Refraction

by Christopher Hinz

  The yellowish liquid must be an acid corrosive to paper. Should the safe be opened by any means other than dialing “Blackie Redstone,” the mechanism would flip the test tubes 180 degrees, pouring the acid into the tray and destroying the envelope and its contents. The gyroscope served to keep the test tubes upright in case someone jarred the safe or turned it upside down.

  No batteries were in view. The contraption appeared to be entirely mechanical in nature. That made sense. Batteries would go dead after a few years.

  The hiss of air when the door opened suggested the safe had contained a partial vacuum. Dad must have created the vacuum before sealing the safe. A very slight change in air pressure, such as from a drill penetrating the walls, would have caused the envelope to receive an acid bath. Dialing the proper code had been the only way to neutralize the fail-safe mechanism.

  Aiden marveled at the design. His father’s main field of expertise had been electronics systems. But his non-circuitry inventions, such as this contraption and the snowball rifle, had always made the deeper impression. Sadness touched him as he thought back to those hours he’d spent down in the basement workshop with Dad, watching him bring one of his unconventional devices to life.

  Of course, it would have been much simpler to keep the contents of the envelope in a safe deposit box. But simple had never been Dad’s style.

  Aiden withdrew the envelope but hesitated before opening it. The “Blackie Redstone” moniker’s symbolic meaning resonated. Was the very act of opening the safe an example of wild and foolish behavior?

  The contents of this safe will change your life.

  He suspected that his father had been conflicted. The envelope contained something important Dad wanted him to have. Yet it also contained something wild, something that might better be left untouched. Still, his father would have known that Aiden had no real choice. What mere mortal could resist such temptation?

  Still envisioning a waiting fortune – maybe details for accessing a secret bank account – he broke the seal. Inside was a four-page handwritten letter in his father’s elegant cursive. The date indicated it was written when Aiden was twelve, only a few months before his parents died.

  Aiden began reading. Before he got to the second page, his hands were shaking. It felt as if a giant claw had grabbed hold of his guts and was applying relentless pressure.

  By the time he reached at the end of the letter, he felt numb. The notion that the contents of the safe would change his life was the grossest understatement.

  His entire world had just been ripped apart.

  SIX

  “Aiden, are you all right?”

  George Dorminy gazed worriedly at him from the shed’s doorway. Aiden, still in a daze, didn’t know how long he’d been standing there.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You finally got it open. What was the secret key?”

  Aiden wanted him to leave. He wanted to be left alone to process the letter’s monumental impact. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen.

  He forced a smile and gave Dorminy a quick explanation of “Blackie Redstone” and the safe’s self-destruct mechanism. The old man nodded and gazed at the letter clamped in Aiden’s hand.

  “No secret treasure,” he said, trying to relax his tense body through sheer force of will, trying not to show the devastating emotions churning through him. “Just some personal stuff.”

  “Well, either way, Irene and I would like to invite you to stay for supper.”

  The last thing Aiden wanted to do was hang around and make small talk with the Dorminys. He politely declined, saying he needed to catch a train back to Philly. His original plan of staying overnight in a motel was history. He just wanted to go home.

  Home. The word caught in his throat, its meaning forever altered by the letter.

  Dorminy insisted on showing Aiden the basement and the hollow cavity in the wall where the safe had been concealed. It was a clever hiding place, not readily accessible until the old coal furnace had been hauled away. The removal of the furnace, an unused relic even when Aiden lived here, had disclosed a section of false wall covered by wooden slats painted the same shade of ivory as the surrounding cement.

  “I know you’re eager to get on the road,” Dorminy said. “But before you go, I’d really like you to see my pride and joy.”

  The old man drew aside a green drape that separated the front of the basement from the furnace area and stepped across the threshold. Aiden followed reluctantly, hoping the tour would be short.

  Dorminy’s HO-scale model railroad was spectacular. Butting up against three walls, with a peninsula jutting out into the center, the miniature empire was richly detailed. A single track studded with sidings and branch lines wound its way along portions of the Squamscott River and through replicas of New England towns, forests and mountains. The track terminated at a large freight yard in an urban area representing Concord, New Hampshire.

  “It’s part of the Boston & Maine rail system in the mid-1950s,” Dorminy said, removing a device resembling a TV remote control from a hook and pushing some buttons. A set of maroon and yellow diesels pulling boxcars and gondolas crawled out of the freight yard and began its journey to the other end of the layout. Authentic sounds – growling engines and multi-chime horns – emanated from the locomotives.

  “Like to try it?” Dorminy asked, offering him the throttle.

  “No thanks.”

  Aiden feigned interest as the train threaded its way across the layout. All the while, he couldn’t help dwelling on the act of fate that had brought him here. Had George Dorminy not desired to extend his layout by adding a branch line to be constructed where the furnace stood, Aiden never would have learned that his life had been built upon an unconscionable lie.

