RESTORATION (a science fiction novel) (RESTORATION (the science fiction trilogy))

by Utley, Todd

  “So did my friends risk their lives for nothing last night?”

  “No of course not, they did a good thing, the longer they can stall Cyrus from realizing that we’re a step ahead of him, the longer we’ll all live and the more likely we’ll succeed in taking him down. If Cyrus does get another clone of Dodge loaded up successfully, at some point he’s going to discover that the file is old and that he has been deceived. Once he knows his cover is blown, he’ll go crazy scuttling the entire operation. We don’t want that. So no, your friends aren’t wasting their time, they did a very brave thing that bought all of us more time.”

  Linsey considered telling her about the virus that Toby had already carried back to Glitch on the microdrive, but decided to hold back on that one, it was still too soon to trust her completely. They went on talking as they headed to the store, it really was a good sale.

  On the way back they talked more and Linsey reassured her that John and Dodge were doing everything they could to resolve the whole thing as quickly as possible. Linsey didn’t mention the farm or the clones they had there, it was too risky, Cheyenne could be discovered and tortured into telling these things.

  “What about this guy Todd, is he on board with this?”

  “No, not yet, Toby and I are gradually working on him and he does seem to be coming around.”

  As they arrived back at the house Cheyenne asked, “Can I have this scanner?”

  “Sure, I can get another one from John, just don’t get caught with it! If you think you might, then destroy it somehow, okay?”

  “Sure I can do that, and don’t worry, I’ll be very careful, my life depends on it, if I get caught with anything like this that they don’t recognize, I’m dead.”

  She slipped the scanner into her purse with intentions of using it later on her phone and around the house.

  “Be careful, there could even be cameras, and if that’s the case you will have to do your checking in a very subtle way. You might try just walking around with it in your pocket first to see if it goes off anywhere in the house. It has a switch on one end, you can select light or beep for the indicator, that’s it.”

  They pulled into the drive only to discover that the boys had gone inside and left the basketballs in the way, typical for teenage boys. Linsey parked outside and they both went in. Cheyenne said goodbye to Toby and told him to behave and be a gracious house guest.

  All the way back to the house she blasted the radio and enjoyed the top down weather. Even amidst all this pleasant much needed distraction, thoughts of her messed up life of servitude to Cyrus Slade were brewing in the back of her mind. She had to figure a way to talk to Todd, she had to convince him somehow that Cyrus would never deliver on his promise of freedom, even for those that put in their time. There was simply no way he would let anyone go, they could grow a conscience or a sense of civic duty, and decide to come forward to testify against him later. She didn’t know how or when but she knew that at some point she would have to talk to him about it.

  When she arrived at the house, Todd was on the front porch drinking a glass of iced tea reading the sports section of the daily-digital. Cheyenne got out of the car carrying several bags of clothing that she had bought at O’Hare’s. Todd was flabbergasted.

  “How did you get money to go shopping?” She grinned.

  “Came with the car.”

  “No way, are you serious?”

  “Yes, the driver handed me a sealed envelope when he delivered the car this morning. I opened it and there was a note inside. It said to get whatever you need to play the part, get close to Linsey, report to Glitch.”

  “Unbelievable! I have never been given cash money for anything. That is plain nuts.”

  “Oh well, what say we go for a spin in the caddy? You can drive just like I promised.”

  “Hey that does sound like fun, I’ll get my shoes and put on a clean shirt. God I still can’t believe they gave you cash, jeeze!”

  Todd was still muttering about the money as he went inside to get ready. Cheyenne laughed and went back down to the caddy with the scanner. She wanted to know if the car was safe to talk in. She wrapped the scanner up in a towel and turned it on so that it would beep if it detected anything. She turned the radio on to mask the sound in case it went off. She began wiping the interior down as if doing a quick once over dusting job. It let out a little beep when she got near the rear view mirror. She went over the whole interior just to be sure there weren’t any more of them.

  She slipped the scanner back into her purse with the cloth and then sat in the driver’s seat and began fiddling with the side mirror adjustment and the seat adjustments like she just couldn’t quite get it right. Then she began adjusting the rearview cam mirror, she could see the wires going to it from the top of the windshield and there was a little plug there. She reached up as if to adjust it one final time and got a real good grip on it. Then she acted as if she had something in her teeth and was leaning forward to inspect her mouth more closely, but in reality she was pulling herself forward with her full weight on the mirror. It broke off and she let out a little scream and dropped it. It was dangling from the wires. She leaned back in the seat and covered her face with both of her hands and said.

  “Oh my god, I broke the damn mirror off. Shit, they’re gonna kill me!”

  In her mind she was laughing but on the outside she had tears running down her face. Her plan worked, the mirror snapped off and when Todd got in he would either insist on fixing it or removing it for now. That was her plan, removing it for now. Once the wires were disconnected she was quite sure the thing would be dead and they would have their privacy.

  She got out of the driver’s seat just as Todd came bounding down the front steps to the drive. She still had some tears running down her face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re not going to believe what I did, go look at the mirror.” They both got in the car and Todd saw the mirror dangling by the wires.

