Pins (2)

 

Chesapeake, Virginia Beach
October 2038

 

The safe house. By the sea - follow the coordinates. A hut. Rocky beaches. Dark water.

Pete parked on a grassy rise. Cliffs fell away beneath him. He popped the trunk and unloaded a stack of thin cases. His hands were still shaking. They shouldn't be. He should be used to this.

The living room: wooden walls. Ratty furniture. A single table. Candles burned down to the nubs. She was curled up on the sofa. Her hair was lank. Her eyes were red. He caught visions: a man's ear blown off. A man clawing at his eyes. He blinked. He willed himself present. He re-stacked the cases. She watched.

'It's done, then,' she whispered.

Pete slid one case on top of another.

'Don't touch these,' he said. 'They're not safe.'

She stared at him. She lit a cigarette.

'How many?' She said.

Pete looked round. He pulled himself up.

'How many people did you fucking... '

He moved to the kitchen. Candlelight swerved. He opened the fridge door, grabbed a beer, and cracked it open. She crushed her cigarette out.

'How long do we have to stay here for?'

Pete slugged a draught.

'I don't know.'

'It'll be sooner, now,' she said, nodding at the cases. 'They'll bring it... they'll bring the departure forward.'

He sat and scratched at the fabric of his boiler suit. 

'I expect so,' he breathed. 'I expect so.'

Her lips curled. She lit another cigarette.

'You fucking expect so? Twenty fucking years of - are you excited? Scared?'

'It's a shock,' he said. 'It's a shock.'

She blew out smoke. She wrapped her palm around her forehead. Her hand trembled.

'How long does it take?.. '

Pete downed the bottle. His eyes watered.

'Nine months... one way. Eighteen months, round trip. Then the tests, themselves... I can't place that.'

She held his eyes for a minute. She picked up the ashtray and walked to the bedroom.

Pete retrieved another beer from the fridge. He sunk it in one go. His chest stung. A thought struck him. It refused to budge. He walked over to the stack of cases. He selected four. He pulled his gas mask on. He bagged his tablet and walked out to the cliff.

The sea rolled far beneath. The wind whipped. Pete laid the cases out on the grass. The mask clung to his face. His breath was throaty. He smelled rubber.

He twisted each case open and allowed the smoke to disperse. He pulled the skinny chunks of rock from each case. He selected one; he held it by its balled end and plunged it into the grass.

A pin.

He removed the gas mask. He shrugged his bag off and lifted his tablet out. He tapped the screen. His fingers moved through a carousel of files. He selected one. He keyed in a password. He clicked. He keyed in another password. A spiderish outline of a hand fuzzed onto the screen. He placed his palm on it. The screen glowed. A document loaded.

- CLASSIFIED -

- EXEMPT FROM DECLASSIFICATION per E.O. 11552, S (E) (2) 
TURNER / CIA / 28 JAN 2008 -

- PHOBOS MONOLITH / 'PINS' / 'PINNING' / SPECIAL REVIEW -

Pete scrolled. The document was heavily redacted. Black boxes obscured walls of text. He rubbed his eyes. He rummaged in his bag. He withdrew a small tin box and removed a micro card from it.

He slid the micro card into the tablet slot and held it until it locked into place. His fingers traced glyphs across the screen. The black boxes disintegrated. The redacted text clarified. He scrolled. He absorbed. He laid the tablet on the grass.

Walking around the house, he mapped out measurements and angles. He calculated. He went back to the tablet. He entered the data. He processed it. He crunched numbers. He re-calculated. 

The moon strobed above. He removed the chunk of rock he'd wedged into the grass. The pin. He kept one eye on his tablet. He paced out. He plunged the pin into the grass. He moved. He pinned two more around the hut. He double-checked the data.

He stooped. He punctured the earth with the last pin. He felt a static crackle in his hand. A fuzzy black thread trailed from the rocky pin. He stood. He ran around the hut. The pins were connected by the thread.

He rubbed his neck. There was a soft whump sound. He jolted. Everything turned monochrome for a split second. He looked round. The threads had disappeared.

That was it?

He grabbed his tablet and scrolled. The wind stung his cheeks. He bit his lip. He retrieved the pins from the ground and re-cased them. 

He fell asleep on the sofa. He dreamed that the hut, the beach and the cliffs were a monochrome prison he could never leave. 

*

The dull pop of the silencer was enough to wake him. His hand moved automatically to his waist. He caught the first man between the eyes.

Everything was muddy and confused. Two empty beer bottles. Her ashtray. The stacked cases. The bedroom. A smoking hole in her head.

