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“For our next agenda item, our newly appointed Director of the Nuclear Particle and Astrophysics facility, Dr. Suzanne Corellis, has managed to garner additional funding for continued particle physics research. The Sands Research Foundation has generously contributed a grant of three million dollars and a future scheduling of continued grants based on progress. While Dr. Corellis has stated the Sands Foundation is a conglomerate of various interested parties, we can only assume our own government might be contributing funds. Regardless, we are quite pleased with the progress we’ve been seeing since the appointment of Dr. Corellis.” (Dean of U.W. Operations at the monthly Board of Academics meeting.)
Giant Bald Eagles flew in a perfect circle above Leif as he hovered in the air. The sunlit sky was crystal clear and bathed in a blue almost as deep as the distant waters of Puget Sound. A full moon could barely be seen in the center of the circle of eagles. One of the eagles screeched loudly, pulled in its wings, and dove from the formation, heading directly toward Leif. His pulse raced as he looked around for someplace to hide, preferably a dense cloud, or trees would be perfect. There was nothing except the distant ground below. He could see the cone of Mt. Rainer, a small circle of jagged snow, thousands of feet directly below him. He looked to the horizon and spun around. There were no clouds as far as he could see. Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, the Olympics, and even Mt. Baker were showing peaks were above the curve of the distant horizon. How can I even breathe?
A shadow suddenly appeared over Leif as he impulsively flinched and looked up in time to see the eagle extend its talons toward his head. He flew backward, watching as the eagle pulled in its claws, and stroked the air with its massive wings. It turned and gazed at Leaf with one eye as it took another stroke of the air and climbed back up toward the circle of eagles. Leif continued to fall backward. He no longer feared the eagle, recognizing the attack was just a show of force. Mirroring the eagle’s graceful flight Leif let himself fall through the sky. It felt good to stop exerting himself against the pull of the earth below. The wind whistled in his ears and his hair rapidly fluttered against his forehead and face. He smiled as the eagle slipped back into formation of the flying circle above. They continued as if there had been no intrusion into their space.
Leif rolled over to face the ground and Mt. Rainer directly below. He continued to let himself fall through the air, spreading his arms and legs in the typical skydiver fashion. The crater of the mountain below grew in size. He lowered his legs, placed his arms at his sides, and focused his energy toward the ground. Nothing happened as he continued to fall. His speed increased. It was difficult to keep his legs together from the force of the rushing air. He attempted to cross and lock his ankles together, but as he pulled one foot forward the wind caught his leg and flipped him over. He started to tumble and spin from the momentum. Extending his arms and legs he managed to stop the tumble, but now he was on his back, facing up. He slightly pulled in his left arm and leg which rolled him back over to face the ground. The circle of the Mt. Rainer crater was much larger. I wonder if I can get a bullseye, Leif chuckled to himself, strangely not afraid of not being able to stop his descent. He was more afraid of being seen. I’m a black dot in the sky, falling like a meteor, about to smash into the center of the crater.
The sound of the rushing air past his ears stopped. He was still falling, but he could no longer feel the wind or hear it. A peacefulness fell upon him as he watched the crater get rapidly closer. He pulled himself into a ball and started to tumble. A shadow of blackness engulfed him and he caught a glimpse of claws as they wrapped around him. The end points of the claws pierced into his chest and legs and were suddenly gone as quickly as they had appeared. Leif felt himself fall into the mattress of his bed and rudely out of his peaceful dream. The bounce back off the bed caught him off guard. He had no idea he had been hovering so high above it. He opened his eyes and grabbed onto the blankets to keep from falling off, but it didn’t help. They draped over his shoulders as he slid off the side and ended up sitting on the floor with his legs straight.
“Wow,” Leif said while shaking the sleep from his head. He reached out for his cell phone from the bed-stand and checked the display. No new messages received. He selected Carina from his contact list and tapped on the ‘Call’ icon. Three rings and then voice mail. He couldn’t leave a voice message. There was no way he could convey in a voice message how he currently felt. Maybe she’s still sleeping, he tried to convince himself, but he felt something wasn’t right. Did I scare her off? It didn’t make any sense to him. He was certain Carina was just as in love with him as he was with her. Why is she ignoring me? Maybe something is wrong. He decided to send a text message for her to see when she woke up.
