Mike discovers that the team’s math is largely based on the work of an obscure, possibly insane Russian scientist named Aleksander Koturovic. Another comes through the portal with fatal wounds and massive radiation burns. One team member returns from the portal convinced that his wife has been replaced with a stranger. A team of six DARPA scientists working on a small campus near San Diego appears to have created a working teleportation device dubbed “The Albuquerque Door,” and Reggie asks Mike to see if it’s bogus or not. Mike is intrigued by an offer from his childhood friend Reggie Magnus, who's now the head honcho for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. “I’ve got.complete, instantaneous recall of anything I’ve ever seen or heard,” he explains. Not only is he a certified genius, but he also got a bonus: an eidetic memory. We soon learn that Mike is one of those gifted people who's chosen to walk away from his talents, but his gifts are particularly thorny.

Our hero is Leland “Mike” Erikson, whom we meet quietly teaching the last day of a high school English class in Maine. There’s a great big bait and switch in the middle of this sci-fi thriller by Clines (Ex-Purgatory, 2014, etc.), but it’s unlikely to deter readers intrigued by its full-on Michael Crichton–esque premise.

A schoolteacher with unusual gifts is recruited by the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects division to investigate a troubled project.

The fold by peter clines