Recycling... the novel - Chapters one to eleven

Recycling, the novel Copyright 2006.
By Paul V. Montesino

The goal of the brain of the human species is to survive, which means the rest of the body survives with it; its nature not hard to figure out. It is a big drama of the specie played at the local theater of your skull. The mind, the brain’s expression, wants to be acknowledged, it wants to be loved, make an impact in its surroundings, what we call “making a difference.” Throughout recorded history, humankind has consistently applied that two and a half pound tool to reconciling its narcissistic and selfish image with the unavoidable reality and humility of death confronting it. The mind has trouble conceiving its opposite, no mind. In doing so it has “discovered”, “invented”, “concocted”, “claimed” or, at least, “accepted” to have received from a world beyond complicated and, in many cases, educated, labored and sophisticated fantasies of after-life environments where gods or other celestial beings exist that, having nothing better to do, constantly busy themselves with the trivial and irrelevant aspects of our brief mundane existences that compose what others have called the human condition. And, what condition that is!

That those fantasies have been supported by tradition has made them easier to accept without question. After all, what is wrong with a long lived belief handed down to us by those we trust and love that also feels good? It is not our position as a novelist or the goal of this book to say whether those ideas are possible or not, actually they are all speculative, your guess as good or bad as mine. Our science and our thoughts have constantly become ensnared in conflict after conflict with each other about the meaning and origin of life, until a new cold and merciless scientific discovery, as they all seem to be, dissolves the light and rationale of some of those conflicting beliefs, like dying fireflies, into obscurity, and we have to start all over.

Some of those old conflicts are still with us; perhaps it is safe to assume that they will always be. The perennial matter of evolution is one of them. Others, like the issue of “diluvialism,” the theory of the grand flood and Noah’s ark, was a serious religious companion to all “scientific” interpretations of the nature and longevity of the earth until the glacial theory showed up to spoil things for that theory.

There are still some who swear for diluvialism and the big flood these days. Perhaps they don’t do it as openly or noisily as those who, on behalf of the strength of religious beliefs that have been around for a few thousand years, still fight local and state school boards trying to suppress evolutionary ideas of a world in which thousands of species have gone forever without much notice in an evolutionary reality of hundreds of thousands or even millions of years of existence. Unfortunately, when the belief supplants reality it can become nasty. That is where the world becomes ready for our next…. Recycling.

Chapter One
The Beginning of the Crisis.
It was the late afternoon of a crispy clear California day when the silvery shape of Flight 250 from Long Beach placed itself graciously like a seagull over the runway at Oakland International Airport. The tired sun was already starting its daily reddish descent show entering retirement until tomorrow over the distant horizon, a view that in other occasions Robert Johnson might have appreciated and enjoyed from his narrow plane window. Not this time. Whatever performance the sky was putting together for him, he would not buy it. He felt depressed, dispirited, his usually optimistic outlook diminished.

His professional business life, even his normal confident and positive state of being, had taken an unexpected, unpleasant and unwelcome turn off the road for the past several weeks and he had the feeling that this sudden change would make it hard to control the unpleasant consequences of the evident new direction not only because they were negative, but also because he could not even guess or fathom their source, never mind their resolution. What was worse, he had no ne he could talk to intimately about the situation and its aftermath. He was and felt alone.

Ever since his wife had died unexpectedly of an undiagnosed heart ailment six years before, he had tried hard to get his existence reoriented, and most of the time things eventually had worked out well. He had done it not only for his benefit and survival, but also for the happiness, well being and security of his only daughter Rosalind, now a Junior attending the School of Anthropology at UCSB, the Santa Barbara branch of the University of California State College System. Thinking about his daughter now was the only light he could see in the dark of his confusion.

As the taxing plane approached the assigned airport gate to his incoming flight the aircraft had to be placed on hold for several minutes to allow for the departure of another airliner, a delay that had a feeling of eternity for Robert. He looked at his wristwatch with renewed impatience. Dr. Julius Laramie, his old time friend and point of contact at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field near Mountain View, had offered to stay after hours and wait for him that day to discuss the recent upsetting events that had suddenly plagued Robert’s life. Laramie also had preferred to meet late in the day when most of the staff and management at the center would be on their way home and the visit could go, if not unrecorded, at least not visibly noticed by others. Normally, those conditions would have embarrassed him personally and professionally, but now he would take anything that came his way if it helped to close the painful incident still troubling his mind.

Robert was very appreciative of his friend’s willingness to see him and accepted it without hesitation but did not want to impose any more than was necessary. He had the gut feeling that this generous gesture would probably be the last Doctor Laramie could do for him, although Robert continued irrationally to hope for some sort of miraculously solution to his predicament. The ride from the Airport to the Moffett site through Interstate Route 880 and then Route 101 would take some time, particularly at the rush hour. Robert asked his taxi driver to try and be as prompt as traffic would permit. He placed his battered briefcase alongside, rested his head on the back of the seat and closed and massaged his blue tired eyes trying to avoid the troubling images that kept coming to his mind.


The unfortunate flurry of disconnected incidents kept coming to mind. Several months before, in response to budgetary constraints imposed by a tough Congress on NASA as a result of the Shuttle accidents of the past few years, the Challenger in 1986, Columbia in 2003, the Agency had found it convenient to switch some of the large recurring expenditures to lines of disbursement that might be less constant, more adjustable and variable so to speak and subject to bids and tough negotiations with outsiders. It was all in the open, actually intended to be a public relations device as well, but it allowed the managers of the space program the opportunity and flexibility to spend the money only when and where it was needed as they waited for the continuation of the faltering space program and the allocations from a stingy Federal Government that was losing its patience, a feeling that was evidenced when President Barack Obama had suddenly decided to shut the window to a new moon adventure despite opposition from Cape Canaveral interests.

One such expense was related to the listening backup and rescue systems the shuttle launching requires. While it was true that the skies above the earth provided enough military and civilian satellites to keep an eye over our lives and the shuttle activities, there were areas of the globe, particularly in the expansive Pacific Ocean, where an addition of technical redundancy was an unquestionable benefit in case of emergency. There was not only a need to have a watching post on the path, planned or accidental, of the spacecrafts on the way up and down, but precaution and common sense required a safety net, a mobile landing station strategically located where Navy Seals and other rescue specialists might be able to attend to the lives of the astronauts if the need arose.

The most recent tragedy of Columbia’s crash was a good example. And, on top of it all, it made for good public relations with Congress and the rest of us. With the ever present leading assistance and moral support of his good friend and former college-dorm chum at Cal Tech Doctor Laramie and other folks at NASA who believed in the idea fervently, Robert Johnson had received a contract from the space agency to provide one such sea-based emergency station.
The forty seven-year old nautical engineer became ecstatic. He immediately went to work to deliver his side of the agreement. Several years before, in the early nineteen-nineties as Robert returned home full of dreams from his participation in the successful naval operations of the first Iraqi war, he had decided to try his hand in a familiar sea-related venture: oceanographic research. One of the boats anchored in Long Beach was a fifteen-ton former Navy electronic surveillance ship involved in the now defunct cold war that was for sale. It had been decommissioned and stripped of its classified technology yet left with enough unrestricted hardware to serve regional weather stations, private offshore oil drilling ventures or providing fiber cable underwater installation under contract with ever expanding competitive international telephone companies that needed to supplement their satellite connections with real wire.

With his own money, the resources of his well-to-do relatives and friends, and a low-interest Small Business Administration government loan, Robert had put together a financial package that allowed him the opportunity to hire some of the best unemployed ship’s former crew and start his business. But the enterprise had not been a consistent money maker, and sometimes he had trouble funding his payroll. The contract with NASA had been a godsend. It was good for business and it gave Robert additional credibility with current or potential customers. Robert did not waste any minute to get his ship off the pier for the first test trials required by the Agency. The ship would go through several dry runs, be certified by NASA for backup duty and then sit out; perhaps find some of his more mundane work when needed, until the next launch, which was expected in about five months.

Chapter Two
The crisis at sea Part I.
The rhythm of the rushing taxicab tempted Robert Johnson to fall asleep. He resisted, but the tension and anxiety of the past few days while winding down operations with his ship venture and the loss of control to the itinerary now on somebody else’s hands took the best of him. He felt drowsy, the presence of the memories of the chain of events that had brought him to Northern California mixing wildly with the reality of the hard shock absorbers and the noise of the vehicle where he was traveling now to meet his friend. He felt as though he was living in two different worlds, the present one leading to Moffett and the surreal one where all hell had broken loose… his emotions oscillating from one to the other. This was new territory for him: the engineer who believed almost religiously in a world of cause and effect suddenly could not tie the two. It was not only scary but also humbling. He had never been there before.

The eventful day that kept playing in his mind had started two weeks before in the piers of Long Beach with a light fog that extended to the horizon but was expected to lift by the middle of a breezy day. Three engineers from NASA looking as tired as they probably felt and curious about their surrounding marine environment at the same time had appeared at the long pier as promised. They had flown from the East Coast all night long and looked weary and exhausted.

All were middle aged, dressed in gray and blue jackets with a NASA logo stitched to the left of their chests, and Robert noticed with some amusement that all of them wore Bermuda shorts, probably a leftover from their warmer Florida habitat. Robert Johnson and his first mate had been impatiently expecting their scheduled arrival since day break, having spent the night before getting their ship in shape for the important upcoming visit and subsequent tests.

The technical crew members of the ship had gone time and again through the electronic hardware in the crowded vessel’s ample engineering room making sure all the gear was in order. Accompanied by an authorized air traffic controller provided on retainer from the FAA on a part time basis, they had been listening to the Los Angeles International Airport air traffic control frequency for two days and had been able to track all flights in and out of LAX, as that airport is known. Robert was satisfied with what he saw. He felt optimistic about positive about the test resultss. Nothing, he hoped, could go wrong.

“Good morning,” had said the spectacled shortest of the three visitors who seemed to be the leading NASA engineer as Robert and Jerry Mendoza, his ship mate and assistant, approached them with extended right hands. “I am Lou Fox” expressed the senior engineer. And then, turning to the others and pointing to each successively, “these guys here are Dr. Mark Lewinstein and Lt. Argibald McCain. You can call him Argie.” Lou Fox, his southern accent quite evident, smiled with a down to earth calmed expression of friendship, respect and courtesy for his hosts. He noticed several ship crew members of the Aurora II, which was the ship’s name, leaning with curiosity against the ship’s railings.

“Good morning folks, I am Robert Johnson. Welcome to Long Beach and the Aurora II. And this here is Jerry Mendoza, my right hand man and senior engineer.” They exchanged hand shakings and started the walk towards the ship’s wide plank, the imposing gray presence of the old navy boat dominating the landscape. Robert Johnson’s and his assistant Jerry Mendoza’s six-feet heights contrasted with their recently arrived visitors. Robert light skinned, with blue eyes and blond gray fluffy hair looking younger than his forty something age. Jerry Mendoza darker skinned, with big black piercing eyes, probably of Latino extraction as his last name indicated, with not much hair left on his fifty plus years balding head.

“We have some equipment sitting in our minivan that we would appreciate you folks could help us with,” said Lou Fox looking at the ship and nodding in a gesture that could have been interpreted as approval or admiration, “it is kind of hard and heavy for us to bring it on board unless we spend a lot of time.” He did not seem to be the athletic type, was perhaps a bit overweight as a matter of fact, unlike his two companions who looked a bit younger than him and appeared to have stronger muscular features.

“Sure bet”, answered Robert, “Jerry can get some of the crew to give you a hand and we will be very happy to help you carry the stuff aboard as well. You can park the van in that area over there while we are gone. We are anxious to get going as you can imagine,” he added while pointing to a parking area nearby.
An hour or so later, all the testing equipment from NASA safely tucked on board and ready to be connected to their electric outlets, the ship’s engines started to buzz.
“What is our course?” asked Lou Fox pretending ignorance. He pulled a tobacco pipe from his pocket. And then, a bit defensively: “Not to worry. I don’t smoke it. I only bite on it. It helps me keep my mind clear,” he said and laughed.

