“What are you made from?”
“Interlinked crystalline building blocks of pure quartz,” Q replied. “I can dynamically reorganise my fundamental atomic structure to function as memory, central-processors or program logic in any combination, depending on what I need and when I need it.”
“How much memory do you have?”
“Humans have not yet developed a representation of such a high number,” Q stated. “It would be meaningless to you.”
“And your processing speed?” she asked.
“Again, there is no human representation.”
Emily’s head was spinning. What Q was telling her was like trying to imagine where the Universe ends. Humans could only think in terms of boundaries. Everything had to have a limit; a beginning and an end. Yet this computer didn’t reason that way; if reasoning was the right word.
“How old are you?” Emily wasn’t sure if such a question would even make sense to Q. Apparently it did.
“In human terms, my prototype was developed four years ago. My latest adaptation is six minutes old and my next version will be available in twenty-two seconds.”
Emily’s jaw dropped.
Chapter Sixty-Three
“Q, I need you to authenticate something for me,” Trish interrupted. She stood up and walked to a table that Emily had only just noticed. It held various computer peripheral devices.
“Q’s only connection with the outside world is through the equipment you see here,” Trish explained to Emily. “He is totally self-contained and has no need for access to any type of network.”
Trish placed the loose sheets of the document into a scanner which pulled each page through faster than the eye could see. It appeared to Emily as if the final page hadn’t even been read when Q answered.
“It is completely authentic, Professor LaForgue.”
It made no sense to Emily. “I don’t understand much about inertial or reactionless technology,” she said. “But why is the document full of formulas that appear to be directly related to geophysics?”
“That is the key,” Q replied.
Years suddenly seemed to shed from Trish’s face.
What had Q said that caused such a dramatic change in Trish’s demeanour? Emily thought. She had no idea what had just become apparent to Trish.
“Emily,” Trish said, looking her in the eyes and smiling; a genuine heart-felt smile. “Let me tell you what’s really going on here.”
“Should I know?”
“I mentioned earlier that I’ve spent the best part of my years with national security in pissing contests with men. It gets to you after a while.”
“I can imagine,” Emily empathised.
“Uri has spoken very highly of you, and although we’ve never met before today, I knew the instant I walked into Level-2 that you were someone I could trust implicitly.”
“Er, thanks, Trish.”
“My gut instincts have never steered me wrong, and I have a knack for sifting through lies and bullshit. Surrounded by ambitious egomaniacs, it becomes second nature.”
“I can’t imagine that myself,” Emily said. “I’m lucky in that the team I work with are all very sincere people.”
“I want to speak to you woman-to-woman, and completely on the level.”
“Surely you could speak with Yvonne Baird?”
Trish had a twisted smile on her face. “National security departments do not talk to each other or share information.”
“So I’ve heard,” Emily said, smiling back.
Trish continued, “There has always been controversy behind the Dean Engine. Norman Dean, its inventor was right in his calculations and assumptions, but just slightly off the mark. When his documents were archived as a hoax, they were essentially forgotten about until recently, when they ended up on public domain. The NSA tagged them to see who, years later, would be interested in non-working technology. Kubacki was the only one who downloaded those documents.”
Emily was curious as to where this was going.
“My interest,” Trish said. “Was to help Kubacki succeed, so I privately sponsored him. If he could pull it off, and it became public knowledge, our oil-based economy would essentially collapse.”
“We figured as much when we first read through the deciphered document,” Emily said. “Thing is, it was still far too cryptic for us to understand. Also, we hadn’t yet unscrambled the illustrations. Even after that, we weren’t any wiser without understanding the formulas. I get the distinct feeling that Q has given you what you were looking for.”
“He has,” Trish said. “But for other reasons entirely.”
Emily looked at her with a bewildered expression.
“I’ll get to that in a moment,” Trish said. “The point is, that with technology like this, it has to become the most closely guarded secret ever. Whether we like it or not, we live in a global society that’s obsessed with money and power. And we already have two prime contenders for Kubacki’s research and development.”
Emily had already figured that one out. “Cevallos and Müller, right?”
“Exactly,” Trish said. “Each only has one half of the solution, or, at least, they think they do. Cevallos has obviously seen what’s in Kubacki’s cavern but knows nothing about any document.”
“And Müller knows about the document but has no idea what’s going on in the Mojave,” Emily said, finishing Trish’s thoughts.
“You catch on fast,” Trish said. “But let me tell you something. This is very much a personal quest for me.”
“Oh,” Emily said.
“And one of the reasons I’ve been so evasive with everyone,” Trish said. “I’m well aware of Uri and James’s opinion of me. You’ve no doubt heard what happened to my husband, John LaForgue.”
“Yes,” Emily said, after a short pause. She wasn’t exactly sure how much of that story she was supposed to know.
“There are precise boundaries around Groom Lake when it comes to testing new aircraft,” Trish said. “Altitude, speed, doesn’t matter. You can imagine what would happen if a concept jet fell out of the sky over Las Vegas. A lot of damage could be done.”
“I presume the same applies to tests over both Edwards and Nellis Air Force bases,” Emily said.
“It does, but here’s the irony. The US Air Force doesn’t care about damage to property or human life. They get to sleep at night under the pretext of acceptable losses. They are far more concerned about someone stealing their technology.”
“The military mind,” Emily said, shaking her head.
“Unfortunately, John, my husband, crossed those boundaries, but for good reason. Altitude tests cannot realistically be done at night. But doing them during the day with all those conspiracy assholes and their cameras… well, you understand.”
Emily nodded.
“John took off from here at low altitude, climbed to forty-five thousand feet over Vegas, and then attempted the ultimate test over the Mojave. The F-14A was an extremely fast fighter jet. It had taken only minutes to reach his destination and height. Then it all went to shit.”
“What happened?”
“Mechanically, there was nothing wrong with the aircraft, but over the Mojave his instruments went crazy, and so did the fighter. I’m the only one who has a recording between the F-14A and the tower here at Homey.”
Right, Emily reminded herself, Homey was the official name of Groom Lake’s airport. “I understand that the jet achieved a height of one hundred and twenty thousand feet,” Emily said.