Going through withdrawals. I need a fix. ;)
***
“Suzanne, I think she’s waking up,” Matt stated.
Carina’s eyelids fluttered slightly. Black retaining straps held her securely on a wheeled gurney. She was on her back with a strap running across the top of her chest and over her arms, below the shoulders. Fur lined straps held her wrists and ankles. Another wide strap ran across the top of her legs, just below her pelvis. Several tubes extended from her mouth and were taped to the side of her cheek, and a IV drip line ran into one of her veins in the middle of her left arm. Electrode sensors were attached to each of her temples and a finger clip sensor dangled from the tip of her left ring finger.
Dr. Corellis walked over from her desk to the gurney where Carina was strapped down. She examined the monitors on stands behind the gurney. “Vitals look good and heart rate is coming up.” She stood beside Matt at the side of the gurney and gently grabbed Carina’s hand.
Carina tightened her grip on Dr. Corellis’ hand as she slowly gained consciousness. The memory of the struggle she had in her condo with the men in black washed over her like a cold bucket of water. She opened her eyes wide in fear and saw Dr. Corellis and a strange man standing next to her. Her adrenaline spiked, greatly increasing her heart rate. She tried to scream, but no sound would come out - only air wheezing past the tubes in her throat.
Dr. Corellis glanced at the monitors and back down at Carina. “It’s okay dear. We’re going to take good care of you.” She gently squeezed Carina’s hand. “We paralyzed your vocal cords for now. It’s for the best.”
Carina tried to pull her hand away from the doctor’s, but couldn’t due to the straps around her wrists. She violently shook her body against the gurney restraints, her hair flailed in all directions, and she almost shook loose the sensors attached to her head.
“Please dear, don’t do that.” The doctor calmly stated and patted Carina’s arm. “We’re not going to hurt you. If you act like this, we’ll just have to sedate you again.”
Carina stopped shaking and stared angrily at the doctor. She mouthed and whispered “Why?”
“We just need to do some studies and perform some experiments. You have a special talent dear, and we just want to understand it better.” She paused and gently moved Carina’s hair away from her eyes. “And I’m sure Leif would want us to take good care of you as well.”
Carina’s eyes became wet with tears with the realization Leif could be in danger as well.
“We have him close by and he’s working his magic programming for us. If you don’t cooperate with us I’m afraid we’ll have to turn our attention to him. Do you understand dear?”
One tear streamed from Carina’s eyes as she closed her eyelids. She nodded her head and whispered “Yes” hesitantly.
“That’s a good girl, Carina. We’ll make sure you’re comfortable.” Dr. Corellis winked at Matt. “All we want is a little cooperation.”
Matt pulled a cell phone out of a pocket and smiled as he noticed a text message showing on the display. “And we’ll make sure Leif knows you’re okay,” he added. He entered a reply to Leif’s message:
I understand. Need more time to think. Txt you l8r.
“Ah, the angst of young love,” Matt stated as he pressed the send button.
Carina opened her eyes and stared at him. She recognized his voice as one of the men in her condo when she was abducted. She raised her head and threw it back with a thump into the thin pillow of the gurney. Once she knew she had his attention she locked her gaze with his. She mustered a look of as much hate and distain as she could without being able to speak.
Matt chuckled, “She’s feisty. This will be...” he paused and looked at Dr. Corellis, and continued, “interesting.”
***
Leif managed to wake up, scarf down an energy drink and a microwaved breakfast sandwich, showered, dressed, and reached his car in under thirty minutes. He tossed his laptop backpack into the back seat as he felt his phone vibrate. Pulling it out of his pocket, he quickly read the message from Carina as he sat behind the wheel and started up the car. “More time?” he stated while tossing the phone onto the passenger seat and backing out of his parking spot. He pulled into traffic and grabbed the phone again, hoping he could get a long red light at the next intersection. It didn’t happen. The next three lights were green as he headed for the Amzoft office.
“Duh!” Leif exclaimed when he remembered he was supposed to be heading for the University of Washington campus instead of the Amzoft office. He almost stopped at a green light as he thought about making a u-turn. A car behind him honked. He waved at the driver behind and accelerated to the next intersection. Checking all his mirrors, he noticed a man in a mini-van on his right who looked familiar. The man was wearing thick rimmed retro sunglasses and had jet black hair styled into various angled points along his forehead and down past his ears. The exact same man he had seen outside of the Amzoft office over a month ago, when he was having coffee with Jewels. The man looked back at Leif for a second and then sped ahead as Leif quickly made a u-turn.
