“Oh, forgive me.” Dr. Adams quickly retracted her hand. “I nearly forgot the new protocol.”
Lauren and Dr. Adams bowed to each other. Ellis more or less nodded at Dr. Adams.
“This new superbug seems determined to reshape our lives, one way or another,” Dr. Adams said. “Welcome, Special Agents Cole and Madison—is that correct?”
“It is,” Lauren said, “but just Lauren and Ellis will do. This is a pretty informal visit.”
“Good, because this is a pretty informal place. You can just call me Desiree.” Desiree giggled.
Lauren attempted to mirror Desiree’s behavior, but girly girls were the most difficult for her to understand, let alone emulate. But, when in Rome…
Ellis eyed Lauren suspiciously.
What? She squinted at him.
“They say this virus keeps mutating,” Desiree said as she led them to the ISS I wing of the museum. “I was just reading in Nature how they’re now looking at nanotechnology for a solution—some kind of robotic antibodies. Can you imagine? But they say that it’s still ten years off.”
“Everything’s ten years off,” Lauren said.
“Isn’t that the truth?” Desiree agreed.
“Did you know Dr. Lee?” Ellis asked.
“Desiree’s not old enough to have known Dr. Lee,” Lauren scolded Ellis.
“Thank you, Lauren,” Desiree said. “But I’m afraid I’m a bit older than I appear. I did know Dr. Lee. Enough to say hello, anyway. My first real job at NASA was as a fact-checker for a documentary on NASA’s collaborations with private firms. It was scrubbed, naturally, following the bombing. Not a lot of PR to be gained out of that collaboration.”
“What’d you think when you first heard about the bombing?” Lauren asked.
“Utter disbelief.” Desiree led them into a room the size of a blimp hangar. A replica of the International Space Station loomed two stories above their heads.
Lauren bumped into Ellis. “Sorry.”
“He is kind of hard to miss,” Desiree told Lauren with a suggestive smile. Then she looked up at the replica. “The model up there is three-quarters scale, except for the solar panels. It’s just an illusion how they seem to project out into space.”
Lauren looked up and down the empty walkways. “Where is everybody?”
“This wing is temporarily closed due to the new OSHA air flow regulations. They’re retrofitting the building with a new HVAC system that’s supposed to have all kinds of special particle filtering.”
Desiree took them over to one of the wall displays where, behind the glass, holographic astronauts worked diligently on the space shuttle.
“And this one, over here,” she said, leading them to the next display, “shows Dr. Lee’s laboratory. Well, it’s the module in which Dr. Lee had set up his laboratory. I’m afraid we don’t have a holographic image of him, or his experiment. But I do have pictures back in the documentation room. We’ll be going there next.”
Lauren read the plaque: The Leonardo—a Permanent Multipurpose Module. She looked at the display. The Leonardo was a cylindrical, windowless, padded room. If Dr. Lee did go insane, he sure was in the right place.
“Just one other thing in here I thought might be of interest.” Desiree took them around the corner to where the museum had several floor displays. They passed two satellites and a rocket engine before coming to a space capsule. “Look familiar? This is Helios’s sister ship, Chronos.”
Lauren and Ellis walked around its perimeter.
“We’ve already submitted a request to bring Helios here to Houston,” Desiree said. “The perfect addition to our conspiracy wing. Just kidding.” She giggled. “Come on, I’ll take you to the documentation room.”
Leading them down a “staff only” hallway, Desiree explained that requests to view Dr. Lee’s archives were typically made by students working on their dissertations. “It’s been decades since the FBI has looked at this stuff.”
She opened the door to the documentation room where Desiree’s team had placed boxes of items specifically linked to Dr. Lee. There were nine tables, each with five or six boxes on it.
“Here we have photos, files, laptops, flash drives, flight patches, logbooks—essentially, all the small stuff,” Desiree told them. “We also have a warehouse with bulkier items from this time period, but this smaller stuff tends to be more personal, more interesting. Bear in mind, though, this is a well-beaten path. Not one of these items hasn’t been examined a thousand times before.”
