by M. Alan Marr
“Are you all right?” Dev says urgently.
“What—the hell—was that?”
Dev lowers his weapon and approaches. “I think it’s called a Bear.”
“Not the bear! What did you do to it! What is that!”
“Uh . . .” Dev sees that Chaz eyeing his weapon and stows it back in the pocket in his vest. Chaz confusedly alternates looking at the spot where the bear had stood and back at Dev.
Dev moves in closer. “I think maybe we should have some wine.”
Chaz, still stunned, merely hands over the bottle and drops the cheese to the ground. The wedge of cheese, mashed by the tight squeeze of Chaz’s fingers, no longer looks very edible.
NORAD
ROCKY MOUNTAINS - SOUTH RANGE
COLORADO
Multiple rows of ubiquitous computer stations sit before strategic maps of the United States and the world. A computer begins flashing data, causing a tech sergeant at one of the stations to investigate. Concerned, he attracts the attention of the commanding officer.
“General? One of our DefCon satellites just picked up a large x-ray spike, sir.”
“Where?”
“Isolating it now, General. Ground level. Southern continental US. Looks like . . . somewhere in Alabama.”
“Alabama?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What the hell’s in Alabama?”
“Nothing that should cause an x-ray burst, sir.”
“Anything on thermal? Is the source still hot?”
“Negative, sir, target area is cold.”
The General calls out to someone to his right. “Tracking, have you got anything?”
“Negative, sir, skies are clear.”
The general takes a breath of relief and speaks to the Tech Sergeant. “What’s the closest base?”
The sergeant types a series of commands into his keyboard and pulls up an aviation map of Alabama. The regional target area is plotted. A military installation is highlighted next. “There’s an Air National Guard base fifty miles south southwest, sir. They’re currently on stand down.”
“Contact the base duty officer. Have them send a pair of helos to check it out. And run a test program on that satellite to make sure it isn’t a malfunction.”
“Yes, General.”
Dev and Chaz sit near the lake’s edge. Chaz is still somewhat shaken by his encounter with the bear and the, as yet unknown, way it was vanquished. Dev puts a caring hand on Chaz’s arm. At least he’s not trembling anymore. Chaz, who has been drinking directly from the wine bottle, offers it to Dev, who takes just a small sip. The wine at this point is more therapeutic than anything. Chaz thinks for a few moments and then looks at Dev.
“Not that I’m at all ungrateful, Dev, but what exactly did you fire at that bear?”
“Essentially, it’s a . . . well, x-ray laser.”
“Of course,” Chaz says blankly, “because what else would you bring on a camping trip.”
“Yeah.” Dev nervously takes a sip of wine and then gazes up at the stars.
Chaz watches him for a few seconds. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Staring at the stars. You do that all the time. You look at the stars and lose yourself up there.”
Dev looks at him. “I do?”
“All the time.”
“I . . . guess I never realized.”
Chaz shakes his head slightly in the negative. “There is a lot going on in that head of yours, Dev, and I have no idea what it is.”
Dev’s expression suddenly looks worrisome. “I’m going to tell you everything.”
“Start with the laser.”
Dev thinks about it for a moment, then removes the weapon from his pocket and carefully hands it to Chaz, muzzle slightly down and away from them. “Don’t pull the trigger.”
Chaz carefully takes the gun, keeping his finger across the trigger guard, and holds it so he can look at its profile. “This is a laser?”
“Technically, it’s an x-ray spectrum kinetic energy weapon.”
The weight and feel of the weapon seems strange to Chaz, as does the steely blue finish. “What kind of metal is this?”
“It’s a metal composite.”
“Metal composite? And this is what you shot the bear with?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t understand,” Chaz says, handing the weapon back to Dev. “Since when do we have kinetic energy weapons?”
“Well . . .”
“Did you design that thing?”
“Nope. Standard issue,” Dev replies, as he stows the weapon in his vest.
“Standard issue? For who? What, are you a spy?”
Dev makes a somewhat guilty face. “In . . . a manner of speaking.”
“You’re kidding.”
Dev stands up and takes a deep breath and starts pacing around slightly. “I don’t know exactly how to explain this, so I’m just going to say it. Six months ago, I was conducting orbital reconnaissance.”
“Orbital reconnaissance.” Chaz frowns. “From where?”
Dev stops pacing and motions upward. “Orbit.” He pauses. “I landed here.”
“Here?”
“Right here, as a matter of fact.” He kicks a rock across the ground and then continues, “That program running on my computers all this time is a dynamic navigational plot that generates outbound courses to remain clear of system traffic.”
“System Traffic,” Chaz repeats. “That sounds familiar.”
Dev squats down across from Chaz and says the next part slowly and deliberately. “Satellites. Platforms. Geostat devices. Probes—”
Chaz remembers this is the same conversation they had on the day they first met. They say the last items on the list at the same time. “Planetary orbits, and gravitation.”
