Offworld (44 page)

It was Owen who found his voice first. `Are you saying what it
sounds like ... ? That this machine can alter reality?"

Rowley looked him dead in the eye. "That is exactly what we're
saying."

"So .. " Terry surmised with no attempt to hide his cynicism,
"that crazy stuff that happened while we were away the moon, the
T-Rex, the flying dolphins ... That was you, then, was it?"

Parks nodded. "We were perhaps not as cautious as we should
have been, in light of our extraordinary discovery. Those strange
events were us testing the limits of the machine, over several months'
time. We nearly caused a worldwide panic! The media went nuts over
the amateur footage and eyewitness accounts, playing them again
and again. But for the most part, they avoided drawing conclusions.
Though there was that one guy ... "

"Who?" asked Chris.

Parks shook his head, frowning. "His website was run anonymously. Whoever he was, he pieced together all the evidence and
started drawing conclusions. I think Roston had him killed to silence
him. Anyway, it was during these early tests of the quantum machine that we first grasped the profound strain that altering reality puts on
the machine, which led us to realize-"

Trisha shook her head, not buying it. "No way. I'm sorry, but
there is absolutely no way a man-made machine can just suddenly
have access to the kind of power it would take to alter reality. If such
power even exists."

"You're right," Parks admitted, unshaken. "We thought the same
thing when the machine began to cause these incredible things to
happen. It didn't take us long to realize that something deep inside the
machine-one of the thousands of pieces of experimental equipment
we mentioned earlier-is the key to what the machine was doing."

"There are all sorts of strange bits of technology throughout the
machine," explained Rowley, his voice slower and more reverential
than before. `But one object in particular has been there since almost
the very beginning, and it's been the source of endless debate and
theorizing by all who've worked on the machine. We call this object
`the Box.' "

"What is it?" asked Chris.

A container," replied Parks. "Obsidian black and a little smaller
than a phone booth. What it contains-what's inside the Box-we
don't know. There's no inventory of all the `stuff' that's been added
to the machine over the years, so we have no way of knowing what
it is. We don't know what's inside it, we don't know where it came
from, and we've vowed never to open it and find out."

"Why not?" asked Terry who, despite his earlier skepticism, was
having a hard time hiding his curiosity. "How can you not want to
know?"

"About twenty-five years ago," said Rowley, "a scientist working on
the Waveform Device came across the Box and, like everyone before
him, wanted to know what was inside it. He was advised not to go
near it by other members of the team, who believed it to be dangerous,
but he didn't listen. His curiosity was too great. Late one night when he was alone in the Vault, he climbed down through the machinery
and circuits to where he found the Box, and he opened it.

"He was found dead two days later. His body was sprawled out
on a catwalk next to the Box, which had somehow been closed after
he opened it. But we know he opened it, because his eyeballs were
missing from his head. Or not missing per se because an autopsy
revealed that scar tissue left in the eye sockets was actually what
was left of his eyes.

"Whatever he saw inside the Box melted his eyes."

That's ludicrous, Chris thought. But is it any crazier than every
living creature vanishing from the face of the Earth?

`And you really have no idea where this Box came from?" Chris
asked.

"No proof. Just theories," said Parks. "Some believe it to be an
artifact from some lost ancient civilization. The man who recruited
me to the project believed it was a piece torn free from the alien
craft that supposedly crashed in Roswell. But truthfully, we don't
know anything."

"Well, mostly," Rowley corrected his friend. "We know one thing.
A few weeks after 'D -Day,' as you call it, electrical power went out at
the college, as it has throughout much of the world. But the Waveform
Device-which we always assumed ran on the city power grid-kept
running. It's running now, and electricity has not been restored to
the college.

"We traced the source of the machine's power back to the Box,
or rather to whatever's inside it."

"So," Terry said, trying to sum it up, "this Box thing is like a
power generator for your machine? Is it the real reason the machine
does what it can do?"

Rowley frowned, reluctant to give this answer. "We believe it to
be, at the very least, the foundation of the machine's capabilities."

"Whatever is inside the Box," clarified Parks, "is somehow tapping into the fabric of reality. The quantum machine is allowing
us to manipulate that fabric. For a while."

Chris looked around the room at his friends.

"Then that's how you did it," he guessed. "That's how you made
the world's population disappear-or `stop existing,' as you put it.
You used this quantum machine to change reality."

Parks took a step backward, shaking his head. "It wasn't our
idea."

"Indeed not," Rowley agreed, though he maintained his
businesslike tone. "That insane notion came from the mind of Mark
Roston."

"Who is Roston?" asked Chris. `And what's his part in this?"

"Roston is career military, a veteran of several ground conflicts,
and ... he's my brother-in-law. He found out about the machine, we
assume through my wife, and cooked up this entire plot."

"But why?" Chris was leaning forward now, desperate to understand this key fact. "What does the absence of everyone on Earth
get him?"

Parks shook his head, his ponytail flopping back and forth behind
it. "He wouldn't tell us. But whatever he's up to, he's not finished.
Far from it. Roston and his people, when they are done with whatever they're doing while everyone's gone, intend to bring everyone
back."

Chris blinked. It made no sense.

Why would Roston remove the population of the planet, only to
return them later?

How does he benefit from that?

Whatever it is, it can't be good for the world.

"But he can't do it," Rowley spoke up. "He may plan to bring
everyone back, hut it won't be possible for him to do so."

"Why not?" asked Trisha.

