The fact was that no one knew what had happened in Anaheim, just as no one really knew what was wrong with Jacob Slater. The doctors who had analyzed him two decades earlier hadn't actually found anything definitively wrong with him. Yes, they had offered an authoritative-sounding diagnosis, but it wasn't as if they had discovered anything concrete like an imbalance of bodily humors or a band of angry dwarves living in his small intestine. All they had done was to confirm that, yes, there was something a little off about young Jacob, and lump him into a category with a few million other kids who were a little off---a category called "Asperger's." When all else fails, science comes up with a label, like "gravity" or "inertia" or "Asperger's" and calls it a day. And that, in a nutshell, is how the Anaheim Event was born. It was a name that explained nothing and meant nothing, but it stuck the phenomenon into a category around which life could go on more or less as usual.
Jacob was, in fact, one of seven explosive experts from various agencies who had been called on to help explain the Event. Experts in other disciplines had been recruited as well, of course---some three dozen men and women bearing laminated badges identifying them as hailing from some arm of the government or other wandered about the crater at any given time, jotting down God-only-knew-what in government-issued notepads and talking to God-only-knew-whom on government-issued mobile phones. Jacob couldn't fathom who all these people were, and he didn't make much of an effort to find out; he communicated only with his direct superiors and the other blast guys, not only because of his aforementioned discomfort with strangers, but also because that seemed to be what his superiors wanted. Interagency cooperation was all well and good, but it was understood to be the sport of the aristocracy; rank-and-file workers like Jacob were expected to keep to their own kind.
Jacob's own notepad was empty, because despite having been on-site for six weeks, he still didn't know where to begin. None of his training seemed to apply; it was as if they had called him to investigate the site of a UFO landing or diagnose a case of lycanthropy. The only inference he could draw from the scene was so bizarre, so far outside anything he had ever experienced, that he dared not even write it down for fear of where it would take him. So he had spent six weeks walking in circles trying to devise a reasonable explanation when it was clear that whatever happened here was anything but reasonable.
Jacob sat in a crouch at the edge of the Anaheim crater, letting sand fall between his fingers and wondering what he was going to tell his superiors. A hundred or so feet away, behind a barrier of hurriedly constructed fencing, a handful of tourists stood gawking and taking pictures. The authorities would have preferred to keep the public farther away from the crater, but the blast site (as those in charge insisted on calling it) was so huge and so close to the center of bustling downtown Anaheim that isolating it had been effectively impossible. Still, they made a good public show of keeping the area secret as a matter of national security, with twenty-foot-high chain-link fencing topped with barbed wire marking a perimeter some hundred feet outside the rim of the crater, and National Guardsmen patrolling the streets a quarter mile out. The sight of armed men in camouflage gear driving around town in Humvees made for a surreal juxtaposition with the amusement park atmosphere of Anaheim, prompting one cynical joker to spray paint a nearby building with the moniker FASCISM-LAND. The perpetrator was arrested and held for three days without access to an attorney as an "enemy combatant" before being handed over to the local police, a regrettable episode that not surprisingly failed to quiet protests that the military had overstepped its authority.
"Hey, um, Slater," called a voice. "You are, um, going to be late." It was Kevin Samson, another member of the blast team. That's what they were calling it: the "blast team." Jacob found the name ironic not only because he was pretty sure that what had caused this crater was in no way any kind of blast, but also because the members of the team were some of the dullest people he had ever met. What was it about explosive guys that made them so impossibly boring? Did a life centered on explosions cause a man's personality to somehow implode? Not that Jacob minded; he actually preferred dull people, because they made few social demands and tended to make him look interesting by comparison. "Team" was also a stretch, as once the bus from the blast site deposited them back at their hotels, each team member went his separate way, not seeing the others again until the bus picked them up the next morning. This "blast team" was as big a blast and as much of a team as the 1962 Mets.
