STORM: The Infinity Code

Gaia shrugged. She hugged her arms around her stomach. The snow still fell thickly. Will’s shoes were soaked, and yet the soles gave good traction on the developing patches of ice.

At last, the door was thrown open. Andrew looked tense. He wore a tartan dressing gown over a Thai beach top and a pair of designer combat trousers. If Andrew was surprised to see Will, or felt any displeasure at his presence, he did not show it. Will felt awkward, of course. But clearly Andrew wanted him, or Gaia wouldn’t have come to find him.

Will’s flesh tingled at the warmth of the hallway. His chilled fingers seized and he flexed them painfully as Andrew led them through the kitchen and down to the basement.

At once, Will saw that it had been transformed. The walls, which had been bare and black, were now fitted with LED screens. An antique dining table with matching chairs upholstered in green leather was topped with half a dozen new notebook computers. Whatever he was, Andrew was clearly serious about STORM.

Andrew pointed to a screen that showed a webcam image of a bedroom. Will could make out a poster of the Horsehead Nebula glittering on the wall.

Will and Gaia pulled out heavy chairs from the dining table. Andrew grabbed a remote and stood in front of his monitors. He assumed the attitude of the night the previous week when he’d revealed his plans for STORM. Will watched him doubtfully. In his mind, he still heard Roden Cutler, and saw the hopeful shape of his mouth as he said the word father. Cutler was gone now. And Will hated clichés. Still, he couldn’t help wondering if he was out of the frying pan and into the fire . . .

“As you no doubt know,” Andrew was saying, “we are now at the solar maximum, which happens once every eleven years. Our sun is at the peak of its activity.”

He pressed a button on the remote. A close-up of the sun flashed on one of the monitors. “It’s pustulating with sun spots—here and here. What we’re looking at are concentrated magnetic fields. The surface is raging. This is an image taken at sixteen hundred Greenwich Mean Time. At sixteen zero five our sun did this . . .”

“It emitted a solar flare—a burst of hot electrified gas. But this is no ordinary flare. It’s the biggest in recorded history. For one whole minute and twenty seconds, the amount of light produced by our sun doubled.”

Andrew paused for a moment. With gravity, he continued: “But this is not the real problem. The real problem is on its way. At the same time as the flare, our sun let loose a coronal-mass ejection, or CME. This is a massive cloud of magnetically charged plasma, and the storm is heading right at us. Fast. It’s forecast to hit at zero six hundred tomorrow morning. What will happen then is simple: chaos.”

Will glanced at Gaia, all thoughts of Cutler banished. He’d studied solar flares in astrophysics but he knew much less about CMEs. “What sort of chaos?”

“There are three main threats from a CME,” she said. “First to astronauts in space—from all the radiation. Then to satellites. When the cloud gets close to Earth’s magnetic field, it’ll trigger a geomagnetic storm that could wipe out a satellite’s electronics. Our atmosphere will stop the radiation reaching the surface, so people won’t be hurt directly. But the geomagnetic storms could easily overload power grids, causing massive blackouts—there’s the third major threat. I guess there’s also a fourth: Radio communications will almost certainly be affected. If that happens, emergency services won’t be able to communicate properly.”

“It’s a recipe for disaster,” Andrew said. “If telecoms satellites are taken out, people’s mobile phones won’t work. If the electrical grid goes down and there’s a blackout, people will panic. There could be rioting, looting. Mayhem.”

“Have you checked the U.S. Bureau of Meteorology’s Web site lately? Do you hang out in Galactica, a chat room for space weather scientists?”

“It’ll be common knowledge pretty soon,” Andrew continued. “The U.S. Space Environment Center will be putting out public alerts, and I’m sure the media will be quick to react. But Caspian heard about it from a friend of his who hosts Galactica, who got it straight from one of the space environment scientists just a few minutes after it happened. Then Caspian called me.”

Caspian ignored him. “You must monitor the situation. STORM must stand by. There has been nothing of this magnitude before in our history. Earth will stand in awe of the power of space.”

Caspian’s eyes narrowed. “Will Knight,” he said. “So, you have come scurrying back. I suggest you scurry on into a corner and leave Andrew and Gaia to work. This will be the best thing for us all, I think.”

“I think,” Andrew said quickly, “that we have a long night ahead of us. Caspian, if you hear anything important, please get in touch. I’ll keep an eye on the Space Environment Center transmissions. Thank you.” And he cut the connection.

“Until then I suggest we work out if there’s anything we can do to help mitigate the effects. I’m sure NASA is looking after its astronauts. So perhaps we should get on top of what’s happened in the past—on the sizes of previous CMEs and their impacts on satellites and grids. And we should do some calculations on this burst, so we can work out which satellites are likely to be affected, and what the threats are to power in London, at least. Then, of course, we need to work out if there’s anything that can be done to reduce the risk of total disaster.”

