Split Second (25 page)

PART 3

Pandora’s
Box

“I myself believe that there will
one day be time travel because when we find that something isn't forbidden by
the over-arching laws of physics, we usually eventually find a technological
way of doing it.”

           
—
David Deutsch (Oxford Physicist who laid the
foundations for quantum computing)

 
“Technology . . . is a queer
thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back
with the other.”

           
—Carrie
Snow

“Beam me up, Scotty. There is no intelligent life on this planet.”

           
—Unknown
(often printed on T-shirts)

44

Blake awoke, having no idea how
long he had been out. He was unbound and found himself in a room the size of a
small classroom, with several conspicuous cameras pointing at him from above.
Jenna Morrison and Dan Walsh were lying on the floor beside him, unconscious,
but apparently unharmed. Jenna had cleaned the eyeshadow from her face after he
had left the motel, and whoever had deposited her here had done her the favor
of leaving the hideous blonde wig behind.

His memories returned and he
pieced together what had happened. Soyer had shot him with a dart and he had
been taken here—wherever
here
was. He
had told Soyer where Jenna and Dan were staying, which explained how they had
been gathered up, surely a simple exercise without him there to protect them.

Had Soyer been working with Cargill
all along?

It seemed impossible.

But then so did so many other
things he had learned of recently. His definition of the word
impossible
was certainly getting a work
out.

He looked down and saw a page of
unruled printer paper affixed to his chest by a piece of clear tape, with a
message neatly scrawled on it in blue ink.

Touché
, he thought. Apparently, one low-tech, hand-written message
deserved another. He began to read:

To: Aaron Blake

From: Lee Cargill

Since you are reading this, you have no doubt recently awakened. We
expect you to be the first, but we tried to time things so your friends will also
awaken fairly soon. We gave you enough of a dose that you would sleep through
the night, so it is now Wednesday morning.

Given that you are unbound in an innocent-looking room, you might be
tempted to escape, but let me discourage you from such an attempt. You’ve no
doubt noticed the cameras. The door is locked and there are men as highly
trained as you guarding it.

In case this isn’t enough of a discouragement, you should know that you
are now in perhaps the most secure military facility in the US, Cheyenne
Mountain. If you aren’t familiar with this base, and haven’t seen it in any
movies, it is a tiny city carved out of a granite mountain in Colorado Springs.
Trust me, as formidable as you are, you have no chance of escape.

Sorry about having to proceed in this way, but you refused to let me
explain things over the phone, so I felt I had no other choice. As soon as your
friends are awake, though, I promise to bring you all up to speed and answer
your questions.

I look forward to meeting you in person.

Lee

Blake glanced once again at the
cameras facing him, and then at the door. As much as he was tempted to try to
escape, he believed Cargill’s message. After all, the man could have easily chained
him to a wall. He didn’t need to bluff.

But Blake had to admit, being
held prisoner within America’s premier fortress was the last situation in which
he had ever expected to find himself.

He sighed. Maybe cheating spouse
cases weren’t so bad, after all.

45

True to Cargill’s word, the
moment all three prisoners were awake a man named Joe Allen arrived to escort
them to a large conference room within the mountain.

Blake couldn’t help but gawk at
a site he never expected to see, and Jenna and Dan were doing the same. They
first passed a wide tunnel protected by a famous twenty-five-ton blast door
that was only shut in times of crisis. Blake estimated that the steel door was
over three feet thick, ten feet tall, and slightly more than ten feet wide.

After this they continued on
through several sections of the complex, including a glossy paved concrete road
as wide as a runway, claustrophobic corridors dotted with doorways, and
expansive brown, unfinished caverns, in which the mountain ceiling and walls
had been smoothed but left natural and uneven, in case anyone had any doubt
where they really were.

They finally arrived in a
standard conference room that would have been at home in any Fortune 500
company in America. Opulent leather chairs surrounded a never-ending lacquered
redwood conference table, so smooth and shiny it almost seemed radioactive. Oversized
plasma television monitors covered the walls, and a clean, overturned drinking glass
had been placed at each spot around the table, waiting to be filled by one of
several evenly spaced pitchers of
icewater
perched on
large lattice coasters.

When the three prisoners had
taken a seat next to each other near the center of the table, their armed
escorts left, and Joe Allen took a seat across from the trio. Seconds later Lee
Cargill entered and extended his hand.

