Delta Green - All Part of the Job

Reverberations - Session 3c

Dolf jogged at a quick pace and checked every alley he found. It didn’t take long for him to discover a particularly filthy and miserable-looking man slumped against a wall. He wasted no time producing the pipe from his plastic bag. He offered the man $100 to smoke what was in the pipe, no questions asked.

The man may have been a junkie, but to his credit, he still balked at the offer. It was only momentary, and the promise of money won out over the potentially dangerous mystery high. Couldn’t be too much more dangerous than some of the stuff he’d done. The man asked for the money upfront, but de Jaager countered with an offer of half in advance, and half after. Dempsey would undoubtedly disapprove of the delay for negotiation, but de Jaager felt the man might be too sketchy. He handed over the pipe, a $50 bill, and a Bic lighter.

The man eyed the residue on the pipe and searched the Dutchman’s face for any sign of trickery. Seeing only impatience, the man shrugged and took the biggest hit he could. Dolf nodded and thanked the man as he traded the second $50 bill for the return of the pipe. He told the man to keep the lighter.

He had enough time to jog halfway back to the Talbott before a scream from the alley drowned out the light traffic on State Street. He felt a sharp pang of guilt, but he didn’t let it slow him down. If Dempsey were still alive, he’d be in desperate need of medical attention. Dolf yelled in a loud whisper to ask the Irishman if he was still alive. The response over the earpiece was hushed and delayed.

“Aye. I’m still alive. Not going to die without a bottle in my hand. I think the thing left. I’m heading down to the lobby. Get me to the hospital.”

Dolf decided not to mention what he’d done, but he did tell Dempsey he’d have the Cherokee running. He also asked Clark not to move from the camera feed. That suited the DEA man just fine. Crack went another can of Red Bull.

The hotel lobby was empty, and the clerk at the desk was preoccupied with stringing together a chain of paperclips, so Dempsey made it out to the vehicle without causing a scene. Dolf drove to the hospital and stopped in the ER drop-off zone. It was probably for the best if an Irishman walking like a broken Slinky arrived without an escort. Besides, there was blood all over the front seat of a rental vehicle. They couldn’t possibly return it that way.

Dempsey shambled through the doors and down the hall to the ER desk. The nurse on duty was quite professional, and she didn’t so much as flinch. Then again, it was the graveyard shift at a hospital in Chicago. He probably wasn’t even the worst thing she’d seen that night. He was able to fill out the paperwork well enough to be admitted, and the nurse assured him he could take care of the rest of it after surgery. Two orderlies helped Dempsey onto a wheeled bed and took him down the hall. He tried counting the ceiling tiles as they passed, but he only made it to five before losing consciousness.

Dolf looked online for an all-night auto detail shop and decided to go with The Guild of Mute Mechanics. They sounded like they could keep a secret, and they were open at all hours. He paid the $400 in advance and handed the keys to a fair-skinned man of indeterminate ethnicity, and then he went across the street to a diner designed to look like an oversized train car. He drank an hour’s worth of coffee while watching out the window. As soon as he saw the Cherokee appear in the parking lot across the street, he threw a few dollars on the table and left.

Once back at the hotel, de Jaager told Clark everything that had happened before falling over on his bed and immediately passing out. Clark tossed an empty can on the pile, opened another Red Bull, and kept working. Spider J had gotten what was coming to him, and Dempsey had taken the heat. Maybe it was the Red Bull, but Clark almost felt like he could fly.

Reverberations - Session 4a

Thomas Edison would take six half-hour naps throughout the day, and Leonardo da Vinci slept for 20 minutes every four hours. Nikola Tesla slept for two hours every night. If they’d had Red Bull, they might not have slept at all, and then Carl Clark wouldn’t consider them lazy amateurs.

When de Jaager awoke around lunchtime, Clark had just finished his forensic analysis of the laptop hard drive. The computer appeared to have been used solely for surveillance camera feed monitoring and storage. Over the past few days, there had only been two visitors; the Hispanic woman and an African American woman who kissed Spider J when he opened the door.

Clark ran the faces through every database he could. The Hispanic woman remained unidentified, but the other woman was Tanyika Tillerson. She was unemployed and was not known to have any involvement in drug trafficking other than the fact she seemed to only date people who did have such involvement. Her last known address was Room 412 at the Talbott Hotel.

