Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow

by Lee Baldwin

  Every individual who comes into the prison system is DNA-swabbed, their unique pattern stored in the FBI’s combined DNA index system database, CODIS. Every law enforcement agency in the country takes advantage of CODIS, as has Garcia, many times. They are always faster with improving techniques, but it will still be a couple of days. The recent flood of new requests have CODIS staff working overtime.

  And the manner of death. Garcia shakes his head. Shocking of itself, the head was cut from the body clean. The lovely face untouched, expression neutral, eyes open. Severed at the neck by something micro-sharp. Are beheadings back in fashion?

  Variations and Perversions

  That afternoon, true music fans join the morbidly curious across the nation to look in on the first of several planned two-hour marathon TV specials on Annetka’s life and tragic passing. Although no details have been released by the NYC Homicide Division, they have confirmed that Annetka was one of four people savagely murdered in the singer’s Park Avenue apartment that morning.

  “…when we come back, we’ll hear from Ronny Ronson, syndicated talk show host on many of these same networks, speaking with two of Annetka’s former lovers, stay tuned.”

  Although the program is being recorded, NYC homicide detectives crowd the ready room at headquarters. They will treat the broadcast as an extended crime scene, searching for behavior typical of sociopaths.

  When the show comes back from break, studio cameras pan over a packed crowd chanting, “Ro-ny! Ro-ny! Ro-ny!”

  Ronny Ronson, a petite black woman in her mid-40s whose early career was broadcast journalism, had nine years back found her true calling, milking the last sweet drops of schadenfreude from family drama in front of millions of viewers. She dabs her eyes with tissue before bravely continuing.

  “Today's guests are here because they were close to Annetka, shared many important moments in her young life, a life too soon taken from this world. First I’d like to introduce Cheryl Marr, a high school friend of Annetka’s who kept touch with her until very recently. How you doing, Cheryl?”

  Cheryl Marr sits on a matching loveseat, across a tasteful low table from Ronny. She’s younger, olive-skinned, well dressed and attractive. She wears oversize Karan sunglasses and holds a white lace hanky.

  “Okay, Ronnie, considering.” She manages a wan smile behind the $600 shades.

  After the usual cooing, commiseration and verbal petting, Ronny goes straight to the line of questions her watchers hunger for.

  “Now Cheryl, when you agreed to come on the show you told us you were prepared to be candid about your sexual relationship with Annetka, isn’t that right?”

  The audience leans forward. Cheryl nods. Not her first choice of topic. She really cared for Annetka, and the singer’s foster parents. But she’s been down on her luck lately and the network came waving a lot of cash.

  “Isn’t that right, Cheryl? We want to hear your answer.”

  “Yes, Ronny, Avi and I were lovers for two years, before she released her first album and started her nationwide tour.”

  “Thank you, Cheryl. We all remember the blockbuster tour that became an instant legend. We all know how rough this must be on you. She was such a lovely person.”

  Cheryl nods behind the dark glasses. “Avi was such an angel. We had such high times.”

  Chuckles from the crowd.

  “No, no, I mean that metaphorically. Together, the two of us. Well, we made our own little heaven.”

  “Tell us about spending time with her, Cheryl, the private times you had.”

  Cheryl Marr knows what Ronny wants now, the code words have been spoken, it’s time to play for pay.

  “She was so intimate with me, always said the most beautiful things to me when we were alone. And I to her. But she had her quirks.”

  “What kind of quirks, Cheryl, please tell us,” Ronny prods, glancing at the segment clock.

  “Well. She always wanted to tie my hands.”

  “Tie your hands! Did you think that a bit unusual?”

  “It was just her way. She liked me in wrist cuffs. It was like, I wasn’t allowed to touch her with my hands. Although we touched in every other imaginable way.”

  An exhaled Oooooh from the crowd.

  “I mean,” Ronny urges, “were you completely tied up, while she had her way with you?”

