Legacy of a Mad Scientist (7 page)

"With a boy who wanted to fight, you'd be trying to
check aggression and develop maturity. With a girl, it's the
opposite. You want to build physical self-esteem and intuition. But
that’s not why you have to do it. You have to do it because I said
so. Is that clear?"

In her father's study, the phone began to ring. He
ignored it. It continued to ring as Dr. Fox held his daughter’s
stare.

The ringing became incessant.

"Yes, clear." Ashley glared at her plate.

In the other room, the phone clicked over to the
messaging system.

“I'm not hungry," she said.

"You're excused," Fox said.

Ashley stood and left the table.

The phone began ringing again.

Dr. Fox nodded to his wife and rose from the table,
crossing to his study to answer. "What kind of problem?" he
asked.

A few minutes earlier…

Far out in the middle of the barren desert, the
massive Project Epsilon Research Facility hung in the evening sky.
No guards stood their posts, no vehicles moved on their patrols
around the perimeter.

Documents, tatters of clothing and broken glass
littered the interior of the facility. Doors hung from mangled
hinges or lay at angles on the floor, unable to find comfortable
positions as their handles kept them forever tilted just a few
inches away from perfect slumber. Couches, chairs and desks, all
reduced to kindling and wire-ribbed tumbleweeds of stuffing. Only
short tongues of untended combustion moved, pacing themselves in
their consumption of the scattered debris.

The relatively indestructible terminal monitors of
the observation labs all flashed the same message, EVACUATE.
Scattered across the floor lie the message's intended recipients,
the lifeless bodies of the project technicians. Opposite the
monitoring labs, small, comfortable cells lined the other side of
the hall, each occupied by a single unmoving individual.

Naked, hairless and still, the test subjects floated
in the air, several feet above the floor. Before each of them
hovered a small black rectangular object, a Micronix device. Anyone
not preoccupied by a floating rectangle of black metal was lying in
a crumpled heap, oozing fluids.

In the very center of the facility, loose items had
begun to gather. Bits of paper, glass and chunks of office
furniture began to slip and slide along the floors, becoming
trapped against other objects, walls or ceilings. The center of the
facility began to churn with the debris. Human bodies, office
appliances and furniture, all flowed forward to become a formless
boiling mass. The center grew tight then burst into flame as
white-hot fusion consumed the physical elements.

With a second pop, the burning knot at the center
went dark, expanding exponentially, inhaling, igniting and
consuming furniture, walls and floors as an ocean drinks from
rivers. In a fraction of a second, the implosion consumed the
entire facility, leaving a massive crater in the empty desert where
Project Epsilon had once stood.

At the center of the devastation, one item survived.
A rectangular chunk of black metal, a single prototype, lay in the
dust.

In a separate, much smaller facility, hanging in
orbit far above the desert site, three agents monitored the Earth.
They sat with their backs to one another, in a triangular
formation, each occupied with their own bank of monitors and
control panels. They sported beards and crazy longhair, as they
were in orbit and had lost the desire shave and get regular
haircuts.

The astronauts double-checked and confirmed their
readings.

"We'd better call Dr. Fox," Carlson said.

"Where is he anyhow?" Wilkins asked.

"Dinner with the family," Bryce answered.

"Fuck, man." Carlson dialed the doctor. “No
answer.”

“Better dial again,” Bryce said.

Carlson tapped resend and waited.

"Hey, Doctor Fox, this is Carlson, up on Kojima
Station, we've got a problem with Epsilon."

"What kind of problem?" the doctor asked.

"Well, sir, it's gone."

"Gone?"

"Exploded, sir, or imploded maybe. We've forwarded
our footage."

"How did it start? Anything preceding?" Fox
asked.

"There was some kind of accident, sir. We've got all
the data backed up to the server, but on the security feeds... it
was psychokinetic. Also, the server might be contaminated as well.
We're not sure."

"Has it given you any strange readings?"

"You should have the stream in just a couple of
seconds. We did see some lights, but it could be just a backup
battery coming online. They were floating again and then everything
got sucked toward the center of the facility."

