Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow (6 page)

Friedman reaches the shadow’s tip.
There is concern about this shadow. The dark form that sprawls the surface is ragged of outline, a shape of wild, indescribable form. Is it truly a shadow? A towering object would be required. A massive thing which neither instruments nor human eyesight have yet to detect.

Friedman is
five hundred feet from the nearest outer wall of the Pentagon, where Wedge 2 and Wedge 3 meet at an angle of seventy-two degrees. Watching the sun above him, Friedman steps over the shadow’s edge. Abruptly, the sun disappears. Friedman halts, stands rigid. He can see the sky, but the sun has vanished. Turns around, his own shadow is engulfed in the larger one. Lifts his arms high. There, at the topmost edge of the misshapen outline, shadows of his own tiny hands follow his movements faithfully. In his mind echo statements he’d heard from his interview subjects:
It’s a shadow of nothing.

Although
forewarned by his evaluations, Friedman, experiencing this directly, is shaken. Within the outline of this sinister darkness, he cannot see the sun. Shaded by some invisible object, Friedman scans empty sky. Somberly, he continues toward the building.

The door sensor opens to Friedman’s RFID tag. The
once-bustling metropolis that is the world’s largest office building rings with silence. Visitor brochures litter the floor. Friedman notices on a wall something scrawled, a terse handwritten instruction in black marker, sign of the mad rush to vacate until this mysterious problem can be put away.

Friedman steps
through the spacious lobby into a spoke hallway, looking both ways as he passes each ring corridor. Empty stillness echoes. With a resolute breath, Friedman pushes through a glass door into the central courtyard.

The
distant figure stands near the hot dog stand, facing away. The man does not react to Friedman’s presence. The psychologist gathers his courage in both hands and walks directly ahead. Ten steps is all he is allowed. It’s as walking into soft yielding foam. One moment he is moving, the next he’s eased to a gentle halt.
The taffy curtain
, one person had called it. He sees nothing, yet an invisible force allows him no further.

Friedman considers. Hand outstretched, he
steps to his left, trailing fingers against the resilient force as he circles the space, much as a surfer keeps touch with a wave face. Something in the air above catches sunlight. He stops.

Friedman pulls out binoculars. Focuses on a small object forty feet up. Unmoving,
supported by nothing, what it most resembles is a 50-calibre slug, angled directly toward courtyard center. In the air above Friedman’s head, the binoculars reveal many others.

It takes Friedman fifteen minutes to complete his circuit of the space. Although forced to detour by trees and benches, nowhere can he find a gap in the invisible barrier, nowhere can he make his way closer to the lone man. Exactly as described to him
individually by thirty-one Pentagon cops who charged in with riot gear.

Directly in front of the man, Friedman lifts his binocs. He has a close-up view from here. His breath catches as he regards the most sublime male face he has ever seen. The eyes are closed, the man stands perfectly still, as though dreaming on his feet. Aware of afternoon cold penetrating his long wool coat, Friedman wonders that the man wears only slacks and a flowing shirt.

He removes from his pocket a small video camera with wireless link, attaches it to the back of a bench. After making certain his camera frames the unmoving figure, Friedman with silent relief makes his way from the courtyard.

After waiting in line through a security checkpoint manned by eleven armed and armored Pentagon Police, Chris Strand shoulders his way through a doorway clogged with military officers and into the main conference room of the Pentagon swing space. The center of the room is dominated by a polished oval table 23 feet long and 12 feet wide, equipped with 44 stations, each having an Ethernet port, power outlets, fiber optic adaptors, secure hard phone, other hookups and receptacles. Most of the high-backed chairs around the table are occupied by military brass. Strand nods at a few he recognizes, and reads the uniforms: Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force. All military departments are represented. Suits and uniforms are here from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Logistics Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, and of course Homeland Security.

The large team is under tactical command of General Ralph Solberg at the front, who spots Strand, points him to an empty station between an Air Force general and a Marine colonel. Strand had expected a seat at the back, where some 40 men and women sit quietly
working at laptops, support staff for those at the curving table.

General Solberg steps to a podium at the head of the room, speaks into the cluster of microphones. “Everyone please find your seats as we’re about to get started.” The hulla in the room quiets to murmurs, intense conversation
s drop in pitch without actually stopping. The Marine colonel at Strand’s left speaks to a suit beside him, Strand overhears the whispered comment.

“The Pentagon is evacuated. Parking lot
is empty.”

His companion replies,
sotto voce
, “We’ve been chased out of our own headquarters by one man?”

The whispered reply, almost too faint for Strand’s ears. “Some new passive weapon, that’s our position.”

At the podium, General Solberg hooks a laptop into the flat screen that covers most of the front wall. On other flatscreens faces appear as remote conference rooms join the meeting. The official Pentagon logo vanishes, replaced by a high-angle image of the Pentagon courtyard, time-stamped 1115 hours EST.

Solberg
surveys the room. “Everyone, good afternoon. Thank you for joining us on such short notice. I know that many of you have been pulled from other priority tasks to be here.

“Now, this view is what
Security captured in the Pentagon courtyard this morning, just prior to the arrival event. People are strolling, crossing between Wedges, sitting on the benches. Some are inside the gazebo. People are taking early lunch, talking together, working on laptops, on their phones. A typical day.”

Solberg changes the image. It’s a satellite view of the Pentagon in its surrounds, a roughly triangular join of busy freeways, a sea of parked cars, a
n active yacht basin, Arlington National Cemetery, the Potomac. The striking feature is a dark shadow, originating near the pentagram-shaped gazebo at the courtyard’s center, extending over trees and walkways, and partway up the inner Wedge 3 wall to the north.

