The Hidden Truth: A Science Fiction Techno-Thriller

by Hans G. Schantz

  What sense it made for the urns to be placed in the open coffins for a viewing was beyond me. When we learned about the arrangements, Rob secured identical urns and filled them with some wood ash to withstand a superficial inspection. When we had a private moment with the coffins, Kira pulled out the duplicate urns from her unusually large purse, and we swapped them out for the urns in the coffins. Rob said the three of us could figure out what to do with Mom’s and Dad’s remains later.

  Rob, Kira, and I stood as the line of mourners flowed into the church for the funeral. I’d wondered if Uncle Larry would want to stand in the reception line with Rob as brother to one of the deceased. That would have been awkward. Instead, he elected to lead off the line of mourners coming to pay their respects.

  A few of my high school teachers came by. Coach Warner insisted I’d done enough for the semester to get A’s, and not to bother coming back to school until after the Christmas holidays. The principal was with him and backed him up. I thanked them all.

  Amit and his family came up to me in line. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to be there for you,” he said simply.

  “I understand.” I assured him. “It’s for the best.”

  Dr. Kreuger was next in the line of mourners. “I’m so very sorry, my young friend,” he said.

  “Thank you, sir.” I cut him off before he could say more. “I wasn’t privy to the details of my father’s arrangements with you, sir, but I imagine there’s a good bit more that needs to be done on your project. I’m handy with things like that. If you’ll call me later this week, I’ll see what I can be doing to fulfill my father’s promises.”

  “You would...” he began. “At this time?” He looked overwhelmed. There was a lot of that going around. “You are good…,” he cut himself off. “No, sir,” he said. “Good man you are. You stand on two feet.” He paused. “You don’t need anything right now. But, sometime in future you need help. Only you don’t ask. You are too proud and too strong. But, is not help. Is debt I owe your father. Is more than just his work for me. Your uncle he already square that up with me.” I saw Rob exchange a look with him and nod before returning to his own conversation. “Your father he make me and my family safe. Ingenious what he did.” He glanced around, clearly not wanting to elaborate where he could be overheard. “I owe your father. Debt I cannot pay now, except to you. You understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I think so.”

  “I owe your father,” he insisted again. “There will come a time when you need some money to get started, a down payment for a house, a job at my factory, maybe just a place to stay when you are in town. When you need, you will ask me, so I can pay down the debt I owe your father. You understand? You promise?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Thank you, sir,” he said.

  Frau Kreuger and all three children gave me hugs.

  I got enough offers of jobs or money that I honestly lost count of them all. There must have been a couple dozen contractors there with the same story. Dad had given them their start as apprentices. They’d take me on tomorrow or any time I wanted. And, if I ever needed anything, I should let them know. I was overwhelmed by the intensity of feeling.

  The church was packed to overflowing. Grandma had insisted on orchestrating the services, and I didn’t have the energy or inclination to deny her. We sang a hymn.

  “We gather here today to lay to rest our brother Roy, and our sister, Amanda,” the preacher began. Roy and Amanda. Amanda and Roy. The names still seem foreign, awkward, to me. They were always just Mom and Dad. And so they remain in my memories of them.

  The preacher led us in prayer and presented a sermon. The service all blurred together. But I remember the end. Kira spoke toward the end. She related some of her favorite stories and recollections of Mom and Dad. She concluded with one last anecdote. “Mom used to tell me how Dad swept her off her feet with his dancing when they first met. My folks spent so many years raising my brother and me. They hardly had any time for themselves. This past weekend, they traveled to Nashville, just the two of them, for a couple of nights out on the town. They had breakfast with me before they left. I’ve never seen them happier – Mom was almost glowing with excitement about how she and Dad had danced the night away. That was the last time I saw them. They never made it home. But I’m so glad Mom and Dad got to have a last dance together before they left us.”

