His cell was state-of-the-art two centuries past. Smooth concrete formed a smothering shell around him. There were only two openings, a barred window adjacent to the ceiling and a steel door. The old man spent most of his time lying on the ground. It felt like he would hit his head on the ceiling when he stood. Even so, the window always seemed just out of his reach on those occasions when the need for freedom overpowered his better judgment. The door had two slatted openings, one for viewing and one for sliding a food tray through. Except for those occasions where he hoped to squeeze through the window and the guards beat him into submission, the door opened only once a month. They brought a hose to wash the floor. The old man had learned that the process went much faster if he picked the corner closest to the door as his toilet. There was no bucket or privy, so the faster his waste was flushed from the enclosure, the sooner the hose was moved to the next cell.
On the best of nights, he tossed and turned. He had not had a full night’s sleep for half a century. Even with so much time passed, he could still remember what it felt like to sleep in a bed. He dreamt of it often. He had nothing that could be considered a bed now, no whicker, feathers, or straw. He had only a pile of mite-ridden wool blankets, their weaves having long since started to disintegrate. Night in the mountains was cold even in the summer months, and the barred window made sure the cold was always there, set deep into his bones. It was not uncommon that he should be up this late at night.
Tonight was different. Tonight was uncommon. The light flickered. They only did that during the heavy snows, still two months away. He heard sounds, voices in the corridor. The prison, tucked away from the world in the Hindu Kush, had seen no new prisoners for months. Those detainees that still lived made little sound during the day much less the night lest the guards beat them to death. This wasn’t the type of prison one was sent to with the expectation of being set free, he had learned. Yet there they were, voices, guards shouting in Pashto, the local Afghan dialect. He recognized some of the words. He could hear them clearly. What piqued his interest, though, were the others. They spoke little, but when they did, it was English. He had hallucinated in the early years of his confinement, praying for rescue until his mind deluded him into believing it was so. All that ever earned him was a beating.
He watched the door, waiting for the guards to arrive. Surely they knew he was hallucinating and they would punish him for it.
The observation window opened. A square cross-section of the guard’s face pressed into the opening. Hatim, he needed no excuse to beat prisoners. A large crack echoed through the corridor and into the cell. Blood splattered the opening, and Hatim’s face fell away followed by a loud thud. The old man sat up, confused. What kind of hallucination was this?
He stared at the opened slat. It was some type of trick, he presumed. Hatim wanted to raise his hopes and draw him to the door, only to slam it in his face. He should go back to sleep and ignore the bait, his mind told him, but his blood was rushing and the pounding in his head was making it difficult to think.
He didn’t remember walking to the door, but there he was, pressing his own face up to the opening. The blood smeared when he touched it. His fingertip glistened red in the flickering light. If he stood on his tip-toes, he could see Hatim lying face-down on the ground. More sounds erupted back down the corridor. Gunfire. All the years he had spent in the Kush and never had he heard gunfire away from the training yard, but the sound was unmistakable and there was the guard lying motionless on the ground. He had heard English. The blood on his fingertip was wet. All the evidence said that he was not hallucinating and that this was real…or that his hallucinations had achieved a whole new level of complexity, but he preferred not to dwell on potential insanity. If that were the case, there was little he could do about it now. Better to hope for the best, that his dreams had been answered after all these decades.
He could see movement coming down the hallway, four…no five men coming toward him. Prisoners were sticking their arms out of the slats of their cell doors. The men were obviously not guards. They stopped only a cell away. It was hard to make out their faces in the writhing shadows. They weren’t Afghans that was clear enough. The adjacent cell door squealed as it opened. The man placed his ear against the opening, straining to hear.
“Bad intel, Cap,” one of them said. “No one’s here.” They were American!
“Braun!” the old man shouted through his door’s small opening. “Lucias Braun! I know where he is!” His voice hurt. He had been a young man the last time he had spoken so loudly.
A face appeared at his door, a black man covered with green face paint.
“Where is he?”
“I’m an American. Take me with you.”
“Where is Braun?”
