Infinity Born

by Douglas E. Richards

Genres: Hard Science Fiction; High-tech & Sci-fi Thrillers

Synopsis

The race to develop a super-intelligent AI is on. And the country who wins will dominate the globe.

ChatGPT is just the beginning. Infinity Born is a science-fiction thriller that explores an AI future that is rapidly approaching. A breathtaking novel you will never forget. From the author whose books have sold over three million copies.

When America's program to create a super-intelligent AI is sabotaged, US operative Cameron Carr begins a frantic hunt for the culprit, with the fate of humanity hanging in the balance. In the right hands, such an AI could lift civilization to towering heights. But in the wrong hands, this technology could represent the greatest threat humanity has ever seen . . .

Infinity Born is a scientifically accurate roller-coaster ride of a thriller. One that explores the deadly perils and mind-blowing possibilities that await the human race--including both extinction and immortality.

As our phones and computers become ever smarter, Infinity Born takes an unblinking look at a technological tipping point that is just around the corner. One that will have a profound impact on the future course of human history.

"Richards is a worthy successor to Michael Crichton." (SF Book dot com)

"Richards is an extraordinary writer," (Dean Koontz) who can "keep you turning the pages all night long." (Douglas Preston)

 

Release date: April 29, 2017

Publisher: Paragon Press

Print pages: 408

Reader says this book is...: action-packed (1) cool gadgets & tech (1) entertaining story (1) escapist/easy read (1) high stakes (1) unexpected twists (1)

Sample

PART 1
The Rod of God

1

It was nearing seven in the morning and President Dillon Mattison was still reeling, three
hours after having been awakened from a sound sleep and hastily ushered deep into the earth.
Years earlier the President’s Emergency Operations Center, built in the 1940s under the East
Wing of the White House to withstand a nuclear attack, had been replaced by the bunker he was
now in. This one was below the West Wing, and so fortified and deep that it made the other seem
soft and shallow by comparison, as well as containing substantially upgraded communications
and computer systems.
What had been PEOC, the President’s Emergency Operations Center, was now DUCC, the
Deep Underground Command Center.
During his mad dash to get here, swept along by a whitewater river of Secret Service agents,
Mattison had decided that the name DUCC couldn’t be more appropriate, although it needed to
be spelled a different way—D-U-C-K, not D-U-C-C. And spoken more emphatically.
DUCK!
Because that was what he was really doing here. He was ducking. And it was beginning to
really irk him.
Yes, there had been a horrendous mass casualty event that had taken the world by surprise,
at least those who weren’t still sleeping in blissful ignorance. But he needed to be out front on
this, on television. He needed to be presenting a face of calm. He needed to reassure, to grieve, to
publicly provide condolences on behalf of a traumatized nation to friends and families of those
tragically lost.
The last thing he needed was to be trapped in a glorified conference room as if he were in
personal danger, sniveling like a child frightened of an act of nature that had happened thousands
of miles away and that couldn’t possibly be a threat to him.
When the Secret Service had insisted that he remain where he was until they were dead
certain this was a natural event, and not an attack, he had agreed. But this had been in the
beginning of the crisis and by now they should be certain. He would give them thirty more
minutes, out of respect, before he demanded to return to the surface.

Lou Nevins, Mattison’s Chief of Staff, sat beside him at the ridiculously elongated
conference table, listening to a report coming through the comm in his ear, his face looking
bleaker by the second. “We have an update on casualties,” he said to the gathering, which
consisted of five flesh-and-blood humans on the president’s National Security Council and
numerous others desperately gathering intel and joining or leaving the proceedings as virtual
attendees, popping in and out of the Command Center in 3D glory, nearly indistinguishable from
the real thing.
Everyone was juggling conversation and a frenzy of activities, but stopped in their tracks to
listen to the Chief of Staff’s update.
“The original estimates were three thousand dead,” said Nevins, looking sick to his stomach.
“But this has risen pretty dramatically. We’re probably looking at closer to five thousand.”
The meeting participants all looked as though they had been punched in the gut. The
president visibly cringed and then shook his head in horror. Five thousand! The biggest loss
since 9/11.
Even as he thought it, Mattison’s political instincts seized on the best possible spin to put on
the situation. Today at three-thirty a.m. Eastern Standard Time, he would say during his address
to the nation, a terrible tragedy occurred.
He would ignore the fact that the Secret Service had kept him in his underground prison for
so long that his entire audience would already know this.
A meteor struck the city of Turlock, California, he would continue, with devastating effect.
He would go on to describe the terrible tragedy further, explain that its toll of lives was
heavier even than on 9/11, and make it clear that no words could express his or the nation’s sense
of loss. Although this is of little comfort right now, he would add, we can take some solace from
the fact that this was an act of nature and not one of terror.
He wouldn’t have to spell it out further. The casualties may have been greater than those on
9/11, but at least this was a one-off event, not the prologue to a war against terrorism with no end
in sight. In this case, the event would at least mark the end of the dying rather than the beginning.
This would do little to salve the country’s immediate emotional wounds, but at least he could put
the tragedy in the most positive context possible.
It didn’t help that Turlock, California, had become a shining example of the best of
America. Of the future of America. When the US tech sector had grown too big for Silicon

