“Exactly!”
“Do you owe me a dollar now?”
The professor didn’t seem to hear her. “It was one of JFK’s personal obsessions, and not just winning the race to the moon, either. But he had the foresight and vision to realize the logistics and realities of deep space travel, anything beyond the moon, really, brought challenges and costs that barely qualified it as a pipe dream. So Kennedy assembled a group of experts to come up with alternatives to rocket ships and star cruisers even as work continued on those as well.” The professor paused long enough to meet both Alex’s and Sam’s gazes. “Here, my young friends. On these very grounds that had been housing an amusement park destroyed by an earthquake. Laboratory Z was built under the cover of a Western Electric company manufacturing plant and continued in operation after the Sunset Development Company created Bishop Ranch in 1978.”
“Not exactly the New Mexican desert,” Sam noted, contrasting the infamous Los Alamos facility in New Mexico with the million square feet of modern office space before them.
“No, but the scientists who worked here didn’t have as clear an agenda, either. We were basically poking at the wind to see if anything poked back.”
“And did it?” Alex asked the professor.
“I can safely report that virtually every experiment conducted here was a failure, often abysmal. It’s why the government, and NASA, didn’t dare show us on the books. We were a financial black hole—no pun intended, since black holes were among the subjects we studied extensively.”
“You said virtually,” Sam noted. “Meaning…”
“Meaning all but one.”
“And were you involved in that one?”
“Intimately. It was my specialty, accounted for why they brought me and another scientist to Laboratory Z as project supervisors in the early nineteen nineties.”
“What was your specialty?” Alex asked him.
“Wormholes,” said the professor.
* * *
“Let’s start with the basics,” he continued, turning his focus on Sam. “Feel free to jump in at any time, young lady.”
Alex’s shoulders snapped erect. “Why didn’t you say that to me?”
“Feel free to jump in at any time, young lady,” the professor repeated. “But for now all you need to know is that the purpose of a wormhole is to facilitate travel to and from distant areas of space—I mean, really distant, as in different universes, potentially. Like this.”
The professor reached behind him and grabbed one of the signs staked into the ground that read, LOOK UP AND SOMEBODY’S LOOKING DOWN. He stripped the thin cardboard from its post and turned it over so the blank side, with just a smidge of black washed through, was up.
“Picture this as space,” he resumed, “the goal being to get from an originating point at one end to a destination point at the other. Since they could be light-years away, the journey would be all but impossible. Even traveling at the speed of light, you’d be gone hundreds, even thousands of years of Earth time by the time you got home.”
“Einstein’s theory of relativity,” Sam said, just loud enough to be heard.
“I know that,” Alex said meekly. “Don’t I, Sam? And I even know about string theory and black holes and wormholes.” He smiled at her.
The professor half rolled his eyes. “The ability to create a wormhole changes the very nature of the journey,” he said, starting to fold the strip of cardboard over. “Notice how close the two points are now, the distance between them shrunk by folding space over. That’s what a wormhole is, a theoretical passage through the space-time continuum to create shortcuts for long journeys across the universe. How am I doing, young lady?”
“Perfectly on point,” Sam told him. “Einstein and another scientist named Nathan Rosen used Einstein’s theory of relativity to theorize that bridges through space-time could exist connecting two different points. A shortcut, like you said, like cutting through the woods instead of taking the long way along the street.”
“I’m impressed, young lady.”
“I’m interning at Ames.”
“Are you now?” the old man said, raising his eyes just enough to make her think his response hid something else. “I’m really impressed now. Only the best and the brightest, as they say. And did you learn anything about wormholes at Ames?”
“No.”
“They contain two mouths with a throat connecting them together. The mouths would most likely be spheroidal. The throat might be a straight stretch, but it could also wind around, taking a longer path than a more conventional route might require.”
“But they’re likely to collapse after milliseconds,” Sam noted. “Isn’t that the whole problem in conceptualizing them?”
“Challenge, young lady, not problem, but, yes, generally. My specialty, what brought me to Laboratory Z, was an expertise in the more theoretical realms of quantum mechanics, specifically realms dealing with exotic forms of matter. Exotic matter, which should not be confused with dark matter or antimatter, contains negative energy density and a large negative pressure. Such matter has only been seen in the behavior of certain vacuum states as part of quantum field theory. But if a wormhole contained sufficient exotic matter, whether naturally occurring or artificially added, it could theoretically be used as a method of sending information or travelers through space.”
“Artificially added,” Sam echoed. “That was your specialty, wasn’t it?”
