According to Wikipedia, 'coke' or 'cola' is the generic term for a soft drink in the Southern states, while 'soda' is more often used on the East and West coasts, so 'cocolas' could be a typo for 'colas'.
I think the writer was trying to make it sound stereotypically Southern (coca-cola getting shortened to "cocola") without realizing that we don't actually shorten like that, we just say "coke." I've honestly never heard someone say "cocola" in my life, and I've lived it entirely in the Deep South. You either say "coke" or the name of your carbonated sugar water of choice.
I'm not quite getting how that fight seen ended (aside from the other three men disappearing). Was Anson hit by Tabitha's shots? If so, what the hell is she doing shooting into a melee with him as a backstop? If not, why did the shooter stop (or not take Tabitha down in the meantime for that matter)?
Chapter 13 opens with our "heroes" having ejected from their Harrier jump-jet. Anson asks how they managed to survive the blast, and despite the fact that he's been shot, has lost a large amount of blood, and has a fractured wrist atop of all that, we still manage to get some "I am very smart" banter between the two:
"Simple shock wave aerodynamics," she replied. "I maxed our velocity to get us as high as fast as we could get. The air pressure is lower as you get higher of course. I managed to surf the wave as long as the aircraft would take it, which wasn't that long. When the aircraft came apart, the blast wave overtook us. Then we were on the inside of the wave. What is the air pressure behind a shock wave?" she quizzed me.
"Of course. The pressure behind a shock is at stagnation pressure of that gas. In Earth's atmosphere, that is one atmospheric pressure of air, mostly harmless. Genius! You knew we weren't going to make it. That is why you told me to wait on ejecting until you ordered me to. And you didn't order us to eject until we were inside the shock wave letting the plane take the force of the blast wave." That was more than I felt like saying at the time, but it was so brilliant I had to say something.
Because this is how people talk after getting shot and a watching someone's head get shot to pieces. But hey, we haven't seen anyone in this story acting like a human being up to this point, so why would the author start now?
I was feeling weak. I was so weak that each step took all of my will power and strength to accomplish. I felt like I was about to "bonk."
For you non-athletes out there "bonking" might mean something else,—something, erh, sexual—but to the athletes you know what I'm getting at.
I know what "bonk" means, thank you very much. It's the sound that's made right before you get sent to horny jail.
In this conversation, however, "bonking" simply means collapsing from exhaustion, and we have a completely pointless flashback to a mountain biking expedition where something similar had happened to our author...err...protagonist.
Eventually, however, he passes out, and then we get a dream sequence where he meets....Albert Einstein?
"You fixed my blunder," he said and pointed to the whiteboard.
The whiteboard had the complete story spelled out in undergraduate math. From beginning to end in front of me was The Grand Unification of All Forces of Nature. Everything was described, gravity was a simple ungauging of the electromagnetic field, inertia was due to the vacuum energy fluctuations and something similar to Mach's principle, renormalization of the Standard Model wasn't required, and Einstein's Cosmological Constant when moved to the right rest frame turned out to be proportional to Hubble's constant for the expansion of spacetime. It was beautiful, absolutely magnificent!
"I didn't do that," I told him.
"But of course you did. In one experiment, you accomplished all of that. You just have yet to write it all down." He smiled and shook my hand approvingly. "I just wish," he began, "that such a large sacrifice didn't have to be made for such great achievements."
Remember that scene in Gravity where the protagonist has given into despair and turned off the oxygen to the Soyuz capsule, but then she has a hallucination of George Clooney telling her not to give up? Well, this is like that, only far stupider and more self-aggrandizing.
He whines to Dream!Einstein about how his invention has caused so much death and destruction, and then Dream!Einstein reassures him that he did the right thing in keeping the warp drive (or "spacetime distortion device") out of enemy hands:
"The device would have been used for the gain of power, Anson. That type of power shouldn't fall into the wrong hands. This is why I signed the letter to President Roosevelt endorsing atom bomb research. I feared a madman might gain that knowledge first. Although I will never forgive myself for the evil device that I took part in creating, I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself for letting it fall into the wrong hands either."
Of course, the real Einstein was a pacifist who regretted signing that particular letter, stated that "Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would not have lifted a finger" and that "I made one great mistake in my life - when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atomic bombs be made." I should also point out that Einstein never worked on the Manhattan Project, as he was considered a security risk.
Anson retorts that Einstein "helped get the bomb built that saved us all from World War Three," to which Dream!Einstein responds, "Very good, Anson."
