MuTerra-kindle (17 page)

―

Two days removed from his experience in the forest, Keith found himself in a valley full of wild grass. It was yellow in color and tall. He collected some for study. He also noticed the ground was marshy. From this, he went to several standing pools and collected samples of water in the hopes that he would find what Dr. Maddow was so interested in. He marked them and placed the vials into a pocket on the inside of his jacket.

He heard the noise before he saw them. There was a pack of dog like creatures walking along the rim of the basin. They spotted him and they were acting as if they were trying to avoid him. He did not think they were planning to attack, as they appeared to be rather small to approach something his size. They were smaller than a coyote, but larger than a red fox. Their coats were yellowish brown, similar to the grass, and they had a dark brown patch riding down the middle of their back.

They were not calling out to one another, and this was another reason
he did not think they would try to molest him. He was wrong. As soon as the four dogs were within twenty yards of him, they started to growl and run straight for him. He had little time to draw his gun and fire as they did so. He took aim at the closest one and fired. The gun bucked in his hands as he acquired his next target. The first two went down in cries of pain, while the other two continued their assault. A third one absorbed two quick rounds in mid-air as it jumped at him. The last animal was now too close to fire at. Keith swung his free arm as the dog was in the air.

He struck the dog in his ribs with the side of his forearm. It was not a solid blow but Keith knew it caused damage. In fact, the dog had landed, turned around and growled at him. He did not seem as enthusiastic as he was a few seconds ago, and it was obvious he was hurting.
Probably from broken ribs,
Keith thought in the moment it took to consider it. He raised the pistol ready to fire once again, but the animal never came. He saw he was now alone, turned, and walked away in search of an easier meal.

Keith decided to return with one of the creatures. He sealed it whole in a plastic bag. It would surely be ripe by the time he made it back, but that would not be his concern. He knew they would want to examine every detail down to what it had been eating. He marked the bag the same way he did all samples he gathered, with the direction and distance from the mountain. This one was labeled 60 Mi. North.  

    ****

Construction had been moving at a fast pace. Those on the inside could see images through their computer links. They were also able to keep in contact with their colleagues in this same fashion. Once a week, they even shared in parties via this link, both inside and out, as a way to keep up morale. Those on the inside wanted to get out. Those on the outside, wanted to finish their work, and be safe. After the newness of the adventure had subsided, the realities became heavier. They trusted in the measures they were taking in relation to protecting their health, but it was a regimented system. It also became a realization that they were not going to be entering the mountain facility again anytime soon. They would only see others when it was safe enough for them to come out too. This emerged as the new motivation to finish their work.

Eventually, the outside facility became functional to the point of having air-handling systems, recreational areas, and a hermetically sealed exit point. Just inside the exit point was a permanent decontamination unit, which allowed for both people and small recreational vehicles to pass through. The level of radiation was monitored daily. It was clear that it was decreasing, but it would be sometime before it would be safe enough to go outside without self-contained protective gear.

The recreational vehicles were battery powered, and only allowed travel for moderate distances without a reserve. There were solar cells on the top of the vehicles, but they only prolonged the battery life. They were not enough to power the vehicles alone. The facility staff grew to twice its original complement as scientists were kept busy examining whatever newly discovered items were brought in. They decided that they would not construct any other facilities, beyond the mountain, until the environment was safe enough to work in without protective gear. Many of those outside were comforted by that. They believed they had tempted fate enough already.

Frank Bishop was pragmatic enough to realize there were only two options for continued progress. One, was through medical enhancement, the other was time. One they could control once they found the means, the other they could not.

 ―

Keith had been in the apartment for little more than an hour when Terri arrived. “Hey, how’s my favorite girl,” he said as he walked toward her.

“Hi. I didn’t know when you were coming back,” she said in a sullen voice.

“What’s wrong,” he asked halting their customary embrace.

She looked in his eyes and knew she could not keep it from him. It was too big for her to keep to herself. “I have something to show you. In fact, it’s something that needs to be shown to everyone here.”

“Okay, so show me,” he said agreeably.

She removed a thumb drive from one of her pockets, and went to a laptop they kept in the room. Once it was turned on, she plugged in the memory stick, and entered the code necessary to open the file it contained. At first, he did not know what he was looking at. It was obviously medical data.

“What exactly am I looking for,” he asked her as he scanned through the pages.

“Here,” she said as she scrolled to what she wanted him to see.

He read it. At first glance, it did not register with him. He reread it. This time it dawned on him. They found a cure for cancer. “Hey, this is great. Is it true? I mean, does it really work?”

“Yes,” she said without much enthusiasm.

“Then what are you upset about. I agree, everyone should know about this.”

“Look,” she said as she scrolled back to the top of the report, “Look at the date.”

He did. The report was almost fifty years old. “That can’t be right,” he said.

“It is,” she replied as she replaced that thumb drive with another.

“What’s on that one,” he asked.

“Wait and see,” she said seriously. After she opened this file, she explained what it contained while he viewed its contents. “After I came across these records by accident, I noticed several references to what I later learned was a secret government project called ‘Artifice.’ I didn’t know what connection it had with the cancer studies, so I asked somebody to do some checking for me.”

While she was talking, Keith was putting things together as he read the reports.

“You know Lisa,” Terri said keeping his attention, “Her husband Greg works with those supercomputers in the archives and records department. I asked him if he could locate anything on some project called Artifice. He did, that’s what you’re looking at now.”

“This stuff has to be classified,” Keith interjected.

“It was. Even with his security clearance, he said he had to use a decryption program to access it. He only knows what he copied for me, he doesn‘t know the other part.”

