“Dr. Montgomery said something about living in a piece of human history,” he ventured.
“Indeed he does,” the man said as they arrived at the long, black car and he opened the trunk to deposit the duffle into it.
“So, what did he mean?” Vernon prompted.
The bald man turned to regard him, grinning almost playfully.
“I’m not supposed to spoil the surprise,” he said.
Vernon stared at him a moment before shrugging.
“Okay,” he said.
The bald man stepped around him and opened the passenger door for the back seat, allowing Vernon to shuffle over and slip inside.
In a few moments the bald man slid behind the wheel, and very quickly the long, black car was exiting the airport onto the wide, open highway.
John sat at the table in the small, tiered bar at the top of the long spectator stands, looking over the race program. He glanced up to look at the large, illuminated board that sat on the infield beyond where the horses dashed madly around the track.
It was turning out to be a lousy day. Six races down and all the favorites were coming in so far. The best odds of the first half dozen heats had been less than even, winning back only two dollars for every five bet. At this rate, if he put down his whole stake, even on a quinella for a single race, he wouldn’t even be able to double it. And today was the last date of the season.
The next wouldn’t start up for over a month, and that was trotter races in New Jersey. And he hated those. They took too long to run, and left him with very little time to make a jump and get a bet down. And most of the time the odds sucked.
He felt a rumble of panic as he realized he was down to just about enough cash to live for a couple of months, but hardly any to build a good, solid bankroll with.
He told himself he was close to Las Vegas, but his prior attempts to utilize his unique skill on any of the standard table games was problematic, at best.
He had long ago reasoned that it took an event of sufficient size so that any difference he might cause by jumping wouldn’t knock the expected outcome off track of actually happening.
He had tried it several times in Atlantic City, when he’d first begun attempting to make this thing he could do pay off, but the probabilities involved with such things as craps, poker, blackjack, even the slot machines, occurred on such tiny scales that he always seemed to change them, however careful he attempted to be.
He couldn’t just jump at the table as soon as he saw a winning event such as the toss of the dice or the turn of a card. He had to get up, go off somewhere private, then jump and return to the table… where he would have miraculously vanished from a short time before. That tended to stop the game cold and destroy the potential win.
And slot machines selected the numeric combination from millions of possibilities every second in the depths of some random number generator, utterly ruining his chances of catching that same micro-second after a jump.
Only something where his jumping would have no influence, like a race, would play out exactly as he first experienced.
Even unintentionally, his knowing that something would happen, if he altered the circumstances by a single molecule, might redirect an unforeseeable sequence of tiny events and cause that thing not to happen. One guy up in the clubhouse making one anonymous bet moments before the deadline would have absolutely no impact on the way the race transpired. It happened on a different level than he could change, unless he jumped, made the bet, then shot the winning horse.
The public address system crackled to life and the next race was announced.
John scanned the race program.
Two more to go. Two chances for a little bit of luck.
But the next to last race was another stinker, featuring almost an even money field. No long shots, no way of building a decent trifecta. He glanced up at the scoreboard on the infield and let his eyes flick over the odds. El sucko, he thought.
Well, he considered with a sigh, he at least had the final race. It had a wider field and he should be able to build something from that.
He leaned back and glanced around the upper level of the massive grandstands where he sat.
It was somewhat crowded, with fans attempting to consume the final day of the sport for some months, and the betting was most likely heavy.
He glanced at his watch, noting the few minutes left until the betting closed on the next to last race of the day, then looked up and over the green grass of the tracks infield.
Something caught the corner of his eye, an unexpected something, like a brightness, at the very rim of the long, wide window.
The boom of the first blast rattled the entire structure, sparking a sharp, whining exclamation of human shock around him. The second was closer, and this time the entire building seemed to jolt, and the running began.
The third was just beyond the next section of the high, covered grandstand, spitting bits of wood and twisted metal from the billowing fireball.
John threw himself back hard against the chair, and jumped.
He caught the tail end of a small chorus of shocked gasps as he tumbled over backwards, the chair making a loud crack on the smooth floor.
“Geez, buddy, are you all right?”
The man was bending over him, reaching out to grab his arm and help him to his feet.
But as soon as he’d gained his balance John tore his arm away and was running, through the wide archway into the next section of the covered grandstand.
He was already searching, scanning, looking for anything that might have caused the blast. And he had less than ten minutes to find it.
He raced to the other end of the elevated grandstand and skidded to a halt beside the large open windows that looked down over the expansive parking lot at the far end of the track.
It was flooded with cars. Would one of them explode? A bomb? An accident?
But how could that trigger multiple blasts all down the length of the huge structure?
Glancing quickly around, he spotted a large, burly man in a dark sport coat with a colorful crest on the pocket.
“Hey!” he called over as he moved swiftly toward him, “What kind of cooking do they do here? How do they heat this place? Do they use gas? Or electricity?”
