The Other Eight (3 page)

“I think I follow.”

“Okay, good. Oh, and above all, we should be
picking people based on mental status first and powers second. The
last thing we need is to get our heart set on someone with the
power of flight only to discover that it is a manifestation of his
belief that the rest of humanity is beneath him. Put a rifle in
that guy’s hand, and he is liable to decide it is time to start
thinning the herd.”

“Roger,” she said with a nod. “Hero first,
super second. Let’s get to it.”

General Siegel
himself handpicked the first round of potential recruits that Aiken
and Summers had been asked to assess, and it was clear what he’d
been after. Of nearly three hundred profiles, no less than fifty
had been observed to have powers that at least partially resembled
the roles of modern soldiers. The most promising had been a set of
triplets who were telepathically linked, a man with perfect night
vision, and a young girl who could smell explosives from a range of
over thirty miles. A bit more research turned up all sorts of
warning signs, including the tendency for the triplets to use their
powers to cheat at blackjack, the three warnings “The Owl” had
received for voyeurism, and the unnervingly large stockpile of
fireworks that the bomb-sniffing girl had accumulated. Finally they
had settled upon someone who, at the very least, was unlikely to
cause any harm to the team.

“Francis Modell,” Aiken said, shaking hands
with a fit twenty-three-year-old man. “Thanks for coming in.”

“No problem,” he said. “They said you wanted
me to interview for a job?”

“More or less. As I learned a few weeks ago,
the way things work around here is that by the time you walk in
that door, most of the decision has been made. We’re just going to
go through a few formalities and then see if you are interested.
Before we begin, I trust you read and understood that stack of
papers we had you sign. Everything you hear in this office, or in
this building for that matter, is of the utmost security and does
not leave these walls.”

“Yes, sir. I understand that.”

“Great. Sit down; I’ve got a few
questions.”

The young man took a seat in a creaky wooden
office chair on the opposite side of Aiken’s desk. Office space was
scarce in the DARPA HQ, but they’d managed to find him a room with
enough space for two desks, three office chairs, a few filing
cabinets, and a water cooler. It was a shade cramped, but it beat
working in the conference room. Private Summers worked from the
desk nearest to the door, and right now was on one of her
thrice-daily coffee runs. Aiken felt a bit odd about a member of
the armed forces getting him coffee, until he realized that it was
just an excuse for her to feed her own caffeine habit on the
company dime. She walked in with a cardboard container with a spout
on the end and set down a stack of cups, cheerfully pouring out one
for each of them.

“Thank you, Private Summers. Now, Mr. Modell,
I see that you work for the sheriff’s department. Four years so
far, generally positive record.”

“That’s right.”

“Middle child in a family of seven. Must have
been interesting growing up with so many siblings.”

“Heh, you get used to it.”

“And if I understand this correctly, you have
the ability to”—Aiken flipped through his file—“voluntarily
transmit your thoughts as radio waves.”

Francis smiled and looked down, radiating the
same sort of humility-tempered pride one might show if someone had
made mention of the Nobel Prize he or she had on their mantle.
“That’s right. Folks around the office call me FM.”

“Naturally,” Aiken remarked.

“I don’t like to brag, but it has come in
pretty handy on the job. We don’t have much money for radios, so it
can be a real lifesaver when you can just think out an all-points
bulletin. It is the craziest thing, too. If I go easy on it, it is
just nearby radios that pick it up, but if I really push hard, it
is like anything transmitting FM sort of repeats it.”

“I’ll bet. Perhaps you could give us a little
demonstration?”

Without being asked, Private Summers produced
a battery-operated radio and flicked it on. “Any particular
station, Mr. Modell?”

“Sure, 99.1 or thereabouts. FM, of
course.”

“Let’s keep this small. We don’t want
everyone in the DC area hearing what’s on your mind.”

“Sure.”

She tuned to the station. After a few seconds
of a news broadcast about the previous night’s sports scores, the
transmission dropped to silence. A moment later, “Testing, testing,
one, two, three. A proper cup of coffee in a copper coffee pot.”
The voice was FM’s own, and as clear as a bell. The radio then
snapped back to the sports report.

