Chapter Thirty-Eight

Holographic Portal Project

April 12, 2004. 200

Anglerton Dynamics Laboratories. New Jersey

Leteo Waters sighed nervously. "Are we all ready?"

"Fix your tie a little," said a woman, somewhat younger than him, and reached over to adjust his tie.

They were all dressed in suits. It was a group of five scientists, all of them with papers in their hands. They stood in front of a metal door and glanced at each other. No one was smiling, just a general nod of assent swept across their faces.

"Well, here we go," Leteo said and opened the door.

They had entered a huge oval room. There was a large horseshoe-shaped table at which sat at least twenty people. Many of them decorated military men and some generals. Others showed no badges on their immaculate clothes, just a gesture of seriousness. Leteo looked at them and almost near one of the edges he found two people he knew. One of them was Maximilian Norton, part of the Royal family. Prince Max, as some called him, was already in his fifties and many found it amusing that his appearance was reminiscent of Beethoven's most famous portrait. The other was Carl Scott. On the other side of the table Gehirn was also there, in a black suit, twirling a pen between his fingers. Next to him was a fey woman with green hair.

Leteo's group stood at the open part of the table and one of them, with a remote control, lowered a huge screen from the ceiling, which lit up almost immediately.

Leteo spoke. "Gentlemen, thank you for meeting here today. I know you have busy schedules and I really appreciate you making the trip."

There were a few nods but no one said anything, though everyone seemed expectant.

Leteo let out a sigh and began. "As all of us here know, there have been difficult times in recent years. The campaign against terror has not been yielding the results that the Parliament was initially expecting. And public opinion is beginning to show signs of dissatisfaction with the joint campaign of countries to dismantle the Octogonus terrorist cells, following the September 8 attack on a global scale."

There was some throat clearing in the room, but Leteo continued. "What happened in 2001 has led to heightened security measures at airports and borders to uncover latent threats but, honestly, I think one of our biggest problems is underestimating the capabilities of these groups. They may have looked like maverick groups in the 1990s but in the 2001 attacks, and in the attacks that have occurred since then, they have proven to always be one step ahead."

Another of the scientists plugged his laptop into one of the cables and images of different areas of the planet destroyed began to appear on the giant screen. The Russian Kremlin, the side of the British government's House of Commons, a government building in Sydney, the Petronas Towers, an attack on the embassy district in Brazil, a train explosion in Tokyo, the destruction of the Panama Canal, an assassination in Manila and an explosion of gigantic proportions in the Horn of Africa, among many others. The scenes of destruction spoke for themselves. A few last images appeared in that tapestry of macabre horror. One was the White House, home of the kingdom's Prime Minister, reduced to rubble and another was a building in New York, The Attraction Hotel covered in smoke.

"No matter how it has been tried, whether by intelligence or military force, joint efforts have been ineffective in predicting the attacks. And that is why we are gathered here today. Show them," Leteo said to one of the scientists.

The image that was shown was one of an obsidian-like stone on a white surface. "What you are looking at here is a type of rock that was found over a century ago in Japan. It was supposed to be two halves, but one part was lost almost two decades ago, in Italy. Its discoverer was a scientist named Satou Nobuyama, he is not very well known, although it is known that he exchanged correspondence in his time with Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein himself."

"How long ago exactly are we talking about?" Asked a general leaning forward.

"Ah... late 19th and early 20th century," replied one of the scientists accompanying Leteo.

"Anyway. This scientist discovered this stone was two parts. In his diaries he wrote that he discovered them when he was a child but, what interests us, is that he said that when he touched them for the first time he suffered visions. As if he was seeing fragments of the past, or rather of the future."

Some of the men furrowed their brows and others exchanged confused glances at the information.

"What exactly are we talking about here? Some kind of rustic crystal ball?" Asked a tired-looking man.

"Not exactly. But as an analogy it may serve. Let me explain."

On the screen appeared an image of some pages of what looked like an old diary. The images were clearly old, not the digital quality of recent years.

