Paper or Plastic

by Mackey Chandler

  "I'd be real willing to pay twenty bucks and another twenty to cover your shipping, but if you can remember where you picked it up, that mystery is worth another twenty bucks to satisfy my curiosity," Josh offered.

  "Sixty bucks?" the old boy said, a little surprised. "As to how I got it - I cruise along on the trash day and look over what people set out. People throw things away you can't imagine. Appliances that work fine, antique dinnerware and glass. Sometimes the retirees here die and the kids don't have any idea what the stuff is in their place. They just toss it all, because old to them means junk, same for us sometimes as well as our stuff," he said with a wry smile. "Anyway, I remember this was from a place down on 52nd Street North West, last May they set pretty much the whole house out on the curb, furniture and everything."

  "That's still in Bradenton," he explained. "I near filled up my truck off that pile and made out good, got a couple hundred bucks easy off the whole thing. But this didn't sell and what is worse I tried it, just to see if it would open our garage door and the damn thing fried our receiver. Had to have Lowe's come out and replace the whole thing and the Mrs. was teed off at me for a couple days. You familiar with it? It doesn't have any marking at all."

  "Yes sir," Josh decided he would tell him just enough to satisfy him. "I'm an electronics techie, ham radio guy too. That is a prototype from the first company where I worked. It never got to market. I had one for awhile, but it died. There were problems with people getting shocked by it too. Get your hand out in front of it and it can give you a pretty good buzz. They never did get that straightened out, so it never got past legal to market it, but I'd sure like to have a working one, since it was some of the first stuff I worked on."

  "Prototype, huh?" SurfDog looked wary. "I used to work for Ford before I retired. I'm aware a prototype costs a heck of a lot more to make than a production part. Seems to me this must have cost a lot more than fifty bucks to make. Are you sure you're not going to turn around and sell it to a museum or something, for big bucks?"

  Josh laughed at that. "Not unless you know someplace where they have a garage door opener museum. I'm probably one of six people in the country who would look at that and remember what it is. But if you want to put it back up to auction with the word prototype in the title and see if anybody bites on it be my guest."

  "Well, it was an ugly little sucker, didn't even have a clip on it to hang it on your visor. How about kicking in another twenty since it has such nostalgia for you and I'll pack it up extra good for you, so the damn post office doesn't crush it?"

  "Another ten," Josh offer. "And you know you're making out like a bandit at that, when you offered it for ten before."

  "Yeah, well you know how it is when you're on a fixed income. But I can live with seventy bucks. That's early bird dinner for the Mrs. and me. Here, I'll type in my account information."

  Josh transferred the cash to him and gave him a box in Cooperville to ship it to. Now if the Post Office doesn't lose the thing we're set, he thought.

  "Do you think some Federal agency would give me a good price for a genuine alien artifact?" Josh asked Roger facetiously. "Maybe I could get them all fighting each other to see who will get it."

  That gave Roger a second’s panic, until he saw for sure he was cracking funny. Roger already had the sense Josh didn't feel any close ties to whomever he had been employed with, or he would have never brought the stuff to Josh. In Germany Josh had seemed to feel wronged by what happened to him and Rog hadn't seen anything to change that.

  The shielded room just affirmed that. If he had nothing to hide, or still worked for his previous people, then all his equipment would have been in the open basement, not hidden.

  At least he hoped that was true.

  Chapter 11

  Three days after he dropped his items off at Josh's, Rog was sitting at his computer. It was hard to concentrate. The cabin was tight and insulated, but the CRACK – Tonk! of Martee practicing on the porch penetrated. Not quite enough to make him put on the shooting muffs and too much to ignore.

  An IM popped up text-only on his screen: "OK to stop by?"

  Door-Opener was the ID. That made him smile. "OK," was all he sent back. He slipped on the ear protectors and went out on the porch.

  "My friend, who has the stuff we took off the cop, just IM'd me and is coming over. Do you want to meet him, or do you want to wait in my room until he's gone?"