“Actually, playing the fiddle was my specialty. But artificially adding exotic matter to the construction of a wormhole, what we called a space bridge, was a close second. Now, I won’t bore you with the details of the myriad of development and construction issues we faced in building the particle accelerator we needed. Even you, young lady, wouldn’t be able to grasp their intricacies and dynamics,” the professor said, as if speaking only to Sam now. “It was, suffice it to say, the most advanced work in applied physics done to this day by the best minds gathered since Teller and Oppenheimer shared the same room in the Manhattan Project. But you’d need a doctorate in quantum mechanics to even begin to understand the principles involved. You know how it began and how it ended. The middle, on the other hand, the middle was wrought with setbacks and misfires. We had some success and in 1997 actually managed to erect a wormhole that remained stable for all of a hundredth of a second. A remarkable achievement in itself that, of course, in no way satisfied us. Instead if left us only after more, seeking something we were hardly ready to find,” the professor said, his voice sounding sad and bitter at the same time.
“You caused the fire,” Alex blared suddenly, eyes wide in realization. “Trying to keep the wormhole open longer was what did it.”
“Not at all, young man. We had nothing to do with the explosion that originated in our particle accelerator. Nor did we have anything to do with the wormhole we’d created actually opening. That wasn’t our doing at all.”
“Then whose was it, Professor?” Sam asked before Alex could find the words.
“Someone from the other side,” he said, folding the cardboard over anew and tapping the top.
79
THE OTHER SIDE
“WE WERE JUST TRYING to open a wormhole to space,” the professor continued. “No specific destination or designation. Just a bridge to the great out there. But somebody on the other side seized the opportunity to home in on Laboratory Z as a destination point in the fold, home in on the beacon we’d provided.”
“Why?” Sam wondered.
The professor answered her with his gaze fixed on Alex. “I had no idea until today, until now. Your story, your very existence, is the missing piece I’ve been looking for. I don’t think this was the first time someone from that other side opened a wormhole to our world, not at all. But it might have been the most important.”
Alex leaned over, shrinking the distance between them. “Because of me?”
“Because of what happened after. The explosion and resulting fire, young man. Whateve
r caused it didn’t originate with us; it originated on the other side in a desperate attempt to close the wormhole from that end before anyone else could follow you through. I’m going to assume this makes a degree of sense to you, to both of you.”
Thoughts flooded Alex’s mind, all the revelations of the past forty-eight hours that had begun with getting wrecked on the football field. He thought of his mother’s tale tucked inside Meng Po for safekeeping, proof in the form of Dr. Chu’s lab results currently squeezed into the back pocket of his new jeans, all the dots it had left dangling connected by the professor’s assertions and Laboratory Z’s work on forging wormholes in space.
“You said the people, the beings on the other side, had used wormholes before,” Alex said, words and thoughts forming at the same time. “You said they used the one you created to get me through before destroying it. Question being, what were they doing here?”
“Yes,” the professor nodded, “that’s the question.”
* * *
“They look like us,” Alex continued. “Does that help at all?”
“Wait, there are others? You’ve actually seen them?”
“It’s a long story. Might take a wormhole to get from one side of it to the other.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” the professor said, waving him off. “I’m afraid the information might fry my brain, leave me in a white coat bouncing around a rubber room. But this one thing: You say they look like us?”
“Pretty much, yes; exactly, even. Like me.”
“Even the drone things,” Sam added. “First time we saw them they were dressed as cops.”
“First time?”
“Long story, like Alex said.” Sam shrugged.
“Cops…”
“Is that important?”
“It suggests complete societal immersion, a necessary precondition.”
“For what?”
“An invasion,” the professor said without hesitation.
* * *
But then he lapsed into silence.
“What is it you’re not telling us, Professor?” Sam prodded.
“I’ve said enough.”
“Not even close.”
“All I’m going to say, then. My partner warned we were going too far, pushing the envelope too much. Never look for something you’re not ready to find, he said. Risk versus reward, the zero-sum game. By the time I finally listened to him, it was too late.”
“This partner of yours, did he die with the others?”
“No, we both managed to survive. Otherwise…” The professor let the remark dangle.
“So he could still be alive.”
“And indeed he is, making a much better account of himself than my daily silent protest against that which I only feared but now know to be quite real.”
“Where can we find him?” Sam asked.
And her mouth dropped when the professor told her.
80
ALIENS GO HOME
“I NEED TO SEE it,” Alex said suddenly, after Sam and the professor had lapsed into silence.
The professor’s eyes turned quizzical. “See what, young man?”
“Laboratory Z.”
The old man’s quizzical expression turned caustic. “Then close your eyes and use your imagination. That’s as close as you’ll ever come.”
“I don’t think so,” Alex said, a mix of suspicion and surety lacing his tone.
“I’ve given you my company, charged you for only a single question when you asked a dozen. I’d appreciate your respect.”
“You said you’ve been coming here every day for fifteen years.”
“Thanks to the courts ruling in my favor, decision after decision,” the professor told him. “This part of the complex being public land and all.”
“I think you come here every day to make sure nobody else finds it,” Alex continued.
“Finds what?”
“Laboratory Z.”
“It’s gone, young man. Burned to the ground in an explosion of white heat. All the records, the readouts that could have provided more specifics of those final moments, lost too.”
“But there’s something that wasn’t lost,” Sam interjected. “Alex is right, isn’t he?”
