The Basement was poorly lit. That was the first thing Smith noticed as he entered it. He hadn’t been down here much. No reason to. Nayib was panting. The Elevator didn’t go all the way down. They had to climb down a flight of stairs. It had taken a lot out of him. Amanda had an arm around his shoulder. He had his hands on his knees and was taking deep breaths. Fenryr had swept into the room last and had scanned the whole room. Not that there was much to see other than the machine.

The machine stood in the middle of the room. It reached to the ceiling. It gleamed even in the poor light. Status indicators were everywhere. Green pinpricks dotted all over it. There were a few people in white overcoats holding clipboards. They seemed to be have been recording various readings. The light from the hallway outside the Basement had announced the groups arrival, and everyone had turned to them. One of the technicians walked forward. He was a thin balding man. His hair was in wisps that seemed glued to his head. He leered through thick round spectacles. Smith could pick out pieces of food stuck to his face. Nayib took a few more deep breaths and he stepped forward. Shook hands with the man before turning around.

“This is Dr. Adhur. Manfred Adhur. He’s been in charge of getting the machine ready. Dr. Adhur, these are the brains behind it.”

He drew close and shook hands with everyone. His palm was moist in Smiths hand. He lingered on Amanda, taking an extraordinarily long time to shake her hand. She squirmed. He didn’t approach Fenryr for a handshake. After greeting the rest he stepped back. In a voice that sounded like gravel he said,

“Nice to meet you all. As Nayib said, I’m Dr. Adhur, but you can call me Manfred.” He snorted. Then he did something that sounded like wheezing. It was only from the smile on his face that Smith could make out that that had been a laugh.

“This is the beast. That’s what we call it. The beast.” He paused as if the name was impressive enough to merit applause. The silence caused him to cough lightly. He continued,

“Well, as you can see, this is per your specifications. We were done with this a good while back, but every refinement to the equations you geniuses came up with caused us to have to move some things around. It’s been hectic. I haven’t gone home in over two weeks. My cats are probably starting to miss me.” Another snort-laugh. Smith looked at his feet. Fenryr launched into form two.

“Yes. So follow me and I’ll show you the beast” He turned away and swept his arm out indicating them to follow. Nayib stepped to the front. Amanda close by his side. The group formed up behind him. Smith found himself walking next to Fenryr.

Up close the machine was even more impressive. It towered over them. It emitted a slight hum. Lights were blinking everywhere. LCD screens hung from it, each one showing different parameters. At the heart of it was a window. Smith peered into it. The tablet lay there, with two wires connected to it. One was red, the other black.

He placed a hand on the surface of the machine. It was cool. He saw large tubes running all around it. Mist was rising from them. They had the universal symbol for danger on them. A yellow triangle with a black skull inside. Liquid Nitrogen. Smith felt a hand on his back. He turned to see Fenryr looking at him.

“I think we should go over there.”

He pointed to where the group was walking into what seemed to be the control room. It was on the far side of the room from the door. The machine had blocked it earlier. The technicians had gone back to noting down readings. Smith nodded and followed Fenryr inside.

The control room small. There was barely enough room for all of them inside. The wall facing the machine had windows set in it. There were chairs pulled up. Nayib was sitting in one of them. Overflowing, Smith thought to himself. Amanda was seated next to him. Her hand was on his knee. Manfred was standing at the back, near what looked like a bank of filing cabinets. Except there were keyboards and screens mounted on the wall. He saw Smith looking at them.

“This is the Super computer that controls the machine. The tablet goes through so many state transitions that it’s impossible for a human to cope up. What did you do?” He meant it politely, but his voice made it sound condescending.

The sudden conversation had caused everyone to turn and look. Everyone except for Fenryr. He was leaning against the door. Nayib answered.

“Ah. Dr. Adhur, meet Smith. He’s the man who figured out the Spread Function. You know, the thing that’s been holding us up for so long.” He smirked at Smith. Smith felt bile rise in his throat. He swallowed it and smiled at Manfred.

“Pleasure to meet you Manfred. Now if you could show me where, I’ll enter the Spread function and we can get this party started.”

Manfred muttered under his breath. Smith managed to catch the words ‘arrogant’ and ‘genius’, but the rest was drowned out. The rest of the group had gone back to looking out the windows at the machine. Manfred led Smith to a keyboard placed at a terminal on the wall away from the door. He entered a few commands, and the screen redrew into a schematic of the machine. He typed some more and the schematic rotated and zoomed in on the tablet at the heart.

