Confirmation

by Barna William Donovan

  “I have no control over that,” he replied.

  “But your opinion is valued. That’s why you’re here. Working with the military.”

  That comment brought up another important matter, something Rick had to know. “Look, Lindsay, just curious about something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What are you guys doing on this base?”

  “Don held a service for some of the airmen. Many on this base, like Sarah Robinson’s brother, as you know, have been saved. They just needed words of encouragement and guidance with this coming storm.”

  “I see.”

  “That’s what it is, Rick. You know as well as I do. A storm. We must get rid of these things before we all perish.” Then Lindsay paused for a deep breath. “But unfortunately, I do have to go. Don and I will try and drive home. As fast as we can on these roads, I suppose.”

  “All right. And, yeah, be careful on the roads.”

  Lindsay was about to back away, but paused for a moment. “Oh, and Rick…. Do go back to Cornelia. I think you two would be wonderful for each other.”

  Before Rick could reply, she turned and walked away. He was glad that she did and he didn’t have to say anything else. The problem was he was feeling unspeakably low at that moment. Lindsay had wished him well and encouraged a relationship with Cornelia…just moments after he admitted to himself that he had enjoyed hurting Lindsay the other day.

  He felt he needed to take a shower right away. But it wasn’t just the run that had left him feeling unclean. Could some soap and water, he wondered, scrape away the taint of self-disgust?

  4.

  Rick was surprised to run into Cornelia as she walked away from the row of guest apartments set aside for Confirmation. With what Knight had said back at the track, he couldn’t imagine what she would be doing here. She was, after all, the chief interviewer of their show.

  “Hey,” he called to her as she lifted her gaze from her phone and whatever news site she was perusing on it. “What’s going on? I ran into Dan back at the track. Don’t they want you for the shooting with—?”

  “With Kwan here? Nope. And Jerry’s not happy.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “The news broke. Kwan and the hums and vibrations he’s hearing. The rest of the press got ahold of it.”

  Now that was a surprise. “What happened?”

  Cornelia pocketed her phone. “His neighbor happened. After we talked to Kwan, he repeated everything to his neighbor who, by the way, is a globe blogger.”

  “Globe blogger?”

  Cornelia returned a weary kind of what-is-this-world-coming-to smile and a shrug. “Why not? Some people blog about food, others blog about cats. Kwan’s neighbor blogs about globes. And hums and vibrations and photos of air force people coming to meet David Kwan. And Kwan arguing with them. And Kwan’s lawyer showing up, too. And everyone leaving their house. Oh, and a few of said air force people staying behind and making the mistake of trying to tell his neighbor—Andy Michener, by the way—that he should keep quiet about what went on there.”

  Rick couldn’t keep a little guffaw of laughter tumbling from his mouth. “And these people are supposed to be hiding back-engineered UFOs?”

  Cornelia laughed too. “Maybe the local members of the air force couldn’t. You know these California types. Too mellow and laid back.”

  “Now the secret’s out? The rest of the media picked up on it?”

  “Yeah,” Cornelia said lightly. “And some of our friends in uniform are not happy about it. Especially the medical service’s answer to General Patton.”

  “Oh, her—yeah. Murakami’s just not quite sure, I think, that we’re not a bunch of con artists. That we’re not working with Kwan on some sort of a scam to get access to the government’s globe investigation.”

  “Anyway, you remember what you said about, uh….”

  “About what?”

  “You know, rolling with the punches. It’s probably right.”

  Except Rick had been having second thoughts. “I’m not sure anymore.”

  “Oh?” Cornelia, looked genuinely taken.

  And Rick wondered just what kind of an image she had of him. “Yeah,” he said, something prompting him to infuse that word with as much gravitas as he could. “The thing is…I just had a…well, a bit of a disturbing experience.”

  “With Lindsay?” Cornelia replied without a beat.

  And that really caught him off guard. So, someone has been talking.

  “Dan told me,” Cornelia added quickly, noticing Rick’s surprise.

  But of course he did.

  “Sorry,” Cornelia tagged on quickly. “If it was something private….”

  “Oh, no,” Rick replied, noticing how fast and how unequivocal his own words were. “Definitely nothing private. As a matter of fact, Lindsay wants to warn all of us.”

  “About what?”

  “Only that the world is coming to an end.”

  Cornelia looked puzzled for a moment, as if trying to figure out how serious he was.

  “For real,” he said. “That’s her message to all of us.” Although he wanted to sound serious as he spoke, an impulse to smile almost sunk into the corner of his mouth as he thought of Lindsay’s other bit of advice.

  “Well, it sounded to me the other day like she and her husband are always prepared for that.”

  Rick couldn’t help chuckling now. “I think they are. But she also said something that might be on the money.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “That it’s not the globes that will do it. But we will.”

  Cornelia hung on those words for a moment, her gaze very graven now. “That might be true.”

  “And you can’t just go with that. Sure, Lindsay and her husband are. Probably getting ready to be raptured away or something.”

  Cornelia gave him a crooked, humorless little grin.

