A World Without Secrets (5 page)

"Don't lose heart, bro. How many times have great authors had their early stories rejected, only to finally find someone who was willing to take a chance? Then you can thumb your nose at all the assholes who turned your work down. I've seen the fan letters you get and I've read your stories. You're really good, and you'll get published eventually. I just want an autographed copy of each of your books so I can prove to people that I knew you before you made it big."

I smiled. "You're great for my ego, Billy. I'm really glad you came over."

A somber look came over Billy's face. "Are you asking me to leave now?"

"Hell, no. Have another beer. Have two. My ego needs lots more stroking."

Billy smiled widely and chuckled. "Think I will. Ya know, Kathy was asking about you last week after the explosion. She said she tried to call twice, but your line was busy."

"I received a lot of calls from friends after the explosion. I was on the phone almost all day."

"She's got the hots for you, bro. I can't understand why you don't ask her out."

"Billy, I like Kathy. A lot. I really do. But I don't have the time or the money for dating. My bankroll is almost gone, and I can't afford to go to a movie by myself, much less take a date. Those thirty bucks will feed me for a week. I'm living like a hermit. When I do go out it's only to stop at the bar and nurse a single beer for a few hours until it's so warm that I can't stand to drink it."

"I just hope your books hit while you're still young enough to enjoy it."

"Yeah, me too."

* * *

I waited three more days before trying to remove the paper from the wall. I had concluded that it would probably stay there for as long as I left it alone, but I wanted to experiment a bit more. As my right thumb touched the paper in the top right corner, it suddenly illuminated like a television set. I jumped backward as if I'd received a massive electrical shock, lost my balance, and tripped over my own feet as I backpedaled.

I found myself sitting on the floor against the base of the sink cabinet, staring up at a telecast of people walking on a congested city street. I couldn't move as I sat there hyperventilating with my mouth wide open and my eyes probably as large as teacup saucers.

I'd hit my head on the sink cabinet when I landed but didn't think I'd hit it so hard that I could be hallucinating from a concussion. And I had fallen only
after
suddenly seeing a piece of paper turn into a television.

I continued to sit on the floor, staring dumbfounded at the newly revealed video device. My involvement and passionate interests in the computer and electronics fields had always kept me on what's been referred to as the bleeding edge of technological development. That's about six months ahead of what's known as the leading edge and a year ahead of what the average person is seeing in the news. I knew nothing like this was available, predicted, or even contemplated for the near future. A product like this was not even speculative hardware at this point. It was what I'd always referred to as dreamware. A paper-thin monitor— literally paper-thin, without any visible power supply— had to be super hush-hush corporate or 'eyes-only' government stuff. Just knowing about it could make people 'disappear.' I immediately thought of the mysterious emails I'd received. "Someone already
knows
I have it," I mumbled. "In fact, they knew before I did. So who are
they
, and why haven't they shown up to collect it?"

I jumped to my feet and raced to my front door. After fumbling with the solid steel security pole, I managed to position it between the metal floor plate embedded just below the surface of the hardwood floor and the steel plate mounted on the door. As I pushed downward and locked it into place, I leaned back against the bathroom doorframe.
There,
I thought,
it'll take someone with a battering ram to get through the door while that pole's in place, and they'll only succeed if they smash the solid door to kindling
. But the idea of someone using a battering ram to get in set my mind reeling again, so I raced to my bedroom and peered cautiously out the one-foot square hole in the plywood. I couldn't spot anything suspicious, but that didn't mean there wasn't someone out there watching. Across the street, the lot was almost completely cleared. The firemen were long gone, and a front-end loader and several dump trucks were cleaning up in the far corner while workmen erected a plywood fence around the entire property. The absence of the apartment building meant that buildings on the cross street for an entire block now had an unobstructed view of my house. Anyone with binoculars or a telephoto lens could be watching my front door from a block away to see when I emerged. I stood there, quietly hyperventilating, while my heart pounded in my chest like an out-of-control trip-hammer. But the only people on the street were local residents, many of whom I knew and all of whom I recognized.

