Third Transmission by Jack Heath

over to Six. ‘She’s right,’ she whispered. ‘Why isn’t the Deck raiding this building right now and grabbing all the guests? ChaoSonic would be crippled. Maybe wiped out.’
    â€˜Then what do we do with them?’ Six whispered back. ‘Lock them up? Kill them? Just for being useful to the company? We’d be just as bad as ChaoSonic. We’re not terrorists, we’re law enforcement.’
    â€˜There are no laws to enforce, just our own code,’ Ace pointed out. ‘More lives would be saved in the long run.’
    â€˜You don’t know that. Something would replace ChaoSonic, and it could be something worse.’
    Ace nodded reluctantly.
    â€˜Anyway,’ Allich was saying. ‘It’s time you finally saw your credits at work!’
    There was a resounding
clank
, and the ballroom wall split down a seam in the centre. The two halves slowly rumbled apart, revealing nothing but a black void.
    And then lights beyond clicked on, one by one. Six stared as the machine was revealed: a tubular tower madeof colossal chrome plates, ringed by cooling pipes as fat as subway tunnels, with webs of power cables hanging as high and low as he could see.
    It was nothing like the machine he’d seen two years ago. Allich had hollowed out the centre of the Tower and built a colossal metal tube in the empty space. A skyscraper within a skyscraper. What was it? Was this part of the same project at all?
    â€˜It’s my pleasure to present to you,’ Allich was saying, ‘Tiresias! Please, follow me to the auditorium.’
    As the crowd started to move towards the gap between the walls, and take their seats on the other side, Six took the Geiger counter out of his pocket and checked the display.
    It read .815 mSv of radiation. There was no doubt – the warhead had been here.

    The air bubbled with excited conversation as the security guards ushered the guests through the gap in the ballroom wall. Six couldn’t take his eyes off the metal tower. What was it for?
    As he crossed the threshold into the darkness, he saw hundreds of seats installed in semicircular rows around the giant tube. Between the front row of seats and the tube there was a safety rail and then an impressive trench – Allich had drilled a giant hole in the ground, hundreds of metres deep, maybe even kilometres, and then builtthe foundations of the tube at the bottom. The tube must be taller than any skyscraper in the City.
    On the other side of the trench there was a small stage, with a large metal table and a big screen on the wall. The screen was currently blank.
    The room was like a cross between a cinema and a missile silo.
    â€˜Is this what you saw last time?’ Ace asked, staring at the tube.
    â€˜No,’ Six said.
    There was a chamber embedded in the wall behind the stage, with a tinted window so the audience could see in. It was connected to the stage by an imposing airlock. The chamber was about 8 metres wide, high and deep. The walls on the inside bristled with obsidian needles, and a line of grey rings were clamped to the ceiling. Those were the magnets for the MRI, Six knew, for scanning the cargo. Nine white pods surrounded the box at varying heights. The CT scanners, he thought.
    He pointed. ‘
That’s
what I saw last time.’
    â€˜Okay. Back then, she was only dematerialising things and then recreating them, right?’ Ace asked. ‘No transmission, just
poof
, it’s gone,
poof
, it’s back?’
    â€˜Yes,’ Six said.
    â€˜Then what’s the tower tube thing for? Transmission should be the simplest part of the process – it could be done with a phone, a modem, or anything. If that chamber handles the dematerialisation and the recreation, then what does the rest of it do?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Six said quietly.
    â€˜Please take your seats,’ Chemal Allich boomed, as she appeared on the stage. ‘The