by Mark Wandrey
“Do you really think any of us want to hear this crap again?” asked one of the older hostages. “We’ve been studying this device for weeks. It’s an incredible piece of radically advanced technology. I can see how some people would think it’s godlike in its abilities. The truth is it’s really just a machine. Those that sent it to save us are just highly advanced beings.”
“We seem to have a difference of opinion.”
“I’m a scientist, and it’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. What are you going to do now?”
“In a few minutes, once the faithful are assembled, we will go through to Heaven.”
“How many are there?”
“Oh, several hundred at least.”
“You’re about to be sorely disappointed. Only a hundred thirty-seven more can go through.”
“Don’t be ludicrous! God would not do such a thing to His faithful children.”
“Once again, you are working under the impression that this is somehow supernatural, and not a high-tech machine.”
Victor looked at the man then at the Portal. His eyebrows scrunched together in thought. “You’re just expressing your opinion.”
“See those white lights on the side? There are seven of them lit up. One scientist went through by accident a few weeks ago and was subsequently eaten by a giant lizard. We’ve since sent through six more men, thus seven lights lit. If you send through a hundred or so of your fellow fanatics you’ll arrive at an alien world with no equipment, no shelter, no tools, no weapons, and no chance of surviving. You’re about to make the biggest mistake any religious leader has made since Pope Gregory IX started the Inquisition.”
Victor listened to the man talk then shook his head. “I was once as you are, only believing in what I can see and what can be described rationally. Maybe if you had been there to watch this miraculous machine delivered you might feel differently.”
“You called it a machine. Starting to think it over, are you?” Victor scratched his head and looked around at the room full of confusing scientific apparatus. “It creates a quantum distortion in the space/time continuum. We think it utilizes a sort of dimensional door, temporarily creating a shortcut through a universe where the rules of space and time aren’t the same as here. It can take you a hundred feet, or a hundred light years, instantly.”
Victor shook his head and smiled. “The time for a change in beliefs has come and gone.” He turned away and Duke came to him.
“They are ready,” Duke told him and turned to open his arms as if to embrace all those crowding into the dome, “Your children are ready to go home!”
The cheer was deafening in the confines of the dome. Those outside took up the cheer and the sound rose to the point that the walls shook. The noise was so loud that the first sounds of renewed fighting went completely unnoticed.
Outside, a hundred CIA and NSA agents had quietly crept to within yards of the raucous celebration. With deadly accuracy snipers killed several dozen of the followers deemed to be high-risk targets. Once they were no longer a threat, a volley of grenades was lobbed in.
These grenades didn’t explode, instead they began hissing forth billowing clouds of gas. Those closest to the gas who tried to yell only inhaled more gas and succumbed that much quicker. People began gasping and collapsing all around the Portal dome.
The gas was a powerful neurotoxin, nearly one hundred percent effective against an unprotected target. A few of the followers actually had gas masks taken from downed SWAT teams, but none of them realized what was happening in time. Government agents swept in like the tide, shooting where needed, acknowledging downed targets before moving on. The neurotoxin was not fatal, but its victims would not regain consciousness without an antidote. Left unattended long enough, the effects would become permanently debilitating. Most of the revelers outside were either down or under attack before anyone inside knew what was happening.
Victor walked up the few steps to the dais top. The Portal jumped into startling brilliance and he tentatively put out a hand out to touch it. Of course his hand passed through the ethereal projection. There was the writing again, its image ingrained in his mind forever. He looked up at the opening and closed his eyes for a moment. “Here we come,” he whispered to the Avatar.
Osgood glanced down at the borrowed Blackberry hidden in his hands. There was a simple message displayed there. “Stall, here we come.” He’d gotten that message five minutes ago, just as Victor had made his triumphant appearance. What’s taking them so long? “Don’t make this mistake, Victor,” he called to the man’s back an instant before he was to step through. Victor paused without turning around. “Think about what I’ve said. You don’t have to agree with the premise that this is a machine, but you do have to realize it has limits. If you are the only ones who will be saved from the Earth’s destruction then at least pick your best people! Take the time to get some gear together. We have a warehouse a short distance from here with tons of stuff we were going to take. Go and get some of it! Why are you in such a hurry? You won, you’re in charge, just think!”
Victor turned and looked at him with a confident smile. Then he cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “You’re trying awful hard to stop me. If you were that desperate you’d at least come over here to reason with me, instead of staying up against that wall with the others.” Osgood clenched his teeth and hissed under his breath, afraid that his game was up. The reply message from Volant late yesterday had been explicit in its instructions to stay in this one part of the dome and not move among the cultists. A commotion was beginning by the open doorway and, now that the celebration was winding down, gunshots could be heard through the concrete dome. “You’ve been stalling me,” Victor growled. “Duke, we’re going to be attacked!”
“We’re ready for whatever they throw at us,” the big man said confidently. A second later Gabriel plowed through the disorganized crowd around the open doorway. He had a bloody wound on his head and a wild look in his eyes.
