The Watcher's Door

By David Lee Short

A professor of Paleontology encounters alien robots that have been left on Earth to monitor man's progress. He is accidentally drawn into their collective mind and discovers corrupting power. In the meantime, government agents want what he has discovered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Lee Short
• Release date: Aug 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005213039

David Lee Short

I was born at an early age (OK, age is just a number; mine is unlisted) in Kualakapuas, a Dayak village in Central Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. My parents were missionaries–McGregor Scotts by ancestry, Americans by birth. At the time, Kalimantan was ruled by the Netherlands and known to foreigners as the Netherlands East Indies. Shortly after my birth, a Japanese invasion appeared imminent; we all returned to the United States. We waited out World War II in Springfield, Missouri where my father wrote and edited for the Gospel Publishing House. After the war, we returned to Borneo and lived in the coastal city of Banjarmasin. The way back was long and hard; civilian transportation was still very limited, and while the Army Air Corps would fly us on a space-available basis, very little space was available. We waited 3 months in Adelaide, South Australia, and another 3 months on the island of Ambon in the Moluccas, or Spice Islands. By the grace of God, none of the Japanese munitions I collected from the Ambon beaches exploded. I did, however, develop a fondness for mangos that has never left me. After Borneo, we lived outside Manila, the Philippines, where my father helped build the Far East Broadcasting Company. My father never had a slow button, and after just more than a year, he collapsed from exhaustion. Our ship docked in Burbank, California on December 20–it snowed 6 inches just for our benefit. We didn’t own so much as a long-sleeved shirt.Although I wrote in school, fighting wars and raising babies caused me to set it aside for some years. While snowbound for a week at our Wisconsin home, I decided to write a short story to pass the time. A little more than 100,000 words later, the novel Pastime came to be. The noted author of spy novels, David Hagberg, mentored me for a while. His judgment, correct as always, was that Pastime was a mixed genre; it is Earth-bound science fiction but has whole chapters where no sci-fi takes place. Just to prove I had it in me, I wrote The Devil and Omorti’s Circle, an off-world novel that expands on some of the alien races introduced in Pastime, and has a few of its own. There are now four novels in that series and a spinoff. A Level-Three Correction is a short story that further develops two of the alien races of earlier works. I wrote it to see if I could write a piece that had no slow passages. I give it a B+, but you may judge for yourself. Alaya is a departure for me. Fantasy, rather than hard science fiction, it’s Swords and Sorcery without the sorcery. It too has sequels and a spinoff.I currently live 6200 feet up the side of Colorado’s Grand Mesa and love it.

Book preview

Part One—Colin

Chapter 1

It was September 21st. The fall colors were past their prime, but the weather was warm and dry. As he walked, Colin MacGregor considered making camp; the day had been long, the canyon narrow and brushy, and the pickings slim. Other than two fine Clovis points and one other piece of knapped flint, he had found one fossilized bone fragment. The fragment was no larger than his fist but was part of a much larger bone. It showed signs of having washed some distance down the small, clear stream he followed. He was hungry. Still, the fragment held his attention; he logged its GPS coordinates and continued upstream.

He primarily searched gravel beds on the inside of bends in the stream where larger pebbles were deposited but kept an educated eye on the canyon walls. Even in wide spots, the canyon walls were no more than 100 yards apart. One could gauge the probability of finding fossils according to rock types. This narrow canyon was cut into Weber sandstone with the occasional basalt inclusion left over from a period of uplift and volcanic activity. Fossils would be in the sandstone; the basalt, while often beautiful, was of little interest to him. Because of that, he nearly missed seeing the door.

A columnar basalt flow no more than 200 feet wide had, in some ancient time, shattered the sandstone cap and thrust its way to the surface. It now occupied the east wall of the canyon and made a cock's comb crest on the ridgeline. It was dark gray and lacked the lighter stripes so common in this part of Utah. The door, if it was a door, matched the color of the rock. It was square—Colin estimated ten feet on a side—slightly inset and perfectly smooth.

