COMMITTED by A.R. Kirby Episode 14 A trip to the desert V ernon Hasselblad sat in the driver’s seat of his 1972 Ford Bronco and stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his battered leather bomber jacket. Even in June, mornings were cold in Flagstaff, and the north wind blowing off the tarmac at 6:30 a.m. made it even colder. He kept the motor running on the old Ford, chewing the unlit stub of a Swisher Sweet cigar, annoyed that the Collective had him up this early. But when the Collective calls, Vernon Hasselblad answers. And the call this morning was to take charge of a Junior Associate from Collective headquarters on his first field mission. Vernon watched the door to the terminal absent-mindedly from his spot curbside, pondering the wisdom of his decision to stay home from the training exercise in Greenland this week. By virtue of his seniority and tenure with the Collective, he was given the option of being the senior Associate on call while the rest of the Associates from North America underwent a strenuous survival course. Having been through more of the courses than he could count, he decided to stay home. It had been a quiet week until last night, when he got the call from headquarters. It was somewhat of a surprise. Vernon had been in a state of semi-retirement for almost four years now, only joining in on important Collective missions. He could understand getting a call for an actual emergency -- if Alpha Centauri attempted to invade again, for example, or if Dr. Zombie’s legion of dead came marching down the road, for another -- but being called out to investigate a minor energy phenomenon with a raw Junior Associate was something else altogether. He shook his head Committed by A.R. Kirby slightly, thinking about the stacks of reports and no telling what other kind of crap work this “investigation” was likely to require. His weekend was screwed. Movement from the terminal shook Vernon from his thoughts as a dozen or so people began filing out the door. He scanned the new arrivals as they walked out, and immediately picked out his charge -- Brandon Mays, Junior Associate, he recalled instantly from the mission briefing he received from headquarters. He rested one arm on the steering wheel and leaned toward the open passenger window. “Mays! Over here!” Brandon looked around for a moment, wondering where the voice that sounded like heavy grit sandpaper rubbed on plexiglass came from. He saw the old man motioning to him from the battered old truck with the open back. Picking up his bag, Brandon walked quickly to where Vernon was parked, but when he was close enough to look into the cab, he hesitated. The old man with the University of Wisconsin ball cap, aviator shades, and chewedup cigar stub was not anything close to what he expected from his Collective contact in Flagstaff. He looked like an effigy of Hunter S. Thompson that had been left out in the harsh desert sun for far too long. His face was wrinkled, leathery, and stern, three days of stubble marked the old man’s skin, and wisps of longish and untidy gray hair fluttered in the wind from beneath his cap. “Vernon Hasselblad?” “That’s me, son. Hop in.” Vernon reached across the passenger seat and opened the door for Brandon, who hesitated. “A nice day for a canyon hike,” Brandon said quietly but firmly, looking Vernon directly in the face. Vernon let out a little laugh. God, the earnestness of these new Associates. He raised his sunglasses and looked at Brandon. “You gotta be kidding me, right? It’s six-thirty, I haven’t had breakfast yet, and you’re going to be all by-the-book with me?” Brandon stood still at the side of the vehicle, awaiting Vernon’s reply. The older Associate sighed heavily before reciting the passcode answer. 2 Episode 14 “Okay, junior -- ‘The mountains are nicer this time of year’. Happy now?” “Thank you, sir,” Brandon said, clambering into into the truck. “This is my first assignment, and I want to do everything right...” “Of course you do, of course you do,” Vernon said, taking Brandon’s bag and tossing it toward the back of the truck. “And I’m sure you’ll do fine. By the book is the way to go, especially on an assignment like this. We’ll probably be waist deep in weirdness before the sun goes down.” “You really think so?” Brandon looked eagerly at the senior Associate. “Hell no,” Vernon said, slamming the old Ford into gear and rapidly pulling away from the curb, tumbling Brandon into his seat. The old man stifled a chuckle. By the time they had reached the airport exit, Brandon had pulled himself together enough to begin noticing his surroundings. He stuck his head out the open window of the truck, closed his eyes and breathed in the high desert air, already warm to his nostrils, dry, clean and invigorating. He took another deep breath. He’d never smelled air so clean before; Hartford, where he’d lived most of his life, was a city and smelled like one. The massive underground headquarters of the Collective, where he’d spent the past three months, always smelled slightly antiseptic. Although the virtual outdoor recreation rooms at headquarters provided an ultrarealistic experience of any outdoor