Tallant shook her head with a slightly crooked smile. “Are you just slightly insane? You want to get zapped off to Never-Never Land?”
Winger said, “What’s insane? This is basic recon…scout the territory. Prepare the battlefield. I doubt we can shut this thing down until we understand how it works.”
Frost said, “He’s got a point, Lieutenant Tallant. But that’s a mighty big risk you’re talking about.”
“That’s why I need to let Major Kraft know. We get his approval, then we treat this sphere as enemy territory. Send in a scout force…you and me, Doc.” He patted his shoulder. “And ANAD too.”
Frost looked dubious at the prospect. Mary Duncan silently grasped hold of his shoulder. “Irwin, maybe we ought to the let the troopers handle this one. You’re not getting any younger, you know.”
Frost studied the image of the sphere on the screen. “He does have a point, Mary. There’s only one way to know for sure what this device is capable of.”
Winger put the idea to Major Kraft, who had swung by Containment on his way to the Sim/Training complex. Another class of nog school cadets was set to run through their first Molecular Ops class.
Kraft rubbed his chin, stroked his moustache. “Lieutenant, you’re not undertaking this ‘mission’ alone. I want backup, all along the line.”
Winger said, “Sir, Lieutenant Tallant has volunteered to join this recon mission. And Doc Frost.”
Kraft squinted at Frost as if he were some kind of specimen from another planet. “Doctor, you’ve been cleared by Medical for this, I presume?”
Frost lied. “Completely, Major. The mission Lieutenant Winger’s proposing may give us critical intelligence on how to combat Red Hammer…this device is a key part of their advantage over Quantum Corps.”
At the mention of Red Hammer’s supposed advantage, Kraft bristled. “First Nano can handle any situation, any mission.” Now, Kraft took a hard look at the sphere on the display screen. “Doesn’t look like much. A giant egg. What’s it supposed to do?”
Frost answered. “It’s some kind of quantum device. We don’t fully understand it ourselves. It seems to transport anyone who comes in contact with it to other pockets of spacetime…sort of an entanglement system. I don’t think they’re actually physically transported, but somehow this device is able to place ‘users’ in more than once place at a time. That’s consistent with quantum mechanics, but we’ve never seen it on this large a scale. Potentially, this device and others similar to it are what makes Red Hammer so hard to deal with.”
That brought a scowl again to Kraft’s face. “Nobody’s invincible. We just have to find the right center of gravity. Winger, your idea is approved. Take a small recon team with you. And report back to me by 0800 hours tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, sir.”
With that Kraft spun about and left the Lab.
Winger opened his coupler circuit to ANAD, still embedded in the shoulder capsule. “ANAD, config C-10. All effectors at Ready One. Prime bond disrupters. Initialize propulsors. We’re taking a little trip and we’re going in hot.”
ANAD came back on the circuit. ***ANAD to Hub…where are we going, Boss?***
Winger relayed ANAD’s words to Frost and Tallant. Then to ANAD: “I’m not sure exactly. This is a recon mission…into unknown territory. We’ve got to be ready for anything.”
***ANAD reconfiguring now…assuming C10…effectors safed for transit…all bond disrupters extended and primed…now straining at my leash, Boss***
Frost smiled when Winger reported ANAD’s response. “Maybe I need to do a little tweaking of his emotion modules. Sometimes ANAD correlates inappropriately….”
“Yeah, like a five-year old,” Tallant said.
Winger told Corporal Thielen to unseal containment in the tank. “CT1, ready injectors, just in case. I don’t want this thing big banging on us when we unseal.”
Thielen tapped some keys on his panel. “Tank unsealing now, Lieutenant. All parameters normal, everything in the green.”
“Bring the sphere to the lockout platform but keep the outer doors shut until I give the word.”
Thielen complied. Inside the containment tank, small motors drove the scaffolding toward the tank hatch. Other motors whirred. The hatch popped as it unsealed. But the hatch didn’t open as the transport lugs drove the sphere into the lockout chamber.
“It’s in lockout now, sir,” Thielen reported.
