The Fold: A Novel (3 page)

Eight days, three security checks, and one plane ride later, Mike was in Washington, D.C., wearing his best suit. It was still the cheapest one in the room. Reggie had loaned him a silk tie after seeing the two polyester ones he’d brought from home. He adjusted the knot against his throat, glad he’d decided on the full-Windsor over his usual half.

The room was almost twice the size of Mike’s classroom back in South Berwick. There were no windows. Five people shifted and mumbled and found seats behind a row of tables at the front of the room, avoiding the collection of flags behind them. Ten feet away there was a mirroring row of tables, this one with two dozen chairs lined up behind it in four rows of six. Two other tables ran along the far side, facing the door. The walls were painted in warm colors, but the room felt stark.

It struck Mike that the setup was very similar to a courtroom. Judges up front. Defense and prosecution across from them. Jury off to the side. He was sure it was deliberate.

The five people at the front of the room—three men and two women—settled into their chairs. Mike glanced at each of them. A man in an Air Force uniform with silver eagles on his shoulders and seven rows of color on his chest. A younger man with dark hair and glasses. An older woman with a flag pin on her collar who the ants recognized as a senator. An Asian man with a white line on his finger where he normally wore a ring. A dark-eyed woman with long hair and an athlete’s body. Seven people sat back in the body of the room, scratching notes on identical pads with identical pens.

Reggie guided them to the jury tables. Each one had two pristine
legal pads with a Department of Defense watermark stretching across the top of each sheet. A matching logo graced a pen placed precisely across the top of the notepad. A blue file folder lay next to each pad.

“What is this?” asked Mike. He adjusted his coat to display more of the borrowed tie.

“Budget review board,” murmured Reggie. He popped open his briefcase and pulled out a slim pad. “Standard stuff. It’s still DARPA territory, but a lot of departments have invested in the Albuquerque Door. All these folks have some say in what happens next. Some of them are tied to the agency, a few are from the DOD itself. The Air Force colonel over there? He loves this sort of stuff.”

Mike glanced across the half-dozen board members to the broad, square-jawed man with bristle-brush hair. “Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Forget anything you read in the papers about the Marines or the Army. The Air Force loves high tech more than any of them.”

“So it’s all about high tech, but everyone’s using notepads and ballpoint pens?”

“Remember how you had to turn in your phone at the desk?”

Mike nodded.

“They’re not big on laptops and tablets in these meetings. It’s a security thing.”

“Cool. Can I keep the pen?”

“Yes, you can keep the pen,” sighed Reggie. “It only cost the taxpayers seventeen dollars. Here, you can have mine, too.”

“What about the notepad?”

“Don’t be greedy.” He nodded to the front of the room. “Okay, pay attention. These are your new best friends.”

Two men and a woman came through the door. The leader, an older black man with a trimmed goatee and a circle of gray hair around his scalp, glanced around the room and up at the board members. He walked with a dark cane in his right hand. It had a silver derby-style handle. He wore silver-rimmed glasses that pulled attention to his eyes. He hadn’t changed much since the photo for his book jacket.

“Arthur Cross,” said Reggie, following Mike’s gaze. “He’s probably got the best idea of how this whole thing works, although they’ll all tell you it’s beyond any one person. That’s why you’re here.”

“I still don’t know what ‘this’ is.”

“Patience.”

Cross looked across the room at Reggie and nodded politely. The woman with him shot Mike and Reggie a look that was only a few degrees away from a glare. She, Cross, and the other man sat down across from the board.

“The blonde is Jamie Parker,” said Reggie. “Head programmer. She’s here today because their other physicist has the flu.”

Her eyes were hazel, like Mike’s, though much narrower than his. Her hair reached past her shoulders, but was bound up in a sensible ponytail. She had on a tight black turtleneck over an equally tight body, somewhat concealed by a gray blazer.

He realized he was staring because she was glaring back at him. Mike rubbed his temple and forced a few ants back behind their wall. “You said it wasn’t cryptography.”

“It’s not.”

“Or robots.”

“It’s the twenty-first century,” said Reggie. “I don’t think I’ve got any projects under my umbrella that don’t have at least two programmers.” He tipped his chin to the woman. “Parker was a black hat at MIT, got in trouble with the feds, but they couldn’t prove anything. After she graduated they tried to hire her, and she more or less spit in their faces. Dropped out of sight for two years, and then Arthur found her at a hacker con and recruited her. Major chip on her shoulder.”