Valley, and Silicon Valley real estate had become too pricey to house non-millionaire
employees, Turlock had beckoned. A hundred miles due east of the famous tech mecca, and a
hundred times less expensive, it was the perfect place to spawn the son of Silicon Valley. Five
years earlier the migration had begun, and Turlock farmers sitting on huge tracts of land had
cashed in big.
Construction was rapid and never-ending as tech companies raced to Turlock—a city the
press had begun calling New Silicon Valley, or NSV. Fortunately, the meteor had struck one of
the less dense sections of the burgeoning city, and after midnight when the corporate
headquarters affected were unoccupied. If it had struck during business hours the number of
casualties would have skyrocketed. This, at least, had been a blessing.
Unfortunately, a spate of apartments and condos had sprung up near enough the strike to be
in the blast zone. Anything and everything within a little over a half mile of the meteor’s point of
impact had been destroyed, forming a circle of death over three miles around that was still filled
with raging fires.
During 9/11 any number of people had burned to death, or had been forced to jump to their
deaths to be free of the blistering heat. In the case of Turlock, many times this number had been
burned alive, flash-fried, vaporized. Bile rose in the president’s throat as images of helpless
victims dying in this way flashed across his mind’s eye.
Surely this was the most horrible of all ways to go.
The impact crater was centered on what had once been Quantum Sensor Technologies, a
relatively small two-story building that had been in place for just over two years. Next to it had
stood the headquarters of Cambridge Nanosystems, which had been a gleaming twenty-story
glass structure. Along with these two, five other tech companies had built corporate headquarters
of various sizes within the blast radius, and all seven had been flattened and incinerated.
As New Silicon Valley, Turlock had become one of the most concentrated centers of
brainpower, innovation, and outside-the-box thinking in the world. It wasn’t as if tech geniuses
were any more deserving of life than grocery clerks, but the blow to the economy and America’s
technological competitiveness would be significant.
President Mattison was vaguely aware that Lou Nevins had continued speaking, giving the
reason for the increased fatality estimates and describing the progress being made by first

responders, called in from neighboring cities as well as the military, which Mattison had ordered
deployed within minutes of reaching the Command Center.
Those flooding onto the scene had their hands more than full battling the raging fires and
finding and tending to survivors. While no one could have possibly survived within the extended
circle that was still in flames, a shock wave had swept through structures up to nine miles distant
from the center of the strike, including additional apartment and condo complexes, causing
hundreds, or even thousands, of injuries.
Mattison’s attention had drifted off, but it returned abruptly as the virtual presence of his
Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeff Brown, popped into the meeting across from him and
interrupted Nevins in mid-sentence. “This situation just went from bad to worse,” he announced
gravely.
Brown paused for a moment to be sure he had everyone’s full attention. When all eyes and
ears were fixed firmly on him, he continued. “Early on there were indications that not everything
about the Turlock incident was what it seemed. But before I shared these suspicions, I wanted to
be certain, and do some additional digging.”
The president swallowed hard. “What suspicions?” he demanded, realizing that Brown had,
indeed, been absent from the proceedings for long stretches over the past three hours. Now he
knew why.
“Half an hour after the strike,” replied the Secretary of DHS, “one of my experts, a professor
at the University of Arizona named Cathy McGowen, told me that her analysis of satellite
footage of the crater footprint suggested it wasn’t created by a meteor. At least not a natural
one.”
The vice president, Pattie Hammond Blask, was seated to Mattison’s left, and was in no
mood for riddles. “What the hell does that mean?” she demanded. “We’ve all seen the footage.
And we’ve all seen it compared to aerial footage of past meteor events. It looked exactly like
those.”
“I’m not an expert,” replied Brown, “but my understanding is that Dr. McGowen determined
that the center of the crater was deeper than it should have been. Based on the ratio of the crater’s
depth to its radius, she concluded that the meteor had to be shaped more like an arrow than a
ball. Since then I’ve awakened hundreds of people in DHS and beyond, and I’ve confirmed that
she was right—and much more.”

