Chapter 9:
As the lights were turned on one by one like a wave, the giant underground palace lit up like a diamond before Hiccup and Emma.
"You had this place to yourself the entire time?" the size of this place shocked Hiccup. "It's like an underworld."
Rolls and rolls of metal shelves extended endlessly long deep into the mountains, even larger than the Vatican Secret Archives or New York Public Library. Hiccup couldn't even see the top of the shelves, and every shelf contained enough file boxes that could almost crash the metal holders. File boxes in a single shelf were organized in alphabetical order, and the shelves lined up in chronological order, from seven thousand years ago to 2017. Motion controlled lights provided illumination to the aisles among the shelves. Besides the countless shelves, there were also doors on one side of the wall, labeled in numerical order, from "Room 001", "Room 002", to "Room 101."
Hiccup lingered before the nearest shelf, his fingers traveled through the loaded file boxes. The boxes were lidless so that visitors can easily find the correct file. Some were printed on A4 papers or special lined papers, and some were handwritten. Hiccup even found a papyrus scroll that was sealed in a glass cylinder. From the basic information about atoms to some elements and substances that not even university chemistry professors had heard about. Besides science, Hiccup even dug out copies of DARPA and the Pentagon's documents with a red "classified" stamp on the cover.
"Where did you get all of these?" Hiccup asked as he pulled out a file about Wernher Von Braun. "Some of these are not even science-related."
"This place is called Niflheim, which pairs up with Asgard. An engineer doesn't just need science," Sam replied. "We need anything and everything. When my family gained some power a few centuries ago, we started garnering information about everything. Science, math, astronomy, military, politics, theology, mythology, blah, blah, blah, and even music. I don't even know how much information this place contains."
"So this is more like… a hobby?" Emma questioned while staring at the shelves.
"Sort of," Sam shrugged.
"The Timothy family is one of the greatest collector family in this world," Gobber added. "They even have some manuscripts that the world believes are gone."
"We've been working on top of this giant…pile of knowledge the whole time?" Hiccup couldn't find the right word to describe this place.
"That's right. This place is air-conditioned to stay dry because some of the files are hundreds of years old," Sam walked along the side wall until he reached Room 008. "Things behind these doors are engineering related stuff."
"The Laser is in there?" Hiccup asked.
Sam didn't reply. He rested his thumb on a fingerprint reader on the door. The door opened automatically after the reader scanned Sam's fingerprint.
"Everyone, say hello to the Laser," Sam said as he turned on the lights inside.
"Uhhh, that doesn't look like a scientific apparatus or something," Hiccup stared at the object at the middle of Room 008.
Two giant, arm-sized power lines connected the wall and a transparent l cylinder made of unidentified materials and could probably fit a half Hiccup in it. The outer plastic protective layers of the power lines were transparent, allowing Hiccup to see the intricate wires and… some weird cords that sometimes leaked bright beams of lights, as if the whole power line was a giant plasma ball. At the two intersections of power lines and the transparent cylinder were two funnels that concentrated the wires and cords into the cylinder.
"That looks like someone grabbed some old electronics from a trash can and put them together using duct tape," Emma snorted. "And created this Laser? Some of the cords are not even connected in the right way. And that cylinder looks like an old and clear hydrogen tank. At least do what Rutherford Appleton Lab is doing."
"This is not something you just said," Gobber replied. "We know that Project Bifrost reached a severe problem, and that is you can't let Bose-Einstein Condensation release enough energy to be used as a weapon."
"So this thing can do that?" Emma asked.
"Uhhhh…"
"Well, it's very complicated," Sam raised his left arm before Gobber and stopped him from explaining. "You know that to release energy, atoms need to have some speed, but atoms in BEC have almost no speed. And if we try to increase their speed to get energy, then the status of BEC will collapse. So we need to create more energy out of that minute speed."
"And how is that gonna happen?"