Mike let his eyes drift to the other man. He had a long, weather-beaten face, and small eyes. His dyed-black hair was slicked back, and his face had a slack look to it that somehow seemed more practiced than genetic. He had lean limbs and perfect posture. It gave the impression of a tall man, even though he was only an inch over Parker. His suit was poorly fitting and almost definitely off-the-rack. It made Mike feel better about his own wardrobe.

Mike nodded at the man. “Olaf Johansson.”

“Olaf?”

“Hey, talk to his parents. He’s Arthur’s partner. Double doctorates in physics and mathematics. Number cruncher. Very little imagination or sense of humor. You two should butt heads nicely.”

“Is he related to Scarlett?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Has anyone told him he looks just like Humphrey Bogart?”

“I tried,” said Reggie. “He didn’t know who I was talking about.”

“How can he not know Bogart?”

“I don’t think he’s seen
Casablanca.
”

“You lie.”

“Shut up and play with your pen. They’re ready to get started.”

The dark-eyed, athletic woman started things. She had a pleasant voice. “So, Dr. Cross, perhaps you could give us a rundown on your project and where it currently stands?”

Arthur nodded. “Well, as our reports explain, the Albuquerque Door began as the SETH Project. It was an attempt to create a viable method of energetic matter transmission, the long-term goal being to create a practical IMT system.”

“Doctor?” The Asian man raised his hand. “Could we get that in layman’s terms, please?”

Olaf sighed and his brow furrowed for a moment.

“IMT,” said Arthur. “Instant matter transfer. We were trying to make a matter-projection system, one that wouldn’t be—”

“Teleportation?” interrupted the Asian again. “You were trying to make some sort of teleporter, like on
Star Trek
?”

“They call theirs a transporter, actually,” said Jamie Parker.

A faint chuckle rolled across the board’s tables.

Mike felt his eyes start to roll. He turned to Reggie. “I thought you brought me down here for something serious,” he whispered.

“I did,” murmured his friend.

“Physical teleportation’s impossible.”

The board plowed ahead. “And how much success have you had with your…matter-projection system?” asked the Asian man.

“Well,” said Arthur, “all things considered, we had a fair degree, sir. There are a number of ways to break something down to the atomic level using existing technology. The challenge, of course, has always been reintegration.” He paused to adjust his glasses. “Even a life form as small as a mouse contains billions of cells, each made up of hundreds of millions of molecules, each of which is also made up of possibly millions of atoms. Taking it apart is relatively easy, putting it back together, well…”

“I believe your earlier budgets accounted for that, yes?” asked the
Air Force colonel. His precise voice echoed in the room. “Says here you built yourself a supercomputer.”

“To build a computer that could identify and track all those particles in real time would pretty much be impossible,” Jamie said. “It’d be beyond anything even theorized by modern engineers. The closest thing in existence is the Tianhe-2 in China, and that’s only a bare percentage of the calculating power we’d need for a single jump. We were trying to develop a program that worked off an idea similar to quantum entanglement, what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.” We wouldn’t need to know where every particle was, so long as we knew where
most
of them were.”

The board members glanced at one another and the files. “And that worked?” asked the athletic woman.

Mike leaned in close to Reggie again. “I don’t even follow this stuff and I can tell you half a dozen reasons it wouldn’t work.”

“I’m sure you can.”

“I can name at least a dozen physicists who’ve played with this and moved on to easier things like antigravity or the Grand Unified Theory.”

“I told you to be patient already, yes?”

“Mr. Magnus,” asked the athletic woman, “did you have a comment?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “Just clarifying a point for my colleague.”

Her gaze slid to Mike, then back to Arthur. “Doctor?”

“We had some success,” Arthur said, “and a few failures. The first few objects to HD didn’t tell us anything, but by the time we—”

“I’m sorry,” interrupted another one of the reviewers, the senator. “HD?”

“Oh, it’s…uhh.” Arthur examined the table. “Well, it’s an unofficial term we coined for when test objects dispersed rather than reintegrated.”

“What does it stand for?” This from the man with glasses.

“Well, it’s…” He glanced at Jamie.

“Humpty Dumpty,” muttered Olaf Johansson.

“What?”

Mike’s mind leaped ahead and found a childhood copy of the nursery rhyme. He looked at all six pages of the picture book at once and crossed it with the topic at hand. He winced.

“Humpty Dumpty,” the Bogart look-alike repeated. His faintly accented voice sounded wrong coming from that face. “You know, ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…’ ”

“Oh,” said the Asian interviewer.

