Linkage: The Narrows of Time (28 page)

“What would be your estimate?”

“At a minimum, we’d have to match the energy
field’s total output.”

“Which is six times 10
³¹
terajoules, same as the E-121 energy spike, right?”

“Of course, but where are you going with
this?”

“I’ve been thinking about the government’s
Big Ivan idea,” Drew said, opening the red-and-blue theory notebook
from his knapsack. “Remember those equations I saw the two NASA
techs working on, when we followed Mary to the conference
room?”

“Vaguely. Wasn’t it something about
controlling virtual protons in a quantized field?”

“Exactly,” Drew answered, pointing to a set
of equations on page fifteen, with the letters QED written above
them.

“Quantum Electrodynamics?”

“Do you remember the tremors in our lab right
before the E-121 vanished?”

“Sure, but I don’t see the connection.”

“What if NASA was running a vacuum energy
test at the same time we were running our experiment?”

Lucas nodded his head several times and
smiled. “Okay, I see what you mean.”

“What do you think? Would it be enough?”

“It’s possible. But we should run this by DL
to get his input.”

Drew followed Lucas to Kleezebee’s location
across the room.

“Excuse me, Dr. Kleezebee, but Drew has an
idea you need to hear,” Lucas said.

“Okay, shoot,” Kleezebee said.

Drew said, “When we were on NASA’s Sublevel
Twenty, I saw something in one of the labs. Two techs were standing
in front of a grease board, working on a set of equations. I could
only see part of their work, but I’m sure it had something to do
with Quantum Foam.”

“What’s Quantum Foam?” Bruno asked.

“It’s a subatomic storm of creation and
destruction that takes place constantly inside empty space,” Drew
replied.

“Wait a minute. If it has a storm in it, how
can it be empty?”

“The laws of QED say that
on average
the vacuum of space is empty. That means there are other times when
empty space is not empty. It all depends on when you happen to look
at, or sample, the empty space. The storm happens so fast,
sometimes you’ll see it and other times you won’t.”

Bruno shrugged. Obviously, the information
confounded him.

Drew tried to dumb it down a little. “Think
of it like the percolating foam on top of a bubble bath, except it
takes place at a subatomic level. The storm is always churning
away, creating particles of matter and anti-matter, which instantly
destroy each other and give off energy. Now imagine you’re in that
same bathroom, but it’s dark, and all you have is a strobe light
that’s flashing slowly. If you happen to open your eyes at the same
moment the light is on, you’ll see the foam creating and destroying
virtual particles. If you look when the light is off, you won’t see
it even though the foam’s still there, doing its thing.”

Bruno stood there with a puzzled look.

Drew continued, “The way it works is empty
space borrows energy from the future to create one particle of
positive mass and one of negative mass. When these two particles
meet, they annihilate each other and release tremendous amounts of
energy. This, in effect, pays back the borrowed energy to the
future. This constant creation/destruction cycle is what we call
Quantum Foam.”

“Okay, I think I’m starting to get it,” Bruno
said, rubbing the top of his glistening skull.

Lucas added, “It’s like on
Star Trek
,
when there’s a breach in the engine room’s anti-matter chamber.
When matter and anti-matter meet, they instantly destroy each other
and everything around it. We think this is where all the excess
interstellar radiation comes from.”

“Ah yes, Gene’s show,” Bruno replied, smiling
at Kleezebee.

“And the relevance of all this, is what?”
Kleezebee asked.

Drew answered, “The night the E-121 vanished
from the core, we felt underground tremors. If NASA was running a
Quantum Foam experiment at the exact same moment we fired up our
E-121 experiment at full power, then maybe—”

“The zero-point energy produced by their
experiment was drawn into yours. Like interstellar light being
sucked into a black hole,” Kleezebee interrupted, combing his
unruly beard with his fingers. “You think NASA’s experiment caused
the energy spike.”

“Yes, sir, we do,” Lucas said. “And that’s
not all. Go ahead and tell him, Drew.”

“Professor, I don’t think it’s purely
coincidence that these domes are using the same amount of energy as
the energy spike. I think they’re related in some fashion. We might
be able to use the energy produced by NASA’s experiment to overload
a dome’s power matrix and collapse it.”

“How?”

