Meeting

South of Death Valley

October 31st, 9:30am

I was as ready as I would ever be, so I fished my phone out from the pile of objects on the right hand seat and turned it on. In my paranoid frame of mind, I could almost see the notification from my cell phone to the nearby towers that it was back online, and I imagined that police in some anonymous tracking station were suddenly springing to action in order to capture me. I scrolled down to Serene's number, hit the dial button, and waited for it to connect.

Serene answered. "Yes?"

I was tired, and stressed, and my voice cracked as I spoke. "Roberta, this is Peter."

Her voice dripped with concern. "Of course. How nice of you to call. How are you doing, dear?"

How long did it take to trace a cell phone call, and how much could they pinpoint my location? "I'm tired of this. I'm tired of running, I'm tired of being afraid, I'm especially tired of having people trying to kill me. I just want to go back and try to pick up whatever pieces of my life are left."

Serene said, "Yes, I understand that. Well, why don't we meet, then?"

I said, "I'm fine with that. I can't even use this thing, not really; it's no good to me. But I need some guarantees. How can I be sure that you'll leave me alone?"

She paused, for a second. "Once we get what we want, we don't care about you anymore. You're just a transient."

I shook my head in disagreement, but then stupidly realized that she couldn't see me. I really was tired. "Somehow, that's not good enough. I still know enough that I could cause you problems. It seems like it would be tempting to just kill me and be done with it."

Serene forced a laugh. "Who would believe you, Peter, dear? People would write you off as a raving lunatic." She was right, of course. I had always automatically discounted anyone that claimed that there were aliens walking among us… and, ironically enough, here I was in the same exact situation.

I said, "Revenge, then. Your boyfriend doesn't seem very rational or reasonable."

Serene replied, "He can be controlled, dear. I'll keep him in line."

I thought silently to myself for a second, and then looked at the phone to figure out how long I had been talking. I wonder… "Roberta, are you tracing this call?"

She slowly said, "Whatever do you mean, hon?"

"Forget it." I hit the button to terminate the call and then shut off the phone.

I put the key in the ignition, started up the Porsche, and slowly pulled out of the parking lot towards the freeway entrance. I entered onto the freeway and headed north towards the nearest town, Shoshone. Shoshone used to be a little town of a thousand inhabitants, but one day they had discovered some geologically unlikely and surprising deposits of yttrium and bauxite in the area, and the town had grown like a week around the economic infrastructure necessary to do large scale mining.

I had planned this all out as well as possible, but one large gap in my information was the fact that I still didn't know the extent to which the Core used humans. It was obvious from my previous experiences that had significant influence with the police, government, and financial institutions, but I didn't think that they controlled anything and everything - it seemed like they used their influence with human organizations only when the Overnet was not able to provide them with what they needed.

I wasn't sure if the Core (or the police) were actually trying to trace my cell location or not, but either way I would need to draw them in. I traveled north, driving at the legal speed limit - it wouldn't do to get pulled over at this point, in someone else's car - and went northeast for 20 miles. If they were tracking the strength of my cell phone’s signal at the various towers, I wanted to make it very apparent that I was heading north… but I didn’t want them to know exactly where I was.

I needed to take a strong stance with Serene, so I started to think about Gwen for a minute, and it started to make me angry and furious and hurt. I turned on the phone again and dialed Roberta.

"You're jumpy," she said.

My voice was a controlled monotone veiling rage underneath. "I don't want this call to be traced. Do you understand?"

Serene's voice was a study in innocence. "Honestly, we aren't tracing this. Let's just meet and get this over with, okay?"

"What about my problem? What are you going to do about your boyfriend?"

"He doesn't have to be there," she said. "Just you and me can meet. It'll be like old times. We never did get a chance to finish what we started."

"No, no, that won't do," I replied. "I wouldn't be sure that he wasn't lurking behind my back. I have to meet with all three of you, and I want to hear each of you promise that you'll leave me alone."

Serene seemed amused. "What, you'll be able to see if we're telling the truth?"

I tried to explain. "Not necessarily, but it's the best I've got. After all, you need me to give this up willingly, don't you?"

Serene didn't reply immediately, and when she did, her voice was odd. "It's interesting that you know that."

"For that matter," I said, interested, "which one of you am I going to give this to?"

The phone was silent for a second. I wondered if there was another person with her listening in. "That's still under negotiation. We'll deal with that problem, as long as you hand it over."

