The Justar Journal: An AOI Thriller

by Brandt Legg

  “Does he know about the prophecies?” Chelle asked Nelson, then, without waiting for an answer, turned back to Grandyn. “Of course you know about them. Can you find time?”

  “Ah, the prophecies,” Nelson said. “That’s the real reason for this meeting. At least, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “That’s not true,” Chelle said. “We’re here because it’s weeks from the start of the Exchange and the outcome of it is already known. We need to find and understand the prophecies if we’re going to win the revolution. You cannot separate the two. The prophecies and the uprising are one.”

  “No!” Munna said firmly as she rose from her seat. “Chelle, I admire you greatly, but you think everything has to do with the revolution, and that is simply not the case. Hardly anything has to do with the revolution, least of all the prophecies.”

  Chelle looked at the old lady, bewildered. “But we can win. The prophecies can tell us how to win.”

  “The prophecies can tell a great many things,” Munna said in a gravely whisper. “They have for a thousand years, and they’ll keep on telling. It isn’t just for this little conflict of yours. Kings and queens have come and gone. Entire civilizations have risen and fallen. Do you know how many wars have been fought since the prophecies were first recorded?”

  No one answered.

  “Hundreds, perhaps thousands,” Munna continued, pointing to Nelson, then to a knife on the table.

  “If prophecies aren’t meant to be used to help people, why were they recorded in the first place?” Chelle asked.

  Nelson cut Munna a slice of apple. She smiled as he handed it to her without the peel, which was hard on her teeth.

  “Oh, but they are meant to help. The prophecies warn us, that is how they help. They show us how to find our original path.”

  “That is the same thing the revolution is going to do.”

  “I know you believe that Chelle, but war is not a natural thing. And winning something that isn’t natural isn’t really possible.”

  “Have you read the prophecies?” Chelle asked, raising her voice. “Do you know how to find them? Or do you already have copies?”

  Chelle looked around the cabin as if the prophecies might have been hidden there somewhere, with a fleeting thought that Munna was going to present them with the keys to the universe and they’d finally discover how to do the impossible. How to beat the massive machine pitted against them.

  “Damn it Munna, what are the prophecies really?” Chelle’s voice was shrill, her eyes pleading.

  Nelson looked at Munna in great anticipation, but she looked at Grandyn. “The prophecies, these prophecies, as you might have guessed, are not mere predictions scribed by a sage in forgotten time. They are something captured and carved from time itself, back when such things were still possible, back when we still understood how to do so much. Far more than we do now.”

  Chapter 24 - Book 2

  In an isolated nine-story building, Blaise stood in a darkened, empty room the size of two tennis courts. The purposefully nondescript architecture and the structure’s location, on the outskirts of Los Angeles, were specifically designed for his purposes. He had nearly identical buildings scattered around the globe. His space on the windowless fifth floor had four-meter high ceilings. The four floors above were filled with relay and blocking equipment designed by him, or trusted employees, to thwart any monitoring of his data. At the same time, the four floors below utilized the latest tracer, tracking, and siphoning machines to bring in intercepted information by gazilla-bytes.

  He had his knights working on the matter of Cope Lipton. It was impossible that he could have missed such a crucial detail in the giant puzzle of the Aylantik world, but he’d already learned enough to know that Cope was Booker’s secret son, making him Deuce’s uncle, and an important advisor to the trillionaire. Because of his position, and the complete secrecy surrounding his life, Cope Lipton – Blaise was almost certain – could be the missing piece he had been searching for. A way to make the picture complete so that he could finally achieve total control over the situation.

  Blaise appeared as something like a modern day wizard with his long dark hair flowing wildly as he spun in the glow of more than fifty VMs. He danced and ran among their constantly changing displays, absorbing the images and texts, turning on and off sound with quick flicks of his pinkies. The data influx was frightening in both its scope and its content. The world, like a kettle steaming for seventy-five years, was about to boil over into what would surely be the ugliest and deadliest war ever. Some VMs showed scenarios of casualties so numerous that it translated to the total extinction of the human race. War could be a profitable business, but only if it is controlled. A war after so long a peace could be very difficult to control.

