Can’t get back in. What’s going on?
Sandy stared not at the message he’d sent Mr. Pick on the company chat system forty minutes ago, but at the space underneath the message that continued to display a decided lack of response. He’d sent it seconds after he’d gotten back to his hotel; he’d walked to a strip mall a few minutes away to get a mini pizza for lunch while scrolling through news reports. His full name hadn’t come up in any so far. Small blessings.
The rest of the world, though, had lost its collective mind. He’d presumed “could Amarylis be an AI-generated fake” from earlier this morning reached the outer limits of crazy, but no. It had been the jumping off point. The conservative cable news network brimmed with speculation that evil liberals—like the current mildly left-of-center president they routinely reported on as if he were a literal bomb-throwing communist—would use first contact as a cover to ram through higher taxes for the rich or gun safety legislation. Well, that was the calm, rational side of that network; the shrill side insisted that this was the end game they’d warned you about, when the radical leftists secretly in charge of the one world government turned over the world to the all-powerful communist aliens. Actual leftists on social media were divided between hoping the giant aliens were communist, and speculating that the government would use first contact as a cover to impose martial law, suspend free speech completely, or make any number of other authoritarian moves. Meanwhile, the highest-rated posts on Reddit babbled about false flag operations and somehow weaved in old anti-caracal tropes. (He’d never figured out why caracals were the go-to for blaming the world’s problems on, but that prejudice endured through centuries, transcending all other politics.)
He’d walked back to the hotel and pressed the elevator call button when his phone finally pinged. Quickly, he pulled it out and opened the chat app to read Pick’s reply:
Voice chat?
Hmm. He could give Pick his phone number, but voice chats were also more secure. At least a little. He waited until he got back up to the room before starting one.
“So what’s going on,” Pick said without preamble, “is a bureaucratic clusterfuck. I think we’re farther behind now than we were yesterday.”
Sandy’s ears skewed. “What? Your team hasn’t started?”
“We tried to start. We got as far as gathering requirements from Amarylis, translating the way she speaks about gates and magic to the way we speak about traversable connectors and technology. What we need is what you’d guess based on what we had when we accidentally brought her here: tremendous power and a big-ass TWT amp. But we don’t have either here, and they’re arguing over who’s responsible for what, how fast they can do it, yadda yadda yadda.”
“That’s…come on. From the way she’d been talking about it, they should have already been able to get her home by now.”
“Yeah, well. I know that’s how she talked about it, but she might be underestimating the work involved. I still don’t know what she means by ‘point of references’ for her teleportation; it sounds like points in three-dimensional space, but when we’re talking about two points zillions of kilometers away, there are relativistic effects involved we haven’t been able to communicate to one another yet.”
“Oh.”
“So what do you mean you can’t get back in?”
“There are checkpoints on the road to the hangar now, and they turned me away. I gave them Field Director Brickman’s name, and they said he personally denied me clearance to enter.”
“Did he.” Pick snorted. “When Amarylis asked him where you were, he said he didn’t know, and that he didn’t have time to, quote, babysit you.”
“Amarylis asked about me?” Sandy felt his ears color.
“Yes, she did.” Pick sounded distinctly amused, which made his ears get even warmer. Thank the gods nobody was around to see the blush. “She sees you as the only true advocate she’s got among all us bug-sized people.”
“We’re bigger than bugs to her. And I’m sure she sees you as an advocate, too. Did they at least manage to get her food and water?”
“Technically. Water tankers were the easy part. The challenge was figuring out how to make the world’s biggest ground beef plate.”
“What?”
“They set up a heat source under a metal floor, cleaned the floor, and dumped about a ton of cheap beef steak and another ton of onions, vegetables, peppers, and salt onto it. That was after they spent about two hours trying to figure out how to stir it all until she asked if they could just rig up a spatula for her to do it, and they did.”
“Wow. So I guess she can’t use magic to scale up a normal-sized burger to her size.”
“Didn’t come up, so I guess not. Anyway, I can see what I can do about getting you back on base, but be prepared to stand around watching Gilchrist and Brickman snipe at one another. You’d at least cheer Amarylis up. She’s not doing much besides lying around looking depressed now.”
His ears folded back again. “Okay. Thanks a lot, Mr. Pick.”
“Dennis.”
“Uh, okay. Dennis.”
When they disconnected, Sandy started pacing. It’d be much easier to do the work on the BRC campus, wouldn’t it? Most of the buildings were intact, after all, and it didn’t lack for power. They might even have another TWT amp available. Yes, it’d expose Amarylis to more public scrutiny, but that ship had already sailed. Anyway, if she could describe to Pick and his team what they needed to do, what she needed to be ready, they wouldn’t need to bring her there until the last minute.