The burly man was now fixed on him, his body stiffening uncertainly.
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Do they use gas here? Yes or no?”
The man eyed him with a furrowed brow and hesitated.
“I believe the kitchens run on gas, yes.”
Bingo, John thought. There were multiple kitchens for the many restaurants in each section of the sprawling stands. If something went wrong with the main line…
“Call the police. And fire department. There’s going to be an explosion in about five minutes. Do it now!”
Now the burly man had straightened to his full, tense height and was reaching out toward John, who whirled and threw himself toward the nearby stairs down to the ground floor.
“Wait! Stop!”
John heard the man behind him, his own steps on the stairs echoing with the heavier set of the larger man chasing him.
He managed to reach the ground floor - a wide, low lobby - and was across it and out the door into the sunlight in three steps.
He leapt off the low set of stairs and turned sharply, breaking into a full sprint as he raced around the end of the grandstand and jerked to a halt.
He spun in place, shooting his attention out across the expansive parking lot, searching, scanning, not knowing what he might be trying to –
He spotted it, just inside the parking lot. It was sitting on a small island of grass between the edge of the lot and the long lanes of the driveway that wound back to the street exits. It was some kind of thick pipe, rising out of the ground, making a sharp turn to where a large meter of some kind sat atop the bend, then plunging back into the earth. At the bottom of the pipe, where it entered the earth, was a small metal box.
He dashed over to the pipe and dropped to his knees beside it on the grass, scanning it quickly. He saw the small box had a thin but sturdy-looking covering sealed with a small, rusty padlock.
“Hey!”
He jerked his gaze back toward the building to see the three blazer-clad men jogging toward him.
Turning back to the pipe, he decided he couldn’t waste time explaining.
He reached out, hooking the tips of his fingers around the box's thin cover and pulled. It was loose but the padlock kept it from opening.
“Shit,” he growled, and anchored his fingers deeper in the small opening.
Bracing himself, he pulled, leaning back, throwing his entire strength into the attempt.
The lid squealed a protesting whine, then the hasp, held closed by the padlock, snapped and the lid flew up and open.
As he had hoped, it contained a valve.
He grabbed it and began to turn it. It resisted for a moment, then began to rotate.
He had turned it a half dozen times when the men were upon him, the burly man he’d spoken to driving him down to the ground with hard hands on his shoulders.
John grunted as the air was forced from his lungs, but managed to work his arm around to grab the valve and turn it one more time. It hit a point and resisted. It was closed.
John went limp, feeling a dizziness roll over him.
The burly man straddled him and extended an arm for one of the others to place a pair of handcuffs into his upturned palm.
At that instant, in the kitchen of the hot dog stand tucked into the corner of the grandstands just beyond the wall where the main gas line ran along the length of the building, a part-time high school employee, making some extra money during his break from classes, hoisted up the large, heavy block of lard that was intended to be melted in the French fry cooker, and felt it slip.
He struggled for a second to maintain his grip on the heavy, gooey square but succeeded only in hoisting it higher, almost to his shoulders, before it squirted from his control.
It dropped like a rock into the space beside the wide, flat, gas griddle and slammed into the relatively thin corrugated pipe that entered the outer wall, made a sharp bend and entered the side of the massive cooking machine with its leaping flames.
The pipe snapped off.
At this near end of the long gas pipe, so close to the main, the pressure was at its highest. It sprayed into the room, an invisible, flammable vapor, and through a small heat vent in the side of the griddle, reaching the flame in less than a second.
The blast filled the entire confined alcove with searing flame, drawing a fragment of screams from the three people occupying the space before they were cut off in a dying gasp.
The flames boiled up and out of the wide windows above the hot dog stand’s counter, like a splash of liquid fire that roiled along the roof as it consumed its only available fuel.
Then the pressure died, the gas now burning off on the end of the sheered pipe jutting from the blackened outer wall, like a torch.
In a few more seconds the pressure had ebbed to make the flame little more than a candle before it winked out.
Had the main been fully open, the pressure might well have carried the blast along its length, wreaking an untold havoc.
John felt the burly man jerk upright in response to the loud, close blast.
By the time he got over his shock and turned back to this now-suspect man on the ground beneath him and began roughly slapping on the handcuffs, he was a little unnerved to hear the man was laughing hysterically.
Vernon turned his head to scan the horizon, seeing little but flat, open landscape in all directions. If there was a sign it would surely read “the middle of nowhere”.
“How much longer?” he called to where the driver sat.
“We’re almost there,” the bald man replied and began to slow down.
Vernon sat up in the back seat and looked to see a small, dirt track leading off to the right and through a tall, tumbledown fence, then off along toward the horizon. Following the track with his eyes, Vernon thought he could just make out a dark, low shape in the distance.
“Is that it over there?” he called up to the driver.
“That is it,” the man responded.
“What is it?”
