The Null Prophecy Read online

  Stretching for as far as the eye could see was a frozen beachfront strewn with marooned narwhals. To him they looked like hapless, slug-like unicorns. Beyond the beach, the steel-colored Arctic Ocean teemed with still more whales making straight for shore.

  “I expected this.”

  He and the others turned as one toward the voice; it was the Inuit biologist, Rebecca Anawak. Last night in Thule he’d convinced her to join them at the station until the polynya was safe again.

  “What?” Brody said. “What’d you say?”

  “It’s the same as at the polynya—the same cause, I mean. The faltering magnetic field.”

  Everyone gathered around her.

  “Go ahead,” Brody prompted her.

  “Many animals carry tiny magnetic particles inside their bodies. We believe they use them like built-in compasses, mostly for long-distance navigation. Homing pigeons carry them inside the muscles of their necks, rainbow trout inside their noses, whales inside their heads.”

  Dallan banged his gloved hands together and nodded. He knew where she was going with this.

  “Joe Kirshvink at Cal Tech and others have done experiments and come up with a theory,” she continued. “They believe there are troughs in the magnetic field—invisible highways—animals follow to get around.”

  “Like cars on freeways,” Dallan interjected.

  “Exactly.”

  He saw Brody light up like a third grader who suddenly understood fractions.

  “So wait,” the major said. “The problem we’re seeing with the polar B-field is screwing up these invisible highways? That’s why these animals are lost? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Basically, yes,” she replied. “And it’s messing with their personalities too, as we saw at the polynya.”

  EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 23 (9:35 P.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME)

  That evening Dallan lay in bed staring restively at the ceiling. His dorm room was cozy enough and the black-out shades were fully drawn, but he was unable to fall asleep. His thoughts were in turmoil, surging from the events of the last twenty-four hours to Lorena and back again.

  Every thought of Lorena ended with, What have I done?

  The previous week he asked his lawyers to start divorce proceedings against her. It wasn’t what he wanted, really, but he had no choice. She’d changed too much. The fun, high-spirited girl he first met and fell hard for had morphed into a conventional drudge.

  He shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead brusquely, as if to erase all thoughts of the fiasco.

  I never wanted children.

  I told her that—over and over again.

  Involuntarily, his mind was flooded again with images of bloody skies and beached whales. Moments later he found himself reliving the events of Friday afternoon that brought him to this nightmare.

  He was at the Space Weather Prediction Center holding court with a gaggle of fifth graders.

  “Every eleven years or so the sun goes bonkers,” he explained. “Like you kids when you eat too much sugar.”

  The students laughed and nodded knowingly.

  He pointed to the large screen on the wall of the SWPC’s command and control room. “That’s what you’re seeing right now, live and in color: a sun that’s pumped. We call it solar max.”

  The sun’s surface, its chromosphere, was the very portrait of chaos. The tangled, twisting rivers of red-orange plasma suggested to his mind a nest of writhing red corn snakes.

  A tall, lanky boy raised his hand. “Is that why there’s gonna be a magnetic storm Sunday night?”

  “You could say that. Geomagnetic storms happen a lot during a solar max.”

  He glanced furtively at the children’s attractive young teacher, Ms. Bell, and noticed she wasn’t wearing a ring.

  “But you guys don’t need to worry. The one we’re predicting for Sunday is no biggie, okay? At most it might cause a little bit of radio and TV interference, that’s all.”

  Ms. Bell raised her hand. “Dr. O’Malley, what about the Internet?”

  “Yes, maybe that, too.” He gave her a friendly wink. “Excellent question.”

  A ginger-haired, freckled-faced girl raised her hand. “What’s a gee-o-mag-ne-tic storm, anyway?”

  “Well, it’s caused by a blizzard of invisible, electrically charged particles from the sun that slam into the earth. They’re mostly electrons and protons—” he paused. “Uh, have you kids studied about them yet?”

  There was a discordant chorus of yeses and nos. He looked to the teacher, who smiled and shook her head.

