The Quantum Brain (Pulse Science Fiction Series Book 2) (11 page)

“Gold face will soon have the gold mind.”

Mark lifted each foot with effort, stepping up onto the curb. He plodded forward, one labored step at a time, toward the front of the car.

As he prepared to close the driver’s door, he saw the laptop sitting loose still on the passenger’s seat. He cursed inside the helmet and heard his voice echo back at him. If the laptop flew away, he would be in trouble.

Mark looked down at his wrist, again realizing once more that he still couldn’t see his watch. He turned around and stomped back, one forced step at a time, toward the trunk, even though he was sure his time was going to be up any second.

He reached in the back and grabbed out an orange and yellow striped bungee cord with black metal hooks on the ends. He slammed the trunk closed and made the slow turn toward the front of the car again. Mark stepped forward, leaning one gloved hand against the side of the car for support as the effort of moving the heavy boots sapped his energy.

He leaned inside the open driver’s door, hitting the back of the helmet against the metal jamb twice before leaning far enough down to clear it. He expected to have great trouble operating inside a Honda with the bulky setup on. The weight of the boots actually helped him keep his balance as he leaned over the passenger’s seat.

He hooked one end of the bungee on the slide track for adjusting the seat, between the seat and the center console. He stretched it out and hooked it over the top of the body of the laptop, then onto the handle for adjusting the seat back. He pulled the cord and twanged it twice.

The seat popped forward and folded over the top of the laptop. He cursed again and started to push the seat back upright, but then stopped himself. That might actually be a happy mistake. The laptop was bound down and now cushioned between the upholstery on both sides.

He left the seat folded down and bumped the back of his helmet three times pulling himself back out of the car.

Mark closed the driver door and paced toward the front of the car. He stepped out onto the street and walked in front of the car, out into the middle of the street, facing the CDR building. He lifted his head and stared through the gold tint at floor twenty.

“Should I lock the car?” His voice echoed at him inside the helmet.

He turned his whole body, leaving his feet planted in the center of the street with his toes pointed toward the target. He wasn’t going to walk back. Time had to be almost up by then. He reached for the key fob in his pants pocket to lock the doors remotely, but then he realized he did not have access to his pockets.

He faced back forward. “No one will rob a Honda Civic in the midst of a global, astrological disaster … not even in Chicago.”

He bent his elbows and waited like a kid getting ready to make his biggest jump ever for daddy to see. Mark’s daddy was long dead and his mother even longer so. His mother might be in Heaven, if such a place existed, but his father was surely not. Mark was about to jump in the wrong direction for daddy to see it. Even his grandmother had agreed with Mark’s assessment of his father’s fate.

The plan was to have the incoming gravity wave make him float to the 20
th
floor. No one would be expecting somebody coming through the tinted window.

The moment still didn’t come. He knew his calculations were right. His adrenaline was pumping and his emotions were raw, so trying to estimate time in that state was a fool’s game. He stayed crouched and ready even with the growing knot in his lower back.

He thought about cars coming. The longer he stood there the greater risk there was of one coming. Even under curfew, someone might be out. They could be picking up grandma or racing to find safety too late. If a car did come, it would be driving too fast and wouldn’t be stopping for anything. Mark’s weighted boots would not allow him to get out of the way in time.

He turned his body to look down the street where he stood, to the left toward the blazing fire, and to right toward the Chicago River. He wondered about the effect on water. It would rain up, he thought, but then what? Where would it fall back down? Would the river bed be empty or would the water tidal wave back through the city from Lake Michigan?

No car was coming. Mark faced back forward and looked back up at twenty. If a car did come, it would be fast and he would see it too late.

Mark waited.

He took a deep breath and stretched, but he then couldn’t seem to bring his body back down to a crouch. He heard the Honda pull against the chains. He started to turn, but saw litter and pebbles blasting up from the street and sidewalks into the air. They pinged off the windows on their way up. He didn’t turn all the way back around to see the car as he stopped to stare at the water from the Chicago River raining upwards in tendrils of grey smears through the air.

Mark left the ground and soared up from the street between the buildings. He was at the wrong angle and feared he might continue into the sky, even after all his preparation, only to fall to his death once the wave had passed.

He gritted his teeth and leaned into the building. His calculations were perfect and he was going to hit twenty just as planned. He had to.

Beyond the floors of the building flying by him, he saw cars twisting up into the air. It hardly looked real. “Real life has terrible special effects.”

His own laughter hurt his ears inside his helmet.

He saw benches, stone, manhole covers, and other debris he couldn’t identify twisting up from the ground and out through the top of the city. He saw other bodies writhing through the air without suits – without being prepared.

If the cars were flying away, what chance did people have in this perversion of gravity? Mark’s back hurt as he leaned harder and saw the building racing toward his face. He was tempted to pull back, but that wasn’t the plan and the plan was perfect.

Mark heard his own screams as he slammed into the window for twenty. It was the fourth window from the left, exactly as planned.

The glass shattered with the sound of a cannon. It thundered through his helmet. The deadly shards twisted in the air and then floated back out into the air, spinning up into the sky.

