“Ghosts? Not demons, like from a Finder? They’re bringing in spirits from another dimension all the time.”
“Nope. These were actual dead people from Earth. Many of them didn’t even know they were dead and couldn’t figure out who they were talking to. Edison brought in teams of interpreters and even a Babel, because obviously, just from pure statistics, most of the ghosts who picked up the other end of the line didn’t speak English.”
This was a lot of information to take in. Hammer kept talking as she took him down the hallway. They passed many heavy steel doors, each with a black Roman numeral painted on it. Uniformed security, workers in coveralls, and lab-coated staff passed them, all of them glancing suspiciously at Sullivan. The secret underground lab had far more workers than its outside appearance indicated. The tunnels went off in directions that showed that this facility was much bigger than the building above it.
“Lots of money and work went into running the spirit phone, but they never met George Washington or Julius Caesar or anyone interesting. It’s not like there are switchboard operators in the afterlife. We were spending a million dollars a pop to make a call to some random somewhere, and most of the time nobody answered.”
“Must be busy in heaven.”
“That’s the problem. I don’t think we got heaven. When it did occasionally work, we weren’t getting happy people, and there sure weren’t any choirs of angels singing. After a bit, most people thought that Edison had built a phone line to hell.”
“Oh…” Sullivan scowled. “That could be awkward.”
“Try explaining that to the shareholders. We don’t know where we connected to, just that the spirits of some dead people end up there. The conversations were usually screaming gibberish, angry ranting in Chinese, that kind of thing. It didn’t help that a couple of researchers went crazy and there was a rash of suicides on the EGE team. Plus, it was sucking up too much of EGE’s capital to keep it running and it wasn’t like Edison could tell the board that calling hell was a sound investment. The Coolidge administration decided that it should be kept secret because news of the spirit phone could cause-what did he call it? — anxiety among the public.”
The theological implications of such a device were… troubling. “I can see how people might get a little upset. Might get some folks to behave nicer though, if they thought they really would go to hell.”
“Or have the public go ape-shit and bananas… Pardon my French. Coolidge played it safe. He asked that the project be shut down, so EGE powered down, quit making calls, and just gave it enough juice to keep the connection live in case we ever decided to fire it up again. They were worried that if we shut it down completely, we might not ever be able to reconnect.” She stopped at a large steel door labeled XIII and removed a ring of keys from her coat pocket. Another guard stepped aside so she could unlock it. “Three weeks of Power-fueled Cog madness from the greatest mind of our time and”- the heavy door swung open-“we got this.”
Sullivan stepped inside a room that was nearly as large as the warehouse above. A dozen men in laboratory coats were wandering about, checking panels of gauges and flashing lights, while in the very center of the room, cordoned off by protective railings and metal safety cages was a twenty-foot-by-twenty-foot glass box filled with crackling lines of electricity and another, slower, blue energy that could only be the visible manifestation of raw magic. It was a thousand lightning strikes imprisoned in a big fish tank. The air hummed with violence as fat power cables fed the hungry box.
It was frankly awe-inspiring.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Hammer asked, already knowing the answer. “A one-minute conversation uses more electricity than Newark does in a week. The big partition was left over from the elephant electrocuting days back when he was trying to prove that direct current was safer than alternating current. The room is reinforced, because if that containment was to break, it could flash-fry Menlo Park.”
The last time he’d had anything to do with Cog superscience he’d nearly been vaporized by a Tesla weapon. He wasn’t exactly fond of this sort of thing. “You know, the way you were talking, I was kind of expecting”-Sullivan held his hands out about a foot apart-“a telephone.”
“The original hypothesis was that it needed to be sensitive. Turns out it just needed to be bigger. And it is like a phone; look closer.” Hammer pointed at the base of the massive, flashing death-box, where there was an older two-piece telephone unit, with separated microphone and earphone, sitting on a small metal cradle next to a folding chair.
“Somebody has to sit next to that thing?” The amount of energy running through the machine was staggering. “What’s in there?”
“All sorts of stuff.” Hammer waved her hand dismissively. “Half the periodic table, including some things that are theoretically supposed to annihilate each other on contact. I don’t know. It’s way over my head.”
“I thought you said that they’d barely kept it running?”
“It was on standby mode for years. This is not standby mode. After what happened a few days ago they restarted the project.”
“What happened?”
“The phone rang.”
Before Sullivan could digest that the crowd had seen them enter and was swarming. A man armed with a large clipboard reached them first. “Mr. Sullivan?”
“Yeah.” He could hardly take his eyes away from the spirit phone. “That’s me.”
“Oh, thank goodness. We’ve been looking all over for you. Come right this way. He should be calling very soon. The check-ins have been exactly every seven hundred and seventy-four minutes. I have no idea how he can tell such precise time without any physical instrumentation.”
Another man, this one in a uniform, pushed past the scientist and pumped Sullivan’s hand. “Captain Ellis, Naval Intelligence. Thank you for coming. I just need to confirm that you are in fact, Sergeant Jake Sullivan, formerly of the 1st Volunteer Active Brigade.” Sullivan nodded along. “Very well. If we had more time we’d conduct a proper security check, but as it stands the Navy appreciates your assistance in this matter. Your conversation will be recorded. Anything you can get him to say concerning the makeup of their forces would be greatly appreciated.”
“Since this is the first time the dead have ever endeavored to speak with the living in a scientific environment, I’d suggest asking more valuable questions,” interrupted another man in EGE coveralls. “This is a monumental occa-”
“That’ll be all, Doctor,” snapped the captain. “We’ve got no time for your frivolity. See if he’ll divulge their attack plans in the Pacific, Sergeant.”
The brain side of the group was eager. The military side of the group was nervous. There were four men that stood back a ways that didn’t seem to fit with either side. They smelled like enforcers, and the way that they kept looking nervously at the spirit phone told him that they were also new here.
“Right this way, Mr. Sullivan,” coaxed the first scientist as he glanced at his watch nervously. “We only have a few minutes. Please do hurry.” He reached out and took Sullivan by the sleeve.
Sullivan smacked the hand aside. The EGE scientist put his fingers to his mouth and slinked away, surprised. “Who’s calling?”
The crowd exchanged glances.
Hammer spoke. She seemed to be enjoying the general discomfort of the eggheads. “Three days ago the spirit phone rang and for the first time ever, the dead called us. The thing on the other end claimed to be the ghost of Baron Okubo Tokugawa, Chairman of the Imperial Japanese Council, and he asked to speak to you.”
Machine Man
Chapter 4
Finders have proven the existence of disembodied spirits. Thus, I’ve had to revise my opinions on the nature of such spiritualist matters. If we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something.
