1
Paul Marino could see the collapse of the environment from human activities beginning
right before his eyes. He knew it was inevitable and there was nothing he could do to stop
it. Upon meeting a man from the future, Paul learns that his fears come true and they are
worse than he could have imagined. But the man also comes with hope, a gift. He gives
Paul the ability to change the world. He tells Paul to do three things: stop the destruction
that eventually leads to the decimation of life on the planet; train to fight because they
will come for him; and to protect Melissa. Walking a fine line between saving the world
of tomorrow and fighting with the people of today Paul sets out on his mission. All the
while wondering how he will ever find the one “Melissa” he is to protect.
2
Five Minutes in the Future: ................................................................................................. 4
A Year and a Half Earlier ................................................................................................... 6
The Future ......................................................................................................................... 11
The Gift ............................................................................................................................. 17
Katie .................................................................................................................................. 20
Skurge ............................................................................................................................... 25
Setting up Camp................................................................................................................ 34
Working with the Masters................................................................................................. 44
379 Grand Avenue ............................................................................................................ 52
Happy Birthday ................................................................................................................. 59
Getting Ready ................................................................................................................... 62
Meeting Melissa ................................................................................................................ 66
The First Mission .............................................................................................................. 75
A Chink in the Armor ....................................................................................................... 83
A Woman’s Intuition ........................................................................................................ 91
Family Man ..................................................................................................................... 100
The Winds of Change ..................................................................................................... 105
Four Minutes and Thirty Seconds in the Future ............................................................. 107
All On Board ................................................................................................................... 116
Two Years ....................................................................................................................... 122
Raptor.............................................................................................................................. 127
Even Ground ................................................................................................................... 131
Self-Sacrifice................................................................................................................... 135
Epilogue .......................................................................................................................... 148
3
Five Minutes in the Future:
She hung up the phone and exhaled deeply. Finally! The end the long day.
6:30.
“Damn!” She muttered to herself as she gathered her bag and jacket. She told her friends
that she would meet them for Friday Happy Hour in a few minutes as she finished with
her last client. That was over an hour ago.
On the way to the lobby, she used the mirrored wall in the elevator to fix herself. The
door slid open just as she finished untangling one corner of her collar from her faux
pearls. She crossed the lobby to the security guard’s desk.
“Good night, Marty.”
“Late night tonight, Miss Cooper?” Marty was the guard at the front desk. Just about
ready for his retirement, he rarely got out from behind his desk. For his age he was still in
pretty good shape but he had the typical love handles of an aging man. He specialized in
small talk and endless conversation about classic cars.
Eager to get out before he got entrenched in a description of his latest car project, she
swiped her ID card and started heading away. “Yeah, I had to finish with a client on the
phone. Late for Happy Hour. Good night.”
“See you on Monday. I’ll have pictures from this weekend’s car show. I’ll be showing off
my ’67 Chevelle. She’s really sweet. Would you like a free pass to the show?”
“No thanks, Marty. Have a great weekend.”
He was harmless enough. Very friendly, but he loved to talk. About once or twice a week
he managed to occupy her for several minutes. He was the kind of person who didn’t pick
up on social cues and body language like shifting towards the exit or repeated glances at a
watch. Walking out of the elevator talking on a cell phone, or pretending to do so, had
been ineffective. But today was a good day. She was able to disengage in about thirty
seconds. Rushing through the massive glass doors, she left 379 Grand Avenue and
briskly walked down the street. She considered taking a taxi as one drove towards her
building but allowed it to pass. Skids, the bar her coworkers frequented, was only a few
blocks away. The October air had a hint of a chill in it but it was not too cold. She carried
4
her jacket on her arm. She stopped at the curb and waited for the traffic to clear before
crossing the street.
She turned a corner and headed for the bar, her heels making echoing footsteps off the
brick facades. She noticed that a couple of the locals glanced at her as she approached.
She suddenly felt uncomfortable and realized how alone she was. Familiar to the
neighborhood during the day, at night these streets took on an eerie loneliness. It seemed
much larger yet more cramped, with more corners and shadows. She picked up her pace
but not so much that it would be obvious. She didn’t dare turn around but she could feel
the two men were now following her. Her eyes darted from side to side looking at the few
people she passed. Some were oblivious to her while others seemed to lock eyes as she
hurried along. A growing awareness revealed faces in doorways or behind cars- all
seemingly leering at her from the shadows. No longer caring how obvious it looked, she
picked up the pace again getting almost to a jog. A man stepped out of a doorway ahead
of her and walked straight for her, staring the whole time. Walls were closing around her.
She quickly stepped between two cars and headed across the street. Her heart pounded so
hard she could feel it in her ears. When she reached the opposite sidewalk she looked
ahead and saw another man heading towards her, eyes tunneled at her. She spun on her
heel- another man.
The net closed around her. The wolf pack surrounded her and blocked any attempt to
break through the circle. There must have been at least eight of them- too many for her to
get a grasp of their numbers. They pushed her back and forth across the circle. They
passed her around the circle, groping some part of her body with each shove. One of the
men yanked her jacket off of her arm. Another ripped her purse from her shoulder. To
her, they looked like a sea of grabbing hands, sneering mouths and eyes filled with
malice. A new level of horror swept over her as she realized that the attack didn’t stop
when her purse was taken. One grabbed her pony tail and yanked her back. She cried and
screamed and covered her face with her hands as the shoves and pulls became more
forceful. Her sleeve ripped and one of the men chuckled. The blood pounding through her
veins rushed with such force that her hearing dissolved into white noise. She was being
smothered. She felt a button pop on her blouse. Someone grabbed her necklace. It
snapped and all the faux pearls fell to the ground clicking as they settled on the cold
concrete…
5
A Year and a Half Earlier
Paul Marino, a twenty-nine year-old science teacher, was deep in discussion with his
students. The latest headlines had them both excited and scared. The recent, historymaking storms they had studied had given them plenty of practical lessons since
September. The current record-breaking 8 days and 15 inches of rain served as a
backdrop to the latest storm to make the front page:
Another Tornado Outbreak Levels Oklahoma!
“This year’s tornado storm season,” the science teacher explained, “has been so active
that it has had more tornados by mid-April than the average year has all season. With
over two months left of tornado season, this year is predicted to shatter records of
frequency, strength, and range. Last year’s hurricane season was so busy that NOAA, the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, ran out of letters in the alphabet and
needed to start again at Greek letter Alpha.”
“Why is this happening,” asked a young teen from near the back of Marino’s classroom.
“Well, some would say that it’s just a random series of events,” Marino answered, “that
would have eventually happened.”
“Mr. Marino, it sounds like you don’t believe that.”
“Not completely. There is another theory that, even if not correct, at least gives us
something to think about: The Earth is mad at us.”
A few students chucked. “Come on!” another burst out.
“Think of it this way,” the teacher pointed out, “our atmosphere is getting hotter every
year.”
“You’re talking about Global Warming.”
“Right, Maggie, the Earth’s atmosphere is getting hotter from heat trapped by extra
carbon dioxide. The extra heat adds energy to the atmosphere which fuels these storms.
All that a hurricane is trying to do is take the extra heat from the sunny part of the world
and mix it with the colder air near the pole. Tornadoes form along lines where cold, dry
6
air meets warm moist air. The turbulence mixes the air at the interface. Some would say
that the increase in number and strength of hurricanes as well as tornadoes and other
storms,” he waved to the monsoon outside the window, “are a direct result of humans
burning fossil fuels.”
Silence.
“So you can say that these storms are Earth’s reaction to human pollution. The Earth is
mad at us.”
To add a note of finality, the dismissal bell rang in the hanging silence. “Have a good day
everyone. I’ll see you tomorrow.” The usual cheery smiling students did not wave their
goodbye’s today. They quietly packed up and marched out, deep in thought and a
melancholy cloud hanging over their heads. Mr. Marino said good-bye to the last of his
students then walked to his classroom window. Beyond his almost six-foot reflection, he
saw his students, hunched and covering their heads, dash from doors out to waiting cars
and busses. A scowl darkened his face and the brows above his brown eyes knitted
together. He contemplated the gloom and the steady rain for a few moments and then sat
at his desk to grade some papers.
A couple of hours later, he finished his last paper and packed up. He threw on his
Goretex rain jacket and shouldered his teacher bag. The building was empty and quiet
except for the pounding of the rain on the roof. A garbage pail was stationed at the end of
the hall to collect the drips of water leaking through the soggy ceiling tiles. The main
office was empty and dark as Paul passed through to check his mailbox and sign out. He
flinched as his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He rarely got calls on it and it was on
silent mode for the school day. He looked at the screen to see the caller ID.
Caller Out of Area.
“Hello,” Paul said curiously.
“Mr. Marino?” A man’s voice asked on the other side.
“Yes. Who’s calling?” Paul paused at the lobby door, preparing to pull his hood up for
the rainy sprint across the parking lot.
“My name is Allie and I have a proposition I think you’d be very interested in.”
He opened the door and started across the lot. “I’m sorry, I’m not interested.”
“I’m not trying to sell you anything, but to give you an opportunity. Please hear me out,”
the caller insisted.
What’s this world coming to, Paul thought, telemarketers are now calling on cell phones.
7
“Really, sir, I’m not interested in any opportunities.”
Suddenly, like a switch turned off, it stopped raining. The absence of drops on his hood
was so abrupt that it startled him like he heard a loud noise. Paul looked around and saw
that it was raining everywhere except within a precise circle about ten feet wide with him
at the exact center.
“Do I have your attention now?”
“How did you do that?”
“There’s time for that later. May I have ten minutes of your time? I promise you’ll be
interested in what I have to say.”
“Where and when?”
“The athletic fields. Right now.”
Paul looked towards the dark fields. “I don’t see anyone there.”
“Just come to the middle of the fields. I’ll be there.” The call went dead.
Paul walked to his car, put his bag in the trunk, and headed for the fields. As he walked,
the rain shadow followed him, keeping the circle of dryness centered on him. He left the
lights of the parking lot headed into the field. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he still
couldn’t see anyone in the field.
What a strange place to have a meeting, Paul thought, a muddy field on a rainy night.
The soggy field yielded under each of his steps with the sound of a wringing sponge. In
the middle of the field, Paul noticed a patch that didn’t seem as hazy with rain. As he got
closer, he realized that it was another “rain shadow”. He entered and the area was
completely clear of rain. He looked around at the patch of field. The rainless area was
much larger than his ten-foot circle but it had a different shape- roughly like a lower-case
T. When his vision reached one of the ends of the “T”, Paul finally saw him standing
there. A man dressed all in brown. Dark baggy pants topped by a loose tunic of a lighter
tan fabric. He was completely dry. Tall and thin, the man’s complexion was very pale yet
he looked rugged. He looked as if he was aged beyond his years by a hard life. He
appeared to be about fifty years old but his eyes looked younger.
“Mr. Marino, thank you for coming out. I’m Allie and it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
Confused about the ‘finally meet you’ distinction, Paul extended his hand to take the
stranger’s and they shook.
8
“Mr. Marino, let me get right to my reason for contacting you. I’ve heard some great
things about the way you speak and teach about the Earth. You speak of our
responsibility as wards of this planet. You are frustrated about the continuing problems
and the inability for one person to make things the way they should be. I’m in a rather
unique position and would like to extend a once in a lifetime, no, a once in several
lifetimes opportunity to you.”
Here it comes, thought Paul, the sales pitch. He eyed the stranger suspiciously, looking
for any sign of a con or mental instability. Despite his outward appearance, which
bordered on a homeless look, Paul couldn’t detect anything but sincerity.
“Mr. Marino, what keeps you up at night?” The question hung there. The two men stared
at each other without a sound except that of the driving rain around them.
Paul thought a moment. He already knew the answer; he was just contemplating if he
should share his deepest troubles with a complete stranger. Sensing that honesty would be
best, he replied, “I’m kept awake by the fear that I will live to see the world die before I
do. I fear that I am already witnessing it dying. A cancer is attacking our world and it has
already gone past the point of no return. I fear that even if the people of this planet wake
up to the peril, it will be too late.”
The words came easily. He has said them dozens of times before in class and he knew
them by heart. “I lay my head on my pillow with visions of the ice caps melting, sea level
rising, weather patterns changing, entire cities abandoned from the former coastlines.
Ecosystems destroyed to the point that the lack of biodiversity will no longer sustain the
planet. I hear the cry of the animals ‘Why is this happening? Where did my home go?’ I
stay awake wondering if I should have children and what their fate would be?”
“Do you have a solution to the problem?”
“There is no solution. The people who have the most influence have other priorities.”
“What kind of priorities, Mr. Marino?”
“They fall into two main categories: apathy or selfishness.”
“What if you could change it?”
Paul shifted in his shoes. The spongy field made a squishing noise as he picked up one
foot slightly. “You can’t change it. These people are rich, powerful and don’t care what
happens to anything as long as they turn a profit.”
“But, Mr. Marino, what if?” Allie’s last two words were very forceful and Paul sensed
seriousness and an urgency behind them.
9
“If I could change it, I would.” Paul enjoyed discussions of this sort, but he felt as if the
stranger already knew the answers to all of his own questions. Tired of standing in a
muddy field, Marino cut to the chase. “What’s this all about?”
“Mr. Marino, I come from a place that has been totally devastated by the destruction of
the environment. My actual home is twenty feet below ground and I spend most of my
time there. Food is scarce back home and everything I eat is either deeply preserved or
synthetic. Despite my harsh living conditions, I’ve managed to develop a few things that
I’m quite proud of. Things that I think will help you realize your vision and help you
sleep at night. If we can go for a ride, I think I can show you something you’ll like.”
“Where’s your car?”
“Right here.” Allie said with a sweeping wave behind him. As he did so, a small building
faded into view just behind Allie. Paul looked up and saw that it also overhung the two
men. Paul took in the sight and realized that it wasn’t a building at all, it was a craft. By
the struts under each corner of the craft he surmised that it must be some kind of aircraft.
“OK, you have my attention!”
The craft was about 30 feet long with a long tapering nose, a rectangular wing on each
side and a pair of powerful looking engines in the rear- all in about the shape of a hilted
dagger. The canopy of the ship had the appearance of a fighter jet but the craft looked
like nothing Paul had ever seen before. Allie ascended up the ladder that hung from
below the canopy and climbed into the cockpit. He motioned for Paul to follow.
As Paul climbed up, he gazed above the ship. Only then was he able to see the rain
splattering and draining above him as if it were hitting a glass ceiling. When he reached
the top, he saw that there was a second seat next to Allie and he got in. As he sat, the
console came to life with lights and displays. A quiet hum started from all around the
two. The canopy slowly closed and the ship started to lift straight up into the rainy
darkness.
10
The Future
Allie piloted the craft smoothly up into the rain. The canopy remained completely dry as
the rain parted over the invisible ceiling. Fog began to surround the two as they rose into
a cloud. Paul watched the pilot casually adjust controls on the front console. The mist
faded and stars began to show. Allie began talking while the two of them lazily drifted
along above the rain clouds.
“Mr. Marino, it should be obvious to you that this ship is very advanced technology. It
should also be obvious that I am not from the military or government. So you have to ask
yourself the obvious question: ‘how does someone like me get technology like this?’ ” He
paused for a moment. “The answer is clear, isn’t it?”
Paul nodded.
“My home is about two hundred years in the future. As I told you before, my world is
devastated. You worry about what will happen to the planet if things keep going the way
that they are? Well it gets bad, probably even worse than you think it will. I estimate that
in less than one hundred years in my future, the planet’s ecosystem will completely
collapse to no life more complex than a slug. The climate is unstable. Extreme swings in
weather are commonplace. Long periods of severe drought are followed by excessive
flooding. Conditions vary so quickly and so extremely that it is beyond the adaptability of
most organisms. The people of the planet have been struggling for over a hundred and
fifty years just to survive.”
“After the wars to control food and water, we are down to about 90 million people left on
the planet. Most people live in the few cities that are left, where they pool resources such
as food, water, energy and air conditioning. The cities are run by corporationsdescendants of some of the very same ones that are around today. The corporation
owners are infinitely wealthy and will most likely be the last of all the people to perish.”
“The areas outside of the cities are barren wastelands. What little natural wild life is left
has adapted to either hide very well or spread out so wide that gathering or hunting is not
worth the effort. Most organic food for the people comes from greenhouses or farms
inside biospheres. But there aren’t enough of them and whatever food comes from them
is extraordinarily expensive. The rest of our food is supplemented by factories that mix
raw chemicals into synthetic food- if you can call it that. The consumption of synthetic
foods has caused an epidemic of cancer and the lack of medicines available to the general
public has made it even worse.”
11
“I am a recluse, I guess. I live alone, underground, just outside the city. My home is
hidden and self-sufficient thanks to some of my innovations. I basically have my own
biosphere fed by solar light pumped down to my level through fiber optics connected to
the surface. I spend most of my time inventing new technology and monitoring the
goings-on in the cities and the corporations.”
“My most recent big innovation was time bridging which I perfected two years ago and
has allowed me to visit you today. Let me tell you a little about how it works.”
“A theoretical physicist of your time named Stephen Hawking once described his theories
about multiverses- multiple Universes. Basically, that there are an infinite number of
universes occupying the same space at the same time. At every moment a decision that
you make sets off a chain of events that creates a timeline that extends forever into the
future. If you make a decision to wait for traffic to pass before crossing, all events then
follow the consequences of that one decision. If you hurry to beat the traffic, a whole new
set of sequences then happens. Hawking said that there is a Universe created every time
there is more than one possibility for an event. For each of the possibilities there is a
Universe with its own timeline. And all Universes happen at the same time occupying the
same space but in different dimensions.”
“If you look forward in time, the consequences and then the consequences of those
consequences branch into more and more Universes. If you go back in time, the branches
collapse into fewer and fewer Universes.”
He paused for a moment. “Do you know what entangled particles are?”
“I’ve heard a little about them,” Paul answered, “but I’m no expert. They are quantum
particles. A pair of them that have exactly the same properties. They are lined up in some
sort of way that if you change one, you change the other- regardless of the distance
between them. I think it is a current research topic which can theoretically transmit
information between two locations instantaneously without any wires or even signals.”
“Essentially, that’s it. But, entangled particles don’t only work across vast distances, they
also work across time. There are particles here in the present that have a partner in the
past with exactly the same properties as one in the past. If you can just find that one
particle, and can change the state of the particle in your present, it will change the one in
the past- you have sent information back in time.”
“OK, so you can send information back to the past,” Paul interrupted. “Like give yourself
the lottery numbers and make yourself a millionaire. That doesn’t explain how you are
here.”
Allie continued. “So now you can send information back and forth using these two
entangled particles. With that information bridge established, I can get information about
the next particle over from the first particle. Then the next and the next. The information
12
becomes more complete in an expanding sphere around your initial particle. With such an
exact connection to the past established, the exchange of information forms a wormhole
that can be crossed just by stepping through. At first you are both places at once and then
you pass completely into the other side- into the past.”
“The further into the past you go the harder it is to find those first paired particles needed
to establish a bridge. The collection of information is slower so the wormhole takes
longer to grow large enough to pass through.”
Paul took a few moments to take in all of this information and its implications. “What
about the grandfather paradox?”
“I’m sorry Paul, but I haven’t heard of that.”
“Allie, the grandfather paradox is a thought experiment and a popular debate on the topic
of time travel in science and science fiction circles. If I go back in time and kill my own
grandfather as a child, he will not grow up and meet my grandmother. My father would
have never been born and neither would I. But if I did not exist, how could I go back in
time to kill my grandfather?”
Allie took a moment to organize his words. “Paul, if you decide to travel back in time to
do this reckless and stupid thing, that would represent a decisional branch and create
alternate Universes where one consequence would be to go back and murder your
ancestor and another Universe would be formed from the decision not to. In roughly half
of the Universes branching from you initial decision you exist and others you do not. You
are only concerned with your Universe, your timeline- the one that you are in right now.”
“OK, so you can travel back in time, what about the future? Can you travel into the
future?”
“The short answer, Paul, is yes. But it is much more difficult. Finding entangled pairs
between your present and past is relatively easy because the state of all current particles
are the way they are because of what they were at one point in the past. The future is
much more random. Remember, when you go back in time, the decisional branches
coalesce while those in the future branch out and multiply exponentially. There is much
less history than future.”
“Now here’s the fun part. When you change the timeline, say, by killing your
grandfather, you now have two parallel realities and those Universes will have entangled
particles here.”
After contemplating Allie’s hanging implication, Paul’s eyes widened at the possibility.
“It’s a Wonderful Life!”
“Sorry?”
13
“It’s a Wonderful Life is a classic movie where a man in a state of extreme depression
wishes that he never existed at all. An angel gives him the gift of seeing what it would
really be like if he were never born. He got to see how different the world would be from
his absence and he saw the ripple effect of all of his actions. Even something as
significant as saying ‘hello’ to someone as they pass could produce a ripple effect.”
“It’s what we call the Butterfly Effect,” Paul continued. “A butterfly flaps its wings to
take off from a flower on which it was feeding. The disturbance releases some pollen.
The pollen then causes a lion to sneeze. The sneeze alerts a herd of animals to the lion’s
presence and they stampede away. The stampede kicks up a cloud of dust. The dust is just
enough to push the condensation rate within a cloud over a threshold which causes the
cloud to grow rather than dissipate. The cloud then continues across the ocean where it
collects moisture and energy and becomes a hurricane.”
“Exactly! But there’s a little more to it than that.” Allie explained, “there’s a thing called
‘Temporal Inertia’. Some events have little or no effect on future timelines. Other events
will affect them all! For example: if you go back in time and step on an ant. Chances are
immensely small that that missing ant will have any effect at all. But if you go back and
kill Adolf Hitler as a boy, it will affect every timeline and Universe that branches from
his existence- good and bad. It’s a bit of a gamble because you might step on that
butterfly.”
“With a just a few changes in the settings my ship can also visit parallel Universes. Your
own Einstein has even said that space and time are not separate things that have no effect
on each other. He said they are intimately linked. He was right- but not complete. If you
can travel through time, you can not only travel through space but also hop Universes in
the same way. You can see the consequences of some event in the past. For example, you
can side-step to a few alternate realities to survey the consequences of an event and those
if the event never happened. I would suggest that you don’t do it too often.” He paused
for a moment then looked over at Paul, “I would also suggest that you don’t go back and
kill your grandfather.”
“But here’s the problem,” Allie continued, “If you start jumping through time and across
Universes you can easily get lost, and lose track of which one you belong in and where
your friends, family and life exist as you know them. If you decide to do so, only do it as
an observer and always return to your home before you make another jump.”
“OK, Allie. So you can go back in time and step on that ant or kill Hitler. Why haven’t
you come back and stopped environmental change yourself?”
“For some reason, almost every side-Universe I visit, it simply doesn’t work. The odds
are that I will fail. But the chances improve if I recruit someone. I’ve searched for two
years. Your knowledge of science and your passion about environmental change- which I
found through numerous acknowledgments in your alumni’s writings, make you an ideal
candidate. I’ve checked many parallel realities and you have the best chances for
success.”
14
“So, here’s the basic plan:” Allie looked at Paul and gave him his full intense attention,
“you accept this mission, train for a year and then start your campaign to stop the
corporations and change the mindset of society. I will stay in my own time and fight
there.”
Paul was confused. “Why do you need to fight there?”
“Here’s the theory, Paul. If my plan succeeds, I wink out of existence. I will not wink out
of existence before I am even born but the moment that I left my time and decided to visit
you. I know I still have things to do because I am still here. The moment that the last
thing that needs to happen happens, I will wink out.”
“See this light here?” Allie pointed to a small steady red light on the dashboard. “This is a
beacon connecting my home to this ship. We will not be able to send messages back-andforth to each other. That would be too easy to trace to one of us. Back at home, I have a
transmitter that sends an intermittent signal to this display. As long as I, and my
workshop, exist it will send a signal here and keep the light on. If they discover me, the
beacon is automatically programmed to blink until it is shut down. If it suddenly goes
out, that means that you succeeded and I no longer exist.”
“You’re killing your grandfather?”
“Well Paul, in a manner of speaking, yes; although you are not a direct ancestor of mine.
I am sacrificing myself to save your world from becoming mine. I have to stay and fight
to keep the corps from finding you. I will stay in my time, keep my work hidden, and to
disrupt the temporal field in order to keep them from jumping back to find you. You will
need to train before you can actively do something. Once you overtly do something, they
will be able to find you and they will try to stop you. You will need to be able to protect
yourself.
“Train? Train what? Who will train me?”
“Once you start making changes, they will sense that something is different. They will
start to fail in their business. They will look in the history books to see where it all went
wrong. The more that you do, the better they will be able to pinpoint what time you are
from. Once they narrow down your time they will send people back to stop you. That’s
why you need to be ready to defend yourself before you do anything. Once you begin,
they will be able to find you by historical records. They will know where you will be and
when you’ll be there. Before your first action they will have no idea of who you are and
where you came from. Keep your identity secret otherwise they can simply look up your
birth information and kill you at any time before you begin your work.”
“You will need training in flying, and yes, hand-to-hand combat. You will also need to
learn about economics and social politics in order to understand your enemy.”
15
Paul blanched. I’m just a school teacher, he thought. How am I to fight off someonesomeone determined to kill me?
16
The Gift
“Now a little about what I’ve brought you. This ship is yours. It has many features, too
many for me to tell you about now. But here are the most useful capabilities: The ship
can travel at hypersonic speeds in the atmosphere. It can fly while facing in any direction
since it does not use aerodynamics like a plane does.”
“It has shields that can protect you from any current weapon including nukes. It will also
protect you and the ship from hazardous conditions such as high temperature, radiation
and pressure. It is space capable.”
“One of my favorite features is the cloak. It can render the ship invisible to all
wavelengths of light including visible frequencies. When doing this, the cloak requires a
lot of energy so try to budget when and how you use it. The cloak is designed for covert
surveillance and not for battle.”
Allie continued, “I used the cloak extensively to watch the corporations. It also allowed
me to sneak my ship out of my facility without being detected.”
“Speaking of battle, the ship is completely armed and battle-ready. It has both offensive
and defensive weapons that range from somewhat passive to all-out destructive. You
have a full arsenal of energy weapons, projectiles and missiles. The ship can hold more
ordinance than it looks like it can hold.”
“I call her ‘Storm Front’.”
The ship began to descend slowly and Paul could see the outline of a large building in the
darkness below.
“The next key system of this ship is the computer. Naturally, it has capabilities far
beyond modern computer systems. It is a negative time quantum computer. Basically
what this means is that the actual computing process happens faster than light. It’s a neat
little trick where the quantum particles used for data transfer enter a special medium.
Einstein says that nothing can travel faster than light in a vacuum. He still has not been
proven wrong. However, light slows down when it travels through a medium like water
or glass. In those media, there may be some particles that can travel faster than light can.
The end result is that the signal comes out of the other side before the input enters.
Transferring the data to other parts of the computer occurs at more normal speeds but it
makes calculations happen so much faster.”
17
“The computer has all of the technical and operational information you will need to learn
and use the full capabilities of not only the ship but of all I am leaving with you.”
“The next toy, when paired with the ship, will make an amazing team with no limits in
capability.”
Allie piloted the ship into the large building which appeared to be an empty warehouse.
He opened the canopy and the two men descended down the ladder onto the building
floor.
Baited by the cliffhanger, Paul’s curiosity clawed at him.
Thankfully, Allie continued without any further delay. “This is MaRe. ‘Mary’, or MAtter
REarranger, which allows you to create any material in any configuration almost
instantly. The concept is rather simple. Any kind of ordinary matter is collected from the
surrounding environment, converted into elementary particles- protons, neutrons and
electrons, and then rearranged into whatever element or compound you want.”
Allie handed Paul a cylinder about six inches long. It had different shades of metallic
colors- dark grey, silver, white, aluminum and bronze and gold hues. Paul moved it
around and twirled it a little in his hand. The device had a good weight and balance to it.
It was light with just enough weight to feel like he had a good solid object in his hand. It
tingled slightly and had an almost imperceptible humming and vibration to it.
“Try this!” Allie said. “Hold it in both hands like a baseball bat and swing just like you
would at a ball.”
Paul did as instructed. He gripped the cylinder with both hands and prepared to hit an
imaginary ball. Just as he began to swing, it made a sucking sound, there was a dull
thumping noise and it turned into a bat. The sudden weight change and new balance
startled Paul and the bat flew out of his hand. It twirled through the air as if it was a
slipped bat during a baseball game. It landed with a loud echoing hammering as it
bounced and slid across the empty warehouse floor.
“Call it back,” Allie instructed.
“Come back.” Paul commanded with authority.
Nothing.
“Reach for it like it is on a shelf just within reach.”
Paul reached out, stretched his fingers and grabbed at the imaginary object just within
reach. Instantly, the MaRe responded and jumped into his hand from fifty feet away
reverting back to its original shape on the way.
18
“How the Hell did that happen… all of it!”
“Besides rearranging matter,” Allie explained, “MaRe can also tell what to turn into by
reading your patterns of nerve activity. You make a movement like you are swinging a
bat, it turns into a bat. Swing a golf club, it turns into a golf club. Need a screwdriver?
It’ll turn into a screwdriver.”
“A different application of the same technology is embedded all throughout your ship. It
is a system designed to repair any damage to the ship automatically. If a piece of, let’s
say, the wing breaks off, regeneration units will assemble a functioning replacement right
there.”
“I have to go back now. If I stay too long I risk leaving my home unguarded. Once they
get their hands on my work, they’ll be able to come back for you. You’ll do fine, Paul.
Remember, I already know that chances are you will,” Allie reassured.
Allie took a small device out of his pocket, pressed a button. The air next to him
shimmered and then an expanding circle revealed a different scene. It was like looking
through a window into a room. Beyond the opening, Paul could see what he could only
surmise was Allie’s home. Machine parts cluttered shelves and hung disorganized by
tangled wires. “Good luck! And thank you.” He shook hands with Paul. Allie took one
step through the portal and looked back. “When you find Melissa, protect her.”
Before Paul could ask, Allie stepped through the opening and it closed instantly without
as much as a sound.
In silence, in the middle of an empty warehouse, holding MaRe in one hand, Paul stood,
motionless, looking at Storm Front.
19
Katie
As the enormity of his situation began to sink in, Paul realized that he needed help. He
needed assistance. He needed partners. Competent partners. A small team to help him
with the workings of his ship and mission. One name immediately popped into his head.
Katie Ryan.
Paul went to college with her. He was in the science program and she was in engineering.
They had many classes together and became good friends. Although he had feelings for
her at the time, she always had a boyfriend and he never had the opportunity to have her
all to himself. He pined after her for three years until they graduated. After graduation,
they went their separate ways but always kept in touch with an email, a birthday card or a
rare meeting whenever they were in the same town.
Katie stood just about the same height as Paul. Her natural and effortless beauty was
disarming. It was easy to forget that this girl, this woman, who could easily get by on
looks alone also had one of the most beautiful minds as well. Her dirty blonde hair with a
slight curl and a hint of red tint framed her shapely face. She could have been a model.
Paul often imagined her as the poster girl for engineering. He was sure that enrollment in
the engineering program would skyrocket. She had the most amazing blue eyes. Not a
pale blue, but a rich, deep, warm, comfortable blue. The kind that just invited you to stare
and lose yourself. She often accused him of being a typical male and not listening to her.
Which was only partially true. He was listening too hard. Her soothing voice became
music as he lost himself in its sound. She was beautiful and didn’t even know it. And she
was the most talented engineer and computer techie that he knew. She made it look easy.
He sent her a text:
Kat, I’d like ur input on a project. Get together today or tomorrow?
She replied:
U in town? After work. Give me some time to clean up. 6 2nite?
Paul:
Gr8. C u then.
****
20
At the stroke of six PM, Paul knocked on her door. After a few moments a text pinged his
phone. The caller ID displayed “Katie Ryan” of course.
Come in
The door clicked open all by itself.
Paul entered her house. It wasn’t large but it was warm and welcoming- just like Katie.
Not much had changed since the last time he visited a year or so ago. She added some
spring notions but everything was where he remembered it. A technophile, Katie had all
manner of gadgets around, but most were working behind the scenes- like her automatic
door opener. Whatever technology was visible, it was brilliantly modified to look like it
was a natural part of the décor. An enlarged photo of a grove of aspen that Katie took
herself during a trip to Colorado hung on the wall. Paul knew that the image of beautiful
black-speckled white, straight trunks of the trees reaching towards the sky was actually
the screen of a flat panel TV.
Her refrigerator scanned the bar codes of supplies and took inventory of every item put
in- and taken out. It then generated a shopping list to replace depleted or expired supplies.
The list was uploaded to her phone.
The picture frame on the table, currently showing a picture of her brother, was a tablet
computer connected to all of the major functions of her house.
Whenever she came home, the house welcomed her- already prepped for her arrival as if
a servant was expecting her. When she left work every day, she told her GPS “Home”. At
that signal, the house came alive. Based on her current position and real-time traffic
patterns, the house prepared for her by activating different systems at just the right times
in order for the house to be ready for her arrival. The heater took the day’s chill out of the
house. The water heater ramped up the temperature. Even the toilet seats warmed up.
When she pulled into the driveway, the entry lights inside flicked on as if someone was
expecting her. Anticipating that her hands were full of the groceries that the refrigerator
suggested, and that the GPS confirmed that she stopped to get, the front door unlocked
and swung ajar as she walked up to the door.
“Hey Paulie!” She greeted as she came down the stairs. It always amazed him how
effortless she made it look to be so casually beautiful. The jeans and warm soft sweatshirt
looked like she had just bought them. She gave him kiss on the cheek and a sincere hug.
The hug of good friends. Her hair smelled heavenly. His crush and their mutual sexual
tension had long ago faded away but they remained friends- as close as friends could be.
An honest friendship, like a brother and sister that hated to be apart.
“Katie, you look great. I see you’ve been keeping up on your cardio-kick-boot-campburst-endurance-something-or-other.”
21
“Thanks, yeah.” She walked into the kitchen, grabbed a glass and began to fill it with ice
and water from the refrigerator. “So tell me about this project.” She handed him the glass.
He liked his routines. She already knew that he wanted just plain ice water.
He grabbed the glass and took a long sip. After taking a moment to enjoy the refreshing
feeling of the cold water sliding down his warm, dry throat he said “I can’t tell you. I
have to show you.”
“OK, Lemme see.”
“It’s outside,” he replied. “Come on.” His voice had a hint of Christmas morning
excitement in it.
He put down his mostly-full glass and escorted her outside. “Lock up. This could take a
little while.”
She turned around and pressed her thumb to the scanner where there would usually be a
lock. After her thumbprint was verified, the door clicked.
“You have to close your eyes.”
“Hey, you said you were going to show me!”
“Please,” he begged.
“OK.”
She closed her eyes. A moment later, she felt a blindfold slip over her face.
“Hey!”
“I have to make sure you don’t peek.”
“What the Hell!” She protested, but she allowed it.
He took her hand and guided her up the walkway. Her hands were always pleasantly
warm. Even on a cool April evening. Even after holding a cold drink.
“OK. We’re here. I want to show you my new ride.” She was a little confused. It didn’t
feel like they walked any further than the curb in front of her house but she didn’t notice
any car there when she came out. She dismissed it since she turned to lock her door and
closed her eyes too quickly to take in any details. She heard the soft sound of a car door
opening. He escorted her up the short access ladder.
Confused by the unexpected climb up a ladder, again, she blurted out, “what the Hell!”
22
“Just trust me and go with it.”
She knew he would never harm her. She trusted him completely. He guided her over the
edge of the cockpit and into the seat. “Keep your hands in your lap and don’t touch
anything.”
“I don’t… eh whatever.”
Paul got down the ladder and quickly walked around the invisible ship and felt for the
other access ladder. He dropped down in the seat next to her and began the sequence to
take off. As they began to rise the canopy closed. The level, vertical ascent and
subsequent flight was completely smooth. Katie had no idea that they were even moving.
Paul set the destination coordinates and let the autopilot do the rest.
“You know how I always wished there was a way that I, just one person would be able to
do something to get the environment pointed back in the right direction? Well, I think I
finally found a way. Take your blindfold off and look around.”
