Damage Control Read online

  Jack, who already felt like a fifth wheel, volunteered to go back to DC and report on what had happened. This was too earth shaking to talk about over a satellite phone. He caught the next plane out of Grand Junction.

  I stayed on at the safe house, working with the Trio and the Alternates on a safe way to open the interface between our universes, but finding one remained elusive. In the meantime we used the portals to exchange thousands of terabytes of information, improving understanding on both sides of not just teleportal technology and the nature of the multiverse but also each other’s histories. We could exchange information without physical contact, but stepping through the interface was our ultimate goal.

  Unfortunately, the folks in DC had trust issues. They insisted on being sure the Alternates weren’t aggressive non-humans hiding behind electronically generated human images. They wanted a way to confirm the Alternates were what they said they were, so they sent NSA specialists to watch over our shoulders. We at the safe house knew this was xenophobic hysteria, but as long as we were working out of a government safe house, we had no choice but to play along.

  But not long after NSA arrived, confirming whether the Alternates were really human became irrelevant. Duncan Reid happened.

  Chapter 2

  “Working from the paper by missing Dr. Melissa Kim, JHU senior Duncan Reid claims to have duplicated her teleportal device and is now testing a working model.”

  – Robert Cannon, Channel 6 News

  “Stay tuned. JHU senior Duncan Reid is once again in the news. He has invited the local media to a demonstration of his teleportal device.”

  – Robert Cannon, Channel 6 News

  “Well, there you have it. You saw with your own eyes almost everyone here stepped through one teleportal and emerged from the other.”

  – Robert Cannon, Channel 6 News

  Day -8, 10:05AM

  It wasn’t so much that Duncan did anything that by itself required damage control, but his urge for personal glory resulted in an incident that almost derailed teleportal development in the US. And I ended up being the only one who was in a position to fix the damage that was done. Here’s how I got tangled up in trying to rectify what happened.

  Troy and I were in the room that had become the lab, examining the latest information on a resistance field the Alternates had been experimenting with but never completed. If it worked, it could be adjusted to identify dense materials such as uranium. Troy believed the field was the key to automatically shutting down an interface before a dirty bomb could be brought through.

  Since there was no cell phone or Internet, the kids were watching television in the family room. We heard Kevin call at the top of his voice, “Hey everybody, you’ve gotta see this. Hurry!”

  I couldn’t imagine anything I “gotta” see, but I rushed into the family room with everyone else. The news program had already gone to the opening credits by the time we arrived. Troy skidded to a stop with me right behind him. “What’d we miss?” he asked.

  Before Kevin could answer, one of the FBI agents who also came running looked at the credits and commented dryly, “Boy, this is exciting.”

  Kevin gave him a brief glare as others hurried into the room. “Give it a minute.” Almost as soon as he spoke, the news anchor popped up on screen with a crawl that proclaimed “Breaking News.” The anchor looked thunderstruck. “You’ll have to see this one to believe it. Let’s go to our reporter on scene, Reynaldo Cruz.”

  The scene switched to a large open room with concrete block walls, a high ceiling, and windows that started above head-level. Cruz stood in front of an audience occupying folding chairs that filled the space between him and the wall.

  After the typical satellite delay, Cruz said, “Thanks, John.” He nodded to his right, and the camera panned to show a pair of metal door frames behind him facing the chairs and standing about ten feet apart. “What you are looking at is the most important invention in years, maybe forever. These two door frames you’re looking at are working teleportals, devices that connect two separate places as if there were no distance between them. Those of us here have already seen them in operation, and you will be seeing them live.”

  At that signal both doorway openings shimmered like a reflection on a pond. When the shimmer cleared, both of the views through the portals had changed. They no longer showed the wall behind them. Instead, they showed the space, chairs, and wall in front of them. Cruz was standing where his back and the cameraman in front of him both showed through the far portal.