  SEVEN

  After removing the test tubes of acid and making arrangements with Dorminy to ship the safe to Philly, Aiden drove back to Boston. The letter was another matter. It was tucked securely in the vest pocket of his jacket.

  He called Darlene from the train station to say he was returning a day earlier than planned. He told her about the safe but not about the letter, divulging only that he’d discovered no hidden riches. She sensed from his tone that something was wrong.

  “Everything’s fine,” he lied, struggling to contain his anger. Now wasn’t the time and place to unleash it. “I’ll tell you everything when I’m back.”

  He hung up before she could respond.

  My dearest son: There is no good way to reveal the things your mother and I kept hidden from you.

  The opening words of his father’s letter surged back into awareness. For the third time since the train departed Boston, Aiden slipped the pages from the envelope and read on.

  I can only guess what your reaction will be. Hurt, anger, fear, and perhaps other emotions I can’t fathom. In any event, your mother and I made a vow to one another that we would not reveal these things until you turned twenty-one. We felt that by that age, you’d have acquired a maturity that would allow the rigors of your mind to temper the turbulence that likely would tear at your heart.

  We intended to sit down with you and unveil these secrets face to face. This letter is the backup plan. I can only assume that since you’re reading it, your mother and I have died or are in some way incapacitated, and that the location of the safe was passed on to Darlene, and ultimately to you, through our estate attorney.

  Aiden paused, wondering again why his sister hadn’t removed the safe prior to selling the house. Had there been some sort of mixup? Had Darlene never learned about the safe?

  Those details would become clear soon enough, when he confronted his sister.

  He continued reading.

  I’ve always considered myself a reasonably courageous man, but your reaction to all this was not something I was eager to face. But these are things you deserve to know. For better or worse, they are your heritage.

  Your birth date is correct as far as we know, but not much else r
elated to the first eighteen months of your life. You are not our biological child. You were not born in that Allentown, Pennsylvania, hospital, but in a clinic in Helena, Montana, to a poor itinerant woman who died giving birth.

  We never knew your real mother’s name, only that she apparently had no close relatives who might be willing to take care of a newborn, and that she had to make some really hard choices to get by. If she even knew the identity of the father – your father – she took it with her to the grave.

  You were eighteen months old when your mother and I adopted you. Had the circumstances of your early life not been so unusual, we would have revealed your true origins earlier. Maintaining this secret was partly for your own protection.

  As you know, I spent most of my professional life as an engineer for Innovative Electrodyne Corp., working originally in IEC’s Allentown office. What I never revealed is that your mother, sister and I moved out west for several years. For part of that time I was with a design team sent to work at a top-secret military research facility in the wilds of Montana. It was known as Tau Nine-One.

  IEC had won a Defense Department contract for the design, testing and installation of a state-of-the-art electronic sensor net for safeguarding the installation. But I never knew much about what went on at Tau Nine-One. My security clearance only permitted involvement with peripheral elements.

  What I do know is that one of their projects, rumored to be the most secret of them all, involved seven orphaned babies. It was an experiment of some sort, ostensibly done under the strictest medical guidelines, and with the babies subjected to nothing harmful. The children were roughly the same age, all born within a few months of one another.

  The experiment ended abruptly when they were eighteen months old. It was rumored that ethical considerations surfaced in Washington – better late than never – and the project terminated. The seven orphans were put up for adoption.

  You were one of those babies. That’s how your mother and I were afforded the opportunity to become your parents. We’d always wanted another child, but after Darlene’s birth, your mother could no longer conceive.

  After my work at Tau Nine-One and at some other West Coast job sites, we returned to Pennsylvania. Shortly after coming back, I accepted a transfer to IEC’s New Hampshire office and we moved north.

  Because of the unusual nature of how we came to adopt you, your mother and I made the decision to pass you off as our natural offspring. Since we didn’t have many close living relatives and hadn’t seen most of our friends back east in years, the fiction held up. We soon had reason to be glad we’d taken this step.

  Although the experiment on the babies supposedly was finished, I learned that you were being discreetly monitored, presumably by Tau Nine-One researchers. Someone was secretly accessing your medical records from our family physician, as well as your test scores, grades, and behavioral profiles from elementary school. The monitoring went on for a number of years. As far as I could ascertain, it ceased when you were about ten.

  We thought that was the end of it. But then you turned twelve and your weird ability appeared. Your mother and I became quite frightened by those manifestations, not so much by the chunkies themselves but by the fact that, in all likelihood, they somehow were related to what had been done to you at Tau Nine-One. Although we have no proof this, it seems reasonable to assume a connection.

  We feared that if the government learned what you could do, they’d take you away from us. We couldn’t bear the thought of that, which is the main reason we encouraged you to keep the manifestations to yourself and never talk about them with anyone outside the family, and why we kept up the fiction that you were our natural child.

  Once you get past the initial shock of these revelations, you may find yourself wanting to delve into your past. If you do, please be extremely careful. The people who run Tau Nine-One belong to a very secretive part of our government. Making direct inquiries likely would uncover little information and could draw unwanted attention.

