The Overfile: The Story of the Spherit

By Tom Chesters

Two millennia after World War III, in the New Order year 1901 AE, StarProbe Tech Lt. Anen Kel was searching for a resolution to the interstellar communications problem known as the Anomaly when his intercept beams awoke a comatose alien creature drifting in high orbit over earth. As Kel and his android companion, CR, ultimately converse with the spaceborn being who calls himself the Spherit, the alien realizes that he has been an unconscious time traveler since he was struck by a nuclear blast during WWIII.

He has been awakened in what is for him the 42nd centurybut with his 21st century viewpoints still intact. Until he can begin to understand how the earthworld has come to be wholly dominated by the techno-philosophy of O Theory, nothing of this braver new world will ever make sense to him

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 14, 2000
• ISBN: 9781469754628

Tom Chesters

Tom Chesters was born and raised in Chicago, IL. He is an inventor with several patents, and has written several unpublished works.

Book preview

1

2087 AD

Vl Inacada hated to shrink. Any forced constriction of his invisible, gossamer essence caused temporary distortions in his hair-thin, radial tendril configurations and made his fifteen-meter round wave-frame hurt. And Vl Inacada did not like pain, not for himself. But for his innumerable victims in previously visited star systems strung across this end of the galaxy, the issue of pain was irrelevant. Vl no more cared about the dying pains of the Ytyerans of Gatea, or the Difrites of Hazas—or any other species he had terminated—than an exterminator cares about the feelings of dying insects which he has sprayed with toxins.

Vl’s seeming depravity was perhaps not a true moral perversion, simply because he was not a member of any organic species. He was, in fact, very differently physically, mentally and emotionally constituted. In his aristocratic, light-like, tachyonic wave essence, he really cared no more about other lifeforms than humans care about the earth animals they stealthily hunt and kill as game.

Vl was, after all, only on his way elsewhere, back to that which he called the Bright. What did it matter if he had a few moments of playful pleasure as he passed from one star system to another along the way, resourcefully eliminating the scourge of organic creatures from the galaxy? He was, after all, a god. It was his right.

* * *

Vl Inacada did not ingest anything other than radiant and electric energy to sustain himself. He did not kill for food, but simply to exterminate organic life. And yet it was always like a hunt for food. He invariably considered the eradication of a world’s dominant species as an intellectual gaming event. When he obliterated them by using something of their own against them, he felt a particular sense of exhilaration in the intellectual conquest of his victims. He had played this game many times in the past.

Sometimes Vl would destroy a world’s sentient population with a skillful alteration of a viral DNA, and sometimes he would just ingeniously trigger their own weapons against them. Soon he would hunt, kill and intellectually devour humanity with regal indifference. He would briefly savor the moment of triumph, and then he would simply soar away in a blaze of white light toward the next star system along his path home to the Bright.

But still, he did not want to have to shrink to do it. He would do his hunting, killing, and devouring, in a stealthier and less hurtful way.

* * *

Vl was highly stimulated at the moment, very excited about his enigmatic plan for the conquest of earth, so much so in fact that he was trembling throughout his waveframe. His inner half-meter round core was now several stages beyond its normal ground state energy levels, and he was sensing something pleasurable within himself, something that he had not felt in a long, long time. It was the ironic humor of being here on earth after Gu Urqu had been here for so much longer and still not destroyed the humans. Gu had prepared the way for the kill, but he had not carried it through to its logical outcome.

The irony of it all was surging through his waveframe and transforming into a pleasurable high. The irony was that if Gu Urqu had done away with the humans, Vl would not have been filled with this intense sensation of pleasure. The joy of what he was about to experience—the annihilation of all humanity in one swift blow—was suddenly overwhelmingly wonderful to him. Killing these creatures would be an extraordinary experience.

* * *

Across the first decades of the new millennium that began in 2001 AD, the American government spent nearly $700 billion dollars attempting to make the StarWars Project a viable system. The U.S. military sought total space control, which turned out to be a mistake of historic proportions. Other nations immediately followed the American example, and launched their own space-based weaponry.

This, of course, lead to American countermeasures; which then lead to further countermeasures by foreign agencies, and so to even more billions of dollars being expended. And still, America’s space assets could not be adequately protected against potential adversaries.

Ground based anti-satellite lasers were used to blind optical sensors on orbiting weaponry. Medium range missiles were used to disperse ball bearings in the low earth orbits of high-speed reconnaissance satellites producing disastrous collisions that ended their usefulness. On a different level of cold warfare, computer hackers were interrupting the radio signals being sent between the sky and the ground. Actual ground attacks on the satellite control centers became a frequent occurrence, as did constant reports of signal jamming and disruption.

Every time the super-expensive, space-based laser satellite system was declared to be in a useful operational status, someone would find a way to crash the software, or accidentally shoot their laser beams into a vital component. The initiative that was said to be completed in 2030 was said to be defunct by 2032.

By 2035, all the world’s nations had agreed upon and signed the Global Pact on Space Weaponry. The agreement said in effect, any nation could launch a global positioning, reconnaissance, or scientific sensoring satellite; but no nation could launch any form of laser or other weaponry into permanent orbit. The key word here was permanent.

National defense was a necessity to all countries, and so the old became the new again. By 2040, the global defense system had come full circle and back to where it was in the 1950’s. But now it was new and improved.

Nuclear tipped ICBMs—InterContinental Ballistic Missiles—new and improved, impossible to affect or abort once initiated, were what every country would have. Who would dare to provoke a country, whose missiles once sent, could not be aborted?

