Origin - Season Two

by James, Nathaniel Dean

  “That a man who’s about to fall off the face of the Earth would visit his bank first.”

  “Perhaps he’s emptying out his checking account,” Titov said.

  “That’s my point,” Francis said. “Shouldn’t he have closed it by now? He’s sold his house, quit his job and paid off any outstanding debts. Why would he leave his account open?”

  “Perhaps he’s transferring what he has left to a favorite aunt or nephew? Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  “I will. And if he’s leaving a trail I suggest we make him clean it up before we go anywhere.”

  “You see,” Titov said. “This is why you’ll be doing this from now on.”

  Jasper was only inside for a few minutes. He walked to the bus stop, glanced to see if the bus was coming, and took out his cell phone.

  “Great,” Francis said. “Now he’s making a phone call. On a phone he shouldn’t even have, by the way.”

  “Have you considered it might be a pre-paid phone?”

  Francis sighed in frustration. “Seriously? This is how we recruit people? I’m surprised you’ve gotten away with it for so long.”

  “We’re watching him, aren’t we?” Titov said.

  “Because I insisted,” Francis said.

  Francis let the bus get a few blocks down the road before pulling out. They followed it for several miles and stopped again when Jasper got off outside the local mall.

  “Well there’s something at least,” Francis said. “I was beginning to think he might stop by the local TV studio for an interview first.”

  Titov laughed and said, “Now that would be a problem.”

  They followed Jasper inside and spent the next half hour trailing him as he visited first the local music emporium where he bought several CDs, then a clothing outlet. He came out carrying two bags stuffed with socks, underwear and a tracksuit.

  “I’m telling you now,” Francis said, “this guy is a walking security risk.”

  “Maybe,” Titov said. “But we need him. You want to tell Richelle she can’t have her geologist after we spent twelve months getting him ready?”

  At last Jasper reached the agreed meeting place. He ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk and sat down at an empty table in the corner of the food court.

  “I’ll wait here,” Francis said. “Meet you back at the car.”

  Titov walked up to the table and took a seat opposite Jasper. Although Jasper was clearly taken aback by the size of the big Russian, Titov soon had him chatting freely. A little too freely in Francis’s opinion. The conversation lasted only a few minutes. Francis watched them to the stairs, then spent a minute looking around for any sign of a follower. When he was satisfied, he made his way to the parking lot and got into the back seat beside Jasper.

  “Jasper, please meet my associate, Mr. Landen,” Titov said. “He’s a Yankee like yourself.”

  Jasper nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “Everything okay?” Francis said. “You look a little nervous.”

  “I’d like to hear the offer again,” Jasper said.

  Titov looked at him in surprise.

  “The offer?” Francis said.

  “The job offer,” Jasper said. “I’d like to hear it again.”

  “Forgive me,” Francis said, “but I was under the impression all this had been settled some time ago. What have I missed?”

  Jasper’s face suddenly took on a nervous look of defiance. “It’s just that I’ve been made another offer and I’d like a chance to consider my options.”

  Francis looked at Titov. “Another offer?”

  “Yes,” Jasper said. “I’m sorry I didn’t mention it sooner, but I’ve been—well—negotiating with the other party.”

  “Well, I hope you got yourself a good deal,” Francis said. “Consider our offer revoked. You’re free to go, Mr. Klein.”

  “Just a moment,” Titov said. “May I ask who made you this other offer?”

  “I’d rather not say,” Jasper said.

  “I only ask because we’re a big company,” Titov said. “There’s a good chance it may have come from one of our affiliates. Imagine how awkward that would be.”

  “Are any of your affiliates based in Dubai?” Jasper asked.

  Francis, who had been listening to the exchange with growing frustration, turned to Jasper and said, “Alright, pal, that’s enough of the bullshit. You think we were born yesterday? Whatever you’re angling for, it isn’t going to happen. Do you understand me? Our offer isn’t negotiable. Not that it matters, because it’s off the table.”

  When Jasper reached for the door handle Francis leaned over him and pushed the lock down.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Jasper said.

  “I’m not done,” Francis said.

  “If you think I’m lying—” Jasper said.

  “I know you’re lying,” Francis said.

  When Jasper put his hand inside his jacket Francis grabbed his arm. “Easy now.”

  Francis reached into the jacket himself. What he pulled out wasn’t a gun but an airline ticket, a first class seat to Dubai via Chicago and Frankfurt.

  “Where did you get this?” Francis said.

  “I picked it up at the bank,” Jasper said.

  Francis closed his eyes for a moment and let out a long sigh. “And the phone call at the bus stop?”

  “You’ve been following me?” Jasper said.

  “Just answer the question,” Francis said.

  “They told me to call when I got the ticket,” Jasper said.

  “Go,” Francis said to Titov. “Get us out of here.”

  Titov started the car and pulled away.

  “Make a circle round the mall,” Francis said. “And keep your eyes on the mirror.”

  “Listen, I—” Jasper began.

  “What’s the name of the company?” Francis said.

  Jasper hesitated, but only long enough to see that Francis was one more question away from losing his temper.

