Mind + Body - Aaron Dunlap (big screen ebook reader txt) 📗

keyword file you set. You enter whatever you want the filenames to match and anything on the computer that matches will be copied.”

“What if you take the drive out before it’s done copying?” I asked.

“Then only whatever there was time for will be copied,” he said, “and if it’s in the middle of copying a single file when you remove it, only part of the file will be copied.”

I leaned in to type my keyword. “It uses wildcards?” I asked.

“Yeah, asterisk.”

So on the first line, I typed ‘*baker*.*’. That would match any file with baker in the name, no matter what type of file it was. I saved that, and pulled the drive out.

“This isn’t about dirty pictures, is it?” Dale asked as I walked away.

My plan was to use this USB drive on a computer where my dad worked. I hoped someone would be nice enough to give me a tour of where he worked, and I could plug it into the workstation of someone nearby. He must have co-workers, people doing the same stuff as him or working on the same projects. If they were logged in, I could stick this thing in any USB port and hopefully get a copy of anything with his name on it.

I was dropped off in front of a long, narrow building. A half dozen other buildings of equal size were scattered throughout the area. When the driver put the Jeep into park, he said, “Someone will meet you inside.”

I got out, looked at the building before me. “This is the Marine Corps University?” I asked.

The driver silently looked at the identical buildings all around, smiled at me, then pulled the Jeep away.

This is it, I told myself. This is what I wanted for so long, this was the place I was never allowed to see. How terribly disappointing.

I walked through the entrance of the building and found myself in a large lobby. I stopped to take it all in, but was interrupted by my name.

“Chris,” called a man who was leaning against a long desk parked along the right wall. He stood up straight and walked toward me. He was old, older than my father was, anyway; maybe early sixties. He was in full officer’s uniform, with a series of multicolored ribbons decorating his chest. When he got to me, he extended his right hand.

“Lieutenant Colonel Schumer,” he said as I shook his hand. “I worked with your dad.”

“Really?” I said, a bit shocked. “My dad was a researcher; I didn’t think he’d be working with a Lt. Colonel.”

Schumer chuckled and released my hand. “It’s a Marine city and a Marine base,” he said. “Everything’s run by some kind of officer. The cafeteria’s run by a Mess General, even.”

I forced a laugh, then stood in silence.

“Come on,” he said, “I have your dad’s keys and his personal items in my office.” He walked to the end of the lobby and turned left into a long, narrow hallway. It seemed like an office building more than a school.

“Is this where he worked?” I asked, trying to read the names on the doors as I passed them.

“Your father worked downstairs,” he said, opening a door and stepping inside.

Lt. Colonel Schumer’s office was small and cramped. The books lining the back wall and drab shades covering the windows made it feel even smaller. Besides a few filing cabinets and a wide oak desk positioned in the middle of the room, there was little appointment or decoration to the room. I sat down on a wooden chair with leather lining opposite the desk while Schumer sat behind the desk. On top of the desk was a healthy scatter of papers, a small wooden clock, and a beige computer sitting horizontally on the desk with a small monitor perched on top of it. The back of the computer was exposed, only a few feet from me. I could see an open USB port among the mess of keyboard, mouse, monitor, power, and speaker cables. The computer was turned off.

Schumer slid a thick yellow envelope across the desk to me. Inside was a set of keys to my dad’s car, a wrist watch, and a few mildly expensive looking pens. “These are the things your father left here,” he said.

“There isn’t more? Books or pictures? Journals? Anything?”

Schumer folded his hands on the desk. “These are the sort of things one keeps at a desk, but your dad didn’t really have a desk. He did lab work, mostly, and he used various workstations. People here tend to keep personal effects to a minimum because they never know where they’re going to be moving next.”

I took another look inside the envelope, then closed it and set it down on the floor.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” Schumer asked.

“Can you tell me anything about what he did here? How he died?”

He looked down at his hands, and said, “As I said, mostly lab work. He had the heart attack while he was working. He’d said he wasn’t feeling well earlier in the day, if I remember correctly.”

“Lab work. Okay, but that’s the weird thing,” I said, “As far as anybody knows, this place is just a school for teaching about military history and Marine Corps fundamentals. The web site makes this place sound like the most boring place on Earth. I don’t understand why, then, there would be any lab work going on.”

Schumer’s jaw tightened, then he sighed and his body loosened.

