“Mr. President.” Hargrove drew his attention, and Manning’s fairly youthful face turned to find them under escort. His dark hair had only but begun its graying stages, but his African American features were yet devoid of heavy lines. He was one of the youngest presidents America had seen in a long time, or at least, one of the youngest looking. His brow arched over tired eyes as he sighed.
“Yes, John?” He asked.
“You shouldn’t be standing by the windows like that.” Hargrove commented, glancing to the secret service all about the room, apparently not doing their jobs. President Manning saw the look he gave to the agents of his security.
“It’s not their fault, John.” He said. “I’m through hiding from this Dunesil’s threats. I’ll stand in front of my own window if I want to, and if they’re going to kill me, then so be it.” He grinned heavily, not entirely humorous in mind or tone.
“So far, they haven’t had the guts, or they simply aren’t there.” He lightened a few shades as he smiled, but that smile died as he turned back to steadfastly gazing out the window at the helicopters on the lawn.
“Any news? Recent developments? Hope?” He asked without bothering to watch their approach.
“No, to the first two.” Hargrove answered.
“But we think we’ve got the beginnings of a connection going on, between this Dunesil Message and previous events on the west coast involving similar matters on a smaller scale.” He added, drawing the president back to face them once more.
“What events?” He asked, moving to rest a hopeful hand upon his high-backed chair as they drew up to his desk.
“Deputy Director Michael Farsing from the FBI.” Hargrove introduced them, but Manning knew who Farsing was. Not many didn’t.
“What have your people discovered?” Manning was almost hasty.
“One of my agents, based in Seattle and working against an eco-terrorist organization has seen a figure like this Dunesil, character.” Farsing stated it matter-of-factly, beginning to convince himself now that the correlation between Connelly’s glimpse of the shadow was directly related to the Dunesil Message. The more he said about it, the more reasonable it became.
“And the message itself is almost akin to the E.L.F. terrorist faction he’d been working to disband. We’re beginning to suspect the two figures and the two acts are invariably synonymous.” He drew his conclusion, and Manning suddenly looked his proper age. He looked relieved, as if the great weight of some terrible future was lifted away to reveal that none of this was as bad as it seemed.
“You think it’s all a hoax then?” Manning asked hopefully. “That they can’t do much more than they already have? Do you think this will be the extent of the Dunesil Message’s truth?”
“We cannot say for certain.” Farsing spoke hesitantly.
“I would not discount further acts to make us think they can and will work to attack us violently, but right now, it looks at least, as if they might be bluffing.” He sighed.
“Of course, they could be equally serious and capable, these soldiers and emissaries of ultimatum. So far, we haven’t seen any action. It looks as though we’ll have to wait for the seventh day as he’d spoke of in the message.”
Manning didn’t look happy, or pleased, but at least the weight was taken off of his shoulders for now. At least he could marginally relax his mind if nothing else. Abruptly, the door opened, admitting several more secret service men, escorting a slightly balding dark haired gentleman with a briefcase in his possession. Arthur Black made his way to the trio with purposeful strides, joining their meeting and causing Director Farsing a double-take of confusion.
“Special Agent Black?” Michael questioned, somewhat surprised to see the man here in D.C.
“Greetings.” Was all he said in response, nodding as he came to set his briefcase on the president’s sprawling desk.
“What brings you all the way to D.C.?” Farsing tried, but Special Agent Black ignored him in exchange for greeting the president.
“Greetings, Mr. President. I am Agent Arthur Black, with the P.E.D.D.” He informed, opening his briefcase to begin setting up a laptop.
“P.E.D.D.?” Manning was unfamiliar.
“Paranormal Extra-Dimensional Division.” Arthur clarified, receiving a skeptical look from more than one face. “I know what you would think, but know that the PEDD is a real agency, gentlemen, and that what we know about the Dunesil Message is extremely important.”
“What exactly do you do in this agency?” Hargrove spoke up doubtfully.
“We monitor that which you would all presume to be mere coincidence or purely imaginative.” Agent Black responded.
“You mean, like on television?” Manning asked, doubtful as well.
“No, sir.” Arthur answered once more.
“What we deal with is entirely real.” He said it so matter-of-factly that no one could question his authority.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask Agent Farsing to leave.” He then said.
“What I’m about to reveal is secret even over his authority.”
“No.” Manning responded. “We’re done with secrets, Agent Black. If you know something about this whole mess, then you’re going to share it with me, whether he’s here or not. You’re going to share it, or you’re not going to leave this room.” He added, glancing to the many secret service men here gathered who would do anything he asked to detain Agent Black and force him to reveal what he knew. The PEDD agent hesitated, weighed the truth in the president’s voice, then shrugged his shoulders.
“Very well.” He sighed.
“We’ve analyzed the footage of this, Dunesil Llaerth, as he called himself.” He hesitated, dreadful about his dark visage.
