First Contact

First Contact - Chapter 616: Interlude

First Contact - Chapter 616: Interlude

The air was climate controlled, fully filtered, and nearly canned. Not one molecule or atom was spared multiple filtration systems before it moved to the more secure levels deep beneath the earth. The air had a dry chill to it, one that seemed to seep through clothing and into the skin, setting into the muscle and fat beneath. The climate control kept the internal thermostat at 68F, supposedly comfortable to the occupants of the high security facility.

The man hated it.

He hated secure facilities like this. Constructed under the Atlas Missile Silo program, funded by FEMA's eternally black budgets, and so far off the books that no whisper of their existence reached those who were not cleared to know about them.

He viewed the nearly three hundred million dollars spent on it in the 1950's as an indulgence of a bygone era, despite the fact the facility was completed a little over a decade ago. Blasted out with dynamite, carved out by jackhammers, built by men he considered almost an alien species, the type of men who took such jobs and never spoke of them, merely cashed their paycheck and moved onto the next paycheck without regards to favors, possible hush money, or how it could benefit them beyond that meager paycheck.

The walls this far down were brushed metal, stencils here and there with strange acronyms that he didn't bother trying to understand.

He wasn't here to decipher strange glyphs on steel walls.

He was here to see the Queen of the facility.

A woman who's work was so closely guarded that her name was not redacted, it was never written down anywhere. She was referred to only as "Dark Queen", a nickname given to her by someone from within the labyrinth of government secret project administration.

On either side of him were his body guards. CIA agents of known reliability, who knew who granted favors and approved budgets. He had waived the military escort that had been offered when he had landed and the helicopter had been withdrawn into the facility.

He understood the soldiers as much as he understood the men who had carved out and assembled the facility.

The agents, those he understood.

The door he stopped at was heavy, inches thick, a heavy blast door that belonged somewhere else, not hundreds of feet inside the guts of a mountain.

He waited, looking up at the camera. There were no controls on this side beyond an alphanumeric keypad with several keys denoting 'color shift' and enter/delete buttons.

The door clunked, then hissed as it slowly rose, the bottom of it was a wedge. He waited impatiently as all eight feet of it withdrew into the top of the doorframe.

Satisfied, he moved through.

A single escort waited. A young woman, Japanese from the looks of her, maybe South Korean, wearing a lab coat and corrective lens glasses. Her black hair was cut brutally short and her face was expressionless.

"Follow," was all she said, her accent thick.

He felt some disdain for her as he followed her through the labyrinth high security section.

The heart of the facility.

"Why are we going to one of the labs? Wasn't she notified of my arrival?" He asked.

The woman waited a moment before answering. "She is reviewing the results of an experiment. She has instructed that you be brought to her or that you may return to the upper levels and await her," the woman said.

He felt a dull burn of anger.

But he was careful. The person he was here to see, the Queen, was dangerous.

Lethally dangerous.

It galled him to know that she could kill him with no repercussions to her career, her livelihood, or her status. That his political office would not shield him if she decided that his life was her price to continue her work.

The Asian woman stopped at a door. She motioned at his two escorts. "They are not permitted beyond this point," she said. She pointed at two sets of four chairs. "They may wait here."

"They're with me," he said.

The Asian woman shook her head. "It does not matter. She has said that only you are to be admitted and that if you disagree, you may return to that badly drained swamp that they built DC on and wail and gnash your teeth to your betters," the woman said, her voice monotone and emotionless as her face.

"Wait here," he ordered.

The two agents nodded, their eyes hidden by their sunglasses.

The Asian woman opened the door, motioning to him to follow, and went inside.

The door slotted into place, tons of armor, concrete core, and steel bolts sliding into place with a controlled thud.

It felt even colder to him.

The Asian woman led him to a lab, where the object of his mission stood, looking over a circuit board with a round magnifying glass held in an oval that held a fluorescent light.

"Wait, and be silent," the Asian woman ordered.

He watched as the Asian woman moved over to another work station, turning on the ring of light and shifting the large magnifying glass to examine another circuit board.

He paid no attention to the Asian woman. She was a functionary, a replaceable (as far as he was concerned) cog in the machine that worked in the heart of the facility.