From the stream to the door, the ground rose sharply; a mix of small boulders and loose stones that supported a large Juniperus osteosperma, the common Utah Juniper, but little else. Colin scrambled up the loose bank, cautious of where he put his foot—a broken leg this far out would be serious. After a few minutes’ examination, he was convinced it was indeed a door. It was featureless, but a hairline crack ran on all sides. He measured it; exactly nine feet, two and an eighth inches wide and nine feet, two and an eighth inches from the lintel to the smooth threshold. He assessed the probability of natural occurrence to be so remote as to be unworthy of serious consideration. He had undergrad students that would, no doubt, debate it. He did not.

He pitched his tent on the thick brown bed of dropped leaves under the juniper, gathered stones for a fire ring, and built a small fire from the abundant driftwood along the stream bank. His pocket Nikon was small and lightweight, but high-resolution with a passable lens. It would do. He carefully photographed everything—the door, the basalt, the environment—everything. This late in the day, the lip of the canyon had cut off direct sunlight to the door, but Colin preferred the indirect light for photography.

Good light or not, there was nothing new to be seen. No latch. No control panel. No call button. He finally prepared a package of freeze-dried beef stroganoff and ate in silent frustration. Afterward, he uncoiled his six-foot frame from the tiny folding stool by the fire and washed up in the clear, cold stream as it tumbled its way to its confluence with the Green River. He released his long, salt-and-pepper hair from the elastic band that held it in a ponytail and ran a comb through it.

Having satisfied his hunger and freshened up, he sat, admired the skill of the craftsmen that had created the Clovis points from rough pieces of flint, and considered what to do about the door.

It was not all that unusual to find a door in the stone. Natural gas pipelines, and various other industrial projects often dug small caves to shelter equipment from the elements and vandals. There was nothing subtle about them. They were cast concrete frames with steel doors, high-security locks, and warning signs threatening legal action against anyone contemplating trespass. This door had none of that. He pulled a long drink from the second of two water bladders in his backpack and re-wrapped the arrowheads in thin sheet foam.

In the last of the twilight, he unrolled a self-inflating ground pad, placed his sleeping bag in his tiny North Face tent, and brewed a cup of coffee. A raven swooped to the water’s edge and fixed a glossy black eye on him as it drank. Colin considered it entirely possible that he was the first human to be seen in this spot for a hundred years. This had been Ute country then—the Clovis points predated the Utes by perhaps a thousand years.

He was almost asleep in total darkness when a sharp click brought him to instant clarity. Through the mesh sides of the tent, he could see a light moving along the canyon wall above his campsite. It bounced and jiggled for a moment, and then moved quickly upward and out of sight. By the time he had unzipped the tent and rolled out of the sleeping bag, the only light was brilliant pinpoint stars in a black strip of sky.

He dug a tiny LED flashlight from a side pocket of his pack. In just a moment he stood beside the door in hiking boots and paisley boxer shorts. Nothing had changed, and the night had grown cool. With a weary shrug, he put everything away and returned to the warmth of his bag. Four hours later, the light returned; Colin was sound asleep.

The next morning, he re-hydrated some scrambled eggs and bacon bits, brewed another cup of coffee, and took stock. He was now on the second day of a planned four-day trek. He would need to purify more water. He had food for an extra day if need be.

The source of the fossilized bone fragment was still somewhere upstream. Finding it would be a crapshoot, but he had known that when he locked the Jeep and started up this remote canyon.

He didn’t truly need to find fossils; he was tenured and widely published. His one non-academic piece, a mainstream book on the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event titled Time Tracks nicely supplemented his salary. He was not wealthy, but…comfortable. He was in the field simply because he enjoyed the hunt and the solitude. The sky had clouded over during the night, but the forecast held little chance for any significant rain. On the other hand, the door was only a few feet away. By the end of the coffee, he had made his decision.

Leaving the camp where it was, he began a detailed search of the canyon walls and floor for a hundred yards in either direction. He found a tiny cave in the sandstone; wind eroded and was barren. He found another arrowhead, probably Ute, this one with a broken point. He found what appeared to be the toe bone of a sauropod embedded in the sandstone wall, but an hour’s work produced nothing more. Midafternoon, he found a dart.

