Book of Magic

Chapter 1

2008-11-30T23:58:00.001-08:00

Oakland, TN – May 27th, 1983 – 2:50 PM

In ten minutes it would be summer. Although June 21st was still three weeks away, for Jon Edmonds—and everybody else who went to Jefferson Middle School, he was pretty sure—summer started the moment that bell rung, and wouldn’t end until August was almost gone.

And what a summer it was going to be. He would have the house to himself. His sister was taking summer classes at UT Memphis, and would be staying down there most of the summer. She’d come up some weekends, which would be great. Stacey could be a lot of fun in small doses. Most of the time, though, she’d be seven hours away in Memphis, and Jon had found that having his big sister all the way across the state made having one almost bearable.

His mom would be at work, or out—out dating, taking classes, attending seminars or saving the world—almost every hour that she wasn’t asleep. His mother’s constant absence had, at one time, been something that he hated, but now that Stacey was no longer there to either torment him or share the seemingly endless miseries of her life, his mom being gone didn’t bug him so much. It was actually kind of nice.

During the school year, he got his homework done in the afternoon and had the whole night to play videogames, program his computer, read, watch TV, or talk on the phone. Much of the time, his mom didn’t get home before midnight. When Stacey had still been living at home, she had made him go to bed early, had monopolized the phone and the television, and when he had tried to read or work on his computer in peace, she had always sought him out and tried to make him as miserable as she was. She had told him stories about all the terrible things that happened between their parents before Jon could remember, before their father had left. She would go on about how bad their mother was for being gone all the time, leaving the terrible responsibilities of “raising” Jon on Stacey’s already burdened shoulders—

Jon shook his head. He looked to the front of the room, where Mrs. Matthews sat, head down, studiously reading a paperback. He looked around at the other students, most of them, like Jon, waiting patiently for the bell to ring; there weren’t too many discipline problems in the advanced algebra class. He looked up at the clock on the wall. Just five more minutes, and he was free for three glorious months.

There was no point in letting his mind wander into the past, he told himself. That was all over. Stacey was out of his life, and in remarkably better spirits for the few weekends she was in it these days. For himself, Jon was perfectly content to have Pop-Tarts for breakfast and TV dinners in front of the television, and didn’t mind his absentee mother. His dad—Jackson, in his mind; that’s what Stacey called him—hadn’t made one of his awkward, bridge-building appearances for two years running, and Jon was guessing this year would be the same. It was one thing to manage to show up once in a while when you were only four hours away, but quite another when you lived halfway across the country. Last Jon had heard, his dad had moved to California and was protesting something somewhere. All put together, it was very likely that this would be the best summer ever.

Last Christmas, Jackson had inexplicably sent Stacey an Atari 5200, which had characteristically arrived a month late (along with socks and some Star Wars toys for Jon, which were kind of cool but really for a younger kid—he was, after all, fourteen) and his mother had insisted on boxing it up and sending it to Stacey in Memphis, where it had stayed, in the box, until Stacey had come up two weekends ago and given it to Jon. Not only did that bode well for future visits—life away at college was obviously making Stacey nicer—but it was just in time for summer. He already had a Pitfall cartridge, and was saving his allowance to buy another game cartridge in a week or two.

He had recently managed to persuade his mom to let him upgrade his computer—a very groovy TRS-80 Color Computer—to 32K of memory and Extended BASIC, and to buy him an the Editor/Assembler so he could start writing not just in BASIC but also assembly language, like a real, honest-to-God computer programmer. He had also shaken her down for a new chemistry set—a big one, one with almost everything. Being the only child in the house with an almost never-present mother had a few perks beyond controlling the telephone and the TV.

As an added bonus, Dr. Bernhard from down the street had loaned him a book on electrical engineering and given him some cheap “build your own radio” and “build your own calculator” kits from Radio Shack several months ago. The old guy had a wall full of books in his living room, and had, just a little over three months ago, pulled down half-a-dozen for Jon to take home and keep as long as he liked. Electrical engineering, chemistry, physics, even history books.

And it was all in his room at home, waiting for him. Just three more minutes.

Not everything was perfect, of course. He still didn’t have cable television. It seemed like every kid in school had cable now—everybody was talking about MTV, where they played nothing but extremely cool music videos all day long. He had seen MTV over at Johnny Two’s house. Jon and John and Megan eating popcorn and drinking Coke—well, Megan usually drank Tabs—and eating popcorn and pizza rolls and sometimes passing around a pilfered Budweiser. They watched J. J. Jackson and Martha Quinn and the extremely ultra hot-looking Nina Blackwood and the other guys with the big hair intro super-cool videos by Hall & Oates and Men At Work and Thomas Dolby and Johnny Two’s favorite, The Greg Kihn Band—and one of Jon’s favorite, Styx. Johnny Two had HBO and Cinemax, too, the best part of which was Cinemax After Dark. Movies like Emily, with Koo Stark—who was unbelievably beautiful, and in a movie where she was naked and fondling herself and then in a shower soaping up with some other naked woman, which proved beyond reasonable doubt that cable was the miracle of the age—and Emmanuelle in Bangkok, with Laura Gemser, who was, like, a goddess. But since he didn’t have cable, and had to depend on Johnny Two for MTV and Cinemax After Dark, his opportunities to see such high art were usually few and far between.

Given his success with computer upgrades and chemistry sets, he had leaned on his mom for cable, too, but apparently things she considered educational were easier to get out of her than stuff she considered frivolous, and she never watched television.

“Pay for television?” she had asked, brow furrowed. “You’ve got to be out of your mind.”

But, it was a minor issue. Johnny Two—his best friend, John Miller, actually, but Doreen and Stacey had gotten in the habit of calling him Johnny Two early on, and it had stuck—had cable and a BetaMax, so summer entertainment nirvana was never more than four blocks away.

Last but not least in the list of incipient summer goodness, there was Megan. While Jon didn’t have any illusions about the likelihood that Megan was going to end up being his girlfriend or anything, it was likely they would be doing a lot more stuff together this summer. Megan’s sister Carla had a new car and a new boyfriend, and the best and least suspicious exit strategy, as far as Jon could figure, was for Carla to take Megan out “to the library” or some such, and Megan was pretty good friends with both Jon and John, so Carla might drop off Megan at Jon’s house or take them all to the mall and ditch them for a few hours to get some “quality” time with her boyfriend.

Jon suspected that Megan liked Johnny Two significantly better than she liked him, and that the other John was the real reason she’d end up hanging with them over the summer. Most of the time, she seemed focused on Johnny Two—touching his hand, laying her head to his shoulder when she laughed at some stupid joke, putting her hand on his leg. Remembering that Jon was there only when she asked to borrow his homework. Forgetting she knew Jon when some of her friends from gym class were in the hall.

Jon understood. Johnny Miller was funny. He liked to skateboard, and looked extremely cool doing it, and was definitely in better shape than Jon. His parents had more money, so Johnny Two had more money, and he had a dramatic shock of skate-punk blonde hair—bleached, Jon knew, but the effect was the same. The girls—including Megan, most of the time—swooned. And it was clear when they hung out that Megan and Johnny Two were just really good together. Jon wasn't exactly happy about it, but he couldn't begrudge Johnny Two Megan's affections. Johnny Miller was a good guy.

Looking up at the clock, which barely seemed to be moving—were seconds really that long?—he shook his head and sighed. That’s just how it was. Still, she was gorgeous, she had big boobs, even for an ninth grader, and was prone to wear pretty revealing stuff during the summer. Before, his summer encounters with Megan had been fleeting. This summer, he might have entire days with her, either with the other John but maybe also without him. That had, after all, happened more and more often over the past several months. The opportunities to try and look down her shirt alone would be staggering. He could brush up against her boobs with the ever-useful accidental-elbow maneuver. Maybe offer her a backrub, when they were alone.

Would it lead to her French kissing him and rubbing up against him naked and riding off into the sunset? No. But there was going to be plenty of time to be close to her and maybe catch a look at some excellent cleavage. And that was certainly more than any summer before. It was going to be great.

At long last, the bell rang, its familiar stutter and thump—there was something wrong with it that apparently wasn’t bad enough for anybody to get it fixed—music to Jon’s ears. Mrs. Matthews dismissed the class with a casual wave of her hand, not looking up from the book she was reading. Exam results had been handed back the day before—Jon had aced it, natch—so, on this final day of school, Jon had been given his entire 6th period algebra class to reflect upon the wondrous summer ahead.

He almost didn’t want to leave. He relished the anticipation as much as anything, and sat peacefully in his desk as the bell stopped its laborious rattling and the rest of the class beat a hasty exit.

After a minute, Mrs. Matthews looked up. “Jon? Did you hear the bell?”

“I was just thinking.” Jon smiled. “Planning my summer.”

“Well, good. I hope you have a great summer vacation this year.”

“I’m going to,” Jon replied. “You have a good summer, too.”

Mrs. Matthews laughed. “Well, when you’re an adult, summer vacation isn’t all that big a deal. I’ve got a job teaching summer school this year. So, not a lot of days by the pool.”

“Jeeze, that sucks.” Jon stood up, picked up his book bag, and started heading toward the door. “Sorry”.

“Don’t be.” Mrs. Matthews smiled. “I had some very good summers in my life. Very good. If I spend every summer from now until the day I die teaching summer school, I’ve got nothing to complain about. I had some good summers.”

She stood up, picking up her own books—quite a lot of them—and her purse. She looked at Jon and smiled. “You just make sure you have some summers like that before you’re my age, okay?”

“That’s the idea,” John replied cheerfully. He thought for a minute. He liked Mrs. Matthews, and she liked him, and he always wanted to keep his teacher relationships a little more intimate than flippant. “Thank you.”

She smiled warmly at him; he had clearly struck the right tone. “You’re very welcome, Jon. Now, stop hanging around school. It’s summer vacation!”

“I’m going, I’m going.” Jon walked out the door, turning right towards the closest exit. Mrs. Matthews headed left. “Bye!”

“See you next year, Jon,” she called over her shoulder as Jon pushed open door that led out to the soccer field. Jon smiled. He liked most of his teachers, but Mrs. Matthews was nicer than most.

The weather outside was perfect. It was balmy and breezy and the afternoon sun was cresting the hills in the distance. Jon took a deep breath, and began walking home.

What a great way to start the summer.

Chapter 2

2008-11-30T23:58:00.000-08:00

Manassas, VA - May 27th, 1983 – 4:32 PM

Richard Mathers shifted uncomfortably in the small chair in front of Albert Monk’s large desk. Albert Monk was staring at him.

Richard was staring at the alabaster bookends—Roman soldiers pushing heroically against either end of the conspicuously displayed volumes of literature and philosophy that dominated Monk’s desk.

Albert Monk was the editor of the Washington Tribune. The paper had done pretty well in the fifties and sixties and had held its own against the older and better financed dailies, the Post and the Times. Circulation had dropped during the late seventies and in 1979 Albert Monk and the Tribune board had relocated the editorial offices from their expensive real estate in D.C. to cheaper digs in Manassas, Virginia, close to the Tribune’s printing plant and distribution center.

The waning fortunes of the Tribune had probably been a good thing for Richard Mathers—he didn’t think he would have gotten a job working for the Tribune during its heyday, and he certainly wouldn’t have kept the job he had gotten for as long as he had. But, as Albert Monk’s solemn stare clearly indicated, his days of keeping that job were over.

“I don’t like doing this,” Albert said slowly, breaking the uncomfortable silence with what was, for Richard, an even more uncomfortable lack of silence. “But . . . I’m not moving you anywhere else. Not this time.”

“Monk,” Richard started.

“Look, Rich, I know you’ve had some tough times and I’m sorry about your problems—good Lord knows, I’m sympathetic, my first wife couldn’t keep her pants on either—”

Richard bristled. He could feel his face flush.

“—and don’t you even think about punching me. I may be old, but I’m a black belt in Judo and I’ll kick your ass.”

“Jeeze, I wasn’t going to throw a goddamned punch, Albert—”

Monk picked up a copy sheet. “Rich, let me read to you from your latest submission, covering Wednesday night’s city council meeting. Simple reportage. Take a pencil, write down what you see happen in complete sentences. Come in under three hundred words. Easy enough, right?” He cleared his throat. “‘Councilwoman Deandra McNealy argued against any easing of zoning restrictions, all the while clearly not wearing a bra, which might make one wonder if her own display of flesh, as her nipples were clearly visible, might not violate current city ordinances—’ I mean, seriously, Richard. I can’t print this. Even if I edited the stuff about not wearing bras and which councilmen you think put ‘socks in their pants’, what you’re turning in is too incoherent to print.”

“Albert, look, I’m sorry, maybe I was editorializing too much, but—”

Monk shook his head. “No buts. I know you can do good work, but the fact is you haven’t done good work. You haven’t done good work for six months. Maybe a year. You clearly don’t want this job—”

“Albert, I do, I just—”

“—and I don’t want people here who don’t want to work here. So you are out. End of discussion. Grab a box, pack up your stuff, and stop by personnel on the way out. You get two weeks severance pay. The check will be waiting.”

Richard sighed. He looked at Monk. He had blown it, he knew he had blown it. It was a good opportunity, but he had not been able to keep himself together. Too much had gone wrong in his life. And, when it came down to it, Monk was right. He didn’t like his job. He needed money. He had to pay rent. He had to pay alimony. But he didn’t want the job and it had become impossible for him to even keep up the pretense.

“Go on,” Monk said. “I wish you the best, Rich, I really do. But I’ve got a paper to run.”

Richard stood up. “Do you try to look like the editor in All The Presidents Men on purpose? You know, the real guy doesn’t look like that.”

Albert just barely cracked a smiled. “Maybe Ben will give you a job.” He exhaled, and stood up, looking at Richard pointedly. “Your check is waiting. I’ve got work to do. I hope you get it together. Now go, before I call security.”

Richard walked out of Monk’s office. He went to the supply room and found a box that looked like it would be large enough to hold most of his belongings, and went back to his cubicle. Someone had already found a box for him, it seemed. People could be so helpful, when they were getting rid of you. He decided to use the one he had gotten for himself, instead, and started putting his personal items away. Coffee mug, paperweight, stapler, pen and pencil set, a few reference books . . . it was depressing to see how few personal things he even had to pack up.

Richard sighed. He stopped by a few desks and said a few goodbyes. A few people weren’t around to say goodbye to, but Richard figured they’d hear the good news soon enough.

At the front desk, he stopped one last time. The woman behind the desk smiled sweetly. “We’ll miss you, Richard,” she said.

“Ah. The word has already reached the front line, I see.”

“Yeah. Most of us figured you were going to get canned pretty soon, though.”

“Oh. Nice. Rachel, is Deb here?”

“Sorry, dear, no. She’s in DC interviewing some house members about the increases in federal spending under Reagan. Reagan promised a balanced budget, after all. You know, spending was lower under Carter.”

“She’s making house calls?”

Rachel smiled. “Now, you know Debi always gets more dirt when she shows up in person. Can’t imagine why, in Washington, being a gorgeous girl around all those amoral, unprincipled men.”

“Yeah. Well, when she gets back, tell her I was fired.”

“I will, sweety. Did you remember your check?”

Richard looked back blankly at Rachel. He had forgotten. The thing he needed most in the world—money—and he had forgotten to get his severance check.

Rachel smiled, apparently unsurprised. “I’d go back up and get it if I were you. I don’t suspect security is going to let you back in after you leave.” Rachel cocked her head to the security guard at the door who, indeed, was eyeing Richard very closely.

Richard sighed. “Thanks, Rachel. Don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”

She smiled again. She was a good receptionist. She was always smiling. “You’ll suffer,” she said sweetly. “Go on now.”

Chapter 3

2008-11-30T23:57:00.000-08:00

Washington, D.C. – May 27th, 1983 – 7:02 PM

Before the phone rang, Deputy Director Gordon Swan thought he was going home.

After it rang, he realized he was not. It was FBI Director, William Webster, who told him that he had a priority project, and that there would be two gentleman from the NSA over in an hour to discuss it with him. End of conversation. If you wanted any future career in the Bureau—or if, as in Gordon’s case, you just wanted to make it until retirement—you did not say no to the Director.

Gordon Swan sighed as he put the phone back in its cradle, and then picked it up again and called his wife to let her know that he wouldn’t be home until everybody else was in bed asleep. If then. Unsurprisingly, the news did not go over well.

Next, he punched the handsfree button on the phone. “Jack, I think it’s going to be a long night for me. You think you could run go get me a turkey sandwich—plenty of mustard—before you pack it up for the night?”

“Will do,” said Jack loudly, making the tiny speaker in the phone buzz with static. “Want I should get you some coffee?”

“That would probably be a good idea.”

Gordon took off his glasses and rubbed his temples. Another long night. What was it going to be this time? Getting his marching orders from the NSA or the DOD was generally guaranteed to be unpleasant. There would be long nights, travel, paperwork—oh, the paperwork. His agents couldn’t swat a fly without a warrant and it would take them a month to get one if Gordon didn’t walk it through every step of the way. Any investigation where anything was going to get done, there’d be dozens of warrants, and there was plenty of paperwork for every warrant and he’d end up keeping track of it. Others in the Bureau would dump all the grunt work on the agents who were supposed to be working the case. Which was why, in his opinion, it took forever for their cases to get resolved, if ever.

The problem with getting results over avoiding grunt work was that tough cases often got shunted to him. He closed his eyes and moved to rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I’ve got to start pushing all the damn paperwork on my agents,” he muttered to himself.

“Director Swan?” It was Jack, with a deli sandwich neatly wrapped in white paper and a cup of coffee—black with two sugars. Gordon found himself sorry Jack would be moving on at the end of the summer; he was a hell of a lot better than his previous full-time assistant. But, of course, Jack was young and ambitious and planning to move up in the Bureau. It was good to win the favor of the Deputy Directors if you were planning on being a career man.

“Thanks, Jack. Good man.”

“No problem, sir. You need anything else?”

“Nah. You go home. You’ll miss all the rest you're getting now when they make you a Deputy Director one day.” Gordon felt a tinge of jealousy as he said it, but smiled all the same.

“I can only hope, sir.” Jack turned and walked out the door, his footsteps vanishing quickly down the hallway. He was good. Did what he was asked to do, and didn’t overstay his welcome. He would move up, Gordon thought. Sort of reminded him of himself, when he was younger.

Gordon sighed, and thumbed through his in box. There was nothing that couldn’t wait—but, it wasn’t like he had something else to do, and there was normally no way of being sure when personnel was going to arrive to meet for “emergency” sessions. And people in the NSA, DOD and CIA were known to keep the FBI waiting.

He pulled out a marked and coded folder—a report on a recently resolved case that needed his stamp of approval. It was a thick, thick report. His agents had been working with both the IRS and the DEA in prosecuting a New Jersey drug kingpin. They had nailed the guy good, and the evidence for the case was plentiful. The DEA was going to handle the prosecution on drug trafficking and the IRS was going to handle the prosecution on income tax evasion so the Bureau, except for the agents being called as material witnesses, was done.

The report, however, was 250 pages of ass covering. And he had to read it all, to cover his ass. To be Jack, he thought. Young and ambitious and with something in life to look forward to. Because he hasn’t been around long enough to know better.

Seventy-five pages into the report, his phone rang. He pushed the handsfree button. “Yeah?”
“Howard Voss and Theresa McNaney here to see you, sir.”

Theresa? Swan thought. Director Webster had said to expect two gentlemen.
“Could you show them to conference room three and let them know I’ll be there in two minutes?”

“Yes, sir.”

Gordon hit the release button. He sighed, grabbed a legal pad, and made his way down the corridor to the conference room.

Chapter 4

2008-11-30T23:55:00.000-08:00

Oak Ridge, TN – May 27th, 1983 – 9:15 PM

Sheer bliss. Summer was going to be sheer bliss. Jon had talked to both his friend John—and they just used their names when they talked to each other; nothing clever like Johnny Two or Mr. Miller, because they both knew who was which—and Megan, who had called him. She hadn’t exactly been in a good mood, and had done nothing but complain about her parents for an hour and a half, but she had been talking to him. For an hour and a half! During which, he had beaten his previous high score in Pitfall. The boy was hot tonight.

It was funny. The sort of sharing of miseries, of grousing about parents and general, implacable unhappiness of life, that Jon found so tiresome and even grueling from his sister was bearable, even kind of nice, from Megan. And, more and more, it had been Jon she had been calling to share her miseries with. Even if sometimes Megan could descend to a desolate bleakness that was far blacker than anything Stacey had ever cooked up, from Megan, it was a privilege. Even if, in the end, it meant he was the “friend” and Johnny Two, or some other eligible young buck, got the boyfriend position. Something was better than nothing, and it seemed harmless to let himself fantasize that maybe one day she could be sharing her misery in person while he consoled her, and as her voice trailed off and their heads slowly moved closer to each other, their lips almost touching . . .

On the television, Jon’s little Pitfall dude got stung by a scorpion and fell into a tar pit. All right, maybe he was getting too distracted thinking about Megan. But, it was time to move on to something else, anyway. Is was getting near ten, on the first official day of summer vacation, and he had barely scraped the surface of what he wanted to do with this immensely valuable time. Time to start programming. He had some ideas he wanted to play with, and wanted to make sure this summer ended in a finished program—he wanted to write an adventure game like Zork or Bedlam or one of the Scott Adams adventures, and he didn’t want to have to do it in BASIC. Maybe one day, he could do really cool video games like Pitfall. But he knew something that advanced was still a long way away for him. But a text adventure? He was up to it.

So, he disconnected the Atari 5200 from the old RCA television and hooked up his TRS-80 Color Computer, stuck in the Editor/Assembler cartridge, and got to work.

“Thanks for listening, Jon. You’re a really good guy,” she had said. How could that not lead to a kiss? Like, a French kiss. When a girl sounded that grateful, she’d put her tongue in your mouth, given half a chance. Jon was sure of it. If only she had been coming over tonight.

Jon shook his head. Yes, it wasn’t even the first official day of summer, but summer vacation was short and Megan wasn’t there to kiss or be kissed. He needed to focus. Flipping the manual open, he began work again on the second tutorial—generating a siren sound that changed pitch by which key on the keyboard was pressed.

It was just that she smelled so good. There had been long pauses in the phone conversation where Jon had just listened to her breathing, and he could almost smell her hair. Like flowers and water. Then she would start again, telling him about her parents, or her friends and school, or her own general depression, her voice low and deliberate, as if she were tasting the words as she said them. She could talk, sometimes, in this low, smoky voice—like everything she said was at once a seduction and a secret. It was wonderful to listen to.

“I just wish someone would take me out of here. I wish I could get out. You ever feel like that, Jon?”

“Sometimes. Not all the time. It’s better now that my sister moved to Memphis.”

“Yeah. And you’re mom’s never home, is she?”

“Nah, she’s got other shit to do.”

“You’re lucky. My mom and dad are home a lot. They argue all the time. They are always yelling. I can hear them now. Right now, they are fighting about some stupid, trivial, nothing piece of shit thing. They won’t let me do anything.”

“Damn, that sucks,” John had replied wisely.

“Yeah.”

In his mind's eye, he was no longer just reliving the earlier phone conversation. Instead, they were sitting his living room, talking by candlelight. As she talked, she took his hand and moved it towards her breasts, which seemed suddenly larger than before–

“Oh, for the love of . . . ” Jon muttered, trailing off. What the hell was wrong with him? He had cool stuff to work on right in front of him. He’d pick the real, live Megan over programming or video games any day of the week. But just thinking about her? Re-imagining their phone conversation? He could do that while he drifted off to sleep, or when he was stuck somewhere boring. Right now, he had a challenge, and he wanted to get to it. If he got to the end of the summer not knowing Editor/Assembler, he’d never catch up. There were already twelve-year-old kids submitting assembly language programs to the contests in the Color Computer magazines. If he had to stretch out learning assembly through 9th grade and into the next summer, how would he ever catch up?

If it was the real, live, warm, supple Megan, whose hair smelled like flowers and rain–then, sure, he’d give up learning to program forever for the real deal. But for just thinking about her? That was nuts.

Anyway, when it came to even having a shot at Megan, it wouldn’t hurt to have some sort of impressive accomplishment tucked under his belt. If he could be writing commercial-grade text adventures and programming in assembly by the end of the summer, he reasoned, well, that would seem pretty damn impressive to him.

So, back to work.

Three lines into the tutorial, he could almost feel Megan’s lips against his. He could feel her tongue teasing him. He had never actually French kissed a girl, but he had seen it on TV and in movies often enough and it looked like it would be really cool. So long as the girl didn’t have bad breath, which Megan wouldn’t. He could see it in his mind, as if watching a film, and Megan was almost chewing on his face, working her mouth and jaw so vigorously and intensely it was almost like she wanted to eat him. As they kissed, her hand wandered down towards his lap . . .

“Crap!” Jon stood up, dropping the Editor/Assembler manual on the floor. He was having issues. It wasn’t the first time he had had these sorts of thoughts, of course, or had been excited by them. But this was the first time the opportunity to play video games or work on his computer hadn’t been able to trump them. I’ve got to get back on track, he thought. How am I going to get anything done if I keep getting all weird over Megan?

He knew a cold shower was supposed to help, but he didn’t like the sound of that. “A walk around the block,” he said. “I’ll walk around the block. That’s supposed to help.”

Jon grabbed his keys, put on some tennis shoes, and ran out of the house. But he made sure the door was locked; his mother would kill him if she came home and the door was unlocked. Walking briskly, he made his way around the block in the warm night air. He circled the block four times before deciding that it wasn’t, as a practical matter, doing him much good. Maybe, he thought, he should just give it up and give it a clean start tomorrow, and do his programming tutorials first thing in the morning, before he did anything else.

As he finished his fourth and final circuit and turned down the cracked cement walkway that led to the door of their admittedly cheap, but very functional, rental house, he stopped with a jerk.

The mail! He had forgotten to check the mail. What the hell was he thinking? That was always supposed to be the first thing he did when he got home. If his mom got home and found out he had forgotten to check the mail, there would be hell to pay. Absolute hell. Among a dozen other things, Doreen Edmonds was paranoid about people in the neighborhood stealing the mail and doing something sinister with it. He had forgotten to get the mail before she had gotten home once last Fall, and the ensuing ass-chewing had been vicious. Worse than the time he had set his bed on fire when he had tried to improvise his own chemistry set out of common household cleansers.

He ran back to the mailbox and pulled open the door. It was loaded with mail, top to bottom. Letters and bills and magazines and a fairly sizeable box. Jon felt his pulse quicken. He felt the skin on his arms and back dimple up with goose bumps. A palpable sense of nearly avoided doom settled on him. Dear God, if I had forgotten to get this mail . . .

No time to waste. Jon pulled all the mail out and rushed into the house, sorting it quickly, just in case his mother showed up early. It was almost eleven, and it was rare on Friday nights she would get home that early. But it did happen.

Bill, bill, bill. Doreen Edmonds, you could already be a winner. Dorna Edmund, you could already be a winner. Bill. Victoria’s Secret—Jon liked sneaking a peak at it, but did not like to think about why his mother got the stupid thing. The thought of her wearing this kind of stuff was just unpleasant. It made him shudder just to think about it. J.C. Penny—that was more like it. Ms. Magazine. A subscription offer to Popular Mechanics, addressed to Jon. Maybe he could guilt his mom into getting that for him. He sat that aside. And . . . a box. A box wrapped in brown butcher paper, with Jon’s name and address neatly penned in blue ink on the top.

For a moment, his heart sank. All thoughts of Megan were finally wiped from his mind. A box. Addressed to him. No return address. That didn’t bode well. The obvious, and depressing, thought was that it was something from his dad. Some object with some letter he didn’t want to read. Some peace offering sent ahead of coming down and wasting futile hours and even days of the valuable summer time to try and make up for—or, let’s be honest, make excuses for—having been gone since before Jon was born. A curse on what was supposed to be the most perfect summer ever.

He needn’t have worried. At least, not about that. Inside was an unlabeled video cassette with a square of notebook paper loosely inserted with it.

Urgent! it shouted, in the same neat, blue-inked penmanship that the box had been addressed with. He could almost believe it was from his dad, but a video cassette with no label? When his dad, Mr. No-Money-For-Child-Support, ought to know they wouldn’t have a BetaMax. Well, perhaps saying he ought to know was giving his dad too much credit. But they didn’t have a video cassette player, and the only person he knew that had one was the other John. And urgent. Who would send him a BetaMax video cassette with a note that said “Urgent!”? Was it a joke? What could possibly be on it?

Jon was dying to find out, but he had to admit that nearing eleven o’clock at night was too late to call up Johnny Two and see if he could come over and watch some weird video tape that came in a box with no return address. John would be fine with it, but his parents would be home, and they’d pop a gasket.

Jon shook his head. Weird. He put the note down and picked up the video cassette again. It was compact and seemed heavier than he remembered Johnny Two’s video cassettes being. The surface seemed slicker, too. He rubbed his hand over it. It was cool, even cold to the touch. And, as he listened closely, he could swear he heard something whirring.

The video cassette shifted in his hands. The center plate, where the label should have been, rotated and rose up from the tape. The surface of the clear plastic that allowed one to see how much tape was currently unspooled clouded and turned silvery, and sprung up, stopping at a forty-five degree angle. The black piece on the opposite side also clouded and then turned a reflective silver, and lifted away from the body of the video cassette at a forty-five degree angle.

“Jon,” the video cassette said, clear as a bell. “Do not be—“

There were sparks flashing between the two elevated, reflected plates. Jon squealed and tossed the video cassette on the floor. He struggled to breathe; his feet felt frozen in place, and his heart was beating a hundred miles a minute. “Omigod,” he said. “Omigod. Omigod. Omigod.”

The tape, black and lifeless and completely normal, sat quietly on the floor.

Jon just stood, staring at the video cassette, for a full five minutes. It did nothing.

“I’m going crazy. First, I can’t stop thinking about Megan, and now this.” But, even in his highly agitated state, that didn’t sound right. There was a big leap from a teenage boy being unable to get his mind off an attractive girl, especially one that might possibly like him, and seeing household objects come to life. And he wasn’t exactly seeing all the household objects come to life. Just this one video cassette. That had arrived in the mail, with no return address.

Jon waited another five minutes. Then he bent over, picked up the cassette and held it for a moment. He waited.

Nothing. It was just a video cassette, that was all. He was just . . . tired. He had over exerted himself walking around the block. Or maybe he had been drugged. He had taken some aspirin earlier for a mild headache; maybe he had taken one of his mother’s indecipherable prescription drugs by mistake? Sometimes she would put them in regular medicine bottles. That seemed feasible.

The tape whirred again, and this time, more rapidly, the two silver panels lifted up and the center plate extended itself and rotated.

Jon let out a strangled gurgle, throwing the tape over to the sofa. “Omigod omigod omigod.”

The video cassette sat silently on the sofa, doing nothing.

“What’s going on?” Jon asked the empty room. “What is this?” He was breathing in rapid, sharp exhalations. His throat felt tight. He felt light-headed. He wasn’t entirely sure what hyperventilating was, but as he seemed unable to control the rapidness of his breath, he thought he just might be doing it now.

Jon ran to the kitchen, peaking over the divider between the living room and the kitchen area—in truth, it was just enough room for a person to squeeze in between the stove, refrigerator, cabinets and microwave–to make sure the video cassette hadn’t moved. It hadn’t.

He began searching for something to hold the tape with, or maybe just poke it with. For a fleeting moment, he had a crystal clear vision of the cassette, whirring and clicking, sprouting mechanical legs and leaping at him from across the room, shooting sinewy, web-like magnetic tape all over him. Then it would descend, reflective, silvery fangs sinking into his neck with high-pitched whine of an electric motor.

He looked up at the video cassette. No movement. It was just sitting there, being a tape.

“Okay, good, Jon.” He wiped sweat off his forehead with his shirt. “Schools out and I’m going nuts.”

He quickly rummaged through the drawers, looking for the BBQ tongs. They never actually used them, at least that Jon recalled, but he knew they were in there somewhere. Then, he put on the bright yellow oven mitts that dangled off the oven handle for added protection.

He approached the tape slowly. No change. It just looked like a blank video cassette.

“Careful, careful . . . ” Jon muttered to himself, sweat beading on his forehead. He extended the cooking tongs gingerly towards to the video cassette. “Careful . . . ah!” The tong slipped as he tried to grab the cassette. The video cassette did nothing.

“Damn,” Jon cursed, and made a second pass. This time, he got one side of the tongs firmly under the video tape, and clamped down. He lifted it in the air, held it steady—and as far away from himself as he could with the tongs—and waited.
Nothing happened.

Sweat was beading into his eyes. He spared a moment to glance away to the kitchen clock, a yellow cat with a swinging tale and rolling eyes that told him it was 11:15. He stood as still as he could, holding the video tape out in front of him, watching it carefully.

It began to shake. Jon gasped, and then realized his arm was shaking. The tape wasn’t doing anything, it was him. He looked back to the clock. It was now 11:17. Nothing had changed.

Jon slowly brought the video cassette closer to him, and then placed it gently down on the free oven mitt. He was now holding the video cassette. He stood for thirty seconds, carefully holding it in his left hand. Nothing happened.

The fear was subsiding and the curiosity was rising. Certainly, he reasoned, if it was going to blow up—or turn into some sort of mechanical spider and kill him—it would have done it by now.

Putting aside the tongs, he grabbed the tape firmly with both hands, still wearing the oven mitts. He waited. The yellow cat’s tail swung back and forth, marking the seconds. Thirty seconds. Forty. Nothing happened.

“What the hell?” Jon marveled, beginning to doubt he had actually seen what he had seen.

He took his left hand out of the oven mitt, and touched the video cassette with his bare fingers. The surface was smooth and cold; it felt like polished marble. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a regular video cassette.

The tape whirred and clicked. The two silver panels lifted up and the center plate extended itself and rotated. The area above the center plate began to sparkle.

“Yah!” Jon yelped, his heart jumping again. Not quite as much this time, though. He immediately withdrew the hand touching the tape, and with two beeps and a series of rapid clicks, it was back to normal. It looked just a like a video cassette.

“Okay. This is weird.” Jon put his hand back down on the tape, waiting. A few moments later, he heard the clicking start and he lifted his hand off. It stopped. “Freaky,” Jon muttered. “Freaky, freaky.”

He put his hand down again, this time placing just his palm against the top of the video cassette. He waited. Tick, tock, went the kitty. Nothing.

Jon thought for a moment, then placed just one finger firmly against the side of the video cassette.

This time, it was faster, the panels were up and the center plate extended before he had time to gasp, yelp, or gurgle. The center plate was practically spitting sparks. In a tinny, but clearly recognizable voice, the tape started talking to him.

“Jon, don’t be alarmed. As you have received this, I will be dead. Well, for the time being, anyway.”

Curiosity was gone again. Now, it was just pure fear. Jon couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He just stood there, over the sofa, holding the spark-spitting tape in a large, yellow oven mitt, one finger almost comically extended, pressed firmly against the left side of the cassette.

The voice the tape was speaking with was Dr. Bernhard’s.

The sparks emitting from the two silver panels began to coalesce over the center plate of the video cassette, forming a translucent image. It took Jon a moment to make it out, but it was a head. Dr. Bernhard’s head.

“Holy shit.” Jon blinked. “Holy, holy shit.”

“I’m so sorry, Jon, to put you in this position,” the translucent head spoke. “But I am afraid you are in tremendous danger. And I’m afraid I’ve put you in it.”

Then the phone rang, and Jon screamed.

Chapter 5

2008-11-30T23:50:00.000-08:00

Washington, D.C. – May 27th, 1983 – 9:20 PM

At about the same time Jon was finding himself too distracted by thoughts of Megan Kincaid to continue to play Pitfall, Deputy Director Gordon Swan was sitting down in conference room three with Howard Voss and Theresa McNaney.

They were already in the room, standing and waiting by the door, when he arrived. Howard Voss stepped forward immediately and thrust his hand out to Gordon. “Howard Voss, Deputy Director with the NSA. This is Theresa McNaney, a Special Operations Coordinator at the Department of Defense.”

So, it wasn’t just the NSA, but the entire Department of Defense. Gordon could just see the paperwork. Miles and miles of it. That, and the ego battles, the smoothing over of ruffled feathers and, of course, the finger pointing. If he could just get the assignment and proceed with an investigation, it would be fine. But, inevitably, the Department of Defense–and probably the NSA, if they were materially involved in the issue-–would take a hands-on approach. It was the simplest solution for agencies who couldn’t conduct their own domestic investigations. They used the Bureau as their eyes, ears, hands and feet. And, normally, they ended up making it impossible for the agents in the field to get the job done.

“Is this room secure?” Theresa McNaney asked. She did not extend her hand.

Gordon shook his head. She couldn’t have been a day over thirty. When he started in the Bureau, she would have been in junior high school. Is this room secure? No, we’re in the middle of FBI headquarters, Gordon thought. We have people drop in and bug rooms all the time. Hell, I invited the press.

“It is,” he said. “Please sit.”

“Mr. Swan, this is a fairly unique situation,” Theresa McNaney began, taking her seat.

“Everything we discuss here is completely confidential. Only agents you assign to this case should be informed of anything we’ve discussed, and then only on a need to know. We’ll also want the agents you assign to get DOD clearance when they begin.”

“Of course.” I’m missing dinner with my family to get treated like a two-year old by some intern who just happened to give the right person a blow job, Gordon thought. That’s just great.

He glanced over at Harold Voss, who looked a little uncomfortable that Ms. McNaney was informing a Deputy Director of the FBI of the obvious. He decided then that, irrespective of what he was told, he’d spend most of his time conferring with Voss.

“This is our situation,” she continued, pulling a file jacket out of her attaché case. She expertly pulled out one picture and flipped it down in front of Gordon.

She must’ve been practicing that all day, he thought.

“This is Dr. Donald Hermann Bernhard. Up until three weeks ago, he was working on a highly classified project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. An internal investigation was begun approximately three months ago, regarding irregularities with the reporting process and due to a general lack of progress in regards to the project—”

“So what was this project?” Gordon interrupted.

Theresa McNaney looked visibly perturbed at being interrupted. “Research regarding an artifact. Now, once the investigation began–”

“What kind of artifact are we talking about?” Gordon asked.

The woman frowned. She obviously did not like how this was going. Where do they get these people? he wondered. He tried to resist, but he couldn’t help himself. “Is it bigger than a breadbox?”

The frown deepened. “It was an artifact of unknown origins. No, it was not bigger than a breadbox. Deputy Director Swan, may I continue?”

Gordon looked down at his legal pad, writing studiously, and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Ms. NcNaney, in order that I might prepare to conduct an investigation, I will ask questions when and where I feel appropriate. If you want to give a speech, perhaps you should join Toastmasters.” As he spoke, he continued writing, not looking up. He was writing, artifact of unknown origins, my ass. Someone’s pulling my leg.