  “Emirate Global Mining,” Jasper said.

  “And have you checked to even make sure it exists?”

  “They have a website,” Jasper said.

  “Everyone has a website,” Francis said. “I mean actually checked to see if it’s listed anywhere.”

  When it was clear he hadn’t, Francis said, “So you were just going to fly to Dubai and hope for the best, is that it? Can I ask you something?”

  “What?” Jasper said.

  “Are you a complete and total idiot?”

  “I—I didn’t—”

  “Think,” Francis said. “Yes, that’s becoming painfully obvious. And you’re supposed to be some kind of genius. Go figure, hey?”

  “You may not approve,” Jasper said, “but I have every right to talk to whoever—”

  “Please stop talking,” Francis said. “I need to think.”

  When Titov had completed the circle of the mall and reported not seeing anyone in pursuit, Francis told him to return to the hotel. By the time they got there, Jasper was looking decidedly unnerved.

  “You’ll be glad to know I’ve reconsidered our position,” Francis said. “In fact, you may consider yourself hired as of now.”

  “I’m not sure—” Jasper began.

  “Oh, it’s not negotiable,” Francis said. “In fact, you start tomorrow.”

  “He does?” Titov said.

  “Yes,” Francis said. “You’re going to Dubai.”

  “I am?”

  “You are,” Francis said. “And we’re coming with you.”

  Chapter 8

  The Pandora

  Saturday 9 June 2007

  0100 EEST

  Mitch was alone on the bridge of RP One. Naoko, the last of the hangers-on, had thrown in the towel an hour earlier and gone back to his cabin for a few hours of sleep.

  The countdown had ended less than five hours after it began. There had been almost a dozen people crammed onto the bridge at the time. Even Captain Almila had p
ut his animosity aside to come down and see what all the fuss was about. In the meantime Mitch and Naoko had figured out how to replicate the view on the commander’s screen on one of the bridge’s four viewports. When the countdown reached zero, all four screens had gone blank for a few seconds. Then a three-dimensional Earth had appeared, not drawn in the bright green lines of the system interface, but in full color.

  Using the controls in the armrest, Mitch had moved the view and zoomed in until they were directly above the Isle of Dragons. Mitch, who had seen plenty of high-definition satellite imagery during his time at the FBI, was still taken aback by the level of detail. Even more incredible was the fact that the images appeared to be arriving in real time. Exactly how a system orbiting the earth could be used to view any part of the surface at any given time was another of the many mysteries they would, hopefully, solve in time. For now, however, they were too absorbed with the functionality of the system to care much about the underlying technology.

  Within a few hours Mitch and Naoko had mapped at least some of the imaging system’s control menu. In addition to analyzing the anatomical structure of elements, it could record temperature, barometric pressure, and elevation, as well as intercept sound and radio waves, but it could not decode them. It could analyze biological structures and shift to over a dozen points within the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as display images as thermal and a form of night vision in which purple replaced the more common green of earthbound systems. If that wasn’t enough, it could also be used to tag and track objects of almost any kind with no apparent limit to the number. Shortly before Naoko had called it a day they had put a trace on a yacht sailing between the islands of Martinique and St. Lucia in the Caribbean while simultaneously analyzing the chemical compounds in its fiberglass hull.

  Now, sitting alone at the console, Mitch watched in rapt fascination as a Sukhoi Su-33 fighter jet took off from the deck of the Russian aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, in the Barents Sea. Using the controls in the armrest he moved his thumb until the jet was inside the triangular cursor and let go. The triangle followed the plane as it moved toward the coast at supersonic speed, the small text field to its right constantly repopulating with an endless procession of data that meant nothing to him. Using one finger to lock the view onto the plane and another to zoom in, he kept moving closer until he could see the pilot’s helmet through the cockpit. None of what he was seeing made any sense. Not only could whatever was feeding the image down to RP One somehow shift its own orbit on demand, but it could maintain a rock-solid close up of an object travelling faster than the speed of sound while collecting information that would ordinarily require an electron microscope. Both the image and the idea were hypnotizing.

  “Mitch?”

  Mitch almost fell off his seat. Sarah was standing at the top of the gangway. His first reaction was a sudden and undeniable wave of irritation at being interrupted.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” Sarah said.

  “Sarah, I—”

  “You what? You can’t stop? Is that it?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Mitch said, but the words sounded feeble even to him.

  “You think the world stopped turning when this thing arrived?” she said, looking around.

  “Sarah, this is the most—”

  “The most incredible thing that’s ever happened to you?” she suggested.

  “That’s not—”

  “You think I don’t get it?” she said. “You think I don’t understand how important all this is? I do, Mitch. But I also know that you can’t just put your life on pause because the rest of the world has suddenly become more interesting.”

  She walked over to him and took one of his hands in her own. “I miss you, Mitch. The part of me that belongs to this organization is as excited to know what will happen as you are. But the part of me that belongs to you doesn’t care about any of it. Does that make sense?”

  He looked at her for a long time, his stubborn resolve slowly giving way to an unbearable feeling of guilt.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Sarah put a finger to his lips. “Kiss me.”