All three agents had lunch about the same time; Dempsey got Jello and what the nurse swore was Chicken Cordon Bleu, and de Jaager and Clark headed to a place called Leng in a neighborhood controlled by the local Tcho-Tchos. Leng was a restaurant which served traditional dishes from all over Asia. Clark knew the place because the owner had been a person of interest in a DEA investigation years ago. It was the same investigation where he had met Spider J, though this wasn’t the place.

The restaurant was busy but not packed, and the staff was an assortment of many different Asian cultures. They all looked the same to Clark, but de Jaager could easily tell the Japanese from the Laotians, the Chinese from the Vietnamese, and the Tcho-Tchos from anything else. The Tcho-Tchos were notably smaller, and they just looked … off. It was hard to explain, but there was something about them that didn’t seem natural.

The Tcho-Tchos at the restaurant seemed to be working in a management or security capacity. They watched everything without expression, except for two who spoke Aklo in hushed tones closely enough that de Jaager could hear. He was able to make out phrases and words well enough to infer the rest of the conversation from context. The two were concerned about the Reverb-related disappearances of so many drug dealers, but it wasn’t because the Tcho-Tchos were doing the smuggling or manufacturing. They didn’t seem to know who was behind the recent resurgence of Reverb, but they wanted whoever it was to die in the second-most terrible of ways. Evidently, the most terrible way would be for a dog from somewhere called Tindalos to come for you. That was probably the invisible razor-tiger which mauled Dempsey.

It sounded like the Tcho-Tchos had nothing to do with Spider J’s Reverb operation, so the agents finished lunch and headed out. The next stop was the police station to talk with Detective Johnson. The detective wasn’t in much of a talking mood, but he was able to tell them where they could find the last known Reverb dealer in Chicago, Bad Luke. As it turned out, Bad Luke was likely to be at the Tan ‘N’ Wash near their hotel, but he always had a few armed thugs with him. Detective Johnson said the best way to get a word with Bad Luke would be to identify themselves as law enforcement; his men wouldn’t shoot. They thanked the detective for that handy piece of information and headed to the Tan ‘N’ Wash.

The detective was right. Bad Luke and three armed guards were out front just standing around. They evidently didn’t see the sign in the window which said ‘No Loitering Allowed.” Dolf waited in the Jeep while Clark went to talk with Bad Luke. The thugs stiffened as he approached, and their hands moved closer to openly-displayed pistols. Bad Luke only smiled. It was Luke’s turn to stiffen a bit when Clark showed his DEA badge.

Reverberations - Session 4b

Clark eased the tension by promising he only wanted to talk. He was investigating the disappearances of Reverb dealers, and he had some information Luke needed. It wasn’t the sort of thing they could talk openly about, but if Luke would just follow him over to the Cherokee … Maybe it was something in Clark’s voice, maybe it was the expression of genuine concern on his face, but Luke trusted him enough to follow. No, you know what? It was probably the traces of glitter in his hair and the fact Luke’s men had guns ready. That was more likely. Either way, Bad Luke followed and got in the back seat.

Clark and de Jaager told him what had happened to Roofie in a locked cell. The same thing had happened to Spider J in his hotel room. Luke was the last one, and the same thing was probably going to happen to him, too. The dealer took the news remarkably well. He’d heard rumors from people he trusted, so he was prepared to believe the agents. Reverb was a big money maker, but it wasn’t worth being ripped to oblivion. Besides, Spider J was the source. With him gone, it wasn’t like Luke could get more. Or … could he? No. Clark let him know in no uncertain terms that Spider J’s contacts were not going to be made available. Luke shrugged. It was worth a shot.

One more thing. Clark wanted to know where Spider J mixed the Reverb. That, Bad Luke didn’t know. He would meet Spider J at the Talbott for all their transactions. He kept it all in a black duffel bag, and the bag was never out of reach. Clark and de Jaager shared a quick, quizzical glance. There was no bag in Spider J’s room. The Hispanic woman hadn’t left with one either. They thanked Bad Luke for the talk and wished him the best of luck.

After the dealer went back across the street, they were going to stop by the hospital to check on Dempsey, but they quickly scrapped that plan. Dolf had been watching the live feed from the security cameras, and he saw Ms. Tillerson enter Room 412. The new plan was for de Jaager to call Dempsey to check on him while they headed back to the hotel. The hospital said Dempsey had checked himself out as soon as he saw what they called chicken.

