Dr. Richard Vandergroot paced the length of his office with his cellphone to his ear, listening to the update from the logistics coordinator. Cutting it close—and not just the arrival of the shipping containers from Taiwan. Alpha started in less than ten minutes.

  “Where are they?” he asked, turning to his office window.

  The Reagan sat moored outside, close enough to read the tail numbers on the Super Hornets lining its deck.

  “No. I need to know where they are right now.”

  He put a hand to his forehead and looked at the ceiling.

  “Yes. Coordinates—unless you have some other method of locating a ship I’m not aware of.”

  Richard tapped his foot on the floor, waiting for the man on the other end of the line to pull his head from his ass. He checked his watch.

  “Shit. Just send me a hit when you figure it out.”

  He ended the call and shoved his phone into his jacket pocket as he rushed to catch the elevator. Inside, he checked his hair in the floor-to-ceiling mirror on the back wall. A little more salt than pepper since accepting the role of Managing Director at the Center for Sustainability Research, but at least he wasn’t going bald from the stress. Not yet, anyway.

  On the ground floor, he passed the empty reception desk and exited through the sliding glass doors into the courtyard garden between the Center’s two main buildings. He checked his watch again. Six minutes to the Alpha window.

  Thankfully, the usually busy walkway was empty, as most of the staff took weekends off. Richard didn’t often have that luxury, and this Sunday, he wasn’t alone. The Alpha window, its timing dictated by mathematics so complicated only a handful of people on the planet understood them, arrived without consideration for what anyone thought might be reasonable working hours.

  Though the Reagan dominated the Center grounds, filling his peripheral vision, that wasn’t his destination. He headed instead for a squat, windowless structure sitting on a concrete pad halfway between the main building and the massive carrier.

  Fusion B comprised several modular units that, according to the designers, could be dismantled and reassembled in less than seventy-two hours, thanks to clever couplings linking the structural and systems components—a bold claim he would soon put to the test. Richard yanked open the door and stepped inside, bounding up the metal staircase to the control room.

  Technicians and scientists occupied a dozen workstations, monitoring various test parameters and status indicators. Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Spencer Daniels stood at the far end of the control room speaking with Richard’s boss, Rebecca Steinman. As the right hand of Anton Kamaras, she visited the Center regularly to ensure everything stayed on track.

  Richard paused to observe the activity in the test chamber below, visible through panes of thick plexiglass. A pair of axially aligned ring assemblies three-and-a-half meters in diameter dominated the expansive room. One hung from heavy steel brackets fixed to the chamber wall, while the other, only inches from the first, stood mounted on a dual rail system that allowed it to slide back and forth to fine-tune the gap between them.

  Other than their mounts, the two assemblies appeared identical. Each comprised a rotating inner ring adorned with copper coils housed in a stationary outer ring wreathed in thick bundles of multi-colored wires running up to connection points in the ceiling.

  Richard turned to the technician sitting at a nearby workstation.

  “Time to window?”

  “Just about five minutes.”

  “Ready to clear the chamber?”

  The technician nodded.

  Below, two men in radiation suits gathered their equipment on a stainless steel cart and left the test chamber through a set of double doors on the opposite wall. Only the test sample—a small cube of silvery-gold metal, one cubic centimeter in size—remained, resting atop a waist-high pedestal in front of the twin-ringed apparatus.

  Richard continued to the main console at the midpoint of the bank of windows, where a mildly overweight man in a long white lab coat sat staring at his laptop.

  “How is everything looking, Dr. Akindele?”

  The man glanced up with a scowl.

  “Leave me alone, Richard. I need to focus.”

  The Nigerian-born physicist, Dr. Olujimi Akindele, wasn’t known for his soft skills. Ordinarily, Richard would have goaded him with a snarky comment, but now was no time for fun. He held up his hands and backed away.

  “Richard,” called the Admiral, waving him over. “Glad you didn’t miss the excitement.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”

  He snapped his feet together and offered a smart salute before the pair shook hands. They’d been acquaintances back in Richard’s days in Naval Research—friends, even—long before Daniels had been named Commander of the Pacific Fleet.

  “Rebecca,” he added with a nod.

