Super World

by Lawrence Ambrose

The armored vehicles stopped in a semi-circle a few yards off her porch. The men on top of the vehicles directed their machine guns in her general direction without quite aiming straight at her. She sat in a lounge chair and resumed drinking her coffee. What would happen if they fired on her? Would the bullets injure her? Would they even reach her before her thoughts repelled them? If she was attacked, how powerfully – how controllably – would she react? These weren't the circumstances she wanted to test those questions, not with human flesh and lives hanging in the balance.

  A jeep rolled up through a gap in the convoy, and young middle-aged woman with sandy hair and a no-nonsense air stepped out. Two alert-looking soldiers with rifles held at ready flanked her as she approached.

  "Jamie Shepherd," she said. "I'm Colonel Jeanine Adams."

  She stepped up on the porch, nodding for her escort to stay behind, and offered her hand. Jamie rose to shake it.

  "The bank sent an army to repossess my property?"

  Colonel Adams barely cracked a smile. "I've heard you've had some financial difficulties. But no, I'm here about another piece of property. We understand that an object crashed on your land roughly two weeks ago. We've come to retrieve it."

  Jamie settled back down in her chair and picked up her coffee. It tasted tepid. She raised its temperature with a light mental nudge.

  "I can't guarantee anything, but it's possible the government would be willing to restore your ownership of this property if you cooperate, Mrs. Shepherd."

  "Could I get that in writing?"

  "I'm not authorized to make that kind of deal. Today, my task, on orders from the President himself, is to retrieve the object."

  Jamie was surprised by how pissed off she was becoming. It would be so easy to just hand over the object and "be done with it," as her father was so fond of saying. But for some reason she wasn't finding it easy. They come in here and bully me and expect to take something from my land without even asking. It wasn't like her to make a big fuss when the government treated her unfairly or cavalierly. What was the point? Government bullied people and everyone put up with it. But what if you didn't have to put up with it? What if that was a choice? A weirdly revolutionary concept, she thought. If it was a choice, who would choose to pay their taxes? Society would collapse into anarchy.

  "Mrs. Shepherd." Impatience clipped the friendly tones in Colonel Adams' voice. "I'm going to be blunt – something I've been accused of being most of my life. We're taking the object, with or without your cooperation. But I have no doubt you believe in your country, that you want to do the right thing by your country – you want to do your patriotic duty. If you do that, this administration will remember that. Good things may come to you. But if you don't cooperate, you're taking a stand against your own country. That can't possibly end well for you. So, again, will you please take us to the object now or tell us where it is?"

  "It's not here," said Jamie.

  "Not on your land?"

  "No."

  "Then where is it?"

  Jamie pointed one finger at the sky.

  "What the hell does that mean?" Colonel Adams' eyebrows met in an angry union between her eyes. "Are you saying it took off on its own?"

  Jamie shook her head. "No. I sent it up there."

  "Up where, exactly?"

  "I'm not sure. The upper atmosphere. I don't think it's in orbit."

  "And you did this with your mind?"

  "Yes. Just as I stopped your forces for a minute or two."

  Colonel Jeanine Adams stared at her with bleak, grey-brown eyes. Jamie stared back, unblinking.

  "Is this really how you want to play this, Mrs. Shepherd?"

  "Is it the way you want to play it, Colonel? You come roaring onto my property waving guns, making demands, threatening me. Do you think that's a good approach to gaining my cooperation?"

  "If you were cooperating, no threats or demands would be necessary." Jeanine Adams leaned toward her, glancing back at her two-man escort and lowering her voice. "Jamie, I understand you're feeling a kind of god-complex right now. You don't believe anyone can push you around. And maybe we can't. But are you really prepared to take on the full force of the most powerful government on this planet? Are you prepared to go to war with your own country? if you refuse to cooperate, I promise you will be arrested. And wherever the object is, it will be found. The difference is that in one case you'll be a hero. In the other case, you'll be a villain, an enemy of this country, and treated as an enemy combatant."

