Part 19

by William (Blue) Berry

“Thank you, Captain Pierce, that will be all.”

The voice was old, gruff, and male. It couldn’t be her, although she did need a drink of water badly. That name, she knew it. Hawkeye from M*A*S*H. Trust her subconscious to dredge that up. Boy she needed water if she sounded like that. She tried to get up to get some water. She could not move.

“$tupid, $tupid, $tupid.”

Slowly she became aware that was not her voice.

“It was distressingly easy, young lady. Going to bars and drinking with strange men.”
Machiko opened her eyes. That hurt. She closed them and opened them slowly. That hurt just as bad but being able to see was worth it.

“You didn’t even feign unconsciousness for a while,” said an old man in military uniform. You are attached to EKG or something, so it would’ve been futile, but you could have at least tried.”

“I see you are a total amateur, so let me introduce myself,” he said. “My name is Ralph E. Eberhart. I am a general in the United States Air Force.” He pointed to two stars on the shoulder of his blue uniform.

My name is Elmer J. Fudd. I own a mansion and a yacht, she added mentally.

“You are alive. You will remain alive. You are a prisoner, but of the good guys. Think of it as protective custody. You see you did a very amateurish thing. You sent a heavily encrypted e-mail when you were under surveillance. They’ve started killing the recipients. Covering up murder is risky but they think what you sent was worth the risk. However if they are unsure about plugging the leak because they do not know where you are it changes the risk level. By being here you save lives.”

“Now I’ll be honest with you. We have not cracked the encryption. YET. I hope when you regain your ability to speak you will tell us, but we won’t torture you or shoot you up with truth serum because we are the good guys. Well, relatively good, anyway.”

“Oh, you are probably concerned about your condition. The drug will wear off in a few hours, until then you will find speech almost impossible. Even after then you won’t be able to move. The straps holding you down on the bed are really very strong don’t waste your strength testing them. For now you are catheterized, IV’ed, and many such stuff. You are tied to the bed because, although we are the good guys, we are not as $tupid as you. If you escape it will be very problematic.”

“To fill you in on your apartment, it was ransacked. It wasn’t us. Your male friend has gone to the police and filed a missing person report on you. If we can tell he isn’t involved, they can. Murder is very difficult to cover up. He is safe, for now. If he is not totally ignorant you better tell me to pick him up or feel responsible for his death.”

“Among your scattered belongings were many books on Wiccanism, Witchcraft, or some Pagan stuff. That is surprising. The reports indicated a Bible. Why would you keep a Bible a stranger gave you. When you can speak we’d appreciate an answer to that.”

“In the meantime, young lady” he said, “Let’s discuss your misguided religious beliefs.”

Cripes, she thought, Who is this guy, my father?

“Don’t you roll your eyes at me!”


Detective Carlos Pinehero entered the office. Detective Steve Welsch warned him, “Here’s the address. Jim covered for you by saying he was meeting you at the scene. Get out of here before HE sees you.”

“PINEHERO, MY OFFICE,” boomed Lieutenant Murphy’s voice.

“Too late,” said Steve, “protect Jim. Good Luck.” He patted him on the shoulder and let Carlos face his fate.

Carlos tried to be nonchalant, “Hi ya, Murf, what’s up?”

Murphy closed the door and said “Sit down.”

Not good, thought Carlos.

“Late again, Pinhero?” said the Lieutenant. “It’s one thing to be dragging your own career down but Jim Medeiros is a good detective. His lying to me is unacceptable and your fault. Get to the address Welsch gave you before I fire you and send Welsch in. Oh, by the way, the trouble Welsch is in is your fault too.”

Carlos warned Welsch and looked at the address. Another drug deal gone bad.

“Drug deal gone south?” he asked his on time and one the scene partner.

“Where the he** were you?” he asked as they went by two uniformed cops and under the crime scene tape around the body. The coroner was removing the body and the chalk out line was already drawn. The drizzle had subsided to a mist but it was enough to wash a river of blood into the gutter.

“I forgot to set the alarm last night,” said Carlos. He hoped to steer the conversation onto more pleasant topics. “What you got on this case?”

