. 15

This chapter is non-erotic.

***

Chapter 15: Uriel

Ellie followed Tad down the escalators and back outside through the revolving door. The sun was at a much lower angle and still bathed pockets of the campus around them, but the village in the valley below was now entirely shaded by the mountains.

Tad chattered in front of her about the Academy -- "rigorous training" this and "spared no expense" that -- but Ellie couldn't listen. The tug-of-war in her head was slowly approaching a cacophony. She only vaguely registered that Tad was leading them toward the observatory.

They stepped into a smaller lobby of the complex at the base of the tower. It was mostly naturally lit by broad windows that nearly covered the front of the building. Ellie absently sat down in one of the lobby chairs, still drowning in her conflicted thoughts.

"Ellie. Ellie."

She snapped out of it. Tad had been joined by another person -- a woman.

Monisha.

"I believe you have met?" said Tad.

"Yeah!" said Ellie, comforted slightly by the presence of Monisha's familiar face. She was no longer topless and wore a loose, crimson linen shirt that contrasted beautifully against her dark skin. "Hi Monisha, sorry." She shook Monisha's hand unnecessarily.

"That's quite alright," said Monisha. "I'm sure you're exhausted."

"... Yeah, something like that," said Ellie with a grimace.

"Well, it looks like we haven't lost you quite yet. I'm happy to see that."

"Do you work here?" asked Ellie. New questions were giving her mind a moment's peace.

"Yes, I do. I'm the Dean of the Academy."

"Oh... Huh." said Ellie. "I didn't..."

"Expect that after you saw me milking? Yeah, I know that was weird for you."

"Everything around you is Monisha's domain," said Tad. "She was at NASA for eight years before she joined us. Monisha has full run of the Academy. Counsel authority ends at the top of this hill. We have her to thank for this top-notch program."

"That's so cool! Have you been to space?" asked Ellie.

Monisha nodded. "I sure have; I've been to the ISS twice."

Ellie let her mouth hang open impolitely for a moment, then remembered herself and closed it. Monisha laughed. "But that was a long time ago. Shall we proceed?"

"Where?" asked Ellie.

"The observatory," said Monisha. "Last stop."

Monisha led the way now. On the opposite side of the lobby from the front door, the wall was a great, convex semicircle. Ellie made the easy assumption that the observatory proper waited on the other side.

This lobby was slightly busier than the last. Ellie saw a couple of casually dressed staff members criss-crossing the space with an energy Ellie recognized from her own marketing office. They carried laptops or packets of documents as they strolled to their unknown destinations at far ends of the lobby. On Ellie's left and right were doors and elevators that must have led to offices and workspaces.

Monisha opened a see-through glass door in the convex wall and held it for Ellie, who stepped through.

A thin beam of sunlight made it through the narrow opening up top and struck the far wall of a tall, cylindrical room. Railings surrounded the telescope's viewing station in the middle of the room. The facility proper was situated at the bottom of the guts of the telescope; an enormous and complicated apparatus of mirrors, machines, and wires. The hum Ellie had picked up outside was quite loud in here. She could see portions of the central column rotating slowly, working to track a target in the sky against the Earth's rotation.

An older gentleman sat at a work station on the other side of the room. He glided his rolling office chair between an array of multiple keyboards and widescreen monitors. Then he turned at the sound of their entry.

"Hey, Monisha. Hi... Elizabeth, is it?"

"Ellie."

"Hi, Ellie. Name's Paul." Paul waved at her from his work station, not getting up. He was a gangly individual; his clothes hung loose over a bony frame. Paul looked to be in his late fifties. He was balding, but what was left on the sides hung long, nearly to his shoulders. Ellie thought he looked a bit like a skinny Ben Franklin. Definitely your stereotypical scientist-type.

"World still ending?" Monisha asked casually, strolling over to the work station.

"Still ending," said Paul. They sounded like this exchange happened on the daily.

"How's the image in the telescope?" asked Monisha, now looking over Paul's shoulder.

