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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
The Winds of Change
Chapter 3 (rating PG)
Springdale, Arkansas
August 7, 1997 2300 CST
The enveloping aroma of barbecued meat welcomed the group back to the home that was their temporary
command post. Money had been unusually tight this year and Kevin had been unable to maintain the
office space he had rented in years past. The timely death of his mother-in-law had provided the group
with an ample field headquarters and bunking area. The four bedroom home had been more than he had
ever needed. With the new guy, though, it was going to be tight.
Although Kevin hated to admit to it in public, he was a Storm Chaser. Kevin felt lost in the Hollywood
inspired hype surrounding the release of “Twister” and the constant bombardment of tornado footage
available on the Internet and the Weather Channel. Suddenly what had once been the domain of a small
group of dedicated meteorologists and a few dozen crazed Viet Nam vets had become the mainstream.
Tornado sightings seemed to create as much traffic going towards the funnel as away from it. They were
fools who played with death. It was nearly impossible for him to believe that the hysteria for storms rivaled
that of UFO and Elvis sightings. Tornadoes were nothing to play with, as he knew from experience.
Kevin had started chasing in the late sixties after his mother and father were killed by a tornado. They had
lived in a nice trailer park, very similar to the one today, he had noticed immediately. Tornadoes were
crushing monsters which fed as much upon the souls of the living as those of the dead. Kevin understood
firemen when they talked about seeing the beast in the fire. The tornado which killed his parents threw him
a hundred and fifty yards into a stand of oak trees. Three broken ribs and a fractured skull later he hit the
ground with enough force to break both of his legs. Neither leg had correctly healed and he walked with a
pronounced limp. He knew they called him Duckman behind his back. He was glad they at least
respected him enough to do it quietly.
As he lay, broken and alone in the Fayetteville Shriners Hospital, Kevin vowed to avenge the death of his
parents. He swore his life to the pursuit of Mother Nature and to conquering her. He wanted to provide
some means to protect others from the horror that he and his family had faced. He wanted some form of
revenge.
‘Strangely enough, they didn’t portray that part in the movie,’ he bitterly complained to anyone who would
listen. ‘No, too many Hollywood bodies and poster boy faces for Reality’s sake.’ Kevin and his team
were part of the inspiration for ‘Twister,’ which drove him even crazier. The ‘DOROTHY’ device used in the
film had been developed by Kevin years prior. The original concept had been so revolutionary, so
promising that he had created a stir in the meteorological field to rival Newton. Unfortunately, the data
which DOROTHY was capable of obtaining had proven next to useless. Unless of course you count
helping a computer to generate an animated tornado. Kevin didn’t.
Somehow, all that data just didn’t correlate to any real knowledge about the makings of a tornado.
Somehow all that information never made one damn bit of difference when it came down to actually
predicting where the monster would strike next. He knew it should, but he had long since given up that pipe
dream. Many brilliant scientists were working on the formulas now, many people with higher IQ’s than his
checking balance. None were having any more luck than he had.
Not surprisingly, as more and more of his colleagues began to suspect the minimal benefits of
DOROTHY, his notoriety and prestige suffered. Once a highly sought after expert he had now sunk to the
level of an intruder or perhaps a prodigal son returning the day after his father’s funeral. The pain he felt
stretched much further than his pocketbook. He had lost his pride.
After years of seclusion, he discovered that a competitor sold the movie rights and pirated information
relating to the initial testing of DOROTHY. The legal battle was still being fought in the courts, but the only
winners in that battle, Kevin knew, were the sharks fighting it. His principle would not allow him to sell out
and begin to guide “Storm Chasing Tours.” Tours of tornado ‘hot spots,’ promising to sight ‘at least one
real tornado per week.’ It sickened him. How could some of his contemporaries, some of his colleagues
consent to bring civilians into harms way like that? I was unconscionable.
The Smithsonian purchased the original DOROTHY for a reasonable sum and with his mother-in-law’s
death, Kevin and his wife Dorothy (for whom the device was named, not the fantasy character of a warped
children’s book) suddenly found a way to keep their creditors at bay. After selling their small home in
Birmingham, they moved to Spring Valley and Kevin began to arrange the old team for the upcoming
storm season. Situated in Tornado Alley, they could stage out of this home for the season. Kevin hoped
that by returning to the chase he could find some of the heart he had lost. Dorothy hoped he’d just find his
smile.
The season had been long, but profitable. Kevin had managed to sell a number of good storm pictures to
local magazines, newspapers and even two to ‘New Yorker’ magazine for a story on ‘real-life Storm
Chasers.’ The proceeds from the picture sales would help carry them through the next year. Most
importantly, Kevin found that he had not lost his ability to feel the storms. He retained an uncanny ability to
predict the storm’s path. Simply put, he had observed so many storms that he recognized the patterns and
the landscape and could anticipate storms well. He was responsible for saving dozens of lives this
season alone.
The storm today had taken them by surprise. Essentially in his backyard (about two hours away), Kevin
had to scramble to make the sight before all the evidence had been lost. So much could be learned about
the storms after they were gone. Kevin spent hours studying every storm path he could find. He fashioned
himself the Sherlock Holmes of Natural Disasters. He knew enough, anyway, to know how little he still
knew.
The team he had assembled this season had jelled well over the last few months. Jeff Carlson, the radar
operator was a genius with electronics. He had taken the low output Doppler radar Kevin had managed to
obtain and had converted it somehow to something the military might be interested in. Jeff’s MIT
background showed and his gadgets continually had better storm information than the National Weather
Service (NWS, called ‘the NeWS’). Marty Donovan had been a television weatherman when he decided
his life was in neutral. He left his wife and began a tour group for disaster junkies. In spite of this, Kevin had
hired him because of his nose for storms and his incredible driving abilities. One thing Kevin had not
counted on was the intensive traffic and the sheer number of storm chasers now. He needed a capable
driver and he found one.
