CHAPTER ONE
Castillo walked around the vast lab table and carefully examined every wire, each connection, all the coolant tubing and optical fibers. He was thrilled to have rounded out the work of all the researchers who had gone before and failed. His notes had confirmed and reconfirmed all the computer’s algorithms. No matter how he crunched the numbers, the simulations told him he had it right.
Though the project was the financed property of Pravus, this remained, and always would remain, his baby. The big projects, like the one up in Alaska, utilized massive arrays to tweak weather patterns. Castillo’s twist focused electromagnetism in a new way to accomplish the same thing with surgical precision.
Only here. Only at the secretive facilities hidden in the hills outside Camarillo could this even be possible, as far as he knew anyway. He could well remember the first time he was flown in. The facility was so choked with trees that, from his perch in the corporate helicopter, he had no idea how far-reaching were the grounds. From above he could see the occasional rooftop and connecting sidewalks. This could be your run-of-the-mill business park. However, as the helo descended, Castillo could see the workmanship of the buildings, that the architectural design was anything but your prefab business park construction.
Money. Funny that such a word was the first to pop into his mind as the skids of the helo touched the pad. But that is what he saw everywhere he looked. This was not leased property. This was private and very well funded. Castillo had come up on meager University funding. This... for a scientist, this was like winning the lottery.
The vast grounds had excited him as much as the expansiveness of the buildings. A young lady, what was her name again? Terry? No, Kerry! That was it! Kerry met him at the pad and escorted him to the Admin Building. Building One. There he'd been fingerprinted, photographed, tagged and released once again into Kerry care. She escorted Castillo to a golf cart to the edge of the grounds, toward the east end of the campus. There she stopped at a modest, single story building that looked more carpenter shop than anything.
He had been, frankly, disappointed. Maybe even a little depressed. Castillo chuckled to himself at the memory. As Kerry escorted him inside, he had no idea at the time that he was about to set his eyes upon one of the most secure private facilities on the entire planet, so far as he knew. An armed guard was inside at an unassuming desk, suitable for a school teacher. On his desk, a notebook computer and little else he could recall. Behind the guard a single door with a simple keypad.
When he offered Kerry a questioning look, she answered in a matter-of-fact fashion, “We were already bio-scanned as soon as we pulled up. Had we not passed muster, Jim there would not be seated quite so casually behind his desk.”
Castillo was dubious, but followed Kerry to the door where she entered her code and opened the door for him. “This is as far as I go. I'm not cleared for the rest.”
She gave him a sly grin and said, “Follow the yellow brick road.”
When she closed the door behind him, Castillo found himself alone with three bare walls, plus the one behind with the door. Then, movement. Why an elevator should be so large...he assumed to move large equipment. Only the door was by no means large enough. Later he learned the door and its wall had been added after completed construction. Down, down the room took him. Castillo was certain he stood in the slowest elevator in existence. No, idiot. He corrected himself. Not slow. Far!
Castillo felt the familiar sensation of increased weight. He'd arrived. Or slowed. Then the back wall, all of it, swung open like some massive vault door. Amazing! He stepped through and could only shake his head at the door's incredible mass. Two feet thick? At least. Maybe a little more. Men and women milled to and fro, taking little notice of him. As if such an entrance were commonplace. The enormous room was warehouse large with several doors on each wall. It looked to him like a warehouse for a space shuttle. Before he moved on, he just had to watch while the massive door clunked shut. He could not fathom what such a thing must weigh. To keep people out, or keep something in!?
When he shook the question out of his head, he turned to see several squares of the floor before him were lighted in an offset pattern; left, diagonal right, diagonal left... and lit from beneath, yellow. The floor was one of those gridded, raised ones that likely had all kinds of wiring and cable dropped beneath. He took a step and the pattern adjusted before him several steps. Castillo recalled having laughed out loud. Someone must have been inspired by that old Michael Jackson video. He remembered thinking, So this is what happens when you give a bunch of nerds unlimited funding.
And now, so much later, to realize the dream... To have the funds to dabble and create something so significant-so important. Something this huge will change the world. Castillo just hoped his baby would never become militarized. There had already been one Department of Energy clown nosing around. That’s what happens when you file the wrong papers at the wrong time. Those government types were like military recruiters. They could make a tour in Afghanistan sound like a vacation in Maui.
