Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 84 - Space Dominoes

Photo by Олег Мороз on Unsplash

James stood on the ramp with his arms folded over his belly. He was looking into the open, gaping maw of what initially appeared to be a steel storage container painted yellow on the doors and outside walls.

“Let’s take a look,” he said to Tony.

When the two men stepped into the container, Tony noticed a multi-buttoned control panel on a rolling cart.

“This place sure is rife with rolling metal carts and cobbled-together contraptions,” Tony said. “But I must admit I’m somewhat confused. What is this thing?”

“What do you think it might be?” James asked.

Tony looked at the control panel and followed the lengths of rubber-encapsulated extension cables connected to the back and over to a transparent plexiglass container almost hidden in the shadows within the center of the faintly lit vessel. This container, in turn, was connected to the edge of a hole in the center of the ceiling that led upwards into what appeared to be a chimney of sorts. Tony summarily realized it wasn’t a chimney but a silo as wide as the length of the container itself. He stepped outside the container, evaluated the top of its heavy metal exterior, and observed the long length of metal piping, at least fifteen feet in diameter, which connected the container’s interior to an exit port in the ceiling far above.

Stepping back inside the container, he idled up to James and pointed at the device in the center of the plexiglass cube.

“It’s a rocket?” Tony asked. His wide and round eyes were magnified through the lenses of his eyeglasses, and his lower lip was pulled into a thin grimacing line. The words somehow became more conclusive as they left his mouth: “I didn’t realize your grand plan here was to fire a missile.”

“Technically, yes,” James said. “That’s the plan. But I thought we’d need to construct it first.”

“What do you mean?”

“This missile isn’t supposed to be here,” James said. “At least, not yet.”

“So, to be clear,” Tony said, itching at his bushy mustache like a chipmunk grooming itself after a meal. “You weren’t expecting to find a missile right here in a missile silo. But you planned on assembling a missle with my help.”

“Something like that,” James answered.

“I’m not exactly sure I’m comfortable with that idea,” Tony said. “So, how exactly did this get here?”

“That’s what perplexes me,” James said. “I could have sworn it was eighty-eight or even 1990 before we finished this. Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m quite glad to see this here.”

“So it’s really a missile, then?” Tony asked. “Like a nuclear warhead?”

“Not exactly,” James explained. “This is a full-scale EMP weapon. It’s a larger version of what we made earlier in the lab but with a much wider and powerful circumference. It’s launched via rocket like a satellite and then armed once in orbit. But I wish I knew how it was already here.”

“You had the dates wrong, is all,” Tony said. “That’s bound to happen, considering we’ve traveled forty years in time.”

“No, you don’t understand,” James said and hitched up the back of his pants, squirming, unsettled even in his own skin. I’m quite good with dates. I’m meticulous with notes and review them regularly — or I did when I was still doing this work. But all we had at this point were the essential components of the electromagnetic pulse device, not the dispersion method. The rocket is something I know we didn’t have yet.”

“Well, isn’t this good news, then? If finding a nuke is good news?”

“Again, it’s not nuclear,” James said. “That’s always the misconception with EMPs. While EMPs are typically associated with nuclear denotation, the difference is that nuclear warheads wipe out entire populations.”

“And this one doesn’t?” Tony asked.

“This one’s payload is more like basic satellite technology than expected for something capable of more disruption than you can imagine. It sends up an EMP more akin to what happens in nature, like lightning, solar flares, or a meteor. EMPs of that sort cause smaller, temporary disruptions. But this is military grade. Beyond military grade, for that matter. Even more advanced.”

Tony gave the massive silo extending from the top of the storage container another look.

“But we have to get it airborne?” he asked.

“Exactly,” James answered. “But again, what worries me is the timetable. This is just the initiation detonator. By 1992, we’d launched a series of globally orbiting EMP satellites that, when triggered, would initiate a worldwide sequence that shuts down the power.”

“Seriously? More than just this one?”

“Again, it’s disaster prevention,” James said, turning and staring down at Tony with a broad, pleased grin. “The question now — given that this EMP weapon is already here — is whether those other satellites were already launched. There’s no real way of knowing that I can think of. I didn’t see any other assembly parts in the main laboratory or elsewhere.”

