Chapter 27

United States Senate Offices, 7 Months Ago

It was a usual busy day in the Senate, people coming and going, debates and meetings that never seemed to end and the occasional brown envelope passed under a desk. In one hall, the assistant to the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee walked down the halls in a brisk pace. His palms and forehead was sweating, he would have been running flat out after the call he just received but there was a level of decorum to maintain in this place.

He soon reached his boss’s office and stood before the door, a dab of his handkerchief to wipe off the sweat was followed with him straightening his tie. Once his appearance was sorted, he knocked on the door and immediately entered. He found the Senator meeting with several other people, all high ranking in the party.

“Senator, I’m sorry for the interruption but it is important,” the assistant, Frank, said.

“Frank, I’m in the middle of a meeting that’ll win this party a large chunk of the next vote and me in the White House. What could be more important than that?” the Senator asked.

“Sir ... uh...” Frank said, his eyes darting around the others in the room, yet trying to remain focused on the Senator.

“Frank?” he asked again.

“Sir, I had a phone call from Vandenberg ... its Prometheus ... its gone Red,” Frank said.

The Senator tried to smile to cover what he was feeling right now, “Uh gentlemen ... I’m afraid I’m going to have to postpone the rest of the meeting. We’ll try to do this some other time. A Senator’s work is never done, I’m sure you all understand,” he said before he asked his other assistant to escort the people out of the office and then close the door.

Senate Appropriations Committee, 2 Years Ago

File Begins -

File Name: Prometheus Project

Status: CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET

It is hereby submitted to the Appropriations Committee for funding approval for seven billion dollars over the course of two years for the development of Project Prometheus. Major General Simon Pierce of the US Air Force out of Vandenberg Air Force Base will administer this project. The project head is Dr Patrick Lyman PHD.

Dr Lyman has theorised the development of a device capable of rendering all explosions inert by the generating an energy wave at the inverse frequency of the explosion. Upon meeting, the two cancel each other out. It has been postulated that there is no limit that the device cannot counteract; this is including all nuclear detonations of various magnitudes.

At the most basic form, the equation of this interaction is: 1 to –1 = 0

Where 1 is the explosion and negative 1 is the inverse frequency to that explosion.

A prototype device has already been developed and tested on various explosive materials ranging from lighting a match to the detonation of one pound of C4. This testing has proved 70% successful with the limited power supply. Funding is required for the development of a larger device and wave projection systems that will allow the delivery of a wave of sufficient power to neutralise nuclear explosions.

It is intended that this device will act as a defence shield against the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction against the US either through Nuclear War of by terrorist actions.

File End.

In the overly lavish meeting room of the committee, the General and Dr Lyman sat before the several Senators. The room had been locked and sealed, there was no one else allowed in the room for the discussion of anything above a certain classification level. Most of the time not even the senators knew the details of what it was they were signing money over for.

The Chairman had been told of the doctor’s work and kept track of it over the years. Now, after the limited successful tests, he was very keen to give the man every dime needed. He wanted that device developed and installed everywhere possible.

“General Pierce, Dr Lyman, thank you for coming today. We’ve all gone over your presentation and the overview you have submitted. First of all, this seems very ambitious Doctor. Do you really believe that you can cancel out a nuclear blast?” the Senator asked.

“Yes Mr Chairman. With sufficient power to provide a big enough wave it is very possible. The waves themselves travel at much greater velocities than the explosions themselves. If the project goes to plan then the result will be, in the case of a terrorist incident for example, then it will be the loss of maybe five square meters. It’s difficult to tell at this moment without more analysis but the structure, and other structures nearby, would be safe. A nuclear blast, if in a building, would probably involve the loss of the building but the city in its entirety would be unharmed. The key is generating the precise inverse frequency,” Dr Lyman said.

“And this is the problem at the moment?” another Senator asked.

“Yes Ma’am. With the current sensor technology we have been using, it just isn’t sensitive enough to get exact frequencies. There are also cases where the current power unit didn’t supply enough power to create a wave of sufficient intensity.” Dr Lyman said.