"As good as it's gonna get while the sun's out."

"Yeah not bad," said Monisha, nodding at the screen. "You should take a look, Ellie."

Ellie made to walk over to the work station.

"Oh. Sorry. I meant at the telescope," she clarified, gesturing to the chair beneath the apparatus. "More fun if you see it directly."

Ellie thought that was a strange word to use -- "fun." She paused, then rerouted her steps to the central station beneath the telescope.

Here sat a well-worn office chair in front of a binocular viewing port beneath the apparatus above. Ellie found a gap in the surrounding railing and stepped closer. She looked around at Monisha.

"Go ahead, take a look!"

Ellie sat down in the old chair. The cushion hissed in a way that reminded her absurdly of the booth back at Luann's, and she realized she'd only met Hannah 24 hours ago.

The black binocular viewport welcomed her coldly. Ellie lowered her head to the lenses.

She half expected to see nothing but blue sky, but the image was nearly pitch black, save for a tiny pinprick at the center of her gaze.

"What am I looking at?"

"A star," said Monisha's voice, "We call it Uriel. In twelve years it's..."

"Yeah, I know," interrupted Ellie. "But all I see is a tiny little light."

"Oh." Paul this time. "Sorry. Wrong magnification."

Ellie heard Paul clatter a keyboard, and the apparatus above her gave a gargantuan whir and click. The light went away and was replaced by a much larger circle.

It was severely anticlimactic.

Uriel looked like a normal star as far as Ellie was concerned. She stared at the orange circle. "It just looks like a star."

"A dying star," Monisha responded. "Hence the redness."

Ellie pulled back from the viewport, unimpressed. "Okay..."

"Come look at this," said Paul from the desk.

Tiredness was beginning to set in. Ellie's stomach grumbled and she realized that she was very hungry. This exercise was making her feel stupid. She got up from the viewport station and shuffled around the railing over to the desk, repressing the urge to say something snarky. Get to the point.

"Check it out," said Paul. He clicked an arrow on the screen and a digital flipbook of images of the star played a loop. The time stamp established the first image at March 1996. The subsequent images, flashing rapidly, moved forward through the years one month at a time. Each image was only on the screen for a quarter of a second.

Together, they did tell a story.

Ellie watched a tiny white dot -- only two or three pixels wide -- expand, slowly at first and then at an exponential pace over this 26-year timescale, into the angry basketball she'd just seen in the telescope.

"That's cool," said Ellie with minimal sincerity.

"Yep," said Paul. "It's about to collapse and implode." Then he whispered to the computer, somewhat aggressively, "son of a bitch."

Tad's voice came from near the door. "Ellie, can you do me a favor? Please take the file Monisha has in her hand and review its contents. Paul, will you join me in the lobby, please?"

Paul swiveled around and looked at Tad, then at Ellie. "Oh." He understood something Ellie did not. "Yeah, I'm coming."

Ellie was bewildered by their sudden departure. She looked at Monisha, slightly alarmed. "Why'd they leave?"

Monisha didn't answer directly. She handed a plain Manila file folder to Ellie, who took it nonplussed. The folder was old; it was torn and frayed at the spine and had been taped back together. "This is very important, Ellie, and I want you to take all the time you need with it."

She gave Ellie the desk, but didn't leave the room. Monisha leaned back on the railing near the telescope. Ellie sat down and opened the file.

The first sheet was beginning to yellow, and the corners were bent and worn. It was an email printout from 1997. It had a White House Oval Office header.

[CLASSIFIED -- TS/TSCI]

"From the Office of the President:

"Mister Paul Johnson, PhD,

"I regret to have missed you at your office early this morning when I phoned; however, the matter at hand is too sensitive for voicemail.

"In review of your recent findings which corroborate the findings of your colleagues at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and several other institutions, I feel that this matter must be treated with utmost urgency. I am requesting an audience with you all at the Oval Office at 2:00 PM EST/11:00 AM PST today.

"A US Navy helicopter is inbound to your location at UCLA to retrieve you.

