Chapter 1
It's that nasty, nasty smell. That smell bothers me more than anything about a hangover. Not the pounding headache. Not even the way your hands or any other part of your body seem to respond in slow motion. It's almost like you've been bathing in some sort of cleaner. Or maybe even diesel fuel. Canadian Mist and Coke -- it tastes so smooth going down. And ever since the guys at the camp introduced it to me a few years back it alone has been my drink of choice.
The next day however when you're schlepping around in the heat and it begins evaporating from every pore in your body there's only one way to get rid of it and the stench, sweat. And sweating is what I was doing. A lot.
As I am swinging away with the sledgehammer, I am trying with my best psychic ability to will away the smell. Yet it seems like every time I lift the three-pound sledge over my head another whiff of my armpits make me nearly want to puke. I think nature programmed that smell to enter your nostrils and seek out that very specific molecule deep in your body that triggers the gag reflex and smack it nice and hard across the face.
I don't drink much anymore but when I'm up here at the camp it seems okay to relax and take in a few drinks. In fact that is what being at the hunting camp is all about. No one here to judge me for having one too many, and honestly there is no reason not to have one too many.
The Franklin family has always been very kind to me. They have allowed me to come up here for several years now to their family hunting camp. My Dad is best friends with Tommy, one of the Franklin boys, and I, being his only male offspring, have been invited to hunt with them. Now I'm just part of the family here at the camp and welcome anytime. During the summer ,for exchange of hunting privileges, I come here every two or three weeks or so and do things around the Camp trying to keep it nice and tidy. Cut the grass, put out corn for the deer in the off season and keep the trails open so that we can get to the hunting patches. Whatever needs to be done. Today the trails need the most attention.
A bad rain a few weeks ago washed out one of the driving trails to the point that no one could navigate it. The trail dead ends into a ten foot deep gully and picks right back up twenty five feet or so on the other side where it left off. Definitely a jump to fulfill the dreams of any country boy with a beat up second hand hot rod. I have taken out a couple of trees and routed the trail around the washout. It is probably only about 150 feet long or so before it bends to the left back to the rest of the trail. The left-hand side of the trail is a big drop-off and middle of the trail there is a large piece of sandstone. On the right is a 12 foot high sandstone cliff. So the only route is to bust up the sandstone slab and finish the new trail where it stands.
Needless to say, here I stand smelling like a bar-room dishrag beating the crap out of a two foot high piece of stone in the middle of the woods with a serious thumper of a hangover.
The driving trails get us to the footpaths that we hack through the woods during the summer time so that we can easily make it to the tree stands and patches during the hunting season. Our trucks and the camp's Stephen King version of an old farm tractor will use this trail to get in and out for planting and delivering corn to the hunting patches each year. Right now this piece of sandstone is the only thing standing in the way of the trail being perfect--just wide enough to drive my trusty work van through and just flat enough to keep it from flipping over and becoming part of the permanent scenery.
I'm no expert on geology or really on anything for that matter, but I do remember from science classes back in high school that all this land here in lower Alabama was once a beautiful place for some serious river fishing. As I remember the whole area, thousands of years ago was covered by water. To look at it now you would think that to be crazy, yet I've seen fossils from around here that prove just that. The sandstone in this area is one of those proofs. All you need do is chip away at it for a few minutes and your bound to find a couple of fossilized snail shells. Over the eons Mother nature and a few gazillion fish dropped layer upon layer of debris to the bottom of the rivers to build up this rock that I am trying so diligently to destroy. Welcome to the modern Delta!
Chipping away with my sledge I chuckle to the rock but mostly to myself, “Your the one made out of fish shit and I'm the one who smells bad! Go figure.”
I'm pretty good at building things, and working with my hands but my real talent comes to light when I get to tear shit up. Ever since I was old enough to hold a power tool in my hands and not fall over from it's weight, I have been repairing things. Air-conditioning, plumbing, electrical, or even construction, you name it and I have either built it, repaired it, or torn it up. This is one of those tear shit up times.
My placement exams in high school were excellent. So good in fact that Navy recruiters showed up at my house one night uninvited and wouldn't leave until my dad finally told them he would break my legs before he let me enlist. Truth be known, if they would have let me be a fly-boy I would have left with them that night. With my near-sited vision, the best offer they could give me was the choice to work on any aircraft they had. Sorry boys, not good enough.
I failed high school short of the required credits by one half point. In Phys-ed. I was told that I didn't dress out in shorts and a t-shirt one too many times. The sad part about this was that even though I'm sure that I dressed out every single day, all we ever did was sit on the bleachers and play cards. Hell, half the time our gym teacher just sat in his office and read the paper. He would pull his chair close to the door, prop his feet on the desk and lean back so he had a straight line of sight into the gym. Just in case a fight broke out he could come save some poor nerd from a severe anal rash caused by an atomic wedgie.
I finally start to figure out the best way of dismantling this fine piece of nature. I realize as I swing away at it that if I bring the hammer in at an angle to the top edge of the stone it tends to chip a nice big piece of it loose that I can then just slide off onto the ground and out of the way. This method is proving itself rather productive. Chip and then slide. Chip and then slide.
