By Stoney M. Setzer
“How long has your wife been missing, Mayor Collins?” Kelvin Lockhart asked, leaning forward in the leather guest chair. The move was as much about comfort as it was about being direct. The chair almost swallowed his small, wiry frame.
On the other side of the mahogany desk, Geoff Collins shook his head. “Quite an interesting euphemism. I think what you really meant was how long has it been since she ran out on me.”
“Either way, she’s gone. How long?”
Collins shrugged. “Maybe a couple of months.” His Tennessee drawl was so pronounced that Lockhart, originally from Milwaukee, found it hard to take him seriously.
“Have you heard from her since?”
“Nope, not a word.”
Lockhart peered over his thick glasses. “And you don’t find that strange?”
The mayor rubbed his forehead. “You have to understand, Mr. Lockhart…”
“Doctor.”
“Okay, Dr. Lockhart. You have to understand, Madeline was unhappy. She resented my position as mayor and its demands. I’m not surprised she left.”
“If she resented your position so much, why keep running for re-election? Why choose the town over your wife?”
“For one thing, I believe that this town, this whole area, has unlimited potential. And since the city and county consolidated, I have a chance to oversee all of it.” Collins sighed. “For another, Madeline was never satisfied. If I stepped down, soon it would have been something else. Her leaving was probably inevitable.”
“I see,” Lockhart replied. I see that you don’t understand what’s really going on here.
Collins cleared his throat. “So, what do you want, Doctor? You didn’t come here just to talk about my losses, and I’m a busy man.”
“I represent Janus Labs, the research facility outside of town. You attended our groundbreaking ceremony ten years ago.”
“Government funded research facility?”
“Correct.”
“I don’t remember y’all being very forthcoming about what kind of research you were doing or why you chose to come to a small town outside of Memphis.” Collins raised an eyebrow. “Something secretive, I gather?”
“Yes, but our secret research may affect you now, Mayor. You and your absentee wife.”
Collins arched his fingers. “Do tell.” A practiced politician, he was trying hard to mask his skepticism, but Lockhart saw through the façade.
“We set up here because Sardis County is a hotspot.” Lockhart paused, waiting for the inevitable inquiry.
The mayor’s brow creased. “What kind of hotspot?”
And here we go. “Are you familiar with the concept of the multiverse? Parallel dimensions and the like?”
Collins smirked. “Sounds like comic book stuff, Doctor. How are we a hotspot for science fiction?”
“There is one dimension whose inhabitants have targeted us for conquest. The hotspots are places where they have made inroads into our world. At Janus Labs, we study the threat with an eye toward stopping it.” Lockhart tried not to cringe. Good grief, this does sound like a comic book plot…
Collins made an inscrutable expression. “Actually, you aren’t the first person to spin a yarn like that.”
“Do tell.”
“During my first term as mayor, a man named Henry Owens tried to tell me that.”
“Henry… Owens?” Lockhart was stunned. Owens had been an ally of the invaders. Why would he have told? Had he gone crazy?
The mayor chuckled. “This was right after he claimed that there was no way men had ever walked on the moon because a rocket going straight up couldn’t possibly hit an object orbiting the Earth.”
“He said that?” Now it made sense. Misdirection. Owens had deliberately undermined his own credibility to make the truth sound ridiculous. And now Mayor Collins won’t believe anything about the Other Side. Owens was crazy—like a fox.
“Yes, sir. So why don’t you save us both some time and tell me the truth?”
Roll with it. “You’ve got me,” Lockhart said, faking a chuckle. “I get bored with constantly saying our work is top secret, so sometimes I throw out something outlandish, just to get people to quit asking.”
“Clever,” Collins said. “But what does top secret research have to do with me and Madeline?”
“Surveillance equipment,” Lockhart blurted, surprised with how quickly he came up with the lie. Well, more like a half-truth. “Designed to locate missing people. Would you like us to track her down?”
The mayor forced a smile. “I appreciate your offer. Closure would be nice, but I’m pretty sure she’ll never come back. Might as well have been abducted by aliens.”
***
“How did it go with Mayor Collins?” Dr. Balelo asked as Lockhart stepped out of the lab elevator.
Lockhart shook his head. “He thinks the Other Side is hogwash. We can’t expect any support from him.” Their footsteps echoed down the tile floor of the long, windowless corridor. Motion detectors turned the recessed lighting on and off as they walked.
“Figures. Hard to convince anybody of what we’re doing unless they can see the evidence themselves.”
“Yeah, but I was thinking about that on the way back. His skepticism may help us.”
Balelo frowned, punching in his access code at a sealed doorway. “How?”
They stepped out onto a balcony overlooking a huge infirmary. Dozens of sedated men lay on hospital beds, while lab-coated technicians swarmed around them like bees. All of the men—members of an abducted National Guard platoon—had been exposed to the new mineral researchers had found, the one that must have come from the Other Side. Caprinium, they were calling it.
“Our enemies have benefited from the mayor’s skepticism for years,” Lockhart explained. “I think they’re involved in his wife’s disappearance, but he wouldn’t even let me get that far. They operate with no interference whatsoever because the mayor doesn’t believe they’re doing anything. Maybe we should try that strategy ourselves.”
“Sounds like madness,” Balelo said.
“It does,” Lockhart agreed. “But it’s Mayor Collins’s madness that makes it possible.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
If you can’t beat em, join em–and the world will never know the truth…
Yes…building up to an arc where Lockhart will eventually do more harm than good in his efforts!
Yay! I’ve been hoping for a continuation from the last one. And I can’t wait to see what happens next!
Thank you, and there is more to come!
looking forward to part two!
Thanks! More to come!
Loving this world!! Keep ’em coming, sir!
Thank you very much, and there will be more to come!
Interesting!
Thank you!
This is an interesting strategy to take.
Thanks. Without spoiling too much, the problematic nature of Lockhart’s strategy will come to light soon…