Author Part 14
(Chapter 67 of "Senses")
OVER REYKJAVIK
Iceland is not the same as Greenland. It's actually quite green; an irony that I will appreciate for the rest of my days. I suppose having an active volcano on the island must help.
We were only a few minutes away from the big event. We were in Janis about 15 miles up, hovering over the island. Scott and Mats were working with Janis about any possible side effects and other ramifications from Mats' upcoming attempt to contact the machine. We had decided to hover far enough above the big island until after the earthquake happened, if it happened, so that Mats wouldn't be caught up in the effects. Then we would go after the machine.
Scott, in addition, had set up a subroutine in the lab computer that could be monitored by Janis. The basic effect was to monitor all outgoing phone calls and signals from Iceland and have search algorithms looking for certain words. In addition, any encoded transmissions would also be monitored and decoded to look for these same certain words.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again; Scott scares me.
The rest of us, meanwhile, were playing poker and eating pizza. Much to my chagrin Jim is also a great poker player. We had only been playing for about an hour or so and he had won almost fifty dollars from me, and almost equal amounts from everyone else (Mats and Scott having both dropped out of the game to go to work). It must be something about games in general that he's just gifted at.
Our last hand was dealt by me, and I had naturally drawn a full house; three jacks and two aces. We bid our first round (Jim opening with fifty cents and Karen and I seeing the bet) and then Jim took three cards. Karen took two and I stayed pat, which raised eyebrows around the table.
"Is your luck finally turning around?" Jim asked with a sly grin on his face.
"Bid," I replied with an obviously phony scowl. It had been a long time since I had been beaten this badly at my game.
"Two dollars," Jim said, placing the money on the table. He took a bite of his slice of pizza (extra cheese and whole garlic cloves - Karen must really love the guy). With a mouthful of food he continued, "we should probably make this the last hand. We'll need to be ready to do anything once the quake happens."
"Agreed, and see your bet," Karen said. "I'm thinking we'll do a time snap immediately after the quake and let Mats go to work"
Jim nodded. "My thought as well."
"Won't there be protocol problems due to the changed speed?" I asked.
"I don't know, but we need to try. Doc Hopkins already has a link with the machine, and we need to be just that much faster than he does."
"The problem," Karen continued, "is that Dr. Hopkins knows we're out here, and if Scott's right he has his booby traps all set. We need to interact with the machine and get Mats up to the proper protocol and get disconnected before Hopkins becomes aware that anything is happening." She pointed at my cards. "Your bet."
I snorted and smiled. "See your two and raise you five," I said.
"Five and five more," Jim shot back.
"Seven to me," Karen mused. "I'm out." She turned her cards face down and got up to stretch.
I put my best imitation of Jim's ironic smile on my face and raised him ten more. Jim looked at me seriously for a moment then got a look on his face I was getting used to. "What the fuck," he said and he raised me ten. I raised again.
"Has your luck returned?" Jim asked.
"Didn't you ask me a similar question one once before?" I shot back. "Only one way to find out."
Jim nodded with grudging respect. "I'll call your bet." There was, including our quarter ante, over eighty-eight dollars in the pot.
I smiled and put down my cards. "Full boat," I said. "Jaces and aces."
Jim shook his head and whistled. "Fuck!" he said, barely at a whisper. "That beats my two pair."
I started to pull the cash towards me when Karen looked at Jim with an odd expression her face. "Hold it," she said. "Let's see those cards."
Jim, ironic smile in full force, turned them over. Two pair indeed! A pair of tens and another pair of tens. I was downright pissed off.
"You bastard!" I yelled. "You goddamned bastard!" I was red-faced, indignant, and was shaking my fist at him. "Never do that to another poker player!"
Jim roared with laughter. "Bastard is one of the few things I can prove I'm not," he said. "Considering I was the second child."
"I'm sure you could have managed it somehow!" This comment made Jim laugh even louder. This would have gone on for several minutes, but Janis broke in.
"It's happening," the ship said.
We grew silent quickly. "How's Mats?" Karen asked.
"He is all right. He has learned how to defend from the machine's probes. I suggest you head for the control room. According to Scott this one is at least a magnitude seven."
All three of us, native Californians that we are, sobered up considerably at that. I myself was ten years old for the Loma Prieta quake that shook up my native San Francisco in 1989, just getting ready to watch the world series begin. Our marina district home survived, but most of the contents did not. I was trapped under a fallen bookshelf for almost two hours because both of my parents were at the game and a neighbor finally came to look in on me. I lost my ability to watch baseball that day and I had nightmares for weeks.
My point is, that quake was also in the sevens. "Where is the epicenter?" I asked as we walked to the control room.
