Supersymmetry (4 page)

Tequila Williams looked where she was pointing and nodded. “In the flesh. Smartest guy in the world, so they say. They also say he's cracked.” Tequila was tall and slender, partial to platform heels, low necklines, and neon eye shadow. When Alex and Tequila walked across a room, it was Tequila who drew all the looks. Alex didn't mind. She dressed for comfort, not to draw attention, whereas Tequila always wanted attention.

They were both physicists-turned-engineers, here at the NJSC with the Lockheed Martin contingent to demonstrate the latest technology to representatives of the military and intelligence communities. The demo would take place in the NJSC's High Energy Lab, the largest facility on the Lakehurst complex. The name was a misdirection, intentionally benign, to distract attention from the armed guards and oversized power conduits that screamed Secret Government Facility. It was an enormous building, surrounded by cameras and two layers of fencing and razor wire. Alex doubted the public was fooled by the name.

The technology they were demonstrating had been built by Alex and Tequila's company, but that the technology was possible at all was due to Dr. Ryan Oronzi. Rumor in the media was that Oronzi was on the cusp of discovering the elusive Theory of Everything, finally reconciling gravity with particle physics and finishing what Einstein had started more than a century before.

In the flesh, Oronzi was at least a hundred pounds overweight, his hair askew, dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of worn jeans that would have benefitted from a belt. “He looks like a plumber,” Alex said.

Tequila stifled a laugh. “I guess if you're smart enough, you can do and say what you like, and people just call you eccentric. It's like being old.”

“Or rich,” Alex said.

The demo was staged in a huge, warehouse space that would give them enough room to demonstrate the new technology in dramatic style. All of the guests were milling in one corner, near a lavish breakfast spread—far nicer than anything Lockheed Martin ever provided just for their employees. Oronzi's arrival quickly attracted the attention of the generals and executives, who shook his hand and made small talk. Alex and Tequila made their way through to the tables. Tequila piled her plate high with eggs, bacon, and a Danish, but Alex just poured some coffee into a disposable cup and leaned against the wall, sipping it.

“Are you all right?” Tequila asked, eyeing her meager breakfast. “It's not like you to be nervous before a demo.”

“It's not that,” Alex said. “The stadium disaster has me rattled.”

Tequila instantly turned serious. “You didn't know anyone there, did you?”

“My dad was at the game.”

Tequila's eyes flew wide. “Was he—”

“No, he's okay. I talked to him on the phone. He left early, before the bomb went off. He was on the way home when it blew, miles away. If he had decided to stay just a few minutes longer . . .” Her voice choked, and she fought back a sudden rush of tears. She had been so close to losing him.

“What are you doing here?” Tequila said. “We can cover things without you. Go and hang out with your family. Give your dad a hug.”

Alex shook her head and wiped her eyes. “We've been working on this for how long? More than a year? I'm not backing out now. I'll go home afterward.”

“You're sure? You don't have to, you know. Everyone would understand.”

“I'll be fine.”

Tequila put a strawberry Danish in her hand. “Eat it,” she said. “That's a command.”

Alex managed a watery smile and took a tiny bite of the Danish. It did taste good. “Thanks.”

“It's entirely selfish,” Tequila said. “I was lying when I said we could cover things. Without you, we'll crash and burn, and they'll give the contract to Boeing.”

“Look,” Alex said. “My sister's on the Philadelphia police force, and I'll guarantee you she hasn't gone home. Probably hasn't slept, either. If she can keep working, so can I.”

Tequila swallowed a large bite of eggs. “Competitive relationship, huh?”

“You could say that. Her name's Sandra. She's a twin.”

Tequila whistled. “How come I didn't know you had a twin?”

“It's complicated.”

“Don't I know it. Family always is.”

“I have an older sister, Claire, and a younger brother, Sean, but Sandra and I are the most . . . closely linked.”

“Identical?”

“In appearance? Absolutely. In personality . . .”

