Anomaly

by Peter Cawdron

  Teller appreciated Mason's confidence. He wasn't so sure. It seemed risky, but the alternative was unbearable. If they did nothing, Cathy would die. What would become of the anomaly, he wondered. Could it absorb such a blast? Probably. But the ramifications beyond the blast were unknown. How would it interpret such violence? Would it react? Would it suffer damage? Would it depart?

  There was some commotion over by the research trailer, but Teller couldn't make out what was going on. Mason had a small portable TV screen and so could see from the other angle. Cathy was making her way out of the trailer. Anderson was with her, hanging from her shoulder, clutching a dark patch at his stomach. Dark streaks ran down his trousers. His footsteps were marked with bloody outlines. Someone was shouting at Cathy, screaming at her, telling her to stop, but she staggered forward, out into view, staggering out onto the road in front of the anomaly. Anderson's head hung low, his feet barely moved as she pulled him on.

  “Get the fuck down,” yelled Phelps, marching over toward her. “Get the fuck on the ground.”

  Cathy was defiant. Blood stained her clothes. Black streaks marred her face. “I can't. He'll die.”

  Phelps raised his gun toward her, pointing it at her head, “I said get down, bitch.”

  “No,” replied Cathy as she staggered on in somewhat of a daze.

  “Not good, not good,” said Mason, turning to one of the soldiers beside him. “Defiance is never a good thing.”

  Cathy waded forward, pulling Anderson slowly on with her. Phelps was enraged, his face was visibly reddened. He stepped forward and struck her with the back of his hand, his pistol raking across her face.

  “He'll die,” cried Cathy. “Don't you get that?”

  “I decide who lives and who dies,” yelled Phelps. “Me. I decide that, not you.”

  “And you let us live,” pleaded Cathy. “You didn't kill us. You kept us alive. But he's sustained life-threatening wounds. If he doesn't get medical treatment he'll die. Is that what you want? Is that really what you want?”

  Phelps was unusually quiet. He raised his gun swiftly. The look on his face was cold, his eyes never blinked as he pulled the trigger. The shot was quick, startling Cathy. From the look of horror on her face, she had expected him to pause, to threaten them further, to continue with his bluster, but he killed Anderson without a second-thought. The bullet struck Anderson in the center of his chest. Cathy felt the jolt, she felt the final spasm of Anderson's body as he fell away from her, crumpling lifeless to the ground. She stood there shaking as Phelps held the barrel of the gun just inches from her face. The burnt smell of gunfire hung in the air. Cathy quivered, closing her eyes, waiting for the inevitable.

  Teller wasn't sure how the next few seconds unfolded. Somehow he found himself halfway across the concrete road before he knew what was happening. He was running toward Cathy, yelling at Phelps. The road seemed so wide, so long. Teller felt like he was running through mud, as though each step held him back, slowing him down, making it harder and harder to push through to the next step. Although he was running hard, his body felt like it was moving slowly. His heart pounded in his chest, his mouth ran dry, and the world fell silent around him.

  Searing jolts of pain tore through his body, first through his right shoulder, then a sharp, stabbing action tore at his left arm and finally something invisible cut along the side of his right thigh, tearing the muscle open. It was only then he realized he was being shot. He looked up. Spent shell casings flew from the gun being fired by Phelps, and then his gun ran dry and the slide on top of the gun remained open.

  Teller staggered forward the final few yards.

  With white knuckles, Phelps held the dead-man's trigger in his left hand, squeezing it with vengeance. He tossed the pistol in his right hand to one of the other terrorists who dropped the empty magazine out of the butt of the gun and slammed another magazine in place. In those few seconds, Teller had reached Cathy. They embraced, holding each other as Phelps got his gun back.

  “It's OK,” said Teller. “It's going to be all right.” He ran his hands through her hair, and felt her trembling beneath his fingers.

  Teller felt the barrel of the gun pushing hard into the back of his head.