The man with the glasses dipped his chin. “A bit…macabre.”

“But pretty much dead on,” Olaf said. He almost sneered when he spoke.

“So, really,” said the Air Force colonel, “how many successes did you have?”

“In the first three years of the project, we managed to teleport two test blocks and a test animal,” said Arthur. “Both of the test blocks crumbled to dust a few moments after reintegration. Microscopic analysis revealed fundamental changes in their structure at the molecular level.”

The senator swallowed. “And…the animal?”

Arthur glanced at Jamie. The blonde examined her blank legal pad.

Olaf straightened up in his chair. “We’re pretty sure it was dead the moment we reintegrated it.”

“Pretty sure?”

“The autopsy was inconclusive,” he shrugged. “If it was alive, it couldn’t’ve been for more than a second or two.”

“Are you sure?”

“We’re sure,” muttered Jamie.

Mike picked up his pen and wrote
TOLD YOU
! on the pad. He angled it to Reggie. Reggie ignored him.

The Asian man tapped his report. “That was an unauthorized animal experiment, was it not?”

“Yes, sir, it was,” said Arthur. “And the reports from that hearing, the ethics committee, and the Humane Society should be included in the packets you have. We are…all of us on the Albuquerque Door Project are ashamed of what we let happen. Of what we did then. I can absolutely assure you it will never happen again.”

The Asian man nodded. “Please, go on.”

“As I was saying,” continued Arthur, “our second wave experiments forced us to agree with prevailing theories. Physical teleportation was simply not going to be possible at our current level of technology. Possibly not ever, as many noted quantum theorists have said.”

A low grumble started at one end of the board’s table and made its way across.

“I can’t believe you’re funding someone who told you they could build a teleporter,” whispered Mike.

“I’m not,” said Reggie. “I’m funding Cross because he’s done it.”

“However,” continued Arthur, “during our hiatus, Dr. Johansson and I had the idea that the secret to instant travel might not be trying to manipulate the traveler, but rather to manipulate the distance traveled.”

Mike’s ants paused in their endless movement, just for a moment.

The athletic woman made a show of flipping her report open and referring to something. “And how would you manipulate distances, Dr. Cross?”

“Distance is a relative term,” said Arthur. “When you start applying the idea of additional dimensions, it can be manipulated very easily.”

Reggie cleared his throat for attention. Mike, the scientists, and the board members all turned to him. “Ummm…Just for the record,” Reggie said, “and, again, the benefit of our nonscientific members, could you explain that a little more?”

Arthur nodded. “Of course.” He ignored the pen in front of him and pulled one from inside his coat. The scientist made two exaggerated dots on opposite corners of the legal pad and stood up—without using his cane, Mike noticed. “For our purposes, let’s say these dots exist in a two-dimensional universe, the sheet of paper,” he said, adopting the tone of college lecturers across the globe. He displayed the sheet to the room. “Simple enough, yes?”

There were a few nods from the assembled board members.

“Mr. Magnus, since you suggested it, how far apart would you say these two dots are?”

Reggie eyed the paper. “If I remember my geometry,” he said, “something like fourteen inches, right?”

“Close enough,” Arthur said with a nod. He tore the sheet off the notepad with a flourish, and folded it in half. “Now how far apart are they?”

“Eight inches, maybe.”

The physicist folded the paper the other way. “And now?”

“Less than half an inch, if that.”

“And yet,” said Arthur, “to any creatures in the paper’s two-dimensional world, nothing has changed. Their universe is unaltered, and the dots are still fourteen inches apart. But if they had the means to perceive our three-dimensional space, to cross through it, and reenter their own, they could go from point A to point B with just a single step.

“In a similar manner, we manipulate the distance the Albuquerque Door covers by creating a path across another dimension, an alternate quantum state, if you will. One in which our own dimension appears folded back on itself. Where A and B are one step apart.”

“The paper bit was your idea?” whispered Mike.

Reggie gave a small nod and lowered his voice. “It’s how he explained it to me the first time I asked him. It’s a nice visual for us little common folk.”

The buzz cut colonel tapped his pen on the end of his file. “So you’ve found another dimension that allows this?”

“That’s the whole crux of our project,” Olaf said. Mike found it amazing how much veiled condescension the man could work into his voice. “We don’t need to find it. We just tell our equipment we have and everything works accordingly.”

“And that works?”

“To date,” said Arthur with a cough, “it has worked over four hundred times without any side effects or consequences. One hundred sixty-seven times with human subjects. There has never been a failure in the system.”