The stone itself stood about two feet high and about three feet round. With each chip I am able to knock loose a piece about six inches around and about half an inch thick. I start at the right and work my way across to the left which takes about fifteen minutes a layer. At this rate I figure with my mental slide rule that it will take me exactly two lifetimes to get this thing low enough to drive over.
When your hung over most people tend to find a deep appreciation for their hearing and wish themselves dead due to the fact that sound has decided to no longer be their friend. Luckily for me the sound of a sledgehammer hitting a piece of sandstone is remarkably, damn near silent. Just a nice deep thud is all you seem to get.
About an hour into my slug fest my spirits begin to brighten a bit. I decide to step back and look at my work, or should I say destruction.
“Your losing this one big guy!” I tell the rock through an acrid cloud of stench.
The stone is actually starting to get smaller.
I tend to talk to myself, and animals and... well... pretty much anything around my when I'm all alone. Why I'm not really sure. I've just always done it. I don't usually answer but on occasion, when the alcohol is plentiful I have been told that I tend to hold quite humorous arguments with myself. I did try to stop once. It was a couple of years ago when I had found myself fulfilling the most basic cliché in the world by asking a fence post what it had done with the key to the camp. In my defense, this is where we have always hid the key, hanging on a rusty nail driven into the post out of sight so that nobody knows where it is. Since I always put it back where it came from and no one else was at the camp that day it only made sense that the post had hid it somewhere else so that people would quit fondling its backside every time they came to visit.
“You just let me get a swig of Gatorade and I'll be right back to cleaning your clock!”
I walked over to the van where my ice chest sat and pulled out a drink. Took a few gulps and wiped the cold dew covered bottle across my sweaty forehead. Once again my armpits violated my personal nasal space.
“Good grief I need a bath.” I whimpered aloud. “Just a few more hours and you can soak in the tub all you want mister.”
I resume my position straddled over the stone and commence “Operation Clock Cleanage”.
On the third swing my life changes forever.
Everyone has those defining moments in their life where they know that nothing is ever going to be the same. I know this, you read about it all the time. Like the guy who had to cut his own arm off to free himself from a rock that had pinned him down. What else was he supposed to do? No one was near him to lend a hand. Okay. Poor taste of words, but hopefully you see my point. That guy at some point heard in his head a voice that said to him, “You do realize things have just changed for the rest of your days don't you?”
Well I'm telling you that right now I should be hearing that voice of warning, but I'm not. There should be a bell ringing over head to mark this moment in my life, but it's not. The fact is that it will probably be a few hours before it starts to even sink in. This simple hammer swing has just changed the game I'm playing called “Life” into a race.
“What was that?” I asked no one in particular.
The normal deep thud that I was so used to hearing with each swing was replaced with a click. Not the soft gentle sort, more of a deep loud crack muffled by the stone itself so that all you hear is “click” but you feel in your chest a deep hollow “thump.”
I stand there looking at it for a moment and realize what had happened. I had hit the stone just so that it gave way along a perfectly flat layer about four or five inches down. Perfectly smooth. At this realization I become excited about the decrease in time that I may need to spend here beating this thing into rubble. If I can continue to find these “sweet spots” in the stone I might be done with this much quicker than previously estimated. All I have to do now is slide this layer off the top and start looking for another “sweet spot” and smack away.
I kneel down and find good spots to place my hands for a shove. I push as hard as I can and the slab starts to slide out of the way. As the slab moves I see that the stone looks different underneath. I can't see why due to the concentration I have on pushing. When the slab finally flips out of the way and I stand up I realize there is no “sweet spot.” There is a perfectly good reason the slab had broken free so cleanly.
The stone is perfectly smooth. The reddish color is now just a frame around a new color. Silver. Or, maybe even, Aluminum. Not sure exactly, but what I do know is that it is metallic and almost a perfect circle with the top and bottom cut off. Perfectly smooth with the top of my stone.
“What in the crap are you doing in there?”
What else can I say to it? I mean this piece of metal does not belong here. In fact if it's aluminum there is no way it could be here. Aluminum is a mixture of metals that are made by man. Therefore if this stone is, let's just say, two or three hundred thousand years old then it's safe to say that this piece of aluminum does not belong here. Again... not a geologist. Nerd yes, Geologist no.
Still, this ain't right!
“Okay, you're a conversation piece for later, and right now I'm in the middle of a very important Clock oriented mission.” I tell the piece of metal. “So let's just get you out of there so I can focus on the task at hand. But don't think there won't be an interrogation later!”
I pick up a chisel that I have within reach and start to work my way up one of the curved sides staying a good inch or so away so that I do not gouge it. Maybe I'll leave a little stone around the edge to prove to the guys that I actually did pull this out of a rock.
After about two or three minutes the metal pops loose. Almost perfectly clean of any stone. I carry it over to the van, set it on the windshield and lift the wiper blade and slide it underneath so that it will not walk away.
I go back to work on the stone and set my mind on destruction. That doesn't last very long, because I keep looking back over my shoulder every few minutes to make sure that piece of metal isn't climbing off the van to come after me. It's creeping me out and consuming my thoughts. What in the hell was an eight inch round and half inch thick flat piece of oxidized aluminum with scratches all over it doing a foot or so deep in a hunk of rock? I keep working for the next couple of hours trying my best to push it out of my mind.