“Yes doctor, but what if this is fired close a nuclear power facility?” she asked.

“It’ll be highly improbable that the nuclear reaction in that facility would operate at the same frequency as a nuclear blast Senator,” Dr Lyman said.

“What if there was no nuclear explosion, if it was set off near a facility by accident?” another Senator asked.

“Ah, well then yes, it would lock onto the reaction happening inside the power station and generate a wave to neutralise it. Effectively it would shut down power to anywhere that station feeds power,” Lyman said.

“And the same would be true of, say a hospital running on internal generators operating in an emergency?” a fourth Senator asked.

“Yes sir,” Dr Lyman said. “Of course that is why one team of this project will be strictly devoted to the development of failsafe systems. A series of scanners and computers designed not to allow the system firing without an actual bomb going off.”

“And these systems, what’s to prevent them from failing and resulting in the weapon being fired?”

“Back ups, multiple sensor arrays, independent pathways. Everything will be designed to operate so that if there is a malfunction, there will be sufficient redundancy to prevent an accident. I am well aware of the dangers Senators, which is why we’re working to prevent them,” Lyman said.

“Very well. General Pierce. You have asked for seven billion and that’s for R&D alone. That’s a lot of money,” the Chairman asked.

“Yes sir I know. Much of the technology does exist but enhancement of that technology to be useful to us will require financing. Besides, this isn’t just for R&D. Upon completion of the project we will require to install it. For that we have chosen New York City as it is a prime target site. A building will be selected in the heart of the city, on the roof of which we will place the wave emitters and they will be disguised as common satellite dishes. Beyond that, sensor nodes will be installed on the roofs of very building and connected through a secured digital wireless network with landline back up and tamperproof hardware. Interference will be impossible,” the General said.

“Nothing is impossible, General,” a Senator stated.

“Yes sir, but it will be as impossible as we can make it,” the General said.

“Okay, General ... let us assume everything goes according to plan, you make this machine and install it in New York. How long before wide spread installation across the country?” the Chairman asked.

“In every city and small town? It depends. If we are able to get immediate funding, mass production of the components could take as little as two months after the New York installation. Complete nationwide installation ... to do this quietly, it could be finished in five years. Of course all major cities and prime targets will be of priority,” the General said.

“Very well. Doctor, General, thank you. You’ll receive our answer in one week. This meeting is adjourned,” the Chairman said.

Not too long after that the two men were heading back to the base and the committee were sitting privately discussing it the project. They had to admit, the advantages far outweighed the disadvantages and the Chairman found it very easy to sway his colleagues over to his way of thinking. One week later, the money flowed from the treasury straight to the project.

Project Prometheus, Vandenberg Air Force Base...

One month later, the scientists were working away on Prometheus in several labs in the base. Dr Lyman worked on designs, enhancing his original device so that it could do what was needed. Just through the math alone he knew that the next generation of this machine could be the size of a television. However, everything that needed to be added on would make it massive, perhaps the size that old computers used to be when they were first made.

Most of that would be taken up by the detection computers and power systems but without significantly more advanced technology it was what he had to do. His team had been split up; each taking on a system the final product is going to need. Circuits were being soldered and wires were connected as lasers were projected through long series of powerful lenses. Computations were made all over the place as they worked. Each advancement was met with an equally important failure - along with head-bashing against the wall frustration.

“Status?” Lyman asked as he entered the lab.

“We’ve finished the designs for the detection systems. Using these, it would be easy for a system to pick up a detonation, scan it and determine the inverse frequency within 0.0001 milliseconds.”

“Good,” Lyman said.

“Yes but making it ... we will require a lot of pure titanium rods and diamonds.”

“Diamonds?” Lyman asked.

“Yes sir, we’ve determined that the best signals can be sent by point-to-point laser systems as well as the others proposed by yourself. Use of diamonds will increase the power of lasers and can help keep any signals we transmit in the clear.”

“I’ll put in a requisition to the General when I see him next,” Lyman said.