“Never?”

“Never.” The older man sat down as he repeated the word. Olaf and Jamie both crossed their arms.

Mike frowned and glanced at Reggie. Reggie gave him a quick shake of the head. Mike snatched up his pen again and scribbled out
IF NEVER
—
WHY ME
? on the pad.

“So, how safe is it?” asked the colonel.

“Utterly safe,” said Arthur.

The Asian man tapped his pen on the table. “What about Benjamin Miles?”

A small swarm of ants carried out images and sounds. Mike had
visited Washington thirty-two months ago. Reggie had introduced the freshly promoted assistant director as they walked past him in the hall. Short, but with strong shoulders, a square jaw, and sun-blond hair. His tie pin had been a tiny silver-and-red Captain America shield. His office was three doors down from Reggie’s, on the left.

A low murmur passed through the room. A few glances flitted over to Reggie. Olaf and Jamie shifted in their seats. The colonel and the senator leaned forward. Arthur met their gazes.

BEN
? scribbled Mike. Reggie shook his head again.

“The problems Mr. Miles has had are regrettable, of course,” said Arthur. “We all liked him during his brief visit to San Diego. But they have nothing to do with the Albuquerque Door.”

“He used it,” said the Asian man. It was not at all a question. “Seven weeks ago. And then his first episode happened right afterward.”

“His first episode also happened right after he flew back to Washington on Virgin America,” said Arthur. “Have you spoken with Richard Branson?”

Mike glanced at Reggie again, but his friend’s face was a blank slab.

“That’s not an answer,” said the Asian man.

“You haven’t asked a question,” said Arthur. “You’ve falsely imputed a line of cause and effect between the Door and Mr. Miles’s condition. I can tell you with absolute certainty the Door had nothing to do with it.”

“How?”

“Because the Door doesn’t affect the traveler in any way,” said Arthur. “It’s still possible to be hurt by misusing the equipment itself, but that would have nothing to do with the actual act of traveling.”

“So it’s dangerous to some degree,” said the colonel.

“It’s like asking if a freeway is dangerous,” Olaf said. “A freeway’s just a long strip of pavement. In and of itself, it’s harmless. But it’s still possible to get hurt on one if somebody does something stupid.”

The colonel considered this and scribbled a note.

The athletic woman who’d begun the meeting flipped through her file again. “Dr. Cross,” she said, “there’s no actual specifications for your project here.”

“No, ma’am,” said Arthur.

“Is there another file?”

“No,” he said. “Part of our agreement is that we don’t share our research,
findings, or technology with anyone until the project is ready to go public.”

Her eyes widened a bit. “But this is a review board.”

There was a moment as the scientists and board members looked at one another. Reggie leaned close to Mike. “This is why you’re here,” he murmured.

“Doctor,” said the man with the glasses. “We’re going to need to see your research if we’re going to have any discussion about extending your budget for another year.”

“As I just explained,” Arthur said, “no one sees our work until the Albuquerque Door goes public. Not one equation, not one line of code, not one blueprint. This was the deal we worked out with Mr. Magnus when we switched our research over from SETH.”

Several heads turned to look at Reggie. He didn’t flinch.

The Air Force colonel slapped his file closed. “Why are we just hearing about this now?”

“Because you don’t read your e-mail,” said Olaf. “This has been the standing agreement for almost two years now.”

“It seems like we’re done, then,” said the senator, shooting a tired look at Reggie. “If you can’t show us any actual results, we can hardly be expected to continue your funding.”

“On the contrary,” said Arthur. “We can show you the only result that really matters. As I said, the Albuquerque Door works.”

“Do you have video?” asked the Asian man.

Arthur shook his head. “On site, but nothing we’ll allow out of our labs.”

Another sigh of frustration from the board.

Mike picked up the pen, but Reggie set a hand on his wrist and eased it back down.

“I’m sorry,” said Arthur, “but it was decided very early on that all information regarding the workings of this project would be on a strict need-to-know basis.”

“Well, for the funds we’re being asked to contribute,” said the man with glasses, “I think we need to know.”

“Why?” asked Jamie. “None of you are physicists. You’re not engineers. You’re not programmers. You wouldn’t understand anything we gave you anyway.”

“But we have people who would,” said the athletic woman.

“And that,” said Arthur, “is why we’re not sharing information with anyone.”

They all focused on him. Jamie and Olaf straightened up, flanking their boss. He glanced at Reggie for support and got a small nod.

