Apocalypse Machine (39 page)

41

Raven Rock isn’t just a subterranean backup Pentagon, it’s also a vast military complex and backup White House, complete with its own Situation Room. At any other time in the history of the Situation Room’s existence, fifteen years would have brought a lot of changes. From landlines to cellphones and then smartphones. From notepads to PDAs and then tablets. From paper maps to interactive touch-screen displays with satellite imagery. But now, despite the passage of fifteen years, this duplicate Situation Room looks identical to the one I remember. The long desk. The office chairs. The wall-mounted flat screens, most of which are turned off, having no outside feeds to display. The furniture looks worn from use, no longer able to be replaced with each new presidency.

I sit beside my wife, the President, who is seated at the head of the table. Her fingers are tented in front of her weary face. She glances around the room, making eye contact with several of the people seated with us, no doubt trying to gauge their reactions to the information bomb dropped by Ishah. He’s not the most senior scientist in Raven Rock, but they seem to trust him, especially Mina, though she has questions.

“What do you mean, it’s not alive?” she asks.

Ishah’s first declaration silenced the room, but it achieved its purpose. He has their attention, not necessarily because of the information that he’s given them, but that he’s given them something for the first time since the last Situation Room meeting I attended. I look around at the faces watching him, searching for someone I recognize. The science advisor, or generals, all of whose names I have forgotten. But I see no one familiar, and most of them are younger than me.
How many of the old guard were lost in the coup
, I wonder, and then I turn my thoughts back to Ishah’s answer.

“In many ways, it resembles life. It takes in energy, we think, from radiation, from the sun and from biological matter, most likely from the oceans, which it then excretes, or sheds, as new biological matter. My father calls it Scionic life, divergent from all previous life on Earth, but still related.”

“Related?” someone asks. “To us? How?”

The question is off topic, but I tackle it head on with the hopes of getting back on track. “The human race and most of the plants and animals we shared the planet with evolved in the wake of the Ordovician–Silurian extinction event.”

“You’re saying that the human race...”

“Evolved from the Machine, yes. We were shed into being, created from the elements of this Earth and allowed to be fruitful and multiply, until we nearly destroyed the garden we were given to tend.”

“You’re suggesting that the Machine is...God?” The question comes from Bell this time.

I shake my head. “It’s a tool, created by and left here by a higher power. Whether you believe that’s God or aliens or beings from another dimension, is up to you.”

At the back of the room, the door opens and a man steps inside. I only see his head, but the tight shave tells me it’s another military man. I wait for him to push through and take a seat, but he seems content to linger behind the circle of aides and advisors, ready to spring into action.

“You keep calling it ‘the Machine’,” one of the generals points out. He wasn’t around for my earlier explanation of the name, and Ishah wisely leaves that story out, focusing on the newfound scientific facts.

“That’s because it
is
a machine,” Ishah says. “The sample provided by my father contained thousands of microscopic nanobots.” He points a remote at the large screen mounted at the back of the room. It shows a video captured by the microscope. At first glance, it looks like a close up view of tiny biological creatures flitting about. “Each one of the individual units you see is smaller than a speck of dust. Yet, they are machines, containing no biological elements. Separately, they are even more primitive than a virus. Their primary function is to seek out other nanobots and form more complex matrices, which we were able to modify with various electrical charges. Each one acts as a stem cell, able to become part of whatever is needed, whether that is part of a self-healing exoskeleton, or a more complex machine capable of genetically engineering new life.

“We believe that the Machine is composed of more nanobots than we could ever count. Basically, a googol. And combined in that number, the Machine would be sentient, far more intelligent than any of us, and very capable of managing life on Earth, from the planet’s conception to its eventual demise at the hands of the sun.”

It’s Mina who hears the silver lining in all that. “How were you able to modify it?”

“Certain charges triggered changes in the nano behavior,” Ishah says. “We were able to instigate a merging, or tightening, in which the nanos coalesced into a dense ball. And we were able to separate them again, putting them in a kind of temporary dormant state.”

“Could you do this to the Machine?”

“Theoretically,” Ishah says. “But the effect would be momentary and would likely wear off before the effect even reached the far side. It would be like a ripple of dormant activity, moving at the speed of light. The best it would do is make it stutter, for just a moment.”

“Can the nanos be destroyed when they’re dormant?” Mina asks.

“Individually, they are quite fragile. I would guess that the nuclear blasts used against the Machine in the early days destroyed layers of them as well, but when pulling from a resource numbering googol, it’s virtually impossible to run out of replacement parts, especially when new parts can be constructed from the very Earth itself. And it’s conceivable that the nanos could form a structure sturdy enough to not sustain any damage.”

The look in Mina’s eyes is one I haven’t seen before. She’s always been intelligent and logical, but now I see cunning. “And if a nuclear blast were to follow in the wake of a dormancy ripple?”

Ishah looks as stunned as I feel. Did Mina just unravel a way to not only defeat, but destroy the Machine?

“Uh,” Ishah says.

“In theory,” Mina says.

