Mars Journey: Call to Action: Book 1: A SciFi Thriller Series

by Bill Hargenrader

  Brent was speechless and just stared in stunned disbelief.

  “Do you understand?” the cop demanded.

  “I do,” Brent answered. “Are we done here?”

  “We are.”

  “Good. Now get off my property!”

  Chapter 18

  Brent sat down at the table. His gun was gone, now. The glass of whiskey was still sitting there. Brent just stared at it, shaking his head.

  “RAHHHHH” he shouted at the ceiling, at the stars, at the gods.

  He slammed his fist down on the table. The glass of whiskey spilled over and ran towards his stack of mail.

  “No, no, no, no,” he said as he automatically went to grab a towel to blot the alcohol.

  He moved the stack of bills and letters over to the counter. When he plopped them down, one fell out onto the floor, the blue letter with Mars Now Needs You emblazoned in gold. The words seemed to stare up at him from the floor.

  “What is this nonsense?” Brent picked up the envelope, tore it open, and pulled out a one-way ticket to Australia. Also in the envelope was a handwritten note.

  Dear Brent Carlson, read the letter. This is the 10th letter we have written you. Since you submitted your application a year ago, you have been routinely advanced to the next levels of competition. You are currently ranked #1 in the world, and therefore are the first choice for the Journey Program Partnership. We require you to respond to this letter and meet with us within one week of its postmark or your posting will be forfeit.

  Brent checked the postmark. “Hmm. That’s in two days…”

  The letter went on: We are aware of your stature as a former American astronaut and co-architect of the United Path to Mars Plan, and therefore, we would like to offer you special consideration.

  Kindly, Dr. Stuffert and Mr. Jensen

  “That actually sounds promising,” said Brent.

  He went to throw the envelope and its contents off to the side when the soothing voice of Shayla in his head spoke to him and said Connect the pieces.

  He froze. His eyes locked on some distant unseen point. It was happening again. Better just strap in for the ride.

  His mind revved up to higher and higher cycles. Brent felt like he was no longer in that room. He was in his mind, his beautiful, unique, powerful, problem-solving mind. Images of Shayla, Johnson, Andrea, Yuri, Li, Ken Solum, Herr Graden, and the Journey swirled, and expanded. He saw Earth, and off over the horizon, a red blur, and he was hurtling towards it. The blur gained focus and clarity and it was Mars, and they were flying by it, and he was on the ship, and they were all dead.

  And suddenly, it all went in reverse and increased to triple speed, then ten times speed, all the way back to Earth, all the way to the present.

  What went wrong?

  Backwards, Brent went through pain, struggle, riots, celebrations, as if billions of voices spoke out all at once, backwards, and then forwards again to Mars, and back to where he was, in this room.

  Fix it!

  Again and again, faster and faster.

  Modify that!

  The technology flashed in and out of focus, and Brent caught glimpses, remembering all he could, small changes and big changes. He hovered in the space between worlds, godlike, seeing the connections, the powers, the streams of energy, and the visible pull of gravity. Finally, at impossible speeds, Brent flew forward, until Mars filled his vision, and he was hurtling towards the surface. Before impact, he realized he was standing on Mars with Earth looming impossibly large on the horizon. He looked down at his feet, standing on red soil, and up at the blue dot against the backdrop of black.

  This is the way.

  And then, all went black, and Brent dropped to his knees, exhausted.

  After a few minutes, Brent regained his feet. He wasn’t sure how long he had been like that, but the clock on the wall told him that it had been at least an hour. It was getting late.

  Brent had gone into powerful mental trances like this ever since he was a kid. Usually under stress and pressure his higher cognitive functions kicked into overdrive. His parents used to worry about him, but Brent learned to use it like a tool. He hadn’t gone into a mental trance like that for some time. Last time he had, was when he concluded that Herr Graden was behind the conspiracy to murder his wife. He could only surmise that maybe the alcohol was keeping his brain suppressed, and this last week of clarity allowed him to tap into that state again.

  He put the ticket and envelope down on the table next to the photo of Shayla. He picked up the bottle of whiskey and walked to the sink, emptying its contents down the drain. He picked up his cell phone as he stumbled to his bedroom and hit the speed dial for Lawrence.

  “Jesus, Brent,” Lawrence answered on the other end. “It’s one in the morning! I heard about the cops. Do you need me to come over?”

  “Just come in the morning,” Brent replied.

  “You drunk?” asked Lawrence, sounding worried. “You okay?”

  “See you at nine. Crashing.”

  Brent hit the button to hang up, faced the bed, and crash-landed onto it. He was out before he even settled in.

  Chapter 19

  Lawrence arrived at Brent’s house at nine the next morning. He had a key but didn’t need to use it. The front door was wide open.

  Lawrence entered through the front door. He and Brent had been friends together since they were kids, and he had gotten used to Brent’s crazy ideas. But the state of this house had him worried. It looked like a bomb had gone off.

  Brent appeared in front of him with a stack of papers in his hands, having come up out of the basement.