“If my understanding of the instructions from your Cape Canaveral office is correct, we are about to sail three hundred nautical miles southwest from here and then stop for the first test. I am not even sure what that test is going to be yet,” answered Robert.
“That is correct,” asserted Lou with a more authoritarian tone now. “We don’t know the details of the test either. It is supposed to be very confidential. That is part of the deal. In a real life situation we don’t know what the shuttle is going to do if there is an emergency. Planning the trip is one thing; planning an emergency is another. That is why we do the test in open waters in your own ship, not here in the pier or in computer simulations. We will find out what the test is when we open the details of the test that will be wired to you. We will see then how this beautiful babe behaves.”
“We understand,” answered Robert with a sudden slight furrow of insecurity over his forehead. “But I presume you guys want something to eat, right?” He added graciously trying to change the topic towards a more positive subject. His mind went back to his earlier concern about the test. He knew that the feeling would not go away until the trip was over.
“Yes, that would be fine and dandy,” said Lou, “we only had coffee and some juice since last night.”
“Jerry, is Tom busy?” asked Robert Johnson turning to his first shipmate.
“Yes Bob, I believe he is working on lunch as a matter of fact, but that will be for later. I can ask him to get some sandwiches, milk, coffee and juice for these folks.” Jerry Mendoza answered.
“Yes, that will do,” answered Lou approvingly patting his belly, “that certainly will do.”
“We will be sailing in a few minutes and will not get to the point of the test until later tonight or sometime early tomorrow. This ship travels fast. Is there anything you can do or want to do in the meantime?” asked Robert.
“Yes, as a matter of fact there is. We would like to tour the ship if you don’t mind. We need to know your capabilities, condition of the engine rooms, facilities,” answered Lou Fox. “We have to fill a list with a chuck full of rating items. We might as well start now before we munch breakfast and perhaps continue on our way back from the testing area if that is OK with you.”
Robert shook his head up and down approvingly. “You are the boss,” he said.
“Yes, and we will also want to determine where you plan to have standby medical facilities,” added the man who responded to the name of Dr. Lewinstein. “I have a medical background and want to make sure we know what you will need, how much of that will be coming from us, that kind of thing. We have certain standards for the astronauts and want to make sure that we provide the necessary equipment. Anything you don’t have will be shipped to you and installed by our own personnel, but I need to know how much space you will have available, particularly head room. Some of the descriptions about these old ships are often inaccurate, or better obsolete. Too many changes.”
“I understand,” said Robert trying to be a bit patronizing even though he disagreed with the statement.
“And, or course, we want to review your helipad. I saw it on the way in, but was unable to see it in much detail, was sort of hidden from my view,” added the other man, the one named Argie. “Have you used it before?”
“Actually no, the helipad was part of the ship, but it was not being used and we have added some reinforcements to its foundation based on the weight of the Navy helicopters you indicated to us in the Request for Proposal, and I believe it is sufficiently strong. We have scheduled the yellow painting you required. It will be done as soon as we return.”
“Good; we will check that out. I am sure the Navy Seals will like the color. They hate to land at night on the gray deck of a ship. Once you and I are done with preparations they will want to conduct a landing test as well.”
At that point in time, as the ship started to move to both sides, everybody became aware of its long awaited departure, a fact confirmed by three or four sharp sounds of its outside siren, a few seagulls flapping their wings and screaming in fear as they dashed away.
Chapter Three
The Crisis at Sea Part II.
Facing the increasingly choppy waters of an ocean that seemed to get impatient by the minute, the bow of the Aurora II nosed straight off shore for a while, its engine sound playing a majestic concert of power and then took a more southwesterly direction as soon as the California coast became a distant and sketchy brownish shape difficult to be detailed by those on board, busy as they were doing other mundane but more urgent things inside the ship. The persistent fog had continued to muddle the distinction between sea and sky as the ship moved on, a fact that worried those aboard the former Navy vessel, concentrating as they were on the important preparations for the critical forthcoming tests. They did not need bad weather, not today anyway.

“Weather conditions are going to be poor for a bit longer,” Jerry Mendoza announced wearily after hanging the phone connected to the bridge and looking in the direction of the NASA crew spread around the room and busily turning on and connecting the computer laptops that were supposed to help evaluate the continuous stream of data that would be coming from the detecting digital devices in the humming operations center built in the ship’s large hull midsection.
Robert Johnson had just opened the door and come into the room when he heard those worrisome comments from his number two officer. He had entered the crammed quarters where equipment, the NASA staff and two of his engineer men and women were concentrating their attention on the work at hand. He had lowered his head as he went through the threshold and came into the room a bit consciously, unnecessarily trying to avoid hitting his bushy hair with the overhead. He ignored Mendoza’s words trying to dispense with their pessimistic threat. Robert did not like bad news or even negative thoughts. The world to him was perfect unless proven otherwise, a distinctive characteristic that, unbeknownst to him, would prove invaluable to him in the weeks and months ahead.
“I have the details of the test folks,” he announced holding and shaking a few sheets of paper in his right hand, “We received a message from Moffett, not from Cape Canaveral.”
“Oh great, may I see it?” asked Lou Fox reaching anxiously for the papers in Robert’s hands.
“Here you are,” answered Robert as he handed one of the two copies of the three-page document to the senior NASA engineer. The conditions of the test were spelled out in technical language on an Internet wired instrument printed on thin graying paper. Lou read it quickly to himself. Then aloud to the rest.

The first test was supposed to take place between three hundred and fourteen hundred hours, which in regular non-military hours meant three o’clock in the morning immediately following and two o’clock of the next afternoon. The ship’s radar was supposed to track all flights in and out of LAX (Los Angeles) and San Francisco International Airport on their way to and from Australia and Honolulu. Robert’s crew and equipment, observed closely but not aided by the NASA engineers, had to record the longitude, latitude and descending or ascending altitude of the aircrafts at every hour on the half hour, the moment when they were first detected and then the moment of the last contact by radar. The flight information number was available from the FAA and its Air Traffic Control System. The information obtained by the radar was to be recorded by the computers on board the ship and then relayed to Moffet to be checked against NASA’s own database records, the source of which was probably connected with the West Coast’s air traffic control system, the military or both. The confidentiality and secrecy of the source was critical in order to avoid manipulation of the exercise by the staff of the Aurora II and was dictated also by the security concerns of a nation in state of war since September 11, 2001.

Within that period of time, and unannounced, an aircraft flying from the San Francisco Bay area by a crew from the Moffett NASA center would also approach the Aurora II. Robert crew’s role was to detect a pulsing beacon coming from that plane similar to the one built into the shuttle nose, be properly identified and distinguished and traced from amongst hundreds of other commercial and civilian aviation airplanes crowding traffic on the West Coast. If the two tests were successful, additional more complicated tests based on the evaluated results and still to be disclosed that were expected to simulate emergency conditions would follow the following day. Then, several days or weeks later, a Navy Seal emergency landing on the Aurora II helipad would follow. The next shuttle flight was scheduled for the coming summer, although unexpected technical glitches in the Florida launching pad could result in additional delays.

“That sounds like what I would have expected. No surprise to me. Are you ready?” asked Lou looking at Robert with the serious intensity of a testing professor as he placed the document on the desk in front of him crossing hands over his lap. Robert looked at Jerry Mendoza trying to convey with his impatient eyes the same question. Jerry understood what he meant and smiled.

“I guess we are as ready as we’ll ever be,” was Jerry’s confident cliché answer. The other members of the crew assented and looked at each other approvingly but did not say a word. Their eyes returned to the colorful blinking screens of their computer.
“I suppose we can take a breather to munch some dinner before the testing starts,” commented Robert trying to focus somewhere else. His moment of truth was approaching.
“Yes, that sounds OK to me,” expressed the senior NASA engineer clenching with his mouth the useless tobacco pipe, “That wonderful burrito breakfast you gave us is gone.”

Robert glanced at his wristwatch. It was still early. There was plenty of time to spare before they would start the preparations for the first test. He waved with a two finger v shaped peace sign and left the room.
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At two hundred hours, two o’clock a.m. regular time, as he walked forward from his captain quarters near the stern of the ship to the operation room in the midsection, Robert noticed with concern that the weather conditions had deteriorated substantially. It was windy, rain heavily pounding the weather deck of the Aurora II. The ship was bouncing to every imaginable side, up-down, right-left. Robert had trouble maintaining his balance. The location they had reached was very much closer to their target, so that issue was not a problem, but he became alarmed about the possibility of missing their goal if they were forced to slow down due to the worsening weather condition.

Under normal circumstances they could have avoided the force of the stubborn storm by steering somewhere else to calmer waters, but this time it was impossible to do so. They had to be at the nautical coordinates where they promised they would be. The position of the ship on the ocean was navigationally related to the positions of the flying commercial airliners they were supposed to detect, so there was no choice. And it was not that he doubted the technical capabilities of his recently installed computer equipment or the capabilities of his early Cobra style decommissioned ship either, but he did not want any uncontrollable weather related problems to affect the test they were about to embark on. His life, figuratively if not literally, depended on it. He grabbed the handle of the dog at the door and opened it. As he did, he entered into what later would become his worst nightmare.
Chapter Four
The Crisis at Sea Part III
The moment Robert entered the humming ship’s operations center he felt a renewed sense of accomplishment. All his hopes and aspirations and his carefully laid out plans were finally been realized, he thought. His staff and the three NASA engineers were busy with the pretest of countless computer-like devices tied to a dozen or so bright monitors where continuous oscilloscopic green lights and jumbled aircraft identifier message codes appeared in constant display, the reflection of their blinks shining brightly on the intense faces of the engineers. The place looked like a station from somewhere out in space.
“Welcome to NASITA…little NASA!” exclaimed Jerry Mendoza giving a thumbs up sign the moment Robert entered the room, smiling broadly from a location near one of the ports on the starboard side. It was very dark outside, and one could still see the heavy rain drops pounding mercilessly on the glass.
“Everything OK?” asked Robert.
“All is honky dory chief. We lost one of the laptops, but we had one backup unit brought from the cargo room “muy pronto,” replied Jerry, It was probably defective. No big deal.”
“You should get something to eat Jerry. I can take over for a while. I am fed and rested,” said Robert with a friendly pat on his assistant’s shoulder. “If I have to start the tests when the real McCoy begins I think I can do it.”
“Yeah, that is not a bad idea. I am not sure if the noises I am hearing are coming from my stomach or from those blips in the monitors.” Then, looking at his wrist watch; “I will probably take a short nap too. In an hour we have to be ready. Call me if I am not back within the hour.” He showed Robert the log where he was keeping track of the various tests they had been carrying on the computer and pointed to a particular line.
“You continue the monitoring here from this point on. We have been spotting irrelevant aircrafts as they descend on LAX. These guys have been doing some tests of their own, mostly checking the accuracy of what we do,” said Jerry as he got up and walked toward the door nearby leading to the toilet, “But first things first… I have to hit the head. Hasta luego.”
“I am a bit concerned about the weather,” commented Lou looking at Robert with apprehension, “We received a call from Moffett a bit ago and they don’t expect a letup.”
“Is that a problem?” asked Robert not sure of what the repercussions were.
“Well, no, it isn’t and, again, it could be….”
“What do you mean?
“…The weather could delay their flight out of the Bay Area,” Lou answered slowly, pausing with his words for more impact, “San Francisco and Oakland Airports are always busy. The fog could cause big delays at those two airports. If civilian traffic up there is put on hold, I am told that we have the lowest priority with the air traffic control system. This is no military priority like we would have in a real shuttle flight emergency situation, so folks at Moffett would have to wait.”
“Well, I guess we will do what we have to do,” was Robert’s answer flipping the pages of the log distractively and turning his head to Lou with a resigned look on his face. He did not like to think negatively. He sighed silently and shook his head.
The ship bounced suddenly.
“Oh, Oh,” reacted Argie, “What was that?”
“Argie here is no sailor. He gets seasick easily,” said Lou laughing. “I am not even sure why he lives in Florida near the water. I think he gets seasick just watching the sailboats.”
“If you need Dramamine I can get some for you from the sick bay,” was Robert’s answer. He waited for a response.
“No thanks. I already took some earlier in anticipation of this. I always do. Otherwise it would not work as you probably know.”
“All in his head,” said Lou pointing to Argie’s head with his dead tobacco pipe.
“No, all in my damn feet,” responded Argie. His laughter was nervous.
They fell silent, the boat still shaking to one side and the other more strongly than before each time.
“What time is it?” asked Lou looking at his own wristwatch. “Oh, it is almost three hundred hours uh?”
At that point, the ship shook as though someone was holding it from the mast and rotating it; two books that were leaning against one of the walls fell to the floor.
“Wow! Rock and Roll! And all in one full scoop.” Reacted Argie with a nervous laughter.
“Waves, it is probably waves,” answered Robert uneasy. “I have not experienced anything like this since we started sailing this sucker.”
“Well, I would not want to be a witness to the first,” responded Argie with a nervous tone.
Jerry Mendoza came out of the toilet facility at that point. He looked alarmed and not liking what was going on.
“Do you guys need me here?” not sure if he wanted to be, he said.
“Don’t be silly Jerry. We have enough stability on this ship for a direct hurricane hit,” answered Robert with a bit of impatience, “you go do what you were going to do.” He wasn’t totally convinced of what he was saying but left it at that.

