The Chardon Chronicles: Season Two --- The Winter

by Kevin Kimmich

  Chapter Three

  By the time Chloe and Keith were back at the Wells Farm, the sun was peeking up on the horizon. Tracy and Robbie were out in the field watching the sunrise and checking the alignment of the statue. The ground was frozen solid overnight and a blanket of frost and patches of snow covered the ground. Their breath formed clouds of vapor in the air. Chloe jogged over to them and Keith walked behind.

  Chloe handed Tracy her phone with the video cued up. She said, “I climbed in through the roof and made this video. There’s a large ball-like contraption, some computers and like a waiting room.”

  Keith added, “They must have some rudimentary security--cameras or motion detectors. A guard showed up about ten minutes after she was in the building.”

  Robbie asked, “Did anyone see you? Your face, I mean?”

  She pulled the balaclava down, and poked a finger in Robbie’s chest. “No,” she said.

  Robbie laughed at her. Then he scratched his beard and shrugged. “We still don’t know if it works.”

  The sun was just starting to climb above the eastern horizon. Samantha’s right hand pointed at the spot. Tracy said, “Looks right to me.”

  “Let’s go inside!” Chloe’s teeth were chattering. She ran toward the house and the rest of them followed.

  They watched the video on the big LCD TV in the kitchen. Robbie sent a copy of the video to Johnny and Dana and video conferenced Johnny in. Johnny’s face was ghostly in the light of his computer monitor and he had a bad case of bed head. He put a knit cap on and sipped a cup of coffee.

  Robbie asked, “Where are you guys?”

  Johnny said, “We’re in Colorado now. We’re going to go pick up David then head to the farm.” He studied the video and sipped noisily.

  Tracy asked, “What do you think?”

  Johnny narrated as he watched the video. He occasionally paused it and extracted frames. “It looks like they built a housing around the reflector ball, so it’s really hard to tell much about the antenna design. It’s roughly the same size as ours, though. It looks like that chair is fixed to the platform, maybe the whole thing is fixed in place, or they use a different method to orient it. Our design was actually quite unsophisticated. It took a long time and effort to really tune it up, but if you had more money and resources to throw at the problem you could automate that process. Really speed it up.”

  Keith asked, “Is it plausible that it works?”

  Johnny nodded, “Most definitely. My assessment of this technology is its actually really simple stuff even though I don’t understand how it really works. I spent lots of hours analyzing electrical signals I measured while Matt was connected to the other side and found zilch.”

  Tracy said, “Really, then, destroying this thing only gives us a short term advantage.”

  Robbie yawned and said, “Sometimes that’s all we can get.”

  Johnny sipped his coffee and added, “Well, it would be really nice to know what they’re up to. Can we get a camera in there?”

  Keith shook his head. “I wouldn’t risk it. We tipped our hand a little. I think we’re stuck with outside surveillance for now.”

  Robbie added, “At least we can listen in on them as they’re coming and going.”

  “Can we get a cargo van?” Keith asked. “Much better for this kind of work.”

  “Sure… Sure. I’ll get one here today. We’ll rig it up.” Robbie stretched. He added, “I need to nap. Brain is fogging up. Reconvene this afternoon?”

  Johnny gave a thumbs up and closed the video session.

  Tracy stretched and said, “I guess I’ll stay here, you guys want to stay?” She asked Keith and Chloe.

  Keith said, “I’m going to head home and sleep in my own bed for as long as possible, plus I have some equipment to pick up from the office.”

  “I’ll go with papa to la condo de Marte.” She kissed Tracy’s cheek then did a Terminator voice, “We’ll be back.”