  Jamie felt her anger breaking up. Of course she wasn't going to war with the government or anyone else. On the other hand, she'd gone through too much the last couple of years to allow herself to be bullied.

  "What do you want?" Colonel Adams asked. "Your land returned to you?"

  "Yes. That's all I want. And you can have your precious object."

  "You're blackmailing the United States Government."

  "No more than you're blackmailing me. That object isn't yours just because you say so and show up here with guns. It crashed on my land. I'm offering to sell it to you at what I think is a very fair, maybe even cheap, price."

  Colonel Adams stared at her again, but this time some of the harshness had bled out of her expression. She looked more meditative than condemning.

  "All right ," she said. "Let me make a call."

  Jamie reached for her coffee, straining to maintain her cool façade, shaky inside and shocked at herself for standing up to a massively armed contingent of the U.S. Military. Assuming they were U.S. military. They might be one of those clandestine operations groups her conspiracy-loving father was always talking about. A special group dedicated to retrieving UFOs or something.

  She finished her coffee, which was no longer needed for stimulus – she was perpetually revved up on her own now – but just the familiar act of sipping it had a settling effect.

  Her life was on a completely different course now. Pushing the government for concessions was just the start. They might go along – she figured they would – but they probably wouldn't forget or forgive. Still, it looked like they were going to be busy for a while with plenty of other problems. She'd watched the James River breakout on television that morning, and while explosives and "jet packs" were credited for police vehicles and prisoners flying through the air, she had different suspicions. At least one of those prisoners had telekinetic and flying capabilities, and who knew what other powers they'd picked up from Terry Mayes' prison visit? And somehow, though his name wasn't mentioned, Jamie suspected Terry's Rasputinish brother was involved.

  The news had grown ominously quiet about the breakout after the initial conflict. A brief caution to watch out for and report escapees in the community or on the highways, and then the news faded into the daily weather report. The prisoners were presumably thumbing rides or buying bus tickets or hiding out in the local area waiting for the first available way out.

  Or maybe they weren't running? Maybe they were gathering? Organizing an army. It wouldn't take many with special powers to overpower anything the local authorities could throw at them. Thomas Mayes struck her as someone with a Napoleon complex, despite his size. His ability to command people served his ambitions perfectly. He'd probably wanted the object because of the power he'd believed it would bring.

  Colonel Jeanine Adams returned and extended the large satellite phone to her, pokerfaced. "Someone wants to speak to you."

  Jamie accepted the phone with some trepidation.

  "Hello, Mrs. Shepherd?" A woman's voice.

  "Yes?"

  "I'm Rosie Rios, United States Treasurer. How are you today?"

  "Um..." Jamie cleared her throat and swallowed. "Okay?"

  "Good. Mrs. Shepherd, I am authorizing, on behalf of the Executive Office and the United States Government, the wiring of two million dollars into your account as compensation for the object on your property. That sum, incidentally, will be tax free. I hope you will find that to be adequate compensation."

 
"That's..." Jamie cleared her throat, afraid to blink for fear of waking up. "Very generous. I just asked for enough to pay for my land. That's a lot more than that."

  "Please consider it a sign of good faith from your government. We feel you are entitled to just compensation."

  "Oh. Well, thank you."

  "Your country thanks you, Jamie Shepherd. Please have a nice day."

  "You...too."

  She handed the phone back to Colonel Adams, who seemed to be doing her best not to look disapproving.

  "You're satisfied?" she asked in a flat voice.

  "Yes. They were surprisingly generous."

  "So you have your pound of gold. Can we have the object now?"

  Jamie mentally tugged on the cylinder. It appeared in the skies overhead – a tiny rod approaching several times freefall speed. Jamie slowed it down until it hovered a few meters over the ground between the porch and the armored vehicles.

  "Where do you want it?" she asked.

