Super World

by Lawrence Ambrose

  Eileen Hui, Dr. Hayashi, Jamie, and Zachary Walters were waiting in the inner chamber beside the object, along with a tall bearded man Morgan didn't recognize. No one was wearing protective gear.

  President Morgan wasn't sure if Zach was here in an official or unofficial capacity, but he seemed to function as Jamie's agent/liaison in her relations with the government. Or maybe something more was going on between the handsome couple? Whatever worked to keep her happy and cooperative was fine by him.

  Dr. Hui was perched on a chair peering at – or into? – the Object as President Morgan and Dr. Locke entered. Dr. Hayashi was asking her to describe what she was seeing.

  "So she's seeing something?" President Morgan asked.

  "Yes," said Dr. Hayashi, "but it's rather ephemeral. So far just a complex lattice of what resemble nerve cell ganglia, according to Dr. Moberg here – our project neuroscientist in residence."

  "Ganglia?" President Morgan frowned. "Doesn't that have something to do with the brain?"

  "Indirectly, Mr. President," said the tall, bearded neuroscientist. "They're nerve clusters that function as part of the autonomic nervous system. But the resemblance in the device goes further than structural: Eileen believes the changes in their structure are occurring as she watches, much like a living cell."

  "Is it alive?"

  Dr. Moberg made an uncertain noise. "That wouldn't be my guess. I strongly suspect it is a highly complicated machine and nothing more, but that is speculative at this point."

  "The only thing I feel safe in speculating," said Dr. Hayashi, "is this thing, whatever it is, represents a technology and science far beyond our own. An obvious truth, no doubt, but it's good to keep in mind when we attempt to categorize it."

  Dr. Hiu squinted with sudden concentration, bending so that her forehead nearly touched the cylinder.

  "What is it, Eileen?" Hayashi asked.

  "I'm not sure...but I believe I'm seeing a row of symbols near the center of the device."

  The project chief handed her his clipboard and pen. "Draw them for us."

  The young bioengineer/material scientist stared and carefully penned what she was seeing with the elegance and ease of a practiced calligrapher. Everyone huddled around her as her sketches took shape.

  Moments ticked by as everyone stared at the symbols.

  "How accurate are your drawings?" Hayashi asked in subdued voice.

  "Fairly accurate," said Dr. Hiu.

  "Looks like a cell with DNA strands," Dr. Locke murmured. "But what's the triangular thing?"

  "Mothra?" Zach suggested.

  The chuckles came reluctantly, like a delayed laugh track.

  "I'd say a craft of some kind," said Dr. Hiu. "It seems to be compressing the cell...crushing it...breaking up the DNA strands?

  Dr. Hayashi cupped his chin. "But in the third symbol it's the ship or creature that's breaking up."

  "The third sphere appears to be thicker or more DNA helixes." Dr. Hiu fingered the third image. "The suggestion seems to be that the sphere, representing a cell with inserted DNA, has been shored up, and now the craft or object is defeated."

  President Morgan made a grumbling noise. "You should get a cryptographer in here, Kelvin."

  "But isn't the implication obvious?" Dr. Hiu asked. "Our DNA is being altered by the Object. We've been made stronger, some of us more than others." She glanced at Jamie. "Stronger in order to withstand that triangular object, whatever it is."

  "So our DNA is being altered in order to withstand the attack of Mothra?" Uncertainty notched Zach's smile.

  This time no one chuckled.

  "That's what it looks like to me." A note of defensiveness had entered Dr. Hiu's voice. "Though I doubt that's Mothra. I'd say alien space craft."

  "Alien space craft." President Morgan was shaking his head. "So we get an alien device preparing us to face an alien space ship?"

  The slim Asian scientist offered a cool shrug. "I have no better interpretation, Mr. President."

  "It's not as if it's farfetched," said Jamie. "We all believe the 'Object' is alien, don't we? So we know they're out there."

  No one spoke for a time. They regarded the Object and Dr. Hiu's drawing with equal uncertainty.

  "One more reason to get to the bottom of what this thing is, Kelvin," said President Morgan. "What are you planning to have Jamie do with it?"

  "Break a piece off." Dr. Hayashi added: "A very small piece, if possible."

  "I'd like to see that," said the President.

  The three scientists exchanged uncomfortable looks. Jamie was giving a subtle shake of her head.

  "Sir, I'd have to recommend against that," said Dr. Hayashi. "We have never attempted any major invasive procedure on the Object. One reason is from fear that we might damage its internal mechanisms, but there is also the possibility that it may take defensive measures. You should not be here when this test is performed."

  President Morgan started to protest, but reconsidered. "All right. I see your point. But I want to know the results of that experiment immediately."

  "Of course, Mr. President."

  JAMIE STARED down at the cylinder, imagining her first line of attack. The Object had been moved to the High Explosive Testing Chamber - a hardened room at one end of the facility that was designed to contain a small nuclear blast – a maze of Ultra High Performance Concrete walls and huge venting holes leading to other hardened chambers that stretched three hundred meters in all directions.