The biggest risk of the group turned out to be his greatest coup. On a whim and a prayer, Kevin had
decided to hire a woman photographer to assist him with filming storms and taking still shots during the
season. She had been with the team for three months and was the sole reason they were profitable. She
had an uncanny knack for shooting incredible pictures and would regularly return from a storm with only
twenty pictures taken, three of them worthy of sale. Her capability with the camera had greatly freed Kevin
up to observe and react to the storm, while still allowing the team some chance for profit. Kevin was not so
blind as to disdain money. Bridgett was a trained journalistic photographer with Desert Storm and City
Desk experience on the ‘New York Times.’ She was not some fly-by-night destined to be part of the
picture instead of taking it. She was the one he worried about the least.
He remembered meeting her for the first time. She had strode up to him with the confidence of woman who
thinks equal rights are a stepping stone for men. “Bridgett. Bridgett Emm. No relation,” she had said, her
firm, callused hand extended to him almost in challenge.
Although a bit confused at the initial introduction, he quickly deduced that with her current string of tornado
pictures she was getting tired of the Auntie Em references. Auntie Em she was not. Her grip bespoke a
power uncommon in any woman and surprising in one 5’ 5” tall. Her shoulder length black hair was pulled
back away from her face with a style that was all function. Kevin pegged her for about 115 pounds but with
loose fitting shorts and a casual denim shirt effectively hiding anything particular about her figure, he was
not sure. He would have been genuinely surprised to find she topped 130. Not a particularly thin woman,
Kevin mistook the slight stockiness for fat. He was unaccustomed to the proportions of a well muscled
woman.
During the last few months he had rarely seen her wear anything feminine. The Timberland hiking boots
and hiking shorts she wore seemed permanently attached to her and he didn’t think she knew what
makeup was. Unlike most of the women he met, Bridgett maintained a very small wardrobe. Her lack of
clothing and insistence to carry more than her weight with the chores and duties around the house meant
that some weeks she was forced to wash clothes three and four times to stay clean. When in the field, she
rarely changed clothes.
The most remarkable thing about Bridgett was that Kevin had encountered absolutely no problems with
the other two men regarding her. Even Dorothy, who had a notoriously jealous streak, seemed indifferent
to Bridgett. Bridgett didn’t have any particular aspect of her beauty which stood out and caused attention,
rather she had a sense of inner beauty derived from confidence and authority. Her deep blue eyes were
so open and so innocent that it was often hard to imagine her having lived the life she had. She came with
excellent references and was already a vital member of the team. Kevin fell in love immediately.
As he strode back out of the house onto the large front porch, Jarod Stewart, the rather strange, boyish guy
they had met in Missouri, pulled up. Jarod was another gamble this late in the season. With his current
string of successes, though, Kevin felt he couldn’t lose. Jarod claimed to be a meteorologist with a degree
from the University of Illinois, a fact Kevin could easily verify. He was having a little trouble finding
challenging work and his wife had just left him, so he had no ties and no requirements for pay. Best of all,
he offered to work solely for room, board and experience. Kevin noticed he had been tracking the
tornado’s path and had made some very detailed notes. Kevin was impressed and he was looking
forward to having another meteorologist on the team.
Jeff had decided to ride back with Jarod. Kevin supposed he couldn’t blame him. Jarod had air
conditioning in his Lumina. Kevin was surprised Bridgett had decided to ride home with him. Kevin was not
blind to the way Bridgett had looked at Jarod. Kevin knew she never looked at him in that way. Her eyes
were on fire, burning a hole in Jarod two yards across. Kevin was not a jealous man and he didn’t hold it
against the newcomer. With Jarod’s looks, attention from women was undoubtedly his norm rather than
Kevin’s exception. Kevin loved Dorothy and was a happily married man, anyway. He did notice that Jarod
seemed oblivious to it, thankfully.
Well Jeff must have liked him, Kevin remarked to himself. The two of them were laughing up a storm.
*****
Springdale, Arkansas
August 8, 1997 0235 CST
The hardest part of any pretend was the first twenty-four hours. Although his research was impeccable,
Jarod never held the illusion that he could know everything. Questions came with much greater speed and
covered a much broader spectrum during the initial meeting between him and his targets. This was
always the case and the more technical the pretend, the more precise his answers had to be. In a close
knit group like this, whose members knew each others sleeping habits better than their own children’s
Jarod had to be braced for close scrutiny.
Despite anything else done to him at the Centre, they had taught him well the art of Pretending. For some
of the Pretenders, like Angelo, pretending was natural. Close contact or interaction with another person
opened a floodgate of emotions, thoughts, perceptions and beliefs, each one more alien than the last.
Jarod often wondered if schizophrenia was somehow related to a Pretending ability gone horribly out of
control. The process was both horrible and wonderful and it terrified him. He often pondered what Isaac
had said to him many months before: “You can’t just go around pretending to be something you aren’t.
After a while, you just forget who you really were.” That simple statement, offered by the transvestite cab-
driver he had spared from a humiliating six months in jail, haunted him to this day.
For the true Pretenders, their own thoughts and life had little meaning. Over the years they lost the contact
with their real selves in the sea of personalities which floated into and out of their consciousness.
Occasionally, old pretends would muddle up through the depths of his mind to threaten to take over.
Domineering personalities rarely evaporated when the pretend was over. These warring factions of the
mind had driven more than one Pretender insane and Jarod had fought it with every fiber of his body. He
resolved long ago to never lose himself because it was the only thing he really had.
Today had gone smoothly enough, though. The tornado dominated the conversation and allowed him
one night’s peace. The late hour of their arrival also promoted little in the way of conversation. Jarod was
thankful for the years of training at the Centre for preparing him to exist on less than four hours of sleep a
night. Although it had been after midnight, he wasn’t tired and the others were exhausted. After a quick
meal of barbecued venison, which had tasted much better than the beef he was used to, Jarod was shown
where the couch in the living room was and the rest of the team disbursed for the night. Two hours later,
Jarod was still wide awake, his laptop humming steadily.
