Greig Beck - Dark Rising

The screen showed many scientists and engineers in the lab. As the lights dimmed, they pulled visors down over their eyes and turned to face the sphere. The sphere seemed to glow as the room darkened around it, and then, for just a few seconds, the room filled with white streaks before everything went black. A dreadful howling sound made even the viewers widen their eyes and grip their chair rails. Al Janaddi slowed the footage to a frame-by-frame perspective. Even so, the speed of events was rapid and it was difficult to understand what they were actually seeing. All of the personnel in the lab seemed to blur and warp, stretching towards the sphere as if they were made of elastic. The slowed-down howl sounded almost musical now, like a large brass horn.

Al Janaddi halted the display and enlarged a small section, showing the faces of the scientists in detail. Most showed expressions of surprise, but among them there were also fear and agony. Then they were gone.

‘Gamma radiation within the facility spiked at eight thousand sieverts,’ Al Janaddi explained quietly. ‘That’s almost incineration wavelength. Further away from the sphere, the concrete and lead panelling shielded the pulse shock wave somewhat, but we know it travelled beyond the facility. There is no significant radiation at the site now; in fact, nothing much above normal. It was there, and now it’s gone.’

Davoodi spoke again, slowly. ‘Are there any survivors? Have the bodies been retrieved and blessed?’

‘There are no survivors, but…’ Al Janaddi licked his lips as he gathered his thoughts. ‘We believe we have recovered the remains of Mahmud Shihab, the lead scientist of the facility. But at this point we’re not one hundred per cent sure if -’

The president unfolded his arms and narrowed his eyes at the scientist. ‘Tell us what you have, Professor. Everything – quickly.’ Though the tone was even, Al Janaddi could feel the underlying warning to be absolutely candid.

‘Yes, my President. Please appreciate there is much we still do not fully comprehend, and we need many more tests for final confirmation, but a body… er, a partial body, was shipped to us this morning. We believe it is Dr Shihab, but identification was possible only from the security tag found on a pocket and a partial thumbprint from the left hand.’

Al Janaddi sensed Parvid Davoodi watching him closely. ‘Severe burning?’ the vice-president asked.

Al Janaddi’s lips moved as if testing his words before he spoke them aloud. He shook his head and looked down at the ground before continuing. ‘Yes, there was gamma insult to the physiology, and some of the personnel recovering the body suffered quite severe secondary radiation poisoning, but that was not what confused us.’

The scientist drew in a deep shuddering breath and opened another file on the laptop – a single colour photograph that filled the screen. Though he had seen it before, he winced at the image. The top half of the body was almost unrecognisable as human. The head and face were the worst – they seemed to have stretched and widened. An eye a foot long stared out of the image, while the mouth – held open by the swollen, distended tongue – seemed to be screaming from the very pit of hell.

Even the veteran soldiers, who had seen all manner of mutilations on the battlefield, sat with mouths open in either disgust or shock. After a few moments, most of the group looked away, all except Mahmoud Moshaddam. The president’s gaze burned into the scientist; Al Janaddi felt as if it penetrated to his very core.

‘What else?’ Moshaddam said softly. ‘There is something more – I can feel it. I will not ask you a third time, Professor. Tell us everything.’

The scientist wrung his hands and nodded. ‘The Persepolis anomaly occurred just forty hours ago and over 400 miles from where we are now. However, when the body was recovered it was severely decomposed, as if Dr Shihab had been dead for many months. Somehow, between his disappearance under four days ago and reappearance, his body has undergone nearly half a year’s decomposition. We believe that when he disappeared, he didn’t just go somewhere else – he went some when else.’

Mohammed Bhakazarri was shaking his head. ‘Professor, are you aware how many billions of rials that site cost the Islamic Republic of Iran? Are you aware of the camouflage and misinformation that we needed to facilitate to mask it? And for what? What have we got for our billions and all that work other than a deformed, dead scientist?’

Al Janaddi had expected this from the military. They resented the fact that scientific personnel were in charge of the Jamshid projects. But his defensive strategy wasn’t aimed at the military; it was for the benefit of the president. It was common knowledge that Mahmoud Moshaddam was a deeply religious man who saw the hand of Allah in every event that occurred. This knowledge had shaped Al Janaddi’s argument.

‘Yes, I am aware of the cost, Chief Commander Bhakazarri – both in terms of the loss of personnel and rials. But I think we may have expended our money very wisely. This may be the greatest gift Allah, may his name be praised, has bestowed on our great land for a thousand years.’

The president’s brow knitted and he sat forward. Silence hung in the room and all eyes were now firmly on the scientist.

‘Black holes are the deadliest and most powerful entities in our universe,’ Al Janaddi continued. ‘And Iran just created one in a laboratory. The Europeans and the Americans are still theorising about the ability to achieve this with their giant particle accelerators. They know that creating and securing a black hole would deliver an energy source unparalleled on this planet. Gamma-ray bursts from outside our galaxy have enormous power that could supply the entire world’s energy needs for a billion, billion years. Rather than bury the Jamshid project, we must try to reproduce the work that was done at Persepolis and see if we can harness these mighty entities and their almost limitless power.’

Davoodi raised an eyebrow and half-smiled at the scientist. ‘I am not an expert, but I understand, Professor, that a single gamma burst can release more energy in ten seconds than our sun will emit in ten billion years. How do you propose to contain this monstrous force once created? Also, what would stop these unstable entities from escaping your facility and devouring Jamshid II, Iran, or the entire planet for that matter? We just lost Jamshid I in the blink of an eye, and probably alerted the West that we are working with fissionable material. The next accident could be the last for everyone in Iran.’

The vice-president leaned forward and steepled his fingers. ‘I suggest we shut down all testing until we have a better understanding of the risks of trying to tamper with these monstrous freak occurrences.’

Al Janaddi closed his eyes for a moment and sighed, opening his arms as if in resignation. ‘Perhaps you are right. There is much we don’t know at this point, Vice-President Davoodi. But maybe that is why we must undertake further study to understand and perhaps harness this power. If we don’t, the West will.’

There was complete silence. All eyes turned to the president. He seemed deep in prayer: his eyes were closed, his hands were clasped and he was murmuring softly to himself. At last he opened his eyes and spoke.

‘It is clear to me that this is Allah’s gift to the Iranian people. He has shown us the path forward and it would be blasphemy to ignore his message. No more will our enemies be able to threaten embargoes on our petroleum or the destruction of our oil fields. When we have an energy source that does not need to be sucked from the ground, that we can pluck from the very stars themselves, that has been given to us by Allah, blessed be his name, then we can lead the entire Muslim world to a new age of superiority. We will be able to stop our oil production and watch the West return to chaos when the source of the black blood that their machines gorge themselves upon is suddenly turned off.’