“Deputy Director Swan, I was assured you would be cooperative.” She seemed to actively be trying to inject an edge of menace to her voice.

Gordon looked up at her. “Ma’am, I can’t help you if you won’t let me ask questions. If you just want to make a speech, you obviously already have all the answers. If you have all the answers, what in the hell do you need the FBI for?”

“Deputy Direct Swan,” Harold Voss interjected, “we will both be happy to answer any of your questions, whenever you want to ask them.” He looked at Theresa, who conspicuously avoided his eyes. “Obviously, time is of the essence for everybody, so . . .”

“So,” Gordon said. “Artifact of unknown origins. What is that? Are you saying we’re talking about some sort of alien artifact? Somebody steal a flying saucer?”

Theresa McNaney opened her mouth to say something, and Harold Voss quickly said, “There is no official classification of the object. That’s why we were doing the research. It is possible that the object was of extra-terrestrial origin—at least that was speculation in some quarters—for a variety of reasons, all of which are in the file. Technically, the determination of origins is unknown, but wherever it originated, it is like nothing else on earth that we know of.”

“Nothing else on earth, eh?” Gordon asked, one eyebrow cocked skeptically. “As a rule, the FBI tracks down real, flesh and blood criminals, not little green men. The DOD is serious about this?”
“Very,” Voss said quickly, again speaking ahead of Theresa. “The NSA as well. And there is no positive conclusion that the artifact was extra-terrestrial in origin. What is clear is that it represents technology way beyond our own. We’ve—I’ve seen examples of it, with my own eyes. Now—”

“Now the artifact is missing and Dr.—what was his name?” Gordon asked.

“Donald Bernhard,” Theresa and Harold both said simultaneously.

“And Dr. Donald Bernhard took it. Security lax at Oak Ridge?”

“No.” Theresa McNaney again. She was apparently determined not to let the discussion get away from her. “And Dr. Bernhard’s record was impeccable. He worked at Los Alamos for almost twenty years, with distinction. He was instrumental in almost every weight-to-yield increase in our nuclear warhead technology in the late sixties and early seventies.”

Harold Voss, to Theresa McNaney’s clear displeasure, thumbed through her file jacket and pulled out a one-sheet dossier and pushed it over to Gordon, who picked it up and began reading.

“It is now our belief he had been in possession of the artifact for some time, and had substituted a similar object at the ORNL, possibly synthesized with technology acquired from the original artifact. It is our belief he had been concealing his progress with the artifact, and had gotten much closer to understanding how to decipher it than he had indicated in his reports, and had possibly learned to make use of the artifact to develop unique technologies, some of which he may have applied to get around the security at Oak Ridge—”

Gordon looked up from the dossier. Artifact. Unique technologies. What a load of bullshit. “Says here he was teaching at UC Berkley before he got the assignment at Oak Ridge. That didn’t set off red flags?”

Theresa flushed, apparently with anger. Jeeze, is there anything I could say that wouldn’t set this bitch off? Gordon wondered. Oh, the people you meet doing government work.

“He’s not a communist spy, if that’s what you mean, Swan. He was practically kicked out of Berkley for some of his anti-Communist leanings. He wrote a piece defending the arms race. He made a speech at Berkley about ‘the nuclear deterrent’ and was booed off stage. He published a piece just a month ago praising SDI. He’s on President Reagan’s short list to receive the Presidential Freedom Award. He had the highest level of security clearance available to a civilian for nearly twenty years. This is not a communist sympathizer or reactionary.”

McNaney’s nostrils flared. Swan glanced back down at the dossier.

“Perhaps there was outside pressure. Something involving a friend or a family member? Somebody in the old country? This says he was born in Austria, he went to school in England, Austria and France before getting his masters at MIT. He’s been around. Outside pressure?”

“There was no outside pressure—“ Theresa started.

“—that we know of,” Voss finished for her, although Gordon seriously doubted that was how Theresa was planning on finishing her sentence. “It is certainly possible. However, we’ve tapped the channels available to us and we’re out of options. If there was outside pressure on him, we do not know where it came from or of what nature it might have been. We suspect there was something in his investigation of the artifact that led to his decision to mislead his superiors and steal the artifact itself.”

Gordon tapped his pen on his yellow legal pad. He scratched his nose. “Is Dr. Bernhard dead, then?”

McNaney looked over at Voss, apparently meaning to exchange a look, but Voss just looked straight at Gordon. “Yes. We managed to track him to Los Angeles. We had released his picture to some of the hotels and restaurants in the area—”

“Why were you looking in L.A.?”
“Given his recent residence in California, it was high on our list of likely destinations, along with New Mexico—and Dr. Tsukishiro Yukito at Oak Ridge confirmed Los Angeles as a likely destination, based on previous discussion—”

“Dr. Tsuki-who-so?” Gordon asked.

Theresa McNaney tapped the table loudly with one finger. “It’s all in the report.”

Gordon frowned, then looked up at Voss. “Go on.”

“We located him in L.A., and an operative tailed him to the Four Corners Mall. When the state police closed in on him, he dropped dead.”

Gordon arched his eyebrows. “Dropped dead?”

“Dropped dead. Fell over, into his soup.”

“Soup?”

“He was eating lunch at the food court. The police closed in, cleared out the area, and took him out in a body bag.”

“What happened? Heart attack? Suicide? Poison soup?”

Voss smiled. “No, no poison soup. No heart attack, either. It may have been suicide.”

“May have been?”

McNaney thumbed through the file jacket and pulled out another photograph. “This is from the mall security camera. See that item he’s holding up?” Gordon did; in the blurry picture, it just looked like a blob. “We believe this may have been his method of suicide. Or, possibly, that he unintentionally killed himself. In either case, we believe the object was one synthesized from technology he derived for the artifact.”

“Huh.” Against his own better judgment, Gordon was beginning to consider the possibility that there might be a legitimate case here. Not in that there was legitimately some sort of alien artifact, or that half the stuff these two were telling him had more than a passing relationship to the truth. But, the guy was working on the project. He did disappear when they started investigating him. He did end up dead, half-way across in the country, at a mall in L.A. There was something there, even if Voss and McNaney weren’t giving him the real story.

“Did you locate the object?” Gordon asked.

“We believe we did,” McNaney replied. “It was a plastic box with a fairly crude system of wires and batteries, what we believe to be a phone speaker and a fairly large voltage capacitor.” She thumbed through the file jacket and then pulled out another picture. As she said, it was a plastic box, what looked like the speaker element from a telephone, some batteries and a capacitor. There was also a crudely wired toggle switch. “We believe there were other elements, utilizing technologies developed from the artifact, that are missing from the mechanism retrieved from the scene.”

Gordon shook his head. The sense that his leg was getting pulled on, and hard, returned. He tossed his legal pad and pen on the table. “So where the hell did this artifact come from?”

Voss leaned forward. Now that he was answering questions, he seemed excited. Did he actually believe this garbage? “It was recovered from Christmas Island off the coast of Australia in 1962 by the discovery team that was preparing for American nuclear testing. We believe that it may have been uncovered or in some manner revealed by the Mosaic G1 or G2 nuclear ground tests conducted by the British on Christmas Island in 1956. It went through review in late 1963 with a number of other items, mostly nuclear glass and rocks and other objects, marked as unclassifiable and put in containment storage in New Mexico.”

“Unclassifiable, huh? What the hell does this thing look like, anyway?”

McNaney pulled another photograph, this one full color, out of the file jacket. “Pyramidal in shape. Pretty beaten up. A scuffed and weathered appearance, but otherwise not terribly remarkable.”

“So why was it unclassifiable?”

“It was noted at the time that unlike everything else retrieved from Christmas island—and I mean everything else; even shell fish 100 yards off the beach made the Geiger counters start clicking—it was not radioactive. At all. It also did not respond to chemical identification.”

“So they didn’t know what it was made of.”

“Correct.”

“And they packed it up in a box and put it in a government warehouse.” He shook his head. That would be about par for the course. Gordon had laughed until there were tears in his eyes at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when it had ended with the Ark of the Covenant, the holy repository for the stone tablets Moses brought down from Mount Sinai, being wheeled into the depths of some giant government warehouse, to be lost among all the other boxes. His wife—and some of the other patrons of the theater—had looked at him like he was crazy, but it was so true. Certainly, that was the most credible part of Voss and McNaney’s story so far.

“Containment facility,” McNaney corrected.

“And there it would have stayed,” said Voss, “had there not been an investigation into the Christmas Island nuclear tests. At issue was mostly the exposure of soldiers and even some civilians to the blasts, as well as the effect of fallout and lingering radioactivity on much of coastal Australia and the indigenous population. Congress appointed an oversight committee, and everything was dug up. All the paper work, all the records, all the test data, and all the materials and samples taken at Christmas Island.”

“Uh huh.” Gordon picked his pad and started writing again. “Go on.”

Voss continued. “The military investigators going through the materials had pretty broad authority, and when none of the crated material showed any signs of radioactivity—”

Gordon blinked. “None of it?”

“None of it. Going back through all the Christmas Island data, it turns out there was something that originally flagged our interest in the artifact, and it’s not clear why there was no follow up.”

McNaney leaned forward before Gordon could ask the obligatory, and what was that?

“The artifact was in the center, give or a take a yard, of an area of zero radioactivity. It’s why they examined the area closely enough to find it in the first place. There was a roughly 22.5 yard circle around the location where the artifact was discovered where there was no radioactivity. On an island that has some radioactivity on every square inch of it. In the middle of ground zero—not 40 yards away from where the tower for the second Mosaic test stood.”

“And, when we got it, we packed it in a crate and put it in a warehouse—I mean, containment facility.”

“It doesn’t seem the report was taken seriously at the time, or that there was any follow up,” Voss said. “But, when the military researchers noted the same phenomenon in 1977, it was taken seriously. Jim Turney, the lead investigator, believed the lack of radiation in the samples represented tampering or substitution. So, he ordered a full regimen on everything—carbon dating, x-rays, materials testing. He even secured access to an electron microscope to go over all the materials, nanometer by nanometer.”

“And he found little green men.”

McNaney flushed red again and leaned forward, her eyes wide. “As we have already told you, there has been no determination in regards to the origins of the artifact—”

Voss interrupted. “What he found was that most of the materials were about what you’d expect, other than the lack of radiation, except for one. The artifact was covered with symbols and diagrams—billions of them. Only visible under electron microscope.”

McNaney, glaring back and forth between the two men pulled a set of photographs from the file folder and slapped them down in front of Gordon.

“It is not a known alphabet or ideographic system or code,” Voss continued. “Many of the diagrams were recognizable as star charts, planetary maps, cartography, what could potentially be charts of the elements, diagrams of molecules, atoms, electrons. What appeared to be possible explanations of mathematical systems, one with a base of eight and one with a base of twenty-four. While some of the diagrams seemed recognizable and offered some clue as to some of the meaning of the symbology, we ended up with over twenty of our top cryptologists and linguists at the NSA trying to crack the code, and we were making no progress—”

“And this Dr. Bernhard,” Gordon said, looking back down to the dossier, “you think he ‘cracked the code’? I don’t see anything about cryptology here. Speaks three languages, right? But he’s not a linguist.”

“We have been reviewing the reports and records from the project since Dr. Bernhard took position as research head,” McNaney said. “We cannot find any indication as to how or to what degree he was able to decipher the artifact and possibly synthesize technology based on the data from the artifact.”

Gordon looked back down to the Dossier. “His wife died in a car accident in 1974. They were married . . . twenty-seven years. He resigned his position at Los Alamos the next year.”

Voss and McNaney looked at Gordon expectantly as he looked from the dossier to his legal pad. Finally, he looked up at them. “Did it ever occur to you that Bernhard thought you were a bunch of idiots and decided he would take you for a ride? That he was old and tired of life and thought you guys were a bunch of dumb asses looking for little green men in some kind of fake alien artifact and thought he might go out with a bang? See how far you guys would take this bullshit? See just how much of the government’s money he could waste?”

McNaney was turning red again, but Voss just looked steadily at Gordon. “There is no human technology that we know of at this point in time that would be capable of producing the artifact. We can see the symbols and diagrams, but we are not capable of producing them. Not that small. It’s at least twenty years ahead of our best etching technology. Not to mention that we’ve only been able to analyze twenty percent of the data after six years of active research. How much longer would it take to create that amount of randomized data and unique ideography and diagrams?”

“This isn’t some sort of prank,” McNaney interjected, glaring at Gordon.

“And I’ve spent a lot of time at Oak Ridge,” Voss said. “That’s why I’m here. The artifact is not just data. It is an active example of a form of technology unknown to us. I have seen it in operation.”

“Operation?” Gordon asked. “What kind of operation?”

“The activation of what appeared to be a defense mechanism, which injured three people. The projection of what appeared to be holographic images. The active absorption of radiation—heat and light radiation as well as radioactivity. The generation of strong magnetic fields. And more. It’s in my report, which is included in the file jacket.”

Gordon sighed. “And you’ve got Bernhard, but you can’t find the artifact.”

Voss nodded. “We’ve been conducting our own investigation, but haven’t turned up anything. The incident at the mall in L.A. attracted some attention, and we have limited authority for domestic investigation. It would be difficult for us to make much further progress without the assistance of the FBI.”

Gordon just shook his head. He was going to be up all night because some kooks at the DOD really thought they had some sort of extra-terrestrial codebook. Even if they managed to find the artifact—which, for all anybody knew, Bernhard could have just tossed off a bridge or thrown in a dumpster somewhere—what was likely to come of it? Except that, after funding got cut for the current research, it would be stuck back in a crate in a warehouse somewhere. And the world would be no closer to meeting E.T. than it had been before.

But there was no choice about the investigation. The Bureau would be doing it, and Swan would be in charge. He wouldn’t be able to stick it on somebody else. William Webster had called him personally. Which meant other people, important people, behind the scenes took this very seriously.

It was going to be a late night.

“Okay,” Swan started, putting pencil to pad. “I’ve got some questions.”

Chapter 6

2008-11-30T23:45:00.000-08:00

Manasses, VA – May 27th, 1983 – 11:04 PM

Richard Mathers opened the door to his apartment. He was a little drunk. Not as drunk as he could have been; he had spent a lot more time talking, and bitching, than he had drinking. Mitch tended bar at The Grotto and Richard had known him since high school. He was a good bar tender and a patient listener, and had spotted Rich two shots of tequila. Rich did buy one drink and leave a tip, but he was going to have to be careful with the money. He had enough in the bank to pay rent and bills this month. After that, he wasn’t sure where the money would be coming from.

“Time to start donating blood,” he said to the empty apartment, turning on the light. It was a cheap one room efficiency. It was inexpensive—well, inexpensive for DC—and it did the job. It was sparsely furnished. Julie had gotten most of the furniture.

He went over to his little boombox—an Emerson radio/cassette player he had picked up on sale a month ago at Radio Shack—and turned it on. Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” filled his small apartment.

Richard plopped down in a black beanbag chair—Julie hadn’t wanted that; almost all of Richard’s remaining belongings came under the title of What Julie Didn’t Want—and closed his eyes and listened. He had been thinking about getting a TV. They had had a very nice TV, that had been a lot more money than Richard had wanted to spend on a television set, but had, at Julie’s insistence. Now she had the TV, too. No getting a TV, even a cheap one, for Richard now. He’d be lucky if he had a place to keep the few things he had in a month.

Richard rubbed his eyes. Lord, the fit Julie was going to pitch when he couldn’t make alimony. It wasn’t like her new husband-Josh or Jeff or something; Bishop was his last name—didn’t make ten times more money than Rich ever had. It would just be the idea that he wasn’t doing his fair share. No, that wasn’t quite true. It would be the idea that Rich wasn’t paying. That he wasn’t being punished.

And Julie had dropped hints on more than one occasion that Josh or Jeff or whoever had friends that handled domestic disputes in his firm. Yay.

She would take him to court, too, even if in the end she’d lose the alimony altogether. Even a rent-a-lawyer could make the case that Richard no longer needed to be paying alimony, given her current income, and Richard could probably make a better case for himself than he had during the divorce. She would know she would likely lose the case itself, and still do it, just to take him to court. To let him know again how much she hated him. To make him pay for . . . for what? For not having fixed her life for her? For not having been somebody else? Or maybe she would just do it for the hell of it. For some dark pleasure she derived from it. For some brief relief from some poisonous itch that only hurting him could scratch.

Duran Duran faded as Richard lay back in the bean bag, staring at the brown stains on the ceiling. A DJ came on, with bland patter about the song and the band. It was seventy-one degrees outside. It would be getting a lot warmer next week, but remaining sunny and clear. How nice.

Ads for used car dealerships followed, then a promo for the three radio jocks they had on in the morning—two guys and one girl—that they called “The Morning Zoo” but didn’t seem like much more than adults in their thirties and forties acting like they were fourteen. They would play maybe two songs in an hour. The rest of the time they would fill up with vulgar jokes and crank calls.

Commercials over, the DJ resumed playing all the hits, with less talk: “Now, here’s Hall & Oats. She’s a Maneater. I know she is! Watch out, baby! Here she comes, here she comes! Ouch!”

Rich grimaced, but didn’t get up to change it. It was one of the songs he just couldn’t seem to get away from. Since the first time he’d heard it, it seemed like he couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing it again. Case in point, he had turned on the radio five minutes ago and here it was now.
During the divorce proceeding, the song he had been unable to escape was “Love Will Lift Us Up Where We Belong”, from An Officer and a Gentleman. He had been unable to turn on a radio without hearing it. Now, the gods of FM radio had apparently dropped the humor and had gone on to direct assault. Maneater, indeed.

He closed his eyes. Julie, he thought. Julie, Julie. What the hell had happened? More than a year later, and he still wasn’t sure.

He saw himself walking into the penthouse apartment he had barely been able to afford—he had taken a second shift position at the Post’s printing plant to make ends meet. Granted, he had almost never been at the apartment because of it, but Julie had been desperate for it. He had thought it would be better for them to start out smaller and save—she had been a receptionist at Goldsmith, Goldsmith and Bryant, and he had been busy covering the local politics—the most insignificant, tedious local politics—at what amounted to little more than minimum wage for the Tribune. Put that together with his second shift at the Post’s printing plant, they had almost had a one real salary. And they had still only barely been able to afford a decent meal.

Although, when she had wanted something, Julie had usually managed to come up with the money for it.

It was only after that Richard had realized Julie’s budget hadn’t been so tight because she had been getting money from Jason—and that was his name; not Josh, not Jeff, but Jason. Jason Bishop.

One thing about the Tribune position was that he had often had gaps of open time during the day. That particular day, the day he had walked into his way-too-expensive penthouse apartment and had heard noises, he had had a break because a council meeting scheduled for the afternoon had been canceled. Unsurprising, for a Friday. It had been about two o’clock, so Richard thought he’d swing by, grab some lunch—leave a little romantic note for Julie, trying to keep the romance alive between the arguments—well, between her yelling at him about not making enough money or her sitting, not saying anything, glaring at the television.

When he had parked, though, he had seen her car. She didn’t tell me she’d be home early today, he had thought. The simple, stupid idiocy of the completely oblivious spouse. The reality of a dozen signs he should have seen but hadn’t didn’t begin to settle in on him until he had been there, walking into the apartment, and had heard the noises. Breathing. Thumping. Animal noises.

He rubbed his eyes, trying to sink further into the beanbag. Oh oh, here she comes. Watch out boy, she’ll chew you up. Oh oh, here she comes . . .

Richard had turned the corner, and there she had been with Bishop—both of them, butt naked, on the floor, with Julie going down on Bishop like . . . like . . . well, like she never had with Richard. Hell, she hadn’t even wanted to make out with Richard in the living room. Or in the middle of the day. Both of which she apparently had no problem doing with her favorite trial attorney.

Bishop had noticed Richard first, standing there, mouth agape. Bishop had had to tap Julie on the shoulder, still so busy at her work that she hadn’t noticed that her husband had entered the room, to get her attention. When she had finally looked up, she had smiled. It was the first time she had smiled at Richard, he would think later, in weeks. Maybe in months.

“Well,” she had said slowly. Deliberately. Almost as if she had been waiting for this moment, anticipating it. Almost as if this had been the entire reason, for her. “No point in trying the old, ‘I can explain, I can explain’ bit, huh?” And, pointedly, she had put her head back down and gone back to work.

She had known what she was doing. Backwards and forwards, she had known. Over the following weeks and months, Richard would come to realize how wrong he had been. How much the woman he had married, that he had been so crazy in love with—even though it had gotten awfully hard, that last year—wasn’t just attracted to somebody else. Sure, that was normal. She wasn’t just dissatisfied with married life, with Richard’s career prospects, with the money he brought home—that was normal, too, he figured. Richard would come to realize that his wife had hated him.

She had, too. She had hated him for a year, Richard thought. Maybe two. Maybe since the day they were married. Over the last year, as he struggled so hard to work things out, she had just wanted him punished. She had wanted him to suffer. And not just a little, but a lot. She had wanted him to know she’d gladly do things for her new man, and with him, that she wouldn’t with Richard. She had wanted him to know that the day after he had spent three hours enduring a torturous scream session about what a bad husband he was, or how unhappy she was, or how they would never have enough money—and there were plenty of days like that—she was going out on dates, having fun, and having sex—in short, all of the things she never did with Richard—with Jason Bishop, attorney at law.

Then came the divorce. He was slow to realize how much Julie had hated him, but the divorce proceeding would teach him what it was to be loathed. Despised. Reviled. By someone you had at least thought you had loved.

She did stop short of having him killed. But not by much.

Richard sat up, rubbing his eyes. Stupid dumb-ass, crying like a baby. Just the sort of stupid thing that had made Julie hate him, he was sure.

Richard, tired of his punishment from the radio gods, got up to turn it off when the radio moved on, from Darryl Hall and John Oates to Big Country, singing their eponymous “In a Big Country”.
“I guess that’s not so bad,” Richard mumbled, and left it going. He hated being in the apartment without some sort of background noise. The loneliness just became oppressive. He had thought about getting a dog or something, but now, without a job . . . well, that wasn’t going to happen. So his only companion was the radio.

He went to check his answering machine. Three messages. He pressed the red play button.

“Hey, Jack, is that you? I got some woo, if you know what I mean. Call me.” There was a beep.
Richard had no idea who the person who left the message was, or exactly what “woo” might be, but Rich received a lot of those sorts of messages. Apparently, whoever had his phone number before him had been something of a party animal, and possibly a drug dealer. He wondered briefly if he could sell a story about the secret lives of old phone numbers. No, he thought. Lame, lame. Just the idea of trying to research and write it made him nauseous.

Maybe a career in hospitality service would be a better direction. Certainly, it couldn’t pay worse than working at the Tribune.

Then again, maybe a job as a drug dealer. Or a party animal. Just from the wrong numbers he got, Rich was pretty sure that who ever had had his phone number before him had a more interesting and more enjoyable life.

A click and then a dialtone. Apparently, caller number two did not want to leave a message. Then another beep.

“Rich, it’s Debi. Pick up if you’re there.” A pause. “Okay, I guess you’re not home yet. Call me when you get home, okay? I want to know you’re all right. Also, I might have a lead for you. Love ya, kid. Keep your chin up and all that worthless shit people tell you when life kicks your ass.” Another pause. “Bye.” A click, a dialtone.

Rich sighed. There was a time . . .

He wanted to call her, but not tonight. They’d talk, she’d want to see him, he’d probably go over to her place—certainly, she wasn’t coming here–and one thing might lead to another, and then what? Rich was attracted to her. She was as sweet a human being as one could possibly hope to meet in DC and she was also the only person he had ever known personally who could literally have been a supermodel.

Statuesque was the word that sometimes came to mind when he saw her. Once, when on the phone with an old friend from his days in Alabama, he had been asked who she was—Walt had read a piece by her and been suitably impressed. Richard’s mouth had opened and it had said: “She is a woman of extraordinary beauty.” Which he had followed up with the obligatory: “And the best reporter I know. Smart as a whip. And as nice as they come.”

Clichéd, but it was all true. She was a great reporter. She was as smart and well-read and just plain grounded a person as Richard had ever known. She was also a woman of extraordinary beauty. Raven black hair and silky smooth skin, pale–she didn’t tan; no time, no point, she’d say–but radiant. Her teeth were perfect, white and straight, as if they had been capped with white porcelain. Her eyes were green, but not a regular green—a deep, dark green, almost a forest green. Her lips were full, almost swollen.

She went very light on the makeup—she apparently knew she didn’t need it—and in a maneuver that was maddeningly sexy to Richard, she dressed like a schoolmarm. Blouses came up past the neck, skirts down to the ankles. More dress slacks during the summer, and the occasional short-sleeved blouse or shirt, but always up the neck. She didn’t even wear V-necks. She dressed well, absolutely, but she didn’t use flashing neon to make her point. Richard had always found women who didn’t have to flaunt what they had appealing, even as a teenager.

After the last two years of his marriage, they had become much more appealing. During those two years, Julie had been working out, losing weight, and, he now believed, taking drugs to help keep the weight coming off. She had taken to wearing shirts that dove down to her navel or bared her midriff up to the bottom swells of her tiny breasts. She had started wearing shorts and little leather skirts that left about two-percent-past-nothing to the imagination. She had gone to the tanning bed all the time. She had gotten into the habit of spraying silver or gold glitter into her hair. The makeup had gotten thick. Any trace of natural hair color had vanished. She had become a walking neon sign. One that advertised, he had realized belatedly, how well she could fuck up-and-coming lawyers.

Debi, though. She had in spades the sort of deep and satisfying beauty that people like Julie could only dream about. In the same way Richard Mathers wasn’t ever going to be confused with Richard Gere, Debi was beautiful in a way that few people could ever hope to be. The fact that she didn’t hide it under a bushel, but she didn’t even come close to flaunting it—it was wonderful. Intoxicating. Even on the days that his memories of Julie and his hatred of his job had seemed the most oppressive, Debi could make him woozy. She was as close to perfect as Richard could imagine a woman being. She was beautiful, she was secure in herself, she was funny, she was smart. She was possibly the sweetest woman on the planet. Plus, she could cook like nobody’s business. She’d bring cookies up to the Tribune office around the holidays that he had told her, only half-joking, that he’d be willing to kill for. They were that good.

So, yes, Debi was wonderful.

But Julie had been wonderful. Julie had been sweet. Julie had been a decent cook. She hadn’t looked anything like a supermodel, especially when they had first started dating, but she had been sweet. She had been funny and thoughtful and a very good dancer. She had been interested in politics and social issues. At first blush, he had been intrigued, and then charmed. Then he had fallen in love, hard. He had thought she loved him, and maybe she had thought she loved him, at first.

But he had been wrong. So very wrong. And they had clearly been wrong for each other. They had been bad for each other. The pitch black, venomous hatred that had emerged during the divorce proceedings had devastated Richard as much as coming home and finding her butt-naked and on the floor with Jason Bishop, performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the wrong part of his body. The divorce proceedings, however, had done it in a way that was much, much deeper. This was what being married to him had turned her into. His charming little Julie had become an angry, spiteful poisoned woman. That was what he had brought out in her. Black, bilious poison.

Then there was the effect she had had on him. Before Julie, he hadn’t exactly had his shit together, but he had been ambitious. He had wanted to do things—maybe too many things, but he had wanted to leave his mark. He had played bass. He had tried his hand at writing music. He had been into cars; he had liked working on them. He had loved to read—that was how he had ended up at the Tribune. He had read all the time. He must’ve read a hundred books or more in a year, before Julie. He had loved to check out the local bands and the local bars. Plus, although he hadn’t much liked it, he had tried his hand at the journalism gig and had been pretty good at that, too.

After Julie, there was nothing. That’s what she had left him with. Nothing. No money, no furniture, no television, no life. “Ambitious” was not a word he would use to describe himself. It wasn’t just that he hadn’t liked the job at the Tribune. He couldn’t imagine anything he would like doing. He had hocked the bass two years ago, but he wouldn’t buy a new one, even if had the money. He didn’t want to read anything. He would occasionally stop in a bar for a drink, but he didn’t make it a mission to check out the new bands. He didn’t care anymore. He certainly hadn’t given a shit about reporting on the latest city council meeting or zoning committee decision. That was why he had lost his job.

She hadn’t quite destroyed his will to live. She hadn’t gone that far. But almost. Perhaps it would have been better if she had. Well, better for him. She was probably pretty pleased with the outcome, to the degree anything actually ever pleased Julie.

Richard sighed, looking at the answering machine. He granted that it was an absurd notion that Deb, nice as she was to him, would have any interest in him beyond the humanitarian. He wasn’t exactly a catch. He could barely take himself, most days. Still, he wasn’t going to risk it. He had seen stranger things happen, and Debi did show an awful lot of interest in him. Florence Nightengale Syndrome, he thought. She wants to rescue me, maybe. And I haven’t ever seen the slightest interest on her part, but, tonight, after today, she might try to rescue me between the sheets. And I might let her try.

The Good Lord knew it wouldn’t be the first time a woman had tried to rescue a man from his life or himself in just that fashion. He just wasn’t going to go there, that was all.

She worried about him. He knew she did. She just cared about people; it was how she was. She had seen what Julie had done to him. One night, out at the bar with Debi and Clark and a couple of other guys from the Tribune, he had told her everything. No tears, no screaming. Just what Julie had done, what was going on in the divorce, the sheer hate Julie had for him, the blind rage. How incredibly, unshakably wrong he had been. He had gone on for an hour or two. Debi had listened sympathetically. Patiently. She was a sincerely good woman.

Of course, he had thought Julie was a sincerely good woman, too. Maybe she had been. Together, however, things had gone terribly, terribly wrong. That was not a mistake he wanted to risk making again. Which was why the phone stayed on the hook and calling to confer with Deborah was tabled until the sober light of day.

“To bed,” Richard said, turning off Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” in mid-chorus.

“Yes, yes she did,” he told the radio. “And she did a good job of it.”

Richard ambled to the corner of his efficiency apartment and fell across the twin mattress that stayed on the floor; he hadn’t bothered to get a bed-frame or box springs—what was the point?

As he closed his eyes, he thought of Julie. Again.

She hadn’t just left him empty and aimless. She had left him haunted.

Sleep, although not terribly peaceful, came quickly.

Chapter 7

2008-11-30T23:40:00.000-08:00

Oak Ridge, TN – Friday, May 27th, 1983 – 11:19 PM

Jon picked up the phone as it rang for the seventh time, eyes fixed not on the receiver he was lifting up but the video cassette—once again, nothing but a video cassette—resting on the floor, just where he had dropped it when the phone rang.

“ . . . uh,” Jon said, suddenly unable to remember the word hello. “Um . . . ”

“Jon? Is that you? Are you still up? Did I wake you up?” it was Megan. There was a clear tremor in her voice. She was upset about something. Of course she was, why else would she be calling Jon at eleven o’clock at night? “Jon?”

“Yeah. Here. Just. Uh.” Words didn’t want to connect and come out of his mouth. What should he tell her? That he was asleep? That his mom was home? That he was playing video games? Or that the ghost of Dr. Bernhard had sent himself to Jon in the form of a possessed video cassette?

Amazingly, Jon found himself wishing he was not having to have this conversation right now.

“Jon, can I come over? I know it’s late, I just need to get out of here. Mom and Larry are just . . . they’re going to kill each other. I can’t take it. I’m sick of it. I just want to get out.”

“I . . . “ Jon started. Then, he couldn’t believe the words that came out of his mouth next. “This isn’t really a good time.”

There was a moment of stunned silence. There was some vague awareness in the back of Jon’s head that Megan wasn’t stupid, and had a good idea of just how bad a thing Jon had for her. And “no, don’t come over to my house late at night where we will be all alone together” was not the answer she was expecting. In fact, it wasn’t the answer, under any circumstances, he would have expected to give. But, there it was. “Maybe tomorrow?” he followed up, hopefully.

“Oh God, oh god,” Megan almost sobbed. “Oh God. I can't call John—the other John. His parents would kill both of us. I can’t call my cousin Colleen, she’s out of town. Oh God. I can’t take this any more. I wish I had a gun. I wish I had a gun.”

“Start walking, I’ll meet you,” Jon said, reversing himself. First, no matter what this thing was, he couldn’t do that to her. Second, he couldn’t pass up an opportunity like this. To maybe spend the night alone with Megan? Unless she started spitting sparks and unfolding secret panels when he touched her, he couldn’t miss that. Great danger or not, the tape could wait.

So, what about the tape? Did he tell Megan about the video cassette? Should he show her? Was it dangerous? Was it really from Dr. Bernhard? Was the old coot really dead? Even if it was from him, couldn’t it still be dangerous? How well did he really know the old guy? He pushed at the video cassette with his foot. Apparently, he hadn’t known him very well at all, Jon thought. I am afraid you are in tremendous danger, the head had said. And I’m afraid I’ve put you in it.
Boy, that didn’t sound good.

“Oh God, thank you, Jon. Thank you. I’ve got to get out of here.” Jon could now make out noises behind Megan’s voice. Yelling. Loud yelling. Saying, from what little he could make out, some truly terrible things. Thank you, God, I’ve just got my mom, Jon thought. And she’s usually not even home.

“I’ll see you in a few minutes. I’m out of here now.” There was a click of the receiver from her end, and Jon put the phone down. He shook his head. He hadn’t been home from school twelve hours yet, and already it looked like summer was going to be something very different from what he had been anticipating. I am afraid you are in tremendous danger. And I’m afraid I’ve put you in it.

Jon grabbed the tongs, and carried the video cassette back to his room. On the off chance his mom showed up while he was out, it would probably be best not to have the tape lying there where she might pick it up. Then, he put the tongs and the oven mitts back in the kitchen. He grabbed his key and ran out the door, slamming it behind him.

It was a beautiful night. The evening air was cool and the breeze was blowing. The sky was clear, and the moon was a brilliant white. A million stars sparkled against the black of space. The wind smelled like summer. The leaves rustled in the trees—it was the sound of summer. The sound of the world talking to him. And Megan was on her way to meet him.

That, and the old guy he’d hung around with some and who loaned him some books had sent him some sort of possessed video cassette. Which had warned him that he was in tremendous danger.

And she’s going to be, too, Jon’s mind told him. Danger you’re going to put her in.

Jon turned the corner and walked briskly towards Avalon, the street he’d probably end up meeting Megan on. Well, what was he supposed to do? Tell her she had no place to go and he could do nothing for her while her parents were threatening to kill each other? No, no, no, that didn’t work. He’d stick the video cassette in his closet, and that would be it until she left. She didn’t have to know, and he could get back to it sometime in the morning, after she went home. In the meantime, she might be staying the night. With him. Alone. How cool was that?

Jon looked at the houses as he passed by, mostly smaller one story houses but also some larger two-story homes. Dr. Bernhard’s house was the other way down Avalon. Don’t you dare go to that house, Jon’s mind almost screamed at him. Don’t even think about it!

No, no, no. He wasn’t going to go to his house. It’s being watched, he thought. They’re watching it.

Okay. That was enough. He wasn’t going to go to the house. He wasn’t going to tell Megan about the video cassette. He’d investigate the video cassette further in the morning, but that was it. He wasn’t going to go to Bernhard’s house. Especially if he really was dead, that’d just be creepy. Hopefully the video tape—or, he thought giddily, Dr. Bernhard’s translucent, disembodied head—would shed some light on what danger, beyond being sent to a mental institution, he was actually in.

He could make out another figure a block away, coming toward him. As they approached each other, it became clear it was Megan. She picked up speed as they got closer, and Jon couldn’t help but notice how her breasts bounced under her t-shirt. She’s not wearing a bra, he thought. Holy shit, no bra! And she had to know what Jon was seeing as she was running toward him. Had to.

He picked up his pace a little, too, but mostly was transfixed by the image of Megan, bathed in the glow of the yellow-orange street light above her, the wind blowing her long, auburn hair as she moved toward him. Suddenly, he panicked. Should I just stop? Should I hug her? Should we shake hands? They had never really hugged, after all, and he didn’t want to do anything stupid or awkward.

Megan flew into him, almost knocking him down, and threw her arms around his neck, pressing her face against his chest. He could feel her nose on his collar bone. He could feel her hot breath through the thin fabric of his shirt. Her chest was heaving, breasts pressing against his ribs. Well, that solves that, he thought.

She also smelled like someone had poured a beer on her head. And that explains that, he thought. Megan had alluded to the amount of beer and liquor her parents kept in the house, and how sometimes it was the only way she could deal with them. She had clearly been dealing with them a lot, this evening.

“Thank you, Jon. Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do right now if you hadn’t said yes.” Her voice was muffled as she talked into his shirt. He could feel the breath of every word. Her hair was in his face. It was a beautiful reddish brown, and almost glimmered under the yellow of the street lights, though it wasn’t quite as soft as he had imagined. It was actually a little stiff, like extremely thin strands of straw. And, boy, did she smell like beer. Beer and cigarettes. The flowers and rain smell she usually had at school had been smothered. Completely. Not quite his fantasy. But, he thought, a lot closer to his fantasy than he had any right to expect to come.

Again, he thanked God that he had a single mom who let him be a latchkey kid. Sometimes very late into the night. If the situation had been different, and Megan had actually been able to call Johnny Two and go see him, that’s probably what she would have done. Or, if she had been able to call any of the other guys she hung around with at school she would have, because hang around with them she did. In two years, when they were all in high school and the other boys had cars and late night curfews, would Megan Kincaid be in Jon Edmonds’ arms, pressing her breasts against him, her hot breath against his skin? Not frickin’ likely.

After a few moments, even the smell of beer and cigarettes didn’t seem so bad.

Megan lifted her head, her eyelids heavy, her eyes red. She had clearly been crying. She was clearly drunk. She parted her lips and for one brief moment, Jon thought she was going to kiss him. His mouth went dry and his heart skipped a beat. He hadn’t brushed his teeth since that morning! His breath had to be terrible. And would she kiss with her tongue? That had always been his fantasy, but suddenly the idea was terrifying. He didn’t know what you were supposed to do with your tongue in another person’s mouth. What was the etiquette? Should the boy or the girl go first?

“You are a sweetheart, you really are,” she said, breaking away. No kissing. He had read that wrong. Bizarrely, Jon found himself relieved. “I don’t know what I would have done. If I had to stay another minute. I’d rather kill myself. I’d rather die.”

“Christ, Megan, don’t say that. Move out or run away or something. Don’t talk like that. You’re the most wonderful person I know.”

“Aw, Jeeze, Jon, you’re so sweet,” Megan replied, pinching Jon’s cheek. Hard. From heaving breasts and her nuzzling her head in the hollow of his neck to getting pinched on the cheek. He was strangely relieved about not having to kiss her, but moving from passionate embrace to getting a pat on the head like a precocious nephew was not the right direction.