Rarely did he ever enter a pretend without every piece of the puzzle in place. This allayed any chance of
discovery. In the beginning, this had not always been the case and he was caught once by an EMT
dispatcher. After that embarrassment, each detail of the pretend was analyzed and he often tried for days
to break his own identity prior to entering the arena. This time was different. The background he required
needed a masters degree, and he wanted it to be from MIT. The easiest part of this was convincing Jeff
that he was an alum. Jeff had done graduate work at UC Berkeley and would have been six years ahead
Jarod’s stay at MIT. Jarod had the faculty, course curriculum and campus layouts, together with local
establishments and favorite places for student to go, memorized for twelve college campuses. As he
often required technical background information, MIT was a natural choice. So far, though, he had been
unable to make his hacked MIT records stick.
MIT had one of the most effective firewalls Jarod had ever encountered. He doubted anyone but him and
maybe Broots could hack into their systems. The strangest thing for him was that every time he would
hack a record at MIT, the next day it would be gone. No matter what steps he took, the records would
always be erased. He had altered the clock counter thinking that the protect was a time sensitive write-
erase, eliminating all data stored after or before a specific time. That didn’t work. After six attempts, he
had begun to give up until Jeff had mentioned something in the car. They had been discussing computer
viruses and Jeff was telling him about the new one called Tall Mocha-Raspberry Java. The virus would
attach itself to a Java Applet and keep an internal counter. After 666 runs of the Java Applet, it would
delete the Applet and would send a spike through the hard drive, deleting any programs open at the time.
Tonight, Jarod had spent two hours writing a Java locator algorithm in the hope to discover a similar
Applet running in the MIT admissions computer system. Jarod could have simply transferred his attention
to any one of a dozen other schools, but he enjoyed the challenge. It was so rare for him these days. The
MIT system was accessed, bypassed and violated by the state of the art machine at Jarod’s fingertips.
Once inside, Jarod knew he had twenty minutes before the access sensor noticed his feed. Apparently no
one in admissions telecommuted, he mused.
Bingo! The algorithm picked up a Java Applet run in the system. After fifteen minutes of scanning the
hundreds of attached HTML’s and other library files, he found a counter. He exited then regained access,
buying him another twenty minutes. Quickly back to the timer he actually laughed out loud. The timer was
one number bigger. He had been foiled by the simplest trick in computing. Apparently, the network
administrator would record the counter number each night. If the number did not match in the morning, the
files were backed up from the tape back-ups created each night. Some of the best hacking protection in
the world and he had been foiled time and time again by a simple counter. He laughed and popped
another Pez from the Chewbacca dispenser he had picked up yesterday.
Pez was one of the few outlets Jarod had. As the sweet, slightly tart sensation began to spread throughout
his mouth, the rest of his body began to respond in kind. Although he never understood Miss Parker’s
smoking habits, he believed the comfort and almost sexual pleasure he derived from the tart wash of Pez
was something akin to what she got from cigarettes. He did not envy her. He could always brush his teeth,
while she couldn’t just brush her lungs clean. The ulcer she had recently opened startled him as well.
Maybe he was pushing her too hard.
He knew the degree in Meteorology would not directly translate to a Masters in Computer Science, so he
added some remedial undergraduate classes to his transcript. The algorithm he programmed into the
Java counter now allowed him trouble free access between two and three o’clock in the morning, eastern
time. Satisfied that this ended the last hurdle to the pretend, he exited the MIT mainframe.
“You Have Mail Waiting” circulated around the computer generated mailbox in the upper corner of the
screen. Figuring that Sydney was trying to contact him again, Jarod began his tracer program. Jarod and
Broots had developed a tacit friendship over the last year. Jarod had begun to truly respect Broots’ ability
to make a computer sing. His abilities were nearly as good as Jarod’s own. As sworn adversaries they
fought their public battles, but they often carried out a private truce. Jarod never underestimated Broots’
ability to send traces and attach mail send traces to received mail. If he ever had, Broots would have
caught him in a heartbeat. Jarod often left Broots just enough of an opening to catch him, and Broots
always left Jarod just enough of an opening to escape. The day he found Jarod unaided, Jarod would
have no such advantage.
The mail message turned out to be clean, less than 1K bytes. Not even Broots could fool with a message
that short. Besides, the modem Jarod had installed had send block functions, which he routinely activated
and the satellite link Jarod was using would takes Broots five seconds to trace. The message took two to
download.
The body was more cryptic than Jarod was used to: “http://www.geocities.com/televisioncity/set/3658. FYI
– P7/G2”
Jarod contemplated seeing what this address would bring up when he heard the soft footsteps coming up
the basement stairs and into the kitchen. He quickly deleted the message and clicked his bookmark to
the homepage of Nine Inch Nails. The refrigerator door opened and closed. Fortunately this page was
stored in his Cache folder and the graphics heavy page sprang onto the screen in a heartbeat.
“I thought I heard someone up here,” the calm, steady voice of Bridgett carried across the living room like a
sweet fragrance. Jarod cursed the placement of the two staircases not allowing him to face both.
Deciding the main staircase more apt to yield a midnight snacker, he had been forced to place his back to
the kitchen door, though which Bridgett now approached. In her hand she carried a plate with two slices of
apple pie and two glasses of milk. Clearly, she anticipated his presence here.
Jarod made no attempt to answer her and instead commenced shutting down his laptop in such a way as
to not seem conspicuous.
