by C. S. Won
“But how?”
A long, uncomfortable moment of silence followed after.
“We’ll think of something,” Tobin said finally.
“Don’t expect me to help,” Jae said.
They all turned to look at Jae.
“Why should I? I have no more reason to trust you—” Jae pointed at Tobin. “Or you—” Jae pointed at Clay. “Then I do Morgan Duffy.”
“We’re nothing like Morgan Duffy. He made you an enemy of the state after he betrayed you,” Tobin said.
“You think there’s a distinction to this? I was conned by both friend and foe. Supposed friend.”
“We are not your enemies,” Tobin asserted.
“Clay claimed he could eventually reunite me with my brother in exchange for my protection. So I took him in, not realizing he was operating under false pretenses. Is that what friends and allies are supposed to do? Act with deceit?”
“You would rather let Morgan do as he pleases, even after everything he’s done?”
“You think trust is something you can play around with? I was led by the nose by a so-called friend. I don’t take that lightly. I want no part of this, not until I get a proper and satisfactory explanation for Clay’s deception. If you aren’t willing to do that, then take me home right now. You can fight your own battles.”
“You can’t go back home. People are looking for you. They’ll tear you apart out there.”
“At least I know where the people stand. Here? I have no idea.”
That prompted another round of silence, this one a little more awkward and uncomfortable then the last. But Jae didn’t care. Let them stew in their discomfort, he thought. He had no reason to play nice with Clay anymore, or this Tobin fellow for that matter. Not after they spoon-fed him fiction for so long.
Tobin shifted away from the cabin, which creaked with the release of his weight. “You have every reason to be angry with us. I would be too if I were in your shoes. We were not upfront, and that deserves scrutiny. You have it right. As you said, trust is a delicate thing. It’s a bridge between two people, and one that can be broken easily.” He pushed a sigh through his nose. “But I’ll make it right. I’ll rebuild that trust.”
“Trust isn’t something you can rebuild with just a few words.”
Tobin nodded, understanding. “But I hope words can act as the foundation for a new one.”
“Then start off by telling me why you even sent Clay to me in the first place.”
“Clay didn’t lie when he said he needed your protection. We were already stretched thin as it was, and we couldn’t provide him with any security, so you were our best option.”
“Then why tell him to keep me in the dark? What was the point of that? Why not allow him to be upfront right away?”
Tobin, appearing unsure, looked at the ground for a moment, before finally looking back up. “Because that’s what Han wanted.”
Jae thought his hearing had suddenly gone bad, because it sounded like Tobin just said Han wanted to lie to him. But the words were as clear as the sky above him, so he knew what he had heard, and the very notion of it almost made Jae explode in laughter. Why would Han want to lie to him? What was there to even lie about? It made no sense. Was this just another falsehood Tobin and Clay had cooked up?
Tobin, perhaps sensing Jae’s disbelief, went on. “Han was acting out of fear.”
“Fear?” Jae said the word as if he didn’t know what it meant. “Fear of what?”
“You.”
Jae pulled back, offended, but also confused. “Why would he fear me?”
“Because he knew how angry and disappointed you had become with his prolonged absence, and having to potentially answer your many misgivings about his disappearance always gave him pause, as he felt he never had a good reason for it. It eventually reached a point where the notion of it actually began to frighten him, so he chose to keep himself distant and hidden, and he begged us to maintain that lie.”
Jae couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Han was scared of answering questions about his disappearance? He was gone for twenty years! Of course I was going to ask him about that. He should have expected that.”
“Perhaps frightened is too strong a word. It’d be more accurate to say that he was just not ready for it.”
“If he had bothered to write an e-mail or call me in the twenty years that he was gone, then he wouldn’t have to worry about any misunderstandings about where we stand. Just one correspondence would have been more than adequate. One! None of this had to happen if he did just that. He had no excuse.”
“It’s not that simple,” Tobin said.
“Why not? It sounds simple enough to me.”
“The work he was doing kept him busy. He was too pre-occupied to—”
“Get out of here with that busy-with-work crap. I don’t care what sort of workload he was under. Anyone can spare three minutes to write a quick e-mail or dial in a damn number.”
“I know it doesn’t sound plausible, but it’s true. He spent every waking moment buried in his work. He simply didn’t have the time, or perhaps the inclination, to contact the outside world.”
“Why would he dedicate so much time and effort to his employers, when he ends up revolting against them?”
“Because your mother’s death had a profound effect on him. For a long time, work was the only thing that helped him take his mind off of her.”
That Jae believed. He tried to keep himself busy too in the wake of his mother’s death. Anything to dull the pain. Sighing, he continued. “So when he presumably frees himself from the yoke of the government, and finally has the time to do the most obvious thing—touch base with me—he instead cooks up this needlessly complicated plan to send you and Clay to . . . I don’t know, spy on me?”
Clay winced at that.
“As I mentioned before, our plan was to eventually bring you into the fold, but . . .” Tobin trailed off.
“But what?” Jae asked.
