The Black Hole Read online

  Suddenly a loud warning klaxon started to sound. Then the floor of the control room started to shake.

  Professor Baxter leapt to his feet, as did General Stone.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ bellowed the general, addressing the entire room.

  Baxter ran to a computer terminal, thrust the monitoring scientist out of the way and rapidly began punching at the keyboard, trying to override the software personalities who were supposed to be controlling the test. The heavings of the concrete floor grew more severe and a crack suddenly zigzagged down a wall. Now the shaking control room was filled with an awful low rumbling.

  ‘LEAVE NOW, SIR!’ yelled a powerful male voice.

  President Weeks felt strong hands grasping his arms from behind as two Secret Service agents began to pull him out of the room.

  The mountain and the control room now shook at a higher frequency and, as Weeks turned back to see what was happening outside, the distant Kinska mountain range seemed to crumble and disappear before his eyes – tearing into a vast spiral of rock fragments and dust which raced round and round into the red funnel in the centre of the sky.

  For a moment the sensory distortion was so great that the President wondered if he were having a stroke. He saw multiple shades of red, as if seeing the blood circulating inside his brain, and everything seemed to be breaking down into fractals. He felt a heat growing in his eyes, his sinuses and soft tissues and then his vision closed down into a red tunnel. Then he tasted blood in the back of his throat.

  ‘NOW, SIR, NOW!’ yelled a Secret Service agent pulling hard at his boss. Then others were also sprinting towards the rear exit, instinctively trying to escape from the shaking room.

  Suddenly the control centre was filled with brilliant white light – as if a giant flash bulb has been fired. Weeks shot a glance back over his shoulder as he was being hustled away to the exit.

  ‘Wait a minute, WAIT!’ he demanded, pulling himself free from the agent’s grasp.

  He turned back to face the main control room. The shuddering had stopped and there was no longer any red tint or gravitational spiral in the sky outside. The room was filled with bright, white daylight and all was silent but for the calamitous shrilling of the emergency klaxon. Then that switched itself off automatically.

  The Secret Service agents and the other staff members who had been scrambling for the exit also turned back. Those scientists still at their terminals stood up slowly.

  Outside, the blue sky looked as if nothing had happened. It was a deep azure – cloudless and with a bright sun.

  But the desert floor had been changed beyond recognition. The distant mountain range had disappeared completely and where the flat yellow sands and scrub of Arizona had stretched as far as the eye could see, there was now only a vast, grey crater – hundreds of feet deep – that continued all the way to the horizon.

  There was silence in the control room as all present gazed with awe and horror down into the new and enormous rocky basin which stretched away towards the horizon. It looked as though a giant meteorite had struck the Earth a terrible blow.

  On the display screens, images from the satellite overhead clearly showed the vast new pockmark that had appeared on the eviscerated surface of the Arizona desert.

  It was the President who found his voice first.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ he demanded.

  *

  May 21st 2025

  INTERNATIONAL OUTRAGE

  AT U.S. NUCLEAR WEAPON TEST

  20-Mile Wide Atomic Crater Appears in Arizona

  by Martin Beck, chief political correspondent

  The United Nations Weapons Inspectorate has demanded that the United States government explain why it conducted an unannounced underground nuclear weapons test on Thursday. Pictures of the resultant 20-mile-wide crater in Arizona taken from space have appeared in news media all around the world.

  Speaking from UN headquarters in New York, Secretary General Odile Tekembenko said “This action is wholly indefensible. The United States has only recently signed an extension to the nuclear test-ban treaty and is the most vociferous voice in non-proliferation. It is gross hypocrisy for the nation to continue developing its own nuclear arsenal while urging restraint on others.”

  PRESIDENT FORCED TO ADMIT NUCLEAR TESTING

  In a statement from the White House, President Gerald Weeks said, “The US has not developed any new form of nuclear weapon. After decades of reliance on computer modeling it was necessary to carry out a series of controlled underground detonations to ensure that simulation data remain accurate. There will be no further tests.”

  *

  ‘This whole project must be completely disbanded, completely,’ shouted President Gerald T. Weeks. ‘Everything must be shut down immediately!’

  Fourteen days had passed since the first live test of the Pentagon’s new non-nuclear weapon of mass destruction, but the President still seemed to be as angry as he had been in its immediate aftermath.

  Standing in front of his desk in the Oval Office of the White House were General Rodney Stone and Professor Tom Baxter. The youthful President was also standing, tense, bouncing from foot to foot. Now he walked around his large desk to confront the two men at closer range.

  ‘I want everything to do with the Indiana Project destroyed,’ he demanded, jabbing his forefinger in the air. ‘This is a technology that is far too dangerous to be developed any further. I’m told that if your goddamn black hole weapon had gone on growing it could have eaten the entire planet – perhaps even the solar system. What the hell did you think you were doing, fooling with such dangerous technology?’

