Shoggoth

by Byron Craft

  She went up the front steps with her heavy load and unlocked the door. Traversing the living room in long strides, she set the laundry basket on the kitchen counter. Gwen had just returned from the base Laundromat. She never used their dryers. It cost too much. There were two clothes poles with lines strung between them in her back yard. Gwen “Save a Buck” Gilhooley, she thought, it should be part of my family crest.

  While retrieving a handful of clothes pins from a kitchen drawer her cell phone buzzed. It was a familiar buzz, an annoying buzz, that could only come from her duty station. It was a text that simply read “STAT.” When the job calls, it is one thing, but when they say, “Stat” it meant drop everything and report for duty. Gwen was madder than hell. She would have to leave her wet laundry unattended. They’ll probably get mildewed, she fretted. Then I’ll have to wash them all over again when I get back. Damn!

  ***

  Travis shifted his position on the chaise longue. The tan on his left side was deep enough. He smeared some oil on his right side with the palm of his hand. He loved laying naked out in the sun. The hair on his lean body had been shaved clean. He wanted nothing between his flesh and the sun’s rays. Beside him, in the other chaise, was Dorian. His massive muscular frame rippled in the afternoon glow. Travis kept him in steroids and human growth hormones as part of their equitable bliss.

  Travis stared at Dorian. His blond hair shined like gold. He loved their lifestyle, but it had its upkeep. It was expensive. Their high-rise condo in Las Vegas wasn’t cheap either. He and Dorian needed another job. He got up from the chaise and lit a Marlboro. Walking to the parapet wall that surrounded their balcony he looked down. They were sixty-four stories up. The bumper-to-bumper traffic moved slowly below. The cars appeared too small to be even Matchbox size when you are over 620 feet in the air, he mused.

  Their bankroll was starting to shrink, and they needed another contract. Travis had one in the works. He was waiting for the call. The ball was in the client’s court, and all he could do was wait. He tossed his lit cigarette over the wall and hoped that it would land in some bitch’s hair. If this one came through it wouldn’t be easy, but it would set him and Dorian up for quite a while. It would probably be pretty bloody so it would have to be done quickly.

  The cell phone on a tray table next to his lounge chair rang. Picking it up, he answered, “Hello.”

  “Is John there,” a voice on the other end asked.

  “No, you have the wrong number,” responded Travis.

  “I am sorry,” said the voice and terminated the call.

  “Payday,” Travis said with a smile. The name “John” was their “open sesame,” their secret code for the person to hit, it was all done, so simple and so low tech. The client, or probably one of his stooges, calls from a pay phone faking a wrong number but the right number for Travis and Dorian. Even if the NSA were eavesdropping, they would come away with squat.

  Travis walked over to the recumbent Dorian and kissed him on the forehead. “Come on darling,” he whispered. “We’ve got work to do.”

  Travis was aroused, as long as he could remember he had always wanted to kill someone in uniform. It was anarchy at its finest.

  ***

  Vice Admiral Jack Hawkins sliced a ball for the third time. He hated golf. It was a helluva way to spoil a good walk. He didn’t know why he kept at it. Well, actually he did. He was three years away from retirement and his kids, kids? Hell, adults were more like it, his son would turn forty next month, they had bought him a complete set of Big Bertha clubs, and they weren’t cheap. They thought that the Callaway classic golf clubs would be a good pastime. Hawkins didn’t want to disappoint them although he’d rather be skeet shooting.

  They were on the sixth hole, which was a par five and Doc Farmington was down in four. Hawkins wanted to wipe the smug look off of the Doctor’s face. The course at the NWC was bare bones. The tee boxes and the greens were a luscious shade of emerald. Water is a precious commodity in the desert, and consequently, they were the only areas that were irrigated. The fairways and the roughs that surrounded them were brown with dead vegetation.

