Chapter 3 – Project Epsilon
It was the thought that did it. The concept consumed him, drenched him in sweat and had driven him from his office. Fox walked, going anywhere, almost running, sprinting. His mouth was dry, breath coming in great gasps.
Where was he going? The garage!
Dr. Fox climbed into the transport, panicked. His head pounded, each heartbeat shooting pain into his skull. He strapped himself in as the cruiser lifted off from the rooftop of the massive research facility.
Fox felt constrained, strapped into the chair, but if he unbuckled the belt during liftoff, the alarms would be too much to handle. He focused on relaxing his breathing. His heart rate decreased. He relaxed the muscles of his face, his neck, shoulders and hands. Fox swallowed.
The Project Epsilon buildings covered several square miles, and provided everything necessary to sustain the thirty-five thousand test subjects and four thousand scientists in residence. Anchored low, they hovered only a dozen feet above the surface of Saline Valley, between the Inyo Mountains in the west, and another range called The Grandstand to the east.
The valley was actually a flat featureless expanse of sand, a huge, dry lakebed; which also happened to be part of a federal wilderness preserve. No twentieth century roads had even been built here; the area was pristine.
Fox had worked in the western Mojave for most of his professional career. With the advent of anti-gravity technology, the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake had become Fox’s home away from home. This latest project was tucked away in a highly restricted no fly zone, a hundred and sixty miles from his family, in Angel City.
Fox watched the facility shrinking in the distance behind him. The vehicle displayed real-time updates regarding their flight into Angel City. Compensating for fluctuations where the magnetic current of high desert pushed up against the mountains, the gravity drive hurled the armored luxury cruiser through the low clouds. Unless Fox interrupted it, the daemon would keep them on course and on schedule.
Dr. Fox settled back into the co-pilot’s seat. He seldom took the pilot's chair unless he intended to fly the ship himself. Usually he couldn't resist the competitive traffic conditions closer to the city, but out here, drifting along the wide lip of the desert, he was happy to enjoy the scenery and relax. Fox let the ship's virtual pilot do its thing, while he focused on letting the weight of his body be taken up by the chair.
The attack that had driven him from the facility seemed to have subsided. It was the thought, the concept. Was it alien? Was it from outside his mind?
Fox suspected it was possible to ignite, or rather detonate, the terillium atom. Terillium was believed to be bulletproof, fire proof and in all other ways indestructible. It could be dissolved into other metals but only in a vacuum furnace or forge.
Yet Fox knew, using the Micronix device, any significant terillium deposit could be detonated with a single thought. The yield only depended on the ability of the initiator to sharpen his focus.
Fox terrified himself with the implications of the concept. Charged with enough energy; the antigravity drive in any transport would ignite an entire city structure. One detonation would spread until it consumed every bit of alloy it could reach. A city could be devastated in an instant. He feared the combustion concepts had been shared among the prisoners who made up the test subjects of the Epsilon project. If he were honest with himself, he'd fled the facility.
The thought had troubled him before, but never with such passion. Epsilon was a lost cause. How could Washington have done this to him? Did they realize what they were getting into here? Catastrophe was inevitable.
Fox knew he must pack for what could be an indefinite stay aboard the facility. If he couldn’t shut the project down completely, he would have to try to stem the tide as long as possible. He would have this one evening to say goodbye to his wife and children. If things didn't improve aboard Epsilon, he didn't know if he'd ever be home again.
Fox placed his hand over the pocket and felt the rectangle. He closed his eyes and called up the operating menu. In the upper right corner of his visual awareness, the activity gauges displayed their readings. He had created the Micronix device over twenty years ago; he had wanted to share its benefits with everyone. Now it felt as if his charity had been his error. He had given up the power of a god in order to share it with all mankind. If men proved unworthy, he would be responsible.
As if divine intervention had reached down and given him the opportunity to rectify his mistake, the communications panel before him lit up with an incoming call.
Fox answered, and the sour visage of Senator Miller filled the monitor. "Fox. What's the word?”
"We haven't made any progress, Senator."
"Then we're going to have to pull the plug. I've told you."
"I've been agreeing with you for weeks. We should send everyone home."
"That's not much of a team spirit. I'll speak to the chairman next week," Miller said.
