Quantum Times Read Free Page B

he’s caught up in this. Maybe they all are! He does some sort of advanced weapons development thing. I’m going to call him!”
     
     
     
     
     
         Brigadier General Mark Randall was right then sitting in his office at his desk with Colonel Jake Schneider sitting across from him. Mark and Jake had been friends ever since they had met at a Seminar at MIT on nuclear engineering. Since the seminar was about the use of tactical nuclear weapons, one had to have special clearance to even know the seminar existed. That had been ten years earlier and they had worked together ever since and had become godfathers for each other’s kids and that sort of thing.
         They had just come out of a briefing where most of the officers there had more stars on their uniforms than Mark did. Mark and Jake had already attended several meetings just like it in the few weeks since The Object had arrived so dramatically overhead. Each meeting started with a discussion about whether there were any new developments. Several of the generals would then voice guesses about what was going on but then admit they did not have anything new to add. The second item invariably would be about the timing of the arrival of The Object and the destruction of North and South Korea. It rankled everyone that the timing was so close together.
         Then one or another of the brighter generals would remind everyone that the timing had to be coincidental if The Object really was from “Outer Space” since distances just across our Solar System were so vast let alone from anywhere more remote in the galaxy. Then as that realization sank in there would be stunned silence until one general or another would plaintively say, “Are we sure that The Object is actually from Outer Space”? Could Russia or China have put it up there? Then another round of silence until another general would say convincingly that there was no way that the United States could do it and if we couldn’t do it then no other country for damn sure could do it! And that would for a moment make everyone there feel a little better until they realized it actually made everything worse.
         So then the meeting would come to a very desultory close but before it ended the generals would come up with a wish list of what they would really like to know and then Mark and Jake and a few other lower level officers like them would be given an even longer “To Do” list than the one they had from the previous meeting. But when it came right down to it though their instruction was easy – FIGURE OUT WHAT THE OBJECT IS AND HOW TO DESTROY IT!
         Mark Randall had spent his career in the Army figuring out how to destroy things and he was very good at it. In truth though, he had rarely seen any of his plans actually put into effect. He had done a tour in Iraq during the first Gulf War but that was the only action he’d seen and even there the really clever things he had prepared were never needed. He knew he had received his last promotion and with his thirty years in, he realized this assignment was probably going to be his last. The worry was that it might be everyone’s last assignment.
         Jake Schneider was in many ways Mark’s alter ego. Where Mark was creative and theoretical, Jake was practical and disciplined. Mark determined what should be done and Jake made sure it got done. They looked enough alike to be brothers, both were a little above average height, fit and trim with straightforward features that didn’t reveal much and had enough creases in their face and tightness in their jaws to suggest they took things seriously.
         “So where do we start today?” Jake asked Mark.
         “I guess we start with what we know, but that sure as hell won’t take long.”
         “We don’t know shit!” Jake responded.
         “True but let’s go through it. We know The Object is about the size of our average aircraft carrier. We know we can’t