by Mark Wandrey
“Are you going to check that every time we go in and out?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“How about when I need to take a leak, man?”
“As long as you piss on this floor, I don’t give a shit. Now move along.”
“We have a bill of rights in this country, General Custer!”
“We have martial law in this nation, zipperhead, so move your ass before I go find a drug sniffing dog.” Harold moved closer to the soldier but Mindy grabbed him by the back of his shirt.
“Have a nice day,” the soldier sneered as she bodily hauled him away.
“This is fucking bullshit!” he said as their office door closed.
“I need to call Billy,” she said and snatched up the phone, dialing the number by memory.
“Identification code please?” a voice asked.
“I’m just making a local call.”
“I need your identification code to make an outside call.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I am not, ma’am. No code, no call. Now do you have a code or not?” Mindy hung up in dumb silence, then told Harold what just happened.
“They shut the phones down too?”
“You need an identification code just to call out.”
“No way man, this is not right!” Harold grabbed the phone and before Mindy could stop him he had dialed 911.
“Identification code please?” asked the same voice Mindy had heard a moment before.
“The building’s on fire!” Harold cried in a convincing voice.
“There are no alarms on your floor. Continued attempts to make unauthorized outside communications will result in disciplinary action.” Harold slammed the phone down so hard it flew off their shared desk.
“Calm down, Harold,” she said, but he was already heading for the door. “Damn it, Harold!” she yelled and tried to stop him. A skinny, little, middle-aged stoner he might be, he was still in decent shape. He easily slipped out the door before she could stop him.
Even though Harold was so mad he couldn’t see straight, he was still a scientist at heart. And a scientist knows how to go about things in an orderly manner. The phone was out, as was the elevator, so he made a beeline for the stairs. Mindy caught up to him just as he turned to head down another hallway. She could see why he hadn’t paused at the stairway. Despite the glowing “fire escape” sign over the doorway, shiny new chains and a padlock had been installed. She raced to catch up to him. When she realized where he was going she yelped and tried to sprint ahead.
In the end he was just too quick for her. He reached his objective first and yanked the red fire alarm box’s handle with a yell of triumph. However his yell turned to a snarl of rage when nothing happened. No siren, no flashing lights, and especially no confusion that would have allowed him to make an escape. “You fuckers!” he screamed and headed back for the elevators.
“God damn it, Harold, chill out!” She abandoned subtlety and grabbed him around the waist, trying to wrestle him to the ground.
“Stop it,” he spat. He was so skinny she easily wrapped her arms around his waist. He was not that easily dissuaded. His anger at being involuntarily detained was pushing him past the point of reason. Mindy grunted as she tried to stop him and he snarled like a caged animal as he dragged her, now on her knees trailing behind, toward the elevator and the surprised soldiers waiting there.
“Hold it right there, pot head,” he said and held up a hand.
“Move it, soldier boy, I’m getting out of here!” The soldier clawed his sidearm from its holster and that finally stopped Harold. “You gonna shoot me?”
“I-If I have to, yes.” Harold could tell the boy lacked the resolve to back his convictions and moved to step closer. Mindy had made good use of his pause. She reached higher, grabbing his collar and pulling while kicking him behind the knees. Harold found himself sprawled on the floor. Once she had him down, Mindy moved with the dexterity of a Greco-Roman wrestler and quickly locked him in a vicious full nelson.
“You want to get yourself killed, dumb ass?” she whispered in his ear.
“They can’t do this!” he cried, “This is America!”
“Yes, it is America,” said a new voice. They both looked up to see General Hipstitch standing in the elevator door with a pair of new soldiers. The hesitant man who’d been guarding their floor had been relieved. He shot daggers at Harold before stepping onto the elevator and disappearing, never to be seen in the building again. “Now, the question you have to ask yourself is, how badly do you want to spend your remaining days in a small hotel room waiting for death?”
“You’re not even going to consider us to go through the Portal, and you know it, you fascist pig!”
“Miss Patoy, you should consider yourself lucky to be a personal friend of Dr. Skinner. If not, I would now be stomping that punk’s guts out. Every person working here who meets the physical health standards is being considered or you’d have been sent to the hotel last night. Now, you, Mr. Binder, will both stop this childish behavior and resume your job right now, or you will be removed. Bear in mind that your behavior is influencing both yours and Ms. Patoy’s chances of becoming one of the Chosen for this project.”
Harold stopped struggling and Mindy let him go. He got to his feet and looked defiantly at General Hipstitch, who gazed back without fear. “What’s it going to be, sport?” Harold dropped his gaze and turned to walk back to their office. “Thank you for controlling your friend, you likely saved his life.”
“Don’t thank me; I did it for him, not for you.”
“Fine, whatever gets the job done, little girl. Y’all have a nice day, ya hear?” With a nod, the general called an elevator up and left with one of the soldiers he’d brought. The other now had the clipboard and assumed his predecessor’s duties. She could tell right away he was older and much more experienced. If this man had been on duty when Harold came snarling down the hall they would both have likely been dead by now.