"Very good, Anson. I don't believe that you need me anymore either. You will do just fine." Instead of turning into a purple emu and flying away this time, he slid down the helmet of his EMU and locked it into place; EMU not emu this time. "Just fine," he said as he opened my closet door. "Perhaps you will be able to sleep now."
Funny that the whole time he was sitting there talking to me, I didn't notice that he was wearing a spacesuit. Somehow, it just seemed right. He was wearing an EMU, not becoming an emu. My mind was trying to tell me something but I wasn't sure what.
"Hey wait!" I shouted to him. "You aren't here and this ain't real is it?"
"Of course I'm real, Anson," he paused at the closet door. "I'm as real as your subconscious and I'm as real as your need to be humble. You did all of this amazing science and engineering and will not admit that to yourself. Perhaps you created me in your dreams to tell you what you wouldn't tell yourself. But you will not be needing me any longer, I think."
"Need to be humble." Yeah, because "humility" is clearly one of this guy's virtues.
He then wakes up in an helicopter, being airlifted to a hospital.
"Dr. Clemons if you can hear me I want you to blink your eyes." He said.
I blinked at him twice.
"Oh Anson!" Tabitha continued to cry.
Then I started feeling slightly better. Probably the adrenaline or whatever this was in my arm. I noticed an I.V. hanging from the roof of the helicopter and I felt like I would be able to speak so I tried. Nothing happened.
"Don't try to speak, Anson!" Tabitha shouted.
"Dr. Clemons you have a tube in your throat. Don't try to speak. Do you understand? If so blink twice."
Chapter 14 opens with the hospitalised Anson speaking with someone named General Bracken:
"Dr. Clemons, Colonel Ames here has debriefed me on your adventure of the last few days. Not only is the story amazing, but nobody must ever hear a word of it. The implications alone of the high speeds that were achieved give a completely new meaning to intercontinental ballistic missile and to rapid force deployment. I needn't even discuss the ramifications of the energy collection devices." He turned to Tabitha. "Has he seen the news?"
"Not yet, General. Anson has only been awake for an hour or so. I'll bring him up to speed soon." Tabitha touched my shoulder and took the cup from me.
"What . . . is on the . . . news?" I whispered and cleared my throat.
He tells Anson that he "would have made a good soldier," as if this novel weren't enough of a wankfest already.
Tabitha goes on bleating for a while about how close he came to dying, and we learn just how badly he was wounded:
I was in surgery for several hours during which one of my lungs had to be repaired. The major problem was my loss of blood. One can't bleed internally that badly for an hour or more and expect to keep walking. Most of the pain I felt was from the broken bones caused by the bullet as it zipped through my chest. The knife wound was superficial and the bullet wound in the shoulder was muscle damage only, though, I'm sure I'll feel a good bit of pain there for a long time to come. The doctors said I could walk to the bathroom in a couple of days or so if there are no infections. Phooey! I ain't laying in bed that long. And, I sure as Hell ain't using a bedpan!
You know, I was hoping that he might have gained some newfound respect for the medical profession after it just saved his sorry ass, but I suppose that's too much to hope for, isn't it?
Tabitha explains that the news is spinning this whole affair as a series of meteors striking Florida (I think the word they're looking for here is asteroid), and that somehow these impacts wound up spawning several tornadoes, and we get several rambling paragraphs about the destruction the tornadoes that is utterly superfluous. I'm beginning to wonder if the author has some kind of...tornado fetish...given how frequently the subject comes up.
It's not long before Anson starts bitching about doctors again:
"That doesn't explain what happened after the storms settled. I mean, I feel horrible that all those people died," I coughed a couple of times. Tabitha looked concerned until I showed her my hands, "See no blood. My throat is still just a little scratchy from whatever they had stuck down it. Quacks!"
"Anson, those quacks saved your life. Three times!"
"Maybe I'll have to rethink my opinion. Be patient please, it is hard to change years of bad behavior and beliefs over night. Believe me, I'm far from ungrateful. I like the scratchy throat much better than the alternative."
"Well, okay for now. But I don't want to hear you talking like that around the doctors. It would just be plain rude," Tabitha scolded me with her best Mama-said-don't-do-that voice.
Well, I guess I was wrong...sort of. At least he can admit that his opinions are unreasonable. Not that this redeems the novel in any way, mind you.
