Class Fives: Origins

by Jon H. Thompson

  “Couldn’t,” he whispered tightly.

  “Why not?”

  John leaned forward as if suddenly trying to nurse a pain in his guts.

  “Couldn’t,” he repeated. “All those people. Had to do something. Had to.”

  Dan watched him for a long moment, and somewhere in his mind something dropped heavily into place, sealing itself with a silent finality.

  “John,” he said gently. “Listen to me, John.”

  He waited while the younger man struggled to pull himself together and finally raised his head to stare hopelessly over at where Dan stood.

  “I wasn’t going to mention this,” Dan said gently. “It’s got to do with… something else. Something I told myself I was going to keep private. It involves… somebody else.”

  He hesitated, wondering if he was doing the right thing, then decided that, like John, he really didn’t have much of a choice.

  “I know a couple of guys,” he said finally. “From Homeland Security. I think they might have the pull to get you out of here.”

  John’s eyes widened and he slowly rose from the bunk, unwinding his arms from their protective clutch and moving toward the bars.

  “What guys?” he whispered, as if to speak too loudly might make this sudden, faint hope vaporize.

  “I only just met them. But I think they might be able to straighten this out. One way or the other.”

  “Who?” John said, now with a desperate forcefulness as he reached out to grip the bars tightly.

  “Calm down. There’d be conditions,” Dan said.

  “Fuck conditions,” John blurted, “Call them. Get me out of here.”

  “Listen to me,” Dan interrupted. “They’ll probably want to test you.”

  John flinched, confusion shooting through him.

  “Test, what test?”

  Dan sighed, and continued evenly.

  “They’re apparently part of some government agency or something that’s looking for people who can do the kind of things you say you can do. Don’t ask me why, I couldn’t tell you. But I know another guy who can… do things. Like you can. Different things but just as… unusual.”

  “What are you talking about? Who like me?”

  Dan shook his head to ward off the cascade of questions before it could begin to spill out.

  “Just listen,” Dan snapped, causing John to fall silent.

  “We went to see this other guy, and they said they want to test him somehow. I don’t know what they meant, but I think they want to try and understand how he can do what he does. If I call them about you, they’ll want to do the same thing with you. So they could probably get you out of here and make all this go away. But in exchange, you’d have to do whatever they wanted you to. Now that might mean having to take a whole lot of tests, maybe medical tests, who knows what else? And I can’t tell you what would happen after that. For all I know they may put you into a different kind of cell somewhere else. I just don’t know. But it’s all I have to offer right now. So if you want me to, I can call them. And after that, whatever happens to you is up to them. But it’s your choice. If you want me to call them, I will. But you have to decide. It’s up to you.”

  John absorbed the words and clung tightly to the bars, his eyes, tight and wild, fixed into the space between himself and Dan.

  “And if you don’t call?” he said at last.

  Dan sighed.

  “Then you stay here until they indict you, and if you can’t explain what happened in some way that doesn’t sound totally shithouse insane, then you probably go to prison for a long, long time.”

  John’s face went suddenly still, his eyes fixed far away, where thoughts are widescreen movies in the air, then sank slowly into a kind of calm.

  “Call them,” he said, calmly.

  “You sure?” Dan inquired, needing the confirmation.

  John nodded.

  “I figured it had to happen sooner or later. Somebody would notice or I’d do something to get myself noticed. And that would be it. So yes, please call them. And thank you.”

  Dan regarded him silently.

  I hope you really can do what you say you can, he thought, and then realized he didn’t know if the faint spark of something potentially glorious he felt in his gut was for John, or himself.

  “Okay,” he said quietly, “Their names are White and Jones.”

  Marvin drummed his fingers on the desk nervously, holding the handset tight against his ear. When the outgoing voice message clicked in, he hung up the phone and huffed.

  Dr. Jenkins still wasn’t answering. It had been two days and the man hadn’t picked up any of the calls. At first he’d left urgent messages to get back in touch as soon as he was able. But after the fifth or sixth time, the anxiety had risen so high he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  He only hesitated a moment before plucking up the handset again and stabbing in the number he’d memorized. The phone was answered on the first ring.

  “Yes?” a voice inquired.

  “Mr. Crawford, please,” he responded.

  “Please hold.”

  The line clicked silent and Marvin turned to settle down on the edge of the desk.

  He had a bad feeling every time he started to put the pieces of what little he knew together. It always seemed to lead toward a destination he would never want to visit.

  The phone clicked to life again.

  “Crawford,” the voice said.

  Unconsciously Marvin straightened, as if in the man’s presence.

  “Mr. Crawford, it’s Dr. Henry.”

  “I know, please go on.”

  “Well, sir, I can’t get through to Dr. Jenkins. I’ve been trying ever since our meeting but it keeps going to voicemail.”

  “And he didn’t indicate where he was going?”

  “No, not at all. He said something about getting in touch with Dr. Montgomery about the experiment but I don’t know how he’d do that.”