"Right in the heart of Reykjavik," Scott said.
"Fuck!" Jim shouted. "People are going to die down there."
"Probably already have," Karen said.
It suddenly hit me. "There's going to be a crack running through the city," I said. "Nobody's going to think this was natural for very long."
Scott looked up from his computer in surprise. "Hopkins is going to move very damned quickly then," he noted.
Jim looked at me, then Scott, then back. He nodded is a heavy sigh. "Feed me lover," he said to Karen.
Mats spoke for the first time. "Time snap?" he asked. I nodded yes and he added, "Do us all. We may need to communicate with one another."
Jim nodded. Then something strange happened, everything started going red. I had been prepared for a sudden shift, not the gradual way everything faded into a weird red twilight. I have since found out that my eyes and brain were compensating for the sudden shift gradually as a defense mechanism, but at the time is was even more disorienting than I had expected. I've been in other time snaps since, but to this day it is the first one I remember the most vividly.
Once we were in Mats took control. "Janis," he said. "Put us over the machine."
"Ten seconds local," Janis replied. In hardly longer than it took to take three breaths she said, "We're there."
Mats took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "Here goes," he muttered. Almost immediately he grabbed his temples in pain, but unlike the previous times, he didn't cry out.
"Janis," I said. "When he has established contact can you also hear the conversation?"
"Yes," the ship replied. "Although without a proper translation protocol I can only give you binary. this machine doesn't have an audio mode."
"Put it on audio anyway," Scott said.
A fairly loud hum of static came over the speakers, followed by a long string of zeros and ones read at a rapid rate. Scott immediately began tapping at his keyboard at the main console. The numbers became different numbers, then finally letters, then words. Once they became words, Mats opened his eyes.
"Link fully established," he said, looking at Scott. "Thanks."
Scott nodded. "Base 23," he said. "It figures that someone other than me had to make that leap of logic." I hadn't yet heard about exactly how Scott had broken Janis' programming the first time, but at that moment I decided to incorporate Scott's comment into the tape recordings I had for Instinct. File that for future use.
"Command?" came the translated voice from Janis' speakers.
Mats looked at the rest of us. "Any ideas?" he asked.
"Several," Scott said. "Ask for a directory of files."
Mats did so and a string of about two hundred file names came by at an unbelievable rate. When finished the word "command" came again from the speakers.
"Did somebody get all that?" Jim asked.
I was about to raise my hand to say that I had caught about a third of them, when Janis' voice came from that same speaker. "I have them," she said.
We all nodded and smiled, then Scott got to work, looking at each file as they were spoken and then translated into print. During the two hours (our time) of work, the only spurious conversation was instigated by me, towards Jim.
"How sped up are we?" I asked.
"Sixty times normal," he replied. He grinned at me sheepishly. "It's worked before," he noted. I couldn't contest that.
Finally Scott turned away from his console. "There's about a dozen commands that we will need to concern ourselves with," he said. "They're all encoded as alphanumeric combinations in Base 23, and that's probably why Mats got headaches earlier."
"And now?" Karen asked.
"Mats is getting acclimated by about now. We used my translation algorithms to build up the connections, but Mats is doing it all now.
"Anyway, the commands are pretty simple, and I think Mats could send them as well as Hopkins could. The primary one we've been looking for is FE16. That's the interrupt command and it's being maintained at a rate of once every tenth of a second. Now get this, there's no shut off command, not even a sleep command."
"How is that possible?" I asked.
"The guy would have to remain constantly awake," Jim said.
Karen shook her head. "Probably not," she said. "My guess is that Dr. Hopkins generates this command at an unconscious level and has taken advantage of it."
Jim nodded. "That would make sense," he noted. "It should also make A.J.'s job easier in helping Mats to take over when we neutralize Hopkins."
"We need to issue a command just to be sure," Scott said. "Mats, try sending CHK3. That's a system's check."
Mats nodded and got that murky look in his eyes. Out from the speakers came a series of numbers, each followed by the word "affirmative". At 35 (translated into base ten by yours truly for the purpose of this narrative) Mat's hands went to his temples again. He looked about to scream when his face showed a sudden release. He sank to the floor.
"I'm disconnected," he said. "Hopkins was sending a command, and the differences in time were too much for me to maintain the link."
"It's just as well," Jim said. "Hopkins is so fucking powerful that he might have noticed you if you stayed much longer. Let's get up to a safe height and go over what we have."
We reached a height of 10,000 miles before Jim took us out of the time snap, which was just as disorienting as going in. This is the reason the people of Reykjavik reported a sonic boom just after the shocker. Sorry about that.
