Anomaly (16 page)

“Bates has a theory,” continued Anderson. “He thinks the anomaly is working through the periodic table as a primer before constructing something out of these elements, some kind of device. What do you think?”

“Makes sense,” replied Teller. “There's got to be a next phase in the cycle of communication, and it seems reasonable that the initial discovery phase would lead to something that's related. Does he have any ideas about what?”

“Nope. But it scares the crap out of Mason. He's been pleading with the President to cut the live feeds, but, with all the diplomatic pressure, the President is more determined than ever to make sure there's complete transparency.”

“It won't be bad,” replied Teller. “Whatever it is, it will be in keeping with what we've seen so far. It will be an extension, an improvement, something that takes our conversation to another level.”

“Yeah, well Mason wants you back here. At the current rate of element exchange, we'll be up to radium by midnight, if not sooner. He wants your thoughts on all this.”

“Mine?” replied Teller, still getting used to the attention. “I don't know anything about fusion or triple-whatevers. I think I may have outlived my usefulness.”

“Nonsense,” said Anderson. “We're in uncharted territory, so it's a level playing field for all of us, elementary school teachers and astrophysicists alike.”

Anderson gave him a wink. Teller appreciated his kindness, but he really did feel out of his depth. It was one thing to come up with the idea of introducing helium, but when it comes to atomic isotopes and high-energy physics, he was a dead weight and he knew it.

“Bates said we're going to run into trouble once we hit Fermium. It's bloody nasty stuff. Bates is struggling to get his hands on more than a few hundred milligrams of the stuff. After that, we get Nobelium, and that's worse. It has a half-life of only ten days. There are no known stockpiles of the crap so we're scouring several university research reactors trying to scrape some together, but even if we can get that worked out, the next element we need to come up with is Rutherfordium, which has a half-life of ninety minutes. Somehow, I don't think Mason's going to let us whip some up on-site.”

“I suspect,” said Teller, “our friend is probably counting on exposing our technical limitations with these exotic elements as it will give him a yardstick to determine how advanced we are.”

Anderson was running his hand over his goatee beard as he spoke.

“Yeah, he's going to see we're struggling with the heavyweights beyond a hundred. In principle, we can get as far as ununoctium at 118, but no further. And then, that's only ever been a handful of atoms in a particle accelerator. The darn stuff decays in a fraction of a second. There's just no way we can feed this stuff to our hungry friend.”

“Exactly, and he knows it. It's going to be an interesting evening,” said Teller.

“Hey,” said Anderson. “Mason said you should be getting…”

There was a thumping knock on the door.

“Well, how's that for timing. Looks like your ride has turned up.”

Mason wasn't taking any chances. The whole suburb had been locked down by the National Guard, with armed soldiers stationed at each intersection. The Marines that picked up Cathy, Teller and Jones, drove three blocks to an inner-city school where several adjoining basketball courts had been converted into a helipad. Sawn-off basketball poles, their nets still attached, lay carelessly on the ground. From there, Jones was flown to a military hospital in Jersey while Teller and Cathy were flown to the park beside the UN. Teller was glued to the window as they came in from the north, making the most of the opportunity to see the anomaly from the air.

It was a little after eight in the evening and spotlights lit up the anomaly from numerous angles. The concrete intersection sat high in the air, facing down to the north. The underside of the concrete was exposed to the night sky. Teller could see the core team at work on the inverted slab, moving about as though it were natural to defy gravity in such an extraordinary way. The flags inside the anomaly had passed their zenith. They looked surreal, floating freely, suspended against the skyline, flapping gently in the cool evening breeze.

After landing, Teller and Cathy were treated at the medical center, where they showered and were given a fresh set of clothes. Mason had even commandeered an electric golf cart from somewhere so they didn't have to walk back to the research center.

Teller joked with Cathy that he was so pumped full of painkillers he could spin upside-down like the anomaly. And yet, she noted, he walked with a limp.