“I asked if you worked for NASA, and you said you didn’t.”
“I don’t.”
“Then how do you conduct orbital recon if you’re not with—”
“Well, there’s another way.”
“ESA, then? NSA? CIA?”
“Nope.”
“You’re in the commercial space business with Richard Branson?”
“No.”
“You have your own space business?”
Dev chuckles at that one. “You might think so, but no, not exactly.”
“Well, then, the only other thing I can think of is—” Chaz looks frustrated. “Be serious, Dev, you’re starting to freak me out.”
“I’m not trying to freak you out, Chaz, but have you ever seen anything on your world that can vaporize a bear?”
A small dose of reality surfaces in Chaz. “Oh, yeah, the bear.”
“Yeah.”
Chaz shakes his head in denial, “No, this is some kind of joke.”
“Stand up. I want to show you something.” Dev stands up first.
Chaz begrudgingly stands. “I should have packed more wine.”
“You’re doing fine, Chaz,” Dev reassures him, and then looks up at the sky. “Do you remember my middle name?”
“Camelopardalis.”
Dev locates a large constellation in the night sky and gets very close to Chaz to point it out. “Up there, to the left, Camelopardalis.”
“Where?”
“See Polaris, the North Star? Just to the left of Polaris is the head of the giraffe and its horn. Then go down the neck, there’s the body, and then three of its legs,” Dev says, pointing out the shape of the constellation.
“Wait . . . I do see it.”
“Camelopardalis.”
“So, you’re named after a star.”
“Actually, they’re named after us. My grandfather’s maternal family name. And it’s not a star. Camelopardalis is a constellation of fourteen stars.”
“The constellations have been named for quite some time,” Chaz says dismissively.
“Yes, they have. And Camelopardalis goes way, way back in my family.”
“Huh?”
“It sounds more impressive than it really is. Almost everyone can trace their family tree back far enough to something like that.”
Chaz looks at Dev. “So, what are you saying? You’re not from . . .”
“Canada?” Dev smiles, “No.”
“Hang on. You said you were doing orbital reconnaissance. You were in orbit.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“The rate of technological advance in complex civilizations move along predictable lines; typically achieving an order of magnitude about every thirty years.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Every thirty years technology makes an exponential leap.”
“Okay, so?”
“So, every thirty years we send someone to check on things.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know anything about astronomy?”
“Like what?”
Dev locates another big constellation in the sky. “See Ursa Major?”
“Ursa who?”
“The Big Dipper.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Look between the Big Dipper and Hercules.”
“I see the Big Dipper, but I don’t know Hercules.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Dev points up at the sky, making angular motions. “Follow the handle of the Big Dipper to the tip. Keep going along the transverse, then down a few degrees and you’ll see a group of seven stars along a sort of angular half circle. Like a wide, shallow U-shape. They’re a little faint, but visible. The fifth one is the brightest, in the lower right-hand part of the constellation.”
Chaz focuses in on the sky. “I . . . I do see it.”
“Shaped like a crown.”
“It does look like a crown,” Chaz says.
“Corona Borealis . . . the Northern Crown.”
“Okay.”
“The bright one is called Gemma, the gem of the crown.”
“Planet Gemma?”
“No, Gemma’s a star. An important star with a planetary system. Three terrestrial planets, two gas giants, and an asteroid belt.”
“What are their names?” Chaz says, doubting the whole topic of conversation.
“Outbound from Gemma, there’s Prixa, Dué, Trieste, Triton, Penthar, and the Sextan Asteroid belt.”
“What’s so special about them?”
“Trieste is very special.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s where I come from.”
Chaz sits down on the ground with a thud. A blank expression washes over his face. Dev sits down a little more gracefully. No one says anything for several seconds.
“Chaz? You in there?”
“Oh, yes, please, tell me more about this solar system of yours.”
“All right,” Dev says, not wanting to agitate him. “Gemma is what astronomers here would call a main sequence binary. The parent is a blue-white star, two and a half times bigger than Earth’s sun. The companion is a yellow star, a little smaller than yours. The first planet, Prixa, is a like a denser version of Mercury, only bigger and much hotter. Its surface is mostly superheated carbon. Prixa has oceans of lava and a nitrogen-argon atmosphere.”
“Go on,” Chaz says blankly.
“Next is Dué,” Dev says. “Dué is about the size of Mars, only closer, and has a neon atmosphere. Trieste is a large planet. Very habitable. She has a single moon called Ichi. Triton and Penthar are both gas giants. Sextan was a planet that broke apart at some point in the formation of the system and exists as a partial asteroid belt.”
Chaz stands up again and begins pacing, then suddenly stops. “Wait a minute—Corona Borealis?”
