Solar Cycle 24 Read online

  Part 2: JPL

  When they landed at LAX, a car came to the plane and whisked them off to Pasadena.

  They put them in a completely furnished house on the grounds of the campus at JPL, and as soon as they had time to settle in a little, Cantrell came to visit them.

  “Are you getting settled in?” He actually smiled at them this time. Rob got the feeling that the man had been under tremendous pressure in Seattle, and now he was more relaxed.

  “I want to say I am sorry for all this uprooting, but the government can’t have dissidents running around out there, now can they?” He said it with a sarcastic grin.

  “Its not really my forte to go to a mans home and do a takeover, I am a scientist, not a very Gestapo type. Welcome to JPL. You are one of the JPL family now, and I want to make you feel at home here.”

  “Rob, you will be working for the U.S. government for the duration; I convinced them that, even though you do not have the credentials for it, you could be a useful addition to the team here. They went for it. I was impressed with your array the minute I saw it. I am sorry I doubted you in the first place, but the consequences of you being right were more than I wanted on my plate.”

  “Kathleen, there are other women here at JPL, and I’m sure you will make friends among them; we are kind of like family here, and if there’s anything you need, all you need do is ask. I will have Dr. Joyce Bryce, our clinical physiologist to come and visit with you first. You will like her I’m sure, but she will answer all your questions.”

  “Rob, there will be a meeting the first thing in the morning; Gary will pick you up to take you to where the meeting will be held.”

  “I’ve got to go for now, but again, welcome to JPL.”

  He held out his hand to each of them and shook it warmly.

  When he was gone, they both just stood looking at each other, studying each other's eyes in that age-old communication between a man and his wife.

  Finally, Rob embraced her and held her close; they were both still in shock at the takeover of their lives and freedoms. A week ago, Kathleen had been a wife to an insurance salesman/hobbyist with their own home and their own habits, and now he was a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories under the rule of the secrecy act.

  Rob had been used to doing his own thing, and now he was taking orders from men he didn’t really know. No words were said, because there weren’t any to describe the feeling.

  “What do I fix for supper; we have no food.”

  “Gary said they have a fine cafeteria about two blocks down the street; you may not have to cook or clean up the mess for a while. “ He grinned at her.

  “Sounds good to me, lets go, I’m hungry”

  The next morning at seven thirty Gary showed up at the door to take Rob to the meeting room.

  “Are you ready?” He said, grinning at him.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Honey, you can just poke around if you want, I’ll be back when I can get back.”

  “Ok, you guys go on, I think I’ll take a nap this morning, I still feel tired.”

  Gary led the way out to an electric cart. “No need for cars on the campus much, they just get in the way, but you’ll see a lot of cart traffic; they don’t make much noise so you have to watch you don’t get run over.” He grinned as he got behind the wheel and stepped on the accelerator. The cart shot forward, and three minutes later they were walking through the door of a large three story building.

  They took an elevator to the third floor, where Gary led off to a room with an armed guard at the door.

  They showed him their I.D cards and were admitted into a large, mostly barren room with just video equipment and a large chalk board.

  There were several men in the room, and as Gary called for attention, the low mumbling faded away.

  “Gentlemen, I want you to meet the man responsible for the antenna array that we are going to be telling you about. Meet Mr. Rob Packwood.”

  There were nods all a round the room as they sat down at one of the long tables.

  It was about five minutes when Cantrell entered the room and walked straight to the chalk board.

  “Gentleman, you have been called here this morning on a matter of gravest concern.”

  “Of course you know that we are part of the team that monitors solar radiation, as it is important for our space missions.”

  “You all know about solar winds, and the predictions for solar cycle 24, what you don’t know is what we didn’t know until just a few days ago.”

  “Mr. Packwood there discovered a pulse in the low-frequency range of just above four megahertz. He was working on an antenna project, and when he discovered the signal he called Gary Goldsmith.”

  “What this means gentlemen is that what we thought we were monitoring for solar cycle 24, is that we were only monitoring the leading edge of a solar wind of huge proportions, as evidenced by the pulse in the high-frequency range.”

