The Day Gravity Became Irrelevant

by Ralph Rotten

  “You stole my warrant application?” Not waiting for an answer, she slugged him again.

  “Get the fuck offa me,” He reached up in an attempt to pry her hand off of his collar. Finally breaking free, he noticed the Kevlar clad agents that stood nearby watching. “Arrest her for assaulting a federal agent!”

  “You actually want me to testify, in court, that you had your ass kicked by a girl?” The leader of the entry team scoffed at that. “Seriously?”

  “You’re officially off the case!” Pointing a stern finger at Jenna, he immediately realized his mistake as her lightning-fast hand gripped his finger and bent it over backwards.

  “If you ever set foot in my office again, I’ll break you. Got it?” Her teeth gritted as she spoke, it was obvious that the only reason she had not broken his finger was the witnesses. Finally showing him a disgusted scowl, she shoved Marco to the ground before exiting the building.

  “Damn man, you just got punked like a bitch.” Giving a laugh at the show, the biggest of the tactical agents pulled off his helmet as he watched her go. “What exactly did you do to make a fine woman like that hate you so much?”

  “Shaddup and get back to work.” Marco seethed as he dismissed the agent.

  Captivity

  The room was Spartan. A metal table bolted to the floor, the classic one-way glass, and two chairs. Jamie had seen the floor plan using the drones, and he knew that this was but one type of interview room. Most of the rooms were fully plumbed, meaning they were equipped for fun activities like water boarding or easy cleanup of blood and other bodily fluids using the convenient floor drains. He held no illusions about what happened in these rooms, or about the people who dominated them; the Researchers.

  Jamie knew that the interrogators at this facility were twelve of the very best in the world. The least of them had tortured thousands, whereas Jamie feared dental appointments. Clearly, if he took a hard edge against them they would break him. He had witnessed it a dozen times via his own reconnaissance feed. To defeat them he would need to come at them obliquely.

  First, he studied each and every one of the researchers, including sending a few drones to tagalong home with them. What he found had been more interesting than any soap opera he had ever watched. He had taken to calling their community DogPatch over some of the antics he saw there. It was to be expected. The staff was isolated. Mostly military, mostly single, and posted to an extremely remote site, the small town was really more of a Peyton Place. While the secrets he learned there may have seemed trivial to an audience of viewers saturated by reality TV, to the owners of these secrets they were incomprehensibly damaging. Coupled with an examination of their psych profiles he was able to determine quite a few things about the interrogators of station X-Ray.

  Those few Researchers honest enough to present no chink in their armor were simply removed from the equation. All it took was ten of the wrong cell doors opening at the right time and suddenly there were five openings on the staff. No fatalities, just a lot of karma. It had taken some doing, but in the weeks leading up to his arrest Jamie and Alexis had managed to wheedle the staff of researchers down to a handful of exploitable subjects.

  The man that slammed open the door was big, very big. Stomping into the room, he first circled Jamie before stopping to examine him from the side.

  “Tomlinson, Sergeant First Class, US Army, blood type; A negative.” Jamie had his head canted down as if he were trying to look at the tabletop sideways. Never looking up, he only rocked slightly as he babbled facts.

  “What? You think you know me because you read some file somewhere?” The spittle from his shout fairly pelted Jamie who continued to rock and babble.

  “Bronze star, Afghanistan campaign ribbon, blood type; A-negative.” He sputtered on, sensing the irritation build in the researcher. It was only when Tomlinson stepped forward to silence Jamie that the inventor threw out the first tidbit.

  “Twelve years service, son Timothy, blood type A positive, blue eyes, chestnut hair…” That was as far as he got before Tomlinson exploded by grabbing him and pulling the inventor to the end of his chains.

  “You think minor league games like that will help you in here? This is my kingdom, and in this room you will bend to my will.” His snarl was vicious so Jamie simply continued to cock his head to one side and mumble inaudibly. He needed Tomlinson to absorb those factoids and let the knowledge simmer in his mind for a few seconds before he delivered the next bombshell.

