The Fall (9 page)

“Wow,” Jack replied as he stared out the window, finally spotting a road sign that seemed as bizarre as the brain firing inside this guy's head.

A chill gripped him as he read the sign again while starting to wonder if perhaps
he
was the one imagining shit.

But the sign was for real, right there, on the side of this winding two-lane road.

SPEED LIMIT

75

How could it be seventy-five miles per hour? The speed limit on an interstate in Florida was sixty-five.

“What road is this?” he asked.

“Forty-Six heading for I-95, son. Why do you ask? You lost?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “Was hiking and I think I lost my bearings.”

“You got lost on a clear night with all them stars up there?”

Jack tilted his head.

“Some hiker you are.”

You have no idea,
Jack thought, forcing a half-embarrassed shrug.

“But Reagan's ancient history,” the Marine veteran added as Jack tried to piece this mystery together. This was a side road that connected Orlando to I-95, and if memory served him well, the speed limit on it was around forty-five or fifty. Certainly not seventy-five.

“The one that really gets me is the Clinton body count,” the driver continued.

Really, dude?

“Yeah,” Jack finally said, deciding that it was best to keep the guy talking while he did more thinking. “So, how many people did Clinton have killed?”

“Oh, son, many more than the ones reported by the American Justice Federation. Many more. Many more, indeed. The man was ruthless, I tell you. Taking out Vince Foster and about sixty more of his close associates from previous business deals. Poor bastards. From suicides and accidental deaths to murders that remain unsolved to this day.”

And so it went, for the next fifteen minutes, as this nameless driver continued down this dark road while covering Clinton, Obama, Reagan, the two Bush presidents, and then took off in the direction of MLK, JFK, and especially LBJ before diving even deeper into Nixon, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Jimmy Hoffa, and Salvador Allende, who Jack learned was a former president of Chile.

Finally, after what seemed like a deep and nearly endless discourse, the driver paused, frowned, and thrust an open hand in Jack's direction. “Look at me. Where have my manners gone? I'm Lou Palmer,” he said, offering a smile of stained teeth adorned with greenish chewing tobacco.

“Jack Taylor,” he replied, pumping the man's hand, unable to think of a reason he shouldn't use his real name.

“Jack Taylor, huh?” the man replied. “Your name sounds awfully familiar,” he added.

Jack was about to reply when they reached a sign for Interstate 95.

Palmer got suddenly quiet as he worked the gears while steering the Peterbilt cabin toward the entrance ramp for I-95 south.

And that's when he felt a bit light-headed as the Peterbilt accelerated down the highway and a new road sign loomed into view:

SPEED LIMIT

105

One Oh Five?

Really?

“You okay, Jack?” Palmer asked after putting the rig on cruise control, shooting him another sideways glance. “You look a little pale there, buddy.”

“I get a little carsick,” he lied as he looked over to the dashboard and noticed the speedometer needle pegged to one hundred.

And then it hit him.

For reasons he couldn't explain, this version of central Florida, where his greeting committee and Claudette were absent, was on the metric system. Everything was in kilometers.

Fuck me.

Palmer reached into the large center console separating them, revealing a small cooler. He pulled out a can of Sprite and handed it to him. “The carbonation usually helps.”

Jack was actually hoping for tequila.

But he thanked him for the cold soda, popped the lid and took a sip, momentarily closing his eyes. The drink was cool, refreshing his core, and in a way renewing his desire to find Angie and get some answers.

He decided to simply inspect the world projecting beyond the rig's large windows. Traffic on the interstate looked normal, except for the speed limit signs.

Neighborhoods and businesses crowded both sides of the highway now, in sharp contrast with the desolate road he had walked for the half hour before Palmer picked him up.

On the surface, everything appeared normal, from the Exxon, Texaco, and Shell gas stations to his right to a Walmart sharing a parking lot with a Home Depot on the left. A large bank was next, with the current temperature displayed above its empty parking lot.

Twenty-two degrees Celsius, or around seventy Fahrenheit, meaning the temperature was also being reported in the metric system.

He tensed again when a large billboard caught his eye. A couple in swimsuits holding hands staring at the sunset below the words:

CUBA

THE HONEYMOONER'S PARADISE

He stared at the picturesque image in growing disbelief, his eyes slowly drifting back to the road ahead, his mind resigning itself to the reality of his situation, however bizarre or inexplicable it seemed.

And that reality blasted in his mind the words he had been so reluctant to accept:

It wasn't a dream, Jack.

But then what was it?

How did he end up here, back on Earth, alone, with no tropical storm overhead—and where former President Jimmy Carter back in the 1970s had apparently succeeded in transitioning America to the metric system.

At least in Florida.

He closed his eyes, wondering if he could be suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder. Although SEALs rarely suffer from PTSD, primarily because they had volunteered for combat-related duties and had gone through extensive realistic scenario training, making them better mentally prepared, Jack still contemplated the possibility, which effects varied from depression to delusions.

Am I delusional and just don't know it?

Pushing that last thought aside, Jack forced his sorry ass past denial and into acceptance of whatever it was that was happening to him. There had to be a logical, scientific explanation for what he was experiencing. There always was.

He should just roll with the punches, knowing deep inside that things always had a way of working themselves out as long as he kept his thinking cap on, as long as he followed his training and remained calm.

But what if my thinking cap is off its rocker, like this guy's?

What can I do if my senses are lying to me?

He shook those thoughts away and forced his confused mind to think of something productive, like analyzing the final moments before entering that strange storm—remembering the numbers that had flashed on his faceplate display over and over again:

MACH 1.2

G-METER 12.0

TEMPERATURE 1200 DEGREES.