In Baldwin County Alabama an afternoon shower in the summer is something you could just about set your watch by. Today is no different. I can smell it coming. The stone is broken down enough now that I'm pretty sure the van could make it over without me having to buy a new transmission. That's when the rain starts coming down in frozen daggers.
I grab my tools up and sprint for the van. Since it is ninety something degrees outside, and the rain feels as though it's made out of freshly sharpened ice cubes right out of the freezer, I'm pretty sure I look like a girl trying to not get her Sunday dress all wet as I dance for the van and jump in.
I slam the keys in the ignition, fire her up, grab the gear shift and put it in drive. All I keep thinking about is the hot shower waiting for me back at the camp. I can't see through the windshield, with the rain coming down so hard, so I flip on the wipers and finally remember the aluminum plate. The sound is horrible as it scratches it's way across the windshield. Like a recording of nails on a chalkboard through one of Motley Crew's crappy sounding guitar amps after they had bashed all the speakers in.
I immediately open the door and grab it on the next wiper pass and slam the door back as quick as humanly possible. As I look at it in my hand I suddenly realize the thing is sizzling and popping and my reflexes throw it across the van into the floor board.
“Oh, there's a good genius. You idiot!” I scream at myself with the realization that I just threw something that may very well be catching fire on the floor board.
In the back of my head I remember that some metals will catch on fire if they are exposed to air or water, which ones I don't know but I don't want to find out at this very moment. I reach between the seats to the pile of tools and grab one of my work gloves to get that thing out of the van before it burns the thing to the ground.
Leaning over I grab it in the folded glove and reach for the door handle to pitch it out. As I am about to throw the door open I realize it is no longer sizzling. In fact it is now kind of glossy and heavier. When I picked it up, after chiseling it out of the stone earlier, I had thought that it was Aluminum because it was so light. Now, however it seems to be darker and shinier and heavier -- almost like hematite.
I flip on the overhead light and that's when I hear the bell ring and the voice of warning comes out of my own mouth.
“This damn thing has writing on it!”
Chapter 2
My tiny little brain is moving faster than it should, and the duct tape holding it together is starting to peel away because of the severe heat that my little meat marble is putting off trying to understand what I had just seen.
Driving back to the camp house I found myself making it in record time. I set the... “tablet” on the couch in the TV room. I keep wanting to refer to it as a disk as thoughts of it roll around in my head. It's not a disk though, since the top and bottom are lopped off. Or is it the left and right sides?
“It” sat quietly on the couch and didn't say a word. I'm nearly expecting “it” to sit up and start singing “Hello my honey, Hello my baby, Hello my ragtime gal...” or something along those lines. But “it” just sat there.
I went into Mr. Franklin's bedroom where the bathroom was and started undressing to hop in the shower. In the process of disrobing I kept looking through the open door to the couch to make sure “it” was still there.
“This is just creeping me out.” I said as I slammed the door so that it would stop looking at me with half my clothes off.
Showers are wonderful by their nature, but a post hangover and sweat fest shower with the fringe benefit of stench removal is the best. The cream on top was the fact that sometimes the wives come up here and they always bring good soaps and shampoos so that we can smell like decent people when we get out of the shower. If it was left strictly to the guys here at the camp there would probably only be a half used bar of Ivory soap to handle everything including brushing teeth and washing dishes.
I dry off and step into some clean jeans and a tee shirt.
“I feel like a new man!” I exclaim. “Honey go find me a new man!”
Thats one of my more famous lines around my house. I yell it to my wife upon stepping free of a more exhilarating shower and watch her chuckle and shake her head on the way out of the bathroom. If anything I can always make her laugh.
Cindy is a wonderful woman. Quick to laugh and hardly ever an angry expression about her. She lives by the old adage that “If you can't say something nice, you might as well keep your damn mouth shut.” Cindy has spunk. No, Cindy is spunk! A sense of humor for days. And on the day that God decides to fire potatoes at you at three hundred miles an hour, She will be the one tossing you a tennis racket so you could have fries.
Her parents are the well rounded over protective sort and why they ever let her marry me I couldn't tell you.
“Mr. Jenkins, I'd like the honor of marrying your daughter.” I said eight years earlier.
“Would I be able to stop you?” Came the response.
How do you respond to that?
The best part is that I'm pretty sure they have come to think of me as a son. Now being from Alabama a son marrying a daughter is something we just don't like to talk about. Not to mention the fact that she was adopted. That little tid-bit of data caused quite a few jokes to roll around with my friends. Luckily my dad was nowhere near Huntsville during the time of her conception.
It was Cindy that was rolling through my mind right now. She and I are huge book readers and Sci-Fi is usually at the top of the list for us both. This weird little tablet is quickly falling right into that genre. So needless to say she is on my mind as I creak the door open and peer out half expecting to see the tablet standing there with a steak knife from the kitchen.
“Still there I see.” I say to the tablet actually quite relieved. “You and I are gonna set some ground rules here in a few minutes.”
