A Small Gray Dot

Dr. Bennet shook his head. “That’s not what I’m saying, Tennessee. In fact, I do think it will negate the shield and the lasers. Nevertheless, I don’t know what the middle switch controls. Those instructions weren’t clear. It did have the term “anomaly” in it but the rest didn’t translate into English. It’s speculation to think it’s there to shut it down.”

He shrugged. “They know it will disable their defense and offense, so that could be the reason they were trying to get it back. Besides, I’ve been thinking about it and concluded that they don’t need to be able to shut down the wedge from this end. That would strand them here. They are intelligent beings even if they think differently, so I can only consider that they know this.”

Those were good reasons but I wondered why the instructions would even mention the anomaly if the canceler didn’t have anything to do with shutting it down. Still, it was a disturbing thought. Everyone was assembled and depending on me to find a way to destroy the thing once we got there. What if I pointed the apparatus at the machine and nothing happened? More Binqua would show up and I was certain they would be better fighters. That would be bad. My hope was that the doctor was overthinking the whole thing.

“We have to go anyway, Doctor. We don’t have a choice or time to wait around. Simon’s out there right now filling everyone in and getting them organized.”

Dr. Bennett clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Don’t get upset, son. I have something that could work if the canceler doesn’t. Come with me.” He started down the hall.

Lowell and Buster looked at me with raised eyebrows.

I shrugged and turned to follow him. “Stay here, I’ll be back,” I said.

Buster said, “I’m going with you. I wanna see this thing,” and he tagged along as I trotted after the fast moving man.

We went through the bedroom and into the lab where the doctor stood in front of a wall cabinet next to the big surveillance monitor. He pulled open the doors and withdrew something that resembled a tuning fork.

“Is that it?”

Buster and I shot looks at each other. It looked… homemade.

“Yes. I cooked it up a while back when I was playing around with an idea I thought might help solve the problem of our diminishing electrical power.” He snorted. “Well, that was before I learned about the Binqua and why we were getting power outages so naturally it didn’t work.” He gave a rueful smile. “Subsequently – and accidentally, I might add – I found it can make electronics and electrical devices go haywire. For that reason, I call it a scrambler. It works, or at least it does on computers and other devices – as long as you’re within two feet and its pointed directly at the switch or the wiring of whatever it is you’re trying to scramble. Now, I never saw whether the wedge mechanism had something as simple as a switch, in fact, it probably doesn’t. But it looked similar to the machine in Henderson’s office from which I saw him remove a panel.”

He shrugged. “I can’t tell you how he removed it but it’s likely that all their devices have such service panels, so I believe if you can get close enough to it and can get that panel off, you should be able to stop it with this.” He handed me the scrambler. “Press it there” – he pointed to a makeshift button in the handle – “and that will turn it on.”

I stared at the thing skeptically. Apparently, it was homemade. “So, if the canceler doesn’t work, all I have to do is shove this inside the machine and it’ll be disrupted.”

He pushed his glasses up his nose and studied me for a moment before saying, “It should, Tenn, but as I said, it has only come into contact with items I have in the lab – and a lamp. There hasn’t been any way to test it on anything more complex, something made by them.”

Swell. That was a lot of “ifs” and a big “maybe”.  If I could find a panel on the wedge to remove, if I could figure how to get it off, if the canceler operated as I thought, and if not, then maybe the scrambler would do the trick. Nevertheless, it was all we had and so I was going to have to go with it.

I stuck the canceler in one jacket pocket and the scrambler in another. We went through the bedroom and back into the livingroom. Lowell was watching for us to come back down the hall and Simon was just coming in the front door. I was sure the people out there understood the simple plan. Which was, when broken down to its basics: beat-the-shit-out-of-the-Binqua-and-get-Tennessee-to-the-wedge-alive.

“Are we ready to go?” asked Lowell.

“Yes.”

“Let’s go get it done, then, boy!” said Simon, his eyes glinting with anticipation.

They picked up the bags of ammo and weapons they’d left in the entry.

Terry had fallen asleep on the couch. I didn’t try to wake him. The poor guy was exhausted after being up practically all night and then running all over the neighborhood. I looked at his sleeping face. He was younger but I thought of my cousin Will.