The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  Alex took the folder. “How fast?” he asked.

  “The Vice-President pointed out that we have that Town Hall speech tomorrow,” Boehm said. “It’s thirty-four hours from now, in point of fact. You’ve got twenty-four of those to get me something. That is, assuming the President doesn’t drop dead between now and then.”

  Alex looked up from his folder to see Brad Stein standing over his desk.

  “I wish you would knock,” Alex said.

  “I’m the Head Spook,” Stein said. “I’m supposed to sneak in. Anyway, it’s been an hour. Thought before I went to the Pentagon I’d check in and see what you’ve got so far.”

  “I got nothing,” Alex said. “Or maybe I’ve got a miracle. I mean, look.” Alex plucked the X-Ray out of the folder and handed it to Stein. “How do you get along without your brain?”

  “The press corps has been asking that about the President since the campaign,” Stein said, holding up the X-Ray to the light.

  “They don’t mean it literally,” Alex said. “The President’s not the brightest bulb in the drawer but that’s what he’s got the rest of us for. But this,” Alex tossed the folder down onto the desk and threw up his hands. “I don’t even know where to begin on this one.”

  “You’re looking at a puzzle, that’s for sure,” Stein said, still peering at the X-Ray.

  “It’s not a puzzle, it’s a miracle,” Alex said. “It’s magic, is what it is. It’s messing with my head.”

  “‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,’” Stein said, setting down the X-Ray.

  “What?” Alex said.

  “It’s a quote,” Stein said. “From Arthur C. Clarke.”

  “The 2001 guy,” Alex said.

  “Yes, the 2001 guy,” Stein said, slightly mockingly. “I take it you’re not a big science fiction reader.”

  “Well, what does that mean, for those of us who aren’t proud to be nerds?” Alex said.

  “That would be ‘geeks,’ and I would take it to mean that before you throw your hands up and declare a miracle, you might consider the slightly more rational approach of assuming it’s some sort of technology,” Stein said.

  “Brain-stealing technology?” Alex said. “Seems an awfully specific sort of technology.”

  “I’d guess it’s not specifically brain-stealing technology, it’s just what this technology is being used for in this case,” Stein said.

  “Then, what?” Alex said. “Some sort of transporter technology, like in Star Trek? Maybe that would get the brain out of someone’s skull, but it doesn’t explain how the brain is still functioning. That is, if I believed this was transporter technology, which I don’t.”

  Stein smiled and tapped the X-Ray. “Let me remind you that what you have here—or more accurately, what you don’t have here—is a missing yet fully functional brain,” he said. “Alex, this is one case where the most ridiculous explanation you could come up with for how this is happening probably isn’t going to be ridiculous enough.”

  “This is what I get for not being a geek in high school, is what you’re saying,” Alex said.

  “I suspect you were a geek, all right,” Stein said. “You’ve got all the hallmarks of a Model UN dweeb about you.”

  “Thanks,” Alex said, wryly.

  “But if you want my suggestion, you need to start thinking like a science-fiction geek. Because this,” Stein pointed at the folder, “is some first class X-Files material right here. Good luck with it.” He smiled and exited Alex’s office.

  Alex stared at the space where Brad Stein used to be for several minutes and then picked up the phone.

  “You’re fatter than you were at the reunion,” said Ezra Jefferson to Alex, shaking his hand on the steps of the Air and Space Museum.

  “You’re not, Captain,” Alex said.

  “That’s because the Air Force doesn’t believe in fat officers,” Jefferson said, and then pointed to his shoulderboard. “Also, that’s Major now.”

  “When did that happen?” Alex asked.

  “When I transferred to the Pentagon,” Jefferson said. “Which you would know if you’d ever bothered to call before now. I’ve been in DC for four months, Alex. And I haven’t seen you since our 10 year reunion. That’s just wrong.”

  “Well, I’m making it up to you now,” Alex said, and motioned toward the museum. “Come on, let’s go in. I’m paying.”

  “It’s free admission,” Jefferson said.