  “What have we here?” came the voice from behind him. He could feel the barrel as it was pushed around the side of his head and then across the top of his head, pointing down into his skull. “What have we here?” repeated the voice.

  Teller turned slowly, getting his first good look at Phelps. His eyes weren't quite blue, more of a light gray. The goatee beard had been dyed black to make him look younger than he was, and the regrowth on the sides and below his nose showed softer tinges, including specks of gray that matched his eyes. His nostrils were flared, his teeth were bared, his lips pulled back tight as he spoke.

  “Do we have ourselves an all-American hero? A lover or a fool?”

  Phelps was strangely quiet, almost subdued as he spoke. He brought the barrel of the gun down, running it around the side of Teller's face, pushing it hard up against Teller's cheekbone and then down under his chin, lifting Teller's head slightly as he raised the gun upwards.

  “A fool,” said Teller, and he meant it, knowing just how stupid he had been.

  Phelps placed his gun between Teller and Cathy, gesturing for them to step apart. They both complied meekly. Phelps backed Teller over toward where the lounge suite sat, barely twenty yards from the anomaly. His eyes glanced up. Although Teller's back was to the anomaly, he knew Phelps was staring up at it in awe. It had that kind of hypnotic effect up close. The slowly swirling blue environment was semi-transparent, allowing Phelps to see the outline of the vast empty sac within.

  “What is it?” Phelps asked. “What does it do?”

  Teller didn't know quite how to respond. “I don't know. I don't think anyone knows. I thought I knew, but, honestly, I was guessing. The truth is, no one knows.”

  Strangely, that seemed to satisfy Phelps. His lips showed a hint of admiration for Teller's response. For all his talk of conspiracies and alien invasions, it seemed reality had a numbing effect.

  Teller staggered a little, the tear to his thigh felt strained. He clutched at it and the blood seeping down his leg.

  “Do you have nine lives?” Phelps asked.

  Teller didn't answer. He kept his gaze down, away from the terrorist's eyes.

  “Three shots, and not one direct hit. I'm normally not so sloppy.”

  Teller leaned against the back of the lounge, allowing it to support his weight. Cathy circled out wide, not wanting to come too close to Phelps, but wanting to stay close to Teller.

  “What is all this?” asked Phelps, kicking the bags of shopping that had been left by the lounge. Toys and books, music discs and a packet of colored felt-tip pens scattered on the ground. Teller felt himself slipping down the couch. He felt weak. The adrenaline of the moment wore off and the blood loss sapped his strength. His shoulder ached, and his arm felt like it had been slashed with a red-hot iron.

  Phelps kicked one of the books over to him as he slumped on the ground, his back up against the couch.

  “Math,” said the terrorist. “I hate math.”

  “Me too,” said Teller, half laughing. “I was never any good at it.”

  Teller picked up the thin, paper-back textbook and thumbed through the pages, looking at the equations and diagrams awaiting an answer, the blank lines awaiting some intelligence to complete them. Answers, thought Teller, that was all anyone ever wanted in life. As sick and distorted as Phelps was, he was predictable, he wanted answers. That was what they all wanted. But what had the anomaly given them? Nothing but questions.

  Cathy moved in from the side, her hands out touching at Teller's shoulder, trying to stem the flow of blood. Teller dropped the math book, the pages flayed open before him as it lay on the ground.

  Phelps kicked the dictionary to one side. The cover opened and the pages fluttered in the breeze. He looked at the music discs, k
icking them around.

  “What was all this for?” he asked.

  “They were a fool's errand,” said Teller, not expecting him to understand. Teller watched as Phelps flexed the fingers of his left hand, rolling them slightly, relieving the pressure slightly. Phelps followed his gaze, seeing Teller's eyes settling on the bars of explosive strapped to the jacket. Thin wires ran between the bars.

  “You have to be prepared to die for what you believe in,” said Phelps. “Or you don't really believe in anything. But you understand that, don't you? You ran in here. You were prepared to die for what you believe in.”

  Teller was silent.