The sight of the man in the sunglasses sent a chill down Leif’s neck. He checked his rear-view mirror as he now headed in the correct direction toward the UW campus. He felt relief as he saw the back of the silver mini-van heading away. The next light turned yellow, then red as Leif approached. He stopped and took the opportunity to check the message from Carina on his phone again. He quickly typed out:
Miss you, but understand.
What else am I going to say? You say you love me and then disappear for two days? Leif shook his head and hesitantly pressed the send button before the stoplight changed back to green. Tossing the phone back onto the passenger seat while accelerating, he checked the rear-view mirror and noticed the silver mini-van was back and heading his direction, with five or six cars between them.
“Really?” Leif stated to the mirror. Instead of running and trying to lose the tail, Leif decided he would drive normally and keep an eye on the mini-van - even though he made direct eye contact a few minutes ago.
Leif continued driving to the UW campus at a slower pace than normal while keeping one eye on the tail. He almost lost him by accident when a stoplight caught the mini-van driver after Leif made it through the intersection. The driver managed to catch up again a few minutes later, still keeping his distance of four or five cars behind. Leif laughed and figured this guy was either very bad at tailing someone or just didn’t care about being spotted. “Why are you even tailing me?” Leif asked the reflection in the real-view mirror. Twenty minutes later Leif, and the mini-van driver, arrived at the university campus.
The campus was a mix of red brick buildings with grey stone accents surrounded by lush landscaping and plenty of benches and grass for lounging students. It was everything Leif had previously imagined as a typical college campus. Even the air seemed to smell intellectual as he slowly drove through, looking for the Astrophysics facility. Both students and faculty staff were on the move to their classes. He checked the rear-view mirror and noticed the driver in the silver mini-van was no longer there. Tapping his brakes, he slowed to a crawl while looking around for the mini-van, but it was nowhere in sight. A student on a skateboard took advantage of the near stop and crossed the street in front of Leif’s car.
Leif quickly lowered his side window and called out to the skateboarder. “Hey, excuse me. Can you tell me where the Astrophysics Center is?”
The skateboarder didn’t even look back as he pointed behind and to the left of Leif’s car. Leif turned to look and saw the sign on a nine story, red brick building - ‘University of Washington C121 Physics-Astronomy Building’.
“Thanks!” Leif responded loudly, but the skateboarder kicked-jumped from the street to the sidewalk and kept on rolling. Leif found a nearby parking garage, parked, threw his backpack over one shoulder, and tried not to look like it was his first time on campus. He kept glancing around for any sign of the man with the jet black pointy hair and dark sunglasses, to no avail.
***
A security guard watched Leif approach the double glass doors and buzzed him in. As Leif walked up to the lobby counter where the guard was sitting, an elevator door opened with a ding. A woman’s voice could be clearly heard, echoing off the marble floors and walls of the lobby. “It’s just the way she looks at me when I’m calibrating the ...” A man and a woman, appearing to be in their mid-twenties, in white lab coats exited from the elevator and halted their conversation as soon as they saw Leif standing at the guard’s desk. Leif gave them a quick glance and turned his attention back to the guard.
Leif could hear the couple walk behind him and out through the doors. He thought it odd that they didn’t continue their conversation, but just walked past quietly.
“Can I help you?” the guard asked.
“I’m Leif Anderson, here to see Dr. Corellis.” He was surprised to see the guard was an intimidating mid-thirties something with a holstered side-arm instead of an aging retiree with the typical can of mace. A walkie-talkie was on the guard’s belt with a wired microphone clipped to a button downed flap below his left ear.
“I need a picture I.D., your signature, and time of entry on the sign-in sheet. Put your pack on the counter and unzip all pockets and compartments.”
Leif obliged as the guard typed into a computer, ran Leif’s driver’s license through a scanning device attached to the computer, and performed a rudimentary search of the backpack.
“Take a seat,” the guard stated while handing back the driver’s license and pushing the backpack back to the front of the counter. “The doctor will be here in a few minutes.”
