"If I have to explain it to you, then we should end this before we get started. You all obviously have no shred of individual or group dignity that you care about, but I have a reputation that I have established over three decades that I do actually care a lot about."
"Mr. Attorney?" a black-haired woman calls out from in the audience.
The leaders are visibly irritated by the breach of protocol.
"Elliott, please, ma'am."
"I prefer to call you Mr. Attorney. In the law, Mr. Attorney, if I shoot at you and the pulse blast misses, hits right next to your head, I am not charged with murder, even if that was the intent. Correct? I am charged with what did happen, not with what could have happened. Is not your Continuum judging us on what could have happened rather than what did?"
"The Resister-Registrant wars were back in the '70s and '80s. We're in the late '90s now, almost to the next century. It's over and this childish feud should be over too," a male leader says.
"Since a lot of people lost loved ones in that conflict, I would strongly advise you never to use the phrase 'childish feud' in front of them," Elliott says.
"I'm sorry. You know what I mean."
"We don't have to solve everything tonight. I committed to come and listen with no promises, and I did. I know what the threshold is and you haven't met it. But you all knew that without me having to say it."
"It smells of vindictiveness," the black-haired woman says.
"Really? It seems a bit of revisionist history is taking root, because I remember many in this very room—and yes, I do remember some of you—saying it would be a cold day in Gehenna—Hell, for those of you not up on your Jewish terms—when you'd ever want to rejoin the Community."
The black-haired woman looks away.
"There's plenty of vindictiveness to go around, but it didn't originate from our side. I think I should go."
"Haven't excommunications been overturned before?" a man asks.
Elliott stops and looks at him. "I'm sorry, but it is rare."
A young woman stands from her chair and walks to him. Elliott realizes that she is actually a girl, dressed in black with a blue baseball cap on a bald head.
"Bald head? What's that for, young lady?"
She smiles. "You definitely aren't any kind of Jew from here. No one says 'lady' or 'gentleman,' 'ma'am,' or 'sir' in this place. Only a real Faither has manners like that." She looks at the gathering. "Aren't they all so pathetic?" she says. "The only good thing about living in Tek World is that you can divorce your parents. Here the kids are absolutely smarter than the parents. Were you there?"
"There where?" Elliott asks.
"The Fall of Jewish Israel."
Elliott at first doesn't know how he should react. After a long pause, he answers. "I was."
The girl moves closer. "You lived there?"
"No, I joined the emergency IDF. Flew from America on some of the first planes out. I was one of thousands of American Jews to get out before the travel ban."
"What stands out? What remains with you most from when you were there?"
Elliott reflects and answers without looking at her. "The screams." He looks at her.
The girl's eyes widen. "People screaming?"
"The cats." He pauses again. "There were many plans to evacuate people, but no one thought of the cats. They were everywhere—crying. They sounded like...screaming children. I often wondered if that's how it was back in the Holocaust. They said there was no screaming. It all happened so fast, but I always wondered. There were so many of them, cats left abandoned. I had more nightmares of those screams than of dead people. Will never happen again, though. Every rescue plan always accounts for pets and animals—every one. That's why there are so many cats in Jewish enclaves today. It's like penance. Bet the Pagans don't even know that's where all the abandoned cats go. We take them."
Elliott realizes that not only is the girl transfixed to what he's saying, but so is everyone in the auditorium.
"I wanted to tell you," the girl says, "that if you decide not to take them, that we kids want a separate hearing. You'll be impressed with us, I promise. I want to join the Jewish Wolf Pack." She smiles. "Shoshana, the Iron Rose, is my idol. I want to be just like her. And there are many of us—girls and boys. Will you promise to let the kids have a separate hearing?"
"How old are you?"
"Fifteen. Age of reason."
"Yes, I think you deserve your own hearing."
She smiles again. "Well, nice to meet you, Mr. Elliott. I can't stay any longer in the same auditorium with them or I'll throw up."
Elliott holds back a smile.
"Those are my bio-parents." She gestures with her head to the very male and female leader closest to him on the couch.
Her parents are both completely unaffected by her insults. "You said excommunication reversals are rare, but it is possible?" the man asks Elliott. "I mean, if we were able to trade or buy our way back into the Community."
Elliott's eyes narrow. "And how would you do that?"
"Offer something the Continuum would really want in exchange."
"Such as?"
"Information."
"What information?"
"Information that would be of immense value to the Continuum."
"Sir, I don't like games."
"It's not a game. It's not a game to anyone in this room. We know you don't like us. We know the Continuum doesn't want us and is more than content with watching us die in exile. We know, Mr. Elliott. We know how we're regarded, and, honestly, the feelings have always been mutual. You have called us collaborators. We have called you religious zealots. But that's past. It's over. We lost. You won. I'm over it. We all are."
"Just forgive and forget, is it? The Continuum does not believe in transformative reconciliation. You do something against us and you will never be in a position to do it again. We forgive—if we don't kill you—but we never forget."
"I think you will."
Elliott frowns, fighting his impulse to walk out of the auditorium.