“Dead. Five years ago. Will you take me with you?” The soldier turned and looked down the corridor for instruction. Whatever the answer, his face was impassive as he turned and looked back at the aged prisoner.
“It’s outside of parameters,” he said turning to leave. He paused. “Sorry,” then walked out of view.
The old man’s heart broke. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. Fifty years of plotting, planning, dreaming, he was not supposed to be left behind to die in this place.
“But I’m an American!” he screeched. His mouth was dry. The sound of the soldiers’ boots was already disappearing.
“Bush number one!” he shouted unthinkingly.
Nothing.
His knees grew weak and he wanted to fall to the floor, but his hands would not let go of the opening in the door, of that sliver of hope that had stared back at him for only a few seconds.
He heard footsteps.
The same black soldier appeared at the door. He was alone. “Possible political prisoner, Cap,” he said to no one.
“Bush number one,” the old man whispered. Desperation stole his voice.
“Step back,” the soldier said. Hope threatened to return, and the old man’s heart strained under the weight of it all, but he did as he was told. He watched the door anxiously, waiting for something to happen. Seconds felt like years. He relived all the atrocities of his incarceration in the 12 seconds it took the laser torch to excise the door’s lock. “Move quickly.” The soldier disappeared back down the hallway.
The old man stepped cautiously to the doorway. No guards waited for him on the other side. Hatim lay motionless on the floor. Still, the old man moved slowly, watching the body, waiting for it to sit up and beat him with its baton. Nothing. He turned and looked back at his cell one last time. He was struck by how large it looked from the corridor. It was no wonder he never reached the window. The thing had to be at least 15 feet off the ground. The place had always felt so much smaller.
The helicopter bay was cavernous by comparison. For all the movies he had seen, he had never realized just how much room there was. His legs had carried him as if he was still a young man, but his heart strained at the effort. Inside the helicopter, he collapsed, gasping for air. Five sentinels, unmoving and unspeaking, kept watch around him. They paid him no attention; their weapons pointed out the large opening behind him. The soldiers’ eyes glowed green, amplifying the ambient moonlight.
He saw two other men behind this group, one looking up toward the cockpit, his lips moving, although the old man could not hear anything but the whirring of the rotor. The other was manning a machine gun of some kind. An action movie aficionado in his youth, he had forgotten guns beyond the AK-101 rifles his guards carried. He felt the tug of the Earth not wanting to let him go as the helicopter touched off. Freedom at last.
One of the statuesque soldiers moved, turning to the old man, roughly grabbing his chin. He turned the man’s head left and right, inspecting him.
He pushed a small earpiece into the old man’s ear and spoke at a level tone. “Last name,” he ordered. It was neither a question nor a request. The old man looked at the open door and wondered whether he would be thrown from the helicopter if he did not answer satisfactorily.
“Galilei.”
“First name.”
“Galileo.”
“Official place of residence before abduction.”
“Arizona. Near Tucson.”
The soldier retrieved the earpiece and motioned to the others with a plunging fist. The doors were closed. The sound of the rotors disappeared and all was silent.
“Tuxedo this is Top Hat, over.” The soldier spoke to no one in particular and Galileo heard no one respond when the soldier—clearly the one the black soldier had called captain—spoke again. “Top Hat is Green-plus-one, Yellow, Green, over…negative Tuxedo, Caviar is expired. Plus one acquired under open contract Uniform-Sierra-Golf-1-1-3-0-0-7, over…Confirmed Tuxedo. Top Hat is coming home. Out.”
That was all he said. Captain Top Hat did not look at him again. Galileo thought he saw the others watching him, but whenever he looked at them directly, they were staring straight ahead, unblinking. It did not take long before the adrenaline wore off and the silence consumed him. He fell asleep. For the first time in fifty years, he smiled as he did so.
