Chronicle - Mel and Chris Ch. 02

"But," Mel said, "they're kidnapping people. They're hot, beautiful blondes with awesome legs, big tits, and very high sex drives! Think of them like you would a succubus."

She looked to Chris who nodded, the assembled scientific professionals blinked in near-unison.

"Yup," he said, "that seems to be the case. They might be brunettes too, we're not as sure on that part. The brunettes have even bigger breasts apparently. No idea if there are male ones or not."

The gaped mouths on the other five people in the room were met with smiling certainty.

"But," Mel said, "ok. We're still trying to PROVE the 'aliens are here, female and horny' part, and these so far might just be human women they've recruited. But who else would've built these?"

"Back to point," said Hauptmann as he held the 16x20 enlargement of an anomaly occluding Jupiter they'd taken in the Uintas, Chris having mailed them copies of that and a few other photos, "we greatly admire the amazing insight and the ability to find these things."

In turn Chris and Mel were going over even higher-resolution photos from the astronomy's scopes.

"They're slippery," added Joyce, "even with our scopes if they don't pass in front of anything they're just not there! But, you need to accept, we aren't talking about aliens. They do have some IR signature but nothing like we'd expect and they seem to simply eat radar waves."

"Yes," Hauptmann tapped in, "we'd like to understand WHAT it was that crashed, some info about what was found, and possibly a mission to investigate these in orbit."

"Shuttles can't get anywhere close," Mel said, "nothing I know about that we or the Soviets have that would be manned."

The professional astronomers and their assistants seemed impressed at that, again, all nodding.

"Would have to be unmanned, but GPS is close to there so we could put something up. Maybe with different angles..."

The debate went on but finished right where Chris and Mel had expected, they'd describe their methods but ignore speculation on the occupants, if any, of the anomalies.

Just before lunch Sandy led Mel and Chris to the briefing room where they'd meet the expected massive numbers of press people.

"Both of them," Sandy said with a laugh, "double what we usually get! In here."

"Ah," said Chris as they stood in the room, a low stage at the front of the room, "it looks like plan B is a no go, Mel."

"Huh?" Sandy asked with furrowed brows, "Plan B?"

"We expected there'd be chairs, so if things weren't going so well," Chris said, "Mel had a plan."

Sandy looked at the younger woman, her expression still guarded from their initial meeting.

"I'm not wearing any...," Mel leaned in and cupped her hand around Sandy's ear and whispered, the graduate assistant's eyes went briefly wide then half slits as Mel stood straight again with her best demon smile, she used a hand to hold her dress just below the open buttons and tossed it a bit with a swing of her hips.

"But that tablecloth hanging over the front to the floor means we'll need to rethink things, my demon," Chris said as he strolled into the middle of the room and sat in a chair, "nope, not even this angle. We'll have to skate by on our brilliant ideas."

"We're effed then," Mel said, "I even trimmed extra short this week!"

"I noticed that last night," Chris said as he moved his head to various angles while still seated.

Sandy's open mouthed expression swung from one to the other of them. Chris knew she had no idea how the afternoon was going to go and she wasn't happy about that. She'd told them she'd been here since the first of the year and had assisted on a few briefings, but those had always been low-key affairs given by professional astronomers or physicists. She also did lots of scut work but had never been on stage during one of the briefings, her attitude made clear she wasn't happy it would be two pain in the ass amateurs who got lucky to be up there. 'Plan B' just cemented whatever ill feelings their meeting had engendered.

"So what's for lunch?" Mel asked Sandy as Chris stood and took Mel's hand and they walked toward the door, Sandy finally reacted and followed.

"Thank you all for coming, I'm Dr. Bernard Hauptmann, the Director for Near Earth Studies here at Mount Mallomar. I think we've set a record for attendance today with and, yes," a latecomer came in the door with a sheepish expression, "we've reached double figures. We're here to discuss the Caldicott-Bajevic Anomalies and we have the discoverers with us today."

After Dr. Joyce, the Chief Astronomer, introduced himself he nodded to Mel.

