Origin - Season Two

by James, Nathaniel Dean

  The president nodded, as if this had been his own conclusion, and said, “We will return his wife and child. Kim Jong-sul is not his father. With our assistance he may even be able to reach more amicable terms with the South.”

  “And what good will that do us?” one of the other men at the table said. “A settlement with Pyongyang would only strengthen the South.”

  “Perhaps,” the president said. “It would also give them a reason to refuse further help from the Americans. The situation is what it is. We will have to rethink our plans for the peninsula. Now if you don’t mind I have other important matters to attend to. This meeting is adjourned. General Sew, if you would please, stay.”

  The men began to shuffle out. Two soldiers entered the conference room and escorted Yew out. When they were gone, a young woman entered. “Mr. President, Professor Yen has arrived.”

  “Show him in,” the president said.

  Yen was a tall man and surprisingly young for the title he held. He wore a clean black suit with a white shirt and red tie and looked more like a businessman than a scholar of physics.

  “Come in, Professor,” the president said. “And thank you for arriving on such short notice. I know you’re a busy man.”

  “It’s my honor, sir,” Yen said.

  “General Sew tells me you’ve found something most extraordinary on the Xilin Gol. I’m intrigued to know what it is.”

  Yen approached the president and placed his briefcase on the table. He produced several black and white photos and handed them over. “These are stills recovered from the targeting computer aboard the destroyer sent to recover the ship.”

  The president studied the photos and laughed. “Is this some kind of hoax? What is that supposed to be?”

  “I assure you it’s no hoax, sir. We have over thirty witnesses who saw it with their own eyes. It was hit with a hundred and thirty millimeter shell with no apparent effect.”

  Yen produced a compact disk and pointed at the television on the wall. “May I?”

  The footage from the gun camera was poor, but not too poor to leave the president stupefied. It showed the giant black creature being hit and flying back into the superstructure, then getting up and weaving across the deck the way a soldier running into enemy fire might. The footage ended just as it leaped from the side of the ship.

  “Where is the rest of it?” the president asked the general.

  Sew nodded toward the file in front of the president and said, “It’s classified, sir. On your orders.”

  “So what the hell is it?” the president said. “Some new weapon?”

  “We don’t know,” Professor Yen said. “My colleagues and I suspect it may be some form of advanced robotic system. Although the technology to create something like this—well—it doesn’t exist.”

  “Clearly it does,” the president said.

  Yen took another set of photos from his briefcase and handed them over. One of them was a shot of the hole in the wall of the cargo hold. Another was a close up of the dent in the side of the superstructure.

  “It did this?” the president said.

  Yen nodded. “It also shut down the engine by crushing the lines to the fuel pump. The strength required to do something like this is simply beyond anything of that size, large as it is.”

  “So you keep saying,” the president said. “Yet the evidence clearly indicates that it is not. I want to know what this thing is and where it came from. And what the hell it was doing there in the first place. Could this be something the North Koreans have created? If so, we’ve clearly underestimated them.”

  “If I may, sir,” Yen said. “I think that is highly unlikely. In fact I think we should consider the possibility that this thing is—well—”

  “Is what?” the president said.

  “That it’s not a product of human design,” Yen said.

  The president looked at him for a moment, then laughed. “Professor, you’ve been watching too many American movies. Next you’re going to tell me there’s an alien invasion on the way. That we are being watched by spaceships no one can see. This is the Americans or the Japanese toying with us, not some monster from outer space. I suggest you get back there and figure it out. I want a full report—a plausible report—by the end of the week.”

  When the professor was gone, the president turned to General Sew. “What the hell are they teaching our scientists these days? I thought we had overcome our historic superstitions and learnt to embrace the modern world.”

  The general nodded his agreement, but he appeared less than sure himself. He had seen the missing footage after all, and even to a man with no formal training in the sciences, what the thing had done before it plunged into the sea was simply beyond all realms of possibility.

  II

  Pyongyang

  Kim Jong-sul was standing at the window of his official residence in the Kyongrim District and exerting all the force of will at his disposal not to call the airport again. It occurred to him, and not for the first time, that once you found yourself in a position where you could have just about anyone you wanted shot, the problem of who to actually kill pretty much worked itself out on a day-to-day basis. Not that Kim had given any such orders, but he’d certainly been tempted.

  Sitting on the couch behind him was his only surviving relative. He presented a sorry figure in his ill-fitted suit and oversized shoes. Seong Jing-nam was his uncle on his mother’s side.

  Once a ranking party official, Seong had fallen out of favor in the mid-’90s over some slight or failure, most likely imagined, and been sent to Penal-Labor Colony 25, a lifetime prison for political undesirables. When Kim had ordered he be released and brought to the capital his advisors had cautioned against it, insisting Seong was an unreformed enemy of the party and a traitor to the Juche Idea. Kim had responded to this by pointing out that anyone questioning his judgment must also be an enemy of the party. The matter was quickly dropped and the order issued for Seong’s release.

  In the week that followed, the two of them had spoken at length, often staying up late into the night. It had taken the frail old man some time to understand what had happened, and once his initial suspicions of Kim’s motives had been laid to rest, he proved to be as intelligent and kind as Kim’s mother had always claimed. He was also very shrewd.