"What you are looking at here are pages from Dr. Satou Nobuyama's diary. Some of the things here are probably remembered by anyone who paid attention in high school physics and chemistry classes, or in college." Leteo began to scroll through the images as he explained. "This is the Rutherford model. This here is what's known as the Funnyman diagrams for electrodynamics, this page is about the Heinsenberg matrix equations, here we have what we know the Kaluza-Klein scale and this here are basically what we know as quantum erasers and this here is pretty much what we know as Bell's inequalities."

Many had stared at him not quite knowing what to say, while others looked more serious.

"These pages of his journal would not be rare if not for a few details... many were written in the early years of the twentieth century. Many of these advances would not be realized until much later."

Some frowned and looked at each other.

"Let me show you something else." Somewhat crude drawings appeared in the pictures, but those pictures were much easier to understand than all those equations with Japanese notations. Many knew what those drawings were.

"Is that what I think it is?" asked a general pointing to one of the pictures.

"Yes," admitted Leteo. "If what you're thinking of is the demon core, we're on the same page. This drawing was made fifteen years before the date of the first tests of a fissile plutonium core."

Many in the room were surprised.

"Are you telling me that during World War II Japan already had ideas for an atomic bomb?"

"Not only did it have them. Experiments were carried out much earlier, but in the Pacific. Who has not heard here of the stories of the Russian ships that spoke of an explosion like a broccoli fire in the sky?"

Those were stories that were not known, so those who were less informed about who Leteo was knew that they had someone who was informed about some obscure events of the Second War that even they did not have all the facts about.

"Was this scientist involved in it?"

"No. Not at all. In fact, in his diaries he always talks about keeping quiet, so as not to cause any mistakes that could destroy the planet. As far as we know he corresponded with many scientists, but he never hinted at any of the things he wrote in his journals."

"Where are those journals now?" someone else asked.

Scott cleared his throat and took the floor. "If I may. They were destroyed in 1977, during the explosion of an experiment in the Mojave Desert."

"What experiment are we talking about?" Asked another of those present.

"I'll explain," Scott said. "Through investigations by Her Majesty's Intelligence Department, news came to us about Satou Nobuyama's diaries, several years after the war ended. In 1960, we held a meeting with the custodians of the Satou Nobuyama diaries and the two rocks. Through a goodwill agreement, they gave us the journals as well. One part went to Italy, with a team of scientists that was subsidized by the Vatican, and the other half with us."

"The Vatican? What does the Holy See have to do with all this?" asked the one who had inquired about the journals.

"The Vatican has always had its special research department, not to mention that it has a science department that has collaboration with many institutions in our territory. Satellites, antennas, astronomical observatories that are related."

"Not to mention the joint work during the Cold War period," admitted a general.

Someone spoke up, addressing Scott, as he was flipping through some pages. "This experiment is related to the search for similar rocks. That was your mission, right? Were you involved in the Stargate remote viewing project?"

It was time to lie a little. Any mention of past civilizations or the like, such as magic, was not to be named there. It was enough that a fey representative had been accepted into a secret security committee. Scott, on the other hand, had only heard about the latter, though he had never been involved.

"Yes and no," Scott lied. "Thanks to the journals we got the information that the rocks were part of a larger mechanism that ran a machine. He wrote down the specifications of the machine, although they were a bit abstract, we suppose because he was not an engineer. Satou Nobuyama in the visions he had of the rock wrote down several locations around the world, where we think it would be possible to find more of the material. As for the latter, I have to say no, in fact the records of those who participated in the Stargate project have been lost."

Maximilian Norton took the floor with a serious gesture and a curt tone. "The official position of the RIA is that the project never existed. But we know that it was a project conducted illegally and using dirty funds. It is related to the so-called 8th Floors scandal, as some of you may know. Not even an internal investigation has been able to find out who was behind it."

There was no comment, so the general took the floor again, addressing Scott. "But you never found anything? I meant the rocks."

"My partner and I did the best we could by getting to the places cited in the papers, but we never found anything."

"What a waste of money."