"Hi, I'm Melanie Caldicott, but if anyone calls me anything other than Mel there will be trouble. My boyfriend sitting next to me wanted to get into my pants so being that his family lovingly calls him Black Cloud he caused some sort of orbiting object to crash to Earth back in June in a flaming streak. Of course, I was wearing a skirt with no underwear so no pants to get into so the fireball was overkill. But it made me certain I was making the right decision."

"I'm Chris Bajevic, also known as 'Black Cloud' when I'm crashing things that I don't even know exist, much less don't touch. I just follow directions and write wicked computer programs to allow my girlfriend to tell me where to point my cameras to take pictures of invisible satellites. And I do it to get into her non-existent pants."

Chris glanced sideways to see Sandy's pained look as she stood hidden from the lightly laughing reporters, all but one of them male. Leftward Joyce smiled but Hauptmann was, as usual, less amused. He also looked at the cameras, although it wasn't being broadcast live it was being recorded. Whether any of the networks would want any of it who knew.

Hauptmann sighed softly then launched into a summary of the key dates and events, highlighted the USENET posting from Mel and Chris but entirely omitted the Bart Shell Shore to Shore AM appearance. He described the observatory's efforts to capture their own images and the exchanges with these two young amateurs to build up their certainty.

"So before I open to questions, allow me to reiterate that we do NOT know what the anomalies actually are. They are seemingly regular in appearance and the two remaining ones fit perfectly with the third, apparently crashed, one being part of an original trio. That they are of artificial origin is consistent with what we have but we cannot state that definitively. Nor can we state much about the crashed item as the government continues to insist it was simply a radioactive meteorite. They continue to restrict access, claim severe radioactivity. One of our goals here today is to lay out as much information as we have to encourage more openness in the investigation."

He stopped and sipped from his glass of water as a couple of the reporters took pictures.

"All of this is in the briefing materials you were given. Now, we hope you have questions."

"So Ms. Caldicott, how did you conclude this wasn't simply a rock?"

"Mel, please, Ms. Caldicott is my mother. And this one next to me is Chris, Mr. Bajevic is his very wonderful father, no idea how he ended up with this as his son!"

A chuckle around the room, a snort from Chris in Mel's direction. Mel nodded to him.

"That said," Chris began, "I'd taken Mel to the park up the mountain to try and impress her. I had, as we admitted, ulterior motives. That I somehow conjured up a fireball just as we were moving things along was well, a nice coincidence."

Chris stopped and another quick glance showed Sandy's growing desperation. It was early though and he was worried for her. Joyce's near-losing fight to not laugh relaxed him. He couldn't quite see Hauptmann's face but his crossed arms weren't a man in a sanguine mood.

"The fireball was kind of excessive," Mel said, "I mean, I'd already decided I was going to put out. But going out of his way to conjure it for me meant Chris got my front AND back doors that night."

Mel left some silence for that to sink in as she kept an innocent 'did I say something' face, Chris watched lights turn on behind the sets of eyes in the audience, including the lone female journalist there, whose professional demeanor almost broke but whether to outrage or joy Chris didn't know. Another sideways glance he saw Sandy's mouth slowly open as it belatedly sunk in.

"But it wasn't quite right. I didn't know the dimensions of the Valley, the latitude and heights of the mountains, the crash site, but it stuck in my mind. So when Chris helped me get all of that I knew it had to have been something in orbit. The rest was his magic fingers. And also his code writing."

After a wave of chuckling passed through the room, the next question came from the woman, except for the dark blonde hair an almost-twin to Maria. Chris immediately liked her.

"So Mel, Chris, what was the moment when you two felt you'd calculated the orbits? Why didn't you announce then?"

"It was still just my hypothesis," Mel said, "lots of numbers. We were naked in the computer lab..."

A round of murmurs caused her to pause, smiling softly.

"As I said, Chris used my info to do his programs and fired it all off, then we went out to run."

"Obstacle running," Chris interjected, "not parkour like those French guys call it. WE invented it. Please note that."

"Silly CS guys," Mel muttered with a shake of her head, then continued, "anyway, we came back, sweaty, it was cold in the air conditioning, so we stripped down, had towels but hadn't gotten redressed when we reviewed the numbers. We got excited and celebrated."

"What if you'd gotten caught?" the female journalist added quickly.

"I'd have gotten a massive boost in status in the CS department," Chris said, "from being caught with this beautiful demon."