“Gas!” he gasped, “they’re using gas!” Fear spread through the dome like a shockwave. Some people screamed in fear, others in anger. One group raised weapons and pushed their way through the door. Moments later the weapons fire from outside increased in intensity, then fell off entirely.
“We got them!” someone yelled near the door. A split second later blood blossomed from the side of his neck and he fell to the floor gasping and gurgling. A wave of ten close-assault-trained CIA agents burst through the opening, moving in a squat with weapons held up to their shoulders. They began methodically shooting everyone in sight.
“Kill them!” Duke screamed and pulled a pair of huge revolvers from his belt. One man turned toward him with his silenced MP-5 machine gun raised, its red dot laser sight sweeping up toward its target. Duke fired twice from each gun, sending the man spinning to the floor in a fountain of blood.
The fighting was close and deadly. The Followers inside were all blooded veterans and fought savagely. Half the first squad of agents had been felled, and Victor was thinking they might win again when an explosion blew the second garage door inward. Another dozen black clad agents, this time NSA specialists, burst in with guns blazing.
“All is lost,” Victor realized with a sinking feeling. Through the ruins of the garage door he could see hundreds of his followers lying dead on the ground. The agents inside were killing at will. Nearby, Gabriel struggled to climb the Portal dais to defend his leader. Already bleeding from several gunshot wounds, he still managed to continue firing his M-4 until it ran empty. A CIA agent stitched him from crotch to head with automatic fire and Gabriel fell next to Victor, eyes wide in death.
“Go through!” Duke yelled from the bottom of the steps, “Get to Heaven!” Victor looked at him, then to the Portal. When he looked back, Duke had jumped at a pair of agents who were firing at him from point blank. He was hit a half dozen times and still managed to reach them. With his dying strength he crushed their necks with his bare hands.
A pair of agents turned toward Victor, and he realized he was about to die. Confronted with certain death he did the only thing he could, he raised his hands. They both pointed their guns at him for a long moment before one of them raised a hand to the other, and they both lowered their weapons slightly. Victor nodded his head and half smiled at them before taking a deep breath and jumping backwards.
The Portal flashed deep purple and he landed seemingly just a foot from where he’d started. Only now a strangely tinted sunlight shown on him, not the near darkness of the dome. He was in Heaven.
Victor turned around and beheld the Promised Land. There were trees in the near distance and the air held a strange sweet smell to it. “I’m here!” he cried, the joy of the moment temporarily overcoming the hopelessness of the situation he just left behind. He turned his head slightly and there he saw a pair of small, roughly constructed log cabins. Out of one of their doors came a pair of men. To his horror he realized they carried machine guns and were dressed in fatigues. It was just like the prophetic dream. He'd reached Heaven and it was already occupied!
Searing pain suddenly jerked Victor upright and pulled him around. He looked down to see several bloody holes torn raggedly through the front of his shirt. He staggered around and looked back through the Portal to the darkened dome. Some of his followers managed to almost reach the gateway as well, only to be cut down by weapons fire. Somehow the bullets traveled through the Portal and reached him in Heaven.
“How?” he gurgled as he fell backwards and rolled down the steps. Lying on the ground and feeling his life’s blood pour out, Victor wondered how he could die in Heaven. A short time later he ceased to wonder about anything.
Mindy woke in the quiet hotel room to the smell of bacon and eggs. She sat up and looked around, trying to remember something. That was when she noticed the covers pulled back on the other side of the bed and the note on a pillow. She bit her lower lip and her cheeks flushed as the memories of the previous night came flooding back. She couldn’t remember the last time she had stayed up late making love, or when she’d had such an attentive and skilled lover. Billy was an eager professional in the sack, and she already longed for another go at him.
The note explained that he was on duty this morning and he wanted to see her afterwards. He said he’d had a wonderful time, thought she was a pale-skinned goddess, and asked if she still thought he’d been a perfect gentleman. She laughed as she read that last part, and then noticed the room service cart.
“Food, thank God!” She jumped out of bed with a laugh. He’d obviously made himself a sandwich or two, but that left more than enough. She piled a plate high with some of everything, took a huge glass of orange juice and plopped down on the end of the bed to eat and watch TV.
“News from the spaceship Aries is all systems are go!” said an artificially beautiful TV anchor. “As the world watched, the USS Aries fired its engines and raced away from space station Freedom and into outer space. Just moments before the President of the United States announced to the world that the asteroid LM-245 was going to hit the Earth. NASA apparently made the determination weeks ago, but the news was kept secret to allow plans to be completed.”
“Already critics are complaining loudly that keeping this mission secret was a serious breach of the public’s trust. Dissenting voices have said that secrecy was the only logical response to this world-threatening event which the average citizen could not affect. The risk of regional or even global unrest was too great, it is claimed. Now that the Aries mission is underway, people can be informed of the danger and given hope at the same time.”
“The official spokesman of SETI announced in a news conference scheduled more than a day earlier that the only reason NASA even made the mission public was their own planned disclosure of LM-245’s impending impact.”