“That part I haven’t figured out, yet. I’ll
need a better look at their work.”

“If I can get you back down there, do you
think you can show me where you saw those equations?”

“Not a problem. I have the location
memorized.”

“How are we going to get past the soldiers?”
Lucas asked.

“By killing two birds with one stone,”
Kleezebee said, before asking his tech, “Where’s the squad?”

“Ten miles out, sir.”

“Then we still have time. Get him on the horn
for me.”

Chapter
22

Misdirection

Even though the city streets were mostly
abandoned, Bruno waited for the green arrow to appear on the
traffic signal before turning left onto 22nd Street from Kolb Road.
Now only five miles east of campus, he was driving the lead car of
their three-vehicle convoy in the right-most lane, keeping under
the posted speed limit. L was to his right, staring out the
passenger’s window, while the other two Bruno copies were directing
the lumbering tanker trucks following behind him.

His handheld, ten-watt Motorola radio
squelched from inside the middle console, startling him for a
moment. “Rabbit, this is Base, do you read?”

Bruno dug for the two-way radio, taking his
eyes off the road.

“Hey, watch out,” L said, snapping out of his
trance.

One of tanker trucks blew its horn three
times when Bruno’s black, four-door sedan drifted to the right,
nearly hitting the curb. Bruno swerved the car to the left, just
missing a newspaper dispenser chained to a light pole. His heart
was pumping full steam when he rolled down his window and gave the
other Bruno copies a courtesy wave. He picked up the radio and
pressed the talk switch. “This is Rabbit, I read you loud and
clear, over.”

“There’s been a change in plans,” Kleezebee
said. “I need you to deploy to checkpoint Alpha. You’ve got
forty-seven minutes.”

“Roger that, Checkpoint Alpha,” Bruno
replied, adjusting the angle of the camera mounted to the dash. It
was disguised as a portable GPS unit. “How’s the reception,
sir?”

“We’re receiving you five by five. Is L ready
for this?”

“I think so,” Bruno replied, looking at
L.

“Excellent. Make sure you’re not
captured.”

“Will do, Chief,” Bruno said before hearing
Kleezebee’s sign off.

“Are we going to make it there in time?” L
asked.

“Yes, if I can keep this thing off the
sidewalk.”

“So we’re really going to do this?”

Bruno nodded. “DL’s counting on us.”

Bruno pressed the transmit button on his
radio. “Chase One and Two, this is Rabbit. Did you guys copy that?
We’re redeploying to the Checkpoint Alpha. You guys continue
on.”

“Understood,” one of the Bruno copies
reported.

“Ten-four,” the other said.

Bruno looked into his rearview mirror as they
drove through the next intersection. The tankers behind him slowed
down, then turned left as expected. “Good luck, guys,” he said.

* * *

“What’s their ETA?” Lucas asked one of the
video surveillance techs, keeping his eyes on the video monitor
just below the center screen. It was streaming live from the camera
hidden inside the GPS unit mounted on Bruno’s dashboard.

“Approaching the checkpoint now,” the tech
said.

“Are the tankers in position?” Kleezebee
asked.

“Yes, sir, location confirmed.”

“Go ahead. Call the press.”

The video screen flickered twice as Bruno’s
sedan inched forward toward Checkpoint Alpha, which controlled
access to the campus from 6th Street. The wide-angle camera was
aimed straight ahead, out over the hood, not allowing Lucas to
follow the guard as he walked up to the driver’s window. Both the
miniature U.S. flag mounted on the left side of the hood and the
two-star command flag on the right were flapping in the breeze.

“Here we go,” Kleezebee said.

“Too bad we don’t have audio,” Drew said.

“If Bruno does his job, we shouldn’t need
it.”

The screen showed Bruno’s vehicle quickly
backing away from the checkpoint, providing an underside view of
the lower concourse to the university’s 58,000-seat stadium to the
right. The vehicle spun ninety degrees counterclockwise, then
accelerated west along 6th Street.

“ETA to the tunnel?” Kleezebee asked.

“Four minutes.”

Lucas checked the video feed monitoring the
open stairwell shaft above NASA’s bunker and the one in front of
his apartment complex. The soldiers guarding both locations
scrambled away from their posts. “Looks like the chase is on.”