Blake ignored it, focusing
instead on the man who had entered next to him: Greg Soyer.

The PI shot up from his seat and
looked ready to leap over the table, causing both Cargill and Soyer to reflexively
step backwards.

“You son-of-a-bitch!” hissed Blake
at his former friend. “Were you with them from the very
beginning?
”

Soyer shook his head and looked
physically ill. “How could I be, Aaron?” he barely managed to croak out.

Here was a man who had battled
vicious terrorists with courage and calm, but seemed to be unraveling when
confronted by a friend he had betrayed. “I knew nothing about this until you
brought me into it.”

Soyer took a deep breath. “But
after they captured me,” he continued, “they were very persuasive. You’ll see.
I don’t blame you for hating me right now. But everything I did, I did with
your interests at heart, and with good intentions.”

Blake bored deep into Soyer’s eyes
and saw nothing but hurt and sincerity. He unclenched his fists. He had been
too close to this man not to at least hear him out. And he would believe almost
anything before he would believe Soyer would purposely do him harm.

He sat back down beside his two
companions, who had been tensely observing the altercation and who seemed
relieved that this powder keg had not gone off, at least for the moment.

Cargill gestured to Soyer, still
standing by his side. “I know what you must think of this man,” he said to
Blake. “But put yourself in my shoes, in your friend’s shoes. Edgar Knight is
good enough to convince you that he’s Mother Teresa and I’m Darth Vader. I have
no idea what he told you, how much he’s poisoned you against me. All I know is
that you refused to even let me make my case.”

“You could have told me you’d
won Greg over.
He
could have told me.
That would have changed things.”

“Maybe. I considered this. But
over the phone, you might have convinced yourself he was being coerced. Or that
we had fed him nothing but lies, and he was being duped. You had no idea who to
trust. You still don’t. And Greg Soyer was my ace in the hole. If I would have
let you know he was siding with me, and you refused to come in, I couldn’t have
used the tactic that
did
get you here.”

Blake glared at Soyer once
again, but remained silent.

“Edgar Knight is the wrong man
to underestimate,” said Cargill. “I’ve made that mistake several times now.
He’s brilliant, competent, and has unlimited resources. Believe me, there is no
doubt he was closing in on you fast. If he found you, as I said, the
consequences for you, and the world, would be catastrophic. For all I knew he
was minutes away. I explained the danger you were in, and Greg believed me.”

Cargill finally took a seat next
to Joe Allen, facing the three prisoners, and Soyer followed suit.

“So if you were in his shoes,”
continued Cargill, “what would you have done? You believe that your best friend
might be one step away from a landmine, but has been lied to and isn’t in the
mood to trust anyone, or anything. Do you risk taking the time to try to win
him over to your point of view, while he continues to traipse through the minefield?
Or do you tranquilize him before he can take another step and airlift his ass
to safer terrain?”

As Cargill finished, Blake
noticed that Soyer’s eyes had moistened, indicating he was experiencing
emotions too powerful to fully contain. Apparently, Soyer’s betrayal had been
as hard on him as it had been on Blake.

But this still didn’t mean his
friend hadn’t been duped.

“You’ve made an interesting
case,” said Blake, “but it all hinges on how real or imaginary this minefield
is. So I’ll postpone judgment
—
for now.” He waved a hand at Cargill. “You wanted to tell your
story. Okay, you have the floor.”

“Before I begin,” said Cargill,
“I need to know everything Edgar Knight told you.”

“And if we refuse?” said Blake.

“Then you refuse. I won’t try to
coerce you. But knowing what truths, and untruths, you’ve been told will allow
me to proceed more efficiently, and I’ll be able to tell which parts of his
story I need to demonstrate are lies.” He shrugged. “But it’s your choice.”

Blake glanced to either side of
him, and both Jenna and Walsh nodded their approval. “All right, we’ll do as
you ask,” he said. “Why not?”

The three prisoners took turns
covering the tenor of their conversation with Edgar Knight, as much as they
could collectively remember. Soyer appeared fascinated, while Cargill and Allen
remained poker-faced throughout.

“So that’s everything,” said
Blake when they had finished.

“Thank you,” said Cargill.

“So now I suppose you’re going
to tell us it was all lies, right?”

