Class Fives: Origins Read online

  The software, which had been awarded the catchy name of Deep Look, was humanity’s best bet for at least knowing its death was on the way.

  Fortunately so far, it had found a tenuous harmony and grace in the motions of the other bodies within the solar system. Planets continued their lazy, endless circling of the Sun, and even the asteroid belt jostled along pleasantly, some masses being bumped out of their trajectories, bumping others, but always remaining comfortably trapped within the overall gravitational field in which they swam, each potential escapee being gently pulled back into the mad, circling rush of rocks around their unending track.

  Of course there was always the possibility of some intruder from the dark, empty recesses beyond our celestial neighborhood appearing unexpectedly. Some lumbering, wandering body might cruise in from outside the orbits of the Ort Cloud and race, like a bullet, straight toward the Earth. The software would see it the moment it appeared in the unimaginable distance, and mankind would know there was something out there with organic life’s name on it. But in the two years since the project had been in operation, the software hadn’t picked up even a shadow of a hint that such an object even existed.

  Marvin slowly stretched out and yawned, settling into the chair, preparing himself to spend the next several hours studying the software’s conclusions, its predictions, its prescient speculations. And while quite interesting merely for the amount of data it utilized alone, it could get somewhat boring.

  I’m a Goddamn cosmic security guard, he thought.

  The computer emitted another quiet beep, announcing the completion of some particularly massive calculation and, to Marvin’s surprise, one of the computer screens suddenly went blank. A moment later there was another quiet beep. And then another. On the fourth beep Marvin sat upright suddenly, already reaching out to stab a finger onto the readout key.

  The blank screen went a bright blue for a moment, then flashed with a new image. It was a virtual simulation of orbital patterns, the tiny points of light with their long, fading tails, moving slowly along it in great arcs.

  Marvin pulled the chair forward and leaned in to focus on the screen.

  The software had noticed something.

  It took him a few minutes to isolate what had captured the software’s attention and zoom the simulated image toward that spot among the many slowly swirling lines, zooming down in scale until he reached a level where two specific trails of light were seen to be clearly moving together.

  His hands lifted to the keyboard and he began to work the data.

  In another few minutes he slowly slumped back, his mind attempting to absorb what he’d just seen.

  The software had captured a shadowy image of a dim object, tumbling end over end, and moving in a rather peculiar way, almost cutting across the normal flow of traffic on the inner edge of the asteroid belt. It stood out enough to cause the software to automatically focus on it and immediately do an analysis of its trajectory, then run a particular subroutine that tracked back along its path in an attempt to discover where it originated.

  The object, a relatively unimportant hunk of rock already identified and catalogued as NC1107H, was roughly the size of the Empire State building, first noticed by observers decades before, because of its orbit, which was slightly elliptical, causing it to track a path that made it stand out against the clutter of the asteroid belt itself.

  What Marvin saw was at the very least unsettling, and would require greater study. But what left him feeling tense and with a growing sense of anxiety, was the forward projection of the object's path. Within the next week, the software predicted, it would collide with another object, KL4440R, an impressive mass whose circumference equaled that of the state of Texas. Ordinarily this would have resulted in a minor reshuffling of the chaotic racetrack order of the objects as they sped around the distant sun. But in this one case, the virtual image showed that the projected line of KL4440R’s flight would change after that collision. A single thin line representing its future path emerged from the thick jumble of lines and was shown racing off, away from the pack of circling debris. And it pointed, like an arrow, toward the center of the solar system. Toward Earth.

  After rerunning the projection a second, and then a third time, his sense of alarm rising as the preliminary projection was confirmed, Marvin felt a tight lump in his stomach.

  He hesitated only briefly to let the full implication of what he was seeing solidify in his brain.

  Then he reached for the red phone.

  It was difficult for Grigori Flezoff to believe that such a place could exist, here in the middle of the endless expanse that was Russia. Having been born and raised in the city once again called St. Petersburg, his entire concept of Russia was that of either lush fields or thick blankets of snow. But here he was, thousands of miles deep into the east, and slowly working his way through a fetid swamp amid the bones of trees long since burned to matchsticks.

  Beneath his feet was a thick stew of brackish water and rotting vegetation. Around him the scorched, bare trunks of endless trees jutted sadly up at the empty sky.

  He paused, sensing his stationary weight driving him down a few inches into the sludge that surrounded his boots, and slowly turned his head to scan the endless horizon. It was just past noon. He’d been stumbling his way through this muck since just after sunrise, when he’d left the strange little tracked vehicle resting in the first few inches of stinking groundwater that squished beneath its treads.

  Was that ten kilometers back? More?

  He would allow himself one more hour before he turned back. With luck that would give him enough daylight to make it back to the vehicle, where he could rest and then try to find another path toward where the sensitive instruments built into the conveyance told him his goal lay.

  He unclipped his canteen from his thick belt and took a deep swallow.