As it turned out, the Irishman was waiting for them in the hotel lobby. The thousands of tiny nicks on his face and hands were bright pink, but he otherwise hid his injuries well. Dolf was in a hurry and either missed Dempsey or ignored him on the way to the elevator. With two quick bro-nods, one upward and the other directional, Clark both acknowledged Dempsey and told him they were headed to the elevator. The implication was that he should follow.

In the elevator, Clark and de Jaager briefed Dempsey on the situation. Spider J’s girlfriend was in his room, and she might be the only person who knew the dealer’s operation well enough to give them something to go on. Dempsey asked if they had a lead on the invisible dog, but the other two just shrugged.

Clark knocked on the door, but he was met with silence. A second knock and he could hear quiet shuffling on the other side of the door. It took several minutes of reassurance and persuasion, but eventually, Ms. Tillerson let them in.

She was wary of talking to federal agents, but Dempsey told her they were with the CIA, and that meant they had no jurisdiction on U.S. soil. They couldn’t arrest her or Spider J if they wanted to, which they didn’t. They had some bad news about Spider. He was dead. The thing that killed him was … Ms. Tillerson cut him off.

“Wait. The thing?”

“That’s right. The thing.”

She asked if the thing was an invisible dog, and the agents all nodded. She knew about the hound? She didn’t seem to believe it, but she did know about it. Spider’s contacts in Tibet warned him some kind of dog from a place they called Tindalos might come for him if the stuff he was buying from them was improperly handled. They told Spider if the dog came for him, he should immediately meditate on either an empty void or a perfect sphere, and that might ward the thing off. If he was in a group, they should all meditate on the same thing, or it wouldn’t work.

Reverberations - Session 4c

Clark asked if it was Reverb he was buying in Tibet, but she shook her head. No. It was a dark purple flower they called Liao. Spider had been bringing it into Chicago and mixing it with MDMA. Clark explained that was 3,4-Methyl​enedioxy​methamphetamine, more commonly known as Ecstacy. Dempsey narrowed his eyes disapprovingly and called Clark a nerd.

Ms. Tillerson nodded. She said Spider J would mix a tiny bit of the Liao and some MDMA in gelatin capsules, and then he’d sell it to the dealers who had been disappearing lately. Clark asked where Spider J mixed the Reverb, and Ms. Tillerson said he had a small condo he used only for mixing batches of Reverb. She gave them the address but told them they wouldn’t find anything. Spider never left anything but the furniture there. The agents thanked her and asked if she had somewhere else to stay. She did, but she had no way to get there, so Clark offered to take her. Ms. Tillerson accepted a ride to a Burger King near where she was headed, but she didn’t want to show up with obvious cops. None of the men could fathom what she could mean by that. In their estimation, they couldn’t look less like law enforcement.

The agents dropped her off and headed to the address she’d given. On the way, they agreed to meditate on a perfect sphere at the first sign of glittering razors. The condo was the leftmost of four in the same building. It was thin, but it was two stories. The door was locked. The window next to it was locked as well, but it was poorly latched. Dolf jiggled the window a bit and loosened the latch enough to open it. He climbed in, closed the window, and opened the door from the inside.

There wasn’t much to the place, and Ms. Tillerson’s description was accurate. The bottom floor was a living room and kitchen. The living room held only a couch, coffee table, and 55” plasma television mounted to the wall. Dempsey took the kitchen while Clark headed upstairs. Dolf searched the living room.

Dempsey didn’t expect to find anything in the kitchen. As he searched, he recited the Old Mother Hubbard nursery rhyme with himself cast in the title role.

“Young Agent Dempsey went to the cupboard to give the poor dog a bone, but when he got there, the cupboard … was full of gelatin capsules and Yuban coffee?”

Clark shouted down the stairs that there were a bathroom and an empty bedroom with no furniture. Dolf shined his flashlight inside a vent near the ceiling, but it was empty. Or rather, it was empty until he looked away. Then his peripheral vision caught something shiny, glittery, and razory.

“Sphere!”

All three agents immediately dropped to the floor and sat cross-legged while meditating on a perfect sphere. Nothing happened, and nothing continued to happen. They weren’t sure how long they had to concentrate because they’d forgotten to ask.