  General Stone stiffened under the onslaught. ‘We’re interrogating all of the software personalities now, sir. We think a mathematical descriptor in the evaporation algorithm caused the zone of singularity to–’

  ‘Forget it,’ broke in the President. ‘We don’t need to know what went wrong because nothing like this is going to be attempted again – ever!’

  He shifted his glare from the Pentagon general to the senior scientist.

  ‘You realize how much you two have embarrassed your country – and me? I have spent the last two weeks apologizing to the world for carrying out a nuclear test – when I was the one who was calling the loudest for no further nuclear development!’

  ‘Sir,’ said Stone, arms rigid at his sides, ‘We’ve been in contact with our opposite numbers in China and Russia. We’ve reassured them that we merely tested a series of old nukes that were—’

  ‘Never mind, never mind,’ interrupted Weeks, dismissing the senior Pentagon general with an abrupt wave of his hand.

  ‘Sir,’ Stone began again. ‘I have sworn to defend my country – and that’s just what I have been trying to do. Who knows what new type of weapons the Chinese or the Russians might be developing, right now, because of the nuclear development ban? If we refine Professor Baxter’s invention we’ll be unassailable. In its next iteration the PWS will fit inside a ship’s container, then it will scale down to fit inside a cruise missile – all controlled automatically by new software with almost human-level intelligence. The United States will once again have ultimate security.’

  The President looked from soldier to scientist and back again, as if mystified. Finally he shook his head and spoke softly, ‘You know, I think Einstein was right. He once said, “I believe that the universe is infinite, as is human stupidity. But I can’t be sure about the universe.” I agree with him. I have never before met such stupid clever men as you two.’

  ‘Mister President!’ objected Stone. ‘The latest round of international nuclear arms reduction agreements and the comprehensive test-ban treaty has seriously reduced this nation’s ability to defend itself. What this project can offer us is a nuclear-level strategic strike capability that does not contravene those treaties. Without having the Indiana Project in the pipeline I and my colleagues at the Pentagon would never have concurred with your signing away the futur
e development of our most significant deterrent.’

  Gerald Weeks’s face flushed a deep red. He stepped a foot closer to the general, took a deep breath and then spoke in a voice he had to fight to keep calm and steady. ‘I order that everything to do with this project must be shredded immediately – every document destroyed, every digital file erased, every software personality terminated and every network dismantled. I order all the computer media to be scrubbed and every piece of physical equipment broken up and then incinerated. I want the whole team disbanded the moment that has been done. I am passing a Presidential Order that the knowledge you and your team have gained will remain classified – not just for a set period, but for all time. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the General crisply. He could see that his commander-in-chief was in no mood for further argument.

  Baxter nodded – his long grey face drawn with anxiety.

  ‘And you’re going to take early retirement, Professor,’ said the President. ‘We’ll have to give you your full pension, I suppose. Just go fishing – and forget you ever worked on this thing.’

  ‘But the pure research value of a ten dimensional…,’ began the scientist. Then he shook his head miserably and swallowed whatever he had been about to say.

  ‘I won’t keep you any longer, Professor,’ the President told him.

  The scientist glanced at his Pentagon boss, then at the elected leader of the United States. Then with a short nod, he turned on his heel and walked heavily across the richly patterned carpet towards the exit.

  ‘Classified for life!’ called the President after him as he reached the door. ‘You hear me?’

  Baxter nodded and then reached for the handle.

  When the paneled door had clicked shut Weeks turned back to face the senior officer who was responsible for running all of the secret weapon development programmes undertaken by the Pentagon and DARPA – the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

  ‘You will also be leaving the Pentagon, General Stone,’ said the President coldly. ‘But not before you and your people have told me about all of the other black projects you’ve got in hand. In the meantime, I’m issuing a new Presidential directive that every new project, every new idea pursued by the Pentagon or the DARPA people must first have the approval of the President’s Office. There’s to be no more billions of public dollars siphoned off secretly to invent lunatic weapons. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Yes. But, sir, I–’

  The President flushed once more, then stepped forward so that his face was only a few inches away from the general’s.

  ‘Don’t you get it?’ demanded Weeks. He held up his hand, forefinger and thumb outstretched so they were almost touching. ‘We were this close to destroying the world, Stone. This close. It’s over. Never again.’

  One

  June 2047 – twenty-two years later.

  Shortly after nine p.m. a convoy of three black vehicles sped out of Mondo Park, a sprawling technology campus in Northern California. They turned onto a wide, tree-lined boulevard and headed east, towards the low range of hills from which the city of Mountain View took its name. On this Tuesday evening in high summer it was still bright and warm.

  The car in the lead was a powerful and heavily armoured hydrogen-powered SUV inside which rode two armed bodyguards. The all-terrain vehicle at the rear of the convoy was a similar 4 x 4 and it too contained a pair of armed guards. Both cars were simultaneously broadcasting video images of their surroundings and their satellite-tracked location back to the security centre on the corporate campus.