At that point Maximilian Norton interjected. "The money to finance such search operations came exclusively from my family's personal coffers, no taxpayer money was used. Contrary to many of the projects that were financed in secret during the Cold War and which my family did not know about until the scandal a decade ago."

"If I may clarify something. We did indeed not find any more of this type of rock, but we were not the only ones, many countries found out about Satou Nobuyama's diaries and there were many interested parties scouring the world like us. Money was lost on it, yes, that's true. But imagine what would have happened if other countries had found such material as well."

"I'm still lost," said another man as he drummed his fingers.

Leteo cleared his throat. "Please gentlemen, I will summarize now, before going to the important point."

"Proceed professor," said one of the generals.

"The stone allowed Satou Nobuyama to gain visions of future events and discoveries, that's what we got from his writings. But he also concluded that the stone could only work on certain occasions. According to his hypotheses, the stone had in its core a virtual state particles that could be activated and change state only when they received the impact of another type of particles from the sun."

"The sun?"

"You see the type of particles that came from the sun, which he called savitronics, could activate another type of particle in the rock, these were called tokions. These tokions were responsible for receiving the information in time. But the problem lies in the fact that, to this day, we have never found these particles in the studies carried out by the sun."

"If you have never detected them, how do you know it is real?"

"Because the stone has been activated. And we have evidence of it at times when there has been some change in solar activity."

"How do you say?"

"In different years there have been testimonies that the stone may have been activated according to Satou Nobuyama's notes."

"Only testimonies and written words?"

"No. We have a real proof or rather, two."

Leteo indicated to the one in charge of the laptop something and it played the video of an old security tape. In the image could be seen, from a high angle, a deserted plain in the middle of the night. Nothing happened for a few seconds, until on the right side of the image they saw a glow that illuminated the entire image. This was followed by a strong jolt and a cloud of dust from a shockwave. It took several seconds before the glow subsided and they could see plumes of smoke and fire rising from the place where the glow had occurred. The installations on the ground that the camera captured were intact, that explosion must have occurred at least two hundred meters from where the image had been taken.

Leteo explained. "This is the recording of the explosion that occurred at the Mojave Desert facility. This was on May 1, 1977. Some here already know the context, but for others it is something completely new."

"That was caused by the rock?" asked a man with a frown.

"The rock, it was in the machine that had been built for the experiment at the time."

"How did it happen?"

"Well, we had relied on Satou Nobuyama's measurements and believed that there would be an activation of the particles in the rock, but that it would occur somewhat later. At noon local time. It was a mistake. It occurred in the middle of the night. The explanation for what happened in the explosion is that somehow the particles in the stone detected the arrival on earth of these savitronic particles from the sun and when they were activated there was an overload in the machine's system, because the cooling systems were not working."

"Can it cause such a big explosion?"

"No, the stone itself is not dangerous. It's what we were doing without knowing the potential it can release. Our science twenty-seven years ago was not as complex as it is today. The machine had really huge cooling systems to maintain low temperatures and they worked perfectly, but they were turned off because the was a cold night. At night the systems were usually turned off because it was believed that they were not needed."

"It was night? How could particles come in from the sun when this part of the planet is in the shadow cone?"

"Well we're bombarded with particles from the sun even when it's night. A lot of the radiation is absorbed by the poles, but there are certain particles that don't seem to really care too much about the time of day, like muons for example. They can come in and have strange angular momentum."

"In fact from what we can gather from Dr. Nobuyamam's notes is that these savitronic particles could be a type of particle somewhat similar to muons. Although of a type we haven't detected before," a female scientist interjected.

"One of the first ideas was to put the labs in northern Alaska where cold conditions and study would have been better, but given the Cold War it was decided that it was better to keep the project in closer terrain with better security in case of any unforeseen events. The aurora activity in the desert is less than at the poles, but it also offered a good backup in case the rock could detect the arrival of such particles."

"You said there were two real tests. When did the other one occur?"

Leteo's group looked at each other. "That's the reason it took us so long to convene this panel. We wanted to be sure before we said anything."

