The Harbinger Break (22 page)

  
Walking inside, he noted immediately the lack of flour on the floor, instead greeted by pristine white tile and a bored secretary whining apathetically on the phone. She covered the speaker end as he nervously approached.

  
He had half a mind to turn around, and the only reason he didn't was because he thought that'd be embarrassing. That thought was immediately followed by the question as to why he even cared about what a stranger thought.

  
"Can I help you?" she asked apathetically.

  
"Um. Yes."

  
She waited for him to continue, but he had no idea how to pursue his vague train of thought. He couldn't just ask the secretary. What would he even ask? He was grasping at greasy needles with glass fingers, and no line of questioning seemed remotely reasonable under any context. He couldn't ask, "are you aware of drugs in your products?". They would toss him face first onto the pavement outside or have buff security guards drag him out without a second thought. He wondered if this facility even employed security guards. It seemed unlikely.

  
"Um," Sam scratched his head, feeling that familiar flush rush to his cheeks. "I'm concerned about the contents of your food."

  
The secretary looked at him and then glanced around the room, as if searching for a hidden camera, revealing the setup of a prank. Finding none, she turned back to Sam.

  
"Did you try calling?" she asked.

  
He shook his head. No he didn't. She had no idea what he intended to talk about. It wasn't an over-the-phone matter.

  
"Well, you see," Sam said, digging his hands into his pockets and feeling his cellphone. "I-I don't have a cellphone."

  
The secretary raised an appraising eyebrow, then relented and pressed a button on her intercom.

  
"George?" she asked after the buzz.

  
It buzzed back, "Yeah?"

  
"I have someone here who wants to speak to you."

  
George didn't respond for a moment. Sam felt himself cringing, waiting for the inevitable orders that he be kicked out.

  
"Just a matter of time," George finally replied. "Send him in."

  
The secretary glanced at Sam curiously as she pressed the buzzer. "Sending him in now."

  
Sam was stunned. He couldn't believe it. From what George had said it sounded as if he expected someone. Sam wondered if George would flip out when he realized that Sam was obviously not the person he expected.

  
The secretary pointed Sam through glass double doors, through a hallway, up the elevator to the third, top floor, and to the furthest room down the hall. He thanked her, straightened his tie, and marched away.

  
Following her instructions, he passed portraits of employees and pictures of baked goods. He pressed the call button by the elevator, and studied the pictures of bread, bagels, and muffins for a moment before the elevator doors opened and he turned away and stepped inside. He rode the elevator to the third floor, walked down the hall and knocked on the furthest door.

  
"Come in," George said immediately.

  
Sam took a deep breath, then turned the brass knob and entered the large office.

  
George stood with his back to Sam, staring out the large window behind his large wooden desk. There was a bookshelf to the left and a bathroom to the right. A black leather sofa sat on the side of the desk closest to Sam, angled towards the window. The room vaguely smelled like a new car, with a hint of sugar.

  
"I'm tired of keeping silent. You ready for your scoop?"

  
Sam paused. George must've thought he was a journalist. That could work.

  
"Sam Higgins. You were expecting me?"

  
"Not you specifically, no. But I've heard word of the public discovering wisps of the truth, and months ago I resolved to spill when your kind finally came knocking."

  
Sam withdrew his cellphone. A journalist would've had some kind of recording device–but his phone was all he had. It'd do more than fine though.

  
But what George had said sounded too good to be true. Proof. Sam could barely contain his excitement.

  
"You mind if I record this?" Sam asked.

  
George continued looking out his window. "By all means. Ask
the
question."

  
So here it was, Sam thought. Time to lay his hand out on the table. If he was wrong–if his question wasn't
the
question–the jig was up.

  
Sam cleared his throat. "There's something in the food."

  
George didn't respond.

  
After a moment, Sam continued. "Something people are addicted to. Drugs."

  
George remained silent, and Sam's heart pounded in his chest. Why wasn't he responding?

  
Then Sam's heart felt as if it'd arrested completely–what if George was an alien?

  
He began to back petal towards the door. That's when George finally spoke.

  
"You're right," he said, still looking out the window.

  
Sam froze. He wanted to call 9-1-1, but knew he'd be killed within seconds of doing so.

  
"You're right," George continued. "This is bad."

  
As he finished speaking, he finally turned around.

  
From what Sam could tell, George was an older man–in his late sixties at least, with heavy skin weighing down his distraught face. He looked as if the burden of the world had been taking its toll for quite some time, and Sam could tell that George was about to relieve it.

  
"In the dawn of the 20th century, chemists discovered that fairly common conditions of the time such as goiter and mental retardation were caused by an iodine deficiency in the diet of the general public," George began. "The chemical iodine is inexpensive and fairly little is needed to offset such conditions, and in 1924 a researcher named David Cowie suggested to a certain salt producer to add iodine to their product, an ingenious method of prevention."

  
George motioned for Sam to sit in the leather chair across his desk, then sat himself, the two men facing each other. Sam placed his phone on the table. George glanced at it, then continued.