I make my way passed the couch and into the kitchen to make myself a bologna sandwich and another Canadian and Coke. I keep leaning back into the TV room every thirty seconds or so to keep an eye on “thin and creepy” out there. Just waiting for it to burst into flames or morph into a demon and incinerate me where I stand.
I'm not doing justice to my friends by calling this a “hunting camp.” The fact is, most peoples' houses aren't this nice. Room for eight, satellite TV, separate bath and kitchen, and let's not forget to mention twelve hundred and eighty six of the most prime acres of hunting land in Alabama. To call this a “hunting camp”, would just be down right rude. This is a redneck paradise. As the old addage goes, if the “camo snake boots” fit... Needless to say, I love it here.
I grab my kitchen and cocktail creations, along with a bag of chips and a big bottle of water from the fridge, and make my way back to the TV room.
Flopping down on the couch by the tablet I flip on the TV and start scrolling through the Dish menu to find something to occupy my mind while I eat. As usual I find some science show on the History Channel, which I love by the way, showing the complete and unedited history of the forty billion dollar a year coin operated vending machine history. Everything from old moving picture machines built in the 1920's to modern video games. I've always loved technology and silly shows like this grab my attention and hold on with almost no effort at all.
To me the show is exciting but the shiny little tablet sitting on my right keeps popping into my thoughts every few minutes. My dinner is gone and it is time to start investigating. I flip off the tube and turn to the specimen to begin a little Q and A.
“All right you. Let's see what makes you tick.” I said, lifting the tablet into my lap.
The writing I spoke of before is like nothing I have seen before. If it is writing at all. More like hieroglyphs or pictograms.
“Let's see we covered whether or not I'm a geologist. How 'bout a linguist? Nope. Not a linguist either.”
I slowly turn the tablet over and over in my hands looking for any other form of markings. Nothing. In fact it seems that all the little scratches I had seen on it earlier, when it was a dull piece of Aluminum, have all seemed to vanish. “Smooth as a baby's butt.” I whispered to myself.
Picking myself off the couch, tucking the tablet under my arm, and grabbing the dead remains of my dinner, I make my way over to the kitchen table. I can the trash and sit down for a little closer inspection here where the light is much better.
“Let's see what water does for you this time.”
I open the bottle of water I had taken from the fridge and wet down a paper napkin that is sitting on the table. I push the tablet away to a distance of about an arms length and touch the paper towel to it's edge, gritting my teeth and squinting as I do so. Nada. Nothing. No smoke, no sizzle, nothing. I pull the tablet back to myself and take a closer look. Where I had touched the towel to it I can see an obviously darker spot.
“Well, let's just see what a drop of water will do?”
I open the bottle and pour some water into the cap. Picking up the towel I dip it's already moist end into the cap and let it soak up a good bit. Careful not to shake the drop off the end I hold the towel over the tablet. A tap of the index finger and the drop falls right onto the middle of the tablet. It doesn't sizzle or pop. It just seems to soak right into the shiny, almost perfect finish of the smooth surface and produce a dark spot.
“You're kidding me, Right?”
Okay. Time for something a little more bold.
Turning my back to the table I walk over to the sink, turn on the faucet and plug in the stopper. I retrieve the tablet and when there was about an inch or two of water standing I submerge it and turn off the water. Nothing. Well maybe nothing.
Small little bubbles form on the surface of the tablet. Nothing big, just as if water is beginning to boil in a pot. I reach into the water and brush them away to find that the tablet is not warm, nor is it cold. That to me seems odd. If this thing is producing some kind of chemical reaction there should be some kind of energy release. Usually in the form of heat.
I decide to let it sit for a moment and do three things. For one I reach in the drawer under the microwave and get out the Bar-BQ tongs just in case this thing decides to pull another sizzle-fest. I open the door from the kitchen to the outside so I have somewhere to throw it. And finally I get my drink from the table and swallow it in two big gulps hoping that might steady my nerves.
On returning to the sink I notice that the fine layer of minuscule bubbles has returned. I reach into the sink and wipe them away. As I do so I think I see movement. At first my head says “bug.” There must have been a small bug in the sink when I turned on the water, and now it must be crawling across the tablet where the stamped glyphs are. I wipe all the bubbles away from that area and make sure there is nothing on the tablet. No bug.
I wait and watch. Nothing. Just as I am turning my eyes to look away, I see it happen.
“What the...” I breath, and jam my hand into the water and grab the tablet. I saw the glyphs change. The change was tiny. Almost imperceivable.
The glyphs make a line right across the top at the flat edge. About two thirds of the way across that row there are two small triangles inverted one atop the other, almost an hourglass shape. It seems as though it has changed. With the tablet about six inches from my face I can see the hourglass shape is shaded in almost completely to the top. Water is still dripping from the tablet.
I run my index finger over the glyph, trying to see what is happening. At the very top of the upper triangle there is a thick line. Thicker than all the others that make up the shape.
I look at it pulling it as close to my face as possible, almost to the point that it goes out of focus. The thick line at the top of the triangle thins out right before my eyes. I hear a loud “RING-RING” come from somewhere and instantly go blind.
