Category Archives: Science Fiction

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

Today’s distractions have been brought to you by football, the successful return to Earth of the ISS Expedition 37 crew (congratulations on a great mission!), and the usual Sunday breakfast+groceries+shopping routine. Last week that routine and football had little-to-no effect on my word count because I was on a mission from God. With today’s IRL events coming on top of yesterday’s day-long event, the cumulative effect has been more significant.

To continue the running/marathon analogy, I had a great pace and was going strong — but now I’ve stumbled. My rhythm has been broken. I realize now just how hard I was pushing myself for this first week and I would really like a break – but one does not take breaks while running a marathon, if one can avoid it! While I’m still making progress, I feel a little bit like the football player who’s just caught a toe while running at full stride. (The analogy works for either version of “football”.) My figurative arms are windmilling and my figurative strides are uneven as I try to catch my balance and reset my stride, or, if that fails, at least go down semi-gracefully and not get hurt and knocked out of the game. So it will be important to see if I “fall” (i.e., end up with little or no output for NaNoWriMo for a day or two) or if I can “recover” (i.e., pick up the pace again and get back on track) in the next day or two.

Okay, so it might not be my best analogy, but it’s kind of the way I feel. Time to flail and stagger for a bit to see if any words come out. If they’re good words, so much the better. Maybe if I promise myself ice cream if I get ‘er done?

CHAPTER NINE (continued)

The camera came next. Tom was accustomed to using a good, high-end camera so it didn’t take long to set it up and get used to the subtle differences between the Canon he usually used and the new Nikon. He took a string of pictures using both lenses and also tried out the video capture capabilities.

The small telescope was trickier. The easy part was getting the camera to attach to it. Getting that setup to focus on something only a mile away or less meant that the focusing mechanism was pretty close to the end of its range. After all, t was designed to focus on nothing closer than the moon. But Tom found that it could be done, if only barely. He doubted that he could get it to focus on anything closer than a half mile or so, but for that he had the regular telephoto lenses.

The hard part of dealing with the telescope was the mounting. The modified half-horseshoe mount was computerized and designed to let beginning astronomy buffs find objects in the sky without learning where they were or how to point the telescope. Just set up the telescope properly, pick an object from the onboard database, and hit the “Go!” button. But that wasn’t what Tom needed it to do.

While it was possible to disengage the computer drive and manually point the telescope where you wanted, the mount was still designed to find things in the sky. Finding targets on the ground either at or below the horizon was not a normal operation. On the other hand, while the telescope itself could be removed from the mount, doing so and using as a huge telephoto lens was extremely awkward. The whole thing was unbalanced and unwieldy, with no way to attach it to the tripod or another system.

In the end, Tom decided to leave it attached to the mount. It wasn’t a perfect setup by any means, but it did allow the added benefit of having a good cover story built in. If someone should see him and become curious about his activities he could pass as an amateur astrophotographer setting up for a night of dark sky observations. That couldn’t be that unusual out here so far from the big cities.

He tested the rig with some pictures of Farmington, fifteen to twenty miles away on the plateau beneath the mountain he was on. Getting a really good focus was tricky, but when it got the hang of it the results were impressive.

Carefully Tom packed up all of the equipment, putting the telescope in the car’s trunk with the sleeping bag and new clothes, while he kept the camera and binoculars on the passenger’s seat where he could get at them quickly if needed. Crawling gingerly down the steep mountain roads toward the interstate, he headed back to his hotel.

CHAPTER TEN

The stack of brochures for local attractions split pretty evenly into two classes on closer review. There were a lot of activities in the region for the “indoors” or “mainstream” crowd who were looking for nothing more strenuous than maybe golf or water skiing. Other attractions for them in the region were shopping, jewelry, restaurants, even a winery.

For the “outdoors” or “active” crowd, the area within a three or four hours’ drive had at least a dozen national parks and monuments, plus state parks and historical sites. Many of the latter were associated with early Native American ruins and villages.

Tom wasn’t a dedicated hiker or outdoorsman, but he wasn’t in terrible physical shape either. A lot of his reporting assignments over the years had involved getting out into the field with various scientific teams, often in places well of the beaten path. He wasn’t going to be running any marathons any time soon, but a couple of hours of hiking on a trail designed for the average desk-bound and overweight American wasn’t going to kill him.

Sorting through the brochures, he built a list of all of the attractions and started summarizing some notes on each, along with building a map of their locations. It was soon obvious that many of the sites had been considered to be sacred or mystical sites and many still were.

It didn’t take much digging to find “New Age” connections to every single site, which explained all of the billboards for psychics and tarot card readers he had seen coming into town. It seemed like nothing sold harmonic crystals or mysterious psychic energy sources like the ruins of a two thousand year old Native American village location.

What Tom didn’t find was anything on any of those websites or in any of those brochures that said anything solid or factual about any of the grandiose claims. In particular, nothing was mentioned in any of the claims and treatises about the phenomenon that Tom and Jason had seen. The paranormal and supernatural claims were all the same vague, non-specific, open-to-endless-interpretation mumbo jumbo that Tom always saw when these sort of paranormal claims were made and supernatural services offered. He had investigated and debunked plenty of these types of claims when he was working as a reporter. It wasn’t science. It wasn’t even science fiction.

Most of the national parks and monuments had gotten those designations because they were unquestionably remarkable and stunning. The Bisti Badlands looked like a landscape from an alien planet with pinnacles and spires of rock carved into bizarre shapes and totems by millennia of wind and rain. Tom wasn’t surprised to find that some science fiction films and television shows had filmed outdoor scenes in the area.

Along those lines, Tom also immediately recognized Monument Valley from the movies, but not science fiction films. He suspected that it had been seen in probably 90% of the westerns made in the 1950’s and 60’s.

As for Native American sites, the Aztec Ruins National Monument was also a UNESCO World Heritage site. So was the Mesa Verde cliff dwelling city. Shiprock Pinnacle was a sacred site to the Navajo. Canyon de Chelly was an ancient fortress and city predating the arrival of the Europeans by centuries.

Many of the ancient sites had some sort of astronomical building or a suspected observatory location in addition to the other buildings and homes. Related in spirit to other ancient observatories at places such as Stonehenge in England, Chichen Itza in Mexico, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the Egyptian pyramids, Tikal in Guatemala, Medicine Wheel in Canada, Machu Picchu in Peru, and countless others, these locations had been far more advanced than anything used by Western astronomers for hundreds of years before the Renaissance had given birth to the telescope.

Finally, as he was startled by the horn of a fast moving passenger train rolled through town, Tom was noting that there were also several historical railroads up in the mountains. Now they took tourists up to the Grand Canyon and some of the other big parks, as well as on wine-tasting tours and “murder mystery” rides. A hundred and fifty years ago they had been a vital to the mines and cattle ranchers and a huge part of the development of this part of the world.

While he felt more knowledgeable now, Tom still didn’t see how any of those pieces fit in with the puzzle he was trying to solve. What did any of those things have to do with why the commune members had come here? Why would any of those things have attracted Auntie Annie here? And why would she be making those funeral urns out here with the bizarre artwork?

Granted, Annie by herself was probably just a loon, prone to making bad or bizarre decisions. But if she had others involved, especially others who weren’t out of touch with the real world, someone must have had a reason to come to this part of the world instead of another. And if they were making funeral urns with weird artwork for $5,000 a pop, someone had to be very much in touch with the real world.

It could have simply been that the land was cheap and the locals minded their own business, so commune members could find a place where it felt safe and they would be left alone. That could be especially true after they got evicted from their long-time home outside of Manitou Springs. While it would seem that there were plenty of other places that might fit that bill and not be 100-plus degrees every day during the summer, maybe that’s all it was, a need to be away from everyone else. There was most certainly a lot of room to run away to out here.

Tom was shaken from his revelry by another new icon popping up on his phone. He tapped it and watched as a secure connection was made to his home system, followed by the opening of a mapping application. The map showed the Farmington area, with two colored, blinking dots standing out. Almost immediately a chat window opened up from Jason.

“I can confirm that this connection is secure. Anything exciting happen today, Tom?”

“I took your suggestion and got some tools and toys,” Tom typed, explaining to Jason about the gear he had gotten earlier in the day and how he had tested it out. “I think that will give me a good start, especially for a rank amateur.”

“No half measures, eh, Tom? You told me that you were a reporter of some kind? Some day you’re going to have to tell me how you can afford to just go out and buy all of that stuff on a reporter’s salary.”

“Don’t sweat it, Jason. Let’s just say that I’ve made some good investments. Other than that it’s a story for another day, like when you tell me where you’re getting all of these James Bond-like computer programs. Speaking of which, is this new app what I think it is?”

“If you think it’s a tracking map for your GPS tracking devices, then yes, it is. You’re the green dot, Ellen’s car is the red one. If you tap on any of the dots you’ll be able to see a track and history of that device’s movements. Try it.”

Tom tapped the green dot and the map zoomed in to show an area of a mile around his current location, with a bread crumb trail of smaller and dimmer green dots leading off along his earlier path. Zooming back out a bit and following the trail, Tom could see exactly where he had gone on this afternoon’s trek. Hovering the cursor over the trail caused the cursor to change to a time stamp indicator. Tom was impressed.

“How often does the location update?”

“Readings are taken once a minute and sent to the server in real time, assuming that the unit can get a connection. If not, it can store up to a week’s data and then upload it later when a connection becomes available.”

“How long will these things last? What’s the battery life?”

“It’s anywhere from sixty to ninety days, but there are other factors that can affect it, such as low temperatures. Up there if it’s getting below freezing every night, we’ll get less, but I expect we’ll still get at least forty-five to sixty days.”

“What’s the accuracy on these readings?” Tom asked.

“The specs say about ten feet, plus or minus a foot or so. I don’t know if you should use it for driving in the dark without lights in the fog, but it should let you see where Ellen’s car is in the parking lot next time.”

“Great. Where is she now?” Tom tapped the red icon.

“She’s somewhere a couple of miles off of the main roads over near the Arizona border. It doesn’t look like your friend has been anywhere else except for the post office since you tagged her last night. You can see that she stopped at what looks like a gas station as she got off of the highway on the way home, but other than that she went straight to that location and hasn’t moved.”

“Do we know what’s out there? Is it a farm or another commune?”

“That’s the next interesting thing. Double tap the dot to get a menu, then go to the Google Earth overlay.”

Tom did as he was instructed. The location showed itself to be nothing but dirt and weeds, no matter how far he zoomed in on the image.

“There’s nothing there. Are they camping out or something?”

“Look at the image data in the fine print down at the bottom. The picture you’re seeing is over ten years old. Do you know how to use the history function on this map app? Most people know that they can slide back through older pictures and maps, but they don’t know that sometimes you can also use it to go a little bit the other way? Pull that history slider to the left, then bring it back to the right all the way against the stop and watch what happens.”

Again Tom did as he was instructed. Nothing much changed as he moved the slider to the left, since today’s dirt pretty much looked a lot like yesterday’s dirt. The only significant difference was that the image quality kept going down as older and older aerial photographs were used and they were soon in black and white. Then Tom brought the slider back smoothly to the right, the images flipping forward in time. Suddenly there were a group of over a dozen buildings shown when there hadn’t been any before.

“I see it now, but what just happened?” Tom typed.

“The default aerial photo for this location is over ten years old and it shows an empty desert location. But it turns out that there are newer photos available, you just have to know to ask for them. This latest photo is only six months old and it shows a compound there.”

“Why wouldn’t the most recent data show up by default? Could it be simply some sort of database error? After all, that function to force the most recent data to show instead of the default has to be there for a reason.”

“True, that little trick exists for a reason. There are times that Google deliberately doesn’t want to show the most recent data. Any government might request that for security or military reasons. Google might be collecting new data and building a new data set for an area and they don’t want to integrate it until it’s completed. Neither of those explanations appears to apply here as far as we know. So what do you think, is it just a coincidence?”

Tom was starting to get sick of that word. “You keep using that word, but I do not think that it means what you think it means,” he typed back.

“Inconceivable!” replied Jason. At least Tom now knew that he had a respectable background in classic cinema.

“So, someone’s hiding something and they’ve either got enough pull to get Google to do it for them or they’ve got enough skill to get into the database and change it themselves. Can we use this to figure out when the compound was built?”

“I already did that. It went up very quickly, about year and a half ago, which would put it a month or so after the commune in Colorado was shut down.”

“Correlation does not imply causation,” Tom typed.

“True, but it does give us something to think about. In addition, that compound doesn’t look ramshackle, it looks conventional construction. You’re the guy with money, you tell me how many bucks you need to put up a dozen buildings like that. So where did a bunch of hippies get that kind of money?”

“Maybe they’re not hippies. Maybe it’s some kind of religious cult. They wouldn’t be the first ones to hand over all of their worldly possessions to some self-proclaimed prophet only to live like slaves for payback.”

“Either way, that’s your target. Just be careful. The more we find out the less it makes sense, but we do know we’re dealing with people who have some skills, some resources, and a strong desire to not be found. They may react badly toward someone actively tracking them down and spying on them.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Tom typed.

“You’ll also need to keep in mind that they may have other vehicles and other people. You know about Ellen and Annie and this lady who was driving last night, but there could be two other people there or twenty-two.”

“Times like this I wish we could just turn this over to the police or the FBI or someone and let them handle it. Then I remember what we’re investigating and how those padded cells don’t have internet access.”

“You have that right. Two more things,” Jason typed. “First, go into the setup menu on this app and you can have it send you a notice when a target starts to move. You’ll want to do that, but don’t bet your ass on it. The data for this app is actually being stored on your system at home for security reasons. You’ll only have access to it when you have a secure connection. You should be able to get that any time in town or on the highway where you’ve got a good, high speed connection, but you might not have it out in the boonies. As in, out in the boonies near this compound where you might really need it on short notice.”

“Thanks for the heads up. I’ll send messages whenever I’m able, to keep you up to date on what I’m doing and what I plan to do. I think tomorrow I’ll start trying to get a better idea of what and who are out there.”

“Great. What do you plan on doing tonight?”

“It’s clear, it’s getting dark early these days, and I’m supposed to be pretending to be an amateur astronomer out here for the dark skies. I think that I’ll make a show of checking with the hotel front desk for advice and directions, then taking all of that gear out to actually look at the stars.”

“Be careful.”

“What, do you think I’m going to coincidentally run into Ellen or her friends out there while watching Jupiter’s moons?”

“No, I’m worried that you’ll trip in the dark and break your leg, or go over the edge of a cliff.”

“I’ll be careful. About all of those things.”

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

There’s a meme that shows up a lot around the beginning of NaNoWriMo that describes the writing process as:

1. This story is fantastic!
2. This story really could be better.
3. This story sucks and is worthless!
4. I suck and I am worthless!
5. Maybe it’s not that bad.
6. This story is fantastic!

Somewhere in the middle of last night’s writing session, we entered “Phase Two”. I’m not sure how or why, but things didn’t really “flow” last night. It was more like pulling out your own teeth without benefit of anesthesia. The blue funk finally lifted toward the end, about the time that the idea of the GPS tracking beacons became clear to me. (Good thing that I had included it to begin with back in Chapter Six.)

Those who serve as mentors to those of us who are trying to learn how to do this writing thing warn repeatedly of this sort of thing. (As always, Chuck Wendig says it better than I can even dream of saying it, but he uses “strong language” so you shouldn’t read this in church or at work.) Some days it’s magic — but some days it just sucks and you wonder why you’re doing this to yourself. Most days are somewhere in between. This is exactly how I feel when running a marathon, by the way. Exhilarated at both the start and at the finish line (I can give myself a huge emotional boost at any time just remembering the last do-or-die mile of the 2012 LA Marathon), having fun every now and then, but often (especially in the middle sections) wondering just what in the hell ever possessed me to voluntarily put myself through this.

The key bit of wisdom we get from our writing mentors (and from our running coaches) is to know that these ups and downs exist, and steel ourselves psychologically to just soldier on through the down spots and trust in your training, your craft, and your faith that you will pull through the other side. Above all, give yourself permission to suck and permission to fail. This doesn’t mean that you want to fail or try to suck, but by giving yourself permission to let that be a possible outcome (“Failure is always an option!” say the Mythbusters) you allow yourself to learn from the experience and get better the next time.

So. I plowed through the tough spots yesterday, one verb and noun after another, finally “breaking through” and finishing strong.

And then I spent a huge chunk of today helping The Long Suffering Wife and our local Habitat For Humanity organization with a BBQ For The Troops event. It will be interesting to see (I’m writing this at 19:30 after finally getting home and having dinner) to see how much I can get accomplished before I collapse. The good news is that I started the day significantly ahead of the minimum pace necessary to “win” NaNoWriMo. I’m currently averaging over 3,000 words a day and that projects to crossing the “50,000 word finish line” on about November 17th or so. I’m just a shade under halfway there right now!

Having said that, this might be a tough day to keep to that pace. There may be only a portion of a chapter below. If that’s the case, look for the rest of it tomorrow, hopefully along with all of Chapter Ten. We’ll see. It’s not life and death — NaNoWriMo is much more important than that!

(Oh, no, I’M GETTING SHOUTY!! Note to self — Chapter Nine may require significant re-writing, if you know what I mean.)

