Ghost Flyers

By

AlbertG

Undersecretary Thomas Schenck:

Location: USA

(Year: June 17, 2005)

My name is Thomas Schenck and I and I am the Undersecretary of Homeland Security. In my excitement, I handed – well a better term would be thrown – the report to President Kenilworth before I even sat down because at this point I didn’t care. In his eagerness, he almost snatched it from my hand, which was in itself unusual, as I considered him the personification of disinterest. Few things really seemed to faze him, not even when his son had that life threatening surgery two years earlier. However if looked closely I could see his eyes shadowing. A few minutes later, he gave it back and motioned for me to read it to the others. Normally as Undersecretary, I wouldn’t do this but these were hardly ‘normal times’ and we were on a tight, tight schedule. Besides decorum was at a minimum since we could be under attack at any moment. Copies were passed around to the others present and as soon as they had broken the seal I began.

They weren’t going to like what I had so say. I hadn’t been this shaken since the attacks began, so to keep from humiliating myself, I took a deep, deep breath, wet my lips and begin to speak.

“Mr. President, Senators, ladies and gentlemen, I am reading to you case number AGR211 of the International Shark Attack Reports, acronym ISAR, classified as an unprovoked shark attack on June 23, 1995. A large shark believed to be Carcharodon Carcharis, or Great White, attacked and killed Jeanette Steinbeck, age thirty four, who was allegedly swimming in a depth of three to four feet of water at Volusia County beach, in Volusia County, Florida, eight-fifty p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Conditions at the time, temperature: eighty-two degrees F, with moderately choppy water and visibility at one half mile. Several eyewitnesses’ reported seeing the shark pulling the victim into deep water after she managed to scream.

However, the primary eyewitness, a twelve-year-old boy, was the only witness reportedly to have observed the shark actually acquiring the victim. He insisted that the woman was at least twenty feet from the edge of the surf during the time of the attack. He also stated that the blue colored shark seemed to float across the beach, almost like a plane – that was his exact description – attacked and then pulled the struggling victim back towards the water. Due to his description of the shark, its color, and other improbable statements, his account was considered to be the result of trauma induced hysteria and discarded.

Other than eyewitness accounts, initial investigation presented no concrete evidence of an attack. However the victim’s car, parked at the Volusia Beach Recreational Parking lot and subsequently vandalized two days later, was taken to the Volusia City police pound. Continuing investigations placed the victim at the beach during the time of the attack. Other than the victim’s purse found some thirty feet from the surf, no evidence of a body was found. ISAR investigators concluded that, despite the boy’s eyewitness account, the victim must have been attacked in no less than three feet of water, within five to seven feet from the beach, grabbed and pulled into deeper water.”

The conclusion was obvious and it was this realization that frightened me so very much. I took another breath and continued. “They were wrong. Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, this report is evidence of the first known, or should I say documented, Ghost Flyer attack.

“They’ve been with us for years.”

***

“My God”, I whispered as I looked into the mirror for perhaps the fifth time.

Carefully, I fingered the top-secret report in my left hand while trying desperately to keep my right from shaking. If anyone had told me that I would have aged this much in three years being in this position, I would have laughed in their face, politely of course, but in their face nevertheless. But now, I was laughing to myself and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the expanding horror of it all or because I was slowly losing my sanity. “My God, what have we done?” I whispered again. It was something I’ve been doing a lot lately.

I was inside this the Freedom SL1 building, designed for high-level security in case of civil unrest for branches of the Executive, Military, Judicial and legislature. I must admit, for a security enclave it is truly gorgeous -a perfect example of our tax dollars at work. Freedom SL1 was sound proof, radiation resistant, resistant to electromagnetic pulsation, with four-foot titanium re-enforced walls covered with the latest stealth materials. This donut shaped place couldn’t quite handle an atomic blast, but then it wasn’t designed to. But it could handle everything else, or so we hoped. Our NORAD Mountain facility proved to be a deathtrap and no one wanted to be inside a mountain of stone when the Ghost Flyers were hunting. Now they’re assuming that this facility will do better. Personally, I couldn’t imagine any place would be considered safe anymore with these things loose.