"And while this one is hard to control," Mel reached and took Chris's hand, "for most of the CS guys a bit of thigh, glimpse of cleavage, and they're putty. I'd have had them at my beck and call just by implying they might be next..."

"What about the CS women?"

"Harder, but I'm willing to share him now and again," Mel nodded toward Chris, who raised an eyebrow and nodded with a soft smile, "and for the lesbians I'm quite flexible."

His next glance showed him that Sandy's hands gripped her cheeks, her mouth open. He was definitely worried for her continued health at that point.

"But we wanted solid proof," Chris said, "now we had predicted orbits we found a telescope and went into the high mountains with it. Mel's theory was three equidistant satellites that can use lasers or something like that to communicate, make it impossible to detect."

"And it was key that we had a wonderful professional photographer," Mel picked up, "who guided us with how to do proper astrophotography."

"The briefing guide and the paper we did with Mt. Mallomar has details," Chris explained, "about the exact films we used, the hypersensitization process, exposures, development, all that. We owe our photo pro big time. But no use us reading that stuff off up here."

"Why isn't she here?"

"We respect her wish for privacy, would YOU want to be publicly associated with US?" Mel's answer led to another bout of group laughter, once it had quieted she continued, "Dr. Joyce has spoken with her, knows her story. If she chooses to come forward we'll enthusiastically help her. But not before. But that was what led us to post on USENET and the eventual chain that led to today."

"I did speak with the photographer to confirm her story. When we saw their posting," Joyce said, "I just had a feeling about it. There'd been discussion about the fireball so given we had ridiculously precise guidance from these two we went for it."

"Did you two, um, 'celebrate' up in the mountains?"

"Oh, yeah, both doors again," said Mel, with a firm nod, but she left off certain details in this case. Chris simply smiled and nodded along. He was relieved no one asked the possibly obvious follow-up.

"What about your claims on Bart Shell's show? About the kidnapping?" A burly man, around fifty or fifty-five, Chris thought, if he based the comparison of grey hair and the like to his soccer coach.

Both of them glanced quickly at Joyce, who shrugged, as if he'd expected this.

"All we KNOW," Chris said the last word firmly, "was two students, one of them a CS guy named Peter Miller, disappeared back in 1981. His girlfriend was utterly stunning by all accounts, but they left everything behind. Clothes, his car, money. No sign of either of them. By all accounts he was a great student and had excellent prospects. No obvious reason to disappear."

"Stunning isn't the word, she was absolutely beautiful," said Mel, "but it was like they were beamed up and the girl, Carole, seemed to have appeared from nowhere. When we have PROOF about that we'll be happy to have another briefing. But mainly we wanted to get the word out through an alternative channel."

Chris could no longer see Sandy. He hoped one of the other grad assistants was calling her an ambulance. He wondered if she might reappear with a shotgun.

"Let's get back to subject," Joyce said, but his face was soft, "we're happy to stay as long as we need but I know many of you have deadlines."

Most of the subsequent questions were around work Mallomar had done in conjunction with other observatories using different techniques, all largely useless in working out exactly what was in orbit.

"But going back over photos," Joyce said, "we think, think mind you, that the anomalies appeared no earlier than 1975. Given that we need precise conditions we don't have many photos, but we have some that would provide indications. The earliest is from that year."

"That's after the moon shots were done," said a reporter with what sounded to Chris like a Russian accent, "so what was being launched?"

"To these orbits? Nothing anywhere near large enough to match these, and nothing manned," Joyce said firmly, "shuttles go nowhere near this high."

Both Mel and Chris mouthed but didn't say 'aliens.'

"There's also the stealth," Chris added, "these things are nearly invisible. I'd say we got blindly lucky but we didn't. Mel KNEW where to look once I'd run her numbers and she has damned good eyes. Which makes it more surprising she's with me!"

"Thank you everyone for coming," Hauptmann's first words for quite some time, "we'll be available informally and off the record for those who'd like to attend our reception. We'll also have a few other staff available. For those needing to leave, thank you for your time and attention."