Everything about the Omega III ICBMs was new and improved. There were no more plain looking, wooden frame Launch Alert Facilities, or LAFs, like the days of old when the Minuteman ICBMs ruled the planet. Now there were multi-roomed, modern brick buildings with sophisticated security devices. The senior commanders were given plush offices, and the uniformed soldiers doing the grunt work of maintaining and guarding the respective sites were given updated equipment. The old clunky, toggle-switched and mechanical slide-switch launch consoles had been replaced with modern sweptback monitor screen housings and touchwave systems. The new touch sensitive on-off and rheostat circuit controls were set beneath transparent, brightly color-coded and illuminated console board covers. Only the old principles remained the same—the launch method still required two separate security codes entered by two separate missile commanders using separated keys to launch the Omega III missiles.

* * *

For the first four decades of the new Omega III system, the sentinels of the cold war deployed about the world stood silent and unprovoked in their guardianship. To the apathetic general populace, the missile forces were little more than vague, but presumably powerful, impersonal sentries that stood between them and their remote enemies. If anything, the world population of the time, 9 billion in all, almost never thought about the almost immeasurable destruction that the missile force could bring if properly provoked.

In the spring of 2087, NAMF, the North American Missile Force, was, as always, active and ready with over six hundred multiple-warhead, Omega III intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles. Each was housed in respective, distantly separated silos spread across thousands of square kilometers in Montana, Wyoming, and the two Dakotas. A small Launch Alert Facility or LAF compound cared for every ten-missile set. No one in the Missile Force seriously believed that a barrage of missiles would come flying over the North Pole to pour down on the home of the brave. The Omega IIIs were there only because of the constantly presumed real threat of a terrorist rogue missile attack from any mobile launch site virtually anywhere in the world. Whatever the source of the attack, the North American Missile Force was well-trained, and always prepared and ready for any contingency or attack scenario—except perhaps, an invasion from an invisible alien enemy of such an intellectual brilliance that no mere human could ever hope to match.

* * *

The Battery A, Third Missile Battalion, 44th Artillery, Omega III Launch Alert Facility was located in Easter Rock, Montana. It had an above ground compound composed primarily of brick and cinder block buildings. The buildings housed the missileer security crews, as they were called. Here the security crews could work, sleep, eat, exercise and entertain themselves with civilian satellite television, or walk along the gravel pathways watching the stark Montana surrounds of Easter Rock about them from within the security perimeter fence line. Their military satellite feeds kept the Launch Alert Facility’s underground systems constantly apprised of security conditions around the globe. They also constantly updated the targeting list priorities from among several hundred known fixed installations and mobile launcher ICBM sites. Easter Rock was anything but a duty paradise. As if the scenery about the site was not desolate enough, within the compound the inadequate air filtration system frequently kept the missileer’s cooking and bodily function smells lingering in the air about them.

The Easter Rock LAF missileers had affectionately named their ten missiles Momma and the nine children. The only thing the missileers really wanted out of life was for Momma to stay quietly at home while they tended to her needs and those of the children. Momma’s nosecone weaponry, as well as the children’s, was inspected daily and re-certified by a squad of khaki-clothed silo personnel.

Once the crews descended through the ground level personnel access hatch into the respective silos, they would further descend on the metal ladder rungs into the level one and level two areas beneath the ground. Then the soldier technicians would typically attach their meter probes to the rocket and launch control systems, and the nuclear tips themselves, to measure how well their myriad circuits were functioning. Momma and the children never let them down. Momma was also occasionally called the nuclear woman—ready, willing and able to be remotely armed and activated.

* * *

After his two dogs alerted him with their barking, Rilas Fortin looked out from his cabin windows and saw a tall, muscular man with long, flowing white hair in the distance. The man was using a walking stick and slowly making his way through the green foliage down the mountain footpath approaching Fortin’s cabin. As the man drew closer, Fortin recognized him as Aurora Laur, the eccentric leader of a survivalist group that had taken up residency in a remote set of vast interconnected caves in the area. Laur was an unusually tall, powerfully built man in his early seventies, with deep-set eyes the color of cinnamon, and a square jaw line. To Fortin, he looked like Moses coming down from the mountain.

Fortin pushed his two barking dogs away, slid past them, and shut the cabin door behind him. The two old men confronted each other beneath the cabin’s makeshift porch canopy. "Aurora Laur! So you are still out here in these God-forsaken mountains! exclaimed Rilus Fortin. You know, I’ve been a mountain guide out here for comin’ on twenty-four years, and I ain’t never seen a group of people like you before—"

Aurora Laur attempted a semblance of a smile and said, "Rilus, I came out here to find you. Now that I have, I need to ask a favor of you."

Fortin felt the wind gusting, and pulled his tattered hat down. He seemingly ignored Laur’s words and said, You know I heard you people were gone from these parts, scared off by them other weapon-totin’ groups. Are you still expectin’ trouble from those nuts that have been holed up out here this past winter? Hell, they’re just like the damn bears—they sleep away their winter in the caves and start all over to cause problems every spring.

Laur was working his long, white hair back into a ponytail and securing it with a clasp as he softly laughed. You’re probably right, Rilus. But I don’t expect any trouble from them. If they do cause problems, we have enough firepower in our caves to defend ourselves. I’m just glad that damn winter snow melted away. It’s hard to believe that March is nearly behind us.

