The Officially Unofficial Files of Dr. Gordon B. Gray Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One - Dr. Gordon B. Gray

  Chapter Two - Dust

  Chapter Three - Departure

  Chapter Four - Discoveries

  Chapter Five - A Fresh Start

  Chapter Six - Zolkin

  Chapter Seven - The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

  Chapter Eight - St. Petersburg

  Chapter Nine - Veritas Bellum

  Chapter Ten - The Past Returns

  Chapter Eleven - The Pyramid

  Chapter Twelve - Escape

  Chapter Thirteen - New Day

  Chapter Fourteen - Moscow

  Chapter Fifteen - A Divorce

  Chapter Sixteen - The Gemologist

  Chapter Seventeen - Hack The Hacker

  Chapter Eighteen - Convergence

  Chapter Nineteen - Tunguska

  Chapter Twenty - Blue Light

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  THE OFFICIALLY UNOFFICIAL FILES

  OF

  DR. GORDON B. GRAY

  Darcy Fray

  NERDMOB|USA

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 Darcy Fray. First Edition.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 0991253248

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9912532-4-1

  For Stephen.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dr. Gordon B. Gray

  A LONE BOY shuffled along the desolate dirt road, fueling the billowing dust cloud that nipped at his heels. His thousand-yard stare and gaunt, disheveled frame amplified the word he repeatedly mumbled to none but himself, “Gone...gone...gone...”

  Nearby, a rusted sign protruded from the overgrown roadside -- “Dust, City Limit, Population 23.” Buried deep within West Virginia’s Appalachian backwoods, Dust was the kind of place that went unnoticed for decades at a time.

  •••

  Lieutenant General John Wilkinson’s sagacious nose preceded him as he entered the darkened corridors of Caltech University’s Bridge Building.

  Sweet English roses. Errant chalk dust. Cherrywood pipe tobacco. The must of old books. The distinct aromatic blend of academia offered only a moment’s distraction. The Dust incident weighed heavily upon his mind and there was little time to be wasted on the whims of the senses.

  His burdened footfalls resonated through the eerily lifeless hallway, standing the hair at the back of his neck on end. It was true that he had weathered battles on five of the seven continents, but he was not immune to the disquiet of a deserted corridor.

  Eagle-eyed, Wilkinson scanned the names and titles affixed to each door: Physics Lab - Dr. Sophia Holtzman, CMS Advanced Particle Theory Lab - Dr. Harsimran Gupta, Applied Mathematics, High Energy Physics and so on. Finally, the very last one at the end of the hall read: Dr. Gordon B. Gray. The title beneath his name sounded impressive: Deputy Chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy.

  Wilkinson’s unanswered knock reverberated along the corridor as the worn brass door knob surrendered to his iron grasp.

  A photo perched on the edge of Gordon’s desk caught his eye. The fixed gazes of the late Thomas B. Gray, a peerless U.S. Army General, and his beloved wife Margaret stared out at him. How long had it been since the funeral? Three years? Four?

  Wilkinson suddenly felt guilty for falling out of touch. The kid has no one.

  Gordon had just completed his first semester of grad school when he got the call. His parents, both presumed dead in a freak car accident that left the military community shocked and bewildered. Their bodies were never found, which naturally sparked lively debate among the conspiratorially inclined. How does a man who commandeered Humvees and tanks through ambushes and impossibly difficult terrain accidentally drive off a bridge he’s traversed hundreds of times? No snow, no ice and no telltale skid marks. Made no sense at all.

  The Lieutenant General’s attention shifted to Gordon’s recently awarded Nobel Prize in Physics, consisting of a gold medal and diploma mounted on the wall behind his modest desk. Wilkinson seemed to recall Gordon had been the youngest physics Nobel laureate of all time, and in fact, at the tender age of twenty-three, the youngest laureate in any Nobel prize area. Not bad for an Army brat.

  The rest of the room was in apple-pie order. Not a paperclip or pen out of place. He will be perfect for the job ahead.

