Forecast (10 page)

The door to the White Room opened and one of the technicians, who had finished preparing the balloon, entered to run a check on their spacesuits. He wished the crew a private good luck, shaking their hands individually and then left again. As soon as he was gone the crew double
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checked their equipment and that of the person next to them.

Riding the elevator to ground level, the crew exchanged swift handshakes and wishful words before the workshop door opened upward on its runners and exposed the St. Ives cliff
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top overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The early morning sun beat down on their faces through their visors as they walked out onto a red carpet leading all the way to the balloon two hundred feet away. Tight security monitored their route along the carpet cordoned off by chain
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wire fencing, keeping the audience back. The first thing they saw as they came up the crest of the hill was the enormous envelope of the balloon swaying in a soft breeze, taller than the Eiffel Tower. The blob of helium pumped into the envelope had floated to the top, pulling the balloon tall and thin, making the Fable
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1 logo and NASA’s Insignia plastered across the middle indecipherable.

“There she is,” said Sutcliffe, feeling emotional.

There was an impressive turnout. Fears of failure were allayed by the encouraging cheers of the crowd. Throngs of spectators packed either side of the red carpet applauding their daring heroes. Matthews pegged the attendance at somewhere between seven and eight thousand, thereabout. The balloon itself was cordoned off with rope and a handful of officers who strictly marshalled the area. An inundation of media snapping shots from every conceivable angle provided the large TV monitors with live images. A convoy of satellite vans facing the towering balloon was a further indication of just how much of the world’s attention was upon them.

At eight o’clock, the noise from the crowd dissolved into a mumble of individual conversations. The air was pregnant with anticipation, thousands of eyes locked on the five balloonists strapped into seats on the gondola. Onlookers didn’t know a great deal about the five individuals. They were not celebrities. They were five people who had attracted the world’s attention with a wacky idea. Yet, they had style and assurance and were admirably calm. Sutcliffe watched a light breeze make bends in the balloon. Faraday was also staring up at the giant bulk looming over their heads, approximately thirteen hundred feet tall. 1.7 tons of super
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thin polyethylene, only twenty microns thick and thinner than a freezer bag, would allow the helium to expand in altitude. The Russian spacesuits kept their bodies warm in the cool morning air. Five hours later the same spacesuits would keep them safe from bombarding cosmic radiation at the fringe of space.

“Mike, can you hear me?” Sutcliffe spoke with a slow, raised voice through his mouthpiece to F1 Mission Control Base.

There was a sputter in the headset. “
Loud and clear. Systems all good, weather is great. Whenever you’re ready. Say hello to God for me
.”

“I’ll give him your regards.”

The technicians orchestrated the launch by firing the squibs, which separated the gondola from the frames. At the last moment, Sutcliffe caught a glimpse of his son, Martin, near the front of the crowd pointing a camera at the balloon. He’d forgotten all about the stolen camera. He would deal with that later. In the meantime, he gave his son a friendly farewell wave.

The crew held their breaths as the helium balloon jolted off the cliff
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top and whisked them into the air as if a force had just picked them off the land. Within a few seconds, the spectators shrank as the balloon rose at a staggering eight hundred feet per minute. From the gondola, they saw that the crowds extended to nearby roads and right across St. Ives Beach. Traffic around the town appeared to be at a standstill. There were thousands of spectators staring up at the cucumber
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shaped silhouette shrinking in the sky. Not far away was an oil tanker passing a few miles out from shore.

Before long, the altimeter read thirty thousand feet, the balloon close to crossing the flight path of commercial jumbos. Faraday surmised that they had reached an altitude close to that of Everest in the Himalayas and briefly thought back to the day she’d met Nick Parsons. She wondered what he was doing right now, if he was thinking about her. Was he watching his TV?

Great Britain had become a land of quadrilateral shapes in the greens and browns of farmland and field, dissected only by snaking roads and narrow country lanes.

“It’s incredible,” Faraday remarked.

Matthews nodded. “It’s moments like this that make you realise why you’re alive.”

At sixty thousand feet, a portion of Britain’s coast could be mapped – the outline of southern Wales, the sharp corner of Lands End, the jagged edge of England’s southern coastline and the Isle of Wight, Faraday’s home. Lakes and rivers and streams and ocean glistened under the sun. Then Mike Townsend’s booming voice exploded from their headsets, interrupting the moment. “
You’re faring fine, Fable
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1. Remember, there may be strong wind currents in the stratosphere. Be cautious. I will contact you again when you reach float altitude
.”

“I’m going to release the black smoke identifiers,” said Faraday. At that stage the balloon would look like a mere black mark in an endless blue sky. She located the remote for the smoke cylinders and pressed the button.

Spectators patiently staring up at the sky began pointing at a speck of expanding black shadow. The crew had just released the smoke from their balloon to pinpoint their location. The live images sent waves of admiration and respect across the globe to more than one hundred countries and those not near a television set were able to witness the live transmission over the Internet.

“Can I pinch a cigarette?” Trev Gable held out his hand, waiting.

Adam Fraser, the Navigation and Controls Systems Engineer, pulled his earphones off his head and laid them on the desk. “Again? One of these days you’ll buy your own.” He sighed and it seemed to border on a moan. “Suppose you want me to make you tea as well?”

“Cheers, two sugars.”

Gable scuttled out of the Flight Control Room to get some fresh air and some circulation. He’d been working hard analysing data systems. No lunch hour today, just a quick fag break. Lighting the end, he sucked in five consecutive drags, blowing the smoke high into the air. Chatter and noise emanated from the spectators still flooding the cliff
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top in their thousands and a youngish couple right in front of him kissed and held hands against the gate to the F1 Mission Control Base. Lucky man, he thought, feeling the downbeat of single life. He’d been single now for way too long. Women just didn’t fancy him. It might have been the unyielding acne on his face or the geeky way he walked. Perhaps his personality didn’t appeal to the modern woman.

