Ghost of a Chance

Chapter 9

Dominic Parker downloaded the image onto his hard drive.  He saved it, encrypted it, and opened a fresh copy to manipulate, keeping the original contained in his virtual vault.  

His terminal was connected directly to the agency's mainframe, although the connection between the two did not allow any Internet traffic to pass between them.  Dominic pursed his thin lips and examined the copy's credentials.  Everything was identical; the check-sums matched.  His thin lips tugged upwards at the corners, and his dark eyes glittered with satisfaction.  Good.  

Now he turned his attention to the image itself.  He pushed his dark hair back a bit, and leaned toward the screen.  It required a professional falsification for Dominic to need to take a second look at any image; his abilities were sensitive enough to spot the fakes before he wasted time on them.  He still went through the motions, documenting each step in the process, but he completed that work for his superiors.  He had already known.  He always knew.

The image on the screen in front of him, though, bothered him.  It looked...right.  He could find no other word.  It was right.  There was no manipulation, no Photoshopping, no digital tricks; nothing artificial.   Not a pixel seemed to be out of place.  He knew before he ran his battery of computer-assisted programs to verify the fact.  The image was genuine.  It was either completely authentic, or Dominic was looking at the greatest faked image since the Patterson Bigfoot film of 1967.  Dominic stretched and shook the stiffness from his broad shoulders; he knew the truth about that footage as well, but he was not about to tell anyone.  Not, at least until he got out of the Federal Information Processing Agency, and only then for a great sum of cash and a clear path to the exit door.  FIPA had long arms, but Dominic was determined that when the time came to cash in his chips, he was going to be the one they couldn't reach.  

But this.  This lonely image, taken in a quarry by a simple trail camera, had the potential to ruin his grandiose exit plans.  Since his first day at the agency, he had considered the possibility of an actual paranormal image, and the resulting fallout; the amount of Internet chatter told he had misjudged the initial impact.  Sitting at his desk, only hours removed from the posting of Teddi's image, he wondered two things:  did anyone else at the Agency understand what they were dealing with, and how he could turn this bombshell to his advantage?

Dominic smiled again.  I'd make a lousy poker player, he thought.  

He ran the required filters, processors, and wipes.  Each time, the figures came back just as he had suspected: there was more than a ninety-five percentile chance that the image had not been doctored.  The data only confirmed what his eyes and gut already told him.  And each time, he adjusted the figures on the report.  Seven reports run, as was standard; seven different false interpretations noted.  He moved the gradient filter report higher, to 98%, to obfuscate the issue further.  He knew that one report, showing near-certainty, would be the outlier his superiors would seize on.  Having one markedly deviated number would make them that much sure that the other six numbers were the correct ones, and would give them ammunition for the news media.  They could go on any cable outlet and explain that yes, the image appeared genuine, and there was even one measure that showed it was, but the bulk of the evidence was that the snapshot was a hoax.  Clever, but a hoax.  Dominic perched the truth high atop a manure pile, and he knew human nature.  Nobody would climb the manure pile to get the truth.  

He stood up, pushing his black leather chair away; it scurried away like a chipmunk after an acorn on a runway.  Just before an airplane ran over it.  

“Hey, watch it with the chair, Ace.”  

Dominic glared at his suite-mate, Jeannette Edwards.  “Did it hit you, Jeanette?  And I've instructed you before to not call me Ace.  My name is Dominic.”