Judgement Day, page 8
“As you see, ladies and gentlemen, the rock is now ready to be exploded.”
Joseph then went to his control unit and gave the instruction for the explosion to take place and instantly and silently there was movement on the rock and then smoke as the explosive materials did their work. It took the audience three or four seconds to realise what had taken place in front of their eyes, and then there was spontaneous applause around the room. They could see that the rock had been propelled by force some three feet from its resting place, with rubble all around it such was the power of the tiny squares when combined together.
“That, ladies and gentlemen, is the principle of it but we need somewhat of a large quantity of these squares to make any material impact given the mass of the asteroid.”
Joseph was known for his dry sense of humour and the way he said these words broke the ice and there was relieved laughter, none more so than from the President.
The President spoke for many in the room and said thank you to Joseph and the team. He was well aware that Dr Brandi Kovach was the brains behind the project, and he made a point of smiling at her and she nodded in appreciation.
“As I understand it, we need millions of these devices,” said the President, “but can they be produced in time and can the controller successfully give instructions to such a huge number?”
Joseph answered: “As to the second question, yes the controller can deal with a virtually unlimited number. As to the manufacturing of them, we have made some tentative enquiries and some of the squares can be made in the United States, but most will have to be manufactured in the facilities of the People's Republic of China.”
“What about are the lasers?” continued the President, “how do we know they will be strong enough and with a wide enough beam to propel millions of these squares into space.”
Joseph was anticipating this question and replied: “Yes, Mr President, we’re sure that by firing lasers from designated places on the Earth's surface we can direct them in the right place although it will be a very fine calculation. We are also considering putting a laser gun into space to be managed by astronauts in the International Space Station, rather than attempt to fire a laser from the ground. We may want to do that anyway in terms of attempting to deflect the asteroid if needs must.”
He left unsaid the implications of such a last-ditch attempt at saving the planet if the squares failed. Brandi was mightily relieved that the demonstration had been successful, but she was under no illusion that hard work was ahead of them. It was one thing to prove a demonstration of one thousand squares and another to deliver millions of them in a temperature of close to absolute zero with instructions for them to be sent to reach the asteroid being delayed for an hour given the speed of light.
The attendees of the demonstration included six people from China, and they were most interested in the technology and particularly the software and its intellectual property, but they quickly realised that they would not have access to this essential part, at least for a while anyway. They would be concerned primarily with the supply of the materials to be used, including titanium other rare earth minerals plus gold, all of which had an estimated cost of several billion dollars, and then the subsequent manufacturing process using extremely intricate machinery and robotics, but this was nothing when weighed up against the stakes for the planet.
The Chinese representatives were immediately asked to attend a series of manufacturing planning meetings to commence production as soon as possible and as part of this process, they would be given blueprints and all manner of technical details for the squares. The science and technology interface with the master controller was kept back for now, the idea being that each square would have its own antenna embedded in it such that messages would be received from the central controller. It was assumed by the Chinese that in due course they would have access to everything and already they could see the potential in the military sphere, which in this regard was no different to the view of the military advisers in the west. That was for another day, but in due course the communist party’s central committee would be most interested. First, everyone had to resolve the more prosaic matter of planning production.
The Chinese officials attending the demonstration had not been involved with discussions in Beijing relating to the possibility of allowing the United States to be destroyed by the asteroid in a cynical attempt at world domination and they were ignorant that this was being considered as a serious possibility. However, they were used to taking orders in the name of the people and had a job to do and that was enough for them.
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An international team of officials visited the Chinese facilities and were very impressed with what they saw, and it was agreed that representatives would stay to monitor the process of creating the new tiny squares. It was laid on thickly to the staff that their work would save the world. The plant selected for adaption from manufacturing rather more prosaic cheap retail items to the most highly complex and intricate squares was located in the deep countryside about five hundred miles from Beijing. Outside, the plant was very quiet but inside the large building was a hive of activity.
The Chinese had managed to find large quantities of the raw materials needed from their interests across Africa in the main and as a demonstration of the power of the People's Republic and of the might of the people of communism they put on a great show for their western allies in this matter. The early morning singing of loyal songs to the party followed by group exercise were met with amusement by the team from the west, but they soon came used to seeing such a thing even though they refrained from accepting the invitation to join in.
Intricate robotic arms with leading-edge molecular manipulation capability had been designed to automatically imprint the tiny squares, once they have been made up in the relevant materials, with circuitry and inert explosives and soon production commenced and ramped up from initially two thousand units a week to two thousand per hour.
