Adopted Son Read online

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, this briefing will be given at the Top Secret/Majestik-12 level. If anyone here doesn’t have that caveat, you should probably leave now.” No one got up, nor was anyone expected to. It was just formal procedure to ask about clearances before a briefing. “Here at Beachcomber, we are used to getting trash. Most of the pieces that we bring in are found to be meteorites, or hoaxes, or parts from airplanes. A lot of the research papers that will be presented today will talk about those things. They will talk about how we spent $25k on a metallurgical analysis of a screw, only to prove conclusively that it fell off a Cesna into grannie’s back yard. Today I’ve got something different. In this diplomatic pouch, I have something that could be a very key find for the Beachcomber project. Potentially, this one object could justify the entire Beachcomber budget for next year.” He broke the diplomatic seal on the pouch and pulled out a silver cylinder. It was about two and a half feet long, and maybe eight inches in diameter. One end was pointed like a missile. It was smooth and polished. You could tell that it had once been rather shiny, but the pointy end was blackened considerably. All down one side of the cylinder were small holes, about a few millimeters in diameter each. Ray dropped the bag to the floor and rotated the cylinder around for the room to see.

  “This here is what I consider to be one of the most intriguing items that the Beachcomber project has found in the last forty years. I personally picked this up from our station in New Delhi last month. It had been found lying in a field by some school children a few weeks before and was being stored in a local police station pending identification. The schoolchildren said that it was in a pit. I visited that pit and here’s what it looked like...,” Ray handed a slide to the contractor who placed it onto an overhead projector. “As you can see from the pit dimensions, as well as the blackened tip, this object obviously fell from a great height, probably from orbit. That makes it of interest to Beachcomber and to all of the Majestik-12 projects. Beachcomber originally thought that it might be an errant satellite, but it seems to be hollow and has no internal components of any kind. There is no reason to send up an empty satellite into space. Then we thought that it might be a missile casing, but we couldn’t think of any reason that someone would test an empty missile. The test wouldn’t be of any use to you because the missile would fly differently when filled. It was classified as an enigma and got shipped to a Majestik-12 contractor lab for testing. We’ve gotten some very odd results, which I think could become very important.”

  Ray looked around the room. Most of the generals were dozing off. They were really only here to show off how much clearance they had and to get a free weekend in Vegas. These people got their jobs based on kissing up to the right people or being well-groomed and trustworthy. It was the same here deep in the black world as it was everywhere else in the government. There was no secret cadre of superspies that kept the U.S. safe, just a bunch of schmucks who couldn’t get jobs in the civilian world. None of these people had any real interest or capabilities to do the job that they had been assigned. Most didn’t believe in either Beachcomber or Majestik-12 in general. They weren’t ready to accept anything outside their preconceived notions. Ray would have to make them listen. If he was right, there wasn’t much time.

  “The first significant thing that we found was that this material isn’t typical of any known alloy we’ve put into space. I’ve had the object analyzed, and it has a very strange isotopic spectrum. It’s primarily made of steel and tungsten, but the isotopic ratios are unlike those typically found on earth. There’s more 59Fe than one would expect. That would imply that the material used to fabricate this object didn’t come from Earth.” That got some people’s attention. Since the Soviets had self-imploded, all of these generals were going around looking for an enemy. All they ever found were petty dictators and inept terrorists. Whoever made this object could be the real threat that they’ve been waiting for. “Now there are three possibilities that could explain this. First, the object could have been made out of a meteorite, second, it could be an elaborate hoax in which a reactor was used to change the isotopic spectrum, or third, it could be a genuine alien artifact.”

  A chorus of cries sprung up from about the room. Was it an attack? That was big news. Questions flew at the podium. Was he sure, how did he know, who could have done it, why were they shooting at India? Ray tried to calm the crowd down a little bit. “We don’t know what the purpose of the cylinder is. It clearly didn’t explode. There were no traces of hazardous chemicals. We’ve tested those kids, and none of them are sick. CDC databases haven’t showed a spike of diseases anywhere in the world, so we don’t believe that this is a biological attack, or at least an effective biological attack. This could just be a test run for something. Or maybe it’s a message.” The crowd interpreted that as ‘no casualties, nothing to worry about,’ and began to slump back into their boredom-induced catatonia. Once again, Majestik-12 blows the whistle on something that initially sounded big, but turned out to be nothing in the end.

  “One more thing,” continued Ray. “Unlike most of our other anomalies, this object is not unique. Beachcomber has been finding these all over the place.” Ray moved to a curtain that covered the back of the podium and pulled it aside. There, lined up on the floor were about a dozen objects identical to the one he had just pulled from the diplomatic pouch. “Gentlemen, Beachcomber has been picking these objects up for about eight months now. They seem to be falling indiscriminately around the world. We’ve picked up objects from most of the continents, all with the same characteristics, same isotopic spectrum. And who knows how many more we haven’t found yet, or how many the Russians have picked up? I’ve been in contact with experts in other parts of the Majestik-12 program, and we are of unanimous opinion. We believe that these objects can only be explained as the beginning of contact from an alien intelligence.”