  “I respect that,” said Phelps, his fingers flexing on the dead-man's switch. He wasn't going to apply any safety catch, Teller knew that, Mason must know that too. There was only one way this was going to end. There was only one way it could end. They were going to die. Phelps turned to walk away.

  “Why?” asked Teller. Cathy squeezed his arm, alarmed he'd called Phelps back when he was ready to leave them alone.

  “Why am I here?” asked Phelps, turning back to him, his arms by his side.

  “No,” replied Teller. “Why are we still alive. You're going to kill us. Why haven't you killed us yet? Why wait? Why haven't you blown us up?”

  Phelps laughed. His head rocked back, his eyes looking up above the anomaly, at the sky growing dark with the coming of twilight.

  “I am mad,” he said, pointing at his own heart with the gun, as though he would shoot himself. “Do you not know that? Does a mad man need a reason? And yet you ask for a reason as though I were sane. Ah, but perhaps it is you that is mad and I am sane.”

  Teller didn't say anything.

  “Madness is a matter of perspective, my friend. Hitler was mad. Truman was sane. Or was he? Hitler never unleashed the horrors of nuclear weapons on unsuspecting women and children. Hah, no. That took a sane man. You see, madness is a matter of perspective. We are all mad. And madness only needs impetus, not reason.”

  Phelps held the dead-man's switch above his head so Teller could see the wires spiraling down to the explosive vest.

  “This is not madness,” said Phelps. “This is power. This is control. You see, they have controlled us, they have held all the power. All power is based on fear, and now they fear me, now I have the power.”

  Phelps stepped forward, pointing the gun at Teller as he spoke. It was more as a gesture than a threat, but Cathy grimaced.

  “You see this?” Phelps continued. “You see this monstrosity? This anomaly? They would have you think this is the first, but it's not. They would have you think this is unknown, but it's not. They've been working with these aliens for decades. Think about it. The Wright brothers could barely fly a couple of feet above a beach in North Carolina, and yet in less than a hundred years we were flying to the moon. The Wright brothers flew for twelve seconds, just twelve seconds, and we called it powered flight. Hell, I can hold my breath longer than that. You want me to believe we went from twelve seconds to putting men on the moon, sending probes to Mars, flying by Jupiter, Saturn and out of the solar system, all within a century, all by ourselves? Somebody's lying. I defy you to show me how that is logical. I defy you to show me how that is realistic.”

  Phelps waved the gun at the anomaly and, for a moment, Teller thought he might start shooting at it.

  “Now, I don't know what this thing is,” Phelps continued, “but I know what it is part of, I know what it is for. It is part of the continued alien investment in our economy. They're propping us up. They're giving us all of this tech, these computers and chips, these inventions, these rocket ships. But it's a bribe. They do it so they can control us. And the government's been in on it all along, since Truman at least. Roswell was just the beginning.”

  Phelps leaned down toward Teller, saying, “They want our minds. They want our allegiance, our loyalty.”

  The wind picked up, a chill cut through the air. The shadows were growing darker as the sun began to set behind the New York skyline.

  The pages of the mathematics textbook flicked over in the breeze and Teller's heart stopped. Phelps seemed to pick up on the change in Teller's focus, seeing his eyes looking intently at the textbook.

  Complete the following binary sequence 0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111

  Convert the value of the dice into a numeric equation [::] [:.] 4 + 3 = 7

  There were answers. But how? These books had never actually been inside the anomaly. Perhaps, thought Teller, that characterized the anomaly as a whole, something that never could fit into a box, or a sphere, or whatever.

  Each of the questions, the equations and diagrams, had answers written next to them. The writing was neat, the characters and numbers were crisp and consistent, as though they had been typed into the book.

  Phelps didn't understand. Teller could see that from the look on his face. Somehow, Phelps could see Teller saw this as important, but to him it was just math. Teller fought not to give anything more away in his facial expression, knowing he'd said too much already with his look of wide-eyed surprise. Phelps kicked the book, twisting his boot on one of the pages, tearing the corner off it. A dark smudge marred the rest of the crumpled page.

