Callsign: King - Blackout

30

The journey from the ruins of the exhibition hall to the front exit of the Louvre was a blur to Fiona. She moved in a daze, struggling to make sense of everything that had happened.

First, there was Alexander’s dire prognosis: Gamma radiation… A lethal concentration…

What did that even mean? She didn’t feel any different. Maybe he’d been wrong. Or maybe the gamma rays would affect them differently. Maybe they’d all get mutant superpowers…like Bruce Banner in the Incredible Hulk comics.

Then the world had turned upside down.

Sara’s flashlight, augmented by the occasional glow of battery operated emergency lights scattered throughout the corridors, revealed rubble strewn corridors that bore little resemblance to the ornate museum through which she had passed only a few minutes before.

Along the way, they encountered other museum patrons being guided to safety by Louvre personnel. The need for an alternate evacuation route became apparent when she stepped out into the Cour Napoleon-Napoleon’s Courtyard-and caught a glimpse of the twisted steel frame that had once been the elaborate glass pyramid guarding the front entrance to the Louvre. The seventy-foot high structure groaned and creaked in the grip of tidal forces, the sound punctuated every few seconds by the noise of another glass pane breaking free and shattering on the ground below.

Fiona expected to find a cordon of emergency vehicles lined up outside, and beyond that, a world unaffected by the chaos that had swept out of the exhibition hall, but to her dismay she discovered that the legendary City of Lights was almost completely dark.

Alexander separated them from the crowd, but did not take them far. He directed them to sit on the ground, well away from any hazards, and without preamble, launched into a story. Although Sara had been the most vocal in demanding answers, Alexander’s gaze remained fixed on Fiona as he spoke, a fact that did not escape the girl’s notice.

“Nearly seventeen hundred years ago, the residents of the Bamiyan Valley, in what is now Afghanistan, encountered a strange phenomenon. They called it Angra Mainyu, believing it to be the devil of Zorastrian mythology. In reality, it was something even stranger: a micro black hole.

Julia shook her head in confusion. “I thought black holes were the remains of collapsed stars.”

“The term ‘black hole’ applies to any region of space where the local gravity is so powerful that not even light can escape. It has long been believed that when a star uses up all of its fuel, its own gravity causes it to become a black hole-a concentration of stellar mass in something perhaps only a few miles in diameter. But that is only one type of black hole. Almost forty years ago, scientists posited the existence of very small black holes, caused spontaneously by cosmic rays or particle collisions. They have even tried to produce micro black holes at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.”

“They’re making black holes in a laboratory?” Fiona said. “That doesn’t sound very smart.”

“Most micro black holes are unstable and cease to exist in a matter of nanoseconds. Unlike stellar mass black holes, they don’t have enough mass or energy to do any harm, much less achieve any kind of stability. The anomaly encountered by the Bamiyan villagers was different though. It was stable. Though probably only a few molecules in diameter, it had a mass equivalent to Mount Everest. The gravitational effects were localized; the event horizon was probably only about a meter, but anything-even particles of atmosphere-caught in the event horizon would have been added to its mass, increasing if only incrementally, the gravitational attraction. In time, it would have grown large enough to consume the entire planet.”

“Hang on,” Sara said. “You said this micro black hole was stable. What made it different?”

“And what stopped it?” Fiona added.

“I can no more tell you the reason for its stability than I can explain where it originated. But to answer your question Fiona…” Alexander cast a glance at Julia, and then chose his words carefully. “According to one report, the evil of Angra Mainyu ended when a traveling group of Buddhist monks taught the villagers a mantra.”

“A mantra?” Julia made no effort to hide her skepticism.

Fiona however understood. Alexander had been there; one thousand seven hundred-odd years ago, the immortal Hercules had witness these events, had actively participated in them. Fiona also understood all too well the power that could have been unleashed with something seemingly as commonplace as a chanted mantra.

“A black hole is not simply super-condensed matter. If that were true, there would be little to fear from them. A black hole with the mass of a star would have the same gravity as the star itself-zero net change in the regional gravity equation. But at their core, black holes, and particularly micro black holes, consist of something called ‘strange matter.’ Strange matter appears to contravene the laws of physics governing the conservation of energy and matter. When strange matter interacts with normal matter-which is exactly what happens beyond the event horizon of a micro black hole-a change in mass occurs without the corresponding change in energy described by Einstein’s famous equation.”

Alexander must have sensed Fiona’s confusion because he immediately left off the technical explanation. “When a black hole adds a ton of matter, its mass might increase by a thousand tons…or by nothing at all…depending on the specific frequency of the strange matter at that exact moment.

“My hypothesis is that the monks’ chant found the specific acoustic frequency that cancelled out, and possibly even reversed, the strange matter reaction.”

Realization dawned and the words were out before Fiona could stop herself. “They sang it to sleep.”

A faint smile crossed Alexander’s rough visage and he nodded. “That’s exactly what they did.”

“You’re serious about this,” Julia said. She glanced at Sara and then at Fiona. “And you believe him?”

“I believe what happened in there,” Sara shot back. “So unless you’ve got a better answer…”

“What did happen?” Fiona asked.

“The black hole was dormant, but it had not destabilized. Instead, it simply lay there on the ground, smaller than even a mote of dust. The people of the region converted to Buddhism, and consecrated the ground where the struggle with the black hole had occurred. Hundreds of years later, they fashioned two enormous statues of the Buddha, the bodies carved from the sandstone cliffs and the features molded of a stucco. The black hole itself was incorporated into the stucco, perhaps intentionally, as a way to prevent it from accidentally being reawakened.”

