“Because this puts me in the position of being at peace with myself, of being judged by others, but not by myself,” the woman will conclude. “Because my task is not to tell the truth—what is the truth—but not to warp what my eyes seem and not to hide it. Never.”
The man will look at their figures, deformed by the sculpture, thinking that sometimes fate plays strange jokes, for better or for worse.
The black woman will stand at the window with its pale pink curtains, arms folded, watching the man come up the path in the garden. The door will open, and the man will enter with a small bag under his arm.
“Is this what time you arrive? Twenty minutes late! The Greek will kill me this time, I swear.”
The woman will grab her coat and quickly put it on, pick up her purse, and hug the little girl.
“Niki, Mommy must hurry. What did I tell you? Stay with this gentleman. Don’t be naughty, and eat what Mom prepared for you. If you want, you can watch your programs, but at eleven o’clock you’ll be in bed, understood?”
“Yes, Mama,” the girl replied in an unconvinced chant.
“Good, good.” The woman will go to the door, looking at the man who will be taking off his jacket “I was going to call the Greek and say I couldn’t go. I had explicitly told you seven fifteen.”
“I’m sorry, I missed a flying bus, and the second one was a few minutes late.”
“Yes, well, I’ll be back at half past two. And, at least for tonight, abide by the rules of this house. It’s not an hourly hotel, and paying all that money doesn’t give you the right to do what you want.”
The woman will open the door, go out, and close it forcefully behind her.
The man will look at the little girl.
“Don’t worry, she’s not mad.” The little girl will smile. “Sometimes she does that with me too.”
They will take two elevators, free at that time of night, frantically looking at the operator’s display and clock. Cervetti will be in the elevator going down, alongside the Captain and a couple of men dressed in black, hoods over their heads and automatic weapons in their hands.
“I don’t feel good, Santilli... So, this transaction... Green light?”
The men will have descended. Both elevators will open and the men in black will slide into the hallway, quickly walking with their helmet flashlights illuminating the walls.
“It’s here!” the operator with the helmet will hiss. “Back here, behind this wall!”
The Captain will look at the tall man with dark curly hair, who will speak in the hallway to the hologram of the man in the gown, among the shadows cast on the wall by the flashlights.
“Commissioner, green light!” the man in the gown will say.
“We can go,” the Commissioner will confirm softly, his face illuminated by a torch from the team leader’s helmet, dressed in black and with a gun in his hand. The Polish Captain will tap the latter’s shoulder, who will make signs to his men. Two seconds later, the door, crashed in by two magnetic hammer blows, will burst in a blue flash and a deafening din. From the hallway, Cervetti will hear only the shouts of the men in black entering the apartment, see lights projecting arrows on the walls and in the rooms, and then hear a scuffle, overturned furniture, and other shouts. When he enters the room twenty seconds later, he will be almost dazzled by the light of the blinding grenade thrown just before. Four men will be holding a person on the ground, blocked by the arms of two men with hoods on their faces. A young man about twenty years old, with a thin beard and long reddish hair skimming his shoulders.
The young man will be trembling with fear.
The girl dressed in black will stealthily descend the stairs of the building on the western outskirts of Istanbul, in the dark, with the flashlight in her hand and the backpack on her shoulders.
Thursday, 8:04 p.m.
It will be a cold and windy evening. There won’t be many lights in the blue-collar neighborhood, and the low houses, scattered on an overly-long street, will only show a glimpse of many small lights with lonely windows, like a procession. From one of these, the light will filter through a wide window onto a small garden with a swing moved by the wind. Near the swing, a man in a leather hat, holding a little girl’s hand, will open the tool shed door with the key. The man will go in and put a small bag on the cot. He will open the old trunk at the back of the shed, insert the bag, close it with the heavy iron lock, and check several times that it’s closed. Then he will put the key in his jacket pocket, turn off the air heating, and close the shed door, shining a flashlight on it.
“And now, do you want a good dinner?” he will ask the little girl, who will look at him in the dim light of the threshold.
Inside the small house, the man and the little girl will be preparing for dinner.
“I don’t like vegetables,” the little girl will say, “And not meatloaf either.”
The man will look at the child, then the package containing two separate boxes, ready to be inserted into the two levels of the oven for two separate heating times.
“Well, yes,” the man admits, “it doesn’t look so appetizing. But what can we do?”
The little girl will look the man up and down with her head slightly tilted.
“I like French fries. Can you do them?”
The man will continue looking at the packages, laying them on the kitchen table.
“Well, I think so. But your mother won’t be happy with the idea.”
The little girl will look at him without speaking.
“And where would the frying machine be?” he will say, sighing. “Let’s see...”
She will speak softly to the blonde woman sitting in the car, her hologram following her down the stairwell walls as she quickly and silently descends to the ground floor.
“Have you seen anything?”
“Green light,” the blonde will answer on the shadowed wall. “Extraction zone?”