Jim knew Carlos wanted to avoid the subject, but he could resist, “Again? You want me to call you? Anyway, the deceased was a William Henry Berry who lived on the second floor here,” he pointed to a medium sized tenement behind them. “In his possession at the time of death was three dollars and 12 cents, his wallet, and a tube of toothpaste. The good news is the witness on the first floor is very talkative. The bad news is she didn’t see the assailant’s face. The good news is she says the driver of the car did. The bad news is the car was a black or dark blue Lexus.”

Carlos knew what a Lexus meant in this neighborhood. Either a suburban youth buying drugs in Daddy’s car and not wanting to admit he wasn’t at the library like he told mommy or a drug dealer who will not relish talking to the police.

“Any other good news?” asked Carlos. When Jim sullenly shook his head he added, “Hey, I could hope.”

“It just gets weird,” said Jim. “That red station wagon is his car. Minutes before the murder the uniforms posted to catch illegal dumping saw him do a bootleg turn on the dirt roads up there. From the car we can tell he was a Libertarian. Let’s go up to his apartment, it gets weirder.

They go up the stairs and Jim showed him a steel door. “The downstairs neighbor said the assailant came in but didn’t open this door. See the crowbar mark and these bullet holes? He tried but didn’t have the time. The downstairs neighbor heard nothing. Think about that. She hears him going up the stairs but doesn’t hear him shoot. No commercially available silencer is that good. The assailant didn’t get in. The door guys had to take two hours, while you weren’t here.”

Carlos ignored the jab, “Any reason why the door with ordinary locks took so long?”

“Three of six locks were locked. Whenever they turned the tumblers of an unlocked one they locked it. Once they figured that out it was a breeze.”

They went in. Jim led him to a room with two computers. On One monitor was a cartoon of five teenage girls dressed as Catholic School girls / sailors. The other had a smiling cartoon guy in shoulder pads and weird hair.

The victim had two kids. That’s Sailor Moon and the sailor scouts and Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z. Fun stuff is on Sailor Moon, although Vegeta has been connected to the web in the past too. He went into my documents and opened a folder that was called officers, open this.

A file was titled “In the event of my demise.” Jim opened it. It started with the usual suspects (ex-wife and stuff) then got weird. Jim turned on the printer and printed the list of things he was involved in that might, might, might lead to “them” killing him.

He chuckled at the paranoid nut case as the uniforms came in and impounded the evidence.

“Label that CPU Sailor Moon and that one Vegeta,” said Jim.

Back at the office Murphy called them into his office. A man in a Black suit was there. “The Berry case involves national security. The feds will investigate it. Turn over all your evidence to them.”

“Care to introduce us to your friend?” said Jim.

“My name is unimportant,” said the stranger in a black suit as he showed a Homeland Security I.D. Section 6. We believe Mr. Berry to be involved in a plot whose details we wish to not divulge at this time. The homicide was a regrettable violation of our procedures and we will investigate it internally.”

“So why is Homeland Security killing my people on my streets?” asked Carlos.

“That doesn’t matter,” said Murphy, “you are both off the case. Any evidence will be turned over to the feds.”

“We are especially interested in any computer records he might have had.”

Carlos stared at Jim while Jim said, “His computer is in the evidence cage labeled as Vegeta, or will be when it gets here.”

“Pinhero and Medeiros, please close the door on your way out as you get to your other cases,” said Murphy.

“Why did you do it?” Carlos asked Jim when they were back at there desks.

“Don’t you watch TV?” said Jim. “He took us off the case so we got to solve it before the bad man in black and we may need Sailor Moon to do it.”

“They’ll see two computer desks, and figure out we held back,” said Carlos.

“Then you better work late to make up for being late organizing evidence and copying that hard drive,” Jim said.


Mike looked at the reports again. He wasn’t sure of what he did know. He got some scrap paper and cataloged what he did know.

1) Some agency was making a play that needed a threat. That agency was not the NSA, the Military Intelligence guys, or even the FDA.
2) Although it is possible that an agency within an agency had gone rogue he figured he’d notice that at NSA.
3) As for the Pentagon, if they didn’t shoot back at you then spying on them was hard to justify.
4) The CIA could not do domestic stuff without everyone seeing traces of it, although this would be right up their alley.