Yup, tomorrow’s April Fool’s Day, actually, in this wonderful year of our Lord 2087. Now that he was ready to respond to Laur’s earlier statement, Fortin continued, So what’s this favor you’re lookin’ to have done, Aurora?

* * *

At 0713 hrs on March 31, 2087, Commanders Calky Korbryn and Edmond Keyhoe were on duty in the underground launch capsule. Commander Ernest Totin and his Deputy Commander Rijer Thalquist were the relief security crew. Korbryn, a tall, athletic, black man, among all white peers, had signaled that he was seeking a break. Totin, seeing the flashing light in the above ground, signal light patterns, volunteered to take the relief.

Totin was tall and thin, and like the rest of his crew, thirty-something. He wore his dark hair in a standard buzz cut, as did most of the missileers. Totin was always aware of himself, his surrounds, and the crisp condition of his khaki uniform, even when there was no one there to look at him. Keyhoe was shorter and somewhat slovenly, with slightly longer, lighter, unkempt hair. He was reasonably indifferent to the world around him, except when he was on duty in the launch capsule. Keyhoe’s appearance always made Totin cringe, but it was not his place to make comment.

Commander Totin was about to enter what the crew privately called the foxhole. He stepped from the tiled floor of the launch control support building, through the accordion-style steel doors into the elevator. As the doors closed behind him, he began a rapid decent down the three-story, military-gray steel and concrete tube to the underground missile launch capsule. The blast door to the concrete outer chamber swung open upon his statement through the intercom of the day’s code words, Lincoln Towncar.

He stepped across the rampway to the inner sanctum, the inner control chamber within the launch capsule. The inner control chamber was suspended from heavy steel chains within the launch capsule. It was designed to survive a nuclear attack while maintaining launch capabilities for its ten designated missiles. Korbryn rose from his seat and approached Totin’s location. The two men exchanged Heys as they passed each other in opposite directions.

As the blast door swung shut behind him, Commander Korbryn returned along the same route that Totin had just traveled. The blast door was never left open, even for a few minutes. As he waited for the elevator doors to open, Korbryn glanced briefly at the shotguns that sat in a locked rack at the bottom of the emergency escape ladder next to the elevator. The shotguns were only to be issued and used in case of a direct invasion by enemy personnel. He then began thinking what might it be like to have to take out his sidearm, issued to him at the beginning of the shift. What if he had to actually turn it on one of his own people to get them to fire a missile that perhaps they did not want to send on its way to destroy millions of lives in another land? Could he do that? Really?

From his seat in the launch capsule, Totin glared briefly at the hand-painted sign on the massive, vault-like door that locked the missile commanders within the capsule. The mural depicted a pizza—with tiny bombs where the sausage pieces should be—set atop an Omega III projectile with the ominous caption, Delivery to your distant doorstep on the first doomsday of your week. Totin thought the caption was stupid and the mural worse; but its presence was at the behest of his supervisor, Colonel Davidson, and he knew better than to question Davidson’s decorative choices.

Totin settled into the control seat next to Keyhoe and nodded in his direction. Keyhoe half-heartedly nodded back, but he was busy with his calibration routines and wanted no part of distracting small talk. Totin sat alone with his thoughts for the moment. He reflected on how simple it actually would be for two people to just touchwave a few switches, arm the nuclear missiles and their warheads, and complete the launch sequence. One person could not do the launch—unless that person had the plastic security code inserts for both keypad apertures and a three-meter wide reach. One person could not activate both key consoles simultaneously as required.

The launch capsule console before Totin controlled a mere ten of the hundreds of Omega III class nuclear missiles which were buried in silos spread throughout hundreds of square kilometers across the surrounding plains. He unconsciously shook his head in a No manner as he thought to himself that it was a true wonder that no crew had ever cracked and sent an errant missile into a another country in the entire history of the ICBM system.

2

First Try

Vl Inacada drifted invisibly in the wind like a gargantuan fifteen-meter round spherical seed plume. He silently floated over the high barbed wire of the Launch Alert Facility’s perimeter security fence, being extremely cautious not to allow his fibrous webbing ends to snag against the sharp tips of the fence lines.

Vl had been studying the LAF’s ICBM system for the past several weeks to prepare the way for the completion of his plan to activate the ten Omega III missiles and thereby initiate an all out nuclear war. He now knew the ins and outs of missile warfare better than Totin did. Vl understood and could transmit and receive the system’s digitally encoded secrets.

Vl quickly located the HF and UHF antennas on the site and settled down over each briefly to get a feel for their inner pulses and frequencies. Ultimately he decided to use the HF antenna to reach out to the Omega III missiles. How ironic he thought, that the Omega III should be used to initiate the earth’s final World War III. He suspected that none of the humans would survive the nuclear winter that was certain to follow the global thermonuclear war that would soon occur.

* * *

The favor, said Laur, is to help us set up a better perimeter alert and defense system than what we currently have. You know these mountains better than anybody in these parts, Rilas. I would expect that you can save us a good deal of time by telling us where you think the best mounting points would be for the new system we intend to install beyond the original one. Would you be able to do this for us, Rilas? We would pay you as before, $200 per day, if that’s acceptable?

Fortin nodded in the affirmative and said, "Sounds good, Aurora. I certainly can use the money. It’ll be just like old times when I first helped you people find the entrances to the big caves. I still can’t believe you brought in all the stuff you did. My God! You people brought in enough stuff to live here for a hundred years!"

A little over two hundred, actually, Rilus. So you will return with me to the main cave, then?