“That’s all right,” Lauren said. “We’re only looking for general information. And thank you for getting this stuff out. I had visions of digging through old, dusty warehouse shelves.” Lauren opened one of the plastic boxes. “You said that these archives were typically accessed by students. Who else has accessed them in the past few years?”
“Let’s see. There were these two irritating gentlemen, working on a book called A Dubious History of Space Flight—I think that’s what it was called.”
“How about researchers or scientists?”
“Oh sure. We had Dr. Carrols’s people in here about—”
“Dr. Jane Carrols?” Ellis stepped closer.
“From the Iceland Group?” Lauren asked.
“That’s right,” Desiree told them. “She was very nice.”
“What was she looking for?”
“I have no idea. She had four people come in and filter out all the written material. They removed logbooks, diaries, flight manuals, and journals—basically anything written. Then she and two others came in and went through all the electronics, computer components, and test equipment—everything, even the stuff in the warehouse. Whatever she was looking for, she never found it. But she was very thankful and very good about having her staff put everything back in order.”
“When was this?” Lauren asked.
“About three years ago.”
“The crystal…?” Lauren looked at Ellis. “Dr. Watson did say it was about the size of a quarter.”
“Oh my stars.” Desiree laughed. “You two sound like a couple of regular conspiracists. I suppose the Helios discovery has us all questioning what really happened. But…” Desiree’s voice became a whisper. “… Is this about something you found inside it?”
“We can’t really discuss it,” Lauren said. “But don’t get your hopes up. It’s our job to investigate these things even if they’re really nothing.”
“I might be able to help, though,” Desiree replied, almost pleadingly. “This is my area of expertise. Was it a diary? Perhaps a suicide note?”
“I’m sure the capsule, and everything we found inside it, will be yours in just a couple of weeks,” Lauren assured her. “For now, though, we just need some general information for our report.”
“Of course, of course.”
“But I will see what we can do about expediting that process,” Lauren told her.
“Thank you,” Desiree said.
“Is there anything else you can tell us about Dr. Carrols?” Ellis asked.
“Well, she was quite entertaining—”
“Entertaining?” Ellis looked at her curiously.
“One of our staffers asked her a question about her work, and she ended up giving us a lecture on the relationship between probability and mutability. She said that everything, past and future, is fixed, and it’s simply our ‘not knowing’ that makes the world appear mutable.
“The past is fixed to the degree that we know about it, but, she said, the future is no different. If one were to step off the roof of this building, we all know what’s going to happen next. The laws of physics—which provide us a limited vision into the future—tell us that, to the degree we can see it, the future is fixed.”
“Did Dr. Carrols mention whether or not she had any success duplicating Dr. Lee’s work?” Lauren asked.
“I didn’t get the impression that that was what she was trying to do. I’m pretty certain she was much further along than Dr. Lee
.”
“Do you think Dr. Lee was successful in his experiments?” Ellis asked.
“There’s no evidence to suggest he was.”
“What about the bombing?” Lauren removed a photo album from one of the boxes. “Why do you think he did it?”
“That seems to be a mystery as well. But, personally—and, mind you, I’m no conspiracist, but—I believe someone pushed him into a corner.”
“And what about these conspiracists?” Lauren asked. “What do they believe happened?”
“Well, if you want to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, I can pretty much guarantee that the king of the Space Station Bombing conspiracy world, George O’Kelly, is here at the museum at this very moment.”
“You can?” Lauren studied a picture of five astronauts. One was Dr. Lee.
“George comes here nearly every day to write in the cafeteria. He’s a freelance journalist and blogger who multitasks by staking out the museum while he writes. He always said that something like this would happen—like Helios being found—and that whoever investigated it would have to come here for historical context. And here you are. Would you like to meet him?”
