Never Again

by M. A. Rothman

  With a frown, the FBI director sighed, “We know almost nothing about her. She’s the daughter of General Albert McMillan, former head of the clandestine research wing of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Approximately half a year before her escape with Doctor Holmes, General McMillan, along with his wife and a twenty-two-year-old daughter, were in a tragic car accident that killed both the General and his wife, leaving the daughter in a coma for nearly six months. The medical records indicate that when she woke from the coma, the accident had left her unable to communicate and emotionally unstable. We’ve not had any hint of either of their locations since their escape.”

  The president cocked an eyebrow. “Well, the good doctor clearly figured out how to communicate with the young woman. Tell me about our illustrious head of NEO and the man charged with doing something with DefenseNet. He was kind of quiet at our first meeting. What’s his background?”

  “Madam President, I’m surprised you’ve not heard of him,” the Secretary of Defense chimed in. “He nearly caused L.A. to go dark due to his runaway invention. Radcliffe was the man who invented the first Turing-capable computer.”

  “Turing-capable?” Something about that term rang a bell in Margaret’s head.

  Walt leaned forward, his elbows pressing down on his knees, and nodded. “The machine could actually think for itself. The story is that someone broke into the lab during the middle of the night to try and steal something. The computer detected the break-in and managed to lock everyone out of the building while it alerted the police.”

  “That doesn’t sound unreasonable—”

  “You’d think so,” he broke in, with a lop-sided smile, “but something in its protocol went haywire. When the police arrived to collect the criminal, the damned machine wouldn’t unlock the lab. As soon as they tried to force their way in, the thing pulled power from the rest of the building, overloading the circuits and shocking the hell out of everyone in the building. It wasn’t until the city administrator cut off the power to the entire twelve-square-block grid of downtown L.A. that the computer was disabled and the mess could get cleaned up.”

  “Okay, so he’s a computer nerd.” Margaret barely suppressed a smile as she imagined the chaos of the situation. She turned her gaze back to the FBI Director. “Karen, what do you have on him?”

  “Madam President, we don’t have much in the way of a psychological screen on Doctor Radcliffe, but he’s been under observation ever since he became the head of NASA’s Near Earth Object program. He has a double PhD in Computer Science and Astrophysics; there’s no doubt he’s well-disciplined and methodical. From the interviews we conducted with his current and past associates, he seems to be levelheaded, and has the respect of his coworkers. Evidently, he has pacifistic leanings. He’s written many papers on the peacetime usage of artificial intelligence ever since the L.A. incident, and he’s also done his best to destroy the computer technology he invented, fearing its further use and declaring it the biggest mistake of his life. The Defense Department has approached him in the past, trying to recruit him to further develop aspects of his intelligent computing, but he refused to even take a meeting with anyone who might want to leverage it.”

  Margaret held up a finger, and Karen paused. The president pursed her lips as she gave thought to what she’d just heard, and the room grew silent, waiting for her to do something.

  “What about the scientist who’d accompanied him? Isn’t she his second in command at the NEO program?”

  “Yes, Madam President, Doctor Neeta Patel is most assuredly one of the top scientists in the nation. She was also a former department head at the ISF, reporting to David Holmes—”

  “The same Holmes who’s missing?” Margaret interjected.

  Karen nodded. “Doctor Patel likely didn’t get the notice that she might otherwise have gotten because she’d been in the shadow of Doctor Holmes, who by all accounts is a freak of nature—”

  “Woah,” interrupted Walt, the Secretary of Defense, with his gravelly voice. “But he’s our freak of nature—and we need to understand that!”

  Margaret sighed. “Let’s just hope that we find—”

  A loud knock echoed through the Oval Office. Just as one of the interior doors flung open, a Secret Service member rushed in. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Madam President, but you asked for instant notification on this ... we just received a call from a field office in Florida. Doctor Holmes has been found by Mister Hildebrand and is being transported to D.C. as we speak. We expect him to touch down at Joint Base Andrews in four hours.”