A new video appeared on the screen. It was filmed with a hand-held camera and excited voices could be heard. The image simply showed someone standing in front of an office door. The camera was focused only through the glass part of the door. It looked like a professor's office. The camera was moving so much that it was difficult to see but, after a few seconds, it could be seen that on the desk covered with papers there was a small glass box with something blue glowing.

"This is my office in the labs, just a few floors below where we are. I was going through some things when I started to notice the glow. I thought it was something in my eyes, but I rushed out of the office and grabbed the camera from one of the labs. Without doing anything the stone had just activated."

"When did this happen?"

"This happened on September 7... 2001."

Everyone except Scott and Maximilian Norton were shocked.

"One day before the massive attack?"

"Exactly. Now as you know several strange things happened around the world on the day before. There was a big uproar around the world because the market algorithms had started to behave strangely. Especially in the European Union, where there was a market crash that lasted for a couple of weeks. Almost like what happened in 2000 with Y2K."

"Could it have been a coincidence?"

"That's the first thing many of us thought, so we started running experiments again, with the help of the Royal family. We thought of several reasons why it could have happened, we know that certain emissions from the sun can cause malfunctions in our equipment, but that had nothing to do with what happened in the European Union."

"What were you able to find out about the stone?"

"Well, to begin with, managing the stone's energy is impossible with our current technology. It will be a long time before it can really be done, because exploiting the stone's capacity would require working with energies that are not yet possible. But, on a smaller scale, that's where we can make something of the situation. If our calculations are correct, even at smaller energy scales quantum fluctuations in the rock could be studied. Which by the way we've called it Chronomantic Crystal, rock seemed a bit inadequate, honestly."

"What exactly is it composed of?"

"That's a bit long to explain, but the structure at a glance is very similar to other crystalline rocks on earth. From what we have studied it could almost pass for black quartz, although it has other parts that are not visible to the naked eye that are found inside. The geometric structure at the microscopic level actually looks like a fractal, which does not fit with the tetrahedral composition of the oxygen and silicon atoms of normal quartz. On the other hand the hardness is higher than that of a quartz, in that we have carried out tests under high confining pressure and the hardness is higher than that of diamond. Dr. Nobuyama called the rock jikanium, the crystalline structure tokihedron, and the virtual particles inside tokions."

A good portion of those present looked at each other quizzically.

"Where did this rock come from? Is it a meteorite or something like that?"

Leteo shrugged and twisted his lips slightly. "We don't know. Nobuyama himself thought it was from some mythological creatures called chronophages or something. We haven't been able to find where he might have gotten that idea, though. It's not in Japanese mythology, or other cultures."

"You don't want to know?"

Leteo smiled. "Edison didn't know how the mechanism that gave light to a lamp worked either, he just knew that it worked and that was enough, it wouldn't be until years later that the quantum aspects of some light phenomena would be discovered."

"Shut up and calculate," Gehirn said smiling.

"Shut up and calculate," Leteo nodded.

Another of the men had been turning pages and reading. "A machine...that allows the transmission of data from timelines. I'm kind of lost on this. From what I see there was huge amounts of money put into this. Even Mr. Gehirn here was involved."

Gehirn cleared his throat. "My involvement in the project was for the fabrication of a part that could not be replicated in the Nevada lab. Our scientists did their best to build that part," he said and glanced sideways at Scott.

"What do you think of all this?"

"Honestly I have lent my help but... I think differently."

"Why?"

"To believe that the future is already written in the information that the stone can supposedly obtain, is to believe that our universe is ruled by determinism."

"And you don't think so?"

"Whether it is or not, I prefer to believe that we have free will. On the other hand both science and Dark Events have proven this."

There was a murmur in the room. "The Dark Events. Yes, those mysterious cases of supposedly paranormal nature that violate laws of physics."

