Crossover Earth '98

A week of surveillance ranked right up there with watching paint dry. But Saber persevered. The government installation was small and not very well guarded. If he were still in the military he would have busted the lax crew. Breaking in would be a snap.

The regular supply truck rolled through the checkpoint, and Saber clipped his harness to the underside. A good security team would have checked the weight of the truck. Once he was inside the compound, he unbuckled himself from the transport and rolled into the shadows. Coming into a crouch, he checked his suit's systems to make sure everything was still in working order. The chameleon field stayed active and his sensor suite checked OK.

Saber slipped through the shadows to the keypadded entry. He waited for the regular guards to walk by and punched in the security codes he copied down from his surveillance. As he suspected, the first ring of the complex was administrative. He wasted some time going through people's desks, looking for memos that might prove useful. Teleportation that anyone could use was worth spending a little extra time at the secretaries' desks. He didn't want to miss anything.

Saber waited an hour by the door to the next layer of security. Finally, an important, yet cheerful looking man carrying an attaché punched in a code and opened the door. Saber ghosted by the man, into the secure zone, when his proximity alarm flashed in his faceplate.

An outline of a person appeared on the digital screen of his visor. Another ghost hunting the prize, he thought. Looks like the Agency has started to remake my infiltration suit. I guess they want the teleportation process for the next suit. Well, I can’t let that happen. This is my prize.

Saber backed off a step and followed the invisible man, who followed the visible man who let them through the door.

The trio walked through the complex until they reached a lab in the corner. Saber made notes of the path they took, peering into open doors, looking for the teleportation device. But he didn't find anything useful. Perhaps I should just take the ghost or smiley here hostage. I'm sure I can get them to talk. He smiled under his mask.

The lab they entered appeared to be the paydirt Saber was looking for. It contained two booths that resembled typical phone booths, and a technician working vigilantly on them. Saber loosened his shotgun and was about to make his presence known when Smiley spoke to the tech.

"Got that working yet," the agent said with a joking tone in his voice.

The technician grimaced, as if he'd only heard that thirty times already that day. "Don't teach your granny how to make grits."

Saber decided to hold off on his abduction of technology and man. Something wasn't right. Maybe his ghost friend might know more. So the trio continued their tour of the facility.

Smiley headed for the center of the building, to a much larger lab. This is more like it, Saber thought. Saber estimated the millions of dollars spent on the electronic equipment in the room. The good ole US of A spared no expense on this place. The walls were covered in consoles, and the doors guarded by grunts with some decent firepower. But the center of the room held Saber's attention. There stood a metallic arch reaching a good ten feet into the air. The technology looked impressive. Saber made a quick survey to make sure he hadn't lost his invisible buddy.

Smiley nodded to the technicians at the consoles.

"Fire it up, so I can pass on the latest dispatches and get back before I'm missed."

The technicians performed their magic and a pinpoint of light hung in the center of the arch. The light grew in size and brightness until it filled the arch. Saber's flash suppression adjusted his vision at the light flashed white, then faded. But instead of seeing the other side of the room through the archway, Saber found himself looking into a different room. A different man stood on the other side in that other room. He walked through the arch and was in the room with Saber, the ghost, Smiley and everyone else.

Saber had trouble wrapping his mind around the situation. Teleportation was not supposed to work like this! You were supposed to set the location and disappear here and appear there. He never dreamed a gateway like this was possible.

The man from there handed Smiley some papers, and Smiley returned the favor with paperwork from his attaché.

"So, did they impeach him yet?" There Man asked.

Agent Smiley laughed and shook his head. "They acquitted him."

There Man shook his head in disbelief.

So, Saber thought, the other side of the gate must be in a communications blackout. Who in the world hasn’t heard of the Civilian in Chief's acquittal.

"I wouldn't have believed it." A technician motions toward them. "Time for me to get back. See you in a month."

There Man walked back into that other room, and the ghost was right next to him. Saber wasn't about to let his new buddy get more information than him. Besides, once he left the base on the other side of the teleportation portal, he'd just hike back into town and find out where he was. So the courier had not one, but two invisible shadows following him through the gate.

The room on this side was similar to the one Saber and the ghost just left, but there were differences. An archway was also on this side, and Saber watched the other room disappear with the pinpoint of light that opened the gate. The effect made Saber think of turning off an old television.

The courier took his papers and started to leave the room. The ghost followed. Saber was steadily growing angrier and angrier. He hated not knowing what was going on. And his ghostly companion seemed to know more than he did. Saber couldn't allow that. Saber pulled his shotgun from the holster again. At the first opportunity, he'd find out just how much of a ghost his friend really was.

There Man went through several checkpoints with armed guards. Saber noticed that they acted like jarheads, but the uniform was wrong. They wore an insignia of the Earth, instead of the American flag.

Saber smiled evilly. Well, well, well. I've always heard about a secret world government. I guess I've stumbled onto their HQ. I wonder what certain governments would pay for this kind of information?

The courier and the ghost exited the building named "WorldGov Contact/Quarantine Facility #13," and Saber stood there stunned. In front of him stood a base with enough military equipment to launch an invasion. Where the hell am I? I used to know all the secret locations across the planet, when I tested this suit for the Agency. There is no way a force this size, and a base this size could be hidden from the satellites!