“He was in fact speaking more languages simultaneously than we could possibly imagine. Of course, we’ve set into action a series of tests and filters to determine if it hadn’t been done with complex sound-editing software, but judging by his mouth and what little we could see of his tongue’s movements, it his highly unlikely...
We’ve determined it doubly unlikely due to reports from Paris, the Russians, Japan, and even the Vatican. He spoke all of their languages, clearly to their ears. They did not detect any other discernible languages clearly in their monitors until after they’d run their own filtrations and tests on the footage and audio. This means, that if it was done with software, then the Dunesil Message was pre-recorded, and that it was recorded differently for each language, and every location it was sent to was done precisely, sent specifically to certain regions with the intent of speaking to each of the various people across the globe...
So far, until we lost communication, Japan had developed the highest number of filtrations, running more than sixty languages, and a few they haven’t yet identified. In response, they have mobilized their entire armed forces division and opened a vault of secret military developments that we’ve long suspected of them, but had no proof to authenticate. But that’s beside the point...
Before we lost telephone communications, we received their versions of the broadcast in other countries, and when we listened to the play-back, we could not discern it in any way other than English. This message, if it had been pre-recorded and doctored to appeal to each of the various languages and those who speak them, would have been speaking a different language when we listened to them. But, they weren’t...
We heard English where they heard Japanese, Russian, Italian, Spanish or whatever and wherever else it was sent. Anyone with multilingual talents can hear the languages they are given to understand, but make no sense of the rest of it...
It appears that this message was not pre-recorded, based on audio alone. However, when we matched up the visuals with video-analysis software, and overlapped them, they were an exact match. If it had been pre-recorded for each of the languages and locations it was being broadcast to, there would have been variation in the video. There was not. It was identical.” Agent Black paused meaningfully.
“The
speaker of the Dunesil Message, was also the same voice in all of the versions that we received from outside sources. Which means, if it had been pre-recorded to appeal to various locations and people, then the speaker would have to be fluent in over sixty languages. The sheer scope of that, coupled with setting this entire operation into motion, and the amount of preparation it would have taken is virtually inconceivable.” He paused once more, turning his laptop about on the desk for the others to see as he went on.
“Gentlemen, the speaker, we have concluded, was in fact speaking just as he’d proclaimed. Simultaneous languages in numbers even the most widely versed of men aren’t capable of speaking separately. That is the only thing that can account for the phenomenon of the echoing and incomprehensible background noise that we all picked up with our ears.”
“That can’t be possible.” Hargrove tried to reason it, but Arthur Black silenced him with a dangerous look.
“Not for Men, it can’t be. We lack the mental and physical faculty for such a feat.” He agreed, but disagreed in a strange fashion. “But, all of this is not necessarily why I am here.”
“Then why are you here, Agent?” President Manning demanded while Hargrove turned to other matters of importance.
“Mr. President, we must get you to safety immediately. We must if others have already fully mobilized.” Hargrove insisted.
“Let Mr. Black finish first, John.” He said, calming his Defense Secretary.
“Go on.” He urged the PEDD agent, and the man ran a file on his computer screen. The trio was set to staring at a playback of the Dunesil Message. The dark figure spoke, and the audio played as the visual ran along, much as they remembered. It had a distinctly much creepier feel this time around, for now they speculated and viewed it as if he really was speaking more than sixty languages simultaneously with that disconnected tongue.
“He is wreathed and veiled by random, flares, and rays of light. A glamour, if you will. Just as you no doubt recall seeing, Mr. President, which is why it took us some time to discern what exactly we were looking at. After running intense studies of digital visual effects as part of screening through a hoax, we came across a peculiar perspective plane of light reflections running across the image.” Agent Black informed, gesturing to particularly stationary bits and lines and rays of unfocused light.
“Plane of reflections?” President Manning asked immediately, not bothering to wait for them to be pointed out.
“What does that mean?” He asked, and Agent Black merely pushed a button. The screen wiped once, portraying several static reflections of what could have been buildings and streets and trees reflected off of a pane of glass. But, it was incredibly vague, as blurry as it was.
Then, he pushed enter again.
The screen wiped once more. The image of Dunesil disappeared a little bit, grown fuzzy and blending with the dark background, bringing the highlights and foreground into focus. There were indeed static reflections amidst the minimal movement of the background figure. Then, once more it wiped at Black’s touch, and sure enough it looked like a pane of glass stood between the camera’s lens and the speaker, Dunesil.
It wasn’t just sitting between however, but angled away in sharp perspective, a very obtuse angle. One last time he pushed the button, and Dunesil all but disappeared in the darkening blur as a pane of glass came sharply into focus, showing trees, people and buildings reflected on its surface from off the right of the camera’s eye. The left side of the screen was where the glass was extremely close, and the right was where the glass was extremely far away. It was like looking through an average, albeit huge window at an obtuse angle.
“Oh my god.” Farsing gasped as if struck an epiphany. It was just like Agent Connelly had explained seeing a glimpse of a figure through the window in Shannon Hunter’s hospital door.
