by Josh Craven
DREAMLAND
Josh Craven
www.joshcraven.com
Copyright © 2017
Josh Craven
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights reserved under copyright, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form (including but not limited to electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
THE FRICTION BENEATH THE TIRES of the plane crept into Ben Witter’s white knuckles. Inertia sat fat on his chest as the twin-turboprop barreled along the runway. When the plane leapt off the airstrip, launching him into the Nevada dusk, the noise and vibration gave way to a disquieting calm that made him shift in the plump, leather seat. He looked out the window to his left at the sun gleaming off of the massive glass façade of the MGM Grand. Beyond it, a hundred miles into the desert, was his destination.
“Most people call it Area 51, but the JANET crew calls it Dreamland. Those of us that work there just call it ‘The Ranch.’”
Ben turned toward the petite brunette sitting across the aisle to his right who had spoken to him. He had done his research and knew that JANET was the official ferry airline of Area 51. Appropriately, JANET stood for “Just Another NonExistent Terminal.”
“I assume there will be little green men to welcome us when get off the plane,” Ben said. He forced a tight smile over the clinched fist in his gut. Despite recently earning his pilot’s license, he wasn’t a huge fan of flying, especially when someone else was behind the stick. He would be the first to admit he had control issues.
“Don’t be ridiculous. First of all, they’re not little or green, and secondly, we keep them locked up underground,” she said with a smile.
He learned from the DoD itinerary he had received Colonel Jennifer Maldek was the Installation Commander and senior medical officer at the remote facility located on the Nevada Test and Training range. It failed to mention she looked like Liz Taylor circa 1970.
“So, do you always fly to Vegas to personally greet contractors?” Ben asked.
“No. It’s pretty rare, actually. There are more contractors at the facility than there are service personnel. If I had to personally fly each of them out to the Ranch, I’d never get any work done.
“But,” Maldek continued, “you aren’t the typical contractor. Witter Biotech keeps the Ranch in business.”
“That’s kind of you, but I just make medical equipment. I’m sure the Air Force wouldn’t fold up its tents if it didn’t have the latest MRI machine.” Like Maldek, Ben spoke modestly but was proud of his achievements.
“You might be surprised,” she said.
Maldek was familiar with Ben’s public persona. Early in his entrepreneurial career the press labeled him a genius, the sexy, single Einstein of the biotech industry. When he rejected celebrity, the jilted media pivoted and painted him as a Bond villain, but the image never stuck, and in the end, most of the world saw him as a brainy James Dean, a rebel with a lab coat. He never wanted for female companionship, but neither did he ever want it for more than a night. He had work to do and no time for romantic entanglements.
After a moment, Maldek broke the silence. “We’ll be landing soon. We can grab a bite in the dining facility, and then I’ll show you to the guest quarters.”
“What about the medical facilities?”
“First thing in the morning,” she said. “Right after I introduce you to the little green men.”
“Wait—if I see them do you have to kill me?” Ben asked with a lopsided grin.
“Some things are worth the price of admission, Mr. Witter,” she said with a wink.
The plane banked right and began to descend. He could feel a knot drawing tight in his stomach, and he wondered if it was caused by the enigmatic Air Force installation on the ground below or by the beautiful officer to his right, or both.
###
After breakfast, Ben and Colonel Maldek climbed into a Polaris Razor four-seater ATV, and a young Airman chauffeured them to the far side of the base. Along the way, Ben saw several pieces of military wartech covered under the Non-Disclosure Agreements he had been required to sign prior to his trip: F-22 Raptors, F-35 Lightning IIs, and others he’d read about on dark net message boards.
When they arrived at the medical facility, Maldek swiped her key card and then pressed her palm to the laser scanner. A green light flashed twice and the elevator doors slid open. The two stepped inside, Maldek swiped her key card again and the doors closed. She punched a series of buttons on the key pad and Ben’s stomach rose into his throat as the elevator dropped like an amusement park ride.
“Where are we going?” Ben asked. He thought the only thing this deep underground was Hell.
“You’ll see.”
The elevator eased to a stop, like it landed on a marshmallow, and the doors slid open. Ben and Maldek stepped out into a cavernous room. Stainless steel and glass as far as the eye could see. Scores of men and women wearing white lab coats or baby blue medical scrubs passed by, walking with a purpose. Ben saw only a few military personnel in their Air Force uniforms, most of those manning security desks or shadowing non-uniformed persons.
“Wow,” was all Ben could muster.
“This is the largest medical facility in the world.”
“Why?” Ben’s shock leaked from his brain one word at a time.
“Careful, Ben,” Maldek said. “Don’t ask too many questions. Let me just say that this is a national security issue of the highest magnitude. The U.S. government contracted you because it needs the brightest mind in bioengineering, and that happens to be you. It also needs your discretion. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ has a unique meaning at the Ranch.”
“This is incredible.”
“It is, and it’s so Top Secret even the State Department knows its classification. Follow me to your lab.”