Julia sat up straight, realization finally dawning. “Until the Taliban came along and blew them up.”

Alexander nodded. “It’s a wonder that the explosions didn’t reactivate the black hole.”

“So what caused it to happen tonight?” Even as Fiona asked it, the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. “You knew it was going to happen. That’s why you were here. That sound you were playing…that was a recording of monks chanting, wasn’t it?”

Alexander nodded guiltily. “I arranged for the pieces of the Buddhas to be brought out of Afghanistan in hopes that I could identify and isolate the black hole. I thought that I had taken sufficient precautions-the recorded mantra, as you have so astutely deduced-but it seems I miscalculated.”

Then a conspiratorial smile settled on his lips. “However, there may be-”

A sudden cry from the courtyard interrupted him. His head swiveled to locate the source, and Fiona looked as well.

A stampede was in progress. A group of museum patrons who had been huddled in a corner of the courtyard formed by the meeting of the Denon and Sully wings, was now moving as a panicked mass toward them. Behind them, Fiona saw what had prompted the terrified exodus.

An enormous dark spot, easily ten feet high, had appeared on the exterior wall of the palace. Fiona knew that it was no mere shadow because there was no light source outside to create such a powerful contrast; indeed, the dark spot was only visible because, unlike the rest of the museum, it reflected not even a hint of moonlight. It was absolutely black, the complete absence of light. It was exactly what she imagined the black hole must look like.

And it was moving.

Fiona watched in stunned silence as the dark spot detached from the wall and began moving into the courtyard. She saw that it was not simply an amorphous void; there was the suggestion of a central shape, surrounded by radiating tendrils of darkness, which writhed like snakes in every direction. Her first thought was that it resembled an octopus or jellyfish. The tentacles wiggled out ahead of it, seeming to grasp the ground and pull it forward into the courtyard. As it advanced, Fiona saw that the part of the museum wall from which it had issued was gone. It hadn’t broken apart, but simply erased from existence as if it had evaporated into smoke.

Alexander jumped to his feet and scooped Fiona up with one massive arm. “Run!”

His shout galvanized Sara and Julia into action, and they followed as he darted out of the path of the onrushing crowd.

The black shape continued forward, no faster than a jogging pace but relentless as a heat-seeking missile. Beyond the edge of the perimeter of the courtyard, the crowd began to disperse in all directions but the dark thing did not alter course to pursue any of them.

Alexander halted as soon as they were clear of the mob, and he turned to observe the shape’s journey. From his embrace, Fiona saw that several other evacuees had stopped as well, their curiosity evidently overcoming the instinct to flee. A few, like bystanders viewing the aftermath of a traffic accident, actually began moving closer to the thing.

“Stay back!” Alexander warned.

His command went unheeded. One of the group, a boy perhaps only a couple years older than Fiona, with long stringy blond hair and numerous facial piercings, wearing low hanging plaid shorts and a Tony Hawk T-shirt, fell in behind the shape. He moved slowly, poised to run at the first sign of trouble, but when it became evident that the shape was oblivious to his presence, he quickened his step, matching its pace and peering into the lightless mass for some clue about its nature.

A murmur of voices issued from the crowd, some echoing Alexander’s plea for caution, others-mostly from the teenager’s peer group-daring him to get closer. The boy raised a hand, testing the air, and sensing no peril, stepped around the moving shape and placed himself in its path.

Fiona gasped as the shape engulfed the curious boy. For just a moment it paused as if the encounter had forced it to make a decision, but the tendrils resumed reaching out, pulling the shadowy mass forward. As it moved, the boy was revealed, standing motionless exactly as he had a few seconds before. Fiona waited for his reaction, hoping to see him give some indication that the black mass was harmless, half-expecting him to crumple lifelessly to the ground…but he did not move. He did not even seem to breathe.

The dark shape cleared the courtyard and then abruptly shifted left, angling toward the open space separating the end of the Denon wing from the Jardin des Tuileries, and to all appearances, completely ignoring the shocked spectators.

Fiona felt Alexander’s hold on her loosen, and after setting her down, he moved slowly toward where the impulsive teenager still stood statue still. Her own curiosity aroused, Fiona caught up to Alexander, her gaze now riveted on the motionless figure. She knew that her desire to discover the youth’s fate was little different from the urge that had prompted the young man to approach the nightmarish entity, but she had to know.

Other museum patrons were closing on the spot, compelled by the same craving for answers and she heard one of them gasp. “My God. He’s been turned to stone.”

Fiona saw it too. The boy had been transformed utterly. His appearance was unchanged; the color and texture of his skin, hair and clothes were as distinct and individual as they had been in life. But where once there had been a living organism of flesh and blood and bone, wrapped in clothes woven of cotton and synthetic fibers, there was now only a lifeless mannequin made of what looked like polished stone.

Fiona shuddered and shrank into Alexander’s embrace. “That’s…horrible,” she said, choking back a sob. “A black hole can do that?”

For some reason, Alexander’s answer and the tone in which it was delivered was even more shocking to her than the curious youth’s fate. In a voice that verged on pure trepidation, the immortal Hercules answered simply: “I don’t know.”