"We inject energy into atoms..." Sam put his hand on the top of the cylinder.
"Excuse me, did you say 'inject'?" Hiccup interrupted his boss. "Are you saying that we are treating BEC as a... person?"
"Kind of," Sam said.
"What is this? Some sort of magic?" Emma cried. "I'm not sure how this is going to work, but are you suggesting that we change the number of protons and electrons in an atom?"
"That's one way," Gobber said.
"But then you are changing this element into another one."
"Then we just change the numbers of neutrons and electrons and leave the protons alone."
"Explain this to me," Emma stared at Sam.
"Uh, we release a great amount of energy into something, and… try to let this thing to absorb and keep the energy in it," Sam tried his best to explain the process.
"Try?" Hiccup questioned.
"Yeah, try. I never used this baby before," Sam walked to the door of this room. A piece of paper was glued to the back of the door, like an attendance sheet of a classroom. "The file says that Muspelheim received this thing in 1946, before I was born. From a laboratory somewhere in Northwestern Europe."
"Wait, wait, according to what you said, releasing a great amount of energy into BEC, but you'll destruct BEC. It'll fall apart," Emma added.
"You have a better plan then?" Gobber questioned.
Silence.
Hiccup and Emma looked at each other. Hiccup shrugged.
"Ok then, I'll let Gobber help you when you are using this," Sam said as he exited the room. "Just don't blow up this place."
The trio watched Sam entered the elevator and disappeared, Gobber opened a drawer that was built inside the wall and took out something like a drone controller and a small robot with wheels and two manipulators in front of it.
"Makes things a lot easier," Gobber flicked a switch on the robot. "I need this robot to do things for us. Sam doesn't know how to do this, and that means I know shit about it."
Meanwhile, on the third floor of Asgard.
In the room at the very end of the corridor, computers screens covered every inch of the wall. Some screens showed individual information like surveillance and some were connected to present something bigger. Five technicians wearing headphones with microphones sat in front of the screens, fingers tapping the keyboards like how a musician plays the piano. A person wearing a black baseball hat and a dark green jacket stood in the middle of the room, his arms crossed before him, and his vision traveled from one screen to another. This room didn't look like someplace you can find in a lab; no lab has twenty-five computer screens. This place was more like a basement where some hackers live.
Muspelheim put hundreds of cameras and infrared sensors in Asgard and the forest, just to keep an eye on what was going on around Asgard. At first, Sam didn't want to spend one and a half million dollars on some surveillances, but Helga used her "ultimate reasoning" to deny Sam's decision, which is "safety first".
Each screen in the room showed the image of a camera or color-coded vision from infrared sensors. Every scene of Asgard and the forest could be seen from here, from engineers and guards walking down the corridors to the secluded trees in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains. The heat map showed every heat source that infrared sensors captured and labeled them from dark blue to bright red. The engineers and guards nicknamed this room "the watcher". Basically, "the watcher" was the central control room of Asgard.
"Northwestern section 8 all clear."
"Southeastern section 5 all clear."
"Northeastern section 14 all clear."
"Outer section 21 all clear."
Technicians reported the conditions of each section to their boss, Herkman, who stood behind them. Herkman was the Technician Advisor of Asgard. Even though he didn't know as much about computer science than his technicians, but he expertised in all sorts of surveillance.
"Sir, four heat sources in Mountain section 5," a technician reported.
"Show me," Herkman walked behind the technician.
The screen presented four yellowish-red shadows that were captured by an infrared sensor.
"Are those animals? Maybe four deer or other wild lives?" Herkman asked.
"I'll double-check with a camera," the technician tapped a few commands into his computer, and then the scene of a part of Appalachian Mountains showed up on the screen. There was nothing but wild plants and tree branches with green leaves, just like another quiet and peaceful day in the forest
"The infrared sees it, but the camera doesn't," Herkman murmured, then turned to the technician. "Send out the Gray Eagle."