He and Tabitha then discuss the implications of the warp drive falling into the hands of the Chinese, and Tabitha tells him that they're going to have a press conference with the Vice President in New Mexico, and then they'll be debriefing the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the president himself. After meeting with the VP, Anson laments that he "didn't get to discuss the state of world affairs" with him, something for which the VP is no doubt grateful. I can only imagine what kind of kooky ideas our hero has about foreign affairs...
After that they meet up with Jim, who informs them that Becca is in the ICU, running a high fever with flu-like symptoms. Anson immediately decides to run off and see her, despite Tabitha and the hospital staff telling him he ought to stay put:
"Doctor, I am paying for medical attention and this room, not for imprisonment." I said as I wrist-locked the orderly's hand and twisted his hand backward and showed him his own palm. He must not have like the way his palm looked because he collapsed to his knees in either disgust or pain. Probably, pain. I walked past him and let go of his wrist. Jim and Tabitha never said a word. They just followed me.
"Lead the way, Jim." I motioned him around me.
The three of us found the elevators, then up to the ICU. There was some slight resistance until I told a nurse that Tabitha and I were Rebecca's parents. She didn't seem to care if I was lying or not and let us through to see her.
The doctors say that Becca is infected with "some kind of weird virus":
"Dr. Reese, this is Professor Clemons and Colonel Ames," Jim introduced us to 'Becca's physician.
"The astronauts?" Reese asked. Tabitha and I just nodded.
"It's a pleasure to meet you both." He shook our hands. "As I was saying, we thought it was just multiple opportunistic bacteria coupled with allergic reactions but not any longer." He looked at his pad. "We sent several blood samples to Atlanta. The CDC has isolated some new mutated flulike virus. It is the first time it has ever been reported. CDC is trying to develop a cure but it would help if we knew where she caught it. Its host might have antibodies."
He shows Anson an SEM micrograph, which shows something odd about the glycoprotein spikes on the virus's surface. They appear to have a dumbbell shape, which leads to an "Oh, shit!" moment when Anson realises that this are the same Clemons Dumbbells that he invented:
"Listen to me, Doctor, and listen very carefully. If the things in this picture you just showed me are what we believe they are, then 'Becca is contaminated with Top Secret nanoscopic explosives. Don't ask where they came from. One, and I mean one," I emphasized by holding up one finger, "of these tiny devices could blow her arm off." I told him.
"Whew!" Reese whistled, "There are most likely millions of them in her body!
"I was afraid of that," Tabitha said. "More than enough to destroy the whole city."
I was beginning to realize the awesome power of the dumbbells and how they might could be used as a weapon of terror. There would be no way to detect a dumbbell or millions of them. And they could be hidden inside the terrorist's own body until, kablooie!
Another grand accomplishment by our hero - a flu virus with highly explosive protein spikes. But they don't have time to dwell on the matter, because shenanigans are afoot! Anson and Jim drive back to their laboratory, only to find that the guards normally posted there are missing. Suspecting something is awry, Anson begins loading a Glock pistol, stuffing an additional clip into his pocket (yes, the book uses the word "clip," no doubt pissing off gun nerds everywhere).
For you folks that don't live in the South, I guess I should mention that most everybody has at least one pistol in his or her glove compartment. Those who don't, well they are carrying theirs on them somewhere. That's why our crime rate is so much lower than the big "no-gun" cities. There, only the criminals are armed. If you recall history, the "shoot out at the O.K. Corral" was over a no-gun ordinance in the city of Tombstone. In the South we try to keep the playing field as even or better as we can. Therefore, criminals know that if they want to start something in the South that they will be shot back at. Deterrence is a very good crime prevention technique. Hell, it kept the Soviets at bay during the Cold War.
The South has less violent crime? You fucking what, mate?
He's essentially making the same tired thought-terminating cliche of, "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." Since I don't want to drag this thread into a debate on gun control, I will just say that this argument is founded on three very dubious assumptions:
- That law enforcement does not have access to guns.
- That stricter gun control laws would not make it harder for criminals to obtain firearms.
- That citizens owning gun actually acts as a deterrent against violent crime.
"Jim, you're right. The stitches are to fill up the bullet holes left by terrorists. Tabitha is limping on a shot up leg. Johnny Cache shot her. Long story. Do you have any other weapons in the car? I asked.
Jim smiled and popped the trunk. His karate gear and his tournament bag were in there. He rummaged through the gear and dug out two kamas, two escrima sticks, and one set of nunchukas.
"Which do you prefer?" he grinned.
