by Brandt Legg
He stopped writing as anger overtook his thought. His hands tensed and trembled. Too much had happened, too much that he took on his shoulders. His father had raised him to be brave and true, to face what came and rise to the occasion, but what does that mean when everything is at stake – the lives of millions, the future of the world, the truth in the remaining books – he didn’t know.
What am I supposed to do? How do we change something this big, fight something this big? Grandyn balled his hands into fists and pounded the table. Too much.
His anger quickly turned to depression. The knowledge of what had been done during the Banoff and in the present constantly droned in the background of his thoughts. The noise and vibration of it became too much to bear.
He looked at his lasershod and considered ending his life. It was not a new thought, and it didn’t happen daily, but every week or two, after a heavy day of running, pretending, or both, he would contemplate his end. However, it was usually the days when he had time to think, when the pull to find his parents and friends tattooed another reaper onto his mind, erasing another smile, another patch of flowers left over from that long-lost innocence. He wanted so badly to cry.
The lasershod looked so easy, seemingly a way to peace. Instead, he wrote more in his letter to Fye. My need for revenge is what keeps me going, but it is also killing me. There is a toxic seed in the force that drives me on to avenge. I wish I were like you, with your noble endeavor to right a wrong situation. But my fire comes from a desire to see them all bleed openly while leeches, maggots, and vultures eat them alive.
He eyed the lasershod as if waiting for it to come to him, but went on writing.
Or to walk in Munna’s footsteps, with her resolute call for peaceful change and nonviolence like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, or those other rebels of the past that we’re forbidden to learn about, not allowed to even know their names. I’m so grateful I was raised in a library . . . it may be all that saves me. That, and you, of course. If I’m even to be saved at all.
Grandyn picked up the lasershod, gripped it tightly.
“Dad, help me!” he groaned, pointing the weapon at his face. He looked into its smooth black metal end, narrower and slightly shorter than an old-fashioned gun, precisely machined, one hundred percent accurate and highly lethal. It felt like strength, something that could solve problems, right wrongs, and perhaps transport a person to a different reality. Sweat dripped from his temples.
His trembling hand put the lasershod back on the table.
I have such guilt, he wrote, and if I’m to be denied my revenge . . . living with that failure would do a better job of killing me than this lasershod ever could.
Chapter 32 - Book 2
Hilton Prison officials allowed inmate Evren outside solitary confinement for ninety minutes each day. Thirty of that was spent alone on a three-by-three-meter dirt pad enclosed by an old-fashioned, three-meter-high chain-link fence, his recreation time mandated by law. But it was the other hour, his mandated socialization time, that Evren made most use of. None of the inmates knew his true identity as Polis Drast, former head of the AOI for the Pacyfik region. If they’d known, he’d be dead.
The AOI had gone to some trouble to keep one of their former leaders alive. During the first few months of incarceration, a waiver had been issued and he spent twenty-four-seven in isolation until enough work had been done on his face as to make him unrecognizable. His transformation was complete when he, like all inmates, had his head shaved. He and his fellow convicts had all celebrated the news that Polis Drast had been killed, making his Evren cover story even more solid.
Safe in his new identity, instead of lying low, he used his knowledge of the AOI to his advantage. In his prior role he had read the files of most of the prisoners at Hilton, since he’d actually been responsible for getting a majority of them locked up.
“Mite” was an early conquest. The stubby Asian man had earned his nickname by being an explosives expert. Mite, short for Dynamite, didn’t use the forgotten nitroglycerin-based explosive. Instead he used pulse, EMFs, laser, and nano-particle varieties. He’s been an AOI contractor, but was caught supplying materials and technical knowledge to a group of Rejectionists with links to PAWN. Normally, Mite would have been executed, but like almost all the other residents of AOI penal facilities, he’d been allowed to live because the AOI believed he might be useful at a later time. Additionally, in the case of Mite, he was one of the top scientists in the industrial, space, and munitions explosive field.
Evren, of course, knew this and wanted to be friends with Mite for the same reason the AOI did.
“What do you say today, Mite?” Evren asked as the most important sixty minutes of the day started.
“Evren,” he said, holding out his two fingers in a “peace” sign and inserting them into Drast’s, whose were arranged the same way. The modern equivalent of bumping fists stood for being plugged into the same program. “Good, man, I say good things today.”
“Any news?” Evren asked, glancing up at the guard tower. News was supposed to be kept away from the inmates. They had no access to the Field, and their only entertainment came in the form of AOI-censored movies appearing on VMs in their cells.
“Heating up out there,” Mite said, watching an android guard patrolling fifteen meters away.
The android, and other nearby devices, were monitoring them constantly, including audio and visuals, but Evren had managed to get micro-whistler-FAs for a number of his important inside “crew.” The “FA” stood for False Audio, and they were miraculous devices that fit into their mouths. The whistler blocked their conversation from being monitored, and then broadcast a false audio prerecorded by DesTIn systems to replicate small talk – weather, food complaints, etc.
