Quantum Break--Zero State by Cam Rogers

Author:Cam Rogers
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780765391612
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

14

Saturday, 8 October 2016. 7:58 P.M. Floor 49, Monarch Tower. Paul Serene’s Quarters.

The glass wall afforded Paul an angel’s view of Riverport. The town was nothing special, but neither had Alamogordo been before Oppenheimer, or Sarajevo before Gavrilo Princip, or, for that matter, Bethlehem if he wanted to be grandiose.

On official blueprints his rooms were listed as office space. When Paul had reason to leave the building he came and went via private helicopter, his existence a company secret.

Paul had never wanted for anything material. Wise investments had furnished his parents with a pleasant home and their son with the freedom to pursue a life of his choosing. The world had always been open to Paul. But it was Riverport, Massachusetts—not the universities of Europe or the Machiavellian war zones of world finance—that had shaped him. This town, of all the places on Earth, had been his crucible. Riverport had birthed him, raised him, changed him. Compressed and bound by fate, it had all happened here.

Urban camouflage fatigues lay pressed and ready, draped across the chair beside him; props to lend authenticity to the press release he was soon to be filming. He had the chair commissioned, carved from a single piece of a Fitzroya cupressoides taken from the Chilean rain forest. The tree had been over thirty-six hundred years old when Paul had it felled and turned into something he might sit upon. It was older than the Americas, than Christianity, older even than mathematics.

It was Paul’s favorite chair.

Time would end. But, perhaps, by using every part of his wealth, talent, determination, and intellect, he might liberate humanity’s fate from the end he had written for it.

“You’re doing it again.”

If he had died today there would be no one to undo what was coming. He had risked it all to save Jack, for friendship. He could not be so irresponsible again.

“Paul.”

Sofia had entered, dressed for the evening in something tight, floor-length, and Italian. Tablet in hand, mind forever on the project.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Grinding your teeth,” Sofia said.

Paul felt something stir in the waters of his body, a pulse of nausea behind his eyes. He braced.

“I could hear them popping in the hallway. You’ll need a dentist more than you need me if you don’t learn to relaaaaaaaaaaa…”

Sofia slowed and froze as time hesitated, foreshadowing an incoming stutter. They were becoming more frequent now, that was undeniable. Paul kept his composure, waited for the elongated moment to play out, and snap.

“… aaaaax. The ground-floor atrium looks beautiful, and the demonstration space is perfect. Now, there was something you wanted to show me?”

“You are about to woo the world with the wonder of chronon technology, and all of our efforts are about to conjoin. Lifeboat has a fighting chance. You’re here with me. That’s all I need.” She had noticed nothing. That brief stutter was more severe than the last instance. A sizeable one was due.

“Nervous?” he asked.

“Not at all.” She moved closer to him. “Once the world sees with their own eyes what we have achieved, how foolish our critics will seem.

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