“I’m having a little trouble sleeping too. Care for some company?” Although she had not come fully around
into his field of vision, Jarod could feel her presence in the room. She brought an airy quality to the room,
as if a spring breeze had somehow found a way penetrate a prison wall. The room began to heat up and
Jarod began to feel slightly uneasy. The headphones he was wearing were plugged into a portable CD
player, but the CD had ended an hour ago. He used the excuse of the headphones to feign ignorance of
her presence. He knew that he could feel her enter a concert hall. She radiated.
“Oh!” Jarod started, feigning surprise at her suddenly entering his field of vision.
“Oh, jeeze, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” she apologized, clearly surprised at his ignorance of her
presence. “I didn’t see your headphones. I was having trouble sleeping and I figured you’d like to share a
piece of pie with me. I made it myself.”
Pulling his headphones off and hitting the stop button on his CD player, Jarod stood quickly to help her with
the plate. “Sure, I mean, I’d love to eat your pie.” Bridgett’s embarrassed laughter signaled to Jarod that
once again he had said something really stupid. Suddenly figuring it out, he began to laugh too. “I, umm,
that’s not what I meant.”
“Don’t ever take back something unless you are told to,” Bridgett chimed in as a challenge to the
staggering Jarod. His mind just wasn’t working as fast as he knew it should be. Was it getting hotter in
here? “Anyway, I asked for it. Come on over here and sit down.”
The full sized couch seemed suddenly far too small for the two of them. Jarod felt the presence of Bridgett
like an electric field surrounding her. This was so vastly different from anything he had ever felt while
pretending. This was alien to him. Alien and frightening. Frightening and exciting. Bridgett, for her part, sat
on the far corner of the couch with one leg tucked up under the other. The flannel pajamas she wore clung
loosely to her body in a way that somehow stimulated Jarod to imagine the difference between the parts
touching her body and the parts which did not. He had seen lingerie before, but somehow this complete
masking of Bridgett’s body was even more exciting. He was awestruck.
Bridgett had her hair in a loose french braid tied with a single black elastic band. Pulled completely back
from her face, the hairstyle revealed two simple silver stud earrings. Jarod found the examination of her
ears fascinating as he lingeringly counted the six pierce holes in her main lobe and up the side of her ear.
The top piercing was at the apex of her ear, Jarod lingered on it for hours, so it seemed.
Her hands were the rough, callused hands of worker, undoubtedly made harsh by the variety of chemicals
used to turn film into pictures. Her years of City Desk experience and wartime photography undoubtedly
had left their mark as well. Jarod had studied her work over the last two weeks and found her eye for
camera angles superb. Thinking along these lines, Jarod naturally followed is train of thought to her eyes.
It was there he lost his will to escape. Bordered by the slightest line of sun-freckles and bracketing a
compact, linear nose, Bridgett’s eyes were simply the most captivating eyes of anyone he had ever
encountered.
As he continued to stare, the ocean blue depths of Bridgett’s eyes captured Jarod in the rapture of the
Assumption. He could feel his entire body grow lighter and could literally sense the change in the air
around them. An electric, no magnetic impulse began to surround him. Suddenly, the air had become too
heavy to breath. Jarod had made mixed gas dives to four hundred feet and spent time in space but
nothing came close to the feeling of suffocation he began to feel now. He knew that he should not be
counting Bridgett’s eyelashes and memorizing the small black lines radiating from her iris to her cornea,
but he couldn’t help himself.
“Don’t you like my pie?” the altogether too sensual voice of Bridgett returned him to reality. Her voice
dripped with innuendo. She was nearly done with her slice of pie, he hadn’t even touched his. The last
fifteen minutes he had only sat and stared. She was intoxicating. Jarod felt trapped by her charms and for
the first time he began to surrender to the feeling.
“I guess I wasn’t very hungry.” Jarod was surprised he managed to convince his mouth and tongue to co-
operate. No other part of his body seemed willing to undertake a task that did not involve Bridgett in some
way.
Jarod had known many women, Nia, Miss Parker and many others. Something was incredibly different
here. Never before had he felt so powerless and so out of control as he did now. He began to convince
the usually overwhelming part of his mind to return to decision-making. He began to analyze these new
sensations and emotions. Climbing slowly out of the Bridgett inspired stupor, he began to slowly eat the
pie. What was this he was feeling?
He knew that what he felt for Nia was not healthy for either of them. The love that they shared stemmed
from mutual need, from a mutual weakness. The passion and the love were present, but the true bonding
was absent. She could never be truly his because he would never give up his life for hers. Mutual need
was not love.
What he felt for Miss Parker was altogether different. They shared the camaraderie of two spirits too
powerful to be contained, too alone not to be loved. The incredible degree of passion and devotion which
had stemmed from this relationship was borne out of respect and understanding, rather than from true love.
They could never be together because they were, at heart, two very different, fiercely independent people.
Passion was not love.
This new enveloping presence before him defied explanation. Miss Parker was dangerous and exciting,
Bridgett was, well, complimentary. This was it, he finally decided. Bridgett felt like the missing half of some
puzzle that had been his life. She seemed to flow with him. He could sense her incredibly soothing
presence filling some need in him even more basic than sex, the need for acceptance.
As the last bite of arguably the best food he had ever eaten slid un-tasted down his throat, he could no
longer concentrate on anything other that the incredible woman next to him. Jarod knew Bridgett would
never make any top ten lists, but a natural beauty resonated from her and blocked out any conscious
thoughts he tried to make. The couch continued to shrink and the room temperature had far surpassed
any heat endurance sim Sydney had subjected him to. Bridgett sat through it all, chattering away about a
hundred meaningless details that Jarod should have been paying attention to, he guessed. Without even
touching her he felt closer to her than he did to anyone else in the world.
*****
When Kevin came down at six, Jarod and Bridgett were still sitting on the couch having a great
conversation. Jarod was still wearing the clothes he arrived in, so Kevin correctly guessed he hadn’t been
to sleep yet. As the others came down, Jarod managed to pull himself together and begin his first day as
part of the new team.
But only after Bridgett had gone back downstairs to shower and dress.
