by B. C. CHASE
“Owe!” she pressed her head where it had hit the overhead compartment on her way down.
“Sorry,” he said.
When she had oriented herself, they stepped out of the broken craft. They were in a forest, flames from debris burning all over the place, blustering in the wind. When he surveyed the damage, he was amazed that they had survived. His only guess was that the trees had cushioned their fall, though that seemed dubious at best.
Stacy said, “It's a miracle we're alive.”
He was silent.
“Tom's prayer?” she suggested hesitantly.
Gary looked at her, a warning glance.
“What caused the crash?” Stacy asked.
“I have no idea. I was sleeping one moment and the next we were falling from the sky.”
“Let’s go,” Gary suggested, climbing up the ceiling toward the opening.
Just as they emerged onto solid ground from the half of the jet, there was a flash of lightning with the immediate crack of thunder outside. A flaming treetop came crashing toward them. They jumped out of the way just as it landed, sending sparks everywhere. The wind was picking up strength.
The sound of more splintering trees resonated from some distance in the forest, accompanied by a roaring sound almost like a freight train. Gary turned toward the sound and wiped his eyes of the rainwater that was now stinging as it struck his face.
A fierce blaze was burning, billowing out of control in the wind. Then, before his eyes, the flames seemed to organize themselves into a sideways pattern forming a towering column of circling fire. But the fire gave way to a dark cloud of debris as it gobbled up the inferno and moved swiftly toward them, snapping the trees cleanly off their bases.
“Run!” Gary shouted, disbelieving his eyes.
They catapulted down the slope, crushing ferns underfoot and tripping over the occasional branch. The whirlwind fast approached, clearing the trees and handily lifting the plane wreckage into its roiling mass.
They burst into a swampy rice field. From there, they were able to see their expansive surroundings. A billowing inferno was sweeping the foothills of a mountain range. The smoke rose up to the most intense lightning storm Gary had ever seen. Trailing high up into the atmosphere was a gigantic streak of cloud, like a plane trail only huge. Even to Gary’s untrained eye, it looked like the atmospheric trail of a giant meteor.
Opposite the mountains and across the clearing, the edge of the forest marked the beginning of some small hills that obscured the view to anything else. There were no lights, no humans in sight. Only the rumbling of the huge storm, the crackling of fire, and the screaming freight train that was the windstorm.
As they splashed across the field, the sound of helicopter blades made them glance up into the sky above. From beyond the clearing, the black form of a chopper quickly approached. As it neared them, it slowed and began to land.
As it lowered Gary saw forms of soldiers with machine guns standing at the openings on the sides.
“Hurry!” he shouted. The rain poured heavily as a violent gust swept from behind them. Churning clouds above were almost black.
"Ouch!" Stacy shouted.
"What?"
"Hail!"
Gary felt the slap of ice on his hands and face. The tall leaves of the rice were being flattened in the sudden onslaught. Gary turned back to see the chopper coming to rest on the ground and the soldiers leaping out. Something about their movement was strange; they were very mechanical, very tall and all looked identical. Covered in skin-tight, thick plates - some sort of armor - their bodies, even their faces, changed color to camouflage with the terrain as they landed on the ground.
“Gary!” Stacy cried, struggling to keep up. He paused, took his wife's hand, and ran with all his might. He heard a whizzing sound near his head. Then a piff, piff in the water near his feet. He glanced behind to see five soldiers sprinting mechanically out of the woods, pausing at evenly spaced intervals to kneel and fire. Stacy had seen them too; she screamed. The pair ducked as they ran, bullets spraying all around them.
He squinted at the line of forest about a hundred yards ahead.
They wouldn’t make it.
He took a backward glance at the soldiers, advancing as if they were tanks plowing through a mere drizzle. Yet, to him and Stacy, the hail was brutal. Two other funnels had descended in the distance, these ones also picking up the flames from the inferno.
Stacy tripped and fell. With their momentum, Gary couldn’t keep her from hitting the swamp face-first. He helped her struggle to her feet, mud clinging to her form and face. The trees behind them just edging the field were waving violently as the whirlwind approached from behind. The hail, the size of ping-pong balls, was floating on the rice water as it landed, making running impossible.
The pock of a bullet through the material of his shirtsleeve reminded Gary of the soldiers, and he pulled Stacy on. A sudden updraft lifted Gary and Stacy into the air and flung them on their backs. He stood and tried to pull Stacy up, but the hail was hitting her so brutally rising was difficult. The funnel was now entering the field like a mighty lion shadowing a grassland of quarry. To his relief, the soldiers were flailing in the wind, disoriented; even the copter was shuddering where it sat.
With Stacy back on her feet, they desperately fought the onslaught toward the line of trees.
Hopeless.
The chopper was being pulled up into the air followed by the soldiers one by one, their bodies jerking reflexively as they rose into the sky.
The trees wouldn’t offer any protection from the vortex, which now had streaks of white as it sucked up the swamp water. On the field they were sitting ducks.
Gary stopped and turned to face the whirlwind. “We can’t get away!” he shouted, his voice lost to furious shriek from the storm. Its mass was thicker with every roiling revolution. The water was flowing backwards toward it, creating a river under their feet.