“Yeah.”
Chaz becomes skeptical. “You heard Rachel Maddow talking about that the night we had dinner in the park.”
Dev looks a little embarrassed. “I’m . . . sort of the reason she was talking about it.”
“Huh?”
“I needed to send a message to the Crown, and it was either disrupt phone calls in Mexico or cause a huge data blackout for half the United States, so . . . I chose Mexico.”
“What do you mean, data blackout?”
“My system identified two satellites that could accomplish what I needed to do. The US satellite carried not only phone calls, but vast amounts of Internet data, military traffic, media transmissions, and a large swath of air traffic control information. It would have been disastrous to shut down those facilities. The Mexican satellite only carried phone calls, and not that many of them at the time.”
Chaz is still skeptical. “You’re saying you did that?”
“I did that,” Dev confirms. “Remember the dashed line you saw on my laptop? That was that transmission.”
“You’re telling me you hacked into a secure space system in Mexico and re-tasked a satellite from your hotel room in Midtown?”
“A party trick.”
Chaz starts getting visibly upset. “I—I—I don’t understand!”
Dev remains seated on the ground and watches Chaz pace nervously back and forth. “Deep breath, Chaz. Remember the bear.”
Chaz walks around in a short circle, then looks up toward the hill. “Oh, yeah, the damn bear.” Chaz tries to make sense of all this. “And you bought this place because . . . why?”
“Because at the bottom of that lake is a CDF-R35 Reconnaissance ship.”
“CD-what?”
“Crown Defense Force, Recon model Thirty-five.”
Chaz becomes emotional. “Why are you doing this!”
Dev speaks compassionately. “Please hear me out, Chaz.”
Chaz wipes his eyes. “Okay.”
Dev explains, “Normally, on a Recon flight, we would stay in orbit for a day or two and conduct a complex series of passive surveillance; monitoring transmissions, mapping population demographics, scanning the oceans, the atmosphere, continents, etcetera, and then come down in an isolated area and conduct live observation.”
Chaz is suddenly irritated. “I watch Star Trek. I know how it works.”
“Okay,” Dev says, holding his palms out in a relax motion. “As it turned out, I had to come down a little earlier than planned.”
“Why?”
“Remember I said technology achieves an order of magnitude every thirty years? Well, despite knowing that, I didn’t count on you guys putting up a space platform.”
“What do you mean?”
“International Space Station.” Dev explains. “Because of some system technicalities, we orbit counter-rotational. In this case, east to west. The space station orbits along the rotational axis, west to east. Anyway, the ISS was quickly rising toward my horizon, so I had to descend fast to avoid being seen. And once inside the atmosphere, I had to continue to landing. Fortunately, it was at night, and this place was chosen because it offers . . . great privacy.”
“Great privacy,” Chaz repeats. “That’s what you told George when he asked why you wanted to buy it.”
“Exactly right.”
Chaz paces around slowly as he processes this information, now in a more rational, less emotional fashion. “You’re saying this ship of yours is in the lake? Right now?”
“Yes, it is,” Dev says, while getting up. “As a matter of fact, let’s go get it.”
“How? It’s dark, and I am not going diving in the dark.”
“You won’t have to,” Dev says, pulling out his iPhone. He swipes left.
Chaz watches the screen graphics dissolve into special mode. Dev keys a series of icons. “What are you doing?”
“Just watch.” Dev presses the initiator.
A large area in the middle of the lake lights up briefly, and a force of bubbles starts rising to the surface. A slight technological sound begins to register in the water.
Chaz glances at Dev. “There’s an app for that?” The ridiculous question only diverts Chaz for a half second before he is looking out at the lake again. The growing sound and upwelling of water
now captures his full attention. A swell of water washes up on the little beach area, stopping just short of their shoes. Chaz fixates on the source of the upwelling and the blue glow slowly rising from below. The light and bubbles seem to form a perimeter around a large object, just as the upper canopy and fuselage of the ship breaks through the surface.
Dev smiles. “There she is.”
“Oh my God—”
“Pretty cool, huh?”
The large ship continues to rise, eventually breaking all contact with the surface and hovering about ten feet in the air, raining down water onto the lake. The sounds emanating from the ship are not disturbing, but completely foreign. The power reaches some kind of idle, and as it does, every molecule of water and mud clinging to the ship’s fuselage is shed in one sheet, leaving the hull completely dry. The blue glow disappears and the ship just hangs there.
Chaz is startled by the sudden purge of water from the ship. “What just happened?”
“It’s okay. The gravity field just stabilized and shed all the water from the hull.”
“Why did it do that?”
“Because there’s nothing for the water to hold on to.”
Chaz marvels, “Holy shit.”
Dev smiles. “Told you it was cool.”