The Know Circuit - Chapter 18.66

Chapter 18.33

Bridge laid out the logistics of his plan to the skeptical group. It was bold, ambitious and larger than life, but he was sure it would work. Once they’d all bought into it, he set them to their individual tasks. As they went about their work, he went about his. He had one thing more to do before leaving Boulder, and he needed to do it alone.

The address was easy enough to find. He drove to a modern, somewhat swanky condo complex near the Pearl Street Mall. Bridge wandered through the halls until he found the right door, Condo 17 A, just like the book had said. The place was deserted, barren like every other place under the dome. Though it took only a few minutes to drive there, the sun was already peaking up over the mountains in the distance. He wasn’t sure if the temporal distortion was accelerating or not, but his body sure wanted that sun to be the signal for sleep. He would usually be in bed right about this time and his arms and legs felt as if they moved through molten lead. But he struggled to the door and made his way through it with a few well-placed kicks. He chuckled at the dichotomy of such an expensive place buying such cheap locks. The alarm system blared a deafening claxon to an audience of one. He ignored them as he entered her apartment and sagged into a chair with an audible thud.

He had asked Lydia about the ghosts before leaving. “When do they show up?”

“Random times. I tried to track it the first few days, but there was no discernible pattern other than that they show up once a day… er, once a solar cycle, that is. Close enough to a day for us.”

“So if I hang around here at least a day, they’ll come back?”

She nodded. “For a few minutes. Why do you ask?”

He just waved her off. “One more thing I have to take care of.”

There he sat in Lalasa Freeman’s apartment, waiting to meet her ghost while hoping he didn’t, hoping against every cynical bone in his body that she wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have been affected, a strange guilt weighing him down. Of course, he didn’t cause her death anymore than he should have felt guilty for not saving her. Guilt was one of the emotions he rarely felt, as if it was a disease and he was immune to its contagion. But he felt the guilt now, felt it like a two-ton stone in his gut. He knew better, but he still found himself hoping she had taken a trip, had gone to visit a friend outside the dome’s range, that they would yet find her somewhere safe and sound. He hoped and he blamed himself and he sat waiting. He tried to stay awake, marveling at the powerful paintings that hung all over the place, but his chin fell to his chest as his body gave in to the urge to sleep.

He woke to the rushing of blood in his ears, the itch of his jack burning on his neck. The hairs on his arm stood on end. He could feel something about to happen, just like it had the first time he’d seen the ghosts, and he steeled himself. The world blinked.

He opened his eyes and there she was. A short, slightly stocky black woman with neat cornrows in her hair and glasses perched on her nose, the ghost of Lalasa Freeman stood before Bridge. She seemed to be staring around the apartment, at her artwork, her counters, her chair where this young intruder sat staring back at her agape. “Who are you?” she asked, the hint of fear cutting through the distortion in her voice.

“Mrs. Freeman?”

“Mrs. Freeman was my mother. My name’s Lalasa, son. Now what are you doing in my apartment? Did you bust open my door? Why can’t I see right?” She adjusted the glasses on her nose and scowled. “My prescription ain’t due up for another six months. What’d you do to me?”

“Nothing, ma’am,” Bridge said, an unconscious respect appearing in his voice. “Well, I busted in the door, but didn’t figure you’d be in a position to mind.”

“Mind? Hell yes, I mind, you little fucker. You here to steal an old lady’s purse? I’m on a fixed income and my credit is tied up in this place. You won’t get nothing worth a damn out of me.”

“I’m not here to steal from you, Mrs. F… Lalasa,” he replied. “I’m here because Marcus sent me.”

“Marcus? That boy needs to learn to call his grandmother. I ain’t gonna be around forever.”

An unfamiliar sensation of regret stabbed at Bridge’s heart. “Yeah, about that,” he choked, “he’s fine. But you aren’t. You’re a ghost.”

“Nonsense, boy. You’re the ghost. How you do that, by the way? Gas? Nanovirus? Cloaking suit?”

“It’s not me, it’s you,” he said firmly. “There was an accident, and everyone here is… well, they aren’t dead, exactly, I guess. There’s just ghosts, like you. You blink in and out for a few minutes every day. We don’t have much time.”

She seemed to take the news of her condition in stride. “Well, you’re obviously crazier than a bedbug, but I’ll bite. How is my grandson? Is he keeping his nose clean? No more drugs, gangs?”

“He’s clean,” Bridge lied. “He’s working for me.”

“Doing what?”

“He’s a bodyguard. But he’s going to college, he’s getting a philosophy degree.”

“Good, good. Boy always was smarter than he let on. I tried to teach him right, teach him that money wasn’t as important as a peaceful spirit. Why’s he bodyguarding you? You ain’t doing nothing criminal, are you?”

He lied again. “No, not exac… no. He’s safe, and I intend to keep him that way. I just wanted to know if there was anything you wanted me to tell him. You might not ever be able to see him again.”

“Oh, I’ll see him again. One day we’ll all be one with the universe, and his spirit will be there right beside mine.”

“Ok, sure, we’ll do that. But while he’s here, is there something you want to say?”