The Command Center was as silent as a tomb as they awaited the rest of Brown’s report.
Given the stunned expressions on the faces of Andrew Havens, Secretary of Defense, and
General Eric Faust, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mattison was convinced the two military
experts knew exactly where Brown was going with this.
“Based on Dr. McGowen’s calculations of the shape, velocity, and angle of impact of the
meteor,” continued the Secretary of DHS, “my experts were able to go back into infrared satellite
footage and get a still of the object.”
He touched a tablet computer and an image filled an eight-foot-tall touchscreen monitor
against one wall of the Command Center’s conference room. While not perfect, the image was
surprisingly sharp, and had been placed next to images of known objects such as trees and
buildings so viewers could get a sense of its size.
“Is that a telephone pole?” whispered Secretary of State Chris Best in disbelief.
Brown gestured to Eric Faust. “Do you want to field this one, General?” he said.
“It’s a rod built for a kinetic attack,” said a seething Chairman of the Joint Chiefs through
clenched teeth. He visibly fought to calm himself so he could continue. “Built to be dropped
from orbit. Nicknamed the rod of God. You don’t need an active weapon or explosives to get
nuclear bomb level results.”
“That’s exactly right,” said the Secretary of Defense, nodding in grim agreement. “The total
kinetic energy an object picks up by being in motion is half of its mass times its velocity squared.
So a tenfold increase in an object’s velocity increases the energy it carries a hundredfold. If this
object is stopped dead in its tracks, all of this energy is released.” Andrew Havens frowned
deeply. “Pick up a bullet and throw it at someone and it barely registers. But if this same tiny
bullet is going fast enough, we all know how much damage it can do, how much force it can
impart.”
“Speed kills,” said General Faust, picking up the baton. “It’s nearly impossible to overstate
its power. Darth Vader wouldn’t need a Death Star to destroy the Earth—or any explosives for
that matter. He’d just need to put a single star cruiser on autopilot and ram it into the planet at a
tenth of the speed of light. That would be more than enough to do the trick. If Vader had ever
figured that one out, he would have put a lot of Death Star contractors out of work.”
Mattison’s eyes widened. He had never considered just how much of a force amplifier raw
speed was. If the Earth really could be destroyed by a single ship moving fast enough, humanity

would be totally helpless to defend itself against a spacefaring alien civilization. He would never
watch another space movie in quite the same way again.
“In 1908,” continued the general, “a meteor leveled over seven hundred square miles of
dense wilderness near the Tunguska River in Russia. In total, the damn thing knocked down
eighty million trees. Eighty million. And it was smaller than a high school football stadium.”
“The use of kinetic weapons dropped from orbit is illegal by treaty, of course,” explained
Andrew Havens. “But that doesn’t mean our military hasn’t studied the shit out of the concept.
So has every other military, for that matter.”
Brown gestured to the image on the monitor, ready to resume his presentation. “We’ve
analyzed its composition, shape, and weight. It’s absolutely textbook for a kinetic round. The
concept is simple. Just drop something from orbit, with no explosive payload necessary and very
little guidance—assuming you’ve calculated correctly. As Secretary Best noted, the most
effective shape is basically a streamlined, tapered telephone pole made of tungsten. This metal is
very tough and has a melting point four times higher than steel. And this shape is hard to detect
and cuts through the air nicely, increasing its velocity at impact.”
He paused to let this sink in. “The experts DHS contacted estimate that this glorified
telephone pole hit the ground between Mach ten and Mach eleven.”
“What is that in miles per hour?” asked Pattie Hammond Blask.
“About eight thousand,” replied Brown. “Which is a little over two miles per second,” he
added to give further perspective. “This is more than twice the velocity of a rifle shot.”
“Only this rifle round is made of tungsten and weighs tens of thousands of pounds,” noted
the president.
Brown nodded grimly. “My people estimate the energy released on impact was the
equivalent of thirty thousand pounds of TNT.”
This was a mind-blowing figure, but Mattison had seen the devastation with his own eyes
and had no doubt that it was accurate.
So this had been an act of war, after all. The Secret Service had not been overly cautious. If
more of these flying tungsten telephone poles were poised to drop, being deep under the White
House was much preferred to being inside of it.