Systems Testing Centre, Groom Lake, Nevada (Area 51), 1 Year 2 Months Later

It took then over a year to get everything right and be able to test it. As expected the device was powerful and large when the detection systems and computers were attached, but the new power cells were fully integrated. However they had done it, after working non-stop they had a prototype that was now sitting out in the middle of the desert for testing. While the scientists were confident about everything going right, the military was less than sure so for the testing they instructed them to limit the power usage. Lyman protested but had to relent if he wanted to see his brainchild work, so he dialled back the power output of the device to fifteen percent.

At the furthest point from the main facility there was a bunker that had originally been used for observing nuclear testing in the fifties. Everyone watched at the shielded -windows and waited. “What is the test?” General Pierce asked.

“Well we’ve already tried one pound of C4. This time we have placed three hundred pounds out there, approximately one mile from our location. The device is two hundred feet directly in front of us with a detection sensor near the explosive,” Lyman said.

“Very well. Time?” the General asked.

“Ten seconds to detonation. 8... 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1 ... now,” a sergeant said.

Everyone looked out and watched a blast of light as the device detected the explosion and fired its pulse through its emitters. The two energies collided in less than half a second and they all watched as the blast vanished. It had been completely neutralised leaving nothing but a scorch mark on the ground.

“Calculating blast radius...” one technician said as the satellite watching it zoomed down to the area.

“Well?” Lyman asked as his team monitored the readings recorded during the test.

“Damaged area comes to ... less than two metres of scorched earth,” the tech said with surprise.

The general smiled, “Well done doctor. Now for the big one.”

“The big one?” Lyman asked.

“This was just to make sure everything went okay. Now we install the power cell and detonate a Hiroshima-sized nuclear blast,” the General said.

“We have authorisation for that?” Lyman asked, his eyes going wide.

“Received it from the President, assuming that test went okay, and it did with even better results than you predicted,” General Pierce said.

“Okay then. I’ll go dial up the power, while your people set up the nuke,” Lyman said. “Oh by the way, I knew a Special Agent Pierce once. With the FBI?”

“The alien hunting nut with his ‘Special Unit’, yeah I know him. No relation. He ran his project out of my base ... kept on wanting more resources than I had to give and wouldn’t even let me in his lab. But then he did have ‘special authorisation’,” General Pierce said, rolling his eyes.

With that the two men went about their work. An hour later the nuclear warhead was strapped to a metal frame tower in the desert and device was turned up full. They did everything they did before and set off the bomb. Everything went as before. The bright flash of nuclear light lasted but an instant and nothing came of it, no pillar of fire, no mushroom cloud and no radiation.

After a few minutes came back the data came flooding into the bunker and the tech had to blink to clear his eyes and make sure he was reading it right. “Total destructive area - two point six eight meters from a fifteen kiloton nuclear blast. There’s barely even a crater.”

The cork of the champagne bottle went flying, the bubbly was poured and a photograph was taken of the scientists and the General standing by the main unit of Prometheus. There was still a lot of data to go over, everything needed to be scrutinised and there were still a few safety features to install but on the face of it, it worked.

At the end of the day it was all shipped back to Vandenberg along with everyone else. Their work was to continue, make everything as perfect and flawless as it could be while the data was analysed and any corrections that needed to be made were made. In the meantime a report and a copy of that picture were delivered to the President and another to the Senator. He was going to be very pleased that he backed the right horse in this.

Alternate Project Lab, Vandenberg AFB, 5 Months Later

Tying in the final components was proving to be more difficult than originally anticipated but they were still on schedule. However Vandenberg was host to a number of different projects, one of which was in another lab nearby and this one had been falling behind and was on the verge of being cut. That didn’t please the project director who was as passionate about his work as Dr Lyman.

She was working on a device that was solely intended to eradicate the enemy, kill anything alive yet leave everything inorganic intact – a neutron bomb. The simple result was that people were incinerated where they stood in the space of a few seconds. All that would be left was a pile of ass ... maybe one or two bone fragments, a skeletal hand at the outside. From this device there could be no shelter, no protection. The blast would penetrate all the way through mountains, into bomb shelters and the hulls of ships – there was no way to escape it.