Overture

by Mark Wandrey

  “These officers are going to escort you to the camp,” Agent Anderson explained. “They will provide security.” The city smelled of fires and rotting trash. Across from the hotel was a pile of garbage bags the size of a van. Mindy looked up and saw smoke drifting over the roof of the hotel. The situation had deteriorated overnight. “Don’t straggle. If you’re left behind, we won’t look for you.” Everyone nodded, Mindy included. She had no intention of getting left behind with the city descending into anarchy.

  The police escort organized the thirty-odd people into a rough line, with two officers leading, two following, and the other four interspersed among them to keep the group moving. It was only seven blocks from their hotel to the portal camp, yet it felt like a mile. With the sounds of an angry crowd behind them, the assemblage moved along briskly.

  They were more than halfway there, Mindy in the center of the column, when she suddenly recognized a police officer near her, a young detective who looked just as disheveled and exhausted as the other seven. Still, his face was unmistakable. She edged toward him until she was walking next to him.

  “Good morning, Detective Harper,” she said. He started and jerked his head around to look at her. It was easy to tell how tired he was, because it took him a full second to recognize her.

  “Ms. Patoy,” he said, his stubbly cheeked face breaking into a grin. “Good to see you. I see you fibbed to me about wanting to get into the park.” She felt her cheeks grow hot as she smiled back. Despite looking as ragged as he did, the man was still quite handsome. Remembering she’d only abandoned her longtime boyfriend a short time ago, she quieted the butterflies in the pit of her stomach.

  “Just a little fib,” she admitted. They walked on for another block. “Are you on the project?” He gave her a sidelong look.

  “We’re just grunt workers,” he said. “Someone managed to get through to what’s left of the department and requested escorts, so they sent us.”

  “What’s left of the department? What do you mean?”

  “You don’t keep up with the news, do you?” he asked. She shook her head. “Most of the government is out of contact. The chief left on other business two days ago. As far as we know, a couple of senior investigators and the police academy commandant are maintaining the department as best they can. About half the force have abandoned their posts and run for a bunker in the Adirondacks.”

  “Bunker?” He gave her a bemused look.

  “They have you guys locked up pretty tight, don’t they?” He quickly summarized the story. “The TV and internet news keep running in circles, and NASA is just blowing smoke. Even the most trusting people in the government know that now.” He shrugged.

  “What about you?”

  “I’m a cop,” he said with conviction. “People trust me.” He walked on and shrugged again. “Besides, I got nowhere to go.”

  “No family?”

  “No, they’re all gone,” he said, “I was an only child.”

  “Wife? Kids?”

  “Never found the right person,” he said. They walked on for a bit. “I’ve thought about you a lot since we met.”

  “You mean since you arrested me?” He looked at the serious expression on her face, but Mindy wasn’t a good actor, and her face quickly broke into a wide grin.

  She chuckled. “I’ve thought about you a bit too,” she admitted.

  “I’d ask you out for a pizza, but I don’t know of any places that are still open.” Mindy nodded. They probably wouldn’t let her leave after this, based on the way they were treating her. “Are you okay here?” he asked her suddenly, in a comforting and authoritative policeman voice. She looked at him queerly. “I mean, are you free to go?”

  “Are you?” she replied.

  “That’s not the same thing,” he said.

  “It’s closer than you think,” she told him. His eyes narrowed, an understanding look crossed his face. She got as close to him as she could without drawing undue attention. “There isn’t anything in the mountains worth running to,” she said. She briefly considered telling him about the portal, but decided against it.

  “That silver asteroid thing?” he asked. “They’re not going to stop it, are they?”

  “No,” she whispered back. The look of defeat on his face was heart wrenching.

  “How bad will it be?”

  “Nobody knows.” She wanted to tell him more, that she might have a way out, and that she wanted him to go with her, but she kept it all to herself. A few minutes later, a pair of U.S. Army tanks parked at the barricade around the portal camp came into view. They were almost out of time.

  As they approached the perimeter, the soldiers next to the tanks waved them forward. Mindy felt a slight tug on her Osprey backpack. “What?” she said.

  “Shhh,” Billy hissed and gently moved her toward the line. “Until next time.” She glanced over her shoulder and saw Billy, along with the other officers, walking back the way they’d come.

  An NSA agent took charge of them inside the perimeter. The agent escorted them to a military bunkhouse trailer, their new home. There were nine compartments in the trailer, each holding three bunks with storage space underneath. Several people were loudly complaining there wasn’t enough room. Mindy, used to moving around, thought there was more than enough space. For the moment, she was the only one in her room. As she unpacked her Osprey, she found it. Detective Harper had tucked a police radio into an empty, unzipped compartment in her bag. Feeling a thrill of excitement, she turned it on and spoke into it.

  “Hello?”

  “I knew you’d figure it out,” Billy’s voice came through loud and clear.

  “You’re sneaky,” she giggled.