  “Okay, then, let me put it this way. Electrons and protons are super-tiny particles that carry electricity. When they hit Earth’s magnetic field way up there”—he pointed skyward—“they set off a chain reaction that creates big problems for us down here on earth.”

  “What kind of problems?” a kid called out.

  He had an idea. “Let me show you. Follow me!”

  He led the children to the visitors’ auditorium, which was stocked with lots of fun demo equipment. Once on stage, he rolled out a Van de Graff generator, which looked like a giant metal globe. He invited the teacher to join him.

  “If you don’t mind,” he said when she came alongside him, “I need you to stand on this wooden box.” He took her hand and helped her mount it, in the process catching a whiff of her flowery perfume. “Lovely,” he said sotto voce. “Thank you.”

  She tottered on her petite-sized green pumps, but quickly regained her balance.

  “Okay, now, students, I want you to pretend this Van de Graff generator is the earth.” He turned to the teacher. “Go ahead and place both hands on the globe.”

  She looked at him trepidatiously, but then did as requested.

  Nothing happened.

  “As you can see,” he said, “nothing happens—everything’s cool.” He asked the teacher to remove her hands then flicked a switch; the machine roared to life with a loud, grinding sound.

  “The globe is now being electrified. It’s like the earth being bombarded by that hurricane of electrons and protons I told you about. It’s creating a magnetic storm—and now watch what happens.” He asked Ms. Bell to lay her hands on the globe once again.

  She wavered.

  He smiled. “Trust me, you’ll be fine.”

  Reluctantly, the teacher placed her hands on the globe and instantly her long blonde hair rose straight up like stalks of dried wheat. The boys and girls pointed and laughed with unfettered glee.

  Dallan quieted them down with his hands. “The magnetic storm is causing Ms. Bell’s hair to rise like that—and if you were standing close enough, like I am, you’d hear her hair crackling from the electricity.

  “In theory, if a magnetic storm were powerful enough, this would happen to your hair as well. Normally, though, magnetic storms—like the one we’re predicting for Sunday—aren’t strong enough to do that. Mostly they only mess up things like radio and cell phone reception. Nothing you’ll probably even notice.”

  He switched off the machine and helped Ms. Bell off the wooden box.

  “Okay, I think it’s time—”

  He was interrupted by the sight of his assistant rushing into the theater. A moment later the young man leaped onto the stage, rushed up to him, and spoke directly into his ear.

  “We need you, sir. Right away.”

  CHAPTER 5

  CASHING IN THE CHIPS

  EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 23 (4:00 P.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME)

  NEURONET CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS; MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA

  For reasons nobody understood, but that Allie hoped to find out, Jared Kilroy was reared in complete secrecy. He’d never issued a public statement, except through his handlers, nor had he ever made a single public appearance. No one even knew his exact age, although prevailing wisdom placed him in his mid-twenties.

  “I wonder what he looks like,” she said to Eva. They were in the back seat of a limo that had just pulled into NeuroNet’s vast parki
ng lot. “Google Images has thousands of pictures that are supposed to be of him, but they’re all different.”

  Two weeks earlier the young mystery man was named NeuroNet’s new CEO, following the death of his ninety-year-old legendary father, Jack. The old man founded the company decades ago and in 2000 received the Nobel Prize in Physics for co-inventing the computer chip.

  Under Jack Kilroy’s leadership NeuroNet grew to become the world’s largest maker of integrated circuits. NeuroNet now employed more than 90,000 people and posted yearly sales north of forty-five billion dollars. The corporate giant comprised sixteen fabrication plants, or “fabs,” and nine assembly and test facilities worldwide. NeuroNet microprocessors were in eighty percent of all existing PCs.

  When the car stopped in front of the entrance she and Eva let themselves out and stood ogling the company’s towering new office building. NeuroNet 2.0, they called it: Silicon Valley’s newest hot property. Scores of uniformed musclemen were offloading chairs, desks, tables, and other furniture from a fleet of large vans.

  “Wow,” Allie said, “impressive.” Her heart was racing. By network news standards this evening’s exclusive interview was a huge “get.”