  “It’s just like you to point that out,” Alex said.

  “You still owe me for drinks at the reunion,” Jefferson pointed out, as they went in.

  “Speaking of the reunion,” Alex said, after the two of them had wandered around the museum for a half hour, catching up, “I remember you telling me that you’d been stationed at Nellis Air Force Base right out of Yale.”

  “Yeah,” Jefferson said. “Nellis for a year and then Edwards for a couple of years after that.”

  “I remember you telling me that you were attached to the Air Force Flight Test Center when you were there,” Alex said.

  “Sure,” Jefferson said.

  “Which keeps a presence at Groom Lake,” Alex said.

  “Right,” Jefferson said.

  “Otherwise known as Area 51,” Alex said.

  “There are no aliens, Alex,” Jefferson said. “I swear.”

  “I didn’t say anything about aliens,” Alex said.

  “Never have been any aliens,” Jefferson said. “The alien stories are just what the Airmen tell the alien groupies to get some.”

  “There are alien groupies?” Alex asked, knocked off his conversational path.

  “Oh, yes,” Jefferson said.

  “And have you…” Alex asked.

  “Once,” Jefferson said.

  “And how was it?” Alex asked.

  “Unspeakable,” Jefferson said.

  “And how does Caitlyn feel about this?” Alex asked.

  “We were taking some time off from each other when it happened,” Jefferson said. “But if I were you I wouldn’t be going out of my way to tell her about it. There’s some debate what ‘time off’ meant in that context.”

  “Got it,” Alex said.

  “Anyway, it’s all crap,” Jefferson said. “The alien stuff. The whole Roswell thing. Complete crap. The Roswell thing was a test model of a high-altitude surveillance balloon. They put a chimp in the cabin to test its build integrity. That was the alien. How people confuse a chimp with an alien tells you how much people want to believe. That’s where they got the alien autopsy thing from, too, since they had to examine the chimp after the crash.”

  “That poor chimp,” Alex said.

  “There was a memorial to it at Groom Lake,” Jefferson said. “A banana tree.”

  “That’s sweet,” Alex said.

  Jefferson shrugged. “It’s dead. Can’t grow bananas in the desert, man.”

  “This conversation is getting progressively more depressing,” Alex said.

  “You brought it up,” Jefferson said.

  “I brought up Area 51,” Alex said. “I didn’t bring up aliens or dead chimps.”

  “No one brings up Area 51 without talking about aliens, Alex,” Jefferson said.

  “I did,” Alex said. “I wanted to talk about the technology the Air Force was testing out there.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jefferson said.

  “Area 51 and Groom Lake are the Air Force’s testing grounds for its new technology, right?” Alex asked.

  “Sure,” Jefferson said.

  “And aside from the technology we know about, there’s probably some technology being tested there that we don’t know about. Like skunk-works stuff,” Alex said.

  “Is this going somewhere, Alex?” Jefferson asked.

  “What I was wondering is if in the time you were there, you ever saw evidence of the Air Force working on some real bleeding-edge technology,” Alex said.

  “Like what?
” Jefferson said.

  “I don’t know, maybe something like teleportation,” Alex said.

  “Are you serious?” Jefferson said, after a second of blankly staring at Alex. “Like in Star Trek?”

  “Maybe not exactly like Star Trek,” Alex said.

  “You know that shit’s made up, right?” Jefferson said. “Teleportation and phasers and Vulcans and green-skinned hotties.”

  “I’m just asking,” Alex said.

  “Is there a reason why you’re asking?” Jefferson asked. “Aside from possibly becoming an alien groupie yourself?”

  “That’s not it,” Alex said.

  “I’m glad,” Jefferson said. “Not that you aren’t a good looking man, or were before you got fat. But Caitlyn and I are definitely ‘on’ now.”

  “Stop that,” Alex said, and then grinned sheepishly at his college buddy. “Sorry, Ezra. I just have a problem and I thought… it was a shot in the dark. Forget it.”