The professor looked away, then turned back toward them looking almost guilty. “The past is better left to itself, young lady.”
“Not this time,” said Alex.
And they watched as the professor yanked the blanket aside beneath the pop-up tent to reveal a strange-looking patch of ground.
* * *
The tent cloaked the professor as he felt about the thin ground brush, dried, blanched of color, and flattened by being covered from the sun on a daily basis. His knobby hands latched onto some holds, Alex and Sam watching him pull up on them.
The ground seemed to lift upward, enough of a space created to let a wash of cool, stale air flood outward from below.
“Behold the last remains of Laboratory Z,” he said, holding the hatch up.
“What’s down there?” Alex asked him.
“Can’t tell you that, since I’ve never ventured down there myself. I know there’s an emergency escape tunnel lab personnel caught in the fire never got the chance to use. Beyond that, well, there could be more. What exactly, I have no idea.” His gaze turned sad, sky-blue eyes looking suddenly duller. “You have the right, young man, and I won’t try to stop you. Just remember my warning about what happens sometimes when you find what you’re looking for.”
* * *
Alex and Sam found nothing at the foot of the dust-layered ladder, not at first. Just a tunnel that, if their bearings were correct, led underneath Bishop Ranch and the original location of Laboratory Z.
A dull haze of luminescence filtered down from recessed areas of the tunnel’s side walls even with the ceiling. Sam figured the lights must be powered by a solar generator or something, to explain how they were still functioning after eighteen years. The tunnel smelled of nothing at all and she felt a constant air flow slipping past her, evidence of massive pumps and recirculators at work somewhere down here too.
She and Alex continued to follow the tunnel’s irregular path, the twists and turns likely spawned by the need to dig around deposits of rock and shale that would otherwise have to be blasted through. If this were only an escape tunnel, their trek would end with a pile of earth and rubble at the other end. But both of them sensed there was something else down here, something more. Most of Laboratory Z itself, after all, was contained on subterranean levels beneath one likely reinforced with plate steel and concrete. So it wouldn’t just offer escape in the event of an emergency, it might also provide storage for huge reams of records before the Cloud was a thought in anyone’s mind along with vital equipment, so they might survive such a catastrophe too.
And, sure enough, they rounded a final corner to find the tunnel continuing in one direction, while a heavy steel door that looked like the entrance to a bank vault seemed to open onto another. There was no visible latch and the steel was cold to the touch, almost icy, forcing Alex and Sam to keep pulling back their hands as they checked for a knob, button, or keypad.
Alex slapped a palm against the cold steel in frustration, and lurched back with a start, dragging Sam with him as the door, incredibly, started to slide open. Both figured Alex had stumbled on something that did the trick, until they spotted a shadowy figure standing just beyond the now open door.
“I thought you might find your way here,” said Raiff.
81
PINGS
THE MACHINES HUMMED. THE machines whirred. The machines spit out data at speeds beyond comprehension, at least Langston Marsh’s.
Fortunately, the same could not be said for his army of technicians, who lived their lives hunched over keyboards in front of LED screens following the constant scroll of readouts. They worked out of a cavernous underground structure amid tons of limestone and shale layered beneath the Klamath Mountains of Northern California, a bun
ker within a bunker lined with workstations laid out east to west, and north to south, in a manner mirroring the country. So the upper left-hand corner of the room represented the Pacific Northwest, the upper right, New England.
And so forth.
Hits, or “pings,” as Marsh preferred to call them, were far too rare and uncommon. When they came, though, as subtle as the blip on an animated bouncing wave, they unleashed a fury of Marsh’s making. For just as his monitoring room was laid out according to the geographical composition of the country, so too were the teams of Trackers already in place to hunt every single ping down and shut off the signal.
Every ping that registered on the vast array of monitoring machines tuned to electromagnetic frequency discharges represented another of those in league with the forces behind his father’s death. His father had once had a part-time job as an exterminator and Marsh figured he had taken that baton from the great man he barely remembered as well as this mantle of responsibility. His father had fought the aliens in the sky, very likely giving his life to forestall an invasion. Marsh had never flown a plane in his life, but his charge was still much the same: to face down another coming invasion.
Rathman had already departed to the San Francisco area to pick up pursuit of the boy. He was marshaling his supplemental forces, comprised of special operators, and had explained that the arrival of dozens of them was already imminent, just hours off. Marsh didn’t know the place of Alex Chin in all of this, only that his presence had unleashed the firestorm that had left severed robotic limbs all over a FedEx Office outside San Francisco the night before.
Ping.
It was Marsh’s favorite sound in the world, but right now the chirping of his cell phone claimed his attention, a number given out only to a very select few. Marsh answered and listened to the man’s fervent report on what had just transpired.
“I thought you should know immediately,” the man finished.
“And right you are, more right than you can possibly realize,” he said.
“We’re in this together, but it’s partially my fault we’re in it at all.”