Gone - Chapter 1

Gone – is a serial short story that will be released here over the next several weeks. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to follow my blog in order to get the latest. - Peter-John Campbell

Chapter 1

“Tomorrow!” A deep gravely voice came from the television as images of war flashed across the screen. The sensationalized news would have made the masses in a former time, rush to the theater to see the latest Hollywood action thriller. “With the Russian build up on the Ukrainian boarder, how will the world respond? Will NATO take action? Join us for team coverage from around the world as we bring you up to the minute news of this latest pending crisis. Globe News Now, America’s most trusted news source.” The ad ended and instantly the next program began, ignoring the carnage that had just assaulted the screen.

The music flared as a crisp animation played out. The tune was catchy and it felt more like a song heard on the Top 40 than the respectful anthem that it parodied. The slick graphics finished, revealing the Seal of the President of the United States of America. The modern version of Hail to the Chief took another rift and the music dipped and began to fade. “Ladies and Gentlemen!” an announcer with a very commanding voice said. “The President of the United States!”

The camera pulled back and the President entered the shot dancing, spinning, and bouncing. His gyrations seemed more suited for a late night talk show host rather than the leader of a country. But then again this was President Ego; he was tall, handsome, and the people loved him.

“Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen and thanks for joining me for my weekly Fireside Chat.” A stool appeared out of the floor as he sat down. It was all perfectly timed. “We have a lot to cover this week, so I hope you have your phones ready. First, the current Welfare Reform Bill that Congress passed today is layin' on my desk now for my consideration. But I have some concerns. I feel that it doesn't give enough back to the people. And you know I love ya'll, but before I vetoed it I wanted to know how you feel about it. So text in your answer right now to let me know.” A graphic appeared on the lower part of the screen: 2768 for Approve and 8386 to Veto.

The ultimate populist, he never made a move or spoke a word until he knew the direction of the political wind. And it worked. The people loved him. The youngest man to ever be elected to the office of President, he had run his entire campaign online. Without a single in-person event. His whistle stop tour consisted of live real-time video chats with every home in America, and the people loved it. They got to speak to the man himself for as long as they wanted. But in the end, he won their votes because he was “cool”, not because he knew what he was doing.

“So while you're texting in your votes,” he continued, pointing to a band on a stage, “Let's hear it for General Sherm and the Rangers!” With that, music started and the camera whipped to the musicians. They had a unique sound; it was mostly punk with a goth overtone. Behind the band a group of women dressed in modified Army uniforms danced seductively. The camera focused on one of the women, and then went to break.

“Danny!” A distant voice echoed from the next room in between the sound of metallic bangs. “Danny!”

Daniel “Danny” Flint, was hunched over his work, soldering a circuit board. The TV sat next to him on the work beach, blaring the President's program. Suddenly the intercom squelched loudly, startling him. An annoyed voice said, “Danny turn that idiot off and get your butt in here.”

Getting up from his workstation, Danny crossed the vast warehouse that served as his office, a junkyard which was virtually a museum of the history of aeronautics, now only scrap used for parts. The room was full of countless assorted planes, missiles, and rockets. When Danny had arrived this room was a disaster, but after years of sorting, cleaning, and cataloging it was now at least an “organized mess.” Danny ran his fingers down the smooth hull of a Titan II rocket as he passed by. He loved the feel of these old ships; they felt realer, for some reason. They were elegant beasts, created in the mind and engineered with a slide-rule unlike the 3D computer modeling of today.

Graduate of MIT, top of his class with honors, Danny stunned the engineering community when he published his master's thesis on “The Obsolete Nature of Microelectromechanical Devices and the Future of Electrical Engineering” He was a rising star, no doubt, with multiple job offers waiting for him upon graduation.

It was around then that the Chinese began buying up engineers wholesale and sending them to their mainland. Those who could not be bought were persuaded to relocate. But Danny wasn't interested in building an empire or destroying others. On receiving his “letter of employment” from the People's Republic, Danny did the only thing he could do. Disappear.

Lost in the forgotten fields of Kansas, he had changed his name and waited tables at a small diner outside of Wichita. The world was shifting at a dramatic pace, and for someone like Danny, this was the price he had to pay for his freedom.

Tuesdays quickly became Danny's favorite day of the week. Like clockwork she would enter at 11:35; tall, thin, amber eyes. Danny could hardly pay attention to anything else while she was in the room. She always sat in the same booth, ordered the tuna salad, and spent her time writing in an old notebook. It took Danny weeks to build up enough nerve to talk to her beyond taking her order. But one day, while bussing the booth next to her's, he caught a glimpse of what she was working on. To his surprise, it was a page filled with equations.

“Excuse me.” He spoke quietly.

She turned, a little surprised by the disruption. “Yes?”