Fortin pursed his lips, tilted his old hat back on his head and said, Sure will, Aurora—but I can’t go just now. Got me a pig last night and I’m still draining him. I was planning on having him for dinner if you’d care to join me…? Do you think you could spend the night here, and then we could start out for the caves fresh in the morning?

Laur smiled and nodded his head in the affirmative. Yes, I think that I would enjoy spending some time with you, Rilas. Just let me clear it with my family so they don’t worry about me, okay?

Well, that sounds fine to me, Aurora. Just let me tend to the dogs and lock up the cabin. Then we’ll head on down to where I got the pig hung.

* * *

An unwelcome, high-pitched warbling sound began to screech from the launch capsule speakers and cut through the customary din of the motors, generators, ventilation fans and computer beeps directly into Totin’s and Keyhoe’s ears. A primary alert message appeared on their screens and was quickly followed by a hard copy printout in their console printer. The orders read, GO TO A READY STATE OF HEIGHTENED PREPAREDNESS FOR LAUNCH SEQUENCE INITIATION.

Totin began to perspire and felt a paralysis-like pain snaking through his limbs. Keyhoe was visibly upset and trembling. Was this a test? A simulation? A horrible joke? What was it that SAC could see on their radar screens that they were not sharing with them? Perhaps some bogie had a projected flight path into California or New York?

Would even that scenario be sufficient to prepare the capsule for a war event? No, it must be something far worse.

An apprehensive Commander Korbryn had read the same SAC message on his ready room monitors and now the whole site was on high alert. Korbryn anxiously spoke into the intercom to the two missileers below. Everything okay down there, Totin? Keyhoe?

They replied in the affirmative.

And then the orders from SAC came through, first on-screen on the various monitors above and below, and then via the printers:

WE ARE AT PRESENTLY AT WAR WITH CHINA. THREE INFLIGHT ICBM WARHEADS HAVE BEEN DETERMINED TO BE NUCLEAR, AND THEY ARE WITHIN AN HOUR’S DETONATION IN LOS ANGELES, CHICAGO, AND NEW YORK—TARGETING DATA WILL BE RELAYED THROUGH YOUR COMPUTER I/O PORTS DIRECTLY INTO YOUR TEN MISSILES. YOU WILL LAUNCH IN SERIES, MISSILES ONE THROUGH TEN, UNTIL ALL MISSILES HAVE BEEN DEPLOYED—STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND, OMAHA.

* * *

After Laur used his worldphone to apprise his family of his intent to spend the night with Fortin, he and Rilas walked on in a lengthy silence to where the pig had been hung to drain. As the two men began the difficult process of preparing the pig to be roasted on a tree branch rotisserie over an open wood fire, Fortin tried to casually work some of his many questions about Laur and his group into the conversation. He said, You know, Aurora, a few years ago, when you people first used your helicopters to airlift your machinery, and your animals, and your everything else that you brought in here, to the—Whadaya call them caves—?

The Interment Facility.

"Yeah, the Internment Facility. Well, I thought the noise would never stop—I mean it went on for weeks! I…I just don’t get it…What is it you all expect is going to be happening here that you would want to live like this, all sealed away from everyone and everything—? It don’t make no sense to me…"

Laur smiled to himself. He turned stern-faced toward Fortin as they walked and he queried Fortin in mock seriousness, "You do not believe in the Apocalypse?"

"What—Armageddon? Well, why would that be happening now…? It hasn’t happened since the start of the nuclear age—Why would it be happening now? What do you know that I don’t know—?

"And how can you people afford all this high-tech stuff you’re using?"

Laur replied, You’re kidding me, right?

Fortin said, "Well, I’ve known you for years as the leader of your little group, but no, I guess I actually don’t know who you are, and, well—no offense—but I’ve heard some say that you are the leader of a…a…"

"Cult…?"

"Well…yeah…a cult…"

"That much is true. The media sometimes calls us the O cult."

"The occult…?"

"No, the O-cult. We actually call ourselves the O Technocracy, but some of us have tongue-in-cheek taken to call ourselves the O cult. Laur could see Fortin looked perplexed. It’s a long story, Rilus…But to get to the answer to your question, I am the tenth richest man in the world. I am the inventor of the Graphic Music System, among other things, and I have numerous patents in other fields of—"

Fortin interrupted him. "Tenth richest—? And you all live in the caves—? I just don’t get it." * * *

Totin was a good missile commander. He trusted in the system. He sincerely believed that if he were ever asked to launch, it had to be for a good reason. He stood there in the middle of the steel box that was the launch capsule, and stared at the two key slots. In this simple circuit was the power to send nuclear devastation out into space and back to an unsuspecting county in a matter of minutes. When the final command came, Commanders Totin and Keyhoe were ready. They were good soldiers. They would do as they were told. They would follow the rigid protocols that would prevent them from making a mistaken launch.

Totin and Keyhoe were both acting reflexively now, focused on routines and not really thinking beyond the moves to be made to launch the missiles. What could they do but prepare the launch sequence? They began by verifying that the missiles in their silos were ready for launch, and that the launch capsule controls were all fully operational, and able to fire the ten missiles when ready. They both maintained their focus, just as they had been trained to do. They both kept waiting for the order to stand-down. But the order never came. No screen messages, and no further printed out orders were forthcoming.

Totin wondered if they could actually survive a nuclear attack here in their underground facility? For how long? And what of their spouses and families—?