“What about everything that’s been done to me? I want the money.”

“We will bring the money,” said Roberta. “We won’t forget the precious money.”

I took a deep breath "Okay, let's meet. Are all three of you together?"

"Close enough," she said.

"Are you still in California?"

"Yes," she answered.

"I'm somewhere east of Death Valley. I'll meet you in Shoshone."

"I'll have to check on that, but we should be able to manage that."

"I don't know the flight schedules, but you should be able to get here by 3:00 or so without any problems. I'll call you and we'll pick someplace to meet."

"Okay," she said, and she hung up, and I turned off my phone.

I drove for a while, then, just in case they had traced the previous call, as I wanted the meeting to be on my terms and not theirs. I was pretty sure that they wouldn't pull in the police, not yet; they still wanted to do this with as little fanfare as possible. However, I decided to check on things.

I pulled over to the next public phone booth and looked through the pages until I found a public library. I used the pay phone and called them and asked for directions, and without too many problems had driven to a pleasant little brick library nestled among some elm trees and surrounded by a slightly brown lawn. Children ran and played "Duck, Duck, Goose" or some such game on the front lawn while an elderly gentleman holding a pile of children’s books sat in the sun and watched them.

I walked in and rented a terminal for an hour. I logged into the Internet, from that logged into Anonymizer, went to my new Yahoo account and then sent a message to Tom through two levels of anonymous forwarders and encrypters. Perhaps I was taking this too far, but I understood too well just exactly how trackable everything was on the Internet, and I wanted to make it as difficult for the Core as possible. I sent a note to Tom, asking him to check for any APBs out on me, updated him on the timetable, and asked him to make one last check of all the significant details. I waited for his response, browsing the net and trying to make it look like I was doing research for something. Tom's e-mail response came about thirty minutes later, telling me that it was all go.

Fair enough. I left the library and went to go eat.

It was my last meal, yet I still didn't have much of an appetite. More than anything else I wanted a hot fudge sundae - the kind with French vanilla ice cream (the type with small flecks of vanilla beans dotting a creamy yellow-white, not the abominable artificially flavored stark alabaster white kind), liberally spread with roasted peanuts and real whipping cream, hold the cherries - but I was afraid that if I ate something like that I would be jittery and shaking by the time I met with Serene and her friends.

So instead I pulled into some deli, sat at the counter, and flirted with the waitress while I ordered a BLT and fries. She was very personable and attractive, with long black hair and startling blue eyes, and was also very spunky and bright and outspoken, and by listening to her conversations with the regulars I learned that she was still going to college, had a little boy that was about one-and-a-half years old that was currently suffering from the flu, and that she had no husband or current boyfriend but did have lots of family around to help her with her child.

It was fortunate that I had randomly encountered that place, because it reminded me of the important things in life, the very things that I was trying to preserve. I had always had a tendency to feel sorry for myself, at least a little bit, and certainly my life was essentially ruined at this point, but nonetheless I had the chance to be a hero. Such chances are rarely given to mortals. Who wouldn't want to be able to save the world?

After finishing my meal and drinking the last of my Coke, I stood up and walked around, still trying to take my mind off the situation and kill time until 4:00. I went into a tiny independent bookstore and looked around, but it was hard for me to get interested in the books, because I knew that I wouldn't get the chance to finish any of them. I left and walked down the street some more, running into a little coffee shop that had gorgeous dark oak floors and a frayed green couch that looked inviting, so I went and purchased a strong cup of coffee, sat in the couch, and read the local weekly.

I read the paper, trying not to look at my watch, and when it finally chimed four times I looked at it, and thought: why didn't I try to kiss a girl, play with a child, do a good deed, create something for posterity? But at that point it was too late, anyway.

I drove to the area of the abandoned gas station that I had picked out for a meeting place and parked the Porsche about a block away. I got into my BMW, which was parked nearby, and with the motor running I turned on the phone and dialed Serene again.

She picked up on the first ring. "Hello, Peter."

"Where are you?"

"We're at the Shoshone airport. We've... acquired a car. God, what a Podunk little town this is. Where do you want to meet?"

"Okay, there's a park that is just off the Ansel Adams drive as you go north on 97[*]. It shouldn't take you more than in 15 or 20 minutes. Sit down somewhere that is easily visible from the road, and I'll come find you. If I don't see all three of you, I won't show up. If anything looks suspicious, I won't show up."

