“Anyone,” Knight said, surprised by how forcefully the word came out. For a moment he wondered if the inflection came off as petulant, as desperately demanding as all of those conspiracy theorists out there, like the ones in England, shaking their fists and screaming and demanding that someone confirm their beliefs.
“I think that unlike all those yo-yos out there screaming conspiracy,” Robinson replied, his attention refocusing on Knight, “you would realize that the military industrial complex is actually not quite as complex as Hollywood and a bunch of hack novelists would like everyone to think it is.”
“I would understand?”
“Yes, Dr. Knight. Someone intelligent…oh, and I beg your pardon….”
That sounded odd, Knight mused. “For what?”
Robinson shrugged lightly. “It’s not just because of Cornelia that I put in the word to have your people document our research efforts. It was because of you, too. We need the top minds working with us.”
Knight wondered if the compliment was genuine to any degree at all. “I’m touched.”
Robinson met his gaze with a rueful smirk. Come on, Colonel, show me just how open you people are capable of being, Knight thought.
“The president,” Robinson said, “and his national security advisor have already met with particle physicists from Fermilab.”
Knight had not heard of this in the news yet. “Fermilab. No kidding. Why?”
“Apparently,” Robinson said, and paused to sip some scotch, “these are the people who can speak to the theoretics of black holes, dark matter, super strings…or some such thing. Multiple universe membranes…I don’t know. Wherever these things might be coming from. There’s going to be a meeting of the U.N. about all this. They’ll be bringing in more scientists from Europe. Their brainiacs from CERN. People working their particle accelerators.”
“Multiple universe membranes?”
“I guess they think the globes are coming from some alternate dimension…I don’t know. But that’s why they’re getting the top people in the world together.”
Knight turned that information over in his head and realized he didn’t know what to think of any of it. Physicists looking at this made sense, but…. “Well, like I said, I’m flattered and all, but do they think I can contribute to alternate-dimension theories?”
Robinson gave him a long, probing look before replying. “Can you? Or since you’re an anthropologist, can you contribute to communicating with whatever’s on the other side? Inside the alternate dimension? Whatever sent these things over?”
Knight noticed how Robinson’s look and tone sharpened as he spoke. There was a challenge in his words.
But Knight wasn’t sure what an answer to that question might be. “Well,” he said, knowing he had to choose his words carefully to come off sounding halfway intelligent…or to avoid sounding completely deluded and pathologically self-important. “I guess I wonder if whatever sent those the globes really wants to communicate. Or even cares what we have to say.”
Robinson averted his gaze for a moment. “Yeah,” he said very slowly. “Truth is…I wonder about that too.”
The distant look in Robinson’s eyes made Knight wonder about a lot of things. His thoughts, for one, skipped to his own family. For a second he considered his two ex-wives. They were, no doubt, frightened by the phenomenon. Amy and Margot were both just that type. They must have been holed up in their homes right now and living in fear, he was certain. They had to be looking at these globes as the harbingers of the worst. He thought about his daughter and his grandson in San Antonio, too. The sad truth of it was that Knight just couldn’t be sure how they were reacting to all this. It had been that long since he had been in touch with them. He just didn’t…didn’t know them well enough to guess.
“I wonder what I would say to it,” Robinson’s voice startled him. The voice was dry, subdued, but not weak. It came from someplace cavernous and dark.
I bet you do, the thought ran through Knight’s mind. All the while, he consciously kept his gaze from drifting back toward the picture of Sarah. Would you want to say anything at all? Or just use whatever the air force has to blow it the hell back to where ever it came from? Blow it back in pieces.
Robinson shook his head ever so slightly. “Fact is, whatever sent those damned globes did it for some reason.”
“Yeah,” Knight said simply, leaving it as neutral as possible.
“Maybe we’ll get a chance to ask it.”
Knight nodded and finally spoke when he felt he had his thoughts and his words for them in just the right order. Then, for good measure, he took a sip of the scotch to fortify himself. “Colonel. Look, I gotta ask you something and you need to be straight with me. Since I’ll be this…what? Air force…consultant?”
Robinson simply raised an eyebrow in reply.
“Like I asked before. What do you people know about any of this? Are those globes really the first ones anyone’s ever seen?”
Without his expression changing much, Robinson nodded his chin toward the window. “What? Like those people out there? Is that what you’re asking me? Are we running some cover-up? Conspiracy? Did we get the globes from Roswell?”
“Roswell,” Knight said, and chuckled. “OK. Just like all those people out there. The conspiracy, New-World-Order-nuts. That’s what I’m asking. Is there any truth to any of the Roswell, Area-51, dead-alien-bodies stories? Do you people know what this is all about?”
8.
(Las Vegas Review Journal)…Nevada Senator Brandon Markwell called for a vigorous investigation of the globe phenomenon and the creation of a special Congressional subcommittee to make sure no part of the findings are kept from the public.
“The unfortunate situation since the start of this phenomenon has been a breakdown in the people’s trust in our public institutions,” Markwell said. “We need to be mindful of the national security implications of these objects appearing out of nowhere, on military bases like in San Diego, and the American people need to know what is being done to study this matter. What is being done to keep them and the country safe?”