It didn’t matter anyway. The sphere in Clark’s mind eventually began to expand and contract, pulsing to the beat of a random bit of house techno which popped into his head. It was still kind of a sphere, though, so maybe he hadn’t totally screwed them.

Clark’s pulsing rave sphere elongated into a puffy cylinder, and so he gave up. He imagined several more puffy cylinders, and then he watched as his mind arranged them in a vaguely humanoid shape and put a sailor’s suit on it.

“Uh, guys … I just want you to know that if the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man crushes this place, I …”

“Nice thinking, Ray.”

Dolf’s delivery was unamused, but it was evident he’d seen Ghostbusters enough times to quote it.

Dempsey opened his eyes and stood cautiously. He was done with this place, especially if a razor-marshmallow tiger thing was going to show up. They’d met their objectives, right?

Determine if the new Reverb has unnatural effects. Yes, it did. Find the source and cut off the supply. Check. That was good enough for the Program, and so it was good enough for the Irishman. The others agreed, and they left in haste. Back to the hotel to report their success to Voss, then they’d get a good night’s sleep and hit the airport in the morning. Goodbye, Chicago. You can keep the dog.

Observer Effect - Session 1a

Task Force 138 had reached consensus. They were done with Chicago. Morning came, and the city hadn’t been destroyed by the spongy, sweet physical manifestation of Gozer the Gozerian. That fact was, of course, bittersweet for the agents, but it meant they were still alive, so that was a plus.

Dempsey had wasted no time leaving the hotel in the morning despite the fact his flight wasn’t due to depart until 11:00 AM. He was at his gate and waiting by 9:15. It seemed there was no shortage of people wanting to leave Chicago, but for whatever reason, there also seemed to be many who actually wanted to be there. Maybe they just had connecting flights.

The DEA would likely want to know the situation, and so Clark decided to stay another day and write up some sanitized reports for the official file. He also practiced forming a perfect sphere in his mind, because he felt he might be right after Dempsey on the invisible razor-tiger’s hit list. He hadn’t shot at the thing, but he had been dosed with the Liao drug.

De Jaager’s flight was later in the day, and so he went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. He sat in a booth and turned the empty coffee cup he found there right side up to let the waitress know he’d be having some. It wasn’t because of the coffee – at least, he didn’t think so – but as soon as he had taken his first sip, he was assaulted by swiftly-vanishing memories almost like waking from a nightmare. He could have held on to the memories if he’d wanted to, but he felt it best to let them fade. Besides, the whole restaurant was looking at him.

Had he screamed out loud? The waitress seemed to think he had, and for a good 20 seconds at least. She was nice, but she looked worried. Dolf apologized.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that – how can I put this? – Well, I’ll just come out and ask. Did you give me decaf?”

The waitress stared in bewilderment for a moment before indicating that she had not. He had the regular, caffeinated coffee they always serve.

“Then it must be instant coffee.”

“No, sir. It’s Yuban.”

“Ah, then no flavor crystals … You know, I think I’ll pass on breakfast. Thank you.”
Dolf tossed a $5 bill on the table and exited as casually as he could. He couldn’t explain what had just happened, but he needed to tell someone. He went back up to the room only to find Clark had experienced the same sort of fading nightmare effect at the same time.

Clark’s phone rang. It was a Chicago area code, but he didn’t recognize the number. He was still a little out of breath when he answered. The woman on the other end asked him to attend a briefing at 3:00 PM. Without waiting for his confirmation, she gave him an address and hung up. Was that Delta Green? The fact de Jaager’s phone rang immediately after and showed the same number told them it was. After hanging up, De Jaager called Dempsey.

The Irishman confirmed he had been detained by TSA for screaming uncontrollably just as he was about to board his flight. He was fine now, and he thought he could still make his flight as soon as he answered the call coming in on the other line. De Jaager told him he and Clark would be seeing him at 3:00. Dempsey was confused until the woman on the other line told him pretty much the same thing. So … more Chicago. Excellent. Someone or something out there hated him with a passion. He was sure of it.

The agents all met at the address they were given. It was a plain office building much like the building where they’d had their briefing for the previous Op. There were two women waiting in the briefing room. The first was a quiet and businesslike Asian woman with an ID badge identifying her as Inspector Hua of the Department of Energy hanging from a lanyard. The other was a middle-aged woman with weary eyes. She introduced herself as Carpenter, their case officer for this emergency operation. It had been her voice on the other end of the calls that morning. Once everyone was seated, Carpenter began the briefing.