Another ten minutes went by when Janis spoke. "I have a positive match on one of Scott's search parameters," she said. "It's a transatlantic mobile communication presently from Iceland to Washington D.C."
"On speakers," Mats said.
".....predicted. Having witnessed the power of the quake first hand I'll be returning to New York for Hopkins' address. Then we'll open a dialogue for demands."
"That's Secretary Nunn," Jim said.
"Understood," came a reply in a voice I recognized. President Cranston had a very distinctive voice. "So far this Dr. Hopkins has been true to his word. What about taking him out?"
"He's covered that, sir, although I have trouble believing him. Perhaps we should do as you suggest."
"Fuck!" Jim shouted. "Scott, break me into that conversation now! We have to stop them before they take this mother-fucking thing to its logical conclusion."
"I'm on it," Scott replied. There was a squeal followed by two voices saying "What the hell?" and then Scott added, "You're in."
"Mr. President, Secretary Nunn," Jim said. "This is Jim Christopher. You must not make any attempt to assassinate Dr. Hopkins! It will only speed the process up!"
"Who is this?" came Secretary Nunn's outraged voice.
"Jim Christopher," Jim repeated.
"The musician?" President Cranston asked after a pause.
"The same, Mr. President. Dr. Hopkins has hard wired his machines to activate upon his death. If you take him out you'll trigger everything!"
"How did you get on this line?" came Secretary Nunn's voice.
"Who the hell is this?" yelled the President.
"If you'll recall," Jim said, "I held a fundraiser for you when you first ran for President. I even invited you on stage for an impromptu jam session and you played tambourine! As I said, I am Jim Christopher!"
There was another pause. "How was I? My tambourine playing?"
"You stank, sir. I whispered that into your ear, if you'll remember." Jim looked at the rest of us and winked. Karen gave him a broad smile and winked back.
There was a much longer pause. "Mr. Christopher," the president finally said. "What the hell is going on? Are you involved in all of this?"
"Only in the fashion that I'm trying to stop it, just like you are. The big difference is that I have a team ready to go and a plan."
"Then what the hell are you waiting for? You've seen the destructive power this madman can unleash! Stop him!"
"That may involve killing him," Jim said.
"You said that couldn't be done!" Secretary Nunn nearly screamed.
"I said you can't do it. I can."
There was a pause. "I can sanction that under the proper circumstances," said President Cranston, sounding as Presidential as his speeches ever did. "I'll need to know your plan."
"And I need access to information you have. We know that Hopkins plans to make a public announcement. I gather from Secretary Nunn's comment that this will be in New York. Do you know where?"
"Don't speak Mr. President," Secretary Nunn said. "What if he's one of them?"
"It's a good point, Mr. Christopher. How can I trust you?"
Jim thought furiously for a moment. "Janis," he whispered. "Where is Secretary Nunn's signal coming from?"
"An airplane flying west about six miles from Iceland," Janis replied.
"I thought this was a land-based call," I said.
"It started out that way."
"Mats," Jim said, "Get us next to his plane. Get us there now!"
We never even felt the acceleration, but three seconds later we were there. I learned some new respect for the alien technology we were using at that moment.
"Secretary Nunn," Jim said after we had adjusted to the change in position, "would you please look out your port window? That's us."
"Shit!" came Nunn's voice.
"What's happening?" President Cranston asked, his voice in alarm.
"Sir, you won't believe this, but it's a goddamned flying saucer!" Nunn said.
"It's about to get better," Jim said. "Mr. Secretary, I'm going to come over to you. This will reveal a big secret about me to you and your crew, and once revealed I will need to trust that you'll keep the secret. You'll know then that you can trust me because I'm going to need to trust you."
"And how do you propose to get over to me? Beaming aboard? It's not like we can just open our hatch." Secretary Nunn had made his reputation as a Senator. He was well known for his sarcasm.
"I'll grant you that, sir. I'm going to fly right up to your window and wave hello. Then I'll fly back to our ship and we can talk further. Keep the President on the phone because we'll have a lot to discuss." Jim turned to the rest of us, who were all looking at him slackjawed. "We need their help," he said. "More importantly we need their information, and they need to know someone's one their side working on this."
"Let them know that the X-Men are really here, and on their side," I said.
Jim nodded. "Janis? Is there a hatch that can let me out, and let me back in again once I've gone over to say hello?"
"Affirmative," Janis replied.
"Good." Jim looked at the rest of us with his ironic grin. "Funny isn't it? Usually I'm the one concerned with security amongst ourselves." He took a deep breath. "Have some Bushmill's waiting for me when I get back." He gave Karen a long, deep kiss.
"Time to go public," he said when they came up for air.