“I'm sorry... I couldn't help noticing, but I think the value of B is wrong.”

“I'm sorry, what?” she said, amazed.

“Well.” Danny looked around for a moment, but his other customers seemed fine. He leaned in. He could smell her perfume. Danny forced himself to focus. “Look, you're obviously using Biot-Sava's law to determine your magnetic response, but you've miscalculated your magnetic induction here,” he pointed at an equation, “causing your density p to have value of 0.8752, but it should be 0.08752, which would explain why your value of B is off. And you're probably having some inconsistencies with the current too, or am I wrong?”

The women sat back with a smile. “Pretty impressive for a farm boy.”

“Oh well, it's just a hobby I picked up along the way.” Danny went back to bussing the table.

She turned around. “That's a pretty unusual hobby. What's your name?”

“Dani...Dann...” He caught himself, “My friends call me 'Steve.'”

“Well, Steve, I'm Elise,” she smiled. “Thanks for the help.”

The next morning Danny arrived at the diner at 4:30. He had the breakfast shift and was in desperate need of coffee. Pulling in, he was surprised to see an old red pickup parked in front of the diner. A man stepped out of the shadow and approached Danny as he got out of his car. “I'm sorry sir, we don't open until Five.”

“Are you Steve?” The man said in annoyed voice.

“Yeah, why?” Danny replied, confused and a little scared.

“I heard you were talking to my wife yesterday,” the man said, stepping toward Danny. He had something in his hand.

“Whoa, whoa man!” Danny stepped back defensively. “It's not like that! I just saw she needed some help with her work...”

“You think you're pretty smart, don't you?” He interrupted.

“I'm not sure...” Danny stuttered. “No. No, I don't think smart.”

“Can you solve this?” The man threw something at him. Danny fell back onto the gravel. A spiral notebook landed on his chest. After a moment, he sat up and looked at the paper. It again was filled with equations.

“Ummm, yeah, sure. There's a couple of things... First, it looks like you're using Schrödinger's equation to determine your Harmonic Oscillation, which is fine, but it seems that Heaviside's Step Function would work better here. Also, your value of w could use some tweaking. And, well, your sevens tend to look like twos, so, you should work on that.” Danny looked up at the man.

The man stepped forward and reached his hand out to help Danny up. “Why is a guy like you working in a place like this?”

Danny grabbed the man's forearm and stood up, brushing the dirt off his clothes. “I'm not a fan of Pad Thai,” he muttered. "Who are you?"

“Jackson. Jackson Price.”

Jackson Price, multi billionaire, aeronautical engineer, and daredevil. He made the “Top Ten World's Sexiest Men” three years in a row. Forbes Magazine called him “the perfect combination of Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and Steven Jobs warped into one.” “He is brilliant!” wrote columnist Lindsay Walker of the Washington Post. “A man centuries ahead of his time. A modern Leonardo da Vinci.” The only thing that Jackson enjoy more than being famous was flying. But when the Iranians took an interest in him to develop their latest fighter jet, Jackson knew it was his time to depart.

Danny stopped for a moment, perplexed. “I thought you were dead.”

Jackson turned and looked east towards the horizon. The sun was beginning to rise. “Then the media did their job.”

Danny stood quiet for a moment and looked over the equations. “What are you working on?”

Jackson turned back to him. “Tell you what. You come work for me, and I'll show you.”

165 Tuesdays later, Danny slid his fingers down the hull of the Titan II as he walked across the warehouse. The bangs coming from the silo became louder as he approached the launch pad. Slipping past the four-foot blast door, he entered the massive chamber and looked up for a moment to admire their work. The Sphinx. 110 feet long, weighing in at an estimated 231 tons.

He looked around but didn't see Jackson. “Where are you?”

“Booster 2!” His voiced echoed from inside the machine.

Danny climbed onto the pad and looked up into Booster 2. He could see Jackson's arm dangling through the nozzle. “Can you hand me the ¼ inch? It's there by your left foot.”

“Sure.” Danny reached for it. “Wait... Are you stuck up there?”

“No, I'm not stuck up here, I just dropped it and can't reach it.”

“So rather than jumping down to grab it yourself, you called me all the way down here to get it for you?”

“Just hand it to me and shut up.” Jackson was irritated.

Danny laughed. “What was your plan here, exactly?”

“You were my plan. Just give me the wrench and walk away.”

The elevator door opened and Elise stepped out with her hands full of groceries. “Hey Danny, can you give me a hand for a second?”

“Sure, Elise.” Danny looked up and smiled at Jackson.

“Danny, throw me the wrench.” He said quietly.

“Have you seen Jackson?” She asked.

Danny tossed the wrench up to Jackson and jumped down off the pad. “He's hanging around here somewhere.”

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To read Chapter 2 click here.  

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Gone by Peter-John Campbell @2014