15 [JUST BEFORE]

“Commander, I think you should see this”.

The Corporal looked up from his glowing console and straight at his commanding officer, whose boots clinked like rattlesnakes on the military-grade catwalk. “Sir, Surface grava-metric readings are… well, erratically fluxing up and down like some kind of wind-sock. The satellite feeds are… well, damn odd, sir. All GOES data is not making sense, and visual feed’s intermittent. Diagnostics say we’re seeing accurately.”

This was DeepStar, a military operation, looking 24/7 for potential hostile military movement in space. The Commander, used to life with his crew a quarter-mile below the ground ‘in an undisclosed location’ frowned, started to say something…

A different corner of the room. “Excuse me, Sir, I’m getting ocean sensor data here as well, doesn’t make sense.”

A voice from behind him immediately chimed, “Sir, all the solar-wind measurements began fluxing a few minutes ago, but now they are… well, I’m not sure… never seen…”

“Solar winds or a coronal-mass ejection?” asked the watch commander, an accomplished physics professor himself.

He was loudly cut off. “Sir, the International Space Station just went dark, GeoSat positioning signals are all scrambled…”

“Is this computer failure, or real-data, real-time anomalies?

“All diagnostics say it’s real-data, real-time, sir!”

It was starting to get loud in that hollowed out bit of mountain.

“Ladies and gentleman!” barked the Commander above the mounting ruckus, “get a handle on this! Work-the-problem!” His voice rose a pitch, “there are more PhD’s in this outfit than all of Harvard, so call your reports and I want to know what-the-hell-is-happening in three minutes!” He turned to his personal aide, “get me SecDef at the Pentagon, now.”

“Yes, sir.”

crisbaj

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‘The Last Last Lecture’ is copyright ©2018-2021 by crisbaj. All rights reserved. No reproductions, reprinting or reposting without express permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Contact:  http://www.crisbaj.com

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