"A wife finds her husband's secret diary and is shocked to find he's led a double life."
Approx. 1,923 words
The Network
©2003 by W. E.
Lopez
During the past three weeks, without luck, Maggie
carefully searched the three-bedroom home for the evidence she knew had to exist. Carefully, meticulously, she searched every
drawer, every shelf, every cupboard, always being careful to restore the areas
she searched so there would be no telltale evidence of her actions. It would not due for her husband to learn she
was investigating him. Her search was
limited to the eight or nine hours of each day when he was away at the office,
and often she could not take advantage of the entire day by ignoring wifely
errands and chores.
She had to find the evidence! Today was the deadline; the day she knew he
would kill her! Without the evidence of
his treachery, her history and life would hold no meaning.
In the event of Dave’s unexpected arrival home, she
carried a bucket, cleaning rags, feather duster, and spray bottles of Pledge, 409, Windex and Comet.
Should he surprise her, she would fall back on the pretext of house
cleaning.
Maggie moved the bucket to the other side of his desk
and began rifling the drawers for what she knew had to be the last time. If she did not find it this time, she would
never again have the opportunity.
Perhaps he’d taken it with him today, yesterday, or one of the many
previous yesterdays. Would he always
have it in his pocket or briefcase? She
hoped not. Dave spent many hours working
at his desk, grading student papers, preparing lesson outlines, or writing
another of his many monologues. As a
tenured professor of sociology, he had a façade to maintain, but she knew the
truth of his life… if only she could prove it!
Unable to find the incriminating evidence, she pushed
the top drawer to the rear, as she had done so many times before, ready to
search the next. Was that a soft click she heard? Could there be a secret catch or a hidden
compartment?
Maggie pulled the drawer out as far as it would go
until it stopped. She felt along the
roller-track until her fingers found the catch and removed the drawer from the
desk. Disappointed, she found
nothing! Wait! What was that nearly hidden in the dark
recess at the back? It was… it looked like…
a floppy disk with a strip of masking tape holding it loosely to the rear of
the desk.
Reaching in, she grasped the disk and pulled it into
the light for examination. This had to
be the proof she needed! Excited, she
set the bucket of cleaning materials on the floor, cleared a space on the desk,
and booted his computer. When the screen
came to life, she inserted the floppy disk and opened it to the directory. She found more than six hundred small files
and tried to open one as straight ASCII text.
It was gibberish! Maggie tried
another and another, only to have the same results. It was obvious the files were encrypted. How could she examine them? There was no way she could know what program
he had used to create the files, and without that, the data would be
unintelligible.
On a hunch, she shut down the computer and rebooted
while leaving the floppy in the drive.
Maggie knew computers were inherently instructed to boot from the floppy
first, but if no disk was present, they would fall back to the CD drive and
then the hard-drive if no CD was present.
The monitor briefly flashed a kaleidoscope of colors
before a directory of the floppy appeared on the screen. Maggie quickly scanned the list of names,
locations and employment, before she realized she was reading Denebian script. She
had been schooled in a hundred languages and alphabets and her mind slipped
into understanding without conscious effort.
This was the proof she needed of Dave’s
treachery. Here was his entire network,
too much for him to carry in his head; he had to have it written down. She found the names of his principle agents
and their subordinates. She found a
brief description of their usefulness and a summary of the information they
provided.
The idiot!
Only a fool would keep such incriminating evidence where it could be
easily found by a determined counter-agent.
Denebians were never noted for their creative
intelligence, they were a slow, plodding, and methodical species. They could never survive in the galactic
community if it were not for the directives which protected the less fortunate
species.
“Maggie! What
are you doing?”
She had not heard his car as it pulled into their
driveway. She had not heard him enter
the house. In her excitement, and with
the low hum of the computer fan, she hadn’t been aware of the warning signals
until he slipped into the room behind her.
It was too late for her prepared excuse of simply cleaning house; Dave
had seen her sitting in front of the computer monitor and reading the alien language. She knew her fate was now sealed!
Slowly she turned to see him standing in the doorway
with a pen-shaped micro-disruptor leveled at her. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What’s happened to Maggie? What have you done with her?”
“Maggie is safe, Dave. My race could never allow anything to happen
to her, but it was necessary to get an agent into your home to search for the
evidence we must have to convince the security-council to take action against Deneb. Maggie is
safe and well. At this moment she believes
she is being processed into the government Witness Protection Program. From our vantage point in a future timeline,
we knew she had to be protected before you could kill her. This race is a protected species under the
council’s non-intervention treaty. Just
as strongly, we had to have the evidence to convince the council that your race
has begun a clandestine invasion and takeover of this planet.”
