When the soldiers of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant took over the town, some of the men of the village joined them. Some fled with their families and what few possessions they could carry. Some died.
The Mullah listened to what the fighters of ISIL had to say and although he was not deeply involved with politics, he understood that to stand with them meant that fewer of the villagers would be killed. And so he raised the black flag.
When the Americans came and drove the ISIL garrison away, the Mullah stood wide-legged before the doors of the town’s tiny mosque, guarding it with his body, willing to die to keep it safe. He begged the soldiers for mercy on behalf of the villagers and this small, modest place of worship. Most soldiers might have pushed past him and searched that mosque anyway, but not the CIA man. He was in charge of this team of soldiers and he did not allow anyone to defile the mosque.
The CIA man was tall and powerful and you knew right away that this was not a green college boy who had gone off to fight. No, this tall man was a killer of men, and perhaps of many men.
He came up to where the Mullah stood and said nothing for a long time, merely staring in the cleric’s face. The CIA man asked the Mullah for his name, took his fingerprints, and then abruptly turned and left, taking the other American soldiers with him.
The mosque remained undefiled.
That night, however, Al-Faiz had a dream. And in the dream he fell backward out of his body. Not all the way, but far enough that he no longer felt like he was in control of his own flesh. Not anymore. It was as if someone else had taken over control of his muscles and nerves. When his hand moved, it was not Al-Faiz who moved it. He watched as some unseen hand worked the strings and moved his body with the dexterous skill of a puppeteer.
He rose from his bed and walked out into the moonlight where several men were up late, talking by the light of a small fire. These were men who had joined with ISIL and were being trained for the war. Al-Faiz came up to them and stood at the outer edges of the fire’s yellow glow. The other men greeted him, but he said nothing for a long time, and instead waited while the others gradually fell silent and turned inquiring faces toward him.
The quiet of the night settled around them and the moment gradually grew strange. Later, those gathered men would tell their friends and family—and anyone else who would listen—that weird fires seemed to burn in the Mullah’s eyes. They said that when the Mullah spoke it was not in his own voice. And though he spoke in Arabic, even his accent was different. The Kurdish inflection on certain words, common to all of the people in that region, was gone.
They never forgot what he said that night, because the words of the Mullah were the match that set fire to the world.
“I am no one,” he said. “I am a vessel through which God speaks. And I will tell you how we will destroy the infidels. I will tell you how to throw them into a world of darkness.”
INTERLUDE SIX
BELL FAMILY ESTATE
MONTAUK ISLAND, NEW YORK
WHEN PROSPERO WAS TWELVE
“What’s he building in there?”
Oscar Bell sat behind his desk and nodded to the papers. He didn’t get up and hand them across. He did not do that sort of thing. Not even to a physicist whose name had appeared on the Nobel ballot four times in seventeen years. It’s doubtful he would have done so had Dr. Gustafson in fact won those four prizes.
That was Oscar Bell.
For his part, Dr. Gustafson did not expect simple courtesies from this man—nor indeed any graces. He’d been warned by his colleagues and Bell’s senior assistant had given him a twenty-minute talk on deportment. A younger and wealthier man might have taken offense. It’s possible that a younger Gustafson might even have walked out. Youth and optimism can craft moments like that. Age and being an also-ran tended to make a person more conciliatory.
So he reached for them himself, opened the folder on his side of the big desk, and began sorting through the papers. He already knew that this would be something involving both advanced electronics and physics, but he was not at all prepared for what he saw.
What he saw confused him.
“Where did you get these plans?” he asked.
Bell sipped coffee from an expensive china cup, his face giving absolutely nothing away. “You tell me.”
“Ah. Well … see here?” said Gustafson, rising and spreading the papers out so they puzzled together one very large schematic. “In a general sense it appears to be a hadron collider. This circular chamber is the tunnel through which the particles are run. You aim and bang and study what happened during that impact. Most of these devices are designed as large rings, of course, because you can better regulate the speed of the particles. In either case what is absolutely necessary is to get the tunnel perfectly cylindrical. Imperfections cause explosions—miner ones, of course, but damaging and time-wasting. Or your particles can strike irregularities in the wall and then the nature of the experiment is warped due to interference, and with the materials used to make the tunnel. Ultra-high-speed collisions with a loose steel rivet can spoil weeks of careful planning, and if anything is chipped off you then have particulate contaminates. It would be like doing blood work in dirty test tubes. You could never separate out the impurities from the desired particles.”
“Firing tunnel and smooth bore,” said Bell. “Got it. What’s next?”
Gustafson shifted to a second set of papers. “Mmm, this looks like some kind of propulsion system. These are superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way. Very streamlined from what you typically see, but the structural design looks good. Very good, actually. This is elegant.” He named a number of other key components. “You see, inside an accelerator, two high-energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light before they are forced to collide. The beams travel in opposite directions in separate beam pipes, like these two here and here. These tubes are kept at ultrahigh vacuum and are guided around the accelerator ring by the strong magnetic field maintained by the electromagnets. The electromagnets themselves are built from coils of special electric cable that operates in a superconducting state. So, essentially they conduct electricity without resistance or loss of energy. To accomplish this, the magnets need to be chilled to minus two hundred seventy-one point three degrees Celsius. That’s actually colder than the ambient temperature of deep space. This is really a fine piece of design work.” He went through more of the designs, then abruptly stopped and frowned. “Wait … no, that’s odd. This isn’t right.”