"A gravity knot? Like before?"

"Yeah, only this time... No survivors."

"That we know of?"

"Sir, we’ve got a fifty-kiloton release and an
eleven-mile crater. FLIR and sonics show no life forms. We do have
confirmation that a small black metal object is lying in the middle
of the crater. One piece of shrapnel, that's all that's left."

"How small?"

"Looks like, flat rectangle, it would fit in the palm
of your hand. Spectrometers register it as pure terillium."

"Thank you, Gentlemen."

"Kojima out."

Upstairs, in her room, Ashley flopped onto her bed.
She pulled her journal from her bag and opened it...

Ashley’s Journal, June 22, 2308, Evening

I can’t believe I am actually considering running
away, but he is making my life impossible. There’s no reason for
him to treat me like this.

I hope Mom brings up my plate, but as hungry as I am,
it’s not worth going back down there.

Ashley heard the door to the garage open and close.
Then the big garage door opened, and her father’s car lifted off.
Ash could easily tell the difference between them. His cruiser had
a deep low rumble, while the family wagon had a slightly higher and
quicker purr.

Ashley opened her door and found her mom halfway up
the stairs.

“Come down here,” She said. “I want to talk to
you.”

Ashley rolled her eyes but followed her mom down the
stairs.

She sat back at the table and noticed the food was
still quite warm.

“Go on,” her mom said.

Geoffrey had finished and gone down to his games and
simulators.

Ashley didn’t talk but quietly ate her food.

After a few minutes and a few more bites, Anastasia
looked over to her daughter. “You don’t know how much he cares
about you, Towanjica.”

Ashley looked up at her mom. It had been years since
Ana had used the pet name for her little girl. Ashley had been born
with bright blue eyes and a shock of dark blue-black hair. Lakota
for ‘All Blue,’
Towanjica
had been Ana’s term of endearment
for her daughter.

Anastasia Zelena was the daughter of a
Czechoslovakian manufacturing mogul and an American Indian, of the
Oglala people. Both her parents insisted that Anastasia be fluent
in their native tongues, so she spent lots of time between the two
countries, learning English and Russian, in addition to Czech and
the Lakota languages.

Ana had tried to pass on some of what she remembered
to her children, but Geoff and Ash seemed to absorb none of it.

“I know it feels like he’s ignoring you, but he
isn’t. He’s just got a lot on his plate right now.”

“He always does.”

“You heard that phone call? Well, things might be
changing a bit.”

“What do you mean, changing?” Ashley asked.

“You might not be going to camp at all.”

Ashley put her fork down. “What happened?”

“I just need you to be extra patient with your father
this summer. What ever he wants you to do, just do it. Don’t fight
with him, just do it.”

“Mom! He’s not listening to me! Don’t you
understand?!”

“I do understand. I know you feel trapped, like you
have no control over your own life. You’re right, you don’t. But
this time will pass very quickly. Once you’re grown up, you’ll wish
you’d enjoyed it more.”

“Is that all?” Ash asked.

“No, that is not all,” Ana paused. “Eat your food.
You need to eat.”

Anastasia waited until her daughter picked up her
fork again.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about your father.” Ana
looked out through the glass doors, into the back yard. “I was only
twenty-six when we met. He was a couple of years older, but he
already had the world by the tail. Everybody wanted what he
had.”

“What did he have?” Ashley asked.

“Everything. If you wanted it, he could get it, or
could make it. Once he created that healing compound, he was the
one everyone looked to. And he’s been working on a new project, and
it just went sideways.”

Ashley didn’t speak.

“Over the years, your father has embarrassed some
very important people, and they aren’t the forgiving sort. They are
looking for any excuse to take a shot at him.”

“They’re going to shoot him?” Ashley asked.

“Only if he’s lucky,” Anastasia answered.

“What?” Ashley asked.

“They might arrest him, and try him for treason.”

“What happens to us?” Ashley asked.

“We run.”

Ashley set down her fork.