She did so slowly and cautiously. Before the blindfold was even halfway up her forehead
“whoa” was all she could say. Paul had blackened out the windows. All she could see
were the controls and displays of the cockpit.
“What is this? How did you get this?” she gasped in awe.
“Something different, huh? I can’t thoroughly explain it all now but the short of it is that I
was recruited by people with vast resources at their disposal.”
She looked around again, slowly, at all of the details and began to absorb the layout of
the dashboard.
After she completed a more thorough pass of the cockpit Paul said “now look at this.” He
pressed a button, the windows cleared revealing the very near surface of the moon to the
right. Directly in front of them, gleaming, sparkling was the small jewel of the Earth.
A quick wave of nausea flashed through her as she realized that there was no ground
under what she thought was a car. The wave passed as quickly as the onset.
A long moment later the engineer in her asked, “Why aren’t we weightless?”
Without going into detail, Paul simply stated “inertial dampeners and gravity generators.”
He guided the ship towards Earth. It steadily grew in size before them while he explained
about the mysterious man who gave him the ship and some of the abilities of the craft.
As they neared the atmosphere, Paul said “watch this” as he pointed out the window and
then he re-engaged the cloak. Katie watched as the wings disappeared. Sensing her
23
confusion Paul simply explained “the wings are still there. The ship’s skin can bend
light.”
Katie head was swiveling this way and that looking at the continents and oceans as they
became larger. They flew above the clouds. She began to see the grey smudges of cities,
landmarks, then roads, buildings then cars as they descended back into her neighborhood.
As they reached her house, still cloaked and hovering just above the rooftops, Paul said
“There’s one more thing.” Just then, in front of them, on the street below them, they
watched as Katie’s car drove around the corner. It turned up her driveway and she got
out. Wearing the same clothes and carrying the same bag of groceries that she had…two
hours ago!
Katie sat there, speechless, watching herself walk into her house and close the door.
“This ship was given to me by a man from the future who wants me to change the
world…”
“…and I need your help to do it.”
24
Skurge
Spurred on by the excitement of the possibilities, Paul and Katie worked every moment
that they could. They listed and organized and planned on how to make the whole thing
work. The first thing that they agreed on was that they simply couldn’t go back in time
and “stop it” or change events because of the unforeseen consequences. They needed to
change things from this moment forward. Before they did anything they had to have a
plan and they had to get everything in place before they implemented that plan. And they
only had a year to do it.
Paul hid the ship in the same abandoned warehouse where Allie disappeared. He parked
the craft in a high storage bay. With the cloak engaged it was sufficiently undetectable.
Whenever he and Katie visited, all that Paul needed to do was approach it and tell it to
drop the cloak in order to gain access. They needed to familiarize themselves with its
basic capabilities. For the next week, they spent many hours running Storm Front through
her paces- after school for Paul and after work for Katie. They tested the speed,
acceleration, maneuverability and they were thoroughly impressed. They even did a
couple of time jumps across the bridge.
On their first test jump together they went forward by three hours and watched the lottery
drawing. They both fantasized about hitting the big one, but they quickly dismissed it
because it would attract too much attention. On their next trip, they went back in time to
July 20, 1969 to watch the moon landing live on TV. When they returned to present time
Katie had a brilliant idea.
“Let’s go see the moon landing,” she said.
“Been there, done that.”
“No, Paul. THE moon landing.”
His eyes widened and then he immediately reset the time bridge. Just as he was about to
open the portal, Katie stopped him.
“Paul, set the entry point a mile or so away from our last entry. We don’t want to fly into
ourselves.”
“Good point,” he conceded. “I knew you’d be a great partner!”
25
He made a slight change in the controls and opened the bridge. In the featureless sky, the
opening was invisible since they were looking through to the other side to another
featureless sky. When they passed through, there was a little bump and there was a quick
passing wave of dizziness.
“That was odd,” Paul observed. “All of the other times the jump was completely
seamless.”
“Turbulence?”
“The ship doesn’t fly on air currents. It’s impervious to turbulence.”
“Perhaps it was some kind of interference from our last trip,” she postulated. “I mean,
two ships opening two bridges at the same time at nearly the same location might have
caused some waves or resonance or something.”
“Hmm. Perhaps.” He knitted his brow.
They sped off to the moon still cloaked. They arrived just as the Eagle was in the final
stages of descent. They listened to the conversations between the astronauts and Mission
Control while they watched from a safe distance. Paul occasionally hit a button to capture
short video clips and pictures for his own enjoyment later. When the lunar lander came
safely to a stop, he positioned the ship within a hundred feet for a good view. Even
though cloaked, he made sure not to get in frame of the outboard cameras used to
transmit the “One Small Step” moments. When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the grey
dusty surface and said the most famous words ever spoken, Paul and Katie had a shiver
run up their backs and bumps rose on their skin. They marveled at the gift they had been
given.
They decided that they had had enough time to play and needed to get on with their work.
The first order of business was to get at least one more person to help them to get started.
The first person that they decided that they needed was a computer specialist. Someone
who could speak to Storm Front’s computer, fix it, maintain it and use its full capabilities.
Someone who could cover their tracks as they worked. And someone who could also get
whatever information they needed from whatever source that they needed it from. They
needed a hacker.
“Steve Miles, ‘Skurge’,” Katie suggested. “We worked together on a project for the
metro system. He was able to build an integrated system that allowed controllers to
monitor, track and control every system and subsystem of the new transportation hub in
the city- and he had the plans roughed out over a weekend.”
“I’ve met him outside of work a few times during the project to discuss some details. I
think he might be just the person to run the computers.”
26
“Allie told me that I’ll need a combat trainer, flight teacher and I have to learn economics
and politics.”
“We need a place from which to work. We need contacts and inroads into the
corporations,” Katie brainstormed.
They started to become overwhelmed by the things they needed to do and the list of
people they needed to find and bring on board.
“Let’s start with Miles,” Paul said.
****
Paul and Katie pulled up to the address. It was a nice neighborhood- not too upscale, but
it was a town that cared for itself and took pride in itself. Old, knobby, shady trees hung
over the street. The sidewalks, straight and level, framed the manicured lawns. The
landscaping was neat and clean. Shapely shrubs and colorful accent plants were bedded
in dark brown mulch. Each house was different from the next.
They rang the doorbell. The moment walking up to a new front door filled Paul with his
usual battery of anticipations. He wondered, is this the right house? What will the person
be like who answered the door? Was it the person they were looking for? If it is someone
else, would they be expecting us? Will they be moody that they were disturbed or
welcoming of a new friend? Will he need to talk through the door? Through a cracked
door? Or across an open-inviting entry?
After only a short time, Paul saw the distorted figure of a person approaching the door
through the wavy glass. The figure loomed until it filled the entire portal and then the
door opened.
“Hello! Katie! And you must be Paul.” Obviously it was Skurge, but he was not at all like
he imagined him to be. He was not a basement rat that one often envisions a computer
genius to be. He was in his early to mid-twenties with a thin, but athletic build. Just an
average looking person that would blend into a crowd and be invisible if he wanted.
He gave Katie a warm handshake, turned to Paul and gave him a firm handshake as well.
Strong hands. The practiced hands of someone who typed on keyboards constantly, but
Paul also felt a little exercise behind them. The glint in Steve’s brown eyes betrayed
warmth and intelligence. He was well groomed and dressed neat and casual. Again, not
what Paul expected.
“Please come on in,” Steve invited. The house was immaculate!
I really need to drop this picture of what I expected. Be careful or you will underestimate
him! Paul warned himself.
27
“Katie didn’t give me too many details but told me that you were looking for someone to
work on a computer system that is in a completely different direction as what’s currently
out there. Possibly long-term employment? I’m enjoying my job doing freelance
consulting. I get to pick my own jobs and set my own schedule. But Katie insisted I hear
you out. Can I get either of you a drink?”
“Some ice water please.”
“None for me, thanks.”
Steve walked over towards the refrigerator. While crossing the room he spoke casually as
if he were talking to himself, “ice water.”
A light came on inside the refrigerator’s dispenser. A frosty glass rose from below to
meet falling ice. The clinking of the cubes was swallowed by the rushing stream of water.
It filled and stopped just as Steve reached for it. He turned around and handed the glass to
Paul. Steve’s finger prints left melted outlines in the frost.
Katie and Paul decided that she should do most of the talking since she knew him well.
They didn’t want to reveal too much until they knew if he would be receptive.
“We are working with a new computer system and we need some help maintaining and
running it. It’s bringing us in a new direction in computing and it might be the next big
thing.”
“Next level of evolution sort of thing, huh?” Steve posed. He paused as if mulling
something. “How does a school teacher and a civil engineer get involved with ‘the next
big thing’?”
Damn! Paul thought to himself, he’s good, he did his homework. I don’t think Katie even
told him anything more than my first name and he’s already collected at least basic
information about me. He’s sharp.
“I haven’t heard of any great leaps in computing getting beyond the research phase. Of
course there are the constant incremental increases in speed. Moore’s Law has pretty
much held true since day-one: computer speed will double every eighteen months. But
there haven’t been any monumental leaps in a while.”
Katie baited him. “What about quantum computers?”
Steve’s eyes widened! “Whoa! You have one? I’ve never had the chance to work with
one. I’ve read some research papers on them, but never even seen one in person. Is this
theoretical research or hands-on?”
“Hands-on.”
28
“You have my attention now.”
“Non-disclosure?” Katie was suddenly all business.
“So what? That’s standard stuff in my business. You work for big companies, you see all
of the trade secrets, social security and payroll information. Personal computers, you see
passwords, mother’s maiden names, twisted porn and fetishes, illicit chats and texts. We
see it all. We’d also be out of jobs and with no credible reputations if those personal and
professional files got out through us. Besides, if I really wanted any of that, I’d have no
problem getting it.”
“Steve, can I see some of what you do?” Paul asked.
“Sure. Come on in.” He motioned to a door to the right. He opened the door and they
entered his office. Again, it was not what Paul expected. Not a dirty basement with wires
and computer parts strewn about, but an orderly workspace. Not a dimly lit secret hole to
hide his location from the ‘hacker police’, but a light, airy, spacious office. There was
one thing that met with Paul’s expectations: a high-tech, multi-screen, way over-the-top
computer powerhouse. Three wide-screen monitors were mounted side-by-side. One
more, even larger screen was mounted above the three and tilted down towards his office
chair. Sitting on the desk and flanking the center position were two more, smaller
monitors. Inlaid within the desktop just to the right of center was, what appeared to be,
one more screen- darkened. Every screen showed different displays and most of the
panels had numerous sections which showed different applications. The entire array
wrapped him inside a hemisphere of screens. Animation, flickering, scrolling, sliding
ticker tapes all together showed the heartbeat of a well-orchestrated computer organism
in perpetual motion.
Steve sat into his rolling chair and rotated towards the desk. He slid a keyboard out from
under the center desk-top screen and tapped a few keys. The bottom and top center
screens changed their displays and the darkened, the inlaid panel lit up showing a
duplicate of the bottom center screen. Completely ignoring the mouse to his right, Steve
directed the computer with the well-practiced touch of his fingers.
“The top screen is showing the schematic code for the metro communication and control
system. On the bottom is the overview of the working system- in real-time.”
“Are you hacking the system?” Paul asked, incredulously.
“You don’t need tp hack it if you know every access point and have the master
passwords.”
“OK, technicality. Are you authorized to access all of this?”
“Yes, I am still on the payroll as a consultant and one of my job functions is to monitor
the system and trouble-shoot any problems or bugs as they crop up. So far, after
29
seventeen months, nothing more than a couple of crashed workstations from
inadvertently downloaded viruses.”
Paul came in closer and peered over Steve’s shoulder. The complexity amazed him. The
animation and speed of the dozens of windows would overload anyone unfamiliar with
what it all displayed. Paul could find nothing more than snippets of information that he
was able to make sense of- possibly.
“Not only is the computer network completely monitoring every system in the Metro
services but here’s the real value. If you want to see exactly what is going on in some
area, say right here where a train is currently in the state of breaking down (the conductor
doesn’t know it yet) a system administrator can get a detailed view of all systems
affected. Like this:” Steve tapped the corner of the flat desk display and four pegs rose
out of the desk near each of the corners of that screen. He manipulated his hand within
the area confined by the small towers and a three-dimensional hologram of the train in
question appeared centered above the flat touch-screen.
Steve spread his fingers apart and the holo-train expanded and exploded to reveal a
detailed image of the now-failed parts. He twisted his hand and the parts rotated in space
to mimic his movements. Then he closed his fingers and the train sank back into view. It
continued to shrink to show the train tunnel, the neighboring stations and then the entire
tunnel network. Sections of the railway blinked red to show where there were going to be
crowds forming from the lack of train service. Touching the virtual train system at one
blinking section made a message pop up:
Additional busses routed to affected area to compensate for extra surface
commuting.
“And you did this in a weekend?”
“Katie loves to exaggerate the timeline.” Steve smirked, “I also worked on Friday after I
got home from the meeting. Now it’s your turn. What is this project you want me in on?”
Katie explained, “we are developing a computer system that can run extremely fastfaster than any other-“
“Doubt it!” Steve interrupted. “But keep talking.”
“The system is run by AI and can essentially carry out any computing task as well as
physical activity that is controlled by computer. Similar to your metro design, it will be
an all-encompassing program that can control an entire system and network. And the
artificial intelligence will accomplish these tasks without programming. The AI will
interpret commands and figure out a way to make it happen.”
“If this is all true, it is impressive…and dangerous. Demonstration?”
30
“It can be very touchy, Steve, which is why we handpicked you,” Katie explained. “I’ve
seen how well you work with computer systems, obviously, but I also observed how you
handled the ethical issues in the metro design. ‘Should bathrooms be integrated into the
monitoring? Should scanners read RFIDs located on people?”
“Excuse me? RFIDs?” Paul interjected.
“Radio frequency identification,” Steve explained. “They are small, passive chips
embedded into tons of stuff like credit cards, passports, merchandise, hell! even dogs
have the trackers in them. When the chip passes near a scanner, the information from the
chip is detected and used for whatever. Let’s say Fido gets out and ends up at a shelter.
The shelter will scan the dog. If it has a chip, it will give the shelter staff the contact info
for the dog’s owner.”
Katie continued. “With the collection and control of information like this there can be
serious problems for privacy, civil rights, and violations of law. Steve managed to design
the system to handle these issues in an ethical way. Essentially, the system tracks and
records this information in highly encrypted files that is to be used for monitoring traffic
flow and crowd sourcing group dynamics.”
“Oh! There’s one more thing guys,” Steve said. “The system is 99% energy output
recapture. Ninety-nine percent of all of the energy that would be ‘wasted’ as heat is
recaptured and used. The trains and busses are hybrids using braking to recharge
batteries. Solar panels on bus roofs supplement their energy needs. Turbines in subway
ventilation shafts take the air rushing in and out with every train and turns it into
electricity. The system’s even people powered. When the fee is paid, the commuter
passes through a turnstile which is a small generator that powers the lights in the train
terminals. Rush hour surplus is stored for off-peak hours.” Steve sat back, smiled and
crossed his arms in front of his chest. “It’s carbon neutral.”
Paul and Katie looked at each other and ear-to-ear grins simultaneously stretched across
their faces.
“OK, Steve. It’s our turn to show off. Paul, a demonstration please.”
Paul pulled up his left sleeve to expose his bare arm. He used his thumb and forefinger to
trace a rectangle on the back of his forearm. A computer touch screen materialized on his
arm resembling an oversized watch. He tapped a corner of the screen.
“Turn off every computer in this room.”
Instantly every computer began its shutdown sequence. A few moments later all of the
devices were off. Steve took out his phone and it was off as well. He raised an eyebrow.
“Turn them back on,” Paul commanded.
31
Disc drives began to spin and fans started humming. Moments later, all of the computers
were back on, and quicker than with a usual boot up, running all of the same programs as
if they were never interrupted.
“Not bad,” Steve commented but his tone was only half-impressed.
“Send a text message to everyone affected by the train delay that there will be an
interruption in service and inform each one of them what their best alternative will be.”
Steve swung around in his chair, called up the holographic display and maneuvered the
display to show a live video feed from a camera in one of the areas in red. By the time he
had the area in question in view, the video stream showed every person in the station
taking out their phones and reading the text. There was an unease as the crowd noticed
that they all received the messages at the same time. Then, the three of them watched as
the commuters compared notes and the confusion deepened. Steve turned on the audio
and they heard some of the conversations centered around the strange texts that they all
received. Some were messaged about alternate trains to take, some where the closest bus
stop was, some were instructed to go above and hail a taxi. There was one man telling his
fellow commuters that he was told that he had no better alternative and would need to
wait approximately forty-eight minutes for the problem to be fixed. He was given a
location of a nearby restaurant (unknown to him at the time, it was one that was matched
to his style and favorite cuisine by cross-referencing his recent restaurant charges on his
credit cards) and then he received an electronic gift certificate to cover his meal.
Steve let it sink in for a minute. “Now I’m impressed,” is all he could say.
Paul read his display. “No worries Steve. You and your system will not be blamed for the
Big Brother intrusion. Traces have already been left behind to implicate some rogue
group of hackers for the disruption and for the mass texts. All you will need to do is to
explain that an unnamed Metro employee opened a doorway in the firewall when their
computer was compromised by a virus downloaded from a questionable site which
allowed the attack.”
The two men sized each other up. After it seemed as if they both resolved some internal
debate Paul said “Sleep on it. If you are interested in a steady job working with our
computer system, of which you have seen only a fraction of its capabilities, then come to
this address tomorrow.” He handed Steve a card with a long series of numbers and letters.
Obvious to Steve, it was a hexidecimal access code to be entered into the computer for
instructions. “Your computer will understand what to do.”
Steve raised an eyebrow.
All three of them rose and exited the office. Paul placed his empty glass on the kitchen
counter as he walked by. When they reached the door, Steve shook Katie’s hand first.
“It was good to see you again, Steve.”
32
“Same here.”
“You’re going to love it, please consider the job,” she asked gently, almost a whisper.
The two men shook hands looking each other in the eyes intently. “I hope to see you
tomorrow Steve. And Katie’s right, you’ll find it more satisfying than any other job
you’ve had or will ever have.”
The two guests walked. Steve slowly closed the door and stared at the door seam. He had
the feeling that he just had a life-changing experience.
33
Setting up Camp
Once the key players were in place, the team’s first priority was to find a place to work, a
rally point, a base of operations. After much brainstorming they finally agreed on a short
list of criteria for their new home: spacious enough for Storm Front; room for banks of
computers; and room for expansion. It had to be completely cut off from all utilities. No
electric cables, no lines of communication. It had to be so “off the grid” that nothing from
the outside world would get in or out of the property. It had to be convenient for
conventional travel into- and out of the city on a regular basis. It had to either blend in
with its surroundings or be completely camouflaged.
Steve took point on this project. He did a series of searches, cross-references and
examinations of deeds and archived documents. Twice it required actual physical travel
and flipping through real pages in books- a rare bit of nostalgia for Steve. After a week of
research, which was a very long time for the way Steve worked, he brought Paul and
Katie to see it.
The property was in the suburbs twenty minutes out of the heart of the city. The house
was slightly upscale but in a humble way. Nothing about it made it stand out in any way.
Not too rich, not too shabby, not overly accessorized. Five thousand similar properties
filled neighborhoods that dotted the suburbs ringing the city within reasonable
commuting distances. The tans and browns of the Tudor home were beautifully
complimented by the surrounding wooded and manicured grounds. Although it was not a
main criterion, Steve thought it was a bonus that the on-line real estate listing described it
as “park-like” landscaping. The visit was not a disappointment. Paul and Katie ambled
about the property looking at the aesthetic beauty of the house, bushes and trees. The lush
greens and vivid colors of early spring made it “park-like” indeed. As they circled the
property they took into account the level of privacy. Tall, dense shrubs and dark
evergreens with sweeping limbs draped to the ground made a living wall surrounding the
perimeter. Thick deciduous woods that ringed the great lawn surrounding the house did
not allow a line of sight to penetrate. They were completely unable to catch a glimpse of
any street or house from the center of the front lawn. A wrought iron gate blocked the
entry far enough up the high hedged driveway that no portion of the house was visible
from outside of the property.
A tour inside the empty house revealed a neat, clean, open living space that perfectly
mirrored the tone of the exterior. Rich, polished hardwood floors of cherry-stained oak
accented the mid-tone tan walls. In the kitchen, shiny dark granite countertops gleamed
on top of deep cherry cabinets which sat on large cream-colored stone tiles. The family
34
room had a large fieldstone fireplace and a panoramic glass wall that looked out across
the majority of the manicured 2.5 acre estate behind the house. The room was vaulted and
had a balcony overlook from the second floor.
The upstairs bedrooms were empty, clean and otherwise unimpressive with the exception
of the Master Bedroom. It was much larger than the other rooms and looked even more
so by the lack of furniture. One entire side of the room was a chest-high open wall that
overlooked the family room. The master bathroom was opposite of the balcony overlook.
It was separated from the main bedroom by a doorless dark cherry wall with gold trim
etching the edges of large square sections of the wall. Within the tan-marbled and goldfixtured bathroom was spacious shower separated from the main chamber by a doorless
glass block, wall.
“It’s a nice place and all. I’d like to live here if I was shopping for a family house, but
what makes this a good place to be our center of activity?” Katie asked, slightly
impatiently.
“Come with me,” Steve smiled.
He led them down into the basement. It was an unremarkable basement. The floor was
covered by a warm beige, lightly-padded, small-knapped berber carpet. The walls were
finished with clean sheetrock painted white. Three corners were sectioned off as a boiler
room and two storage closets. All of the doors were opened to show prospective buyers
the interiors. In the last corner there was a closed door. Steve walked them towards the
door.
“My original search was for a moderate building like a light commercial property within
an industrial park. But I expanded my search with the words ‘bomb shelter’ or ‘storm
shelter’. This house was built in the early 70’s- the height of the Cold War. It was later
purchased by the current owner- a Mr. Patino, who was a high end car customizer. He did
some projects that you may have heard of like to original Batmobile for the TV show and
the Oscar Meyer Weiner Mobile. He needed a place to tinker with designs and also keep
his work from being viewed before it was unveiled.”
Steve opened the door. Katie gasped quietly at the surprise. “Whoa!” Paul said in a
whisper. Beyond the door was a long, darkened hallway. The basement light streaming
from behind them dropped elongated shadows that stretched into the consuming
darkness. As they entered, an automatic sensor responded to their presence and turned on
the lights to the end of the hallway. Without any real reference points the length was
difficult to estimate.
Steve continued as they walked, “shortly after purchasing this house, Patino had a friend
acquire the neighboring 5 acres of undeveloped woodlands. It is a land-locked parcel with
owned properties all around. No one was able to build a house there because there was no
access to it except through one of the neighbors’ property lines. Patino’s partner then
quietly signed the deed over to him years later.” They continued down the tunnel which
35
stretched over 100 yards under the original property line and was wide enough for all
three to walk side-by-side with room to spare. Steve’s narration and their footsteps
echoed along the passageway. “He built a workshop garage underground.”
Paul and Katie began to get very excited like they were about to open a coveted present
that was impossibly beyond their reach. They felt the same way that a child would feel
when given a fantastic trip to Disney World knowing that price tag was well beyond the
means of their family.
When they reached the far end Steve opened the door.
Automatic lights turned on to reveal a vast garage with steel I-beams supporting an
expansive ceiling. It was a square garage about two hundred feet on each side with a high
ceiling about 15 feet high. The floor was immaculate, polished concrete with not a sign of
an oil drip or tire mark. If they didn’t know it was a garage they would never have
thought so. The walls and ceiling were neat and clean. Electric fixtures were mounted on
the surface of the walls. The ceiling was bare except for light fixtures, the occasional
hanging electric outlet and the power conduits to feed them.
They walked around the room with their heels clicking on the concrete and their hushed
voices reverberating off of the bare walls. Steve walked over to the wall opposite the
entry door. As they got closer, it became clear to Paul that the wall was a large pair of
garage doors. They were sectioned like the huge doors for airplane hangars. Steve went
over to a small control panel, pressed a button and the doors began to slide open. Three
sections on each side, the doors slid, one behind the other, simultaneously. The doors
were almost silent except for a slight hissing as the doors rolled open. The doors stopped
with a muffled “boom” to reveal an opening fifteen feet high and forty feet wide. Beyond
the door was a smooth tunneled driveway, gently sloping up towards ground level. The
entry was lit by fluorescent light bars in the top corners of the walls. At the top of the
incline was, what appeared to be, a room just slightly wider than the ramped driveway.
When they reached the top of the drive ramp, Steve walked across the room and opened
the door with the push of a button. These two doors opened the same was below. The trio
walked out into the daylight and turned around to see that they had just exited a large
shed. Laid out in front of the shed was a well-kept, smooth asphalt road extending in the
direction away from the main house.
“This road here,” Steve narrated, “will take you to the street on other side of the block.”
“I thought you said this property was land-locked,” Katie questioned.
“It was. Patino’s partner struck a deal with this neighbor here,” Steve waved in the
direction of an unseen house to the right, “for access just wide enough for a driveway. He
essentially bought a fifteen-foot-wide strip of land extending to the road. Valuing his
privacy, the partner paid cash for the right-of-way and signed a personal contract with the
36
neighbor. There are no records of this property and the other as being owned by the same
person.”
“Well, Steve, I’m impressed,” Paul congratulated as the three slowly strolled, side-byside, up the long strip driveway. “But this is a little pricey for me. Even if I sell my home
and use my savings I could not come close to managing this. I wouldn’t even be able to
pay for the landscaping and upkeep.”
“Not a problem, Paul. Katie and I came up with a plan for financing our operation. Using
the quantum computer, we were able to set up multiple, untraceable accounts. We then
filled them with enough funds to suit our needs.”
“How did you fill the accounts?” Paul asked suspiciously.
Steve and Katie exchanged mischievous glances. “You’re gonna love this,” Steve
couldn’t contain his grin and laughter began to leak out of his throat. “We skimmed
money from the biggest corporations on the planet.”
“How much?” Paul asked.
“Nothing they’d notice,” Katie replied. To Paul, it sounded apologetic.
“How much?”
Steve: “For each of them, it actually amounts to less than their budgets for the cookies
and coffee at their meetings.”
“HOW MUCH, STEVE!!”
“Ten million dollars in total,” he said sheepishly, quietly.
“And nobody misses it?”
Steve got his voice back. “Untraceable. Just a drop in the ocean. Unnoticeable.”
“You sure?”
“As sure as your AI computer says. It set up the dummy accounts, hacked into the
corporate banks, transferred the funds, then covered all signs of a trail. Absolutely sure.”
****
Steve hacked into the electric company, which was no problem using Allie’s quantum
computer, and caused an overload at a transformer making it explode creating a ten-block
blackout. While the local grid was down, Katie had time to climb the poles on both sides
of the properties and cut the dead wires entering the two lots. While up on the poles she
37
took the opportunity to cut the phone and cable TV lines heading into the property. Then
Steve deleted any computer records of utility services for either address.
They called in a plumber to dig up the pipes leading into the property under the guise of
upgrading the water supply. Once he excavated and removed the original conduits, Katie
told him that they decided to put in a private well instead. She paid him for the work done
and sent him away. Missing each other by minutes, the well digger rolled up the
driveway to the main house. As a final severance from the outside world, Steve used an
up-scaled matter rearranger to make a self-guided landscape-bot thus avoiding any
regular workers from entering the property. The estate was now completely physically
unattached to the rest of the civilized world. They were off the grid.
Katie and Steve worked together on making a self-sustaining power source to run the
entire compound. It ended up being a modified version of MaRe. Using the original
MaRe Allie had given Paul as a template, they manufactured the new one and Steve
programmed its functions. The generator version of the MaRe took matter, a very small
amount of matter, and converted it into energy. It was not fusion or fission. It was
annihilation- one hundred percent conversion from matter into energy. The small device
was mounted near the circuit hub in the middle of the west wall.
Steve replicated several matter rearrangers. He made different types and programmed
them each to do specific jobs. He grew tired of referring to the computer as “the
computer” and named it “Neti” after her negative time circuits and programmed it with a
female voice. He designed one MaRe with an antigravity lift similar to Storm Front’s to
work on constructing the ceiling and fixtures. Another with six extendable, insect-like
legs to work on walls, and a third construction bot to roll on the ground to work on the
floor and low walls.
Over the next couple of weeks the three designed and constructed the workspace. Most of
the work was done by Katie and Steve while Paul began his training. Katie’s engineering
and decorating skills guided the work. And Steve, with Neti controlling the MaRes, made
it all come together. To feed the matter reorganizers they had truckload after truckload of
bricks delivered to the front door of the garage. The MaRes would have had no problem
gathering the raw matter from molecules of air but it would take too long to collect the
amount of matter required. The constant flow of air to feed the construction would also
produce a constant gale of air getting sucked down the drive ramp and into the work area.
To avoid the suspicion of a continuous stream of palates of bricks being dropped off by a
shed in an empty field with no obvious building project in sight, each delivery came from
a different supplier. After construction they constantly kept a palate in a new storage
wing of the shed to supply any future projects.
“The Garage” as they called it, came together as an office complex centered around a
hangar. The hangar was, by far, the largest section. It was large enough for Storm Front
to come down the tunnel-drive ramp and turn around to prepare for the next trip out plus
some extra room for movement around the craft.
38
The entry from the house-tunnel to The Garage was through a pair of solid wood French
doors. Just inside the compound was a hallway that ran left and right connecting all of the
rooms. Directly across the hallway from the tunnel entrance was a pair of full glass
French Doors that opened to the hangar. At the far left end of the hallway, on the hangar
side was the doorway to the control room.
The control center took up the entire left side of the hangar wall. Just to the right of the
hall entry was a door leading directly into the hangar. A second hangar entry book-ended
the room at the far end. The side facing the hangar had a panoramic glass wall. When
Paul was home it would typically be clear glass. When the ship was out of the hangar, the
glass would become a long, single computer monitor stretching the length of the room in
order to closely monitor all aspects of whatever operation Paul and the ship were on.
When operations were running in full swing, the display had multiple windows open.
Neti chose contextual displays based on what was going on at the time. Sprinkled within
those suggested displays were the displays that each of them wanted configured just the
way that they preferred. During the quiet times, the window was clear and featureless.
Above the length of the window were monitors angled down to face the rolling chairs in
front of each workstation. Below, the window were two workstations, one for Katie and
one for Steve.
Steve’s, naturally, was the most complex. At the far end of the panoramic window, it was
the widest station. It had two flat-paneled keyboards inlaid into the desk top. Flanking the
keyboards were two touch-screen panels for controlling the computers. They were
usually flush with the countertop but they tilted at an angle to better face Steve when he
was working furiously. To the left side of his station was a large square monitor. It was
angled to face his chair and partly obscured the door from view. When Steve worked at
his station he became the focal point of a partial sphere of technology that covered front,
left, above and below.
In one corner of Steve’s workstation was a single, unlabeled glowing red light. It was
linked to the dashboard display of Allie’s beacon in Storm Front. Whenever the team
closed down the control center, the only light that illuminated the room was Allie’s
beacon- a constant reminder that they still had work to do.
Katie’s workstation was smaller than Steve’s hot rod but more sophisticated than Paul’s
Spartan area. She spent more time designing and less time typing and she opted to have a
traditional keyboard with raised keys as opposed to Steve’s flat keyboard. Her station
also lacked the secondary monitors that he had. She used the panoramic window instead.
The desktop monitors were replaced with a holographic display similar to the one in
Steve’s home. But because of Neti’s advanced systems it lacked the four sensing pegs
that Steve’s needed. This allowed her to grab and manipulate virtual representations of
the ship or a building or weapon system that she was engineering.
39
Paul’s station was opposite of the others with his back to the panoramic window. It was
the simplest setup. He did not use the station often since most of the technical work and
research was done by the other two.
The room was usually dimly lit to better see the displays but had full lighting whenever
they scheduled upgrades and maintenance.
Back in the hallway, the room closest to the control center was the hardest room to assign
to a purpose. Paul and Katie spent much time arguing over which room would have the
highest priority of being right next to the command center. Paul insisted on it being
devoted to daily living creature comforts: a bathroom or a kitchen. Katie wanted the room
allocated as a clinic. Steve had no opinion beyond how he would wire the room for
computer access.
“What do we need an infirmary for?”
“Paulie, Allie told you that you will most likely be involved in fights. Right?” Katie
debated.
“Yeah, but the ship is invulnerable to any weapon on the planet. I’m perfectly safe within
the cockpit.”
“Why did he tell you to study hand-to-hand combat?”
Paul had no rebuttal. After a moment he attacked the remaining hole in Katie’s argument.
“Who is going to work in the clinic? None of us is qualified to do that kind of work.”
“We have almost ten months before we start taking action. That will give us time to think
about that. But I really think that we will need to have a medical facility on hand. We
have the room for it. At the least we can just think of it as a large medicine cabinet with
band aids for paper cuts.”
Her argument took the wind out of Paul’s sails and he yielded.
As a diplomatic consolation, Steve added “if it doesn’t work out, Paul, we could always
redesign the layout since there are MaRes embedded throughout the compound.
In the end, Paul was pleased with the room. It looked similar to almost every doctor’s
treatment room. It was all white with a light tan granite counter. The white cabinets had
glass windows to show the inventory within. In the middle of the room was an
examination chair that could be flattened to make a table. The cushions of the table could
be removed to reveal the stainless steel surface beneath in a moment’s notice to transform
the casual doctor’s room into an operating room. Above the table was a chandelier of four
spotlights resembling a silver-and-glass four-leaf clover. Further out from the center of
the ceiling was a ring of mounting brackets for any equipment that they might need to
hang in the future.
40
The second room was a bathroom. It was not an office-style public restroom but it was
more like a home bathroom. Although she could not image why they would ever have
guests in the compound, Katie designed the room to accommodate four people. It had
four closets loaded with toothpaste, brushes, powders and lotions- whatever personal
items they needed. They each had their own plus there was one extra for a guest. Again
with guests in mind, as well as a sense of “home” for the team, she decorated the room as
inviting as possible. The décor reflected the style of the master bath up in the main house.
The sink was a bowl seamlessly formed into the tan faux granite countertop. Golden
fixtures goose-necked above the sink basin. Designed to be unisex and to be occupied by
more than one person, the only “public restroom” accommodation was a stall made of
light cherry wood around the commode for privacy. The room had a shower, and like the
bathroom in the house above, it was doorless with a glass block partition. One side of the
alcove had a shower with a subtle bowl-shaped basinless shower capped with an
oversized golden showerhead. The wall opposite the shower, which was beyond the
splash zone and visible from outside of the shower, had shelves set within the wall for
towel and toiletry storage.
Still heading back towards the tunnel from the control room, the next room on the right
was a small kitchen. It had a sink and an electric stovetop inlaid in a counter top that
matched the bathroom next door. Under and over the counter top were cabinets made
from the same light cherry as the bath. They were stocked with dishes, cups, and basic
cooking utensils. One cabinet was filled with pasta, canned soup, cereal and other easyto-prepare packaged foods. Sitting on the countertop was a single-serve coffee maker
with assorted coffee blends next to it. A stainless steel refrigerator sat at the end of the
counter. It was stocked with soda, milk, half-and-half and usually some seasonal fruit.
The kitchen had all of the basics of getting through the day. When they wanted a more
complete meal they went up to the kitchen in the main house or into town for a sit down
at the nearby strip of chain restaurants.
Between the kitchen and the next room was the entrance to the tunnel back to the house.
Just inside the tunnel, four Segway personal transports lined the wall in their charging
stations. The trio used the two-wheeled self-balancing chariots to commute from the main
house to The Garage. When they traveled as a group they used a golf cart for the trip.
The room just beyond the tunnel doors, Katie made into a gym. This was by Steve’s
request. He needed to exercise to balance the sedentary life of a computer tech. Of
course, the gym was state-of-the-art. High tech equipment like weight machines and
treadmills that monitored vitals and adjusted routines automatically were supplemented
with low-tech dumb bells, exercise balls and jump ropes. Steve had Katie seamlessly
incorporated voice activated computers and televisions at strategic points. One corner of
the gym was devoted to a large wooden floor with heavy bags and other hanging
equipment.
