Callsign: King - Blackout

31

King did not bother with the doorknob, much less signal his presence with a knock. Instead, he delivered a decisive kick that slammed the flimsy door aside. Then he propelled Brown through the opening, into the control room, following close behind with the Uzi leveled. Chesler remained in the hallway, guarding the approach, though his vigilance was probably unnecessary. None of the Alpha Dog mercenaries had given the slightest indication that their employer’s fate mattered one bit; if Chesler’s defection was any indication, they all seemed to sense that working for Brainstorm was a dead end.

Pradesh started at the intrusion, jolting upright in his chair, but otherwise made no move as King aimed the gun at him. The Indian hacker’s initial surprise quickly passed, his expression giving way to something that looked like satisfaction. “I didn’t expect to see you again,” he said with a chuckle.

King ignored the attempt at banter. “Brainstorm’s finished,” he declared. “Shut it down.”

Pradesh glanced at Brown, who had recovered from King’s shove and was now leaning against a bulkhead, glowering but saying nothing. Pradesh then looked back at King, smiling in a mockery of innocence. “Shut what down?” He gestured to the bank of monitor screens, all of which were dark. “There’s been some kind of blackout. I’m not connected to anything at the moment.”

“You know goddamn well what I’m talking about. The quantum computers. You built them, you control them. Now turn them off.”

Pradesh folded his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. “Why on Earth would I want to do that?”

King stabbed the Uzi’s barrel at him menacingly. “A lot of reasons come to mind. Saving your lousy ass is probably first on the list.”

Pradesh seemed unfazed, amused even. “You really have no idea what’s going on.”

The hacker’s demeanor bothered King. This wasn’t false bravado or posturing; Pradesh did not appear to be the least bit troubled by the threat of violence. King chose his next move carefully. “I know that Brown-or rather Brown pretending to be Brainstorm-hired you to attack the global power network.” He glanced at the gambler, who remained defiant, giving no hint as to whether King’s supposition was on the mark. “You built that quantum computer to control a virus that could break down any security firewalls and adapt to any defensive measures. Impressive stuff. I’m sure you’re worth every penny he paid you, but I don’t think that check is going to clear.”

“Money.” Pradesh scoffed. He glanced at Brown again, making no effort to hide his contempt. “Everybody in this world thinks that you can buy anything. That if you dangle enough money in front of someone, they’ll be your faithful dog.

“You are correct in one respect. That’s exactly what Mr. Brown, or rather his somewhat comical alter-ego Brainstorm, hired me to do.” He then leaned forward conspiratorially. “But that’s not what I did.”

King saw a look of surprise flash across Brown’s countenance, and barely managed to hide a similar reaction. He had misjudged Pradesh. Fortunately, the hacker appeared eager to boast about his accomplishments. King lowered the Uzi a notch and tried a different tack. “I thought that business about a quantum computer sounded like a lot of sci-fi horseshit. You conned, him right?”

Pradesh’s visage went dark with barely restrained rage. “I did no such thing,” he said, enunciating each word to underscore his ire.

King feigned a skeptical shrug to hide his satisfaction at how quickly Pradesh had taken the bait.

“The quantum computer is a masterpiece, and more valuable than Brainstorm-” The hacker again made no effort to disguise his contempt, “-could possibly have realized. I could have done what he wanted in my sleep, but he was too ignorant to realize that. Instead, he gave me what I wanted; the money and resources to build the quantum computer. He never even suspected.”

“You’re lying,” Brown said, his own anger rising. “The hardware was assembled at Jovian Technologies.”

“Based on my specifications.”

“I had your work checked independently. Every design, every line of code was reviewed. You did exactly what I hired you to do.”

Pradesh dismissed him with a wave. “Your so-called experts had no idea what I was doing. They saw only what I allowed them to see.”

King suddenly understood that, whatever Brown’s scheme had been-and he was now convinced that his earlier supposition about Brown’s plan to sabotage the power grid was correct-it had nothing at all to do with the phenomena he had earlier witnessed. The real threat was evidently something much worse.

