Asteroid Discovery

by Bobby Akart

  Except for the occasional local vehicle passing by, he didn’t encounter any of his pursuers. Sparky glanced at his watch. He studied the parking lot of the Mary Willis Library, the oldest free library in the State of Georgia. It was nearing five o’clock and they would be closing soon.

  Sparky knew the layout of the building well. Founded in 1888, the library originally encompassed twenty-six hundred square feet, but then subsequent annexes had added an additional ten thousand square feet in 1977 and 1991.

  There were plenty of places for Sparky to hide. He looked up and down Jefferson and he dashed across the front lawn of the home at the back of the library. Sparky wasn’t an athlete and he hardly considered himself to be fleet afoot, but somehow, adrenaline turned his aging body into a bona fide sprinter.

  He ran up the steps to the rear entrance and immediately turned right toward the small meeting room that was used for monthly presentations and special events. He hadn’t been noticed and began to feel comfortable as he crawled behind a stack of folding tables in the corner of the room. Sparky pulled his knees close to his chest, wrapped his arms around them to emulate a cannonball, and waited, trying to control his breathing in order to avoid discovery.

  He continuously tapped the Mickey Mouse display on his Apple watch, urging Mickey’s arm to move farther around the dial. Why haven’t they left already? Of all days to work late!

  Sparky closed his eyes and tried to calm his nerves. He focused his senses on the sounds emanating from the main library.

  Then he heard them—muffled voices and the customary goodbyes as the last two remaining members of the library staff approached the rear exit to the building. They paused to enter the code into the keypad of the library’s alarm system.

  The push bar on the exit door made a loud clank, and as the door opened, light from the setting sun reflected off plate glass and shiny appointments on the library’s wall, causing odd flashes of sparkle to appear above his head. But when the door slammed shut and Sparky was enveloped in silence, he knew he was safe, for now.

  A sense of relief washed over his body. The Mary Willis Library had had a state-of-the-art security system installed ten years ago, but the one thing they couldn’t afford to do on their limited budget was install interior cameras.

  Sparky, as the town’s newspaper publisher and sole reporter, knew the system well, as it had been a newsworthy item when it was installed. He’d discussed the lack of interior security measures with the librarian, who responded jokingly that the only way for someone to get in was using some kind of Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible, fall from the ceiling like a spider stunt. Frankly, she’d said, there wasn’t anything worth stealing in the library that would warrant that maneuver.

  He waited a few minutes and then he slid on his butt until he could extricate himself from his hidey-hole. Sparky exhaled, adjusted his shorts and shirt to look more presentable, and made a beeline for the men’s room. Throughout the entire ordeal, he’d realized how badly he needed to pee.

  After he relieved himself and washed his hands, Sparky looked in the mirror. “What have you gotten yourself into, pal? You’re seriously too old for this.”

  Sparky used a wet paper towel to wipe the salty sweat off his face and then made his way to the librarians’ desk and their offices behind it. There were numerous telephones at his disposal as well as computers. He assumed the bank of computers in the offices were password protected. The computers in the library accessible to the public were as well, unless you were part of the Friends of Mary Willis Library, a nonprofit organization that raised money to promote reading in the community, among other things. Sparky and his wife were part of the Friends, and therefore he had a log-in to use the public computers at any time.

  Before he did, he walked around the library, careful to steer clear of the doors to avoid triggering any alarms. He wanted to give the streets a final look to check the level of activity. The original structure featured stained glass, making it difficult to see outside, but there were other windows installed that allowed clear views onto Liberty and Jefferson Streets.

  Sparky rolled his eyes and sighed when he saw that the Georgia State Patrol had joined the hunt. In the five minutes that he viewed the library’s surroundings, he counted five different law enforcement vehicles. What did the feds tell them? That I’m a fugitive? A murderer? Seriously?

  He was afraid to use the telephone system for fear that all of the calls in and out of Washington were being monitored by some spy agency or something. Sometimes, paranoia causes one’s mind to race to the absurd, but he just didn’t know for sure.

  He considered using his email, but immediately assumed that someone was watching his activity there as well. Then he remembered the email account he and his wife used for online purchases. They’d become increasingly annoyed with the amount of spam email they’d receive after making an online purchase, so they established one account to handle all of that.

  Sparky settled in behind one of the public computers and powered it on. Seconds later, he’d logged in and was navigating his way to the Hotmail account. He rubbed his fingers against the palms of his hands and flexed them as if he were about to perform a piano concerto.

  Then it dawned on him. He was all dressed up with no place to go, as they say. Who, exactly, can I trust?

  He decided to reach out to Jack Young at CNN again. He calmed his nerves as he racked his brain to remember Young’s email address. He closed his eyes and tried to remember the last time they’d corresponded with one another. He tried to visualize typing the keystrokes, and then he remembered.

  He began the email with a plea.

  Jack, I desperately need your help. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it is a matter of life or death not only for me, but for all of us as well. Please email me back as soon as you see this.

  Thanks, Sparky Newsome.