  The men in the room looked stunned, and then they started asking questions all at once.

  Cantrell began beating his long pointer on the chalk board, “Gentlemen; your questions will be answered, please, let's have order!”

  The noise subsided in the room as he continued. “Unfortunately, if our calculations are correct, this could mean the end of the world as we know it.”

  The room immediately erupted into complete disorder again. “Gentleman, please!” He began beating his pointer again on the chalk board.

  When the noise again subsided, he continued, “What this means, is that these radiations will not only bring a halt to communications, burn out the electric power grids, but will affect humans, and most likely animals and birds.”

  “The radiation will cause sores to break out on the skin, as well possible death. We don’t know what it will do to plant life, as we have never experienced this type of solar eruption before.”

  When Cantrell mentioned sores, Rob remembered Dr. Boyd’s teaching on revelations, and he sat upright.

  When the meeting broke up Rob said, “Can I go Gary?”

  “Sure, can you find your way?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Ok, I’ll make contact with you when I have something for you.”

  Rob left the building and walked hurriedly to the little furnished house, he busted through the door, “Kathleen, did you bring a bible?”

  “I think so, it’s in the suitcase in the bedroom, what’s up?”

  “I don’t know yet.” He said as he began rumbling through the suitcase still lying on the bed, and brought out the beautifully bound bible.

  He quickly turned to the book of Revelations and read the passage Kathleen marked that Sunday.

  He read: Revelation 9:6 And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

  Revelation 16:2 And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image.

  There it was, that scripture he had remembered when Cantrell had mentioned the sores again.

  Could this be? Could this be what is predicted in Revelations? His mind worked feverishly, should I show this to Gary and Cantrell?

  He rubbed his hand across his forehead as he sat and pondered the scripture. “Could be a coincidence, but I don’t know.”

  “Rob, what are you mumbling about?”

  “Kathleen, look at this!” He said as he carried the bible over to where she was sitting. He showed her the scripture, and then he explained to her fully, what the scientists had said could be expected to happen.

  “Oh my Lord, do you think that this is what the bible predicts Rob?”

  “I don’t know. I remembered it when Cantrell was telling the others the portent of my signal. I remembered Dr. Boyd talk about the sores.”

  “Do you believe this bible Kathleen? We have never really talked about
it before.”

  “Yes I do, every word of it.”

  “But how do we know it’s true, do we have proof, we can get our teeth into?”

  “Well…the death and resurrection of Jesus is a documented thing. Isn’t that proof enough?”

  “Yes I guess it is, is there a prediction in the bible of his death?”

  “Yes, it’s in the book of Isaiah.”

  “Well then I guess it is.”

  “I think we may be onto something here, but I had rather say nothing for a while.”

  “Robby, like you said, we haven’t discussed it much, but have you accepted Jesus as your personal savior?”

  “I don’t think so, I have never had the time to think about it a whole lot.”

  “I wish you would honey, and I know your mom wishes you would. It breaks her heart you know.”

  “Have you Kathleen?”

  “Have I what?”

  “Accepted this Jesus as your savior?”

  “I don’t know. I went to church because I always knew it was the right thing to do, I drew comfort from reading the bible, but I didn’t have the conviction your mother has. I think there was something that I missed.”

  All of a sudden, he remembered his mom, “I wish she was here; I want to know how she is doing. It's not right to leave her up there by herself. I'm going to talk to Gary about this first thing in the morning.”

  He slept fitfully that night, and he had bad dreams about a fantastic future where the air was gray and the sky was a dirty blood red, he and Kathleen hunkered behind a huge log in a ruined forest while missiles flew over their heads, long ugly things, and instruments of death. Death and destruction were everywhere. The ground was dead and ruined. He awoke the next morning tired and agitated. When Gary picked him up to go to the monitor complex he said, “Gary, I want my mom down here, or I’m not going to go along with this.”

  “They’ll put you in jail if you raise a stink you know.”