location on earth, they couldn’t hold a candle to the real thing. He’d never been to a place where the air was so clean, with so much wide open space as far as the eye could see. It was, in a word, glorious. “Keep hanging your head out the window like that, and people are going to think I’ve got a mighty strange looking hound,” the old man said, interrupting Brandon’s reverie as the sunbleached Bronco swerved onto Interstate 24 . Brandon pulled his head back inside the window and looked at Vernon. “I’ve never been out west before,” Brandon told the old man. “It’s nice out here.” “Yeah, it’s not too bad,” Vernon replied as he got the truck 3 Committed by A.R. Kirby up to speed on the interstate. “It’s quiet, the air is clean, and the Collective pretty much never bothers me, so I like it. Not that you’re going to get to see much of it -- we’ll be out of here by nightfall, off to check out this strange, strange occurrence. Most likely, we’ll be writing up a lot of reports with one conclusion -‘unexplained’. Big waste of time as far as I’m concerned. “But, it is your first mission,” he went on, “so we might as well make the most of it. Gotta have some kind of stories to tell when you get back to headquarters, right? So tell me -- what do you think of field work so far?” “It’s been a busy night, that’s for sure,” Brandon said, and recounted his evening for Vernon. He’d been on the move ever since Senior Associate Merkle put him on the assignment some seven hours earlier. First was the rush to get to the transport at headquarters; he had to literally run from the Monitor Room to his bunk, with just enough time to pack a single bag and download the briefing information into his Collective supplied PDA before rushing to the transporter bay to catch his flight. “Did they bring you over on one of the new Megasonic Stealth Transports?” “Oh yeah,” Brandon replied. “Have you been on one of those things yet? It was great. Never even knew we were moving, even though we made it from headquarters to Mexico City in less than two hours. And some kind of nice.” “So I heard,” Vernon said, eyes fixed on the road ahead. “Form-fitting seats, all the latest gadgets, and better coffee than Starbucks. Must be nice. Back when I was a Junior Associate, all we had were surplus cargo planes fitted with some cloaking technology the Nazis never quite cracked during World War Two. Traveling was hell back then.” “It’s not now. The Collective really knows how to keep its people happy.” “Well, most of the time they do,” Vernon said. Brandon noticed the old man’s jaw clench slightly. “Anyway, we’ve got a little time to kill while we’re driving,” Vernon continued. “Tell me what you know about the mission.” The aviator sunglasses stared straight ahead while 4 Episode 14 Brandon turned and pulled his bag from behind the seat.. He dug around for a moment, and with silent triumph, Brandon pulled out his Collective-issued PDA and began punching at the touchscreen fervently, calling up the mission brief uploaded to him from headquarters. “What the hell are you doing?” “I’m calling up the mission information, sir.” Brandon scanned for the file; he knew it was there somewhere, he read it on the plane, he just had to find where he saved it. “I didn’t ask you to read me the mission brief, I asked you to tell me what you know about the mission!” Vernon’s right hand flashed out, and the next thing Brandon knew, he was rubbing a very sore wrist and the PDA was lying in the Bronco’s floorboard. He looked down, wondering if it had broken. “Make a move for that little computer, and we’ll be doing a lesson on how to field dress a broken wrist,” Vernon said, still staring straight ahead. Brandon glared at the old man. Vernon pretended not to notice. “You need to know your mission backwards and frontwards in your head, son. You can’t depend on technology to do all the work for you. Now tell me what you know about the mission.” “Uh... well... we’re investigating an unusual energy spike,” Brandon said, still rubbing his wrist. “It happened somewhere in the southeastern U.S. last night.” “Okay, you’ve got the what and where, sort of,” Vernon said. “Can you give me some details?” “Not really, sir, not without the PDA.” “Jesus, what are they teaching you kids back at the farm these days?” Vernon’s stare never faltered, but his voice rose steadily. “I’ve told them for years and years that they need to work on memory training for all the field Associates, but do they do anything about it? Hell no.” Vernon spat out the window. “Well, it is a lot of information, sir. It seems pretty unlikely that anyone could remember all of it.” “You would think that, but you don’t know about memory 5 Committed by A.R. Kirby training,” Vernon said, his voice softer now. He recognized a good opportunity for a teaching moment, and now was one of the best he’d ever seen. He went on, hoping some of his wisdom would stick on this new Associate. “A good memory is essential in this line of work. A damned near photographic memory is an invaluable asset. And such a memory can be created. It’s just a matter of training. In fact, I’ve already looked at the brief and put all the information in