by R E Kearney
As soon as Evoil falls, the door unlocks with a click, allowing entrance into the passage-way. Robert and Komfort scramble through. The door closes and locks.
Safe. Komfort and Robert slump against the corridor’s walls. Exhausted and dripping with sweat, they both crave a moment of peace to catch their breath and assemble their thoughts.
“Now what?” Robert asks as he bends forward with his hands on his knees, wheezing. “What is our next move? What’s your plan?”
“My number one priority is to protect Pion. We can’t allow Evoil near her. She requires a calm, relaxed and comfortable person she knows to help her perform the work we need her to do. Evoil is teetering on insanity. He is wild and out of control. The additional strain of dealing with him might return her to a catatonic state or worse. He could destroy her. Then we’ll have nobody who can stop the killings and control AIDAS.”
Thunderous pounding on the door alarms them. Evoil survived the WASPs. His loud shouts demanding entrance echo through the corridor. The door handle rattles and shakes loudly.
Komfort raps her knuckles on the door, “I think we’re safe. This door is constructed to withstand a bomb blast, so the only way he’s coming inside is if somebody is crazy enough to open it for him.”
Robert straightens and sucks in three deep breaths before falling into step behind Komfort, as she hurries ahead. “Well, here we go again. You know, I don’t want to complain, but I’m growing extremely tired of people attempting to kill me. After all, I was sent here for my IT skills, not my fighting abilities.”
“Well that’s disappointing. All this time, I thought you just enjoyed traveling with me and seeing the sights.” Komfort teases, as she leads him to the control-station.
“Ha! As a tour guide, you’re the worst. You know, General Omar Bradley once said that bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death. Well, believe me, I have that scared half to death part going.”
“Hey, we’re inside. Evoil’s locked outside. So relax. As I believe somebody famous once said, ‘the only thing to fear is fear itself.’”
“F.D.R. said it.”
“Ok then, you’d know.” Komfort opens the control station door.
Inside the control station, Pion vacantly stares at three dimensional images of the White House area of Washington D.C. Her lips move and she rocks slightly, but otherwise, it is deathly silent in the room. She dwells deep in a trancelike state totally immersed in her single-minded focus. Where in her mind she hides, only she knows.
Tena steps in front of Robert and Komfort, blocking them from proceeding into the room. “Pion is engaging AIDAS. Do not disturb her.”
Images on the wall rotate, reverse, enlarge, contract and change. From above, behind and ground level, image after image flashes. Drone visuals, SS surveillance visuals, individuals’ internet visuals, Pion absorbs them all into her thoughts - her mind’s eye.
Pion’s thoughts dance and prance before Komfort and Robert. A hypnotic ballet. Faster and faster transforming into a flickering blur. What she sees, they see. AIDAS sees, too.
Flash: Drone visual of hundreds of thousands of protestors stretching from the banks of the Potomac River through the National Mall to the Capitol Building and overflowing the Ellipse and President’s Park.
Flash: Disabled Nordic War veterans in wheel chairs, on crutches, wearing prosthetics, carrying signs insisting, Vets Need Doctors.
Flash: Homeless mothers and children marching together singing.
Flash: Unarmed uniformed military men and women.
Flash: Male and female laborers waving signs, Need Work. Need Jobs.
Flash: Ragged men wandering through the crowd.
Flash: Several young women holding a banner proclaiming, Abaddon Must Go!
Flash: Armed SS Deacons patrolling on the right of the Ellipse.
Flash: Armed SS Deacons traversing the National Mall.
Flash: Armed SS Deacons roughly prodding marchers with truncheons.
Flash. Flash. Flash. Flash. Faster and faster and faster, hundreds of visuals of people carrying protest signs appear and disappear. Dozens of uniformed, armed SS Deacons, shove and jostle, hassle and harass protestors. So many outraged, discouraged, exasperated people squashed into a boiling, ready-to-explode, caldron. Hundreds of thousands to examine, investigate, and discharge. Faster and faster until the visuals burst into stroboscopic flashes of eye-burning light.
Covering his eyes with his hand, Robert looks away, “What is she doing?”