In the Executive restroom, I read the official reports once more while trying to relieve myself. In the last three days over four thousand people had officially ‘disappeared’ due to confirmed Ghost Flyer attacks in the United States alone. It’s a load of bull. The actual count must be at least three to four times that amount. At this time we have no true idea how many people were killed. Every country in the world has united against this threat even though most of them still have no clue as to its true nature.

There was a plague loose upon this earth.

One of my aides, ever searching for me of course, tracked me to the restroom where I had secreted myself. I hope he’d come to relieve himself also, but no such luck. Quietly he announced himself. “Mr. Undersecretary?” For some unknown reason, I laughed. Well actually, it was more of a giggle and when he got no answer, he said a little louder, “Undersecretary Schenck? They’re waiting. The meeting is beginning.”

“Oh? I’ll be there in a moment.” I turned to my aide and looked into the young man’s worried face. “You know that I didn’t always look like this,” I told him. “I mean look at me. I have the face of a sixty-year-old man in the body of a fifty-year-old. I guess that’s what happens when you're faced with the end of the world.”

My trusty aide said nothing, but his face was aghast, literally paling before my eyes. “I see I’ve made your day, haven’t I?” I laughed again as we walked out the door towards the inner chamber hall. Two security guards and several scientists accompanied us through the large double doors.

What a sight! Every single individual from the President on down to the junior aides carried weapons. Paranoid Army Rangers provided security for the members at this meeting and for once they were more concerned about what could slip in as opposed the average person with a forty-five strapped to his or her side. Everyone was tense because an attack could occur from any direction, at any time, in any place and the resulting death would be very unpleasant.

-So much for us feeling secure.

“We’ve really fallen into the toilet this time,” I said to no one in particular.

I was beginning to talk to myself out loud a lot more often now, always a bad sign. More telling though was the fact that I didn’t care. More than that, others had started doing the same thing. Sitting down, I opened the secured folder in front of me and began re-reading the report. Next to me sat Dr. Harriet Lasurdo, Head of Marine biology at the San Diego Institute of Maine Studies and next to her was Dr. Eugene Porter, the leading expert in the newly developed Portal Technologies, Inc located near Denver Colorado. Sitting near the President were the Chiefs of Staff, General Sandstone, representatives of the CIA, and two high-ranking FBI officials. The Vice-President sat on the opposite side, looking indifferent about this entire debacle. There were others, but with the exception of Dr. Craig Lawson, from Chicago, I didn’t know who they were yet. To the right of President Kenilworth sat Dr. Han Shang Tsiao, Director of the Colorado Lancet Particle Accelerator Lab, the place where this nightmare began fifteen years ago. I judged him to be in his fifties, bald (bad toupee) with large bloodshot eyes. He shifted constantly, unused to carrying a firearm, but too fearful to set aside.

It was a sign of the times. ‘Wise man’ I thought as Dr. Tsiao began.

“I’m sure everybody’s read the detailed report by now, so I’ll present a quick summation,” he stated in his best lecture voice. “Approximately fifteen years ago we activated our newest particle accelerator. At that time, if you remember, several scientists were concerned and theorized that we could unintentionally create a miniature Black hole that would suck the planet into its gravity well when we powered up. That didn’t happen,” he said.

I could hear the contempt in his voice. Those same scientists had almost shut the project down before it began and he had fought tooth and nail against that, finally discrediting them in order to complete the project. It was the better political fights I’d seen in a long time. Obviously, the man was still carrying a lot of bitterness especially since they were in some ways right.

“We didn’t destroy the world,” he said, laughing slightly. “What we did unintentionally create,” he continued, “was a portal or doorway to another world, the greatest discovery of our time. From our initial studies we believed that this planet was essentially another Earth located in a parallel dimension, as opposed to simply some distant planet in our own galaxy. We named this planet Aquaterra since it appeared to be a mostly water-covered world. We accidentally discovered that we could transport objects through the doorway on a one way trip to the planet by simply moving things through the portal’s event horizon.”