  Seong quickly put paid to Kim’s naïve and enthusiastic ideas for what he might achieve with the power he had inherited as both unrealistic and suicidal. He explained that two of the men who had placed him where he was now were dead, their Chinese backers in retreat, and that many of those who groveled at his feet in public would be wishing for his downfall in private.

  Among the first things Seong had insisted on, much to Kim’s initial horror, was the elimination of Rhee. The logic was both simple and brutal; Rhee posed the greatest threat to any hope of a reconciliation with the Chinese, who, despite everything, were the only real hope they had of avoiding an economic crisis and the political turmoil it would bring. And while Rhee’s motives were personal, his dislike of the Chinese was shared by many in positions of power, some of whom had the means to release him should it serve their purposes. With Kim’s reluctant approval, the job was given to Captain Shin, who was only too happy to see it through.

  For a man who had spent eleven years on a subsistence diet while assembling bicycles, Seong proved surprisingly well informed. Much of this was down to the simple fact that little changed in the “workers’ paradise”, but not all of it. He had been a senior civil servant in the state security apparatus. As such he had enjoyed unrestricted access to much of what went on behind the outwardly solid veneer of the party machine and its privileged hierarchy. It had quickly become clear to Kim that his uncle was going to prove indispensable were he to have any hope of surviving, much less succeeding, as the new despot of a totalitarian regime.

  “Why the hell aren’t they calling?” Kim said. “The plane should have landed an hour ago.”

  “Be patient,” S
eong admonished him. “Remember, you don’t know these people. They mean nothing to you. If you show anyone you are anxious they will wonder why.”

  When the phone did finally ring, Seong held up his hand and shook his head. Kim let it ring several times before he picked it up.

  “Very well,” Kim said when he was done listening. “Tell the ambassador he is invited to dine at my residence. In fact, tell him I have invited the entire delegation.”

  Putting the phone down, Kim turned to his uncle. “Was that to your satisfaction?”

  Kim spent the next several hours pacing back and forth across the room. When one of his household staff informed him the guests had arrived, Seong had to stop him from rushing downstairs to meet them.

  “Wait here,” his uncle said. “I will make the arrangements.”

  The plan had been Seong’s. Kim’s family would be travelling as the wife and son of one of the negotiators with the Chinese trade delegation.

  The delegation was a fiction of course. Its actual purpose was to discuss the sensitive matter of Project 38 and seek mutual assurances that both parties would do everything necessary to erase all evidence of the agreement and forever hold their peace. Seong had been quick to understand what Yew had already pointed out to the Chinese president, namely that it was the Chinese who would suffer if the secret ever got out. Understanding also that to push too hard would create its own problems, he had proposed an agreement that would see Kim’s silence rewarded with generous, but not egregious terms of both trade and credit.

  By the time Seong returned, Kim was all but pulling his hair out in anticipation. Seong followed the family inside, then closed the door and ushered the bemused standin husband into the room next door, leaving the new First Family to enjoy their reunion in private.

  III

  The seven hours following the debacle onboard the Xilin Gol passed in an atmosphere of tension that only abated partially when the dreaded minute arrived and there was no sign of a nuclear explosion.

  Under the watchful eye of Mitch and the others, the ship was soon towed into port and guarded with a tenacity that would have made little sense were it not for the eyewitness reports of over three dozen highly agitated and incredulous soldiers and sailors of the People’s Liberation Army. Within days the ship had been moved back out to sea, where it was guarded by a small fleet of naval vessels as the men tasked to explain her fate were ferried back and forth under cover of darkness.

  As Captain Almila had predicted, a search was also conducted for the missing warheads within days. When the frame was finally lifted from the seabed onto the waiting research vessel Watkins, who had been on duty at the time, saw enough to confirm that it was intact before it was covered. They tracked the ship to the port of Shanghai, an irony lost on no one, where the warheads were offloaded at the Qinshan nuclear power plant in Hangzhou Bay.

  As the Chinese busied themselves cleaning up their own end of the mess, the North Koreans appeared to be doing the same. Both the facility at Nampo and the Jangdan-myeon mine were, in the words of Mitch, “evacuated as if someone was expecting an air raid.” No word of the project or its fate ever reached the international press, nor were there any reported personnel changes in either Beijing or Pyongyang. As far as the world at large was concerned, nothing had happened.

  – – –

  Richelle, looking unusually feminine in a white floral dress and with her hair in loose waves, called the meeting to order and turned to her notes. When she looked up, all six members of Aurora’s newly-appointed coordinating committee—Mitch was already quietly lobbying to have the name changed to the Order of Seven—were seated and waiting patiently. The location chosen to host the meetings was not Richelle’s office, but the Pandora. The room was one of the many spaces that had remained unfinished when the ship moved out of dry dock at Busan and set sail on her maiden voyage. This particular space, located just aft of the hangar that housed RP One, had been designated the officers’ mess on the original blueprints, but Erik and his team had transformed it into an elegant but functional lounge of sorts, complete with a twelve-foot glass-top table, communications suite and a well-stocked mini bar.

