Apocalypse

20

Joaquin Abell strode up the steps to the metal chamber and rested his hand on Aubrey’s shoulder. The smaller man turned to look up at Joaquin, his features frozen with horror.

‘It can’t be,’ he uttered.

Joaquin smiled. ‘It is.’

Aubrey looked again into the chamber, at the terrible black sphere and the clock with the slowly ticking second hand.

‘It’s producing time-dilation,’ he whispered.

‘Congratulations Aubrey,’ Joaquin said, ‘you are one of only a handful of human beings to have ever gazed with their own eyes into the past.’

Aubrey turned from the window.

‘It’s impossible,’ he uttered. ‘You can’t possibly have achieved such energies. It would take a particle accelerator the size of our solar system to generate enough pressure to produce this. Human technology doesn’t even come close to what would be required to…’

‘I have not used a particle accelerator,’ Joaquin assured him. ‘There are other ways to create a device like this, if you know where to look.’

‘But you’re not a scientist,’ Aubrey protested, ‘so how could you have…?’

‘I have people,’ Joaquin cut him off again. ‘People who know how to achieve the impossible.’ He gestured to the chamber before them. ‘Have you even thought about where we are, right now?’

Aubrey stared around him at the huge dome. As he focused on his surroundings and took in the immense superstructure around them, he began to realize that it looked old.

‘We’re in the Florida Straits,’ he replied, ‘maybe halfway between the coast of Florida and South Bimini.’

Joaquin nodded, his hands behind his back as he spoke.

‘We are in a facility that has been here for a very long time, that was once responsible for the disappearance of dozens of vessels and aircraft from the region.’

Aubrey gasped as he realized the connection between Joaquin’s immense undersea facility and the sinister device hidden there.

‘The Bermuda Triangle,’ he said finally. ‘We’re on the southern tip of it.’

‘On the contrary, this is the Bermuda Triangle,’ Joaquin corrected him. ‘This dome is the source of the modern legend, Dennis.’

‘Who built this place?’ Aubrey asked.

Joaquin looked up at the dome around them.

‘My father was responsible for building this central dome to conduct experiments designed to harness the power of nuclear fusion to build power plants. His official plan was to search for neutrinos, so called ghost particles emitted by supernovas. He felt that if he could detect them then he could use what he learned to search for new physics, and acquire the ability to produce nuclear fusion — to generate a star on earth and use the resulting immense power to fuel our civilizations for a near-zero cost. He was shut down in 1964 because he couldn’t generate enough energy to start fusion.’ Joaquin stared into the distance. ‘He never got over that. He took his own life a few years later.’

Aubrey looked up at the girders supporting the dome, marked with military-style lettering and US Army motifs. Faded radiation-warning signs plastered the walls, and many of the heavy cables and ventilation ducts were dusty with age.

‘You added to his central dome,’ Aubrey surmised. ‘The military must have left it down here still pressurized.’

‘It was used as a storage facility for highly classified military and intelligence materials and artifacts until the 1980s,’ Joaquin explained, ‘when private enterprise began building submersibles capable of reaching these depths. With the advantage of total security lost, the military mothballed the site. I bought it seventeen years ago and made damned sure that all Pentagon files came with the sale.’ He smiled. ‘Very few people who worked at this facility are still alive, and those who are have no idea that it’s once again occupied and active. I opened the conservation project on the coral reefs nearby in order to place an exclusion zone around the site under the pretence of protecting the rare reefs.’

Aubrey shook his head in wonder.

‘You’re far enough off the coral reefs that nobody would come out here on the abyssal plain — there’s nothing to see at this depth. My God, the Coastguard probably doesn’t even know that it’s inadvertently protecting this site from discovery.’

Joaquin nodded but did not respond, lost in his thoughts.

Aubrey guessed that it would have taken at least fifteen years to build the underwater facility, under the guise of an IRIS charter to create a wildlife refuge and deep-sea coral-research outpost. The original central dome in which they stood was dominated by the revolutionary spherical tokamak chamber built by Joaquin’s father during the Cold War, a device used to contain immense plasma energy and generate intense pressures and temperatures.

Aubrey turned on his heel and looked out at the huge television screens mounted on the interior walls of the dome. The news feeds showed anchors from a dozen different networks revealing the latest events from around the world.

‘This is how you did it,’ he realized, and turned to the metallic sphere behind him, wherein the slow-running clock ticked. ‘This is how you look into the future. Your father built this facility to generate nuclear fusion, but you’ve taken his work far further than he ever intended. You realize that what you have in there is not a star, Joaquin, and it is not of this earth?’

‘This is the only place on earth where the present and the future coexist in perfect harmony,’ Joaquin confirmed. ‘This single device is worth more than all of the money on earth, and were it known that I possessed such a machine, every government on the planet would send its armies here to take it away from me.’

Aubrey looked at Joaquin and saw the radical glitter back in his eyes. The younger man was not a scientist, and would almost certainly be unaware of the immense power caged just a few yards from where they stood. Like a wayward god idly toying with lightning bolts, Joaquin was unwittingly treading a fine line between power and oblivion. All at once Aubrey realized that the tycoon was telling him something more than just the monetary value of his elaborate contraption.

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.

‘Ensure that no government, and nobody else, ever dares challenge me,’ Joaquin replied.

Aubrey glanced at the nearby sphere and shook his head.

‘This is dangerous, Joaquin. Do you know what you’ve actually got in there, the kind of power you’re trying to wield? Nobody can control that kind of—’

‘It’s under control, Dennis,’ Joaquin growled. ‘Everything, and everyone, is under control. Do you understand?’

Aubrey stood his ground. ‘If you detonated all of the weapons in the United States nuclear arsenal, it would not generate as much energy as you have contained in that one single chamber. You need help with this, Joaquin.’

‘Indeed I do,’ Joaquin replied. ‘And you are my help. Agreed?’

Aubrey’s features sagged as he realized that he no longer had any choice.

‘Why have you done this?’ he asked.

‘Because, my friend, if you know the future then you can command the present. This is the key to my success, to our success. Trust me, Dennis, there’s no news like tomorrow’s news, and we’re going to know all of it.’

Aubrey’s face grew a shade paler.

‘Do you have any idea just how much power that device can generate?’

‘I do indeed,’ Joaquin replied. ‘And we’re going to unleash some of that power into the world around us.’

Aubrey suddenly felt cold as he digested what Joaquin was suggesting.

‘You’re going to use it as a weapon,’ he uttered, his throat dry.

‘Soon,’ Joaquin replied. ‘But right now, we’re going to take a look into the future.’