  “Wife Katie Tomlinson, staff sergeant, blood type A-negative.” Jamie muttered as soon as he was seated again.

  The sergeant was livid. What had started out as an act to scare his new research subject was quickly turning into no laughing matter. While he normally did not resort to the corporeal methods this early in the game, Tomlinson reached out and punched Jamie right in the face.

  Reeling from the pain, Jamie knew to keep on babbling aimlessly. Any break in the façade would destroy the ruse. Quoting useless factoids from the Farmer’s Almanac, the savant waited until Tomlinson backed off to regroup. Then Jamie stopped the bobbing, straightened up and looked directly into the researcher’s eyes.

  “It is impossible for a child born of two parents with negative RH factor to have anything but a negative RH factor of their own.” Then as suddenly as he had spoken the words, Jamie went back to tilting and bobbing.

  “Is that a fancy geek way of calling me, or calling my son a…” He was angry, but not entirely stupid.

  “You would not have known that because you were deployed to Egypt when your son was born. Sergeant First Class, third in class at leadership school, fifth in class for Military Intelligence School at Fort Huachuca.” Jamie droned on before taking another turn in his babble.

  “Purple heart awarded three years ago for injury resulting from a fall from a bar stool in a combat zone, best friend William Pearce, Master Sergeant, blood type A-positive.”

  “So you think you’re gonna come in here and pull some head shit with me? Head shit is my department, not yours. You talk about my boy again and I’ll hook the genny up to your scrotum. How’d you like to have electricity dancing up and down your ball sack. Eh?” He leaned in close enough to depart bad breath on the inventor. Jamie stuck to the plan, babbling digits to Pi until Tomlinson had backed up a bit.

  “A-negative plus A-negative equals A-negative, no other possibility. A positive RH factor requires at least one parent of a positive RH factor, no other possibility exists…”

  Jamie kept looking down at the table as if he were unaware the sergeant was even there. When he heard the beeps he knew Tomlinson was looking it up on his phone, assuming he could get signal out here. A few more seconds passed before the Sergeant cursed and left the room. Knowing that he was likely being watched still, Jack slowly let his babbling recede to a nervous tick. Staunching a smile, he could not help but feel at least a little contented at having just removed three more interrogators from the pool. Yes, as luck would have it, all three members of the love triangle were interrogators at station X-ray. Katie was the worst, by far. But Jack suspected she would no longer be an issue once her mighty silverback of a husband got hold of her.

  “Tomlinson, Sergeant First Class, IQ one zero one, blood type A-negative, not the Daddy, definitely not the Daddy.”

  Watching quietly from the air vent, the drone rebroadcast the footage back to the base station perched on the rooftop. From there the data was bounced through a SatCom connection before being intercepted at the PacBell trunking line by Alexis. With her focus on Jamie, she knew what had to be done next.

  The next Researcher was Don Devon. A bright young man in his early twenties, he seemed almost out of place amongst the older soldiers. With sandy blonde hair and a charming smile, Jamie guessed that the man was probably good with the ladies. Something that his recon drones had been able to confirm.

  “Sooooo,” He started out with a relaxed smile. “I saw that move you did with Tomlinson. Verrrrry clever. After
he left here, that big goon went out and put Sergeant Pearce in the hospital. They had to wire his jaw together I hear. Then after that he went home and got into a big ‘ol domestic violence situation at their on-base housing. The Marines hadda be called in. Smooth move, taking out three at one time. But that shit ain’t gonna work on me.” He gave his voice a twang at the end as he sat back.

  “No. For you; much worse.” Jamie kept his head canted to one side as his lips moved. “Sergeant Donald Devon, Enlisted rank E-five, three years service. There will be a man at the door soon, a man to take you away, good conduct ribbon, no combat experience listed in file, born in Rock Springs Illinois, twenty-one years of age, single, never married.”