When she returned to her desk, she found Harold sitting there busily shuffling papers. She didn’t know what to say so she just sat down and resumed her job. Sometime later he looked up and reached over to pat her hand. “Thanks,” he said and went back to work. She smiled at him and tried to concentrate on her job. She hoped Billy took this situation better than Harold. She doubted she could stop her muscular fiancé as easily.
Volant watched the catastrophe unfold from his old trailer in Portal city. Some of the repairs hadn’t been completed and roughly patched bullet holes were everywhere. The lights were on, the TV was working, and there was cold beer in the fridge. Steve had had a temporary wheelchair ramp installed. Volant felt himself getting accustomed to the younger man. “I’m getting on in years and need a replacement,” he thought.
Steve sat on a chair in the office near where Volant had parked his wheelchair. They’d both seen the same high definition images. When the announcer said the nukes were detonating, Volant made a fist and almost jumped to his feet. “Yes!” he yelled and then sank back to his wheelchair with a groan. Steve nodded his head and the two exchanged somewhat subdued high fives.
“We might not actually need that damned thing,” Volant said and gestured out the window in the direction of the Portal dome. When the picture cleared, they saw the gas cloud and figured it was all over. Neither of them were scientists, but they didn’t need to be to realize what had happened with the Aries or what the bright, shiny surviving Lebowski meant. It meant the game was over, Earth was doomed.
“Well, that sucks,” Steve said as they stared at the blank screen.
Volant whirred over to the doorway, open to the cool May air. Already they could hear the sounds of sirens begin to echo across the formerly quiet city. “Shit’s going to hit the fan,” Volant said solemnly. Then the President’s voice came on the television and Volant spun around to listen.
The speech was taken quite differently by the two NSA agents, compared to the other 99% of the natio
n’s citizens. “What the fuck is he talking about?” Steve asked when the speech turned to the bunkers. “Do you know anything about that, boss?”
“Not a damn thing,” Volant said and turned to look at a red coded file on his desk, the one Steve had given him days ago. “It’s some kind of a delaying action.”
“The man is the most accomplished liar since Clinton,” Steve shook his head. “I’d buy a used car from him!”
“Unless he believes what he’s saying,” Volant mumbled.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Take off, Steve; I’ve got some phone calls to make. Oh, double the perimeter guard, right away. Also, fire off an e-mail to Washington. I want another hundred combat-trained agents down here.”
“The troops are doing fine, don’t you think?”
“Just do it, and don’t let anyone else know, not even the agency chief.” Steve’s eyebrows shot up but he said he would do it and headed out. Once the kid was gone, Volant rolled over to the phone on his desk. “Let me talk to the old man, this is Mark Volant. I don’t care if he’s busy, just tell him who this is and hand him a phone.”
It didn’t take long to get results. “Hipstitch here, what do you want?”
“Just wondering how you were involved in that load of shit I just saw on TV.”
“How I was involved? What, do you think I wrote that speech? Not my thing, really. I’m more of a man of action. I make things happen for other people. Take your boss, for instance. He’s a smart cookie, really knows what side his bread is buttered on. I’d take a page out of his playbook if I was you or you could find yourself watching a really fucking big asteroid come down on your noggin.”
Volant hung up and put the phone back on the desk. Then he picked it up again and dialed another number. “I’ve been expecting your call, Volant,” said the voice on the other end.
“Boss, what the fuck is going on? Since when are you taking orders from the military?”
“Whatever makes you think that?”
“I just talked to Hipstitch, he all but mentioned you by name. I want to know what kind of a game we’re in and who’s in charge now?”
“Mark, have you never understood the most fundamental truth of the intelligence world? It mimics the real world in so many ways if you just take the time to look around. Is the smartest and best skilled wolf the alpha male, or is it the strongest and most cunning? What gorilla leads the tribe, the smartest or the biggest?”
“We have a chain of command, boss, this is a democracy.”
“You really believe that, don’t you? Shit, Mark, I always thought you were an educated man. You’re just a god damned boy scout, strutting around flaunting your ideals, trying to prove to the world that good always prevails over evil. Frankly, I’m disappointed in you.”
Volant almost told him he knew about the fake presidential briefing, then he considered going to the press. Then, before he could take action, the memory of all the people he had killed in the line of duty came crashing in like the tide. “If I’m a boy scout I have a lot of blood on my hands,” he thought.
“Are you thinking about how you can use this? I wouldn’t go getting any bright ideas, Mark. The Titanic is going down fast and there’s only one lifeboat left. We’ll need people, faithful and strong people, in this brave new world.”
“But only if I keep my mouth shut and play along, right?”
“Precisely. You want to get anywhere in life, you have to go along with the parade. That new young go-getter you’ve got there, Steve Bradley, he might be willing to make a go of your job. Do I need to arrange a promotion for him, Volant?”
“No need for that, I’ll do what you want.”
