by Linda Hawley
I smiled at her and giggled, unable to help myself. “I think we were mesmerized,” I said, trying to explain it.
“I’ll say! It’s like all of you were hypnotized,” she said, still worked up.
“Did you see the energy?” I asked her.
“No. There was nothing,” she said, annoyed.
“Well…there certainly was something,” I said, contradicting her.
Chow approached Vanessa, speaking calmly to her. “It was a beam of pure energy. It originated in the center of our joined quartz, going down into the earth, then extending up beyond the visible sky.”
“From what I could see, nothing happened until the earth began to shake. Then I ran over here as fast as I could to break up your trio, tackling Ann, thinking she was the most powerful of you.”
“Thank you,” Edwin said to her sincerely. “We had no awareness that the earth was shifting.”
“Let’s get back inside so we can talk about this while Chow rests,” Vanessa directed.
“Okay,” I agreed, looking at him.
Chow looked better—much better. We walked over to where our ATVs were parked. Vanessa mounted hers first. She moved the start key to the on position and then pushed the electronic starter button. Nothing happened. She repeated it again. Edwin mounted his ATV and couldn’t get it to start, either. After four tries on all the ATVs, we admitted that we had a problem. Somehow our little experiment fried something in the vehicles. I looked toward the house, a mile away, and then looked back to Chow.
“Sorry my friend, but it looks like we’re gonna have to hoof it,” I said to him.
“Okay,” Chow said happily.
“Edwin, walk on the other side of Chow, just in case he needs help. I’ll walk on this side of him. We’d better get started—it’s almost dark,” Vanessa said, taking charge.
Chapter 37
Four of the security team intercepted us on foot at a full run within minutes of our hike back to the house. Their ATVs were useless too. They took positions alongside Chow and encouraged us to get in the house quickly. They’d felt the earthquake from the ranch’s perimeter—miles away—and were spooked.
When we got to the house, two men insisted on checking the house before we entered. Within a few minutes, they’d cleared it for entry. It was only a couple of minutes after we entered the house that one of the security men informed us that all the electronics were dead.
“Oh my goodness…you’re kidding,” I said.
“Nope,” he said grimly.
“Inventory all our security resources. Report back to me within fifteen minutes,” Vanessa told him.
He turned and left the room.
“We created a pulse of energy…” Chow began.
“An EMP,” I said, finishing his thought.
“An electromagnetic pulse—or EMP—is a sudden pulse of electromagnetic radiation. It creates unstable current and surging voltages, easily destroying modern electronics,” Edwin said flatly.
Vanessa faced Edwin. “I already knew that.”
Edwin looked sheepish.
Vanessa looked directly at me, fire behind her eyes.
“You have this dream where you don’t see the ending. You conduct an experiment out of curiosity of what’ll happen. You three end up creating a pulse of energy so strong that it creates an earthquake and wipes out our electronics. Why?” she demanded.
“Why what?” I asked her.
“Why did it happen?” she said, exhaling in irritation. “If I hadn’t stopped you, you might have destroyed this house with a nine-point-o on the Richter scale.”
She had a point.
“I don’t know,” I said.
We began to discuss the events in detail, trying to make sense of what had happened. Within ten minutes, Vanessa was called away by security. When she came back into the room, she looked stressed. It was nearly dark.
“Bad news,” she announced.
The three of us turned to her.
“Everything’s fried, including the SUV we came in. Phones and internet are out. Computers are dead. I don’t know why we don’t have electricity—the ranch has solar. I guess the inverters are fried. We do have a little good news. You’re in a safe house that was built for all contingencies—including EMP. The guys are breaking out the big generator and the diesel stores. It’s been isolated in a Faraday Cage, which makes it immune from an EMP. We’ll have electric in about ten minutes. We’ve got an older Land Rover that was intended to run in case of an EMP. It was rebuilt—stripped of all electronics. Some spare parts for it are in the Faraday Cage, but it seems we don’t need them. When the guys tried to fire it up, it started just fine.”
“So we’ve got power and one four-by-four,” I said.
“Yes…no thanks to you,” she said to me.
I stuck my tongue out at her.
* * *
“We’ve got a runner,” one of the security guards loudly announced.
It was nearly midnight, and we’d been sitting in the living room, talking through the events and all of their implications. Every time I thought we might have covered everything, Vanessa, Chow, or Edwin asked something else. And then I'd consider something new. It was all very complex.
An early twenty-something woman with dark brown hair in a pixie cut, dressed in what could be described as cowgirl attire, strode into the room purposefully.
“What’d you do, come on a horse?” Vanessa asked as she stood to meet the runner.
I smiled. She was so direct and unfiltered that I often found her very funny.
“Nope,” the woman answered in clipped tones.
“What’s with the cowgirl getup?” Vanessa asked.
“Blending in, ma’am.”
Now I couldn’t help myself—I laughed out loud. Vanessa looked at me, her serious face meeting mine. I tried to keep my laughter in behind my smile.
“You want the message or not?” the GOG runner asked Vanessa impatiently.