  “I need you to sell the house,” Brent told him. “Use any profit to cover your fees. Get this place cleaned out. Anything in the basement and on the memory shelf in the living room, have sent to storage. Please oversee that personally, and if there is anything left over, get me a camper or something, will ya?”

  Lawrence stared with his mouth agape and could only let out, “Uh, sure thing, Brent. You okay, buddy?”

  “Better than I’ve been in a long time.”

  “Care to elaborate?” Lawrence asked.

  Brent’s face grew sad. “I’m tired of running. I’m tired of hiding. And I’m tired of drinking myself to death. I’m tired of not being the person I was meant to be. I was going to kill myself last night, Lawrence. Like, really do it.”

  “Brent! I… I had no idea.”

  “I’m not telling you for pity or as a cry for help,” Brent said slowly. “I was going to do it. Then, when I was attacked by the man in black, I found myself fighting for my life. And that just didn’t compute. Why would I fight for my life when I was about to end it? That’s like a glitch in the Matrix, and for me, it was like a reboot of the system.”

  “A fresh start?” Lawrence suggested.

  “Something like that, yeah,” Brent said. “I realized that it’s time for me to make my move before I lose all my resources and credibility.”

  “I know what you want,” said Lawrence. “I’ve known that for years. But sometimes, the world isn’t ready. Sometimes, it’s not enough to want to be a better person. Or to be a better species.”

  “It’s way beyond that, Lawrence,” said Brent, raising his voice. “It’s not just about feel-good achievement. It’s about the very survival of our species on our planet.”

  Lawrence was a bit shocked at Brent’s ferocity. Brent picked up a small, globe-shaped paperweight from the table and tossed it back and forth from one hand to the other. He took a deep, calming breath before continuing.

  “There’s a law of progress that affects our lives. If you’re not active, you atrophy. If you’re not learning, you’re getting dumber. If you’re not progressing, you’re dying. It’s a forward-moving drive that can be found in all life forms, not just ours, and it can be found at higher and higher levels of systems, such as our global human presence.”

  “That’s a liberal mix of motivation and ecosystem theory there, but
I’m following,” said Lawrence.

  “We’re on an undeniable collision course unless something drastic happens. All the signs of it abound, if you just know how to look for it, much like you can find black holes by observing the space, time, and gravity that warps around them. Well, we have much that is warping around us, all the death and decay and disease and destruction all around us. Millions of species are dying off. We’re killing ourselves and the only home we have. And that’s because we stopped progressing as a species in one critical area.”

  “But we have access to better education, and homes, and cars, and luxury items,” said Lawrence. “Surely you have to recognize that.”

  “Those are economic indicators, and they tell only a fraction of the story. It is in our very human nature—in our DNA—to explore, and we’ve run out of places to explore on this planet. What happens when you put wild chimpanzees in a zoo?”

  “They get depressed and bored.”

  “That’s us. We are caged chimpanzees. Caged lions. And we hate our captors, and we hate ourselves for letting us be captured. And I don’t know precisely why or how I know, but I know with every fabric of my being that human exploration and habitation of Mars is the path to the next level of evolution for our species. It is the catalyst for raising the collective consciousness of our planet, and it is the vital element leading to the survival of our species, setting us free from our current doomsday course.”

  At that, Brent set down the globe, grabbed a hybrid map and spreadsheet from the table, and held it up for Lawrence to see. Patterns crisscrossed the continents. The word Focusing Lens was drawn across the top in black marker. Along the side, there were names and titles that Lawrence was just able to make out before Brent lowered it: The leader, the celebrity, the martyr.

  “That looks like a pretty complicated map,” Lawrence said.

  “It’s actually a key,” Brent said. “The key to everything.” He folded it and put it in his back pocket.

  “Everything, huh?” Lawrence said, unsure of whether his friend had finally snapped or if he was actually starting to understand, for the first time, what Brent had been after all along. “And what is all of this?” he said, pointing to the luggage stacked up at the door, hoping to change the subject. “It looks like you’re set to head out on quite the journey.”

  “The longest Journey, I would say,” Brent commented, picking up his wife’s photo from the table, folding it, and putting it in his back pocket. “I’m headed to the airport, Lawrence. And from there, Australia, and from there… I’m not quite sure. But I do know what I need to do now. Correction. I know what I am going to do.”

  “And what’s that, Brent?”

  “I am going to get us to Mars, and I won’t stop unless it kills me. And even then…” Brent’s voice trailed off.

  “And just how are you going to do that?”

  “Sometimes, it’s not about how you get something done. It’s about how bad do you want it.”

  With a slight grin on Brent’s face, the one that meant he was about to get into some mischief or trouble or both, he turned and walked out the door. Lawrence watched him leave, too shocked to say anything else and knowing too well that nothing he could say would stop Brent. Of all his friends, of all his legal clients, heck, of all the people he knew, that man just might have been the craziest. He was also the only one Lawrence knew of who could actually make good on a promise like that.