The image changed to her scruffy friend Harold speaking on a typically bleary Seattle April day in front of the shiny gold SETI sign outside their Renton, Washington office. “This is a standard government snow job,” he said with his patented move of sweeping his long hair back out of his eyes with one hand while holding a cigarette with the other. “They wouldn’t have said a (bleep)ing thing if it hadn’t been for us. This Aries mission is just smoke and mirrors. Throw a few billion dollars of space junk at that asteroid and everyone feels better, until it goes smack and we all die.”
“When Mr. Binder was asked to elaborate on what NASA was doing while Aries distracted the masses, he claimed to have no idea, then said they were ‘looking into it, and would find the truth’. There is some interest in the claims made by SETI. Just what can a space ship not slated to originally fly for nearly a year, and then only to Mars, hope to do against an asteroid the size of LM-245? We spoke to an expert on this issue.”
The screen changed again to show a familiar gray-haired troll of a man. Scrolling across the bottom of the screen appeared the name Dr. Leo Skinner, Head of Astronomy, NASA. “Well, you see, the physics are complicated but the solution is elementary. You just rendezvous with this asteroid in deep space.” While he spoke a graphic appeared showing a stylized space ship racing toward the bowling pin shaped LM-245. “As you close within a few thousand kilometers, more detailed radar analysis is possible. We must assume the asteroid will have faults lines, and that vulnerable spots can be located.” The graphics showed lines radiating out from the ship, scanning the asteroid. “Once you find a weakness, you plant a few nuclear bombs. Detonate these bombs in the right sequence and you not only break the rock into pieces, you also push those pieces away from a collision with the Earth. As far away as this asteroid is, if you can alter its course by as little as one tenth of one percent, it will miss us by a considerable margin. I’m afraid this Mr. Binder just doesn’t know much about astrophysics.”
“What will happen to Aries after it shoots past LM-245?”
“Well, we didn’t have time to build a ship capable of an active return orbit, so we elected for free return.”
“I’m sorry, what is a free return?”
“Aries will continue onward at its speed, rendezvous with Mars, and slingshot back around. All they need to do is fire their engines for a good burn and they’re heading home.”
“That’s going to take an awful long time isn’t it?”
“Naturally. They should reach their objective in ten days. Their return to Earth will be almost a year from now.”
The camera changed back to the interviewer, now alone, for his closing monologue. “So it would seem Aries is making its trip to Mars after all, only it won’t be going to look for signs of life or even a colony site. No, Aries has left mankind’s cradle of life on a mission to save us from certain death. Will the ship and its valiant crew succeed? Only time will tell. Please stay tuned to this affiliate for constant updates on ‘Aries: Earth Rescue’.”
Mindy sat back and thought about this. If anything, Harold and Leo were on a par with each other in scientific knowledge. After her conversation with Leo last night she knew that he was lying, and that Harold was probably right. There was no way Aries could save the planet. NASA and the US government were spending a huge amount of money to buy time. According to the story, Aries would reach LM-245 in just ten days. That wasn’t going to buy much time. So what was so desperate that they were willing to go to these lengths to get a few extra days?
She checked her messages and found none. There was nothing to do but wait for Leo to call, so she contacted Harold via IM. He was on as usual.
“How you doing in the big apple?” he asked her.
“Fine. All this fighting is scary.”
“Cults are going to rule the world once civilization is gone.” She shook her head at his typical pragmatism. “Oh, we broke the code,” he typed.
“You what?!”
“Yep, broke the primary component late last night. It was those images from that cult website. The data strings were righteous, man. They filled the holes we needed. Now don’t freak, it’s not like we know what they
were saying. We have to learn the language now that we can read it.”
“I understand,” she typed. A second later IM told her that a file was incoming. “What’s this?”
“It’s the data algorithms for the code. Thought if you got bored you could work with it too.”
“Thanks, I have some spare time. I talked to Leo last night and he told me some things.”
“Oh, fuck him.”
“Forget about your differences for a second will you?” Quickly so she wouldn’t lose her nerve she let Harold know what Leo told her last night. About the sure impact, about the Portals, about mankind's only way out. Then she told him about the list. “I want you to come out and work with me so maybe we can both be on that list.”
“They don’t want old hippies on that new world. If Skinner’s in charge I’ll never make that list, and you know it.”
“Not necessarily. They’re going to have a few old scientists; you might as well be one of them. You’ve still got live swimmers, right?”
“Huh?”
“Can you make babies?”
“Oh, sure, far as I know. Never got cut and haven’t been sitting on any nuclear reactors.” She chuckled at his quirky sense of humor.
“That’s an issue with this situation. Adam and Eve and all that jazz. There’s no sense in looking for E.T. anymore when he’s dropping off intergalactic Portals. Jump a plane and meet me here. We’ll do our best to catch a ride and failing that at least have some fun on the way out.”
“Sure, why not. The rest of the dudes can hold down the fort. I still want that original message licked. You’re right of course, they’re linked somehow. See you in a couple days?”
“You bet. Bye.”
She shut the computer down and leaned back on the bed. An old quote from college floated up from the depths of her memory. “May you live in interesting times.” It was Chinese, she thought, and, if she remembered rightly, it was a curse. These were certainly interesting times.