The Justar Journal: An AOI Thriller

by Brandt Legg

  He nodded. “The order probably came down from Parker. She’s not my biggest fan.”

  “Even if she was,” Zaverly began, “twenty-six dead TreeRunners might be something they can tolerate to protect you, but hundreds? In one swoop? How many do we have down here, and the whole installation, all the bunkers? It’s too much to give up for you. They need you right now to pay back the TreeRunners, to give your life to save the rest.”

  “But what about you? Why send you with me?”

  “I volunteered.”

  “What?”

  “They were going to send Lloyd,” she said, not looking at him. “I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “Well, you can’t go.”

  “You’ll stop me?” She smiled quickly. “I don’t think so.”

  “Lloyd is a good guy.”

  “Lloyd is definitely nice, but you’d last about ten minutes with him. It’s not just a unit of grunges . . . half the torgon AOI is going to be out there.”

  “Zaverly,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders, silently staring into her eyes for a moment before continuing. “You are not going to die for me.”

  “Not if I can help it,” she said, never losing his eyes.

  “You know this is a suicide run. I’m being used as bait, a sacrificial lamb.”

  “That’s what’s so crazy,” Zaverly said, stepping back so his hands fell away. If his hands had stayed on her shoulders any longer, she would have pulled him into an embrace, and that couldn’t happen. She wanted it to, just not before they were going into battle. They couldn’t afford to be soft and mushy. They couldn’t afford much in what was probably going to be the final hours of their lives. “How long until the AOI annihilates the rest of them anyway? Until they crater this whole area?”

  “Maybe it’ll give them time to get out.”

  “Something isn’t right. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t buy it that they’ve saved you for three years only to toss you to the wolves now.”

  “It’s a timing thing,” he said. “The war is about to start.”

  “Too bad,” she said, grabbing her gear. “We’re just going to have to surprise them and survive this. I plan to be in that war. I plan to help win it.”

  Chapter 37 - Book 2

  Munna looked into the room, smiling. “Lance Miner, how interesting to meet you.”

  Miner, still stunned, looked at the five Imps.

  Sidis shook his head as if to say, We didn’t do this.

  Charlemagne shrugged, as baffled as the rest.

  Sarlo couldn’t help but smile back at the old lady.

  “How did you do that?” he asked, referring to the explosion of stars, nebula, quasars, galaxies, and light in which she arrived.

  “I heard you talking about me. I understand you’ve been wanting to meet for years, just thought it was time to pay you a visit.”

  Miner looked around for a weapon. This woman was his enemy. He wanted to take her into custody, and if that wasn’t possible, killing her was fine with him. But of course, she wasn’t really there, just a type of hologram. “Where are you?”

  “I’m near some lovely trees,” she said. “And you’re in a lovely spot yourself. The Amazon is one of my favorite places. Let’s not scar it all up with a war.”

  “I don’t want war.”

  “Yes, I know. We share that in common.”

  “You don’t want war, but PAWN‒‒”

  “PAWN is not me. They have their own ideas about how change should come.”

  “Change?”

  “Yes, Lance, change. I may not want war, but a change is gonna come.” She smiled again. “You still have time to be on the right side of that change.”

  Miner laughed. “Oh really, is that why you’re here? To get the sinner to repent before judgment day?”

  “Lance, do you know how old I am?”

  “I’ve heard rumors, but you look younger than I thought you would.”

  “You think power comes from money, from controlling people . . . You have no idea. I have no possessions, no money, I control no one with rules, laws, or manipulation, and yet for years you have sought to destroy me, because you fear my what?” She stared at him intensely. “You fear my power.”

  “Fear is not in my vocabulary, Munna. You’re mistaken. I don’t want to destroy you because of your power, I want to destroy you to add to my power.”

  She smiled. “Perhaps Sarlo will explain it to you later.”

  Sarlo burst out laughing.

  Miner glared at her.

  “Where do you think my power comes from Lance?” Munna asked.

  “My advisors here tell me it comes from your alleged ability to access universal consciousness.”

  “Do you believe in universal consciousness?”

  “I have a vague notion of something,” he said, waving his hands to the heavens.

  “And do you believe I can access it?”

  “I think if you could do what my advisors say you can, then you wouldn’t be wasting time with me, and you would have already won this war.”

  “You have forgotten, I do not want war. And you clearly don’t understand how the universe works. May I suggest you read some books? And Lance, please leave me to my work. Don’t waste your time looking for me or trying to stop me. I’m the best chance you have to stop the war that you so dearly wish to avoid.”

  Her image faded, replaced by a three-dimensional book, which was now on his INU. “Observations of the Universe, a Conversation with Cope Lipton,” by Nelson Wright.

  Munna stopped and waited for Nelson to catch up. Somehow she seemed to get younger in the redwoods. Nelson had a harder time accepting he was fifty-four than believing she was one-hundred-thirty-three. He vowed once again to give up smoking, drinking, and eating. That was it, he decided, that’s what was killing him. He’d never seen Munna eat, maybe some nuts and seeds every once in a while, but he couldn’t think of much else. And she certainly never touched alcohol or bacs.