  “We already tried to contact him ourselves,” Crawford said, “But it appears no one has seen him since the afternoon you spoke. It’s likely he left campus before you told me about him. He might have communicated with someone first. If he did, we’ll find out.”

  Marvin was momentarily surprised.

  “How?”

  But Crawford seemed not to have even heard the question.

  “Dr. Henry,” he said instead, “I need your assistance with something else. Something confidential.”

  “Okay,” Marvin said slowly, his sense of caution perking up suddenly, “What would that be?”

  “I need you to go to Los Angeles and observe some tests. I want you to let me know if they relate in any way to this other situation.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean, sir.”

  “You’ll be briefed on the flight. There’ll be an escort at your place in about twenty minutes. Please pack quickly. You’ll be there a few days.”

  “Be where? Los Angeles? What about monitoring the system? I still have a lot of calculations to do here.”

  “This takes priority,” Crawford cut him off. “Consider it an order.”

  Marvin rose from the edge of the desk, alarmed.

  “But I don’t really work for you, sir. Sorry, but I work for the university.”

  “That’s right,” Crawford said with certainty, “And when I hang up you’ll be receiving a call from the University Chancellor who will tell you to do what you’re told. Don’t take long on that other call, Doctor. You still have to get packed.”

  The phone clicked off, leaving Marvin listening to something dead.

  Slowly he hung up the handset, feeling as if he’d been smacked across the head by something heavy and hard.

  The instant the handset clicked into the cradle, the phone rang.

  Marvin swallowed hard and answered.

  “Chancellor,” he said calmly.

  John heard the heavy door open, and looked up from the bunk bolted to the wall of the small ce
ll. He swung his legs up, his back straightening.

  They stepped into view before the cell. Two men, both in dark, nondescript suits, one older and taller with a shock of gray hair, one shorter and younger.

  They moved tightly, not quite tense but clearly not to be caught unawares, taking positions side by side, staring into the cell at him, arms folded loosely before themselves.

  “Who are you guys?” John said, suspiciously.

  “Los Angeles Police Department Officer Daniel Sinski contacted us,” the younger one said. “My name is Jones. This is White.”

  John’s spine straightened and he slowly rose.

  “Are you guys… Homeland Security?” he hissed quietly, unsure if he would be overheard.

  “Officer Sinski said you would have something to show us,” the one called White said.

  John stared at them a moment, then nodded sharply and approached the bars.

  “That’s right. Get me out of here and I’ll show you anything you want.”

  “Please demonstrate now,” Jones said calmly.

  John almost took an involuntary step back, his spine straightening even further.

  “What, right here? Now?”

  The two men simply regarded him blankly.

  John had hoped to be able to prove his thing to them in a little more private an environment. What if some guard should see?

  “You sure?” he inquired, perplexed.

  “Please,” White said flatly.

  John considered this a long moment, then shrugged.

  “Okay, if that’s what you want. But just one time. I can’t handle doing it one right after another. So you get one freebie, fair enough?”

  Neither of the men responded, so John simply shrugged again and moved across the small cell, turning and placing his back against the cold cinder block wall.

  “Okay,” he said, “Here’s the deal. I’m going to stand here for a little while, all right? And in a couple of minutes I’m going to walk over to that other wall and put my back against it. And then I’m going to jump, okay? Now what’s going to happen is, I’m going to drop back a little bit, maybe a minute, but when I land, I’m going to be over there, on the other side of this place. And you won’t remember seeing me walk over there because it won’t have happened yet as far as you’re concerned. I’ll just vanish from here and appear over there, and you wouldn’t have a clue why. That’s why I’m telling you now, okay? Because, hopefully, when I land I won’t – “

  He simply vanished from where he had been standing, his back pressed against the cell wall, and appeared in exactly the same posture against the opposite wall.

  White and Jones turned their heads slowly to where John now stood, looking at them, a half-smile on his face.

  “So, did I finish enough of the explanation before I landed? You get it now?”

  Jones turned slowly to exchange a silent, long look with White.

  At last White turned toward where the door was somewhere down the short hall, out of sight.

  “Open this cell,” he said calmly, “We’re taking custody.”

  Joe Franklin watched as the large shipping containers were eased slowly up the loading ramp at the rear of the large cargo plane. He went over once again in his mind the way the device was secured within it, tightly packed into the middle of enough shielding and protective foam that any emissions it might be producing would be smothered and undetectable from outside.

  I wonder what it’s really for, he considered yet again. If it really was a weapon of some kind, then it was possible he might have just contributed to the creation of something never before attempted with great success – a functional, deployable energy beam emitter. Part of the Star Wars system, perhaps, that fantasy of being able to knock missiles out of space like blobs of pixels in some video game.

  But once again he caught hold of himself, pulling sharply back on his imagination before it led him too far along that dangerous path. He’d been hired to build the thing precisely because he wasn’t supposed to know. That was his advantage in obtaining this sort of work. What he didn’t have to know, he didn’t want to know, and the ultimate purpose for the things he built he usually didn’t have to know. It was what his clients expected, what made him so valuable.