Sandy paused in his pacing. No chance in hell of convincing Brickman of this plan…but what if Brickman wasn’t the “they” bringing Amarylis there?
“That’s crazy,” he said aloud. And it was. They couldn’t exactly sneak an eighty-foot tall, eighty-foot long alien fox woman out without being spotted. Pick’s team wouldn’t have the resources to do it even if they agreed, and even if Gilchrist helped—which she wouldn’t. Beyond that, cops had locked the campus down as tightly as they had the blimp hangar, given that it was now a disaster recovery site.
He chewed on his lip, tail flicking back and forth, then headed to his car.
No checkpoints on the way back to the office, at least. But sure enough, police cars guarded the campus’s main entrance. He didn’t attempt to turn in, instead continuing on as if he were driving to another office building. They’d blocked off side entrance, too, but the road along the back of the campus didn’t have any official vehicles on it—only the usual collection of cars parallel parked along its sides. There were no automobile entrances to BRC to block off on this street. A walking/exercise trail started here, cutting across the campus and continuing across the road toward a city golf course.
The police hadn’t secured the trail.
He slowed the car, crawling along the road and parking in front of the trail entrance. He hadn’t taken this trail in about three years. At least. It wound through woods and manicured gardens, passing by a forgotten, weed-filled picnic area. Buildings 8 and 9 stood over here, just about as far as you could get from the ruins of Building 4.
Hmm. He pulled out his phone again, starting another voice chat with Pick.
“Building 9 has high voltage lines coming into it, right? For the decommissioned server farm?”
“It does.” Pick sounded cautious, clearly trying to figure out where Sandy was going with this.
“What if we could set up what Amarylis needed here, instead of doing it at the hangar? Get it all set up, fully operational, and just bring her here at the last minute?”
“It’d be faster than bringing lines from the military base in here. ‘Just’ is doing an awful lot of work in that sentence, though, isn’t it?”
“I know. But I’m looking at the campus from back here on Landing Road, by the exercise trail, and it’s basically unguarded. We could get in and out without anyone noticing. If we could just get a few people in here who knew what they needed to do, the work could be super fast.”
Pick’s voice grew strained. “You used ‘just’ again. We—” He cut himself off and grumbled. “Hold on.”
Sandy couldn’t make out the background noise, but he could tell Pick was striding away from where he’d been, away from anyone who might overhear, heading outside the hangar completely. “Are you seriously suggesting we do this all secretly, without waiting for any authorization, and spring it on Brickman and Gilchrist when it’s finished? ‘Surprise, we’re ready?’”
Oh. He hadn’t considered that, actually. “Do you think that’d work? That they’d go for it?”
He scoffed. “No. Even if I could get all the engineers to ignore how that could involve prison terms for them, it’d infuriate Brickman. He’d think we were undermining him on purpose. Which we would be.”
“Mmm.” Sandy’s ears folded down, and he began pacing again. “What if we could get Ms. Gilchrist to sign off on it without Brickman knowing?”
“How do you think…” Pick made a more thoughtful grunt. “Convince her it’s a way to push the balance of power back in her favor.”
“Exactly. It’s all technically still working toward the same goal they’d have here, but it’s doing it on property that’s fully under SI’s control.”
“She’s as invested as Brickman in the idea that Amarylis’s promises to send engineers back here aren’t good enough, though. Brickman sees it as a matter of national security, she sees it as a matter of corporate influence.”
“If she wants to get control of the situation, this will be the best way to do it. Maybe the only way. Otherwise, she and Brickman squabble until the Sivra rescue team shows up and takes control. Make that last point to her.”
Silence stretched out for several long seconds before Pick said, “I’ll try to find a chance to float the idea and call you back. It might be a while, but I’ll let you know.”
“Great. And, uh, tell Amarylis…” Tell her what? That you miss her? “That we’ll get this worked out.”
“Mmm hmm.” Pick sounded amused again as he disconnected.
It took a longer while than Sandy expected. He’d gone back to the hotel and, in a sudden panic, remembered he hadn’t even tried to get in touch with his manager yet to see if he had actual work to do, if his job was in jeopardy. Fortunately, while he was technically absent without notice, his manager brushed it off with “don’t worry, you can use some of that PTO you never take.” (He wasn’t wrong; Sandy had over seven weeks accumulated.) Breathing a sigh of relief, he decided he would resolutely ignore the news for now. He watched a couple of episodes of an old detective show he’d been going through on a streaming service, then flopped over for a now late-afternoon nap.