  •••

  Splat. Splat. Splat. Splat. Splat. Splat. A barrage of liquid nitrogen frozen pumpkins shattered upon impacting the plastic tarp-covered ground ten stories below the roof of the Millikan Library, nestled in the heart of Caltech’s Southern California campus.

  A hundred or so students looked on, clustered behind the yellow caution tape that demarcated the safe viewing zone. It was Halloween and close to midnight; half the crowd was under the influence and the other half were merely present because their second home, the library, was closed in recognition of the event.

  Gordon peered over the edge of the roof, observing the spectacle below. It had been a few years since his first pumpkin drop and although he’d never seen the elusive triboluminescent spark himself, he had heard tales of past sightings. Nonetheless, it was always good fun, and something to do on an evening when one was, after all, expected to do something.

  Gordon had recently celebrated his twenty-third birthday over a burger and a pint of beer with a few colleagues. Even so, with his bright complexion and schoolboy looks, visiting parents often mistook him for an eager young undergrad, albeit a sartorially inclined one. Gordon’s athletic six-foot frame was always garbed in a Scottish-made Taransay Harris Tweed jacket, gray flannel trousers, suede saddle oxfords, a white shirt and maroon tie. It didn’t matter if it was midsummer, winter, a wedding or funeral, he had one outfit and he stuck with it. And though unimaginative, his fashion sense did little to deter his popularity among the opposite sex. With a full head of perfectly tousled chestnut brown hair, light green piercing eyes and a smile that weakened women’s knees, he was forever destined to be the center of attention of every woman on campus, an admittedly thin, yet eager populace.

  Splat. The last of the pumpkins hit the ground. No triboluminescent spark this year, although a few of the more inebriated students were convinced they saw something.

  “Bro, the blue light. Bro, I like saw it on the second-to-last pumpkin,” a freshman proclaimed, belying his command of a far more ambitious vocabulary and near-perfect SAT score. His costume, consisting of a cardboard box with an original Macintosh 128K computer drawn in Sharpie, bobbed around on his head as he spoke. It did little to bolster his credibility.

  “Dude, me too,” echoed his roommate, who was disguised as a “data pirate.” He had updated a standard seafaring pirate costume with flash drives hanging from his hooped earrings and belt. Earlier that evening, he had jumpstarted his buzz by beer bonging a six pack and was well under the influence.

  The growing rumble of the crowd led Wilkinson directly over to the two young men.

  “Hey, man, swag costume,” the Macintosh 128K computer remarked, as he snapped a salute, knocking the box on his head slightly askew.

  “That’s Lieutenant General John Wilkinson to you, and this is a uniform, not a costume. Do either of you know where I might find Dr. Gray?” The combination of Wilkinson’s decorated uniform, his ch
iseled chin, razor-sharp silver flattop, husky baritone and six-foot-something frame was more sobering to the inebriate than a cold shower and a triple espresso.

  “Yes, Lieutenant Master Chief…errr…Wilkinson. He’s ten stories that way,” the data pirate said, doing his best to hold back a smirk as he pointed skyward.

  “Am I amusing you?” Wilkinson’s furrowed brow snapped to attention, accenting his soldierly bark.

  “No, sir. On the roof, for the pumpkin toss, sir,” the pirate’s friend interjected, pointing to the smashed-pumpkin-covered plastic tarp.

  “I see. Dismissed.”

  The two students left so quickly, they seemed to disappear into the ether.

  The Lieutenant General marched over to the entrance of the Millikan Library, a 1967 modern industrial style mass of concrete and glass. Ten stories high, it was the tallest building on campus. Rumor had it that the neighbors found the library to be such an architectural eyesore that the City of Pasadena forbade Caltech from building anything over three stories ever again.

