Road Less Traveled (6 page)

“She's worked out a way to collect electromagnetic input from another dimension,” Allison answered. “Then she'll filter the energy, remove any traces of our own reality, analyze the energy for any patterns, and use those patterns to organize it into a pixilated grid!” She beamed at Carter as if this was the most incredible thing she'd ever heard. Carter just stared at her. “Pictures, Carter! She's talking about finding a way to actually see another dimension!”

“Oh.” He took that in. “That is cool. Snapshots of another reality, huh?”

“Exactly!” They stopped at a lab door, and Allison entered a code into the door console. The red light flicked off, to be replaced by a green one, and the door slid open. “It'll be blurry, and we'll probably have to run a variety of extrapolation programs just to make any sense of it, but this will be our first-ever glimpse into a different reality. The amount of information we could gain, both about that reality and, by extension, our own, is almost infinite!”

“Right. Cool.” Carter didn't really get it, but Allison's enthusiasm was infectious anyway. She was excited, so it must be something exciting. He was okay with following her lead.

“Think of it as extradimensional sonar,” a tall, striking blond woman said as she crossed the lab to greet them. “We're basically throwing energy waves into that universe, then absorbing them as they bounce back, and using that echo to build an outline or image of whatever they touched. The only difference is, we're not actually generating the energy ourselves, since it would require an immense energy output just to breach the dimensional barrier. All we're doing is tapping into the energy already there and analyzing it to see what it has rubbed up against.” She held out a hand. “Nancy Russell, extradimensional visualization project. Nice to finally meet you, Sheriff.”

“Uh, same here,” Carter replied, shaking her hand. She had a firm grip. Also, a nice smile. And killer legs. He pretended not to notice. Why didn't all GD researchers look like her and Allison? He'd gladly become a mad scientist if it meant toiling in a lab with them all day.

“We're almost ready,” Russell was telling Allison. “We're just powering up our equipment now.” Behind her, three technicians were throwing switches and typing in commands on an array of monitors and computer banks. Carter watched as lights burst into being all around the room, tiny circles and squares and blinking rectangles and crackling arcs—

Crackling arcs?

“Look out!” He was moving before he'd really registered what he'd seen, and was halfway across the lab before his brain had finished processing that image—a crackling arc of electricity, bursting from a wiring juncture and spilling out along a power cord—

—which then led back to the computer banks, and toward the center of the room.

Carter was no electrician, but he knew a short when he saw one. And he knew that if it reached the monitors and the rest of the equipment, it could fry the entire system. Not to mention anyone touching it or even standing too close to it.

He couldn't let that happen.

Instead he lunged at the juncture. The wires were all bundled together there, and he was guessing one of them had come loose or somehow gotten exposed. There was no time to figure out which one. Instead he simply wrapped his hand around the entire bunch, tensed, and gave a fierce yank.

“Yowtch!”
The shock traveled up his arm and into his body, quivering its way through him in an instant, and Carter felt his hairs stand on end. His teeth rattled together, and his ears were filled with a sharp buzzing sound. The charge dissipated in an instant, however, and he sagged against a nearby console, the wires still in his hand, their circuit broken.

“Carter, are you okay?” Allison was next to him a second later, and immediately started checking his pulse, temperature, and eye dilation, the medical doctor in her rising to the fore. “You shocked the hell out of me!” Her eyebrows rose as she realized her own pun.

“Wow,” was Russell's comment as she joined them. “Thank you, Sheriff. I don't know how that happened. It looks like one of the wires may have been tugged loose slightly, probably when we reconnected them earlier or maybe when we repositioned one of the computer banks. If you hadn't noticed when you did, and acted that quickly—well, we all could have been experiencing an energy surge of our own, and not in a good way.”

“All part of the service,” Carter managed to gasp out, pounding his chest to get his lungs working again. He felt like he'd just run a marathon and then stepped into a sauna, every part of him taut and vibrating but all of his energy sapped away.