The ghost stood for a moment in concentrated thought. “I don’t know that I believe you, what with the ghost thing, but yeah, I got something to tell him.”

Bridge began to feel the encroaching event, his body tingling, his jack burning. The ghosts would be gone soon. “You don’t have a lot of time, ma’am. Please.”

“Tell him I was always proud of him. Even when he was at his worst, I always knew he’d succeed, he’d get it together. Deep down, he knows who he is. He…” The world blinked, and when Bridge opened his eyes again, she was gone.

With an exhausted sigh, he left the apartment and drove back to the Engineering Center to prepare for the escape.

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The Know Circuit - Chapter 18.33

Chapter 18.0

“I gotta freshen up,” Bridge muttered. His head was spinning, fatigue beginning to take its toll. “Where’s the can?”

The scientists all looked at each other in puzzlement. Janicki pointed out the double doors. “Down the hall.” Bridge strode out of the room shaking his head, barely noticing the others. His mind was racing from idea to idea, analyzing the events of the last days and formulating plans he couldn’t even consciously grasp through his weariness. He half-staggered down the hall to the bathroom, absentmindedly walking through the ladies’ room door before realizing where he was and turning around.

He stood before the mirror in the men’s room, the water swirling loudly in the sink. Reaching his hands into the cool water, he splashed his face. The shock of the near-freezing liquid took his breath away for a moment, but it crystallized his subconscious musings into concrete conscious thoughts. The scheme he was cooking up was big. It would require some long-range commitment on his part, but if it worked, he would personally benefit as much as the geeks. One cold, hard look in his own eyes, the mirror reflecting his desperate cunning and fatigued sparkle of insanity, then he self-consciously straightened his clothes. The last thing he needed was the grin, the cocksure slight uptick of the corner of his lips, the expression that said he had the situation under control.

When he returned to the lab, the four scientists were huddled around whispering in conspiratorial tones. They went deathly silent when they saw him. “You geeks ready to perform the biggest magic trick in the history of the universe?” Bridge said with that crazy confident smile.

Their stunned silence was answer enough. “Here’s how it’s going to go down. You’re dead, all of you, even your buddy Carl out there. In fact, you never existed. You cannot exist now or in the future. To even leave a hint that you were ever here during this clusterfuck is to sign your own death warrant, for realz.”

“How do we do that?” Lydia asked.

“Magic, baby. Magic.”

“There’s no such thing as magic,” Balfour scowled.

“Flying fucking dragons, guys tossing around fireballs like baseballs, energy shields, football golems, need I go on? You guys are wizards if ever there was one. You show one-tenth of what I’ve seen to the knuckle-dragging rubes on the street, they’ll either think they’re in a movie, or you’re some kind of magic man.”

“But everything we’ve done is a side-effect of this dimensional-particle technology,” Balfour insisted. “We can’t quite explain all of it, but there has to be a rational, scientific explanation for it. Just because we’ve discovered how to use it doesn’t mean we’ve been able to understand it all. Marie Curie discovered radiation without understanding the dangers.”

Janicki snickered. “Until the radiation sickness killed her.”

“Yes, but that’s what I mean. Eventually, science found a logical explanation, and we can find one for all of this.”

“And until then, you guys are magicians. Wizards.” A name he’d heard on science-fiction TV during his childhood leapt to mind. “Technomages, technomancers. Wizards whose spells are created using technology. Does that sound more acceptable?”

Balfour shrugged. “It makes as much sense as wizards. One doesn’t weave spells from technology, one just applies theorems to practical…”

“Yeah, you? You don’t get to speak to the public. You could ruin a wet dream.”

Lydia interrupted. “Great, we call ourselves technomages or technomancers then. Are we going on television to reveal ourselves to the world?”

“No,” Bridge sighed. “I’m creating an event here, lady. Do you want the Chronosoft’s of the world finding you and picking your brain for every little trick you can think up?” She shook her head. “Then you have to distract them. People are going to want to know what happened here, and the less they know of what actually happened, the less chance you five have of being blamed for the deaths of thirty thousand people, got it?”

“But how does calling ourselves technomancers help us?”

“You guys know anything about history? Probably not, you’re more concerned with the Big Bang than with history, am I right? Anyway, you know about the Crusades right? Good.”

Bridge crossed his arms with casual confidence as he began to tell the story. “Well, the Christians, these Frenchies and Germans and whatever captured this town called Antioch from the Muslims. One of the priests with the army, guy named Peter Bartholomew, claimed to have a vision. This vision told him that a holy artifact was buried in some church in Antioch. He probably made the whole damn thing up to inspire the troops. After all, the Crusades hadn’t been the cakewalk most of the idiots thought it would be. So, he goes and digs up the floor of the Church and lo and behold, there’s this lance head buried underneath the Church. ‘A miracle!’ he says. ‘This is the Holy Lance that the Romans used to pierce Christ’s side on the cross,’ he says.”

“The Spear of Destiny?” Wong asked.