  Cruz turned and walked toward the portal nearest him, and the Cruz in the other portal approached it. The handful of people in the audience got up and followed him. He continued through the near portal and simultaneously stepped out of the other. Moving away from the other portal, he turned to face the camera as the audience members passed through the near portal and stepped out behind him. He waved at the far portal with his left hand. “This, ladies and gentlemen, is the future. You just saw me and these folks walk into that other teleportal and step out here.”

  When the last audience member went through, the cameraman followed them, coming out behind Cruz. He moved the camera up on Cruz’s left to show a man approaching. The man was about Cruz’s height and heavy set, with unkempt brown hair and green eyes. When the man reached him, Cruz addressed the camera, “This is James Harrison University senior, Duncan Reid, the teleportal inventor.” He turned to face Reid. “What an amazing demonstration, Duncan.”

  Reid stared at the floor as if abashed. “Actually, I can’t take credit for inventing the teleportal. Dr. Melissa Kim was my inspiration. Her paper on wormholes had all the information I needed to figure out how to produce these. I simply followed her plan.”

  Reid turned out to be a publicity hound. Giving Melissa credit served his purposes by making him appear more humble than he was. In fact, he quickly showed he was a self-aggrandizing jerk. The rest of his time on the newscast was spent talking about himself and how important he was to developing the portals.

  After the broadcast I learned Reid had contacted the media and invited them to a demonstration as soon as he had his portals working. Having the press traipse through them on live TV made sure he got attention and credit for what he had done. It also left no question that teleportation was real, and now the whole world knew about it. The news created a sensation among the public and a panic in the transportation related industries.

  Not surprisingly, the media was in love with the story and beat it to death. Over the next several days it seemed as if every news program interviewed Reid. It quickly became apparent that he was an arrogant, self- glorifying egotist, but it was the biggest news since the end of World War II, so he continued to get coverage. Some of the programs had him debating with politicians and business men. He infuriated one oil company CEO to the point that he tried to come across the table at Reid. The others at the table could barely restrain him, and his remarks when interviewed after the debate had to be bleeped so many times he was almost incomprehensible. Some programs interviewed citizens on the street and allowed Reid to rebut their concerns or preen in their praise.

  Finally the uproar began to die down, and I thought we might be getting into sensible dialogue. But Reid had another, unpleasant surprise for us.

  ◆◆◆

  Day 1, 6:15AM

  A few mornings later, Melissa came running into the lab, almost hysterical, shouting, “Reid is crazy! He’s made contact with another universe, and he’s going to open the interface tonight in front of a live television audience.”

  Even though we had ruled out a massive explosion as one of the potential dangers of opening an interface to another universe, I immediately got a mental picture of DC being leveled by a matter/antimatter explosion. I was so stunned all I could think to say was, “Oh my God.”

  “I’ve got to stop him.” Melissa was taking responsibility for Reid. I guess that was reasonable. He had used her paper as his blueprint.

  “How
did you find out about this?” Greg asked.

  “I was talking to that tyrant, Wells,”—the head of my department at the Technology Reconnaissance Agency and the man responsible for holding the Trio incommunicado—“on the sat phone, trying to get him to let us go back to Phoenix to finish our work. I mean, now that Reid has made teleportals public knowledge there’s no reason to keep us here. But I was getting nowhere.

  “He interrupted our conversation when someone told him she had heard Reid’s announcement on the TV. She said it loud enough I could hear it clearly. When Wells got back to me, I told him he had to stop Reid and why. He said he’d see what he could do, but I don’t know him all that well, and it sure sounded like a brushoff.”

  For once I felt sorry for Wells. He probably knew he had to stop Reid, but Reid had taken his announcement to the public. If Wells stepped in and kept the demonstration from happening, the public would know it, and someone would raise a stink about government interference. I glanced at my watch: 6:22 AM. “When is this going to happen?”

  “7:30 tonight, eastern.”