“As you can see in this recon photo taken at 1117 hours,
two minutes later, a large shadow is visible. This is after the sudden appearance of a man near the gazebo. We see no object that can explain this shadow. Instruments detect nothing. The shadow as of my latest information has no known cause.”

A question from a uniform across the table. “General, is this shadow moving with the sun, or can it be some other type of artifact?”

“Right. Using a time-lapse of images, we see that the shadow is behaving as would a sundial, a tree, a building or other vertical object. Dr. Arnold Friedman is in the room with us and we’ll ask him to speak. He made onsite observations of the shadow in the last hour. He’s also completed a psych eval of those in the courtyard at the time of the appearance and I want you to hear what he has to say.”

“Materialization,” whispers
the Marine colonel to Strand’s left. A suit to left of the colonel hisses an angry reply, Strand picks out a single word.
Portal
.

Solberg turns back to his laptop, the projected image changes. “This is a frontal image of the man in the courtyard. Height about six feet six, weight estimated at 245 pounds. He has the appearance of a trained fighting man. He has not responded to any verbal command. Approximately four hours ago, in consultation with the PFPA, it was agreed to use deadly force. A sniper fired a single round at the target. Nothing happened. We’re not sure what became of the round. I witnessed this myself, as did some others in this room. Following that, the command was given to fire heavily on his position. None of the rounds reached the target. As far as we can detect, no rounds fell anywhere in the courtyard. Following this, seventeen RPGs were launched on his position. Here’s an image we captured after that event.”

The general switches to a new image, pulled back. The solitary figure is visible, but the view shows more of the courtyard. “Let me call your attention to some objects in the air around him.” He moves a magnifying reticule over the image, centers it on a dark dot with a gray smear behind it. A hushed gasp rises, hastily whispered remarks and questions. Solberg turns to the room, patiently waits.

“Yes, you read the situation correctly. You’re looking at one of the RPGs fired at the target. It’s come to a stop some fifty yards out, eighty yards from where it was launched. You can see the smoke trail. This RPG is motionless, and the propellant has stopped burning.”

Solberg roves the magnifying reticule across the image, locating other rocket grenades one by one, all frozen in their flight toward the center.

“All of these fast-burning RPGs have come to a complete stop in midair. The chemical reaction in their motors has halted. It is as though time has stopped in this zone.”

Murmuring and whispered questions as Solberg switches the view.

“General Solberg, what do your people make of the smoke trails? Why is there a short trail just behind the RPG? They burn over the entire trajectory.”

“Good point. What we’ve decided, and this is a theory at this point, is that all molecular activity stops within the zone. Some of the trail is trapped. The rest blew away. ”

Solberg pauses to let that sink in. Whispers of
suspended animation
, and
time has stopped
circulate the large room. The General continues.

“We overlaid a combined-frequency radar image of the area on a photograph. The silver points on the radar are the rounds fired by rooftop snipers. All have come to a complete and utter halt. They are suspended motionless, in a ring approximately 100 yards across. None is closer than 50 yards from our new visitor.”

Solberg looks around the room, praying inwardly that someone will come up with a useful observation or workable idea. There are none. He moves the magnifying reticule. “Here, thirty yards from Wedge 2, is a tube-launched anti-tank missile. It too has come to a stop.”

Q
uestion from an Air Force general to Strand’s left. “Ralph, with reference to the aerial photographs, how tall would something be to cast a shadow that long?”

“Good question. We calculate at the time of day these photographs were captured, the height required to cast this shadow would be some six hundred feet, give or take. The shadow moves with the sun, as we’ve discussed. Later in the day this calculation will be more accurate, with a longer shadow.”

“What is casting the shadow?”

“We don’t know, sir. What we do know, the person standing there is inside it.”

“Does this, um, individual cast a shadow too?”

“If he casts a shadow, we can’t see it.”

“He casts no shadow?”

“We’re not saying that, sir. Any shadow he casts is inside of the larger shadow. We can’t distinguish a separate shadow.”

Another uniform at the table speaks up. “General, may we suggest to shine a powerful light from another direction? On the man. Both in daylight and after dark.”

Solberg nods to someone at the back, who immediately begins tapping keys. “Thanks for that suggestion, Colonel, we’re on it.”

Another question, from Navy brass. “What have you developed about the whale migration?”

“We can’t discuss the whales in this setting.” Solberg says tersely.

“But isn’t the sudden movement of blue whales worldwide some kind of response to the one the Japanese photographed? The one marked with Japanese Kanji gave a lat-long, a time and date.”

“
Please, sir. We need to develop further information. That meeting will be called when we are prepared. And everyone, that information is black absolute, not to be repeated outside of this tactical team.”

Another question, this time from a suit with the Joint Chiefs command. “What is our best reading on the Pentagon situation? Is that a weapon?”

Solberg nods, turning to the speaker. “One of the theories advanced is exactly that, a passive weapon such as a protective shield. It could be a foreign power showing off a new capability. There’s another theory, this is a portal to other physical locations. We’re probing for field strength and looking at physiological data on our visitor, ethnic strains.”

“General,” a suit at the table
has a hand up. “Could this be a projection, an illusion, not an actual person, nothing there at all?”

“Thank you Mr. Stephenson, our psychologists are including that possibility, along with
theories of mass hallucination.”

“I make him as East Bloc,” someone offers.

“Mass hallucination! We’re way out of our league here,” another says.