  "You trust him, don't you?" Martee asked.

  "Yes, but I don't demand you trust him."

  "I've trusted your judgment for everything else and it has worked fine. Let's see if my English is getting good enough for strangers."

  Martee opened the pistol and ejected the empty brass into a coffee can on the table. They couldn't be reloaded, being rimfire cartridges, but they didn't want to slip on them and fall either. He might actually scrap them someday if he had enough. At the rate she was going through the boxes she'd need more soon too.

  She loaded with the rounds Roger had modified, which had carbide pins pressed in the hole with Locktite where the polymer tip was removed. That meant she was done, as she wouldn't waste those on practice. He'd tried a few of those modified rounds himself and the point of impact seemed unchanged from the factory load at fifty meters. He was more concerned with terminal ballistics under five meters in any case.

  "I'll clean this after your friend leaves," she assured Roger. He had emphasized maintaining her equipment. She clipped the holster inside her jeans and pulled the sweater down over it.

  "Would it be too much for you to handle if I invite him for supper?" Rog asked. "I should be starting it soon anyway and he probably has a lot to show me."

  "No, I think I can eat without closing my eyes and doing the rocking back and forth thing," Martee said, embarrassed. She was starting to understand how bizarre that looked, to people who were blasé about the rapture of double chocolate torte.

  "He must have IM'd me on the road," Roger said. "I think I hear him turning off the main highway already."

  Martee scooped up her shooting things and took them inside to put away. By the time she came back out the sound of a diesel engine easing up the drive was distinct. They sat on the porch chairs to each side of the small table and watched the pickup approach. It was a good three hundred meters to the place where it became visible coming out of the trees and he didn't hurry.

  Josh turned around, parked facing back out and got out of the cab with a gym bag. He was in jeans and flannel, with a beret today. When he saw them sitting on the porch, he reached into the pickup bed and got a folding chair to join them. He dropped the bag on the table and unfolded the chair. It was the sort with a single sling of fabric hanging from pockets sown in the corners. It had Martee's interest right away. He eased into it and leaned back resting his head on the back.

  "That's your stuff all safe. I had to remove a transmitter on the computer, but otherwise it was clean. Glad I got it out though, because it isn't like wireless with limited range. It looks to be a good five watts output, at a bit higher frequency. It was really easy because everything was modular. Much easier to work on than a… uh… commercial computer," he hedged, not sure what he could say in front of Martee.

  "Josh, this is Martee. You can speak freely in front of her. She's aware of the stuff's origin."

  Josh looked upset. "If three people know about it, then by my definition it's not a secret. Do you have any idea how far afield knowledge of this extends?"

  Roger got a thoughtful look on his face. "You know – I think that is a question we should have asked a lot earlier. If we could find two matches for these items with an image search, what are the chances some agency of the US government, or some foreign government have already found other copies and came to the conclusion they are extraterrestrial?"

  "Pretty good maybe," Josh admitted. "I had two more image matches after the search had time to run. They were lower percentage matches, but I'm sure of both of them. And one involved a federal age
ncy, so we know there is at least one item in their possession, if they have the sense to recognize it."

  "One match was a series of still photos, showing the rental tables at a gun show in Arizona. Among the really cheap nasty handguns on one table is another pistol like you gave me. I'm really curious if it was functional or not, but it is in a rack with old Saturday night specials and cheap Eastern European guns. It wasn't a good match because you are looking at the back of the grip pointed toward you. There is no side view at all and the dealer sign or banner is not in the pic either to track it down."

  "Maybe a private investigator could show the picture to the dealer at the next table and he'd remember who was next to him, or the show organizer might have a floor chart of all his rental tables. But I’d hate to spend that kind of money to just find out it was traded in by somebody they didn't know."

  "The other match was for another of the electronic weapons. It is cataloged among the debris in a commuter plane crash in '03, that was never connected to any particular passenger. There was a John Doe in the wreck also, who never was matched to any database. He had ID to buy tickets but it was dead end ID, when you went as far as birth records.

