In the Time of Man

Taking the middle of the week spot to dispatch more on the science fiction novel. First four chapters are offered below. I intend to get this rewrite complete and make the full book available on here in the near future. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts on these chapters that get the story rolling, let me know.

I also want to say thanks for the great comments and feedback on my question about whether to write politics or stories, true and fiction. The overwhelming answer was to continue what I was doing, offering political commentary and analyses along with my stories. The mix will vary but that is the course I will follow now. And thanks again to everyone who subscribes and has given me a reason to do what I love, and what I would be doing anyway; it’s just great to know you have people who appreciate what you write and look forward to reading your work. That’s quite an honor. - JM)

Chapters 2 and 3

Chapter Four

Looking around the newsroom, Becky Acuna was reminded of her maturity and television journalism’s emphasis on youth. Local TV was hardly a place to be after arriving at mid-life. She had her own vanities, of course, like refusing to wear her brown hair in the short “bob” that had become fashionable among female correspondents and she had a regular appointment to get her nails done, an extravagance she had promised as a young woman to give herself when she got a good job. Becky accepted that being attractive was an advantage in television, but it was becoming more important than the journalism. 

She had to force herself to not be resentful of the glamorous types who got the big anchor money. Becky knew she was not able to compete with their looks but she also found confidence in her journalistic skills serving her career long after her personal attractiveness failed. How she looked was never of great concern, though she understood the aesthetics of her career choice. Becky suffering from the optimism that her writing and TV production skills would make her stand out and attract attention that would increase her profile, and her salary. She was still smoldering with an ambition to work for one of the networks as a national correspondent but after Gene and her bought their new house in the desert, Becky had to acknowledge she was beginning to grow fond of their comfortable life. Why trade that for corporate network pressures and weeks on the road away from her family?

The newscast’s anchors, who Becky privately smirked at for their behavior, were devolving to be more like movie stars than reporters. She found that she despised KSUN's anchorman, a childishly blonde graduate of San Diego State, who bragged that he had majored in "beach." Privately, her colleagues in the field made sneering references to him as "anchor boy" or "Biff Rock." His female counterpart, Heidi Jennifer Jones, was less offensive with her persistently glossy lips and a blaze of red hair, which was always just a little too sharp to be natural. Heidi was passably capable, neither insightful nor oblivious, but Becky never believed that was her real name. And why could she not just use her first and surname when she introduced herself on air? The three name thing ought to be reserved for serial killers, Becky joked one evening with Gene. How do these people get their jobs, she kept wondering?  

In fact, there was no logic behind most of the hires in the KSUN news department.  Becky had always thought that Walter Robbins, the station's general manager, had succeeded because of his hard work and intelligence but he lacked any concept of what it took to be a good reporter. KSUN's GM was aware of only the telegenic demands of broadcast news and acted like that is what generated ratings. Hell, maybe it was. The FOX stations around the country had succeeded using a strategy of building an audience for its affiliates by hiring beautiful people because they tended to get big ratings numbers. Becky kept reminding herself to avoid cynicism but, sheesh, facts were stubborn things, she thought.

As her managing editor Mike Burke crossed the room in her direction, Becky looked up at a TV monitor near the police scanners and saw the slickly-produced open of Desert View, KSUN’s local and low-brow version of an Oprah style talk show. Becky thought the promotions for the program ought to point that out and be a bit more honest. “Live, local, and low-brow.” Certainly, nothing seemed capable of diminishing Desert View’s popularity, which probably had much to do with Michelle Mina, the hostess. GM Walter Robbins was fond of bragging that he had “discovered” his star in the makeup section of a Scottsdale department store. In Becky’s estimation, far too many women succeeding in television looked and acted like Michelle Mina; she was a blonde with long hair and long legs who dressed just to the edge of provocative, used her sexuality as a professional tool, and laced her conversations on-air and off with the entendres of a college frat boy. Regardless, Michelle’s approach captured a nice lucrative audience and Desert View, in terms of consistent ratings among households using television, had turned into the most popular local program in America, and in America, nobody ever mounts an argument against success.