"This will do fine," I brandished the Glock 19 with the pre-Clinton-Reno era clip. "Sixteen shots ought to do. Besides, I ain't in any shape to be fighting. I'll have to keep you covered. Sorry."
The front door to the office had been opened effortlessly. Obviously, the guard's keys came in handy for somebody. We cautiously scoured the entire facility and found no signs of foul play, except that my laptop was missing from the safe, the lab was nearly destroyed, the contents of the offices were strewn about everywhere, and my whiteboard in my office was gone.
So it seems that Johnny's goons ransacked the place and nicked everything of value. Jim checks the silent alarm, which indicates the break-in occurred about thirty minutes ago. Fearing that Al and Sara (Wait, who are they again? The awfulness of this novel is giving me plot amnesia!) are still in danger, Anson has Jim call them up and warn them. They manage to get Sara to leave her apartment, but they get no answer from Al, so they head over to his place, where more shenanigans are afoot:
We reached Al's house; there were two vehicles in his driveway that we hadn't seen before. There was a truck and a van. Jim pulled up in the neighbor's driveway and we crawled over the fence into Al's backyard. I barely had the strength to get over the four-foot chain link.
Jim and I hugged the back wall of Al's house and eased around the chimney to the back door. The back door flung wide open and Al came flying out the door headfirst and he skidded across the patio into a large ceramic plant pot. The little apple tree in the pot had one small apple clinging from its droopy limb. The impact of Al's head into the pot shook the apple free and it fell on his back. Al was out cold I was pretty sure.
Behind Al stepped a very large individual. I didn't have time to make out any details of his face before Jim had sunk the blade of a Kama into his throat and ripped out the guy's trachea. I rushed in behind Jim as he flew through the door never missing a beat from the Kama strike. There were Kamas swinging and then escrimas. Two more were dead before the gunfire ever started.
God, this reads like some kind of mall ninja fap-fiction. I'm surprised Jim didn't utter something like "NOTHING PERSONNEL, KID!" as he tore the blade from his opponent's body.
I changed the clip since the slide on the Glock was open, depressed the lever with my thumb and it closed, chambering a new round. "Ready now. On three and you stay low. One, two, three!"
I rolled out into the open and fired two rounds. Jim came out behind me and zipped across the room behind the couch and took cover again. I rolled across the floor behind him. "Ow shit that hurts!" I held my chest.
"You all right, Doc!"
"Yeah. Just pulled some stitches I think."
"I think we're clear. Let's get Al and get the hell out of here."
Eventually they meet up with Tabitha, who arrives in a military helicopter. They fly to the Redstone Arsenal, where they board a C-141 Starlifter:
This one must have been close by when Tabitha put in the call. Come to think of it, I never did figure out how she got us a helicopter so fast either—I didn't care. I just wanted to get out of sight fast. As we boarded, Tabitha explained to me that our families were being hidden and that her daughter would meet us at the rendezvous point. Neither of us were sure how far the—whoever they are—would go to get what they wanted. Whatever that was. Were they looking for something or did they just want us out of the picture? And, who were they? I still voted for Chinese.
Leaving aside how much strength a bullet-ridden man should have, has anyone ever seen a four-foot high chain-link fence? The only thing that comes to mind is chicken netting.
That depends on if you have a camera or not. This book was published back in 2004 and presumably actually written at least a little earlier, the author likely just didn't think "Oh, they'll just use their phone camera".
Now, a good sci-fi writer writing about near-future events would have likely done so; extrapolation is kind of sci-fi's thing, after all. But "good writing" is not how I'd describe this.
That depends on if you have a camera or not. This book was published back in 2004 and presumably actually written at least a little earlier, the author likely just didn't think "Oh, they'll just use their phone camera".
Now, a good sci-fi writer writing about near-future events would have likely done so; extrapolation is kind of sci-fi's thing, after all. But "good writing" is not how I'd describe this.
Good point. I thought it was published closer to the end of the decade. Of course, you'd think that they'd still bring along camera cameras to make sure that the notes and diagrams and the like are set up the way they were back at the original lab.
Good point. I thought it was published closer to the end of the decade. Of course, you'd think that they'd still bring along camera cameras to make sure that the notes and diagrams and the like are set up the way they were back at the original lab.
Yep, but somebody not used to such phones existing likely wouldn't think like that.
It's funny to think how the now almost iconic movie/TV scene of "everyone in the crowd holds up their phones to record the dramatic thing happening" is actually a quite recent thing.