Leif sat down by a corner table with scattered magazines and technical journals on physics, astronomy, a Scientific American, and a couple entertainment periodicals with the latest gossipy celebrity on the cover. Leif grabbed the astronomy magazine and started to thumb through it when the elevator dinged and Dr. Corellis exited. The guard placed a clip badge on the counter for the doctor as she walked past. She grabbed it and give it a quick glance while walking toward Leif. He stood and threw his backpack over one shoulder.
“Hello Leif,” Dr. Corellis stated. “Welcome to CENPA, the Center for Experimental Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics. We’re very excited to have you joining us here at the university.” She handed him the clip badge. “You can clip this to your shirt. Just don’t lose it or you won’t be able to get any of the doors to open for you.”
“Thanks.” Leif noticed the badge had his picture from his driver’s license on it, a started date, a QR bar-code, and a light blue square on the bottom right corner with a dark blue dot in its center. A small strip of 10 colored boxes ran along the left side of the badge, starting with light blue and ending with a dark blue square at the bottom. Tiny white numbers were on each square, with 0 on the light blue and incrementing 2, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 200, 400, and 1K on the dark blue square. He could feel a small square bump in the middle of the badge, below his picture. He assumed it was an RF chip for door scanners.
“Did you have any trouble finding a parking place?”
“Nope.” Leif responded while following the doctor and studying his new badge. “You have tighter security than we did at Amzoft,” he added as they stepped into the elevator.
The doctor scanned her badge across a small black panel below the elevator buttons. Leif was startled when the elevator started moving down when he was expecting to go up. He glanced at the floor number indicators above the doors and noticed there was a ‘B1’ to ‘B3’ to the left of ‘L’, and 8 floors to the right. The elevator continued to descend.
“How far down is the basement?” Leif asked.
“Far enough.” Dr. Corellis answered. She gave him a small grin. “We have very sophisticated measuring equipment, a bubble chamber, and a small particle accelerator. Aside from being away from surface vibrations we also have to keep the lab contained in case something goes wrong.”
“Wrong?” he nervously asked.
She chuckled, “It’s okay. It’s perfectly safe. The underground protection is more for government standards than anything else. We have to play by the rules to keep our funding.”
Leif nodded as the elevator stopped on B1 and the doors opened. They stepped into a small room with a single empty desk, a couple chairs, and a single steel door. A panel with a speaker, numeric keypad, and black scanner box was left of the door. “Let’s see if your badge is working.” She held out her hand.
Leif handed her his badge and she waved it in front of the black scanner box. A light above the door handle changed from red to green and sounded a short beep. “Excellent,” she stated and handed the badge back.
“I guess the students won’t escape too easily,” Leif chuckled, trying to calm his nervousness.
They entered a corridor with various doors, each with an access panel and a number. He followed the doctor till they reached door ‘9’. The doctor stood to the side and pointed to the panel. Leif waved his badge in front of the black scanner panel and waited for the beep and the green light. The light turned green and a computer generated voice stated, “Leif Anderson access granted,” and the door clicked. Leif opened the door and was surprised to see a brightly lit laboratory with white granite floors, concrete walls, the ceiling twenty feet above, steel tables with equipment, pipes and cables running to various locations, computers, several racks of electronic monitoring equipment, and a dozen people in white lab coats busily working. A low vibrating hum from a ventilation system permeated the room. A glass enclosed room was on the opposite side of the lab with a small ramp leading up to the glass doors. Multiple racks of black computer servers formed several corridors within the glass room. The left side of the lab revealed a circular tunnel with a long steel table against one side holding a pipe several feet in diameter, covered with wires, hoses, and tubes, extending far into the distance within the tunnel.
“We call it the cave.” Dr. Corellis stated. “It holds our miniature particle accelerator and all the equipment for measurements. We have wave and particle detectors at the far end of the tunnel as well. Over here,” she pointed toward the glass room, “is where you’ll be working.”
Leif followed Dr. Corellis up the small ramp to the double wide glass doors of the computer room. She pointed to a black scanner panel off to one side of the doors. A small red light glowed in the middle of the panel. Leif waved his badge in front of it and the light turned green as a single beep and a click of the door locks indicated he was allowed to enter the inner computer sanctuary of the U.W. Astrophysics laboratory. He wasn’t sure if he should be excited or afraid with such a privilege. What if I trip over a cable and shut the whole system down?