“What is it Michael?” Manning asked.
“Agent Connelly said he’d seen a black-cloaked figure in the hospital room of the E.L.F. terrorist. He said he’d seen it, just a glimpse of it through the refraction of the glass of the door when they’d entered, and though he swore he’d seen it, it wasn’t there when they’d entered in full.” Farsing’s voice rushed through what he’d been told.
“Mr. President.” Arthur Black addressed, trying to draw his attention away from Director Farsing with dreadful tones once again, and Farsing was struck by his odd behavior, for he didn’t even seem to acknowledge the fact that he’d been there with Connelly when Shannon Hunter had been sprung from capture. Perhaps that was just his way of admitting he was wrong to deny Connelly his sharp eyes.
“I’m afraid Lord Dunesil Llaerth is no hoax. Nor are his intentions.” He revealed, but how that assumption was made from the presence of a simple pane of glass wasn’t quite clear.
“I think we have no choice but to comply with his demands.” He concluded, like an emissary of ultimatum himself. No one noticed.
“Bullshit.” Defense Secretary Hargrove snorted defiantly. Manning ignored both of them in light of Farsing’s revelation.
“We need to get in touch with Agent Connelly, somehow!” Manning concluded, speaking only to Farsing. “I’m not about to submit to any terrorist of any denomination. This Lord Dunesil’s threats, if they are real, can and will be defied.”
“How?” Black demanded to know.
“I believe Agent Connelly will have the answer in the angle of the glass.” The president then turned to Agent Black.
“We’re going to be needing that laptop of yours, unless you can tell us exactly what angle the glass was at.”
“This laptop is full of highly sensitive material, Mr. President. I’m afraid you can’t confiscate it, and I’m afraid we haven’t analyzed the angle of the glass yet.” Black denied him.
“Agents.” Manning gestured to his many secret service members. “If you would please relieve Special Agent Black of his PEDD notebook.” And they came, and defied Arthur Black’s sole clearance to the information supposedly kept upon that computer. They took it from him despite his protests, and it was bequeathed to Director Farsing.
“We need the angle of that glass, Michael. I trust you and yours shall be able to discern it.” President Manning gave him a task.
“What are you planning?” Farsing asked, confused but willing to try anything to put the world of men back into its usual swing of things as swiftly and smoothly as possible.
“If Mr. Black here is correct, and this Dunesil figure is indeed some supernatural, paranormal creature of indeterminable origin and skills, with soldiers prepared to do his bidding, then I’m willing to bet the similarity of Agent Connelly’s glass-door story and the plane of glass in the footage of this message are part of an important factor in our ability to withstand an attack.” He clued Michael in on his line of thinking, and the Director could only stare in wonder.
He honestly should have seen it himself. What if what they were dealing with, really wasn’t a man? What if the only reason Connelly had seen the one in Shannon Hunter’s escape was due to the sharp angle of light reflected through glass. What if the glass in the footage of the Dunesil Message was the only reason anyone had been able to see the figure to begin with? It was a far chance that such was truth, and yet, it sounded entirely reasonable.
“Thank you, Mr. Black. Your information was indeed valuable.” The President nodded to Agent Black, who was all in a huff without his laptop.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He gestured towards the door, dismissing the PEDD agent, for he believed he’d devised a way to see these so-called soldiers who the figure, Dunesil, had said would not be seen.
In little time, the glass plane was analyzed by video specialists, and a program was started up, working to develop a way to allow men to see constantly through angled glass. It would be rushed, with only two days remaining in which to prepare for the supposed end of the world of mankind, but it wouldn’t have to be fancy. It just had to work. Makeshift would do just fine if it worked.
C
hapter 16
Dismissed, Special Agent Arthur Black of the PEDD took his leave without his computer, fuming at the treatment he’d received. He left the oval office, down the hall and rounded a corner. No one ever saw him again.
One of the Seven emissaries of ultimatum by council of Addl’laen, Athaem Llaerth, prince of the Elvine, was one of the only seven beings permitted to cross into the real as mankind knew it. He was granted that power by training to be like the Black Leaves, but also due to the bidding of his father. And he’d done as was desired. He’d come, albeit late in the scheme of the one week humanity had been given in order to bring about their own survival, and he’d delivered the chance humanity had outright denied to see. He’d brought them proof as if one of their own -Dunesil was real and his message was also truth.
But they’d denied it, even knowing it was no hoax. Not only did they deny, but they were planning to fight against it.
Athaem knew it would come to that. In fact, as an emotionally bitter soul after so long in watching men rape the great mother, defiling her every feature and shred of dignity, he’d counted on their denial. More than this, he grinned widely, he’d handed over the means by which mankind could see into the doorstep of the Veil of the Leaf’s Edge, a place they could not truly discern from their own world unless someone from beyond the Veil was both in the doorstep and standing right in front of them. And he planned to do some standing, for he had an agenda of his own.
E.L.F. - White Leaves Page 21