CHAPTER NINE

Skipping dinner for the moment, Tom went straight back to his room. He quickly had a secure connection and tried to contact Jason. He failed to get an immediate reply, so he left a simple message instructing Jason to immediately start using the first tracking device to follow Ellen’s vehicle 24/7. He also said that he would activate the second device to keep in his pocket.

Tom was famished and almost went out to find dinner without bothering to activate that second device. He caught himself after he had left the room and was waiting by the elevator. It was so tempting to blow it off, but the little details like that were the only ones he could really control right now and he would hate for one moment of neglect to end up being his epitaph. Tom forced himself to go back to the room and activate the device, only then allowing himself to get dinner.

While waiting for his meal to arrive, Tom found himself nervously checking his phone every few minutes to see if Jason had responded. When an email finally did appear on his phone, just as his salad arrived, it was nothing more than a spam message (“Acai Berry Power 500 Oxycontin plus Viagra To Make Her Admire You No Prescription Needed!”) that had somehow slipped through his filters. Annoyed, Tom swiped to delete the message.

“Enter password to delete message,” was the prompt that displayed. That caught Tom by surprise. He simply hit “return”, but the message did not delete. He tried again but received the same prompt. He tried one of his generic, personal passwords. The message did not delete. Again, this time with a different password. The message did not delete. Stumped and starting to get angry, he had the presence of mind to set his phone down calmly and resume eating.

Tom knew that his normal email filtering software should be more than good enough to keep that sort of spam out of his box. He knew that spam like this still existed and plenty of people put up with it. But he wasn’t plenty of people and he didn’t put up with it. He couldn’t remember the last time that a message like that had made it into his system. For many years he had found it worthwhile regardless of the cost to keep upgrading to the best software available to keep his systems safe, secure, and private. That in turn was one of the reasons that he had been so surprised when Jason’s software upgrade had proven to be so much better. Tom thought that he already had the best.

Even given that, there shouldn’t ever be any reason that he couldn’t delete any email or file. The fact that he couldn’t made him wonder if this might be some kind of new super computer virus that was good enough to penetrate even this system. And needing a password to delete? That sounded like some kind of “ransom-ware” attack.

All of those facts should have been true even with his previous top-of-the-line system. This meant that it should be even truer now with Jason’s upgrades installed. In summary, if Jason now had him using some kind of top secret, cutting edge, and military operating system, who knew what other kinds of similar but hostile systems might be hunting such a “benevolent” system? Was he now inadvertently involved in some kind of cyber war on top of everything else?

While Tom was waiting for his main course, he decided to take a chance. He took another look at the spam message, this time reading the entire text.

• “Going bald? Grow new hair!
• “Oxycontin available, no prescriptions!
• “Testosterone replacement available!
• “Incredible results, guaranteed!
• “Testicular cancer won’t kill your love life!
• “Just make the move to satisfy her!
• “Available discreetly!
• “Satisfaction assured!
• “Only available a limited time!
• “Never be impotent again!”

Suddenly it became clear. The message wasn’t spam. It was from Jason. The system allowed it through because of that and then didn’t allow him to delete it because he needed to see it. Yet to anyone other than Tom and Jason, it was just an annoying file that was messing with his operating system and might have loaded some kind of virus or malware.

Satisfied that his message had gotten through, he finished his meal in peace.

Tom had the best of intentions, planning to do more research on the area and figuring out what his next move should be tomorrow. But he got back to his room with his stomach full and the day’s multiple adrenaline crashes taking their toll. When he saw the room’s desk covered with brochures about the area attractions, he decided instead to lie down for just a few minutes before attacking them.

He was sound asleep in seconds.

When he awoke in the morning, he was surprised to find himself sprawled on top of the bedspread, still in his clothes, with the room’s lights all on and the temperature uncomfortably cold. What had happened? It took a few seconds before his brain kicked into gear and brought him back to reality.

Tom’s perceptions were still being heavily clouded by the vivid dreams he had experienced all night. It felt like the entire night had been filled with images of cats and toothy holes filled with ghosts hovering just out of reach over him. Everywhere he went they followed him, the cats yowling as if they were in heat and the disks bobbing and weaving above, popping in and out of existence.

While the dreams had been far more detailed and realistic than any he could remember ever having before in his life, they had not been nightmares. The overall emotional feeling of them all was not fear or terror, but rather comfort or reassurance. In the dreams he was frustrated and confused by his inability to touch the disks or understand what the cats were saying, but those feelings were secondary to the overall feeling of impending acceptance.

Over all of the other events of the dreams was a continually recurring chorus of train whistles. Sometimes the trains could be heard Dopplering up as they approached and then back down as they went by. Sometimes the sounds were the warning blasts they screamed as they approached a grade crossing. But again, the sounds were never indicative of danger. It was much more like the wistful, mournful association of train whistles and sad country songs.

Tom looked at the clock next to the bed. It was just after 9:30. He had slept for over twelve hours, but he didn’t feel particularly rested. Shaking his head, trying to clear it, he downed two aspirin, started the room’s small coffee maker, stripped, and headed into the shower for a long, steamy soak. He ignored the plaque on the bathroom wall asking all guests to conserve water due to the area’s drought conditions.

As he turned off the shower and began to towel dry accompanied by the welcome smell of brewing coffee, Tom again heard a train’s warning blast. Sure that he wasn’t dreaming, he padded over to the window and peeked out through a crack in the drapes. Across the river, beyond the parks, he could see a freight train trundling through town, crossing guards down and holding up traffic as it passed. That would explain where the sounds in his dreams came from.

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

From the Department of “Duh!” — After writing the intro paragraphs yesterday where I talked about faith and the “amazing” plot revelations that were just suddenly appearing when I needed them, what happened later in the day when I was writing Chapter Seven? Of course.

JINX!

I got through about about three hundred words and hit a freakin’ brick wall. Tom’s driving into Santa Fe & pissed and he’s not going to catch Ellen and he may or may not be totally chasing wild geese and then… And then what? What happens next? Hello? Magic subconscious, are you there? “Do, doo, Doo! We’re sorry. The muse you have reached is no longer in service, and there is no new muse.”

Nothing. Nada. *Le Sigh*.

Fortunately, I had to go feed the dog, feed the cat, walk the dog, fix my dinner, watch a bit of the football game (did Stanford really knock off Oregon?), turn the television to the hockey game, sit down to face the blank screen again, and… And I decided to get him stuck in Santa Fe rather than going on. At first he was going to be in a fleabag motel, but then that got changed to an upscale place. (I have no idea why, ask the muse.) Something happens, but what? What might happen there that wouldn’t happen in the fleabag place? What would be the consequences of that simple choice? Different entertainment choices? Better wi-fi? What might he see on the TV? What’s in Santa Fe? Expensive, trendy art galleries. Which could have… And we’re off to the races!

Then this morning I got up thinking, “Was the fact that the artist is Dahlia and the agent is Ellen and Tom just happened to stop in Santa Fe and then just happened to stumble past that video in his room too convenient, too coincidental, too unrealistic?” Well, again, “DUH!”, yeah, of course it is, but that’s also something to be “fixed in post production”, as they say. This is neither the time nor the place to get picky about the finer points of plotting. It’s NaNoWriMo — write until your fingers bleed and let logic and consistency be damned!

Thanks, muse! I got it. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and don’t get cocky, kid!

CHAPTER EIGHT

Tom hurried back to his hotel so that he could use the resources available in his room before check-out time. He needed to make sure that Jason was kept updated on what he had learned, just in case anything happened to him. He hoped that the situation wasn’t as ominous as that made it sound, but he kept having his nose rubbed in just how many things he hoped for and assumed a week ago were now completely changed.

In his room, Tom turned on the television and flipped to the local access channel. He got his phone out and waited for the ad from Starry Mountaintop Gallery to appear. It came up and he took two quick photos of the TV screen showing the urn that he had seen.

Checking the photos he found them to be a bit fuzzy, so he waited for the ad to come around again. To his amazement, when the slot came up, the ad for Starry Mountaintop was one of the others that he had seen with Karen. Another pass through the loop confirmed it. The ad had changed.

Was this a coincidence? Tom was not very confident in anything being a coincidence any more as far as his search for his aunt was concerned. He checked his phone to make sure he at least had the two slightly blurry pictures, then made a secure connection to Jason.

“Jason? Tom Tiernan here. Is the motorcycle still available and locked up in a safe location?”

“Good morning, Tom. The connection is secure. Where are you this morning?”

“Still in Santa Fe, but there’s been a new development.” Quickly Tom told Jason about what he had seen in the ad and what he had learned in his visit there. He sent copies of the two screen capture photos to Jason. “I was going to get better photos, but the ad has now disappeared and been replaced with another one. There’s no way that’s an accident or a coincidence.”

“Agreed,” typed Jason. “Are you heading up to the Farmington area? It wouldn’t surprise me if the address for that phone was where you find this artist, Dahlia. Was your aunt an artist? Do you remember if she has a tattoo like that?”

“She could have been, I don’t know. I was only about seven when I last saw her, so I’m not sure if what she did for a living would have registered one way or the other. I don’t remember any of my relatives ever mentioning it. As for the tattoo, that probably would have been something I would have remembered and it doesn’t ring a bell, but she could have gotten that any time in the last forty years. It could be tied to her name change. Assuming, as always, that Dahlia is actually Auntie Annie.”

“Let me do some searching with the new information and see if anything shows up. Also, something with the rental car thing yesterday got me to thinking.” As he typed, a new icon popped up on Tom’s screen. “Here are the specs for a personal GPS tracking device that you should be able to get at an electronics store there in Santa Fe. It should also communicate with your phone, and when you set it up and link it, the security software will set it to only talk to my computer or you. I recommend that you get two or three of them before you leave town. You keep one of them with you at all times but you can use the others on Ellen’s car or anything else that we might want to track.”

“Okay, I’ll pick those up. Just so I know, if I put one on someone’s car and we track them, is that legal?”

“You mean in absolute terms or relative to the two dozen felonies we’ve already committed?” Jason asked.

“That’s what I thought. Thanks. I’m going to check out and then head up to toward Farmington. Before I leave, I remember you said yesterday that you had some new information on the video from my place?”

“That’s right, I got the complete analysis done. There is absolutely zero sign that anything in it is faked. Better yet, once I did some image enhancement on the object itself I saw something interesting.

“Do you remember those vague, grey blobs that showed up just before the teeth started appearing? We thought they were random, like static, but they’re not. The frames are a second apart so the blobs appeared chaotic, but the video is actually made of two half-frames making up each frame. When you compare each pair of half-frames, which are taken a thirtieth of a second apart, you can see that the blobs are objects of some kind, moving around. They almost look like jelly fish swimming around. Or ghosts.”

Tom had to think about that a second. “Thanks, I guess. I’m sure it’s better to know than to not, but this is getting pretty bizarre. Do you have any idea if any part of this thing is dangerous, benign, both, neither?”

“Sorry, still no data on that. The only way I can think of to test that would be if we know when one is there and try interacting with it. I wouldn’t suggest trying to stick your hand into one just yet. In that respect it’s a good thing that your cat picked that time to claw you up. But if we had any kind of control or warning we could at least try to poke one with a stick.”

“What you said about the cat,” Tom typed. “We’ve been assuming that it was a coincidence, but we’re also finding out that there are no coincidences. It’s possible that we’re anthropomorphizing, but I’m convinced that the cat saw the thing appear. Then she saw me about to touch it and she leapt. What does she know that we don’t?”

“She’s your cat. You’ll have to ask her. If she starts talking, let me know.”

“You got it. Anything else about the video?”

“From the time that the hole first opened up until the teeth appeared we’ve got over a minute of video,” Jason typed. “I tried to see if any of the blobs could be identified from one pair of frames to another, but there were no matches. I did look closely at when the teeth appeared and confirmed that they didn’t just pop into view. They come in from the edge of the hole over about four seconds, with the inside rows following simultaneously, each row a fraction of a second behind the row outside of it. The whole process took about fifteen seconds, and the blobs all started disappearing as soon as the teeth appeared.”

Tom thought through what had happened three short days earlier. There was something there, another thought, another clue tipping on the edge of falling into place.

“Jason, I’m trying to remember. I had been sitting there. The cat got wonky. I walked around and couldn’t see anything. I had the thought that maybe it was something that I could feel but not see, like a cobweb or something small. I closed my eyes, raised my arms, and stepped forward. Something you just said, it matters, but I can’t put it together.”

“I’ve got it!” Jason said. “Your cat noticed it as soon as it appeared and started watching it. You got up and circled it, but at a distance. The blobs were there the whole time. But as soon as you raised your arms and started to step forward, the teeth appeared.”

“So sticking my hand into one or trying to touch it will trigger some kind of defense mechanism?”

“Given the pathetically small amount of data we have, I think we have to go with that until proven otherwise.”

“Duly noted. If you don’t have anything else, I’m going to hit the road.”

“Remember the tracking devices,” Jason reminded Tom.

“Got it. Later.”

Tom checked out of the hotel and let the car’s GPS guide him to the electronics store. As Jason had said, there were personal tracking devices available. Tom bought four, just to be safe.

With the weather clear and the roads all plowed, it was an easy drive up to the Farmington area in less than four hours. With some new results to buoy his spirits, Tom was able to enjoy the scenery more. After following the interstate south for forty miles or so, just as he was entering the northern suburbs of Albuquerque, Tom turned onto US Route 550 to head back to the northwest toward Farmington and Durango.

The roads wound through hills from one mesa to another, the horizons lined with a constantly changing array of mountain peaks. All were snow covered and at the top of the higher hills there were patches of snow. The terrain trended generally lower from Santa Fe and less snow had fallen here. As the day warmed it was soon above freezing and the road were occasionally wet from the melt runoff.

Periodically there were road signs indicating that they were now on one reservation or another. It was often ten miles or more between exits and most exits on tribal lands had casinos which were advertised early and often as he approached. Tom stopped once for gas and lunch. During the break he followed the instructions for activating one of the tracking devices, let it talk to and be reprogrammed or upgraded by the security software on his phone, and finally attached it to his key chain.

As he approached Farmington he began to see billboards advertising the area’s attractions, which seemed to revolve around outdoor activities and parks, both the national and the state variety. Mixed in with all of the usual billboards for gas, restaurants, and motels there also seemed to be a lot of psychics, tarot card readers, and purveyors of crystals and energy balancing massages.

Tom couldn’t decide if it was significant to see those kinds of ads as he approached or if they had always been there and he had simply ignored them in the past. While he was a devout non-believer in such things, under the current circumstances, it was getting harder to be such a diehard skeptic.

As the main highway skirted the south side of the city on its way to Arizona, Tom turned off into the city. He quickly found another suite-based hotel in the same national chain as before, of course built in the obligatory southwestern style. At least he would be building up toward some free nights on this trip.

Tom was offered a room overlooking the river and the parks that ran along its banks. He checked to see if the room would be available for additional nights if needed, but only committed to the first night. It seemed prudent to cover all of his bases.

On his way to the room he stopped at a rack of flyers for local attractions that sat next to the elevator. He picked up one of each to augment the online searches that would be coming tonight. In addition to his newfound potential openness to New Age mysticism he was thinking that maximizing his options at every turn was a good strategy.

Once settled in his room, Tom found the local access channel on the television and let it run in the background. It was probably too much to expect to get lucky twice with that trick, but he wouldn’t know unless he tried it. Laying all of the flyers out on the bed, Tom began to learn about the Farmington area.

In some ways it seemed to be sibling city to Santa Fe with many art galleries, trendy boutiques, jewelry stores, and restaurants. But it differed from Santa Fe in the emphasis it had on outdoor activities and the fine arts. For a city of this size there seemed to be a disproportionate number of theatres, performing arts groups, and concert venues. There was even a local symphony.

But the outdoors is where everything in the area was focused. National parks and monuments were all over the area, most an hour or two away. Mesa Verde National Park was to the north over the border in Colorado, while Canyon de Chelly National Monument was to the southwest in Arizona. Monument Valley was on the border between Arizona and Utah to the northwest. Not to mention all of the camping sites, hiking trails, fishing spots, and water sports opportunities.

It was obvious that he was going to need some sun block and better hiking boots if he was going to be here long.

Scattered all over nearby were Native American reservations for various tribes. Navajo, Southern Ute, and Hopi villages and tribal lands covered large sections of the region. Many of them included archaeological tourist sites, including cliff dwellings, ancient villages, and ruins.

Tom looked at the information that Jason had sent regarding the phone that Ellen had called. It was a cell phone and billed to “Four Corners Enterprises” at a post office box in one of the Farmington neighborhoods on the west side of town. The map showed the small post office branch to be located in a shopping center in a residential neighborhood. Other than the phone number, Jason had found absolutely nothing else about Four Corners Enterprises.

It was starting to get dark but the post office should still be open for another hour or more. If nothing else, it would be useful to know what size of a box it was. If it was one of the smallest ones it was probably for an individual, where an actual business or company would be more likely to have one of the bigger boxes. At least it would be a starting data point.