Chapter 3
Somewhere in the bright white fog I can hear Cindy calling my name. “Tim... Tim? Whats wrong with you?”
I'm lying on the cold ground. There seems to be something sitting on my chest. Not too heavy, but there, just the same. It's hard to move. I open my mouth to respond to her. The only thing that seems to come out is a moan.
“Tim, can you hear me?” she says seemingly far away.
I try sitting, but my arms feel so weak that they hardly want to cooperate in pushing my body up. I push as hard as I can, make a little bit of progress, then relax and decide to wait a second or two before trying again. Bad mistake. As soon as I relax the back of my head touches the ground, and the pain shoots from the floor through the back of my head, ricochets off the inside of my forehead and on it's way down to my toes via my spine it seems to grab both of my optic nerves and yank as hard as it can.
That's when I finally re-develop the ability to move and scream.
“Holy shit on a stick!” I screamed. Grabbing the back of my head I shoot up into a sitting position and pull my knees to my chest.
The fog starts to recede a little and I realize that I'm sitting on the kitchen floor.
“TI-MO-THY RICH-ARD-SON.” I hear her scream through the big yellow telephone handset lying on the floor beside me. “PICK-UP-THE-PHONE.”
“What?” I mumbled, loosely holding the handset to my ear with my free hand, the other cradling the throbbing spot on the back of my head.
“What do you mean what? I've been yelling into this phone for... I don't know how long, and all I hear coming from you are a bunch of grunts!” She said, clearly sounding perturbed.
“What?” I said as I realized she was actually talking to me.
Her voice softened a little. “Honey, have you been drinking?”
“What?” I said a third time just to get her goat.
I hear her sigh heavily in response to my deliberate attempt to antagonize her. She pauses for a moment then asks, “Why didn't you answer the phone?”
“Oh that! Well, uh... Good question. Is that the only reason you called? Cause I'm a little busy here right now trying to figure out who just sucker punched me.”
“What?!”
“Oh please stop asking that question it's really becoming irritating.” I said pushing her a little further.
“You know what I mean Tim. What are you talking about?” She said really starting to get irritated.
“All right, calm down.” I said, not wanting to push her any further. “All I know is that I was bent over the sink looking at something with every bit of attention I own and this big ass Ma' Bell of a phone rang and scared the beejezus out of me. I guess I stood up so fast that I just kept on going back and grabbed the phone on the way down to try and break my fall. Got a nice knot on my noggin though, it's gonna be a beaut!”
“So you have been drinking.”
“No. Well... I mean yeah. But that's not what caused my recent floor dancing routine.”
“Are you okay?” she asked actually starting to sound relieved and concerned.
“Yeah. I'm fine, but I'm probably gonna have to replace a tile or two where my head hit the floor. What time is it anyway?”
“About seven thirty... That's why I called. I needed to know what time you were planning on being home tomorrow. Bert and Ernie called to see if we wanted to come over for dinner.”
That is an inside joke,and if you tell anybody, I'll kill you. We don't actually know anyone by the name of Bert or Ernie. However our best friends do happen to be named Curt and Bernie. You do that math. It's hilarious to us, but we have decided to keep it between ourselves so that they won't kick our friendship to the curb.
Curt and I have known each other since high school. He's one of those guys you can bounce anything off of, just to see if it makes sense. He's just that smart. The fact that we both share the exact same twisted sense of humor has made life in the “best friend” category pretty sweet. When he and Bernadette hooked up they were a match made in heaven. Evidentially she loved sex and he was a guy. Perfect for each other. Actually Bernie was perfect for him. He always worked best when paired up with strong, hot women, and Bernadette would not back down from anything she believed in, ever. That includes Curt. Oh, and she was hot. Perfect.
“That's fine.” I said. “I finished clearing the trail a little while ago so I guess I'm done. I'll head back in the morning around nine or ten if that's okay with you.”
“Fine with me.” She said perking up a little bit. “I love you Honey. I'll see you in the morning.”
“No! Wait.” I said remembering the tablet that is now cradled between my stomach and my legs. “I found something... something I need to tell you about.”
I go through the story from start, to present time, and make sure to leave nothing out. Even the parts about feeling as though I'm being watched.
Cindy listens and acknowledges me all the way through the story and calmly says. “ Make sure your sober up before you try and drive home tomorrow.”
“I'm not drunk!” I blurt with a voice a little whinier than necessary. “I'm dead serious.”
“Okay fine, I believe you. But just remember our deal. If they come, you better come and get me or your gonna be in some deep doo.” She says referring to an agreement we had made years ago.
During a conversation about aliens, and whether or not they exist, Cindy and I made a pact that if one or the other of us was ever abducted, or preferably 'invited,' onto an alien space craft that I or she, whichever of us happened to be in that position, would demand that the aliens go and pick up the other. You know just to keep the peace in our marriage. Could you imagine? Oh by the way honey, I was taken on a space ride last night! Really? How nice for you! I want a divorce!
“What? Oh, yeah most definitely. Don't you worry. It'll be a family affair. Me, you, and the boys jetting around your anus!” I say referring to our two dogs as 'The Boys.' “I love you, and don't worry, I'll see you in the morning.”
