Overture

by Mark Wandrey

  There was the portal, surprisingly like the one on Instagram posted by the Chinese occupiers.

  “Victor,” Billy said, hand to his mouth. “Man, oh man, what did you stumble on to?” He clicked to the next image and spent a long time looking at the ‘angel.’ He also thought about how Victor had said the other side was, at first, a snowy plain, and then woods at night. He looked up at the frozen frame on his TV. The winter tableau was still there. He thought he could see a frozen lake, and maybe some bushes? Everything was covered in thick snow.

  Not only had Victor apparently been telling the truth, but the portal in Central Park was not the only one! He sat scanning the news channels for hours. Only the BBC mentioned the events in NYC, “We’re currently investigating;” and in Beijing, “Is this another Tiananmen Square in the making?”

  As regular programming gave way to the mind-numbing content of late night talk shows, Billy abandoned them for his tablet and surfed the web late into the evening, looking for any other mentions of the portals. Billy Harper wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the Instagram images.

  Agents of the Australian, Egyptian, Russian, and United States governments also took notice. Their observations made it to interested parties, whose reactions varied from amazement, to fear and consternation. An analyst in Bluffdale, UT picked up the images, added them to others in a highly-secure data packet, and sent it to another secure site.

  Mark Volant’s computer buzzed, alerting him to high-priority traffic. He got out of bed where he’d been trying to get to sleep and entered the 22-digit encryption code the fingerprint secured dongle he wore on a necklace generated. In a second, he was looking at the Instagram pictures. He reviewed them for a minute, then typed a simple reply message.

  “Kill all instances. Disavow the sources.”

  His agency director had been right. There were more than one of these portals. That meant there could be a lot of them. Primary data, still being analyzed, suggested at least five more. “Alien invasion?” he wondered, then snorted. He picked up his agency-issued secure cellphone and speed dialed.

  “Get in here,” he said and hung up. He pulled on a pair of boxers and walked to the door. By the time he opened it, an agent was standing there.

  “I want that spraycrete dome installed tonight,” he told his assistant.

  “That…won’t be cheap, sir.”

  “Does it look like I give a fuck? Find someone who can do it and get them there right now. Get it done. See to it personally. Keep the lighting very low inside so the crews can’t get too good a look.”

  “Damn thing glows in the dark,” his assistant said.

  “Then throw a fucking tarp over it. Just do it.” Volant closed the door in the agent’s face. He plopped into a chair and sighed. It had been at least 24 hours since he’d had more than an hour of sleep. In his younger years, he could go as much as 96 hours without sleep, if drugs were available.

  “Getting old,” he grunted to the empty room. He grabbed an old-fashioned note pad and jotted a few things down. He was old school. You could be 100% certain that paper was destroyed. Bytes had a weird tendency to come back and bite you in the ass. He chuckled at his own humor, thinking he had to save that one for one of his agency training sessions. Then, figuring it might not be the last time he was woken up that night, he took the comforter and a pillow from the bed and grabbed a couple hours sleep in the chair. He felt the comforting lump of his venerable Sig Sauer P220 Equinox under his thigh.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Four

  April 10

  Dr. George Osgood leaned back in the chair, flipped his glasses up on his receding hairline, and sighed while rubbing the bridge of his nose. The current undertaking had quickly become one of the most frustrating of his long career.

  At least half of his staff from Houston and the embeds at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory were there with him now. He had access to state of the art equipment brought in from all over the world at his request. They’d spared no expense. The greatest minds in the country were at his beck and call, as long as he carefully parsed his words. Yet, after working tirelessly for almost three weeks, he was no closer to substantive answers than the day he started.

  “Here’s the latest particle physics report,” a physicist said, handing him a thick stack of paper printouts. Another annoyance of the NSA’s insistence on maintaining ‘compartmentalization.’ They emailed as little data as possible. There were probably a hundred government couriers, at any time, flying around the world for this one project, booby-trapped with secure attaché cases handcuffed to their wrists.

