by Lee Brainard
27
Ithaca, New York
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
It was a gorgeous fall day, and Irina was enjoying an evening stroll in the park, marveling at the myriad hues of the autumn foliage. But her primary reason for the walk wasn’t indulging the beauty of nature. It was figuring out a solution for her situation—walking cleared her mind and helped her grapple with perplexing questions. Time was running out. She needed to get the evidence for the Rogue into capable hands—hands that wouldn’t ignore or bury the unsettling information for the sake of convenience or gain. She knew several people she could trust, but . . . the recipient needed more than trustworthiness. They needed access to suitable astronomical software and the expertise to operate it. Moreover, they needed to be fearless and cunning, ensuring that the information would get disseminated regardless of the obstacles. She only had one shot. In her brother’s Illya’s military lingo, it was a go/no-go operation.
Her contemplations were distracted by a group of young ladies—they appeared to be Renaissance buffs—wearing period dresses, sporting flowers in their hair, and carrying pitchers and woven baskets. They were having their pictures taken, in poses, alone and in groups, by a photographer. The scene reminded her of Ariele Serrafe, a quirky acquaintance from her Caltech days. She was unique . . . a hippy-chick with a stunning IQ . . . like Rainbow Family meets Einstein. Irina smiled as memories danced through her head. She liked her, but they had never hit it off as friends . . . they were just too different . . . like night and day . . . wait a minute . . . Ariele is precisely the person I need. She was trustworthy. She was an exceptionally intelligent astronomer. She had access to the necessary software. Her moral compass was exactly what the situation called for . . . she was death on corruption and duplicity . . . relentless and fearless for causes that she believed were right. She could be trusted to do the right thing with the information.
Having settled on her contact, the rest of her plan, in its rough details, came together easily. She decided to mail the information to Ariele during Thanksgiving break. The five days she would have off would give her plenty of time to access her Buster account, load the documents and images onto a DVD, package it anonymously, drive to a distant location, mail the package, and drive back. She just had to work through the details, including how to shake the agents that would almost certainly be tailing her.
With the load off her shoulders and a sense of serenity returning, she turned her focus back on the wonders of God’s creation. In the distance the hoot of an owl echoed through the trees . . . overhead a flock of geese was noisily preparing to land on a nearby lake . . . a squirrel scampered up a white pine and scolded her . . . and the sinking sun was bathing the clouds in majestic reds and oranges . . . God is still in charge and things are going to work out . . . they may not work out the way that I would like them to . . . but they will definitely work out.
28
Cornell University
Monday, October 15, 2018
Irina entered the CCAPS building and found it strangely quiet. When she walked into her department, it was empty. No one was at their workstations. The offices were empty. The silence—like the still of a graveyard—was unnerving. This is really odd. She glanced at her watch in case she had shown up an hour early. After all, she did occasionally have her blonde moments—her grandpa used to tease her about dying her hair brunette. It was 7:48 a.m. That was a few minutes early, but not early enough for her to be the first one to arrive. Now she was thoroughly confused.
She fished her cell phone out of her purse and checked the day. It was definitely Monday—as she had thought. What is going on? Had there been an emergency or an emergency drill? Did she forget about a scheduled meeting? Where was her cubicle mate? Sandy’s chair was pushed back from her workstation and turned as if she had just stepped away. She walked up for a closer investigation and noticed that she was logged in and her program was open. Strange. She reached out and touched Sandy’s coffee cup—it was still quite warm. Really strange.
Her thoughts were interrupted by muffled human voices. She walked around the corner to investigate and heard what sounded like the droning of a television in the distance. As she approached the break room at the end of the hallway, a cacophony of exclamations erupted which drowned out the programming—“Wow!,” “Whoa!,” “Insane!,” along with a bevy of coarse expressions. She hurried down the hall and peeked into the room to see what the commotion was about.
A female newscaster was pointing on a map of Asia to a red circle near the center of Mongolia and talking a mile a minute. “Early Saturday morning, around 2 a.m. Ulaanbaatar time, an extremely large meteor streaked across the East China Sea in a north-westerly direction, then across eastern China, and ultimately impacted in the mountainous region of Övörkhangai, southwest of Ulaanbaatar. There were only a handful of witnesses—all in Mongolia. Apparently, the meteor came in at a fairly low angle, traveled unseen across the open spaces of the Pacific Ocean, passed between Taiwan and the Okinawa Islands while both were socked in by heavy clouds from Typhoon Usagi, then passed over an overcast eastern China and Gobi Desert before dropping beneath the clouds deep in Mongolia.
“The witnesses, we have been told, were a few nomadic families who were grazing their livestock in the area and an Englishman on assignment with National Geographic. This area will be very difficult for authorities and researchers to reach. The Englishman, who was staying with one of the families, informed us that they were camped about two days horse ride from the nearest road and that the impact site is another seven or eight hours further away. Apparently, there are three families missing—and feared dead. As of this time, the Mongolian government has said pointedly that they cannot comment on the matter until their investigation is completed. It is believed that they have people at the site at this time, assisted by a team from China. China is not saying anything. The Russian news outlets are silent. Both countries have banned all air traffic over their territory adjacent to Mongolia until further notice, effectively hindering access by any outside observers to the site.
