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gone_byebyeMonday, December 11th, 2006
Presidential Briefing Room
The White House
Washington, DC
It wasn't the Oval Office after all, so Ray didn't feel too bad about the fact that the only thing between him and nodding off was blind, unreasoning terror. And coffee. But mostly the terror. That…. whatever it was… that had smacked him between the eyes from inside while he was asleep on the plane had left a lingering dread that not even a Baha Men earworm could dispel. Nevertheless, he did his best to smile and nod and let the Secret Service men do their searches, and to shake hands when he was introduced to the President. Peter could do the talking, so far as he was concerned. He just had to find out what was going on, not be a PR monkey.
"-so I’m sure you gentlemen will be interested in seeing this first of all," said Secretary of State Flaherty in his slightly reedy voice. "Mission Control in Houston keeps tabs on all the ISS's transmissions and observation cameras as a matter of course. This happened a few hours ago-"
He pressed a few keys on a laptop almost but not quite as slender as Ray's holocomputer, and one wall of the briefing room lit up with an exterior shot of metal, floating in space.
"Thrillsville," said Peter, settling back in his chair.
"Yeah, well, it gets better," said Flaherty. "It's a monitoring camera. Keep watching."
A few moments later the form of an astronaut hove into view. "That's Major Thomas C. Hogarth, one of the two American astronauts on the ISS. The rest of the crew is an American woman named Dr. Zenobia Bishop, an English astronaut named Ramsey Campbell, two Russians, Konstantin Pavlov and Arkadii Tsybenko- and of course the tourist, Henry Kuttner. Major Hogarth is one of the most experienced spacewalkers NASA has. This was supposed to be a routine check-up on the AE-35 antenna array."
As the astronaut set about his work, radio-crackly voice reporting back to the station and to Mission Control, status messages scrolled across the bottom of the screen from the sensors in his suit. To Ray, who knew very little about biology and only the basics of first aid, they looked normal.
On the wall, Hogarth's image turned its head. "What was that?" his recorded voice said.
"What was what?" someone answered ("Frank Belknap. Mission Control specialist.").
"I just heard something. Did someone let Kuttner near the radio again?"
"Tom, I don't think-"
"Oh God," Hogarth suddenly said. "Oh God. . ."
The status messages started changing, even as Belknap's voice demanded that Hogarth speak to him again. The astronaut didn't seem to be listening. In fact, he didn't seem to be doing much of anything beyond holding onto one of the station's external struts. If the status messages were right, though, his heart rate was soaring-
And then plummeting like a brick, and then soaring again, even as his blood pressure numbers and other indicators Ray couldn't recognize started leaping and falling all over the place like a bucket full of Superballs dropped from a second-story window.
Ray's mouth felt oddly dry as he leaned forward, watching with a kind of curious horror; he was only dimly aware that the others were doing the same. Hogarth's form on the wall was starting to spasm and kick, bucking furiously in ways that did not look comfortable- or healthy, for that matter. "Tom!" Belknap was shouting. "Tom, can you hear me? Tom?"
Hogarth managed to squeeze out a few hoarse, horribly compressed-sounding words. "Somebody tell Natalie- aaghghck-"
And then the status messages froze, and Hogarth stopped moving, and a peculiarly iridescent green-and-blue sheen began to spread itself over the astronaut's form. Within moments it had encased him entirely and started expanding into a perfect sphere.
"Tom!" said Belknap one last time before the Secretary of State stopped the playback.
There was silence, the sort of silence that normally precedes the deployment of a single well-chosen obscenity.
The President cleared his throat instead. "I'm sure you gentlemen can see why we wanted your assistance," he said. "We. . . haven't been able to contact Dr. Bishop, or any of the other people on board the ISS for that matter."
"Wow. Um. That's. . . bad," said Peter, staring at the frozen image. "You sure that's not. . . oh, something mechanical or something? Somebody planted a prank in his suit and it went wrong on him? I mean-"
Flaherty gave Venkman a long-suffering look. "Buddy, every single item that's gone up to the space station's been checked over and accounted for. Nobody brought any make-your-own-homicidal balloon kits, okay? That is not normal. And neither is this."
"Neither is what?" asked Winston warily.
"An internal radio transmission that we think might be what the Major there said he heard. . ." Flaherty clicked a few more buttons on his laptop. The screen image didn't change, but a man's voice started to speak:
"EZPHARES, OLYARAM, IRION-ESYTION, ERYONA, OREA-"
Flaherty stopped the recording and glanced down the table. "Dr. Stantz? Are you okay?"
"I'm- I’m sorry, Mr. Secretary, but I've heard those words before."
"Really?" The President and the Secretary alike were watching him intently now.
"Yeah. It's part of a summoning ritual, a very old one that I last heard being spoken by a Sumerian apocalyptic deity in a truly eschatological mood." Ray raised one shaking hand and pointed at the image on the wall. "I think," he said with the greatest of care, "that we're all in an enormous amount of trouble. Major Hogarth was only the beginning."
( the tragedy is how you're going to spend / the rest of your nights with the light on. . .)
