Origin - Season One (33 page)

They arrived at the house to find Mike standing in the doorway smoking a cigarette. When the car was in the garage Francis led them into the living room and Mike came back inside. Francis introduced everyone and a rather awkward moment passed in which no one knew quite what to say.

Mike broke the silence. “Francis, I need to talk to you.”

“Francis?” Jesse and Amanda said in perfect unison.

The moment was lost on Mike, but Francis held up his hands. “You got me.”

“I think I like Eddie or Maurice better,” Amanda said.

Mike was visibly impatient.

“Whatever it is, Mike, just go ahead and say it,” Francis said. “We’re all in this together.”

“Reginald’s been making a few calls. He’s – I don’t know – he’s a little freaked out.”

“Who’s Reginald?” Amanda asked.

“A friend of mine,” Francis said. “This is his house. He’s been having a look at the stuff on the hard drive while we were gone.”

Reginald appeared in the entrance to the hallway. “And here we are. Safe at last”

Another awkward silence fell over the room.

“Yep, here we are,” Amanda said.

Again, it was Francis who stepped in. “This would probably be a great time to head up to SeaWorld and spend a few days getting to know each other. Because that’s obviously out of the question, I suggest we all listen to what Reginald has to say. It’s the reason we’re here, after all.”

Reginald picked up his pipe.

“Take a seat,” he said, pointing at the couch.

They all sat down, Jesse next to Amanda on one side, and Francis and Mike on the other. When they all looked comfortable and suitably impatient, Reginald lit his pipe and sat down in the rocking chair. For a long moment he just sat there chewing the stub of the pipe and looking grim. When he looked at them all again he seemed unsure of how to proceed. “Okay. Feel free to pitch in at any time if you have questions. You all know about the hard drive and where it came from, so we’ll ignore that for the moment. It contains mainly pictures and technical diagrams. Most of it appears to be random. A few satellites, a dock crane, and so on. There are also a few pictures of a Victor-class nuclear powered Russian submarine. Nothing you can’t find on the Web, in other words. The schematic drawings are a little more specific. One of them is actually a highly detailed plan for the retrofitting of a Victor with a loading hatch. Don’t ask me what that means, because I haven’t got a clue. There is, however, a common denominator and that’s Skyline Defense.”

“What’s that?” Jesse asked.

Reginald looked at Francis, who said, “Just run us through it briefly.”

“All right. Skyline is an American company based in New York, although in reality it belongs to a Zurich-based foundation with very deep pockets. They design, consult on, and provide engineering support in all fields of space-related technology. They work with NASA, The European Space Agency, The Russian Federal Space Agency and even the Chinese. During my time at the Pentagon there were even rumors that Skyline was lobbying to resurrect the Strategic Defense Initiative.”

Amanda raised her hand like a pupil in a classroom and Jesse said, “It’s a program Reagan began that was supposed to create a space-based defense shield against Russian nukes. Total waste of money.”

Amanda smiled and squeezed his left hand, mouthing the words “thank you.”

Reginald nodded. “That’s right. Anyway, Skyline is a relatively minor player in the space game. I’m still waiting for a couple of people to get back to me, but what I’ve found out so far suggests they’re more diverse than most people know. It has forty-three subsidiaries. A few of them are openly acknowledged, but the rest are hard to find. And if I found forty-three, you can bet there are more. Most of them are related to the company’s primary activities, but a few aren’t. They own a Finnish maritime salvage and refit company based in Kotka on the Baltic Sea, which makes you wonder about the Victor drawings. They also own a Russian munitions manufacturer, a private university outside Sao Paolo in Brazil, and a small but highly successful company called Albion in California that manufactures water desalination systems. All four of these companies appear in the technical drawings on the drive.”

Reginald sat back and re-lit his pipe.

“That’s it?” Jesse asked.

“What about the encrypted files?” Francis said.

Reginald raised a finger. “I’m getting to that. I just wanted to get the things that make at least some shred of sense out of the way first.”

Mike and Reginald shared a knowing look, while Francis, Jesse and Amanda just sat there looking perplexed.