  Margaret hopped to her feet. A surge of energy flushed through her as her heart raced with hope. She turned to her Chief of Staff and aimed her pointer finger at him while barking orders. “Round up everyone. I want the full contingent of the national security advisors in the Situation Room before that plane’s wheels are back on the ground. Make sure our representatives from NEO are here as well.”

  “B-but, Madam President,” Doug stammered. “I know Doctor Radcliffe is on the west coast—”

  “Listen to me,” Margaret set her jaw. “I don’t care what it takes.” She glanced at Walt. “Even if you have to put our good Doctor on a fast mover with in-air refuel, get them here, now! Are we all on the same page?”

  As Margaret listened to the resounding chorus of assurances, she waved everyone off, dismissing them to their tasks. A chill ran through her as she stared grim-faced out the windows of the Oval Office.

  What if Doctor Holmes doesn’t have any good answers?

  Chapter Twelve

  As Neeta arrived at the Cape Canaveral spaceport, she vaguely remembered a conversation she’d had with Dave years before when he’d let something slip about the Moon being part of a plan. “Neeta, it’s more complicated than you think. With Changing Venue, there’s also a big rocky satellite I have to contend with...” She’d never learned what that was about, and he’d never mentioned it again. If Dave was still around, he’d have long ago adopted a pseudonym, so it would be pointless to try and remotely search through the Moon shuttle logs for his name. He wasn’t stupid enough to make himself that easy to track. She was convinced that if Dave hadn’t been found by the government, he’d either be dead or hiding in a place so remote, that very few would think to look for him. It didn’t get much more remote than the Moon, and besides, that place was largely a mineral mining operation dominated by a bunch of roughnecks. Who’d expect Dave to be there?

  Breathing in the warm, salty air of the Florida coast, she sat in the outer lounge with a few dozen people, all of whom were waiting to cycle back up to the Moon. Most of them were rough-looking miners, returning to their jobs after having come back to Earth to visit with family or friends.

  Neeta focused her attention on the shuttle, only a few hundred yards away, and watched as nearly a dozen maintenance personnel scurried all over it, each executing their preflight safety checks.

  Over the din of the random conversations coming from the miners, the sound of heavy vehicles approaching from the nearby coastline drew Neeta’s attention. A convoy of military transport vehicles was rushing away from the beach. She watched them aim for a large military aircraft that had turned itself onto the runway, getting ready for takeoff.

  The convoy stopped fifty yards short of the airplane as the whine from the jet’s engines blocked out any other sounds. Soldiers piled out of the vehicles, yet there was one person in civilian clothing, directing the men to board the plane.

  Leaning forward, Neeta witnessed another man in civilian clothes being dragged out of one of the vehicles. She instantly shot out of her chair. The man was obviously unconscious, but that wasn’t what had gotten Neeta up onto her feet, sprinting toward the distant convoy.

  There was something about the black man that instantly reminded her of her old boss. As Neeta raced closer, a squirming woman with a shock of red hair was also ripped from one of the covered vehicles and dragged toward the plane.

  A
s Neeta approached, her confidence grew. As the large black man was pulled up the portable stairs leading into the military aircraft, despite the screaming whine of the jet engines and the distracting smell that reminded her of ozone, her senses screamed: Dave!

  Just as she got within fifty feet of the first of the convoy’s vehicles, a soldier grabbed her arm and yelled, “Ma’am, you’re not allowed to be here. Please return to—”

  “You don’t understand—” Neeta screamed, as she pulled toward the receding figure of her friend. “Dave!”

  “Neeta Patel,” a familiar, nasally voice caught her attention. “What in the world are you doing here?”

  Neeta glanced to her left, into the sneering face of Greg Hildebrand. “Greg, you found Dave! Is he okay?”

  Greg waved away the question and turned to the soldier. “Gutierrez, make sure you keep that crazy red-headed bitch separated from Holmes. I’ll be right up.”

  “Greg, you have to let me go with you! We were both asked to find him, but I just want to talk to him, see if he’s okay.”