Deng Qui had not been idle in these weeks and a colleague of his, Zang Qi Dong, had managed to infiltrate himself into the team inside the main plant producing the tiny squares. Zang Qi Dong was regarded by members of Truth as a zealot in the same way as Deng, but he was an extremely educated academic with high level engineering qualifications and so his position went unchallenged and he had free access wherever he went.
Zang was a convert to Truth relatively late in life and did so with apparent enthusiasm, at least as far as Deng Qui and others were concerned. The reality was, though, that Zang was a complex character and ambitious, and he saw Truth as a way of gaining advantage in his career. He was clever enough to understand the ideas as postulated by the Master, and to say the right things at the right time, but he made sure to keep his real thoughts hidden from view. He went along with Truth because it suited him to do so. A product of parents who were well established in the communist party, he had received a sound education and the freedom to do more or less as he liked. He joined the party as a student and, in keeping with his approach of going with the flow, he did this for more calculated reasons than anyone would have guessed.
He spotted immediately what needed to be done in practice to interfere with the attempt to deflect the asteroid and was overjoyed when he learned that the west would be forced to rely on Chinese ingenuity and resources. He decided on a short-term approach and looked only for the next two and a half years, up until the date of the impact of the asteroid on Earth. The highly likely destroying of civilisation did not register with him in any significant way, and this gave him the countenance of cold calculation. All his other acquaintances were either delighted or shocked depending on whether they were members of Truth. He had taken the general view that something would turn up and whatever it was he would do his best to make sure he was well placed.
After a long discussion with Deng Qui, Zang came up with the idea of changing the manufacturing process to introduce into the squares an almost imperceptible amount of a special compound that worked in such a way that it would not be detected in the process or apparent in the laboratory or even quality control. He believed that once the squares were placed in near absolute zero degrees temperature in space the compound that he proposed to introduce would serve to fracture the squares and they would disintegrate, but this would not happen until a few minutes after exposure to such low temperatures, thus blurring the act of sabotage.
These low temperatures and weightless conditions were very difficult to replicate in Earth-based laboratories and so the scientists involved on the project were very keen to try out the squares in orbit as soon as possible, so before too long Zang knew that he would need to therefore make sure that those that would be sent up into space did not include his compound mixture for there would be no point in showing his hand too soon. It was a very subtle thing to mix in the compound in small precise quantities and he needed to arrange it very carefully so that quality control would have no idea about it during their check of the manufacturing process, but he was a pleased and congratulated himself for his cleverness and happily reported back the news to Deng.
Zang was aware that another reserve batch of squares was to be manufactured in the United States and therefore it would be much more difficult for him to introduce the compound over there without the assistance of supporters of Truth. Fortunately there were several people he knew in the United States who would gladly work to stop the project, so he arranged to travel to America as part of a Chinese mission to discuss the project, during which time he would secretly meet with his colleagues and they would plan their campaign.
His trip to the United States took place a week later and went smoothly and Zang was made to feel very welcome, but not once did he waver in his intentions and, back in his hotel after the first day of meetings, he made the call to his contact.
“I’ve brought the formula with me it and should be possible to produce enough of this compound to infect the whole production,” he said to his American supporters, all of whom were of Chinese descent and who had close links with their motherland.
His prime contact in the United States was Jonathan Wong who was ecstatic at the plans and news from China and they arranged to meet to have dinner on the next night, when details would be handed over because Zang did not want to email or otherwise electronically transfer information.
After dinner that night Zang and Jonathan retired to a private lounge in the hotel where they could speak freely in Chinese. They discussed progress being made in China as well as preparations for commencement of manufacturing at a plant in Wisconsin. Zang explained exactly how he intended to go about introducing his mixture into the process and Jonathan studied the idea closely to make sure that it would work given that the United States had extremely strict protocols and security. The compound would take two to three weeks to manufacture and this would be carried out in a remote part of Texas, at which they both saw the irony, whereupon it would be transported north to Wisconsin by car in Jonathan’s luggage bags.
Mercifully for them only one tiny grain of the compound would be needed for each square and Jonathan thought that Zang’s proposed mechanism for delivery would work, so they congratulated each other and toasted their plans with mineral water, given that the members of Truth followed a strict code of avoiding all forms of stimulation of the senses and alcohol in particular. The type of persons attracted to Truth were those who were keen on strict rules and hardships, for this surely demonstrated purity of mind and spirit.