The president gritted his teeth. “It goes without saying that we need to know who is behind
this,” he insisted. “Immediately! And we need to know if more of these things might be raining
down on us. This information is of the highest possible priority,” he added unnecessarily.
Brown nodded. “Which is why I didn’t spend time reporting this finding two hours ago.
Instead, I galvanized my organization to find these answers.”
“Are you saying you have them?” asked the president.
“Yes,” replied the Secretary of Homeland Security. “With very high confidence. I’ll walk
you through what we’ve found, but let me give you the bottom line before I do. First, we’re
confident that there is only one of these, thank God. And second, this attack wasn’t instituted by
Islamic radicals or an adversarial nation-state. It was launched by a single American civilian.”
He paused, almost as if for dramatic effect. “To be more specific, it was launched by Isaac
Jordan. From the Eureka, the flagship of his R-Drive fleet.”
Mattison’s jaw dropped open, and his wasn’t the only one. “Isaac Jordan?” he said, shaking
his head slowly. “Impossible! I don’t believe it.”
“I understand why you might say that,” said Brown. “But once you see the evidence I’ve
gathered, I’m sure you’ll change your mind.”

2

President Dillon Mattison could only absorb so many shocks to his system, and after
learning that the meteor strike on Turlock was really an attack, the idea that Isaac Jordan might
be responsible was one shock too many.
There was no way Jordan was behind this. He didn’t care how much evidence Jeff Brown
thought he had gathered.
Isaac Jordan was a legend, admired around the globe. His personal wealth was greater than
that of most nations. He was a superstar entrepreneur, scientist, and world-changer who had
become a bigger celebrity than Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, or
Elon Musk before him.
There wasn’t a person on the planet who didn’t know his story.
Born last in a family of seven children, his father had deserted them soon after his arrival,
leaving his mother to raise a family she couldn’t possibly afford. Largely responsible for himself
since the day he learned to walk, Jordan had worked at odd jobs to earn money for food, and was
largely absent from school.
Fortunately for him, he possessed a once-in-a-generation genius, and lived in an era in
which he could pirate digital copies of expensive textbooks. He became a self-taught polymath,
his genius unconstrained by narrow college majors or PhD programs, free to roam, to explore
whatever interested him across numerous disciplines. Chemistry, math, physics, biology,
computer science, sociology—he dived deep into each with unparalleled zeal.
He made millions starting and selling mundane companies by the time he was twenty-five,
and then took a year off from business to change the face of physics as profoundly as Newton or
Einstein had before him.
For years the concept of an electromagnetic drive that would revolutionize space travel had
captured the imaginations of crackpots. Even a few legitimate scientists—including a NASA
group tasked with exploring exotic concepts for future propulsion—had detected slight amounts
of propulsion being generated by such a device, dubbed the EmDrive. Still, the majority of those

in the physics community were convinced this was nothing more than experimental error and
that anyone who believed otherwise was a self-delusional idiot.
There was good reason for this dismissal. The EmDrive flew in the face of accepted
physics—the only flying most believed it would ever do. Since the days of Newton, it was clear
that for every action you needed an equal and opposite reaction. You could move an electric car
on Earth without the need for propellant, true, but only because the car had the road to push back
against, providing forward movement.
But in space, with nothing to push against, if you wanted to drive a rocket or a spacecraft
forward, you had to shoot something out of its back end. Nothing in space could be propelled
without propellant. Period. End of story.
Only those behind the EmDrive claimed the device could achieve propulsion in a vacuum
without expelling anything, without the need for heavy fuel that weighed down spacecraft and
made travel to Mars and beyond prohibitively costly and time consuming. The drive was a
truncated cone, narrower at one end than the other, and totally enclosed. It created force by
bouncing electromagnetic radiation back and forth inside of it—in this case, microwaves.
Believing this strategy could work was as ridiculous as believing you could get your car to
move forward by sitting inside of it and bouncing ping pong balls against the dash. It was utterly
absurd.
But the data stubbornly continued to show that this is exactly what was happening. That this
reactionless drive had somehow found a loophole in the laws of nature.
Isaac Jordan, high school dropout, decided to take the data at face value and see where this
would lead him. Einstein had done the exact same thing a century earlier. At that time, data
seemed to indicate that the speed of light was exactly the same no matter how fast its source was
moving toward or away from an observer. Instead of decrying this result as impossible, Einstein
decided to determine what the laws of physics would have to be for it to be true. What he
found—that as objects approach light speed their time slows relative to unmoving objects, their
mass increases, and their length decreases—at first ridiculed by many, was later proved to be
true in every instance, and had totally upended physics.
At the age of twenty-six, Isaac Jordan managed to do nothing less. By assuming the
EmDrive effect was real rather than a hoax, he was able to completely rewrite the laws of
physics. His work was utterly revolutionary. Disruptive. Profound.

