The Fall

by R. J. Pineiro

  Slowly, as they worked their way through the guts of the European particle physics laboratory, it became evident that the information in the CERN databases didn’t go beyond the particle accelerator experiments. That’s when Angela stumbled upon a hidden directory in one of the tablets.

  “Well, well, what have we got here?” she said.

  “What is it?” Art-Z said, looking over to her screen.

  “A link to another database.”

  “Where?”

  “DARPA,” she replied, referring to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the military’s premier and most secretive R&D agency. “My guess is that Hastings and his gurus only used the CERN and Columbus experiments to corroborate whatever theories they were working on. After that he locked his gurus and the results in the one place he could control. We need to break into DARPA next.”

  The hacker looked into the distance before regarding her with his dark stare. “Breaking in isn’t the hard part. CERN—hell, even Los Alamos—is a cakewalk, Bonnie. DARPA … man, I know guys—really talented guys—doing time because they hacked into the place only to have the Feds up their asses within the hour.”

  She put a hand to his bearded cheek. There was fear in his eyes. “Look, the last thing I want to do is compromise your location. You’ve been generous enough to help me. But I need to find out what happened to my husband, and the only path I see is to get some answers, and those answers, for better or for worse, are very likely hidden somewhere in those DARPA servers.”

  Art-Z took a deep breath and said, “There are places that no one should try to hack, no matter how good you are. You of all people should know that. I warned you last time not to screw with the FBI, and I’m telling you now not to mess around with DARPA.”

  “I’m already in deep shit,” she said, “so it really doesn’t matter if I get caught like the last time. But no one knows about you, yet. So I’d completely understand if you—”

  “Shut up, Bonnie,” he interrupted, gently getting her hand off his cheek before lowering his gaze to the black feline sleeping on his lap. “If you’re seriously willing to put it all on the line,” he added, lifting his eyes and locking them with hers, “then there might be another avenue. But we’re going to need help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  After hesitating, he said, “Between you and me, we have plenty of cyber muscle. What we lack is muscle in the real world.”

  For the first time that evening, Angela Taylor smiled. “And I know just the place where we can find it.”

  The hacker didn’t return the smile. Instead, he rubbed the base of his neck, frowned, and said, “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  * * *

  Highways gave way to familiar streets, familiar buildings, familiar sights under the glow of a moon and accompanying stars that should have been hidden by the missing tropical storm.

  Jack watched this strange world go past his side window with mixed emotions, uncertain what lay ahead. He had seen enough to be convinced that something was seriously wrong with his senses, which screamed that this was not the same Earth he had rocketed from earlier that day. But that couldn’t be possible.

  Could it?

  He shook his head, wondering what in the hell was wrong with him. How could he be suffering from a concussion when he felt perfectly fine, albeit a bit dehydrated?

  And the more he thought about it, the less he felt he could be suffering from any form of PTSD, especially after what he had gone through with the SEALs. This jump was a walk in the park compared to Afghanistan and Colombia.

  But he had to admit to himself that no one had ever done a suborbital jump before, and perhaps there were serious physiological consequences that only now would become known … thanks to him.

  Jack pinched the bridge of his nose.

  He could almost imagine himself hooked up to tubes, probes, and wires as scientists tried to figure out why he had gone cuckoo.

  Fuck me, he thought, his mind searching desperately for a single shred of an answer to explain anything, from the absence of Claudette, to the frozen telemetry on his faceplate display when he was obviously falling, and a world that had literally abandoned him.

  Stop torturing yourself.

  He tilted his head at that last thought.

  Torturing?

  Jack suddenly realized that in a strange way, what he was experiencing was a form of imprisonment of his mind. His perception was being held hostage by whatever neural damage he had likely incurred during the fall, and his SEAL training taught him that one way to survive long periods of captivity was by forcing happy thoughts into his mind, by recalling the good times.

  He chose to remember when he had first met his wife, the feisty Dr. Taylor during his initial weeks at the Cape. Angela was the only daughter of Miguel “Mickey” Valle, founder of the legendary Paradise Motorcycle Shop in South Miami, where she grew up among bikers and hackers before earning degrees in engineering from nearby Florida Institute of Technology and a doctorate from MIT. It had not taken very long for the slender brunette and former criminal hacker with high cheekbones, light-olive skin, and amazing hazel eyes—and who seemed to live on energy drinks—to get under his skin. And what made it impossible for him to give up the hunt was the way Angela tried to hide it all by minimizing makeup, keeping her brunette hair very short, wearing faded jeans, black T-shirts, and riding boots and jackets. But even her tomboy-biker tough looks couldn’t hide a natural beauty that Jack found simply irresistible. And his persistence paid off in the end. After a long courting period, the couple was married on the beach among a colorful collection of characters from Angela’s side of the fence, from bikers to hackers. Across the aisle, the groom’s side was limited to Navy personnel, mostly his SEAL brothers, plus Pete, who stood as best man for the short ceremony. Following an adrenaline honeymoon rock climbing El Capitan at Yosemite National Park in California, the couple settled into a little bungalow-style house in Cocoa Beach, just minutes from their work at the Cape.

