SFSD X

Contact (6.4)

O'Neill gazed into the warmest brown eyes he could remember seeing. A soft hand reached across the table to rest lightly on his. He smiled and picked up his fork, wondering how soon they could leave the restaurant and go home to bed.

They had only been going out together for a few weeks, but already he knew Carla was the best thing that had happened to him in his whole life. She filled his days with fun and laughter, his nights with passion. He couldn't imagine how he had lived so long without her.

Only last week they'd flown to Bora Bora, after Carla had found pictures in a magazine and he'd told her he'd always wanted to go there.

"What are you waiting for?" she'd asked. "Life is too short to waste. Let's take a holiday."

So he had—his first holiday in years. Surely work could manage without him for once. Looking back, he'd spent all too many hours at the office and even when he'd gone home he'd still been working most nights. It wasn't as if he needed the money either, he had millions.

It was time to do something for himself, enjoy life and step back from the constant pressure of work.

True, the Indian contract still needed attention but, as Carla had suggested, he could easily turn the project over to someone else to complete. It was only another coal mine when all was said and done; it was hard to understand now, why he'd thought it was so important.

And Bora Bora had lived up to all his expectations. Five marvellous days of sun and crystal water, cocktails on the beach and a charming wooden hut over the sea to sleep in. They were already talking about going back in a few months. After they returned from their skiing trip to Switzerland.

~~~

Rodriguez frowned as he reread the report from his best agent. At least he'd thought Volkov was the best—until now. After weeks of painstaking digging and research, he'd come up with nothing. It was as if Contact had sprung into life out of thin air—fully formed. The company was based off-shore, apparently hidden behind an impenetrable wall of shell companies, firewalls and invisible staff. Once he'd realised they weren't getting anywhere investigating the company, Rodriguez directed Volkov to turn his attention to some of the "dates."

While tech assistant Brian Manning had been only too eager to talk about his new girlfriend, Melanie, once again, Volkov had run into a brick wall. It seemed Melanie had arrived in town with no history, no record of her birth, education or previous life that Volkov could find. When Volkov reported the same results for two more Contact "dates," Rodriguez was almost certain he was confronting a sophisticated scam.

Despite the late hour, he rang Volkov on his mobile.

"I read your report. What's going on?" Rodriguez demanded. "It's obviously some sort of racket, they must be making money out of it somehow."

"That was the first thing I tried," Volkov protested. "Follow the money trail, the first law of detecting, but there isn't one. Signing up is free. At least at the moment. Who knows what will happen down the track? But that's not the issue which worries me most. Where are they getting all these women from? That's what I want to know," Volkov had said.

"What do you mean?"

"You must have noticed that nearly all of them are what you'd call physically attractive, beautiful even. Far more than the population average. Where have they been all this time—before joining Contact I mean? Why were they all still single and available?"

Rodriguez frowned. "Hmm."

"It's as if they have a factory somewhere, churning them out!" Volkov added. "Like in 'Stepford Wives'."

Rodriguez found himself actually considering the idea for a moment, before he joined in Volkov's wry laughter. No one had that sort of technology, not even the US, and he should know.

"I want you to keep looking," instructed Rodriguez. "They'll have to slip up sooner or later." He ended the call on Volkov's reluctant agreement.

Contact had to be a scam, but who was behind it? Setting up new identities and deleting the back trails so efficiently was a highly specialised and expensive process. Not for amateurs. Some crime syndicate perhaps? Or more likely, a rival power—the Chinese possibly, or the Russians. But to what purpose? Extortion? Blackmail?

Contact had spread across the planet, no country was immune, though Volkov reported that it was having a higher success rate in some places more than others. Rodriguez knew from his own observation that half his staff were either already dating Contact matches or else in the process of doing so. His blood ran cold as he thought of possible consequences. What if it wasn't about money at all? What if the sole purpose of Contact was to infiltrate key organisations, to discover secrets—influence decision making?

Eventually Rodriguez rubbed his tired eyes, stretched, and yawned. Time to pack it in for the night. Dimmed lights glowed faintly from each room on the floor as he walked down the corridor, emphasising the silence. It appeared he was the last one to leave, apart from the security guard. He frowned. Normally there would be people working all hours until the current project was completed, it appeared Contact was already having a deleterious effect. Instead of being hard at work, his staff had left early, hurrying home to their Contact partners.

Rodriguez was still too wound up to sleep when he got home. He made himself a sandwich, then flicked through his collection of sci-fi movies, searching for something to take his mind off the problems posed by Contact and help him relax.

Aliens. Barbarella. E.T. His lip curled, surely the most unlikely scenario yet. He wouldn't have kept it except that it was a present from his young niece. Galaxy Quest... entertaining, but hardly realistic. Independence Day. Now there was a plot he feared all too likely. Matrix. Eventually he selected The Day the Earth Stood Still. He liked the picture of the robot on the front and besides, he hadn't seen it yet.

Three hours later, he sat straight up in bed, his heart pounding and sweat beading on his forehead. He'd been dreaming—a nightmare. Something about aliens appearing from a cloud of fog. Always, he'd pictured aliens as having a distinct physical form—whether humanoid or other—but what if they didn't? What if they came as particles and then took any shape they wanted? He fought to recover the last wisps of the dream, but it melted away, out of reach.

Then he laughed. That damn film! That would teach him to watch a suspense movie before bed. He would have been wiser to choose Galaxy Quest after all.

He yawned. Tomorrow was Saturday, perhaps he'd allow himself a bit of a sleep-in for once. Go into work after lunch instead of before.

He was just finishing a late breakfast when the doorbell rang. He looked through the peephole and saw...

Rodriguez flung the door wide, his heart pounding with a mixture of dread and outrage.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded harshly. "How did you get this address?"

A beautiful young man stood there, with sun gold hair, sculptured cheek bones and eyes... For a moment Rodriguez could have sworn his eyes were bottomless holes, filled with pinpricks of cold light... before they turned sapphire blue.

"Hullo, General." His Contact date smiled. "Can I come in?"

(Author's Note - this is the end of Contact.  A new story, Tabula Rasa starts next)