Chapter 10: The Burglar Alarm
Location: GIG/Apex R&D Campus, Agonwood
I walked until the manicured pavement of the cul-de-sac ended and the gravel service road began. I hugged my arms around my chest, suddenly aware that while the California sun was bright, the air could still be biting.
In contrast, my anger was a hot, tight knot in my stomach. It wasn't just that Julian was reckless; it was that he treated his own survival like a variable he could just tweak in a spreadsheet. My eyes stung, and I knew I was a blubbering mess.
A low hum of an electric engine and the crackle of the tires on the road approached slowly from behind. I moved to the shoulder, expecting a security patrol.
The car rolled to a stop beside me. It was Alex's sedan. The window slid down.
"Get in, Lonna," Alex said. His voice wasn't charming or playful. It was steady. "It's cold."
I hesitated. "I'm not going back to Unit 6. He's insane. And I'm…" I felt the tears coming on again. "I'm a theorist. I don't think I'm cut out for hands on."
"He's not at Unit 6," Alex said. "Marcus took him to the onsite clinic for the workup I ordered. Unit 6 is locked down. We're done with the cowboy diplomacy for the day."
I opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. The heat was on, and it smelled like leather and whatever expensive woodsy cologne Alex wore. It was irritatingly comforting.
"You need to tell me what the actual goal is here, Alex," I said as he put the car in drive. He didn't turn back toward the rowhouses. He drove slowly along the perimeter fence, watching the tree line.
"The goal is detection," Alex said, his hands tight on the wheel.
"Julian just tried to shake hands with a topological defect. That looked a lot like interaction, not detection."
"Julian gets… enthusiastic," Alex said carefully. "He wants to solve the puzzle. But that's not why I'm funding this."
He pulled the car over at a scenic overlook that gave a view of the entire campus—The Barn, the rowhouses, and the innocuous little circle of homes that held a hole in reality.
He turned to face me.
"Right now, we're flying blind. We know Unit 6 is broken, but we only know that because we built a billion-dollar sensor net around it and waited a year for the clocks to drift. I can't put a billion-dollar sensor net on every street corner in the world."
"I get it," I said. "I signed on to help make something that can find these pinholes instantly."
"Lonna, I want a burglar alarm," Alex corrected. "I want to know when the window is open so I can make sure it stays shut. Julian wants to see what's on the other side. I just want to make sure nothing comes through to this one."
He looked at me, and the weight of that responsibility was etched into his face. It made him look older than the magazine covers.
"That's why I need you, Lonna. Julian is the gas pedal. I need a brake. I need someone who understands the physics well enough to build me a radar, not a battering ram."
"A radar," I repeated, thinking about the waveform on the screen. "I don't know, Alex. I can't watch that again."
"Then let's talk about it," Alex said. "After we make sure Julian hasn't grown a third arm."
Location: Agonwood Onsite Medical Facility
The "clinic" was better equipped than most hospitals I'd been to. We found Julian sitting on an exam table, shirtless, looking annoyed while a nurse removed sensor pads from his chest. Marcus was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, looking equally irritated.
"I'm fine," Julian said the moment we walked in. "Heart rate is normal. Blood pressure is normal. No radiation burns. No spatial warping of my epidermis."
"And the MRI?" Alex asked, walking straight to Dave's workstation.
"Clean," Dave said, pulling up a scan on the wall monitor. "Brain activity is baseline. No neurological anomalies."
"Why is Dave doing the checkup?" I whispered to Marcus.
"Hey, Lon. Are you doing okay?" Marcus bumped his shoulder against mine, and I nodded.
"Yeah, well, believe it or not, Dr. Dave over there is actually an MD, not a PhD. I don't know what happened, but Dave said he prefers things to people. Alex swears by him and makes him keep his license up to date."
"See?" Julian hopped off the table, grabbing his shirt. "Null result. It interacted with the field, not the tissue."
"Marcus said you were a genius, but you're clearly a moron," I said, stepping forward. It coupled. That means energy was exchanged, Julian. Just because you don't have a rash doesn't mean nothing happened."
Julian buttoned his shirt, his eyes locking onto mine. The manic energy from the house was dampened, replaced by a cold, analytical calm.
"You're right," he said. "Energy was exchanged. The system observed me. And because of that, we know the laser failed."
"The laser failed because it was too perfect," I said, my brain finally catching up to the problem now that the panic was subsiding. "A laser is coherent light. A pure sine wave. Low entropy."
I grabbed a dry-erase marker from the whiteboard on the wall used to record patient updates and drew a straight line.
"The pinhole is a topological defect. Like a snag in fabric. A smooth line just slides right over it without getting caught."
Then I drew a jagged, messy squiggle.
"But your hand… your hand is messy. Thermal noise, bio-electric pulses, micro-tremors. It's high entropy. It's a jagged line. It got caught in the snag."
"So we don't need a mind," Marcus said, pushing off the wall. "Thank god. Because Julian's 'Like a mind' comment was really creeping me out."
"No," I said, shaking my head. "We don't need a mind. We need noise."
I turned to Alex.
"You want a detection mechanism? We need to build a device that broadcasts a signal so complex, so chaotic, that it mimics a biological system. We need to build a synthetic bio-field generator."
Julian's eyes lit up. "A chaos emitter. We blast the room with high-entropy noise, and we measure the echo."
"Exactly," I said. "Like sonar. But instead of sound, we use structured electromagnetic chaos. If the room is normal, the signal bounces back clean. If there's a pinhole…"
"The signal comes back distorted," Alex finished. "It snags."
"And we can put it in a box," Dave said, already typing on his phone. "We can miniaturize a noise generator. It doesn't need to be a room full of lasers. It could be handheld."
"Let's get it to work before you start trying to make it look cool."
Alex looked at me, a slow smile spreading across his face. "That's it. That's the device."
"It's going to be hard to calibrate," I warned. "We have to find the exact frequency of 'chaos' that the anomaly likes. We're going to have to run a lot of tests."
"But no more hands," Marcus said firmly. "We use synthetic signals only. If I see anyone stick a limb into a physics experiment again, I'm tackling them."
I rolled my eyes at Macy's, "Then you'd just end up compromising both of you."
"Agreed," Alex said. "Lonna runs the safety protocols. If she says stop, we stop. Julian?"
Julian looked at the whiteboard, at my messy squiggle drawing. He looked at Alex, then at me.
"Fine," Julian said.
"Lunch first," Alex ordered, checking his watch. "And this time, we're eating at a table. Like civilized people."
As we walked out, I fell into step beside Marcus.
"He's still crazy," I whispered.
"Yep," Marcus agreed, bumping my shoulder. "But at least now he's listening to you."
"Until he doesn't," I said. "You and I both know this is just a stop-gap measure."
"Doesn't matter," Marcus grinned. "He agreed. That's a win."
I looked ahead at Alex and Julian, walking side by side, discussing budgets and frequencies. "Hey, Marc? Could you make some excuse for me? I think I need to go cuddle my therapy cat."
Marcus nodded. "Check on you later?"
"Yeah," I said and changed direction.