“Yeah. That’s exactly what I said. But the ichor doesn’t. It doesn’t even have particles. The best we came up with was it’s what you get when you have enough one-dimensional points in a single place that you can actually see them.”
“You’re talking about string theory.”
“Yeah.”
“If that were true, the amount you’d need for it to be visible would be infinite.”
“Our best guess, a single drop would consist of enough strings to fill every particle in the universe.” Reese still couldn’t mentally digest it. Even after he’d seen it and what it could do. “And if that doesn’t put a cramp in your brain, the ichor reacted to all types of stimulus.”
“You mean it’s alive?”
“Not like you and I understand it to be, but yeah. It responded to the environment, and when you separated the samples, they communicated without making a single detectible sound or emitting any kind of energy.”
“And you used the ichor to make zombies.” Harrington said it so deadpan, Reese didn’t know whether to laugh or be scared by the fact the colonel even entertained the idea.
“We used the ichor to resurrect the dead, not create zombies.”
The other three men in fatigues looked at Reese now. Harrington glared at them, and they returned to staring at the darkness beyond the window.
“What’s the difference?”
There were a million reasons, but in the end, it all boiled down to one. “Because when we brought them back, as far as we could tell, they were the exact person they were before they died.”
The helicopter tilted. Pinpoints of light formed the shapes of buildings in the darkness outside the window, and glowing dots drew horizontal lines.
Phillips’s phoned dinged, and she looked at the screen. “They’ve got the plane ready.”
Harrington checked his watch.
Another shiver ran down Reese’s spine, and he exhaled a breath of frosted air. “Hey, since I, uh, kind of had to leave in a rush, do you think you could call ahead and get me some clothes? Not that cheap stuff either from the big box stores. Like, something from Lands’ End.”
Phillips picked up a paper bag sitting by her seat and set it in front of Reese. He lifted a thick sweater from the top. There were pants under it. He checked the tags. Not only were the garments exactly what he would have picked out, they were the right size. “How the hell?”
Phillips smiled. “Like you said, Dr. Dante. We’re the government.”