The Petrichor Conspiracy - Chapter 1
The SPACERS SAGA journey begins here...
Chapter 1
B.S.I. Case File #465:
“On September 21, 2035 at approximately 1240 hours Zulu time, an incident occurred near a NATO outpost in western Iran. A NATO convoy was on patrol near the border with Syria when a series of lights appeared in the sky and followed them for some time. The on-scene commander, Commander Derrick Ross of the U.S. Navy, contacted the Bureau the morning after the incident, and an investigation was opened in coordination with the Defense Intelligence Agency and INTERPOL. Initial findings indicated that the lights were drone aircraft sent over the convoy by China-backed insurgents in the region. Regardless, the military asked that the matter be CLOSED”
Case File Status: CLOSED on June 16, 2036 per D.O.D. request
Svalbard, Norway - April 2049
The sun glinting off the snow was almost blinding. A biting wind rolled up the fjord, causing Doctor Alicia Ricardo to shiver even in her thermal gear. She wasn’t complaining. This was the life she had chosen, and she’d be damned if she’d let something as trivial as the cold slow her down now.
In the past three years, she had gone from Africa’s rift valley to the jungles of Central America and more. The fjords of Svalbard was just her latest stop. Sometimes, it all felt like a wild goose chase. Then again, she was searching for something that would shake the very foundations of modern science.
As she marveled at the beauty of her surroundings, her research partner, Dr. Henriksen, called out from a few dozen yards away. She could hear his thick accent even through the stiff wind. “Dr. Ricardo, we have found something! Come, see for yourself.” Alicia shuddered as a gust of wind blew up from the fjord, then turned and headed up the hill to see what it was that Peter and his team had found.
The dig site was tunneled twenty feet into the wall of the fjord. Dr. Henriksen stood to the side of the hole, next to the group of student researchers who’d accompanied him on the dig. As she came upon them, Alicia noticed the strangely haunted look on Henriksen’s face. “What’s wrong, Peter?” she asked.
Peter Henriksen turned to look back into the mouth of the dig site, his brows creased in astonishment. “I cannot say for certain, Alicia. Perhaps you should see for yourself.”
Henriksen pointed into the tunnel. “Ja,” he said in his accented voice. “It’s in there. Whatever it is.” There was something in his voice that Alicia couldn’t place, something that sounded like fear.
The other four members of the dig team stood shivering against the brisk wind, waiting for Alicia to go first. That was concerning. She’d worked with these men for several months now, long enough to know that they were all tough, no-nonsense scientists. Whatever had them spooked was enough to get her imagination running wild. She stepped through the loose snow and peered into the tunnel. It was dark, with the brightness of the sun reflected on the clear white snow obscuring the view.
Alicia steeled herself and stepped into the opening. As she walked forward, she noticed a strange glow at the back of the tunnel. Squinting, she saw something nestled into the back wall. She went closer and saw that whatever it was, it had melted some of the snow from around its resting place. It was a strange, metallic device about two feet in length, and it was faintly glowing a strange greenish-blue.
Alicia’s eyes went wide as she stepped forward, reaching out toward the object in the enveloping dark of the tunnel. Something about it drew her toward its eerie glow, as if it were a magnet.
She extended her hand and touched the sleek metal of the object’s surface. At least, she assumed it was metal. Whatever it was, it was as smooth as summer air and colder even that its location would lead one to assume. She ran her hand across the surface, and to her amazement, the skin or whatever it was that coated the object seemed to vibrate under her fingers. Except it wasn’t vibration, as much as it was a kind of fluttering, with the object’s silver skin shivered like the ruffling feathers of a bird.
Alicia smiled. It was like something out of a dream, those dreams of childhood when the imagination still runs free through the deepest recesses of the subconscious, untethered by the constraints of age. Over her shoulder, she heard Doctor Henriksen. “What is it, Doctor Ricardo?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “But I’m going to find out,” she added in a voice only she could hear.
