Sleeper Seven

by Mark Howard

  Jess, trying to keep up with this rapid fire data download, took a moment to respond.

  "Uh, my range?"

  "How close do you need to be?" Holly replied, impatient with her new charge's inability to keep up.

  "How close...to do what?"

  Holly let out an audible sigh. "My understanding about you people is there are limits to recall at certain distances."

  Boy, she's getting downright pissy now, Jess thought. "Yes, of course, I understand. Let's see..." She thought about the distance from the dome to the house, where she lost her focus, back at the Center.

  "Maybe two hundred feet?"

  Holly set her coffee down hard, almost spilling it.

  "Two hundred feet! Are you kidding me? We're a quarter-mile from the Wynn. Christ on a cupcake. Gimme a minute." She got up just as Jess' custom-ordered waffle arrived. Jess could see her near the slots making a call; it was clear she was angry, and that she was giving the unlucky person on the other end of the line a pretty hard time.

  Jess knew this was finally the comeuppance she had been expecting — those flakes at the Adams Center had built her all up, and now, to someone in the real world, she wasn't as great as she thought: she was a fraud. She suddenly lost her appetite, and watched the whipped cream slowly melt onto her waffle.

  "We're moving," Holly said curtly, returning to the table. She didn't even bother sitting back down; it was clear she was still simmering. "We're getting you a room at the Wynn. Go back to your room, get your stuff and meet me there in forty-five minutes. We've got to work fast, the meeting is a working lunch scheduled for noon, and possibly going well into the evening."

  She abruptly walked off, leaving Jess with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. At this point, she just wanted to go home. This was important, though, she reminded herself — she couldn't let her own feelings of inadequacy, and her distaste for some of the people involved in this, get in the way of the big picture. Retrieving her things from the penthouse, she gloomily returned to the lobby, still un-showered, unchanged, and with an aching hunger, but zero appetite.

  As she left the hotel entrance, two tourists emerged from a limo in the circular drive: a large middle-aged man, and presumably his wife. Both of them were adorned with matching American flag shirts and shorts, USA baseball caps, and flag sunglasses, tags still attached. They clumsily blocked her way, and annoyed, Jess maneuvered around them with an audible sigh. Swiftly repositioning themselves, they blocked her way again.

  "Excuse me young lady, can you help us out, we need to find our way to our hotel, this one here ain't it," the woman asked her in a deep southern drawl, grabbing onto Jess' arm and pulling her towards the limo.

  "It'll take just a minute, sweetie."

  "T'would be real helpful, like," the man added, taking her other arm.

  "Really, I don't have time for this..." Jess protested, struggling from their grasp. It had been a tough morning already, and she was fed up. Pausing, the woman lowered her sunglasses and looked into her eyes.

  "Please. Come with us," she asked earnestly, the drawl suddenly gone.

  ~ 25 ~

  There was something familiar about this woman. Confused, Jess looked closer, trying to place the face, as she reluctantly handed the bag to her male companion. While climbing into the back of the limo, he gently pushed down on the top of her head, ensuring she wouldn't bump it. That was the giveaway — these were cops.

  The man entered after her, slamming the door as the driver chirped the tires and sped off. Ensconced in the protection of the tinted town car, he removed his sunglasses and cap then turned to face her.

  "Sorry about that, we had to disappear you," he said, also suspiciously losing his southern twang. "You have been deceived, young lady."

  Taking a closer look, there was something familiar about this man as well, but she couldn't place it.

  "Well, I'm pretty much being abducted now, so which is worse?" she retorted, and turning back to the woman, watched her also remove her getup. Suddenly she knew why they looked so familiar.

  "Hell no! Kal?" she exclaimed, as Kal smiled back at her. Jess turned to the man and recognized him as well, even though he was freshly shaven. "Len!" She felt like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz. "What the hell is going on here! Who are you!" she cried, slumping into the black leather seat and holding her hands over her eyes. "Holy cats, this is too much!"

