Unnatural Sights

Chapter 1



‘No, I cannot meet with you. The hour is late, I don’t know you, and therefore I refuse to meet with you. What don’t you understand?’ Professor Carmen, graying, thin, a small, exact, fidgety man who turned sixty a week ago announced once again, ‘you are not listening.’ He was repeating himself, and tiring of it. ‘I will meet you tomorrow, following my presentation and not before. You can arrange matters through my P.A. For now, I direct you to my press releases, which you may find on my web site, and I cordially thank you and advise that I must hang up. Goodnight.’

How did the caller get the hotel room’s telephone number?

Then the stranger’s tone of voice changed.

The Professor held the receiver a few seconds. He asked, ‘where did you say you wished to meet?’ And before hanging up he confirmed, ‘very well. I can meet you in thirty minutes.’

Though it was 10:30 PM, Sunday night, and cold outside, with Montreal’s heavy snow arriving early this fall, the five star hotel’s heating worked perfectly, and Carmen was dressed lightly. He needed warmer clothes, if he was going outside. He walked to the wardrobe, and searched through the clothes rack.

He fidgeted, deplored the idea of having to go outside at all, considered ignoring the stranger, and reneging on his commitment to meet him but, reflecting over the stranger’s parting comments, decided otherwise and pulled a thick sweater and corduroy trousers from their clothes hangers.

He removed his cashmere overcoat from the wardrobe also, the black one, not the fawn one, which he planned saving for tomorrow when he must dress to express. He expected to see cameras at the Dawson Adams Building, and expected that those cameras wanted to see him.

Ninety percent of the time he was up to his neck in it, he thought. It’s only at the end, when he looked over his creative work, that he took pride in it.

And that’s when people wanted to know him.

He pulled on thick leather shoes over socks that were too thin for walking along Montreal’s late night streets, having worn them from UC Berkeley this afternoon, where it was much warmer.

He wore plastic rimmed spectacles and combed his hair. Deep lines etched themselves down his cheeks.

He had the poise of a rooster, a sort of cock on the mound look about him, and was pleased that the soft cashmere bulked him up and gave him stature that he could almost own.

He reached for the TV remote, was about to switch off the TV, but he watched the news headlines instead. The anchor explained how the Professor was ready to release his Europan findings to the world tomorrow at Montreal’s famous McGill University, the Harvard of the north, at 11:00 AM sharp.

He nodded as if confirming the story - as well as his own importance - and said, ‘well, John, dear friend, dear colleague, we’re no longer working together, and you will be absent from tomorrow’s proceedings, and I alone will watch as humanity changes forever. If you can hear me, I give you my word that I will ensure that history writes us both up.’

He was about to click the remote, when the next story caught his eye.

‘The war of words has intensified between the United States and France, with the US based corporation Global Oil entering the fray and defending its position - and what it claims as the US position - on global warming. The US President is yet to comment…’

Carmen clicked off the remote, and the screen went blank.

The Professor was a Full Professor – a fact that he ensured people had understood from early in his career - in the Molecular and Cell Biology Department at UC Berkeley. He became a Full Professor at the age of twenty-eight, when his peers were struggling with their doctorate studies, and he was a world authority on extraterrestrial life at the same time. It was while studying plant life growing around Earth’s deep sea thermal vents that extraterrestrial life first began fascinating him.

‘Aliens,’ people often commented, ‘men from outer space.’

He tolerated the party jokes and smiled, correcting them with an understated, ‘not quite.’

Actually, he studied the simple DNA strands of dead extraterrestrial bacteria, such as the bacteria that space probes found on Mars and accessible asteroids.

Inevitably, having spent the better part of his adult life examining microscopic cadavers, his career slowed and he grew jaded – spiritually as well as professionally - until recently, when he focused on Europa, the icy, white moon of Jupiter.

Now – that is, tomorrow morning - he was to deliver a presentation in respect of just that moon to an auditorium in the Dawson Adams Building, packed with the world’s scientists.

What he had to say would cause uproar and lead him into direct conflict with corporations such as Global Oil. The popular media would tear him apart, on behalf of the oil giant.

Even at this late hour, with one sleep remaining until he revealed his results and, without exaggeration, watched as humanity fumbled, reacted, accepted the facts and altered its destiny forever, no one had any idea what he was going to say, no one.