“Let’s move into the kitchen,” Vanessa said, giving me a reproachful look. As they left the living room, I heard Vanessa ask her, “How’d you get here, if you didn’t ride a horse?”
The runner replied, “Car. How else?”
Chow, Edwin, and I sat in silence, waiting for Vanessa to return. Five minutes later, the faux cowgirl exited, and Vanessa walked briskly into our room.
She looked directly at me. “It seems your little experiment had bigger consequences than we realized.”
“If you’re gonna make us guess, we might be up all night,” I said with sarcasm.
“What is it?” Chow asked Vanessa, deflecting her focus from me.
“The FEMA center in Eden is leveled,” she said flatly.
I popped up off the couch. “What?”
“In a few years, it’ll look just like that photo from 1882,” she said, matter of fact, unfazed by my outburst.
Slowly, I sat back down, my eyes wide, thinking about what we’d done. I could see thoughts churning in Chow’s head as well. Everyone was silent, except Vanessa.
“At least you don’t have to worry about killing Clauberg’s reincarnation.”
I just stared at her.
“It was late when we visualized together,” Edwin said. “Perhaps some of the people had gone home for the day.”
Edwin was trying to minimize the human impact of our actions.
“All the remote viewers stayed in the dorms when they were there. It is likely that everyone was in the facility,” Chow said.
Vanessa spoke up. “We need to remember that these people were enemies to us. They were enemies to GOG.” She looked directly into Chow’s eyes. “They tortured you.”
He nodded.
“She’s right,” I said. “War’s ugly…and this certainly is war. It may not be fought like World War II, but this government—our government—is injecting American citizens with kill switches! At this very moment, thousands of Americans are imprisoned in FEMA centers in the United States, just because the gov
ernment feels threatened by them. There is no justice. There is no due process. There is only our government, who decides when we die.”
I was fired up.
Vanessa was nodding as I spoke. “I’ll be right back,” she said all of a sudden, then quickly left.
“Here’s the good news as I see it. When we were in France, we talked about the problem with the Project Continuum viewers changing history to their idea of what it should be. That threat no longer exists. We know that Grace was training their remote viewers—and she’s gone. The other viewers are gone. It would take years to assemble and train a new group,” I said.
Chow chimed in. “We owe our lives to Charlie for getting us out of there, and he did it knowing that he had implanted nanobots in his brain. I believe that he may now be safe.”
“Because the director can’t hit his kill switch,” I said, finishing Chow’s thought.
“As long as he had not already done so,” Chow added.
I nodded.
Vanessa rejoined us, sitting next to Chow. “What’d I miss?” she said excitedly.
He put his arm around her contentedly.
She looked at me to fill her in. I didn’t, but I did have a question for her.
“How did the runner drive a car here?”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she said, upbeat. “The pulse you three created was localized. It seems that you only fried this ranch.”
“The pulse was localized,” Edwin said, repeating her words as he pondered it.
“And you leveled the place you were visualizing,” she reminded us, although I was certain none of us had forgotten. “Do you realize what’s possible with what you’ve achieved?”
We all looked at one another.
“Anything!” Vanessa said, answering her own question.
“Or anarchy,” Edwin answered.
Chapter 38
“GOG’s mission was never to create anarchy,” I argued.
“Ann is right,” Chow agreed, coming to my defense.
“But GOG never imagined that governments would implant kill switches in humans. Guys, let’s review,” Vanessa began. “Remember the little teleport to 2020 that you told me about, visiting me in the middle of a blizzard? You said—”
“We did not teleport,” Edwin clarified, just as he had said before.
I chuckled.
“Like I was saying…” Vanessa said, eyebrows knitting as she gazed at Edwin.
He recoiled from her stare.
Some things never change.
“Let’s recap just the worst stuff from 2020. There’s an active genocide program in India, which makes them a wealthy country as they eliminate their poor. Worldwide, RFID is implanted in humans at birth, accompanied by an organic kill switch. Nearly all of GOG is in hiding. The Patriot Act was enhanced by President Obama at the end of his second term and includes an indefensible death penalty for anyone considered to be a terrorist—that would include each of us. They’re executing Americans, especially all GOG members that they can get their hands on. You two are dead…” she said, pointing to Chow and me, “along with GOG teams in D.C. and Bellingham. Elinor and Eliott are also deceased. Oh, and let’s not forget…Johnathan Talbot is the President in 2020.”
Vanessa sat back and looked at us, smug. It felt as though she’d slapped me. Chow and Edwin sat rigid. We’d been eating breakfast, and now our food sat in front of us, untouched. A security guard peeked his head into the dining room, breaking us all from our thoughts.
He announced, “A runner’s here.”
“Be right back,” Vanessa said as she rose quickly from the table.
The three of us stared at one another. The somber blanket settled over the room as we each thought of the burden we shared.
* * *
When Vanessa returned, her face had lost its glow.
“What is it?” Chow asked, rising to her.
“Not good,” she said, returning to her seat. “Clauberg’s clone is alive, and so is Humpty,” she said, looking at me.
I caught my breath as a ripple of dread shot through me.