He had spent hours arguing with the board of directors about the error of looking for supplemental funding from military sources. Those guys had a one track mind. One agenda.
Enough with the negative thinking. Castillo wanted to feed the world. Change the deserts into farmlands. He wanted to bask in the moment. Yes, his baby was all spread out on the table now, but the components would button up just fine in a smaller container.
Time to throw the switch.
Castillo was no fool. No-sir-ee. This initial test had a load disconnect that would fry in a nano-second. Just long enough to get the reading he wanted for his final report. Jonas had proposed using a scalar energy source at one time, but Castillo strongly cautioned about the dangers. Scalar tended to be nearly one-hundred percent self-perpetuating and could be disastrous without proper safeguards.
This one test would be powered by a simple marine battery sufficient to garner a pulse reading. Lots of data would flow from that.
Castillo walked to the battery and connected the posts. The switch was around the table, to the right. He compelled his feet to move. His knees felt weak. He actually might have a chance at the Nobel. Carla would be able to have her dream home. Daniella can get her braces.
Now, standing before the switch, his hand trembled. He could hear the rhythmic thud of his heart. Wouldn’t that be ironic; to die of a heart attack at the pinnacle of his life’s work? Castillo smiled, and threw the switch.
*
Within an area of about a football field, those within this Pravus building felt, rather than heard, a whump! Scientists, executives, janitors and Administrative Assistants paused in their tracks to flex their jaws and pop their ears. Some shared confused stares and Mailroom Supervisor Helen Cooper asked if someone had slammed a door.
About two hours later, a lab tech would punch the keypad outside Castillo’s lab and open the door to a chaotic mix of papers, blood and debris pulled to a point four feet in front of Castillo’s experiment. More accurately, the debris merged on the floor before the machine’s focal point.
Strange enough, though everything had been tugged with extreme force to that center, any object within about a five-foot circumference was sliced cleanly away. The sudden
voidance resulted in a violent influx of anything not bolted down, including most of Castillo. Most.
The tech, distracted by the debris and gore, never noticed the visitor in the room – the one in the corner, in the shadows. The man himself was but a shadow, an apparition, a phantom in the day - his subtle motion akin to a tree’s shadow. The tech surveyed the walls and saw only the shadow, not a curious specter pulled through a minuscule keyhole punched through a door to another place.
*
Cassie Johnson was on the monkey bars when a policeman and police lady met the Principal on the sidewalk. They talked for a while and the Principal looked very upset and pointed at the kids in the big playground. Cassie couldn’t tell which kid they were looking at. Probably just another big kid that stole something or ate some drugs.
Cassie was surprised when a few minutes later the police were walking back to their car with her neighbor from across the street, Daniella Castillo. She looked worried too and the police lady just seemed like she was sad and not mad. Daniella was cool and never got in trouble before. Cassie would find out after school. Right after her mom picked her up from Miss Sandy’s.
*
Weeks later, Sandy Carpenter sat reading in her rocker next to little Cassie when a sweet fragrance in the air tickled at her nose. She put down the book with a frown. With the windows closed, she knew the scent couldn’t be the flowers outside.
She looked around for the source when she turned to Cassie, with the notion she might confirm her senses, but her question died in her throat. Cassie stared, transfixed on the space before her. Sandy looked but could see nothing out of the ordinary. She watched Cassie for a few seconds to see if perhaps Cassie was lost in a contemplative moment over her latest novel.
Sandy didn’t yet cultivate concern. Cassie and strangeness ran together much as tea and sugar. Sandy had never observed inappropriate behavior in all the months she sat five-year-old Cassie for the Johnsons. To the contrary, Cassie was very polite and well behaved. She did detect a reserved and guarded demeanor, as if Cassie harbored a terrible secret.
However, beyond a touch of the precocious expected with any exceptional child, little Cassie remained a model citizen. Sandy associated Cassie's eccentricities as part and parcel of the exceptionally bright.
She sat forward, watching Cassie breathe in rapid shallow breaths. Cassie’s current book of choice, Great Expectations by Dickens, summoned forth no frightening memories for Sandy that should agitate Cassie into some “state.” Although, Sandy had to admit to herself the number of years since she read the classic in her High School’s Great Books class. She did recall the escaped convicts and the old lady in the fire. Maybe that was it.
