Author's Note: [takes AgentSands;CIAsFinest and hugs her] You like Serge too? He was my favorite character!! YAY for Serge! [hugs Serge]
Serge: Get away from me you nut!
Aw c'mon! Can't I get a hug!
Serge: No! Get away from me! Josh! Get this crazy girl away from me!
Josh: What's the problem here?
No problem!
Serge: She won't leave me alone!
Josh: Okay let's go!
NO! WAIT! STOP! DO NOT TOUCH ME I DECIDE YOUR FATE IN THIS STORY!!! [As they drag her off the ship] NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
~Um okay, on with the chapter.
Chapter Four
Government Secrets
Outside the National Science Museum
Josh had been waiting outside the museum for the past half hour. It was cold as hell and he wasn't too happy with his timing. The demonstration meeting had been over an hour ago. What was keeping them? He turned, ready to leave when suddenly a great din of voices could be heard, one was unmistakably arrogant.
"Dr. Zimsky!?"
"Will you make sure my assistant has your number, darling?" Zimsky was singing something of a lovely young blonde woman's, and his eyes gazed fondly into hers.
"Sure." she answered in a flutter.
"Dr. Zimsky!"
"Hello."
Josh ran up on the other side of the large crowd, hoping to catch the man's attention.
"I'll call security." his assistant offered.
"No, its all right. It's all right." he waved his hand, signing a few more books here and there. "Hello."
"Thank you, sir."
"Dr. Zimsky." Josh asked, feeling nervous but too cold to think much on it.
"Yes, what's your name?" Zimsky placed his cigarette in his mouth and brought out a pen.
"Uh, Josh Keyes."
"Josh."
"No, sir, I don't need you to sign it. I need you to read that."
Zimsky looked up at Josh with a slight shock and impression in his eyes. That this young man would have the nerve to ask such a job of him, not knowing or seemingly caring who he was, and with more important business deals then this half pints theories.
"I'm sorry," he laughed, taking the cigarette from his mouth. "I don't have time. I'm late for the White House."
"Sir, please." Josh was desperate. "I need you to confirm my results, sir."
"Young man, do you have any idea who I am?"
This conversation lasted till the end of the staircase in front of the museum. Zimsky was preparing to get into his car. Josh didn't have much time left to convince this man otherwise.
"Yes, I do sir. Please read this."
Zimsky stopped, consider this man. His face was sincere and worried. He wasn't unintelligent, Zimsky could tell that in a heartbeat. But his inconsiderate nature was slightly annoying.
"What's it about?" he spat, sticking his cigarette back into his mouth.
"It's the end of the world."
Zimsky's Loft
Papers, graphs and charts were scattered everywhere. Stereographs, thermographs, seismographs and other charts. Zimsky shifted through them all, again and again. Disbelieving. All he could do was shake his head as his eyes poured over the information.
Their eyes met after a few moments, and a smile broke over Zimsky's face.
"No I...this is impossible. I'm sorry. I-I-I can't have missed this. You-you have to be wrong. I mean, look, I'm sure with careful comparison to my own work, we'll find that you're mistaken. No offense but..."
Josh had heard enough already. He grabbed his coat.
"Well, I mean, we'll know soon enough." Zimsky looked up. "The bigger effects will start up any day now." He left, leaving Zimsky to his thoughts.
Immediately he rushed to a side room and opened a file. He then returned to his room. This wasn't going to be easy.
D.C. The Pentagon
Major Rebecca Childs stood stiff and weary near the entrance to the review room. Her eyes peered expectantly down the hall. Waiting. She bobbed up and down on her heels, twisted her hat, and bit her bottom lip. She may have torn her hair from her head had she not needed to worry about making a good impression. Finally her eyes caught sight of the man she was looking for.
"Rebecca?" It was Purcell. He shook her hand, slightly amazed to be seeing her.
"Only you and Dad ever call me that." she smiled.
"Well, Beck." he corrected. "So, what brings you to sunny D.C.?"
"The Board of Review is next week." she responded nervously, following him down the corridor. "Just trying to get a sense of the mood upstairs." They traveled down the stairs. Her eyes bounced around nervously as the creases in Purcell's face tightened. "How bad is it?"
"Your crew crashed the space shuttle." Purcell answered coldly. He turned to face her firmly. "Now, how good do you think it could be?"
"Sir, this is my life." she said in a panic, following him further down the stairs.
"Well..."
"I was studying for the academy when I was thirteen. This still is and has always been my life."