An animated representation of what Smith assumed was the particle field was shown in blue. It formed a sphere all around the tablet. Manfred hit Enter and a small black bar popped up beneath the image. A green cursor blinked expectantly at its left edge.

“So this is where you can put the evaluation of the function in. The computers will process that and display the new field pattern on your screen. The changes don’t get implemented right away. Nayib was very clear that we had to provide you a ten second buffer window, in case you mess up.” He smiled apologetically. Smith rolled his eyes. He said,

“So that’s it right? Anything else I need to know?” He turned back to the screen. Typed his name and hit Enter. The screen went black for a second. A warning buzz sounded and the message ‘Invalid input’ came up on screen. The buzz had caused everyone to look at him again. Smith didn’t like people looking at him. He hit Enter and the message disappeared. Manfred looked relieved. He was sweating even though the room was cold.

“So can we get started?” Nayib asked the room.

“I know this might seem silly, but what does the machine do exactly?” Amanda asked.

Manfred snorted again. He quickly stifled it when he saw Nayib glaring at him. Amanda looked embarrassed.

“There’s quite a bit more to this than what I told the people upstairs. Remember I told you that all attempts at dating the tablet had failed? Well that wasn’t exactly true.”

Amanda was listening intently. The rest of the group already knew everything. They were getting impatient. A few of them got up and started wandering around looking at the various terminals. Manfred was busy as well. Making sure no one touched anything. Fenryr was still leaning against the wall. His wrists were moving again.

Nayib sat closer to Amanda and continued,

“We dated the fresco using normal carbon dating to around fifteen thousand years ago. But we had to use a revolutionary new technique called Pazhaya technique to date the tablet. It does something with the quantum strings or something. It’s results are the most accurate. But when we tried to date the tablet, It came up with an age greater than that of the Earth.” Nayib paused for dramatic effect. Amanda inhaled deeply. She asked,

“What? How is that possible? It has writing on it. You don’t mean-“ Her expression turned to shock as she realized the implications.

“We don’t know for sure. But its origins are hardly the most interesting aspect of the tablet.”

“What does it do?”

“Exactly. What does it do. Smith, do you want to explain?” Nayib looked at Smith. Smith heard his name and turned around. His blank expression caused Nayib to swear under his breath and say,

“I asked if you would explain to Amanda what the tablet does.” The group stopped walking around and looked towards Smith. They had a vague idea of what the machine did, but no one was exactly sure. Even Fenryr had walked forward. Smith groaned inwardly. Amanda was trying hard not to meet his eyes. She had settled for staring at his navel.

“Well. The tablet, as you call it is without a doubt the most interesting thing I’ve ever come across. I only believe it exists because I have seen it and touched it. As Nayib mentioned earlier upstairs, the tablet is made out of a material we have never seen before.”

He walked over to one of the monitors. Pressed a few buttons before he pulled out a stylus. He started drawing on the screen. Everyone crowded closer to get a better look. He wrote down an equation. It started with a ‘E’ and ended in a ‘z’ That’s all Fenryr could make out. There were a few square root signs and some Greek letters thrown in there was well.

“This is the solution of the Absolute Equation for a normal element. Doesn’t matter which. All elements we know reduce to this. It comes from one of the higher order solutions.”

The blank look on Amanda’s face and the fake look of understanding on Nayib’s caused him to erase it.

“Let’s just say that the material of the tablet does not conform to this solution at all. Instead it does something totally different. It obeys the energy solution.”

“I don’t understand.” Amanda was looking at Smiths neck.

“The tablet is energy.” Smith wrote the word ‘ENERGY’ in capitals on the screen. Drew an ‘=’ sign and wrote ‘TABLET’ after it.

“I’m no scientist, but isn’t energy like electricity and heat or whatever? Isn’t it supposed to be untouchable and invisible and all that?”

“Yes Amanda. Technically you are right. But that’s beside the point. All our theories are just that. Theories. We assumed energy was all that because all the examples we had up till now supported those generalizations. But according to the Math, that tablet is Energy. Hence it is Energy.” He underlined what he had written earlier.

The room was silent. Everyone was hanging on Smiths every word. Fenryr’s hand had stopped twitching. There was a look of extreme concentration in his eyes. He asked Smith,

“What if the Math is wrong? The Equation maybe?”