Each of the two commanders used their respective lock combinations to open the launch code box that held the two separate plastic cards containing the launch codes and keys. They broke open the respective cards and out came the respective keys and code sheets. Each launch commander returned to his console and sat down. The launch keypads were spring-loaded so that each had to be turned and held. Each such keypad was 3 meters from the other. This prevented one or the other from being able to hold both keys in the turned position while the two separate launch codes were entered to activate the console.

Suddenly Totin could contain himself no longer. He turned to Keyhoe and said, "You know something is seriously wrong with that message—"

Keyhoe said, What do you mean?

"SAC would not have phrased the launch command in that way. We need to check this out further before we take any action we’re going to permanently regret."

Totin’s statement made Keyhoe leery of Totin’s motives. Was he afraid to launch—? O my God! Would he have to use his sidearm to force the issue? He had to calm down. He took a breath and asked Totin, What’s wrong with the launch order?

Totin said excitedly, It’s missing a vital component—

What component? Keyhoe asked.

Totin said, "There is no request for confirmation of orders back to SAC. They did not say they were unable to receive a message—therefore they must receive a confirmation from us or move on to another launch capsule with the targeting vector codes. Whatever is wrong with SAC is whatever is wrong with this scenario. This has to be some kind of God-awful bizarre simulation, test, or a hacker—or God knows what—but it’s not a war, Keyhoe! It just can’t be—"

They did not have to wait long for an answer. Commander Korbryn was shouting loudly through the intercom, ABORT! ABORT! Totin! Keyhoe! ABORT!

Within a few minutes, they learned that Commander Korbryn had also gone beyond his automaton reaction to the alleged SAC message. He had immediately sought radio confirmation with Colonel Davidson, who in turn confirmed with SAC that no message had ever been sent. Clearly, this was terrorist hacker sabotage. They were being used by some unknown agency to start a war, not join into a war in progress. Someone with highly sophisticated communicational abilities had nearly taken control over the targeting vectors and launch capability of ten surface-to-air nuclear-tipped missiles with a 15,000 km envelope. Indeed, the airspace within the kill capabilities of the Easter Rock Launch Alert Facility amounted to nearly half the globe. But they were not ready to give up this power to any terrorist just yet.

Within a few hours, numerous security teams arrived. The plains, hills and valleys within a hundred kilometers of the LAF were searched by hundreds of armed personnel on foot and in numerous air and land vehicles for any signs of radio and microwave emissions. They also sought any strange e-m signatures, radiation, and virtually anything else the security force thought they could sensor or otherwise monitor to locate the terrorist forces. Security around the base was increased until it became evident guards were challenging each other because they were spooked by the inexplicable nature of the near disaster. By nightfall, they had calmed down somewhat and felt the situation was under control. Afraid that the nuclear tipped missiles might be booby trapped into detonating, they posted guards around the ten silos until SAC personnel could arrive the next day to test the conditions within the system.

3

Apocalypse

Vl Inacada was not particularly upset that his first try to destroy the humans had failed. It only made the hunt that much more of a pleasurable challenge. He drifted off to a restful sleep, and was trembling only slightly in the cooler and less comfortable night air. He would possibly be angrier in the morning when he was fully awake and certain that he was going to have to shrink himself to get into the Launch Alert Facility. * * *

The night passed uneventfully within the LAF. The day shift Commanders reported for duty at 0700 hrs. Totin and Keyhoe took the first tour as Korbryn and Thalquist monitored topside.

* * *

As Vl awoke to bright sunlight piercing through his bundled tendril optigate slits, he went over his initial plan. He had underestimated the humans. He was surprised that that they had seen through his deceit. They had won the first confrontation, but they would lose the next. It was time for a new game plan to be implemented.

Vl did not like the new plan, but he did not want to waste time trying to develop a new viral enemy or other causal agent to set against the humans. He lifted his spherical form slowly into the wind and began the agonizing process of gradually compressing himself ever smaller. Within a few hours of painful effort, he was barely the size of a basketball. He hated being so small. It was undignifying and painful to hold himself inward so tightly. It made him feel like that wretched, stubby-tendriled, Gu Urqu, whom he hated beyond hate; but shrinking was the only way he would be enabled to enter the facility undetected.

Once he was sufficiently small, Vl patiently waited for nearly an hour for the LAF front door to open. As a guard stepped out, Vl floated in like an unseen blur in the air, and remained undetected within the wide open LAF ready room.

* * *

When Totin and Keyhoe entered the elevator to go down to the launch capsule at 1100 hrs, Vl entered as well. Vl briefly thought about igniting them then and there with a brief laser burst. He decided that in his restricted state the thrust effect of the light emission would cause him to bounce repeatedly between the walls like radiation caught in a mirrored box. He also did not want their tainted human blood covering his invisible tachyonic mass and making him an easy target for another human’s wrath.

As the two men exited the elevator, Vl floated off as well, still unseen and undetected. He then floated into and nestled securely against the outside air duct of the underground missile launch capsule, and prepared to reach his way into the inner control chamber. Vl could have slipped into the launch capsule with Totin and Keyhoe, but his inner constrictional pain was getting the best of him. He had a much better idea of how to probe the system hardware in order to enter into its missile software programs.