Becky noticed Mike Burke had stopped to speak with another reporter and she went to her cubicle determined to be on the phone when he tapped her on the shoulder, as he invariably did when he had a lousy assignment. Being on the phone was the best way to keep people from pestering you and to prevent editors from dumping lame ideas into your lap. You had to give your supervisor the impression you were already working on a lead story or you were likely to end up doing a report on trends in used car values. Unfortunately, Becky felt Burke’s finger on her shoulder before she had a chance to touch the numbers on her cell phone. 

“Beck?”

“Yeah, Mike. Whatcha got?” 

Mike Burke was carrying a blue call-in assignment sheet. The old school editor had refused to give into digital advancement and email out story ideas. He liked reporters coming to his desk to talk to him about their stories, get his advice, and tell them his expectations. Too often, though, Becky was bothered that Mike seemed to take ideas from viewers that ought to have been completely ignored. Rarely did anyone other than screwballs call into the newsroom claiming to have information that would make a good news story. Becky expected the worst as her editor hovered over her shoulder.

“Have you made any progress on that Luke thing?” Burke’s flat top haircut and cigarette yellow teeth always distracted Becky. She had to struggle to look him in the eyes.

“Not much.  Why?”

“Nothing. I just thought you said it was driving you crazy.”

“It is.”

“Well, why no progress then?”

“Look, Mike, I got some phone numbers from a source in Washington. And I’ve called out there and got someone on the line but they won’t acknowledge even who or where they are, much less talk to me about what’s going on. They also have all kinds of unmarked security guards patrolling the base. They may have been there all along but I just noticed them. And I’m told they’re armed, so getting in there isn’t really likely, either. So, I’m frustrated.”

“I didn’t ask for the history of the world, Acuna. Just wondered if you were still working it. Here. Maybe this will help.” Burke let the assignment sheet flutter to her desk top.

“No name?” she asked as she read Burke’s scribbly notes.

“Nope. He said he’s too afraid but you can call him. He said he works out there.  Doesn’t know exactly what’s going on but he can tell you what he’s been seeing.”

“Seriously?” 

“Suppose so. He said he’s watched you on the news for a while and he thinks he can trust you. Give him a call, eh?” Mike Burke further loosened his unfashionably wide necktie and returned to a chair beneath a row of squawking police scanners. Police department radio calls could now be streamed directly to laptops, desk tops, and handheld wireless devices, but Burke was having none of that convenience. He seemed to need the rattling white noise as an audio backdrop to his work space, and maybe even his entire life.

After dinner last night, Becky’s husband Gene had set up his telescope on their deck to look at Venus as it rose in the purple sky over the desert. He was bent over the viewfinder when Becky spotted another one of the unmarked jets touching down. By the time it had rolled to a stop, she had commandeered Gene’s telescope to watch as four large military ambulances pulled up next to the lowered stairway at the rear of the old 727. The focal length of the lens on the telescope was too long to provide any real detail of objects that close but she tweaked it until fuzzy profiles emerged in the lingering light of sunset. Becky counted 13 people being carried down the stairs and loaded into the ambulances. Three more walked with assistance to a gray Chevrolet Suburban. She wondered if the increasing number of patients coming in on this one plane meant anything. Was a disease of some kind spreading and being kept a secret? That seemed impossible. But maybe this caller knew something that would explain what Becky and her husband were witnessing off the rear deck of their home.

Becky glanced at the small television on her desk and saw Michelle Mina prancing across the screen. Desert View had been on for about ten minutes and Michelle was working the edge of the set between her guest, a handsome, young African-American man, and the audience. She was wearing a black dress cut just above the knees, a gray jacket, and silver high-heeled sandals. Becky had begrudging admiration for Michelle’s acute awareness of the power of her own beauty and youth. The lady certainly knew how to work it.

She turned up the audio to hear the conversation. "You understand, don't you, Mr. Eddington, if I tell you I find it really impossible to believe that happened?"

