Violet Incursion: Chapter 8

 

2018

Rain sputtered against the huge curved window overlooking the launch tower. Mother Nature couldn’t have chosen a worse time to be a total bitch, swatting the NASA grounds in rippling waves.

Overhead, the inverted Brass City opened wide, swallowing the sky from one end of the compass to another.

It was an incredibly strange Odyssey Year. Astronomers, mathematicians, soothsayers, and every kid with a hobby camera were going bonkers over the unusual presentation of the Violet Incursion. In fact, it was being called the Umber Incursion this year, owing to its tilt toward swirling clouds of ochre-yellow and earthy brown.

Adding to the somber mood was the fact that the City was presenting itself upside down. The tops of its towering spires of brass and steel stabbed down toward the surface of the Earth instead of stretching toward the heavens. While this wasn’t the first time in Odyssey record that this sort of thing had happened, it was the first in over a century and a half, and the first since the invention of modern optical equipment and recording devices. The last time it had happened, the only evidence had been paintings and drawings.

I stared out through the blankets of rain, my chest uncomfortably tight. I tugged nervously at the silver chain around my neck, exhaling shakily.

“What a shit year,” came a voice from the door to my empty observation room.

I shot a look over my shoulder, my breath catching in my throat.

A man in a checkered button-up shirt tucked into a pair of beige Dockers looked at me with something like pity, softened by the easy smile on his face. He had his white lab coat slung over his shoulder, an ID lanyard dangling from his other hand.

“Oh… uh, I know, right?” I replied lamely. “Ian was your name?”

He nodded.

“Ian Braun. Your dad’s VICA liaison. We met yesterday at the launch banquet. I made that joke about the cream cheese wonton wrappers.”

I chuckled, feeling my nerves settle a bit.

“Right. And how I should quit eating them because they—”

“Got left out, yeah,” he laughed melodiously.

His laughter came as easily as his smile, cutting through tension like a cheese knife. He walked up to the observation window, stopped next to me, and sighed.

“Any other year, and we would never go ahead with a launch in this weather. It’s nerve-wracking, isn’t it?”

I settled back into reality, my stomach tightening again. Looking out over the soggy grass lawns and wet concrete, I tried not to think about shuttle crashes and fireballs in the sky.

“Dad would never let them call it off. Not even if I begged. Probably not even if my mom were still around to beg right along with me.”

Ian’s face didn’t shift, the same barely-there grin dancing with reflections from the droplet-covered glass and the early-morning gray sunrise behind it.

“Yeah, he sure would. Honestly, he would probably shanghai the crew and steal Aeris. Even if the entire VICA security team were after him.”

He chuckled. Stealing a glance in my direction, his eyes tightened slightly.

“Not to worry, though. There has never been a shuttle launch as meticulously managed as this one. Not Apollo, not Challenger, not Columbia…”

I gave him a flat stare.

“Challenger blew up and everyone died. Columbia almost did too.”

He raised his hands in mock surrender.

“Okay, sorry. Bad example. But hey, Columbia made it because of the DyGen shell around the wing, so thank the Peruvians for that one, and remember that their tech has only gotten better since the turn of the millennium. And Challenger only failed because…”

“Because of bad weather?”

“Uh, let’s change the subject,” Ian said through gritted teeth. “I’m supposed to find you and bring you down to the launch deck for the takeoff. It’s in an hour.”

I looked out the window skeptically.

“They’re still having the press conference and whatnot outside, in this?”

Ian gestured helpfully to a pair of umbrellas leaning against the doorframe.

“Let’s make hay while the sun is shining.”

I rolled my eyes, and a barking laugh escaped despite my nerves.

“I have allergies.”

 

2028

“Ryan, you there?”

Doctor Silas bobbed up and down, sticking his face into my view.

I snapped out of my daydream, memories of the last Odyssey fading into the brightening sunrise outside.

“Yeah, sorry, Tran. Distracted. So, what do you think about what’s on the drive?”

He nodded enthusiastically.

“Yeah, I agree. There’s something here. Leo, you’ve got it on your console, right?”

A tall, broad-shouldered, handsome blond man with his hair tied in a ponytail flashed his blue eyes over the top of his monitor at us and nodded.

“I sure do. I don’t completely get where you’re going with this, Doctor Ryan. I don’t see how I can extract text, audio—any sort of language—from soun—excuse me, not sound.”

He shook his head.

“I’m so confused. You’re going to have to walk me through the waveform and help me figure out what I’m looking for. Then I can try running it through some filters.”

“Ha!”

Tran let out a quick laugh and did a goofy duck-and-dive motion toward Leo’s computer, looking like he was practicing yoga.

“Let me work on that with Doctor Halsted, Dick. You take five. Looks like you’re about to rub a hole in your forehead.”

I wrinkled my nose.