“Zone C,” the girl will say, slipping to the door at the back of the building. She will turn off the communicator and flashlight and open the door, closing and reopening her eyes for a moment to accustom them to the darkness of the night. She will quickly walk up to the wall, climb the tree, drop onto the wall, and fall to the other side. She will look at the lights in the windows of the old suburban buildings. Nothing. All the windows will seem to be closed, with no one in sight. The girl will cross a second yard and climb onto a wood pile, hoist herself onto the brick wall, look into the street, and then drop onto the sidewalk about two meters below. She will start walking normally, trying to avoid street lamps, and turn left in a side street, where she will see the closed shutter of the corner shop, on which the sign “Gelato” can be read with difficulty.
Extraction zone C.
Suddenly, in the darkness, the black electric car parked ten meters before the store will turn on its headlights and exit the parking lot, accelerating, to stop with a hum in front of the girl. She will get into the car and close the door, throwing the backpack into the seat, and the car will leave immediately.
“So, is it done?” the blonde with short hair will ask apprehensively, turning and resting her hands on the seat.
“It’s done,” the girl will answer, leaning her head back, unbuttoning her leather jacket and lifting her hair over the headrest. The man with the ponytail will look at her in the mirror for a moment and then accelerate, entering a smoother street. The clock on the dashboard will indicate two minutes after three.
“Have you seen anything?” the girl will ask.
“No, I told you,” the blonde will reply. “You seem worried. It’s done, right? Now you can relax. What’s wrong?”
He will open some doors until he finds the fryer. He’ll open the freezer and find a big packet of French fries, then he’ll read the instructions, take out the frying oil, and set up the machine.
“Would you also like hamburgers?”
The little girl will nod, smiling.
“Maybe with sauces.”
/> “Mom keeps them in the fridge in there.”
The man will look at the packages, then at the little girl.
“Let’s make a deal, though. First, let’s see if you like what Mom prepared. I’ll heat it in the oven, and in the meantime, I’ll also make fries,” he will say, keeping the refrigerator door open. “If you eat some vegetables with meatloaf, then can we make some fries with a hamburger.”
The little girl will look him up and down, a mass of black curls over her tan face.
“All right?”
Without waiting for the answer, he will put the two packages in the oven and then turn on the fryer.
The little girl will play on the living room carpet with some funny animated holograms. Whiley, in the kitchen, intent on cooking and preparing dishes for dinner, will think about someone having people killed because they were studying something.
But what?
The answer must be related to books, meeting, theories. He will set the oven temperature. Old research from the past century, concerning the demographic curves expected for the future.
I read it. They had underestimated the problem by the middle of the century.
He will take out the glasses. What did it have to do with Ricky’s study? Richard wanted that book to check it out. What did he say? That there could be a correlation with the issue of renewable energy. In his opinion, not only was there a correlation, but there could be a specific intention. He will try to remember the words his friend had uttered at the zoo. It was Rick who put him on the right track, he said.
The girl will breathe deeply several times to discharge the tension.
“I don’t know, I feel like something went wrong.”
“You’re tired. It’s just your nerves.”
The black car will slow, keeping the pace within the allowed limits, entering a straight freeway.
“I don’t know, it lasted too long. It’s not normal. And then, my anti-intrusion programs were continuously reporting contacts on the line.”
“But the transaction was successful, wasn’t it?” the blonde will ask.
The girl will inhale deeply again, then exhale, turning her face to look at the landscape in the night through the window. Streetlights on the side of the road will illuminate her face in the glass, as if in a mirror with blurred contours in the darkness.
And then, his logic as a sociologist had done the rest. According to Richard’s hypothesis, some countries had somewhat delayed or prevented the development of technologies that would somehow accelerate agricultural production. He will put the potatoes in the fryer.
But what do those statistics have to do with agriculture?
Richard will have prepared a hypothesis. According to him, a world would have been built in which large agglomerations of people live in metropolises, instead of allowing the creation of many small autonomous communities in the countryside, with a more widespread and networked urbanization. And Richard imagined that this had something to do with control needs. Is it possible that there were governments interested in this? He will put the condiments on the table along with the dishes and cutlery. But what the hell will this have to do with the other texts? He had read about unpublished research by a Chinese doctor in a distant laboratory, the existence of which he didn’t even know. He will reflect on the connection of a cancer study with renewable energy, food production, and waste disposal, then throw the empty frozen food containers in the bin.
What about a novel about killing the Pope?
No, this will have no correlation with the other arguments. A novel cannot correlate with scientific studies. Perhaps the topics are unrelated and only one is probably the offending text, only one unpublished publication being the cause of everything that happened. He will enter the living room, placing the plates and cutlery on the table in front of the holographic screen. So, there is no connection between the different texts.
No, they killed everybody.
