Thirty seconds later, Samuel pushed open a large pair of glass security doors and emerged onto a wide sidewalk that butted up against a decent sized side parking lot. Having come in through a high security visitor’s entrance before, he was immediately overwhelmed by the sea of non-descript sedans waiting patiently for their owners to get off work.
“Where am I going?”
“Look to your 2 o’clock at about three hundred meters.”
Samuel followed the AI’s curt instructions and saw a newly built, yet barren helipad in the distance. Abnormally clean, the raised metal platform appeared so new that the surrounding area’s landscaping wasn’t even complete. Barren of grass, there were only mounds of freshly moved dirt piled up around it.
“Why am I heading for an empty landing spot?” He asked tentatively.
“It won’t be empty by the time you get there.”
Instinctively, Samuel scanned the sky for an incoming plane or helicopter. Sadly, for his present situation of needing a quick escape, nothing flew in the skies above him besides a flock of vultures looking for their next meal. He found the irony of those scavengers both comforting and infuriating at the same time.
“Stop looking up at the empty skies and get moving.” The mysterious voice bellowed in his ear as though he knew what Samuel was doing. “And stop wondering how I knew what you were doing. It’s not like I’ve got a spy satellite trained on you right now.”
“Ok---.” Curious as to how the AI knew, he asked the obvious question. “Then how did you know?”
“Because humans are predictable.” The voice said it like it was the truest thing in the world. “You could almost set your watch by them.”
“And you’re sure you’re not Hoover?” Samuel asked with a fair bit of uncertainty.
“Quite sure.”
Hearing the soft clacks of tactical boots in the distance, Samuel decided to forgo his curiosity and break out into a dead sprint toward his destination. This burst of speed only lasted about 100 yards before his late thirties began to catch up with him. So much so, that by the time he was fifty meters away, he might as well have been speed walking.
“Do you want to escape?” Tommy said with a highly amused tone of voice. “You could just lie down and wait for them. They might even have some water on them.”
“Shut up,” Samuel said through huge gulps of air. “No one told me I would be sprinting three football fields this morning.”
“All that training and no cardio.”
“Listen...” Samuel began and thought seriously about slowing down even further to respond. But he saved his retorts for a time when the screams of ‘stop’ were farther behind him than a few hundred feet. So, with one last burst of speed, he crossed the remaining distance between himself and the outside markers of the helipad.
Once there, he placed a hand on a concrete pylon to catch his breath. After a brief respite, the scientist shuffled over to some metal stairs then took the five steps quickly to the heliport’s landing pad.
“Get in!” Tommy ordered through the earbud.
“What are talking about?” Samuel looked around the newly constructed platform and saw nothing but empty space. Well, emptiness and a large H painted in the center of the flat, asphalt pad. “There’s nothing here.”
Before his new friend could answer, a lone figure stepped up onto the other side of the heliport with an almost graceful stride. Dressed in a very similar dark blue suit to the other aliens, this obvious bad guy was nothing but smiles when he spoke.
“Mr. Mosley,” the purposeful man called out from about 50 feet away. “I think it’s time for you to stop avoiding this conversation.”
“Conversation?” Samuel shifted his body to the side and twisted it slightly to provide his opponent with a narrow silhouette. “I wouldn’t call what happened back there a conversation. More like something out of the Matrix.”
“You humans.” The man said with a bitter taste in his mouth. “Always trying to explain away the unexplainable with pop culture.”
“It’s referred to as ‘Reframing the Impossible’, asshole.” For the first time since all this craziness began, the man who tried his best to stay calm in almost every situation was starting to get pissed. “But maybe you should look in the mirror, pal. After all, you look very human to me.”
“Only on the outside.” With that cryptic statement, the solitary figure produced a very familiar-looking weapon from inside his jacket. A weapon that was suspiciously like Justine’s favorite toy from Elmira. Only this pea shooter was dark grey where hers was almost obsidian black.
“I guess Ft. Meade made a few more of those things.” Samuel said in reference to that special package that arrived for Foster so many years ago.
“No,” the man said as he held the Slinger at the ready position in his right hand. “We’ve made a lot more of those things, Mr. Mosley. After all, Foster Evers is the gift that keeps on giving.”
“Not the best time for a monologue if you ask me.” Tommy said with all the emotion of a play-by-play announcer. “Still, I guess this is probably one of the few times he’s able to be honest about who he is.”
