Dad is there.
Mark’s first impulse was to hurry toward the sirens, as fast as he could manage by foot or bike or by flagging down a car… all possibilities he dismissed in about a second. All seemed equally hopeless.
What he needed right now? Facts, quick and reliable.
Moving across the quad to where an open gate faced Rimpau Avenue, he pulled from his backpack that pair of Tru Vu specs the Channel Ten guys gave – or lent – to him that night, a few weeks ago. It was the first set he ever had a chance to try. Mark had been slyly practicing at home, navigating the goggle-like spectacles in much the same way that you’d use a super phone or pen-cell, accessing several levels of the Internet through his personal account – with the biggest difference being how the world web surrounded him with clickable choices, all of them overlaid upon his view of the real world.
Slipping them on, Mark saw the streets of Twenty-Nine Palms California through layers of augmented reality. The Tru Vu specs detected whatever his eyes happened to glance at, and wrote stuff on the inside of the glasses, guessing what he might want to know and offering links to even more data. All the nearby buildings had extra ID markings painted over them – from the Shell gas station to his right, past Drannen’s Hardware, the Food King and Pizza Habitat to Marshall Motors … all bore info-tags that ballooned outward with added details, the very instant that he looked directly at something.
Students and pedestrians passing by … they were also labeled. Twin camera dots on the Tru Vu rims scanned every face in stereo and compared it to an online registry, providing tags. No one using this tech would ever again be at a loss remembering another person’s name. With practice, you might also access a guy-or-gal’s sosh-sites … or tap into gossip posted by an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend, scanning all of it while looking right at the real person.
This kind of tech had been promised for decades. Major Bamford used a heads-up display each time he flew, relying on the HUD to draw flight and weapons data on the inner surface of the plane’s bubble canopy. Civilians were used to getting augmented reality on their cells and pens and watches, offering simple displays, like direction arrows, so you never got lost, even in a strange town.
But these full overlay specs were another matter. Early versions had left people nauseated or caused accidents, delaying adoption by a decade or more. Only now – in the last year or so — were rich kids in the big cities finally sporting the things, walking around immersed in a double-layered world … with real reality still plainly visible, but overlain with rich textures of color and information.
Right now, Mark had no interest in name tags! Lacking any other input device, he spoke commands aloud, not caring if he drew looks.
“Erase all! Now give me news feed on whatever’s happening at the Base!”
That wasn’t very specific. But the specs ought to guess which “base” he meant, and that he wanted emergency-level info.
Abruptly, several info-boxes opened in the periphery of Mark’s vision, leaving clear the area right in front of him, so he could walk. One box blared a headline:
FLASH! Ninety-eight seconds ago Faux Presse
caught an alert — the U.S. military enclave
hosting the Garubis Guest is under attack!
Stay tuned for further …
Trying to stay focused, Mark stared at that box and muttered “delete!” grunting satisfaction when it went away. He glanced at another, which zoomed outward, responding to his eye-interest. It showed a cam-image from some news crew, covering the festive crowd at the edge of the base. Only things weren’t festive at the moment! Mark winced at the much-louder siren wail, enhanced by terrified screams from tourists and gawkers near the main gate. Bikers, cultists, neo-hippies and just-plain-folks were scurrying in all directions. The breathless reporter babbled –
“… still no word about what’s happening. I’ll stay up here on top of my van as long as I can, though if that turns out to be a terrible mistake I hope my husband and kids will understand. If only I could get higher …”
Mark deleted that one too. Anyway, the reporter had given him an idea. Get higher. In order to look past the low buildings of the desert town. He took a quick spin to look at one option —
The school bell tower. An architectural ornament paid for by Augusto Video Montes, one of the founders of Cirrocco Corporation. Already, the slender edifice looked crowded, with a dozen students squeezed in the small atrium up top, staring east toward some commotion. Mark might have headed to join them … only then he spotted Principal Jeffers striding purposefully toward the tower, with clear intent.
“Everybody get inside!” shouted the school cop, Mr. Perez. And for once, the jovial, pot-bellied retiree didn’t wear his usual, affable grin. “All students take shelter in the gymnasium or other assigned places!”