* * *

Half a world away, while free floating invisibly in his spherical form somewhere over London, Gu Urqu gradually realized that he was remotely sensing the pain of Vl’s constriction. He knew instinctively what that meant. Vl was attempting to get into a smaller place than he should reasonably belong. It was too soon for Vl to kill the humans. Gu was not ready for that to happen. It was not his plan

In his fully expanded two-meter round spherical format, Gu was at the mercy of the winds like an unviewed weather balloon. Were he visible to the earthlings far below, Gu would have appeared as nothing more than a silken cloud formed from countless intertwined gossamer threads. He was similar in structural configuration to a seedling dandelion sphere made up of myriad radial needles of plumed seeds emanating from a white, speckled, spherical interior core. But in his case, each radial needle was a consciously stiffened tendril. His tendrils were of several kinds: hairy, wispy, spongy and spiny. His hairy tendrils afforded him sight in the full e-m spectrum and on into the tachyonic spectrum. His wispy tendrils allowed him to hear low and high frequency sounds. His spongy tendrils allowed him to taste and smell the world. And his spiny tendrils gave him structural integrity, and the ability to touch and feel the world. And they also allowed him to process electrons in the atmosphere, something that was essential for emergency energy supplies in the dark, and for flight propulsion as well.

Each type of radial tendril emanating from his core mass was formed from a particular type of stacked circular ring cell, hollow in the middle, and capable of conducting light like an optic fiber. And each type of tendril length, however fine, was similar in operative nature to a controllable muscle fiber emanating from his central core. And in this case, the plumed seeds were in fact the flaring of the various tendril tips. Each such flaring was meant to allow in specific forms of sensory data from the environment. In his current format, he was able to take in the e-m waves from the sun in the full spectrum and process them for nutrients.

When he was full, so to speak, the overflow of e-m waves would tickle him, and he would have to curve his tendril tips away from the focal light of the sun to avoid core overheating. He was also somewhat blind in his current format, as it took many hairy tendrils acting together in large bundles to allow him the means to conduct sufficiently focused image light into his core center where his mindfield was generated.

His core center, where his tendrils all met in the center of himself to form his core, was like a half-meter round brain with numerous convulsions similar in areas and functions to a bicameral, symmetrical brain. Literally, his brain operated extensions of itself which were his innumerable tendrils.

Gu knew that he could not continue to float freely in his full spherical format. He would have to begin transforming himself into a diskform to enable himself to focus his senses to fly to wherever Vl might now be. He slowly began to undergo conscious changes within his inner wave structure. In his ball-like form, he slightly resembled a planet with a vertical orientation, with top and bottom poles and an equator. As he stabilized himself in a vertical orientation, Gu began parting his three-quarter meter long, spiny tendrils, and then his other tendrils, outward and downward from the top, and outward and upward from the bottom. Soon the tips of the bent tendril fibers were all in the same circular plane that ran through Gu’s equatorial midsection, and he began looking very much like a puffy disk.

Gu then thought of a focus point forward and began the process of selectively clustering and twisting his hairy tendrils about some of his wispy tendrils to his immediate left and right. Soon the two arm-like bundles extending oppositely from his mid-section could each respectively move as a thin tentacle through the other individual tendrils. They appeared like opposing rope braids moving through a sea of thin fibers. The ends of the rope-like tentacles moved slowly outward toward the front of him. Gradually the respective ends of the two tentacles began to flare outward into an inner, circular, hairy set, and an outer, oval, wispy set of tendril tip patterns. The circular hairy tendril tips within the flared tentacle would soon act as optigates, or eyes, to afford Gu a means to monitor the full spectrum of the electromagnetic wave band. The outer oval wispy tendrils would act like a set of audigates, or ears, funneled around his optigates, detecting all forms of atmospheric vibrations from the lowest to the highest frequencies.

As the transformation from ball to disk continued, three more spongy tendril within spiny tendril, twisted, rope-like extensions began to issue from beneath the equatorial midsection of Gu’s central spherical core. The appendages were bent downward into three equally extended, equilaterally arranged lengths. Each length ended in a set of circular, flared tips within oval flared tips. The three dangling appendages would later be utilized to stabilize his flight while in disk-form, and to provide a means to perch upon a stable surface in a tripod format. And when he was in direct physical contact with a surface, their slightly flared tips would allow him the tactile ability to feel and otherwise sense the molecular nature of the surface. Generally, Gu’s tendril energies flowed upstream from the outside tips to the inside core. But if need be, they could be reversed, and some feeble amounts of energy could be made to flow out of himself into the world about him.

What concerned Gu about Vl was that in Vl’s fifteen-meter format, some seven plus factors of radius greater than Gu, Vl possessed a far greater ability to release energy from his tendril tips. Gu knew Vl had the power to shock, or even kill a human being within a fraction of a second.

With his transformation from sphere to disk complete, Gu Urqu’s transparent form appeared to him like a bloated, sinewy disk with five thin tentacle-like arms. Two such arms could be seen oppositely extended from the sides of his spherical core and curved toward the front within the disk. They then fully flared outward at the ends like frayed rope end irises within oval eyes. Three such similar arms could be seen curved downward through Gu’s hairy, wispy, spongy and spiny, fibrous essence as dangling appendages with slightly flared tactile pods at their bottom ends. Gu was completely transformed now and ready for controlled flight.

With his outer radial webbing tendrils now completely unfurled and flattened, Gu began to process out electrons from the atmospheric molecules passing through the interstices of his being. With a virtually silent shhufff sound, he left a rushing wake trail of ions as he ascended upward.

Like a great alien disk-bird with hunting eyes and ears, and dangling legs, Gu began the long flight to locate Vl. His first goal would be to seek out a source of laser light to make the trip happen much faster.