Accidentally, my foot. As soon as the realized what they had, they had begun throwing objects through the portal just to see what would happen. They couldn’t wait to do it.

“In order to study Aquaterra,” he continued, “and learn more about this planet, several unmanned subs were transferred through the doorway, but were immediately lost to us, as we were unable to establish two way communications with them. We could receive data directly through the portal, we could receive images transmitted from the subs, but we couldn’t transmit instructions and thus, we eventually lost contact as we had no control. But what we did observe astounded us. And of course, we were curious.”

“Yes, yes, that is old hat. It’s all in the report,” the President said. “Are you trying to tell us that these things are from Aquaterra? How did they get here?”

President Kenilworth voiced exactly what I suspected as soon as I read that report. Wonder how long it took him to figure it out? Science in any form wasn’t his best subject. These creatures had to be from Aquaterra.

“We believe that these creatures are not from Aquaterra,” Tsiao sighed. “Please remember that our knowledge and technology is somewhat limited in this area. It was a whole New World and we couldn’t explore it properly. There was unimagined aquatic life there. There were simple fish, other things we recognized, and then there were animals that we’re still trying to catalog. Eventually we used one of our modified submersibles programmed to act as a stationary satellite next to the exit horizon, while we decided how to proceed with the explorations.

“Since the portal is one way, a manned expedition was out of the question. So we decided to use Carcharodon Carcharis equipped with the newly developed cataract eye cams, nicknamed CEC. When connected to the shark’s nervous system, CEC’s ran on bioelectric energy and as long as the shark was alive, the CEC’s would function. CEC range maxed out at over 300 kilometers and could be picked up by the sub. The images were displayed on a continuous screen which we could physically see and record from the event horizon.”

“You used animals?” President Kenilworth screamed. He’d beaten me to it. They used animals. “What kind of animals? Sharks!” I couldn’t believe they would do something like this. I was shocked as Tsiao answered the President’s questions in the affirmative.

However, a moment later, I remembered that scientists were especially weak when it came to exploring new realms. Also, this is exactly what some covert government agency would do. Something about a possible threat assessment. Besides we really did want to know what was on the other side.

Meanwhile the President was raving. Obviously no one had told him about this, and now he was about to receive the Big Stick because of those omissions. I felt a little sorry for him, but at this point, I was more concerned about being eaten. Then it occurred to me that the man had just lied. He ‘did’ know about the sharks. And the more I thought about it the more I knew I was right. Both he and the Vice-President had strong ties to Portal Technologies, Inc.

“My god man,” the President hissed. “What about the environmental impact of sending our animals into their world?”

As if he cared.

“We could have sent a plague to that world! And why were Great Whites used?” I noticed that the President began to calm down. I never cease to be amazed as to how he can do that. “Why not some smaller animal?”

Now that was a legitimate question. Dr. Tsiao cleared his throat before continuing. I guess he was more nervous than I thought and he should have been. I would have been if I were in his rapidly shrinking shoes.

“It was assumed," he continued, “that Carcharodon would probably not survive more than a few days in this new environment. But because of their size they would have a better chance against any unknown predators that we hadn’t previously seen. It was assumed that they would have increased range, and we would therefore see more of this New World. Five were sent, two survived the transit and lived for about two years,” he said proudly. He turned looking at the President squarely in the eye, justifying his actions in the name of science.

Fool. You know, I’m constantly amazed at how quickly I change my opinions these days. Now, if he were smart he would tactfully redirect the subject.

“We kept that part of our explorations non public so that the environmentalist wouldn’t tie us up in courts for the next ten years,” he said, still defending himself.

Moreover, the man was right. The potential for cross contamination would be unbelievable. No self-respecting biologist, environmentalist, scientist or whatever, would have sanctioned a project like that without considerable environmental impact studies. But there was another point and I remembered it well. We, the People, needed to see what was on the other side. We needed to know.