Ben stayed glued to Maldek’s left elbow as she led him away from the masses of people, down a long, white hallway, and to an isolated area of the facility where their footsteps echoed like thunder rolling down a canyon. As they walked, Maldek discussed the reason for Ben’s visit.
“We have a lot of Air Force personnel that reside here at the Ranch, and we have even more government contractors that are more or less permanent fixtures. The population here is in the tens of thousands. People of different ages, races, religions, and gender.”
She stopped walking and looked him in the eyes. “Gender, Ben. You know what that means, right?”
“I like to think I do,” he said with a half grin. His eyes, lingering on the curve of her hips, the swell of her breasts, backed up his claim.
“It looks like you are familiar with the concept. Eyes up here, cowboy” she said, snapping her fingers next to her temple. “It means lots of babies, Ben. That’s where you come into the picture. Like the rest of our medical facilities, our neo-natal unit runs on Witter Biotech, and several of the pieces of equipment have fallen offline. We aren’t sure if the problems are hardware or software related. Either way, we need you to get us up and running again, pronto.”
They approached a door on their left with a young Military Policeman standing guard. The MP’s right hand snapped up to a salute, his fingertips hovering at the corner of his brow. Maldek returned the gesture with equal vigor.
“Ben, this is Airman First Class DeShaun Downsen,” Maldek said. “He will be pos
ted outside your lab in case you need anything.”
My own, personal babysitter, Ben thought. “Nice to meet you, Airman. I’m Ben Witter.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Witter.”
Maldek swiped her key card and opened the door to small lab with a black, shiny floor and gray walls. There was a minimal sofa on the right and framed photo of the President on the left. In the middle of the room, a lone computer terminal sat on a black, Ikea desk.
“This is where you’ll be working,” she said. “I have your temporary credentials to access the network, and here’s your badge. It’s a key card like mine, but you only have limited, contractor access. It will get you in and out of your lab and in and out of the small breakroom across the hall. I’ll be back at five o’clock, and we’ll grab supper. My treat,” she said with a smile.
She had him test his keycard on the lab and the breakroom, and then she was off to tend to colonel business. Pretty sure she didn’t learn that strut in basic training, Ben thought as he watched her walk away.
Ben fixed himself some coffee and settled into the chair at his work station. He noted the time: 8:45. He logged into the network and started running diagnostics on all Witter Biotech equipment, looking for any devices not talking to the network.
By noon he completed the testing cycles. He took a short break for lunch and then started pouring over the results. It only took him a moment to find the pre-programmed glitches in the reports—some minor compatibility issues between a recent DoD security update and Witter Biotech hardware peripherals. He knew he could get his equipment updated and back online by five p.m., but if he did that, the government would likely have him off the premises and back in Vegas before dark. That would defeat the purpose of the intentional incompatible coding that had been his ticket into Area 51.
Ben decided his first step was to test the security of the base’s servers. A frontal attack would likely have him applying for asylum in Russia, so, under the guise of fixing his equipment, he assumed remote access to one of his hardware processors and began crawling the network.
Too quickly, Ben had accessed areas of the Pentagon that nobody with fewer than five stars or a Presidential seal on their jacket has clearance to view. As a U.S. citizen, the ease and freedom with which he was able to invisibly move through the DoD’s network, like a ghost roaming the halls of an old hotel, made him dry in the mouth and wet in the palms. After minimal site-seeing, he dropped down a level and resumed his electronic exploration of Area 51.
###
The Witter family was a tragic three-ring circus. Momma Darla left their south Dallas home every day smelling like cigarettes and Enjoli perfume, and she came home smelling like diner grease and Old Spice. Daddy Jim was a paper mill layoff cliché with a liver that was melting like wet toilet paper. Neither of them were parent material, so Ben was left to care for his intellectually disabled sister, Hannah.
In normal families, a dearth of cash would be the flame that ignited the smoldering powder-keg of frustration, but Ben’s family lived just across the state line from normal. In the Witter world, it was the exact opposite: Darla brought in more money than any double-shifting waitress in the history of food service.
Ben was fifteen and Hannah was six on the night his dad got whiskey-bent on a Hank Williams level and drove his pickled ass up to the diner to see his wife in action. He stumbled into the restaurant and looked around for her, his head swinging side-to-side like a busted barn door. When he couldn’t find her, he told Pastor Arnold’s wife to stop gawking or else he’d shove her hamburger up her cooter, then stormed through the kitchen and out the back door where he found Darla in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler with a Yankee truck driver’s progeny dripping off her chin.
Jim pulled a squared-off little .38 from the back of his britches and popped a neat hole in the truckers chest, then he used the little six-shooter to pistol-whip the teeth right out of Darla’s pouty little money maker. He grabbed the wad of cum-stained twenties from his wife’s purse and jumped in the car. He tore out of the gravel parking lot, flicking his tongue between the V in his fingers at Mrs. Arnold, who was staring out through the plate glass window. He made it six miles up the road before he wrapped himself around an oak tree.