my head.” “Right.” “Let me tell you what I know about the mission. About 11:13 p.m. local time, an energy spike was recorded by you. The spike was subtle, but matched one from approximately one year earlier, hence the investigation. It appears to be a type of dimensional transfer, but that has not been entirely confirmed as yet. The spike was determined to have originated somewhere in the southeastern United States; however, more recent information narrows that location down to Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and the northern Gulf of Mexico. Shall I tell you about the frequency and amplitude of the spike? Or perhaps I can give you information on the cross-referenced files related to dimensional energy spikes occurring in the United States over the past fifty years.” Brandon looked at Vernon in amazement. “How’d you know all that?” “I memorized it. I’ve got one of those PDA thingys, but I don’t like it. That’s one of the problems with the Collective; always so hung up on technology. Sometimes you just gotta go with your gut, and other times it doesn’t matter what your cell phone can do, it won’t save your life. So I keep all the important stuff here.” He pointed to his head. “How do you do that?” “Well, it’s a trick I learned a long time ago. Do you know who Truman Capote was?” “Um... actor? Writer? I know he was famous...” “Writer. Ever read In Cold Blood? Great book. You should read it. But when he was writing it, he was interviewing residents of a small Kansas town. He didn’t want to let his note-taking 6 Episode 14 during these interviews distract the people he was interviewing, so he worked on his memory -- eventually he didn’t have to take notes at all.” “That’s pretty impressive.” “Know how he did it?” “Uh, no.” “He memorized the Sears catalog as practice. Once he could do that, his memory was so good that he could re-create entire conversations verbatim from memory.” “Wow.” “So I did the same thing. Or at least I used to. I memorized the Sears catalog every year from 1967 though 1996.” Mays let out a low whistle. “No way.” “Oh, yes I did. I memorized each and every item on each and every page of each catalog each year, for twenty-nine years.” “Why did you stop?” “Well, paper catalogs started becoming passé. The Sears catalogs started getting so small that they were no challenge any more; they weren’t of any use to me. Everything started being posted on the internet, so I decided I would memorize it.” “Memorize what?” “The internet.” “Okay, now you’re just bullshitting me.” “Think what you want to think, buster. But one of these days, you’re going to need to know something that’s on that little machine, and you won’t be able to access it. And then you’ll say, ‘damn, I should have memorized the internet like Vern.’ And you’ll be right.” They drove on for a few minutes, Vernon still focused on the road ahead, Brandon silently trying to figure out what he’d 7 Committed by A.R. Kirby gotten into with this crazy old man. Vernon took the next exit and pulled into a small gas station. At the pump, both he and Brandon stepped out of the vehicle. “Listen, I need to go inside and grab a few things. Make yourself useful and put some gas in this old thing,” he said, and Brandon turned and walked around the back of the vehicle to the gas pump, pulled out the nozzle, and began looking for the filler cap. plate.” “It’s on the back,” the old man called. “Behind the license “Thanks,” Brandon replied, and pulling down the license plate on a spring hinge, he found the filler cap and inserted the nozzle into the old truck. As fuel started filling the gas tank, Mays found himself reading the stickers plastered across the truck’s beatup bumper and tailgate: A large University of Wisconsin Badgers sticker; one declaring the owner of the vehicle to be a Vietnam Veteran; another reading “The Power of Pride” atop a fluttering American flag; a plea to stop the war in Iraq; a green Grateful Dead dancing bear; and a declaration that the driver would rather be driving a Titleist. Brandon wasn’t sure what to make of these, or what they might tell him about the old man. At this point, he didn’t much care. All he knew is that he was tired, his wrist hurt, and he was ready for something to happen. A few minutes later, Brandon was putting the nozzle back on the gas pump when Vernon came out of the station carrying a small brown paper bag. He placed the contents into a small daypack he pulled from behind the front seat. Brandon joined him in the cab of the truck. “Listen, Mays, I apologize if I was a little bit hard on you back there,” he said, closing the driver’s door and cranking the truck with a low roar. “I know you’ve got to be tired. We’ve got a couple of hours worth of driving left to do this morning, so why don’t you catch some shut-eye? I’ll wake you before we get where we’re going.” It was the best news Brandon had heard all day. He sunk back into the passenger seat and closed his eyes. 8 Episode 14 “By the way, where are we headed?” Brandon asked as sleep crept up on him. “To see a friend,” Vernon replied as he pulled the Bronco back onto the highway. “A very, very old friend.” To be continued... 9