She couldn’t believe this little prodigy could wade through the sometime tedious and archaic language, let alone enjoy the classic. Sandy could clearly see that something beyond her own awareness held Cassie transfixed, not frightened.
“CJ?” Sandy probed. When Cassie didn’t respond, she grew alarmed. She called out again but Cassie didn’t seem to hear. The displaced smells persisted and now Sandy noticed a faint breeze in the room reminiscent of a warm, late morning in the tropics. She held her hand up to feel the breeze but could discern no specific source. No windows were open this cool October afternoon and no fireplace with open flue graced Sandy’s home.
Cassie's odd non-response, the scents and the breeze from nowhere made Sandy's heart race, although little Cassie appeared serene. Sandy didn’t want to over-react, but she was on the edge of panic.
She determined that the source of the breeze was from the general direction where Cassie fixed her gaze. Where she stared was nothing extraordinary that Sandy could see. Light entered from the picture window and from the window on the front door. There was a large mirror over a modest console table on the wall. To either side of the mirror were two Impressionist pieces by a local artist, framed and matted at Aaron Brothers. A small fern flourished on the table. Aside from this, nothing else was in the room that Sandy could detect but fragrant, warm air, stirred from a place beyond her ken.
She inhaled the scents and could smell the distinct aromas of baked cookies, something floral, a fresh desert breeze, pine trees, smoky incense, and her dad’s favorite cologne. Then she readjusted her perception when she realized she not so much detected a mix of those scents, but rather they arrived within her olfactory system in separate and distinct streams of delight. It was as if they each entered her home via their own private doorway or window.
Her memory ran through a variety of diagnoses from insanity to phantom odors brought on by brain tumor. If not for little Cassie’s odd behavior, Sandy might conclude her sensory overload was strictly psychological.
Now panicked, Sandy jumped to her feet to with the intention of doing whatever came to mind first to snap Cassie out of wherever she had gone.
“CJ... Cassie!” she shouted.
Sandy stood and she noticed the space before Cassie shimmered. The effect was oh so subtle, as if an oval of cellophane stretched before Cassie. Sandy walked to the shimmer, saw that the shape seemed to adjust itself depending upon her position, and appeared to reach back into the wall.
She noticed Cassie’s faint smile and subtle nod. Cassie gripped Great Expectations close to her chest. Sandy pulled Cassie out of her chair and hurried with her to the far wall, as far from the anomaly as she could manage before she set her down. She knelt before Cassie, took her shoulders in her hands to make eye contact, but Cassie stared right through her. The gentle breeze whispered at Sandy's neck and tickled the small hairs at the nape. Spooked, she spun on her knees yet still saw nothing. No hand reached through the ripple. No dragons or shadows passed through.
She hurried to the window and tipped her head as far as the glass would allow, but all was as should be. She didn’t know what she might see. She expected nothing, but expected to see something that would explain the odd shimmer that so riveted Cassie in state.
She looked beyond her immediate surroundings and out across the street but saw no ogling neighbors pointing at her house with their mouths agape. She saw no dragon breathing a hot flame against her wall to create a heat distortion in the air in front of Cassie. Nor did she see a witch doctor or a leprechaun doing a jig.
In the maybe two seconds Sandy took to make this determination, the one thing to catch her eye was the odd displacement of shadow in the tree line across the street and up. Two shadows more distinct than the rest, shaped like men.
She didn’t give this too much deliberation as shadows can play tricks on the eye, in particular where odd shaped trees and shrubs come into play. Sandy considered the alignment of the sun that should have obliterated shadows where she saw them. Next, I’ll be seeing faerie shapes in the clouds.
However, this would not explain the delicate ripple in the air before Cassie. Something inconsistent in makeup of the shadows made her heart skip a beat. The vital, yet inexplicable, suggestion of Cassie in danger gripped Sandy.
When she turned again to look at Cassie, her little CJ grinned back at her. Sandy hurried to her with arms outstretched.
“CJ, what…?”
Cassie threw her arms around Sandy’s neck. “Wow! He’s handsome. I think you should marry him!”
Sandy pulled her away and looked at her.
“CJ, what are you talking about? What just happened?”
Cassie gave her a puzzled look.
“That man! Didn’t you see? He said he came to tell me something important I’m supposed to do.”
Sandy tried to wrap her mind around Cassie’s pronouncement when Cassie added, “Something really huge is happening.”