Yep, but somebody not used to such phones existing likely wouldn't think like that.
It's funny to think how the now almost iconic movie/TV scene of "everyone in the crowd holds up their phones to record the dramatic thing happening" is actually a quite recent thing.
That depends on if you have a camera or not. This book was published back in 2004 and presumably actually written at least a little earlier, the author likely just didn't think "Oh, they'll just use their phone camera".
Why wouldn't they bring a normal camera, if phone cameras aren't a thing in their universe? They can't be sure they can physically remove everything and better to take pictures of all the hardware before disconnecting it and sticking it in the van.
They could have just stopped at a drug store and bought a disposable camera. Any time after the 1980s.
These people are crap at basic industrial espionage. As in had never watched a technothriller or thought about how to do their job bad.
In E.E. "Doc" Smith's Galactic Patrol, which is one of the SF classics that Taylor claims to be the modern coming of, our heros have both still and moving cameras along when they do a technical information raid. (Also since it was written in the 1930s, draughtsmen in space armour that can fly at FTL speeds.)
Thinking about it Anson's problems with the medical profession may be due to Taylor having a dim memory of the troubles Kim had when he was hospitalised in Grey Lensman. Those though were him having problems adapting to the lack of physical activity that spending several weeks in bed involved, mostly due to not needing to eat to the level to which he was used to and getting frustrated about Hospital food. He never took off out of hospital before the Doctors said he was fit and did in fact manage to apologise to the staff who'd been hit by his frustration. And equally critically this incident became useful later when he needed to let one of the nurses know who he was without breaking his cover.
It's also noticable that several of the medical staff involved actually got names. Unlike the villians in Warp Speed, where Johnny is it for names,characterisation or motivation and god forbid the point of view shift a milimeter from Anson. Weber may do it badly but we do get to know what his villians think they are doing.
With Taylor, we've no way of knowing if the Chinese are a hive mind of giant ants in bad human costumes. And Russia appears to have been erased from the map. We know more about Taylor's pets (two dogs and a cat) than his villains, and that is despite the cover blurb telling us their plans.
I remember reading a scifi novel back in the early 90s, and was probably written in the 80s if not the 70s.
The main character was basicly a youtuber.
I kid you not.
Being unable to remember cameras exist, and would be useful for espionage, in 2004, is utterly ridiculous.
I was in surgery for several hours during which one of my lungs had to be repaired. The major problem was my loss of blood. One can't bleed internally that badly for an hour or more and expect to keep walking. Most of the pain I felt was from the broken bones caused by the bullet as it zipped through my chest. The knife wound was superficial and the bullet wound in the shoulder was muscle damage only, though, I'm sure I'll feel a good bit of pain there for a long time to come. The doctors said I could walk to the bathroom in a couple of days or so if there are no infections. Phooey! I ain't laying in bed that long. And, I sure as Hell ain't using a bedpan!
If nothing else we're learning a lot about why this dude sucks up more alcohol than a shop-vac in college: it's to ignore the constant pain he's in from a lifetime of stupid injuries that healed badly because he can't be arsed to follow doctor's orders unless he's knocked the fuck out.
If nothing else we're learning a lot about why this dude sucks up more alcohol than a shop-vac in college: it's to ignore the constant pain he's in from a lifetime of stupid injuries that healed badly because he can't be arsed to follow doctor's orders unless he's knocked the fuck out.
He sounds like the kind of guy who ends up disabled in his thirties or forties because he kept ignoring doctors and trying to "tough out" injuries, wrecking his body in the process.
If nothing else we're learning a lot about why this dude sucks up more alcohol than a shop-vac in college: it's to ignore the constant pain he's in from a lifetime of stupid injuries that healed badly because he can't be arsed to follow doctor's orders unless he's knocked the fuck out.
IIRC this book was published during Jim Baen's final years of life, so I dont really think he was as involved in vetting new authors as he might otherwise have been.I recall reading this book a long time ago, back when I had a lot more free time and was much less discriminatory about my science fiction.
Jim Baen tackled the whole ebook thing headon way back when it became a thing, had a very aggressive free library program for first-time readers, and actively snippeted the first 25-30% of a lot of books published under his imprint, as well as CDs containing entire back catalogs. It introduced a lot of people to a lot of his authorial stable, and served as a pretty effective marketing program. Especially coupled with the no-DRM policy.
And I do recall this book in particular as being one of the few that I do not think warranted a re-read.
