Resonance (33 page)

"But that number could be weeks out of date."

"Possibly but unlikely. It's a skewed snapshot of the data we have. Some of it's days, some of it's weeks old. But logs from the important worlds are collected daily."

"When do you run today's?"

Howard stopped what he was doing and raised his eyebrows.

"I'll do it now."

He pulled down a new menu and clicked through it until he found the program he wanted. "It'll only take a few seconds. All the RP logs are filed together."

Graham watched the screen, unsure what he was looking for. Would a number flash on the screen and, if so, where?

A box appeared in the top-left corner. The count was sixty-three.

Howard looked worried. "It could be a mistake in the program."

He ran it again.

"It assesses a project purely on whether it's filed a log entry for the most recent date. If a project used to report but stops, for whatever reason, it's counted as closed. A bank holiday could throw the figures out."

"Would you shut down a Resonance project for a bank holiday?"

Howard was silent. "Or a major computer failure. Something like that. Some of the worlds are experiencing blackouts due to the chaos."

The program stopped running and a number flashed on the screen—sixty-three.

Howard muttered to himself as he pulled down details of the sixty-three worlds and cross-checked the dates they'd last filed. Most hadn't reported for days, some for weeks.

"Damn!" he said. "I'm picking up more recent data from all these worlds. No reports of any prolonged power cuts or disturbances."

A sudden idea hit Graham.

"Can you do a cross-check on Graham Smith and hospital admissions."

He was amazed at how calm he sounded. He was asking to see a list of his counterparts—bodies he may once have lived in, faces he would have seen in the mirror every day.

Sixty-three matches appeared on the screen. Every one showed a Graham Smith admitted unconscious.

Howard put in a call for Gary and Annalise to come to 5G immediately.

"What's up?" said Gary as he entered the room.

Howard told him. Sixty-three Resonance projects closed and sixty-three comatose Grahams.

Graham stared at the screen. Line after line of Graham Smiths—all of them lying on a bed somewhere and who would care? Who would even know? He had no family or friends. Only Annalise.

He thought of Annalise Twelve and her daily vigil at the hospital, watching over his lifeless body. Was that what the future held for the girls? Daily trips to the coma ward as the only visitor to a man who'd barely lived.

He felt so useless. His life summed up as a name on a screen. That was all he was—a name. He wasn't a person. A person had friends, people who'd notice if he was no longer there. Who'd grieve and reminisce and lift a glass in his memory? Who'd have more to say about him than "weird but harmless?"

He felt a hand on his arm and started at the touch.

"Are you okay?" asked Annalise, withdrawing her hand. She looked concerned.

Graham forced a smile. "I'll be fine."

Gary and Howard were deep in conversation.

"It was only seventeen yesterday," said Gary, throwing up his hands. "How can it have risen so fast?"

Graham waited for someone to say "resonance" but no one did. It was left unsaid, hovering over him like a blunt instrument. Seventeen yesterday, sixty-three today, how many tomorrow?

Annalise contacted the girls while Gary and Howard brainstormed in circles: Were they safe? Should they be more circumspect in their logs? Who was closing down the RPs and why? Was there a common denominator? What motive could anyone have? Greed, power? In a world tumbling towards anarchy? Anarchists? Were there still anarchists in the world? Anarchists who happen to have access to the Resonance project logs?

Graham let it all flow over his head. They were only words. Words chasing names. No substance.

"Quiet!" shouted Annalise. "I've talked to the girls. One of the Kevins says he makes it seventy-one projects closed down. Probably more. He says that none of the RPs access current logs from every world."

Gary and Howard nodded in agreement.

"He says the only thing they know for certain is that it's increasing. Fast."

"It's got to be an insider," said Howard, continuing his earlier argument. "Someone who benefits or thinks they can benefit from a society in upheaval."

"But no one benefits. We've been through all that!" said Gary.

"Can't you list all personnel with access to the ParaDim database for the worlds that have stopped reporting?" asked Annalise.