Jordan should have been a lock to receive a Nobel Prize, but the fact that he didn’t even
have a high-school diploma weighed against him. Einstein had been a lowly patent clerk when he
had done his seminal work, but he, at least, had earned a PhD, and his Nobel Prize wasn’t
awarded until fifteen years after he had developed his theory of relativity, and not even for this
contribution.
But even so, even without a formal education, Jordan’s contributions were so unparalleled
the Nobel committee couldn’t possibly deny him his due. Couldn’t, at least, unless he committed
an unpardonable sin, which he managed to do with breathtaking speed.
Instead of going forward as an academic purist to develop his theories further—the kind of
academic purist the committee liked to reward—he had shown himself to be a ruthless capitalist.
He had wasted no time in patenting numerous applications for his theoretical discovery, leaving
the ivory tower realm of science to exploit them commercially, forming yet another company,
Space Treasure Industries, or STI.
His theories allowed him to perfect a Reactionless-Drive design that put the fledgling
EmDrive to shame. He rapidly built a fleet of relatively inexpensive R-Drive-powered spacecraft
that could reach Mars in weeks, rather than months or years, and which he initially used to mine
the Moon and asteroids, beating several long-running companies to the punch.
The Moon possessed bountiful quantities of helium-3, extremely rare on Earth. Helium-3
was the perfect fuel source for nuclear fusion, a fuel the Sun produced in great quantity and
dumped on the Moon, but which Earth’s magnetic field rejected.
But as lucrative as Jordan’s helium-3 mines quickly became, the asteroids were his
figurative—and literal—gold mines. They contained treasures galore, a ridiculous bounty of
gold, silver, osmium, iridium, palladium, and platinum, along with numerous other rare and
expensive materials.
Within eight years of turning the physics world upside down, Isaac Jordan did the same with
the world’s economy, flooding the markets with precious metals and making himself the first
ever trillionaire in the process.
With this vast wealth he went on to establish a thriving colony on Mars, this time beating
Elon Musk to the punch, selling the reality TV rights to life in the colony for almost as much as
the project had cost him.

He was known to be brilliant, relentless, and ruthless—at least when he felt he had to be. He
was an absolutely unstoppable force. Anything or anyone standing between him and one of his
goals didn’t stand a chance.
His mind, his wealth, his ambition, and his plans for the future were so much larger than life
they had become almost absurd.
And of the multitude of entries he could have added to his résumé, mass murderer was the
last one anyone could possibly have foreseen.

3

Dillon Mattison’s full attention returned once more to a bunker deep under the West Wing
of the White House. He stared deeply into the eyes of his Secretary of Homeland Security and
saw absolute conviction there. Isaac Jordan’s guilt remained to be seen, but Jeff Brown was
certainly convinced of it.
“My experts were able to backtrack the kinetic round’s path,” began Brown, “and
crosscheck it with every satellite and spacecraft in orbit. There was no doubt where the round
originated. Like I said, from the Eureka, the flagship of Jordan’s R-Drive fleet.”
“Too easy,” said Chris Best. “A guy this smart would have covered his tracks so he could
never be connected to this atrocity. It has to be someone in Jordan’s employ. Or a frame-up. Just
because a murder takes place in a building Isaac Jordan owns doesn’t make him a murderer.”
“My team and I thought the same thing,” said Brown. “What motive could he possibly have?
A man wealthier and more famous than God? We looked into it, and several of the corporate
headquarters that were destroyed did compete with some of the businesses he’s now in. Still, the
motive had to be a lot more visceral than that to trigger this kind of response. Besides, when you
almost literally own the world, who isn’t a competitor?”
Brown shook his head, as if still unable to believe his own findings. “So we did a lot of
exploration, a lot of waking people up. I can go into detail later, but the picture that emerged left
little doubt that he was personally responsible. He personally ordered the tungsten round built to
the exact specifications of the one that hit New Silicon Valley. To the centimeter. A telephone-
pole-sized tapered rod. He lied about its purpose to those who built it for him. He said he was
looking into new techniques for skyscraper construction and wanted to use it in several
experiments. The people who built it for him had no reason to doubt him, or suspect what it was
really for.”
He sighed. “The good news is that he only had one. The manager in charge of the project
was certain, because he offered Jordan a deep discount if he would buy in greater quantity. But
Jordan insisted that only a single unit be produced, and that the mold be destroyed right
afterward.”

