megan''s skepticism, "and it''s the only one that makes sense from what I understand."
"What''s it got to do with anything?" Megan asked suspiciously.
"Well... if the Many Worlds is true, every quantum measurement clones the universe," Sean picked up a piece of hardware and brought it over to Megan.A closed tube attached to a bulky box with a mini-keyboardand an LED display. He pressed ''Enter'' and the display lit up with a ''0''. Pressed again with display unchanged. Pressing once more and thedisplay changed toa ''1'', "which means every time I press this key, a single-photon crystal-emitterclonesthisuniverse into two, whosetimelines diverge from that point on, because the photon''s path can have real world consequences."
"You call that a simpler explanation?" scoffed Megan, "and what''s it got to do with getting rich?"
"Say I wanted to break an unbreakable encryption," Sean continued, "all I need to do is to generate a random binary key with this gizmo. The chances of getting the rightkey by accident are a trillion to one, right? Not a problem, since I''ve already cloned a trillion universes. Each of my counterparts in those universes will see a different random number on this display, almost all of which will be wrong. But one of those versions of me, will have the rightkey by chance."
"That''s your plan?" Meganbarked a laughat the sheer insanity of it, "just hope that one of your quantum clones will succeed? Even if you''llgeneratethe wrong key in almost every instance?Go through this ritual... it will make you rich in another universe, which you can never see!" The last part came out more mockingly than she intended.
"I wasn''t going to take it on faith," Sean scowled, "I was going to hook this up to adevice that''llterminate meif I get the wrong key. The only version of me that survives will be the one with the right answer. It won''t convince anyone else since I''ll be dead in most universes. But I will knowbecause I''d be alive in that one universe where I generated the right key. It was Moravec''s thought experiment, the robotics pioneer... crazily brilliant dude."
Megan stared at Sean, feeling a chill. The kidwas batshit crazy,nothing like her nephews.
"Oh... I''m not actually going to commit quantum suicide," Sean blurted, seeingher reaction, "I am not that morally bankrupt, to leave my mom and dad devastated in a trillion universes just so I could profit in one. Stupid reason to die to anyway. If the Many Worlds is wrong, I''ll be completely dead. If it''s right, I can take comfort that I''ll win in atleast one universe. Besidesquantum suicide wouldn''t work for me anyway."
"Huh? Were you just bullshitting me then?" it was Megan''s turn to scowl.
"No," Sean smiled wanly, "My bestie Mei Ling would kill me if she found out I offed myself in all those other universes.But... it mightmake a nice emergencydevice ina pinch, say ifyou need to defuse a GORGON fusion bomb by inputting the right code... same principle."
"I... see," Megan sounded strained, "Speaking of which, let''s talk about what happened last night..."
#
Megan stopped the video. The faces around the table,in the Pentagon war room, looked flabbergasted. Even Jonathan.
"Agent Murphy, are you crazy?" Stapleton demanded, "you seriously expect us to believe there are trillions of copies of our universe and we are in one that did not order an attack based on a quantum dice?"
"God does not play dice with the universe, Agent Murphy," Briggs interjected, "That''s a quote from Einstein, by the way."
Megan resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
"Observer selection effect is a thing, sir," the NRO analyst spoke up unexpectedly, "It would explain Dr. West''s failure with the quantum dice, if GORGON simply destroys the world everytime we manage to defeat them mortally. It has been theorized that extremely energetic particle collisions can collapse the false vacuum in our region of space and destroy the Earth near instantly."
"Or Sybilline opens up a wormhole toa strong superintelliegence," Jonathan mused, "this one big enough to permitsaid entity to physically pass through. That would kill us all instantly."
The silence at the table lasted several moments.
"If quantum tech is ruled out," Folgers finally spoke, "it appears we have little choice but to trust Griffin''s plan with Patient Zero."
It sounded like a concession, but Colonel Griffin didn''t look too happy.
END OF CHAPTER