Chapter 9

ID: 1762291   (Rated: 13+) Artifact Man  A thriller, new age, sci-fi novel about a strange man found in the desert. by Hyperiongate

ID: 1762796   (Rated: E) Chapter 8  Jack tells Dr. Marshall about the strange circumstances surrounding her patient. by Hyperiongate

10:00 pm, Wednesday, March 17th
Renown Medical Center

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I am locked in a place of my own creation, fearful of what waits for me outside the door. Pain can be a patient predator. I intend to be more so. It cannot touch me in here. I am safe, but alas, this sword has two edges. It cannot get in, but I cannot get out.
Fortunately, the room is not perfectly sealed. I can see light and shadows as the predator paces outside the door. These are visible through small cracks of imperfection. He cannot come in and I cannot get out, but there may be enough room for a small string of consciousness to reach out and see what there is to see.

I send out a tentative string, looking for anything that may help me survive my ordeal. Almost immediately, I sense danger. Probability curves dance around me; nearly all bring death to my body and thus, an end to my mission. I cannot let that happen.

Continuing my exploration I look for an outcome amongst outcomes. There are infinite possibilities but that does not mean that anything is possible. Eventually, I am able to find a path although it has low probability of success. It is the best I can do.

I reach out to her carefully. She is extremely receptive to my thought-string. Gently, I guide her down a path; it will eventually intercept the one I have chosen for me. She is my best hope. Annie is my only hope.

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Annie could hardly wait to get to work tonight. After last night’s shift, she’d to her nursing class. She was surprised at the pedestrian pace the instructor seemed to be using to cover the material. Typically, these classes were a source of frustration for her. She’d be sleepy after working a graveyard shift at the hospital. Previously, the material had always seemed so complex.

Today had been different. She’d easily understood the material and found herself correctly anticipating the instructor’s next line of thought. By the end of the four hours, she found herself wondering if this was even something she should attend. Maybe there were more challenging courses for her to take.

After class, she’d gone home and slept the soundest sleep she could remember. She didn’t know if she dreamt or not but when she awoke, the strange new patient, JD11 was on her mind. She rushed through the process of dressing and making dinner. He was waiting for her. She just knew it.

When she arrived at the hospital, Annie rushed down to her observation room and felt a bit surprised by the excitement she’d felt all evening. Through a large window, she could see the body floating in the tank. It was quite a site to see. They must have transferred him to the tank sometime during the day.

She looked at the body floating in the tank. Aside for the tremendous amount of visible damage, JD11 seemed to be just another patient. Yes, he was undergoing a radical new treatment and it was quite a site to see him floating there. Missing was the sense of personal attachment she’d felt growing in her all day long.

Annie, what an imagination you have, she thought as she took her seat in front of the dials and monitors she was tasked with keeping an eye on. She pulled a textbook out of her bag. She’d stopped by the college bookstore on her way in to pick the text. She really didn’t need to read it just now since it was intended for a course was considering taking next semester. However, she’d already finished the textbook for this semester last night. She wasn’t sure how that actually happened but accepted that it did with little more than a passing thought. Tonight, she planned on getting ahead of the game.

Eight hours later, without so much as a glance at the clock on the wall, Annie reluctantly sensed that her night shift was nearly over. The last eight hours had flown by. She had completed her new text book during the first couple of hours of her shift, thinking nothing special about the amazing accomplishment. She had never been a good reader, or student for that matter. That all seemed to be in the past.

Halfway through her shift, an impulse sent her to the hospital library during a break where she borrowed a couple of books. While she was gone, there was no one in the observation booth to notice as a thin membrane blinked shut over the patient’s eye and then open again. This would have astonished the burn team. They all knew that when he went into the tank earlier today, he had no eyelids at all. As far as they knew, that was still the case.

Annie returned to her observation booth, uncertain about what she’d just done. She looked down at the books and thought, Why these? Without thinking about what she was doing, Annie walked out of her observation booth and into the TIG room. There was a chair over in the corner. Annie pulled it over by the TIG tank and sat down. She opened up the first book, A Tale of Two Cities, and began to read aloud to JD11.