He got the second man on the cliffs. The back of the head. He couldn't remember anything about the chase later. He called for immediate back-up. Clean-up. Relocation. He couldn't remember anything about it later. One image stuck. One image lingered.

A smoking hole in her head.

 

Kansas
November 1858

 

The girl sat perched before Wells on the horse. Duffy followed. He kept the pistol trained on her. The road thinned going up the mountain. Stark trees. Muddy huts. Wooden frames. Tattered flaps. Cheyenne men and women emerged. They grouped. They stared.

Wells swung down. He lifted the girl off. She led him by the hand. They made for a hut. Duffy swung down. He pulled the cinches on his horse. He went to Well's horse. He led them both by the reins. The Cheyenne parted before them.

The girl took Wells into the hut. Duffy stood. The horses stamped and sniffed. The Cheyenne stared. Duffy kept the pistol trained on them. He waited. He eyed the hut. He sighed and wedged the pistol in his belt. He lit a roll-up. 

Wells emerged. He looked troubled. He was carrying a stack of thin, pointed rocks. Several of the Cheyenne men moved forward. Duffy dropped his roll-up and raised the pistol.

Wells spat.

'This is it,' he said. 'We can go.'

Duffy ground his teeth. The Cheyenne men whispered. He cocked the pistol. 

'What the fuck's gotten into you? This ain't none of our business. It don't mean nothin' to us. You best walk out here and leave this goddamn devilwork far behind.'

Wells said nothing. He bowed his head. The Cheyenne were silent. The girl appeared at the hut entrance. Duffy cursed. He moved close to Wells. He leaned into his ear.

'Is this fuckin'... has this got somethin' to do with Marie? You think there's somethin' here can help you all?'

Wells said nothing. Duffy pushed past him. He passed the girl. He ducked into the hut.

It was dark. It smelled rancid. He squatted. There were piles of pointed rocks. Two men were shackled to the hearth. They were small. They were naked. They were bald. They were extraordinarily skinny. Their eyes were lidless and egg-white.

One of them looked up. Black mucus dripped from his mouth.

Duffy backed out. He swung the pistol.

'That's fuckin' it. You put that shit down. This is fuckin' devilwork. You put that shit down, James Wells. You scarin' me. You fuckin' scarin' - '

The Cheyenne men moved forward. Wells glanced at them. His face creased.

He dropped the slips of rock. Duffy turned. Wells palmed his belt. He raised his pistol and shot him.

 

Phobos/Mars 1 orbit
Epoch J2000
October 2038

 

The tapering cylinder cut a silent passage through the darkness. Stars pursed around the monolithic, rotating centrifuge. 

To the rear of the ship, concave panels preceded further hive-like cylindrical clumps. The tubular ship glimmered, as if the last monastic cell within a ocean of oblivion.

A whirring noise. A dull throb. Weird rhythms. They came to Pete. They found him. They dug behind his eyelids.

The lid was grinding open. Bright light. He rose. He choked. He blinked gluey eyes. A gelatinous membrane clung to his shoulder. He tugged at strings of it.

Nine months in the blink of an eye. Inconceivable technology. It scared him. It weighed on him.

A pantheon of white coffins was spread around him. Circular levels spiralled around a central void. A white balcony lined the interior of his own level. He clambered from his sticky bed. He tripped between the coffins and slumped against it.

There had been no need for relocation from the safe house. They moved him straight to the pre-launch quarantine. They brought the departure forward. She said they would.

Pete blinked. He saw the smoking hole in her head.

'Status.'

His voice was reedy. It looped throughout the metallic chambers. A steady thrum underpinned everything. He walked to the chamber exit.

'Status.'

The door slid open with a sharp intake of breath. The light in the corridor was a violent neon. The walls were white. Numerous doorways were indented into the curved passage. He looked up. White orbs were attached to the ceiling at regular intervals. 

'Support,' he said, coughing. 'Support, status.'

The white orb above his head flared yellow. It detached. It hovered. It glided down the wall. Two shutters opened in its white lining. A greyish, wraith-like cloak slid from the gap. It lent the circular head a strange, shimmering body.

Pete breathed. The silver-bodied apparition wavered before him. Its blank yellow head bobbed.

'Phobos orbit. Epoch J2000. All systems functional. All cargo healthy.'

'Who else is awake, support?'

'Commanding Officer Cole. Engineer Officer Keys. Doctor Doherty is waking.'

Pete nodded. A skeleton crew. In a ship that held three thousand. Three thousand white coffins, capable of sustaining human life for far longer journeys. But this was the first run. He understood this. There were bigger possibilities.