Chapter 3 (rating PG)
Springdale, Arkansas
August 7, 1997 2300 CST
The enveloping aroma of barbecued meat welcomed the group back to the home that was their temporary
command post. Money had been unusually tight this year and Kevin had been unable to maintain the
office space he had rented in years past. The timely death of his mother-in-law had provided the group
with an ample field headquarters and bunking area. The four bedroom home had been more than he had
ever needed. With the new guy, though, it was going to be tight.
Although Kevin hated to admit to it in public, he was a Storm Chaser. Kevin felt lost in the Hollywood
inspired hype surrounding the release of “Twister” and the constant bombardment of tornado footage
available on the Internet and the Weather Channel. Suddenly what had once been the domain of a small
group of dedicated meteorologists and a few dozen crazed Viet Nam vets had become the mainstream.
Tornado sightings seemed to create as much traffic going towards the funnel as away from it. They were
fools who played with death. It was nearly impossible for him to believe that the hysteria for storms rivaled
that of UFO and Elvis sightings. Tornadoes were nothing to play with, as he knew from experience.
Kevin had started chasing in the late sixties after his mother and father were killed by a tornado. They had
lived in a nice trailer park, very similar to the one today, he had noticed immediately. Tornadoes were
crushing monsters which fed as much upon the souls of the living as those of the dead. Kevin understood
firemen when they talked about seeing the beast in the fire. The tornado which killed his parents threw him
a hundred and fifty yards into a stand of oak trees. Three broken ribs and a fractured skull later he hit the
ground with enough force to break both of his legs. Neither leg had correctly healed and he walked with a
pronounced limp. He knew they called him Duckman behind his back. He was glad they at least
respected him enough to do it quietly.
As he lay, broken and alone in the Fayetteville Shriners Hospital, Kevin vowed to avenge the death of his
parents. He swore his life to the pursuit of Mother Nature and to conquering her. He wanted to provide
some means to protect others from the horror that he and his family had faced. He wanted some form of
revenge.
‘Strangely enough, they didn’t portray that part in the movie,’ he bitterly complained to anyone who would
listen. ‘No, too many Hollywood bodies and poster boy faces for Reality’s sake.’ Kevin and his team
were part of the inspiration for ‘Twister,’ which drove him even crazier. The ‘DOROTHY’ device used in the
film had been developed by Kevin years prior. The original concept had been so revolutionary, so
promising that he had created a stir in the meteorological field to rival Newton. Unfortunately, the data
which DOROTHY was capable of obtaining had proven next to useless. Unless of course you count
helping a computer to generate an animated tornado. Kevin didn’t.
Somehow, all that data just didn’t correlate to any real knowledge about the makings of a tornado.
Somehow all that information never made one damn bit of difference when it came down to actually
predicting where the monster would strike next. He knew it should, but he had long since given up that pipe
dream. Many brilliant scientists were working on the formulas now, many people with higher IQ’s than his
checking balance. None were having any more luck than he had.
Not surprisingly, as more and more of his colleagues began to suspect the minimal benefits of
DOROTHY, his notoriety and prestige suffered. Once a highly sought after expert he had now sunk to the
level of an intruder or perhaps a prodigal son returning the day after his father’s funeral. The pain he felt
stretched much further than his pocketbook. He had lost his pride.
After years of seclusion, he discovered that a competitor sold the movie rights and pirated information
relating to the initial testing of DOROTHY. The legal battle was still being fought in the courts, but the only
winners in that battle, Kevin knew, were the sharks fighting it. His principle would not allow him to sell out
and begin to guide “Storm Chasing Tours.” Tours of tornado ‘hot spots,’ promising to sight ‘at least one
real tornado per week.’ It sickened him. How could some of his contemporaries, some of his colleagues
consent to bring civilians into harms way like that? I was unconscionable.
The Smithsonian purchased the original DOROTHY for a reasonable sum and with his mother-in-law’s
death, Kevin and his wife Dorothy (for whom the device was named, not the fantasy character of a warped
children’s book) suddenly found a way to keep their creditors at bay. After selling their small home in
Birmingham, they moved to Spring Valley and Kevin began to arrange the old team for the upcoming
storm season. Situated in Tornado Alley, they could stage out of this home for the season. Kevin hoped
that by returning to the chase he could find some of the heart he had lost. Dorothy hoped he’d just find his
smile.
The season had been long, but profitable. Kevin had managed to sell a number of good storm pictures to
local magazines, newspapers and even two to ‘New Yorker’ magazine for a story on ‘real-life Storm
Chasers.’ The proceeds from the picture sales would help carry them through the next year. Most
importantly, Kevin found that he had not lost his ability to feel the storms. He retained an uncanny ability to
predict the storm’s path. Simply put, he had observed so many storms that he recognized the patterns and
the landscape and could anticipate storms well. He was responsible for saving dozens of lives this
season alone.
The storm today had taken them by surprise. Essentially in his backyard (about two hours away), Kevin
had to scramble to make the sight before all the evidence had been lost. So much could be learned about
the storms after they were gone. Kevin spent hours studying every storm path he could find. He fashioned
himself the Sherlock Holmes of Natural Disasters. He knew enough, anyway, to know how little he still
knew.
The team he had assembled this season had jelled well over the last few months. Jeff Carlson, the radar
operator was a genius with electronics. He had taken the low output Doppler radar Kevin had managed to
obtain and had converted it somehow to something the military might be interested in. Jeff’s MIT
background showed and his gadgets continually had better storm information than the National Weather
Service (NWS, called ‘the NeWS’). Marty Donovan had been a television weatherman when he decided
his life was in neutral. He left his wife and began a tour group for disaster junkies. In spite of this, Kevin had
hired him because of his nose for storms and his incredible driving abilities. One thing Kevin had not
counted on was the intensive traffic and the sheer number of storm chasers now. He needed a capable
driver and he found one.