  The danger flew at speeds so high that even his genius found it difficult to assimilate, but he knew two things for sure: he had to find Grandyn Happerman, and he needed the books. From then on, everything he did would be filtered through that knowledge. He also knew that Deuce Lipton, Lance Miner, and the AOI Chief also wanted those same things, and “want” was not meant in the way that an average citizen wants a new LEV or an upgraded INU, not in the case of the most powerful people on earth. They wanted Grandyn and the books like a drug addict wants a fix – their life depended on it.

  The books were obviously important because of the prophecies. Grandyn was important for many reasons. He might be able to find and even decode the prophecies, but Miner and the Chief were still under the false impression that Drast had destroyed half of the books. Therefore, keeping Grandyn out of the hands of the others was crucial. Whoever had the books could control the war, and Grandyn might be the key to actually winning it.

  Blaise spoke out loud to his empty room as he let the VMs run random excursions into the possibilities. “This world rides on the unpredictable nature of a troubled youth.” He laughed. “Oh, the irony of it. The madness of fate and cruel destiny of a misused crime.”

  The VMs showed aerial images of large swaths of forests blowing in the breeze, of real time AOI missions, the moon colony, bases on Mars, near constant population figures for decades, possible faces of Grandyn Happerman, tracked PAWN movements, images of Chelle, Nelson, and Polis Drast together during the first years of their alliance, and more trees.

  “You’re out there somewhere TreeRunner, running wild like a virus.” He stared into the closest screen with a forest, and quickly resized it to nearly four meters high and seven wide. “In those trees! A twenty-one year-old storm . . . a single lighting strike and it could all go up in flames.”

  He moved more VMs into place and the room lit up in greens and browns like forests going on forever. He had the wide views of most major wilderness areas on the planet. At his command, they organized by number of Grandyn sightings, likelihood of survival, cross-referenced with movements of AOI, BLAXERs, and the P-Force. Wildlife data, temperature fluctuations, plant and tree growth rates were thrown into the mix. He watched as overlays appeared of captured PAWN facilities, locations of arrests and executions of TreeRunners, suspected PAWNs, Rejectionists, and Creatives. Finally the DesTIn system running the show added the variable that included the occasions the AOI thought they were pursuing Grandyn or the times they believed they had actually killed him.

  Blaise stared and suddenly waved his arms out in a wide, sweeping, crossing motion above his head. All the lights and sound froze instantly. He paced and studied several VMs closely.

  “You crafty little devil, Grandyn. You aren’t out there in the woods at all, are you?” he said, then after a silence in which it almost appeared as if Blaise was waiting for an answer, he laughed for half a minute before shaking his head in disbelief. After several fast hand gestures, the VMs showed more data, but nothing he could use. “Perhaps you’re in the Amazon, but why would you keep surfacing? Why would you show your face at all?” he asked, zooming in on pixilated close-ups of a blurry face purported to be Grandyn. He ran a system with o
ther photographs alongside enhancement and correction apps, which suggested it was Grandyn in the Amazon. “But I don’t believe you’re there. Because if you really were hiding, why would you venture out of a well-stocked bunker buried beneath the impenetrable forest? Why expose yourself when you’re safely tucked away in the safest place possible?”

  Blaise stood silent as every VM filled with hi-res images of the Amazon forest.

  “You’re not harvesting rubber, you’re not shopping for groceries!” Blaise walked slowly among the VMs as if strolling through the largest jungle on earth. All that was missing were the humid air, rich soil, and thick vegetation under his feet. “I’ll tell you what you’re doing Grandyn. You’re trying to distract us all. You’re keeping us on our toes, just out of reach, dangling that carrot on a stick, and while we all chase you around the world from forest to forest, we’re missing something else, aren’t we?”