  Your mother and I never felt responsible for what was done to you in the first eighteen months of your life. That was beyond our control. But we are responsible for everything that happened afterwards, including hiding these truths from you for so long.

  But please know that when we first set eyes on you, smiling and giggling in a playpen, we fell instantly in love. In all these years that love has never wavered. You brought us a joy that made our lives more meaningful than we ever could have dreamed. We can only hope and pray that you’ll remember the good times you had with us and find a way to get through all this.

  Love,

  Dad

  Aiden returned the letter to his pocket and gazed through the Acela’s spacious window. The train was cruising through the seaside town of New London, Connecticut, home to a naval base. The conning tower of a docked submarine was visible in the distance. He had a hunch the sub was preparing to head out to sea, maybe for a descent into uncharted depths.

  EIGHT

  Leah was on a sleepover at a friend’s house when Aiden returned late Friday evening. That was just as well. There was no good reason for a seven year-old to be in the house for the screaming match about to ensue.

  “How’d it go?” Darlene asked. She was in her pajamas, nestled on the living room sofa reading a nursing magazine.

  “Fuck you.”

  All the venom he’d accumulated during the return train ride poured into those words.

  “What happened?” Her voice was softer than usual. It was good to hear her not sounding all haughty and superior for once.

  “You’re going to play innocent with me, huh?”

  “Aiden, please just tell me.”

  He threw the letter in her lap. She began reading. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and paced back and forth in front of her.

  She finished and gazed up at him with sad eyes. “I’m sorry you had to learn this way.”

  “So you admit you knew.”

  “About Tau Nine-One, about you being adopted, yeah. Dad and Mom swore me to secrecy. They said they weren’t going to tell you until you were an adult. But I swear to you, I didn’t know anything about this letter or the safe.”

  “What about the estate attorney? He never told you?”

  “Mr Devereux was an old man. I think he was suffering from mild dementia. He died a couple months after Mom and Dad. Somehow, the existence of the safe and the letter must have slipped through the cracks.”

  “OK, I’ll buy that. But why the hell didn’t you tell me I was a goddamn orphan?”

  “Oh, God. Aiden I wanted to! So many times. But you always seemed to have so many other problems in your life. I thought that learning all this would make things even worse for you.”

  She got up from the sofa and moved toward him. She spread her arms, intending to envelop him in a hug.

  “Keep the hell away from me!”

  A hurt look crossed her face. Aiden didn’t care. Her voice fell to a whisper. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to find out more about this Tau Nine-One. I figure Dr Jarek is a good place to start.”

  “You think he knows about the experiment?”

  “If something was done to me and those other babies that caused us to develop weird psychic powers, he might have been in the loop.”

  Darlene nodded. “What about your birth mother?”

  “What about her?”

  “Are you going to try to find out more about her?”

  “What’s the point? She’s been dead three decades.”

  “You could have distant relatives living out there in Montana.”

  “If I do they don’t mean shit to me!”

  Darlene pinned her gaze to him. He knew she wanted him to keep talking, let his anger out so they could get past it. It was his sister’s tried-and-true way of dealing with him.

  But Aiden didn’t bite. He headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out for a drink.
And tomorrow morning, I’m driving down to DC.”

  He opened the front door. An instant before he stepped outside and slammed it shut, he yelled back:

  “And I’m not replacing your goddamn toaster!”

  NINE

  U-OPS had no public face and few people knew of the agency’s existence. Passersby to the upscale Georgetown row home assumed the brass sign – Dr Abelicus Jarek – signified a traditional psychiatric practice.

  Jarek did hold a PsyD among a slate of advanced degrees. But he had no patients. His so-called practice was a cover for the comings and goings of researchers and volunteers engaged in secret, government-sponsored psychic experiments in a basement lab. Aiden had been down there for sleep tests wearing headgear studded with EEG sensors and other oddities.

  Although it was a Saturday, Jarek had agreed to a morning meeting after Aiden insisted it was an emergency. He’d downed a lot of beer the previous night in a futile attempt to hatchet the letter’s turmoil yet still managed to get on the road early, before Darlene awoke. He was still too pissed to deal with her.

  He found a parking space a block away, threw the trash bag with the chunkie-infused toaster over his shoulder and rang the bell. Abel Jarek, sixty-something and portly, opened the door. Stylish the man wasn’t. He was garbed in a rumpled sports jacket and jeans a couple sizes too large.

  Jarek led him through the reception area to his office, where the psychiatrist charade was operating full throttle. The framed degrees were from top-tier universities and the bookshelves were crammed with medical texts. Aiden settled into the sofa. Jarek took the armchair and gestured to the bag.

  “I presume that’s your latest manifestation.”

  “Uh-huh, two nights ago. As a bonus, you get a free toaster.”

  Jarek looked at him quizzically. Aiden explained.

  “Other than the touchdown, was there anything else unusual about it?”