  They never made a public thing of it though, so maybe they smelled something funny. They just released his name on the credit card and hometown. They never made it public he had no family and the billing address was a mail box store. They probably think it is terrorism related though and they didn't connect the stun gun at all. In fact the images didn't get posted for ten years, until when the NTSB put all the unclaimed possessions online, after that big Airbus A380 crash."

  "Sounds reasonable to me," Roger agreed. "Have you fired the pistol?"

  "No," Josh shook his head and smiled. "I sort of hated to without making sure I could recover the bullets. The damn things are gold."

  "Gold?" Roger repeated.

  "Yeah, it makes sense really. The ballistic coefficient is great and they should deform very nicely. I checked the karat value with a little acid kit. You rub it on a stone against known samples and drop some acid on the rub marks. The test showed it to be about 22Kt or better. I don't know what it is alloyed with. I'd have to send it to a lab for that. It's pretty close to .20 caliber, just a hair on the big side, .205" instead of .204", but it would fire through a .20 caliber barrel OK."

  "And what sort of propellant?" Roger wondered.

  "That's the twist," Josh admitted. "It appears to be an electrical discharge, through a chamber that is filled with a single tiny drop of pure water. There is a tank inside with enough volume for maybe eighty shots. It has what I'd say is an ultracapacitor. It's low inductance and about two full farads, but it has to take more voltage than anything I can buy, because I don't see any voltage multiplying cascade.

  I couldn't really fire it up and test the peak voltage, without taking something apart I might ruin. It discharges across a gap that has two peculiar electrodes, one of them looks shiny and the other dull. I'd love to get the dull one under a microscope, but I'd have to cut the chamber apart. You can only see them using a bore scope. The power source is a sealed unit, but I don't see any way of recharging it. There is no external port to connect it up. So unless I cut something that's a mystery too."

  "A steam gun," Roger marveled. "I'd hate to cut up this one, without another in reserve." Rog said.

  "I agree. You notice I am not pushing to do that," Josh pointed out.

  "But trying to acquire another may be too risky if any intelligence agencies know about these folks. Just asking around may bring them down on us." Rog pointed out.

  "Yes, well you might stop and ask if this is something we really have the capacity to exploit? I’m starting to think we are in over our heads. I know you have some funds old man. I'm comfortable for my own needs, because they are few. But can we really come up with the funds to properly investigate even these few artifacts - much less discover how many of these aliens are operating on Earth and what their intentions are?"

  "Even if we can find one or more of the aliens and expose them to prove we're sane, don't you think we'll have to contact my old company, or use some of their government connections? Somebody with real resources we could turn it all over to on the best terms we can get?"

  Josh had been looking Roger in the eye and ignoring Martee. He wasn't ignoring her anymore because she drew her pistol and had extended it across the table pointing at his nose. She had moved much faster than Roger would have believed possible and was holding it very steady.

  Roger was unhappy to see she had taken time to cock the hammer and her finger was inside the trigger guard firmly on the trigger. She didn't look happy.

  Josh only moved his eyes and seemed to be focusing on the muzzle of the weapon.

  "On the other hand," Josh said slowly and gently, "perhaps you folks are aware of other facts you haven't shared with me and we have a wider range of options than I've envisioned."

  For two long seconds everyone stayed frozen and then Martee took her finger out of the trigger guard and extended it alongside. She thought about it another couple seconds and pulled the pistol back, pointing to the side at the wall and dropped the hammer back to a safe position. She rested it on the table in front of her, but left her hand around the grips.

  "I'm really – really sorry, Roger," Martee said. "You told me never to point it at someone unless I had already decided to shoot them, but I really, truly had decided to shoot him and changed my mind. I hope you won't hold that against me. Will you still trust me to have the gun in your house?"

  "Sure Martee. I've changed my mind a time or two, after I had my sights on someone. Would you like to tell us why?"