“This manager could have been dealing with an impostor for all we know,” said Nevins.
Brown shook his head. “We verified this intel in several ways,” he said. “We have no doubt
that the man who ordered the kinetic round was Isaac Jordan, that only one was made, and that
only one was loaded onto any of his spacecraft.”
Mattison was still far from convinced of Jordan’s guilt, and he could tell by the body
language of those around the room that he had plenty of company.
“But this is only the beginning of what we found,” continued Brown. “We also discovered
Jordan created a complex computer system for the sole purpose of taking control of the Eureka
and the tungsten payload in its cargo hold. Remotely. With the necessary precision to hit any
target he chose. The control system was installed in the only building he owns in the city of
Turlock. A manufacturing plant three miles beyond the ring of death.”
The president considered. Whoever framed this man had done a skillful job. Mattison had
little doubt the rod had been loaded onto the Eureka and dropped from this ship as Brown had
determined. Placing a computer that could access the ship and its payload in the only building
Jordan owned in Turlock, which happened to be located just beyond the devastation, had been a
masterful touch. “What does he manufacture at this plant?” he asked.
“An advanced form of graphene,” replied Brown. “For those not familiar, I’m told graphene
is a carbon structure that forms two-dimensional honeycombed sheets. You can make it a
superconductor, and it’s two hundred times stronger than steel. Apparently, Jordan uses the stuff
in his ships, but there is no obvious connection between graphene and this attack, other than the
facility’s proximity to ground zero.”
“The evidence so far is all circumstantial,” noted Vice President Blask.
“It won’t be by the time I’m finished,” replied Brown. “To continue, we also learned that the
computer Jordan set up to control the Eureka could only be accessed by him,” he added. “It had
multiple levels of security. Access not only required complex passwords that only Jordan knew,
but also his presence. His willing presence. He installed a sensor on the computer capable of
measuring his unique brain activity signature, which could only be read if he were still alive. No
match, no entrance. Finally, before the system would let him in, he had to pass the equivalent of
a sensitive lie detector test. Unless he truthfully indicated he was accessing the computer of his
own free will, he would be shut out.”

The more certain the evidence against Isaac Jordan seemed, the more convinced Mattison
became that the tech icon could not be behind it. He was far too smart, and the case against him
far too tight.
“Someone must have found a way past these safeguards,” insisted the president. “What’s
more likely, that someone found a way to hack this unhackable system? Or that Isaac Jordan
willingly killed thousands of people?”
“I put dozens of my best agents on this,” said Brown, “and we all shared your skepticism.
Even after uncovering incontrovertible evidence that Isaac Jordan built and installed the kinetic
rod on the Eureka and was the only one with the keys. So we continued to turn over every stone
we could find. Turns out that Jordan has actually been living in Turlock for the past twenty
months, not his corporate headquarters in Seattle. Living about four miles beyond the zone of
death, in fact, and a mile from his graphene facility.”
“This makes sense,” said Lou Nevins. “If you want to frame Isaac Jordan, you have to be
sure any smoking gun you plant is within his easy reach.”
Brown winced. “Speaking of smoking guns,” he said, a look of revulsion momentarily
appearing on his face, “we discovered video footage taken by security cameras in his home. The
footage was taken using a quantum verification system, so it couldn’t have been doctored
without us knowing it.”
He blew out a long breath. “I’ll run it on the main screen now,” he said grimly. “But I have
to warn you—it isn’t for the faint of heart.”
Mattison’s eyes narrowed. After the horrors they had seen over the past three hours it was
hard to imagine anything could throw them at this point. The fact that Brown thought this
footage might do the trick was troubling.
The video opened with a man who was unmistakably Isaac Jordan entering his mansion
home. The vast structure was well lighted on the outside and absolutely magnificent, although
understated compared to many of his other residences around the world.
“This is just over twenty minutes before the rod hit,” explained Brown. “We learned from
the computer on the Eureka that two hours earlier, Jordan had already set the strike in motion.”
“On some kind of time-delayed fuse?” said the president.
“Exactly.”