  Greg frowned. “As long as there’s no confusion about who managed to find him, I suppose it’s okay if you hitch a ride. I know you’re a fan of his, but I just hope there’s a point to all this. I can’t imagine that there’s a way out of this situation, and maybe in the end, I’ll finally have an opportunity to tell the illustrious David Holmes, ‘I told you so.’” He glanced at her, and then back to the waiting area she’d raced from. “If you need to grab anything you left behind, we’re taking off in two minutes, so hurry.”

  ###

  The last soldier from the convoy scrambled up the steps leading into the large cargo jet, while a spaceport worker manning the controls of the portable stairs motioned toward his wristwatch to indicate that he was about to pull away from the plane. Neeta held up a finger toward the man as she put one foot on the base of the metal stairs. She yelled, hoping that her phone would pick up her voice over the noise of the airplane’s engines.

  “Burt! Hildebrand managed to find Dave! We’re at Cape Canaveral and I’m about to go back to DC with him. Can you hear me?”

  Neeta covered her ears, and across the crackling connection, she could barely hear Burt’s voice.

  “Neeta, I just received an alert about that from the White House and they’re having me meet you guys. I’ll be arriving in Andrews in about two hours.”

  “How’s that possible? Aren’t you in L.A.? That’s over 2,000 miles.”

  The man at the controls of the stairs frowned at Neeta, motioning for her to continue up into the plane or get off.

  Slowly, she inched up the stairs as she struggled to hear what Burt said through the static.

  “When the president wants you somewhere badly enough, evidently she has her ways. I’m being stuffed in a flight suit as we speak....”

  The static got worse as the electric fuel-cell-powered engines of the jet whined even louder and the man at the base of the stairs yelled something unintelligible. For a few seconds, Burt’s voice dropped in and out, so she only heard pieces of what he said.

  “... fighter jet at ... on supercruise ... with mid-air refueling.”

  “Refueling! They’re actually using gasoline and refueling in midair? Isn’t that insane?” The whine of the engines lessened for a moment and the connection suddenly became static-free.

  “Neeta, they used to do that kind of stuff all the time fifty years ago. None of the fuel cells of the local jets can go full speed the entire way, so they’ve dug up something that can handle the trip. Anyway, they’re rushing me off to the tarmac, I’ll—”

  The phone connection cut off with a surge of static, and Neeta raced up the stairs, all the while thinking, God, I hope Dave’s got some answers for us.

  ###

  Neeta held tightly to the armrests of her seat as she was pressed against her chair by the plane’s sudden acceleration. The uncomfortable feeling of the pressurized cabin and the sudden skyward launch sent a shudder through her. She tried to control her sense of panic. Before last week, she didn’t remember having a fear of flight, but out of nowhere, Neeta couldn’t help but feel a nervous energy any time she was in the air.

  The interior of the cargo jet was sparsely furnished, very much like she’d have imagined a military transport would be. She sat in the back of the plane with Dave, on an isolated bank of seats that seemed to have been bolted to the floor at the last minute. Only twenty feet toward the front of the plane were approximately a dozen soldiers, sitting on chairs that reminded Neeta of the type that flight attendants used on civilian aircraft. Their seats pulled down from the wall, and a long bank of them lined the sides of the jet.

  Beyond the soldiers was a closed compartment, where Neeta presumed the pilots were located. Greg wasn’t anywhere in sight, and she wondered if he didn’t want to be amongst the common soldiers.

  “Greg, you were always an ass, even in college.” Neeta shook her head and gripped the armrests even tighter as her stomach lurched with the plane’s sudden change of course.

  Coming from one of the few windows in the cabin, a beam of sunlight moved across the plane’s interior as the jet banked to the left. The plane tilted at an extreme angle for a moment, away from what had been a southbound direction, and eventually leveled off again, presumably aiming north for the country’s capitol.