  “Did they have anything useful to say this time?”

  “Mostly they wanted to know where we came up with such a unique set of readings, and then they accused us of making up data for them to run.”

  “Figures,” Osgood said and tossed the papers onto a cart piled high with similar reports. He snorted and kicked ineffectually at the cart. “It’s their way to avoid admitting defeat.”

  “They did say the readings from the neutron target suggest bosons. They just can’t confirm.”

  “Of course they can’t,” Osgood grumbled. The instruments used to capture subatomic particles and taste their flavor wasn’t, by its nature, portable. A huge amount of the Hadron Collider in France was the detection array. Even a small one was the size of a modest office building. “Did they have anything on the gamma ray problem?” They’d recently realized that activating the device might result in the emission of some subatomic particles, as well as gamma rays. Dosimeters at the Mount Sinai Hospital, almost 2 miles away, had detected these readings!

  “Best guess?” Osgood nodded, then shrugged. What else could he ask for? The man continued. “The thing might be made of neutrons and anti-neutrons.”

  “Well,” Osgood said and looked at his nemesis. That was interesting! That theory might explain the potential energy readings. “Wouldn’t Mr. Roddenberry be pleased with himself?”

  “Doctor?”

  “Nothing,” Osgood said and shook his head. “Thanks for the reports.” The man went about his business, and Osgood took out the tablet he used to organize research efforts and grumbled. After a minute, he heaved himself to his feet and trundled over to the food cart. They kept it stocked 24/7 with sandwiches, doughnuts, coffee, imported water, and an assortment of other snacks, as research never stopped. He grabbed half a tuna salad sandwich, plopped it on a plate with some chips, and took it back to his workstation.

  An hour later, Osgood got up and headed out of his office in the main research trailer and across the area nicknamed Portal City. Twelve semi-permanent structures and six portable trailers surrounded a concrete dome. Dozens of cable traces were set along the ground and strung through overhead, wooden supports moving back and forth like a telephone exchange in India.

  He walked toward the dome. It was 20 meters across and painted in neutral earth tones, so it didn’t stand out. There was only one exit, a pressure tight airlock that currently stood with both doors open. A pair of NSA agents guarded the airlock, one on either side. They held their machine guns like they knew how to use them and regarded Osgood coolly as he approached.

  “Identification?” one asked as he walked up. He’d long given up fighting the daily indignities of repeatedly identifying himself to someone who saw him on an hourly basis. He held out the RF Identification, and the guard touched his scanner plate to it. The scanner gave a small beep, and a green light came on. “Proceed,” the man said.

  Inside the dome, the portal dais glowed dimly. Sensors registered his entrance. LED lights came alive, overwhelming the inner glow, but not reducing the impressive pearly, swirling otherworldliness of the material.

  “I hate that thing,” he said. As he walked around it, he was careful to step over the dozens of cables lying around and to avoid all the instrument stands. Most scientists had a deep-seated loathing and suspicion for anything that violated the known rules of physics. The portal definitely qual
ified as suspicious. He had to chuckle, though, as he remembered the official story behind the dome and the scientific community and NASA presence. They said a research satellite from the Gemini era with a thermal generator had crashed. “Bullshit,” he said, “as if anyone would buy that.”

  It was a sad statement on modern education, he thought, that most of the public completely believed it. There were hundreds of protestors from organizations such as Greenpeace and Earth First holding daily vigils, protesting NASA’s pollution of the cosmos. If a satellite crashed into Central Park, there should have been 20,000 cell phone videos of it. That there were none of the portal delivery or the alien stunned him. Was that on purpose? It was an interesting premise.

  Osgood walked over to the central control computer and glanced at the schedule. He could hear the team coming. A series of heavy-alloy steel plates was arranged around a segment of the dais, and the laser was setup and ready to go.