  “Okay,” he said to himself. “I’ll give up drinking and eating, except for nuts, seeds, and berries. And I’ll limit my bacs to no more than seventeen a day – one every hour I’m awake.” He always enjoyed his own sense of humor.

  “Here we are again!” Munna said as she reached him. “It’s been three years since I brought you here to meet Cope.”

  Nelson nodded, too winded to answer. He checked the time on his INU and reached for his bacs. Surely it’s been an hour since my last one. We’ve been walking forever, he thought.

  “Why do you insist on killing yourself Nelson? You’re such a talented man.”

  “Last time I was here, Cope was still alive,” he said, lighting a bac and ignoring her criticism.

  She smiled. “We need minds like yours. You can sway people . . . but that is significantly more difficult to do if you’re dead.”

  “The year I spent with Cope was the most important time of my life. He changed how I view everything.” He sat on a nearby fallen tree. “Why did you arrange it so I could stay with Cope? Why me?”

  “Because you have the power to get the message out.” She looked at him, her eyes glowing in the muted light of the late morning sun, filtered by thousands of centuries of old trees. “Those things you discovered are more important than the revolution. The prophecies are part of the proof of what is possible. They aren’t meant to be used to win a war, they are meant to end war.”

  In spite of his sister’s fighting so badly to start the revolution, he believed Munna. Because of his experiences with Cope, he knew she was right, but he lacked her faith. It was as if he had not completed something, like reading a book with the last chapter torn out. “Perhaps if I read the prophecies. Maybe if I live to be as old as you . . . I know in principle we should avoid war, but I lack the faith you have.”

  “Faith for what?”

  “That we could remove Aylantik and end the AOI without bloodshed.”

  “Perhaps you cannot.” They stood in the shade
of a huge tree.

  “But we cannot allow them to remain. Even another day is too long.”

  “There are other ways to find change . . . there are always other ways.”

  “Then, by all means, please tell them to me.”

  “Come,” Munna said, walking again.

  “Are you going to answer me?”

  “Oh, Nelson, didn’t your time with Cope teach you anything? The answers are always here.” She waved her arm in a circular motion above her head. “The answers are all around us.”

  He followed her silently for a while. Every so often he squinted into the space between some of the particularly larger trees, hoping to discover an answer. Cope had been easier to understand, more direct. Sometimes he and Cope would play cards, and in between hands and draws their conversation would be as if two old friends were hanging out. But at the end of the evening, Nelson would realize he’d learned something. Sometimes it was big, like the time they’d been discussing their favorite foods – Nelson claiming pizza and Cope craving apples. “The real ones,” he would say, “the ones right off the tree, never sprayed, just some tree forgotten in an overgrown corner of somewhere.”

  Still unsure how it happened out of that conversation, Nelson first considered the power in simple things. Real power, as if a single thought could change the world. A pebble rippling in a pond, he thought, looking up through the branches of a mighty tree he remembered from his time in the forest with Cope.

  “Answers all around,” Munna echoed her earlier words.

  Nelson wondered if it might be possible somehow to overthrow Aylantik with words. After all, words were at the center of the revolution . . . the books, the prophecies, his own writings, the history of the Banoff, and the rules of the Doneharvest and all the names lost in between. Words. A pebble rippling in a pond.

  “Twain was here with you and Cope. You know that young man fairly well, I suppose,” Munna said. “Where would he go?”

  “You mean if he didn’t want to be found?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you think if he doesn’t want to be found we should allow him that?”

  “I thought we’d already settled that. Deuce is out here looking, and that brings many complications. Twain will have other times to seek his meaning and understanding. Right now we need him to be with his father.”

  “But I still don’t get your concern. Deuce doesn’t agree with your anti-war stance. What does it matter if he misses his son? We know Twain is safe.”

  “It is more than a ‘stance,’ and it is not about him missing his son. Deuce must be convinced that war is not the correct road, and only Twain can do that. You should know, from the perils of Grandyn and the other TreeRunners, that being in the forest, even the redwoods, does not ensure one’s safety.”

  Chapter 38 - Book 2

  Standing in a small wooden shed on the edge of the forest, Grandyn, with hungry eyes, stared at the holograph of Fye. His desire went beyond wanting to touch her real flesh instead of the digital apparition standing next to him in the pale evening light. It exceeded every measure of what he knew as a man of lust. Fye had not only saved him, she filled the missing parts that had been ravaged by AOI plots and schemes. Grandyn may have seemed lost to everyone else, but without her, he’d be lost to himself. Fye, in a real sense, was his entire world.

  She returned the stare, kissing him with her eyes, imagining their shared passion changing the hue of the surrounding air to some shade of magenta. “When do I see you again?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “The torgon AOI has me running around the clock. We’re so close to this thing erupting that they’re throwing everything at any Grandyn sighting.”

  “It’s so dangerous now. The systems show the probability of them catching you at eighty-eight percent. It’s never been that high.”

  “They won’t catch me.”