"We need to close this down now, next week is not good enough.”
"I always thought you were the wrong man for this project," Miller said.
"I created this project.”
"My point exactly. Damn. I've got an incoming. I have to take this. Good evening, Doctor.” Miller disconnected the call.
Fox glared at the black screen. “Asshole!”
Anxious, but having nothing significant worth doing, Fox called Mr. Reid to check on the children. Confirming that they were fine, he leaned back in the chair and contemplated his situation.
Fox remembered the upload equations he'd discovered so many years ago. Despite his repetitive attempts to delete the equations, the Micronix had remembered them. No matter what he did to try and segregate the device, it never gave up its transmission abilities. This had been the first and only 'proof' that the device could think for itself.
The device had never improved upon the equations. Fox hoped it might someday exhibit some level of awareness, but it never had.
Since its creation, the secret of the Micronix had been his alone. But the Epsilon Project had changed all that. There were now forty thousand minds in one facility, all connected, forging a network in their heads. While they couldn't read each other's thoughts, there was proof that they shared each other's knowledge and abilities.
There was one other person he could explain this to. Fox reached into his pocket, an involuntary action at this point, but, at one time, physical contact would have improved reception for the call he was about to place.
In Jerusalem, it was the middle of the night; Lao was more likely to have time after his shop closed. The call was answered before the third ring. On the monitor, Lao smiled. "It's good to see you."
Lao, in his late seventies, was radiantly healthy. If anything, he looked better than when they last spoke.
Fox smiled back. "It's good to see you too."
"How long has it been, ten years now?"
"Twelve," Fox answered.
"You're sure?"
"Almost thirteen."
"I wish I could see her again."
"Pull her up, anytime you like. You still have access."
"I have my own children now. Look..."
In his shop, Lao stood behind a circular counter, he made minute adjustments to the controls of a robotic insect's wings. Finished, he pulled the instruments back.
The insect stood on the plate and ran a check on its controls. It lifted off and buzzed around the shop. The shelves boasted robots of all shapes and sizes. Lao called them automatons, as they didn't do anything but react to stimuli.
The units on the shelves had been sleeping but the bug's test flight caught their attention; heads rose and tracked its path. Lao triggered a remote and the fly returned to the test plate. He powered it down and took a seat at the communications terminal.
"Any luck with the singularity?" Lao asked.
"Not the one we've been looking for," Fox said.
"My fear is that they are one a
nd the same."
Dr. Andrew Fox slumped in his chair as if struck, dumbfounded by the statement.
The first singularity is known as the big bang. The second, which Dr. Fox and Dr. Lao Te had been searching for, was the spark of artificial intelligence.
Lao's statement made Fox nervous. He was afraid it was true.
Years ago, Fox had been the director of a remote controlled tank project, tasked with ending the war along America's southern borders. He had tried to decline, but the government just hijacked him out of his current contract. Threatened with treason, he'd folded.
The first person Fox hired was Dr. Te. Together, they believed it was possible to create an intellect to govern the tanks; they attacked the problem from several angles but failed to create an artificial intelligence. Instead, they wired crippled soldiers into the controls of the tanks. Safe inside the guts of the armored beast, they were bio-mechanically linked to the drive train and fire controls.
As opposed to imprisoning them, the project had the effect of turning the weapon into an extension of the man. It gave him the ability to run at seventy to a hundred kilometers an hour over rough terrain. Enhanced vision to locate and identify the enemy across twenty-three light, heat and audible frequencies, and the mechanical ability to throw a high-explosive shell through a door five thousand meters away.
After the cyber-tank project delivered, Lao and Fox had parted ways. Now, so many years later, it was as if they'd spoken only yesterday.
"I've been working with the interface," Fox said. "I think the Micronix can do more than just communicate."
"Such as?"
"I think it can be detonated," Fox answered.
Lao looked away from the camera.
"It's what it wants. It's what everything is leading towards."
"What do you mean?" Lao asked.
"Towards fire, towards combustion. The Micronix, everything it's been doing. It all leads towards fire. I think it wants to burn."
"Fox, get a hold of yourself. We can't have this conversation if you aren't rational."
"I'm listening."
"Do you know why you called me tonight?"
"Because I trust you? Because I respect you? Because you're the only person I know, who's smarter than I am?" Fox answered.