  Gary sat and looked at the steering wheel of the cart, his eye's downcast. “Listen, I have been having bad dreams, and I don’t have a good feeling about this either, but can I trust you Rob?”

  “Can I trust you either Gary?”

  “Yes you can, and if I tell you we need to play along a few days, would you believe me? This is serious business Rob; I was planning on approaching you in a few days about quitting the scene.”

  “I’ve been having bad dreams too Gary. I had one last night, If this is coming on us, there is nothing we can really do here to stop it is there?”

  “No”

  “Gary, will you come to the house tonight? I have something to show you.”

  “Yeah, I’ll come, after you showed me all this, I don’t dare to ignore you.” He grinned as he accelerated the cart forward.

  That evening Gary, true to his word, showed up at the little house, and knocked on the door.

  “Come in Gary, and have a seat.”

  “Thanks, I’m bushed after today.”

  “So what is the latest? All they did was run me around the campus and show me all the toys you guys have got here.”

  “The signal is becoming stronger, just as I thought it would. We have maybe sixty days before the effects of the solar storm will be noticeable.”

  “Just what will be the first indicators?”

  “Well…your HF frequencies will start to get so noisy you won’t be able to hear on them, then the VHF and UHF frequencies will go. It's liable to put down some satellite communications when the first front moves through, then your VHF communications will cease to exist, that means all the ambulance; police and fire departments won’t be able to communicate except by human contact.”

  “There will be a steady stream of radiation after that, and in less than two months after the front moves through, we will start to see the effects on people.”

  “That’s my best guess, after all, this is something that we haven’t experienced before, it may be less dramatic, or it may end up being far more dramatic than we ever thought about.”

  “Thanks for leveling with us Gary.”

  “Yes, thank you for telling us.” Kathleen chimed in.

  “No need to thank me, in more or less a month, it won’t make a difference either way.”

  “Gary, I want to show your something.”

  He opened the bible to where Kathleen had highlighted and handed it to him to read.

  Gary read the passage and then laid the book down, “Wow! I didn’t know that was there. It sounds like what we think will happen to people as the radiation becomes stronger. However, we don’t have any mark.”

  “Well…I thought of that too, but the mark of the beast could be a spiritual one, Kathleen, and I haven’t been much on religion. I have been to church, but mostly to please my mom, who is a good solid Christian, how about you?”

  “No I can’t say I have. I haven’t been to church in over ten years, too busy being a scientist, I guess science has always been my life.”

  “Well, we don’t have much going for us then do we?”

  “Guess not, but it looks like we'd better get something going for us, which brings me up to why I told you earlier to go along for a while.”

  “Yes, tell me.”

  “The way I figure it in about two weeks, if we take off, they won’t bother coming after us, the rest will be too busy looking after their own hides.”

  “Right now, it hasn’t dawned on them the government will just use us until we are no longer any use to it, then they will leave us to fend for ourselves.”

  “When the front moves through the officials in Washington will leave and go to hunt themselves a hole in the ground, and believe me, there are holes in the ground they can go too.”

  “Oh, they’ll piss and moan about all the poor people up top, but they won’t come out.”

  “What about people shooting missiles at us from afar?”

  “Their guidance and launching systems won't work; they risk a missile landing right back in their lap, no, there won’t be many dangers of missiles, although they may think we caused it all.”

  “I figure if we just keep a low profile two more weeks, we can blow this place. What do you think Rob?”

  “I think you are right, and we had better be out of here by then too, if the natives get restless, we may not be able to get out.”

  “Ok, its set then, but we need to find us an older model car made before the 80’s, we can say we are just interested in old cars, should anyone ask."

  “I can go out and find us that car, but its going to be expensive, and I’m not sure I have that kind of money.”

  “I have plenty of money; I'll get you some; I haven’t spent hardly a dime in fifteen years, I kind of wish I had went to see a movie or two now.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t see many neither, too busy I guess.”

  “I think I can get the old car, but why an old one Gary?”