“What are you talking about?” Samuel asked the voice in low whisper.
“I’m talking about you escaping.”
“Well, I don’t know if you can see what’s going on right now.” He stopped to look back toward the building he had just come from. And just as he feared, a group of about twenty people were making their way toward his position quickly. Too quickly. “But the strange man with the Slinger has me covered.”
“No,” the voice laughed a little too loudly into his ear. “He only thinks he does.”
“Please tell me you’re not in the middle of a systems crash.” Samuel started questioning his sanity when a strong breeze began pelting him and the stranger in the face. Seemingly out of nowhere, these gusts of wind were so powerful that they began to push them back from the center of the landing pad.
“What the hell?” The strange man said as he raised his weapon to meet Samuel’s chest. Sensing something was amiss, he pushed forward toward the invisible and growing vortex. “And who are you talking to?”
“Who am I talking to?” Not wanting to divulge anything about the voice in his head to the creepy… alien? Samuel fell back on his original nomenclature for the artificial intelligence attempting to help him. “Not Foster.”
“Who in the fuck is— “. But before he could finish that question, a bright red explosion of light erupted from the center of the empty pad and struck him square in the chest. Once it did, the stranger and his weapon shot back in the air about twenty feet. After hitting the ground with a thud, he tumbled lifelessly for another five before coming to an ungraceful stop against a black Chevy Tahoe.
Then, something even more bizarre happened at the center of the landing pad. Or more precisely, just below where the red lighting had appeared. First, the air began to transform into a wild array of shifting colors. These colors swirled and shifted around like a watercolor painting come to life. At least until, with a visual snap, the spiraling mirage of visual splendor coalesced into a sleek, low to the ground, personal flying vehicle.
“What the hell?” The scientist blurted out upon seeing the impossible.
Flabbergasted, Samuel stared at the sci-fi-looking machine and couldn’t help but marvel at how compact and powerful the dark gray vehicle appeared to be. Equipped with four tri-fan self-encased turbo rotors, the craft looked a cooler version of Tesla’s Cybertruck.
Only this futuristic fever dream had wings. Wings that just happened to be pointing horizontally instead of vertically at that moment. Even more unbelievable, the sound of the prop blades were barely audible above the wind they produced.
“I don’t know what’s more amazing.” The CERN scientist took a beat to appreciate the amount of engineering that went into making the craft that stood before him. As a scientist, he couldn’t help but feel a little intimidated. “That this thing exists or that Foster made it.”
“Foster didn’t make this machine.” The new voice in his head corrected. “And before you ask, neither did Hoover. This one’s all mine.”
With that proclamation, the engines slowed down before repositioning themselves vertically for take-off. Unsure of what to do next, Samuel eased around the piece of futuristic tech and stood by what he thought was the passenger side door. There, he waited not so patiently for his ride to open.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
After a second, the section of vehicle that looked the most like an entrance retracted back on itself like a pocket door. Then, with the darkened interior finally revealed, he looked inside the otherworldly conveyance and fully expected to see a pilot staring back at him. Strangely, what greeted him was two empty seats.
“Get in!” The voice again commanded from somewhere inside the cockpit.
Samuel only hesitated for a second before climbing into the main cockpit. A moment later, a mixture of small arms fire and orbs of blueish plasma went flying over the craft’s mostly transparent canopy. Braced for a quick takeoff, the middle-aged scientist became unnerved when the engines didn’t rev up automatically.
Then, after another volley of fire barely missed their position, he panicked. “Shouldn’t we be leaving?” He said in a high pitched, end of the world type voice.
“Give me a second.” The AI’s voice said over both the vehicles internal speakers and the tiny earbud. “I want to make sure they call it in.”
“Call what in? And to who?” Although the questions and the answers seemed redundant given the number of armed people scrambling across the parking lot to apprehend him.
“Joint Air Force Base Andrews.” The voice responded succinctly with an answer that both intrigued and terrified the person asking the question. “They have first response authority over this airspace.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me.” Immediately, Samuel’s highly creative mind dreamed up squadrons of F16’s flying overhead just itching to blow this little thing out of the sky. “Why in the hell are you waiting for that? What? Are you trying to get us blown up.”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean ‘yes’?” Samuel cried out from behind wide eyes while clutching the sides of his seat. Meanwhile, above him, more rounds of ammo went flying past their still stationary position.