  He knew it could get hot in parts of his motherland, but he never imagined it could be like this. It was like standing in an oven.

  But he was being paid handsomely and that crushed all other considerations. If a few days of misery would provide him with a bit of financial stability, particularly in the economic chaos that was Russia since the collapse of the Communist regime, then it was well worth it.

  Snapping the canteen back onto his belt, he unclipped the bulky electronic device and slipped the power switch to “on”. He needed to take another reading to make sure he was traveling in the right direction.

  The small computer powered up, its screen filling with the various blips of awakening software, and finally stabilized on the menu screen.

  He thumbed the small arrow buttons to select the tracker, and the screen was replaced by rows of numbers showing his exact position on the planet, thanks to the many satellites orbiting the earth and talking to the little device he now held. But then the target location data rows began to blink.

  Grigori drew the device closer, his brows contracting in concentration.

  The rows of data showing the location of the target, based on very precise remote reading of a very unique energy signature it was emitting, were doing something very strange. The first line of the data showed the longitude of where the energy signature was being detected in degrees, minutes and seconds. The second line displayed the same data for latitude. What was strange was that the numbers representing the seconds of both axis kept changing. They would race up by a few tens, then drop down by a few tens, always hovering within the same degree and minute.

  Now what the Hell does that mean, he asked himself.

  He hadn’t been told to expect anything like this. The entire job was to come out to this godforsaken nothingness, deep in the heart of the continent, and simply locate the origin point of the energy and plant the electronic beacon, that was all.

  Only whatever it was that was being tracked was apparently moving, more or less all around him. That did not make Grigori feel comfortable. He had known about Chernobyl from childhood and that things you can’t s
ee, hear, taste, touch or smell, can kill you stone dead in very unpleasant ways.

  He had to call this in. He thought a moment. If it’s noon here, then…

  He would most likely wake him up. But there was no choice. He was standing in the middle of this wilderness of vegetable stew, the day was racing along and he did not want to have to face the idea of spending the night in a place where one literally could not lie down, or even have anything firm to lean against.

  Reaching into the large pocket on his thigh, he removed the slightly bulky satellite cellular phone and pressed speed dial for the only number programmed into it.

  It rang only twice before it was answered.

  “Yes?” the voice said, and Grigori could hear the calm alertness in the tone. He hadn’t been asleep, even though it was the dead of the night where he was.

  “Sir?” Grigori said, “it’s Grigori. Grigori Flezoff.”

  “I know,” the voice replied. “What can I assist you with?”

  “Sir,” Grigori began slowly casting his gaze around to take in the desolation of his surroundings, “I’m in the marshes right now. About ten kilometers from the vehicle. I couldn’t get it any further in so I had to come on foot.”

  “Go on,” the voice responded calmly.

  “Well, it’s the instrument. The one you gave me. The locator device. I think it’s experiencing a malfunction.”

  “Explain,” the voice said, now slightly more focused.

  “Well, it’s the target numbers. The reading for the seconds. They keep changing.”

  “Changing how?”

  “Going up and down. It looks like between zero zero seven up to six one three or so, and then back down, over and over.”

  “Longitude or latitude?”

  “Both, sir.”

  There was a long pause and for a moment Grigori thought he might have lost the connection.

  “Sir? Are you there?”

  “Describe your surroundings,” the voice said, now with a hint of tension.

  “They stink, sir. What a terrible place this is. And it’s endless, in all directions.”

  “Describe it,” and now there was growing annoyance in the tone and the hint of clenching teeth.

  “Well, it’s a swamp. I don’t know how deep but it feels spongy under my boots. And it’s full of dead plants.”

  “Are there trees?” the voice interrupted.

  “Yes sir. Or what’s left of them. They are all… burned, sir. Long ago. And they are brittle, like charcoal. Just these needles of black in all directions. I can smell the charring.”

  “Grigori, listen to me,” the voice cut in.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Place the beacon and activate it.”

  “Now, sir?”

  “Yes, now. Right where you are. Stay on the phone while you do so.”

  “Okay, wait a moment.”

  Grigori fumbled with the phone, momentarily glancing around for a place to put it and realizing there simply wasn’t one, then gently slipped it back into the wide pocket and shrugged his shoulders to slip off the small backpack. He swung it around and undid the strap buckles, tossing back the flap to reveal the oddly egg-shaped metal object inside.

  He tried to grip it to pull it from the confines of the pack, but then realized that if he was planting it here, he wouldn’t need the pack, and simply scooped the object into his palm and shook the pack from around it, discarding it into the slime by his side.

  His employer had explained what to do with the beacon, how to extend the long, spindly legs, how to activate its power supply. Strangely, he hadn’t actually explained how to turn the thing on.

  He managed to get the long, thin metal legs extended and drove them into the thick stew at his feet. At first he thought it would simply sink into the slime, perhaps wind up floating on it, but it sagged only an inch further once he released it and then became still and stable.