He stood and the rest of the panel followed suit, a round of soft applause. Chris saw Sandy back at her station, her relief at this having ended losing to her new stress at having two lunatics loose in her building. The panelists stood and Joyce motioned for Chris to lead them off, he smiled at Sandy who forced her face into a minimal smile, for the sake of her bosses rather than the lunatics.

"Good job," Joyce said brightly, "you two sure you've not done briefings before?"

"We're just too stupid to be scared," Chris shrugged as Mel slid her right arm around his left one and nodded in agreement, "no use hiding."

Sandy's stiff shoulders led them to the cafeteria where it seemed the staff had the afternoon to mill around and drink wine. Chris stuck with coke as did Mel to avoid any awkward questions around her getting alcohol, although Joyce shrugged at the prospect.

After a few questions and discussions with various of the other astronomers and staff members Mel and Chris were left slightly apart from the crowd and she leaned her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, he slipped his arm around her waist and kissed the top of her head.

"None of the networks are here," she said softly, "just specialists."

"One of them's from the LA Times," Chris said, "or so I was told. And 'Science for America,' and 'Astrophysics Today.' You read that one, don't you?"

"Me, and three other people..."

"Heads up," Chris nudged her softly with his shoulder, "attractive older woman approaching."

Mel opened her eyes and straightened up as the one woman who'd attended approached. Chris noticed less resemblance to Maria beyond her similar age and her build, a bit taller than their anonymous photographer and her dark blonde hair quite a bit lighter.

"Chris, Mel," the woman put out her right hand to shake Chris's then Mel's hand, "I'm Sonia Tarkus, I'm a freelance journalist. I've been in many of the science magazines and I'd love to set up a long interview with just the two of you."

She let that sink in, the lowered her voice.

"Where you won't need to follow someone else's rules."

"Here's my card," she handed each of them a business card with her name and contact information, her office somewhere in the Los Angeles area so far as Chris could tell, "I'm happy to come to the Uni. I'd like to do it before your classes start at the end of the month but I'm flexible. Not doing it on commission, but if we set a date I can start trying to sell it."

"Thanks a lot, Sonia," Mel said with a tired smile, "we'll talk about it, okay? Get back to you?"

"Sure," she said, then lowered her voice again, "think of me like Bart Shell, eh?"

The young couple chuckled, they shook hands with her and she turned, "call me, don't be shy!"

"Remember," Chris said softly to Mel when they were more or less being ignored again, Mel's head nestled back onto his shoulder, Sonia had joined a couple of other of the journalists speaking to Hauptmann and Joyce, "how Dave said Peter talked about Carole's 'crazy green eyes?' Dave said he never bothered looking at her eyes though, too busy elsewhere."

He felt Mel's nod and heard her snort.

"That Sonia's eyes were green."

Mel laughed at that.

"Glad you managed to look at her eyes. What color are my eyes?" She had them closed tightly.

"Black," Chris said, "black like your cute little trimmed bush."

She opened them and kissed him. Her black eyes glimmered.

"Flattery will get you in. Think we could find a quiet spot," she murmured, his hand fell down her back to slide over her ass, "always been a fantasy of mine to be here... I have underwear in my pack, for after... We'll worry about the maybe alien agent that wants to interview us later... Unless you want to invite her along. She's hot. And you have this thing for old women..."

Chris scanned the room. No one paid special attention to them.

"That conference room," Chris said, "everyone's here drinking. We should probably be quick about it. Unless we could get back with the main scope..."

He kissed her forehead as she nudged his crotch, his cock wanted attention.

"I'll do you slow, slow, slow, tonight to make up for it...," he added as she responded with purring, he took her hand and started to walk, at the door she took one last look and noticed they were still being ignored as they slipped into the empty hallway.

They passed one staffer who nodded to them as he went toward the cafeteria and the refreshments and wasn't interested in why the guests wandered loose. Mel slipped into the conference room as Chris checked to ensure the hall was empty before he followed and closed the door quietly.

"Mmmfff," he said as arms were thrown around his neck and his mouth was the victim of a forceful tongue, he mounted a late but effective defensive response that led to a series of battles trading back and forth over the same territory. He pushed her back until her ass bumped against the table and a mutually-agreed tongue truce was called.

Chris moved back enough to slip his jacket off and lay it over a chair back. Mel pushed forward as she unbuttoned her dress.