The Queen, on the other hand, was irreplaceable. She was short, not even five foot, thick bodied, well endowed, and shapely. He had seen file footage of her when she was younger and noted that her hourglass figure had been lost to time and sweets. Her black hair was in what people were calling "Beatles Style" now, her gun-metal gray eyes were intent on what she was examining, and her lips full and plump.

He reminded himself that she was deadly as a wasp and that any plans of impressing her with his political office and looks in hopes of seducing her would be crushed with glee by the Queen.

Finally she looked up and motioned at him.

"You have five minutes," she stated. Her voice was low, what some called a whiskey voice, slightly rough and breathy. She picked up a lighter and a pack of cigarettes, lighting one and exhaling smoke as he approached.

She stared at him as if he was nothing more than an object of mild curiosity. The expression, the dismissal, the boredom in his eyes burned at his pride.

"I bring news from the Department of Defense," he said, staying out of arms reach.

"I already know," she said. She picked up a bottle, pushing on the wire under the ceramic stopper to pop it loose. She took a swig and closed the bottle. "Ginger ale. We brew it here."

"Oh," he said. He frowned. "You already know?"

She nodded. "I do."

"Then why not let the Department of Defense know so I wasn't sent here," he said, feeling his temper rise.

She smiled, a pitiless, cold thing that compressed her full lips into a blade.

"I wanted one of you to have to tell me, face to face," she said. She twitched her wrist and he stared as she lifted up a long blade that had dropped into her hand. "An Arkansas Toothpick," she said, looking at it. "My father taught me to use it after Okies ate my dog."

His temper vanished as a cold trickle of fear moved down his spine as she opened her hand and the blade vanished up her sleeve. She stared at her sleeve for a moment, then turned her gaze on him.

He suddenly realized that her the iris of her eyes looked like molten iron.

"Say it, dog," she hissed, her face coldly angry. "Say what your masters sent you to tell me."

"The Department of Defense and Department of the Army regret to inform you that your son was killed in battle in Khe Sanh," he said. "His body has not been recovered."

She just nodded.

He stood there, waiting for her to say something.

"Is that all?" she asked, flicking her ashes in a beanbag ashtray on the workbench.

"My God, woman, don't you care?" he asked, startled by her emotionless response.

"That's not your business," she said. She exhaled smoke and he realized her could see her eyes clearly through the smoke. "You drafted him, you trained him, you sent him into battle where he got killed," she took another drag. "Then you came here, hoping to gain gratification in seeing a mother's grief at the news her only child was killed in battle because the Marine Corps, for all their shit talking about 'leave no man behind' couldn't be bothered to rescue my son and his fellow Special Forces, just because General Thompkins doesn't like Army Special Forces."

He blinked and stepped back at her cold words.

"You want a reaction? Fine. You go back, you to that worthless hovel of plotters and brain dead morons, you pick up the phone, you call Vietnam, you tell General Thompkins of the United States Marine Corps that he better stay in the Corps, because the minute he leaves, he is mine. He can try to blame Colonel Lownds all he wants, but I know who ordered the Marine tanks to train their guns on the SOG base, know what he called men like my son," she said, stepping forward through the cloud of smoke. "You tell Thompkins that when he leaves the Corps, he becomes my property. If he's killed, he better hope they can't find his body, because I'll use his body for my experiments," she said. "He better hope that one of you works up the balls to dispose of me before he leaves his beloved Corps."

He was aware he was gaping at her.

"What? Did you expect me to harbor hatred and anger for the rice paddy farmer that pulled the trigger on a gun that might as well be magic to him?" she laughed coldly. "It was war. He was defending his country, his misguided belief in communism, from the round eyed foreign barbarians. I hold no malice or anger toward someone like that."

"No, I hold my disdain and contempt for men like you," she said. She stepped back and leaned against the work bench. "Don't bother waiting for tears. I will not allow myself to cry, to demean his memory with feminine weakness," she sneered. "Now, get out."

He turned and hurried from the room, his fantasies of watching the Queen break down and cry shattering as he stumbled to the door, where another lab assistant waited to escort him out.

The Asian woman looked at the Queen.

"My condolences, Doctor," she said softly.

"Thank you, Doctor Jin," the woman said. She took a drink off of her bottle and replaced the ceramic cap. "I am aware that you know the pain of a mother losing her only child to war."

"Indeed," Doctor Jin said. "Will you tell the father?" Jin asked after a long moment of silence.