  “Not like that, just my hands. I so wanted to hug and hold her. In public we did that, but in private, my wrists were bound.”

  “Did you have to sleep like that?”

  “No, no. She would untie me and sleep in her own room.”

  “Sounds very strange. Was there anything else unusual?”

  “Well, she always wore something in bed, something cute and sexy.”

  “Could you describe these articles of clothing? Was it a negligee, for example?”

  “Not always. Sometimes. It could be a T-shirt, or a shorty nightgown.”

  “So she was always in some way covered, when the two of you made love, and your wrists were always shackled.”

  “That’s right, Ronny. I love and miss her so. We were always in touch, even after our breakup we stayed friends.”

  “Thank you for sharing with us Cheryl. I wonder if Annetka was a girl with a secret. After the break, we’ll hear from Annetka’s personal physician.”

  Applause. Fade to commercial.

  Known to only a few, the program is being converted speech to text with facial-recognition data frames, to become part of the growing Annetka database in the underground digital storage facilities of Next History.

  Walking the Shadow

  Dr. Arnold Friedman drives slowly through the deserted parking spaces near the north-east wedge of the Pentagon. In this vast space, nothing moves. Not a person, not an automobile, not a Metro shuttle. A fretful scrap of paper lifts on a dust devil.

  This vast place, normally a center of unrelenting activity, has in every sense shut down. Tense and wary soldiers, such as the ones who allowed Friedman to pass under Jefferson-Davis highway, control all road access into the complex. While traffic moves normally on the highway behind him to the east, South Washington Boulevard to the west, and I-395 to the south, within these barriers is a literal no-man’s land. The Pentagon is sealed off by its own military forces. Helicopters hover vigilant, miles away. Out of sight at high altitude, two MQ-9 Reaper drones hold station.

  Friedman has completed psych evals of thirty-four Pentagon police, including the snipers who fired on the man in the courtyard. Many are unnerved, in high states of disbelief. The preliminary results of Friedman’s evaluations are clear: every single individual saw a man standing in the Pentagon courtyard whom they could neither approach physically nor touch with rocket-propelled grenades and powerful rifles. Friedman will continue probing the psych eval data, but the reality echoing in his head is simple: not a hallucination, a real event. Now, he is here to experience the visitor for himself. He is not far from being scared out of his wits.

  Friedman leaves his car near the helipad. Cold wind knifing off the Potomac tugs at his knee-length wool topcoat. He pulls the black toque down over his ears. As he faces the building, low sun to the west is bright in the sky. Friedman walks toward the sprawling irregular shadow. All day it has been photographed from drones, from satellites, and various vantage points on buildings and bridges, its movements tracked and measured. The shadow points obediently away from the sun.

  Friedman reaches the shadow’s tip. There is concern about this shadow. The dark form that sprawls the surface is ragged of outline, a shape of wild, indescribable form. Is it truly a shadow? A towering object would be required. A massive thing which neither instruments nor human eyesight have yet to detect.

  Friedman is five hundred feet from the nearest outer wall of the Pentagon, where Wedge 2 and Wedge 3 meet at an angle of seventy-two degrees. Watching the sun above him, Friedman steps over the shadow’s edge. Abruptly, the sun disappears. Friedman halts, stands rigid. He can see the sky, but the sun
has vanished. Turns around, his own shadow is engulfed in the larger one. Lifts his arms high. There, at the topmost edge of the misshapen outline, shadows of his own tiny hands follow his movements faithfully. In his mind echo statements he’d heard from his interview subjects: It’s a shadow of nothing.

  Although forewarned by his evaluations, Friedman, experiencing this directly, is shaken. Within the outline of this sinister darkness, he cannot see the sun. Shaded by some invisible object, Friedman scans empty sky. Somberly, he continues toward the building.

  The door sensor opens to Friedman’s RFID tag. The once-bustling metropolis that is the world’s largest office building rings with silence. Visitor brochures litter the floor. Friedman notices on a wall something scrawled, a terse handwritten instruction in black marker, sign of the mad rush to vacate until this mysterious problem can be put away.