Mason made sure they got something to eat and briefed them on the progress so far that day. Teller asked about the riots in the city, but Mason assured him that the National Guard had squashed the unrest. He felt it was an isolated incident, Cathy wasn't so sure. One of the monitors displayed CNN. There were images of Paris in flames. She wandered over, wanting to hear the commentary.

“...coming to you from the Arc de Triomphe. The Champs Élysées is in flames. The rioting, which began in the northern suburbs of Paris, has spread to the iconic western quarter, destroying some of the most expensive real estate in the world.”

Footage of Prada, Versace and Louis Vuitton stores, ransacked and in ruins, flashed up on the screen. Broken glass and smoldering cars lined the streets.

“The French government has deployed troops to protect the Louvre, blaming the unrest on the United States. Ambassador Carter was summoned to appear before the French President, Jacques Lebarre, just a few hours ago, and was formally asked to leave the country in protest at the exclusion of the International Community from the anomaly research.

“The Laver Administration, here in Washington, is downplaying the incident, stating that Ambassador Carter has flown to London for security reasons and will return to Paris once law and order has been restored.”

Teller had walked up beside Cathy. He too was alarmed by how little attention the news broadcast generated. No one cared. The work they were doing here was tearing the world apart, but no one seemed to notice.

“Is it just me?” she asked.

“No,” said Teller. “I see it too. We're getting tunnel vision.”

Cathy moved slowly, aching. She yawned.

“It sounds bad,” she said. “But I'm sick of caring. I just want the world to come to a halt, to stop the madness. Why is it like this? Does it have to be this way? Why can't we all get along?”

Teller suspected she already knew the answer, but he said it anyway. “We've never been able to get along. The anomaly hasn't done anything other than expose the weaknesses that were always there.”

Teller pointed at the screen, which was showing images of protests in South Africa.

“They don't trust us because we're different. We don't trust them, because they're different. Oh, if only we could see how similar we all are.”

Cathy rested her hand on his shoulder, saying, “If only we could see at all.” To which Teller laughed.

Someone had got hold of an old couch, a couple of armchairs, and a walnut-stained coffee table from somewhere and had set them halfway between the NASA research trailer and the anomaly. A pair of binoculars, a copy of the New York Times and a couple of half-empty coffee cups sat on the worn, wooden table in front of the couch.

“Now, this is what I'm talking about,” said Cathy, seeing the couch. “You go do your science thing. I'm going to have some me-time and unwind for a bit.”

The couch hadn't aged well, with stains on the cushions and tears along the seams. Teller watched as Cathy slumped into the couch with a sigh. She leaned back, slouching, looking up at the anomaly, a vacant expression on her face.

Teller was in two minds. Part of him felt numb from the events of the day. Part of him wanted to flop on the couch next to her, but not to talk, just to be near her. With all they'd been through, from the very first day, he felt a bond with Cathy. She was so different to him. Seeing her go through all the same things he had gave him another perspective, one that seemed more grounded than his own. That she'd propelled him through all this escaped his mind, and he saw only their common, shared experiences. But she needed some time alone to clear her head and recharge her batteries, so to speak. He figured he'd sit there at the other end of the couch and not say anything, perhaps have a cat nap, when he saw Anderson walking up to him.

“Your timing is impeccable,” said Anderson, oblivious to all Teller and Cathy had been through. “We're making great progress. We just passed radium.”

And with that, Teller found himself swept up in the anomaly research again. He lost himself in the science, talking passionately with Anderson and Bates.

A row of monitors set up beneath the awning of the trailer displayed all kind of readings from the various instruments set up around the anomaly. None of them made any sense to Teller. They were plotting trends over time, noting the subtle changes when each new element was introduced, but what it all meant was lost on an elementary school teacher. Teller knew the graphs were probably telling the real scientists a great deal about the anomaly, but he'd rather turn around and watch the anomaly itself.

After milling around for a while, talking to the contact team, Teller noticed Cathy again, still sitting there alone on the couch. He looked at his watch, it had been the best part of two hours since they had watched the vision of Paris in flames. Anderson was rushing from one group of scientists to the next, so Teller figured he'd stay out of his way and keep Cathy company.