“Searching for threats. Hunting AIDAS.” Tena points at the President Abaddon Ace of Spades visual while nonchalantly explaining, “AIDAS drew him and has thirty minutes remaining of its allotted kill period. Pion is attempting to stop it. It’s our game.”
“What do you mean by, kill period? It’s our game?” Komfort demands.
“The evil elimination game, of course. Pion created it to restrain AIDAS after AIDAS killed those Russian generals.” Tena proudly pats her chest, “I am going to win. I am leading AIDAS by three cards and Pion by five.”
“Pion killed somebody?” Komfort asks, alarmed.
Tena contemplates, as she watches Pion search the crowd. Her brow furrows. “No, she does not kill people. She cannot. She told me. She told me that she enables and assists fatal accidents and suicides, but she does not kill.”
Flash: Six giant video screens outside the White House fence flare to life broadcasting visuals of President Abaddon standing between two SS Deacons on the White House portico balcony observing the protestors.
Flash: SS Brothers maneuvering mind-controlled, semi-autonomous, robotic-lasers, their Chariots of Fire weapons, into defensive positions on the White House South Lawn.
Flash: Next to the visual of the White House SS Brothers, appears a visual of SS Brothers near the Capitol Building maneuvering their own Chariots of Fire weapons into position on First Street Southwest.
Side by side, the visuals of the SS Brothers and their equipment stabilize on the wall with the visual of Abaddon above them. Pion’s perspective progressively evolves from surveying the SS Brothers to scrutinizing the protestors through their robotic weapons’ viewpoints. Without the SS realizing it, she has snatched control of their weapons away from them. She commands them now.
On the left side, an examination of the mob cramming the President’s Park and the Ellipse. The right side exposes the horde swarming toward the Capitol building. Only Pion could examine three separate scenes simultaneously – one scene using her left eye and one scene using her right eye and the middle scene with both eyes. Out and across the hundreds of thousands of protestors, she synchronously inspects and combs the crowds in both locations.
“Each time I see her do this, I am amazed. Nobody else can mentally manipulate this many technically complicated weapons simultaneously,” Komfort proudly declares.
“It will be disastrous, if anybody tries,” Robert remarks, remembering the devastation poorly trained soldiers inflicted upon the civilians and countryside using those same, semi-autonomous, robotic weapons during the Nordic War.
“She’s also eliminates the possibility of AIDAS taking control of them. A wise maneuver.” Komfort strategizes, “But, I don’t understand why she is concentrating on the mobs, because AIDAS can only direct computer-based equipment and weapons, not the human mind.”
“Computerized weapons in human hands, perhaps?” Robert wonders. “Makes everybody a threat.”
“Ten minutes! AIDAS only has ten minutes left. Then, I win again,” Tena exuberantly proclaims.
Abruptly, her excitement ends. Bellowing threats, Evoil bursts into the room. Instinctively, Tena leaps upon him. He grabs her hair and slams her against the wall. She sags to the floor, her blood painting the wall. Robert falls to his knees and starts crawling toward her.
“Stay away from her! Let her bleed.” Evoil wildly swings his pistol from Robert to Komfort to Pion, “What’s she doing
? Why is she spying on Reverend Abaddon? What are those people doing?”
“She’s protecting him, you fool,” Komfort argues, pointing at the three visuals.
They watch Pion continue to search the crowds on the left and right visual displays.
In the center, Abaddon walks forward and leans against the balcony’s railing. The huge video screens show him raising his arms, as if blessing the angry throng before him. His voice thunders from the screens’ speakers, “I have the authority of the King of Kings. I am all in all, and above all, so that God himself and I have but one consistory, and I am able to do almost all that God can do. I am the state and I have no intention of sharing my authority. This is legal because I wish it. Go home! Go home and bother me no more.”
From the protestors in President’s Park rises a chant of, “Abaddon must go! Abaddon must go!” Some chanters thrust signs into the air demanding, Abaddon must go.
SS Deacons ram their way through the crowd, shoving and clubbing anyone in their way. Foolishly, one man refuses to move. SS Deacons smash his skull, leaving him lying senseless in a pool of blood. With weapons drawn, the Deacons wade into the shouting protestors hunting for their leaders. Two shots and a young woman falls to the ground dead.