  Rob and I led up the pallbearers for my father’s coffin. Uncle Larry and the Sheriff, looking sleek and deadly in his dress uniform, led the pallbearers for my mother’s coffin. Kira had insisted on lending a hand, too. There must have been a quarter-mile worth of contractors’ vehicles and pickup trucks in the procession to the cemetery. And so we laid their coffins and the duplicate urns to rest.

  Sheriff Gunn had asked Rob and me to stay at the Berkshire Inn one last night. “I think you’re both in the clear, but if they’re going to try anything, this would be the time.” Amit’s Dad refused to accept any payment. Rob and I had adjoining rooms up on the third floor.

  I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. My actions had consequences. I would be living with them for the rest of my life. I kept replaying my choices, wondering what I could and should have done differently. I was interrupted by a soft knock on my door. I grabbed my .45, rolled out of bed, and crawled to the door of Rob’s adjoining room.

  “I heard it,” Rob said as he came through the door, short-barrel shotgun in hand. “You stay back, I’ll check.”

  It was Amit. Rob let him in.

  “I thought you should see this,” he said, handing me a sheet of paper. “EVIL finished their investigation.”

  Chapter 11: The Enemy Reports

  Amit handed us the intercept and took a seat. Rob sat next to me on the sofa, and we read the report.

  Final Report – Sherman Nexus (Category V), Sherman, TN

  Summary: A Category V Nexus arose in Sherman, TN due to a supercritical outbreak of proscribed knowledge. Targets terminated and illicit publications recovered or destroyed. Situation now under control. Details follow.

  Details: We recovered illicit publications describing fundamental electromagnetics outside safe paradigms. Recovered contraband included unredacted works of Oliver Lodge, Edmund Taylor Whittaker, John Ambrose Fleming, and William Suddards Franklin.

  “I thought you and your dad scrubbed the house of any incriminating documents,” Rob said to me.

  “I left a flash drive hidden in a cell phone charger,” I explained. “That’s why I went back home. They may have found it.”

  “I don’t know,” Amit cautioned. “Apparently Mr. Burleson had lots of the books and scans printed out. There’ve been a few other mentions.”

  Evidence strongly suggests Primary Target became aware of suppressed Heaviside analysis on wave interaction. Both Primary and Secondary Targets were skilled electrical contractors. Secondary Target had background in electrical engineering. Neither Target had experience in fundamental or applied research. No evidence Targets realized implications or succeeded in reducing to practice. Additional non-proscribed but related works (by Nahin, Hunt, Searle, Carr) found that, taken together, suggest Primary Target was researching Heaviside containment effort. Practice and certain methods of technology control may have been compromised to the Target. No evidence Targets connected the Circle to these actions.

  “‘Reduction to practice,’” Rob said. “There’s something in those bouncing waves of Heaviside’s. Something with serious implications. Something that concerns them.”

  “It’s complicated enough that they’re convinced neither Dad nor Mr. Burleson could have figured it out,” I observed. “But, they recognize Mr. Burleson and Dad were wise to the effort to suppress the Heaviside paper.”

  “Do you have any idea what this Circle is they’re talking about?” Amit asked.

  I filled him in on Uncle Larry’s attempt to recruit me, and the apparent tie-in between the Civic Circle and Xueshu Q
uan. “I figure the Civic Circle is a kind of public face to the organization and Xueshu Quan is a group within the Circle whose goal is to keep undesirable truths hidden.”

  “That’s huge,” Amit said. “The Civic Circle has members everywhere. They’re tied into everything: business, media, finance, government.”

  “There must be an ‘Inner Circle,’ if you will,” Uncle Rob speculated. “They’re behind the Civic Circle and run the Circle’s direct action arm that we’ve been calling ‘EVIL.’ I doubt very few Civic Circle members are actually clued in to what’s going on. The rest are just useful idiots, like Larry Tolliver, who are in it for the prestige, the connections, and to look out for their own interests.”

  “The Circle is convinced no one has seen their hand behind all these events,” I noted. “They don’t know that we know.”