  Pitsy and the crew, who’d driven there ahead of time, were waiting for them at the entrance.

  “How was the flight?” Pitsy asked.

  Stu “tightwad” Siegel, their boss and president of Fast News, had given Eva and her permission to take a private jet.

  “You know—same ol’, same ol’,” Allie deadpanned before laughing.

  “Pretty awesome, actually,” Eva said.

  “What I wanna know is how you got Stu to go along with it,” Pitsy said, pushing on the glass door and holding it open for them. “How’d he react when you asked him for it?”

  “How do you think?” Eva said, rolling her eyes as she walked past him into the building. “The old skinflint.”

  Allie, following right behind, chuckled. She’d actually come to like Stu. Four years earlier, when she was still at Harvard, he had invited her to his office in New York City. There on the spot he offered her the position of chief science correspondent.

  She quickly accepted on the condition she be allowed to live in Los Angeles, to be close to her family. Stu consented and later even helped get her manuscript about the null prophecy published, figuring a book tie-in would help boost ratings for the TV special. “I think you’re onto something here, Allie,” he’d said, “It’ll be gold.”

  “Hey, it’s the least he could do,” Allie said about Stu’s rare show of extravagance. “I’m giving up my Easter for this.”

  “Whoa, girlfriend!” Eva said. “Remember, you didn’t need to be here. Stu knew I was willing to do the interview by myself.”

  Allie frowned. “And turn a major live spot into a taped piece? No way. Besides, I’m dying to meet this guy.”

  They walked through NeuroNet’s lobby, gawking at the cavernous interior. At the reception desk they were checked in by a pretty, pale-faced young woman with spiked purple hair and lip rings. A few minutes later they were approached by a tow-headed, baby-faced teenager dressed in torn blue jeans and a black T-shirt emblazoned with the word BRAINSTORM across the chest. A small, sorrel-colored horse was tattooed to the inside of his left forearm.

  She guessed high-school intern.

  Dang. The older I get, the younger they look.

  “Allie Armendariz, right?” the boy said.

  “Yes,” she said, shaking his hand. She stared into his unusual, amber-colored eyes. “And this is my producer, Eva Freiberg, and our chief cameraman, Phil Pitman.”

  “Great, good to meet you all. Follow me. Everything’s set.”

  This was her first time inside the new building and what she saw as they walked through the offices surprised her in a pleasant way. Google, Twitter, Facebook: the mainstream corporate environments of the digital age all had a certain Willy Wonka cuteness she liked at first. But she came to see them as childish attempts by the companies’ geeky founders to be cool and worse, Orwellian. Playful, coddling environments, complete with free food and candy, ingeniously calculated to indoctrinate their mostly young, impressionable employees into cult-like corporate cultures while squeezing every ounce of productivity out of them. For her, there was far more Kool-Aid than cool in Silicon Valley.

  But NeuroNet 2.0 was disarmingly understated. The chairs and couches being brought in were plump and inviting, the floor coverings warm and homey, the living-room-like lighting subdued. Had some management guru—Jared Kilroy himself, perhaps—discovered a new, unpretentious algorithm for enhancing worker productivity? Whatever the explanation, she liked what she saw.

  The intern led them into a spacious, glass-walled conference room in which everything did indeed appear to be set up for the live interview.

  “I’m sorry,” Eva said, “I’m confused. We brought our own equipment.”

  “Is there a problem?” The question came from a slim woman with short hair, ramrod-straight posture, and stern demeanor. She was older than the intern, but not by much, and clad in a perfectly tailored charcoal-gray business suit.

  Eva’s face was reddening. “There is if you expect us to do the interview with your set-up.”

  “And why is that, may I ask? This equipment’s all top-of-the-line.”

  Allie stepped in. “Sorry, but it’s network policy. Unions and all that.” She nodded at Pitsy to start setting up. “It won’t take us long to set up.”

  “But we went—”

  “It’s okay, Maggie,” the intern said, walking over to the young woman.

