by Mark Wandrey
When Volant and Osgood regained their senses they both ran around the dais to be sure the man hadn’t just fallen over the side. The hovering Portal stayed in place, something it had never done before once the top step was vacated. Clearly visible in the window of the Portal archway was a wooded clearing lit by subdued starlight, not the glaring dome illumination that should have been there. Also visible was a surprised and frightened-looking scientist. He was looking around, obviously as amazed as those looking at him from the other side.
“Are you getting this?!” hissed Dr. Osgood.
“We’ve had this thing on continuous record since we got here,” someone replied.
“That particle target just had a shit-fit,” someone else said. “Real spike in neutrino and neutron emissions.”
“Any danger now?”
“No, it was only about half a second. Maybe two or three rads total ionizing radiation. Nothing to worry about. Unless it fires up again, of course.”
Osgood nodded his head and boldly climbed back up to the Portal. The ill-fated laser scientist could be seen talking, but not a sound came through. Osgood gestured for the man to step back through. The scientist nodded that he understood and stepped forward only to collide with an invisible wall.
“One way trip,” Mark Volant said from the ground. A pair of technicians came running up with handheld cameras, taking pictures of the scenes on the other side.
“It’s a dynamic image,” one of them said.
“Not a picture,” the other agreed, dropping to his knees at the extreme edge of the Portal and aiming his camera up to see the top of the other side of the Portal. “You can see sky on the other side. Wow, look at those stars!”
Meanwhile, the marooned scientist turned behind him. There was little light yet some trees were still visible. The terrain looks like virgin wilds. He turned to look back and there was panic in his eyes. “Help!” they could see him mouth.
“Quick,” Osgood said, “someone toss him some food, or matches or something! Anything!” There ensued a great disorganized scrambling.
“Fucking eggheads,” Volant snarled and reached into his pocket to fish out a piece of Government Issue equipment. With a quick toss he lobbed his Swiss Army knife through the Portal where the man on the other side caught it. He looked down at the gift he’d been presented with and looked back up, his face conveying dismay. An instant later the starry view swirled and disappeared, letting the bright glare of lights from the dome flood back through.
“Fuck!” said the head laser scientist.
“Well put,” agreed Dr. Osgood. Mark Volant duly noted that the little flashing light the unlucky man had shown them was no longer flashing white it was glowing purple. The next one in line was now flashing white. He left the babbling scientists behind and headed for his trailer. After three steps he broke into a loping run.
Mindy was about as uncomfortable as she could remember. To be sitting in a cabin more than a hundred miles from work on a weekday was unthinkable. She hadn’t taken a day off since she’d started her current job. She’d told herself it was just dedication. Throwing herself into this new career and pushing hard was the best course to success since she was starting relatively late in life. Taking her first vacation in five years was bringing an ugly truth to the surface. It hadn’t been dedication, rather a hollow attempt to bury the pain.
Just a short time ago she and Jake had made love and it had been as good as always. Afterwards she’d come out onto the deck. The cabin on the western slope of Mt. Hood had taken weeks to get a reservation. The weather in southern Washington State was always wonderful in the spring. She'd looked forward to the vacation as an excuse to get away from the memory of her IM conversation with that old friend. Unfortunately they were here, and so were the stars. Jake was sleeping the sleep of the dead inside on the luxurious feather bed while she sat outside wrapped in a comforter and staring up at those stars.
The tears came uninvited, and when they finally did arrive they came in torrents. She found herself kneeling at the edge of the deck, the valley below lit by the sparkling starlight and the white wispy haze of the Milky Way spread out above her. She missed the stars so much it felt like a piece of her soul had been torn out years ago, and only now was she realizing how much of her had been missing. She pounded the railing but the pain in her hand didn’t take away the pain in her heart. She fell back on the deck and let the sobs rack her chest under the great umbrella of the heavens.
Finally the tears slowed and stopped. The pain was gone and as she got back to her feet she knew what she had to do. Back inside the cabin she fished her computer out of the bottom of her suitcase.
The laptop’s cellular Internet link came up, even out in the woods. Mindy activated her instant messaging and was not surprised to see an old friend on line. “Got a minute to talk?”
“Always for you,” came the quick reply.
“How you coming on the code breaking?”
“Slow and sure. We’d be making a lot more progress if we could land that funding I talked about.”
“I know, that’s why I contacted you. I hear your looking for a person to help line up funding, fix computers, stare at the stars, and all that?”
“You teasing me, Mindy?”
“Not since we were lovers in college, no.”
“I thought you had a job, a career...a fiancé.”
Mindy stared at the computer and took a deep breath before answering. Two hours later, she was walking down the wooden steps from the lodge to the road. It was a two mile hike down to the highway but the cab she’d called on her cell phone would be arriving about the time she got there. A handwritten note stood peaked on the kitchen table, her goodbye to Jake and what she hoped wasn’t as lame of an apology as she felt it was. As she walked away from her temporary life, a figure stood in the shadows of the cabin’s window and watched her go.