Tobin sighed. “Han had reached a point where he felt like he was ready to finally see you, gathering the courage necessary to move past his reluctance, but . . . when he received word that you were contemplating working with Morgan to reel his son in, he thought you had become . . . bought, for lack of a better word, and backed off.”
“Bought? Bought?” Jae didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or cry. “Just because I was willing to do whatever it took to save my city, he thought I had become Morgan’s stooge?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. He thought you had sold your soul to him. I tried to convince Han that it was not a good reason to distrust you, as anyone in your position would have accepted Morgan’s proposal, but he couldn’t be persuaded. He was convinced you had flipped.”
Jae buried his face into his hands. Misunderstandings piled on top of a mountain of no communication. So many issues could have been prevented if Han got over his fears and misconceptions and made just one call. Things could have been easily clarified. None of this had to happen.
“Do you mind if I ask you something, Jae?” Clay asked.
Jae removed his hands from his face. “What?”
“How did you find out that we were . . . keeping you in the dark?”
“Morgan had us bugged the entire time. They heard everything. Probably saw everything too.”
“We were under surveillance?” Clay looked incredulous. “How did Marlowe not sense that?
Jae looked at Tobin. “What I want to know is why you were even at our hotel room in the first place.”
For a split second, Tobin looked ashamed. “Due to your apparent alliance with Morgan, Han wanted me to take Clay and Marlowe away from you.”
Jae grinded his teeth.
“But I didn’t take them away. I opted to stay until you came back, because I felt it was time that we finally talked. But I was careless and sloppy. I should have brought Clay and Marlowe back to Han first, then waited for you alone in your hotel room, but I didn’t suspec
t a trap was being set by Morgan, and now I fear we are in this predicament because I let my guard down.”
“I should have told you everything from the start. I really should have,” Clay said. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t . . .” Cut it. That’s what Jae wanted to say, but he closed his eyes and forced the words to the dustbin in his mind. He was already angry and getting angrier wasn’t going to accomplish anything. He opened his eyes and spoke the next words slowly. “Where did they take Han?”
“I unfortunately don’t know. He could be anywhere at this point, but I’m working on a few leads, so hopefully I’ll know more soon,” Tobin said.
“What about Marlowe?” Clay asked.
“I’m looking into that too.”
“What was Han doing for Morgan? What made Han so important to him?” Jae asked.
“Morgan was one of the key drivers of the neo-human project for the government. Han was one of the people he had recruited for it,” Tobin said.
Jae should have known that Morgan was involved with the project. It made too much sense. “But what exactly did Han do? Why was Morgan willing to go to the lengths that he did to take him back?”
Tobin glanced at Clay, then looked back at Jae.
“I think it might be best to ask him yourself once we find and rescue him,” Tobin said.
Jae furrowed his brow. “You’re doing a poor job at this whole winning-back-my-trust thing. Withholding information then expecting me to put my faith in you is not how this works.”
“It’s nothing like that, Mr. Yeon. It’s just that your brother would be far more suitable to answer these sorts of questions. My knowledge of his work is cursory at best.”
“But you said yourself, he could be anywhere at this point. There’s no guarantee we’ll ever find him.”
“Are you already losing hope in rescuing your brother?”
“I’m trying to be realistic here. It might take months, maybe even years, until we can finally narrow down where he is. And when we do, then what? How do we get him out? It’s just the four of us against . . . the entire might of Morgan’s PMC? The United States government? No matter how you cut it, our chances do not look good. So until we rescue Han, I . . .” Jae looked at Andrea. “We, all of us here, need to know what exactly is going on. We’ve been pulled into a conspiracy larger than any of us can imagine, and we need to know what’s at stake here. We cannot be kept in the dark any longer.”
Tobin hesitated, appearing unsure.
“He’s right,” Clay said. “I put my life on the line for this, and as a result I had my boy stolen from me. Tell them everything, Tobin. We need Jae and Andrea on this more than ever. Whatever we end up doing, we can’t do it without them.”
Tobin looked at Andrea, as if he was expecting some sort of mandate from her too.
“Hell, I’m just as curious as anyone else here. It’d be nice to know what’s going on,” Andrea said.
Exhaling, Tobin made his way over and sat at a nearby table, facing his audience.
“You’re right. All of you deserve to know what’s going on. It’s only fair. But I’m not an expert. Han told me a lot, and I myself have seen a lot, but the finer details escape me because I do not have his mind or his knowledge. The picture I paint will be incomplete. When the time comes, you will have to ask Han to fill in the blanks for you.”
“I’ll do what I can to clarify where possible,” Clay said.
“Much of what I’ll say will be difficult to accept. I myself had difficulty accepting it when I was first told, but in the end, I had no other choice but to accept it because it was all true. If you choose not to accept what I say, then that’s fine. It doesn’t matter to me. It’s up to you if you want to believe me or not.”
Jae and Andrea exchanged glances.
“Believe me; it’s not going to be easy to consider. It’s pretty far out there, but it’s all true. Every last preposterous bit of it,” Clay said.
“We’ll be the judge of that,” Jae said.