Opinion polls, however, show a considerable percentage of Americans do not believe any type of government or military-led efforts to find the origin of the globes will be successful. Fifty-six-percent of the people, according to a Marist poll, believe the origin of the globes will not be found at any point soon. Thirty-five-percent say the government already knows more than it is admitting to.
“This fixation the public has with conspiracy theories is very troubling,” Dr. Bentley Covington, a professor of communications at the University of Southern California, said. “It’s not that our government is perfect, or that the military or big business and big corporations have not abused their power in the past. But believing that they could be behind something like the globe situation is giving them way too much credit.”
Covington also agrees with Markwell that the public needs to be reassured that any efforts made to study the globes will be done honestly and openly.
“(Because) what becomes of a world where we believe anything we want without any proof? Where we pick and choose our so-called ‘alternative facts’ if we don’t like the real facts?” Covington asked. “Where we believe our institutions are so corrupt and we are so powerless that there is no hope for any community action? In political involvement?”
Markwell also drew criticism from a large number of his own Nevada constituents when he said every possible explanation for the globes should remain on the table, even natural and man-made explanations.
“Just like CNN’s Peter Rollins said a few days ago, there are incredibly talented illusionists out there who can make us believe we’ve seen the impossible,” Markwell said.
He also proposed inviting several of Las Vegas’s top magic acts to serve as consultants on any research efforts.
J
erome Pike was the last professional illusionist who criticized the paranormal explanation for the globes. He was the victim of a violent assault in Miami by supernatural proponents, the Church of the Universal Dawn.
“I don’t know if Markwell is merely shilling for the Las Vegas tourism commission or if he’s a part of an agenda to keep the truth hidden,” Andrew Fullerton, the host of a popular conspiracy-oriented podcast in Las Vegas, quickly declared.
Most Americans no longer believe that a natural explanation for the globe phenomenon can be found. They do, however, support plans like Markwell’s for a fully transparent research effort.
From Las Vegas Review Journal’s Emily Harding
9.
“You people?” Robinson asked, his right eyebrow arching over a disappointed glance. “Really? Like I said, if you mean the government, the air force—”
“Yeah.” Knight just had to cut him off, irritated by the way the colonel was attempting to slide around a direct answer again. “I understand. It’s all complex and it’s not complex. So what’s the truth? Does anyone really know anything about any of this?”
“Not about the globes, no.”
Had he been sipping any of the scotch that moment, Knight was sure he would have choked on it at that instant. “Not about the globes?”
“From the seventies until ninety-six, the CIA studied whether psychics were for real. Inconclusive, by the way. And yes, there were the studies of UFOs. From the late forties through the sixties. And you can see shows about it all over TV. You understand? We don’t know anything. What those things are. I mean yeah, there were lights in the sky. Radar signatures. What the hell’s behind it, nobody knows. There are no aliens in Area 51, none of that crap.” Robinson paused with a sigh and eyed his glass of scotch. “Basically, we’re conspiring to hide our ignorance. The most technologically sophisticated military machine in history has no idea what’s flying around in its skies.”
“You know this for sure—”
“Know this for sure? No, not for sure…. Hell, I asked, OK? What they said sounded pretty much on the level.”
“On the level…?”
Robinson gave Knight a tight look. “We’ve got people ready to kill each other over these damned globes. So we—the president of the United States, the Pentagon…everyone—we’d better get to the bottom of this real damn fast.”
“There’s no time for secrets?”
“No time for secrets,” Robinson said with a tone, with a look that appeared to be real damned on the level.
“So what’s the plan?” Knight asked.
“We’ll know soon enough.”
“You think they, your superiors in Washington, might want me in case we need to ask…them...it…some questions?”
“They thought it was a good idea.”
“Well, I sure as hell can think of a couple of good ones.”
There was a drawn-out moment of silence before Robinson said, “So could I.”
All the while, Knight’s gaze was drawn back toward the picture of the colonel’s daughter. “I know.”
Chapter 6
Traffic Jam. The Hum. A Theory. Fired.
A Night at the Airport. Invitation to Travis AFB
1.
“His name is David Kwan,” Cornelia said, looking into Matt’s camera. “He’s the manager of a Sunset District branch of Golden State Banking and Savings. The kind of…witness, the kind of experiencer, that makes us look closely at his claims.”
Because he works for a bank? Cornelia wondered, considering how absurd her own script might have sounded right now. Then she scanned the faces of her colleagues, the rest of the team, plus Jerry Peretti, crammed into their bullet-riddled Ford F-150. With Doc Knight off at Travis Air Force Base, space was freed up for Jerry.
“This might be a man beyond reproach,” Cornelia went on, sure her own words made about no sense now.