  “Having troubles with your transporter?” Jefferson asked.

  “You could say that,” Alex said, and then checked his watch. “Come on, let’s catch the IMAX show. It’s in 3D. And it does cost money, so there.” And that was that for the topic, until Major Jefferson called Alex at his desk at 7pm to tell him to meet him on the corner of 8th and F at 8:30, sharp.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Alex said, as the white panel van rolled up and Jefferson opened the sliding door, two armed Airmen beside him.

  “Get in, Alex,” Jefferson said.

  “I thought abductions in white panel vans only happened in movies,” Alex said.

  “No, the North Koreans use them too,” Jefferson said. “And it’s not an abduction, yet. But if you don’t shut up and get in the van, it might be.”

  Alex got into the van.

  As the vehicle drove away from the intersection of 8th and F, Jefferson motioned toward an older man in the back of the van. “Alex Lipsyte, Major General Marcus White.”

  “General,” Alex said, settling into a bench seat on the side of the van.

  “Major Jefferson tells me you’re having transporter problems,” White said.

  “I might be,” Alex said, after a second.

  “Describe them to me,” White said.

  “It’s less a problem with the transporter than a problem with something that got transported,” Alex said.

  “Like what?” White said.

  “Like a brain,” Alex said.

  “Whose brain?” White said.

  “Er,” Alex said.

  “It wouldn’t happen to be the brain of someone who’s not generally described as having one, is it?” White asked. “Someone you work for? Someone who spends his time doodling on a scratch pad in a big oval room a couple of miles west of here?”

  “He doesn’t doodle,” Alex said, defensively.

  “Shit, Mr. Lipsyte, I’m surprised the man can hold a pen at all,” General White said. “I’ve known lower primates with higher cognitive functions than your guy. You’re just lucky the other team decided to run someone who couldn’t keep it in his pants on the campaign trail. That dumb bastard should have saved his little romp with those twins for after the election. But he didn’t and now we’ve got your weak-lipped son of a bitch drooling all over the chairs in the West Wing. It’s a miracle someone found a brain in there to steal at all.”

  “General,” Jefferson said.

  White raised his hand to both acknowledge and placate the Major. “Be that as it may, that dim prick just so happens to be the Commander in Chief, so I suppose we should do something about this,” he said. He pulled out a cell phone and punched in a number. “Dave,” White said, after a minute. “It’s Marc White. Yeah. Good. Listen, I have one of your boys here with me and I think I might have a clue to a little problem you’re having, the one about someone you know missing something that to most people would be important. Yes, that. No, I’m not trying to be rude. I’m trying to help you. Why don’t you and some of your people get organized and we’ll meet over at the Executive Building in half an hour. Yeah. Fine. Forty five minutes, then. See you there.” He hung up.

  “You know Dave Boehm?” Alex said.

  “He dated my niece about fifteen years back, back when the President was still a penny-ante Congressman,” White said, folding up his phone. “He was his Chief of Staff then, too. Got him elected then, got him elected now, which is probably unforgivable in the larger scheme of things. But he treated Patty well. Better than she treated him, anyway. I figure for that alone I owe him a favor. Now, we’ve got forty-five minutes. Let’s hit the Five Guys on H. I’m starving.”

  “First off, that whole Roswell thing is bullshit,” General White said in the secure Executive Office Building meeting room, pointing with a Five Guys fry for emphasis.

  “Told you,” Jefferson said to Alex, under his breath.

  “What isn’t bullshit is the 1908 Tunguska Event,” White said.

  “That thing in Russia,” Boehm said. The cheeseburger White had brought him from Five Guys lay in front of him on the table, untouched. Brad Stein, sitting next to him, was busy consuming his.

  “Right,” White said.

  “I thought that was an asteroid impact,” Boehm said.

  “It was,” White said. “Or a comet impact, one of the two, take your pick. But that chunk of ice and rock didn’t just happen to fall out of the sky. We think it was aimed there to wipe something out.”

  “What, aliens?” Boehm said.