When he woke up, he checked messages—none—and set off on foot for dinner, a noodle place he knew a few blocks away. The order had just arrived when a notification chime sounded: another voice chat.
This time, though, it wasn’t from Mr. Pick. Swallowing, he put in his earbuds and answered. “Ms. Gilchrist.”
“Mr. Nelson,” the caracal’s voice came. “Give me a paragraph or two explaining how your idea of a quick hackathon to build a new temporary portal on the back side of the BRC campus gives us leverage.”
“Well, uh, it’s our facility, so all under—”
“An explanation I can’t figure out on my own, please.”
“I think that’s a massive point of leverage, though, ma’am. Amarylis talked about using points of reference for traveling back to her world from this one, and she and her team will return to the point of reference she left from.” That breezed past a whole lot of assumptions that he hoped she wouldn’t question if he moved fast enough. “Do we want that to be at the hangar at the military base, or on our campus?”
She remained silent a few seconds. “And you think we should do this on our own as fast as possible, then present it to Brickman as fait accompli.”
“Yes.”
“He’s going to make up a thousand national security directives this violates.”
“He’ll still be—” He couldn’t say in charge and keep her interested. Hmm. “—securing the site. We’ll do it all to his specs.”
“That won’t satisfy him.” He could almost hear her tail flicking. “But maybe there are strings I can pull elsewhere.” She fell silent again for just long enough to make it that much more uncomfortable. “All right, Mr. Nelson. I’ll give you and Dennis a provisional go-ahead while I shore up support against the inevitable fallout. As soon as you have even the most half-assed idea of a time frame, you let me know.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you. Uh—”
“Yes?”
“Is there a way for me to get back into the hangar?”
“Don’t you have clearance? You were here…” She sighed. “Here because the alien happened to talk to you first. Let me guess, Brickman didn’t give you the authorization to return once you left.”
“Yes.”
“Head back to the entrance checkpoint and I’ll get someone there to meet you.” As she disconnected, he heard her voice growl more faintly to herself: “—man’s ass was any tighter I’d shove coal up it to make—”
He coughed, putting his phone away and hurrying through the rest of dinner before running back to the car.
The cops and agents at the checkpoint probably weren’t the same ones who were there this morning, but he had trouble being sure. At least there was no line there now. The cop who stopped him was a snow leopard again, but he looked lankier. Maybe. “ID?”
Sandy held out his employee badge. “I was told to wait by the checkpoint for someone to meet me here.”
The cop squinted. “Meet who?”
“Ms. Gilchrist didn’t say.”
“Who’s Ms. Gilchrist?”
“Aurora Gilchrist, vice-president of research initiatives at Strategic Industries? She’s in charge of the Bridgetown Research Center where, you know,” he mimed an explosion with his hands, “the alien came through.”
He ran his hand through his head fur, looking at Sandy’s badge, and sighed, waving him to the side of the road. “Wait there.”
Sandy pulled over and leaned back, trying unsuccessfully to look cool and relaxed.
About ten minutes later—ten minutes that might as well have been an hour—another black sedan pulled up. A tiger agent got out, walking up to the snow leopard cop and handing him a badge. The cop glanced toward Sandy, nodded, then walked over, holding the badge out. “You’ll need this to get through in the future. Go ahead, sir.”
“Okay. Thanks.” He took the badge and pulled back onto the road, now not even bothering to hide looking excited.
The media circus remained in full force; he hit two more checkpoints, the first one directing him around the hangar to a remote lot, the second one verifying his ID again before letting him back inside. The checkpoint inside the hangar waved him through wordlessly with another flash of the new badge.
As he drew closer to Amarylis, he saw she’d created a magic diagram in front of her again. Engineers he recognized from the quantum connector team, including Mr. Pick, stood around her. Ms. Gilchrist stood on the giantess’s other side.
“—cords anchored at your reference point on the end here, around the circumference of your portal, and at our reference point, around the circumference of ours,” Amarylis was saying.
“Magical cords,” a lynx about Sandy’s age repeated, looking baffled.
“Cords of magic,” Amarylis corrected. “Not created by magic, but made of it. I am sure your physics has an analogy.”
“Cosmic strings.” Pick crossed his arms, shaking his head with an incredulous grin.
“That is an interesting—” Amarylis’s ears perked up. “Sandy!” She broke into a smile. “You are back!”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get back until now.”
“Rory Gilchrist said there were…difficulties. But we are moving forward now.”
“We’ll be taking what we learn from you now and starting on combining it with our work tomorrow morning,” Gilchrist cut in, looking up at the giantess. “And we’ll chat about what we need from you then, too.”
Amarylis looked down, her ears lowering.