`Because the quantum machine is tearing itself apart. It's doing something exponentially bigger than it was ever meant to do, and
the strain is too much for it to withstand"

Parks added, "Imagine trying to channel a tornado through a
drinking straw. Even for its tremendous size and all the working parts
that are in there, the machine just can't handle the power being fed to
it by the Box. And once the machine fails completely ... it's over."

A note of finality hung in the air, and Chris was beginning to
understand the burden being placed on their shoulders. "How long
until the machine falls apart?"

"A day at most," replied Rowley. "Likely far less."

Chris let out a long, slow breath. He was starting to feel jittery,
like they needed to move, to get out of there and back to Houston
as fast as they could.

"We can't be certain exactly when it will occur," Rowley went
on. "It's already happening; it started a few days ago. You've seen it
yourselves-when you find yourselves briefly in places that shouldn't
exist, places that defy the laws of physics? That's the machine taking
damage, and in turn damaging reality. And those flickers in reality
are coming faster all the time."

"There's also the spatial disturbance," added Parks. "I think you
call it `the void.' It's the machine's event horizon-we don't completely understand the void, but the machine creates it, and it emerges
whenever a change is made to reality. It's shrinking, getting smaller
by the minute. When it shrinks down to nothing, the machine will
be dead."

Chris stood. "So if we get the two of you back inside the machine
before it falls apart, then you can make it bring everyone back?"

Parks and Rowley exchanged another look. Chris was starting to
hate it when they did that.

"The two of us," said Rowley, "will never be allowed to see the
inside of the Vault again. Roston will kill us before that happens. But
not you. He could have had us kill you anytime he wanted, and we
almost did when we made your ship crash, but when you survived, he had a change of heart. He made us throw plenty of obstacles in
your way the flooding, the grocery store that collapsed, the hospital
that burned down-but his intention was to slow your progress, not
kill you. I think he may actually respect you, and even hope to recruit
you to his way of thinking. Particularly you, Commander Burke. He
seems especially fixated on you-"

"Back up for a second," said Terry. "You caused the Ares to crash?
And every other bit of awfulness that's happened to us since we got
back? The flood in Biloxi, the hurricane, the dams and levies and all
that that was you and your machine?"

,
"Yes.,

`And you saved me on Mars? Before Roston took control of the
machine?" asked Chris. "So what was with the stroll down memory
lane? And the ball of light? Why did you show me that stuff?"

Parks looked confused. "We inadvertently caused the sandstorm
that you got lost in. You fell into the tunnel on your own-that was
real. Then we pulled you out of it and deposited you where one of
your teammates would find you. And we added oxygen to your suit,
so you could survive until you were rescued. But that's it. Anything
else you saw or experienced during that time you can chalk up to
hallucinations caused by oxygen deprivation."

"But ... the strange things I saw ... they didn't happen? No basement? No ball of-George? It was all in my head?" Chris asked.

"We were watching you inside that tunnel by looking through the
spatial-by looking through the void," said Rowley. `And we never
saw anything out of the ordinary."

"But ... my memories came back. If you took them away, why
did they return?"

"The human mind is complex and unpredictable," replied Rowley,
shaking his head. "We used the machine to wipe your memories, but
the human body can find a way to compensate for almost anything
given enough time."

"What do we do now?" Trisha spoke up. "How do we get everyone
back?"

"Fortunately, it's quite easy," Parks explained. "Once you get to the
machine. Of course, you'll have to get past Roston's people, but once
you're inside the Vault, we built a fail-safe code into the machine's
software."

A fail-safe code," repeated Trisha. "One simple keystroke and
everything's undone?"

"Very nearly. Think of the disappearances like a program that's
running on your laptop. As long as that program is open and running,
the world's populace is rendered nonexistent. If the machine should
come apart on its own, as we think it will ... What happens when
your personal computer crashes? You lose whatever data you had
open at the time, if it isn't saved. And that's exactly what'll happen
to everyone that was erased. The `program' has to be closed, and the
machine shut clown while it's still able to function properly.

"The fail-safe code will do that. It will force every program currently running-and there are several, including one for the people,
and another for the animals-it will force them to close and shut
clown the machine. Bottom line: enter the code before the machine
tears itself apart, and everyone comes back. If the machine's destroyed
before you enter the code ... then the human race is lost forever."

"What's the code?" Trisha asked.

For the first time, Rowley hesitated. He opened his mouth, but
then closed it, looking away.

"You'll need to find the main data terminal-it's near the Vault's
only exit," said Parks, covering for his friend. "Once there, bring up
a command prompt and enter the three-letter code."

"What are the letters?" asked Trisha.

With a final nervous glance at Rowley, Parks replied, "M. A. E."

Terry sprang from his seat, ignoring his injury, and launched himself at
Rowley. He tackled the older man and pinned him to the ground.

"What did you do?!" he screamed in Rowley's face. "Who is
shed "

"Terry!" shouted several voices at once, but Terry ignored them
all, ready to choke the life out of this man.

"She's my daughter," whispered Rowley, his face pained and not
from Terry's hold. "She was my daughter."

Chris and Owen together tried to pull Terry off of Rowley, but he
was filled with so much righteous fury, he refused to let go.

"Was?" he said.

"She was never born. Her mother was murdered while
pregnant."

Terry froze, and finally allowed the others to pull him hack. He
studied Rowley, who remained on the ground, but propped up on
his elbows. "No, Mae told me about her mother. She died when Mae
was seven. They were both living on the streets-"