Virtual Destruction

CHAPTER 40

“It’s the same philosophy that made NASA so successful during the Apollo days,” said Gary Lesserec, looking down at Craig like a mad doctor about to perform brain surgery on an unanesthetized patient.

Tightening a buckle, he made sure Craig was securely strapped to his motion simulator seat in the VR chamber. “NASA practiced everything so much, ran over so many contingencies, that nothing came as a surprise.” He snorted. “Too bad the space program lost their good luck. Seems they got politics now.”

Craig nodded, but paid little attention, facing away from the redhead. The red-padded chair in the VR chamber stood among a row of others, but Craig would be the only one in here during the high-explosive dress rehearsal. Now that he was buckled in, the only way to get away from Lesserec’s bad breath would be to unstrap and leave.

Paige Mitchell stood at the doorway, arms folded. She watched like a den mother, but she said nothing to Craig.

Lesserec said, “Ready to ride the first nuclear test in nearly a decade?”

Craig turned in his padded seat and looked quizzical. “I thought this was a high explosive test.”

“Right — that’s what I meant,” said Lesserec, almost too quickly. He patted Craig on the shoulder. “Five hundred tons of HE, or a kiloton of nuclear yield equivalent.” Lesserec gave a supercilious grin. “The factor of two difference is due to the percentage of explosive energy that goes into blast and shock versus the radiation yield for a real nuke.”

He made a dismissive gesture. “You wouldn’t understand the difference, but you don’t need to. This dress rehearsal will simulate nearly every aspect of the real thing. That’s why it’s so critical that everything goes right. We’re recording it all. In fact this is going to be our real test. The demonstration for the foreign nationals is just show and tell.”

Craig looked around, flicking his gaze around the dull, featureless chamber. “So what am I supposed to see? Won’t this explosion be over pretty fast?”

Lesserec grinned, freckles and all. “Quicker than you can blink — but that’s the secret of using VR during the explosion. For the real test we’ve got the hole out at the Nevada Test Site just bristling with sensors and humongous data-storage devices. We’ve got new ‘enhancing’ chips in the image processors. Our computers will slow the explosion down by nearly a million times so you’ll ‘see’ the explosion in slow motion. You’ll experience the whole thing on a slow enough timescale it’ll be just like having a God’s eye view.” He sighed. “I envy you the experience, Mr. FBI.”

Craig thought for a moment. “I thought you were going to show this to everyone else anyway?”

Lesserec looked shocked that Craig would even ask the question. “Of course I am. But you get to experience it first. We’ll be processing nearly a thousand times more data than any other simulation we’ve done, so we’re only allowing one person in here at a time — otherwise, even our supercomputers might not be able keep up with all the changing viewing angles, aspect ratios and such.”

Paige called from the doorway. “Good luck, Craig. I’ll be monitoring you outside with the techs.”

Lesserec looked at his wristwatch. “Gotta go. Just be patient. Only about five more minutes to the Big Bang.”

The heavy vault door swung shut; a soft glow oozed out of the walls in a bath of illumination.

Craig grunted as he turned back to the front of the VR chamber. At first the chamber walls had seemed solid, dimpled with round indentations. Now that he had a chance to sit back and wait before the test, he saw that the indentations were actually laser projection lenses, flush with the chamber wall. A breeze from the air-recirculating systems tickled his cheeks. His suitjacket seemed too warm.

Lesserec’s nasal voice came from speakers in the ceiling. “I just checked. They’re about ready out at the test site. Powering up our simulation here. I’ll take you on down the hole, let you sightsee before we begin.”

Before Craig had a chance to answer, the walls around him transformed to rough gray-tan dirt. He found himself in a vertical cave, thirty feet in diameter. Cables and fiberoptic links ran like tentacles down the tunnel wall; small black boxes hung on the cables every five feet or so. Some sort of sensors, he supposed.

The room started descending, and Craig felt a cool, damp breeze waft up from below; a musty smell permeated his senses. My God, he thought, reeling. I can't tell the difference between this simulation and really being in a bore shaft! Craig felt a deepening, grudging respect for the red-headed computer whiz.

Craig looked up and saw distant blackness. Squinting at what must have been an enhanced computer graphic, he thought he could make out a cap to the tunnel; but from what Lesserec had told him earlier, the top was a great distance above him. Some fifty feet below sat a brightly lit canister, which Craig knew should hold the high explosives, though it looked too small to contain tons worth.

