RE: Second Sun
03-16-2018, 07:53 PM
(03-14-2018, 08:37 PM)Arcanuse Wrote: »
You're used to businessmen and lawyers insinuating themselves into your company, men who think the downtown secretaries exist only to serve at their pleasure, so you lay into him. "People are complicated. Pinning actions on a single cause, say emotion or needs, works but is terribly shallow. In turn, asking why they felt that way leads us on a merry chase of cause and effect going long past the persons original reasoning and or awareness for acting." You take a breath, theatrically staring into the distance as if ponering a universal truth. "I suppose then, in a sense, causality also works, but suffers from going too deep. Of course, the actor at one end of the web is unlikely to know the full extent of the web of reasons leading up to their action. So from a final perspective, human actions are caused by various factors adding together to outweigh the incentive towards inaction." You refocus into the man's eyes. "Like I said, life is complicated. Why do you think people do what they do?"
The man smirks and flashes a badge - CANADIAN FORCES NATIONAL INVESTIGATION SERVICE, something you've never heard of. Your first thought is that something's happened with your mother on one of her benders. "We're recruiting," he says.
You wonder what that has to do with you. "Okay," you say. "Yeah?"
He introduces himself as Agent Thurman. "One of your professors put your name forward as a possible candidate for federal law enforcement," he says. "She's been impressed with your work."
"Okay," you say, wondering which professor, wondering if this was some kind of scam. "Don't you have pamphlets you mail out or something?"
"I have you in mind for a specific division within CFNIS," Thurman says. "I wanted to meet you myself before I made the pitch. I don't usually recruit like this, but I already have reason to believe you'll make an exemplary agent - still, I have to make sure I actually recruit you."
Maybe some sort of sales scheme - give out your name and address and then get slammed with junk mail and cold calls. Any second now he's going to ask for twenty bucks to "hold your spot in the program" or ask for some kind of donation. "My record can't look that great to you," you say, calling his bluff. "I almost didn't make it out of high school."
"Your past plays a part. I'm interested in your renewed focus and dedication now. Some people wilt in high school, then bloom in post-secondary - that's what I look for. I don't want brilliant kids who'll burn out within a couple of years. I read a paper you wrote about the responsibility of a strong society to defend the rights of the vulnerable - some of the most vulnerable being the victims of violent crime. Was that copied from somewhere or was that you?"
"I didn't copy anything."
"I found it moving," says Thurman. "Passionate. That's what I'm interested in, Jeanette - that articulate passion. I think it might help you through what I have in mind."
"I had a friend," you say. "She's the reason I'm interested in criminal justice."
"Well, Jeanette, as it happens, I do have a pamphlet for you," says Thurman. "You've got - what, another year before graduation? If you're still as passionate then as you are now, and decide to apply, send your application directly to me." He writes down his mailing address on the back of the glossy advertisement.
A year later, you mail your CNFIS packet to the address, along with other applications to local police departments. Thurman calls within the week and asks you to report to the Ottawa HQ to begin the interview process. "Clear your schedule," he says.
Thurman's recruited a class of twelve, you one of only three women, and within a few days, two of the men have dropped out rather than endure the physical regimen the instructors demand. You realize that this isn't really an interview; more of a culling. Hours swimming in a tank wearing scuba gear. Rounds of spinning in a g-force simulator until your eyes roll backwards and you black out, only to wake up and spin again. The recruits are given small meals and bunk together in a dorm with room enough only for six - one toilet to share and a carton of wet wipes instead of a shower.
The spartan conditions fray some nerves, but you adapt well enough, your track-and-field experience preparing you for endurance, conditioning strength of mind over body. At the end of five weeks, only seven recruits remain, you the last woman. In a ceremony in one of your classrooms, Thurman presents you each with a choice: "Report to the main office and be welcomed with open arms to begin a fulfilling career as a federal law-enforcement agent," he tells you, "or stay seated."
One of the men does stand and leave, but the rest of you stay at your desks, confused and excited as Thurman hands out forest green T-shirts and certificates with your names printed on them.
A reception with coffee and cake in the hallway is followed by instructions to change into your flight suits within the hour. After nightfall, you board a jet called Ogopogo, a sea monster painted along its triangular body - the jet is called a Bolt, long and sleek, wingtips pointed downwards, the size of a small airliner.