The last room on the right was a lounge. Like everything else in the compound, it had its
three primary focal points for Paul, Katie and Steve. In this case, it was three couches.
41
One was on the wall that shared the entry door and the other two were on the left and
right walls. On the wall opposite the entry door there was a large monitor for watching
TV, videos or games. The couches were for napping and the TV was for staying awake.
The far right corner had a small refrigerator stocked with soda, energy drinks and other
beverages.
At the end of the hallway, there was a door leading into the conference room. The room
was oriented at a left ninety-degree turn from the hall. Like the other sections of the
compound, one entire side of the room was a panoramic window which allowed an
unobstructed view of the hangar and the control room across the bay. The conference
room was set up like a small theater with the hangar-viewing window to the left of the
door and a large flat panel display on the front wall. In the corner to the left of the screen
was a second door leading into the hangar.
The front half of the room sloped down towards the front screen in three wide steps.
There were three well-padded office chairs lined next to each other in a slight curve
focused on the main screen. Each chair had a desk top that folded down next to the chair.
The desktop was large enough to have a built-in keyboard and a writing area. A thin,
transparent monitor pulled out from the bottom of the kepboard. One arm of each chair
had a cup holder and the lighting and temperature controls for the room. The other had a
small control panel for the monitor up front.
Unlike traditional conference rooms there was no podium. There was no need since the
conversations and strategy meetings would only include the three of them. They also
could not imagine a reason why they would ever have a guest speaker.
Paul’s chair was the furthest to the right which enabled him to see the other two without
turning his head. As leader, he needed to be able to address both of them together. He
also liked that position because it allowed him to look through the panoramic window at
his ship resting in the hangar.
Behind the theater area of three chairs, the rear half of the room was a flat landing that
was dominated by an eight-by-four-foot conference table. When the table was inactive, it
appeared as a solid mahogany slab inlaid with lighter geometric accents. When needed,
the top became a flat screen monitor which also had the ability to display holographic
images above the surface. The table was ringed by three rolling office chairs.
The hangar itself was the centerpiece of the compound. The parking spot for Storm Front
was clearly marked with a red “+” outlined in white against the spotless light grey of the
epoxied floor. A large circle, also red with a white border, ringed the center, marking the
active area of the craft. There were no marks within the circle with the exception of two
rectangles that hid the retractable ladders to enter and exit the cockpit. In the corners near
the control and conference rooms were a pair of rolling stairs used for access to the ship
for maintenance.
42
Extending from the circle to the garage doors were a pair of yellow lines marking the
edge of the exit ramp. A white line was centered between the two edge stripes. The lines
continued past the garage doors where the color of the floor turned from grey to black.
Lights with matching yellow and white colors were embedded within the ramp lines for
night take-offs and landings.
In the same corners adjacent to the rolling stairs were a pair of robotic MaRes used for
repairs and modifications of the hangar which were lifeless except when needed. Under
the control room window was a single computer workstation. Tool boxes and work
counters lined the remaining space along the walls. All of the equipment remained
outside of the red circle which gave Storm Front enough room to maneuver a hovering
turn to face back up the tunnel.
Above the garage doors and the French double doors were mirroring twin oversized
monitors. The monitors were used as a summary of all pertinent information that Paul
would need during ingress and egress.
The ceiling was lined with lighting panels and glowed with a diffuse light that
illuminated the bay with uniform, comfortable light. Forming a cross from wall to wall in
each direction hung a gantry supporting a crane. The crane was used to lift the ship for
belly maintenance. Knowing that the ship had the capability of extended motionless
hover, Katie originally did not include a crane. However, after only a few projects under
the ship, they found that working under the humming, floating ship was distracting and
unnerving.
43
Working with the Masters
James Forest was a large but unassuming man. At just over six feet tall he had a couple of
inches over Paul but otherwise had a similar build. He was in excellent physical shape but
the passive observer would not see it. He was extremely strong. His muscles and tendons,
well defined, hid under his casual clothes. They were solid and tight like steel cables
under his skin. He had dark brown, salt-and-pepper hair which matched his “soul patch”
goatee beard under his lip. His eyes were a crisp brown and they let off the shine of
insight and clarity. People often got the feeling that he knew all about them after only a
moment of locking eyes. They felt naked, exposed in the bottomless black of his pupils.
The corners of his eyes had hairline crow’s feet from long years of joy and laughter. Jim
took his martial arts and perception of character serious. But he was just as serious when
it came to enjoying life. A handful of thin scats framed his crow’s feet like the random
sketch-lines that eventually drew a face- the accumulation of countless fights. He had a
few much worse scars around his body, but luckily the worst scars spared his rugged
gothic face.
Steve found Master Forest with a quick search for “martial arts, trainer, street, fight, kill.
After the first round of searches produced a short list of the country’s top felons, he
added “not guilty” to the query. Paul wanted someone who could mix it up, has walked
the walk but was not a thug. Jim’s was the second name that came up. The first was a
repeat felon who was convicted of killing in a case of road rage. The explosive overreaction after a simple fender bump was caught on a bystander’s camera. The YouTube
clip showed Dustin Terrance use some stylish martial arts techniques, that the trial
revealed he had learned from the movies. He quickly overwhelmed the untrained and
passive dog trainer who rear-ended Dustin’s car. The unfortunate victim was eventually
killed when Terrance used a wrestling move that he saw on television to break the
trainer’s back over his knee. Mr. Terrance had been found not-guilty in two previous
cases of assault due to lack of evidence or credible witnesses but was currently serving 25
years for the killing.
Master Forest, who simply went by “Jim”, had trained his entire life in the martial arts.
He was familiar with most styles on the planet and was proficient in more styles than
most experienced artists even knew about. He held a black belt, or the equivalent, in
seven arts but sums up his repertoire as “street fighting”. The aspect that sets him apart
from most students of fighting is that he also has experience in the practical application
of the arts- real fights. Most students train for fights that never happen. It’s a reverse
vicious cycle. A young man is either bullied and wants to fight off the offenders or the
boy is a bully and wants to be better at it. As training progresses, the bully learns
44
discipline, respect and patience. The bullying victim grows strong, confident and aware.
The more they train, the less likely it will be that they need it. It is typical that both boys
will never see a physical altercation for the rest of their lives.
Jim spent four years in the Army. Most of his time was spent in Afghanistan in a unit that
specialized in entering homes and small buildings to capture or kill suspected militants.
He quickly became “the guy you want on your squad.” He had a unique method of
entering and searching a home. The snaking corridors of a house or the tight tunnels
under buildings made the typical man feel cramped, immobile. But Jim trained for it and
became comfortable in it. He usually left his side-arm in its holster and began a building
search as the point-man for the team- empty handed! The free hands kept him well
balanced and agile. Whenever he crossed paths with an armed enemy, he moved like a
leaf caught in a cross breeze. Lunge, roll, dive, reverse direction, stop- erratic movements
made him an impossible target to hit. His partners had seen his enemies empty complete
magazines within the same bedroom and had never landed a shot. It was not uncommon
for the bad guys to shoot each other as Jim rolled between two of them. By the time his
teammates entered the room Jim would usually be sitting on one man’s back and any
others would be in various states of incapacitation.
After he finished his tour of duty with the Army, Forest earned his living as a bouncer but
lived his life as an instructor. His night job, the one that really paid, allowed him to teach
during the days and early evenings. He gained a tremendous amount of experience in
fighting while bouncing at the clubs through which he rotated. As a bouncer he had to lay
his hands on people almost every night. Most of the time it was simply “pest control”:
someone who had a little too much and became obnoxious enough to be escorted out.
About once a week, and it always seemed to be on a Friday, he was in a knock-downdrag-out fight. He’d be back at work in a few minutes so it was clear who got knocked
down and dragged out. With his years of training and his constantly growing experience,
Jim often felt he was paid to beat people up. It was usually too easy, but occasionally
some less drunk, more serious combatant would force Jim to step it up a bit.
The real thrill, the real experience, the real opportunity to become better, happened about
once a month. The all-out brawl! That was when Jim felt alive. The typical bounce
simply didn’t even get a rise out of his adrenaline anymore. On more than one occasion
he didn’t put down his phone or even stop talking while fighting. But a mass of people all
looking to land a few punches, that was the challenge. The first few brawls he was in
ended up 50-50 if he would come out on top. That’s where he accumulated most of his
scars. But once he learned what to pay attention to and how groups fight, it became more
of a chess game for him. It wasn’t about what his hands or feet were doing, they took care
of themselves. It was all about how to manipulate a group into a worse position while
placing himself in a better one.
Each time he was involved in a group fight he tried to work on one thing, do one
experiment to see if it worked. He’d try to defeat the group without a strike by simply
moving around and between them just the right way so that they would bump into- and
fall over each other. Or he’d see how few strikes he could throw to end the bout. He tried
45
to find that one person who was the cohesive link for the group and take him out quickly.
The group would instantly lose heart and bolt. He would fight around- and protecting
bystanders. He would fight in tight crowded areas. He would fight around broken glasses.
He would fight on beer slicked floors. He would fight knives, bats and the occasional
gun.
Paul’s first impression of Jim was that he was not what he would expect of a Martial Arts
Master. Paul had taken Karate and Judo as a child and young man and was expecting the
protocol of uniforms and bowing and formal titles. Jim was very down-to-earth, no
uniform, no bowing and he insisted that Paul and all of his students call him “Jim”. He
definitely did not have the puffed-up-chest, everyone-look-how-great-I-am attitude that
most martial arts masters and instructors had.
“Isn’t bowing a sign of respect?” Paul asked.
“You can be the worst old-lady mugger all other days yet still come in here and bow. You
show me respect by how you treat other people.”
“No uniform or bare feet?”
“Paul, if you get in a fight is it going to happen while you are barefoot and in your
bathrobe?” Jim asked rhetorically. “You move differently when barefoot and when you
have shoes on. Do you walk the same way when the garbage truck surprises you in the
morning and you run out barefoot? Unless you get around most of the time without shoes
I suggest that you train with shoes. The same goes for your clothes. We study practical,
street fighting. Not classical or traditional martial arts designed around swords and spears
and fighting from on top of horses.”
“Belts?”
“You told me that you wanted an accelerated program that you can work on every
evening. It’ll be pretty much private lessons except when we need partners. I know what
your abilities will be. No need to remind me with a belt.”
The schedule was concentrated. They trained together every day after school and most of
the day on Saturdays. Jim left the most intense workouts for Saturdays to give Paul the
day off to recuperate. Even so, he still had to wear long sleeves to school Mondays and
often Tuesday to hide the bruises on his arms.
*****
As the days stretched into the end of May, Paul decided that he could not postpone the
inevitable any more. He had to put in his notice to leave teaching at the end of the school
year. Teaching had been the most important of all things to him. It was his calling. It
defined who he was. He loved teaching. He loved his students. To walk into his
principal’s office broke his heart. Paul cited “out-of-town” family concerns as the reason.
46
However, his boss refused to accept Paul’s resignation. He officially entered it as a
sabbatical. That would hold his job for up to three years. “If you can get things
straightened out with your family, we would love to have you back.” Paul never returned
to teaching.
*****
With Jim as his teacher and training partner, Paul picked up the basics quickly. Although
he already had some previous training, he had to unlearn most of it. They went through
the rudimentary lessons of blocks, strikes, what targets to hit and with which kind of
strike. Once Paul became proficient with the nuts and bolts of fighting Jim began what he
called the “intangibles”. The real art of fighting.
“Once you have the foundation under control, you will have the same arsenal as any other
martial artist out there. But how and when you use what you know, that’s half of
winning.”
“What’s the other half?”
“Knowing!”
Jim taught Paul about a whole new level of awareness. Those tiny details that we tend to
ignore because our brains tell us they are unimportant. Extraneous data. It was the brain’s
way of being lazy and analyzing the least amount of information.
“But, if you learn to reconnect with those sensations you will have an awareness that can
seem very spooky. This is what accumulates subconsciously into intuition, instinct and
that gut feeling. That is ‘knowing’. But, again, we start to ignore it as we get old.”
Jim lightly placed his right hand on Paul’s arm. So slight was the touch that the only way
that Paul was sure there was contact was that he saw it. Jim closed his eyes. “Hit me.”
Afraid of hitting his disadvantaged partner but having faith that his teacher knew what he
was doing, Paul threw a punch right at Jim’s temple. Easily and with barely a hair’s width
to spare, Jim rolled his shoulders and turned his head just enough to avoid the strike.
Jim pulled a blindfold from his pocket and placed it over his eyes. “Spar,” the Master
instructed. They stood in “en garde” position- wrist touching wrist. At first, Paul took it
easy, not wanting to take advantage and hurt Jim. The two men stood face-to-face and
traded blocks and strikes. Every one of Jim’s strikes went directly at a target on Paul.
Paul either blocked or got hit. Every strike Paul threw was blocked or avoided. Growing
frustrated, Paul began to spar in all earnest. Jim reacted accordingly both defensively and
offensively. After a short while, Paul completely forgot that his opponent was
blindfolded. Just as Paul began to run short on breath, the Master called “stop!”
“OK,” Paul huffed, “what’s the trick?”
47
“The ‘trick’, Paul, is to use every bit of information that enters your body. Obviously you
get a tremendous amount of information from your eyes. But what else do you have? We
started with wrists touching. With that single light touch I can tell where you were, which
way you were facing and even what posture you were in. I can feel your body shift with
every strike. Even though I was processing all of my senses for the entire match, I really
used them to their limits once you broke contact.”
“I knew where your face was from the direction of your breathing,” he continued.
“Which foot was forward, from the rustling of your clothes with each step. The slight
vibration of the floor with each footfall. The hitch in your breath when you were about to
strike. I can even pick up the change in the environmental sounds as you moved around.
You blocked some noises and reflected others. Near the end of the match, I was able to
feel your body heat.”
“Then every time we made contact with a block, strike or kick, I got a flash- a rush of
information about everything about you. I knew you were about to strike even before you
moved. I could feel your muscles change tension just before you struck out.”
Once Paul became proficient in empty-handed fighting Jim began to introduce him to
weapons. Jim handed Paul his first weapon- a Bo staff. Paul took the four-foot hardwood
broomstick, felt the weight of it then asked Jim “why didn’t we start with weapons?”
In response, Jim threw a punch right at Paul’s face. Instinctively, Paul blocked the punch
while still holding the rod. “Do you think you would have blocked that without the
training we’ve done? Paul, you will not always have a weapon in your hand. You might
drop it. It might get taken away. It might break. In the end it is you! You have to rely on
yourself, not some tool. The weapon amplifies your abilities. You still need to strike, but
a weapon will enhance the strike. You will still have to block, but a weapon will take the
impact instead of you.
Jim taught Paul traditional weapons and showed him orthodox as well as unorthodox
techniques. He learned to use swords, knives, fighting staves of assorted lengths and any
other weapon one would find in a martial arts store. In addition, Jim showed Paul uses
and techniques for improvised weapons. For one training session, Jim took Paul on a field
trip to a local department store. As they walked the aisles, Jim picked up random objects
that they passed. He demonstrated how to hold the object in order to use it as a weapon.
The he quizzed Paul about possible targets to hit with the new ‘tool’. Jim spent a large
amount of time on the hardware section.
“A screwdriver… obviously a stabbing weapon…eyes, chest, ears. A hammer… don’t
use it as a swinging weapon. It has too much momentum to get in a second strike or to
change its direction. Hold it by the hammer’s head and use it for thrusting attacks and
blocks. Saw blades! Great for throwing… can’t block them and they are so thin that they
are hard to focus on.”
48
After each training session Paul borrowed the equipment for the weekend. Back at home
he would practice with the equipment. During his practice he wrapped a pair of
neuromuscular sensing cuffs that Neti manufactured around his forearms. The sensors
picked up muscle movements and nerve impulses in order to program the hand-held
MaRes. He would then test the programming by holding the units and seeing if they
could replicate the object, which was almost always to case. Every once in a while, the
devices would get their signals mixed and produce the wrong weapon. Paul had to take a
break during one programming session when the sword he wanted materialized as an
umbrella.
Occasionally Steve worked out with Paul in The Garage’s gym. Some of the training
seeped into Steve, which he enjoyed, but more importantly, Paul was able to train against
an opponent other than Master Jim. Paul became accustomed to Jim’s style and repertoire
of moves. It was invaluable to be able to spar against someone who was less familiar with
Paul’s training.
*****
In early July Paul began flight training. His educational goals were two-fold: learn how
best to control and use his ship; and to learn the abilities and tactics of the aircraft he
potentially could face.
The first phase of his formal aviation preparations was to learn the basics. Steve arranged
a seven-to-twelve morning schedule with a pilot instructor flying a Cessna out of a small
airport in the suburbs.
Flight instructor Ron Esposito was tall and thin. His eyes were grey and his voice was
gravelly. He always had a three-day beard. He wore a worn grey-blue hat that never came
off. Sticking out from under the hat and behind each ear were tufts of hair. The tufts
betrayed the presence of grey hair at the top of his head which Paul had never witnessed.
Ron was a seasoned pilot. During his youth he flew for the Army for eight years in the
seventies. He signed on during the height of the Viet Nam War but started too late and
never got to fly any combat missions. In the years after being discharged, he worked at
various flying jobs. As most professional small-plane pilots do at some time in their
career, he flew crop dusters for a handful of years. He spent two years flying sky divers
up to fifteen thousand feet over Hawaii. Then his work took him up to Maine where he
flew water planes. He taxied hikers, fishers and hunters deep into the wilderness and
dropped them off in remote lakes. For the remaining and current years, Ron flew
simulated dogfights for middle-aged men with too much money and too little experience.
After a minimum of training they were allowed to fly the front seat and control the plane
in mock aerial combat missions against his partner who played the part of the adversary.
For the entire first week, Paul had classroom instruction during the first half of the
morning followed by flying until noon. Paul didn’t touch a control for that first five days.
It seemed to him that the time was simply to build up his resistance to nausea. Monday
49
and Tuesday’s flight sessions had intermissions halfway through because the cockpit
smelled so bad.
Ron was thorough. The classroom training was a combination of lecture and plane
maintenance. The instructor sat with Paul in the hangar office where they sat side-byside. Paul listened to him lecture about aerodynamics and physics. They surfed the
Internet together looking at airplanes from the Wright Brothers all the way up to
experimental concept planes. Every other day, Ron set Paul up with a video game flight
simulator. The sessions rarely went smoothly. Ron typically programed some kind of
emergency scenario into the simulation. Paul felt like he faced every kind of emergency.
A broken fuel line. System’s failure. Sudden storm. Bird strike. Locust swarm. Ron’s
imagination was infinitely variable.
Using hand-held models on the end of sticks he showed Paul combat tactics. They
studied both theory as well as historical dogfights. He particularly focused on World War
Two era combat.
“Using missiles requires very little flying skill,” he would say. “That’s just playing video
games. Wait for a beep and press a button. A true dogfight, now that’s a contest of skill!
Put two men on equal footing and have ‘em go at it. That’s where the genius comes to the
surface.”
After three weeks with him, Paul had a solid foundation in the basics of aviation and it
was time for Paul to move on to the next level: two weeks of military flight training.
Steve took care of the easy part. He forged credentials and a backstory for Paul. He was
particularly proud of himself for giving Paul the alias of “Captain Paul Miles”. “I always
dreamt that I would be a fighter pilot,” he smiled at Paul. “At least I’ll get your flight
jacket with the ‘Miles’ name patch when you’re done with it.”
The hard part of getting into the military training was the personal interactions. Paul had
never been in the service and he was unfamiliar with much of the lingo. In order for him
to be above suspicion, he would need to pass as one of them. He learned the protocols
from working with Neti. She coached him on the rules of saluting and greeting other
officers and enlisted men using holographic soldiers. She then gave him a short list of the
most common phrases and acronyms used by Marine aviators. To fill in the blanks, Neti
and Steve coached Paul through a hidden earpiece when he was on the base.
With his faked credentials and coached behavior, Paul was able to get into a “Top Gun”
class which allowed him access to get the best instruction and access to fighters. His first
flight was an F-16 Falcon.
While trying to figure out how to put on a flight suit Paul had a small panic attack.
“I can’t do this,” he whispered into his earpiece.
50
“You can do it,” Steve’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet and soothing. He was
talking just above a whisper in gentle empathy of Paul’s fear. “You have to tell yourself
that you belong there. It is your base. It is your plane. Act like it and they will never
know any different. I’m with you and you’ll be fine.”
Paul took a deep breath, left the locker room and headed to the line of planes. Steve
worked into Captain Paul Miles’ backstory that he was being upgraded from an A-10
Warthog to the Falcon and needed a new plane.
Inscribed under the canopy: “Captain ‘Long’ Miles”.
Long Miles! Paul chuckled under his breath at Steve’s boastful double entendre. The
inside joke settled his nerves and he entered the cockpit like he had done dozens of time
in his own ship.
It was a completely brand new experience once he throttled up and took off. The
acceleration was severe and without the inertial dampeners he was slammed into the seat.
His helmet banged into the headrest with a loud clunk! It took him a few minutes to get
used to the sensitivity of the controls. Several times a G-force alarm blared when he
attempted a turn that was too sharp for this plane but easily manageable for Storm Front.
Once clear of the base, Paul tested the craft for speed, acceleration, and maneuverability.
He became nauseated at one point because the sensations were amplified versions of
what he became accustomed to in the Cessna.
The first day of flight classes was spent flying solo so that the pilots can test out the new
tactical maneuvers learned in class. For the second day and onward it was class in the
morning and two simulated dog fights in the afternoon. Paul lost miserably for the first
three days. The other pilots, naturally, were much more experienced with these planes
and with flying in general and they made short work of him. For the remaining three days
Paul began to improve and started to win the fights.
After two weeks, Paul graduated. Lucky for him, his attempt to blend in and not attract
any attention kept him off of the radar.
51
379 Grand Avenue
Paul walked up to 379 Grand Avenue in the city. It was a towering skyscraper stabbing
the hazy blue mid-day August sky. Smoked glass intertwined with a gleaming network of
aluminum facades covered the skin of the forty-story building.
He was on his way to an interview with the CEO of an environmental crusading
company. Paul was applying for a part time, morning intern position in order to learn the
inner workings of companies. Steve arranged to get recommendations and credentials
from a professor at the University of Chicago. He cross-referenced the professor and
CEO’s communications and found that they don’t know each other and never metalthough they were at the same airport terminal once in 2011. Paul was impressed and
scared at how thorough Steve was with his research.
Paul pushed through the massive, well-balanced doors to the lobby at the stroke of 11:30.
Sitting at the front security desk was a pleasant-looking security guard.
“Good morning. Is it still morning?” He glanced at his watch. “Ah yes, still morning.
Good morning. I see the fog has finally burned off. Thick as pea soup at 8:30. But it
looks like it’ll be nice the rest of the day.”
“Good morning. I have a 12:00 appointment to see Ms. Frank at CGA.”
The guard scanned down a list hidden behind the raised wall of his desk. He muttered to
himself as he fingered down the list, “10:30, 11:00, 11:15, 11:30.” His eyes widened
slightly as he found it. “Ah, here it is. Um, Mr. Marino, right? May I have some picture
ID?”
Paul took out his wallet, took out his driver’s license and handed it to the guard. The
guard, in turn, inserted the ID into a scanner and picked it up as it slid out of the other
side. “Please sign in here Mr. Marino,” he pointed as he returned Paul’s card. By the time
that Paul was finished signing his name, date and time, the guard handed him a visitor ID
complete with his picture and a shirt pocket clip.
“Take these elevators to the thirty-second floor and see the receptionist just as you exit
the elevator. I’ll let her know you are coming. Have a good day, Mr. Marino.”
“You too.”
52
Paul entered the elevator, pressed the floor number and affixed the visitor pass onto his
shirt pocket as the door closed. He used the mirrored walls to check his suit and hair. The
elevator rose quickly and his ears popped just as the bell dinged his arrival at floor
number thirty-two. The door opened to reveal a light, airy vestibule. Opposite the
elevator was a light blue wall that curved away slightly with a large “CGA” backlit with a
diffuse white light splashing onto the pale sky blue.
Behind the elevator and to the right and left were large, floor-to-ceiling windows. Both
windows were accented with armless leather waiting couches. Beyond the chairs the city
sprawled out. The concrete grey of the shrinking buildings on the outskirts gave way to
the greener suburbs. Off in the distance, the morning fog could be seen stubbornly
hanging on in the low spots in the countryside.
The reception desk was hewn from two large blocks of creamy tan scoria. The small
volcanic bubbles and carved shape gave a contrast between the raw art of nature and the
meticulous creativity of human hands.
The receptionist politely stood as Paul approached. Her dark brown hair was pulled tight
into a bun with a few loose tendrils gently falling down in front of her ears. She had
flawless light tan skin typical of Amer-Asian women. Dark brown, slightly almondshaped eyes were framed behind glasses that appeared to be a fashion statement rather
than functional. Her rich red lips had just the right amount of gloss to be professional yet
alluring. As she rose, Paul was not surprised to see that she was smartly dressed with a
stylish and professional outfit. Her fitted white blouse was unbuttoned at the top to
showcase a beaded and rhinestone necklace. The blouse and necklace pointed down her
chest to where her cleavage just barely showed itself off before discretely hiding behind
the first button. Visible just above the desk Paul was able to see an over-wide patent
black belt. It cinched her already-tiny waist into an attractive hourglass. The belt topped a
light grey garment which he could not tell if it was a skirt or slacks from behind the desk.
“Mr. Marino.” She extended her arm to shake his hand with a slightly exaggerated overthe-top-of-the-desk bend in her wrist. He took her dainty hand and shook it. She shook
back with the firm grip of a habitual exerciser. “Ms. Frank is expecting you. Please have
a seat,” she motioned to the waiting chairs. “She should be done with her meeting in just
a few moments.”
Paul used the time to stand against the glass wall and take in the view from the thirtysecond floor. As Paul was following the traffic pattern along Grand Avenue he heard the
frosted glass door swing open. He turned to see Laurie Frank escorting who must have
been her previous appointment to the front door of the firm. They shook hands,
exchanged pleasantries and he walked past Paul to the elevator.
“Ms. Frank, this is Mr. Paul Marino, he is your 12 o’clock,” said the receptionist.
53
“Thank you Rachel. Mr. Marino.” Laurie extended her hand and met Paul halfway. “So
nice to meet you.” Her hand was warm and strong. It made Paul self-conscious that his
was cold.
“Same here, Ms. Frank. Thank you for the appointment. I appreciate your time.”
“If it means that we get an intern with your qualifications it will be well worth the time to
meet. Please come in.” She pulled the door handle and waved Paul in.
Ms. Laurie Frank, CEO, was the head and founder of CGA: Common Goods
Acquisitions. In the twenty-some-odd years that the firm had been in existence, it had
grown from a small grass-roots effort to block housing development. The lakeside marsh,
or “wasted swamp land” as the real estate companies called it, was one of only a handful
of places on the entire planet where the Venus Flytrap grew naturally. They seemed like
weeds at the location because they covered huge swaths around the local lakes. It was
locally abundant but globally endangered. If this one area was sterilized, it would have
taken a large slice of the trap’s pie-chart and erased it.
Ms. Frank organized local, and not-so-local, donors and sued to block construction, and
to subsequently purchase the land to protect it from future development. With each small
victory the reputation of her group grew, more people flocked to the cause- volunteers
and those accepting low pay for personally rewarding work, and, most importantly,
money flowed in faster. Since then, Ms. Frank has achieved the impossible: she made
championing environmental issues profitable. She made a business of it. Her vision had
evolved into a juggernaut. Environmentally irresponsible endeavors were quickly crushed
under the wheels of her machine.
She was physically a small woman but Paul knew right away that he was dwarfed next to
her. She was easily past retirement age but she stayed on because of her passion for the
job. Her short hair with more salt than pepper was age-appropriately styled yet the stress
and intensity of her job added years to her face. She had a pleasant voice but the slight
gravel in it gave one reason to be careful. It was the voice of a tough bitch. Days chanting
and protesting in whatever weather. Years of leaning across a conference tables
lambasting opponents. For all Paul knew, it could have been from all-nighters in bars
hustling pool games while chain smoking between fights- or all of the above. Yeah, she
was a tough bitch!
The two of them walked side-by-side along the outskirts of a rat maze of cubicles. Up
ahead, Paul could see a frosted glass-walled office that he assumed was hers. Just outside
of the office, Ms. Frank stopped and faced Paul.
“Mr. Marino, tell me what you know about CGA.”
Paul breathed a mental sigh of relief followed by a silent thank God! Katie, in her usual
persuasive and relentless fashion insisted that Paul wear a tiny two-way transmitter
earplug. As a science teacher, Paul knew only the rudimentary basics of economics. This
54
was exactly the reason why the three of them decided on this internship- so that he could
learn what made corporations tick- or, in this case, how to un-tick them. Katie, Steve and
Neti were monitoring. But Paul had to bluff just long enough to give them a few
moments to research and relay the answer.
To Ms. Frank. it appeared as if Paul was collecting his thoughts- deciding on where to
start. When, in fact, he was listening to Katie reciting the Reader’s Digest version of the
company’s history.
“CGA. Common Goods Aquisitions.” He repeated Katie’s words a moment behind her
discourse in his ear. “You legally block environmentally irresponsible development and
projects in the courts. You sue companies that have damaged the natural balance. You
take that money and use it to purchase environmentally sensitive tracts of land in order to
keep them off of the market.”
He went on. “Two recent projects you are testing are green products. You are selling
things like clothing, furniture, and food that are all 100% naturally grown and
manufactured within 100 miles from the retailers who sell them. The other project is
selling products made from nut trees in the Amazon. But to be honest Ms. Frank, I don’t
understand that one.”
“Mr. Marino, do you know why we are called ‘Common Goods Acquisitions’?”
“Well, the ‘Acquisitions’ part is because you buy land and then put it in stewardship. I
assume that ‘Common Goods’ is a double- no! Triple entendre. You work for the
common good. You work on the basis of common sense. And you want good things to be
common.”
Ms. Frank smiled. “You’ve gotten ‘acquisitions’ right. Eh, but most people don’t see the
connection. I don’t even think that half the people here know.” She made a sweeping
motion over the cubicle maze. “Paul, behind you is a reminder, a reaffirmation, of why
we are doing what we do.”
He turned to see a plaque with a magazine cover under glass. It was the December 1968
edition of the journal Science.
“That is the journal that published Garrett Harding’s, a professor of mine at the time,
theories about ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’. In short, if nobody owns a resource there
will be some people who will exploit its resources and eventually it will be depleted. For
example, in Africa no body owns the vast expanse of the savannah. Even though there are
rules about killing endangered animals, all it takes is a few poachers to disregard those
rules. They sneak in, kill a rhino, take its horn- and the horn only- the animal was killed
not for meat, or even the hide, but for the damn horn!” She spat the last words out. “So
that some dealer in the Asian black market can sell it as a powdered aphrodisiac. So some
rich old man in Japan, who can’t get it up can have a hard-on to impress some hooker.
Next thing you know, all of the rhinos are gone. Kill a gorilla so that you can sell its
55
hands as ashtrays, then they’re gone. Cut the fins off of living sharks to make soup and
then dump their helpless living bodies back into the ocean. And those will be gone, too.
“The same thing happens when everybody owns something- it is a ‘common good’ like a
national park. All it takes is a few people to break the rules to exploit a resource and then
it’s gone. It is illegal to remove fossilized wood from the Petrified Forest, yet you can
find pieces in any mineral shop. Every person who wants to appear to their friends like
they’re in-touch with nature and exotic places has a piece collecting dust on some shelf in
their TV room. If you go to the Petrified Forest, you will have a hard time finding a piece
of petrified wood.”
“That, Mr. Marino, is the Tragedy of the Commons. We acquire the commons, make it
private property and preserve its resources.”
“For example, in most suburbs, if you wanted to build houses with access to the city, all
you would need to do was to build further and further as the land closer gets developed.
Buyers would need to commute from increasingly greater distances. But there are people
who are already doing that two or even three hours, each way, every day. Long Island is
different. It is a limited parcel of real estate- as the developers see it. Once the land is
used up, there is no more. You cannot extend the suburbs beyond the end of the island.
The developers are constantly lobbying local and state politicians to release public lands
for development. They offer farmers enormous amounts of money for their land. All of
the prime locations are already built up. So now they’re working on less and less
favorable areas. They are draining swamps to build houses below the water table and
homeowners fight a never-ending battle with basement flooding. The developers
complain that there are parks and sanctuaries that they cannot build up.”
“Whenever places like wetlands and parks are released for development or a farmer goes
out of business and sells his land, we buy the land and set it off-limits forever. You can
imagine how expensive that can be to get into a bidding war with a desperate developer.
We have to bid aggressively to win the property- often at a premium. In the cases that
they win, they pass the cost onto the home buyer. They, in turn, end up with an overpriced home, squeezed into this multi-subdivided postage stamp of a property- most
likely in a former swamp. Mass-produced, oversized houses on sub-standard parcels of
real estate- McMansions!”
“When we, here at CGA, buy the land there is no income or profit from it. Some would
say that we are throwing our money away. We need funding. That’s where the new retail
projects of our company come in. We are selling local foods and green products.”
“The nuts, Mr. Marino, are a counter-intuitive initiative.” Paul only now just realized that
they had continued walking while Ms. Frank lectured. “Most people would shun buying
up or gaining profit from the rainforest. It is associated with bulldozing hundreds of acres
every day so that cheap grazing land would be available for cows. Problem with that is,
that even though the rainforests have the highest biomass and diversity of any place on
the planet, the soil is actually rather nutrient-poor. The fertility, the life of the forest is
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locked up in the trees themselves. Take the trees away and you might get a season or two
of grazing pastures and that’s it. You have a dustbowl left over. All for cheap grazing
land for the cows that go into your fast food burger.”
“Don’t they have laws and land management down there?” Paul interjected.
“That is a typical American attitude, Mr. Marino. It is so easy for us up here in our rich
society to dictate the immorality of cutting down the rainforest to those ‘stupid people’
down there destroying the rainforest. Here, where most people have the money to buy so
much food every day that we are an obese society. We have two cars, a TV in every
room, summer homes. Waste. The list of our glut goes on. These people are trying to get
by on pennies a day. They don’t know of the importance of the rainforests. All that they
know is that they will get those few pennies if they cut down a few trees. It is so easy for
us to sit here and tell them that they cannot scratch out a living.”
“We buy nuts to supply our new product lines of food and textiles. We pay them to
essentially farm nuts from the exotic trees. They get very good wages by their standards.
They earn a living by supplying us with renewable resources. There is profit and
prosperity from forest farming. Now they have a real incentive to keep the trees. To cut
them down gets the workers minimal pay from day-to-day but once the trees are gone the
job is gone. Farming the forest, gets them pay today, and tomorrow. It is in our long-term
best interest and in their short-term. They get food on their table indefinitely.”
Paul felt guilty that he had never given it not only a second thought, but not even a first
thought to the difficulties and dilemmas of the people down there. He was embarrassed
that he always had the preconception of ‘how can those people down there cut down their
own rainforest. Don’t they know that they are destroying the planet!’ He heard a part of
himself shatter as he realized that his thoughtless consumerism had forced those people to
do it.
He stood there for a moment, belittled. He could feel the awkward silence in his
earphone. It seemed to him that the background bustle of the office was getting loudermore into focus. Uncomfortably humbled, the only thing he could break the silence with
was “I’m sorry. I never knew.”
Sadly, and with gentle understanding in her voice, she said “most people don’t.”
After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, Laurie escorted Paul into what he thought
was her office. It turned out to be her personal assistant’s office. Laurie’s office was at
the far end of the assistant’s antechamber. The room was a comfortably oversized square
room with the entry corner cut off to form a diagonal wall of frosted glass. The office was
decorated in soothing shades of grey- lighter on the walls and the carpet a darker tone.