* * *

Multiple, parallel, slithering tendrils, invisible to the humans beneath them, uncoiled from the basketball-sized Vl and reached down through the overhead air vents of the launch capsule. Cautiously, the intrusive tendril bundle swung snake-like at ceiling level, its various optigate, audigate, and tactile tips spying stealthily about the interior of the small, darkened room into which they had surreptitiously entered. The alien creature, pressing himself tightly against the air inlet portal, soon saw and heard his targets. Through his tendril optigates and audigates, he remotely observed and listened to the two humans monitoring the controls before them. He saw the two keys protruding on either side of the missile control console. Each human had control over one of the two keys, but neither one could possibly reach and turn the other. Two of the slender alien probes cautiously sighted their respective paths to their initial targets.

* * *

Commander Totin was finally feeling calm, collected, safe and secure. He had not felt this good in a long time. They had averted the disaster of disasters. Everything would be all right now. And just then he thought he heard an almost inaudible hissing noise in his left ear.

* * *

Vl’s two invisible offshoot tendril tips came up from behind and between the two khaki uniformed soldiers. One tendril tip was targeted in on the right ear of the soldier to the left, and the other on the left ear of the soldier to the right. Suddenly, the two tips surged forth and released their inner energies directly into the brains of the two men. In pain and confusion, Totin and Keyhoe turned to each other in disbelief.

As the piercing pain became overwhelming they succumbed, collapsed, and fell to the floor.

The first floor security camera revealed the problem, and the onduty guard watching the monitor screen took immediate action. The intruder alert alarm sounded, and a recorded voice boomed through the entire facility—INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!—repeating itself a dozen times before being shut down in the upstairs ready room by Commander Korbryn. Korbryn and two guards with holstered handguns made their way down to the foxhole via the emergency escape ladder under the floor hatch adjacent to the elevator. Looking around nervously from the bottom of the ladder in all possible threat directions, Korbryn used his duty key to unlock the loaded shotguns from the security rack, and issued one to each guard with him. Each guard took his weapon and racked it with a resounding chack chunk.

Korbryn used the remote security code access port to unseal and unlock the capsule’s blast door. He swung the heavy door open and rushed into the missile control room to find Totin and Keyhoe writhing in pain on the floor. "What the hell—!? he yelled out. He bent over the two soldiers and began shaking first the arm of one and then the other, shouting, Commander Totin! Commander Keyhoe!"

The two guards waved their shotguns around the small room pointing in every direction, until Korbryn said, "Forget it—there is obviously no one in here! Call for a medic—now."

* * *

Undaunted by the concerns of the humans for their fallen comrades, Vl Inacada continued to cautiously move his invisible tentacle tips below the console table in a search for his primary targets, the apertures into the sub-circuits of the key modules which would initiate the missile launch code sequences.

Vl carefully probed the under surfaces of the missile launch console, and upon finding a series of small heat vent holes, he used his thinner tactile tips to enter into and survey the hidden space beneath the console table.

* * *

Sweat was streaming down Korbryn’s face as he and the two soldiers tried to place Totin and Keyhoe into sitting positions against the back wall of the launch capsule. Korbryn wanted to get their bodies out of the launch capsule as quickly as possible so that he could place an armed emergency crew in their place. Within minutes a soldier paramedic and several other soldiers arrived in the cramped area of the capsule. The paramedic began asking a stream of questions. Korbryn yelled at the new soldiers saying, "Forget the questions. Let’s just work together and get the two Commanders into the elevator. You can treat them upstairs. We have to secure this area ASAP—Got it?"

The soldiers nervously nodded at Korbryn. Without speaking, the soldiers nearest to Totin handed off their shotguns to others, and began to lift and carry Totin out of the capsule. Korbryn pointed to the two soldiers nearest to Keyhoe and yelled, "Let’s go! Get the Commander up and out of here! Now!" Another soldier and the medic immediately began moving Keyhoe.

None of the humans had the slightest idea that the worst enemy the world had ever faced was there with them doing his best to ignore their presence.

* * *

Once Vl found the circuit board containing the encoded chips, his tendril tips began to interact with the microscopic hardware. Within minutes he had interpreted the hardware circuitry. He began to enter the command sequences that no human would have ever wanted placed into the system. As he methodically changed the software program, he sang softly to himself a warrior chant from a time so far removed from humanity that it was known to him before humans had even walked the earth. He stopped singing when the computer’s synthavoice spoke to him.

Target coordinates for missiles one through ten…Updating…Entered.

Key one module arming code sequence. Determined—activated. Released.

Key two-module arming code sequence. Determined—activated. Released.

Twin key modules currently in simultaneous use display. Arming code sequences activated.

Launch sequence initiated for missiles One through Ten.

In the confusion that followed this announcement to the replacement crew, Vl stealthily made his way back up through the emergency escape hatch and on out of the LAF.

* * *

The ten missiles controlled by the launch facility console, Momma and her nine children, were now retargeted and freed from their encoded electronic bonds. Within minutes they would begin to launch in numerical sequence. And no power on earth could stop them.No one and nothing could prevent the inevitable fate of the earth, nor the infinitely complex and far ranging consequences resulting from these almost infinitesimal changes in the here and now.

Several kilometers away from the launch capsule control system, the launcher door motor activated with a whirrr, and the horizontal door panel began to slide noisily on its hidden wheel sets, slowly unveiling the pointed tip of Missile One.