“Well, that’s just fine and dandy. We’re going to start erecting some temporary buildings near the site next week.” Suddenly he laughed long and hard. “Fuck, looks like everything on Earth is now a temporary building!” Volant waited for him to get over it. “Anyway, we’re putting up some buildings. Most are storage; a few will house the people who are going across. Strong and loyal people, like you. We’ve been hand picking them over the last couple weeks. Some are those owed favors, other are ones who found out and we had to give them a ticket to shut them up.”
“What about scientists and people who can help build a colony once we’re there? The kind of people Osgood is talking about.”
“Oh, we’ve addressed the issue of manual labor on the other side.”
“And what was the decision?”
“Other countries have sent through people. I’m sure they can be convinced to help in the effort. Just be ready for those Army Corps of Engineer boys tomorrow, right? Oh, hope your healing well. Don’t know how well the others will take to bringing along a cripple.” The line clicked dead.
Volant
sat the phone back on the desk again and felt a deep dark sense of despair running laps around his guts. When he’d seen the Aries destroyed he’d known everything would start to fall apart. Now he knew that disintegration had begun some time ago, probably when Lebowski was first discovered. “Or maybe our government was just a dream that we woke up from some time ago.” Whatever it was, that thing was now doomed. All that remained was a trip down that last lonely street.
Intermission
Across the world, the news of Aries’ demise traveled at the speed of light; electronic televised light. Five billion people watched or listened to commentary as the great spaceship was smashed like a child’s toy under a bully’s foot. In space, the debris that was once Aries formed into a small grouping of asteroid-like masses that would orbit the solar system for centuries.
The Russian Federation exploded into uncontrolled warfare. Three different armored divisions all laid siege to Star City, the long time, and once ultra-secret, home of that nation’s space program. Two of their most powerful boosters sat on their pads while scientists and technicians prepared them for launch. The Russians were digging two huge bunkers in the Ukraine, and they would be finished in about nine years. Three ancient cold war facilities, underground cities really, one in the Urals and the other in the Caucus mountains, were again filled with people. They had been stocked within a week of the discovery of LM-245. When their own Portal was taken by force, efforts were changed to preserving something of their people. Five rockets had lifted into space so far and these were the last two.
Everything possible had been launched up to the Mir II that would be needed to preserve the Russian people. A small crew, extensive supplies, gene banks, and embryos from hundreds of species were all safely stored above the coming storm. The crew of the Mir II eagerly awaited the last two rockets prior to climbing into prototype cryo-sleep chambers.
Defenses around Star City, while considerable, were no match for the concerted attacks of fifteen thousand men and armored vehicles. Once the defenses were breached, they rushed to the center of Star City where each unit vied for control of the launch pads. The lead elements of each division engaged in a fierce rocket and cannon fire battle over what they believed were Soyuz rockets set to evacuate selected government officials.
The rockets were hit numerous times, though it was nothing that the experienced technicians at Star City couldn’t fix. Then a stray rocket found the cryogenic hydrogen and oxygen storage tanks situated between the launch gantries. The blast sent a fireball more than a mile into the sky and incinerated both rockets.
The rebel troops destroyed and killed every living thing at Star City. The crew of the Mir II never received those last two supply rockets, including the last of the equipment for their cryogenic chambers. The station hadn’t been designed for long-term support of a crew not in suspended animation. They asphyxiated while trying to reach anyone at Star City.
India and Pakistan, already at war, continued fighting with zeal. The temporary pause in the Arab-Israeli war ended and the push toward Tel-Aviv renewed. The Arab forces took Jerusalem and moved toward their final goal. The Jewish soldiers fought on with determination and the inner knowle
dge that they had already won survival for their kind. Israel would survive, no matter what happened on Earth.
Battles raged all over Africa, but that was nothing new. Asia took the opportunity to settle old grudges. North and South Vietnam picked up where they had left off in the sixties while North Korea threw off its UN-imposed muzzle and launched simultaneous invasions of South Korea and Japan. The latter involved the United States as Korean fighter jets roared down on US bases first controlled after WWII. America was again the victim of a sneak attack involving the Japanese. The irony that this time they were defending them was lost in the melee. Fifty thousand Korean commandos parachuted onto the Japanese islands and the panicked people began to realize the errors of their ways in not having a stronger defense. The US forces were too few in number, further weakened by the recall underway to the States. In two days, they were forced to pull back and defend their bases along with several of the biggest cities while praying for reinforcements that would never come.
South America was much like Africa. Warfare was nothing new there, but they lacked the means to cause any serious damage. Still, many of the wonderful cities of that continent were quickly put to the torch from within and without. Europe was one of the calmer locations in the world. Their government has disarmed the citizenry long ago so the people lacked the means to do more than riot in the streets and burn malls. The French were particularly effective in this endeavor. Soon enough the military and police arrived to put the unrest down with brutal efficiency. Most of Europe would quietly wait for the end with dignity as the military made sure it stayed that way.