A Hard Rain: Book Two Of The Shift Trilogy

Chapter 22

Stubb Foundation

Laurel, Maryland

January 2013

Rita Luevano wasn't the swooning type. She'd been through a lot in her forty-odd years of life. She nearly drank herself into oblivion as a teenaged Goth runaway, she'd had been in a lot of fights, she had fought in the Battle for Monticellan Independence; she had lost an eye and a few teeth to it, and she had witnessed the rise of the Gaia Piety Society. So, it was a little surprising when she nearly lost consciousness. She would have collapsed on the floor had her husband Akil not been there to ease her into one of the swivel chairs.

Akil knelt beside her as Rita shook herself out of the stagger of confusion. She placed her palms on her forehead as if trying to rub sense into the insanity.

"Okay, okay, just relax, Rita." Helmut who leaned over to her right seemed to have regained his faculties while she felt she had lost all of hers. "I know it's a lot to take in. Just breathe."

"Rita, are you feeling sick? Helmut, did you get my mother sick?" The computer generated face scowled at the people below.

"Just a minute, Jamil. She's a little disoriented. Please, just give her a little room and go back to sleep."

"Okay," the voice of a pre-pubescent boy sulked.

"Helmut?" she called.

"I, I know. From the beginning, right?"

Rita nodded not able to say anything more. Akil looked about as terrified as she felt. He pulled up a chair and sat next to the couple while the rest of the team sidled up to listen.

"It's real," said the gunnery sergeant as he pecked at the keys of a computer next to a Stubb Foundation woman who looked too frightened to protest.

"Please, Gunny, she's working," Helmut said. The gunnery sergeant must have been as shocked, because he obeyed the diminutive scientist.

"Okay, Rita, Akil, ladies, gents, Gunny, I know this is a lot to absorb here, so I'll try to tell you what I can. First, I would like to welcome you all to the Stubb Foundation. It's not often we receive guests."

"This is where you worked?"

"Well, actually, I didn't work in here. I was upstairs...you know, the abandoned floors above ground. I was part of the official operations of the Stubb Foundation, contracting with the US Department of Energy to keep track movement of all nuclear material, just like I said. But that is just the public face of the Stubb Foundation."

"What's going on here? How," trying to sort her myriad of questions out mentally, "How is this possible?"

"I understand your confusion. I'm trying to find a good place to start. Reverend, have you ever heard of molecular electronics?"

Rita's brows knitted. "Do you mean nanotechnology?"

"Well, close, kind of, but not exactly. What is your knowledge of computers?"

Rita rubbed her eye patch wearily. It was a funny question, like asking her about a subject she hadn't taken since high school.

"Not much except how to use them."

Helmut smirked as she continued. "I know that the micro circuits that formed the CPUs were made of silicon and that the Shift fried every one of them, or so I thought up until now."