  Again he waited for an answer that didn’t come, so after a long pause, he provided it himself.

  “We’re missing something that you want more than your own safety, and what is that Grandyn? Do you want war? Yes, I think you do. Do you want the books? Your father’s books? Of course you do. Do you want to destroy the AOI? The people who took your mother and father from you? I’m certain you do, and who can blame you? But what do you want most of all? You can’t have it all . . . or can you?”

  Chapter 25 - Book 2

  Nelson, Chelle, and Grandyn stood in the still air of the cabin, embraced by the fragrances of pine and organic earth, waiting for Munna’s next words. She sat there in her straight-backed chair, also seeming to be waiting for something. Her thick gray hair resembled the mane of an aging lion, and the alert eyes of a cat gave her a regal appearance rather than that of a little old lady. Her presence, particularly if she were focused on you, gave the constant impression that something profound was about to be said, something important about to happen.

  “No, I don’t have the prophecies,” Munna said. “I’ve never even read them, but . . . I have felt them. I’ve talked to people who have read them, and the power of those visions could be seen, even partially understood, in the eyes of those who have grappled with the words.” She swept an arm out to the three of them. “You all want the prophecies, everyone wants them, but be careful what you wish for. You might not be ready when you finally get it.” Munna looked down into her empty hands as if something might have been there a long time ago and she hoped it might have magically returned. “All this time spent searching, and not a moment to prepare.”

  “Cope Lipton had read the prophecies,” Nelson said. “And his father, Booker.”

  Munna nodded.

  “Is there anyone left alive who knows what they contain?”

  “Me,” Munna answered.

  “But you said you hadn’t read them,” Chelle said.

  “Reading them and knowing what they contain are two very different things.” Munna looked sternly at Chelle. “It is not a simple matter. You all imagine it to be so casual to read these prophecies and suddenly know the future, but you cannot imagine, cannot begin to comprehend, what it is to actually know the future.”

  No one said anything. None of them had ever seen Munna so agitated. Finally Grandyn, realizing their time was running short, pressed her. “Are the prophecies dangerous?”

  To his relief, she smiled at him. “All knowledge can be dangerous in the wrong hands, and this, being the most ultimate knowledge, is the most dangerous of all. Why do you think they have been hidden so well for so long? Why have only a handful of people read them?”

  “The corrupt people in power have kept them from us,” Chelle answered.

  “Yes, yes. Of course we can always blame those corrupt leaders who always seem to lie their way into power and end up stealing all kinds of things from us, and to some extent, in this case, that is also true. But the corrupt leaders throughout history mostly share one common trait besides greed. They are not very smart. It doesn’t take a genius to lie and cheat. It is easy work for cowards and empty men.” She shook her head. “Booker Lipton was an enlightened man, a rebel in every sense of the word, who fought to bring down corrupt leaders and shed truth into the world, and yet . . . when given the chance to publish the prophecies, he decided instead to suppress them.”

  “What?” Nelson asked, stunned.

  “They were not lost or stolen, the government did not find and destroy them,” Munna said. “Booker Lipton buried them.”

  “Why?” Nelson asked.

  “Because knowledge is dangerous in the wrong hands.”

  “But he helped to publish other works by Clastier.”

  “There are two kinds of knowledge, aren’t there?” Munna asked.

  “Apparently dangerous and too dangerous,” Chelle said.

  Munna nodded. “Something like that. Inner knowledge can be dangerous for those who deny their power as individuals, our place in the universe.” She paused. “But external knowledge which comes from others can be dangerous to the innocent if wielded by tyrants. Clastier wrote about a great many things and his writings were divided into three sections. The Attestations, the Inspirations, and the Divinations. The former two were the bulk of the work and comprised his teachings and philosophies. The Divinations – a series of predictions for the future – were his direct understanding of what he saw in the prophecies. But what you must understand is that even though he had access to all the prophecies, even he chose to limit what he released, just as others had before him.”