Satisfied that a SWAT team wasn't out front preparing to assault my apartment, I returned to the kitchen and stared out the back window. Nothing suspicious there either. The fenced backyards that I could see into were empty except for next door where old Mrs. Schmidt was hanging her wash. Of course, they could be watching the house by satellite. But if it was the government, wouldn't they just bust down the door and retrieve the device? "No," I said to myself, "it's not the government. The government is never subtle in matters like this. It definitely has to be somebody else— someone who has to maintain a low profile."

My next thought— that perhaps the device was some super advanced prototype a company was keeping top secret and they couldn't afford to make a scene— I immediately dismissed. That didn't make sense either. Someone would have approached me and tried to bully me or offered payment to get it back. Perhaps they would have threatened me to give it to them and then keep quiet about it. They certainly wouldn't have told me to destroy it.

"What am I thinking?" I mumbled. "Nobody has this kind of technology. It's a television as thin as a piece of paper that stays against a wall by itself, is self-powered, and can be folded up and put in a pocket. Nobody has this. At least nobody on
this
planet." My eyes opened wide and my jaw dropped as I realized the implications of that last sentence.

I was hyperventilating again as I sat down at the table and positioned myself directly in front of the device, so I worked to get my breathing under control as I stared at the image being projected and tried to reason its source. It didn't appear to be a television show. The image was more like what would be received from a security camera. What seemed like ordinary people were walking along an ordinary city street. I knew it wasn't New York City. For one thing, it was overcast outside my house, but the sky in the video image was bright and sunny. And people were wearing lighter-weight clothing than I'd expect to see in New York right now.

"So how do I change the channel and increase the volume?" I asked aloud. "There aren't any controls visible. Do I need a remote?"

Naturally I didn't receive an answer— not that I really expected one. And if I had, I would have immediately checked into Bellevue because I was already beginning to doubt my sanity.

Stretching out my arm, I touched the paper on the right side of the image, just inside the paper's edge. The image immediately began to shift right, as if the camera operator were moving sideways. I pulled my hand away and it stopped. When I touched it again, it moved right again. I touched the top of the image next, and it immediately changed as if the camera operator were on a boom that was rising into the air. When I pulled my hand away from the device, the image stopped moving. I touched it again and it rose again. At this point I realized my breathing had quickened appreciably and I was getting a little dizzy, so I forced myself to take slow, measured breaths.

As the image cleared the surrounding buildings, I saw the unmistakable shape of an obelisk that could only be the Washington Monument in DC. I touched the left side just inside the edge, and the camera moved left. As I continued to touch it, the Capitol Building came into view. Live cams on the internet that could be adjusted from a computer were common, but they were nothing like this. For one thing, the image quality was nothing less than superb. In fact, it was more like a window than an electronic image.

I had a sudden thought and reached out towards the device. My finger met a more-or-less expected resistance at the center of the image.
So much for that dumb idea
, I thought as I pulled my arm back. But the image had seemed so lifelike that it really appeared like I could put my hand right into it.
You never know for sure until you try,
I told myself,
but if my hand had gone through the paper, I would definitely be on my way to the psych hospital for an examination.

Thinking I would hold it up close, I reached out and lifted the edge of the paper off the wall, but as the paper came free, the image disappeared. I was alarmed, thinking I might have broken it. As I held it in my hands, it again looked like an ordinary piece of paper. "Oh God, oh God," I said under my breath as a sort of prayer that I hadn't destroyed the electronics by removing the paper without turning off the device first, although I didn't even know how to power the unit down. I put it back on the wall, thinking it might work again if it was perfectly vertical, and I was horrified when it failed to illuminate.