  "They told you they were the Feds, right?" Len asked.

  "Well they're not. We are," Kal explained.

  Looking back, she hadn't seen — nor had she asked for — a single piece of identification from Sylvia, other than her business card; and the jet she arrived on did appear to be more commercial than government-owned.

  "So the thing about bin Laden...?" she asked weakly.

  "I have no idea what she told you, but I can almost guarantee it ain't true. They really suckered you in, huh?" Len teased.

  "But how do I know you're not the ones lying, and they really are the government?"

  "Think about it Jessica," Kal replied slowly, "how much paperwork did they have you sign? Now here's our proof," she offered, handing over a manilla envelope filled with documents, followed by a pen.

  "If you really want to serve your country, we need your John Hancock on all of these."

  Jess knew she wasn't going to sign anything just yet, not after all this. She needed to know more.

  "Who were they, then?"

  Kal sighed. "They're corporate," she remarked dismissively. "They've recruited a couple others out from under our noses over the years. I knew Nancy — Sylvia — was with them, but dang it all, I wasn't working at the Runaway when you met her there. If I was, I would've intercepted you then. When I found out you were there with her, I put it all together, and with Len's help we traced y'all here. We just got in forty-five minutes ago. Can you tell?" she asked, tugging on the bill of her hat. "Too much? Well we're just proud 'Muricans is all."

  "So what company do they work for? And what did they want from me?"

  "Well, it's not really a single company," Len explained. "They're sort of a syndicate of freelance 'information gatherers' who ultimately get paid by a few of the bigger hedge funds. The Consumer Electronics Show is here this week, and there are some big players dealing behind the scenes. They were lookin' to see which way the wind was blowing in the semiconductor industry, so they could get some leverage."

  Well they sound convincing so far, Jess thought, and at least they're nicer.

  "OK. But before I do anything, here are my conditions, and I want these written in." She was determined to be a partner now, instead of just a pawn. "One: I will not do anything against my will. Two: I will not use my abilities to harm others, either directly or indirectly. Three: I will only use my abilities to help others in distress. I want that all in there."

  Kal smiled tenderly. "Well honey," she responded, "that kind of narrows our options a bit, don't it? What if you have to hurt somebody to save somebody else's life? There's all kinds of scenarios you just can't plan for."

  "That's true, but that will be my decision to make, and not yours to dictate to me. Capiche?" She realized she was the one with leverage here — she had what they wanted, after all.

  Len looked at Kal, then back to Jess. "OK, boss, agreed. We'll write it in. We can't force you to do anything anyway. Well, at least not in this branch."

  As she went through the papers, Jess glanced out the window and found they were heading south on the strip, back towards the airport.

  "So where am I going today?"

  "Can't tell ya," Len replied with a wink, "You didn't write full disclosure into your demands."

  "Nice. Real nice. Can you have your driver drop me back with Sylvia, please?" Jess retorted. "Better company, she was."

  "Well honey," Kal interjected, "it's not that we won't tell ya, it's we can't tell ya. Where we're going don't have a name to it."

  ~ 26 ~

  They turned off of the strip near M
andalay Bay — earlier than they should have if they were headed to the main terminal — and pulled up to the entrance of a fenced-in parking lot. Stopping at a small security booth, the driver held out a badge for the guard, who scanned it before raising the gate. After driving past several rows of parked cars, they stopped in front of a separate, smaller terminal. The driver unlocked the doors with a pop and Jess exited the limo, hoisting her duffel bag over her shoulder.

  "What is this?"

  "It's our own little private airport," Kal revealed. "No lines, no scanners, no TSA feelin' ya up. It's good to be the government."

  Walking through the entrance, the layout reminded Jess of a small town airport: a large open space with a few gates at the edges, all surrounding a central food court; but like Kal mentioned, no sign of any scanners. They led her straight through the building, out through a doorway, and onto the tarmac, shimmering in the late morning desert heat.