  Jamie and the Object stood alone at the center of the maze, doubting very much that even she could survive or contain a point-blank nuclear blast of any size. But she didn't believe the Object would respond with that level of hostility. The scientists, including Dr. Hayashi, reasoned that because the Object was clearly designed to be near-impervious to external trauma that its construction alone was its defense. A "passive defense," as Dr. Hayashi put it.

  But then Dr. Hayashi was a physicist, not an expert on extraterrestrial technology or psychology. There was no such thing as an expert on that, as far as Jamie knew. She wouldn't be surprised if the device responded non-passively to her "tender caresses." Maybe it would kill her, but she thought it was more likely that it would warn her off less lethally, if it did anything at all.

  Still, as she visualized her first attempt to break off a piece of the cylinder, apprehension was flowing in her veins. Life was finally looking up. She had her health, her land, and possibly – she thought of Zach – something more. Her dad might be shanghaied in Peking, but it was just a matter of time before they released the players. Things were good, and now would be a lousy time to be consumed in a ball of fire.

  Jamie touched the surface of the Object, gradually increasing the force. Her feet started to slide on the cement floor. She planted herself mentally and pushed her fingers downward with all her strength. To her physical strength she added telekinetic force, something she hadn't done – as far as she knew – when crushing graphite into diamonds.

  Something began to give. At first, she wasn't sure if it was her fingers or the surface...but yes, it was the surface. Her fingers were glowing white-hot. She wasn't sure if that was from the pressure or her telekinesis or something else, but it was expanding into a pool of white under her fingers. The Object's surface grew malleable. She closed her hands and withdrew them filled with cylinder-matter. For an instant, the small indentations left by her hands lingered – and then closed in the blink of an eye. In the same moment what she held in her hands dissipated into a fine mist and was gone.

  "Huh," Jamie said. She glanced up at the array of cameras recording her every move.

  "Self-healing," came Dr. Hayashi's raspy voice from the overhead speakers. "I might've predicted that. It can heal others – why not itself?"

  Cool. She felt almost proud of the device – and of herself for pushing it enough to make it do that.

  "Okay," she said. "Here goes."

  Jamie kicked the Object dead-center with all her strength. Th
e cylinder flew. An instant's blur in which she couldn't tell if it had been damaged or not – and it was gone, leaving holes in the hardened concrete walls as far as she could see.

  The sound of her foot striking the Object reverberated as an after-thought in her mind. She could've sworn it made a tuning fork sound.

  "Oh, oh," she said.

  A few moments clunked past before Dr. Hayashi broke the silence in a calm but somber voice.

  "The Object is no longer in the complex. It's breached the exterior wall."

  "What's beyond the exterior wall? Dirt? We're buried a quarter of a mile down, right?"

  "That's right. A recovery team is tracking it down as we speak."

  "Maybe I could track it down?"

  "Perhaps. You're welcome to try."

  Jamie attempted to establish contact with it with her mind. Nothing clicked. But then she'd never attempted to control something she couldn't see.

  She lifted off, flying at a moderate speed through the holes in the concrete walls. In a few moments, she'd reached the end of the facility. A faint pinprick of light, visible only when she focused her eyes to maximum magnification, shone through the final hole. The Object had breached the surface. Jamie rose after it.

  She battled an intense few moments of claustrophobia before feeling the earth give way around her shoulders as though it were cotton candy – hardly more resistance than air. Once she noted that, her fear melted away. She burst through the surface seconds later in a sunny meadow on a fine late-July summer day.

  A quick scan of the meadow revealed nothing of the cylinder. She squinted up at the sky. For an instant she thought she saw a dark speck in the clouds but when she zoomed in there was nothing.

  Jeeps rolled in, filled with men in green fatigues. Helicopters appeared on the horizon. A pair of jeeps rolled up to her – one manned by a grizzled older man with gold oak leaf on his cap.

  "I'm Major Feldon," he said. "Did you see where it went?"

  "No."

  The Major stood up in his jeep and made a circling motion. The other jeeps spread out over the meadow while the helicopters flew over the field and then the perimeter of the adjoining forest.

  Major Feldon fixed Jamie with a disapproving stare. "Did you kick it into space?"

  "Maybe, though it's hard to believe that's possible."

  "A lot of things are hard to believe these days."

  Jamie lifted off – too fast to note his startled expression and too slow to harm anyone - accelerating until her clothing and skin started to warm. She'd have to find some equations to learn her speed, but she guessed it was between Mach 2 and 3, a small fraction of her former lift-off. Even so, it didn't take long to break through the upper atmosphere.

  After an initial panic about expanding her lungs and inhaling nothing, she relaxed, and it seemed natural not to breathe. Perhaps her lungs were now vestigial organs – along with her stomach, intestines, and bladder? How exactly did her body work now? Those were questions the scientists of Project Black Pill were eager to analyze. Her science teacher self wanted to know, too, but the subject also made her queasy. She wasn't eager to have her non-humanness confirmed.

  She searched the glowing darkness all around her for signs of the cylinder, and wasn't surprised to see no sign of it. Without radar or some form of other detection it would be like finding a needle in a haystack squared – a black needle in an infinite black haystack.

