Confirmation

by Barna William Donovan

  Cornelia had to grin at yet another Ian Durfy crack at the “new age yo-yos.” With his long locks held back in a ponytail, he would have been the first member of the group to be accused of meditating with crystals every morning.

  “The reporters weren’t taking any of it literally,” Lacy said.

  Ian looked up from his tablet. “Exactly.”

  “Good,” Rick nodded with a smile of his own, and stepped back. “Excellent! So now we really have something to take to…well, whoever’s trying to make sense of this.”

  “Sure,” Lacy said, but Cornelia caught something in her tone and noticed a distant, tense look in her eyes. “And let’s hope they keep their word and let us stay involved.”

  “Well, now we know what we know, right?” Ian said, and glanced at her. “If the G.I.’s don’t want to let us play, I’m sure we can go to any number of scientists at any university. Am I right?”

  “Maybe,” Lacy said under her breath.

  And what she was hinting at was already dawning on Cornelia.

  “What do you mean?” Ian asked.

  “We can go anywhere we want to with this information,” Lacy almost whispered. “If they don’t lock us up first. They could declare this is nothing but empty speculation that can cause more panic and disorder, and have us detained as a national security threat.”

  Ian looked out the window. “Aw, crap,” he said softly.

  Lacy threw a glance toward Jerry at the front of the plane. “Maybe we should have thought of this before rushing on this plane. But stardom beckoned, didn’t it?”

  “All right,” Rick said just as quietly as he leaned back toward the group. “Let’s everyone chill. We’re here now and we need to see how it plays out. And remember, we’re not the only media who will be at the base. Let’s just all stay cool for now.”

  When no one replied, Rick backed away and took one of the seats by a window. It was quite a characteristic move and attitude, Cornelia thought. And she hoped he was right. There was nothing to do but wait now until they got face to face with Garret Robinson and whoever he was reporting to at Travis Air Base.

  So she took the seat right next to Rick.

  “Nice job keeping it together back there,” she said at length.

  Rick glanced at her with a distant little grin before looking out the window again. “I guess I have you fooled.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I’m not ready to shoot someone who disagrees with me over all this, yeah. But that’s hardly being Clint Eastwood.”

  Other than wanting to know how Rick could stay “Mr. Cool” when things were at their weirdest, his quip did make her curious about something. “Well, who is disagreeing with you?”

  Rick looked at her without the smile this time. “Say what?”

  “Who do you think is wrong? About the globes. About everything.”

  “Probably everyone,” Rick said very matter-of-factly. “I mean Nazis? Come on!”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty stupid.”

  “Or the wrath of God over gays? Or Atlantians from Mount Shasta….”

  “Remember, it’s the alien citizens of the Kingdom of Lemuria that come from Mount Shasta,” Cornelia cut in. “But that stuff about Atlantis is kind of cool.”

  Rick raised an amused eyebrow now. “Really? Cool?”

  “It kind of is, yeah. It’s different.”

  “Yeah, I guess it is…different.”

  “All right, Professor.” Cornelia had to press the issue now. “If we’re all wrong, then what are they? What are these globes?”

  “Oh, I’m not the professor in our little team,” Rick said with an easy shrug. “And I have no idea what the globes are. About the time the second one showed up, the one in New Jersey, well, I decided I probably am not going to be the one figuring this out either. So I might as well sit back and enjoy the ride and not stress too much.”

  “Actually, that does sound a lot like Doc Knight,” Cornelia said, surprised by what he’d said. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she was certain that she had sensed a tension between Knight and Rick since very shortly after the Confirmation team had started working together in Mount Shasta City.

  But Rick shook his head immediately. And quite resolutely, Cornelia thought. “Knight?” he said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, I think so.”

  “No way.”

  “Why not?”

  Rick glanced out the window for a beat before looking at her again and replying. “When the Doc’s thinking of any higher power, I don’t think he’s willing to sit back and just roll with the punches.”

  “Really? How do you think he feels?”

  Rick looked Cornelia square in the eyes. “I think he hates it.”

  And she was impressed by the certainty in his voice. They did say that effective cops needed to be very good judges of character, didn’t they? Although she was intrigued by Rick, Cornelia was now just as intrigued by his take on their crusty, hard-living professor. “You think he hates the globes?”

  “He hates whatever made them. Whatever’s interfering with the world.”

  “Why?”

  Rick shrugged, and with a lighter tone he said, “I guess we could ask him, but….” Then after a pause, he added with a harder edge, “Because they’re interfering with the world.”

  Perhaps he was right, Cornelia mused now. If she wanted to know what made Dan Knight tick, all she needed to do was ask him. But now, and ever since she had overheard him arguing with his ex, Cornelia was much more interested in understanding Rick. “But you, on the other hand,” she said, “are willing to roll with the punches.”

  “As long as I can,” he said lightly, but he did give her a quizzical look.

  “I mean, how long will this go on? Globes appearing one after the next? What’s all this leading up to? What’s the reason for all this?”

