“I had that set to KPFA talk radio—94.1 FM. Has someone moved the dial?”
Paul looked at the digital readout. The numbers were still set to 94.1. He checked to be certain the radio was receiving the FM band. Then he pressed the search feature and watched the numbers scroll. Static rippled through the speaker, until the signal strength located something and locked on. A man was singing in another language. The first thing that came to Paul’s mind was that he had stumbled across a Spanish broadcast channel, then the realization of what he was hearing struck him, and the color faded from his cheeks.
One by one the same awareness came to each of them as they listened. They were hearing the chant of the muezzin as he sung the call to prayer from the minaret of some distant, unseen mosque. His voice rose and fell, filling the silence of the room with a haunting chorus that deepened to a feeling of impending calamity. The lingering echo of the singer’s voice seemed to taunt them now, rising and falling through the intermittent static of the radio. Then the signal faded, unable to penetrate the magnetic aura of the Arch that surrounded them, and was gone.
Part VIII
Chaos
22
Paul looked at Kelly, who was hunched in thought as he tapped away at the history module controls. It was clear that something was wrong there.
“That’s odd,” said Nordhausen. “Could we be receiving a signal from the Middle East on the FM Band? Are you sure you don’t have the thing set to a shortwave channel? I often get foreign broadcasts when I browse the wires in my study. In fact, I listen to the BBC every night.”
“No, this is an FM signal. I’m certain of it,” said Paul.
“How very odd,” said the professor. “Atmospheric conditions must be ideal for an FM signal to go that far.”
Paul said nothing. He was suddenly very interested in Kelly at the history module. “What’s up with the Golems?” He leaned in to inspect the computer console.
Kelly just looked at him, then squinted at his monitor again. His face was a mixture of perplexity and disbelief.
“Come on,” said Maeve. “What do the little critters say about all this?”
Kelly gave a sigh and swiveled in his chair to face them. “I’ve got no variance flags on the RAM bank, no Golem warnings at all.”
“Great,” said Nordhausen. “That means this isn’t a major transformation after all. The Golems have found nothing amiss.”
“Yes, and let me tell you why.” Kelly’s voice had a warning in it now. He looked at them, his eyes shifting from one to another, even as the conclusion he was arriving at grew more certain in his mind. “The net must be down…”
The words seemed to linger in the air when he spoke them. He saw the faces of his friends crease with concern.
“What do you mean?” Robert spoke up first. “What do you mean the net is down?”
“I’ve been trying to query the network,” said Kelly, but I can’t seem to get a response. There’s over 100,000 machines out there on the net with my Golem program installed, but I can’t connect with a single IP address. It’s very strange.”
“You’re saying the Internet is down?” Nordhausen had an unbelieving expression on his face. “How is that possible? I mean, it was designed to survive a nuclear war, wasn’t it?”
“Theoretically…” Kelly was thinking hard now. “There’s no one single hub on the net that could bring the whole thing down if it failed. It’s a widely distributed network, with hundreds of thousands of servers scattered all over the world.”
“Then the problem must be local,” said Robert. “Check your connection, Kelly. You’re the networking guru.”
“I have checked it—give me some credit, will you?”
“Then it must be the damn ISP.”
“No, it’s not. We have no ISP. We’ve got a direct high-speed optical fiber link, right into the backbone of the Internet.”
“Then what’s the problem? Is your machine in order?”
Kelly held up a hand, fending off the professor as he came up to the history module. “You don’t understand,” he said as firmly as he could. “The hardware here is fine. I just ran system calls on every lab console. Our RAM bank memory is holding true, no problem there, but it’s the net, I tell you. It’s not there…”
Nordhausen just looked at him, a half smile on his face, fading with each second against the resolve in Kelly’s voice. “Not there?” He repeated the phrase, unbelieving.
“I can’t get a response from my Golems because there’s no network traffic,” Kelly explained. “No network traffic of any kind. My query packets are being generated, but they all time out with no response from the network.”
“This is absurd,” said Nordhausen. “How could the entire Internet be down?”
Paul was off his chair and heading toward the stair well. The professor had turned to him for an answer to the dilemma when he saw him go. “Paul?” The plaintive twang in Nordhausen’s voice was plain to hear. Somewhere, deep inside, he was possessed with the notion that this was all his fault. It was his insatiable curiosity, after all, that had started the whole thing. He had to take that train ride to steal Lawrence’s lost manuscript… he had to go back to have a look at the Rosetta Stone in the British museum. While Paul had tried to comfort him, explaining that nothing he did could have caused a major transformation, the professor was still nagged by guilt, and the look on Maeve’s face did nothing to assuage his embattled conscience.
“Where are you going?” He called, following after his friend.
“The observation deck,” Paul said flatly. “It’s only two flights up, and the Arch effect should still encompass the dome. I’m going up to have a look outside.”
“Good idea. Let’s have a look outside.” Maeve started after him, but Kelly remained behind, hunched over his keyboard as he stroked his chin in thought.
Paul led the way into the stairwell and up a few short flights of stairs. He reached for the door at the top, and Nordhausen saw a slight tremor in his hand. Then he took hold of the latch and pushed hard. The door opened with a metallic squeak and Paul went through. Robert and Maeve crowded close behind him, as if his presence would offer them some protection from whatever they would find on the other side.
The room was very cold, and completely dark. There was an acrid smell in the air, like ozone on a smoggy day in the city. Nordhausen saw Paul grope for the light switch, and it flicked on. Their gaze was immediately drawn to the far wall, where a series of windows marched in a circle at the base of a shallow dome.
“What time is it?” Nordhausen asked an obvious question, for there was inky darkness beyond the panes. He stepped to the edge of the dome, feeling the cold grow more pronounced as he approached the glass.
“It’s half past four, in the afternoon,” said Paul.
“What? Is it storming? Why is it so dark? Look at it, Paul, you can’t see a thing out there. Is that fog or are we just socked in with overcast?”
“Weather report was for clear skies, sixty five degrees,” Paul said matter of factly. “You were just telling me how the atmospheric conditions had to be ideal for an FM signal to reach us from the Middle East. That’s the bay side of the dome there, Robert, and we should be able to see the sun starting to set over the city by now.