“In any case,” he continued, “the experiment was such a success that we sent over fifty sharks through the portal. For some reason, only twenty-two made a successful transition. The others never made it through. It was assumed that that they were lost in the void but they weren’t. About five years ago, imaging discovered a dolphin-like species that appeared to be the dominant life form on the planet. It was being attacked by a Carcharodon variant, very similar to one of ours.

“That’s when the military got involved,” I said. That little tidbit had been kept quiet and neither Secretary of Homeland Security Hansen nor I knew about it until last year. It was a real shame that he had died of a stroke a month earlier leaving me with this god-forsaken job. I had to say something. “So, you're telling me we started a war with these dolphins? And Homeland security didn’t know until last year?” My voice was cold, cold.

“I didn’t directly involve homeland security,” the Vice-President responded. It wasn’t a threat to our country and it wasn’t need to know at the time.”

I bit back my reply, one that may have gotten me escorted from the room or maybe placed on the hot list for eternity.

“Cetaceanoids,” Dr. Lasurdo said, correcting me. I liked this woman. She was smart and pleasant. A quite attractive blond I must say, even if she was a little short. And her voice didn’t grate on me like Tsiao’s. “We call them Cetaceanoids. And no, we didn’t start a war. The sharks did. Thousands of them.”

That floored me. But due to the numbers, it couldn’t be ours. It wasn’t our fault and that made me feel better.

“Excuse me, thousands of them?” The President couldn’t believe what he was hearing either and neither did the rest of us. “I thought that we sent only about twenty-two?”

I hate it when he says ‘we’. ‘We’ didn’t cause this horror, although ‘we’ have to clean it up. I’m glad ‘we’ didn’t cause this mess.

“They couldn’t have multiplied that fast,” he said as he squeezed his fists until his knuckles popped. “What did you people do?” What gave you the right to infect that planet with one of the most dangerous creatures on Earth?”

Dr Tsiao snapped back as if slapped. “We didn’t, Sir,” he answered indignantly. “The sharks we assumed were dead were still alive in the void. Those sharks that attacked the Dolphinoids are not the Carcharodon we sent over.”

“So what happened?” The President’s voice had become a low growl and he took on a menace I hadn’t been aware of before. “Did the dolphins modify the sharks and send them back to us? Are we in a state of war with another planet?”

“No. We believe that there are life forms in that void between the two worlds that somehow joined and mutated those Carcharodon; causing the problems we have now. This Carcharodon variant is totally different from our own marine species.”

“And how did you find that out?”

“We er, may have seen a few of them,” Tsiao muttered. “Some of them tried to enter our world and we pushed them back.”

“The Hargrove incident?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Thirty-five soldiers had died during that incident. It was so classified that I couldn’t even get access to the files. The so called terror attack in Colorado – that explains so much. “Then it is our fault,” I murmured. Dr. Tsiao evidently heard me because he gave me this dirty look as though I had personally accused him of genocide. He was right and I did feel this way, so I did the only thing I could at this point in time. I stared at him back with an equally dirty look.

“Mr. President, everyone,” Dr. Lasurdo said, “We have three video clips to show. The first one was taken eight years ago.”

I remember seeing those images a lifetime ago. There was this shining jewel-like city, with the dolphin-like creatures swimming everywhere. They were fellow intelligent life forms. That city was the main reason why we sent so many probes to their world. We had attempted peaceful contact. With their presence, we knew we weren’t alone.

It was magnificent.

But these fools sent sharks. Lord, save us from well-intentioned scientists!

Meanwhile everyone turned to stare at the wall-sized screen. Dr. Lasurdo cleared her throat and began. “One of the second set of survivors, identified as USGW13, swam to within 3 kilometers of what can only describe as an underwater city, created by the Cetaceanoids. They were already under attack and we surmise that those flashes of light are energy weapons of some sort, possibly lasers.”

The beams were extraordinarily bright and I wondered just how much heat was being generated as they defended themselves. And if they took chances boiling their own life support it showed how truly desperate they were. This wasn’t encouraging at all, not at all.

“Notice the bluish energy bubbles surrounding the city?”

“Yes,” General Sandstone said. “It’s the same thing as those seen around the New York and Chicago areas. Those are definitely dimensional phasing of the shark-entities.”