“I mean... yes.” Tommy said with a verbal wink. However, before any of his fears could be assuaged by the AI, the stealth vehicle’s engines screamed with unseen power and the craft shot up into the sky with the speed of a small rocket.
“Jesus,” Samuel stammered out. A second later, the hover copter/spaceship hybrid leveled off before quickly heading off like a bullet toward the southwest of the main campus. “Are you trying to get us killed?”
“If we’re lucky.”
Samuel looked down at the bevy of computerized flight controls. There were at least three separate screens for maps, air speed, altitude and heading. And three separate control yokes for piloting this thing automatically on both sides of the craft. Not that he would or could try and fly this thing. Besides, the voice in his head seemed to have things in hand.
“What’s the range on this thing?” That was the only thing he could think to ask at that moment as an untold number of GeForces pressed against his unrestrained body.
“Not far enough.” That was all the voice said as the vehicle shot south at a speed of 150 miles per hour. Way faster than he would have expected for an electric aircraft.
“So how far will it go?”
“Current specs have the production model rated at 120 miles. However, this is not the production model. Far from it.”
With that ominous claim, the sleek craft banked to the left and made a wide elliptical turn back in the direction they started. A second later, multiple caution and warning lights blinked to life on the main radar screen.
“What are those warning indicators for?” Samuel asked as he felt the craft slightly power down its whisper quiet engines. “And why are we slowing down?”
“Those,” the voice said as the more obtrusive warning lights were extinguished. “Let me know that two alert aircraft have just taken off from Andrews. And we’re slowing down because their runway points south instead of north. They need time to catch up.”
A hundred thoughts were currently racing through Samuel’s mind at that exact moment. But the most pressing was the words ‘catch up’. “What do you mean by ‘catch up’”?
“No time to explain.” Tommy said, almost gleefully. “You need to strap in.”
Suddenly and more forcefully than he would have imagined, his seat spread apart on the sides and wrapped itself around his upper shoulders and lower torso. Then, a black partition rose up from the bottom of the cockpit floor to eventually seal him off from the rest of the cabin.
Truly scared for the first time since this little odyssey started, Samuel began to call out for answers when the voice continued. “There they are.”
Unable to turn around, Samuel let his eyes dart down to the radar screen and the two red dots currently at the bottom edge of it.
“They’ll be on us in 30 seconds. So, I don’t have time to really slow down all that much.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about forward momentum and quantum gravity.”
For a second, the voice’s words were completely bat shit crazy. But then, he remembered a cold day in the woods outside of Elmira New York. And more specifically, Foster’s terse yet fascinating explanation of something he later came to refer to as a magic 8 ball.
“No,” The scientist’s mind began to piece together what could be happening as the craft powered up and thrust forward. And those assumptions did not make him feel any better about their current course of action. “You can’t be serious! You’re going to let them blow up the plane?”
“I don’t want to. Believe me.” Tommy sounded quite sad as the craft picked up some speed. But not in a way that made Samuel feel that sadness was directed toward himself in any way. “I’ve only got two more functional prototypes. But you can’t escape if they think you’re still alive.”
“What the fuck do you mean by ‘still alive’?”
“Trust me.” The voice said casually as the ship gained some much-needed altitude. Below, the industrial buildings he’d been flying over gave way to a large swath of thickly knotted trees. And beyond those trees, a small airport came into view.
“Plus,” the voice quipped as a series of locking mechanisms gave way all around him. “This thing is a lot more reliable than that old 8 ball.”
On the verge of screaming, Samuel once again gripped tightly at the sides of his seat as the sealed off portion of the cockpit ejected straight down like one of those tower rides at Disney World. Except there were no track system or cables to keep his ass from crashing into the pavement at a hundred miles per hour.
Only the vague explanation of someone he hadn’t seen in well over a decade.
“Calm down.” The voice broke through over the sound of air around the small capsule as the horizon grew closer to becoming flat. “Brakes should be activating…”
With that, a slight hum began to emanate from below his ass and spread out to the entire enclosure like waves on a lake. Then surprisingly, if not amazingly, the rush of air and sense of dropping to his inevitable doom slowly began to lessen. So much so that about ten seconds later, Samuel could barely feel his escape pod touch lightly down on the end of a small, commercial runway.
“Thank you for flying Evers Air, Mr. Mosley. As always, we appreciate your business.”