  Now, he waited. He suddenly found himself parched, so he worked his way through the darkened library illuminated only by the setting sun through the incredible stained-glass windows on the west side of the building. The light cast a series of colorful hues across the interior of the building, periodically capturing the makeshift planets that hung from the ceiling in the children’s reading room. Ironically, that summer’s theme was titled Universe of Stories.

  A small refrigerator in the librarians’ offices yielded some bottled water, a few brownies left over from their recent bake sale, and a Yoplait yogurt. The odd combination of yogurt and brownies didn’t deter Sparky from mixing the two together to provide him some carb-fueled energy.

  After downing a bottle of water and procuring another from the fridge, he went back to the computer terminal to check his emails.

  Nothing except a spam email from Walmart.

  He shrugged it off and decided to check the major news websites to see if there had been any reporting on the asteroid. He logged into his Associated Press portal and scanned through the real-time news feeds that he relied upon often.

  The world had no idea what was headed toward it. Sparky began to wonder if Jackie was correct in her calculations. He started to have his doubts. And then the shrill high-pitched sounds of sirens racing by the library silenced those thoughts and scared Sparky out of his chair, and sent him scrambling under the table.

  After the sirens passed, and the sounds of a SWAT team breaking through the doors didn’t occur, Sparky took up his place behind the monitors again.

  He navigated the cursor to the refresh button on the email program. He pressed it and waited.

  One new message.

  It was from Jack Young.

  Chapter 24

  Friday, April 6

  Washington, Georgia

  Sparky pounded away at the keyboard, not bothering to spellcheck as he typed. His mind was racing faster than his fingers could work, furiously pounding away until he’d told Young just enough to ensure that he’d help get Sparky out of this predicament. Sparky was just about to hit send when his eyes quickly glanced
over the body of the email.

  His sentences were disjointed, full of misspellings and grammatical errors. Not his best work and certainly not representative of a newspaper editor. Plus, Young might think that Sparky was drunk or something, and disregard the urgency of his request.

  Sparky took a deep breath and steadied his nerves. He took another moment to polish the email and then sent it. This time, rather than wander away from the computer terminal, he sat there, repeatedly hitting refresh in the email program every minute or so, awaiting a response.

  Fifteen minutes had passed and Young hadn’t responded. Sparky grew nervous, the paranoia setting in once again. He’d purposefully withheld the meat of the story from Young in order to maintain some semblance of control over its dissemination and to get credit for breaking it.

  Should I have told him more? Jack knows I’m withholding the details. Will he insist upon more information before he drives all the way to Washington? Is he calling the feds?

  Sweat broke out across Sparky’s brow as he stared at the monitor, hopeful that Young hadn’t double-crossed him.

  One new message.

  The words on the screen sent a jolt of excitement through his body.

  Sparky hurriedly attempted to open the email message, almost deleting it by mistake in the process. He pulled his hand away from the mouse, shaking it violently as if he were scolding it for bad behavior.

  He opened Young’s email.

  Sparky, sorry for the delay.

  I had to get approval from my boss. I hope that was okay. Anyway, I’ll be on my way shortly with one of the CNN producers. My boss insisted.

  Jack.

  “Hallelujah!” Sparky spontaneously shouted to the ghosts of the Mary Willis Library. Fortunately for him on that night, they didn’t respond. His nervous system couldn’t have handled it.

  He left his post at the computer in search of another bottle of water and a bathroom break. On the way, he raided a jar of change donated to the library for a fund-raiser, vowing to pay it back when this ordeal was over. He had a sudden hankering for a Hershey’s bar, which he purchased with the borrowed money on the way back from another trip to the restroom.

  Sparky plopped in front of the monitor again and checked his emails in case Young wanted to communicate further. There was nothing, so Sparky navigated to Google Maps, where he calculated the distance and route Young would take from CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta. It was just over a hundred miles.

  “One hour and fifty-one minutes,” Sparky muttered.

  He tapped on Mickey Mouse to hear the time. The squeaky voice of Disney’s greatest character quickly responded in a high-pitched mouselike voice. “It’s 9:57. Good evening!”

  Sparky did the math and determined that he’d be on his way out of Washington by midnight. He thought about what lay ahead for him. Conversations with CNN’s muckety-mucks. There would be possible nondisclosure agreements and, hopefully, a payment arrangement for bringing them the story of the millennium.

  He was sure an on-air interview would be in the cards, a thought that sent him scampering back to the restroom to fix his disheveled hair. Then he had a thought. He hesitated and then entered the women’s restroom. He was sure he was breaking all kinds of laws by doing so, but then again, he was also breaking the stowaway-in-the-library law that was surely on the books as well. He rummaged through the vanity and found what he was looking for.

  Sparky adjusted his hair and then gave it a generous dousing of hair spray to keep it all in place. He rinsed his face with water again to freshen up. He didn’t want to look like he’d been sleeping in a gutter during his interview, which would be viewed by millions, if not more.

  He wandered the library, constantly checking the windows and his email account. He thought about his wife, whom he felt certain was okay. She had to be. The information he possessed, and that Jackie had been abducted over, had to be revealed to someone. He knew Mary would understand.