“In theory.” Ishah gives a nod. “Yes, but—”

“How fast can we—”

“I think we need to take a moment and consider not just whether or not we can, but whether or not we should.”

Mina has always hated being interrupted, especially by me, because I know better than anyone how much it annoys her. But the shock in her eyes is more than simple annoyance. And it’s not just her. Aside from Ishah, most of the people filling the situation room now stare at me like I’ve got bulbous peeled orange eyes.

Like I’m a traitor.

“It’s here for a reason,” I say. “And that was
our
fault.
Humanity’s
fault. We inherited the Earth and set about annihilating it and each other. If we destroy the Machine, there will be nothing to stop us from killing the planet in the future.”

“That could be millions of years in the future,” Mina says, her voice strident, but not quite angry. This isn’t a personal argument between husband and wife. I’m talking to the President, who can do whatever she pleases, whether or not I agree. “I have to believe we are capable of learning from this. We can harness the power of nature without destroying it. We can expand into the stars. We can even learn to live with the...Scionic life. We can be responsible stewards. There’s a lot we can accomplish if we are focused on the task and present to get it done.”

I don’t miss the slight dig at the end, and I nearly congratulate her on speaking like a polished politician. But those petty quibbles can’t compete with the affection I feel for my wife. And, I admit, her words are inspirational. I don’t believe our responsible stewardship of the planet is probable, but maybe it is possible, given the right start. Maybe that’s the real solution. Maybe the Machine is simply waiting for one of its evolved spawn to take responsibility? To grow up. That might be the furthest thing from the truth, but I’m not going to stand on the sidelines and let this happen without me.

“Well then, I suppose the next obvious question is, do you have any nukes left?”

Mina smiles. “We’re still the United States.”

That’s a big, fat ‘yes.’ The only country with more nuclear warheads than the United States was Russia, and the last I knew, we had roughly 7,100—enough to destroy the world more efficiently than the Apocalypse Machine, several times over. With that number in mind, I still think it’s entirely possible that the Machine has saved us from extinction, rather than caused it.

“We have twelve.” The man who entered late steps through the crowd and presses his fists against the tabletop. He’s dressed in military fatigues and wears a dirty olive-drab shirt stained with blood over his large, powerful body. His cheek has a fresh cut, sewn up by someone lacking a surgeon’s steady hand. There isn’t any military situation in which his current state would be found acceptable, especially in the Situation Room, in the presence of the President. He’s young, but carries himself with the air of a seasoned warrior, like Graham and Mayer, confident and in control, totally oblivious to the rules of diplomacy.

Normally, the man’s appearance and insertion into the conversation would have earned him a strong rebuke, if not worse, but no one says a word. This isn’t just some random soldier, it’s the President’s son.

My son.

Ike.

“The aberration stopped thirty miles outside Yellowstone, and since we haven’t heard the eruption yet—and we will, when it happens—we can assume it’s remained stationary. This might be our last chance to do something, anything to stop it.” Ike turns to Ishah, his eyes glancing past my face, not seeing my teary-eyed fascination, as my son-turned-powerful-man volunteers to save the world. “If you can give me something to create that electrical charge—” he turns to Mina, “—and if you can give me a nuke, my men and I will get the job done.”

“Sir,” someone says, “you just got back.”

“There is no one better trained or with more experience than—”

“That’s not exactly true,” I say.

Ike appears to enjoy being interrupted as little as his mother does. He reels around on me. “I don’t know who you are, or what...you...” My heart breaks in time with his hard shell. He goes from anger to confusion and visible denial in seconds.

“It’s him,” Ishah says, smiling wide.

“It’s me,” I say, and I stand to my feet. For a moment, I think Ike is going to close back down, that after all this time he holds nothing but contempt for me, but then he leaps across the table with all the grace and speed of a soldier in action. “Dad!” His big arms enfold me, lifting me up. I’m dropped back down onto my feet and then pulled close again. We stand there, two men hugging in silence, the room watching us, not interrupting, understanding the significance, or perhaps simply not wanting to mess with Ike.

There’s a moment where I wonder why he’s not saying anything, but when I feel his big, muscular form shaking up and down, I realize this hardened soldier is crying. There’s nothing else that needs to be said. He’s still my son. I’m still his father.

I look down at Mina, who’s holding back her own tears. “I’ll do it. Don’t let him go.”

Ike pulls back. “I’m going. My men are ready.”

I motion to Mayer and Graham standing across the room, dressed in military garb and looking rock solid. “So are mine. And you have kids now. You need to meet them. You need to be with them.”

Ike wipes both of his eyes. “So did you.”

“I shouldn’t have gone.”

“I’ve always been proud of you for it.”

His words stun me. Proud of me? For abandoning them? For running away again and again?

“‘Sometimes the best thing you can do with your life, is risk it for others.’ Those were your words. The night you left. When you thought I was sleeping. They’re why I am who I am today. Why I’m a Ranger. You inspired me then. And here you are, alive? After fifteen years, out there? You inspire me still.”