Victor sat in the small diner listening to his friends. More than friends, these five people were his disciples. For weeks now he’d been preaching on street corners in Queens and the Bronx to any who would listen. After Duke had joined in jail and the huge man was released on a technicality, two women and then two more men answered his call. There were hundreds who sought him on the streets. Some wanted to hear his story about the angels and the Portal to Heaven. Some were believers, some were curious, some were just bored. But there were more and more every day.
“We have to get a place to call our church,” Duke insisted yet again. “Damn Victor, we almost got arrested yesterday for stopping traffic for two hours!”
“I agree with you brother, but even in this heaven-forsaken place a church is going to cost bread. We’re having a hard enough time feeding ourselves.”
“Then we need to ask the faithful to turn out their pockets,” said Mary. She was the first to join him after Duke. Mary was the only white person among his flock of disciples, and the best educated. She had been a crack whore only weeks ago, selling her body to feed her habit. Once she had been a college-educated stockbroker.
“Many of them can’t feed themselves either,” said Paul. Paul was the most humbling of his disciples. He'd once been a Catholic priest, but didn’t talk about his fall from grace. You didn’t have to think too hard to guess what might have happened.
“There are those that would not want to see a permanent presence from our ‘church’ either.” This comment was from Gabriel. Of his flock, Gabriel had fallen the farthest, having been a police officer. He’d gone dirty, taking bribes, supporting the Mafia, anything for a buck. Then one of the people he’d double crossed turned and ratted him out. The mob tried to kill him to close a loose end and Gabriel spent six months in the hospital wing of a prison. He’d been wandering the streets since he got out, until Victor had brought him aboard.
“You know the society of the streets better than any of us,” Victor said to Gabriel. “I’m certain that amongst the street ministries we are considered less than legitimate.”
“You could say that. To them we’re just an overnight cult. Damn, Victor, why do you think I was casing you out? Hopes of a buck were the biggest reason. Then I started listening to what you were saying.”
“Our word must get out, and to be heard one must sit to listen.” They all turned to the newest member of their group. Known only as Kadru, she was a lovely Indian girl who’d joined just a couple days ago. Victor didn’t know a great deal about many of his disciples, but of Kadru he knew the least. “People can’t listen to the words of the Avatar while standing in the streets and being watched by non-believers.”
“She’s got a point,” Duke said, sipping his soda.
“I can get us a place for about five hundred a month,” Gabriel said. “Over by 156th street, used to be a porn theater.”
“Yeah, I know that place,” said Paul. Mary lifted an eyebrow and Paul looked away with his cheeks flushing red.
“That’s several hundred more than we have, just for the first month,” Victor pointed out. He was at the moment counting loose change to see if he could afford a sandwich. Breakfast had been a long time ago. Quietly and without comment Kadru got up and left the table. Mary watched her stroll out of the coffee shop and went back to her own soda with a shrug. It was quiet moments like these that she felt the old desires for crack skulking around the edge of her consciousness. She squeezed the edge of the table until it hurt and offered a silent prayer to the centaur-angel Victor preached about.
“On a subject we can afford,” she said once the cravings subsided, “I’ve made progress on our website. I can only get so much done up with no domain name, and they limit my time at the library. We can’t afford to buy a domain name, but it’s up.”
“What is it called?”
“I was just thinking how Kadru keeps calling the angel you saw an Avatar. Well, since we really hadn’t thought about a name I took the initiative and called it The Followers of the Avatar.”
The disciples all looked at each other and started nodding. It had a nice sound, and avoided any claim of a church that might bring down the wrath of the established churches. “I think Kadru has named us,” Victor said and there were smiles all around. “Where is our newest disciple?”
“She went outside a few minutes ago,” Mary told them. On cue, the tiny form of Kadru stepped back through the doorway. She headed for the table with a smile on her face as if she already knew the news they were going to tell her. “Victor has something to tell you, dear,” Mary said to her younger friend.
Victor told her about their decision and Kadru nodded her head in appreciation. Then she took an envelope out and laid it on the table. Victor opened it and inside was thirty crisp, new one hundred dollar bills. “Good lord,” Duke gasped.
“Where did this come from?” Victor asked.
“The Avatars provide,” she said with a shrug.
“That’s enough for six months,” Gabriel said.
“It’s a start,” Victor told them. “We can get set up and see where this is taking us.”
“Six months is all the time we’ll need,” Kadru said and sat back down. Victor placed the money in the inside pocket of his trench coat and went back to finishing his drink while the others talked excitedly about the opening of their temple. Victor thought about the envelope in his coat, the kind of envelope an ATM used when it dispensed cash. There was much more to Kadru than anyone thought, of this much he was certain. Across from where he sat, Kadru participated in their celebration without a single mention of the incredible gift she’d presented.