  Minutes turned to hours and Sparky was beginning to break out into a nervous sweat. On three different occasions as Thursday night rolled into Friday morning, Sparky returned to the computer to reconfirm the distance from CNN studios to the library. The result of his search was the same every time.

  Panicked, he double-checked the last email communication from Young, thinking he’d gotten the time wrong. Nope, that wasn’t it. The fact of the matter was that Young was almost an hour past Sparky’s estimated, albeit best-case scenario, arrival time.

  It had been three agonizing hours. He paced the stacks in the library, running his fingers along the spines of the titles offered to readers. He couldn’t keep up with how many times he’d calculated the distance, plugged in a variety of average speeds, and then stared down at his watch, wondering why Jack Young wasn’t there yet.

  Did he change his mind? Was he unexpectedly detained? Or worse, had he turned on Sparky and snitched him out to the feds?

  All of this ran through his mind as he made a constant vigil from window to window, scanning the library’s surroundings for activity.

  It was nearly two in the morning when he heard the sound of car doors slamming. “Jack!” he exclaimed as he ran past the audiobooks section of the library and made his way to the double glass doors separating the rear exit from the rest of the building. What he saw froze him in his tracks.

  Two men were approaching the rear exits, and both were dressed in dark suits. Sparky squinted his eyes, trying his best in the low light to determine if one of the men was Young. Would he be dressed in a dark suit this late at night? And what about his producer? Usually field producers wore jeans and a polo shirt because sometimes they had to tote a heavy camera on their shoulders.

  Sparky’s eyes grew wide and he slumped behind the doorjamb when he saw one of the men reach for his coat lapel and speak into it. He couldn’t discern what was being said, but he knew one thing—Jack Young didn’t speak into coat lapels unless he was on camera.

  His heart sank at the thought of being discovered, either by his use of the computer or as a result of Young contacting his pursuers. Either way, he now hoped that his only salvation, the CNN newsman, was running behind so these two guys didn’t intercept them.

  The two men walked away from the door, and Sparky took a chance and attempted to follow where they went. One by one, he quickly moved from one window overlooking the library’s grounds to another, following the progress of the two men as they circled the property. He scurried about, tripping over the corners of the bookcases from time to time. His head was covered in sweat once again, a combination of stress and adrenaline ruining the look he’d tried to achieve in the women’s restroom.

  He lost sight of them for a moment and scampered back to the rear exit to catch a glimpse of their car. Sparky breathed for the first time when he saw them get into the black sedan and pull out of the parking lot. He leaned against the wall and allowed his head to fall backwards, hitting the one-hundred-thirty-year-old plaster with a thud. He closed his eyes for a moment, allowing his mind to wander as he considered whether it was safe to continue waiting in the library.

  That was when he heard it. The gentle rapping at the rear exit. The sound of a single knuckle tapping away. It wasn’t the pounding of law enforcement—the unmistakable thump-thump-thump-open-up-or-we’ll-bust-it-down sound. No, this was more polite. Almost stealth-like. It had to be …

  “Sparky? Are you in there?” Jack Young’s Midwestern American perfect announcer’s voice was familiar to Sparky.

  Sparky rushed toward the double glass doors and greeted Young with tears in his eyes. He spoke to his rescuers through the glass. “Jack! Thank you so much. I was getting worried. Um, listen. Stay right here.”

  Sparky turned and ran back into the library. He shut down the computer and double-checked that he hadn’t left a trace that he’d been there. Then he did something he wasn’t proud of, but felt it was necessary to cover what happened next.

  He approached the vending machine in the back hall
way, stood back, and raised his leg to kick the glass. After three attempts, he was successful in breaking into the machine. He frantically began to throw crackers, cookies, and candies all over the floor, except for a couple more Hershey chocolate bars. You know, just to make it look like a break-in. Then he turned his attention to an astonished Jack Young.

  He addressed his rescuer through the glass door. “Jack, get the car ready. When I come through this door, all kinds of alarms are going to sound within half a minute. Okay?”

  “Okay, Sparky,” replied Young, who led his producer back to the unmarked white panel van with a small antenna mounted on the roof.

  The engine started and Sparky made his move. He burst through the door, hitting the panic bar with far more force than necessary, and ran down the stairs, stumbling on the last step until he landed chest first on the concrete sidewalk. He skinned both knees and hands as he attempted to break his fall.

  So much for looking spiffy for my big interview, he thought to himself as he scrambled to the awaiting van.

  Chapter 25

  Friday, April 6

  The Situation Room

  Ground Floor, The West Wing

  The White House

  Washington, DC

  A steady rain added to the dour mood that had overcome Director Hapwell as she was escorted onto the grounds of the White House. What should have been a momentous occasion for her, meeting the President of the United States and leading a briefing before his most important advisors, was dwarfed by the overwhelming feeling of dread due to the discovery of 2029 IM86.

  Ordinarily, newly discovered space objects were provided a temporary designation until they were studied and then given a more formal name, typically associated with the individual or astronomy facility that made the discovery.