Oscar Bell leaned forward. “What isn’t right?”
Gustafson’s frown deepened. “A couple of things. First, this here … I don’t know what it is. It looks like the frame for an airlock, but you wouldn’t need one for a hadron collider. I mean, a door to what? It doesn’t even enter the main tunnel. There’s nowhere to go. Strange.”
“What else is wrong with it?”
“Huh? Oh…,” said Gustafson as he placed one sheet atop the others. It had several lines of serial number-letter codes paired with corresponding numbers given down to ten thousandths of inches. “See this scale key? Each of these codes indicates a component of the overall machine, and the numbers on the left are the dimensions.”
“And—?”
“And the scale is completely off. These plans are for a large machine approximately eighty feet in diameter. But you said that you had a model of a smaller one?”
“A working prototype,” said Bell, nodding.
“I don’t see how it could work. It would be impossible to generate the kind of electromagnetic power necessary to do anything or learn anything. The wires and capacitors would be too small to take any serious strain, and even if they did manage to keep from fusing, they couldn’t generate the near light-speed necessary for any kind of serious particle collisions.”
“You’re certain?”
“Absolutely certain,” said Gustafson. “And any qualified civil en
gineer, electrical expert, or metallurgist would agree.”
Bell nodded. He stood up to take the materials back, folded them, and put the designs into his desk drawer. He removed a separate set of papers, considered them, and then tossed them onto the desk so that they slid across to the scientist. “Now tell me what that is.”
With some trepidation, Gustafson opened the folder and went through each of the papers. There were more design sketches, wiring schematics, materials lists, power output predictions, and other technical data. Some of it was computer printouts, some of it was written in an awkward hand. Gustafson’s frown went deeper still.
“Does any of this make sense to you?” asked Bell. “Take your time with it. Be sure.”
Gustafson took ten more minutes reading through the papers, comparing one set of notes to corresponding sketches, and back again. Then he looked up, clearly troubled.
“I don’t mean to offend, sir,” he said, “but did you commission this work?”
“Why?”
“Well … if this is something you paid for, then you have been tricked.”
Bell brushed lint from his sleeve. “How?”
“This is nonsense. I mean, sure, this is impressive work in many ways and whoever designed this has some appreciable understanding of physics, collider technology, and materials … but really.”
“What is it a design for?”
“I … I don’t know. Nothing that makes any sense,” said Gustafson.
“Try to make sense of it,” said Bell. “Indulge me. What would such a machine do?”
Once more Gustafson placed the papers on the desk and pointed to a sketch. “See this? This piece is a more detailed version of the airlock from those other sketches. It looks like one of the NASA designs that they are working on for the proposed Mars settlement. See here? Atmosphere filters, air scrubbers, a bio-aerosol mass spectrometer, a radiation detector. All of that by itself is reasonable for an airlock for a base on a planet with uncertain atmosphere. Though the filters here are based more on identifying air quality rather than protecting against the kind of radiation you’d have on Mars. It’s not something you’d use, say, in a space station or on the moon, where there’s no atmosphere.”
“But—?”
“But why build something like this into the wall of a hadron collider? There is no way that makes any sense.”
“If it’s a hadron collider,” suggested Bell.
“It is,” said Gustafson. “At least that’s the central design of those other plans. It’s some kind of particle accelerator.”
Bell nodded. “What else can you tell me?”
“Mm, well, some of these plans are for a power generator that makes no sense at all. The output predictions are way off the scale. You couldn’t hit those numbers with any generator short of a nuclear reactor, but this isn’t a centrifuge or a reactor. There’s no mention of a reactor or nuclear fission.”
“No,” agreed Bell.
“And yet there are numbers for the amount of kinetic energy created by this engine that are not possible outside of fission. I mean, look here, there are references to something called refractive crystalline source generation. What is that? It’s nonsense. There is no such thing.”
“I see,” said Bell. “So this is all nonsense?”
Gustafson hedged. “If I may be frank—?”
“Please.”
“Whoever designed this is probably a genius. There are some truly elegant refinements to the standard collider components. Things I’ve never seen. Possibly even revolutionary. Any of those elements would be worth filing patents on right away because they, at least, are sound and, really, they’re quite exciting.” Gustafson shook his head. “But the rest … either someone is trying very hard to sell you a bill of goods, in which case if you’ve paid for this work you could probably sue. This is someone trying to dazzle you with bullshit. With science fiction.”
“You said ‘either,’” observed Bell. “What’s the rest? What’s the other possibility?”
“Well … you know the saying that there is a fine line between genius and madness? If the person who designed this actually believes that this machine will work, then he’s quite mad.”