He awoke in a hospital bed. His eyes hurt. It was difficult to open his eyes. He was not used to the light. He panicked at first, seeing through squinted eyes how close the walls were. Beeping machines loomed over him like mountains; padded walls suffocated him with their proximity. It took a few minutes for rationality to overcome fear, and he realized he was not back in his prison. There had never been a medical ward there. Galileo looked around a second time and realized just how spacious the room really was, much like the helicopter now that he thought about it. His was the only bed, although the light over his shoulder was so bright that there could have been another bed to his left and he would not have known it. To his right the machines did not tower, but were an arm’s length away. They supported various tubes that, he discovered, all led to his right arm. Behind them was tucked a cardboard box, overflowing with stuffed animals, coloring books, and assorted toys. The room’s last resident had obviously been a child.
There were also two chairs, both currently occupied by men in suits. It took him a moment to realize that the larger of the two, a handsome black man with a bald head and broad shoulders, was the same soldier that had rescued him from his prison. He wore a black jacket over a purple shirt with a matching lapel. He held a paper-thin tablet in his lap, touching various areas of it with a stylus. The younger man’s jacket was wrinkled and a bit threadbare. The shirt was in desperate need of ironing.
“Mr. Galilei, my name is Sergeant Martinez. On behalf of Special Forces, Incorporated, I’d like to welcome you back to the United States. You are currently at our branch offices on Boston. Dr. Darazs has listed you in stable condition. We will take you to the mainland once your processing is complete.”
“Mainland?” Galileo’s mouth felt like cotton, and it took abnormally long for his lips to form the words he thought. He looked at the myriad IV tubes in his arm and wondered exactly what was in the solution.
“I have been assigned as your Debriefer of Record as we process your contract. This is Debriefing Trainee Allen,” he said, acknowledging the younger man beside him. Galileo did not like this other fellow. It was more than just his suit. There was something wild in his eyes. “He will be assisting me during the fulfillment of your contract.”
“My contract?”
“During the Russian-American War, the Russian People’s Republic zealously pursued our technicians, hoping for an advantage in the arms race while inhibiting our own abilities to compete. Following the conclusion of hostilities, an open contract was filed with all licensed military corporations to retrieve those technicians. Twenty years later and we still haven’t found all the Russians’ hidden detention centers.”
Galileo nodded but had only a marginal idea what the sergeant was talking about. The prisoners in the Kush weren’t allowed to speak to one another, but they had always found a way. Little bits of information passed down the line each time a new detainee arrived. It had been big news when the Americans stopped funding his Taliban captors and the Russians took over.
“Technicians?”
“Engineers, programmers, and others like yourself. Could you tell me, Mr. Galilei, what your chosen specialization is?”
“I am an astrophysicist.” The situation was skewing. He could feel it as something palpable between them, but he could not figure out what was wrong. If he could just pull out his IVs with whatever drugs they were pumping into him, maybe he would remember.
“Those are for your own safety, sir,” Trainee Allen said, gripping the old man’s hand, pulling it away from the tubes. Galileo winced. The boy would have broken his fingers if they were alone, he was sure of it.
“I have to say,” Sergeant Martinez continued, apparently not noticing the incident, “it is unusual that they would have taken a scientist, even one as informed as yourself.” Something changed in Sergeant Martinez’s voice, but Galileo did not know why. “President Bush has not been in office long.”
“What?” He shouldn’t have said it, but his wits were too dulled to stop himself before the word came out.
“In the prison, you said ‘Bush Number One’ did you not?” The sergeant’s look was piercing. The stylus continued tapping away at the tablet. Galileo had taken his first misstep. He was not sure how many others he would get.
“Yes, I did.”
“Why did you say that?”
“You were going to leave me.”
“Yes, but why did you say that?”
That was a good question. Why had he said that? It had been half-a-century since the last time he had heard it, and it hadn’t led to the best results for the Iraqis.
“It seemed like the right thing to say,” he rasped. The young man obviously found the answer lacking, but his rescuer had mastered his emotions and Galileo could see little on Sergeant Martinez’s face.
“Okay,” the sergeant acquiesced, tapping away with his stylus. “Mr. Galilei, can you tell me who was president when you were abducted?”
“J. Bush.” That fact was burned into his memory. Sergeant Martinez couldn’t contain his surprise at that answer. Trainee Allen was half out of his seat.
“Can you confirm that, Mr. Galilei?” Martinez asked.