“You’re so lucky. Just your mom. And she’s gone all the time.” They started walking back towards Jon’s house. “My folks. Sometimes I wish they were dead. And I hate it. I hate it that I think like that. I hate it that they make me think like that. I wish they’d get a divorce.”

Jon nodded. They both had friends with good families. Johnny Two’s parents had been married for twenty years. They were pretty strict on him—about where he went, when he had to go to bed, when he had to do his homework and so on. But they loved him, and they got along with each other. Jon was fine with just having half a parent; the alternative, gauging from both the behavior of his father and the sorts of people his mom would occasionally bring home after they had been dating for a while—or, sometimes, since that afternoon—would have been much worse. Megan’s family was a pretty good example of “much worse”. Sometimes he envied the whole family-sits-down-to-dinner” gig that Johnny Two had. How much time they invested into holidays and family vacations. How much time they all spent together. But so much better to live without that than to live with what Megan had.

“They tell me they stay together for me and Carla but it’s not for us. It's not for me. I think they hate me. They hate me and they don’t know they hate me. Do you know what I mean?” Megan took a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket. They were Marlboro Lights. At Jefferson Middle School, Marlboro Lights were the cigarette of choice. Megan took one and held the pack out to Jon. He really didn’t smoke, but he didn’t want to get another pinch on the cheek as if he were a small, precocious child. He took a cigarette. Megan took out a Bic lighter, and, hand cupped around the flame, expertly lit her cigarette as the wind kicked up.

“Here,” she said, taking Jon’s cigarette and lighting it from her own. She puffed on it, and handed it back to him. Jon put the cigarette into his mouth. It seemed like something intimate had just happened between them, but he wasn’t quite sure what. Simpler than kissing, though.

“It’s like they start fights about something to do with me on purpose. Like they want me to know it’s all my fault, but they don’t want to say it. Sometimes I just wish they’d both kill themselves. And I hate them so much for making me think like that.”

“Shit,” Jon said, shaking his head sympathetically. If you didn’t know what to say, a rueful shit, with a little sympathetic head shaking, could fill in the gaps nicely.

“Shit is right. My life is shit. That house is shit. They are so much shit.” The tremor was back in her voice. “So much bullshit.” She took a deep drag on her cigarette and exhaled a plume of smoke into the night air. Jon stuck to short little puffs, trying not to cough.

“I’ve got to get out of there. I’m not going to make it through the summer. I can’t do another summer. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“You can come over to my house, whenever. Sorry about tonight, I was just busy when you called and . . . I didn’t mean to sound like I was trying to blow you off.”

“Shit, Johnny. You guys are so good to me. I got no right to expect you to come running to meet me in the middle of the night or let me stay at your house.” Jon watched as she took another deep drag on her cigarette. He wondered how such a beautiful girl—such a beautiful woman—could say something like that and seriously mean it. Especially in that light blue t-shirt and no bra. Who wouldn’t run to meet her in the middle of the night? And, good Lord, if it was an option, what red-blooded American male wouldn’t let her stay at his house? He just hadn’t quite been himself when she called.

“And I’m sorry I called you out of the blue like that.” She shrugged, her breasts following her shoulders, pulling against the fabric of her t-shirt. “Hey, at least I’m not wearing a bra, huh?”

Jon stopped in his tracks. He blushed furiously. He had been staring at her chest. And he was busted. He hadn’t meant to, it had just sort of happened. “I—uh—I was—I was—” he stuttered.

“Damn, I’ve never seen anybody turn that red.” She laughed, the first time he had heard her do it in weeks. “You’re ears are just red as tomatoes.” She laughed again. “I know I’ve got boobs. It’s okay. Most girls do. Just remember,” she continued, taking his chin in the hand that was also holding her cigarette and pulling his head up, “the face is up here. This is the part—” She hiccupped. “This is the part you talk to.”

She slurred the last part, her eye lids drooping heavily. Yes, her face was up there, and it was clearly drunk. Maybe she won’t remember, he thought hopefully, still red as a beet.

She put her cigarette in her mouth, and they started walking again. “You’re cuter than I remember,” she said. “Come on, hold my hand, you pervert,” Jon felt his cheeks flush again, as she grabbed his hand. She really did seem to be taking it in stride, but he couldn’t help feeling like a creep.

She swung their hands back and forth dramatically while flipping her cigarette between thumb and forefinger with the other, occasionally taking a puff as they walked. “Yeah, I know I’ve got big boobs,” Megan said, nonchalantly. “My mom has ‘em. Her mom had ‘em. I’m supposed to be in tenth grade. I got held back in sixth grade because the school messed something up, and my parents—hell, they wouldn’t think of trying to fix it. So, I did sixth grade twice.”

Jon nodded. He knew that part. He took a drag on his cigarette. A deep one this time. He coughed, but not badly.

“Don’t kill yourself there, smokestack,” she said. “You know, you guys. You and the other John. You’re just the best. You guys love me more than my mom and dad ever did. Why is that? Why do people I meet at school care about me and my own parents don’t? Do I suck that bad?”

“I don’t know,” Jon said, thankful the conversation was going to move away from Megan’s boobs. She had seemed all right with it, but he was still mortified that he had been standing there, staring at her chest. Something was definitely haywire with the teenage hormones. This had to be abnormal or something. “Some people are just stupid. And sometimes those stupid people are our parents. Maybe it’s just luck. John—the other John—has good parents. Yours suck. My mom is all right and my dad stinks, but he’s on the other side of the country. It’s not just you.”

“I dunno. It’s just so hard to know, when you’re in it everyday. Sometimes it sure feels like me.”

They turned the corner off Avalon onto Cheshire. Jon’s house was just three houses down. And his mom’s blue Dodge Diplomat was parked in the driveway.

“Crap. Mom’s home,” Jon said.

Megan blanched. “Oh no.” She took a drag off her cigarette, the tremor back in her voice. “Oh God.” She stared and his mom’s car like she had wandered into a graveyard and stumbled across and open grave with her name on the marker. “What do I do now?” she whispered. Her lower lip trembled.

Jon thought for a moment. “I don’t think she’d call your parents,” he said, and he was pretty sure she wouldn’t. But she wouldn’t, say, let them stay in his room alone all night, either. “But better safe than sorry,” he continued. “Go around to the back. You’ll have to get through the bushes and they are kind of prickly but I’ll just open the window and let you in. I gotta let mom yell at me for being out this late, then she’ll go to bed and she’ll be out of it. She’s got a yoga class or something on Saturdays—I don’t ever see her in the mornings. She doesn’t make breakfast or anything.”

Megan nodded, taking another drag off her cigarette, but she still looked nervous. “Cool,” she said. “You’re sure, right? I don’t want her finding me and calling me parents. I’ll sleep outside—”

“No, no, she’ll just go to bed and that will be it. She, like, never comes in my room. She hates how messy it is. Oh, yeah, sorry, my room is a mess.”

“Oh, hell then, I’m going home,” Megan laughed. Still, she looked nervous. Her eyes were wide open and aware. It was clear, again, why she had picked Jon to call instead of anybody else. Because Jon was the only person she knew with almost no parental issues. Thanks to his sister’s summer classes, no sibling issues either; those could often be worse than parents. But, that was why Megan had chosen him for this late night rendezvous. That, and she didn’t completely hate him.

He nudged her towards the back gate as they approached his house, but she was still staring at the car, eyes clear and alert and not even a glimmer of a smile.

Man, Jon thought. Her parents are such a mess she hates the very idea of parents. Of any parent. Even Jon’s mom, who was about as innocuous as they came. “Just wait by my window. Give me, like, ten minutes. At the most.”

“’kay,” Megan said. “Don’t leave me out here all night.”

“No way,” Jon said, and, seeing her turn cautiously around the corner in the darkness of their postage stamp of a back yard, Jon went to the front door and pushed it open, breathing heavily. “Mom!” he yelled. “Thank God!”

Doreen Edmonds dropped her books. Her blond hair was teased in the front and feathered in the back. It looked to Jon like she had maybe sprayed glitter in it. She had on purple eye shadow. She was wearing four fat bracelets around each wrist and huge golden hoop earrings. She had her long white Benneton sweater over her blue jean miniskirt and orange blouse. She was dressed like the girls at Jefferson Middle School. Aw, Mom, come on. Jon thought. What are you going to do next? Put Quiet Riot posters up in your room? You’re forty frickin’ years old.

Doreen looked up at Jon, startled. Her lips were bright red and her mascara was running. Another one of those nights, apparently. Instead of picking up her books—she had, no doubt, gone out after class with somebody, again, and it hadn’t worked out—she pulled the sweater around her. For the same reason she had it on in the first place. Jon never gave her shit, but he could tell she didn’t want him to see her dressing up like she was sixteen years old and desperate.

If you’re ashamed of what you’re doing, what kind of guy do you think is going to go for that? Jon asked in his head. But he thought he probably knew the answer. Somebody like Jackson Edmonds, the sperm donor that had provided the necessary fertilization for Stacey and Jon in first place. That’s who. Fortunately for Jon, guys like Jackson Edmonds were attracted to the Doreen Edmonds of the world when they were twenty years old, not when they were forty. No matter how they dressed. Not one of her boyfriends had lasted more than four months in Jon’s entire life. Given what he had seen of them, John judged that to be a good thing.

“Jon, where were you?” Doreen asked, with an almost white-nuckled grip on her sweater. “You know I don’t like coming home and you’re not here.”

Jon was still breathing heavily. “Sorry—” He breathed in and out pointedly. “—mom. I—” In and out. “—I was programming on my computer and I heard a loud noise, like, five minutes—” Deep breath. “—five minutes ago.” In and out. “It was like a car crash. A skid and—” In and out. “—then a crash. And you weren’t home and I thought it—” Deep breath. Slow exhalation. “I don’t know what I thought. Just, you weren’t here and it was getting late and sometimes you’re tired when you’re driving home—” Deep breath. “--and it’s dangerous out on Friday nights. So I ran out to see and I couldn’t find anything, so I ran back—” one last deep breath. “—and you were home. I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Oh,” Doreen said. “That’s okay.” Now, she turned around and then bent over to pick up her books. She put her books back up on the side table near the door, and moved away from Jon, towards the living room area. She casually turned on the standing lamp in the corner and turned off the overhead lights.

“I guess you get scared too, sometimes.”

Oh, Mom, if you only knew the half of it. “Next time I should leave a note,” Jon said. “I was only out for five minutes. I know it was late, I just got worried. Paranoid, I guess. It’s stupid.”

“No, no,” Doreen said. “I worry about you, too, kid. I know I’m gone a lot. It’s just, being a single mother, having to pay all the bills, having to raise to kids—”

“Never getting paid your alimony,” Jon volunteered.

Doreen raised her hand, flipping it out at Jon, as if she were Vanna White introducing a new vowel. “Thank you! Barely get a dime. He doesn’t remember half the holidays. The few times he ever has shown up, it’s unannounced, out the blue–”

Doreen lurched over to Jon. She hugged him, awkwardly. Good Lord, he had thought Megan smelled like beer and cigarettes. Doreen smelled like she had taken a bath in cheap gin and rubbed dirty ashtrays in her hair. “Sorry, guy, I don’t need to be talking about your dad like that with you.” As if she hadn’t been talking about Jackson Edmonds exactly like that with Jon since Jon could remember. It was why Jon had brought it up—it was, nine times out of ten, a sure-fire way to direct attention off of himself and onto Jackson. “Anyway, it’s late, and I’ve got my business networking seminar tomorrow—”

“I know, I’m tired, too,” Jon said. “Mind if a listen to some music in my room for awhile? I don’t want to keep you up.”

“No, that’s fine, once I hit the sheets I’m dead to the world.” Doreen moved towards the bathroom. “Well, I’m going to shower. I’ve got yoga after the networking seminar, and then I’ve got to get to the grocery store, so I might not see you until tomorrow night. You want I should make you something for dinner?”

“Nah, I’m good. I’m going to hang out with Johnny Two tomorrow and we might get something to eat at the mall. Carla—you know, Megan’s sister—she might drive us.”

“Okay. Well, you be careful. I worry about you, kid.”

“I know you do, Mom. I’ll be careful, promise. ‘Night.”

“’Night.” Doreen disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door. A moment later, he heard the shower come on, pipes rattling and squealing. Plenty enough noise to mask getting Megan in through the window.

Jon stepped back and looked at the yellow cat clock in the kitchen. He’d gotten his mom from pissed off to out of his hair and in the shower in four minutes. Just one more thing that was so much easier now, without Stacey lobbing bombs to get him in trouble.

Jon drew a deep breath. Now, it was time to bring a real, live girl into his bedroom. Where she would probably stay. All night. Jon swallowed hard. In so many ways his life, which had never felt simple to him, seemed destined to become enormously, irreversibly more complicated over the next few days. And yet . . . would he throw the tape away and pretend he had never gotten it? Would he send Megan away, explaining he had more important things to do? That he had to keep his summer open for learning programming and playing video games?

I might have to forget about learning assembly language, he thought, looking at the TRS-80 Color Computer in front of the television. And then he went into his bedroom and closed the door.

Chapter 8

2008-11-30T23:35:00.000-08:00

Washington, DC – Saturday, May 28th, 1983 – 2:15 AM

That Theresa McNaney was a bitch on wheels.

Gordon Swan flipped through his legal pad. He had filled nearly twenty pages, constructing the time line, trying to structure the case for himself before he assigned any agents. But, damn. That woman could drive a man insane. He had had dozens of questions he needed to get answered and she had fought him like some venomous demon-harpy straight out of hell on almost all of them. Voss had done a good job of keeping things on track, though. He must’ve worked with McNaney before.

Swan looked at his timeline. Donald Bernhard had keeled over into his soup at the food court in the Four Points mall four days ago. State police had handled everything up until now, keeping the DOD in the loop through McNaney—Gordon bet that the boys in gray drew straws for that duty. But the scene, and the trail, was now four days old. Not to mention, it was 2:15 in the goddamn morning. They could have scheduled a meeting for 8:00 am Friday, or even Thursday. Instead of sitting on their asses until six in the evening, on a Friday, before he even got a call. Bureaucrats.

Gordon Swan sat in the conference room alone, rubbing his temples. What a crock of shit. Artifact of indeterminate origins, my ass. Maybe the Christmas Island story was all on the up and up, but absorbing all the radiation? And what about the crap about defense mechanisms? Then, the whole deal about not being able to specifically determine the material—some form of carbon-silicate they were speculating. But material tests were inconclusive. Bernhard had synthesized some sort of alien device with double-A batteries and rubber bands that he had killed himself with, after which, anything that would constitute actual corroborative evidence had disappeared. How convenient.

McNaney and Voss had told Gordon that the current hypothesis was that Bernhard had somehow taken the artifact nearly a year ago, and had substituted a copy, likely—say it with me, everybody—synthesized using technology acquired from the original artifact. He must have heard some variation on that phrase thirty times during the conference. It was the explanation for everything that had no explanation. Well, no explanation except that all these people were out of their fucking minds and this whole thing was a load of horseshit. Eliminating that hypothesis, the only thing left to fill in all the gaps were things synthesized using technology acquired from the original artifact. It was the answer for everything.

Gordon sighed, thumbing absently through the materials in the file jacket. McNaney’s repeated protestations that there had been no determination regarding the origins of the artifact to the contrary, there obviously had been. Somebody somewhere, and probably more than one of them, thought they had a piece of a flying saucer. Some sort of microscopic Martian Rosetta stone. Someone with some clout. They had already burned God only knew how many taxpayer dollars monopolizing Oak Ridge so Dr. Donald Bernhard could, in most likelihood, yank their chain for three years. Consumed the time and resources of who knew how many people at the DOD and NSA. Now, they were going to start burning through grampa’s Social Security at the FBI, looking for little green men.

Gordon reached into his breast pocket and pulled out an Alka-Seltzer. He had some deadly indigestion. He popped the two Alka-Seltzer tablets into his water—the ice had mostly melted, having been brought in an hour before while the conference with Voss and McNaney had still been in full swing. Still, it was cold, and with the Alka-Seltzer fizzing away, it tasted good.

While there might be something to investigate here—fraud and abuse, just to name two things off the top of his head—the likelihood of the case brought to him by McNaney and Voss even remotely resembling reality seemed, to Gordon Swan, extremely slight. But the strings here were being pulled from way above Gordon’s box on the organizational chart. All he could do was do his job, as quickly and discretely as possible.

Gordon flipped forward a few pages in the pad. Towards the end, he had pressed Voss and McNaney on who they were taking marching orders from. They had all the wheres and whos and hows from the frontline—everyone on Dr. Bernhard’s team, the team that had originally noted the artifact, the people who had processed it, the oversight committee and the military and civilian personnel that had handled the Christmas Island investigation. But not who signed off on this project virtually taking over the Oak Ridge lab. No word on who made the call on the “artifact” in the first place.

Often, research was done in the forms of grants with oversight based on petition from civilians–usually contractors hoping for fat government contracts and, by the way, could Joe Taxpayer also pick up all the research and development costs, too?–or from military men looking for advantage or career opportunities or politicians looking for pork. No petitions here. Dr. Bernhard had not read about the artifact in a journal and then put together a grant proposal. He had been tapped, as had Oak Ridge and the rest of Bernhard’s team. Just as Voss and McNaney had been and just as the FBI now was getting the good news that it had volunteered.
So someone else was calling the shots. Maybe the guy that McNaney blew for her current spot in the Department of Defense’s organization chart. Or someone above that.

There were a lot of nuts in the world, and some of them in very high places. Swan had heard that J. Edgar Hoover had worn women’s underwear, and that that might have been one of the more normal things about him. True or not, it certainly could have been. Howard Hughes, America’s first billionaire and at one time the world’s richest man, had spent the last years of his life terrified of germs, shuffling around with Kleenex boxes on his feet, unwilling to cut his hair or his fingernails. Among other things, Howard Hughes’ autopsy had revealed that his body had been riddled with broken off hypodermic needles. Many of them had been in him for years. And Hughes had been a very powerful and influential man, as well as incredibly rich, in many ways that didn’t come to light until after his death, and in some ways that probably hadn’t come to light yet.

Not nearly so impressive, Swan’s immediate supervisor when had been in the field—Deputy Director Geoffery Ramis—had been convinced that people spontaneously combusted. That it had happened to his brother, a CIA field agent that had disappeared in Venezuela. Ramis was convinced that it had happened in five different cases he had investigated in his career, and that it was the explanation for multiple disappearances and unexplained fires or arson. Ramis—who had gone on to a senior position in the State Department—had had an unshakeable conviction that people would sometimes just blow up. They would catch fire on the inside, and rapidly burn away at a temperature high enough to turn bone to ash. Sometimes causing building, car, or brush fires, but usually without so much as scorching the bed they were laying in or the floor they were standing on. On occasion, Ramis had intimated that he knew something more sinister about the origins of these spontaneous combustions, but had never been specific.

Swan, who had always beend dismayed when his normally clear-headed, fact-checking, i-dotting and t-crossing superior began to expound on the reality of spontaneous combustion, had never tried to extract from him exactly what his theories had been. After enough conversations on the issue, where Swan had simply remained neutral to gauge how serious Ramis had been, it had become clear that Ramis was extremely serious and not only believed in it—it was important to him. Important enough that if logic might contradict the conclusions, then logic was simply wrong. By the time Swan had switched departments, he had learned that it was religion to Ramis; to question the factuality of something that, in truth, didn’t have one single shred of definitive, empirical evidence was, to Ramis, sacrilege. Not only sacrilege, it was evidence of the questioner’s incurable stupidity.

And Ramis had moved up in the world, not down. It was scary to think of the strange, wrong, and even terrible ideas people had—people in positions of power, people with resources, people who could not only act on their ideas but make others act on them as well. The huge waste of taxpayer money, from the government-funded research on the “artifact” to the government-funded hide-and-seek mission now to whatever government-funded research that would happen if they ever found the useless thing, was, in the end, fairly harmless. Just a little more government pork, and not that big a piece at that. The people who were making it happen, the people who were pulling the strings—his strings, Voss and McNaney’s strings, maybe even Director Webster’s strings—those people were not fairly harmless. They might end up self-destructing, sure. Usually they did. But not always.

Gordon slapped the legal pad on the table. He picked up the file jacket and stuck it on top of the pad, preparing to take the bundle back to his office, drop it in the file drawer of his desk and lock it tight. Standard procedure, but he was more worried about this sort of material getting out than most regular cases. Leaks about legitimate investigations would most likely not damage his career and leave the Bureau looking insular and stupid. Leaks about little green men, on the other hand, might play well with the Area 51 crowd. But not with John Q. Public. And certainly not with congressional oversight committees.

He stood up, stretched, picked up his pad and file jacket—half-empty cups of coffee and water he’d leave for the early morning pick-up crew—and headed for the hall, putting the case together in his mind. Putting it together on paper could wait until morning.

He hated to do it, but he decided to put the best available agents on the job. He would need high efficiency and total discretion. It could not get out—get out to anyone—that the FBI was look for some sort of alien artifact. The FBI fought crime and did paperwork–and three guesses which it did more of–but it did not go looking for E.T. the Extra Terrestrial throughout the malls and multiplexes of suburban America. This case could not get leaked. Not to the press, of course, but not to other agencies, either. Not to other agents in the FBI. Not to other directors, aside from Director Webster’s discretion, over which Swan would have no say. But he hoped and suspected Director Webster was as skeptical of this foolishness, and as anxious to keep it in low profile, as Swan was. Which might be, he supposed, why Webster stuck the duty on him. There were, Swan knew, less cynical deputy directors in the FBI than himself.

Also, the Bureau was not short of deputy directors who would not do well with a bitch on wheels like McNaney.

Bitch on wheels. It wasn’t a phrase that Swan really used, though he’d heard it used more than once around the office. He couldn’t help but notice, however, that it was starting to come up in his head every time he thought of McNaney. Hopefully, he could spend more of his time dealing with Voss. Maybe submit written reports to McNaney and be out if the office when she called to bitch at him.

So, who to put on the case? Greg Willet was on a child abduction assignment—little redhead girl, kidnapped right in front of her school, with at least two creeps involved, demanding a ransom that was more money than her parents had access to. He would have been Swan’s first choice; there was none better in the Bureau than Greg Willet. But kidnapped little redheaded, freckled-face girls were a lot more important than political maneuvering or personal butt-covering to this father of three. His youngest was eight, same age as girl that Greg Willet was busy trying to bring home, alive and in one piece, to her desperate parents. The world was better served with Greg right where he was.

Frank Andrews, had just come off a case and was busy plowing the paper work. He was good. Not Greg Willet, but good, and Swan knew he was discrete. Discretion was what this particular case demanded most, ahead of speedy resolution. Vic VanCleef was available, too. He was a big lug, and suitably threatening—when all 6’4”, 250 lbs of agent VanCleef showed up, in a fresh brown suit and tie against a crisp white shirt with his FBI badge and ID held up high, knees got wobbly and people talked. People cooperated. VanCleef could also make sure that people kept quiet. He looked a little like Moose from the old Archie comics, but VanCleef had a mind as sharp as a razor and he heard and saw everything. He was great on the interview, and he was great at making not-so-bright people think he was dumb and they were clever. More than one case had cracked while Vic VanCleef just stood, watched, and listened. And he could turn them off the same way he could turn them on; not only was he discrete, if he wanted, he could make sure that everybody else was discrete, too. VanCleef was definitely on it.

He flipped through the other agents he knew would be turning in paper soon, without a locked-down assignment. Janet Brewer, maybe. She had shown promise. Actually, she was quite good, but Swan didn’t know her well enough, he decided. Off the list. Maybe Lydia Chelsea? Her, he knew. She was dependable, she didn’t rock the boat. That would make three agents, which he thought would be fine, at least at the start. There was more he needed to learn before any more agents could do any good.

He was still debating about Lydia as he arrived in his office and put the file jacket and legal pad away. He grabbed absently at his pocket and realized he had left his pencil. Well, not a big thing. He locked the drawer with the files, and tabled any more thought about this case until tomorrow. He’d decide if Lydia was going to round out the threesome then. Until then, no more thinking about the case until he showed up in the office Monday morning.

Well, he did allow himself one thought. He thought that he’d probably heard the last from FBI Director Webster on this, and that from now on he’d be dealing mostly with McNaney and Voss. If Webster called and said “Jump!”, Gordon Swan would ask, “How high?” If Voss or McNaney called and said, “You have to miss dinner with your wife and kids again because we’re career political flaks that think somebody elected us Ronald Reagan and we’ve got you on a leash,” he was going to tell them to go fuck themselves.

There, the last thought. He closed the door, turned off the light, and went home to his sleeping house.

Chapter 9

2008-11-30T23:30:00.000-08:00

Oakrdige, TN – Saturday, May 28th, 1983 – 12:22 AM

Getting Megan through the window was trickier than Jon had thought it would be. They hadn’t trimmed the hedges since—well, since probably more than a year ago—and he himself hadn’t gone through the window in six months. Plus, Megan’s general tiredness and intoxication left her less than coordinated.

At first, she tried to straddle the window and lift herself through, but as she got her left foot over the sill she fell backwards into the bushes. With the shower going, Jon wasn’t worried about what his mom might hear, but that had to hurt. He had done it himself, in past, with much better-trimmed hedges. Those weren’t pricker bushes, thankfully, but it wasn’t exactly a featherbed out there, either.

“Ouch. Hell. I scratched the crap out of back. And my arms.” She had, too. The red lines criss-crossed the sides of both arms and the tops of her hands. A few lighter, white scratches ran across her forearms. “Maybe I should just try tumbling over—“

There was a considerable gap of floor, and junk on the floor, between the window and Jon’s single bed. He didn’t think the tumble over strategy would be a wise one.

“Let’s try this,” Jon suggested. “Grab my hands and push against the wall. Sort of walk up it and pull against me, or just try and get your feet up as high on the wall as you can and then pull up against me and I’ll be pulling you over—”

“’kay,” she said. “You’re the super genius.” Jon bristled a bit, but let it go. Megan and Johnny had ribbed him for the better part of the school year, since he had made the honor roll with every report card. As far as Jon was concerned, it had just been the most efficient way to keep his mom off his case. Absentee mothering or not, a lot of Jon’s freedom and autonomy would dry up without those straight As (well, except for gym) on every report card.

Megan lurched up, pulling against Jon as he tried to pull her in. She was wobbly, but was up the wall and had her feet at the level of the window sill in a moment. Then, she fell forward on Jon, who fell back against the bed, their hands still linked.

There is a God, Jon thought. There can be no doubt. Earlier that day, he had been speculating about the possibility of maybe getting to look down her shirt once or twice while she flirted with Johnny Miller—a little more intense version of the sort of thing that had been happening at school for the last semester. Maybe he’d get to spend some time alone with her—he had, after all, found excuses to bring his lack of parental oversight into the discussion a lot during the last month of school for a reason. Megan would complain, in a sort of angst filled flirt with Johnny Two, about her parents fighting and how hard life at her house was, and Jon would weasel in there with something about how bad that sucked, he was glad to be a latchkey kid, had the house to himself practically all the time, it was peaceful and easy and so on. He had stopped short of inviting her over specifically to avoid her parents, yeah, but the offer had been there, all the same.

Apparently, the angling had worked. School was out and Johnny Two had parents who were home all the time, and Jon did not. From the tone of conversation earlier in the evening to the “not wearing a bra” comment on the street, Jon was beginning to think that, as of final bell, Megan had maybe shifted her flirtation interests. She didn’t have a boyfriend. She had spent more and more time talking to Jon over the past month, on the phone and even at school. And now, they were both in his bed and she was laying on top of them, as braless as ever, breasts pillowed against his chest, her hands in his—and not letting go just yet, even though she was, obviously, well through the window. Indeed, there was a God, and He was smiling on Jon tonight.
And with your bounty, comes your duty, Jon thought, the video cassette—quickly stowed in his tiny closet before opening the window—flitting through his mind. I’m so sorry, Jon, to put you in this position, Dr. Bernhard had said—apparently from beyond the grave. But I am afraid you are in tremendous danger. And I’m afraid I’ve put you in it.

“Shhhh,” Megan’s puckered lips blew air right in Jon’s face. Her breath smelled like beer, cigarettes, and day-old food, but it didn’t bother Jon a bit. The magic of hormones, he thought.
“We shouldn’t wake up your mother,” Megan said groggily, her eyelids heavy and fluttering again. Jon didn’t bother to correct her; his mother was still showering and, most likely, not yet asleep.

Megan shifted, and let go of his hands, putting her hands down on the bed to steady herself. Jon let his hands fall, one dropping—not unintentionally—to her side, fairly far up, only to land on the bare skin of her midriff. Bare skin? Apparently, falling in had pulled up her shirt almost to her boobs. And there his hand was, on her naked side—he could feel her ribs, he could feel each breath making her rib cage expand and contract—and she was just smiling drunkenly at him.

The urge to just grab her head and kiss her, kiss her hard, beer and cigarettes and all, rose in him like a tidal wave. Like someone had taken the distraction he had felt earlier, thinking about Megan, and turned the volume up ten times. For a moment, he felt dizzy.

Megan obviously saw something in his face, or sensed something, drunk or not.

“Hey, now, don’t get any funny ideas. I’m not that kind of girl,” she said blearily, and rolled off of him. When she did, he saw that, indeed, her shirt was up to her breasts, and he could see the white skin of her rib cage and belly clearly and closely. The soft curve of her abdomen at her navel. Again, the urge to grab her. To possess her. It was almost overwhelming. Possessed video cassettes seemed irrelevant, unimportant. Learning assembly language? Playing Pitfall? Who gave a shit? The line of her ribs and the soft swell of her belly, the oval of her navel—what could possibly be more important?

Megan pulled down her shirt. “All right, all right,” she said. “I’m not a big juicy steak, Tiger.”

Jon felt his face flush again. Busted. Once more. Maybe not for the first time, if his score tonight was any indication. His body was betraying him. Hell, his mind was betraying him. It was full-scale mutiny. He suddenly understood very clearly why adults did not want young girls and young boys spending a lot of time alone together. While he couldn’t speak for the girls, the effect on the male of the species clearly seemed to overpower almost all reason.

What would happen if she were more drunk? Or if he was Johnny Two, and she was more amenable to the idea of making out? Or if he was a charmer, willing to bargain and barter and promise the moon and eternal love for a little nookie, right then? On the one hand, the thought had some appeal. On the other hand, the last thing on earth Jon would ever want would be to play Jackson Edmonds to some poor girl’s Doreen Edmonds. He’d stay a virgin until they day he died, if that was his only option.

“Sorry,” he muttered, rolling off the bed. “Busted,” he finished sheepishly.

“I am so tired,” she said. “It’s not a big deal, guys are just sort of hardwired that way and sometimes you just need a good smack. And I'll smack you. Just see if I won't.” She crawled out of the bed, laying down on the floor between the wall with the window and the bed, instinctively going for the one place she could sleep and not be seen. She was right, too—Jon didn’t think Doreen had peeked over to that side of his bed since they had moved into the house. “I know you’ve got your head and heart–and your hands, let's not forget those–in the right place. Lots of guys don’t.” She reclined on the floor, stretching and yawning, and just watching her he felt the tremendous desire to touch her. To hold her. To taste her.

He looked away, shaking his head. Hoping she hadn’t seen him do it again. Too many times, and she’d forget any benefit of the doubt she’d given him about having a good head or a good heart. And she had it right about the “juicy steak” comment, too. When he saw her stretching, or had been staring at her bare midriff, or had been staring at her boobs earlier, he had felt like a ravenous wolf who hadn’t eaten in weeks and weeks who had just run across a fresh kill. Fresh meat. Like a wild, hungry animal that smelled blood.

Good smack, hell. Jon thought maybe Megan ought to get a cattle prod.

He knew Megan’s interest in him was more practical than personal. More logistical than emotional. Still, that didn’t mean he wanted to be thinking of her like a piece of meat. He wanted to be better than that. For her, sure, but even more so for himself. Right?

Jon got out of bed and opened the closet. He could hear Megan making a long, high-pitched groan as she stretched, but he refused to turn and look. It was hard. It was amazingly hard not to turn and look.

The first thing he saw, on top of a blue milk crate full of dirty clothes, was the video cassette. That cut into the desire to turn around and look at Megan stretch. Just thinking about it hadn’t been enough to break the spell, but actually seeing it . . . well, that sobered him a little. He quickly grabbed and extra blanket from the top of his closet and tossed it to Megan, trying not to look directly at her.

“Ooomph!” she said dramatically. “Thanks a lot. Not in the face, next time.”

“Sorry,” he apologized. The pulled a sweat shirt off a hanger. He tied it at the neck and at then stuffed several t-shirts and loose socks into it. Then, he tied it together at the bottom and tossed it to Megan. “Hoo,” she mumbled. “Jeeze, I was almost asleep, is that everything?”

“Unless you need something else,” Jon said, turning around to look. She had unfolded the blanket and pulled it up around her.

The sweatshirt stuffed with t-shirts and socks was in her lap. “Whassis?” she asked.

“Pillow. Or I could use that one, and you could use mine—”

“S’fine,” she mumbled, sticking the stuffed sweatshirt under her head. At about that time, the pipes banged as the shower water shut off. Jon thought about turning on music, as he had said he would, planning to cover up any noise with his stereo. Whatever he had thought that noise was going to be–them talking, them making out, or perhaps him showing Megan the video cassette–it apparently wasn’t going to be necessary. Megan was already snoring. When he glanced again a moment later, her lips were parted and she was drooling on her pillow.

“Okay, even I’ve got to admit, that’s not exactly attractive,” Jon said quietly to himself. There, that was good. Obsessive lust might have some boundaries, he thought. However, the idea that he was fourteen and men reached their sexual prime at eighteen made any temporary victory over lust seem sort of pointless. If it was this bad now . . .

The though occurred to him to try and touch her boob, while she was asleep. Maybe he could touch her nipple. Or lift up her shirt, anyway. After all–

“See, that’s the stuff I’m talking about,” Jon said to himself. “Do I want to be like the sperm donor? Do I want to be a creep?” He asked himself out loud.

Do you want to be salivating over this sweet and fundamentally good girl like she just a piece of meat? his mind asked him. Is that how you’ll do it better than your parents? Better than Jackson?

“All righty then,” he said, sitting on the side of his bed. He started to lay down the way he normally did, which would be facing the same direction Megan was, and then thought better of it. He could see his hand falling over the side of the bed at night, as if often did, and he didn’t want to end up doing something that would further embarrass him. Not to mention, doing something that he might sleep through. So he laid down on the bed the opposite way, his head toward the closet. This way, if he did drop his hands out of the bed, the worst damage he might do would be to grab an ankle. Innocuous enough.

It was inevitable, of course, that with Megan asleep and the closet just a few feet from his head, his thoughts shifted from her and his undulating sense of lust and embarrassment. Back to the tape. He had just started it, really, when Megan had called. And no small message, that: I am afraid you are in tremendous danger. And I’m afraid I’ve put you in it.

There was more, and he needed to listen to it.

He opened his closet and pulled out the tape. When he had tossed it in the closet earlier, he had been quick about it, and it hadn’t started up. Now, he took it out and held it deliberately. If Megan woke up, Megan woke up. He was tired now, as it was very late and it had been an enormously packed evening, and he was feeling that it couldn’t be a coincidence—Megan being at his house, now, all by themselves for the first time ever, and the arrival of that video cassette. Or that he first began to see what it had to tell him, when Megan had placed the phone call that had led to her sleeping on the floor, next to his bed, right now. If she saw something, she saw something. And Jon wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to be going on this trip alone, anyway.

The thing was, nothing was happening. Before, the process had seemed to be speeding up, and the tape—or whatever it really was—had seemed to be on a hair-trigger. Every time he had touched it, the clicking and whirring began. Now, nothing.

From beside the bed, Megan snorted in her sleep. Then she worked her mouth, smacking her lips as if she had tasted something unpleasant.

Jon looked at Megan, then at the video cassette. Then back at Megan. Then back to the cassette. The idea that it had all been his imagination was still knocking around in his head. With Megan, asleep and braless in his bedroom, all alone with him—well, hell, he might be dreaming right now.

It was also, he supposed, possible that he had broken it. But, somehow, he didn’t think so.
He thought the video cassette wasn’t transfiguring itself now—and he didn’t know exactly how to think about what it seemed to do when he touched it except “transfiguring”—because of Megan. Because Megan was in the room.

He didn’t just think it. He knew it. Crystal clear and sky blue, right in the center of his head. Dead certainty. The sort of way he knew that if Johnny Miller had absentee parents, and run of his nicer and larger house, Megan would be asleep on Johnny Two’s floor right now. Only stronger.

Jon turned on the small boy-&-dog figural lamp by his bed, with a brief thought that if he was going to start having hot chicks in his room, he might want to move up from the bedside lamp he’d had since he was three years old. He turned out the light, and then cracked the door, peeking out. He could smell the cheap soap and steam from his mom’s shower, but the bathroom light was off, and her bedroom door was closed. She probably wasn’t quite in bed yet, but she would be soon, and dead to the world shortly thereafter.

Safe enough. Especially if the tape, as he was certain it did, had some sort of mechanism to keep it from activating when somebody else was in the room with him. How in the world Dr. Bernhard had created such a thing, Jon had no idea. Why, if capable of such an amazing piece of technology—and certainly, that’s what it was, not some supernatural phenomenon or other such hokum—then why hadn’t Dr. Bernhard been making a zillion dollars a year selling portable holographic projector things? Why would he have developed such a thing, and then . . . sent it to a fourteen year old kid? That made the least sense of anything, to Jon. Why him? Why such a bizarre—and, frankly, initially terrifying—delivery mechanism? And, of course, there was that whole “tremendous danger” thing.

Jon made his way down past the little hall that led to his mom’s room and the bathroom and across the living room—in truth, a room not much wider than the hall–and into the kitchen. He hunched down, with his back to the rest of the house, against the kitchen door that led out to the carport. It was about as far as he could get from both his and his mom’s room and not go outside. Hopefully, if he was correct and the device was somehow sensitive to the presence of other people, this would be far enough away.

It was. Before he had even finished hunching down, the video cassette was whirring and clicking. Transfiguring. The silvery mirrors started sparkling, and the miniature image of Dr. Bernhard’s head began to coalesce.

“Jon, as you have received this, I will be dead. Well, for the time being, anyway,” the head said, again.

“Okay, good, I got that,” Jon whispered back.

“I’m so sorry, Jon, to put you in this position,” he continued. “But I am afraid you are in tremendous danger. And I’m afraid I’ve put you in it.”

Jon braced himself. This was the part where the phone had rung before. The next part—well, given the impossibility of what he was holding in his hand, given the impossibility of what he was seeing, it couldn’t be good.

“Jon, I’ve stolen something. Something very terrible and very powerful. There are good reasons for what I did. At least, I think there are. I hope there are. Just as I hope that there are good reasons for putting you in such terrible danger. I don’t suppose I can be sure, not yet.”