Annie had never read an entire book just for fun. She was amazed at how much she was enjoying the story. Every now and then, she would look over at JD11. There was no question in her mind that he was enjoying it as well.

As she read through the night, she felt as if he were looking at her from where he was floating in the tank. From time to time, she would glance over only to see nothing had outwardly changed. She felt certain that something was going on. JD11 was healing quickly. She knew it without knowing how she knew.

Once her shift ended, Annie decided to have breakfast in the hospital’s cafeteria instead of going home to get ready for class. She felt confident that she could miss a class or two without missing anything important. After all, she’d already finished reading, and understanding all of the course material.

She wanted to sit in on the morning briefing on JD11. As part of the team, albeit a small part, she was welcome to sit in on these meetings if she wished. No one expected her to participate. After all, she was just a nursing assistant. Annie understood this. She just wanted to see what the experts had to say about her patient. Besides, she felt as rested as if she had just finished sleeping all night.

4:00 am, Thursday, March 18th
Artifact Base.

The night drops started just after midnight. The large planes flew in low and slow, dropping their cargo on target before lumbering back into the blackness of the night sky. Large black parachutes, invisible against the moonless sky, set their dangling loads down softly. After each drop, men would scurry out to the landing zone and begin to unpack equipment and supplies. A bus-sized container would be emptied in minutes. Its collapsible sides would allow it to be broken down quickly; leaving no indication that it had ever been there. A load would come in every twenty minutes. They would continue to do so until one hour before sunrise.

Standing outside of his tent/office, Colonel Wes Lanier watched events unfold. He did not get directly involved. That was not his job. He needed a secure, level 3 compound up and running by morning. He’d made one call. That was all that was needed. People that worked for the Colonel knew how to get things done.

Barracks were constructed to house up to one hundred troops and scientists. An armory, and mess tent went up along with several other structures that would serve as offices and laboratories. Everything was prefabricated and easy to assemble quickly.

Eventually, if it became necessary, more durable structures would be built. For now, canvas was the order of the day. They only exception to this was the Artifact Structure. It was being built around the artifact since they didn’t seem to be able to move it. This structure would have to possess many characteristics that would be hard to accommodate out in the desert. It needed to be capable of meeting extreme Clean Room standards. A significant power source with backups would have to be available at all times. From the outside, it would have to be thermally inert making it invisible to the prying eyes of foreign satellites. Finally, it would have to be bomb proof. If a country suspected that the United States had access to advanced technology that they were not interested in sharing, they would be very tempted to simply eliminate the “advantage” such a thing might bring.

Security was airtight. Motion sensors were everywhere. A rabbit wouldn’t be able to scratch itself within five miles of the camp without being automatically targeted by remote weapon systems. Foot patrols were plentiful but not evident. The idea was that part of being secure was to be invisible. Thermal imaging from above would show almost no activity. The five mile perimeter insured that line-of-site observations would yield little more than a few military type structures. No big deal. The military was always practicing out in this part of the country anyway.

The final piece to the puzzle was called Final Destination. Far overhead, outside the range of civilian radars, a specially equipped B-2 stealth bomber carved mobius circles in the sky. It provided secure communications as well as blanket surveillance of the areas across several spectra, including infrared. Its most important role was to deliver its very special payload, on target and on time at a moments notice. Should the worse case scenario come to be, Final Destination would ensure that the Artifact site was bombed down to bedrock. Nothing would survive. Colonel Lanier was the only one that could pull that particular trigger.

Satisfied that work was progressing as planned, the Colonel turned in for the night. He knew the camp would be completed down to the last nail by the time he got up early the next morning. The only exception would be the Artifact building. That might take an extra day or so. When it was completed, the only thing capable of destroying the building would be in the belly of the B-2 high overhead.


When it was completed, the only thing capable of destroying the building would be in the belly of the B-2 high overhead.

Or possibly whatever was floating down inside the structure’s walls, thought the colonel. He was well aware that they were building a structure with a dual purpose. It needed to keep others out while containing whatever beast they may have floating in the hole within.

ID: 1763738   (Rated: E) Chapter 10  The team discusses the miraculousness healing of JD11. Private Smithers betrays. by Hyperiongate