“I believe we would.” Lauren glanced at Ellis. He probably wasn’t too thrilled about meeting a conspiracy nut, but it did sound as though they’d be meeting him in the cafeteria—and Ellis, by now, had to be hungry.
“Have you ever seen this before?” Lauren showed Desiree the “Your Move” index card.
“Why, yes, I have.” Desiree examined the card through the plastic. She went over to one of the tables, read the labels on a few of the boxes, and opened one. She removed a photo album, flipped through the pages, and handed it to Lauren.
The photo was of Dr. Lee and another man—Dimitry Antonov, according to the caption. They were floating in front of a long, rectangular box that had LCD displays, switches, and labels all over it. Behind them was a tangle of cables and electronic devices and, to the left of Dr. Lee, stuck to the wall, was an index card—Lauren’s index card—with “Your Move” written on it.
“The card was part of the experiment,” Desiree explained. “When the time came to do some actual time-messaging, one person would be the Sender and the other the Receiver. The Receiver would start with the card, and once he was done either receiving or not receiving the message, he would move the card over to the other side of the apparatus. Now it was the Sender’s move. Once the Sender was done either sending or not sending his message, he’d move the card back to the Receiver’s side. And that’s when the experiment was complete—when they could start talking to each other again. You see, they used the card as a means of reducing the amount of information that might get passed between Sender and Receiver through words or facial expressions. See the Velcro strips on either side of the experimental apparatus?” Desiree pointed at the rectangular box. “That’s where they would affix the card.”
“But…” Desiree picked up the evidence bag. “I see that the Velcro strips have been removed from the back of the card and there are now pieces of tape in the corners. Was this attached to something inside Helios?”
“It might have been at one time,” Lauren told her, leafing through the album. “But, as you can see, the tape is all dried up. We’re just covering all the bases. Would it be possible to get a digital copy of these pictures?” Lauren spotted the silver case in one of the photos.
“Of course. I can email you the entire Lee catalogue.” Desiree looked around the room. “People tend to prefer the tactile sense of these things. But the database is definitely the way to go if you’re looking for something specific. Not that I have any idea what you’re looking for.”
Lauren studied the woman. Was she upset?
“Come on.” Desiree started for the door. “I’ll introduce you to George.”
• • •
At the Saturn V Food Court, all but a McDonald’s had their gates shut. Through a glass wall on the far side of the room, a playground with space shuttles and rocket slides looked just as abandoned.
George O’Kelly, seated as far away as possible from the only other people present—a group of seniors by the McDonald’s—was typing on his laptop.
“George?” Desiree said cautiously.
George nearly leapt out of his seat, knocking over a can of soda, which he quickly righted. “Dr. Adams,” he said, turning to face her.
“George, this is Special Agents Madison and Cole. They’re with the FBI and would like to have a word with you.”
“Of course—yes, yes.” He wiped his hands on his jeans as he stood, then looked apprehensively at his right palm.
“We’ve found that bowing seems to do the trick,” Desiree said.
George smiled grimly and bowed.
George was younger than Lauren had expected, perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five. He was wearing a black T-shirt with the phosphorescent green words “This T-shirt Is Green.”
“May we join you?”
“Yes, yes, please.” He indicated the chairs across from him.
“I’ll be leaving then.” Desiree bowed. “Lauren, Ellis, it was a pleasure. Anything else you need, you know where to find me. I’ll send you that catalogue and, please, if you need any help with whatever it is that you found…”
“We will,” Lauren said. “And thank you, Desiree.”
“Be good, George,” Desiree warned as she started away.
“Yes, Mom,” George said as Lauren and Ellis sat down. George closed his laptop and, as if suddenly remembering his lines, blurted, “May I see your identifications, please?”
Lauren and Ellis presented their holographic ID cards. George examined them carefully before nodding his approval.
“I heard the FBI had a little trouble up at Los Alamos,” George said.