Observer Effect - Session 1b

“Thank you for coming on such short notice. As I said, this is an emergency, and you were the nearest agents. You will be heading to the Olympian Holobeam Array. It’s a new, high-tech physics lab not far from Fermilab, and it is run by a handful of academic researchers from MIT and the University of Chicago. The Array is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science and a private consortium of donors and venture capital firms, most notably Olympian Advances, Inc.

“The Array’s website says it’s built to study the theory that space itself is a sort of three-dimensional hologram cast on a two-dimensional surface … whatever that means. The Program has determined the Array secretly uses technology derived from Air Force research programs defunded years ago. The Air Force projects were too dangerous to continue and were terminated, but during that process, certain elements were reclassified, privatized, and sold to some of the same donors who sponsor the Array. The Program has an interest in that technology.

“At 10:00 today, the Array went online for the first time. The history of the Array’s technology and certain other anomalies indicate an incursion of unnatural forces at the Olympian Holobeam Array. You will go to the Array, isolate it by shutting down its communications with the outside world – including cell phones – and stop the incursion.”

At that point, Carpenter paused to hand out Department of Energy ID badges and two sets of keys. Each agent received a badge with his face and someone else’s name and employee number. They were also being provided with an unmarked DOE-issued sedan and an unmarked DOE-issued cargo van.

Clark took the keys to the van while de Jaager claimed the sedan. Dempsey announced he’d be in the van because he would need workspace during the drive. Clark immediately tried to trade vehicles, but de Jaager was already welcoming Inspector Hua to Team Sedan. Once the travel situation was decided, Carpenter continued the briefing.

“You have clearance under the cover of an inspection team for the Department of Energy tasked with reviewing the site and its records for wrongdoing. There may be specific documents or pieces of technology in the facility this clearance does not cover. You will have to make do. These cover identities were constructed in a hurry, borrowing names and employee numbers of retired or deceased DOE employees. They won’t stand up to sustained investigation.

“The Program has pulled strings in the DOE to classify the investigation such that no real DOE agent – let alone police or private citizens – can come near it without risking prison. Though, if an emergency at the site attracts first responders, there is no telling whether they will obey that restriction.

Carpenter gave the agents a cheap burner phone preloaded with a single phone number. They could use it to contact her if necessary, and they were to destroy the phone after the Operation.

As the briefing was nearing its end, music came from Carpenter’s pocket. Evidently, her ringtone was the first verse of the theme song from the television show American Dad. She was either a true patriot, or she had a sense of humor. The weary expression on her face implied the former. She answered the call wordlessly, listened for a moment, and then hung up.

“An unexpected power surge shut down power to the Array a few minutes ago. I don’t know how or why, but I wish you good luck.”

Carpenter allowed no time for questions as she gathered her belongings and exited the briefing room. A few short minutes later, the agents were on the road heading for the Olympian Holobeam Array. The drive wasn’t far, but thanks to traffic and construction, it took about an hour. On the way, Dempsey worked unsuccessfully on a batch of “Irish Coffee,” and Clark kept an eye out for razor-tigers and the Michelin Man in a sailor suit. In the sedan, de Jaager tried to engage Inspector Hua in conversation, but the soft-spoken woman wasn’t much for small talk. She was, however, busy researching the Array and Olympian Advances on her laptop computer, and she had found some interesting items.

The Array seemed to be run with a skeleton crew. For a project like this, there were far fewer staff than she would expect, and they were mostly high-ranking experts without a single intern to do the drudge-work. She had heard of the lead researcher, Dr. Jaime Campbell of MIT, too. Dr. Campbell had a reputation as a crackpot, but she had an extensive history of projects affiliated with the Air Force, and over the years, she had garnered extraordinary support from private-sector underwriters like Olympian Advances.

The sedan was in the lead as they turned off the main road and onto an unlabeled driveway leading into the woods. The onlyindications they were going the right way were the Google Maps application on de Jaager’s phone and the partially-obscured sign reading “Authorized Personnel Only.” Beyond that sign, the road wound back and forth through the woods for a hundred yards or so until it ended at a steel gate with a thick concrete wall on either side extending out into the woods.