  “How did he decide?” Grandyn asked.

  “I don’t know, but it appears, and Booker believed, that he selected key events around war and dark periods when significant loss of life and spiritual oblivion would occur . . . his predictions included the Banoff.”

  “But who was he to decide? Who made Booker king? Why not let it out and allow us all to know?” Chelle asked.

  “The prophecies don’t just say things like, on July 29th 2108, such-and-such will happen,” Munna explained. “They change with the influence and pressure of all that has already happened and all that is yet to come. The only constant in the universe is change.”

  “That’s exactly why we should know, so we can affect the change. The very fact that the prophecies are not written in stone is why we must give them to everyone.”

  “Why?” Munna asked sharply. “So you can decide that war is what’s needed to make change?”

  “Sometimes war is the only way to stop injustice,” Chelle said. “Look at what the Aylantik is doing. We’re at peace, yet the AOI kills as if we’re at war.”

  “War is never the way,” Munna said. “Violence cannot stop violence any more than hate can stop hate.”

  “There are times in history when war did end violence.”

  “No!” Munna snapped. “It only rearranged the sufferings! Historians’ slanted versions answering to hidden masters and propagandists’ lies owed to the same corrupt group made it seem that it was about making things better. About honor and fairness. We redraw the borders and memorize dates, but the same war has been raging for thousands of years. It has never ended.”

  Chapter 26 - Book 2

  The deteriorating situation in the Amazon continued to distract Deuce. He had already ordered BLAXERs into the region, something that would horrify his son, Twain, if he’d known. Twain had followed his great-uncle Cope’s path of non-violence and empowered-meditation, and long argued against sending armies into the forests. But Twain didn’t know about the escalations in the Amazon because he was missing. Deuce preferred to believe his son had just gone into silent solitude to advance his spiritual practice.

  As Billie Holiday sang, “I’ll Never Be the Same,” Deuce stood in his San Francisco office twisting VMs, searching for clues to where Twain might be. He hadn’t seen nor heard from him in months, and although his instinct told him his son was still safe somewhere in the redwoods, he wasn’t sure. He shifted his screens and viewed aerial coverage of the Amazon and othe
r forests closer to home. A zoom from his wife suddenly interrupted his concentration. As she had daily, for almost seven weeks, expressed concern for Twain, she urged Deuce to go looking for him.

  “It’s been too long without word. Twain would know we’d be worried and wouldn’t do this to us,” she said, and he agreed.

  After the zoom he summoned Nolan, one of the BLAXERs traveling with him. “Get the team together,” Deuce told him.

  Nolan, an efficient man with chiseled features, understood that Deuce wanted the eleven elite BLAXERs trained for special assignments. He touched his Eysen INU, and after several keystrokes into the projected light, Nolan looked back up to his boss. “Set in twenty-eight minutes,” he said. “Where are we going?”

  “Redwoods.”

  Nolan nodded. “Twain?”

  “Yeah,” Deuce said. He’d spent so much time concerned with finding Grandyn and the books that he’d probably let a few more weeks go by without going after Twain than he should have. But Deuce knew Twain wanted solitude, and was willing to trust he’d be safe in the redwoods. He also knew that his wife saw things differently.

  “How are we looking down there?” Nolan asked, pointing to a VM showing satellite images of the Amazon covered in brightly colored lights. AOI agents had set up a base there as they closed in on Grandyn. Drawn to the area for the same reasons, Miner’s P-Force was also on hand. Miner was hoping to beat the AOI to the lost TreeRunner.

  With so many fighters concentrated in such a remote part of the world, Deuce worried that it could be a precursor to the war. At any moment anything could spark the three powerful armies from a pursuit mission to the first open battle between major forces since the Banoff war. The lights showed positions of the troops.

  “We’re the blue ones,” Deuce said. “AOI is Red, and P-Force is yellow.”

  “What are the green ones?” Nolan asked.