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The Enoch Effect

By Rick Acker

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February
Silence filled the lab, interrupted only by faint electronic murmurs from scientific equipment lining the walls. A Cray supercomputer whispered secrets to itself in a corner.
Moonlight spilled through cramped windows, carving squares and rectangles of silver white in the darkness.
The head and shoulders of an older man intruded into one patch of light. He lay slumped over an immaculate metal desk, his head pillowed on his right arm. His long, handsome face was perfectly still and white in the moonlight, a sculpture carved in alabaster.
A soft, powerful whump, like a giant pounding his fist into a huge feather pillow, shook the building and rattled the windows.
A yellow light flickered in one window. It flared and leaped. Then it shone through another window. Then two more.
Red-gold flames jumped into view. They brushed the windows. The glass quivered and warmed.
The man did not move.
The fire outside burned brighter and higher, clawing at the windows. They rattled and cracked.
The lab grew hot. Fans whirred to life as the temperature control system woke. The lab held tens of millions of dollars’ worth of sensitive equipment that did not like heat or cold. And the data on that equipment was still more precious. More precious, perhaps, than anything else in the world.
The pallor melted from the man’s face. A ruddy, wavering glow replaced it. But still he did not move.
The door of the lab burst open. A man ran in, but stopped at the sight of the fire roaring just outside. He took a tentative step into the room.
A wall of flame leaned against the windows. Streams of red, yellow, and orange writhed over them. The glass rattled violently, then broke.
The second man staggered back, throwing his arms in front of his face. Then he turned and fled.
A river of fire poured into the lab. It cascaded over the walls of equipment and priceless knowledge.
The temperature control system shrieked in protest, and then died. Gallons of specially designed fire-extinguishing foam gushed from spigots in the ceiling. It pushed back the flames and covered the lab and its unmoving occupant with a protective chemical shield.
But the fire still roared in through the shattered windows. It ate into the walls. It broke into rooms above and beside the lab. The ceiling began to sag as the supporting beams roasted and weakened.
The sound of distant sirens rose above the thunder of the flames. The sirens grew closer and louder. A fire truck screeched to a halt outside. A second pulled up beside it. Men leaped off and pulled out hoses and axes with practiced speed and precision.
But they were too late. The ceiling collapsed into the lab, crushing whatever equipment and data the fire had not already destroyed. And burying the man under a funeral cairn of flaming debris.

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