  “What is it? What do you see?” he demanded.

  “Nothing.”

  “You're lying. You're fucking lying to me. What is it?”

  “It's just a kid's book,” replied Teller, trying to downplay the situation.

  Phelps flew into a rage, kicking Teller with his steel-capped boots. He crushed both the textbook and the dictionary under his feet, stamping on them, bending the spine of the book back and tearing several pages.

  Teller looked away, looking at Cathy. Their eyes met, he could see tears streaming down her cheeks. He wanted to say something, to let her know what he'd seen, to let her know there was hope, but he couldn't.

  “Nothing can save you,” said Phelps. “You must know that. Nothing. You're dead. You hear me? You are dead.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Teller could see Phelps holding the gun out at arm's length, just inches from Teller's head. Teller refused to look at him. If he was going to die, he wasn't going to give this madman the satisfaction of terrorizing him. Teller held Cathy, pulling her head over near the couch, hoping she wouldn't see this, hoping that somehow she'd make it out of this alive. He closed his eyes tight, the muscles in his body seizing as he clenched, waiting, wondering how quickly he would die, wondering whether he'd feel anything, hoping he wouldn't, hoping it would be quick. Seconds passed, and then a minute. When Teller looked back, Phelps was gone. The madman stood some twenty feet away, talking with one of the other men.

  “You're so stupid,” said Cathy, crying. “You should have never come for me. You should have left me. You're so silly.”

  Teller simply held her tight as she sobbed. There was nothing he could say. Cathy's hands ran over his aching chest. Teller reached out and picked up the math book. Blood marred the pages, deep red fingerprints marked where he held it. His shoulder ached, throbbing with the pulsating rhythm of his heart.

  Complete the prime numbers: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19

  Convert the Arabic number 25 into Roman numerals XXV

  “What is it?” asked Cathy, not seeing anything significant.

  “Answers,” said Teller. “It's giving us answers. In the midst of all this, the anomaly wants to give us answers to our questions, anything we ask of it.”

  He put down the math book and picked up the dictionary. The damaged spine had caused the book to fall open in a strange manner. There, in the margin, was a large red asterisk next to the definition for the word Trust.

  Noun: Firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.

  Verb: Believe in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of.

  “What does it mean?” asked Cathy.

  “I don't know,” said Teller. “It's trying to talk to us. Trying to tell us something. They
want us to trust them.”

  “But how can we?” asked Cathy. “How can we trust the anomaly if we don't know what this means?”

  Teller didn't say anything. There was nothing to say. All his conjecture, all his opinions, all his speculation, what had it accomplished? Nothing. His hit rate was low, and he knew it. Somehow, he'd stumbled upon the nature of the anomaly, and a bit of guesswork had helped him figure out why hydrogen sat at the heart of the anomaly, but that felt like years ago. Back at the mall, Cathy had come close to uncovering the truth and he knew it. Ego. Flattery. It felt good to be important, to be needed, to be valued. And all he had to do was to sound convincing, but it was shallow, hollow.

  Cathy believed in him, he could see that. She trusted him, even now, even when they were about to die. Teller looked at that word; trust. So much depth of meaning, so much application in life, but all too often trust was misplaced. Trust had to be earned.

  She looked into his eyes. He could see the intelligence behind her brown eyes, the sense of hope she held. What a waste, he thought. What a tragic waste to be snuffed out like a candle, to take something so beautiful, so fragile and precious, and to tear it apart in a moment.

  “I'm sorry,” said Teller. “I wish I knew what it meant, but I don't.”

  Phelps was raging, yelling, taking his moment in the spotlight, and Teller knew what was coming next. Phelps held his left hand high above his head, as though he were reaching up toward the sky, holding the dead-man's trigger as high as he could while he cried out in anger at the world.

  Trust, thought Teller. If only he could. He tossed the child's dictionary to the ground, even at a distance of a few feet, the large font could be clearly read. Trust, the word was so simple, but the intention was unclear. How?