Shaken, Samuel tried to respond but was cut short by the door retracting open. This silent maneuver was quickly followed by his seat restraints disengaging enough to allow his vibrating body to wiggle free from his sci-fi escape pod. Once outside, he crawled away from the piece of still cloaked equipment and preceded to kiss the proverbial ground.
“Jesus!” A different voice from the one in his ear exclaimed further down the runway. “I think that’s a neater trick than my diploma.”
Finding himself even more off balance, Samuel Mosley looked off in the direction of sound and saw a dark-haired woman standing lazily in the doorway of what looked like an idling G5 leer jet. Almost six feet in height, the woman was practically hopping on the balls of her feet as she pointed to the sky and the still flying stealth craft.
“But why bail out when your plane is still operational?” She turned her gaze toward his direction long enough to make eye contact.
Before he could answer her highly intelligent and obvious question, the voice butted in. “Just wait for it.”
“Wait for what?” This question hung in the proverbial air as the stealth craft got further away from where he crouched on the ground. Then, as if the heavens answered, two sidewinder missiles streaked overhead towards their intended target. They were quickly followed by two F18 Hornets pushing forward with all they had.
“Oh,” Samuel said as the first missile struck the craft causing a loud pop and a fiery explosion. It was quickly followed by the second missile that struck its target. A second later, the mysterious craft exploded in a comically large ball of blue electrical flames.
“WOW!” The young woman exclaimed from the hatchway as the remnants of the craft fell slowly toward the ground. “Definitely better than the Fourth of July.”
“Yeah,” the voice said to both of them. “But way more expensive.”
Still trying to get a handle on his new situation, Samuel looked back at the woman who was now staring intently at him. A little too intently if he was being honest with himself. And before he could react to her stare, she finished her once over and yelled out.
“This bus isn’t going to wait forever, Mr. ‘Mosley.” Her eyes appeared manic and controlled at the same time. “And we’ve got places to go and people to see.”
“Bus?” He asked just before the woman stepped back inside the jet and out of his sight.
“You heard her, Samuel. Time to go.”
Not waiting for his brain to catch up, the now middle-aged Samuel Mosley hurried away from his escape capsule and ran toward the small set of stairs hanging down from the plane. A moment later, he had plopped down into one of the most comfortable airline seats he’d ever sat in.
Near the front of the spacious cabin, the young woman swiveled around in her own comfortable chair and stared directly into his eyes.
For a second, he just sat there and made mental notes of her posture, age, and outward demeanor. From what he could initially tell, this woman was in her mid-twenties. Pretty, but not in a way that suggested she cared about looking so. She was also moderately athletic but not ripped.
Back in his youth, he would have found her quite attractive. Hell, Samuel would have probably made a smooth statement about how beautiful her eyes were. But something else was more important at that exact moment. Namely, the fact that this strange woman seemed to be completely at ease with everything going on around her.
Almost sensing his inner thought, the young woman smiled at him like a predator seizing up some prey. “My name is Dr. Beth Quant, Dr. Mosley. It is very nice to finally meet you.”
“Finally?” The adrenaline was beginning to subside, and his rational mind started to work again. Or at least work enough to begin asking questions of the ever-watchful person. “Just what the hell is going on here?”
“Well,” Beth’s simple smile turned into a mischievous smirk. “From what I gather, we’re here to put your old band back together.”
“My old band?”
“Yes,” she responded with way too much enthusiasm. “The Elmira team to be exact.”
Just then, the far-off explosion, the alien creatures, and the bevy of high-tech gadgets all made a lot more sense. It was returning. That nightmare of a trip to upstate New York almost 12 years ago was hurtling back toward him with a vengeance. And he knew precisely what the next words to come out of her mouth would be. And that knowledge both infuriated his soul and scared the shit out of him at the same time.
Why was this happening to him all over again? He thought bitterly.
“Sorry.” She said, seeing the downtrodden look on his face. “I can see all this is a sore subject for you.”
“Dr. Quant,” he said. “You have no idea how sore of a subject.”
“Then let me say I’m sorry one more time, Dr. Mosley.” Her eyes somehow became sharper, more focused. “Or do you prefer, Samuel?”
He didn’t answer her question. He couldn’t. He could only wait patiently in his very comfortable seat for this new nightmare to begin. Which it did only three seconds later.
“Well, I like to keep things simple.” Her face was practically beaming with excitement as she spoke. “So, Samuel. What can you tell me about a man named Foster Evers?”