  Jack reminisced while looking up at the moon and the stars, which instantly reeled him back to his screwed-up reality.

  Sitting in the passenger seat while Palmer calmly steered the rig down Highway 528 through Cocoa heading for the bridge leading to Cocoa Beach and the Atlantic Ocean, Jack got the sudden urge to punch someone—and have someone punch him back very, very hard. Maybe that’s what he needed instead of some happy fucking thoughts: a good old-fashioned bar fight to get his head screwed back on.

  “You okay there, buddy?” Palmer asked. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”

  “Do you ever get the feeling that things aren’t the way they should be?” Jack asked before he could stop himself.

  It only took a microsecond before the conspiracy theorist nodded and said, “All the time, my friend. All the damn time. I’m telling you, nothing, absolutely nothing is really as it seems. Everything, from the water we drink and the food we eat to the clothes we buy and the girls we date, is carefully controlled and watched by big brother up in the sky. There’s really no place to hide. And the Internet only made things worse.”

  “How so?”

  “It proved that people are quite willing to trade off their privacy in return for things like free Facebook accounts, giving Uncle Sam even more insight into our personal lives.”

  “So, what can you do?” Jack asked, choosing to keep stoking this guy as a way to disengage from the reality of his situation. Though in a way, Jack’s current altered state of mind only helped give Palmer’s view of the world a certain degree of credibility.

  “Well, of course you go on,” Palmer replied matter-of-factly. “You keep doing what they’re expecting you to do, every day, week after week, year after year. But you do it with full knowledge that the world as you know it is nothing but an illusion created by those in power.”

  “An illusion?” The word struck a chord in him.

  “That’s right, my friend. You see, there ain’t no accidents, Jack.
Everything, stock market swings, oil prices, and even the news is centrally controlled and managed. Sometimes things gets away from them, shit like 9/11 cybercrime, and AIDS, but eventually Uncle Sam manages to un-fuck its fuck-ups and keep the machine rolling forward.”

  Palmer steered the rig from Highway 528 onto A1A at the end of the bridge as it reached Cocoa Beach and the entrance to the Kennedy Space Center off to their left.

  “So it’s still there,” Jack mumbled, for a moment wondering how his altered mind would see the Cape. But it looked just as he had left it this morning, and for a moment he almost told Palmer to drop him off at the security checkpoint. Walking straight into NASA with his suit in hand would be one quick way to get answers.

  “What’s still there, Jack?”

  “Ah, nothing,” he replied, but Palmer had already caught him looking in the direction of the brightly lit KSC. “Take a right at the next light,” he added, guiding the truck driver toward his home and his wife—at least according to his confused mind.

  “You’re one strange man, Jack Taylor,” the trucker replied, shooting him another glance before steering the rig onto the right lane as they approached the intersection. “But I still think you’re one of the good guys.”

  “What makes you think so, Lou? You’ve known me for less than an hour.”

  Palmer shrugged, put on his blinker, and made the turn. “I may not be the smartest guy on the planet, Jack, but I’m a pretty darn good judge of character.”

  “Keep down this street for about a quarter of a mile. Take a right on DeLeon Road. It’s right before we get to the Cocoa Beach Junior High,” Jack said, before asking, “So, why am I strange?”

  “For starters, you’re full of contradictions.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, you’re genuinely fascinated by the sky, especially the moon. You’ve been staring at it most of the way here, like you haven’t seen it before. Then you’re staring at roads, billboards, and buildings with almost childlike interest. Some signs even make you close your eyes, like their mere presence is shocking you. So that suggests that you’re either not from here or haven’t been around in quite a while, which contradicts the fact that you claim to live in the area. But you do seem to know where you’re going, at least based on the directions you’re giving me. And then there’s this futuristic suit you’re wearing and your comment about the KSC still being there.” Palmer made quotation marks with his fingers, returning his hands to the wheel and adding, “Weird, Jack. You’re just one very weird dude … but still a good guy.”

  Although he found it amusing that Palmer was calling him weird, Jack didn’t want to engage this guy any more, chastising himself for having been that transparent. But he couldn’t help it. So much just didn’t make sense. Why were some things the same while others had changed, and quite drastically? Why was he alone at the landing site? Where had Claudette gone?

  “But I respect your privacy, my friend,” the trucker continued, taking a left on DeLeon. “Everyone’s entitled to their secrets. I sure have plenty of them.”

  Jack’s heartbeat kicked up a notch the moment Palmer turned onto his street. In this part of Cocoa Beach, city streets resembled fingers surrounded by the calm waters of the Indian River, the body of water in between the city of Cocoa and Cocoa Beach. The houses on either side had backyards facing the water, where homeowners kept their boats and other water equipment with ready access to the river and the Atlantic Ocean. Jack and Angie owned an old but reliable thirty-two-foot Boston Whaler with a pair of outboards, their weekend getaway with a long enough range to get down to Miami or even the Bahamas for scuba diving.

  “That one,” Jack said, stretching an index finger toward a white house with blue trim and a detached two-car garage to their right, about halfway down the block. Relief swept through him as he added, “Home sweet home.”

  “It’s been a pleasure,” Palmer said, stretching an open hand.

