2120 Titus Page 2

  Chapter 2

  Six years later

  Dr. Mueller sat behind a metal table, hand cuffed and monitored by two armed guards standing slightly behind him on each side. He had been an inmate at the Kearney Correctional Maximum Security Prison for the last six years sitting on death row awaiting his execution date. Six years prior, he managed to cut down and murder forty seven students during a lecture on school shootings. For the last six years, he put his time to use studying and working towards his second doctoral degree. No university would have him now, and he would never attain the degree, but he was satisfied he fulfilled whatever requirements were necessary.

  The doctor was now thirty eight years old, with a salt and pepper beard and a high and tight military style haircut. He liked to keep the hair on top clean and neat but was too bothered to shave anymore. It was an inconvenience that he only partook in when the whiskers began to itch.

  He had been sitting in the interview room for ten minutes when he finally noticed the door open. He had no idea why he was brought here and was surprised when he saw two women enter the room led by a guard. The first woman, tall and thin, with a grey blazer, skin tight leggings and four inch heels looked like something out of a teen fashion magazine. The other woman, shorter, more business like wore slacks and a blazer. Her shoes were insignificant.

  The guard led the women over to the table and pulled out a chair for the shorter woman, both sat down and laid papers on top of the table. No one spoke at first as they seemed to be judging each other from across the table. Dr. Mueller did gaze over to the taller woman and shake his head in bewilderment. “Do you always dress like a whore?” Dr. Mueller asked.

  “Excuse me?” the tall woman asked. She was taken aback by the doctor’s forward, rude comment.

  “I could see your camel toe from across the room. What are you? Forty? Don’t you know how to dress?”

  “I didn’t come here to talk fashion,” the woman replied.

  “I would hope not,” Dr. Mueller said almost cracking a grin. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Linda Kaminski, I’m a lawyer with the Justice department.”

  Dr. Muller looked over at the more conservative woman and asked the same thing.

  “Donna Coburn,” the woman replied. “I work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.”

  “NASA,” Dr. Mueller replied.

  “Yes, NASA,” Coburn replied. “We’ve come to discuss something of great importance with you.”

  “Obviously,” Dr. Mueller replied with a smile. “But first I want to talk to Linda if you don’t mind.”

  Coburn spoke up, “I have a presentation set up, we don’t…”

  “Slow down Donna,” Dr. Mueller said. I have all day.”

  Coburn bit her lip and gestured for Dr. Mueller to continue. Linda wasn’t sure she wanted him to.

  “Now Linda, tell me why you come here to meet me dressed like a prostitute.”

  Kaminski leaned back in her chair and subconsciously pulled her shirt tight around her collar. “I told you I didn’t come here to discuss fashion. I am a lawyer with the Justice department.”

  “You are a slut---get out,” Dr. Mueller said waving her off like she was nothing.

  Donna spoke up, “I need her here, and we both have something we need to discuss. It’s very important.”

  “I’ve been here rotting in this prison for six years, what’s so important now?”

  “Can she stay?” Coburn asked.

  Dr. Mueller didn’t like the tone he was getting from either woman. Although he enjoyed the break from his normal routine, he didn’t like feeling disrespected. “Only if she admits she’s a whore.”

  The room fell silent as Kaminski turned a shade of red. She was livid and ready to explode. Swallowing hard and taking a calming deep breath, Kaminski said as calmly as she could muster, “Fuck you.”

  “A whore and a cunt, all wrapped up in one skin tight outfit, how nice,” Dr. Mueller replied

  “I’m a whore,” Kaminski added just to shut him up. “If that’s what you want to hear.”

  Dr. Mueller smiled and raised his hands gesturing his approval. “See, that wasn’t so hard, now was it?” Dr. Muller looked Kaminski in the eye and awaited her reply. She gave none. “If you ever come in here again to see speak to me, I expect you to dress appropriately. Do you understand me?” Dr. Mueller asked.

  Kaminski nodded her head and looked to the papers on the table. She was still a bright shade of red.

  “Now, what do you two ladies want with me?”