She shook her head. "No. I will not tell the father he had a son and then tell him that son is dead in the same breath. It is an unnecessary cruelty."

Doctor Jin nodded.

The two women turned their attention back to the dark science they were laboring on in the heart of a mountain.

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

Not enough time had gone by as far as he was concerned, since the last time he had visited such a place.

Another mountain.

Another underground facility carved out of the mountain's heart by silent men who took the money and kept their secrets, even to the grave.

Where what was known as the Dark Queen was housed.

This time he was escorted by more than a handful of CIA agents. There were generals, admirals, several politicians, and even a few scientists that could be trusted with secrets dark and silent enough that a mere whisper of the Overproject's code name or SIGMA code would result in a cratered head wound within hours.

The helicopters had landed on the pads, which had lowered into the mountain, heavy blast doors normally seen on silos, camouflaged to look like barren rock, sliding into place over the top of the shafts. From there the visitors were searched, despite any objections, forced to walk through fluoroscopes and X-ray machines, subjected to cavity searches, and given jumpsuits to wear. Corrective lens glasses brought in by the visitors were replaced by ones already present in the facility.

Decades of work had resulted in many scientific advancements, many of which opened up new lines of scientific inquiry in order to utilize the discoveries, others esoteric enough that the advancements were merely questions that required new scientific knowledge to explain.

It was the results of tens of billions of US dollars over decades.

Born of the Development of Substitute Materials Overproject, the latest discovery or accomplishment was important enough that even the Dark Queen was willing to allow it to be witnessed by more than her subordinates or a few assigned watchers.

He felt a slight bit of disconcerting deja-vu as he moved through the brushed steel corridors, despite the additional people around him.

The last time he had walked halls such as these, he had carried a simple message to the Dark Queen herself. It was a message he had not understood, even though he had looked at it. A message from a physicist regarding a complex equation.

It made him feel illiterate and ignorant that she had merely glanced at the message, shook her head, and told one of her assistants that she owed him a bottle of whiskey, that he was right after all.

It had been humiliating that he had been relegated to a courier after he had lost reelection and the new administration had declined his services.

The Dark Queen herself greeted the guests, coldly and remotely, her face as expressionless as always, her gray eyes smouldering with something he did not understand but he could see left the others slightly disturbed.

She led them into a room full of large heavy computer consoles. The walls were lined with computers displaying scopes, blinking lights, dials, magnetic tape reels clicked, and the entire thing hummed with purpose.

Video display terminals were at heavy desks and work stations, the high resolution cathode ray tube screens showing streams of texts, graphs, sine-waves, and other esoteric data.

The visitors were curious, but stayed silent.

In the middle of the room was a large hexagonal chamber, made of some kind of thick glass that was blue, with red edging and white threads through it. The heavy door was open, showing dime sized copper contacts on the edge of the door. The floor was hexagons of heavy glass, dark and opaque.

Sitting on a table in front of the hexagonal chamber was a table with a wooden box, open to show it was empty, and a stack of index cards as well as jar with pens in it.

The Asian woman that he recognized from his previous visits stepped forward and lifted a finger to gain everyone attention.

"If you would all line up, and one at a time write something on the index card before placing it inside the box, you may then take your seats," she said, her accent still as thick he remembered it.

Everyone lined up and moved forward one by one. He wrote "Sixteen Tons of Number Nine Coal" on the index card, folded it, and placed it in the box, a reference to one of his favorite songs when he was younger. He reached forward with the pen and scratched the bottom inside of the lid of the wooden box.

The box was picked up and put in the chamber. Mirrors at the corners of the room allowed everyone to see that the single door was the only way in. As they all took their seats, following the tags on the chairs, a large dedicated screen lit up, showing the interior of the hexagonal chamber.

He knew that the screen had been custom made, at great expense, then moved through multiple cutouts and military bases, before finding its way to that wall. He knew that the shell-game to hide it had been a significant percentage of its cost.

Another screen came on, showing another hexagonal chamber in a room almost identical. The chamber's walls were dark green with gold edging and red swirls. The screen divided into quarters. One showing the chamber's interior, one showing the room the chamber was inside of, one showing a closeup of the table, and the other showing the mirrors so it was obvious that there was only one entrance.