Presidential Briefing Room
The White House
Washington, DC
It wasn't the Oval Office after all, so Ray didn't feel too bad about the fact that the only thing between him and nodding off was blind, unreasoning terror. And coffee. But mostly the terror. That…. whatever it was… that had smacked him between the eyes from inside while he was asleep on the plane had left a lingering dread that not even a Baha Men earworm could dispel. Nevertheless, he did his best to smile and nod and let the Secret Service men do their searches, and to shake hands when he was introduced to the President. Peter could do the talking, so far as he was concerned. He just had to find out what was going on, not be a PR monkey.
"-so I’m sure you gentlemen will be interested in seeing this first of all," said Secretary of State Flaherty in his slightly reedy voice. "Mission Control in Houston keeps tabs on all the ISS's transmissions and observation cameras as a matter of course. This happened a few hours ago-"
He pressed a few keys on a laptop almost but not quite as slender as Ray's holocomputer, and one wall of the briefing room lit up with an exterior shot of metal, floating in space.
"Thrillsville," said Peter, settling back in his chair.
"Yeah, well, it gets better," said Flaherty. "It's a monitoring camera. Keep watching."
A few moments later the form of an astronaut hove into view. "That's Major Thomas C. Hogarth, one of the two American astronauts on the ISS. The rest of the crew is an American woman named Dr. Zenobia Bishop, an English astronaut named Ramsey Campbell, two Russians, Konstantin Pavlov and Arkadii Tsybenko- and of course the tourist, Henry Kuttner. Major Hogarth is one of the most experienced spacewalkers NASA has. This was supposed to be a routine check-up on the AE-35 antenna array."
As the astronaut set about his work, radio-crackly voice reporting back to the station and to Mission Control, status messages scrolled across the bottom of the screen from the sensors in his suit. To Ray, who knew very little about biology and only the basics of first aid, they looked normal.
On the wall, Hogarth's image turned its head. "What was that?" his recorded voice said.
"What was what?" someone answered ("Frank Belknap. Mission Control specialist.").
"I just heard something. Did someone let Kuttner near the radio again?"
"Tom, I don't think-"
"Oh God," Hogarth suddenly said. "Oh God. . ."
The status messages started changing, even as Belknap's voice demanded that Hogarth speak to him again. The astronaut didn't seem to be listening. In fact, he didn't seem to be doing much of anything beyond holding onto one of the station's external struts. If the status messages were right, though, his heart rate was soaring-
And then plummeting like a brick, and then soaring again, even as his blood pressure numbers and other indicators Ray couldn't recognize started leaping and falling all over the place like a bucket full of Superballs dropped from a second-story window.
Ray's mouth felt oddly dry as he leaned forward, watching with a kind of curious horror; he was only dimly aware that the others were doing the same. Hogarth's form on the wall was starting to spasm and kick, bucking furiously in ways that did not look comfortable- or healthy, for that matter. "Tom!" Belknap was shouting. "Tom, can you hear me? Tom?"
Hogarth managed to squeeze out a few hoarse, horribly compressed-sounding words. "Somebody tell Natalie- aaghghck-"
And then the status messages froze, and Hogarth stopped moving, and a peculiarly iridescent green-and-blue sheen began to spread itself over the astronaut's form. Within moments it had encased him entirely and started expanding into a perfect sphere.
"Tom!" said Belknap one last time before the Secretary of State stopped the playback.
There was silence, the sort of silence that normally precedes the deployment of a single well-chosen obscenity.
The President cleared his throat instead. "I'm sure you gentlemen can see why we wanted your assistance," he said. "We. . . haven't been able to contact Dr. Bishop, or any of the other people on board the ISS for that matter."
"Wow. Um. That's. . . bad," said Peter, staring at the frozen image. "You sure that's not. . . oh, something mechanical or something? Somebody planted a prank in his suit and it went wrong on him? I mean-"
Flaherty gave Venkman a long-suffering look. "Buddy, every single item that's gone up to the space station's been checked over and accounted for. Nobody brought any make-your-own-homicidal balloon kits, okay? That is not normal. And neither is this."
"Neither is what?" asked Winston warily.
"An internal radio transmission that we think might be what the Major there said he heard. . ." Flaherty clicked a few more buttons on his laptop. The screen image didn't change, but a man's voice started to speak:
"EZPHARES, OLYARAM, IRION-ESYTION, ERYONA, OREA-"
Flaherty stopped the recording and glanced down the table. "Dr. Stantz? Are you okay?"
"I'm- I’m sorry, Mr. Secretary, but I've heard those words before."
"Really?" The President and the Secretary alike were watching him intently now.
"Yeah. It's part of a summoning ritual, a very old one that I last heard being spoken by a Sumerian apocalyptic deity in a truly eschatological mood." Ray raised one shaking hand and pointed at the image on the wall. "I think," he said with the greatest of care, "that we're all in an enormous amount of trouble. Major Hogarth was only the beginning."
( the tragedy is how you're going to spend / the rest of your nights with the light on. . .)
