EXOSKELETON II: Tympanum (46 page)

The Judge reached across the table with both hands and grabbed both of Will’s. “Torture, or enlightenment?”

Will’s thoughts bounced back and forth between revealing the truth and lying. How should he answer? He knew it would take little effort to uncover the truth if he were to lie.

He then wondered if the Judge already knew the answer. It was obvious to anyone who looked that the world was no bastion of enlightenment. It was the opposite – it was a crucible of war, torture, disease, immorality, greed, and indifference to life. These things practically
defined
the world. If it were only he who was to be judged, Will would admit his every transgression. But he wouldn’t condemn the world with his own words. It was not his place.

“You don’t need me to answer that question,” Will said. “Look for yourself.”

The Judge let go of Will’s hands and leaned back, never breaking eye contact. “The answer must come from admission, not observation,” the being said.

“Why?”

The Judge remained silent.

Will’s mind whirred. “Are you not able to observe? Are you confined to this object?”

“Judgment can only come from your testimony,” the Judge responded.

“I will not answer your question.”

After a long silence, the Judge said, “If you answer, you will be spared.”

“What do you mean?”

“You will not suffer the regeneration,” the Judge said. “Your soul will be cast.”

“What about everyone else?”

The Judge shook his head. “Only you.”

Will was insulted. He imagined an eternity of guilt. “No!”

“I can destroy you right now.”

“I don’t care,” Will said. “You will not condemn the world on my words.”

The being leaned forwards and its eyes darkened. “Very well,” he said and leaned back. “You are free to go.” He waved his hand as if to tell Will to leave.

Something was wrong.

Will exited the body.

The Judge, still occupying the other body, said, “Please, wait for a moment.”

Will kept his position above the table as the Judge separated. However, instead of coming up to meet him, the wraith entered the body that Will had just exited.
What the hell was it doing?

The face came to life, and then distorted in an expression of recognition, and then anger. After a short time the Judge said, “This body was pristine. By entering it, you imprinted upon it – all of your memories. And now, not only do I know everything that you know – I have
experienced
it. I know the answer to the question.”

The being exited the body.

“Admit what happened to you,” it screamed. “Say it!”

“No!” Will yelled back.

“Then you will be destroyed.”

“What gives you the right to condemn us?” Will shot back.

“You have destroyed yourselves,” the being replied. “Your intellectual development is stagnant. Your morality has been nonexistent from the beginning. You are still bound to your dirty planet, and will annihilate yourselves in your own filth – greed, war, and ignorance.”

“Not everyone is guilty,” Will said.

“You have all come from the same tainted origin,” the Judge said. “Judgment has been made.”

The being morphed into something that resembled a demon – more hideous than the wraiths Will had seen before.

But Will had no fear. He was ready to fight. He
wanted
to fight. Then a thought entered his mind out of nowhere.

He rushed towards the first body the Judge had occupied, and
entered it
.

Unknown Time

The body was identical to the one Will had first occupied. The difference was that his memory seemed to change – he began to remember things he knew he hadn’t actually experienced. His consciousness became overwhelmed with information that surged so quickly he had no sense of what was happening around him. It was like trying to catch a waterfall in a bucket. Images of things he’d never seen before – alien to him – flickered before his eyes. And there were emotions connected to the memories. Most of it was beyond his comprehension.

An instant later, he was looking down upon a headless, twitching body. He watched as the wraith decapitated the second one, its head rolling off of the pedestal and into the darkness at the bottom of the sphere. Both bodies slumped forward, spurting blood on the white table that quickly poured off the edge and onto the platform.

Will realized that he’d just experienced being killed, but his attention quickly turned back to the wraith.

“You are vile,” Will said. “
Evil
.”

The wraith sneered. “I am everything you fear. I am the Judge. I am the
Destroyer
.”

Will sensed the pedestal ascending towards him. The sphere was moving upward. He darted to the wall to his right as the wraith screamed at him.

“Your world is dead!” it screeched. “Your filthy world is dead!”

4

Saturday, 13 June (1:21 a.m. EST)

It took Will a few seconds to recognize the dark eyes that stared down at him. They were Denise’s. He didn’t recall the trip back to his body.

“We just rolled violently and alarms sounded,” Denise said. “I came to see if you were okay. What’s happening?”

He figured the
North Dakota
was jostled by the turbulence from the beacon’s ascent.

“Couldn’t you separate?” she asked.

He was confused for a second, but then understood. “How long have I been gone?”

“Two, three minutes,” she replied.

Jonathan burst into the room. “We’re following the beacon to the surface,” he said, out of breath.

Will didn’t know if that was a good idea.

“Let’s go,” Jonathan said, waving them to follow him.

Minutes later they were standing in a crowd of more than a dozen sailors staring at a bank of monitors. They were displaying various views of the probe with night-vision cameras.

The orb was clearly visible, rising into the sky. Will estimated it was already 100 meters above the surface.

“What the hell is that thing?” Captain McHenry said. He looked to Will. “What did you do?”

Will shook his head. “I’ll explain later,” he said.
If there was a later,
he didn’t add.

They watched as the probe kept growing, the part of the stem at the surface of the water thickening as it rose.

After 10 minutes he could hardly see its spherical head. It had to be more than a mile high, and its stem at the water’s surface had widened to a diameter of more than 100 meters.