Momma began a slow flaring of her blasting, blazing energies into the bottom of the launch tube some twenty-five meters below the silo’s inside ceiling. As the launcher door fully opened, the piercing rays of sunlight lit up Momma’s nose cone. Momma’s half-meter long aerial tip began to vibrate from the fiery thrust rapidly building up below her fat bottom. With a sudden upward surge, she began lifting from her enclosing launch tube and soaring directly up into the bright blue Montana sky above the facility.

As Korbryn listened to the Launch Sequence Alert Warning suddenly begin its bleeping warble, he stared at his upstairs monitoring console screens in total disbelief. Korbryn shouted out loud to no one in particular, "What the hell—!? Who authorized the missile warhead activation sequence!?"

A dozen thoughts were racing simultaneously through Commander Korbryn’s mind. Was this an accident happening, or the work of a saboteur? Had there actually been terrorists in the launch facility? What the hell was going on!?

4

The O Cult

On the morning of April 1st, 2087, after a rough night of sleeping on a straw mattress in Fortin’s cabin, Aurora Laur woke up to a furry, wet kiss from a large St. Bernard. Shortly thereafter, Laur, Rilas, and Rilas’ dogs all had a quiet breakfast of fried pork and eggs and then the two men finished processing the pig for drying into strips. Aurora used the kitchen sink hand pump to refill the water bottle for his backpack, and Rilas tended to his dogs and prepared himself for the ten-mile trek through the mountains back to the caves.

Somewhere in the middle of the long uphill, downhill, winding trek, they began to hear a distant, blaring DLEEP DLEEP DLEEP echoing through the mountains and valleys about them.

Fortin yelled out, "What the hey—What is that God-awful sound, Aurora? In a near panic, Laur said, That’s the worse sound you ever heard in your life, Rilus! It means the caves are about to be sealed—"

* * *

Within the Interment facility, Laur’s adult son, Argo, had just sat down to lunch when he heard the alarm and ran to his parents’ quarters. He shouted out a question to his mother, Reni.

Where is Laur—?

The thin old woman was shaking almost uncontrollably. She excitedly shouted back, He went to that old mountaineer’s cabin yesterday to solicit his help in redoing our perimeter alarms! He stayed there overnight!

Moving in to gently calm her in his enfolded arms, Argo asked, Did he take a chopper?

"No. The stubborn old fool is walking. God knows where he is now! He’s 74 years old, and he thinks he’s 24! You’ve got to find him, Argo—!"

Backing away slowly with a sympathetic smile, Argo said, I’m on it mother. Try and contact him by worldphone, or pager, or however. I’m taking out a chopper. Tell him to contact me while I’m in the air so I can home in on his GPS signal.

Laur heard his phone ring just as he was about to call into the facility. Reni quickly informed him of the plan to pick him up, and he disconnected with her and contacted Argo directly. Within a few minutes of establishing the homing signal, Argo had brought the chopper down close enough for the two walkers to board the craft and return to the facility.

After a quick flight and a hurried landing, they deboarded the helicopter. A waiting crew shut down its engines and towed the aircraft within the still open cave mouth. Other technocrats who had been out of the caves were hurrying to get back within its sheltering subterranean passages.

As he approached the cave mouth, Fortin stopped in his tracks as he gazed upon the massive radiation-sealing door, which filled the entrance to the primary cave.

"My God— he said, You people certainly have been busy!"

As they were stepping inside, the remote speakers were blaring out and repeating the unbelievable news over and over: "This is not a drill! This is not a drill! A ballistic missile launch has been confirmed! Lock-down in progress!"

Laur turned to Fortin and said, Well, Rilus…This was a completely unexpected turn of events. I think we can forget about the perimeter alarm system. We’re just fortunate that we made it to the facility in time. I’ve much to do. I’ll have to get back with you later to discuss your living arrangements.

* * *

No matter what Korbryn did, he could not halt the evolving disaster. The missile launch sequence could not be reversed. Worse, the newly reprogrammed coordinates displayed on his monitors revealed that four of the ten missile targeting vectors had been reprogrammed from their distant targets. They were now respectively aimed at Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, and New York. Everyone in the world who mattered was trying to call into the facility, but he was taking no calls. Korbryn could feel the rumbling in the silo even though it was more than a kilometer from the launch facility control room. The Apocalypse was upon them.

Missile Two, the First Child, was readying itself for lift-off…

* * *

Unseen and unheard, a second, far smaller alien’s efforts came into play. Gu Urqu’s two-meter diskform plummeted down into the open Missile Silo Two in an attempt to work himself through to the control panels to stop the launch sequence. Over and over he muttered to himself, It’s too soon! It’s too soon! Not yet! Not yet!

Hovering over the LAF, Vl was expanding back into his normal fifteen-meter diameter format when he suddenly sensed this possible ruination of his scheme. Within minutes, Vl had folded over his webbing strands to transform himself into a fifteen-meter round diskform. He lifted quietly into the sky and began to fly toward the First Child to thwart the efforts of the other alien.

The two alien creatures, one appearing monstrously majestic, and the other tiny and tattered looking, collided at the top of the now open vertical, cylindrical shaft of Missile Silo Two. They twisted and spun about the top nose protrusion of the First Child in a swirl of blurred webbing as their respective long and short tendrils tried to reach and grab at one another. As they viciously fought with one another, many of their webbing tendrils gripped one another, clutching each to the other tightly about the nearly meter long, tubular tip of the missile’s warhead. The growling, rumbling of the missile and the splash of white fire far below them at the bottom of the silo made it seem as though