The Gray Eagle was a type of drone that the US military uses. Asgard's security division made a few copies of this drone and used it as the last line of their surveillance. Asgard's version of the Gray Eagle used some electromagnetic cameras that could see deeper into the spectrum.
The vision of the Gray Eagle quickly came out: four men with a lot of metals with them hid beneath some electronic camouflages.
"I need a better view!" Herkman yelled. "Those metals might be weapons!"
As the vision became clearer as the Gray Eagle decreased the altitude and the electronic camouflages could no longer hide the people beneath them, Herkman could see four men with M4s crawling slowly through the trees and toward Asgard.
"Sir, we also have some movements on The Road!" another technician cried.
His screen showed The Road, which was a two miles long paved road that connected Asgard with the outside world. The Road was usually quiet and lifeless, except when some deer or bears would wander around on The Road and when engineers were coming and leaving. But this time, at least a dozen black trucks with the white letters "SWAT" parked on The Road, officers wearing black uniforms advancing toward Asgard.
"Pull out our record. I need to see why they are here. And hack into the police system, see whether they were issued with a warrant" Herkman ordered.
The sound of keyboard tapping filled the room once again. The technicians were all brilliant computer geniuses, hacking into some governmental systems was a piece of cake to them, and they didn't even need to look down at their keyboards while tapping.
"Our record is clear, and no one issued them warrant," a technician reported. "Seems like they are dirty cops."
"Can we fire on them if they enter our private property?" Herkman asked.
"Not sure," the technician replied. "But we are sure that they are either dirty cops or fake cops."
Herkman stared at the screen, he didn't want his company to be sued because of firing at police.
"Sir, we have two guards patrolling the Road right now, and they reported that the SWAT fired at them," a technician yelled as he unplugged his headphones from his computer so that everyone in the room could hear the radio. The sound of gun firing and people screaming in pain filled the room with tree branches falling.
"One man down. I need back up right now!" a guard shouted in the radio as bullets poured down at him. "Shit! They are not the police. The police don't use the tactic of 'emptying ten mags at one person'."
"Thit's hell of a gunfight," a technician murmured.
"Screw this," Herkman murmured as he took down the red telephone on the wall and yelled: "Get me Helga!"
"Who is this?" a guard responded, with the sound of people being beaten on a mat in the background.
"This is Herkman. I believe I'm calling Helga's radio," beiHerkman asked. He dialed Helga's channel. "I need to speak to her. This is urgent!"
"Hang on, the Lead Security Officer is practicing wrestling with other guards."
"I don't care..." Herkman paused and sighed, "Code Tundra. I repeat Code Tundra."
"Code what... oh fuck. Yes, sir! Code Tundra!" the guard replied loudly.
"Ok, I think I got the hang of it," Gobber placed the robot back into the drawer.
"You do? I still have no idea how this thing works," Emma threw a punch at the wall with frustration.
"I think it's using some sort of energy magnifier to increase the energy that can be created from slow speed atoms," Hiccup stared at the exotic machine which, according to his knowledge, was based on bullshit scientific hypothesis.
250 meters below the earth's surface, Niflheim added another "mysterious" factor to Muspelheim. This company was like an onion, secrets piled up behind layers and layers of camouflage, and no one knew everything about this giant onion. It was not just once or twice that Hiccup suspected Sam had been hiding something, or the Timothy family had been hiding something.
No one knew why the headquarters of Muspelheim, Asgard, was located among the trees of the Appalachian Mountains, and no one knew why Muspelheim, or the Timothy family, decided to build an underground palace for information about anything and everything.
Hiccup used to believe that Muspelheim developed itself throughout the years and finally became one of the most advanced labs in the world. If Muspelheim put more effort into advertising their product, then probably one-fourth of their engineers would get a Nobel Prize. But now Hiccup kind of realized why Sam ordered no Muspelheim's products should have their company tags on and no company logo. If the world knew that Muspelheim had this giant underground "database", then this place would be surrounded by journalists and newspaper companies.