Little did she know that, on the other side of the world, a small object of similar material was being driven through the barren Arizona desert by a man named Thomas Morrow. He’d just recovered it from the scene of an electrical disturbance, and was eyeing his car’s digital clock readout when the object lit up like a Christmas tree. The suddenness of its activity shocked him so badly that he almost swerved the car off the road. By the time he got it back under control, the object was dark once more.
Tom looked over at the object resting in his front passenger seat. For a moment, he worried that it might start sending off some kind of bizarre energy, like the disturbance he’d responded to when he first flew out here from San Diego. When nothing else happened, he turned his tired eyes back to the road. There was still a long way to go before he could get any sleep, and he was dead tired.
Back in Svalbard, it took almost five hours for the team to work their discovery out of the tunnel and across the tundra to the base camp. A blizzard had come on from nowhere, blowing snow sideways across the fjordlands. Visibility at base camp was reduced to only a few yards. The guideposts staked into the outskirts of the camp helped them to fumble their way up to the tiny temporary prefab structures.
Alicia huddled with a few of the others in the mess hall section of the main shack, contemplating the strange object now sitting on a tarp in the middle of the equipment shed. Even a rudimentary overview could prove that it was certainly not from the early Holocene, the Pleistocene, or any other epoch of the Earth. Which means it may not be of this Earth, Alicia thought gleefully. Could this be the proof she needed?
Dr. Henriksen’s teaching assistant, Olsson, poked his head in from the small kitchen cubicle of the trailer. She clutched the cup of cocoa in his hands as he began to speak. “Dr. Ricardo?” he said. “Dr. Henriksen wishes to speak with you about the find, if you are available.”
It took them five minutes to re-don their winter gear, then they went out through the two-tiered entrance to the main trailer. The wind moaned outside the trailer, and the air itself was a mess of white cotton. Inside the stout, squat equipment trailer, the howling of the wind sounded like a mourning wolf.
Inside, Dr. Henriksen was hunched over the strange object, probing its every inch with a magnifying glass and a pen light. He didn’t look up when he spoke. “So, what do you think we have found here, Doctor?”
Alicia did not answer. Instead she leaned in to get a better look at the object, only now getting an appreciation for its finer details through Henriksen’s magnifying glass. It was oblong in shape, roughly teardrop-shaped, and perfectly smooth. But as Alicia watched, the surface seemed to pulse. It was almost as if the object was a kind of living thing, with photoreactive cells that were changing to match the light.
Dr. Henriksen turned slightly to face her. “What do you think we should do about it?” she said, his face betraying his own nervousness. “Should we, eh, call someone?”
His assistant, Olsson, leaned in to get a look for himself. “Who is there to call?”
Alicia frowned, wondering if there was indeed someone they could call about this sort of thing. Then a flashbulb went off in her head. “Wait, I have an idea. There’s an agency back in the States that investigates just this sort of thing, the Bureau of Special Investigations, or something like that.”
Henriksen’s eyebrows went up. “Ja, I have heard of them.” He frowned. “But I have thought they were just a sort of joke, yes? A means to keep the conspiracy theorists quiet, or something like that.”
“At this point I’d be happy just to have some help trying to identify this thing,” said Alicia. “You said it yourself, Peter. whatever it is, it was buried deep enough to pre-date the first expansions out of Africa.” She looked around the faces now staring back at her. “We have a responsibility to get to the bottom of this.”
Henriksen smiled. “Why not? The more the merrier, as they say.”
Smiling, Alicia nodded and began to compose her message to the B.S.I. in Washington. But as she looked past Henriksen to the strange, otherworldly object sitting in the middle of the room, that same old feeling of foreboding rose in the pit of her stomach. Somehow, she sensed that whatever was going on was only just getting started. It gave her a warm feeling deep in her gut. She knew to trust it.
What a joy it was to work on this!
It’s great to start reading the story you’ve been brewing!