Farmington wasn’t that large of a town, so it didn’t take long for Tom to find the shopping center. It was a mid-sized strip mall with a large grocery store at one end, a large national department store at the other, a large drug store in the middle, and a half-dozen fast food restaurants on islands out in the parking lot. The post office branch was next to the grocery store. The parking spaces near the front of the grocery store were all full, so Tom parked down one of the aisles and started walking back toward the post office.

The lobby of the post office was generic, with three service windows off to the left and two hundred or so boxes in a couple of alcoves off to the right. There was only one postal employee working the desk with one customer being helped and another in line, so Tom stepped over to the boxes.

They were arranged in the usual fashion, with six rows of small boxes on top, two rows of medium sized boxes below them, two rows of large boxes below the mediums, and a single row of extra large boxes at the bottom near the floor. Since they were numbered in order, it was a simple matter to see that the box he was looking for was a large one in the third row up. No other details were obvious. Tom really didn’t want to attract any undue attention, particularly by a federal agency, so he turned and left.

Out on the sidewalk, he looked down the row of small shops stretching between the grocery store and the drug store. A real estate office and an insurance office looked like they were just closing, while a karate studio was bright and full of kicking and punching ten-year olds. Beyond that was a Starbucks, which Tom determined was his next destination.

As he came out with his coffee it was now fully dark. He started walking across the parking lot to his car, sipping the hot drink, becoming acutely aware that he was wearing dark clothing and there were several parking lot lights burnt out. Because Tom was keeping his eyes open for traffic around him, he saw the new, white Tahoe as it turned down the parking lot lane ahead and came right at him..

He couldn’t see the license plate or any other details, but he was now on edge enough to react quickly. He stepped back between two minivans and kept his head down as the Tahoe parked several spaces down and facing the other direction.

As the driver got out and started walking toward the post office, Tom kept his eyes open while he turned toward the driver’s door of the one minivan and acted as if he were getting his keys. The Tahoe’s driver walked right past him without paying any attention and Tom could see her clearly.

It was not Ellen.

Waiting until she had walked past, Tom walked toward his car on a route that would take him near the parked Tahoe. He paused to look at the Colorado plates and immediately recognized the digits. Ellen might not be driving, but it was her SUV.

Tom kept walking, mindful that someone else might still be in the van even if the driver wasn’t. He kept moving until he was behind a pickup truck and out of view of the Tahoe. Only then did he stop and quickly consider his options.

He really wanted to put one of the GPS trackers onto that vehicle. It would be a huge advantage to them if he could pull it off. But if anyone was still in the van he would be caught trying it and there was no doubt that he would be in hot water, either from the police or from Ellen and whoever she was with. Tom was no secret agent and the prospect of trying something like this was both exciting and terrifying. Praying that fortune did indeed favor the bold, he peeked around the back of the truck he was hiding behind.

Fifty yards across the parking lot, through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall lining the front of the in the brightly lit post office, Tom could see the SUV’s driver. She was squatting down in the corner of the second alcove where he had just been, getting mail out of a box. While he couldn’t be absolutely sure from that distance that she was in the exact box that he had looked at, he would have bet the house that she was. That settled it.

Tom abandoned his coffee, leaving it on the step bumper of the truck. He pulled out his keys and removed the tracking device from his key chain. Holding it in his hand, he started slowly walking back toward the shopping center, approaching the back of the parked Tahoe. Trying very hard to not look suspicious to anyone who might be watching, he checked quickly to see if there were any other occupants of the Tahoe.

It looked clear, so Tom made his move. As he came next to the back left corner of the Tahoe he cut to the left, more or less toward his car. As he passed the vehicle’s driver side door he “dropped” his keys with a clatter. He quickly went down to one knee to “find” them and prayed that he was hidden by all of the cars parked around him. As he grabbed the keys off of the cold asphalt, he reached up under the front bumper and clipped the tracking device onto a wire or cable he felt there. He then smoothly stood with his keys jingling and walked to his rental car.

His heart was pounding as he got in and he wanted to watch the woman come back out from the post office, but he knew that he had to behave naturally for anyone who might be watching. He started the car and backed out, keeping one eye on his mirrors as he pulled away.

No one seemed to have paid any attention to him or raised any alarms. He drove cautiously back to the hotel, but the trip was uneventful. The adrenaline in his system at first made him jumpy and jittery, before all of the nervous energy abandoned him and left him hollow and exhausted.

Maybe they had finally gotten a break.

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

Another really interesting thing that I’m finding out while writing this story is the way plot twists and events pop up as I’m typing them. I’m writing this story with a general outline and a target of where I want the plot to end up, but there have been several things that I had no clue were coming until I got there. For example, the fact that Ellen lied through her teeth to Tom and ditched him. I was literally typing, “He pulled up in front of the store about 8:55” when my brain said, “You do know that she’s not going to show up. Right?” Well, now I did!

It’s happened several times, and each time it’s been quite clear in my head that it was the correct way to go. In addition, by the time I finish writing out the modified scene, it’s usually pretty clear what follows next on the altered time line.

That’s pretty neat. I don’t know if I can count on that happening the next time, or the 1,000th time I need it, but for right now it’s kind of an amazing feeling. Not quite “amazing” like finding out that you have the ability to teleport or kill people with your mind, but more like the “amazing” when you suddenly find out that you have a natural talent for juggling or roller skating.

I’ve never been a big fan of “faith”, more of a “cover your ass and your bases” kind of a guy. But if this keeps up, I might have to start having faith in my ability to do this. It feels like jumping off a cliff and having faith that I can learn to fly on the way down. That analogy, in turn, could have profound consequences for many other aspects of my life.

As Alice said, “Curiouser and curiouser.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

The miles droned by as Tom drove the long way around the southern end of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. He passed into New Mexico before sunset, but soon it was dark and more light snow flurries started. At one point the GPS chirped and asked if he wanted to take a shortcut through Taos, but when Tom checked the elevations on the alternate route he decided that it was better to just stick with the interstate. It wasn’t worth it to possibly be forced to double back for three or four hours just to maybe save an hour.

As the snow continued, Tom was able to keep moving but he was forced to slow down. He kept checking the radio for reports from the highway patrol and the news was always that the road was open but caution was necessary. When he had left Pueblo he hadn’t planned on the weather getting worse. The GPS periodically updated his ETA in Farmington, but it was always basing it on the maximum speeds for the roads. As the reality of the slower speeds and sloppy conditions kept being factored in, the ETA soon slipped into the wee hours of the next morning.

Tom tried to keep an eye out for any late model, white Tahoe SUVs, but there weren’t a lot of other cars out this far in the middle of nowhere in a storm. Most of the traffic was made up of long-distance truckers, who didn’t seem to slow down for anyone or anything. It was almost like they were driving in an alternate reality that didn’t include darkness or snow.

It was seven o’clock by the time he got to the New Mexico version of Las Vegas, where he stopped to get gas and a quick dinner. From there the interstate went back up into some higher elevations, along with their heavier snow. The roads were starting to get icy underneath the snow which just made everything all the more treacherous. Driving his compact car Tom could feel every gust of wind and was pushed around by every truck that blew past him.

When he got to Santa Fe it was nearly ten o’clock and the GPS was telling him that he would get to Farmington by 3:00 AM, but Tom knew that was a lie. Ellen had probably arrived hours ago wherever it was she was going. Getting himself killed in a stupid car accident wasn’t going to solve anything. It was time to hole up for the night.

The freeway sign indicated that the next five exits serviced Santa Fe. The first couple still looked like they were way out on the outskirts of town, but soon Tom could see that he was coming into the main city. Even from a distance he could see several towering signs for gas, motels, and restaurants. He took the exit and then had to choose between a national discount chain motel and a more upscale national all-suites property. Tom went with the suite.

Once in his room he tried to do some more searching online for anything that might be useful, but he was having problems maintaining his concentration. Now that he wasn’t focused on driving in dangerous conditions, all of the adrenaline and tension of the day leaked out of him and left him deflated. He turned on the television to see if there might be something mindless to distract him for an hour while he wound down, preferably without insulting his intelligence.

Flipping through the satellite channels on the motel’s system, his attention was caught by a local access channel promoting a number of the area’s tourist attractions and small businesses. Living up to Santa Fe’s reputation, most of the ads were for art galleries, jewelry stores, historical sites, spas, luxury boutiques, and restaurants.

Tom had never been to the city before, but he couldn’t help but wonder how much of the art in the galleries was actually unique and inspired and how much was simply trendy and expensive. As the ads began to scroll back through their loop for a second time he reached for the TV’s remote control. Just as he changed the channel an image in a gallery ad caught his eye. He flipped back as quickly as he could, but the loop had already moved on.

Getting a pen and notepad from the hotel desk, Tom waited impatiently for the ads to loop through again. He kept scanning the ads for a repeat of the image he had seen, but it never appeared anywhere else. Finally he recognized one of the ads that had just preceded the one he wanted to see and he got on the edge of the bed so that he could clearly see the television.

The ad he had seen came on and he wrote down the name, the Starry Mountaintop Gallery. As he quickly wrote down the phone number given, he clearly saw the piece he had glimpsed the first time. In a collection of large vases, bowls, and various pottery items, there was clearly something like a large cookie jar painted to show two cats staring up into a cloudless, blue sky. In the sky were several black disks and circles, all of them with a row of teeth around the inside rim.

Tom watched the ads for a third time to make sure that he was seeing what he thought he had seen. It went by quickly as the camera panned across the gallery showroom, just one art piece in a room full of them, but it stuck out like a sore thumb to Tom. He quickly checked out the gallery’s web site but didn’t see any sign of it there. He noted the gallery’s hours and address.

As long as he wasn’t going to be getting anywhere before Ellen, this was something he needed to check out first.

In the morning Tom slept in late and took his time getting up and finding a good breakfast. The gallery didn’t open until ten o’clock, so there was no hurry. Tom was glad to see that the skies were clear. Even with the sun up it didn’t look like it was going to get much above freezing any time during the day. The streets and sidewalks were all clear of snow by the time he went out, although there were still plenty of white patches in yards and parks where no one had trampled it yet.

The GPS indicated that the gallery was only a few blocks away and Tom had seen several notices about restrictive parking in the area. It seemed that many streets were primarily for pedestrians only. After checking with the front desk at the hotel, Tom decided to leave his car at the hotel and walk.

The cold air was thin as Tom hustled along at his usual brisk pace. He had seen the signs indicating that Santa Fe was at 7000’ altitude and there were warnings in the hotel room about the dangers of overexertion in the thin air, but it didn’t register until he found himself getting seriously short of breath. Like it or not, he was forced to ease his pace and take it easy.

As Tom entered the Starry Mountaintop Gallery he saw that it was arranged less as an art gallery and more like an upscale furniture store. All of the paintings, sculptures, and other art pieces were displayed as they would be if they were prized possessions to be shown off as ostentatiously as possible. Some of the furniture being used could have been art pieces in their own right, but some appeared to be minimalist set dressings. In what was apparently the theme of the gallery, almost all of the art pieces portrayed some kind of astronomical object or symbol.

There was only one employee in the gallery as Tom entered, and she was engaged in conversation with a young couple. The well dressed, middle aged woman caught Tom’s eye and held up a finger indicating that she would be with him shortly. Tom gestured back with a thumbs up, hopefully indicating that he was fine and in no hurry. He began circling the room slowly, looking carefully at each piece.

There was no sign of the piece that he had seen in the ad last night. Stars, moons, and suns were everywhere. A huge oak headboard on a king-sized bed was intricately carved with something that could have been a distant cousin to van Gogh’s “Starry Night”. A monstrously huge chrome mobile displaying the solar system hung high above a living room setting, the planets each etched with detail and embedded with semi-precious stones. Several stained glass windows showed stylized constellations. A large painting of the sun in full eclipse had amazingly detailed loops, rays, and whorls in the flaming corona.

Some of the pieces included animals, but only one had a cat and it was obviously not the one that Tom was looking for since the cat was shown curled up and sleeping. Other pieces showed various animals looking up at the sun, the moon or the stars, but nothing bizarre or unusual was shown in the skies anywhere. Tom liked a tapestry that showed a mountain lion lounging on a cliff ledge while looking up at Orion rising above a city, which he assumed to be Santa Fe. Curious, he looked for a price tag, but found that nothing in the gallery seemed to have one. He thought that it was a subtle touch that spoke volumes.

He realized that the gallery saleswoman was now standing quietly behind him, apparently done with the couple who had been here earlier. Suddenly deciding to take the initiative, he turned to her, smiled, and stretched out his hand. “Tom Tiernan. And you are?”

The woman graciously shook his hand and then released it. “I’m Karen Anders. Is there something in particular that you’re looking for today?”

“Perhaps I am, I’m not sure yet. I’m out from Los Angeles, just visiting the area for a few days and your gallery seemed interesting. It seems that everything has some astronomical connection, yes?”

“Quite so,” Karen said. “I have always been fascinated by the stars and astronomy, but when I wanted to study it in college I found that I should have studied a lot more math when I was younger. Instead I ended up studying art and business, then starting this gallery to combine it all. So far it seems to be working out. Are you involved with astronomy?”

“In a way, I guess that you could say that I am. I worked for over thirty years as a science and technology reporter, mainly for newspapers out on the west coast. In the course of doing that I’ve covered a fair number of stories relating to astronomy and the space program. It was always special when I got to go to JPL or Florida for a space shuttle launch. But I wouldn’t have guessed that enough people shared that interest to have a gallery that specialized in that sort of thing.”

“It’s a niche market, but there’s not a lot of competition and it fits in well with the culture here in Santa Fe. I couldn’t sell straight astronomical art here, it’s not the right market for that, although I did have Alan Bean do a showing here once. Mainly I look for things that will stand out and be eye catching. That’s what a lot of people in this area are looking for. Did you see anything that you liked?”

“There are several very nice things, but I’m not sure that they would fit in with my current décor. However, I noticed your ad on one of the local access channels in the hotel last night. There was a piece there that caught my eye. I don’t see it here, or anything like it, but maybe you’ll recognize it if I can describe it.”

“I can do even better,” Karen said. “We only have four video ads that we’ve shot, and I have a DVD with copies of all of them. Why don’t we look at them and you can show me which one you’re looking for.”

“Perfect, that would be great,” Tom replied.

It only took a minute for Karen to pull the DVD out of a file cabinet and put it in a player in her office. A very large flat screen display lit up on one wall. Neither of the first two ads were the ones that Tom had seen, but the third one was and Tom froze the playback to show the piece with the two cats and the disks in the sky.

“Can you tell me about this?” he asked.

Karen looked puzzled for a second but then her face smoothed to hide the emotion. “That’s an odd work, part of a series that we get from time to time. I don’t have any in right now and I really can’t say when I’ll get another, but if you like I can take your information and let you know when one becomes available.”

“I noticed it because of the cats,” Tom lied. “I’ve got a British Shorthair just like that and I’ve had others from that breed in the past. I’ve got some other artwork that shows British Shorthairs, so I thought that this would be something that would fit with my collection.”

“I see,” Karen said. “Now I understand. This particular work was here when we shot that video about eighteen months ago, but it went fairly quickly. This artist’s works usually do, but generally it’s someone who’s already familiar with her work or has been introduced to them by someone who is. It’s unusual for someone to ask about these works at random.”

“From the video it’s unclear just how big it is or what the design is. Would you have any still pictures of it or anything else on it?”

“No, I can tell you that it’s a little more than a foot tall and the artwork you see here is repeated on the other side, but I don’t have any other photos I’m afraid. The artist is quite strict about allowing any images to be taken of her work. I think she may be worried that her designs will be copied or stolen.”

“Thank you, that helps a great deal. What’s the astronomical connection to the piece? Do you know what exactly it is that the cats are looking at? I can’t quite see it clearly in the video.”

“I’ve never quite gotten a detailed description of that from the artist, but when I’ve been able to talk to her at all she has spoken of ‘other worlds’ and ‘signs in the sky’. All of her works have cats, and all have some variation of those symbols. If I had to guess I would think that they’re star symbols with the points turned inward instead of out, or possibly some kind of symbol for a solar eclipse. Perhaps they’re of paleographic origin or related to a more recent Native American symbol, but I don’t know enough about that to say for sure.”

“That’s fascinating,” Tom said, his sincere interest being obvious. “It almost looks like it has a lid, or is that a lip or top on it of some sort?”

“You’re correct, there’s a lid. I’m hesitant to say too much for fear of sounding macabre, but in addition to being beautiful, these works are designed to be functional.”

Now it was Tom’s turn to be puzzled. “I’m sorry, but that just makes me even more curious,” he said, giving Karen his biggest smile. “Please, I promise to not be upset or offended.”

“Very well, if you must know. While they might be used for a variety of things, I understand that these works are actually intended as funeral urns, to hold someone’s ashes after they’ve been cremated.”

Tom did his best to hide his surprise. “That’s not macabre, that’s wonderful. Many people keep the ashes of their departed family members for years in their homes. What better way to do that than to have some beautiful piece of artwork to use for the job? I think that it would be fantastic to use something like that instead of something that’s just ordinary marble or pottery.”

“I agree and I’m glad that you’re not bothered by that. I’m just always afraid that it might upset someone or violate their religious convictions.”