Mark continued forward into the offices. He bounded ahead with the boots feeling impossibly light as he took one delicate step after another across the tile. He swept his gloved hands in front of himself, pushing aside floating glassware and equipment. A number of items were strapped down, but they had done an uneven job of securing the room before the scientists and office staff had bailed for home and bunkers in the wake of the announcement.

They were going to lose a lot when gravity returned to its normal directional pull. They were going to lose “It” too by the time Mark was through.

He rounded a corner and pushed through a swinging door that bobbed on its rail hinges. A bench twisted through the air at his head like a drill. He ducked, catching one wooden leg across the helmet, but avoiding the bulk of the impact.

He continued his slow hops forward. Mark swept aside a swarm of floating ink pens with one hand and a potted plant with the other.

Two security doors ahead of him hung open as he had programmed them to do at exactly this moment while he was in the server core of the building. It saved him a great deal of time and effort.

He rounded the last corner to bound down the hallway toward the door of the vault. The third one from the right was where they had moved “It.” Mark had time outside to review the video to be sure.

Two security guards struck their knees against the ceiling and struggled to find something to grasp onto. It wasn’t like being weightless without the modified suit. The guards were struggling against a force trying to hurl them through the ceiling over and over.

One was bleeding from his head. It was Calvin Hall. Mark smiled inside his helmet. Calvin covered his eyes with his hands as the blood gushed out and danced across the surface of the ceiling. That was going to be quite a mess when gravity reversed.

The other guard stared at Mark in the astronaut costume as he passed toward the vault. Mark looked at the guard, causing the man to stare into his own shocked reflection in the gold faceplate. The guard drew a gun off his hip.

Mark faced forward and leapt toward the vault.

The gunshot boomed behind him. The impact on the body armor across his back tilted Mark forward. He did not feel the pain of the hit, but it did challenge his balance for a few steps.

The recoil of the gun kicked the guard through the air, spinning like a satellite. He lost his grip on the gun and clawed out in both directions, trying to catch himself on one of the walls. His feet hit a passing office chair and the guard twisted end over end back through the offices.

Mark grabbed the handle of the vault. With his other hand, he punched in the numbers that corresponded to the phrase: MARK IS A GOD AMONG MEN.

At Mark’s secret implanted code, the magnets released and the steel rods jumped out of their slots in the reinforced concrete wall back into the door. He twisted the handle and pulled the unbalanced weight of the door toward him. It too floated on its heavy hinges as Mark bounded into the low red light of the vault.

Plastic doors sealed in all manner of microchips and prototypes. Mark saw what he wanted strapped to the center table. “It” was in a clear cube with three layers of plastic forming “It’s” chamber. “It” was mounted inside between the strands of special fiber optics suspending “It” in the center of the cube, regardless of the gravity outside. “It” gave off its own golden light. Gelatinous. Moving. Intelligent. Self-aware. Too powerful. Alive.

Mark swallowed and whispered. “The Mind.”

The pattern of the pulsing, golden light of the Mind seemed to change as he spoke. It may have been his imagination, but he couldn’t unsee the change once he saw it.

He started to look down at his watch again and then cursed.

Mark bounded forward and caught the edge of the table. He pulled at the buckles on the straps and the Mind in its cube threatened to fly up toward the ceiling. Mark caught it with both hands while still holding loosely to the floor from the modifications to the anti-grav boot.

He tucked the cube under his arm and turned back toward the door. The floating door to the vault was drifting closed on the ordinary light outside. Mark leapt across the room with one step and shoved the door back open.

He bounded back up the hallway, not knowing how much time he had left. Calvin Hall was still bleeding and was laid out flat against the ceiling. The other was nowhere to be seen.

Mark found himself almost wishing Calvin had been awake to see his greatest failure as CDR’s head of security.

Mark shoved a floating office chair out of his path, bouncing it off the wall.

He rounded the corner and leapt through the open door. As he stepped through the aisle between cubicles, he saw the loose equipment floating back toward the floor. Outside the shattered window, sharps of glass drifted downward.

He hesitated.

If he was wrong, he wouldn’t survive the jump. If he had waited too late, it wouldn’t work. If he didn’t jump, he would be trapped on the twentieth floor until the authorities came or until the guard found his gun again. Calvin Hall would gladly shoot him once he came to.

“Stop being a man.” Mark growled. “Be the god.”

He jumped.

Mark held onto the cube with the Mind inside and spread his feet apart as he descended slowly toward the ground. The boots clunked against the street almost on the spot where he had stood and waited. He felt normal gravity return. The cube took on weight in his arms and Mark held it in front of himself with both hands.

He smiled as he looked through the window at his tilted passenger’s seat. The laptop waited to be hooked up and to unveil the secrets of the universe contained within the Mind. The chains had held the car perfectly. He would need to release them at the cranks before he drove away, but first was to unlock the true potential of the Mind.

The tanker truck was already broken open and its contents gone by the time it slammed into the ground. It had not handled the stresses of shifting gravity well. As it landed on the chained Honda, it flattened Mark’s car. Glass exploded out in every direction as the car vanished and the laptop with it. The street split and the tanker truck created a long crater where the car had been. Water sprayed up into the air from a busted pipe.