ALTITUDE 120,000 FEET

The numbers. Those numbers have to mean something.

They continued flashing red while he fell, violating the laws of physics in ways that made his tired mind hurt. Energy couldn't be created nor destroyed, only converted from one form into another. And the telemetry up to that point confirmed that theory as vertical velocity was converted into heat and pressure.

But then things just froze while he continued to fall.

Was the suit malfunctioning?

Eventually the display returned to normal once he punched through that membrane-like layer full of lightning, and he reached the atmosphere.

But he also remembered fading in and out during the latter portion of the fall. Was it possible that he dreamed the part about the display contradicting the laws of physics?

His mind then jumped to Pete, recalling how he'd tried to contact him and how the transmission faded away shortly after he was immersed in that storm.

Did the TDRSS link fail? Is that why they couldn't talk to me anymore?

But what about afterward?

It was pretty obvious that he hadn't drifted away like he had originally thought. But if so, then where was everybody?

It simply didn't make any sense.

Or maybe …

Jack stared into the distance, pursing his lips.

Maybe I have some sort of concussion from the extreme Gs,
he thought, recalling that at some point the G-meter had read almost thirteen, which was in itself unprecedented. Most astronauts experience only three to four Gs during launch and a few more during reentry. There was a case of a malfunctioning Soyuz causing a pair of cosmonauts to experience around ten Gs some time back, but he couldn't recall what became of them. Fighter pilots sometimes go up to twelve Gs, but not before their bodies have gone through a lifetime of conditioning in flight training plus lots of time in those dreaded centrifuges.

His eyes drifted back to the road, starting to believe that he had to be staring at a distorted version of reality as a result of his ride, and he could only hope that this condition was temporary.

It has to be,
he thought, touching his head, ignoring the sideways glance that Palmer shot him before looking back to the road ahead. Jack pressed his fingertips all around his skull, the base of his neck, and around his temples, looking for any tender spots, bumps or other telltale signs of external trauma, but he was clean.

Sighing, he returned his attention to the world outside, looking at everything, at vehicles, at buildings, at road signs, at billboards, finding commonalities and also finding differences. Some were subtle, like the slightly darker green background on highway signs, or the more rectangular license plates, though not as wide as the ones in Europe. But then he would see bold differences, like the billboard advertising a high-speed ferry delivering you to your dream vacation in Havana, paradise for gambling, music, surf, and sand—in only two hours directly from Miami Beach.

Does that mean that in my sick mind Castro fell? Or does it mean the bastard never won that old revolution?

Another billboard appeared behind it depicting a smiling Pan American Airlines captain flanked by beautiful flight attendants welcoming passengers with open arms to their new fleet of Boeing 777 clippers.

Your mind is certainly fucking with you, Jack.

The advertisements that followed for McDonald's, Ford Motor Company, Apple Computers, and even Walgreens and Rolex all looked just like home, and so did the—

Jack suddenly felt himself being stared at again.

This time he turned to see Palmer regarding him with a narrowed gaze under his bushy brows. The man seemed to have an amazing ability to keep the truck dead in the middle of the lane while looking away from the road for more than just a second—something that even the high-adrenaline junkie in him found dangerous.

“What?” Jack asked.

“There's something really odd about you, Jack,” Palmer said, his beard shifting as he frowned and returned his eyes to the traffic ahead. “But I haven't been able to put my finger on it. Yet.”

“Well, this hiking suit is certainly different, Lou,” he replied.

“No,” Palmer said. “It ain't that. I already know that's military-issued, including that serrated SOG knife strapped to your thigh. But you've got your reasons—probably orders—not to talk about it, and I respect that.”

“Look, it's really not—”

“I served for twenty years,” Palmer interrupted before giving him a wink. “Did four tours in 'Nam before spending time in the DMZ. I know what I'm talking about, and you
know
that I know. But again, that's not what's odd about you.”

“Okay,” Jack said, deciding to go along with this strange but somewhat insightful man. “Then what?”

He studied Jack again before shifting his eyes back to the road.

“It's the way you're looking at everything, Jack.”

“How's that?”

“Like … if it was your
first time
.”

*   *   *

Angela felt her life had been defined by a series of crucial experiences, events that had transformed her thinking, her way of looking at the world around her. It started with her father's death, followed by her short but impactful time with Anonymous, where she had strayed from the straight and narrow while acquiring skills that placed her on the FBI's radar. But that experience, however dark at the time and certainly life-changing, had eventually forced her back onto the right path, steering her toward Florida Institute of Technology and her decade at MIT, where NASA recruited her. Then the road changed drastically again from academia in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to a government contractor living in Cocoa Beach, Florida.

And straight into the arms of Jack.

And straight back to this dungeon,
she thought, sitting next to Art-Z while rubbing her eyes and trying hard to suppress a yawn.

She was tired.
Very
tired.

Her dose of energy drinks had long worn off and her body demanded the rest that her mind couldn't yet allow. The data browsing down the screen of her former mentor and boyfriend required her to stay frosty, alert.

So she drank more energy drinks while ignoring the slight shake in her hands and her increased heartbeat—though it was hard to tell if her heightened level of anxiety was chemically induced or due to the information Art-Z had managed to extract from the bowels of the Department of Defense's network via the hack that Angela had so masterfully done to the tablets of the two scientists accompanying General Hastings.

“Did you really have to name the cat Bonnie?”

He shrugged, and said, “Same color eyes and hair, and just as … temperamental.”

Angela looked down at the dark feline and noticed the hazel eyes. “I'll be damned.”