  Chapter 20 - Location: Northern California Mountain Wilderness, United States

  The pickup truck careened down the dirt road, brushing up against tree branches that whipped the antenna back and forth smacking off the windshield. Two men, one tall and the other short, dressed in black combat gear from head to toe were tossed back and forth in the cab as the vehicle took the curves hard. The truck took the crest at high velocity, and all four wheels left the ground. The man in the passenger seat shouted as his head hit the roof of the cab.

  “Jesus, slow down!” Shouted Kato, the shorter of the two. “This is killing my leg.”

  “Sorry,” said Walker, “but maybe you should be wearing your seatbelt or something.”

  “You’re going to kill us!”

  “You almost got us killed last night! The boss said we were just supposed to keep an eye on him. Only approach if someone were trying to do him harm.”

  “Well, you didn’t see what I saw, and now I’ve got to get surgery and rehab on this leg to thank for my efforts. Look out!”

  Walker slammed the breaks hard as a deer ran out in front of them. The truck came to sliding halt, kicking dust and rocks up in the air.

  “Come on, Walker! I told you to slow down!”

  “Relax, we’re here.”

  The truck stopped in front of an eight-foot-high barbed wire fence enclosure surrounding an eighty-foot cell phone tower. Walker cut the engine, trotted around to Kato’s side of the truck, and helped him out. They hobbled together to the gate, thumbed the combination lock open, and locked it behind them before making their way to an access hatch in the side of the tower. The doorway was barely large enough for Walker to squeeze through. Kato, the smaller of the two descended quickly despite his injury.

  Walker punched in the key code, and they both entered the underground communications bunker. Servers whirred and hummed, and flashing lights signaled the transference of terabytes of data.

  “This place shouldn’t exist,” said Kato.

  “Well, it does. Let’s get this call with the boss over with and get the heck out before someone else notices we’re here.”

  Kato hopped on one leg over to the phone console and slumped in the chair next to it. “How do you think he’ll know to call us—?”

  The phone rang.

  “There’s all kinds of sensor in here and outside,” Walker said as he leaned in and picked up the phone. “Delta, Hotel, Alpha, Kilo, five, eight, Foxtrot, Zulu, seven,” he spoke into the phone and waited for voice confirmation. “Yes, sir, we are secure. I’ll put you on speaker.”

  Walker reached out and flicked the speakerphone switch.

  “What in the nine hells happened out there?” came a deep voice, distorted and processed through a voice modulator.

  Walker and Kato just looked at each other.

  “Well?” the voice demanded.

  Walker pointed to Kato and mouthed the words, “Speak up.”

  “Things got crazy, sir,” said Kato.

  “Things weren’t supposed to get crazy. You guys are professionals. You’re Atlas Force for Christ’s sake! Your job was to observe and protect, and from what I can tell from the networked police reports, you nearly killed him.”

  “Walker nearly killed him,” said Kato.

  “Yeah, because you were getting your butt handed to you,” Walker cut in.

  “Enough. It’s like talking to a bunch of children out there. How did Carlson spot you?”

  “You’re not going to like this, sir,” said Kato, “but Carlson was about to do himself in.”

  “You mean… kill himself?”

  “Yes sir. I had to stop him somehow. I blew my cover, and the rest was just the fallout.”

  “Damn. I guess I should have seen that coming.”

  “That guy is like a one-man wrecking crew,” said Kato.

  “I know he is,” said the modulated voice. “You’re lucky to be alive. Where is he now?”

  “Gone,” said Walker. “We swung back this morning after we laid low the rest of the night, and his place is cleared out.”

  “Wait, what? Someone came and got him?”

  “No, sir. From what we can tell, he left on his own.”

  “And you have no idea where he is?”

  “None, sir,” said Kato. “I’m sure you can track him if you have access to your old deep search systems.”

  “I don’t, unfortunately. Until he pops back up, you guys go back to your normal routines.”

  “I don’t get it, though,” said Walker. “I know he’s an astronaut, and we
’ve been watching over him for a long time, but why is this guy so important?”

  “Can’t say over this line. I appreciate you working this one. I owe you.”

  The line when silent, and Kato flipped the speaker switch off. “Can’t say over this secure line? This might be the last time I agree to help you out with a favor from an old buddy.”

  “Yeah, like you have a choice right? But I agree, this one is a little too much over my pay grade. Let’s get you to a medic.”

  Chapter 21

  The man at the other end of the line sat staring at the phone, slowly shaking his head and rubbing his chin in contemplation.

  What have I gotten myself into?

  He slid the voice modulator into the desk drawer and stood up. He punched in a code on the keypad on the desk, disengaging the security protocols. Blackout panels retreated from in front of the windows. The red light over the door blinked out and turned green.

  With a heavy sigh, he walked to the window, opened the blinds, and looked out over the streets of Washington DC. The lunch trucks had pulled up on the streets, and his employees were gathering below.

  So oblivious, he thought. I guess that’s a good thing. They have no idea what’s coming. That’s why I do what I do.

  “Yeah, keep telling yourself that,” he said aloud.

  He walked to the mirror and straightened his already straight tie with the absentminded practice of someone who had been performing that motion for a very long time.