The Quantum Connection (10 page)

"Oh, sorry to interrupt, bye Reagan," I called to her as she and Reagan trotted off. "That tears it. Damn it all to hell." I stood up, ready to go pack and head to the airport. I walked about five steps and then stopped. "Damn, what should I do?" I decided to call and see if there were any flights back to Dayton, so I found the nearest pay phone. One of these days I've got to get a cell. Fortunately, I had been using my itinerary for a bookmark and the travel agent one-eight-hundred number was on there. It turned out that I couldn't get back to the airport in Dayton until five-thirty, which was about the same time the kennel closed. No way I would make it to Laz tonight. "So that solves that," I told myself.

A post-Rain storm came through about one p.m., so I took in the Smithsonian Museums along the Mall and then went to the Spy Museum. I also hailed a cab and rode up Capitol Hill to the backside of the Capitol building and saw the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress. Then I had the cabby drop me at the closest Metro and I went back to King Street and the hotel.

Later that evening Larry and I had the free beer and then walked down King Street all the way to the river. We stopped and ate dinner at one of the seafood shops along the way. I asked Larry about the meetings and my status and so on. He just told me not to ask. Then we talked about the sights that I had seen. The Library of Congress specifically intrigued Larry. He said he had never been there before.

I finished
Glory Road
on the plane back to Dayton and went from the airport straight to the kennel. I'm not sure who was happiest to see whom, but Laz and I hugged each other dearly. He licked my face and whimpered at me a time or two.

"Good boy!" I told him. "I missed you, buddy, d'you miss me?" I tugged at his ears and stroked his back. "Sit fella, sit." He sat and allowed me to put his leash on. Then we loaded up in the SUV and were off to the apartment.

I didn't bother to unpack and we went for a long walk first thing. We stopped in the park by the local high school and played Frisbee some, and then we went back to the apartment and sprawled out on the couch together. Laz laid his chin on my lap and I stroked his fur between his ears, gently, until we went to sleep. I belonged there, I missed Laz, and he missed me; my only real connection to the entire damned planet. Oh, sure I had grown a little closer to Larry Waterford, but it was in an employer to employee relationship. That just isn't the same. I couldn't cry on Larry's shoulder and hug him for reassurance that things would be okay. Laz didn't mind at all, and I loved him for it.

CHAPTER 10

When I went back to the office the next day Larry gave me a new task that was completely unrelated to the quantum connected computer project. He gave me a Chinese rocket computer operating system and wanted me to learn how to talk to it. It was boring, hum-drum stuff. It wasn't much harder than Sequencing that old video game that I did for Larry so long ago. I would ask Larry about the project on a daily basis and it seemed to annoy him a bit. He would always tell me that I couldn't be told anything and that I shouldn't think about it anymore until the clearance comes through. So, of course, then I would ask, "Well, when will my clearance come through?"

"When it comes, Steven. That's all I can tell you."

"Well, I thought they needed my help with the SuperAgent code?" I would ask.

"I don't know any more than you do." He would fiddle with his tie and then change the subject. He would always seem irked that I wasn't focused on the current busywork project he had given me.

So, I worked on reverse engineering some of the most benign devices you could imagine by day and then went home and sat with Lazarus by night. The drugs had begun to diminish in effect against the depression again and occasionally I would wake up and not realize hours had passed. But good ol' Lazarus would always be there to help me through it. I would hug him and sob some and tell him that he was my buddy. That seemed to help almost as much as the drugs did.

Then, in a morning-depressed haze, I would go into work for more run-of-the mill reverse engineering busywork. I reverse engineered a tank turret control computer, ejection code for a French fighter plane, the reaction control system of a recovered satellite (although I never figured out how the satellite had been recovered), and I was working on a radio jamming device found in North Korea nearly six months later. Don't get me wrong; some of the work was challenging, but nothing like the reverse engineering of that magical green and orange quantum cube device. The biggest depressing fact was that after more than six months, there was still no clearance.