  “If they even suspected we knew, we’d be dead,” Rob said soberly. “Keep that in mind.”

  Unauthorized release of proscribed knowledge traced to Tolliver Library in Sherman, TN. Once the principal library of now-defunct Tolliver Technical Institute, Tolliver Library was a top-tier research library before WWII. It subsequently fell into obscurity and thus failed to receive appropriate scrutiny from Xueshu Quan. Recommend a detailed review and investigation to confirm that similar threats are identified and neutralized. A fire consumed the library and its collection, however an external digital catalog shows significant amounts of proscribed knowledge much greater than that confirmed as having been in possession of Primary Target. See details in the attached file. All proscribed publications are believed destroyed in fire. Fire appears to have been accidental as no evidence of accelerants or arson was recovered from the scene. Timing, failure of fire suppression infrastructure, and extremely destructive nature of fire are highly suspicious, however. Unable to ascertain specific cause of fire or identify responsible party, if any.

  “They didn’t start the Tolliver Library fire?” I was incredulous. “I was convinced that fire was them hiding their tracks like they did at my house.”

  “It can’t have been an accident,” Amit insisted. “And that means…”

  “There’s someone else out there,” I concluded. “Some third party that wanted to prevent the library from falling into their hands.”

  “A potential ally,” Amit agreed.

  “Keep in mind that the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend,” Rob cautioned. “Read that next part.”

  Primary Target also obtained proscribed knowledge through online inquiries to sellers of used books. Found unredacted copy of pp. 301-302 Lodge Modern Views of Electricity with fingerprints of both Primary Target and Secondary Target. Microdot analysis ties printout to the serial number of a color printer purchased by Secondary Target. Secondary Target also purchased toner for printer about time a potentially dangerous pattern of online searches began (see previous report). Initial investigation failed to identify potentially hazardous synergy between online searches and proscribed knowledge available from Tolliver Library.

  “That must be the hardcopy Dad took to Mr. Burleson,” I concluded. “But what’s a microdot analysis?”

  “Apparently color printers place a pattern of yellow dots that provide a serial number and time and date stamp on everything they print,” Amit explained. “It was implemented to trace counterfeiting of currency with color printers, but now it’s routinely used to trace printouts back to printers.”

  “We need to dispose of that printer,” Rob observed.

  Amit nodded his head. “I know. This is the last time I intend to use it.”

  “The takeaway here is your tradecraft sucks,” Rob insisted bluntly. “You boys were amateurs. You were playing games and going through the motions of maintaining security. You did do some things right with your wardriving and anonymous Internet searching, but you can’t just do it right most of the time. You have to do everything right, all the time, and every time. Or, it will kill you and those around you.

  “Your interception of this was a masterful piece of hacking,” Rob told Amit, holding up the printout we were reading. I could see a smug grin on Amit’s face. “But you still screwed up big time and almost got caught at that truck stop. In fact you did get caught. The sheriff saw right through you two guys, and the only reason that didn’t end your schemes right then and there was because the sheriff was even more suspicious of the phony feds and their cyber-terror lies than he was of you. You cannot count on such a lucky break next time.”

  I could see Amit was as sobered by Rob’s after-action review as I was.

  “I want to sit down with you, Amit,” Rob insisted. “I want to review your methods, and your procedures, before you undertake any more initiatives. I want you to assume the Circle figures out the vulnerabilities you’re exploiting. If they know someone is doing what you are doing, how could they go about tracing it back to you? Let’s not add to the death toll. I don’t want you to lose your parents and your life because of an avoidable mistake. We need a secure firewall around your hacking, so it doesn’t lead back to you or to any of us.

  “Yes, sir,” Amit said softly.

  “You boys were sloppy,” Rob continued. “And you were only saved by a huge element of luck and by the fact that Jim Burleson was even more sloppy and inept than you were. It got him killed. It got your parents killed. We can’t afford to do that again. Never again.”

