An hour later, she was standing on a large ledge that stuck out twenty feet from the wall. A thin layer of snow covered the ground. Her glasses indicated that she had reached Tony and Mai-lin’s last known location. “Mai-lin,” she called. “Tony.” She heard something coming from a large boulder that was leaned against the cliff face. Jane ran over, continuously calling out their names.
“Over here,” she heard. Was that Tony? It sounded like it was coming from below the boulder.
“Tony?” she repeated, louder this time.
“We’re both okay,” he answered. She could hear him clearly now, but she still couldn’t see where the voice was coming from. “We’re trapped under a large boulder,” he explained.
“How did that happen?” Jane asked.
“When the rocks started flying, we only had a second to react,” Tony explained. “We ducked into a small cave, mostly just a pocket in the ground, just as the boulder came down on the opening.”
Jane was beside the boulder now. It was about ten feet wide and eight feet high. She gave it a push. It was solid. “I see it,” she said. “Won’t budge.”
“Yeah,” Tony said, chuckling tensely. “Twenty tons is probably just a little past your max lifting power.”
“Jane, is that you?” Mai-lin’s voice floated through the air. She sounded different, suddenly much younger, and unsteady.
“Yeah, I’m here,” Jane responded.
“Help us,” Mai-lin pleaded. Jane realized that she had never heard Mai-lin scared before.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get you out of there,” she promised.
“We’ve searched around already,” Tony said. “There aren’t any openings large enough to fit a person through. We’ll have to blast our way out.”
“Blast? With what?” she asked.
“I left an emergency pack in our camp. It likely survived the explosion.” Tony sounded confident, perhaps only for Mai-lin’s sake. “I need you to hike up there and grab it for me. We’ll be fine until you get back.”
Jane didn’t waste any time, dropping her own pack before quickly finishing the final ascent to the southern peak. She was surprised to find Tony and Mai-lin’s campsite still intact. The blanket of snow and ice that fell over the rocks created a serene picture of a pleasant winter campsite. However, fifty feet away, near the edge of the cliff, scorch marks radiated out from a mess of melted metal. It looked like the RF antenna and equipment had blown somehow. She didn’t have time to look around for the answers now. Instead she searched for Tony’s emergency pack. She found it where he had instructed her to look, just outside of their tent. She hoisted it onto her shoulders, almost throwing out her back from the unexpected weight. She wondered how Tony managed to carry the pack along with all the radio equipment they had set up.
Five minutes later, she was back in front of the boulder. Following Tony’s instructions, she emptied out the bag onto the ground in front of her. “Let’s see, we have a medical kit - I’m sure that’s useful. And there’s a box of, looks like hand tools. Here’s a container of...oh, it’s labeled ‘explosives’. And finally, here’s the really heavy one, a gray block with buttons and caution stickers all over it.” Jane felt completely out of her area of expertise.
“Good, good,” Tony replied. “This is good. We can do this.” It sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than anyone else. “Open up the explosives box. There should be at least two bricks of plastic explosives and a detonator, which should look like a stopwatch with a bunch of wires sticking out of it. Please confirm.”
“Yes, I see them,” Jane replied excitedly. “We’re just going to blow up the boulder?”
“Not quite,” Tony said. “In fact, close the explosives box and put it safely to the side. We’re not ready for those yet. They’re not really powerful enough to move this boulder.” Jane felt a pang of doubt. “We’re going to use them carefully to try to crack the boulder apart. Go examine the gray block carefully, but don’t press any of the buttons. It’s a high-power portable industrial laser.”
Jane took a close look at the laser. The top of the laser had an LCD screen and a number pad with several other buttons. There were large handles on either side of the block. The far side of the laser had an opening which was ringed in bright red. At least she knew not to look into the hole. The side closest to her had a small red T-shaped handle sticking out of a slot. The handle was attached to the laser by a string.
“Okay, now find the red handle and pull it out,” Tony directed. “That will activate the fuel cell, powering on the device.” Jane did so and watched as the LCD blinked on. “Loman Industries” appeared on the screen and then faded out, replaced with a bunch of numbers. Tony talked her through how to set the power level and the beam width and how to monitor the cutting depth.