Winger, Tallant and Frost gathered around the hatch. In the background, Mary Duncan clasped her hands together, silently praying.
“This is surely the strangest mission I’ve ever been on,” Tallant muttered, to no one in particular.
“Pop the hatch,” Winger ordered.
The small door swung open on its jackscrews. Now the sphere could be seen…and touched…just inside. It sat on its platform like a giant egg, inert and silent.
Winger looked around at his ‘troopers.’ Dana Tallant gave him a thumbs up. Doc Frost was intent on the sphere. They were as ready as they would ever be.
“Let’s do it,” Winger said.
As one, the three of them reached into the lockout chamber and placed their hands on the surface of the sphere.
Chapter 3
“Entangled”
Inside the sphere
Time: Unknown
Place: Unknown
There was a blinding flash of light and a roaring rush of deceleration. Johnny Winger felt like his head was about to be ripped off. He was hurtling down a long curving corridor, careening through impossible geometric shapes—polygons, cubes, spheres, pyramids—when he came to a sudden stop, a hard bump and his head spun in dizzy giddiness.
He looked around. Where the hell--?
The sphere was there, right almost at his feet, inert like a piece of forgotten pottery. Then he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. It was Doc Frost…and Dana Tallant.
Winger crawled over, ascertained that everybody had come through the experience in one piece.
“Where is this place?” Tallant asked. She scanned around their surroundings.
They seemed to be in a circular room. A colonnade curved around the outer perimeter of the room. Pedestals were visible along its quadrant positions, each surmounted by small statues, Buddha-like statues. Incense smoke issued from the head of each little Buddha, filling the room with a pungent aroma. In the shadows, several monks in saffron robes could be heard murmuring something, a chant perhaps.
“It’s the monastery,” Doc Frost reported. “I know this place. It’s upstairs, the main entrance hall at Paryang. But I never saw anyone in here before...this must be another time….”
“How’d we wind up here?” Winger asked. “That sphere—“
Frost was beginning to understand. “Johnny, the sphere’s an entanglement device. It puts us in multiple places. We’re both here and back at Table Top and probably multiple other places as well.”
Tallant winced as she got unsteadily to her feet. “Doc you’re making my head hurt. I wasn’t paying attention when we covered this in Molecular Ops in nog school.”
Winger got up too. “Maybe we should look around…we are here to recon after all.”
Frost had a thought. “Johnny, is your ANAD embed still with you?”
“I don’t know.” Winger tried opening up his coupler link. “Hub to ANAD…ANAD, report status.”
There was a delay while the link fritzed and buzzed, then ***ANAD copies...reporting all systems at Level One readiness…Boss, what happened? Are we back in that historical simulation again?***
“I don’t know, ANAD. Just stay there, okay. Config One and standby. Keep your propulsors powered up too. We may need to launch in a hurry.”
***ANAD copies…all effectors initialized and primed…Boss, ANAD always has the greatest enthusiasm for our mission…***
“Yeah, I’m sure of that, ANAD. You sou
nd like a Quantum Corps recruiter.”
“What’s he saying?” Tallant asked. She was wafting her hand through tendrils of smoke, making odd patterns.
“Gung ho, as usual, Dana. Like a five –year old at the circus. Doc, you’ve really got to fix that. I like ANAD’s enthusiasm. But a simple yes or no will do when I ask status.”
Frost was studying the scrollwork on a nearby column, running his fingers along the Tibetan script. “Sorry, Johnny, but that’s ANAD’s processor. Interaction and Affective module. He’s programmed to act like a nanotrooper, to make it easier to get along with your soldiers.”
“It doesn’t always correlate that well, Doc. He kind of needs a lot of handholding, so to speak.”
“ANAD does have deep learning capability, Johnny. His neural nets make and break connections all the time, just like your brain and mine. Keep teaching him what you want and he’ll come along.”
“If you say so, Doc…where are you going now?”
Frost had started to move toward a door between two columns. “If I’m right, the lift to the Project labs is this way—“
“Doc, I wouldn’t—“
But Frost had already stepped through the door . Winger and Tallant had no choice but to follow.