The high shine glass and steel grey shelving and cabinet units filled the remaining wall to
the right. The far wall was a floor-to-ceiling glass window so clean that it looked as if
there was no window there at all. To the left was another frosted glass wall which faced
57
the majority of the cubicle maze. The far wall had a pair of large tropical plants flanking
the majestic mahogany wood doors into Laurie’s office.
Two matching desks mirrored each other across the path that stretched from door to door.
Sitting at the desk to the right was a light-skinned black woman in her early forties
looking over a small pile of folders. Her dark brown hair was straightened and lay in
loose waves down to her shoulders. She rose from her seat once she saw that Laurie had a
guest. She was much shorter than Paul barely reaching up to his chin. She was wearing a
yellow and orange sleeveless dress matched with sandy tan sandal flats each topped by a
large jewel on the instep. The outfit was a perfect representation of a sunny day in
between summer and autumn. As she rounded the desk corner, Laurie introduced the two
of them.
“Paul Marino, this is my assistant Justine Henderson.” Paul reached out to shake her
already outstretched hand. The multiple orange and brown wood-beaded bracelets rattled
as they shook. “Justine, Paul will be interning with us in the mornings until June. Can
you please set him up in Jamie’s old desk and get him set up with whatever paperwork he
needs?” She motioned to the empty desk on the left. Ms. Frank then shook Paul’s hand.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some rainforest nuts to sell. We’ll talk again later after you
settle in.”
“Thank you Ms. Frank,” he replied as they separated hands.
“Laurie,” she called over her shoulder as she walked away.
“Well, Mr. Marino, first day in a new position is always an exciting time.”
“ ‘Paul’ will be fine. And yes, I’m looking forward to working here.”
“Make yourself at home. I’ll give you login and password details when you’re ready.
Welcome aboard.” She gave him a friendly touch on the forearm then turned back to her
desk.
58
Happy Birthday
Paul stayed late at the office today to look over some of the statistics that Laurie gave
him. She had showed him how to look at a company’s records to see signs of hidden
violations. He was comparing productivity rates with waste disposal invoices and began
spotting discrepancies. A company that increases production of energy and profit but had
no increase in landfill bills indicated illegal dumping of the by-products. He finally had
enough for the day. Justine was long gone. The office felt cold and dark whenever she
left. They had become good friends over the last few months working together. Although
she had a steady boyfriend, they mutually flirted. They definitely had a pleasant
enjoyable working relationship. He closed his bag and quietly walked out leaving the
lights on for the automatic occupancy sensor to do its job.
When Paul returned home, he saw Katie’s car in the drive and felt a little brighter. A
casual dinner with his good friend would take a little gloom out of the dark days of
December. Inside the house it was quiet and dim. Only a few automatic lights were
illuminating the corners of the rooms. Katie was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s Katie?” He asked to the air.
Neti replied, “she is in the control room.”
Paul wanted to see what she was working on that would keep her away from the house so
late. He went through the basement and rode a Segway down the long hall. The command
complex was eerily quiet. He felt like he was sneaking around and instinctively walked as
quietly as he could.
He walked into the darkened control room. The only light source was Katie’s monitors.
She was slumped over the keyboard, apparently passed out from working too hard. He
quietly went up to her and prepared to escort her to the lounge so she can continue her
nap on one of the couches. Just as he was about to touch her, he looked at her display and
his heart broke. September 11th. The image was frozen on the screen. The first jet was
captured on video as it flew into the building. The image was stopped at the moment of
impact. The moment her brother died.
John was working that day on the 97th floor of the North Tower at his investment firm.
New to the job, he arrived early that day to catch up after the long Labor Day weekend.
He had just called Katie to see how the rest of her weekend went.
59
They had spent Friday and Saturday together at their parents’ vacation house for a
barbeque. He had to leave but Katie stayed with her parents. They made it an extended
weekend and kept Katie home from school an extra day. They wanted to make sure that
they would not be on the road with all of the travelers who were coming home from their
parties and barbeques. The two spoke to each other almost every day and he felt at a loss
that he hadn’t talked to her in three days now. He was always talking with his little sister.
Safely out of college and working at the beginning of his career, John was very protective
of Katie. At thirteen, she was almost ten years younger than her brother. She was an
“oops child” as he often reminded her whenever the subject of the age gap between them
came up. He was worried about his little Kat. A thirteen-year-old girl can find all sorts of
ways to get herself into trouble. He needed to keep her close.
They were already on the phone for over ten minutes. They still managed to have an
exchange that they were both equally enjoying even though it had been only three rather
uneventful days since they last talked. It was always like that. Best friends. At twelve
minutes and thirty-three seconds, according to the timer on the handset, the call just went
dead. Twenty minutes later, Katie and her parents were sprawled out on the floor in an
inconsolable writhing ball of hugs and tears. They had just turned on the television.
Today was December fifteenth: John’s birthday. He would have been thirty-five. Lying
on the console was a small wallet picture of John and Katie. They were pressed cheek-tocheek in front of some landmark while he held the camera at arm’s length. The picture
had apparently fallen out of her right hand when she passed out. Her left hand was
extended and still touching the computer screen. The screen that showed the last moment
of her brother’s life. The moment that she was on the phone with him. The moment that
she would hear his laugh for the last time. Her head was lying across her left arm with her
ear pressed against her bicep. Paul leaned over her and he could see her face. Tear stains
streaked down the side of her nose. The desk still moist from the puddle that collected
there.
Paul left Katie undisturbed and quietly walked out of the control room. In a somber
mood, he walked through the hall of the complex and headed towards the tunnel. He
turned the door knob to exit and stopped. His thoughts deepened. He became angry at
fate. He wanted to fix Katie. Was there anything he could do?
“Don’t kill your grandfather!”
Paul backed up into the hall again, and closed the door in front of him. He turned and
walked through the double doors into the hangar. He climbed into Storm Front and
piloted the ship through the launch tunnel. Although it did not really make a difference he
breathed softly to be as quiet as he could as he exited.
Once clear of the shed hiding the entry to the complex he sped up into the sky then
hovered, invisibly cloaked, and collected his thoughts. He set the controls and opened a
portal. After collecting scans from many destinations on the other side he passed through
and was in an alternate Universe- one where the terrorist attack did not happen. One
60
where John was alive. The onboard Neti scanned the world. In less than a half second,
Paul was shown a summed-up biography of the now thirty-five year-old John Ryan. He
was married and had a child. Katie was an aunt!
“Search historical records for the last fifteen years and highlight any significant
differences.”
A moment later an abbreviated video clip showed Paul an alternate history. It was like
watching a movie. Different presidents. Different conflicts. All-out war between the
Middle Eastern countries, Isreal and the NATO countries. There had been several
detonations of nuclear weapons in populated areas around the world. North Korea was a
wasteland. Seventeen million people were dead from the wars. In this alternate history,
the airline attacks on the United Stated never happened. It was prevented by an
anonymous tip that grounded the jets the morning of the hijackings. As a result, the
terrorist groups grew more frustrated and more determined to strike at their enemy.
Funding grew and networks deepened. They were able to detonate a biological weapon at
a less secure yet a grand enough symbol of American prosperity: Las Vegas. The
American people had lost all patience with diplomacy and retaliated viciously against the
terrorists’ home countries. In the end it had become a war deepening the chasm between
the Muslim world and the West in what had been called the Modern Crusades. Over ten
million people were dead in the first year.
Discouraged, Paul tried a handful of other timelines.
In each one where John was delayed from arriving at work on time the attacks still
happened and he was one of the ten million killed.
In one alternate reality John was given an early anonymous tip, Paul assumed that he was
the caller, warning to evacuate the building. Result: John evacuated the entire building.
The minimal casualties did not anger the American people enough to retaliate. It showed
weakness and the Chinese attempted to invade the United States. There was an exchange
of nuclear weapons and fifty million people were dead.
Each variation: four million dead, twenty-four million dead, irradiated areas, ecological
destruction of entire continents.
There was no option. John Ryan could not be saved.
Frustrated, Paul returned to The Garage. Katie went to greet him as he disembarked from
the ship.
“Where have you been,” she asked. She looked composed and back to her normal self.
She had no idea that Paul stood next to her earlier.
“I did some side-stepping…looking at some ‘what ifs.’ ”
61
Getting Ready
While Paul was training, Steve became intimately familiar with the computer system. He
often felt uncomfortable with how little it needed him, how much it could do and how
intelligent it was. At times he had conversations with Neti that were as lucid as any he
had had with humans. When they worked closely together, he even programmed her to
announce the time every half an hour as a reminder that she was not a real person. He
was also reassured in his humanity by her lack of insight. She could make connections
and predictions based on formulae and trends but there were no hunches, no intuition, no
recognition of subtleties. In the end, she was a machine.
Katie used the time to re-plan The Garage. She considered the original layout as a
prototype conceived through brainstorming. With the aide of the multiple MaRes she had
at her disposal she was able to manipulate the facility much as a potter would mold clay.
Trying out ideas was, to her, like trying on different colors of a sweater to see which one
worked best with her eyes. She moved entire workstations, reconfigured walls, changed
the position of equipment and re-tasked different areas of the hangar and side rooms.
Katie also used the opportunity to renovate the house above. Over the last year, the house
had changed its function from a cover to hide The Garage and its purpose to an actual
home for the three of them. The trio had taken up permanent residence at the house. Katie
changed the interior layout as easily as she did in The Garage. They each had their own
living spaces designed to their own personalities. They no longer had to share a bathroom
like a nuclear family. Katie furnished and decorated each area with the same casual
warmth as her original home. Although, not needed, she kept her home more for a sense
of stability and sentiment than anything else.
When Paul returned home one day after a day of training, Katie and Steve discussed an
idea they have been working on over the last few days.
Katie told Paul “right now, if we wanted to stop a bad event form happening we would
have to have known from a jump forward in order to monitor what is going on, or jump
back to undo it.”
“Katie, Allie gave us all of this so that we can change the things that destroy the world’s
environment. We cannot stop every bad every bad event from happening.” Paul
protested.
62
“Don’t we have a duty, a responsibility to prevent people from dying senseless deaths?”
She countered.
“If we tried to stop every senseless death we would not have time for our mission.”
“Not EVERY death! Just the big events.” Her voice softened almost to a whisper. “Mass
killings.”
Paul finally realized why she was so insistent about this- her brother’s death. “Katie,” he
continued gently, “we cannot stop what happened to your brother. I looked into it. There
is just too much temporal inertia. We cannot stop the ones in current time just as much.”
“Paul, if we stopped them as they happened, there would be no inertia to them. Listen to
me. If you stand at the bottom of a hill and try to stop a car that has been rolling down
from the top, it will be impossible to stop it- too much momentum. But, if you stop it just
as it begins to roll, you can easily stop it from gaining that momentum.” She would not
let it go. “Paul, I just don’t want history to repeat itself.”
“Katie, we can’t do it all.”
Steve finally spoke up. “Paul, Katie also had another thought on the subject. What if one
of those random events was a meteor falling from the sky and landed on this house?”
Paul raised an eyebrow.
“Ok, unlikely. But what if the authorities finally figure out where we are? What if the
enemy finds out? We might not see them coming. We are done. Mission over! We have
failed.”
Paul considered it. His shoulders slumped a little. “I… um, I’ll have to give this some
thought.”
“There’s one more thing,” Steve pressed. “You’re getting old!”
“What? What does that have to do with this? We all get old.”
“The trips that you’ve made forward and backward in time to monitor events, or the
results of our actions, are aging you- faster than us two. When jumping back and forth in
time you will still age according to your biological clock. If you jump back in time to, for
example, visit the time of Christ and spend Holy Week there- the last week before Jesus
was crucified- you would age a week. If you return home to the moment that you left you
will now be a week older than you should be according to the calendar on the wall. If you
do this repeatedly, the weeks would add up and you would be an old man while your twin
would be the same age you are now.”
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“The other alternative would be to come back home a week after you left so that your
biological age would coincide with your calendar age. The problem with that would be if
something happened in that week while you were absent visiting some other time. We
could be found out or destroyed or they can wait for your return and arrest or attack you.”
“You two can be so frustrating at times.” He looked over at Katie, she folded he arms
folded across her chest triumphantly. She gave Paul a smug look.
Steve took that as a sign the Paul relented. “The probe is a sensor array that is launched
five minutes into the future where it will stay permanently,” he explained. “It has its own
cloak so it will be undetectable. It monitors the world for any significant events and
transmits the information back to current time via quantum bridge. It is limited to five
minutes in the future because any further will require too much energy to keep the
transmission streaming. Neti tells me that it would also leave too much of a temporal
signature that could give us away. Keeping a cloak activated twenty-four seven requires a
lot of energy so it will not be able to do anything other than surveillance and sending a
signal back to us.”
“So it can’t do anything about what it sees. Correct?” asked Paul. They nodded in answer.
“Right,” Steve continued. “But monitoring events from five minutes in the future should
give us enough time to respond.”
Paul took a long sip of his ice water and thought about it for a moment. After he
swallowed, he paused. “Ok send one out but just to monitor us. To keep us safe. Let the
world unfold as it is supposed to unfold.”
Steve swung around in his chair and pressed a single button. “Done!”
They looked up through the bay window and watched a MaRe unit begin materializing a
large metallic beach ball. It was covered with lenses, wires and conduits, sensor dishes
and tubes.
A beep sounded from Steve’s workstation behind them. He turned to see the cause.
“Already getting telemetry. It’s on its way,” he reported.
Paul and Katie looked back out of the window to see the incomplete probe then back at
the display with the video feed from the probe as it flew towards the city from their
location. Paul was just about ready to ask for explanation when he realized that the signal
was coming from five minutes in the future where the probe was completed and on its
way to its holding position twenty thousand feet above the city. He toyed with the idea of
running out into the bay and hitting the assembling probe with a hammer just to see what
would happen to the video feed from the future. Don’t kill your grandfather, he mused.
Then he came to the conclusion that he already knew that he avoided the temptation to
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stop production because it was sending back video. He had to stop himself. Temporal
puzzles and paradoxes took so much mental energy.
Once completed, the MaRe rolled away and the probe began to levitate. The bay doors
opened just enough for the probe to fit. The machine opened its own bridge. The portal
appeared invisible since the scene on the other side was exactly the same now as it would
be in five minutes: the far side of the bay. The probe glided through the opening and
appeared as if it went through a window and disappeared.
65
Meeting Melissa
Paul exited the cab in front of 379 Grand. He shivered as he hunched his jacket up
towards his ears to keep the cold morning air from sliding down his neck. He was
definitely underdressed. He quickly shuffled up the stairs and into the lobby. Once inside,
he paused for a moment to let the warmth soak in and chase the chill away. Paul walked
over to Marty’s desk with his shoulders still hunched up.
“Running late today, Mr. Marino?”
“I had to run some errands,” was all he explained as he placed his work bag down
between his feet. He wasn’t going to tell the guard that he had a meeting with the team
before he left. They wanted him to pump Laurie for some new candidates for their first
attacks. He called ahead and told Justine that he would be an hour late.
“That cold came out of nowhere, huh?”
“Yes Marty. I should watch the weather more closely.” Paul chuckled inwardly as he saw
the irony of that statement.
“Yeah, I hear you Mr. Marino. I hate driving my ’67 Chevy on days like this. It takes so
long for the heat to kick in.”
Paul swiped his card.
Marty continued without breaking stride. “With a 283-cubic-inch four-barrel V-8 engine
it takes forever for the block to heat up. I’m practically here by the time it’s comfortable.
You ever ride in one of those sweethearts? I should take you out in mine one day. Once
it’s warmed up it’s a real sweet ride.”
“No I haven’t Marty. Paul flipped up his ID card like he was showing off a winning
lottery ticket. Then he jerked the card over his shoulder towards the elevators in a I’vegotta-go motion. He backed away towards the elevator alcove. “Maybe one day. Gotta
go.” Still walking backwards.
Ding! Perfect timing, he thought as he turned towards the opening door, his head still
looking at Marty. He didn’t care if it was heading up or down to the basement. Already
halfway through the door, Paul finally completed his turn to look where he was going. He
stopped short to avoid stepping into a woman standing against the back wall. All he could
66
see was the dark brown hair on the top of her head as she intently read some file on top of
the small stack shelved on top of her hands. Paul’s sudden stop broke her from her
concentration. She looked up without moving her head. Seeing the startled look on his
face at her sudden appearance, she slowly turned her face up to look squarely at him. Her
passive “reading face” slowly softened into a smile.
“Sorry,” was all he could say.
“Scary?” She said, referring to herself, as the door slid closed behind Paul.
“No, not at all. I just didn’t see you there until I almost bumped you.” Paul melted. She
had the most piercing, penetrating, most beautiful brown eyes he had ever seen.
Gracefully almond-shaped. Her long eyelashes hid the perfectly applied eyeliner just
enough to soften the whole frame. His breathing suddenly became irregular. His hands
started to tremble. His vision began to tunnel as his brain discarded extraneous
information on the sides. Adrenaline!
Tachypsychia kicked in. It was a physiological response to an adrenaline dump that Jim
told him about. It was an altered perception of time during stressful events.
“It’s like when people get into car crashes they often say that things went too fast to do
anything or that things looked like they were in slow motion. That’s the adrenaline hitting
the brain,” Jim told Paul during one of their “intangibles” lessons.
Jim trained Paul under stressful conditions: threat of getting hit; cold and loud conditions;
dangerous situations; forced limitations during sparring while Jim had none. Then, once
the stress had been applied, Paul had to accomplish multiple tasks in short periods of
time. This trained Paul to recognize the adrenaline dump, to be comfortable working with
it, and how to channel tachypsychia to collect information, make decisions, and take
action at incredibly fast speeds. Paul never thought that he would use his martial arts
training as a reaction to coming expectantly face-to-face with a woman!
The world slowed down, his brain went into overdrive and he was blasted with
information.
She blinked.
Somewhere a clock ticked.
He did one, fast, scanning sweep down during her timeless blink. She was in her early
thirties and had perfect light skin. Her slightly curved bangs just reached eyebrows which
were not too bushy and not tweezed out of existence. They had a shapely curve to them
that once again, drew the gaze to her eyes. The remaining length of her hair cascaded
down and caressed her shoulders in a blanket of loose silky curls that framed her face.
She had such a beautiful face.
67
Her lips had a hint of rose-red but there didn’t appear to be any lipstick or gloss on them.
It seemed like the color came up from under the surface. They were soft, curvy and ended
in the most joyous dimples where her mouth met her cheeks.
She wore a navy coat that reached down to her thighs with a slightly lighter scarf draped
around her neck. The unfastened coat revealed her business jacket underneath which was
a dark blue but not quite navy. It was secured by a single button. She wore a light bluealmost white blouse with a slight sheen to it. The top button was open revealing a thin
silver necklace ending with a tricolor gold pendant. Over one shoulder she had a black
leather purse hanging down to one hip. In her tabled arms was a small pile of file folders
and a binder. Her slender manicured fingers wrapped around the edge of her folders- no
ring! She wore a skirt that matched her jacket. It was a slim, straight skirt that came down
to her kneecap. Her flawless legs had light tan, almost nude pantyhose and tapered down
into her shoes. The three-inch heels of her black leather pumps lifted her up to Paul’s
height once she turned her head up out of her reading.
Tock!
Paul backed up slightly and turned to put his back against the wall as is the norm
according to the unwritten protocol when riding an elevator. He leaned slightly across her
and pressed thirty-two. Just then the elevator started going down. She realized his
mistake just as he did. As he straightened up he caught her scent. It was a heavenly smella hint of soap from her morning shower hid under the light sweet fragrance of jasmine.
The strength of her perfume was perfect. It was almost understated but could not be
missed.
“Someone must have pressed the down button in the lobby and then caught another car,”
he said as a matter of excuse. He blushed slightly and was thankful that they were both
facing forward.
Ding!
The door opened to the executive parking level. She took half a second to adjust her files
under one arm and then walked out towards the subway entrance just outside of the lot.
“Have a good day,” Paul said to her back.
She glanced back and hit Paul again with one final look at those amazing eyes. “You
too.” Her voice was silk.
Focused on her eyes he had to say something. Anything! Just something so that it gets
beyond that exchange of required pleasantries. Anything that showed he was processing
something about this moment and not reading from the automatic strangercommunication script.
“It’s still cold out there!”
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As she continued to walk away he could see her adjust her jacket in a little tighter with
her free hand. She glanced back for a moment as she held a loose end of her scarf aloft to
make sure that he saw. Her eyes pierced his and then she tossed the scarf over the
opposite shoulder to let him know she followed his advice.
She walked away and the door closed. Paul remembered to breathe.
The elevator dinged and the doors opened once again to the lobby. Paul found it funny
that this is where he should have gotten onto the elevator. If he had paid attention to what
he was doing he would have pressed the up button and waited for the correct car. The
door closed. He chuckled to himself. If it wasn’t for trying to avoid a prolonged
discussion with Marty he would never have crossed paths with that woman. He reflected
on how much chance plays into the moments in your life. A few random words with the
guard changed a regular day into one with a smile.
When he reached the thirty-second floor, things slipped back into his normal routine.
“Good morning Rachel.”
“Good morning Mr. Marino.” He was certain she was a robot. She greeted him the same
exact way every day since he started his internship. Four months of “good morning Mr.
Marino.” Four months of “have a nice day”.
When he reached the antechamber of Laurie’s office he greeted Justine then looked over
at Laurie’s closed doors.
“She’s finishing up her last interview of the day,” she explained. “New PR position.
She’s met four people so far and he should be out in a few minutes.”
By the time Paul was finished unpacking his bags the door opened. Laurie was holding
the door escorting the candidate out.
“It was a pleasure to meet you, Michael.”
“I enjoyed our talk Mrs. Frank.”
They shook hands and the young man walked out of the office. His suit was sharply
pressed, shoes polished, briefcase without a scuff. His short hair was meticulously
trimmed. It reminded him of how well-groomed the elevator woman was. To Paul, the
candidate appeared to be straight out of college looking for an entry-level job. He crossed
the room, met Paul’s eyes and gave him a confident, cocky nod. The kind of nod that
conveyed an attitude that he was Paul’s equal, as if they were seasoned comrades. As if
he had the job in his pocket.
Laurie waved Paul into her office as Mr. Cocky left the office.
69
Justine openly laughed as Laurie closed her office door muttering “arrogant ass!”
“That’s the problem with public relations people. If they are inexperienced they think
they are more charming than they really are.”
“Anyway Paul, I’d like you to compile a short list of the next companies that we are
going to work on next. The last few settlements worked out nicely but we are going to
need some more revenue in order to seed the next couple of projects I’d like to start. Let’s
focus on power companies that are showing the largest profit margins. You’ll see that
those are the ones that inflate the utility charges the highest and have the greediest
CEO’s.”
*****
A few days later Paul began to see the woman from the elevator on a semi-regular basis.
They usually crossed paths as he was coming in for the day and she was, he assumed,
coming leaving for lunch. Paul was comfortable with steady routines. When working as a
teacher, he would have a very rigid daily pattern determined by the class schedule. Each
day he would pass the same person at the same spot in the same hall as they each moved
to their same next period. The routine became part of his circadian rhythm.
Soon they had become used to seeing each other. He would hold the door for her if he got
there first or she would hold it if she was first. It amazed Paul how differently she looked
each day. She changed hairstyle almost every day. Sometimes it was down and in loose
curls like the day they first met in the elevator. Sometimes, it was a french braid or a
rolled rope on one side. On dress-down Fridays it was a pony tail. Her dressing style was
just as varied. Sometimes it was business formal, a skirt and blouse, or a pant suit. On
Fridays it was a complete surprise every time but the pony tail was as good as a calendar.
At times he hardly recognized her from the back. But from the front there was no
mistake. Those eyes gave her away every time. One thing that was consistent about her
was the trail of that heavenly soapy jasmine that she left in her wake.
Occasionally they met at the guard’s desk as he was swiping his ID card to come in and
she was checking out for lunch. Marty rarely gave them the opportunity to talk to each
other. When they did, it was small talk. “Hi, how are you? Hot day today. How was the
traffic?” They became familiar enough for short conversations. They silently slipped past
that line that divides anonymous strangers and from people who were too familiar to
exchange names. It felt a little awkward. Paul was never able to catch her name from her
ID card as she swiped it. All that he could catch was “Cooper”.
There became a friendly connection between them. Through eavesdropping on Marty’s
conversations they each gained a small foothold to initiate a short conversation.
“Are you going to the car show this weekend? Me neither.”
“How was the movie you mentioned to him yesterday?”
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Every once in a while the answer would be an understandable “I just said that so I can get
out of here.”
On hectic days, they simply exchanged eye rolls at the guard’s third-wheel intrusions.
Her eyes were still as captivating while giving a sarcastic roll.
*****
“Good morning Paul.”
“Good morning Jessie.”
“She has a meeting going on right now and she wanted you to come in as soon as you got
here. Go right on in.”
Paul put down his bags and walked into Laurie’s office empty handed. When he entered,
he saw Laurie and another woman from behind hunched over the large table in the rear of
her room. Laurie stood up at the sound of Paul coming in.
“Good morning Paul. I’m glad you got here before we had to break for lunch. We’ve
been working on a plan to infuse some life into the green car market. I’m working with
one of our brightest new acquisitions from PR on this.”
The woman straightened and turned to look at Paul. Miss Cooper! He hoped that his
momentary look of shock went unnoticed.
“Paul, this is Melissa Cooper. She works in our PR department. She started here earlier
this month and has jumped in with two feet.”
He extended his hand to shake hers while he thought Ah! Finally a name: Melissa!
Then Allie’s parting words hit him like a pan to the head ‘Protect Melissa.’
Oh Shit! This is Melissa! Just before touching his hand made a single spastic twitch as the
realization crashed upon the rocky shore of his mind.
Laurie finished the introduction. “This is Paul Marino. He is interning here while
thinking of possibly starting his own green advocate company like ours. Between you and
me, Melissa, I think it would be best if he just stay here.” She finished with a wink to
Paul.
They clasped hands in a shake. Already flooded with adrenaline from the revelation,
sensations exploded into him through the contact. Again, Jim’s martial arts training rose
to the surface. Paul glimpsed everything about her in that moment of contact. Her hand
was warm and firm. It electrified him with a tingle that shot halfway up his forearm. The
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hairs prickled. Her finger and palm muscles flexed in the handshake. She workes out. Her
pinky pressed just as firmly as the rest- she touch-types- no hunting-and-pecking. He felt
her pulse- slow and strong. She had a barely perceptible downward rotation in her shake:
her balance was tipped forward slightly from her heels. After the firm shake, the mood of
her hand changed. It softened from firm to tender as the muscles relaxed but he felt that
there was absolutely no intent on pulling back from the clasp. Her hand rested in his. Her
fingers melted around his hand.
He remembered to breathe.
The half-second-eternity ended.
“Nice to meet you Ms. Cooper.” He was lost in her eyes. Then he directed his words
towards Laurie without turning away from Melissa. “We’ve passed in the lobby before
but never really met.”
“Just Melissa. Paul is it?”
The rest of the meeting was white noise to him. He nodded and “yessed” and “I agree-d”
his way through it. He was lost in her scent- the same heavenly scent from the elevator
that first day and passing in the lobby during the days since. At the slightest bump or
brush while working side-by-side over the conference table he lost all train of thought.
In what appeared to him to be a moment, the meeting was over. Although he wanted the
conversation to continue- even though it was strictly about business, he also wanted to
run back to base and report his discovery.
“Jessie, I’m leaving for the day,” he said as he quickly gathered his coat and bag.
“Errands to run. Bye.” He shot out through the door.
“See you tomorrow” Justine said to the now-closed door.
The ride back home was painfully slow. He was antsy the entire trip. He didn’t trust his
report to a text or a phone call. This was not the first time that he wished that there was a
way for him to have Storm Front facilitate his commute. But there was no way he could
get on and off of the ship unseen in a bustling city.
Not wanting to waste a moment with the Segway ride down the tunnel, he parked outside
the shed and ran down the launch ramp into The Garage. He burst into the command
center. Katie and Steve sat there staring wide-eyed at his unusual dramatic entrance.
“I met Melissa!”
It took the two of them a moment to process what, to them, was an obscure detail from
Paul’s report on his meeting with Allie. They continued to sit wide-eyed.
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“She works at CGA! Allie told me to protect her. I still don’t know why, but now that we
have found her we have to.”
“How do you know she’s the right Melissa?” Katie asked.
“She is. I know it.”
Steve thought it over for a second and then he snapped into a mission attitude. He swung
around to his work panel. “Paul, Melissa what?”
“Cooper. Melissa Cooper,” he impatiently blurted out as he moved to look over Steve’s
shoulder at the workstation.
“Checking Melissa Cooper…” A list hundreds of names long scrolled as a blur up
Steve’s screen. “Cross referencing with payroll at CGA…” The list quickly shortened
down to one. “Ok. That’s her. Compiling personal information…address…D. O. B….
Cell phone number…” Using the holographic interface he pulled out a virtual map of the
city. “Locating…locating…locating…” A circle within the map shrank in spurts until it
zeroed in on CGA. A wireframe drawing of the building grew up out of the flat map
surface. The building rolled and spun to give the best view of the thirty-first floor- the
location of Melissa’s office on the lower floor occupied by the company. “Cell phone
lock.” Steve clicked a quick series of keystrokes followed by a final “Enter” tap.
“Manufacturing and dispatching a temporal probe.”
“Paul, there are about a hundred thousand Melissas in the United States alone- Steve?”
She nodded in the direction of Steve’s computer.
He took up her lead and quickly glanced at one of the windows. “One hundred, seventyone thousand, two hundred and four Melissas.”
“How do you know this is the one that Allie was referring to?”
Paul didn’t know if her questioning was out of a purely logical motivation or jealousy at
some level. He became a little defensive. “She’s the only Melissa I’ve met since last year
and she works in the same field as we do- stopping the dirty companies. If it turns out
that we find another Melissa we could always dispatch another probe.”
“Why don’t we just have a probe follow every Melissa in the country! Maybe we have to
protect one that has nothing to do with us, but eventually becomes Allie’s great-great
grandmother?”
“Katie, I think Paul makes sense,” Steve attempted to smooth things over. “It certainly
seems to make sense that it would be someone close to our mission and someone who we
have crossed paths with. She may become significant to our mission.”
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“Hmmph. Whatever!” Katie’s feathers were uncharacteristically ruffled. She got up and
walked out of the room.
74
The First Mission
During the next few months, their preparations became a routine. During the weekdays,
Paul was either at the office with Laurie Fox or Martial Arts training with Jim Forest
while Katie and Steve prepared The Garage or researched. During the weekends the three
of them trained with operations. They practiced working with each other as a team. Paul
would practice listening to their instructions as they guided him along more and more
complex flight plans. Other times, he would describe to them what he was observing and
they practiced listening to him. By the end of the year, they were able to finish each
other’s sentences and even bordered on reading each other’s minds.
One thing that amazed Katie about the ship was the shields. They were waves of charged
particles. The waves resonated in such a way that they focused in layers of intensity at the
shield surface. Each layer had a different property and repelled or annihilated different
materials or energies. The shape of the shields also enhanced their strength. During flight,
they took on the shape of a cylinder around the ship with the front and rear ends tapered
down to a point on each end. The tips of the shields extended far beyond the ends of the
ship. The long, sleek, aerodynamic shape of the shield allowed the ship to part the air and
slip between it very quickly. The air was spread apart and put back together so gradually
that it didn’t create a sonic boom until it reached hypersonic speeds of Mach 8 or 9.
During turns, the shields changed their shape to turn the tapered points along the
projected flight path.
Once comfortable with the workings of Storm Front and communicating with each other
they began running simulated attacks on industrial targets. Flying with the cloak engaged,
Paul would approach a real-world location and do a dry run with his support team acting
as extra eyes and guidance. Occasionally, Steve instructed Neti to throw in a monkey
wrench. She would add simulated defenses such as armed guards, air force defenses, even
missiles. On a handful of simulations, she faked technical glitches to blind sensors or to
disable some of the ship’s functions.
With the unwitting guidance of Laurie Fox, they picked a handful of preliminary targets.
Most were industrial- ranging in size from small operations in commercial developments
up to sprawling facilities and refineries. Within the list were a handful of military and
shipping facilities.
April 2015: the campaigns begin. The first strike was chosen to both send a message and
to demonstrate some of the capabilities they had. Paul and Katie prepared the statement
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and Steve edited the message and designed the method of delivery. At exactly noon on
April 25, a year after Allie’s visit, he gave Neti the command to execute.
Simultaneously, all over the world the message was broadcast. So as not to cause a panic
it was not sent by the live media of radio or television but instead it was dispersed by the
web. It appeared on homepages for the largest websites as well as an enormous list of
potential targets’ websites. It was sent as a video along with a text transcript of the video.
The video consisted of a series of media clips showing a parade of environmental
disasters, charts of environmental degradation and the plight of animals most affected by
environmental change. It was narrated by the voice of the CEO of number one on their
list, Michael Kinsey. Steve had Neti simulate his voice and speech pattern to deliver the
message. He was immensely proud of the beautiful irony.
“The rape of our planet must stop. Industrial pollution and depletion of resources has
changed the planet so much and so fast that we are at the tipping point of permanently
spiraling down into the ecological collapse of the entire world. We have choked our
atmosphere with poisons and heat trapping gasses. We have clogged our waters with
toxic waste. This trend has been accelerated by the greed of large corporations and fed by
mindless excessive consumerism. These companies will continue to expand regardless of
consequence in their blind ambitions with only one thing is sight: money. They are
supported by a disposable society. They are protected by the politicians that they lobby
and buy. Starting today, we are declaring war on all of those who mindlessly exhaust
resources and destroy the balance of the planet. We, as a people are so short sighted that
we are living in excess today by destroying our children’s inheritance.”
“We are not terrorists. We are not killers. We are the Storm Front.”
It was Katie’s idea to give themselves a name rather than letting the media do it.
Otherwise, she said, they could call us ‘the eco-terrorists’ or ‘death from above’ or some
other less flattering, vilified name.
“We are here,” the recording continued, “only to motivate the people of our world to
behave as if we want the world to be sustainable. Since our money-driven society has
taken on a life of its own we will put a stop to the insanity. At noon tomorrow we will
destroy the first of many sites that are causing the most environmental harm. Tomorrow
is a message that we have arrived and that we as a people need to start changing our
ways.”
“We will be mindful to do our best to give ample warning to the places to be destroyed so
that facilities can be evacuated and resources secured. Many of our targets supply power.
In an effort to avoid widespread hardship due to power outages, any facility that shows a
good-faith effort to switch over to greener technologies will be placed lower on the list.”
“At twelve noon tomorrow, the decommissioned coal fired power plant in Iron Hills,
Nevada will be leveled. We are aware that this is an off-line facility but we want it
understood very clearly that we are serious and capable of doing what needs to be done.”
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“As a demonstration of our resolve, at exactly 1PM today, in fifty-one minutes, we will
destroy the top secret Aurora hypersonic plane housed at the Air Force base in Tonopah,
Nevada. To witness this event, we have already diverted seven passenger airliners to the
area. The passengers will not be harmed in any way and will arrive safely at their original
destination with little or no delays. Any attempts by the military to escort the planes away
will be stopped.”
“Three locations at a time will be chosen and the list made public. They will be given one
day to prepare and evacuate. At which time, one of the three will be destroyed.”
The video ended.
Paul was already in the Nevada airspace in a cloaked hover watching the frenzied activity
at the Tonopah base. Moments after mentioning the base by name ground crews ran
around in a frenzy and fighters took off and circled the base. On his screen, he could see
the approaching passenger jets whose navigation computers were hacked by Steve’s
computer. One plane was already visible along with the two fighters attempting to escort
it away. Unwilling to shoot down a plane full of people, the impotent military jets flew
alongside the planes.
At 12:55 Steve sent the signal to hijack the Aurora’s onboard computer. The plane that
Neti was controlling taxied out of its hangar and parked in the middle of the airstrip.
Paul’s hands began to tremble as adrenaline surged in his body. It was surreal that he was
sitting here about to attack a top-secret high-security experimental military base.