Thus, the telephone call surprised him. That’s an understatement. It blew him away!

The Europan shale was only half of it. People guessed about it, and they learned to hunger for information about it.

Twenty months ago, the crewless space probe, Orbiter, entered Europa’s orbit and commenced its investigations of the distant moon, within days sending its findings back to Earth via wide bandwidth telecommunications. Several months later, hard samples – Europan rocks - arrived in the sub-probe. Orbiter discovered a sort of white, crystallized carbon deposit, created over millennia by compacted organic waste. It burned like coal, while releasing up to one hundred times more energy. And one hundred kilograms of the shale produced greenhouse gases equivalent to gases produced by one ton of coal.

People knew that the shale might answer humanity’s prayers for fossil fuel. But confusion surrounded the emissions side of things.

Tomorrow Carmen would set everyone straight with an unequivocal warning about the toxic dangers of Europan shale.

Yet the stranger had referred to organic systems. How could anyone have known about that?

Carmen checked in the mirror again, pulling his shoulders high a couple of times and letting them drop, then he turned and assessed his profile, which pleased him.

He locked away his presentation outline and tiny computer in the hotel safe, convinced that his materials were secure, and he shrugged and left the room, remembering his card key at the last moment.

Organic systems. Organic systems had fascinated the Professor and his partner, John Santo, and it was this something else that caused the men to lock down the laboratory and conceal their research from the very outset.

The eminent scientists had analyzed data on non-networked UMPCs (Ultra-Mobile Personal Computers – mini tablet computers) and kept them nearby at all times.

For the sake of fool proofing the due release of the data, Carmen had encrypted it two days earlier and he had uploaded it to a University mainframe. The day after tomorrow – one day following the presentation - the encrypted data would resolve automatically and flash across faculty computer screens.

The whole world could know the truth about Europa, just in case it didn’t reach everyone at tomorrow’s presentation.

He made one further contingency plan two days ago also, which he told no one about, except for those people concerned, and that plan involved the UW, United World.

He was not paranoid, and this was the important point – he was not paranoid.

The bachelor John Santo, living alone at the time, came home one night and became a victim of circumstance. After smearing feces over the bathroom mirror and photographing Santo’s toothbrush up his ass, and pocketing a few cheap rings and small change in cash, the home invader turned murderer, when he struck Santo over the head with a baseball bat.

It was a lucky – unlucky – shot. The police believed that the home invader swung the bat to stun Santo. It struck him in the temporal lobe and killed him. Apart from identifying the killer as a white post adolescent male – the ass shot gave that away – the police had no real clues to go on.

The police had telephoned Carmen. John had dog tagged his number around his neck, a precaution the two had agreed on as part of their secrecy pact. (Carmen had dog tagged John’s number around his own neck also.)

Yet Professor Carmen never accepted the final position of the investigating officer.

One saving grace came of it. John had left the UMPC at work. The hairy assed home invader hadn’t stolen it and sold it to a garage retailer specializing in cheap secondhand computer hardware. The Professor destroyed John Santo’s UMPC immediately, extracting the mini hard drive and dismantling it with a ball-peen hammer and cold chisel.

How long ago was that, three months? Alas, he thought, truth is the first victim.

And yet he never examined the risk to his own person that he faced now, in meeting with the caller, a complete stranger, and one who had spoken in urgent, troubled tones at that.

And that was because, in speaking in urgent, troubled tones, he had spoken about matters too significant to ignore.

The Professor exited the hotel lobby, stepped onto Rue De La Gauchetiere West and walked to the intersection at Rue University, a half a block away.

The stranger said he would wear an orange sweater and he agreed to stand outside the florist’s across from the intersection, Carmen suspected in order not to inconvenience him – Carmen - too much.

If he turned out to be a reporter eager for a quick grab, Carmen would sue him. First, he would verbally attack him, decimate him, shred his skin, as if his words were a rooster’s claws, and then he would see his lawyer in the morning, or after the presentation, or the following morning, and initiate proceedings.

The night was too cold to be chasing smart-aleck reporters.

Sunday night Montreal was bleak, and lonely, with streetlights struggling to burrow through the unseasonable, unprecedented snowfall. It was as if darkness captured the light and held it from moving too far.

