The Fold: A Novel Part 12

"How many jumps with people?"

"All of them. We started from zero again, once we began testing humans."

"So how many tests altogether?"

"About four hundred with animals or people," said Neil. "There were a bunch with test objects, too, and some dry runs. Olaf or Bob could tell you exactly."

"Is it always one of you?"

"At first it was, yeah. As of late, we've been opening it up a bit."

"Yesterday, Olaf said nine people had jumped."

"That could be right."

"The six of you, Reggie Magnus, his a.s.sistant."

"Yup."

"And then Ben Miles."

"Yup." Neil examined the floor. "Sad what happened to him."

Mike let the words hang for a moment and gazed over at the big rings. "There's no chance going through did it to him?"

"Going through...the Door?"

"Yeah."

Neil shook his head. "No. None at all. It's perfectly safe. Everyone has multiple exams after every crosswalk."

"You've got a doctor on staff?"

"Local doctor," said Neil. "Just down the hill from us. He doesn't know what we're doing, but he's still signed a bunch of nondisclosure forms."

"Did Ben get checked out?"

Neil nodded. "I drove him down there, in fact. Nice guy. His tests all came back good here. He had his second set done back in Was.h.i.+ngton just after his..." He searched for the right word. "His breakdown?"

"Yeah," said Mike.

"He had a full physical done out there and all the results sent to us. I think they've done it two more times since he's been in the...the hospital. All clean, all good, as I understand it."

"Is that normal? That many tests."

"They did an extra set because of the circ.u.mstances. Everyone gets checked out within six hours of going through, then two more times in the next two weeks and once more at two months. We had everyone under forty-eight-hour observation at first, but Arthur's cut it back since we've had a hundred crosswalks with no side effects." He gave Mike a pointed look. "Think he saved about four hundred thousand in the budget when he did."

"As I understand it," said Mike, "the amount of the budget isn't the big issue they're having back in Was.h.i.+ngton."

"Well, you could still bring it up."

Mike smiled as they circled back around the machine to Bob and Sasha. They'd disconnected one of the hoses running from the tanks and were working on the connector with a set of ratchets. "One other question, if you don't mind?"

"Sure."

"Why are you replacing that?"

"What?"

Mike pointed at the component in Sasha's hand. "That connector. Socket. Whatever you call it. Why are you replacing it?"

"It's on the list," she said.

"But why?"

Sasha sighed and stepped away to pick up a clipboard. She skimmed through a few pages and then shrugged. "Reason's left blank," she said. "It was probably leaking."

Neil looked at Mike. "Is there a problem?"

He shook his head. "I'm just curious why you're replacing it."

Bob shrugged. "Things wear out. It was probably leaking."

"It wasn't leaking," Mike said.

"No offense," Sasha said, "but how would you know?"

He glanced up at the double rings. "Because I was watching when you turned it on yesterday. There wasn't anything."

"You might've missed it," said Neil. "You were up in the booth."

Bob glanced down at the coupling in his hand. Sasha s.h.i.+fted her feet and crossed her arms. Neil rolled his shoulders. The three of them exchanged looks.

Mike looked at the coupling for a minute. The ants churned in his brain, but he forced them apart. "Yeah, sorry," he said. "Sorry. You guys know this stuff better than me."

Bob smiled. "Well, I don't know about that."

Sasha tapped him on the back of the head. "Speak for yourself."

THIRTEEN.

Jamie unlocked the deadbolt, then swiped her key card. The door clicked and she swung it open. A gust of cold air rolled out and chilled Mike's legs. "Meet Johnny," she said.

The room was eight feet on a side. The walls were lined with industrial shelves, the Erector-set looking ones from stores like Home Depot. Computer towers filled each shelf. Cables ran back and forth behind each one. The air in the room s.h.i.+vered from the constant hum of fans and the buzz of the air conditioner.

"Six units on each shelf," said Jamie. "Twelve shelves total. They're all overclocked, so we're effectively running at ten trillion operations per second."

"Why Johnny?"

"Johnny Mnemonic," she said. "Old Keanu Reeves movie I saw in high school. It doesn't hold up well at all, but I loved the name."

"TriStar Pictures, nineteen ninety-five. Based off the William Gibson novella. Didn't do well at the box office, or with most critics, but I thought Dina Meyer was pretty hot in it."

"Whatever. Anyway, the system was designed to run at eight hundred teraFLOPS, but I've made some tweaks over the past three years so I think we're actually closer to one petaFLOP. I wanted to submit it for the Linpack Benchmark Top500, just to get a solid measurement, but Arthur didn't want the publicity."

"Must've been a little frustrating."

She shrugged. "He pointed out that once we go public, Johnny's going to become the most well-known computer on Earth anyway."

Mike looked around the room. Most of the towers were the standard flat white, but a few tan and black ones were scattered through the room. He resisted the urge to find a pattern in their placement. He asked Jamie instead.

"We had to do this on the cheap," she said. "It was just whatever housings I could find." She watched his eyes. "Are you memorizing all of this?"

He glanced at her. "I can't switch it on and off. It's just the way my brain works."

Her lips tightened. "So you can't help spying on us?"

"I'm not here to spy on you," he said.

She looked away. "Any other questions?"

Mike gestured at the shelves. "So all this runs all of the Albuquerque Door?"

Jamie shook her head. "No, all it does is the math for each trip."

"That's it?"

"The Door program is over two million lines of code. The folding equations alone are over a thousand pages if you printed them out. Over five hundred thousand lines of math, most of them depending on a number of variables in the system."

He smiled. "Are you supposed to tell me all that?"

"If you can figure out our code from the page lengths, you deserve to bust us."

"Bust you?"

"Find out our secrets," she said. "Steal our tech. However you want to put it."

"I'm not going to steal anything. Honest."

She waved him out of the room. They stepped back into the hall and she locked the deadbolt behind them. "Can I get back to work now?"

"Why the extra lock if it's already got the key card?"

"To keep out government guys who might want to look at our code," she said. "Also because Bob plays too many practical jokes for his own good. Every day he can't get at Johnny is a day I don't need to beat him to death."

"So, what's the answer?"

She blinked. "What do you mean? Answer to what?"

"The answer to the equation," he said. "Is it forty-two? Is it four-eight-fifteen-sixteen-twenty-"

Jamie cut him off with a wave of her hand. "We never see the answer. Even if we did, it's just another equation about a hundred pages long. That's what gets fed into the Door."

"But what is it?"

She stared at him for a moment. "In simple layman's terms," she said, "it's a mathematical representation of an alternate quantum state or 'dimension' that meets our requirements."

"And in non-layman's terms?"

"You'd need to ask Arthur or Olaf. I'm just the computer chick." She turned and walked down the hall.

He stepped quick to catch up. "If you've never seen it, though," he asked, "how do you know it's solving the equation?"

"Because the Door opens. Are you always this difficult?"

Mike shrugged. "Only when I'm trying to get answers."

"Well you're not getting any more from me," she said.

"Actually, Arthur said you had copies of the trial reports."

She sighed. "Yeah, he did, didn't he?" She veered into a side hall, not asking him to follow and not looking to see if he did.

They headed out of the main building and down to the trailer park. "So," he said to her back, "how'd you get involved with this?"

She glanced back. "Huh?"

"The Albuquerque Door. Did you answer an ad or did you know someone or what?"

"Arthur recruited me. Which you know from my files."

"You like working with him and Olaf?"

"Beats working at a bank."

"Do you guys all tend to eat lunch together, or do you-"

Jamie stopped and turned on him. Mike tipped forward but stopped himself before he ran into her. "What's this about?"

"What's what about?"