  Coburn opened a manila envelope and pulled out a color photo and laid it before Dr. Mueller. He instantly recognized the image as an asteroid, which one he didn’t know.

  “This is 2120 Titus, a seventeen km long, main belt minor planet category asteroid,” Coburn said.

  Dr. Mueller picked up the photograph and took a look at the asteroid. “Don’t tell me, it’s on a collision course with Earth and we have three days to stop it.”

  “Actually we have four years to stop it,” Coburn replied.

  “What? That makes no sense,” Dr. Mueller replied. “Any asteroid coming from the asteroid belt should take no longer than a year at most.”

  “That’s why we’ve contacted you Dr. Mueller. We can’t figure out what caused 2120 Titus to leave the asteroid belt in the first place, let alone the speed.”

  “What’s the lawyer here for?”

  “We can get to that later,” Coburn replied. “And there is something else.”

  Dr. Mueller started to get excited. He his doctorate was in Astrophysics as well as Computer Technology and this was just the kind of problem he craved. “Have you calculated the orbit?”

  “Yes, but there is a lot of leeway. We won’t have a good grasp on it for weeks.”

  “Is it going to hit Earth?”

  “Maybe, we’ve calculated a window somewhere between the Indian Ocean and just inside the orbit of the Moon.”

  “That’s quite a large area don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I need to tell you what we found.”

  “Oh yes, what was it?”

  “We’ve detected a signal. We can’t pin point it to 2120 Titus but we’re fairly sure that’s where it’s coming from.”

  “What kind of signal?”

  “VHF band, repeating oscillation every 3.14 seconds at 138 MHz” Coburn replied.

  Dr. Mueller leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment. “Are you sure it’s an asteroid?”

  “Fairly certain, it was discovered in 1866,” Coburn replied. “Its density was found to be very low, around 1.2 times the density of water,” Coburn added, “Indicating that the asteroid is porous to very porous. It could be twenty five percent to as much as sixty percent empty space.”

  “That’s a lot of empty space,” Dr. Mueller replied. “Are you sure it isn’t a vehicle of some sort?”

  “It’s been a known object for over a hundred years,” Coburn replied. “And never moved from its orbit.”

  “And you just now realized it was heading towards Earth?”

  “The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer picked it up three months ago thinking it was a new asteroid. We reversed the orbit and found it to be 2120 Titus.”

  “So what made you decide to check it for radio signals? As far as I know asteroids don’t give off any.”

  “When an asteroid seventeen km’s long is heading your way, you tend to throw everything at it. We needed to find out as much as we could.”

  “Who did your radio surveillance?”

  “We used the Very Large Array in San Agustin fifty miles west of Socorro, New Mexico,” Coburn replied.

  Dr. Mueller took in the information and looked closely at the photograph. To him it looked like any other asteroid he had ever seen pictures of. It was oval shaped, kind of like a hamburger covered in light grey dust. He saw pock marks from smaller asteroid hits and nothing else that really stood out. “Do you have any other pictures?” Dr. M
ueller asked.

  “In the envelope,” Coburn replied.

  The doctor picked up the manila envelope and dumped out the three remaining photographs. These were of various sizes and different views, one color and two black and white. “This thing must spin,” Dr. Mueller said, “How else could you get the different perspectives?”

  “It rotates once every 3.6 days,” Coburn replied.

  Dr. Muller picked up one of the smaller photographs and held it up close to his face. “This thing has been through hell,” Dr. Mueller said. “If I weren’t mistaken, I’d say it has a small hole in it.”

  “Are you sure you’re not seeing an asteroid impact crater?” Kaminski asked.

  “A whore, a lawyer and an asteroid expert?”

  “You don’t have to be an expert on astronomy to know what an impact crater looks like,” Kaminski replied.

  He looked back at the photograph. “Could be, hard to tell from this image.” Dr. Mueller set the photograph back down and shrugged his shoulders. “Beats me, by the way, why are you bringing this to me? There must be a half dozen unemployed astrophysicists out there who could use the work.”

