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And lo, there came out of the river seven goodly kine and fat-fleshed, and they fed in a meadow.
And lo, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, evil favored and lean fleshed, and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river.
And the evil favored and lean fleshed kine did eat up the seven well favored and fat kine: so Pharaoh awoke.
— Genesis 41:2-4
Solomon unlocked the front door of the warehouse unit where the pod was located, and was greeted by a slightly irritating chime from the door opening sensor as he walked in. He'd brought Joyce and her husband here yesterday afternoon; they'd come all this way, it was the least he could do to let them see it in person.
The unit itself was a narrow slice of a much larger building, 10 meters high and 90 meters long, but only 15 meters wide. The front of the unit had a small office area built inside it off to one side, complete with a few cubicles and a drop ceiling. Beyond that, though, the unit was essentially empty all the way back to the loading dock at the other end, containing only the shipping container holding the pod and a sad-looking scissor lift.
He'd managed to purchase the lease on the unit from an electrical contractor that had gone under about twenty years ago, and although the lease payments weren't cheap, he'd so far actually made a net profit sub-letting the space out. However the previous tenant had moved out about four months ago, leaving the space unoccupied for the time being.
Solomon's goal for today was to make progress setting up an improvised "clean room" area to use for examining and possibly disassembling the pod. He wasn't sure what he'd do after that, but this felt like a logical step, and after Joyce and her husband had left he'd purchased some heavy clear plastic sheeting to use for this. His plan was to suspend the sheeting from the rafters in order to form walls and a ceiling, and although this wouldn't provide certification-grade protection, it would at least help avoid any dust or debris falling down.
Fortunately the scissor lift still worked, and solomon made his way slowly around the ceiling, attaching the sheeting and draping it down to form a small enclosure. He was nearly finished, when from down below he heard the door opening chime.
Solomon cast his gaze around, trying to figure out a course of action. He could just make out a vague blur standing next to the entrance through the sheeting on the other side of the enclosure, but couldn't make out any details.
He was currently at the top of the scissor lift under the rafters, holding up one end of a large section of sheeting. If he just let this end go, it would fall to the floor, ripping out all of the grommets and collapsing part of the enclosure. There was a short offcut of rope sitting at the other end of the lift that he could use to tie it off, but it was just barely out of reach.
"Hello?" a unrecognised female voice called out, echoing through the empty space.
"Uhh, just a moment..." He called out.
After a moment of grunting he managed to pull the end over with his foot, close enough to grab it, and carefully tied the bundle of sheeting to the rafter to hold it in place temporarily.
Solomon pushed the lever the control box to lower the lift. He'd managed to get halfway down before he heard a sudden explosive pop, and moments later smelled and saw blue electrical smoke coming out of the lever slot.
Solomon swore, and considered his options. It didn't look too far too the ground, and in his younger days he might've considered jumping, but he wasn't as fit as he once was and didn't want to risk it. He briefly considered opening up the box and attempting to hotwire it, but the power indicator light was out, meaning the breaker had tripped.
"Hey, are you alright?" the woman called out again, suddenly rounding the corner of the enclosure and coming into view. She had light skin and dark hair, looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties, and was wearing blue jeans and a tight-fitting yet modest gray tee-shirt.
"Uh hey, I appear to be stuck, could I get a little help?" he called out. "There should be a small red handle marked 'emergency release'."
"I think I see it." The woman walked over to the side of the lift.
"Just pull the handle, that should let the lift down."
She did so, and the lift slowly descended the rest of the way.
"I take it you're Solomon?" she asked, as he climbed out of the lift to meet her at eye level.
"Uhh, yeah?" He was suddenly unsure about the situation, and had no idea who this was.
"Pleased to meet you, my name's Kat." She reached out a hand to shake his and he accepted it.
"Umm, I wasn't expecting anyone here today, mind telling me why you're here?"
"Joyce said to meet up here." Door
He wasn't quite sure how to process this answer, but he didn't have to, as at that moment the door chimed again.
This was followed by a clearly-agitated sounding man's voice drawing nearer, and he recognised it as belonging to Jack Hart from yesterday. "— worked with ~indistinct~ before, this is emphatically not fine."