"This chamber, designated platform beta, is in a secure facility on the other side of the continent," the Asian woman said.

Many of the visitors, the man included, looked at the Dark Queen, who merely nodded.

It gratified the man to see that she had gray in her hair and wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth. He knew she was reaching the age where the flesh between her breasts, at the top, would develop slight wrinkles, and wondered if that was why she was wearing such a severe outfit. A dark blue outfit, almost black, that looked more like a military uniform than something a lead scientist would wear.

A lab tech by the door grabbed the handle, pushing on it, shutting the door.

The Dark Queen nodded and personnel at the computer work stations set to work.

A low humming started, a cyclic thing that quickly picked up speed until it was one long hum. He looked at the screen and saw that both chambers were filling with some kind of mist. There was a crackling sound and the hum slowly cycled down in pitch until it was silent.

The mist cleared to show the wooden box was gone from the blue walled chamber and was now in the other chamber.

The visitors watched as the box was removed, taken to the table, and the index cards opened and laid flat to display the contents.

The man was not the only one who had marked the box, and at each request it was shown to the skeptical visitors that the box had indeed moved between the two chambers.

The Dark Queen cleared her throat and everyone looked at her.

"The potential of matter to energy conversion, first envisioned with the Manhattan Project for the atomic bomb, has been slightly realized," she said. "Advances in electronic calculating machines and programmable calculating machines have allowed the energy conversion to be moved between two points and the energy reconstituted into the original matter."

She moved over to the hexagonal system and laid one hand on it.

"Based on the work of the Manhattan Project, Tesla's work with broadcast power, and many other accomplishments in many fields, matter transmission is now a reality," she stated. "So far it has been tested on inanimate objects, including complex mechanical objects and electronic storage media, including hard disk magnetic platter systems, magnetic tapes, and audio-visual tape."

One man, a former Senator, raised his hand and she stared at him for a long moment as if he was an unruly child who had come inside covered in mud.

"Yes?" she asked, her voice cold.

"Have their been tests on living creatures? Can people be moved through this device?" he asked.

"An understandable and expected question, given your extensive investments in the petroleum industry as well as the automotive industry," she stated, her voice still cold and remote. "Yes, it has."

"And?" he asked.

"Bacterial, then small cell organisms, then plants, then insects, then birds, and finally mammal testing proceeded without any visible effect upon the test subjects," she said. "To date, there have been only three human trials."

"And the results of those trials?" he asked.

She gave a tight lipped smile. "Madness, followed by death. However, you will be witnessing the third human trial."

"And if it is not successful?" the man asked.

"Then I will learn quite a bit from the attempt," the Dark Queen stated. She motioned and the assistant opened the door.

She walked into the chamber, moving over and sitting down.

The door closed and the humming started again. The chamber filled with glowing, sparkling mist, then cleared.

The Dark Queen was sitting motionless.

For a long moment there was silence, just the clicking and whirring of the computers and keys clacking on the keyboards.

After nearly five minutes she stood up, resting against the side for a moment, and moved to the door.

The visitors watched as she staggered out, to a microphone set on the other table. She looked into the camera.

He could see madness in her grey eyes.

"Mat-trans successful," she said.

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

He was escorted into her office, deep in the heart of another mountain, by two uniform clad soldiers that gave off a feeling of remoteness to him.

"Have a seat," the Dark Queen said, staring at him. She sat behind the light, the lamp situated in such a way that he could not get a clear look at her even as he sat down.

There was silence for a long moment.

He had grown used to her silence over the decades. Her dominance games. Her cold cruelty.

"I am about to show you an advancement in technology," she stated.

He noted that her voice sounded stronger, much like it had sounded in years gone by.

She lit a cigarette, holding out the pack to him.

"No, thank you, I quit," he stated.

"Suit yourself," she said.

She turned on the office overhead light at the same time as she stood up.

He stared at her.

Gone was the gray hair. Gone was the crow's feet and wrinkles. Her neck was firm and delicate, missing the signs of age that a woman her age should have carried.

"How?" he asked.

He had learned that wasted words annoyed the Dark Queen.

"The mat-trans," she said, shrugging. "It's too complex to explain easily, but it relied on work by other people in areas of stem cells, telomeres, and other biological data," she sat back down. "Applying other's work to the mat-trans is not easy," she said. She shrugged. "Six months and I'm suffering no cellular degradation, no loss of cognitive function, no organ stress."

