by Mark Howard
"How long has this place been mothballed?" she asked, dragging her finger through a thick coat of dust on the dresser.
"Let's see," Len mused, glancing at Kal for help. "Probably twenty-some odd years?"
"And how many people passed through here?"
"Oh, well, in its heyday, if the Adams Center had a hundred guests a year, I suppose we would have had about ten percent of that. All told, probably looking at ninety, a hundred."
"That's it? Through the whole program?" Jess was incredulous at the amount of money and effort spent for less than one hundred people.
"Yeah — remember, folks like you aren't a dime a dozen, and we had the cream of the crop coming through here."
"And most of them were duds too!" Kal added with a grin.
"So how many people like me did you find?"
Len answered without hesitation.
"Six," he said, suddenly staring off into space, "there were six."
Jess had to ask. "Are they all...dead?"
Snapping out of it, Len smiled widely. "Oh hell no! It was all worthless, remember? Who'd want to kill a bunch of spaced-out Clouseau's batting ten percent? They went back to their lives, probably forgot about the whole thing. Come on, let's get something to eat."
Len led them outside the dome and to the rear of the hangar, then through a connecting doorway leading to a smaller building. This space, clearly a cafeteria, contained several rows of tables and chairs along with a large open window to an industrial kitchen in back. Along one wall, however, were several doors spaced about ten feet apart and labeled alphabetically, with the exception of the final door which was labeled 'Monitor'.
"This here is the canteen, mess hall, monitoring room, and dorms for up to twenty-four people, though we never had that many at once, like I said. They were a little too optimistic when they built it I guess. We don't have any cooks, of course, so we'll have to take care of our own meals for now. Pick a room and drop your stuff, then you can take a nap if you want, cause we're gonna prep the kitchen and get an early dinner started."
A nap sounded like a good idea, so Jess picked the first door. Behind it, she found a simple eight by twelve windowless cinder-block room, containing a bunk bed and small wooden dresser. After unpacking her clothes, she slowly folded over the dusty grey blanket covering the bottom bunk, lay down, and promptly nodded off.
She awoke to the clattering of pots and pans, and emerged from her room to find a meal, ready to eat, waiting for her: a fiberglass tray holding a metal bowl of spaghetti and meatballs alongside a warm can of coke. Kal and Len were already in the kitchen cleaning up after their own meals, as she had slept longer than they expected. Jess tucked into her meal while listening to the two bicker about how thoroughly, or not, to clean the pots. Len wanted a simple rinse, but Kal demanded a full sudsy cleaning.
"That's cause you never do these back home!" Kal exclaimed.
Jess couldn't believe she had missed this, and barging in on them, she exclaimed "You're married!"
Sudsy pot in hand, Len's look of mild shock turned to remembrance as he muttered under his breath, "Yup, that's what the preacher man did say." Kal twisted his nipple as he let out a yowl.
"Do people know this?"
"Well they know about this," Kal replied, pointing back and forth between her and Len, "but they don't know about this," she added, spinning her hands in wide circles as if she were mixing two large kettles.
"We told them we were going for a quick trip to Vegas — no lie there," Len explained, "and that we'd be back in a few days. Which we will, can't take this canned stuff for much longer than that. Hey, now that you're up, how about we run through a bit of testing when you're done?"
She agreed, and after finishing the dishes they headed over to the monitoring room to set up. Jess finished up, and after returning to the dome, entered her doppelgänger Einstein shack and lay down to await their instructions.
~ 29 ~
The speaker above her head clicked on, followed by Kal's voice.
"Okay now, the first thing we want to do is get you out and about. Taped above the headboard is a set of GPS coordinates, see if you can project yourself there when you're out, okay?"
Glancing behind her she found a small strip of paper, secured to the wall with yellowing scotch tape, containing a set of latitude and longitude numbers typed on it.
"Ummm, I've never done that before; how does that work?" Jess asked curiously.
"Well we certainly don't know, we're a lower pay grade than you young lady, but we know it's possible. Just focus on the numbers and let's see what happens," Kal replied confidently.
Jess lay back down and performed her exit procedure. When she was out, she turned and focused on the numbers, repeating them in her mind. The pulling sensation returned, and she was catapulted forward into the sparkling tunnel, heading towards a pinprick of white light at the end.
Seconds later, the pinprick engulfed her, and she was deposited into a brilliantly white, formless space. She remembered what Terry had said, and concentrating on the thought-form of a pair of Wayfarers, her vision darkened enough to be able to maintain her focus.
The room was devoid of any objects — it was simply a closed-in area, without doors or windows, lit by a sourceless, diffused white light that reminded her of the domes. Looking closer, she examined the walls and discerned the mortar seams of the brick construction, as well as the white paint that covered the surface. The floor and ceiling, also painted white, had no seams, but instead appeared to be of concrete slab construction, with several visible imperfections from the pouring process. These details helped her to determine this was a physical place, and not solely a creation within her mind.