Observer Effect - Session 1c

An external security kiosk stood outside the concrete wall. It was manned by a single guard – a fit Hispanic man in his forties whose name tag on his khaki uniform identified him as Officer Gonzales. The man smiled out from beneath a tan Stetson hat as he approached the sedan. He checked ID badges and returned to the security kiosk. A few moments later, the steel gate slid open. Gonzales gave the agents a thumbs-up.

Beyond the gate, a short drive through the woods led to a wide, paved clearing with a small, gravel parking lot to the right. There was a large, main building with another security kiosk outside the front doors, and beyond that was what Inspector Hua said was the Array itself. The Array consisted of a cluster of small, plain concrete buildings connected by an intersecting set of 60-foot-long tubes arranged in a ‘T’ shape.

The agents hadn’t noticed security cameras outside the wall, but inside, they were everywhere, and they were obvious. They decided to check in at the second security kiosk. This one had a bank of video screens, and as they approached, the woman monitoring those screens came out to greet them. She was in her thirties, and while she was polite, she wasn’t quite as cheerful as Gonzales had been. She identified herself as Officer Henson, and she checked IDs just as Gonzales had.

Once Officer Henson confirmed everything was in order, she told them where to find Dr. Campbell’s office. Dempsey and Inspector Hua followed the directions and entered the main building through the front door. Clark and de Jaager asked to see security footage for the day. Officer Henson made a quick call to Dr. Campbell’s office to clear the request before showing them to the security kiosk and the bank of monitors.

Even at 4x speed, a full day of recording from a dozen cameras would take more time and attention than they could spare, but fortunately for the agents, they could limit their search to the time between two specific points. They checked the grainy footage starting at 10:00 AM, and at the moment the Array was activated, every camera showed nothing but static for a few seconds.

To a less-tech savvy observer, it might be easily overlooked, but Clark and de Jaager were both computer guys. To them, the static stood out as strange. If the signal had been dropped, there would be no image at all, just blank frames. The static meant electromagnetic interference, but there didn’t appear to be anything strange happening at the time.

Once the video feeds resumed, everything appeared normal. There were static interruptions again at 11:05:47, 12:11:34, 13:17:21, and 14:23:08. The timecoding on the security footage evidently used the 24-hour clock. Each static interruption lasted for a few seconds each time. At 15:28:55 – while the agents were nearing the end of the operational briefing – the feed went black, but the black screens still showed the same static interference for a few seconds. That shouldn’t happen if the power surge had knocked out all the electronics and the cameras weren’t operational, and yet, there it was.

The video feed resumed at 15:50:58 when power was restored. At that point, the camera in the engineers’ office showed a man sleeping or unconscious on a couch. Officer Henson identified him as Dr. Takagawa, one of two engineers at the Array. One other thing stood out to de Jaager: someone was missing. Before the power surge, there had been eight people on-site, six staffers and two security guards. Now, there were seven.

Clark rolled the footage back to just before the power surge, paused, and counted. De Jaager was right. A woman was exiting the lab just before the surge, and when power was restored, she was gone. Officer Henson identified her as Dr. Helen Klinger and said she hadn’t seen Dr. Klinger leave. Dolf asked her to radio Gonzales at the front gate, and Gonzales said nobody had left the facility. That meant this Dr. Klinger was on the Array grounds in an inconspicuous place, or she had actually disappeared.

De Jaager thanked Officer Henson for her time and tried to keep her attention while Clark made a few quick clicks and keystrokes. He was able to find out the computer had a subroutine in its programming which would transmit the day’s footage to a particular IP address at midnight every night and then delete the oldest day of stored footage. It stored 72 hours of footage at any given time. Clark made note of the IP address, and then he, too, thanked Officer Henson for her time.

Observer Effect - Session 1d

While de Jaager and Clark were involved in what Dempsey called nerd work, the Irishman and Inspector Hua met with Dr. Campbell. The director of the Olympian Holobeam Array was a gray-haired African-American woman. She was as thin as a stick, but she seemed anything but fragile. Dr. Campbell was very businesslike in her demeanor.

Inspector Hua got right to the questions. How many staff were here today? All of them. This was the first day of operation, and it was far too important for sick days. There were three researchers (Dr. Campbell, Dr. Philip Black, and Dr. Helen Klinger), two engineers (Dr. Ishi Takagawa and Evan Kozac), and one IT support specialist (Jingfei Tsang). There was also a janitor who services the offices three times a week, but he was not scheduled for today.