It was at that point that all hell unexpectedly broke loose in the Aurora II. Suddenly the lights went out; the green computer screens next with a woo kind of sound. No one could see beyond their noses. The powerful engines of the Aurora II, which until that time could be heard humming and puffing in the background, suddenly stopped, leaving the shift adrift at the mercy of the waves. Robert reached blindly for the undetectable telephone on the nearby desk until he finally got hold of it.
“! Bridge!! Bridge! This is Johnson, what is going on? What the…?” He listened for a second and then, hitting it several times madly trying to get a sound, hung the phone. He reached for the cellular phone hanging from his waist belt. “There is no sound, nothing. I have to go to the bridge. They are dead, no power, no lights, ….not even my cellular phone. It is crazy.” He got up and, finding his way in the unfamiliar darkness, approached the hatchet door, opened it, and exited the operations center, leaving everyone else behind in a confused state.
Walking through the darkened corridors leading to the wide control bridge was no easy task for Robert. The ship was shaking and the only way he could maintain balance and find his way was through the limited visual memory he had of where things were supposed to be located. There was a light from a hole atop that was not of much help at that time. He hung to the door dog and entered the bridge encountering a crew of two shocked officers looking at each other and the useless controls who were as confused as the rest of the ship team was at the moment.

“What happened? Did we hit anything?” asked Robert without even thinking.
“No, we did not hit anything sir. It looks as though we have had an energy shutdown in the ship, no lights, not even the engines running. That is very strange. We have no idea where this blackout came from. Even my cellular phone is dead. I was trying to contact you without luck.”
“Yours did too? …. But the engines do not run on electricity alone,” pointed Robert.
“Yes, but everything here has some sort of electric input.”
“I can not believe we have no power everywhere. There has to be a reason, short circuit, sabotage perhaps?” commented Robert in frustration. He was looking everywhere and nowhere.
“Mr. Johnson, that does not make any sense, who and why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. There has to be a reason, some logical reason. If we don’t recover soon we will miss our target time and we will look like a bunch of idiots.” Robert was beside himself, looking in the dark for some bright spot, a face perhaps he could easily place a name on.
“You guys go up and take a look around the deck. Check everything. See if you spot something that makes sense, some electric spark, perhaps the rain has hit a cable or a wire. Do it, and do it now. We have to find whatever is happening very fast. If you find nothing go below deck and get some of the others do the same. And go to the engine room, get the electrician. He must know what stopped the engines. I can take over here.” The two guys were paralyzed staring at Robert doing nothing. “Go!” he screamed impatiently. He was almost at the point of breaking into fury. He did not recognize his own frenetic self.
The two officers left the bridge quickly to walk around the deck as directed. Since wired and wireless communications were all but useless, they had to actually walk to find the rest of the crew, some in their assigned positions, others just moving aimlessly in different parts of the ship, not knowing what to think or do and trying to keep their balances like a pair of drunken sailor on furlough.

As the clock hit the three-hundred-hours pre-arranged test time, the ship continued to drift, the compass indicating a westerly direction at a ninety degree angle with the now much distant California Coast. And the drifting would continue unabatedly until day break, a time when finally the weather started to clear. But not in the minds of the sailors of the Aurora II; whether it was the three disappointed and visibly upset NASA engineers or the rest of the frustrated crew. No one had the nerve to declare the intended plan a failure. It was evident. Some situations are obvious and don’t need definition.

It would take several hours later before the engines could be re-started. Robert, ignoring a distress message sent by the Coast Guard offering to come rescue them, instructed his crew to shift directions towards Long Beach again. As the boat entered the harbor to return to its assigned pier the long distance communications connection to Moffett was reestablished. The curt instructions to the NASA staff on board were to gather the equipment and leave. No ands, ifs or buts. This deal was dead in the water, literally and figuratively. The future did not look bleak; there was simply no future for this project.
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At about the same time, on another unexpected part of the world……
“Coquí,… coquí,… coquí.”
The big powerful and familiar sound of the tiny Puerto Rican frog national mascots going to their nests saying “hasta la vista until we meet again tonight” filled the early dawn air around the mountainous Arecibo sunny range, all other living creature sounds in the area quiet perhaps in deference to the national symbol that was taking its long daytime nap.

The five researchers, Drs. Deborah McCarthy, Debbie for short, and Juliet Rowland both from NASA, the former from Moffett in California, the latter from Cape Canaveral in Florida; James and Ernest Alexander, twin doctoral student brothers from Cornell University and local engineer Juan Mercado from the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, had alighted from their noisy Land Rover. Tired and drowsy after a long sleepless night working on an important Asteroid Observation experiment, they had descended to El Colmado, a convenience store situated near the intersection of Puerto Rico’s routes 635 and 625, the latter coming narrowly through graceful curves down from the large stellar observatory in the mountain that was constantly listening and trying to make initial contact with aliens that so far have remained either deaf, silent or indifferent. The store owner was already busy serving espresso and other sweet breakfast goodies for his early morning customers and the five familiar visitors were not only sleepy but also very hungry when they came in.
“Armando, we are mucho hungry,” said Juan Mercado loudly as they entered the crowded shop, “we need something to eat, croquettes, sandwiches, pasteles de guava… whatever you got.”
The man smiled, a golden tooth showing through his lips, and pointed to a white ceramic coffee pot that was lying above a small hot stove and they all eagerly reached for it and poured some espresso in tiny plastic cups.
“I still cannot believe that we wasted so much time trying to figure out what blew the dam computer and then find out that it came back to life on its own. It was weird.” Added Mercado as they spread in front of the counter waiting for the shop owner to come up with a tray filled with guava and coconut pastries and some white cheese slices.
“I have been working at Arecibo for a long time and every time a computer malfunctions we have to replace it or fix it, but never anything like this. Even my backups were dead. Wait till my boss finds out. He is going to blame it all on me.” Mercado added with a sense of frustration and foreboding.
“I have to go back to California,” remarked Debbie McCarthy. “I cannot waste any more time here. I am behind as it is.“
“Well too bad,” responded Mercado, “I was hoping we could complete the asteroid list before the end of the month, but when you have to go you have to go.”
“Mercado, you guys are going to have to finish it by yourselves and you also will have to tell me what is your final decision on the piece of literature you are going to quote to show your alien contact that you know how to read when you first meet him or her,” Debbie commented with a chuckle.
“Yes, I have to decide between Hamlet and Don Quijote,” he replied laughing.
“Oh, knowing you, I think it is going “To smell and not like Amber”,” she responded.
“What is that?” asked Juliet Rowland, the other woman researcher, laughing, “Can somebody let me into the joke?”
“From Don Quijote silly, from Don Quijote de La Mancha,” replied Debbie McCarthy also laughing, ”the other contender is “to be or not to be,” and you know whose that is, right?”
“Sure I do; William Shakespeare. Well, they both died the same day, didn’t they? So how are you going to explain that? No alien will buy it.”
“Well, there is more to buy than that I guess…” responded Mercado laughing.
Several minutes later, after having had breakfast, the group and their Land Rover took off via Route 635 until they got to Route 2 East on their way to San Juan. Eventually all of the researchers, with the exception of Deborah McCarthy, would return to Arecibo to continue with their asteroid research work. She left San Juan on an early flight the following day thinking that she might never want to hear about the computer incident of the previous day. She did not know how wrong she was and how soon that would come to pass.

Chapter Five.
The Visit to Moffett.
Robert awoke and opened his eyes as the memories of the Pacific Ocean storm dissolved in his mind and the images of Moffett appeared in front of them and the taxicab maneuvered to a screechy stop. He realized that his trip had lasted longer than he anticipated, paid the driver after alighting and asked him to stay for the return trip. The man assented and drove away to a visitor’s parking spot nearby, the meter still running, and then turned the radio on to fight boredom.
It did not take much time for Robert to enter the ample building’s lobby, register his name and purpose of the visit with the security guard so she could buzz upstairs and then sit down at a red leather couch to wait for Dr. Laramie. The man appeared a couple of minutes later.
“Robert!” he exclaimed, getting close to him and reaching with his big right hand, “I am glad you could make it.”
“Julius!”
Dr. Laramie was very tall and thin, porting a bicycle type moustache, his hair all white and well combed. He wore thin spectacles and was dressed Friday-casually, no tie, and short shirt and boat shoes. He displayed a big, confident, friendly smile that was contagious. You could tell that he was a very amiable person also used to being in charge.
“Since when do you call me Julius? It was always Larry, remember? I am older, but not that much” he said jokingly. “Did it take you too long to get here from Oakland? I heard there are a lot of detours on the way due to the construction of 880,” he added.
“Well, I could not tell the difference. I have not been here more than a couple of times as you know, but the ride was not too bad actually.”
“Good. It is a nice thing for me that I don’t have to drive in that direction every day. But let’s go to my office. How is your daughter?” he added trying to be personal and friendly. “It is… Rosalind, isn’t it?” he added trying to recall Robert’s daughter’s name.
“Yes, Rosalind. She is fine, still at Santa Barbara. Doing well.”
“I lectured about our space program at a symposium there a couple of years ago. I hear that is a good school.”
“Yes, she is very happy there. Doing well also. Their Anthropology Department is top class.”
They walked towards a wide hallway located next to the guard station, the uniformed woman shaking her head to Robert in another sort of formal hello as he went by. Twenty or thirty feet later they found an elevator that Laramie called by inserting in a golden narrow key hole on the marbled wall a plastic card that hung from a chain attached to his belt. The elevator light went on and the door opened immediately.
“Now this guy knows I am here,” he said sighing, “I am on record so to speak.
“Welcome Dr. Laramie,” a voice from the elevator sound system announced. They laughed.
“Well, I am glad it does not know I am with you. It may not like me,” chuckled Robert as they entered the elevator.
“Oh no Bob, it is not that bad.”
“Yes, it is that bad Julius. Actually is worse. I have no way to explain satisfactorily what happened, not even to me. It is the biggest puzzle and embarrassment of my life.” Robert sounded obviously upset.
“You have no idea, uh?” Julius Laramie shook his head. He looked at his own shoes while the elevator went up.
“Not a single clue,” answered Robert sheepishly.

The elevator stopped emitting a slight “hump” sound and Robert’s friend pointed the way out to him. They were in an ample hall full of mostly unoccupied cubicles in the center of the floor and bigger private offices on the sides, many closed for the day. “Dr. Julius Laramie,” a clear black on white sign with his name attached to the door, was in an isolated and remote corner of the floor. As they approached the office Robert could see that perhaps one or two of the cubicles at the most were being used at the time, the people concentrated in their tasks, minding their own business and ignoring Robert and Laramie.

They went into the office and Laramie closed the door. Without saying a word he pointed the palm of an open right hand to one of the two chairs around a small round conference table that sat on one side of the room. There was a thick manila folder clearly in view in the center of the table. Laramie placed his right hand index finger crossing his lips in a gesture of silence. Robert watched as his friend went to a long desk and then, opening one of the top drawers, pulled out what looked like a radio and turned the instrument on. Immediately the room was filled with the sounds of an announcer of a local radio station providing the late afternoon weather, traffic and local news.

“I want to make sure that our words get mixed,” said Laramie pointing now to his ear. He was obviously worried about listening devices. Robert moved his head up and down in assenting understanding. Laramie walked over to the other chair and pulled the folder to his side, then opened it. “I received and have read a copy of the report from Lou Fox and his crew. They were really pissed,” started Laramie, “and I mean pissed.”

“I imagine. I can understand. We had to wait several hours dead on the water with no means of communications or power,” responded Robert. “How do you think I felt? This was my baby, my dream.”
“Well, part of the problem is that this civilian participation project was a new thing. NASA was using this alternative support system to spread the work and lower the overhead in the Agency at the same time and this failure puts a damper on that program. Lou was one of the faithful, so he obviously feels bad.” Laramie added.

“Julius, I can understand all of that but I can find no scientific explanation for the situation. I think there is something I am missing and I don’t know what it is. I have gone through all the instruments in the ship with my people more than once since it happened just for the hell of it and there is nothing that was not working well before the power blackout and has not gone back to normal afterwards. This was a short, intermittent total failure as far as I know, but it was solid. Even the cellular phones were useless. It could have been sabotage, something beyond my homework, the preps and control.”
“I read the report. At least Lou concluded with your assessment. Everything was working fine until “the-you-know-what” hit the fan. And it was not only your instruments that failed, so did theirs. He attributes that to a loss of energy coming from your equipment cables that sucked it from everybody, but the problem for now is that NASA has given up on this plan. They want no part of this project in general and want no part of you either in particular. There is no time to be screwing around if you know what I mean.”
“See? There it goes.”
“Robert you cannot fault the Agency,” insisted Laramie getting up from his chair and walking back and forth around the office, “This exercise was critical. We cannot jeopardize an entire space shuttle program because one component that is not under our control is failing. We have to move on to bring that component in house and it cannot be you or anyone else. It has to be our own folks. This episode burned a lot of people up. And I think you should also move on. This problem was regrettable but fortunately no one was hurt or died. The only bruises are in the egos.”
“Julius, I agree, I really recognize the value of what you did for me before and what you are doing just by seeing me today. I clearly understand how the Agency feels, but I wanted to make sure you also knew how much I appreciate what you did for me. That is why I am here. I needed to complete this thing. And you are also absolutely right. I have to move on. We have been friends for a long time, you were my friend and I still consider you my friend” said Robert with an apologizing tone of voice, “and that friendship is not going away. We have to go back to tabula rasa. What is done is done.”