Smith burst out laughing. A look of anger flashed across Fenryr’s face. Smith held up a hand in apology.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. It’s just that your question was so silly. The Absolute Equation explains everything. It links all the forces. Gravity and Quantum theory. It is the Theory of Everything. It is the single most tested and evaluated expression ever. Let me just say that I’m more sure that the Equation is accurate than I am the Sun will rise tomorrow.” He nodded once to Fenryr. Fenryr nodded back. His face returned to its usual impassiveness.

“So if the Math is right, and it is, then that tablet is Energy. Energy can be of many forms. As Amanda pointed out, Heat, Electricity, whatever. A rolling stone has Kinetic energy. A fruit hanging from a tree has Potential energy. But there is one thing that all energy has. A parameter we evaluate from the Absolute Equation Solution. The Intrinsic Frequency. All energy is characterized by it. Every form of energy has a distinct Intrinsic Frequency. All Electrical energy has the same IF as we call it. Same goes for all the other forms. Following me so far?”

A series of nods. Amanda’s was slow, but her face seemed to indicate that she understood well enough. Nayib wasn’t paying attention. He was working on a chocolate bar Manfred had handed him a while earlier.

“Well here’s where it gets interesting. The IF for the tablet keeps changing. Every time we measure it, it changes. So that’s what I was working on. Predicting the IF for the tablet. Enter the Spread Function.”

Smith erased the screen again. Started writing down the Spread Function Expression but gave up midway. No one really cared about it anyway.

“So yeah. The Spread Function. The Spread Function predicts the instances when the IF of the tablet approaches the IF of a usable form of energy. At that instant, a carefully calibrated input can modify the next IF value the tablet takes. This input could be anything. But owing to the extremely short duration of time the prediction is valid, the only thing fast enough to make the change is human thought.”

Looks of confusion. Only Nayib and Smith had known that before right now. Even Manfred and the technicians working on the machine had been kept in the dark about that detail. That was what had taken Smith so long on the Spread Function. How to convert human thoughts into a usable input for controlling the IF.

“I believe that the headdress seen in the fresco somehow resonated with the tablet, and with the IF of human neural energy. Basically, the Spread Function mimics that effect. It ‘tunes’ the tablet to take input from Human Neural Energy.” He paused.

The smarter ones in the group had picked up what the implications were. If they could control the tablet by their thoughts, the possibilities were miraculous to say the least. All they had to do was think ‘Electricity’ and the tablet would generate it. The world’s energy problems were solved. Amanda hadn’t caught on yet. She was still wrapping her head around the whole IF thing. Fenryr had his cell phone out. He was trying his Commanding Officer, but there was no signal down in the basement. He shoved it back in his pocket. Nayib had finished his chocolate and was licking his fingers. Manfred was dumbstruck. His mouth was opening and closing like a fish’s. Smith just smiled and continued talking.

“But that wasn’t enough for us. In the fresco, the tablet seemed to be able to generate matter out of thin air. We wanted to duplicate that effect. The third part of the Spread Function does that. That was the thing I was working on till yesterday. The Matter-Energy Equivalence Transform. MEET for short”

Nayib’s mouth watered at the mention of meat. He looked at his watch. It was barely 11. Nowhere near lunch time.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t conservation of energy apply? I mean the matter can hardly come out of nowhere. Where does it come from?” Fenryr interrupted. He was looking intently at Smith.

Smith was surprised. He had taken Fenryr to be the dumb soldier type. But here he was asking a valid question. He paused, formulating a reply.

“Yes, Fenryr. You are right. We believe, and this is an untested assumption that within the tablet itself, the required energy for the transformation is generated.”

He could tell Fenryr wasn’t satisfied with the answer, but it was the best one Smith had. He turned away and looked at Amanda. Her eyes were glazed over. Several of the others looked equally overwhelmed.

“In a nutshell, this device materializes your thoughts.” He concluded.

Nayib looked at him. That was a lovely way to describe what the machine did. Far simpler than what he had in mind. He would use that explanation at the post-test press conference. He smiled to himself. Maybe Smith wasn’t so useless after all.

***

Somewhere deep in the Atlantic Ocean, buried beneath tons of sand and silt was a small piece of the fresco. It hadn’t seen the light of day in millennia. Its left edge was jagged, and the panel on it was only half complete. If someone had found it, they would have marveled at how perfectly it fit with the right edge of the larger fresco.

The painting on it had dulled with age. The image barely visible. A tablet held high above the head of a man wearing a headdress. The man’s face melting. His eyes white with pain. His body turning to ash from the feet up. Men in loincloths bowing down to the one who had made the ultimate sacrifice for the good of their tribe.