"We will give you information to hand over to the Continuum that will prove to all of you that the reason our anti-Jew-Christian"—he corrects himself seeing Elliott's reaction—"our anti-Faither government has left you alone for all this time, along with all the Trog anarchists and Outland separatists, is because the government hasn't left you alone. All of you in your own isolated, self-segregated ghettos wrapped up for them with a big red bow."
"Enclaves are not ghettos," Elliott snaps back. "And one could say the same about them in their tek-cities."
The man laughs. "You didn't think all the government had was their Rabbi Susan, Bishop Joe, and Master Pastor collaborators-in-chief?" his wife asks.
"Spoken by someone who would know," Elliott snaps again.
She glares at him.
"It's strangely biblical. You fatten the cow to the right size before you kill it," the husband adds.
Washington Hilton Hotel Ballroom, Washington, DC
6:30 p.m., 4 June 2089 (Seven Years Earlier)
President Wilson has not been seen in public for many months. The event is a special fundraiser of his major donors in the District. It is a tuxedo affair for the men and little black dress affair for the women.
Mrs. Lucifer is rolled into the banquet room by her cyborg husband. She may be in a wheelchair, but she is stunningly dressed.
"Hades, my God, you look amazing. And you just came out of a coma. How do you do it?" one of the women says—everyone is noticing her.
She smiles and says, "Don't you know ninety is the new fifty?"
President Wilson gives a good speech. He smiles and waves as the attendees applaud.
The Supreme Senate has enacted a law banning any presidential action against any Jew-Christian ghetto without the explicit approval from a majority of the nation's governors. They would only allow action against a Jew-Christian enclave in the nation if the administration could prove that the enclave was behind a sp
ecific act of terrorism. Congress supported the law.
The National Police Chiefs Association has also banned the use of stormtroopers for any federal action not approved by the Supreme Senate. The president of the NPCA said, "I have enough funerals to attend to carry me well into the next decade."
The entire intelligence community had been consumed with locating the missing American jets. The Northern Confederacy floated the idea of intervening on behalf of the White House and opened a dialogue with the Jew-Christians. Later, the jets were "found"—delivered, disassembled, to the Asian Consortium.
Wilson used the return of the jets to overshadow his defeats to the Supreme Senate and the NPCA—and it has worked.
"Mr. President. It looks like we both seem to have come back from the dead," Mrs. Lucifer says, smiling. The president has moved from the stage to meet the attending donors at the event.
"Thank you, Mrs. Lucifer. Yes, we are both survivors."
"Yes, we are."
He continues to mingle in the crowd with his Secret Service detail close. They move him from the VIP section of the banquet, with its one hundred major donors, to the general area, where thousands of people wait behind a partition—smiling, cheering, and reaching out their hands to greet him. He immediately walks to them. Such events where a celebrity of some sort meets a crowd are the only times Pagans do shake hands. Wilson does so with a large smile on his face. He has managed to survive another crisis.
The man in the red fedora extends his hand to the president. The man is smiling and unthreatening, but instead of shaking the president's hand, he reaches in and pokes him in the center of his chest with his index finger.
"The finger of God," he says and starts to walk backwards.
President Wilson is unnerved and his Secret Service detail is already calling in on their ear-sets to apprehend the man. The man seems to be enveloped by the crowd. Plainclothes Secret Servicemen rush into the crowd from three different sides. The man ducks down into the mass of people. They can't see him. The three Secret Servicemen reach the spot and all there is, lying on the ground, is the red fedora. The man is gone.
The lead Secret Service agent takes no chances. They surround the president and whisk him out a side door to the secure parking lot and into the presidential limousine. Agents swarm into the banquet hall to detain the entire body of attendees.
Mrs. Lucifer starts to laugh. "Let's get out of here, husband. We've done our evil deed. Our little temporary alliance with the Jew-Christians is over. Let's disappear into the night before our good and dear friend, the president, sends a kill team after us too, like he did to our son."
Toronto, Canada
2:12 p.m., 1 October 2096
Ever-flashing, ever-changing digital billboards adorn the top of every commercial building in the tek-city—advertising music, movies, clothes, the latest devices, latest cars, restaurants, vacation trips, virtual reality dens, drug parlors, or massage services. These advids are either rapid stop-motion, live-def static photos, or full-fledged vids. The colors are as bold and vibrant as the sounds are loud and frenetic. Both rapidly pulsate to create an atmosphere that completely engulfs the sight and hearing of anyone within range. Surveillance drones zip around more than a hundred feet in the air or hover in mid-air.
A lone man walks a few steps up the sidewalk and stops again to engage in people watching. The streets are packed and brimming with life, energy, and excitement. There is nothing like the hustle and bustle of a tek-city, both the automation and the people. The obsolete adjective is technological and the obsolete noun is technology, but no one under the age of eighty uses those words anymore—the word is tek. It isn't just slang that, after a few decades of common use, has replaced its original reference; it's an attitude.
Along with many others, the balding man comes out of the metro exit for the fast-track (train) onto the street. People are in traditional business office suits or casual attire, in a variety of colors from simple blacks and whites to earth tones to natural rainbow colors to synthetic, techno colors, or even the so-called futuristic shiny silver everything. Everyone is carrying or wearing their device of choice—e-pads, tablets, ear-set, interfaced glasses, etc.