One day I was so bored I thought I would go further out of my mind, so I sloughed off work and I went surfing on the Framework instead. My office hook-up wasn't as fast as at home but I didn't feel like measuring voltages on a Russian computer motherboard. So I logged on and started to look up that Dr. Who fellow. It didn't take long for me to figure out the reason that Dr. Daniels had brought him up. That guy was some very old British television character who apparently lives in a phone booth, or whatever the British call it. On the outside it looks like a regular phone booth, but on the inside it is large enough for a very comfortable apartment. It is explained as some sort of space warp or something. Just like the "warped" RAM chips Dr. Daniels's wife had theorized.

I was still on the Framework when the phone rang. Finally, Larry called me into his office for a chat; I hoped every time the phone rang that it was about my clearance. This time it was.

"Steve, we need to talk."

"Yeah, what about?" I hoped this was it. After all, it had been nearly seven months since we had been to Washington, D.C.

"Sorry, Steve, but your advanced clearance has been declined," he said and looked down at his feet for second. My heart fell to my shoes.

"Why? I mean, I told the truth about everything. I . . . I . . . don't understand, I'm a good American, aren't I?"

"Son, nobody really believes otherwise." He paused. "Except that . . ." He stopped again.

"Except what?"

"Well, son, as far as your background investigation is concerned, you just suddenly appeared in Dayton, Ohio, at about the age of eighteen. There is no proof that you ever existed before that. No hospital records, not any living witnesses that can say you are the same kid that came out of your mother's birth canal, nothing. In fact, the only proof to corroborate your life is that your parents' tax records can be found and that they paid taxes on a dependent."

"So, there you go; I was their dependent," I argued.

"No, son, there is no evidence that it was you. Oh sure, they filed a social security number for you when you were nine, but there are no pictures, no birth certificates, no DNA samples, nothing."

"But . . . but I can't help that. The Rain killed them! The Rain killed them
all
! Don't you understand? There is nothing I can do about that!" I was frantic.

"Calm down, Steven! I understand. But you have to understand that this is the perfect approach for a mole or a spy to infiltrate our nation's security. Conveniently, all the records were erased and some guy moves in and becomes Steven Montana. How do we know that you were not killed during the meteors? People don't realize this, because on the surface and in public, the world looks as though it is getting along famously and friendly now. We are all banding together after the disaster and gelling as one race. It looks that way on television, but in the real world espionage and counterespionage are at an all-time high. The FBI, CIA, and Homeland Defense agents have caught literally hundreds of moles trying to take identities of victims from the meteor disaster."

"
No!
I am me.
I am me!
"

"Steven, calm down, son! I know you are you and that you are a good guy. But I can't prove it. Nobody can. Since you passed the lie detector, you can maintain your current clearance level, but you can't go any higher and you have to forget anything and everything you heard in D.C." He pulled a form out of his desk and handed me a pen. "Read this and sign it."

I read it. It basically told me that I had never heard of quantum connected CPUs, funny-colored cubes that data falls through, Air Force Group W-squared, SuperAgents, and anything else related to that CIA meeting. Then it said that I would suffer penalty of up to life imprisonment if I ever divulged any of it to anybody. "Are you telling me that I never invented my SuperAgent?"

"Sorry, son, your computer has just been confiscated and your machine at home is being cleaned."

"What! You can't do that. I invented it; it's mine! Do you hear me? Its mine!"

"No, son, the U.S. Department of Defense paid for it, so it is theirs. This is the way it has to go, Steven."

"No, but you don't understand." I was still no calmer. "I can't just not work on it now that I know how to do it. I can't!"

"Steven, you can and you will, or you will go to jail. I want you to take a couple of days' administrative leave and go home and think this through before you say or do anything harsh. But you have to sign this form right now."

"And what if I don't?" I defiantly suggested.

"Steven, don't do this. If you don't sign this now, I have to notify DSS and in a matter of minutes there will be a warrant out for your arrest for violation of the National Security Act."

I was lost, cornered, screwed, stabbed in the back, and just generally fucked! I grabbed the pen from Larry and signed the form. "Larry, you can go to hell!" I turned and walked through his door and slammed it as hard as my two hundred forty pounds would muster. I heard pictures fall from the wall on the other side and fall to the floor and break with the clash of glass shattering.

