Final Solstice (15 page)

Chapter 17

“Everyone, please welcome our newest recruit, Mason Grier. Meteorologist extraordinaire, and someone sure to be a tremendous asset to our team.”

Mason acknowledged Solomon’s voice but took a second to allow his eyes to accustom to the dark interior of the Conference Room labeled as Sigil 1. He had expected a long table, cushy leather chairs and speakerphones, ports for laptop access, and maybe a screen for teleconferencing.

Instead, he found himself in a forest. A virtual forest, he thought at first, but then realized there was no hard floor, but soft earth. Mossy stones and twigs.
Full trees mixed with holographic projections or just wall visuals again?
He had no idea where reality ended and the illusion began. He looked up, and the ceiling—if there was one—was perfectly hidden in the mirage of foliage, darting birds, an owl and great tree trunks arching high overhead into a pock-marked clearing through which soft sunlight filtered peacefully.

Magnificent, was his only thought, and he was about to say so when he realized he wasn’t alone. Ten other men and women stood in a circle around him. It was then he realized some of the other members must be projections as well, since they were behind him, where the wall should have been blocking them. And in fact, as Victor closed the door, the seams vanished and the forest expanded at his back.

He was truly in the woods, and abruptly he felt as if he’d been caught in a fairy tale world without breadcrumbs or any other means of backtracking or getting out before he was cooked. Glancing around, he shrugged off the feeling and just spoke, feeling quite out of his element. “Hello everyone. I haven’t gotten tired of saying this yet, but I’m glad to be here.”

Solomon stepped into the circle, opposite Mason. He wore a gray suit with an open collar silk blue shirt and no tie. “Mason and Gabriel survived a nasty little accident while in New York, and we’re all happy they’ve made a full recovery.”

The others murmured to themselves as they nodded. A woman to Mason’s left reached over and patted his shoulder. She at least, was real. Some of the others … if he looked hard enough at them … he could see the ferns and bushes through their outlines. Even Solomon.

“This,” Mason said glancing around, “is incredible.”

Solomon smiled with the compliment. “Not exactly an OSHA-approved workplace, but it’s one of our own little nature sanctuaries. If we have to be inside, we can at least let the outdoors in through whatever means necessary.”

Mason checked out the other faces. “So how many of us are really here? I honestly can’t tell.”

Four hands raised in the air, faces smiling.

“The rest,” Solomon said, “myself included, are at various offsite locations. As you might have heard, I’m headed to Zurich, which I don’t expect will be a long visit. Not even time to do a ski run, but I will haul ass through the Alps.” He grinned and everyone chuckled. Apparently, Solomon enjoyed his fast cars when a limo driver wasn’t around. Mason wondered if the Solstice lawyers knew about that for insurance purposes. He wondered suddenly about a lot of incidental things, like its balance sheet, debt ratios and for that matter—clients, revenue history and earnings projections.
Probably should have checked into all that before joining for idealistic reasons.

But Shelby wasn’t some idealistic notion. She was a flesh and blood miracle. If that kind of cure could be made commercially available … To say nothing of the potential that enhanced weather forecasting could entail, the financial prospects were staggering. With his options, and if everything went even half as well as he thought they could, he and Lauren could be looking at a cozy retirement very soon.

Solomon cleared his throat and produced a curious staff from the forested shade behind him in the virtual glen. He set some of his weight on it, glanced around the chamber at the other members, then settled on Mason. “The meeting is almost complete. Sorry, Mason, you didn’t need to be here for the earlier sections. We reviewed financials and the regional directors gave their weekly updates on status of various projects and long term goals.”

Would have liked to hear those,
Mason thought.
Maybe there’s a transcript.

“Now, on to the more pressing matter. You are going to Oklahoma.”

Mason blinked at him. “Where? I’m sorry, you’re going to Switzerland and I get shipped to Oklahoma?”

Solomon nodded. He lifted his staff and pointed at a space over his left shoulder. A rectangular view screen appeared in the virtual canopy, calling up a map of the state, then zeroing in on one small city, where red text appeared with the label:
Lawton: Population 96,545.

“Sorry, why there?”