"It's not like they violate physics. I just think they are aspects of our universe that we don't fully understand. There have been some experiments in quantum physics that have proven this. If the rock, the chronomantic crystal as it has been called, really could predict the past and the future it would be like finding Laplace's Demon. It's kind of impossible if you ask me. Simulating all the paths between past and future would require as much computing power as creating a copy of our universe, with every atom and molecules."

"But we're not talking about simulating the universe. We're talking about fluctuations in quantum information at the local level," Leteo said.

Gehirn frowned and looked at Leteo. "Even if that were possible, it would be with almost very small changes. Something like what Satou Nobuyama saw could only be explained that the rock is quantum entangled or that the particles, the tokions, do not have a temporal lineality."

"Exactly, that's why we've gathered you all here today."

New images appeared on the screen. They showed a computer-generated human brain, with wires and some graphics around it.

"This was the first idea, although I'm presenting it in a didactic way. It always struck me that whoever discovered the stones had constantly repeated about the danger of a brain being exposed the moment the chronomantic crystal was activated. But my team and I, after 2001, wondered if it might not be possible that in the future a human brain could somehow interpret the signals from the stones when activated and thus amplify them to get a more complete picture.

"Do you think that's possible?"

"I think it's possible, but not now. I got the idea when I was looking at those virtual reality headsets that are usually sold for video games. "

"The main idea is not to wear a helmet, but to transmit to the brain the signals from the crystal when it is activated. The brain would interpret those signals. But it was just an idea," the woman who said that was the woman who had arranged Leteo's tie. A scientist with her hair tied in a bun and glasses.

"Isn't it possible to do that?" asked one of the generals.

"Well, ethical considerations aside, I wouldn't recommend experimental tests on human brains ever. We don't know exactly what allowed Nobuyama to receive those visions, but something like what he described in his diaries would be impossible for a human brain, we are not neurologically wired for it, if we were we would not only remember the past, but we would know the future. Our brain goes in only one direction. Exposing the brain to something like that is crazy, not to mention that we don't know what those particles can do to living tissue."

"Is it known to be harmful?"

Leteo spoke again. "Dr. Nobuyama died of cancer, we do know that. I myself was exposed to tokion particles during the 1977 explosion, but so far my medical tests have not detected anything. Even so, the possibility of what it would do to the human body should not be dismissed. On the other hand, this idea is not possible right now. It would practically require the introduction of a computational unit into the brain. Doing something like that today is impossible, maybe in a few decades when miniaturization reaches the order of quantum computers, and also when they become cheaper."

"It would require a new generation of superconductors and materials," Gehirn admitted.

"So? What's the idea," asked a man behind Maximilian Norton.

A new image appeared on the screen. It was a sphere, a kind of machine reminiscent of a vacuum chamber, with various connections.

"What is that?"

"This is a safer and slightly more improved version of the machine that was destroyed in 1977. the design is more simplified and parts not required were removed. It's a somewhat different approach. We call it the Holographic Portal."

"Can you explain it in simple terms this time?"

"Well, the idea of the 1977 machine was to detect that particles called tokions actually existed. Which we already know. This version will improve, we can make use of it to extract information from the future."

Silence reigned for a few seconds. "Maybe it's too simple. Can you expand on it a little in a simple way?"

"Right. In this case the idea is not to use an individual to receive the images. First you would use the Internet as a database. The idea is to send the information as high energy data packets to the crystal. Then the chronomantic crystal would send new results to servers... many servers. These servers would interpret the information and give us the result."

"Which would be?"

"Information, from the future."

Gehirn frowned. "How would you activate the crystal in that case, you don't need the sun?"

"That's where sending data at high energies comes in. Information encoded in electrons, data packets received in positrons."

Gehirn pondered the explanation. "And how do you guarantee that the information you receive from the future is accurate?"

"That's the tricky part. The theory is that by sending information at high energies, we are using subatomic fractal patterns in the crystal structure to store and retrieve information. The connection allows us to interpret future events accurately, but there is always a measure of inherent uncertainty."

Gehirn nodded slowly. "So it's based on quantum mechanics only?"