  "Well at first I thought this man is going to betray me to the police and all I could think was to eliminate him before he could do so. But then I realized he really doesn't know who the aliens are, or their intentions. Not even that I'm one. So what he said is really reasonable without that knowledge. Also you didn't react at all to his proposal and I know he is your friend, but if one of us was clearly a betrayer, you'd shoot that one before either of us could shoot the other. I've seen you are fast enough for sure. You are too good a man to join in an injustice with either of us."

  "You really considered all that in the time you were pointing the pistol at me?" Josh asked her.

  "Oh, no, I considered all that by the time I put my finger on the trigger. I thought about a great deal more after that, before I felt safe to lower it. I wouldn't want to bore you with all that just yet."

  "So you are an alien?" Josh wanted confirmed.

  "Yes sir, an honest to God ET." She gave him a Vulcan salute, left handed. She was really absorbing the culture.

  "Of course having a friendly, cooperating alien, as an ally changes everything. You might have mentioned that little detail," he directed at Roger.

  "I meant to get around to it, but I never envisioned you saying such a silly thing as you just did. I'd never feel safe to trust some shadowy agency to treat us right. Instead of a reward, I'd worry about being locked up indefinitely. After I saw your setup at your house I was pretty sure you wouldn't go back to working for the same people, but maybe I'm wrong. How would they react to your secret equipment room?" Roger asked him.

  "It costs a lot of money to lock people up," Josh explained. "They really don't like to do it as much as you'd think from espionage thrillers and spy movies."

  "It's a lot easier to put people on the payroll, or just kill them if you must. And you'd be surprised how seldom people really want to do that."

  "As for the room – you are right - I'd want to strip that out and do a major clean up of stuff before I even thought about trying to communicate with my old bosses. There's stuff there they wouldn't be happy about at all, stuff that would sour any attempt to cooperate with them. But I didn't have much in the way of other options, before you revealed Martee."

  "Truce then?" Roger suggested. "You both promise not to plug the other, without discussing with me why it is necessa
ry? Unless of course the other one draws on you. Just be aware they may be drawing to shoot the bad guy, who just appeared over your shoulder."

  "Do we know some bad guys by sight?" Josh asked.

  "If they have an alien gun or stunner in their hand they are bad guys," Roger assured him.

  "So Martee here doesn't have any other alien good guys associated with her, we have to keep safe?"

  "There may be others who would become our allies," Martee answered for herself, "but for here and now, if they have these sort of weapons you've examined they are with the police, who are trying to seal your world off from ours."

  Josh thought about that for a moment. "Agreed," he said after giving it some consideration. Nobody was rude enough to point out how much easier it was for him to agree at the moment.

  "Agreed," Martee responded too and slipped her pistol in her holster.

  "Well Josh. You want to stay for supper, if you didn't piss yourself?"

  "I've been in worse situations in the Pan Arabic Protectorate," he grumbled. "The day we got that plane ride to Wiesbaden together, I saw a bad guy point a RPG around the corner of a building at our communications van and fire. At least if Martee shot me I'd have never known. I still dream about that sucker coming at us. I think it took a half hour to make it to the van." Then they had to explain to Martee exactly what a Rocket Propelled Grenade was.

  "Martee, why don't we go in to the kitchen table and you can explain what our situation is and what you are interested in doing to Josh, while I make dinner. I'll listen in and see if I have a clear picture what your thoughts are and only butt in if I need to for your English."

  "OK," Martee agreed getting up and snatching up the gym bag. "Let's also take this computer in and we'll see if we can compare it with what is on mine."

  "Now that would be fun," Josh surprised them by saying.

  Chapter 12

  The rich aroma of a tomato-based sauce filled the kitchen. Martee had taken the time to make a salad and rejoined Josh at the table. Rog had been glad to see she would turn her back to Josh so readily. He was adding garlic with a heavy hand and had water heating in a big pot for linguini.