This was Dr Taylor's best solo book IIRC.
I tried reading snippets of The Quantum Connection, his second book, and....dont. Just dont.
Dr Taylor may have many talents, but writing fiction is not one of them.
Chapter 15 opens with our heroes arriving at a secure air force facility, where we get several paragraphs worth of infodumps about their proposed solution to Becca's little "explodey virus infection."
So, we took a sample of Rebecca's blood and prepared to electrocute it in the same manner we had used on a macro level, before. Sara had run the show at the ECC manufacturing facility back in Huntsville, Alabama, so I let her run the show now. We carried out the process on a very small sample, via robotic remote, on the lowest abandoned level of the facility, which turned out to be an old abandoned mine shaft. For extra safety, we added a solid, steel reinforced concrete wall. Things went well for the first ninety-three nanoseconds. Then the mineshaft was fused together with a fireball explosion from the Casimir effect devices going hypercritical much faster than they had in any previous experiments with the original configurations. These new viruslike dumbbells were much more energetic than the standard Clemons Dumbbells. We obviously couldn't just electrocute 'Becca. We had to be sharper than that. Hard problems are never easy to solve.
"Hard problems are never easy to solve." Well, no shit, Sherlock! That's why they're called "hard"! I can see that Ph. D. of yours is really paying for itself.
They come up with an idea of removing the dumbbells (or "flubells" as they've taken to calling them) by running Becca's blood through an electrically-polarised field that will pull the dumbbells out and capture them.
The idea worked! Well, sort of. It worked well enough that we could keep the virus in check, but, the virus replicated far too fast for us to filter it completely. What this meant was that we could keep 'Becca alive through constant filtration as long as the virus didn't mutate again. It was a simple Malthusian Population differential equation, or a damped forced oscillator in engineering terms.
The question is, are these viruses also replicating the dumbbells? Because, uh, that would be pretty damn incredible if they did.
While they're testing the filtrating system, the rest of the gang are working on making their new home at the underground facility a little more homey. There's another lengthy bit of infodumping wherein a doctor explains how they can get rid of the flu viruses in Becca's body, and for once Anson DOESN'T start ranting at him:
"Yes," Dr. Smith explained. "The drug was designed to be the opposite of the viral receptor. It basically attaches to the virus's receptors before it can attach to a cell. Thus it becomes inert and is eventually filtered out by the body's waste disposal system. Let me explain it the way I do to kids. The virus is like the bottom of a Lego block and a cell is like the top of a block. Viruses stick to the cell kinda like the Leggos stick together. Well, Acyclovir was designed to look like the virus end of the block. The hopes with this type of therapy is that if you throw enough of the antiviral blocks into the mix, the virus will stick to them instead of the body's cells. Then your body's own filtration system will take care of it from there."
Of course, making this drug will require a large amount of equipment, and thus we get a scene of Tabitha dressing down an acquisition sergeant whose a foot taller than she is just so we know she's a badass.
The rest of the equipment arrived the next day. It took about four more days for us to assemble and test the nanotech factory and then another week and a half for Jim and me to build the first "flubell hugger." Once we adjusted the prototype to map directly opposite to the electromagnetic signature of the sialic acid receptors of the flubell virus, we then began tweaking of the automated manufacturing process. The process went fast. Our new facility was more efficient than the one that had evolved in our old Huntsville lab. It took some getting used to.
The flubell huggers were much easier to make than the Clemons Dumbbells because there were no moving parts. We were able to manufacture about twenty-three point eight grams per day. That added up to about forty-two days until we had one kilogram. I laughed at that. Perhaps this was the "ultimate question" to Douglas Adams's "ultimate answer.
Oh hell, don't remind me of a much better novel. Anyway, the chapter ends with Anson suggesting that Becca ought to be one of the bridesmaids at their wedding and oh god I think I just threw up in my mouth a little. Anyway, things will pick up a bit in the next chapter when Colorado gets destroyed.
Chapter 15 opens with our heroes arriving at a secure air force facility, where we get several paragraphs worth of infodumps about their proposed solution to Becca's little "explodey virus infection." The question is, are these viruses also replicating the dumbbells? Because, uh, that would be pretty damn incredible if they did.