You strap into your seat and the Ogopogo lifts off from the runway. You're utterly delirious when it enters an accelerated climb and pulls away from the tug of gravity. A crescent shine of earthlight frames scattered diamonds of city lights on the distant globe. You feel the dizzy bliss of weightlessness in your chest, your hair rising around you like a blond dandelion puff until you pull it into a bun.
Thurman is the first to unfasten his harness and float freely, his aged features suddenly childlike, the others following his example, whooping up the free fall like children on a trampoline. You rise from your seat and weep openly, gleeful, but your tears adhere like sticky balls over your eyes and sting until you wipe them with your sleeve and laugh.
---
The moon below is a lake of darkness. You approach the Twilight Vale station, the lunar outpost like a secret city built into the Daedalus crater, a crater a hundred kilometers wide and right in the middle of the hemisphere that never faces Earth. The slopes down from the crater's raised ridges are terraced, like huge stairs falling two miles to the wide floor of the basin. Nobody speaks as they catch their first glimpse of the lunar launching sites. The Twilight Vale is outlined with lights, the buildings and runways, the layout reminding you of oil rigs, the air control tower a spire of steel and lights. Seven ships are docked at the Twilight Vale, wide and strange-looking vessels the size of Victoria-class submarines.
"Those are the Spades," says Thurman, pointing out each of the seven ships. "Look there - the engines are Novikov Quantum Foam Generators", he explains, "the technology that allows the military to travel to Sidereal Space and Ulterior Time."
A cloverleaf of launch and landing pads spreads out from the tower, arteries of roads and taxiways between them that lead to hangars and a scattering of white domes, dormitories, machine shops, offices and labs. Thurman explains that the designs for the Naval Space Command ships - the Skimmers, the Bolts, the Spades - were brought back from a point nearly six hundred years in the future, retrofitted for the comparatively lackluster industrial capabilities of the 70s and 80s, when most of the fleet was built - skunkworks engineering projects carried out by the team that developed the Avro Arrow. The Bolts used enhanced gas turbine engines to control the vessel by thrust vectoring, with large rotors acting like gyroscopes to balance it. The Ogopogo settles on Pad 4 like an insect landing on a leaf.
The views from every portal are vast plains of grey dust lit up by floodlights. Everything falls slowly on the moon; in the weaker gravity, it feels like you've been dropped through water. You're twenty-two years old, overwhelmed by the secrecy and miracles of the military, the Naval Space Command operating just outside the realm of public knowledge.
The first few weeks of continued training are dreamlike, lectures in the sunlamp solarium, bunking in the dormitories, finding your way through the greenhouses and corridors and learing about the ships of the fleet. You're assigned to Thurman's Spade battle group aboard the HMCS Alexander Mackenzie and launch to Distant Shores. Within two months of your first arrival at Ottawa HQ, you've time-traveled to the Demarcation of humanity and sailed the farthest regions of the Andromeda Galaxy, bathed in starlight that won't touch Earth for two and a half million years.
---
1997
---
The media jams the Beaverton Police Station's central hallway, reporters begging for quotes about the triple homicide and the missing girl. The local police seem unprepared for the sheer amount of interest, you think, pushing past a throng of photographers. You show your credentials to an officer and sign your name on a printout list of authorized personnel before you're allowed through to the conference room. Still a few minutes before nine. Several of the task force have already taken seats around a horseshoe of a half dozen banquet tables. You recognize faces from the night before, RCMP men mostly, but their demeanors are different, the pallor of the Keating deaths dissipated in the light of day, replaced by fresh hair gel and changed clothes, brown coffee cups, Tim Hortons doughnuts on the back table.
Someone waves to catch your attention, a man with sandy blond hair, his jaw shaded by stubble that foreshadows a beard. He has a warm smile, you think, a smile that softens his otherwise rugged features. Bright blue eyes - hooded eyes, thoughtful.
"Are you Agent Newmann?" he asks. "Ken Whicker. We spoke on the phone last night."
"Oh, of course," you say. "Jeanette."
"I have a seat for you," he says. "Mason asked me to take care of you."
You bristle at being taken care of and you're unwilling to negotiate the gaps between chair legs. "I don't want to fight my way up front."
