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Pendergast gave a nod.
“But to be honest, I was afraid no amount of money could put the machine into working order. Frankly, I didn’t even believe this machine could do what you claimed. But I’ve got to tell you, when I looked it over, and read the notebooks, and finally understood the physics behind it—I was blown away. This machine is…unbelievable.”And worth an absolute frigging fortune, he didn’t add.
“I’m glad to hear it.” Pendergast paused. “One reason your fee is so large is because this technology must remain secret.”
It was as if the damned man had read his mind. Ferenc nodded obsequiously.
“Naturally, you can imagine the consequences of unleashing this kind of power into a world that is corrupt, venal, brutal, and ignorant.”
Ferenc nodded again, maintaining what he hoped was an agreeable smile. Once he realized the machine might actually work, he couldn’t help but fantasize about its potential—who wouldn’t? Working conditions at the mansion had been great, all his needs attended to. The only thing that bothered him was a feeling of being trapped. Of course, he had nottriedto leave…but he had sensed it would not go well if he did. Far better to play along, agree enthusiastically with the need for secrecy, take his hefty paycheck, say his goodbyes…and only then consider how best to exploit his newfound knowledge.
And now a thought occurred: They wouldn’t be planning to kill him, would they? Wait until he’d finished the job and then finish him off, bury him under the basement floor of this pile? But no, that was crazy. Eccentric though he was, Pendergast seemed to have a strong sense of honor. Besides, if they were going to dothat, they wouldn’t have paid him anything in advance.
He realized that Pendergast was looking at him expectantly.
“Of course,” he said hastily. “It would be crazy to share this machine with the world until its potential was understood…for good or evil. In fact,” he added, “now that I’m more confident it’ll work, I’m sort of wondering how you plan to use the machine—and if that use will be, ah, responsible.” He arched his eyebrows.
The look in Pendergast’s eyes became so stony that Ferenc shifted nervously and gave a little laugh. “Of course, I have to ask, right? Because, you know, the power of this machine to wreak havoc in the world is almost limitless, as you yourself just now admitted. It would be remiss of me not to ask.” Ferenc stopped himself as he began to babble.
Pendergast continued staring at him for a long time. Then his face slowly cleared and he said, mildly: “Continue, Dr. Ferenc, with your narrative.”
Ferenc cleared his throat. “As I said, I was skeptical of success—ironically, because several of the components were so outmoded I wondered if they could be found. But as I examined the units more closely—and considered how they functioned as part of a greater whole—I realized many could be replaced and even improved.”
Pendergast nodded for him to continue.
“Synthesizing what I learned from the notebooks with my own background in cosmology and string theory, I realized the device worked by breaking through the ‘brane’ of our universe into other such branes, infinitesimally close but normally unreachable, essentially by shaping magnetic fields into an intricate knot in which various world lines pass around one another to form braids in four-dimensional space-time. These braids make up a kind of topological computational space. You can envision it as a type of toroidal lattice. It’s at the center of the lattice—around the hole of the donut, so to speak—where those world lines thread into parallel branes or universes.”
He paused to gauge the effect of this. But there seemed to be no effect at all; Pendergast merely waited for him to continue.
“All the simulations I’ve run are encouraging. Now that I have everything I need, I can move on to assembly and testing. That, in particular—” and he pointed to the large wooden crate containing the recently delivered demagnetization refrigerator— “is crucial to the next phase. The main unit responsible for creating a lattice capable of bringing parallel universes into temporary alignment must be fashioned from special looped circuits of gallium arsenide, held at a temperature near absolute zero while being subjected to rapidly fluctuating magnetic fields.”
“Gallium arsenide,” Pendergast said.
“GaAs is the element gallium, doped with arsenic. That’s why I needed a small furnace and ultraprecision machining device—along with the gold, of course, used in the processing. Now, the secondary ‘braiding’ unit will be devoted to generating the required magnetic fields. For this, I determined that an 11.3-microjoule main laser, coupled with a smaller laser capable of a 1.9-microjoule frequency-doubled pulse, could activate and deactivate an 8-Tesla field in approximately 50 femtoseconds, initiating the braiding process. A tertiary unit would trap the magnetic fields comprising this braid into a toroidal lattice, at whose center, as I said, will be the…doorway to the multiverse.”
He paused to give these last words a little flourish and was rewarded by a small smile from Pendergast. “You make it sound so simple,” the agent replied dryly.
“I’ve left out a lot of workaday stuff: the collimation optics, diode and lens assemblies, heat-sink and cooling systems. With the addition of a few exotic computer chips, I was able to salvage and retask much of the machine’s control mechanism to keep the three primary units within safe operating parameters.”
Pendergast slid off the soapstone table onto his feet. “So—the device can be made to work, correct?”
“Yes,” Ferenc said after a brief hesitation. There were a few rather knotty problems still to be overcome, but he was proud of the progress he’d made and there was still plenty of time.
“And migraines have not been a problem?”
“Nope.” The lights in the lab were kept rather low, and Ferenc was always careful to look away from the brilliant glow the device was already capable of generating.
“In that case,” Pendergast said, “I congratulate you.”
Ferenc demurred even beyond what he thought modesty required.
“And that’s why I feel confident in requesting you to accelerate your timetable.”
“Whoa. Did you sayacceleratemy timetable? Just because I gave you a simplistic overview of the project doesn’t mean there aren’t hundreds of steps still to be completed.”
“No doubt.”
“Mr. Pendergast—”