For the moment, Will kept his mouth shut. It was all very well to review and to monitor, but what could STORM actually do? There were scientists out there, with access to all the raw data and the historical files, who surely would provide advice to the operators of power grids and satellites.

Andrew took a chair at one of the computers on the dining table. He started tapping at his keyboard. Gaia sat down beside him. “The crew of the space station has been moved to the shuttle,” Andrew murmured. “Good. It’ll offer better protection from the radiation.”

And Will sighed. Was there any point in arguing with them? Perhaps it was better to join them. And it wasn’t as though he had any other plans for the evening.

Will pulled out his phone, texted Natalia: Staying night with friend. Working on school project. Back first thing. W. And he thought of what Roden would say when Natalia got the message. He glanced at Gaia now and he almost blushed.

On his way to the steps, Will paused. He’d noticed a new trestle table topped with yet another notebook. Will thought it had been switched off, but as he passed the screen a web page suddenly burst into view.

Andrew had been watching him. “It’s just been released,” he called. “The screen’s designed so you can only read it if you’re facing it head-on. Keeps people from reading over your shoulder on the train.”

Andrew’s expression hesitated midway between a frown and a smile. He let the frown give way. “Keeps someone who might break into the back of my car while I’m being driven from reading what I’m working on.”

Andrew’s faint smile broadened a little. If Will could have translated Andrew’s expression into words, he would have read it like this: “I really wasn’t sure, but welcome back.”

Will took the steps two at a time. The kitchen was warm. It was much bigger than Natalia’s, with stainless-steel equipment, smoked glass and wooden benches. Andrew had an Internet fridge, Will noticed. He remembered what Gaia had said about him liking gimmicks.

Will opened the fridge, pulled out the bottles. Gaia took hers and didn’t immediately turn away. He was glad, because there was something he wanted to say.

“I wanted to ask you—” And he stopped. It seemed harder than it should. But Will didn’t like shirking anything, even an apology. “I’m—” He stopped again. Somehow the apology just wouldn’t come out. Instead, he said: “Why did you come to find me? I was rude to you yesterday.”

She leveled her gaze at him. “I don’t like many people. When I find someone I like, I don’t let surface stuff put me off. I could see right through you.”

She turned and headed back down to the basement. The unexpected answer left him confused. To his shame, Will realized “You’re brilliant, we need you,” was more what he might have anticipated. But what did she mean, she could see right through him? She didn’t know anything about him—nothing about who he was or who he had been.

Grasping the bottles of water, he followed her. As he left the kitchen, he glanced at the window, at the solid gray denseness of the sky. It was hard to imagine that right at that moment an immense cloud of electrified gas was racing through space. Hurtling through the vacuum. Straight at Earth. If electricity grids did go down, if people suddenly couldn’t use their mobile phones, if other vital satellites—like the Global Positioning System—were disrupted, and if even the police couldn’t talk to each other, Andrew would surely be right: There would be total panic. No amount of public warnings would prevent that. And what would happen out there, on the streets? Will was afraid of what the answer could be.

“There is quite a lot to do,” he said. “I think maybe we should call a meeting. We can draw up a list of tasks and distribute them according to volunteers and expertise.”

Will glanced at Gaia. “Andrew, no offense, but that sounds like a waste of time. There are only three of us. You start on the history. I’ll concentrate on what’s likely to happen to power grids.”

His lips pressed tight, Andrew turned back to his computer and brought up the Web site of the Space Environment Center. He started to search for information on the last five major coronal-mass ejections. But it was hard to concentrate. Hovering right in the front of his mind was the discovery he’d made quite by accident, in one of the secure space sites.

He kept this site open now. It contained ongoing comms between a floating HQ and Earth’s very latest satellite—a different sort of object altogether. A space hotel. A secret module, launched from the equator only the previous week. On board was none other than Esmee Templeton, along with some other eminent astronauts. Quite why the launch should be a secret wasn’t clear. He might share his discovery with Gaia, he thought. But Will? No. At least not yet.

Meanwhile, Gaia plotted the satellites likely to be most affected by the incoming storm. Will started checking out the power grids that served the UK, working out how much of a geomagnetic hit they could take before overloading. As Andrew gathered useful data, he shared it with Gaia and Will using instant messenger, so they could feed his results into their models of what was likely to happen.

This was slow-going and methodical. The sort of work Will didn’t much like. He preferred immediate problems— but for that they would have to wait.