As a college professor, Drast had said several times, “For each way to monitor, a way to defeat that monitoring will be invented.” So far it had proven to be mostly true. The AOI had not yet detected FAs, and didn’t appear even to know the technology existed.
Evren nodded. “It’s close.” But the recoding of their conversation would have that as, “It’s cold.”
“And the chamber-slot is installed.” Even with the FA, they still spoke in shorthand, as Drast had also said that there will always be a kind of arms race in the surveillance industry, and new ways to defeat the defeating systems would, inevitably, also come.
Evren eyed a fly and wondered if it was real or a drone. But Mite had just given him excellent news. The chamber slot was the plan to breach all AOI prisons at once, and installed meant the systems and people were all in place to carry out the action. It would happen as soon as PAWN struck. That part he was still trying to get a handle on, but he knew it would be soon, and, when the chamber slot occurred, he would be free.
“What’re the numbers?”
Mite answered with a series of numbers which told Drast which guards were with them. They had four humans so far, and were hoping for one more, but the support would come from nine androids that would be remotely reprogrammed over the Field during the final hour. It was a bold plan that only a former AOI head could have organized. Drast had been working on it for years, long before he became inmate Evren. Back then he had not been expecting to be on the inside, but nonetheless, that possibility had always haunted him.
“What about Tiger?” Evren asked.
Mite raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure we need that crazy torg?”
Tiger was a seemingly crazy inmate who’d earned his nickname inside by killing two inmates at an AOI prison in Arizona. This was his third institution in just five months. “Torgon if I care!” Tiger screamed one day when a guard threatened to transfer him after he threatened to eat the guard’s ear for not allowing him to make a zoom. “I’m gonna see ‘em all sooner or later.”
Tiger had originally been locked up for murder, but Drast didn’t know the details, as he’d come from Australik, the region that contained the countries formerly known as Australia, New Zealand,
and surrounding islands. Tiger, a volatile man well over two meters tall, intimidated even the toughest Hilton residents. Part descendent from aborigines, and the rest a mixed mutt of European blood, his dark skin and electric blue eyes gave him a haunting look. His appearance was further enhanced by concrete muscles and white and yellow tattoos depicting him slaying dragons.
“Here he comes,” Evren said.
“I’ll see you later,” Mite replied.
“No, stay. You just think he doesn’t like you.”
“I guess I misunderstood the last three times he told me he hates me so much he wants to set fire to my soul and use the ashes to smother any relatives I might have.”
“He didn’t mean that. It’s all part of his act,” Evren said. “Hey, Tiger, how are we looking?” The FA sent the audio. “Hey, Tiger, what’s the movie tonight?”
“I’m set for this weekend,” Tiger answered Evren, while scowling at Mite. “It’ll be worth it just to get away from this piece of trash.”
“Hey, leave Mite alone. He might start to think you really don’t like him,” Evren said, smiling.
“Don’t like him, ha! Maybe I should kill him for the transfer.”
“No, no more killing or they may just execute you instead of transferring you. You must have some damned glowing hot information for the AOI to have let you live this long.”
“They like me killing inmates.” He shot a look to Mite. “It saves them the trouble.”
Evren laughed. Mite just sat there trying to look tough, which wasn’t too hard since he hated Tiger right back.
“Just push the guard, don’t kill him,” Evren said. “According to our informants, Pacyfik is over-crowded with the Doneharvest and they can’t kill everyone. With the revolution looming, they need all the intelligence they can get from us cons.”
“Why not just kill us all and do brain scans?” Mite asked.
As Drast, Evren knew this answer precisely. The Said-scans didn’t always work, the process of data retrieval was tedious, the information gleaned was often incomplete and “one-dimensional,” and it went stale. A valuable subject was always better to have alive. They could be tortured if necessary and, most important, they could be questioned as needed.
“They must have their reasons,” Evren answered.
In the short period before they would all be returned to their cells, they worked out more of the logistics. Tiger and twelve other inmates would be transferred in the next two weeks for various reasons: medical, security, proximity to family, conflicts, etc. They would carefully spread word of the chamber-slot to the other prisons so that when the time came, the inmates would be ready, their assistance assured.
Evren sat in his two-by-two-meter cell and stared at the stainless steel walls. For two years he’d been living inside a tin can, guarded by the lowest bottom-feeders the AOI had to offer.
Although the majority of the inmates were good, honest revolutionaries, he didn’t like trusting people, especially when some of them were real-life dangerous criminals like Tiger. Word could leak too easily, but there was no choice. Enough of the guards were in on it, not just at Hilton, but everywhere, that they had a slight tinge of protection. Drast still had people on the outside as well. There were thousands working toward the revolution, but the key to it all might not be Grandyn Happerman. In his opinion, it was the AOI. And Drast, better than anyone, knew the AOI was not exactly built on the loyalty of its agents.