"Do we have such a list?" Howard asked Gary. "We might be able to cross-check all ParaDim employees but how could you tell which of them had access to the database."

"The number of staff who actually know about the parallel worlds is very small," Gary explained to Annalise. "Most employees think they're analyzing data from the AI engine."

"Or are working in the Admin or Finance divisions."

"Or manufacturing," added Gary. "ParaDim employs tens of thousands of people but only about thirty or forty know the truth."

Howard agreed. "Maybe more, maybe less on other worlds. Plus people at the periphery, people we've never heard of—consultants, assistants, IT personnel who might have put two and two together."

Annalise shook her head. "How do you keep the parallel worlds a secret when so many people know what's happening?"

Graham wondered that too. People loved to gossip. The greater the secret, the greater the compulsion to say something.

"Because working for ParaDim is infinitely better than not working for them," said Gary. "It's like going to work every day knowing that the Holy Grail is not only out there, but its location could be in the very next file you read. You don't get opportunities like that anywhere else."

"Plus the money," said Howard. "ParaDim pays double the going rate. Whatever the job."

"Okay," said Annalise, holding up her hands. "Why not cross-check all ParaDim employees and see who exists on all sixty-three worlds? Then you can haggle over which of them has access."

"Works for me," said Howard. "Is there one employee file or is it split by country?" he asked Gary.

The two men conferred and typed. Annalise joined Graham by the window.

"I won't let anything happen to you," she said. "None of us will."

Graham didn't know what to say. So many people risking their lives to protect him and for what? A possibility? A dream that maybe he was some sort of key who could unlock the secret of the resonance wave? What if he wasn't? What if all those people had died for no reason at all. Yes, there were sixty-three Graham Smiths lying in comas but what about the missing Resonance project members? The Kevins and the Howards and the Tamishas who were being hunted and tortured and killed at this very moment. Who was going to save them?

Several minutes passed. Graham watched the river flow slowly by, counted the boats and watched them fight against the tide. Annalise stood alongside, silent and supportive.

"The scan's running now," said Howard. "The hits should appear any second."

"It has to be someone with power," said Gary. "Someone who can close a project down without anyone questioning them."

Graham and Annalise walked over to stand behind Howard. A cursor flashed hypnotically, counting down the seconds.

And then a name appeared.

Just the one.

Adam Sylvestrus.

Graham should have guessed. He would have if his mind hadn't been elsewhere.

"What about external consultants?" Gary asked Howard. "Are they included in the employee files or are they logged somewhere else?"

Howard wasn't sure. He pulled up one file after another.

"What are you doing?" asked Graham. "You've got your answer. It's Adam Sylvestrus."

Gary shook his head. "Sylvestrus is head of ParaDim on two-thirds of all worlds. You'd expect his name to be flagged."

"Sixty-eight percent of all worlds," added Howard, tapping on the keyboard. "I read it in an RP log this morning. Which," he paused and pulled down another screen, "if you bear with me for a few seconds, computes to a probability of . . ." He paused again and read the numbers off the screen. "Thirty-five billion to one." He turned to Gary. "I'd call that significant."

Gary shook his head again. "Did you find the external consultant files?"

"I'm adding them to the scan now," said Howard. He pressed "enter" and sat back.

Graham couldn't understand what was happening. How much more proof did anyone need?

A thought which ended abruptly when two names flashed on the screen.

Adam Sylvestrus and Maria Totorikaguena.

"Who's she?" asked Annalise.

"The name's familiar," said Gary, "Try . . ."

"Already doing it," interrupted Howard, clicking and tapping furiously on the keyboard.

Maria Totorikaguena's personnel file appeared on the screen. She was a theoretical physicist attached to the Resonance project.

"She's part of the RP?" said Annalise incredulously.

"Not on this world," said Howard. "I picked the first personnel record I could find."

"What does she do on the other sixty-two worlds?" asked Gary.

Howard flicked through file after file. Sometimes she was an employee of ParaDim, sometimes a consultant attached to the Resonance project.

"Pull down a bio," said Gary. "What's her area of expertise?"