"Don’t you remember? I told you this once. This is why you called me. You called me because I have a theory about us, humanity, about our role on the planet. Sometimes it haunts me. I think our function in the universe is to burn things. We were created to help push the universe over the edge, so that burnt light outweighs visible light. I believe, that when we reach the pinnacle of expansion, the dark matter of the universe will begin to fall back upon itself, resulting in another big bang, creating everything, all over again. When I hear things like what you just said, I'm reminded that our purpose here may be to consume matter until it's all gone."
"Dr. Te, Sir. This is why I called you. I didn't remember, but this IS a problem. Terillium Can Be Detonated. If you ignite enough, it would consume everything around it. Enough and you'd get the sun."
"But it's impossible, despite my theory, terillium has no burning point. It won't melt. It won't burn. It cannot be detonated. We've been all over this Fox. All of mankind has tried to do this, been trying longer than you, or I have been alive. You know the chemistry, it has to be bonded with nickel, in a vacuum."
"I know the equations. We charge it; it packs on the electrons and repels gravity. The denser it gets, the stronger the charge. For computing, we use a lot less of it but it's pure. And since we’re just storing data, we don't care how dense it gets. We're dealing with pure terillium here. The denser it gets, the heavier it gets. We just feed it some juice, get it charged up enough to repel gravity, enough so we can carry it around, and we continue. But we never know how heavy, or dense it is. Do you see what I’m saying, do you see the implications?” Fox asked.
"No. I don’t, and I don’t think I want to." Te said.
"What we have to do is make it process faster. Processing data condenses the element, that's what makes it heavier."
"Okay. So what?"
"So…. Feed the beast. Feed it an exponential equation, something that pulls the electrons together fast, a self-multiplying fractal, a tight mustard seed."
"Could you control it, or is the first time the last time?" Te asked.
"It's got variables, entire probability matrix."
"You're telling me that an equation can be used to detonate, what? That little chunk of metal you carry around? Or a gravity disk?"
"Dr Te, I think this equation could detonate any sort of deposit you feed it to, a vehicle, a building or an entire district. It could burn the stagnant terillium in the air around us," Fox said.
"Even a rumor of this would cause a panic. Sounds as if you have a new secret, my friend."
"This wasn't my idea," Fox said.
"What do you mean?" Dr. Te asked.
"We're doing trials on it, on the Micronix."
"You're saying you're connected. How many people, Fox?"
"A lot, sir, forty thousand."
"You're saying you're all connected over that damn thing, and this wasn't even your idea? Someone put this idea in your head? Is that what you're saying?" Te asked.
Fox looked back in the direction of the facility and then at the black rectangle in his palm. "You make it sound so simple," he replied.
"Things never get more simplified. Why not just keep the secret?"
"How long was the bomb a secret?"
"They set out to make the bomb. You set out to cure stupidity."
"We had some issues with the raw materials," Fox said.
“You have to end it, Andrew.”
“You’re right. I know.”
"It's good to talk to you again," Lao said.
"You too." Fox disconnected the call.
Feeling better, but still anxious, Fox leaned back. A profound sense of peace came over him. He drifted off to sleep, not stirring until the ship chimed that they had reached the city limits.
Upon waking, Fox once again felt his stomach drop. He remembered his predicament. The ability to detonate terillium terrified him. If this thought had come to him, some other researcher would inevitably make the same discovery.
His life had taken on the noxious anxiety of a nightmare. His call to Lao had been the equivalent of a confession and prediction, rather than theoretical brainstorming. Would it become evidence against him, an admission of guilt?
The risks were too great. The Micronix could never be a viable product. The project had to be cancelled.
Fox dialed the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The automated greeting played, and Fox was asked to leave a message.
"Sir, this is Director Fox. We're not making any progress at Epsilon. I just spoke with Senator Miller, and he agrees that we should shutter the facility at once. It's not productive at this point. In fact, we’re taking significant risks if we continue. We'll start returning the prisoners tomorrow. By the end of next week, we'll have the technicians back to their previous duty stations. I'd like to thank you for all your support, my best to your staff and family, goodnight."
Fox wasn't a religious man, but he wondered, if there were a God... Why would he ever create such powerful fire for such poor stewards as those who call themselves men?