"Oh, alright - sure," says Whicker, leaning against the wall beside you. "And not like that, not 'taking care of you', more like a liaison," he says, quick to read your tone. You remember his voice from the call - disturbed, tinged with sorrow. "Mason says you should have full access, but since he has a lot to juggle," he says, gesturing at the room, "I'll be your conduit."
An outdoorsman, you think - he has an easy athleticism, not like a gym rat with their muscled bodies. He's wearing brown corduroys, contrasting the grey or beige slacks his colleagues are wearing - shirtsleeves rolled to his forearms, a sweater-vest, and a tie, professorial despite the lanyard with FBI tags on them.
"I don't remember seeing you last night," you say.
"I was there, I saw you when you came in," he says, "but I was" - gesturing to indicate a Tyvek suit - "taking photos. You wouldn't have noticed me. I have to ask you, though, if it's true, what Mason told me."
Fuck. You wonder what's gotten around. "That depends on what he told you."
"That you knew the family over on Colyer Road."
"The family that used to live there," you say. "My best friend lived there, years ago. I was over there almost every day."
Whicker sighs. "I'm sorry. That must have been a shock."
"What else did he tell you?"
Whicker raises his hand, a gentle conciliation. "Only to be respectful, said you were taking it hard."
The clamor of conversation dulls when Mason makes his way to the lectern. His clothes are the same from last night, rumpled - he might have splashed water in his face before this meeting, cologne, but he hasn't showered, hasn't rested. A film of exhaustion clings to him, his eyes underscored by bags. He dims the room to half-light.
"Good morning," he says, switching on the overhead projector, a block of light appearing on the whiteboard behind him. "I'll keep this brief. Agent in Charge, Rick Mason, RCMP. My team will be working closely with the local police in the murder investigation of the Keating family and in the search for Nicole Keating. Our lead investigator is Agent Ken Whicker."
Mason's first transparency shows the image from the Amber Alert.
"Nicole Keating," he says. "Know her face. Thirty-eight hours gone."
Keating sips from a water bottle, pauses his speech until he registers all eyes on the image of the young woman. Silence, except for the whirring fan of the projector.
"We already have significant media interest in this young woman, probably on a national scale. She was last seen on Friday afternoon leaving her shift at the local Valu-Mart, where she's a cashier. Clocked out at seven PM, and that was the last confirmed sighting we have. We've recovered her car from the parking lot - so she left with someone, or was taken. Her shift supervisor and her coworkers don't recall anything unusual about that afternoon. She has no regular boyfriend that we know about. Ontario police are following up with her extended network of friends."
He switches the transparency. A cropped photograph of a man wearing a zippered blue sweatshirt, his hair dusty grey. He's smiling, squinting against the sunlight.
"This is the most recent photograph we have of her father, Rodney Keating. Petty Officer First Class, Royal Canadian Navy. Born 1949, August 3rd. Rodney Keating is on the board as our primary subject both for the abduction of Nicole and for the murder of his family. An arrest warrant has been issued. We do not have any solid information as to his whereabouts, but we've placed checkpoints at all major border crossings."
Another transparency. A Polaroid, the deck of a ship. Keating in drab green, his skin tanned - he looks like a child, you think, despite the cigarette and rifle slung casually over his shoulder.
"Triple homicide," says Mason, showing a transparency of the woman's blood-slathered face.
A close-up of a hand covered in blood.
"The actor removed the fingernails and toenails from the woman and children," says Mason. "That information is not to be given to the media. Understood? In case we're wrong about Keating, we're holding this piece back to weed out false confessions that come through the tip line."
An air of unease simmers in the room - the missing nails bother the people gathered here, pushing the deaths from common brutality to something more bizarre, with unfathomable intention.
"You alright?" asks Whicker, his eyes troubled.
You ask, "Are you?"
Mason holds his press conference half an hour later, the conference room's whiteboard screened with an RCMP backdrop. He focuses on the only substantive lead you have, the neighbour statements about Keating's unidentified associate, a white male, bearded, driving a red Dodge Ram with Ontario plates. Mason describes the truck covered in bumper stickers, but holds back on their exact nature. You join a few cops watching on the break-room TV. You fill a mug with oily dregs from the pot while reporters from Toronto pepper Mason with questions about Nicole Keating and her family's murder.