Saber was torn on whom to follow. The courier, who obviously knew a lot about the device and would have plenty of useful information got into a car and started to drive off. But his ghostly buddy took off in another direction, further in the base. He must know something, Saber thought, and decided to follow the invisible man.

The ghost explored the barracks and administrative buildings. Saber's experience in the military kept trying to tell him that something was wrong with the deployment of this force. It reminded him of a concentration camp in some ways. It was almost as if they were protecting the outside from what was inside. But of course, that made no sense.

The ghost and Saber, its shadow, explored the base. The enlisted barracks gave Saber a sense of reality. Wherever he was, jarheads were still jarheads. The troops talked about women, bitched about the sergeant, and argued their favorite sports teams. Everything was normal after all Saber thought.

The ghost moved through the admin sector, shuffling papers. Saber looked over his shoulder to gain any knowledge the ghost may glean. Typical, routine paperwork, stamped with the WorldGov logo. Reviews, parts requisitions, schedules, etc. The only useful info the ghost picked up was that the Gate activated only once a month for the courier transfers.

The ghost also found a picture and bio of the administrative head of the facility. Saber looked and the picture and memorized the name, but other than that, was starting to get bored with the ghost. Maybe he doesn't know anything after all.

The ghost either found what he was looking for, or gave up. He started walking for the exit. Saber, convinced that the shadow knew nothing useful, was going to make an example of him, for wasting his valuable time. Ghost boy froze in the hall as a couple of technicians wandered by.

"So you think we'll get anything good from this one?"

"I dunno. Way I heard, it's about the same as here. But you know they never tell us anything."

"Maybe antigravity, that'd be cool."

"Yeah, you can bet we'd never see that tech."

They wandered off, continuing to bitch about their lives.

The ghost and his shadow left the building and headed toward the gates to the compound. Saber leveled his shotgun at the ghost's head, savoring the moment. It's been a while since I assassinated an operative. Feels good.

He stared to squeeze the trigger, when the ghost disappeared. The only indication of his passage was a rainbow flash. It took him a minute to process the data. He wasn't following an Agency operative. He was following a Super. The rainbow pattern gave him away. His ghostly friend was actually Spectrum! Goddamn tights patrol! He thought. I've wasted all this time following a bleeding civilian! Waste of my time.

Saber burned with the anger, feeling he had been duped. He waited for the compound gates to open, and he slipped into the woods.

The Junction City Chamber of Commerce welcomed him, according to the sign.

"Why thank you very much," Nathan Lee said to no one in particular. He stood at the city limits of a place named "Junction City, Kansas, District 27"

"Never heard of it." He walked into town, just another drifter in America's wastebasket. When he left the woods outside the military base, Nathan found a farmhouse. He stowed his Saber gear, and stole a pair of jeans and a red flannel shirt.

Junction City was just like any other small town. The downtown has the usual assortment of historical buildings, fast food and sit-down restaurants, etc. There's a small park in the town square, with statues of founding citizens, etc. Just like every other nauseating podunk town. A map on the welcome to town sign shows Junction City to be about 50 miles from Topeka.

Nathan hadn't had any real junk food in over a week, so decided to treat himself to a Big Mac and fries.

He grabbed a passerby, "Hey, buddy, where's the nearest McDonalds?"

The native looked perplexed. "Well, if you mean Josh McDonald's ranch, it's about twenty miles that a way."

Nathan let go of the guy. What the hell kind of place doesn't have a McDonalds?

That's when he started to notice that things really weren't the same. He stared at the guy in the phone booth. Nathan watched him probably talking to his girlfriend, and she was hot. The pay phone was a two way, real-time video phone. Seeing Nathan looking over his shoulder, the guy got annoyed.

"Hey, buddy, back off. I'll be done in a minute."

Nathan gave the guy a killer 's glare until he started to sweat in the phone booth. Then Nathan walked off, looking for other dissimilarities. There were no visible power lines, but each building had what looks like satellite receivers on the top. Either they beam down their power from satellites or their all addicted to MTV.

He waited for the light to tell him to cross the street when he noticed the lack of fumes. Small towns usually had older vehicles that spewed smoke. But there, there was no smoke smell. There was no exhaust smell. Hell, there was no internal combustion noise! Nathan looked at the cars stopped at the light. They had no exhaust pipes. All the cars were electric.

Nathan Lee decided it was time to get out of town. Maybe he could find some useful information back in Los Angeles. So he took a couple of hours and walked to the Junction City airport.

Lee lined up to buy his first class ticket to Los Angeles, paid in full with cash. But he could feel the strangeness return. Something wasn't right. Looking closer at the people in front of him, each one presented an "Identity Card" when the ticket lady asked for it. Worried that they'd probably ask for his, Nathan ducked out of the line.

Okay, Nathan thought, I've had just about enough weirdness for one day. It's time to find out what the hell is really going on.

Investigating in town, Nathan discovered that WorldGov is apparently a world-wide government, based in London. The local library had a decent history section, and he dated the formation of WorldGov back to the 1970s. It was apparently a worldwide recognition of the problems in maintaining national boundaries in a highly technological world. The British took the lead in suggesting a world government, so London is now the capital. But the WorldGov officials are drawn from all countries and races.

Sick of world events, Nathan searched for information on the identity cards. He pieced together from old news articles that the identity card had an embedded microchip which also contained financial information for each person. People present these when buying goods, and the cost is debited from their account.

Curiouser and curiouser, Nathan thought.

[to be continued]

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