There was a pause, as the head turned from glancing towards the dishwasher to staring directly at Jon. Jon, again, felt that earlier sense of fear growing. Not of this device, not anymore. Jon was scared of what he suddenly, clearly knew would be the next thing the good doctor would tell him.
“I have hidden what I have stolen, Jon. It is in your possession. I believe you will know what it is. I hesitate to be more direct; I’m sure you understand. I have built what safeguards I could into this message, but it is hardly all-encompassing. I expect, given time, others could make it play. Much of where we go from here will depend on your memory.” Unbelievably, Jon was sure he saw the deadly-serious, I’m-so-sorry-I’ve-put-you-in-danger disembodied head smirk. “Although you didn’t know it, I’ve been telling you about this since the moment we met.”

The earlier fear now seemed tame. This fear—no, not just fear, this creeping sense of impending doom-made the earlier episode seem almost lighthearted by comparison. He had something the professor had stolen—certainly, he must be talking about something he had stolen from his government research job, so Jon was in possession of something some crazy old man had stolen from the CIA or something. What was more, Jon was apparently supposed to know, without ever having been told, just what the hell it was.

“Holy shit holy shit holy shit,” Jon repeated to himself, sweat beading up on his forehead, a chill crawling up from his belly and spreading out from his chest, then his arms. He had just been sort of casual friends with the old guy. Had done some chorses. And now he the good doctor had stolen something important—and the way the message was delivered proved it had to be something terribly important—and stuck Jon with it. And Jon didn’t even know what it was. Unless, he thought, it was the tape, but—

“You will need to be very alert,” the head continued. “I suggest you trust no one. I know you are young, and may need assistance, but be very careful who you tell. For your safety and quite possibly for theirs. For the moment, you should be safe.” Again, the smirk. “I have left my former employer many, many clues to consider, mainly designed to buy you time. I think you may understand now, too, why I didn’t give you my phone number when you asked. Why I didn’t go to anything outside of my house when you invited me. Why I steered you away from making your thesis in English class on anything to do with me; I know you weren’t happy about that. But I knew that this day would be coming, and I wanted as little left behind, when it did, that would tie us together.”

Jon stared at the translucent, glowing head, mouth agape. His jaw started working. “You lying mother—“

Dr. Bernhard’s head sighed, almost as if he heard Jon. “I know this doesn’t paint me in the best light. I hope you understand. Putting you in this position wasn’t my first choice, but simply trying to run with the item myself, or conceal it—I knew that wasn’t going to work. It would be found out and eventually I would be found. I’ve spent most of my life in government work, or in academia, and you don’t meet too many people you’d trust with your car keys, much less your life, in either area of life.”

Jon shook his head. Even now, the old coot was rambling aimlessly. What was the point of that? He wanted to know what the hell it was Dr. Bernhard had stuck him with. And just how dangerous it was.

“Jon, when I met you, I hadn’t talked with you for an hour before I knew you had been sent into my life for a reason. That in sixty-eight years of life, you were one of the few people I had met that I knew I could trust. That I felt for sure that I should trust. Even with great power. Perhaps especially with great power.”

“Thanks,” Jon murmured, his mouth dry and cottony. “Wish I could say the same.”

Great power? Jon didn’t like the sound of that any better than of tremendous danger.

“I would like to tell you the object must be destroyed. Unfortunately, if that was all there were to it, I might have done it myself. Might have. There is, however, every indication that it survived multiple nuclear blasts, largely without a scratch, and probably worse. And it is of such a durable and advanced technology as that even if you thought you had destroyed it, there would be no way to know. Not for sure.

“I would like to tell you to get rid of it. To drop it to the bottom of the ocean or launch it into the heart of the sun—”

Jon felt that cold, sick feeling spread out from the center of his stomach again with the casual way the good doctor mentioned those options, as if sending something into the center of the sun was something as simple as throwing a candy wrapper in the trash. What the hell did you stick me with, doc? He thought. What the hell did you do?

“I’m sure you want more explanation,” Dr. Bernhard’s ghost image said. “I expect you understand that this is serious. You are a very intelligent young man. You know that what you are holding in your hand represents a technology unknown to Sony and unavailable at Radio Shack. Technology that is easily fifty years ahead of anything we have developed. But—oh, Jon.”

It was hard to tell, but as the head glanced away, over towards the kitchen sink, it looked as if his eyes glazed over. He looked a little bit like a man in love. “The item—it represents technology a century beyond anything we have achieved. Five centuries beyond. Maybe a thousand years beyond anything we have achieved. I believe it represents an end to technology, Jon. The end. The point beyond which there truly is nothing more to discover. The point at which technology turns us into something like gods.”

The head just floated, seeming to gaze off into the distance. Looking a little love struck. Looking maybe a little wistful. Or maybe not wistful. Maybe hungry was a better word.

He suddenly thought of Megan, pulling down her shirt uncomfortably. All right, all right, I’m not a big juicy steak.

“To tell you the truth, even if I was sure as to how to dispose of it at this moment, I’m not sure that I could. I would like to think I am a better person than the people I am working for. That, were I to run away, to secure myself some uncharted desert island from which I could use the power of the item only for good, that that’s what I would do. To feed the world. To provide abundant energy and resources for all. To transform medical care. To make everything safer. To make a world where there was no cancer. No heart disease. No Alzheimer’s. A world where my wife might still be alive.”

The head stared away at the kitchen sink, and then turned, again seeming to look pointedly at him. “I would only mean to do good, Jon. I think that is the terrible trick of it. I would only mean to do good. But the people I’m working for—mostly career government types, but there are also civilians in the mix, as you might imagine—they would only mean to do good, as well. To defend our country. To ensure freedom. To liberate people around the world. To develop a tremendous technological advantage militarily and economically. And those are truly noble goals. They are, Jon. But in the end . . . ”

The head looked away again. “Jon, if you wanted to build a ‘doomsday device’, how would you do it? Do you remember when we talked about that?”

Jon did. Bernhard had actually sat him down and watched a taped episode of Star Trek, one featuring what looked to Jon like a killer carrot roaming the universe, eating planets. Bernhard had referred repeatedly to it as a “doomsday horn of plenty”.

Another day, he had shown Jon Dr. Strangelove—which Jon had thought was hilarious. He had also loved the conspiratorial way in which Dr. Bernhard had confided in him that some of the portrayals were a little too close to reality for comfort. There were, he said, a lot of people in the government and in the military that reminded him of some of the characters in the movie. There had been a doomsday device in that movie, too.

Dr. Bernhard had suggested that perhaps a real doomsday device—something truly designed to wipe out entire civilizations, entire planets—might better come disguised as a gift. That it might come as a Trojan horse, and depend on the very people it would end up destroying to deploy it. Use their resources and energy, their time and labor, and in the end lead them to annihilation.

“It could, in fact, be a test,” he had said. “Give the foolish monkeys a gun, and see if they kill themselves. Gift or curse—it would be up to us. Could you let go of absolute power, even if you knew full well to hold on would kill you? But to let go would be to surrender everything you ever thought you wanted?”

Jon suddenly felt very cold. Had all their conversations been like that? Had everything they had talked about had some double meaning?

Crazy, Jon thought. It’s crazy. He’s crazy. Crazy old man. He was just a kook, that was all. A kook that had somehow had invented a portable holographic projector in his spare time and built it into the shape of a video cassette—

“Or what if some alien civilization, with all the best intentions, shared their advanced technology with cultures not prepared for the responsibility?” Bernhard’s head sighed. “It could seem wonderful. Or it could be like letting a five-year old drive his father’s Buick on a winding mountain road. Do you remember when we talked about lottery winners?”

Jon remember that, too. That conversation had stuck with him. At Jon’s house, they were always short of money. There were always things he wanted that they couldn’t get. They were always shopping at the thrift store. He had dreamed on more than one occasion of winning a sweepstakes or a lottery. He had thought of how their problems would be over. He had been amazed to learn from Dr. Bernhard that most lottery winners ended up in worse circumstances than they had been before they won the money, within five years of having won it. That many of them ended up declaring bankruptcy for the first time in their lives.

Bernhard had had stories, too. A woman living in a trailer park had won the lottery, and then bought the trailer park. She had evicted everybody she hadn’t liked and let only her friends stay. Three years later, she had declared bankruptcy, and lost the trailer park and her own trailer. A man had won a sweepstakes and sold his winnings, which were to be paid over fifteen years, to a financial company for a lump sum that was 60% of what he had won, just so he could have it all right then. He had bought a big house, a car, chartered a plane, lavished gifts on several women and ended up declaring bankruptcy less than two years from the day he collected his check. Additionally, he had burned a lot of bridges in his former circle of colleagues and friends, and had found it impossible to get a job, or find anybody to help him.

“It’s an important lesson,” Bernhard had said. “Sometimes there are shortcuts to the benefits of life. Money, career success, relationships. But there are rarely shortcuts to the responsibility and maturity it takes to cope with them. Successful business people who are hated by their families—what have they won? The handsome fellow that you probably have a class with in school, that all the girls love, who seems to have it so easy—five years from now, when he’s pumping gas and paying child support, what has he won? The drug addict—what are drugs but a shortcut to pleasure? And when addiction has destroyed the addict’s career and relationships, yet he still cannot—or will not—give it up, what does he really have?” Bernhard had shaken his head ruefully. “Great success can be an ugly thing, Jon. A very ugly thing.”

“—but eventually, a connection will be made. We have to expect it,” the luminous, floating head of Dr. Bernhard was saying. Jon had gotten distracted by his memory, trying to put the pieces together. An object of great power. Of advanced technology. Might be a cleverly disguised doomsday device. And it was in Jon’s possession. And someone was going to figure it out. And come after him.

“So you will need to take the object and start moving. I’m not going to tell you where. I cannot tell you how long. Unless you surrender—and you might want to, in the end. Or even the beginning; I know that is a possibility. I just hope you will do the right thing.

“And I may be wrong. If you turn the item back over to the government, it might take months and years or even decades before anything happens. You might be old and gray like me before it all ends. Who knows, I might be wrong. People have been predicting the end of the world since the beginning of recorded history, if not before. Though, I must say, I don’t think any previous doomsayers were faced with anything quite like this.” Again, the smirk. Jon found himself wishing he had never, ever met Dr. Bernhard.

“I have done a lot with the item, but there is much I haven’t. You may discover something I have not. A way to securely and definitively dispose of it, perhaps. If you do, I suggest you get rid of it. I think you can.” Again, he looked away. “I am ashamed to admit it, but I don’t think I could. There is too much promise. Too much potential. It would be like having won a million dollars and throwing a match on it—even though you knew your life would probably be destroyed if you did not. It might be impossible to do. You might talk yourself out of it. Bargain with yourself. Rationalize. I have already done that.” The head chuckled. Chuckled.

Jon was appalled. The old coot was insane. Insane, and casually condemning Jon to a life on the run from the government and God only knew who or what else with some sort of technology bomb.

“I stole it from people I felt would not be good stewards of its power. Who I felt, even with the best intentions, would end up destroying us all. As it turns out, I’m not sure I’m a much better steward. But I believe that’s why it is in your hands now, Jon. I believe you came into my life for a reason. And this is it.”

Jon just stared at the head, afraid of what was going to come next. Oh, by the way, this tape is going to blow up for your safety, I think you’ll understand why I had to blow off your arms—

“I think you should have some time, as I said, but I cannot tell you how much. First, you need to find the item. Think about it, and I’m sure you will. Next, I have prepared a package for you. It is in a locker somewhere. If you think, you will know where, and what number. There is a small slot, if you look, in the front of the video cassette you are holding. Insert two quarters in it.”
Jon blinked. Dr. Bernhard’s head floated, frozen in miniature, over the tape, waiting. Jon felt as if he had been asked to insert a quarter for another three minutes. Insert quarters? What the hell? He searched his pockets and came up with one quarter and some nickels and pennies. He put in the one quarter, touching it to the thin slit on the front of the video cassette, and it disappeared with an unpleasant sucking sound.

Jon then stood up. It hurt; he had been crouching by the kitchen door for almost ten minutes now, and he’d gone stiff. Still keeping one hand on the video cassette, he fumbled around in the kitchen drawer beside the dish washer. There was a little dish with change in it, and, sure enough, another quarter. He took the other quarter and pressed it to the slot, it disappeared with same noise. The tape vibrated briefly in his hand, and then an object emerged from the slot.

“Take the key,” Dr. Bernhard continued.

Jon removed the key from the slot. He could barely make out a crude impression of George Washington. Like the Penny Press at the Knoxville Zoo (which would turn out an elongated penny with an angry gorilla embossed on one side), it appeared the video cassette had stamped his quarters into the shape of a key.

“That goes to the locker,” the head explained. “I think you know where.”

Jon thought he did, too, but that could wait.

“A word of warning—the package in the locker is keyed to you. As is the item. As is the tape. However, I could only anticipate so much. Exercise caution in the presence of others. The key serves another purpose, as well, but use it cautiously. This message will not be activated without you touching the tape, and was designed not to play with other people around—I did not know in what circumstances you might be opening this package. While not foolproof, I believe the mechanism I devised was close enough for government work.” The head smirked again. The old asshole thought all this was funny. “The slot you put the quarters through—it will always be there, though difficult to see. To play this message with somebody else, press the key to the slot—you will have to keep holding it—and it will play even with others around. However, it is keyed to your fingerprints and will never play without you.”

His fingerprints. Jon suddenly remembered being over at Dr. Bernhard’s house, watching a movie on his BetaMax—still quite a novel thing, to Jon, who didn’t even have cable, to watch a movie whenever you wanted to—and Dr. Bernhard had asked him if he had wanted a drink. Jon had said yes, a Coke would be great, and Bernhard had come back with a black glass and handed it to him. Jon had taken it, and then looked inside it. The glass had been empty. Bernhard apologized, and immediately snatched the glass back, holding it at the rim between thumb and forefinger, and returned a moment later with a glass filled with Coke and ice, only this was a blue glass. Not black.

Jon shook his head. Bernhard had been lifting Jon’s fingerprints. How many other stunts like that had the old man pulled?

“The package I’ve left for you contains more information. Additionally, I have had some time to develop a few things—the clever little gizmo you currently hold in your hand being but one example—that I hope may be of help to you.” As he described the video cassette as a clever little gizmo, Jon couldn’t help noticing that Bernhard looked quite pleased with himself. “As you have an opportunity, you may wish to study the item yourself and develop things as you need them to protect yourself, and the item. Until you can find a way to dispose of it. And, in the end, you must dispose of it. There will be no end of trouble unless you do.”

No end of trouble. Great, just great.

“Time is of the essence. I suggest you retrieve the package I have left for you as soon as possible. Take it and the object and get moving.” The head bent down, and then disappeared halfway up, as if he had been leaning to turn something off. Then, it came back into full view. “Another thing, Jon. Stay away from my house. They will be watching it, and there will be nothing for you there. Avoid airports and car rental—”

“Car rental?” Jon couldn’t help but ask, exasperated. “I don’t have a license! I don’t have any money! I’m not old enough to drive!”

The head ignored him. “Pay for everything in cash. Avoid using your real name at hotels and motels. Keep a lookout for strange people and strange cars. You might want to occasionally vary your style of dress and hair. Some of things I have provided should help you there. Be very careful who you involve. For their sake as well as your own. And be vary careful of how you use the item.”

The head bent forward, and there was a flash. The video cassette was just a video cassette, and Jon was standing by himself, in a dark kitchen, face sweating and legs trembling, holding an unmarked key pressed out of quarters in one hand, and the fairly normal looking video cassette in the other.

With the yellow cat ticking behind him, eyes moving back and forth comically as its yellow tail twitched, Jon just stood, alone in the kitchen, for almost ten minutes.

Finally, he went back to his bedroom. Placing the key on his dresser, he laid down on his bed, not knowing what to do. Not knowing what to believe. Megan snorted on the floor beside him. He looked down at her, and he only felt ill. What the hell had that old bastard gotten Jon into?

He turned over, looking away from Megan. Shit! What the hell was he going to do? How was he going to get out of this? Find the thing, figure out what it was, and maybe go drop it out in a dumpster at the mall? Go drive up into the mountains and drop it a mile into the woods? He’d have to get someone to drive him—

Oh, Lord. Jon felt nauseous. He turned over on his back, folded hands on his chest, and quietly started to pray.

A few moments later, he was asleep.

Chapter 10

2008-11-30T23:25:00.000-08:00

Oak Ridge, TN - Saturday, May 28th, 1983 – 6:06 AM

Richard was gasping for breath. Julie was jabbing her finger into his chest, yelling at him. Screaming at him. Spittle flew from her mouth as she screamed. It was the same stuff he had heard a million times before. They were never going to have enough money. Was he ever going to be able to provide for them? What the hell was he doing? What was he getting done? Why was he so worthless? Was he trying to make her miserable? And Richard, trying to talk, was choking on the words, unable to speak. Unable to breathe. Julie, her face red, tears running down her cheeks, opened her mouth again—opened it wide, lips peeling away from her nicotine- and coffee-stained teeth—and a phone rang. Then it rang again. Julie froze, the image of her inverting and fading to white as the ringing phone grew louder.

Richard opened his eyes. He had rolled off his mattress, and his face was on the floor. He sat up, stiff and creaky. His eyes were gummy and everything was blurry. The phone rang again, and the machine picked up.

“Hi,” Richard heard his own voice say. “This is Richard Mathers. I’m sorry I’m not available right now, please leave a message at the sound of the tone.” It beeped as Richard was actually going through the pain and difficulty of standing up, and he heard Deborah Enos speaking to him.
“Richard, come on,” she said. “Now I’m really worried. If you’re there, pick up. I want to know you’re all right. Come on. Richard? Look, I’m really sorry—”

“Y’here,” Richard mumbled picking up the receiver.

“Richard,” she responded, relief in her voice. She was really that worried? “Richard, oh, thank goodness.”

“Y’m fine,” he mumbled back. “Jus’ ist like six in the mornin’. And ist satday.” Richard yawned. “Man, I’m sore.”

“I’m sorry,” Debi replied, with a sincerity that would have sounded patronizing on almost anybody else. “I didn’t mean to wake you up so early, I was just so worried after yesterday. I barely slept last night. I was worried you’d gone out and done something or gotten drunk and tried to drive or—”

“Now, come on, I’m not like that,” Richard said, more clearly, though actually he could be entirely like that. He just hadn't had enough money to get anywhere near that drunk.

He rubbed his eyes, trying to wipe the sleep out. He glanced at his shaded windows. Damn, it looked bright out there. “It was just a job. I’ll get another one,” he said gamely enough, although he was not sure how true that was. “I hated that job, anyway,” he finished. That much, he knew was absolutely true.

“I know,” she said sympathetically. “You didn’t get along with Monk.”

“Deb, I just didn’t like that job. I didn’t get along with Monk because I did a crappy job. I did a crappy job because I hated the job I was doing. At least while Julie was with me there was a reason to keep doing something I hated. Or to try to talk myself out of hating it. After she was gone . . . what’s the point? I hated the damn thing. Not Monk’s fault, I just did.”

“So you’re okay?” Deb asked.

“Okay as I ever was,” which was to say, not okay at all, dear, but Richard thought he had burdened Deb with more than her share of his problems in the past. Dragging her down with him now wouldn’t help either of them.

“So, what are you going to do now?”

Richard shrugged at the telephone. “I don’t know, Deb. I really don’t. Maybe freelance. Maybe move out of D.C. Maybe get a job stocking groceries.”

“Uh huh,” she replied. “I hear there is a big future to being a thirty-eight year old stock clerk at a grocery store.”

“It’s something else,” Richard replied. “Something I could do.”

“What about freelancing? Got any ideas?”

“Yeah, maybe. I know people at some magazines. I think I’ve got an idea or two for articles I could write. I thought I might shop a few ideas around and see if I get any nibbles, and then take it from there. This is sort of uncharted territory for me. Alone and jobless in Washington, D.C. Hey, there’s an article.”

“You’re not alone,” Debi said, her voice warm and consoling. “I’m going to help you any way I can. I will be there for you all the way. That’s a promise. And, I know you were kidding, but there just might be an article in that.”

“Thanks,” Richard replied. That was Debi. Life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Hell, Debi was: life gives you lemons, make lemonade, open a lemonade stand, and become fabulously wealthy and famous selling Deborah Enos’s Old Fashioned Pot O’ Gold Lemonade. “Thank you, Deb. You are as good as they come.”

“Don’t suck up. Anyway, the thing is, I think I have a lead that might work out for you. I’ve got a guy at Capitol Brief who is looking for someone to write a story—a thousand bucks for 3000 words, probably. More space if you need it. No more money, though. Still, not too bad.”
“Uh huh. Go on.”

“The deal is, this guy who was in charge of some sort of hush-hush government project gets placed under investigation, then disappears. Then he turns up dead at a mall in L.A. Robbie—he’s the guy I know at Capitol Brief—thinks there’s a story there. He thinks the project is about something more than what they say it is. He thinks the guy in charge was on the run, and maybe for a good reason, or he might have been selling information to the Soviets—”

“Huh. What was the project he was working on?”

“Robbie explained it. Something to do with using lasers to find nuclear materials—like uranium and plutonium—and eventually being able to deploy them on satellites, so the military could image where nuclear materials are—”

“So the guy in charge—who was it?”

“Uh, hold on a second, he told me and I wrote it down . . .um, Dr. Donald Bernhard. He used to work at Los Alamos. Then he taught at Berkley for a while. Then he got recruited for the laser imaging project at Oak Ridge.”

“And somebody thinks he was selling information on the project to the Russians?”

“I don’t know. Robbie said they were speculating about that, but by ‘they’ he might have meant that he, personally, was speculating about it and wanted to give it more credibility by saying ‘they’.”

“You see a lot of that in this town. You said the guy worked at Los Alamos–where was he working on the laser imaging stuff?”

“Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It’s in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, right outside of Knoxville . . .”

“Oak Ridge. Huh. Hang on a second.”

“What? You’ve got something? Do you know somebody?”

“Hang on.” Richard leaned into the kitchenette and grabbed his address book and start flipping pages. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do. Actually, I know two. I know a guy who works at Oak Ridge—Tsukishiro Yukito, he’s a research scientist. Apparently gets down to D.C. a lot. Met him last year, and I don’t think I made too much of an ass out of myself. But I think I might know somebody else.”

“Well, there you go, see? It was meant to be. And pretty good money. And better than covering city council meetings all the damn time.”

“What was the guy’s name? The guy in charge of the project? Bernhard?”

“Dr. Donald Bernhard.”

“And he lived in Oak Ridge, right?”

“Uh . . . I don’t know. I didn’t ask, I assume he did—”

“I don’t know for sure, but I think I know someone who knows Bernhard. Or her kid does, anyway.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. I don’t remember exactly, but I think she told me that she wasn’t sure if it was a good idea or not, her kid hanging out with some old codger . . . I don’t recall the whole conversation but I’m pretty sure the guy’s name was Bernhard and he was a scientist or a doctor or something.”

“Mmmm,” Deb hummed. “So, who is the mystery woman?”

“Hah,” Richard laughed, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat. “Darla—uh—” He looked back at his address book.

“Darla?” Deb asked incredulously. “Like Little Rascals? Or more like a stripper stage name?”

“No, no, nothing like that. Doreen. No mystery woman. I dated her for, like, a month back in . . . damn, it was like 1973. It was a long time ago.”

Deb giggled. “You must have left quite an impression. For her to still be calling you ten years later.”

Rich smiled. He knew what Debi was up to. Look, here’s a job opportunity. Now, you’ve heard about that, let’s talk about your past conquests as a man. Let’s joke and I’ll give you my best girlish giggle, to show you how entertained and impressed I am. Get your mind off it, guy. Deb was the best.

“I don’t know about that. It couldn’t have been a good impression. She just—she seemed really desperate. I was going to be moving. She had two little kids. I wanted to get a career going. It just wasn’t going to work out.” Richard sighed. “In retrospect, I don’t know how good my decision making actually was. But, yeah, she called me out of the blue three years later—tracked me down, I guess.”

Debi laughed. “No mere mortal man could satisfy her. She had to have you back!”

Richard shrugged at the phone. “I don’t know about all that. I think she was just lonely. There wasn’t much of a chance either of us were going to pick up and move. I had moved here, she had moved to Tennessee . . . she just wanted to talk.”

“Mmmhmmm,” Debi hummed into the phone knowingly. All a put on, sure, but Richard did appreciate it. She was just as sweet as she could be. The anti-Julie. “So her kid knew this Dr. Bernhard, you said. What, were they neighbors or did she date Bernhard or what?”

“I don’t know, we didn’t talk about that much. She was telling me about all the classes she was taking. She one of those running-in-a-million-directions-but-never-getting-things-done types. I don’t see how she has room to breathe. She said it was some old guy her kid hung around, and she was worried if it was all right. Apparently her kid is something of a geek, so she thought the math and science aspect with the old guy being a research scientist might be a good thing. But she was, you know, naturally worried about old men wanting to spend time with adolescent boys. So, no, I don’t think they were dating.”

“Maybe he was babysitting,” Deb suggest helpfully.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’ll give her a call and see if I can find out some more.”

“You do that. Also, call Robbie Deaton at Capitol Brief and tell him you’re interested in doing the story. He can probably fill in some of the details I’m missing; he just gave me a rough sketch. I just thought you’d be interested in picking up some freelance work.”

“Yeah, I am. Thanks a lot of, Deb. You are absolutely the best.”

“You bet,” Deb said. “Are you going to be okay? You want me to come over for awhile?”

“No, thank you, I’ll be all right, Nurse Nightingale,” Richard replied. “But thank you. I do appreciate it.”

“Okay, if you’re sure. I could bring some breakfast?” she half-said, half-asked.

Richard looked at himself in the mirror—he looked like he’d been kicked by a mule and pissed on by a horse—and his crappy efficiency apartment. He didn’t guess there would be too much risk of Debi swooning over him and asking him to marry her, given the circumstances. And breakfast would be good.

“Okay, okay,” he relented. “Breakfast, and then you need get out and live your life. I don’t want you just hanging around me out of sympathy. Or charity.”

“Wouldn’t ever,” she said. “I promise, I’ll just eat my bagel and go.”

“Okay. Give me a chance to shower and shave and stuff. I look like crap and I smell.”

“You usually do. I don’t mind, I’m not dressing in my church clothes or anything, but you can pretty yourself up if you like.”

“Not trying to pretty it up. I just want to scrape off a layer of grime.”

“Well, when you put it that way, maybe it would be a good idea. I’ll grab Robbie’s business card for you.”

“Thanks. See you in, like, forty-five. Is that okay?”

“Fine with me. Bagel and coffee okay?”

“That sounds great. Bye.”

“Hang in there, guy,” she finished, and the line clicked and the dial tone sounded. Rich put the receiver down.

“Today is the first day of the rest of my life,” Richard told himself, trudging toward the bathroom. “Yay.”

Chapter 11

2008-11-30T23:20:00.000-08:00

Oak Ridge, TN – Saturday, May 28th, 1983 – 6:12 AM

Jon’s eyes snapped open. Jon, I’ve stolen something. Something very terrible and very powerful.

He looked at the clock. It was 6:12. He couldn’t have gotten that much sleep, but he was wired.

I have hidden what I have stolen, Jon, he had said. It is in your possession. I believe you will know what it is. I hesitate to be more direct; I’m sure you understand.

No, he sure as hell did not understand. How in the hell could he understand some normal old guy down the street, who had always been nice as he could have been, stealing something important and dangerous from the government and then sticking it on Jon? How the hell was he supposed to understand Dr. Bernhard doing this to him without telling him anything? Even now, he hadn’t told Jon where the hell it was supposed to be. Had Dr. Bernhard snuck in his house? Put it somewhere? Or had he somehow stuck it on Jon, or put it in his bookbag, or . . .

Jon sat up. Books. Three months ago, Dr. Bernhard had given him several books, unbidden. Jon was interested in the subjects, and enjoyed reading, and thought they’d make good things to peruse over the summer. Like most of Dr. Bernhard’s eccentricities, Jon had shrugged them off. Jon had just figured that he was old, he was a scientist, he had a vaguely European accent—so, sure, he was going to be a little strange. Otherwise, he had been interesting, had seemed like he knew something about everything, and had been as nice as Jon could have imagined being to another person.

Appearances are deceiving, Dr. Bernhard had often told him when demonstrating a particular experiment or regaling Jon with a story of scientific conquest. Don’t trust them.

Apparently, that was advice Jon should have taken to have a more immediate application.

The books, he thought. If this terrible and powerful item was something Bernhard had given to him in disguise, in some innocuous form, like the video cassette, it had to have been one of the books. Be very careful with my books, Bernhard had cautioned him unnecessarily. Books are very valuable to me. Then, another time, just as he was leaving Bernhard’s house the last time he’d been over there—and it had been over three weeks—Bernhard had told him, Remember, Jon, don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Remember. At the time, Jon had agreed that he would remember that and left, thinking it another irrelevant eccentricity. There had been nothing preceding that provided a reasonable context for the non sequitur.

Except that Bernhard had been speaking in code. The old bastard had been sending him coded messages the whole time Jon had known him.

The clear, unshakable sense of certainty gripped him again. It was in one of the books. It had to be.

Which one, he wasn’t sure. But no time like the present to try and figure it out. Jon rolled out of bed and heard Megan grunt. He peeked over at her. She was still sleeping, wrapped up in the blanket like a burrito and holding Jon’s sock-stuffed sweatshirt on top of her head. She did not sleep pretty.

Jon opened his closet, and reached up on the top shelf to grab the books. He had figured keeping them out of the whirlwind of his room would probably be a good idea, given that Dr. Bernhard had stressed he be careful with them. This strategy had not been altogether successful, as Jon had already thrown several things on top of the books since he had first put them up there three-odd months ago. A pile of dirty clothes fell out and landed at his feet, and a box of old Legos and Star Wars toys followed, upended on Jon’s head. A few paperbacks—horror novels, not really his thing but Stacey had given them to him for Christmas. Under a month-old edition of the Sunday comics—now, why had he put that up there?—he located the books. His neat stack had been knocked over, but all the books appeared to be there. Except one, pushed towards the back, looked bigger. Bigger than any of the books he had brought home with him, at any rate.

Jon kicked away clothes and Star Wars action figures and pulled a blue milk crate–full of his shoes, most them in pretty bad shape, but “waste not, want not” his mom always said–over and tipped it on its side.

Balancing on the milk crate carefully, Jon surveyed the top shelf. There would be no careful examination of the books, turning them over and over, reading each page, searching for clues as to which one might be the object Dr. Bernhard had referred to, or where the item Dr. Bernhard referred to might actually be. It was, as he had felt certain it would be, a book. And it wasn’t going to be hard to figure out which one. Because one of the books was no longer the book Jon had brought home with him.

Introduction to Electric Engineering and Applied Chemistry were fine. The Age of Alchemy was also unchanged, as were A Philosophical Primer on Ethics and A History of Eugenics. But one book had transformed significantly. He could still make out the title on the side: The Interstitium: Molecular Molding via Chemical Synthesis In Extremely Small Spaces, although the letters now seemed to be deeply embossed and almost luminous in their burnished gold stamp against the worn leather of the book cover.

The book, too, was easily three times thicker, more the thickness of the Knoxville phone directory than the much thinner textbook he had taken home from Dr. Bernhard’s. The dull brown laminated chipboard that had been its cover was gone, replaced with well-aged embossed leather. The changes didn’t stop there, either.

As he pulled the book out from the back of his closet, any doubt that this might have been the object—the terrible, powerful thing Dr. Bernhard had warned him about—evaporated. This was not just a book. The taut, worn leather was warm against his palms—almost hot. There was a low hum emanating from it, barely audible, but still clear from the moment he touched it. Even the worn leather of the book was not quite right. It felt like leather, yes, but it also felt metallic. Like a fine woven mesh of metal, maybe aluminum, somehow coerced into pretending to be leather.

He stepped down off the milk crate, turning the tome over in his hands. It was much larger than any of the books he remember taking home from Dr. Bernhard’s that day, even though the title, The Interstitium was familiar, and Dr. Bernhard had commented on the title more than once. To make it stick in my head, Jon thought. He was planning this since he met me. Maybe before he met me. Bastard.

The book was much heavier than anything he had taken home that day. How could it have increased in mass? The surface, which had been the smooth, laminated paperboard of a textbook when he had put The Interstitium up in his closet was now a worn, embossed, vaguely metallic leather. Ornament on the front, side, and binding included raised sections—rectangles, rounded circles, and trapezoidal shapes—that came up almost half an inch off the cover itself. It reminded him of the oversized pulpit Bible at their old church, before Doreen had gone Unitarian—with its beveled geometry of panel molding and corner blocks raised off the cover with the grandiosity of a piece of Victorian furniture. The round medallions emerging from the corner blocks of the front cover looked like the ornate finial at the end of a grand staircase, squashed vertically to a quarter of its normal size, but no less detailed.

Jon continue to turn the book over, the warmth—and that hum, that barely audible subwoofer buzz—spreading into his hands and up his arms. Yeah, it looked like it could be a piece of Victorian furniture, or, from a distance, the ornate, old pulpit Bible at his church. But something about the designs was different. More exotic.

The border around the covers was vaguely geometric, like the dentils of an old Victorian roof—and yet the size and shapes of the rectangles inside the strips was random and asymmetrical. In some ways, it was like looking at an autoradiograph of genetic material, the image produced when doing genetic typing–Jon was into genetics–abstracted and turned into a weird embossed motif. The ribs following the contours on the medallions on the corner blocks looked at first blush like a knit ribbon pattern, but when he looked closer, the random assortment of ovals and asymmetric triangles was reminiscent of the binary zeros and ones of machine language. The faint characters that decorated the six rectangular molded panels that extended—actually, extruded seemed like a better word—from the cover weren’t characters that Jon had ever seen. They seemed ideographic, like Chinese language characters or pictographic like Egyptian hieroglyphs, but much more mechanical and rigid in their geometry. Some of them looked vaguely like circuit diagrams.

Jon let his finger trace the contours of the medallion in the top right corner—there seemed to be detail within detail, as if the larger designs embossed into the medallion were made up of smaller and more intricate patterns that were, in turn, made up of still smaller patterns or characters. And something about the medallion reminded Jon of some sort of knob. Or maybe a rheostat.
Jon looked at the type: The Interstitium, with Molecular Molding via Chemical Synthesis In Extremely Small Spaces beneath that in much smaller lettering. It was nothing like what he remembered, except for the actual title. What he recalled as being simple black type on a dull brown background was now embossed and stamped into the worn leather. The letters were a thick and blocky san serif, not the sort of gothic calligraphic text he normally associated with big, old looking books with embossed foil lettering. It looked like gold leaf at first, but as he continued to examine it, running his fingers over the type itself, it seemed to shimmer, a spreading spider web of rainbow light refracting out from beneath the surface of the letters. The words weren’t just reflective, either—they glowed, with a dull but unmistakable light.

This was not the book Jon had brought home some six months ago. He ran one hand across the binding, feeling it hum under his fingers. Hell, this thing wasn’t a book, period.

Jon, I’ve stolen something. Something very terrible and very powerful.

He could practically feel the truth of it. He could smell it in the air, metallic and electrical. He could feel the heat of it in his hands. Not just like feeling something that had been left in a hot car—it was a volcanic heat, radiating up through a mile of solid rock. What he was feeling now, just touching it, that was just the dim echoes reaching the surface.

Something very terrible and very powerful. Jon wondered if the thing was radioactive, if it had been sitting in his room, poisoning him for the last six months. That didn’t really make sense, but what the hell about this did? Nothing, was what. Of course, there was that other thing Dr. Bernhard had asked: Jon, if you wanted to build a ‘doomsday device’, how would you do it?

“Disguise it as a book?” Jon asked himself. He shook his head. And who did it? Who would have made such a thing? Who could have? If it was something—he hated to think it seriously, but he couldn’t avoid it—something alien, why was it a book? Why was the type in English? That didn’t make sense.

Unless it was something Dr. Bernhard did, somehow, Jon thought. Obviously, the guy had figured out how to make it do something, or had figured something out with it—the portable holographic projector, disguised as a video cassette, was proof enough of that. Was this Dr. Bernhard’s disguise for it? Whatever it actually was? Or something else?

Despite the heat radiating from the book, Jon felt like he was freezing. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead. He founded himself unable to open the book. He found himself unable to try.

I don’t want to see anymore I don’t want to know any more I just want to send it back take it back to his house throw it in the trash mail it back to the government—

He heard Dr. Bernhard’s voice in his head—quite clearly, this time, almost as if it were a clear and separate voice, distinct from Jon’s own thoughts. I would only mean to do good. I think that is the terrible trick of it . . . they would only mean to do good, as well.

Jon inhaled deeply, and pulled open the cover. He looked at the first page for a moment, and then laughed out loud. Only then, was he aware of how close he had been to losing control of his bladder.

The first page was a diagram—an elaborate, detailed diagram, and the page itself had almost an appearance of depth, as if the diagrams not only stretched across the page but descended down into the page. What had made Jon laugh, however, was the largest portion of the illustration—a stylized human form, with arms and legs that ended it rounded curves rather than hands and feet, and a round, bald head with big black eyes and a black semi-circle of a smile—it looked for all the world to Jon like a smiley face. The absurdity of it struck him once more as he stared at the smiley faced figure, and he laughed again.

Even what the illustration seemed to be made him snicker. He wasn’t an electrical engineer by any stretch of the imagination, and a lot of the stuff in the diagram he had never seen, but some of the stuff—D batteries, speaker wire, toggle switches, rheostats and pan pots and low voltage electrical motors—was easily recognizable. The illustration showed most of the stuff as being included as components on a belt that went around the figure’s midsection, with wires that ran down to each rounded stump at the bottom of the figure’s legs. The figure appeared to be floating under the power of the wires, toggle switches, and D batteries. A caption under the figure read, simply: Anti-Gravity Belt.

“Hoo-hah,” Jon wheezed. “Hoo, hell. That’s just crazy. It’s all just crazy. Nuts. Completely nuts.”

“What’s crazy?” Megan asked drowsily. “That you’re up talking to yourself at the crack of dawn?”

Jon froze. He had almost forgotten. Megan. Slowly, he closed the book. “Uh, nothing,” he started, grasping for words. What should he say? Probably just put the book up, say it was no big deal, or hint that it was something he was . . . what? Researching? Working on? And she would find out more later, he would say. Then get her out of the house. Get her out of this, and out of danger, as soon as possible. He should have stuck with his original instinct and not let her come over at all. Because Jon had a feeling this situation was going to get very sticky very quick.

Jon, I’ve stolen something. Something very terrible and very powerful.

“Hey, cool,” Megan mumbled. “Is that a book? Where the hell didya get that?” Jon turned around to face her as she leaned in to get a closer look, putting the book on the floor, away from her.

