At first glance, the scene is nothing strange: a teenage girl sitting on a chair, waiting impatiently for the makeup artist to finish the job.
It becomes interesting when you think that the girl is Noriko Null, also known as the world’s smartest person, and the artist is Deena Zylberman, current flame of Noriko’s father.
<Would you please stay still? I swear, you act like you never had makeup before.>
<I’m perfectly capable of applying cosmetics, Deena. I simply find the effort unnecessary.>
<Look, you can walk in front of a camera with millions of people watching that hideous green leather jacket of yours, but I refuse to let you do it without proper foundation and eye shadow.>
<I like that jacket> Noriko pouts.
Deena smiles. It’s one of those rare moments where Noriko lets down her guard and acts like the eighteen year old girl that she is.
<Y’know, this may be the first time we’ve had a chance to talk since I met your father.>
<I will try to control my excitement> Noriko answers with deadpan voice.
<You don’t really like me, now, do you?>
<No.>
<But you pay my rent.>
<You make my father happy, for reasons I force myself not to dwell upon. As long as that doesn’t change, the rest is inconsequential to me. Are we done now?>
<Sure. Well, tell me, what do you think?>
<Inertial electrostatic confinement is the most promising path towards successful nuclear fusion.>
<About the makeup.>
<Oh. I could’ve done a better job if I wanted to, but I appreciate the effort.>
Noriko steps up, putting on the green leather jacket. She looks at herself in the mirror, specifically at the white symbol on her black T-shirt. The symbol for a null set: Ø. Now her symbol.
Her silver eyes glow suddenly. She’s feeling the moment.
<I’d tone down the glowy-eyes thing if I were you. It messes with the eye shadow.>
“And it gives me the creeps every time you do that” – Deena adds without saying it out loud.
The press room is lit by tens of flashes when Noriko walks into the room. The five feet tall teenager steps on the blue podium with the large Ø symbol and turns on the microphone.
<I am Null. Get used to hear this often.>
Backstage, Deena chuckles thinking that, for Noriko’s standards, it was kinda funny.
<The press has called me “the smartest girl in the world”, which is of course correct if a bit reductive. As of today, I am also the sole owner of Null Technologies. Since you have never heard of it, you are probably wondering what Null Technologies does. Luckily for you, I am a firm believer in the “show, don’t tell” philosophy.>
Noriko places a cylindrical object on the podium, something that looks like fancy camera lens.
When she turns it on, the air is filled with a spectacular tri-dimensional projection of the schematics of this device. She needs to raise her voice above the sudden chatter in the audience.
<The Null Holographic Projector is just the first of many scientific breakthroughs you can expect from Null Technologies. Investors can find all the information they need to know on our website; you can see the address in the projection. Now, onto more trivial matters…>
Noriko presses a few buttons on the dedicated remote, and the hologram changes form. Now it shows an outside view of the skyscraper where Noriko is keeping the presentation, but with one major difference: the big Ø symbol added on top.
<Two East River Place will be renamed Null Tower; it will serve as headquarters of Null Technologies and my personal residence. Résumés can also be submitted to our website; don’t worry, I have assembled a dedicated server to back up the increase in traffic.>
She pauses. Right now, you could probably hear all the jaws hitting the floor.
<Any questions?>
Every single hand in the room goes up.
White House Situation Room
Washington, D.C.
A live feed of the press conference is playing on one of the many flat screens. Others show stills from the Talos attack; others yet focus on Vesta and Quantum. A man breaks the silence:
<So this is the girl you guys are all so worried about.>
<Mister President, if I may> another man answers, standing up and replacing the live video with a still picture. It shows a big hole in the ground.
<This picture was taken the morning after the New York Air Impact. The building houses the former residence of Noriko Null. You can see the signs of an impact in the left corner, which from our analysis was caused by a motorcycle crashing into the wall. According to police reports, people first heard an explosion and saw a very bright blue light. When they looked at the street, it had simply vanished. The description matches the blue light that accompanied the sudden appearance and later the sudden disappearance of the meteor that caused the air impact.>
<The same meteor that NASA says wasn’t a meteor at all> the President remembers.
