by David Capps
* * *
The return journey was uneventful. Trent got off in London when we stopped for fuel. It was just after two in the morning when we landed in Denver. Ed and I were descending the steps of John’s Learjet 45 when I heard sirens. Three black SUV’s came rushing at the plane with red and blue strobes flashing into the darkness. Ed looked over at me. “Remain completely silent,” he said. “Don’t say anything to anybody, don’t trust anyone other than John, and don’t believe anything they say. Remain absolutely silent. You got it?”
“Yeah,” I replied. I took my iPhone out of my pocket and activated my SWIPE program. It uploaded everything to a private secure server, the ‘S’ in SWIPE was for the store part, then it wiped all of the special apps and other data off of the iPhone, the WIPE part. I watched the display as six federal agents rushed from their cars with guns drawn.
“Freeze!”
“Do not move!”
“FBI.”
The display on my iPhone reverted to its initial configuration, just the way it was when it came out of the box. Ed and I slowly raised our hands over our heads and waited. The FBI agents rushed up to us and roughly pushed us up against the railing of the steps and handcuffed each of us. They stuffed both of us into the back seat of an SUV and whisked us off into the night.
* * *
I sat alone in the interrogation room for several hours, handcuffed to a large U-bolt sticking up through the metal table. Finally two FBI agents came into the room and sat down on the other side of the small table in the room. I looked up at the mirrored glass facing me and assumed I was not only being watched, but recorded and videographed. It was exactly the same procedure they used on me when I was sent to prison. The lead agent plopped a tablet of lined paper and a pen down on the table.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
I pointed to the pad of paper. He slid it across to me. In big block letters I wrote, LAWYER.
I pushed the pad back over to him. He looked at the pad and smiled.
“You don’t get a lawyer,” he said. “You’re under arrest pursuant to the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act. You’re a terrorist; you have no rights. We can hold you indefinitely without charges or a trial. You’re toast, so why don’t you talk to us? If you can clear up the questions we have, you can walk out of here and go home.”
Yeah, I thought, talking was what got me into prison the last time. It’s not happening again.
The lead FBI agent studied my face for a bit. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was being rude. My name is Special Agent Bergman and this is my partner Agent Woldrich. Can we have your name?”
I stared at him. After a long pause, Agent Woldrich slammed his hands down on the table and yelled. “Come on, you fucking scumbag, give us your name.”
I looked over at him and said nothing. The good cop / bad cop routine continued for the next ten hours without rest. I had nothing to drink or eat during that time and I was quickly getting worn out. They baited me, telling me John was an international drug and arms dealer and plotting terrorist attacks against the United States. It wasn’t working. I knew they were lying.
Finally there was a knock at the door. The two FBI agents got up and left. Two new agents took their place. One was carrying a small tray with a bottle of water on it. He set it down on the table close to me, uncuffed my left hand, and motioned for me to take it. I hadn’t had anything to drink in at least twelve hours. I grabbed the bottle, unscrewed the cap and drank. It was such a relief. My hand was shaking and it was hard to keep the bottle steady. I spilled some of the water down the front of my clothes. I didn’t really care; I was just so thirsty. I finished the bottle off and placed it back on the tray. The agent picked up the tray with the bottle on it.
“Thanks for the prints and the DNA,” he said. “Now we can find out who you really are.”
My thoughts went immediately to Tia as I wondered how well she did with my new identity.
The interrogation continued hour after hour. I was exhausted and drowsy. Every time I started to doze off the bad cop agent would slam his hands down on the table, or shove me, or grab me and shake me. My mind was wandering. I couldn’t concentrate. I thought I could see Tia through the mirrored window. She was so beautiful, smiling at me. Her face turned serious and then sad. She shook her head, and then disappeared. I wanted to call out to her, to get her back, but I held on to the image of her smiling at me and said nothing.
The door to the interrogation room opened. “We’re ready,” a male voice said.
They uncuffed me from the table and led me to a restroom. I was so grateful to pee. After that I was led into another room. This one had what I assumed was a polygraph machine set up next to the table. They hooked the sensors up and started the machine.
“Is your real name Karl Koenig?” the agent asked.
I said nothing.
“Did you grow up in Milwaukee?” he asked.
I stared at the wall.
“Are you a member of the Survivalist Network?” he asked.
I continued to look at the wall.
“Have you ever been arrested before?”
The thought of going back to prison was creeping back into my mind. I couldn’t shake it.
“Have you ever been married?”
I realized they were fishing. They didn’t really know anything. I tried to push the thoughts of prison out of my mind.
“Did you graduate high school?”
Focus, I thought. Focus on Tia.
“Have you ever done drugs?”
She seemed to be slipping away from me. Tia! My mind screamed. Don’t leave me!
“Do you own a firearm of any kind?”
Tia! Come back!
“What were you doing in India?”