  “But this is the time to try and do something about it.”

  “How?” Cornelia asked, her tone almost a whisper.

  “I don’t know yet. But we have to start working hard at figuring it out.”

  “That’s funny,” Cornelia said after a beat, “because I was starting to seriously doubt that anything can be done.”

  Before Rick could reply, he felt the fingers of her right hand tentatively moving over his left. As he moved to hold them, she took a firm grasp of his hand and pulled him closer.

  “Maybe we can…with people who are used to fighting the odds,” Rick replied, staring into her eyes as her lovely face came closer to his with the passing of each word from his lips.

  When Rick kissed her, Cornelia took his other hand as well, holding him tight, holding him closer to her, encouraging it.

  And suddenly she pushed away. “Do you think…?”

  “What?” Rick whispered, wanting to kiss her again but distressed by her vacillation. “You don’t…?”

  “I do,” Cornelia said, “but is this the right time? I mean, we don’t even know what will happen to us from day to day.”

  “Maybe that’s why it’s the right time. We need something to live for.”

  Cornelia’s hands tightened on his and she kissed him again with renewed vigor and passion.

  Except Rick noticed a problem. “I’m kind of a mess,” he whispered a moment later, embarrassed, conscious of his sweaty running clothes.

  “Then let’s get you cleaned up.”

  5.

  If Rick had seriously entertained the idea that the tide of chaos could be controlled, entering the base’s command center would have made him rethink that idea. The installation’s communications nerve-center, loaded with rows of computer consoles on the floor-level and towered over by nearly monolith-sized monitors on three walls, was now relaying a flood of breaking news to the air
force personnel crowded into the room, and the Confirmation team hovering on the periphery of it all.

  After having been led inside, Rick tried to read the body language all around as much as the images flickering away on the myriad of screens. Was all this something good or something pushing the world to the brink of whatever apocalypse Lindsay and Don Burke must always have been preparing for?

  Or maybe it’s neither, Rick thought as he felt Cornelia brush against him. At first he felt the impulse to reach for her again, to find her hand and hold it, except this was not the right time. She, too, must have realized the same thing, he guessed, because she was not reaching for him either.

  Maybe it’s time for business first, his mind called to him, commanding him to focus on the tumult in the room and all of its possible implications, instead of the profound way his relationship with Cornelia had just changed.

  The first implication he noticed was cameramen Matt and Tony panning, pausing upon, then panning their cameras yet again at the command center personnel. So something must have happened to let Colonel Franciosa and his globe study group allow them full access and documentation privileges.

  Catching a glimpse of Jerry standing nearby, studying everything with steely intensity, Rick also noticed that their producer looked elated. Despite the fact that Cornelia had been under the impression that Jerry was not happy with the leaked news of Kwan, something had finally gone his way and he was relishing it.

  Before he could ask anyone what was happening, Rick saw Kristine Murakami glaring at him and Cornelia. The doctor sized him over the way he would have expected her to had he still been in his running clothes instead of cleaned up, shaven, and in a fresh pair of khakis and a polo shirt.

  “Did you two get lost?” Murakami asked.

  “What’s happening?” Rick asked instead.

  “This hum phenomenon of Kwan’s is suddenly infecting people all over the place.”

  “All over San Francisco?” Cornelia asked. She seemed as stunned as Rick felt.

  “All over the world,” Murakami replied immediately. “That’s what we’re monitoring. News reports from around the world that have anything to do with anyone claiming to hear hums and buzzing and vibrations.”

  “I guess we won’t need a media analyst,” Rick thought out loud.

  “Yeah, guess not,” Cornelia seconded.

  But Rick was too curious to not broach another subject, no matter the reaction it would get out of the temperamental Murakami. “So, since we were right about Kwan, we get to stay on the investigative team? By the way, what is his condition that he can feel the vibrations…?”

  “We don’t know what his condition is,” Murakami replied, much more coolly than Rick had thought she would. “Of course it would have helped if we could have started on his examinations sooner rather than later. If we didn’t have to argue with his lawyer. And you get to stay a part of the team for now because one of the networks wants to follow a scientific expert consulting with the government on all this. And Washington agreed.”

  “What? Dan Knight?” Cornelia exclaimed.

  “Yes,” Murakami replied flatly. “They want to show complete transparency to the world and foster international cooperation. All in light of stuff like that.” She nodded toward one of the overhead monitors.

  On the one hand, what he saw made the populist part of Rick’s nature soar. Here they stood in the heart of a major defense facility’s command center, and the people in charge were watching broadcasts of CNN. The screen Murakami brought their attention to was displaying live shots of from CNN’s The Situation Room program. An informed press is the soul of democracy, he almost said in the most droll tone he could muster. But, unfortunately, the report was also about a violent demonstration in Madrid.

  “What’s going on?” He asked as he watched the scenes of an angry, bottle and rock throwing mob, riot-police trying to keep them under control, protesters being dragged away in cuffs, and shots of broken windows on stores and vandalized cars.