  The central vehicle of the convoy was a long, dark, armoured limousine with blacked-out windows. On the front seat beside the limo driver sat another armed bodyguard and in the spacious rear passenger compartment rode ninety-four year-old Harold Darrenbaum, president and major shareholder of the Mondo Corporation, a technology company he had founded single-handedly seventy years before. Now the search-engine company operated on a global scale and also provided human enhancement therapies and life extension technologies, new enterprises funded from the profits generated by MondoMind, the planet’s largest web memory warehouse and information provider. Technology commentators had dubbed Mondo ‘the world brain.’

  Harold Darrenbaum did not look like any sort of ninety-four year-old human who had existed previously in history. Mondo’s transhuman rejuvenation therapies had given him the vigour, appearance and biological functions of a man of forty and a nanoscale cerebral implant had provided him with a permanent companion he had named Lisa. This software personality acted as a virtual assistant and she also gave his mind a direct wireless interface to the vast sea of information stored on the Web and in Mondo’s global network of databases.

  As Darrenbaum sat he eagerly sampled and scanned the dozen different 3-D, high-definition, holographic TV images that Lisa was projecting into the passenger compartment via multiple display systems. Like the vehicles fore and aft, the limo was also transmitting its position and video images of its surroundings back to the Mondo corporate security centre.

  The Mountain View rush hour was long over and vehicular movement was once again under individual driver direction, rather than automated satellite control. The broad divided highway was now almost deserted.

  Despite the lateness of the hour this journey was just a standard commute home for Harold Darrenbaum and his security entourage. No matter where he went in the world the Mondo boss was unable to travel alone or to use any form of public or scheduled transport: the man was imprisoned by his extreme wealth. The corporation’s security consultants had warned him that, as the world richest individual, the multi-trillionaire must regard himself as a permanent target for kidnappers, extortionists, anti-technology terrorists and homicidal lunatics fixated on celebrity. As a result, even the return home after a routine day at the office was conducted as if Harold Darrenbaum was a much-loathed head of state constantly in fear of assassination by his own people. Only his intense dislike of helicopter travel had kept Darrenbaum from accepting his security consultants’ advice and making the commute by air.

  Once he arrived at his well-guarded hill-side mansion he would eat a light supper of organically-grown, stir-fried vegetables with his eighth wife Dawn, a thirty-two year-old former Mondo software engineer. Then Lisa would connect him to Mondo executives in time zones in which a new day was already starting.

  Inside the cool of the limo interior Darrenbaum mentally dismissed a three-dimensional graphic of Mondo Corp.’s currency hedge holdings and, with a thought, asked Lisa to find more background on a European news item. The breaking story was about a new collaboration between Mondo’s British Transhuman Technologies division and Guy’s Hospital in London.

  Suddenly the holographic images projected inside the limousine flickered, started to break up and then abruptly disappeared. Darrenbaum’s implanted portal to the Mondo network went blank, cutting him off from mental access to the world brain for the first time in over a decade.

  There’s a comms problem, Lisa said urgently in his inner ear.

  A dozen red warning lights had flicked on in the passenger compartment to announce that all external communications had gone down. Then a warning alarm sounded to announce that all the vehicle’s radio, phone communications and navigation systems had lost both signals and bandwidth.

  Red security alert, Lisa told her owner. I have no bandwidth. Take immediate physical precautions.

  The company president sat bolt upright and glanced around in all directions. Lisa boosted his optical nerve signals to give him 20/10 vision.

  Everything outside appeared magnified, but normal. Then, up ahead of the lead SUV he saw a large red dumpster truck pull out fast across the highway, blocking the eastbound carriageway.

  ‘DRIVE! DRIVE!’ yelled the security man in the front seat, striking his fist hard on the chauffer’s right shoulder. The driver floored the accelerator and, just as he pulled out of the convoy line to speed away – as he ha
d been trained to do by the security consultants – the large 4 X 4 up ahead suddenly erupted into a ball of orange flame.

  The limo driver swerved further to the left, intent on mounting the boulevard’s grassy central reservation and driving around the flaming wreck, when there was another loud WHUMP! from behind.

  Harold Darrenbaum twisted round in the limo’s rear seat and saw that the SUV following them was now skidding along on its side, completely ablaze as its hydrogen tank ruptured. Despite the heavy armour that had been fitted to all three vehicles, something had succeeded in penetrating and instantly destroying both escort SUVs.

  Lie flat, Lisa instructed her owner. Darrenbaum ignored her. The limousine was now bouncing heavily as the driver fought to maintain control on the soft grass of the highway’s central reservation. Beside him the CEO’s personal bodyguard had his bulky automatic drawn and was reaching forward to grab the gas-powered sub-machine gun that was clipped inside the passenger footwell.