Cargill smiled wearily. “No,” he
replied, “because it wasn’t. What Knight told you about going back in time
forty-five microseconds is accurate. So is his depiction of Q5’s initial
mission, and how this changed once he found a way to tap dark energy and send
matter back in time.”

He shook his head adamantly. “But
it was
Knight
who went off the
reservation. Not me. He broke off from Q5, killing some very valuable people on
the way out the door. He had become paranoid, with delusions of grandeur, although
I didn’t recognize this until later. He is no doubt brilliant, every bit the
inventive genius of a Faraday, as he told you. But there can be a fine line
between genius and insanity. Years ago there was a guy named Ted Kaczynski, a
brilliant mathematician accepted into Harvard at sixteen, who became a crazed
recluse, killing three and injuring dozens in bombings over several years.”

“Was he the guy they called the
Unabomber?” asked Blake.

“Exactly. And Bobbie Fischer was
considered the greatest chess player who ever lived, and he ended up losing
complete touch with reality. John Nash, a brilliant mathematician who developed
game theory, was debilitated by paranoid schizophrenia. There are numerous
other examples of brilliant people becoming deranged.”

“So what?” said Blake bluntly.
“I can give you more examples of
stupid
people becoming deranged. This doesn’t prove anything.”

“I didn’t say this
proved
anything. I just thought I’d
point it out.”

“And now you have,” snapped
Jenna. “So Knight says you’re the rogue, and you say
he
is. So how do we know who’s lying, and who’s telling the truth?”
She shook her head, a dark scowl on her face. “The only thing I know for sure
is that your side killed Nathan in cold blood.”

“For one, I have a video of Knight
trying to convince me of his perspective, before he took matters into his own
hands. The video that, among other things, convinced Greg Soyer. But even
without that, from what you’ve told me about your conversation with Knight, I
know he lied about several other things, and I can
prove
it.”

“And these things are?” prompted
Jenna.

“First, he lied about the maximum
physical dimensions of his time travel devices. You can construct them as big
as a room. Second, he lied about his reason for wanting Dr. Wexler’s work. He
didn’t want it to improve the process. It’s already seamless.”

“So why then?” said Blake.

“Because he’s only ever been
able to get his device to push back forty-five microseconds. But he
desperately
wants it to be able to go
back the full half-second Dr. Wexler indicated should be possible.”

“I still don’t get it,” said Blake,
shaking his head. “Why does any of this matter?”

“I agree,” said Walsh. “How did lying
about these things help Edgar Knight in any way?”

“Because it allowed him to
accomplish exactly what he accomplished,” said Cargill. “As always, he did a
brilliant job of it. He managed to freak you out about the possibilities of
time travel, of duplication, to justify why this discovery needed to stay
hidden forever, and convince you my actions were due to megalomania and greed.”

Cargill leaned forward, and his
voice took on a new intensity. “But Knight didn’t even
scratch the surface
of what is possible. He made you think the
device was the size of a suitcase, and limited his examples to cell phones.” He
paused. “And he did this for a very important reason.”

“What reason?” said Blake, still
not seeing it.

“To distract you. Like a great
magician, he focused you on the small so you’d never consider the big. Why? Because
a
human being
can’t fit inside a
suitcase,” pointed out Cargill. “If he started you off thinking the device
could be as large as a room, you would soon ask the question: can you send
people
back in time? In essence, can you
duplicate not just phones, but
human
beings?
”

Blake’s jaw dropped, and his two
companions both reacted with equal dismay.

“In case you were wondering,”
continued Cargill, “the answer to both questions is
yes
. If you think duplicating octa-nitro-cubane, enriched uranium,
and complex electronics opens up some serious cans of worms, spend a few days
thinking through the implications of copying
people
.”

All three prisoners remained
absolutely dumbfounded, too much in shock to attempt speech.

“And, yes,” said Cargill, “I can
show you a device much bigger than Knight said was the theoretical maximum, and
give a demonstration,
proving
that he
lied.”

Walsh was beginning to recover his
mental equilibrium, and his shrewd scientific mind was coming back to life.
“Okay, this explains why he had to pretend the device was small,” he said. “But
why the half-second? This doesn’t help him duplicate matter any better than
forty-five microseconds does.”

Cargill raised his eyebrows.
“One word,” he said evenly. “Teleportation.”