  Chapter 9

  IF ZACH HAD THOUGHT he'd been in illustrious company before, now, in the Whitehouse Situation Room, he had entered the rarefied air of Mount Olympus. President Robert Morgan sat at on one end of the long table, Defense Secretary Paul Walker at the other – the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, directors of the NSA, CIA, FBI, and DHS, a few choice representatives of the National Security Council and Cabinet, Vice President Peggy Arnold, and a smattering of individuals, including some high-powered scientists from various government and university institutions.

  For reasons far from clear – he'd been told only that the President had asked to hear his "unique perspective" - Zach had been invited to this meeting of top movers-and-shakers. He stood out not only because of his lack of position and experience, but at thirty-six he was the youngest person in the room by maybe a ten-year margin. "Fish out of water" didn't even begin to cover him.

  His decision to go into government service had been born of nothing more than a desire to avoid teaching and to do "something interesting." He'd first set his sights on DARPA, but his scholastic resume didn't make the grade.

  In the initial perfunctory introductions, one fortyish man in casual dress was from DARPA, but Zach couldn't recall his name or position. He understood that "The Object" was undergoing tests on a feverish scale as they spoke, but he hadn't heard anything about the results. He hoped that would come up in the meeting. That alone would make signing all the non-disclosure forms and the blood tests worth it.

  "First, what's the latest in North Dakota," said President Morgan. "Vernon?"

  The DHS Director stirred. "Sir, a SWAT team attempted a raid on a home suspected as harboring prisoners escaped from James River Correctional Center. One SWAT member survived. He says his team was told by someone in the house to turn their weapons on themselves and fire. Every man did so, including the survivor, a member of the Grand Forks police force. He said his gun jammed, or he would've died like the others. He never saw the man who gave the order, but believes it was one of the fugitives."

  "He told these men to kill themselves and they obeyed?" The President was staring at the DHS director, blinking in disbelief. "How is that possible?"

  "I don't know, sir. The survivor said the moment he heard the words his will was subverted. There was no question in his mind. He raised his weapon to his head without hesitation and pulled the trigger. It is extremely fortunate that his weapon jammed."

  "Dorian?" President Morgan turned to the man from DARPA. "Any theories about how this could happen?"

  "Under other circumstances, I'd suspect an airborne hypnogogic," the DARPA scientist replied. "But under these circumstances, I'd have to guess a power related to the mysterious 'Object' is involved. We don't even have a working hypothesis how a person's voice could have that effect."

  "Has any progress been made understanding how the Object works or what it is?"

  They all followed the DARPA scientist's look to the famous brilliant physicist, Kelvin Hayashi, who Zach understood was heading the investigation of The Object at some unnamed location. The slim scientist with the preternaturally youthful face – Zach knew he was fifty-three, but he looked closer to thirty-three – made a steeple of his hands and contemplated an empty space at the center of the table.

  "It has resisted all our attempts to obtain an even microscopic sample," said the physicist. "Diamond and carbon nanotube blades, lasers – even particle beams – have failed to either penetrate or scratch the surface in any way we can measure. We may try more potentially destructive approaches, but to this point we're taking it slowly and cautiously. We have, however, had far better luck identifying the mechanism of the 'infection.' Our chief biologist, Andrew Locke, has isolated the agent of infection found in blood samples of our team."

  The famous physicist nodded to an older, bearded man.

  "What we've discovered," said Dr. Locke, "is an extremely small virus-sized entity of 3 nanometers. The devices are completely uniform in structure and size. Because of their size, it has been exceptionally difficult to assess their construction, but they appear to be artificial – a kind of nanite, though one which mimics a viral organism in many important respects. Like viruses, they multiply and infect cells, and have been found to exist in remarkably dense numbers in three members of our team. Also, like certain viruses, these devices are changing the hosts' DNA – but on a scale magnitudes greater than any virus we know of."

  "You were practicing full quarantine protocols?" Zach hadn't intended the accusing note in his voice, but it snuck in – enough to draw cool gazes from the other scientists.