The monks kept murmuring, paying them no attention. That’s when Winger and Tallant realized what it really meant to be entangled, to be in more than one place at a time.
“They don’t see us, Wings. It’s like we’re not really here.”
Winger sniffed. “Wicked.”
They followed Frost down a shallow ramp to another set of doors. There they found a lift.
The lift door opened when they approached. No one else seemed to be around. Frost went in, followed after a moment’s hesitation, by Winger and Tallant. The door closed.
“I don’t see any controls,” Tallant said.
“If my memory is correct, it goes down to the scope works…fifth level down.”
A second later, they were in motion.
The lift cab stopped abruptly. The door swung wide and the three of them cautiously stepped out. As they did so, Frost issued a warning.
“If I’m right, Johnny, we’re in an entangled state. The sphere in Containment at Table Top is some kind of entanglement device.”
“So what does that mean, Doc?”
“It means were not really here. Or to be more precise, we’re in multiple places at the same time. Quantum mechanics permits that…as long as no one sees us…no one observes us.”
“What happens if we’re seen?”
“Entanglement collapses. We wind up in one place…probably right here.”
“Okay, Doc,” Tallant said, “now I really have a headache.”
They crept out of the lift and found themselves on a swaying catwalk, fixed by cables to bolts in the walls of a large semi-circular cavern into which they had stepped. Walkways crisscrossed the floor below the catwalk, which circled the entire cavern. More walkways hung suspended by more bolts from the ceiling above, which was bright with rows of lamps. Along every catwalk, shelving and cabinets were lined up, one after another. Many of the shelves supported large vats, out of which hung dark green leafy plants.
“Scope, tons of it,” Winger muttered. “Dana, doesn’t this look just like Lions Rock, in Hong Kong?”
“Yeah,” Tallant said, “only bigger. Must be the mother works. Hey, Doc—“
But Frost had already started moving cautiously along the catwalk.
They came to a small cave that branched off the central cavern. The catwalk branched off too, angling down to an actual wood plank floor. Frost had stopped at the edge of the entrance and was peering in. Silently, he motioned Winger and Tallant to take a look with him.
Inside the small cave were arrayed several tables. On one table sat a smooth white sphere, seemingly a perfect copy of the one at Table Top, only larger. The other table contained tablets and vid equipment; the sphere was being videoed. One man sat at the table, fiddling with the vid gear.
Another man was adjusting some small rings which completely enveloped the sphere. Winger realized the sphere seemed to be projecting something. A small narrow beam had emerged from the sphere and was actively being focused through the rings into a 3-D image on the table. It was an image of some device, plan, elevation and section views, Winger could see that much.
“Doc, who’s--?”
But Frost quickly held up a hand, for quiet. He turned back. “I think that’s Kulagin…Ruling Council,” he whispered. “He seems to be trying to access the archive I told you about. I don’t know what that device is.”
Tallant figured the man seated was taking notes and otherwise helping with the session.
The note-taker dropped something and leaned over to pick it up. That’s when he looked up and saw three faces peering in at him and his superior.
In less than an eye blink, Winger felt the entire cavern shudder. It was just like someone had slammed a door right in his face. He felt himself jolted sideways, left, then right, then left again. Then the shudder stopped.
But everything had changed. As Doc Frost had suggested, Kulagin and his subordinate had observed the intruders. Their entangled state had collapsed. Now they really were physically in a cavern below the Paryang Monastery, in Tibet, China.
And people were running at them along the catwalk from both directions. Voices were rising, weapons were being readied. Inside Kulagin and the note-taker were getting up.
Winger swore. “Well, crap…no sense in being quiet now. We’re in a world of hurt. ANAD—“ he got on his coupler circuit. “Launch immediately…configure C-2…max rate reps…get the hell out here NOW!”
And ANAD was ready. ***ANAD to hub…configuring C-2…I’ve got disrupters primed, going to full propulsor when port opens…give me heading, Boss and I’ll go get ‘em!***
“ANAD, you sound like an attack dog! On exit, partition into two elements…one goes to heading zero nine zero and the other two seven zero degrees…fast as you can!”