“I love you too, Honey. Bye.” I hear her say into her phone. With an almost silent click I realize the line is gone and once again I'm alone at the camp.
I stand up with the receiver in hand and grasp the tablet in my other to keep it from falling to the floor. I place the receiver back on it's hook and touch the back of my head gently to see if there is any blood. Nope, No blood, but man does that hurt. Luckily my thinning hair hasn't receded that far back yet so no one will see the bruise I'm sure is forming.
I grab my bottle of water and walk back into the TV room. Flop onto the couch and start turning the tablet over in my hands. The glyphs have not changed anymore that I can see. Leary this time but still wanting to know what is going on with this thing I pull it up to my face for a closer look. The engraved images are perfect. What I mean by that is that the edges of the stamps are pristine. No dye marks, no scratches, nothing that shows wear or any imperfections in the tooling. I have seen a lot of coins go through my hands and not one of them could even begin to compare to the perfection that I'm holding in my hands right now.
I press a thumbnail into the edge of one of the glyphs to test the materials strength. I don't see any impression forming. In fact I'm pressing so hard that the base of my nail starts to turn blue and begins to hurt. That's when I get the idea to try a different angle of approach.
I pull out my trusty Gerber pocket knife and unfold the two and a half inch blade. This is just my little work knife. I've had it for a few years now and love it. It is just the right size that I can hide it in my carry-on luggage if Cindy and I go for a trip. I've done it before too. It seems that as long as you have enough camera equipment or other metallic junk in the bag no one seems to notice.
I know this might sound weird to some people but whenever I travel by car I usually have a pocket knife, a pair of handcuffs, a pistol, a lock pick kit, one or two digital cameras and a bag full of hand tools with which I can fix just about anything. The perfect spy kit. Not that I use them every time we go for a ride, but everything in the list I just gave you has been absolutely beneficial at one time or another. Just the fact that I'm a guy's kind of guy gives me the knowledge to know that if it were up to them every 'real' man out there would want that list of items with them at all times. Since I make my living fixing things for people, I do have most of those things with me all the time. Makes life a lot easier.
“Let's see what your made of.” I say to the tablet as I place it between my knees to keep it from squirming away from me while I perform surgery. “This won't hurt a bit.
I tap the blade to the edge of the tablet and here the distinct sound of metal on metal. Very dense metal for that matter. 'Tink, Tink', but no ringing afterwards. Definitely dense, and definitely solid. With the knife in my right hand I put the edge of the blade to the upright edge of the tablet and drag it towards my chest. It feels a little like metal on glass. Almost like the imperfections in the blade are grinding across the tablets edge. I lift the knife out of the way and look at the edge. Not a scratch. Not even a nick.
“If I can just cut off a small piece of you, I can send it off to the University and get you analyzed. That way I'll know exactly what I'm dealing with.” I say to the tablet.
Still holding the tablet upright between my knees I brace my left palm against the flat edge closest to my chest. With the knife in my right hand I touch the blade to the edge about half way down. I push down while pulling it towards me and feel it catch. In that same pulling and pushing down fashion I increase the pressure and begin to see the slightest nick starting to form on the tablet at the knifes edge. I pull harder to the point I can feel the tendons in my neck standing out and my teeth beginning to grit.
What happens next is in no way normal. I have cut wood, metal, glass, and just about every piece of material known to man. All of these have there unique characteristics. All of them different. Yet all of them are the same in that none of them vary in their density while you are cutting them. The material in this tablet between my knees went from being so hard that I could barely even form a nick in it with my knife, to the consistency of warm butter. Instantly.
My left hand that was bracing the tablet closest to my chest rushed forward towards the knife. My right hand holding onto the knife with white knuckles sliced through the tablet like a razor through a sheet of notebook paper. In this instant of time I see it all happen in slow motion. My right thumb on top of the blade helps keep the sliver cut from the tablet from flying off as the knife careens into the palm of my left hand. Even though it's all in slow motion there is nothing I can do to stop it. I feel the blade as it goes in and even see it as it comes out the other side. No pain. Well, in that instant there is no pain. About three millionths of a second later the pain receptors in my hand finally wake up and start faxing out status reports about the current puncture situation in their vicinity.
“Ooowwwww, Crap!” I scream as I leap from the couch and sprint into the kitchen with the knife still sticking through my palm. “SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!” No other words seem to be coming to mind. That's okay, I'm certain I'll be able to pull out something more colorful when I pull this thing out of my hand.
My first instinct is to turn on the water and stick my hand under the faucet, but by some streak of genius my brain kicks in and says no.
“Unfiltered well water, bad idea.” So I grab the dish towel and hold it under my hand. I kick open the cabinet and look for some peroxide. Nothing but two bottles of Canadian Mist. Just the idea of pouring that stuff on my hand makes the pain in my hand double. I run to the bathroom amazed at how much blood is starting to pool into the dishrag. I pop the medicine cabinet open with my elbow and see a box of Band-Aids.
“Yeah, right.” I mutter to the box as the pain in my hand steps up about five more notches. With my right foot I edge the cabinet door below the bath sink open to find nothing but toilet paper.
“Damn it!” I scream, and wouldn't you know it, that too seems to make my hand hurt more.