"I'm coming," muttered Jacob. He turned and trudged along the edge of the crater toward a parking lot crammed with the double-wide trailers that acted as the Anaheim Command Headquarters, On-site Operations, which had the unfortunate acronym ACHOO. He made his way through the maze of trailers to the one marked Central Briefing. Below the official sign identifying the building was a hand-painted piece of laminated cardboard that read GOOFIE. All of the trailers had been given cartoon character names that later had to be modified due to threat of a lawsuit. As a result, GOOFIE now sat nestled between MICKEE, DONULD and MINNEE. The U.S. military feared no fighting force on earth, but even it was no match for the army of attorneys that served the Mouse.
Jacob walked up the ramp that led to GOOFIE and went inside, taking a seat at a table at the front of the room, along with the other members of the blast team. They sat with their backs against the wall, facing an assortment of military and civilian higher-ups that had gathered to hear them speak. This was to be the third briefing delivered to the Heads of the Joint Anaheim Command (unofficially known as HeadJAC) by the blast team. The previous two briefings consisted mainly of the blast team members pleading for more time to assess the situation, and there had been a lot of pressure leading up to this latest briefing to deliver some kind of preliminary report on what had happened. The blast team had, as a result, written up a sketchy eight-page report that was long on descriptive information and very short on causality. The report had been distributed to the HeadJAC members the previous day, but the real trial by fire was going to be the Q&A period following the briefing.
After the briefing had been called to order, Kevin Samson began to read the report word for word, pausing often for generous drinks of water. Kevin had been chosen as the de facto spokesperson of the blast group because of his painfully deliberate, halting way of talking. Only thirty minutes had been allotted for the briefing; it was conceivable that he could use up the entire time reading the report and the Q&A period would have to be postponed.
"Preliminary report on the kinesthetic dynamics of the Anaheim Event," Kevin began. "Um." He picked up a water bottle from the table in front of him, unscrewed the lid, put the opening to his lips, took several small swallows, screwed the lid back on, and set the bottle back down on the table. He continued, "Before drawing any conclusions from the, um, physical evidence present at the scene of the Anaheim Event, hereinafter referred to simply as 'the Event,' it is necessary to...undertake a, um, thorough cataloguing of the...data at hand." Kevin cleared his throat and continued, "To wit." He cleared his throat again, said, "Excuse me," and picked up the water bottle again. He unscrewed the lid, took several more sips, screwed the lid back on, and set it down once more. He began again, "To wit. Um."
A gruff voice from the back of the room broke the silence. It was the deputy assistant director of the FBI, Dirk Lubbers. "Look," he said. "Do you know what kind of bomb this was or not?"
Kevin paled. He riffled through the eight-page report as if looking for a section entitled "What Kind of Bomb It Was." He didn't find anything of the sort. "Um," said Kevin. "Before drawing any conclusions, um..."
"For Christ's sake," Lubbers growled. "There are seven of you, and you've had six weeks to examine the scene. Surely you can tell us something." Murmurs of assent bubbled up from the assembled members of HeadJAC.
Brighton Quincy, another member of the blast team, spoke up. "We have a theory," he said, which was news to Jacob and the rest of the team.
"Go on," said Lubbers.
"W
e believe that a device producing an extremely high-temperature, symmetrical blast could conceivably have vaporized the stadium, converting much of the matter within range to plasma. The super-heated plasma would have shot upwards, creating a massive vacuum at the scene that would have sucked everything into it from immediate vicinity. This would explain the inverted blast pattern we found, as well as the lack of any glazing or other typical signs of an explosion, such as..."
He was cut short by the sound of harsh, barking laughter. It was Lubbers. "You're telling me that what caused...this," he said, gesturing toward the giant crater visible outside, "was a bomb that was so effective it destroyed the evidence of its own explosion?"
Kevin leaped to the rescue. "I think that what Mr. Quincy is saying is that theoretically, um."
Quincy tried again. "It isn't inconceivable that a very high-energy blast, not nuclear because we'd have detected some fallout, but some sort of controlled plasma reaction..."
"Jesus Christ," spat Lubbers. "I scraped through physics in high school with a C minus and even I know that's bullshit. You guys don't have a damn clue what caused this. A hundred and forty thousand dead, and you don't have a goddamned clue."