  Tearing her mind away from her nervous stomach, Neeta focused on the man sitting across from her. Dave’s arms and legs were strapped to the chair, effectively tying him to the flight seat. When one soldier had led her to her seat, she was given firm instructions that she wasn’t supposed to touch any of Dave’s restraints, on Mister Hildebrand’s orders.

  Neeta thought the order was strange, considering Dave was the man the world was depending on to save them, but Greg and Dave had never gotten along—so why should that have changed over the years?

  Dave was still unconscious, and Neeta worried about what might have caused the need for the thick, bloodstained gauze taped across the side of his head.

  He looked different than she remembered. Even though Dave had never had a frail build, working out had never been his focus. Yet he now looked strong enough to tear someone in half. Even though his head lolled to the side, unconscious, his neck was thick, more muscular than she remembered it being, as was the breadth of his chest and arms. He looked like he’d been working as a day laborer, and not as the preeminent scientist of this world and a Nobel Prize winner.

  As Neeta pondered the rough life Dave must have been living, a strong feeling of sadness washed over her. She leaned forward in her seat and tried hard to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat.

  “Dave, I’m so sorry you’ve been put through this.” She breathed the words across the few feet that separated them. “Your days of hiding are over; I swear—”

  Dave groaned as his eyes fluttered.

  “Dave!” Neeta’s heart raced. She reached forward and patted him on the knee, as he blinked his eyes open and stared with a confused expression at his surroundings. “Dave, its Neeta, Neeta Patel. Remember me?”

  The confused expression vanished as he sat up straight and craned his neck to look behind him. He yelled, “Bella! Bella, where are you?”

  Neeta leaned closer to Dave and asked, “Is Bella the red-headed woman—”

  Dave wheeled his gaze toward Neeta and spat out the angry words, “Where is she? She needs to be with me.”

  Neeta leaned back with concern as his gaze turned toward his restraints and he pulled against them. The blood vessels in his neck and forearms bulged. All the while, he yelled for Bella.

  Neeta unbuckled her seatbelt and stood not more than a foot from him. “I’m going to see if I can help,” she whispered. “I’ll be right back.”

  ###

  “Greg, why don’t you let Dave see this Bella person?” Neeta confronted Hildebrand near the entrance to the front compartment. She figured that someone had probably aler
ted Greg that Dave was awake, because he came barreling from the front section, slamming the door behind him.

  Dave continued to yell for the mysterious Bella, and Greg sneered. “And this is who we’re depending on? What a joke.”

  Neeta glared at Greg and blocked his view of Dave. “Greg, I’m talking to you! What’s the story? Dave’s freaking out about that red-headed woman.” Pointing at the door, she asked, “Is she in there?”

  Greg nodded, and tilted his head toward the door. “Yes, but she’s clearly got issues. I think it’s the same chick he escaped the mental hospital with.” He turned toward the door and waved for Neeta to follow. “Take a look for yourself.”

  He opened the door and waved away the soldier guarding the entrance to the forward compartment.

  Neeta walked in, and the soldier yanked the door closed behind her. The plane was even bigger than she’d imagined. There were many more of the pull-down seats lining the walls of the front compartment, yet Neeta’s attention was drawn to the woman who knelt in the middle of the compartment, bobbing back and forth. Her shock of long hair was like an angry, red cloud masking her features and Neeta wondered what was wrong with her.

  As Neeta took a step closer, Greg warned, “She’s a nutcase. Don’t get close. She punches and kicks with the best of them.”

  Neeta hesitantly cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled, “Bella? Is that your name?”

  For a moment, the bobbing stopped. The woman glanced in Neeta’s direction, spat out a long stream of gibberish, and resumed her rapid rocking motion.

  Blinking, Neeta realized it hadn’t been gibberish. That woman had just yelled a bunch of numbers at her.

  “What in the world,” Neeta whispered, more to herself than anyone else.

  “I told you, she’s crazy.”

  Ripping her gaze from the woman, Neeta turned to Greg. “I’m guessing you found Dave with her, so why not see if bringing her to him will calm them both down?”