Dilation Chapter 2: Fowler
Most of Isaac Fowler’s morning had been mundane, but they all were. Not that he was complaining. He had already seen enough action for a lifetime, but his three years at the Defense Intelligence Agency had not been as originally described.
Before the DIA, he’d been an Army Ranger, and a damn good one. He was smart, skilled, and professional — just the kind of man to load up with a few million dollars of military equipment and send into dangerous territory. After a few years, Russian-American tensions hit a boiling point. Rather than waging all-out war with North Korea on the table, both sides regressed to tactics utilized for several decades in the 20th century.
Begin the Second Cold War, dubbed “CW2” by media outlets in their typical push for sensationalism and antiquated trendiness. As far as Fowler was concerned, there was no war. If the original one was cold, this was frozen solid. There had been threats, sanctions, and some light spying…nothing new.
Of course, Fowler hadn’t known that would be the outcome when the Pentagon came to him with a job offer. It wasn’t a hard sell — no more crawling in the mud, no more MREs. Throw on a suit, make more money, and enjoy the freedom of operating as a federal agent. His country needed an intelligence asset and wanted to utilize his skills in small-team combat to neutralize Russian assets on domestic soil.
None of that happened. If there had been any downed surveillance craft or neutralized spies, the information never made it down to Fowler.
Not until this evening. Just as Fowler was about to call it a day, every intelligence agency went into a frenzy. Reports hastily shot through the agencies to put everyone on high alert — the Russians had new spytech over American soil. Flurries of disparate information trickled down the ranks — the plane had been spotted but no one could track it, Canada didn’t see it cross their airspace, even once the craft was located, we couldn’t keep tabs on it.
Fowler overheard frantic conversations between his superiors about the apparent technology gap, but the discussion was otherwise above his pay grade. And while his section of the DIA — Defense Clandestine Services — was responsible for intelligence-gathering assets, Fowler was not one. He was there to intercept uncooperative spies, which meant he’d be stuck at Rivanna Station until further notice.
Trying not to get sucked into speculative discussions by the civilian personnel, Fowler sat around his desk talking about the current baseball season with another agent. Leonard Sconi had also been in the Army, joining the DIA a year before Fowler. Neither of them were avid followers of baseball, but they also weren’t prone to gossiping. They were just killing time until they got an assignment or were sent home.
Just after six, they were called in for a briefing. The walls felt even closer than usual in the small conference room. No additional chairs had been brought in and the blinds were all closed. A projector sat in the center of the dark conference table, shining an image onto the far wall.
The Director of the DIA stood across the table. He was a round man with a receding black hairline atop a square head. Fowler liked him enough; he was good at filtering through bureaucratic bullshit and usually pretty relaxed. Tonight, he was stern. Tense. Fowler had no reason to think he and Sconi would be in trouble, but that was the vibe in the room — someone was in trouble.
A third agent arrived behind Fowler and Sconi — Doug Pierson. Most intelligence work didn’t require military training, so their rural outpost in Charlottesville contained a large number of civilian personnel. Fowler, Sconi, and Pierson were all special ops veterans.
Looks like they’re shooting the plane down…
“This information is TS/SCI,” the director said without so much as a welcome. The acronym stood for Top Secret: Sensitive Compartmented Information. It was reserved for specific groupings of information otherwise inaccessible to those with top-secret clearance — the formal shorthand for “need-to-know.”
The agents acknowledged silently and the projector image blinked. Defense Secretary Lauer appeared as he sat down. Fowler had been on details with Lauer a few times over the past three years. He was a politician to the core, though perhaps slightly less crooked than the average one.
Lauer proceeded to verify most of the gossip Fowler had heard over the past hour. The Russians denied ownership of the unidentified ship, but no one knew who else it might belong to. We threatened to blow it out of the sky if Russia didn’t remove it. They didn’t.
“We hit it with a couple of 150s,” Lauer said, “and the craft has gone down intact.”
The Raytheon AIM-150 was one of America’s biggest flexes in Cold War II. It was designed to destroy Russian MiGs more efficiently than the Swedish Meteor — easily the most destructive air-to-air missile on the planet, and it didn’t leave planes intact.