  Coburn hesitated, like she didn’t know how to break bad news. “We think the asteroid is answering a call.”

  “A call from who?” Dr. Mueller asked. The room fell silent as Dr. Mueller awaited her reply.

  “A call from you,” Coburn replied.

  Dr. Mueller cracked a smile and squinted his eyes. He then shook his head and picked up one of the photographs and looked closely at it. “I’ve done a lot of things in my life Miss Coburn, but I can assure you, I’ve never called an asteroid before.”

  “It’s Misses Coburn, and we don’t mean directly. We think a code you created was broadcast into deep space and picked up by some intelligence located within the asteroid.”

  “What code? And how did you come up with that theory?”

  “The asteroid has been broadcasting a repeating set of numbers over and over every 3.14 seconds at 138 MHz since we detected it moving out of the asteroid belt. It’s the same set of numbers you embedded in code in a virus software program you created.”

  “What virus program?” Dr. Mueller asked.

  “There’s no use denying you wrote the program. We’ve known the source for years. You wrote it in a sub routine for a program you sold the US government for tracking wheat futures. It was designed to allow you access to CIA and NSA main frame computers. They discovered it almost immediately and kept it secret.”

  “So all the data I’ve received…”

  “Yes, bullshit to keep you hanging on,” Coburn replied.

  Dr. Mueller let out a whimper of a chuckle realizing he had been had. “Yeah, well I created that one for fun anyway, no big deal.”

  “Sour grapes?” Coburn asked with a smile.

  Dr. Mueller glared at Coburn. “So now what? You think this asteroid intercepted some transmission you obviously made and now it’s coming to get me?”

  “We don’t know why it’s coming, but we know it’s coming because of something you did. Maybe you have some insight as to what it may be up to?”

  “Fuck, I probably came up with that number sequence with a random number generator. I might as well as grabbed numbers out of a hat.”

  “Maybe so, but you’re all we have for now, and we need you.”

  Dr. Mueller felt a bit giddy hearing those words. “You need me? That’s fantastic. When do we leave?”

  “Not so fast doctor, we have plenty of time to figure this out. And from what we have calculated so far the asteroid most likely won’t hit us anyway.”

  “But it may loop back and hit us in, let’s say, thirty years?”

  “Closer to twenty, but yes. It could loop back if it passes within a narrow window of space.”

  “Either way you need me, what’s in it for me?”

  Coburn leaned forward and put her elbows on the table. She was pissed that this arrogant asshole would think he deserved any special treatment after murdering forty seven people in cold blood. She looked Dr. Mueller in the eyes and replied, “Not a fucking thing.”

  “Then why ask me?”

  “Because maybe after killing all those students, you’d want to do something good for humanity. Maybe pay a debt to society. Maybe to get on God’s good side before you die.”

  “Don’t get me started on your God,” Dr. Mueller replied.

  Coburn leaned back in her chair and sighed. “Think about it. Chances are you can’t do a fucking thing to change it anyway. If you decide you want to assist us, tell your warden, he has my number.”

  “What about the lawyer?” Dr. Mueller asked.

  “Never mind, any deal we had is off the table.”

  “Get my sentence commuted and I’ll talk.”

  Kaminski smiled and looked to Coburn. “Did you hear that? He wants his sentence commuted.”

  “You think that’s funny?” Dr. Mueller asked.

  “If we all die it won’t matter anyway, and from the looks of it, you don’t have a chance in hell of making any of this go away. Random fucking number generator,” Kaminski said. She stood up and turned to walk away, but before she took a step, she leaned over slow and slid her hands down her legs raising her ass up for Dr. Mueller to see. In her skin tight leggings there was nothing left for the imagination.

  Dr. Mueller wanted to shove the table into her ass and knock her on her face but noticed the table legs were bolted to the floor, instead he said, “If I weren’t cuffed, I’d slap that fat ass of yours and you’d love it.”

  That was what Kaminski was waiting for, she gave him the bait and he took it. She stood up, spun around and pounded her fist on the table top. “You have no fucking right to do anything to me. Just because I’m a woman that doesn’t mean you can treat me like a sex toy!”

