SoulStone
#40: The Enigma
Director McCarthy opened the vault door as he was wont to do on occasion. When ever he run into a particularly hard problem he went into the vault and stared at the enigma.
Compared to the enigma nothing else was hard.
The enigma looked perfectly innocent at first glance. It appeared to be a leather jacket and a motorcycle helmet. Perfectly normal until one read the evidence identification tag. They were found during the Viet Nam war in the provence of Cu Chi. They had been the private property of a Vet. Which vet...no one knew. Records had been lost.
The leather jacket was NOT normal nor was the helmet. The jacket was the simplest of the two items. It’s sole function appeared to be ballistic protection. Tests had been run and it did a damn good job of that. Too good. Much, much too good. Impossibly good. It shrugged off any small arms rounds as if it were rain. ANY small arms in the technical sense. That would include fifty cal.
UN-possible.
No one had any idea how that could be......until recently. That thing was damn near forty years old. No one had even imagined that type of tech back then...
He didn’t even want to think about the other item. The helmet had electronics in it that simply weren’t even believable not to mention the the same degree of ballistic protection.
No one had the faintest clue...
Of course McCarthy wasn’t going to let just anyone examine the items. This was burn before reading level of classification. Anyone that was allowed to look at the enigma had to have the proper clearances. They had to be vetted. Not just anyone could know such tech existed.
Consequently very few did.
McCarthy thought about the Jacket in hopes that it would jar something loose, or strike a chord, or jog his thinking such that he could gain some insight in his present situation.
He had no hope of solving the enigma.
There were four items on the table now. Director McCarthy sat and started at the two new arrivals in sick fascination.
One was just a staff. A stick, a rod. A little over a meter long of no particular significance. It hadn’t looked important until it had been triggered and cut off the head of the person investigating it. No one knew how that had happened. No one really knew by what mechanism the poor man’s head had been so unexpectedly removed. One moment he was holding the stick in one hand, fiddling with his SmartPhone. The next moment there was a “snick-snick”. His head was pushed off of his neck by blood pressure. His head, body, and the stick all fell to the ground.
The lethal staff appeared to be made from the same unidentifiable material as the other item. At first glance the other item had looked like a collection of sticks connected to a bowl or pan. In fact the Director’s intelligence report indicated that was being used as a flower pot when it had accidentally been discovered.
The set of circumstances which lead to it being discovered at all was surreal. It made McCarthy’s head hurt to think about it. If, at any given point, the circumstances had tilted the other way...he would never have these four items on his table.
In his vault.
Alien tech.
That’s all it could be. And it was new. It was only a few decades old. Carbon dating had proven that conclusively. There was no doubt that they all came from the same source either.
Each object had a brand, an identification mark. No one had noticed it on the helmet and the jacket until the last two items had come into their possession. The exoskeleton, that’s what it was, there was no doubt of it, had a small symbol embossed upon it’s ‘body’.
The discovery of which had prompted a very close re-examination of the other items. They were all embossed the same way.
Director McCarthy was not a happy camper. Alien tech did not have medallions with english lettering.The enigma was grown more enigmatic. He didn’t like it. He sat in the vault and pondered.
McCarthy was getting on in years. He wondered if he’d live long enough to unravel the mystery.
The Next Episode is
#41: - Treed Kitten
The Previous Episode was
#39: It never went well when he mentioned voices in his head.…
the First episode was
#1 : Prologue
I'm
@everittdmickey
.
I write
SPECULATIVE FICTION
I have books on Amazon too.
.
Sometimes I also comment on the news
.
.
Sometimes it's hard to tell fiction from the news.
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I wish someone would shoot that giant assed robot in the foot. I hate it. It takes up to much room in the comments, and i find it extremely distracting. So distracting, I forgot what I was gonna say,
The parts are all being gathered, so I'm thinking that Director McCarthy will not a happy camper when they all of a sudden disappear on him.
regarding the robot....your mute button is just sitting there.
regarding the enigma...I guess you'll just have to wait and see.
Robot gone, for some reason I keep forgetting about the mute button. Thanks for the reminder, out of site out of mind. Now if I could just remember that.
once you swat one (mute) they stay gone...but, like skeeters, there are always more.
my 'mute list' probably numbers in the thousands.
I have a few muted, I just forget when it comes to bots, they are just visually annoying, unlike unthinking people that think they are human, those ones I remember the mute button, I forget it works on bots also.
there for a while I was muting any language I couldn't read
it was kinda overwhelming.
I still do sometimes..
I forget who all i have muted, I know one of them got muted because he was arguing about gun control, had not voted in a single election and then to end his argument claimed Natural Law as his reasoning. So I just told them what I thought, and then said goodbye and muted them. People that can not think for themselves I really don't like to deal with.
me too neither..
except sometimes I bait them for a while..
it fun when they get so mad that the slobber comes thru the screen...
after that I mute them.