“I see. But tell me one last thing, Doctor,” said Bell. “You’ve told me what’s wrong with it and why it won’t work. However, you haven’t speculated on what you think this machine is for. If—and indulge me on that—if the person who developed this was working toward a specific end, then what end is that?”
“You don’t know? Surely he told you.”
“As I said, indulge me.”
Gustafson shrugged. “The power calculations, the placement of a door in an accelerator, the fact that the door is designed to scan for air quality and radiation … it’s obvious. However deluded or misguided, it’s obvious. The person who designed this is trying to generate enough power to open a door.”
“Be specific, Doctor.”
“This person is trying to open a door to another dimension.”
Bell smiled. “Ah.”
“As I said,” Gustafson added quickly, “this is nonsense. It can’t ever work. And if anyone was unfortunate enough to actually build this thing, it would probably blow up.”
“I see.”
“It gets worse, I’m afraid,” said Gustafson. He picked up one of the papers. It showed a diagram of several electrical circuits connected to gemstones. Diamond, ruby, emerald, topaz, garnet, and sapphire. Beneath the diagram were several scrawled notes. “Did you take note of this?”
“I did. What do you make of it?”
“It’s labeled ‘crystal power sequence regulator,’ and it corresponds to a key section of the firing controls for this device. From its placement in the system it clearly keeps the machine from overheating or exploding. Even if something that improbable were to work, the cost of obtaining gemstones of the type and size indicated here would be enormous. Prohibitive.”
“I didn’t ask you here to comment on the budget, Doctor.”
“No, um, very well,” fumbled the scientist, “but let me say two things. First, using gemstones to regulate this kind of power is pure fantasy. There’s no valid science to support it. And frankly it’s unreasonable to assume that a few carats of precious stones could in any way act as a regulator for any machine as complex and sophisticated as this. And please let me stress that as designed, those gems are key to the safety features.”
“Point made. What’s the other thing?”
“This,” said Gustafson, placing his finger on a list of notes written in the lower left corner of the page. “These are book titles, I think. A few have bylines, so we can assume that much. And they’re placed as a footnote to the power sequencer. The indication is twofold. That there is a very precise sequence needed for safe firing of this ‘God Machine’ and—”
“‘God Machine’?” interrupted Bell.
Gustafson nodded. “There is a small notation indicating that this is the name, or perhaps code name, of the machine. Shall I continue? Yes? Very well, sir, it appears that the crucial sequence can only be found in one or more of these books. Look here, the designer says as much. I quote, ‘the sequence is hidden in the prayers to the ancient ones,’ and ‘the Unlearnable Truths are the key,’ and yet he notates that ‘nothing is unlearnable.’”
Bell nodded. “I saw that. Do you have any idea what the ‘Unlearnable Truths’ are?”
“If I were to guess, they are the product of a delusional mind.”
Bell stood up. “Thank you, Dr. Gustafson,” he said without warmth, “you can show yourself out.”
The scientist rose and moved awkwardly toward the door. He paused, his fingers touching the doorknob. “Sir, you asked what ‘he was building in there.’ Who’s ‘he’? Who designed this? And is he actually building it, because again, I need to caution you…”
His words trailed away as Oscar Bell turned his back on him and went to stand by the window, looking out on the roses in the garden. Af
ter a long, uncomfortable moment Gustafson sighed, opened the door, and left.
* * *
When he was alone, Bell crossed back to his desk, lifted the receiver, and punched in a number. The call was answered on the second ring.
“You were right,” he said. “I want a team over here. I want this machine out of here before my son is home from school. All of it. The papers, Prospero’s prototype. All of it. Get moving.”
He made a second call to a gem merchant and a third to his banker to transfer funds. The banker cautioned against so large a transfer and warned that some holdings might have to be liquidated. Bell told him to stop whining and do it.
After those calls he replaced the phone in the cradle and then returned to the window. The early-afternoon sun turned the waters of the Atlantic into a rippling blanket of deep blue. His lips formed three words but the sound of them echoed only in his thoughts.
The Unlearnable Truths.
Oscar Bell turned and reached for the phone again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
IN FLIGHT
ANTARCTIC OCEAN
AUGUST 20, 3:44 A.M.
We sat in the empty hull of the airplane and did not look at each other. I couldn’t bear to see the truth of what had just happened in the eyes of Top or Bunny. They avoided my eyes, too.
We’re soldiers and we’re a very specific kind of special operator. We’ve seen things that no one else has seen. Monsters. Genetic freaks. Doomsday weapons. That’s our job, that’s the kind of thing we face.
But this…?
This was something else.
That gateway was ten kinds of wrong. The shapeless mass with all those tentacles? Wrong.
Swapping bodies with Bunny for a few seconds? Doing some kind of bullshit astral projection and spying on Lydia while she undressed? Really, really wrong.
The clones of Professor Erskine … or whatever they were?
So wrong.
When giant violent albino penguins are the least extraordinary issue of the day, then your day has slipped a gear.