At least he assumed it was a dart—a three-inch-long, half-inch cylinder, sharply pointed at one end, with bristles at the other end that could have easily served as directional stabilizers. It was lightweight, suggesting that it could be hollow. As far as Colin could tell, it had no moving parts. It had a gray luster that appeared to be metal of some sort. He carefully tasted it—it tasted of sage and juniper as one might expect.

Back at the campsite, he wrapped his new finds and stored them with the others in a small waterproof pouch. He had missed lunch; a package of freeze-dried sweet and sour chicken promised to be two servings. He stirred the embers of this morning’s fire and found enough to kindle some dry, scaly, juniper leaves. A fire ignited quickly, and soon he had water heating in his little aluminum pot with the permanently blackened sides. It sprinkled for a few minutes, hardly enough to dampen the rocks and not enough to dampen his camp under the juniper at all.

At dusk, he dressed warmly, made himself a cup of coffee, slid his flashlight into his jacket pocket, checked the custom-made knife that lived permanently on his belt when he was in the field, and climbed up to the door. He sat with his back against the door reasoning that even if he dozed off, the opening door would wake him. A camp robber landed in the juniper with a flutter of gray wings and began search for food. The jay imperiously ignored him as it went about its work.

A lone mule deer, a doe, wandered downstream, stopped to look at him, twitched her ears and then continued on her way, unconcerned. A moment later, a fawn, still in spotted coat, came into view, glanced at him and then scurried after its mother.

It was fully dark when a sharp click brought him fully upright and awake. The door moved inward several inches, and then slid open to his right. A tiny point of light in the inky blackness beyond the door grew quickly into a glowing sphere no larger than a softball. At the entrance, it stopped, bobbled a few seconds, and then retreated back the way it had come. A click signaled the door closing.

Given time to consider, Colin might have reached a different decision. Instead, he rolled in past the pathway of the door. He misjudged a little—the door struck his right shoulder. It wasn’t serious; the force spun him around, and his arm went numb, but he heard nothing break. He was used to bumps and bruises in the field.

After a minute or two, feeling returned to his right arm and he retrieved his flashlight. The pain was bothersome, but bearable. A tunnel exactly the size of the door extended farther than his little light could reach straight into the dark basalt. Its walls were smoothly cut and featureless, showing nothing resembling tool marks. A cursory examination of the door and its frame revealed nothing that might have been a control, although he found his coffee cup squashed between the door and the jam. Lacking an option, he started into the stone tunnel.

After about 50 feet, the tunnel reached the end of the basalt flow. A line of nearly white sandstone cut across the tunnel at a sharp angle. Colin found his light was much more effective in the lighter environment, but the sandstone offered no more answers than the basalt had. Without warning, the glowing softball reappeared. It bobbed for a moment and then hung motionless at eye level. He stepped to one side as though to go around it—the sphere moved with him. He moved the other way, and again, the sphere moved with him. After the second attempt to bypass the sphere, two darts exactly like the one he had found in the canyon moved at blurring speed from somewhere farther along the tunnel and stopped abruptly, one on either side of the sphere. Colin took it as a not too subtle warning and didn’t try a third time.

Slowly, the trio of objects began to retreat into the tunnel. It appeared to be an invitation. Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly, ran through his mind as he kept pace.

After another 50 feet, the tunnel turned sharply to the left and then emptied into a cavern large enough that its walls were lost to his flashlight. As he watched, a map of North America formed in the air before him. It was not projected on anything, it simply hung there—colored lines drawn in space with exquisite detail. A tiny green dot seemed to say, You are here.

A voice came from the sphere; flat, mechanical, badly accented. It reminded Colin of Robbie the Robot; Forbidden Planet was a cult favorite of his.

Who are you?

Professor Colin MacGregor. Who are you?

What do you profess?

He suppressed a snicker. I teach Paleontology at the University of Colorado. You didn’t answer my question.

Show us the location.

Colin took a step toward the map. As he approached, it shifted, expanding to show the area he approached in greater detail. He quickly found Interstate 70, and began sidestepping to the right. He crossed the Rocky Mountains, found Denver and then Boulder; he moved in. With a little effort, he found Broadway Street and then the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History. My office is here. He pointed.