James scratched at his chin, his eyes darting as he considered the possibilities.

“I don’t mean to be obtuse,” Tony said. “But what would happen if this was launched and the other satellites were already floating around in space?”

“That’s the ingenious part,” James answered, smiling proudly. “Once launched, this final EMP satellite would act like a wick on a stick of dynamite. After reaching its programmed position, it would initiate the transmission of a series of signals from one satellite to the next. Like dominoes falling one by one.”

“If one of these EMP devices went off, wouldn’t it disrupt the others and keep them from transmitting to the next satellite?”

“No, not at all, because there are different types of EMP signals,” James explained. “As we saw earlier with the telephone, the burst of electromagnetic energy from an EMP device, even as basic as the one we cobbled together earlier, can disrupt electronic equipment and render everything that uses nearby electrical currents useless. And since you now know that ENH has been creating manufactured black holes for transdimensional, beyond lightspeed travel, we felt it in our best interests and that of the planet to have safeguard protocols in the event of an anomaly during our experiments.”

“How does the government not know about this?” Tony said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Pfff,” James responded, waving his hand as if swatting away a gnat. “The government paid for most of this. How do you think we finance our endeavors?”

“So there are different types of signals?”

“Exactly,” James said. “This is why a nuclear warhead — which would emit a nuclear EMP — isn’t exactly necessary. There are also high-altitude nuclear weapons and non-nuclear EMPs that would do the trick. Our satellites were designed to be all non-nuclear so that we wouldn’t wipe out the Earth’s entire population.”

“I have to tell you, James, it’s hard not to be angry at you,” Tony said. “All of your scientists who get it in your heads to make stuff that can kill everything.”

“I can understand that.”

“How someone can get so bent on harnessing power that isn’t theirs to harness is just beyond me. I mean, what was the point of all this?”

“Strangely, I find this work beautiful.”

“Beautiful?”

“It’s not about harnessing power, but witnessing it. To work with capabilities that empower transgalactic travel and allow exploration of all of creation is to somehow, I don’t know, have a first-row seat in witnessing every aspect of God.”

“God?” Tony scoffed. “Now you’re bringing God into this?”

James subconsciously dug his hands into his pocket. His left hand fingered the beads of the Rosary he’d carried with him for years.

“I think that what happened — what you played a part in happening — pretty much nullifies any possibility of the existence of God.”

“How so?” James asked, his eyes raised in surprise.

“You were dead before all this, am I right?” Tony asked. “Well, so was I. And what do you remember from when you were dead?”

“Nothing, I guess,” James answered.

“Nothing,” Tony repeated. “No heaven. No hell. Not even something like a halfway house purgatory.”

“No,” James said and clutched the Rosary harder.

“When we die, aren’t we supposed to be sent to one of those places? If God exists, why doesn’t anyone who was dead remember seeing God in heaven? Do any murderers remember going to hell? I haven’t heard of anyone saying they do.”

“Neither have I,” James admitted.

“How did you and I die only to get zapped back in time instead of meeting our eternal reward?”

“Maybe that’s it,” James said, passing his fingers from one bead of his Rosary to the next. “God works outside of time. He doesn’t exist at any single point in time and, therefore, doesn’t experience any temporal succession. Who’s to say that even though someone found a way to go back in time, God’s ability to work outside of all time is somehow negated?”

“Let’s assume that’s true,” Tony said. “But now you’ve got millions of people returned from the dead and millions more gone. How could God let that happen?”

James looked up and smiled at his new companion.

“You know the story of Adam and Eve?” he asked.

“Of course,” Tony said.

“They had everything. They had paradise. And God let them throw it all away when they wanted to be like God.”

“So?”

“There’s a difference between eating the apple and looking at and admiring the apple God made. God’ll let us see the good He’s made, but He also lets us make our mistakes. I wanted to admire God’s work in this universe. But the woman who took us back in time wanted to be like God.”

Photo by Bradyn Trollip on Unsplash