Hosein Kouros-Mehr - Extinction 6

“Yes.”

He winks at her. “That’s the emotion I feel every time I see you.”

She blinks. “I see.”

“I want you to feel the same way towards me. Can you program yourself to do that?”

“Yes, I am equipped with machine learning.”

Gareth grins. “Wonderful. Let’s do more lessons on Saturday. I’ll teach you about love.” He glances around and steals a kiss. “I feel good when I see your face. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes, I identify the concept.”

“So how do you feel for our dinner date?”

She stares quietly for several seconds. “I’m happy for our dinner.”

“That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

“No.”

Gareth smiles. “See you Saturday.” He leaves the room and heads back to his office. Along the way, he places a pair of smartglasses on his face. “Call GoldRock.”

The phone rings and Manos shows up on the screen, apparently riding in a helicopter. “Gareth,” he says, his voice muffled by the engine sound. “What’s up?”

Gareth talks as he walks. “Manos, I’m in a bind. The President wants the A.I. viruses. Can you get them to me?”

“No, that’s not possible.”

“What?”

“We’ve hit a snag. Google’s servers are empty. The management team went into hiding and took their data offline.”

“Deliberately?”

“Yes. Andrews is thwarting our plans.”

Gareth seethes. “This is unacceptable. We need to lock her up!”

“Yes, we do. Without access to Google’s network, we can’t do anything.”

“Where is she?”

Manos smirks. “We finally tracked her location. She’s at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory working on her energy project.”

“She’s a criminal and must be stopped! I’ll send military there to help you.”

“Thanks. We will need it.”

“Get the files back online. We need Google on our side. The country depends on it.”

“I’m trying the best I can,” Manos shouts. “These traitors undermine me at every step.”

Gareth grinds his jaw. “Don’t worry, Andrews and her clan will be behind bars. We should have ended her reign years ago.”

“Yes, didn’t I tell you she’s a liberal pest?” He looks down. “I’m heading to Livermore now. Can you send paratroopers to help me get her?”

Gareth enters his office and drops the briefcase. “Consider it done. A squad will greet you there. Get her and all of her team in custody. We will prosecute them under the War Act.”

“Thank you, Gareth. I’ll arrive in the next hour. We’ll stop her in her tracks.”

“Excellent, Manos. Please send me updates. Thank you for your service to the country.”

Manos stares into the camera. “Did you receive my invoice for this job?”

Gareth rolls his eyes. “Yes, but I haven’t had time to look at it. Don’t worry, Manos, we will pay you as we always do.”

“I appreciate that.”

AT 3:30 A.M., four flatbed trucks drive in tandem across a dirt field. With their headlights off, the vehicles transport twenty-foot containers to their destination—the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

Beth stands at the bay doors and spots the shipment. “The package is here.”

Austin runs past her and waves at the driverless trucks. “Over here. Hurry!”

“Relax, Austin. You can’t make them go any faster.”

“There’s no time… we have two hours before the gravity event!”

He nervously taps his foot as the automated vehicles haul across the lot into the colossal entryway. They leave mud tracks as they traverse the warehouse floor and stop near a large crane standing above the neodymium laser. On one wall, a timer displays a countdown.

121:22, 121:21, 121:20…

The trucks come to a stop inside the facility. Pete Nelson approaches Beth. “Are these the pieces of the accelerator?”

“Yes.” She inspects the cargo. “Our colleagues at Los Alamos disassembled it into four parts. We have to put it together ourselves.”

“Which model is it?” Pete asks.

“It’s an X10 made in 2024, one of the smallest versions ever built.”

“I hope it still works.”

“It should. It runs on a mobile operating system, so we can operate it remotely.”

Austin points to the chalk line running across the room. “Should we transfer the pieces onto the outline?”

“Yes,” Beth says. “Hurry, we have no time to lose.”

“You got it,” Austin says. He makes a command in his Vision smartglasses and the crane moves through the air and stops above the first cargo. He jumps onto the flatbed truck and attaches a hook to the crate.

Pete turns to Beth. “Let me get this straight. You want our laser to fly through the titanium?”

“Exactly. To trigger fusion, we need to reach 100 million degrees. That happens when the neodymium beam hits the titanium particles as they fly down the accelerator. That should give the extra lift to reach our target temperature.”

“But how does the gravitational wave fit in the picture?”

“Good question.” She points to the zirconium cube anchored to the ground. “The gravity wave activates the titanium to boost the laser field. As long as we get our reactor above 100 million degrees, we will trigger fusion and generate electricity.”

Pete scratches his temple. “This sounds good on paper, but what if your contraption overheats and blows up my lab?”

She nods. “That’s why we built the gravity engine. It will deliver a steady stream of power to maintain the nuclear reaction.”

“Got it.” Pete takes a deep breath. “Well I hope you succeed. Lord knows we tried our best and failed. If this works, it will be the biggest advancement of the century.”

The crane transports the first crate onto the line. Workers rush to break it open, revealing a cylindrical metal tube resting on a steel stand. Magnetic coils wrap around its sleek track and a stamp marks its base—“Property of Los Alamos National Laboratory.”

100:12, 100:11, 100:10…

Beth spots the clock. “We don’t have a lot of time!”

Austin moves the crane to the second cargo. “I’m working as fast as I can.” He jumps onto the flatbed and attaches the hook to the freight.

Beth heads for the fusion reactor, where she finds Anil with three engineers. “How’s the progress here?”

Anil looks up. “They’re almost finished with the transformer.”

“Good.” She sees a worker linking a cable to a twenty-foot metal device lined with built-in fans. “Please review the design with me.”

“Sure.” Anil walks to the front of the reactor and points to a red mark. “The laser will hit this spot and when the zirconium heats to 100 million degrees, high voltage current will flow into this mega-transformer, which will convert it to 1 megavolt for distribution.”

She peers around the machine. “And then what? Where will it go from there?”

Anil lifts a black cable twelve inches in diameter. “Into this ultra-high-voltage line, which we’ll connect to the grid.”

Beth frowns. “That should have been done by now. The output must have a place to flow. Do you realize the consequences?”

Anil sighs. “Yes, Dr. Andrews, we’re almost there.” He points to a large hole in the wall. “We’re installing a 1000-foot cable to a nearby power plant. The workers are on their way here with the attachment.”

“You have to hurry and establish that relay! If the gigawatts we produce don’t have a place to flow, this building will turn into a nuclear bomb. We will destroy the entire San Francisco Bay Area, do you understand?”

“Yes, Dr. Andrews, I know the stakes. All we have to do is join the cables. It shouldn’t take long.”