The final passenger jets arrived and were circling the base from several miles in a
clockwise holding pattern. Steve chuckled as he hit the command to send a message with
Michael Kinsey’s voice to the passengers instructing them to take out their cameras and
tape what they see out of the right windows.
Show time! Invisibly, Paul dove at the target from several miles out. As he entered the
ring of airliners he de-cloaked in full sight of the passengers. He rapidly decelerated to a
halt and Storm Front hovered, menacingly pointed directly at the helpless Aurora sitting
on the tarmac. Paul let loose with all weapons. It was overkill but he was firing for effect.
Shock and awe. Missiles and energy beams tore the long semi-triangular multibillion
dollar experimental craft into shrapnel. Once the smoke cleared, the runway was a
smoldering, charred crater in the midst of a wide ring of black metal, ceramic and asphalt.
Even before Paul was finished firing, the base fought back. Missiles and antiaircraft fire
converged on the shielded ship from multiple angles. Paul sharply inhaled just before
contact, hoping that the untested shields would stand up to the assault. He had faith in
Allie and Storm Front but it was still unsettling to allow himself to be attacked. Even
with the shields and inertial stabilizers the impact of the weapons hit with an unexpected
ferocity. The ship was rocked. The shock of explosions pounded Paul in his seat and
77
vibrated his teeth. The sound was deafening. The detonations made a strobe. It was pure,
unrestrained violence.
“Target all active weapons,” Paul commanded to the computer. Instantly, the Heads-Up
Display highlighted each individual target with a crosshair within a red circle. Leisurely,
the ship swiveled in a three hundred sixty degree circle and picked off the offending
weapons. The din died down as the circle completed. Two more turrets were picked off
as they opened fire as a last feeble attempt to take down the invading ship. The offensive
weapons were shattered or melted but there were no casualties. Only the weapons were
targeted.
Steve activated another message.
“We have made our point. At twelve noon, tomorrow,” said the synthesized CEO, “one
of these three facilities will be leveled:
AriCal Power Plant near Essex, California
Zion Nuclear Power Plant outside of Chicago
Georgia Chemical in West Green Georgia.”
Paul guided the ship up in a leisurely climb and faded away as he engaged the cloak.
Once invisible, he immediately sharply turned the ship at a sharp angle. This was a tactic
that he began to employ during flight simulations and it was starting to become a good
habit.
He adopted the strategy while sparring Jim blindfolded. Whenever they made contact
with each other during a block or a strike striking or blocking, they each knew exactly
where the other was. A furious exchange erupted from the sudden flood of information.
Each subsequent contact gave each combatant a better picture of body position and intent.
They would usually get closer and eventually end up wrestling- which Jim always won.
Paul needed to derail that losing course of events and he adopted the “strike-and-hide”
method. He stalked Jim with as much stealth as possible. The rare clue such as a foot
shuffle, a breath or vibration gave Jim away. As soon as Paul was able to determine Jim’s
exact location, he would throw a strike or small combination and then suddenly change
his position. This prevented the Master from effectively predicting where Paul would be.
Because of his mentor’s sensitivity and skill, Paul’s technique rarely, but occasionally,
worked.
“Every little advantage adds up to a big advantage,” Jim would say, with a slight
compliment in his voice, during the post-sparring conferences.
Paul slid away in invisible silence in his new random direction. After a safe distance he
turned one more time to head back to The Garage. In a similar fashion, he never
approached home base straight-on. He would get within a few miles of the property
heading as if to pass it and then make a sharp turn to line up with the landing strip within
the shed. He used these decoy turns to hide any indication of his flight path.
78
When he entered the control room Katie and Steve had enough excitement for a room full
of people. Katie was jumping and cheering and hugging. Steve attempted to shake hands
and pat Paul’s back through Katie’s jubilation. All of the monitors in the room were
tuned to various news channels. The panoramic screen was split into a collage of
repeating videos. Some scrolled “Breaking News” others already had the stereotypical
dramatic graphic behind the news anchors. The theme appeared to be a crosshair around
some variation of “Storm Front Coming.” One station had a round table discussion
between experts in industry, climatology, military and a politician. Another had a split
screen debate between two opposing commentators. Still another had a map graphic with
a crosshair centered over Tonopah, Nevada serving as the backdrop to a phone interview
labeled “Live on the phone: Eyewitness Valerie Hanks, Flight 772 Passenger.”
For the next day the media was abuzz. Discussion panels argued the moral issues.
Weapons experts were analyzing the video frame-by-frame and speculating on the
capabilities of the craft. Conspiracy buffs and UFOlogists claimed government cover-up
and alien invasion. All the while, every station had a countdown timer ticking away in the
corner of the screen.
When the countdown reached one hour Storm Front launched out of The Garage under
cover of the cloak. The ship crossed the country and arrived at Target #2 from the
candidate list. The Zion Nuclear power facility between Chicago and Milwaukee was the
best of the three stations. Recently decommissioned, the plant was no longer needed for
the surrounding communities. The facility was located close enough to the two cities to
ensure plenty of witnesses from the public sector as well as the media. As Paul
approached, the tactical display indicated scores of news vans and a dozen helicopters- a
media circus. The public, clearly visible as an unorganized line of haphazardly parked
cars was held back almost two miles away on the main road edging the limit of the
grounds. From Paul’s vantage point his magnified display showed a large tailgate party.
Barbecues were smoking from behind sport utility vehicles. People ringed in circles
sitting in lawn chairs anxiously waited. Photographers, amateur and professional alike,
were lined along the fence with their cannon-sized telescopic lenses trained on the
containment dome and cooling towers next to scenic Lake Michigan. He was able to
make out a few vendors selling t-shirts and souvenirs. Although he could not see what
was written on the shirts he had an idea that it was some catchy slogan or dramatic
graphic. He made a mental note to ask Steve about them when he returned.
At precisely twelve noon, the ship faded into visibility as it streaked straight toward the
plant. Once completely de-cloaked, Paul turned on the shields even though he imagined
that he would not be fired upon so close to civilians. The ship paused menacingly above
the shore line. Three helicopters between the craft and the power plant wheeled away to a
safer viewing angle. Simultaneously, another three copters- Apache attack helicopters
took over the vacated air spaces in an attempt to block the power station.
“Targets?” Paul asked the onboard computer. A handful of red cross-haired circles
appeared in augmented reality on the tactical heads-up-display. Katie programed the
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targets to allow for a dramatic show yet keeping the debris from reaching the onlookers
out on the road.
“Are there any people within the target zone?”
Neti took a couple of seconds to scan the area then replied in the negative.
ALL CLEAR blinked on the HUD.
Paul opened fire with a continuous energy beam. It surgically sliced a smoldering line
across the bricked base of Cooling Tower #1. In slow motion, the tower leaned to the
right. The wall supporting the side of the tapered, column-shaped stack buckled. The tan
brick facade heaved then shattered. The tower collapsed with a low rumble into a cloud
of dust. From the on-looking crowd of ants he could see camera flashes shimmering like
sunlight playing on a child’s glitter encrusted art project.
He turned the ship slightly and blasted the sister tower on its left side so that the two
collapsed into one huge pile of rubble. The remaining target was the reactor building with
it containment dome. Paul was eager to use the next weapon. This one was a biggie,
potentially as strong as a nuclear bomb but without the deadly radiation. To eliminate the
threat of releasing radiation into the environment, Katie chose to destroy the domes with
a Cascading Higgs Implosion. The missile was a hardened, high speed projectile that
penetrates to the center of a target. Once at the target, the warhead detonates. It generates
a blast of Higgs bosons. The bosons interact with matter at the subatomic level and
amplifies the force of gravity between each particle. The particles collapse in on each
other which further enhances gravity. The effect cascades until everything within the
blast radius implodes and creates a black hole. The black hole is very small, as far as
black holes are concerned, and quickly evaporates by releasing Hawking radiation.
From a safe distance, he fired the shell at the containment dome. The moment that the
shell penetrated the building it was pulled in and collapsed surprisingly fast. The entire
building shrank to a point and winked out. Tendrils of rock and dust streamed into the
gravity well from the edges of the spherically excavated hole. He could see a faint
expanding sphere of condensation as the shock wave radiated out. Three seconds later it
hit him. The ship lurched forward from the inward suction caused by the collapse. Then it
was violently banged backwards. Even with the inertial dampeners, Paul was thrown
forward and banged his head on the front panel. When he looked up again he saw the
energy released as the miniature, unseen black hole evaporated its energy. Arcing
lightning bolts radiated out from the center of the circular bowl that was the containment
building a moment ago. The unrestrained energy slammed into random points nearby. A
rock vaporized. A tree burst into flames. One bolt connected to a light pole on the edge of
a small parking lot. The connection endured and the energy poured from the weakening
singularity into the earth surrounding the pole. The arc wiggled and twisted through the
air making a loud, deep, menacing hum. The spot where the pole was anchored to the
ground became the center of a spasmodic crab of flickering streams of energy, popping
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and cracking each time the lines re-attached to a new point. Little branches snapped and
sparked any near points as the tempest died down.
The sounds of violence died down to be replaced by the blare of car from near the distant
spectators. More glittering paparazzi. The crowd erupted in cheers and claps loud enough
that Paul was able to hear them from his hovering craft. After a few moments, the ship
pivoted in place and retraced its entry path fading into a cloaked departure.
*****
The first couple of missions were for the spectacle. The team wanted the major offenders
to be put on notice that they were on the list. The companies needed motivation to start
making the right decisions with the right priorities. They had to come to value the welfare
of the community at large rather than prioritizing profits for stockholders above
everything else. With enough persuasion, the stockholders will take smaller gains instead
of complete losses.
The trio wanted the government to know that the strikes will not be stopped. The
politicians were also put on notice that their pandering to the lobbyists and the corporate
funding will no longer be tolerated. The elected needed to be reminded that they were
servants of the people charged with guiding the care of their constituents and not the
other way around.
A message was also sent to the military that Storm Front, the “terrorist group” as they
labeled it, was not their enemy. An offensive posture will not be taken against those
ordered to protect the installations under attack. With the exception of the first mission,
Paul had not fired on any military targets whether they attacked the ship or not. It was
just as clear that conventional weapons would not scratch the ship.
As the strikes progressed, the targets became larger and more complex. Paul and Katie
agreed that they could not go directly after the top of the list. Even though they were the
biggest offenders, the public relied heavily on the largest facilities. If Paul went directly
at #1 on their list: KinsiCo, Neti predicted that up to one third of the country would black
out due to a cascading power failure. The massive blackout of 2003 caused eleven deaths
from a variety of causes. The computer simulated that a sudden loss of #1 would result in
close to one hundred casualties. Out-of-shape middle-aged men would have heart attacks
climbing the stairs of high rises without elevator service. People in hospitals or home care
would lose critical life support. She predicted that two people would die on operating
tables during the critical moments between the loss of power and gererators coming on
line. Cars crashing at lightless intersections. Botulism from spoiled food. The list of
possible ways to die was impressive but ultimately traced back to the sudden loss of
power.
With each attack, the message was reaffirmed that priority would be given to companies
that made no effort to clean up their activities and develop alternate, greener methods for
conducting business. On a second front, Steve began funneling funds from the dirty
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corporations into research and development companies to test new technologies and
programs.
The team and Neti anticipated that with the proper motivation, current trends would be
reversed and headed in the right direction in eighteen months to two years.
If it all went as planned.
82
A Chink in the Armor
June was always an exciting time for Paul. It was a time to reap the efforts of his teaching
and those of his students. It was a month of sitting on the edge of his seat, waiting to see
how his students would fare in the end. It was a month of anticipation, the long summer
vacation within reach- just past the last surge of the year. For teachers, every day in June
is Friday. Even though he was no longer teaching, that trained undertone of excitement
had become hard-wired into his seasonal rhythms.
He was also a little giddy from yesterday’s mission. It was particularly spectacular and
was set apart from the success of the previous sorties. As usual, the attack was covered by
the media but. It was no longer covered by every major news agency in the country.
Although they were no longer the media frenzy of the earlier missions, his raids had
become local festivals- a spike in excitement in the otherwise quiet, even boring, life of a
factory town. Schools were closed, parking was organized and vendors descended on the
perimeters of the sites.
Fortunately for the locals, it was no longer a one-in-three gamble if they were going to
get a show or not. Since Paul has had several opportunities to test the military response,
he has found them to be impotent in their evolving countermeasures. To no avail, the
responses had become more and more creative in their defense of the targeted facilities.
Bigger missiles, depleted uranium high-speed projectiles, ground-based lasers, ground-toair modified “bunker-busters” and aerial dispersed napalm were all used with no result.
Then there was mission eight: the first mission that singled out one facility instead of
three. The military defenders tried a fuel-air explosive- the most powerful conventional
explosion in the arsenal. It essentially had the power of a non-radioactive low-yield
nuclear weapon. Government agencies herded the crowds back so far that they could
barely see the facility. The bomb was detonated at the moment of Paul’s appearance. The
explosion was so large that it destroyed the factory and set off car alarms at the viewing
area over a mile away.
After the test, a spokesman for the White House explained that Storm Front would have
destroyed the facility anyway. They needed to attempt a more aggressive means to stop
the vigilante once and for all.
“Today we are going for number three on the list of baddies: the Birmington Energy
Associates coal-fired facility in Alabama,” Steve briefed during the morning meeting in
the conference room. All three already knew the target but the briefing was to make sure
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that they shared all of the information that they have gathered. “It is the largest one so far.
It has several steam turbines, each with an output of over 200 megawatts. The turbines
are fired by so much coal that they are constantly fed by freight train. Cars are
continually added to the end of the train and become a conveyor belt of coal. It has the
world’s record for the longest train. It has had an uninterrupted train pass through its
furnace with a length of over fifty thousand miles and it keeps growing.”
“Why this one?” Paul asked his usual question to keep the team focused on their main
objective: to continue to stop the worst environmental offenders with a minimal impact
on the general public.
Steve continued, “although this one has the highest output to date the loss of power can
be easily absorbed by surrounding facilities. The company, as a whole, generates so much
energy that it exports it outside of its region. The transmission of electricity is extremely
inefficient- losing more than sixty-five percent of the voltage to heat along the power
lines. The surrounding utility companies are much greener. They have power
supplemented by wind and solar. The local consumers have the choice of which utility
supplies their power. Most of them choose BEA because it is the cheapest.”
“In addition to its over-production of electricity, the facilities have outdated CO 2
scrubbers in the smokestacks. It produces an insane amount of carbon dioxide as well as
nitrous oxide- well beyond Federal limits.”
“How do they keep from being shut down or fined?” Katie asked.
“Pollution permits,” answered Steve.
“Pollution permits? They have permits to pollute?” She exclaimed.
“A pollution permit,” Paul answered relying on his classroom science background, “or, as
the companies like to call them, emission permits, is a federally accepted method that
allows these companies to skirt the regulations on emissions.”
“The government sets a limit of gasses allowed by law, say for example, an average of
ten parts-per-million of pollutant X. Some companies emit more, like fourteen ppm’s. At
the same time, there are companies putting out a lower amount, say six ppm’s. The
cleaner company can sell their remaining four ppm’s to the dirty company. The overall
average is still ten ppm’s, the dirty company is given a financial incentive to cut back its
emissions while the cleaner company is rewarded for its limits. They are called tradable
permits and there are companies in business solely to broker the trades.”
Steve added to Paul’s explanation, “Even with purchasing the permits, BEA can be the
cheapest utility around because of it burning of cheap, dirty coal and its substandard
equipment.”
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“Today, you will be taking out two of its five turbines. They are twin stacks over seven
hundred feet high. They are connected by this central furnace.” Steve directed their
attention back to the front screen where he indicated the tan brick building with an area
he selected with his mouse. “They have taken yesterday’s warning seriously and have
given all but a skeleton crew the day off. The furnace room and stacks are empty. The
only personnel in that facility are five workers in the control room which is in a small
auxiliary building here,” he pointed, “connected to the outside of the building housing the
coal furnace.”
“Katie?” Paul prompted.
“A laser slice to the bottom of each stack will easily topple them into a neat pile of
rubble. Two medium yield conventional missiles will clean up the furnace nicely.”
Paul smirked. “Excellent.”
The team split. Paul headed out of the front of the conference room and into the hangar
while the others went out through the back door and along the hall to the control room.
Paul crossed the hangar to the small changing room next to the control room and donned
his flight suit. Once changed, he grabbed his helmet and headed towards his awaiting
ship. While his support team configured their computers, he dropped down into the
cockpit and pulled on his helmet.
“Flight status?” he asked Neti.
The front screen displayed a wire diagram. The sections of the ship flickered in
succession as the ship ran a self-diagnostic test.
“All systems nominal,” Neti reported.
“We ready?” Paul asked Katie and Steve.
“Ok, good luck.” Katie wished over the radio. Her soothing voice took the edge off of
any nerves that he had before a mission.
“See you in a bit.” Paul opened the bay doors and activated the cloak. The ship faded to
clear within the hangar. He pressed the accelerator with his foot and launched up the
landing strip and through the opened shed doors.
The leisurely flight to Alabama took about twenty minutes. Neti made a quiet
announcement, “two minutes to destination.”
“Notify the personnel in the control room next to the furnaces to evacuate immediately.”
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Neti sent a signal to the building which channeled the message through the PA system
and all of the speakerphones. All displays refreshed as they switched over to a tactical
configuration. “Aircraft detected within strike range.”
Moments later Paul was not alarmed when she announced incoming missiles. On every
sortie so far he has met with token resistance. During the first few missions he was
nervous about his shields holding fast but he has come to have faith in their
invulnerability. The impacts and explosions still rang his bell but he became accustomed
to it much the same way that experienced pilots no longer get nauseous from flight. True
to his standard operating procedure, Paul ignored the resistance and prepared to set into a
hover for the attack. Storm Front was rocked and she vibrated from the munitions
slamming into her shields. His vision was obscured by the fire and smoke erupting
around his ship- typical. He targeted the first tower and armed the lasers.
A blinding flash! A shattering explosion hammered Storm Front into a side roll. He saw
stars as his temple slammed into the left canopy. Displays violently flickered- most
blacked out. A wailing alarm blared then stopped so quickly that it sounded more like a
loud chirp. Sparks shot out of the instrument panel on his left. He suddenly felt the
disorientation of the rolling.
Damn! Inertial dampeners are offline.
The earpiece in his helmet squealed with static and whining- although he did not know if
the ringing was in his head or it came from his helmet. Another slam. This one was not as
violent as the last. Two more in quick succession. Paul realized that the last impacts were
directly against the hull.
Shit! The shields are down! What the hell just happened?
Paul snapped awake as if he was in a daze. He had become complacent safely nestled
within the impenetrable safety of his shielded ship. Somehow his defenses were
compromised. He was vulnerable! He now had to fight his way out of this mess.
“Katie!” Nothing. “KATIE!” Static.
He was on his own. Almost every system was unresponsive. No shields. No
communication. No sensors. He kicked the accelerator. He was immediately slammed
into the seat. He never felt that before. The wind began to whoosh past the canopy as he
accelerated. He never heard that before. The telltale sound of missiles exploding around
him let him know that the aircraft were pursuing even though he could not see them. He
flew blind. He flew as erratically as he could, desperate to stay out of fire. With no
inertial dampeners he could not make radical turns without getting thrown around the
cockpit. Without his shields to push the air aside he was not able to get up to speeds
beyond his pursuers. He was reduced to maneuvering much as a plane would- he could
not fly at any angle as he did within his shields. Restricted to subsonic speeds and
maneuvering like a plane, he was on level footing with his pursuers!
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He heard a hum coming from within Storm Front. It sounded familiar like some kind of
background sound that is normally ignored but this time it was unmistakably loud.
Bullets rattled against the hull. Thankfully they were harmless against the graphene and
nanotube exoskeleton of the ship- it was the one significant advantage left to him. A
display flickered to life. Paul placed the humming sound. It was the onboard Regens
furiously rebuilding damaged systems. Another screen healed.
Static over the radio.
“-aul! Can yo- -ear me?” Katie sounded as frantic as Paul felt. The typical calm of her
voice was replaced by the hopeless wails like someone who was trying to stop a dear
friend from falling in front of a train.
“Paul! Are you there?”
“I’m here,” he replied.
“Paul!” She didn’t hear him.
“I’m here! I’m here Katie!” He repeated louder.
“Passive cloak functioning.” Neti informed, her returning voice sounding as cold and
impassive as if she had been working the entire time.
He breathed a sigh of relief and instantly turned the ship at a hard angle to change his
trajectory. The pursuing craft shot past him blindly chasing a ghost.
A moment later “missile lock,” Neti updated.
Paul knew his evasion would not work for long since the passive cloak would not hide
him from the fighters’ radar and infrared. Once they lost him, the pilots switched from
fighting visually to using instruments. But random turns while visually concealed still
kept him one step ahead of them.
“Paul!”
“Katie, I’m here.”
He could hear her breathe out. After a moment she replied. “We lost you. We saw the
missile coming in and you disappeared completely on impact. We are completely blind.
We had no idea what happened. What happened, Paul?” Her tone relaxed as she spoke.
“Katie, it is such a relief to hear you. I don’t know what happened. I think I was hit by a
missile and it kicked the shit out of me and nearly tore Storm Front apart. The ship is
slowly putting herself back together.”
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“Shields functional,” Neti informed.
Paul’s shoulders loosened a little but he knew that if they hit him with another one of
those weapons that he would be in even worse shape than with the original strike. He was
much more at ease now that he had full maneuverability within his shields. He was now
also able to get to full speed and escape. He slammed the accelerator down and jumped to
maximum atmospheric speed and hurtled away as a fireball. Once he was safely away, he
reduced his speed back down to stealth speeds.
Minutes later, he arrived back at base. He was relieved to be safely back home. He
dismounted Storm Front and looked back at her. Completely repaired, she was her
normal gleaming beauty. Nothing gave a hint that she was limping, seriously injured just
a short while ago. He thought about how bad it was. As he thought, a fury began to grow.
What happened? What went wrong? What the Hell was that thing that hit us?
Fury turned into rage. He clenched his hand into a fist while holding the chin guard of his
helmet. The power of his grip spread up his arm and then down his body. When the
tension reached the floor and he was completely filled with anger and frustration he let
out a primal scream and threw his helmet with all of his might. It slammed against a tool
cabinet which flew apart. The tools inside careened in random directions and clattered
against the wall and floor.
Katie and Steve came running out of the control room, overjoyed at Paul’s safe return. As
he unleashed his fury, they stopped in their tracks and froze in place. Their beaming faces
instantly dropped into shock before the last tool clanked on the floor.
“What the fuck was that? Steve! What the hell did they hit me with? How come you
didn’t know they had that kind of weapon?” Paul was right up on Steve, his pointed
finger centimeters away from his face. Paul’s veins swelled in his neck. “That’s your
department. That was your responsibility! You and that damned girlfriend of yours were
supposed to be on top of things like that!”
Steve was speechless. He was frozen in place; eyes open in shocked surprise and fear.
Katie reached between the men and with gentle firm pressure she grabbed Paul’s
threatening arm. She didn’t fight its coiled tension. “Paul, we’ll sort this out.” She moved
in front of Paul, face to face, blocking Steve from the wrath. “Let’s just take a minute.
We were so scared Paul, We lost you. We thought we lost you for good.”
Paul finally broke his menacing stare into Steve’s wide eyes and dropped his gaze down
to Katie’s face. The concern on her face and the moisture pooling up at the bottom of her
eyes rescued him from his wrath. Her gentle hand guided Paul’s arm from pointing at
Steve down to her front. She hugged his arm against her chest and wrapped her hand
around his fist closing his pointed finger in the caress. With her right hand, she motherly
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touched the bruise on his temple. “Paul, we’ll sort this out. Come, let me take a look at
this.”
His shoulders slumped. Everything deflated. She hugged his arm tighter and he could feel
her slowing, strong heart beating against the back of his arm. Locking eyes with him,
wary for any sign that he will lunge for Steve, she quietly escorted him out of the hangar
and into the infirmary.
*****
Two hours later, after a long hot shower and a small lunch of creamy soup and toast, Paul
was calm enough to talk to the others.
“Katie, I’m ready,” he called into the air. The computer microphone in the lounge relayed
his message through the speaker in the control room.
“Ok, Paul. Why don’t you come into the control room?”
He walked into the darkened room to see her leaned over Steve’s shoulder, one hand on
his back for support and pointing the other at the screen. A tiny spike in jealousy
threatened to resurface some of his frustrated anger. “Paul, come here. Take a look at
this.” She had a fascinated tone to her voice.
“Look at this! These are the sensor readings just before the hit. The missile that struck
you looked like any other missile except for this. It was such a tiny signature that it was
easily discarded as background noise. This is a very small, but highly concentrated
magnetic field inside the warhead. Just before impact it collapsed.”
“It was antimatter contained in a magnetic bottle,” Steve added.
“It was an antimatter bomb?”
“Essentially, yes.” Steve kept his voice as passive and neutral as possible so as to tread
lightly around Paul. “When the warhead was detonated, it turned off the magnetic
containment and released the antimatter. When it touched any normal matter within the
missile itself, they annihilated each other. That’s what made the flash and explosion. But
that’s not what destroyed your shields and fried your circuits. The annihilation released a
concentrated Gamma Ray burst that they managed to focus on Storm Front.”
“Gamma rays! Shouldn’t I be dead or close to it?”
“Yes you should,” Katie answered. “Allie’s design saved you. The graphene and
nanotubes were able to withstand most of the impact from the explosion and from the
missiles that followed. But the gamma rays, they were channeled away from you through
the passive cloaking system. The fiber optics carried the rays safely around you and out
the other side of the ship much the same way that a car’s metal frame would divert a
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lightning strike around the passengers. Your cloak does not block light; otherwise you
would appear black whenever it is engaged. It takes the background light, channels it
around your ship then out of the opposite side producing an image of the sky behind you.
The gamma rays are part of the light spectrum, just way off of the visible end. The burst
penetrated the shield and overloaded your systems as it passed through the cloak.”
Katie added, “if they had a second one, the combination of antimatter detonation and
gamma ray burst against your unshielded ship would have destroyed you and the ship. It
looks like this one was a field test. After this one’s success, there will be more.”
“Ok, Skurge,” Paul had a small snarl at the name, “how did they develop this thing with
you and Neti knowing? What with all of your ‘skill’ and her ‘intelligence’? “”
“Paul, they developed it completely off the grid. It is called ‘Project Hulk’ after the comic
book guy made into the Hulk by gamma rays. All communications concerning Hulk were
done with hard copy, typed and printed on stand-alone computers and data transferred
manually. The components were quietly procured from other existing projects. The
antimatter was obtained from UC Berkley where they are doing Big Bang research. All
on the down-low.”
“The design is actually very simple,” he continued, a slight air of awe in his tone.
“Contain antimatter within a magnetic bottle so that is doesn’t touch anything and
collapse it when ready. The rest of the missile was pretty much off-the-shelf stuff. No
other exotic materials needed. The only really clever part of the system was the way that
they were able to focus the rays on you. They managed to collapse the bottle only on the
side facing you.”
“Well, it looks like they’ve found Achilles’ Heel.”
“Here’s the thing that bothers me, Paul,” he continued. There is no information anywhere
about a way to aim gamma rays from an antimatter reaction. Nothing!” He looked up at
Katie. “Katie thinks the technology or the information was sent back. Neti says that there
is a better than eighty-five percent chance that she is right.”
“Paul,” Katie said, “they found us. The people from Allie’s time are trying to stop us.
They don’t know where we are but they know exactly where we will be and when we
will be there every time we attack another facility.”
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A Woman’s Intuition
He walked into the lobby of 379 Grand Ave and checked in with Marty as they
exchanged pleasantries. When he exited the elevator at the thirty-second floor he was
greeted by Rachel the same way she has every day, “Good morning, Mr. Marino. So
good to see you.” It never ceased to amaze him how freakishly consistent she was. The
same greeting each time without fail. The same hairstyle and makeup. Of course, she
changed her clothes to the current fashion right out of the pages of Harper's Bazaar, but
everything else was always the same.
“Good morning Rachel,” was his usual reply.
He walked along the lane skirting the edge of the cubicle maze. For such an
environmentally conscious company, their layout is pretty cold and inhuman. He mused
at the irony.
“Good morning Jessie.” He blindly saluted as he turned to ease the glass door closed.
“How has your morning been, Paul?” She was typing furiously but did not lose cadence
when she spoke.
How does she do that! He wondered.
She glanced over at him. Perhaps a little too long. Since they worked in the same room
with Laurie’s door typically closed they had become familiar enough to drop the
formalities. There was a level of sexual tension between them. Paul usually dismissed it
as harmless office flirting since she has had a steady long-time boyfriend. He pleasantly
harrumphed inwardly. Occasionally he imagined the two of them going out on a quasidate: not exactly romantic and not exactly as work buddies. He wondered if that long
glance stirred the same thoughts in her.
He smiled to himself as he turned his attention to settling in for the morning. Paul put
down his laptop bag. He sat down and exhaled for a second. Sometimes he took pleasure
in the simple act of sitting. He let the moment of rest soak into his legs and back after the
bustle of the commute.
Justine interrupted him while he was opening and turning on his laptop. “What happened
to your face?”
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It took Paul a couple of moments to process the question. He had forgotten about the
impact from the night before. He touched his temple and felt the soreness of the bruise
and the roughness of the scrape.
“I was fixing a shelf at home and there was a small statue I forgot about.”
“It doesn’t look like it was so small.”
He realized that the bruise and scrape were a little larger than one would expect. “It
caught me just right.”
“I’d go with ‘bar fight’. It sounds better than ‘dusting a shelf’.”
“I’ll remember that.” He settled in and checked his email. He was sorting spam and
unsolicited business pitches from the legitimate messages he should read when Justine’s
phone beeped.
“Justine, have Paul come in when he gets here, please.”
“He’s here already- a few minutes early.”
“Ok, send him right in. Thanks.” The intercom disconnected.
Paul locked his computer and closed the lid- habit he got into so that students would not
see and possibly change grades when he left his desk. It was not unusual for Laurie to
start his day with a briefing of the morning events and what was on schedule for the rest
of the day. They had gotten into a routine although she rarely had him paged and just as
rarely asked for him right away.
“Good morning Laurie,” he greeted as he walked through her doorway.
“Jeeze! Is it still morning? What a day.”
Paul glanced at his watch. “By a minute or two, but yes, still morning.”
“Have you seen this?” She excitedly motioned towards the flat screen TV mounted on the
wall across from her desk. The screen had a news teaser for the twelve noon broadcast.
The screen showed his ship getting hit by the Gamma Missile and subsequent strikes. The
on-screen footnote read:
Storm Front Beaten?
He didn’t know what kind of coverage the news had given it. “No, ma’am. I woke up late
and went for a run before coming in. What happened?”
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“Well, just what it shows. He got blasted with something big- they’re not saying what;
but it damaged the ship and he bolted out of there. That has never happened before.”
“Did he make it out of there?” Paul faked the concern.
“Yes, he did. They think tha- wait, wait, here it is now.”
They watched the beginning of the newscast. Even before they showed the anchors the
screen showed an extended version of the video teased earlier. It showed the entire
confrontation lasting about twenty seconds. While it was showing, the female anchor
narrated the scene:
“Dramatic footage of the Storm Front craft taking damage during his latest raid on his list
of environmental targets. Does this mean the end of the crusader? Video from the scene
shows the flash of a powerful weapon and then more missiles striking the ship.”
The image replayed and then stopped just after the last hit. “Just after one hit, it appears
as if the ship is damaged. Something can be seen here flying away from the ship.
Although, according to sources, authorities have not been able to recover any parts of the
craft.”
At the time, Paul had no idea of the extent of the damage to the ship. He was shocked,
and it showed on his face, to see what had happened. A large portion of his left wing was
blown off and there was charring on about half of the ship’s skin. He was relieved that
Steve programmed the micro Regen units within the ship to dissolve any parts that are
dislodged from the ship. Just a small section of the ship recovered by the military would
reveal clues about its strengths and vulnerabilities.
To cover up his shock at the video, he played it as if he was shocked at the graphic
images that they were watching. “Wow! I didn’t think they would be able to touch him.”
“They sure did.” She commented. “Looks like he ran with his tail between his legs. I
wonder if he’ll be back.”
“Sounds like you’re happy to see him get shot down.”
She came back at him. “He’s a vigilante. He’s working outside the law- not accountable
to anyone. Yes, I’m glad they knocked him around a little. With the resources that guy
has, he can easily get out of control. Ok, after his environmental crusade, what next?
Who’s next on his list? The fur industry? Housing developers? People parking in the
handicap spots? Jesus, Paul! What if he disagreed with the President? How far will he
take his agenda to reach his idea of a perfect world?” To mull over questions like this
showed her true colors as an ethics expert. This is why Steve chose her to mentor Paul
during his internship. They knew that they would need an anchor, a compass to keep him
from going astray. Paul’s internship was rapidly coming to an end and he was glad for all
that she has taught him.
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“Truth be told, I like what he’s doing…so far. If I had the ability, I’d do exactly what
he’s doing. But I don’t. I have to do things the slow way: suing the bad guys and
funneling the money to the good.” That was the activist part of her talking. Apparently,
ethics and activism do not always agree on how to handle things. Paul could almost see
the devil and angel wooing her from their respective shoulders.
“But his power can easily get out of control. Actually Paul, that’s kind of the reason why
I was so eager to see you today. I’ve seen a trend in his work.”
Paul was intrigued.
She went over to her computer and motioned Paul to come over to her side of the desk.
He enjoyed working closely with her this way- both professionally and physically. Tough
bitch as she was, her presence was warm and motherly. As he circled the desk, he
smelled the usual light, pleasant perfume with a slightly fruity undertone.
“Here’s a list of his strikes. And here is CGA’s list of top offenders. Notice anything?”
“No. Not really.” He lied.
“His list has been a semi-randomized form of our own list. He’s starting at the bottom
and working his way up the list.”
Paul looked at the two lists side-by-side and there it was. She was able to figure out the
pattern- the pattern that he generated through his work with her. The list was massaged
based on other factors that she did not need to bother with but the two lists were almost
identical.
“I don’t think there’s anything surprising here. Anyone can do a quick Internet search and
come up with the same list.” He tried to misdirect her but she was too keen.
“No Paul, look at this.” She pointed to one line on the list.
Global Power Solutions (GPS)
“Just one day before yesterday’s attack, GPS shut down buildings five and six. They had
to cut down their production to supply just their region and not to make a surplus of
energy to sell off at higher rates. That was in response to an agreement that I struck with
the company. It was finalized in arbitration. The files were sealed. There was nothing on
the Internet about this. This was no casual Google search.”
“Storm Front has been avoiding the top of the list and has been randomly working on
numbers seven through thirteen lately. GPS was in the “hot zone”: number ten on the list.
When they shut down those two furnaces they moved into the number sixteen spot. A day
later BEA was given the warning. Because GPS moved down the list BEA moved up
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from number fourteen to thirteen. But again, Paul, this was not public knowledge. This is
our list. Storm Front has gained access to our files!”
She stood there, leaning on her hands and hunched down over the computer screen
contemplating. Connections, variables, politics- something, but Paul didn’t know what.
Suddenly, she broke her trance and turned to Paul. “I don’t know what to make of this yet
but- Paul! What happened to your head? Oh dear, that looks bad! Are you ok?”
“No, no I’m fine. I was, well, in a bar fight. You should see the other guy.” He couldn’t
keep a straight face. “Well, no. Justine told me to go with that instead of the truth. It’s a
little embarrassing. I was fixing a shelf and a statue I didn’t see slid down and hit me
there. It’s not bad, really. I should go and finish settling in so I can get caught up- unless
there was something else?”
“That’ll do it Paul. I just wanted a sounding board for some thoughts. If anything occurs
to you, buzz me back.”
“Will do,” he said as he walked out as casually yet as quickly as he could. He returned to
his desk where he finished clearing out his email and wrote all of his replies. He was deep
in thought studying some charts when Laurie opened her door a crack and asked him to
come in.