Dressed in a casual white office suit, he walks up the three flights of stairs to his apartment home as he does daily.
"Morning, Mr. Gee." His next-door neighbor pops out of her front door as he passes. The brunette in a blue halter top dress playfully smiles with a glass of shimmering yellow alcohol in her hand.
"Morning, Ms. Cubex."
"I'm having a house party today. Stop by if you have the time."
"I may do that."
He continues down the very wide hallway to his apartment door and it automatically opens at his approach. She watches him disappear inside before taking another sip from her glass.
"Oh, I forgot to tell him what time," she says to herself.
She ducks back into her apartment to place her glass on a corner table and runs barefoot to his place. The door is only half closed, which surprises her. All interior shades are down so there is very little light inside.
"Mr. Gee?"
She moves inside slowly and sees a fallen body behind the door on the floor with the legs sticking out. Someone else is moving inside. She screams and runs back out.
A nearby police drone hears the scream and flies to the scene with sirens beeping.
Chapter Two: Vatican Games
Jungle Compound, Brazil
9:03 a.m., 1 October 2096
Deafening sirens shriek from outside of the fortified compound—a two-story, gray pyramid design. The secluded property is enclosed by a ten-foot, 'sticky' razor-wire wall with an arch over the metal gate. Gun-toting men run out of the building and jump into SUVs, Jeeps and trucks parked in a semi-circle around the building. Three more men burst out from the doors.
"Blow it," the center man commands, wearing a neon silver office suit with an open white shirt.
The man on his left pushes a button on a hand-held device and the entire compound erupts in flames. Both of his men are in rugged, casual clothes.
"What's happening, boss?" the other man asks.
"Unidentified jets are headed to us. The Invisible Fighters. It must be them. They're hitting all our facilities."
"Which ones?"
"All!"
"All?"
"All! Everything! We're the only ones left."
"They would need an army on the ground and air to hit all of us at the same time. The government would never allow that."
"The government is a joke. We should know because we made them that way. We need to be away from here."
"We shouldn't have blown the bunker. We could have stayed there and dug in."
"No. We had the bunkers, but nothing was stocked. I'm not getting buried in a bunker with no food and water. We're safer outside where we can see. We have the drones in the air watching all the roads and they'll shoot anything on the ground or air that approaches. No one could get in here unless they run all the way through the jungles and up to us." The boss man talks into his wrist. "What's taking so long?"
"They're loaded," a voice says from the device on the leader's right wrist.
He answers into his wrist-comm. "Get in the air!"
"Boss, are we sure?" his man asks. "Every single girl we got is on those transports. That's all our money in the world on those three transports. A lot of money."
"The Invisible Fighters would never shoot them out of the air. They're safer than us. Let's—"
"Are those two of our girls?" The other man points. They all take notice.
Two women are already through the gates, running at breakneck speed to them in army green, two-piece bikinis and jungle boots.
"Who are you two?" the leader yells. The other two men are grinning.
Before he can say another word, the first twin throws two daggers at them. It flies from her hand—already laser-locked—at the men. It slices through the bodies of two of the men,
who immediately collapse to the ground. The shocked leader runs, but is stabbed in the head with a laser dagger by the other twin. He falls to the ground dead.
The cartel henchmen waiting in the vehicles look at each other before reacting. Some vehicles drive off while other men jump out to shoot at the women with machine guns and rifles. Mortar rounds begin to fall; vehicles are hit, and explode. Bodies are thrown everywhere.
The twins ignore the carnage of the entire convoy of the slave smugglers being destroyed and watch the compound on fire. Humanoid drones fly over them, descend to the ground, and immediately run into the blaze shooting white-water from their hand sockets to put out the fire.
Civilian soldiers dressed in camo-green fatigues pour through the gate and fan out throughout the grounds. A squad runs to them. One is a female soldier who hands the twins their fatigues. The women quickly put them on.
"When the fire is out, we want every inch scanned by bloodhound-teks," says one twin.
"Yes, ma'am," answers one of the soldiers.
"If there is any surviving data in there, we want it. This is their data center. These criminals don't like their data on the Net."
"Destroying computer consoles and data banks is easy, ma'am. Erasing the data is not," says one soldier.
More civilian soldiers run to them.
"Ma'am, we missed the transports. They're already gone."
"How far out?" asks the other twin.
"A minute out—max."
"We'll intercept. Get the fire-bots out and the bloodhound teks in and let's get in the air. "
The lead jet flies low, just above the jungle canopy, with several others following. Inside the Twins sit behind the dual pilots, watching the monitors.
"Have the Medical Corps standing by," one Twin says to the pilots.
"Contacting them now, ma'am," the comm-pilot answers.
In the cargo area behind the Twins, the crew of forty sit in floor pods, each able to swivel three hundred and sixty degrees.
"Can I ask you a question, ma'am?"
Pure Conspiracy (The After Eden Series): The Genesis of World War III Page 4