  He flipped the small switch on the side of the object, activating something within it.

  Grigori dug into the pocket, extracting the phone.

  “Okay, sir,” he said, “The device is placed and activated. Now what?”

  “Now you must walk at least sixty paces away from it and stop. I’ll tell you how to turn it on, but you mustn’t be standing near it when you do. It emits something you really don’t want to be close to. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Grigori replied, a little unnerved at the slight, sudden quiver in his own voice.

  He began moving, briskly though not quite hurrying, back along the path he had taken to this place.

  “So, this is all you need from me?” he said into the phone, more to just keep himself calm and focused against the increasing nervousness about things emitted from unknown devices he was about to unleash. “I am available for other work if you wish.”

  “Thank you, Grigori, I shall bear that in mind.”

  “So what is this thing you are looking for? And why did the tracking device go bad?”

  “It didn’t malfunction. Far from it. It is giving the most accurate readings it can, based on the locally sampled data.”

  “But what does it mean? The numbers going up and down like that?”

  “It means,” the voice replied, and there was a kind of quiet in the tone, “That you have found it, Grigori. It’s all around you. In fact, you’re standing on it.”

  Grigori hesitated, his step catching.

  “Standing on it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Standing on what, sir? What is it?”

  For the first time the voice on the other end of the line emitted a small, quiet chuckle.

  “It would be a little difficult to explain, I’m afraid. But suffice it to say it has to do with energy. Large amounts of it. The trees around you, for example. At one time, a few decades ago, it discharged a large amount of energy. Enough to char the trees.”

  “Energy,” Grigori repeated thoughtfully. Of course, he realized. Energy. Petroleum. Oil. The whole of Russia was supposed to be full of the stuff. And this mysterious man to whom he’d only ever spoken on the phone, was an American. That explains it, he decided. He’s an oil prospector, and I’m just the donkey that’s carrying his equipment for him, taking it here and there while he sits at home in some plush office somewhere in the US and directs me like a monkey on a string.

  For the first time he began to consider that maybe he should have asked for more money. The whole trip had been long and grueling just to get here, and now that he’d pinpointed what must be a vast fortune in oil, maybe he could request a little bonus.

  “Where are you now?” the voice said patiently.

  Grigori cast a glance back toward where the device was planted. He could barely make it out amid the blackened spikes of the dead trees.

  “About a hundred meters away from it.”

  “Excellent. You can stop now.”

  Grigori stopped and turned fully toward where the little glimmer of the metal sides of the device was barely visible in the distance.

  “I’ve stopped,” he said.

  “Now,” the voice instructed, carefully, “Take the tracker device and enter this code. Six, one, seven, eight, five, then press Enter.”

  Grigori fumbled the phone around and plucked the tracker from his belt, glancing at the screen. The numbers of the seconds continued to rise up and down steadily. He punched in the code and pressed Enter. A small red light he hadn’t noticed since he’d been using the device suddenly lit up and began to blink, and the Enter key itself lit up with a dull yellow glow.

  Grigori fumbled the phone up to his ear.

  “Ok, it’s blinking a little red light now.”

  “Is the Enter key illuminated?”

  “Yes, it’s lit up.”

  “Good. Please press it.”

  “And that will turn on the device?”

  “It will.”

  “Okay, hang on.”

  Grigori fumbled the tracker around to place his thumb on the
Enter key and pressed it.

  From a distance it would have appeared odd. The sudden, bright blossoming of the first blast as the tracker detonated, followed an instant later by the smaller blast of the cell phone and, within a second, the much larger, distant detonation of the vehicle. Within a few seconds the flaming debris that had been Grigori Flezoff, and all that he had brought into this barren place, had dropped into the water and sizzled out.

  The oddly egg-shaped beacon began to emit its signal.

  Dr. Montgomery slowly placed the handset back into the cradle, his hand remaining on it a moment as he contemplated.

  He’d found it. After all this time, he’d finally tracked it down. The information he had taken decades to collect had proven correct. Rumors, hints, vague bits and pieces of stray data, had combined into something solid. And now that the beacon had been placed he could turn his attention to the next component. Only a few more to go now, he told himself. He was getting close. It really was going to happen. He was going to make it happen.

  He leaned back in the chair and raised a hand to stroke his chin absently. This time it would work. He would make it work, because he was so much smarter, so much more brilliant than Korillan had been. And in the three and more decades since that first experiment, the increases in the power of technology of all kinds had provided him with the means to make sure it was fully functional.

  He glanced at his watch. Hours until dawn yet. He would call and start the next task. For now, time to sleep.

  He rose from behind the desk and reached down to snap off the small lamp, plunging the room into darkness.

  John sat in his car, leaned back against the worn seat, an elbow propped on the sill of the open window, a hand absently stroking his face as he turned the thoughts over and over in his mind.

  He somehow felt that he should know of some way to deal with this situation, but he simply couldn’t think of anything that would solve it, make it go away and just leave him alone.