“That still doesn’t explain who you are and how you
got here,” he said, continuing to menace her with his weapon.
“Do you remember when Maggie went into the hospital
for the biopsy of that suspicious lump in her breast?”
“Yes, that was three weeks ago. The lump turned out to be harmless when it
was removed. You can’t be a clone,
created from cells removed from her; it’s impossible to grow a fully mature
clone in only three weeks.”
“It may be impossible for Denebians,
with your limited grasp of the multi-verse and the infinite dimensions of time
and space, but not for us. After the
lump was removed, the tissue was rotated into a perpendicular timeline, where duration
has no reference to this timeline.
During the next twenty-seven subjective years, I was given a normal
education with emphasis on my mission to Earth to gather evidence against you
and your superiors. When my training and
growth was complete, I was rotated back to this timeline and inserted just as
Maggie was leaving the hospital.”
“Thank your for your explanation,” he said with
sarcasm. “However, you’re too late. My agents have gathered all the background we
need to subjugate this planet, and I have no further need for you, nor this
façade as a college professor.
“After I dispose of you, I can relay my information
to the invasion fleet and before a year has passed, this planet will be ours. Once we possess this planet, you will not be
able to take control without destroying all life here. Now, give me that disk…!” he shouted, threatening
with the disruptor weapon aimed at her.
Maggie pushed the release button on the face of the
tower and the floppy was ejected into her hand.
“Okay, Dave, I haven’t much choice….”
As she spoke, she deftly positioned the disk in the palm of her hand and
gave a swift, flicking motion with her wrist.
The disk headed straight for Dave’s face and struck him across the
bridge of the nose.
Distracted and trying to avoid the disk, his aim was
far off target when he pushed the button on the disruptor. A brilliant arc of magenta flashed across the
room and daylight became visible through a two-foot hole where the beam struck
the wall.
Maggie wasted no time as she dropped to the floor and
grabbed the spray can of Windex. Keeping low while Dave swept the
disruptor around the room firing blindly, she popped up on his left side and
sprayed the window cleaner into his face.
Dave yelled with pain at the stinging ammonia, but
did not drop the disruptor. The computer
monitor disintegrated in a burst of magenta, half the double-bed was neatly
sliced away in another, until the ray struck the mirror atop the bureau drawers
and was reflected directly at him. The
wavelength and intensity had been drastically altered as the beam was
transmuted by its double-passage through the glass mirror; it did not instantly
destroy him when it struck, but it did paralyze him momentarily causing him to
fall to the floor.
Maggie first relieved him of the disruptor and then
the disk. “And you, Dave, are you a
surgically altered Denebian, or are you a clone like
me? Does it hurt when I do this,” she
asked, driving her heel viciously into the side of his knee, causing it to bend
in a direction humans were incapable of, “or is it harmless to your reptilian
skeleton?” From his non-reaction, she
judged he was not a clone, merely a product of the operating room.
“We have agents on Earth also, you slimy snake. Soon I’ll have a team here and the world will
believe you’ve been arrested and spirited away for some drug offense, or
perhaps you’ve been messing around with one of the college girls. No matter, no one will be suspicious when you
disappear.” Keeping the disruptor aimed
at him, she went to the closet and removed the sash from one of her
bathrobes. She tied his hands together
and pulled one leg sharply back to his wrists and bound it also. It probably wasn’t as painful as she hoped,
but in his human form it would prevent him from quickly maneuvering to attack
her.
Now that she had secured both the prisoner and the
floppy disk, Maggie picked up the telephone and contacted her control. “Sirena here,” she
said. “I need a containment squad immediately.
After receiving an acknowledgement she cleared the
phone. “That’s all, Dave. You and your race are finished in this corner
of the multi-verse. With the evidence we
have, your planet will be rotated to an alternate time line. It might not seem like much, but the security-council
is not vengeful and all life is precious to us.
Perhaps in a few millennia, perhaps with readjustment, your species will
be allowed to rejoin this timeline.
“You’re lucky I’m not a member of the
security-council, for I would block any forgiving attitude with every effort
possible. Your evil race is responsible
for my birth and training, and much as I love my home world, I can never return. This form could not long live on
Aquaria. On that ocean world, I would be
the reverse of a fish out of water, so I guess I had better get used to living
here on Earth. I wonder if Maggie will
enjoy having a twin sister.”