“I think we could benefit from their expertise,” Vigor pressed. “Besides, I sense we’re running short on time.”
As if proving this, a shatter of glass sounded. Glass cascaded into the office. An object ricocheted off the stone edge of the narrow window and rebounded to the room’s far side.
Vigor flinched from the sudden noise. Rachel’s training had her already moving. She scooped her uncle around the waist and rolled him away from the window, toward the opposite side of the room.
She drove her uncle to the floor, sheltering him behind the desk with her body—as the grenade exploded with a concussive blast of fire and smoke.
10:18 A.M. PST
Airborne over California
The sprawl of Los Angeles vanished below the wings of the jet as it began its cross-country flight to D.C. Painter had asked the pilot to spare no fuel, to push the Bombardier Global 5000 to its severe limits. The luxury of the richly appointed interior, with its full bar and leather seating groups, belied the jet’s state-of-the-art engines, which could reach an upper speed of 590 mph.
Painter intended to test the manufacturer’s claims during this flight, especially with the Eastern Seaboard set to burn in less than four days.
Whether true or not, General Metcalf had requested he set aside such mysteries for now and tasked him with a more practical concern: the crashed IoG-1 satellite. Those orders still rang in his ears.
Find the wreckage of the satellite. That remains your primary objective. The technicians will deal with the image taken by the satellite. And as a precaution, I’ll begin a risk assessment in regards to pending threats to the East Coast.
They each had their roles to play.
The plane banked as it headed out of Los Angeles airspace. The comet shone in the blue sky, luminous enough to see during the day. At night, the tail stretched far across the stars, so bright that one could discern the wavering scintillation of its tail, making it appear a living thing. It was expected to blaze up there for almost a month as the comet made a slow pass by the earth.
Slipping into the leather seat next to him, she noted his attention. The only other passenger aboard the jet, she tinkled a glass of cola in one hand.
Jada had shared with Metcalf her theories of time skipping a beat due to a wrinkle in space-time. Her theory offered an explanation for the errant shadows discovered in the photo, shadows that suggested the image might be a glimpse of ninety hours into the future.
“I don’t think we convinced the general,” Painter said, turning to her.
“And I’m not sure I’m convinced either,” Jada added.
This surprised him—and it must have shown on his face.
“There are so many variables in play here,” she explained, shifting uncomfortably in the seat. “As I mentioned before, the image could be a peek into an alternate future, not necessarily ours. I refuse to believe that the future is written in stone. In fact, quantum physics defies such linear paths to time. Just the act of observation can change fate, like with Schrödinger’s cat.”
“And that applies how?”
“Well, take that cat. It’s a classic example of the spookiness of quantum mechanics. In that thought experiment, a cat is put in a box with a poison pellet, one that has an equal chance of killing the cat or not. While the box is closed, the cat is considered to be in a suspended state—both alive and dead. It’s only after you open the box and check on the cat that its fate is truly settled one way or the other. Some theorize that when the box is opened, the universe splits into two. In one universe, the cat’s alive. In the other, he’s dead.”
“Okay.”
“And the same situation may be involved with the photo taken by the satellite as space-time wrinkled around it. In one universe, the world burns. In the other, it doesn’t.”
“So we have a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. For some reason, with the fate of mankind hanging in the balance, I’m not particularly happy with those odds.”
“Yet the flow of time gets even murkier from there. Just the fact that the satellite took the picture and we all saw it is an act of observation. What we do from here can change fate—but we don’t know if our actions will make that doomsday more likely to happen or less.”
“It sounds as if—for the next four days—we’re all like Schrödinger’s cat in the box, trapped in that suspended state between survival and death.”
She nodded, not looking any happier than he did.
“So we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”
She shrugged. “That pretty much sums up quantum physics.”
“So then what do you suggest we do?”
“We find that satellite. That’s the most important agenda.”
“You sound like General Metcalf.”
“He’s right. All my theories are just conjecture. But by analyzing the wreckage, I may have something more concrete to offer.” She shifted in her seat to more fully face him. “I know you were not keen on me joining the team headed to Mongolia to search for the wreckage, but no one knows more about that satellite than I do. Without someone intimately knowledgeable on hand, valuable data could be lost—or worse.”
“What do you mean by worse?”
She sighed heavily. “I told you how that influx of dark energy likely wrinkled space-time, a wrinkle much deeper than any estimates projected. But my preliminary calculations warn of a larger danger.”
“What danger?”
“There is a slim possibility that we might’ve created a kink in space-time, something semipermanent, capable of lasting for a period of time—and that the kink could still be entangled at the quantum level with the remains of that satellite.”
“Entangled?”
“Such an event occurs when two objects interact for a period of time, come to share quantum states, then become separated. In certain instances, their quantum states can remain linked, where a change in the quantum status in one changes in the other instantly. Even over vast distances.”
“That seems to defy logic.”
“And violates the speed of light. In fact, it kind of freaked Einstein out. He called this effect spukhafte Fernwirkung, or spooky action at a distance. Yet, not only has this phenomenon been demonstrated in labs at the subatomic level, but a group of Chinese researchers recently accomplished the same with a pair of diamonds visible to the naked eye. All it takes is enough energy.”
“Something like a blast of dark energy.”