The biggest risk of the group turned out to be his greatest coup. On a whim and a prayer, Kevin had
decided to hire a woman photographer to assist him with filming storms and taking still shots during the
season. She had been with the team for three months and was the sole reason they were profitable. She
had an uncanny knack for shooting incredible pictures and would regularly return from a storm with only
twenty pictures taken, three of them worthy of sale. Her capability with the camera had greatly freed Kevin
up to observe and react to the storm, while still allowing the team some chance for profit. Kevin was not so
blind as to disdain money. Bridgett was a trained journalistic photographer with Desert Storm and City
Desk experience on the ‘New York Times.’ She was not some fly-by-night destined to be part of the
picture instead of taking it. She was the one he worried about the least.
He remembered meeting her for the first time. She had strode up to him with the confidence of woman who
thinks equal rights are a stepping stone for men. “Bridgett. Bridgett Emm. No relation,” she had said, her
firm, callused hand extended to him almost in challenge.
Although a bit confused at the initial introduction, he quickly deduced that with her current string of tornado
pictures she was getting tired of the Auntie Em references. Auntie Em she was not. Her grip bespoke a
power uncommon in any woman and surprising in one 5’ 5” tall. Her shoulder length black hair was pulled
back away from her face with a style that was all function. Kevin pegged her for about 115 pounds but with
loose fitting shorts and a casual denim shirt effectively hiding anything particular about her figure, he was
not sure. He would have been genuinely surprised to find she topped 130. Not a particularly thin woman,
Kevin mistook the slight stockiness for fat. He was unaccustomed to the proportions of a well muscled
woman.
During the last few months he had rarely seen her wear anything feminine. The Timberland hiking boots
and hiking shorts she wore seemed permanently attached to her and he didn’t think she knew what
makeup was. Unlike most of the women he met, Bridgett maintained a very small wardrobe. Her lack of
clothing and insistence to carry more than her weight with the chores and duties around the house meant
that some weeks she was forced to wash clothes three and four times to stay clean. When in the field, she
rarely changed clothes.
The most remarkable thing about Bridgett was that Kevin had encountered absolutely no problems with
the other two men regarding her. Even Dorothy, who had a notoriously jealous streak, seemed indifferent
to Bridgett. Bridgett didn’t have any particular aspect of her beauty which stood out and caused attention,
rather she had a sense of inner beauty derived from confidence and authority. Her deep blue eyes were
so open and so innocent that it was often hard to imagine her having lived the life she had. She came with
excellent references and was already a vital member of the team. Kevin fell in love immediately.
As he strode back out of the house onto the large front porch, Jarod Stewart, the rather strange, boyish guy
they had met in Missouri, pulled up. Jarod was another gamble this late in the season. With his current
string of successes, though, Kevin felt he couldn’t lose. Jarod claimed to be a meteorologist with a degree
from the University of Illinois, a fact Kevin could easily verify. He was having a little trouble finding
challenging work and his wife had just left him, so he had no ties and no requirements for pay. Best of all,
he offered to work solely for room, board and experience. Kevin noticed he had been tracking the
tornado’s path and had made some very detailed notes. Kevin was impressed and he was looking
forward to having another meteorologist on the team.
Jeff had decided to ride back with Jarod. Kevin supposed he couldn’t blame him. Jarod had air
conditioning in his Lumina. Kevin was surprised Bridgett had decided to ride home with him. Kevin was not
blind to the way Bridgett had looked at Jarod. Kevin knew she never looked at him in that way. Her eyes
were on fire, burning a hole in Jarod two yards across. Kevin was not a jealous man and he didn’t hold it
against the newcomer. With Jarod’s looks, attention from women was undoubtedly his norm rather than
Kevin’s exception. Kevin loved Dorothy and was a happily married man, anyway. He did notice that Jarod
seemed oblivious to it, thankfully.
Well Jeff must have liked him, Kevin remarked to himself. The two of them were laughing up a storm.
*****
Springdale, Arkansas
August 8, 1997 0235 CST
The hardest part of any pretend was the first twenty-four hours. Although his research was impeccable,
Jarod never held the illusion that he could know everything. Questions came with much greater speed and
covered a much broader spectrum during the initial meeting between him and his targets. This was
always the case and the more technical the pretend, the more precise his answers had to be. In a close
knit group like this, whose members knew each others sleeping habits better than their own children’s
Jarod had to be braced for close scrutiny.
Despite anything else done to him at the Centre, they had taught him well the art of Pretending. For some
of the Pretenders, like Angelo, pretending was natural. Close contact or interaction with another person
opened a floodgate of emotions, thoughts, perceptions and beliefs, each one more alien than the last.
Jarod often wondered if schizophrenia was somehow related to a Pretending ability gone horribly out of
control. The process was both horrible and wonderful and it terrified him. He often pondered what Isaac
had said to him many months before: “You can’t just go around pretending to be something you aren’t.
After a while, you just forget who you really were.” That simple statement, offered by the transvestite cab-
driver he had spared from a humiliating six months in jail, haunted him to this day.
For the true Pretenders, their own thoughts and life had little meaning. Over the years they lost the contact
with their real selves in the sea of personalities which floated into and out of their consciousness.
Occasionally, old pretends would muddle up through the depths of his mind to threaten to take over.
Domineering personalities rarely evaporated when the pretend was over. These warring factions of the
mind had driven more than one Pretender insane and Jarod had fought it with every fiber of his body. He
resolved long ago to never lose himself because it was the only thing he really had.
Today had gone smoothly enough, though. The tornado dominated the conversation and allowed him
one night’s peace. The late hour of their arrival also promoted little in the way of conversation. Jarod was
thankful for the years of training at the Centre for preparing him to exist on less than four hours of sleep a
night. Although it had been after midnight, he wasn’t tired and the others were exhausted. After a quick
meal of barbecued venison, which had tasted much better than the beef he was used to, Jarod was shown
where the couch in the living room was and the rest of the team disbursed for the night. Two hours later,
Jarod was still wide awake, his laptop humming steadily.