You drift from the break room, find a vacant office in the downstairs bullpen. You dial your supervisor's direct line at CFNIS HQ. Thurman had recruited you to CFNIS, had mentored you during the following training, had sailed Distant Shores with you aboard the Alexander Mackenzie - he had accompanied you on your first space walk, the two of you floating far from your ship, tethered to the hull like spiders on silken threads. Thurman was born only a decade before you, but he was well traveled in Distant Shores and FPTs, had already aged while the rest of the world stood still. His head is a thicket of white curls, his face deeply wrinkled, but his deadpan stare breaks easily into the crooked smile of a mischievous child.
"Thurman," he answers.
"This is Newmann. I need information about Keating, if you can get it for me. The info I have was redacted. He's listed as missing in action."
"I have something for you," says Thurman. "I've been meeting with NSC over the night. Keating showing up is a huge problem, Jean."
"What do you have?"
"Rodney Keating was a major player when NSC was working with Reagan's Star Wars initiative," says Thurman. "The early days, part of the broader joint Canadian and American space program, before Challenger and the American consolidations. Keating participated in joint exercises with the US Air Force's Manned Spaceflight Engineers program in Los Angeles, and had his hand in the military floor at Johnson Space Center. But, Jean, his record ends with the Olympus missions. Are you familiar?"
"Twelve ships, deployed through the late seventies until about 1989. Before my time. Three of the ships are still in service."
"Ares, Demeter, Poseidon," says Thurman. "The other nine ships never returned, hundreds of lives presumed lost. Catastrophic. And the Apollo-"
"The Apollo discovered the Demarcation," you say. "They were the first." You've studied crime-scene photographs of the HMCS Apollo. The ship launched in late 1986 but returned from a far future FPT with a depleted crew, only a few survivors, the inside of their ship covered in crude pictures of dead men and warnings written in their own blood.
"Rodney Keating is listed as missing in action because he was a sailor aboard the HMCS Hermes," says Thurman. "Jean, the Hermes is assumed lost."
Lost to Distant Shores, but appearing now. "How is that possible?" you ask. You've observed NSC launches, seen ships launch to Distant Shores and return within a second, nearly instantaneous - the ships just shimmer even though the crew might have sailed galaxies and lived for several years within that time. It's an uncanny sensation to see a man board a ship one moment as a young man and disembark the next moment grown to retirement age. Occasionally, though, an NSC ship launches but never returns - it simply blinks out of existence altogether. The ships that blink are assumed lost, irretrievably. They're either torn apart by debris or cast into a burning sun or devoured by a black hole, or, most likely, suffered a mechanical failure that proved catastrophic or one of any number of potential ruins - but the ships never return and they never appear somewhere else. If a ship blinks out, the ship is lost and the crew dead, listed as missing in action only because their bodies will never be recovered. "If Hermes was lost, then Rodney Keating shouldn't exist," you say. "Or he was never on Hermes. Maybe he's a deserter? Or never amde his assignment?"
"We need to account for Hermes, we need to account for Keating," says Thurman. "That's why you were called in. We need to apprehend Rodney Keating, find out his story."
"Mason says the guy's been living off the grid, everything in his wife's name," you say. "We have witnesses who know Keating personally - I don't think we're dealing with a false identity, or anything like that. He's been living here in Beaverton, right out in plain sight."
"Nobody's been looking for him," says Thurman. "As far as anyone knew, Rodney Keating blinked out along with everyone else on Hermes. You can hide a long time when no one's looking."
"We have a lot of people looking for him now."
"Jean," says Thurman, "Agent Mason mentioned you have a personal connection to the crime scene-"
"Fine - I'm fine," you say. "A childhood friend lived there. And the crime scene was horrific last night, but I'm fine."
"I can offer you more agents, if you think you'll need the help," says Thurman.
"I'm handling it," you say, thinking of Jennifer Keating, the body gouged. Nancy Wright's bedroom, where you'd dreamed of ditching Beaverton. No one will ever leave that room. "I'm fine," you say again. "I'm focused on Rodney Keating."
"Okay. Given what you know now, what's your take on everything? Motive? The fingernails? What do you think happened?"