”I know, I know, and you should also know that I feel bad not only for you but also for the program itself. A few small entrepreneurs were on a waiting list on other parts of the program. There are too many members of Congress who are willing, ready and able to cut our budget and dump the shuttle series into the ocean figuratively and literally.”

“I suppose so. In any event, I only came to see you and say hello because you were generous enough to help me and see me again while I close this unfortunate chapter. And you probably need to go home anyway. I don’t want to hold you up for too long either.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I have a community meeting scheduled for tonight but that is much later. If I am delayed my wife can get it going without me, actually I hope she does. Do you want to read Lou’s report? The offer is still there.” He pointed to the papers lying on the table.
“Will it help me if I do?”
“No, I don’t think it will help you,” answered Laramie, “but it might give you some sense of completion and, in any event, there is something else that is not in the report which will make you feel better.” Placing both hands on each hip cowboy style he looked at Robert for a moment as though hesitating whether to continue or not with that line of conversation. Robert had a sudden feeling that his friend was holding something from him and was not sure whether to let it out or not. Laramie stopped his walking and looked intensely at him one more time.
“Oh, what the hell, before you go I want you to meet someone. You have to promise me that the meeting will be off the record. If anyone above me knows what I am doing it might cost me my job, but friends are friends and I know and trust you. Come on, let’s go. You won’t be disappointed.” Laramie showed Robert the way out, his tall figure decidedly towering one foot over Robert as they walked through the door.
They left Laramie’s office and walked to their right toward the opposite end of the long corridor. In an office approximately the same size as the senior NASA engineer’s they found a woman who was obviously packing her things, boxes and books all over the floor.
“Hi Jules.” She said with a friendly smile and nodding her head towards Robert.
“She always calls me Jules…,” commented Laramie. “She actually means Jewels, but that is her hidden unconscious subliminal message..”
“Bull,” she answered quickly with a laugh.
“Debbie, this is my friend Robert Johnson,” then turning to Robert, “Bob this young and vibrant woman here is Dr. Deborah McCarthy. She is a Research Specialist.”
“Correction, I was a Research Specialist Bob, a pleasure to meet you Bob.”
Robert was impressed by the slim woman. He guessed she was in her late thirties or early forties, brunette, short hair, about five feet seven, beautiful and attractive creamy blue eyes very difficult to miss in any conversation. She still showed the tan she had acquired during the few weeks she had spent in Puerto Rico attending to the Arecibo work and looked really smashing.
“The pleasure is mine,” responded Robert shaking hands with her. He could not miss the feminine expression of her eyes. And he did not fail to notice that she was barefoot, giving her an air of freedom and independence from the conventional.
“Bob is the fellow I was talking to you about this afternoon Debbie. His ship was the one that went dead in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with Lou Fox doing preparatory work for us,” added Laramie.
“Oh yes, I heard all the commotion about that. Too bad, isn’t it?” she responded. “Are you applying again for that job?” she added.
“No, that issue is dead unfortunately Debbie,” remarked Laramie interrupting that line of the conversation fast.
Debbie moved around her desk and, picking her sandals, put them on and said in a hushed voice to Robert.
“Well, that is unfortunate. Did Jules tell you what I saw in Puerto Rico?” she asked looking curiously at Robert.
“That is why we came,” responded Laramie. “I was hoping you could tell your story again.” He moved to another side of the desk.
“I thought so. I hate to have that kind of conversation here though. Walls have ears. Why don’t we go downstairs to the cafeteria? They are probably closed now, but we can have a soda or coffee from the machines and chat.” She sounded pleasantly and decidedly convincing.
“Good idea,” said Laramie, “I can use a drink of soda.” In the meantime, Robert’s ears had perked up like radar, thoughts mixing uneasily with each other in his head. He had no inkling of what the woman meant. Why all this strange conversation? He thought they were talking in some sort of secret code. Laramie knew that Robert was convinced about the futility of future possibilities and was willing to close the subject finally, but, what was the woman’s role in the entire episode? He asked himself. And knowing that she had been in another part of the globe most of the time of his anxious experience did not make it easier. He started to feel lost.

They walked to the elevators and repeated the previous security steps routine to get access. In less than thirty seconds travel time the door opened again, this time in one of the lowest floors where several vending machines and lunch counters filled the right side of a huge cafeteria. The place was empty, so all they did was to sit around one of the tables. Debbie took the floor.

“I have been working a relationship between NASA and Arecibo, the Puerto Rican telescope observatory station, for several months now. I have two doctoral degrees, one in Astronomy and another in Biology, so the Agency thought it would not be a bad idea to use my Astronomy background to see what those guys are doing there and how we can increase the amount of some of the work we have done in the past together. Everyone wants to share big expenses. As you know they are trying to identify any space signals directed toward earth by alien civilizations among other things. They are also broadcasting messages to areas of our Galaxy that might contain intelligent extra-terrestrial life. They need money like everybody else in this business, so any person with a worthwhile project, not necessarily space eavesdropping, may use the telescope if approved by their project committee, we maintain ties with them. If there is an organization with worthwhile observatory projects that organization is NASA, of course. Arecibo has the observation post and we certainly can use the space peeping.”
“Yes, I have read some of that extra-terrestrial work they do and also saw a very good Hollywood fiction movie not long ago,” interjected Robert.
“Right,” said Debbie pausing for a second to catch her breath. She unexpectedly realized that she was feeling attracted to Robert. What she did not know at the moment was that he had been feeling the same towards her for a while. It was only fleeting and she continued. “It is kind of science and fiction at the same time… but, isn’t that what life is all about?” she added with an air of mystery and excitement. Her eyes opened in a broad and bright expression of wonder.
Laramie smiled. “What Debbie is going to tell you is the reason for my bringing you to her,” he said, “and this conversation is confidential. If you mention it to anyone we, both Debbie and I, will deny it and say that you are crazy and angry because you screwed up. Agree amigo?” asked Laramie looking at him closer. Robert hesitated.
“Sure, I have to agree,” he responded Robert now barely sitting at the edge of his seat.
“Well, you had your blackout at three hundred hours or so, on April 2nd, wasn’t it?” asked Debbie.
“That is about right,” Responded Robert now more curious and listening intensely.
“In Arecibo we were several time zones away from you, which meant three hours later, or six hundred hours, six o’clock a.m. in Puerto Rico.”
“If you say so,” responded Robert deeply intrigued now, not much interested about the raw facts but dying to hear the rest of the story. He wanted the meat, not the fluff. Laramie was looking at Robert’s expression with a certain level of sympathy.
“At that time,” continued the woman, “the Arecibo observatory station detected something falling from the sky approximately three hundred miles or so, away from where you were supposed to be at the time. They thought it was a small meteorite, because the mass was not large.”
“What?” asked Robert not wanting to believe what he was being told.
“And, this is the big mystery,” added Debbie, “At that same time Arecibo lost any satellite contact with a wide swath of space in that area. In other words, they could not see or figure out what was happening from the top to the bottom in that part of the sky in the world for several minutes. One of their asteroid research computer components malfunctioned. Nada. And the people who work there swear right and left that this had never happened before.”
“My word,” exclaimed Robert. He had never realized that he had so much hair on his back that could raise in excitement. “That is quite a coincidence.”
“That does not end there,” said Debbie crossing her hands and looking at Laramie now and pausing, as though looking for his approval to continue. He moved his head in an assenting expression.
“I was working with Julie Rowland, another NASA researcher and two graduate students from Cornell. That university has been behind the Arecibo station since its inception. The electronic components we were using that short circuited came back to life on their own. That had never happened to them either. We got on the phones and called several other satellite stations in the world connected with NASA afterwards and found similar incidents. I even called a contact I have in a branch of NORAD, the North American Air Defense system, in Newfoundland, Canada. I asked him if they had experienced something similar and his response was a terse “no comment” and quickly gave me a silly excuse to hang up. That in my book meant: yes, but I cannot confirm it. I know the guy very well. He used to be my husband and that is how he always ended his conversations when he said no but actually meant yes. That was part of our problem unfortunately.” Debbie smiled with a certain air of resignation. “I could not live with that.”

“Of course, if they had not experienced the same blackout,” added Laramie, “they could have said no right away and leave it at that. With the stringent safety measure levels we experience since September 11, would you imagine what would happen if the word goes out that the air defenses systems were knocked out for even a few minutes?” added Laramie, “That incident would go all the way up to the White House with a moan and come back down with a kick on the butt. That is why we are counting on your discretion about this incident. It would not look good in the six p.m. news. It is not about your boat and your contract. It is about the prestige of our national security old buddy.””

Robert made an effort to envision the whole picture in front of him and moved back to retreat in his seat trying to straighten his thoughts and stayed silent for a brief moment, placing his left hand over his mouth in a wondering gesture, and then saying the only reasonable thing that came to his mind at that point: “But what could have happened?”
“We don’t know,” answered Debbie, “Nobody does. That is the sixty four thousand dollar question. It could have been a small meteorite that fell in the ocean. Perhaps it was loaded with some sort of unusual electric space energy or the impact of sun spots that, in combination with the bad weather that hit the area, caused an expansive negative reaction on the signals sent by the satellites. But being a small satellite did not mean it was not really big energy wise. Your ship came back to electronic life eventually without harm, so did the Arecibo station components. They had never seen anything like it. I know, I was there. So what happened to you could have been the effect of the same phenomenon, who knows? Whatever it was is buried out of sight deep within the ocean and I am sure no one is going to spend a penny or time looking for it. A lot of experts would be needed to figure that one out and no one is buying. End of story.”
“Is that why you are leaving NASA?” asked Robert trying to get further track on the chat.
“No, I am leaving NASA for personal reasons. I gave my notice before all of this happened. I have been planning to write a book about this stem-cell research controversy and need time to do it. I am sick and tired of looking at the stars constantly. Cells are closer to home, actually they are inside all of us all the time and looking for attention,” she said with a smile that completely captivated Robert’s male imagination. He liked what he saw. They spoke of a few other mundane little things, left the cafeteria and returned, Robert and Laramie to the building lobby, Debbie to her office upstairs. Before leaving she gave Robert a business card, including her cell phone number. Robert did the same for her. He could not think of a better outcome.

As soon as she disappeared into the entrails of the building Laramie made a wisecrack observation: “Attractive woman, isn’t she?” He received the reaction from Robert that he expected.
“She really is. Is she married?” he answered recognizing his feelings for the woman.
“Not since she got divorced. I believe she married still in college. She is not only pretty but also quite a personality and very smart. You have to be a very confident man not to feel threatened by her intellectual capacity. Her husband is a tough guy, a really nice guy too, but very insecure when it was about her. He could not live with that. ”
“Hmmm; quite a lady, certainly quite a lady,” said Robert.
“Robert, you have remained unmarried for too long my guy,” remarked Laramie not necessarily relating his comments to Debbie.
“Well, it is not that I have not tried, believe me. There have been a couple of women since Dolores died, but they did not work.” I am not an easy guy by any means and they have not been either.

Laramie looked in the direction where Debbie had disappeared already. This time he saw connecting dots flying between Robert and Debbie.
“I said that you have to be very confident not to feel threatened by her intellectual capacity but that did not mean you Robert. You certainly can handle it.”
And with those words the two friends shook hands and departed, Robert signing on the visitors log before heading out looking for his cab driver. He found him asleep at the wheel, the radio still blaring some salsa music, but the meter certainly not asleep.
“Oh crap,” said Robert looking at the fare. A minute later he was on his way back to
Oakland International Airport. That was the last time he would see or hear anything about Moffett or NASA for that matter. But things did not stop there, on the contrary.


Chapter Six
The Accident that opened Pandora’s Box.
Water, as we know, has always been a critical and important ingredient of our existence either because of what we are or where we are. For one thing, it makes up a large percentage of our bodies; babies are said by scientists to have the most, at about 78%. In adult men, about 60% of their bodies are water and in women about 55%. The human brain is 80% water. So it is safe to say that without water we cannot survive for long. Dehydration, drying out, is a real threat to survival and so is a long distance opposite relative, the “yang” of the “ying”, hypothermia, where we “freeze to death.”

Water has also been important in our daily living and our moving ability. About 70% of the Earth is covered with water, and 97% of that is part of the salty oceans, not drinkable at all. Only a small portion of the earth's water is fresh. This includes such things as rivers, lakes and flowing or tapped wells deep in the ground. Freshwater is needed for drinking, farming, and washing. There is even water in the form of ice at the poles. Should those so-called “caps” melt as many alarmed environmentalists predict, some of the earth coastal areas would disappear as a result of a twenty or twenty five feet high flood. It happened before; it can happen again. Those who warn us of global warming are betting that it will. Of course, if they were to win we would all be losers, wouldn’t we? So why blame the messengers of gloom and bless the gamblers who bet our destinies instead?