I run back to the kitchen swerving like a punch drunk boxer from the pain in my hand. I grab one of the two bottles of Canadian Mist and open the screw cap with my teeth. I spit the cap into the sink remove the towel and lay my skewered hand into the sink. Not at all on top of my coordination game at the moment due to the pain coursing through my body, I hear the tip of the blade tap the bottom of the sink as I do so. “AARRRRGHHHHhhh!” The scream just kind of trails off as the first real tears start to form on the edge of my eyes.
I grab the bottle, take three or four huge gulps, and set it back down. A small weak bleary eyed laugh starts to trickle out of me as I look at my hand.
The knife hadn't hit any bone. By the angle it came at my hand, I could see that it cut about a two inch slit before it finally punched through the other side of my hand.
Not wanting to think about it for too long, because I know I might change my mind, I reach down and grab the knife and snatch it out. I can't even scream. I know I have plenty of air in my lungs because it is furiously trying to escape my body along with the contents of my bladder and stomach as well. I believe that what is happening is that my body has just reached a magic sort of red line on the pain meter where it decides to stop all movement, breathing, and blood flow so “subconscious” me can decide what to do next, since the “conscious” me is obviously doing a very poor job at the moment.
The only body function that did not seem shut down at the moment is my sweating. In fact I believe it has actually amplified because nobody else is using their share of bodily energy resources. The sweat glands on my forehead started producing water like they were trying out for the Olympic sweating team.
As the first drop left my brow and floated to the sink it made a “plink” noise and that seemed to be the signal my body needed to relinquish it's grip and let me take control again.
I grab the bottle and pour it over my hand. The pain buckles my knees and I here them hit the cabinet door below. Sheer will, and the skin of my forearms pressing against the sink, keep me from falling to the floor again as I watch the liquor pour over my hand.
As the bottle glugs away I can see the blood washing off to reveal the sliver from the tablet still in the palm of my hand. I set the bottle aside to reach for the piece and watch as the final straw lands on this camels back.
The sliver of dark metal melts into a black liquid as the gaping wound in my hand closes around it and heals before my very eyes. That's when I check out of Hotel Consciousness and hit the kitchen floor for the second time tonight.
Chapter 4
In his cold dark office Hicks tends to nod off quite a bit more that he should. The flicker of lights from the server racks and computer monitors don't do much to help him stay awake. The constant steady hum of cooling fans seem more and more like a lullaby as the nights wear on.
Ever since signing on for this, the most recent post in a list of thankless posts, he has done nothing but regret it. The Special Department for the Acquirement of Ancient Technology, SDAAT for short, is where he has landed. The promise of field work is the only thing that has kept him from filing for a transfer. The Old Man keeps telling him that he will get his chance soon enough.
The job was going to be incredible, or so he thought. Ever since he had made the rank of “7 Granted Clear” this was the job he wanted. He had picked it out of a list of departments that his handler had shown him. This was above military ranks known in the normal world. This was above the C.I.A. He had worked his skinny little ass off coming up through the ranks of the company. Not the normal route of kissing ass mind you, but by the tough route, learn it all and answer every question before his boss knew what to ask.
He had been recruited out of high school by a company called Alchemy Holdings LLC. out of Richmond, Virginia at age fourteen. The two guys who had come to his parents place back in Kentucky were not much older than him. They gave him this pitch that if he could put up with just few months of bullshit he could work in any field that he wanted, with the most advanced technology on the planet. Little did he know those few months involved a C.I.A. sponsored “boot camp” made special for nerds just like him.
His parents didn't like the idea of him going to work in another country, England is what they were told, but the four million dollar sign on bonus seemed to sway their opinion dramatically. And off he went. Six years later at the ripe old age of twenty and here he sits with some of Americas best kept secrets in his noggin and very few people he could share them with.
Once he had made 7GC though, he was officially off the map. It wasn't an easy task though, and evidently he was the youngest to ever pull it off. Constant psych evaluations and testing mixed in with weeks on end of immersion training in computer and spoken languages and tons of spacial recognition courses. It had almost worn him so thin that he thought he was going to break. Not so much his body, but his brain. Three months. Three friggin months, he had spent in “the tank” as they call it. Only spoke to three people the entire time, the psych, the doctor, and the immersion control computer. He knew there were others out there just beyond the mirrored walls but it was protocol. As few people as possible while he was being trained meant less people who could screw up his brain.
It wasn't like he had been brainwashed, he knew that wasn't the fact, it was more like they had made the smartest things about him even smarter. He could sit behind a computer now with 4 million lines of butchered up code for some black ops satellite and literally “see” the glitch. Shit like that.
Once that was all completed he was brought outside for the first time in months by his new handler and was given a sheet of paper. There were seven lines on it, each one more bizarre than the next. From “Department of Non-Terrestrial Technology Disbursement” to “Department of Populous Fear and Control.” When he saw the text reading “Ancient Technology” he knew where he wanted to be.
Most people go through their lives never even imagining the things that he had seen. Hollywood had come close to depicting things he had experienced, but they always seemed to get the “when” wrong as far as the technology was concerned. When he had gotten settled into his office at SDAAT six months ago, Foresythe, his new boss, “The Old Man” came in and handed him a binder the size of “The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.”
