The Labyrinth Key by Howard V Hendrix

Author:Howard V Hendrix [Hendrix, Howard V]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780345491022
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2006-01-31T05:00:00+00:00

…BREAKING

LAKE NOT-TO-BE-NAMED

Don tried to take that in, but even knowing what he already knew of Jaron Kwok’s disappearance, it wasn’t easy.

“And that’s why we’re inside a mountain?”

“Yes,” Barakian said, his gaze roving over the screens. “Strange, really. A number of the movies shot here were low-budget apocalypse flicks. The underground tunnels were supposed to be where humanity survives being sky-rocketed by a comet or an asteroid, buried by nuclear winter, whatever. Protection against the outside world. But now we’re trying to protect the world from what just might happen inside here, a mile into a mountain and a thousand feet underground.”

Barakian looked around and shrugged.

“For whatever good it might do. It might be a protection, or it might not.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some of the comments in the Kwok holo-cast seem to indicate that the physical effects, though initially unexpected, have now become an important goal of ongoing covert research.”

“Into what?”

“A cryptologic catastrophe. A ‘cryptastrophe,’ if you will—or rather a controlled cryptastrophe. Some investigators seem to think they can produce an event in which only the device and a specified area around it would be annihilated. Neatly snipped out of existence. No fallout, no fire, no shrapnel. The ultimate precision munition, scalable to any required size. The Kwok holo-cast, however, indicated the possibility that something much more devastating might occur.”

“You’re just full of good news, aren’t you?” Don said, shaking his head. He thought of that ‘put out the stars’ comment and smiled crookedly at the image of the Memorial Hall. “Okay. I’ll bite. What kind of ‘devastating’?”

“If we believe the theorists, a cryptastrophe in which perhaps our entire universe winks out of existence. Kwok’s holo-cast suggests that, if we conclude and achieve closure within the memory palace ‘room’ that is our home universe—that alone will destroy those who are working with the device, and may bring down the cryptastrophe on our universe as a whole.”

“Is that possible?” Don asked.

“Who knows? We’re not at all sure that it is,” Barakian said, shrugging awkwardly again. “If so, it has something to do with the concept that our universe, or at least a part of it, would be ‘displaced.’ Transformed from ‘real’ into ‘virtual.’ Depends how correct the plenum theorists are about a particular sort of complementarity among parallel universes.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Don asked, more than a little annoyed that Barakian should be taking the idea of parallel universes quite so seriously. Despite his familiarity with virtual realities—or maybe because of it—Don had long resisted the idea of multiple and parallel universes. It always struck him as rather like being told that God had been traumatized as a child and suffered from a multiple personality disorder.

Barakian, however, remained unfazed. He simply nodded and continued.

“According to the plenum physicists, the total number of universes is essentially infinite. But with this peculiarity: from within any given universe, only that particular universe may be considered ‘real’—all of the others are at best only ‘virtual.’”

“And that fits ‘devastation’…how?”

“What the cryptastrophists are most likely after is a virtualization bomb,” Barakian said.

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