What caused the power surge? Dr. Campbell had no idea, but it had to have been something outside the facility. In the hours the Array was in operation, had they learned anything? The Array had collected data, but it was too soon to know what to make of it, if there was anything of value to be learned from such a small sample. Tsang would be in the lab going over everything now. That was all Dempsey and Hua had for the moment, and so Dr. Campbell called the junior engineer, Evan Kozac, to show them around and assist them. Evan was a wiry man in his forties with nervous eyes, and he seemed to have a habit of humming to himself. The humming was a brief series of atonal, nonsensical notes, but they were consistent.

As they exited Campbell’s office, de Jaager and Clark met up with them. After introductions, de Jaager asked about the unconscious man in the engineers’ office. Evan explained he had found Dr. Takagawa unconscious in the Atrium of the Array shortly after the power surge. He had managed to bring the doctor back to consciousness long enough to walk him back to the office, but Dr. Takagawa was incoherent and passed out again.

Evan led the group to the engineers’ office where Dr. Takagawa still slept. De Jaager, who was no doctor, felt for vital signs and found nothing. He announced the man was dead, but Clark pointed out the slow, even rise and fall of the man’s chest. Okay. So, he wasn’t dead. That was good news.

Dempsey, who was also no doctor, examined the man. There was no evidence of injury; no blood, no swelling, no perspiration. Dr. Takagawa seemed to be resting peacefully, so Dempsey shook him gently. When the man didn’t wake up, Dempsey shook more violently and called his name. Still nothing.

Evan assured them he’d tried all of that, but Takagawa only woke long enough to stumble to the office. Dempsey wasn’t buying it.

“Damnit! This man probably has a concussion. And even if he doesn’t, he obviously needs medical attention. You need to call 911 right now, and if you don’t, I will!”

Clark, de Jaager, and Hua all shook their heads as casually but forcefully as they could to remind him they didn’t want emergency services or first responders anywhere near this Op.

“Uh, or, you know … maybe we could let him sleep a bit and see if he wakes up on his own. But I’m watching you, Kozac. Something’s not right here.”

The other three agents spoke over each other in an attempt to redirect the conversation. Realizing it was better for one person to ask a question at a time – and better still for that person to be the one who had conducted an investigation like this in the past – Clark and de Jaager stopped to let Hua take over.

“Mr. Kozac, what can you tell us about the technology used by the Array?"

“Well, I could get killed for telling you this, but …”

Evan grinned to show that he was at least half-joking, but even still, he leaned forward conspiratorially and spoke in a hushed tone.

“In a nutshell, the Atrium’s lasers detect jitters in space-time, and the computer – we call it Dee – records the data and makes it comprehensible.”

“Can we see this technology and your computer, Dee?”

“Well, I’d be happy to show you around the Array and the lab, sure, but you can’t open up the laser array’s casing. The technology is extremely expensive, fragile, and precise. Also, Dr. Campbell says you’re not cleared for it. Same goes for Dee.”

Inspector Hua nodded in understanding. Dempsey, Clark, and de Jaager nodded to each other in the silent agreement that they were, indeed, going to be inspecting every inch of that laser and the computer.

Hua had another question. Once the Array had detected enough of these jitters in space-time, what use would that data be? Again, Evan started with his disclaimer about potentially being killed for telling them. He then explained it might be easiest to think of it as a very compact particle accelerator, but really, it caused quantum reactions that would fold and spindle space-time itself. Keying that beam to patterns of data detected by the Holobeam might open brief, controllable gaps in reality.

Inspector Hua nodded some more.

“Then, you might produce instantaneous movement or communication.”

Oh, good. At least someone here was following. Clark and de Jaager were both highly-intelligent and well-educated, but they weren’t physicists. They managed to catch the main idea, and when Hua gave her summary, they, too, nodded in understanding. Dempsey just shrugged and called them all nerds.

Observer Effect - Session 1e

The agents decided to let Dr. Takagawa rest for now, and Evan suggested passing through the lab before heading out to the Array itself.