Teachers were also spreading out, shouting for their charges to take cover, according to procedures everyone had practiced in the last drill. But the high school was an ‘open campus’ and Mark had already departed through the main gate. He was on Rimpau now, and running toward his only other option. The only other possible way to “get higher.”
Marshall Motors – the Chevy dealer here in Twenty-Nine Palms, just a few doors east of the Food King. They kept an advertising balloon overhead during daylight hours, made of pixelated cloth that blared unbeatable offers in both real-reality and VR. On several occasions Mark had watched the owner use a winch to deploy or retract the display and he even helped once, when a freak sandstorm threatened to rip it all away. He had a crazy idea. So crazy that it just might —
As he neared, Mark noticed – somebody’s already hauling the balloon in.
He also checked the time. Almost three whole minutes since the alarm first wailed. During that huge interval, ten thousand things could happen. And fear wrenched a coil in his gut as he now heard, in the distance, something more ominous than mere sirens. A series of faint crump and whoosh sounds — of air defense missiles launching out of vertical racks. He recognized the noises from an exercise Dad once let him attend.
Zig-zagging across the Food King parking lot, he vaulted the low barrier next to Sun Valley Real Estate and landed amid the shiny new cars…
…to find Alex Behr already at the winch, carefully tending the cable as it reeled in.
I might’ve figured. Jeez, she’s a great pal and really useful. But it can get tiresome, always being a step behind her.
A couple of the X-guys were there too. Not the world’s greatest wits, but quick on the uptake. Probably, they had already been thinking about the Marshall Motors balloon, for some stunt. Mark had. Who wouldn’t? It made such a tempting do something with me target.
“Sup, dawg,” Ricardo Chavez offered Mark a quick nod of greeting. So did Conner Mills and Dave McCarty, though Dave looked sweaty in his leather jacket, and hadn’t said much to Mark since that tense discussion in History class.
“Sup n’ hella-hola, compad,” Mark answered quickly, on automatic. Because with his main attention he had been counting seconds. And roughly thirty beats after the missiles launched, there arrived a series of very faint, distant echoes, rumbles of what might be thunder. Then more whooshing sounds as the anti-aircraft battery resumed firing.
What’s happening! Who’s attacking? Could it be aliens? But the sky appeared empty and all innocent-blue.
Sidling closer to the winch, he spoke to Alex.
“Hey.”
“Hey-back. What took ya?”
“Sue me,” he shrugged. “Barry?”
“Sent him a ping. He’ll be along. In time to miss everything.”
“Usual. Empanado!”
“Yep.”
Mark glanced around. Normally, you’d expect the Marshall Motors employees to interfere, or at least ask questions. But none of the salesmen were in sight. Probably doing something sensible, like seeking shelter. The clock in Mark’s Tru Vu specs said four and a half minutes. The balloon had almost reached the ground. Ricardo and Conner were adapting a climbing harness to snap onto the cable.
“Dibs first,” Dave claimed.
“Bull!” Ricardo responded. “It’s my harness. Alex has to run the winch…”
“Hey! My parents both work at the Contact Center,” she reacted hotly. “I got a better claim than anybody!”
“Yeah, well all of my living parents are there too,” Mark interjected, reminding everybody he was already half-orphaned. “Plus… there’s another reason I should go.”
“Yeah what?” demanded Dave… who then stopped his protest short as Mark removed the Tru Vu goggles and held them up, so all could see the twin cameras and hi fidelity inputs. It went without saying. If he went up, wearing these, it would be like having their own news and camera crew up there. “You can tune in. See what I see.”
Dave clearly wanted to contest the point, but Alex made a curt hand gesture and grunted. “No time to argue. Suit up, Bam!”
Mark jumped into position and put the specs back on, tugging and tying the stretchy headband-laces so they wouldn’t jostle off, while Dave and Ricardo fastened harness buckles. “Ready to belay,” he said.
“Belay on!” Alex cried.
Was there anger in her voice? As she yanked the release…
… and Mark had a sudden sense of falling. In a weird direction — up! The winch whined in seeming tempo with the emergency sirens, going off all over town. And, before he was halfway to the top, Mark heard an even more ominous sound – a fast-pitched, snare-drum stutter to the east. And he knew what it was. The chatter of high-speed Gatling guns. Vulcan close-in air defense cannons. Something must have made it past the long range missiles.
