The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.: A Novel
Page 53
OTHER NOTES:
—“BACKHOE” is Secret Service code name for Lieutenant General Octavian K. Frink.
—“STYLUS” is Dr. Roger Blevins.
—“DOSECOPS C4” is the communications officer on duty in the Diachronic Operations Security Ops (DOSECOPS) Command, Control, and Communications Center, the hub for security operations beneath DODO’s Cambridge, MA, headquarters.
—“DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL” is the ranking officer on duty there (at the time of these recordings, Major Isobel Sloane).
—“DOSECOP 1,” “DOSECOP 2,” etc. denote specific security officers on site.
—“USSS 1,” USSS 2,” etc. denote United States Secret Service officers visiting the site as part of BACKHOE’s personal security detail.
15:00:00 DOSECOPS C4: All units, this is a reminder that the facility is now officially closed for the day and transitioning to off-hours security protocols. We’re expecting a number of delivery vehicles in the next two hours at Docks 1 and 2, these will be bringing party supplies. Normal screening procedures apply for all incoming cargo, drivers, and entertainment personnel. Doors open for civilian guests in two hours.
15:37:12 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: This is C4 Actual. I have just received confirmation that Backhoe is coming to the party. He’ll be coming in from Hanscom, exact arrival time TBD. We will be integrating with his Secret Service detail as needed. Officers on duty at Dock 1 should stand by to close it to all civilian traffic and make it ready to receive Backhoe and his entourage; please acknowledge.
15:37:38 DOSECOP 1: Acknowledged, standing by.
16:05:56 DOSECOPS C4: Two vans are now inbound from MUON Residential Facility carrying a total of nineteen MUONs and three support staff, ETA 16:30. We’ll direct them to Docks 1 and 2. Any officers on patrol in that part of the building should stand by to help check credentials, just to avoid a backup and a lot of annoyed MUONs.
16:23:32 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: This is C4 Actual. I’ve received confirmation from Backhoe’s Secret Service detail that he is on the ground and in a vehicle. ETA is about 17:30 depending on traffic, will update as I have further information.
16:30:00 DOSECOPS C4: All units, this is a reminder that doors will open for civilian ingress in thirty minutes. Officers on internal patrols, now is the time for you to inspect all surfaces for potentially classified documents. All monitors are to be switched off or placed in secure locked mode with Infosec-compliant screen savers.
16:31:45 DOSECOP 1: Dock 1 here. MUON vans have arrived and are backing into the grade-level ramps at Docks 1 and 2.
16:31:55 DOSECOPS C4: Acknowledged. Have officers standing by the side doors of those vans to offer a hand to disembarking MUONs, we have been warned to expect an abundance of high heels, and some of the ladies are new to that kind of footwear. Don’t want to kick off the party with an injury.
16:32:02 DOSECOP 1: Acknowledged. Standing by with stepstools and strong arms.
16:36:38 DOSECOPS C4: Loading dock detail, sitrep please? Looks on the cameras like there’s quite a bottleneck and some hurt feelings.
16:36:54 DOSECOP 1: Roger that, C4. If you’re watching this on the feed you may have noticed that some of the MUONs’ costumes are, uh . . .
16:37:00 DOSECOPS C4: Stop right there before you get into trouble, officer. Yes, the costumes have been receiving close attention from C4 staff and we are aware of their nature. What is the issue?
16:37:10 DOSECOP 1: Some of them didn’t bring their lanyards and badges because of compatibility issues of an aesthetic or stylistic nature with costumes. Procedures dictate . . .
16:37:20 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: Understood. This is Actual. I am authorizing you to waive procedures and treat the MUONs as civilians for now. No need to write up incident reports or any of that. Visual ID is sufficient. The one in the red shimmery um . . . whatever you call it is gonna have to take her mask off whether she likes it or not.
16:37:31 DOSECOP 1: Roger that, Actual. Speaking of visual ID, we have two in violation of the diversity policy regs.
16:37:40 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: Come again?
16:37:46 DOSECOP 1: Pointy hats and brooms, sir.
