Dark Rising

TWENTY-FIVE

The president was coming. Ahmad Al Janaddi was sweating profusely from the pressure of a thousand unfinished tasks. Even though Moshaddam wasn’t due for a few days, he needed to have the facility rebuilt in time to conduct a third trial to finalise the calibration of the test openings – or ‘Judgment Events’ as the president had instructed they now be called. The scientist was a little unnerved by how Moshaddam so smoothly intertwined religion and science. He spoke as if every successful test was a prophecy straight from the holy book.

Al Janaddi thanked Allah that they had refined the rebuilding process, with many of the pieces prebuilt for fast installation. The entire acceleration chamber could now be recreated and operational within twenty-four hours. The latest test must occur today, without fail, and then they must be ready to rerun by the time the president was on site. Since Moshaddam had announced he was coming, the schedule had become immutable. Al Janaddi didn’t doubt for a second that all his successes would count for nothing if he were seen to be slow in responding to a direct order from the president.

Installation of the new silver sphere was almost complete, and the circular line marking the edge of ‘Allah’s Gateway’ was already in place. There would be just a single traveller this time, and the president had personally provided the blueprint for the design of a six and half foot lead capsule that was to be fully constructed and in place before the next test run. Inside the hermetically sealed pod, which weighed many tons, there was room for a man to stand comfortably. In addition, it held black box-type recording equipment, homing beacons and communication devices. Theoretically, when the traveller returned, he could be detected and retrieved from anywhere in the world.

The computer simulations were very encouraging; it now looked possible to control the size of the Judgment Event and even its duration. This was the most important step in being able to design a harness for the powerful gamma radiation emissions – a repository to actually store the enormous cosmic energies. Al Janaddi smiled to himself. Already he had achieved more than dozens of scientists working in laboratories around the world. If only he could tell someone… If only he could tell everyone.

Al Janaddi was a talented scientist and a man with great dreams. Like every science professional, he imagined the ultimate recognition of his work – a Nobel Prize for science. It had proved to be more than a dream for one Iranian. Shirin Ebadi had been awarded the Peace Prize in 2003; she had been showered with wealth and was now treated as a national hero.

Al Janaddi closed his eyes and dreamed for a moment. Success and recognition could bring him many fantastic things – enough money to buy his mother a new house with heating that actually worked in winter, a new car for his lazy brother – just a small one though. A holiday for himself, maybe even to America; it would be worth it, even if he had to have a Republican Guard accompanying him everywhere.

Ahh, what would it be like to live in America with so much freedom? He daydreamed some more: Hello, I live in New York. Hello, I live in Texas. Hmm… He breathed in through his nose, a smile just touching his lips as he imagined the Norwegian gold medal being hung around his neck while the world applauded.

He opened his eyes and made a guttural sound in the back of his throat as the image of that disgusting creature in the containment cell ruined his beautiful daydreams. It wasn’t my fault, he thought, pushing harsh reality and its side effects to one side as he returned to fiddling with some software refinements. He still had much work to do.

On Al Janaddi’s instruction, his fellow scientists and the attending technicians went through a final operational program while he reviewed the facility’s image recorders, transponders and other electronic sensory equipment. New equipment had been added, which, they hoped, would contain the dark matter and stop it evaporating so rapidly. More refinements were still on the drawing board and would be engineered following this test; every run now was an opportunity to learn more about the mysterious anomalies they were creating. It was all in order – they were ready.

Al Janaddi stopped flicking between cameras when he reached the sphere room and stared at the lead capsule standing in the semi-gloom of the chamber. He had made one adjustment to the president’s blueprints, more as another option for retrieval of the capsule than as any form of improvement. A large half-ring had been welded to the back of the capsule; attached to it was an inch-thick titanium cable that snaked away to be bolted securely to an industrial winch on the wall. An extra 500 feet of cable was coiled at the base of the wall – hopefully enough to allow the traveller to enter the black hole far enough to obtain meaningful data, then be reeled back in like a fish.

Al Janaddi flicked the image feed to a small camera inside the lead capsule. The old cleric who had volunteered for the test looked almost rapturous at his imminent departure through ‘Allah’s Gateway’. The promise of a personal meeting with God followed by eternal life in Jannah was irresistible to any man of faith. Al Janaddi wondered whether the cleric would be so composed if he met the distorted remnant of humanity that moaned and slavered in the tunnel complex below.

He raised his voice without turning. ‘Green light in sixty seconds.’ This time there was little enthusiasm, just nods and one weak ‘Allahu Akbar’ from a younger technician. Al Janaddi lowered his visor and initiated the particle acceleration lasers – once again the lights dimmed.