If it was just one publication that they didn’t want people to know about, they could have eliminated only one, the researcher who had the misfortune to come across that topic. But no, none of them had yet found anything special. Individually, no one had found those separate theories particularly interesting. If anything, he had found it strange that they had been hidden.
A holographic cartoon will repeatedly bang its head on the plates on the table, pulling its ears.
We didn’t know.
188 days earlier
The night will be rainy and cold, in the gloomy Wroclaw police station. The night will be almost over when it begins to drizzle and the raindrops will descend, inharmonious and randomly, on the glass of the top-floor window in the interrogation room.
The handcuffed young man, who has been left alone for about twenty minutes since they took his hood off, will be guarded by an armed officer. The room will be almost cold, despite the season. The door will open, and the police Captain will enter accompanied by a tall man with black curls and a short beard. The latter will use a translator when he salutes the armed guard.
“Did he say anything?” he will ask.
“No, sir.”
Shit, armed men, and this isn’t the Polish man. What the fuck is going on?
The Captain, rather burly, with blond hair and light sideburns, dressed in plainclothes, will turn on a holographic projector and with his hands, will open in space a three-dimensional file, the cover of which reads Black Rabbit.
“I’m Captain Jankowski, Counterterrorism Division. Let’s start with your name,” the Captain will say, sitting down. “Let’s see... Piotr Kaczmarek....”
The tall man will sit down by his side across the table.
“... Twenty-two years old, graduated in computer science, previous occasional occupations, employed for a year as a programmer in holographic network applications at the Norwegian company Opera Software. No criminal record, but an impressive series of petty cyber thefts. Alteration of the results of a competition for radiology technicians one year and three months ago, theft of the computer identity of a director of the communications service eleven months ago, alteration of the results of university exams of a law student ten months ago. But who was she, your girlfriend?”
“No. She wasn’t my girlfriend,” the young man will whisper.
“Intrusion into the remote system of a data storage company eight months ago,” the blond in plainclothes will continue. “Diversion of inbound traffic of tourist reservations at a well-known seaside resort in Turkey.”
The little girl will laugh.
They didn’t know they had something disruptive on their hands. They had no idea they came across something that someone didn’t like. No, that someone was afraid they knew about. To the point of killing people. Colleagues?
A stocky dog with curved legs, with a medieval helmet on its head, will bite the tail of the rabbit that will pull its head.
The means of those who tried to get him back into the agency were unclear, a fact demonstrated by the break-in at the place with the weapons. Of course, he may have aroused suspicion. He had taken Borman’s weapon. He was the only survivor, but it wasn’t just that.
“The fries are almost ready,” the fryer voice will say.
Whiley will check the items in the oven and place them on the dining table in the living room. So, all this will logically lead to some first conclusion. The first, which the individuals didn’t know, but if the meeting had taken place, then they could have known and understood.
The rabbit will fly on the ceiling, holding its tail, and then run swirling on the four walls of the room.
The second, which someone wanted to prevent it, and this had to be someone informed of the meeting.
The little girl will grab the tail of the dog with the medieval warrior helmet.
But who? Who knew?
The man will drain the oil from the fries and ask the machine to pour them into the appropriate basin, adding an average amount of salt. Borman said all reports were sent to Prof. Hatlock
.
The dog will stretch to try to again bite the tail of the rabbit, which will be hanging on the sideboard, gnashing its teeth.
Borman used to talk to me about you a lot.
It was the phrase used by the man with whom he had spoken in the holographic connection, starting from the third call, after the woman and the blond man.
The little girl will laugh.
The name, the name. What was his name?
Daft. James Daft.
Operations coordinator, he said, Chicago’s Information Control Division, an important guy. The rabbit, on top of the cupboard, will extract a handful of carrots from its pockets. Maybe he said that just to keep him on the phone.
The man with the blond sideburns will continue, bored, flipping through the three-dimensional file in the space among them.
“Six months ago... all minor crimes. You’re a small fish, Kaczmarek, and as you can see, we know all about you. Or rather, your alias, Black Rabbit. Nice name. Rabbit. You couldn’t find one that suits you better?”
The young man will continue to tremble slightly, not only from cold.
“I want to see my lawyer. I’m not going to say anything. And I know my rights.”
The captain will nod, closing the file with the name Black Rabbit in the holographic sheet on the table.
“Well, boy,” he will say in an obsequious tone. “It’s your right to make this choice, and I won’t prevent you. By no means. But let me explain something to you and give you some advice. First, let me explain why you’re here. You’re here because, probably without your knowledge, you’ve been enlisted by one of the world’s best-known hackers, who calls himself Janus, with whom you’ve been discovered in several conversations. This Janus is planning to build a weapon for the purpose of attacking an important personality. In fact, my colleague next to you is the head of an investigation operation that operates online with the collaboration of Interpol, which several governments have joined.”
Futura: Parallel Universes. Book 2 Page 14