“Not at all,” Tom said. “In fact, I’m becoming more fascinated by the minute. I would love to meet this artist. Is she from the area?”

“She’s regional but not local. I believe she lives up beyond Farmington. I’ve only met her a handful of times. Usually I deal with her agent. When they first approached me about carrying her works I had doubts, especially since they’re both so odd. The first pieces I took strictly on consignment, but now I get pieces at irregular times, usually about four or five times a year.”

“If I may ask, how much do her pieces cost?” Tom asked.

“I currently ask $5,000 for each piece,” Karen answered.

“That sounds quite reasonable,” Tom lied again. “I would be very excited if you could let me know when you get more of her works in. What’s her name again?”

“Her name is Dahlia,” Karen said.

It was everything Tom could do to keep a straight face and keep his voice level. “Really? Dahlia? Like the flower?”

“Yes, just like the flower. She’s got a beautiful tattoo of a purple dahlia on her right shoulder. It’s wonderful work as well, but I don’t know if she takes the name from the flower and the tattoo or if she got the tattoo because of it’s her name. I’m sure that you know how eccentric artists can be.”

“I know, their actions can often be inexplicable. Please, let me give you my information,” Tom said, fishing out a business card. “I’m very interested, but I need to ask if you can be extremely discreet about my identity. I have a wide range of financial partners and competitors. In my investment field it’s a very competitive and cutthroat business, so it would not do to give anyone any unnecessary information, even the artist.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Karen assured him. “As I said, I rarely see her. Usually it’s the agent that I talk to, and then only when she comes in. I’ll make sure to let you know as soon as I have another piece available.”

“Thank you, I really appreciate it. You mentioned the agent that you deal with. What’s her name?”

“Ellen Summers. I used to deal with her mother, Beth Summers, but she passed away two years ago, so her daughter took over for her.”

Tom almost didn’t dare to speak. To buy some time, he held out his hand again for Karen to shake. “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful, very helpful indeed. I’m so happy that I stumbled across this, it had made my whole trip worthwhile. I look forward to hearing from you soon.”

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

I realized the other day that in some ways, writing (and displaying) a “zeroth draft” like this, almost as a stream of consciousness exercise, is almost like making a really, really detailed outline. What I see happening (which you don’t) is that I’ll notice things a day or two after I write them that I know right now I’m going to need or want to change or re-write — but I can’t do it at the moment. In part this is because I need to get the next day’s 3,000 words done, and in part because doing so will change what I’m writing today, so today’s post won’t make any sense to anyone who hasn’t already read the revised versions.

Clear as mud?

Look at it this way. If I were working on a first draft without it being NaNoWriMo and without letting everyone watch, I could and would make plot revisions as they pop up, and then write from there. No one would ever see the first draft until all of those major revisions were done. On the other hand, that can get really time consuming and regressive. It’s easy to get into a death spiral of revising and writing a bit more and revising some more and then re-revising and re-writing and then re-re-revising…and you never, ever finish the damn first draft! So the “NaNoWriMo & fling it at the blog” approach bypasses that.

For example, the scene in Chapter Four where Tom meets Ellen at the chocolate shop. I only had the idea to put the cat in that scene at the last minute. As soon as I thought of that and what would happen, I knew that it was a good idea, moving the plot along, putting some tension between Ellen and Tom, and ratcheting up the suspense. But, in retrospect, in real life there’s probably not going to be a cat wandering around in a restaurant & chocolate shop. Real world health regulations and all of that. So what will need to happen will be something like Tom finding the store closed with some plot thing that leads him to some place like Ellen’s home (maybe she lives in an apartment over the store?) where they can have their conversation and have the tomcat freak out.

There is a growing list of quick notes and comments that are being added to the file as we go on. In Chapter One I need to put in more physical descriptions of Tom – I have an idea of what he looks like, but I didn’t let you know. I need to make it more clear at the beginning of Chapter Four that Tom has a pet sitter and didn’t just abandon his cat when he went to Denver. In the Manitou Springs police station in Chapter Four, I need to give the cop a name. Corrections to typos. And so on.

It’s just a big, fancy, detailed outline I’m telling you!

CHAPTER SIX

Tom drove with his brain on autopilot for a half hour. He set the cruise control on the rental car for fifty-five MPH and stayed in the right lane with the trucks, letting the drivers who were paying attention fly by him. He needed to be moving, even if he wasn’t sure that he was moving forward, but he also needed time to think. Too much had happened in the last seventy-two hours and all he had done the whole time was respond to what was being done to him. He needed to figure out was happening and become proactive instead of reactive.

Why had Ellen misled him? No, that wasn’t even the half of it. Why had she flat out lied through her teeth to him? He was just trying to find a lost aunt. It wasn’t like he was smuggling secrets to the Russians or trying to crack some secret society’s hidden conspiracy. What had triggered this deception and betrayal? Tom really didn’t want to be paranoid, but between Jason’s warnings about an unknown cop bot being on their tail and this inexplicable move by Ellen, he was really wondering what he had gotten himself into. Wryly, he remembered a high school friend telling him that just because you are paranoid, it doesn’t mean that they’re not really after you.

As Tom was lost in thought, a sudden patch of slush on the pavement made the car start to skid and fishtail. The car’s cruise control tried to compensate and made the skid worse. Tom’s attention instantly snapped back to his driving as he gently got on the brakes, tripping the cruise control off, and steering into the skid. Fortunately, most of the pavement was less treacherous, so after a brief but terrifying sojourn onto the margin, Tom was able to regain control and get the car back into the lane. Now he remembered why you should never drive with the cruise control engaged in slippery conditions.

Tom realized that he was out of his league and needed some help. Paying attention now to his surroundings, he saw that he was coming into the outskirts of Pueblo. Spotting an exit sign that pointed toward the Colorado State University campus, his next move became clear.

Exiting the interstate, Tom followed the signs and made his way to the CSU campus. At the campus entrance was a visitor’s information booth where he got instructions on how to get to the main library. He bought a temporary parking pass and hunted around until he found an open spot in an extremely full parking lot near the library.

Going into the library, he felt out of place with the crowds of students, almost all of whom were less than half his age. No one asked him for any kind of ID as he entered, so he strode purposefully past the front desk as if he knew exactly where he was going. As a reporter, he had spent more than enough time doing research in libraries to look like he belonged there.

He looked around until he found an area that was mostly empty of students. Looking for privacy, he found an empty work cubicle and chair buried back behind rows and rows of neatly shelved reference works. There were of course the obligatory security cameras in each corner of each room. Mindful of how a well-placed camera could see and record his keystrokes if some cop bot thought that to be necessary, Tom casually sat so that his keyboard should be hidden. He hoped that he was paranoid enough and there weren’t any other cameras that he didn’t see. Once he got his pad up and running he was grateful to see that, as he had expected, the library had an open wi-fi system, a robust signal, and a high speed connection.

Using the software that Jason had given to him, Tom connected to his home system in Los Angeles and verified the existence of a secure connection. Using that connection to contact Jason, he hoped that their conversation would be free of scrutiny. He opened a chat window and typed, “Jason, I need your help.”

It only took a heartbeat before Jason typed back, “What’s up? Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I can’t call right now,” Tom typed. “Is this connection secure?”

“Yes, it’s coming through your home system and the software says we’re invisible. What’s happening? Where are you?”

“I’m still in Colorado, at the university library in Pueblo. Last night I thought that today I would be driving to see someone who might still be in touch with Auntie Annie. This morning I found out that my contact in Colorado had buffaloed me. She took off without me last night. I need help figuring out which way to go next. I’m running out of clues.”

“What kind of help? What do you need me to do?” Jason asked.

“I need to try to get a lead on my fugitive contact. It might require some ‘advanced’ software tools in order to access some non-public data. I’m sure you know what I mean. The security software you have is very ‘cutting edge’. Do you have any access to anything else that could help with this latest problem?”

There was a significant pause before Jason replied.

“I might have some toys that could help, but there could be serious consequences to using them. I’m not anxious to go to jail but I’ll give it a try. What exactly do you need?”

“The woman I met is named Ellen Summers. She was raised in that commune outside of Manitou Springs but left years ago. Her mother appears to have been one of the leaders of the commune. The local police gave me a picture of Auntie Annie from her arrest two years ago. Ellen recognized her but said her name was ‘Dahlia’. Ellen said that she was going to take me to meet her mother, but when I showed up an hour ago to pick her up, I found that Ellen had taken off overnight. The phone number and email address she gave me were bogus. To top it all off, I’m told that her mother died last year.”

“Yeah, nothing suspicious about any of that,” Jason replied.

“I was able to find out that Ellen’s mother probably lived in New Mexico, possibly somewhere in the Four Corners area. Ellen used to call a phone number there. Is there any way we can access the phone records for the store and find out what that phone number is, then do a reverse search to figure out where that other phone is located? That will tell me where I have to go next.”

“Do you mean, ‘Can we find that information legally?’ No way,” Jason said. “Practically speaking though, anything is possible and public utilities aren’t exactly legendary for their top notch security protocols. It may take an hour or two, I’ll have to check with some people I know. Anything else you need?”

“I know that Ellen’s driving a new four-wheel drive vehicle she just bought. If you’re pulling miracles out of a hat, I would like to know what kind of car, color, license plate, whatever. Ellen may be wherever that phone is located and she’s got a big head start. As much as I would really like to find her for any number of reasons right now, I would prefer not to stumble on her by accident if I can help it. Finally, I could use an ID for Ellen’s mother and any information at all you can get on her.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Give me the information on Ellen and this store.”

Tom sent over all of the information he had so far as well as a quick image of Annie’s booking photo that he had gotten.

“I’ll see what I can do, but no promises,” Jason typed. “By the way, you’ll want to see what I’ve found in the video from your security cameras. You’ll love it, but I’ll update you later when we have more time.”

“That reminds me, there might have been another ‘anomaly’ or ‘event’ when I was talking to Ellen. There was a cat in the room and it went from sleeping to nuts just like mine did, staring off into space the whole time. Just like before, I didn’t see a thing. Ellen thought she might have been hitting the catnip, but I’m not so sure any more. Do you have a cat that you can use as an alarm?”

“No, I’m a dog person.”

“Of course, now that I think about it, we don’t even know if it’s all cats or just certain ones who can see these things, whatever they are. I’m getting really tired of our list of questions increasing a thousand times faster than our list of answers. Anyway, you might think about getting a cat if these things are really happening.”

“Oh, they’re really happening,” Jason said. “Let me do some hacking and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can on Ellen’s information.”

“Okay, I’m going to get some lunch,” Tom typed. “I’ll be back at the library in about an hour. I’ll reconnect then.”

Tom shut down his pad and went looking for lunch. In the middle of a college campus it wasn’t hard to find a place to get some decent pizza. There were a few breaks in the clouds but no sunshine. From time to time the mountains to the west could be seen, well covered in new snow.

Tom went back to his spot in the library, this time taking a minute to pull some dusty volumes off the shelfes and take them to his seat. He spent some time looking though them at random, then reconnected securely to his home system and waited for Jason to get back to him.

He was flipping through a volume of the International Journal of Quantum Mechanics when the icon for a new file popped up on his pad. Before he could open it, Jason’s text chat window opened up.

“Tom?”

“Yes, I’m here, Jason”, he answered. “A file just got uploaded but I haven’t opened it yet. Were you able to find anything?”

“Yes, I think that I got what you needed. There’s the phone number, an address in New Mexico, and some other documents. As for Ellen, I got the vehicle registration information on her Tahoe and her DMV driver’s license data. The mother’s a ghost, no record of her at all that I can find. She didn’t even get arrested like your aunt did when they shut down the commune.”

“Good work, thanks. Do I want to ask how you did it?”

“Boy, I sure hope you know the answer to that already, Tom. Needless to say, be very careful letting anyone know that you even have any of that data.”

“Right, I will. Just checking. I’m going to head toward New Mexico to see what I can find out. I’ll let you know tonight where I’m at.”

“One more thought that I had before you go, Tom,” Jason typed. “You now know what this lady is driving, which she won’t be expecting. Look at the flip side of it. Does she know what you’re driving?”

Tom had to stop and think about that. His immediate reaction was to answer “no”. He had walked to the chocolate store so Ellen hadn’t seen his car. But then she had asked about it. And he had told her that he had a rental from Denver, as well as where he was staying. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to figure out which car was his.

“Thanks for thinking of that, Jason. I think we can assume that she does.”

“Is there a place in Boulder where you can swap for a new one? It’s probably not worth going back to Denver for, but if you can do it there, maybe you should. Also, you might want to do a quick check for any kind of GPS tracking devices she might have planted on your car.”

“Jason, you are really taking to this paranoia thing like a duck to water. But you’re right. I’ll check.”

“Sorry, but those things aren’t that uncommon or hard to get. Remember, I work for a security company. We’re professional paranoids.”

“Keep it up. I don’t think that I’m going to be kidnapped or murdered if I catch up with Ellen or figure out what’s going on, but I don’t want those to be famous last words either.”

“Good luck in New Mexico. Keep in touch and let me know if you need anything else.”

“Thanks, Jason.”

Tom checked to see if there was an outlet in town for the car rental agency he was using and was pleased to see that there was. He noted the address and then closed and locked his pad.

In the parking lot Tom did take a quick glance into the wheel wells and behind the bumpers to see if there was anything obviously out of place stuck there. He didn’t find anything. He thought of checking in the engine compartment, but realized that he knew so little about modern day engines that he wouldn’t recognize it unless it was marked “Super Secret GPS Tracking Device” in bright yellow letters.

At the rental agency he told the college student working there that he was having problems with the car, getting random error messages flashing on the display screen. The agency manager wanted to have some tests run on the car so they could fix it for him, but Tom said that he was in a hurry and wanted a replacement. Since they were a small office, they didn’t have the same type as Tom’s. He settled for a smaller and less comfortable model and hit the road.

The information Jason had sent indicated that the mystery phone number was in northwest New Mexico, outside of the small city of Farmington. Setting the car’s GPS with the address given to him by Jason, Tom was frustrated to be told that no such address existed in the GPS’s database. He tried it again and verified that he was putting in the correct data, but again got nowhere.

It was something he would worry about later. For now he pointed the GPS toward city hall in Farmington. The GPS said it was 310 miles, a five and a half hour drive. Tom was bemused to see that, if you assumed that Farmington was the correct destination, Ellen had even lied to him about how far away it was.

An hour south of Pueblo, in Walsenburg, the GPS instructed Tom to get off of the interstate and head west into the mountains. He did as he was told, but as the road started to climb the amount of snow on the side of the road began to increase quickly. Soon Tom was driving in increasingly heavy snow showers, until he came upon a roadblock set up by the highway patrol.

A polite highway patrolman explained to Tom that they were only allowing through local traffic, and then only those with both four-wheel drive and chains. The locals knew the routine and were properly equipped. Tom was not, even if he could have convinced them that he was local. He was turned around and sent back down the mountain.

Updating his GPS with the new parameters and taking the recent and upcoming weather into account, Tom saw that his 310 mile trip was now a 531 mile trip. He would have to follow the interstate all the way down though Santa Fe and almost to Albuquerque before he could swing back north through the high desert to Farmington.

Worst of all was that Ellen, with her eight-hour head start and a four-hour shortcut because of her well-equipped SUV would be there well before he was. She would be free to do whatever she planned on doing and heading off with no further trace for him to follow. Assuming of course that he had guessed correctly and was going to the right place. Assuming this trip wasn’t just one huge wild goose chase. Assuming his aunt was still alive. Assuming Annie knew anything at all about the weird phenomenon that they had witnessed. Assuming they hadn’t imagined it all from the start.

It was going to be a really long drive.

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

I find that it’s easiest to write using locations and setting that I’m at least a bit familiar with, especially if I’ve got pictures that I can review to help set the location in my head so that I can describe it better. Fortunately I travel a lot and (have you noticed) I take a lot of pictures! For example, we were in Denver, Manitou Springs, and Pikes Peak in 2008, and I live in Los Angeles. On the other hand, while some landmark & public places will get used (for example, the LA Zoo and Griffith Park in chapter two), most specific places are fictional (the Golden Horseshoe Motel and Pikes Peak Fine Chocolate & Confectionery Emporium in Manitou Springs).

I’m also finding that it’s sometimes tough to keep telling the story in third person. I think my natural writing style tends to gravitate toward first person, and given the nature of the action (and other factors) it often sounds in my head like it should be a gumshoe detective, noir story. But it’s not. I have a pretty clear tone and story destination in mind for this story and it really needs to be told from a more dispassionate, impersonal, outside viewpoint. That, of course, will be another thing to go through and “smooth out” in the next draft.

For now, onward fellow word herders! Time to see what new obstacles we can throw in front of our plucky hero!

CHAPTER FIVE

“When?” Tom asked anxiously. Despite spending his entire adult life with a well-earned reputation for being slow, methodical, and stodgy, he found that this odd journey that had been thrust upon him seemed to require almost reckless haste in its pursuit. Somehow he had grabbed a tiger by the tail.

“Are you staying here in town, or up in Denver?” Ellen asked.

“Here, down at the Golden Horseshoe Motel for tonight.”