"Understood, Peter. We'll be there."

I started up the BMW and drove to a back road a few miles from the park. I found a likely vantage spot nestled between some oleander bushes, pulled out my binoculars, and steadied myself against a rock. A short while later, I saw their car pull up to the curb, and Serene, Demon, and Snide all walked out and sat down at a picnic bench. For some reason the image of children playing while the Core watched was chilling to me.

Now things were going to proceed with little room for error, and if there were any major changes I was probably not going to be able to recover. I blocked my caller ID and called the local police:

"This is the Shoshone Police Department."

I lowered my voice, added a very slight fake and indeterminate accent. "Yes, I was driving by the park, and there were a bunch of kids that looked like they were doing something suspicious. I swear that they left a box or something in the playground. I didn’t want to take too close a look.”

The woman on the other hand was very polite. She said, "Okay, sir. May I have your name and number?”

I gave them a name and number that I had pulled from the white pages. "It's probably nothing, but it looked a little suspicious, so I thought you guys should know."

"Thank you, sir, we'll send an officer out to check on it."

Hoping that this was a typical small-town police force (i.e., responsive), I turned on my police band radio, and listened for the dispatcher to send someone out to the park. On the radio were fragments of conversations between the policeman and the dispatcher. I thought I had put the pieces together of a domestic dispute and a standard drunk and disorderly before I heard what was looking for… from the radio came a static-filled and slightly unclear voice. "This is Wallace, I'm at the park. It doesn't look like anything is happening, but I am going to go do a quick walk around of the area."

"10-4 on that, Wallace. Let us know."

I started the car and drove onto the freeway. Jabbed at the phone a few times before finally turning it on, waited impatiently for it to lock into the nearest tower, and finally dialed Serene.

This one would have to be good. I thought about Gwen, again, allowed the anger to fill me completely. I was furious. I yelled, "What the fuck is going on?"

Serene's didn’t expect an attack, and her voice was strained. "What do you mean?"

"Why the fuck is there a cop there?"

Serene seemed surprised. "Look, that has nothing to do with us. He's just looking around - it's probably just a standard patrol. There's nothing that you need to worry about."

I started yelling, then, using the frustration of the past months to fuel the anger in my voice. "What do you mean, there's nothing to worry about? I know that you guys control the cops. You know that I know. What is he supposed to do, arrest me and throw me into jail right after I hand it over? That was not the fucking deal."

Serene's voice went down an octave and acquired a strident tone. "You are freaking out about nothing, Peter.”

"Fuck you, Roberta," I yelled. "I will take this thing and drop it down the Marianas and then you can just try and go get it!"

I had pushed Roberta’s buttons, and she started yelling back at me, “It's just one cop looking around, Peter, stop being such a goddamn baby."

I had reached my destination, but instead of stopping I kept kept driving in a circle, wanting the road noise to be heard on the other end.

On the other end of the phone, a deep, gruff voice said, "Hand me the phone," and then I heard Demon. "Peter, this is Xavier. It is in our interest as much as yours to resolve this as quietly as possible. We did not call the police. We have no problem letting you take the money and walking away."

“Why was there a cop there?” I asked.

“Honestly, Peter, we didn’t call the police. Think about it - do we really need to? What could they do in this situation that would help us?”

I paused, and lowered my voice, and took three deep breaths. "Well… yeah… I guess you’re right. I just saw the cop and assumed, you know? God, I’m tired. We're all tired. “

He said, "I understand, Peter. It's not a problem. The officer just left. Why don't you come back to the park? We are still sitting here in plain sight, and there are quite a few people around. You have nothing to worry about."

I pulled the abandoned gas station, let the lack of sleep and the uncertainty creep into my voice, and stopped the forward motion of the BMW. "You know, Xavier, I'm not up to driving any more, not really. I’m not even sure I know exactly where I am. I don't have a map of the area in this car. Can you come here?”

"Tell us where you are, Peter."

I paused, remembering. "Umm.... I don't know. One second." Wait. Pretend I’m craning my head around, trying to find a street sign. "The street sign says… Industrial Drive, or something like that. There's an abandoned gas station here, not a major chain, I think - the sign is pretty faded. I'm parked here in a blue BMW convertible. I'll just... stay here until you get here."

"Okay, we'll be right there," Xavier said.