The cables from above came together at four junction boxes to the left of the explosive canister. Thickly wound rope and myriad diagnostic cables lay on the bottom of the pit like serpents, spreading out from the device. As his image drew closer to the ground, Craig saw four tunnels that led away from the sealed container of explosives.

“Hello? Can anybody hear me?” he called. “Where do those tunnels go?”

Lesserec’s disembodied voice came from somewhere above and behind the tunnel wall. “They lead to additional sensors and test beds to run shock-wave studies. Some of the tunnels are a quarter mile long so measurements can be made of the radiation yield before the sensors are destroyed.”

Craig’s image settled to the ground with a silent bump. Down one of the tunnels he saw massive steel doors that looked to be a foot thick. Blast doors, he thought. Those must be the explosively driven doors Lesserec told me about. But why so much for the practice run with regular high explosives? These details seemed just like the setup for a real down-hole nuclear test.

Craig felt stunned. With a virtual hand, he reached behind him to touch the hard, packed-dirt walls. He felt the cool earth, the rough texture. “This is incredible. It’s so realistic.”

Lesserec’s voice sounded smug. “We can even display a real-time computer calculation of what should happen during the explosion so the weapon designers have a one-to-one mapping of what is taking place.”

From the invisible speakers came the sound of papers rustling and hushed voices speaking, keyboards being rattled. Lesserec’s voice came again. “Mr. Kreident, we’ve been informed the Nevada Test Site is ready. Countdown for the test has been started. Everyone has gone to their workstations. You’ll experience a short period of darkness while we get in sync with the NTS sensors.”

Craig’s image craned his neck and took in the huge artificial cavern, the tunnels leading off into the distance behind the blast doors, and the monstrous bore hole extending straight up to the desert surface far overhead.

“How real is this simulation going to be, Mr. Lesserec?” Craig asked. Hell of a time to think of a question like that, he chided himself.

“Just close your eyes if you get frightened,” said Lesserec. “Remember, you’re in a VR chamber, not down a hole. It’s not real. I’m going to link you up with the test in a few seconds. You’ll lose contact with me, but we can still monitor you.”

The light suddenly blinked and Craig felt a momentary sense of disorientation. Oily blackness swallowed him, oppressive and thick. He knew he stood nearly a mile beneath the Earth, in the presence of five hundred tons of high explosive that was set to go off any minute now.

Faint lights came up again, enhanced by the VR sensors, and he could look at the canister of high explosive. It was going to explode in his face, and the computers would slow it down enough that he could enjoy every little phase of the detonation.

He should be able to see the detonation wave of the chemical explosion reach the metal casing, buckle it outward. He could stand there and watch as the blast wave rumbled down the tunnel.

Five hundred tons of high explosives. Again, he had trouble believing that so much chemical explosive could be packed into a volume that small. Craig stared at the canister. Five hundred tons.

It was hard to believe.

Craig frowned. “Hey, Lesserec, your distance scale must have changed as well!” he shouted at the dirt walls. “No way that casing holds five hundred tons.” He glanced around the artificial cavern. The rocky cave gave him no sense of proportion. The cavern could have been a mile across or ten feet — nothing gave him any sense of scale. But yet….

He glanced up at the tunnel above him. What was it Lesserec had said — that the tunnel was thirty feet in diameter? And if that was the case, then that weapon casing couldn’t be more than a few feet across.

Even filled with lead it would weigh two tons, max — hundreds of times less than what Lesserec had said it would weigh. What the hell was going on? Another one of Lesserec’s cute tricks?

“Lesserec?” called Craig. “Paige — what’s going on here? This isn’t a high explosive test.” No answer. “Can you hear me?”

Still nothing.

Craig muttered to himself. “All right, what’s up?” He started to get angry; there was no response from Lesserec, nor any indication that anyone could hear him.

Craig fumbled at the straps on his seat. He unbuckled and stood. “Lesserec, I want to know what you’re trying to pull. This is supposed to be a high-explosive test, and none of your handwaving is going to convince me this can holds anywhere near five hundred tons of TNT.” He rapped on the metal casing with his knuckles.

Craig heard only the soft, resonant hum of electrical sensors and diagnostic equipment around the cavern. He took a tentative step away from the invisible row of chairs in the VR chamber and walked out into the cavern.