Rarely did he ever enter a pretend without every piece of the puzzle in place. This allayed any chance of
discovery. In the beginning, this had not always been the case and he was caught once by an EMT
dispatcher. After that embarrassment, each detail of the pretend was analyzed and he often tried for days
to break his own identity prior to entering the arena. This time was different. The background he required
needed a masters degree, and he wanted it to be from MIT. The easiest part of this was convincing Jeff
that he was an alum. Jeff had done graduate work at UC Berkeley and would have been six years ahead
Jarod’s stay at MIT. Jarod had the faculty, course curriculum and campus layouts, together with local
establishments and favorite places for student to go, memorized for twelve college campuses. As he
often required technical background information, MIT was a natural choice. So far, though, he had been
unable to make his hacked MIT records stick.
MIT had one of the most effective firewalls Jarod had ever encountered. He doubted anyone but him and
maybe Broots could hack into their systems. The strangest thing for him was that every time he would
hack a record at MIT, the next day it would be gone. No matter what steps he took, the records would
always be erased. He had altered the clock counter thinking that the protect was a time sensitive write-
erase, eliminating all data stored after or before a specific time. That didn’t work. After six attempts, he
had begun to give up until Jeff had mentioned something in the car. They had been discussing computer
viruses and Jeff was telling him about the new one called Tall Mocha-Raspberry Java. The virus would
attach itself to a Java Applet and keep an internal counter. After 666 runs of the Java Applet, it would
delete the Applet and would send a spike through the hard drive, deleting any programs open at the time.
Tonight, Jarod had spent two hours writing a Java locator algorithm in the hope to discover a similar
Applet running in the MIT admissions computer system. Jarod could have simply transferred his attention
to any one of a dozen other schools, but he enjoyed the challenge. It was so rare for him these days. The
MIT system was accessed, bypassed and violated by the state of the art machine at Jarod’s fingertips.
Once inside, Jarod knew he had twenty minutes before the access sensor noticed his feed. Apparently no
one in admissions telecommuted, he mused.
Bingo! The algorithm picked up a Java Applet run in the system. After fifteen minutes of scanning the
hundreds of attached HTML’s and other library files, he found a counter. He exited then regained access,
buying him another twenty minutes. Quickly back to the timer he actually laughed out loud. The timer was
one number bigger. He had been foiled by the simplest trick in computing. Apparently, the network
administrator would record the counter number each night. If the number did not match in the morning, the
files were backed up from the tape back-ups created each night. Some of the best hacking protection in
the world and he had been foiled time and time again by a simple counter. He laughed and popped
another Pez from the Chewbacca dispenser he had picked up yesterday.
Pez was one of the few outlets Jarod had. As the sweet, slightly tart sensation began to spread throughout
his mouth, the rest of his body began to respond in kind. Although he never understood Miss Parker’s
smoking habits, he believed the comfort and almost sexual pleasure he derived from the tart wash of Pez
was something akin to what she got from cigarettes. He did not envy her. He could always brush his teeth,
while she couldn’t just brush her lungs clean. The ulcer she had recently opened startled him as well.
Maybe he was pushing her too hard.
He knew the degree in Meteorology would not directly translate to a Masters in Computer Science, so he
added some remedial undergraduate classes to his transcript. The algorithm he programmed into the
Java counter now allowed him trouble free access between two and three o’clock in the morning, eastern
time. Satisfied that this ended the last hurdle to the pretend, he exited the MIT mainframe.
“You Have Mail Waiting” circulated around the computer generated mailbox in the upper corner of the
screen. Figuring that Sydney was trying to contact him again, Jarod began his tracer program. Jarod and
Broots had developed a tacit friendship over the last year. Jarod had begun to truly respect Broots’ ability
to make a computer sing. His abilities were nearly as good as Jarod’s own. As sworn adversaries they
fought their public battles, but they often carried out a private truce. Jarod never underestimated Broots’
ability to send traces and attach mail send traces to received mail. If he ever had, Broots would have
caught him in a heartbeat. Jarod often left Broots just enough of an opening to catch him, and Broots
always left Jarod just enough of an opening to escape. The day he found Jarod unaided, Jarod would
have no such advantage.
The mail message turned out to be clean, less than 1K bytes. Not even Broots could fool with a message
that short. Besides, the modem Jarod had installed had send block functions, which he routinely activated
and the satellite link Jarod was using would takes Broots five seconds to trace. The message took two to
download.
The body was more cryptic than Jarod was used to: “http://www.geocities.com/televisioncity/set/3658. FYI
– P7/G2”
Jarod contemplated seeing what this address would bring up when he heard the soft footsteps coming up
the basement stairs and into the kitchen. He quickly deleted the message and clicked his bookmark to
the homepage of Nine Inch Nails. The refrigerator door opened and closed. Fortunately this page was
stored in his Cache folder and the graphics heavy page sprang onto the screen in a heartbeat.
“I thought I heard someone up here,” the calm, steady voice of Bridgett carried across the living room like a
sweet fragrance. Jarod cursed the placement of the two staircases not allowing him to face both.
Deciding the main staircase more apt to yield a midnight snacker, he had been forced to place his back to
the kitchen door, though which Bridgett now approached. In her hand she carried a plate with two slices of
apple pie and two glasses of milk. Clearly, she anticipated his presence here.
Jarod made no attempt to answer her and instead commenced shutting down his laptop in such a way as
to not seem conspicuous.
“I’m having a little trouble sleeping too. Care for some company?” Although she had not come fully around
into his field of vision, Jarod could feel her presence in the room. She brought an airy quality to the room,
as if a spring breeze had somehow found a way penetrate a prison wall. The room began to heat up and
Jarod began to feel slightly uneasy. The headphones he was wearing were plugged into a portable CD
player, but the CD had ended an hour ago. He used the excuse of the headphones to feign ignorance of
her presence. He knew that he could feel her enter a concert hall. She radiated.
