The Kuiper Abnormality: Or Humanity, we are all doomed.

Chapter 16: Hank

     Dr. Hank Burney was worried. He had signed is life away twenty years earlier, and knew that one day the government was going to come back. So, he periodically hacked into Strategic Command, NORAD, NASA, and even the personal computers of amateur astronomers to track everything entering Earth's atmosphere. Most of the time, everything checked out and whatever burned up was already accounted for space debris or meteors. But this time it was different. A "faulty satellite," as it was called by NORAD, had entered the atmosphere over Nebraska. The only problem was the fact that there hadn't been any faulty satellites over Nebraska in a very long time. Judging by its angle of entry, he could only believe that whatever it was that burnt up was none other than that wretched spacecraft, the Korna V. 

     Before he was approached by the Air Force, Hank had a lot going for him. He had a wife, a house, a dog, and friends. Now he had been reduced to a lunatic, the insane epidemiologist living in the ghetto part of Detroit, all because he had signed that contract with the government all those years before. In the mid-90s, Hank mysteriously disappeared for a good year. Any attempt by the authorities to look into the disappearance was silenced by the periodic visit of men in Air Force combat uniforms, and the subsequent "suicide" of whoever was looking into the case the most, often with five gunshots to the head. His family held a funeral for him that was interestingly attended by all sorts of military personnel, which would've made sense if Hank had served in the armed forces, but he never did. When he came back to Ann Arbor, he walked into his home only to find that his wife was having a fun night with an officer from the Michigan Air National Guard. All of his stuff was gone, apparently having been left to the government in a will he never actually wrote. His ex-wife and the officer kept the dog. When he went to tell his colleagues at the University of Michigan of his return, they welcomed him back, but isolated him from the rest of the department. His former friends regarded him to be a traitor, a man who toyed with their emotions by selfishly faking his death and staging his own funeral. They never welcomed him back into their circle. The same situation played out with his family. He became engrossed in his work afterwards, cursing the government under his breath and releasing papers that were quite frankly, entirely unimportant for either the epidemiology department or the university in general. The most notorious of these papers was titled The Andromeda Strain revisited: The very real threat of extraterrestrial pathogens carried across space by space junk. These papers made him a laughingstock within the scientific community, but they had all been inspired by what he had learned during his year of disappearance. Now homeless, he was forced to by a cheap home in the slums of nearby Detroit, where he saw the city's decline firsthand. 

     But the circumstances were different now. He had regained some respect within the scientific community, having long since come out of the realm of pseudoscience. He still lived in the slums, but he now had a woman that he corresponded with. He was even deployed abroad by the World Health Organization during the outbreaks of swine flu and Ebola. But one day, that probe would come back, and ruin his life again. So when he saw it on the screens, he booked a flight to New York, where the Swiss consulate whose jurisdiction covered Michigan resided. So he drove to the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, checked in his bags, went through TSA screening while cursing George W. Bush under his breath, and finally boarded American Airlines flight 113, bound for John F. Kennedy International Airport. 

     After navigating his way through the subway system, Hank finally found himself at the doors of 633 3rd Avenue #30, the Consulate General of Switzerland. He stepped inside and went up to the desk.
"Guten tag," said the receptionist in thick Swiss German. "How may I help you, mein Herr?"
"Listen man, you've gotta help me! The US Government's hunting me down!" Begged Hank.
"And why is that?" Asked the receptionist.
"It's a very long story that goes back to this big astronomical discovery in the mid-90s. NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency found a wormhole in the Kuiper Belt!"
The receptionist chuckled.
"I'm serious! You've gotta believe me!"
"This story is quite interesting! Do continue," replied the receptionist, mockingly.
"So to vastly oversimplify matters, they launched this space probe to go up and get a sample, and I'm on the team to study whatever the f*ck it brings back!"
The receptionist laughed. "I like you. What's your name?"
"Dr. Henry Burney. I'm an epidemiologist working for the University of Michigan."
"Then tell me, Dr. Burney, why would an epidemiologist be working on a top-secret NASA project?"
"They think that they can find out more about the aliens by studying their afflictions."

"You're right. They do!"
"What do you mean by that?"
"It means we're onto you, Burney," said a different voice behind him. 
He spun around to see a group of men in Air Force combat gear, with a leader wearing Air Force command astronaut wings on his uniform. They had come for him. "Well, f*ck!" he looked at the receptionist this time, and said "How is any of this legal? Isn't Switzerland neutral?"
"We are. But your government was one step ahead of you, and planned this out decades ago."
"Look, Burney, this was inevitable. The craft has come back and you signed the contract. Let's go."
"I'm not going with you!"
"Yes you are, Herr Doktor," instead replied the receptionist. He pulled out an EpiPen and stabbed it into Hank's neck. "Auf widersehen," were the last words Hank heard before everything went black.

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This chapter sucked, but I couldn't think of any other way to introduce this character. Anyway, today is December 24th, so to my Christian readers, Merry Christmas. To my Jewish readers, Happy Hanukkah. To my readers of African descent, Happy Kwanzaa even though that's not for a few more days. My point is, if I say "Happy Holidays," I'm going to end up getting accused of alienating people (which is downright dumb). So to minimize the triggering, I'm just going to address you all. Remember to check out Courtney's stuff too, she'll really appreciate it.
-Bryan

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