  Tonight? That was a shock. Here we were being so careful because we were dealing with a totally unexplored area. No one had even known for sure there were other universes until now, much less how dangerous it could be to open an interface to them. Reid was bulling ahead as if there were nothing to be concerned about, and it was happening this evening. We had to get him to delay until we knew how to safely make contact, and with the demo tonight we didn’t have much time to do it.

  I sat down at a control console and dialed up the Alternates to see if they might be able to delay Reid from their end. Dr. Friedlund greeted the news with surprise. Reid had not been in contact with them, and they hadn’t heard of any other contact with him. Friedlund suggested that Reid’s connection might be a do-it-yourselfer experimenting with a home portal … or was possibly in another universe.

  The Alternates immediately began a search for whoever was in contact with Reid, but it would take time if they could even find him or her. We all knew there was no time to wait and were certain Well’s reaction made it clear he wasn’t likely to do anything. That left it up to us to stop Reid. It didn’t take me long to recognize I was the one who had to do it since I was the only one who knew the teleportal workings and could leave the safe house. I said, “Wells won’t do anything. He’s too worried about his image.”

  Melissa started for the door. “I’ll get a sat phone from the guards and call Reid. He has to be told him how risky what he’s doing is.”

  “Wait.” I got up from the console. “First, if Reid is the egotist I think he is, he’s not likely to back down easily. Someone will probably have to get in his face. Since I’m the only one here who doesn’t have to get government permission to leave, that person has to be me. Let me use the phone to see if I can get a flight to DC that will get there on time. Then you can use it to call Reid.”

  When I located a guard with a sat phone, I think the panicked look on my face did a lot to convince him of how serious the problem was. He handed me the phone.

  I quickly found a flight out of Grand Junction at 9:30 am. It didn’t give me much time, but it would allow me to catch a flight in Denver that was supposed to get into Dulles at 6:00 pm. I booked both flights, but it was going to be tight.

  I changed into travelling clothes, including a jacket. If I needed more clothes in DC, I’d get them from my apartment. I threw my laptop into my backpack, kissed Troy goodbye, and headed for the rental car.

  On my way I stopped to speak one last time to Melissa. She had managed to reach Reid, but her conversation with him had been short and futile. I got his number from her and hurried out to the car.

  I barely made the plane.

  Chapter 3

  Robert Cannon: “Duncan, you seemed to be disturbed after your demonstration. Is there a problem?”

  Duncan Reid: “There was an anomaly just before we shut down the portals. There was a call-in from another portal.”

  Robert Cannon: “Could it have been from the missing Dr. Kim and her team?”

  Duncan Reid: “I don’t believe so. The coordinates were wrong. I’ll need to investigate further before I can give a definitive answer.”

  – Channel 6 News

  Day 1, 6:30PM

  As soon as the plane touched down at Dulles, I had my phone out calling Reid. The call went straight to voice mail. I knew it would be futile, but I left a message. “Mr. Reid, this is Samantha Pederson of the Technology Reconnaissance Agency. As Dr. Kim told you, she and her team are currently working to determine if there is a safe way to open the interface to the other universe and how to implement it. Please consider how potentially dangerous what you are planning for tonight will be—what if the other universe is antimatter?—and hold off opening the interface any further than visual only mode.” I left my number. “Call me when you get this message.”

  Once I got off the plane, I took the Aerotrain to the main terminal and literally ran to the taxi stands. I got into the one in front almost before the driver could get his door open. The driver, a black man, with a medium build had a shaved head and a beard that combined a mustache with a short goatee. He looked at me over his right shoulder. With a noticeable accent he said, “Where to?”

  I gave him the address. “I need to be there before 7:30 if possible.”

  He immediately shifted into gear and pulled out of the parking space. The cabbie was from Angola, and he made quite an impression on me. I spent half the ride to Reid’s lab being regaled by his stories about back home. The other half was trying to learn how to correctly pronounce his first name, Abdourahime. I still don’t have it right.