The questions continued as I tried to focus only on Tia. Gradually her image returned. She smiled at me. I was going to be all right.
Another agent entered the room.
“I was hoping to get some kind of baseline,” the technician said, “but everything is elevated. I’m afraid this isn’t going to work.”
“Okay,” the agent said. “Bring him back to interrogation.”
Bergman and Woldrich were back in the room. Again the good cop / bad cop routine played itself out. Several hours later there was another knock at the door. “His lawyer’s here,” a male voice said.
Oh thank God, I thought to myself.
A tall man with thin wire rimmed glasses entered the room. “Okay, you’re done here,” he said. “You can’t question my client anymore.”
Bergman and Woldrich got up with a disgusted look on their face and walked out of the room.
“You’re safe now,” he said. “John is proud of you for how well you held up in here.”
I looked over at him. Finally this insane ordeal was over. I was about to say something when Ed’s words came back into my mind. Trust no one but John. I stopped and looked closely at the lawyer. He wore a nice suit, but it wasn’t that nice. John was impeccable in his clothes. I had trouble imagining a lawyer working for him that didn’t dress the same way.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Anything you say now is covered under the attorney client privilege. They can’t use it against you.”
My mind was swimming. Thoughts were spinning around with no apparent connection to one another, but something didn’t feel right about this guy. I put my head down on my arms and closed my eyes. My hope was if I could just rest for one minute, my mind would clear.
“It’s all over,” he said. “You can relax now. Just tell me the truth and I can get you out of here.”
That’s it! I thought. He isn’t getting me out of here. If he’s my lawyer, why are we still in the interrogation room? Why aren’t we leaving? I saw Tia again in my mind. She was still smiling at me. I reached out to her, but she faded away and disappeared.
“Wake up, asshole!” It was Woldrich again. Bergman was back and the so called lawyer was gone.
“L
ook,” Bergman said, “we’ve run your prints and your DNA. We’ve verified that you are Karl Koenig from Milwaukee. You don’t have any criminal record. Your prints and DNA are not in the system. Just tell us what you know about Carl Palminteri and we can get you out of here. It’s that simple. Just tell us about Carl.”
I put my head back down on my arms. Woldrich grabbed me and shook me again. “Tell us about Carl!”
I shook my head and tried to think about Tia, her blue and brown eyes, her hair, the softness of her voice.
The door to the interrogation room opened. A man stepped in and handed Bergman a piece of paper. Bergman looked at it and tossed it back onto the table.
“It’s a Federal Court Order releasing my client immediately,” he said. “Your Assistant United States Attorney refused to provide any evidence whatsoever to support your claim that my clients are connected in any way to any known terrorist organizations. They are not enemy combatants. You can’t hold them any longer.”
Bergman got up and left the room with Woldrich close behind.
“Hey,” the lawyer shouted. “Remove the cuffs.”
An agent came in and took the handcuffs off my wrists.
“I’m Charles Edward Harrington the third,” the lawyer said, “of Harrington, Harrington and Spetznaz, Attorneys at Law. Come on, we’re leaving.”
I looked at the suit he was wearing. It was expensive and impeccable, right down to the thousand dollar shoes. I whispered to the lawyer.
“Where are his personal effects?” Charles yelled. Everyone ignored him. “Are you begging for a mulit-million dollar law suit or are you just plain stupid?” he yelled again.
An agent opened a desk drawer, removed a manila envelope and tossed it to Charles who handed the envelope to me. I opened it and slid the contents out. There was my iPhone, my wallet, money, passport, watch and my medallion. I told Charles we were good and we left.
CHAPTER 11
I slept for nineteen hours straight and still felt exhausted when I woke up at two in the afternoon. John’s cabin seemed empty as I made my way down the stairs to the kitchen. I put some coffee on and looked in the fridge to see what appeared edible and interesting. I still felt starved from not having anything to eat while I was in federal custody. I found some cinnamon and raisin bagels, sliced one and popped it in the toaster. When it came up I put some cream cheese on it, poured my cup of coffee and settled in on a stool by the kitchen counter. After the bagel and coffee my brain began to work better. I thought it was strange that nobody was here but me. I wondered if John’s communications officer might be in the communications room in the basement. I went down the stairs and pushed open the padded door.
All of the screens along the outer wall were lit up with different images. I counted over twenty five people working at computer consoles throughout the room. John looked up and came over to me.
“Carl, how do you feel?” he asked.
“Still a bit fuzzy and tired,” I replied.
“I brought a few specialists in to help us,” John said.
“Yeah,” I responded, “I can see that.”
“I’ve upgraded the alert to a level three; that’s why the extra people are here.”
“Yeah,” I said, “we’ve got a lot of work to do in a very short period of time.”
John pointed to the main display screen in the center of the back wall.