“Yes I can. I was abducted and incarcerated without trial seven months, one day, four hours, and 36 minutes after President Bush took the oath of office.” The first ten years of his incarceration often involved this measurement of time. He had never been able to pinpoint it to the exact second, though.
The answer did not seem acceptable to his interrogators, however. Emotion was gone from Sergeant Martinez’s face as quickly as it had come. Allen, on the other hand, had left his chair completely and was looming over his bed.
“What is wrong with my answer?” he asked. He was scared. The walls closed in. It felt as though Allen could fit nowhere else in the room but on top of Galileo.
“You’re lying,” Allen growled.
“Mr. Galilei,” Martinez cut in with a more reassuring voice, “President Bush has only been in office four months.”
The old man felt a flood of emotions and thoughts explode in his brain like a supernova. How could Bush be president in 2063 when he had been president in 2013? Could he still be alive? Had medicine progressed so far that he could have grown so old and still manage the presidency? Had he only been in office one term, or had the constitution been changed? Had he been president the entire time? His heart began to flutter, his breathing growing so rapid he was like to hyperventilate.
No, they said Bush had only been president for four months. This one fact among all the questions gave him an anchor against the hurricane in his head. His eyes focused and he realized Trainee Allen had his hand on Galileo’s shoulder. It was not anger he saw in the boy’s face but malice. The old man feared for his life.
“Jeb Bush is still president?” he asked.
Both soldiers froze. Whatever thoughts had been going through their heads vanished. Allen turned and looked at Martinez, back at Galileo, and then back at Martinez. No answers came and the old man had no idea what their questions were so he could answer them.
“Please excuse us, Mr. Galilei,” Sergeant Martinez said. Both men exited the room without waiting for his response.
They were long in returning. He was glad to have them gone. Galileo looked around the room as best he could. With Trainee Allen gone, it did not feel so confining, but the thrill he had felt when Martinez told him he was on Boston was gone. He wondered whether that was true and whether it mattered. All he wanted now was to leave, to get to the mainland—whatever that meant—and then to Arizona. He would walk there if he had to. He soon discovered his legs and waist were fastened to the bed.
The door finally opened, and his breath caught. He half-expected Hatim to enter the room to reveal this cruelest of jokes. Instead, Captain Top Hat strode confidently to his bedside. Like his subordinates, he had traded fatigues for a suit, a very expensive suit by the look of it. He spoke with the same authority he had on the helicopter.
“There is no record at any security level of an American citizen named Galileo Galilei. Will you tell me your real name?”
The old man shook his head slowly. “This one is more appropriate.”
“Sergeant Martinez tells me that you believe Jeb Bush is president,” the captain continued, ignoring the vague response.
The old man shook his head again, more forcefully this time. “I should hope not. He was at least 60 when he was inaugurated in 2013. Regardless of the endless controversy that follows the Bush name with every election, I cannot imagine a 110-year-old man would be elected president.”
“You mean 2012,” the captain replied. “President Jeb Bush was inaugurated in 2012.”
“No, I mean 2013,” Galileo snapped. He leaned forward pointedly. “An election is held in a year divisible by four, but the actual inauguration is not held until the succeeding year. Jeb Bush was inaugurated in 2013 after the Supreme Court dismissed the case against him.” Galileo laid back. He didn’t like being corrected.
“That’s correct. I see your memory is still in fine shape.” The captain smiled as if Galileo should be thankful for this affirmation. His PhD defense had been in two months when he was abducted. And this man in his expensive suit presumed to tell him he was correct. Of course he was correct.
“Is Jeb Bush president?” Galileo asked.
“No,” the captain answered matter-of-factly. “His niece is.”
Allen looming over him like a bear, the indignity of having his wits tested, and now another Bush in office. He couldn’t endure much more. He wanted to leave.