“Holy Lance, Spear of Destiny, who knows? Not important. They find this lance head and show it off to the army. The head Crusaders, they’re real skeptical. I mean, it looks just like one of their spears, so they figure this guy’s yanking their holy chain, right? But as soon as the grunts see this lance, they go ape shit. I mean, any army that carries the Holy Lance of God cannot possibly be defeated. They’ll just rampage over the heathens. And these happy assholes believed it.”

“Maybe it was the starvation, the heat stroke, the fasting, or maybe the lance really was some kind of magic holy mojo, but whatever it was, the army starts winning. Guys are running into battle getting shot to shit by arrows and shit, but they don’t care. They’re totally oblivious to their own wounds, slaughtering Muslims left and right, just batshit crazy suicide bombs in armor tearing ass from one side of the Holy Land to the other. They drive off the Muslims, but instead of thanking old Peter there, the leaders of the Crusade accuse him of making the whole thing up.”

“You know what an actual trial by fire is, right? Light up this stretch of ground between two points and force the accused to walk through the fire. You live, you’re innocent, you burn and you’re a liar, liar pants really on fire. Well, they put Peter through one of those and he comes out totally unscathed. Scared shitless, but unharmed. They make him do it again. Once ain’t enough proof, get it? It makes them look bad. But he makes it through again. Now, he’s probably thinking he’s either the luckiest motherfucker alive, or maybe God really has blessed him. What’s that got to be like, going from scared of being a crispy padre to thinking you might really be some kind of messenger from God? The crowd fucking loves him after that. Here’s the guy that’s brought them the bomb, the divine intervention that will save their asses from a slow, scorching death in some fly-ridden foreign shithole. They start to cheer. They start to paw at him, ‘cos everybody wants a piece of this lucky divine son of a bitch. Everybody wants a bit of hair, or some of his robe, because if this fucker is blessed, maybe I can lucky rabbit foot’s my way to surviving this crazy ass war by pinning a pound of his flesh to my armor.”

“And they pick at him for days. By the time they’re done, he’s been trampled and ripped apart by this insane crowd of fanatics. He inspires them to victory and he gets ripped to pieces for it. I heard that story when I was twelve. Not sure how much of it is true, but it always stuck with me.”

The scientists stared at Bridge in confusion. Balfour asked, “I’m confused. In this allegory, are we supposed to be the crowd or the priest?”

Bridge grinned. “You’re the Lance, Mr. Wizard.”

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The Know Circuit - Chapter 18.0

November 7, 2028
Time Unknown

“Gone? Just gone?” Bridge had listened as patiently as he could to Balfour’s story, but the finality of an empty city, the sheer bleakness of having come all this way only to find Aristotle’s grandmother vanished crushed him with fatigue. He slumped further into his chair. “And you eggheads don’t have clue one where all these people went?”

“No, Mr. Bridge. We scoured the whole city in all directions. We didn’t find one corpse, not one molecule, nothing to show that any of the residents within the dome survived. These ghosts which you’ve already seen are the only evidence they ever existed. Most of the ghosts don’t even seem to know we’re here. They come at random times but never for very long.”

Janicki offered a theory with cool detachment. “I’ve considered the possibility that the cloud generator experienced a power surge. This surge might have disintegrated all non-plant organic matter underneath its area of effect. Plant life is unaffected but humans, pets… all gone.”

“And you guys,” Bridge replied.

“If we accept Dr. Janicki’s surge hypothesis, we can deduce that our mana engines rendered us immune to the effects,” Lydia explained.

“That is a logical deduction. After all, we can juggle fireballs and lightning without getting singed. The engine seems to lend us a remarkable resistance to electricity, heat, perhaps even other forms of more harmful radiation.”

Bridge scoffed. “Rolfsberg didn’t seem too immune to heat.”

Balfour peered down his nose at Bridge distastefully. “No need to be petulant. We’re still exploring the rules of our upgraded conditions.”

“Great. I’m dealing with wizards who don’t even know the extent of their magic. Five idiot savant Merlins.”

“Wizards? Magic? You sound like Carl with his dragon illusions. We aren’t magicians. There’s no such thing as magic. We’re scientists. All of our abilities can be explained by a more thorough understanding of the mana engine, something we’ve been trying to accomplish while we waited for you. Dr. Wong has been experimenting with his sports simulation. Dr. Carlisle has been examining the startling variety of dense particle combinations the engine can facilitate. Dr. Janicki and I have been attempting to better understand the cloud generator, and we think we can shut it down, though the results will be rather explosive.”

“Science, magic, same thing to a caveman.”

“There is another possibility.” The voice startled everyone. Wong had appeared in the doorway. His eyes were red and puffy, and he walked with his shoulders slumped as if they bore the weight of the world.

“Quon!” Lydia shouted and ran over to him. “Are you all right?” She clutched his face lovingly with both hands. He pulled her hands down softly, nodding his head. Though calm as a still sea, his expression betrayed a tumultuous spirit.

“You have a theory, Dr. Wong?” Balfour asked.