He realized the word “not” was prominent. He made another list.

Aliens faked by….

1) UFO nuts (are they that organized?)
2) The anti-UFO nut guys (the NSA does track them. It’s done $tupid stuff before but I’d know if it went rogue. Wouldn’t I? Look into it.)
3) Marietta (She’s out. Did she go rogue? Grill the pregnant *****!!)
4) The Pentagon (some non-itel guys trying to justify budgets? Look into it.)
5) NASA (same)
6) GOP (Distract from Halliburton, etc.?) (Bushies? Cheneys?)
7) Buddhist Monks (mad about Gore’s defeat?)


Dood read the police report. Berry was dead. The cops had everything. Why was the back door he installed in his system back on the net?


Marietta was still in shock. She witnessed a murder. Should go the police? It looked like the company. Did No Such Agency do it and how long would the NBPD hold out if they did? If it wasn’t the company she was a plain old witness and she also knew what happened to witnesses.

Great, she thought, like I don’t have enough to think about right now. She stared at the phone. It was on the table next to her car keys.

Part 20

by TomM

She'd been putting off sending her latest report. Her superiors had not looked favorably on her decision to bring in outsiders. It was, they felt, too much of a risk. She'd agreed it was a great risk, but he felt it was unavoidable. The last three files needed an appeal and a commercial viability that her team simply could not achieve without help.

Of course she'd taken precautions. Contact had been strictly between the most expendable member of the team and the drug-addict brother-in-law. Fredricks knew, of course, that there was something funny in the code they insisted he include, but the money she'd authorized in payment was enough to allow him to convince himself it was only industrial sabotage, substituting one company's pop-up ads for another. Another precaution had been giving him a couple of innocuous assignments at twice their value when she first sounded him out.

Everything had gone well. The logic bomb had gone off as scheduled. They were prepared to jump to Stage 3 if the opportunity arose, but the military's red networks apparently remained secure. Still, one could read between the lines. It was almost certain that in checking those networks they found enough unauthorized files to become concerned. "American boys," she thought to herself, "can't stay away from their toys for eight hours, even if it means using the 'sneaker net' to import them against regulations.

Of course that was the real purpose of Stage 1. To alert the military that there was a strange new virus out there, and that even their red networks were vulnerable. They were now in the early phase of Stage 2, where both timing and patience were critical. The software company her team had set up had to be the first to come up with a "vaccine" for this virus, long enough before any other company that their vaccine become the standard, but not so quickly that anyone would suspect that they'd already had it. The second bomb would be delivered in the vaccine for the first. But theirs had to be the standard in order to make sure that the military would buy it. It was the only viable way to infect the red networks.

The hitch was that somehow Fredericks and Donovan managed to attract attention to themselves, and were picked up during one of the first frantic sweeps of "all the usual suspects" the day after the logic bomb went off. Her people managed to "liberate" them, silencing Donovan and severing the only link to her team, but they were not able to recover the disk that Fredericks had used to create the critical files.

That was why she had not filed her report, even though Stage 1 went off without a hitch. If Fredericks were to talk, or if the disk were to be discovered and understood, things could still unravel, and her superiors would make an example of her.

Still, it had been over a week, and no one had leaked any hints about "breaching the DRM protocols" or multi-part virus structures, so wherever the disk was, it had probably not been unencrypted, and her superiors would begin to wonder at her delay in reporting back.

-------------

Jason needed a break. Ever since that logic bomb went off, he had, like most of his co-workers, devoted every possible moment to trying to track it down. And like everyone he knew, he was having no success at all.

He took a moment to check his e-mail. Most of it was SPAM, of course, but there were a few things from friends and family. and an odd note from Morgan, asking if he'd heard from MJ. Looking over his old mail, he noticed that the last note from her was almost two weeks ago, which was unlike her. That had been the one with the high-level encryption he'd informed her about, and had started "In the event of my death or disappearance...."