“The Horseshoe, eh? You should have gone to the Manitou Manor Motel next door, they have better wi-fi and the owner there is a friend. Anyway, let me get in touch with my staff to make sure that the store’s covered for a few days. Unless there’s some ongoing disaster that I’m not aware of, we should be able to take off in the morning. Let’s say I’ll meet you here at 9:00 unless you hear otherwise from me.”

Tom took a moment to make sure that Ellen had his phone number and the room number at the motel. Ellen gave him her contact information in return, which Tom carefully wrote down on the back of his aunt’s picture. Tom paid for the hot chocolate and also bought boxes of chocolate to have sent to each of his kids.

“Do you have a car?” Ellen asked.

“Yes, I picked up a rental in Denver. It’s at the motel. I just walked down to the police station and back to here so I could see the town.”

“Did it come with chains and do you know how to drive in the snow?”

“It did and I do. My wife and I used to go up to Big Bear and Mammoth all the time to go skiing. Why?”

“There’s a system moving in and we’ll get snow overnight. You’ll be driving tomorrow, if that’s all right with you. My car hasn’t run well enough in months to take on a trip like that. I don’t drive it any further than I want to walk back. I just wanted to make sure that you could handle what Colorado can throw at you this time of year.”

“No problem. I’ll pick you up about nine o’clock. Care to tell me where we’ll be going?”

“I’d rather not say right now. We’ll be driving for most of the day, assuming we don’t get slowed down too much by the snow. It’s about five hundred miles, but it’s out in the middle of nowhere with no way to fly there unless you have your own plane, so we’ll do it the old fashioned way. Will that fit in with your travel schedule?”

“I’ll be okay for now,” Tom said. “I packed for four days just in case and we can figure something out if it goes longer. Anything else I’ll need or need to know?”

“Not that I can think of right now. I’ll text or call if there is. I’ll see you in the morning.”

As Tom stepped back out onto the sidewalk he was hit by a frigid blast. As Ellen had predicted, the sky was starting to fill with heavy grey clouds and the wind had picked up considerably. Even though it was technically still over an hour before sunset, the tall mountains on all sides left the town in deep shadow and the street lights had turned on.

Tom hustled back to his motel. Once in his room he sent a bland and brief message to his pet sitter regarding his travel plans and another to Jason regarding “the motorcycle”. Ellen was right, the wi-fi connection here was worse than he had seen anywhere in years, but it at least got that simple job done.

The front desk clerk was happy to direct him to one of the family restaurants nearby. Tom walked there and had a wonderful dinner. The meal had far more starch and meat than he was used to, but Tom had to admit that it tasted good. Given the recent stresses in his life, he was not going to feel guilty even if he had pie and ice cream for dessert. As he walked back to the motel following dinner, the first wisps of snow were starting to fall.

Back in his room, Tom checked the weather forecast for tomorrow. They were only supposed to get two or three inches of snow at the most down here, although there would be a lot more at higher elevations. But this was a small storm by the region’s standards. The weather guy on the local news broadcast didn’t seem too excited, so Tom wasn’t going to sweat it either.

What did bother him was the possible event that had occurred in Ellen’s store as they were talking. If he hadn’t seen the video from his house two days ago, he would have simply written off the cat’s behavior as Ellen had, assuming that they had simply seen a stoned cat spacing out on catnip. With his new perspective Tom was far more nervous about what they had seen, wondering what invisible activity might have been going this time. Even more worrisome, they still had no idea if it these events were dangerous, even though they seemed to be happening in close proximity to him.

That might be another question that needed answering. Were these “events” happening all over the place, or just around Tom? Tom was well aware of how a selection bias could skew interpretation of data, especially when the data set was extremely small. But if these events were dangerous, actively seeking to get more data introduced a whole new set of hazards and problems.

Tom tried to use the information he had gotten from Ellen to find more information on Auntie Annie’s whereabouts, particularly using the name “Dahlia”. Nothing simple came up and the slow connection prevented him from trying anything not simple. He left it alone for now, hoping that tomorrow’s trip might answer many of those questions on its own.

In the morning Tom was woken up just after 5:00 by the sound of a tractor clearing snow from the hotel parking lot. Peeking out the window, it looked like more than three inches were sitting on top of his car, but the lot was cleared quickly. The streets appeared to have been cleared as well. Tom got ready to go and see what answers Ellen could help him find.

Following a quick breakfast, Tom checked out of the Golden Horseshoe and drove down to Ellen’s chocolate shop. The roads had some snow on them but no ice. Since the plows were coming through regularly and the snow seemed to be letting up, Tom hadn’t bothered to put the chains on yet. He pulled up in front of the store about 8:55. The store was still dark so he settled in to wait.

At 9:05 a young woman pulled up and parked next to him. She ignored his car as she got out and walked up the steps to the porch in front of the store. Once there she pulled out out her keys and unlocked the door. As she entered, she turned the “closed” sign in the window around to “open”. Soon Tom could see lights turning on inside.

After another five minutes with no sign of Ellen, Tom was getting impatient and worried that something had gone wrong. He pulled out his phone and called Ellen’s number. After three rings the call went to a generic voice mailbox

“Hello, Ellen? This is Tom. I’m here in front of the store and it’s about ten after nine. Maybe I got the time or the place wrong, so please give me a call back as soon as you can so that we can get going. Thanks.”

With growing frustration, Tom got out, locked his car, and went into the store. The young lady who had parked next to him was bustling about, bringing out boxes of candy from the back room and restocking displays on the floor. She turned toward the door when he came in.

“Good morning, can I help you?”

“Maybe, I hope so at least,” Tom said. “I came in and talked with Ellen yesterday. We were supposed to meet here this morning at nine o’clock, but I guess I got it wrong since she’s not here. I’ve tried calling her but I just get voice mail. Do you have any other way to get in touch with her?”

The young lady looked at him with a puzzled expression. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Who are you again?”

“My name is Tom Tiernan. I’m trying to track down my aunt, who used to live in a commune near here. I went to the police station first and the policeman there suggested that I talk to Ellen, since Ellen’s mother might know my aunt. When I talked to her yesterday, Ellen recognized my aunt’s picture. We were going to drive to see her mother today. But Ellen’s pretty late getting here, so now I’m trying to find another way to get in touch with her.”

The young woman walked past Tom, over to the front windows of the store. Leaning up against the glass, she peered down the street. Pulling back she said, “I don’t know what to tell you, but not a lot of that makes sense. I would help you get in touch with Ms. Summers if I could, but I don’t know where she is.”

“What to do mean, that it doesn’t make sense?” Tom asked. “What part of it is unclear?”

“Ms. Summers called me last night and asked me to work some extra shifts for the next week to cover the store, which was great for me. I can use the hours whenever I can get them. Things have been tight around here, if you know what I mean. But she didn’t say anything about meeting anyone this morning. I didn’t get any details, but it sounded to me like she was leaving right away last evening.”

Tom was trying to make sense of that when his phone started to ring. The caller ID indicated that it was Ellen calling. Tom hit the icon to answer the call.

“Ellen, this is Tom,” he said without preamble. “I’m here at the store waiting for you. Is everything okay?”

“Tom, I don’t know who you are and I’m not Ellen,” said an unknown voice on the other end. “You left a message earlier on my voice mail and I was just calling to let you know that you had a wrong number.”

Tom quickly fished out the picture of his aunt with Ellen’s contact information written on it. “Wait, is this 719-129-3580? That’s the number I was given for Ellen Summers in Manitou Springs.”

“Yes, that’s my number, you dialed it correctly, but I’m not that person and I’m in Colorado Springs, not Manitou. I’m sorry, but somehow you’ve got the wrong number.”

Tom thought about it for a second, but it was starting to become obvious what had happened. “Thank you for calling back,” he told the anonymous caller. “I’m sorry to have bothered you this morning.”

“Good luck finding this Ellen lady,” the caller said as she cut the connection.

The chocolate store saleswoman was looking at Tom as he finished the call. “That was one of the other things that you said that didn’t make sense,” she said. ”Ms. Summers couldn’t possibly have given you her phone number. She doesn’t have a phone.”

Tom held out the photo to her. “What about this? And didn’t you say that she called you last night about covering the store?”

“She called from here, the store has a phone of course,” she explained. “But Ms. Summers doesn’t have a phone.” She took the sheet and looked at the information written on the back. “She doesn’t have an email account either, at least not that I know of. She doesn’t even have an email account on the company website, although the rest of us do. As long as I’ve known her, she’s always been living kind of, what’s the term, ‘off the grid’? It’s weird, but I always figured that it came from her being raised the way that she had been, up in that commune. Plus, it really wasn’t any of my business.”

Tom’s head was starting to pound and adrenaline was beginning to send his pulse soaring. Carefully he said, “Can you tell me where she lives so I can go ask her about this?”

“Oh, no, I don’t think that I should tell you that,” she said, as Tom had expected. “If she didn’t want you to contact her she must have had a reason. But I don’t think it matters. I can see her garage from here and her car’s gone. If it’s really important, I guess you might try to see her here when she gets back in a week or so. Or you could take a hint, if I might say so myself.”

Tom let the last comment slide. Losing his temper right now wouldn’t help him get any more information from this lady and at the moment she was his last potential source of clues regarding was going on. Also, if he made a scene, that nice cop from yesterday might not be so nice today.

“Thank you. But I still need to track down my aunt. Plus, Ellen told me yesterday that her car had been broken for months and couldn’t drive.”

“I don’t know why Ms. Summers would say that. She was always taking long trips and driving all over the place. In fact, she just bought a new four-wheel drive for the winter. She was real proud of it too.”

“I’m starting to wonder if anything she told me was the truth,” Tom said in frustration. “When she saw that picture, Ellen said that she had seen my aunt when she was younger and her mother might know where she is now. You wouldn’t happen to know where Ellen’s mother is, do you?”

“Sorry, but there you go with another thing that just doesn’t make any sense. Ms. Summer’s mother died about a year ago. I remember her being gone for almost a month for the funeral and to take care of her mom’s estate and stuff. It seemed like a long time to spend doing that, but that was about a year ago and I needed the hours so I didn’t ask questions.”

Tom sighed heavily as he folded up the picture and put it back in his pocket. “She told me just last night that I needed to meet her mother. That’s why I was supposed to meet her this morning, so that we could drive there. She said it would be a long drive and I was supposed to pick her up.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, mister. I had heard that her mom used to be in that commune up in the hills there by Cave of the Winds and she raised Ms. Summers there. But when that cult got kicked out, most of them scattered all over the place. A big group was supposed to have moved off to somewhere in New Mexico, there’s lots of odd places and groups out there. Some place up by the Four Corners area, on a reservation of some sort.  I never got told anything since it wasn’t my business, like I said, but I saw some phone calls to New Mexico on the bill when I did the accounting for the store here. Ms. Summers told me they were her personal calls and she paid for them herself. Then when she was gone for the funeral, I saw that number was the one that she called from when she would check in on us.”

“I don’t imagine you could let me have that New Mexico phone number, could you?” asked Tom.

“No way. I’m sorry, but I can’t. It looks a lot like Ms. Summers wasn’t buying what you’re selling, so I’ve already probably said too much. Like I said, not my business, but I do really need the job here, even if it is only part time.”

Tom took out his wallet and plucked out a business card. He circled his phone number and handed it to the saleswoman. “If Ellen calls in or comes back, please tell her I was here and at least give her my name and phone number again. I don’t know what’s going on here and I’m not some psycho or stalker, I just want to find my aunt. I thought that Ellen could help. At the very least, at this point I think I deserve an explanation or an apology from her.”

“I’ll keep the card, mister. I don’t know if she’ll call you back.”

“Thanks.” Tom turned and walked to the door. He stopped with his hand on the knob before turning back to the woman. “What about that big tomcat that was here yesterday? Do you take care of him while she’s gone as well?”

“Do you mean Lucifer? No, Ms. Summers always takes him with her when she goes on one of her trips. That’s another reason I know she’s gone. He’s gone, his travel case is gone, and a bunch of his food isn’t here either.”

Nodding his thanks, Tom went out into the cold. There still wasn’t any sunlight and the day looked like it was going to continue to be gray and snowy. With Manitou Springs now apparently a dead end, Tom got into his car and headed out of town. Alone with his thoughts, he got back on the highway and took it down out of the canyon to the interstate, where he turned south toward New Mexico.

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

The realization is setting in that this is not a sprint, but a marathon. Good thing I’ve got a little bit of experience there. Getting into that frame of mind will be critical to getting this job done. On the other hand, I’m very pleased to see that I’m averaging over 3,000 words per day, well in excess of the 1,667 word average needed to “win” NaNoWriMo and complete 50,000 words by December 1st. In my head I see this story as 80K to 90K in the zeroth draft to begin with, probably being edited down to 70K or so in the final form, sp it’s good to see that I’m on a solid pace. At least so far. Let’s hope that it’s not like a marathon where I take off and do the first three or four miles at an 8:00 pace when I should be at a 12:00 pace, leaving me to die a horrible, painful death leaving my body to be picked apart by vultures at about mile thirteen. (Stop it! Bad analogy! BAD analogy!)

So, we found out last night that Jason isn’t just a wimpy customer service rep. Instead he’s resourceful and has some unexpected skills. Who knew? Not me. I find when writing that the characters really do come to life and take on characteristics that as the author you didn’t necessarily plan for in advance. But as long as the changes are “right”, it’s all for the good. However, once the first draft is done and you have a good idea of what happens when and who does what and why they did it, then you have to smooth out the differences in how characters act in different scenes so that they’re believable and consistent. That, however, is a problem to be dealt with in the next pass through the manuscript. Now it’s just word-herding, slinging it hot and fast to see what sticks.

CHAPTER FOUR

When Tom checked the flight schedules he found that it was a tossup between competing evils. He could go at a truly uncivilized hour out of LAX on a regular airliner, or he could sleep in more than an hour and go out of Burbank, but on a tiny, regional jet. Or he could leave from either about once an hour if he was willing to change planes in Phoenix or Salt Lake City. His loathing of the wee dark hours and his hatred of the crowds at LAX overcame his distrust of small aircraft. By 7:00 AM he was checking in at Burbank.

In the middle of the night he had woken up wondering if he should even be flying instead of driving. His initial concern was that one of those invisible holes could open up in the plane with unforeseen and probably horrible consequences. After rousing himself enough to worry about it, he realized that logically it didn’t figure that it was a huge danger.

It was extremely unlikely that this was a phenomenon that had just occurred for the very first time, only to be observed by accident. The universe was a big place, so even if the invisible holes were something very recent, there must be more of them occurring, even if Tom and Jason didn’t know how common their appearances were. The holes apparently hadn’t caused any air crashes so far, or any other major disasters. Otherwise they would be in the news, or at least that’s what Tom told himself.

Furthermore, if the holes’ appearances were a common but unknown event, it was even less likely that they would be dangerous to a plane and its passengers. For that matter, Tom didn’t even know if the holes were dangerous at all. The cat had knocked his arm away before he could touch it, but that could have been a complete coincidence. For all Tom knew, there could be fifteen of the holes in his room right now with the only possible clue to their existence being the cat’s mood.

Since they knew nothing good, bad, or otherwise, the best course was to just plow ahead and try to get some facts. Freaking out over every boogie man that his subconscious could come up with wasn’t going to be useful.

The flight to Denver was full but on time. With his last minute booking Tom had been stuck with an aisle seat of course. However, the emergency exit row seats were occupied by an elderly couple who would not have been able to open the door if needed, so Tom was swapped with one of them and scored not only the window but two additional precious inches of legroom.

The two-hour trip to Denver was uneventful. The weather was calm enough so that the seat belt sign was off, although there was no room in the small plane to really get up and move around. As they flew over the Grand Canyon the pilot told them how spectacular it looked, but it was below them on the right and Tom was looking out at the left wing. When they came into Denver and turned north into the landing approach, Tom’s view of the Front Range was magnificent. All of the mountains were completely covered with snow with the snow line almost down to the city already.

Mindful of Jason’s worries about possible surveillance, Tom at first tried to keep an eye open for anyone who might be watching or following him. He sheepishly realized how unlikely it was that those extreme measures would be necessary at this point. If some cop bot system had tagged them, a surveillance routine would be following him from one security camera to another. Since he wasn’t going to dodge the cameras, and it would only serve to really set of some red flags if he tried, he just relaxed and acted the part of a nephew trying to track down a long lost aunt for the holidays. It wasn’t a hard role to play.

On the ground, Tom checked his phone for messages but found nothing from Jason. He hoped that was good. Tom double checked the phone to make sure that the security software was working before sending a text message to his pet sitter to let her know that he had arrived safely in Denver. His upgraded home system would see that Jason got a copy of the message on the side.

Tom picked up his rental car, set the GPS, and followed its instructions onto Route 470 around the city. It was getting near noon and breakfast had gotten skipped in his rush to the airport, so he got off the freeway to find food as soon as he got to I-25. He was impatient to get on the trail of Auntie Annie but it wouldn’t do to show that, so he took his time before setting off to the south again.

It was an enjoyable drive, the air clear and cool, the mountains towering up out of nowhere on his right, the plains stretching off as flat as a pool table for two thousand miles to his left. After an hour the Air Force Academy and its iconic chapel appeared between the freeway and the mountains. After passing through Colorado Springs a turn into the mountains for five miles brought him to Manitou Springs at the base of Pikes Peak.