“You don't seem worse for the wear,” Allison decided after finishing her cursory exam. “Good thing you broke the connection quickly, though. And that you're wearing rubber soles.”

“Yeah, being grounded has come in real handy lately,” Carter agreed. One of the techs had joined them, and Carter let the man pull the wires from his hand. It took some effort to get his fingers to cooperate, though. He took a few deep breaths, then forced himself upright and tried to stretch everything out a bit. It wasn't easy.

“The electricity made all your muscles contract,” Dr. Russell told him. “That's why you're having trouble moving—and speaking. The effect should fade, though.” She gave him a smile. Nice smile. “I think you may have saved our lives.”

“That's kind of what he does,” Allison agreed. And did Carter imagine it, or had she moved just a little bit closer to him when Russell smiled? Like she was marking her territory?

“Found the problem,” another tech announced from the far side of the console Carter had leaned against. “Fuse burnt out on one of the safeties here. When we powered up, that circuit got fed too much juice and overloaded. The excess had nowhere to go but that coupling.”

“And my arm,” Carter muttered. His jaw was still clenched tight, but he could open his fists again, with effort. That was an improvement.

“Everything's reset,” the tech assured them. “We're all good to continue.”

“Right. Let's start the power-up sequence from the beginning,” Russell announced. “Just to be on the safe side. Sheriff, Director, maybe you want to wait over there?” She indicated a row of seats along the back wall, facing both the computer banks and the massive flatscreen monitors mounted on the opposite wall.

“Of course.” Allison led Carter to the chairs, and after a minute he managed to sit down stiffly. Now he knew what the Tin Woodman had felt like. “I'll still want you to stop by the infirmary afterward,” Allison warned him quietly once they were seated. “Just to be on the safe side. But I think you'll be okay for now, and I'd hate for you to miss this.” Her lips quirked in a smile. “Especially when you've paid such a high price for admission.”

Together they sat and watched as all of the equipment, which had gone dark after he'd pulled the plug, began to power up again. This time there weren't any disturbing sparks, and after a few minutes each tech announced that his station was all clear. Russell, who stood by the center console, nodded and threw a switch. Then she typed in a short series of commands and dramatically hit
Enter
.

“We've begun the collection process,” she explained to her audience of two. “It will only take a minute for our extradimensional scoops to draw in enough energy to form an image.” Behind her, a line of text appeared on the screen. “We've currently collected sixty-two percent of the necessary data, and we're building rapidly,” she called out after reading it. “Seventy-six. Eighty-nine. Ninety-four. One hundred percent—we have enough raw data. Next step, number crunching.” She typed in the next set of commands.

“I prefer my numbers smooth,” Carter whispered to Allison. “Not as annoying to everyone around me. Especially during a movie.” She elbowed him in the side, but did so gently.

A few more minutes passed before they heard a chime and saw more text flow across the screen. “Number crunching is complete,” Russell announced. “We've filtered the gathered energy, broken it into patterns, and parsed those using a mathematical equation that maps them onto an ordered grid. Then we've applied that grid as a visual pattern, and the result is—” She tapped a key, and the large central monitor began to glow with light, then swirls of color. “Our first look at another reality!”

Carter watched, entranced, as the swirls shifted and settled, the colors clumping and adjusting to become hues and shades, creating shapes and depth. After a few seconds, he was squinting at the image, trying to make out some sort of shape within it. Just like staring at clouds, or those optical illusion pictures, he thought. And the longer he stared, the more the scene resolved itself into something that looked like—

—downtown Eureka.

“Wow!” Carter gazed at the monitor. “That's fantastic!” It was a perfect image, as if he were standing downtown instead of sitting in a lab at GD. There was his office, and there was the little park across the street, and there was the dry cleaner's, and there was the hardware store, and there was the crosswalk whose signal often went on the fritz, and there was the statue of Archimedes, the town's patron saint—the image was so clear, it seemed as though any second now the people walking past would turn and say hi.