“The engines and the generators work off the principle of firing particles cross-dimensionally, right? What if the particular combination of particles we fired into the generator created a reaction that opened that dimensional tunnel too wide? The energies unleashed could have shifted the dimensional frequency of the organic material in the area of effect, except for those of us with mana engines whose bodies were already attuned to the engine’s dimensional energies. We’re anchored at the same frequency as the cloud generator, but those who weren’t at the time are constantly shifting back and forth across the dimensional barrier. When the ghosts appear, it’s just the echo of their consciousness coming close to the same phase as the cloud but never quite syncing up.”

Bridge tried to follow the Chinese scientist as best he could. “So you’re saying the people here could be saved? You could sync them back up with this cloud thingie?”

Wong stared at him with a puzzled expression. “Save them? Do you have any concept of how difficult it would be to try to guess the particular dimensional frequency of just one person and then sync that person in with the rest of us?” He laughed a hollow, soulless chuckle. “No, I guess you don’t. It would be like trying to catch one specific water molecule with a net the size of the Milky Way while that water is traveling at the speed of light. And even if we could reconstitute whatever energy state their consciousness is trapped in, their organic matter has likely been converted to that energy.”

“I’m sorry to say those people are gone, Mr. Bridge.” Balfour spoke with such detached certain finality that Bridge’s stomach burned.

It all began to swirl in his mind. Fatigue and despair weighed on him so heavy it felt as if a fully-loaded truck sat on his chest, restricting his breathing. They’re all dead. Or stuck between dimensions, whatever that meant. It was probably worse than being dead. Aristotle’s grandmother, the Naturalist recruiters, they were all gone, for all intents and purposes dead.
Despite all the talking and effort and wheeling and dealing Bridge had done to get to this point, to get to Boulder to perform some miraculous rescue, he hadn’t really cared. He hadn’t come to save Aristotle’s grandmother, no matter how much he had told his bodyguard. Bridge had always known that deep down. It was why he would never make Aristotle a promise. Not because he logically knew that the chances of her survival or of Bridge being able to do anything to find her were so remote as to be impossible, but because he hadn’t come here to help. He was here because he was angry. He was here because somehow these geeks had gotten into his head and compelled him to come here, had forced these choices on him. He was here because he was pissed off at being jerked around.

His anger, his fatigue, his sense of failure, and deep down his own self-loathing finally exploded. “GODDAMNIT!” Bridge snapped, lifting the desk next to him and tossing it aside. Papers and books flew everywhere. A console screen exploded in a shower of sparks. “I came here because my bodyguard’s grandmother lives around here somewhere… lived. And you fuckers are telling me that she's dead, just like that? She’s just dead?”

“No, Mr. Bridge, you’re here because we called you here,” Balfour stated without emotion. “We are fully aware of what our experiments have wrought. The Legios Corporation and the US government will find every excuse to blame the deaths of these people directly on us. And before they are done with us, Chronosoft and any other corporation that funded our research will claim ownership of every bit of it. They will bury us in a deep dark hole and they will steal everything we created. They will turn all of it into another means of exploitation, or another weapon.”

“You sound like my buddy Stonewall,” Bridge chuckled wryly.

Lydia elaborated. “We talked it over before we activated the cloud generator, Bridge. Whether the experiment had succeeded or failed, we were going to need someone to represent us, someone who could help us negotiate, or help us hide if the corporations went after us. We would need someone like you. Dr. Balfour’s friend Freeman said you were the man we needed.”

“Once we realized what we’d done,” Janicki took up the story, “we knew we had to have you here quickly. But the cloud was interfering with all forms of communication in or out. So we sent Carl outside the dome and sealed it, making sure only he could open it from that side. He was to send the message and wait for you to come.”

“He got a little overzealous,” Bridge responded. “Not only did he get me, he’s hypnotized every jack head from five states over to flock here like you were handing out free Trip. And he attacked a National Guard post, which has probably caused fifteen kinds of holy hell out there.”

“We think they might have attacked him. This is his last message.” Balfour gestured and Carl’s distorted voice filled the room. Though Bridge could see no speakers in the room, it filled his ears as well as any sound system could.

He recognized the nasally, artificially augmented tones of the dragon Carl. “They’re everywhere! Tanks and soldiers. I’m hit bad. I don’t think I’m going to make it. I can’t believe it. I didn’t think it was possible. They’ve killed a technomancer.” The message ended with a booming explosion and a burst of static.

“Until you got here, we assumed that meant he was dead. Now that we know he might still be alive out there, we need to find him. We need to disappear, to destroy any trace of our work and set ourselves up somewhere else with new identities and new facilities. We need you to get us out of here.”

“What’s the plan then?”

“We don’t have a plan, Mr. Bridge. That’s why you’re here.”

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The Know Circuit - Interlude - Part 8.0

Interlude Part 7.0

Balfour woke to sunlight streaming over his body from the hole in the ceiling. A moment's confusion left him unsure of where he was, but the steady hum of the cloud generator jarred his memory with a focused shot of dread. The pillar of light still stood, reaching up towards the morning clouds. As he studied the sky further, he noticed that the light was muted like a pair of weak sunglasses stood between him and the blue sky above. He sat up, noticing that Janicki lay unmoving next to him. Wong still hovered in the air despite being unconscious, his arms hanging limply at his sides. Balfour noted with a curious detachment that the flight equation didn’t require conscious maintenance. A groan from behind shook him from his musings.