  He watched as the last of the four large containers slid fully inside the huge aircraft and disappeared from his view. Within a half hour, the plane would take off and begin its journey halfway across the world. It would land at a modest regional airport somewhere in rural Russia by late tomorrow. From there… who knows? That wasn’t really any of his business.

  But the engineer in him couldn’t help but speculate about how it would be deployed. For one thing, it would require an incredible amount of power. At first, when he’d thought it was part of the Star Wars program, he’d been sure obtaining that amount of power would be no problem. If it was a government project, it might even have its own dedicated nuclear generator already standing by to feed it the vast streams of gigawatts required to kick it into operation.

  But then he’d received the shipping instructions and official documents, and saw that it was to be delivered somewhere in the heart of a decidedly foreign and potentially still-hostile nation. That had given him pause, but not enough to abandon the project, or even the impulse to see if what he was contributing to might have edges a bit darker than he originally imagined.

  This thought, too, he had shrugged off. After all, if he had taken the project under the terms that he was simply to build the thing and ask no questions not necessary to that single purpose, then he was bound to stick to those limitations.

  If he had indeed just added his efforts to some dark, destructive purpose, any responsibility rested on other heads than his. He was, he liked to consider himself, like the man seated at the bench of a workshop designing and fabricating a unique firearm. It technically didn’t matter to him if that weapon would ultimately be used to capture a bad guy or assassinate a President of the United States. Those choices of how it was to be used were in the hands of those who ordered it, not his.

  Joe had always been able to tell himself that he was merely a mechanism, doing the task for which it had been designed, and doing it very well - not to mention just how lucrative it could be. He not only slept very well at night, he was able to do so on silk sheets in a very large, plush bedroom.

  In fact, he reminded himself, by the time he arrived home and checked the balance of his offshore account, he would be able to sit and enjoy staring at the impressively large number, aided considerably by the final payment for this task, which would have been transferred in by then.

  Perhaps, he considered, he would finally take a little vacation. Maybe the Caribbean. Hell, maybe he’d buy himself a little island down there. He’d always wanted to own a bit of real estate. And if he could find something that was outside the jurisdiction of any other country, what might he be able to work on, to explore, to produce without having to be quite so surreptitious? It would be nice to invite his customers down to watch his works in progress without all the paranoia and security concerns.

  As the tail ramp of the large plane began to slowly rise, he finally turned away from the window of the small terminal building and stepped off. Either way, he thought, his part was done. He had built the whatever-it-really-was and seen it handed over to those who had been contracted to deliver it to its destination. If something went wrong now, his customer, the mysterious Dr. Montgomery, could deal with it. It was at last out of Joe’s hands.

  By the time he had crossed the large waiting room and passed through the sliding doors into the cool night air beyond, he was already letting his mind flip through the correspondence he’d been receiving while he had devoted all his energies to this single project. Montgomery had wanted it completed in record time and Joe had managed that. Another mark of pride he could take in his skills.

  He walked briskly across the wide lot toward where his car was parked in a far corner, very close to the exit to the highway
.

  He would make it home in an hour or so, be able to kick back, relax and maybe catch part of some game on TV. He would open a beer, put his feet up and just savor that feeling of having accomplished something unique once again.

  As he began to draw close to his vehicle, parked just under the dim halo of the overhead lamp, he noticed the man, leaning against the other car nestled right next to his own.

  A tiny flicker of alertness shot up in him, wondering if it was mere coincidence that another human being just happened to be waiting for something in such an isolated part of the parking lot, or if the man’s presence had anything to do with him.

  As he continued to approach, he at last began to make out that it was the same guy who had come to visit him once before, to deliver the plans those many weeks ago. He was tall and rather bulky, possessing a completely bald head, which made his appearance somehow unsettling, despite the fact that he was quite pleasant and polite.

  He noticed Joe approaching and pushed himself upright, keeping his hands folded before himself, his stance now beginning to look like a relaxed version of what the military types called “parade rest”.

  Of course, Joe realized. The plans. Dr. Montgomery would want them back. And that made perfect sense.

  Joe raised an arm casually and unconsciously his gait became a bit looser, a bit more relaxed.

  “Hi,” he called out as he approached.

  “Good evening,” the bald man called back, pleasantly. “Everything go all right?”

  Joe nodded as he strode forward.

  "It’s loaded and on its way,” he said, a satisfied, perhaps modestly smug smile spreading over his lips.

  “Excellent,” the man said as Joe closed the distance between them.

  Joe was about to ask if the man wanted to just follow him back to his workshop so he could retrieve the plans, and perhaps stick around for a beer and a quiet, self-satisfied celebration of the end of this most unusual but rewarding job, when the bald man moved suddenly.

  The hands clasped before him shot straight up, the man’s knees bent slightly, the hands joined before him at the end of fully extended arms.