Chapter 33 - Book 2
Grandyn got himself together. In the end, it had once again been Hamlet that stopped him from pulling the trigger this time. “I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?” Perhaps a gift from his father, after all.
He tried to reach Deuce, but unbeknownst to him, Deuce was deep in the redwoods, and therefore unavailable. Grandyn left a frustrated message. “Where are the books? Why is it taking so long?”
Sitting there thinking about Nelson, Chelle, and Munna, Grandyn realized that the books were as important to him as the revolution itself, not just because they could possibly provide the road to victory, but also because they were his father’s. A link, and something more, a message, a real message, from whom, he didn’t know. It could be hidden words from his father, but it was more likely from some unimagined, long-dead prophet who found a way to see the future and figured out how to warn them – the inhabitants of that future – how to save themselves from all that the prophet had seen.
Nelson had confirmed that they believed the books, which disappeared around the time of his father’s death, had not been destroyed by the AOI. He looked again at the AOI emblem and could almost see the flames in the glint of gold. “But where are they?” Grandyn had asked Nelson. “And even if Drast did save them, they could easily have been discovered and destroyed since his arrest.”
“Deuce is working on it,” Nelson had told him. “PAWN has some of the original books, and Deuce has about half of them, but I understand he’s split them up into as many as eight locations. We have a dedicated team trying to find the books the AOI took, and Deuce has even more people working on the same thing.”
“Three years? That’s too long.”
“If it weren’t for the Doneharvest we’d have found them already. But don’t worry. We will, and when we do, you have to be ready Grandyn,” Nelson had said pleadingly, talking to him the way only someone who’d known him his whole life could. “Infinite-encryption means we can stay in touch, and your location will be unknown.”
Infinite-encryption had been invented by one of Deuce Lipton’s companies, and although it wasn’t available to the masses, PAWN, TreeRunners, and a few other rogue organizations had access to it. For the rest of the malcontents, a simpler Whistler still allowed some protection from the AOI’s snooping. The tiny device scrambled voice, data, and image communications within twenty-five meters of the INU partnered with the device. Grandyn recalled the days when they’d relied on what now was considered primitive technology and was amazed that they hadn’t been caught.
Grandyn wanted to know what the prophecies said about the Banoff and those who had done it. The whole thing, and all else that had occurred in the seventy-five years since, were incomprehensible to him. Nelson had told him once not to think so much about the “nightmare,” adding, “It’ll just make it all the more real.” But Grandyn had been raised by thinkers, and he’d received a double dose of the trait that makes one worry and wonder. Every day, hours were lost trying to fathom the insanity.
Those in power at the time prior to the Banoff, the super-wealthy, thought they had no choice but to do what they did. Terrorists everywhere had changed the landscape as they made progress and claimed victories around the globe. Traditional problem areas, like the Middle East and northern Africa, became unbearable, and the unrest spread. It spilled out of Afghanistan and Pakistan into India and China, then into other marginal areas. Sections of Mexico fell to guerilla groups. Eastern Europe, and even South Korea and Australia, saw flare-ups. Violence and unrest became the norm. At some point, the elite saw no way out and concocted the Banoff. They orchestrated the virus. Then, through planning and strategic deployment, combined with the use of inoculations and medication, they controlled the spread.
Grandyn remembered the conversation he’d had with Fye after she’d explained the motivation for the Banoff.
“In other words, they killed whom they wanted?” he’d asked her.
“Yes,” she’d answered as if discussing a minor car accident. “Most definitely, certain populations were targeted. Historians would tell us that the huge loss of life among Muslims, Asians, and blacks was due to mistrust of western medicine and or immune problems, but nothing about the Banoff was accidental.”
“How could they pull it off? How many knew?”
“They’d had a few dry runs in the early 2000s. Contr
olled epidemics were used to kill thousands, and they tracked medical and media response,” she said, scratching numbers and something that looked like symbols from as old Asian language into her pad. The pencil flew across the paper while she spoke as if she possessed two independent minds.
“Apparently they learned well. No one would believe the Banoff was planned. I know it was, and I absolutely can’t comprehend people would knowingly do it.”
He could still recall the feeling, like the wind getting knocked out of his lungs, an ache in his chest. He could not find words, he could hardly breathe. She had continued, not noticing his state.
“They saw it as the ends justifying the means. A chance to start over without war, hunger, crime, over-population, all the ills of the world could be erased. And you must admit, they created a wonderful world, but the AOI, initially meant to keep order and protect the Banoff secret, grew too powerful. The elite became afraid of losing all that they had created, all they had taken, and lived in fear that the Banoff secret might be exposed. They put all that fear into the hands of the AOI. The AOI made an art form of that fear, so much so that those three letters now represent it worldwide.”
Chapter 34 - Book 2
Miner, looking at his reflection on a VM, pointed at himself and winked. He had not heard back from Blaise since he’d brought up Cope Lipton. He was now convinced that Blaise had not known about Booker’s missing son. The Imps had known, and the Imps said Cope was dead. Blaise might have been surpassed by his own creations.