Without water, life as we know it would not exist. Not many rivers flow into the Pacific Ocean where Robert’s Aurora II found itself stalled, since it is bordered by impressive mountains and cliffs hard to climb by the force of gravity alone. As it is a fact well documented, many large rivers flow into the Atlantic Ocean, where shores are milder, carrying sediment from the land. Whether it is the glaciers which dominated the earth for millions of years and made the planet difficult to populate until they started to melt or the oceans that have affected how we move and where we go from here to there, water has always been part of our consciousness, our migrations and our culture. First it was sail ships that crossed the oceans powered by the unreliable and sometimes treacherous winds, later by steam and diesel engines; now airplanes fly at thousands of feet over the same oceans trying to reach where we want to go without getting our feet wet. We take the availability of water for granted and cannot conceive ever running out.

Water has always been an important part of religious ceremonies as well. It seems that its cleansing nature has had for the initiates the magic value of redemption. And for those who lived in the dry deserts it is not surprising that being immersed in water can be a blessing of sorts. But we have gone much farther. For ages, religions have speculated on mythologies of deluge stories and many scientists of the early second millennium of our Christian calendar based most if not all of their scientific archeological explanations on the effect caused by the famous “big flood;” yes, the same that carried Noah’s Ark to the Ararat mountaintop that we are still trying to locate to prove a point that has only sacred value to a very small tradition path of a few thousand years but meaningless to the rest of the world. And the same place where human selfishness was later made responsible for creating our different languages that have kept us from communicating fully. No reasonable astronomer or anthropologist of the middle of the second millennium would dare to cross the philosophical and moral dogmatic barrier between land and water without attributing to the big flood the source of everything that went on in this planet. It would have gone against the faith of the times that controlled Western thought as sacrilege and the security of their lives as well. The Inquisition was no joke; it was serious business. And not every martyr was sacrificed by the Romans in the Coliseum; we burned some ourselves in grotesque cookouts.

Humans are often seeing crowding the shores of lakes and oceans on warm and not so warm days, walking semi-nude in and out of the water, playing, swimming, surfing and boating. For ages we have seemed to be hypnotically attracted to the water as though it is a long lost home where we want to go back now and again. So it would not be unusual to see a person getting in or out of the water at any part of the world. It would be odd, although not necessarily irrational either, to see a man walking out of the ocean at one time or another of the night.

It might seem a bit more peculiar to see two men instead, totally nude, walking out from the waters, particularly if those two men seemed to be identical twins. On April 4th, two nights to the minute after the Aurora II became paralyzed and aimless several hundred nautical miles away from the California coast, the wet images of two heavily breathing naked young men emerged from the wavy waters hitting the shores surrounding the Pacific Coast Highway near “Big Sur.”

It was dark and noisily windy. One could hear the sound of the waves getting angry as the sky became less friendly and the rain began to pound the seashore with merciless strength. The two men ran towards the cliffs surrounding that section of Highway 1, the road that begins at San Juan Capistrano and ends much north as it merges with Highway 101 at Leggett. It took them some effort to climb the cliffs and then, on a hunch, decided to start to walk north along the sinuous road.

Not far from where they were, also going north, towards the quaint city of Morro Bay, an impatient and angry tow truck operator had finished lifting and securing a disabled small minivan that had lost its rotor. The young couple who had impatiently waited for the truck to arrive after using their cellular phones desperately, climbed on the passenger truck’s side with a sigh of relief. Then the engine roared and the trio started to move. No one spoke a word; they weren’t in the mood. Their clothes were wet and sticky, their bodies cold.

The road was dark and treacherous. The three felt secure on the knowledge that traveling north they did not have to confront the perilous dark abyss that engulfed the coast around its sinuous shape on the other side of the road. It was slow when they were going uphill but then, going down the slippery road, the truck and its load made it faster, forcing the driver to hold tightly unto the wheel while chewing on a wasted wet cigar that only his owner knew what it could taste like. They traveled very close to the side of the road, several tall low tree branches hitting the top of the load on occasion.

It was at one sudden and hidden blind turn of the road that, out of the dark, the clear masculine shapes of two naked human figures appeared in front of the truck, illuminated by its bright front lights. One of the men reacted quickly and jumped out of the way and into the darkness of the bushes, but the other one became hypnotically paralyzed in front of the truck, his eyes in a surprised expression of panic and fear clearly visible. The driver of the truck swore loudly: “Damn!” Afraid of applying the brakes and risking running perilously close to the other side of the narrow road with his load, he could not stop on time to avoid hitting the man with all the force that the truck speed and the gravity of the downward road provided. The man was hit with such force that his body was catapulted above and beyond the dark cliff falling down over the rocks near the ocean below in a certain tragic death. Several yards away, its passengers still hit with the shock of the dreadful accident, the truck came to a screeching and panicky halt that was followed by a common moan of relief.

“I thought the weight of the van was going to push us to the ocean as well,” said the driver as he spat whatever wet cigar he had still in his mouth. His two passengers looked at each other wishing this nightmare would end soon.
“But what happened to the other guy?” asked the woman.
“What other guy?” answered her companion.
“A guy, I saw another guy. He jumped out of the way, but where did he go? Where is he? How come he did not stay behind to help?”
“Come on lady, I didn’t see no guy,” added the upset driver emphasizing the double negative.
“Oh, I definitely saw a man. He jumped out of the way just in time. Perhaps I saw it because I was on the passenger window side, but I could swear I saw another guy.”
“Well, other guy or no other guy, we have to call the police from here. May I borrow your cell phone?”
“Sure.” She handed the cellular phone to the truck driver and, looking suspiciously into the dark, crossed her arms. The driver dialed 911.
Chapter Seven
Pandora’s Box Open.
It took several additional unpleasnt stormy hours of the night after the ghastly running accident before the officers of the Morro Bay police department could locate, never mind get, the badly crushed lifeless body of the male accident victim lying several feet below the cliff amongst the grayish rocks near the “less-than-Pacific” ocean. First, they had to view, photograph and evaluate accurately on the actual landing spot the fatal wounds suffered by the dead man and then they needed the assistance of a police emergency helicopter to lift it out of the inaccessible area very carefully to avoid further damage to the body. The corpse would be transported in an ambulance to the San Luis Obispo County Coroner’s Office for an autopsy and identification, although it was hard to imagine how a naked body could provide the latter clue until dental records could be located and checked further. For now he was a John Doe killed accidentally, nothing more, an evaluation that would not change with the passage of time.
“And you insist that there was another man, Miss….?” was asking the patient officer who seemed to be in charge of the investigation. The truck had not been allowed to continue much to the chagrin of his owner, and they were standing by the side of the road away from the curiosity of an early morning Pacific Coast Highway traffic traveling slowly both ways.
“LaSalle, Kitty LaSalle. And this is my husband Joshua. Yes, I saw another man jumping out of the way.”
“I did not see anyone,” said the husband with a tinge of irritation in his voice, “may be it was his reflection on the window glass.”
“Neither did me,” added the driver in his usual Southern twang raising his right hand in a swearing gesture trying impatiently and unsuccessfully to shorten the process.
“How couldn’t you Josh? Were you asleep? He was closer to the trees and looked at the truck terrified before he jumped into the bushes. He did not have a chance to even warn his buddy,” responded with anger the young woman as she crossed her arms tightly. She sounded convinced. “And I am sure it was no glass reflection.”
“Well, it is two against one, but we will keep looking until we are convinced. I have to warn my officers and the locals to be on the lookout for another a..., naked guy? Just if what you say is correct.” The officer did not sound very convinced as he wrote down the young woman’s words. He was wondering whether these folks had been drinking. It was hard to tell now after so many hours. Besides, he had not found any evidence of alcohol in their breaths or the vehicles.
“Yes, naked. And I know I am right. He was as naked as the dead man.” Answered the young woman upset that she was being patronized.
“Oh Jes..,” said the driver, holding his tongue to avoid the profanity. “You mean to tell us that there were two weirdoes there? I thought I had seen everything in California. I am moving back to North Carolina. At least we are normal there.”
The young woman did not find his comments particularly funny and moved away without uttering another word.

A couple of hours later the tow-truck with its load was allowed to continue to drive towards Morro Bay where further routine mechanical tests were going to be conducted on its brakes and engine and when additional conflictive statements would be obtained and recorded in more detail from the witnesses and be eventually sorted out by the investigators. As they left, looking around the still wet vegetation surrounding the scene, they failed to look up, way up, higher up on the hidden green top of one of the huge trees nearby.
Hunkered and crouched amongst the thick branches it was hard to distinguish the dark figure of a naked man watching with curiosity, intensity and apprehension the activities of the police and witnesses below, his face wet either with rain drops or tears; it would be hard to tell.. Interestingly enough, like a camouflaging chameleon, the color and texture of his skin had turned now to almost the same of the leaves surrounding him, making his figure practically undetectable; yet, his dead ringer companion still lying down in the ambulance had retained the same colorless features he showed the moment when he was hit and killed by the truck.
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Joe Alvarado, all of his two hundred and fifty pounds, one of the San Luis Obispo County medical examiners, had been delayed for several hours attending a symposium in Los Angeles and was not in a very good mood when he returned to the morgue that afternoon and had to suit up to conduct an autopsy. His boss was sick with the flu and had asked him to conduct what looked like a routine automobile accident perhaps involving drugs. Little did he expect that this case would be other than your run of the mill autopsy. He massaged his left thigh, trying to alleviate the recurring sciatic pain that had been bothering him off and on for the past day or so. “I have to lose some weight,” he thought.

As soon as he saw the damaged cadaver on the metal table and read the lengthy police report related to the case, he swore to himself: “Jerk! Naked and running in the middle of the night on Highway One; I bet I am going to find drugs and alcohol in your brain.” He was alone, the assistants, with the exception of one attendant who would help him move the body when needed, gone home now. He did not want an accident trauma case to delay the other work he was supposed to complete the following day. These cases were usually cut and dry as far as he was concerned, and the sooner he got over them the better. He put on rubber gloves and reached for the microphone controls to record the details of the autopsy as he proceeded and approached the body to start cutting the man’s cranium.

“Strange,” he said as soon as he saw the man’s face, “he has no eyelashes, zilch. That is unusual.” And then, almost as quickly, “Holy shit!” he exclaimed moving away and looking around instinctively. He had opened the skull to evaluate the brain. It was intact. Hi eyes opened widely. He could not believe what he was seeing. The man had no left and right brain separation, but a complex mass of neurons attached from one side to the other like connected wires, meaning that he lacked the specific specialization that those two parts of the cerebellum have given us after thousands, perhaps even millions of all these years of evolution. The two brains cooperated with each other in helping the person see and visualize what to do and tell how to do it. Joe looked for his assistant trying to spot him. He could see through the glass wall that the man was sitting in the hall reading a magazine. He had not heard his words.
This dead fellow was unusual to say the least; something new in a professional occupation that had no variety other than the circumstances of each case, but all within the human condition. The autopsy table was a constant stage of human sadness, human tragedy and, in many occasions, human folly, and Joe had seen it all, but this was a new play altogether.
“This can’t be. A man with a single brain,” he said to himself in a whisper covering the microphone to avoid recording his words. “He has to be sick,” he thought. “Perhaps there was some type of mental retardation evidenced by his sudden run in front of the tow truck. Has to be why he was hit,” He paused as he speculated, “But why? How? What? And naked?” he thought. “Is disease the reason?” he mumbled shaking his head.

He did not know what condition could have led to such a physical uncharacteristic nature, but the dead man’s brain certainly was unique. And it did not help matters when Alvarado, now totally dumbfounded, cut the left temple and a miniature crushed piece of what looked like a gooey shaped electronic chip fell off to the table top.
“What the…?”
He picked up the yellowy needle-shaped object. It dissolved into crystals as he touched it almost instantly. It was hard to determine the physical make-up of the device, particularly after it was almost gone and it would have come as a great shock to Alvarado if someone had told him that the gadget was not manufactured, but was a biologically created substance that had grown in the man’s brain since birth to help him communicate.

“Some sort of hearing aid I suppose. This guy must be deaf,” he said in a loud voice to make sure he recorded the comment. ”He was not sure why he had made the comment. “Reason enough not to hear the approaching truck that killed him,” he thought. Alvarado moved away from the table and shut off the recorder. He sat down on a three leg stool to ponder his next steps. He had been in this business for a couple of decades now and never had seen a human brain with such a different set of connections. It was not supposed to look like that. He decided to defer judgment and continue, going to the chest now. He got up and moved towards the body again. This would startle and shock him some more.

At first, as he cut open the chest cavity, all organs seemed normal for a young man his approximate age, strong lungs on sides, and the heart big and healthy; the bronchial tubes were intact. He certainly was not a smoker. But then he noticed that the tubes had an unusual shape, as though they had branches going backwards an upwards, not just sideways, something he originally thought was related to the shock of the accident until….
“What? What is this?... gills? This man has gills?” He exclaimed as he lifted the bronchial tubes with a couple of long scissors.
The simple autopsy he had anticipated was now becoming a huge puzzle. This case was no routine; it was medical history in the making. He then realized that he had started to perspire heavily. The air conditioned temperature in the room was cold, actually freezing, but he was sweating from fear, of the unknown, of the unexpected. His white curly hair was wet and he touched it with his thick right hand, his rim eyeglasses starting to slide off his watery nose.