“That will never be my name, Tran. Just for that, I’m taking ten.”

As if to prove his point, I rubbed the back of my head.

“I’m maxed out on Tylenol. It feels like someone’s having a concert in my skull. I’ll be back in a minute.”

I left Tran and Leo at their computer and returned to my own desk, grabbing the pack of nicotine gum and punching out the second-to-last piece. My mind wandered to the ACH lab, where I had a pack of cigarettes stashed in my locker. It was months old, but this headache was making it hard to focus.

Shaking my head, I scanned the room.

Evelyn had returned to her group at Gravitics and was giving an earful to a junior researcher over making a copy of a shared document instead of a shortcut, resulting in duplicate versions with different updates. I winced. I may have been guilty of that several times in my first year or two.

Doctor Loise glanced at them with an eyebrow raised, but continued her silent typing, letting Evelyn handle her juniors.

Doctor Alvarez was seated at a workstation in the corner, wearing a headset that looked like it belonged in a recording studio from the 1980s. He had a pencil between his teeth and was staring intently at his vertically oriented monitor, occasionally pausing to make a note on the other screen, which he was leaning barely two inches away from, decades of poor screen discipline and blue-light exposure taking their toll.

Curiously, the USJAF desk was empty. The General and Colonel, along with all their lackeys, were nowhere to be seen.

I frowned, considering the oddity. As agitated as they’d looked earlier, it seemed strange they wouldn’t be keeping an uncomfortably tight handle on things now.

Looking over to the Rocketry/Ballistics desk clump, I noted that only junior researchers remained behind, each one looking more lost and disheartened than the last. Their Odyssey dreams, once the focus of the night, were rapidly dissolving as the odds of the EMP plan grew longer, like shadows in the morning sun.

I blinked.

Rocketry, Thermodynamics, and the military were all gone?

Oh.

That was a mixture of minds and motivations I did not much care for being missing.

At all.

I struggled to contain the fraying thread of possibility unraveling in my mind, but some force kept tugging at it, dismantling the fortifications of my skepticism.

I walked slowly to the door leading into the lobby, my heartbeat growing wilder in dogged pursuit of my imagination, my common sense struggling to keep up.

This is none of your business, the voice told me.

Still, I stepped out into the hall, casually glancing down the main stairwell into the lobby. A pair of guards remained posted at the base of the stairs, as usual. The lobby itself had cleared out, the majority of the crowd either having gone home or retired to the separate visitor center outside the main gates if their clearance timetable had come and gone.

I looked down the curving hall to the cupola overlook.

Empty.

Quiet.

Steeling myself, I turned the other way and strolled toward the labs. Passing the tall, fully glass walls and doors to various open-use lab spaces, I ducked behind a potted fern when I heard a thump farther up the corridor.

I scratched my head and tried not to look like a discount Solid Snake, straightening up and walking casually again.

A senior researcher whose name escaped me came out of a shared lab, a soldier with a flak vest and an M16 over his shoulder walking alongside him.

They both paused for half a step when they saw me before regaining their composure more quickly than I did, sadly. The looks of surprise on their faces vanished behind confident expressions of purpose.

The metaphorical “ladder and clipboard” routine.

It could get you anywhere.

As we passed, I noted the Rocketry embroidery on the researcher’s lab coat. The soldier locked eyes with me but kept going.

I looked over my shoulder just in time to see the researcher doing the same. We both jerked our eyes back forward.

The anxiety twisted over itself once more in my belly. I quickened my pace until I reached the sliding glass door to the private departmental labs.

I’m just going for my cigarettes, I told myself. We’re not on lockdown, so you’re fine.

I scanned in, trying to keep my imagination under control.

I passed two sets of doors. The walls were no longer glass. The nameplates THERM — FUSION and THERM — COLD STORAGE were embossed beside stout metal doors with intimidating radiation placards on them, their card scanners glowing red in defiance.

I continued after glancing under the doors, confirming no lights were on inside. Short, long windows sat high along the wall at the end of the hallway, angling down a stairwell. The brightening swirls of purple and green from the Violet Incursion outside spilled into the corridor, illuminating the section of hall that hadn’t kicked on its automatic lighting yet in a kaleidoscope of dancing color.

The next room was marked CR.-LING. FILE ANNEX before a stairwell descended deeper into the lab wing. I took the stairs, noting the increasing damp of the lower floors.

BAF1 had been carved too close to a canyon aquifer, or so Facilities liked to complain whenever someone important was listening. The sublevels were sealed, resealed, and over-sealed every few months, but the groundwater always found a way to announce itself. Nothing dramatic. Just a faint mineral smell, cool air beading on pipes, and the unsettling impression that the desert was quietly trying to take the building back.

The entire left side of the hall was one interconnected lab with a door at each end. Both were marked GRAVITICS/THERM. HOT LABS.

