Offworld (43 page)

"Everybody okay?" Chris asked quietly, ignoring their rescuers
for the moment and focusing on his friends. "Terry?"

"I'll live," Terry replied.

"Trish?"

She looked dreadfully tired, but fighting through it. "Fine"

"Beech?"

"Good to go, Commander."

"They got Mae," said Terry.

"I know," replied Chris. He nodded at something in Terry's general
direction and said, "Gimme"

Terry pulled the pistol out of the back of his pants without
argument the same pistol he'd used during the flood in Biloxi-and
tossed it to Chris.

Chris grabbed it out of the air with one hand and slipped the
safety off, aiming it at the two newcomers.

"Whoa, whoa, wait-" started Parks.

"Before. You said you helped Roston to ... to do whatever he's
done with everybody. So tell me why I shouldn't shoot you in the
face?"

"Do you really think," said Rowley, "we would have risked our
lives coming to you if we didn't think we could help you?"

"Why were you helping him?!" Chris demanded.

Rowley was unmoved, his stature rigid as he said, "Because he
paid us."

Chris ran his free hand through his hair, not believing what he'd
heard. He looked at his friends. Mixtures of incredulity and outrage
showed on each face.

It was a very long time before anyone spoke again. Chris barely trusted himself not to pull the trigger that his finger trembled on. And
he knew his friends were thinking similarly murderous thoughts. Yet
each of them held his or her ground in the face of this admission
of guilt.

"Should we assume, then," said Owen in his most controlled and
modulated voice, "that since you came to us, whatever deal you had
with Roston went bad?"

"We didn't know what Roston wanted us to do when he paid us.
We thought it would be something smaller. We had no idea it was
going to be anything like this. Once we agreed, we had to either obey
and be rewarded, or his men would kill us. We chose to live."

Chris closed his eyes and looked down. This was madness.

"Let me see if I've got this straight," he said. "You came to our
rescue, after jumping ship on Roston ... because you figured that
his mission was no longer a guaranteed success, and therefore you
might end up on the losing side?"

"Hey," Parks protested, "you wouldn't even be alive-!"

"We saved you," said Rowley, "on Mars. We are the only reason
you didn't die in that tunnel."

"You're pathetic!" Chris shouted. "You helped Roston wipe out
the entire human race, and I need one good reason why I shouldn't
kill you right here and now."

"No one has been wiped out, Commander Burke," replied Rowley.
`And you should let us live because we are the only two people alive
who know how to bring everyone back."

Slowly, Chris lowered his arm, set the safety, and slipped the gun
into a pocket. "I saw you. Both of you. I saw you on Mars. Or from
Mars. How is that possible?"

Rowley sighed.

"We helped you during your experience under the Martian surface," explained Parks, who was clearly the more excitable of the two.
He talked much faster than his friend, and seemed as eager to put the puzzle pieces together for Chris and his friends as they were to see
the puzzle assembled. "If we hadn't, you'd be dead now."

Chris swallowed this slowly. `And did this help of yours include
erasing my memories of everything that happened in that tunnel?"

Parks frowned briefly. "Yes, but it was absolutely-"

"Please," Rowley interrupted. "Let us start at the beginning. We
have an extraordinary story to tell you. I know you're tired and hurt,
and you want answers now. We're going to give them to you. But
the answers you seek are not simple ones. How we have arrived at
this place in history cannot be explained quickly. So please, extend
to us a little patience-"

"Patience is something we're fresh out of," said Terry. "Tell us
where everyone is, or Chris'll shoot you. And if he doesn't, I will."

"They are nowhere, Mr. Kessler," Rowley replied. "Strictly speaking, the ten billion inhabitants of this planet no longer exist."

"What do you mean?" asked Trisha.

"They've been erased," replied Parks. "Every living person on this
planet excluding us and Roston's people-they've been removed
from reality."

"Please," Rowley said again, "allow us to explain properly. It's the
only way you'll understand."

Chris leaned back against the wall and folded his arms. Trisha
sank down until she was sitting against the same wall. Terry tried to
get more comfortable in his chair, but couldn't keep from wincing
at the pain in his leg. Owen stood at attention, perfectly rigid yet
perfectly relaxed, and absorbing every word that was said.

"What we're about to tell you may be difficult to accept, so please,
try to keep an open mind," said Rowley. "Back in the 1960s, when
JFK challenged the nation to put a man on the moon, NASA began
examining all sorts of methods for making that happen. All methods, including a search for solutions that went beyond conventional
branches of science.

"They saw the need to capitalize on every possible advantage they could get their hands on, because space exploration, as you know,
is the most dangerous undertaking mankind has ever attempted.
Anytime there's a manned vessel being sent into space NASA's top
priority is to see that their astronauts return safely to Earth, and that
means attempting to think of every possible detail that could place
astronauts in danger while offworld. Any and all factors. Which, of
course, is an impossibility.

"Finding a way to forecast every possible harmful thing that could
happen to our astronauts and prevent those things from happening
became regarded as the holy grail of astrophysics, and it still is. NASA
was willing to try anything to achieve a greater level of prediction,
even if it meant working in arenas that reputable scientists wouldn't
ordinarily touch, because the public would not react favorably to a
government agency dabbling in `alternative science.' For that reason,
the project was kept entirely off-the-books."

"What project?" Owen asked.

"It started by accident," continued Rowley. An early group of
NASA scientists got the idea that quantum physics-a relatively new
field of science back then-could hold the key to more accurately
forecasting potential mission failures."

"Quantum physics," Trisha repeated, "is a highly respected field
of study; there's nothing `alternative' about it. It's the study of the
subatomic particles that form the building blocks of everything in
the universe."

"Well, in this case, we're talking about a specific branch of quantum mechanics," said Rowley. "One that many scientists believe to be
impossible. Are you familiar with the concept of determinism?"