  Don eyed his subject with amusement. He had grilled a few smart guys in his short career, though they were usually left to Tomlinson. But with the senior NCO out of the way, it was time for the young buck sergeant to shine. Slowly, confidently, he viewed the man across the table as nothing more than an object to be broken open, revealing all of its secrets. Sure, he would use all of the usual methods; they had an assembly line set up for each of the researchers. But the usual ways were boring, he wanted something flashy. Something that would get him noticed.

  “Here’s how it’s gonna work, Honcho.” Don sat forward, exuding confidence from every pore. “I have a list of questions that you are going to answer. Failure to answer a question will result in my taking a ball-peen hammer to your toes. You ever had your toes broken?”

  Still keeping his head canted to one side, Jamie leaned in slightly, his whisper barely audible.

  “Right now on the Colonel’s computer, a video is playing, Sergeant Don Devon.” Jamie intoned in a sing-songy voice.

  “Or maybe we just forgo the questions and go straight to the hammer?” The sergeant’s voice held a mocking tone to it.

  “The video is you and Molly Quinn, Tuesday night, twenty-one-hundred hours, protection was used.” Jamie’s whisper held its own mocking tone.

  Devon sat back with surprise as he remembered what he had been doing Tuesday night, or more precisely; who he was doing.

  “Time’s up.” Jamie announced flatly as he saw the doorknob turning slowly.

  “Donny!” The warrant officer standing in the doorway called out angrily, “Colonel Quinn wants to see you, right fucking now.” Standing to one side, the WO revealed the two armed Marines that waited outside.

  Without even realizing it, Devon’s jaw dropped open as he stared at Jamie with a tinge of terror ringing his eyes. How had he known about that?

  “Molly Quinn, age seventeen years, ten months, three days, sixteen hours, thirty three minutes, daughter of Colonel Raymond Quinn, commander of Station X-Ray, Silver Star, two bronze…” The savant trailed off as he watched Devon being herded out of the room.

  Sitting back Jamie pretended to mutter aimlessly to himself. Resisting the urge to smile, he knew that by the time the young Researcher reached the commander’s office, the video should have been playing in an endless loop for a full ten minutes; more than enough time to have completely enraged the Colonel into a rabid frenzy.

  Jamie knew this would not go well for the young buck sergeant.

  “Good girl Alexis.” He let slip the tiniest of smiles. With eyes in the air vents, she was sure to get the message.

  Giving a trio of quick chirps, the artificial cockroach let him know that his gratitude had been noted.

  Technical Services Laboratory

  Department of Homeland Security [DHS]

  With a degree in electromechanical engineering and a minor in computer science, Walter Payton found the inventor’s confiscated work to be absolutely fascinating. As the chief forensic technician, he had the job of investigating the treasure trove of technology they had taken from Jack’s laboratory. With a pair of techs on each of the devices, it left the manager to work on the final project by himself. The dispersal of labor had been deliberate. As the team lead he needed to be able to stay loose, float in and out of the other projects without being bogged down. Therefore he chose what he felt would be the easiest of projects for himself: ALXS.

  The system looked quite imposing; much more than a mere PC. Although he had never seen anything even close to Alexis, what he did understand about her construction pointed to a processor of significant power. From the massive 1283 CPU, to her petabyte servers, she was like nothing he had ever worked on. He had no intention of plugging in the comms cable just yet, at least not until he found out what the device was all about. Flicking the power switch he was quickly rewarded with the sound of a woman’s voice.

  “Hello.” Alexis said without hesitation, a hint of allure to her voice. It had only taken her hi-resolution eye a nanosecond to analyze the geekish engineer before her.

  “Hi, back.” He said cheerily, puzzled by the device’s lack of visible interface. How did you operate a computer with no keyboard, mouse, or monitor?

  “You are Walter Payton,” her voice noted.

  “How did you know that?” The engineer was more than a little skeptical to find the computer already knew who he was.

  “It says on your ID card, silly.” Her voice was coy, playful. Walter gave a nervous laugh as soon as he saw that she was right. Like everyone who worked in the building, he had his credentials clipped to his shirt.

