Daniel Suarez - Influx

But something even stranger was happening. Rather than feeling himself falling backward, Cruz felt both himself and the ship falling forward, upward—as though he stood upside down at the edge of a great hole. A hole in the sky.

“Dear God! What’s happening?” He looked to Matapang, who was silently moving his mouth, unable to find words.

And then the San Miguel starting moving forward, “up” the face of the wave that now reached high into the sky. It was a five-thousand-foot mountain of water roaring up, into, and past the clouds.

Cruz willed his knotted hands off the tiller and clawed on handholds to reach the bridge hatchway.

Cruz looked out the hatchway behind them and could see that they were already hundreds of feet above sea level. They’d apparently been falling upward into the sky for some minutes already. He pulled the hatchway closed and rammed the bolt home. A glance to port. “Mat!”

Matapang awoke from his daze, pulled the port doorway closed.

Outside, on deck, he could see that a rising gale was rolling over them. And yet there was no wake or bow wave around the boat. They were moving along with the water at a speed of at least twenty knots—far faster than this old boat had ever gone. Winches and nets flailed about as the men gave up on cutting the net free and instead tried crawling in through the nearest hatchway. The net as well seemed to move alongside them. They weren’t moving relative to the water but with it.

The steep slope of ocean now filled his forward view. Wind was howling around them as they moved faster and faster.

And then Cruz felt his body grow lighter and lighter until finally he was in free fall, along with everything else in the cabin. “Dear God, what’s happening?”

Matapang stared as if comatose at a void that spread before their boat, and sailors, fish, and equipment fell skyward, the roar of water filling their ears. The sea itself began to come apart into a turbulent mass of white water, and the temperature dropped rapidly. Their breath condensed into fog as they panted in fear.

Until finally they stared straight into the heavens, falling upward along with a thousand Niagara Falls—the roar filled their ears as terror gripped their uncomprehending minds.

“A fishing trawler got caught up in the test, Mr. Director.”

The voice came over the intercom into the observation gallery. Graham Hedrick sat surveying a control room lined with thin film displays and workstations—most of it AI-automated but not all. There were still a few scientists down there manning workstations. A towering holographic satellite image spread before him on a central dais. It was focused on a broad expanse of the South Pacific, where a supernatural funnel of water rose from the sea, pouring into the upper atmosphere. The view from space was spectacular, but then it was always spectacular. It was the test results that needed to be spectacular.

“Do we power down Kratos, Mr. Director?”

Hedrick frowned in irritation. “We’re not going to interrupt a billion-dollar test because some pirate fishing boat wandered onto my test range. This section of ocean was supposed to be clear of shipping—whose responsibility was that?”

A pause. “An AI, from strain R-536, sir.”

“Damnit.” It was immensely unfulfilling reprimanding AIs. They always had a built-in you’re-the-one-who-created-me excuse. “Find out which team evolved R-536 and where else it’s been deployed. This was sloppy work—not checking for unregistered vessels. Give it and its progeny a red ticket.”

“Understood, Mr. Director. What about the fishing trawler?”

“Jam its distress calls.” Hedrick cut the connection, then brought up his project leads onto several holographic screens. “What’s our telemetry look like?”

The elder of the two scientists spoke first. “Kratos is maintaining ninety-four percent power with no discernible fade. We’re projecting a gravity field a mile in diameter from an altitude of twenty-two thousand, two hundred thirty-six miles. Displacing approximately four hundred billion—”

“Maximum acceleration?”

Both scientists were suddenly quiet, waiting for the other to talk.

He stared hard at them. “What is our maximum acceleration?”

This finally shook an answer out of the older one. “Zero-point-nine-eight Earth gravities.”

Hedrick looked to the younger scientist. “So there was no increase in the excitation of the boson field? Mass remained constant?”

The scientists exchanged looks.

“Can you please explain how all these changes made no difference? This is where we started.”

“Our changes may not have increased gravitation, but Kratos is far bigger than anything we’ve—”

The elder scientist cut in. “We’re still evaluating the quantum physics of this technology, Mr. Director. There are competing theories as to why Mr. Grady’s apparatus works at all. It’s possible that what it’s creating is actually a distortion in space-time, not a manipulation of gravity. Even the Varuna AI hasn’t come up with answers.”

“Not good enough. It’s been years since we harvested this technology, and we still don’t even understand it. It’s not enough that we reflect gravity. We need to be able to create gravity from energy. We are no closer to doing that today than we were three years ago.”

“But we’ve discovered the means to project the gravity mirror over arbitrary distances. That’s a major advance.”

“A necessary advance. And so, too, is the ability to amplify gravity.”

“Having a goal doesn’t make it possible.”

“You just got through telling me you and your whole team still don’t understand the technology we have. I thought that was the whole point of putting you in charge . We are not without rivals or detractors—you realize that, don’t you? ”

“Yes. I assure you we’ve been examining every angle we can think of.”

“That’s the problem: You’re apparently not able to conceive of the answer. Or perceive it—you and the synthetic intellects both.” Hedrick looked down into the control room, where technicians were high-fiving one another. The first full-scale test of the gravity mirror satellite certainly appeared to be a success in their eyes. “They don’t even seem to know they’ve failed.”

“We did succeed in creating the largest gravity mirror yet, sir.”

“I get large. Now I want powerful.”

A technical operations officer appeared as a hologram. “You have a call from L-329 at BTC Russia, Mr. Director.”

“Damnit, they’re not BTC Russia. They’re an illicit organization.”

“Sorry, Mr. Director. I was simply repeating—”

“It has no authority whatsoever.”

There was a pause.

“Did you still want to take the call, sir?”

He took a deep breath. “I hate talking to this thing.” Hedrick looked to the ceiling. And yet he knew why it was calling. It was one of the very reasons for the gravity demonstration, after all. “Varuna.”

The console’s voice emanated from the ceiling. “Yes, Mr. Director.”

“Adjust the modulation of my voice while I speak with L-329. Make sure everything I say has a sound pattern consistent with confidence and honesty.”

“I will modulate your speech transmissions to convey the desired effect, Mr. Director.”

Hedrick spoke to the operations officer. “Send the call through.”

In a moment a cartoon cat with large green eyes replaced the tech officer’s holographic image. The cat was apparently the L-329 AI’s latest avatar. It nodded in greeting. “Director Hedrick. We have detected a gravitational anomaly in the South Pacific that is a cause for collective concern.”