  “Because with this kind of radiation, I think it will burn out the ignitions on the newer cars, and we may end up with no transportation of any kind.”

  “Do you really think it could be that strong?”

  “Yes I do.”

  ‘What about food supplies then if the trucks quit running?”

  “There won’t be any. We have to prepare before hand.”

  “Say, wait a minute!” Rob snapped his fingers.

  “There’s an old cave right near our house, it’s an old volcanic flume. The opening is very small, but the ceiling is at least ten feet high, and it goes back in at least a hundred feet; the previous owner showed me the cave. I don’t think anyone else is aware of it.”

  “We could stock that if we can get out of here in time.”

  “Hell, lets up the time a week, then get the heck out of here.”

  “Sounds good to me Gary.”

  “You get the car, have a shop check out the engine, transmission, and tires, meantime I’ll try to come up with some cover to throw off the government hounds, just in case th
ey decide to chase us.”

  They talked until about ten o’clock, then Gary excused himself and headed back to the dorm. Before he went, he handed Rob his bank card.

  “Do you think we can trust him Kath?”

  He depended on her woman’s intuition more than he liked to admit.

  “Yes, I think so, you ready to go to bed?”

  “Yeah.”

  He lay in bed with his fingers laced behind his head a while, then he said, “Kath.”

  “Huh?”

  “How do you accept Jesus?”

  “I don’t know, just believe what he has said, I guess. I already do honey, don’t you believe him?”

  “I would like to, good night dear.”

  “Goodnight sweetie.”

  The next morning Rob and Kathleen borrowed a car to go looking for an old car. They found a sixty five Mustang before they had gone far. It was on a car lot about a mile from the JPL facilities.

  Rob checked it out as best he could, then hackled with the dealer some. The dealer came down four hundred from the exorbitant price he had on the windshield.

  He handed the dealer Gary’s card, “I’ll do licensing, then in a few days you will get the new sticker. I’ll put you on a temporary license for now.”

  “The current license is still good for six more months, but we have to do the temp anyhow.”

  It took them about forty-five minutes to finish the transaction, “Do you know of a good garage near by?”

  “Sure do, but the car was completely restored by the previous owner.”

  “I still want to get it checked out by a good mechanic.”

  “Ok, there’s Jake’s garage about three blocks down on the left, he’s high, but he’s good; I don’t take anything to him accept something I am going to be driving myself.”

  “Thanks.” Gary said as the dealer handed him the keys.

  He got into the Mustang, and the engine fired when he twisted the key in the ignition and purred like a kitten.

  “Ok honey, you can follow me.”

  They got the car to the garage, and Rob entered the office, a man in mechanic's coverall’s was sitting behind the desk writing on a form. He looked up and nodded as Rob walked in.

  “I have a ‘65 mustang I just bought, and I would like to get you to check it out for me.”

  “Sure, it will be about thirty minutes before I can get to it though.”

  “We’ll wait.”

  The man in the blue uniform got up and yelled through the door into the main part of the garage, “Jimmy, as soon as you get through with that tune up, check this Mustang out will you?”

  “Sure thing, I’ll be done in a few minutes.”

  “Is Jimmy a good mechanic?”

  “He’s not good; he's the best I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been in the business twenty some-odd years.”

  True to the man’s word, he appeared in the doorway to the office, and Jake tossed him the keys.

  “That’ll cost you a hundred dollars mister.” He said as he sat back down at the desk.

  Rob handed him Gary’s card, and he swiped it, then handed Rob the receipt.

  About thirty minutes later Jimmy came to the door and tossed the key on the desk.

  “She’s all good; I adjusted the carburetor for you a little; she runs perfect through all the gears. You wouldn’t want to sell it would you?”

  “No, I just bought it.”

  “Figures, whoever restored it knew what they were doing.”

  The mechanic disappeared back through the door into the shop area. Rob took the keys and went back out to where his wife was waiting.

  “I’ll put it in the storage unit near the JPL complex; we don’t want to take it on the campus. It might draw too much attention.”

  “Ok, I’ll just follow you.”