He looked outside again trying to make sure that the attendant was still there. As a trained scientist, he had read that the human fetus, in its very early stages, had on occasion shown certain characteristics of an incipient system of gills that eventually disappeared. Evolutionary biologists attribute such brief and temporary phase of the development of the human embryo as evidence that some time in our long gone past we had been water creatures. It was the fish in all of us so to speak, very controversial for the uninitiated even so for those who had read or heard about it. Of course, it was impossible to determine how many still go through that embryonic episode of the gills because all of us who are alive are allowed to grow to full term and be born without interruption at what must be a very brief and rare undetectable biological moment. But this man was no embryo. Here was a fully developed organism, all six feet tall of it. His gills were not huge or dominant by any means, but the watery substance that came from them when they were cut open showed that they were functional and not atrophied when he died. Alvarado was surprised but not shocked. In his years at the autopsy table he had seen everything: Individuals with six or seven fingers; men with several sets of nipples.

Was there any relationship between the shape of his brain and this unheard of condition? Was one the effect of the other? If so, which one? Was this a sick person? Medical experts speculated that the development of Aids in humans had been an unfortunate evolutionary cross from monkeys to humans at some point in time. Were we witnessing a new crossover disease between species like Aids was supposed to have been when it started? Was this creature a “chimera”? And the tiny electronic bio device implanted in the man’s left ear? Was he really deaf or had some human cloning experiment gone awry?

He realized that the crushed electronic looking pieces had to be reported. If the person or persons responsible for such technology heard of the accident that would be the first thing they would want to recover. It was the smoking gun so to speak. He considered removing the destroyed device altogether and obscure the true nature of the results of the autopsy. To his surprise, by then the piece had evolved into a reduced and colorless biological liquid impossible to describe and detect in the future. It was not there anymore, so he had to forget about its presence or risk looking foolish or incompetent.

The situation bothered him. He was tired and needed additional time to think. He probably could make up a temporary opinion similar to the thousands of trauma death automobile accident reports they had on record in the coroner’s office enough to help him consider other alternatives. After all, this was no crime by any means, it was an unfortunate accident that did not show any other characteristics. The only danger would be if later on someone tried to conduct another autopsy on this guy’s body and got to see the gills. It was not the first time that his boss went back to spot check some autopsy results before the findings and the bodies were released. That certainly would open a Pandora’s Box. If this man was an escaped guinea pig from a lab, someone must certainly be looking for him by now. “But, who?” he thought.

Suddenly, his wild investigator imagination took over; he envisioned lab-created human sea creatures that could be trained by the military to penetrate enemy harbors in case of war. “This has to be a U.S. military project,” he reasoned. It did not smell like a terrorist plot to him. Those crazies operated with unsophisticated “boom-boom” events. This case was more refined. “Had the Pentagon scientists finally lost their marbles? Was this some Dr. Strangelove child?”

He felt a shivering of his spine. For months now he had considered the ethical and practical risks of stem-cell research and cloning technology falling in the wrong hands. He had even written an article on the subject for his local church newspaper. He suddenly welcomed and appreciated the fact that his boss had remained home to care for a bad case of the flu. This was his baby now and he would not want it any other way. He was at the forefront of… what? He shook his big head. Suddenly he felt a cold sensation in her stomach. If someone had asked him what that feeling was he could have identified it very easily: fear.
He had to look into the young man’s bowels before quitting. There, at the point where the small and large intestine join he was supposed to find the appendix. He did not find any. Not because it had been surgically removed. It was easy to see, with his trained scientific eye, that the worm-shaped attachment had never been there in the first place. At this point, his surprise list was exhausted and he concluded that he could finally complete his work. If he had given it a bit of additional thought he would have come to the conclusion that the man had never consumed beef and was a full-fledged vegetarian, a condition he had inherited, not started after birth.

As he reattached carefully the skin he had just cut, his mind moved to the tests he was required to do next. He would retain some skin and blood specimens for toxicological examination. The results, coming in three weeks or so, would tell them whether there had been alcohol or other drug substances that could explain the victim’s fatal behavior. That would also give him the additional time he wanted. After a few minutes of cutting and slicing tissue and drawing some dry blood, he placed and labeled the specimens in several small shipping containers, sealed and put them in a refrigerated compartment. He covered the body as well as he could.

“Jimmy, we have to put this poor fellow away.” he yelled, calling for the attendant. The man came in and together they placed the corpse in one of the large freezer storage drawers attached to the wall. Joe Alvarado then returned to his office. He promised to talk to his boss about this fellow as soon as he could, but not soon enough. He was still tired and needed time to put all the facts together. That would be the last time he would place his eyes on the dead man, but he did not know it at the time.


Chapter Eight
The noose gets tighter.

Robert Johnson got up from one of the cabin bunks. Yawning, he massaged his eyes, approached one of the ports and opened the curtains. It was very bright outside and he realized that it was also very late the strength of the daylight hitting his eyesight at full force. Boats and ships of all sizes were going about their marine business or pleasure routines all over the harbor. He had overslept, he realized. The night before he had stayed talking animatedly with his daughter Rosalind until very late when she and a couple of her college friends, all excited for being in a former warship finally went to bed elsewhere in the vessel and had left at the crack of dawn.

He had been living on the Aurora II for several weeks now. His sea business was paralyzed, actually gone down the drain. The losses suffered on the recent aborted attempt to get the license from NASA to take part in the shuttle mission and the impact of loss in credibility that followed were hard to sustain for business, at least for the time being. He had not only lost an opportunity to make some decent money, but his failure ruined the idea for others as well and that more than anything else bothered him.
The recent trip to Moffett had been cathartic. The issue was finally behind him and the only leftover of the experience that stayed with him was to have met Debbie McCarthy and that was a definitive plus, one that he intended to pursue.

He had to let his fulltime crew go, a person to person episode that was still hurting. His bank had given him a break in rate and terms until his business could recover, but no bank wanted to take the Aurora II and its hunger for fuel run it, so he had no choice but to keep going. Giving his keys to the bank was not an option, A couple of his closest and most loyal guys, Jerry Mendoza included, were still coming around once in a while to visit and have a beer or two and remind him that they were available, but they had to take care of themselves first and could not afford to lose any income. Robert felt particularly responsible for their fate, but other than providing good references when asked he could not do anything else.

The ship was moored on a more distant pier in Long Beach. He had been fortunate enough to rent out his expensive home to get some income and avoid losing it, but the rest of his disposable income related needs were more difficult to satisfy. The cost of diesel fuel along for the ship would have eaten his meager resources if he ever dared to sail anywhere, so he waited and waited for oceanographic work that might save the day but so far no dice.

What bothered him these days was also the emptiness and silence of the ship. There were no voices, questions or commands that gave the vessel a feeling of life. He felt that the communion between the ocean and a boat could only be measured when people were inside and going about their shores.
He learned to compare the similarity with the old philosophical riddle propounded by the question: “If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, is there sound?” To him an empty boat was detached from the ocean where it floated unless there were human sailors on board, and he felt incapable of filling that void himself. Actually he felt like he did not belong in the space where he moved day in and day out; like some foreign invader stepping into unwanted territory and violating it.

He was a man of action by nature and training and was not used to philosophical musings or platitudes. When things had to be done he did them without looking back or regrets. As far as he was concerned, a day lived was a day gone. But there was a new feeling he had experienced recently more than once, his emotions traveling back and forth between the action man and an unfamiliar man of regret. He did not like it one bit. It made the ground he was standing on insecure, shifting. He considered the recent actions and events in which he had participated and only one of them remained firmly on his mind now and again like a place of certainty he would not mind revisiting soon: meeting Debbie. Somehow her sudden appearance in his life had shown to be the only star to shine in the dark night of this predicament. It really felt good. He had tried to contact her a couple of times but had been unsuccessful.

He went to the kitchen and after making and drinking some coffee went outside. The day was clear and fresh. There was not much wind and the air was pleasant to breathe. Robert touched his own jaw and felt on his hand the sting of a three day old beard. He approached the port side of the ship and it was then that he spotted a familiar but unrecognized figure of a tall and thin middle aged man approaching the Aurora II. He was holding a newspaper in his hand and, as soon as he saw Robert, he shook it in the air smiling. At first Robert did not make out the man clearly and then: “Oh, it is Raymond,” said Robert to himself as soon as he realized who the man was. He waved his hand as well. “What the hell is that guy doing here?” he thought, “I don’t think I need this, not now,..” he concluded.

He did not have any job for him if that is what he wanted. Raymond had been one of his two ship cooks for the past several months. The man was a recovered alcoholic and Robert, on a strong recommendation from Jerry Mendoza, had given him a job opportunity. He had not been disappointed. Raymond was a good cook, worked hard and seemed to have stayed away from liquor as far as he knew.
“Hello Mr. Johnson,” yelled Raymond from the bottom of the plank and hesitating to board the ship without permission, “can I come up to see you sir?” He waited for an answer.
“Sure, come on up.” answered Robert. He guessed that Raymond was going to ask him for his old job back, some money perhaps. No on both counts, he said to himself. He took a gulp from his coffee noticing that it was not only getting cold but also bitter.
Raymond, agile and anxious, approached the plank stairway and walked up to where Robert was standing near the entrance. He shook the hand of his old boss with respect and jumped inside.
“How have you been Raymond? You look good,” commented Robert smiling and doing his best to sound friendly, “come on in.”
“You too Mr. Johnson, you too, you always look good and in good shape. I hope you don’t mind my coming here unannounced like this.” He sounded apologetic.
“No, not at all; I have a couple of hours before some folks who are thinking about using the ship for underwater cable work come in, but I can see you for a bit.” Suddenly Robert was not sure if he should have mentioned that additional fact before it became a reality.
“Good, sir. I really wanted to see you. I have a great opinion about your smarts and I am really very grateful about you and Mr. Mendoza giving me a chance to work with this baby.” Raymond rolled his eyes around and surveyed the ship eyeing it with pride.
“Are you working?” asked Robert afraid of the answer.
“Well, not really. I am doing a few little things here and there, but I am always hoping you will get me back when you can. I liked it here. I liked everyone.”
“Well, I can’t promise. If this new deal works out, perhaps both you and Jerry and a few others can be back. Do you need any money now?” asked Robert thinking that perhaps money was the reason for Raymond’s visit. He was hoping that was not the motive.
“Oh, of course, one always needs money, but that is not why I am here sir.” Raymond looked a bit sheepish and shook his head.
“It isn’t?” asked Robert curiously. He did not expect or really needed a social visit from Raymond. He was not in the mood. Besides, beyond the formal salutations of daily work on the ship there was little in common between both of them that could develop into a long and meaningful conversation. Robert did not recall having ever discussed anything of substance with Raymond, not even a food recipe.
“No. Actually for quite a while I have been asking myself whether I should talk to you or not, but a couple of things happened recently and I said to myself: Raymond, you ought to talk to Mr. Johnson”
“A couple of things… What things?” Asked Robert now getting interested.
“Could we sit down somewhere sir?”
“Sure; sure. Oh, I am sorry; I should have asked you to come in and sit down. Better, let’s go down to the kitchen. I have some fresh coffee there. It is not as good as yours,” he added laughing, “I have been living here for several weeks now you know….”
“Really Mr. Johnson?” said Raymond with a big smile as both men walked towards the entrance to the kitchen and walked the stairs to go below, “actually, I think I would not mind living here myself. It is a great ship.”

Robert pulled a cup for Raymond and one for himself and placed them on the table. “You pour. You know what you want. It is probably getting cold now but it is good enough if you warm it up. There is cream and sugar on that counter. If you want some cookies there are some over there too I think.” Raymond poured himself a cup of black coffee and said: “No, no cream or sugar for me thanks. I will go for one cookie though.”
They sat and for a moment there was absolute and embarrassing silence.
“Well..?” said Robert trying impatiently to move things forward.
Raymond swallowed some of the coffee and then swallowed emptiness as though trying to get courage for what he was about to say next. He looked around the room looking for some kind of protective shield. He was not usually open with others, actually was shy, one of the reasons why alcohol had opened social doors for him in the past.
“Do you remember the night of the big storm out there in the ocean?”
Robert looked at him with perplexity. That was a memory he could never forget, so the question hit a nerve. Robert became a bit upset that the subject he was trying to bury in the past had surfaced again. He wondered why Raymond had to bring it up.
“Do I? Of course I do. I will remember that night for a very long time. But what about that night?” He suddenly had the strange feeling that he was not going to like what his former cook was about to say.