After a few minutes, Jane hefted the laser onto her shoulder. “Okay, got it,” she said. “What now?”
“Set the laser on maximum cutting power with a cutting diameter of three inches,” Tony said. “Then place the red end up against the boulder as close to the center and as high up as you can. You’ll have to hold it for quite a while. When ready, just hold down the red switch on the top.”
Jane walked the laser over to the designated spot, keeping it on her shoulder. When she had everything set up, she pressed the switch. Other than a slight hum, nothing seemed to happen. She was about to tilt the laser back when she smelled it, a slight burning smell like a candle had just been blown out. Good thing she didn’t “check” on the laser. She might have lost a few fingers or an eye. “It’s working,” she said. “How long do I keep doing this?”
“Until it runs out of power,” he replied. “Hopefully we can get the hole to be several feet deep.”
Thirty numbingly long minutes later, the laser sputtered and the hum disappeared. Jane took her finger off the switch and dropped the laser on the ground. She checked the display. Other than the low-battery warning, the display showed that she had cut three feet and eleven inches into the rock. She looked at her handiwork. There was a perfectly cylindrical hole cut into the rock. She couldn’t see how deep it went.
“Excellent,” Tony said when Jane told him the news. “Hopefully that will do it. Now take the plastic explosives from the box. I need you to place a black wire and a red wire into one of the blocks. Make sure you have at least thirty feet of wire. Then you’re going to have to push all the explosive as far into the hole as possible.”
“Got it,” she replied. “Let me go find a stick or something.”
Several minutes later, she was crouched behind a rock twenty feet from the boulder, forty-five degrees to the side from the hole. Twin tiny wires ran from the hole and into the detonator that she clutched in her hand. ‘You guys ready in there?” she yelled.
“Go for it,” Tony replied.
Jane hit the ignition switch cringing in preparation for the explosion. But all she got was a muffled pop as a cloud of smoke and debris shot out of the hole. Crap. There were no other explosives on site, and it would take a day to get more supplies in from the outside. Tony and Mai-lin didn’t have any supplies, and she had no idea if they were getting enough fresh air.
But then a crack grew from out of the hole in both directions, splitting the boulder down the middle. The whole boulder just peeled apart from the top into two perfect halves, opening up like a tulip bulb. After the dust settled, Jane ran up to see Tony scurry out from the gap between the boulder halves and the ground. Mai-lin followed soon after, crying tears of happiness as she crushed Jane in her grateful arms. Jane welcomed her hug as she watched the dust settle over her handiwork. Not bad for a scientist in her fifties.
************
“Wait, I don’t understand,” said Abdul raising his arms up. “How could the antenna relay just explode?” He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed.
“It couldn’t,” Tony replied, failing to elaborate. “What’s Chris’ ETA?”
“Wait, you’re
saying that someone...” continued Abdul. For being a Mensa-certified genius, Abdul could be surprisingly slow sometimes. He sprang out of his chair. “But how could someone? Why would someone?”
“We don’t know,” Tony said calmly. “That’s why we need to go see Bryce. ETA on Chris?”
Abdul flipped through some windows on his terminal. “Ten minutes.”
After their escape from the cave, Tony went back up to their camp while Jane tended to Mai-lin’s scrapes and cuts. The dermal regenerator in the medical kit took care of those rather quickly, but Jane could see that Mai-lin remained quite shaken from her near-brush with death. Tony returned quickly with all their gear, photos of the wrecked antenna array, and a grim look on his face.
“What’s wrong?” Jane asked.
“We better go see Bryce,” he said. “Can you call in to HQ and get them to request a pickup ASAP?”
Now they were back at Central HQ waiting for Chris to arrive. Though on the outside Tony appeared calm, Jane could sense that he was deeply bothered inside. She could see his mind fidgeting, constantly checking the time, impatiently awaiting Chris’ arrival.