Eyes bleary and auburn hair twisted into a knotty rat’s nest of tangles, chunks of it falling over her face, Jon’s eyes widened. My God, he thought. She’s radiant. And, immediately after: I can’t believe I just thought that.

He knew that she looked crappy, and that that’s what his eyes saw and that’s what he should think—that she didn’t wake up pretty. That she needed a shower and a good hair brushing in the morning. Yet she looked more beautiful to him now than she had last night; almost more beautiful than he could have imagined.

Pheromones, Jon thought. I’ve read about this. Certain people give off smells and they just make you go crazy. They stimulate the sex drive. Mess up your brain. No other explanation.

Megan apparently misread the look on Jon’s face. “Aw. jeeze, don’t look at me—“ She half-covered her face with her hands, which only served to enhance the effect. “I know I look like crap.”

“No, no,” Jon said. “You look—“ Beautiful, Jon’s brain suggested. Radiant. Like an angel. “—fine,” he finished.

“Oh no,” Megan said. “You hesitated. I must look like absolute shit. And I don’t have anything with me. I don’t have my makeup. I didn’t even bring my hairbrush. Shit shit shit.”

“You can use my hairbrush,” Jon offered, thankful for the turn of conversation. Megan had been distracted from the book. “I don’t know if that’s hygienic, but, you’re welcome to. But . . . don’t you need to get home?”

Megan let out a little laugh. “Worn out my welcome, huh? Or now you’ve seen my morning face, you’re ready to kick me out—”

Jon shook his head vigorously. “No!” he almost shouted. He stopped himself; he was a little wound up, he thought. He needed to take it down a notch. “You can set up house in my closet and sleep on my floor until you’re old and gray, if you want.”

He paused for a moment. Did he risk saying anything more? Given the circumstances? He decided he would, especially given the circumstances. “I really liked seeing you last night. I like you being around.”

Megan smiled at him through her bed head. “That’s sweet,” she said, and Jon was afraid he was going to get another pinched cheek. Perhaps that had been the beer as much as anything, because she just reached up and touched his hand. “Thanks. Thanks for letting me crash here. I like hanging out with you, too.”

Tell her about the book, came the thought, filling his mind, as she touched his hand. You really want to do this thing alone?

It was tempting. He was going to need help from somewhere. Hell, he was going to need transportation. Megan’s sister had a car, and that would be a start. And he had already probably put Megan in danger. Possibly tremendous, terrible danger. So didn’t she have a right to know?

I would mean to do good, Dr. Bernhard had said on the tape. I would mean to do good.

Who was he going to get to help him, though? Johnny Two? His mom? He didn’t have a lot of other options. Did he want to put them in danger? Or wouldn’t they be in danger, anyway, just because they knew him? If someone was going to come looking for him, wouldn’t they try and get to him through the people he knew?

Jon shook his head. He was in above his head. Way above his head. He thought the best things right now was just to do nothing. He wouldn’t tell Megan, or Johnny Two, and, of course, no way he was going to tell his mom. Better to think about it. Give this issue some consideration before he decided who to drag into it, or what to do. Maybe he should just turn the thing into the government. He hadn’t known Dr. Bernhard all that well. Maybe he had just been some paranoid old kook and had kept it disguised well enough. Maybe he was still alive, and was just—well, he couldn’t just be pulling an elaborate stunt. There was no denying the technology of the video cassette or the hard, inexplicable reality of the book. Still, he could have been paranoid, or even power mad, and was trying to keep whatever it was he had stolen—the book, it had to be the book—for himself. It was possible he wasn’t dead at all, and was just using Jon.

Jon was just fourteen years old. The most complicated things he had been contemplating for his summer had been learning assembly language programming and maybe getting a good look at Megan’s cleavage while she fawned over Johnny Two. This was way beyond anything he was prepared to cope with—had been, from the moment the video cassette had started to click and whir. Maybe turning the book over to the authorities would be the best idea. Just tell them he had no idea what the hell the old man had been thinking. Just get it out of his life, and let them deal with it.

You were one of the few people I had met that I knew I could trust, Dr. Bernhard has said. That I felt for sure that I should trust. Even with great power. Perhaps especially with great power.

Maybe not. Trust no one, Dr. Bernhard had also said. Jon thought that perhaps that was good advice. Starting, right off the bat, with Dr. Bernhard himself, who Jon currently had no reason to trust at all.

“Jon?” Megan was asking. “Are you okay? Earth to Jon, earth to—”

“Yeah, yeah, heard you,” Jon mumbled. Megan’s head, bleary eyes and tangled hair, was not a foot from his—she had sat up on the bed, right next to Jon, and he hadn’t even noticed. He did notice now, and Megan’s morning breath—it smelled a little like beer, cigarettes, and rotting vegetables—was not pleasant. He backed up a little, worried, distractedly, that his breath might be even worse. “Sorry, I was zoning.”

“No kidding. You okay? Do I need to clear out—”

“No, nothing like that,” Jon said. Although we could probably both use a Tic-Tac, he thought. “I mean, my mom will probably be out for another hour or more. She usually makes a slow start on Saturdays. She wouldn’t come back here, even if she was up. I was just thinking. I’ve got to pick something up in Knoxville—and I kind of don’t want my mom to know about it.”

“Say n’more, say n’more.” Megan gave Jon a toothy grin. She was slightly bucktoothed, Jon thought. The smile was bright and warm, and something tugged at his heart. Just tell her. She’s about to get involved, anyway. Just tell her.

“I’ve got—somebody left me a package, and I’m not sure what’s in it,” Jon said. That sounded good. Not exactly the whole story, but true enough. “I wanted to go ahead and get it today, just to make sure it’s nothing—nothing—“ Nothing what? Too dangerous? Incriminating? Toxic? “—perishable,” Jon finished.

“Perishable, huh?” Megan smiled a little wider, a little twinkle in her eye. She thinks I’m talking about beer or dope or something, he thought. Well, he wasn’t saying that, she was just making up her own mind. It might be something perishable. Dr. Bernhard hadn’t exactly been clear. “Carla owes me, like, a dozen major favors since she started dating Bryan. I’ve done so much cover up, and I’ve taken some major shit from Larry for her. It may not be until this afternoon, but I bet I can get her to drive us down there.”

Drive us down there. There it was. She had said it; they’d all be going, both Megan and Carla would be involved, then. He had known that would have to be the way it worked, if he wanted to get what Dr. Bernhard had left him. But, now she said it, and it was real. Even if he just turned it all over to the government or whoever, they might still get in trouble, even though they wouldn’t really know anything. If he ended up doing what Dr. Bernhard had apparently thought he would—try and hide it from the government or destroy it—then they would be directly involved and could be in serious, serious trouble. Jon felt sick to his stomach.

“That’d be great, thanks. Also,” Jon forced a smile, “it’ll get me out of the house for awhile. My mom is home, like, half the day on Saturday.”

Megan nodded wisely. “Yeah.” She looked up, as if trying to look into her own skull, and then stared, cross-eyed, at a tangle of hair that had fallen down across her nose. “I think I need to get cleaned up before I do anything. And eat some food. I think maybe I drank too much beer last night.” Sticking out her lower lip, she made a failed attempt to blow a lock of hair out from in front of her eyes. It went up, then fell right back. She sighed. “I don’t guess I could shower here, huh?”

“Uh, no,” Jon said. The idea certainly had it’s appeal—Megan, naked and wet and soapy in his bathroom, even if he couldn’t figure out some way to peak in, seemed like something most excellent. If his mother had been out of the house, he probably would have told her to go for it. The chances of his mom waking up and going straight for the bathroom, though, were pretty good. No point in risking making things any more complicated than they already were. “My mom—she could get up, it’s happened, and she usually goes straight for the shower—”

“’s cool,” Megan said, waving one hand dismissively. “I need clean clothes, anyway, I’m just not looking forward to going back to the house. You know.”

“Yeah,” Jon nodded.

“But, I can talk to Carla. Talk to you about—“ She smiled that toothy grin again. “—you’re little errand.”

“Thanks,” she smacked him on the thigh, and gave it a hard squeeze. She was a strong girl, too. “Want to walk me home, hoss?”

He didn’t think he really did, but recognized the sort of offer he’d be foolish to pass—besides which, she was going to get her older sister to drive him into Knoxville to get Dr. Bernhard’s “package”; he couldn’t exactly refuse a request to walk her home. “Sure. Probably better get a move on, before mom gets up.”

“Yeah, yeah, and I might be able to get in before Larry gets up. Or at least before he comes and checks my room.” She swung her legs up on the bed and put them down on the other side. She stood up, pressing down on Jon’s shoulder as she got up for support. She wasn’t entirely steady on her feet.

As she let go of his shoulder, Jon quickly swung his own legs over, standing up. As nonchalantly as he could, he positioned himself between the area at the end of his bed, where the book still lay, clear as could be, on the floor, and Megan. As Megan moved towards the door, Jon nudged the book under his bed with his left foot.

Megan got to the door, and looked back at Jon. “You coming?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you, like, make sure the coast is clear or something?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jon agreed, moving to the door—just one quick backward glance, to make sure the book was obscured. Not just from Megan, but possibly from his mom. She probably wouldn’t come in his room, but better safe than sorry.

He got to the door, and turned the knob. He peaked out for effect—he was pretty sure he would have heard Doreen if she was up and about; she was usually pretty noisy. Everything was dark, just a little morning light bleeding in around the shades in the living room. His mom was still fast asleep.

“Coast is clear,” Jon said. “Let’s go.”

Chapter 12

2008-11-30T23:15:00.000-08:00

Manassas, VA – Saturday, May 28th, 1983 – 11:06 AM

“Humyellow?”

The voice on the end of other line was a sleepy mumble. She must have had a late night last night, Richard thought. Well, it had been a Friday night, after all. Doreen had always been something of a night owl, as he recalled.

“Hi, Doreen? It’s Richard. Richard Mathers.”

“Richard?” she repeated, still sounding a little disoriented. “Oh, Richard. Hey. Richard in Washington, right?”

Rich smiled. Doreen had probably known so many Richards by now it was tough to keep them straight. “Yeah, Richard in Washington. I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

Doreen either chuckled or coughed, Rich wasn’t sure which. “Well, yeah, a little. Late night. But it’s time for me to get up, anyway.”

“Sorry about that. I can call back—“

“No, no, it’s great to hear from you,” Richard could almost see Doreen adjusting her nightgown or brushing her hair back, primping for a phone call. He wouldn’t have been surprised; the few times he had seen her over the years, Doreen hadn’t seemed to have changed much. “But, you know, I don’t think you’ve called me in . . . what, six years? Seven?”

Richard couldn’t remember a time that he had ever actually called Doreen. Normally, she called him. He’d keep his address book updated—contacts were everything, networking was everything, and you just never knew when having met someone on a plane—or, for that matter, having dated somebody right out of college—might come in handy. He knew how to get in touch with her, just like he knew how to get into touch with hundreds of people. Covering city council meetings and zoning review committees, however, there just hadn’t been much practical need to keep in touch with anybody. He had ended up getting his divorce lawyer, a pretty good guy he had met at one of Julie’s parent’s summer parties, out his beaten and dog eared black book. There were a few people he had called about council meetings. Most of the time, that all important network of contacts he maintained so meticulously remained untouched. Still, he kept it. Because you never knew. Case in point, this call.

“Sorry,” Richard said sheepishly. “I’m not a very good pen pal, either. I’ve got friends who write letters and . . . you know, I should write them back. I just never do. I think there are, like, I don’t know, three people I still talk to from when I was in high school or college. They all call me. They have to do all the work. I’m not trying to be rude or anything, I just don’t think about it.”
“So I’m special, I actually got you to call me,” Doreen said, pleasantly enough. Richard couldn’t shake the image of her preening into the phone. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure? Did you just want to reminisce or—”

“Actually, I’ve got a story I’m working on,” Richard said. Not quite true, he had no commitment from, and in fact had not yet talked to, Robbie at Capitol Brief. He didn’t have anything else to do, though, and perhaps getting out of D.C. altogether and taking a look at the want-ads in some place a little lower key, like Knoxville or Oak Ridge or Chattanooga, wouldn’t be such a bad idea. “I’m going to be coming down to Knoxville either on Monday or Tuesday, and probably be staying a couple of days—”

“Oh, hey, that’s great,” Doreen interrupted. “You want to get together? Do you need a place to crash? I’ve got a room. My oldest is taking summer classes—”

“No, no, I don’t want to inconvenience you,” Richard said, although it had been in the back of his mind. He wasn’t exactly flush with cash and Doreen had offered to have him come down and stay in the past. Still, he thought it was better to go through the ritual. “I’m sure I can find a cheap hotel.”

“Really, it’s no trouble, Stacey is taking classes in Memphis and Jon won’t bother you. He’s always got his nose in a book or is playing video games or working with his computer.” Then, softer, with what to Richard sounded like the sort of calculated femininity that Julie had always wielded so potently: “We’d love to have you.”

Richard made a gagging motion, sticking his finger in his mouth. Ugh. If money wasn’t so tight, he’d just tell her no and be done with it. Come down, she was saying. Come down, we’ll have sex, we’ll fall in love, and then I will dedicate my life to hating you and destroying you emotionally and financially. Won’t that be fun?

Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly. Not this time, Richard thought. I’ll just stay at the far end of the web and we’ll talk from there, how about that?

Richard shivered. At least he was older and wiser. He had never been more than recreationally interested in women like Doreen, and certainly wasn’t now, but he wasn’t exactly in a position to judge her. With Julie, what had he done, after all? Please, o please let me into your parlor, cried the fly to the spider. He had pursued that relationship. Pursued it hard. No, he didn’t need to be judging anybody.

“Well, it does sound pretty good,” Richard said. “If you’re sure it’s all right—”

“I’d love to have some adult company,” she quickly interjected. “And, be-it-ever-so-humble, I do have an empty room.” And you don’t have to sleep it in, either, if you want some adult company, Richard heard her say in his head. And I’ll give you the best blowjob you’ve ever had and I’ll do everything for you that your nasty old ex-wife wouldn’t. Then, when you finally feel happy, when you finally feel complete, I’ll rip out your still-beating heart with my claws and eat it hot and spit the blood in your face. No, you won’t die. But you will wish that you could. You will beg for death.

The image he had in his head of Doreen was looking a lot like Julie. It had been a long time since he had seen Doreen, but as far he could recall, the only thing Julie and Doreen had shared in common was the color of their hair. But right now Doreen was even sounding a little like Julie. At least, the way Julie had sounded before they had gotten married.

Richard swallowed hard. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

No, no, no. Debi had probably been calling people all day on Friday, trying to find something for him. She hadn’t just stumbled over it; he had seen her do the same for other people, and then present the lead to them as if it has just fallen in her lap, when she’d spent a day-and-a-half on the phone trying to find it for them. If nothing else, he should do it for her. Also, there was the little of issue of how he was supposed to pay his rent, and his alimony. Buy food. Those things had to be factored in, too.

“Okay, okay, you talked me into it,” Richard said. “I’ll stay, but you need to know that one of the reasons I called you was that I wanted to talk to you about the story. You and your son.”

“Jon?” Doreen asked, her voice not just puzzled but harder. Older. Suspicious. Accusatory. A little bit of the real woman usually shrouded by the façade of batting eyes, coy smiles and calculated modesty. “For your story? Why would you want to talk to Jon?”

“The main reason I’m coming down is to talk to some people about a guy named Dr. Donald Bernhard. He was—”

He heard Doreen inhale. “Oh no. Dr. Bernhard? What did he do? I never liked Jon hanging around that man—“

“I’m not sure what he did. He may have stolen something—I’m not sure where that speculation comes from yet, I’m just getting started. But he was in charge of a research project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and that’s what the story is about. He may have been working on something else than what the government says he was working on. He was supposed to be working on a system to find radioactive materials with satellites, but there are some sources that say it was actually a weapons grade laser program, maybe for military satellite applications. He may have been selling secrets to the Soviets, or trying to sabotage, from within, the laser weapons program—he apparently taught at Berkley for a while, and some people think he might have hooked up with some of the more radical organizations or professors on the campus—apparently, he kept in touch with them until he disappeared—”

“Disappeared?” Doreen asked, her voice now more worried, but still as hard and brittle as granite. That soft, seductive veneer of femininity had vanished. How familiar Richard was with that process, too. He had seen it happen a thousand times in his marriage, when Julie stopped batting her eyes and lingering on her vowels for someone else and turned, usually with an accusation or a criticism, on him, normally without missing a beat. Well, goodbye, thanks so much for calling, it’s been wonderful to hear from you, goodbye, why the hell did you answer the phone, are you retarded, you know I hate talking to those people, are you just trying to drive me insane or are you really just that stupid?

“Uh, yeah, they actually—he turned up dead at a mall in Los Angeles,” he stumbled. Spit it out, just don’t stand there, he heard Julie saying in his head. Don’t you even know how to form a complete sentence? “Uh, apparently there is some speculation he may have been trying to get back to some of his contacts at Berkley, or possibly may have been working with some fairly radical organizations around L.A.” Possibly may have been? Fairly radical? And you’re supposed to be a writer?

Richard closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. I don’t live with you anymore. You have somebody else to sink your claws into now. Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.

“Richard? Are you there?”

“—um, yeah,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to trail off like that.”

“Did you say Dr. Bernhard was dead?”

“Yeah. It hasn’t been on the news? I would have figured it would have made the local news there, at least.”

“I—I’m always taking classes or taking Jon or Stacey somewhere or doing something, it’s hard to watch the news or read the paper everyday,” she snapped. How different they always were, the mask and the face underneath it. “When—what happened?”

“He had a heart attack at the food court at the Four Points Mall in L.A., or at least that’s what I’ve heard so far. About a week ago.”

“I—“ Doreen started. “Jesus Christ. Is—is Jon in danger? Are we? Are we going to get in trouble?”

“I don’t think so,” Richard said. “Nobody else has talked to you, or said anything about Dr. Bernhard to you?”

“No, no. Is—”

“Did you guys ever do anything with him? Did he come over to the house? Call a lot?”

“No. I mean, he came over here once, that I know of. Maybe twice. I’ve met him, and he seemed normal enough. I don’t think he ever called us. Jon always went over there—doing odd jobs for him and stuff. And I knew he was a scientist and smart, and Jon’s smart and I knew he could maybe use somebody in his life who knew more about that sort of stuff than I did. But, I don’t know, a guy that old, it just always worried me that Jon spent so much time with him.” Doreen inhaled. Richard thought he could almost hear the mask going back on. It was a honey-velvet sucking sound. “So, this is a big story?”

“I couldn’t tell you. Might be nothing. Hopefully, if it is nothing, I’ll still get paid.”

A peel of laughter issued from the receiver. Richard shook his head. It was schizophrenia. Hard as nails one moment, and then pretty-in-pink the next. Only, after you had known them long enough, the pretty-in-pink façade was, like the good china, saved for company. Hard-as-nails and sharp-as-a-razor and as caustic-as-acid—that was what was left for you.

The laughter continued for about three beats too long. “Oh my, oh my,” she said. “Goodness. Don’t be so funny so early in the morning. I can’t take it.” A pause, calculated. “Do you think Jon knows something?”

Richard smiled. Some of the pretty-in-pink approach—at least, its return now—was trying to sugar coat herself for him because she was worried about her kid. She gets points for that, he thought.

“He might know something and not really know he knows it. That’s why I thought he might be good to talk to. I remembered you mentioned him—that’s why I called, because I thought you had said something about your son knowing a Dr. Bernhard, and that he had worked at Oak Ridge. There’s not like an APB out on you or anything.”

Doreen offered a nervous titter. “Thank God for small favors.”

“Doreen, I really don’t think it’s all that big a deal. I’m trying to set up some interviews with some of the people that worked at Oak Ridge with him and some of his colleagues at Berkley. I’m even trying to find the people he bought his house from. I’ve already got a call into the realty company. You just never know.”

“I—I just always had this—“ she started, then paused. “I don’t know. Feeling. I just had this gut feeling there was something out of whack there. With this old guy wanting Jon to come help around his house and getting money for odd jobs and Bernhard would loan him books and sometimes stuff like lab equipment. I always had this—I don’t know, this tickle—that there was something a little weird going on there. I just couldn’t ever find a real reason for it.”

Richard looked at the phone, eyebrows arched. “He loaned him scientific equipment? Like what?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know that stuff from Adam. Something that looked like a chemistry set, I remember. Lab stuff, mostly. One of those things with the little round screen and wavy lines—”

“An oscilloscope?”

“An oscilloscope. Yes, thank you. Meters. Stuff like that.”

“Does your son still have the equipment?”

“You’ll have to ask him. I think he had to give most of it back, but I don’t know for sure. You’re sure he’s not in trouble?”

“I seriously doubt it,” Rich replied. “I might not be the last person who wants to talk to him about Bernhard, reporter or otherwise, but I wouldn’t worry.” Richard flipped the pages in his legal pad; he only had a few pages of notes so far, but it was already more than he could keep straight in his head. “I think—yeah, the Department of Defense started an investigation on him three months ago. He disappeared almost three weeks ago. He turned up dead in L.A. over a week ago—I don’t think you’re on anybody’s radar, except mine. If anybody was going to be in trouble, I think it would have happened a long time before now.”

“Okay, maybe,” Doreen said. “I’m just—I just worry. I’m a single mom and it’s tough raising a kid as smart and, I don’t know, as easygoing, as Jon. Even-tempered. Everything seems okay and he makes, like, straight As all the time, but I worry he’s even smarter than I think, and maybe he could be up to something bad, and I’d never know. You hear about these kids—they hack into government computers and do some really bad stuff, and they go to jail. How would I know if Jon was doing something like that? Even if I saw him doing it I’d have no idea what I was looking at. You know?”

Her voice was softer. Richard knew he had thrown her for a loop. She was worried about her kid; what mother worth her salt wouldn’t react to something like that? He had, after all, called to tell her there was a connection between her fourteen year old son, a secret government project, and a nuclear scientist who had just turned up dead in an L.A. mall. She wasn’t Julie. She was a mother who loved her son.

“I don’t have any kids,” Rich replied. “I probably don’t know. I do know what it’s like to have no idea what I’m looking at, though.”

Another forced laugh. “It’s been too long. I’m sorry if I—I didn’t mean to act weird or angry or anything, I’m just worried. I guess it doesn’t take much to worry me most days.”

No, not much, Richard thought. Just finding out a nuclear scientist your son was spending time around might have stolen something from a secret government project and ended up dead. He decided not to say that, though. He had done enough damage for one day.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you—I really don’t think it’s a big deal.” And then, before he could really stop and think about it: “But don’t talk to anybody else about it.”

“Don’t talk to—why not? Do you think we might be in trouble?” The hard tone was creeping back into her voice.

That was smart, Julie’s voice quipped in Richard’s head. Why can’t you ever leave well enough alone?

“No, but if someone ever does come sniffing around you guys, I think it’s better if you didn’t have a record of talking to a lot of people or asking questions—what I mean is, you could end up wasting a lot of time and energy dealing with explaining stuff you don’t need to explain, because somebody finds out six months from now you told a friend about it who told another friend—it could just end up being a big pain in the ass for you.” There, that sounded reasonable, he thought, without sounding too dire. “I’ve seen it happen,” he added. He hadn’t seen such a thing happen, exactly, but it seemed plausible enough. Then, further inspiration: “Besides, if there is a story there, I want the exclusive.”

“Exclusive, huh?” The soft, warm velvet was back in her voice. She didn’t have much of an accent, but he could almost taste the too-sweet southern honey in her tone. You can have the all-night exclusive, if you like. Richard closed his eyes and rubbed one temple with two fingers. Worried about her son or not, it still felt like dealing with a schizophrenic. It also made him recall, a little too clearly, Julie’s sweet Virginia sugar that could so abruptly turn into poisonous black bile.

It will only be a few days, he told himself. I’ve got to be able to manage a few days. Have to. Then: Loaned him scientific equipment, huh?

Maybe he really did want the exclusive. Because maybe, just maybe, there really was something here that somehow had gone under everybody else’s radar. Loaned him equipment? Books? Visiting all the time and doing odd jobs? For a guy working on a secret government project that turns up dead in L.A.? Maybe it wasn’t a big deal, maybe it was. But something smelled like an honest-to-God story.

“Yes, exclusive. So no talking to other reporters,” Rich replied. He thought he hit a pretty jovial tone, even if he didn’t feel it. “And I didn’t mean to worry you, and I’ll probably know a lot more by the time I get down there. I’ll be there Monday evening, if that’s all right. It might be a little late, so . . . how about I take you out to dinner Tuesday night? Return your hospitality.”

“A dinner date? Oh, Richard, that’s sweet, but you don’t have to—”

“I insist. I’m not saying anything terribly fancy, just someplace with low lights and soft music and good food. Or, failing that, Shoney’s.”

Doreen giggled. All froth and bubbles, it sounded, to Richard, well-practiced and not terribly sincere. “I’ll figure someplace better than Shoney’s. We can go dutch, if it’s trouble.”

“Oh, hell no, if you’re letting me stay at your house, I’m going to pay for dinner,” Richard insisted. “We can catch up on things. It’ll be fun.” He doubted the last part, but he believed—he hoped, anyway—that he could put on a good enough show of it for long enough to get what he needed for his story. While keeping Doreen happy. Because maybe there was something there.

“Okay, okay,” she consented. “It will be good to see you. It’s been too long.”

“Yeah, it has,” Rich agreed. The next part made him feel dirty but, if there was as story there, he did want the exclusive. “I’ve missed you.”

“Oh,” she murmured. She seemed pleasantly surprised, which was the desired effect. “I’ve missed you, too. It will be good to have you here.” Her voice was low and soft, but very clear—a well-practiced sensuality. She sighed into the phone. On the one hand, Richard had to admit, she almost oozed a desperation that was just sad. Sad and pathetic. On the other, she did it fairly well. The honey velvet in her voice, the husky, plaintive sigh—it stirred something in him. A little voice that said maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they got a little friendly. It wasn’t like Debi, it wouldn’t be ruining a deep, solid, and long-standing friendship. It would just be a little sex, and she was obviously open to the idea, and Rich thought she had probably had a lot of experience since the last time they had been together. It might even make her cooperation on the story a little easier.

Yet, in the end, the image of Julie, in the middle of their expensive Penthouse, in the middle of giving Jason Bishop the sort of professional, practiced fellatio that had never been a part of his relationship with Julie, won out. He saw himself—still so stupid, still so naïve, and so utterly pathetic, tell Julie that he wanted to work it out. That he wanted to keep their marriage together. When it should have been clear—when it should have been clear for the last year, for the last two years—that Julie despised him. He could see the utter contempt on her face when he had suggested counseling. If I wanted to “work it out”, she had said, I wouldn’t have been fucking somebody else all this time. Would you like to buy a clue?

Perhaps it was best to keep it at the friendship level. If his head was like this just talking to Doreen, what would it be like if they were making out? She had a life to lead, he’d have to go back to DC. He wasn’t in a position to rescue anybody; so far, he hadn’t done a terribly good job of saving himself. He would just go, ask questions, take her out to dinner, and avoid anything that involved back rubs, cuddling, or getting into something more comfortable.

“I’m looking forward to seeing you. Look, I’ve got a few more calls to make—I’ll probably call you when I’m on the road, for specific directions. I was going to take I-81 to I-40 and take I-40 to Knoxville—”

“I live in Oak Ridge, now. Not far at all, but I did move. You’ve got my Oak Ridge address, don’t you? You’ve obviously got the right phone number.”

“Yeah, I’ve got it—1347 Cheshire Ave.”

“That’s it. You think you’ll be here Monday, you said?”

“I think so. I’ll call you before I get there. I promise, no surprises. And if something comes up and you’re busy or I’d be in the way, I’ll find a Holiday Inn—”

“No, sweety, I’ve got you covered. I haven’t seen you in, like, seven or eight years. You’re staying with me.”

“Okay, if you’re sure. I’ll call you soon. Good-bye.”

“Drive carefully,” Doreen said. “I’ll be waiting for you.” Her voice was warm honey. How did they do it? Why did they do it? If I wanted to “work it out”, I wouldn’t have been fucking somebody else all this time, Julie’s voice taunted in his head. Would you like to buy a clue?
Richard placed the handset down with both hands, and then continued to lean against the phone, as if he had to hold the receiver down. To keep it from attacking.

Drive carefully, Julie’s voice seemed to come from the speaker of the handset. Drive carefully, I’d hate to see the latest in the long line of shitbags that have been in my bed hit a telephone pole before I can give him gonorrhea.

“Shut up,” Richard whispered, pushing on the receiver. His fingers were turning white where they gripped the phone. “You are out of my life just shut up.”

She turned out something special, the voice continued. Although it was less Julie, now. It sounded more like his voice. Didn’t she? So worried about the bilious and bitter bitch dressed up like twenty-dollar whore—

“Stop it, just stop,” Rich mumbled helplessly. “Please stop.”

She turned out something special. You seem to have quite the effect on the ladies, don’t you? The indelible mark of just a few months of dating you ten years ago, Richard—a poisonous, miserable harridan covered in honey and velvet and fucking any miserable piece of human debris that can crawl back to her rotten little shithole of a house—

“SHUT UP!” he spat, throwing the receiver violently at the wall. It pulled the telephone off its small table, and the answering machine behind it, and they clattered to the floor.

“Hell,” Richard mumbled, and bent down to pick up the phone and the answering machine.

“Can’t be breaking stuff, I can’t afford to replace anything,” he murmured to himself. He gingerly placed the phone and answering machine back atop the small table, a black, scratched, beat-up thing with a drawer that had been one of those thrift-store items Julie had been good enough to leave him with.

He shook his head. He walked over the window, where his boombox sat on the ledge. He turned it on. He needed to hear the outside world, something other than the thoughts inside his head.
On the radio, Daryll Hall and John Oates were getting busy, warning him about “The Maneater”.

One eye twitched, and then he jabbed the power button. It didn’t turn off, so he jabbed it again, and again, and again, and again. It would turn on, and he would jab it. It would turn off, he would jab it again. He stood for almost a minute, jabbing and then almost beating on his radio.
Then, the song was over. Richard stopped punching the buttons on his boombox. Then Billy Joel started into “Uptown Girl”.

His eye twitched again. “Don’t break it,” he said. “Can’t buy anything else. Don’t have a TV.”
A more practical solution occurred to him. He turned the knob until he heard classical music. Then he stopped. “That’s better,” he said to himself. Then, he sat down in his bean bag and closed his eyes. He did have things to do—like pack, for example. He also had people to call, not the least of which was Robbie Deaton at Capitol Brief and make sure he was actually doing the story. He guessed that Deb had probably already made sure that Rich would get the story, unless he completely blew Deaton off. No guarantee Robbie would be in on a Saturday, but it wouldn’t have been at all unusual.

For now, though, he need to close his eyes and listen to something that wasn’t Julie’s voice. To think about something that wasn’t Julie.

And he did, a little bit. Odd jobs. Scientific equipment. Young kid hanging around an ancient nuclear scientist. Guy gets an internal investigation started by the Department of Defense, and ends up dead in L.A. Might be a real story. And Richard might have a real angle.

Chapter 13

2008-11-30T23:10:00.000-08:00

Knoxville, TN – Saturday, May 28th, 1983 – 12:13 PM

“You can park anywhere,” Jon said, leaning forward to make sure Carla Kincaid could hear him. During the short trip to downtown Knoxville, she had relied on Jon for navigation, and had repeatedly complained that she couldn’t hear him. Yet, she was unwilling to even look at the map.

“Just tell me where to go and let’s get this done, I’ve got a lot of shit to do,” she had said. Megan’s sister apparently did owe her a favor or two, but she was obviously none-to-happy about having to pay it back today.

“All right, thanks, master,” Carla returned snidely. “I don’t know how I’d figure out where to park without you.”

Megan squeezed Jon’s hand, and looked at him sheepishly. She shrugged. Big sisters, the shrug said. What can you do? Jon understood the big sister problem all-too-well, and continued to be careful not to antagonize Carla.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I just don’t know where the best place is to get to the lockers, so I thought . . . sorry.”

Carla grunted. She pushed a chunk of greasy brown hair back out of her eyes. She looked a lot more like her and Megan’s mother than Megan did, which was not a good thing for Carla. Her nose was bigger and her chin was flat. The color of her hair was a dull brown—not so many shades away from the brilliant auburn of Megan’s hair, but a few shades made all the difference. She was taller than Megan, probably right at six feet, and was both skinnier and had bigger boobs, which she liked to show off with shirts cut to show too much cleavage, and she wore Madonna-inspired midriff-baring outfits that advertised the waxy, translucent skin stretched over her ribs. But Madonna she was not. In some ways, she reminded Jon a little bit of his mom.

“This better not take long,” Carla cautioned. “Or I’m leaving and you find your own way home.”
Megan leaned over to whisper in Jon’s ear. “This won’t take long, will it?”

Jon whispered back: “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. I’ve never been here before.”
Megan gave him a quizzical look but said nothing else. He looked at Carla, and then back to Megan. The difference was amazing. Carla’s skin, especially her face, was perpetually broken out—it looked she had a rash on her face—and coated with base makeup. She wore eye-makeup that made her look like her mascara was always running. Her hair was greasy. She almost never smiled—she usually looked queasy or angry or both.

Megan, on the other hand—she scrubbed-up well. Her red-brown hair was washed and braided and was so clean it sparkled in the sun. It looked like it would squeak if he rubbed it between his fingers. Her skin was smooth and clear, almost always. She had shown him and Johnny Two the zits on her back once, just to prove that, yes, she was a normal teenager and got pimples like everybody else. Her face, though, had never broken out that Jon could remember. She looked like she had a little lipstick and maybe some blush on, whereas her sister looked like an escapee from Mary Kay Girls Gone Wrong. And her skin. Where Carla’s skin was waxy and translucent, as if stretched too taut over her towering frame, Megan’s skin was a crème-colored silk. She was radiant. It wasn’t just her skin, either; it was all of her. She seemed, to Jon, to glow, as if illuminated from deep inside. And Carla smelled stale. Not just like cigarettes—she smoked like a chimney—but stale. Like stale bread and stale air. After having gone home and showered, Megan again smelled like flowers and rain. Even with Carla up front, chain smoking Virginia Slims.

Megan was holding his hand—nothing had been said, and he wasn’t quite sure what had changed, but there had been a lot more touching and hand holding between him and Megan since last night—more, perhaps, than in the entire two years previous he had known her. Now, it was a new day, the sun was at high noon, and Megan was stone, cold sober, and she was still holding his hand. When she had leaned against him to ask him if this would take long, she had whispered in his ear. Then her lips had touched his ear—one beat, two beats. Then she had leaned back. Not a kiss, but—well, she had whispered things to him plenty of times before, and he never remembered the feeling of her lips against his ear. And he was pretty sure he would have remembered such a thing very well.

Earlier, on the drive down, Carla had gone on a five minute rant to the world in general about being a bus driver for kindergartners and she had things to do, goddammit. At first, Megan had grabbed Jon’s hand and put it on her thigh, patting his hand reassuringly. She’ll be all right, Megan had mouthed at him. She’s just a little cranky. Then, when Carla, apparently cut off by somebody in traffic, escalated the rant to a full throttle stream of barely coherent profanity, Megan had dropped her head down and leaned into Jon’s chest, hiding her face as if embarrassed. One hand on his shoulder, the other on his knee. Giggling, saying “oh no, oh no” and “I can’t believe she said that” and apologizing. She was dressed in a fairly thick white knit top, plus a dark brown suede vest, and was—he had noted with some embarrassment—wearing a pretty sturdy bra under it all. Still, he felt her bosom pressing against him as she feigned embarrassment. Feigned? Yes, he was almost sure of it—feigned embarrassment at her sister. Then again, rubbing across his arm and elbow as she disengaged in what had to be the least natural, most awkward way possible.

Could this be leading to the impossible? Like, maybe him—a geek, not all that bad looking, maybe, as geeks went but still a geek—and Megan, who was an authentic descended-from-Olympus goddess in white knit and blue jeans, going steady? Being, like, boyfriend and girlfriend? Just yesterday, the idea would had seemed so absurdly out-of-reach that he might as well have been speculating about dating Cheryl Tiegs or Christie Brinkley. Yesterday, she had apparently been drunk. But, in the bright light of the morning, she was being nothing if not more friendly than before. More intimate. She was not only engaging him, out of nowhere, in the sort of casual intimacy she usually seemed to show Johnny Two—not so much a geek, and definitely more athletic than Jon—but actually more. Somewhere, somehow, something had turned a corner.

You have a late curfew, Jon’s more rational mind told him. You have a mom who almost never bugs you. She’s gone a lot. You’ve got the house to yourself. Your mom never even opens the door to your room. Megan hates her parents and she hates being at home. You offer the one thing nobody else can right now: escape.

He guessed that was it. She hadn’t really put two-and-two together before, he guessed: that Jon’s sort of perpetual crush on her, plus the free reign he enjoyed over his household, could mean a regular refuge from her home life. So, in a year or two when she managed to get a car, or when most of the boys in school had cars, his appeal would vanish. She would meet other guys who probably had more autonomy than Jon, and might play on the football team, to boot, and she would move on. Hell, it might happen this summer. Maybe tomorrow. He was fourteen years old. Megan was fifteen—hell, sixteen in a month. This would not be a love to last for all time, even if Megan liked something more about him than the escape from her parents he afforded her.

But right now, it seemed like it had been enough for Megan to reassess her relationship with Jon. As he settled against the seat, Megan put her head on his shoulder. It was just unheard of. And doing it with Carla in the car, so she didn’t even care who knew. Amazing.

Carla pulled into an empty space in a row of empty spaces about as far from the entrance as she could possibly park. She put the dirty brown Datsun into park, with a grinding of geers.

“Stupid shittin’ car,” Carla swore. “Go and you better be back in ten minutes or I’m leaving and you’re walking home.”

“We’ll be back,” Jon said, opening the rear door with tortured squeak of bone dry hinges. “I hope.”

“Don’t worry about her,” Megan assured him as they started across the parking lot to the Abraham Bus Station. “She talks a lot but she’d be scared to death I’d tell Mom and Larry about some of the stuff she’s done. She won’t go until we get back.”

“Hope not,” Jon said. Spending the afternoon trapped at the bus station with Megan wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, though. “I don’t think it should take too long, I’ve just never been here before.”

“Yuh-huhn, you said,” Megan murmured thoughtfully. “Just what are these perishable items, anyway, that you need to pick up from the bus stop you’ve never been to?”

Jon sighed. “To tell you the truth, I just don’t know. It’s a long story. I’m not even sure there will be anything here, I just think this is the place. It’s—well, it’s sort of like a scavenger hunt. Or a treasure hunt. I’ve got to find a package, I’m pretty sure in a locker somewhere, with only what I can remember about—I don’t know, this is too tough to explain.”