“What was that?” Rolfsberg shouted from a heap on the floor. The Norseman pushed a robotic arm that had fallen over him aside and struggled shakily to his feet. “Hello, is anyone there?”

“Here,” Balfour answered while checking Janicki’s pulse. Alive. He shook the unconscious scientist awake.

“What… who? Shit, we’re alive.” Janicki seemed surprised by this fact as he stared up wide-eyed at Balfour. “Do we have power?”

A quick glance around the room confirmed that the generator was indeed working. “I’m a bit more concerned about what that flash was, but yes, it’s working. Better than we’d anticipated, apparently.”

“I told Wong that his math was off,” Rolfsberg hissed. Janicki threw Balfour a knowing glance and a wry smile.

“Still an asshole,” Janicki whispered under his breath.

Balfour’s connection to Lydia and Carl was still active. “Lydia? Carl? Are you two ok? Answer me.” He heard the pair stirring back to consciousness.

“What happened?” Lydia said sleepily.

“We’re still trying to determine that. Do you have power down there?”

“Yes. The generator worked?”

“Affirmative. Unfortunately, we’ve got a bit of a side effect here. And we’ve slept for… I’m not sure how long, it’s daylight outside.” He glanced over at the clock, but it had malfunctioned, its digital display cycling through its series of numbers at breakneck speed. He tried to connect to the GlobalNet to update his own internal HUD clock, but no connection was found. “Just get back here and we’ll figure out what happened.”

“I guess we wait for security to come and escort us off campus,” Janicki joked. Despite the humor, they all expected it. “I don’t think we make enough in a year combined to pay for that hole.” They sat in embarrassed silence waiting for the hammer to fall, each fidgeting with their own data from the generator’s operations. When Carl and Lydia finally burst through the double doors to the lab, Balfour jumped as if electrocuted. He sighed with relief to see his colleagues instead of a team of campus cops.

“You have to come see this,” Lydia shouted. “Come outside, quick!” She motioned at them with her hand then ran back out the doors, ignoring the hole in the ceiling completely. Balfour raised an eyebrow at Janicki and followed.

They ran down the hallway to the stairs, barely keeping up with Lydia as she retreated down to the ground floor. She blasted through a side door into the parking lot. Balfour stared around for a minute, seeing nothing out of place. The parking lot was mostly deserted despite the hour. He looked back up at the tower where his lab was located, scowling at the pillar of light poking out of the top. Then he noticed the dome, the polarizing effect of the energy field dulling the chill November sunlight. The temperature was a bit warmer and stuffier than he would have expected, perhaps a function of the dome’s translucence acting like the glass in a greenhouse. He followed the curvature of the dome across the horizon. It was enormous, possibly miles in diameter. No way could they hide their experiments with that overhead.

“The cloud appears to be visible,” he observed. “That was unexpected. Your calculations on the range were also incorrect, Rolfsberg.”

The Norseman started to protest but Lydia interrupted. “No, not the dome. Don’t you notice anything else? Anything missing?”

There was a silence in the air, a disconcerting stillness that distorted their voices with an eerie echo. Despite the proximity of the nearby buildings, he felt isolated on a clear open field, alone in a massive desert.

“No security. We ran into nobody on the way from the lab to here. No one in the parking lot. No early morning joggers. There's nobody here.”

“No,” Janicki objected. “It’s just early.”

“Do you ever remember it feeling this empty? This quiet? Even this early? And how early is it, anyway? My watch isn’t working at all, but it looks like class time to me. There should at least be the joggers or the security. Look at the street.” She pointed to a security truck sitting in the road. At first it appeared to be idling but on closer examination, the truck had drifted unattended to a rest on the cub. The cab was empty with the engine running. Balfour reached in and put it in park, then shut off the engine.

“She’s right. What kind of security guard leaves his truck running in gear? We need to scout out, see how far the dome extends and if there’s anyone else left here. Take a car if you need to.”

“I think we just made a city disappear.”

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The Know Circuit - Interlude - Part 7.0

Interlude Part 6.0

After long nights of furious work by the entire group, they had their proof of concept prepared. Their first prototype was a glowbug on steroids, as Janicki put it, a featureless box standing over six feet tall. While glowbugs were wired into an existing power source, this larger, more powerful version would generate power wirelessly to any electrical device within its sizeable radius. This cloud of energy gave the device its name, the cloud generator. Due to the mana engine’s asymmetrical power conversion ratio, they couldn’t pin down how long the cloud would operate on the tiny bit of startup energy. It might only last a few minutes, or it could go for years. Rolfsberg’s math was imprecise, and everyone else was too busy with their own work to double-check him thoroughly. Since the generator had no moving parts, as long as it could generate power, it would need no physical maintenance. If it worked, it could literally power an entire building without cost.

