The Petrichor Conspiracy - Chapter 2
In 2014, Phoenix burned. Agent Thomas Morrow is about to find out why...
Chapter 2
B.S.I. Case File #297:
“On June 25, 2029, at approximately 2100 hours, five teenagers experienced an Alpha-level event in the desert near Rhyolite, Nevada. When Bureau agents arrived to investigate, the teens explained that several glowing objects had appeared in the sky and approached them. The agents ventured to the site to check for evidence; when none was found, the case file was shelved. As of 2049, the children have exhibited no long-term fallout. One is even a member of the Bureau.” [see attached files for details]”
Case File Status: OPEN
San Diego, California
The afternoon sun slanted through the venetian blinds of Special Agent Louis Kellogg’s corner office. As Thomas Morrow sat in a cushioned office chair, contemplating the light patterns, he thought that the glow resembled the amber light of a truck stop in the dead of night. He realized that he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in three days, and even a dingy rest stop on I-8 seemed appealing.
As his eyes started to close, Agent Kellogg walked back into the office, and Tom saw that he was accompanied by Agent Simmons, the head of the western division. “Run the story by me once more, Tom,” he said as he slapped an old-fashioned file folder down on his desk as he spoke. “We need this for the record.”
Tom cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. “Yes, sir. We received a report two days ago of an electrical disturbance in the desert near the Phoenix Exclusion Zone. I arrived at the contact’s house at about 0200, and spoke briefly with her about what she saw. Then I swept the area for evidence or artifacts.”
He hesitated. “I found that thing I brought back here, and the lights came in over the mountains, just like back in the Air Cav. Only thing missing was the Ride of the Valkyries. They swarmed the site, but they seemed to ignore me. When they were gone, the local contact and her trailer were gone. Like they’d never been there.”
Simmons sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He turned to Kellogg. “What do you think, Lou? Do you think we’ve got another Omega-level problem brewing here?”
Tom looked at Kellogg, a man who had mentored him from his early days in the Bureau. Lou had been around more than a decade longer than Tom, and seemed to be on a fast-track to run the western office when Simmons retired. He sighed and shifted his weight. "Let’s hope not. I don’t want to work too hard today.”
Simmons frowned and looked down at the file folder on his desk It told a tale of woe in only three words: “CASE FILE #1.” Tom knew the story behind those words. The Phoenix Event. May 7, 2014. The day the world changed.
Agent Simmons cleared his throat and turned off the recorder. “Of course, what I’m about to tell you should be considered strictly confidential. Understood?”
Tom looked up at him, then nodded slowly. He was too stunned to do anything else.
Simmons leaned back against the desk. “2062 Aten, the asteroid which destroyed Phoenix thirty-six years ago, did not hit the Earth for natural reasons. As in, someone or, dare I say, something set it on its course.”
Tom’s blood went cold as the Senior Agent’s words reached into his chest and stabbed him in the heart. He had grown up obsessing over the demise of Phoenix as much as anyone else. His was called the Phoenix Generation, defined as much by that devastation as by any other event at the turn of the 21st century.
But Simmons wasn’t finished yet. “A painstaking investigation into the record of its orbit concluded that Aten should have passed the Earth harmlessly in May of 2014. Instead, something nudged it onto a course which caused it to impact this planet and wipe an entire metropolitan area off the map. Which, as I said, means that two million people weren't killed by God, but by one of his children.”
Again Tom’s eyes widened in shock. “Yeah,” said Kellogg. “I know.”
By now Tom felt like the room was spinning. He leaned back and rubbed the nape of his neck. “Well, I guess that buries the hatchet in thirty years of speculation, doesn’t it?” Then he let out a single, harsh laugh. It was bitter, joyless sound.
Then he rose to his feet and began to pace. “Why the secrecy?”
Kellogg put a hand on Tom’s shoulder. “The secrecy lets people sleep at night. Waking them up would just let them know how powerless they are. How insecure and corrupt their world is. That's how you make cities burn.”
Tom backed away from him, his own shoulders still shaking with anger. He wanted to scream, to smash the chairs into the window at the injustice of it. But Tom wasn't that guy anymore. “I don’t buy it,” he said instead of exploding. “The secret is too big. You couldn’t hide it from the whole world, not for this long.”
Simmons turned toward the door and sighed. “Tom, you could probably fit everyone in the country who knows what I just told you onto this floor. The higher ups that formed the B.S.I. kept it a secret even from the President. To tell you the truth, I wish I didn’t know. Who wants to know that somebody sent an asteroid toward their own planet and killed two million of their own species?” He turned back to Tom and crossed his arms. “That’s why the secret remains buried, just as it should be.”
Tom took a deep breath, then another. He still felt like he was in freefall. “You’re telling me the people who held the shovels didn’t think that their Commander in Chief needed to know why two million of his citizens were dead?”
Simmons cast his eyes at the floor with a mix of emotions on his face that Tom recognized as both pity and fatigue. “You still don’t understand the scope of this,” he said. “The whole world came to our aid after Phoenix was destroyed.”
Tom cooled off as Simmons spoke. He was still angry, but now his desire to know why overpowered his desire to take the office apart with his bare hands.
“Even 9/11 didn’t get that level of international aid and support. We weren't going to waste it. Ever since the fifth NAFTA agreement in 2016, every nation outside of the Shanghai Pact has either joined the dollar, or is begging to. If the world learned that not only was it a man-made event, but we knew about it the whole time?”
His eyes narrowed ominously. “You don’t fuck with the dollar, Tom. We built an era of peace and prosperity in the wake of the worst catastrophe in modern history. Why would we risk bringing it all crashing down?”
When the senior agent was done with his diatribe, Tom had relaxed enough to gather his thoughts. He closed his eyes for a moment. “Okay. I understand.” He looked at Simmons, then at Kellogg. “I may not like it, but I understand. My question now is, how does all this relate to what I found in Arizona?”
“That’s where things get interesting,” said Kellogg. “Tell him, Frank.”
“Right,” said Simmons. “Earlier today, we received a call from the Norwegian consulate. Apparently, a group of scientists have discovered something in the ice in Svalbard that they think might not be of this world.”
He saw the look of skepticism on Tom’s face. “But they described it as an oblong cylinder, about a foot in length, made of a highly smooth grayish material that glowed a faint greenish-blue in low light. Does that sound familiar?”
Tom blanched again and looked at Simmons, then Kellogg. “When do I leave?”
Simmons grinned, and Lou slapped his hand down on Tom’s shoulder. “We’ve got a flight lined up for you already. You’ll be headed to Oslo on a CIA jet, and then getting ferried to the base camp in Svalbard by local transport.” He grinned and added, “You might want to pack some warm clothes, too.”
Tom nodded, grinning. “Maybe I can catch some sleep on the flight.”
They all chuckled, but deep down, Tom felt like the walls closing in on him. Somehow this was all going to go off the rails. He just knew it.
Tune in on May 25 for Chapter 3!
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