“Yesterday should have stayed put. Now it was too late.”
~ Conner Quick
The RedBook wasn’t a book at all. It was a vintage notebook computer, designed to look like a leftover from the early twenties. It held 50 Terabytes of top secret government design, spanning everything from ten years back to the entire crop currently on the Facility’s drawing board; blueprint to prototype.
You’re probably wondering why anyone would lay that kind of trust in the hands of a fifteen year old kid, but the answer is simple: half the prototypes were either designed by Conner himself, or someone directly beneath his wing. The few designs that weren’t, served as practical reference for the hundred or so projects hovering in various stages of production. If Conner could be trusted with most of it, then Conner could be trusted with all of it.
Whatever the thieves were planning, it could easily affect the entire globe. If they didn’t attempt to cripple the government with ransom, it was probably because they wanted it leveled. About near anything in the RedBook could be tweaked toward the nefarious.
The Memory Wipe came first to Conner’s mind. The MW1 was counterpart to the Facility’s earlier Memory Bank. The Wipe was originally designed to extract traumatic recall from the victims of violent crimes, but in theory could be used for anything, perhaps causing a victim to forget who they were, or where there allegiance lay. A bead of sweat made a mostly neat line down Conner’s face. He wiped it absently and thought about the EverGrow. The research was remarkable, but it was in a precarious part of its development cycle to turn up AWOL. Half a dozen drops of the green, icy liquid could germinate a wheat field the size of San Fransisco. Twice that and the land would go fallow for a hundred years, if not two.
Anything was possible, but there was a single file inside the notebook that meant more to Conner than all the others put together. If someone had managed the unimaginable, Conner was certain, it was the only thing they really wanted.
The Molecule Regenerator was Conner’s blueprint, a brainchild that would bounce the whole big blue spinning orb right into the next eon. Even stuck in the purgatory of Phase 1 Development (where it had lingered for over a year) the Regenerator was arguably the most significant invention the world had seen since fire.
Acid licked the lining of Conner’s stomach. He felt like he’d devoured two pounds of uncooked sausage, then chased the raw meat with an antique can of Spaghettios. He collapsed in the chair and stared out the window.
The Molecule Regenerator had never advanced to the second stage of testing, though the theories were solid and framework sound. The Facility forecast that they would have a working prototype within the year, and commercial availability in under three. Within half a decade, everybody in Newmerica would own one. Only a few months after that, and the whole world would be wondering how they ever went without.
The possibilities were endless; a virtual fax for physical objects. The instrument, once complete, could gather the atoms of any living creature or inanimate object, condense them to their tenth exponent of miniaturization, then store them inside an alloy nano-bucket. The bucket would then send the atoms swirling through the atmosphere to specified coordinates anywhere on the international map. A second Regenerator wasn’t even needed.
In a decade, it would be the standard for transfer of goods or information, the manner in which people moved, whether commute or vacation. It would be one of those innovations, like the first horseless carriage or telephone, that shoved one epoch into the next. It would render the wheel and movable type about as minor as a one armed monkey.
Of course that was theory. In practice, the device still had a huge hurdle to hop. Despite a year of research, the alloy bucket simply would not work. The current blend of metals showed promise, but were still a long light year from acceptable. As it stood, the Regenerator would swallow the atoms, but only spit a mutation. The atoms gathered in the bucket just fine, but a fraction would never leave. The ones that did were somehow altered. A successful transfer had yet to be made.
A broken shipment from everything.web was one thing, half a grandma knocking on the door for Thanksgiving Dinner was another altogether.
Whoever the highwaymen, and whatever their intentions, the world was at risk and the Facility its finest hope. Conner had less than eight hours to gather his team and get them to the bottom of the Grand Canyon with a plan in place. That included Jessie and Gina, both overseas on assignment in The Union of Asian Republics.
No one could be spared for this mission. If he was a suspect, Conner thought, than so was everyone else.
Writer Dad
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Corey Allan, the author of Simple Marriage dot net has started a new blog callet Parent to Launch dot com. You can discover it here.
About a month ago, I wrote two guest posts back to back. Both for sites I really liked, and both escorted to my door by the kindness of others. They’ve been off of my desk for over three weeks. Coincidentally, they both landed within a day of one another.