Jacob found himself on his feet, clearing his throat. Suddenly all eyes were on him. Good God, he thought, what am I doing?
"It wasn't a bomb," he said.
"'Scuse me?" said Lubbers.
"I, uh, suspect that it, uh, was not actually a bomb," said Jacob. Great, he thought. I'm turning into, um, Kevin.
"Not a bomb," chuckled Lubbers. "OK, I'll bite. What was it then? A UFO? Bigfoot? The world's largest Dyson vacuum?"
The room erupted in laughter.
Jacob took a deep breath. He stared at his feet because he dared not confront the jeering faces in the room, but spoke clearly, willing each word out of his mouth. "Something like that," he said. "Clearly this...event...was not caused by any kind of ordinary explosive device. In fact, other than the, uh, sheer devastation, there's no evidence of an explosion at all."
"No evidence of an explosion," said another voice. "You mean other than the quarter-mile diameter crater in the middle of Anaheim."
Nervous laughter filled the room.
Still Jacob did not look up. He went on, "Yes, uh, as I said, no evidence other than the crater. That is, we're assuming it was an explosion because, well, that's the only phenomenon we've ever experienced that is capable of creating a scene remotely like this. But if you look at the scene as its own thing, that is, not as something under the heading of 'blast crater,' you would come to the conclusion that it was caused by something else entirely. Something, uh, not an explosion."
"Something, uh, not an explosion," repeated Lubbers mockingly. "Can you be just a little bit more specific?"
"I believe I can," said Jacob. He took a deep breath and looked Deputy Assistant Director Lubbers straight in the eye. "I believe what caused this," he said, "was an implosion. Rather than exploding outward, the device---call it an anti-bomb---sucked Anaheim Stadium into it. It imploded the whole area. "
"Imploded?" said Quincy, doubtfully. "That's impossible. And even if there were such a device, which we know there isn't, where did everything go? Where did a hundred and forty thousand people and five thousand tons of earth and concrete disappear to?"
"Well," replied Jacob nervously. "It's impossible to say. Outer space, maybe."
"Are you shitting me, Slater?" growled Lubbers. "Anaheim Stadium was sucked into outer fucking space?"
"Not necessarily," answered Jacob hurriedly. "That's one possibility. But to remove that much matter that quickly would require some kind of rift in space-time itself, some kind of wormhole or portal. The other end of the portal might open somewhere in deep space, but it could just as well open into another dimension. Once you've established the possibility of a rift in space-time, there's really no limit to..." Jacob broke off, having come to the uncomfortable realization that everyone in the room, including his "teammates" in the blast group, thought he was crazy. It didn't matter what he said at this point; no one was going to hear him. He might just as well be talking about leprechauns and the Easter Bunny as wormholes and other dimensions.
Lubbers narrowed his eyes at Jacob. "You're telling me," he said, "that it is your professional opinion that Anaheim Stadium was sucked through a portal to another dimension?"
Jacob had to admit that when he phrased it like that, it did sound a little silly. "Sir," he said haltingly, "I have no professional opinion on the matter. I, uh, my expertise and experience fail me. What I'm offering you is an attempt at an assessment uncolored by prejudice. I'm shooting in the dark, sir. We all are."
"Well, Mr. Slater," said Lubbers, "you'd better hope to God that your alternate dimension exists, because that sort of fairy tale Star Trek bullshit sure as hell isn't going to fly in this one."
With that, he walked out of the trailer. The briefing was over.
EIGHT
circa 2,000 B.C.
"Well, this is ridiculous," observed Tiamat irritably. "We're going on, what, three weeks of rain now?"
Mercury nodded. "It'll be twenty-one days on Thursday."
"And no word from Nabu," she said. "We're running out of food."
Nabu had left four days earlier on a raft with three other men on an expedition to the mountains to the east in an attempt to scrounge up some food.
"OK, that's it," Tiamat said. "You need to go find out what's going on."
"Me?" asked Mercury. "What am I going to do? I don't know anybody in Weather."