Aiken turned to Summers, who widened her
smile a bit and enthusiastically nodded.

“Well, Mr. Modell. I’d say I’m satisfied. The
military has asked me to screen the mental status of the first
round of potential recruits for what can only be called a team of
‘super-soldiers,’ and I’m pleased to say that I’m willing to give
you my recommendation. Does that sound like something you would
like to be a part of?”

“Really? Gosh, sir, that would be… that would
be a dream come true. Where do I sign up?!”

“You already are signed up. Here is a card
with the address and phone number to our testing facility. For
security purposes I’ve been told to have you memorize it. Report
there in three weeks for the next round of tests. See you
then.”

“Congratulations, Mr. Modell. Just head out
to the hall there, and when you’re ready, hand that card over to
the guard at the security checkpoint, and he’ll take you outside,”
Summers said.

“Thank you so much for the opportunity, sir.
You won’t regret this,” Modell said, shaking Aiken’s hand
vigorously. “You too, Miss Summers.”

“Welcome aboard!” she said, matching his
enthusiasm.

The grinning man marched out of the office.
Dr. Aiken released a sigh.

“Well, that’s one down, who knows how many to
go.”

“I think we picked a winner, Dr. Aiken.
General Siegel is going to like him.”

“I hope so. It is like a needle in a haystack
finding people who won’t degenerate into wearing their underwear on
the outside,” he said, sipping at his coffee.

She paced around and took a seat, beginning
to type up the official e-mail announcing the first selection.
There was a pop and hiss from the radio, then silence, then a
voice: “Phone number, 555-883-9329. Gosh. The army is putting
together a superhero team, and they want me on it. Let’s see.
Service Road 7, eight miles past…”

Private Summers sprang to her feet and
sprinted after FM, Aiken in hot pursuit, as the voice on the radio
ran through the rest of the address and began to repeat the phone
number.

“Mr. Modell! Are you aware that you’re
broadcasting?” Summers asked urgently.

“Am I?” he said. “Oh, gosh, I’m awfully
sorry. When I get excited it sort of goes off on its own.”

Summers shot Aiken a nervous look. “And when
that happens, is that usually a little range or a big range?”

“Sometimes it is pretty big,” he said, the
color gone from his face.

Summers turned to Aiken again. “Uh-oh.”

“Maybe it was small this time,” the doctor
said hopefully.

The radio flicked back to news. “With a
game-ending walk-off home run. … Thanks, Dan. We’ve got some
breaking news for you now. We are getting reports from many of our
listeners of a bizarre message that was just broadcast. We are
working on getting a recording of the broadcast, but until then, a
transcript is as follows: 555-883-9329…”

Aiken swallowed. “This isn’t going to end
well.”

“You let a
walking, talking security leak into a top secret facility!
What
did you expect to happen
?” raged General Siegel, the unlit
cigar waggling with his words.

For the last fifteen minutes, the general had
been screaming at Aiken and Summers. For the first few minutes it
was terrifying and humiliating, but after ten minutes, even Aiken
had to admire the knack he had for screaming at subordinates. If
Siegel hadn’t been a general, he would have had to become the
editor of a newspaper or the chief of a loose-cannon cop, because
clearly barking at underlings from the other side of a desk was his
calling in life. It was a thing to behold. His face had turned an
impressive shade of red, and he’d bitten through his cigar twice.
Finally, after a quarter of an hour of unbroken anger, he had to
take a moment to keep the throbbing vein on his temple from
rupturing.

“With all due respect, sir,” Aiken said
nervously, “I was only supposed to assess their mental state. You
picked the first round of assessments, and it was your security
crew that gave him the thumbs-up for the interview. How was I
supposed to know he suffered from power incontinence?”

“What is power incontinence?”

“It’s, uh, it’s an informal term for when a
meta-human can’t rein in their powers completely.”