  If I can get a hundred yards on this next shot I can make it on the green with a respectable Bogey, the Admiral wished. He was on the edge of the rough with a straight shot over a bunker in line with the green. He gathered together every muscle within his large frame and swung a nine iron with major league force. He topped the ball and watched it bounce for fifty feet along the fairway, with aggravation mounting, he walked up to where it rested and swung at the ball with frustrated abandonment. This time the golf ball traveled with a modest arc towards the green but fell short and landed in the sand trap.

  Doc Farmington had parked their golf cart on the other side of the sand bunker. As Admiral Hawkins walked up, he heard his cell phone chirp. It was clipped to his golf bag in the back of the cart. Overjoyed with the interruption, he snatched it up. “Hawkins,” he announced into the mouthpiece.

  “Admiral,” replied the voice on the other end. “It’s Ironwood. I got your voice mail message.”

  “Yes, Professor. We need to talk. See me in my office at 2 p.m. and bring your colleague.

  “You mean Ward?”

  “That’s the one. Don’t take your back way. Use the front gate. I’ll have clearance there for the both of you. Don’t breathe a word about this to anyone.” Hawkins closed the clamshell on his flip phone without waiting for a reply. Ironwood was a civilian, and by all rights, he couldn’t issue him orders, but he knew that when he “asked” the old Prof would come. With a grin on his face, he shouted, “I guess this has now become a six-hole golf course. . . Duty calls!”

  Before the good Doctor could reply, his cell phone made the sound of bells chiming. Looking at the phones read out, he glared back at the Admiral. “You’re not setting me up are you?” he challenged.

  “What do you mean Doc?”

  “I just got a priority text from sick bay. It says ‘Medical Emergency.’”

  Vice Admiral Jack Hawkins just smiled and shrugged.

  ***

  Cac was his cyber name. It was an acronym for Charles Augustus Chase. He believed that, when pronounced, it sounded like a feline gagging on a hairball. He thought that the articulated nickname was funny. He insisted that everyone call him Cac. The acronym for a choking cat should also have been a metaphor for his lack of personal hygiene as well as his lack of personal appearance.

  Cac was overweight bordering on critically obese. His five-foot six-inch frame was over two-hundred-fifty pounds. His usual attire was flip-flops dangling from dirty feet, well-worn Levis and a tee shirt, as a rule, soiled, which normally sported an assortment of contradictory sayings. On a Monday, for example, his shirt may read, “NOBAMA 2012,” while the following Monday, because he usually got a good week’s wear for each shirt before laundering, it might read, “I’M A DEMOCRAT . . . SHOVE IT” or “MR. POLITICIAN LEAVE MY SOCIAL SECURITY ALONE!” Cac’s political affiliations, at first glance, could have been difficult to ascertain until it was learned that he purchased most of his wardrobe at Ridgecrest’s Goodwill Store. Cac loved the ease and carefree attire associated with tee shirts providing that they were in his size, XXXL, and no more than twenty-five cents each.

  ***

  On the morning that Professor Ironwood walked into the lab, he was fuming. He had brought Alan Ward with him, and it irritated Ironwood that they had to take the long way around to get their gate passes. The main gate of the installation was located at the intersection of Inyokern Road and China Lake Boulevard in the city of Ridgecrest, a helluva distance to drive compared to his back door route. The underlying cause of his aggravation ran deeper, he was sick and tired of the interference from Captain Eastwater, infuriated that his life’s work was being co-opted by Neville Stream and now he has been told to report to the Admiral like a kid being sent to the principal’s office.

  Ironwood didn’t know what Congressman Stream had up his sleeve, but he did kno
w that he didn’t trust him. How can a pompous ass like him get re-elected term after term was truly amazing? The country, he raged within himself, was fraught with central political control, not the rule of the “elected” and followed by a media numbed citizenry with almost zero attention span and less memory. If all the energy that is put into garnishing votes could be turned into useful work, we could be a great nation again. He believed that he was condemned to live in a democracy where every fool’s vote is equal to a sensible man’s.