“I was just going over some of your files here- end of internship sorts of stuff for the
paperwork and had a couple of questions. Your attendance for the first half of the year
has been exemplary, but you have not been so consistent since April.”
“I had a few interviews and a couple of days for home renovations. Contractors can be so
unaccommodating sometimes.”
“I see that you were not absent, but late on these days. Does this look right?” She showed
him two columns of dates on the computer screen.
“Yes I think so. I didn’t think it was excessive. Held up by traffic and all of that. I’ll
make sure I’m on top of that for the last few weeks.”
“Not excessive at all Paul. But here’s the problem. You see how these two columns
match exactly?”
“Yes. What’s the second column?
She scrolled the computer screen to reveal the headers:
Dates:
Attendance: Marino, Paul / Storm Front Attacks
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“I thought this was very interesting. Then I called the professor at the University of
Chicago who recommended you: Bruce Maxton.”
Paul felt a sudden rush of heat flash up his face. He felt the trap loading.
“He never heard of you. Very interesting. Then I re-watched this:” She pointed her
remote to the television. It showed the attack that nearly crippled his ship. It played to the
end. Then she replayed it. She stopped it just after the last missile struck the left wing.
The ship was frozen in a severe pitch to the right. She turned to look him square in the
eyes. She held his stare for a second.
“How exactly did you hurt the left side of your head again?”
SNAP! The trap closed. He was speechless. He could do nothing except stand there. He
had no idea what to do. Deny it? Debunk it? Run?
“Now what,” he asked quietly without confirming her accusation nor denying it.
“Paul, you’ve got some explaining to do!”
“Not here. Not now.” He paused a bit to think. “Dinner. I’ll pick you up at your home at
eight o’clock.” He didn’t wait for a reply. He turned and calmly walked out of her office.
He closed his laptop and placed it in his bag without powering it off. He grabbed his
water bottle.
“Have a good day, Jessie. She’s got me running an errand. See you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow, Paul.” She always sounded sad when she said goodbye to him. The
tone made him miss her a little each time.
****
At precisely eight o’clock he was at her house. Although his attendance record would say
otherwise, he prided his punctuality. Her house was beautiful. It was the large stately
home one would expect of a CEO.
He rang her doorbell. A moment later she opened the door as she was still gathering her
purse from the table just inside the door.
Paul was a gentleman to his boss. He walked around the car and held the door for her as
she got in. The first few minutes of the ride were filled with a thick, awkward silence.
The two of them simply stared ahead or at the scenery rolling past.
Laurie was the one who finally broke the silence. “Where are we having dinner?”
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“I’ve had a friend prepare a simple dinner of chicken cutlets and vegetables at my house.
Unfortunately, I cannot let you see where I live. Understandably, there are things that I
can’t let you see just yet.”
“I see,” she said, her tone a little guarded.
“I hate to do this Laurie but I need you to wear this if you want to know it all.” Paul took
a blindfold out from the console between the two seats, closed the console, and placed it
on top to allow her to take it herself.
She took the blindfold and turned it over in her hand. She mulled it over. “I’m trusting
you here, Paul.”
“I know.” He replied.
She reluctantly slipped it over her head.
The rest of the ride was in silence except for the light music Paul put on to ease the
tension a little. She felt the bump as he turned onto the property then heard the crunching
gravel of the driveway. One more turn and then the car came to a halt.
He turned the car off and quietly said “you can take that off now. Keep in mind that I’m
trusting you as well.”
“I know,” she replied.
He escorted her up the front steps and he opened the door for her. From the kitchen, they
were greeted by Katie. She was putting the finishing touches on dinner.
“Hi! Dinner’ll be ready in a minute. I’m just warming the bread. I have some wine and
cheese here.”
“Laurie, this is Katie, my associate. Katie, Laurie Frank, my boss at CGA.”
“Very nice to finally meet you Ms. Frank.” Katie extended a hand.
“Laurie, please. And nice to meet you as well Katie.”
Katie poured Laurie a glass of wine and one for herself. She handed Paul a glass of ice
water that was already sitting on the counter. He grabbed a few cubes of cheese and
showed Laurie around the first floor. He was actually excited that he finally had the
opportunity to show his home to someone. Katie did such a great job decorating and he
was bursting with pride at their home.
With no possible smooth segue, Paul jumped right into his story.
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“I was visited by a man named Allie. Normally, this would be a bit unbelievable but
considering what you have seen I think you will find it plausible when I say that he came
from the future.” Once he started the conversation, it came out easily. They migrated to
the set dinner table when Katie brought out the warm bread. They sat and the two ladies
listened intently as Paul recounted his entire story. He relayed the history of what will
come to pass, how he assembled his team of three and his training and preparation for the
missions. Laurie found it fascinating how Steve was able to Robin Hood the funds from
the dirty businesses to the greens.
After dinner, the three worked together to clear the table. The tension from earlier in the
evening had faded away. Once they finished cleanup and had a few moments to sit with a
cup of coffee Paul asked “wanna see it?”
Laurie took a last sip, placed her cup down on the table and stood. Question answered.
They walked down stairs to the basement. Paul opened the wall to the tunnel. Laurie
gasped in awe when the lights flickered on down the length of the tube. The two ladies
sat in the golf cart as Paul drove towards The Garage. Laurie asked question after
question- the same questions everyone else in the world had. But unlike everyone else
she was able to get answers!
“What happened yesterday?”
“Yesterday was not a good day, Laurie”
“We thought we lost Paul.” Katie added.
“The military was able to develop a weapon without our knowledge.”
“Without your knowledge? Do they have to pass these things on to you for approval?”
Laurie asked with a slight edge of sarcasm.
“Of course not,” Paul answered. “But my computer guy has an excellent machine and is
highly skilled at using it. He keeps a tight rein on anything that refers to us. The Air
Force was able to produce the weapon in the highest secrecy that he had ever seen.”
“It was an experimental weapon- and I was the experiment. When it detonated, it
overwhelmed my defenses. If the ship weren’t so well made I wouldn’t have made it past
the first blast. ‘Tail between my legs’ I believe you said.”
Laurie gave a sideways smile at the comment.
They reached the entry doors to The Garage. “Katie decorated the house upstairs but she
designed this place.” He opened the door to reveal the hangar behind the glass on the
opposite side of the hall. Resting in the middle of the hangar, gleaming in her blue and
white, bathing in the overhead lights was the immaculate Storm Front.
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Laurie walked right up to the observation window and stared at the large room beyond as
a new grandparent would look upon the child in the hospital nursery. Her head swiveled
left and right, up and down to see everything.
“Come this way,” Katie gently pulled at her elbow to tear her away from the window.
She guided the woman into the control room. As usual, the room was dimly lit and
Steve’s monitors were active.
Steve stood up from his workstation and greeted the guest. “Laurie, nice to meet you.” By
his informal greeting she had the feeling that he knew that she told Katie upstairs to call
her ‘Laurie’. She was a little creeped out. This man was a cyber-spy. He must know all
sorts of things on all sorts of people.
“Well Laurie,” Paul began, “this is the team. This is Storm Front. Not such a big terrorist
organization. Just the three of us. Although you did not know it, Laurie, you have been a
great help to us. You know our mission and what is at stake. We’d like you to come on
board. It’s completely up to you but it would be better for us if we can trust you- if you
were on our team.
“We three have been doing the best that we can just making it up as we go. You can be a
great help. Your insights have been invaluable but I have only been able to get a fraction
of the potential as your part-time intern.
“We also need a guide. Your expertise in ethics could help us keep our mission in focus.
We have broken laws. We will continue to break laws- but we would prefer to break the
ones that should be broken. We don’t want to go astray.”
“Laurie,” Katie said, “we don’t want you to answer now. Think about it over night or for
as long as you want but we would like you to join us. We have considered this before but
didn’t know how you’d react. Now, we really didn’t have a choice but to see where you
stand.”
“Come with me,” Paul said to his boss. “Would you like to meet her?”
She turned around and looked out of the observation window at the ship parked only feet
away. She had seen video of the famous ship but they were always short glimpses
obscured by weapons and dust clouds and from far away. She never thought that she
would ever get such a good, close look at it. She turned her head to look over at Paulwith a beaming smile.
99
Family Man
With their secrets safe, which Steve was able to verify, and Laurie safely on the team,
they were able to conduct operations much more efficiently. She helped them narrow
down targets and to prioritize them. Steve made some adjustments to her laptop to hide
and secure the team’s business. This allowed her to email Steve safely. He then modified
Neti’s Internet monitoring parameters to include Laurie’s regular workstation. In the
event that she happened to inadvertently conduct the wrong sequence of search terms or
used key words that would give away her dealings with Paul and the others it would
immediately squash the communication. At first she was annoyed at the warning
messages that appeared on her screen but as she learned how to handle the new routine,
the pop-up windows became less frequent.
The next three missions went quickly and according to plan with Laurie’s guidance.
Their forth mission together was different. The target this time was a large chemical
neutralization facility: Elco Industrial Solutions. It took in highly toxic materials, treated
them so that levels were within Federal limits and disposed of it according to government
guidelines. Some of the raw products entering the facility were handled properly. They
were neutralized, rendered inert and put in landfill or even recycled. Unfortunately, the
largest portion of their influx was improperly treated using sleight of hand or
manipulation of records to accomplish appropriate levels- at least on paper. Solid
material was incinerated in enormous furnaces under towering smoke stacks. The effluent
had chemical levels below emission limits because of an injection of fresh air into the
stacks to dilute the exhaust to within standards, with the exception of carbon dioxide.
They worked around this violation in the typical fashion of purchasing emission permits.
Liquid waste at EIS was minimally treated. The actual mitigation process for some waste
that they treated yielded a profit in addition to the disposal fees paid by the customer.
Pure silver was extracted from the silver nitrate used in photographic developing. The
silver was smelted and sold in bulk. A profit was made from waste coming in and going
out. However, most liquid waste was pumped into the ground beneath the facility. It was
essentially flushed down the toilet. They managed to get limits below acceptable levels,
again, by diluting the toxins. The illegal practice was so common that the federal
inspectors had a catch phrase for the practice: “dilution is not the solution to pollution.”
Even though inspectors kept a close eye on water consumption by EIS and effluent was
tested regularly, input and output levels of water were never compared by inspectors.
Otherwise, it would be obvious that the amount of waste water exiting the plant was
much greater than the input of fresh water. They had illegal ground water well pumps
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drilled directly underneath the refinery for diluting the processed swill. The chemical
soup pumped down into the ground created a toxic plume underground that stretched for
miles.
After “Hulk” handed him his hat at Birmington Energy Associates plant, Paul conducted
raids at random times. Even though he still needed to give a warning for a specific day to
ensure that the facility was empty of personnel, his fly-bys could happen at any time
during that day. Today’s raid was at 4:15 in the afternoon.
Paul reached the plant, as usual, under the cover of the cloak. Steve issued the standard
evacuation warning within the plant as Paul deactivated the cloak in order to arm all
weapons. Paul scanned the plant and could see the employees evacuating. Neti displayed
a countdown of people as they exited the buildings. As the last eleven stragglers were
making their way out, the tactical alarm sounded.
“Weapons systems arming,” Neti said and simultaneously displayed.
EIGHT PEOPLE
Neti displayed:
MISSILE LOCK
to warn that he was targeted by the approaching fighters.
FOUR PEOPLE
“Shit Paul!” Steve’s voice startled Paul. “I’m picking up magnetic signatures from two
missiles. They’re gamma missiles!”
ZERO
INBOUND MISSILES
Paul wasted no time. He unleashed all weapons on the pre-selected targets. He
accelerated away even before his projectile weapons landed. He engaged the cloak,
changed direction and safely sped away.
“Target destroyed,” Neti’s objective voice confirmed.
Paul flew back to base, his hands slightly trembling from the adrenaline brought on by
those two words: “gamma missile.” By the time he was climbing down the ship’s ladder
in the hanger he was feeling giddy. He was thrilled at the way he was able to come back
unscathed even in the face of the most dreaded weapon yet turned on him.
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He rushed to the control room triumphantly- still holding his helmet. He burst through the
door, “Whoo! Did you see tha-“ His voice trailed off as he saw the expressions on Katie
and Steve’s faces. “What’s going on?” Even in the dim control room light he could see
that Katie was pale. They spoke not a word. Steve pointed to the news program on the
main screen.
Worker killed by Storm Front was highlighted at the bottom of the screen.
Paul’s helmet hit the floor.
A police commander was being interviewed by a reporter. “These people are outlaws!
They have no regard for the law. They are murderers and must be brought to justice.”
Murderers? Outlaws? Paul’s heart sank. He clumsily collapsed into the chair behind him
and almost missed entirely as it began to roll away from him.
“There was one left in the incinerator building,” Steve explained. “He was shielded from
the sensors by the excessive heat and machinery in the area. We had no idea he was
there.”
The air in the room filled with an uneasy silence. “It was going to happen eventually.”
Katie tried to rationalize.
“A man is dead!” Steve interjected.
“They were warned,” she came back at him. The color came back to her face. “They
know that we don’t bluff.”
“That’s no excuse!”
Katie countered, “think about the big picture, Steve.”
“The big picture?” His pitch went up and his voice got louder. “At what cost?” He
pointed, “There! Look at that!”
Father of two killed in latest attack appeared as a headline under the police
commander.
“A man is dead! We killed a man!” Steve fumed.
“I know.” whispered Paul.
Katie: “one to save billions.”
“I know,” Paul repeated louder.
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“We cannot kill the innocent! What if he was the one to turn things around for the
future?” yelled Steve.
“I know. I know! I KNOW!” Paul’s face was buried in his hands, fingers wringing his
hair in frustration. “What was I supposed to do? They didn’t evacuate! They knew I was
coming. They’ve seen it! They were warned.”
“You pulled the trigger!” Steve was unforgiving. He was outraged at Paul, at Katie, at
himself. They were all responsible.
After a few tense, silent seconds and without a word, Paul stood and stormed out of the
control room. His frustration was clear, as he slammed the door behind him. In a festering
anger he stormed across the hangar and climbed the ladder into the cockpit without his
helmet. Steve and Katie looked on in concerned horror as the canopy closed. The hangar
doors opened. The amber lights surrounding the entrance spun indicating that the shed
doors above were opening. The ship exploded up the ramp as it dissolved into the cloak.
Steve and Katie’s ears popped from the pressure change as the air was pulled out of the
garage from the ship’s sudden departure.
Screaming to himself all of the way, Paul rocketed at full speed up higher and higher. The
ship went hypersonic and turned into a fireball trailing a sonic boom that shattered the
peace in the neighborhoods below. He left the atmosphere and streaked towards the
moon. When he reached the far side of the moon, he took his frustrations out on the
sterile lunar rock. He leveled mountains and blasted out new craters. He melted plains
into sheets of glass. He depleted his projectiles and missiles and depleted them twice
more after regeneration units replenished his supplies. He fired until his blind rage
subsided.
Once he cleared his head, he floated there in a brooding silence. I need a break, he
thought. How can I do this? It’s too much.
He came to a decision. He flew down to Earth and descended on a forest he knew well as
a child. The ship landed on the bald top of a hill. He ordered MaRe to generate some
basic camping equipment. He recorded a message into the computer and then
programmed the ship to return to The Garage. He did one last thing before he sent the
ship away. He told Neti not to reveal his location to his friends. Only the computer was to
know where he was. He locked in the command and Neti scanned him as a biometric
password- retina patterns, fingerprints, facial proportions and chemical signatures were
all recorded and encrypted in a way that even Steve would not be able to hack. Paul
wanted pure solitude.
The ship flew away. He watched as it dissolved into the sky when the cloak engaged. He
stood there, alone except for the backpack next to him. He watched the spot where the
ship disappeared for a long moment, then picked up his pack and walked away.
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Paul stayed in the woods for close to two weeks. He moved around each morning and
built a shelter each afternoon. He collected food and water. His main diet consisted of
assorted plants and berries and the occasional fish. He stood on a lake shore, held MaRe
in his hand and simulated casting a hook from a rod. The MaRe turned into a fishing pole
with a lure on the end of the line.
While on a hike on his twelfth day he came upon a rabbit. With all the stealth he could
manage he held up the MaRe and flexed his forearm. The device changed into a bow,
complete with an arrow already nocked. A few moments later he was standing over the
rabbit’s twitching body. While sitting next to his fire that evening, Paul looked at the pile
of bones and the hide lying next to the fire pit. He reflected back to his younger years
when he was learning woodsmanship from his father. “Nothing goes to waste,” his father
would say. Then he would show young Paul how to make buttons and tools from bone,
strings from sinew, and water bags from bladders.
Nothing goes to waste!
If we stop now, Paul thought, nothing will change. The world will still spiral down into
ecological collapse. All of our efforts will be for nothing. That worker would have died
for nothing! He cannot die in vain. Yes, Katie, he spoke to his absent partner, one to save
billions. But we will not make it one for no reason at all! That factory worker will not go
to waste!
Paul stood up. He pointed MaRe at the pile of hiking equipment and it dissolved back
into the Earth, Wind, Fire and Water from which it came. He then adjusted his grip and
the mechanism turned into a bucket of water. Using several self-generating pails of water,
Paul reduced his fire into a cold puddle of grey mud. He touched his forearm and a small
control panel appeared, it having always been there- cloaked. He pressed one button and
set off at a leisurely jog. A few minutes later, he arrived at a clearing to see Storm Front
waiting for him.
He climbed into his ship and, like he’s done a hundred times before, flew it back home.
The ship felt a little different. Perhaps it was his time away from flying but he swore that
something was not the same. It was like the seat of the car that was adjusted during
service and its original position can never seem to be found. He pulled into The Garage,
took a shower in the lounge and headed back to the house through the long tunnel. He felt
like a teen sneaking into the house after breaking curfew. He did not want to disturb the
others if, in fact, they were home at all. He sank into his bed and let the comfort seep into
him. He didn’t realize until then how much he missed sleeping on a soft flat surface. He
faded into unconsciousness.
104
The Winds of Change
Paul slept solid through the night and partly through morning. He walked downstairs and
stopped through the kitchen to grab a muffin that must have been left by Katie. Muffin in
hand, he made the long, slow walk down the corridor to the operations area bypassing
one Segway and golf cart. When he walked through the double French doors he heard
Steve and Katie talking quietly in the control room.
Katie was sitting next to Steve looking at the same monitor. She straightened with a start
when he walked into the room. “Paul! I didn’t know you were back. When?”
“Last night. What’s up?”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine Katie. All straightened out.”
“Good. I’m happy you’re home,” she said.
“Good to have you back,” added Steve. “We’ve been busy during the down time. We
were hoping that this wasn’t going to be the end. Is it?”
“No, this is not the end. I’m ready to get back to work.”
“Wanna see what we’ve been up to?” She asked.
“Ok. What have you got?”
Steve waved Paul over to the main screen. He punched in a few quick commands,
windows shifted around and a reduced panel opened up. It showed an image of Storm
Front in the middle of a blue sky. It appeared to be flying as indicated by the occasional
cloud animated to shoot past the ship.
“We made some modifications to the ship. Well, mainly Katie did.”
“I thought the ship felt different last night. What did you do?”
“Watch this!” Steve beamed as he pressed the “enter” button.
105
The view of the ship rotated to show it from all sides. After a full rotation, a pair of doors
resembling bomb bay doors opened from the belly. Again, another rotation. Once the
rotation completed, the ship appeared to drop a bomb or missile from the opened port.
After a moment, Paul saw a computer generated vision of himself riding on top of the
missile- riding it like a bike.
“What the hell is that!” Paul was stunned by the radical scene he was watching.
“That, my friend,” Steve leaned back into his chair and rotated to face Paul, grinning, “is
a drop ship.” He gave a moment for it to sink in. “Katie thought it would be useful for
you to be able to get up close and personal to any targets for a close inspection. She
designed it and with Neti’s help and several MaRes working non-stop we completely
stripped the old girl down and rebuilt her with the modifications. As you already know,
the cockpit appears to be unaltered. But when you disengage the drop ship, handles fold
out of the walls and the air bike drops through the floor. It can hold one or two people,
can travel up to two hundred miles an hour and has a single laser cannon on the front.
The cannon tracks your head movement for aiming.”
“Nice!” was all that Paul could say. He watched the animation run through its paces. It
showed the drop ship fall from the main craft from a significant height, swoop down,
strafe along the ground and then ascend back to Storm Front. The larger craft’s bay doors
opened to greet the offspring and the two ships merged and flew off as one.
“We have another toy for you, Paul,” Katie explained. “There’s no neat graphic like
Steve here drew up for the drop ship but it’s a device within the ship. Steve described
what he wanted to Neti and she actually designed and built it. We call it a ‘temporal
dilator.’ It projects a temporal field around the ship that slows down time. The outside
world appears to slow down while you can continue functioning at your normal pace. It
doesn’t stop time- we’ve figured out that you can’t do that. Einstein, light speed, dividing
by zero and all of that. But it slows it down a lot! Something like one hundred times
slower. As with the cloak, it consumes a lot of energy so it cannot be used with the cloak
on or during combat or any other high intensity activities. It will allow you, once again,
to get closer to whatever you need to for inspection. It also cannot be used as a high
speed getaway. It needs time to perform the calculations necessary to warp the temporal
field around your area.”
“We have a couple of other minor modifications that we worked into the ship,” Steve
contributed, “but haven’t had a chance to thoroughly test them.”
“Those are some great modifications, you two. I should take vacations more often!”
106
Four Minutes and Thirty Seconds in the Future
Melissa hung up the phone and deeply exhaled to finally end the long day. She checked
her watch: 6:30. Damn! She muttered to herself as she gathered her bag and jacket. She
told her friends that she would meet them for Friday Happy Hour in a few minutes as she
finished with her last client. That was over an hour ago.
On the way to the lobby, she used the mirror in the elevator to fix herself. She crossed the
lobby and headed towards the security desk. The desk was unusually vacant. She didn’t
pay it much mind since she was not usually here this late. He must be doing his rounds,
she thought. What she didn’t notice was that just as she started across the lobby were
Marty’s limp feet disappearing as they were silently dragged into the custodian’s closet.
She swiped her ID card and left the lobby.
She left her building and briskly walked down the street. She considered taking a taxi as
one drove towards her building but then allowed it to pass. Skids, the bar her office
frequented, was only a few blocks away. She still wasn’t used to the early gloom from the
changing seasons. The October air had a hint of a chill in it but not too cold. She carried
her jacket on her arm. Down the street, she saw the traffic stopped behind the red light.
She quickly stepped across the street before the traffic reached her.
She turned a corner and headed for the bar, her heels making echoing footsteps off the
brick facades. Melissa noticed that a couple of the locals took note of her as she
approached. She suddenly felt uncomfortable and realized how alone she was. Familiar to
the neighborhood during the day, at night these streets took on an eerie loneliness. It
seemed much larger yet more cramped, with more corners and shadows. She picked up
her pace but not so much that it would be obvious. She didn’t dare turn around but she
could feel the two men were now following her. Her eyes darted from side to side
looking at the few people she passed. Some were oblivious to her while others seemed to
lock eyes as she hurried along. A growing awareness revealed faces in doorways or
behind cars- all seemingly leering at her from the shadows. No longer caring how
obvious it looked, she picked up the pace again getting almost to a jog. A man stepped
out of a doorway ahead of her and walked straight for her. His eyes locked to hers. Walls
were closing around her. She quickly stepped between two cars and headed across the
street. Her heart pounded so hard she could feel it in her ears. When she reached the
opposite sidewalk she looked ahead and saw another man heading towards her, eyes
locked. She spun on her heel- another man.
107
The net closed around her. The wolf pack surrounded her and blocked any attempt to
break through the circle. There were too many for her to get a grasp of their numbers.
They pushed her back and forth across the circle. With each push came a grope to some
other part of her body. Melissa cried and screamed and covered her face with her hands
as the shoves became more forceful. Her sleeve ripped and one of the men chucked. The
blood pounding through her veins rushed with such force that her hearing dissolved into a
white noise. She was being smothered. She felt a button pop on her blouse. Someone
grabbed her necklace. It snapped and all the faux pearls fell to the ground clicking as they
settled on the cold concrete…
*****
Current Time
The matter regenerators did an excellent job reproducing almost everything Paul and his
team needed. He could request a new pair of jeans from one of the MaRes. The problem
that Paul had was that every pair of jeans the machine produced was exactly the same as
the last. He wanted some variety. He wanted some uniqueness. He wanted some
personalization in his jeans. He wanted to buy them himself from a human with all of the
un-reproducible personality that every pair of jeans has. He walked the mall with a bag of
clothes and looked for the perfect pair of sneakers.
A vibration tickled his forearm. The invisible computer he wore there tried to get his
attention but he could not activate it in front of the other shoppers. He took out his cell
phone and Katie was already connected.
“Paul, we just got a temporal alarm.” There was a brief pause. “Paul, it’s Melissa.”
“Get the ship here immediately!”
“It’s already on its way. The drop ship will meet you at the doors to your west.”
Paul dropped his bags, tucked his head and did his best to cover his face as he ran. He did
not want to give anyone a good look at his face while he ran through the concourse.
Just as Paul burst out of the glass doors, the drop ship swooped down to meet him. He
mounted the bike without waiting for it to come to a complete stop. With a twist of the
handle, the craft launched forward. The acceleration pulled on Paul’s arms as he sped up
towards a rendezvous with Storm Front. Guided by auto pilot, the two ships converged on
each other- the smaller ship rising up to meet the descending craft- bay doors opened.
Paul popped up off of his seat as the two ships joined with the solid metallic “clunk” of
clamps closing.
“Accelerate to maximum stealth speed.” The ship instantly responded.
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“Status.” Several displays on the front panel and windshield came to life. They displayed
current position and destination maps, live video from the temporal probe and two timers
counting down:
+00:03:15
ETA 00:03:03
“OK, Katie, what’s the situation?”
Katie responded with the efficient professionalism that she usually had over the radio.
“Melissa will be pursued, caught, attacked and sexually assaulted by six men on a city
street at the displayed coordinates. First physical contact will be made in three minutes.
Temporal probe sensors detect that two of the men are armed with hand guns, and three
of them have knives. At the point of contact, they will be surrounding Melissa. At current
speed you will arrive about ten seconds before contact is made.”
“Steve, you there?”
“Yeah Paul.”
“I don’t think anyone got a good look at me after I started running but I’m sure that I was
on video at some point.”
“Got it… Ok Neti is deleting all images from every camera that recorded you since you
left here this afternoon. She also found three cell phone videos that recorded your
departure and has deleted those.”
“Are there any bystanders near Melissa during the attack?”
“None detect- What the-! What’s going on?”
Suddenly, the displays in Paul’s cockpit violently flickered, shut down and started to reboot. “Whoa! What’s happening?”
“Shit!” Katie lost her composure. “Get it back up!” She shouted at Steve.
Steve replied “re-booting…”
Paul’s displays flickered back on. A little static, then the screens cleared into the same
displays as before with one exception: the countdown timers changed. The ETA was now
longer than the time until the event and blinking in red.
+00:02:07
ETA 00:02:37
“Katie, what the hell’s going on?”
109
“Timeline changed!” Steve quickly blurted out between exchanges with Neti.
“How’s that pos-?”
“I don’t know but it did. The time line is off by almost thirty seconds. You’re going to be
late!”
“Damn! Increasing speed to maximum atmospheric!”
“You’ll be detected!” Katie protested, “sonic boom! Fireball!”
Outside Paul’s window, the shield began to glow orange from the atmospheric friction as
the ship accelerated to several times the speed of sound.
“Update. What’s the new ETA?”
The display refreshed to calculate his new speed and displayed a flashing red
+10.3 sec
The ship rumbled from punching through the air at hypersonic speeds.
“Still ten seconds too late,” he thought to himself. “Neti, activate VINCENT.” The
Visually INnduced Chaotic ENvironmenT, was one of the modifications that Katie made
to the ship during Paul’s sabbatical. It projected a hologram in an attempt to distract an
enemy. Still untested, Paul hoped that it would work and that it would buy him the ten
seconds that he needed.
Miles ahead of Paul, Melissa had just realized that she was becoming ensnared in a trap.
She started to run as those behind her revealed themselves. Unseen by her and her
attackers, high above them, dark grey holographic clouds started to coalesce in an
otherwise clear, dark sky. The clouds rolled and thickened. Illuminated by the city glow
below, the low billowing clouds took on a sick yellow-brown color.
Melissa came to a stop, now completely surrounded.
Flashes from within highlighted the outlines of cloud layers. The flashes came faster and
grew in intensity. Rumbling began, distant and deep within the clouds at first, but quickly
getting louder.
The net was about to close. Melissa felt the inevitability of doom about to be handed to
her. A flash so bright that those facing it were forced to blink. Those facing away, saw
their shadows so intensely that they registered after-images each time they blinked. All
stopped in their tracks. The thunder came. It was loud, so loud that the group clasped
their hands over their ears. When they looked up, they saw the clouds boiling like rolling
110
fire. They moved with a life of their own. Completely awestruck, everyone on the ground
watched, frozen in position, as the clouds began to form into the shape of a great lion’s
head.
Above the cloud deck, Paul was making his descent towards the attack. The targeting
computer selected the best shot to take from this angle.
“We only get one shot from here before everyone starts to move and we endanger
Melissa.” Paul muttered half to himself, half to the computer. “Wait! Neti, reset
targeting… here.” He tapped the screen to indicate the new target.
The main screen displayed:
DROP OFF IN 7 SECONDS
Paul put on his helmet and grabbed the handles on the side of the cockpit.
The cloud-lion snarled and growled in the air. Lightning flashed in and around it. The
thunder was deafening. Suddenly everything calmed down and the lion appeared to take a
big breath. The muscles in its virtual face bulged with coiled strength. It let loose a
tremendous roar directed right at the mob of attackers. The sound was palpable. The
booming roar came from everywhere at once. It was as though the air itself was vibrating
and making the noise. The group below could feel the air slapping them in the face, their
lungs trembled, and their feet tingled from the vibrations of the pavement. They held their
ears to shield them from the power of the roar. At the peak of the roar, Storm Front burst
through the lion’s opened mouth trailing wisps of virtual cloud. As soon as the ship
appeared, a single bolt of energy shot from one of the wing tips and pierced two of the
bad guys. One through the head and the other through the heart and spine. Both men fell
dead.
A moment later the drop ship was launched through the opened bay doors and streamed
straight for the group as the mother ship swooped upwards and away, bay doors already
closing. Paul was upon the group in a heartbeat. He jumped out of his seat and landed in a
crouch in the middle of the circle right next to Melissa. Left hand down on the ground to
stabilize and the right clutched MaRe. He was coiled and ready to strike.
In one movement Paul stood, reached to the side with his left arm to make a bar across
Melissa’s chest and the right hand swung forward to point MaRe at the closest bad guy.
Marino kept his arm across her to keep her in place and also to sense where she was in
the melee that was about to explode. He twitched the muscles in his right arm. MaRe
fired a bullet and hit the bad guy in the face. Behind him, enhanced by the selective
amplification in his helmet, Paul heard the tell-tale click-click of a gun chambering a
bullet. He scooped his hand around Melissa’s shoulder and pushed her down as he spun
around her, lowering into a crouch himself. During the pirouette, Paul swung MaRe like a
stick. Sensing the movement, the device extended into a four-foot rod. Just as he ducked
beneath the line of the barrel the gun went off. Paul hit the man in the leg with the rod
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and swept the leg up throwing the assailant on his back. Another click-click behind him.
He threw the rod over his shoulder as it converted into a shield just as the bullet struck.
From the concealed position beneath his shield, Paul kicked to his rear, snapping the
gunman’s leg at the knee. He pulled the shield back over his head and thrust it at the first
gunman. The shield contracted into a spear and he stabbed the man under the ribs. Paul
assumed that the two attackers that he had not touched yet had some of the knives that
have not been seen yet.
Paul now had the two remaining combatants in front and Melissa behind. He released her
to free another hand to fight. He grabbed the MaRe with both hands and pulled it in half.
Both halves immediately wrapped around his forearm as a pair of metal gauntlets. With a
quick shoulder roll, Paul was right between the two combatants. He blocked one knife on
his protected forearm while he struck the second man in the face with the other gauntlet,
dazing him slightly. Recoiling off the strike to the face, Paul swung his arm over the
knife arm, sweeping it to the side. He then grabbed the man under his chin and used the
hold as leverage to throw the man to the ground by the head. Once on the ground, Paul
punched the man in the temple taking the fight out of him.
“Paul,” came Katie’s voice in his helmet, “we have a new problem. Your approach was
detected and jets are incoming. You have about twenty seconds until they reach your
location.”
Paul cursed under his breath. Now I’ll have to end this fight very quickly, he thought.
Waking from his daze, the second knife fighter wiped the sting of the stunning blow off
of his face and charged Paul from behind. Paul lurched backwards from his crouched
position. This closed the distance sooner than the fighter anticipated and the knife
plunged over Paul’s shoulder. Paul used the assailant’s momentum to continue the
movement with a shoulder throw. Trained well, the bad guy used the throw to roll over
Paul’s shoulder and slash Paul’s opposite arm across the inside of the bicep. The final bad
guy hit the ground several feet away knocking the wind out of him.
Paul used the moment to recall the drop ship. He reached for Melissa’s hand and pulled
her to him just as the ship stopped in front of him. He jumped onto the seat and pulled her
on behind him. He guided her arms around him then hit the accelerator. They
immediately shot off away from the moaning bodies towards the safety of Storm Front.
Paul was flooded with sensations on his way to dock with the mother ship. The feel of
acceleration. The rush of wind. Through his helmet he could hear Melissa’s fast breathing
next to his ear. Her warm body heaving from excitement and fear, pressed against his.
Katie talking in his ear.
“Paul, your suit is registering a tear. Are you injured?”
“I think so but I’m not sure yet. I think it’s ok. It doesn’t hurt much.”
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The jolt of docking brought Paul back into the moment. Alarms were already blaring
inside the cockpit. A quick flip of a switch made a slight reconfiguration of the seat into a
front/back two-seater. Melissa broke contact as her seat slid back several inches.
A proximity alarm flashed on the main screen.
INCOMING MISSILE
“Hold on, we’re not out of the woods yet. Shields up!” He commanded as he turned the
ship into a radical turn- but it was too late to avoid the rocket. Lacking the usual
advanced warning, the Air Force did not expect this encounter. They were not armed with
antimatter gamma missiles. The impact on the shields from the missiles jarred the ship
violently. The sound was deafening. Almost immediately, the inertial dampers kicked in
and regained control of the ship.
Choosing not to fight, Paul throttled up. The ship lurched and they sped away in a
fireball. Finally, he had a chance to take inventory.
He swiveled his chair to face her but kept his helmet on, visor down. “Are you hurt?” He
asked as he scanned around her body for any injuries.
“I, I don’t think so,” Melissa replied. Her voice was a little weak and shaky but she
appeared to have her wits about her. Her eyes went down to his arm. “You’re bleeding!”
“It’s not bad,” he lied as he swiveled back. “Just a little messy.” Facing forward again,
Paul began tending to his slash. It was deep. The blood soaked his sleeve and was
beginning to drip from his elbow. He pressed a button on the side wall and a medic kit
slid out of a panel. He took out a cloth and used it to staunch the wound to little avail. A
sharp pain radiated from the cut letting him know that the adrenaline from the fight was
wearing off and he was getting full sensation back.
Except for the warm drips down his arm, Paul started to feel cold. He began to hear a
little white noise in his ears. He realized that he was in trouble. He needed to get back to
The Garage as soon as possible but he didn’t think he would make it. He took a deep,
slow breath to combat the vertigo that was starting to creep into his head. His vision
tunneled as the periphery changed into a grey fuzz. An alarm of some sort rang in his
helmet. Katie was saying something frantic from the end of a long tunnel. The white
noise became so loud that he could not hear anything else. The console turned into
formless shadows.
Black.
*****
Bright light.
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Paul’s blinky, bleary vision began to adjust and focus in the glare. Afraid to move and
fall or slide or something else unpleasant, he laid there allowing himself the opportunity
to regain his senses before taking inventory. He recognized the ceiling of the infirmary
back at home base. Katie’s face moved into his vision and she looked directly into his
eyes taking up his entire field of vision.