Her guest feigned offense. "You're not calling me a liar, are you, Miss Mina? I don't think I could stand it unless you believed every word I said."

Becky Acuna was almost immediately put off by the exchange. Two attractive people were flirting with each other in front of a TV camera and the KSUN audience was invited to watch what amounted to a mating ritual. On the screen, Michelle Mina returned her attention to her guest.

"I certainly did not mean to imply, Mr. Eddington, that you were a liar. I only meant to suggest that perhaps you have the same healthy imagination and sexual fantasies as any young man your age. Perhaps, the only difference is that yours are so powerful you believe them to be true."

Michelle gave the audience an inquisitive expression to see how they might be responding to her idea. The only sound, however, was the laughter of the young man, which was coming from behind her.

"That's hilarious, Miss May.  My sexual fantasies have never even come close to being as creative as some of the ladies who approach me. You have no idea. Believe me."

"Or, perhaps I do."

What the hell did she mean by that?  Becky wondered. This was embarrassing. Why didn’t Walter Robbins every say anything to the producer and Michelle for turning morning talk into a dating show? She also recognized the man Michelle was interviewing; he was that famous baseball player from San Francisco. His nickname was “The Jet” because he seemed to almost never be thrown out while trying to steal bases. When the Giants were in town for spring training, Eddington was in both the sports pages and the tabloids because of his unabashed public fondness for beautiful women. Becky remembered him mostly, though, for the fact that he had signed a major league record contract of $35 million dollars a year to play baseball, and he was only in his mid twenties.     

In the studio, Becky saw Michelle Mina quickly climb halfway up the stairs between the two sections of audience seating. "Do tell us another story, Mr. Eddington. I trust this has been happening to you all your life."

"Well, certainly not to this degree. Money does change everything, as I am sure you are well aware. A million dollars will go a lot farther than tall dark and handsome."

"But on either count, you're in good shape, aren't you, Mr. Eddington? Now please, tell us more. See if you can get us to believe the unbelievable."

Becky had the sarcastic thought that Michelle ought to just take off her clothes and get after it in front of the audience. That’s about the only thing that would be more obvious than the current mutual seduction between the TV personality and the professional athlete. Regardless, Becky had to concede that Michelle May certainly knew the entertainment value of getting viewers and the audience to pair her up with the ballplayer, if only in their minds.

 “Jesus,” Becky muttered under her breath. “I have got to get out of this place.” She picked up her cell and punched in the number of a nameless man who had told Mike Burke he might know about what was going on at Luke Air Force Base.

                        *                                              *                                              *

The man, whose name was Vicente Cantu, had asked Becky to give him time to arrive at their restaurant meeting place ahead of her and he was sitting in a corner booth, hands curled around a cup of coffee, by the time she parked. Becky recognized him from the red baseball cap he said he would be wearing. Fortunately, there was none of that MAGA nonsense on the front of it. She walked up to his table without attracting the attention of people who might know her from all of her years on the nightly news.

"Mr. Cantu?"

Vicente' stood immediately. "Yes, yes. Miss Acuna. Thank you for coming. Please sit down. I'm just having coffee. Would you want some?"

"No, thank you."

A waiter came over before their conversation got involved and Becky ordered a fried egg sandwich on toast with a glass of Sprite. Becky was conscious of her grooming in Vicente's presence and tried to hide her manicured hands. She saw, though, that he was taking in details and she worried he might be hesitant to give her information if he concluded they were too different. Vicente did not have the look of a working man but his shoulders were square and muscled and he had a laborer’s weariness. He wore a maroon ASU Sun Devil baseball tee shirt and when he talked his mouth curled up to his left side like he was sneering at his own words. There were stacks of wrinkles in the corners of his sun-scoured eyes. 

Becky looked at Vicente' and smiled, hoping to make the stranger comfortable. "Mr. Cantu, my editor says you wanted to talk about unusual things out at Luke.”

