Chapter 7

Chapter 7

“Well sir,” she begins, “I have good news, the document that was sent to you, we only needed a quarter of it. It was composed in four languages, English, Chinese, French, and Spanish. What little I know of two of the languages, Chinese and French, they seem to be the exact same document. I know for a fact, that the Spanish and English are the same.”

“I would expect no less from you,” Sebac quipped, “you are from the Southwest. So what does it say?”

“The document begins as a breakdown of the virus, which incidentally is not even smallpox. It is a mutation of the common cold, the strange part is that it is extra terrestrial, also it was engineered by a race of aliens,” she says flatly. “If this information is true, it has repercussions beyond this facility. But, the information came to the right place as it also comes with the way to make a vaccine, so we will need to get started on that immediately. In addition, your plan to turn us into a hostel, will allow us to get as many people as possible immunized. The information after that seems to be very frivolous, silly things like disease vectors, symptom progression, and so on.”

Sebac nods thoughtfully, he sips his coffee slowly, then putting his mug down asks; “Isn’t all this very strange to you?”

“How do you think so, sir? This is the keys to the problems of our new world! This is the Rosetta stone of this disease, what could you possibly be talking about?” she asks.

“This is rather convenient given our situation, all the answers, a vaccine, all mixed with known information. I am very wary of this entire document; the presentation is a standard ruse. Mix faulty information with common knowledge, string someone along, and make it look real by doing something like, for instance, translating it into four languages.”

“I see now sir, you think this is fake because it uses tricks that you would use,” she says doubtfully. “I understand the need for caution, but at what cost? What if this is the real deal, sent to you somehow by someone who wants to be anonymous, but has answers for you? What if, this was a failsafe set up by the very researchers that we had working on this virus? “

“But we can not know for sure can we?” Sebac retorts, “We have almost no way to positively identify where this came from. I agree, we should use the information; just not change our plans to offer safety and a fresh start to the civilians that depend on us.”

Lopez relents, and takes the folder. “I will annotate this and leave it on your desk. For now, let us have a meeting to save the nation.”

On that note they both get up out of their seats, and together, walk to the front of the cafeteria. Corporal Lopez turns to the audio visual terminal and loads the PowerPoint she spent the afternoon working on. Sebac calls everyone’s attention to him, waiting for a minute for everyone to sit down and get comfortable, he begins. He lays out his plans to convert the base into a shelter, and temporary home for as many people want the space. Veronica begins the PowerPoint, showing a schematic of the installation, overlayed with sections that are unusable, already taken, must be renovated and unsafe for civilians. With conservative estimates, they project that they can support around 750 more people, with at least double that outside the facility. They are located in Missouri, so the weather is not too terrible even in the winter. The wind can be bad, but that is a problem easily solved with simple architecture.

The next part of the presentation is a detail of the level of rationing, based on the number of people that answer the invitation, everyone will either have lots of food, or barely enough. Sebac then opens the floor to questions, there are only a few clarifying some of the details and how much various sections of the base will be converted. After answering the few questions, adjourns the meeting and Corporal Lopez gives all the department heads their instructions, Sebac was not even aware she had the time to type all these packets. He then wanders over to Lieutenant McHoliday; who is finishing up his notes from the meeting.

“Are you ready for us to maybe ruin your communication equipment?” Jacob gives the General a look that shows the worry he has for his tech gear.

“I am as ready as I will ever be,” he says. They then start to walk down to the communications hub. Gopher, who has his tech box, with wires, a soldering iron, and about twenty different screwdrivers, meets them on the way.

“Nice of you to join us Gopher, are you ready to rewire a transmitter?” Sebac asks.
“As ready as I will ever be, I hope the manual is with it so I do not fry myself.” Gopher says warily.

“Well let’s get there and send out an S.O.S.” Sebac chuckles, “That was a good song by The Police. I wonder if we have that in the archive.”

“We should put that in the background of the message, we need to decide how the message is going to be put together. We need to decide things like, wording, who is going to ne the one to record it? Should we record it into multiple languages?” Jacob rants. He is becoming a little agitated, but not really upset, more enthusiasm to set up this repeating signal.

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, in a dark red lit room, a hooded figure looks up to his superior. “The file is sent and opened. Our plan now begins.” The figure says in a raspy, dry voice.

There is motion against the wall, a door opens, and a small squat figure passes through it into the lighted corridor, moving down the hall, it slinks rather than walks, which is to say, the legs move in a walking motion. However, the movement does not look like walking.

As it moved down the hall, the lights dimmed slightly just ahead of the figure, and brightened as it passed. It is dressed in a strange bulky robe, with a full cowl and hood. Each step, the robe slid along the floor in a non-cloth like sound, each footstep falls rather heavily, like the figure is much heavier than its size would indicate. It reaches the end of the hall, a bulkhead door slides up silently. The room ahead is completely dark, with a low bass hum, rising up and down the scale, almost to the infrasonic range.

As the door slides shut, there is a large click, and blue lights come on. The robed figure takes his hood off, exposing a shiny black helmet. The helmet is an elliptical sphere, with a seam across the front, and a grill off each side. It reaches the end of the room, climbing onto a small dais, looks out into the blackness that the lights do not reach. A sharp hissing sound, again up and down the sonic scale, emits from the figure. Answered by the bass hum, a conversation continues like this for several minutes, then without warning, the small figure turns and walks away.

As the figure leaves, a ray of light shoots out of the wall and strikes the figure. It falls to the floor; a sharp squeal comes from the figure. Loud footsteps come from the far side of the room, a very large shape passes by the lights. A clawed arm reaches from above the small figure, grabbing the helmet, it picks it up, a loud growl followed by a shriek. The small figure flies across the room, crashing into the wall, then the door opens and it crawls out. It is met by a man dressed in a tight fitting, tailored suit.

“What is the problem?” the man asks curtly.

The small figure climbs to its feet, and twisting a small dial on the side of its head, says “The master is not pleased by the timeframe, the master wishes to speed up the time frame.” The heavily synthesized voice is clear, but the hissing sound is still audible.

“That is not possible, we must stay on schedule,” the man says dismissively. “The schedule now says we move to phase two, prepare to activate our operative.”