"Relax it's not like I've even told them anything," Joyce responded, as the two of them rounded the corner around the plastic sheet. "It was all in the video anyw—"
Solomon stopped her with a glare. "Can you please explain", he paused, "what exactly is going on here?"
"You said you needed help reverse-engineering the ship, well that's this." Joyce put her hands on her hips. "Kat's an expert at reverse-engineering electronics and integrated circuits, and I have another guy who should be here any minute who's an aerospace engineer."
"Did I?" He paused again, to make sure his next words adequately conveyed his sentiment. "Let me get this straight. First, you show up at my home, unannounced, accompanied by someone I didn't even know existed until yesterday. Today, you've decided to have a meetup with more, random strangers" — he re-silenced her with another glare — "on my property, not even without asking but without informing me.
"This is utterly unacceptable. I need you and your 'friends' to get off my property, and if you ever set foot in this building again without my explicit permission I'm going to consider it trespassing."
At that moment, he spotted some motion out of the corner of his eye and turned around, just as the bundle of plastic he'd tied off slipped free of the knot. He heard the pop-pop-pop as each individual grommet broke free and cascaded onto the next, and within seconds the entire sheet had fallen to the floor.
"OUT!" he roared, pointing aggressively towards the entrance.
Solomon was still fuming when he left warehouse unit, and spent the car ride home trying to calm down.
He'd spent four hours trying to get the scissor lift working again, managed to shock himself twice on the electrical connectors, and still hadn't managed to get it working again. For the enclosure itself, only the one sheet had fallen, but because of the way it had torn it would now be twenty centimeters too short to reach the floor, and he didn't have any more uncut sheeting left to use.
For all he hated to admit it, Joyce was right: he needed help. He was no engineer; his expertise was in field logistics and operational security.
As the car pulled into his driveway, his phone chirped to indicate he had received a new email, and he gestured to have the phone's personal assistant read it out loud as he walked in.
from: "Jack Hart"<[email protected]>
to: "Solomon Riviera"<[email protected]>
date: 2060-10-21 20:09
subject: ApologiesDear Solomon Riviera,
I must apologise for my wife's unacceptable conduct. I only learned of her plan minutes before we arrived at your warehouse, and would have warned you if I had had time.
The full names of the two individuals she your name and location to are Katherine Jenkins and Timothy Fogle. I've managed to pull together basic profiles on them, to help let you know who these individuals are and so you can take any necessary action. Based on my research I don't think they're likely to pass the information on to anyone else, but that determination isn't for me to make; what to do about it remains up to you.
If it's any consolation, Joyce appears contrite, although I don't know how meaningful that is.
attachments:
📎 Katherine-Jenkins.pdf
📎 Timothy-Fogle.pdf
Signals intelligence, huh? he thought, as he pulled up the phone and read the email address. He'd pegged Jack as a military man, but the fact he was apparently still military was news to him, as was the fact he was under the North African Resource Exploitation Cooperative, the same conglomerate Solomon had worked for before retiring. More than this, though, he was surprised at how seriously Jack was taking this, given that his wife Joyce had shown complete disregard for such things.
But the more he considered it, the more he realized that this was in fact the appropriate level seriousness. Although he had no idea where the pod's occupant was, this was, as far as he knew, first contact, and he needed to do things properly, or not at all.
After a moment, he made a decision, and phoned up an old colleague at his old department.
"Hey, Pete, I need a favor."
"Hey, long time no see, anything I can do for you."
"Nothing major, I just need you to expedite a few things for me." He clicked a button on his laptop to submit background check requests for Kat Jenkins, Timothy Fogle, Joyce Hart, and Jack Hart, and then added two other documents.
The agent paused for a moment as he looked over the documents at his end. "Everything seems to be in order, but ..."
"But what?"
"I'd heard you were retired. But this would mean..."
"Yes. Yes, I'm afraid it does."
"Well, in that case: welcome back, Project Director Riviera."
Solomon had spent several hours over the last day and a half navigating the NARECO bureaucracy, calling and emailing various people in order to get everything he needed through. Project directors like himself were generally given fairly wide discretion regarding a lot of things, including chartering their own projects and choosing how to allocate resources to them, but certain things took a little extra work to make happen.