Manitou Springs was obviously a tourist town on the cusp of two tourist seasons. The big summer crowds going up to the Pikes Peak summit were long gone, but the more modest crowds coming to ski and take the holiday trips up the mountain hadn’t yet started. Everywhere in town were directional signs sending drivers to parking for the historic cog railroad station, but Tom ignored them.

Getting off of the highway he followed the main road through town, taking in all of the shops and restaurants. The buildings were a mixture of old brick and timber buildings that might have been a hundred years old and little strip mall style buildings that were much more recent. The older buildings tended to be occupied by antique stores, craft stores, and restaurants that catered to tourists, while the strip malls were full of the convenience stores, fast food restaurants, and small businesses that every town needed to function. The store windows in the older buildings were full of all manner of knickknacks and bits aimed toward tourists, but at least they looked like reasonably upscale knickknacks. Christmas themes were dominating the decorations, although there weren’t yet any decorations hung on the street lights.

As he approached the turnoff to the train station Tom spotted a pair of small motels. Neither looked likely to win any awards other than those given out by the local chamber of commerce, but they both looked reasonably clean and comfortable. Both had signs advertising “Free Wi-Fi” and “Free HBO & Cable”. Both had their “Vacancy” lights lit over their almost empty parking lots. Tom picked the one on the right for no particular reason.

Tom had never considered himself to be a gregarious man or even a particularly social and outgoing one, but for this trip he was working hard on playing a different role. Trying hard to not go over the top, he made an effort to be chatty and friendly with the hotel desk clerk, letting her know the gist of why he was in town and who he was looking for. The clerk had never heard of Annie of course, but she was more than happy to give Tom directions back to the police station. It was about a quarter-mile walk, back about half way to the exit from the highway, right where Tom had seen it on his way to the hotel.

Tom checked into his room and found it to be pretty much as expected for a low-budget motel room built three blocks from a tourist trap. He checked the wi-fi connection and found it to be functional if not particularly strong, worth just what he had paid for it. After sending another text message to his pet sitter to give her his overnight location, he headed down the street toward the police station.

The Manitou Springs police station was a newer building sharing a lot with the fire department and city hall. Tom went in, expecting to find a lobby walled off from the main station by a bullet-proof partition, but this wasn’t Los Angeles, or even Denver. A uniformed officer looked up from the counter as he entered.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“I hope so. My name is Tom Tiernan and I’m trying to track down an aunt of mine. No one in the family has heard from her for several years, but I have reason to believe that she was in this area about two years ago, so I’m hoping that someone here might be able to help me find her.”

“Do you need to file a missing persons report, sir?”

“No, no. Nothing like that,” Tom said. “I don’t really know if she still lives around here or even if she’s still alive. I’m here because I found a record of her being arrested and charged with trespassing two summers ago, something about a commune that was being evicted off of someone else’s land.”

“I see. Yeah, I remember that situation, a guy up in one of the canyons wanted to subdivide and sell the lots for pricey vacation homes. Who is this you’re looking for? What’s her name?”

“She’s my aunt, her name is Anne Tiernan. She would have been about eighty-one at the time, so she would be eighty-three now. She’s sort of the ‘free spirit’ of the family, if you know what I mean, but with the holidays coming up her brothers and sister, my mother, would like to make sure that she’s all right.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean, we get more than our fair share of that kind of person around here.” He made a note, apparently writing down Annie’s name. “Do you have some ID, sir?”

“Of course.” Tom pulled out his wallet and handed over his driver’s license. The officer ran it through a scanner and handed it back to Tom. Tom  assumed that some information based on his license was showing up on a monitor, but it was set at an angle so that he couldn’t read it. The officer scanned the information, then started typing.

“Is your aunt’s last name spelled the same as yours, Mr. Tiernan?” the officer asked.

“Yes, it’s T-I-E-R-N-A-N.”

“Uh-huh. It looks like she was booked here in the summer of ’16 like you said. She spent one night with us, saw the judge, paid a fine, and left. I don’t show anything other than that. Sorry.”

“I see. You don’t happen to know her or have a picture, do you? There wasn’t a booking photo that I could find online, but that should be public. If I could get that it would at least let me know what she looked like then. It’s been over ten years since I’ve seen her, so a more current picture would help.” Tom hoped that using a selective subset of the truth wouldn’t come back to haunt him.

“No, I don’t know her, but there is a picture here. You’re supposed to fill out the forms and submit a request to get a copy mailed to you,” the officer said as he hit a couple of keys on the keyboard, causing a printer to come to life and kick out a page, “but if you do that you’ll find out that she looked a lot like this. Will that do?”

“That would be perfect, thank you. I very much appreciate your help. Do you know anyone else who’s still around who might have been associated with the commune that got evicted? Someone who might have known Auntie Annie when she was here?”

“Not directly, no. Once the commune was shut down everyone scattered and I don’t recall seeing any of them in this area. There are plenty of other small towns up in the mountains out west that get these small groups and cults setting up shop, but nothing around here.

“There is one person you might check with though. Ellen Summers runs the chocolate and candy boutique down about three blocks on the other side of the street. She wasn’t a part of the commune, at least not any time near the end when they got the boot, but her mother was there and had some sort of leadership position. Ellen had left the group years before, I guess because she preferred indoor plumbing, electricity, and Bobby Summers, but she hung around here after her and Bobby got married, in part so that she could be near her mom. She might know something, or she might not.”

“Thank you, officer, you’ve been very helpful,” said Tom, turning and walking back out to the street, making sure that he had the photo tucked away securely in his coat pocket.

Tom crossed the street, mindful to do so at the corner in a crosswalk, and casually strolled along the shops there. It was getting chilly and the wind was picking up, so he was glad to see the sign in the window for “Coffee & Hot Chocolate Available” at the Pikes Peak Fine Chocolate & Confectionery Emporium.

He was alone inside the store as the door closed behind him, ringing an old fashioned bell attached to the top of the door. He started to look around at the candies and chocolate displays. From a back room he could hear someone moving around and soon a middle-aged woman came out, followed by a large tomcat. The cat slunk along behind the counter to the window at the front of the store where it took up its sentry position on a chair cushion.

“Can I help you with something?” the woman asked. “Some candy or chocolate? Anything in particular that you’re looking for?”

“A hot chocolate would be great, thanks. Are you Ellen Summers?” Tom asked.

“I am,” she replied as she turned to fill a mug from a pot of hot cocoa that had been sitting on a hot plate. “May I ask who you are and why you need to know?”

“I’m sorry, that was rude of me. I’m Tom Tiernan. It was suggested by the police officer at the station that I talk to you. I’m trying to track down an aunt who I haven’t seen in quite a while. She apparently was here when the commune was shut down two years ago. The guy at the station said that you might still have connections to other people who had been in the commune and they might be able to help me find my aunt.”

Ellen picked up the mug of chocolate and motioned toward a table near the front of the store. She set it down in front of Tom and took the seat opposite him as he sat down.

“You mean my mother, of course. No need to beat around the bush. Tell me about your aunt.”

“Her name was Anne Tiernan and the family has pretty much lost touch with her for years. I was talking to her brothers and sisters the other day about getting together for the holidays and I decided to try to get in touch with Annie if I could to invite her to join us. The last information I could find on her led me here.” Tom took a sip of the chocolate to test the temperature, expecting it to be too hot to drink right away. He was pleasantly surprised to find that it was perfect.

“What was your aunt like?” Ellen asked.

“In a word, weird. She was always a bit off, the classic one in the crowd who was marching to a different drummer. I remember her from when I was a kid and I liked her, but she didn’t get along with my parents or her brothers, so she went her own way. She would be about 82 now and I don’t even know if she’s still alive, but if she is I would sure like to re-connect with her. This is really good chocolate, by the way.”

“Thanks. It’s my special recipe, has a lot of pot in it. That’s legal here in Colorado, you know.”

Tom stopped drinking in mid-sip and looked at Ellen over the top of the mug, keeping it at his lips. After a second he raised his eyebrows a bit in a silent inquiry. Ellen let the moment drag out, maintaining eye contact, looking nonchalant, before smiling and looking down at the table.

“Go ahead, it’s fine. A local joke, there’s not any pot in it, just chocolate and cream and lots of sugar. You really should see the look on your face though.”

Tom’s attention was no longer on Ellen and her joke however. Looking past Ellen toward the windows on the other side of the front door, he could see her tomcat. He was now sitting up at attention, tail twitching, staring up at something in midair. Tom couldn’t see anything there.

His heart starting to race, Tom asked as calmly as he could, “Is your cat all right over there? He’s acting like he’s about to attack something.”

Ellen turned and glanced back at the cat. She looked up in the air where the cat was looking before turning back to face Tom. “He does that. He’s a cat. It’s like they’re an alien species, who knows what they’re seeing or thinking. He probably got into some catnip or something.”

“Do you have any catnip here for him to get into?” Tom asked.

“Maybe. I don’t know. There used to be some in the back but I haven’t seen it in forever. He’s probably got it stashed away. Whatever. Do you want a refill on that hot chocolate?” she asked, starting to rise.

“No!” Tom said, grabbing at Ellen’s wrist and then immediately letting go. “I’m sorry, that startled me. No, I’m fine. Please, just sit for a minute. I just want to find out about my aunt if I can.”

Taken aback, Ellen sat but leaned back away from Tom and the table, now cautious.

“My mother doesn’t talk much about her work and her friends at the commune,” she said with a chill in her voice. ”I’ve never met anyone named Anne or Annie when I’ve visited, so I don’t think I can help you.”

Keeping one eye on the tom at and the location where he was still staring, Tom pulled out the picture that the policeman at the station had given to him. He unfolded it and handed it to Ellen.

“Here’s what she looked like two years ago,” Tom said. “Does she look familiar at all? You’re really my only lead right now.”

Ellen looked down at the picture. In a flash, recognition was written all over her face. She held the paper for a moment, pondering. She looked up at Tom as if some disparate puzzle pieces had fallen together.

“This is Dahlia. She was in the commune, wandered in and out, but I knew her when I lived there and I saw her every now and then after I left. You’re right, she was weird, a real whack-a-doodle. But at other times she could be…I don’t even know how to say it.” Ellen paused, as if she wasn’t sure she should say her next thought. “Your name is Tom Tiernan? You’re Tee-tee, right?”

Tom felt as if the chair had been kicked out from under him. He could not remember being called that for over fifty years, but in an instant he remembered when his Auntie Annie had given him that nickname while she was teaching him his alphabet at a very young age.

“Yes, she called me that. I’m Tee-tee. But how did you know?”

“Dahlia had told everyone that she never wanted to talk to anyone in her family again, except for you. We were always told what she wanted if you ever showed up looking for her.”

As Ellen spoke, the tomcat growled and leapt from the chair up onto the counter by the cash register. Landing smoothly, he trotted the length of the counter before hopping down and disappearing into the back room. The motion caused both Ellen and Tom to turn and watch him.

Ellen turned back to Tom and handed Annie’s picture back to him. “Stupid cat. There must be catnip involved. Anyway, I don’t know where you aunt is now, but I’m sure that we need to have you meet my mother.”

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

A little bit less adrenaline and enthusiasm today, a little more reality. It’s one thing to “know” that it’s going to be a lot of hard work, it’s another thing to know it.

I wanted to move the story along and get a little bit of help and possibly useful information for Tom and Jason. I found that I kept coming up with logic issues as I wrote. (“Wait, wouldn’t this be a problem? How would they explain that?”) It also became increasingly obvious that Tom and Jason had to meet ASAP, and why. (I had originally thought that they wouldn’t meet face to face for a while.) By the time I was done with that, the destination for Chapter Three had changed. What I thought would come next here will have to wait for a chapter or two, and I now see some additional wrinkles and plot twists down the road.

Good thing I’m keeping notes!

CHAPTER THREE

By mid-morning Tom had talked to his mother, his two brothers, his sister, and his two surviving uncles. In each case the conversations were casual, pleasant, and ostensibly about the usual family gathering during the upcoming holidays. It wasn’t too terribly unusual for Tom to call any one of them from time to time. As long as his family didn’t suddenly compare notes and wonder why Tom was calling all of them at the same time and asking some of the same questions of each of them, there shouldn’t be any suspicions raised.

Tom’s younger brother and sister knew nothing of Aunty Annie, largely because she had been banished from the household before they were out of diapers. They knew who she was but couldn’t recall ever having talked to her or had any contact with her at all. When asked why he might be asking about her, Tom gave out a pre-packaged story about a new family tree making software package that he was playing with. He had even gone so far as to download and install the software, so he dutifully took their information about birth dates, birth locations, spouses, spouses’ data, kids’ data, and so on.

Tom’s older brother had a few memories of Aunty Annie but he hadn’t had any recent contact with her either. When pressed about his memories of her, all he said was, “She was a loon and she smelled funny. I was scared of her and I thought it was great when Mom and Dad told her to get lost. She was always trying to touch my head. Yours too, even when you were really little. I tried to keep you hidden from her when she came over but she would still track you down. I would find her holding your head and whispering to you. It was really, really creepy me out. And you’re welcome, by the way.”

Tom’s mother and uncles were able to give him plenty of genealogical data for the family tree. Using that pretext Tom was able to get them to talk at some length about their oldest sister. All of them described her as being “odd”, even as a child. Despite everyone’s hopes that she would grow out of it, it was a condition that got worse as time went on. Both of Tom’s uncles thought that their parents might have had Annie tested to see if she had what now would be called a “learning disability”, but they didn’t know what the tests might have shown.

As an adult, Annie had problems holding a job. She never had any boyfriends or lovers that any of them knew of. When the Sixties rolled around everyone in the family that there must be drugs involved, but there was never any evidence or proof. If nothing else, she never did anything to get herself arrested.

Her “condition” had apparently gotten worse about the time of the moon landings. Where before she had often acted as if she were listening to things that no one else could hear and seeing things that no one else could see, the fact that men were walking on the moon was a source of agitation for her. No one could figure out why and Annie wasn’t able to tell them. When pressed, she only said that they wouldn’t be able to understand it if they didn’t already know why, whatever that meant.

For thirty years, Annie had drifted, usually though the southwest and mountain states. She lived a vagabond life, moving irregularly through a series of communes in Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. One summer one of her uncles had gotten a phone call from her when she was in Alberta and needed money to get back to the United States. Tom’s other uncle had kept a handful of letters he had gotten from her during those years. From them Tom got three decades-old, probably useless, return addresses.

When Tom’s grandmother had become seriously ill, she had asked about Annie, wanting to see her one last time. Tom’s mother remembered telling Nana that Annie was lost somewhere living like a damn hippie, only to have Nana retort that hippies had sex, drugs, and rock and roll, while Annie had nothing to do with any of those things. Near the end, when she was heavily sedated, Nana had also repeatedly said that Annie was only partially of this world, but there hadn’t been any further explanation.

The introduction of the internet and email had brought Annie back into the fold in a small way. For some reason Annie had taken to the idea of living a virtual, online life. As others in the family gradually got online accounts they would receive long, ranting tomes from Annie once or twice a year. No one had kept any of those files, of course, with most of them disappearing with the death of AOL, Hotmail, and other email services now long defunct.

The last that anyone had heard from Auntie Annie was about 2012 or 2013. She had sent a few cryptic e-mails to everyone about how “it was getting worse” and she was going to have to go underground for her own safety. Following her previous communications these messages were notable in their brevity. Annie was sounding distinctly paranoid with talk of being followed and under constant surveillance. She was going offline permanently and they shouldn’t look for her.

In the five years since, no one had heard a word. No one knew if she was alive or dead and no one seemed particularly interested in finding out. Tom thanked each of his relatives for their personnel data, anecdotal comments, and family recollections. He promised to send around copies of the family tree data once he got it all pulled together.

Once all of the familial phone calls had been made, Tom set to work trying to see what digital clues might be out there which could possibly lead to Auntie Annie. For more than an hour he played with different search engines and key words, looking for any record of her existence. The skills he had learned as a science and tech reporter came back easily and soon he had several additional nuggets of information.

There was no sign that Annie had ever had a driver’s license or owned a car. Ever. Tom couldn’t even conceive of that in this day and age, but a thorough search of vehicle registrations and DMV records drew a complete blank.

Annie must have had a social security number issued, since her younger siblings all had them. In fact, her two brothers had numbers that were only one digit off from each other, indicating that they had been issued at the same time, probably when they were kids in the mid-Sixties. Tom tried to see if the previous or following SSN’s might get a hit with her name, but he didn’t get far. He wanted to avoid pushing too hard on the government site’s security right now, so that search got tabled for the moment.

There were no signs of Annie on any of the social media sites, but that wasn’t unusual given her age group and her determination to “go underground” a few years ago. There were no signs of her on any state or county welfare rolls in the western states – they could search the other states later if they needed to.

There were no obituaries, news stories, or death certificates reported for Annie.

One thing that the family didn’t quite have correct was Annie’s record with the law. A search of the public arrest record databases for the United States and Canada showed that she had been cited at least a half-dozen times, mostly for minor infractions such as vagrancy or hitchhiking. All of the citations were either settled with a small fine or dismissed outright.