  Friedman steps through the spacious lobby into a spoke hallway, looking both ways as he passes each ring corridor. Empty stillness echoes. With a resolute breath, Friedman pushes through a glass door into the central courtyard.

  The distant figure stands near the hot dog stand, facing away. The man does not react to Friedman’s presence. The psychologist gathers his courage in both hands and walks directly ahead. Ten steps is all he is allowed. It’s as walking into soft yielding foam. One moment he is moving, the next he’s eased to a gentle halt. The taffy curtain, one person had called it. He sees nothing, yet an invisible force allows him no further.

  Friedman considers. Hand outstretched, he steps to his left, trailing fingers against the resilient force as he circles the space, much as a surfer keeps touch with a wave face. Something in the air above catches sunlight. He stops.

  Friedman pulls out binoculars. Focuses on a small object forty feet up. Unmoving, supported by nothing, what it most resembles is a 50-calibre slug, angled directly toward courtyard center. In the air above Friedman’s head, the binoculars reveal many others.

  It takes Friedman fifteen minutes to complete his circuit of the space. Although forced to detour by trees and benches, nowhere can he find a gap in the invisible barrier, nowhere can he make his way closer to the lone man. Exactly as described to him individually by thirty-one Pentagon cops who charged in with riot gear.

  Directly in front of the man, Friedman lifts his binocs. He has a close-up view from here. His breath catches as he regards the most sublime male face he has ever seen. The eyes are closed, the man stands perfectly still, as though dreaming on his feet. Aware of afternoon cold penetrating his long wool coat, Friedman wonders that the man wears only slacks and a flowing shirt.

  He removes from his pocket a small video camera with wireless link, attaches it to the back of a bench. After making certain his camera frames the unmoving figure, Friedman with silent relief makes his way from the courtyard.

  Fish Story

  After waiting in line through a security checkpoint manned by eleven armed and armored Pentagon Police, Chris Strand shoulders his way through a doorway clogged with military officers and into the main conference room of the Pentagon swing space. The center of the room is dominated by a polished oval table 23 feet long and 12 feet wide, equipped with 44 stations, each having an Ethernet port, power outlets, fiber optic adaptors, secure hard phone, other hookups and receptacles. Most of the high-backed chairs around the table are occupied by military brass. Strand nods at a few he recognizes, and reads the uniforms: Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force. All military departments are represented. Suits and uniforms are here from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Logistics Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, and of course Homeland Security.

  The large team is under tactical command of General Ralph Solberg at the front, who spots Strand, points him to an empty station between an Air Force general and a Marine colonel. Strand had expected a seat at the back, where some 40 men and women sit quietly working at laptops, support staff for those at the curving table.

  General Solberg steps to a podium at the head of the room, speaks into the cluster of microphones. “Everyone please find your seats as we’re about to get started.” The hulla in the room quiets to murmurs, intense conversations drop in pitch without actually stopping. The Marine colonel at Strand’s left speaks to a suit beside him, Strand overhears the whispered comment.

  “The Pentagon is evacuated. Parking lot is empty.”

  His companion replies, sotto voce, “We’ve been chased out of our own headquarters by one man?”

  The whispered reply, almost too faint for Strand’s ears. “Some new passive weapon, that’s our position.”

  At the podium, General Solberg hooks a laptop into the flat screen that covers most of the front wall. On other flatscreens faces appear as remote conference rooms join the meeting. The official Pentagon logo vanishes, replaced by a high-angle image of the Pentagon courtyard, time-stamped 1115 hours EST.

  Solberg surveys the room. “Everyone, good afternoon. Thank you for joining us on such short notice. I know that many of you have been pulled from other priority tasks to be here.

  “Now, this view is what Security captured in the Pentagon courtyard this morning, just prior to the arrival event. People are strolling, crossing between Wedges, sitting on the benches. Some are inside the gazebo. People are taking early lunch, talking together, working on laptops, on their phones. A typical day.”