Such a warm, comforting face to wake to. She really is a beautiful woman.
“Hey, you gave us a bit of a scare. You’re ok. Everything is fine.” She placed her palm
on his chest with tender firmness and the slight caress of a mother would on a child.
“Don’t try to sit up just yet. Give it a minute.”
Paul did not even try to resist. All that he wanted to do at that moment was to lay there
for a bit. “What happened? I remember saying something to Melissa and then, then…
then nothing… Where is she? Is she ok?”
“Yes Paulie, she’s ok. She’s in the conference room. I think she’s taking a nap on one of
the couches.
“The ship’s systems detected that you were losing consciousness and all kinds of alarms
starting blaring here. Thank goodness for Neti’s AI system. Steve and I were in a panic.
We didn’t know what to do. We thought we were losing you. But Neti took care of you.
Storm Front switched to auto pilot and whisked you back here. While enroute, she booted
up the systems in the infirmary and instructed the MaRes in the landing bay to make a
rolling gurney that was able to elevate up to the cockpit. She even had the foresight to
black out the canopy windows so that Melissa would not be able to see where The Garage
is.”
“You can thank Steve for the rest. He was able to contact an emergency room doctor who
was trained in telesurgery and had access to a robotic surgical system terminal. Steve
uploaded the plans for a surgical robot to the MaRe in the infirmary and everything was
in place by the time you got here. The brachial artery inside your arm had a small
laceration and you were bleeding pretty badly. It was a bad cut but easy to fix- just a few
stitches. Actually, the doctor was a little annoyed that he was called and that he had to
use the robot for something any grad med student could do.”
Paul slowly sat up. Katie assisted him. The room spun a little at the change in posture.
She steadied him. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. He did a quick
meditation exercise Jim taught him. It calmed him down and allowed him to sense his
inner self. He felt his pulse in his wound. He controlled his heart beat and his breathing.
He recharged his energy and then slowly opened his eyes- completely in control of
himself.
“What about Melissa? What should we do with her?” Katie asked.
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Paul thought for a moment. “Send her home. Put her in the ship and have Neti take her
home.”
Katie left the room and closed the door. Paul sat on the edge of the table with his legs
dangling over the edge. He lowered his head, closed his eyes and collected his thoughts.
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All On Board
Three days later, on Monday, Paul had a lunchtime strategy meeting with Laurie at CGA.
With his arm stitched and bandaged under his shirt he looked just the same as any other
day except that he had to sling his bag over his right shoulder to accommodate the injury.
He felt a little awkward opening the massive doors to 379 Grand with his bag hanging on
the same side as the hand he used to pull the door.
He was looking towards Marty’s desk but the guard was not there. He asked the stand-in
guard about the regular.
“He’s out today, um … Mr. Marino,” he said as he checked the screen after Paul swiped
his ID card. “Main office says that someone hit him on the head Friday night. He’s OK
but he’s still in the hospital for observation- nasty concussion.”
Paul had a twist in his gut. He had a bad feeling that it was too much of a coincidence
that this attack happened on the same night as Melissa’s.
“Did we have a break-in? Was something stolen?”
“Funny thing is no. Nothing else was out of place. Video from the night shows some guy
come from over there,” he pointed to the custodian closet, “and sneak up to Marty and hit
him in the back of the head with something.” He handed Paul a still image from the
security camera. “Then he dragged him into the same closet. A lady upstairs just missed
seeing the whole thing because she stepped out of the elevator just as the assailant
dragged Marty into the closet. Good thing too, because who knows what would have
happened to her if she witnessed it happening. Then the dude just calmly walks out. He
didn’t take or do anything. Strange though, he had no hat on, no sunglasses. It’s like he
didn’t care if we got his face on camera. You recognize him?”
Paul looked it over a little closer. “No. Never seen him before. Can I keep this?”
“Sure,” said the guard. “Let either one of us know if you hear anything,” he motioned
over to the other guard that Paul didn’t notice. “We beefed up security a little. Make sure
you keep your card with you.”
“Sure thing. Thanks.”
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At first, Paul thought that it probably would have been easier if the assailant were to
simply kill Marty and drag him into the closet if he didn’t want Melissa to see him. Then
he thought of the butterfly effect. Desperate as his enemies were, they wouldn’t want to
start killing off random people in case they will have a significant contribution in the
future.
Paul left the station and crossed the lobby towards the elevator. Just then, Melissa exited
the elevator. She turned towards the guard desk to head out of the building and then she
saw Paul. A slight smile spread across her face. She looked somewhat subdued. Although
she smiled, it seemed like a façade. The smile didn’t reach her eyes. Her hair was not the
perfect and unique-style-of-the-day trademark that had come to be her norm. She was still
stunning but her light was dimmed a little. Paul did not expect to see her on his trip
upstairs today. He assumed that she would need some time after what she had been
through on Friday.
Paul walked up to her and, as casually as he could manage, he commented, “like
clockwork. Heading out to lunch?”
“Hi Paul. That’s the way it goes when you’re on a schedule. I was just with her,” she said
referring to Laurie. “She said you were coming by to look over some paperwork.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “We’re going over some of the latest applications for grants.”
Paul loved looking into her eyes from up close. He rarely got the opportunity to have a
one-on-one conversation without Marty acting like a third wheel. He was too engrossed
with her to notice the man hurrying past them on his way to the elevator. The man came
too close to Paul and banged into him as he passed by.
Paul saw stars, winced and inhaled sharply. The corner of the man’s elbow slammed right
into Paul’s arm. Paul quickly composed himself.
“Oh! Ow Paul,” she reacted empathetically to his wince. “Are you ok?” She asked with
confused concern. It didn’t appear to her that the bump was so severe as to get such an
intense reaction.
“Yeah, just hit me right.” He again, faked casual as he gently rubbed his bicep. “Funny
bone or nerve or something.” He quickly changed the subject. “Where’s lunch today?”
“Oh, nowhere special. I have to run some errands and I’ll grab some fruit or something
along the way.” She half turned and waved towards the stores outside and to the left. She
turned back to face Paul and she looked down and gasped quietly. “Your arm is
bleeding!”
Paul’s head snapped down to look down at his arm and saw two small red spots over his
wound. He instinctively covered the spots with his other hand but it was too late. She
stared at his arm for a count of three. Her eyes slowly turned up to meet his. She saw the
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fear in his eyes. Her eyes flew open as the connection was realized. She silently gasped
again and then stifled it with one hand. Her expression softened and with her other hand,
she slowly, carefully reached out and touched the hand covering his knife wound.
Not knowing what to do, Paul stood there, frozen. His eye brows curved up in a wideeyed look of fear. Then he slowly backed away from the touch. Eyes still gaping in fear,
hand still covering his arm, moving nothing other than his feet, he took three slow steps
backward then turned and disappeared into an open elevator. Melissa was left standing in
the lobby frozen in position with one hand still over her mouth and the other still reaching
out to his arm.
*****
By the end of the day he could not remember anything after sending Steve a secure email.
He detailed all that he learned from the guard and attached the surveillance picture. He
did not remember changing into his backup shirt that he kept in the office closet. Nor did
he remember the meeting he had with Laurie. He did not remember pressing thirty-one
when he entered the elevator. He did not remember slowly walking around the public
relations section looking for Melissa’s office. All he knew was that he was walking
towards her door. With each step closer he became shakier, legs weaker. His heart rate
increased.
He stood at her open doorway and quietly looked in at her working at her desk unaware
that he was there. She seemed preoccupied. She was staring at her computer not doing
anything. She tapped a pencil on end, flipped it over and tapped the other end. She just
stared through the screen and into the distance.
He had never been more afraid of anyone. He was shocked when Laurie figured it all out.
That turned out alright because he knew that she could be trusted and was sympathetic
with his mission. He had no idea about Melissa. If she did not approve of Storm Front’s
tactics or if she felt betrayed by the secret, she could single-handedly bring the whole
thing down. He had to contain this.
Knock. Knock.
Although it was a quiet and gentle knock she jumped as if she had heard a nearby
lightning strike. Her pencil bounced and slid across her desk. Slightly disoriented, she
looked around for the source of the explosive noise and focused on the door where Paul
stood.
“We need to talk.” He walked in and closed the door.
He took two steps into the room and couldn’t walk any closer. He froze in fear. He could
not read her at all. She pushed her rolling chair backwards and stood up.
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Here it comes. Moment of truth. He didn’t know which way this was going to go. He
braced himself.
She rounded the desk and walked- then almost ran to him. She threw her arms over his
shoulders and hugged as hard as she could. Her head melted into his chest. She held him
in silence for a moment. “Thank you,” she whispered into his chest. “Thank you, thank
you, thank you,” she repeated quieter each time. She began to sob.
Paul returned the hug with his uninjured arm and comforted her as her shoulders began to
heave. The relief that she was not mad combined with the heavenly smell of her jasmine
was intoxicating. He couldn’t breathe deep enough. They stood there for a while until the
gentle beep of the phone ended the moment and she broke the connection. She ignored
the phone. Paul guided her over to the couch and pulled up a rolling chair for himself.
They sat facing each other. He held her hands gently, looked into her eyes and told his
story.
*****
“Why did history change?” This was how Steve greeted Paul upon his return.
“What?”
“Since you sent me the text that Melissa was in the know I’ve been trying to answer that
question. Paul, why was history changed in the five minutes between the probe picking
up the assault and getting the signal to us? Why was it changed so that she would be
attacked thirty seconds earlier? And why did the guy cut it so close? Couldn’t he have
just killed the guard or knocked him out much earlier. He risked being spotted by
Melissa. Why?”
Paul had the same questions in the back of his mind once he had a chance to reflect upon
the fight and the events leading up to it but he was afraid to confront it.
Why indeed? Why was history changed at that time in that way? Protect Melissa.
“Neti has a theory,” Steve offered. “She thinks that Melissa’s future contributions to our
mission made her a target. She thinks that Melissa will become a visible supporter. The
three of us are off of the grid so we cannot be tracked. But Melissa is more visible and at
some point it becomes clear to them that she is working with us.
Paul though about it for a moment. Why didn’t they kill the guard? Why manipulate
events so that she is attacked?
The thoughts finally came together for Paul. “They don’t want to kill people in our time
if they can avoid it! They didn’t want to risk killing Marty in case one day he might
become the grandfather of someone important.”
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“Here’s why I think they cut the timing so close,” he continued. “Jim told me that in
reality a knock out is not like you see in the movies. One shot to the head and he’s on the
ground for minutes or even hours. A knockout is like you would see in a boxing match.
Boom! You’re out for only a few seconds- a count of ten and then you’re dazed. They
just wanted Marty out of the way but not killed.”
Paul paused. “What about Melissa?” he thought out loud.
“Here’s what I’ve been thinking today,” Steve said. “Our future buddies have identified
Melissa as someone that they have to deal with. They know that she is attacked and also
that you saved her- in the original timeline. So they change things just a little so that you
don’t get there in time. The attackers made no attempt to hide their identities- no masks,
hoods or even sunglasses. These must have been people from Allie’s time. Neti says that
the manipulation of the events were to ensure that they succeeded. Paul, this was a direct
attack on our team.”
Paul scowled.
“But! There’s one thing that the chain of events tells us. They do not know how detailed
our knowledge of the immediate, five-minute future we have. They thought that changing
things so close to the actual event would blind us.
The two men sat in silence for a minute. “They didn’t want to kill her… but they wanted
her to stop her environmental work. Maybe they wanted to scare her enough to leave the
job.” Paul shook his head. “I don’t know. We can only guess. What now? Does Neti have
a suggestion?”
“Since the first attack didn’t work they will come again- stronger and more desperate.
Neti thinks we have to take her off the grid as well, Paul.”
The following day, Laurie called Melissa into her office. When she walked in she saw
Paul was already in the office. The three of them agreed that she should disappear.
Melissa stayed with Laurie while Paul left to get Storm Front from The Garage. He had
to travel conventionally to avoid being seen getting onto the drop ship.
During Paul’s commute Steve erased and rewrote the events since the attack. He created
a police file reporting that she was found dead on Friday in the back of an alley. Then he
and his computer scoured any location where Melissa could have left a digital trail since
that night. Due to the trauma of her experience she did not venture out at all over the
weekend which made the adjustments much easier. She didn’t place or receive any calls.
He erased her cable TV usage, ninety-three security images collected on her way to and
from work yesterday and another fifty today. Once inside 379 Grand the adjustment of
the trail was much easier because all of the data was stored in one mainframe and it
turned out to only be security logs and computer logins along with her computer work.
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While in route, Paul and Steve agreed that her personal interactions were not critical.
Typical verbal conversations do not get preserved permanently the same way that digital
activity is. If they didn’t arouse any attention then once she left there would be nothing
tangible left behind. Although she was well-liked at work and occasionally joined in on
Friday Happy Hour, she didn’t have any close friends that she bonded to.
Melissa told her immediate coworkers that she was going to the California office and
they accepted it at face value. When it was time to leave, she went up to the roof and got
into the invisible cockpit of Storm Front and Paul flew her away. She disappeared.
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Two Years
When Melissa came to the house to be part of the team she hit the ground running. She
was deeply concerned about the environment and stood behind Storm Front’s policies of
actively stopping the worst offenders. It was very clear to her from watching the news
that Paul and his team were taking every precaution not to hurt people. Although the
media slanted towards the murder and financial impact angles, she believed it was truly
an unfortunate accident when the worker was killed. There was much debate in the media
about the level of violence that Paul was willing to dole out. The price tag was already
over a billion dollars and one person dead. To Melissa, most revealing statistic was that
not a single shot was fired at defending military aircraft. She knew that he could have
easily destroyed any opponents with the arsenal he had at his disposal. If there was a way
for her to join the movement before, she would have. But now she felt honored that she
was included.
It was not a trivial factor in her decision to join that Paul rescued her and almost died
doing it.
Even with the addition of Melissa’s fresh ideas and involvement, the next several months
of the team’s campaign became a struggle. The military constantly tested new weapons
on the “vigilante terrorist group known as Storm Front”. Some of the first installations
destroyed were already rebuilding. The reconstruction was an under-riding irritation for
everyone on the team but the consolation was that the newer facilities were more efficient
and cleaner. Perhaps it was the modernization of the equipment. Perhaps it was refocused
motivation.
Paul’s team fought on three fronts: Paul’s attacked the infrastructure; Laurie attacked the
businesses and Melissa continued her PR efforts to encourage competition and discredit
the “browns” as she called them.
Melissa was in charge of the media campaign. Steve created an alter ego for her. She
communicated by email under the name Beth Carlson. Face-to-face meetings were done
with video conferences using a realistic computer generated version of a fictitious
woman. Melissa enjoyed “shopping” for eyes, lips, ears and tinkering with hair color and
styles until she had the perfect front woman for her job. She built up green industry with
grants. She anonymously leaked the most damaging transgressions of dirty companies.
And she circulated a positive image of Storm Front’s work.
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One of her pet projects was spurring on development of nano-technologies that produced
energy. MicroSol in New Jersey, was developing a spray-on coating that would collect
solar power. It could be used to cover any surface that would be painted and turn the
entire surface into a solar panel. Neti enhanced the design and Steve surreptitiously
inserted the upgrades into MicroSol’s mainframe.
Kenergy in Chicago completed a prototype of a microscopic rechargeable battery that
would capture the kinetic energy of any movement at all. It was based on a thread that
had alternating layers of conductive material that would slide against each other with any
movement. The sliding produced small eddy currents within the material which charged
tiny micro-batteries. The threads could be used to make any kind of fabric such as
clothing, and flags. Melissa connected them with Opal industries, a zero-carbon
manufacturing company in India which also received a grant from CGA for re-tooling the
assembly line.
In addition to her philanthropy by proxy through CGA, Melissa put her public relations
background to work building up the Storm Front group and spreading a positive message.
For documentation purposes, Steve permanently dispatched a cloaked probe to follow the
ship. Melissa occasionally took video clips from it for PR. She anonymously posted
videos on the Internet showing Storm Front doing something other than destroying.
During a period of particularly tense relations in the Middle East Paul neutralized over a
dozen missile attacks which allowed the two sides to resume peace talks. One video
showed him rescuing a hiker stranded on a cliff using the drop ship.
Using Steve’s unlimited reserves, she launched a media campaign that promoted greener
living. Nothing mentioned Storm Front and most of it was subtle. She funded
advertisements for products and services completely unrelated to environmental issues in
exchange for inserting subliminal messages of environmental conservation to be
represented in the ad. A sneaker ad in a magazine showed a runner passing through a
neighborhood where most of the houses had solar panels on the roofs and recycle bins in
the driveways. The picture for a furniture sale featured a bowl of Laurie’s rainforest nuts
serving as the centerpiece of a table. Electric cars were seen charging in the backgrounds
of movies.
Under her fake persona, Melissa became a public relations juggernaut. She spent most of
her time working in the secure environment of The Garage’s conference room from
where she was able to coordinate media campaigns. Katie redesigned the room to
accommodate a private office on one side. The separated work area allowed her to
conduct video conferences without being interrupted by any of the others.
She developed marketing strategies to “Grow the Green and Cut Down the Brown” as the
internal memos referred to it. She had her own division at CGA that answered to her
which she guided mainly through emails and phone calls.
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Laurie became the coordinator. With her analytic skills she was able to identify potential
targets for destruction, negative media attention as well as grooming up-and-coming
green companies.
Steve and Katie became support staff for the others’ work. Katie analyzed the targets and
formulated the attacks. She designed enhancements on the ship and she also continued to
be the central voice in Paul’s ear whenever he was on a mission.
Steve was the busiest of the group. He and Neti became inseparable to the point that he
established a permanent link using a bone speaker and microphone surgically embedded
behind his left ear. He modified his cell phone to project holographic displays and
designed glasses that had an augmented reality display so that he would be more mobile
when working. He became the central point of the operations of the group- the “go to
guy”. Anything at all that had to be done went through him. He accessed the plans for
target factories. He delved deeper into company records than Laurie was able. He
disseminated Melissa’s positive and negative media campaigns. And he was the one who
skimmed money from the corps and funneled it to the young companies as anonymous
grants.
The public, fickle as ever, swayed in their opinion of the campaign. It began as
entertainment. The unknown pilot of Storm Front was seen as an idealist and his cause
was embraced for the most part. But as the sorties became commonplace public interest
waned. “Attendance” at the battlegrounds dwindled to include only the locals and the
media reduced it to a quick passing note of interest. Corporations became very outspoken
against Storm Front. Livid from the use of his voice for evacuation announcements,
Michael Kinsey championed the business interests. He spoke on talk shows, news
programs, debate panels and occasionally took out ads in the papers and made
commercials on TV and the Internet. Backed by his team of advisors, it had become a
successful media attack. Video interviews with people who had lost their jobs pulled at
the public’s sympathies. Idealism became an unaffordable luxury when confronted by
practical necessities. Public opinion of Storm Front went from indifferent to fully irate as
the price of gasoline, internal combustion cars and utilities skyrocketed.
Laurie warned Paul this would happen. “It comes down to Rule Number One in
economics,” she told him several times, “supply and demand. We are choking off the
supply while the public demand is still high. Prices are at a premium.” To comfort him,
she reminded him often of the big picture. “Although the people are annoyed, they are
reacting to the high prices. Conservation is becoming a way of life. Innovations in
environmentally friendly technology are taking off exponentially. No matter how much
they protest they are moving in the right direction. You are giving them tough love.”
The media onslaught weighed heaviest on Laurie Frank. As an expert in the field of
environmental business she was constantly pestered to be included in discussions and onscreen interviews to get her expert angle on the whole affair. Justine needed an assistant
simply for correspondence. Her phone constantly rang from reporters looking to corner
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an interview. Her email became a nightmare simply to sort important from lower
priorities.
While being revered as an expert, Laurie was also dragged through the mud. On several
occasions she was accused of being involved with the Storm Front movement because of
the similarity between her company’s work and the attacks. Steve did his best to divert
attention from her. He would leak information that apparently had a connection from
some other company or activist group. Focus would shift from CGA but eventually came
back. It was impossible to completely sever the connections without disbanding her
company.
During this time, Paul and Melissa began to connect deeply. She quickly grew to have
unwavering trust in Paul. Since she was targeted, she knew that she was constantly in
danger. Paul and Steve went through great lengths to protect her and keep her as hidden
as possible. Since she was attacked and the timeline was altered in an attempt prevent
Paul from saving her, they knew that she would be a key player, which she had turned out
to be. She felt safe in The Garage and completely secure whenever Paul was there with
her.
He took her on trips in Storm Front during the slow times: between missions and when
she was off from CGA. Although they had always enjoyed each other’s presence from
the beginning, slowly, and without a specific line to cross, they found themselves in love
with each other. It was not an explosive love like two kids who found each other and
finally had some time to themselves. Theirs grew gradually. It was an inadvertent bump
while working next to each other. A gentle touch on the arm to get attention. Leaning
over each other’s shoulder while working on a computer. They accepted every new level
of intimacy without any resistance. It was comfortable and unpressured and they just let it
happen.
Paul took her on dates to places and to do things that would have been impossible for
anyone else. They had dinner on a tropical island that only appeared during low tide.
They watched underwater lava flows off the coast of Hawaii. They had a sunset picnic on
a sand dune in the middle of the desert.
When she was not working in her office she would visit the control room to see how they
worked. She would observe the hangar through the panoramic window to watch Katie
and Paul make adjustments to Storm Front. At times, Steve, Paul and Katie worked on
the ship together. Paul would sit in the cockpit monitoring the ship and tweaking controls.
Katie would work under- or sit on top of- or climb on the exterior working with a MaRe
building or modifying parts. When Steve was in the hangar with them, he worked on a
portable workstation with a holographic display. He would modify or reprogram a
component. Katie would take that re-worked component fresh from the MaRe, and install
it. Paul would then test the new device for its integration into the ships systems.
125
Melissa admired with awe how smoothly they meshed. At times they were silent. At
others, they blurted out “Check it! Got it! How’s this? Try it now!” in a smoothly
choreographed verbal baton pass.
As the weeks went on, she began monitoring Paul’s sorties from the control room.
Although it was very intense to watch events as the unfolded, she found it easier than
waiting in sequester until Paul’s return. The focus and intensity that Steve and Katie had
at those times filled the room with thick adrenaline- a foreboding sense of danger
balanced with the rush of excitement.
Occasionally, Melissa would get on the radio to wish Paul good luck on the way out and
congratulations on his return. Each time, she could hear his smile in her headphones. “Go
get ‘em, Paul” and “good job. Come on home,” became her typical pep talks.
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Raptor
Paul was eager to strike at the main culprit in the assault on the atmosphere. The power
plants were just the middlemen. The real enemy was fossil fuel. If Paul were to destroy
the wells themselves it would cause fires that would put the carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere even faster than the current rates. Platforms can be built in only a few weeks
so destroying them was a very temporary solution. Paul was stymied. Then Laurie had an
epiphany. While looking at the finances of one of the largest domestic producers of oil, a
line on the invoices caught her attention: “drilling equipment”.
She called Katie with her secure phone. Laurie was so excited that she didn’t let Katie
finish saying ‘hello’. “Destroy the drill manufacturers!”
“ ‘Scuse me?”
“Katie, destroy the companies that make the drills. No drills, no drilling. They can rebuild
the rig but if there is no drill they cannot dig.”
Katie put the call on speakerphone. “Laurie, say that again for Steve.”
“If we destroy the companies that make the drill heads then they cannot drill. The
production of oil will slow down as the drill heads break and the supply of spare heads is
depleted. The stockpile will dwindle. There will be no immediate loss of service that
could endanger the public.”
Steve swirled around in his chair and did a quick search. “Laurie, you’re a genius! There
are only three facilities in the world that make drill heads big enough for oil drilling.”
*****
Storm Front suddenly appeared above Noram Cutting Manufacturing, the largest drill
head manufacturer in the United States located in an industrial park in western Utah.
“Michael Kinsey” gave NCM and its neighboring buildings one hour to evacuate. Unlike
major utilities which would be dangerous to suddenly take off-line, a drill manufacturer
can be removed with no more preparation than a fire drill to evacuate the personnel.
Immediately after appearing, the bay doors opened and the drop ship torpedoed out of the
ship’s belly. Once clear of the mother ship Paul engaged the temporal dilator. To any
observers, it appeared as if he had disappeared. He flew down into the park and did a
127
leisurely sweep of NCM and the surrounding light industrial buildings. The slow pass
allowed the scanners to do a thorough search for any people left behind. He returned to
the ship and deactivated the dilator when he was on final approach.
A moment later a proximity alert blared. Steve summed up the threat. “You have two
inbound jets at Mach 2.4 and speeding up. They will be within their weapons’ range in
twenty seconds.”
Paul began bombardment of the manufacturing building, warehouse and shipping
sections of the sprawling plant. “Neti, how much time will it take to destroy this place
with conventional weapons?”
“Twenty-five seconds until you can disengage,” came her cool response.
Then Steve’s voice changed over to awe. “Whoa! These are F-22 Raptors! Stealth planes
otherwise we would have picked up on them earlier. Paul, they’ve never seen combat.
They are too expensive and they don’t want to risk them unless there is a threat that the
less sophisticated planes can’t handle… they will engage within nine seconds, you need
to stay there for three more seconds before you can leave.”
A few moments later an alarmed sounded.
MISSILE LOCK
INBOUND MISSILE
“Paul it’s a regular missile, keep going.”
He fired the last shot that he needed and began to bank the ship away to make his exit.
Before he could accelerate away, the missile hit. Storm Front was slammed into a roll.
Alarms blared, lights flashed, screens went to static. Paul felt the impact deep in his
bones then the lurch in his stomach that he knew meant that the inertial dampeners were
off line.
“Paul,” Steve was in shock. “That was an antimatter gamma burst!”
“No shit! Ya’ think!” Paul grunted as he made a sharp turn. “Steve, take inventory make
a capability comparison while I keep these guys off of me.”
Paul knew he was severely limited in his options with the ship and systems damaged as
they were but he did not know just how damaged. They were still too far away for him to
see them without the aid of his instruments. At better than twice the speed of sound by
the time he spotted them, it would be too late. He could hear the regen units humming
away with the ship’s repairs.
128
Katie’s calm voice comforted Paul as he flew random patterns. “Paul, Neti scanned the
data from the missile explosion and found that the warhead was heavily shielded with
lead to significantly reduce signature radiation from leaking out.”
Steve cut in. “You are pretty much an even match. Without shields you can outrun them
in a straight flight but not their missiles. At low speeds your ship can out-maneuver them
but you cannot handle it physically without the dampeners. One advantage that you have
is your multidirectional orientation while in straight flight but you can only do that while
subsonic.”
MISSILE LOCK
INCOMING MISSILE
Paul twisted the top of the yoke and the ship rotated around while continuing straight,
level flight along its original direction. He targeted the two missiles heading for him and
shot them. At a safe distance they exploded spectacularly from the antimatter.
He could see both pursuers gaining on him once they cleared the explosion. He rotated
around again and throttled forward to his maximum speed. They quickly matched his
speed and even began to overtake him. He could have easily dispatched the two but he
refused to kill any soldiers. They were following orders and defending their territory from
a hostile force. They were just doing their job. It was important to Paul that they get
home after every conflict.
“They’ll be too close for missiles in a moment,” Katie informed. In the background he
could hear furious typing from her and Steve and the Neti back in the control room
speaking to them while the team gathered tactical information for him. “They will begin
shooting bullets. The graphene shell will have no problem but if they hit any damaged
skin it could penetrate.”
“Time to completion of repairs fifteen seconds, Paul,” Steve informed him.
He slowed down to enhance his maneuverability and began to jink the craft erratically. A
moment later Paul saw tracers flashing past him followed by a quick series of bangs as
some of the bullets impacted the hull. Instinctively, he cornered the ship around a nearly
ninety-degree turn. The first raptor was too close to react to the sudden move and over
shot. The second plane snapped its nose upward while the tail dropped down. The plane
was suddenly facing ninety degrees from its original direction. The splayed wings airbraked the craft to a standstill in the air and the jet nozzles held it aloft in a momentary
hover. It then began to accelerate towards Paul in its new orientation.
Damned vectored thrust! Paul remembered that the space age fighter was able to manage
sharp turns at subsonic speeds by channeling its jet exhaust at an angle. Desperate to get
away from his opponent Paul increased speed. More bangs rattled his ship. An alarm
sounded. One of the bullets entered the ship and hit some components.
129
MISSILE LOCK
Paul spun around again towards the plane that originally over shot.
INCOMING MISSILE
He blasted the weapons out of the sky. While he was preoccupied with the manual
targeting, the wingman unleashed a stream of bullets. Paul saw the tracers coming
straight for him. Most of them missed but some found their target. A handful hit the
canopy in front of his face. Each strike caused a flinch. One cracked the windshield and
Paul instinctively threw his hands up to protect his face but the glass held.
“Steve, they’re tearing me apart. I can’t keep them away much longer.” Paul banked
violently to face forward. “I don’t want to shoot them down- ungh!” The sound of
banging pops was clearly heard over the radio between intermittent bursts of static. “Give
me options!”
“Steve! Eject them!” Katie burst into the conversation.
“What?” The two men blurted out.
“Steve, have their onboard computers trigger an ejection.”
“Of course!” He began furiously typing away and speaking- half out loud and half to
Neti. “Double encrypted firewall… accessing subroutines…whoa! rotating algorithms.
Neti, compensate.”
Two more keystrokes and a punch on the Enter key and the Raptor canopies blew off and
the planes spat out the pilots. The fight was over. The two pilots gently parachuted into a
parking lot a mile from NCM. Neti was able to autopilot the smart planes to land at the
nearest airport.
Once cleared of opposition, Paul returned to the manufacturer determined to reinforce
that he will not be chased away. He reduced the building to smoldering rubble with lasers
and a small incendiary bomb.
130
Even Ground
After waiting for what seemed like an eternity of stepping on ants and cleaning out the
dirty companies from the bottom up, Laurie finally gave the go-ahead to take out the
number-two worst offender: Midwest Enterprises- MWEnt. They were an enormous
fossil fuel power plant. They had three generations of turbines currently working. The
oldest building housed three coal-fired generators. Being over fifty years old, the unit was
the single dirtiest facility in the world. It was also the biggest consumer of pollution
permits and accounted for the majority of the high power rates in the entire Midwest.
The second facility on the same property was an oil-fueled plant. The plant required a
pipeline from the oil depot on Lake Michigan over 100 miles away as well as a handful
of local wells that were close enough to pipe the oil. Generator number two was thirtyfive years old and almost as dirty as number one. To add to the offenses of this plant, the
pipeline was made to substandard specs and collectively leaked over five hundred barrels
a day along the length of the line.
The final plant was a more modern, natural gas generator less than a decade old. The
plant itself would not have raised Laurie’s suspicion but it was guilty by association with
the other two. However, she decided that the building should be spared if possible. Katie
decided that the coal plant should be destroyed with a conventional attack to collapse the
building. The oil plant would be an environmental disaster if the oil were blown all over
by an explosion. She suggested a Higgs implosion. She said that the oil pipeline would be
damaged and would spill but it would be minimal since they will be told to shut it down
ahead of time by the Kinsey Warning.
Once the plan was established Steve issued the warning and the operation began three
days later.
Just as he was about to scan the first target for stragglers a tremendous BOOM slammed
the ship. Paul saw stars. Alarms and buzzers blared. Disoriented by the sudden impact,
Paul instinctively, blindly, threw the ship in a different direction. A thick smoke filled the
air outside the ship. Confused by the sight, Paul relied on his instrument panel to tell if he
was level or heading straight for the ground.
“What just happened?” Katie almost shouted through the radio.
131
“I dunno,” Paul replied looking out of the canopy at the pall surrounding his ship. He
played a hunch, “drop shields.” Almost instantly, the smoke cleared. A flashing display
on his console caught his attention.
MINOR DAMAGE blinked on the display with a section of the ship’s bottom flashed
yellow.
“How the hell did you get hit? There was no proximity alert. No missile. Nothing,”
pondered Katie.
“Somehow it got inside the shields… but nothing they have has that capability!”
A second explosion rocked the ship. More alarms. And another uncontrolled pitch of the
ship. This time with the shields down, the smoke cleared quickly. Another damage alert
flashed at a different part of the undercarriage.
“There was nothing at all on the screens. It was as if the bombs just appeared next to
you.”
“Katie, could they be some kind of temporal mines?”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this. What do you mean?”
“Well, I have the ability to jump through time. Maybe there’s someone here who can also
jump and somehow they are able make a mine appear at my location just as I get there.
That’s how they got inside the shields.” While he was thinking and talking, he made a
series of random turns to stay as unpredictable as possible. Then it occurred to him that
even if his motion was known with absolute certainty from a future person’s viewpoint,
the adjustments he has made because of the mines have been a deviation from where he
should have been if the timeline wasn’t interrupted.
“They’re still here!” he announced to Katie. “They are watching us then sending the mine
back in time a few seconds and it appears just as we pass the spot.”
Another explosion. This time it was on top of the ship. Paul was slammed downward as
the ship careened from the blast. Red sections appeared on the display indicating heavy
damage.
“I’ve lost my right cannon.” The ship instantly reacted to the severe damage by initiating
the self-repair function. The Regens installed throughout the ship began repairing the
damaged and missing parts.
“Two minutes until repair completion,” the computer voice announced.
Thinking out loud, Paul said, “we’ve been getting hit more than once every two minutes.
We’ll be taken apart a piece at a time… We’ve got to stop them somehow…”
132
An epiphany! Paul stopped making wild turns and flew straight.
Katie protested, “Paul you’re flying predictably.”
“It doesn’t matter when you can see into the past and see exactly where someone was at
some point in time. But they must be jumping all over the nearby time line to watch us,
track us, and plant the-”
He stopped in mid-sentence as his idea took hold. He quickly displayed a tactical map of
the recent events.
Katie warned, “if they hold their pattern there should be another mine any time now.”
“I know. I’m waiting for it but I need a few more seconds.” Deep in concentration, Paul
ran through some calculations.
“What!”
“Hold on…got it! Storm Front, prepare to make a jump back 6.4 seconds to exactly one
kilometer in front of the position that we jump from. Also invert our travel direction
during the jump. Make the jump the moment that the next mine hits us.”
A moment later the next explosion rocked the ship. There was an instant of disorientation
as the ship jumped and was now heading in the opposite direction.
A proximity alarm went off. Directly in front of him, Paul saw his earlier self off in the
distance heading right for them- as he expected.
“Prepare to jump back sixty seconds, same location and heading. And turn on the cloak
as soon as the jump is complete.” The two ships careened towards each other, closing the
gap at double the speed.
“What are you doing!” Katie protested.
3… The two ships got closer.
2… Paul could identify the familiar outline of the ship.
1… A bright flash from the mine but there was no impact. The ship jumped back sixty
seconds. No ships were visible. Paul quickly put the ship into a sharp climb. When he
ascended to a kilometer above the site where the last mine will go off, he put the ship in a
hover pointing down.
“Arm all weapons. Target the location of the last mine.”
A quiet beep confirmed that weapons were locked.
133
Katie’s voice suddenly crackled into this earpiece. Sounding a little confused, she said “It
looks like you are time jumping because right now I see two of you on tactical. What’s
going on?”
With his eyes fixed on his tactical display, Paul explained what he was doing. “You’ll see
me a third time in about forty seconds. The only way that they could have gotten a mine
undetected inside my shields would be to have a temporal mine set to appear at my
location just as I passed it. Considering that it still happened after random turns, our
enemy must have been tracking me and jumped back in time to set the mine at one of my
exact locations. By time jumping two times at the same spot, plus our adversary’s third
time, I destabilized the temporal field in the area like we did when we watched the moon
landing. If my hunch is correct, when he jumps in, he won’t be able to use the damaged
field to jump back out.”
As expected to Paul, but so suddenly that he was startled, a new ship, unlike any other
he’s seen, snapped into a stationary position right where the weapons were locked. A
mine was deployed from a bay beneath the ship and the bay doors closed. Then, the tips
of the ship’s wings started glowing. Sparks began shooting from the ship. The air itself
began to ripple and shimmer. With a pop, everything went back to normal. Again, the
enemy tried to open a bridge and with a pop it was shut down again.