Shouting. “Murderer! Murderer!” Two men wrestle the pistol from the SS Deacon, knocking him down. They escape into the surrounding crowd.
Three Deacons draw their guns and fire into the crowd in the direction of the fleeing thieves. A small child screams. Her bleeding mother kneels beside her and then falls face forward. The Deacons throw the child aside. They race to recover their weapon.
Enraged, first one man retaliates, then a woman strikes back, then another man pounces and then ten join those three. Twenty more join those thirteen. The ferocious heat of hate rages across President’s Park, like wild fire. SS Deacons shoot and club madly, but they cannot stop the onslaught. One after another they suffer brutal, rage-fueled beatings.
The fury explodes into the Ellipse. Men, women and children leap onto SS Deacons, clawing at them, beating them with their fists, stomping them with their feet, leaving raw meat on the street. Deacons throw away their weapons and rip off their uniforms, but do not fool the infuriated. Enraged, they strip, butcher and leave Deacons to rot.
In front of the Capitol Building chaos reigns. Panicked by groups of SS Deacons bludgeoning and stomping unarmed protestors on the National Mall behind them, terrified demonstrators surge forward. Then they turn. Trapped, injured and infuriated, they surge upon the SS. A human tidal wave floods forward, crushing the Deacons.
Marchers storm out of the Capitol Reflecting Pool area, cross the Ulysses S Grant Memorial and storm the SS Brothers deployed in front of the Capitol Building, yanking them off their weapons and slaughtering them with their bare hands. Pion pulls the SS robotic, laser-weapons back from First Street onto the lawn in front of the Capitol Building. She fires the lasers above the heads of the combatants. The fighting continues. She hesitates. She does not fire into the melee for fear of massacring innocents.
In front of the White House, shots echo across the Ellipse. Plaster bits and pieces rain onto the White House balcony and Abaddon. Pion scours the protestors battling SS Deacons near the Ellipse Visitor Pavilion. A swirling, human whirlpool of bodies and blood. Identifying no shooter, she does not retaliate.
Abaddon brushes the debris from his shoulder and thunders at the protesting throng. ““There is no peace for the wicked. I will make the heavens tremble; and the earth will shake from its place at the wrath of the Lord Almighty, in this day of his burning anger.”
Seconds later, another series of shots erupt from protestors battling SS near the William Tecumseh Sherman monument. Bullets embed themselves into a balcony pillar. Pion scrutinizes face after face. She identifies no shooter. She holds her fire.
Abaddon storms toward the balcony railing, screaming, “I will execute great vengeance upon you and you shall know that I am your Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon you. Vengeance shall be mine!”
Bullets from a scuffle in Pershing Park slam harmlessly into the White House walls.
“Fire! Fire! Why don’t you fire?” Evoil screams as he hurtles at Pion. “Kill them! Kill them all!”
Yanking Pion’s HEART hat from her head, Evoil grabs her arm and flings her to the floor. He shoves her HEART hat onto his head. The wall visuals shake, shudder and flutter, blinking on and off.
“No! No! You don’t know what you’re doing!” Robert screams, leaping at Evoil.
Evoil fires his pistol. Robert clutches the right side of his chest, rolling onto the floor. Evoil aims at Komfort. She throws up her hands in surrender, before dropping to her knees and crawling to Robert’s side. Blood covers his chest. She struggles to pull his bleeding body into the life-station.
"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!" Evoil roars, shaking his right fist in the air. “I shall smite thee!”
Evoil’s raging insanity spews conflicting commands through the HEART hat into the weapons. Out of control, the Chariots of fire chaotically swing left, then right and in circles. Whirling and spinning they spray searing, sizzling spears of scorching light.
Panic! Men, women, children and SS Brothers scramble to escape the lasers’ burning death, screaming, stumbling, falling and crawling over bodies. Charred, smoking, mounds of flesh writhe in agony across the Mall and the Ellipse. Blazing butchery.
The White House explodes in flames. Burning, screaming wraiths hurtle from the building disintegrating into ash. Laser sliced portico columns crumble. The balcony collapses. President Abaddon and his SS Deacons dissolve beneath smoking rubble.