“Very well.” Tobin cleared his throat. “Where would you like me to start, then? How you got your powers? The global storm from a year ago? Han’s involvement with Morgan?”
Jae shrugged. “How about we start from the very beginning?”
“Then that would require us to go back millions of years.” Tobin stared up at the sky. “Let me start out with a question first, then: the Ancient Astronaut Theory—have you heard of it?”
“No.”
Andrea raised her hand. “It’s the theory that aliens visited the Earth millions of years ago, and either planted the seeds of humanity, or came in contact with already existing humans and steered their development. It’s a popular trope used in science-fiction, but it has no credibility in real life from what I understand. The vast majority of experts deny it.”
“What if I told you that it was true?” Tobin asked.
Jae and Andrea looked at each other.
“Are you saying aliens are real?” Jae asked.
“Seventy years ago, specifically in 1947—well technically, much, much further back than that, but for our purposes we’ll start at 1947, in Roswell, New Mexico.” Tobin stopped to give Jae and Andrea a look, like a teacher glancing at his students. “Are you familiar with what happened there?”
“A conspiracy theory,” Jae said.
“All of which is true.”
“Bullshit.”
“Why?”
“Because the government—”
“Are liars. They’ve proven this time and time again. How can you still trust what they say after everything you’ve been through?”
Jae didn’t, but believing in the existence of aliens was an equally hard pill to swallow. It was too farfetched an answer to take at face value. It was the very last thing he expected Tobin to allude to.
Tobin went on. “When the UFO first crashed into Roswell that night, the government thought it was a Soviet spy craft. The suspicion made sense, since the Cold War was starting to bare its fangs, but once they brought the craft in for examination, they quickly realized that what they were dealing with was something far more . . . extraterrestrial. The technology far exceeded anything that existed at the time.”
“What about the pilot? What did he look like?” Andrea asked.
“There was no pilot,” Tobin said.
“It was empty?”
“When they finally managed to pry the spacecraft open, all they found sitting inside was a metal sphere the size of a basketball. There was no organic lifeform.”
“A metal sphere?” Jae asked.
Tobin nodded. “It was the only thing in there that wasn’t intrinsically part of the ship.”
“Someone had to pilot the ship, though. Did the alien eject before crashing?”
“They found no evidence of an ejection. The spacecraft was either operated remotely or piloted by some sort of auto-pilot software. They’re still unclear on that.”
“What was this sphere, then?” Andrea asked.
“I’ll get to that in a little bit. Just know that while there wasn’t an alien lifeform they could study, the ship itself proved to be treasure trove of wonders. Through the magic of intensive research and reverse engineering, we learned much about their technology and integrated it for our own benefit. Much of the advancement we experienced post-World War II—at least militarily—were birthed from that ship.”
“Every advancement? From just one little alien spacecraft?”
“Let me clarify. While the spacecraft itself certainly helped, what really drove us forward was the vast archival of information contained within the ship’s mainframe database, which housed a near endless library of information on their technology.”
“It was Google and Wikipedia before we even thought of it,” Clay said.
“However, everything was obviously coded and written in a language they had no understanding of, so all they were looking at was gibberish. That spurred the government to bring in dozens, if not hund
reds, of linguists around the world to help interpret and translate this alien text.” Tobin looked at Jae. “Linguists like your brother.”
My brother? Suddenly, like clouds parting to allow the sun to shine its light through, everything started to become clearer for Jae. Han had studied languages in college, and Jae always wondered what use the government had for a budding linguist.
“The government needed as many people as they could find to help develop a system that could crack the alien code. It was an immense undertaking, and even now it continues to be a work-in-progress. But even with the sparse amount of text they’ve managed to decrypt, it helped fuel the fastest technological advancement in human history.”
Andrea stood from the bench and took a few steps away from the group. She looked up at the sky, darkening as the sun began to set, and took in a deep breath.
“Are you okay? Do you want to stop and take a break?” Tobin asked.
“I’m fine. It’s just . . .” Andrea searched for the words. “For a long time, people have always endlessly debated about the existence of aliens, and now, right here in this stretch of nowhere, you’ve confirmed that we are not alone. And you told it so casually, like it was something we were already supposed to know.”
Tobin smirked, the first time Jae had seen him do so. “Sometimes I forget that the outside world is not aware. When you’re exposed to this sort of thing on a daily basis, it becomes normal for you—everyday reality. I have to keep reminding myself that this is something only a small handful of people know.”
Andrea came back to her seat. “So how does any of this connect to our powers?”
“Information on their technology wasn’t the only thing stored within their database. They also had culture and history notated deep within their archives too, and it was through that text that we discovered that our own history was intertwined intimately with theirs, dating back countless millennia. They had been observing us for a long time, almost since the beginning, taking note of our behavior and growth.”
“Why?” Jae asked.
“Because as it turns out, the universe, while vast, is a pretty empty space, and while they admit that they haven’t come close to discovering all of it, the eons they spent traveling the stars produced not a single intelligent organism they could call a neighbor.”