The floor felt rocky beneath the soles of his leather shoes, just as it looked. Squatting, Craig touched the ground — he pulled his hand away at the damp, packed dirt, rubbing his fingers together. It even felt real! He brushed his hand on his slacks

He walked to the fat metal casing in the middle of the chamber. Light from down the tunnel lit his way. Thick strands of black cable ran in twisted pairs away from the device. It looked like a wide cigar with strings running out the end.

As he grew closer, Craig spotted a three-bladed magenta-on-yellow symbol painted on the side of the dull metal casing. The international radiation symbol. And then it hit him.

A nuclear weapon. A real warhead.

This wasn’t any test explosion — this was the real thing! It seemed as if the room had suddenly been thrust in a freezer; a trickle of sweat ran down his back and he shivered. His feet felt bolted to the floor, unable to move.

“Hey! Get me out of here!” he shouted, looking for the door to the chamber, but saw only the tunnels and the dirt wall.

“My God,” he whispered. He looked around the cavern in panic. Why would they substitute a real nuke in place of a high explosive test? Was someone trying to sabotage the International Verification Initiative? Was this the real reason Michaelson had died — did he discover something insidious about having a virtual reality watchdog on disarmament teams?

Or was it that Michaelson had discovered Lesserec exploiting this technology for his own private use? Perhaps the HF was just a ruse, something to throw them off the track? He wondered if he was in danger from the blast, if he would die the same way as Michaelson? More real than real.

Craig looked up at the tall borehole, impossibly far away. He knew the actual VR chamber wall should be only a few feet away, but the chamber tricked him, disorienting him. “Lesserec — let me out of here! Stop this, now!”

Craig didn’t wait for an answer. He strode over to the wall behind him, fully expecting to find the chamber door—

He bumped into a rocky wall. He rubbed his cheek, surprised to find blood on his hand. Real blood. “Lesserec!”

Clicking sounds came from the device in the center of the cavern. Time had slowed down. The light seemed different.

Craig wet his lips, swallowed in a dry throat from the events that cascaded around him. He remembered the briefings Paige had quickly covered on nuclear weapons when he had first showed up at Lawrence Livermore — the device must be going through some sort of arming procedure.

Craig whirled. The chairs! If nothing else, he could strap himself back into the VR chair and ride out this nightmare. Maybe that was how Michaelson had really died — maybe he had been disoriented, trapped in this chamber from hell, and Lesserec had sprayed him with acid, afterwards.

Craig rubbed his sweaty hands against his pants, then quickly brought them close to his eyes. Do I have HF on me now? In this simulation where everything seemed real, how would he ever know?

The VR chairs—

He looked wildly around… but they had disappeared, nowhere to be seen. “Damn it, Lesserec — get me out of here!”

Craig crouched low and swept his hands back and forth across the floor — the row of chairs had to be here. Somewhere.

A humming sound grew in intensity from the device. Craig straightened, sweat rolling from his face. His entire body felt drenched. “Oh, shit.”

He started running for the tunnel to his right, toward the thick steel blast door. But just as he turned, the entire room pulsed a brilliant white—

Incandescent purple splotches mixed with red, green, and yellow. Craig was immersed in a white-noise roar of unbelievable intensity. He felt as if every single nerve in his body had been stimulated all at once. He screamed as his body tumbled down the tunnel with the inexorable shock wave, slowed down so he could experience every nuance, every nanosecond of flight.

The cave walls closed down on him, turning liquid-metal purple, reflecting the light from the underground nuclear explosion back onto him. He heard a hissing as yellow and red particles popped off the surface of the liquid, boiling into a swirling plasma—

Streams of vaporized ejecta roared past, right behind a wavefront of impossibly blue-white light. His body moved with the particles, down the constricting tunnel as it stripped away the integrity of his image.

Electromagnetic waves set up resonances. His entire body became an amplifier of ever-increasing frequencies of light—

As his image roared down the tunnel, he tried to scream, but nothing came from his throat. Ahead, the battleship-thick blast doors seemed to crawl together, automatically closing off his path. The wavefront of light and a precursor of material shot past… and he thought he was going to make it past the closing barrier, to safety.

But the foot-thick steel doors inched shut just as he arrived.

Craig screamed as he impacted the thick, high-density shield, and felt himself spraying off into a million different directions.

The heat of a thousand suns struck him from behind.