  “Well, here we are,” Richelle began. “I’d flatter you all with a speech about how great this is going to be, but I’m not very good at speeches, and I think we’re going to have to prove it before we start congratulating ourselves.”

  When Mitch raised a hand Richelle rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mitch.”

  Mitch stood up. He looked around the table, apparently not quite sure what he was doing himself. Both Francis and Titov urged him on with a discreet nod in Richelle’s direction. When he reached the end of the table Mitch took something from his pocket and held it out to Richelle. “We would like you to have this.”

  The object in Mitch’s palm was a wide, flat ring of dark gray metal surrounded by a circle of dark blue stones. Richelle took it hesitantly and peered at the Saishan text inscribed on the inside. “What is it?”

  “The commander’s signet,” Heinz said. “It was found inside RP One when we first entered, but we didn’t know what it was then.”

  Richelle glanced over at Francis, who said, “Go on. Put it on.”

  She slid the ring onto her right index finger, then blushed as the rest of them cheered.

  “Thank you,” Richelle said. “I think. We’d better get started. Francis?”

  Francis responded with a polite nod in her direction that fooled no one but the two of them and said, “Well, it’s been a month now, and I’m glad to say that there doesn’t seem to be any fallout. No pun intended. If anything, I’d say the opposite. Kim jong-Sul is currently in Beijing, and both sides have announced a new trade agreement that might even be the beginning of something truly historic in the region. The country is still a closed book, of course, so I’m only going with my gut here, but it does look like the new regime is prepared to make a genuine effort at integration. I think it’s going to be a case of wait and see. Other than that, I think we’re good.”

  “And Jasper?” Richelle asked.

  Francis looked at Erik and laughed. “From what I hear, he’s become a valued member of the team.”

  Erik exhaled in mock exasperation. “He’s driving me around the bend.”

  Mitch smiled. “Has he told you about his idea for the high-speed rail link to the mainland yet?”

  “But does he know what he’s doing?” Richelle asked.

  “Oh he knows what he’s doing alright,” Erik said. “He just doesn’t know where to stop.”

  “Well,” Richelle said, “He’s yours now. I guess you’ll just have to figure out a way to tame him.”

  When no one offered to make any further contribution, Richelle thanked Francis and turned to Watkins. “Chris? You have some interesting news, I believe.”

  “I’ve finished translating the first part of a document outlining the history of the Saishan civilization. It makes for some pretty fascinating reading, to say the least. I’d like to propose that we publish the finished translation and make it available to the crew.”

  “How long will you need to finish it?” Titov asked.

  “Three months. Maybe a little longer.”

  “Can I make a suggestion?” Richelle said. “When you’re done, why not hold back on publishing for a couple of weeks and present your findings to the crew informally.”

  “You want me to give a lecture?”

  “Something like that,” Richelle agreed. “You know, let people ask questions. I think we’d all like that.”

  Everyone murmured their approval. When Richelle looked at Watkins for his take, he nodded. “I don’t see why not.”

  “Great,” Richelle said. “It’s settled then.”

  “Can you imagine?” Mitch said. “It’s gonna make the TED Conference look like a retirement home reading circle.”

  When no one laughed, Mitch said, “Never mind. It’s going to be awesome.”

  “Okay,” Richelle said. “What else i
s on the agenda? Erik, did you want to bring us up to speed on anything else?”

  Before Erik could say anything the door burst open and a breathless Naoko stumbled inside. For a moment it looked like he was going to either faint, deposit his lunch on the new Persian rug, or both. When Naoko got his breathing under control, and some of the color returned to his face, he said, “You guys need to get out here.”

  “What’s going on?” Richelle asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  They all got up and followed Naoko back through the narrow passage and down the stairs to the hangar. Before they even reached it they could hear the whine of machinery from inside. When they stepped through the door, what they saw stopped everyone in their tracks.

  The hatch at the top of RP One that had last opened to launch Gandalf, was now standing open again. Francis looked up at the window of the observation room and saw a very nervous Captain Almila looking up at the cargo bay doors as they slowly inched apart to reveal a black sky dotted with bright stars. When Mitch tried to approach the gangway, Titov held him back.

  But there was no launch.

  What appeared from the hatch instead was a telescopic cylinder about the thickness of a telephone pole at its base. It rose ever higher, stopping only a couple of yards short of the hangar doors. A moment later they heard a soft metallic clang from somewhere inside RP One, then the pole began to sprout branches. These got longer as they descended, from only a few feet at the top to several yards at the bottom. To everyone looking on it bore an unmistakable resemblance to a giant Christmas tree circa late January.

  “What is it?” Titov asked.

  Heinz and Mitch answered the question in perfect unison. “It’s an antenna.”

  Mitch was the first to break away. By the time the others abandoned their caution and joined him he was already seated in the commander’s chair. When Richelle stepped onto the gangway behind Francis, the ship let out a short but loud note. It sounded a bit like the first couple of seconds of an air raid siren. Richelle grabbed Francis’s arm in surprise, then pushed him away when she saw he was smiling.