  When Ironwood entered the lab, he couldn’t help noticing that the shirt that Cac was wearing had a drawing of a lamb on it standing on its hind legs, holding a machine gun and smoking a cigar. The caption below read, "TO HELL WITH DEMOCRACY." The Professor smiled and then burst out laughing. The heat of his anger quickly fizzled, extinguished by the humorous irony. He recalled the famous saying of Benjamin Franklin, “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote,” “Morning Cac,” he said with a chuckle.

  Cac squeaked out a reply. Cac was twenty-seven, considered by some to be a computer genius, but sounded like a twelve-year-old when he spoke. Ironwood also knew that he was more than a genius when it came to solar-pumped lasers. He was a leader in the field, and that’s why Ironwood had made him the team leader on his project.

  ***

  Alan Ward was surprised and a bit nervous. Ironwood had been firm bordering on rude when it came to revealing anything about his work. All his colleague would say was that the project was “top secret” and now he was standing in the middle of it. He could not comprehend why he had become so privileged. Alan looked around the laboratory. He was amazed at the age and condition of that portion of the Michelson Lab. Ironwood and his group had been tucked away in an older section of the building. Mid-century modern didn’t quite describe its appearance. Although it was probably built during that time frame it was far from charming; it was strictly utilitarian. Cinder block walls painted a high gloss gray and well-worn steel desks and lab tables. One bore the remains of acid burns made long ago on its black linoleum surface.

  There was a large picture window at the far end of the room comprised of layers of heavy plate glass with wire netting sandwiched in between. An early version of shatterproof glass, Alan surmised. In a corner, off to the left of the big window, was a control panel made out of a four-foot by an eight-foot piece of plywood. The plywood was painted the same gray as the walls. It too had the look of something that was once serviceable many decades ago. There were a number of small slots and screw holes in it that probably held an assortment of toggle switches and gauges once upon a time. The strangest thing about the control panel from a 1950’s sci-fi movie was the automobile shift lever smack dab in the middle of the plywood. Alan gawked at the steampunk contrivance.

  Charles Augustus Chase snickered, “That’s an automatic transmission shift lever to a 1965 Mustang.”

  Alan turned with an incredulous look to Ironwood. Smiling the Professor said, “I am sorry Alan. Cac this is Alan Ward; Alan this is Cac.” They shook hands. Cac’s hand was clammy.

  “I don’t understand,” replied Alan.

  “We are developing satellite based solar-pumped lasers,” announced the Professor. “This laboratory was established to create a system that would allow us to transmit energy from outer space. Cac and our crew have greatly enhanced both the collection efficiency and beam quality of present-day solar lasers.”

  On the other side of the room were more desks and work tables. There were several PC’s and laptops, probably networked together, Alan thought and scores of electrical components all foreign to him. The old-fashioned control panel opposite was anachronistic compared to the high tech equipment. It was out of place, like a clunky black rotary-dial telephone sitting on a desk beside a sleek new smart phone.

  “This was originally used as a testing lab for Nike missiles,” added Cac getting excited and animated. “It was a vacuum tube technology back then thus the old control panel. Outside the window there,” he pointed with a shaky hand. There is a giant pair of steel doors in the pavement with an elevator below. That’s where they would keep one of their anti-aircraft missiles, a Nike. And that is where we keep our Space Guard Transmitter, we call it the SGT,” he added beaming with pride.

  “In the past,” said Ironwood jumping in, “trying to get a power plant to the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere seemed deeply unlikely but our group has been working on a project that we believe will make such an audacious idea simple. The basic concept of the Space Guard Program is to deploy a large platform in space near Earth, typically in a high orbit where the sun shines almost constantly, where it would harvest sunlight, convert it into electricity and then transmit it to receivers on Earth for use.”

  “It could be potentially dangerous as well, our own Death Star,” Cac supplied with a horse laugh.

  “It has a strong defense potential as well,” Ironwood continued in a slow and deliberately lowered voice. “In today’s world, and in the right hands, it could save a lot of lives.”