  A minute later, the team came in, wearing heavy green lab coats and dark laser-protective goggles around their necks.

  “Morning, Dr. Osgood,” the head of the team said.

  “Morning. You on the first run?”

  “No sir, we ran two sequences last night.”

  “Results?” Osgood asked.

  “Not a damned thing. We’ve tried six different frequencies so far; same results on all of them. It’s almost perfectly reflective.”

  “Almost?” Osgood wondered.

  “Well,” one of the techs said, “there’s a 0.0019% deviation from the normal. We’re not certain, but we think it’s being lost in atmospheric absorption.”

  “And the radiation?” One of the more interesting side effects of their investigation was that any attempts to damage or sample the dais resulted in a release of radiation, as well as the high energy stuff. The release could even be neutrinos and elementary particles. Without detection gear, who knew?

  He hung out and observed as they set up. When they were ready, he helped himself to a pair of goggles as they energized the 5,000-watt laser. The laser had enough power to burn through flesh and bone. The goggles were insurance against a bouncer. Thus far, the shields had caught it all. They calculated the results after the run. They were exactly the same as all the others.

  “Just doesn’t make sense,” the laser team leader said. They set up probes to sample the air for residue ablated by the laser. They found nothing outside of normal air ionization. “There should be something!”

  “Doesn’t seem possible,” Osgood agreed.

  “Right out of Star Trek,” one of the techs said, and the others laughed.

  “What did you say?” Osgood asked, his eyes wide. The man looked worried, afraid he’d said something wrong. “No, please, what did you mean?”

  “Well, you know, how they do stuff like this in sci-fi and Star Trek?”

  “Yeah, but I want to hear you say it.” The man explained, and Osgood nodded, the smile growing wider on his face.

  “I don’t know why we didn’t think of that before.”

  “Think of what?”

  Osgood looked over and saw his nemesis, Agent Mark Volant, standing just outside the airlock. He groaned inwardly. “I think I figured out how this thing works. Well, at least why we can’t sample it.”

  “Okay,” Volant said, “why not?”

  “See the laser beam?” The laser was on low power mode and continued executing an endurance test.

  “No,” Volant said. Osgood realized he didn’t have filter goggles, so he got a pair and held them out to Volant. The NSA man looked at him dubiously for a moment, then came inside. In the weeks Osgood had run the investigation, he’d only seen the agent inside a handful of times. Volant looked at the goggles.

  “Better put them on, it’s not on high power, but it is still dangerous.” Osgood pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, put one in his mouth and leaned carefully over a shield. The cigarette flashed in an instant. An alarm went off, and one of the materials analysts gave Osgood a dark look but didn’t say anything. “See, wouldn’t want that in your eyes, would you?”

  “I didn’t think any of you eggheads smoked,” Volant said, slipping the goggles over his perfect haircut.

  “We have bad habits, just like everyone else.” With the goggles in place, Volant could see a ruby line running from the apparatus to the dais. When it struck the pearly surface, it rebounded as if hitting a mirror, and was caught by a shield. The shield was wired into the computers and was dutifully recording the energy.

  “Okay, I see it. So, what? That thing is pretty shiny. It’s no surprise it reflects the laser.”

  “The most reflective mirrors we have are 99% reflective,” Osgood explained. “Certainly, the very expensive ones like these guys work with are 99.5%. That means some of the light is lost, absorbed by the mirror and incorrectly reflected. This,” he said pointing at the dais, “is perfectly reflecting to three decimal places.”

  Volant looked at the dais. It was shiny, but it wasn’t that damned shiny. “So, how is it doing it? What kind of material could be that reflective?”

  “Considering that you can see through it, sort of? Nothing. We just realized that it isn’t a material at all.”

  “You eggheads like to be confusing?” Volant asked.

  “Not on purpose,” Osgood said and chuckled. “You see, it is reflecting perfectly because it’s not a material. It’s a damned force field!”