Why do you trespass?

It’s public land.

Non-sequitur. Why do you trespass?

Why have you conducted mining operations on public land? And are you going to answer my question? Who are you?

One of the darts moved so quickly that he had trouble tracking its path. It hovered inches from his face.

Insolence is not allowed. Why do you trespass?

He contemplated the dart for a moment. He had little doubt that it was intended as a threat, although he could only guess as to how serious a threat. The door opened and I fell in. After the door closed, there was no way out, so I came this way. You ruined my only coffee cup, by the way. He didn’t think it necessary to say that he was leaning against the door in hopes it would open.

There was an uncomfortable silence, followed by, You will follow the hover.

Or what?

A lancet will render you unconscious, and we will move you anyway. He noted that the voice had improved both in tone and accent. The sphere, apparently called a hover, moved farther back into the cavern.

He did not move. Without warning, there was a sharp pain in his neck. The world turned liquid—lines blurred, nothing was solid. And then it all faded.

*****

Dawn’s first light woke Colin. This morning, his mind was unaccountably slow to come fully awake. He slid out of his sleeping bag and set about brewing coffee.

He considered his trip a reasonable success. He had found evidence of a bone field somewhere upstream that students would enjoy helping him document. Four days of solitude and two perfect arrowheads were a bonus. There was something else of interest—it was right there on the fringe of his memory, but it was illusive. No matter; he had a camp to strike, and a long hike back to the Jeep. It would come to him. He poured strong, fresh coffee into an undamaged cup.

*****

A day later he walked into the museum with a spring in his step. He was dressed in his normal fall uniform—black Dockers, and an Oxford shirt topped by a North Face polar fleece against the unpredictable Boulder weather. He wore his brown loafers without socks. Morning, Arthur.

Morning Doctor MacGregor. You look like you enjoyed yourself. The security guard was very large, very black, and all smiles.

Couldn’t have asked for better. May have found a new bone field.

Whatever makes you happy, Doc. Do you have artifacts to register?

I do, but first I need to find a home for used coffee.

Arthur’s smile never faded, but his voice became more businesslike. Perhaps you would like to leave them with me. I can get started while you pee. We can finish when you get back.

That’s a plan. He slipped the waterproof pouch from a black and gold canvas CU bag slung from his shoulder and handed it to the guard. Without looking back, he headed for the public restrooms. When he returned, the guard had opened the pouch, and had seven items spread out on his desk. He had already correctly cataloged the arrowheads as Clovis, or Ute points. The other flint item he had entered as a scraper.

I need dates, and coordinates for these. How would you like me to catalog the bones, and whatever this is? He held up a metal cylinder, pointed at one end with bristles at the other.

Where did you get that?

Arthur gave him a look—head tilted down, eyes looking at him from just under the eyebrows—the look that said, You’re putting me on, right? From your bag. Did you think I brought it to work with me?

I’ve never seen it before. It was in the bag?

Wrapped exactly like the rest of the loot. What should I do with it; catalog it or not?

I think not. I’ll take it; somebody has to know what it is. It was wrapped and in the bag? Weird.

He supplied the other missing information, reading the coordinates from his GPS, and went on his way. The museum was very efficient; there was no question that any or all his new finds would magically reappear if he asked for them. The dart went back in his canvas bag.

James Wu looked up as Colin entered the cramped office. The open door was neatly labeled, IT. Below, someone had scrawled, came from outer space! in black magic marker. The walls were festooned with Cat5 Ethernet cables in a rainbow of colors that were of significance to Jim, but no one else in the building. Two large flat screen monitors dominated his cramped desk.

Welcome back, Mac; enjoy yourself?

Not another soul in the CU system called him Mac, but Colin wrote it off to one more idiosyncrasy of a man generally described by the word. The 30-something computer tech often wore flannel pants to work and sometimes slept under his desk. Today he sported black flannel pants, flip-flops and a black tee shirt that read, There's no place like 127.0.0.