“Not to be a broken record,” said Nevins, gesturing to the man on the screen who was now
inside of the home, “but, again, can we be sure this isn’t an impostor?”
“Yes,” said Brown. “The richest man in the world has the best security system money can
buy. It wouldn’t let him enter if it didn’t confirm his identity biometrically in several different
ways.”
The group watched, spellbound, as Jordan walked straight to his private workshop, which
was the size of a ballroom and filled with enough advanced tools and machinery to make the
fictional Tony Stark envious. Dim lights came on in front of him as he walked and then were
extinguished as he passed. Jordan was legendary for his tireless work ethic, and the lights had
clearly been programmed to light his way when he came home after dark while causing minimal
disturbance to the rest of his family.
He moved purposefully to a large steel cabinet and removed a Sig Sauer X490 Futura
handgun from a drawer, one of a small collection of weapons developed during the early 2020’s
with advanced muffling and noise-canceling technology that made the gun whisper-quiet.
No one in the Deep Underground Command Center spoke, but this was an intriguing
development. Had this scene simply been the opening of a movie they would have been hooked,
needing to know what happened next. But given this footage was reality, and touted as the
ultimate evidence against the richest man on Earth for the murder of thousands, it could not have
been more riveting.
Jordan walked briskly to the master bedroom where his stunning wife was sleeping soundly,
just visible in the dim lighting that continued to follow him around. He pointed the Sig Sauer at
her lithe body and held it steady for almost a full minute. Then, without warning, the gun spat
three times in quick succession, and his wife’s sleep became permanent, her life ended before
she had any idea she was even in peril. Bright red blood gushed from her torso onto the thin satin
sheets.
When the life-sized man on the monitor had pulled the trigger, most of those deep under the
White House had jumped, mirroring the brief, spasmodic movements made by Jordan’s wife as
the bullets punched holes through her body. Gasps of surprise and horror could be heard
throughout the conference room.
On the screen, Jordan was now surveying his handiwork. A broad grin spread over his face
as he tilted his head to watch the blood accumulate. He bent over, turned his wife’s head so it

was facing him, and pushed open her eyelids. Finally, Isaac Jordan stared into the lifeless eyes of
a woman whose beauty was flawless, even in death, with utter malevolence. “Good riddance,
bitch!” he spat, and then quickly exited the room.
This scene was repeated twice more, as Jordan made his way into each of his two sons’
bedrooms, ages ten and twelve, his expression more and more maniacal, and ended their lives
while they slept, the gun as quiet as advertised.
A stunned silence came over the Command Center conference room, and all eyes remained
glued to the scene that continued to unfold on the large monitor.
Jordan had now made his way to the home’s entry foyer and began running full speed into
the oversized oak door, crashing his body against it with bone-jarring force, as if he were a
charging bull and the door a red cape.
What the hell? thought Mattison in dismay. He had heard once that there was a fine line
between genius and insanity, and it was clear that this line had snapped completely in Isaac
Jordan’s case. But slamming into a door seemed even more random than wiping out his family.
On the screen, Jordan had done considerable damage to his body, and he was now certainly
bruised and in great pain, but he didn’t appear to have broken any bones. He repeated his charge
four times, dazed after each attempt. Finally, the fifth time, he tilted his head forward at the last
instant, something he had managed to avoid until then, so that it took the brunt of the impact.
He collapsed to the floor like a sack of cement and remained there.
Brown paused the video. “To save time,” he said, breaking viewers from their trance, “we’ll
skip ahead. Jordan doesn’t move for a while. He’s still out cold when his kinetic round hits,
thirteen minutes later. The shock wave passes through his house, shaking it like an earthquake
would, but he’s already on the floor and doesn’t take any further damage. He finally returns to
consciousness three minutes after the strike. We’ll pick it up there.”
When the footage resumed, Isaac Jordan looked dazed, as expected, and far worse for wear,
as though he had just returned from a particularly nasty bar fight. The malevolent smile he had
displayed while killing his family was gone, as was the maniacal gleam that had been in his eye
while repeatedly ramming a door.
Instead, unexpectedly—as if anything else they had witnessed could have possibly been
expected—his face twisted up in a rictus of pain and tears began to flow down his cheeks. This

didn’t change for almost half a minute, until he suddenly shook his head, as if to clear it. A look
of resolve and determination now came over his face and his tears began to slow.
While nothing Isaac Jordan had done made any sense, it had become abundantly clear that it
didn’t need to. He was a raving psychotic. He didn’t need a rational motive for dropping his
kinetic weapon on Turlock, California, because he was demonstrably irrational. Crazed might be
a better word.
He walked briskly back to the workshop in which he had stored his gun, but this time he
retrieved an axe. He quickly carried it back to the scenes of his crimes, to each of three
bedrooms, and then, one by one, hacked off the heads of his wife and sons like they were cords
of wood he was preparing for his fireplace.
Tears returned to his face as he carried out these grisly beheadings. In each instance it took
him several swings of the axe to cleave cleanly through a neck, and in each case the blood
poured rather than spurted, as each heart had stopped pumping the red substance twenty minutes
or so earlier.
All of those watching this scene inside the Command Center’s conference room were utterly
transfixed. Repulsed and horrified, of course, but stunned and mesmerized as well.
Brown ended the show and the screen became as empty as everyone now felt. “I think we’ve
all seen enough,” he said softly, “and we have pressing matters to return to. But you should know
that Jordan went on to gather the three heads in a large duffel bag, like they were some kind of
grisly souvenirs, and then raced away in a sports car. The car left his garage about fifteen
minutes after the rod’s impact.”
No one spoke, or even breathed, for several long seconds.
“So Jordan triggers his kinetic round on a timer,” President Mattison mumbled, breaking the
silence, no longer doubting Brown’s conclusions. “Then he wipes out his entire family. Then he
almost kills himself tilting at door-shaped windmills. Finally, he flees the scene with three, ah . .
. trophies in tow.”
“In a nutshell, yes,” said Brown. “With one correction. This wasn’t his entire family. His
oldest child, Melissa, who’s a senior in high school, is visiting a friend for a few days in San
Francisco. She’s most likely still sleeping soundly, even as we speak.”