I thought back to what I'd done originally, then reached out and placed my thumb lightly against the top right corner. When it didn't illuminate, I became really upset. Then I realized that I had originally aligned the sheet vertically like a book, but when I'd placed it against the wall this time, I had aligned it horizontally like a television or computer monitor. When I reached out and touched the top left corner, the device lit up instantly. The image flashed for a fraction of a second as it realigned for horizontal projection, then stabilized. Again, I was seeing the Capitol Building from a great distance. I breathed a great sigh of relief.

"So removing the paper from the wall doesn't damage it," I said to myself, "it merely deactivates it. And placing it against the wall again doesn't automatically reactivate it." I sat there looking at the device for several minutes before muttering breathlessly, "There has to be more control than just shifting the image right, left, up, or down."

As I bent closer to examine the device, I noticed a row of tiny light-grey squares that I hadn't noted previously. They were along the bottom border just inside the image area. Touching the leftmost one caused a numeric keypad icon to appear as a superimposed semi-transparent image over the normal image. A flashing row of numbers appeared at the top of the keyboard almost immediately. Before touching the device again, I grabbed a piece of regular scrap paper and recorded the numbers. Then, as I touched a value on the keypad, the first number in the display area changed. More importantly, the background image changed radically. The Capitol Building faded away and was replaced by a pastoral scene with grazing sheep. A farmer on an ancient tractor could be seen plowing a field in the far background. I keyed in the former number and was instantly back to Washington, D.C. When I touched the tiny square again, the superimposed keypad disappeared, giving a clear picture of Washington again, and I knew I had just made considerable progress in understanding how the device was manipulated.

I considered my next move carefully, then touched each of the tiny squares in succession, writing down the numbers displayed on the screen before touching the next. The three squares on the rightmost side didn't affect the keypad numbers. Touching them simply changed their color. One was either black or red, another was black or green, and the third was black or blue. When I reached the end of the squares, the row of numbers I'd recorded on the scrap paper read, 38-54-366-77-01-418-163-86-03-26-2014-14-26-12.

Jumping up, I rushed to my living room to retrieve a CD, then returned to the kitchen. As I loaded the disc into my laptop, a World Atlas program opened up. I entered 38° 54' 366" and 77° 01' 418" into the boxes on the opening screen. Instantly, the computer produced a street address in Washington, confirming what I'd suspected. When I entered the address of my apartment in New York City into my laptop, it responded with latitude and longitude coordinates for the house. I held my breath for a few seconds before entering the coordinates into the viewer using the pop-up keypad. As the last digit was entered, the image morphed to show rooftops disappearing off into the haze beneath an overcast sky. I touched the bottom of the image and the view lowered until I was looking at the site of the explosion, from
inside
the area. Although the result was the one I was hoping for, I couldn't stop my lower jaw from trembling or my breathing from quickening again when I saw it. After a few more seconds, I touched the seventh square and changed the numbers on the keypad from 163 to 343. The view instantly swung around one-hundred-eighty degrees to point directly at my house. The plywood-covered third floor window with the foot-square opening protected by clear plastic could belong to no other.

I let my arm drop to my side as I stared dumbfounded at the image on the screen. Google offered map images of streets on the internet, but they weren't remotely real time. In fact, they might be a couple of years old before being updated.

Since first activating the viewer my heart had been racing wildly, but now it was beating so hard that it threatened to burst from my chest, and I realized I was hyperventilating again. As I again worked to get my breathing under control, I knew that what I was seeing was impossible. It was totally, undeniably, indisputably, irrefutably impossible. Yet, there it was in front of me.

I put a shaky hand to my forehead and was surprised to find how much I was perspiring. My mouth felt as dry as the Sahara. Grabbing a stack of paper napkins, I wiped my face, stood up straight and walked to the refrigerator. Taking a cold beer from the bottom shelf, I drank it down in almost one swallow. Then I leaned against the sink counter and stared at the image of my apartment building. I recognized neighbors as they passed by on the sidewalk out front. It was a real-time image from a camera that didn't exist, shooting from an empty lot. But since it could be instantly transported to any other place simply by entering the map coordinates, 'camera' didn't begin to describe it.