  The crowd replied with an even louder chorus of cries and questions. Ray bit down on a bagel. This was going to be a long meeting.

  Two months after the Beachcomber annual review meeting, Tyler Memorial Hospital, Tyler, TX

  Tom Miller was sitting in Dr. Thomas’s office at Tyler Memorial. He felt a little nervous being here. He was more used to being out in a field dressed in overalls and dust. He wasn’t used to offices. The only time he ever went to an office was to get his loans approved at the bank. Being in a fancy office like this made him feel uncomfortable and underdressed, just like church. It was almost as if they did it on purpose. Made the office real fancy and all so that you would feel a little inferior. Maybe the doctors figured that they wouldn’t get as much back-talk that way. Maybe they thought that if they looked all fancy you wouldn’t mind paying the ridiculous amounts they charged.

  Tom had no intention of giving any back-talk or arguing about bills. He just wanted to find out if he could finally take his kid home from the hospital. He’d been here his entire life. Eight months now of being probed and poked and who knows what else by a team of doctors from all over. They even brought a few in from Dallas a last month to take a look. They all wanted to gawk at the freak, he guessed.

  Dr. Thomas paged through the file on his desk. He and his team had gone over all the data and still didn’t really know what was going on, even after eight months of probing and poking. “Well Mr. Miller, we’ve done every test that we can think of, and we have no real conclusive explanation for your son’s malformities.” Tom hated the word ‘malformities,’ it was just another way of saying ‘freak.’ Why didn’t the doctors call a spade a spade? Everything had to be cloaked in medical mumbo-jumbo doublespeak. “However we have positively diagnosed the problem. It looks like your son is suffering from a very rare disease called Handel’s Syndrome. There are only a dozen or so known cases, mostly in Europe. It was only first documented in the literature a few months ago. It is a genetic defect that we’ve just discovered. Most humans have 46 chromosomes, your son seems to have 48.”

  “What does that mean doctor?”
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br />   “Well, chromosomes are the instructions that we have in each cell. It’s like a blueprint. Every species on Earth has them, animals, plants, everything. Some have more than others, some have less. Every species has a different set. Somehow your child got some extra instructions in him and that is what is causing his malformities.”

  “So, are you saying that he isn’t human?” Tom was a bit confused.

  “No Tom, he is as human as you or I. Kids with Downs Syndrome have sort of a similar problem, they are missing a chromosome. But they’re still human. Kids with Handel’s Syndrome are still human too, even if they don’t look exactly like us.”

  “Can you fix it doc?”

  “No. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to fix it. There are some experimental gene therapies that are being developed, but no one is expecting those therapies to handle something as severe as Handel’s Syndrome. Genetic damage like this is something that child is going to have to live with his entire life.” The doctor picked up the child’s chart and opened it for Tom. “There is good news however. Other than his outward appearance and an irregular heartbeat, he seems to be healthy. He is growing and responding to stimuli. We have no reason to believe that he won’t be able to live a full and productive life.” The doctor smiled, trying to put a good face on the news. Optimism was very important in cases where no treatment option existed.

  Tom wasn’t at a stage yet where optimism really helped. He leaned forward in his chair and said hesitantly, “But he’ll always be a freak, won’t he?”

  “Now don’t say that Tom. Your son is going to have a hard road ahead of him. There are some things that we might be able to do with plastic surgery, but there is little chance that he’ll ever look like you or me. You’ll have to accept that, and you’ll have to be strong for him. He is going to need a lot of support as he grows up. Let me give you the name of a good counselor.” He took a business card out of his desk and handed it to Tom. “That’s the name of a good specialist in Dallas who is an expert in child malformities. She should be able to help you and your wife. It’s going to take a little extra work, but you’ll make it. A lot of other new parents have had to deal with a lot worse, and they’ve found the strength to be there for their children.” Dr. Thomas started to get up out of his padded leather chair. “But, from a review of the literature, there doesn’t seem to be much point keeping him in the hospital any longer. We’ll need to do checkups on him every few months of course, but you and your wife can take him home now. That’s probably the best place for him to be right now.”

  Tom stood up and brushed the seat off a little bit. He still felt a little awkward. Dr. Thomas led him to the door of his office and out into the hallway of the maternity ward. They walked down the sterile corridors to the visiting room. His wife was sitting in a cushioned chair. She was holding the baby in her arms, rocking it back and forth slowly. It was tightly wrapped in a large, blue blanket. Her long brown hair had fallen into her face a little, and she looked beautiful as the light from the window spread rays across her body. She didn’t react to the men’s arrival for a few seconds, like most mothers she was fully absorbed by her child’s sleeping face.

  “Lorraine, we can take him home. The doctor says that we can take him home today,” Tom said flatly.

  “Really?” said Lorraine, lifting her gaze to the doctor. She had a look of expectant joy on her face. She stood up carefully, so as not to wake the child. “We can take him now?”

  “All we need to do is have fill out the release paperwork, it should only take a few minutes,” said Dr. Thomas. “I’ll take you over to the duty nurse.”