Sending in a small team was unusual when the military was already involved, but it turned out they weren’t hunting down a spy at all. American intelligence operatives throughout Russia had since confirmed the country’s story. Secretary Lauer was going out to Georgia, himself, and the three agents were readily-available DoD assets, able to adapt in the field. Nobody knew what they would find at the crash site, but it wouldn’t be a Russian pilot.
Fowler and Pierson were making a stop in North Carolina to pick up some biologist. Given the specifics of their orders — the man Sconi had gone to get, the woman Lauer was bringing…it was difficult for Fowler to keep his mind from wandering towards some truly insane theories.
They’d flown out of Albemarle Airport, near the Blue Ridge Mountains beside Rivanna Station. The DoD paved the way for them, with a small plane ready to take them to Raleigh-Durham. It was probably a noteworthy story for the staff of the small airport. Fowler didn’t know how common it was for the Pentagon to call one and demand airspace and a plane.
He remained vigilant as he walked up to Dr. Walker’s house. No one had gotten a hold of her, and for all he knew, she might be in danger. He scanned the trees next to the driveway, then up to the branches. A hundred yards to the eastern neighbor, a car parked in the driveway. None of it was particularly important, he just wanted to remain focused on the present. Not about what might be in Georgia.
A slight relief swept over Fowler when the biologist opened the door. She was a few years older than him — short and thin with wiry, brunette hair. He waited patiently during her long badge inspection. It was clear she had no idea what was going on, so he couldn’t fault her, even though they needed to move this along. Eventually, she pulled her head back from the small booklet.
“Why does the Department of Defense need me?”
Understandably, she couldn’t be given sensitive details over voicemail, but it was annoying how little information she had. Someone in the Pentagon expected she would readily hop in a tinted Escalade with two strangers — someone who’d never done fieldwork. As if moving six people across three states in two hours was routine.
“Apologies, ma’am, but I’m not authorized to provide those details. The defense secretary has requested you for your expertise.”
She raised her eyebrows, “My expertise?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She thought to herself for a moment. “Is there anything you can tell me? So I know what sort of references or notes I would need?”
“Bring anything you’d need overnight,” he said. Her eyes widened at the word overnight. “Just in case…”
The professor stormed back inside for a couple of minutes. Fowler waited by the door, passively surveying the inside of her living room — lab coat, couch, TV, sliding glass door, garden. It was surprisingly cathartic. Just…standing there. The past hour had felt like a day, and there would be several more ahead just like it. Right now, his only job was to wait. The air had started cooling as the sky turned vibrant orange. It was placid.
Pierson’s head popped out the SUV’s window, looking back. Radio static cued into Fowler’s ear.
“Is she coming?” he asked with a slight echo as his voice traveled across the long driveway and through the radio.
“A-firm.”
“Tell her to hurry. This sucks.”
“I actually told her you would get antsy. She said she didn’t care.”
“What an ass.”
Pierson’s head disappeared back into the car. The informality was unusual, but it was an unusual evening, and they were the only agents here. Walker reappeared at the door with a small blue duffle bag printed with the Duke logo, and a laptop bag over her shoulder. Fowler walked briskly to the SUV, opening the hatch for her bags and a door for her to sit. He felt like a chauffeur. Jumping into the passenger seat, he could barely get the door closed before Pierson took off.
Fowler introduced Pierson lazily while buckling his seatbelt. Walker leaned up towards the front seats.
“Where are we meeting the defense secretary?” she asked.
“The CDC,” Fowler said, holding the handrail above the window as Pierson took a sharp turn towards the freeway.
“In Atlanta?”
“Yup.”
“Why?”
Fowler gave a heavy sigh as he leaned back against the headrest. “Ma’am, I really wish I knew.”
In all honesty, he really didn’t.
Traffic was light along the 147 freeway. It took barely over ten minutes to return to Raleigh-Durham International. The black SUV careened around the off-ramp loop, hastily following signs to the airport. Walker hated navigating RDU, but the agent driving seemed to know where he was going. He pulled the car off the main road for departures, drove around the parking structure, and arrived at a small, single-room building beside a ten-foot-high gate.
All four tinted windows were lowered as the vehicle pulled to a stop. Out of the building lumbered a puffy-faced man in a blue windbreaker labeled “TSA.” He began walking towards the car; the agent behind the wheel leaned out his window.
“It’s us.”
