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Chapter 12
Physics 101
The following day proved to be a frenzy of research and of gearing up the DH Group to fight the paranormal again. Old hardware was pulled out of storage, Research and Development files were unarchived, long-forgotten reference material was collected.Willow found Iain Leighton’s old notebooks and computer files, the ones from his cabin in Oregon, and she, Buffy and Lillith pored over them looking for the one missing piece of the puzzle they needed to stop Cade — the identity of the mysterious “key” that would allow the Leighton Geometry to reestablish an ether conduit with Hell. Without that link, the doorway would be only physical, and any magical being coming through it would find itself bereft of magic in a magic-barren Reality. But an ether conduit would restore a Nexus connection and thereby restore magic.
Buffy couldn’t allow that to happen. It could undo everything she had spent so long trying to accomplish at great personal cost.
Lillith, whose physics knowledge was an order of magnitude deeper than anyone else’s, was the first to grasp the implications of the Leighton Geometry and how it worked.
“As far as I can tell, the ‘key’ exploits a quantum-mechanical phenomenon known as ‘quantum linkage’,” she said.
“Which isn’t really a surprise when you think about it,” added Willow.
“And for those of us who are not Stephen Hawking, ‘quantum linkage’ would be what, exactly?” asked Xander, who was sitting in mainly to provide input into the psychology of Colonel Cade. Willow’s right hook seemed to have settled the score to her satisfaction, and their relationship had actually regained somewhat of the ease it had once enjoyed. Angel didn’t seem to be in the same forgiving mood, however.
“Quantum linking is one of those strange, counterintuitive truths of quantum theory that says that two particles, once they have interacted, affect one another instantly across space and time,” said Buffy.
Xander looked at her as if she were from another planet. Which, she had to admit, she was in a way.
“Hey, you study the physics of interdimensional travel long enough, something is bound to sink in,” she said.
“Buffy’s explanation is essentially correct,” affirmed Lillith. “Quantum linking is apparently the basis for how the key creates its ether conduit — the key itself is an object of some sort that has a quantum affinity to both the home plane and the plane being linked to. It’s a little more involved than that, of course. The criteria for something to be useable as a key are quite stringent from a mathematical standpoint, and the process of establishing the conduit itself would entail the destruction of the key at the subatomic level, but in theory it’s all possible.”
“Destruction of the key at the subatomic level?” asked Xander, knowing for certain he was going to regret asking.
“Basically you generate a collimated stream of intermediate vector bosons to induce a phenomenon known as Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking in the target. That dissociates it at the subatomic level. In this case, it’s a little more precise and complex than that, but that’s the crux of it,” said Lillith.
The mini-symposium on the quantum mechanical foundations of ether conduits spiraled from there into an esoteric discussion of the actual mathematics, involving everything from Dirac equations to quantum chromodynamics debates to a bewildering roundtable on Reissner-Nordstrom timelike singularities. When things degenerated into Buffy arguing with Lillith about false-vacuum zero point energy densities and parity symmetry violations in weakly interacting particles, Xander gave up and left to introduce Spike and Cordelia the current state of culture in Reality Two Six Alpha by taking them to a local mall.
Despite all the post-graduate level erudition, by the end of the day they had no definitive answers. Nor had the forensics lab come up with anything more on the mysterious, youth-restoring nanobots. Nor had the DH Group analysts and intelligence people come up with a location on Cade. Nor did Buffy feel any more comfortable with the prospect of meeting her daughter that evening, after her recital. Whether she would be met with happiness or anger or just the cool indifference of a fifteen-year stranger, Buffy couldn’t guess.
The sun turned red and low on the horizon, and it was time for Buffy to go, to leave the research in Lillith’s capable hands and face the hardest meeting of her life. She, Willow, and Angel dressed at the house that she had left for the last time seventy five years before. Buffy had brought nothing formal from her previous life as a Paranormal Investigator and cop, but Angel had kept her things. Most of them were probably out of fashion now, but she selected a simple, formal black evening dress, something unlikely to go radically out of style in a decade and a half.
Then they were in the rented limousine, slipping through the dark, soft, transcendent night over the bright arch of the George Washington Bridge, into a mad city insane with activity and energy and life, a city at the edge of the world, teetering at all times on the fulcrum between insane joy and an equally mad sadness. It was as if the city itself had become the external manifestation of everything that lay inside her, every conflicted desire, every frustrated life-wish.
Lincoln Center was mad with well attired activity, women and men dressed to the nines milling about the fountain, about the ticket booth, about the lobby. Cabs and limos disgorged men and women in too-expensive attire and the air hummed with conversations bordering on the pretentious, from derivatives investing to the impact of the latest Washington legislation to improving one’s golf swing.
It was at once false and vital and compelling, an addictive melange of pretentiousness and genuine culture. In the New York she had known for the last three quarters of a century, that vitality had given way to a certain dull grimness as life degenerated over the decades into an enervating fight for survival. For all its crime and cynicism, this New York possessed a strange sort of exuberant innocence that the other one lacked, an innocence of a metropolitan soul free of the crushing weight of an ever-present supernatural and technomagical curse that had held her alternate Gotham in a stranglehold of fear and dread.
There were no Elliot Lothairs here, no Shaugnessys, no Detective Vanges. Oh, there was corruption and rudeness and very human evil, but it wasn’t the corrosive, soul destroying pestilence that had choked her former home.
Buffy stepped from the limousine into the bustle of activity, into the New York air alive with noise and light and the aroma of exhaust and hot pretzels and human endeavor, and she knew this was her world, her home, the place she had fought so long and hard for, and lost, and now regained. And now she had to regain her husband, her daughter, her life. It wouldn’t be easy. But it never had been, none of it.
“You okay?” asked Angel.
Buffy took a deep breath and looked at him and at Willow, and she smiled.
“Ask me in a few hours,” she said. “I’ll let you know.”
* * *
“I’m afraid there were unanticipated complications that made the initial phase of the plan unworkable as currently conceived,” said Pitts in wholly neutral tones over the scrambled satellite phone in his hotel room.
There was an ominous silence from the other end of the conversation, then Cade asked, “What kind of complications?”
“Harris made an appearance. I thought I had him contained, but an unanticipated variable entered into the equation and he managed to evade Mr. Funt and Mr. Preen. He subsequently managed to intercept Mr. Gantz before phase one could be brought to a successful conclusion,” said Pitts.
“An unanticipated variable? Speak English, Pitts.”
“A woman who appears to be working with Harris destabilized the scenario. Mr. Funt and Mr. Preen were only able to provide the most cursory of descriptions.”
“What’s the impact on Phase Two?”
“It is a factor. However, even with Harris’ presence, Summers and his organization appear to remain unaware of the nature or even the existence of Phase Two. My surveillance assets indicate that no additional protection has been placed on or around the key.”
“Fine,” said Cade. “Discontinue Phase One and concentrate on getting the key tonight. We can’t afford any more distractions.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There can be no screwups, Pitts. Do I make myself clear?”
“Absolutely, sir. Even after factoring in the Harris and Angel Summers variables, chance of success remains at eighty-five percent.”
“Make sure it’s one hundred. Contact me when you have the key secured and in transit. Out.”
Cade cut the connection and Pitts returned the receiver of the sat phone to its cradle. He methodically secured the device and carefully closed the brushed aluminum carrying case in which it was stored.
Numbers and variables and scenarios ran with machinelike precision through Pitts’ analytical mind.
He still couldn’t get the odds above eighty-five percent.