by E. J. Foster
One thing I had remembered from my time at NASA was that the Leonid meteor shows were not usually due until November. No, this was something different.
I knew one thing for certain. I’ll need someone else, much smarter than me, to take a look at this thing.
Katie.
My daughter was the smartest person I knew. If she couldn't identify this thing, then no one could.
I left the strange object there on my boat and headed inside to get cleaned up. I made a mental note to remind myself to get Katie on the case and take a look at this thing. Perhaps, back in her lab she’d have the proper equipment to analyze it.
I turned west, looking out on the water to see that the sun was just setting on Claw Island.
Behind me, I heard panting. The recognizable sound from one of my favorite friends.
“Chum,” I turned and spoke to the dog. “How ya doin boy?” I gave him a scratch behind the ears.
Chum was a chocolate Chesapeake Bay retriever who had his hind legs on the dock and his front paws up on the transom of my boat. His tongue wagged in time with his tail to the rhythm of pure delight. His thick coat was a swirl of dark brown curls and waves.
Chum earned his name as a puppy when he had a knack for finding dead things and then proudly delivering them. It was disgusting but lovable.
I looked over the transom and down to the dock. At Chum’s feet lay a lifeless mouse. He never disappoints.
What a satisfying end to a beautiful day.
5
When I entered the house, Jules was standing before me with a full red mohawk. Not a fauxhawk. The twenty-six-year-old was sporting a legitimate, shaved-on-the-sides mohawk with a brush of bright red hair standing five inches straight up. I barely recognized the girl.
“Uncle Brock!” Jules’ eyes were wide with joy as she damn-near tackled me, rushing in for a hug.
“Hey Jules,” I said, hugging her back. “Great to see you.”
I had asked for Jules’ expertise in wiring Katie's house for top-notch security. After last summer, I didn’t feel comfortable with my daughter and grandson living alone on Claw Island. There had been too much trouble and too much danger.
That was why I had moved here to the island. To be closer to them and to protect them, if necessary. They were my only family, and I wouldn’t risk losing them. Not again.
Even though I lived right around the corner, I spent most of my days here at Katie’s house. It felt more comfortable to be here, to know that they were safe.
Knowing some of the things I did now, I had developed what you would call trust issues, especially when it came to the government. The same government I had served for over thirty years. I knew bad things happened in every organization, but this, this was something beyond. What they did to Claw Island and why, I’d never truly understand. The takeaway lesson was this: things are out there. Unknowns. Dangerous unknowns.
I needed to be here.
“You went a little rooster with the hairdo,” I said to Jules.
“What’s wrong with my hair?” she questioned me with mock anger in her voice, feigning insult.
“You’ve always been a bit of a rebel. It’s one of my favorite things about you,” I said, and we both laughed.
“Come, look what I’ve done,” Jules said. She took my hand and started leading me through the kitchen, towards the office. “Cameras at all the entrances.” Jules motioned with her hands as she walked. “All the raspberry pi based single-board cams are hardwired to the main pi here in the office.”
“Wouldn’t it have been easier to get those doorbell cam thingies?” I asked.
Jules scowled at me with derision, and then shook it off.
“Not a chance. Those toys can be hacked by high school amateurs. This system,” she motioned to the computer on the desk, “is air gapped and can’t be hacked.”
The computer she pointed at was a small black box about the size of a deck of cards, with a label affixed. Property of Jules. A monitor sat in front of it.
“Property of Jules?” I questioned.
“I label all my stuff. Don’t touch my stuff,” Jules said flatly. I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me, or to society in general.
Jules got up and headed back into the main house, speaking as she went. “Motion detectors in all the rooms and on the exterior as well. The whole yard, all the way to the dock is covered. Sensors on all the doors and windows. I also upgraded your router, made a long and strong Wi-Fi password, and forced the WPA2 protocol to minimize your susceptibility to de-auth attacks.”
“Huh?” was all I could say to that. Jules had probably learned more than I’d ever know about IT security.
“A deauthorization attack on your router. It kicks everyone off the Wi-Fi, so they have to re-join the network,” she explained.
“Why is that dangerous?” I asked.
She shook her head in mock frustration, as if she’d grown tired of explaining these things to boomers like me.
“You remember last week when I let myself into the house using my own key?” she reminded me.
“Yeah. How’d you do that anyway? Get a copy of my house key?” I asked.
“I took a photo of your key,” she said plainly. “Not important.”
I was still lost. What does this have to do with a de-auth attack? I thought, but instead I said, “Go on.”
“I used the photo as a template; I was able to cut a new key using the heights of the key ridges from the photo, but again, that’s not the point,” she said, and continued, “Your key is safe from that kind of attack if it stays in your pocket. If it’s there, I can’t get a photo of it. Right?”
“Right,” I said, but wasn’t sure.
“But, if you get locked out of the house, you have to remove the key from your pocket again, and that’s when I strike. It’s vulnerable to being photographed for the split second you're using it. Understand?”
I didn’t, and she could tell. After a moment of silence, she continued her explanation.