  “You don’t know that.” Her voice was strained. “Twelve percent. That’s all you have. Can you escape in such a small amount of space? If things ignite in the Amazon, your survival chances drop to less than seven percent.”

  “What do you want me to do?” It killed him to hurt her, to scare her.

  “Come to me. This is the only place you’ll be safe.”

  “You know I can’t do that. Everything I’ve worked for in the last three years will be for nothing. My dad’s death‒‒”

  “You don’t carry this whole thing on your shoulders, Grandyn. You’re one man, you’re twenty-one, you‒‒”

  “I’m a Happerman. This is my fight. I know there are others fighting, but everyone has their own agenda, and this cause is mine. I’ve got to find the books and unravel the prophecies.”

  “Grandyn, you don’t even know if the prophecies are real.”

  “They are.”

  “I know you believe that, but how do you know?” She scribbled letters on her pad, not even looking at the paper.

  “I know because Munna is real, and she says they are. And Nelson, I’ve known him longer than anyone else in my life, and he says they’re real. And, because . . . I just know it.”

  “But what if they aren’t?”

  “They are.”

  “But if they aren’t?”

  “Then I’ll still have the books. The real books.”

  “But they’re just books. We have all that data preserved.”

  “They aren’t just books, they’re my dad’s books. He died for them.”

  “I know. I just don’t want you to.” She flipped a page in her pad and kept writing. He was so used to her strange habit of sketching words and symbols that he hardly noticed it anymore.

  “We’re almost there,” he said.

  “Where? The books? War?”

  “Everything. Can’t you feel it?” His voice rose. “The whole world is about to explode, and we can’t stop it . . . but we do have the power to change it.”

  “The List Keepers look at it differently. Without war, the List Keepers go on. Revolution, the List Keepers go on. The books, the prophecies, Munna . . . whatever happens, we go on.”

  “I understand that. But the rest of us, the two point nine billion survivors of the AOI who don’t even know the List Keepers exist, let alone who they are or what they do, we have to go on regardless of what you do.”

  “You’re a List Keeper,” she said quietly.

  “To you I am . . . but . . .” He looked at her softly, wanting to take her hands. “But to me, I’m a TreeRunner, I’m a Happerman, and I have to stop the AOI.”

  “You have to save the world.” She smiled, remembering when they first met, before she loved him, before events had spun even more out of control and Fye had said the same thing to him.

  He nodded, but barely smiled. He remembered too. “I got a message from Deuce, sent before he headed into the redwoods. I’d asked him, not too politely, how much longer until he had all the books together. He gave a complete accounting. The problem is that right after we got the books out of the library and hid them in a barn, Chelle let Deuce take what turned out to be about one-third of them. Munna ordered the others split up and moved, but the Doneharvest created chaos. As you know, the AOI intercepted several shipments and moved them to a warehouse where they were supposed to be destroyed.”

  “But Drast saved those.”

  “Right, we know that now. But the AOI didn’t get them all, as we originally thought. Several of the shipments got through, but the people in charge were killed in AOI raids just hours after they had safely hidden the books.”

  “But surely Munna would know where they are?”

  “She would if they had reached their final destination, but they didn’t. Remember, the Doneharvest exploded with a shocking show of force. In all that confusion, the PAWN agents who were moving the books were forced to drop them at temporary locations. Those agents were killed that same day.”

  “You mean everyone who knew where they were is dead?”

  “So it would seem. But Deuce has ha
d a team working on it for three years and they just uncovered a hidden cache. Once we get Drast’s books, Deuce estimates we’ll have about ninety percent. That’s enough to give us a good chance to find the missing eight works that contain the prophecies.”

  “Progress.”

  “Still a needle in a haystack, but you’ve shown me repeatedly that nothing is impossible.”

  “I don’t have any doubt that you can find them, but then what? Lance Miner, Deuce, Blaise, Chelle, they all want the prophecies. Are they really going to let you keep them?”

  “I haven’t figured out that part yet, and I know Nelson will be there, but right now I’m the only one who knows about Hamlet. I’m counting on Shakespeare to save me. After all, I’m the only son of the Last Librarian.”

  Chapter 39 - Book 2

  Inside the AOI Hilton super-max prison, Evren had only an hour a day in which to recruit and conspire with inmates, but he had the remaining twenty-three to work the guards. This was even easier since all the senior officers knew his real identity as Drast. He was too important, and still held secrets the AOI needed. Even prior to his arrival, a deputy to the Chief had briefed the top guards. Deaths at Hilton, like most AOI lock-up facilities, were not unusual, and the Chief needed Drast protected. Drast was the highest-ranking PAWN arrest they’d ever made. He was a deep probe into whatever the AOI was up against. If war were to be avoided, his information would help her do it, and if war came, his information could help her win it quickly.

  The directive to “keep an extra watch” on Evren/Drast had unintended results. Most of the guards resented their low-level assignments with pay to match. They were easy targets for the once powerful former AOI Regional Head, and, remarkably, Drast somehow still had access to a seemingly untraceable and significant pool of money. More than that, he could see into all their personnel files. He knew how to get to each one, and he knew how to cover his tracks.