The man continued moving slowly, not seeming to care about the DIA agent’s perceived rush. He peered in the window at Walker like she might be a giant bag of drugs disguised as a woman. Pierson quickly became impatient, tapping his hand on the wheel. “We told you we were picking up another passenger.”
“I know,” the man droned. “Is she bringing any packages onto the property?”
“Yes, and their contents are classified, so let’s go. We’re in a hurry.”
Glaring lethargically at Pierson, the TSA agent shuffled back into the building at his leisurely pace. A moment later, the gate began opening and the SUV started forward.
“Not sure if her bags fall under ‘top secret,’” Fowler said casually as he looked towards a small commercial jet off to the side.
“Fuuuck him,” Pierson said. “Transit dick. You know they fail 80% of their tests to detect weapons? I’m not letting one of them hold us up so they can pretend like they do their jobs for a minute.”
“I think it’s down to 70.”
“Oh, well in that case…”
Cool air rushed into the open windows as the Escalade took a sweeping turn towards the small plane.
“Why aren’t we using a military airport?” Walker shouted over the noise of the wind and distant jet engines.
“This one’s closer,” Fowler said back without elaborating. Walker didn’t press further. If they were flying to Atlanta on this plane, she’d have at least an hour to pry for information.
At the bottom of the mobile staircase stood a man in brown slacks and a light blue button-up shirt. As they walked up, Pierson handed over the Escalade’s keys and trotted up the stairs. The man didn’t so much as look at Walker, but shook Fowler’s hand when he hiked by.
The plane was only four seats wide, split into pairs by a narrow walkway. As soon as Fowler got inside, the pilot closed the hatch and headed into the cockpit. He did not seem happy about the arrangement. They settled into three aisle seats near the front. The engines were already firing up as she clicked her seatbelt in, apparently last used by a giant.
With the sun almost setting, both agents removed their sunglasses. Walker felt like she was seeing them for the first time. Fowler appeared concerned, deep in thought across the aisle from her. In front of him, Pierson looked intense — almost angry. It made Walker a bit uneasy. She almost preferred it when they were robots.
“Is this a commandeering?” Walker asked, only partially joking. Fowler seemed to have an internal debate before answering.
“I suppose.”
“All to save twenty minutes of travel time?”
“That sounds about right.”
Walker laughed in disbelief. “Wonderful to see our taxes being used efficiently…a private plane for the good of the commonwealth.”
“Better safe than sorry,” he said dismissively. Even with his glasses off, the DIA agent was stoic, and the cryptic nature of the situation was becoming an annoyance. Walker recognized that these two might not be allowed to explain much — hell, they might actually not know anything — but somebody did, and that person owed her an explanation. They requested her.
She tried to hold back her frustration. “I forgot how many lives can be lost every minute an ecological biology professor isn’t around. The Pentagon understands I don’t study diseases, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then what? I refuse to believe the safety of our nation depends on my knowledge of vultures or alligators.”
“You’ve never been to Georgia then.”
“I’ve — ” Walker paused, caught off guard by the reserved agent’s bout of sarcasm. He reclined his chair and closed his eyes.
“Your name was on a list of people to contact,” he added. Walker sat back as well, staring blankly at the seat in front of her as the plane took off, her mind reeling.
A list?
The paper Walker wrote on taxonomic classification would likely have caused some backlash even without the political spectacle. Linnaean taxonomy — named after Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus — was almost three hundred years old, and due for an overhaul.
Every plant and animal was given a classification of increasingly specific size down to the exact species. These names were typically Latin, such as felis catus — a domesticated cat. Felis refers to a genus of small cats, and catus differentiates them from their wild counterparts like the jungle cat. Moving into larger groups, the animals get less similar. Family felidae includes all cats big and small, from tabby to lion, continuing up to the kingdom, animalia and, more recently, the cellular domain of eukarya.
It was nothing more than an administrative convenience. The jungle cat was also commonly called a reed cat or swamp cat, but their taxonomy ensures they’re never confused scientifically. The system was well ahead of its time, predating the concept of genetics by 124 years, and as a result, it was far from perfect. Scientists used sloppy methods to identify animals that were already classified — what was referred to as “parallel nomenclature.” It resulted in a wide range of issues, one of the most famous ones surrounding the African spitting cobra.