16:37:50 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: So, two of the MUONs are attired in a manner that is culturally offensive to MUONs?
16:37:57 DOSECOP 1: According to the regs issued yesterday, yes, sir.
16:38:02 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAl: That’s Ms. Stoll’s problem. Let them in without further delay.
16:50:00 DOSECOPS C4: All units, doors open in ten.
16:50:15 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: This is C4 Actual. Just an update before all hell breaks loose. Backhoe is still inbound, ETA has been pushed back to 17:45 because he has decided to swing by Stylus’s residence and pick up Stylus and his wife en route. They will all be arriving together. At that time we’ll be clearing Dock 1 for the vehicle carrying Backhoe and Stylus, as well as Dock 2 for the war wagon with Secret Service detail.
16:51:20 DOSECOP 2: Reporting in from Door 1 where we have now two separate minivan loads of costumed rug rats with moms in a high state of combat readiness. They are taking exception to our holding the line on the 1700 hours opening time. Request permission to let them in early.
16:51:30 DOSECOPS C4: Hold the line. We see the moms and concur with your threat assessment. As diversionary tactic we are sending out a juggler on a unicycle. You might want to open the door for him.
16:51:59 DOSECOP 2: Acknowledged, I have unicyclist on visual.
17:00:00 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: Okay to open doors to civilian guests. Officers on patrol, divert to entrance zones and help with any bottlenecks—all credentials need to be checked, no exceptions.
17:01:11 DOSECOPS C4: Door 2 personnel, our audio systems picked up a loud bang followed by a scream, please report.
17:01:25 DOSECOP 3: Roger, that was the guy making the balloon animals. Wiener dog underwent explosive decompression, scared a baby.
17:01:34 DOSECOPS C4: Acknowledged.
17:15:00 DOSECOPS C4: All door units, report with numbers.
17:15:15 DOSECOP 3: Door 2 has admitted 41 with approximately three dozen still waiting for credentials check.
17:15:31 DOSECOP 2: Door 1, 79 in, a dozen waiting.
17:15:40 DOSECOP 4: Door 3, 56 in, maybe two dozen outside.
17:16:02 DOSECOP 1: Uh, C4, no one yet except the MUONs but we are expecting two full buses from the SARF [Supervised Anachron Residential Facility] with an estimated total of 70. Should be here in ten.
17:16:12 DOSECOPS C4: Weren’t they supposed to be in the building by 1600? For the Anachron briefing?
17:16:17 DOSECOP 1: Anachrons and their sense of time.
17:16:26 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: This is C4 Actual, I want those buses processed fast so we can clear the docks for Backhoe’s vehicles. Any officers on internal patrol, if it looks like the surge is abating at the doors, redirect to the loading docks.
...
17:27:43 DOSECOP 1: Here come the SARF buses. Brace for weirdness.
17:50:15 DOSECOPS C4: Patching Secret Service voice frequencies into local DOSECOPS VOIP network. We should all be on the same channel now, literally.
17:50:21 USSS 1: Backhoe vehicle 1, comm check.
17:50:25 DOSECOPS C4: Acknowledged.
17:50:30 USSS 2: Backhoe vehicle 2, comm check.
17:50:35 DOSECOPS C4: Acknowledged.
17:50:42 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: This is DOSECOPS C4 Actual welcoming our Secret Service brothers and sisters to Boston. We are tracking you with an ETA of sixty seconds. Officers in civilian clothes are waiting on the street to wave your vehicles in. Loading docks are clear.
17:50:59 USSS 1: Thank you, C4 Actual, Boston drivers have made quite an impression on us, and we are looking forward to working with you and your staff on a safe, sane Halloween party.
17:52:15 USSS 1: C4, I’m out of the vehicle and having a look-see around the dock area. Everything looks nominal but there is one gentleman wearing a Mongol costume having an argument with your door staff . . .
&nbs
p; 17:52:25 DOSECOPS C4: It’s not a costume.
17:52:29 USSS 1: Come again?
17:52:33 DOSECOPS C4: He actually is a Mongol.
17:52:40 USSS 1: Oh.