  Allie thought it odd for an intern to be giving orders.

  “I suppose I should introduce myself,” he said, turning to her. “I’m Jared Kilroy. This is our public relations chief, Maggie Henderson.”

  EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 23 (5:59 P.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME)

  “Stand by. One minute to air!”

  It was Eva talking to her through the IFB, a custom-fitted earpiece. Allie was seated opposite Kilroy in front of an elegant, floor-to-ceiling bookcase. One camera was framed on her, another on him. A third camera was on both of them. Eva was out in the parking lot inside a capacious production truck, from which she could communicate directly with Stu in New York. The anchor there, Brett Halsey, was at that moment introducing the segment.

  “Three . . . two . . . one. You’re on, girlfriend.”

  AA: “Thank you, Brett.”

  She turned to Kilroy.

  AA: “Mr. Kilroy, thank you for being with us this evening.”

  It felt weird calling him mister. He couldn’t be older than eighteen or nineteen. Could pass for sixteen.

  He nodded.

  JK: “Sure, of course.”

  AA: “You’ve never appeared in public before. Why is that—why the secrecy?”

  His face tightened.

  JK: “If you don’t mind, that’s not what I’m here to discuss.”

  She squirmed, caught off guard by the terse stonewalling.

  AA: “But you granted this interview. Why would you—?”

  JK: “I agreed to the interview to talk about something very important to me.”

  This was live TV; she needed to roll with it or risk total disaster.

  AA: “Okay, and what would that be?”

  JK: “First off, let me say thanks. I’ve watched your science reports on TV. You’re the best at what you do. Just like me. Just like NeuroNet 2.0. We don’t plan to be my father’s company anymore. That’s why I’m doing this. Today, right here and right now, I’m announcing that NeuroNet is going private and will be donating all of its profits to certain select charities.”

  She felt lightheaded. Was she being punked? She knew of reporters who’d been suckered in by fake news stories; their careers had tanked in the blink of an eye.

  AA: “What do you mean? What charities are you talking about?”

  JK: “My dad’s generation was all about profits, right?—making the rich richer.
My generation’s all about the double bottom line: doing well by doing good; profiting for a cause, not just stockholders. We’re going to be like Newman’s Own, except a million times bigger. Our sales last year topped forty-seven point three billion dollars. That’s a lot of influence.”

  AA: “You said, ‘select charities.’ What do you mean by that? What kind of charities?”

  JK: “Charities like Hedge Clippers, Mind the Gap, Cornell’s Center for the Study of Inequality—those kinds of nonprofits.”

  She shifted in her chair, her mind desperately seeking its bearings.

  JK: “See, we have a huge income inequality problem in our country and I want NeuroNet to be part of the solution. In the last thirty years the wealthiest one-percent increased their take by sixty-six percent, while for everybody else things got worse. The middle class in our country is disappearing. Minimum wage is worth twelve percent less now than in 1967. It’s so bad that one in every four American workers has to rely on some kind of government handout. Bottom line: the U.S. is almost dead last in the civilized world when it comes to income equality: thirty-second out of thirty-four countries. That’s obscene.”

  “Three minutes!” Eva said into her ear. “Enough with the politics, already. Ask him about the chip. The chip!”

  A week earlier NeuroNet had released its latest microprocessor, the Quantum I; it was causing quite a sensation.

  AA: “Tell me about Quantum I. It’s a real technological breakthrough, right?”

  JK: “Yes, well, as you know, it’s the world’s first one-megaqubit microprocessor—the start of a new age.”

  AA: “It’s certainly taking the world by storm.”

  JK: “Of course. With Quantum I’s computing power your average PC can now run ultra-realistic simulations of everyday life that can forecast the future: the weather, stock market, climate—”

  AA: “But—”

  JK: “And that’s just for starters. With Quantum I, theoretically you can digitize thoughts and memories and store them on a hard drive. One day you’ll be able to download all that into the electronic brain of a robot that looks just like you. You’ll be able to interact with others forever. It’s the first step toward true immortality.”