Alicia punched the erase button when the answering machine was finally empty. She tossed aside her pencil and pad with a disgusted sigh and went to get a fresh cup of tea. Only twelve messages today but none of them were worth writing down. Two crank calls, eight requests for interviews by the typically confrontational British media, and the last two were canceled field trips. Running the observatory grew from a hobby to her living over the years since she’d built it and the budget depended on the field trips and buses of curious tourists. In the weeks since going public with the LM-245 incident, the tourists’ visits had first boomed, then sharply fell off. Most of them had come to ridicule her, even though many had no understanding of astronomy.
Now, though, the schools and other small astronomy groups, the backbone of her income, had begun to dry up as well. Her frustration at the World Astronomy Association was by far the most profound. They all but called her a charlatan, a simple publicity-seeking fraud. After all her years of substantive contributions to the astronomical community, they had thrown her to the wolves with a press release stating that nothing she reported held any grounding in scientific fact.
Alicia finished her tea and peeked out the back door. The sun was almost below the horizon so she got ready to go out. “Bloody bastards,” she growled, dropping her cup into the sink a little too hard and breaking the handle off. “Shit.” Outside she began opening the observatory for the night. The forecast was for clear skies and she was eager to find an old friend. The trouble was, she should have found that friend several days ago.
As soon as it was practical the telescope was sweeping the distant horizon. Because of the time of the year she only had an hour or so to complete her observations. The edge of the telescope’s view was hazy from light pollution. During the days she used the American’s site to access imagery from the SOHO observatory. It watched the sun twenty-four hours a day for solar phenomenon but also took wonderful pictures of the area around the sun. The images were high resolution and available to anyone with a computer connection.
She punched data into the computer control and the motors hummed as the telescope came onto target. Each night her search became a little more frantic, but tonight was special. This is when LM-245 should have emerged from its trip behind the sun and become visible. Tonight was her night of redemption.
She watched intensely as the telescope tracked slowly, the motors humming efficiently. The view began to clear of the haze created by the light pollution as the asteroid should have appeared. She wasn’t surprised when it didn’t.
“April 10, 2014 at 8:49 pm,” she spoke into the microphone next to the telescope control, “observation for LM-245 at expected coordinates after its transition behind the sun. LM-245 to transition Earth orbit at perihelion on July 9 this year. I’ve been observing for the appearance of LM-245 for three days now supplementing with data from SOHO. The WAA has refused to assist in this work due to their insistence that LM-245 never disappeared in the first place.”
A new hard drive was dutifully recording the information, making sure she would have two copies this time, and one of her last friends, coincidentally a new friend, was on line to assist. She stretched over and typed into the computer. “Are you there, Mindy?”
The IM window relayed the reply almost instantly. “Ready and able. I’m live with SOHO, but we can’t use Hubble for another nine hours. Two hours before that I can get the Navy Observatory at Virginia to give me a spot.”
“Thanks, Mindy, you’re great.”
“Hey, Alicia, I’ve been there. It’s about time the WAA takes one on the chin.”
The minutes crept by with no sign of LM-245, each minute making Alicia breathe easier. Regardless of what she’d seen there was still a deep-seated fear that she could have been wrong, and it looked like she was right after all.
“I’ve got something,” appeared Mindy’s word on the computer. Alicia’s heart jumped into her throat.
“Where is it?” she asked. A moment later the coordinates appeared and she looked up at her screen. Alicia cursed; the coordinates were still below the horizon to her. She jumped onto the computer and called up her own view of SOHO off the NASA site. She messed with the images for a few minute before admitting that she didn’t have the resources to see what Mindy saw. “I can’t see it; can you transfer me the image?”
“Sure,” was the reply. A few seconds later IM flashed that a file was available for download. Only a few hours ago Alic
ia was cursing the cost of her remote satellite broadband connection, now she was glad she'd maintained it. The image took a lot of memory, but the connection only took a couple of seconds to download. There in the bottom quarter of the image, complete with a graphic circle drawn by Mindy thousands of miles away, was a light colored object. “It’s oblong and I’m sorry to say it looks like your rock.”
“No,” Alicia whispered but didn’t type into the computer. “I should be able to eke out an image of that spot in about forty minutes, but I’ll only have it for a few seconds before I lose that view.”
“I’ll wait; we’re having an afternoon meeting of our finance group anyway.” Alicia had heard that Mindy was at the heart of the reemergence of SETI into the public eye. She was beginning to understand how hard it must have been for her to come back out of retirement after the way the WAA destroyed her reputation years ago.
While she waited, Alicia ran the location through the computer and compared it to the long established orbit of LM-245. It suggested a deviation of some hundred thousand plus miles from its calculated location. While significant, it was not at all what she had expected. That sudden burst of acceleration, if sustained, should have put LM-245 millions of miles from where it should have been. She continued to work as the time clicked by.
The view on her telescope began to be blurred from one side as the Earth intruded on the spot she was photographing. The density of the atmosphere meant she was looking though hundreds of miles of air. But as that view began to be lost, the area where Mindy had spotted LM-245 became visible. Alicia let out a deep sigh as the view cleared, giving her a fairly good view of her old friend, the elongated irregular profile of LM-245.
“It’s my rock,” she typed into the computer.