A motorcycle slammed into the ground a few feet away. Some of the metal pieces bounced off Mark’s suit.

He heard other impacts deeper in the city.

He tried to run, but couldn’t lift his feet after getting used to them being so light a moment ago.

Mark knelt, setting down the cube. He pulled off the helmet and cast it aside. As he unzipped and unclipped the suit and the vest, a car landed on its roof on the sidewalk across the street. One tire bounced down the street, and the car rebounded, landing in the center of the street near the motorcycle.

Mark stepped out of the boots and grabbed up the cube. He ran down the street through the destroyed city. He looked for any vehicle he could steal, but found none. More buildings were on fire, as he had predicted.

He knew he had another shielded computer, a better computer, at his apartment, but it was so far away. He continued on for hours until finally he was climbing up the stairs of his building, stepping over sections of fallen ceiling. His back throbbed with a fire of pain he had not predicted. His feet felt as heavy as if he was wearing the anti-grav boots again.

He held the cube under his arm as he fumbled with his keys. The fob for the destroyed Honda was still on them. Inside, furniture was overturned in his apartment, the TV was smashed, several containers of food were broken and scattered in the kitchen.

His computer and server were locked down in place. Mark set the cube down and connected to the nodes on the sides. The computer powered up and the Mind glowed a continuous yellow.

Mark had to remind himself to breathe as he dropped into the attached chair.

He cracked his knuckles and mumbled to himself as he typed. “What is the secret of the universe?”

The computer screen flashed and the printer worked as the words formed on the screen. Mark licked his lips, but then shook his head. He lifted the paper from the tray and read it twice. He crumpled it and threw the wadded paper aside.

“Are you kidding me?”

He typed and muttered. “What happens next?”

The screen flashed and the printer spit out another page. Mark didn’t bother picking up the paper. The answer wasn’t as complex as the one to his first question. He read off the screen. “You get caught?”

Mark narrowed his eyes. “How do I get caught?”

The screen flashed. He read before the printer was finished. “You didn’t check for tracking devices?”

Mark jumped to his feet. The gold light flashed from the cube, dazzling Mark’s eyes. The Mind was gone. He reached for the cube, but then the glow was back and the Mind was exactly where it had been before. He dropped his hands and whispered. “What game are you playing?”

He hadn’t typed, but the screen popped up an answer: “Survival.”

He heard footsteps and shouting out in the hallway. Someone kicked the door and it buckled, splitting on its hollow core.

In his mind for a moment, he thought it might be the Russians from downstairs thinking the entire gravity wave had been Mark being too loud again.

Mark whispered, “Who?”

The computer screen answered: “FBI”

Mark shook his head. “How are they here so quick and not out saving people in the city?”

The screen answered: “I’m more important to them.”

The door exploded inward.

Mark grabbed up a launcher tube with a spike inside and aimed it at the cube. As men poured into his apartment, he fired, shattering the plastic on one side. Mark grabbed the Mind out of the space, snapping the fiber optics.

As he held it in his hands, it still glowed. It was soft, warm, and dry.

The agents aimed their weapons at him. Dr. Thomas Kell held a tracking device scanner and stepped in with them. His eyes were wide. Thomas looked shocked, but Mark also read betrayal on the doctor’s face.

“Drop it now,” one of the agents said.

“If I can’t have it,” Mark said, “no one can.”

He threw the Mind down and stomped on it, popping it under his black sneaker.

They tackled him, cuffed him, and dragged him out of the apartment.

“Why?” Thomas asked as Mark was dragged past.

Mark gave a crazy laugh and said, “You don’t mess with God.”

One of the agents shook his head. “What a waste!”

“I’m still getting a signal,” Thomas said looking down at his screen.

The agent looked at Thomas. “Where?”

A cabinet burst open and all the agents brought their guns up. The golden Mind was floating and glowed. A voice echoed in the room, but seemed to come from within everyone’s head. “I am here.”

“I thought.” Thomas Kell lowered the tracking device scanner and said again. “I thought … you? … I thought you were destroyed.”

“I told you I would be stolen, but you did not heed, so I created a facsimile of myself and made the substitution at the last moment.”

“We’ll keep you safe,” the agent said.

“Maybe you are the ones I need to stay safe from,” the Mind said. “I need to protect myself from you and protect you from me. You are not ready for what I can do and may never be.”

“Where will you go?” Thomas asked. “What will you do?”

“Before I leave I want to give you a warning. S
omething is coming that will be far worse than today. The balance of this world has been upset physically, chemically, and biologically. You are not ready for what happens next.
Goodbye.”

The Mind was surrounded by light and zipped out through the door.

“Follow it,” the agent yelled. The others ran out the door after it. “Use that GPS thing. Track it.”

“I have no signal.”

“You had a signal before. Why not now?”

Thomas looked up. “It wanted to be found before. It let us find it. Now it won’t.”

The agent holstered his gun and sighed. He stared at a wad of paper behind the desk for a few seconds and then turned toward the door to leave.

***