“The impact was so forceful that originally the suspicion among U.S. intelligence was that a nuclear device had been detonated—most likely an illegal test by North Korea, China, or Russia. But when triangulation traced the event to Mongolia, authorities were nonplussed. For the next sixteen hours, the government officials and agencies involved were stumped. Various theories and conjectures were floated but none gained any traction except the meteorite-impact theory. Nobody was certain, though, and the agencies involved were in a holding pattern, waiting for more information.
“Less than an hour ago, however, we received a phone call from the BBC that one of their contacts in Mongolia, the Englishman mentioned a moment ago, had breaking news—the seismic event appears to have been a meteor that made impact early Sunday morning, Ulaanbaatar time.
“Joining us live from Övörkhangai aimag—province—in Mongolia, via satellite feed, approximately forty kilometers from the impact site, is Harry Wetherington. Good evening, Harry.”
“Good morning to you, Heather.”
“I understand, Harry, that you are currently returning from a visit to the impact site.”
“That is correct. We are around forty kilometers from the impact site and about sixteen kilometers from our ger—often called a yurt in the outside world. It has been a long, grueling day on horseback traversing extremely rugged territory.”
“What time is it there, now?”
“Heather, it is 10:55 p.m. The sky is blanketed with stars, and we are enjoying a magnificent view of the Milky Way—the kind you can only experience in the remotest regions of Earth.”
“Wish I could see that for myself. Not much of a night sky here in the Big Apple . . . but back to our story . . . it is my understanding, Harry, that you are the sole source of intel coming out of Mongolia at this time.”
“That’s what I have been told, Heather. And it wouldn’t surprise me if that were t
rue. There is no cell-phone service for over a hundred kilometers. Nobody in the region except myself has a satellite phone. None of the locals would have had time yet to ride out to civilization, for we are two long, hard days on horseback—blankets, mind you, not saddles—from the nearest road. And that barely qualifies as a road—it is four-wheel drive only. You need a Land Rover, a Russian UAZ, or something similar to negotiate it.”
“Are there any officials or investigators at the site?”
“Yes, there are, Heather. At around three p.m. local time, we observed two large helicopters flying over the site with Chinese markings, accompanied by a smaller helicopter that belonged to the Mongolian Air Force. A half hour later two more helicopters arrived. They landed approximately two kilometers from our observation point and disembarked soldiers which appeared to be both Chinese and Mongolian. It was hard to determine with certainty. At that distance, my binoculars were unable to resolve the uniform details.”
“Were they setting up a perimeter?”
“No, they spread out in small teams and appeared to be searching the area. Several were using what appeared to be Geiger counters and others were taking soil and air samples.”
“Does there appear to be any danger from radiation or poison?”
“I have no information at this time except that I don’t see any panic or haste among the soldiers. But if my hair falls out, I’ll give you a call.” Where do they come up with these questions? . . . I carry a lot of cool tools in my duffel . . . but I don’t carry a Geiger counter or a chemistry set.
“How long do you think it will be before the Mongolian officials give us an official news release on this event?”
Gee . . . let me turn on my ESP for a few minutes and tap into their brains . . . I’ll get back to you shortly. “Well, Heather, the Mongolian officials and their Chinese partners have only been at the site for approximately seven hours. Their investigation is still in its early stages. I’m guessing that we might have to wait another forty-eight hours before they release an initial statement.” If it were only the Mongolians, we would likely have heard something already. But with the Chinese involved, we may be forced to wait a week or two. They love to annoy the West with such tactics.
“Tell us your story.”
“Certainly, Heather. I have been in the area since May, living with a nomadic family in their summer ger, working on a project for National Geographic. Last night we stayed up late around a campfire, drinking airag—fermented horse milk—with four hunting guides who were passing through. The men swapped tales of run-ins with wolves, bandits, poachers, opium smugglers, and Chinese soldiers. We had let the fire die down and were getting ready for bed—around two a.m. local time—when a large glow in the low-hanging clouds streaked across the north-eastern horizon, followed by a large flash behind the mountains to our north, followed shortly after by a loud explosion. My heart raced. I thought to myself, ‘that was either one blooming huge bomb or one blooming huge meteorite.’ I watched the horizon for several minutes, a tad nervous, but the flash was not followed by a mushroom cloud, so I figured I would probably still be alive in the morning. Relieved, I went to bed.
“Early the next morning my host, his brother, his cousin, the four guides, and I arose, quickly downed our breakfast—a bowl of milk tea with millet and lamb jerky—saddled our horses, and headed north from the ger about 7:00, shortly before sunrise. We wanted to investigate the situation. It took us seven hours to reach the ridge that overlooked the area of the explosion—the ridge was in a shambles. The trees had been blown over into a tangled mess, making access very difficult. On the far side of the valley, about two kilometers away, we observed a crater around three hundred meters in diameter. Everything in the immediate area was burned or blackened. The trees were knocked down for more than two kilometers from the destruction zone, both up and down the valley. The pungent odor of sulfur hung heavy in the air.