Whatever game MJ and Morgan were playing, this was not the time. The military, of course, was trying to pretend nothing was different but those who knew how to read the signs could see that they were worried. And there'd been that Scramble right around the same time as the logic bomb.

On the other hand, he needed something to sweep away the mental cobwebs, to allow him to come back to the problem afresh, so he might as well take a look at MJ's note. It directed him to an On-Line file storage site, and a series of files that were too large to be e-mailed. It was all encrypted with a different secure encoding than anything he'd sent to either MJ or Morgan, except for one small text file, in the same cypher as the e-mail. Decoded, it looked like a Bible reference.

-----------------------------

Fredericks groaned.

"Welcome back to the land of the living. Are you ready to coöperate?"

He looked around for the source of the question, but no one was in the room.

"Up here."

He looked up there was a TV set mounted on the wall, next to a security camera. The face on the screen did not look friendly.

"O.K. Have it your way. But you should know we already know most of it."

The scene changed. Fredericks saw a door opening. The picture wobbled slightly. it reminded him of the helmet cam experiment in broadcasting footbal games. The person at the door looked familiar.

"Ah! So you do recognize her."

Did they know about the disk or were they bluffing? There was no sound, but clearly the girl was being cagey. He'd recognized her spunk the moment he'd seen her. That's why she was the one he'd approached.

"We have the Bible, too," his captor said, as the scene changed to show the girl in a cell similar to his. "Why don't you do yourself a favor and clear up a few points for us?"

What points could he clear up? If they had the disk, their techs knew more of the important details than he did. He knew that his "clients" had found a way to use movies to carry a virus, but he didn't know how it worked, although he'd overheard something about DRM protocols only being worried about information getting out and not about it getting in. Or was it MDR? Surely that would have been the first thing they'd noticed on the disk.

On the disk. The voice said "We have the Bible," not "We have the disk." They didn't know anything! He could still negotiate.

Part 21

by ScottN

Special Agent 47, Homeland Security Section 6 was upset.

As far as he could tell, there was absolutely nothing useful on "Vegeta". Sure, there was the crab video, but everyone in the world had that. Yeah, there were the emails, but he'd already gotten those from NSA. Other than that, there were just Berry's political diatribes ("d@mn Libertarian", he thought), his checkbook, and a bunch of archives from some geek website called "NitCentral". Big deal.

He stared at the computer, thinking.

----

Dave and John were arguing. This was nothing new. However, the subject of their argument was, for them, rather unusual.

"You want to do what????"

"You heard me. You saw the report on the police computes. The cops have got one of his machines. It's just a matter of time before the before the MIB figure out the cops pulled a fast one on them. We've got to get at the data on that hard disk before its too late!"

"You're insane! They'll just hand us over to the feds as terrorists!"

"No, they won't. If they didn't hand over both machines, they're not particularly in love with the feds."

"D00d, you're crazy."

"Yeah, Dave, I know, but have you got any better ideas?'

----

The desk sergeant asked, "How may I help you?"

"I need to see Detective Pinhero now, if not sooner!" John's people skills, while better than Dave's (which wasn't saying much), weren't very good.

"Oh, you do, do you? Well he's very busy now." The sergeant didn't like this guy. From his long unkempt hair, to the paranoid way he kept looking over his shoulder, everything about this guy screamed trouble.

"Look, I can't tell you what it's about, but it's important that I see him!"

Yep, paranoid, the sergeant thought. "Sorry, buddy, but he's really tied up right now. Why don'tcha leave your name and number, and I'll have him call you?"

John realized that screaming about the MIB and the global conspiracy out here wouldn't do anything except get him thrown into the drunk tank. He thought for a few moments and said, "Look. I've got information about the Berry shooting. I need to see Pinhero now, there isn't much time."

Part 22

By Machiko Jenkins

"Don't you roll your eyes at me!"

Sometime later, after the sedatives wore off, I heard that demand a lot. Usually after the old wardog claimed that my imprisonment was for my own good.

"Look, Elmer," I said placatingly, "it's not that I don't appreciate your suspicious altruism, but...you're military. You're old. And you're not my father."

"You've as yet to explain what a nice, Bible owning girl like you is doing wrapped up in something as dark as the occult." he persisted.

