Scorpion by Christian Cantrell (novel24 .txt) 📕

can be used for more than just bundling photons together into pixels. The only explanation is that its purpose is not digital, but physical. It is there not to display, but to contain.

She stops a few paces from the console.

“Quinn, sweetheart,” Van says, her tone attempting a reset. “I am so sorry about James.”

Quinn’s eyes pause on her old boss, and she can see that Van wants to come forward in order to embrace her. And for a moment, Quinn wavers. She could go that route. She could allow herself to be hugged, and she could break down right here in front of everyone. She could collapse, and Van could lower her to the cold, concrete floor and sit with her and rub her back and pet her long blond hair. They could all stand there and watch her sob for a lifetime defined by unimaginable loss.

But the impulse is fleeting. It no longer fits. It does not feel like who she is anymore. Maybe you only get to do that so many times in your life before it loses its benefits. Maybe there is a finite supply of catharsis for any one of us, and once it is spent, instead of permitting yourself to feel pain, your impulse is to find ways to inflict it.

“What is this place?” Quinn asks by way of deflection. “And where’s Henrietta?”

Moretti seems relieved that they are not to be derailed by the whole emotional, dead ex-husband thing. Quinn sees that his arms are folded across the tops of two impact-resistant, injection-molded cases—the kind of luggage you use not for weekend getaways, but for highly specialized, foam-cushioned weapons.

“I sent Henrietta to Paris,” Moretti says.

Quinn looks to Van as if for confirmation, then back at Moretti. “Why the hell is Henrietta in Paris while I’m still here?”

“You’re about to find out,” Moretti says. “Quinn, this is Simon Baptiste. Simon, I’d like you to meet Quinn Mitchell.”

“It is a pleasure to finally meet you,” the kid says, his accent unmistakably French. His lab coat is at least two sizes too small, and as he extends his hand, his sleeve rides up to just below his elbow. Simon is a handsome young man with a big, bright smile, and behind the glitter of pixels projected against his metaspec visor are a pair of warm, dark eyes.

Quinn is in no mood to make new acquaintances, but she can see that Simon is not part of their bizarre, fucked-up clique. At least not yet. And one day, all of this might just come down to picking sides, so she decides it would not hurt to have another ally. He wraps her hand in both of his in a way that could come across as sleazy, but that he manages to do with charm. In his soft eyes, Quinn can see a touch of compassion for her loss.

“Go ahead, Simon,” Moretti says impatiently. “Show her.”

After a quick, final smile, Simon steps back behind the console, hitches his sleeves, and addresses the built-in keyboard. He cycles through a deep and hesitant breath, which Quinn guesses is about as close to a prayer as a quantum physicist gets. The console’s plasma glass slab illuminates his visor in a sheen of terminal-green as he proceeds to unleash short controlled bursts of succinct command-line verse. Quinn leans to the side to get a better look at the vinyl decal on the side of his helmet. The logo suggests a spiral galaxy, but at the center of its radiating arms, rather than a single core, there are two black dots seemingly in a tight binary orbit.

As the control room begins its dramatic fade, Quinn realizes that the lighting is inverting—that, as it gets dimmer on their side, the plasma glass is clearing and revealing what the massive capacity contains. From as close as she is, she can’t even see the curve in the surface anymore, and as it goes from black to a deep indigo glow, she senses movement. On an incredible scale. It is so imposing and disorienting that she involuntarily takes several steps back.

The two colossal objects are perfect, mirrored spheres, orbiting each other like marbles circling a drain. They are revolving clockwise, off-axis by about 20 degrees. The chamber extends so far down that Quinn can’t see the bottom, and the spheres seem to consume all of its volume. It is impossible to tell how thick the glass is, or how close the spheres come as they alternate their approaches, but it looks to Quinn like everything is touching—like they are ball bearings in a machine that keeps the planet smoothly spinning. Everything is so tight and precise that her instincts tell her it can’t be real. That it has to be a building-scale hologram. Yet the spheres cast bright blue, hypnotic light across the control room at every pass. And she swears she can feel them. She can’t quite name the sensation, but her entire body senses some kind of force that is at once nauseating and intoxicating.

“Welcome,” Moretti says, “to Kilonova.”

To which Quinn responds, “Fuck. Me.”

“Impressive, no?”

“What…is it?”

“Simon?” Moretti prompts.

“In some ways,” Simon begins, “Kilonova is the most complex machine ever built. And in some ways, it is also one of the simplest.”

“What does it do?”

“It generates gravitational waves.”

“Gravitational waves,” Quinn repeats. “As in…”

“Ripples in spacetime.”

“How?”

“By exploiting certain properties of quantum gravity. We cause the two bodies to orbit each other very, very quickly inside the vacuum chamber, then we transfer mass between them in order to create asymmetrical gravitational perturbations.”

Quinn reapproaches the glass. She lifts her hand, and since nobody stops her, she presses her palm against the smooth surface. It is warm and feels electric. Somehow alive. Now that she can see what’s behind the glass, she also feels like she can hear it, but not exactly with her ears. It is as though a pulse is being transmitted directly into her brain—as though it is her neurons doing the vibrating instead of her eardrums.

The source of all