The gas station had undoubtedly treated with care many years ago, but over the years it has slowly decayed from pride and joy to eyesore. [*]The pumps were decrepit, handles removed, rust beginning to form at the corners of the surfaces everywhere and giving everything an odd brown tone. Looking through the shattered windows into the garage area revealed aging and faded signs still exhorting, "Safety is number one!" I steadied myself against one of the old pumps and raised my binoculars to the road.

There weren't many cars on this road, one of the many reasons that I had chosen this location for the rendezvous. Five minutes later I saw their car, a generic Ford rental car, traveling down the highway towards me. I checked the occupants quickly with my binoculars, saw that it was just the three of them, and was standing around and pacing by the time that they pulled into the neighboring row of pumps. I bent over slightly, looked at them through the windows of their car, and said, "Come out slowly, please."

They came out of their car, looking around. Roberta looked distinctly pissed, while Xavier was as calm as ever. Snide, as usual, had a sardonic look on his face. Xavier, apparently the designated spokesman, said, "Okay, Peter, how do you want to do this?"

I asked the key question. "Who gets the ring?"

Xavier and Roberta looked at each other, as if memories of recent arguments were being recalled. "You'll give it to me, Peter," said Xavier. As he said this, I looked at Roberta briefly, and she certainly didn't appear to be happy about the situation.

"I need guarantees from you," I said. "I want all of you to assure me that the Core will leave me alone."

Xavier spoke first. "I can guarantee that," said Xavier. "We're not interested in you after you hand over the ring."

I turned to Roberta, and she pretended to pout. "And you and I were such a cute couple! But I'll stay out of your life, dear."

Finally, I turned my eyes to Snide, and he just looked at me like I was some interesting specimen of insect and he couldn’t figure out if he wanted to collect me or just squash me. Roberta looked at him, and then said, "He’s in one of his moods. I'll speak for him. He'll leave you alone."

"What about the rest of the Core?" I asked.

"We'll warn them off. There are precedents," answered Xavier. "They might not like it, but they'll have other worries anyways."

"Did you bring the money?" I asked.

Xavier pulled out a suitcase. "Here it is. You can count it if you like."

"Open it up, let me see inside," I said.

He opened up the suitcase, tilted it towards me so that I could see the contents. Bearer-negotiable bonds, 10,000 dollars each, which meant that there could easily be the ten million dollars in the briefcase that I had asked for.

"Let me think about this," I said. I wasn’t sure about this. So much had happened over the past few weeks, and my calculations were all based on incomplete evidence and guesses, mere whispers of probability when I wanted absolute concrete proof. My hands were in my pockets and I looked down at the ground with a blank stare as I started pacing in thought. I had financial independence in front of me, and the ring really wasn’t doing me much good, and in the end I wouldn’t care, but I still had this ridiculous desire to make sure that I was doing the right thing. I slowly walked back to the center of the gas station. "What are you planning to do with the human race?"

"We aren't planning to do anything with the human race, Peter," said Xavier. "Over the years, we've just been teachers... and humans have been apt pupils. When we leave, you'll have a level of technology that would have taken you 10,000 years to acquire. It's very possible that we saved humankind. What if a meteor comes along in 30 years? Your race will be able to deal with it. If we hadn't helped you, it would have meant the end of the human race."

I started pacing again, visibly nervous. I wiped the sweat from my forehead. "But you guys are the bad guys."

"That’s an abstract moral concept. There aren't bad guys and good guys," said Xavier. "We're imperfect beings trying to do the best that we can with a bad situation.”

I continued to pace, tracing larger and larger circles around the gas station. I came to the side of a ditch about 20 yards away from them. Logically and intellectually I didn’t have enough information to make this decision, but nothing had changed in my mind, really. For whatever reason, I was going to base this on my instincts and on the truthfulness of a man that I had met just once in an afternoon with in the Smithsonian. Sometimes, you have to have faith.

"Hey, Xavier," I yelled.

"What?" he asked.

"Hitler. Bad mistake," and with that took one more step, dropped into a ditch, and thumbed the switch in my pocket.

Circuits closed and electrons danced and an oscillator put out a signal at 271.3359 Mhz (just there, mind you, not more nor less) and this wave, this signal, this invisible equivalent to a smoke signal crossed twenty yards at the speed of light to some sitting, waiting metal boxes that were listening for a signal at 271.3359 Mhz (just there, mind you, not more or less), and they let the circuits close and electrons dance and the current ran free, free, free.