  After they got the car in storage and got a gate key in the form of a swipe card, they returned to the JPL campus.

  The facility was located in the City of La Cañada Flintridge near the northern border of Pasadena; it was a giant sprawling complex.

  They returned the car to the motor pool, and went home just before sundown.

  Gary was waiting for them when they got back, “Didn’t you get a car?”

  “Yeah, we got one, a ‘65 Mustang, we left it in the storage facility just off the campus.”

  “Good idea, it might bring attention; we don’t want too much attention.”

  “That’s what I thought too, come on in.”

  “Before we go in, I thought of something else, this place may be bugged, so let’s not talk in the house about this any more.”

  “Sheesh, I never thought of that, what if it is bugged? We’ve been talking our heads off in there.”

  “I don’t think it is Rob; it's just a precaution. There would be miles of tape for them to search through even if tried. They went in; Kathleen fixed ice tea, and they took it out back to the patio, where they sat talking in low voices.

  “We need to leave this coming Saturday, if we are to have time to prepare for this, I’ve come up with a plan.” Gary said as he sipped at his tea.

  “I was scheduled to go to Cal-Tech this coming weekend and talk to a Doctor Whitaker down there.”

  They won’t think anything of me leaving this weekend; I was going to drive my own car down, and pick up Ruth and bring her back.”

  “Who is Ruth?”

  “She is my girl friend, a student at Cal-Tech. I’ve acquainted her with the situation, so she is taking a bus up here Friday.”

  “What if she tells the other students?”

  “She won’t, she is a scientist, and she knows the gravity of this.”

  “I didn’t know you had a girl friend.”

  “Yeah, she was supposed to graduate this coming spring, and then we were to get married, looks like that will have to wait now.”

  That Friday evening Gary picked them up in his car, and they checked out of the complex.

  When they got to the storage unit, they left his car, and took the Mustang and drove to the bus station to pick Ruth up.

  When they got to the bus station, a young girl of about twenty stood in front with her suitcase. She came over to the car, and Gary got out to put her suitcase in the trunk.

  “Hi, I’m Ruth.” She said as she got in and closed the door.”

  “I’m Rob Packwood, and this is Kathleen, my wife.”

  Ruth was a rotund girl with thick glasses, she looked the science type as she reached back to shake hands with them.

  The back seats were small and tight behind the bucket seats.

  “It’s a little tight back there; we’ll drive a couple of hours and trade seats.”

  “Its ok, we’ll make it.” Rob said.

  “If we drive straight through, we should be at your place by tomorrow night.”

  “Do you think that’s really necessary?”

  “Yeah, I do; we have to get prepared and disappear into that cave you got.”

  They crossed the Oregon border about noon the next day, and by sundown, they were back at Rob’s house.

  They unpacked quietly and went to bed.

  The next morning they were up at day break sitting at the table making plans, the place was the same way they had left it. All that had been taken was his ham radio equipment and his computer hard drive.

  Rob put his extra hard drive into the computer and formatted it, then reinstalled all his software, he was glad they didn’t take his CD’s.

  They still had a short-wave radio; it was a small battery operated transistor radio the government hadn’t bothered with.

  Kathleen was busy washing their clothes, and she had turned it on to get the latest news from the local station.

  “Rob! Come listen to this!” She yelled out into the kitchen.

  They all heard the alarm in her voice and hurried down the hall to the washroom.

  The announcer was interviewing a policeman, “What do you think happened to the people?

  T
he voice of the policeman came on. “We don’t know at this time, but we’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  “Now a word from our sponsers.” The voice droned on.

  “Rob, people are disappearing! That’s what they said!”

  “What do you mean ‘disappearing?”

  “They said people were just disappearing; they don’t know where they’ve gone.”

  “I’m going down to check on Mom; you stay here until I get back.”

  He ran out to the Mustang and peeled off down the long driveway to the road; they could hear the tires screech as the Mustangs wide back tires grabbed the pavement.

  In thirty minutes, he was back; his face was white as he entered the kitchen.