“Well, something strange happened that night that still bothers me sir, and I said to myself: Raymond, you cannot keep that information from Mr. Johnson any longer. It ain’t fair.”
“Something strange happened?” echoed Robert with curiosity. “What information are you talking about?” Robert felt the hair on his neck rising and the warmth of blood to his face as he started to become slightly agitated.
“Yes something odd... When you ordered the crew to search the entire ship for any kind of electrical problem I decided to go to the deck at the stern of the ship. I went back there in the dark with a flash light not even knowing what the heck I was looking for. I don’t think anyone knew.”
“The stern… uh? What for? There was nothing electrical in the stern that I recall, just rolled cables on the deck or connected to the anchor if I recall…”
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess I wanted to cover every area. I remember that you were concerned that perhaps there was a loose electric cable somewhere.”
“Yes, I recall. So what happened?” Robert was now getting impatient. He crossed his hands attentively and inclined his wide body forward as he looked at Raymond.
“Well, this is the strangest thing. I heard a beating, flapping noise coming from below, where the anchor was tied, as though it was hitting the ship. I walked to the rear and then looked down. For a moment I thought I had seen someone there.”
“I beg your pardon… you said someone?”
“Yes. I then grabbed my flashlight and pointed its beam to the anchor. I could have sworn that there were two guys sitting on the anchor.”
“Two guys sitting on the anchor… Two guys sitting on the anchor? Are you crazy Raymond? And how come you said nothing at the time?” Robert could not believe his ears.
“Well, Mr. Johnson, don’t forget, it was dark and the anchor is really way below. The ship was bouncing badly and I could hardly hold my balance. The minute what looked like two guys saw me they jumped into the water and disappeared… gonzo.”

“Raymond, Raymond! Were you drinking that night again? Have you been drinking now?” Robert sounded really angry. He hit the table with his fist. His eyes were wild. His thick eyebrows moving forward towards Raymond who was afraid his boss was going to hit him.
“No sir, I was not, I swear. But the moment those two jumped and got lost into the ocean I was not sure anymore of what I had seen and I said to myself that Mr. Mendoza and you would probably accuse me of the same thing you are accusing me now. I got scared, I swear. I did not want to lose my job. Then I tried to think straight. Am I right? Besides, I said to myself, am I seeing visions? How can there be two guys and, get this, two naked guys, sitting on the anchor.
“Naked?”
“Yes siree, naked.”
“You mean…”
“No, I don’t mean “nothing.” Just for a moment my flashlight illuminated their surprised faces when they looked at me, and get this, they were identical. These guys were twins Mr. Johnson. They had to be brothers, one the spitting image of the other. And as soon as I saw them they jumped into the water and were gone, nada.”

Robert got up and walked away from the table, his hands inside the back pockets of his jeans. He then turned around and looked closely at Raymond face to face, almost hitting his nostrils, feeling the smell of his morning bad breath.
“I don’t believe you. I think you saw something else, a couple of dolphins perhaps, fish, sharks, who the hell knows? Or perhaps you were really drinking again and did not tell Jerry eh? What you are saying is nuts, absolute bullshit. Two guys, sitting on the anchor of a ship in the middle of nowhere on the ocean and in a stormy night to boot, naked and jumping into the water so many miles, how many? Three hundred miles, or more away from shore too? How could they get there? Do you think I can buy that baloney?”

Raymond shook his head agreeing. “That is correct Mr. Johnson. I know it is hard to even imagine it. That is why I could not say a word and didn’t. We were several miles from shore. If I had opened my mouth then you would have accused me of the same thing you are saying now, that I had been drinking, but that is far from being the truth. Besides, they dove into the water, they did not fall. They did it without thinking. Those guys could not have survived the cold waters and make it. I mean, that is what I said to myself until I saw this newspaper.”
“What newspaper?” Asked Robert wondering why Raymond was always framing his dialogues as though he was talking to himself and not to others. He wondered if he suffered from some sort of echolalia and needed to hear the repetition of his own words to believe what he was saying.
“This.” Raymond then produced the newspaper he had been carrying around with him and had been all but ignored until now. It was a copy of “The Sentinel,” a San Luis Obispo weekly. “You should read this story,” he said with a warning look, his expression becoming less tense. “You can call me anything you want after this Mr. Johnson, but it proves my point.”
He opened the wrinkled paper, unfolded it and placed it slowly on the table. Right on the front page there was a two column article detailing the recent accidental traffic death of a young man near Morro Bay. Robert took the paper and read the story quickly. He noticed that the dead man had been described as naked when killed by the tow truck. It also mentioned that one of the witnesses, a woman, had indicated that she had seen two, not one, naked men on the road when the accident took place. The other man, according to the police, had never been located and there was even doubt that such a man existed.

The article started on page one and continued on page six. At the end of that page there was a police artist’s rendition of the face of the victim, a reconstruction that had to be made from what was left of his disfigured face and which the authorities hoped would help identify the victim. Dental records of the man, still in circulation, had produced no clues.
“That was the same face I saw on those two guys Mr. Johnson. It was only for a couple of seconds, but that was the face, I remember it,” added Raymond with a low voice that was almost a whisper. He looked suspiciously around and at Robert the way a child looks at his school teacher when he is expecting to be punished.
“I can’t believe any of it. You are telling me that those two guys had hung to our anchor in the middle of the storm rather than ask for help and then decided to swim all the way from where we were and made it to Morro Bay on their own? What were they, supermen illegal immigrants? That is impossible! I don’t buy it. They would have needed a boat and, as far as I can remember there was no boat anywhere near us. We even had to wait for the Coast Guard, remember? Hypothermia alone would have killed them…” Robert was getting angry again.
“So I said to myself at the time, and decided to forget it, until last night.”
“Last night, what happened last night?” Robert was now losing control of the facts on the conversation. It was Raymond’s agenda, not his.
“The radio news... According to the news, the San Luis Obispo Medical Examiner’s office reported that someone had broken into the morgue two nights ago and had stolen a corpse. It went on to say that it was the body of that young accident victim.”
“Stolen?”
“Yes sir; the person who did it disabled their electronic alarm system like a real pro, entered the morgue and probably left with the body. The dead man is gone. The police are interrogating the tow truck operator again because they suspect he may be involved, probably trying to hide something, but I think they are wasting their time. I am willing to bet that it was the twin who did it.”
Robert, displaying a doubting expression, dropped the newspaper over the table and looked at Raymond silently. Suddenly his anger started to dissipate; his opinion shifting. He did not know what to think or believe at this point. He realized that the story Raymond was telling had some disparate facts, perhaps unrelated, that together had collapsed unto fiction in his simple uneducated mind. Robert’s engineering background could not accept the man’s words without some evidence. But then, the lack of a reasonable explanation for what had transpired since April 2nd in the middle of the ocean started to affect his thinking as well. What if… ? He was going to say something when Raymond interrupted him.
“Mr. Johnson,” added Raymond, “I don’t know who these two guys were, but I don’t think they are regular folks like you and me. They were really weird, doing weird things you and I would never do.”
Robert Johnson did not reply and thought quietly for a moment. He tried to compose himself.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he said, “I will be back. Have another cup of coffee. I am sure it is cold like ice; warm it up but please wait for me please.”
“Yes sir,” Raymond responded smiling, “you got it.”

Chapter Nine.
The noose gets the tightest.
Robert left the dimly lit dining area of the kitchen and closed the door behind him. He hesitated for a bit and tried to gather his confused thoughts. What Raymond was saying did not make any sense, but nothing related to his whole situation made any of it from the beginning anyway. He wanted very much to doubt and reject everything he had just heard, but that was mind stuff, his engineering and common sense persona. And he was not too happy either that the incident of April 2nd was refusing to die and kept coming back to life. His heart and intuition were getting in the middle of his logical thinking and saying something else.

He decided right then and there to follow his intuition rather than his educated brain for a change. If what transpired with his ship a few weeks ago was logical then this new development would clear itself out soon enough and no one would be the wiser. End of story. But if it was not, then it was just one more piece of the puzzle nonsense and, on a logical contradiction he himself realized, would eventually make sense. And he was not even sure if the new facts could have any practical implications or consequences at this point. There was no way that calling NASA or Laramie back and telling them about two unidentified creatures riding on his boat could make any difference, on the contrary, they would probably laugh in front of his face. He hesitated to put an end to the dilemma; and then opted for one more shot at the events at least to satisfy his own mind.
Walking fast two stair steps at the time, he climbed to his office as fast as he could. He grabbed the dog of the door and opened it, closing it shut tight behind him right away. He did not want to risk Raymond overhearing him, so he locked the door. He reached for the phone, dialed a familiar number, sat and waited. The voice of Jerry Mendoza came loud and clear on the other side.
“Hello.”
“Jerry is me, Robert.” He was hurried.
“Hi Robert, what is cooking?”
“Funny that you asked me about cooking Jerry; not much on the business side I am afraid. I am still trying to work out a contract with a local telephone company to do some underwater cable repair work. As soon as this becomes a slam dunk I will call you. But that is not the reason why I am calling. It is something else.”
“It isn’t?” responded Jerry intrigued.
“No, you know Raymond, one of our cooks…”
“Yeah, what is going on with him?”
“I don’t know. That is why I am calling you. Do you trust the guy?”
“That all depends. Trust him for what?”
“Well, I know you brought him to me and I know he was a recovered alcoholic.”
“Yes, you knew that, but he came to work with us on the condition that I could walk to his cabin any time and search his things. Besides, he was not living alone. He was sharing quarters with Jack Burke, and Jack was always looking after him. Ray is a bit weak. He needs guidance and someone who listens to him. But you have not told me what he did. Is he drinking again…? What did he do…? Got in some sort of trouble…?”
“No, no… It is not that…”
Robert gave Jerry a short script of the conversation he had just finished having with Raymond below deck. Jerry only listened emitting an hmm! or two once in a while. Finally, after Robert finished, Jerry volunteered an observation.
“Bob, I really don’t think Ray is making this up. Perhaps he is misinterpreting whatever it was that happened that night in front of him. He is a bit impressionable, but a liar he is not. I can’t believe that he even has the imagination to concoct such a cockamamie story. The guy doesn’t have the brain, trust me. He is no Hollywood writer and never will be.”
“What do you suggest I do then? He is in the ship right now. I don’t want to let him go without a definite answer. I have to check his story somehow.”
“Why don’t you offer him to stay with you for a few days? I am sure he will not object. Perhaps he may recall other details that will either prove or disprove his story… If he sticks to the same facts after a day or two then…” Jerry stopped. And then, in an after-thought, he said. “But what if it is true Bob?”
“True? … Are you losing your senses also Jerry? This can’t be true Jerry. It does not make sense.”
“Well, if you were so convinced that is senseless you would not have called me, would you Bob? Besides, where was the sense before? What happened that night was crazy and we never knew what it was, did we? I still scratch my head once in a while.”
“Yes, you are right, you are right… Anyway, I don’t know, but your suggestion about Raymond is not bad. I might just do that. It is clear that he needs something to keep him busy. I suppose I could use him to help me unload some of the stuff I am throwing out. I still have to sell some of the computer equipment we bought for this mess.”
“And; just for your own benefit; I live in San Luis Obispo as you know. I happen to know the medical examiner that did the autopsy on that guy the papers are talking about. I read the story as well but I could not connect it with what happened to us. I think it is just a lot of poppycock. If you want, I can try to arrange a meeting and have the two of us talk to him. He attends my wife’s church regularly.”
“Your wife’s church?
“Yes, her church. I have seen him there several times. I don’t go to church too often. I go bowling with my buddies instead.”
“OK, see what you can do to meet this guy and talk to him. Try to find out more if you can. Be careful though, I can’t get in the middle of it. The last thing I need now is for some cops to get me in a question and answer session for a wild goose chase,” Robert remarked, “besides, what do I really know?”
“I will tell you what” added Jerry, “I have seen this guy having a beer or two at the bowling alley bar a couple of times. He is a mountain of a guy. If I see him again I will try to start a friendly conversation with him and see where it leads. Maybe a couple of beers will loosen his tongue. If not I can always join my wife at the church and the after social event and try one more time with him. I am sure my wife will love that. Imagine my soul saved by the medical examiner.” He laughed.
“Good, that will be sufficient for now I suppose. Nothing else we can do. I am going to invite Raymond to stay here for a few days until he or I can find some work in case I have to go see you and need someone staying here keeping an eye on the ship. Let me know as soon as you find anything please. You have my cell number.”
“I sure do. I still have your second cell phone with me as well if you recall. I never use it, but it is still with me.”
“Yes, I remember that. Well, good bye Jerry. Be well.” And with those words, Robert hung up. He sat for a minute or two trying to think a good excuse to keep Raymond inside the Aurora II for a while. Thought of one handy excuse to keep him busy, left the room and went down back to the mess hall in the kitchen to tell him.

Chapter Ten:
The noose gets deadly.
Robert received the unexpected phone call around twelve o’clock that night. The Long Beach pier where his home-boat was anchored was dark, the harbor eerie quiet. Red and green port and starboard lights of passing boats, including those of silent Coast Guard red-and-white boats patrolling the sea watching for terrorists reflected on the dark waters, the pale yellow lights of shore warehouses where some folks were still laboring could be seen from his port window.