  Solberg changes the image. It’s a satellite view of the Pentagon in its surrounds, a roughly triangular join of busy freeways, a sea of parked cars, an active yacht basin, Arlington National Cemetery, the Potomac. The striking feature is a dark shadow, originating near the pentagram-shaped gazebo at the courtyard’s center, extending over trees and walkways, and partway up the inner Wedge 3 wall to the north.

  “As you can see in this recon photo taken at 1117 hours, two minutes later, a large shadow is visible. This is after the sudden appearance of a man near the gazebo. We see no object that can explain this shadow. Instruments detect nothing. The shadow as of my latest information has no known cause.”

  A question from a uniform across the table. “General, is this shadow moving with the sun, or can it be some other type of artifact?”

  “Right. Using a time-lapse of images, we see that the shadow is behaving as would a sundial, a tree, a building or other vertical object. Dr. Arnold Friedman is in the room with us and we’ll ask him to speak. He made onsite observations of the shadow in the last hour. He’s also completed a psych eval of those in the courtyard at the time of the appearance and I want you to hear what he has to say.”

  “Materialization,” whispers the Marine colonel to Strand’s left. A suit to left of the colonel hisses an angry reply, Strand picks out a single word. Portal.

  Solberg turns back to his laptop, the projected image changes. “This is a frontal image of the man in the courtyard. Height about six feet six, weight estimated at 245 pounds. He has the appearance of a trained fighting man. He has not responded to any verbal command. Approximately four hours ago, in consultation with the PFPA, it was agreed to use deadly force. A sniper fired a single round at the target. Nothing happened. We’re not sure what became of the round. I witnessed this myself, as did some others in this room. Following that, the command was given to fire heavily on his position. None of the rounds reached the target. As far as we can detect, no rounds fell anywhere in the courtyard. Following this, seventeen RPGs were launched on his position. Here’s an image we captured after that event.”

  The general switches to a new image, pulled back. The solitary figure is visible, but the view shows more of the courtyard. “Let me call your attention to some objects in the air around him.” He moves a magnifying reticule over the image, centers it on a dark dot with a gray smear behind it. A hushed gasp rises, hastily whispered remarks and questions. Solberg turns to the room, patiently waits.

  “Yes, you read the situation correctly. You’re looking at one of the RPG
s fired at the target. It’s come to a stop some fifty yards out, eighty yards from where it was launched. You can see the smoke trail. This RPG is motionless, and the propellant has stopped burning.”

  Solberg roves the magnifying reticule across the image, locating other rocket grenades one by one, all frozen in their flight toward the center.

  “All of these fast-burning RPGs have come to a complete stop in midair. The chemical reaction in their motors has halted. It is as though time has stopped in this zone.”

  Murmuring and whispered questions as Solberg switches the view.

  “General Solberg, what do your people make of the smoke trails? Why is there a short trail just behind the RPG? They burn over the entire trajectory.”

  “Good point. What we’ve decided, and this is a theory at this point, is that all molecular activity stops within the zone. Some of the trail is trapped. The rest blew away. ”

  Solberg pauses to let that sink in. Whispers of suspended animation, and time has stopped circulate the large room. The General continues.

  “We overlaid a combined-frequency radar image of the area on a photograph. The silver points on the radar are the rounds fired by rooftop snipers. All have come to a complete and utter halt. They are suspended motionless, in a ring approximately 100 yards across. None is closer than 50 yards from our new visitor.”

  Solberg looks around the room, praying inwardly that someone will come up with a useful observation or workable idea. There are none. He moves the magnifying reticule. “Here, thirty yards from Wedge 2, is a tube-launched anti-tank missile. It too has come to a stop.”

  Question from an Air Force general to Strand’s left. “Ralph, with reference to the aerial photographs, how tall would something be to cast a shadow that long?”