The Gatespace Trilogy, Omnibus Edition

by Alan Seeger

  Mr. Lawrence looked unsure. “So, $325, $375 or $450, depending on the guitar?”

  “Right.”

  There was a pause, and for a moment, Brad thought That’s it, he’s gonna say it’s too much and it’ll all be over.

  But then his father looked down at him and said, “Which one do you like the best?”

  Brad’s eyes grew big. He looked over the three instruments. The Stratocaster was black with a white pickguard; the SG was finished in a burgundy-red stain, and the Les Paul was a bright, shiny red and yellow sunburst. Brad thought that it looked like it had no “mojo” whatsoever, a term he had learned from reading guitar forums on the internet.

  The SG looked like the instrument played by one of his heroes — Angus Young of AC/DC. “I like this one,” he said, reaching out to run his fingers across its strings.

  “So, $375, hm?” said Mr. Lawrence with a frown. “I don’t know… are you going to continue to keep your grades up?”

  “I promise! Yes! I’ll work hard! You’ll see!”

  Mr. Lawrence let his hard expression break into a smile. “Wrap it up,” he told the pawnbroker.

  CHAPTER 8

  2020

  High in Earth orbit, a ring of nine 鹰 Yīng (Eagle) communication satellites hovered at 22,300 miles altitude, with roughly 18,000 miles separating each one. Manufactured by the China Academy of Space Technology, the Eagles were designed to succeed the Chinasat 2A satellites that were launched in the early 2010s. The nine satellites — a lucky number in Chinese culture — had been launched from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on the northeast coast of Hainan Island over a period of seventeen months between 2017 and 2019, each one riding into orbit atop a Long March series 11 booster rocket.

  Each Eagle had a signal range covering more than 40 degrees of the Earth’s circumference, allowing for a strong, clear signal for the satellite television programming that each so-called ‘bird’ handled.

  American intelligence had long pondered the significance of the Chinese using the new Long March 11 boosters for simple satellite launches; the “Elevens,” as they were referred to, were the Chinese equivalent of the massive American Saturn V moon rockets of the 1970s and were similar in design to SpaceX’s Falcon Twin X and Quad X boosters which were being deployed in current efforts to return humans to the Moon as well as for planned missions to establish the first human colonies on Mars.

  The fact that the Chinese were using such a powerful booster to orbit the Eagles indicated that they must be very large and heavy satellites; the rule of thumb in aerospace was that the smallest available booster capable of lifting the payload was the one that was used, for simple cost effectiveness. Reconnaissance photos of the Eagle program appeared to show that these birds were huge, several times larger than any other known communications satellites. The CIA reported its findings to the White House, but as things were more than a bit hectic there, little heed was given to the reports coming in from Langley. The birds went up; people all over the world, particularly in South Asia, enjoyed the best satellite TV they’d ever had, and no one thought much of it.

  Until October 29.

  CHAPTER 9

  2802

  “Sitrep?” said the tall, bearded man in a clipped British accent as he walked into the room. It was a wide, poured concrete bunker containing multiple banks of computer displays — 12 in all — which would have been familiar to anyone who had ever seen the control room at NASA or other similar technical installations. There were, however, only three people manning the equipment today, including the bearded man, whose name, as it happened, was Nigel Cummins. He wore an olive drab jumpsuit with dark grey epaulettes across the shoulders. The room’s other two occupants were a slight, bespectacled Canadian and his wife, a short, curvy American woman with deep reddish-auburn hair that fell down her back in waves, nearly to her waist. They both wore the same green garments; the man’s with blue epaulettes and the woman’s with orange.

  The woman, whose name was Sarah, glanced up and said, “Still the same, Nigel. There appears to be a… I guess the word would be a rupture in time, like a tear in the timeline we live in. It reaches back all the way from our time to somewhere around 2000. If it’s not repaired soon, there’s no telling what sort of damage it could cause to events in history.”

  Nigel frowned and sat at one of the consoles. “Any further indication of substantive changes in the timeline?”

  The man in glasses leaned back in his chair and shook his head. He was Sarah’s husband, and his name was Terry Cambridge. “Not so far, but there are signs of further weakening, and… I don’t know exactly how to explain it. The timeline seems to be stretching. Events that history says took place on a certain day are now showing up as a day or two later, sometimes even a week or more.”

  “That can’t be good,” said Sarah.

  “Not a whit,” said Nigel with a worried expression on his face. “Is it affecting more recent events? Say, those that took place in the last year, or five, or ten?”

  “It doesn’t appear to be at this point,” Sarah replied. It still shows everything lining up correctly from today’s date —” she looked at the date indicator on her screen, which read 15 NOV 2802 — “back as far, at least, as 2100 AD or thereabouts. It does look like the effect is slowly creeping forward in time, though. When I first detected it early this morning, it appeared to only be affecting the mid-21st century, from about 2050 on back to the turn of that century.”

  “Let’s definitely continue to monitor it. This is utterly unprecedented, and we may have to move quickly to counteract whatever’s causing it, but first we need to know what that something is.”

  CHAPTER 10

  2020

  At precisely 2300 hours Beijing time on October 28, 2020, the nine Eagle satellites’ programming directed them to enter the second phase of their service.