Finishing his cigarette, he flicked away the butt and watched it roll through the air and extinguish with a fizz in a puddle.

Returning to the building foyer he saw a fifty
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pound note in front of the reception desk. Looking up at the receptionist, who had her head buried in a drawer searching for a stapler, he bent down and picked up the note.

“Finders keepers,” he muttered. Fifty pounds was small change to his fellow colleagues, whoever had been unfortunate enough to drop it. To Gable, it was a small fortune.

Unfortunately, a lack of foresight and discipline had led Gable to debt and he only had best friend, Dell, to blame for it. Dell was his Dimension L600CX computer. Every night he would go home and socialise with his best friend. They would interact for hours, playing games, musing over naked girls, ordering takeaways and leisurely communicating with the world. The computer maestro regarded the Internet as his treasure trove, a tool to make a person more sociable, more knowledgeable, more likeable. His relationship with Dell engulfed every aspect of his life, giving him untold pleasures. And, if used correctly, it would make him rich.

In his mid
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teens, Gable had begun to hang out with a crowd at skateboard parks. Everyone in the area was into skateboarding and he soon mastered competent board
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slides, kick
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turns and ollies, hoping one day to make it his career, even fooling himself into believing it possible. Skateboarding, however, led to unrewarding pay or no pay at all, unless he reached championship level. So he chose a career in computers instead. A degree or a diploma in computing, he realised, was a magical door
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opening piece of paper. To be a wizard on a computer, he required the knowledge and the patience, the hallmark of professionalism. Explosive internet growth was dramatically affecting the evolution of computer networking, meaning computer errors were inevitable.

Gable wanted nothing more than to work from home with Dell. He lived alone in a ground floor bedsit in outer London. The place was small and gloomy, but he was happy living alone. Besides, he was not alone, for he had Dell and rows and rows of shelving that displayed his superhero action figure collectables. Items included Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker and an ARC Heavy Gunner Trooper from Star Wars, seven
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inch Flash Gordon and Ming the Merciless figures, three editions of Indiana Jones, a rare edition of the villain Sweeny Todd and many more. They were his friends, his family. Then there was big sister, Camilla, wife of Mike Townsend, now his brother
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in
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law. His parents had long since immigrated to New Zealand and only Camilla he’d turn to if he had a problem.

Just one month after he had bought into the cyber world of computers, he had received an anonymous email offering to help individuals start their own medical billing service from home. The email explained that he had been specifically handpicked from a shortlist of a thousand people. It sounded intriguing and relatively straight
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forward. All the company required was a one
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off payment of three hundred and fifty pounds, which could be paid over the internet via a credit card. In addition, he had to supply his name, address, date of birth and contact phone number.

He received state
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of
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the
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art medical billing software through the post and a list of potential clients in his area. The information pack explained things clearly and he got to work straightaway, organising his clients into a logical system within the software supplied. Before long, he discovered that the list of potential clients was out
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of
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date. Also, that most medical clinics processed their own bills or got other companies to do it for them, never an individual. He had been cheated. And, unsurprisingly, he couldn’t get a refund. Disappointed, he decided he could find other ways to retrieve the money. Luckily, three hundred and fifty pounds only put a small dent in his credit card with a ten grand limit. Besides, the Internet was a goldmine, his fingers like shovels digging at his keyboard, mining away.

Several days later, he inserted his credit card into an ATM machine and made a request for two hundred pounds to pay some bills. The machine took longer than usual, making enquiries into his account funds and verifying his secret numbers, then spat out his card and a rude little note. No Funds, it read. Thinking there to be a mistake, he typed in a lesser amount. The card slipped out, but no money, and another little note. No Funds. He went into the branch for some human assistance. The bank staff would clear up the misunderstanding. Sitting opposite the bank clerk, he explained the problem and demanded a reason. According to the clerk, not a single penny remained on his credit card. It had all been withdrawn at ATMs or spent over counters paying for things.

“No, it’s a mistake,” he said, his face reddening. “Check again.”

“I assure you, there’s no mistake. Think carefully. Does anyone know your pin number?”

“I’ve never shared it with anyone.”

“Did you have it written down somewhere?”

“No. I have it memorised.”

“Have you given your card details out to anyone recently?”

The blood drained from his face with a shiver of horror. The medical billing company had requested his credit card details for the billing software. The clerk explained that, most likely, his credit card had been cloned. But how had they managed to get his pin number? He hadn’t supplied it, they hadn’t asked for it. He filed a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Centre, a partnership between the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Centre, and they were able to inform him that his pin number had been discovered by guesswork. His pin number was his date of birth, which had been requested on the application form. The criminals had known exactly what they were doing. By obtaining the credit card details of thousands of people, the minority of idiots who had used personal details as a secret pin had lost their credit card funds, the money removed from several ATMs around the country, making the thieves impossible to track. He’d committed a careless act in cyberspace and those responsible had acted quickly and had covered their tracks, like the professionals they’d trained to be.

From that point on, things went from bad to worse. He was fired from his job as a computer technician because he got caught with his hand in the petty cash tin by the company executive. When he lost his job, no
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one was surprised, except Gable. He couldn’t understand how stealing twenty quid warranted the sack when he’d proved himself valuable in all other regards. Luckily, he’d talked his way out of police involvement, although it did nothing to prevent the humiliation. Next came the bills: electricity, phone and council tax, followed by the bill reminders. Three letters chasing him for two missed rental payments from the real estate agent leasing his bedsit arrived. It was followed by a court injunction. To complete his list of expanding debt, a friend called in an eighty
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pound loan he’d lent Gable a few weeks back for a pair of black military boots he could not afford.