“No you don’t,” Megan said, smiling, and poked him—hard, in the ribs. That she had done before, plenty of times. “It sounds all weird and mysterious and stupid. You’re going on a scavenger hunt to a bus stop?”

“I—okay, maybe that’s not the way to put it.” But how should he put it? Without explaining the message from Dr. Bernhard, and how the video cassette had stamped a key out of two quarters. How, as he had thought about it, Jon had remembered a lengthy story about Dr. Bernhard’s frustrations trying to rent a locker at the Abraham Bus Station in downtown Knoxville. That was how he had referred to it, too, almost every time he had mentioned the bus station in his probably fictional anecdote–about a large black lady who wasted a half hour in front of Dr. Bernhard, under the mistaken impression that she could actually take the entire rented locker with her to the hotel she would be staying at. That the story about the black lady and trying to rent a locker had been another coded message, like apparently everything else with Dr. Bernhard. Double meanings had been everywhere. “It’s a long story,” he finished lamely. “Tough to explain. I don’t know what’s going to be in the locker. I’ve got—I think I’m in a situation, and I don’t know what to do. I’ll—maybe it’s nothing.”

“Not perishable, huh?” Megan asked, looping her elbow around his, giving him sly smile. “What’s the big secret?”

“I—I wish I knew. I don’t know. I think I’ve got something dangerous, and I don’t know what to do with it, and I didn’t want it—”

“Want what?” Megan asked, still smiling.

“I’ve gotta tell you, I’m not sure. But—do you know Dr. Bernhard? Have I talked about him?” Jon asked as they stepped onto the portico leading up to the main terminal. “I think I at least told you about the time we set his kitchen on fire—”

Megan looked thoughtful. “Yah,” she consented, as they reached the entrance and the big, dirty glass doors slowly trundled open. “I think so. Vaguely. Something about acid, right?”

“Yeah,” Jon said. “Acid and gasoline, actually.”

They stopped, eyes adjusting to the darkness inside the terminal. Megan put her right hand over her eyes, as if trying to block out the glare of the sun. “So, great white hunter, where’s the big mysterious surprise thing?”

“I—” Jon was started, then stopped. He was tired of saying he didn’t know every three seconds. “Look for something that says lockers, or storage. Or storage boxes. Something like that.”

“Like that over there?” Megan asked, pointing a faded metal sign that quite possibly dated from the mid-50s, over towards the opposite end of the terminal, away from the ticket counter. The sign said: EZ Locker Rental. There was a service counter under the sign, but it was empty and dark and didn’t look like it saw a lot of use. Jon couldn’t imagine the story Dr. Bernhard had fed him as being true. He couldn’t imagine two people in line for lockers here. There was only one ticket window open out of four at the other end of the terminal, and only three people were in that line. And it was noon on a Saturday.

He pulled the key out his pocket. It was unmarked, except by the faint impression of George Washington’s profile on one side and a man in a three cornered hat on the other—at least one of the coins had been a bicentennial quarter. He had given it some thought and believed he had a fairly common sense answer as to the real locker number. He thought it would be locker number 50—the sum of two quarters. He would try 25, if that didn’t work. Failing that, he would look up and down for some other sign—some piece of apocrypha that would take on greater meaning to Jon, if only he could recall the appropriate piece of bullshit he had been fed by Dr. Bernhard. Something from one of his bizarre tangents—like the time he had sung “I’ll Never Grow Up”, hanging off the stair case banister, and then had engaged Jon in a fairly passionate discussion about the stage version of Peter Pan—nothing like the Disney version, nothing!—and the beguiling charms of Mary Martin. There was something attractive, he had said, about middle-aged women playing young boys. Which had been enough to mark that incident indelibly in his mind, which Jon now assumed was probably the point. Or something from the time they had indeed set the kitchen on fire. Or his story about finding a full grown kangaroo in his backyard when he lived in California. Or the story about almost falling off the London Bridge. Or the tangent about all the panels on the Arch de Triumph in Paris. Or-

“These look like lockers, all right,” Megan said, motioning toward the rows of lockers past the empty service counter. Most were small and square. Some of the bottom one’s were larger and rectangular. Many had padlocks on them, in addition to the keyed lock the lockers came with. Still, it didn’t look like a place that saw a whole lot of action. “What number are we looking for?”

“I’m not sure. I think it’s 50.”

“You think? Doesn’t the key have the number on it or something?”

“No,” Jon said. “It’s a copy.” He handed it to Megan. “I guess 50 would be down the second row—”

“This key looks weird.” Megan flipped it between thumb and forefinger. “Where’d you get it?”

Jon started down the second row of battered orange lockers. “It was sent to me.”

“Okay, Mr. Mystery,” she continued, following him. “Who sent it to you?”

“Dr. Bernhard.”

“The guy who’s kitchen you set on fire.”

“Well, actually, he did it. But yeah, that Dr. Bernhard.”

Jon wasn’t sure what he was or wasn’t going to say. She was already involved, by getting him a ride to the bus station. She was here now; whatever was in the locker, she was going to see it. He could just answer her questions, maybe. That might be too much but he didn’t know what else to do. He felt uncomfortable lying to or misleading her, and he was going to need help. Hell, he was going to need a second brain on this, a second opinion, because he was at a loss as to just how to handle this whole mess. There was also the sudden more-than-just-friends relationship he found himself in—at least, he was pretty sure he did—with Megan. The holding of hands, her leaning her head on his shoulder, the suspicious manner in which she had, on more than one occasion, pressed her breasts against him. The casually intimate way she talked with him—she had always been open and friendly with him and Johnny Miller both, especially for a girl at school, but now even that seemed to have gone to the next level. Could he just walk away from that?

Just turning the book, and everything else, over to the government or the police or somebody was seeming like a better and better idea all the time.

“Here,” he said, stopping at locker 50.

Megan looked at it suspiciously. “Doesn’t look very big.”

No, it didn’t. It was one of the small, square lockers that dominated the row, and it looked just about big enough to hold a handbag or a wallet and keys but not much else. Jon put out his hand to Megan, who looked at it blankly. “Oh, the key,” she murmured after a moment, and handed it to him.

The locker did not open. All right, Jon thought, so much for the common sense answer. Jon noticed that he wasn’t particularly surprised, and not even disappointed. Maybe it was none of them. Maybe this wasn’t even the right place and, despite all of Dr. Bernhard’s careful manipulations, Jon had misremembered the wrong anecdote and was looking at the Bus Station when he ought to be looking at a Post Office Box over in Cookeville or the Nashville International Airport. That idea was almost comforting; as a practical matter, he thought, it would make up his mind for him.

“So what now?” she asked from behind him, moving closer. Their shoulders touched. “One down, four hundred to go?”

“Let’s try 25,” Jon said, and they went around to the other side. Jon doubted this would be it; this was the one row that faced out directly to the rest of the terminal, in full view of the one ticket clerk and the sleepy security guard and the odd assortment of people sitting on benches or wandering around aimlessly. And anyone who might have been at the EZ Locker Rental counter, had there been anybody there.

His suspicion was correct, it was not 25.

“Maybe 75?” Megan offered.

“Look for something distinguishing—something written on one, something missing, maybe one of the padlocks is weird, maybe there is a scratch or a sticker.”

“Jeeze, your Dr. Burnsides didn’t make this easy, did he?”

“No, no, he didn’t,” Jon replied distractedly, scanning the first wall of lockers. One locker had a black blotch on it. Another a dent. He was hesitant to try them, and have the key not work, in full view of the rest of the terminal. He decided he get to those last, and went to the second row, scanning one side of the row while Megan scanned the other. One, with a fat yellow padlock, had a car bumper sticker on it that said, Life’s a Bitch and Then You Die. The key didn’t work on the locker or the padlock. Another locker had lines scratched in it, as if it had once been in the possession of a prisoner marking the days in solitary confinement. It also didn’t open.

“How about this?” Megan asked. A large bottom locker had a Grateful Dead sticker on it. Worth a shot, he thought, but no luck. One locker was streaked with blue paint, as if somebody had stored and then spilled a can of paint in the locker above. Jon tried both, without success.
“Next row,” he said. One locker appeared to have been hit several times with a hammer. Another looked to be smeared with something dried, crusty, and brown. One locker had had a neatly placed RIF: Reading is Fundamental sticker, featuring a illustration of a big green book right in the middle. Jon had felt sure that this was the one; he even thought perhaps Dr. Bernhard had mentioned RIF before. The key even seemed to turn, but stopped. He took it out, put it back in, tried again. It turned perhaps a quarter of the way, and then stopped.

“The next row,” Jon said. “You’re sure Carla isn’t going to bug out on us?”

“Not unless she wants to lose her car and get grounded for life,” Megan said. “What about the one with the smiley face?”

It was not the one with the large black magic marker smiley face dominating the small door. Not the one with the Nazi swastika scratched in it, not the one that looked like somebody had painted on it with silver metallic nail polish. Three more rows and a dozen dents, scratches, blotches and bumper stickers later, and they still hadn’t found a lock the key would open. Perhaps he had read the clues wrong. Perhaps his memory was misinformed. Perhaps it had been one of those lockers—the Reading Is Fundamental locker seemed the most likely one, as it had been suspicious and the key had done a quarter turn in the lock—but the key had been wrong or malformed in some way. It had been formed out of two quarters by something that looked like a BetaMax video cassette, after all.

He turned the key in the last candidate—locker 300, which he picked simply because it was the last locker. It didn’t budge. Well, that was that. Hopefully Megan was right about her sister, and she wasn’t halfway back to Oak Ridge.

Megan put her hand on Jon’s back. “Wild goose chase, huh?”

“I guess,” Jon said, almost relieved. Nothing more for him to do. Now, he could just get rid of the damn thing. The idea of turning everything over to the police or maybe calling the Oak Ridge National Laboratory didn’t exactly sit well, because he could still see himself getting in trouble. He might get in trouble for not having told somebody right away. He might get in trouble because he—and maybe Megan, and maybe his mom—knew too much.

Maybe he could bundle it all up and leave an anonymous tip somehow. Maybe—

“What about one of those?” Megan asked, pointing into the dark behind the EZ Locker Rental service counter. Jon followed her finger, and blinked. He could barely see anything in the inky blackness.

“I’m not sure—are those lockers? I think those are just boxes.”

“Are you blind? Come on,” she said, and pushed through the counter door.

“Uh—“ Jon started, looking around. “I’m not sure—”

Megan jabbed her finger at a faded placard taped—repeatedly and yet still pealing up—to the top of the counter with the operating hours of EZ Locker Rental. Most of the times had been rewritten with a black marker. They also had apparently stopped accepting Visa and Master Charge, as the credit card logos had been crossed out repeatedly, with the stern warning “No Personal Checks!” scrawled underneath.

“Cash, Money Order, Or Traveler’s Check,” Jon read from where Megan’s finger was pointing.
Megan laughed. “No, goofball—Saturday hours: 1:oo PM to 5:00 PM. We don’t exactly have a whole lot of time. If anybody ever actually shows up here.”

“Then maybe we should just go—”

“Come on,” Megan said, grabbing Jon’s hand and pulling him through the counter door. “Do you want to find this big bad mystery package of yours are not? Might be perishable, remember.”

She grinned slyly at him. At least she was having fun.

She paused, looking at the wall, and then reached out to it. The lights behind the service desk came on, and then Jon did indeed see the lockers. About seven of them, loose, on the floor, three stacked on top of each other, like boxes.

One of those, he thought, with that same unambiguous certainty he had felt when he had realized the object Dr. Bernhard had left him with had been one of the books the good doctor had loaned him. Dammit, dammit, dammit.

He thought about Dr. Bernhard’s anecdote, about the large black lady who had insisted she should be able to rent a locker and take it home. They had some loose lockers—broken or samples, I don’t know, but just lockers sitting on the floor. I was so exasperated with waiting, I was ready to go behind the counter and just grab one of them and give it to her myself, just so I could be done and leave.

Jon followed Megan toward the lockers, looking back over his shoulder. There seemed to be a few more people mulling about the station now, and waiting in line at the ticket window, but he and Megan didn’t seem to be attracting any attention. He shook his head, looking back at the cash register, then across to the wall, where a large, shallow metal cabinet was mounted, secured by a single, tiny lock. He guessed that was probably the cabinet where all the keys to the unrented lockers were. Maybe even to the rented lockers. Again, he looked back nervously, but no elite secret force of bus station security officers were descending on them.

Look at me, I’m scared of security guards at a bus station, Jon thought, with more pleasure of recognition than shame. I’m supposed be on the run from the government and the FBI and the CIA and the police and—hell, I don’t know. Maybe he was just going senile. Or maybe working at that place cooked his brain. I’m not the guy for this job.

He liked that thought so much that, as he crouched down in front of the first locker, key in hand, he thought it again. I’m not the guy for this job. There was a sweet clarity to it that seemed to cut through the muddle of his earlier confusion and indecision. It wasn’t a choice he had to make—he simply couldn’t do what the Professor had apparently decided, without ever consulting Jon, that he should do. It just wasn’t going to happen. When he did find the package he now felt dead certain he would, he was still relieved of duty. Because no matter what he found, he just couldn’t do it. Even if he could do it, he wasn’t sure why he should. This was Dr. Bernhard’s party, not his. It was Bernhard who had been convinced that the book—the thing, whatever it really was—needed to be kept from the government, or hidden forever from humanity, or destroyed. Jon wasn’t sure that was true. Jon didn’t know how one person could accurately make that sort of call.

So, the trip up to Knoxville and the locker rental slalom course had served a good purpose; it had helped clear his mind. As a practical matter, he could not do what Dr. Bernhard wanted. As an ethical matter, he was not at all sure that he should, even if he could. The issue was settled.
He inserted the key in the keyhole of the first locker—one of the larger, luggage-sized locker. He had figured the larger lockers would be a better candidate than the smaller ones, and he was right. The key turned this time, a full 180 degree circuit, and the locker door popped open an inch.

“Bingo,” Megan said. “That’s the one. Did I call it or what?”

“You did,” Jon conceded. “How the hell he managed to get one of these lockers—”

“Go on, open it all the way, I’m kind of into this now. I want to see.”

Jon swung the door open. Even with his earlier decision—that no matter what it was, he was off the hook—he still felt a great wave of relief. The locker was empty. Not a bag, not a wallet, not a piece of paper or a stick of gum. Just an empty locker.

“Well, that was a great big waste of time,” Jon said convivially. “All that for a big bunch of nothing. Come on, let’s get out of here before we get in trouble—”

“I don’t get it,” Megan murmured, leaning forward, inspecting the locker closely. “It opened. Why would Dr. Burnsides make you go through all this trouble for a stupid empty locker—”

Megan’s eyes brightened. “Maybe there’s a fake bottom, or something taped to the top—”

She reached inside the locker. Just has her fingers disappeared, the empty inside of the locker rippling like the air over hot coals, several things came together in Jon’s head, and reached out to stop her.

Too late.

“Holy shit,” she said as her hand vanished into the emptiness of the locker. It looked as though her hand had been erased, up past her wrist. “Holy shit what is—“

Megan’s body arched, her head thrown back, eyes wide and white, mouth suddenly, violently agape in a noiseless scream. For one small but seemingly endless moment, Jon saw her skin light up with blue flame, literally glowing beneath her clothes, highlighting her hair as the blue-white light seemed to radiate from her scalp. Her eyes were solid white and in her open mouth he could see blue-white fire. It was as if she was illuminated from the inside by a lightning bolt. For that brief, interminable moment, she blazed.

Then it was gone, barely longer than the flash from a camera but with a hell of an after image. Jon grabbed her arm to jerk her hand away from the locker, just as she collapsed back against the floor, eyes and mouth wide open, in a mask not of fear or pain but surprise. The light was gone. Smoke—no, not smoke, but white steam rose from her clothes, from her hair, from her mouth. Jon’s hand closed around her wrist, but instead of feeling hot she felt cold—dead cold.
“Megan—“ he started, his voice strangled. He opened his mouth again and just made a choking noise.

Oh my god she’s dead oh my god I just killed Megan, Jon thought. His heart was racing; he felt dizzy. He felt numb. The edge of his vision seemed to grow dark and his breathing became labored, shallow. I’m going to pass out.

He leaned over her. Can’t pass out. Can’t. Got to do something. She wasn’t breathing. Her brown eyes stared up at him, blank and unaware. He still held one cold forearm in his hand, but wasn’t sure how to feel for a pulse. He looked at her arm, the fine netting of scratches she had gotten trying to make it through his hedges last night less prominent, but still clearly there. It seemed like something that had happened a million years ago. To somebody else.

“Megan, wake up oh dear God Megan please get up please be okay oh God please—”

Not breathing. Not breathing. CPR—God, how he wished he could do CPR. He had seen it done, but he didn’t really know how to do it himself. He hadn’t practiced. He hadn’t taken a class. He remembered something about lifting the neck up, trying to clear the airways—or was that with someone who had drowned? Oh God oh God oh God help me!

He put his hand under her neck, lifting it up as her head fell backwards. That was supposed to keep the airway cleared, right? Oh God oh God Oh God I don’t know how to do this! He had to get help. But wouldn’t help be too late? Didn’t you have only five or six minutes—eight at the most—before it became almost impossible to revive a person, or until they got brain damage or something?

As he leaned over her head, he saw her eye twitch. Her eyeball moved left, then right. Then ahead, straight at Jon. His vision was still spotty, but he thought he saw her brown eyes dilate and focus on him. “Megan—“ Jon started.

The arm he was holding up near her wrist twitched. In a single, violent spasm, in something almost like a karate maneuver, she broke his grip and grabbed Jon’s forearm with a bone-grinding strength. Her nails dug into his skin—deep into his skin—drawing blood immediately. Bright pain bloomed in his arm, and he let out a little yelp, but he didn’t care. Megan was alive. One leg twitched and then the other kicked. The hand on Jon’s forearm squeezed tighter. There was still something wrong.

Her other arm started to beat on the floor. She lifted her head up, and then let it down with a crack against the floor. Then she did it again. Her eyes were now wet and glistening, tears streaming down the side of her face. Her lips seemed the be trying to mouth words, but no sound was coming out—

She still wasn’t breathing. That was what was wrong.

“Shit!” he spat. “Breathe! Take a breath! Come on—” He put his free arm around her shoulders—God, she was cold—and started pulling her up. “Come on, Megan, you’ve got to breathe—”

Her color was changing. Her face was deepening into a blotchy purple. Her eyes, darting back and forth, were bright with fear. As she looked pleadingly at Jon, and then up at the ceiling, and then to the side, she let out a strangled little gurgle.

“That’s it, do it, breathe,” Jon said. “Breathe in. Deep breath. Deep—”

Jon’s heart thudded in his chest—it was like it was trying to beat its way out of his ribcage. He felt the blood pounding in his neck, pulsing in his temples, like someone had hooked a garden hose up to a fire hydrant. He could hear the rush of it over the ringing buzz in his ears. I’m going to have a heart attack, he thought lucidly. I’m going to have a heart attack and we’re both going to die.

“Breathe,” Jon pleaded. He tried to pull her closer to him, not knowing what else to do. He needed to get help, he thought. Get an adult. Get a doctor. I’ll pass out, if I stand up, he thought. I think I’m going to pass out anyway. “Megan, come on, for God’s sake—”

She drew in a loud, ragged inhalation of air. It was the sound of someone, trapped deep underwater, breaking the surface at the last possible moment. She gasped, still pounding the floor with the flat palm of one outstretched hand. “Hhhhshhhk,” she hissed. “Haaaaak.”

“Okay, okay, good, breathe out,” Jon said, realizing he was giving her useless instruction but unable to stop himself. “Big breath out, big breath in. Oh God thank God you‘re alive. Thank you thank you.”

Megan exhaled dramatically at Jon. The brushed-and-flossed minty freshness was gone. Her breath smelled like chemicals and ozone. She inhaled again, and exhaled. She stopped banging her hand on the floor, and released Jon’s arm completely. A little rivulet of blood ran from the middle of his forearm down to his hand, but he didn’t notice. Megan was alive. Alive! Jon hadn’t killed her. Oh, thank God.

Another deep breath, as Jon lowered her back down to the floor. She tensed, back arching as the back of her head touched the floor, and drew in another ragged, choking breath. She looked at Jon, and then at the counter, then at the ceiling. She didn’t look toward the locker.

“It’s all right, you’re gonna be all right,” he said. It was more of a plea than an assurance. “You’re breathing, you’re all right.”

She worked her jaw, trying to speak. “Yyurk,” she said.

“Ssshhh. Don’t try and talk yet,” Jon said. He stroked her hair gently, fingers running along the woven bumps of her braids. Her hair was cold—not just cold, he realized. Frozen. He stopped stroking, instead running a finger in between the tiny valleys of her braided hair. There wasn’t much, but there was no mistaking what he felt.

Frost. He stroked her cheek, which was damp and warm. Her eyes turned to him as he touched her, then she looked away again, apparently dazed. Or going into shock? God, I hope not, he thought. I will pass out.

He touched the sleeve of her shirt. It was cold and stiff, and lightly covered with a fine frost. The same with her jeans and her ragged Nike tennis shoes. The vapor he had seen rising from her right after the flash—it had been steam. Not from boiling heat but extreme cold, like the frozen vapor from the freezer on a hot day. What the hell had happened?

I am afraid you are in tremendous danger, Bernhard had said. And I’m afraid I’ve put you in it. Only the old, senile, stupid, stupid man had not just but Jon in danger. He had put Megan in danger. Probably everybody Jon knew.

Megan’s breathing was steadying, her chest falling and rising slowly in a deep rhythm, as if she were asleep. Her eyes were open and looking up and to the side absently, unfocused. Still not looking toward the locker, though.

The locker.

Jon looked back at the locker, door swung wide open, key still in the lock, still completely empty.
Except it wasn’t completely empty, was it? There was something in there—something that had almost killed Megan. Had Bernhard booby-trapped it? Be very careful who you involve, Dr. Bernhard had said. For their sake as well as your own. He must have booby-trapped it—perhaps for anybody other than Jon. Perhaps for anybody other than Jon with Jon, in case he was a hostage, or if they used that specific key but then turned out not to be Jon, or—

Megan tried to sit up, and then flopped back down. Her teeth were chattering. She tried to sit up again, trembling, pulling on Jon’s arm. “Hang on, I think we’re okay,” Jon said. “I know you’re freezing, I’m so, so sorry—we’ll get out of here in a second.”

From where he was crouched at Megan’s side, he couldn’t see anything but the ceiling of the terminal immediately beyond the EZ Locker Rental counter. So, he didn’t think anybody had seen them, or could see them now. But that flash—it had been intense. Jon could still see ragged white-pink blotches hovering in front of him wherever he looked. It had been silent, except for a few clanks as the locker door swung back, and the sound of Megan hitting the floor. When she had first started breathing again—that had been loud. Not much he guessed in the overall background noise of the bus terminal, but he had no way to judge. His own heartbeat sounded like a jackhammer hooked up to a bass drum, to him.

The flash, though silent in itself, had been painfully bright. Certainly, that would have been hard to miss, even if some had only seen it peripherally. But nobody had appeared, and there were no sounds of anybody running in to check on them now. Just the dull background noise of the bus terminal—low conversation, footsteps, doors opening and closing, the occasional fuzzy announcement over the PA system.

Jon stood up enough to get a look over the counter. There seemed to be more people milling around the station, and another ticket window had been opened. There also appeared to be another security guard, and Jon saw that there was somebody else down towards the end of the last row of lockers, retrieving what looked to be a portable typewriter. Not exactly a coast was clear, but as clear as it was going to get.

Jon was not entirely sure why he did what he did next. He had already made up his mind to turn the book and the video cassette and anything else Dr. Bernhard had stuck him with over to “the authorities”, whoever those turned out to be. He was not going to be a fugitive from the government, jeopardizing his family and friends because some senile old man had gone paranoid and demented. No matter what he had been working on—and, obviously, the book and video cassette represented something incredible, something spectacular, and something terribly dangerous—sticking it with a fourteen-year old kid and telling him to go run away from the full force of United States Government was not a sign of moral dissent but of irrational dementia.

What had happened to Megan—something perhaps engineered by Dr. Bernhard himself—was a clear indicator to Jon that he was more likely to do damage to himself and others than he was to save the world. The government was obviously not perfect. Why did Reagan want more nuclear missiles, when America could already destroy the entire world ten times over? What good would the eleventh and twelfth time do anybody? What was all the evil empire stuff? And hadn’t he just heard something about the Pentagon spending $500 per unit for hammers and toilet seats and toothpaste? No, the government wasn’t perfect, and turning over the book and video cassette and whatever else might lead to bad things. But it was in a much better position to deal with sort of shit than he was. Considering what happened to Megan, the sooner the better.

So why, when he was intending to just pull Megan’s arm around his shoulder and beat a hasty retreat, he instead turned and put his hand inside the locker, he did not know. Considering that he had, he thought, completely lost interest in what was in the locker, and had decided he would just tell “the authorities” about that, too, and then they could deal with it, it didn’t make much sense. But, as casually as a man turning around to grab his coat before getting up to catch his flight, Jon reached in the locker and felt his hand touch something cold and flat.

As Jon’s hand seemed to disappear into the empty space, the interior of the locker shimmered and sparkled. Jon recognized the effect; he had last seen it come from Dr. Berhnard’s disembodied head as it had disappeared from above video cassette. With a mild flash and pop, the locker was not empty anymore. There was a briefcase—a big, fat black one that looked to be thirty years old—sitting inside. Jon’s fingertips, now clearly visible, touched the top corner. Then Jon pulled the briefcase out, set it to the side, and pushed the locker shut with his sneaker. The door made a loud clank as it shut, and Megan jerked, startled. She turned as if looking for the source of sound, but looked away from the locker.

“Jjjzzhhaan,” Megan sputtered. “Hhherkkk.”

Jon crouched beside Megan. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.” He took one arm and put it around his neck. He stood up, Megan struggling clumsily to her feet. As she got her legs under her, her feet slipped several times. Jon looked down, and noticed the floor was damp. The frost was melting. Her clothes were cold and damp, too. With his right arm around Megan’s back supporting her, Jon crouched slightly and picked up the briefcase. Jon, his heart still hammering in his ears, felt a sudden stab of anger as he did so. Almost like rage. Package, a fucking package, he thought. What fucking difference did that make, why not just say it’s a fucking briefcase? You old, stupid, stupid motherfucker. Why not say it’s a briefcase and oh by the way it’s booby-trapped to flash freeze anybody else too, buckaroo? And why in a locker behind the goddamned service counter? What if somebody had been there—what the hell was I supposed to have done then? Some super-shitting-genius you turned out to be.

Jon felt the flat palm of Megan’s hand whack him firmly on the back. “Gggaaaak,” she said. At first Jon was confused, and then she batted at him again. It was then he realized he was pulling her against him, squeezing with all his strength, teeth clenched, the hand gripping the briefcase handle white-knuckled and trembling with rage.

“Sorry,” Jon mumbled. “I’m sorry.” He relaxed his grip, and Megan put her arm stiffly around his neck. Her teeth were chattering and she was shivering and twitching against him, stuck in the middle of her own, self-contained earthquake. Still, she was managing to hold on and put one foot in front of the other. Jon pushed the counter door back and pulled Megan through. He could see the clocks mounted over the doors to both departure/arrival and the parking lot—it was four minutes after one o’clock. The EZ Locker Rental people apparently got a late start.

Past the counter, Jon started towards the door. Another person, an older woman with very tall red hair, was at a locker in the first row, but didn’t even given them a passing glass. Wouldn’t she at least have been on her way over here a minute ago? Wouldn’t she have seen or heard something? Jon wondered. Apparently not.

More people occupied the benches and milled around the station. A few people—maybe attendants—were pushing large blocks of luggage and squeaking roller carts. The lines behind the two open ticket counters were getting longer. What appeared to be a church group was entering through the arrival/departure doors. No one gave Jon and Megan even a passing glance as they walked, her leaning against him, shuffling, limping, and shivering, him lugging a large black briefcase. She almost fell twice, the second time punctuated with a distinct yelp, and Jon saw an old man look up for a moment from his paper, and then look back down. And then they were back outside, in the bright warmth of the sun.

It was easily fifteen degrees warmer outside than in. Megan looked up towards the near-noon sun, eyes closed, and smiled. The teeth-chattering stopped. “Mmmmm,” she murmured. “Worms. Scood.”

“Come on, let’s get you in the car,” Jon replied, and started moving across the parking lot. Megan began walking more under her own power, but stopped every few seconds to stand and look up, eyes closed, toward the sun. The shivering and jittering was dissipating. “Swarm,” she said. “Choogle.”

Jon thought maybe “Swarm” was just “it’s warm”, but wasn’t sure what “choogle” was supposed to mean. Her voice was becoming clearer and less cracked, though, even if her words were still slurred. For the first time since Megan had reached into the locker, Jon felt his heartbeat slowing. She wasn’t going to die, they had gotten out of the bus station, they were about to head home—he wasn’t exactly about to relax, but the sensation of being on the verge of a heart attack was subsiding. For one brief moment he thought Carla had made good on her threat and left—it had, after all, taken a lot more than ten minutes—but quickly saw the beat-up mud-colored Datsun parked across three spaces on the other side of the parking lot. “Now she’s trying to give me a heart attack,” Jon muttered.

“Ig,” Megan agreed.

At the car, Megan let go of Jon and leaned back against the hot metal of the Datsun. “Oh yeah,” she said clearly. Then: “Yas mumbleful.” Jon opened the car door, and she rolled over, pressing her face against the trunk lid. “Mmmmmmmmm,” she hummed, then switched cheeks. “Ahhhhmmmmm.”

“Where the hell have you been?” Carla was yelling. “You’re lucky I didn’t leave both your asses here and tell everybody I didn’t know where the hell you were. I’ve got a lot better shit to do than wait all day in a stupid parking lot—”

Jon helped Megan into the car, and then got in himself, putting the briefcase between himself and the door. He noticed Megan pointedly looking in the other direction as he pulled the briefcase in, as if she didn’t want to see it. After a moment, she slumped down against the car door, looking away. Now she hates me, he thought. Well, shouldn’t she? he thought back at himself. You almost got her killed, you stupid bastard. You can blame Dr. Bernhard all you want, but you’re the dumbass who brought Megan into this.

After three false starts, Carla got the Datsun started. “You were taking so long, I went across the street to get a burger. I figured you’d be out by the time I got back, and still another ten goddamned minutes. You are so lucky I didn’t just leave. And no, I didn’t get you anything to eat and no, we’re not stopping to get you anything to eat. You can waste your own time for the rest of the day.”

Carla peeled out of the parking lot with a screech of rubber. She swerved, and hit the horn. “Goddammit, can’t you people drive?” she spat at the windshield.

Megan, slumped against the car door and facing the other direction, murmured, “Hush, Carya. Sheepy.”

Carla snorted, then turned on the radio. It was in the middle of Quiet Riot’s “Cum on Feel the Noize”, and Carla turned it up, to make sure they did. Megan drunkenly slapped her hands over her ears. Jon frowned, looking at Megan and up to Carla. He really didn’t like Carla. If being on the run was going to mean having Carla drive them anywhere else—well, that was just another reason to wash his hands of the whole mess.

Jon tapped the briefcase, frowning. The trip back could not end soon enough.

Chapter 14

2008-11-30T23:00:00.000-08:00

Oak Ridge, TN – Saturday, May 28th, 1983 – 2:54 PM

“Get out,” Carla ordered. “Now.”

The car was parked, one tire over the curb, in front of Jon’s house. His mom was gone—she had a Saturday seminar in power networking or something; his mom did so much of that kind of stuff, it was hard to keep it all straight. Megan was asleep, her face pressed against the window.

“Wake up,” he said, nudging Megan’s shoulder. “Come on, we’re here. My mom’s gone. Coast is clear.”

“Huh?” she asked, looking up. She looked a lot like she had that morning—only her hair, tightly braided, had remained a lot more disciplined. Her eyes were bleary and crusty in the corners and she looked up at Jon without much recognition. “I fell asleep?” she asked. She sounded bewildered. “How did--? Are we there?”

Carla had finally relented on the loud music, after Jon had told her that Megan was not feeling good and was likely to yark all over her car if she didn’t turn it down. Megan had, shortly thereafter, fallen asleep—complete with snoring and drool.

“We’re here, come on,” Jon said—he had placed the briefcase on the curb and extended his hand to her. She took it gingerly. With his help, she stumbled out of the car and staggered on to the sidewalk, looking around, dazed and confused.

“What—why are we here? This is your house, right?”

“Shut the door!” Carla demanded, and Jon did. With a grinding rev of the Datsun’s struggling motor, the car started forward with a jerk. Gears ground, and the car lurched, and moved forward again, making smoother progress and shortly disappearing around a corner. In the distance, there was a screech and a honk.

“I don’t get it,” Megan said blearily. “I thought we were going to the bus station.”

Jon paused. He had been bending down to pick up the briefcase. Instead, he turned around and looked at Megan. “I—you—what did you say?”

She looked back him, her expression more blank than confused. “I thought we were going to the bus station. Why are we at your house? When did I fall asleep.”

Jon blinked. “We went to the bus station.”

Megan looked at him. “You went? You didn’t wake me up? How long was I asleep?” She shook her head. “Shit, I never do that. I can never sleep in the car.” Megan paused, looking at Jon, who was staring at her. “What? What’re you looking at me like that for?”

“We went to the bus station. Into the bus station. You and me. Looking at all the lockers. Finding the locker behind the counter. Remember?”

Megan shook her head, almost imperceptibly. “You’re shitting me,” she said after a moment. “I don’t remember seeing the bus station. I don’t—is this, like, a joke or something?”

“No,” Jon said slowly. “I don’t—you got—” He stopped. You got flash-frozen or You got freeze dried was what he wanted to say. Instead, he finished: “You got shocked. By something in the locker. Maybe—”

Megan looked doubtfully at Jon. “You’re shitting me.”

“I’m not,” Jon said. “Look, we got the briefcase,” he said, and stepped aside, gesturing to where the briefcase was on the ground. Megan turned her head to the side, not looking at it.

“That doesn’t make any sense. How could I just forget—what time is it?”

“It’s almost three o’clock.”

Megan’s mouth opened, then closed. Then opened. “Three hours? I was asleep three hours?”

“Maybe an hour,” Jon said. “You went into the bus station with me, helped me look for the locker—you actually found it, Megan, behind the service counter. You don’t remember any of that?”

Megan shook her head. “No, no,” she said. “I don’t.”

“What about last night? You remember coming over to my house last night? Climbing through the bushes. Do you remember that?”

“Oh, yeah, I still got the scratches on my arms. And one on my butt.” She paused—looking for a moment at Jon and then turning in the other direction. “That just doesn’t make any sense. I don’t remember anything about getting to the bus station. We went in? I was—what did you say I was doing?”

“Looking for lockers. And you found it. Look,” Jon bent down and grabbed the briefcase by its handle and lifted it up. “We found the locker. You did. I got the briefcase.”

Megan continued facing the other direction. “I don’t—maybe I just need to go home.”

“You want to go home?” Jon asked. “Aren’t your mom and dad—I mean, Larry, aren’t they there? You want to go home?”

Megan paused. “I don’t know why I said that. Maybe I need to sit down for a minute. I’m not thinking straight.”

She turned and started walking towards Jon’s door.

“Megan,” he said. She stopped, not turning around.

“Yeah?”

“You think you can turn around and look at the briefcase for a second?”

“What?” Megan asked, still facing his house. “I think I need to sit down. I don’t feel good.”

“Okay. Did you notice that I had a briefcase?”

“Jon, I really need to get inside. I think I’m going to be sick. Maybe I should just go home.”

“It’s not the briefcase from the bus station,” Jon said. “We bought it while you were asleep. Carla bought it for me.”

Megan turned around slowly. She did look queasy. She glanced at Jon, who was holding up the briefcase in plain sight, and then turned back around. “Carla bought you what?” she asked. “That’s stupid. Carla doesn’t buy anybody anything.”

“It’s an old briefcase that belonged to my Dad,” Jon said. At first he thought the aversion she had shown right away to the locker and afterwards to the briefcase was because of what had happened—she had just wanted to ignore it or to avoid it because it had been unpleasant or painful. This was something a lot more than that. She didn’t remember even going to the bus station? And now she wouldn’t look at the briefcase, under any circumstances.

“Jon, please, I’m going to puke, I’m serious. I’ve got to lay down. Can we do this later?”

“Okay, okay,” Jon said, walking in front of her, briefcase in hand. He couldn’t help but notice that she turned her face away as he walked to the door. He pulled out his key, unlocked the house, and walked inside, placing the briefcase out of view.

“Come on in,” he said. She did, shuffling past him, face turned away from where he had put the briefcase, even though it was out of view. Jon shook his head. What the hell had happened to her?

“Bathroom is over there,” Jon gestured, and Megan disappeared into it. Jon moved the briefcase into his bedroom closet. He closed the closet door, and glanced at the floor at the base of his bed. The corner of the book stuck out from underneath. He nudged it warily with his shoe. It shifted slightly, but did nothing spectacular. He bent down, and pulled it out.

Immediately, he struck by the warmth—it felt warmer than before, almost hot. Is this thing radioactive? Jon wondered. Am I going to start losing my hair in chunks and bleeding from my gums? Wouldn’t surprise me.

Otherwise, it remained unchanged—heavy, imposing, exotically ornate, bound in an almost metallic leather. Humming, almost throbbing to the touch—rumbling, really, so deep and so low he could only hear it with his fingertips.

He sat down on the bed and flipped to the middle. The pages shimmered, refracting rainbows, as he flipped—they felt almost like a cellulose film, rather than paper. Much on the pages were obscure, but some illustrations were almost grade school in their elementary simplicity, and most of the captions and page titles were simple and clear. Hover Craft. Repulsion Bomb. Midfield Light Distortion (Invisibility). Accelerated Information Assimilation Visor. Transparent Body Armor. Suspension Mines. Hypnotic Transfer Gun. Magnetic Projector. Jon paused on a page. Time Bender. The diagrams were complicated, and, as with most of the pages, the information seemed to go not just up and down on the page, but into the page, spilling into the depths, not just floating off the surface. Jon just shook his head. Portable video cassette holographic projector or not—booby-trapped, flash-freezing locker or not—this shit was just crazy. Time Bender? Interstitial Travel? What the hell was Interstitial Travel supposed to be? He turned a few more pages. Healing Elixer. Oh, of course, what was a book of magic without some potions?

Jon shook his head. This was just crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy. Getting rid of it all—somehow, someway—seemed to be the best idea. Send it back the government or send it all to Hell, just so it was out of his life.

The door to the bathroom opened—Jon could just see it from where he sat—and Megan stepped out. “In here,” Jon said, and she walked into his room warily.