As the name suggested, spitting cobras were dangerous. The venom might only cause permanent blindness when spat into a victim’s eyes, but bites were lethal — a danger only amplified by having them classified in two different genera. African spitting cobras were in the subgenus Afronaja, near other spitting cobras, as well as a separate genus — Spracklandus.
Thankfully, Afronaja wasn’t a famous example due to a plague of medical mishaps, but rather because the research was regarded to have been stolen — an increasingly common issue. Many so-called scientists build their entire careers on naming animals; some named thousands. None of them were out in the wild discovering each species. They were thieves specializing in clerical formalities.
Real biologists would spend years tracking an individual animal — called the holotype — collecting data and building documentation. Before they were done, someone would steal the partially-completed work to name the species. It was as juvenile as it sounded. Many researchers stopped publishing their findings entirely.
The act was more recent, fueled by the internet and systemically enabled within the industry. Scientific publications were done through a formal process including a thorough peer review, but taxonomy was not. It was governed by a specific entity — the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature, and their guidelines contained no significant methods of validation, allowing taxonomy vandals to publish through their own websites without review. Walker mentioned some of the vandals and ICZN by name, outlining potential systems in detail that would remove both issues, among others. That same year marked the launch of the Earth BioGenome Project, which aimed to map every complex life form on the planet. Genetic classification was inevitable, the only question was whether they wanted to get ahead of the tide.
In effect, they would use the holotype as a genetic marker, with percentages of variance for levels of classification inside a Linnaean-style hierarchy. There was more to it, but it allowed for adaptation, holding together in the most extreme of situations — fragmented DNA, a species evolving out of its existing classification, even the incorporation of extraterrestrial organisms with the same level of accuracy. Mars was a hot topic in the years leading up to her paper, with evidence suggesting it had once contained life. It wasn’t the focus of her paper by any means, just an example — what if we found an alien bacterium with genetic similarities to terrestrial life? Instead of using incomplete knowledge to build the taxonomy, the very act of classification would help scientists define their knowledge.
The taxonomy vandals locked onto it. Then came the fallout, sexism in STEM fields, bountiful press, Oprah…all of it.
One of the numerous PR events Walker did revolved around space exploration. The presidential administration of the time was considered anti-space by many, so they did a few media grabs to appear more cosmos-friendly. One of those displays involved compiling a list of top scientists to consult in the event of extraterrestrial contact. It was an idle version of the Voyager golden record, which was placed on the spacecraft to play Earth sounds for aliens. It was a cute idea, but ultimately a stunt. Prominent researchers in a wide range of fields were added. Given the spotlight on her and the surrounding conversation, Walker was included as a “trailblazer in the future study of extraterrestrial biology.”
It was worth a good laugh, which was exactly what she’d had. It was one of the least-noteworthy events of her career.
Mild turbulence rocked the small airliner back and forth. Walker turned slowly to Fowler.
“Agent, you said I was on some government list?”
His eyes remained closed. “Mhm.”
“It’s not a black list, is it?”
He smiled. “No.”
“It was a list of researchers from various fields?”
“That’s right.”
Walker tried to think of other possibilities. She didn’t want to sound crazy, but with the secrecy, the DIA involvement, commandeering the plane…if it were an animal-spread disease of some kind, she certainly would have heard about it through her circles, if not on…
The news.
She stared intently at Fowler, looking for any sort of reaction. “I saw a report about a plane crash. A test pilot in Georgia — we’re heading to Georgia.”
“That we are.”
“It wasn’t a test pilot, was it?” She waited for the likely response — that he wouldn’t be able to discuss the details of any military activity. He sat up to respond but Walker cut him off. “Are we heading to a possible…alien crash site?”
With his mouth already open to speak, he inhaled a little heavier than usual. He also didn’t laugh, which was perhaps more revealing. Pierson turned back from the seat in front.
“Dr. Walker, we’re not allowed to tell you anything we know, which is very little. The secretary of defense will be briefing you with us. Okay?”
Her head was spinning. If this was simply a UFO — a likely spy craft — there wouldn’t be all of the red carpet. The execution of this operation required some level of certainty.
Walker didn’t ask anything else for the duration of the flight. She didn’t know what research to prep; her only exposure to the topic was a tongue-in-cheek demonstration of a genetic classification system she’d proposed five years ago that wasn’t even adopted.
She was completely unqualified for this.