"How long could this extend life?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Theoretically? Forever. There's undoubtedly some side effects I lack the scientific tools and teams to discover."

"If this goes public..." he started.

She scoffed. "It will never go public. Imagine every supervisor you had that retired. Now, imagine them in charge of you forever. Scientific progress would slow to a standstill. Wars would happen as soon as the rapidly expanding emerging age brackets realized that ancient power brokers will never die," she shook her head. "No, it's not going to go public."

"How can you be sure?" he asked.

"Because nobody but me, and now you, know about it," the Dark Queen said. "I included nobody in my work. No team members. No co-researchers. As far as everyone knows, it was a standard mat-trans between Site Iota and here."

"Then why tell me?" he asked.

She leaned forward. "When my son was killed, you, and only you, had the sheer balls to tell me face to face. You delivered my message. You, unlike every other watcher they've put over me, have never tried to take what is mine, never tried to act as if you knew better than me about my research."

He just nodded.

She smiled. A terrible thing.

"Your heart is failing. You have received three bypass surgeries, but you possess a rare blood type and have not found a suitable transplant candidate, nor will you in the short time you have left," the Dark Queen said. She exhaled smoke and stared at him.

"I can offer you life," she stated. "Should you want it."

He thought about it. He sat silently, looking back at his life. Decades of government service. Two marriages, both wives dying before him. Children, grand children. His accomplishment.

The whole time he thought, the Dark Queen stared at him with gun-metal gray eyes.

Finally he looked up at her. "I fear I must respectfully and regretfully decline," he said.

She nodded slowly. "For that, you have my respect."

"The decision was made not to offer NASA your technology. It is believed that your technology will destabilize an already shaky geopolitical theater," he stated.

She nodded. "Cowardice," she said.

He shrugged. "Perhaps."

"No orbital construction yards. No lunar base. No Mars base or exploration. No sending out a Voyager probe with a mat-trans. Nothing. If that's what they wish," she said.

He nodded. "It is believed that the discovery of your technology and its application by the Soviet Union could lead to war."

She smiled coldly. "It would be a short war," she tapped her ashes. "Their fear that we could just transmit a nuclear weapon to our embassy and gut Moscow would be proven right before their silo launches reached the stratosphere."

"I appreciate that you understand the reasoning," he stated. "I knew you would."

The Dark Queen smiled.

"How is your other project progressing?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I can create a transmission reception beacon, but there are other difficulties in not requiring a receiving pad. I've managed to miniaturize it extensively. You could fit it and the reactor to power it on an aircraft carrier," she said. "I'm rapidly approaching the limits of technology and scientific knowledge."

"You want permission to restart your energy project," he guessed.

She nodded. "Limitless energy, created by the friction of universes and dimensions rubbing against one another."

"I will relay your request," he said.

The Dark Queen nodded.

"Is there anything else?" he asked.

"No. Not at this time," she said. "Will you be moving by helicopter or mat-trans back to Washington?"

He gave her a slight smile. "I would prefer mat-trans," he held up one finger. "If I have your word that you will not alter me against my wishes."

She smiled widely. "You have my word."

He nodded.

The Dark Queen was many things, but an oath breaker was not one of them.

---------

She was known by many names, but everyone who whispered about her only referred to her by the designation allowed by National Secrecy.

The Dark Queen.

She sat in her spartan room, holding a single photograph in one hand as she paged through a photo album. She didn't pause to linger over photographs, merely paged to the back of the album, to where a few pages were bare.

She pulled the static cling plastic free and carefully situated the photograph in the album.

A man who had been relegated to a courier smiled up from the official file photograph.

She carefully put the plastic over the picture, closed the photo album, then put it away.

She undressed slowly, folding her dirty clothing before putting it in the hamper. She turned off the light and laid on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

She would not sleep.

She never did.

But she would lay there, in the dark, for six hours.

"Tis the wink of an eye, tis the draught of a breach, from the blossom of health to the paleness of death, from the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud: Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" she whispered.

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

"Did you ever meet anyone you liked before they froze you?" the voice asked her.

She sat silently, for a long time, staring at the fire.

She looked up at the slender man, his skin brown and his head bald.

She nodded. "Twice."