  
"Unrelated at the time, in 1983 Morgan Scott requested that the Department of Science research means to increasing intelligence. It wasn't until 1989 that a chemist by the name of Francis Holcomb discovered that the chemical element astatine, which had inadvertently become abundant during the testing and eventual failure of teleportation technology, when flash frozen to salt, slowly increased the perceived intelligence of laboratory rats.

  
"In 1989, President Ernest Dale, under the perpetually imminent alien threat, acted not only too quickly but against the better judgment of Francis Holcomb and realized Morgan Scott's plan, sending funds and means to salt producers nationwide. My company was told to use certain, specific brands of salt. The treatment proved to be an intensely guarded secret, and likely the government's cruelest failure. It took me some time to discover this, and by then it was too late. Not only did the astatinized salt not effect in any noticeable way a person's IQ, but they–we–discovered too late that the population grew addicted to the salt, and that withdrawal from an astatine addiction was deadly."

  
"Which explains the hallucinations," Sam said.

  
"Yes."

  
Sam searched for a second question, but found himself shocked speechless as he absorbed the information. He'd been right–Pat was right. Sam thought the food was poisoned–sure, but never expected anything to come of it, especially by him. But there was no avoiding it–the drugs did, in fact, exist. And he, of all people, discovered it.

  
Sam closed his eyes. "T-taking the chemical–um–"

  
"Astatine."

  
"Yes. Taking astatine out of the salt would result in, um–well, a countrywide withdrawal?"

  
"Society would likely collapse. Production would stop, mass rehabilitation facilities and drugs would need to be manufactured–but by whom? And with what funding? The budget is maxed as is with the space relays and defense appropriation. America just can't afford to deal with a complete production shut down.

  
"But this secret isn't mine anymore–it's yours now. It's yours to do with what you will. The burden of knowledge–that the entire population is drugged and that we can't afford to do anything about it…" George sighed. "Do with it what you will."

  
"What if you just began adding less astatinized salt to bread, mixed un-drugged salt with it–slowly lowered the dose?"

  
George shook his head. "People would inadvertently eat more to achieve the same amount of astatine they've grown accustomed to."

  
Sam shook his head and sighed. They were certainly in a heap of trouble.

  
He had one more question that'd been burning his mind.

  
"Is it possible at all that the aliens are directly or indirectly involved with this?" he asked.

  
George paused, stunned by the question. That was apparently something he'd never considered. "What do you mean?"

  
"I've never heard of astatine, b-but is it possible that the element is abundant on Europa, or on the aliens’ home planet, and they, you know, somehow manipulated humanity into poisoning itself?"

  
George closed his eyes. "I'm not the one you should be asking–I just make the dough. We put salt in the dough, slight amounts, but that's a common practice everywhere. People are being drugged, and there's nothing we can do to stop it without forfeiting our safety and sanity."

   Sam left George's office, holding his stoic, journalistic act until he'd wordlessly left the building and collapsed in his car.

  
So that was it, Sam thought, frowning. The entire nation was addicted to some random chemical. The chemical…

  
Sam pulled out his phone and did a quick internet search. Yes–apparently astatine was extremely rare. Rare, that is, on Earth.

  
The teleportation technology excuse was too vague to be denied, but it was certainly possible that the astatine was introduced and manipulated into humanity's diet by aliens.

  
Sam had hoped for resolution with this investigation, and was certain that when he sat down to talk to George, he'd finally have answers, but found himself instead alone in his car, over a thousand miles from home, with even more questions than ever before.

  
Was the astatine really discovered accidentally, or was that just a cover-up to hide the truth–a cover-up orchestrated by the aliens to have the humans completely under their control?

  
Was there any way to simply and safely rehabilitate humanity?

  
Was there anything he could do? Anyone he could tell?

  
Was there anyone he could trust?

  
It was incredibly frightening. If the aliens wanted to destroy civilization, all they had to do was remove the astatine. Their battle was already won, regardless of whether or not they'd manufactured the addiction.

  
Sam felt his pulse rising, realizing that wherever lay the truth, it was rotten–and society, along with humanity, was on the brink of collapse.

◊   ◊   ◊

   Claire's phone buzzed.

  
"Just bought a gun," the text from Lee read.

  
She didn't respond, instead pocketing her phone and chuckling, doubting Lee knew the first thing about firearms. Fortunately, her plan didn't require he need to.

◊   ◊   ◊

   Lee awoke to knocking. He'd fallen asleep with the lights on. The glow of his laptop was a white blur as he sat up and scratched his head. The knock resounded so loudly that, if he hadn't known better, he would've thought it was construction. For a moment it shook him and he thought it was construction, but then he remembered the night auditor and the gun. He stood from the desk and sleepily lumbered over to the door, then pressed his face against it and looked through the peep hole. From his fish-eye angle of the hallway it looked empty, so he unlocked the door.

  
He checked both ways first, then looked down and saw a small package by his feet. It was a brown box, dented and obviously recycled judging from the torn stamps. He grabbed it, then shut the door and relocked it, resolving to wash his hands once he'd obtained its contents.