“Lawton has been in the middle of a severe drought for weeks. Last precipitation was October fourteenth at one-eighth of an inch. Current forecast …” He tapped something in the air with his staff, and the Doppler map appeared, showing nothing but clear air for everything north and west for the next ten days. “As you can see, no relief in sight.”

“So why send me there? To comment on the severity of situation? I’m sorry but I don’t think this is one case you can pin on corporate America and man-made global warming. Droughts have existed in this area way before Henry Ford even designed his Model T.”

“Granted,” Solomon said, sweeping across the air with the staff and wiping the image away. “But it will make as grand a stage for our point as we can hope for. A perfect realization of a desperate town and a desperate people, a snapshot of Americans suffering.”

Mason thought about it. “And you as the potential saviors?”

“Us. And yes, but only if they give us a chance.”

Frowning, Mason fidgeted, distracted by all the forest stimuli: hearing in the lull the scurrying sounds in the brush, the breeze rustling the vines, acorns falling, a cicada singing a lonely song. “I’m sorry, I’ll go of course, but I just don’t see what I’m going to accomplish. You could just release a professionally-done documentary or something like that to support your capabilities, and …”

“No, having our man at the scene, bringing home the point, will be far more powerful. Trust me. We’ll send you along with some talking points, and you’ll chat with the mayor and some farmers and get impressive pictures for the papers and the blog sites.”

Mason shrugged again. “All right, but it would be better if you could—I don’t know—do that rain-making trick like up on the roof?” He thought again about that, the suddenness and the certainty that it was impossible, and nothing short of magic. In hindsight, he felt like he should have paid more attention. Like a spectator at an impressive carnival show, he’d been looking in the wrong direction while the magician made the true effect happen somewhere else.

Along with several others, Solomon gave a chuckle. “Would that were possible, Mason.”

“It’s not out of the realm,” Mason countered, still thinking about the rainstorm. “Of all the crackpot weather modification theories out there, cloud seeding is one that actually has some merit, yielding positive results. Silver iodine, dry ice and even liquid propane, dispersed into the cloud cover by jets has had some success, although opinions vary greatly still as to the results. Ski resorts have had the best success at producing more snow when needed. And used for hail suppression, seeding especially has seen practical applications, but in situations like this …” he pointed in the area where the map of Lawton had been. “It’s nearly impossible, as with no clouds at all, you have nothing to work with.”

“Sadly true,” Solomon replied. “Which is why we don’t bother with such attempts or technology. It’s got such a bad rap as it is, what with Geneva conventions and UN treaties and concerns over microwave applications like the HAARP facility, or the fact that the U.S. government engaged in this business during Vietnam, attempting to lengthen the monsoon season to impair the enemy.…” Solomon’s eyes glazed over as if in momentary respect, then blinked and he smiled again. “No, that’s not what we’re about, and such minor parlor tricks—such
Connecticut Yankee
effects as you said earlier—would not help our purposes here.”

Mason carefully studied Solomon, or at least his image, stately and modern all at once; he looked more like an eccentric nightclub owner than a CEO, but at the same time, he seemed colder and more calculating. And definitely hiding something.

A flash of light stabbed behind Mason’s eyes. Sudden and intense like a migraine pain, and for an instant he saw that staff again, except now it wasn’t Solomon’s hand that grasped it.
An older hand, wrinkled but firm. And a man seated at a long wooden table in a charming cottage-like room. Shadowy others were seated around him, except … they were encased in blocks of ice. Faces, barely visible, eyes wracked with frozen pain, mouths open in endlessly soundless screams.

He blinked and it was gone. Focus returned, and he saw that some of the others were fading out, their avatars fizzling away into dust. Just Solomon and the four locals remained. The door at Mason’s back opened and Victor was silhouetted in the painful artificial light.

“Time now,” Solomon said. “Victor will handle all your travel needs.”

“Can I stop home first?” Mason asked. “Pick up a change of clothes, maybe? I hadn’t planned on being in front of the public.”

“Of course. Say hi to your lovely wife for me, and tell her you’ll be home soon.”

Mason was about to say something when the image swirled and faded. The four others promptly left and he was alone in the woods, alone in the shifting sunlight and the gentle woods.

He felt a strong pull towards calm and peace, but he was never more sure that Solomon was wrong, and that after Oklahoma everything would change and he wouldn’t be seeing Lauren for some time.