  Dr. Mueller smiled back at the pissed off woman standing before him in her skin tight leggings and four inch heels. “You made yourself a sex toy---cunt, and you know it. You dress like a whore to get attention, and the second you get it, you lash out like you were assaulted. You’re the worst kind of fucking whore---a whore with an agenda against men.”

  “I have no agenda,” Kaminski replied with a smug grin.

  “If you leave here without a deal from me, your bosses won’t be happy.”

  “You just told us you have no connection to the asteroid, why should we make you a deal?”

  Dr. Mueller knew now he should have kept his mouth shut and backtracked the best he could. “I lied, I wrote that code specifically for that virus.”

  “Bullshit,” Kaminski replied.

  “Can you prove it?” Coburn asked.

  Dr. Mueller scrambled for a reply. He really couldn’t remember how he came up with the number sequence. But he couldn’t let them know, not if he wanted to get out. “What is the code?” Dr. Mueller asked grasping for straws.

  “Exactly,” Kaminski replied shaking her head in disgust.

  “It’s been years since I wrote that code, how do you expect me to remember it? I’ve written thousands and thousands of lines of code in my day.”

  Coburn and Kaminski knew he was right. The chances of him recalling the code was poor at best and the chance they came upon the coincidence in the first place was very low. “I’ll talk to my supervisor,” Kaminski replied.

  “What did they authorize you to offer today?” Dr. Mueller asked.

  Kaminski paused before she replied looking down at the pathetic baby killer. “Life without the chance for parole in some shithole prison in Alaska.”

  “I love Alaska, you ever been there?”

  Chapter 3

  Two days later

  Dr. Mueller spent the next two days sitting in his cell wondering what they expected him to do. Was he supposed to use a radio telescope to communicate with the asteroid and somehow make contact? If that was the case he knew his chances were as good as any twelve year old with a laptop and an internet connection. As an autistic, he often had
difficulty with social situations, but he was able to convey his feelings adequately with those two high-dollar government bitches. They had no idea why he did what he did and they had no right to judge him. To Dr. Mueller it wasn’t a murder of forty seven innocent students, it was a science experiment. An experiment no one had ever done before and worthy of a Nobel Prize.

  A bang on the cell door brought Dr. Mueller out of his day dream and back into reality. He saw the door open and two guards step inside. The first guard, dressed head to toe in black riot looking gear looked down on Dr. Mueller who was lying on his bed. More accurately a bench used as a bed.

  “What do you want?” Dr. Mueller asked. He wasn’t used to being bothered at this time of day.

  “Warden wants to see you,” the lead guard replied. “And he has guests.”

  “Two bitches?”

  “Guests,” the guard replied. He wore a camera on his chest, chose his words carefully and didn’t want to have to explain them to the correctional disciplinary board later on if he spoke what he really wanted to say.

  Dr. Mueller stood up and followed the first guard out the door followed by the second. The hallway was barren with white institutional walls and florescent lights every twenty feet or so above them. Occasionally, as they walked down the hall towards the warden’s office they would pass a white unmarked door with no window or handle. “What do you keep in those rooms?” Dr. Mueller asked himself. He didn’t bother to ask the guards, he knew they wouldn’t reply.

  At the end of the hall, they were led into another hallway and then another until they reached the administrative wing of the prison. They were then buzzed in to a large office area with piped in easy listening music. The atmosphere was totally different with desks, people, windows and the smell of real life present all around.

  “In here,” a guard said and led Dr. Mueller into the warden’s office.

  The office was huge, with framed photographs of dead animals and vacations to distant lands hanging on the wall. The occasional dead animal head was mounted around the room with a moose head fixed above the warden’s plush, black leather chair. The desk was cluttered with papers, books and food wrappers and behind the desk sat an obese, balding disgusting man. Warden Chet O’Neil. To the warden’s right stood a woman and two men, all looking like they came from some secret government agency no one ever heard of and to the left of the warden’s computer stood an eighteen inch plastic sauropod dinosaur model.