As he continued to read, it became clear as the story unfolded. It started to display in his mind like a nightmare. The government found a cure for cancer. But instead of making it available to the public, they chose to profit from it. For decades, they collected money from cancer research and programs. Universities, treatment centers, pharmaceutical companies, and other institutes paid large sums of untraceable funds to a government account. A portion of legal taxation was also funneled into this account. What he was looking at now was a detailed log of where that funding went. It was used to build facilities like the one they had been confined to for more than a decade. The government took advantage of one of the worst diseases known to man and used it as a source of revenue to fund projects that were not only ‘off the books,’ but also away from any oversight or scrutiny.  Then he thought of his mother. She was one of the millions to die from this horrible disease. And yet, here he was not only alive because of her suffering, but working to further the effort. He looked her in the eyes, “Who else knows about this?”

“Nobody, only you. Greg knows about the money trail, where it came from and where it went to, but that’s it.”

He was trying to think, but his anger was growing and interfering with any rationality.

“What should we do,” she asked with a desperate note in her voice.

“I don’t know just yet. Don’t say anything to anyone. I’ll talk to my father and see if I can’t come up with more information or some better explanation. He might not know anything, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he did.”

“Keith, this is despicable. I’ve spent the last week going over this to see if it was all a misunderstanding. I haven’t been able to function at work, and I’ve only been able to sleep with help,” she said referring to sleeping pills. “I wanted to be a doctor all my life. Now that I find out what that means for some people, I no longer want anything to do with it. Martin knows something is bothering me, but I can’t say anything to him.”

“Don’t. Let me handle it. I just need some time to think,” he said as he took her in his arms.
Terri was a delicate person. He could only imagine the hell she went through after discovering this information,
he thought as he was going through his own emotional ride.

―

Keith went to his father’s office the next morning. He told Terri to go to work and do her best to put it out of her mind. The outer office was empty. Lucas was most likely running errands for his father. He stepped inside, went to the inner office door and knocked. “Come,” he heard from behind the door.

“I thought I might see you today,” Frank Bishop said from behind his desk. “I heard you brought back a dog, or at least a dog like creature.”

“Yeah, but that isn’t what I came to talk about,” Keith said seriously as he took a seat.

“Oh? Something bothering you?”

“You could say that; something that should bother you too.”

“Keith, if you have something on your mind, then say it. Contrary to what you may think, I actually do have a lot to do around here and I don’t have a lot of time for melodramatics,” he said stiffly.

That was enough to start Keith off a bit more abruptly than he had originally prepared in his mind. “What do you know about a project called Artifice,” he said in a challenging manner.

“I’m not sure what you are talking about,” his father replied a bit too easily.

Keith detected the pretense. “You know, Artifice,  Cancer, money, underground bases, that kind of stuff.”

“Where did you hear about this ‘Artifice’ and what did you hear about it?”

“You first. Did you know about it,” Keith challenged.

Frank Bishop’s face was unreadable. He sat there looking at his son for some time before he replied. “I know about ‘Artifice.’ I know what it was, and why it was. I wasn’t part of it other than functioning here as an end product.”

“And you’re okay with that? The ends justify the means?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But it doesn’t seem to matter to you.”

“It’s in the past. Nothing can be done about it now.”

“Yes there can. People have the right to know.”

“Don’t be foolish. What good can that do? All it would do is to stir up a lot of hard feelings and old memories. Those people are dead. Nobody here will ever have to deal with that disease again.”

Keith looked at his father in surprise, “You don’t think they have the right to know?”

“We are not talking about rights. We are talking about necessity. What good can come of it?”

“Did you know about this when Mom was diagnosed?”

Frank Bishop looked directly at his son, “No. I didn’t learn anything about it until a few years ago when performing a review of all the classified files. Which brings me to the question, how did you find out about it? I remember having all of those files encrypted.”

Keith knew it would not take his father long to figure out Terri was involved. She was the practical medical connection, but he would not let on to who had assisted her in retrieving the other files. “Terri came across some old medical records which were not encrypted,” he answered hoping it would satisfy that issue, “She showed them to me. I guess you could say she was pretty upset by what she found.”

His father accepted what he was told, but made a note to do some further checking. He decided to let Keith know he was aware of not being told everything. “And those medical records mentioned military bases, did they?”

They locked eyes, but Keith did not respond to the statement. “People have the right to know Dad. I told her to keep it to herself for now, but it’s going to come out one way or another. This is just too big to keep hidden.”

His father sat there in silence as if considering a course of action. Just when Keith thought he was about to protest, he surprised him. “You’re right. It is too big, and it is now unlikely to be kept hidden anyway. But, I think, as the Director, I should be the one to explain it. Give me a day to prepare. Can you two keep it to yourselves for that long and let me do it the right way?”

Keith, surprised by the turn of the conversation said, “Sure.”

“Okay, tomorrow then.”

―

Keith gave a recounting of the conversation he had with his father later that night to his wife. They both slept soundly, and looked forward to the next day with mixed emotions. She was glad the burden would no longer be theirs to bear alone. He was glad his father reacted the way he did, and felt others had the right to know what had made their survival here possible.

Keith sat at his desk wondering what life would have been like in a cancer free world. He also wondered what life was like outside now. Not just in the few places he had gone, but everywhere. He did not mention the emaciated human like creatures he ran into on his last trip during his last debriefing. There was enough talk about what was outside without adding stories of ghouls to the picture. He would find them again to see what more he could learn about them before making that information available. He thought about that as he reconsidered his father’s response. He too withheld information, which he thought would do more harm than good. It was not exactly the same thing, but it made him think about it.