“I thought I was going to get sick. I thought I was about to puke. It—it’s cleared up, I guess. I got in there and all I needed to do was pee.” She shrugged sheepishly. “What’s that?”

Megan was looking at the book. Jon was sitting on the end of the bed, legs crossed, the oversized tome open on his lap. He couldn’t see the point anymore in not telling her, because he was going to turn it over, anyway, and she was already in it deep. He also felt like he was going to explode if he couldn’t talk about it with somebody. “It’s—well, it’s a book. At least it looks like one.”

“Yeah, it looks like one,” Megan said. Her tone and expression was more like her old self. “What’s it about?”

“Well,” he started. “I’ve told you about Dr. Bernhard before.” Actually, they had talked about just two hours ago, but if she didn’t remember the bus station, she wouldn’t remember that, either.

“I think you did. He didn’t teach at school, did he?”

“No. I probably told you about the time we set his kitchen on fire.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I remember you talking about that. You were experimenting with gasoline and about blew up the house.” Megan looked down at the book. “Did he write that?”

“Well, no—I mean, I don’t think so. I’m not sure how to answer that.”

Megan looked at Jon, mildly puzzled. “You don’t know if he wrote it or not?”

“I don’t know anything,” Jon said. “I—he stole this. From the government. He was working on some top secret project and this was what it was about—” Jon held up the book to Megan. “—and then I get this—this video tape that’s not really a video tape and he tells me that he’s stolen this thing from the government and it might be a doomsday device and that it can’t be destroyed and that I need to get rid of it.” Jon stopped and took a breath. “And it’s crazy. And then he tells me there’s this package he’s hidden in a locker and I’ve got to figure it out from things he talked about way before that I only half-paid attention to and guess and he’s not going to be any help because he’s dead—”

Megan sat down on the bed next to Jon. She didn’t look queasy any more. “Okay, hang on a second. He’s dead? When did that happen? What happened?”

“I don’t know. The video cassette, he said if I was getting it he had to be dead, and I don’t know when it would have happened. The last time I saw him was maybe three weeks ago.” Jon looked up at Megan. “The video cassette—maybe I can play it for you. It’s proof that—“ Jon stopped.

“Shit!”

“What? What is it?”

“The key. It’s not supposed to play with anybody else around unless I’ve got the key and I don’t have the key I left it.”

“Left it?” Megan asked. “Where’d you leave it?”

“The bus station in Knoxville. When we got the briefcase. When you got—shocked, or whatever the hell it was that it did to you.”

Megan’s bemused expression immediately turned sour. “Can we not talk about that right now?” she asked. “I still don’t feel right.”

Jon looked at her, his brow furrowed. Still didn’t feel right? What was up with that? She seemed to have felt right five seconds ago. She didn’t remember the bus station or the locker, and wanted to completely ignore the briefcase now. Jon shook his head. There was a lot more to that flash than just a shock or some super-techno freeze-drying. It had done something to her head. Something that seemed specifically limited to the locker, the bus station, and the briefcase.

“Megan, you went to the bus station with me, you went inside, you found the locker, you reached in it first, then you got shocked or whatever the hell it was that thing did—”

Megan staggered up from the bed and lurched out the door, towards the bathroom. “I’m going to barf,” she said, very matter-of-fact. “I’ve got to barf.”

Jon looked to the closet—he wanted to open up the briefcase, but now certainly didn’t seem the time. What the hell had Bernhard done? Booby-trapped it with something that made people forget? About the locker, about the briefcase—to actively want to avoid them, to the point of illness? Packed into a single, frozen flash of light? How could such a thing be possible?

Jon looked down at the book in his lap. Jon, I’ve stolen something, Bernhard had said. Something very terrible and very powerful.

Dr. Bernhard apparently had known of what he spoke. Apparently, he had been playing with it.

The bathroom door opened, and Megan walked quietly back in, face freshly washed. “Just a little,” she muttered sheepishly. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I ate an egg when I got home this morning—I hope it’s not, like, a virus or something.” She sat on the bed. “Sorry, I don’t know if I’m going to be much fun right now. Maybe I ought to go—“ she paused. “—go home?” she finished. It was almost a question. She looked to the side and down, eyebrows slightly knit. It looked to Jon like she was confused by the words coming out of her own mouth. “Well, maybe not home, but, you know—”

“Take a look at this,” Jon said, dropping the book in her lap. Keeping his hand on it, just in case. “This is what he took.”

“Huh?” Megan asked. “What who took?” She ran her hand over the embossed panels of the cover. “Man, that’s warm. You leave it sitting on the radiator?”

Jon shook his head. “No. It’s just like that. What’s it feel like to you?”

“Feel like? It feels like a big old knobby book.” She giggled a little. The book itself didn’t seem to bother her. So, Bernhard had rigged something to perhaps make somebody forget about the locker or the briefcase, but not the book? The absurdity of the proposition made Jon shake his head. Rigged something to create selective amnesia? In a few seconds? Complete with frost? Even with the most advanced technology imaginable, how would such thing be possible?

Megan tapped one of the embossed corner piece on the cover of the book, and it lit up bright blue when she tapped it. She let out a startled laugh. “Oh, wow. Did you see that?” She tapped it again, and the piece flashed blue. She tapped a round, extruded knob shape below it and it flashed orange. “That’s—wow. That’s cool. How does it do that?”

Megan opened the book, flipping the pages. “Does this thing have batteries in it?” she asked, stopping on a page featuring a diagram that included several rows of D batteries, and a humanoid figure with a broad smiling face holding up a round globe with several protruding rods. Waves emitted from each rod, but it wasn’t entirely clear what it was supposed to be doing. The caption, Isolated Singularity Simulation (Time Delayed), was not helpful. “It’s like it’s vibrating. Almost—I don’t know—pulsing? Some sort of machine-stuff in all the blocks and knobs? Or a heater?”

Jon shrugged. “I—I guess. I don’t know. I didn’t know the blocks would light up when you tapped on ‘em like that. That’s—”

Megan turned the page again. “Oh, wow,” she said, and laughed. “You can’t be serious.” It was an illustration of a smiling person—so simplified it was practically a stick figure—on skis, with exaggerated ripples of speed drawn in front and behind it. The figure was holding ski poles, and glowing concentric circles radiated from the ends. The caption read, simply enough, All-Terrain Super-Sonic Jet Skis.

“‘Maximum speed 160 miles per hour’,” Megan read. “‘Maximum hover distance of 10 feet. Failsafe in non-navigable terrain.’ And this stuff over here—‘two carbon graphite skis, two carbon graphite ski poles, two standard ski boots, four C batteries, 200 feet of copper wire—‘” Her finger stopped at 2 4-position toggle switches. “This is supposed to be, like, a recipe for making super-sonic jet skis? Copper wire and 4 C batteries?”

Jon shrugged. “I guess—I haven’t actually spent much time looking in the book. I haven’t tried to put anything together. But, yeah, they look like diagrams—”

Megan cocked her head, giving Jon a look that split the difference between unbelieving and amused. “’I haven’t tried to put anything together’? Jon, you mean, like, you’d seriously try to build a pair of magical jet skis?”

Jon opened his mouth, about to mention her experience at the bus station, then thought better of it. “This is what Dr. Bernhard stole. When he gave it to me—I’m dead serious—it didn’t look like this. It looked like a regular school textbook. I mean, it, like, grew in my closet.”

Megan smirked, but was still listening. “Yeah, I know it’s nuts. Feel it. You feel it right now, don’t you? It’s like it’s—you said ‘pulsing’, right? I was holding it a minute ago and I thought it was almost like it was singing. Or chanting, maybe. It’s warm—it’s still warm. Almost kind of hot. Even the pages feel hot. And I saw the video cassette—I mean, that was like a little mini-holographic projector. Stuff way beyond anything I’ve ever seen. I wish I had the damn key—”

“You’re serious?” Megan asked. “This Dr. Burnsides of yours steals some great big book from the government and gives it to you? And the government wants it because they want to build super-sonic jet skis, right?”

“Or repulsion bombs. Or magnetic projectors. Or organic liquefiers. Or force pulse rifles. Or time-benders. There’s diagrams for an awful hell of a lot of stuff in this thing.”

Megan shook her head, flipping pages. “This thing is something else,” she said, running her finger over a diagram that rotated on the page as she did so. “But maybe this Dr. Burnsides is, you know, pulling your leg—” She paused, running her finger over the diagram again. The graphic rotated on the page as she did so. “Holy shit!”

Jon nodded. “Uh huh. I hadn’t seen it do that before but I’ve seen enough—this thing is real and dangerous.”

“You mean, you think you can really build a—” She looked down at the page with the rotating diagram to read the caption. “’A Life-Form Distinguishing Detection Unit’? Or super-sonic jet skis?” She spun the diagram around on the page once again. “Wow. Oh wow.”

“I’ve seen enough to think there’s something really dangerous about this, and that whatever it was Dr. Bernhard thought I was going to do—hide it, get rid of it, or going running across the country, I’m not. After—” He paused, then decided to go on. “After the bus station, and what happened, I decided I had to turn it all over to the police or somebody. I have to get rid of it.”

Megan paled a little at Jon’s mention of the bus station, but didn’t go bolting for the bathroom. “Um,” she said.

“I was already leaning that way, anyway. I was over at his house a lot for, I dunno, maybe the last year, but I don’t know that much about him. Even before this stuff, I thought he was kind of a kook. I’m going to go running across the country with something he stole from some government program because he said so? You wanna know what’s nuts? That’s nuts.”

“Yeah,” she said, turning the page. “’Cryogenic Suspension Mines’” she read, then flipped forward several pages. “’The Rain Maker: Portable Weather Control’. Weather control. You can control the weather with a shopping list for the hardware store and two car batteries. That’s nuts. That’s not science, that’s magic. Hell, that’s voodoo. This is a big book of hoodoo-voodoo.”

She chuckled, but it sounded forced. “Dr. Burnsides stole the government’s big book of black magic. That’s a whole lot to swallow. Oh, wow. ‘Molecular Dispersion Beam: The Portable Hole’. And who doesn’t need one of those? Look, there’s the happy fellow with the laser gun.”

“So I’m turning it over to the police. Or the government. I guess I could call Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I think I’m going to ask my mom—this is just out of my league. I’ve got no idea what to do.”

Megan looked up from the book. “Do you think this is real or fake?” He looked down at the book, and saw Megan was on a page where the top-left quarter was taken up by what appeared to be a running movie of the earth, latitude and longitude clearly demarcated, rotating, with the moon in orbit. “Because this looks real. I don’t know about all this other stuff, but it’s kind of hard to explain this.” She pointed to the movie, which not only was moving as if projected onto the paper but also displayed clear depth, the dimensions descending into metallic, prismatic surface of the page.

“I think it’s real,” Jon said. “And I think it’s really dangerous—”

“If it’s real, maybe you should think about it some more,” Megan said. “Even if it just might be. You really want to give the big book of voodoo to the Black Knight?”

“I don’t know. I mean, no, I don’t. But I don’t think I’m up to this—”

Megan flipped a few more pages. “You haven’t tried building any of these things? Even something simple?”

“No,” Jon answered. “I haven’t had any time. And after—well, I just don’t think it’s a good idea. Too dangerous for everybody.”

Megan leaned forward, over the book, putting one hand firmly on Jon’s forearm. “Come on. You’ve got to at least try building something. See if there is anything to it. I’m sorry, but, cool moving pages and all, I have a hard time thinking of smiley faces and stick figures being in diagrams for space ships and laser guns, you know? But, hell, if you can build a pair of flying Nike’s or something—”

Jon looked at her. “You’re serious?”

“Hell, yes, I’m serious. How cool would that be? Flying Nikes? I mean, boy, you’re supposed to be the big super-intelligent geek. How could you pass by an opportunity to make a—” She flipped several pages. “—a ‘Portable Gravity Well’. Whatever a portable gravity well is. Look.” She turned the book around to Jon, pointing. “See how happy this guy is to have one?”

Jon shook his head. “Some of this stuff may already be built. I think that’s what the package at the bus station was about.”

Megan blanched. Then she shook her head. “Holy shit,” she murmured. “Every time you say something about the—the place—I feel sick. You said something—something happened. I went there—” Megan was pale, but continued. “—I went there and something happened and I forgot.”

She tapped on the book. “Some voodoo out of this book. You said—did you say something shocked me? Did you say that?”

Jon nodded.

Megan’s stomach gurgled. She let out a loud, wet belch. “Ugh,” she said. “Gross. And you got whatever you were looking for at the bus station? Right? Tell me before I have to go barf.”

“Yeah,” Jon agreed. “Why don’t I—hey, here, look, you go out of the room for a minute and then I’ll get the stuff out. So you don’t see the brief—the thing.”

“Yeah,” Megan consented, turning a little green. “I think maybe I’ll take another bathroom break.”

Megan stumbled out the door towards the bathroom. Jon reached into the closet, and took out the battered black briefcase, and laid it on the bed.

Time to see exactly what they had gone to all that trouble at the bus station for.

Chapter 15

2008-11-30T22:55:00.000-08:00

Baltimore, MD – Saturday, May 28th, 1983 – 4:33 PM

“Thanks, Helen.” Gordon Swan smiled at his wife, taking the glass of tea.

“You’re quite welcome, dear,” Helen replied. She sat down beside him, looking out the porch window as Emily, their youngest, swung on the swing set Gordon had built himself eighteen years ago, when their oldest had just turned three. Gordon liked to keep work at work and home at home, but he had a tough time watching Emily without thinking of Trisha Potemkin, the little red-headed girl that Greg Willet was busy trying to bring home alive. He hadn’t talked to the Potemkins but he had talked to plenty of parents whose kids turned up missing, kidnapped or killed. There was a reason the fence behind that old swing-set was so high, and there was a reason why there was a perimeter alarm. Why he never let his kids out of his sight when they were home, or if he was out at the mall or at a restaurant with them. It had been that way with each child. Gordon had kept a sharp eye and a short leash on them until they were well beyond old enough to take care of themselves—and well-schooled in martial arts and self-defense. Gordon Swan had seen too much of the dark side of human nature, and talked to too many parents who ended up burying their children, to take the safety of his family lightly.

Out front, Jacque started barking—the oldest and still one of the most effective form of perimeter alarms known to man.

“Mail’s here,” Helen said. “And I just sat down.” She stood back up. “Always something, always something.”

“Oh, hang on there, I’ll go get the mail, you sit down—” Gordon started.
“Too late, I’m up already, you just keep an eye on Emily and make sure she doesn’t hurt herself.” With that, Helen disappeared back into the house.

A minute later she reappeared. “Another package for Jamie,” Helen commented. “I wish you’d get your brother to stop sending him that garbage. He doesn’t need any more fake vomit or dog-doo or dribble glasses—”

“I’ll talk to him again. Ben can be a little mule-headed. Anything else?”

“Pig-headed, is more like it,” Helen retorted, sitting down. “Bills and junk mail, mostly. A letter from my cousin Sarah.” She thumbed through the mail. “And there’s this,” she continued, putting a plain white envelope on the table between them. She continued to studiously flip through the mail, but Gordon recognized the tone. Helen knew what he did for a living, and that no matter how careful they were, sometimes work overlapped with home. Most of the time, when Helen found something in the mail suspicious, it was nothing. But not always. Sometimes there were threats. Sometimes there were long, taunting letters. Sometimes there were pictures.

Gordon picked up the envelope, and saw what had gotten Helen’s hackles up straight away. No return address. Gordon’s name and address was written in neat blue block letters—the kind it was often very difficult to match to any one person. Gordon’s mouth didn’t go dry until, noting the lack of return address, he instinctively looked at the postmark.

It had been mailed from Los Angeles on Monday, May 24th. The day Dr. Donald Bernhard had ended up dead at the food court of the Four Points Mall.

“Did you get the letter opener, sweetheart?” he asked—Helen normally did grab the letter opener off the bureau, when she went to get the mail. Saying nothing, she handed it to him. He held the letter up to the light and could clearly see it contained nothing but one folded sheet of paper.

It couldn’t be, he thought. There’s no way. Gingerly, he worked the letter opener into the corner of the envelope and carefully slit the top. Using the tip of the letter opener, he pushed the envelope open. He didn’t think there was anything in there but the paper, but it paid to be cautious. He turned the envelope over, making sure there was nothing else to see—the only thing he noticed was Helen watching him out of the corner of her eye. Satisfied there was nothing immediately dangerous about the letter itself, he reached in and pulled the single sheet of paper out.

Pushing his glasses up his nose, he unfolded the letter, and read it.

Mr. Swan,

I hope you are impressed. Statistical analysis. Simple predictive models allowed me to know that there was a 98% probability you’d be working on this case before you even knew there would be a case. Although there is a 99.5% chance I am no longer among the living, I think you’ll find I’ll be three steps ahead of you, no matter what you try.

You have a .02% chance of locating the artifact. I know that you will try anyway, but I thought you should know that your odds aren’t good.

I felt the artifact best belonged in the hands of those who would do the most good with it. I’m afraid, as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to understand that that was not the American military. I realized that responsiblity for the artifact could not be given to any part of the American government. I knew it belonged not in the hands of those who would use it to oppress the people, but in the hands of the people that would be oppressed. I knew something like the artifact didn’t belong to any one person or nation, but to everybody—and the importance of the good it could do outweighed any foolish military advantage it might temporarily grant an imperial aggressor such as America. The possibilities in health and medicine alone are staggering.

The American military industrial complex cannot be trusted with such potential.

I trust you understand.

Sincerely,

Dr. Donald Hermann Bernhard, PhD.

Gordon sat for a moment and then read the letter again, brow furrowed. You’re not at work, he thought to himself. Just put it in your briefcase and wait until Monday.

Easier said than done.

Helen, not looking up from an engrossing piece of junk mail, asked, “Work?”

“Yes, work,” Gordon answered, irritated. Not at Helen, but his job, and how hard it was to leave it at the office sometimes. Hard enough to do it in his head; harder still to make his job leave him alone when he was at home. The outside world did not cooperate.

So he sat, glancing over the letter again. While he himself had suggested to Voss and McNaney that there might be a political element—either ideologically or financially motivated—to Bernhard’s action, this was a red herring. Maybe really from Bernhard, or maybe not. Perhaps the sentiment was real, and perhaps not. But the letter was a red herring. Meant to misdirect him, and use up both time and resources. Swan knew it—the letter might as well have said so.

Real political manifestos were usually long and rambling. He had dealt with enough high-minded ideologues who had felt their political awareness elevated them above the law. When those people wrote letters or left messages, they were manifestos, rarely under ten pages and frequently topping fifty. Especially if they were going to send it to somebody in authority. Where it might find its way to the press.

So either Bernhard wasn’t dead and was trying to mislead him—he considered this an extremely remote possibility—or Bernhard was dead and had planned the letter aforethought to misdirect the investigation. Or this letter wasn’t from Bernhard.

In all three cases, the end result was the same: to misdirect, to throw a wrench in the gears. And it would throw a wrench in the gears. Though brief, the letter was essentially a confession of treason. The first stage of investigation would have to conform to the assumption that Bernhard had been politically motivated. Swan would get his ass handed to him otherwise. A fact of which the letter writer was no doubt well aware. The thing was, if Bernhard had not been politically motivated—if this had all been a big game to him, or if this wasn’t from Bernhard at all—pursuing the political connections could lead Swan and his agents seriously far afield. Yet, given the overall brevity of the letter and the generic quality of the political sentiments expressed, what other purpose could the author have intended it to serve? No other purpose, Swan thought. This is misdirection. A decoy. Maybe Bernhard letting the world know how much smarter than he is that then rest of us. Maybe Bernhard or somebody else.

Gordon folded the letter. The envelope was postmarked for Monday, and it was now Saturday. Slow delivery for a regular letter. If had been sent on the day it was postmarked, it should have gotten to him on Wednesday or Thursday at the latest, not Saturday. Could just be a coincidence, of course, but it could also be a good indication that the letter had been sent by somebody else after Bernhard’s death. The content of the letter seemed to almost excessively affirm—even using the same language—Voss and McNaney’s assertions about the “artifact of undetermined origins”. And would he put it past McNaney to set something like this up? While she hardly seemed that thoughtful and deliberate, it seemed entirely plausible to him that she would have no qualms about engaging in such manipulation.

The first paragraph implied that the author used either incredible intelligence, or perhaps mysterious alien technology, to know ahead of time that Swan would be getting the case, and maybe even to determine his home address. Swan wasn’t buying it. Perhaps Bernhard was a super-genius or a disturbed savant, orchestrating what amounted to an elaborate hoax as some sort of final tribute to himself, to how much smarter he was than everybody he had worked with and worked for. Or perhaps this letter wasn’t from Bernhard. Perhaps Bernhard hadn’t stolen anything. Perhaps Bernhard had not been responsible for his own death, and someone in a position to know ahead of time had composed this letter and signed Bernhard’s name. Or perhaps someone else had reason to misdirect any investigation, and had backdated a letter and mixed it in with Swan’s mail for the sole purpose of sewing confusion. Not exactly easy things to do, but there were a lot of people in the intelligence community who could forge postmarks and signatures and get the letter into the correct bin at the post office. And it was certainly more credible than the idea that the letter implied: that Bernhard, using some mysterious artifact, managed to make himself a crystal ball so he could see the future.

Gordon grunted and stood up. Twirling in her swing, Emily looked up, to see if the grunt had been meant for her—to be followed up with an admonition to be more careful or come in and wash up before dinner. Apparently satisfied it was not, she returned to twisting her swing up as far as she could, and then letting it twirl her rapidly around.

“Dear?” Helen asked, her tone neutral but familiar enough to Gordon. It said, you didn’t get home until four in the morning and you missed a good chicken dinner. You better not be about to tell me something just came up and you need to go the office. Not even a phone call.

And Gordon agreed. “It’s work. I’m just going to go put the letter in my briefcase. Then it’s probably about time for everybody to start getting cleaned up for dinner.”

Helen looked up from the mail, frowning. “I just sat down,” she said. “You can get the meatloaf out and start warming it up. You know how to open a can of green beans and make instant potatoes. You can get the kids cleaned up. I’ve been on my feet all afternoon. I’m sitting my big butt down for half-an-hour.”

“Fair enough,” Gordon said, and smiled. Some days, he thought, shaking the letter in his hand, heading to his briefcase. Some days, retirement just can’t come too soon.

He put the letter away. No matter what else was going on—and there was something more to this case than met the eye—it was going to wait until Monday at 7:00 AM.

At least, that was what he thought.

Chapter 16

2008-11-30T22:50:00.000-08:00

Oak Ridge, TN – Saturday, May 28th, 1983 – 4:33 PM

Megan whistled, eyes wide. “Wow,” she murmured. “Wow. Is that everything?”

“Everything that was in the briefcase.” Jon looked up after he said it—he already put the empty briefcase back in his closet—afraid just the word might make Megan feel ill again, but she was fine. Her attention was completely focused on the arsenal of gadgets spread out on Jon’s bed.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to a round silver disk with a glossy black knob in the center. She sounded like a kid on Christmas morning. Lights blinked and a digital readout was scrolling words that floated a quarter-of-an-inch above the surface.

Jon bent over, reading the scrolling type. “’Holographic Decoy,’” Jon said. “’Digitize subject for any length of time, up to three hours. Press the blue button on the edge to record, once to prepare and align and then once to record with the digitizing unit centered on the subject. Use laser sight to align. Press the center button to deploy. Look for and press the circular black shadow centered beneath the decoy projection to deactivate. To include audio—”

Megan’s eyes were wide and round. “Cool!” she said. “This is supposed to be, like, a holograph? Do me!” she picked up the silver disc and handed it to Jon. “Do what it says. Point it at me and press the button.” She took a few steps back and then clapped her hands together. “Cheese,” she said perkily.

The image of Megan reaching into the locker, then engulfed in blue light, then struggling to breathe, was still very fresh to Jon, if non-existent to Megan. “I don’t know if this is such a good idea—”

“Jeeze, don’t be a wuss, point it and push the button.”

Jon frowned. He assumed that whatever had happened at the locker was a booby-trap set by Dr. Berhnard, in case somebody other than Jon showed up to mess with the locker. But what if that wasn’t it? What if that had been meant for Jon, or what if Bernhard just hadn’t given a shit? He had always been weird. What if he was more than weird? What if he wanted the book to be a doomsday device? What if all of this stuff was booby-trapped? How the hell was Jon supposed to know?

“He who hesitates will get a foot up his ass,” Megan said cheerfully. “Come on, come on. This will be so cool!”

Jon watched the instructions scroll by again. He found the blue button—it was in the form of a ridge at the base of the disc—held out the disc and pressed.

Silently, a web of brilliant blue light shot from the black knob on the top of the disc and hit Jon’s lamp, locking onto the ceramic boy-and-dog and scanning it, up and down, with razor thin lines of light. The lines split and folded, turning into diamonds, as the beams began to draw a series of progressive concentric circles, first out from the eyes of the sad ceramic boy, then the dog, then the boy’s hand that held a short fishing pole, and then the circles began to radiate from the hand resting on the dogs head. Luminous waves of light seemed to pulse down the lamp shade, at first straight and then curving around in pulsing sine waves. Erratic, seemingly random slots of light shot out, hitting objects on the periphery of the lamp—the night table, the pair of ratty shoes, the book on assembly language programming the shoes sat on, the wall, the Blondie poster. Each flash started out as a circle with notches around the circumference, expanding outward while quick blips of lines went up and down in the middle. Then the beam disappeared.

“Holy Crap!” Megan said, eyes wide and glistening. “Oh my God. That is just so cool.” She glanced for a moment at Jon, frowning. “You missed me, though. That’s supposed to be me, not your lamp.” Then, she looked back to the lamp, clapped her hands together and laughed. “That is so cool.”

“I wasn’t aiming at you,” Jon said. “I wasn’t going to do me, either. You don’t remember what happened to you at the bus station,” Jon said. “I do. I think you about almost got killed. Or put in a coma for the rest of your life.”

Megan giggled and slapped her hips, her eyes, sparkling with reflected blue, almost perfectly round. She stared, lips parted in smile, in awe at the dancing blue lights. “Or maybe you could have suffered permanent brain damage,” Jon finished.

As abruptly as it started, the light show stopped. In the center of the black knob a little green light flashed on and off, beneath the surface. “Okay,” Jon said. “Part two. You might want to get back.”

“No way, I want to see this,” she said, eyes bright, her smile all teeth. “Go on, put it down, put it down.”

The bed was full of everything else out of the briefcase, so he placed the disc on the floor, and pressed the black knob in the center. Immediately, the disc seemed to melt into the floor, leaving only a small black stain where the knob had been, and with a blue flicker of light, his lamp sat on the floor in front of them.

Megan nodded vigorously. “Wicked,” she said. “How cool! I can think of about a million things you could use that for. Okay, now do me! Come on!”

Jon swiped his hand at the lamp on his floor—his hand passed right through. He did it again, slowly. His hand disappeared on one side and then reappeared on the other. He felt nothing, absolutely nothing, but there was nothing translucent or ambiguous about this illusion—it looked every bit as solid as his lamp did. It even appeared to be lit correctly, even though he was on the other side of his room and the shadow of his bed fell across it—the shadow was there, just as if it were solid.

He had to admit, it was cool. He still hadn’t adjusted quite as well as Megan apparently had—he should have just told her in the first place, he guessed, but this was definitely not the reaction he had expected. He felt fear, too. He was worried something else might happen to him or Megan. That at any moment, the government would show up in black suits and big black cars and Megan and Jon would both end up in some government-run hospital in New Mexico, permanently drugged into some semi-catatonic state. Or, maybe, they’d just end up in a river. Or one of these gadgets the good doctor had left with him might blow up. By accident, or maybe by design—Jon was none to sure, at this point, of Dr. Bernhard’s benevolence or sanity. Still, there was no denying it—it was the coolest damn thing he’d ever seen.

Megan had crouched over beside Jon, and started sticking her finger into the middle of the holographic lamp. “It’s just—it’s just like it swallows your finger. Like a statue made out of water. That’s something else.”

“Could you turn the light off?” Jon asked Megan. “I want to see if it changes with the light.” Jon traced the line of the bed’s shadow on the lamp with his finger—and the immaterial lamp seemed to cast an accurate shadow on the floor, as well. Amazing.

Megan grunted and stood up, turning off the light. There seemed to be perhaps the briefest delay, just a fraction of a second, where the lamp still appeared to be lit, complete with shadow, as if the light hadn’t just been turned off. Then, it was darker as well, and looked perfectly normal. “Wow,” Jon said. “It’s got to be simulating all that. Wow.”

“Okay, okay, now me! Come on!” Megan stood back near the door and stretched out her arms, chin up. “Scan me!”

Jon stuck his hand through the lamp, and immediately felt the disc. He pressed down on the knob, and the lamp vanished. For a moment, after the lamp had disappeared, it looked as if he was holding his finger an inch-and-a-half over a dull stain on the floor—and then the silver disc rippled back into existence, green light blinking. Jon picked it up.

“I don’t know,” Jon said. “You don’t remember the bus station, or what happened to you at the locker, or the briefcase—”

Megan’s smile faltered a little bit, but apparently whatever had happened to her at the bus station was wearing off. “I don’t care,” she said. “It hasn’t blown us up yet, it did what it said was supposed to when you did it with the lamp, it is, like, the coolest thing I’ve seen in a year—do it to me!”

Jon smiled a little. Who could resist an offer like that? Finding the little blue ridge on the side of the disc, Jon held the disc towards Megan and pressed the button.

The web of blue light erupted, even more brilliant and dazzling in the shade-drawn darkness of Jon’s room, now that the overhead light was off. The blue beams drew a grid over Megan’s body, and the grid moved with her as she shifted on her feet.

“Cool,” Megan breathed, twisting her torso. “It’s like it’s stuck to me. It’s like I’m wearing it!”

She looked down as addition shafts of light shot out from the little disc, drawing at first notched bars that moved and stretched and then went elsewhere—up a leg, at her hips, at her shoulders—it was almost like it was taking measurements. Concentric blue circles began radiating from the center of her abdomen, and then her chest—a set of circles for each breast, though barely distinct under the white knit shirt and brown suede vest, radiating out from the center.

“Heh!” Megan laughed, looking down. “Magical nipples. Kinky little gizmo—” She looked up at Jon. “Don’t get any ideas, pervert,” she said with a smile, and then looked back down. “Oh. My. God. This is so fucking cool.” The concentric rings were intersecting and rippling all over her body. She bounced up and down on her heels and shook her torso—the radiating rings matched every movement, sticking to her like they were magically draw on. “Oh, wow.”

“Do you feel anything?” Jon ask—he moved the disc back and forth, but the beams stayed stuck on Megan, tracking perfectly. “Is it warm? Does it hurt?”

“Nothing,” Megan said, shaking her head—there was a flurry of light shooting from the disc and it looked, for a moment, like Megan’s braids were filled with glowing blue pixie dust.

“What’s it doing on my face?” she asked, seeing that Jon was staring at her. “Is it cool?”

Jon nodded. “Very cool,” he said. Solid blocks of color flowed over her face while concentric rings of blue light radiated from her eyes, intersecting at her nose and flowing over the entire front of her head. A distinct beam seemed to be tracing her lips with light, and when she opened her mouth to talk her teeth flashed blue and even her tongue seemed to be criss-crossed with bright blue lines. Her hair swam with light—it was luminescent, almost as if the illumination was radiating from beneath her hair. Every few moments, a notched circle appeared or a notched set of lines, as if something was being measured and recorded, and then the shape was gone. Blue beams would appear, drawing a shape or a notched line on the door behind Megan, on the floor in front of her, on the ceiling, and then disappear. Jon thought perhaps it was trying to get perspective, or distinguish edges or boundaries—the holograph of the light had not included anything on the table, or the wall, or anything like that, so it had to have some system to decide where it was starting and stopping.

“Turn around,” Jon said. “I don’t know if it needs to get both sides but I would think—let’s just see what it does.”

Megan had already raised her hands above her head and, almost perfectly on the tips of her toes, pirouetted. Jon remembered something about how she had used to take ballet. As she raised one leg up and extended it—damn, she was good at that, too—Jon saw that bright blue dots went up and down her legs and arms, larger dots at her elbows, shoulder, knees and hips. Unlike the grid and circles, which stayed glued to her as she moved, the dots seemed to float over her arms and legs, not disappearing as she rotated around. Rather than her physical appearance, it looked like the dots were tracking her motion. She did two turns and then stopped, back towards Jon. “All dark back here,” Megan noted. “What’s it doing? You’re not staring at my butt, are you?”

Jon heard the smile in her voice, but found himself blushing anyway. He half-way wished that he had something to make her forget that whole at-least-I’m-not-wearing-a-bra episode. Good humored or not, he suspected that was going to haunt him. Plus, he had sort of been staring at her butt, watching the bright blue lines of light tracing the shape of each buttock, clear and distinct in her tight denim jeans. So she was busting him without even turning around.
“Yes, and it’s big and fat,” Jon shot back. “No, I’m not staring at your butt. I just, like, looked at it for a second.”

“Uh-huh,” Megan said skeptically. “Like I believe that.” She wiggled her hips, the criss-crossing grid of light the little disc was drawing on her rear-end staying perfectly conformed. The dots on her legs and arms, the large, filled circles her hips and knees and elbows were, moved as well, but not so perfectly matched, as if they were somehow tracking the specific motion of her bones and joints, not the skin and clothes on the outside. Circles spread from the back of her head and down her back, lines radiating down the back of her legs. More random beams shot out, as if measuring something on her, or the wall, or the door.

Then, all at once, the light stopped and the blue grid was gone.

“Am I done? Did you stop it?” Megan asked, turning around. “Okay, come on, let’s see it.”

“Hang on, hang on,” Jon said. “I didn’t stop it . . . I don’t know how long it recorded. The read-out said it could do that for up to 3 hours . . . I don’t know. Maybe there’s some other setting if you’re going to be moving. Maybe it’ll just be, like, a still picture.”

“Well, come on, come on, let’s see!” she demanded, and Jon put the disc down in the same place as before, and pressed the knob. The disc seemed to melt into the carpet and then, with a blue flicker, Megan was standing over Jon, chin up, arms spread.

“It’s me!” Megan cried, delighted. “Oh my god, it’s my twin! It’s like, it’s me!” she clapped her hands together. Then, she ran up and stuck her hand through the ghost-Megan’s torso. In and out, without resistance, without a sound. “Oh, my God,” Megan said. “That is so, so cool.”

The ghost-Megan lowered its arms a little and bent its head down, looking down. It seemed to be mouthing something, but there was no sound.

Megan stepped back. “Huh. I look a little nuts, doing that like that. I guess it makes sense, when you see all the blue lasers and everything, but that just looks like I’m in love with my own boobs.”

The ghost-Megan pirouetted. ”Hey,” Megan said. “I’m still pretty good at that.” She walked around the ghost-Megan as it lifted one knee and extended its leg, and then brought the leg back down again. “Wow. I’m better at that than I thought, Megan said. “I could’ve done ballet. But—”

She stuck her hand through the ghost-Megan’s head. “—too tall.” She stuck a finger into its torso. “Too heavy.” She swiped her hand through its chest. “Boobs too big. For ballet, anyway. But I could do toe ten times better than that scrawny little bitch Andrea Morlen that David thought was going to, like, ‘break out’. ‘Maybe you need to find something your more suited for, Megan—‘” she started, wagging her finger at the ghost-Megan’s head. Then, seamlessly, the ghost-Megan turned around and lifted up its chin and spread out its arms.

“Cool,” Megan said. “It’s looping.” She cocked her head. “Although I’m not sure how good a decoy it makes. You’d think seeing somebody do something like that would attract attention.”

Jon laughed, and Megan smiled at him. “You knew I was joking.” She turned around and poked Jon in the ribs. “You, I like.”

She turned back around, looking at the pirouetting ghost-Megan. “Andrea couldn’t pirouette that good when she was at the top of the stupid class. Scrawny little bitch.” Megan sighed. Then she turned back around to face Jon. “Well, that’s done, what’s next?”

“What’s—what’s next? What’s next is my mom is going to get home and the CIA and the FBI are going to me knocking on more door and probably yours—”

Megan gasped, and for a brief moment Jon thought that perhaps the gravity of the situation was getting through to her. But, she broke out in a wide, toothy smile, her eyes shining with excitement. “No way! Really? Do you really think so?”

“Uh—” Jon started. “Well—uh—I mean, Bernhard told me he thought they would be coming after me—the government, or the military, or somebody—we might end up in jail, or I might—”

Megan closed the space between them, so her face was three inches away from his. “You mean some guys from the FBI and the CIA might show up and knock on my door and get my mom and Larry and tell them we’ve got some secret government project and we’re out to, like, take over the world or something?”

“I—”

“Do you think they’ll show up with police cars and badges and guys with guns?” she continued.

“Oh, God, Larry would shit a brick. He’d drop dead on the spot, that’s what he’d do. Making me feel like the worst piece of shit on the planet because I skipped school or I got suspended. That time I got the in-school suspension, man, he acted like I had murdered his mother and set fire to the preacher. He wanted to disown me. I told him he didn’t own me, so there was nothing to dis-own, and he said he wanted mom to disown me, and then there was another one of those it’s-all-Megan’s-fault knock-down drag-out fights. Wait until he gets a load of government goons at the front door. ‘Excuse me, sir, your step-daughter is part of a plot of take over the world—‘ Hey, can I leave a note about how my folks, like, masterminded it all? I wish I could be there when he gets the knock on the door.”

Jon stared at Megan, eyes wide. “You want the FBI and CIA showing up at your house to arrest you?”

Megan paused. “Well, not if I’m actually there to get arrested, I guess. But Larry would shit in his pants, and it would serve the old bald bastard right. And my mom—she’ll eat a dozen Xanex and drink a case of beer and puke all night. You really think the FBI or somebody is going to come looking for us?”

“Well, yeah, I mean, you’ve already seen—”

Then it happened. Megan grabbed Jon’s head, and gave him a big, wet kiss. Right on the mouth. As she pulled back, he felt the tip of her tongue run over his lips. Well, that answered the question of what he would do if and when they kissed. He would just sit there and do nothing like a dumbass.

“Mmm,” Megan said, her cheeks flushing red for a change. “Sorry,” she mumbled, looking down and smiling. “I didn’t mean to do that, I just got a little worked up. Sorry.”

“No,” Jon said. “Don’t apologize. That was—” And then he saw the ghost-Megan behind Megan’s back pirouetting, raising one knee and then extending its leg, but looking straight behind him, as if admiring Jon’s excellent Blondie poster, arms folded across its chest. Something he was pretty sure Megan hadn’t done. “—weird,” he finished.

“Weird?” she asked, smiling but turning redder. “Weird? I’ve had ‘oh my god’ and ‘great’ and ‘do it again’ and ‘did you just put your tongue in my mouth’ and even ‘I don’t think you brushed your teeth’ but I’ve never gotten a ‘weird’ before.”