  Pairs of large doors resembling the bay doors on a conventional bomber aircraft had swung open, revealing objects that resembled rows of teeth — they were referred to as

  龙齿 - Lóng chǐ, or ‘Dragon’s Teeth.’

  What they actually were was death for billions of people living peaceful lives, 22,300 miles below, never suspecting what was orbiting overhead.

  Each Eagle satellite carried a bay filled with these teeth — a row of 32 missiles, each tipped with a MIRV (Multiple Independently targetable Reentry Vehicle) containing sixteen nuclear warheads of the Dong-Feng 5 class; the yield of each one was five megatons.

  Nine Eagles, each containing 32 dragon’s teeth, each with 16 warheads, meant that there were 4,608 individual nuclear weapons orbiting above the Earth, poised to carry out their mission.

  It had appealed to some anonymous Chinese tactician’s sense of humor and irony to pick the anniversary of the 1929 Stock Market Crash as the date on which to bring down the arrogant Westerners, so at 11 PM Beijing time on October 28, the bay doors on all nine satellites opened simultaneously, and the dragon’s teeth launched. The guidance systems on each missile guided it into its own geosynchronous orbit.

  The GPS-style trackers on each MIRV targeted each of its 16 warheads to a predetermined target. Most of these, predictably, were in the United States and Europe; the Eagles that were over the Eastern hemisphere targeted locations in Australia, Russia, and other locations that the Chinese authorities deemed ‘decadent.’ When the 烟火秀 yānhuǒ xiù, or Fireworks Show, as the secret Chinese military were fond of calling it, was over, the Pan-Asian Alliance would own the planet.

  CHAPTER 11

  2802

  Calliope Sullivan awoke in her bed in the apartment she occupied in Greater Granite, Northeast Corridor. She sat up and instantly knew that something had changed, and changed drastically. The world just felt wrong, somehow.

  She was used to rising early; her job as an executive assistant at the largest data processing firm in Greater St. Louis was demanding and challenging, but she loved it. This morning, however, she could tell that something was qu
ite wrong.

  She went to the window and peered out into the early morning. The sun was just beginning to come up, it seemed, but beyond that, the sky was grey. Not the normal grey of rain clouds or fog – this was a sickly sort of grey, shot through with a bilious green. What the…?

  There was a sharp rap at her door, which she now saw was not the brilliant chrome yellow color that she had painted it when she moved into the apartment some three years before, but a dull grey primer that almost matched the color of the nasty-looking sky outside. She went to the door and pressed the switch that activated it. The door slid open with a nearly imperceptible whoosh and Calliope stood gaping at the large man who stood there.

  “Why aren’t you ready, Sullivan?” he said. He looked like her Uncle Andrew, but he didn’t act or sound like him. He was gruff and angry.

  Worse, she had no idea what she was supposed to be ready for.

  CHAPTER 12

  2010-2014

  As the months passed, Bradley was as good as his word. He worked hard at his schoolwork and kept his grades at a level that pleased his father. Every night, once he had finished his homework, he practiced the guitar, playing along with the growing collection of CDs that he was accumulating. He discovered a wealth of resources on the internet which helped him learn to play very quickly.

  On the weekends, when other boys his age might be out playing baseball or shooting hoops or riding bicycles, Brad found other like-minded guys to play music with as often as he could. It wasn’t always pretty — Brad discovered that there were lots of guys out there who thought they were hotshot guitar players but couldn’t play worth a damn — but it was almost always fun, regardless.

  He played with drummers who couldn’t keep time. He played with guitarists who didn’t know the difference between a G chord and an Fmaj7. At one point, he played with a bass player who seemed to think that you were supposed to strum the bass like it was an acoustic guitar. That one made him shake his head and pack up his SG. One night he even played with a female piano player who was a few years older than him. She wanted to sing nothing but gospel songs all night long. He wound up making out with her afterward.

  As the years went by, however, one thing Bradley never forgot was that he was always supposed to be learning, and so he made sure he learned something new every day. A new chord, a new song, a new technique — something that would further his playing.

  He learned things besides music, too; he lost his virginity at the age of fifteen to a girl he met one night when he played with some guys at a party in Helena. They had been playing for an hour or so when they decided to take a break; the next thing he knew, she had taken him upstairs and taken his pants off. He had gone upstairs a hesitant young boy and come back down a man.

  By the time he was sixteen, Brad had socked away enough cash from playing parties in the area that he was able to buy an old pickup truck that his friend Sam Denver was selling. It was battered and not terribly attractive, but it ran well, and best of all, it was his. No more did he have to ask his father to drive him to gigs.

  His father cautioned him about the dangers of getting stranded out on the lonely Montana highways, and a couple of days later, when he came home from school, there was a brand new cell phone lying on his bed. His father warned him not to go too far away from home, but he also knew that Brad had a good head on his shoulders and that he could trust him to always do the right thing.

  CHAPTER 13

  2020

  The morning of October 29, 2020 dawned with an air of expectation across America. Election Day for the presidential race as well as that of many other offices was less than a week away, after a seemingly endless campaign in which a dozen or more candidates were whittled down to just three; two if you counted the Libertarian nominee out, which almost everyone did.