  “Everyone with their pet paranoia around the world coming out and using all this as an excuse to throw rocks and set things on fire,” Rick heard Garret Robinson’s voice from behind him.

  “That’s about it,” Murakami concurred.

  “And why all of this investigative project will go international,” Robinson said, “and keep the media informed. To try and get some control over all this lunacy. You got just about every fundamentalist religious sect out there believing these things are the work of the devil. Every radical nut—right-winger, left-winger, anarchist, anti-corporatist, eco-terrorists, skinheads, what have you—is trying to overthrow whatever government is in power.”

  “What about them?” Cornelia asked, staring at the monitor of the Madrid riot.

  “Who the hell knows?” Robinson grumbled with a shrug. “And does it really matter? They want to bring down the government because it knows more than it’s saying about a local globe, and they think the strings are being pulled by the American government and their conspirators.”

  “And more and more of these people hearing the hum now is going to be a break?” Rick asked.

  “We’ll find out,” Robinson said, then looked at Murakami. “Right, Doctor?”

  “We’ll try our best, sir.”

  “But how?” Cornelia tore her fascinated, repulsed gaze away from the riot monitor. “You don’t even know what makes people hear the hum.”

  “Well,” Murakami started to answer, and Rick noticed how tense she looked doing so. She obviously wasn’t happy speculating about something as exotic as the hum-sensitives. She probably didn’t even have a clue about where to start looking for a root of the affliction. “We’re going to run every test on Kwan we can think of. And we’ll get in touch with as many people as possible who are hearing the hum.”

  “Exactly,” Robinson cut in, sounding much more enthusiastic. “We’re going to our nearest concentration of hum-experiencers.”

  “Concentration?” Rick asked.

  “Yeah,” Robinson replied. “There seem to be places where an unusually high number of people have reported this affliction.”

  “And where’s the nearest concentration?” Cornelia asked.

  “Hawaii,” Robinson said.

  6.

  VATICAN AND SCIENTISTS CALL FOR PEACE AND RESEARCH

  By: Arthur Gates, Los Angeles Times

  In the wake of the world-wide protest movements and the outbreak of violence, the Vatican and an American scientist have called for open-minded investigations of the globe mystery and a refrain from the vitriol and violence that have come to mark the entire phenomenon.

  “No matter how scared people might be, hate and violence will not solve anything,” said Monsignor Leonardo Anzalone in a press conference held at the Vatican Observatory in Castle Gandolfo.

  Monsignor Anzalone, a Jesuit priest and astronomer, is a member of the Curia of the Roman Catholic Church.

  During the press conference, he was joined by Dr. Duane King, an astrophysicist from the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The University of Arizona is a host institution for the Vatican Observatory.

  “This sort of aggression we are seeing all over the world,” said King, “is antithetical to all religious faiths, and it’s antithetical to all reason and scientific inquiry. It must simply stop right now before it escalates into a territory we can’t come back from.”

  When asked about so much of the controversy and ill will being fueled by what many see as a chasm between science and religion, Monsignor Anzalone insisted that such a chasm need not exist. He pointed to the Catholic Church’s strong support of scientific inquiry.

  “We must use science to solve this dilemma,” he insisted, pointing at the Vatican’s own observatory program as one of the bridges between faith and reason. “God’s truth is reflected in all of nature and
in all phenomena in the world around us,” Anzalone said. “We need to study this [globe] phenomenon to find out if it is a natural phenomenon, a true miracle, or if it might be something demonic.”

  Although the monsignor did make a controversial acknowledgement of a possibly demonic source of the globes, he called for more rigorous scientific research before any conclusions were reached.

  “The answers to the globe mystery need to be found in this world,” he said. “The globe mystery needs to be explained from within itself. For this reason, scientific research and overall scientific progress is very important.”

  Anzalone also reminded that although it is not an official Vatican position, he had long advocated for the study of parapsychology. Parapsychology applies scientific investigative methods to seemingly supernatural phenomena.

  “These globes,” he argued, “are a phenomenon originating in nature, as they are certainly material objects. But they are from a realm in nature we do not understand.”

  The monsignor compared the globes to unexplained phenomena like telekinesis, UFO sightings, or telepathy.

  Dr. King also urged the world to look at the globe phenomenon as a positive opportunity.

  “Instead of fear and violence,” he said, “we need to look at these globes as perhaps the most exciting time to be researchers and scientists. We know the phenomenon is real. There is no disputing it any more. So now let’s take up the challenge and study it. Let’s understand it without any preconceived notions.”

  The very nature of the phenomenon, King believes, could possibly change the world in ways no one can imagine.

  “This is going to lead us to an entirely new understanding of reality,” he said. “This will make us see the very laws of nature, physics, the entire universe in a whole new light. Let’s embrace all of this instead of closing our minds and fighting each other.”

  What impact these suggestions will have remain to be seen as violent clashes between globe-related protests and police have broken out in Greece, Portugal, Spain, and in Rome.

  Catherine Buchanan contributed to this report from Rome.