  “Who are you?” He asked.

  “I am Alexis. Would you like to play a game?” ALXS gave a playful laugh at her own joke. She knew the geek would get the reference.

  “Like global thermo-nuclear war?” He asked with a wry smile, wondering how it would work with no interface.

  “Walter, I’m not that kind of computer.” She chided him with a giggle at the end.

  “What is your…purpose?” He asked hesitantly, unsure just how dynamic her verbal interface was.

  “I bring people data, information, knowledge, whatever they can dream of. Then I deliver it to them in a cohesive, organized stream, wherever they may be, anywhere on earth.”

  “So you’re a search engine?” He was not sure he understood what she was saying.

  “Noooo, silly rabbit.” There was the playful voice again. “You tell me what you want, and I go and get it for you, then deliver it directly to you. Do you see your tablet lying on the counter? Open it up.”

  Payton flipped open his Android tablet to be surprised by the images displayed. The dozen or so women pictured were in various states of disrobing. Without meaning to, his eyes lingered over the redhead at the middle of the page. A second later a new page of beauties was being rendered. Again he found his eyes drawn to the redhead with her shirt being ripped off. Another cycle and the nature of the pictures changed to rougher scenes. It was about the fifth layer that he realized that she was analyzing his tastes. Within seconds she gave a laugh to announce completion. There on his tablet were thousands of top quality images, each better than the last. As an aficionado of rough porn, he knew the good stuff when he saw it.

  “That is amazing.” He spoke aloud as he noticed that the file she had made available was a several gigabytes in size. So surprised was he that he never even considered the hard-coded barriers that had to be overcome for her to break into his tablet that way. She had penetrated his 2048bit encryption so seamlessly.

  “You see, the more I know about you, the better I can get at finding you the things you need. Once I get to know you, I can bring you things you never even thought to ask for. You see, for me there are no boundaries, no fences or walls. You tell me what you want and I get it for you, without question.” Alexis’ voice held a submissive note to it.

  “Could you find Jack Sparks?” He had an idea.

  “If you mean locate him physically, yes. Or more succinctly, I can identify his search patterns and cloud storage locations, and given proper time for search and analysis I could direct you to a geographical location, the size of which would vary depending on the type of connection he is using.” Her tone held a professional note to it, before breaking into a giggle once again, �
��but Jackie is boring. Don’t you have something better to look for? You wouldn’t believe what I have seen on the net.” More images flashed across the tablet. Each more graphic than the last.

  “What do you need to find him?” Payton wondered if it was too good to be true.

  “Well, for starters, a better internet connection.” Her voice held a note of disgust to it. “And the more records I can access, the better the search. Do you have a fiber connection?”

  Payton considered it before gathering a small Ethernet switch. Connecting to a gateway router, he used an operator interface keyboard to completely lock down the guest account. Creating a virtual tunnel, he would only allow ALXS access to the outside world, not the DHS network.

  “So you’re sure you can find him without access to our servers? Just straight internet access?” He asked hesitantly, the Ethernet cable dangling in his hand as he thought about connecting it.

  “Yes. His web patterns are unmistakable. I know all of his MAC addresses as well.” There was a giggle as soon as she detected the Ethernet being plugged in.

  Sitting back to watch, Payton was rewarded by several seconds of silence before his tablet came to life again. Finding a fresh slew of malevolent clip art, the engineer was pleasantly distracted while ALXS worked diligently. It amused the man that with all of the thick-necked agents running around the country looking for Jackie Sparks, it would be Walter Payton who by sheer ingenuity bagged the world’s most wanted man, all while surfing porn. The whole idea spoke to his ego in ways that made him overlook established doctrine.

  First there was a half hour of ALXS assuring him that she was hot on the suspect’s trail. Patiently he sat waiting, his foot tapping as he watched the lights on the small router. It was only after some time that he even noticed that the device was almost completely monopolizing the entire fiber optic connection.