Paul squeezed the trigger and unleashed the weapons. At the same moment he saw a
flicker around the other ship indicating that the shields were raised. In rapid succession,
several beams slammed into the enemy’s shields while the missiles streaked towards their
targets. The shields glowed and sparked as each energy beam impacted. Such a
concentrated barrage on a stationary target’s weaker top shields was too much to defend
against. After two seconds of resistance the shields collapsed and the energy beams
started tearing away the ship, slicing into its hull. Pieces flew off the ship as it was taken
apart. A moment later, the missiles pounded the ship. It rocked violently with each
impact. Heavily damaged, the ship’s reactor went critical and there was a huge explosion.
The shockwave and debris blasted onto Paul’s shields and the enemy was gone.
Paul continued hovering there, the ship pointed at the battle site. He stared at it intently
until he felt that it was really over. Cautiously, he headed back to MWEnt. He used the
drop ship and temporal dilator to check the sites for stragglers and then proceeded to
unceremoniously dismantle the facility.
134
Self-Sacrifice
Finally! Kinsey. The company’s reputation had spiraled down and teetered on the edge of
financial ruin. The green companies took hold and their share of the market became
significant. It was finally time to go for number one.
Katie called Paul down to the conference room for a meeting. When he got there he was
surprised and a little shocked to also see both Melissa and Laurie there.
“Paul,” Katie said, “Laurie gave us the next target yesterday and we have been putting
together a plan of attack. Paul, it’s KinsiCo!”
His eyes widened at the announcement. “Laurie? Really? It’s time?”
“Paul,” she replied, “there are no other companies that will have a significant impact on
our mission. Yes, it will disrupt the utilities in the area to some degree but it’s
unavoidable.”
Steve added, “I checked all of the critical facilities in the area, hospitals, government
buildings and other sensitive areas and they are mostly covered. Backup generators,
secondary power sources, reasonable evacuation contingencies. The green utilities have
taken a significant foothold and can step up production to pick up some of the slack.
They’re ready for it Paul.”
“Although Kinsey and his cronies have been very outspoken about your mission and he
has been very visible, his popularity has steadily declined in the last three months.”
Melissa reported. “He won’t be seen as a victim.”
Katie added her input. “The facility is huge. It has mainly oil and coal reserves but also a
big storage reservoir of waste that it uses for incineration. We’re going to level the coal
buildings with lasers to collapse the structures. Since the oil and garbage pose a leaching
danger, we’ll surgically remove them with a Higgs implosion- the biggest one yet.”
Paul beamed. “Steve, issue the warning.”
Steve looked down at the control panel on his conference room chair and pressed a single
button to activate the pre-loaded message. “I wish I could be there to see his expression
when he hears his own voice warning him of an attack on his own place.”
135
Three days later Paul took off from the underground hangar and headed towards his
target. As Paul was about to fire his opening salvo the first building suddenly exploded
into an expanding ball of fire and debris. He watched in shocked surprise. He didn’t
notice that his breathing had stopped while his brain diverted all of its energy into trying
to understand what just happened.
An alarm sounded in the cockpit. A half moment later a ship streaked out of the fireball
firing a missile. It screamed towards Paul closely followed by a second rocket.
A second ship emerged from the flames.
What Paul did not know was that the enemy, rightfully so, assumed that if they blatantly
attacked him, he would probably see it coming well in advance. To hide their approach
and avoid detection, they arrived well before Paul and hid close to the building. Their
plan was to blow up the oldest, most expendable plant at the same time that Paul would
have done so anyway. The explosion would catch Paul off guard, confuse him and allow
them to get close enough to him to attack. Their plan worked perfectly!
A large red ANTIMATTER WARNING appeared in front of Paul on his windshield
HUD. Hair prickled from a sudden adrenaline surge. Tachypsychia kicked in. He did a
quick evaluation of the situation: They got the drop on me. No time to avoid. First missile
takes out the shields and some systems; second destroys the ship. Only option: eject. The
bulk of the ship will absorb the blast as I eject upwards away from it.
He reached between his legs.
The first missile closed in at supersonic speeds.
He grabbed the yellow and black striped ejection loop.
The missile hit.
The jarring explosion caused Paul to pull the ejection handle. Nothing happened. For one
quickened heartbeat he saw the next weapon so close now that he could see the seams in
the warhead. He had a momentarily thought: Shit! He felt a searing pain. A moment later
the ship was obliterated.
****
In the control room, Steve, Katie, Laurie and Melissa watched as Paul swooped into
weapons range for his latest strike: a decades-old smooth tan bricked cogeneration plant.
In theory, a cogeneration plant was a marginally environmentally acceptable method of
handling waste. The building was situated next to a massive landfill. An endless supply
of garbage from the neighboring mountain of refuse fueled its furnaces. The heat from
the inferno was used to generate heat and electricity for the surrounding metropolis.
136
Steve and Katie selected this site because of its disregard for any treatment of toxic
byproducts. As the raw garbage was crushed, chopped and shredded, any liquids, toxic,
diseased, rancid, whatever, drained through the grates below and emptied into pipes that
led straight into the ground and distributed subterraneously seven hundred and fifty feet
below.
They watched in the same shocked surprise as Paul had when the first building blew up
before he fired a shot. Before they could even react, the two missiles struck his ship in
quick succession producing a rapid flash-flash from the antimatter detonations. In a futile
attempt to … anything, Melissa lunged towards the monitor. “No! Paul!” was all she
could scream. Her mouth was left hanging open. All of their mouths hung open. They
mirrored each other’s expressions: dumbfounded shock- eyes agape showing white all
around brown, green and brown. Mouths cavernous with not a breath of air entering or
exiting. Eye brows knitted together in a stare of impotent helpless hopelessness. Laurie
stood stoic with her jaw clenched and eyes burning a hole in the monitor. Melissa
collapsed into the chair behind her. She missed the chair. It shot back bouncing and
spinning off of the wall behind. She landed in a heap still watching as the fireball
dissipated. As a final insult- a mock of the horror they just saw, the lead ship, followed by
his wing-man flew right through the fading flames. Like a pin in a voodoo doll, the four
felt a knife in their hearts as the victorious stabbed through the smoke of the vanquished.
****
Explosion detected.
Primary target destroyed 4.435352 kilometers below.
Resulting plasma expanding at 9,400 meters per second. Temperature: 5,238.412 Kelvin.
Hostile vehicle detected emerging from plasma cloud. No damage detected. Conclusion:
Shielded ship: probability: 91%.
No known technology currently capable of shielding a vehicle from 5,238.412 Kelvin.
Conclusion: vehicle returned from a year value greater than present. Probability: 84%
Vehicle on an approach vector. Velocity: 47 meters per second. Accelerating at 31.22
meters per second per second.
Missile detected with a radiation signature consistent with that of magnetic containment
of antimatter.
Second vehicle detected with matching characteristics. Vehicle on a parallel vector as the
primary hostile.
Second missile launched from Vehicle One. Antimatter containment signature detected.
Neti began calculations of possible outcomes.
137
Fail.
Fail.
Fail.
Fail.
Her negative time quantum computer was unable to resolve a successful solution to her
prime function: Protect the life of the pilot. Working at the maximum rate of calculation
of hundreds of pentahertz, she determined that she needed a greater capacity for
compiling outcomes. She commandeered the CPU of every available subsystem
containing smaller versions of herself embedded without the ship. Although smaller and
slower, the additional units doubled, quadrupled and octupled her capacity. The
reprioritizing of information flow caused a shutdown of many of the ship’s functions.
Their primary functions were no longer necessary since the remaining .317 seconds
before impact would not be enough time avoid an impact.
Impact of missile one detected.
Estimated time to antimatter detonation: 0.00147 seconds.
Solution of highest possibility for success calculated in slave unit 5: ship’s environmental
subsystem.
Time to detonation 0.0000051 seconds.
Protective shield activation around main processor complete.
Detonation. Loss of all slave processors. Critical systems failure.
Pilot initiated ejection signal detected. Override.
Probability of successful completion of primary function: 77%
Execute routine.
****
Paul pulled the ejection handle and braced himself for the full body hammering he
experienced during a training exercise in flight school. The canopy did not blow off. He
did not eject. Shit!
Neti calculated the maximum speed of ejection tolerable to Paul and executed a perfectly
timed series of events to get him off of the doomed ship. She instructed the embedded
regen units within the drop ship to manufacture shackles around his ankles and wrists to
more securely attach him- but it would take time for them to form. He would have to hold
on until they completed. He felt a searing pain as Neti electrocuted him causing his
muscles to clench at one hundred percent of their capability. His hands clenched into fists
138
around the control handles. His leg muscles squeezed the seat between his legs. The bay
doors beneath flew open and the drop ship ejected. To enhance the jettison, she
explosively decompressed all pressurized gas within the ship literally blowing him and
the drop ship out of the craft.
Paul rocketed down out of his ship with such suddenness and violence that he was
subjected to close to ninety g’s- near the upper limits of human endurance for a short
period of time. His bones, supported by the flexed tension of his muscles approached
their breaking points in a vice-like grip on his torpedoing escape craft. He became a part
of the machine. They moved as a unit. His skeleton, now completely shackled in place,
shot downward along with the ship. But his fleshy parts lagged behind just a bit. He felt
his organs shift- or rather; they stayed still while his boney frame was pulled downward.
His intestines shot up into his chest causing his lungs to exhale as a coughing grunt. He
felt a kick in his head from his brain slamming up against the inside of his skull. As Neti
determined, the incompressible fluid surrounding his brain encased within a solid skull
prevented any significant brain injury. Still only mere meters beneath the crippled craft,
Paul flew through the fireball from the first strike. It lasted less than a quarter second. To
Paul, it felt like he was within a gassy stove suddenly catching the spark.
Neti used her last bit of processing power to project a small hologram of empty blue sky
around Paul to conceal his escape. As calculated, the incoming second missile targeted
midship and it entered the now vacant bay. In a final act of self-sacrifice, she closed the
bay doors to shield her driver from the lethal blast of gamma rays. Storm Front erupted in
a spectacular fireball. Paul rode the front of the shockwave. The victorious enemies
streaked past Paul’s invisible lifeboat just as the hologram faded.
Debris from the exploded ship flew in all directions. Some shrapnel embedded in the
engine of the drop ship, disabling it. Another punched Paul in his helmet cracking it in
the rear. He plummeted to the Earth riding a log. He sped towards the hard deck. The
craft managed to fire its maneuvering thrusters, slowing his decent. The ship entered a
stand of woods on the outskirts of the furiously burning cogeneration plant.
Although the thrusters slowed the decent, they were not strong enough to completely stop
the drop. The nose of the ship dug into the ground pitching the tail up and throwing Paul
over the front. He flew through the air like a lifeguard doing a running dive through the
waves. He skidded on the ground face first- his faceplate taking the brunt of the scrapes
and bumps. As he slowed, the tumbling drop ship careened overhead in a smashing,
bending, flinging cartwheel finally wrecking itself against a tree. The ruptured circuits
within the ship sputtered sparks here and there. Some leaves near the wreck caught and
made small fires.
Fade to black.
****
139
High above, the cloaked tracking probe watched the entire disaster and relayed it back to
the control room. Neti accomplished her mission and Paul slipped away from the tumult
unseen by his attackers as well as the probe. With no Storm Front to shadow and no
further instructions, the probe remained stationary and continued its normal scans of the
area. It detected an anomaly. There was a disturbance below, an impact followed by four
small fires. The cameras and detectors focused on the area.
****
In the control room, the team was inconsolable. Melissa was fetal on the floor curled up
as if cramped in a dry heave. “No, no, no,” she repeated senselessly as she rocked herself
in an empty hug. Steve and Katie could not hug each other harder. They took their
anguish out on each other and gripped the other so tightly that the physical pain each
inflicted rivaled the emotional torture they were feeling. Katie’s head was buried so
deeply in Steve’s shoulder that he was forced to look up at the dim lights in the ceiling.
Through his peripheral vision, movement on the monitor caught his attention. Not sure if
it was real movement or the welling of his tears, Steve blinked heavily and looked
directly at the screen. The image from the probe panned down from the fireball. Sky,
horizon, burning factory, trees. A handful of objects displayed by their glowing heat
signatures superimposed on the floor of the woods.
Steve inhaled suddenly. He loosened his grip on Katie. The gasp and release froze Katie
in mid-sob. The image on the screen zoomed in on one of the heat signatures. It resolved
and Steve clearly made out the outline of a sprawled out human shape. He pushed Katie
away and turned her towards the screen. As quickly as she could, she dug the tears out of
her eyes. They looked in disbelief. Once the camera finished zooming in, the glowing
computer-enhanced human-shaped heat signature turned off to clearly show Paul laying
on his stomach. He was laying still.
Katie did not want to take her eyes off of the screen. She gently kicked Melissa in the leg.
“Melissa,” she hissed. “Melissa, get up! Look at this.”
Melissa rolled herself up on all fours, hitched one foot underneath as support and stood.
She wiped the tears from her eyes and rubbed the snot off of one cheek.
The human image shifted. “The sonofabitch made it out!” exclaimed Steve in disbelief.
“How the hell did he do that?”
The three of them composed themselves with nose-clearing snorts and more wiping of
eyes and cheeks. Their breathing came down from staccato and began to smooth out. The
image on the screen began to move more coherently.
****
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He couldn’t breathe. Everything felt broken. His head pounded. He felt like he was
spinning. Stars spun and swirled in his vision although his eyes were closed. A low noise
came in from a distance and grew louder. A thousand people all murmuring at once filled
his head with random noise. The sound got louder and exploded into an intolerable
volume then disappeared in a pop as he became fully awake.
He opened his eyes a slit. His lids felt cramped. He felt a dull soreness like the day after
working out- in his eyelids! He went to move his hand. Cramped. He pulled a leg up.
Cramped. Try as he might, Paul could not make any movement that wasn’t painful.
He had a momentary flash of his training with Master Jim. Paul had just gotten hit in the
solar plexus and couldn’t breathe. Nerves scrambled, he thought. He suppressed the panic
that comes from getting the wind knocked out of you. His breath finally returned to him
in small, unsteady spasms.
His damaged visor displayed only red and black static. Its audio counterpart faintly hissed
from his earpieces. With an angry grunt, he made a herculean effort to grab the offending
helmet and threw it off. It tumbled a few feet away. He rolled over onto his back with a
huff. Paul lay there for a few seconds just enjoying his increasingly deeper and deeper
breaths.
A sound caught his attention- a faint but growing whining roar. He looked in the direction
of the sound and saw one of his enemies bearing down on his location. Another
adrenaline surge! He rolled onto his feet and managed a stooped over, runner’s starting
position. Suddenly, the wrecked ship two hundred feet in front of him erupted in a
shattering fire as the approaching ship fired on the biggest source of heat in the crash
zone.
Paul turned and bolted as fast as he could manage. At first he was stumbling, then he
steadied himself. His muscles loosened a bit and he worked up to a respectable run. The
whine roared overhead and he looked back over his shoulder as it passed. He paused for a
moment to watch the fighter begin to swing around. Then he caught sight of the wingman
fall into position behind the first. Paul resumed running- even faster this time. Shots
began slamming into the ground near him. He weaved between the trees running, huffing
and grunting. A tree just behind him exploded, its sap, trapped under the bark, instantly
boiled and blasted the trunk into splinters. Finished with its strafing run, the first ship
passed over.
Paul stopped and turned to see the second ship bearing down on him. Knowing that this
time the pilot would have more time to line up his shot for a sure hit, Paul stood his
ground.
The ship closed.
He reached into his cargo pockets.
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The ship closed.
He pulled out a Mare in each hand.
The ship closed.
He slammed the two Mares together and leaned forward.
The ship fired.
The MaRes formed a shield: a titanium skeleton backed a layer made of the same
graphene nanotube fiber optic material as his ship. The energy blast slammed into the
shield. The fiber optics of the shield diverted the majority of the energy safely away
slicing into the ground and burning an arching swath into the surrounding trees. The raw
force of the unbridled power pushed Paul backwards. His boots plowed through the floor
trailing gouges in the dirt. The shield broke free of his grip and tumbled away over his
head and landed behind.
The ship passed over.
Once the contact was broken, the MaRes reverted back into their original flashlight
shapes. Paul ran in the opposite direction in anticipation of attacker number one swinging
around at any time now. He pivoted while continuing his run- now backwards. He
reached out for the MaRes and they jumped into his hands. He turned and continued to
run.
****
The three watched the image fed from the tracking probe on the main monitor. The first
pass. Trees exploded. The second pass. They thought he was done. Then the shield
appeared. They watched in awe. Paul braced his shoulder against the shield to hold fast
against the impending blast. The laser splashed all around Paul setting the surrounding
trees on fire.
“Holy shit! Did you see that!” Steve shouted as if he was watching a big play in a football
game. Steve was excited. The two women were watching a thriller. They didn’t want to
watch but couldn’t look away. They felt so helpless. They could watch the whole
confrontation but do nothing to help.
The tracking probe widened the viewing area. They saw the two ships land in an open
field nearby and the two pilots disembark. And the hunt was on.
****
Once he lost sight of his pursuers Paul stood motionless to listen for them. He remained
still for an eternity. Then he heard them. The ships began a low slow pass overhead
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searching for him. He found a particularly large tree and jumped behind it. He reached
behind himself and touched the two MaRes together behind his upper shoulders. As he
pulled them apart a blanket formed between them. Paul placed his face against the rough
bark and hugged the tree. The blanket stretched to completely cover him. The mini Neti
processors in the devices surmised that Paul was attempting to conceal himself. The
blanket turned into a camouflage pattern matching the texture of the tree bark. It then
solidified into a heat absorbing material to hide his signature.
After the pass, Paul slowly peeled up one edge of the blanket to take a peek at the
retreating ships. He remained undetected and the two continued to move away. He
exhaled and began to ease. He completely emerged from behind the tree to watch his
enemies. To his dismay, he saw the ships halt, then slowly lower into what must have
been a clearing in the distance.
First he heard them. Slow shuffling through the floor debris. A small twig snap. A dull
crunch of rock under boot. Then he saw them. The lead hunter was looking intently at the
ground while the rear man visually swept the area looking for Paul. The lead was
following Paul’s path exactly. Paul inferred that he was somehow able to see Paul’s trail.
Maybe it was a heat signature of his footsteps or slight footprint impressions enhanced in
the pilot’s helmet visor. Either way the path would lead right to him. He slid completely
behind his tree, collected his thoughts and decided to switch from prey to predator. His
plan was to use a MaRe to make a distraction in one direction while he charged them
from another. Listening for any hint of a sound, he waited for them to get closer. He
closed his eyes and tracked them by hearing alone. Then it stopped. Not a sound.
Then he heard a dull thud-thud at his two o’clock position. He snapped his head towards
the sound and saw a small dark brown ball halt its roll.
Not good!
He threw himself on the ground and pulled his MaRe down on top of him. It quickly
expanded into a graphene turtle shell sealing him onto the ground. He pulled down with
all of his might. His shield was battered with such a quick and concussive blast that it
slammed stunned his hands much the same way that a poorly swung bat will shock the
batter.
Once the debris finished pattering on the surrounding ground, Paul stood and looked from
behind his turtle shield. He saw one opponent, apparently the one who just threw the
grenade, clearly through the spaces between the trees. Paul took his shield and threw
side-armed it at his prey. As it spun through the air it compressed into a saw blade. The
future mercenary saw it coming and moved to evade, but it was too late. Instead of the
center of the throat for a decapitation, the blade sliced through the side of the neck. Same
result. The injured man collapsed to the ground and died moments later while grabbing at
his neck in a futile attempt to erase the wound.
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The two remaining men watched the one die for a moment, motionless. In a
choreographed movement, both men looked at each other. Paul ran towards the soldier at
an angle allowing the trees to block his progress. Shots shattered and spat tree parts at
Paul as he ran. Still in a full sprint, the predator reached out and MaRe flung itself
through the air and met his outstretched hand.
Hoping that the embedded computer within the device was smart enough to understand
Paul commanded “tesla coil!”
The cylinder in his hand reconfigured its shape slightly into one similar to an elongated
flashlight. Once fully formed, Paul skidded to a stop and pointed the instrument at his
enemy. A continuous bolt of electricity shot from the tip and searched for the best
conductor nearby: the salty water within the soldier. Paul knew that the device, which is
often used in science classes to demonstrate electrical properties, would only stun the
man but was all that he needed to get up on him. The bolt curved and arced and forked
until it connected with the enemy. The jolt spasmed his muscles and he flew backwards
onto his back breathing in sputtering jerks.
Paul sprinted towards the recovering opponent. Just as the stunned man got to his knees,
Paul dive tackled him onto his back again. Still in a stupor, he lifted his knee and
redirected Paul’s momentum which resulted in Paul making an over-head roll. This
allowed Paul’s attacker the moment he needed to regroup enough to put up a fight. They
squared off and began circling each other- the mercenary’s chest heaving as he tried
desperately to stabilize his breathing. They both crouched arms out and hands splayed in
a pre-tackle position as each stalked the other looking for an opening. Just out of arms’
reach, they glared at each other waiting for the other to cross that line between them that
will begin the next round of combat.
Suddenly, the line was crossed and the fighter feinted low with a puff of kicked dirt to
distract from the high punch right for Paul’s face. Paul blocked and countered with a
midsection punch followed by a kick to the leg.
****
Steve, Katie and Melissa crowded each other as each tried to gain the best view of the
battle on the screen. Laurie watched from behind the crowd. She began to anticipate
outcomes. Of course she hoped that Paul would win but considered the “what ifs” if he
failed. “What happens if that guy wins and gets away?”
Immersed in the struggle on the screen, neither one of the three heard her. “Neti, what
will happen if the surviving mercenary wins and gets away?”
“Enemy will return to his native time,” the computer answered. “Upon return, he will
report all that he knows including scans of Paul collected while tracking him. They will
be able to identify and find him. There is a high probability that they will return to an
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earlier time and kill Paul shortly after he met Allie. Projected outcome: total failure of the
mission.”
Katie and Steve’s attention was suddenly ripped away from the monitor upon hearing
‘total failure’. They looked at each other, then at Laurie.
“Oh crap!” exclaimed Steve. He dropped down into his seat and swung around to his
workstation. He began working furiously.
“Steve, what are you doing?” Katie asked.
“We have to prevent him from getting back to his ship if he wins.”
“What can we do from here?”
Desperate to complete his thought, Steve worked for another moment before answering.
“Programming the MaRes in the bay to make a pair of cruise missiles to take out those
two ships.”
“How long will that take?” asked Laurie.
“A minute until launch and 90 seconds of hypersonic flight to reach the targets. The
warheads will be manufactured en route with embedded MaRes.”
The three of them turned to look at the hangar bay while Melissa’s attention remained
fixed on the fight. The computer controlled robots began 3-D printing the missiles from
head to tail. The process was hypnotic. A few moments later the bay doors opened. The
missiles blasted out of the doorway the moment they were finished. They returned their
attention to the struggle on the screen.
The bought was furious. Paul and his opponent punished each other. At times it was an
empty-handed melee. Leaves and dirt were kicked up. They traded kicks, punches and
throws constantly switching from offense to defense. Whenever they had enough room
they produced weapons. The soldier pulled gadgets from his belt, pocket or vest while
Paul continually reconfigured his MaRes. Knives, swords, guns and batons all came into
play. Paul, blocked, evaded or produced some shielding for protection while his opponent
relied mainly upon his body armor to save himself from anything that got through.
The pair was suddenly startled by the thunderous explosion of a sonic boom as the two
missiles streaked just overhead and slammed into the two future ships. The telltale flash
of light followed by a push pull told Paul that the ships were destroyed by Higgs
implosions.
Paul instantly seized the momentary distraction and lunged for his opponent. He tackled
the man and hammered his temple with MaRe-generated steel rod. Thin bones shattered
and drove into the soldier’s brain, killing him instantly. Once he was absolutely sure that
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his opponent was dead, Paul rolled off of the lifeless body and collapsed on the forest
floor spread eagle looking up.
He laid there for a couple of minutes until his heart rate and breathing deescalated to a
manageable level. Not wanting to leave any future technology that the soldier may have
on his body, Paul used MaRe generated napalm to incinerate the corpse. When the
immolation was complete he walked to the explosion sites and looked at the spherical
pits. In the distance he saw the smoldering remains of the first building of KinsiCo.
Much to his surprised relief, Paul heard the familiar sound of Storm Front approaching.
Without questioning its existence, he mounted and entered the security of his ship. He
thumped down into the seat.
“Hello?” was all he could manage to say.
“Thank God,” Said Steve through the radio. “So glad to have you back, Buddy. While
you were sitting around your campfire, I had a team of MaRe’s make a new baby for
you.”
“Aah, Steve, you’re a lifesaver,” Paul sighed. “I have a little work to finish here.”
“Go get ‘em, Paul.” He heard Melissa beaming right through the cockpit speakers.
He enjoyed the unchallenged calm for the ride back to KinsiCo until he approached
weapons range. One-by-one, the ship leisurely swiveled as it targeted and destroyed
building after building. The destruction paused for a moment. Paul looked at the last
remaining building.
“Neti, one more Higgs implosion missile please.”
Unopposed, Paul pulled the trigger and squashed the ant. The missile penetrated the
structure. A flash beamed out of windows and through cracks around doors. The walls
separated and flew outward revealing a hellish fire within. As the explosion continued,
any remaining structure was vaporized and consumed by the expanding sphere of
destruction. Reaching its limits, the Higgs Boson reaction began to grab the fire from
within and pulled it back like a miser grabbing at treasures just within reach. The ball of
energy collapsed in on itself and disappeared in the tell-tale burst of snapping lightning.
Paul rode the resulting surge and swell like a boat on a gently rolling sea. Kinsey’s
empire was a smoldering bowl.
“Good job. Come on home.”
Storm Front disappeared under her cloak and returned Paul home.
As he executed the landing maneuver of turning the ship to once again face up the launch
ramp of The Garage, Paul’s vision swept across the beaming faces of the three ladies.
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Melissa couldn’t control herself as she bounced on her feet with her hands clasped
nervously under her chin. He removed his helmet as the landing struts touched down and
compressed to support the weight of the ship. The canopy opened and he climbed down
the ladder. Melissa ran to Paul screaming “you did it!” as the other two walked quickly
up to him. She jumped on Paul with a choking bear hug.
“Never doubted it Paulie.”
“Well done, Paul.”
“Can you guys come in here?” Steve’s voice boomed loudly but softly in the hangar
through the speakers. It sounded serious, even ominous.
They all stopped in mid-celebration and headed into the control room. Paul came in first
and saw Steve sitting in his office chair looking at them all as they entered one at a time.
Once they all filed in, Steve wordlessly swiveled and pointed to a single dimmed light on
his panel.
Katie: “And?” her expression hopeful.
“It suddenly stopped just after the implosion. No change, it just stopped.”
Katie gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. Paul slumped and sat on the edge of
the nearest counter, his eyes pooling.
Confused by the sudden change in mood Melissa asked “What?” She quickly looked
back and forth between the three looking for an answer. “What’s going on? What does
that mean?”
Sadly and slowly Paul said “it means that we won.”
Allie’s beacon was dark.
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Epilogue
September 11, came around again and Katie took her usual day off to mourn the loss of
her brother. It broke Paul’s heart every time he saw the pain on her face whenever she
thought of her brother. John was never recovered. He was just an empty ghost, never to
be properly laid to rest. Paul had been toying with an idea for some time now and he
finally decided that it was time to do it. He walked through the empty tunnel towards the
hanger bay collecting his thoughts. Solitary footsteps echoed along the tiled hallway. He
took the long way and passed through the darkened control room. He reached the ship
and climbed the ladder into the cockpit.
With the canopy still up, he started the ignition sequence. In the quiet bay he was able to
hear the ship start up. The engines started at a low hum but quickly ramped up to a high
but quiet whine. The ship came alive and began to vibrate, ready to leap forward. Paul
grabbed the canopy handle to close it, paused, and gave it one final thought. He made his
decision and closed the canopy. The canopy locks banged inside the ship’s walls and the
ship pressurized with a sucking sound. The engines suddenly growled. He was off!
Streaking through the sky, Paul entered his destination information into the computer. He
activated the cloak. There was a slight diming of the lights in the cockpit and the ship
vibrations lowered slightly as power was diverted to the cloak. Almost instantly, the
generators compensated and everything reverted back to normal. Looking out through his
window, Paul confirmed that the cloak was working as his right wing faded to clear.
“All systems nominal. Course and temporal destination set,” Storm Front’s voice
announced. Green lights appeared on all displays.
“Ok. Engage the temporal jump in three, two, one!”
For a moment, it appeared to Paul that nothing happened. Same beautiful blue sky above.
Same bright sun. Once the screens finished updating their displays for the new location
and time Paul knew for sure that he was no longer back home. He was just outside of
New York City at 8:40 AM, September 11, 2001, local time. His tactical display showed
an inbound Boeing 767 at well over 400 miles per hour.
“Engage the temporal dilator the moment we hit the building. Maximum positive dilation.
Shields up.” More for himself than the ship’s computer, Paul said, “prepare for impact.”
Paul sat there for a few moments reflecting on where he was when this originally
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happened, what was about to happen and the significance of the original timeline and
what he was about to do.
“Get directly in front of that plane at a distance of 5 meters. Match course and speed.
Adjust to keep the same relative position,” Paul ordered his ship’s computer.
The North Tower of the World Trade Center rapidly grew in front of him. Although he
knew he was completely safe, Paul could not help but to be apprehensive about the
collision he is about to have. Under normal conditions the shields and cloak would be too
much of an energy demand for the ship. But Paul planned this trip. He loaded the small
cargo bay with steel ingots to supply enough matter to be converted into energy. At
exactly 8:46 in the morning Storm Front smashed through the 97th floor of 1 World
Trade Center followed by Flight 11 five meters behind him.
A ten thousandth of a second later, the Time Dilator kicked in. Everything around him
suddenly stopped almost to a standstill. People facing the window were recoiling in fear.
Others were completely unaware of what had just happened. Behind him, the front of
Flight 11 was just sticking through the wall. Broken glass and desks were suspended in
the air after being hit by the plane.
“Disengage the cloak and scan for John Ryan.”
The image on the display in front of Paul rotated and moved and each person blinked as
the computer scanned them. A moment later, the display of one person blinked and
glowed.
“John Ryan Identified” scrolled across the screen.
Paul opened the cockpit and jumped down. Once outside the ship’s temporal field, Paul’s
portable dilator kept him in the same time frame as his ship. Behind him, the plane
penetrated a little further into the building. High speed broken glass lazily drifted past
Paul reminding him that time was not stopped in the outside world. It was only severely
slowed down.
Quickly, Paul ran over to John, frozen in mid step as he was apparently darting out of the
way of the plane. His mouth opened in mid-yell. A cell phone up to his ear. Paul took a
second Temporal Dilator off of his belt. He stood very close to John so that John was just
beyond his temporal field. Carefully, Paul pushed the dilator through the field barrier
while keeping his fingers inside the field. He clipped the device on John’s belt and
activated it.
John instantly reanimated and continued his sprint for a couple of steps until he had a
chance to realize that something was different. He stopped and looked around, surveying
the scene. He was disoriented. His brain unable to translate the surreal images into
something he can grasp.
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“John.”
John startled at his name. He had not noticed Paul, who was still standing in place. Paul
started moving towards John while everyone else was frozen in place. John looked past
Paul and saw the massive nose of the jet. Paul turned and looked back. The plane was
much further into the office. Metal beams were bent inward. The desks near the windows
began to explode from the impact.
“John, we don’t have much time. That plane is crashing into us as we stand here. In a few
moments it will kill you and everyone in this office. I came to get you out of here. I’ve
been able to stop time and get to you. If you want to live, you have to come with me
now!”
John looked at the plane again, then at his coworkers. “What about them?”
“Only one. Only you.” replied Paul.
He paused for a moment, contemplating options. Then John started moving quickly
towards Paul. Paul guided him to the ship, helped him up to the back seat, and then got in
himself.
“Throw the phone out,” Paul ordered.
“But I was just talki-“
“I know. Throw it out!”
Paul closed and locked the canopy. The plane was almost touching the back of Storm
Front. Both men took in the scene. Mourning the loss of everyone that is about to die.
“Storm Front, engage the cloak, and shields to full. Prepare to disengage the temporal
field. Go to full throttle the instant you disengage from time dilation.”
A bump shifted the craft as the plane reached the back of Paul’s ship.
“Now!”
The ship lurched forward. Even with the inertial dampeners the sudden acceleration from
stopped up to five hundred miles an hour was jarring and threw the two men back into
their seats. The graphene hull had no problem breaking through the walls in front of him
and they shot through the other side of the building. Cloaked, it appeared as if the
explosion from the plane blew out the far side of the building. Once clear of the
devastation, Paul swung the ship around to survey the unfolding events.
“What just happened?”
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“Terrorists hijacked that plane full of people and flew it into the building.”
The two men watched the fireball erupt from the upper floors of the gleaming silver
building. Paul continued to explain about the historical moment that was unfolding in
front of them. And they watched.
John suddenly blurted out “you had the capability to stop this! You could have shot that
plane down. With your knowledge of this day, you could have alerted the airports that
they had a threat. You could have done something!”
“John, I am from 10 years in the future. You have to understand that I would have loved
to save every one of those people. But this event was so important for so many reasons.
The ripple effect from today would change my world in incalculable ways. If I change
today, I will change tomorrow. That might mean that events might change so that I never
get this ship and my mission is too important to alter anything from my past.”
“Didn’t you change the past by saving me?”
“No John, I didn’t. Your body was never found. Only your phone was recovered.”
The second plane hit the South Tower. In silence they watched. Tears streamed down
John’s face as he saw the first building collapse with his friends and coworkers inside.
Paul cried too. The pain of the day came back in full force as it did ten years ago. But this
time it was even a more intense pain. This time he had the capability to stop it. Shortly
after the second building fell into the cloud of the first, they went home.
Paul brought John back to the present- Paul’s present. They cruised over Paul’s world
and he explained to John some of the major historical events of the last ten years. The
wars, the presidents, the advances of technology, the changes in the climate and the
future history of Allie’s world.
Then he told him about his little sister. She was now older than he was. Out of school. An
amazing engineer, technician, inventor and his most valued partner. He didn’t show John
any pictures or any important milestone in Katie’s life. He left that for Katie to do.
“Call Katie.” Paul spoke into the air. He felt John tense up in anticipation of hearing his
sister’s voice. He was speaking with her only a little while ago just as Paul arrived, but he
missed her and wanted to see her as soon as possible. A few seconds later the call was
connected to the speaker in the main house.
“Paul, where have you been? I came in to work and you and the ship were gone from my
scopes.”
“I went out for some sight-seeing.” He knew that she knew that his missing signal could
only mean a time jump.
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“You didn’t go back buzzing around and messing things up again did you?” She was
referring to the time he jumped back in time and suggested to Muhammad Ali that he say
“Float like a butterfly. Buzz like a bee.”
“No, just sightseeing, cloaked.”
John shifted in his seat as he was finally able to hear his little sister within the grown
woman’s voice on the speakers. As he made his final approach back to base, Paul called
back to Katie. “Can you meet me in the conference room? I brought something back that
I want you to take a look at.”
“Gimme a minute I’m upstairs having lunch. I’ll be right there.”
Paul landed the ship and he escorted John into the vacant conference room. Paul
motioned to John to stay put as he continued through the far door towards the tunnel
entrance. A few moments later he heard Katie parking the Segway and then she opened
the French doors into the hallway.
Paul met her in the hallway. “I think you’ll like this.” He twisted the door handle and
held it open for her. She turned back to Paul to see if he would give her any indication
about what he wanted her to see. Paul pointed to John and began to back away. As Katie
started to turn in the direction that Paul pointed he began to close the door. Paul heard her
gasp, then she screamed and ran across the room. He closed the door to give them some
privacy.
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