The Cryptos Conundrum by Chase Brandon

Author:Chase Brandon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

56

CSC FORENSICS LAB. TUESDAY, 1730 HOURS

Every day since 1955, when President Eisenhower gave him the metal box at Camp David, Chalmers and his DivKay staff—believing it was discovered in the UFO wreckage—had tried to penetrate its seamless construction and discover the mystery within. Chalmers tried on the box everything he’d used on the alien egg, but nothing, including the latest laser technology, had been able to peer inside or even dent the exterior.

This morning a technician had removed the box from its lead-lined storage bin and placed it on a stainless-steel workbench. Chalmers expected today’s exploratory efforts to continue past midnight.

He and other staffers were scribbling physics formulas on a large wall-mounted chalkboard. Nearby were three televisions sets. As he worked and talked with his colleagues, Chalmers simultaneously listened to the evening network newscasts.

Extremely interested in the space program, he of course was watching everything CBS and Walter Cronkite had to say about the lunar landing and the Apollo crew’s return. ABC and NBC were following regular news issues as well. Chalmers expected NBC’s Huntley-Brinkley Report to update the U.S. troop withdrawal from Vietnam and Nixon’s new Asia policy.

Chalk scratching against the green board as he worked the differential equation, Chalmers also differentiated from among the TV channels, noting that NBC’s commercial break was using a nostalgia theme from the network’s bygone years of radio and early television. The familiar bing-bong-bing instantly took him back to Columbia University and the first televised news footage of the destruction at Pearl Harbor.

He didn’t have a chance to finish that memory, or the math formula.

* * *

Suddenly, a rumbling hum filled the laboratory. Everyone looked around as it steadily grew in intensity.

“Okay, that’s interesting,” said Chalmers. “Pete, kill the TVs and hit the tape recorder.”

“On it,” said P. J. Peterson, the senior lab technician who everyone called Pete.

In the next instant, a thin, bright stream of light flashed from the box, then returned to the same unknown location from which it had mysteriously radiated. Left behind, and suspended between the floor and ceiling, was a tiny starlike dot of spinning energy that immediately began to diffuse. A faint cloud quickly filled the room, and from within its mist appeared strange symbols—in numbers too great to count and with shapes too alien to describe. The wiggling string shadows danced to the box’s eerie vibrations.

Mesmerized like everyone else, Chalmers still knew he had to take action.

He engaged the ultraviolet MRI scanner, hoping it would capture this imagery.

“Somebody grab a camera and start snapping regular photos,” shouted Chalmers above the increasing tempo of the bass hum. In an instant, the volume exploded into an eardrum-crushing, pressure-pounding pulse that forced everyone to cup hands over their ears.

No one heard Pete’s scream as the Kodak exploded in his hand, but everyone saw the Cray computer, televisions, tape recorder, and anything electrical spew out sparks, while everything made of glass shattered into silicon dust. With bulbs blown to smithereens, the room was dark save for the odd celestial light coming from the cloud.

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