Sitting on the couch, they were less than twenty feet from the open pit carved out by the anomaly. Teller was surprised Mason had allowed even the scientists this close. If anyone fell into the broad hole, they'd fall up to the concrete intersection, wherever that may be as it rotated over the course of a day. It was as though they were sitting on top of a building with no railing along the edge. The view of the anomaly was awe-inspiring.

“Are you OK?” he asked.

Cathy nodded but didn't say anything. He held her hand. She responded to his touch, snuggling up against him for warmth.

“It's a lot to take in, isn't it?” he added.

“Yep,” was all she could muster in reply.

They sat there in silence for a few minutes.

She breathed deeply before saying, “It's not just the anomaly any more; the whole world is turning upside-down.”

“Yeah,” was all Teller could manage in reply.

“Why is all this so difficult for everyone to accept?”

“I guess it's change,” said Teller, putting his arm around her. “We tend to get in a rut, in a rhythm. We expect life to unfold the same way, day after day. As boring as it may be, we feel comfortable with the mundane and routine. There's security in repetition, going off to work each morning, watching a soap opera at night, taking the dog for a walk on the weekend. And then, along comes a visitor from another planet, from another galaxy, and, well... there goes the neighborhood.”

Cathy laughed. Teller laughed too. There was something about belittling such a radical, disruptive concept that meant if you didn't laugh, you'd cry.

“You know the UN wants this thing?” she asked. “They're claiming jurisdiction over it. They claim we're illegally occupying the site.”

“I don't understand politics,” Teller confessed. “It's never made sense to me.”

“Me neither.”

They chatted idly for a while before Cathy drifted off to sleep, snuggling up to him for warmth.

Teller was sore, but it was nice having Cathy leaning against him as the cool of the evening settled around them. After watching the swarm of activity around the anomaly for a while he started dozing off as well.

Bates walked up to them with two cups of hot chocolate.

“Thought you two might like this,” he said. Cathy stirred with the sound of his voice. She smiled, accepting the warm cup of chocolate. It tasted nice, with a rich, milk froth on top.

“Is this from the mess?” she asked.

“They've brought in a barista,” said Bates, sitting down in one of the armchairs next to them. “I guess there's only so far you can push a bunch of civilians without decent coffee and some fancy hot chocolate.”

“Yeah,” said Teller, taking a sip.

“So, what do you think about our setup?” asked Bates, seeing Teller staring at the activity on the intersection above them.

“I just don't know if I can ever get used to that,” said Teller, watching the core team walking around upside-down on the inverted concrete slab. For him, it was mind-bending to watch people climb down the scaffolding from his perspective, but up the scaffolding from their perspective. And the orientation of their bodies, with their hands lowest and their feet above them, it all seemed to lie, betraying the instinctive notion of up and down. He kept waiting for them to fall.

“Yeah,” replied Bates. “I know what you mean. It's one thing to understand that the anomaly is stationary in its orientation, while we're moving, spinning around the Earth's axis, but it is another to see it that way. It feels like we're standing still and it's the one that's moving. How do you get your head around that?”

“To be honest,” said Teller, “the anomaly does my head in.”

Cathy almost choked on a mouth full of hot chocolate. She shot forward on the couch, turning to look at him, her hand poised to catch any drips of drink. “You're kidding, right? I thought it was just me! You guys are always so confident and assertive. I just figured I was the only one that felt intimidated by all this.”

“Oh, no,” replied Teller. “Don't let the macho act fool you. And when it comes to what Anderson is doing now, well, I don't know what half of these elements actually are. I couldn't spell any of their names.”

“Me neither,” said Bates, leaning over the back of the couch.

“If I ever get to name an element, I'd like to call it absurdium,” said Teller.

“Ha,” cried Bates. “I like that.”

“I'd call mine ignorantium,” joked Cathy, leaning back against Teller.

“Mine would be have to be wackium, or ium-ium,” said Bates.