Once inside the room Leif noticed there were no cables to trip over. The floor was comprised of square tiles, approximately two feet on each side, with hundreds of tiny holes for allowing cool air to flow into the room from underneath the floor. Leif remembered seeing the same type of floor in the main server room at Amzoft, but only through the windows since he had never been permitted into the room. Dr. Corellis led the way through a maze of towering server racks with tinted glass doors, each rack connected with perfectly bundled cables, busy with red and amber status lights. Leif could feel the heat emanating from the equipment and he understood the need for the raised floor air conditioning system. He noticed small circular cylinders mounted to the ceiling with downward facing nozzles, spaced every ten feet. “Is that halon above the racks?” he asked.
“Yes. Which is why you take a deep breath and head for the doors if the fire alarm goes off.”
They turned a corner and came to an open area with two rows of computer desks. Each desk had between two and three monitors on it, and one or two keyboards. There were two men and a woman busily working at some of the workstations. All the desks faced a wall with six, large, flat-screen monitors mounted in two rows of three across. Graphs and numerical values could be seen on each, along with several camera views of the particle accelerator. The cameras switched views every fifteen seconds to keep a watchful eye on other equipment within the laboratory every fifteen seconds.
“This is ATHENA, our super computer cluster,” the doctor provided.
“Wow.” Leif exclaimed. “You have your own mission control down here.”
“Indeed we do.” Dr. Corellis responded with a look of satisfaction. “We perform very serious work here. Rocket science, if you will. Our research fund comes from very influential people with very deep pockets.” She paused for a few seconds, grinning slightly, then turned and pointed to one of the workstations. “Your desk is at workstation 15. You can sign in with ‘leifa’ and a password of ‘new42’. It will prompt you for a new password and the system will step you through our standard set of orientation tutorials. It will take you most of the day to get through it all. Just get comfortable and settled. Tomorrow I’ll give you your first work assignment.”
Leif nodded his head and placed his backpack in the chair at his workstation. “I’m excited about being here. But...”
“A little overwhelmed?” the doctor added.
“Yeah. I mean, I’m a video game programmer and a bit of a math hack. How can I help with particle physics?”
Dr. Corellis crossed her arms and stared intently at Leif for a few seconds before answering. “Ever hear of Einstein’s Equivalence Principal or Newtonian inverse-square law?”
The question caught Leif off guard. He wasn’t expecting to be suddenly thrust into the scientific aspects of what he would be working on. His mind began racing from the question. Scientifically, he was familiar with both of the theories, due to his intensive research shortly after he discovered he had the ability to fly. His biggest question back then was ‘How does this work?’ He responded as quickly as he could, not wanting to show that her question had startled him. “Um, yeah. They are theories having to do with the movement of mass and how it’s affected by gravity.” He hoped his answer was enough.
The doctor smiled slightly. “Sorry if I caught you off guard. Your programming for Amzoft had to deal mostly with the effects of the mass of planets and other spacial bodies on the gravitational forces which were exerted on the player’s space ship, right?”
Leif was afraid of where this might be headed. He suddenly became aware his interest in programming and knowledge of the math for gravitational forces might potentially expose him - something Georgeo had warned him about in the past. He had sloughed it off with Georgeo as being overly cautious. Now, he wasn’t so sure. If he kept his focus on the video gaming, it might detract from a hint of his abilities. “Yes. That’s right. I thought it would be more realistic for the players if we had various levels of gravity affect their movement, based on the mass of the nearby planets or suns.”
“Excellent! Well, we want to use that knowledge of yours and the associated math, to determine if, and how, sub-atomic particles, might be used for manipulating those forces.”
Leif glanced away, staring at the ceiling with a tilt of his head. It gave the impression he was deep in thought. He was buying time to keep himself calm, to not give away any revealing details, and to give himself a moment to gather his thoughts before responding. He decided to ask, “So, to affect the forces of gravity?”
“Exactly!” Dr. Corellis responded. “What if you could help invent the first, true, hover-board?”
Leif forced himself to chuckle at her question. He knew there was more to this assignment than just hover-boards. What he wasn’t sure of was if the doctor was truly involved with anti-gravity research, possibly for the government or other corporate sponsors, or if she was with the Eighteenth and was trying to uncover the secrets of Avitorian flight. He felt a chill on the back of his neck as he wondered if she already knew that he, himself, was an Avitorian.