But she couldn’t see any reactions from her team as Rick drove them west on Parnassus Avenue, heading for the Sunset District. Even Jerry, who had obsessively pored over her script, was too busy scanning emails on his phone. Did it really matter anymore how respectable anyone making a claim about the globes was? Scientists and college professors had been reduced to babbling cluelessness by all this. Rick had been right about Marcus Gunderson, their eminent engineer at Berkley, as well. The man had become a ranting, conspiracy-spouting wingnut, little different from a vagrant with a sandwich-board on the street screaming about the end of the world. How much more impressive was a mid-level bank executive like Kwan likely to be than a professor at one of the country’s top schools?
So Cornelia had tweaked her script to read, “David Kwan risks a lot by going public with his claims. This could do irreparable damage to his reputation in an industry as conservative as banking. But he feels he has to tell his story.” She had to break from the script at that point. “How did that come out?”
She looked at Jerry first, feeling her delivery came out sounding ridiculous.
Or is it more than the delivery? she wondered. It had to be more than that. It had to be more than Kwan…yet it was all of the above. It was the pointlessness of all this, Cornelia thought.
All of the above, she told herself.
They had almost gotten innocent people killed, her mind screamed. That’s what all of her discomfort came from. It wasn’t bad enough that one of the globes had killed Sarah. Now their pathetic, yellow-journalistic TV show was putting people’s lives at risk. She felt as low, as unclean, as she had right after Sarah’s death.
Rick was right, a voice in her head nagged, refusing her any measure of relief. He had been right when he argued with his ex-wife. It’s us. It’s in us. It’s on us. These globes aren’t about to destroy the world. We are.
More than anything, Cornelia felt like they were strapped onto a wild ride hurtling insanely toward oblivion. Yet no one around her seemed to realize it.
“Your script sounds fine,” Matt said noncommittaly.
See what I mean? No one’s realizing it.
“Yeah,” Rick seconded, as cool as ever.
So what was keeping him together so well in the middle of all this? Cornelia knew Rick was capable of a great deal of introspection. How could he not be after all that he had been through over the last few years? Plus the things he had said to his ex-wife—No, not just about me! she wanted to tell herself, wanted to remain objective, but couldn’t quite pull it off—had made her want to understand him, know him so much more than she had gotten to know him since they started working together a few short months ago. There was much more to him than the happy-go-lucky opportunist, the I’m-an-unlikely-TV-star-and-I-love-it façade he had created. But what was happening to him now? What was this stoic distance all about? Was it the cop thing? Did that chase put him back in his element?
But Cornelia looked back at her script instead of allowing all of these questions, all of the stress, to keep battering her.
“What if what he’s about to tell us crashes the stock market?” Ian asked with an exaggerated deadpan.
And Cornelia almost laughed. What the hell? It’s as good a question as any.
Jerry’s eyes came away from his iPhone at last. “That’s no joke, you know. The Dow’s been taking a beating since this whole thing began.”
Melinda looked at Ian and grinned. “You hear that? You afraid your portfolio’s gonna get hammered?”
“Ian with a big stock portfolio? In his dreams,” Lacy said, and laughed.
“No, seriously,” Jerry said. “The market’s been a disaster area. We’ve got these nutbags out there ready for fire and brimstone raining down...listen….” He paused and waved his phone around. “I mean, people are expecting the four horsemen of the Apocalypse to come down from the sky. Well, they’ve been riding up and down Wall Street. The markets are freaking out.”
This time Matt turned his camera toward Jerry.
Cornelia thought she felt a wave of tension ripple through the SUV. The fact that they moved along Parnassus Avenue as slowly as they did helped add to that tension. She had seen Lacy and Tony’s tight faces as they looked out the windows, contemplating the traffic jam. It’s not just Wall Street that’s nervous, Cornelia could imagine a hackneyed news comment saying, but Main Street is scared out of its wits now. People were leaving big cities in ever greater numbers. It was happening all over the world.
Places close to the globes were the worst. Cornelia and her group knew that the traffic they were mired in now was more than the usual evening rush hour. Many of these people were heading out of town. Traffic on the Golden Gate and Oakland Bay bridges was a bumper-to-bumper snarl as well. For a moment she doubted the wisdom of even doing an in-person interview with David Kwan. She knew they needed to get him on the record, but why couldn’t it have been done via video conferencing? They would need to get up to Travis Air Force Base as soon as they could after talking to the banker, but Cornelia would have loathed to guess how long that could take, given the fact that the sun was about to melt into the horizon.
“So we’ve got enough gas in this clunker to make it out of town?” Lacy gave voice to Cornelia’s concern, almost as if she was telepathic.
Cornelia looked at Rick for a reaction.
“Nope,” he said.
“And I’ve seen some serious lines at three gas stations already,” Melinda said.
Cornelia had an idea and thought there was no sense in wasting time bringing it up. She turned to Jerry. “How about we fly out of here when we’re done?”
As she expected, Jerry looked less than pleased by the suggestion. In fact, Cornelia thought there was a slight flinch shivering through his features, almost as if he had bitten down on a painful tooth. “Uhm…look. We’ll do just fine. Just because the world’s panicking, there’s no need for us to go to pieces too.”
“And spend the extra money on a plane out?” Cornelia found herself snapping, her voice harder than she intended. It wasn’t so much conflict with Jerry that she wanted to avoid as…well, as much as panicking.
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