  Wilkinson rattled the first set of doors he came upon. Locked. He spied an open fire escape on the side of the building. Head down, he bounded up the staircase, each step reverberating through the lively chamber of concrete and steel. Most men of sixty-eight would have been winded after the first floor, but years of strict military conditioning and diet had left him with the body and stamina of a forty-five-year-old man. He reached the roof with a barely elevated pulse.

  Gordon sat alone on a corner of the building, precariously dangling his legs over the edge. The view was spectacular. The majestic San Gabriel Mountains rose before him, basking in the glow of the waxing October moon, providing a much needed stolen moment with nature.

  The sound of rapidly approaching footsteps startled him.

  “Gordon?” Wilkinson inquired tentatively, not wanting to alarm the yet-unidentified parlously perched man.

  Gordon spun around to find an imposing silhouetted figure standing directly behind him. His eyes took a moment to adjust before revealing a familiar old face. Grinning from ear to ear, Gordon leapt up to greet the man he had once considered a second father.

  “John!” Gordon enthusiastically embraced Wilkinson, leaving all military protocol behind. “What on earth are you doing up here on the Caltech library roof on Halloween night?”

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “Annual pumpkin drop.”

  “So I heard.” Wilkinson concluded their embrace with a hearty slap on Gordon’s back. “We need to talk.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dust

  THE LAST TIME a stranger had set foot in Dust was fifteen years earlier, at the turn of the millennium.

  Betty Lovell, of nearby Crum, West Virginia, had accepted the 2000 Census Bureau job after the Crum Post Office was forced to close, leaving both her and her husband unemployed. It would be easy cash, or so she thought. She tucked the census documents into her husband’s pleather briefcase, hopped in their rust-riddled ’83 Ford Escort, and made the five-mile journey up to Dust.

  The first residence she came upon was a ramshackle single-wide propped up on cinderblocks in the center of a weedy lot with a few engineless old trucks, two claw-foot bathtubs and one disemboweled toilet.

  Some might think twice about approaching such a dwelling, but Betty was born and bred in West Virginia; heck, she and her husband Bob Lovell lived in a single-wide too.

  She adjusted her freshly permed hair and brassy makeup in the rearview mirror, before grabbing her briefcase and exiting the vehicle.

  Just three short steps from the car, a crazed bloodhound came bounding around the side of the trailer, heading straight for her. The dog’s neck violently snapped back just six inches shy of her pounding carotid artery as she stood there, helplessly frozen with fear. She whispered a quick “thank you” to her savior -- the heavy steel chain lassoed around the bloodhound’s neck -- and hurriedly retraced those three doomed steps back to her car.

  As her fingertips grazed the door handle, Caleb Crimm threw open the trailer’s front door. Wearing nothing but a pair of filthy briefs and a bedraggled beard, he pointed a 12-gauge shotgun in the air and fired off a warning shot.

  “Hold up der.” Caleb’s lack of teeth further muddled his already incomprehensible hillbilly accent. “You guv’mint?”

  “’Scuse me sir?” Betty responded, seriously beginning to regret her decision to take the job.

  “I said, you from guv’mint?” Caleb repeated, as he scratched at his nether regions with the tip of the 12-gauge.

  Sporting her sunniest bureaucratic smile, Betty replied, “Oh, yes sir, I’m a federal government employee here to take the 2000 cen--.”

  A booming gunshot rang out and that was the end of Betty Lovell. The West Virginia State Police never found a body or her car. Rumor had it, Betty had been planning on leaving her husband for years and had finally found the gumption to pick up and move down to the Florida Everglades where her secret penpal lover awaited her. Poor Bob went to his early grave, three years later, swearing up and down that it was the Crimms of Dust who had “done her in.”

  Needless to say, the 2010 Census taker erred on the side of caution and skipped over Dust all together, which brings us back to the road sign. “Dust, City Limit, Population 23” should have read more accurately, “Dust, City Limit, Population 1.” That’s right, two days before, every Crimm brother, sister, son, daughter, uncle, aunt, niece, nephew, grandpa, grandma, mother and father disappeared into thin air... except for one, young Caden Crimm, who was slowly making his way down the dusty road.