I just sighed. "Okay, here's the truth," I finally said in exasperation, "I'm secretly from the planet Krypton, and drinking the blood of a griffin on the night of the full moon in the grove of the manticores, while in the presence of a dragon will grant immortality and immunity to kryptonite. Okay?"

Whoops. All I got for my sassiness was a glare, then he stomped out.

And...what the heck? A Nextel phone used by military? I hopped over to the counter and snagged it. Ooo, nice. The i95cl. That colour display one. Going through the menu showed that it was, in fact, used for military purposes.

Time for some fun. I activated the sim pin lock on the keypad, and then promptly locked it up. Once it read, "Pin blocked, call your provider," I had a lot more fun.

"What I wouldn't give for a nice Lingo," I mumbled to myself. "Or a Louisville slugger. Or a taser." Victory! I had just fried his phone. It was now puk-blocked. I shut it off.

Aw, darn. The wardog had just walked back in. I smiled sweetly and handed him his phone. He turned it on...and stared in disbelief. "Fix this!" he barked at me.

I looked at him blankly, then proceeded to irritate him even more. "Stalin."

No, he definitely didn't like that. Everytime he made a demand, I just gave him a random name. Everytime he asked a question, I would quack like a duck in response.

Needless to say, I didn't appreciate by kidnapped for no good reason. It's my business if I go drinking with strange men, after all.

I found myself hustled into another room. They locked the door behind me, and I got a good look at the other occupant in there.

"I think I owe you a good wallop or two for feeling me up in Starbucks," I said to the bizarre street preacher. "But it looks like Hitler and the Gestapo there got you."

The brother of Donovan's girlfriend looked up, and then grinned.

Oh yes. Life was about to become fun.

Part 23

By JD

Dawn was approaching Maryland, and the government facility cleverly
disguised as an extremely dull-looking industrial park. The sky was
lightening from it's deep dark blue of night to the steely gray of early
morning. The cafeteria was cold and nearly abandoned. Nelson felt the
chill in his bones as he crossed the echoing cafeteria, shaking a bit from
fatigue, to the lone occupied table.

As soon as Nelson sat down, he found a cup of hot coffee right in front of
him. He smiled gratefully at his tablemate.

"You look like crud, Nel." Neville said, stirring his tea idly. Neville,
of course, was impeccably coiffed and dressed at all times of the day.
Nelson sometimes wondered if his friend was an android.

Neville smiled as his friend pulled hard at the hot coffee before managing
a reply.

"Thanks very much, Nev." Nelson croaked.

"For the comment or the coffee?"

"Both."

Neville folded his hands on the table. "All right, pleasantries are over.
The operator said you were done in the Media room. Tell me you've found
the answer."

Nelson drained his rather oversized cup. He would need all the chemicals
he could for the explanation.

-

Nelson finished, almost reached for his now empty and cold cup, and
finally just folded his arms. He was really beginning to feel the effects
of his lack of (real) sleep.

Neville chewed his lip for just a minute in thought, the wheels in his
mind almost visibly turning.

"So, let me get all this straight, Nel."

"Take your time."

"The transmission was real."

"Yes."

"The supposed source wasn't."

"Right."

"But there are aliens involved."

"Uh-huh."

"And the entire country running around like headless chickens plays right
into their hands."

"Nev, sometimes I wonder if you ever do research on cases like these."

"I'm just a good guesser. What do you mean, research?"

Nelson pulled a thick fold of documents from his rumpled suit jacket,
passing it over.

Neville flipped through it deftly, grunting a time or two. "I've heard of
this."

"I bet."

"You got this from the red files, didn't you?"

"Right."

"12 fatalities...no clear explanation of the situation...eyewitness
reports sketchy...I'd say this all fits, Nel, but that's just my opinion.
It's a crazy notion, you know."

"It's the only one that fits the facts, Nev." Nelson's tone was a bit
defensive.

"Oh, I can see that, Nel. It's the Stick you have to convince. With disappearing bogeys, various arrested suspects, hacker activity, and every agency from the FBI to the NSA being involved, he might want something a little less sci-fi." Neville passed the papers back over to his friend.

