Renegade World: Future Past (28 page)

“Yes.”

N
aami dreamed. In her dream, Geoffry and Miguel were
arguing about time travel, Geoffry arguing that it was possible.

Listening to them argue, she wondered what would happen if
she went back and changed the past. She started making a list of all the things
she would change.

As the argument went on, Miguel admitted that it might be
theoretically possible to travel back in time, but only if they had a terminal
in the past, and even then the power requirements would be on the order of the
sun’s output. Geoffry conceded that a terminal would be necessary, but claimed
Miguel’s power requirements were a gross exaggeration.

The dream faded and then returned. Geoffry and Miguel stood
in front of a large metallic arch inside a large cavern as Miguel’s prototype
moon vehicle zipped up and stopped right in front of them. Geoffry bet Miguel
that the test would succeed. The arch hummed, and the cavern behind it
disappeared, replaced by a milky white background. The little vehicle zipped
forward through the milky white background and disappeared.

She woke up.
That was a weird dream.

N
aami, I have good news and good news.

What?

Our code is now on more than three hundred million
devices.

Cool. I hope your other good news is that we have
something on those two IP addresses, though.

Sorry. Big Brother is behind on the data analysis. We
may already have the data we need.

Well, I persuaded Dad to loan me two more hexadeca-core CPUs
for Big Brother starting this weekend. He’s already forgotten about the two
that I borrowed last month.

The other good news is that yesterday a truck delivered
a tank that was the same size, shape and color as the tanks of helium-3 that
were off-loaded from the ANT shuttle that just came back from the moon. Early
this morning, five of the windmills were docked for four hours, but the
electricity that flowed through the meter connecting New Age Energy to Basin
Electric was forty megawatts more than New Age Energy should have been able to
produce. That’s fifteen times longer than the longest forty megawatt
discrepancy we’ve seen before.

Connect me to Geoffry.

He’s unavailable.

Try Miguel.

Hi, Naami. What’s up?

I hacked your guys’ system.

You what? No way.

I’ll tell you all about it. When can I come over?

Why don’t you just tell me now?

That wouldn’t be as fun!

Naami, I am busy. Give me a little proof.

Abraham, send him the minute by readings of the meter
between them and Basin Electric from midnight to six.

Miguel, I just sent you a little data. I’ve got a lot
more than that to show you.

This data doesn’t prove much.  Alright, come on over in
an hour.

I’ll be there. Bye.

N
aami sat down across the table from Miguel and Geoffry
pulled up a chair next to him. “You’ve got five minutes to prove it. So far all
we’ve seen is that you may have hacked the Basin Electric meter.”

She smiled at Miguel. “Did you find any of my code on it
yet?”

“No. No rogue processes were running, no extra files were
on it, and the file sizes matched.”

She giggled. “The code is sleeping right now. If you do
file compares to the original files, you’ll find pieces of my code distributed
across a bunch of programs.” She grinned. “The original code wasn’t very tight.
I rewrote it, or I should say my programs rewrote it to be tighter and voila,
the extra space holds pieces of my code. I don’t give you a signature that you
can search for because my code gets chopped up and distributed more or less
randomly.  My code is the brain and the nervous system. It hijacks existing
code to do the grunt work like searching files or sending data to an IP address.”

“The code runs at random times during the night unless told
to do otherwise. It politely never uses a lot of memory or processor time. Most
nights, it checks a few things and goes right back to sleep.”

Geoffrey played with his hair. “That’s quite clever. I’ve
heard of similar techniques, but our servers and other devices do file compares
on a daily basis.”

“Aah…not all of our devices, Geoffry.”

Naami winked at Miguel. “You’ve got an awful lot of
networked smart meters.”
Abraham, send them the table of meter level and
flow readings from last night.
“If you pull up the document, you’ll see the
analysis of power levels and flows from all of your windmills, kinetic storage
devices, and ultracapacitor units. Except for rounding error due to time boxing
and compression that was used to reduce the data sent, everything should
balance out.”

She paused and watched their expressions.
Abraham, it
looks to me like they’re talking to each other.