  The agent considered what that meant while Osgood went to his computer and began verifying his suspicions. The force field theory explained everything, even the energy emission. When they assaulted the dais, there was an energy flux when it responded. Most scientists considered Star Trek-type force fields impossible. He glanced at the dais and smiled.

  “I have some info for you, too,” Volant said. Osgood looked at the agent in his immaculate black suit with the conspicuous bulge. “There are eight more of these that we are certain of—Moscow, Beijing, Sydney, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, London, and Johannesburg. There could be one in Paris, but the Frogs are being tightlipped. So are the Indians.”

  “There are ten portals like this? That’s stupendous!”

  “And ominous.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “What are they here for? What do they mean?”

  “Well,” said Osgood, flipping off the laser. He ignored the protests of the laser team and stepped on the bottom step of the dais. The round portal sprang to life. Volant took an unconscious step back. The portal aligned with the person who stepped on the dais, as always. It was daytime on the other side. The alien forest was clearly visible, as well as the sky, which had a slightly different color from Earth’s. “Reports say that some alien centaur delivered the portal.”

  “I read that report too,” Volant said. “We haven’t been able to find the punk who saw it delivered or your fucking alien. Some stupid NYPD detective let him go.” Osgood shrugged. “We have a warrant out for him. It’s some black gutter rat. He’ll turn up eventually.”

  Osgood made a dismissive gesture. “It was probably a story told to cover up the fact that a police officer saw the event, not some transient.” Volant eyed him appraisingly.

  “We considered that,” he said, “but that account still stands as the only modestly credible story of this thing’s arrival.” He looked at the laser for a long moment, then lifted his goggles. “Some of the other portals are in countries that are not our allies. If this is a gift, or some kind of crazy, alien finger puzzle, my bosses need to know.” Osgood sighed and shook his head.

  “You’ve been at this for weeks, and all you can tell me is it has a force field and is full of energy.”

  “That’s rather simplistic—”

  “Oh, stow it,” Volant snapped angrily. “Three weeks of research and millions of dollars spent, not to mention an increasingly suspicious press, and you give me Star Trek?” Osgood shrugged, and Volant fumed. “Do you have any clue about those symbols at least?”

&nb
sp; Osgood turned from where he was standing on the dais and looked at the portal ring. All around the edge intricate symbols were moving, morphing, and occasionally disappearing.

  “We haven’t a clue.” Volant looked like he was ready to become violent. “I told you, we can’t decipher the symbols unless we can bring in linguistic experts.”

  “Absolutely not,” Volant said and made a chopping motion with his hand. “We can’t let another group of eggheads into the box.” He looked at the symbols. “Why don’t you know anything about them yet?”

  “Because I’m a physicist, not a linguist, you troglodyte.”

  “Dr. Osgood, I expect much more from an educated man.” The two regarded each other coldly for several moments. Osgood eventually added a little more info.

  “We did a simple test and found that the markings are interactive.”

  “What kind of test?”

  Osgood walked up the steps to the portal. He caught his foot on one of the numerous cables lying there and stumbled before catching himself.

  “Careful, Doctor!” the laser team lead yelled.

  Osgood nodded and stepped away from the cables. Once sure of his footing, he reached out toward the hovering portal. Volant flinched visibly, making Osgood smile inside. He watched the symbols moving and changing for a moment, then touched one. It and all the others froze in place.

  “The portal is just a projection,” Osgood explained and moved his finger through the portal than back out. “But this is fully interactive.” He slid his finger and the marking followed it. As the symbol moved it encountered another symbol, and the two morphed together into a new one. “Interactive,” he said and released the new symbol. The dim blue symbol flared slightly and melted away. The march of the other symbols resumed.

  “Can we resume our series, Dr. Osgood?”

  Osgood glanced up at the laser team leader and nodded, stepping off the dais to continue his verbal jousting with the NSA agent. The portal instantly disappeared.