Reactivating himself, getting a project charter approved, and requisitioning equipment had been one thing, but getting department staff assigned to his project was something else entirely, and would have required the project to be subject to much deeper scrutiny than he could afford right now. He had, however, managed to get payroll approval to recruit individuals to his project himself. The fact he wasn't requisitioning facility space at the department had made this easier, but it had still cost him a few favors. And despite the fact that the salaries he'd been granted authority to offer were, to say the least, rather modest given their qualifications, all of them had agreed to meet back up with him.
He now sat at the head of the meeting room table in his warehouse, reviewing his briefing notes as he waited for them to arrive.
Kat was the first to arrive, and Solomon jumped up to meet her as he heard the door chime sound again. Of all of them, she was the one who would've likely commanded the highest salary on the open market. Whereas most individuals were at least indirectly employed of one of the major conglomerates in the union, she was one of a few who were truly unaffiliated, unbound by any exclusivity or non-compete agreement, and her record showed that she had consulted as a security researcher on several high-profile projects all across the African Union. This was especially significant, as there were often extra procedural hurdles to bringing on unaffiliated contractors onto a project, and the fact that she'd worked for fully a quarter of the major conglomerates in this way spoke volumes.
More recently, the last year and a half were listed as "independent research", which had culminated in the high-profile exploit she'd presented at 76C3 in December of last year. This exploit targeted a previously unknown hardware backdoor on several newer mobile phone CPUs that she'd discovered by physically etching away and imaging layers of the processor dies. This had bumped her background check automated risk assessment from 'none' to 'low', citing a higher-than-average "dissidence" score, but as her record didn't even have any allegations that she'd ever breached any of the dozens of project clearances on it, there was no cause for concern.
There was no arguing that she was, if not the most, definatey one of the most qualified people on the planet to reverse-engineer alien electronics, and Solomon actually felt rather embarrassed that she'd even agreed to come given the paltry sum he had to offer.
In any case, she was here now, he greeted her and shook her hand. "I must apologise for my rudeness last time we met," he said, bowing slightly.
"It's no big deal, although I admit I don't completely understand why you reacted that way; I suppose it'll be clear once I have some idea what this project actually is." She looked at him, the implicit request for more information clear on her face.
"I'm afraid that'll have to wait until you've been read in. I'll be walking the others through the paperwork once they get here, but since you're probably familiar with the process, if you want to get a head start..." He offered her a packet of papers.
"Part B huh, you're not playing around," Kat commented as she accepted them from him. She sat down and pulled a pen from her bag, and began going through and signing the document. "Actually, do you have a restroom?" She said suddenly, and looked up at him.
"Uhh yeah it's over there, around the corner." Solomon pointed, and Kat followed his indication out of sight.
At that moment, the door chimed again, and in walked a man wearing a plaid button-down collared shirt, tan slacks, and a pair of open-framed glasses.
"You're Timothy Fogle?" Solomon asked. He hadn't actually met him yet, although after a moment he recognised him from the background check photo.
"I prefer to go by 'Mideple'," the man replied, pronouncing it "mid-pole" and extending his hand.
"Mideple?" This particular nickname hadn't turned up in the background check, although he supposed it was possible it had just been missed. The conglomerate he'd had to go through to get this man's records wasn't exactly known for keeping exhaustive records on its employees, but fortunately it did have full commutation agreements with NARECO, so in the absence of special circumstances bringing him on wouldn't be a problem.
"Long story." The man smiled
Timothy Fogle, or "Mideple" as he apparently preferred, was a older aerospace engineer who, according to his record, had been working in the industry for at least 40 years at this point. The background check hadn't told him anything about which projects, exactly, Mideple had worked on, but his record was clean at least, and painted a picture of a man who was generally very well compensated for his time, at least if the items in the corruption risk assessment portion of the report (no outstanding debt, 850 credit score, 4+ dependant minors) meant anything.
"Anyway, I'm Solomon." He accepted Mideple's handshake.
"We should be able to get started as soon as Joyce and Jack arrive."
He chatted with Mideple about things for a few minutes as he waited for those two to arrive. He was already familiar with Joyce — she'd been flagged almost immediately as a "high risk journalist" in her report, and would've been denied a clearance automatically if he hadn't manually forced it through. She was a risk, true, but there was no denying that she had particular skills that the rest of them lacked. She had majored in forensic archaeology in college before she'd turned to making videos, and the same skill set would be needed to ensure everything was appropriately catalogued and preserved.