  I’m not sure how many laws besides the speed limit we broke, but we rolled to a stop across the street from Reid’s lab with five minutes to spare. The lab occupied the second floor of a warehouse building. The parking lot was filled with TV vans and the street was crowded with cars on both sides, so we had to double park. Reid had obviously created a media event.

  In a hurry, I handed Abdourahime the fare plus an oversized tip and grabbed my backpack planning to bolt for the lab, but as I reached for the door handle, I glanced at the building and time slowed down. The wall of the building bulged outward like someone was blowing up a balloon and then immediately shattered, hurtling a roiling cloud of flame, smoke, and debris toward the cab. The explosion picked up the television vans in the parking lot like toys and launched them toward us. I had time to see a van flying right at us before it was engulfed in flame, and yet it all happened so fast I barely had time to throw up my left arm and duck down before the blast smashed into us. Terror struck, I could even taste it.

  The pressure wave slammed into the cab, flinging it like a toy. The impact shattered the cab window, spraying me with high velocity chips of safety glass and brick. The pain was intense, but before I could even scream, the left-hand door swatted me like a fly in its way. The blow stunned me and spun me toward the other side of the cab. I vaguely recall wondering when the van would crash into us. Then I thought, I’m glad we weren’t any earlier, before everything went black.

  ◆◆◆

  Day 1, 7:12PM

  A light appeared in the blackness. At first it was fuzzy and dim, but it rapidly coalesced into a disk of white light so bright it was painful. It swung back and forth across my right eye going from dim to bright and back again. I tried to close my eye but couldn’t. It took a second or two for me to realize someone was holding it open. I heard a muffled voice, “She’s coming around.”

  At the same time my sense of feeling began to return. A vague pain increased rapidly until I hurt all over. It was followed by a coughing fit that hurt even more all the way to my toes. When the coughing finally subsided, I ached all over. My throat felt like someone was sandpapering it from the inside. Pain raked the left side of my face and my left shoulder, as though the skin had been peeled off and sprinkled with salt. In fact, my entire left side above the waist hurt like h
ell. I pulled myself into a fetal position on my right side and let the tears flow. Fortunately I didn’t have to tolerate the pain very long. Everything faded to black again.

  ◆◆◆

  Day 2, 3:00AM

  I don’t know how long it took before I became aware of my surroundings again. I was lying on my back and the pain had eased some. I could still feel it behind a thick, fuzzy barrier, but what got through wasn’t nearly as bad as before. My thoughts were chaotic and kept fading from my grasp.

  Finally my thinking began to clear, and my situation swam into focus. I was in a hospital room looking at a ceiling painted sky blue with clouds scattered on it. The fluorescent lights were subdued, but looking at them still hurt my eyes. I felt thick bandages wrapped around my left side from the waist up. Something was taped to the back of my right hand. I had to clear some cobwebs to recognize it was an intravenous needle.

  I made a move to sit, but someone I hadn’t noticed pressed down on my right shoulder and said, “Easy. Don’t try to get up.” The voice came from a nurse standing beside the bed. “The doctor will be here in a few minutes.”

  My thoughts were still muddled. The doctor would be here in a few minutes? Why was I here, and why the pain? Then it began coming back to me. Suddenly I was there again. In painful slow motion the flame, smoke, and debris hurtled toward me. The explosion slammed into the cab, as I made a futile attempt to shield myself by swinging up my left arm. I stifled a shriek of terror and jerked back to the present.

  The nurse’s face showed serious concern. “Are you okay?”

  No I wasn’t, but I made a conscious effort to restrain my answer. “I don’t know, but I hurt everywhere.”

  Right then the doctor walked briskly into the room. He introduced himself, but I was too out of it to remember his name. I vaguely remember him checking my readouts, asking me a few questions, and telling the nurse something. She loaded a syringe and pushed the contents into the intravenous line. “That should make you more comfortable,” she said.