"I guess we can just leave it like this," Gobber concluded. "You two should finish all the other steps and come back and focus on this thing later. From my experience, I think this machine can magnify energy."
"It won't take that long," Emma replied confidently. "With the laser cooling technique, we can create BEC in just a few weeks."
"All right, if you say so," Gobber shrugged. "But I can give you a reminder: your customer said that they want their product as soon as possible, better in a month."
"A month?" Hiccup's loud voice echoed in the room. "We don't even have a design yet. Tell them that we need at least two months."
"I tried but didn't work. You can go ahead and talk to them," Gobber denied Hiccup.
"Ok, tell me how can I contact them."
"You just go 250 meters up and into your lab and convince Astrid," Gobber raised his right index finger and pointed upward.
Hiccup paused. His mouth half-open, as if he tried to say something but a person muted him.
"You see," Gobber put his hands on his hips and sighed. "Just go with one month. It's a four million dollars deal, okay?"
"I want four percent of the money."
"I can talk to Sam about that."
"You know about this place before?" Hiccup asked abruptly.
"Yeah, I'm one of the investors of Muspelheim and a very close friend of the CEO. Of course I know this place," Gobber answered.
"Then why didn't you tell us?"
"Well… because…" Gobber tapped his fingers on his pants as he tried to come up with an explanation.
A red light beam suddenly shot out from the ceiling of the room and rotated like a spinner.
"What the hell?" Emma looked up at the red alarm light as the red light beam traveled around the room.
"Something went off," Gobber unbuckled his radio from his belt. "Sam, what's going on? The alarm in Niflheim went off."
The radio crackled and the noise filled the room like something interfered the signal.
"Shit, no signal," Gobber turned his radio off.
"Code Tundra. I repeat: Code Tundra," the speaker in the wall started shouting in a computer-generated voice.
"What is Code Tundra?" Hiccup asked. Everyone in Asgard knew all the emergency codes that Muspelheim used, but he had never heard about "Code Tundra."
"Of course you never heard about it, because we only used it like… I believe this is the first time," Gobber darted out of the room and ran to the elevator. He took out a small blade from his pocket and pried open the elevator control pad. He smashed the blade into a dozen of blue and red wires like a hammer. The control pad sparkled and caused a short circuit.
"Hey! What are you doing!" Emma cried.
"Code Tundra means that Asgard is under direct ground attack," Gobber replied quickly as he scurried to a metal locker beside the door for Room 001. He placed his right thumb on the black fingerprint reader on the locker. After a blue ray inside the reader scanned across his thumb, the locker automatically opened.
"Right now I need to lock down Niflheim, and to do that I just need to destroy the elevator control system, which I already did, and no one can come in. Forget about upgraded steel and all of those shit that Sam told you: the walls and the elevator door of Niflheim is nuclear-hardened if closed, no one can open it without an access code," Gobber explained as he took out an M4 carbine from the locker. "After securing the most important files, we just leave the business to Helga."
"But if the invaders have the access code, then they are in," Hiccup cried.
"No one knows the code, except for us," Gobber withdrew a small, plastic box from the locker. A piece of paper was folded and placed in the box. "When we know everything is clear, we go out by using this code."
He threw the M4 at Hiccup and handed two pistols to Emma, "Shoot everything that passes through that door."
"You said it's nuclear-hardened."
"Nothing in this world is impenetrable."
"So we just sit here and wait it out?" Emma said, her voice shook.
"You have a better plan?"
250 meters above Hiccup, more than five dozens of SWAT officers approached Asgard, and a few hundred yards to the forest, the four members of Heimdall hid beneath their electronic camouflages.
To be continued
this chapter took me a little bit longer to write, so I hope you guys enjoyed reading this one.
Updates will get somewhat slower, because school had just started again.
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