  “Mom’s not there; the table was set, yesterday was Sunday; her church cloths were laid out on the bed. The coffee pot was still on, and the TV. was on to the station she always listens to. It’s like she left in a hurry. I wonder where she could have gone, I tried her cell several times, but there was no answer.”

  “Oh my God!” Kathleen said with her hand to her mouth.

  “What?”

  “Do you remember the minister talking about the rapture?”

  “Yes, I do, so?”

  “So, this could be it.”

  “Naw, do you really believe people can just up and disappear?”

  “Well, where is she then Rob?”

  “There is a lot about science that we just don’t know.” Gary said.

  “My folks believed in the Bible. That’s who I am named after, a character in the Old Testament.” Ruth said quietly.

  “So where does that leave us?” Rob looked around at each face as he said it.

  “Aw, maybe it is all just coincidence.” Gary looked at Rob.

  “I don’t think so.” Ruth said, she seemed to be staring off into space at nothing, and with her short black hair, her round face, and her coke-bottle glasses, she looked the part of the scientist she was born to be.

  “If the math I have been working on is correct, and what you told me is correct. We had better be hunting a hole in the ground fast, and I mean right now.”

  Her alert way seemed to charge the atmosphere in the room.

  “Look, let's just assume that all this is right, in order to make the right decisions we need to predict what will happen, or the closest we can come to a prediction.” Gary said, as he began to open his own laptop.

  “One thing we do know, we have to have food, why don’t Ruth, and I go shopping while you guys work at coming up with some answers for us? At least, I know how to buy food.” Kathleen looked at Ruth.

  “Ok, but buy canned goods, and dry staples like beans, dry milk and so fourth, forget the fresh stuff, just buy minimal in that area. Rob and I will work at the problem, and look over his cave. Buy all you can haul, if you need to, get a u-haul trailer, leave the Mustang, and use Rob's four by four; it has a hitch, don’t come back until you have enough to last for several months. Go.”

  When Kathleen and Ruth had gone, Gary began to punch buttons on his laptop, in earnest. Rob doodled with some figures on his notebook, occasionally he would stop and just stare off into space.

  Finally, Gary looked up at Rob and spoke. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think we have many chances of survival. Here is what I think will happen. A normal solar cycle last approximately 11 years, although we don’t know how strong the solar winds will be from month to month or from day to day, for that matter.”

  “The coronal mass ejections (CME) of high-energy particles are the results of groups of solar eruptions; the solar maximum will begin in two weeks if the predictions are correct, the only thing that hasn’t been taken into consideration before is the storm you found riding in behind the known one, a perfect storm if you will.”

  As Gary talked on, Rob began to see the implications of it. Anyone above ground would begin to develop skin cancers from the damaging rays of the solar particles. They would not even feel it, but the damage would become apparent in a short while of being exposed to such high doses of solar radiation.

  To complicate this would be the damage to power grids, satellites, and ground communications, followed swiftly by lack of foods and medicines, the people would go on the move seeking such things to no avail, further complicating and aggravating the local areas.

  Men would be on the move with guns to take what they could get, law and order would break down swiftly as desperate people followed desperate measures.

  An unknown in the equations was the damage to crops and animals.

  The earth’s atmosphere would be some protection, but not enough to hold back radiation of this strength and magnitude. No wonder the governments weren’t putting out warnings, to do that would just speed up the inevitable.

  The first symptoms people would see would be flashes of light when they closed their eyes, which, in massive doses will make sleep difficult at night as these particles go through their eyes. As the earth shielded the sun from one side, the only relief would be late at night between eleven and two pm.

  “So in effect, communications will go first; the food trucks are dispatched via communications. The truckers will have difficulty even getting their loads, then the electrical grids will go, then computers, and by then irreparable skin damage will have accrued causing sores something like boils. Then wide-spread panic and war will follow. I’d say we have a problem on our hands of any expectancy of survival.”

  “Let go see that cave of yours.” Gary shut off his laptop and stood up.