The experiment was certain to attract attention. In order to test the cloud, the group would have to disconnect the Engineering Center from the campus’s power grid. If the generator worked as planned, the Center’s power would be restored within seconds, but even that tiny interruption in power would be noticed. Since their work would most certainly be discovered whether it succeeded or failed, they had decided to make this night their public debut. Once the campus administration questioned them, they would reveal their research by releasing it into the GlobalNet as open source designs.

Carl and Lydia would sneak into the Center’s maintenance room and disconnect the back up generators first, then flip the switch on the whole complex. As the building went dark, Balfour would activate the cloud. Nervous anticipation made his stomach do flip-flops as he listened to Lydia’s reports. This was it, everything he’d worked for. He hadn’t eaten all day from the nervousness. His skin tingled with anticipation. His breathing seemed too rapid, too shallow. In the back of his mind, he could hear the voices urging him on, that subconscious creative inspiration whispering concepts and blueprints and ideas and visions into his head from the deepest recesses of his mind.

“We’re in place, Dr. Balfour,” Carl said after what seemed an eternity. “Disconnecting the backups now.”

“Be careful,” Rolfsberg hissed. Carl grumbled inaudibly. He needed no instruction on the need for secrecy. Rolfsberg’s nervousness made him even more insufferable.

Balfour checked his instruments one more time from his seat. He marveled at the engine’s abilities; he could do everything from his chair without ever lifting a finger. “Dr. Wong, Dr. Janicki, are you ready?”

Wong hovered over the cloud generator. He had taken to levitating inside the lab as much as he could, but especially when Rolfsberg was around. Balfour thought he was showing off. The young scientist gave a hearty thumbs-up sign, a smile stretching from ear to ear. Janicki answered, “We are as good as we’re ever going to get, Mark.”

“Carl, disconnect the backups.”

“Backups down. Got a warning light blinking in here.”

“Let it go. Proceed to blackout.”

Lydia’s silken voice broke through the channel. “Shutting down now.”

The building seemed to convulse once, then sigh into silent darkness. Only the computers that ran off individual backup power supplies lit the lab. “Fire it up, boys.”

Wong and Janicki gestured at the cloud generator, each firing a tiny particle at the machine. Two globes of light about the size of marbles shot from their hands and struck the generator’s smooth outer surface, causing the outer skin to briefly glow a muted blue before the particles disappeared.

“Did it work?” Rolfsberg asked out of the black.

“I don’t see any lights,” Janicki snapped, stating the obvious.

A low hum began to sound from the inky darkness. An imperceptible ambient glow grew to sheathe it in white light, throbbing like a heartbeat in an eerie cascade. One of the robotic arms closest to the generator twitched, then snapped into life. Lights began to burn, flooding the room with a sudden, disconcerting light. The battery backups on the computers shut off with numerous audible clicks. As the hum of the generator grew strong, Balfour heard the building’s heating sigh to life. He displayed readouts of the power generation, confirming that it was working exactly as planned. But rather than level off, the power of the cloud continued to build, incrementing slowly at first, but as each second passed, its output doubled, trebled, and climbed on and on at an exponential rate.

“Lydia, Carl, how’s it look down there?”

“Power is steady and strong.”

“This output isn’t leveling off. It’s already passed our highest estimates and keeps going.”

“Is it stable?”

Janicki answered quickly. “There’s a distinct hum, but no other outward negative signs. The casing is cool to the touch.”

“Rolfsberg, can this casing contain that kind of buildup?”

Rolfsberg tapped at a console furiously. “The casing is well within safe limits. Can we tamp down the output?”

“Trying,” Balfour responded, maneuvering the equations as holograms in the air above him. “It’s not responding. It’s like it won’t stop building until it completes a specific cycle.”

“Did you program that in?”

“No, this is entirely unexpected. Rolfsberg, are you sure of your math?”

“My math is solid, goddamnit!”

“Obviously it isn’t!” Wong shouted back. “Dr. Balfour… something’s happening here.”

Balfour looked down from his equations. The generator had started glowing, a cold white light building on the top surface. “Shut it down, boys. Shut it down.”

Janicki and Wong gestured. Draining the feeder particles back out of the generator should gradually shut down the machine, at least in theory. The two particles flew from the machine, zipping into Wong and Janicki’s outstretched hands before disappearing. The light continued to grow brighter. “It’s not working.”

“Shit. Shit. Rolfsberg, get in there and help them drain it.”

“Into what?”

“I don’t know, something else!”

“I think it’s too late for that, boss,” Janicki sighed.

Balfour’s readout spat back a final message. “Power-up cycle complete.” His eyes snapped back to the miniature star growing on top of the generator. He cursed silently.

An icy shaft of brilliant light exploded upwards, slicing through the ceiling like a hot knife through butter. A whoosh of air followed the light up into the ceiling, through the five floors above and onwards until it reached the clouds of the chilly night sky. Balfour stood hesitantly and walked to the machine, staring up through the hole in the ceiling to watch the darkened clouds swirl around this massive pillar of silent light. His stomach sank. There would be no explaining away this experiment. It had worked though not as they’d expected. For the first time since their dangerous experiments had begun, he was genuinely afraid for their survival.

