Dark Matter

Rachel looked up at me with interest. “What could it do?”

“Do you remember HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey?”

“Sure. The most reliable computer ever made. Urbana, Illinois, right?”

I chuckled softly. “He was until he murdered the crew of his spaceship. Well, imagine what HAL could do if he were connected to the Internet.”

“Tell me.”

“One Trinity computer connected to a phone line could hold the industrialized world hostage. It could disrupt power grids, rail lines, air traffic control, missile systems, NORAD, Wall Street. It could demand whatever it wanted.”

She shook her head in confusion. “But what would it want?”

“What does any intelligent entity want? Especially one that’s essentially human?”

“Power?”

“Exactly.” I jumped as my cell phone rang. The ID said “Andrew Fielding.” I pressed SEND. “Lu Li? Has something happened?”

“Nothing happen,” Lu Li replied in a shaky voice. “I worry about Maya. I think I hear noises outside. You bring her back, Dr. David.”

The bichon stopped sniffing the ground, looked up at me, and cocked its head as though listening.

“We’re coming. Right now.”

“Is she all right?” Rachel asked as I ended the call.

“Yes. She wants us to come back, but we’re going to wait a bit.”

“Why?”

“Because the NSA heard that call. If they have people in the woods, they’ll probably move now. And we’ll hear them.”

Rachel glanced anxiously at the wall that separated us from the trees. “Do you really think there’s someone out there?”

“That’s not what scares you,” I said. “What scares you is that now you think there might be.”

She slid off the stage and looked at the door we’d passed through. It was easy to imagine someone waiting behind it.

“You said Fielding was murdered because you and he resisted the project. How exactly did you resist it?”

“We didn’t just resist it. We stopped it cold. Suspended it, anyway. Fielding was the driving force, but it took me interceding with the president to accomplish it. It was like trying to stop the work on the atomic bomb during World War Two.”

“Why did you want to stop it?”

“I’m not completely sure about Fielding’s reasons. I think he kept a lot from me—to protect me, I mean. But my reasons were simple.

“Six months ago, we tested the Super-MRI machine. We used animals first, and there were no problems. The first humans to be scanned were the six of us in the inner circle. Within a week, we all developed strange neurological symptoms. Side effects from exposure to the machine. Fielding believed—”

“MRI doesn’t cause side effects,” Rachel broke in.

“Not the machines you use. But the magnetic fields generated by the Trinity MRI are exponentially more intense than those in present-day machines. They use superconducting materials that allow massive pulses—”

Maya was growling deep in her throat and looking up the slope of stone seats. I hadn’t heard anything in the woods, but maybe the dog had. I put the tape recorder in my pocket, picked up Maya, then drew my gun and pulled Rachel through the stage door.

Darkness enveloped us.

“Stay right behind me,” I said, ducking under a branch.

“Did you hear something?”

“No.”

If I hadn’t had Rachel with me, I would have used stealth to safely reach the house. But speed was the only option now. I plowed through the underbrush, warning Rachel whenever I hit branches likely to whip back into her face. She cried out twice and stumbled once, but she got back up and somehow managed to stay on my heels. As we neared the house, I saw the yellow square of Fielding’s patio doors. Lu Li stood silhouetted inside them, a perfect target. The image made me shiver.

When she slid open the door, I pulled her deep into the room. Maya barked wildly until Lu Li bent and held out her arms. The dog leapt into them as Rachel closed the glass door.

“Call a taxi,” I whispered over my shoulder.

Rachel went to the phone.

Lu Li’s eyes were wet. I touched her elbow, and the dog snapped at me. “I wish I could stay the night with you,” I said quietly, “but that would look more suspicious than my going home. I’m going to go to work tomorrow and try to get some answers, so I want everything to look as normal as possible. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll take Andrew’s box of toys with me. I don’t want anyone to find it here. Is that all right?”

Lu Li nodded, stroking the bichon as lovingly as she would a child.

“I’m going to pull into the garage when I leave, so no one sees me take the box. If anyone asks you what I was doing here, tell them it was a sympathy visit. If they somehow overheard some of our conversation, just act like what you are. A distraught widow.”

“What means distraught?”

“Grief-stricken. Grieving.”

She smiled bravely. “I no need to act this.”

I laid my hands on her shoulders and squeezed, then spoke almost inaudibly. “In the FedEx letter Andy sent me, there was some white powder. Almost like sand. It’s in those plastic bags on the couch. Do you know anything about that?”

Lu Li’s gaze went to the couch, and her face wrinkled in confusion. “No. Nothing.”

“Did you drop it off at the FedEx box?”

“Yes. How you know?”

“It doesn’t matter.” I knew Lu Li had dropped off the envelope because I had been inside Fielding’s head during my last dream. I felt a sudden compulsion to get out of the house. “Rachel? The taxi?”

“Any minute,” she said from behind me.