  “I have no idea,” Rick said with no flippancy, no sarcasm, no levity, and no worries either. Then he added, “And getting an ulcer over it’s not going to change anything. Except give me an ulcer.” After the last word, however, he did allow a sly little smirk. “And that would really ruin my day.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” Cornelia replied.

  A beat of silence hung between them as she thought she noticed the plane slowing and dropping altitude.

  “Yeah,” Rick said, and cast a quick glance out the window. “I’ve just been the type to keep calm and go with the flow since…since Llewellyn Barclay back in L.A. That’s been my philosophy since, and I think it works. You don’t turn on your body-cam one time…and, well, here I am, on a TV show and in the middle of the investigation of the century.”

  “Well, that was a hell of a turn of events,” Cornelia had to admit. But she also had to add, “But the flow right now—out there—all over the world…I think it’s going in the wrong direction.”

  Rick looked her in the eyes, and somehow it seemed to put her ill at ease. He said nothing, just waited for her to go on. The silence seemed to ask her to offer a solution to the problem she posed…but one she didn’t have herself.

  “It’s not just going in the wrong direction,” she spoke at last, feeling that her words were somehow awkward. “It’s insanity,” she added, but felt no more effective.

  “Well,” Rick replied slowly. “If Dan gets us hooked up with the military now, we can find out the truth.”

  “You think so?”

  “Unless Lacy’s right.” Rick seemed to be switching back to the light deadpan again. “And we get used for our information and then locked away in a rendition camp in Albania.”

  “That’s not funny!”

  “Sorry. I know.”

  “I don’t want to sound like the cynical journalist, but I don’t want to put too much stock in the sensibility of the government. Eve
n with our information on the…. What? The hum? The vibrations?”

  “What I mean,” Rick said, more evenly this time, “is that we’re not going to find anything—with or without our Eureka moment here about hums and vibrations—and neither will the government. Even if they are brilliant. We’ll find out whatever the thing behind all this decides to let us find out. So we might as well enjoy the ride.”

  For a second Cornelia wasn’t sure if the unpleasant sensation in her stomach was caused by Rick’s statement or the plane’s fast descent. “That sounds kind of like resignation,” she said after a beat.

  “It’s being realistic. About the globes and the flow.”

  “I don’t know. I think sometimes caring and making something happen is worth the try.”

  “Oh, of course it’s worth a try,” Rick said.

  And Cornelia was so glad he sounded sincere about it.

  Even his smile looked reassuring this time. “Probably won’t work,” he quipped, but did it with a kind of “I’m pulling your leg” wink. “But it’s worth a try.”

  “That’s the spirit—”

  Before Cornelia could finish, the plane banked so violently that she was thrown against Rick. And she noticed the ugly thumping sound of his head striking the window.

  7.

  INCURSION OVER TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE

  By: Dennis Crenshaw, The San Francisco Chronicle

  A hot air balloon flown by protesters was shot down by snipers over Travis Air Force Base in the early morning hours of September 12. Stanley Dorner, Eugene Babbit, and Helen Lasky, members of a protest group that has been picketing in front of the base, were piloting the balloon when it was brought down. The three were able to walk away without injuries after sniper fire deflated their balloon and brought it to a gentle landing inside the base. All three have been arrested and are now facing federal charges for trespassing.

  The balloon, according to the base’s Public Affairs office, nearly collided with a Gulfstream V jet flying in from San Francisco.

  Dorner, Babbit, and Lasky have been camped out by the base for the past four days in order, they claim, to bring attention to the military’s role in the creation of the globe phenomenon.

  “This military installation, just like the ones in the San Diego area, if not many more across the country, have a clear hand in the appearance of these globes,” said Roger Lutz, one of the organizers of the event. “We want answers and a full disclosure of what goes on behind the gates of these bases.”

  Lutz’s group, along with a network of likeminded conspiracy buffs, has accused the government of using alien technology, invisibility devices, time-manipulation technology, and interdimensional doorways to create the globes. All of these devices, the protesters allege, are highly dangerous.

  “Imagine the power of three nuclear weapons going off all at once,” said Lisa Engelhardt, a protester and student from the University of California Berkley. “That’s the sort of damage the technology in use at this base could do. Millions of people’s lives are at risk here, and we need to put a stop to this.”

  “They’re doing highly dangerous weapons research in there and they claim they’re doing it in the name of the American people,” said Zoe Miller, an Oakland resident and mother of three who joined the protest on the morning of the balloon incident. “Well, they’re not doing it in my name. They’re not doing in in the names of my kids. Nobody asked me if we wanted to be any part of their dangerous experiments.”

  According to Martin Scoggins, however, the base’s chief public affairs officer, the protesters are ill-informed about what goes on at the base and the entire U.S. military’s role in the globe phenomenon.

  “Despite what many people might have read on the Internet or in the supermarket tabloids,” said Scoggins, “our base—or any military installation—does not have the sort of technology that could make these globes appear out of thin air. The air force, in a joint program with the Pentagon and some of the top scientists in the world, will begin an extensive investigation of this phenomenon. But we are certainly not the ones causing it.”