  “Good to see you, Richard. Everything taken care of?”

  “Absolutely. Ready for the show.”

  “How long is the Alpha window?” asked the Admiral. “I tried to ask Dr. Akindele, but…”

  Richard snorted.

  “Rain man needs his space right now.”

  Rebecca shot him a look.

  “Just answer the Admiral’s question, please.”

  “Thirty-seven milliseconds,” said Richard.

  The Admiral wrinkled his brow.

  “And the sample?”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “Two milligrams of cesium-136.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Should be plenty. If it verifies our calculations, the remaining convergences will scale up exponentially.”

  A tone sounded on the speaker overhead.

  “Three minutes to window. Initiating power sequence.”

  A hum filled the room, and the floor vibrated under their feet. Through the window, the inner rings of the apparatus sprang to life, accelerating in opposite directions.

  “I’m surprised Anton isn’t here for such a milestone,” said the Admiral.

  “He won’t be present for any of the events before Epsilon,” replied Rebecca.

  He turned to her with a start, wrinkling his brow.

  “He has a strong team here,” she added. “And Richard has everything under control.”

  “I appreciate that,” said Richard.

  Rebecca preferred to express her doubts behind closed doors. Though she could be brutal, at least she knew how to be discrete.

  As the timer counted down, the room fell silent. Technicians speaking in hushed tones and the clicking of keyboards were the only sounds apart from the low, throbbing hum. Whether through the observation window or via monitors around the room, all eyes remained fixed on the device.

  Richard’s jaw fell open as ghostly patterns of concentric waves, like ripples in a pond, emanated from the center of each spinning ring. Though he knew what to expect from a theoretical standpoint, witnessing it for the first time was something entirely different.

  “We’re locked on to the target waveform,” announced a technician, staring at his monitor. “Starting synchronization.”

  The rail-mounted ring moved closer to its fixed counterpart with the whir of a servo motor, stopping when their wave patterns merged to create an intricate interference pattern of dancing, iridescent light.

  “My God,” said Admiral Daniels.

  The interferences formed a perfect standing wave; each successive one identical to the last, creating the illusion they were frozen in midair.

  With eight seconds left on the timer, there was no dramatic audio countdown—just the numbers ticking down in the corner of the monitor. The precision required meant the computers controlled everything, relegating the scientists and technicians to observers.

  Richard glanced at Admiral Daniels. He held his breath, staring unblinking at a screen displaying the close-up of the sample.

  Milliseconds before the timer reached zero, a pneumatic actuator drove into the cube of radioactive cesium, launching it through the center of the rings. A momentary flash, and the standing wave collapsed. The hum faded, and the room fell silent. The sample was gone.

  “Incredible,” said Admiral Daniels, shaking his head.

  Richard held up a finger and nodded toward Dr. Akindele. Everyone in the room stared at the physicist in silence as he examined the data feed on his laptop.

  “Superposition achieved,” he said. “Tracking resultant waveform.”

  While there were a few nods around the room, tension remained high.

  “Sample entanglement confirmed. No losses detected, and no inconsistencies in decay.”

  The room erupted in cheers. Fist-bumps, high-fives, and even a few hugs followed as the enormity of their accomplishment sank in. Admiral Daniels clapped Richard on the shoulder and embraced Rebecca.

  “Incredible. I can’t believe it.”

  “We never had any doubts, sir,” replied Richard.

  Rebecca beamed.

  The cheering subsided, replaced by rising chatter as the team gathered to review test data.

  “Excuse me for a moment, Admiral,” said Richard.

  Navigating through the crowd, he made his way to the middle of the control room, shaking a few hands along the way.

  “Everyone,” he called, “can I have your attention?”

  The chatter faded as they turned to the Managing Director.

  “This success is not an end to our work. It is only the beginning. Even so, we must take some time to recognize the significance of what we have achieved here. This is the single greatest scientific breakthrough in the history of humanity.”

  A pause.

  “So far!”

  More cheering and clapping erupted from the assembled team. Richard looked around and smiled, making momentary eye contact with each of them.

  “Now, I would like to invite the Chief Operating Officer of Hitz-It-dot-com, Rebecca Steinman, to say a few words on behalf of Mr. Kamaras.”

