Day 12: Simulated Morning, International Orbital Station.
Harold Parrish picked up the 10cm tall resin Djinn from the print booth. Yep that’s spot on, and he took a small nail file and sanded down the couple of rough edges. He picked up a cloth dabbed it into a small flat jar and buffed the model of the Djinn. He smiled at the myrrh and frankincense oil fragrance he’d incorporated into the resin during the 3D printing. He held it up to the light, yep very good.
He’d used the CG reconstruction from the latest eye witness accounts of Djinn encounters to build the 3D model and then saved the file into a dot print format and sent it to his printer here. It was only a small one compared to the industrial scale print shops one of his companies was establishing in every major city he could, but weight and size were kinda important in orbit.
Do it Right, Do it First, was his motto. He pushed off from the printer and floated across his small cabin to the large magnetic wall screen displaying a map of the world and positioned the model Djinn at the Syrian coordinates for the SAS team encounter. The base layers of the figurine had iron powder in the resin so were held by the low grade electromagnetic field of the screen. He’d had this screen built to get the maximum size for the lightest weight into the Skylon cargo bay but that would still fit through the International Orbital Stations docking doors. Invest in something the right way from the start, and voila. Harold Parrish was the only entrepreneur to have his own cabin on the IOS. Still he’d worked hard for the privilege and was now the primary contractor for IT systems for the Kalpana One station construction.
Harold paused and looked at the cabins wall screen that acted as a window. He'd added a new programming and voice command. “Screen 2, Kalpana view,” and the screen brought up a view of the structural skeleton of the Kalpana One orbital City there in its stable Lagrange 1 orbital position. “Screen 2, magnify 10 times,” and the view expanded to show details of the construction work proceeding apace around humanities largest space endeavour yet. It was 250 metres across and 325 long, these being the minimum measurements needed to produce a 1G rotational gravity field. It would also be of sufficient size for the atmosphere to successfully filter through natural plant and algae based scrubbers, and not taint with every fart from the several thousand future inhabitants.
There had been much debate and still was as to the safety of the L1 location given its exposure to solar storms. The L2 position was preferred for its protection but it did not have the same solar exposure and so solar power would be less efficient. Needless to say that Kalpana 2 would be built at the L2 orbit and so settle the argument once and for all.
Harold turned back to his situations screen with all his little figurines marking Incarna interventions. They were his hobby within his very busy schedule and it gave him the chance to reconnect with his childhood enthusiasm for making things. There before him was a scene out of any committed Sword and Sorcery gamers table with all of the great and powerful mythical figures deciding the fate of the various human role players. Except here they represented actual death and destruction. The whole thing had Harold stumped.
He picked up one of the Djinn lightning bolts. The theory coming out of Washington and discussed in the latest info release to Jaeger USA, was that this was some sort of orbital or drone released weapon. Harold shook his head at the icon and put it back on the screen. He just couldn’t get the maths to work for that to be the case. The new data coming from the Australians would be important but he wasn’t first inline for it, the Germans and that damned Florian Berg were seeing to that!
Harold picked up Florian’s figurine. He’d dressed him as a medieval Hanseatic merchant spy, which Florian would have loved if he’d seen it. When this was all over I’ll send it to you, and he let it go carefully so it rotated slowly in the zero G of his office. It floated above the situation map screen of the earth like some super suited hero from a graphic novel ready to intervene and save the planet.
Florian was a good friend to Max but he was spreading his influence in ways typical of a clever merchant. He was now directly competing with Jaeger for certain contracts and Harold knew a real competitor when he saw one. His work now with the German Government was only adding to his influence. There were many ways to deal with competitors and Florian wouldn’t suffer personally if everything went the way Harold wanted was positioning Jaeger for.
He plucked Florian from his orbit and paced him back in Germany looking eastward like Europe had for centuries fearing the next surge of slavic invaders. Harold picked up one of the Sirin figurines and allowed himself a smile at how effective that intervention had been in stemming Russian aggression. The latest reports indicated Putin was suffering another bout of whatever it was that kept him out of the media for days at a time. Rumour was, that a Sirin had been seen in the Kremlin and people were fleeing their work, not to return. Even the so called Palace Guard was experiencing desertion not seen since the October Revolution.
Harold frowned and placing the Sirin to float over the screen he picked up one of the Fox Faeires from Korea and one of the Jaguar Women from Mexico. Each were reportedly prowling the countryside tearing the evil hearts out of anyone with a history of crime or violence.
Harold smiled, yes that was a pattern that should have something that could be traced. What was needed now was a search of all deaths, world wide, over the last three months; from any unexplained cause and especially following any sort of dust or sandstorm.
“AIME,” “Yes Harold,”came the voice of his ex-wife, well it kept him on his toes and reminded him never to take anything for granted. “New data search, Deaths,” and a holo screen lit in the air at his face height. “All unexplained world wide deaths last 3 months, key words - magic, mysticism, religious, pagan.” Harold rubbed his eyes then brushed down his bushy beard with his left hand as he watched the data stream indicator compile and display various graphs and tables.
“Overlay ‘Deaths’ with existing display - 'All sand and Dust Storms', last three months.” Harold pushed off from the floor and floated across to his supplies unit and pulled out a packet of Mountain Oolong tea with slices of Toowoomba Ginger floating in it. He placed it in the warmer and waited for the slow heat to bring it to 54 degrees. He never liked the flavour of a good tea after it had been microwaved so he’d had an engineer friend design and build a SlowWave Oven. This was more in tune with the slow food movement approach to eating but compatible with living in high tech environments. They had become a good little earner, funny that!
Harold sucked slowly on his tea while the display began to play-out the interaction of the two data files. Harold watched dust storms swirl across the map of the world and he smiled to himself, well there ya go, you little beauty!