Vicente' looked away across the room at the other diners and then sipped his coffee.  "I don’t know what’s going on, exactly. We are running some kind of a hospital but we don’t cure anyone."

"I’m not sure what you are saying, Mr. Cantu."

“Well, a lot of sick people are brought to us but they all end up dead. I don’t know what’s wrong with them. But they are weak and they die.”

Vicente paused as Becky's food arrived but she pushed her plate away and focused on what he was saying.           

“They call it the Bleak House,” Vicente continued. “I think that’s a good name. It’s very bleak.”

“The Bleak House? Tell me about what you see happening in the Bleak House.” Becky reached in her purse and took out a reporter’s pad and a pen. 

“These people are so sick.” Vicente shook his head. “And I don’t know where they come from. The government just brings them to us, mostly on airplanes. And we try to help. But we never do. No matter what the doctors give them, it never works. They just die and die and die.”

“Can we back up a second? What is it you do in the Bleak House, Mr. Cantu?”

“I’m just an orderly. I don’t do anything important. I help the doctors. Get things for the patients. I guess I do a little bit of everything.”

“Well, is it a hospital? You make it sound like a hospital that just deals with a certain kind of a disease.”

“I guess it’s a hospital; except we don’t ever make anyone better. The doctors sometimes call it a bio-safety facility. No family ever shows up. I don’t get that. Don’t these people have family? Or maybe the government won’t let them visit. I don’t know.”

Becky flipped another page in her notebook. She was scribbling, furiously, but had set her iPhone on record before she had got to the booth to sit with Vicente. 

“What’s the disease, Mr. Cantu? Do you know anything about it?”

“I only know that people can’t eat or they have no appetite. They have no energy.  Very few of them can even walk. The healthiest one we ever had come in was allowed to go out on the athletic field and walk. He was pretty determined. But he ended up like the rest of them. He just wasted away till he was a skeleton and died.”

“What happens to the bodies? Do families claim them?”

“Oh no. They do autopsies and lots of tissue stuff but the bodies are loaded onto a truck a couple of times a week. I think they are taken away and burned but I don’t know for sure.”

“Burned?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus. What do the doctors say? Do you hear them talking? Does the disease have a name?”

“Nobody says much of anything and when the doctors talk they whisper. I think they might be afraid of catching this thing, whatever it is. Besides, it’s all a big secret. The government obviously doesn’t want anyone to know. And that’s what scares me. We all had to sign papers saying that we wouldn’t even tell our spouses about what we were doing for a living and if we do we can go to jail.”

“Do you know if it’s contagious?”  Becky stopped writing and looked up.

“No. I don’t think the doctors know, either. But I have heard enough talk to know they don’t know how people get it, either. But they have to get the disease somehow, right?”

“Of course.” 

“Whatever it is,” Vicente continued. “I think they believe somehow they can contain it or cure it or whatever. But I heard one of the doctors say that it’s on the verge of getting out of control in Africa so I think they’re just trying to keep it from going wild over here. The doctors say everything written about it in Africa is just that people are starving to death and that’s an old story in Africa, isn’t it? I do know something is very wrong and the government is trying to hide it from us. Maybe we’ll all be dead before anyone ever tells us anything. I’ve worked there for three years. I may already be dying and not know it yet.”

“Is that why you are risking jail to talk to me?” Becky sipped her drink and gave Vicente an almost accusatory stare over her glass.

“No. That’s not why.”

“No?”

“No. I’m here because I think my sister may have this thing, whatever it is. I’m worried about her.”

"Your sister?"

"Yes."

"Where is she? Can we go talk to her?"

 "We can. But she lives way out in Buckeye."

 "I don't care. Come on, we'll take my car."

                        *                                              *                                              *

A county road led them west of Buckeye out toward the Gila Bend Mountains. The sun was behind the range but the sky remained a cast of blue and orange above the peaks, the God-like smears of color whose beauty had kept Becky fixed in her desert existence and tamped down her national ambitions. She turned the car down a two-track pointed out by Vicente and they drove through a forest of saguaro and prickly pear in the direction of the distant mountains. 