He lowered himself and cradled Stacy in his arms. “Lay on your back!” he commanded into her ear.
She looked at him questioningly.
“NOW!” he yelled.
She complied.
Looking up one last time at the raging storm, he stretched himself out over her body, his arms extended to clutch the sheathes of rice, and hoped against hope they would survive.
Shanghai
The news anchor on the TV screen in the hotel reported, “The sonic booms from the meteors has caused the glass in buildings from Shanghai to Taiwan to shatter. Immense firestorms have been ignited in several areas, spawning tornadoes. The damage in Shanghai is confirmed to be only from shattered glass, but other areas have been harder hit, with bus-sized meteors failing to fully break apart before they struck the ground. The Hsin-Chu province of Taiwan has…”
“I’ve seen enough,” Henry said to Aubrey, Maggie, and Jinkins, who was holding a fresh napkin over his head injury. The bleeding had stopped. “Let’s get out of here.”
Outside, under the shattered portico, Henry led them into an autopilot taxi.
The ride through the glass-covered streets was surreal. People were standing around in a daze looking up at the white smoke trails in the sky.
Their plane was at a small airport outside the city. The thickness of the jet’s windows had prevented them from shattering, so they were able to board and take off without much obstacle.
Paradeisia
Lady Shrewsbury greeted them in the lobby of the StarLine Paradeisia hotel attired in her usual state of grandness, “I'm glad to see you've all made it back in one piece. Must have been quite the escapade.”
Henry immediately inserted, “Not compared to the escapade that's about to happen.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Has Mr. Jinkins told you about his secret?”
“No, he has not.”
“Shall I tell her or would you like the chance to make an impossible defense, Jinkins?”
Jinkins addressed Lady Shrewsbury, “I�
��“
She raised a hand, “Not another word, Ignatius. I already know everything.”
Henry was immediately irritated, sensing his quarry slipping from his grasp.
“I know that Paradeisia will be opening in four days.”
“How do you know that?”
“I am not a fool. When I saw how fully staffed and operational the place is, I made inquiries,” Lady Shrewsbury said. Then she turned to Jinkins, “But I would say this, Ignatius. You should have discussed this with me first.”
“Certainly,” Jinkins chirped happily. A little squeak then distracted him and he turned to welcome his kinkajou, reveling as it lapped kisses all over his face.
Lady Shrewsbury turned to leave, but Henry was closely in tow. He said, “You should have discussed this first? Is that all you're going to tell him? I'm really beginning to believe you want Paradeisia to fail!”
She stopped and faced him, “If you think I have simply been idling away here on a golden holiday, you quite mistake the matter. I’ve been exploring every facet of this operation, and from all that I have learned, Paradeisia is ready to open. It has been ready now for some time, Ignatius was simply lacking the confidence to do it. But did you know he’s had cruises landing here for a while now, although nobody was allowed down the portal—and some of the hotels have been full with conferences? In fact, several cruises were already scheduled to be docked on opening night. When he heard I had hired you and was on the way, well this was key he needed to unlock the gates.”
Henry said, “I will be making my own assessment, and if I disagree with your decision, this will be it for me. I cannot be expected to save the place when you consistently override my authority. If things don't improve, I will go home to New York.”
“Will you indeed?” she scoffed. “And when you see us open the doors to ruinous failure because we needed you here to see it through, what will you do then? Ring us up to gloat?” She rolled her eyes in vexation, “Saying ‘I told you so’ is such an amiable thing to do when everybody already knew so in the first place.”
“Now you’re trying to patronize me.”
“No, I would like to see you prove that you can do what we heard you can do.”
“And what is that?”
She stopped and looked him in the eye with a hint of a gleam in hers, “Only the impossible, Henry.” Resuming her gate, she said, “I have endured quarter after quarter of losses, and in my humble estimation the day we open the doors to at least a trickle of income cannot arrive soon enough.”
“A trickle of income is worthless if there is a tsunami of lawsuits on the way.”
“A tsunami of lawsuits, Henry? If all else fails, resort to the dramatic.”
“I simply don't have the stomach for presiding over catastrophes like you do. I cannot have my authority challenged at every turn.”
“Well I am in control or I am not in control.”
“Who can lead where even the lemmings will not follow? If you see what I have seen and insist on keeping the gates closed, I will not challenge your authority, Henry: I will challenge your sanity. Do I make myself clear?”
Henry replied brashly, “Do you make yourself clear? You’re not my mother, you know.”
She snapped, “I am fully aware of that, Henry Frederick Potter!” Suddenly distraught, she said, “Excuse me,” and spun around to stamp away.
Henry was standing at the operations center with Scott Nimitz. The center was a tall glass-enclosed wing of the FlyRail Hub with gigantic screens suspended from the ceiling. These angled down toward a row of chairs at a long table with keyboards and over a dozen smaller screens. Outside the glass walls was a spectacular view of the island down toward the Rome, Greece and Atlantis areas. Towering up from behind a forested ridge was also the StarLine Paradeisia Hotel.