As before, faster than human vision could comprehend, the sphere room disappeared into a nothingness so black it hurt the eyes and confused the consciousness. This time, however, the event was suspended and didn’t dissipate so quickly. Encouraged, Al Janaddi levered up the accelerator just one notch on a dial that held over fifty calibrations. Immediately, a wave passed through the laboratory that made his fingertips tingle and caused his stomach to threaten to erupt. He checked his dials – no radiation leakage, but his small screen clock seemed to have slowed.

The capsule was gone. The thick cable fed out with a surprising slowness into the black emptiness – a loop every twenty seconds, as if the capsule were on a sedate and comfortable voyage.

Excellent, just one more, Al Janaddi thought, and pushed the dial up another notch. In an instant all the lead shielding started to warp out from the walls and ceiling. Red lights flashed and a siren screamed a warning that the gamma particles were threatening to explode out of the complex. The scientist sucked in a frightened breath and eased the lever back, allowing the event to stabilise for another moment.

‘Merciful Allah, that was close. Now let us see if we can bring him back…’ Al Janaddi pressed the winch button and, with a deep whine, the loose cable was drawn up from the floor. After the slack was taken up, there was a thump and the whining changed to a deeper grinding noise.

Achhh! Al Janaddi switched the winch off, and was deciding on his next move when an even more ominous sound started within the chamber. The cable leading into the cold blackness, already piano-wire tight, moved up, then down, grinding and shrieking as it wrenched against the winch ring. The cable thrummed, as if something was hauling itself grip over grip along the metal cord. As Al Janaddi watched with an open mouth, he couldn’t help but be reminded of when he was a boy, fishing with his father, and they had hooked a big shark. The fishing line had done something similar before they cut it free. ‘Never bring a shark into the boat,’ his father had said in a low voice as they watched the cut line whip over the side.

Never bring a shark into the boat. Al Janaddi quickly hit the disengage button. Now free, the cable thrashed away into the dark pool almost faster than his eye could follow.

He switched off the acceleration beam and the Judgment Event dissolved as fast as it had appeared. He looked around at the lead-lined room and sucked in an enormous breath, realising he had forgotten to breathe. The shielding over the command centre had held, otherwise he and his technicians would be melted flesh or would have been dragged into the black hole’s corona. He sat down and wiped cold perspiration from his brow – he needed better technology to hold and manage the event.

He checked the other monitors; in the previous test runs, the subjects had been returned almost instantaneously. But of the elderly cleric there was no sign, no signal, nor any images. Either the recording equipment inside the capsule had short-circuited, or the man and capsule were no longer on the planet.

Al Janaddi thought again about the behaviour of the cable. He suspected the little cleric was gone for good.

The creature stopped its slow, insidious movement through the sand. Small glands in its head sensed the slight radiation pulse that had leaked out of the containment sphere facility, and it remembered the same feeling just before it was wrenched from its home.

It raised itself up; sand falling from its armoured plating. Its unearthly vision allowed it to see electromagnetic and X-ray waves travelling across the ionosphere. Its fan-like protuberances waved in the air, scooping molecules from the atmosphere to sample and taste. It could detect the heavy radioactive particles and was drawn to their source – the Jamshid II laboratory.

It reared up on its four powerful hind legs, each bristled point digging into the crusted sand, and called again to its own kind across the desert floor. It held immobile for a few seconds – as before, there was no reply.

The sun glinted off the waxy, mottled shell as it drew in the sensations of this new world. The armoured exoskeletal plates had been compacted together to preserve precious fluids within its body, and its bullet-shaped head was drawn back into the bulbous hump across what could pass for shoulders.

As two black chitin-covered eyes extended on the end of eyestalks, the plates opened out, and its upper body flared open briefly to dislodge more particles of the annoying dry sand. The creature flexed, and the open carapace revealed an underbelly that carried two enormous curved claws – each covered in rows of teeth and ending in a blackened talon. Below these lethal daggers were row upon row of numerous smaller thoracic limbs that slowly undulated. A slight clicking could be heard from the sharp tips whenever they struck each other in their wave-like twitching. Further in, greasy flaps and tendrils hung, coiled and furled amongst the rows of dark green armoured tiles. The carapace shuddered, and then closed across the thing’s hellish appendages.

The fan-like tongue flicked out again and its head swayed slightly as more of the radioactive particles bathed its sensory organs, and it turned to face the direction they were coming from – perhaps there was a way back to its home.

It dropped to the sand and sped towards Arak and the sphere chamber.