Yeah, it seems like this virus is somehow creating more dumbbells by replicating itself. Needless to say, this is COMPLETELY physics-breaking. We're talking "pissing on the law of conservation of energy and laughing about it" levels of physics breaking. This virus is creating energy in staggering quantities out of nothing but human body cells (it's a human-infecting virus). Imagine a virus that created enormous quantities of antimatter out of human body cells (that somehow doesn't explode immediately upon contact with normal matter). That's this virus. It's completely absurd.
Frankly, this entire virus plotline makes zero sense to me. Where the hell did it come from? This is like a new sapient species just spontaneously popping into existence on Earth with no explanation of how or why any of that makes any sense at all, or how it actually happened (or continues to happen).
While they're testing the filtrating system, the rest of the gang are working on making their new home at the underground facility a little more homey. There's another lengthy bit of infodumping wherein a doctor explains how they can get rid of the flu viruses in Becca's body, and for once Anson DOESN'T start ranting at him:
Of course, making this drug will require a large amount of equipment, and thus we get a scene of Tabitha dressing down an acquisition sergeant whose a foot taller than she is just so we know she's a badass.
The problem is more that the idea of a drug solving this problem makes no sense, either. Because, ultimately, this does nothing to deal with the enormous quantity of not-antimatter this virus produces and is present in her body.
It's a gigantic amount of energy. No drug is going to do jack shit about that--the author seems to have no clue how biology and physics interact with each other. You can't block off cell receptors and just treat the fucking not-antimatter bombs infesting her body as "inert". That's just not how energy works.
Oh hell, don't remind me of a much better novel. Anyway, the chapter ends with Anson suggesting that Becca ought to be one of the bridesmaids at their wedding and oh god I think I just threw up in my mouth a little. Anyway, things will pick up a bit in the next chapter when Colorado gets destroyed.
What boggles my mind is how they just brush off all of this stuff like it's an afterthought. Like figuring out a virus that turns a human body into a gigantic stealth antimatter bomb (somehow) takes about a day or so, and creating some kind of drug-based cure out of nanomachines only takes a week (fucking what) and working with nanomachines is easy-peasy with 2000s-era tech, especially when you're injecting it into the human body to perform autonomous explosive ordinance disposal with not-antimatter human body cells, and hoping it never goes wrong even once (because that would set off all of the others, blowing up an entire state)!
All right, a chapter where something actually happens!
Anson is chatting with Jim and Becca about his wedding plans when Tabitha enters the room and informs them all that COLORADO HAS BEEN DESTROYED:
Tabitha always seemed to have a knack of entering a room when you were talking about her. She looked troubled.
"What is it, Colonel?" I poked at her. She didn't snap back with her usual wit and repartee. Something wasn't right.
"It . . . it's terrible," she said. "Colorado has been destroyed."
"What?" resounded uniformly from the three of us.
"Which part?" I asked.
"All of it! Turn on the TV," Tabitha said.
We turned on the idiot box and on all the channels was the catastrophe. Some of the talking heads were calling it an extinction level event like the one that had caused the demise of the dinosaurs. Eyewitnesses had claimed that—there were no eyewitnesses. They were all dead. Roughly fifty million people were estimated dead. The President was to make a statement soon. In the meantime, various astronomers were suggesting that the recent meteor strike in Florida was a precursor to the Colorado Catastrophe.
Anson figures it's a warp weapon that struck somewhere near Boulder, destroying everything within hundreds of miles and kicking up so much dust that they can't even see through it with infrared.
"It adds up," I remarked. "They could have been working on this thing from the beginning. Johnny Cache must have been giving them data and blueprints and reports from the first day. We've got to find out if there were any ships up at the time of the incident."
"Already ahead of you, Anson," Tabitha laid some large printouts on the table. "A friend of mine that I roomed with in undergraduate flight training works for an agency on the Beltway. He just secure-faxed me these documents and satellite photos. An unannounced launch of a manned Chinese spacecraft took place yesterday. The location of the spacecraft at the time of the impact in Colorado was almost three hundred kilometers directly over Boulder."