“Study up kid,” He had said. “At least you'll know what to expect.”
And study he did. Even though the binder was organized like a teenage boys bedroom, it contained the most amazing things he had ever heard of. Simply amazing. From what was gathered in that binder you could write science fiction stories till the world ended three of four more times before you ever ran out of material to work with. He had spent two days with almost no sleep pouring himself into the binder and finally had to set it down and walk away. A lot of the binder was photocopies of hand written looseleaf sheets but most of it was typed. Literally “typed” on an old IBM Selectric like the one sitting in the corner of his office. Upon asking why it wasn't just put into a computer file, Forsythe told him it was for security.
“You see, there's only four of those binders, if this information were ever to grace the disks of a hard drive, it could be hacked. As long as it stays in that binder, and that binder stays within these walls, no one could ever get to it from the outside.”
He tried to argue that a stand alone machine with no network access would work better, and that's when Foresythe showed him something that would make him never doubt him again.
“Okay, smarty pants, go into you office. Do whatever you want to your computer that you can think of to keep it from being hacked, and type something. Anything. Then delete it. We'll see just how good you are.”
Hicks said okay and strolled out of his office with a grin on his face. Too bad it didn't last very long. He ripped open the cheap government bought Dell and immediately took out the network card, shorted out the onboard network interface, checked the mother board for any wireless chips, even went so far as disconnecting any peripheral disk drives. He cracked open the keyboard, and monitor to make sure they didn't have any wireless transmitters. He even went so far as to disconnect the mouse just in case. He loosened the hard drive and set it on the edge of the case with just the power wires and the data cable keeping it from falling to the desk. Finally satisfied, he sat down with his broken keyboard and the mangled mess of computer and monitor and hit the Windows button. Tabbed through to Programs then down to Notepad and hit enter.
Once it opened on the screen he typed in three words. Told – You – So.
The second he hit the period key, he snatched the data cable out of the back of the hard drive with the power cable following only a few milliseconds behind. As the cables fell free from his hand and hit the desk he heard Forsythe yell from two doors away.
“Yeah you told me alright, but you ain't proved shit to me yet boy!”
Bested by a sixty year old man, Hicks had stomped right back into Foresythe's office and demanded to know how he had done it. The old man held up a small bowl made of some kind of black plastic and told the kid to sit.
“First thing first,” he said to Hicks “I asked to be put on that list you chose from and whether or not you realize it, I'm on your side. If you've got a question, all you have to do is ask and I'll be happy to tell.” The old man took a deep breath and kicked his feet up onto the desk. He held his breath for a moment, eying Hicks down and slowly let it out, seeming to relax in the process.
“I've read your file, I know how smart you are. But you've got to understand that there are things that you don't know yet. This little dish in my hand is an electromagnetic receiver. It can pick up the tiniest of EM signals. It's probably the most sensitive one I have ever seen. Combine it with some software developed by a nineteen year old German kid about six years ago, and you can actually see any computer monitor that is in it's direct path. All monitors put off radiation, some more than others.”
He was shocked. Stunned even. Why didn't he know about this?
“This dish was developed in the past few years. It's just a toy compared to the stuff that was developed eons ago that you've been reading about in that binder. And that's why we have to protect it. As you capture and then research things, you will put your observations down on good ole' dead tree paper with a carbon copy for me. I'll duplicate it and pass it on to the two other binders. That's how we keep our jobs. Comprende?”
He stared at the old man for what seemed like an hour and finally came to a conclusion.
“I'm sorry, I just haven't had that much experience with other people the last few years. If half the stuff in that binder is true, then I'm in.”
Foresythe smiled and said, “Don't mention it kid. Let's just get you onto your first project.”
Hicks could feel the hair on the back of his neck standing up as his imagination started to brew into a boil.
“You get to reorganize the binder! Ya know, Clear it all up. Turn it into a fine and dandy encyclopedia of all things Ancient and techy!”
Hicks could feel his heart kind of skip a beat for a millisecond thinking he had heard the best job on the planet. Then the words actually made it to his brain and became a solid recognizable thought. Office work? This old fart wanted him, a certified genius to do office work?
“I know it's bullshit work son, but it really needs to be done. With Gibbons down in Egypt for the past three weeks and me being the only one to hold down the fort, not to mention the fact that I don't want to do it, that just leaves you.”
Hicks could feel a long cold headache coming on as the one sided conversation flowed on and on.
“Your chance will come soon enough son, and I'll be here most of the time to answer any questions you might have along the way.”
Foresythe laid out the way he wanted the binder to be. Set down the ground rules. “Only use the typewriter. Cut out any pictures from the old binder you need and Scotch tape them into the new binder. If you need to use a photocopier, only use the one in the back room, it's not digital so nothing can be hacked on it.”
The next six weeks were a teenage boys nightmare. Secretary and nurse maid to an overstuffed bureaucrat. There wasn't enough Starbucks or Redbull on the planet to make this exciting. But slowly over the next few months, things started to pick up. He started to see the light at the end of the tunnel one day when Gibbons returned from Egypt.