  Polite applause greeted her as she raised a hand to the room.

  “Good afternoon, everyone. First, let me say congratulations to the team, and a special thank you to Dr. Olujimi Akindele, without whose leadership and vision we would not be here today.”

  Another round of applause. Richard glanced at Dr. Akindele and snorted. The freak couldn’t even manage a smile.

  “Second,” she continued, “I want to express how important your work is to Mr. Kamaras, and convey his deepest gratitude.”

  More applause from the team.

  “Richard?” she said, gesturing back to him.

  “As you know, there is work to do, and time is precious. Tomorrow, we will disassemble Fusion B for transport to the Beta site. But first, I would like you to join me on the cafeteria lanai this evening in a celebration of today’s events.”

  The applause started again, but Dr. Akindele silenced it with a wave of his hand.

  “Enough of these distractions. There will be no celebration tonight if we don’t secure the chamber and complete the diagnostics. I need everyone back to work.”

  As the scientists and lab technicians dispersed, returning to their post-test checklists, Admiral Daniels gestured for Richard and Rebecca to join him in a quiet corner of the room.

  “Listen,” he said, “I need to discuss the list for Epsilon.”

  “Don’t worry, Admiral,” replied Rebecca, “your list is confirmed with Anton.”

  “Yes. It’s just that—”

  The Admiral stopped mid-sentence, wrinkling his brow. Richard felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around to find Dr. Akindele standing behind him, scowling.

  “We still don’t have enough capacitance for Beta, and time is running out.”

  “Can we talk about this later?”

  “Later? We are setting up the Beta site this week. The clock is ticking.”

  “Everything is fine, Jimi. Relax.”

  A jab. Akindele hated it when Richard called him Jimi.

  “What’s this about?” asked Rebecca.

  Richard closed his eyes and shook his head. He had everything under control—if just barely. The extra scrutiny didn’t help.

  “The specs for the capacitor network were tricky,” he said. “We had trouble sourcing it.”

  The Admiral leaned in, his eyes darting back and forth between the two men.

  “What’s the status?” asked Rebecca.

  Always pragmatic. Richard appreciated that.

  “The largest capacitor network on the planet—and a backup—are on a cargo ship from Taiwan as we speak. They’ll be here in plenty of time.”

  “Backup?” said Akindele, his eyes going wide. “We have no use for a backup. We need one capacitor network to function within the specifications. There are no second chances.”

  “They work, Jimi. Guaranteed to discharge within spec.”

  Richard paused.

  “But?” said Rebecca, cocking her head.

  Admiral Daniels stared at him with arms crossed. Richard took a deep breath.

  “They can’t guarantee more than one good discharge. In fact, there’s a chance the networks won’t survive at all.”

  “What? Are you serious?”

  “Listen. The specs are unheard of. We’re lucky to have any solution at all.”

  “What are the risks?” asked Rebecca.

  “Minimal. We’ve enclosed each network in a reinforced container with built-in fire suppression.”

  Akindele raised a finger to speak, but Richard cut him off.

  “And we’ve already calibrated the control system to compensate for the additional cable needed to keep it a safe distance from the rest of the equipment. The two on the way now cover us through Gamma, and there’s two more in production for Delta and Epsilon.”

  “Why am I just learning this now?” demanded Dr. Akindele.

  “Because it’s not your job to know, Jimi,” he shot back. “Equipment and logistics are my responsibility. You can stick to the physics.”

  The physicist bit his lip, his nostrils flaring at the repeated use of his hated nickname.

  “Asshole,” he said.

  He turned his back on the trio and walked away.

  “Fucking guy,” said Richard, shaking his head.

  “He has a point, though,” said Rebecca. “Why are we just learning this?”

  “Because it’s under control. I won’t bother you with details unless it isn’t.”

  “Look,” said Admiral Daniels. “So far, you’ve been on top of everything, and God knows you’ve earned my trust.”

  Rebecca nodded.

  “Today was good, Richard. You’ve done well.”

  “Now, about the Epsilon invitations,” said the Admiral, “I could really use a couple more.”