Howard pulled down another screen and copied data across from the personnel file.

A profile came back. Maria Totorikaguena—25, Spanish, quiet, quirky sense of humor, child prodigy—gained her first degree at the age of twelve. The first of many. Published fourteen papers—including "The Twelve-Dimensional Universe" and "Schenck Revisited."

"I thought I recognized the name," said Gary, pointing at the first of her publishing credits. "Interesting theory but flawed. She proposed an extra dimension to solve anomalies with the eleven-dimensional model of the universe. But it wasn't necessary. One of the advanced worlds had already shown that the anomalies didn't really exist."

Howard accessed bios and personnel records from other worlds. The same picture emerged. Quiet, quirky, brilliant. Someone who liked to work by herself and avoided positions of responsibility.

"Not exactly the profile of someone who could close down sixty-three Resonance projects," said Howard.

"On how many other worlds does she work for ParaDim?" asked Annalise.

"I'll check on the other terminal," said Gary. "Howard, you check to see if she's working for us on this world."

Graham watched as the two men tapped and clicked through a series of screens and menus.

"She's not on any of the ParaDim files here," said Howard. "And . . ." he paused while he waited for a search to finish, "I can't find any record of her birth. Not in Spain. Not anywhere." He turned to Gary. "She doesn't exist on this world."

Gary didn't say a thing. He stared at the screen in front of him, slowly shaking his head.

"What's the matter?" asked Annalise, peering over his shoulder.

"How many RPs did Kevin say had closed?" he asked her.

"Seventy-one. Why?" She stopped, the last word trailing off on her lips. Graham followed her gaze towards the bottom left-hand corner of the screen and the two numbers that flashed.

Maria Totorikaguena only worked for ParaDim on sixty-five worlds.

There had to be some mistake. Maybe she'd joined the RPs in the last few days and her details hadn't reached the employee files. Maybe Kevin was wrong. Maybe . . .

Gary and Howard argued at speed while Graham listened, waiting for an opening that never came—by the time he'd thought of something constructive to add, someone had either said it, refuted it or the argument had moved elsewhere.

"Quiet!" shouted Annalise. "Kevin's double-checked. She doesn't even exist on six of the seventy-one worlds."

Gary shook his head. "It's too much of a coincidence. She works for ParaDim on only sixty-five worlds and on sixty-one of them the RP is closed down."

"Sixty-five," said Annalise. "Kevin checked. Every time she works for ParaDim, the RP closes."

"She must have stumbled upon something," said Gary. "Something to do with Graham and the resonance wave."

"If she did, she never wrote it down," said Howard. "I've been all over the closed Resonance logs. They're interested in Graham Smith but they never say why."

"We'll check again," said Gary. "There's another forty-six logs to look through."

They checked and sifted, the two men scrolling and searching for anything written by or mentioning Maria Totorikaguena. They found nothing. All sixty-three logs ended with a note saying they were downloading every file they could find on Graham Smith but none of them gave a reason.

"Maybe she didn't write anything down," said Annalise. "If she liked to work on her own, maybe she kept her ideas to herself."

"Until someone found out what she was doing," added Howard.

"Like Adam Sylvestrus," said Graham.

"It makes sense," said Howard, nodding in agreement. "Sylvestrus has to be involved. He must have seen something in Maria's work that forced him to take drastic action."

Graham could see how that could explain the sixty-five closures where Maria and Sylvestrus worked together, but the other six? Could the same action repeated in quick succession across sixty-five worlds resonate so powerfully that it influenced the decisions of the other Adam Sylvestruses? Was sixty-five enough? Wouldn't you need more?

"It's not Sylvestrus," said Gary, raising his voice. "If he
is
involved, it's as an unwitting agency. Maybe he told the wrong person about Maria's discovery."

"Who?" said Howard. "We've been through the ParaDim files. There's no one else."

"Then it's someone outside ParaDim," snapped Gary. He was becoming increasingly agitated. Graham couldn't understand his continued defense of Sylvestrus. Even Annalise looked surprised.