“Dim the interior lights.”

  Most of the lab’s essential functions were tied into a rather sophisticated voice control system. So, on Foster’s order, the command center plunged into a state of semi-darkness.

  “It doesn’t matter where in the room you sit,” Foster said as the team separated itself around the large table that bisected the room. “Everyone should have a good view of the action. But remember, this is all about cause and effect.”

  Even in the dim light, Justine’s change in demeanor was easy to spot as the word ‘action’ brought on an eagerness to her face. Smiling at her overactive enthusiasm, Foster waited for everyone else to settle into one of the many chairs. Everyone, that is, except for Samuel, who stared defiantly at the numbers still slowly running on his monitor.

  “Hoover.” He spoke loud enough that even Mosley could hear him. “Bring up a map of the town.”

  On the table, the once idle tablet began to make a slight humming sound. On each side of the device, small recessed sections within the casing retracted slowly revealing four tiny light bars. Each bar rose quickly above the housing, then locked into place. Instantly, each bar began projecting three focused streams of light onto the lab’s ceiling.

  Saunders’s mind conjured up foggy memories of old laser shows a magician would employ in his act.

  Slowly, the beams of light moved toward one another until they combined to form one huge line.

  Impatiently, Foster yelled to a hidden puppeteer. “Hoover, quicker!” Before anyone had a chance to ask who he was talking to, the line blinked into nothingness. A second later, a large holographic map of Elmira appeared, floating just above the tablet. There wasn’t a closed mouth in the room.

  Foster rose off his chair to stand beside the floating anomaly.

  “As you can see,” he said, pointing to a yellow bubble encircling the east end of town and the surrounding countryside. “The narrowest target area the satellite information could provide us with is a twenty-square-mile area east of the city limits. Unfortunately,” with a series of hand gestures, the glowing section expanded. “That’s way too much area for the five of us to search, especially given the time constraints placed upon us.”

  Ignoring the first part of the briefing, a visibly stunned Samuel jumped up practically tripping over his own feet. “I’ve never seen technology like this before. Where did you get it?”

  The usually well-controlled scientist bent down to within a few inches of the tablet. Careful not to interfere with the light bars, he prodded the device’s casing with his forefinger. The poke caused the hologram to shift perspective slightly.

  “Agent Saunders,” Foster pointed at Samuel. “Would you please?”

  “Doctor.” Saunders also found himself completely mesmerized by what they were witnessing, but the professional ingrained within him pushed through the haze. “Let’s give Mr. Evers some room to maneuver. We can marvel at his toy later.”

  Mosley silently acquiesced by scooting back across the floor without really looking at the agent in fear of missing something on the display. Barbara, who just moments ago was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, suddenly found herself feeling like she was ten years old again, opening her first laptop.

  Back then, the universe seemed to unfold in the most indescribable ways. She liked to refer to that day as her Unwrapped Possibilities.

  In the meantime, Justine Rushing experienced something along the same line as her colleagues, except on a much deeper level. Holograms, she thought to herself, real holograms. Not wanting her inner geek to shine too brightly, she internalized most of her giddiness, deciding her position on the team would be better maintained by quietly sitting in her chair.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Even though on the inside, she was in love.

  “Hoover.” Foster took this mass hysteria in stride. After all, the tablet was performing just as they had designed it, nothing more and nothing less. “Please bring up the latest supercomputer projections, and inform the group precisely how much time do you estimate before it is finished analyzing all the data.”

  He shot Mosley a look of disdain, but Samuel was transfixed.

  Equipped with two high powered speakers, the tablet crackled to auditory life. For the first time, someone other than Foster heard what Hoover had to say. “Why are you being so nice to me? You’re such a pussy.”

  Unable to control herself, Justine busted out in a fit of laughter while Foster rolled his eyes at his creation’s first spoken words to humanity. “I was attempting to be a professional. Something you could stand to be a bit more of, at least when company’s present.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “The idiot’s creation said.”

  “Now who’s not being professional?”

  The map of Elmira dissolved into a ball of dark blue light. Pulsating slightly, it swiveled on its axis like it was trying to decide which way to go. Then, as quickly as it collapsed, the sphere expanded again into a series of three-dimensional numbers and boxes. Compelled by the sight of holographic equations, Barbara felt compelled to reach out, and touch them.

  Foster beat her to it.

  Using two hands, he expanded a small box in the holograms lower left corner. When he finished, Foster withdrew his hands and allowed everyone in the room to read the information contained within its glowing middle. Estimated time to completion: 97 hours 34 minutes.

  “Four days,” Saunder’s trance was instantly broken by the disappointing figures. “We don’t have four days. We barely have one and a half.”

  “We could cut down on that time,” Barbara said, trying to reassure the senior agent and herself. “There are other resources we can bring to bear. Right now, we’re only using the Cray supercomputers at Bleaker. If we could daisy chain those with some other agencies tech. That time would be gone in a heartbeat.” She snapped her fingers for effect.

  “Not likely.” Samuel stood up and tentatively moved a little closer to the hologram. He looked to Foster for permission. Like a kid letting his friend play with his new toy for the first time, Foster gave it. “It’s like there’s nothing there,” Samuel said, reducing the size of the countdown window. Then, he enlarged one of the other’s that had caught his eye. “They respond with such fluidity.”

  “Hoover’s idea. The tablet not only projects the image but also scans your hands repeatedly to anticipate their next move. Most of the equations are based on body mechanics, and the system’s fast enough to accomplish the calculations in under a millisecond. That means there’s no appreciable lag time.”

  “The system anticipates your movements before you even make them?”

  “A split second before… yes.”

  “Amazing.” Samuel twisted the window and centered it within the middle of the display. “You see this subroutine right here. It represents the number of supercomputers that are at this moment, crunching our data. If I’m reading this correctly, that’s almost half the computing power available in the United States.”

  “More like sixty-one percent of the available supercomputers.”

  “Sixty-one percent?” His brain sputtered. Not only was he talking to a sentient computer program, but that program was telling him that they were tapped into over half of the fastest computers in the country. “How in the hell are you able to monopolize this amount of resources. Research facilities have very sophisticated security protocols in place. As soon as they realize what’s happening, they will cut us off.”

  “Correct, Dr. Mosley,” For Foster’s sake, Hoover attempted to be more professional. “I estimate we have about three more hours before sites around the country begin to realize something’s wrong and close off our access.”

  “Then in four hours, we’re screwed.” Saunders resigned himself to a truth he didn’t fully comprehend. “What about the other ninety hours?”

  The group of scientists and federal agents looked from one to another, searching for an answer none of them seemed to have. Saunders, ever the leader said, “We’re trying to find out what this signal means… right?” The group nodded. “And from the data we see right now, there’s no viable way to crack the code in time to meet our deadline… right?”

  “Yes, sir.” Hoover wanted to stay a part of his first non-Foster conversation. “In fact, once they cut us off, the limited resources at Bleaker will extend this projection out exponentially.”

  “What do you mean, exponentially?” Barbara asked. “Exactly how do you define exponentially?”

  “He means.” Mosley found the seat closest to him and collapsed into it. “There won’t be a countdown clock big enough to measure it. We may never be able to crack it.”

  Justine averted her eyes from the hologram long enough to catch Foster’s attention. He seemed to be taking all this doom and gloom in stride, like none of it was news to him. So, she asked the question with her eyes before she ever spoke. “Then, what do we do?”

  Foster flashed her that same sly grin he had in the car. “We stop looking for the cause, and we start focusing on the effects. Has anything been affected in this town by the signal?”