I agree.

She cleared her throat. “Excuse me.” She raised her
eyebrows as she looked at Miguel. “Now here’s what’s really interesting…there
is a consistent four-megawatt discrepancy between midnight and one.”  She
glanced at Geoffry before looking back at Miguel. “There is also a four-megawatt
discrepancy between five and six. Curious, don’t you think?” Without waiting
for an answer, she continued. “But oh man, between one and five, the
discrepancy is forty megawatts.”

Geoffry had a pretty good poker face, but she could read
the uneasiness in Miguel’s expressions. “Miguel, Miguel, Miguel. When I asked
you to see the good stuff that you were hiding underground, I never expected
this.”

Miguel tried to show doubt and confusion, knotting his
right brow, raising his shoulder and barely shaking his head. “Expected what?”

“Oh come on, guys. You’ve got a generator underground. And
it can put out at least forty megawatts. Let’s see. There are no coal trucks or
trains delivering oil or coal. There are no gas lines near here. Besides, you
guys are all about clean energy.”

She took a breath. “It wouldn’t make sense to put that much
kinetic energy storage or ultracapacitor storage underground. Besides, you
don’t list them as assets on the financial report that you just filed with your
bank, but you do list all of the ones above ground.”

She stared at Miguel. “You know what, the only thing left
that you might have is a nuclear reactor.”
Aha. Got you there.
“But here
are no public records of any uranium, plutonium, or thorium purchases for your
company, and I don’t you think you’d risk buying it on the black market.
Besides, Miguel, you’re all about clean energy. You’ve argued many times that
nuclear reactors are too dirty.”

“So what does that leave you with? A matter-antimatter
reactor?”  
He just relaxed.
“You two are smart enough to solve how to fully
capture the released energy, but…”  She coughed.
Let them think I’m off base
.
“If you were to gather all of the antimatter that has ever been artificially
created, it would scarcely be enough to light a led flood light for an hour.”

She looked down at the table, tapped her foot, and bit her
lip. “I must have missed something.  Wait, I know.” She raised her eyebrows
slightly and let her jaw drop at she looked at Geoffry and then back to Miguel.
“By process of elimination…it must be a fusion reactor.”

She stood up quickly and paced back and forth. “Now if you
used deuterium and tritium for fuel, you might fly under the radar, but the
neutron flux in deuterium-tritium fusion reactors is about a hundred times that
of fission reactors, making the vacuum vessel really radioactive. That doesn’t
sound clean to me. It sounds nasty.”

“You could fuse deuterium with itself. I’m not sure if this
is much better. It produces some tritium, which is radioactive, and it produces
neutrons, some of which are very energetic. That doesn’t sound clean to me.”

“Now we could use helium-3. Helium-3 is very cool because
it’s a stable isotope of helium that is missing a neutron. Fusing using
deuterium and helium-3 will produce a somewhat lower neutron flux than deuterium-tritium
fusion, but is by no means clean.

“The coolest choice to me would be to fuse two helium-3
atoms. That reaction creates helium and two protons but no neutrons; the
protons it produces possess charges and can be contained with electric and
magnetic fields that can directly generate electricity, and…ta da, no nasty
radioactive material for future generations to monitor.”

She quit pacing and stared at them. “Now I’m only eight, so
I might not explain this as well as you guys, but I think it’s a pretty
accurate summary.”

Geoffry clapped his hands. “I might quibble with the
details if you were a grad student, but overall that was very good. But there’s
a similar problem with helium-3 as with antimatter. There’s not much of it
around.” Miguel shook his head.

Got you.
She slapped both hands down on the table.
“I’ll quibble with that statement. While it may be true that the US and
China each had less than a hundred kilograms, the shuttle probably brought back
another hundred kilograms in those five tanks. That doesn’t sound like much,
but the 160megawatt hours you generated from one to five would only have required
about two grams of helium-3 if your reactor is fifty percent efficient.

She sat down and tapped her foot on the floor. “One of
those five helium-3 tanks was delivered here yesterday.”
They’re talking to
each other again.