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Back in China, Deng Qui studied maps of the launch site which was situated in the depths of Kazakhstan and came up with an idea that he thought might work. They had several months to go before the launch was due so they could take their time to perfect their plans, which were in essence nevertheless crude and consisted of firing a mortar at the launch site from a distance of one and a half miles, giving them time to depart from the vicinity before they would be discovered. Deng was not overly concerned about the idea of discovery, only in so far as it might jeopardise their interference with the project if someone talked if they were captured. Even though it was a risky exercise and the team would have to find enough mortars from the army in Russia or Kazakhstan, those involved would be happy to be martyrs and in fact longed to be so. Alternatively, they were quite willing to contemplate a suicide mission and barge their way into the huge launch area and smash a truck of explosives into the rocket itself, although in this latter alternative, he assumed that military forces would be able to stop them first.
At the same time the manufacturing process continued in China under great security with the army deployed to secure the supply of the metals safely along the chain from Africa to China and on into the manufacturing plant. After three months a total of seven hundred and eighty thousand squares had been produced out of an estimated twelve million that would be needed. So far, the manufacturing process had gone very well indeed with very few stoppages and the shift system which operated over twenty-four hours per day meant that they could produce large quantities akin to shelling peas.
Zang was still looking for ways to introduce his compound and he considered that he must do so soon otherwise too many of the squares would be properly produced. He made some calculations which showed that if the infected squares could make up perhaps thirty percent of the total then that would be enough to cause a problem in the construction of the explosive device which was to attach itself to the asteroid, due to their fracturing in space before assembly.
He decided to offer his services as a consultant at the plant to review progress which he would do on the night shift where he knew it would be quieter. The manufacturing plant could take six hundred workers so there would always be activity, but at night the number of people reduced to around about one hundred and forty because most of the work was carried out automatically using robotic arms and stamping machines. However, there was enough human intervention in the process to afford opportunities for him to interfere and he thought that he could either bribe one of the operatives or he could personally take the place of one of them. The latter option was much more difficult because he was too senior and it would result in an awful lot of debate as to why he was doing such a job, so he decided that bribery was the way forward in the time-honoured tradition of Truth.
By now he had accumulated enough of the compound and fortunately this amounted to barely three kilograms, which was all that would be needed to effectively destroy enough of the squares, so he turned his attention to the difficult question of delivery. He picked a date when he would start the process of introducing the grains into the mix, which was to be in a matter of a week or two.
He rented an apartment near to the plant and early one morning stood in his kitchen carefully concealing the powder about his person so that it would not cause a problem when he went through the security checks for all employees. He had studied the measures that had been put into place and saw a weakness so he filled up the turn-ups of his trousers with some of the material each day and simply walked it into the plant, so that after two weeks he would have gathered enough of the compound to enable him to attempt a first effort of introducing it into the computerised process of manufacture.
Bribery was, generally speaking, a delicate matter and he knew from past experience that one must choose carefully, for everything could go wrong if he would prove to be imprudent and select a victim who would make a report. His mentors in Truth had inculcated him with the cynical belief that within the general population most people were without the high morals of their members and would have a price and it was merely a matter of striking it. After careful scrutiny over a few weeks, looking at the habits of the operators and their specific jobs as well as their likely financial status as far as his investigations would allow, he picked out a potential candidate for influence and decided that the time was right to talk to the person. Timing would be everything and the target in question had been surrounded by other operatives for weeks and the last thing he wanted was to create unwelcome interest and certainly not from one of the party’s commissars who were embedded in the factory.
“Comrade, how do you find this work?” he said to the man affably one morning early in the day shift, at last finding a quiet opportunity for a conversation.
“Very important work, comrade,” was the reply in the usual defensive manner of those who were without exception wary of anyone they did not know.
“Please may I speak to you privately?” said Zang, “since I can talk to you better then.”
The man said yes, and later that morning they met when they had a coffee break and could make sure to be carefully away from everybody else.
“If I may speak freely?” said Zang.
The man nodded.
“Our Great Leader, the head of the party, has decided that we must intervene in the manufacture of the small squares, which our decadent enemies have asked us to produce, to enable our country to become supreme,” said Zang grandly.
The man listened impassively but said nothing because he knew the dangers of being involved with something that the authorities would consider to be craziness. He wondered whether perhaps the man was testing him, but so far, he did not know at all, but what he did know was that he would have to be very careful.
“If you help the party, you will be rewarded greatly,” continued Zang.
The man looked at him carefully, for his own family was very poor and his father had forcibly served ten years as a peasant deep in the countryside under the Mao regime as part of ubiquitous political re-education that went on in the nineteen-sixties. His father had become accused of subversive and decadent behaviour, unjustified but once the accusation had been made, zealous officials with a quota of incorrigibles to fill had, after a brief show-trial, made sure that conviction had followed. He decided to play along with Zang, for the time being anyway.