Glancing about her, she noticed something in this empty space: a small strip of paper, similar to the one in the cottage, which was also fastened to the wall with yellowing, peeling scotch tape. It read:
Puzzled, she wasn't sure what to do, so she waited for a few minutes until she felt the small buzzing sensation. Taking this as the signal to return, she imagined herself in the Einstein shack, and was quickly transported back, snapping into her body. The speaker above her clicked on.
"Repeat. Jess. Come on back now."
"I'm here," she replied groggily.
Another click.
"What did it say?"
She slowly raised herself into a sitting position, thinking back to the white room.
"It was like a nursery rhyme or something. No, wait, it was 'Jack and Jill'. On the wall. Was that the test?"
"Yup, nice work. You made good time, one of our best. But I expected as much," Kal replied.
"Where did I go?"
"Let's see...you're in Einstein, so those coordinates would be near Rendlesham Forest, in Suffolk, England."
"That was England? Cool, I've never been there before!" she exclaimed. Kal clicked the speaker on so Jess could have the benefit of hearing their laughter over the intercom.
"But it was a real, physical place, right?"
"Yeah," Kal confirmed, "it's a room underneath an old joint Air Force / RAF base. Most of the newer bases have one designed in from the start, but the one you were at was an older base that was retrofitted. The architects generally didn't ask any questions, they just designed it in as requested, but the contractors always thought it was a mistake and fought 'em hard on it — what good is a fully enclosed, lighted room with no doors or windows, right?"
"Anyway, onward and upward. Ready for more?"
"Sure, what's next?"
"Outside, behind this hangar, there's a twelve-foot thick monolith. We need you to travel all the way through it from front to back. When you're done, come on back and let us know how it went."
She exited again, and leaving the hangar, quickly found the structure out back. Nine feet high and painted black, it had a line marked Start on the ground in front of it. Jess moved forward into it, immediately detecting a heavy metallic sensation. Further in, she sensed a strange earthy taste, lik
e dirt or rock. Beyond that was a material with a gentle, but firm, resistance, which she couldn't pass through: each time she tried she would be slowly pushed back out.
Remembering what she had done at the Center, she imagined herself as a single point of light, ignoring her embodied selves — astral and physical — completely. Only then was she able to easily pass through the dense material. One more thinner level awaited her, which felt like moving through thick honey even in her lighter form, and then she found herself in daylight again. Expanding back into etheric body, she smiled when she looked down and spotted the Finish line below her feet.
"I'm baaaack!" she teased upon returning to the shack.
"Great, how did it go? Did you get through?"
"Yeah, the last two materials were tougher, so I had to get super tiny to squeeze through."
"There you go. Terry did well with you, the short time he had ya. Great job. By the way, those last two layers were lead and gold. Come on out, unless there's anything else you wanted to try."
Jess declined. They didn't bring up the possibility of disembodied speech, or projecting a full body apparition, like she had done with Terry, and she didn't offer them up. Those abilities she kept to herself, at least for the time being.
~ 30 ~
She awoke late the next morning to the smell of pancakes and bacon. Rising from her musty army cot, she discerned the now familiar sounds of bickering — this time over how to cook the eggs.
As they ate, breakfast was interrupted by the distant ringing of a telephone bell which echoed within the hangar outside the cafeteria. Len left to answer it, and returned a few minutes later, a big smile on his face.
"We got it!" he proclaimed to Kal, high-fiving her.
"Oh, that's great news. We couldn't do it any other way."
"What's going on?" Jess asked, smiling. "You pregnant?"
Kal unleashed a hearty laugh. "No honey, I quit that work years ago," she replied. "This is my retirement. What's going on," she explained, scooting over and placing her hand on Jess' wrist, "is we have a real live mission for you."
"Are...are you sure I'm ready?" Jess protested, a complicated mix of nervousness and excitement rising in her stomach. "I've only been here a day!"
"You're pretty far along the path...but 'are you ready'? Well I guess that's up to you. The deal is, this is somewhat of an urgent situation, and the way we'll set it up, it'll be an in-out thing. Low impact."
"Low impact, okay, I like that...what's the objective?"
"We've got a high value target in a sticky situation," Len explained. "We need to get him out, and soon. We know in general where he is, but we don't know exactly, and this is where you come in. We'll need you to pinpoint his location."
"How far away is this? I mean, I can't do this from here. I can go to the white room without anything to distract me, sure, but any real location..."
"Yeah, we know, we know," Kal interrupted, "distance is always an issue, even for the best. That's why we have a hybrid approach to these things. C'mon."
Arising from the table, she followed them as they led her behind the hangar, past the monolith, and down a footpath tucked between the rear of the hangars and the scrub of the desert foothills.
"We'll get you as close as we can, physically," Len clarified. "The rest is up to you."
"So where then am I going, exactly?"
"Pyongyang."
Jess was dumbfounded. "North Korea? That's like the most dangerous place on earth! How am I going to get in there? I can't even play basketball!"
"You are not going to set foot in North Korea," Kal reassured her, as they reached a smaller hangar marked with a large white number six.
"I'm not following you here. How do I get as close as possible without entering the country? Also, that's like a day of flying to get there, right?"