“It is the control bunker for a series of Titan missile silos. They decommissioned it a long time ago and actually tried to sell it as condominiums once. It’s quite spacious, actually.”
A piece of human history, Vernon remembered. This certainly qualified.
It took ten more minutes down the bumpy, bare dirt track until the car pulled up outside a low, moderately wide, plain building with a single large metal door.
The driver opened the door and Vernon stepped out, glancing around.
“Why does he live out here?” he asked.
“I’ve never asked, I’m afraid,” the driver said pleasantly. “Shall we? I know he’s very anxious to meet you.”
Vernon nodded and followed the man to the heavy door. Beside it was a keypad which the driver tapped a few times, and the loud clang of the door unlocking rang quietly within the building.
Inside was a small space with a metal catwalk for a floor, on the other side of which were the currently closed doors of an elevator.
The driver approached the doors where another keypad allowed him to produce a faint beep from hidden speakers, and the elevator doors swung open.
He ushered Vernon inside and when he turned to face the doors, Vernon noticed it had only two buttons. The driver pressed the lower one and the doors slid closed.
“Ok,” Vernon muttered, “This is spooky.”
He thought he heard the driver sniff a small chuckle.
They rode down in silence.
When it stopped, the doors opened and revealed a long, circular corridor leading several yards to a landing where sat a huge blast door which was currently open. Beyond, Vernon could make out some sort of large room but it was dimly lit.
“This way, Dr. Jenkins,” the bald man said, and stepped toward the doors.
“Wait, my bag. It’s got my notes in it,” Vernon said.
“I don’t think you’ll need it,” the bald man said. “Come along.”
Vernon hesitated, feeling that creepy sense begin to loom over him again, but sighed and followed the bald man down the hallway.
The bald man stepped into the open blast door, and Vernon stopped in the portal and swept the space with his eyes.
Barren, was the word that popped into his mind as he saw how sparsely furnished it appeared. Only a single large table stood in the center of a vacant space, spilling over with large pages that looked like maps and schematics.
“Right this way, Doctor,” the bald man said, approaching an open door off to the left of the large room.
Confused, Vernon turned to follow him. When he stepped into the room he stopped, absorbing the new sights.
It was well lit, but rather than the emptiness of the main room, this one was heaped with papers, every flat surface piled high. Opposite the door stood an old, sturdy desk with a computer on it, behind which sat an old man, smiling benignly at him.
The man was clearly tall and thin, with wrinkled, leathery features and long white hair that currently rode down his neck like a soft mane.
He was dressed in a plain white shirt and dark trousers.
“Ah,” the man said, rising, and Vernon instantly recognized the voice as the colleague with whom he’d been trading emails and having lengthy chat room discussions for the past months.
“You’re here,” the man continued, moving around from behind the desk. “It’s very nice to meet you in person at last, Dr. Jenkins.”
The man extended his hand and Vernon automatically seized it.
“And you, Dr. Montgomery.”
“Come,” Montgomery said lightly, “Let me show you around the place.”
He wrapped an arm around the younger man and gently led
him back toward the door to the main space.
“I was sorry to hear,” Montgomery said blandly, “That you no longer have any faith in our work. I mean, it wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near as far along as it has without your new equations. And I am extremely grateful for that work, my boy. Please know that.”
“I do, Doctor,” Vernon said, feeling a flicker of regret stab through him, “But if we could cause something like that asteroid redirection, we just can’t take the chance.”
“I understand that, my boy,” Montgomery said, walking Vernon into the large room, then stopping and lowering his arm from the younger man’s shoulder. Vernon turned to regard him.
“And it’s a shame,” Montgomery went on. “I genuinely would have loved to have you with me for the big event. I really think you might have been the only one who would have been able to head over to the other side with me. I think you’re a genuine mind. So rare.”
Montgomery stared at the younger man, and Vernon saw a welling of something like sadness in his eyes.
“I brought you here because I was hoping to be able to convince you to continue with me on our work. You’ve been so instrumental in bringing it to this point. But just by looking at you, I can see you are beyond convincing. So I’m afraid you won’t be going to the other side with me. I’m sorry.”
Vernon felt a momentary confusion.
“Wait, Doctor… what are you talking about? What other side?”
Montgomery nodded sympathetically.
“I know, my boy. It’s very confusing. But don’t worry. You can forget all that now. You can forget everything.”
He reached out a gentle hand to lightly pat Vernon’s cheek with his thin fingers, then turned back toward his office.
Vernon couldn’t quite formulate a single response to what had just happened, and that stimulating sense of confusion that had always prompted him to throw himself into a search for clarity began to kick in within his mind. He always loved the feeling. It filled him with hope of something new to discover.
The bullet entered his skull just below his left temple and traversed his head in a fraction of a second, hitting the inside of his right cheekbone and shattering into tiny fragments, some of which bounced up through the brain pan, slicing the synapses apart. He was dead before he crumpled to the floor.
Class Fives: Origins Page 18