“They’re not sharks and we must stop thinking of them as such,” Harriet responded harshly, and she was absolutely correct. I resolved to think of these things as alien predators. Then she added, “to think of them as such is to sub-consciously place them into the marine category and this species is certainly not limited to aquatic environments. These creatures are multi-dimensional, variable corporeal, apex-class, predatory organisms that superficially look like Terran sharks.”

“Then what do you want to call them, Anti-corporeal organisms, ACO’s?” It was obvious to everybody who’d seen that stupid little exchange that General Sandstone understood what Harriet was describing. But his need for short idioms was getting the better of him. He seemed rather please with the name he’d just given them. I guess it gave him some measure of control in an otherwise untenable situation. Maybe he wished to break some of the tension in the room. I believe that we should just call them ‘Ghost Flyers’ like everyone else but we won’t, because we’re the Government. Ha-ha. I think I need a drink.

“I don’t know. Oh forget it, call them intra-dimensional organisms!” Her voice squeaked. It would have been funny if the situation hadn’t been so dire. “As we have seen, those ‘bubbles’ protect them from direct contact with weapons used by the Aquaterrans. It also allowed them to shift into their world. And ours also,” she added. “In our world, sharks and dolphins are natural enemies. I speculate that these intra-dimensional organisms found the perfect feeding ground and went for it.”

I watched the exchange with some amusement. All this information and we’re trying to access blame. We’re responsible for the destruction of a race but we’ve spent more time categorizing these things than we have mourning for a race we are responsible for destroying. We committed genocide. But since they’re just fish, we really don’t consider them worthy of consideration since we’re now in their position. We’ve become the equivalent of shrimp dinners.

Turning, I observed the President furiously typing into his PC. Is my glorious leader going to order a nuclear sub, along with the crew, packed with nuclear weapons, on a one-way trip into the void as was suggested? I wonder how we’d stuff a submarine into the accelerator portal in the middle of Colorado? That would make an interesting project. Meanwhile Harriet was continuing and I now had to force myself to again concentrate on what she was saying.

“If we can penetrate the protective bubble, then evidence indicates that we can hurt them.”

“The Cetaceanoids appeared to have fairly sophisticated weaponry, which didn’t do any good, because they were still overwhelmed.” The General rubbed his face as he continued. “Right now, we’re doing as well as they did.”

-Which meant that anything we did was worse than useless. Rather than voicing that depressing comment, I changed tack instead. “I have a basic question," I said. “We talked about it before but the answer wasn’t clear. There were only twenty-something sharks or so and eight years is not long enough to create an army to overwhelm a dolphin civilization smart enough to equip themselves with energy weapons. We’re missing a few points here ladies and gentlemen.” By their looks no one had a clue as to how this happened which didn’t surprise me, but it didn’t matter, since I wanted them to focus on the source of these creatures. This was such an obvious point that I was surprised that they hadn't considered the ramifications of these Ghost Flyers literally out-reproducing us.

“Mr. Undersecretary, I will answer your question shortly when we discuss the autopsy reports. But to continue, these intra-dimensional organisms are different from anything that exists on Earth,” Dr. Lasurdo replied. “We believe that they were modified in the void.”

“You mean mutated, don’t you,” Dr. Lawson asked. This was the first time he had spoken. He was a professor from University of Illinois at Chicago. He appeared a quiet man but he had the most intense eyes I had ever seen. But the way he said that one statement indicated to me that this man needed to be listened to when the time came.

“No, not in the sense I believe you mean,” she responded. “I would say it was more like a genetic restructuring, maybe even genetic engineering that occurred in the void itself. With the Hargrove incident, I believe that we can preclude this being a natural occurrence.”

Then he asked another more basic question. “Then what is the void and what’s in it?”

Dr. Porter answered this time. No doubt about it, the man was a genius but I suspected he was just a tad too young for this project. The man simply tried to hard to please us when what we really wanted someone to get the job done, which in this case was to permanently close the void off from Earth.