"Please refrain from communicating on this subject with any individuals who are not already briefed. We will speak soon.

"Yours,

"William J. Clinton, President of the United States of America"

[CLASSIFIED -- TS/TSCI]

Though her hand began to tremble, rattling the sheet of paper, Ellie found enough resilience to smirk.

It's just an email, so there's no signature. Convenient.

Turning over this first sheet, Ellie found several photographs.

The first showed a much younger version of Paul, hair long and not yet balding, standing in the Oval Office among a semicircle of several other academic-looking men and women and -- Ellie was startled to see -- a very young Fyodor Yeltsin. This Fyd had slightly more hair and far less plastic surgery. Their expressions were all somber.

Bill Clinton himself sat on the edge of the front of the Resolute Desk. His mouth was open and he looked to be halfway through asking a question. The president's face was inquisitorial and full of concern.

The lump in Ellie's throat returned. She turned over the first photograph and viewed the second.

She was startled to see that this photograph had been taken in this very room. Bill Clinton himself stood at the base of the telescope behind Ellie. His blue patterned tie dangled as he bent to observe the viewfinder Ellie had just used. The desk where Ellie currently sat was visible behind the President. The computers were beige and far older.

Ellie whipped around nonsensically, as though afraid a ghost might be standing behind her. She found only Monisha, still leaning on the rail. Monisha's face was stoic. She nodded for Ellie to continue with the file.

Tears began to leak from Ellie's eyes and the lump in her throat was now burning. She turned back to the file, mostly to hide her crying from Monisha. Ellie flipped to the third photograph.

Still in this room, Clinton leaned against the wall. He'd lost his suit coat and was now in shirtsleeves. One arm was folded defensively across his midsection and the other hand covered his mouth. Pit stains were visible under his arms. His eyes stared into a void. This face was at a loss of what to do with the information it now possessed; completely clueless on how to move forward knowing what it knew.

Ellie empathized with this diminished President. A tear rolled off the tip of her nose and onto the photograph in front of her with a plat. She wiped it impatiently off of the print and allowed herself a quick sniff before she moved this photo aside.

More papers. Letterheads from BYU, SMU, NASA, UCLA. The alphabet was fully represented. Ellie skimmed, racing against the coming onslaught of tears, and the papers told her more of what she already knew.

"...the findings of Dr. Nguyen and Dr. Espinoza and have regrettably reached the same..."

"...only recommendation is that we proceed with utmost sensitivity..."

"...timeframe of June 2034, by all available means of measurement, is accurate..."

"... will not survive."

The back of Ellie's tongue prickled and she realized she was about to be sick. Monisha was ready with a trash can right beside her. Ellie vomited forcefully into the plastic bin. She heaved a few more rounds, and then the heaves devolved into a drumbeat of sobs. She wiped her mouth and her eyes at the same time with her forearm and then curled her legs into the office chair.

Mom. Dad. Her sister Sarah. Kathleen. Peter... fucking MARCO, for Christ's sake...

They're all going to die.

Ellie gave a great wail of despair. The truth had finally and completely penetrated her defenses. Her howl reverberated up the cylindrical walls, and then Monisha was hugging her.

"I know."

"FUCK YOU," Ellie shrieked at her, and flailed her arms to beat this alien woman off of her. Monisha had just hand-delivered Ellie her own doom -- and the dooms of everyone she knew and loved -- and she had the fucking gall to lay hands on her?

"Get away from me," Ellie croaked between sobs. "Don't touch me."

"Okay," said Monisha, backing off. "You can have the room. We'll be outside when you're ready."

Ellie squeezed her eyes shut and her diaphragm continued to spasm silently, trying to force out air that wasn't there. She heard the door shut behind Monisha. She was alone.

In this wretched privacy, Ellie allowed herself to roll off of the office chair and onto the floor. The treated concrete was cold and bracing. There she lay on her side, curled up, freely giving herself over to the despair that now engulfed and pulverized her insides.