“When an attacker sends a de-auth notice to your router, everyone gets kicked off the Wi-Fi, for just a second,” she said. “And then, every device automatically tries to reconnect to the router.”
“They pull the key out of their pocket!” I blurted out, once I knew the answer.
“Correctamundo,” Jules said with a smile. “That’s when they capture your passphrase––as you try to reconnect. Once they have the passphrase, they can run it through a computer to crack the encryption. But the longer and stronger your password is, the more difficult it is to crack. If your password doesn’t contain any known words or phrases, it could be impossible to crack.”
“Nice work, Jules,” I said. “So, we’re safe now?”
Her disposition changed. Jules looked down and shook her head, confirming what I already knew. The fact that we’d never feel truly safe. Jules and I both had a different view of the world ever since what happened at NASA.
The mood had suddenly turned from enthusiastic to sullen, so I changed the subject.
“I called out on the radios,” I said. “FRS channel seven, like we agreed. No one answered. I could’ve used some help out there.”
“Ah yes. Finn and Jessa took the radios and have been on a different, secret channel,” Jules said and grinned. “I think they were telling each other secrets, or scary stories, whatever kids do.”
I thought about that for a bit. My grandson Finn and his girlfriend Jessa had been especially close, ever since they went through that ordeal together. Tough times in the trenches really brings people together in a way that nothing else can. And Finn and Jessa went to war together and came out alive. We all did. It felt like forever ago, now.
“It’s just that my dive boat took some damage,” I explained. “I had to limp back to the dock with the bilge pumps running.”
“What? How?” Jules’ grin turned to concern.
I opened my mouth to speak but was interrupted by the sound of the television. The prof
essional voice of a newswoman echoed from the TV and across the living room.
“Eyewitnesses on Claw Island reported sightings of a meteor shower today over the Chesapeake Bay. NASA has confirmed the incident and noted that the shower was visible up and down the eastern seaboard as far north as New York, and south to Atlanta. Typical meteors don’t survive entry into the atmosphere, and instead burn up before reaching Earth, but NASA says, in this case, it’s possible that some larger particles could have reached the surface.”
Just then, Katie entered and asked, “Did you hear about the meteor shower?”
Katie looked just like her mother. Her long dark waterfall of hair fell straight down, framing her smooth cheeks and the amber light in her eyes.
“I more than heard about it. I was in it,” I said.
Katie raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, Katie,” I continued. “Meteorites rained down all over the bay, and one of the smaller ones pierced my hull. I was taking on water and had to end the charter early,” I added as I tried to articulate what happened.
“Oh my god,” Katie gasped. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Nothing to worry about.”
But I wasn’t fine, nor was I a hundred percent certain there was nothing to worry about. I was still a little shaken by the event. The whole thing felt out of my control. And it was.
“At least I got a souvenir,” I said.
Katie and Jules looked at each other, concerned.
All was quiet on the abandoned dock in the back of the house, as water lapped softly, and the red sunset faded to near black.
Glowing on the dash of the dive boat, a small, rough black object stirred and swelled, illuminating all the fiberglass near the helm, transforming the white surfaces into pale green. The thing wobbled and glowed before expanding, then contracting, and then expanding once more. The small egg pulsed and hummed in the evening air.
The steady, threatening growl of a dog echoed and washed over the object. Chum held a fighting stance as he bared his teeth at the glowing rock.
“That’s amazing, Dad,” Katie said. “You actually have something from outer space... in your possession?”
I still got a warm feeling every time I heard that word. Dad. I’d gone so long without my family. Without Katie. I thought I’d lost her and Finn forever. Now that I had them back in my life, I’d do anything to protect them and keep them safe.
“I’ll drop by the lab first thing tomorrow,” I replied. “Maybe you can take a look at it? See if there’s anything interesting about it?”
Katie was about to answer, when Jules interrupted.
“That’s bad news,” Jules said, frowning.
Katie and I turned to her, waiting for more.
“Doesn’t anybody remember?” Jules asked. She looked skeptical. “Remember the kinda shit we got into the last time we started poking around?”
“We’re just gonna check it out—” I started, but Jules cut me off.
“No, no, no! This is how it starts. Every time,” she said. In a mocking tone, she added, “We’ll just do a little testing. Take a quick looksee,” before switching back to her normal tone of voice, “Then––bam! We’re knee-deep in mutant crabs! Exploding bridges! Super-human soldiers with blue blood, and secret military takeover conspiracies!”
Jules was pacing now. “No!” she said forcefully.
Katie and I were silenced by the outburst, stunned almost. Maybe Jules was right. All I had wanted was to relax on my boat and enjoy the island life with my family for the rest of my days. And I had that chance now.
I’d sworn I wouldn’t get involved in any of this crap. Not again. Unless it hit me on the head and dragged me back, which seemed to be the current situation. Literally.
“Calm down, Jules,” I said. “No one is doing anything. Not yet.” I paused to exchange a glance with Katie, and thought, were we doing anything? I wondered what Katie was thinking.
I started again. “I just thought... Would it hurt to—”
Jules cut me off again. “Take a quick looksee?” she said, finishing my sentence for me.