Nelson's eyes were a bit distant. "I know..."

Neville turned to stare out the window, squinting a bit as the sun blazed
over the horizon, filling the room with golden light. "Shoot. Who'd have
thought we'd have another Maple Street on our hands?"

Part 24

Meanwhile...

J McC regarded the attractive redhead closely. "Let me get this straight... You really are a government agent, but you weren't actually following us, until you started getting followed yourself."

"Right. It happened after I witnessed the guy you were seeing get blown away. Although, obviously, there were red flags up about me prior to that."

"What for, being pregnant?"

"Of course, mostly. In my line of work, one can't do that sort of thing... too much emotional attachment, let alone all the physical issues. But I'm something of a loose cannon, and was up for... review anyway because I'd gotten too close to some drug dealers we were 'observing'."

"You mean you hit on something that would have revealled a connection nobody wanted you to see? Like to some other g-types?"

Marietta rolled her eyes, stifling a yawn. "No, I mean I got too close, emotionally, to one of the dealers. How do you think this..." she indicated her slightly swollen abdomen "...came about?"

"Well, for starters, you stopped taking your pill and he didn't wear a rubber," Dood said dryly.

Marietta resisted shooting back a retort about how long it had likely been since either of these nuts had even touched a woman, but decided to let it go. Things were loopy enough as it was without antagonizing someone else, and she doubted these two would even buy her story anyway. Still, she couldn't turn to any of her few friends, for fear of dragging them into the whole mess; how could she put her friends in a position to end up like that man, Berry? Will I end up that way? she thought, unconsciously rubbing her abdomen.

"Anyway," she continued, "my loyalties were being called into question, which I not only understand, but agree with. But I never thought the outright violence would happen related to what should just be a disciplinary case." She yawned, fully this time. "Sorry. I'm exhausted."

"But how'd you get tied up in this whole mess in the first place?" J McC asked. "It doesn't seem related."

"That's one thing that's so goofy. Our first encounter was when I got stuck behind you racing to a funeral I'd overslept for."

"Someone else they rubbed out?"

"No, a friend of my baby's father who OD'ed."

"Sure, it looked like an OD; that's what they want you to think," Dood blurted .

Marietta sighed. "Look, guys, not everything is a conspiracy. Although lately, it wouldn't surprise me. People disappearing, as you say, that 'alien' video hoax going all the way up to the President..." She yawned yet again. "Man, I know pregnancy wipes you out, but I haven't slept in so long..."

Dood proffered a can of Mountain Dew. "Juice of champions."

"No, thanks. Don't you guys ever sleep, or do you just IV that stuff?"

"We try to sleep as little as possible," Dood explained. "And only in shifts, so our guard isn't let down."

"Huh," snorted Marietta. "Sleep deprivation. That's what seems so strange, like the entire country is running around on zero sleep, and it's affecting everyone's behavior." Oh great, she thought to herself, I'm starting to think like these goons.

"Hey, kind of like They Live in reverse!" Dood exclaimed.

Marietta stared at the pair, clueless.

Dood explained: "It was an underrated sf flick from the eighties, where the populace was controlled by subliminal messages on tv, radio, print, even money, so they'd all be sleepy, or unaware that they were being controlled."

"Controlled by whom?" Marietta asked. "The government?"

"Ah, no... aliens, actually."

" 'Underrated' film, huh?" she replied sarcastically.

"Hey, actually it sort of makes sense--"

"Aliens?!"

"Look," J McC interjected. "Maybe you hit on something with the sleep deprivation thing, maybe not. I'm still hazy as to why you sought us out." His tone said I don't trust you. "It's all too neat."

"And if you think about it," Marietta shot back, "so was my being able to find you. I thought you paranoiacs were better than that." She noticed Dood warrily regard his partner. She continued, "Maybe you're just bait, or informants." Oh, good one, M, she thought, her pulse rate increasing. What if I'm right about that one?

She started to leave. "I'm going," she said.

"No you're not," said J McC. He reached for something behind his back.

"Actually," a loud voice said to the trio, "none of you is going anywhere..."