The president nodded. No doubt this would be the last time Melissa Jordan slept soundly for
a long, long time. “I assume Jordan’s security system automatically sent this footage to the local
cops,” he said. “Have they caught him yet?”
“Not a chance,” said Brown. “Not after Turlock got hit like it did. Every cop and fireman for
miles around is in way over their heads responding to the injured and dying and helping with
triage. They wouldn’t stop to arrest Jordan if he crawled by them with his middle finger
extended. We tried to track him after seeing the security video, but he had some high-tech tricks
up his sleeve for avoiding satellites and cameras and we lost him. With his resources and
brilliance, if he wants to stay lost, it’s hard to imagine he won’t be able to do it.”
“We need to freeze his assets,” said Andrew Havens.
“We tried,” said Brown. “But we were already too late. About twenty percent of his net
worth disappeared instantly. He must have had a plan in place for vanishing this money at a
moment’s notice—just in case. Brilliantly done, as one would expect of him. Not sure where the
money went, but probably in multiple numbered accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman
Islands. We were able to freeze the majority of it, but he’s hidden about two hundred billion
dollars.”
“A thousand times as much as he needs to stay off the radar,” said Chris Best miserably.
The president blew out a long breath. “We can worry about capturing him later,” he said.
“Right now, we have a crisis to address. My gut says to stick with this being a natural disaster.
Admitting that we were hit with a weapon like this will panic the shit out of everyone. Yes,
nukes are even worse, but we have deterrents in place, and the last time a nuke went off in anger
was in the 1940s. And everyone has become at least somewhat acclimated to the nuclear threat.
The threat from kinetic weapons, on the other hand, is completely off the radar. We’re at the
highest levels of government, and many of us weren’t even aware of the possibilities. So do we
really want to awaken the public to this harsh reality while fires are still raging in Turlock, and
people are still dying?”
The Secretary of Homeland Security winced. “I’m afraid we don’t have a choice,” he said.
“My group has tipped off too many people in our rush to get to the truth. And my sources tell me
this story has already leaked to the media. Even if it hadn’t, the cat wouldn’t have stayed in the
bag for long, anyway. Professor McGowen isn’t the only scientist who will be able to tell that the
object that hit us wasn’t a natural meteor. ”

“Shit!” said the president simply. “That puts us in a very bad position.”
Lou Nevins frowned. “What about the video you just showed us?” he said to the Secretary
of Homeland Security. “This hasn’t leaked, has it?”
“It hasn’t,” said Brown. “We can still keep Isaac Jordan’s involvement a secret if we want
to.”
“No!” said President Mattison. “That would just make a bad situation worse. Given that we
can’t hide the fact of a kinetic round,” he added, “that’s the last thing we can do. We need to get
this footage to the media as soon as possible. When the nature of this attack goes public, we
don’t want anyone thinking that Russia, North Korea, or China was behind it. Or a Jihadi group.
Talk about blind panic.”
Nevins nodded his agreement, as did several other attendees.
“We’ve been painted into such a corner this time,” continued the president, “that for once,
the best option is to reveal everything we know. We have to finger Isaac Jordan and make it clear
this was a one-off event perpetrated by a madman.”
Mattison paused in thought. “Now that we know it’s safe to go back to the surface, I say we
do that now. I’ll arrange for a televised address to the nation for thirty minutes from now. I’ll jot
down some bullet points, but I won’t wait for a written speech. Sometimes a heartfelt,
unprepared address is the most effective. Jeff, you continue working to gather evidence so the
case against Jordan is as tight as it can be.”
Brown nodded. “Will do,” he said.
Mattison turned to his Secretary of Defense. “Andrew, have the military continue sending
doctors, medical equipment, and blood to Turlock. We want to err on the side of too much
humanitarian assistance rather than too little. And I want these fires out, the wounded cared for,
and the situation normalized as soon as possible. I don’t care how many men and women you
have to mobilize to do it.”
“Roger that,” said Andrew Havens. ...