Trisha leaned her head back, starting to understand. Chris
glanced at her. They were moving away from concepts he understood completely.

"Sure," Trisha replied. "It's about using quantum data to predict
the future. But it's not possible."

"Somebody please translate all this into English," requested
Terry.

Trisha sat forward a bit, her eyes dancing as she formulated her
response. "Imagine if we knew everything about the chair Terry's
sitting in right now, from a subatomic perspective. I mean everythingthe number and types of particles it's made of, even the molecules
from Terry's clothes and skin and hair that have rubbed off on it while
he's sitting there. If we had a complete picture of all that information,
down to the last particle, and we applied scientific laws like gravity
and thermodynamics to that picture ... then determinism says we
could forecast exactly what will become of that chair in the future."

Owen nodded. "Right. But it can't be done. There are too many
random variables in nature to allow for accurate forecasting."

Parks and Rowley exchanged a significant look.

"NASA decided it was willing to settle for less than perfect," Parks
said, taking up the story. `After all, they weren't looking to predict
the future, just forecast as many possibilities as possible.

"This early group of scientists at NASA-they conceived of a
device. It began as a pet project conducted by a handful of NASA
employees. But over the next seventy years, the torch was passed
down from one generation to the next, to specialists in various scientific fields like me and Rowley. And the device eventually grew into
something those early NASA scientists could never have imagined."

Chris believed he was starting to understand, but he still didn't
believe. `Are you saying you built a computer capable of predicting
the future?"

"Not the future. Probabilities," Parks corrected. `And yes, we
built it. About two dozen of us, over seventy years' time. It's not a
computer as you understand the word. It's far more advanced than
that the most advanced computational apparatus ever created. The
Waveform Device is a quantum machine."

"Waveform?" Owen repeated, throwing a look at Burke.

"Yes," Parks replied. "NASA eventually pulled the plug on the project, but the scientists had grown attached to their work. And
there were enough interested parties that funding could always be
found. So they very carefully and very quietly took what they had of
the machine-which at the time was about the size of an RV-and
relocated it from Johnson Space Center to a more remote setting."

"Years went by," Rowley said, "and their clandestine work passed
through various hands recruited from numerous fields of science-all
sworn to silence. Only a handful at a time have ever been allowed
to know of its existence, and work on it. But in all these years, the
work never stopped. The machine grew and grew and grew, until
they had to place it in a specially designed facility.

"But you need to understand, our goals for the machine were
honorable, always. The men working on the Waveform Device were
patriots who believed in the possibilities offered to the world by quantum determinism. Imagine being able to save lives all over the world
because global catastrophes, crises, and even wars were predicted
before they happened, giving the world time to prepare."

"I'm a theoretical physicist," said Parks. "I was recruited to the
project eleven years ago. Rowley predates me by about eight years.
He's a world-class mathematician. We've overseen the greatest fundamental leap forward the Waveform has made since the transistor.
Three years ago, we pioneered and cloned an advanced neural circuit
board capable of processing exabytes of information instantly. Even
today's computers haven't caught up with that kind of processing
power yet. We installed the circuit boards throughout the machine,
just like the hundreds or maybe even thousands of pieces of experimental technology that the device's caretakers have continued adding
to it over the years."

Chris was getting a sick feeling at what they were saying. `Just
how big is this thing?"

"It has roughly the same dimensions as Rice Stadium," replied
Rowley, "which was built over top of it, thanks to the involvement
of one of the university trustees in our program. But it's much taller than the stadium. The device is housed in a special facility just below
ground level under the arena that we call `the Vault.' The machine
itself is more than twelve stories high-or deep, depending on how
you look at it."

A twelve-story computer?" asked Terry. "Let me guess, it's shaped
like a great big stainless-steel Apple logo."

Rowley rolled his eyes, but Parks answered first. "Don't be absurd.
We've already told you it was built from the inside out, with no
blueprint or plan, and it was never intended to become as big as it's
become. The machine is a maze-a web of processors, transistors,
wires, circuitry, conduits, terminals, screens ... Trust me, you don't
ever want to go wandering around inside there. You could get lost
for days-one of our predecessors actually did."

"But even with its unparalleled technological muscle," said Rowley,
"in the last year it has become drastically more than the sum of its
parts-for reasons we don't fully understand."

"Speaking of not understanding," said Chris, "I still don't get what
a gigantic machine that predicts the future has to do with everyone
in the world disappearing."

"Well then," said Rowley, stretching to his full height, which was
still rather short, "now we come to it. This is where our story takes
a radical left turn. The thing is ... for most of its existence, the
machine didn't work. For decades, our scientists believed we were
right on the cusp of victory, but it never produced a viable forecast.
Which is why we kept adding to it we were still trying to get the
thing functional."

As your mission approached," Parks picked up the story, "we
knew we were closer than ever to success. Our ambition was to get
it up and running in time for the Mars mission, especially since your
mission was going to be long term. And just like the original scientists
that first envisioned the machine, we intended to offer it to NASA for
use in predicting any disasters that might befall the four of you while
you were so far from home."

Rowley spoke again, looking directly at Chris. "Our first successful
use of the machine occurred the day you fell into that lava tube on
the Martian surface. But and this is the crucial bit though it was
finally working, the machine was not doing what it was designed to
do. It was doing something monumentally more profound. Imagine
our astonishment when we realized the Waveform Device wasn't
forecasting probable events-it was adjusting theprobability of events
so that not only were they likely to happen ... they did happen."

A very long moment of silence fell over their little corner of the
room. Glances were exchanged between Chris and his friends. Chris
kept thinking that he must have heard Rowley wrong. He could tell
that his friends were having just as hard a time as he was with swallowing what they'd just been told.