“Well, that is
exactly
the sort of
phenomenon you should have shared with my security team!”

“If you’ve dealt with this whole process
three times before, I would have thought you’d be aware of it.”

“No excuses! This is a massive security
breach. That number that leaked has already received six hundred
phone calls. Some idiot made a video on the web with the news, and
it is spreading like a disease.”

“I believe it is called going viral, sir,”
Summers helpfully supplied.

“I’ve had it up to
here
with jargon!
That’s it. I’m pulling the plug on this mess.”

“I…” Aiken swallowed hard and gathered what
little intestinal fortitude he could muster. “I really think you
should rethink that, sir. This sort of large-scale recognition of
the role of meta-humans in national defense is exactly the sort of
thing that would appeal to the hero types out there. I admit it
will cast a pretty wide net, and I’m sure we’ll get more than our
share of lunatics, but we’ll also get just about every superhero in
the country knocking down our door. If there is a genuine
super-soldier to be found, you
will
find him or her.”

“This is a top secret project, or at least it
was.
This is not how the military does things!”

“Perhaps you should give it a try, sir,”
Summers calmly suggested. “Have you been paying attention to the
comments and Internet buzz this has churned up? A lot of it is
positive.”

“Precisely,” came a voice from outside the
door of the office.

“The last thing I need right now is a visit
from
him,
” growled Siegel.

The general leaned down to buzz the door
open, and in walked a middle-aged man with slick black hair and a
snazzy uniform. Technically it was the same sort of suit Siegel was
wearing, but whereas the general looked as though he was born with
it on, this newcomer looked as though he had been cast to play an
army officer on some sort of daytime drama. He was smiling a wide
and shamelessly insincere smile and holding a tablet computer.

“‘The army is putting together a justice
league? How cool is that?’ ‘I don’t know about signing up, but what
channel is it going to be on?’ ‘This is gonna be awesome.’ Those
are just three of the comments we’ve gotten on just one of the
posts reporting this little ‘security breach’ of yours. And General
Siegel, I realize that this is your first project under the DARPA
umbrella, but around here that is precisely how the military does
things. The X Prize? Those boys down at Boston Dynamics with their
adorable little robo-dogs. We’re the Defense
Advanced
Research Projects Agency, Siegel. We evolve with the times. And
this is exactly the sort of spike in public interest that will get
you a nice fat slice of the funding pie.” He stepped up to Aiken
and extended a hand. “Hi there, Dr. Aiken. Major Chester St. John.
Civilians can call me Chaz. I’m a consultant. I’m
the
consultant when it comes to press in this place. I do most of the
public-relations planning around here, and you, sir, just made my
week.”

“Major, I cannot have a bunch of costumed
freaks running around that training facility,” the general
fumed.

“Of course not, of course not. It is already
being taken care of. As we speak there is a remote site being set
up. We’ve redirected the phone number to a team that is taking down
names and addresses, making appointments, and giving out updated
application info and tryout dates.”

“We are trying to build a strike force, not
run a damned reality show.”

“I know we aren’t running a reality show,
General. Not
yet
anyway, though I have already received some
pretty attractive offers from Discovery and CBS. Probably I won’t
be able to make that fly with the top brass, but we’ll see if we
can get something streaming on the website.”

“You cannot broadcast our training and
screening techniques. They are classified.”

“Of course not. We’ll simply come up with
some nonstandard tests. Something that will give us the information
we need, but we won’t mind revealing to the public. And it wouldn’t
hurt to up the entertainment quotient a little.”

Siegel sheared through his cigar a third
time.

“You and I will discuss it, General,” St.
John offered. “I’m sure we can work out something that will meet
with your approval. As for you, Dr. Aiken, and you, Private
Summers, we are going to need you to draw up an application.
Something that will let you work through a few hundred raw profiles
per day. Deadlines are deadlines, after all.”

“I’ll have you know that I am in charge of
this project. You can’t order
my
men around.”

“These orders are coming down from above,
General. I’m just the messenger.”