Ten minutes later, Angel's house came into view. They first saw the window lights she had illuminated against the desert darkness and, Becky thought, probably the loneliness that would overcome anyone being this far into the desert. Pulling up in front, Becky was not surprised to see a small shrine to the Virgin Mary erected off to the side of the house. A low wattage bulb glowed behind the figurine even though no one ever saw the religious structure except the rare unexpected visitors and the eyes of God.        

Vicente did not knock on the door and when they entered the house Becky Acuna thought she registered shock in his sister's voice.

"Vicente, what are you doing here tonight?"

"Hello, sister."

"I am so happy to see you. And who is this?"

"This is my friend Becky Acuna. Becky, this is my sister Angel Mata."

Becky stepped forward into the light falling from the porch lamp and reached out.  When Angel completely emerged from behind the door Becky had to restrain herself from gasping. Angel’s pale skin was almost opaque and lay in sharp relief against her cheekbones and her eyes were slightly bulging over dark smudges, which made it look like she had been double-punched in a fight. A loose pullover hung off her shoulder and her clavicle bone stood out almost independent from the rest of her body. Becky thought Angel had the tall forehead and tumbling hair of a glamorous cover girl but she was far too thin and looked emaciated to the edge of death. She moved as though on the brittle bones of someone well past age eighty.

Becky took Angel’s hand and held it gently with both of hers. A slight tremble betrayed Angel's apprehension at the stranger's presence in her home. Becky knew she was being appraised and that, in her business suit and heels, she was probably being mistaken for a psychiatrist or a doctor brought to her rescue by her brother.   

"Becky is a reporter," Vicente' said. "I wanted you to meet her and tell her when this started and how you’ve been feeling. She is from the television news."

"Oh." Angel almost sounded relieved. “But why does the news want to talk to me? Because I am sick? I don’t understand.”

“I told you it was about what was happening at my work,” Vicente explained. “Maybe we can figure out what’s wrong with you, too.”

“My doctor can’t. He just tells me to eat something and get some sleep. I eat what I can but it won’t stay in me. And I’m never hungry, you know that Vicente.”

As they moved to sit at the table, Becky looked around the modest kitchen and was slightly repulsed at the filth. Angel Mata clearly did not have the energy to clean, either. Trash was piled in corners and water in the sink was dark and rank. Vicente had told Becky on their drive out to the desert that Angel’s husband Roberto worked in construction as a project foreman and that he traveled a lot and was only home every few weeks.

Vicente’ pulled back a chair and helped his sister to sit. She looked out the open window and seemed to begin speaking to herself. "I love the sounds of the night. I used to love whatever was out there. The desert is more alive during the night than it is in the daytime."

Becky immediately found herself liking Angel for their mutual love of Arizona's environment. Although there had been many offers of more lucrative employment in other cities, Becky had never been able to get comfortable with the idea of living away from the desert. She intended to leave only if a network had offered her a job in one of its bureaus.

"Mrs. Mata," Angel said. "If I may, Vicente says I should talk to you and ask you some questions about your health, how you are feeling."

Becky was not known for her patience but she waited on Angel, who appeared to be gathering her strength to speak. Much of Becky’s career had been spent listening to stories from people who had believed in a fantasy so long that the falsehood had taken on the shape of reality in the retelling. And that did not even include the time she had wasted on politicians. 

“What do your doctors say about your health, Mrs. Mata?” Sitting back slightly, Becky crossed her legs and folded her hands in her lap to wait for an answer. She had not taken out her reporter’s notebook. This was not yet a story, though it was very quickly terribly strange.

“My doctor doesn’t know,” she said. “He told me to take more iron; that’s all. He took some blood samples but never said they showed anything.”

“Is your doctor in Buckeye?”

“Yes.”

“Have you been to a specialist or anyone who might know anything more? There are a lot of doctors in Phoenix.”

“No, Roberto says he will take me one of the weekends he is home.”