The trees on the footpath were bare. Municipal workers cleared the sidewalks this afternoon and already snow piled up around the edges thirty centimeters deep.

When he arrived earlier today, Carmen hoped to see the Montreal that he visited as a young man. Then the Saint Lawrence River had reflected the blue sky and red sugar maple leaves were abundant.

The gardens were alive in every way, and very beautiful.

The cell biologist was not an environmentalist. Enough of his friends were, though, and they left no room for mistake. The world was changing; seasons had changed. Water drowned the land in places while land elsewhere became parched and barren. Extreme weather conditions kept everyone guessing, along with every living thing, and the situation made everyone edgy and the changeability made nations edgy.

The small, erect scientist, living within his definable moral universe, believed he must prove that science could bridge the gap where politics had failed. It’s why he chose the French speaking city to present his findings.

He had stopped short of delivering his findings in Paris. Even in his definable moral universe, such an action might seem too much like cavorting with the enemy.

He chose Montreal because he loved the city too.

The Professor slipped in ice as he reached Rue University intersection and twisted his knee and he cursed at having to leave his comfortable room on such a night – and at having twisted his knee. In order that he might entertain an eager beaver reporter? He tried remembering his lawyer’s number.

He peered through the darkness across Rue University and saw no one.

Maybe the caller was a jokester. He considered heading back to the hotel.

Then, across the road, twenty meters away, a parked car flicked on its headlights. One way traffic ran south, towards the Saint Lawrence River, though now the road was empty, except for that parked car. The engine didn’t start.

Strange to see a gasoline vehicle out at all, he thought.

The high beam headlights almost blinded Carmen. Nothing. Were they coming or going?

But the vehicle was silent, and went nowhere, and no one got in or out, no one wearing an orange sweater or otherwise, and Carmen shook his head, further annoyed, and just a little curious, while blinded by its headlights.

He cursed to himself, dismissed the vehicle, along with its driver, and began crossing the wide, slippery street, his right knee paining him. His socks were too thin for the winter shoes, and he lost traction.

Some hundred meters away, north on Rue University, a large, silent, electric motored, square fronted, very black SUV, fitted with a precocious looking bull bar, blasted southwards, down along the one way street, and towards the port area.

Unlike the car with its bright headlights, this vehicle, the SUV, drove without lights at all. And fast.

The Professor never saw it. While dying on the cold, icy road, he shouldn’t have even thought about it, or about what had happened. After all, the sharp edged bull bar projected at the height of the Professor’s skull and impact with it ought to have killed him instantly.

Before he died, however, he considered the rotten luck he and John Santo experienced.

Remembering the sugar maple leaves that lined Montreal’s streets all those years ago, when he had first visited the city, and when life had promised so much, he lost consciousness and died.



The black SUV raced away, and Siniston smiled after it, exclaiming to himself, ‘humanity’s best legal killer.’

He turned the ignition over in his parked gasoline car and switched the headlights back to low beam. He rolled the dark vehicle around the corner onto Rue De La Gauchetiere West, avoiding Professor Carmen’s corpse, and came to a stop fifty meters from the hotel entrance.

The large, black overcoat and dark trilby hat disguised the wiry power of the fifty-five-year-old man, and hid his pale skin and shock of carrot, red hair. He stepped from the car. The darkness hid him deeper in the night, like a dark hand might reach out to another. He entered the hotel lobby, refused eye contact with the concierge, walked to the lift, and pressed for the ninth floor. He got out, headed straight to Carmen’s room, and entered using the hotel master key.

His eyes were small like the world seen from too far away. He looked around and stepped to the wardrobe, in which he spotted the hotel room safe. He pressed the generic code, inserted the master key, and opened the safe door and removed Carmen’s UMPC, as well as his lecture papers. He walked to the bathroom and soaped and washed his hands and left.

Once outside, and seated in his vehicle, he telephoned Shannon Winder, who haunted the halls of UC Berkeley at this late hour.

‘Have you deleted the file?’ he asked.

‘Deleted.’

Siniston rang off and accelerated away, ignoring the ambulance lights and the small crowd that gathered around the deceased Professor back on Rue University, and instead continued along Rue De La Gauchetiere West.

He concentrated on matters that were more important.