Then I turned back to the door, "I DIDN'T ASK FOR THE GODDAMNED METEORS TO KILL EVERYBODY I KNOW, YOU SORRY SON OF A BITCH! YOU CAME TO ME, REMEMBER. I HELPED YOU! I'M A GOOD AMERICAN! ITS NOT FAIR . . ." Tears were flowing down my cheeks; I turned back toward the hall and rushed out. "It's not fair," I cried all the way home. It wasn't fair, goddamnit.

They stole my SuperAgents. There, I thought about it, you bastards gonna come arrest me? Come on then! "SuperAgents, SuperAgents, SuperAgents, SuperAgents, quantum connected computer, quantum connected computer, SuperAgents . . . Fuck you!" I screamed at the windshield and repeated the process several times over all the way home. "I'll say SuperAgents if I want to, damnit!"

I got to my apartment and there were cop cars, several black sedans, and an Animal Control vehicle. "Oh my God, Lazarus!" I ran up stairs and there were two cops standing at my door to block my way and I could see men in my apartment tearing it to pieces. There was also blood on the floor.

"Hold it, son. What is your business here?" one of the cops asked.

"I'm not your son! And I live here. Lazarus, here boy." I whistled for him and tried to push through the door. The cop that called me his son clubbed me in the head with his nightstick. I zoned out for a second and fell to my knees, but I could still hear.

"Jesus, Tony, what'd you hit him for?" the other cop asked.

"Hey, you heard the Feds. Nobody gets in until they are done."

"Yeah, but did you have to hit him? He's just worried about his poor dog."

I regained full awareness and consciousness a few seconds later. I rose up and the one cop who had clubbed me put his hand on his pistol. "Wait, please, officer. Please, I don't want any trouble. I just want to see my dog. Where is he, please, tell me?"

The other cop stepped in between us and gave his partner a stern look. "Come with me." He led me downstairs to the Animal Control van, then nodded to the man leaned up against the back door of the van smoking a cigarette.

"Open it up, Charlie," the cop told him.

The man held his cigarette between his lips and opened the door of the van. There was Lazarus. There . . . was . . . Lazarus . . . dead. He was lying there in the van in a black plastic bag. I had to pull the plastic back to look at him. I sobbed deeply and loudly. "Oh my God, Lazarus. Puppy, what did they do to you?" I fell to my knees and bawled and hugged the puppy to my head and sobbed some more. It was more than I could take, and it wasn't fair.

"WHY! He's just a dog." I hugged him harder and cried deeper. "Why did you have to kill him?"

"Hold it there. I didn't kill him. The Feds had to put him down because he attacked one of them and wouldn't let go," the Animal Control man explained and then stamped his cigarette butt out on the ground.

"Of course he did, you dumbass! They broke into my apartment. He was just protecting our home!" I cried and held him to me. I cried a bit longer and then stood up. I pulled the bag out of the van and held its dead weight to my chest. "You can't have him. He's my dog . . . my friend . . . my . . . only family. I'm gonna take him home and bury him."

"Sorry, son, city ordinance says we have to take him and dispose of his body safely," the cop told me.

"No! He's my dog. I want to bury him with the rest of my family."

"Sorry about all this, I have a dog too," the cop said. Then he sounded sincere. "I would be upset if some jerk shot my dog. Where's your vehicle?" he asked me.

"That SUV over there in the parking lot." I pointed to it.

"Go." He turned and walked away.

"Hey, wait a minute . . ." The Animal Control officer started to protest, but I looked at him in such a way that he would know he was going to die if he said another word.

Laz and I got in the SUV and drove home, as close to Bakersfield, California, as we could get. It took two days and I cried and cursed and cried and cursed and cursed and cried all the way. I only stopped for gas and caffeine. I seldom ate. We had to take the long way since the interstates through both Cheyenne and Denver were gone from the first big impact of The Rain. We had to go way south and cut across below the southern border of Colorado. It added significant time to the drive. It didn't matter though, because I was numb and nothing was going to stop me. Poor Lazarus. I wish I had never met that damned Larry Waterford and his piece-of-shit ancient game console. Poor Lazarus, I loved him so much. . . .