Jack, on the other hand, was still a mystery. The report Solomon had gotten back for him was nearly blank, just listing a "low" automated risk assessment in all categories, and nothing else. This kind of thing had been normal back before Solomon had been promoted to full project director, but he knew better than to try to dig into it, likely it'd just be a waste of time.
The two of them arrived, the door chiming one more time as they entered, and soon they were all seated at the table.
Solomon began.
"From this point out, everything you are about to hear is protected under Part B of the Corporate Secrets Act of 2031. Intentional unauthorized disclosure of protected information is an automatic felony, and carries severe criminal penalties including mandatory prison time. The exact details of what this entails and the possible penalties are spelled out in this document. Please read and initial each section, and then sign on the last page to indicate that you are aware of and consent to be bound by the terms of the Act."
Solomon paused as the others read over the first packet. While technically the Act still applied to all African Union citizens regardless, he had a legal obligation to inform them of it, and having them sign an actual copy of the Act was mostly just a bulletproof way to prove he'd satisfied this obligation. The discussion that went along with it wasn't strictly required, but he and his colleagues had found that this method was effective at getting people to realize the full consequences of the Act, and in any case resulted in a small but statistically significant improvements to reticence rates.
That was the official story, anyway. The real reason he did it was mostly out of habit, but also because it was fun to watch the reactions of batches of new hires as they realized just what this all entailed.
Kat had already finished signing this first document, and was already into the second, but for the rest of them this took a few minutes.
Joyce looked slightly uncomfortable as she went through the document, but still signed after some nonverbal encouragement from her husband. The rest of them had all dealt with classified information in at least some capacity before, but this was likely the first time she'd ever had to deal with any part of the Act. Being confronted for the first time by the explicit hard-line rules and penalties laid out in the document before her clearly made her uncomfortable.
After they had all reached the end of that packet, he collected it from them and handed them a second one, before resuming the monologue.
"These are the charter documents for project CORAL SOUND. The exact details of the project charter are listed starting on page two, and I encourage you to read over it. As the chartered agent for this project, I have the authority to make determinations regarding what constitutes protected information, to grant project personnel and contractors clearance to access this information, and to authorize public disclosure of information relating to this project."
At this point Joyce spoke up, interrupting him with a question. "How does this affect what I've already published?"
"That's an excellent question. Any information that's still under your control, even if you acquired it before this point, will be considered protected information, and in fact this applies whether or not you sign. However anything you've already published is unaffected; you will not be required to retract any articles or delete anything."
Joyce still looked dissatisfied. "You said earlier when we first talked that you wanted to, and I quote, 'let everyone know', and that that's the reason you brought me here in the first place, but all this corporate secrets stuff is completely at odds with that. Is that still your intent?" she asked, accusingly.
"It is, actually, and if you look section four, the charter even includes a writ of public outreach. I intend to authorize disclosure of nearly everything, but there are some things that need to stay secret in order to keep ourselves safe. Things like our exact location, names, and faces need to be kept secure for our own protection, and any clearly weaponizable technologies will need to be handled much more carefully — there is literally no way to get a writ that allows publicly releasing designs for advanced weapons technology without approval from all fourteen of the major union conglomerates."
Kat spoke up. "Ok backup a few, I have no idea what you're talking about. Advanced weapons technology? What?"
"I'm sorry, if we can get through this, it'll make a lot more sense once I'm able to properly brief you all."
Both Kat and Joyce still looked dissatisfied, but accepted this and allowed Solomon to continue.
"By signing on page nineteen, you accept the charter and will be granted clearance to access project information. After you've signed, please detach the signature page and return it to me; the rest of the document is yours to keep and should be retained for your own records."
While the others finished reading and signed, Solomon pulled out his laptop and attached it to the projector.
He'd set it up to boot directly to the title slide of his presentation — a trick he'd learned from another agent to give a briefing just that little extra touch of professionalism.
After a moment, the laptop finished booting to read "PROJECT CORAL SOUND", he collected the last signature page, and began the briefing proper.
"On the March 25th, 2059, at 23:47:51 UTC, the Catalina Sky Survey detected a previously-uncatalogued magnitude 8 near-earth object, designated 2059 QP8432, in a highly-elliptic inclined retrograde orbit of earth...."