I did indeed, thank you. I seem to have returned with a small mystery. He removed the dart from his shoulder bag. This was wrapped and stored in my collection bag. The mystery is that I’ve never seen it before and have no idea what it is. The bag was not always in my possession, but I never saw another person the entire time I was out.

That would be two mysteries; what it is, and where it came from.

Can you have your contacts identify it. That won’t tell me how it got in with my artifacts, but it would be a starting place.

Wu took the dart and scratched the scraggly chin hair that he pompously called a beard. Valuable?

No idea.

okay to file off a few shavings?

Whatever.

I’ll see what I can do. He dropped the dart into a coffee cup already half filled with pencils and paper clips.

Colin started to leave but stopped. I'll bite, what is 127.0.0.?

Home.

He left no better informed than before he asked.

An hour later Colin was standing before 43 eager young freshmen, discussing the cycles the earth had seen over a period of time that was, as yet, beyond their grasp.

*****

Eight days later, Colin had truly forgotten about the dart. A knock on his office door brought him back from grading papers. Come.

Jim Wu entered, his eyes examining everything as though this was the first time he had been here. It wasn’t. He was wearing red plaid flannel pants, a black and gold CU t-shirt and flip-flops. Where did you say you found this? He had the dart in his hand.

I didn’t. It was in my collection bag, but I have no idea how it got there. Why, what is it?

A syringe dart. One that measures point five five eight two three inches in diameter and is made out of Bucky Balls—sort of. That is not a rational measurement in any known system, and we just don’t make things out of that stuff. Not yet, anyway.

"Bucky Balls?

Buckminsterfullerene molecules—C60—picture a carbon soccer ball.

It’s made out of carbon?

Mostly, with a binder no one can identify and laced with what might even be circuitry. Can't tell.

Who made it?

No one has a clue. No fewer than four rational scientists suggested, only half in jest, that it was made by aliens. I don’t think they meant illegal Mexicans.

And what do you think?

I think you need to concentrate on how you came to have it. After you left the search area, was the bag ever out of your possession?

It was a canyon in Utah. Not really; it was in my pack. I stopped for gas and food in Silverthorne, but the Jeep was locked and I could see it from my table. I took it in the house with me, and then straight here the next morning.

So, the bag was out of your sight in your camp, but not after?

I think that’s right; I didn’t know there would be a test.

Holmes says, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ You had to have acquired it in the canyon.

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character.

The logic is still sound.

So, you think someone I never saw, slipped into my camp site, found my collection bag, studied the way I wrap things, wrapped the dart, put it with the other items, and then put everything back exactly as it was?

"No, I don’t have a theory as to how it got in your bag, only where it got in your bag. Can you find this place again?"

Of course. My GPS will find it within fifteen feet.

Then I guess you should look there.

Colin didn’t have a teaching break until Thanksgiving, and that break wasn’t long enough. The school year ended just before Christmas, but the canyon would likely be up to here in snow. He laid plans to return as soon as the snow melted.

He chastised himself that he was allowing this tiny object to take over a disproportionate part of his thought process. He was a tenured full professor, he told himself he should have better self-control. It changed nothing.

Chapter 2

It was mid-morning on April Fool’s Day when he parked the Jeep under a gnarled cottonwood and pulled his pack from behind the seat. This pack was larger by half than his favorite, mostly to accommodate the heavier sleeping bag and warm clothes.

The stream was three times its summer size, turbid and swollen with snow melt. Patches of snow still lingered in depressions and where large rocks blocked the sun. The day was overcast and unseasonably cold. He checked his GPS and started into the canyon.

It was ugly going—soft and slippery where the ground was thawed; hard and slippery where it was still frozen. The larger pack didn’t help. He slipped in the mud often, once plunging his right leg into the icy water up to the knee. He looked at the rushing water and doubted he would survive a full plunge. He changed his wet pants and socks, and continued.

He recognized the campsite immediately; the GPS agreed. The camp he established varied only slightly from his previous one. A waterproof ground cloth shielded the tent, and the area just in front of it, from the soft earth. The rain fly, which he had left off entirely last summer, was carefully staked. He set up a solar charging station and connected a Wi-Fi hub. He only had two bars of reception even with the attached amplifier, but his campsite was now a hotspot. And then there were the cameras.