  The three (technically four) of them began walking down the corridor to the exit of the maternity ward. Tom was amazed at Lorraine’s response. “I guess it’s just a girl thing,” he thought to himself. How was it that she was able to love so unreservedly? She chatted with Dr. Thomas about care and feeding as they walked. The question of what had happened to the child never crossed her mind. She didn’t care about that. She only cared about being with the people she loved, no matter what they looked like, no matter what problems they had. “She’s quite a woman,” Tom thought. He felt lucky to have her. He was going to have a hard time with this, no matter how open-minded he wanted to be, he was still a simple farmer from Texas, and he knew that. It was going to take a lot of effort on his part to be a good Dad. Perhaps more than he could give. He let out an inaudible sigh.

  Tom stopped in front of the window to infant care ward. He looked at their faces, row after row of little bundles of joy wrapped in blue and pink swaddling. A few nurses moved in and out of the rows, distributing bottles, blankets, diapers. All the infants smiled back at them, their faces bright with hope for the future. All the faces were normal, all but his. His child was a freak. Why did this have to happen to him? Here were hundreds of normal babies, why didn’t they have any “genetic malformities?” Why had God saddled him with this responsibility? It could have just as easily been someone else. He could have had one of these kids. He could be looking in this window at his kid right now, tapping on the glass at a beautiful boy, with hair and eyes and pink skin and all the trappings of normalcy. But no, he had a freak to deal with.

  Lorraine sensed that her husband was no longer beside her. She stopped and turned to see him staring blankly in the window. She walked back to him and put her hands on his shoulder. She knew what he was thinking. She knew what she was feeling, because deep down, she felt it too. But she knew that this was the way it was supposed to be, that she had been given this child not as a burden, but as an opportunity. A way to show how much love could achieve. She knew that her son would grow up to be a great man someday, in spite of his problems. She was just sure of it. Tom turned and faced her. “Come on, let’s go home,” she said to him in a quiet yet hopeful voice. “Yeah,” said Tom dejectedly, “Let’s get home.” Together they walked out of the maternity ward.

  The same day, Washington Square Park, New York City, NY. Under the brush.

  The first time the girl knew she was pregnant was when her water broke. She was lying under a tree at the corner of the park, away from the tourists and pigeons. A chill was in the air that morning, the grass was wet with dew. “Winter is coming,” she thought as she pulled her ratty green jacket around her. It wasn’t much to ward off the cold, but it was all she had. Well, that’s not totally true. She also had several slugs of liquor in her, and that was warmer than any blanket. She lay in the grass under the tree, trying to will herself into more of a drunken stupor than she could expect from the amount of alcohol she could actually afford. Her legs felt wet. She looked down. At first she didn’t understand what was happening. “Perhaps it was all a hallucination,” she thought. She tried to ignore it. As with a lot of stuff, if you don’t think about it, it just goes away. But then the cramps started. At 16, she didn’t know much about the process of birth. Her life consisted of running and hiding and searching for food. Of defending herself against attackers, and giving in to them when she thought that she could get something out of it. She staggered to her feet and made it to the public restroom before the cramps overtook her.

  The public restrooms in any park leave something to be desired, but in downtown Manhattan, they are exceptionally bad. The smell was something unidentifiable– an amalgam of dozens of other scents, each offensive in its own way. The floor hadn’t been swept in months, if ever. The girl made it to the one stall with a working door and collapsed on the floor. The child began to come out. “No, no, no,” thought the girl. “I don’t need this, I don’t need this.” She tried to stuff the little thing back inside her in a vain attempt to solve the problem, but that obviously didn’t work. The child came. It pushed itself into the world through sheer force of will.

  The girl lay on the floor for quite a long time. She could feel the fluids leaking from her. She could feel the wriggling of the newborn. She could hear its faint cries and gurgles as it attempted to clear its lungs. After a time she gathered the st
rength to stand back up. There was a large puddle of fluid spreading across the floor of the stall, leaking into the corridor. Around here, no one would notice. The girl didn’t know what to do. She looked down to see a complete shock. It wasn’t a real child that she had just borne, it was some kind of freak thing. Its head was big, far larger than normal. The rest of its body was thin and underdeveloped in comparison. The thing looked up at her with its two large, insect-like, black eyes. A cry came from its tiny mouth– familiar sounding at first, but it grew more and inhuman the more you listened to it. The girl stared in disbelief, “What the hell is that?” Living on the streets she had never heard of Handel’s Syndrome. To her it was just some sort of baby monster. “Perhaps I’m just hallucinating again,” she thought. She hadn’t had any hard drugs in almost a week, but maybe it was a flashback or something.

  The girl was scared. She didn’t know what to do with the little mess that was wriggling around. She scooped the thing up in her green jacket. She brushed herself off a bit, straightened her hair. She carried the child out of the restroom, and, looking carefully around to make sure that she wasn’t spotted, dropped it into one of the wastebaskets at the bathroom entrance. “Well, that’s over with,” said the girl, as she staggered off through the park. The smell of vendor’s hot dogs and roasted peanuts was starting to fill the air.