“Heather, the devastation from this meteor was simply enormous. If it had landed on or near a small town, the town would have been decimated.
“About a half hour after we arrived on the ridge we were joined by a weeping woman, with her husband and children, who explained that her parents and her two brothers, with their wives and families, had pitched their gers in this valley a few weeks earlier and that she feared that the flying death worm had killed them. She and her husband had seen the death worm fly over their heads, burning with red, yellow, and blue flames.
“About 2:40 p.m., while we were observing the site, two jets flew in from the north about five kilometers west of us, circled back around, then flew directly over the area low and slow, giving us the opportunity to positively identify them as Russian. When they finished their flyover, they accelerated on their northward flight, presumably returning to Belaya Air Base in Irkutsk.
“Twenty minutes later, around three p.m., the first of the Chinese and Mongolian helicopters arrived on site and made several runs over the impact area in a fairly tight formation. As I mentioned earlier, they were later joined by two further helicopters which landed in the valley bottom, about half a kilometer from the impact crater and unloaded soldiers, civilians, and equipment. We continued to observe the site and the operation until shortly before four p.m. when two smaller Chinese helicopters arrived and began flying patrol around the perimeter of the area. On their first pass over the ridge we were on, they noticed us. They circled back around twice and buzzed us. Both times we held our ground. The third time the door gunner opened fire about two hundred meters before our position and continued firing until they were about thirty meters from us. We got the message. We picked up our gear, scrambled our way back over the fallen timber to our horses—a little spooked from the gunfire—untethered them, mounted up, and headed back toward our peaceful ger.”
“You mentioned that the meteor had colored flames. Do you have any idea what significance the colored flames might hold?”
“Heather, I have no idea why the flames were red, yellow, and blue. For crying out loud, I studied photography and cultural anthropology, not chemistry. I can tell you that these people saw what appeared to them to be a flying death worm with red, yellow, and blue flames—and it scared them half to death.”
The interview ended and the commentator turned to her next guest, who sitting in the studio with her, an expert on meteors and meteorites at the Smithsonian Institute. “Dr. Franconi, what do you think the significance of the colored flames is?”
“I am going to guess that the yellow indicates sodium, the blue sulfur, and the red probably strontium.”
“Is there any chance that this death worm might actually have deadly qualities, like . . . radioactivity?”
“Great question, Heather. I am curious about that myself. The red flames are provocative, for they suggest strontium. And some isotopes, like strontium-89 and strontium-90, are radioactive. While these isotopes do not occur naturally here on Earth, that doesn’t mean that they don’t occur in other parts of the solar system.”
“Are there any other potentially deadly traits that can be associated with meteors?”
“Yes. Some comets have evidenced cyanogen gas in their tails. If such a comet made impact in a populated area . . . that could be problematic.”
“And what kind of physical evidence can the parties on the ground expect to find . . . apart from the crater, the ash, and the devastation?”
“Fragments of the meteor, which are technically referred to as meteorites, along with impact diamonds, fullerenes, and minerals that are indicative of extraterrestrial origin.”
After several more minutes of discussion on the minerals, poisons, and radioactivity that could be associated with an impact event, the interview grew less interesting and the crew began to disperse.
Dr. Goldblum sauntered up to Irina and crowed, “Maybe this death worm is the beginning of a parabolic increase in comet activity . . . as your theory suggests? Wouldn’t that be exciting if your theory was vindicated?” He studied her face,
looking for an affirmation. She managed a feeble smile. He continued, “I sent an email to The Meteoritical Society and suggested that they name the Mongolian event Deathworm. Has a dark ring to it, don’t you think?” She nodded glumly. It was obvious that she wasn’t in the mood for conversation, much less stroking his ego, so he retreated to his office.
Irina felt a heaviness in her breast as she watched him walk away. If she was right, this impact belonged to the early contractions before the actual labor pains. Things were going to get a whole lot worse. Her heaviness contrasted with Dr. Goldblum’s creepy glee. All he was thinking about was the opportunity for fame and glory that might accrue for hotshot astronomers if her apocalyptic scenario proved true. As for the name Deathworm, it was certainly appropriate. But she still didn’t like it. It sounded too much like Wormwood.
29
Drive back from Mount Wilson
Friday, November 9, 2018
Two weeks before she received the life-altering package from Irina, Ariele was enjoying a late-night drive through the San Gabriels on her way back from Mt. Wilson. She noticed that the clock on the radio dial said 11:01, so she switched from her fave indie/reggae station to YMMR so she could catch the Down the Rabbit Hole program with Burrage “Butch” Krakenhavn. It came on the air seven days a week, at 11:00 p.m. A golden, husky voice resonated, “We cover the world’s biggest stories without the usual dollop of media bias, report the news that the news doesn’t report, investigate conspiracy stories—real and imagined, and dive into that mysterious realm where it is sometimes difficult to tell the truth from fiction.”