  “So I’ve been told. This is an unused frequency, but it can still be monitored. Plus, I couldn’t get you a charger, so when the radio’s dead, that’s it. I’ll check in with you twice a day, at noon and at 9pm. If you need me, call then.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Thanks!” But there was no reply. Mindy flipped the radio off and stashed it in the bottom of the drawer under her bunk. Two people came in a short time later, looking for sleeping space. She greeted them and went about making herself at home. Despite the grimness of the situation, there was a little smile on her face.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  May 15

  Osgood tried not to slam the phone down and almost succeeded. He looked at the phone then back at the computer screen. There were many confidential and top-secret emails displayed there. All of them told the same story about the asteroid formerly known as LM-245 and now known by the space community as The Anomaly. After four days of acting against The Anomaly, Excalibur’s probe had accomplished absolutely nothing. The Anomaly’s delta-v had not shifted by so much as one meter per second.

  The formal summary written by the analysis team at NASA used such words as “surprising” and “impossible.” The prototype ion drive only generated a few thousand newtons of thrust, yet over a hundred hours it should have succeeded in deviating The Anomaly at least a bit. Just like the nuclear weapons, the results were not what they expected. The conclusion was the worst.

  “Based on this data, there are only two reasonable conclusions. One is that The Anomaly is exerting thrust against the probe. This is unlikely as no evidence of drives or visible engines is present. The other conclusion is that The Anomaly weighs much more than previously thought somewhere around several hundred trillion tons.”

  “A hundred trillion tons,” Osgood said, “minimum.” It was the weight of a small moon in a shiny little dart no bigger than Manhattan. What did it mean? Doomsday, that’s what it meant. He looked sideways out the window at the dome less than 100 yards away. The only way off the doomed planet sat inside that dome, and it wasn’t working correctly. He confronted a thought he’d managed to avoid until now. I might die here.

  He’d known he would be one of those to go across almost from the beginning, an unspoken agreement between him a
nd Skinner. He’d even managed to forget that he was committing a supreme act of betrayal by not sharing the truth of the portal with his higher-ups at NASA, thereby ensuring he’d be one of the few. He could justify almost anything, if he didn’t have to look the people he was dooming to death in the face. It was easier before Excalibur failed so spectacularly, revealing its true purpose.

  He scanned the reports from the encryption team before filing the emails with a curse. What had they accomplished? Nothing, that’s what. The symbols matched nothing on Earth (naturally), and there was no context with which to undo what the mysterious woman had done. He simply didn’t know what to do.

  Osgood took a bottle of beer from the little refrigerator under his desk, popped it open, took a long drink, and began calling up images of the symbols on the portal. He never drank in the morning, but it was all he could think of to do.

  * * *

  Volant was close enough to yell at Osgood in his trailer and be heard, but he preferred watching and listening to the geek scientist via the numerous surveillance devices in the man’s trailer. Volant had spent many hours since the mysterious event took place being very careful to tell his boss no more than he needed to.

  “What a shit sandwich,” he said to the darkened trailer, shutters pulled, and only the multiple computer monitors casting light. He’d done nothing in the last 24 hours except analyze data, watch videos, review emails, and read analysis from NSA specialists working on the project. General absenteeism from government positions had been growing in double digit increments the last three days. The NSA was one of the few organizations with more than 90% of its employees still showing up for work. The main facility in Maryland was fully staffed, partly through reductions in field staff.

  A presidential order came out late the night before that effectively put most federal law enforcement personnel on crowd control and disaster response. The NSA responded by buttoning up most of their people in the Maryland compound to avoid notice. The latest email from his boss cut to the chase.

  “Volant, I need your conclusion, and I need it now.”

  He sighed and flexed his left hand, doing the exercises the doctor gave him. The arm hurt less, and he could feel his flexibility increasing. The doctor was due to take the cast off in another week, but by then it would all be over. A visitor was coming in six days. He looked at some of the intel one last time. A particularly damning piece was the material movements occurring under a manufactured account. He’d traced the name and found it didn’t match an actual person, and had only appeared a few days ago. He hit reply and started typing.

  “My conclusion is as follows…” The reply was as succinct as his boss’s demand. He stared at it for a full minute, his mouse hovering over the ‘send’ button. God only knew the shit-storm he was unleashing with this email. He hit the button. He wouldn’t see the real damage for a few days.

  * * *

  In Virginia, a program monitoring traffic across the internet picked up an encrypted message from one flagged account to another flagged account. It was routed to a decryption team, marked with highest priority. Minutes later a supercomputer crushed the code and broke the encryption. A coordinator deep in the bunker under the building received the message while he was in mid conference with several other people. He took one look at the email, and that was all he needed.

  “Gentlemen, we have to act now,” he said. They stared at each other for a second.

  “I’ll have the planes in the air in 15 minutes,” one of them said.

  “I’ll be on a chopper in that time,” another said.

  “We’ll coordinate when we’re in the air,” the recipient of the intercepted message said. In seconds, he was riding an elevator up to the roof where a helicopter was waiting. At a secure airport only a few miles away, hundreds of men sprang into action.