Vicente turned his palms upward and shrugged at Becky. “And I’m worried that if she goes to a specialist she’ll end up like those people at my work in the Bleak House.  What if she ended up there? What if the doctor told them about her and they came to get her?”

“I love the lights in the desert,” Angel did not seem to be involved in their conversation. “Do you like the lights?  Do you see them, Becky, when you are out here?”

“Uh, yes, I love the stars. It’s why we live here.”

“Oh no, I mean the lights. They’re so much more than stars. They keep me from feeling alone while Roberto is away.”

Becky did not respond. Vicente tried to explain what his sister was experiencing. 

“Angel says there are bright lights in her windows on many nights. She thinks they are there for a reason; maybe to comfort her while her husband is gone. I’ve told her it’s just headlights from cars and trucks. The highway is only a few miles away over there and I think it’s just traffic making turns onto the Buckeye Road and the headlights flash all the way out here.”

A worn Bible was sitting on the windowsill behind Angel and she slowly turned to pick it up and hold it in her lap. One hand squeezed the binding while she used her other to finger the rosary beads hanging around her neck.

“I don’t know what to say,” Angel whispered. “I don’t know what is happening to me.  Perhaps it is God’s will. I don’t know. I’m so tired.”

Becky looked at Vicente. “I don’t know what’s wrong with your sister, either, Vicente.  But I know she needs a doctor. I can hear from here her breathing is shallow and she is more pale and weak than anyone I have ever seen. She seems to be ready to just collapse, doesn’t she to you?”

“But what do I do?” Vicente was befuddled by the situation. “If I take her into Phoenix, maybe the doctor will tell someone and she’ll end up in the Bleak House. I don’t want that.”        

“Why?”

“Because. I have worked there for three years like I said and I told you I have never seen anyone leave alive.”

“I can’t offer you any advice, Vicente,” Becky said. “But your sister needs a doctor. I know that much. And right now.”

Becky rose and offered her hand to Angel Mata. Her dark Latina skin was almost a buttery color and Becky was unable to guess Angel’s age. She thought her to be in her early thirties but she had the faded look of someone who had already lived fifty hard years.

“Are you leaving?” Vicente stood.

“Yes, I have to get home to my family.”

“Can you do something about my sister? Can you report about the Bleak House?  Maybe it will help to stop it all.”

“I’m sorry, Vicente, what you have told me about what you have seen and your sister’s health don’t really constitute enough evidence for me to write a news report about what’s going on. I just don’t know what’s going on. And you said you didn’t either and you’ve been working in the middle of it for years.”

“I know but…..”

“Well, stay in touch with me. Maybe there’s a way we can get at this yet. See if there is anyone out there who might be brave enough to talk to me, as you were. You have my cell phone number now. Mrs. Mata, nice to meet you. I do hope you get well, or see a doctor who can advise treatment.”

“Nice to meet you.” Angel’s chin was down and her voice was wispy even in the quiet room.

“Vicente, are you riding back to the city with me?”

“No, I’ll stay with my sister tonight. I’ll take her car in the morning. Thank you for coming out here.”

“You’re welcome.”

In the darkness on the way to her little hybrid car, Becky began to fret over the possibility that she had been exposed to a new and incurable disease. Was she taking it home to her husband and children? There had been great value and purpose in the trip, though, because she had confirmed her suspicions that there was a clandestine operation of some sort underway on the old Air Force base just beyond her own backyard fence. Perhaps Vicente would get her more information or sources. The health of his sister was a great motivation. 

She put down the power windows and let in the dry wind. The air felt almost bracing after the interior of Angel Mata’s kitchen. When she got to the end of the two-track, Becky breathed even more easily as she turned onto the pavement toward Buckeye.  One thing she knew for certain was that she was glad to be out of Angel Mata's house. Just before she drove off to Phoenix, Becky looked back toward the adobe structure set against the black of the distant Gila Bend Mountains. Its silhouette was lost in the distance. But across the desert floor she saw the rising of lights as they flickered and grew to meet the night.