Finally, at the end on the right, a short stair descent terminated at a door marked ACOUSTICS/HARMONICS.

Home sweet home.

I scanned my badge at the door.

The reader blinked between red and yellow.

Frowning, I scanned again.

It repeated the sequence.

I pulled back my badge nervously, looking over my shoulder into the short stairwell.

This was a bad idea. At best, I’m going to get yelled at by Dr. Lindström. At worst… shot and left in cryo to freeze until someone finds my dead body?

I shuddered.

Suddenly, the reader flashed green and beeped, the door lock clicking.

Or not.

I stepped into the ACH Suite, instinctively reaching for the light switch, but stopped short.

The lights were already on.

I paused, my eyes flicking around the room. The tables were littered with papers, keyboards covered with documents, and tall server racks in the corner hummed contentedly.

All typical.

Nothing out of place.

A sharp electronic chirp turned my blood to ice.

From the back room of the ACH Suite, I could see a flashing yellow light. I tried to slow my breathing, and when I couldn’t, I resolved to push forward anyway.

The sharp noise repeated, a drawn-out beep following the chirp this time. A yellow flash winked from behind a glass window in a red panel attached to the wall.

I approached slowly, fumbling for the light switch to the darkened back annex. I stumbled over something, caught myself on the small round table shared by the ACH researchers for eating lunch—or any other meal, should the day grow long enough—and hit the lights.

The annex was packed with miscellaneous stored goods and supplies foraged—or pilfered—from other departments. A stack of hard drives teetered like a nerdy Jenga tower next to another milk crate, this one marked TRAN, crammed full of Pop-Tarts and vinyl Megadeth records.

I kicked the empty milk crate back under the table with a silent curse, pulling a staple out of my hand courtesy of a stack of papers now scattered from a folder. I sucked on the tiny wound, the taste of iron adding to the creepy ambiance.

The chirp, louder this time, repeated, the yellow light flashing urgently.

I scowled at the panel marked FEDERAL FIRE. I hated messing with it, preferring to call Maintenance when it acted up. I had an unreasonable fear that I would set off the facility alarm or activate the sprinklers if I ever touched it.

Still, I flipped the red panel open and touched the screen.

It came to life.

1/3 — SYSTEM SET: AWAY — (5) EVENT(S) STORED

Right, I thought. It’s a security panel too. Not just fire.

I hit the arrow, changing the text on the screen.

2/3 — SENSOR OVERLIMIT: HEAT 23 — SERVER

A heat sensor?

If a heat sensor tripped, wouldn’t that trigger the alarm?

I squinted and frowned, shaking my head. I toggled the arrow key once more.

3/3 — WALK TEST POINT DISABLE: SENSOR 23 — SERVER

Now that made even less sense. Someone had disabled the heat sensor, and then it triggered? Was Maintenance working on a sensor? It would explain why someone was in here while the system was set to AWAY.

I flipped back to the security alert as the panel chirped loudly in my face, followed by the long, mournful beep. I swore and smashed the panel door into the wall, angry at the startling noise.

To my dismay, there was a thump from the server room behind me in response to my tantrum.

I froze.

“Hello?” I called nervously.

No response.

I peeked around the corner of the annex, but the room was empty.

The server room door was closed.

I eyed the server racks suspiciously, wondering if they had produced the sound.

Was the door open or closed when I came in?

The alarm panel chirped again, bringing an annoyed scowl back to my face and renewed intensity to my headache. Looking at the panel screen, I hit ENTER for details on the security alert.

The panel went blank for a moment, a trio of dots scrolling by repeatedly.

Then the text appeared.

SYSTEM SET: AWAY — 8:23 PM, 6/20/28
SYSTEM WARN: AWAY TAMPER — 6:01 AM, 6/21/28
SYSTEM ADMIN OVRD.: AWAY SILENT — 6:01 AM, 6/21/28 — DOOR LOCKOUT ENBL.

The dots reappeared as the next events loaded.

Who the hell came in and overrode the security?

And locked out the door?

When an authorized researcher or technician entered the lab, their badge automatically disabled AWAY mode. No need to touch the panel.

I froze again, my blood returning to ice.

The flashing keypad.

The delay before I was able to enter.

The door was still locked out when I arrived.

The panel loaded, the text on-screen confirming my fears.

SYSTEM ADMIN OVRD.: DOOR LOCKOUT DSBL.
SYSTEM SET: STAY — 6:24 AM, 6/21/28
SYS ENTITY ALLOW: =2

System allow...

Entities...

Two?

Who was in here with me?

The screen turned red with a new alert.

SYSTEM ALARM: FIRE — HEAT 23 TRIGGER — TAMPER DISABLED
ALARM SILENT
DOOR LOCKOUT ENBL.

I turned slowly, my eyes wide.

From the closed door to the server room, smoke was creeping into the annex.