Okay, something funny is going on here. I walk over to his desk and flip over his notebook. His phone has an audio recorder app running.
“Are you recording this?” I ask.
“Um…I’m just taking notes for class.”
“Great. Hopefully it’ll help your grades.” I leave the phone where it is and return back to the front of the classroom.
“By show of hands, how many of you really want to work in space?”
Everyone raises an arm into the air.
“Okay, how many of you are willing to do anything that it takes?”
Most of the hands are still up.
“Great. Here’s my advice. Quit this school. Get your tuition back. Go to a community college, get straight A’s, go to a good state school, study science or engineering and then either go to work in the Navy, the Air Force or get a graduate degree. Along the way, get a pilot’s license, learn to scuba dive and volunteer for every space related project you can.”
A girl in the back raises her hand and says, “I thought this was the easiest path.”
I shake my head. “Right now, space is not for people looking for the easy path. Get rich or wait for space tourism to get cheaper and then go.”
Two hours later I’m in the dean’s office, Miriam Caldwell, a former NASA official, who to her credit, while never having gone into space, successfully ran training in Houston for several years.
“David, you can’t say stuff like that.”
I knew this was coming and had already put all my personal items from my cubicle in my backpack. “I’m sorry. I’ll send you the grades and my class notes.”
“While it’s not like any of those students are actually going to take you up on your advice — if they were that motivated, they wouldn’t be here. I have to let you go for another reason…” Her voice drifts off.
“It doesn’t matter. We gave it a shot.”
“No. You need to know. We’ve had some…concerns from parents. While most of them are thrilled that you’re part of our faculty…”
“Others are not. They still think I’m a terrorist or a target.”
“And there’s the whole Reynolds Report. It’s become such a political issue right now. Maybe when things settle down a little bit we can have you back?”
I force a smile and thank her for the chance.
To be honest, I’m relieved. I was finding it hard to care as a teacher — which is the worst trait an educator can have.
Ten
Deep Six
The sound of the regulator is strangely soothing. It shouldn’t be. I’m 100 feet underwater in a sinkhole in the middle of Florida, all by myself, if you don’t count the two archeological robots sifting through the water, slowly vacuuming away sand and dirt as I babysit.
What should be even more disturbing is the reason I’m even down here. While the robots are very good at cautiously digging through the archeological site, having already discovered a human jawbone, they’re not so good at defending themselves from the giant catfish that is agitated by their presence.
“How’s it going, David? Any sign of Monster Matilda?” asks Dr. Nicole Suarez over the radio.
“No sign, so far,” I say into the helmet radio. “I think she’s planning her best approach to attack me.”
I’m only half kidding. Matilda outweighs me and she’s a protected animal. My only weapon down here — the only one I’m allowed to use — is a fish club to push her away, should she show up.
Nicole had been a friend from college. We’d hung out a few times when we both ended up in Florida, but not much else beyond that.
A couple weeks ago she reached out to me and offered me a job. Although she pleaded ignorance about my current situation, I think she heard it through the grapevine that I was having a difficult go of things after the K1 Incident.
People generally assume that I’m still working for the government — which I never was. Or that I made some movie deal and I’m about to be fabulously wealthy as some Australian actor plays me on the big screen.
While I’ve heard word of some film adaptations, I’m not involved and can’t be because of the gag order. Which is just as well. I don’t think the producers would want me there saying the guy playing me needs to act more terrified and cower a lot.
So here I am, helping Nicole uncover an archeological site that predates the end of the last ice age. The bones and artifacts we’ve found so far come from 7,000 years ago when the water level in Florida was three hundred feet below where it is today.
As Ariel, the robot with the red cover, sucks away the dirt, another yellow human molar comes into view. Nicole is already on the shore looking at the shape of the teeth and comparing them to existing records, trying to map out the early inhabitants who lived here.
Being in a burial site almost 8 millennia old, kind of puts things in perspective. Julius Caesar, The Egyptian empire, even Sumer, were in the far distant future when this person died.
While engineers lay down the framework for the giant US/iC station two hundred miles overhead and people go about their work on a dozen smaller government and private stations, it makes me wonder what the world will be like in just a hundred years.
Things are moving so fast. I feel like I’m missing out.
I feel a current hit my back and spin around. There’s just a murky cloud of mud.
She’s out there…
I turn around as Matilda makes a run at Ariel. I reach out with the baton and tap the catfish on the nose when she gets close.
She freezes, letting her mouth hang open, and stares at me, trying to figure out my deal.
“Go away!” I say inside my helmet, hoping that it will somehow carry through the water and magically translate for her.
“You okay?” asks Nicole.
“Just having a staring contest with Matilda.”
The fish grows bored then goes somewhere to sulk. And I genuinely feel bad about the whole encounter.
“My friends at Fish & Wildlife say it’ll only take two or three taps and she’ll stay clear.”
“Have you considered a scarecrow?”
“I can’t think of anything she wouldn’t eat.”
“So you send me?”
“You come highly qualified.”
Oh, brother. My job is to literally protect robots from a fish so they can do the real work.
I take my time going back to the surface, making sure I don’t get the bends. It’s dark when I finally reach shore. One of Nicole’s grad students, Kyle, a suntanned Floridian with a surfer’s vocabulary, hands me a Starbuck’s coffee.
“Heard you had it out with Matilda,” he says.
“I explained my boundaries. We’ll see how it worked out.”
“Oh…” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a business card. “Some guy came looking for you. Wants you to call him ASAP.”
“Out here?”
Kyle shrugs and starts to help me out of my gear.
After toweling off my hands, I take a look at the card. It’s as nondescript as you can get. Just a name, Jameson Willis, a Virginia phone number and a company; The Penumbra Institute.
It’s what’s on the other side that’s really interesting. In neatly written letters it says, “Markov said you might be able to help us out.”
Markov, the Russian spymaster who defected to the West and is probably the most well-connected man in the intelligence community.
His recommendations aren’t taken or given lightly.
I’m sure The Penumbra Institute is anything but academic.
Eleven
Insiders
Markov’s only comment on Penumbra was that I should hear what they had to say. A man known for his discretion and integrity, I took him on face value and agreed to let them fly me to Virginia business class, put me up in a nice hotel and give me a per diem more than what I made a week protecting underwater robots from catfish.