  “Aliens,” White agreed. “In 1927 a scientist named Leonid Kulik led an expedition to the area. Officially he didn’t find anything other than toppled over trees. Unofficially—secretly—what he found was evidence that someone or something was in the area, using technology well in advance of ours. After he returned to Leningrad he filed a report and then Stalin had his people crawling all over the place, digging everything out. When Kulik went back in ’39, it was all packed up and gone.”

  “Why didn’t Stalin use it, then?” Stein asked. “Alien technology would have saved him a lot of trouble during the Great Patriotic War.”

  “The comet turned everything that was mechanical into slag,” White said. “You could tell the stuff did something, but you couldn’t tell what that thing was. The real prize were the data storage units—hard drives, if you will. Stalin’s problem was that he and his scientists had no idea what they were.”

  “How could they not know?” Boehm asked.

  “How would they know?” White said. “Dave, if you gave a caveman a data disc, he wouldn’t know it had data on it. All he’d know was it was round and shiny. Stalin’s boys had the same problem; the data storage units looked like metal cubes to them. They destroyed a couple breaking them open, found nothing useful and then stored the rest.”

  “So the Soviets had them, but now we do,” Boehm said.

  “Yup. We bought them from Russia in the early ’90s,” White said. “Back when we were paying them to dismantle their nukes. They were hard up for cash and offered us a bunch of their crackpot science projects for dirt cheap. Most of it was the sort of pseudo-scientific crap that makes Lysenko look like a Nobel Prize winner, but this one panned out. We were finally able to get our way into the data drives about fifteen years ago and started working on some of the stuff we found there.”

  “Like teleportation,” Stein said. He took Boehm’s abandoned burger and unwrapped it.

  “It’s not exactly teleportation,” White said. “It’s more like creating static holes in timespace that you can pull or push things through.”

  “Whatever,” Stein said. “The point is it’s something you could use to pluck someone’s brain out of their head, and still keep it connected somehow.”

  “Theoretically,” White said.

  Stein motioned to toward the X-Ray and MRI of the President’s head. “More than theoretically, I’d say,” he said, around his burger.

  “I say theoretically because there are problems with the technology as we un
derstand it,” White said.

  “Like what?” Boehm asked.

  “Like matter spontaneously reorganizing when it goes through the holes,” White said. “It’s bad enough with things like metal and plastics, but when we push something live through one of these holes they come out as disorganized chunks of meat.”

  “Like in The Fly,” Alex said. “The scientist teleported a baboon and it wound up inside-out.”

  Stein smiled at this. “Someone’s been in touch with his geek side today,” he said.

  “It’s why we haven’t made this technology known,” White said. “It’s not ready or safe.”

  “But that’s not happening with the President,” Boehm said. “He’s still walking and talking, so his brain hasn’t been turned to mush.”

  There was a small pause which Alex recognized as General White making sure what came out of his mouth next was diplomatic. “It is still functioning as well as it ever did, as you say,” he said. “And this is where I’m no longer any help to you. One, because I know the whereabouts of every scientist the Air Force has working on teleportation and none of them have gone rogue. Two, because whoever is doing this knows more about it than we do.”

  “Maybe one of the Russians,” Alex said.

  White shook his head. “It’s like I told you,” he said. “The Russians hadn’t the slightest idea what they had. It took us years to figure it out ourselves. The only people who’ve worked on this stuff are Americans, and we know about every one of them.”

  “Then one of your scientists has sprung a leak, General,” Boehm said.

  “Dave, with all due respect, you have no idea what you’re talking about,” White said. “Even if one of them wanted to leak, we’ve got them under such tight surveillance that they don’t take a dump without us knowing what they had to eat twelve hours before.”

  “You can’t keep track of them every minute of the day,” Boehm said.

  “Sure I can,” White said. “Implanted GPS tags never sleep. Trust me, Dave. If I’m not watching one of my people, it’s because I know he’s already dead.”

  “Would you give us a list of your scientists?” Boehm said.