The lab consisted of seven computer workstations. Only one workstation was currently in use. Jingfei Tsang, as Evan introduced her, was a Chinese-American woman in her thirties, and she seemed so intent on watching the data flowing across her screen that she failed to even acknowledge anyone else was in the lab.

Evan explained that Ms. Tsang loved the computer, Dee, like a junkie loved drugs. He gestured to indicate a well-ventilated cabinet near the woman. It certainly seemed unremarkable; a typical rack of processors and motherboards connected to several workstations.

Again, as Hua was the experienced DOE Inspector, the other agents let her start. Ms. Tsang answered questions without looking away from the monitor. She told them several interesting things. During the hours it was operational, the lasers of the Array didn’t jitter with purely random movement which would be represented by white noise when plotted as data on a graph and converted to sound, but with strange, unexpected pulses. She indicated the data streaming across her monitor as if that would clarify, but she seemed to be the only one who could make any sense of it.

Ms. Tsang continued to volunteer information, consciously or not. She had had Dee generate an audio feed from the data, and she gladly played the result. It was a strange and eerie series of atonal whistles of various high frequencies. It was the same pattern as the tones Evan hummed unconsciously, but the tones were much higher. These tones were also punctuated by very low-frequency pulses that were barely audible to human ears but rattled the computer’s speakers. Clark and de Jaager, who were watching the graphed patterns while listening to the audio, instinctively felt a connection between the two, and they felt a connection to an unseen and unknowable aspect of reality.

There was more. While the Array was offline, Dee was powered by the backup generator. The computer showed anomalous readings. The tones were gone, but the pulses were still there. They were much weaker, but they shouldn’t have been there at all. Ms. Tsang explained it meant either there were unexpected energy sources leaking into the carefully isolated sensors, or else the sensors were damaged and reading phantom signals – a point Evan strongly discounted.

Whatever the case, when graphed visually, each pulse looked like an energy signature that began slowly, in low frequencies, and rose in speed and frequency over the course of about one second, until it vanished. An audio representation, which Ms. Tsang was all-too-happy to play, sounded like a drumbeat that rose to a thin whistle.

De Jaager asked if the Array was still picking up the signals after its reactivation, and Ms. Tsang indicated it was. Oddly enough, they were coming more rapidly now than they were in the morning, and they had more energy.

While listening to the exchange, Clark tried to see inside the vents of the computer casing. It looked pretty standard – well, except for the obelisk. It was hard to see it through the vents, but in the center of all the computer parts was what looked like a deep black obelisk, about two feet tall and maybe six inches around. It was run through with veins of softer black where computer cables plugged in.

Clark gave de Jaager and Dempsey a directional bro-nod to tell them to take a look inside the machine while he took over questioning. He asked Ms. Tsang to tell him about Dee, and she was quite happy to do so. Olympian Advances had custom-built Dee to present data from elaborate physics experiments in a more-easily comprehensible form. Dee was a crystal-matrix quantum supercomputer. Data was stored in a crystal framework and retrieved by lasers. It was several decades ahead of state-of-the-art. In a way, Dee wasn’t just processing data; it was thinking. It was constantly updating and rewriting itself to adapt the Array to environmental factors and improve its precision and sensitivity. It was also a good thing it wasn’t connected to the internet, because if any computer could start World War III, Dee would be the one.

It all sounded like technobabble to Dempsey and Hua, but it made even less sense to Clark and de Jaager. They knew computers, and what Ms. Tsang was describing shouldn’t be possible. It just shouldn’t work. But Ms. Tsang was happy to demonstrate. She spoke into a microphone and asked Dee to explain several difficult things from engine tuning to baking a soufflé at high altitude.

The answers Dee gave were detailed and very clear, but it wasn’t enough to convince Clark. He asked if he could direct a question to Dee. Evan tensed up, and Ms. Tsang hesitated, but she was so proud to show off the computer that she allowed it. Clark’s question was interesting: Where was Dr. Klinger right now? Dee’s response sent a chill through the agents.

“Dr. Helen Klinger has decohered out of this reality.”

Right. Not dead. Not abducted by aliens. Didn’t step out for coffee. Decohered out of this reality. Pretty much any other response would have been preferable.

If Evan and Ms. Tsang had heard the response, they didn’t show it. Evan simply gestured to the door leading outside and to the Array while he hummed the same atonal notes as always.

Apologies for letting this go so long without an update. Schedules, holidays, football season, etc ...