“It stopped,” a man said from behind a computer consul. “It’s at a height of two kilometers.”

“My God,” McHenry said.

Everyone else stared in silence, waiting for something to happen.

And then it did.

Everything went dark, except for intermittent sparks that illuminated the area like flash bulbs.

“What’s happening?” McHenry yelled.

“E-M pulse, sir,” a man yelled back.

Will knew exactly what that meant. An electromagnetic pulse was a high-energy surge of electromagnetic fields that could destroy electronics. It could be produced a few ways, one was by detonating a nuclear weapon.

“We’re supposed to be shielded!” McHenry’s voice blasted in the dark. “Was it a nuke?”

“Unknown,” a voice answered. “All systems are down.”

“Emergency power,” McHenry bellowed over warning alarms that seemed to come from every direction.

Another surge of sparks lit the control room in a bluish-white tinge, and then it went to darkness again.

“Another E-M pulse,” someone yelled.

“Dive! Dive! Dive!” McHenry screamed.

Will found an empty chair and sat in it. He separated and passed through the upper hull and into the night. The probe loomed in the moonlight. He searched the horizon for any hint of a nuclear blast but found nothing. The skies were perfectly clear.

He followed the
North Dakota
beneath the surface and returned to his body. Denise squatted down and huddled next to him, grasping his forearm.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I just don’t want to be in the way of people moving in the dark,” she explained.

Will knew she wasn’t easily frightened, yet her hand trembled as she squeezed his arm.

“It wasn’t a nuke,” he said. “I just looked.”

Will stood and talked loudly into the dark. “There was no nuclear explosion.”

Another flurry of sparks illuminated the room.

“How do you know that?” McHenry asked in the dark.

“Just trust me, I know,” Will replied, not revealing what he’d done in case the crew hadn’t been informed of his abilities. The scoffs that emanated from various directions indicated he was probably right to keep his mouth shut.

McHenry asked questions in the dark about the damage. The
North Dakota
needed repairs, but it was going to be okay. And they were safer at their current depth – a 150 meters of salt water would shield them from the E-M pulses.

McHenry set in a new course for the rendezvous point with the
Stennis
. He walked over to Will. “I hope there’s still a carrier group to meet.”

Will nodded. So did he.

5

Saturday, 13 June (7:28 a.m. EST)

The crew of the
North Dakota
managed to make repairs and get them off emergency power. It rendezvoused with the carrier group four hours later. McHenry was then ordered go to Mar del Plata, and then on to an American base for thorough checkup.

Now back on the
Stennis
, Will followed Denise and Jonathan into the ready-room, where Captain Grimes, Daniel, and Sylvia were waiting. Grimes sat directly across from Will at the head of the table.

“Where’s Horace?” Will asked.

“Sick bay,” Sylvia replied.

By her expression Will sensed that Horace wasn’t improving.

“We can’t approach the probe with anything – aircraft or surface ships – and I’m not risking another sub,” Grimes explained. “The electromagnetic signal is just too strong for our electronics to handle.”

“How was the carrier group able to avoid damage?” Denise asked.

“We’re a few miles away,” Grimes answered, “and our systems are well shielded.”

“Have you analyzed the signal?” Will asked.

Grimes nodded. “It’s stronger than anything we’ve seen, save a nuclear E-M pulse. About every few minutes there’s a blast at all frequencies – radio to microwave wavelengths. Between blasts, it continuously broadcasts an encoded signal at a few discrete frequencies. That’s all we know – we can’t decode it.”

“Has it changed at all since it started?” Will asked, wondering if it was another countdown.

“No,” Grimes replied. “Just keeps repeating the same broadcast.”

The term
broadcast
gave Will a sick feeling. The first two probes sent out signals intended for people on earth – sound waves in water. This one was broadcasting radio waves to the entire universe. Earth would look like a lighthouse to anyone who could detect the signal.

Will described what had happened inside the probe, and his conversation with the being – the Judge. It seemed that everyone believed him – no skeptics this time. Their expressions and body language projected worry, except for those of Grimes, whose face became stern.

“I don’t see what else you could have done,” Jonathan said.

“The question is what’s going to happen next,” Grimes said. “And when.”

Will turned to Daniel. “What about the White Stone inscription? Did you find the book?”

Daniel shook his head and sighed. “We didn’t bring the book by Schwinger back with us,” he said. “It must be on the shelves at the base.”

“We’ll have to go back,” Will said.

“That’s not an option,” Grimes said. “The
North Dakota
is disabled, and we’re not sending another sub through the tunnel.”

“Too risky?” Will asked, annoyed. “Do you see what’s going on here?”

Denise grabbed Will’s hand. “We’re going to try to decipher it ourselves,” she said. “The languages expert is working on it. She says it won’t be as difficult as it was in the 1940’s – much more is known about ancient languages.”

“Why does it matter?” Grimes asked. “We’ve already done our part. We needed the information before all of this happened.”

It was a valid point, Will thought. But they still needed the information. “While it’s true that we’ve already triggered something, we don’t know what we set into action. If we have to go back to the base to figure it out, it would be worth it.” Will looked to the others. “Let’s hope our expert can crack it.”

Just then, a young sailor entered the room and whispered something in Grimes’ ear.

Grimes stood. “Let’s go.”

“What is it?” Daniel asked.

“The beacon stopped its broadcast,” Grimes said. “It’s descending.”