“Anthony Bridges, Operations Director,” said a short, muscular bald man with piercing brown eyes and perfect teeth that he exhibited in a practiced smile. Although he was smiling, his eyes were dead serious. This man meant business; that was very clear.
Henry shook hands, impressed by the firm grip on the other end. “It's good to meet you. Why don't you tell me a little about how this place operates, if you have a moment.”
“Absolutely. We are responsible for forecasting and planning, real-time adherence, and some security monitoring and contingency planning. Of course there is a Paradeisia Security force and they operate more or less as a police unit independently of us. At operations, we monitor all the video feeds and provide them with information ad hoc. Every day we receive all the manifests and arrivals/departures lists from the point of entries. We use this information to forecast staffing needs for all the different sectors from food operations, transportation, attractions; everything. We send those forecasts out to all the developers and other operations, such as FlyRail, waste collection, anyone who might need it. They use our forecasts to plan their operations and then we monitor their staffing levels to ensure they adhere to their plans.”
“How do you monitor their staffing?”
“When the workers arrive, it registers on the central computer. If they all arrive on time, the intervals for the different operations show green on our consoles. When a staff member is missing at an expected time interval, it pops up red. The system automatically calls them for a status update. If they respond that they cannot make it, the system calls others to fill the vacancy. Of course, we monitor activity on the island real-time. We receive constant information regarding all types of output from beer sales to room occupancies and can change the plans as necessary during the day. If things are slowing down, we can call up a restaurant, say Poseidon's Platter, and tell them, ‘Hey, you can let some people go for the day. You won't need them.’ Or, if things are picking up, we can tell them, you need an extra server or two. This of course makes the island extremely efficient and keeps the facility managers from having to worry.”
Henry was pleased. “This will work very well with my long-term staffing plan.”
“What's that?” Bridges asked.
“I'm bringing genetically engineered workers to Paradeisia.”
“I see,” Bridges said flatly.
Henry asked, “What have you heard about the plan to open in four days?”
He swore, “It's about time—excuse my language. We've been ready to open for more than a year now.”
“And, in your honest estimation, what has been preventing it?”
“Honestly? Jinkins. We've been locked and loaded for a while now, but for some reason he got antsy when it came to pulling the trigger. Such a perfectionist he couldn’t face the pressure, I guess.”
“So you're ready to open in four days, even on short notice?”
“We've known about the date for a long time, now. Heck, a pod of cruises is docking overnight on opening day, and that’s been scheduled for a year. Yes, we're more than prepared.”
Henry noticed that when Bridges said this, Nimitz seemed to shift nervously. Henry asked, “You're prepared, Scott?”
“Oh yes, we're prepared. Like I told you, operationally this place is the bomb.”
“But you also said you had some reservations. About sightings?”
Nimitz looked to Bridges with hesitation. Bridges sounded accusatory as he stared at Nimitz and said, “Sightings?”
Nimitz said, “Yes. And you know I told you about my screen shots and recordings I saved?”
Folding his arms, Henry replied, “Yes.”
“They've all been deleted.”
“Have they? That’s a surprise, I’m sure,” Henry said sarcastically.
“No—really they have! Everything I saved is gone!”
“Indeed?”
Nimitz shook his head in frustration, “Look, I did find something interesting yesterday that I saved to my personal device, and it’s still here.”
Bridges protested angrily, “Nimitz, c’mon. Let's not turn ops into an American UFO Association seminar for Mr. Potter.” He fawned to He
nry in apparent embarrassment, “Sir, I have to apologize …”
“He needs to see this,” Nimitz said determinedly, wiping sweat from his brow. Under Bridges’ icy gaze, he stepped over to one of the computers and slipped a tiny card from his phone. Sticking the card into the computer, he went through some menus before popping up a video. To Henry, he said, “Did Doctor Pearce tell you that Andrews left the hospital, sir?”
“Yes, my next stop is the hospital to talk with him.”
Nimitz leaned over the keyboard, a drop of sweat landing on the keys, “Well Doctor Pearce hasn't seen this video. There was a camera in Andrews' room.”
“Okay.”
“Now, it only takes a picture every few seconds, so all you see are still images. But watch.” Nimitz clicked the play button.
Towson, Maryland
Wesley and Kelle were standing in the parking lot of the ransacked marine shop. A series of very low-flying drones were passing overhead. To compete with the noise, Wesley asked loudly, “Why don't you go to the media with your story? I had nothing to go on, but you know the truth; that the FBI killed your family.”
“I am the media. I'm a journalist, I usually cover the United Nations.”
“So great, you have connections.”
She shook her head. “That dog won't hunt. I already tried. Called my producer. He was gonna to get right on it. Next day, he supposedly committed suicide.” She pulled a piece of paper out of one of her rear, embroidered jeans pockets. “But, look,” she said. “Wesley was going to check out this address before they killed him. I want to follow up on it,” she looked up at him with pleading eyes, “but I don't want to do it alone.”
“You mean Jarred.”
“Huh?”
“You said Wesley was going to check out the address.”
She looked abashed, “Oh, yeah. I meant Jarred, sorry.”
Wesley examined the paper. Above the address it read:
CONVERGENT GENETIC SCIENCE, INC.