  "Of course," said Dr. Locke. "The Object was placed in a Level One Biohazard Compartment from the beginning and has been examined in rooms with multiple safeguards by people wearing Level One biohazard suits. We're not sure how it penetrated the suits. We don't even know if the nano-devices travel passively or on their own power. We have been unable to detect them in the air."

  "The devices also appear impervious to strong magnetic fields," said Dr. Hayashi. "From our tests so far, they are more like living organisms than electrically powered machines."

  "Do you have any idea what is powering them?"

  "No, Mr. President. They're operating on a power scale that's far smaller than anything we've ever seen before. It's almost as if they're drawing power on the quantum level."

  President Morgan's scowl deepened. "What I believe you two are saying is that we can't control the spread of this nano-device or whatever the heck it is. That your own scientists are being infected as they study it?"

  The biologist took his time in answering, trading a weary look with Professor Hayashi.

  "It's not quite that bad, Mr. President," Dr. Locke said quietly. "Only those who've been in close proximity or had actual contact have been infected, which suggests those are requirements. We have quarantined everyone carrying the nanites, and we test any individual's blood before permitting them to leave the facility – just as all of us have been tested. Unfortunately, the infected already on the outside are serving as vectors for further transmission."

  "How contagious is it? Anne?"

  The CDC Director brushed a bang of grey hair from her intense light-blue eyes. "We've only examined a small number of carriers, but what we've observed so far suggests that the infecting agents are spread through conventional means such as sneezing or skin contact. More than half of the carriers complained of cold or flu-like symptoms."

  "Do you have a rough estimate of how many infected people are out in the world?"

  "We're performing estimates on that now, Mr. President. Our preliminary guess is that we may be dealing with a few hundred infected. We don't know as yet how long the infectious period lasts or if it ever in fact becomes non-contagious. From what we've seen, it appears that contagious periods are episodic – that is, the infected individual experiences cycles of expelling the 'organism.' We're not sure how often these cycles occur, but they seem to be of short duration."

  Presi
dent Morgan leaned back in his chair, irritation flickering through the somber lines on his craggy features that pundits opined were "ready-made for Mount Rushmore." He placed the fingers of his hands carefully together and gazed down the length of the table to his old friend, Secretary of Defense Paul Walker, who responded with a mini-shrug.

  "Any thoughts on how we deal with this?" the President asked.

  "We could round up everyone suspected of having this thing," said the DHS Secretary, Jill Allen. "We have a FEMA detention facility within two hundred miles of Grand Forks that can be activated within twenty-four hours. Our facility near Minneapolis is already up and running."

  President Morgan drew his fingers apart and together in slow rhythm, as if to a song in his head, Zach thought. A slow-dancing song.

  "There's another aspect," said General Perry Williams, Chief of Staff. "The NBA Timberwolves have just played two exhibition games in China. Jamie Shepherd's father, a known carrier, is on that team. What are the odds that some Chinese are already infected? What happens when their people start developing super powers? What do you think the Chinese government would do with them?"

  "Draft them into the People's Liberation Army, I'd expect." The President's casual drawl was belied by the hard tension in his face. "But if we order them back now, before the last game, that will just draw suspicion. Assuming we can even make that happen before they're scheduled to leave tomorrow night."

  "I agree there's not much point in calling them back a day early, Mr. President," said the Secretary of Defense, an old friend. "But the bigger picture is that our country is Ground Zero. We have a head start – the largest number of people affected by this device. In my opinion, we should try to maintain that advantage by preventing, as much as possible, travel in and out of our country."

  "Excellent point, Paul," said the DHS Secretary. "Even if we maintained an international travel moratorium for a short while, that could give us a critical head start."

  President Morgan's fingers stopped their rhythmic tapping. When it came to military engagements or the fine nuances of geopolitics, former Marine Colonel Paul Walker was the most perceptive man he'd ever known. Choosing him for Defense Secretary had been a no-brainer - the easiest of all his appointments. But shutting down all U.S. international travel would create a logistic snafu of epic proportions.