  “How the hell did you break the mirror off!”

  “Well I was adjusting everything you know and then I was looking at my makeup and I leaned forward a little and it just snapped off, it just wasn’t on there very good.”

  “Jeeze! That’s like probably a $500 mirror, look, it’s even got the rear view and side cams built in and everything, now what?”

  “I don’t know I was hoping you could fix it or something.”

  Todd leaned forward and turned his head sideways trying to look up behind the mounting bracket.

  “Nope,” he said, “this thing is toast. Maybe some real good epoxy of some kind, but it’s not gonna get fixed tonight.”

  “Well can you tape it up or something so it’s not swinging around?”

  “Yeah I had better do something with it, otherwise it might break the windshield or damage these wires it’s hanging from. Ah, he said, I see a little plug here, we can just unplug it for now and I’ll see if I can fix it up later in the house.”

  “Oh, okay, I’m really sorry, it was an accident, you know it just broke so easily.” Todd looked at her and shook his head.

  “Remind me to never loan you my new car if I’m ever lucky enough to get one.” He pulled a pocket knife out and pried the locking tab back on the small electrical plug, unplugged the wires and handed her the mirror.

  “Here put this is the glove box. Now let’s take this baby out for a spin. For god’s sake, stop crying, people are going to think I’m a huge dick or something and I made you cry.”

  “Oh, sorry, I’ll fix my makeup while you drive.” Todd smirked.

  “If you use the mirror on the back of the visor, try not to snap it off, okay?” She started laughing.

  “Don’t make me laugh, I can’t fix my face if I’m laughing.”

  As Todd backed out she reached into her purse and got the little scanner in the cloth. She pretended to wipe off the visor mirror so she could use it but she was really checking to see if her little plot had killed the bug.
Sure enough, nothing was detected in that area. She laid the cloth alongside the mirror in her lap, dead as can be. Ha, one point for her, zero for Glitch. She opened the glove box and tossed the mirror in and shut it.

  “Goodbye Cyrus, tonight is mine, free at last!”

  Todd was really enjoying the caddy, they took it out on the highway and he opened it up. It was no GTO but it did have plenty of zip for an electric car. It was no slouch in the handling department either, it had the really good silicon airless tires and the high tech electromagnetic suspension. Cheyenne seemed to be enjoying it almost as much as he was. Todd was glad to see she wasn’t frightened by the speed, he was afraid she might complain and insist that he slow down but when he looked over at her she was smiling with her hand out the window sailing it up and down in the wind. After a few minutes of enjoying the speed he slowed down, he didn’t want to get pulled over and ruin his reputation with Cyrus, everyone was expected to fly under the radar.

  Back at the compound a young lady had summoned Glitch to her workstation. She was a watcher. Her job was to watch the person she was assigned to until further notice.

  Glitch had about twenty such people in a large room adjacent to his offices. Their jobs were simple, watch the watchers, watch the errand boys, watch whatever or whomever we tell you to watch and watch them for as long as we say. If you see anything unusual or anything that you believe would be of special interest to the boss then you summon Glitch.

  Glitch had seen the light come on for cubicle number 14.

  “Odd” Number 14 had never called him for anything before, must be something good. He was beginning to think that she had her own private plan to NEVER call him for ANYTHING no matter what.

  He got up and walked out of his office and over to the large common area and then to cubicle 14, he didn’t know their names just their cubicle numbers.

  “Yes 14 what is it?”

  “Well Sir, sorry to bother you but I thought you should see this. We had eyes and ears in the caddy at the Lansing house but it has been disabled.”

  “Really, was it intentional?”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think so Sir, here, I’ll run a playback, it’s self explanatory.”

  She played the video of Cheyenne breaking the mirror off and then you could see Todd getting in the car and the whole thing playing out. It goes to static when Todd unplugs the mirror unit from the car. Glitch stood there and rubbed his chin for a moment.

  “Thank you 14. Let me know if Todd is successful in repairing the unit. If it’s not back on by tomorrow afternoon please inform me.”

  “Yes Sir, I will.”

  “In the mean time continue to monitor them by any other means available.”

  Glitch walked quietly back to his office not thinking too much about it. He had seen equipment failures many times in the past. Besides Toby was right where Glitch wanted him to be and they had plenty of eyes and ears on him at the Kerrington house. What Todd and Cheyenne were doing in their spare time was of no concern to Glitch, he just didn’t care.

  Chapter 25 A few miles away in his lab, John labored all day digging into every detail of the lives of each person on the list. He, like Dodge, was angry, he felt belittled by Cyrus for what he had done to help ESS. It made him sick to think that any part of their phenomenal accomplishments could be attributed to the evil doings of Cyrus Slade. Unfortunately as the day went on he discovered more mounting evidence that proved Slade and his associates were indeed instrumental in aiding ESS with the acquisition of several very large government research grants.