  Jess spotted the Southwest jets taxiing near the public terminal farther away, then focused on the activity around her at this 'airport within an airport'. It seemed they were walking on a gigantic parking lot for jets: there were a couple of turboprops off to one side, a larger 757 jet on the other, and in the center a cluster of 737's. What was even stranger, these jets were all painted white: no brands, no advertisements, and no markings other than a long red stripe along the fuselage and an FAA registration number on the tail.

  Jess followed Kal and Len towards a 737 with its air stairs deployed, and after a security guard stationed in front scanned their retinas, they ascended into the aircraft.

  Although bigger, these jets were certainly plainer than the one she arrived on — no opulence or creamy leather here — and on top of that, it smelled old; stale even. She settled in one of the front-most seats — what would be business class on a commercial jet — and Kal and Len took the pair across from her.

  "Well if I can't know where I am going, can I at least know how long it'll take?" Jess asked.

  "We'll be back on the ground in about forty," Kal answered, leaning over the aisle and patting her arm, "so don't get too comfy."

  Jess tried to calculate how far a jet could travel in forty minutes, but quickly got bored with that exercise and checked her phone instead. And down the rabbit hole I go she texted Gavin, before stowing it away. Only afterwards did she realize that she probably shouldn't have done that, but nobody seemed to have noticed.

  A few minutes later a pilot boarded, sans crew, and they were soon in the air. While watching the Vegas strip recede into the distance, she spied the snow-covered peak of Mt. Charleston from her window, and determined they must be traveling north.

  Not thirty minutes later they began to descend into the desolate and mountainous terrain, and as she wondered where they were landing, it suddenly hit her. Barely concealing her excitement, she turned to Kal.

  "Oh my God, is this Area 51?"

  Kal turned to Len and gave him an eye-roll, then looked at Jess, and putting her finger to her lips, whispered "Shhhh..." with mock seriousness.

  Holy crap — Area 51! she thought. What will I see? Even if it's all B.S. and it's just a military testing facility, how many people could say they went to Area 51? she wondered. Realizing she wouldn't be able to tell anyone about this, of course, her heart sank. She suddenly felt bad for all the other people that work there.

  Surreptitiously checking her phone for a reply from Gavin, she found none, but strangely, she noticed the cellular carrier, usually listed as 'AT&T', now displayed 'GOV'.

  "Yeah, we're gonna have to take that," Len insisted, holding out his hand. She sheepishly handed it to him, and in exchange, he handed her back a lanyard with ID attached.

  "Here's your golden ticket, wear it at all times. I'm serious about that."

  She took the lanyard and turned the ID over. The picture on the front wasn't even current, it was her high school yearbook picture — from sophomore year at that.

  "Really? With the braces? You couldn't hack into my Facebook and get like, any other more recent picture of me?"

  "Ah, rush job, whaddya expect?" Len replied gruffly, then smiled. "It's good enough for government work."

  ~ 27 ~

  Disembarking was a disappointment. There was nothing much to see: just a couple of long — very long — runways stretching to the horizon in each direction, with clusters of large hangars and various outbuildings arrayed on one side. The only other people around were guards, dressed in camouflage gear and outfitted with appropriately intimidating automatic rifles. Other than that, anything interesting here appeared to be behind closed doors.

  Jess was led aboard a white school bus — with windows painted black — which lumbered down a frontage road for several minutes, before stopping in front of one of the larger hangars a mile or so down the runway. While exiting the bus, two security guards immediately raised their rifles and trained them on Len, while one yelled "Halt!". Len, standing perfectly still, slowly extended his arms to his sides, palms open. A third guard, his weapon also drawn, stepped in from the side, and approaching him cautiously, used the tip of his rifle to carefully turn over the badge on Len's lanyard, revealing his picture. The three guards stepped back, and standing down, allowed him to pass without a word. For Len's part, he seemed to take no offense, and indeed the entire incident seemed to be a rather banal affair to all but herself. Looking down, she verified her own badge was oriented correctly before stepping forward, where they were all scanned in, via badge and retina this time, once again.