17:52:43 DOSECOPS C4: We’ve patched him into an interpreter over a voice link but the conversation is proceeding slowly.
17:52:53 USSS 1: Is that a real archery set he’s carrying? That is my only concern. That, and the fact that he seems agitated. Is it safe for Backhoe to get out of the car? Oh, never mind, Backhoe just got out of the car.
17:53:01 DOSECOPS C4: Who is the Indian chief? Hard to make out on the security feed.
17:53:09 USSS 1: That is Stylus. Repeat, Stylus is dressed as an Indian chief.
17:53:20 USSS 2: On another note, C4, has the shipping container in the adjoining bay been cleared and secured?
17:53:27 DOSECOPS C4: The rusty green one over in Dock 3?
17:53:31 USSS 2: Roger. Just part of our SOP to check and secure any of those within our perimeter.
17:53:40 DOSECOPS C4: Understood. It’s not a shipping container.
17:53:44 USSS 2: Come again, C4?
17:53:52 DOSECOPS C4: The thing in Dock 3 that looks exactly like a rusty green shipping container is something else. Will explain later. It is extremely secure.
17:54:02 USSS 1: As you can see, Backhoe’s entire delegation is out of the vehicle and waiting behind the Mongol, can we have the interpreter tell him to stand aside please so that we can wave our people through?
17:54:07 DOSECOPS C4: Will pass your request on but it might be more prudent to . . .
17:54:11 USSS 1: Never mind, C4, Stylus is gesturing toward the shipping container, telling the others about it.
17:54:17 DOSECOPS C4: ATTO. It’s called an ATTO. The shipping container.
17:54:31 DOSECOP 1: Genghis Khan has cleared door security, we are open for business to welcome Backhoe. Apologies for delay.
17:54:36 USSS 1: Copy that. Stand by.
17:54:42 DOSECOPS C4: As you can see, Backhoe’s delegation is wandering over toward the ATTO.
17:54:55 DOSECOP 1: Is that Backhoe’s costume?
17:54:59 USSS 1: Affirmative.
17:55:06 DOSECOP 1: He’s dressed as . . . a lieutenant general in the United States Army?
17:55:16 USSS 1: Affirmative. He says it’s the only night of the year when he can wear it in Boston and not be recognized.
Diachronicle
DAY 1920 (HALLOWEEN, YEAR 5)
In which witches will be witches
I SHALL NEVER KNOW IF the Halloween party was, from the start, a monstrous distraction created by Gráinne. It’s true that the higher-ups had offered such a masque the previous two years . . . but now I wonder if perhaps Gráinne, in Year 5, did not use an ODEC to go back in time to the same ODEC two years earlier, slip out and work her wiles on Blevins (i.e., induce him to make the Halloween party an annual event), and then return to the present day—I mean to say, what was the present day before I was marooned in 1851.
In any case, there was a Halloween party and she used elements of it to her advantage. More specifically, she relied upon it as a diversion so that she could begin to use the ATTO to her advantage.
Have I mentioned the ATTO in these scribblings? In simplest terms it was a portable ODEC. Oda-sensei, with his unending genius, sorted out how to make it both portable and larger than the stationary ODECs in the office: it was the size and shape of a shipping container. Blevins was obsessed with it, a cat with catnip, and grew preoccupied with all the great psychological ops/warfare that could be accomplished with a movable magic machine. Both Tristan and I were obviously hesitant (if the reasons for hesitance weren’t obvious then, they sure as shit are by now!).
Erszebet’s attitude toward the ATTO, and the work that could be done in it, vacillated wildly. After five years she was really fucking sick bored with doing no magic but Sending, and so the possibilities offered by the ATTO intrigued her; on the other hand, she resented going through another series of parlor tricks to demonstrate its capabilities, as she had done with us when we first sprang her from the elder-hostel. I wish I could remember now what Gráinne thought of it—I realize with rueful retrospection that she was playing her cards very close to her vest.
But to the events of that evening: Gráinne and Erszebet had both chosen to get all ironically meta about things mock the contemporary image of witches by wearing green body paint and pointy hats (they claimed they were groupies of Wicked, but I know for a fact that neither of them has ever seen it). Anyhow, put off by the extreme security measures, they failed to show up at the loading dock as the rest of us did, to pay political homage, as Blevins and Frink arrived.