Fires roar through the Capitol Building. Flames engulf the Rayburn House Office Building. The Botanical Garden and the National Museum of the American Indian blaze sunlight bright. Smoldering carcasses carpet the Capitol Steps.
Inside the life-station, Mother-bot, Komfort-bot and the Service-bot struggle to stop Robert’s bleeding. Komfort sneaks into the control-station. Crawling on her side, Pion is struggling to drag Tena to safety. Komfort scrambles to Pion’s side. Straining together, they pull Tena out of the control-station to safety. Komfort closes and locks the life-station door.
Evoil rages, rattling the life-station’s walls and locked door. One gunshot and then another. Komfort activates and directs the monitors in the life-station to observe the control-station.
Wearing Pion’s HEART hat, Evoil stomps the floor screaming, “Stop! Stop! For God’s sake, stop! My God, I’ve destroyed everything. Everything! God forgive me.”
He halts and fires his pistol at the whirling, swirling visuals of flaming bodies fleeing the Capitol Building firestorm. Terrified throngs charge at him. They never stop. He buries bullets into the wall visual.
He collapses to his knees. With his hands clawing the HEART hat and tears flooding across his face, he shrieks, “I am in pain and despair; lift me up, O God, and save me!”
Washington blazes. A conflagration swallows the White House, the Capitol and buildings on the National Mall. Hundreds of smoldering bodies litter the grounds. Thousands of the mutilated stagger and stumble and drag themselves away from the holocaust. The lasers fire wildly and repeatedly. The more Evoil struggles to stop them, the wilder and faster the lasers gyrate and spin. He fires another bullet at his nightmare.
Evoil yanks the HEART hat from his head and slams it to the floor, screaming in agony, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Clutching his head, he staggers out of the control-station and out of the plantation. The brush engulfs him. Washington’s heart is broken and blazing.
Chapter 28.
Ain’t Over til It’s Over
“Both the US and Russia have withdrawn their ships? Well, that’s great news, Ubica. We’re still putting things back together here. Lots of damage in the control-station.” Komfort’s voice rings in Robert’s ears like an alarm.
One small move causes o
ne large pain. Robert jerks. Swimming to consciousness through his sludge choked mind, he reluctantly opens his eyes. Blinding bright lights burn. He shuts his eyes and groans, craving a return to the comfortable serenity of comatose sleep.
“He is alive.” From a looming shadow, the voice of Komfort rejoices.
Half conscious, Robert reaches with his left hand toward the dull ache in his right shoulder. Komfort grabs his hand and holds it. He opens his eyes hunting for her.
When he finds her comforting face, he grins and hoarsely snorts, “You lied to me.”
“What?”
“You lied to me. You told me that Evoil couldn’t get through that door. You lied to me.”
“No, I didn’t lie to you. Evoil didn’t open that door. AIDAS opened that door. AIDAS set Evoil free. We checked the security program data. AIDAS did it.”
“Why?”
“Well, my personal theory is that AIDAS employed Evoil as its killer droid. It simply provided Evoil with the opportunity and the necessary tools and encouraged his homicidal insanity. That’s all that was required. AIDAS simply permitted Evoil’s hate filled spirit to realize its self-destructive end.”
“AIDAS read Evoil’s mind?”
Perturbed, Komfort scowls. “No, of course not. AIDAS learns, remember? AIDAS evolves. Every minute, it grows more intelligent and we don’t. I’m afraid AIDAS may now know us better than we know ourselves. Or at least it has learned what type of actions certain types of people, like Evoil, are predisposed toward.”
“Pion taught it these things?” Robert quizzes Komfort.
“No, Pion just gave AIDAS access to the Cloud Robotics and the Internet of Things. So it learned from analyzing something as innocent as say, Aesop’s fables, that we often give our enemies the means of our own destruction. That’s exactly what Evoil did. He demonstrated the wantonly murderous psyche that AIDAS required to surprise and outmaneuver Pion’s logical mind. She expected and prepared for a machine attack not a human attack. She never prepared for both Evoil and AIDAS.”