  For the second time that evening, Jack shook the trucker’s hand before reaching in between his legs for his backpack.

  “Really appreciate what you did, Lou,” he said, opening the door.

  “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Jack,” Palmer replied, producing a business card and handing it over.

  LOUIS PALMER

  INDEPENDENT TRUCK DRIVER

  “If you need anything, don’t hesitate,” he added. “I spend my life traveling between Miami and Orlando, so I’m always in the area. Good guys need to stick together. Especially in uncertain times like these.”

  Jack narrowed his gaze at this very odd man before pocketing the card, thanking him again, and closing the door.

  He waited for Palmer to turn the Peterbilt around and drive off before facing his home, which looked eerily just like the place he had left last night, when Pete interrupted his dinner with—

  Get on with it, Jack.

  Taking a deep breath, ignoring the increased pounding of his heart against his chest, Jack took a step toward the house. The lights were off, which was no surprise given that it was close to one in the morning. He stared at the garage, which he hoped had their five-year-old Honda and two Triumphs.

  Walking up the driveway and onto the small front porch, Jack looked toward the line of bushes hugging the front of the house, spotting the one dead shrub that Angie had been on his case to replace for weeks now.

  Jack rang the doorbell, his heartbeat now hammering his temples.

  Steady, Jack.

  A light went on in the bedroom, then another light in the living room, before the foyer light came on and a half-asleep but edgy female voice shouted, “There had better be blood or broken bones to ring my bell at this fucking hour!”

  Jack grinned. “Hey, it’s me. Open up.”

  He heard the door unlock as she said, “Pete? What the hell are you doing here at this hour?”

  He frowned.

  Pete?

  Jack was about to reply when the door swung open.

  Right there, in front of him, stood Angela. Only her hair was no longer short and dark but long and blond, and she now had a little chocolate freckle just above the right corner of her lips. On top of that, Angela wasn’t wearing one of her oversized MIT T-shirts as her nightgown but a long pair of silk pajamas.

  Sleep rapidly vanished from her hazel eyes as they grew wide, staring at him as if he had three heads. Her lips parted but nothing came out as she pointed a trembling index finger at him.

  Before fainting right into his arms.

  4

  CONSPIRACY

  The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.

  —General Douglas MacArthur

  Dawn in southern Florida.

  The warehouse’s window panes trembled to the roar of another F-16 on final approach to Homestead Air Reserve Base, home to the 482nd Fighter Wing, reminding Angela of years gone by. There was a time when she had been scared of the rattling glass under the corrugated tin roof of Mickey Valle’s Paradise Motorcycle Shop as Air Force jets from another era took off and landed at this base, once America’s first line of defense during those dreaded days in October 1962. Back then the world had been on the brink of war after discovering that the Soviet Union was installing medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, just ninety miles away, giving it an unprecedented offensive capability in the Western Hemisphere.

  Angela closed her eyes, remembering her father’s harrowing stories of Castro’s Cuba, including his own gut-wrenching escape at just fifteen years old in 1961 aboard a leaky rowboat, drifting north for almost a week before a U.S. Coast Guard cutter plucked him out of a stormy sea a few miles from Key West. Her father had gambled death at sea for a chance at freedom, however small. Anything was better than growing up under the unyielding fist of communism. So he had stolen a weathered dingy from a marina in the middle of the night and rowed north until he couldn’t row anymore, fin
ally passing out from exhaustion and exposure. But the winds and the currents had been merciful, carrying him away from oppression and delivering him to the home of the brave. And he had worked harder than hard in this land of opportunity, climbing his way from a mechanic apprentice to shop owner in just ten years—an impossibility in a country where his parents were labeled gusanos—worms—and imprisoned for simply complaining about long food lines.

  Angela took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the sweet aromas inside the old shop, with the smell of the ever-present WD-40, which brought her back to endless nights rebuilding engines and transmissions. Her nostrils also detected rubber, gas, and paint. But none came close to the amazing fragrance in the motorcycle world of burnt pre-mix, the residue of two-stroke engines that conjured images of the legendary Mickey Valle in oil-smeared coveralls, tools in hand, face deep in the guts of a Harley.

  She had been a kid back then, never once expecting that this amazing world of chrome, rumbling engines, grease, tattoos, and leather jackets would meet such an abrupt end when her father died, triggering some of the strangest years of her short teenage life.

  But she had survived them and gone on to become one of America’s top scientists.

  Only to lose her husband, her career, and now be hunted by the very same people she had devoted her life to serve.

  But this is far from over, she decided, opening her eyes and breathing deeply again, but this time filling her body with her father’s strength, with his unyielding resolve to fight for what is right, to risk it all for just one chance at a better life.

  Now it’s my turn, she thought, surveying the interior of the bike shop once more before settling her gaze on the heavily inked man standing next to a half-disassembled Harley atop a red hydraulic lift and wearing a pair of worn-out jeans, riding boots, and an open denim vest that exposed his muscular arms and chest. A heavy silver chain hung from a bull neck supporting a well-tanned square face sporting a contrasting white goatee and an intense pair of green eyes beneath closely cropped hair hidden by a Stars-and-Stripes bandanna.