Tequila laughed. “Say no more. You know, I always fantasized about having an identical twin when I was a kid. I bet you pulled some crazy pranks when you were growing up together.”

Alex smiled noncommittally. The truth was, she and Sandra hadn't grown up together, not until they were fourteen years old. They weren't even really twins, not in the traditional sense. But that was more than she wanted to explain right now. To change the subject, she said, “My brother's stationed in Poland. Everyone says that's where the war will break out first, if it comes.”

“Army?”

“Marines. Force Recon, actually.”

“Ooh, a real man,” Tequila said, wiggling her eyebrows. “Can I meet him? When does he come home?”

Alex elbowed her. “He has two months left in his tour of duty. But that won't make any difference if Turkey attacks. Two months might turn into two years. Or he might never come home.”

The speakers crackled, and all eyes turned. A Lockheed Martin functionary stood at the podium, kicking off the day's events and introducing Lockheed Martin CEO Linda Staker. Staker stood to light applause. Tequila said, “Good luck—you'll be great,” and squeezed Alex's shoulder. The two of them took their places on the lower level of chairs.

Alex sat next to Vijay Bhargava, their development team lead, who knew more about the nanocircuitry in their product than any other two of them combined. Vijay was resolutely pessimistic, a glass-half-empty-and-probably-poisoned-anyway kind of guy. “And our fearless CEO takes the stage,” he said. “I've never heard anyone talk as much as she does. She could put a class of five-year-olds to sleep on cupcake day.”

Alex grinned and elbowed him. “She's not that bad.”

“She could out-filibuster a senator,” Vijay said. “She could bore a snake to tears.”

“I get the idea.”

“Get it? Snakes don't have tear glands, so she'd have to be really boring to bore them to tears.”

She raised her hands in surrender. “Yeah, okay. I got it.”

The room was large enough for a NASA convention. It was decorated like a war zone, with burned-out buildings and rubble. A special stage had been built at one end to seat the VIPs, with leather chairs and attendants to bring drinks. This was where Ryan Oronzi sat, along with the Lockheed Martin executive staff, NJSC chief Stanley Babington, two congressmen, the Joint Chiefs, and Secretary of Defense Jared Falk with his security detail. On either side of the stage were the rows of folding chairs for everyone else: the NJSC scientists, the reps from the military and intelligence communities with their science aides in tow to explain the technology to them, the Lockheed Martin executives and business managers.

True to Vijay's prediction, Staker droned on for a good ten minutes, spouting platitudes about the importance of all the people working there at Lakehurst, their dedication to excellence, ability to work together no matter their employer, and the importance of their efforts to national security. Her speech was upbeat, inclusive, patriotic, and desperately dull. Alex had nothing to do but dwell on her role in the coming demo, and the various possible ways she could botch it. At the end, Staker introduced Secretary Falk, and Alex cringed, expecting him to give more of the same.

But he didn't. He took the podium and said, “You all know what happened in Philadelphia last night. Whether Turkish terrorists were to blame or not, we live in dangerous times. The world covets our wealth and power and wants to destroy us. What we see here today might be just the edge we need to preserve our way of life for the next generation. Let's begin.”

Staker nodded to a vice president, who nodded to Alex's boss, and Alex and Tequila and their team stood. It was time.

Music started, a marching drumbeat with horns in the background, probably lifted from some old war film by the Presentation Arts team. The house lights dimmed, replaced by a diffuse light from above that gave the sense of a cloudy morning. Smoke drifted across the warehouse floor. From the back, soldiers in Turkish army uniforms started working their way through the debris, slipping from wall to wall, AK-74 assault rifles at the ready.

