The Void: A 36 Novel by Patton Dirk

Author:Patton, Dirk [Patton, Dirk]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Voodoo Dog Publishing LLC
Published: 2016-10-12T04:00:00+00:00

29

The Operations Center was a crowded space, but not with people. Monitors were everywhere, held up by portable stands. Thick bundles of cabling snaked across the floor, connecting each of them to the equipment stacked on folding tables that were doing duty as workstations for the technicians. When we walked in, a pair of young men were working intently at the back of the largest screen, which was dark. Two runs of cables were scattered across the floor at their feet as they tried to find the correct one to feed the monitor.

Patterson strode across the open space, barking at them to hurry. I stood back out of the way, next to Johnson, and looked around at the barely organized chaos. A large, cylindrical structure on the far side of the space caught my eye. It was made of battleship gray steel and looked almost like a grain silo from a farm, only not as tall. A narrow hatch was set in the side facing me, a pair of Marines pulling guard duty on either side.

“Is that it?” I asked Johnson.

“Yes. That’s the original transport chamber.”

“Why steel?”

“That’s actually a section of the pressure hull from a decommissioned nuclear submarine. At one time it held the reactor. It still has all of the original shielding. We weren’t sure what the best way was to contain the black holes when we were first getting started, so the Director found this. Turns out, we didn’t need to worry, but there’s never been a reason to take it out.”

“Guess I should be glad you guys didn’t blow up the world, huh?” I teased.

“Actually, blowing up wasn’t the concern. Dr. Anholts believed there was a ten percent chance that we might accidentally create a black hole powerful enough to suck the entire planet inside.”

“I heard something about that when I first started,” I said.

“What you didn’t hear was that she nearly did when this whole thing was first discovered at the collider in Texas. Some objects did get pulled in, and a four-inch-thick stainless steel door was bent in half by intense gravity. I wasn’t around then, but from what I hear it was only a quick thinking technician that scrammed the collider or we wouldn’t be standing here today.”

“One of these days you’ve gotta tell me all this shit,” I said.

As I was speaking, the monitor flared to life. The two men who’d been working on it quickly re-secured the bundles of cables and hustled away from Patterson’s unhappy glare. Johnson and I moved closer as the image resolved into a newsfeed of people running out of the glass doors of a large department store.

We watched the muted screen as information rapidly scrolled across the bottom. Frightened men, women and children continued to stream out of the doors, and the camera slowly panned to show the chaos in the parking lot. Cars slammed into each other as panicked drivers tried to leave.

Emergency vehicles were everywhere, roof lights flashing, and more were arriving. They were

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