The light eclipsed all and he was swallowed in brilliant white unconsciousness.

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The Know Circuit - Interlude - Part 6.0

Interlude Part 5.0

The next months were an amazing time of creativity, with each scientist bringing some exciting new idea to each meeting. Balfour’s experiments on power generation and remote cybernetic control allowed him to manipulate all the machines and computers in his lab with a thought. He could jack into any network, including the GlobalNet from any location on campus without using his interface jack. He discovered that he could even enter closed systems that normally only allowed interface through a hard wire, such as the Engineering Center’s security system. He was practically ecstatic the night he discovered this. He could stand in front of the keypad at any door in the building and enter its closed system, allowing him to bypass every electronic lock he could find with ease.

Balfour found his hacking skills on the GlobalNet to be greatly improved. By duplicating the same thought processes that he used to control machines in the physical world, he could create virtual machines that outstripped most of the software he had previously written. The things Balfour could accomplish with software floored Michael Freeman. Though none of the programs Balfour demonstrated could overcome the hacker god’s best work, Freeman pointed out that they were at least as strong as those of a dedicated hacker. Considering Balfour only learned as much about hacking as he needed to further his research, it was high praise indeed.

Lydia and Wong worked together closely. Though he stayed out of their business, it became obvious that their working relationship was turning into something beyond professional again. Balfour hoped their romantic urges did not interfere with the work of the group as a whole. He pulled her aside before one of the group’s meetings. “Lydia, I would like to speak to you about your relationship with Dr. Wong.”

A tense, nervous look of apprehension leapt into her eyes. “What about Quon?”

“It has come to my attention that the two of you are growing very close again, perhaps even considering rekindling your sexual relationship.”

She stiffened as if slapped. “I fail to see how that’s any of your business, DOCTOR Balfour.”

“Normally, I would say that you are entirely correct. These are extraordinary circumstances under which we labor, however. Once the endorphins and the hormones start rushing around the bloodstream, heretofore completely rational people tend to act altogether irrationally, sometimes dangerously so.”

“I am perfectly capable of separating my work relationships from my personal ones.”

Balfour peered down his nose at her, a smug expression of knowing judgement written across his face. “Previous history might disagree with you.” The rush of red in her cheeks told him that he had made his point. “I am in no way suggesting you should alter your behavior in any way, only that you should observe… caution.”

“Duly noted. Now, if you’d like to hear about my research.”

The work she and Wong demonstrated, combining Lydia’s research into particle states with Wong’s nanomachines, produced some fantastic results. Wong had designed an army of nanobots that could deconstruct any inanimate materials, from steel to wood, and reconstruct them into whatever he wished. He could animate the materials like puppets, or use them to build anything. His first demonstration transformed one of the workbenches into a frightening golem that strode around the room before reconstituting itself as a cabinet. Lydia used the nanoconstructors to remodel the cubicle farm in the outer ring of the lab, theorizing that with enough of the little machines, she could erect an entire building from refuse in days.

Carl had the flashiest application. His research on holographic projection created solid light constructs that could affect their environment, perfect illusions with physical manifestations of mass, density and energy. His most impressive was the flame dragon; rather than being a solid entity, the illusion surrounded his body like an exoskeleton composed of light. He could alter the illusion’s appearance like a GlobalNet avatar at will. He and Wong collaborated on the flight equations, which only the two of them could control. Once the two had discovered this new power, it became extremely hard to keep them from zipping around the campus at all times. They chafed at the restraint, taking every opportunity to use their late night meetings as an excuse to fly all over campus.

Rolfsberg struggled with the engine the most. His creations were pedestrian. Whatever he shared with the group, they improved. His imagination couldn’t keep up. He became almost palpably jealous, especially once Wong and Carl discovered flight. Rolfsberg spent most of their meetings sulking. He had great success with the nanoconstructors, using them to improve his materials fabrication but he was clearly disgruntled. Thanks to his work, they had each upgraded their mana engines three times by September. Both Rolfsberg and Janicki insisted that the discarded engines be destroyed at a molecular level, using the energy contained in the engine to implode and disintegrate the case and all evidence of its existence. “We have to be careful,” Rolfsberg argued. “We all know who funded Mark’s work. We all know that corporations like that take great pleasure in exploiting the work of scientists without paying them a dime. I for one do not intend to do this work for free. If they want it, they’re going to have to pay.” The argument was a long one that night, but in the end all agreed no matter how reluctantly that the work must be guarded jealously.

Janicki took Balfour’s designs for portable power sources and expanded their range, output and longevity. Uninterested in the parlor tricks of flight, the garish displays of power like Carl’s flame dragons and fireballs, he concentrated on something the group could sell. He started small, creating small power amplifiers for the lab. The power amplifiers he dubbed ‘glowbugs.’ He could attach one of the tiny cylinders to any power source, from a fuse box to a generator, a battery pack or even a wall outlet. With a tiny jolt of energy from his mana engine, the glowbug could produce power for whatever device they were attached to indefinitely. He could dial up or down the amount of power generated by the glowbug so that he could split the device’s power consumption between the glowbug and a traditional supply. Janicki’s eyes lit up when he talked about the glowbug’s marketability.