Drama like that doesn’t go unnoticed, and the next day Child Protective Services started nosing around. Darla was arrested for prostitution, and the kids were sent to live with good ol’ Uncle Texas. Six-year-old Hannah was adopted quickly, but being a fifteen-year-old male, Ben had no such luck. He bounced around a few foster homes until he was eighteen. His off-the-charts test scores, and the shitty end of the stick life had handed him, opened college doors and the scholarship coffers.
With a PhD in bioengineering from Stanford, he was heavily recruited into the private sector, but after a couple of years he walked away from six-figures and launched Witter Biotech. He dedicated his personal life to finding Hannah and replacing the last image he had of his sister: her screaming “No, NO! Help me Bonk-Bonk!” as she was carried kicking and clawing from the courtroom by a squinty-eyed mole-man with a CPS badge.
Witter Biotech’s medical patent portfolio made its founder and sole proprietor a rich man on paper by age 30, and when Ben took the company public and sold a slice of the pie, he became one of the youngest billionaires in the world. He took pride in contributing to the human race, not just developing a new tech to keep people digitally sedated while you get Bill-Gates-rich selling off every scrap of their personal data you can mine. He viewed today’s social media entrepreneurs as modern-day forty-niners, but instead of risking their lives for gold nuggets, the current breed of prospectors were little more than geeky vampires with ethics that made the tobacco industry look like Mother Theresa.
###
Ben’s knife pierced the seared crust and slid into the hot, pink meat on his plate. “I’ve always heard the military feeds soldiers well, but this steak is amazing. And a glass of merlot, too?”
“Dining—it’s one of the few luxuries we have here at the Ranch.” Maldek said.
“Luxury is certainly the right word. A good steak is a rare treat these days.” Mortar shells of flavor burst in his mouth. His business dealings had taken him to the far corners of the world where, despite the prolonged Global Livestock Famine, he’d tasted the finest steaks—the lean, ruby-red Fassone beef of Italy; tender Kobe steak, swirled pink with intramuscular fat, from the Tajima cattle of Japan—but the cherry-colored filet on his plate rivaled any cut from any region.
“So? You like?” she said.
“Very much.” He made no effort to be discreet as his eyes caressed Maldek’s feminine features like a blind man’s fingers. Her beauty brought to mind the flavors of exotic flesh with Venus dimples and luxurious manes. “So is there a Mr. Maldek?”
“No, there’s not,” Maldek said from across the table, the claret juices of her steak glistening on her plump lower lip, her eyes studying his.
Ben hid the happiness that played at the corners of his mouth behind his wine glass. He was pleased she was warming to him, lowering her guard. He pulled the chalice from his lips and asked, “Is there a missus Maldek?”
“I am currently between relationships. Can we leave it at that?”
“Of course,” Ben said. He felt a mild, reflexive shock of electricity in the tip of his manhood as he considered the many scenarios that her response begged him to consider.
“Business, Mr. Witter,” she said, pushing the heavy haze of lust from between them. “How was your progress today? I should hope your diagnostics turned up some answers as to why much of your equipment is offline.”
“Yes,” he said. “I was able to identify a coding conflict with one area of the DoD’s recent update to its security program. DoD security takes priority and overrides the coding of the equipment. That way security is maintained, but at the expense of functionality of the device. I should have everything back online by end of day tomorrow.”
Ben knew exactly the opposite to
be true. By the end of tomorrow, the United States military’s most guarded and secretive installation would be in utter chaos. If that wasn’t the case, it would mean he had much bigger problems than his company’s medical equipment being offline.
“Great,” Maldek said. “I assume you can update your equipment so we won’t have this issue every time the security programs are updated?”
“Yeah, it should be a simple fix,” he said, his ego stung by her aspersions. “I’ll update the code in the morning, and then I’ll have a few hours to run diagnostics and test it against changes to the other programs the equipment communicates with.”
“Excellent. My medical staff will be glad to have everything back up and running,” she said. She dabbed the corner of her mouth with her napkin and then, without looking up from her plate, added, “I hate to bother you with this, but my personal laptop is giving me fits, running really slowly—any chance I could get you to stop by my apartment before you go back to your quarters?”
He swallowed the last bite of his steak and chased it down with a sip of wine. “Absolutely.”
###
The next morning, Ben sat in his tiny work lab, seventeen stories below the surface of the earth, wearing the same clothes he had worn the day before. The MP stationed outside the lab’s door had looked at Ben with a raised eyebrow when he and Maldek had arrived just before seven a.m.
After Maldek left him, Ben dove into the cyber-brain of the base and picked up where he left off the day before, exploring Area 51 from the backside.
The U.S. Government claimed that it let the rumors of alien UFO research ferment in the public consciousness in order to deflect attention from the “true” purpose of Area 51: top secret, experimental military aircraft and weaponry. His descent into the installation’s digital nervous system, like a diver passing through multiple thermoclines, bore this out.