“What are you talking about?” Jesse said.

“Come with me,” Reginald said and stood up.

They followed him down the hall and into a spacious office lined on three sides with floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookshelves. Only one shelf in the entire room had any space left for more books. Against the remaining wall, below a large window looking out over a thick wood of slash pines, was an old writing desk with an enormous LCD computer monitor in the middle. Reginald sat down at the desk and they all gathered around.

“Ready for the weird part?” Reginald said.

No one answered.

“Okay, here we go. The hard drive Francis…”

Reginald hesitated and looked at Francis.

“Stole,” Amanda said. “The hard drive Francis stole. I think we can dispense with the politeness under the circumstances, don’t you guys? Or are we going to stand here and have a circle-jerk?”

She looked around, and smiled when she caught Francis’s eye. There was no sarcasm or malevolence in it, just determination.

“Fine, I stole it,” Francis said.

“Okay,” Reginald continued. “So the hard drive Francis
stole
is old. It only has a capacity of just over three hundred megabytes, which by today’s standards is nothing. The images and drawing files use just under half of it. The rest is taken up by four raw image files, each over thirty-five megabytes in size. The files are encrypted, which is why you couldn’t open them. But the technology used to do it is even older than the drive, so breaking it was easy. I would have said they were digitally created because what they show can’t be taken seriously, but they appear to be video stills. That doesn’t mean they are real, but it does make you wonder. And the timing is a little too perfect to be a coincidence.”

“Timing?” Francis said.

“You’ll see what I mean in a moment.”

Reginald moved the mouse cursor over the first of four files in the folder open on the screen and double-clicked.

It was a picture of a planet, its surface a marbled texture of rust reds, browns and grays.

“This is –”

“Jupiter,” Jesse said. “It’s Jupiter.”

“That’s right,” Reginald said. “The most likely source of the image is Voyager II, the NASA space probe launched in 1977. It passed Jupiter in July 1979. Keep your eye on the top left hand corner.”

Reginald maximized the folder and opened the second image.

It was the same picture, only in this one there was a small speck in the corner.

“Look like anything?” Reginald said.

Everyone shook their heads.

Reginald opened the third picture.

Now the speck looked more like a black line. “See it now?”

Everyone nodded. Jesse stepped closer and squinted at the screen. “Are we supposed to believe that’s a – you know.”

“Go on,” Reginald said. “A what?”

“Okay, a spaceship. Are we supposed to believe that’s a spaceship?”

Reginald didn’t answer. He put his hand back on the mouse and zoomed in on the spot.

They stood looking at the screen for a long time, nobody saying a word. Mike and Reginald had already seen the picture, but they still looked just as dumbfounded as the others. A full minute went by before Jesse said, “Impossible. I mean, it’s clearly meant to be a spaceship, I can see that. But it can’t be real.”

“I said exactly the same thing when I saw it,” Mike said. “Then I remembered that several people had been killed by someone who wanted these pictures back. Can you explain that?”

“No, I can’t,” Jesse said. “I admit this whole thing is crazy. But I stopped believing in aliens when I was ten, and it’s going to take more than that picture to change my mind.”

“Mike?” Francis said.

Mike looked up from the screen and blinked like a man coming out of a trance. “What?”

“What’s your take on it?”

Mike put a hand over his mouth, exhaled through his nose and shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I was ready for a lot of things, but this – I don’t know. This is nuts.”

“Reginald?” Francis said. “You got anything to say? Know anyone down at Groom Lake who might be able to give us a hand here?”

Reginald laughed. “No, actually. I don’t.”

“Groom Lake is another name for Area Fifty-One,” Jesse said to Amanda.

She looked around at them. “Anyone care what I think?”

They all turned to her.

