John Nance - Orbit

“I… guess.”

“Here’s my ID. Toss me your light.”

“What?”

“NOW!”

He tosses the SureFire to her, watching as she catches it and tosses him the ID wallet, covering the distance between the corner of the house and the obviously frightened man kneeling by the backdoor in a few heartbeats. She covers the suspect with a 9mm Glock Jimmy never saw her unholster.

“Officer? Bring your cuffs, please.”

Jimmy responds as quickly as he can, cuffing the man as he notes the business suit and the balding head.

“Don’t shoot! I’m a friend of Kip’s! I have a key!”

“But not to his filing cabinet, it appears,” Kat says. “What’s in the folder?”

“Ah, private company information.”

“Right. Half the world read exactly what you read about a particular folder with a rubber band and a red exclamation point in the file cabinet you just broke into.”

“Kip asked me to protect this if anything ever happened to him.”

“Sure he did. What’s your name?”

No answer.

“NAME! NOW!”

“Ah… Robert Wilson.”

“How did you get in the house?”

“I have a key. I’m authorized.”

“All right, Mr. Wilson, you’re also under arrest on suspicion of obstruction of justice in a federal case, for starters. Officer?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Please Mirandize this gentleman after you finish cuffing him, and then get us some backup while the rest of my team gets here.”

“Okay.”

She turns to Jimmy Gonzalez now, asking his name, and he responds as he hands her back the ID wallet.

“Good job, Officer Gonzalez. All the way around.”

Matt Coleman is aware tonight’s broadcast could be the definitive performance of his career. He checks his appearance, wondering why anyone would think he looks like the late Johnny Carson, although he considers it one hell of a compliment. At age forty-seven, with a full head of prematurely silver hair, a neutral Midwest accent, and a natural smile, there are a few similarities. But he understands that the comparison is the wishful thinking of a vast audience hungry for the more serious approach and occasionally sharp-witted humor he’s made a trademark since he took over from Larry King, building his now-syndicated evening news, comment, and interview show far beyond the confines of CNN to span American broadcast and worldwide broadcast networks, as well as cable and Internet outlets.

And tonight—broadcasting in high definition to an estimated combined world audience of at least a hundred million people with simultaneous translation in sixteen languages, he can either own the story of Kip Dawson by walking a razor-sharp line between commentary and reportage, or end up as just another conduit for what’s happening.

And Matt Coleman intends to own the story.

Tonight the computerized reassembly of his image will have him appearing for all the world as if he’s actually standing in three different world capitals, complete with a shadow where the sun is shining. He takes his place for the opening against a live shot of Intrepid being downlinked from a high-powered NASA camera in orbit.

Good evening, and right to the point. Seldom has the story of one person dominated our worldwide attention for more than a few moments in this frenetic modern life. When that rare event does happen, however, usually it’s after an event is over. Not so in the case of Kip Dawson. Tonight, I’ll guide you through the significance of what’s been occurring, not only some three hundred and ten miles above us on orbit, but on Earth, too, as an ordinary man—an ordinary husband and father named Kip Dawson—unknowingly communicates to an amazing number of his fellow humans in real time in ways simultaneously complex, simple, and profound.

Not even when the President of the United States or the Pope speaks do so many pay such rapt, all-consuming attention. Yes, this has developed into a shared human experience, reading the words of a man who knows he’s going to die in two more days. But what makes this so profound is that Kip Dawson is saying things that ring true in the hearts and minds and unspoken memories of so many… his angst, his remorse over things left undone, his grief and joy over relationships that form the basic sinew of life, and even one amazing instance this afternoon in which his recounting of misconduct by the company that employs him has already sparked law enforcement action that may end in indictments and prison sentences. In many things he’s written, Kip Dawson is giving voice to feelings we’ve dared not reveal, and touching us uncomfortably in the process. Worldwide, he’s sparking debates and focusing attention on ideas, some fairly far out—such as the religious debate Kip’s words ignited when he recommended that marriage be limited to eighteen years past the birth of the last child. If you’ve been glued to your TV or computer reading every word… if you’ve called in sick or been inattentive to your duties because you’re wrapped up in this, that’s okay, because you’re witnessing and living as it happens something we’ve never seen or heard before—a single voice, speaking to mankind, guileless, with no agenda, and with a blinding honesty we all need to understand. Space tends to do that to us. Our fathers and mothers stood transfixed in 1969, knowing what adults know, and watching Neil Armstrong step on the moon. Later the drama of Apollo Thirteen galvanized the planet, to the extent that communications were able to bring the globe together. And today? A planetary audience is reading or listening in dozens of languages to every word Kip Dawson writes. An audience of perhaps two billion—that’s with a “B"—two billion members of the human family. Perhaps it takes something like this to truly remind us how connected we really are.

Okay. First, let’s get to the basics of what’s happened.

With a pedestrian mini-bar scotch in her hand, in a plush Los Angeles hotel room, Diana Ross settles into an easy chair, thinking over the day’s events. The TV is on, the story doing just what she’d predicted now and turning to phase three, the story about what he’s saying and how he’s saying it.

She shakes her head at the coincidence of Kip going silent just before Coleman’s show hit the air. Intellectually she knows his producer had nothing to do with it. But it gave Matt Coleman an invaluable window of opportunity to feed the void in Kip’s transmission with his own spin, and given the deep public hunger for more, the size of tonight’s audience has to be a record.

Kip’s last-typed words still hang along the bottom of the screen, the end of a surprisingly introspective tale of his second marriage and how the progressive withdrawal of sexual interest by Sharon Summers Dawson affected him slowly, insidiously, exacerbated by her refusal to admit there was anything wrong between them. He wrote about his frustration and his attempts to ignore it. He talked about trying to tell himself it was okay, that he could survive semi-celibacy as Sharon became sexually colder.

But she’s been wholly unprepared to read that Kip fantasized about her while in training in Mojave—a revelation written with her name clearly attached that’s led to an instant phone explosion and morning show bookings for tomorrow. She’s gone through a series of rapid responses from shock to embarrassment to anger to a growing, deep sense of connection.

So I affected him that much!

For several hours she’s been worried that he’ll say more, take his fantasy into the literary bedroom or something equally tawdry. After all, he could say anything at all with the secure “knowledge” that no one in his time would read it. And when he began describing the feelings their one dinner together had sparked in his love-starved head—thoughts that maybe he should consider ending his marriage and looking for someone like her to love—it was not a welcome accolade. Half the planet has now been invited to think of her as a virtual pinup girl, if not a potential homewrecker.