  “Yeah, just think about the potential,” shouted Cac. “In the eighties and the nineties, our satellites could read a license plate from a car parked in front of the Kremlin. Today we can tell you the bra size of the driver. The targeting would be a piece of cake. Imagine the next time some terrorists attempt to decapitate school children on live TV. We would be able to pick all them off like a world class sniper from deep space.” Cac looked from Ironwood to Alan Ward. Neither appeared to appreciate the analogy.

  “You have such a space platform in orbit now?” Alan asked.

  “No Alan,” said Ironwood. “Right now we have three small satellites in low orbit for experimental purposes only. Cac likes to call them the Lithium System.”

  “Lithium is the element that is atomic number three on the periodic table,” barked Cac from across the room, interrupting again.

  Ignoring Cac, Professor Ironwood continued, “These satellites are incapable of carrying the necessary equipment to generate the power. Right now we employ the SGT that Cac mentioned. Its solar collector beams the energy to one of the satellites whenever one is within our hemisphere, and if we have done our work correctly, the satellite will redirect that beam to a spot on earth we have chosen. Currently, this round-about way we will be using can only transmit a third of the energy that a space platform would be capable of projecting someday.”

  “Two Fresnel lenses focus sunlight on a parabolic mirror with an ingester that is juiced up by some quantum processors I developed. The term ‘speed of light engagement’ never sounded so sweet,” Cac joined in with an almost epileptic frenzy.

  “And that’s the reason you chose to set this up in the desert,” Alan remarked.

  “One of many reasons, Alan,” answered Ironwood with a smile. “Of course, there is plenty more sunshine here than on the eastern seaboard.”

  “Ok, but what’s the Mustang shifter for?”

  Cac let out another horse laugh. “It’s so we can suck up to Admiral Hawkins. He’s a classic car freak and a nut about old Mustangs. We will be ready for our first demo in two weeks. I could set it up, so all anyone had to do was to press the ‘Enter’ key on my laptop, hell I could rig it to be triggered by my iPhone. After that, we would witness the elevator doors outside open and the SGT rise up to do its business and take out a target at a predetermined location. But I decided not to do that.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I set the trigger mechanism to the ‘D’ for drive position on the shifter, and we will be giving the honors to the Admiral.”

  ***

  Jonathan Dexter sat up in bed screaming. Intravenous blood and saline drip line tubes hung from his left arm. A nurse and an orderly fought to hold him in place. Doctor Julius Farmington reviewed his chart on a tablet computer. His red blood cell count was dangerously low, and his blood pressure was through the roof. After ascertaining the seaman’s blood type, they
administered the transfusion and beta blockers to manage the cardiac arrhythmia. So far, deliberated the doctor, neither was having much effect. The induction of a sedative, many times, can improve the condition of an acutely unstable patient, he observed. Doctor Farmington nodded to the attending nurse.

  Still managing to control her patient, with the aid of the orderly, the nurse applied a syringe to the intravenous drip line.

  Jonathan Dexter slowly relaxed and fell back against his pillow. “It’s growing Chief,” burbled from his distorted mouth, “Jesus, your arm!”

  ***

  Thomas Ironwood and Alan Ward sat on the opposite side of Vice Admiral Jack Hawkins’ desk. It was proportionate in size to the Admiral, a large antique monstrosity constructed of mahogany. Between Hawkins and the summoned two, along the edge of the desktop, was a row of flags about six inches in height on individual tiny wood bases. Each was a flag from a different country. Hawkins had told them that every flag represented a country that he had either visited or where he had once been stationed. Ironwood counted forty-five. He also thought the flags and the huge desk presented a psychological defensive barrier between the Admiral and any visitors seated opposite.

  Ironwood didn’t say a word. When Alan started to speak, he covertly kicked him in the shins. The Professor hoped that his “first one that talks loses” strategy would be beneficial here as well.

  “I am glad you could make it,” said the Admiral. He pushed a button on the desktop, and the door to his office closed automatically. Ironwood heard a metallic “click” as a locking mechanism was drawn into place. An electronic humming noise followed immediately after that. At first, Ironwood thought it might be the air conditioner kicking in, but then he realized that what he was hearing was a counter-surveillance tool used to disrupt and distort any possible listening devices.