Roger Blevins was dressed like a Native American tribal chieftain, lest any of us forget that his cultural insensitivity was boundless. Frink wore his own dress uniform. Macy Stoll, Blevins’s Girl Friday, dressed as a sexy librarian, or tried to, anyhow. Erszebet had costumed Tristan and myself to resemble Boris and Natasha from War and Peace. (Tristan, never having read War and Peace, assumed he was going to be dressed like the Cold War spy from Rocky and Bullwinkle, and was speechless when presented with the garb of a nineteenth-century Russian aristocrat. He did look quite splendid, I confess.) Frank dressed like the George Takei character from Star Trek, and Rebecca dressed like Rebecca, with a lavender wreath or something. Mortimer and Julie Lee were non-human bipeds.
Of course, Blevins immediately wanted to show off the ATTO to Frink. Isobel Sloane, the smart and tough head of DOSECOPS, prudently suggested that they come back in an hour, allowing them to make sure everything was “shipshape.”
Blevins agreed gaily, requesting they then be joined for a demonstration by some witches (whom we were supposed to call MUONs, a term Erszebet found onomatopoetically bovine and thus offensive. Of course.). As most of the witches were in party dress, Major Sloane could not identify them, and asked to solicit Erszebet and/or Gráinne, who were the easiest to find.
Once the two were located they grudgingly agreed to this. Erszebet had thrown a hissy fit when the DOSECOPS approached her, but Rebecca and I found her in the women’s restroom and convinced her this was not a return to the humiliating parlor tricks of the late 1840s. Gráinne was totally shit-faced quite merry and trying to molest Mortimer in the coat closet, which we discovered because Julie had been tracking her all evening in anticipation of just such an event. Gráinne had a thing for Mortimer (or more likely for whatever could only be accessed from his computer. Ah, the sad wisdom of hindsight.).
Anyhow, an hour later, Oda-sensei ceremoniously opened the door to the ATTO, ushered the quintet (two witches, Blevins, Frink, and Mrs. Blevins) inside, and closed the door on them.
The Secret Service detail that had arrived with Frink immediately grew agitated that they could not maintain a radio connection to him while the ATTO was in operation. I rather thrilled at Major Sloane’s attempt to explain the decoherence/multiverse premise to them—it was very satisfying to know that everyone on the DODO team takes an interest in what we are actually doing. The Secret Service official did not grasp it, concerned only with losing contact with the general.
“Don’t worry,” said Isobel Sloane. “Gráinne is so drunk that Erszebet’s the only one doing any magic, and knowing Erszebet she’ll come flouncing out of there in about twenty minutes, bored with all of them.”
And a wry sense of humor to boot? How I wish I’d had the bandwidth taken the time to get to know Major Isobel Sloane a little better. When I think of where I am now, I cannot but wonder if she either contributed to my situation or could possibly have prevented it.
To continue: Erszebet did not, in fact, come flouncing out after twenty minutes, or even after thirty, or even forty-five. The Secret Service folks were beside themselves with anxiety. Major Sloane, and Tristan, and Frank Oda, and myself all attempted to quell their misgivings.
Reader, we should not have quelled them. For there were things happening within that ATTO that can never be undone. If on
ly we had known to be suspicious.
20:08:00 USSS 1: C4, get me Actual.
20:08:10 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: C4 Actual here.
20:08:13 USSS 1: It’s been an hour and not a peep. I am beginning to get concerned messages from people in the Pentagon wanting to know why Backhoe is incommunicado.
20:08:22 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: The Pentagon?
20:08:27 USSS 1: The Trapezoid. Was my transmission garbled?
20:08:33 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: Sorry, I was distracted. I thought you said Pentagon.
20:08:40 USSS 1: I’m a little foggy myself with all of the weirdness around here and I may have said the wrong thing. I am referring to the [GARBLED]. The very large building across the Potomac River from DC that is the headquarters of the United States military. Does that help clarify matters?