Jon blinked, looking at Megan. He meant to explain why he had said “weird”, and what he was seeing the ghost-Megan do, but instead his mouth said, “Good Lord, how many boys have you kissed?”

Megan flushed, and the smile did go away. “Eight boys and two girls. Not counting gross cousins and stuff. But counting Marc, because he’s, like, a second-cousin twice removed and he was really hot. And he had this kind of accent.”

Jon blinked. Jon had kissed his quasi-girlfriend in sixth-grade, Allison, twice, and both times had been like kissing a dead fish. Well, until just after the second time, when she had bit him and told him to go to hell. That had been it. Of course, Megan was hot, and a year older than him, so it made sense that she’d have more experience. But eight boys and—had she actually said she had kissed two girls?

“Two girls?” he asked.

Megan sighed. “Once was on a dare and it wasn’t all juicy or anything, and once was I was really drunk and it was, like, a college girl.”

Jon shook his head. He had been spending too much of his life playing video games and writing stupid BASIC programs on his TRS-80. Not that he felt he was missing out by not ever having gotten really drunk and kissing a college guy, but for someone without much parental supervision, it suddenly didn’t seem to him like he’d really taken advantage of it.

Jon shook his head. “I didn’t mean you kissing me was weird,” Jon started, intending to explain that he had been talking about the ghost-Megan, which was now doing a pirouette, the left leg extended up above its head, its hand holding the toe. He also wanted to tell her that it had been wonderful. Even now, the taste of her, the sensation of her tongue flicking across his lips, lingered. He wanted to tell her that it had been electric. That, as she had pressed her lips against his, smelling like Ivory soap and cut flowers and fresh, warm laundry, that he had felt a circle of heat explode inside him, spreading out from the very center of his soul to the very tips of his fingers and the soles of his feet. He wanted to tell her that, although short and sweet, the kiss had been . . . transformational. Transcendent. That it was the closest thing to a religious experience that Jon had ever had.

What he said instead was this: “Even though, yeah, it kind of is weird, because I’ve known you for two-and-a-half years and you barely even noticed me at school unless Johnny Miller was hanging with me. And even then—after I let you copy my homework, the time I took the heat for you and Johnny Two breaking the water fountain, the dozen or so times I got my mom to drive you to the library so you didn’t have to go home—I mean, there wasn’t even a handshake. It was like, ‘oh, hey, thanks, can I see your algebra homework’?”

Megan smiled, looking at her shoes. “I had forgotten about the water fountain.”

“I got into a shitload of trouble for that, and I didn’t say a thing, and I sure didn’t do it for Johnny Two.”

“Really?” Megan asked, her smile becoming a little more coy. “And who did you do it for?”

Jon swallowed. “I—I—” he stammered, then stopped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that stuff. It’s just—you know, three days ago you walked past me in the hall and I waved and said hey and I knew you saw me, but your friends from gym were behind me, so—I mean, I understand it, Megan, I do, I know why you walked by like I wasn’t there it’s just it—” Jon swallowed again. Damn, his mouth was dry. “That was just three days ago, and now it’s like I woke up on another planet and nobody told me—”

“Jon,” Megan said, eyes down. A the ghost-Megan was stretching, as if limbering up, behind her. “I was trying to avoid you in the hall because I didn’t want to talk to you, but not because I wanted to pretend I didn’t know you—for Eva and frickin’ Muffy? Are you nuts? They are both such total bitches. Who gives a shit what they think?”

“All I did was say hello—”

“Jon. I had dropped acid about ten minutes before I ran into you in the hall, and I was tripping. You don’t even drink beer. I didn’t want you to know how fucked up I was. On the day before exams. Because, yeah, it was really stupid, and I don’t know why I did it, and even when I was doing it I knew it was stupid and—I didn’t want you to know. That I had just done something really stupid that I knew was really stupid but did it anyway.” She looked up at Jon. “I knew if I started talking to you right then I would freak, and you would know I was a total mess, and that would make me freak more, so I pretended I didn’t see you. I’m sure I could have just said hello, hey, how are you doing, and that would have covered it, but I was, you know, tripping on acid and I wasn’t thinking straight.”

Jon blinked. “Oh.”

Megan sighed and shrugged. “You know, sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” Jon said. “I shouldn’t have said all that—I was trying to say that I wasn’t saying ‘weird’ about you, I was saying ‘weird’ about the hologram.” He pointed. “Look at it.”

Megan turned and looked as the ghost-Megan squatted, hands on its knees, stretching. “I don’t remember you doing that,” Jon said. “It’s been doing stuff you didn’t do for the last two minutes. Randomizing. It’s stopped looking like it was talking, too.”

“I didn’t do that,” Megan said. “That’s freaky. It’s got a mind if its own.” She shook her head. “All in that little silver ashtray.”

“And that’s why I was saying ‘weird’,” Jon said. “I didn’t mean to say the other stuff. It just—I opened my mouth and stupid stuff came out. I like hanging out with you, and I liked the kiss and it was really cool waking up with you snoring on the floor.“ Megan chuckled softly. “I like you a lot,” he continued. “I just—I’m a little frazzled. I didn’t have any right to say what I said.”

Megan was punching her hand through the ghost-Megan’s torso as it spun around. “You talk too much,” she said. “And I don’t snore. This is so freaky cool. You want me to do you?”

“Uh, I’ll pass right now. I don’t need my own personal ghost.” Jon bent down, reaching towards the dark smudge on the floor between the ghost-Megan’s legs. He paused, hunched over, and looked up as the hologram lifted its knee and then extended the leg until it was up in the air, even with it’s head. Jon’s face was less than six inches from its thigh.

“Yo, don’t be getting all kinky with my holo-me,” Megan said, and snorted with laughter. “What are you staring at?”

“Your jeans—its jeans. Even close up, they look perfectly real. Like you could touch them. All the fabric and even how it moves—I mean, it just looks perfect. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I see the pores in my skin,” Megan said, leaning forward and squinting. “And a zit. There’s a zit on the back of my neck! All the little hairs on the back of my neck. It doesn’t look like I quite got my braids right, either. Carla used to do them for me—I can’t see the back of my head in the mirror when I do them.”

Jon punched the space over the smudge—he could feel the knob, about an inch-and-a-half over the dark smudge on the carpet, but couldn’t see anything. Then, with a flicker of blue, the ghost-Megan was gone. The floor seemed to ripple, and the silver disc reappeared.

“Whoa,” Megan said. “That is so freaky. How many of them are there?” she looked at the bed and counted. “I count eleven, including the one you’ve got. You think I could have that one, huh?”

Jon stood up and looked directly at Megan. “You know, if I’m in deep shit like I think maybe I am then you’re in deep shit too, and that’s probably not going to help, having any of this stuff—”

The idea that they were in deep shit apparently left Megan unfazed. “So when do you think the FBI or the Army is coming? Maybe we should—I don’t know, go stay in a hotel or something?”

Jon put the silver disc back on the bed, and picked up a small box that looked like a tiny chrome calculator. He swallowed hard at Megan’s nonchalant suggestion that they go shack-up in a hotel together, but managed to keep his own tone matter-of-fact. “They don’t let kids check into hotels by themselves. You’ve got to have a drivers license. I think you have to be twenty-one.”

Megan picked up a shimmering blue ball, one of almost a dozen. “I know a couple of hotels where we can get a room,” Megan said.

Jon blinked, turning the chrome calculator over in his hands but not really paying much attention to it. He had wasted way too much time playing video games. Way too much.

“I just went to some parties,” Megan continued. “I knew some of the kids that got the rooms. Some places just don’t care that much, is all. Anyway, when is the FBI coming?”

Jon shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t. But—you know, I don’t think I can keep this stuff. I think I’ve got to turn it over to the government or the police or somebody. I can’t justify putting you in danger—”

“You’ve got my permission.”

“Or putting our parents in danger—”

“You’ve definitely got my permission on that one.” She smiled. “I’ve got money, too. Two-hundred and eighty bucks, give or take a nickel. I think I might be able to get some more. I know a hotel or two—what about your sister? Isn’t she in Memphis? Does she know somebody?”
Jon shook his head. “It’s too dangerous and, Meg, there’s no point to it. How do we get anywhere? Would you really want to spend who-knows-how-long on the run from the government or the police with Carla in the front seat?”

Megan nodded knowingly. “I’ve got my learner’s permit. I’ve been driving enough to know I can handle a car. I know where Carla keeps her keys.”

“Megan, we can’t keep this stuff. I think it’s seriously, seriously dangerous. I haven’t had any indication since this started that I should trust anything Dr. Bernhard ever said or did. I don’t know why he really wanted to stick this thing on me. I don’t know that this stuff—” He motioned towards the wide array of objects on his bed. “–isn’t booby-trapped. Or put together wrong. Or malfunctioning. This stuff might blow us up just because we do something stupid. God knows what would happen if I actually tried to build something out of the book—”

Megan leaned forward. “Which is exactly why you should. I mean, all you have to do is watch the news to see why you shouldn’t be trusting the police or the government. The police beat up black people just because they’re black—Reagan wants enough missiles to blow everybody up twenty-five times over and that senile old fart has his finger on the button—”

“And Dr. Bernhard had a picture of Reagan—I mean, a big fat one, signed, in his house. Dr. Bernhard told me that he—Dr. Bernhard—was the reason we could get a warhead to Moscow and deliver enough tonnage to incinerate it from end to end. And I think he was proud of that. And sometimes he would stop whatever he was doing and sing these weird ass songs—”

Megan shrugged. “Maybe there’s something else to do, other than do whatever your doctor told you to do or turning it over to the FBI and the CIA so they can use it to kill political dissidents or assassinate world leaders—or kill poor people, or kill black people, or keep women in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. I mean, if they don’t already have this shit and you just turn it over to them—when whole countries start blowing up mysteriously, whose fault is that? So maybe there is something else you can do.”

“Like what?” Jon almost yelped. This was getting more complicated by the second.

“I don’t know. You’re mister straight-As-in-everything, you ought to be able to figure out something else. If you don’t want to go cross-country with me, staying in cheap hotels, trying to save the world, that’s your call.”

Jon just stared at Megan. He wasn’t exactly sure he trusted her armchair politics any more than he trusted Dr. Bernhard. But traveling cross-country, staying in cheap hotels with Megan. Wow. He had never traveled anywhere without his mom, and had usually wanted to be traveling alone. Especially if Stacey had come along. His mom wouldn’t be happy about his running away. It would, he knew, make her miserable. But there was an unmistakable appeal to the idea of spending night after night in cheap motel rooms with Megan. Megan, who had kissed eight boys and two girls, one of them a college girl. Megan, who not only smoked cigarettes and drank beer and sometimes smoked marijuana, which Jon had heard about from her in the past, but she had also dropped acid. Megan, who had recently been unusually friendly with him, and had, just moments ago, actually kissed him. On the lips. Megan, the first to girl to ever actively kiss him in his life. Night after night, each in a different hotel—even if it didn’t work out, it certainly seemed worth a try.

Megan was still talking. “Hey, maybe we could go to Canada? The government is a lot better in Canada. They make sure everybody can get healthcare up there and they don’t spend all their money on tanks and guns and missiles. If you have to turn it over to somebody, wouldn’t it be better to be someplace that invests in healthcare and hospitals before bombs?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jon agreed. “Okay. I’d finally made my mind up and now you’ve made me go and change it. I don’t know how we’re going to do the hotel thing, but maybe you’ve got a point.” A very good point, about staying alone together in hotel rooms, night after night. A lot of his decision to turn everything over to the authorities, of course, had hinged on him doing it all alone, anyway. He hadn’t anticipated that, if and when he told her about it, Megan would want to help. That she would actually want to go on the run with him.

“What about everything else, though?” Jon asked. “Not just getting money or finding something to do with the damned thing, but what about Johnny Miller and what the FBI and CIA come calling on him? What about my mom? And your folks. And your sister. If this ends up being over or you decide it isn’t your thing anymore, I don’t think you’ve got the kind of parents who are going to welcome you back home. If you know what I mean. I mean, when it’s over, you won’t have a home.”

“Sure I will,” she said cheerfully. “Women’s prison.” Then the smile faded. “Or, I could go take a bath one night next month or next year or the year after that, drink a bunch of beer and take a bunch of Valium and draw two big fat crosses down from my wrists with a straight razor and get messy blood all over the bathroom floor.”

Jon’s eyes widened. The sudden shift of tone and language was not unusual for Megan—they would be talking about movies or music or TV, and something tangential would send her spinning some morose fantasy where she either died or killed herself. Sometimes they would watch TV shows together while talking on the phone, The Greatest American Hero being a perennial favorite, and one day, when he complained that they had shown the same stock shot of William Katt flying over some buildings for the third time, she had spun a fifteen minute fantasy of going to a city like Chicago or New York, just to jump, and what it would be like to jump, and how the wind would feel rushing past her face as the ground raced up to meet her. How complicated her very prominent suicide would make things for Larry and her mom.

Another time, he and Johnny Miller had been both pushing the conversation into the realm of sexual innuendo, both of them offering simultaneous back rubs where their hands were wandering a little far afield of her back, and she had been trading jokes with them, telling them to watch the fingers, she might bite them off, but clearly enjoying the attention. Then, without any indication of what precipitated the mood shift, she grew quiet. Almost sullen, pulling away from their hands, pointedly moving if they tried to touch her and not saying anything back when they tried to engage her in further witty male banter. Then, she had started talking about how she thought if she ever shot herself in the head, she would put the gun to her eye and angle it in, not in her mouth or at her temple, but press it right against her eye and angle it so the bullet would cut across her skull, and maybe exit behind the opposite ear. “Some people live after they shoot themselves in the head,” she had said. “But more often than not, they’re vegetables. Being a vegetable isn’t so bad. Mom and Larry—they’d pull the plug.”

An hour later, they had all been at Johnny Two’s house, watching Bewitched reruns, eating arid popcorn from Johnny’s AirPopper and laughing and carrying on as if Megan hadn’t inexplicably launched into a morbid fifteen minute monologue on suicide just an hour ago. So, yes, he had previous experience with Megan’s mood swings. Even so, they were disconcerting and often left him with nothing to say.

“Big t-shaped crosses,” Megan said, tracing a long line up the underside of one forearm with her finger. “If you just cut your wrist, it’s not enough, unless you’re going to almost hack your hand off. If you make the cut all the way up your arm and you make it deep enough, you’re guaranteed to hit a bunch of veins and arteries—the blood will never clot in time.”

“I hate it when you talk like that,” Jon said. “I wish you wouldn’t. I—look, can we at least plan this thing? If we’re running away together, and we at least plan it out and figure out where we are going and where might stay? I think we must have some time before the FBI shows up if nobody has shown up yet. Read the book. See what we can build. See what the rest of this shit is—let me read the notebook that was in the briefcase. My mom is going to go batshit if I end up running away. She’s always been pretty good to me, even if she’s a flake, and what if somebody comes after her? You might not care what happens to your folks, but Mom doesn’t have anybody to watch out for her but me. I want to make sure she’s protected.”

“Sure,” Megan said distantly. “I know. I wasn't saying we ought to run away tonight. You know, just—I think we could do this thing.” She paused. “I thought maybe you’d want to.”
Jon studied his feet. “Meg—”

“My point was, don’t worry about me,” she continued, looking to the side. “There’s a lot worse that can happen to me than getting kicked out by my folks. It wouldn’t be a real big loss. I know you’ve got to worry about your mom.”

Jon nodded. “Just let me—do a little planning. Write my mom and explain. See if I can do something or give her something to protect her. Maybe, like you said, see if I can build some of these things in the book. Maybe there is somebody else who can help us. I mean, won’t Carla report her car being stolen? Won’t your parents file a missing person? Or say I kidnapped you? I’m pretty sure my Mom is going to file a missing person report on me—she sure did that time Stacey stayed out the whole weekend, and Stace was seventeen when she did that! I’m just thinking we might want to see who else can help us. Especially if the police will be looking for us in your sister’s stolen car—”

“Think Johnny Miller might want to come with us?” Megan asked. “He would help.”

“Maybe,” Jon replied, non-committal. “I’m not saying we couldn’t travel alone, just if there are places we could stay along the way, or maybe if we could get a car that wouldn’t get reported as stolen right away. Or maybe there’s something in the book to help out there—I hadn’t really thought about that. Maybe to make us look older, or disguise the car. Mostly, I guess, we just need some time—”

Megan smiled a little, still not look directly at Jon. “Maybe we’ll just leave Mr. Miller out of it, then.”

“Yeah,” Jon agreed. “I wouldn’t want to put Johnny in danger, too—I’m already doing enough damage getting you involved—”

The dark cloud that had so suddenly come over Megan was dissipating. “No worries about me. I told you. If anything,” she smiled a little more, “It looks like I’m going to be the one dragging you into it.” She picked up one of the silver discs at the end of the bed. “Whatever happens, I’m taking one of these. These things are so cool.”

“Uh,” Jon started, about to object. Then he thought better of it. Why shouldn’t she take one? What made him any better a steward of the bag of tricks, and even the big book of magic, that Bernhard had stuck him with? What entitled him to be the sole possessor of this technology? Certainly, he wasn’t too keen on trying to shoulder the burden of it alone. It’s dangerous, he thought to himself. The bus station. And what if she gets weird and starts showing people or uses something to mess with her folks or—

He heard the front door open. “Jon? You back, sweetie?” Doreen called from the living room, and the door closed.

Megan looked at Jon, and stuck the disc in her back pocket. Jon quickly picked the extra blanket he had given Megan to use last night, and threw it on top of his bed, covering most of the gadgets and gizmos. Although, Jon noted, he could still see some lights blinking and flashing through the thin fabric of the blanket. Megan helped adjust the blanket on the far side of the bed, as footsteps and the jangle of Doreen’s keychain approached. “Jon, are you home?”

“Yeah, mom,” Jon called back, as casually as he could. Jon looked back at his bed, with his spare blanket carefully arrayed to look as much as possible as if he had been quickly trying to hide something, several blinking diodes and tiny flashes visible beneath the cover.

And he had been worried about Megan’s lack of discretion, and here he was about the blow it sky-high right here. Not that he hadn’t almost made up her mind to tell his mom before Megan began arguing the opposite case, but still—he wasn’t in a position to worry about what Megan would do with the little silver disc or anything else she wanted to take. He was no more responsible and maybe less, and would at least be equally as likely to blow it.

If she did want to use the holographic decoy thing to mess with her parents, why was it his job to say no? He certainly hadn’t played it smart so far. The bus station being the first clear example, and having spread the entire contents of the briefcase out on his bed being the second. Well, maybe the bus station wasn’t the first thing, maybe the first thing was going over to Dr. Bernhard’s house in the first place. Ever talking to the bastard.

You know, I’m pretty good at math, myself, Bernhard said in his head. Computers? Indeed I do. Ask your parents sometime if you can visit—I have a mini-computer in my house. I keep it in a room with a window unit, it gets so hot. I have a second terminal I could probably get working. Anyway, if I give you this candy would you like to hop into this garbage bag for me and then climb into the trunk of my car?

Well, Bernhard hadn’t said that last part, but he might as well have as far as Jon was concerned, given the naïve gullibility with which Jon had entered that relationship. If only—

“Jon?” she was right at the door. She was never so eager to talk to him that she’d actually approach his room. Something had to be up.

Jon looked at Megan, who looked back pointedly, eyebrows raised, lips pursed. I thought your mom was going to be gone all day, the look said. What’s she doing back now? Jon shrugged back at her, because he had no idea—his mom wasn’t home on Saturdays unless she was between having courses or seminars to take, or her normal Saturday activities were on a holiday schedule, like around Christmas. Even then, the first thing she did when got home would not be to locate him—it would be on the list, sure, but she didn’t run back to his bedroom to check on him.

Jon grabbed Megan’s hand and then swung the door open. Doreen stood right at the door, hand raised to knock. “Megan and I were just talking,” Jon said. “About stuff,” he added stepping into the hall and pulling Megan with him. He squeezed past Doreen as she stood, mouth half-open, and then Megan slid past similarly, back against the wall.

“Hey, Mrs. Edmonds,” she said. “I like your hair.”

Actually, Jon’s mom’s hair was unusually undone for her, but it did look better when she didn’t try to feather it and spray glitter into it or do something else she had just seen on the cover of Seventeen. She also was unusually unmade for her—even for the Saturday classes, there was normally a strict regimen of come-hither makeup that was almost entirely absent right now. “I was running late this morning,” Doreen said distractedly, eyes moving from Jon and then to Megan. “I didn’t have time to spit and polish.”

Jon frowned. The awkwardness of his mom finding he’d been spending time alone in his bedroom with an attractive young woman had occurred to him as soon as he had heard the front door open. Minor, at the moment, compared to concealing the contents of the briefcase, but he had been a little worried about her reaction. What he saw, as Doreen’s eyes flitted from Megan—smiling a little too perkily—and Jon was not something he had anticipated. But he could read Doreen pretty well, and what the question in Doreen’s mind was not: oh my god, is my fourteen year old son having sex while I’m out trying to improve myself and save the world? or some variation thereof. What Jon saw on Doreen’s face was: oh my god, what is she doing with you?

“So, hey,” Megan said. “How was class?”

“Uh, fine,” Doreen replied, peering past Megan into the bathroom and then glancing to Jon’s bedroom. “Did Johnny Two go home?”

Megan looked at Doreen blankly. “Go home from where?”

“I thought you guys all went to the library together?” Doreen asked.

“Oh, yeah,“ Megan started. “The library—”

Jon interrupted. “I told you that Megan and I were going to the library. Carla was going to drive us and drop us off. Just us.”

Doreen looked at Jon and blinked. “Oh,” she said. “I thought you said you were going with John and Megan.” No, Jon thought, you just assumed that if Megan was going anywhere with me, it would be because Johnny Two was involved. It just didn’t occur to you to think that Megan would want to do anything with just me. Which he couldn’t exactly fault Doreen for, because, for as long as he had known both Johnny and Megan—and those two had known each other longer than Jon had known either of them—he had assumed the same thing. Up until yesterday that was how it had been. There had been some other signs in the past few months that he had dismissed as coincidence or his own wishful thinking, sure. The phone calls, for one. The walks home even when Johnny Two had band practice, for another. But Jon didn’t think his mom’s nonplussed reaction was because things had changed from what had been the status quo. He thought it was because she had always assumed that Megan was out of Jon’s league.

Jon’s brow creased. His mom was such a teenager. Forty-years old, and she almost seemed dismayed that a girl like Megan might actually go for a geek like Jon. Attractive girls like Megan were supposed to go for the Jackson Edmond’s of the world—the ones sensible women like Doreen always had—not the boring, geeky Jons.

Jon sighed. “No, mom, I just said it would be me and Megan. I didn’t have to bribe her with Johnny Two.”

Doreen’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t—” she started, and then seemed to think better of it. “Jon, I need to talk to you.” She looked over to Megan. “Megan, I think you’d better go home.”

“Ho-kay,” Megan said agreeably. “If I don’t call you later, you call me, okay?”

“Will do,” Jon said. Then, Megan leaned forward and planted a wet, noisy kiss on Jon’s cheek.

“The library was great,” she said, smiling. “Maybe we can do it again on Monday, huh?“ She pulled back, letting her hand rest on his shoulder for a few moments.

“Uh, sure,” Jon said. Then he smiled, with dawning understanding. Megan had read Doreen the same way he had, had seen the same thing in his mom’s face. And Megan had told Doreen to go fuck herself, she liked just Jon and liked him just fine.

Jon felt something melting inside. The kiss before had been great, but this made Jon feel like something deep within his body was cracking. Cleaving. It might not just be a lark, or a gag, or just because he was convenient, or because he knew Johnny Two. Megan might actually really like just Jon, just fine.

It felt like his chest was cramping. For a moment, Jon seriously thought he might be able to have a heart attack. Or a stroke.

Megan walked through the living room, opened the door, waved briefly and then vanished. Jon waved back.

Doreen watched dubiously as Megan shut the front door, and then shifted back to Jon. Her expression softened. “You look like shit, kid,” she said. Jon nodded. He did feel woozy and out of breath. A slight smile curled her lips. “I think somebody likes you, too. I wouldn’t’ve had guessed she had such good taste in men.”

The last part was reserved—as if she didn’t entirely believe it—but she was at least trying to be more Mom than prom-queen. Two points for that, he thought.

“It looked like you and Megan had a good time,” she continued.

Jon nodded, still trying to catch his breath. Doreen absent-mindedly straightened his collar. “You look like you might have some sort of bug,” she said. “I hope you didn’t bring something home from the library. That’d be a crappy way to start summer vacation. And I sure don’t need to be catching a summer cold right now.”

“Uh huh,” Jon replied. “I think I might need to—” He was going to say lay down, and then thought better of it, given what was still flashing and blinking on his bed. “—sit down,” he finished. He moved into the living room and sat on the dingy green sofa.

“That’s probably a good idea,” his mom agreed. “Because I’ve got something I need to talk to you about. And it’s pretty serious.”

Jon blinked. He had forgotten about that, the part where she had said she needed to talk to him—never a good sign—before she had told Megan to go home. Given who Doreen was, and the fact she was missing yoga, Jon didn’t think it was going to be about not having girls alone in his room, or the birds and the bees. It would be something else, and Jon suddenly felt, with absolute certainty, she would tell him she had been stopped by the police. Or the FBI had called her. That they were on their way, and there wasn’t any time left to run.

Doreen sat down beside him, folding her hands in her lap. Jon again observed the lack of hair work and makeup—unheard of for Doreen Edmonds when she had been out to face the outside world. Another bad sign. She inhaled deeply. Jon braced himself. With Doreen, bad news always started with a deep breath.

Doreen looked directly at Jon, concerned and even maternal, clearly worried about what effect what she had to say would have on Jon.

“Jon,” she said finally. “Did you know that Mr. Bernhard was dead?”

Chapter 17

2008-11-30T22:45:00.000-08:00

Washington, DC – Saturday, May 28th, 1983 – 5:45 PM

Richard picked up the phone on the fifth ring, just as the answering machine picked up. He had had the radio going full blast—and not a peep of Daryll Hall & John Oates today, thank you very much—had been trying to find some clean clothes to pack, and almost hadn’t heard it.

“This is Rich,” he said.

“Richard Mathers?” the voice asked. “Deborah Enos said I should call you. This is Robbie Deaton, with Capitol Brief.”

“Robbie!” Rich said, with a heartiness he was surprised to find was nearly sincere. “I’m sitting here packing, I’ve got my interviews set up—I left a message at your office and your house, but I was going to get started on the story even if I didn’t get in touch—”

“Debi told me you were excited,” Robbie Deaton said pleasantly. He sounded young to Rich, and a little effeminate. “I think that’s great. She also said you might have some good angles on the story.”

“Yeah, I think so. I’ve got two interviews with guys that work at Oak Ridge, and one of them was working directly with Donald Bernhard’s team. Also, I have a contact who may have had a fair amount of interaction with Bernhard outside of work—socially.”

“Really?” Deaton asked, sounding pleased at the prospect. “Wonderful. I’ve got a few contacts in Oak Ridge and over at the DOD you may want to talk to for story.”

“Great. The more the merrier. I’m not sure how long I’m going to stay down there—”

“You’ll stay as long as you need to get the story,” Deaton interjected. “If there are any expenses that need to be covered, let my office know and they’ll wire you the cash.”

Richard blinked. Cash? Like, an expense account? Even if it was money in advance, that was a luxury Richard had had little experience with. “You must think there’s a hell of a story here.”

“Mmmhmm,” Deaton said. “I do. I think Oak Ridge was working on equipping military satellites—nuclear powered satellites—with weapons-grade lasers. I think they already may have. This ‘Star Wars’ stuff from Reagan and his military buddies is a sham—asking for permission for something they’ve already done. And SDI may be how they handle wide scale deployment. But it’s not about ‘missile defense’, Richard, I guarantee you that it is not. We don’t have the technology to take out individual missiles when there are hundreds or thousands moving at six hundred or eight hundred miles an hour, and we probably never will. But we do have the technology to pinpoint an area of latitude and longitude exactly, and fire a laser back to earth from geosynchronous orbit and hit that point exactly.”

“You’ve got data on that?”

“I’ve got data. I’ve got reports out of Oak Ridge from a source that has gotten me a folder three inches thick on weapons grade laser technology and their active deployment on military satellites. Bernhard worked at Los Alamos for almost twenty years. He was no stranger to making weapons. From what I’ve seen, I don’t believe this was meant to be a system for defense or even for pin-point assassinations—although I do believe it could be used for that. I believe they were working on a system for taking out conventional armies, dozens and maybe hundreds at a time, from a position no one else can attack or defend against. And—and this is the kicker—they could use the lasers to detonate the nuclear warheads of unfired missiles in enemy countries. Bernhard was known to be working systems to detect even minute indications or radioactivity from space, and also look for common shielding patterns for silos and military bunkers—”

“And Bernhard was selling secrets to the Soviets?”

“He was doing something with somebody. They were running an internal investigation on him. I’ve had that confirmed by three sources. He disappears after two months of playing cat-and-mouse with the investigators, and three weeks later ends up dead in a mall in Los Angeles. There is some indication he had been in contact with some radical groups in Berkley. We do know that on the day before he ran, he visited the Soviet Embassy and stayed there for two hours. Another source tells me he had gone to the Soviet Embassy at least four times over the past year. He was up to something.”

“Yes, indeed,” Richard said. “I’m surprised the rest of the Washington press corps haven’t picked up on it—”

“They are,” Robbie Deaton said. “The Washington Post is probably going to run something next week. I want this article to be the most, not the first. I want it to be comprehensive and complete—that’s why I like hearing you have unique sources, that will really help—because I think there is an important story here. A very big story. A cover story.”

Richard blinked. A cover story. Capitol Brief wasn’t Time Magazine, but it wasn’t anything to sneeze at. A cover story in Capitol Brief by Richard Mathers. That was a whole hell of a lot for an unemployed reporter who could barely afford to pay his rent. Good money, sure. But great exposure. A great credit.

“Two-thousand for the story,” Robbie Deaton said, sounding quite chipper. Two-thousand? Richard thought Debi had told him three-thousand. Well, beggars can't be choosers. And they are covering expenses. “We own all the rights. I’ll get a contract over to you first thing Monday—you have to sign that before we cover any expenses. Three thousand words at least but you can make it eight thousand words if you need to, but no more money. We don’t pay by the word. Cover credit. You can have up to twenty-five copies of the issue you appear in. I want you to do a good job, but the sooner we can finish the story and get that issue to press, the better. I need the finished story in a week if it’s going to make the June 15th issue. But—if you need the time for a better story, then take it.”

“That’s novel,” Richard said with a chuckle. “I haven’t heard that too often.”

“Ah, well, you probably won’t, but a story like this has the potential to be a really big deal for us. Last year we did a story on Reagan’s witch hunt at Los Alamos—”

“I read that,” Richard said, folding up a pair of worn brown slacks and putting them in his suitcase. “I’d seen Capitol Brief once or twice before that, but there were at least six or seven copies of that issue making their way around the Tribune after you broke the story.”

“Uh huh. We weren’t the first with it—that was The Washington Post. But we had more data. We had four interviews with the research staff, and the Post had anonymous sources. We had detailed accounts of the sort of witch hunts that started out there the day Reagan took office. Except for the Post, nobody else was talking about it before we ran the article—in two weeks it got picked up in the Washington Trib and the Washington Post and the New York Times and we got a digest version out on the AP—it tripled our subscriptions. Two major distributors picked us up, one for the DC metro area and NYC. I got an actual office and more than one phone line and we started printing color on the inside.” There was a muffled noise as Deaton whispered something to somebody else.

“It was a hell of a story for you guys to break,” Richard said.

“Yes, yes,” Robbie Deaton said, and laughed. “A former paste-up guy at the Washington Times starts his own magazine with $500 and a friend at Kinko’s and in under two years broke a story that eventually got referenced in Time Magazine. They called us a local D.C. magazine, which is bullshit because we have subscribers in Winnipeg and down Key Largo and even in Guam, but, who knows . . . maybe they’re afraid of the competition.” Robbie laughed again. It was bad, but Richard couldn’t help thinking that Robbie laughed like a girl. “Anyway, this is a bigger story than the Los Alamos story. That was just about Reagan guys trying to bully agencies and departments and install their own cronies. This, Richard . . . this is closer to a conspiracy. And I don’t think there’s much doubt as to why the government is working to put military grade lasers in space. That’d certainly be one way to deal with Brezhnev, hmm?”

“Fry him from a satellite, huh? That’d heat up that cold war, huh?” Richard asked.

Robbie Deaton laughed. “No doubt! But, the tone of the article should be neutral, of course,” he said quickly. “If interviewees want to get into speculation or hyperbole, that’s one thing, but we do not—this is Capitol Brief, not Mother Jones or The Nation.”

“Or National Review,” Richard offered.

“Oh, good lord, definitely not. But you’re exactly right. No editorializing. Let the interviews tell the story and the facts speak for themselves. Don’t be afraid of asking good questions, though. Sometimes they give answers we may or may not use, but don’t be afraid of juicy questions—we control the tone in the editorial process.”

“I’m not afraid of juicy questions,” Richard assured him.

“Good. Good. Now, I’ve got a list of names and numbers for you—people Bernhard knew and had apparently been in contact with before—well, before his death, let’s say. He knew people in New Mexico from Los Alamos and California from teaching at Berkley, and was probably in contact with some of them. I’m guessing it was a smoke screen—Bernhard was a company man from the day he started working for the government, and was, from what I have heard, absolutely loathed at Berkley. Refused to go to the protests, he wrote in favor of nuclear testing, got into a shouting match at a public debate on arms control at the campus. The word was, he was up for Ronnie Reagan’s Presidential Medal of Freedom. So—”

“So, whatever it was, you don’t think it was ideological—”

“Or political,” Robbie finished. “I think it was probably about money, maybe a lot of it, but nothing more than speculation, there. Just, in the process, he may have let the cat out of the bag as to just what the government has been up to down in Oak Ridge these past three years.”

“But you said he had been in contact with some people in California—old friends, Berkley-types, or what?”

“I’ve confirmed he went to see Mike Howell at People For a Peaceful Future—Mike and Bernhard about traded blows, I’m told, during one of those campus debates ’78 or ‘79. I’ve talked to Mike briefly, and he seems to feel that Bernhard was just ‘burning time’. That he had hinted that he might have had a change of heart—at the late age of sixty-eight years old—but Mike didn’t think he seemed that serious about discussing it.”

“So he was just there to muddy the waters? Make it hard for people to figure out what he was really doing?”

“Or protecting his real partners. I’ve read too much of Bernhard’s stuff over the past three days—he may have been covering up something for the government. He was not the type to turn traitor lightly. He’s had also gone to the Russian Embassy in D.C. three times in the past three months—”

“But you don’t think—”

“He had already been put under investigation. He would have known that it was likely he was being watched. Now, I haven’t been able to get anybody to return my calls yet, but I’ll lay odds, whatever he was talking about, it wasn’t about much.”

“Damn. That’s something else.”

Robbie giggled. Like a schoolgirl. “Yes, isn’t it, though? I had already been looking at doing something on the Oak Ridge research since the first rumblings that Reagan was going to announce this idiotic Strategic Defense Initiative. But the lead scientist, potentially working on the technology most critical to something like SDI, ending up dead at a mall in L.A., after having been noshing with Berkley radicals and the Soviet Ambassador for the past few months–that’s the hook. That’s the story. The technical details are important, and, like I said, I’ll make room for anything you find out about the logistics of the program itself, but I think Bernhard is the hook. Just the lead in: ‘After wining and dining with Berkley radicals and Soviet dignitaries, top military research scientist ends up dead in L.A. mall’ sucks you in. Doesn’t it just suck you in?”

“It does. There’s a hell of a story here,” Richard said. And there was. A lot more than he had thought before talking to Robbie. Maybe Doreen had had better reasons to be worried about her son than Richard had been thinking.

“Uh-huh,” Robbie affirmed, his voice cracking. He was excited. “It’s a career maker. For Capitol Brief and maybe for you, too.”

“I’m leaving in the morning,” Richard said. “I’ll touch base with you Tuesday or Wednesday—”

“That’s fine. I’ve got no doubt you can do the job. Debi assures me you’ve got the chops, and I’d trust Debi more than I’d trust any other human being on the planet, except maybe me. I wouldn’t risk this story on somebody I didn’t know—I was actually calling Debi hoping she’d think about it, but she insisted on you. Bent my ear. I figure, you must be something to get that kind of recommendation from her.”

Richard blinked. Of course, he knew he had Debi to thank for this opportunity but the reverse—that he was now responsible to Debi not to let down her friend—was suddenly crystallized in his mind. And he was surprised to find that it didn’t worry him. For the first time in a long time he knew he could do a good job on this. That he would be as good as or better than anyone else Robbie Deaton could find. For the first time in a long time, he was actually excited about what he was going to be doing.

“You may want to drop by my apartment to pick up the paperwork,” Robbie said. “You can start without it but the office won’t wire you money for a stamp unless we’ve got a signed contract and your Social Security number. Or Federal Tax ID, if you're incorporated.”

“Not a problem,” Rich agreed. “Can I come over tonight? I want to get an early start in the morning—”

“Then come over in the morning. I’m going to be a little busy tonight, but I’ll be up by five—I’ve got to go running before it gets oppressively hot. I usually leave about five-fifteen and get back a little after six. Before or after, your pick.”

“Uh, after. How about six-thirty or so?”

“Sounds good. I look forward to reading your stuff.”

Rich smiled. “So do I. I really have to thank you for this opportunity—”

“Thank Debi,” Robbie insisted. “Now, I’ve got two chicken breasts brazing and I don’t want to burn them. If you think of any questions between now and tomorrow, just ask them when you come by to pick up the paper work.”

“Will do,” Richard agreed. “Talk to you tomorrow.”

“Bright and early,” Robbie Deaton affirmed, and hung up.

Richard put down the receiver. It was amazing how quickly life could change. On Friday, he had been fired from a job he had hated since—well, since he had started working there. Not yet Sunday, and the only good thing about working there—Deborah Enos—had not only stuck with him, but had managed to get him a freelance gig that was both good money and the most interesting story he had had to work on since he had moved to D.C.

Although the radio had been off an on all day, he hadn’t heard “Maneater” once. He turned the radio on, just to check, and it was Dexy’s Midnight Runners singing “Come On, Eileen”.

“Ha!” Richard laughed, and turned back around to his suitcase, zipping it up. He knew he wasn’t free, but the radio, playing a generic song that had no relevance to his life, right after he had gotten a great opportunity for a great article—that had to be a good sign, right? Right.

Richard finished packing, and then sat down to review the material he had collected so far on Dr. Donald Bernhard, Oak Ridge, and the best route to take to Knoxville.