"It's over." he said firmly, turning to her frowning. She moved to protest, but Purcell didn't give her a chance. "It's over, Rebecca. I'm sorry."
"It's right down here." someone yelled from the other side of the corridor.
"Really?"
"It's like the fourth of July!" a woman laughed.
"What the hell's the hurry here?" Purcell asked. Everyone was heading outside. Suddenly Purcell's phone rang. "Rebecca, would you excuse me, please?" she tried to protest one last time. "Excuse me." he walked off, leaving her with a sad smile on her face. "Purcell."
Zimsky's Loft
"Thomas, um, look...." said Zimsky, rotating his chair to look over a few more of Keyes' charts. "it seems that destiny may have caught up with us."
D.C. The Pentagon
Rebecca left the office and walked casually outside. She wasn't too happy with herself, or Purcell, or anyone at the moment, but the events around her soon made her forget. Everyone had stopped what they were doing and were now observing the sky.
Looking up herself, Rebecca saw a sight she never believed would be seen over D.C. Northern lights danced beautifully above their heads. But why?
How?
A Bar in D.C.
"Did Zimsky really try to give you his autograph?" Serge asked in amusement. Josh downed another drink and nodded, both laughing at the concept. Serge could hardly suppress his laughter. "Ah, Monsieur Zimsky. Conrad Zimsky! Herr Zimsky! Superstar!" He started laughing harder now, and Josh with him. They were both stone drunk.
Suddenly the laughter died. Josh's frown increased tenfold, and Serge could only eye him with concern. Swallowing once, the young man looked up at his old friend and sighed.
"I think I skipped drunk.' he paused. 'Went straight to hang over."
Serge rested his forehead in the palm of his hand. Then with a sigh he combed his fingers through his hair, blinked, and looked at Josh.
"Weren't you the one?" was sung through the radio nearby, but neither of the men were listening.
"I spoke with the kids." he stated. Josh looked up. "They don't sleep at night. They look at the sky at night and..." he laughed. "and they think its pretty. Is there any chance you're wrong?"
Josh shook his head. "No. The sky, man." Serge nodded, understanding as Josh pointed up at the eventless roof. "The sky--I mean, that's just the beginning. That's high altitude static discharge."
"I know." Serge whispered, nodding his head. His eyes were now reddening as they swelled with his lack of sleep and over consumption of alcohol.
"Dr. Keyes..." came a very stern voice from over their heads. Serge looked up with disgust to see the FBI agents looming over Josh's head. Josh, too lazy to turn his head, bent backward over his chair to get the interesting image of two upside down agents staring idly at him. "...your presence is required at the Pentagon."
"Ah...it's my best buddies!" Josh laughed. "Hey!" he straightened back into his seat as Serge tried not to laugh at the mockery he was making of these two highly dangerous men. "Why don't you join us for a drink?"
"We would be grateful if you could join us, for a ride sir."
Serge's eyes jumped from the agents to Josh with humor.
"And if I were to say no? Just asking." Both the men shook their heads.
"Yeah." Serge backed him up.
"Well we have no sense of humor." The agent notified them.
"That's true."
Serge started laughing again. Then, after regaining himself, looked up at the agents and sighed. "Oh..."
"And we're armed." the agent added.
Josh frowned as Serge shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His eyes shot a warning glance at Josh and he nodded for him to go.
"I'll take care of the drinks." he stated.
Josh nodded and headed out, nervous as hell. Serge watched them go, hating the government more and more as they left.
The Pentagon
A guard opened the door to the meeting room. "Thank you." Josh whispered, nervous enough. He was beginning to wish they'd dragged Serge with too, but that was no longer possible. He came to see Purcell sitting in the center of a vast group of military men and scientists . Zimsky was also present.
"Dr. Keyes, welcome." Purcell greeted.
"Thank you." Josh responded meekly.
"Dr. Zimsky informs us that you made a useful contribution to his investigations, so he wanted you to assist him in the briefing."
"That's very generous of you, Dr. Zimsky." Josh bowed his head in mock respect. No one caught on. He didn't care.
"Science is a selfless business dear boy." Zimsky responded. "Now why don't you begin and I'll fill in all the difficult bits."
Josh cleared his throat. His hands seemed tied behind him. A million classes he'd taught and for some reason this was mind freezing.