The door opened. Hidden behind the bright light, he still knew when it opened. It had a heavy bolt that thumped open and closed as people came and went. Sergeant Martinez and Trainee Allen returned, moving to the captain’s side. A third man had come with them, but he remained behind the light, little more than a pair of immaculately polished leather shoes. Martinez gave a manila folder to Captain Top Hat. Galileo realized the leader had never introduced himself. The old man had never seen or heard any reference to his name. The captain opened the folder, taking his time to read the contents thoroughly. Finally, he looked up, closing the folder casually.
“Are you Jeremy Pohlman?” he asked.
“Not anymore,” Galileo whispered. Tears welled in his eyes. It had been decades since he had last heard his own name.
“Were you abducted?” the captain asked.
“Yes,” Galileo answered.
“Were you abducted by Russian operatives or agents working under contract with the Russian government or its allies?”
“No.”
“Do you know who abducted you?”
“Yes.”
“Were you abducted by American operatives or agents working under contract with the American government or its allies?”
“Yes.”
“He’s lying, captain!” Trainee Allen interrupted. “He’s a scientist, sir.”
“Thank you, Allen, I have read the file. I am aware of Mr. Pohlman’s credentials.” There was something unsettling about his calm demeanor. The captain new something Galileo did not, and the old man was not sure if he wanted to find out what that was.
“You can’t trust scientists, sir,” Allen continued.
“As you were, Allen.” It was the first crack in the captain’s demeanor, but it lasted no longer than a blink of an eye.
“You’ll have to excuse the youngster, Mr. Galilei,” the man behind the light said. His voice had a strange accent, one Galileo had never heard before. He hoped this meant the man might step forward, but he remained hidden by the light. “You have been gone a long time. I doubt you are aware of society’s opinion of you.”
“Of me?” Galileo asked, confused.
“Scientists, that is. Once the global warming myth was debunked for the natural cycle that it is, other supposedly credible theories unraveled and evidence came to light that scientists had been fabricating their results to influence public policy.” The man was smiling. It was clear in his voice.
Galileo felt overwhelmed. Global warming debunked? Theories unraveled? The man used the word “scientists” as if Galileo had been part of a global cabal.
“The only good scientist is a dead scientist,” Allen muttered. Captain Top Hat ignored him, but Martinez put a cautionary hand on the young soldier’s arm.
“I never conspired…” Galileo began, but he did not know how to convince them, and by all appearances, it didn’t look like he could anyway. They stood above him, impassive judges of a man they had not even known existed the day before.
“You are correct, Trainee Allen, Mr. Galilei is lying,” the mystery man continued, his smile making his accent thicker. “But not how you think.” Something was happening. The old man recognized that pit in his stomach. Something bad was going to happen to him. “He was not abducted, although it must have felt that way to him. He was incarcerated. He was deemed an enemy combatant and held indefinitely via executive order superseding FISA oversight. Do you remember the numbers, Mr. Galilei?”
“Executive Order 13,647-G.” Fifty years in that frozen hell, and it was happening all over again. How many times had he repeated those numbers? The only epitaph his tombstone needed was Executive Order 13,647-G. He doubted he would have a headstone. He doubted he would have much of a grave at all.
“He’s a terrorist?” Allen asked, shocked. “That’s not very shocking. …Goddamn scientist.”
“He was stopped before he could do any real harm. He submitted an article to the scientific journal Science. I can only imagine what would have happened if it had published. Scientists were still highly regarded at the time.”
The old man wanted to reach up and wipe that smile off the stranger’s face. He did not. What made a prison were not the concrete walls.
“What was that article called again, Mr. Galilei?” The stranger knew the title, the old man was sure. He was just toying with him.
“Verifiable Evidence of Cosmic Blueshift and the End of Hubble’s Law.”
Both men were silent, as if the title was sufficient explanation for the others in the room. The soldiers stared across the bed at the stranger, none of them understanding what relevance the article had or how it pertained to Jeremy Pohlman’s terrorist activity.
Sensing their confusion, the man pointed at the children’s toys. His hand glistened in the light, like it was covered in wax. “Is there a yo-yo in that box, Sergeant Martinez? Could you hand it to me?”
Martinez sidestepped to the box, rifled through it briefly, then extracted a yo-yo, handing it across the bed as ordered.