... my BMW exploded into a mountain of flame, car doors for some reason detaching and propelling away from the gas station like pieces of paper; the explosion was odd bright blue like that seen in a propane burner when camping, the magnesium that I had put into the trunk and back seat burning and igniting and searing…

... while the gas tank under the gas station exploded, and ground buckled and rose for five or six feet, this explosion being white, white hot, fragments of concrete and metal and insulation being straight up into the air….

… while the shaped charges that we placed around the gas station exploded, driving fragments and pieces of debris back towards the center of the gas station, hopefully containing the fury, smashing into the Core members and squeezing a large mass of the gas station into the very, very small space occupied by the core…

… my nightmare mix of liquid oxygen and gasoline and hydrazine and magnesium all combining to make a burning conflagration that was hotter than almost anything else that you were going to find on the surface of the earth right now, barring nuclear explosion or the Shiva laser, and the best that I could do on such short notice.

I stood up from the ditch, the heat from the blaze hitting hit me like a slap. Tears were running down my face, my face was numb, my ears were ringing from the explosion and I was very probably deaf. I looked down, for some reason, saw blood on my shirt, through process of elimination determined that my nose and mouth were bleeding, and I remembered the plan and I was out of the ditch and running as quickly as possible for the Porsche, not wanting to be around when the firemen came to extinguish the blaze. I ran dizzily and unevenly, the explosion having affected my balance.

Monitor started knocking at my mind. Click.

I ran towards the Porsche while I opened my mind to Monitor. I spoke aloud, things too hectic... "What?!"

The Guidelines have been revoked. You have surprised the Core, and they are in a vulnerable state. You should attack now.

"I can't believe that they survived that."

I reached the Porsche, turned around, and looked at the devastation. The entire building had collapsed and was roaring with flame, the magnesium silicate burning so hot that even water would not be able to put the fire out, the fuel mix from the gas tanks enabling the entire structure to turn into a white-hot mass of flaming rubble. The heat from the building was so intense that it scalded my face, even though I was more than a hundred yards away. Large heaps of rubble were on the ground, smoke billowed into the air in a black cloud so thick that you could climb it to the heavens.

Bring up an overlay.

... suggested Monitor, so I touched the Overnet and after two or three tries managed to bring up a quick sensory overlay and was able to sense through the fire, and inside I saw one... two... three figures starting to levitate out of the large hole that had been blown in the middle of the gas station. Despite the fact that the fire was hot enough to melt steel and incinerate flesh, it didn’t touch them, not even their goddamn clothes had been singed, and seeing them there, ringed in the hellish fires that I had created, a primal memory came up and I started to believe in gods.

"They survived?"

Now is the time to attack, while they are in the fire. They will never be more vulnerable than they are right now.

I threw myself into the Porsche, started it up, hit the accelerator and fishtailed slightly as I pulled out and headed for the road.

Turn back. Now is the time to attack, while the Guidelines have been revoked.

My voice was full of panic. "No, no, not now, not now. Keep me alive. You need to keep me alive."

Now is your last chance! Do not doom the human race with your cowardice!

"Go to hell, keep me alive," and with that I turned my mind to my driving. Even as I was in the car, putting as much distance as possible from the Core, I could feel the three of them probing the area. Now that the Guidelines had been revoked...

I tapped into the Overnet myself, called up an overlay onto my sensory system, started seeing everything in terms of energies and potentialities. I couldn’t run any credible defense, but at least I could see the attack coming, and my main shield was going to have to be as much distance as possible, which was why I was already going a hundred miles an hour down an old industrial park. Monitor was running a blocking action, and I had the obfuscation from before, and it all was barely enough for Demon not to be able to strike me down where I was, even miles and miles away from him - he was going to have to be face to face with me before he could kill me. For that matter, with the Guidelines revoked, he could just as well bring the entire state with an earthquake, and this possibility worried me, but I was still betting that they wanted the ring.

I reached highway 97, a four lane highway in the middle of nowhere leading west into Death Valley, and behind me I could see the plume of smoke from the gas station rising into the air like an accusing finger; there were the sounds of sirens and I saw a fire engine headed in the opposite direction straight towards the cataclysm that I had created. I passed a gray van to my right as I accelerated, and looked into the sky.

There were two moons.