He had a nagging headache, product of the effect of too much red wine, the sulfite that went with it and a pasta dinner with some business contacts. He promised himself not to repeat the menu. He realized that he had made the same promise thousands of times before to no avail. Perhaps it was in his genes, he wondered: “Pasta and wine; wine and pasta. What a boring choice,” he said to himself, so he was totally shocked when he heard the familiar voice of the caller.
“Robert?” said a strained voice he recognized.
“Jerry? Is that you Jerry?”
“Yes; it is me. I haven’t got too much time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I am driving on Highway One with Joe Alvarado going your way and a couple of guys in a large black SUV are chasing us very close.”
“Who, who can be chasing you? Why?”
“I don’t know why. Listen goddam it, just listen. I finally caught up with the guy. He is sitting, actually sleeping, next to me. We are riding in his car. We drank; we talked. He is half drunk and really scared to death. He told me the whole autopsy story about the guy Raymond mentioned to you; the fellow who was killed near Morro Bay and then disappeared. He says this man was not normal. His brain had no right and left side and he had gills inside his chest cavity.”
“Gills?...” Robert answered incredulously. He could not believe it. Of course, all of a sudden the story of someone dropping into the ocean in the middle of nowhere fell into place.
“Yes, gills. But they were not regular gills Robert. They were all inside and behind his bronchial tubes, like a second breathing system he could turn on and off when needed. And Robert, listen to this, Joe had a chance to send some of the guy’s organs to the CDC in Atlanta before the body disappeared because he suspected some sort of new disease being transmitted between animals and humans. Then two days ago he received a phone call from a Debbie something or other at the CDC asking strange questions about the autopsy and then the woman hung up suddenly. Robert I have to go, this fuc.. car is getting too close behind us and I think they are trying to push us out of the road Robert… Robert?”
That was the last thing he heard from Jerry Montalvo. There was a garbled sound from Jerry Montalvo’s cellular phone. Then there was sudden silence.
“Jerry? Jerry?”
That would also be the last living thing he would ever hear from Jerry Montalvo or Joe Alvarado for that matter, period. The car with the two passengers inside had been hit with great force from behind by a large black SUV Explorer once, and then a second time with brutal strength skidded dangerously and knocked the frail railing on the ocean side of the road and dropped furiously and noisily down the steep cliff at one of the highest points of the Pacific Coast Highway. A big ball of fire illuminated the dark hill slope enveloping the car as it hit the bottom killing the two occupants. Robert, unaware of those ghostly details and seriously worrying about the situation, walked out of his room and looked around for Raymond. He found him asleep and snoring noisily on a deck chair. The man had been exonerated, but Robert was not sure if those were good or bad news, but he would soon find out. As for now he realized that he was back to square one.

Chapter Eleven.
The noose goes somewhere else up north.
Sausalito is a beautiful waterfront community and a wealthy city that prides itself on a strong and unique spirit of both land and water activities that mix handsomely and feed delightfully on each other. It is high class San Francisco and beyond. A lot of folks live there in their multi million dollar yachts all year long with several goals in mind, none of them contradictory.

One is sheer enjoyment of life of course. The cultural life is mind boggling and spirit satisfying. These people want the best life has to offer and have the willingness and capacity to do it. The other is protection of oneself. If, as it will certainly happen some tragic day, an earthquake of disastrous proportions hits the Northern California shores, those lucky boat owners may be sailing somewhere at the time or, at worst, be swinging securely in their boats avoiding the cracking of the earth crust and its obvious dire consequences. It is anyone’s guess whether such earthquake will hit hand on hand with a tsunami, but taking the chance is worth it. It is hard to imagine the earth shaking; harder still the waters rising.

Spending one third of your life asleep on a sailboat certainly increases the probability of your survival in such a cataclysmic situation. Folks who wander romantically around the marinas in Sausalito and many other California coastal communities sipping perhaps a glass of Chardonnay or Merlot Napa Valley wines in one of their quaint restaurants and looking to the shapes of hundreds, thousands of sailboats nearby, also wonder about life and pleasures in the harbors. They don’t think about survival, but that is also part of the whole game. And that survival, the fiercest of it, was what the crowd at the “Mariette” 160 feet yacht was playing at one o’clock in the evening, just a couple of hours after Jerry Montalvo and Joe Alvarado had met their maker, whoever he or she was.

There were drinks and slow violin music flowing at the Mariette, as slow as the mild coastal waves hitting the boat with a slight murmur, two oriental waitresses making the rounds with horsdouvres and drinks on trays and an older violinist playing softly a labored version of an arrangement of Mozart’s “Strassburg.” There was even surreptitious but not disallowed sex at some of its hidden nooks and crannies of the cabins below the deck level where one could hear sighs and screams of joy, male or female, and not always necessarily straight. All was permitted. People were having the time of their lives; their own time and their own lives. They were different kinds of folks not tied to the traditional. Their world was a new world of carelessness.

John La Pierre, Jack to his friends, Chief Executive Officer of BlodyStats, the giant billion dollar biogenetic Pharmaceutical Company based in San Francisco was having a heck of a good time himself at the Mariette that night too, but people close to him, particularly his younger and beautiful wife Joanna, could see that he was also anxious, chain smoking. She could tell when things were outside his control by the frequency and depth of his nasty habit. His perspiration and smell of tobacco made a lethal combination that she detested and kept her away from him. He constantly checked his golden Rolex watch and looked to the distant semi-dark marina for something to happen, although Joanna could not guess what he was after. He had become his usual uptight self.

Then, suddenly, two tall athletic guys, one black, one white and Latino looking with a missing right eye that was covered by a black patch, dressed in slacks, long sleeve shirts and blue suspenders stepped on the marina and approached the Mariette catching his attention. John La Pierre felt relieved. His heart beating quickly he dumped the cigarette butt in the water and walked briskly outside to meet them at the end of the dock.

“Well Tuerto…?” he asked anxiously as he reached them.
The man with the patched eye answered. His name was actually Eduardo, his extraction Latino. He did not like to be called Tuerto, “one eye” in Spanish, but his boss was the man who controlled the payroll strings and he had to swallow the nickname. He looked briefly away, towards the ship, where the silhouette of Joanna La Pierre, like a kitten, was moving sensuously and slowly about on the darkened Mariette deck. Thinking of her, her passion, her unabashed sexuality the few times they had been able to be together behind his boss’s back, he had no trouble dismissing the Tuerto reference easily.
“Alvarado is dead,” he volunteered bluntly.
“Dead…? You mean…”
“Yes, killed; we tried to grab him but he bolted to the door of the bar and jumped in his car to get away. I never saw a fat guy run so fast Mr. LaPpierre.”
“Well, it is better if he is dead now. He can help none of my competitors. His knowledge, whatever it was, died with him. You guys deserve a big bonus. I will make sure you get it… Go get yourselves some broads and have fun on company time.”
“Not yet…” said the other man hesitatingly.
“Why not yet? What is going on?” asked La Pierre grabbing the man’s upper arm with apprehension. The fellow moved away a bit.
“He did not die alone. There was this other guy riding with him. We don’t know who he was and we are not even sure what he knew or if we will ever find out.”
“What are you saying?” asked La Pierre as he lit another cigarette.
“Yes sir,” answered Tuerto with disgust and a twist of his usually stressed neck, “Alvarado left the bar kind of drunk with the other fellow and we followed and chased them through Highway One going south. We tried to stop them several times to get Alvarado but couldn’t, going south is the right side of that twisting road and kind of tricky, then we got too close and decided that we could not risk being identified so we hit them. Their car went over the railing fast and then hit the rocks below like a fireball. Their gas tank must have been full. It exploded when it landed. I can’t believe there is anything left of them. We could not stick around because there was a lot of curiosity traffic coming to a halt there; we made a u-turn and left in a hurry back here.”
“I think the driver was calling someone on a cell phone, perhaps the cops, and we had to act quickly,” said the black man.
“Well, damn it! I hope he was not talking with someone else; we must find out. This is a big deal for us. We are talking billions here Tuerto. A lot of money for a lot of important people depends on this. Let’s not screw around. Get going!” He touched Tuerto on the shoulder. He pulled his suspender and let it go quickly with a snapping sound. Tuerto hated that joke too.
“Yes sir,” the two men answered, nodding with their heads. They turned and walked away from the sailboat moorings as Jack La Pierre, trying to smile to hide his tension and holding tightly to his cigarette in his left hand, returned to his swinging crowd. He took another puff of the cigarette and threw it in the waters. His forehead was crowded with pearls of tense perspiration. His wife Joanna, noticing the shadows of the two men in the dark as they left, took a second look at the image of Tuerto dissolving in the darkness and then smiled at her husband. Holding her own glass of brandy and soda she raised it on a toast to no one. She was half drunk already and bored as usual. La Pierre noticed with disdain, but thought of nothing to say to her.
“Bitch,” he said to no one. His mind was still following the two men he had just dismissed; still wondering. Then he went back to the boat, got into his private quarters and dialed a number from his cell phone. He waited.
“Yes, it is me. I have news, some good and some not so well,” he said as soon as the other party answered. His face tightened in a grimace. “Yes, I understand,” he added. He listened for a minute or so without uttering a word. “I will call you some time tomorrow when I can give you more details.” Then he hung up.
Jack La Pierre was sitting at the top of a wealthy pharmaceutical empire that was being challenged by stiff competitive and regulatory pressures and constantly changing technical forces. His company was a national Medicare provider of drugs of many types. His products provided relief for an array of illnesses that were the bread and butter of people over sixty five years old these days. If there was any truth in human evolution it was clear to La Pierre that the human race was evolving into a new profitable specie: the lifetime sick person who needed constant care and he was willing to provide it. But that was not where all his wealth and expertise were concentrated. That was the tip of the iceberg only, a legal tip at that, and he was intended to profit from that new world.

Hidden carefully from the government and politically conservative watchdogs he constantly captivated and patronized with his skillful public relations staff, La Pierre protected his empire very closely by participating on drug research and distribution that were hypocritical and might have been considered unethical by his friends and supporters and certainly would have raised some eyebrows if they ever found out.

That scientific work included secret stem-cell research in off-shore ventures in Ireland and Great Britain with complicated unusually misleading business name connections that had no apparent relationship with his company, while here in the United States he preached against the technique for obvious political reasons. It also included manufacturing birth control drugs and devices that sold in African underdeveloped countries under innocent enough names and anonymous subsidiaries that were difficult to trace. But still, he and his endless ambition felt that other companies were catching up with him financially and he needed a big drug discovery to survive and perhaps shine in a world where more and more trademark names were becoming generic. He manufactured drugs against many human maladies, but greed was not one of them.

That is when the findings of Joe Alvarado in the recent autopsy of an auto victim near Morro Bay had come to his attention from a mole in Atlanta, Georgia. The hit and run accident on Highway One a few weeks before had alerted one of his well paid secret agents at the CDC of the appearance of a biological blood breakthrough that had come to the agency’s attention and had been conveniently swept under the bureaucratic rug where only a few underlings knew it but no big chiefs were aware of it yet. Some remains of a John Doe had arrived at the government outfit for routine blood tests and had hit their labs with a bolt. They had found an unusual biological characteristic in the blood of the dead man that came as a big revelation, a situation that became something akin to national security material when it was later reported that the corpse had also been stolen.

To Jack La Pierre, who by now knew some of the preliminary lab results of the victim’s blood, that could mean many things, but one stood out clearly in his fertile mind: Perhaps one of his competitors had stolen the corpse and was working on the remains to capitalize on the findings? He panicked and ordered the kidnapping of Alvarado in order to find more details, a task that became an execution when the man realized he was being pursued and dragged Jerry Montalvo with him to help him escape from his potential captors.

Now his hired henchmen had committed murder on his behalf, a minor disturbance in his otherwise immoral mind. He was not particularly concerned about their unethical criminal behavior, the illegality perhaps, but that was beyond his fearless makeup. His many years in charge of a multinational empire that was only concerned with money and power and had total disregard for the human lives they pretended to save had been involved with mayhem before in countless research failures. Buried somewhere in other lands were the undetected remains of human guinea pigs that had paid with their lives for the failures of experiments that had gone haywire. This case, his limited mind was telling him, was no different, and he would have a tough time unearthing the truth. But the United States and San Francisco Bay were far removed from Africa and he had to make sure his foot tracks were invisible.

He knew he could dispose of his executioners with the same swiftness they had used to get rid of Alvarado and the other man who was with him, whoever he was, and there would not be any traces of his involvement or his company’s. Knowing that there would be enough time to cover those tracks he decided to cool off and wait. He signaled to his secretary to follow him; deep in the guts of the Mariette. Deep in her always available warm arms. And in the meantime, other things were happening in San Luis Obispo.

To be continued.