"First, we need to prepare the machine and synchronize it with the servers. Then, we will encode the present information into electrons, sending it at high energies. When we receive the positrons with information from the future, the servers will work on their interpretation. But keep in mind, Mr. Schmidt, we are entering uncharted territory. The line between the possible and the impossible is becoming blurred."

Gehirn smiled subtly. "Blurry, huh? I guess that's appropriate for a machine that works with time. Tell me, have you tried it yet?"

"Yes. We did simulations of electrons first, then cells, then we refined the experiment using the Internet. We used information first from stock market news and then to predict events in the news."

"What was the success rate of the last one?"

"3 milliseconds."

"Repeated double blind?"

"14."

"Energy level?"

"We used all sections of the lab to power the machine."

Gehirn nodded. He understood that. The idea was that they would need a much more powerful power source to extend time.

"Crystal fractals operate on the principle of quantum entanglement. The subatomic fractal patterns in the crystal structure can be explained as quantum entanglements that allow connection with future events. Basically the tokions are not linear, but the electrons would be the ones transmitting the information to the future and, on their return, we would receive the positrons."

The woman spoke again. "With the information received, the Holographic Portal creates a highly detailed three-dimensional hologram of the events you want to visualize. If the project works and we extend time it could have important strategic purposes."

"How could it be focused solely for defense purposes?"

"Refining the data feed. Today the Internet gives us almost real time information about what is happening anywhere in the world. We could send the information we wanted, and we would receive what we needed."

"Would that be possible?"

"We're talking about the information we would send and receive would initially be in a quantum state before becoming electrons. If there really is free will as Gehirn says the observation of the information received would be the vital part. That way we would be sure that we are receiving information from the future. We may never approach the nature of the visions Nobuyama had, but in defense and in a war a difference of thirty, twenty or even five seconds would be vital."

Everyone present looked at each other and the murmuring began. "What power source would be needed?"

"The primary idea was a particle accelerator, for refinement, but we know that under current conditions it is very expensive. If we had access to an energy source that would provide us with continuous energy, I don't think it would be necessary. Although the data refinement would be much less."

Conversations among those gathered continued. It seemed that many were genuinely interested while others seemed unconvinced. But the majority seemed to be leaning more in favor of Leteo.

Gehirn gestured to Scott. "Gentlemen, I'm sorry, but I think I should leave now, I have my plane waiting at the airport."

"You're not staying?"

"I have another urgent meeting."

"That's a pity." Leteo said.

Gehirn rose from his chair. "I've heard enough. If you want my opinion I would give this group what they are asking for. It's not much, is it? Using power from an atomic power plant is much cheaper and wouldn't require too much infrastructure. The benefits would be enormous if they can really make it happen."

The murmuring continued, Gehirn approached Leteo. "Be very careful what you do, that stone already blew you away once... but good job," he said holding out his hand. Leteo shook it gladly.

"I'm going to accompany Mr. Schmidt," Scott said. As he passed by Leteo he winked at him. "Good job."

As they left the boardroom Scott and Gehirn listened as the table began to ask for more details of the whole thing and Leteo's team lent themselves to handing out some paperwork.

They both walked towards the entrance of the building as they passed through the floors and offices of the labs. The afternoon sun was streaming through the large windows of the building. Many of the people were still working on their own projects. Anglerton Dynamics was a technology lab more focused on industry and military technology development, but it had other areas with different focuses as well. The two walked down the huge staircase and into the entrance hall. The laboratories were surrounded by gardens, which counterbalanced the interior image of the facilities.

Outside a car was already waiting for Gehirn. The windows prevented them from seeing the driver and if there were any guards, but Scott knew that Gehirn personally didn't like bodyguards. It was rare for him to use them. So he accompanied him to the exit and they both walked towards the vehicle.

Although Gehirn wasn't overly demonstrative, Scott liked to think of him as a friend they didn't meet often. Much less in recent years.

Scott had moved a few years ago with his family.

First it had been Leteo who had moved to New Jersey in 1995. A year later it had been Jack who first lived in Arkham for two years before moving to New Jersey. Both worked for Anglerton Laboratories, but focused on different areas. While Leteo had pursued high energy physics and materials, Jack was much more interested in the space race and rockets.