After two hours, Andrew pushed his chair back and stretched. “I think the time is right for an update session,” he said brightly. “So, what have we found? Gaia?”

She rubbed her eyes. They were aching from staring for so long at the screen. “Mobile phone coverage will definitely be hit. But it’s hard to tell whether the satellites will be knocked out totally, or whether coverage will just be disrupted temporarily. Same for the GPS. The Space Environment Center had put out an alert to satellite providers, and some are starting to do what they can to prepare.”

“Shut down everything but the basic housekeeping systems. That should reduce the risk of a charge big enough to short out the electronics.” She glanced at her notebook. “I’ve got a list here of who’s sent a reply to the alert and who hasn’t—but there are hundreds of companies out there.” She paused. “Andrew, I don’t know what we can really do to help with the satellites.”

“All you can really do is wait for a grid to be hit—then you can isolate the portion that’s been overloaded, so the blackout doesn’t cascade. But if the magnetic storm’s really powerful, you’ll be isolating all over the place, so you’ll still have power cuts everywhere.”

“Andrew, you just sent me the last Space Environment Center bulletin—they’ll all be getting it. All they can really do now is wait and see what happens.”

Will got up. The enthusiasm he had started to feel had faded. It left him feeling frustrated, and disappointed, partly with himself, for letting Andrew get him carried away. They were just kids. In a situation like this, they were helpless. Other people were doing what could be done. “Andrew, I don’t think there’s really anything we can do,” he said. “We’ll just have to wait and see what happens at six o’clock tomorrow.”

A pause. “Why don’t you stay here? If you really think all we can do is wait until the morning to see what happens, you might as well wait here. Then at least we’ll be together when it hits. There are spare bedrooms down the hall, or you can sleep on the sofa in the drawing room. The fire should still be going. Gaia, you too. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

“I can do that while you both sleep.” His eyes went back to his laptop screen. “I don’t really need it. Some nights I don’t go to bed at all. Really—both of you, get some rest. I’ll wake you up as soon as anything happens.”

“It’s not that,” she said. And yet the thought was there. All the groundwork—such as it was—had been done. And for all his talk of group meetings and collaboration, Andrew could be as competitive as the next person. Gaia was well aware of that. “Okay,” she said.

In the drawing room, Gaia reached out a hand to the dying fire. She was mostly hidden by the chaise longue, a blanket thrown over her legs. The room was warm, and very comfortable. Will was stretched out on a leather sofa behind the table that supported the photograph of Esmee Templeton in her space suit, and the trepanned head. Dying flames in the grate sent an eerie shadow flickering against the ceiling— a skull that stretched from one wall almost to another.

In fact, Will could believe that Andrew could go a few nights without rest. He had the stubborn energy of the sort of person who would refuse to leave a task until it was finished. His mother had told him stories about some of the scientists she’d worked with when she had been a professor of engineering and astrophysics at UCL Most were normal, she’d said, but one of her colleagues had walked out of his laboratory while thinking about a problem and come back two weeks later, when he’d solved it. In the meantime, his desperate wife had filed a missing-person report and half the waterways around Oxford had been dredged.

“Not exactly. He was in Berlin on vacation. He gate-crashed the math medal classes and blew everyone away. He’s very, very good at math. Actually, he’s a lot smarter than he looks. People see this half-blind boy in goofy clothes. They don’t realize he probably has fifty IQ points on them.”

Will gazed up at the ceiling, at the chandelier that dangled from its thick brass chain. The tiny fragments of glass glinted in the glowing light from the fire. Was he? Maybe. But Will had insulted two people recently and here he was with both of them. So what did that tell him?

“. . . I still don’t really see how I fit in with STORM,” he said at last. “I invent things. I don’t know anything about HIV or global warming.”

“I told you,” she said. “He wants the brightest people. These are early days—there are only four of us. More will join in time, with other skills.”

A pause. “I don’t know why Caspian isn’t here tonight,” Gaia said, and she yawned. “This is exactly his field. He knows more about space than anyone I know. He really cares about it. All he ever talks about is his father, and his work.

Will moved his arm so he could lie flat on his back. He looked up at the shadow, the skull across the ceiling. What was Caspian doing that was more important, he wondered. And what was happening out in space, as that stream of plasma hurtled on its collision course with Earth . . . Will looked at his watch. Two forty-five a.m. And something occurred to him.

“Mom’s dead,” came the quiet answer at last. “Dad wouldn’t care . . . And before you say anything else, I don’t really want to talk about it.”

On the leather sofa, Will stared at the ceiling, taking in this information. He wanted to ask when her mother died. And what she meant exactly about her father. But maybe Gaia was right. The last thing he wanted was to discuss was the loss of his father. The absence of his mother.