He carefully placed three wide-angle trail cameras such that nothing could approach the camp without triggering video. He took great pains to hide them as well as possible without restricting their field of view. Finally, he carefully synchronized the cameras to the hub. Satisfied that he had a camp secured against both weather and intruders, he built a fire in the ring of stones he had gathered on his first visit. He hung his wet cloths near the fire and treated himself to two servings of spicy chicken gumbo. Darkness and trail fatigue drove him into the sleeping bag early. He was asleep in only a few minutes.

Colin awoke in the gray light of dawn a little confused. He rolled out of bed, and instinctively checked his phone. It came up 5:02 AM, April 3. In his fuzzy state, he almost went on. He looked again. Today was April 1, April Fool’s Day, the day he was returning to the canyon where everybody assumed the dart had originated. How could his phone say April 3? He put on buckskin slippers and padded to the kitchen for a cup of coffee to clear his head. There was no coffee. No coffee? His pot made coffee every morning at 4:30; setting it up was part of his going-to-bed ritual. The pot contained no grounds or water; obviously, he had never set it up.

He found the remote and flipped the television on. It came up to Denver Chanel 9; the news was on. The date in the corner of the screen was April 3. A knot formed in the pit of his stomach—somewhere he had mislaid two days.

He dressed and went out to the Jeep. It was packed for the trip. As he climbed behind the wheel, he noticed the floor mat was muddy. He was fastidious when it came to the Jeep; he would never leave it in that condition. He returned to the house and found his boots—caked with mud and juniper leaves. On the way to the museum, he went through a coin-operated car wash and cleaned the floor mat.

Morning Doctor MacGregor. The greeting never changed. Good to have you back. Find what it was you wanted?

Colin took a moment to reply. Not sure, Arthur. Is Jim Wu in the building?

In that closet he calls an office; I think he slept there last night.

Thanks, he said absently as he walked away.

He found the computer specialist exiting the men's room. He was wearing shorts and a t-shirt that read, I found your problem; you need a user upgrade.

I see you made it back in one piece. Jim was headed for his office. Find what you were looking for?

Can we talk somewhere private?

Jim raised an eyebrow. You suspect a nest of intrigue somewhere within the Museum of Natural History, do you? When Colin didn't reply, he said, My office is as secure as any place in the building. About that time, he reached his door and held it formally for Colin to enter.

I have evidence, thin, but evidence nonetheless, that I was there. In the canyon I mean. I don't remember any of it. I woke this morning believing it was the first. Everything I looked at said it's the third.

Which it is. What evidence?

For starters, my boots are caked with mud and Juniper leaves, and the driver's floor mat in my Jeep is muddy.

Can I see the floor mat?

Colin looked sheepish. I washed it on the way here, but the boots are still muddy.

Did the cameras catch anything?

Didn't look. The whole missing two days thing had me rattled. They should be in my pack in the Jeep. Give me a minute.

In short order, he was back with the pack slung over one shoulder. He began unloading the bulky items, and finally found the three cameras.

Jim deftly popped the card from one of them and put it in a reader on his cluttered desk. The card was blank, as were the other two.

These have Wi-Fi capability; did you use it?

How would I know? I'm still not sure I even went.

If you were to set it up, where would you send it?

To my desk computer, I suppose. I can't think of another good place. I can look.

No need. Jim did some swift typing, and Colin recognized his own computer desktop. He was not happy, but now was not the time.

Three files, Jim said absently. He was in his own world now. One of the files began to play—not high resolution, very high contrast. Well, it was dark as it should be—the time stamp is two eighteen AM, April first. Is that your camp?

It looks like one I would set up. I have a tent like that, and a ground cloth.

About that time, a softball-sized round object floated into the picture. It moved like a hunting animal, carefully examining everything in its path. Within two minutes, it had reached the tent, and vanished under the rain fly. The camera stopped recording when it lost the image but picked it up again when the sphere rose above the tent on the far side. Then the sphere rose straight up and out of the picture.

The time stamp on the next scene was