So the Chinese decided to make a devastating attack on the United States, their largest trading partner, because...um...("BECAUSE THEY'RE EVIL" I imagine the author screaming at me). And somehow it never occurs to them that the US might figure out they're responsible and counter-attack with nuclear weapons or something,
Becca asks what the lift capacity of a typical Chinese rocket is, because it's possible they might have put two warp weapons into orbit. Anson then begins thinking of how they can get their own warp weapons into orbit as soon as possible and how can they detect the presence of other warp weapons. He explains that, during testing, they could never get their mathematical models to match their experimental data 100%, and it turns out it was because Johnny Cache was feeding their test schedule to his contacts, so the Chinese were running their own warp field experiments at the same time:
The effects of the other warp field on the other side of the planet, although a couple orders of magnitude smaller due to distance, put a gravitational pole out at infinity (mathematically speaking) and our feedback calculations never could account for it. I never thought that there should be a pole there because it didn't fit the physical model I understood for the world. But it was experimental data and if something is there, it is there. The theory is just not right. I had always attributed our problem with some frame dragging effect or some other General Relativity phenomena that wasn't well understood. Incomplete theory was the problem, or so I thought. As soon as Jim and I thought to add a second warped field to our model and ran the calculation in the computer, the model converged to a solution! We had precise navigation licked. We also knew how to find other warp generators being tested. The field coils for any missile would have to be experimentally aligned. It's during that procedure that we would detect them as poles in our system and measure precisely where they were to within a few meters.
While this is happening, Tabitha is speaking to the president about the present situation. Anson barges in and states his plan:
"Mr. President, these missiles are undetectable by anybody on the planet except for the people in this room and the people in a room similar to this in China. Looking at what has happened thus far, I would venture to guess that our opponents plan to play this one out to the end. We can gather intelligence on them. Determine how far along they are with more of these weapons and slow them down until we can catch up and take them out. And when we do take them out, we will take out their entire government and infrastructure. We will remove their capability to make war at all, in one complete and precise strike. Then we can offer to go in and help them rebuild their government and infrastructure, but this time it will be a capitalist system that is completely allied with us, or else."
"Jesus, son. I'm glad you are on our side," the President said.
"Thank you, Mr. President. I have no sympathy for a people that will let their government kill millions of people in an unprovoked attack. They should get what they deserve." I grinded my teeth a bit and I guess I should've tried to hide my anger better.
Hoooo boy, get ready folks. This is the part of the book where things start getting a bit...pro-genocide. I also find his assertion that China, a country with billionaires and large, privately-owned corporations is somehow not capitalist rather amusing. And the idea that the Chinese people somehow "let" their government perform this attack is even more laughable.
A few hours later the president gives a statement to the public, explaining that what happened in Colorado was the result of a meteor impact (again, the word the author is looking for is asteroid, damn it!), and that the explosions in Florida were fragments of said asteroid meteor. Meanwhile, Anson and Co. finish work on their warp field detector, and discovers that the Chinese have at least four missiles that are almost ready to launch. He goes to tell Tabitha about this, and she asks if the Chinese might have their own methods of detecting warp devices. She asks how far away one would have to be to avoid showing up on his detector, and after some quick calculations he says that the far side of the moon ought to be distant enough.
The problem is, creating a moon base is a bit out of the question at the moment. Tabitha then informs him that the the US government is planning a strike mission against the Chinese launch sites:
"Don't worry, Anson. No ground troops will be involved. In fact, special black bag teams have taken over Chinese airfreight planes. These aircraft are going to fly into each of these locations. As far as anyone can tell, these were terrorist acts, accidents, who gives a damn what. We will have deniability."
"Who is going to fly those things? Will they be able to bail out in time? Then how do they get home?" I was upset. I hope these soldiers weren't asked to volunteer for a suicide mission.
"That isn't your concern, Anson." I could tell that this weighed heavy on her as well.
I hoped that if this was a suicide mission that there was a way to use soldiers that have been diagnosed with something terminal, who were going to die soon anyway, to conduct these types of missions. I guess generals have been ordering men to their deaths for thousands of years. That's something I'm not sure I could do. It takes some real balls to be a general. I'm glad Tabitha has the biggest set I've ever seen. Don't get me wrong. Tabitha is all hot-blooded American woman. She just must keep her balls somewhere besides a scrotum.
They watch as the explosives-laden planes explode on the spy satellite footage, at which point Anson remembers 9/11 and Tabitha cries a single tear for the brave men and women who gave their lives:
We both had been accepting things too quickly and then being forced to move on to the next obstacle. We had had zero time for reflection, contemplation, or mourning. First there was the Shuttle explosion, the narrow escape from dying in space, fighting terrorists, the tornados and ECC explosion in northern Florida, escaping Huntsville by the skin of our teeth, 'Becca's flubell virus, an entire state with over fifty million American citizens destroyed, and now ordering at least four people to their deaths. We both needed to cry for a while. We hadn't even been able to attend the memorial service for our fellow astronauts on the Shuttle and now there were millions to mourn.