The familiar roar of the Gulfstream’s engines shook the building as Chris made the dive into the valley. Tony grabbed his gear and bounded outside as if he could just jump onto the plane before it stopped, like catching a cable car on the streets of San Francisco. Jane and Mai-lin got outside in time to see Chris walk out of the plane. Someone had already brought out the gangway. Chris walked up to Jane eagerly.
“Let me get your bag for you Dr. Ingram,” she said cheerily. Mai-lin was left to haul her luggage up the stairs herself.
Inside the plane, Tony was already buckled in and ready to go. Jane got settled, made sure she was in a forward-facing seat, and buckled herself in. Chris peeked into the passenger cabin. “Are we all settled in here?” she asked.
“Yes, let’s get her up in the air,” Tony answered.
“Sure thing,” she said and ducked back into the cockpit.
Jane felt herself pressed into the back of the seat as the Gulfstream gunned forward. Though the plane needed to climb steeply to pass over the mountains, the ride felt surprisingly smooth and relaxed. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for flying with Kandari airlines,” Chris spoke through the cabin speakers. “This is your captain speaking. Our estimated time of arrival at the U.S.S. Nimitz is twenty-two hundred hours. We’ll be taking a leisurely pace until we get through these mountains and can speed up when we’re over the water.”
Tony pushed the intercom button. “What’s with this leisurely pace crap? Get us there fast.”
“I want to make sure that our guests have a comfortable flight,” Chris answered.
Mai-lin whispered to Tony, “Ever since Ashton and Chris started dating, she’s been like this. She wants to make sure she stays on Jane’s good side.”
Jane sighed. “It’s okay Chris. I’m strapped in. Let her rip.”
“Aye-aye,” Chris replied. “Let’s rock and roll.” Jane clenched onto the handle next to her seat, but her face was smiling. It was better to let Chris be Chris.
************
Bryce welcomed them warmly when they arrived, shrugging off the incident. “This was bound to happen,” he said. “A man with my connections and his own aircraft carrier is bound to draw some attention.” But his actions told a different story. Bryce and Tony spent the next 24 hours closeted away somewhere. And though he didn’t show it, Jane could tell that Bryce was mad. Someone had sabotoged his project. More importantly, it meant that someone outside knew about his project, and that’s what really troubled him. Jane wasn’t privy to the details of their discussions, so she took the opportunity to spend some time with her son.
Ashton picked her up from her cabin in the Nimitz’s island for a tour of his work. Jane was embarrassed that she didn’t really know what Ashton did and was excited to be able to remedy this gap in her knowledge. Though they talked and IM’d consistently over the years, she hadn’t actually seen any of his work since Stanford. She studied him as he led her down the flight deck. Ashton had grown from a frail boy into a rather tall man. Though he didn’t fit the strong Adonis mold of manhood, his slim body did move with a certain grace. He wasn’t strictly speaking, handsome, but his bright eyes had a certain charm that Jane found endearing. And it wasn’t just because as his mother, she had to. Chris saw the same grace and charm in Ashton that she did. But then again, they had known each other since they were children.
“The computation center has now taken over most of the main hanger deck,” Ashton explained as they took an elevator down from the flight deck. “Isn’t it amazing?” he asked. The main hanger deck was a single enormous space with forty foot ceilings that extended almost the entire 1000 foot length of the Nimitz. As the elevator descended into the main hanger, she saw what must be thousands and thousands of racks of computer equipment lined up in plexiglass rooms erected along the hanger floor. Hundreds of pipes snaked along the tops of the buildings.
“What you’re looking at is one of the largest local intra-networked systems of computers in the world,” Ashton said with pride. “I helped build the protocols that allow somewhere north of ten million individual processors to work seamlessly as a single unit.” The elevator stopped at the hanger floor. Ashton led her into the closest plexiglass room, where dozens of people sat in armchairs busily typing away. Curved touch displays wrapped around each of the engineers so that the screen was just within arms reach in every direction. They looked engrossed in the dozens of charts and windows that covered their field of vision.
“Bryce built all of this on a ship?” she asked incredulously. “Why?”