  After a short walk to the hangar, they were scanned a final time at the entrance. As they entered through the small door — the large hangar door was closed — Kal flipped on a cluster of wall switches, slowly lighting the large open space with rows of ancient industrial lamps hanging from the girders above. As the filaments burned brighter, Jess was amazed to see, standing in the center of the hangar, an exact replica of the dome at the Adams Center.

  "What is this? Another one?"

  "You'd be surprised how much money was put into this program during the Cold War," Kal replied, motioning Jess over to a small seating area. The tables and chairs arrayed along the hangar wall were all coated with a fine layer of dust, which Jess wiped away briskly before taking her seat.

  "There was some success with it, too," Kal continued. "Certain features of Soviet military installations were precisely identified and recorded. Unfortunately, these hits were only verified years later when the newer hi-resolution satellite imagery became available, and after the program here had already been dismantled. Regardless, the bigger problem was that it was unreliable. We couldn't get specific enough features, at the particular time we wanted them. It was utterly frustrating for everyone involved, most of all the Sleepers themselves. They'd get a good hit on something one day, but when asked for followup, they'd get nothing, or worse, misinformation. We never found out if that was due to the Sleeper's own unconscious resistance to the pressure to perform, pure confabulation out of a need to please their superiors, interference from the other side, or what. Maybe a combo of all of the above. So eventually the funding was cut to a trickle, and the whole thing was labelled a failure — regardless of the hits we were able to reverse-correlate later."

  Len picked up the story from there. "Then the Wall fell, and the whole program was mothballed. It's only been revived in the last ten years or so to combat terrorism, and only because they found that the world of financial espionage — as you recently discovered — was having some success with it. Problem is, the good ones, like you, are hard to come by. I heard what you're capable of: full consciousness and recall within a hundred yard radius, and that is rare. We were lucky they were so sloppy in handling you. Prolly cause they never had to work very hard at recruiting. They started out by giving a nice chunk of the haul they took from their trades to the informants, which worked on a few, for awhile, but then their 'special abilities' would fade over time without rhyme or reason. Maybe people like you generally aren't as concerne
d with the money, or at least aren't as unsavory as they are about how they get it, so maybe they were working at odds with their unconscious. Who knows. In any case, they would get a lot of burnouts. It's only lately they started impersonating the government, trying to recruit people by using their good intentions against them. When that doesn't work, they resort to scare tactics, telling 'em thousands will die if they don't deliver the info to prevent an 'attack'. So that was the fun you were in for with those folks."

  "You're the first one we poached from them before they could really get started," Kal revealed. "We're pretty stoked about that."

  "Yeah, but unfortunately," Len countered, "the others we debriefed sort of swore off the whole business after their negative experience, so we really don't have a whole stable of folks for this operation."

  "What he means is," Kal explained, spreading her arms to encompass the entire hangar, "this is all for you."

  ~ 28 ~

  Jess started her tour of the hangar with the dome, while Kal and Len trailed behind, outlining the history of the place to her.

  "They had the same contractor who built the one in Black Mountain come out about a decade later and build this one," Kal explained. "At the time they thought the structure itself helped produce, or at least enhance, the abilities. Turns out it's mostly just an awfully expensive concrete igloo. All you really need is a quiet space and some white noise, for the good ones at least. The rest is pretty much just decoration."

  "Actually, the material makes it harder to exit the structure," Jess said, mostly to herself, as she followed the curved wall of the dome with her hand. She was in awe of what they did here; the dome was the exact shape and size of the twin out east, even down to the yellow paint. As she entered, she noticed the structures inside were also similarly configured. Upon entering her Einstein duplicate, however, she found the furnishings different.