Alex settled behind the control table with the other technicians to monitor the show. They were visible to the audience, but off to the side, not part of the action. Vijay took a back seat, monitoring them rather than actually participating. He was more familiar with the design than he was with the actual hands-on controls. That left Alex, Tequila, and their two programming experts, Rod Zeidman and Lisa Mancini. Tequila was tall, but Lisa was perhaps the tallest woman Alex had ever met, an occasional bodybuilder who climbed mountains in her free time and intimidated every man she met. Rod, by contrast, was short, red-haired, with a little-boy-cute face that make him look fifteen years younger than he really was. The five of them made up the Lockheed Martin team. Hundreds of others had worked on the program in some capacity, but the five of them were principle contributors, the ones best suited to run this demonstration. Alex was the youngest of them, but she liked to think she could hold her own.

“Do it like we practiced it,” Vijay whispered.

“No problem,” Rod said. “We've got this one in the bag.”

“Don't say that!” Vijay said, his voice rising almost to panic. “Do you want to jinx the whole thing?”

“A little jinx never stopped us before,” Rod said. “Bring it on.”

He tapped a control, and the music stopped. On the warehouse floor, a single American marine stood up from where he had been hiding. He was exposed, in full view of the enemy Turkish soldiers. He had no weapon. On her screens, Alex could see what the marine could see. He wore eyejack lenses, not significantly different from those that had been on the public market for years. In his view, the scene was clearly lit, with each enemy soldier highlighted in yellow—even those still crouching behind walls. A larger screen above the VIP stage showed the audience the same view.

So far, it was standard military technology, nothing out of the ordinary. The Turkish soldiers approached, shouting at the American, who put his hands on his head, apparently docile. Then he attacked.

The American flicked his eyes at icons that overlaid his vision, an intuitive interface in a style familiar to most elementary school children. The functions he accessed, however, were a far cry from direction finders and entertainment videos. The rifles spun out of the Turkish soldiers' hands, flipping through the air and clattering to the ground far away before they could fire a shot. The Turks shouted in surprise, and then—somewhat unrealistically, in Alex's opinion—charged the American unarmed. They met the same fate as their weapons. The American didn't even move, but the Turks twisted up into the air, screaming, and were slammed into the ground or thrown over walls. The lights came up to applause. The first scenario of the day had finished without a hitch.

Alex could tell the difference between those who'd seen the technology before and those who hadn't. The “soldiers” were stunt men, hired for the occasion, and the demo was carefully choreographed, but the technology was real. There were no wires, no tricks, and the visuals had been designed to make that obvious. Those who had never seen it before were stunned, still staring out at the field with their mouths hanging slack. They had grown up taking technological miracles in stride, but this was a leap beyond, into the realm of the wizards and Jedi of their youth. This was magic. And it was only the beginning.

Stanley Babington took the podium next, describing the technology and its concept in general terms.

“The invention of the Higgs projector has brought the power of the subatomic to the warfighter's control,” he said, raising his hands dramatically to either side. “The Higgs field is all around us, invisible, uniform throughout the universe. It gives matter its mass, controls the characteristics of other particles; in short, it determines all the constants that give our universe meaning.

“But what if we could change it? Science tells us that the big bang produced not just one universe, but countless trillions, all of them frothing up out of the early expansion like so many bubbles. Each has a different Higgs field, producing a different set of basic constants, a different set of fundamental particles, a completely different periodic table. Well, here at the New Jersey Super Collider's High Energy Lab, we've created a universe of our very own, and through it, learned to manipulate the Higgs field in localized areas, for very specific purposes. The Higgs has been called the God particle, and not without reason. To control the Higgs is to control the very nature of reality itself.”

His speech was met with light applause, but Alex was barely paying attention. She perused logs and checked power levels, making sure everything was ready for the next scenario. The truth was, nobody at her company understood this technology completely. Alex had a master's degree in quantum physics from the University of Pennsylvania, and Lockheed was footing the bill for her to pursue her doctorate in the evenings. She could talk Pauli equations and Poincaré symmetries with the best of them. But there was a mystery at the heart of this, a black box that bridged the gap between the quantum world and the world of everyday objects. Her bosses said it was top secret, a special compartmented classification only shared on a need-to-know basis, and Alex accepted the explanation. She wanted to believe that this knowledge had been developed simply by the hard work of a very brilliant man.