Forrest was pulled out of a restless sleep by the incoming chat chime from the screen in the den. All the screens in other rooms were silenced at night, but the Mortons had never left their old habit of leaving the one downstairs on, just in case Molly should call late. Far enough away so it wouldn’t disturb the whole house, just loud enough that it could rouse them if needed.
He made his way downstairs, hoping not to wake up too much. It had taken a long time to drift off. Now his mind was floating around, not altogether out of a weird dream, but the chime had a slow urgency that was pulling him out of it. They really did nail the UI on the chatscreen. Insistent, but not shrill. It made you want to pick up the chat, but not be in a panic when the chime started up. Not like the piercing bell on the old phone he remembered in his childhood home.
His sleepy mind expected to find Molly when he picked up, but instead it was Bruce Cameron who burst onto the screen, even more animated than usual.
Instant tornado.
“Sorry to wake you Forrest, man! It’s so late I know, but I can’t hold this back til morning.” Bruce leaned toward the screen, amplifying his presence in the room.
“I just saw those planes go over, exactly like you said. I wouldn’t have even gone out to look if I hadn’t heard your crazy talk, but there was propeller noise coming from both sides of the house and my hair stood up. Not kidding.”
Forrest’s brain lurched far away from any remnants of sleep.
“I could see that cloud high up, wouldn’t have seen it but it was silver in the moonlight, shifting about. I could see it coming down. Maybe a minute or two later, soft mist everywhere. Forrest man, you were not bee-essing me.”
Forrest processed the news. “So it’s nationwide for sure. Must be they had to reload or something. Or have ideal conditions.”
“Right. This is big, and I think you’re right, it’s gotta be bad. Now I have to know what’s going on here too.” Bruce leaned back, and his agitation gave way to something close to a grin. ”So, thanks for putting that bug up my butt, dude! Thanks a lot!”
“Bruce, you’re the first guy I thought of. You always knew what to do with a bug like that. Reason I hired you in the first place.”
“Yeah well, it’s been nearly a decade but I guess some things don’t change, right boss? You only bring me in on the interesting projects!” Bruce put special emphasis on interesting. He was thinking ahead to the likely weeks and months with no sleep. “Weird as this is, I’m excited. Game on, buddy!”
Forrest absorbed the prospect of being immersed in a new project with Bruce. “Yeah, you’re right, like old times. Except this time we have no idea what the goal is.”
“Maybe so. But what would Forrest Morton do? First step, define the scope. Identify the inputs. Take it from there.”
“I taught you well.”
“You taught me jack-shit! You know I was born a fully-formed rock star!” The Bruce of old. “I’m going to start with seeing if I can reach any of those people we were talking about. Luke, Anna, there was a DeShan too, on that team, I saw a post about him joining MedImplant a while back, could be useful. Do you still have any contacts with your MIT people?”
“It’s been a while, but yes, I’m already tracking them down. Let’s work on this to start and we’ll talk tomorrow night.” Now Forrest leaned into the screen. “And Brucie, thanks. I’m glad you’re with me.”
“You bet, boss. Sounds good. Hope ya sleep! I won’t!”
Like a triple espresso in the night, Bruce left Forrest with no hope of sleep anytime soon. Instead, he started in on a question that had been gnawing at his consciousness. Why no mention in the media? How could there be no mention anywhere?[ Change to why this bogus story in the media, what’s really going on?]
Why construct a cover story? Who would have enough control over the media to plant a story like that, why would there be no coverage of what actually happened?[ Think about whether this is enough or hits the mark.]
Forrest wrapped himself in a throw, found pad and pencil, and settled into a chair in the den to map out his thoughts. Who did he know working in any news organization now? Who else might have media contacts he could work through? And the bigger question, what organizations would have some kind of interest in creating a system like this? Government? Corporations? Some entity outside those realms but with that kind of power or leverage? Cartels, one of those billionaire oligarch ess-faps*? [*Traffic Mesh inside term for shitfuckerassholeprick, a well known character type, found causing chaos in organizations of all sizes.]
What other possibilities besides surveillance would make sense? What might he be missing? What questions did he not yet know to ask?
It seemed he was listing a lot more questions than potential answers for them.
The first hint of light appeared in the sky behind the silhouettes of trees and distant hills, previously invisible in darkness. Now it was no longer ridiculously late, it was ridiculously early.
He flipped back through his notes, had to re-read a section here and there, noticed the heaviness returning to his limbs and eyes. He stopped struggling for answers, and sat with closed eyes for a moment. Begin with what’s known. Let patterns present themselves.
The returning sleepiness was instantly displaced by a blindingly obvious thought. The potatoes! Forrest placed his forehead in his palm. What a dim-wit. He forced himself to focus instead on the tools he could use. He remembered a pocket microscope, deep in a drawer full of tools and toys accumulated through a life of engineering and raising an inquisitive child. It had revealed the hidden details of countless insects, plants and rocks. Ideal for inspecting spud life. Let’s see what we’re actually talking about here.
Forrest located one of the newly dug potatoes in the kitchen, a beautiful red, tracked down replacement batteries, and started hunting.
He scanned the surface, adjusting to keep the thing in focus, looking for anything that might be interesting. It was all interesting. Who knew the skin of a potato could be so fascinating? Like taking a balloon ride over the surface of an exotic planet, with a completely alien landscape, dramatic valleys and ridges, bizarre plant forms in the eyes, chunks of clay like jagged glaciers… wait… there…
That’s it, glinting just a little in the cross light. Tiny. Minute. Faintly geometric maybe, hard to fix an outline. And then another.
He found a peeler, carefully took a slice. The binocular microscope Molly had used for biology was in the basement. It had not been used in quite a while, but was still pristine inside its now dusty protective trash bag, ready to go. He mounted the peel on a slide as best he could, it didn’t want to lie flat at all. No matter, good enough for now.
Scanning again under much higher magnification, those ridges were now like towering mountains covered with the strangest rock and plant life. Focus on the top and the rest is a blur. Slowly turn the dial, focusing down the slopes, down, down, like free falling into a bottomless chasm… and there again, on the wall of a ridge, the same hints of geometric shapes, but an indistinct outline, what was going on there? It changes. But he could make out arms, or spikes, and a central mass. Like a knuckle bone, or a jumping jack, with a core. And this surface… Like a coating that shifts. How does that work?
And Forrest realized it was a disguise mechanism. These things are engineered to camouflage dynamically. Amazing. He switched up the magnification, found focus again. Now the outline was much more distinct, the core and fluid coating, and the arms, at just the right angles to form a tiny tripod, whatever the orientation, and what looked like tiny hairs at the ends. Wow.
Forrest was profoundly impressed.
But the scale of the manufacturing. Billions of these things. Trillions.
His mind returned to the earlier questions: Who is behind this? Why?