Arthur took a brief moment to collect his thoughts. “The Albuquerque Door,” he said, “is the greatest thing mankind has achieved since we reached the Moon. Possibly since the creation of the steam engine. It’s not exaggeration to say it is going to change everything. Transportation, communication, commerce, the energy industry, space exploration, all of it. Every human being on the planet will have their lives changed by this technology once it’s released.

“Until then, we can’t risk having it leak out in bits and pieces. You show it to your aides and consultants, they each share it with their own staff, their staff members share it with their assistants and departments. Some of them might even talk about it with friends and family members. That’s a hundred people, just off this one meeting, and the more people who have access to that information, the better chances it will get out there. To be blunt,” he said, gesturing at Olaf and Jamie, “this is our life’s work, and we’re not going to risk it being torn apart and fought over by vultures before we’re allowed to say anything publicly.”

“So this is about recognition,” said the colonel.

“Of course it is,” said Olaf. “Have you been paying attention? We’re going to win every Nobel Prize for the next ten years. Even the ones for Economics, Physiology, and Literature. We’re going to get them just on general principle.”

“I can understand your concern,” the Asian man said, “but this isn’t like handing over your college thesis to an old professor who can’t work his e-mail. We’re talking about the federal government.”

“Yes,” said Jamie, “exactly.”

“You can’t keep your own secrets,” Olaf said, “but you want us to believe you’ll do a better job with ours?”

The colonel’s jaw shifted.

Reggie cleared his throat and the athletic woman glanced over at him. “Mr. Magnus?”

“I understand this seems highly irregular,” he said, “but it really isn’t any different than the numerous high-security programs DARPA has
carried out for your branches and departments in the past. On and off the books.”

The senator muttered something at her file, and then turned her attention to Reggie. “So DARPA expects us to just funnel an extra three hundred million into this project based on…what? No explanations, no status reports, nothing.”

“Based on the fact that it works,” said Olaf. Arthur hushed him with a wave. Olaf threw himself back into his chair and crossed his arms.

Reggie pointed a finger at Olaf. “The man has a point,” he said. “In fact, it’s the only point that matters. The Albuquerque Door works. I’ve seen it work with my own eyes. We’re not talking about another year to see if they can get results, we’re talking about another year so they can finish testing and have ironclad documentation that no one will question.”

“But without knowing what they’re doing—”

“We know what they’re doing,” Reggie said, cutting off the senator. “They’ve built a system that lets you go from New York to London with one step. That’s exactly what they said they were going to do.”

The man with the glasses tapped his pen against the file folder. “Even though none of us knows how it works.”

“None of
you
know how it works,” said Arthur.

Reggie raised two fingers and the athletic woman said his name again. “When we hire the best chef in the world to cater a dinner,” he said, “we don’t expect him to share his recipes. He’s just supposed to serve the food we ask for and make sure that it’s exactly what we want. That’s what Dr. Cross and his team have done. They’re giving us a taste of some great food with the understanding that we’ll get even more—and the recipe, too—somewhere down the line, when it’s perfect.”

The athletic woman leaned over and whispered to the Asian man. He nodded and glanced over at the senator. The Air Force colonel was still glaring at Olaf.

“In addition,” said Reggie, leaning forward again, “I’m sending one of my top men to do a full on-site evaluation. He’ll be bringing back a detailed report of the project for your examination.”

He gestured across his body to Mike.

Everyone in the room followed the gesture. The board members. The scientists. The seven people taking notes. Mike could feel their stares
on his skin. Arthur Cross straightened up. Jamie’s eyes narrowed. Olaf scowled.

“I haven’t agreed to anything,” he whispered.

“Too late now,” murmured Reggie.

“Well,” said the athletic woman, “under the circumstances it seems like the question and answer session we had scheduled for this afternoon is a bit pointless.” She closed her file and exchanged a few glances with the other board members. “I think that’s that, then. Many thanks to you and your team for coming out this morning, Dr. Cross. You’ve given us a bit to think about.”

He bowed his head.

“Mr. Magnus,” she continued, “I think we’ll still want a few words with you after lunch.”

“I thought you might.”

She nodded. “Let’s be back here at one-thirty then.”

The board members rose, were joined by aides, and broke off into pairs and trios. The scientists huddled together and spoke in low whispers. Their gazes flicked between Reggie and Mike.

“That,” said Mike, “was very uncool.”

“You’ve been hanging around teenagers too long.”