Already Red Hammer security guards and troops were closing on them. Someone had fired a MOBnet canister.
But ANAD had already begun replicating at max rate. As the MOB swarm fell on them, Frost was momentarily knocked to the catwalk floor, and Tallant flailed frantically at the bots, ANAD managed to engage the MOB mechs with enough mass to fend off the first assault. In seconds, the air overhead was thick and hot with battling swarms. Winger wanted to go ‘over the waterfall’ and see what ANAD was engaging in the world of atoms and molecules, but he didn’t have time.
Frost struggled to his feet, batting away residual MOB bots and saw Kulagin and his aide shutting down the sphere’s projection. An idea came to him.
“Johnny, if we could get to that sphere…if we could get inside…we could put our hands on it. It may work the same way as the Table Top model.”
Winger saw what Doc was talking about. They had no chance where they were. But the sphere might be a way out.
“ANAD, partition one more element. Config C-22—“ he was going on memory for that command…”make a barrier for us, to that sphere.”
***Hub, ANAD recommending no more partitions, until replications are done…I’m engaging enemy now…recommending--***
But Winger could see they couldn’t wait any longer. Guards were only meters away. And one of them was sporting what looked like a HERF rifle. If that were fired, ANAD’s swarms could be easily shattered.
“No arguments, ANAD, partition again and configure C-22 now!”
He saw a change in the swarm above, as a narrow finger of flickering light peeled off from the main engagement. It arrowed toward the sphere, and as it expanded, the swarm physically shoved Kulagin and his aide out of the way, both men kicking and swatting at the ANAD bots as they backpedaled.
In moments, the barrier was completed, with Kulagin pinned against the walls of the cave, his aide heaving in great
gasps of air on the floor and Red Hammer guards nearly at the entrance.
It was now or never!
“Come on!” Winger yelled.
Frost, Tallant and Winger barreled through the still-forming ANAD barrier, feeling the pinpricks of the assemblers against their faces and arms. They came to the sphere, which stood inert and silent as a giant egg.
“Put your hands in contact with the surface,” Frost told them.
“What about ANAD?” Winger yelled. “I can’t just leave him here?”
“There’s no time!” Tallant told him. “Do as Doc says.”
Just as they touched the sphere surface, a HERF round went off. ANAD bots fell tinkling out of the air. A few entered Winger’s shoulder capsule by chance, through small tears in his uniform. Others clung to his tunic, a few attached themselves to his hair and arms.
The rest were fried.
And when the three of them finally touched the sphere, as Red Hammer guards poured into the cave, there came a blinding flash of light and a roaring rush of deceleration….
Then nothing.
As Johnny Winger’s last conscious thoughts drained away, he remembered feeling like this once when he and his Dad were riding the Cyclone at Daytona Beach. The same whirling images: the ocean, the boardwalk, the faces of bystanders and riders still standing in line for their turn. A cyclone of sights and sounds and smells…snow cones, cotton candy, salt air and hot dogs grilling…
But when he finished racing at breakneck speed down that long curving corridor now filled with polygons and cubes and pyramids and things he could never describe, and he came at last to that hard bump and things slowed down and finally stopped spinning….
He knew he wasn’t in Daytona Beach.
Or Paryang, Tibet.
Or even Table Top Mountain.
The first thing Johnny Winger did, after reassuring himself that he had all his body parts still with him and his head was still there, was look for Dana Tallant and Doc Frost.
Tallant was on her stomach nearby, faceplanted in mud. She shook herself off like a wet dog and smiled meekly at Winger. “Is this the fun part?” she asked.
Doc Frost was further away, half wrapped around the trunk of a tree. He groaned, slumped to the ground and rolled over, holding his ribs.
Immediately, Winger scrambled up. He and Tallant went to the Doc.
“Don’t move…let me see—“ Tallant muttered. She hoisted up his shirt, saw a spreading purple bruise.