If only there were some way to see what was going on. Then Mark realized. Idiot! You had that ability all along!
“Specs!” He shouted, hoping the Tru Vus would understand his command. “Give me an overhead, real time satellite view of activity at the Twenty-Nine Palms air base!”
The machine tried to obey. A view box opened in his left-hand field of view – binocular and three dimensional, it zoomed in toward the Mojave Desert, flowing past the familiar mountains and salt pans…
…onto a sharp-edged zone that was as black and as dark as night!
SECURITY BLACKOUT IN EFFECT
“Damn!” Mark knew there were other ways. Someone who was really with-it about the latest tech might do a sift-search and find some camera aimed this way from the nature trails on Mount San Sebastian, or one of the Chinese commercial sats that were always overhead. Maybe Alex should’ve been the one to go up, after all.
Again, the shoosh of missiles and this time Mark saw their rocket exhaust trails as they sped upward from the base, arced left… and right… and away, apparently toward enemies looming in all directions! All directions except the civilian town. As yet, Mark saw no threat. No attackers. He did hear detonations. Frustratingly impossible to see!
Finally, the fast ascent began to slow… as he reached enough altitude to look over the main buildings of downtown Twenty-Nine Palms. And beyond them, lower, more shabby structures dating back to the 20th Century, when this was just a sleepy little training base, instead of a national center for high-tech testing.
Could that be why Na-Bistaka crashed here, in the first place? Was he spying on Cirrocco and its activities?
Then, at last, there it was. The military hangars and windowless warehouses and mysterious Cirrocco experimental facilities. The control tower and long, long runways. The far cluster of inflated buildings…
… and a brilliant flash of light that burst forth to crash into Mark from that direction, briefly overwhelming the spectacles, stinging his eyes, just before the Tru Vus darkened automatically, leaving him in pitch darkness. Overwhelmed and stunned, his first thought was simple:
Am I blind, or is it just the specs?
He reached up and tore them off – relieved to find his vision now just a bit speckled – then the concussion wave hit.
Moroni in the Andes! What did they destroy?
Rocking and pitching, his makeshift observation perch heaved and Mark barely held onto his lunch. Concern for his father, for the alien guest, for his country, all roiled in his gut for a few seconds, as the worst of the pressure front passed.
Then, far below, Alexandra Behr let out a warning shriek. Mark wrenched around to look where she was pointing – and spied something coming toward him fast out of the west, almost straight along Rimpau boulevard. Something fierce and fiery – a dragon-machine was his quick impression — heading this way!
Amid all the misfiring neurons of his brain, he realized. It had to be one of the attackers. A drone of some kind, swooping low over the town, almost down at street level, in order to evade radar and sneak in from behind.
It was coming straight at him! Mark kept his eyes open, thinking: well, if I knock it down with my body, won’t that be a fair exchange?
Dad had sworn to make that kind of trade, as a military man, if ever it had to be done.
Maybe they’ll bury me as a marine …
Suddenly, he wanted to fight! Somehow, with anything. But he had nothing, except …
His backpack. Still slung over his shoulder, a familiar weight unobstructed by the climbing harness. With a quick, practiced shrug, he let it drop to one fist in a motion that swung once … twice … and hurled it! An arc that swept the pack skyward, toward the onrushing drone …
… as the pack spilled open, dropping textbooks, class notes, agendas, pencils and a picture of Helene Shockley, clipped out of the local paper when she’d been a finalist for Miss Teen Mojave.
Did that storm of paper chaff seem like a threat, just for an instant? The robotic drone must have sensed it — or Mark and the balloon – and abruptly decided to veer upward in avoidance. He felt its hot wake blow past and the world seemed to shake more than ever. The winch started screaming again, as Alex slammed it into reverse.
A series of popping, shredding sounds told of the balloon’s progressive demise, as it started to lose buoyancy fast. Mark knew he’d be lucky to escape a broken leg, or worse.
And yet, he kept the foe in sight. The drone, already over the eastern part of town, struggled to drop back low, to resume its ground-hugging course, sneaking under the view of base-guardians as it –
Too late, you bastard!
There was another low staccato of the Gatling Gun … and Mark felt a moment’s triumph as the attacker machine exploded in a fireball.
Then, the ground came rushing at him fast.