“I think that last week I was a junior at Penn State studying for a degree in sociology. I went home, went out for a drink, pulled over to help a woman who gave us a goddamned hard drive and a couple of hundred grand, got dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and whisked off to a cabin in Canada with fucking night vision cameras in the chimney. I was then shot at by a one-armed man, I hitchhiked to a town where the police chief handed us over to a cowboy with a jet airplane who flew us to Disney World. Right now, I’m prepared to believe Santa Claus was behind 9/11. And that thing, whatever it is, that’s just a given. That’s well within the norm at this point.”

Nobody said anything for a long time, then Francis, Mike and Reginald all laughed, took one look at her face and stopped.

“Seriously, guys,” she said. “We need to find someone who knows what they’re talking about and show them that disc. If they say it’s bullshit, fine, we’re back where we started. Which appears to be nowhere.”

Francis studied her with a clear sense of respect. “She’s right. And what I suggest we do before we discuss where to go from here is get some sleep. I don’t know about you guys, but I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

Reginald put Jesse and Amanda in the spare bedroom and Mike in his own. When Francis suggested they stay up and discuss strategy for a while, Reginald handed him a blanket and pointed at the living room. “Tired men don’t think straight. I’m sure we must have covered that at some point.”

Francis considered arguing the point, took one look at his former boss, and grabbed the blanket. “Four hours, no more. Make sure you wake me up.”

– – –

Everyone but Jesse was up by noon. They were sitting around the large table in Reginald’s garden eating a cold lunch of ham sandwiches and potato chips. Jesse was still asleep in the guest bedroom. Reginald had gone off to make another phone call.

“I can’t remember the last time I ate,” Francis said as he piled another handful of chips onto his plate.

“I can,” Mike said. “I had half a hot dog in Times Square that I was too nervous to eat.”

Amanda was picking at her food and looking vacantly out at the pines beyond the garden fence.

“You okay?” Mike asked her.

“I keep thinking about my parents,” she said. “They must be going out of their minds. I just wish there was some way I could let them know I’m okay.”

Francis and Mike looked down at their plates, knowing there wasn’t much they could say.

“I’d like to know where the hell we’re going,” Mike said.

Francis took another bite of his sandwich, chewed and said, “It’s best to let him work it all out first. Reginald is a maniac when it comes to planning, trust me. When he’s got it all figured out he’ll give us a full mission briefing.”

“I almost wish I’d brought my Marine fatigues,” Mike said.

“You think you’re kidding,” Francis said. “Wait and see. The man’s a detail Nazi.”

“I don’t see why we just don’t put all that shit up on the Internet and let the world have at it,” Amanda said. “Someone will figure it out faster than we can.”

Mike looked at Francis. “She’s got a point, you know.”

Francis took a sip of ice water and nodded slowly. “Don’t think I haven’t considered it. There are two reasons I don’t think it’s a good idea. The first is incredulity. By which I mean, almost nobody will believe it. And the few who do won’t be able to get anyone to believe
them
. Hell,
I
still don’t believe it. Jesse made a good point about the Internet being full of stuff like that. It took almost two decades for people to get their heads around the truth behind the mess in Vietnam, and it wasn’t for a lack of whistle-blowers. That’s one reason, but not the main one.”

“Go on,” Amanda said.

“Let’s suspend our disbelief for a moment and just assume that what we’ve seen is the truth. There’s a spaceship out there. I hear myself say that and I want to check into Juniper Hill, but let’s say it anyway. If the source Reginald suspects, the Voyager probe, is correct, it was taken 29 years ago. I don’t know if Reginald told you, but there’s a picture of that space probe on the disc.”

“No, he didn’t tell us that,” Mike said.

“Well, now you know. But that’s beside the point. What I’m trying to say is, I look at those pictures and I can’t help but wonder what these people have been doing for the last three decades. Until we know, I think we should keep a low profile, as crazy as that may sound. Your suggestion, Amanda, that we find someone who knows what they’re talking about, still sounds like the best plan to me.”

She was about to say something when Reginald appeared in the doorway at the back of the house with Jesse beside him.

“Briefing in five,” he said.

Mike turned to Francis and smiled. “Semper fi?”

“Semper fi,” Francis agreed.

Amanda just shook her head and rolled her eyes.

Image captured by the Jupiter Eye