“Well, we all know the boss is a bit paranoid about his independence from the nation states,” said Ashton. “Here we’re free from any of the technology bans. I think Bryce really thinks that some government will try to seize our technology. He always says that the pawns of ambition will do anything under the moral imperative of national security.”
Jane nodded. She’d heard it all before.
“But really,” continued Ashton. “This is a perfect place to build this computation farm. You see, the ocean provides a great cooling system. All the pipes you see above these rooms carry free and readily available water from the ocean to cool the computers. Plus we have a great source of power on board.” He chuckled. When his mother looked confused, he added, “This is a nuclear aircraft carrier. The reactor that was used to propel this behemoth of a ship is now just barely enough to power our computation farm. Yep, if we ever have to move this thing, we’d have to shut down all the computers.”
Jane could see how excited her son was by all the bits and bytes that the colossal rows of equipment represented. She couldn’t help thinking that it was a bit ironic that the man trying to build a society free from industrial technology seemed to own the largest example of it. “That’s wonderful, Ashton,” she said warmly. “I’m really proud of you.” She had to try hard not to pat him on the head. “But why is Bryce doing all this? What does all this computational power have to do with the Phoenix project?”
“Perfect segue Mom.” Ashton looked at his watch. “Hey George,” he flagged down one of the engineers who was passing by. “Is everything set for the demo?”
“Don’t sweat it Ash,” George replied. “You’ve got sudo in the globe.” He glanced at a diagram of the ship that was displayed on one of the walls. “Looks like Chris, Bryce, and Mai-lin are already in there.”
“Thanks George.” Ashton turned to Jane. “Come on Mom. Mom?”
Jane was peering intently down the corridor. Was it just a shadow? “I thought I saw someone in there, someone I recognized.”
“Unlikely,” Ashton said. “Only maintenance crews are allowed in the farms, and that patch isn’t scheduled for work today. It was probably just a shadow from a moving fan or something. Come on, I shouldn’t keep the others waiting. I’m about to show you a demo that even Bryce hasn’t seen
yet.”
Ashton led her to the end of the hanger deck and into a giant white globe. Mai-lin, Bryce, and Chris were already sitting in reclining chairs in the center. The room reminded Jane of the conference room where Bryce had first shown them project Phoenix, only this room was easily ten times the size, and the walls were completely round. Ashton gestured for her to sit with the others and then sat in an oddly-shaped chair in the front.
The control chair, like the others, leaned far back so that the occupant looked up at a forty-five degree angle, filling his entire view with the enormous inner surface of the white dome above them. The control chair was different from Jane’s chair in that its armrests had black globes at the end about the size of basketballs. Ashton placed his hands inside the globes and then spoke. “Ashton Ingram. Verification alpha three nine eight delta bravo seven.”
The room darkened and the dome around them transformed into a clear blue sky. An orange wildflower appeared overhead. “Calendula,” Jane thought to herself. It was a new plant variety that she had discovered and brought back from Terrene just a few weeks ago.
“This is version 1.0 of the Athena Simulation Environment,” Ashton said. He made some motions with his right hand inside the black globe and they found themselves flying toward the flower. They went right by the orange petals and into one of the leaves. The image zoomed too fast for her to identify everything, but she saw the unmistakable geometric form of a matrix of plant cell walls. Then they zoomed even closer until they stopped at the double helical structure of DNA.
“The current instance of Athena allows us to simulate organisms down to individual strands of DNA,” Ashton said proudly. “We are close to being able to simulate down to individual atoms, but even with the latest holographic memory chips and optical transistors, we lack the computing power to move to that next step at any useful scale.” Ashton did something else with his fingers and they zoomed back out to show the entire flower. “Of course, we can simulate a lot more than just one flower,” he added. The virtual camera flew up, showing a whole field of wildflowers, then a whole meadow. Forests and streams rushed into the scene. Jane swore that she could smell the grass as it flew past. Finally they hung suspended in the air over an oval-shaped valley encircled by mountains, floating in a sea of nothing.