  Why had it left? Maybe it didn't like getting kicked around? Jamie's smile was short-lived. With the object gone – assuming it was – all the knowledge they might've learned from it was gone, too. But then maybe they hadn't been destined to learn anything from it? And maybe it departed because it had done what it was supposed to do.

  Jamie drifted in the exosphere, enjoying the peaceful motion as she might've floating on a warm lake. Since the day she'd jumped out of her driveway she'd been planning another trip into space, much in the way she and Dennis had planned an expensive return to their honeymoon site in Costa Rica: something to do someday, but no time soon. For a while, she hadn't been quite able to accept that her surviving her spaceflight had been a fluke, but then she knew better. Still, it was nice to confirm the truth that she was now a space-faring creature.

  She eyed the moon. How fast could she get there? She could visit the Apollo Mission sites and refute her dad's moon conspiracy theories once and for all (or confirm them?). She could visit the mysterious dark side and explore it for alien ruins. Maybe she was fast enough to fly to Mars? But then she had no way of knowing how long she could last in space. Perhaps at some point her body would start to deteriorate. Maybe she could go without eating or breathing for a few hours or days, but not indefinitely?

  Jamie retreated toward Earth with a final, longing glance at the moon. Maybe next time?

  Chapter 14

  "THAT BLOND BITCH DONE kicked my ass twice," Thomas grumbled as their flight landed in New York City. "That's two times too many. Ain't never gonna happen again. Next time, it's the fire, as Jimmy B. would say. I'm gonna have a fucking army with me."

  "That's why we're here," said Steven.

  Thomas nodded bitterly. He'd listened to Brainiac's lecture: Jamie Shepherd was incidental to their larger goal of changing this country and ultimately the world. The most direct route to power and thereby change was accumulating allies, and the best source of allies were the inner cities and their millions of disaffected residents. Empower the "downtrodden masses" with super abilities while "infusing" them with the "Gospel according to Thomas," as Steven had put it. Thomas wasn't sure if he'd detected an edge of sarcasm in his friend's voice, but he understood and appreciated the strategy. Black lives would finally begin to matter when they were the first ones to receive super powers.

  His defeat at the Capitol Building still burned in his gut, but it was, as Steven had pointed out, only the first battle in the war. The blond bitch might be super-strong, Steven added, but she wasn't super-smart. Intelligence, in the end, would rule the day.

  Thomas leaned back in his seat and smiled as the plane landed. Thirty million soldiers serving him as their true prophet. Ain't no way life could get better than that.

  JAMIE'S DAD was finally back home, and so was she. Two weeks of intensive testing and intense political maneuvering by her new employer, the Morgan Administration, and she was granted a short leave of absence to meet Cal at the airport and spend a couple of days with him at home.

  Tonight was a kind of homecoming/reunion, with the original "Fantastic Four" – Kevin, Terry, and themselves – once again enjoying a sunny late-afternoon barbecue in Jamie's front yard. For Jamie, it was nice to catch a breath of fresh air away from the endless pokings and proddings in the underground Advanced Research Complex, but it was hard to feel too relaxed considering what was happening in the rest of the country.

  Riots had broken out in New York City, Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles – one right after the other, as if a "riot bug" had migrated to each city in swift succession. The usual looting and burning had taken a different turn as mobs of disaffected minorities had expanded out from the cities and seized control of adjacent suburbia. As one Washington Post writer had commented: "That has never happened before." The National Guard had been called in all four cities, but so far had failed to restore the peace anywhere.

  Rumors of heavy casualties among the Guard units and civilians had not been confirmed by either the government or the media, but Jamie guessed they were significant, perhaps even catastrophic, based on President Morgan's refusal to publicly discuss the details of these operations.

  On top of the riots, plenty of other anomalous events were making the news: a host of mysterious bank robberies where the thieves had apparently "drilled through the roofs into the vaults themselves" and absconded with their entire contents "through some unknown means," a property owner holed up in his house refusing to pay property taxes somehow incinerated a SWAT team, passengers on a commercial flight swore a man in a Batman costume fl
ew alongside the jet and waved at them, and witnesses in a small California town claimed that an unnamed individual had called down a torrential rainstorm, ending a record drought season.

  In international news, a man whom no one knew had suddenly replaced Xi Jinping as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, the President of the People's Republic of China, and the Chairman of China's Central Military Commission. In Russia, a bikini-clad young woman had raced up to Vladimir Putin during a public ceremony, tossed him over her shoulder, and fled. None of the Presidential Security Service agents had been able to stop her - nor could a legion of military and police forces catch up to them. Putin was later found unharmed in a remote village and offered no public comment.

  If you knew what to look for, Jamie reflected, signs of the super virus were everywhere. She imagined that behind closed doors President Morgan and his top advisors were scrambling for solutions to the growing crisis. Their discussions were top secret – President Morgan hadn't revealed much even to her in their two brief personal conversations – but the veil was about to come off with the "special announcement" the President was scheduled to make this evening.

  "Do you think President Morgan's going to spill the whole story?" Cal asked over his beer.

  "I have a feeling not everything," said Jamie. "He might not mention the alien thing, just keep it simple with an 'unknown virus.' Or he might tell the truth."