“That’s not all,” she said, looking at Chow. “Charlie had gone into work, to keep up the façade—”
“No!” I exclaimed. “Oh, no…”
She looked at me and softly said, “He did it to save his father.” Pausing for a moment, she continued, saying, “He was in the facility when it was leveled.”
I shook my head as tears streamed from my eyes.
“Be right back,” I said, my voice quivering.
* * *
As I returned from the bathroom and sat with them, I mentally put my anguish about inadvertently killing Charlie in the little box inside of me. It was getting very full.
I needed to clarify the new situation.
“So everything Project Continuum was doing could easily be recreated, because the two masterminds are alive?”
The three of them considered what I’d said.
“It would take time, but I believe they could,” Edwin said.
Always the analyst.
“We need to think bigger,” Chow said, clearly having been thinking of something.
“How do you mean?” Vanessa asked him. “Level the whole earth?” she said, chuckling at her own joke.
I just stared at her.
“I need to take a walk outside—clear my head.” Standing, I said to Vanessa, “You know I’m fond of you, but would you mind if I have Chow and Edwin walk with me?”
“No, not at all, Ann. I’ve got some things I need to discuss with security anyway,” she said, also standing.
That’s one thing I really liked about Vanessa; she was impossible to offend.
* * *
“I’m not gonna try to make you walk very far,” I said to Chow as the three of us walked abreast outside. “I just needed some air and open space to think this stuff through.”
“I look worse than I feel,” Chow said.
“Let’s head over to the stables. I think I saw benches over there before,” I said.
The sun had warmed the air, and it was comfortable as we strolled. We moved towards the stables, which were built in the Adobe style with exterior arches in the front, mimicking the main house. As we got closer, Edwin smiled broadly. I looked in the direction of his gaze. In stark contrast to the stable wall, a black-and-white leopard Appaloosa had stuck its head out of an arched window that must have been in the stall. It was a beautiful, large horse.
Turning to the backside of the stables, we found rustic benches that overlooked a large horse arena. Nothing seemed to be small in Texas. As we sat, Chow and I side by side with Edwin facing us, I looked up to the sky, thinking of the event we’d triggered.
“I think what’s boggling my mind is that there’s so much information that needs processing,” I said, then looked at the men.
They silently returned my gaze, so I pressed on.
“First of all, Get Out! Government’s founding mission was to unite people to fight digital tracking and government control of citizens worldwide.”
“It does not have a mission of anarchy,” Edwin added.
“No,” I said emphatically, nodding to him and glad he said it out loud. “Vanessa summarized the worst of what’ll happen if we don’t change what we’re doing, so I think we’re all clear that we have very serious worldwide problems that we must face.”
Chow nodded.
Edwin spoke up. “The Project Continuum group reversed every significant change we had made. It is likely that they will rebuild the group, but next time it will have tighter controls.”
“I think you are right,” Chow agreed with his brother. “They may even already have another group assembled and trained as a backup.”
“Plan B,” Edwin said.
I’d never considered that.
Chow continued. “It seems that the only true success we have had is in using the Herkimers. You retrieved your Herkimer from the Shanghai dream. Since the three of us have worn th
e quartz around our necks, we have been injured, but never killed. Then, of course, yesterday when we put the three Herkimers together…”
“And almost every time I’ve dreamed of Armond in the past year, he’s mentioned the Herkimers,” I said and then continued quietly as I looked at the ground. “The day he died, his last words to me were, ‘The Herkimer. Believe…’ But it wasn’t until yesterday that I realized the power of them.”
Chow patted my knee—he knew how painful it was for me to talk about that last day with my husband. I looked up to them.
“It’s time I tell you both the details of how I learned about The Prophecies in the first place, since they are what brought the three of us to this moment right now.”
Their eyes urged me on.
“Armond first learned about The Prophecies in 1993. He’d started his humanitarian work in São Paulo, and he was backpacking. Three days prior to finding an indigenous Brazilian tribe, he had a dream where he was shown a map, and the map led him to a native tribe. When he awoke, the map was clear in his head, as though he had a photographic memory. Since Armond had a notoriously bad memory, it could only have been divine intervention,” I said and then smiled. I remembered the night he told me about this, with my dad and me on board the Woohoo, moored in the San Juan Islands. “He followed the map in his head, and when he reached them, the tribal shaman approached Armond and in Portuguese told him that a spirit had come to him the night before and told him that a Pale One would come the next day. As Armond spent time with them, the shaman began to trust him. He told my husband that they had knowledge of the beginning of time. He said they knew the future. They believed they were the guardians of life on Earth, keeping the world in balance—”
“Very interesting,” Edwin interrupted. “Especially considering the turn of events since 1993.”
“Yes…time gives perspective,” I agreed. “They are a spiritual tribe, who practices meditation and dream-sharing, and they also have psychic abilities. The shaman said that their tribe was the keeper of The Prophecies.”
I thought back to what Armond had told me, wanting to explain it exactly. I took a breath, then continued.
“The shaman explained that there were three prophecies. The first would be unsealed when—while dreaming—a Herkimer unlocked the paranormal dreaming abilities of the woman.”