“The void is described as that area which exists between Earth and Aquaterra. We assumed that it was simple, empty space but subsequent testing, due to the crisis, have caused us to re-evaluate our initial assumptions. We have discovered that the void is hostile to organic life, but the Great whites obviously survived their experiences for a significant period of time. There are previously undetected life forms present in the void that have somehow joined with the Great Whites, converting them into these organisms we see now. The process in which this occurred is unknown at this time. It could be a form of symbiosis, in which the Great Whites could free the creatures trapped in the void and they in turn would allow the Great Whites to survive and manipulate the void as we’ve seen. The void entities may simply be acting from instinct, joining with the marine creatures to explore outside their environments.”

“That’s a pretty big leap of logic!”

“But it seems to fit our hypothesis at this point in time,” Tsiao countered. “The Hargrove incident proved that the aliens couldn’t survive in our atmosphere. This may have been their way to safely explore other worlds. These Carcharodon variants can manipulate the void and phase into our world at will and there is a reasonable probability that they got this ability from the beings located in the void. These beings may have for the first time, discovered an existence outside the void and began investigating it, joining or engineering the Carcharodon variants to do so.”

“But, is such a thing possible?” I asked.

“If they do it, it is.”

“Can we communicate with these beings?” The president asked which was a good question. If we could, any more bloodshed could possibly be averted. I thank God I’m not in his shoes at this time. He looks more stressed now then he did when we discovered that that certain strain of the AIDS virus had mutated into a highly virulent, contagious, airborne organism in southern Bangladesh. I remember the pain in his eyes we he ordered those villages sterilized.

“No. Not at this time.” Dr. Porter answered quietly.

I noticed that each time he spoke, his face flushed and those piercing blue eyes simply made his nervousness more pronounced. As I watched him I realized that this is a man who should never play poker. I realized that I had to focus on what he was saying again. That was becoming harder and harder to do. “They’re almost completely outside our frame of reference and there’s a good possibility that they are not intelligent, as we understand intelligence to be. Personally I suspect these creatures are not intelligent. What we are dealing with here are million year old instincts modified by unknown alien life forms.”

“Whether they are or not, intelligence is not a factor here,” Dr. Dr. Lawson said. I watched him as he took the measure of everyone in the room. Being the only African American in the room, he kind of stood out even though he seemed like an average college professor to me. I did know that Dr. Tsiao didn’t like him because of their earlier arguments of instinct versus intelligence. And that Dr. Lawson had observed the Chicago attack first hand across from John Hancock Building. They fought over perceived theory versus observed fact. It was a small thing really, but small things can make people adversaries for life.

Egos! What can I say?

“Don’t assume,” he continued, “that because these animals are similar to our own in that they’re simply mindless beasts that we need to prevail against.” Looking directly at the President, he eased into his explanation. I suppose he felt some comfort in that. I wish I could feel that way. “Let me explain what I mean,” he stated. “Paleontologists assume that because the large apex predators such as Tyrannosaurs and some of the newly discovered species from Africa had relatively small brain cases they were relatively stupid. This is another one of those logical but foolish assumptions based on limited knowledge of bone structure and theory related to our present knowledge and understanding. The dinosauroids survived millions of years with those tiny brains. We believed that man uses a relatively small percentage of our brainpower for conscious thought. It is just as likely that those dinosaurs could have used their smaller brains more efficiently, possibly fifty to sixty percent. How would that have affected their intelligence? Would they be able to do math? Probably not, but who really knows? There could have been species that were intelligent enough to perform math. Paleontologist may not have found the remains of those species yet.”

Indeed, he had a point.

“In any case, these sharks have only to be smarter than the prey they’re hunting,” he continued. “If we can’t defend ourselves against them then our so-called intelligence will mean absolutely nothing! These things can float through solid rock! We can’t hide and at this point we can’t fight back, and right now that makes them geniuses.”

I thought about dropping my pen just to see how much of an echo it would make due to the silence in the room. We were in it so deep it wasn’t even funny. Nuclear war would be preferable to this.

My Lord. I can’t believe I just thought that…