  He did.

  When she pulled away she said, “You need to come back to Aurora. Richelle wants to see you.”

  “She does?”

  “Captain Almila told her what happened.”

  “Oh, shit,” Mitch said.

  Sarah nodded. “Yep.”

  “When are we supposed to leave?”

  “Now,” Sarah said. “Ride’s waiting.”

  Mitch looked at her startled. Sarah saw his face and laughed. “Oh Mitch, you really do think too much. It was my idea to come and get you, not hers. And I didn’t come to get you for her, I came to get you for me.”

  She took his head in her hands. “And when you’re done talking your way out of this you can help me pack up our room.”

  “Where are you—”

  “Here, you dummy. I’m coming here. I was going to wait until next week to tell you.”

  “What made you change your mind?” Mitch asked.

  “I spoke to Richelle a couple of weeks ago.”

  “She said you had to move?”

  Sarah laughed. “No, not at all. But she did put things into perspective for me. This is what everything else depends on. I knew that before, but I didn’t really want to understand. And I was scared. I guess when you spend your whole life somewhere it’s hard to leave it behind, even if it’s only for a while.”

  Mitch looked down at the floor. “I haven’t been a very good husband, have I?”

  She considered this question for a moment. “Well, you started on the right track, I’ll give you that. You’ve just had a little trouble maintaining the momentum.”

  Mitch smiled, but then looked troubled again. “What did your father have to say about this?”

  “He’s not exactly over the moon. But then it’s none of his business.”

  “He hates me,” Mitch said. “You do know that, don’t you?”

  “He doesn’t hate you,” she said. “He’s just, you know, protective.”

  “Trust me, he hates me. He’s hardly said a word to me since the wedding, for God’s sake.”

  Sarah laughed. “Oh, Mitch, you do think too much. Give him time. He’ll come around.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “He will. Now we better get out of here. Yoshi’s waiting.”

  Chapter 9

  Madison, Wisconsin Friday 8 June 2000 CDT

  Francis started packing as soon as they got back to the hotel. Caroline had called him back an hour ago to let him know she had managed to get Titov a seat on the same flight as Jasper, albeit in economy. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do. Francis would be traveling by a different route that would get him there several hours ahead of them. She had also confirmed what Francis had pretty much known from the beginning: Emirate Global Mining didn’t exist. It was an elaborate scam by most standards, but a fiction all the same. Titov, in the meantime, was on babysitting duty. He hadn’t liked the idea of staying behind, but had been unable to argue with the logic that Jasper was unlikely to get on the plane without the proper motivation. Thus Francis would be the advance party, while Titov shadowed their bait into what was clearly a trap. As for who was behind it and why, all he could do was guess.

  Francis grabbed his suitcase and headed for the lobby, but didn’t check out of the hotel. He would be doing that with a phone call once he was safely out of the country. He took a cab to the airport, where the prospect of another trip through immigration rekindled his trepidation, but it turned out to be as free of fanfare as the first. By the time the sun met the horizon he was safely over the Atlantic, sharing a row in business class with a mother and her young son, the latter of which informed him with great enthusiasm that they were visiting his father in the “city that never sleeps”. He emphasized this as if it were a rule that canceled
bedtime rather than a nickname.

  Chapter 10

  Aurora

  Saturday 9 June 2007

  1200 EEST

  Mitch walked into Richelle’s office with a joke in mind that died on the tip of his tongue when he saw her face. Heinz was already there.

  “Mitch,” Richelle said, “how good of you to join us. Heinz was just telling me how the two of you managed to put this entire organization at risk. Perhaps you’d like to add something.”

  “It wasn’t our fault,” Mitch said.

  “Really?”

  “We don’t exactly have a user manual to work with. There’s a risk that anything we do with RP One could have unintended consequences.”

  Richelle picked up a photograph and held it up to him. It was a grainy color shot of a blue sky with a thin beam of bright light running from bottom to top. “You know what this is?”

  Mitch shook his head.

  “It’s a picture taken by a Russian tourist from a cruise ship less than ten miles from here. He swears he saw a spaceship take off from the middle of the sea. It’s gone viral on the Internet.”

  “It’ll be dead in a week,” Mitch said.

  “That’s not the point,” Richelle said. “What if the damn thing hadn’t disappeared? What if it had landed somewhere instead?”

  Mitch looked at her defiantly and said, “Then I guess we would have a problem on our hands.”

  “Gee, you think?”

  The color in Mitch’s face began to rise. Heinz looked at him and shook his head to indicate this wasn’t a good time, but Mitch ignored him. “You want me to apologize for what happened? Fine, I’m sorry. But I’m not going to stand here and promise you nothing like this will happen again. It’s a fucking alien spaceship. If you want us to figure out how it works you’re going to have to accept the risk. I don’t know if it’s occurred to anyone around here, but everyone on that ship is risking their lives. For all we know the damn thing could explode one day and take everyone with it.”

  Richelle only looked at him, her own temper on the edge of spilling over.

  “He’s right,” Heinz said.