METEOR STORM
IN 57 DAYS
“I picked the first day in the four day window,” he said. “But the most exciting thing is back here,” as he motioned for me to follow him. We went back to where the robot’s head had been set up. John had built sound proof walls with a door around the area with the robot’s head in it. Ed was standing guard at the door.
“Hey,” Ed said, “I heard you did good in custody.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “What did they do to you?”
“Probably the same things they did to you. But after going through Interrogation Training in the SEALS, I wasn’t impressed.” He opened the door for me and John.
Tia was in the room with the robot’s head. As soon as I entered I could smell the fragrance of her perfume. She hadn’t worn any before, so this was a pleasant change. It made me feel romantic. She turned toward me and smiled. “You’re up. Good,” she said. “While you were gone something spectacular happened. NETCOMM came up. There’s another robot out there and they’re communicating.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I keep getting references to a guardian, but we don’t know what that is all about,” she said.
“Robot,” I said, “I know you can hear me.”
Yes, guardian appeared on the screen.
“Oh my God,” Tia said as she turned and looked at me. “How did you… You’re the guardian?”
“It’s a long story.”
“One I’d love to hear,” she replied.
John looked at me and smiled. “I’d like to hear that story myself.”
“Robot, do you know me?” Tia asked.
Yes, Tia appeared on the screen.
“Oh my God,” Tia blurted out.
“Robot, do you have a common name by which people address you?” I asked.
The people at the mining facility on the moon called me what would be Andy in your language appeared on the screen.
“Short for android, I presume,” I said.
Yes, guardian, came the reply on the screen.
“How imaginative,” I commented. “And how many of the robots were called Andy?”
Fifty eight point two percent appeared on the screen.
“Is Andy agreeable with you?” I asked.
Yes, guardian.
“You can call me Carl,” I said.
Yes, guardian appeared on the screen again.
“Looks like you’re stuck with it,” Tia announced.
“Swell,” I replied.
* * *
“This is the heart of Project Ark,” John said as we toured the communications room. “For the last fifteen years Project Ark has existed only on paper and in computer databases. Today, because of you, Project Ark is a physical reality. We have a two-fold mission. The first part is to inform and save as many people as we can from the destruction that is coming. The second part is to preserve as much of our technology as we can. We take so much of our technology for granted that people no longer have any idea what is involved in even simple things.” John picked up several sheets of paper stapled together in the upper left corner. “Take this, for example. Three printed pages stapled together. The technology just for the printing is dependent on electricity and millions of miles of copper wire that had to be mined, refined and drawn out into wire. The wire is coated with plastic which is refined from petroleum and chemicals produced and purified in hundreds of different processes employing thousands of machines, pieces of equipment and skilled people. The toner from the laser printer has its own industry of supply, natural resources, chemical processes, more equipment and skilled people to perform all of the hundreds of functions required just to make the toner.
“The printer is made from mostly plastic, but for each part there is a mold and a machine that produces that part. The mold had to be created in a machine shop on metal cutting equipment and designed by engineers. The electronics that control the printer come from silicon sand, collected, cleaned, melted and condensed into crystals grown under very exacting conditions. Chemicals and heat are used to change the molecular structure of the silicon crystals in order to form the semiconductors. Photographic and even more chemical processes are used to create the microscopic electronic circuits on the semiconductors.
“The paper, one of our oldest industries, is made from wood fiber with more machines, chemicals, processes and more skilled people. The staple has its own industry, with iron ore mined from the Earth, smelted, refined, mixed with other elements, drawn into wire and then made into staples by more machines and skilled operators. Add to that all of the sales and distribution sys
tems involved and you have a very complex interdependent system that supports just these three sheets of paper.
“If only one small detail in the system fails, we lose the paper and the printed information stored on it. At the base of all of our technology is the infrastructure of roads, trucks, trains and planes, water, oil, natural gas, coal, mining and energy production. The loss of any one section of the infrastructure will have devastating consequences for our society.
“With the meteor storm and the trillions of meteorites that will fall from the sky, we are looking at the loss of all of our technology as well as the entire infrastructure. We can preserve some of the technology, but without the infrastructure there won’t be any replacement parts for tens of thousands of years. Mankind will be thrown back to living in caves and using stones for weapons and tools, just like the last time.
“The underlying key to the infrastructure and technology that supports our civilization is the knowledge and skills required to rebuild everything from scratch. That is the real mission of Project Ark: to preserve the knowledge and skills needed to reconstruct the entire infrastructure and rebuild our civilization. You have a solid grasp of technology. I need your help in order to make this happen.”
“John, this is an overwhelming task. How do you expect to accomplish anything on this scale in the next fifty seven days?” I asked.
“We have actually been collecting technical records for more than the last decade, so the bulk of the project is already done,” John replied. “We have also been recruiting technical specialists for close to that long. That’s also why you’re here. What I need is a fresh pair of eyes, someone to look at what we’ve done and see if we missed anything.”