  Roger Winter woke up early in his own bed in his home town of Riverdale, California. The Democratic presidential candidate rolled over and kissed his sleeping wife, Miriam, and sat up to begin what he anticipated would be the week that he was certain would establish his place in history.

  The mood of the country was somewhat more upbeat than it had been four years prior; it was certainly not celebratory, yet was far from the fatalism that led to the Williams presidency.

  Winter had a 9 AM meeting with his campaign staffers, in which plans would be finalized for a four-day hard campaign sweep across the country, in an all-out effort to take back the White House from the Republicans. He ate a light breakfast — egg whites on a toasted English muffin, orange juice and coffee.

  At 8:34, his assigned Secret Service detail escorted him downstairs to the waiting limousine. During the short ride to the Los Angeles regional campaign office, Winter’s campaign manager, Kevin Martell, briefed him on the latest data on the scuttled Paris economic summit, the most recent information on the Ferguson campaign, and a report on remarks that President Williams had made the night before at a Republican fundraising dinner.

  As they rode along in the limo, they caught one of the campaign’s radio spots which employed a Ned Stark soundalike uttering the catchphrase that his campaign had appropriated from the popular television series Game of Thrones that had aired a few years before: “Winter is coming.”

  At 8:53 the limousine arrived at the office building where Winter 2020’s headquarters were located. Winter and his entourage exited the vehicles, walked into the building, and waited for the elevator that one of the staffers had summoned.

  At 8:55 Winter and Martell entered the elevator and rode to the third floor. They stepped out of the elevator, turned left, and walked fourteen feet down the hall to the door of the office.

  At 8:56 Winter walked in and greeted the eleven members of his staff that were present. Most of them followed him into the conference room which took up the rear half of the office. Winter’s assistant area campaign manager, Will Graves, connected his laptop to a video projector on the table, getting ready to show the mid-weekly PowerPoint recap of recent campaign events.

  At 8:58 Winter related a humorous anecdote about the previous night’s dinner with the Mayor of Los Angeles.

  At 8:59 Graves told the group he was ready to begin.

  At 9:02 AM, much of greater Los Angeles disappeared.

  CHAPTER 14

  2019

  From the time when he got his first guitar until he graduated from high school, Brad Lawrence was as good as his word. He didn’t always manage straight A’s, but it was rare that he ever had more than two B’s on a report card.

  In every spare moment, Brad had the SG in his hands and was practicing. It wasn’t long before he was able to pick up most of what he heard on his favorite records and come close to duplicating it within a few hours. Soon after turning sixteen, Brad went to work after school as a bag boy at the local grocery and saved every penny he earned for new and better equipment as well as maintaining his old pickup truck.

  By the time he graduated from high school, he had added a Fender Telecaster and a Marshall combo amp to his arsenal.

  For three or four years, Brad had been forming bands with different people he met in the area. They tended to last three or four months, then implode for one reason or another. One time the drummer moved away; the next, it was the bass player that caused the split when he enlisted in the Navy. One after another, bands came and went. The longest lasting one was a band called Snakebite. The lead guitarist of Snakebite, a roguish, bearded dude who called himself Blade, was electrocuted one afternoon due to a faulty ground on an amplifier, and through a sequence of events, Brad “inherited” a black 1956 Les Paul Custom. The leap in the quality of his instrument cemented his plans to make it as a musician. It was all he had any desire to do.

  Now Brad had turned twenty-one, and his parents — who apparently were considerably more well-off than he’d realized as he was growing up — informed him that they had established a trust fund for him when he was a baby which now contained a tidy sum.

  After he got over his initial
shock, Brad’s father explained that he had received a performance bonus of $15,000 for excellent work at his job the same week that Brad had been born, and had decided to use that as the seed money for the boy’s trust fund. It had been his little secret over the last 21 years as he had deposited an additional $100 or more a week ever since; that, together with the magic of compound interest, had resulted in the balance displayed in the passbook which Charles now handed to his son.

  Brad gazed at the little pamphlet and ATM card which he now held in his hand.

  $244,429.43.

  He couldn’t believe it.

  “Now,” his father said, “we intended this money to fund your college education, but you’re a smart kid. Whatever you want to do, I feel good about you succeeding. So if you want to go to school — and that’s what I’d encourage you to do — that’s great. But it’s up to you. If you want to go into business, that can be your seed money. If —”

  “I’m going to L.A.,” Brad blurted.

  “What?” his father said.

  “I’m going to Los Angeles and becoming a professional musician.”

  Charles sat back in his chair, the disappointment showing on his face.

  “You said it was my money, to do whatever I liked.”

  “And so it is, but…” he paused. “I won’t say you’re making a bad decision, son, because I know how hard you’ve worked on your music. I… I just hope you’ll be careful, and if things don’t go the way you expect… I hope you’ll come back home.”

  The two men sat looking at each other for a moment. Then Brad realized that, in his father’s world, what had just taken place was really quite a breakthrough, and that his dad had actually, in his own way, just given his blessing to what Brad wanted to do.