The legendary spy and ninja, Anastasia Zelena, smiled
at her daughter. “Take it easy on him. He really does have a lot on
his mind.”

Ashley nodded.

“And whatever happens, don’t be afraid. If I could
give you any advice, that’s it. Don’t be afraid. Take the fear and
do something with it. Kill whatever is scaring you and don’t feel
guilty about it. Whether it’s a spider, a snake or a man, kill it
and kill it again, until you aren’t afraid of it anymore. But then,
you have to clean up the mess.”

Ashley smiled.

“Oh and give his little camp a shot. It won’t be so
bad. You might actually be good at it.”

“Ugh,” Ashley replied.

Anastasia laughed and cleared the empty dishes.

Monday, June 22, 2308 7:31pm

Major Ross, Chief Warrant Officer Reid and the rest
of the crew were stunned, watching the real-time feed being
streamed from Kojima Station.

“What the hell?” Ross asked no one in particular.

“Holy shit,” Reid echoed.

On the monitors, the Fox family was seated at the
dining room table, having dinner. Ashley was engaged in her camp
point counter-point.

A phone rang in the background.

Ross pulled up the network transcript. “It’s Carlson
up on Kojima, dialing the doc’s home line.”

Ross picked up an amplifier and projected Dr. Fox’s
feed onto one of the inactive monitors.

Ross and the lab crew watched as Fox answered the
phone and listened as Carlson informed him of Epsilon’s
destruction. They watched his vitals remained calm and cool.
Of
course, how could he be surprised by something he must have already
been aware of?

“Sir…” Reid drew Major Ross’s attention from Fox’s
charts. “We’ve got server crashes at farms two, three, five, seven,
eleven, thirteen… It’s prime numbers all down the row.”

“The mirrors?” Ross asked.

“Looks like one for every three of the lost
originals.”

“Take us completely offline and build a new grid from
scratch. Partition a disk image and initialize all the other
drives. Archive half the unaffected stock and hard start
replacement procedures. Vault all unaffected mirrors and replace
them.”

“Storage facilities?”

“Sink the vaults and split the archives into thirteen
partitions, spread them through the belt. I want two additional
black boxes on the poles of Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea.”

“Copy that. Sinking vaults in the Atlantic and the
Pacific, Mirrors in the twelve houses, plus one in Ophiuchus.
Dropping cubes on Charlie, Victor, Papa and Hotel. We are
one-eighty on the vaults, with seventy-two on the mirrors and an
additional twelve on the cubes.”

“I want the vaults underwater in ninety minutes.”

Reid punched in the calculations. “That will add an
additional five hours travel time.”

“I don’t care if it adds five weeks, get them out of
the atmosphere.”

“Yes, sir.” Reid ran a couple more options. “I can
get them wet in twenty, if you like, but that is a two-week
cruise.”

“Better still.”

“Copy that.” Reid went to work.

Ross pulled up Fox’s conversation with Dr. Te.

"I've been working with the interface," Fox said. "I
think the Micronix can do more than just communicate."

"Such as?" Dr. Te asked.

"I think it can be detonated," Fox answered.

“This is going to be a serious problem,” Ross
said.

The analog phone in the lab began to ring. Ross
lowered the master volume and answered it. “What’s the word?”

“Hey, boss. We outta get some noodles tonight, like
ASAP.” Ross recognized his old friend’s voice, First Sergeant King.
“I have something you have just got to see to believe.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Ross said, disconnecting the
call and turning to Reid. “Chief, go analog and prep backup numbers
for all nine.”

“Copy. We are disconnecting, and we are analog.
Prepping backup numbers for the nine.”

“Don’t burn the house down while I’m gone.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Ross exited the lab, his progress toward the parking
garage displayed on the overhead security monitors.

Dr. Andrew Fox landed his transport in the bottom of
the depression that had been Project Epsilon. What had formerly
been pale, off-white sand had now been stained with an inch of
black soot. The black spread outward, in a radial gradient, fading
away from his central position. The heavy black particles swirled
and settled around him, hovering above the sand.