“Now, please stop me, Mr. Galilei, if I am not doing this right.” He spun the yo-yo, double-looped the string into a triangle and began rocking it back and forth. “I’m assuming you’ve all heard of rocking the baby?” he asked. The group nodded. “Now imagine that the yo-yo is our galaxy, the Milky Way, and the string is the black hole at the center of our galaxy. The yo-yo moves away from the string like the galaxy expands as a result of the explosion that birthed the universe.”
“The Big Bang was disproven,” Allen protested.
“We’re just pretending,” he reassured. “Now the galaxy—the yo-yo—can only expand so far before it falls back toward the black hole—the string. Scientists called it the Big Crunch. Am I correct so far, Mr. Galilei?”
Galileo just watched the yo-yo rock back and forth, remembering life before.
“Fifty years ago, an astronomer might think he had detected the Big Crunch, Mr. Allen, by looking at what he believed to be the edge of the universe and noting that the light coming from that distance had turned blue. Mr. Pohlman detected such a blueshift in 2012. He wrote an intriguing article postulating that the Big Bang was much like rocking the baby, galaxies continuously expanding and collapsing in and out of a black hole.”
“He predicted the end of the world?” Sergeant Martinez asked. His voice was hushed, as if saying it might make it happen.
“No sergeant, he predicted the end of the universe. And he hoped to publish that statement, facilitating civil upheaval, economic catastrophe, and succeeding where so many other scientists’ plots had come up short.”
“I did not plot,” Galileo finally spoke up. “My findings were verified by two other stations. There’s proof.”
“Scientist proof, maybe,” Allen hissed. “What’s that worth?”
The mystery man caught the yo-yo in one hand and stepped in front of the light. Galileo could see his face for the first time, backlit with a halo of light as if he were a saint. The man looked nothing like he expected. His short black hair was receding; his nose was prominent; but he did not have the sickly skin of a mortician or the crazy eyes of a serial killer. He looked normal, average.
The stranger looked down at the old man in the bed, still smiling, but did not say anything. He just stared piercingly into Galileo’s eyes. And then he looked away, up at the captain.
“Mr. Pohlman,” the captain began, “because you are not a political prisoner of the Russian-American War, you do not satisfy the conditions of Open Contract USG-113007. As a duly appointed officer of Special Forces, Incorporated, I am to return you to the place of extraction.”
“No, you can’t!” Galileo tried to sit up, but he could no longer lift his own weight. What was in his IV?
“I am not,” the captain continued. “As fortune would have it, Executive Order 13,647-G designating you as an enemy combatant satisfies the conditions of Open Contract USG-6209735 for the hunting of known enemies of the state established by Executive Order 17,071.”
“It was issued only four months ago,” the stranger said happily, “the day of the new President Bush’s inauguration.”
“Your contract with Special Forces, Incorporated, has been sold. We are turning you over to our associate, Agent Shalev. If you have any questions about your contract with SFI, you can call any of our branch offices, and the local Customer Service Manager will be happy to assist you.”
Captain Top Hat closed the dossier, handed it across to the man he called Shalev, then walked out of the room without saying anything else. Allen followed quickly behind him. Galileo wanted to say something, but he could not think of anything to say.
“Mr. Pohlman, I am Special Agent Shalev of Wetworks, LLC. I am your case manager for the duration of your contract with us. You may notice that you are no longer able to move. This is for your own safety and comfort. If at any time you feel anything more than a mild discomfort, please let me know. This process should only take a few minutes. You’ll be dead soon.”
Galileo looked past him at the door. Any minute now, Hatim was going to come in and beat him for hallucinating. Any minute now…
“Can I ask you a question?” Sergeant Martinez was at his bedside. He had not left with the others, although Galileo had not noticed until now. The old man nodded his head as best he could. “You really were a scientist?” He did not share Allen’s resentful tone.
“Yes.” It was all Galileo could manage to say. It was difficult to move his lips.
“And you saw this blue light Shalev talked about?”
“Yes.”
“The universe is ending? That’s why they put you in that secret prison?”
“Yes.”
“How long do we have?”
“15 billion years.”