I hung my head in shame. She had me. I was doing it again. Getting involved. Why couldn’t I just leave well enough alone?
For as long as I could remember, I’d been cursed with a sense of curiosity. My whole life. And until recently, it’d served me pretty well. Old habits die hard, I guess.
“You're right, Jules,” I said. Jules raised a finger, but my voice rose to speak over her. “When you’re right, you’re right. First thing in the morning...”
I looked over at Katie and thought I saw disappointment in her eyes. Or was it… worry?
“I’ll throw that thing into the bay and forget about it,” I assured Jules.
6
Finn’s room was a mess.
The blankets, sheets and pillows were thrown to the floor. On the bed was a remote-control speedboat that he had been building for the past week.
Shelves circumnavigated the room and displayed an endless parade of prizes Finn had won at the arcade. Most notable were his claw game prizes. Finn had an army of three-eyed, green alien figures he had snatched out of the claw machine in the Pizza World arcade.
The walls were adorned with movie posters of Finn’s favorite films: Jaws, Alien, Jurassic Park, Sharknado, Toy Story.
Through the window was a hanging rope. Finn had built a treehouse directly across from his bedroom window, and had fashioned a rope swing, tied to a higher branch above, as the only access to his fortress of solitude.
A hockey stick leaned against the wall next to the window. This was Finn’s ingenious method for reaching out and grabbing the rope, which dangled about three feet away from the window. Another three feet past the rope was the landing pad at the treehouse door. Finn kept another hockey stick inside the treehouse, for the return trip.
After last summer, he had set out to make it like a panic room of sorts, just in case trouble came knocking again. Behold, the treehouse.
I could hear the muted voice of Jessa. Since last summer, Finn and Jessa had spent almost all their time together. You might say they were inseparable.
I opened Finn’s window to get a better listen. It was Jessa. I heard the sound of someone flipping through the pages of a book, and then I heard Jessa begin to tell a story. I leaned out, pushing my ear closer to the sounds of Jessa’s tale.
Inside the small treehouse, Jessa adjusted the glasses on her face, pressing the white tape in the middle that held them together until the frames slid back to the bridge of her nose.
“The ship Queens Cast was under attack by British warships.” Jessa spoke low and conspiratorially. “She took cannon fire for hours, tearing into the wooden ship, sending the captain into the drink with eighty other sailors. They started with eighty anyway... floating around in that big brackish bay.”
Finn leaned in toward Jessa, as she continued reading.
“It must have been like a dinner bell for the sharks... Explosions, half the men bleeding. As soon as the sharks came homing in on them, they went by the book, of course... They kept trying to float in groups, doing what they had been told to do; splash at them, yell at them, hit them on the nose, they won't bother you. Things like that. They tore apart about a dozen men the first night. And pretty soon, when the hungry creatures stepped it up, and the sailors would get bumped by the sharks, and other seamen would get pulled down a couple of yards away, and it got to ten hours... twenty hours... thirty... Some of the men couldn’t take it anymore, and they let go of the flotsam; got it over with, on their own terms. They were in the water for almost two days. The sharks averaged two men an hour.”
Goosebumps rose up from the skin of Finn’s arms. He rubbed the nape of his neck and creased his brow.
“Do sharks even come up into the bay?” Nerves rattled Finn’s voice.
“Sometimes, they do,” Jessa said.
“What about the gold?” Finn asked.
“The gold is down there with the ship, the Queens Cast, and the ghosts of her crew,” Jessa replied.
“Wait,” Finn started, “if the sharks ate all the sailors, how did anyone live to tell the story?”
“There was one survivor who lived to tell the tale. But the story he told changed over the years. Sharks are just the most recent interpretation. Before that, the survivor told not of sharks, but of eight-tentacled sea beasts.”
“Like, the Kraken?” Finn asked, mouth agape.
“Aye,” Jessa acknowledged him in her best pirate voice. “However, in the earliest written accounts of the story, the original report was of a legged creature. Eight legs.”
Finn shivered, despite the warmth of the summer night.
I had heard enough.
“Hey!” I shouted into the treehouse and listened to both of them gasp before a kerfuffle and commotion erupted and then settled again. Finn poked his head out the treehouse window.
“Oh. Hey Gramps.” Finn’s voice was unsteady, still a little shaky from Jessa’s tale, and my jump-scare.
“Do you kids have the radio?” I asked
“Yes.”
“I called out on channel seven and got no answer.”
“Oh. Sorry. We were using them on a different channel.”
“You know the rules, Finn.”
“Sorry, Grandpa.”
Jessa popped her head out the window, cheek to cheek with Finn. “Sorry, Mister Brock.”
I thought for a moment and decided that was good enough for me. I remembered being young; playing with walkies, hiding in treehouses, and getting that funny feeling in your stomach when a certain girl was around.
“We’ll get you some of your own walkies to play with tomorrow,” I said with a smile.
“Thanks, Grandpa!” Finn’s voice was back to normal.
“Light’s out,” I said, a little more sternly. “And Finn,” I added, looking at my grandson, “don’t believe everything you hear.”
I chuckled to myself as I walked away. I loved being a part of this family.