Carl Scott moved in with his family in 1997 when Rose had entered Princeton University. He had all the years he needed to retire but, while he had contemplated the possibility, he liked to stay active even though the years were already weighing too heavily on him. A part of him wanted to make sure that all this was on track. The Royal Family had assigned him to lighter counterintelligence duties near Leteo. That would give him and Jack an excuse to stay close.

As Jack had said, Leteo was going to plant a seed that would change the world in the future. The meeting that had just taken place was not about that infernal rock, although the results seemed promising. The real purpose was to plant the future idea of a mechanism capable of being implanted in the brains of humans. And, most vitally, Jack had said that Gehirn had to be there.

Objective accomplished.

That machine that Leteo was presenting now was an extra. The truth was that part of the design of the machine had been based on the design that Verneti and DiMati had used for the central part of the Chronovisor, but somewhat improved. The idea of predicting events came from the project that DiMati himself had created based on predictive market algorithms, although Leteo had refined the idea to a different level. It was a pity that both Verneti and DiMati had already died several years ago.

Time, sooner or later, was hunting them down one by one, like a relentless hunter with patience as his only weapon.

But Gehirn was still the same as before. Was he really human? He almost looked more like a fey, although he always said it was different in his case.

It was possible that that man in a child's body, who was even older than he was, would live well beyond a hundred years.

"Quite a few days, isn't it?" asked Gehirn.

"What do you mean?"

"I would have liked to stay, I wanted to see Louise."

"Why don't you come to dinner? I'll invite Leteo."

"I can't, I really have to go."

"We hardly ever see each other, the last time was three years ago."

"I don't have time, my company needs me."

"What the hell are you doing now?"

Gehirn sighed. "Investigating Dark Events."

Scott's gesture darkened a little. "They're growing all over the world, aren't they?"

"Slowly, but yes. There are more every year. I've already heard that the RIA has a special team to investigate them."

"Yes, even the PBI has a small division that's in charge of studying them locally. The world is getting stranger."

"The world has changed a lot over the years," Gehirn said looking down the street, watching the people go by, beyond the gates leading to the laboratories.

Scott remembered. "You haven't found your friend Shin?"

"No. It's been five years now. Always disappearing when something happens."

"Well the last time he showed up when we didn't need him anymore. We never asked him about that table though."

"Well that time he was pulverized by a plane. I still wonder how that was possible. There's still some silly girl out there looking for him, he'll turn up. It's not like he could die." Gehirn reached the vehicle and stopped. "Where is Jack, by the way?"

"Cape Canaveral. He didn't make it in time."

"Send him my regards," Gehirn said and put on a pair of dark glasses that he took out of his suit.

"I will."

Gehirn turned around before entering the vehicle. "By the way, I forgot. I'll bet you a beer they send all three of you to Diego Garcia."

Scott grimaced in confusion. "Diego Garcia? Why there?"

Gehirn wondered, "You're getting rusty, aren't you? You were an analyst, think. With all the conflict in the Middle East, where does the Kingdom want to gain strategic defense?"

Scott nodded. "Yeah, I know what you mean." Gehirn was probably right. If one was talking about testing advantage on a battlefield, nothing better than real-time information on what was happening with the troops. Diego Garcia was a strategic point in the Indian Ocean from where even missile attacks were being launched.

"On the other hand, they have a fairly new nuclear plant there that produces more energy than it uses. It will be good for experimentation. Well, that's just my hypothesis." Gehirn extended his hand. "See you sometime in the future, Carl. That way you can pay for that beer while you're at it."

"We'll see who pays for whose," Scott said, accepting the parting salute and the challenge.

Gehirn got into the vehicle and disappeared down the street. Scott followed the vehicle while wondering.

"Diego Garcia, huh?"

If what Gehirn had predicted was true, then the team would split up. He didn't think he could accept being away from his family if it had to continue in a war zone.