  “I’m sorry,” Amit said simply. “I’m so very sorry I screwed up, and I’m sorry you had to take the brunt of this – losing your parents, losing your house, getting arrested. I wish I could have done a better job of being there for you when you needed me. I never should have let you go back into your house. I knew it was a dumb idea, and I let you go anyway.” There was no trace of the usual cocky and arrogant Amit who alternately amused and annoyed me.

  “There’s plenty of blame to go around, Amit,” I consoled him. “We all made mistakes, and yours were no worse than mine. There was no reason to pull you in while I was under scrutiny. It might have jeopardized our window into the Circle’s communications and put you and your parents at risk, too.”

  “I will work with you both on our processes and our procedures, so we can all keep each other safe,” Rob insisted. “Above all, I do not want you boys trying to investigate or to reach out to any secret group capable of burning Tolliver Library to the ground right under the Circle’s noses until I say you’re ready. You hear me?”

  “Yes, sir,” we both replied.

  In addition, proximity to Oak Ridge National Laboratory led earlier investigation to conclude detection of a Category III Nexus was a measurement error due to artificially induced neutrino flux. We recommend enhanced scrutiny and more frequent surveys for potential Nexus formation in the vicinity of nuclear labs and power generation facilities. Also, our program to suppress and eliminate nuclear power generation should be accelerated to reduce the likelihood of further false positive detections.

  “Neutrino flux?” Rob asked. “Sounds like a bad Star Trek episode.”

  “No, this is science, not science fiction,” I insisted. “Neutrinos are subatomic particles that are the byproduct of certain nuclear reactions. Somehow, artificially generated neutrinos generate a kind of noise that makes it tough to detect the signature of a Nexus.”

  “They had a Nexus scanner in that white van of theirs,” Amit noted. “So you think they were detecting neutrinos with it?”

  “Neutrino detectors are huge,” I explained, “like vast tanks buried deep underground in mines. Neutrinos’ interactions are so weak, there’s no way we know of they could be detected reliably with anything compact enough to fit in a cargo van.”

  “With technology we know about,” Amit corrected. “They may have some ideas that aren’t public knowledge.”

  “This also tells us they have their fingers in the anti-nuclear movement,” Rob noted. “There’s another potential pressure point.”

  Caution: Supercritical concentration of proscribed knowledge id
entified in Sherman Nexus would account for a Category III Nexus but is insufficient to account for a Category V Nexus. At times, Nexus magnitude exceeded that of September 11, 2001. These extreme readings cannot be accounted for by any known or foreseeable consequence of uncovered events.

  “You realize what this means?” I asked, gravely.

  “We’ve somehow unleashed another 9/11?” Rob asked.

  “Something like that,” I explained. “A Nexus is an inflection point, a change in the course of history. What happened here in Sherman is a change that’s somehow even bigger than 9/11.”

  We pondered that point in silence.

  “Then EVIL’s ruthless attempt to crush the agents of that change…” Amit began.

  “…which led them to kill Nicole, and her boss, and Mr. Burleson, and your folks…” Rob continued.

  “…has given rise to a brand new future.” I concluded. “A brand new future in which we now know about the Circle and their plans. A new future in which we can move against them, expose them, and crush their schemes.” I paused, looking at Rob and Amit. “Understand. This hasn’t ended. It’s only just beginning. What the Circle started here in Sherman is going to change the world in a way more profound and more significant than 9/11 did. Their brutality and their ruthlessness had consequences, will have further consequences. We are the agents of those consequences.”

  “They tried to bury the truth. But, ‘they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind,’” Rob quoted. The thought gave me a cold satisfaction.

  Attempts to interrogate Targets failed. Primary Target shot while resisting arrest. Secondary Target and wife shot and killed two agents and wounded another before successful termination. Intelligence grossly underestimated tactical threat of Targets and did not assess Secondary Target’s wife as a tactical threat at all, so Operations should not be held responsible for these losses.