[NSA QUARANTINE FACILITY #105x]
PATIENT #A007c809 INTERVIEW
Unclassified per a FoIA request on behalf of one █████ ███████
[The interview was conducted with a 20 something year old woman who was found unconscious, and near death, deep beneath the city of Chicago. The details of how or why she was there are still unclear to us as most everyone sent beneath the city to investigate died.]
Dr. ███████ – Pardon the restraints. But to be sure, you make us a little more nervous right now than we’d prefer.
Dr. ███████████ – We would like to show you a photo or two, we’ve been trying to figure out your identity, some trace of your past, your acquaintances but have really had a hard time placing you anywhere on the planet over the last 20 years or so.
Interviewee – ok. I’m sorry, but I told you… I really cannot remember anything. Just pieces. Fragments. Shards.
Dr. ███████ – We have with us someone that would like to show you something. And ask a question about it. We, really are at a loss, so if you could help us at all we would appreciate it.
Interviewee – Sure, I will do what I can.
Philip Nelson – Hey there. Boy this is awkward, does she really need to be fastened to the table like that?
Dr. ███████████ –Please, move on with your questions.
Philip Nelson – Ok, sorry. So, I was given a full run up on you – labwork, blood, DNA, photos, fingerprints – the works. And I was told to find you in history. Oh, sorry… I’m Philip. How do you do?
Interviewee – …
Philip Nelson – Of course, sorry. My mother is always telling me I apologize way too much. Sorry. Dang, there I go again. Ok. So my field is wide field fabrics and enormous AI interfaces. I worked for a short while with the NSA and the FBI on their first several iterations of their Quantum Computer, ████████. But that was a while ago now.
Dr. ███████████ – I’m now saying, out loud, that I’m raising my eyebrows at you…
Philip Nelson – Sorry, not exactly relevant. Anyway, now I mainly work on AI algorithms for doing work, mechanical turks if you will, that make leaps and advances in new ideas that humans would not have seen the link for before.
So I fed your information into Nelson… yeah, I honestly didn’t name him that. Sorry, oh shoot.
And after several days we found you nowhere. On anything, in the last 20 years. No security camera footage. No public records. Birth certificates. Fingerprint records. Nothing. I guess that is theoretically possible. There are children born every year at home, and that are intentionally kept off the grid. So that could be the case here?
Dr. ███████████ – Philip? I heard you have a few things you’d like to show to our guest? Maybe we could do that?
Philip Nelson – Sorry. Sorry. So, even though you looked like you were in your early twenties? I widened the net, and I told Nelson to go wherever it wanted. I dropped the filters on your search. I don’t know if you know this, but you were carried out of Chicago almost 2 months ago now. And all this time, Nelson has been working this problem. And some weird things began to emerge, some strange connections were being made. Here, do you recognize this photo?
Our best guess was that it was taken around the turn of the century. The turn of the 20th century, not the 21st. Does this photo mean anything to you? Or maybe this photo of Los Angeles during World War 2? I just see a crowd of people going about their daily lives. Or maybe this one? Taken from the cover of the New York Times on August 17th, 1969?
Anything at all?
Interviewee – Really?
Dr. ███████ – Yes miss. At this moment we completely at a loss as to what to make of you. You are found in one of the least inhabitable locations on earth, alive. The world’s best and brightest can’t find any mention of you, or any hint of who you might be. And one of the most sophisticated AI solutions in the world is handing us these photos. Can you make anything of them? Anything at all?
Interviewee – My head.
Dr. ███████████ – She’s tremoring again. Clear the room. Philip go. Dr. ███████ please get me 320 milligrams of propranolol and let’s see how she responds.
———
———
AUDIO RECORDING OF INFORMAL POST OP INTERVIEW
date: ██/██/████
location: █████████ ████████
“Yes. Fine. I understand.
“But you see it was complicated by a million unknowns and got rapidly more complex the deeper down the rabbit hole we went.” The man laying in the hospital bed was trying his best to sit upright, but he was unable to because of some unseen problems with his legs.
“Two separate helis fell out of the sky in the previous week attempting to bring SEAL forces to the initial LZ. Understand, that was 12 of the best and brightest of the United States military, killed en route.
“Finally leadership got a clue and decided they’d send us in on foot. 14 SEALs, two junior officer humped it 15 clicks into the LZ. And please understand that it wasn’t just a 15 click hike, which would have been doable in half a day in full gear. No, it was door to door urban combat all the way in.
“Our orders were to not engage with the locals, who were all considered hostile. Do not assist, don’t engage, don’t even look their direction. Our orders were to get to ground zero as fast as physically possible. It goes without saying by day two we were all so hopped up on go pills…”
“Excuse me? Go pills?”
“Yeah, dextroamphetamines – go pills – you probably know them better as speed.”
“Oh, ok, go on. Sorry.”
“We had dozens of confirmed kills in just those first couple days. And all we were trying to do was to traverse the city. The deeper we went, the rougher things went. Streets became more clogged. Roaming bands of vigilantes and gangs warred back and forth. I can see how if you didn’t leave in the first couple days it would be impossible to leave. It’s unlike any other war zone I’d ever seen. That’s for sure. Occasionally I’d find a Monster still unopened. And at other times we were attacked by wild eyed hoodlums with sticks. Fairly surreal.”
Shuffling is heard on the recording.
“Sorry, still getting used to this. So, it took us five solid days to make it to our target. We had no idea what we would find once we got there. We had sat intel, but our goal was Union Station, and we couldn’t see inside. We had no idea what was in there. The scientists knew there was something emanating from that location but they couldn’t say what it was.”
“What was the plan for entry?”
“We decided on two teams, one to barrel straight up the front stairs, the other to breach the East windows and meet in the middle. Man, what a cluster. I had sort of been noticing that the closer to ground zero we got the darker things were getting. Like there was some sort of cloud that was settling in on the city? I also noticed that my weapons were acting up more and more. So I found myself breaking them down and cleaning them way more often than normal. That was problem number one.
“The second significant problem was that our walkies didn’t work at all. From day one. So we always relied on line of sight. But this was our first time to break line of sight. So immediately we were isolated to our 8 man team. We had attempted to establish a comm hotspot there at ground zero. Nothing. Absolutely nothing worked.”
———-
The trio retreated back the safety of the college campus and retreated to Laura’s apartment. As they slunk their way back, no one spoke. No one said a thing. Once they had locked, deadbolted, and slid a couch in front of the door, all eyes turned to Laura.
“I don’t know.”
“Here’s what I know. There will be military inbound shortly. That’s what would happen in an X-men movie.”
In unison, “Ben, shut up.”
“Seriously, what just happened in that Denny’s restaurant? We were mindlessly studying, and then I started seeing smoke coming out of your ears Laura. Light bulbs were popping and what not.”
Kierkegaard raised both hands in an indication for Ben to stop, and then he gestured for Ben to sit down. Then for Laura to sit down. Charles dropped down into more of a crouch than a seat. And he waited a moment, dropped his hands to his sides, and said, “First and foremost, are you ok? I saw you going into tremors and the shakes… they were pretty substantial.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I think.”
“Has that, or anything else weird, happened before?”
Laura began chewing on her nails and scrunching up her face as she pulled her feet up under herself. “Well, I’ve never told anyone this before but I have no memory beyond six months ago.”
“Yeah, that would fall under the classification of weird.”
continue to part 4.