  •••

  “I’m gonna be frank with you, Gordon. I’m up shit’s creek without a paddle and you’re the last guy to call on my ‘Save the World’ Rolodex.”

  “Rolodex?” Gordon smiled. In his high tech world, finding a Rolodex atop a desk was akin to spotting a dodo in the wild.

  “I’ve outlived fifteen different computers, but I can assure you that I will not outlive my Rolodex.” Wilkinson’s firm tone and rigid gaze suggested that the debate had ended and the winner had been decided. “So, I’ve had every government expert and scientist from here to East Poughkeepsie looking at this thing and all we’re getting are shoulder shrugs and head scratches. Not to mention, the UFO nut jobs are all over it since a couple of kids uploaded a damn cell phone video of the blue light in the sky...which just about every news outlet has picked up. We’ve got the area quarantined under the guise of a possible anthrax outbreak, but that’s not gonna hold much longer.” Wilkinson took a final swig of coffee. He set down the empty “World’s Greatest Physics Teacher” mug on the corner of the desk. Gordon discreetly slid a cork drink coaster under it. The kid was thorough.

  Gordon began to rock back and forth in his chair. Motion was his mantra and he found comfort in it.

  “Gordon?”

  “Sorry.” Gordon stilled as he focused on the Lieutenant General’s pleading stare. “I’m not really sure what to say. It just seems so...well, crazy. I know I’m young, but I’ve worked super hard to get to this point and from what it sounds like, you’re not just asking for a weekend commitment. I’ve got some major work in the pipeline -- theories, seminars, books--“

  “I get it, wunderkind, believe me, but this is different. There’s a lot at stake. Your country -- hell -- maybe even the world. Anything you request is yours, and that’s coming straight from the top. The president would have come himself, but I thought a familiar face might help seal the deal.”

  “I hope you know I’m thrilled to see you and flattered that you thought of me, but you really should have sent the president,” Gordon stated flatly.

  An awkward pause extended between the two men, before the Wilkinson’s widening smile broke the tension.

  “Ha, got ya,” Gordon continued. “It’s just that, well...I don’t know what to make of all this. Can I have some time to think about it?”

  Wilkinson rose from his chair and glanced down at his
self-winding 1971 Hamilton Khaki Field watch. “Certainly. You’ve got exactly one hour and thirty-seven minutes to make up your mind. I need to get back to camp A-double-SAP, but there will be a car waiting right outside, should you decide to accept my offer.”

  Wilkinson took a few steps toward the door, before abruptly turning back. “Gordon?”

  “Yes?”

  “I know your father would be very proud,” he said, before making a hasty retreat.

  Gordon slumped back in his chair, exhaling deeply. He had always felt the need to please his parents. Even after their deaths, he still weighed their approval in every decision he made. This one was already made for him and Wilkinson knew it.

  •••

  Gordon packed a few shirts, an extra pair of gray flannel trousers, some freshly laundered cotton boxers, assorted argyle socks and his laptop into his suede carry-on bag.

  After a mere moment’s consideration, he opted to leave his Nobel Prize in the care of Caltech. It would be of more use to the university, and would leave the door open for his triumphant return to professorship one day.

  He stole one last look around the faculty apartment he’d been living in for the past few years. Bare white walls, minimal furnishings and not a personal touch in sight...well, except for a vanilla scented pillar candle given to him as a housewarming gift by a female colleague; its virgin white wick standing as pristinely as it had the day he removed it from the gift bag. What kind of man can pack up his entire life in five minutes?

  Two sharp beeps from a car horn alerted Gordon to the rigid timeline now governing him. He picked up his bag and left his apartment for the last time.

  •••

  Caden Crimm continued his shambling gait down the dirt road. His vacant stare and dust-coated gaunt frame gave him the appearance of a survivor from some unknown apocalyptic disaster, which perhaps was not so different from growing up a Crimm.