"All right, I'll put this as simply as I can." he paused, then sighed and finished. "Everybody on Earth is dead in a year." This immediately started some nervous talk in the room. "And let me explain why. Wrapped around the Earth is an invisible field of energy." his hands finally came untied from behind and Josh immediately brought them forward. "It's made up of electricity and magnetism...so it's called -creatively enough- the electromagnetic field. It's where we get our magnetic North Pole and South Pole, and it protects us from cosmic radiation. So this EM field is our friend."
"But now?" Purcell asked.
"But now, that field is falling apart." came Zimsky.
"Why?" asked another officer in the crowd.
"Why?" Josh repeated. Sighing, he looked around and found a table laden with food. "This here." He grabbed a peach and started to cut it in half. "Does somebody have a can of air freshener?" Some looked at him curiously as Purcell commanded that such an item be brought. "Quick and dirty." He stated. He then presented to them, while wiping his other hand on his pants, the half of the peach cut vertically down the center. "The think skin, that's the Earth's crust. "That's what we live on. It's thirty miles thick. The meat here, call it the mantle. And forgetting all the-the funky transitions, it's two thousand miles thick. The core, the peach pit in the center...that's a tricky one. There's two parts. The inner core, and the outer core. Are you following me?" All nodded. All who had never had this lesson in Basic Earth Science 101. "The inner core is, uh...well, its a big, solid chunk of iron, we think. That's surrounded by the outer core, and that is liquid."
"Yes but," Zimsky interjected. "most importantly, this liquid is constantly spinning in one direction. So a trillion trillion tons of hot metal spinning at a thousand miles an hour, so..." he motioned for Josh to keep going.
"Right, so Physics 101-hot metal moving makes an electromagnetic field. This spinning liquid inner core is the engine that drives the EM field. And that's where we have our problem."
"This engine has stalled." Zimsky came again. Purcell's gaze switched from Josh to Zimsky in a heartbeat. "The core of the Earth has stopped spinning."
"How could this have happened?" Purcell asked.
Zimsky looked to Purcell with a slightly knowing expression. Josh took note of this, but said nothing, and kept his eyes on Purcell.
"We don't know." he answered.
"What's the timeline here?" Purcell asked.
Josh sighed, shrugging his shoulders. "As the EM field becomes more and more unstable, we'll start seeing isolated incidents. One plane will fall from the sky, and then two, and then...in a few months, anything-everything electronic will be fried."
"Static discharges in the atmosphere will create 'Super-storms' with hundreds of lightening strikes per square mile." Zimsky added.
"After that," Josh took up the ball again, "it gets bad." The people in the room unfamiliar with the effects of electromagnetism exchanged glances.
"The Earth's EM field shields us from the solar winds, which are a lethal blend of radioactive particles and microwaves. When that shield collapses, microwave radiation will literally cook our planet."
"Dr. Zimsky." Josh addressed. The man left his seat and, brandishing a lighter, stood beside Josh with the air freshener can and another peach, whole, on a barbeque fork. "This is the sun." Josh announced, shaking the can. "This is the earth..." he waved the peach around. "without the EM field." He turned to Zimsky. "Would you?"
"Mm-hmm." The lighter flicked on. Josh let lose the air freshener, and everyone watched uncomfortable as the peach was roasted by the flames. When it was finished, the peach still burned. Zimsky eyed this image and the men in the room in turn. "Three months gentleman, and we're back in the Stone Age. A full year, the field collapses, and that."
Silence. Josh walked over to a picture of water. "May I?" he dropped the burned peach inside and walked away. "Feel free to throw up. I know I did."
"So," Purcell came in. "How do we fix it?"
"We can't."
"Not in my vocabulary." the general argued.
"Then you might want to get one of those word-a-day calendars, General, because it's impossible." Purcell looked as though he had never been so insulted in his life. Josh couldn't care less. "The core is the size of Mars. You're talking about jumpstarting a planet. This is a super heated hyper-fluid of molten iron and nickel at nine thousand degrees Fahrenheit, two thousand miles down, a thousand miles thick. And the deepest we've ever been is...seven miles." he stated. "With a two inch drill bit."
"If we can go into space, we can certainly-"
"Space is easy!" Josh argued. "It's empty." Zimsky smiled. "We're talking about millions of pounds of pressure per square inch. Even if we somehow came up with a brilliant plan to fix the core, we just can't get there!"
"Yes, but..." everyone turned to look at Zimsky. "...what if we could?"
Author's Note: Well that was hell to write. I added a bit more between Serge and Josh at the end of the bar scene. Hope you liked that. ^_^
