Zero Hour

TWENTY-FOUR

Maxmillian Thero walked past a line of his engineers and technicians, a group of misfits he’d molded into a production team. Among them was a North Korean who’d escaped Kim Jong-il, an Iranian couple who’d fallen under suspicion of the radical Ahmadinejad government when their efforts in building his bomb were sabotaged by an American or Israeli computer virus, a Pakistani scientist wanted by Interpol for selling nuclear secrets, a middle-aged German woman whose radical thoughts made her persona non grata in her homeland, and a youth from Chechnya who was brilliant beyond his years but who’d been forced into hiding under the threat of a death sentence for killing Russian soldiers.

In a way, they were his children, Thero mused. But only in a way.

A mixture of fear, promises, and lack of other options kept them at his side, working like devout believers.

“You are the lost sheep whom I’ve gathered beneath my wings,” Thero said, the arrogance in his baritone voice echoing in the semidarkened control room. “Together, we shall witness the fruits of our labor. The brilliance of my genius.”

He moved to a control panel and flipped a series of switches. Lights came on around them, and a suite of computer monitors lit up. Beyond the panels lay a large Plexiglas window. On the other side, a great cavern was illuminated. Perfectly spherical, it stretched nearly five hundred feet from the polished stone floor to the curved, domelike roof. Much of it was natural, but Thero’s believers and his slaves had worked it into the shape of a perfect sphere.

Inside the sphere sat a mechanical orb, made of metal pipes and scaffolding. It resembled a monstrous gyroscope, and, in a sense, it could act as one, pivoting in any and all directions.

This was Thero’s weapon, the ultimate expression of his genius. With it, he could direct vast amounts of energy toward any point on Earth. But, unlike most weapons, Thero’s would not rain destruction down from above. It would send it surging up from below.

By disturbing the zero-point energy contained within the Earth, Thero could channel this energy through the heart of the globe if he chose to.

One by one, a bank of indicator lights went green.

“All systems go,” announced the Chechen.

“Set for minimal power draw,” Thero said.

The engineers busied themselves with Thero’s protocol. They went through checklists and procedures and soon came to the point of no return.

“Switching from geothermal input,” the German woman said. The lights dimmed for a second and then returned to full brightness.

“Initiating the priming sequence,” the Iranian man said.

Several seconds later, a flashing icon on the panel in front of Thero indicated the priming was complete. The moment of truth beckoned. Thero pressed the ignition switch.

The lights dimmed again, much lower this time. Several went dark. The immense power draw of the ignition sequence was straining the electrical grid.

On a screen placed above the viewport a flat line was displayed. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the line began to oscillate as a shallow wave pattern ran across the screen over and over.

Out in the cavern, a dim specter of ethereal light spiraled along the tubing and around the interior of the globe-shaped room. It flashed and faded. A second pulse of energy followed. But, unlike the first, this one remained, moving back and forth like a ghost trapped in some kind of man-made purgatory.

“Magnetic containment field holding,” the Iranian woman said.

Slowly, the lights around them came back up.

“We are now running on zero-point energy,” the German woman said proudly.

As the sounds of subdued celebration spread throughout the room, Thero watched the monitor ahead of him. The peaks and troughs of the wave continued to build until a yellow indicator began to flash.

“Something’s wrong,” the young Chechen said. He returned to his desk. “The pattern is unstable.”

“It can’t be,” someone else insisted.

“Look for yourself.”

Thero stepped over to the panel and studied the three-dimensional pattern. It should have been a perfect sphere like the cave, but it was distorted in one section near the top. The lines pulled to the side, snapped back, and pulled again, like the picture on an old television getting bad reception.

“Counteract it,” Thero said.

Even as he spoke, a second alarm went off.

“Modulate the field.”

The Pakistani began tapping the keys on his computer. Out in the cave, the monstrous, gyroscope-like construction began to pivot in the huge rig. It turned slowly like a giant telescope, trying to align itself with a specific section of the sky. As it moved, the second alarm shut itself off. Only a flashing yellow marker on the oscilloscope-like screen continued.

The giant array of pipes locked itself into place. Ghosts of electromagnetic energy chased one another around the interior and across the polished walls of the sphere. The whole setup continued to glow as if it were covered in St. Elmo’s fire.

“The counterbalancing pulse is in effect,” the Iranian man said. “It should be tuned perfectly, but there is still a slight distortion.”

Thero was furious. He was ready to exterminate whoever had failed him. A slight distortion at low power would be fatal at higher energy levels. It would render his threat impotent.

“Explain the failure!” he demanded.

The engineers and technicians pored over their individual screens, checking and rechecking for any sign they’d missed. They chattered among themselves trying to understand what they were looking at.

“Well?!”

“It’s not us,” the German woman said finally. “Our energy output is balanced perfectly.”

“Then what is occurring?”

The Chechen youth spoke hesitantly, as if he were unsure. “Something out there is reading our signal, absorbing part of it. It’s creating an interference pattern, upsetting the balance.”

“Reading our signal?” Thero’s mind whirled.

“Yes,” the youth replied. “I think I can counteract it and restore…”

Understanding came to Thero suddenly, hitting him like a hammer. “No,” he said. “Shut it down. Shut everything down!”

“What?” someone asked. “Why?”

“They’re probing us. Waiting for us to power up and homing in on our signal. Shut the system down!”

Thero went to switch the system off himself, when an arm barred him. He turned to see his son, George.

“How dare you stay my hand!” Thero shouted.

“It’s too late,” his son told him. “Like radar, we’ve already been painted. There’s no point in shutting it down now.”

“That may not be true,” Thero charged.

“You know it is,” George said.

“Then we must stop them,” Thero blurted out.

He looked over to the engineers. “If they can detect us, then we can find them. Pinpoint the origin of this distortion. Quickly.”

The Korean and the two Iranians sprang into action, glancing up at Thero nervously, gawking at him as he conversed with his son.

“Do not raise your eyes to us!”

They looked back down at their work, made a series of calculations, and came up with a solution.

“Typing the location in now,” the Iranian woman said.

A map appeared on the monitor above the Plexiglas viewport. It displayed Thero’s location, his island of Tartarus. It also displayed the waters of the Southern Ocean and the southwestern tip of Australia. A flashing dot indicated the location where the offending distortion was located. Almost due east, only nine hundred miles from the island.

“How could they be so close?” he gasped. “Traitor. There must still be a traitor among us!”

“It must be a ship,” the Korean said.

“Of course it’s a ship!” Thero bellowed.

“Perhaps we should shut down,” Thero’s son suggested.

“Now?!” Thero barked. “I think not! Like you said, it’s too late. Prepare to destroy them.”

“It’s not wise to risk full power without testing.”

The crew continued to gawk at the argument between father and son. The embarrassment enraged Thero even further. “No more questions!”

“The system isn’t ready!” his son pleaded.

“Silence!”

With that, Thero’s son retreated, and Thero gazed out at his crew.

“Set the machine for a short impulse,” he ordered. “Align the dislocation to occur directly in their path. The distortion alone should swallow them whole.”