Lauren and Ellis looked at each other. George stared at Ellis’s forearms.
“What’d you hear?” Ellis asked.
“Huh?” George squared his shoulders. “I heard someone used fake FBI credentials to steal some stuff. My guess would be either some hard drives or a tuned crystal. The crystal would make the most sense.”
“George…” Lauren looked around the auditorium-size room before returning her gaze to him. “What exactly do you think this is all about?”
“What do you mean? You mean the experiment?”
“What experiment?”
“The experiment.” George brushed his curly brown hair out of his eyes. “Dr. Lee’s Advanced Wave Experiment. I have to admit I was beginning to wonder if anything was ever going to happen. But then Helios showed up and… well, here we are.”
“And where is that?” Lauren asked.
“At the point where it all comes together.” George leaned across the table. “My father always said that Dr. Lee had to have figured it out—how to do time-messaging. That’s why he blew up the space station—because the FBI was after his technology. And that’s why…” George paused. He stared at them. “Well, that,” he said, “and a lot of other reasons, is why I knew there was much more to this story. It was the crystal that was stolen, right?”
Lauren looked at Ellis. He seemed just as perplexed.
George certainly knew quite a bit about Dr. Lee, but he also seemed a bit… unhinged. His left pupil was more dilated than his right, and his blinking at times seemed as if he were trying to transmit Morse code.
“I’ve been studying this for many years.” George dug a flannel shirt out of his backpack and put it on. “And my father had been a believer for decades.”
“A believer?” Ellis asked.
“In the Intervention Theory—” George suddenly turned, as if someone had snuck up behind him. He calmly turned back. “You’ve never heard of it?”
“No,” Lauren said.
“Well, pretty much everyone in my world agrees that the Space Station Bombing was the result of the FBI trying to get their hands on Dr. Lee’s research. But a few of us have always suspected that there was more. We suspect all of the above, but
we also think that Dr. Lee probably had some other motive. And that it involved a message from the future.”
“Why?” Lauren asked.
“Because he wrote about it in an unpublished paper entitled “Practical Applications of Time Messaging by Means of Advanced Wave Interference Modulation.” He did this mock case study in which blocks of information were sent back in time to be processed recursively—making a kind of super parallel processor across time. Anyway, we figured he was kind of asking for it—laying out the premise like that. He also laid out his ideas and warnings about the probability curve problem.”
“Yes, we’re somewhat familiar with that,” Lauren said.
“Dr. Lee’s case study involved intervals of only one week,” George continued. “But imagine thirty years. Imagine the kind of impact even a single development iteration spanning thirty years could have on a given technology. It’s kind of scary to think about.”
“But what technology?” Ellis asked.
“We don’t know for sure.” George looked toward the playground: the abandoned rockets, space shuttles, and lunar base slides. “But you know it has to be something big. I mean, the guy either killed himself or pulled off the most impressive faked death in history.”
“You think he might still be alive?” Lauren asked.
“Don’t you?” George furrowed his brow. “I saw the pictures of Helios—they’re all over the web. That thing looked perfectly survivable to me.”
“There’s no evidence he was ever inside it,” Lauren said.
“I understand the investigation is still ongoing. But whether I’m wrong and he actually committed suicide or whether I’m right and he faked his own death, the person he had been, the billionaire whiz kid ‘Dr. Lee’… he certainly died that day. So whatever he was up to—whatever reason he had for blowing up the space station—it had to have benefited something he really cared about.”
“And what would that be?” Lauren asked.
“His baby, his passion: JL Aerospace.”
“JL Aerospace no longer exists,” Ellis said.
“Sure it does—as Space America Corp.,” George explained. “And you know what else exists? Accel-X Industries, a secret company that’s working on an antimatter rocket engine—an engine that could potentially accelerate a spaceship to a speed of up to seventy percent the speed of light. That’d be like eighteen minutes to Mars.”
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