Destination: Earth: The Enigma Series, Part Three Page 7
The middle-aged, white-coated man shook his head, his somewhat flat face bearing a look of great frustration. “Absolutely nothing. No movement, radiation, or change in its composition. Nor anything in the environment around the box. So, what we have is an effect outside of our science. We’ll have to reconvene and figure out where to go next.”
Drew sighed and nodded. “Same brain wave patterns?”
“Exactly the same,” Lisa said. “Looks like the experiment is 100% repeatable.”
Drew’s communicator chimed. “Manfred again,” he muttered, before answering the call.
“How’s it going?” Manfred asked, his face conveying his tiredness.
Drew relayed the information from the experiment.
Manfred nodded. “That’s something, at least. What I really called for is to tell you that another sizable chunk of Q-carbon has been found, also buried in a field, a couple of miles from the first one.”
“Oh, really? Then we need to get it here ASAP. Have they dug it up yet?”
“They’re doing it now. There’s a crane standing by, and a helicopter to airlift it out of there, and then we’ll get it here in a couple of hours on a spaceplane.”
“Thanks, Manfred. How big is it?”
“About the same size as the first one.”
“Good. Then we can repeat the experiments on it individually, and then on both chunks together. Given the size of them, how is it possible no one discovered them until now?”
“They didn’t check that far away from the Rapture site. They went out about three miles, leaving around 80% of the debris field unchecked.”
“I sure wish the archaeologists would’ve found this stuff years ago. If they’d have sent in robots to look systematically, we could be in possession of ten tons of it.”
Manfred nodded. “It’s frustrating as hell, I know. But at least we have more of it now.”
“So maybe some good came of Storm’s close encounter with the Enigma after all -- which I lambasted him for at the time. Anyway, keep me posted.”
“I will.”
Manfred hung up and Drew turned to Lisa with a tight, thin-lipped smile. “Maybe now we’ll get somewhere.”
****
“Participant number one, please walk slowly past all the boxes, and report any unusual sensations or feelings,” Lisa said, looking through the one-way glass at the back of a tall man.
The man paced slowly forward, past the first of the large white cubes. “Nothing,” he said.
“Keep going.”
“I have to say, I’m not expecting much from this,” Drew said. “After all, I didn’t feel anything when I first entered the Enigma. It took about fifteen minutes.”
“Maybe gaining the sensitivity takes a little while?” Tom suggested quietly, so as not to interrupt the proceedings.
Drew nodded. “Could be.”
“Nothing,” the subject reported.
“Move to box three,” Lisa instructed.
“Nothing.” He proceeded slowly to the fourth cube. “Nada.”
“Okay, try number five,” Lisa said.
“That’s odd. I got a strange sensation. Very mild.”
Drew’s eyes opened wide.
“Describe it in more detail please,” Lisa’s said, a tremble in her voice.
“It was almost like my mind was being transported somewhere else, like a moment of déjà vu. And then it was over.”
Drew punched the air. “Oh, hell yes! We’ve obviously got a critical mass of the stuff that can affect more than just Storm and I!”
Lisa nodded, grinning broadly. “Okay, number one: go to the other end of the room, and then come back the same way, again reporting anything out of the usual.”
Drew drummed his fingernails on the desk, his heart pounding through the seemingly interminable time it took the young man to do as instructed.
“Okay, I’m feeling it again near box five,” he said.
“Very good number one,” Lisa replied. “Now walk forward very slowly, and tell us when the sensation stops.”
He did so. “It seems to terminate roughly five feet from the box.”
Several more iterations of the experiment proved consistently that the effect on him only extended five feet from the object.
“Very good, number one. Head back off the floor now.” She keyed an intercom button. “Subject number two, please proceed to the start.”
Two hours later, the experiment was put on hold. “Absolute consistency between all the subjects,” Drew said. “I still wish I understood how it worked.”
“You know,” Lisa said, turning to face Drew, “it could be the first tangible link between the scientific and the spiritual, if it operates on that plane.”
“It could. Just imagine if we were able to actually detect what was going on in that realm. Einstein would have been pleased, given he once instructed a doctoral student at Princeton Seminary to do their PhD dissertation on prayer. This gives us broad possibilities for study, be it metaphysical research or spiritual correlations to scientific inquiry.”
“Now there’s a thought,” Tom said.
“I have another theory I want to test now,” Drew said. “I’m thinking the subjects who’ve been sensitized to living material should now be able to detect smaller quantities of it—a single one of those debris chunks instead of both.”
“Excellent idea,” Lisa smiled. “All of the newly LM-aware people are still milling about in the waiting area. So if we can get a forklift to remove one of the LM chunks and put the other one in a different box, we could test that out right now.”
****
The hairs on Drew’s arms stood up as he broke out in goosebumps. “All ten were able to detect the reduced quantity of living material. We now have something of great importance: the ability to create more LM-aware people, even though they’re not as sensitive to it as Storm and I are. We can sensitize thousands to it and then send them out to search for more chunks of debris.”
“Yes. Am I right in thinking that neither you nor Storm have noticed any longer-term effects from LM exposure?” asked Lisa.
“There’s nothing unusual at all, unless I’m near the chunks of LM.”
“Then let’s do it. If there’s any more hidden out in the English countryside, we’ll find it. And who knows what’ll happen then?”
****
“Manfred!” Drew panted as he flung open the office door.
Manfred raised his eyebrows in shock. “What’s going on?”
“There’s living material away from the Rapture site!”
“Really?”
“One of the 15,000 volunteers searching the home counties of England had taken a break. She went to the Royal Albert Museum in London. One of the exhibits there is a six-foot section of the first undersea transatlantic cable, laid in 1865, and it’s living material!”
Manfred frowned. “An undersea cable? Surely, that wouldn’t have come from the alien ship? That makes no sense at all.”
“Unless”—Drew raised his right index finger—“aliens did indeed disembark, and turned that strip of cable, and who knows what else, into living material.”
Manfred considered that possibility as he rose and walked to the window. “Makes me wonder what else out there is LM.”
“And what are its functional properties? Besides throwing the human mind off kilter. What, for instance, can it do when there’s an alien in connection with it?”
Manfred spun on his heel to face Drew. “Good God! The cable! What if the whole length was LM, and they either listened to or manipulated the signals passing through?”
Drew’s face turned a sickly shade of green. “They could have been manipulating society by changing, or acting on, the transmissions. Manfred, this goes way beyond the approaching ship. There’s no telling what the aliens’ advance party could have done to us.”
“Or what they’re still doing to us now.”
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Should one man be judge
, jury and executioner? Lee Savage plots the perfect crime: hunt and kill his sister’s murderer using an armed drone. How will he cope with the diabolical situations he finds along the way, and will he kill the man responsible?
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Get Drone Man Free
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CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
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Author's Note
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