Cole rounded the corner. He waved. Pete smiled and stuck out his hand. 

'Tom. It's been a while.'

Cole shook firmly.

'Very good. Doherty's just up. Let's meet him.'

They returned to the chamber. The orb ghosted after them, its grey cloak billowing. Doherty was perched on the edge of his coffin. He pulled gluey threads from his shoulders. He looked exhausted. 

Cole clapped him on the back. Pete shook his hand. They helped him over to the balcony. The orb observed. It skimmed towards the ledge. Its cloak tapered and spread. It trailed iridescent threads as it swam across the void between levels.

They watched it in silence. Doherty shivered.

'The call came pretty fucking suddenly,' he said. 'Been sitting in the Richmond safehouse for six months playing with my balls. They tell me next to nothing. Need to know basis, apparently. The gist was, wait for the call. Be ready to go. I take it you got a fair amount?'

Cole coughed. Pete smiled.

'We got them all.'

Doherty's jaw hung. 

'What the fuck? I thought they were retrieving them in like, groups of four?'

Pete nodded. He looked down at the white dot arcing in the circular black tunnel, a distant dancing light.

'It wasn't pretty. The CIA were transporting the pins they'd collected. Retrieved. Thousands. They've been at it for decades. They collected the data covertly. The pins... they emit very specific nuclear signals. Unique composition elements, too. Extremely rare alkaline-rich clasts. Minerals that aren't found anywhere else in nature. Florenskyite. They pre-scanned thousands of areas. Mostly aerially. Sometimes unmarked vans. Retrieved them covertly. They worked through cut-outs. Sent in dopey informants and criminals to dig them up.'

Cole spat into the void. Doherty frowned.

'That's... '

Pete rubbed his eyes.

'There's a reason. Look, we had private funding for the journey. For the tests. We just needed the pins. We took them. But we're missing a shitload of data on the initial retrievals. There's been weird stories. Strange shit. People disappearing. We can hack the files, but they're heavily redacted. The early files we can uncensor. Basic crap... guidelines. But they caught up with us there. The security's too strong now.'

Doherty tugged at sticky strings on his vest.

'Great. Lots of guesswork, then.'

'Well - '

The orb shuttled up through the gloom. It dangled in front of them. It flared yellow.

'Engineer Keys reports that the capsule is prepared.'

Pete glanced at Doherty. Cole shrugged. They headed for the chamber exit. The orb bobbed behind them.

*

The hold preceding the docking bay was cramped. The EMU suits added another layer of constraint. Cole whistled. Doherty fidgeted. The orb attached itself to the ceiling and winked out. 

Pete stared through the glass. Noise came through scratchy in the earpiece.

Keys was bustling about the frustum-shaped capsule. He lumbered over. He punched a button on the opposite side of the door. The panels slid open. They bundled inside, one by one. Keys nodded to them.

'Good kip?'

Cole eased into a seat and strapped himself in. 

'Slept like a log. Woke up in a fireplace.'

Keys shook his head and dropped into the seat beside him. Pete and Doherty climbed over and strapped themselves in. The orb flitted above them. It flared a dull orange and nestled into a corner.

Doherty fumbled the belts. Pete leaned over.

'Alright, there?'

Doherty looked up. Pete saw his own face reflected in the hemispherical visor.

'The pins are from Phobos,' Doherty mumbled. 'They think the pins are from Phobos.'

Cole's gloves tapped the seat rest. He leaned round.

'You know enough. You're the fucking doctor. You did six months with fuck all info, your money's already been transferred, why do you keep - '

Pete coughed. He sat forward.

'They're cut from the Phobos monolith. According to the Special Review.'

Cole sighed. Keys unbuckled and twisted round. Doherty looked at his lap. He mouthed words within the helmet. He stammered.

'How did they... how did they come to earth?'

Cole clucked. He aimed a kick at the orb on the floor.

'Support!'

The orb flared yellow. It rose up. It hovered. 

'Support, tell this fucker to mind his own business.'

The orb glowed red/blue/green. It wobbled. It hovered near Doherty. It bumped against his visor and retreated.

Pete laughed.

'We don't know. Theoretically, they've been around for thousands of years. We don't have information on the retrievals. We don't know all the sites. But we have the funding. We have this.'

He gestured around.

Doherty's helmet lowered. His gloves clutched the arm rests. Cole stewed. Keys stared at them. He twisted back round and tapped at the screen above him .

'Buckle up, happy campers,' he said.

 

(3): https://www.abctales.com/story/stephen-thom/pins-3