  Cyrus and several individuals in high places, even some in the president’s staff, were involved. Cyrus had used the most powerful tool in the history of human existence, “Greed.” Money talks and Cyrus had obtained plenty of talking power. He had robbed countless billionaires of their fortunes by hijacking their minds and causing them to freely give him their money. He took that money and invested heavily in hedge funds and investment strategies that had gained some influence over individuals and even entire corporations in one way or another. Inside trading, illegal gambling, corporate takeovers and it all added up now to over ten trillion dollars in net worth. Cyrus could buy and sell politicians, and just about anyone else, all day long. He was closer to reaching his goals than John would have predicted just a few days ago. He had influence in several ways over the President of the United States. If he gained complete control of this office, his momentum would be quite difficult to stop.

  John was especially concerned now because he had found connections to people within the pentagon. The head of the Black Ops team and several of their members had ties to the pentagon in one way or another. He worried that there could be a mole in their midst. Or maybe a friend of a friend and word could leak out to the wrong ears and get back to Cyrus.

  John had a program running now called “3 degrees.” It was a software suite that he developed while at RockTight Security. It was never released outside of RockTight and the project was scuttled for budgetary reasons prior to completion. John finished it on his own time at home and never shared it with anyone. It was truly one of his greatest accomplishments yet it remained his secret.

  It took years to develop and it was based on some original work that a team started many years ago under the guidance of a rouge Microsoft engineer, it was never completed by that team either. It used a unique algorithm that could find and exploit unusual connections between individuals based on all kinds of personal patterns, phone calls, traveling habits, eating habits, right down to the kind of coffee you drank or your favorite toothpaste flavor, almost anything you could think of.

  You would simply enter two or more names into the program and between one and ten key words and then start it. The program would create long lists of names and words and then it would keep rearranging the names and words over and over again hundreds of thousands of times until it had made a connection somehow between the two people using the key words you provided at the start. Sometimes it would spit out useless information but if it did you could simply try again.

  It sounds silly when someone tries to explain it, but when you see it working it makes sense. He had ran it several times now and he had recognized two of the names on one of the resulting list from door placards at the pentagon. He remembered the names from when he worked there on the security project years ago.

  John had a near photographic memory, he remembered the unusual last name of Jamblauski from the office door nearest to the elevator going down to the basement there in the Pentagon. A bottleneck would form at the small elevators on days when they had a lot of meetings in the conference rooms down there. A short line would form just outside the elevators so people would mill around there for a few minutes and socialize while they waited.

  He remembered it because several times when he was stuck there, he would look at the door placard and try to pronounce it in his head. It was quite unforgettable really, it was probably nothing but he would certainly check into it in more depth tomorrow. He had been working for many hours and his eyes were burning, it was time for a break.

  Back in the caddy Todd and Cheyenne were still enjoying the night air. Todd had started heading back to the house when Cheyenne noticed.

  “Hey, where are you going?”

  “Well I thought we should get back.”

  “No, come on,” Cheyenne said, “I still have almost two hundred dollars, we could go get dinner and catch a movie.”

  “What? How much money did you get in that envelope?”

  “Well only three hundred but the store we went to was having a going out of business sale. Linsey had a frequent shopper card with a bunch of points on it, she gave me her points, so I ended up getting eighty percent off my clothes. I got what I needed and we have enough left over for a night on the town.” Todd looked concerned.

  “Hey I know what you’re thinking, but listen, I have it on good authority that the only eyes and ears on us tonight were in that mirror that I broke. When you removed
it from the wire up there we got unleashed!”

  “How in the world could you possibly know that?”

  “Well let’s just say I have a friend on the inside that works on the cars, and that friend told me about the mirror.”

  “So you broke the mirror on purpose?”

  “No, of course not. But once it was in the glove box I just felt, I don’t know, liberated I guess. Like I haven’t felt in a long time.”

  “Yeah, I guess I kind of feel it too now that you’ve told me. So, you’re sure we’re off the map right now?”

  “Well we’re probably not completely off the map, I’m sure they still have GPS on us but I don’t think they’re gonna pop our heads or anything. They need us right now to keep Toby on the inside at the Kerrington’s, they’re not gonna risk losing that mole by knocking off his fake parents.”

  Todd thought about it for a minute.

  “All right, let’s go get a big juicy steak!” They drove around for a bit and picked out a nice steak house. They had a big dinner with all the trimmings sparing no expense, after all, it was on Slade. After stuffing themselves near to the point of misery, they went to a nearby movie theater where they decided to see the latest James Bond movie. “Dying to Live.” It was action packed and in tune with the Bond tradition, complete with fast cars, plenty of guns, a super bad villain, and of course a beautiful woman. The title and theme were right in line with the new era of potential immortality and the villain was attempting to control it all just like Slade. As always Bond overcame all obstacles and got the girl at the end.

  They had a great time and came out smiling, laughing and acting like kids. They drove home talking about how good the food was and their favorite parts of the movie. When they got to the house it was getting pretty late and even though they had fun, they still didn’t spend all the money.

  They made their way inside and turned on the TV to watch the news. Cheyenne headed to the kitchen.