<We have recovered parts of the motorcycle and identified it as belonging to a Marco Sanchez, who reported it was stolen by, quote, “an Asian girl with glowing eyes”. Mister Sanchez received several thousand dollars in his mailbox the day after miss Null won one million dollars on a TV show.>
<I remember the show. She said she needed to repay a motorcycle she had crashed.>
<The theft of mister Sanchez’s vehicle was witnessed by several people, who also reported the unexplained explosion of a bar called Moonbucks. A girl whose description matches miss Null was present right after the explosion, together with an unidentified African American male in his mid-twenties and a Caucasian woman with long red hair who was later identified as one of the waitresses of said bar. According the bar’s hiring records, the woman was identified as Vesta Dicrono.>
<You are suggesting that the waitress is the flying woman who fought the robot and the African American male is Quantum. And that what caused the street to disappear was the same thing that made a meteor first appear and then disappear over New York> the President summarizes.
<That’s correct, mister President. Our telescopes also picked up an unexpected blue flash on the surface of the Moon. Further investigation proves that that part of the Moon is now missing.>
<A piece of the Moon is missing?> the President repeats, incredulous.
<Yes Mister President. As you can see, all these…impossible things point to miss Null.>
The President leans back, sighing. This is going to be one of the days when he whishes somebody else had this job.
<What do we know about her?> he asks.
<As far as we can tell, sir, until the night before the impact she was an ordinary teenager. We have studied her student records and tracked her activity on the Internet: she didn’t show any sign of high intellect. We did find, however, that her family has a very unusual history.>
<How so?>
<Her mother disappeared right after she was born. Her father Robert worked as a school janitor until recently; he is the grandson of professor Heinrich Null.>
The screen now shows a very old black and white picture, showing a smiling man shaking hands with a Nazi officer.
<Heinrich was an highly respected professor of geology in Germany in the 1930s.>
<Excuse me, how did we jump from teen supergenius to Nazis?>
<Look at what professor Null is holding in his right hand. He found it in an excavation in Greenland, enclosed in a zircon shell that he believed was older than the Earth.>
<It looks like a rock. Shaped like a baseball> the President notes, squinting.
<Yes, Mister President. Professor Null claimed it showed him images of an alien civilization who used it to, quote, throw away stars when they didn’t need them anymore. He called it the Heart of the Universe. The Nazis took some interest in his discovery at first, but when he failed to show any kind of proof he was isolated from the scientific community. His son Conrad, Noriko’s grandfather, emigrated to the United States in the early 1950s. We believe he took the Heart of the Universe with him.>
<So, to recap> the President interrupts, rubbing his eyes <A Nazi recovered an alien artifact that somehow turned his great-granddaughter into a genius, gave super-powers to a waitress and some guy who thinks he’s a super-hero, and was used to teleport a piece of the Moon over New York.>
<Yes, Mister President.>
<How does this lead to an alien robot who thinks he’s working for a Greek god?>
<We…we’re still working on that, sir> the man answers nervously.
Tokyo, Scion Corporation R&D labs
The day after
Leiko Tanaka hasn’t said a word the whole meeting. The scientists across the table have dreaded her voice for some time now: they know she can destroy their lives with a sentence.
They know what happened to the people who questioned her orders, or who dared to leak any sort of information to outsiders. They know that, at Scion Corporation, Leiko’s voice is law.
According to the Null website, the holographic project works by controlling the position of photons composing the image, causing them to freeze in mid-air in the desired configuration. Which, as far as we know, is completely physically impossible.
<Could she have reverse-engineered this technology from the robot?> Leiko asks.
<Unlikely. The Talos is still under custody of the United States military and she hasn’t had the time to study it. We only managed to do it with the same technology recovered from the Greek vase that allowed us to control it.>
<Are we certain it hasn’t communicated with anyone after we sent it to New York?> she asks.
<Absolutely, ma’am.>
<How about our surveillance? Do we know what she’s doing?>
<The surveillance cameras in her older residence have been destroyed. We have tried to infiltrate listening devices or hack into their database, but Null Tower is impregnable.>
Leiko inhales sharply. The scientists wait for her lead.
“The robot didn’t mention the Heart of the Universe. That means that Hephaestus wasn’t the one that enhanced my daughter’s intelligence. How needlessly sentimental of me to keep her alive”.
<Buy Null Technologies. I don’t care about the cost.>
<Mistress> a female voice interrupts.
A dark haired woman dressed in green, the only Caucasian in the room, stands up.
The woman’s body quickly splits in two, and a second body of the Many walks towards Leiko.
<We think we have another way.>
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