The Weapon

THE WEAPON

By D.R Evans

Willian Harris sat at the desk in his basement. Two twenty-four-inch monitors bolted to a swivel mount, illuminated the small room.

He stared at the left display, a tissue still held to his nose.

"impossible, it's too soon" he said to himself.

The wet tissue drew his attention from the monitors, he threw it into the small waste basket under the desk. He took out a small tube of Purell hand cleaner, poured some on his hands and rubbed them together.

He looked back at the monitors.

"too soon, too soon"

The green "result confirmed" text flashed at the bottom left of the screen.

"no, no, no, too early" He said to himself.

He looked across to the glass board. He stood up dragging the board closer. He went through the equation on the board, putting a black dot at every calculation point if it was correct. He rescanned the equation, black dots right the way through. He then picked up a red marker and repeated the checks.

Scanning it again he saw no lonely black dots, all the black dots, accompanied by a red dot.

He turned back to the screens. Checking that the correct answers were in to the correct places in the program. Then he clicked the "Start Process" button.

Ten minutes later the green "Result" icon flashed again. Not the red "sorry try again" icon but the Green "you are right well done" icon. So why was he not as happy as he should be?

He moved the mouse pointer to an icon labelled "Lab" at the top of his screen and double clicked it. A small video app opened, he clicked the enlarge button and the screen filled his right display.

"ah" he said looking at his watch "everyone has been home for two hours."

The cameras had been set up by Shield Chemicals technicians. To give him the full effect of being in his lab in the south wing. After seeing the pile of discarded tissues strewn over his desk. His CEO had asked the Nobel Science winner to kindly, please go home. The company would send all the equipment needed for a good week-long stay.

The office that seated twenty technicians and scientists was desolate. The glow of the after-hour screen savers illuminated the office and lab.

"ok, then" he thought." So, no one there to verify the result"

Their mandate was to create the next fuel to run aboard the next generation space ships. He and his team knew they were close. But he had hoped it would take a few months longer.

Without his teams' knowledge. This project was under the financial auspices of the United State Army.

To be accurate, DMDS, the Department of Military Developmental Sciences. They had at first told him it was going to fuel space exploration.

He soon found out it was to fuel missile capable of striking millions of miles out into space.

He had never told his team who their employers were. He hoped that he could move the project back to cheap unending fuel for the population.

He knew if they took too long to develop the formula the Military would abandon the project. Then he and his team could develop the formula without the military backing.

He had kept the real reason for their research from his team, knowing that most of them were strong eco warriors. He knew they would never be part of any military project. But he did not want to lose them as he had recruited each of them himself.

William sat at his desk, the blinking green icon mesmerising his mind.

"no, no, no, this is to soon" he said, his head dropping to his hands.

He looked back at the screen.

"It's too simple," he said under his breath.

There is no way he can stop his team from finding the same solution he found.

within hours the military would swoop in take all the work PC's. creation boards and notes.

The feed to his offices and Shield Chemicals caught his eye,

"wait a minute, this is not on the company servers yet? It was all local!"

William turned to his PC.

"there must be away to reverse this? I wrote the fucking program." He shouted.

A feint knock emanated from his office door.

"William you ok?" his wife called

He stood up and went to door.

"Sorry love, a bit excited" He said

William went back to his PC and opened the development side of the software. He deleted everything that could point to his success. Deleting strings and changing internal calculations. Enough to keep his team close but nowhere near a workable solution.

He ran the program again.

"Result Negative".

William turned off his PC, stood up, walked to the door and opened it. Before he walked out he had one last look back. He flipped off the light then walked out closing the door behind him.

"Dad, Dad are you done?" called Jim.

"yes boy, get the ball let's get outside.

Epilogue

Thousands of kilometres from Earth a cloaked intergalactic destroyer powered down its weapon. It turned and headed back out to space.