Zero Hour

“So if it can’t be removed,” Kurt said, “what hope is there in accessing it?”

“Well,” she hedged, “all things are impossible until they’re proven otherwise. Theoretically, there are fields of energy all around us sitting at their zero point. The same theory that postulates the existence of such fields suggests it may be possible to dislodge this hidden energy the way someone dislodges electrons in a power grid and reaps the benefits of electricity. Only, no one has been able to do it yet.”

It sounded a little like the mythical ether of the old days to Kurt, a substance that was once believed to fill the emptiness between planets and galaxies when scientists of the day couldn’t believe there was such a thing as a vacuum.

“Has anyone tried?” Kurt asked. “Before you and Thero, I mean.”

“A few brave souls,” she said. “I assume you’ve heard of Nikola Tesla?”

Kurt nodded.

“Tesla was one of the first,” she said. “In the 1890s he began developing what he called his Dynamic Theory of Gravity. He tinkered away on it for years until 1937, when he claimed it was finally complete and promised boldly that it would displace Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, at least in explaining how gravity works.”

“Don’t we know how gravity works?”

“We know what gravity does,” she corrected, “but we don’t know how it causes what it causes. Tesla believed it was connected to a kind of energy field that existed everywhere, but in some places this field had greater concentrations than others. He also believed that that field could be tapped and the result would be an unlimited energy source, one that would bring peace and prosperity instead of thermonuclear explosions and genocide.”

“So you’re telling me that zero-point energy and gravity are connected?”

She nodded. “If Tesla’s right — and Einstein and the others are wrong — then, yes, the two are connected in very complex ways.”

Kurt considered this. “Complex enough to cause what Thero is threatening?”

She seemed to need a second to think about it. “Tesla spent four decades working on his theory,” she said, “more than half his life. He made his great announcement, insisting to the world that he’d finally completed the Dynamic Theory of Gravity, that all the details were worked out, and then he never published it. After all that work, he locked it away and never spoke of it again. Despite years of ridicule and the crushing poverty he’d fallen into thanks to the treachery of Westinghouse and Edison, Tesla took the Dynamic Theory of Gravity to his grave.”

Kurt had never heard this story. “Has any record of it ever surfaced?”

Hayley shook her head. “When Tesla died, your government seized all his belongings and papers — despite having no legal reason to do so. They were held for a year or so and then finally released to his family. His work on zero-point energy and the Dynamic Theory of Gravity were not among them.”

Kurt considered what she’d told him. He knew Tesla’s reputation as a genius and as a mad scientist of sorts. He also knew Tesla was primarily considered a pacifist. It was fully conceivable that Tesla had destroyed all records of his theory. It was also possible that somewhere in the vast archives of the federal government there lay a file with Tesla’s name on it with the missing papers inside. He made a mental note to relay this information to Dirk the next time he checked in.

“The fact is,” Hayley continued, “we’re dealing with a primal force of nature. Many would tell you it’s something best left alone.”

“But Thero isn’t leaving it alone,” Kurt pointed out. “So what happens if he makes a breakthrough?”

“If he’s successful, a vast output of energy and a side effect of short-lived, extremely powerful gravitational fluctuations.”

“Can you try that in English,” Kurt said.

“The Earth isn’t going to be vaporized or anything,” she said. “We’re not going to start floating out of our chairs like astronauts in zero g.”

“What will we see?”

“The first and most dramatic manifestations will be noticed in the seas,” she said.

“The tides,” Kurt said.

“Exactly,” she replied. “The oceans of the Earth are drawn by the gravitational pull of the moon. The land is pulled on as well, but, unlike the liquid of the ocean it’s locked in place except at the fault lines.”

“How much power are we talking about here?”

“If the papers sent to us are valid,” she began, “potentially more energy than all of humankind has produced and expended since the beginning of the industrial revolution.”

Kurt paused before responding. For the second time in as many days, he found it hard to believe what he was being told.

“How is such a thing possible?”

“The same way it’s possible to run a nuclear submarine on a small chunk of uranium for years. Or to obliterate a large city with only twenty pounds of plutonium. There are vast amounts of energy hidden in places the normal human eye can’t see.”

“But splitting a continent in half?” Kurt asked. “I’ve seen big earthquakes in California. They knock down highways and buildings, but, contrary to popular belief, half the state doesn’t float off into the Pacific.”

“No,” she agreed. “No one is suggesting you’re going to see a divided continent with the ocean in the middle. But Thero is no fool. His first earthquake was a test, probably triggered from the station in the Tasman Mine. We have every reason to believe that that was just a small prototype. He’ll hit us harder next time, much harder, and he’ll hit us where Mother Nature has already done half the work.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Australia has the beginnings of a rift valley,” she explained. “Like the Great Rift Valley in Africa. Ours runs from Adelaide northeast toward the Great Barrier Reef. It began to form a hundred and fifty million years ago and then stopped for reasons unknown. The crust is thin and fractured in this section, and the pressure built up by a hundred million years without movement is waiting to be released.

“If Thero can direct his weapon toward this point and create a gravitational distortion that wedges the plate apart even fractions of an inch, the pressure that’s been built up over the millennia might be released all at once. We’re talking about a series of earthquakes, hundreds even, all in quick succession along the rift. What normally takes ten thousand years might happen in a day, or a week, or even hours. The devastation from that kind of tremor will not be measurable on the Richter scale, or any other scale ever devised. Every city, every town, every village in Australia will be reduced to rubble. Not a single building will remain standing.”

Kurt considered her point quietly. It was a grim scenario.

“I know,” she said, taking his silence for disbelief. “I’m a silly academic pointing out the worst-case scenario. The sky is falling — once again. The thing is, when these scenarios actually happen, there’s always someone running around, wondering why no one told them it could be this bad. I’m telling you, right here and now, it’s going to be horrific.”

Kurt’s face was dark. A new thought occurred to him. “I have to ask why you?”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said.

“The informant sent the papers to you,” Kurt clarified. “Why not send them straight to the authorities?”

Hayley shrugged. “I can only guess it’s because of my background. The claims and calculations would seem like gibberish to someone else. Had the package been sent directly to the ASIO, I can only assume it would have ended up in the wastebin.”

“Okay,” Kurt said, “but why not some other scientist?”

“It’s a very obscure field,” she explained. “We’re a tiny group.”

“Tiny but not infinitesimal,” Kurt said.

“No,” she agreed, “not infinitesimal.”

“So I have to ask you one more time: if there were other options, why do you think they picked you?”

She paused for a long moment. “I don’t know,” she said finally. The sadness had returned to her voice. There was a tinge of weariness to it, and a stronger hint of guilt. “I don’t know.”

She looked away, averting her eyes and staring out into the night. And, in that instant, Kurt knew that she was lying.

He considered pressing her for the truth but held back as he felt a subtle change in the train’s motion, like