As the campus buzzed with costumed students celebrating Halloween, the group met in the lab to discuss their most ambitious experiment, one they would use to prove their success and unveil their research to the public. They set the date of the experiment during the wee hours of November the second.

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The Know Circuit - Interlude - Part 5.0

Interlude Part 4.0

True to his word, Rolfsberg cranked out the casings quickly. Within five weeks, they’d generated five prototypes, improving the fabrication with every new version. Instead of adding a new particle to each engine, Balfour discovered he could concentrate on transferring a piece of the dimensionally-charged particle in his own engine into the new engines. His first attempt was both a spectacular failure and a fascinating discovery. Rather than powering up the empty engine, he managed to fire the group’s first fireball into the table. The fire that resulted was luckily extinguished before the building’s fire alarms could alert the rest of the campus. After some nervous giggling, Balfour tried again, concentrating even harder as he pictured an atomic diagram of the particle in his head, splicing and dicing the particle with waves of equations, precisely considered formulas flashing through his mind’s eye. The second attempt worked. The engine was fully powered with no explosive side effects.

Bowing to the pressure of Rolfsberg’s blistering annoyance, they agreed to let him implant the second engine. Janicki performed the operation while Balfour powered up the third engine for Lydia. Once Rolfsberg’s operation was complete, Balfour explained the use of the engine, sharing the mental formula he used for energy transfer. Rolfsberg claimed to understand, but he was unable to complete the simple particle transfer.

“Are you thinking of the formula I told you?” Balfour asked.

Rolfsberg snapped irritably. “Of course I am. I’m not an imbecile. It’s not working.” He pointed his arm at the engine and squinted but nothing happened.

“Maybe you need a different formula,” Carl suggested. Seeing Balfour’s questioning glance, he elaborated. “It seems like everything we’ve seen you do, from logging on to the GlobalNet without a jack to controlling the constructors, everything we’ve seen you do is triggered by what? You visualize a particular equation and solve it in your head. We’re not even sure how or why the engine allows those mental processes to manifest as physical phenomena. But everybody’s mental processes are unique. Everybody learns a different way as their brain’s chemistry alters around new bits of knowledge. Perhaps each individual has to visualize their actions in a unique way.”

Lydia spoke up from the table where Janicki worked on her back. “That would make some kind of sense. Why don’t you try visualizing it like an engineering problem as opposed to a mathematical one?”

“What? Like I’m building something?” Lydia nodded. Rolfsberg shrugged and reset himself, closing his eyes for focus. He held both his arms up to the engine, and began to wiggle his fingers and move his hands as if he was assembling a physical construct. A soft glow sheathed both his metallic and flesh arm.

“Careful, careful,” Balfour said gingerly. “You only need a miniscule amount.” Balfour ran a piece of diagnostic software he’d written to monitor the engine’s power output. The program appeared as a thin hologram in the air in front of him.

Carl whistled. “That’s a new one, Dr. Balfour. You’ve been holding out on us.” He poked a finger through the hologram and stared at it in rapt fascination. “Oh, the things I’m going to do with you,” he said, rubbing his hands together like a kid eyeing a free candy store.

“It’s done,” Rolfsberg said, dropping his arms to his side. He was suffused with sweat. He plopped into a seat awkwardly. “That sure takes a lot out of me.”

Lydia’s gaze snapped to the Norseman, concern evident in her voice. “How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve run a marathon.”

Balfour considered. “Huh. I’ve never had that happen to me. I always feel wired after using it.”

“Are you just about done?” Lydia asked Janicki hurriedly. He snapped closed the interface port and slapped her on the back. “May I?”

Janicki agreed. “Knock yourself out.”

“Hope not,” she countered, hopping off the table without bothering to put her shirt on. Seeing Quon and Carl’s embarrassed glances and the lascivious stares from both Janicki and Rolfsberg, she covered her chest with a lab coat.

“If I’d have known that was all it took to get your top off, I’d have fainted in front of you much earlier,” Rolfsberg quipped.

“Pig. Act like you’ve never seen tits before.” She smiled. “Oh right, you geeks probably haven’t.” Her cursory examination revealed nothing worrying. “Take it easy. You seem to be fine physically. Perhaps you should drink some electrolyte replenishers. Quon, can you get him an energy drink?” The Chinese scientist jumped at her orders without hesitation. Drinking the sugary concoction seemed to level Rolfsberg off.

Within an hour, they were all fitted with mana engines. Balfour offered as much instruction as he could on using the device, but ended the evening with simple instructions. “As we’ve already seen, it appears everyone can and will use the engine slightly differently. Let’s take the time between this meeting and the next to come up with as many creative uses as you can. Watch your vitals. Watch your electrolytes. Call one of us immediately if you feel even slightly unhealthy. None of you are allowed to die before we change the world.”

Go to Interlude Part 6.0

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