The room's other occupants didn't share his enthusiasm, however. Dr. Russell had sagged against the console. “No, no,” she was saying softly, and though Carter couldn't see her face, she sounded on the verge of tears. Allison was out of her chair in an instant, hurrying across the lab to console the taller woman. She put her arm around Russell's shoulder, and seemed to be talking to her softly. Russell nodded a few times, and may have murmured something back, but didn't glance up. Carter couldn't think of too many executives who could get away with being so touchy-feely, but somehow Allison managed it without losing even an ounce of her authority. If anything, it made her employees respect her even more. They knew she was there for them, and that she was really concerned for their well-being.

Carter rose from his seat as well and wandered closer to the two women, though he wasn't sure what he could do to help. Hell, he wasn't even sure what the problem was.

“It should have worked!” Russell was saying over and over again. After a few seconds of that, she straightened up and patted her cheeks, which were now bright red. “It should have worked! All the calculations were correct, I'm sure of it!”

“I know,” Allison agreed. “I saw your figures. Everything looked perfect.” She frowned. “Maybe your collection array got misaligned somehow?”

“That's possible,” the tall blond researcher admitted. “We double- and triple-checked them, of course, but if we missed something . . . if they'd been set to absorb local electromagnetic signatures instead of extradimensional ones, that could easily include the normal visual spectrum.”

“Sorry,” Carter interjected quietly, and both women turned to look at him. “I don't get it. You didn't want it to look like that?” He gestured at the screen.

“No, of course not.” Dr. Russell had regained most of her composure now, and straightened up, raising her chin. “We're supposed to be looking at a rough approximation of an image of another dimension. It would be grainy at best, like the worst old television signal you can imagine. This—” She glanced at the screen, then turned away. “This is nothing more than a standard satellite image of our own town.”

“Maybe so,” Allison agreed, “but that's actually an achievement all by itself. Think about it—you managed to view downtown Eureka without a satellite, just by targeting the general area and absorbing the energy accumulated there, and then extrapolating that into an image. This could have huge military applications, for one thing—we could see anyplace in the world, no matter how isolated, just by sampling its energy fields! From anywhere!”

Dr. Russell perked up slightly. “Yes, I suppose that's true. I'd only been considering the extradimensional ramifications of my extrapolation protocols, not the localized ones. But if we—” Carter recognized the impending signs of technobabble, and decided now would be a good time to excuse himself. He was pretty sure the demonstration was officially over.

“I'd better be getting back,” he told them, and Allison waved at him absently. She clearly had her hands full, and Carter knew she'd be able to get Russell up and running again a lot more easily if he wasn't around to ask dumb questions. He let himself out of the lab and, after a quick stop at the infirmary to make good on his promise to Allison, he headed back toward the front lobby. His stomach was growling, so he figured he'd stop by Café Diem for lunch, then check in with Jo and see if she'd gotten any leads on the Thunderbird case.

On his way up the stairs, a shadow fell across him, followed by the echo of approaching footsteps. Carter glanced up and saw someone heading toward him. After a second he recognized the tall, gangly figure. “Hey, Taggart!”

The lanky Australian—Eureka's resident hunter, tracker, and animal expert—had been descending the steps with his head down, eyes not entirely focused. He glanced up when Carter called out, looked around, looked at Carter, and nodded. “Oh, g'day.” Then he kept on going.

Odd,
Carter thought as he moved to one side to let Taggart pass. Taggart was extremely outgoing. Usually he'd stop and chat for ages, about any topic under the sun. In fact, plenty of times in the past Carter had been forced to eventually walk away, leaving the Australian still expounding on some esoteric trivia or recounting one of his bizarre adventures around the world to whomever was still around to listen—or to the empty air. Taggart liked pretty much everybody, and though he and Carter had started off a little rocky—with Taggart tranking him and tossing him in a cage like a stray dog because Carter had been walking through Eureka without proper clearance—they had long since gotten past that and formed at least a tenuous friendship. Ever since, Taggart had always seemed happy to see Carter. This time he'd barely even rated a hello.