It didn’t look like she had ever actually spent any time in jail except for one night, but that night was less than two years ago. It was by far the most recent kernel of information Tom had found so far. The details were sketchy, but it involved a commune which was being evicted after squatting on someone else’s land for years. The property owner now wanted to do something else with it. A group of a dozen commune residents had resisted and gotten arrested for trespassing. After one night in jail in Manitou Springs, Colorado, they had been fined, released, and told to never set foot on the property again.

Just before noon, Tom called Jason to share what he had found out and to see what he might have discovered about the video they had. After three rings, just before Tom expected the call to go to voice mail, Jason answered.

“Jason, this is Tom.”

“Tom?” Jason asked, sounding confused.

“Yes, Tom,” he said, wondering what was going on now. “Tom Tiernan? I was supposed to call you at noon today?”

“Oh, right, you’re Betty’s friend, calling about the motorcycle I’ve got for sale, right?”

Tom had been a research scientist and a reporter, not a spy, but he knew when he was having a hint forced down his throat. He didn’t know why Jason was carrying on like this, but now was not the time to question it. He was just going to have to trust Jason for the moment and assume that this call was not secure and something bad was happening.

“Yeah, your bike,” Tom stalled. “I’m glad that Betty told you that I would be calling. What can you tell me about it? Is it safe to ride?”

“I wouldn’t say that a bike is ever completely safe, but I’ve never had any problems with it. I think you’ll be okay as long as you’re really careful and don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. This motorcycle of yours, is it real? I’m a real stickler about having only factory installed and original gear. I would hate to be wasting time if there have been a lot of modifications done.”

“I guarantee that it’s 100% original, with no modifications. If you’ve got time, I would like to show it to you as soon as I can. Are you free to meet me someplace this afternoon?”

“Sure, where would you suggest?”

“I think it would be best to get together someplace where we’ll have some open space for you to ride around. Do you know where the LA Zoo is in Griffith Park, and the Autrey Museum there?”

“Sure, I haven’t been there in years since the kids are all grown, but I know where it’s at. Any particular time and spot in the parking lot you want to meet?”

“How about at 1:30 sort of out in front of the Autrey? I’ll be the guy with the green Kawasaki motorcycle.”

“Okay, I’ll see you there, 1:30 by the Autrey. I’ll be the old guy in the blue BMW convertible.”

“Great. And again, your name was Tom?”

“Yeah, it’s Tom. I’m really looking forward to hearing what you might have to tell me about this bike of yours.”

==========================================

Tom had picked up a chicken wrap and a drink on the way over. He was still eating his lunch when a tall, stocky man rode up on a green Kawasaki Ninja 650. His face and head were concealed under his helmet. He was wearing a heavy leather motorcycle jacket, jeans, along with heavy boots and gloves.

As he parked next to Tom’s car, Tom got out. Jason left the engine idling but pulled off his helmet and gloves. Putting the gloves into the helmet and tucking it under his left arm, he held out his hand. Tom shook it and found something being pressed into his palm.

“Tom, I’m glad that you could meet me, I’m Jason. Thanks for coming out here. Let me show you the engine on this baby.” Still straddling the bike, he leaned down next to the frame and started revving the engine. Tom ignored the noise and leaned down with his head near Jason’s.

“I’m pretty sure the noise of the engine will keep anyone from snooping,” Jason said, just barely audible above the engine noise, “but we need to be quick. What you said about paranoia was correct. Something we said or did yesterday triggered an alert and we are probably both being watched and monitored, at least remotely. We need to let the cop bots see us being normal and boring and then they’ll downgrade and file it, but in the meantime, be very cautious.”

“What did you give me when we shook hands?” Tom asked.

“It’s a tiny memory stick with some goodies. Install it on your home system and follow all of the instructions. Your home system is good, but this one’s a lot better. Once you get it installed, then we can talk safely. And before you ask – don’t ask.”

“Jason, you’re asking a lot given that we’re total strangers.”

“I know, and so are you. I’m sure you understood that the video is real, not something that was tampered with or created. I’ll fill you in later on how I know what I know, but right now we’ve got to ratchet up the security level. Install that software as soon as you get home. Did you find anything?”

“Will do, I’ll install it. I think I’ve got at least a halfway decent clue, but it’s going to take me to Colorado. I can tell you about it later when we’re secure.”

“Right. Now for the big question, especially if we are being watched. Can you ride a motorcycle? You need to take a test drive on this thing.”

“It’s been a while,” Tom answered, “but I used to ride so I can probably get around the parking lot without killing myself.”

“Okay, it’s show time. Assume someone or something is listening unless we’re on a connection that I tell you is secure.”

With that, Jason let the engine go back to idle and put down the kickstand. He stepped off of the bike and Tom stepped on, accepting the offer of the helmet even though it was just for a quick spin around the parking lot. Jason walked him through the gearing, instruments, and controls. Finally it was time to put up or shut up.

Tom was very pleased to see that he was able to make it around the parking lot twice without killing himself or hitting anything.

Tom and Jason went through the show of discussing the sale price, after which Tom expressed some doubts about whether or not the bike was right for him. Tom made sure that he gave Jason the contact information that Jason shouldn’t know about yet, and they agreed to talk later in the day.

Jason roared off onto the freeway on his motorcycle, while Tom tried to keep his attention focused on driving and his thoughts from showing up on his face. The last thing he wanted to do was to get into an accident or run a red light now because of the distraction caused by Jason’s news.

Once he got home, Tom followed Jason’s instructions and inserted the memory stick into his residential system. He followed the onscreen instructions and attached his phone, laptop, pad, and all other mobile devices as requested. The system even told him that the connection to his car and the software onboard the BMW had been updated, all without even bothering to ask for his password or permission.

As the system announced that it was finished, Tom’s phone automatically dialed Jason. Jason answered on the first ring.

“Thanks, Tom,” Jason said. “This is a secure connection. Just make sure that when we talk you don’t have any doors or windows open so that you can’t be heard from outside.”

“What’s this software, Jason?”

“It’s some top of the line military security stuff. I can’t tell you anything more than that or where it comes from, but it will make anyone listening in on the line hear something completely boring and blasé. Anyone tapping into your home video will see you doing boring, routine shit.”

“I hope that you’ll tell me more someday when you think I’m worthy. Why do you think that we need it?”

“After I talked to you last night, as I was leaving to go home, I got called in by a supervisor to go over my incident logs for the day. He asked about a number of them, including yours. That’s a random security procedure here and it has happened to me before, but I don’t believe in coincidences. When I got home I checked my system and found that there had been repeated attempts to hack into the system, starting soon after I first called you and then called the paramedics. My system had allowed the cop bot system to believe that it had successfully hacked in. It’s feeding the cop bot regular doses of bullshit. So that’s why I think we need that level of security right now.”

“I understand,” Tom said. “Thank you for taking the steps you did, I appreciate it.”

“No worries. For the moment we have to assume that you were monitored when you were calling and searching for information this morning. Did you do or say anything there that might raise any red flags?”

Tom quickly thought back through his conversations with his family and the questions he had asked. He was suddenly very happy that he had actually bought that family tree software and put data into it as he had talked to his family.

“I didn’t mention anything about yesterday’s events,” Tom said, explaining what he had done with the software and what he had found out about Aunt Annie. “If anyone had tapped into here earlier, they wouldn’t see anything other than someone setting up plans to meet for the holiday. I think we’re good.”

“Fine, so we’re safe enough for now. I’ll monitor systems from here. What do you think your next step is?”

“I need to try to track down Annie. I won’t be able to do much more from here or online, so I need to get to Colorado to follow up in person. I’ll make reservations tonight and try to fly out first thing tomorrow.”

“Good. We’ll need to stay in touch at least once a day. Is it safe to assume that you figured out what I was telling you about my preliminary analysis of the video?”

“I got that, the video is real, or at least it isn’t a fake down to the level of detection we’ve got. Since you seem to have some really excellent security toys, is it safe to assume that you’ve got access to equally excellent video toys?”

“Yes, Tom, it would be safe to assume that. Don’t ask, don’t tell. When we talk while you’re on the road we should be secure if you’re using your phone to call me on my phone, but for anything else make sure that we’re talking about the motorcycle. Got it?”

“I’ve got it, Jason. You’re security and video analysis; I’m off to do some snooping in the field. We’ll keep in touch. And you’ve got a nice bike, congratulations.”

“Thanks. You do know that I’m not really going to sell it to you. Right?”

You mean I have to bleed onto the page every freakin’ day? Every day? Damn! Still lots of adrenaline and enthusiasm, but the tiniest little bit of reality is starting to creep in.

Lots of dialogue and exposition to set the stage in this chapter. I suspect that it will be something to be played with, rearranged, or completely re-done in a later draft, but for now it starts lining up the challenges for our protagonists and establishing the setting. This is not necessarily a bad second step after pulling a bizarre and highly improbable scenario out of my ass in the first chapter.

CHAPTER TWO

The paramedics were thorough as they made sure that Tom was not in need of immediate hospitalization. He patiently lied to them about what had happened, explaining it away as a dizzy spell brought on by low blood sugar combined with the adrenaline from getting scratched by the cat. He sipped some orange juice as they checked him out. He graciously allowed them to again clean and wash his arm and hand where the cat scratches were, followed by the application of some fancier, paramedic approved ointment. Once his temperature, heartbeat, blood pressure, blood sugar, balance, and mental functions were all determined to be within norms for a man of his age, they left him alone again.

In the course of the exam Tom had been moved back onto the couch in the living room to rest and more easily be examined. Now he lay there with the cat curled up asleep on his chest and wondered what his next move should be.

While he didn’t know exactly what had happened in this room earlier, it seemed obvious that talking about it to the paramedics or just about anyone else would be ill advised. Whether he actually had mental problems or Alzheimer’s disease or not, if he started mouthing off and asking about floating black holes that only the cat could see, he would be prejudged and assumed to be missing a few marbles. That wouldn’t solve anything.

He could go looking on the internet for information, but given the bizarre nature of the afternoon’s events, he had serious doubts about the validity of anything he might find there. No doubt he could call into the Art Bell Show and get a sympathetic audience, but he needed actual data and help, not a warm welcome into a community of conspiracy obsessed wackos. Still, it might be worth a quick, quiet search online. You never could tell what might turn up.

As he thought about it, Tom realized that the appearance of the bizarre phenomenon had triggered a collection of long buried memories from his very early childhood. It was probably nothing, but it was more than he had now.

The second problem was Jason. Tom had no information regarding who he was, if he could be counted on, or if he could be trusted. If secrecy was necessary, Jason was definitely the biggest security risk right now. Was secrecy necessary? That was another huge question, but it seemed prudent to act as if it was. To paraphrase the saying about guns, it would be better to be paranoid when it wasn’t necessary than to not be paranoid when it was.

That brought an even bigger set of questions. With so many unknowns and only a small set of truly bizarre data, how safe was he right now? How would he know if he was in danger? What exactly was the danger if it existed? Those multiple layers of teeth on the edge of that hole would have made a great white shark turn tail and run. But were they even teeth? More important was the thing that contained them. The thing. The object. The hole in space. Make that the invisible hole in space.

Tom had way too many questions with way too little data.

After carefully shifting the sleeping cat off of his chest and onto her pillow on the couch, Tom retrieved his cell phone from the kitchen table. Giving instructions to have a text message sent back to the IP address from which the video had been downloaded, he typed, “Jason, call me please.”

In a few seconds, a return message popped up. “In a little bit, on another call now.”

Tom settled back to wait. He transferred the video file to the home server and brought it up on the big screen. He slowly flipped through the images which showed the floating hole. A few of the frames he ran through some software to clean up and enhance. Knowing it would be there made the video less shocking, but seeing it blown up and enlarged made it even more bewildering and bizarre.

Looked at in detail, there didn’t seem to be any fuzziness or unevenness to the edge of the whole. It was tilted in the view of the camera so it appeared as an ellipse, but every indication was that it was perfectly round. The edge didn’t seem to pulse, waver, or wiggle. It just existed, a clean hole punched in the air.

Tom noticed that in some frames when he was moving behind the hole as seen from the security camera, the hole was completely opaque. The interior of the hole appeared at first to be jet black, but some of the later frames showed shadowy, grey, indistinct forms. The grey blobs were faint and with the slow frame rate they seemed randomized from one frame to another, like snapshots of static on an old television.

In the last three frames, just as his arms rose up, the “teeth” appeared from around the edge of the hole. They were small at first, then bigger with a second and third row, then huge with several overlapping circles and arcs. It was like looking into a tunnel-shaped, circular buzz saw.

Tom cropped an image that showed just the hole with the teeth. Like that it looked almost abstract, like something that might be found in a tattoo on a gang member. Tom asked for an internet search for the cropped image. A number of pictures of wheels and clip art dingbats came up, as well as some images from an assortment of science fiction films.

Eliminating all of those results, there were a handful of images which looked similar. One image was centered in a pentagram. Another appeared to be an ancient cave drawing. The final match was from a wood cut dating back to eastern Europe in the Middle Ages. Tom filed the images for future reference.

The phone rang. Tom saw that it was the security company and put the call on speaker. He also started his own recording of the call, without benefit of the mandatory warning beeps.

“This is Tom Tiernan. Who’s this?”

“Mr. Tiernan, this is Jason again. You asked me to call you back.”

“Thank you for calling back, Jason. And please call me ‘Tom’. I don’t think we need to stand on formalities at this point.”

“Okay, Tom, no worries. How are you feeling now? Did the paramedics give you a clean bill of health?”

“Yes, they’re gone now. Thank you for calling them earlier. Jason, it sounds like this call is being recorded. I’m assuming that our previous call was recorded as well. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir, that is correct. All of our calls are recorded, there’s no way to shut that off.”

“That’s fine. I’m wondering who has access to those recordings, since I’m very concerned about my private security. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

“Yes, sir, I understand completely. Absolute customer privacy is a cornerstone of our company’s services, so we have extensive safeguards to make sure that all records are kept private. As I’m sure you’re aware, we’re required by law to keep all recordings, video, audio, and data, but unless there’s a court order, no one outside of the company except you can access them. Inside the company, only the agent handling an incident and their direct supervisors are allowed access, and that access occurs only in certain very restrictive circumstances. Per your instructions, I’ve marked this incident as ‘closed’ and set the security levels on all of the related data so that even a supervisor shouldn’t be able to access it without getting written permission from you in advance.”

“Thank you, Jason. And this is a secure line?”

“Yes, sir, as secure as they can be given the track record of the NSA and associated governmental agencies. If anyone is listening in, it would be them, but I’m not aware of anything that’s happened that might trigger any of their systems.”

“Well, there were certain things in that video that they might be interested in, but we’ll just have to hope that it’s too far out into the Twilight Zone to be something that they would be setting triggers for.”

“That would be my assessment as well. Um, Tom? Can I speak freely?”

“Jason, I insist that you do. I don’t know what’s going on and we don’t know each other, but we’re in this together and we’ll need to trust each other. A huge part of that is communication, so it’s critical that we not hold anything back from each other. What is it?”

“Tom, pardon the figure of speech here, but… what the fuck is going on? Unless you’re pulling the greatest practical joke in the world on me, something happened two hours ago that is way, way off the scale for bizarre. I’m really hoping that you’re going to tell me that I’m being punked and there are cameras hidden here someplace. Ha, ha! Right? Ollie ollie oxen free, the jokes over, right?

“Tom? I’m doing my best not to lose it here. I’ve been trying to carry on as best I could for the last two hours, but if that video wasn’t doctored or some kind of special effects clip, something seriously fucking wrong is going on here!”

“Jason, just take a breath or two,” Tom said, trying to make sure the situation didn’t spin out of control. “Calm down. It won’t help either of us to panic. Besides, if there’s an evil, ravenous, interdimensional, piranha black hole lurking about, it’s in my house, not yours. Right?”

Jason took a minute to avoid hyperventilation. Tom could hear a couple of choking sounds, but then it sounded like Jason was pulling it together again. Slowly the heavy panting that Tom could hear got quieter.

“Okay, sorry about that, Tom. I think I’m better. I just had to get that out, it’s been tough holding it in with no idea what’s happening.”

“I understand. I don’t know if it makes it any better or not, but I can assure you that I’m just as freaked out as you are with that video. If it’s fake, and I’m not saying it might not be, I didn’t have anything to do with making it. If any reality TV hosts with hidden cameras pop up there, tell them to let me off the hook also. In the meantime, let’s assume that the video is real and we’ve got to deal with it.”

“Right. Deal with it. Any ideas how we do that?”

“Not yet, but I’m working on it. My first concern is keeping an extremely low profile and staying off of everyone’s radar. I think that it’s absolutely critical that this doesn’t go any further than you and I for right now. I do not want to get locked up in a loony bin or on some unmarked Navy ship because Homeland Security hears about it and freaks out. Agreed?”

“Yeah, that seems reasonable. I can get onboard with that plan.”

“Good. I’ve got everything here locked down as tightly as I can for a high-end private residence and home business IT setup. Security at your end is better, but you’ve also got more people with potential access. I’m leaving it up to you to make sure that things stay secure there. Can you handle that?”