“What about Mom’s house?” Drew asked.

The tech changed one of the other monitors to
show Dorothy’s neighborhood. The soldiers were no longer positioned
along her street.

“Wow, better than we hoped. Looks like they
all
got the message,” Lucas said.

“What’s the lead separation?” Kleezebee
asked.

“Two minutes, sir.”

“That’s too close. Notify the tankers and
show me the tunnel feed.”

The center screen switched to a lengthwise
view of a two-lane road. The camera was mounted deep inside a
tunnel whose surface had been desecrated by a blanket of brightly
colored graffiti. Two military tankers were sitting at the far end
of the tunnel, just outside the entrance, parked on opposite sides
of the street. Clouds of white and blue smoke were puffing out of
their tailpipes.

“Can you zoom in?” Drew asked. “I can’t see
Bruno’s car.”

“He’ll arrive in a moment,” the tech
answered, not changing the camera’s focus.

“ETA to the flash point?”

“Twenty-seven minutes, sir.”

“That’s cutting it a little close, don’t you
think?” Lucas asked.

“We should be fine,” Kleezebee said, before
asking his tech, “Are the big-rigs in place?”

“Ready and waiting, sir.”

* * *

“There’re the tankers. Looks like they’re in
position,” Bruno told L, checking the sedan’s jittery rearview
mirror. The swarm of vehicles chasing him was growing larger in the
reflection.

“Dude, the access ramp is coming up fast,” L
said, tightening his seatbelt before gripping the top of the
dashboard with both hands.

Bruno waved to his brethren as the sedan
blurred past the waiting tankers. He eased off on the gas pedal,
preparing for a sharp left turn once they cleared the thousand-foot
tunnel.

“I sure hope this works,” L said.

“It should, there’s no other way onto the
Interstate from here.”

Bruno’s mirror showed the tankers pulling
their front bumpers together, blocking his view of the oncoming
procession. Bruno changed lanes and flipped on his left turn
signal.

“Do you really think that’s necessary?” L
asked.

“Sorry, old habit,” Bruno said after a short
chuckle. He turned off the blinker and peeked again into his
rearview mirror. All he could see were the tankers blocking the
tunnel entrance.

As his sedan turned left and approached the
incline to the freeway, Bruno looked to his left. The two Bruno
replicas were standing together just inside the tunnel’s entrance,
on his side of the tanker trucks.

“Thanks for the help, guys,” he told them on
the radio.

“Good luck and God speed,” one of the Bruno
copies replied.

* * *

“How many copies of Bruno are there?” Lucas
asked Kleezebee when the video feed showed two of them standing
together just inside the tunnel entrance.

“Eleven in all.”

“Couldn’t afford an even dozen?” Lucas
joked.

The video tech laughed. Kleezebee sneered at
him.

“Sir, the sedan’s made it onto the freeway
and is headed south,” the tech said.

“Give Bruno Two the go ahead.”

The screen showed one of the Bruno replicas
attaching a tan-colored object to the rear section of both tanker
trucks.

“C-four?” Lucas asked his boss.

“Something like that.”

“I know you want to delay the soldiers, but
won’t that take out the tunnel completely?”

“It shouldn’t. We only partially filled the
tankers. But if it does, there’s always the news helicopter,”
Kleezebee said, pointing to the upper right screen. A circling
aerial view showed the tankers facing each other outside the
tunnel’s entrance.

“Oh . . . the phone call to the press,” Lucas
replied, nodding to applaud Kleezebee’s strategy.

Lucas looked at the tunnel feed just in time
to see the two Brunos crowd together, then vanish from sight. The
tankers exploded into a billowing cloud of smoke and fire.

“Where’d they go?” Lucas asked.

“Nowhere, they’re still right there,” the
tech replied. “Well, sort of.”

“Are they using some kind of personal
cloaking device?”

Kleezebee shook his head. “That wouldn’t have
protected them when the trucks exploded.”

“Then what happened, Professor?”

“They slipped into an inter-dimensional rift
in subspace.”

“They did what?”

Kleezebee motioned for one of his video techs
to join him. The professor grabbed hold of the tech’s forearm, just
above the man’s watch, then held the arm close to Lucas’ face.