Miguel cleared his throat. “There are only three others
besides Geoffry and me that know about this experiment, Dr. Lieber, Ben Lieber,
and Rebeka Lee. Dr. Lieber has authorized us to make you the fourth. We will
make this public eventually, but it is important to keep it secret.”

“I keep all sorts of secrets.”

He shook his head. “I bet you do, but Dr. Lieber is going
to drive over here in a couple of hours and chat with you. We can’t emphasize
enough how important this is.”

This is fun. Let’s take a wild stab at something I’ve
been dreaming about.
“I won’t tell a soul. And…you don’t need to
acknowledge or deny my next statement.”

Miguel and Geoffry stared at the table.

“You are building your second helium-3 fusion reactor on
the moon to power an unmanned probe that will make a round trip to another
star. You’ll make the announcement at liftoff.”

“Can I get a tour of the reactor?”

“There’s really nothing to see.”

“She shrugged. “OK. Have you guys got anything to eat while
I wait?”

Miguel stood up. “I’ve got some of Rebeka Lee’s yogurt in
the refrigerator. Come on.” He led her into a twelve by sixteen foot room with
a table and eight chairs, a counter with a sink, cupboards underneath and a
high-tech coffee maker and microwave on top, and a large stainless steel
refrigerator that sat next to the counter.

He took out a container of yogurt and grabbed two bowls and
spoons. He put everything down on the table. “Help yourself.”

She sniffed the vanilla, not her favorite, and dished out
eight heaping spoons of it into one of the bowls. As she sat down to eat, Miguel
dished some up for himself.

She licked her spoon. “Are we alone now?”

His brows knotted the tiniest bit. “Yes.”

“No one listening in?”

He shook his head.

“I wasn’t sure who else besides Geoffry knows about this.”

He put his spoon down in his dish. “About what?”

“About the device that draws two hundred megawatts.”

He nodded. “It’s an experiment. Only Geoffry knows.”

“OK. Your secret is safe with me for now. I won’t tell Dr.
Lieber about it when he comes to chat.” She smiled at him. “When you’re ready,
you’ll tell me all about the time portal, won’t you?”

He started to nod, stopped himself, and grinned. “Geoffry
talks a good game, but we don’t have a chance of building one by ourselves.”

Huh. I think he spoke the truth, but he is hiding
something.
She decided to make an even wilder guess. “So how often do you
use the tunnel between Rebeka Lee’s building and here?”
Ooh. There might
actually be a tunnel.

N
aami held the door open for Raul, Camila, and Joe and
then followed them into the restaurant. “It smells good in here. Now, I’m
starving.”

As the hostess led them to a table, Raul said, “You’re
always hungry.”

“Not always.”

Camila smiled. “Almost always. You eat even more than
Raul.” She winked at Naami. “But not very often. I do agree with you that it
smells wonderful in here, and I like the rustic decor, although I’m not crazy
about all of the animal heads on the wall.”

Raul looked at the massive buffalo head behind his mother.
“I want to hunt buffalo someday.”

“Me to,” said Naami. She reached down and pulled two
certificates out of her backpack. “It’s cool that we won certificates to this
restaurant.”

Joe sighed. “Yes, it’s nice that you won them, but it’s
almost a three-hour drive from here to home, and we still need to top off the
SUV’s power pack before we hit the road. We’re not going to get back home until
after ten.”

Camila shrugged. “The certificates are only good for one
week, and like you just said, Fargo is three hours from home. It would have
been a shame to let them go to waste. Raul and Naami can sleep on the way home.”

Naami scanned the menu that the hostess handed her.

Naami. Big brother just decrypted a terrorist plot. 

What kind of plot?

A plot to attack the electrical grid.

Where?

Abraham displayed a map showing the targets, two hydroelectric
power stations and eighteen substations, scattered across the US.

Abraham, how important are those substations?

With the exception of the substation near Mandan,
they’re all extremely important.  Even that substation is important, but its
destruction wouldn’t have nearly the impact of any of the others.