  * * *

  The guards at the portal entrance checked Mindy’s ID before desultorily waving her through. That, more than the lack of any real work, was the worst sign she’d seen. Inside, there were no staff. The various scientific implements sat idle, and only a couple of lights were on. The dais appeared unchanged from the last time she’d been here. She walked up to the dais, stopping just short to look around. No one stopped her, so she put a foot on the bottom step. It instantly sprang to life.

  “That’s not the same place,” she said looking at the nearly dark portal. There was a hint of light from the other side, though only a hint. She walked across to one of the light stands that hung over the dais, aimed it toward the portal and flipped it on. The light revealed a rock or stone wall on the other side. “That’s not the same place,” she said again, craning her neck to see as far sideways on the other side as she could. The wall was built of cut stone, she was sure, and it went in both directions as far as she could tell. Had the people on Bellatrix built a building around the portal?

  “They couldn’t have built that so quickly,” she said aloud just as the portal shut down. She started. It hadn’t been ten minutes.

  “No, they didn’t.”

  Mindy jumped, spinning around to see Osgood standing by the door. He had a beer bottle in one hand, and looked a little unsteady on his feet. He pointed with the hand holding the bottle.

  “Someone appeared a few days ago and…” he gestured at the portal, which had reappeared after she jumped, something she didn’t know was possible, “reprogrammed it, I guess you could say.” He drained his beer, and tossed the empty bottle toward the nearest trash bin, missing by feet. The bottle rebounded off the metal floor and rolled under a machine. He took no notice.

  She looked back at the portal and the stone wall. She’d known from the crypto group’s emails that something drastic had happened. She’d only come here out of desperation to find out. This wasn’t what she’d expected—not at all.

  “It’s not like Bellatrix,” Osgood said, again gesturing at the portal. “The atmosphere is all wrong. The radiation and temps are too high.” He burped and leaned against an instrument panel that threatened to topple over. He straightened up and glared at it as though the furniture had somehow done it on purpose.

  “You said someone did this?” Mindy asked. She felt she wasn’t convincing, but Osgood was too drunk to see through her.

  “Yeah, an older woman appeared in the dome and changed the portal.” He mimed pushing buttons, then did a surprisingly good imitation of the video Mindy had watched. “Poof, no more escape.” Mindy gawked. “Have you seen the lights?” He pointed to the perimeter of the dais. Once there had been 144 lights, with several out. Now, they were all there, but none were lit. “A soldier went through, so it still works. But he disappeared, and we haven’t heard from him again! Maybe monsters ate him.” He shrugged and turned to go.

  “What now?” Mindy asked. Osgood kept walking, so she shouted after him. “Can I try to fix it?”

  “Sure,” he said, walking out, “why not?” A moment later, he was gone from sight, leaving Mindy alone in the dome.

  She spent the rest of the day examining the symbols and their movement up close. With no one to watch her, she could experiment and didn’t have to conceal what she’d learned from eavesdropping on the crypto team’s efforts. Of course, nothing generated results. Some of the symbols did flash when she touched them, but that was the limit of the effect.

  It was hours later when she returned to her bunkhouse. Everyone else was already asleep or getting ready for bed. In the small work area, she got her computer out and made some notes. Mindy included a small diary entry about the extinguished lights, noting that there no longer appeared to be a limit to the number of transits, before she signed off for the night.

  She stowed the computer in her locker under the bunk, so she didn’t notice when it booted itself up in the wee hours of the morning, located a nearby secure network connection, and exploited a built in backdoor to establish a remote connection, and download everything she’d just done to the FBI’s data farm. The download finished in minutes, and the compu
ter dutifully erased all evidence of the event, and went back to sleep.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  May 16

  The next morning Mindy was at the dome bright and early. The mood in the camp was decidedly somber and disorganized. She could see the perimeter, a line of M1 tanks spaced every 100 feet, though there were only a few NSA types milling around. No one seemed to know what to do. The guard waved her into the dome without even looking at her badge. As before, the dome was empty, with no sign of Dr. George Osgood, drunk or sober.

  Mindy walked over to the portal dais. Nothing appeared to have changed from the night before. She had her tablet with her, on which she had made some notes, and an MRE. The previous night, an NSA agent brought a box of MREs to their bunkhouse. When they asked him what those were for, he informed them that the cafeteria had closed due to lack of staff and supplies. They divided the MREs evenly among themselves.

  She’d eaten MREs on a couple of remote astronomy trips. They didn’t taste great, but they were filling and had their own heaters. All you needed was water, and the water in their trailer still worked, unlike the internet. When she woke up, she found there was no internet service. After checking, she found a local network was still up, mirroring the government’s feed, but the rest of the internet backbone was down. There were several news stories about major disorder in cities all over the planet. A few fires still smoldered on Wall Street, which rioters had all but burned to the ground before the meager police presence managed to drive off the rioters.

  Luckily, she had already archived the research she was doing on the local servers, and the government connection with the team of cryptologists was being maintained on government internet services, separate from the public internet.