“Yes, I’ll keep it locked down and I won’t raise any flags while doing it. Good plan, I’m on it.”

“Okay, Jason, the next thing I need you to do is to go over that video pixel by pixel to see what’s there and if there’s anything that we’re missing. First of all, check to see if you can tell if it’s faked. If it is, I think we have a much less dangerous situation to deal with and a whole different set of questions to ask. I’m sure that you have access to much better software toys than I do for that sort of thing. Just don’t do it at work and keep it quiet.”

“I can do that as well. I’m off for the next two days so I’ll start that. What are you going to do?”

“I did some fast and dirty analysis on the images in the video and that gave me a couple of long shot things to track down. For one of them I’m going to need to talk to someone, a distant relative. She’s way off the net, so I’ll have to see her in person. I’ll let you know when that happens, since I think the two of us need to stay in close contact on this thing.”

“Tom, I thought you said we had to keep this between just the two of us for now. Who is this you’re going to tell about it, and why?”

“She’s a crazy, old great aunt who lives off in the boonies in Colorado. I won’t tell her any details, but I remember her telling all sorts of weird stories when I was a kid. My parents and the rest of the family finally told her to stay away from all of us. I haven’t seen her in twenty years and I don’t even know if she’s still alive. But I haven’t heard that she’s dead, so I’ll try to track her down.”

“It’s something I guess. Let me give you my phone number so that you can reach me outside of work.”

“Sure.” Tom wrote entered the number he was given into his phone. “And Jason… You’ve got all of my personal data from my account there. I’m sure that you’ve made a copy of it for yourself by now, whether the rules allow it or not, and that’s fine. It’s what I would do in your position. On the other hand, I don’t know anything about you other than your first name. Can you fill me in?”

“Oh, right. I’m Jason Kosta, from Glendale.”

“How old are you, Jason?”

“Twenty-nine, I’ll be thirty on December ninth.”

“My son is about your age. Do you have a family, Jason?”

“My parents and two older brothers are all back east, around the D.C. area. I don’t have anyone out here with me. I just got the job here when I got out of the service and stuck around because the weather’s nice. And I like to surf. Not much of that in Maryland.”

“Okay, good enough for now. Let’s check in with each other tomorrow. I’ll call you before noon, unless I have to head out of town, in which case I’ll call you as soon as I know where I’m going. You call me if you get any information or if you don’t hear from my by noon. Have you got that?”

“Got it, Tom. Two last questions though. Do you think that the video is real? And if it is, is that thing dangerous?”

“If I were a betting man I wouldn’t give it more than a one in ten chance of being real. But you don’t bet with your brains, you bet with your gut. That’s why they sell so many lottery tickets with really lousy odds. My gut has the odds closer to fifty-fifty.

“If it’s real, I want to be really cautious because I don’t know if it’s dangerous or not. I’ve been working in the hard sciences for a long, long time and I’ve never heard of anything like that. If we didn’t have the video as evidence I would just assume that what happened was some kind of hallucination or optical illusion. Even with the video it might turn out to be that.

“I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves and jump to any conclusions. As Carl Sagan said, ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’ We could make ourselves look very stupid very fast with this. I would like to avoid that.”

“Who’s Carl Sagan?” Jason asked.

“Really, Jason? Do me a favor. Before you work on analyzing the video, google him. Anything else that you can think of?”

“No, sir. My brain is fried and I’m off in ten minutes. I may go home and have a drink and avoid thinking for the rest of the night.”

“Good plan. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Jason.”

Tom got up and cooked a simple dinner in the microwave. As he settled down to try to track down any information on his ancient, crazed aunt, he found himself involuntarily glancing up at the ceiling periodically. He wondered if he would be able to see another invisible disk if it appeared, now that he thought that he knew that they existed. Of course, he never saw anything.

It finally occurred to Tom that instead of watching the room, he should watch the cat, since the cat had apparently seen the thing, whatever it was. She was the equivalent of the old canary in a coal mine. But she slept calmly all evening, oblivious to any interdimensional portal invasions.

And we’re off! Given the nature of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) there will be typos and errors galore in these posts. That’s the nature of the beast. They’re “zeroth” drafts, not ever first drafts. They’re hemorrhaging words onto the blank screen. If we’re lucky there will be some sort of resemblance to proper grammar and story structure, or at least enough so that the reader can follow along.

To use a baseball analogy, it’s not like I’m trying to pitch a no hitter and strike out twenty-seven batters on eighty-one pitches. It’s much more like I’m trying to survive slogging through a long, long season in the low minors, playing in every game and making it to the end alive. Surviving, and learning from the experience. If I happen to have an occasional hitting streak or good game along the way, so much the better.

And there really is a destination to this story. That was my great insight over the last week. You may see it coming in advance, or not. And I may or may not hit it. But there is a target.

Today was a good day to start writing this story.

CHAPTER ONE

The cat’s claws dug into his leg as he sat trying to read. As always, she seemed to be upset that the dog had gotten fed before her, despite the fact that the routine had been established that way for years. It was still an hour before her feeding time and he had given her a nibble of his chicken sandwich during his lunch, but that meant nothing. As with all cats, she seemed to live only in the moment. At the moment, she was hungry.

Tom gently dislodged her claws from his leg, idly scratching behind her ears. He stroked her back and made soothing sounds to her until she relaxed and shifted her weight, curling up into a ball. Soon she was starting to purr loudly as only a cat her size could, her eyes closing to slits.

The purring abruptly stopped as her head snapped up from a snoozing position. She was new fully alert, her eyes and ears tracking something that apparently hovered somewhere a few feet in back of Tom’s head. He craned his neck around to try to see what was there, assuming it was some sort of fly or insect. He couldn’t see a thing no matter how he squinted.

The cat again dug her claws into his leg and then jumped the yard or so off of his lap and into the bay window. As soon as she landed safely, her eyes locked again on the mysterious target. Keeping her head still and focused, she slowly lowered her butt to the ground and wrapped her tail around her. She settled, but did not relax, staying ready to spring.

While the cat often acted odd (as all cats do) this was beyond the norm, even by her bizarre standards. Getting more curious by the moment, Tom slowly stood and moved away from the chair to get a different line of sight on the catnip induced event that was apparently taking place right before him. Carefully walking around the room, he squatted down at different points to see the room from different angles and against different backgrounds. Nothing magical, fascinating, or threatening appeared. With the winter sun low in the south there was a beam of sunlight dodging through the trees outside and finding its way through the window, but it illuminated only some random dust, floating aimlessly.

As he completed his circuit of the room with nothing visible, he heard the cat make a series of guttural chirping noises and then a long, low, warning growl. When he looked at her he saw that she was now in a crouch, her butt wiggling and vibrating, ready to pounce. Her eyes continued to flick back and forth across a small volume of space a few feet out in the room and a bit above head height.

Tom started to step toward the spot, closing his eyes while raising his hands to see if there might be something there that he could feel or touch even if he couldn’t see it. Was there a cobweb or something there? Was it possible that an air current eddy of some sort was doing something that was lost to his vision? Could it be that another of his senses could succeed where his vision was failing?

It was just as he closed his eyes and stepped forward in front of the cat that she screamed and leapt. Her extended claws slashed at the throat of the unseen enemy just as Tom’s bare arms blindly occupied that point in space.

The cat’s formerly graceful leap turned into a wild tumble after her claws raked across Tom’s hands and arms. She managed to twist around and land with some dignity before scooting off into the laundry room.

Tom’s eyes flew open wide as he felt the pain from a dozen long scratches. Letting out an involuntary yelp, a tension relieving roar, and a few choice curses, he hurried into the kitchen. Trying not to drip blood on anything, he stuck his arms under a running stream of cold water in the sink. Muttering threats which sometimes changed to short, shouted warnings in the general direction of the cat, he kept rinsing the scratches until the bleeding stopped. It took a few moments for him to gingerly pat his arms dry and put some antiseptic on the cuts. Then he went looking for the beast that had maimed him.

He found her next to her empty food bowl in the laundry room, calmly grooming herself as if nothing had happened. The temptation for revenge or punishment was strong, but he slowly calmed himself as he realized that in her mind she had done nothing wrong. In addition, by this time, she probably had no memory of even scratching him, so any punishment would seem to her to be totally random, unconnected to the act he wished her to learn from. He took a few deep breaths, reached onto the shelf above the dryer for a can of cat food, and picked up her bowl from the floor.

As he went into the kitchen to feed her, his cell phone started to ring and vibrate in his pocket. Setting the cat food and dish down on the table, he fished the phone out and checked the caller ID. Why would his home security company be calling him?

“Hello?” Tom asked as he answered the call.

“Mr. Tiernan? Sir, this is Jason from Home Protection Monitoring. Our system has detected a disturbance at your residence. Are you alright?”

“What? Yes. I’m fine, nothing wrong at all. What’s going on?”

“Sir, the system detected a situation a few minutes ago that potentially indicated that you might be in injured or in danger. When you didn’t respond to the text messages that we sent, we’re required to try to contact you by phone. That’s the purpose behind this call.” As Jason spoke, there was a faint but regular beeping sound in the background every few seconds, indicating that the call was being recorded.

“Text messages? Alarm? I don’t understand. Hold on.”

Pulling the phone away from his ear, Tom looked at the screen and saw that there were indeed unread text messages waiting. He tapped the icon and saw three requests from the security company in the last ten minutes, all asking him to contact them immediately. In the hubbub over the cat’s insanity he had completely missed them.

“Hello? Are you still there?” Tom asked, resuming the call. “I see your messages now. I’m sorry I didn’t call, I was just having a disagreement with my idiot cat. Is that what this is all about?”

“Mr. Tiernan, our system was initially triggered by some shouting and noise at your location. Once the alarm threshold was triggered, the system took a look at the video, an alarm was triggered, and we began trying to contact you.”

Tom paused, weighing his response carefully. On the one hand, he knew that his children had enrolled him in this home security program after his wife had died. He didn’t want to appear any more ignorant than necessary about how it worked and what he had agreed to. On the other hand, now that the system had been triggered, he found it disturbing to realize how much of his privacy he had given up in the bargain.

“Justin? Julian? Sorry, in all the confusion I missed your name the first time around.”

“It’s Jason, sir.”

“Okay, Jason. I appreciate the call and I don’t want to sound petulant, but isn’t it just a bit extreme to be going on high alert like this just because the cat scratched me? When I got signed up for your system I understood that it would be there if there was a fire, a burglary, or if I were having a heart attack and hollering for help. It seems that triggering on a cat scratch indicates that an adjustment needs to be made on the system’s triggering sensitivity.”

“Sir, you are absolutely correct, but we didn’t have an alarm triggered by a simple cat scratching. The initial triggering event was a series of loud, sudden shouts by you.”

“Right, the cat scratched me and I yelled at her. I got that part, but still, that shouldn’t trigger an alert, should it? Doesn’t your system have ways of double checking what’s really going on before it goes ballistic over a false alarm?”

“Yes, sir, again you are correct. First, the shouting tripped the autonomous audio monitoring alarm at your home. That in turn released limited access to your cached video files from the security cameras in your home. When the system reviewed that video, that’s when the alarm was issued and the text messages began. When those text messages were not acknowledged, the alert was escalated and passed on to my department for follow-up. Because of all of that, I’m talking to you now. As long as you’re alright, I can go ahead and delete your surveillance data at this end and re-set the privacy protocols on your system.”

“Fine – but I’m still unclear about something. What was it in the security video that triggered your system to treat this as a threat or a problem? Shouldn’t the video records have had the opposite effect? All they show is me being scratched by the cat, yelling at her, and dealing with some scratches.”

“Sir, that is correct. If that’s all that it was, the system should have downgraded the problem and cancelled the alert. I currently do not have any details on why the system reacted as it did. If you wish to know what the triggering event was, with your permission, I can personally look at the security images and ask the system for a log of the threat calculations.”

“I would appreciate that, Jason. Please go ahead, I want to make sure that the system is working correctly, and right now it seems to me to be out of balance.”

“Yes, sir. Please stand by while I get the data from your home system.”

For a minute Tom could hear only the faint sound of Jason’s breath, some clicking from the remote keyboard, and the steady, slow beeping of the required call recording notification tones.

“Mr. Tiernan, um… Is anyone else there with you? Or have they been?”

“No, just me and the cat. Why?”

“And there hasn’t been anything strange or odd going on aside from the cat scratching you?”

“No, not at all,” Tom said, starting at last to grow impatient. “Can you please tell me what’s going on?”

Now it was Jason’s turn to pause for several seconds, long enough for Tom to wonder if they had gotten cut off.

“Hello? Are you still there?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Tiernan, I’m here. It’s just that there’s something very, very strange showing up in the video data from your home. That’s clearly what triggered the software to issue the alert for your residence. I just don’t understand how you don’t know about it.”

“Can you give me some details, Jason? I have no idea what you’re talking about. Is there something going on outside that I need to know about?”

“No, sir, it’s inside. And it appears that you were looking right at it. Let me send you the video file and you can see what I mean. It should be on your phone in just a second.”

Tom lowered the phone and tapped the icon to put Jason on speaker. An icon appeared and started blinking, indicating that the video file had been received. Tom tapped the icon and the video began to play.

“This starts about ten minutes before you yelled,” Jason said, “but as you can see it’s a time lapse with only a frame a second. It will slow down as we get to the triggering events.”

Tom watched the panoramic view from the corner of the vaulted ceiling as he sat reading. Suddenly, a black spot appeared, hovering in the air in the middle of the room. Tom could see the cat jumping up onto the window sill and staring intently at it.

The spot grew until it appeared to be a yard or so across. It reminded Tom of the holes that Wile E. Coyote tried to use to get the Road Runner. At first it appeared to be solid black but as the video frame rate slowed to a crawl and he looked closer, Tom could see vague forms and shapes on or within it, like an oil sheen on a puddle of water.

“What in hell is that?” Tom asked.

“I don’t know, Mr. Tiernan. If you didn’t see it, I don’t know what to tell you. It was right there in front of you.”

As the video frames clicked by, Tom saw himself walking around the room, bobbing and weaving, looking up toward where the hole was hovering. He could see the cat staring straight at it, ready to pounce. Then, as Tom raised his arms and moved toward it, the cat leaped against him, scratching him and knocking his arms away from the object.

As he was scratched and pulled his arms down, the object vanished.

Tom was stunned. He felt the world spinning. He grabbed for the table for support. His knees buckling, he managed to pull a chair out before collapsing onto it. As he set the phone down on the table he could see that the video display had been frozen on a frame showing the instant that the cat struck his arm.

“Mr. Tiernan, are you still okay? Are you seeing this also?”

Tom gasped for breath once or twice and caught himself as the world whirled around him. Long forgotten emergency training kicked in from nowhere, forcing him to focus on his breathing until his head cleared. His stomach was turning and he was sure that the amount of adrenaline being pumped into his system would make him explode.

Finally he became aware that someone was calling him. He distantly remembered that he had been talking to someone. Forcing his eyes to focus again, he realized that the voice was coming from his phone.

“Mr. Tiernan, please respond if you can hear me. I’ve called the paramedics and they should be there in a few minutes. Please let me know if you can hear me. Mr. Tiernan, are you there? Can you hear me? Mr. Tiernan?”

“I’m here, Jason. I’m still here. I just had a moment there, but I think I’m better now. I’m breathing.”

“Mr. Tiernan, I’m glad to hear you. I haven’t ever lost anyone before on this job and I don’t want you to be the first. I want you to stay relaxed and just sit there until the paramedics get there. Your vitals spiked off the chart there for a few minutes and you really had me worried.”

“Okay, Jason. I’ll just sit here and wait. But first, while we’re waiting, can you still see the last image that was showing from that video?”

“Yes, sir. I can.”

“Jason, I need you to immediately seal all access to that file and all of the records relating to this incident. I’m sorry that you’ve seen it, but you must trust me when I say that it’s absolutely critical that you not allow anyone else to see it for right now. Can you do that?”

“I can do that, but can you tell me what’s going on? What in hell is that thing? And what is that other thing inside of it?”

Tom looked at the image and then looked down at the cat who was now rubbing against his legs, still anxious for dinner. Tom reached for the cat bowl and cat food, opening the can and dumping the contents into the bowl. He leaned over and set the food down as the cat pounced on it.

“Mr. Tiernan, are you still there? Are you still OK? What’s going on? For God’s sake, what is that thing, and what’s it doing in your house? Hello?”

“I’m still here, Jason, I just had to feed the cat before things get even crazier around here. I can hear the paramedics’ siren, they’re almost here. We’ll all be fine, just make sure that you lock down that data and don’t talk to anyone other than me. Can you do that?”

“It’s done, Mr. Tiernan. Nobody but you and I have access to that data right now.”

“Thank you, Jason. The paramedics are here, so I’ll be hanging up for now. As for what that thing is? I don’t know how to give it a name or describe it.”

Tom broke the connection as he took a deep breath to steady himself. He could see the paramedics coming up the walkway. He hit the icon on his phone giving the command to unlock the door. One more time he looked at the image on the screen and the hundreds of razor sharp teeth in view around the edge of the hole. He blanked the screen and locked the phone.

“But it’s back.”