“Oh!” Jarod started, feigning surprise at her suddenly entering his field of vision.
“Oh, jeeze, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” she apologized, clearly surprised at his ignorance of her
presence. “I didn’t see your headphones. I was having trouble sleeping and I figured you’d like to share a
piece of pie with me. I made it myself.”
Pulling his headphones off and hitting the stop button on his CD player, Jarod stood quickly to help her with
the plate. “Sure, I mean, I’d love to eat your pie.” Bridgett’s embarrassed laughter signaled to Jarod that
once again he had said something really stupid. Suddenly figuring it out, he began to laugh too. “I, umm,
that’s not what I meant.”
“Don’t ever take back something unless you are told to,” Bridgett chimed in as a challenge to the
staggering Jarod. His mind just wasn’t working as fast as he knew it should be. Was it getting hotter in
here? “Anyway, I asked for it. Come on over here and sit down.”
The full sized couch seemed suddenly far too small for the two of them. Jarod felt the presence of Bridgett
like an electric field surrounding her. This was so vastly different from anything he had ever felt while
pretending. This was alien to him. Alien and frightening. Frightening and exciting. Bridgett, for her part, sat
on the far corner of the couch with one leg tucked up under the other. The flannel pajamas she wore clung
loosely to her body in a way that somehow stimulated Jarod to imagine the difference between the parts
touching her body and the parts which did not. He had seen lingerie before, but somehow this complete
masking of Bridgett’s body was even more exciting. He was awestruck.
Bridgett had her hair in a loose french braid tied with a single black elastic band. Pulled completely back
from her face, the hairstyle revealed two simple silver stud earrings. Jarod found the examination of her
ears fascinating as he lingeringly counted the six pierce holes in her main lobe and up the side of her ear.
The top piercing was at the apex of her ear, Jarod lingered on it for hours, so it seemed.
Her hands were the rough, callused hands of worker, undoubtedly made harsh by the variety of chemicals
used to turn film into pictures. Her years of City Desk experience and wartime photography undoubtedly
had left their mark as well. Jarod had studied her work over the last two weeks and found her eye for
camera angles superb. Thinking along these lines, Jarod naturally followed is train of thought to her eyes.
It was there he lost his will to escape. Bordered by the slightest line of sun-freckles and bracketing a
compact, linear nose, Bridgett’s eyes were simply the most captivating eyes of anyone he had ever
encountered.
As he continued to stare, the ocean blue depths of Bridgett’s eyes captured Jarod in the rapture of the
Assumption. He could feel his entire body grow lighter and could literally sense the change in the air
around them. An electric, no magnetic impulse began to surround him. Suddenly, the air had become too
heavy to breath. Jarod had made mixed gas dives to four hundred feet and spent time in space but
nothing came close to the feeling of suffocation he began to feel now. He knew that he should not be
counting Bridgett’s eyelashes and memorizing the small black lines radiating from her iris to her cornea,
but he couldn’t help himself.
“Don’t you like my pie?” the altogether too sensual voice of Bridgett returned him to reality. Her voice
dripped with innuendo. She was nearly done with her slice of pie, he hadn’t even touched his. The last
fifteen minutes he had only sat and stared. She was intoxicating. Jarod felt trapped by her charms and for
the first time he began to surrender to the feeling.
“I guess I wasn’t very hungry.” Jarod was surprised he managed to convince his mouth and tongue to co-
operate. No other part of his body seemed willing to undertake a task that did not involve Bridgett in some
way.
Jarod had known many women, Nia, Miss Parker and many others. Something was incredibly different
here. Never before had he felt so powerless and so out of control as he did now. He began to convince
the usually overwhelming part of his mind to return to decision-making. He began to analyze these new
sensations and emotions. Climbing slowly out of the Bridgett inspired stupor, he began to slowly eat the
pie. What was this he was feeling?
He knew that what he felt for Nia was not healthy for either of them. The love that they shared stemmed
from mutual need, from a mutual weakness. The passion and the love were present, but the true bonding
was absent. She could never be truly his because he would never give up his life for hers. Mutual need
was not love.
What he felt for Miss Parker was altogether different. They shared the camaraderie of two spirits too
powerful to be contained, too alone not to be loved. The incredible degree of passion and devotion which
had stemmed from this relationship was borne out of respect and understanding, rather than from true love.
They could never be together because they were, at heart, two very different, fiercely independent people.
Passion was not love.
This new enveloping presence before him defied explanation. Miss Parker was dangerous and exciting,
Bridgett was, well, complimentary. This was it, he finally decided. Bridgett felt like the missing half of some
puzzle that had been his life. She seemed to flow with him. He could sense her incredibly soothing
presence filling some need in him even more basic than sex, the need for acceptance.
As the last bite of arguably the best food he had ever eaten slid un-tasted down his throat, he could no
longer concentrate on anything other that the incredible woman next to him. Jarod knew Bridgett would
never make any top ten lists, but a natural beauty resonated from her and blocked out any conscious
thoughts he tried to make. The couch continued to shrink and the room temperature had far surpassed
any heat endurance sim Sydney had subjected him to. Bridgett sat through it all, chattering away about a
hundred meaningless details that Jarod should have been paying attention to, he guessed. Without even
touching her he felt closer to her than he did to anyone else in the world.
*****
When Kevin came down at six, Jarod and Bridgett were still sitting on the couch having a great
conversation. Jarod was still wearing the clothes he arrived in, so Kevin correctly guessed he hadn’t been
to sleep yet. As the others came down, Jarod managed to pull himself together and begin his first day as
part of the new team.
But only after Bridgett had gone back downstairs to shower and dress.