“Talk is cheap,” he interjected, maintaining his facade of disinterest. “What did you do, write a program to steal credit card numbers or something?”

Pradesh’s seemed to choke on his rage, but then with an effort, mastered himself. “I’ll tell you what I did,” he said in a low voice. “You know who I am, right? What they call me?”

King cocked his head sideways. “Shiva, right?”

“Do you recall what Robert Oppenheimer said after the first atomic bomb test? ‘I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ He was quoting from Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, in reference to the Hindu deity-Shiva, the destroyer.” Pradesh snorted derisively. “Oppenheimer was arrogant. What did he do? Create a weapon that could destroy a city?”

King blinked at him. In drawing Pradesh out, he had unleashed the hacker’s inner madman. “But you can do better, right?”

“I have done better. I have let loose the true destroyer of worlds.”

“Do tell?”

“A primordial black hole,” Pradesh said, almost reverently. “Dormant for centuries, hidden in a statue of the Buddha. I discovered how to awaken it.”

King’s mind was racing to process what the Indian was saying. As much as he wanted to disbelieve, he knew better. The earthquake had followed Brown’s activation of the quantum phone by only a few minutes. That could not be a coincidence. As crazy as it sounded, Pradesh’s claim just might be true, yet he couldn’t let the hacker know that he believed every word. He turned to Brown and none-too-discreetly wiggled a finger beside his temple and mouthed the word: “Cuckoo.”

“That’s why I needed a quantum computer,” Pradesh continued. “Something that functions on the same principles as the black hole itself. And it worked. The QC isolated the frequency that would activate the dormant black hole. But that’s only part of it. You see, the QC and the black hole are now linked together-mind and body, as it were. I didn’t just wake the destroyer up, I gave it a brain.”

“You did all this yourself? Found a…what did you call it? A primordial black hole just laying around, and figured out how to turn it on? You’re a hacker.” He filled the word with disgust, as if describing something he might scrape off the sole of his shoe. “What do you know about black holes?”

“I had some help. There are others who share my vision.”

“And what exactly is your vision? What is it that you want? You said you don’t care about money? So what then?”

“You really haven’t heard a thing I’ve said. I want to destroy. Everything.”

King’s amazement at the boast momentarily overcame his ability to play act the skeptic. “For God’s sake, why?”

“Because I can.” Pradesh’s simple reply revealed just how truly unhinged he had become. Then he continued in the same reverential tone. “Do you know what happens when you enter a black hole? You experience infinity. It is like looking into…no, it’s like being one with the mind of God.”

King pondered what to do next. Pradesh had made no effort to deceive him or withhold information and he knew that with just a little more prompting, the man would volunteer the names of other members his suicide/doomsday cult, but if the hacker’s claims were true, that knowledge would be of little benefit. He was running out of time. “Fine,” he declared, lowering the Uzi and taking out one of the improvised claymores he’d scavenged from the dead Russian commando. “I’ll just blow up your quantum computer.”

Pradesh offered a coy smile. “The computer isn’t here. It doesn’t have a fixed location. That’s the beauty of it.”

King immediately grasped the significance of the answer and recalled what he had overheard in Brown’s office. The phones! He switched the IED to his left hand and dug out the quantum device. “And what happens if I smash this?”

A faint glimmer of anxiety rippled through Pradesh’s mask of confidence, and King pressed the point. “No, that wouldn’t be enough would it? I’d have to take out all of them, all ten.”

Pradesh’s increasing discomfort verified King’s supposition. He started for the door, but at that instant, a scream-not one, but dozens of terrified cries-echoed through the corridor. Chesler ducked his head into the room, his eyes wide with apprehension. “Hey, man. I think something bad is happening up there.”

Amid the sudden tumult, King heard laughter.

“Too late,” Pradesh chortled. “It’s already here.”