  Scoggins added that Travis Air Force base is open to the public. His office gives guided tours every Thursday.

  “We certainly wouldn’t be running tours,” he said, “if we had alien technology or any such thing bringing granite globes out of the Twilight Zone.”

  As far as the protest movement is concerned, however, the air force’s attitude is patronizing and offensive.

  “How dare they make light of the situation like that?” Benjamin Green, one of the protestors, replied. “It shows how much contempt they have for the American people. Well I, as a taxpayer and a Vietnam veteran, intend to sit out here and make my voice heard until these people come clean about the cover-up. If they want to shut me up, if they want me to leave, they’ll have to drag me away.”

  “Like we’re going to accept anything they say at face value,” added Harry Lombard, an electrical engineer from Vallejo and avid conspiracy blogger. “After everything the government’s lied to us about, they’re guilty, you know, until proven innocent. Liars until proven truthful. The truth is right in there. Right inside Travis Air Base. Hidden from the people.”

  As for the balloonists, they could face up to six months in jail and fines up to $10,000.

  According to Scoggins, no one on the incoming jet was injured as a result of the evasive maneuvers it had to take to avoid the balloon.

  Chapter 7

  The Skeleton Crew. Knight’s Offer.

  Goodbye To Lindsay. Can’t Roll With the Punches.

  Watching the News.

  1.

  A bolt of pain lanced through the side of Rick’s head as he tried to scratch an itch as gingerly as he could. Getting his skull bounced off the side of Gulfstream’s bulkhead as hard as he had, he was surprised he couldn’t feel a larger swelling. It did hurt like hell, though. The ibuprofen tablets he had been given shortly after arriving at the base were not doing their thing yet either.

  The atmosphere in the conference room didn’t help matters much. Most of the people sitting around the enormous table looked either befuddled, hopeless, or irritable. Mostly irritable, Rick surmised from the pinched, sour expressions and the flinty, suspicious glares with which everyone sized up everyone else.

  The most befuddled and irritable was Jerry, despite the fact that the Confirmation team was the only representative of the media sitting in on what had been described as a “skeleton crew of the U.S. government’s investigative response to the globe crisis.” David Kwan’s claims did indeed seem to make their team the most valuable to the government, but Confirmation had not yet been given permission to film anything. Jerry, in turn, looked like a little kid who had been promised an enormous slice of cake, only to have it taken away from him in the last moment. “Would they try and push George Stephanopoulos around like this?” Rick had heard him grumbling shortly before the meeting. So far, his continuous reminders that ABC News was negotiating a deal with him had not born much fruit in terms of getting permission to electronically document anything.

  “So we still have to come up with a workable plan to even approach this whole mess, ladies and gentlemen,” Colonel Michael Franciosa, the base commander and the man doing most of the pacing, said. With Franciosa’s distinguished, almost patrician features and studious eyes, Rick thought he looked more like a business executive than a hard-charging warrior. “And with three of these globes all clustered in California, we better do some serious approaching before the rest of the people from Washington show up. We need result right now.”

  “Obviously we need to round these…people up. If we really do have more than one. And do it right away,” an attractive yet severe-looking woman in her mid-thirties, wearing an air force class A uniform and the rank of major in the medical service, a Dr. Kristine Murakami, replied. Her eyes flicked little glances o
f condescension toward every member of the Confirmation team. “We’ll start with this Kwan individual and go from there. If the CDC will be sending their people too, maybe we’ll have something valuable to share with them.”

  Rick thought she sounded as if she had swallowed another previously intended comment. Maybe something along the lines of, “So we don’t look like idiots taking our cues from a reality TV production crew.”

  “Dr. Murakami’s right. We need Kwan and others like him right away,” a marine corps lieutenant colonel with a name tag on his uniform reading “Rutkowski” seconded. Rick thought he remembered the man’s first name as being Sam from the fast initial round of introductions. His short, dense-looking physique reminded Rick of the way the Wolverine character was drawn in the X-Men comics.

  Since the globe investigation was going to be a joint-services effort, on top of all the scientific and medical consultants Washington was promising to round up, this meeting included representatives of the navy and the marines as well, given the fact that the second California globe appeared next to their installations. Rutkowski’s home base was the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. But he had shared a flight to Travis with Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Graham from San Diego’s Coronado Naval Amphibious Base. Graham, a light-complexioned African American, had, much like Franciosa, the reserved and cerebral bearing of a business executive or a college administrator.

  “If there’s anything to this buzz and vibration theory,” Dr. Murakami said, “and somehow only a few handful of people can hear it, we need to see what makes them tick.” After a quick beat during which she appeared to be weighing the pros and cons of another statement, she added, “As skeptical as I am.”

  Her barbed delivery of those last words reminded Rick of Lindsay’s style of verbal combat during the worst moments of their breakup. Lindsay was always fond of the well-timed final word, a little coup-de-grace after her most potent insults and recriminations.