"This is more than weather," said Tiamat. "This is a cataclysm. The Department of Weather might be involved, but they can't do something like this without approval from higher up. We need to go to the top and ask them what the hell they're trying to pull."
"And by 'we,'" said Mercury, "I assume you mean me."
"Well, I can't go, can I?" said Tiamat. "I've got a civilization to run." She motioned at the hundreds of bedraggled lumps of humanity huddling together under makeshift shelters. She and Mercury sat in comfort in a luxurious tent on the northwest corner of the ziggurat guarded by a dozen cherub henchmen.
"Wouldn't you rather take a little vacation at the Courts of the Most High?" Mercury asked. "The weather there is beautiful this time of year. I'm sure I can manage the civilization for a few days."
"No, no, it wouldn't do for me to leave my people," Tiamat said, watching an elderly woman struggling to cross a torrent of water that had formed where the rain poured off Tiamat's tent. "Move it, you old battle-ax! You're blocking the view! Also, there are some pending legal matters that make a visit to the Courts inconvenient for me at the present."
"Another outstanding warrant?" Mercury asked wearily.
"Don't judge me, Mercury," Tiamat snapped. "You don't know what it's like, trying to build a great civilization while abiding by all these ridiculous regulations. Did you know they've outlawed human sacrifice? How are the people supposed to express their devotion if they can't occasionally sacrifice one of their children to me?"
Mercury frowned. "Didn't you just have a child burned on an altar last week?"
"That was a mercy killing," Tiamat said. "He had a harelip."
"Many harelips live long and productive lives," Mercury replied.
"I know," said Tiamat, "but nobody could understand a word he said. It was very frustrating."
"I see," said Mercury.
"The point is," Tiamat went on, "I've got to sort out a few things down here before I can show my face in Heaven again. Those idiots at the Seraphic Civilization Shepherding Program keep trying to micromanage the situation down here, but they'll change their tune once Babylon is the greatest civilization on the Mundane Plane. All of my minor transgressions will be forgiven then. But until that happens..."
"You need me to be your go-between," said Mercury. "I got it."
The next day, Mercury made his way to the Megiddo Portal, which was some four hundred miles to the west. Traveling by air most of
the way, it took him a little over two hours.
The Megiddo Portal was located on a small rock outcropping that was virtually impossible to reach by foot. For an angel, however, it presented no challenge. Mercury alighted on the intricate pattern carved into the rock and blinked out of Mundane existence, reappearing a split second later in the arrivals area of the planeport.
He walked to the portal bearing the markings of the Courts of the Most High and soon found himself walking the gold brick paths of Heaven's most prominent plane.
Mercury strode the path to the great pyramid-shaped building that housed the Apocalypse Bureau. Once inside, he made his way to Uzziel's office and knocked. A curt "Come in!" greeted him, and he opened the door.
Uzziel was on the phone. "No, I won't hold!" he shouted. "I'm a deputy assistant director of the Apocalypse Bureau, and I demand to...Damn it all, they've put me on hold again. Sit down, Mercury. Let me guess, you're here to complain about the flooding? You and every other cherub assigned to the Mundane Plane."
Mercury shook his head innocently. "Flooding? No, I was just stopping by to see how things are holding up here at the home front. What's this about flooding?"
"Half the damn Mundane Plane is underwater," Uzziel said. "My phone is ringing off the hook with angels asking me if we're running some kind of drill. You really haven't noticed any flooding?"
"Oh, there's been a little rain," Mercury said dismissively. "It doesn't bother me. I find it soothing."
"No, I don't want to be transferred to the Apocalypse Bureau!" Uzziel shouted. "I am the Apocalypse Bureau. My name is Uzziel. I'm trying to find out if you...Damn it all to Hell!"
"On hold again?" Mercury asked.
Uzziel sighed. "I'm actually glad you're here," he said. "Maybe you can figure out what the hell is going on with this flooding."
A nasal voice spoke from Uzziel's intercom. "Sir, you have a call on line two. Should I have them call back?"
Mercury Rises Page 5