Kal stopped and stood in front of her. "Oh, you'll be in the country all right. But like I said, you won't set foot — literally anyway. As for getting there, well, that's the thing, you're correct in there's no easy way to get into North Korea using conventional methods. That's why they come to us."
She stood aside as Len slid open the smaller hangar door behind her.
"Here's your ride!" he announced, stepping back.
Inside the hangar, perched on three wooden sawhorses, stood a matte-black metallic object about seven feet across.
"What the heck is this?" Jess asked, entering the hangar to examine the object.
There were so many odd angular surfaces that she had difficulty discerning the true shape of it. It was certainly unconventional, looking somewhat like a slice of pie impaled on a pyramid: the 'slice' made up the central section, while the pyramid point protruded from the top, and the base rested on the sawhorses.
"This belongs to another group here," Len stated, "whom you, unfortunately, won't be able to meet." He stood aside so Jess could view the far end of the hangar, where a half-dozen people milled about in the shadows, apparently waiting for them to leave.
"It's a rental; we got it just for you, for this mission alone," he continued as he came alongside Jess, who was intensely studying the surface of the object.
Close up, she could see it wasn't truly black per se — the color appeared to change depending upon how she looked at it. Placing her hand on the surface, it felt perfectly smooth, but lacked the coldness or hardness of metal.
"How does it work?" she asked, crouching down to peek underneath. "Where's the engine?"
Len moved around to the rear of the craft. "Engines, you mean, and I'm not sure I could honestly tell you — they tell us how to run it, but I can't fathom how it does what it does. You want to know how to operate it, huh? Well, this is the best part."
Digging into his pocket, he produced her confiscated iPhone.
"There's an App for that," he quipped, tossing the phone to her. "Scan your thumb for me, then go into the App store and download the Krazy Kats game. That's with two 'K's."
She looked at him sideways while unlocking the phone via thumbscan, then searched for the game. "Looks pretty lame, only got one star ratings, seems like most of them say 'WORST GAME EVAR'."
"Just download the app already," Len retorted impatiently.
"At least it's free," she quipped, scanning her thumb again to authorize the download. And indeed it was a lousy game, consisting only of two poorly drawn cat heads floating about the screen. Poking one of the heads would prompt a recorded cat yowl, while a number at the bottom incremented by one.
"Wow, this is really lame."
"Well, the goal was to have people just ignore the app, but it turns out it was so bad it became sort of a thing on the Internet. Now there's all sorts of Krazy Kats fan sites. You can even get a hat if you want to," Len added, chuckling.
"Hey, I've actually seen people wearing those! I never knew what it was all about."
"Yeah — they all got 'em around here too," he noted, motioning towards the engineers still anxiously waiting in the wings. "OK, so anyway, wait until one of the heads hits the bottom of the screen, and when it does, shake the phone twice then swipe down with three fingers. She did so, and a shade dropped over the game, revealing a new screen with the familiar map view and blue dot indicating her location.
"Cool. OK, now what?" Jess asked, pinching and zooming around the map screen.
Len came around to look over her shoulder. "It's natural-language based. First we need to tell it which ship you want."
He whispered into her ear, "Say 'OK Mustang Three, Enable'."
"OK Mustang Three, Enable," she spoke aloud.
"Authorize new pilot?" the app replied in a Siri-like voice, as it popped up a Bluetooth pairing code screen.
"Oh yeah, forgot about this part," he said, "punch in four zeros to pair it."
"Really? Four zeroes Len?" she chided derisively while entering the code. "My bluetooth keyboard has better security."
When the pairing completed, she spoke the incantation again, and the craft respond
ed with a quick succession of faint chirping noises, beginning at the front and progressing along the sides to the rear, until finally joining together in a barely audible hum.
"Enabled," the app declared.
"Why is it called a Mustang?" Jess asked, curious about the name. "After the car?"
"No, not the car, but the car's own namesake: the P-51," Kal explained. "Which if you know your history, was a revolutionary aircraft for its time. It performed better at low altitudes, and was initially used for long-range recon missions, which is exactly what you'll be doing in number Three here."
Jess hadn't seen any wheels during her examination, but nevertheless didn't even consider that this might be a flying machine — it didn't seem to have any wings on it.
"This thing flies? And this is the remote?" she asked credulously, holding up her phone.
"Oh boy, does it fly. And it ain't no toy, neither. Tell it to open."
"OK Mustang Three, Open."
The craft emitted a hiss as a horizontal seam appeared around its midsection. Another hiss, and a vertical seam appeared down the length of the top. The two newly separated halves of the canopy swung back and away gracefully, like a beetle's wings, revealing a dazzlingly white interior. It contained two small reclining seats, yet little else: there didn't appear to be any controls or indicators whatsoever inside the vehicle. She did notice a single white wire coiled within a cavity between the seats, and looking closer was amused to discover it was an iPhone charging cable.
"It's pretty much cruise control all the way," Kal explained. "You tell it where to go, and it goes. You can override it for manual control if needed, just ask. She'll be prepped and ready for you in the morning, cause we've got to get you out of here before breakfast tomorrow. We need to head back now, though, as the team here needs to do some final prep work."