“Obviously, Chris,” he started, “you know that the work we do here— not just here, but all over Washington and in any military base — requires a certain element of secrecy. You should know from the fact that your father never talked about what he did here, that he couldn’t talk about it. From a strategic and conventional perspective, some doors we have to keep shut.”

I frowned. “So you can’t tell me anything?”

“I told you he did lab work, which is more than some people would have me say. A more uptight person might have said he was a janitor or an unimportant paper-pusher. My advice is to take what you have, hold on to it, and don’t worry about what you don’t have. He was a good person doing good things. That’s the best I can do.”

The paper bag over my head wasn’t getting any lighter. I was still scratching at something I couldn’t see or feel. All this secrecy was driving me nuts, when my dad was probably just doing menial work that he never knew the scope of.

“Tell me something,” I said. “If my dad was actually bringing US-made weapons to Uzbekistan to support anti-communist rebels, and he was killed by a stinger missile fired by the man who actually killed JFK, how would you tell me and my family that he died?”

Schumer half-smirked, then leaned back in his chair. “I’d probably say that he died here at the office. I’d probably make up an innocuous cause of death like a heart attack or a stroke. I’d say that he was a good man and was doing good things for the country but I couldn’t say what they were.”

I folded my arms and said, “So you can see the position this puts me in.”

“Clearly,” he said. “But this is something many people in this town have to deal with. You might feel cheated or used, but you can’t let the unknown take over. It won’t bring him back, and it’ll only bring you down.

“It’s hard to accept that your dad had a heart attack, I’m sure, just like it’s hard to accept that he died at all. But he had a heart attack; I was in the ambulance with him when they pulled out the paddles; I was there at the hospital when a doctor declared him dead. People have heart attacks, people die.”

He looked at his watch, and then compared it to the clock on his desk. “I had to interrupt an appointment to see to your unexpected visit,” he said, “and let me tell you, most people who show up at the front gate unexpected don’t get the same treatment you’ve gotten, but Daniel truly was appreciated around here and will be missed. I want you to understand that.”

I nodded; he looked again at his watch then pushed the power button on the front of his computer. A quick beep came from inside, then the soft hum of fans spinning.

“And just to demonstrate that, I want you to come back here and see me if you have any new concerns or questions since I had to cut this short,” he said, looking at the computer screen and watching it boot up.

“I’ll give you a conditional entrance pass and add your name to a clearance list, so you’ll be able to get through the gate and be escorted back here if you need me.”

The computer was up and running, he typed in a password to log in. I slowly pulled the USB drive from my pocket and held it under my palm. The Lt. Colonel clicked the mouse a few times, then typed a few keys, and said, “There, you’re on security’s list. If you come to the gate and show them this — where are those passes?” He turned around to the filing cabinet behind him and opened a drawer.

This was my chance. I leaned in toward the desk, and with my right hand I unplugged the green speaker cable from the back of the computer and plugged the USB drive into the open USB port. My heart stopped beating for a moment, I prayed that the computer had Auto-run enabled and that a big message hadn’t jumped on screen saying, “Hey, someone stuck a USB memory stick into the computer and is probably trying to steal files.” After a few seconds, I could hear the hard drive inside the computer begin spinning and clicking as files were being accessed.

Schumer pulled a plastic folder from the drawer and pulled out a laminated card that looked like my visitor’s pass but was white instead of orange, and explained that the bearer was granted conditional entrance by Lt. Colonel Schumer. There was also a magnetic strip, a bar code, and a few series of digits. “Right,” he said. “Show them that at the gate, then your photo ID and they’ll look you up and let you in here.”

“Thanks,” I said, though I couldn’t really figure out why he was giving me this. If there was nothing he could tell me, why bother letting me come back whenever I want?

Schumer stood up and walked around the desk. I stood up to block his view of the computer’s rear. The USB drive had only been plugged in a few seconds, it would need more time to copy any files. Schumer opened the door and held it open for me, repeating that he had an appointment to get to. To buy time, I pretended to look over the desk for where I’d put that envelope, and then eventually “found” it there on the floor. I backed up to the computer and pulled the USB drive out behind my back, then bent down to grab the envelope.

“His car is in the back of the lot just outside,” he said as I went out the office door. “Can you find your way back to the gate or do you need someone to lead you?”

It was a single road, no turns, so I told him I could make it. In the hall outside his office, a man wearing civilian clothes walked by and looked at me like I had a badger clinging to my face. It was