Fall

by Rod Rees

  ‘Yeah, the Edinburgh Project: everybody’s heard of that!’

  ‘Look at the schematic. The Edinburgh Project was stimulated by a Temporal Modulation. When ParaDigm exploded the A-bomb for the first time in Maralinga, Australia, in 1945, it was based on stolen ideas.’

  ‘Stolen from whom?’

  Rivets shrugged. ‘Who knows? That’s lost in TimeStream v.23. Maybe the Americans’ Manhattan Project didn’t fail. Maybe the explosion that destroyed most of Chicago in January 1943 – the one that killed Enrico Fermi – wasn’t the result of Nazi sabotage. Maybe Broderick Bole wasn’t “the Father of the Atomic Age”.’

  ‘Oh, c’mon, Rivets, the Americans have never invented anything of note.’

  ‘In this TimeStream they haven’t. But remember how easy it would be for Broderick Bole to play the scientific prescient if he was receiving tips as to how an atomic weapon should be manufactured from his as yet unborn son, Thaddeus. Anyway, the intriguing thing was that the British, despite enormous pressure from the Americans to dig them out of a hole they’d got themselves in when their invasion of Japan went sour, only deployed the A-bomb in December ’46, right at the end of the Second World War, when they destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.’ Another tap on the Polly screen. ‘These attacks were prompted by a Temporal Modulation.’ Rivets scratched his head. ‘The question is, why did it need a Temporal Modulation?’

  Dong E had the answer. ‘Maybe Hiroshima or Nagasaki had been atomised in a previous TimeStream and the Boles had to replicate the attacks to avoid there being millions of Resurrectionees. Maybe in TimeStream v.23 it was the Americans who developed the A-bomb and used it against Japan.’

  This was what came of having a girlfriend as smart as Dong E: inspiration. ‘You know, Dong E, I never thought of that. I think you might be right.’ Rivets gave a disconsolate shake of his head. ‘Whatever the reason, Britain emerged from the war as the world’s only atomic power and that was when the Boles got really full of themselves.’ Rivets paused to pour himself a shot of more cognac. He had a feeling he’d need it. ‘Look at the Temporal Modulation creating TimeStream v.45. It’s the one I call Operation Attenuate.’

  ‘Operation Attenuate? I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘That’s because I made the name up. The real name was lost as soon as TimeStream v.45 was obliterated, but it seems a bloody apt title to me. Yeah, Operation Attenuate of 1946 was the big one, the mother of all Modulations. From what I can judge, this was the Modulation designed to make Britain the world’s only superpower and to reduce the USA, Russia and all the other countries of the world to penury and political insignificance. And what a fuck-up it was: a great big inglorious fuck-up that left hundreds of millions of innocent people dead.’

  ‘You’re talking about the Great Plague.’

  ‘Got it in one, Dong E.’

  ‘You’re saying that the Great Plague was man-made?’

  ‘Yeah, and the man making it was Broderick Bole.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I’m not really sure. My best guess is that in TimeStream v.44, by the early 1970s, because of the oil-price shock caused by us turning the Middle East to glass, Britain was running out of economic steam and it was in danger of being usurped in the global pecking order by the oil-powers of the USA and Russia. So the Boles of 1972 decided to put a temporal spoke in our competitors’ wheels, to instruct Broderick Bole in 1946 to unleash the Plague he’d developed with the help of the tips he’d received from the future. Having half their populations wiped out torpedoed any chance of the USA or Russia becoming a post-war threat to Britain.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Rivets, that doesn’t wash. The Great Plague was the most virulent and lethal disease ever encountered by man. Nearly half a billion people died worldwide. No one, not even a Bole, would have been mad enough to murder that many people. I mean, what was the point? And don’t tell me it was done to secure Britain’s status in the world. There must have been another, more important reason than money.’

  Rivets fell silent for a couple of minutes, sipping his cognac, stroking Jasper and thinking. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘ParaDigm Rx did make a fortune from the sales of its vaccines. Four billion pounds – fifteen billion dollars – if I remember correctly. You could say that ParaDigm made a killing in more ways than one.’

  Dong E shook her head. ‘Still too prosaic. To kill half a billion people you need a more compelling motive than money. Maybe the Boles just got off on being able to withhold the anti-Plague vaccine developed by ParaDigm Rx. Maybe that was what Operation Attenuate was all about: the Boles getting to choose who would get the vaccine … to choose who would live and who would die.’

  Again that was something Rivets hadn’t thought of, and the more he pondered, the more he came to the conclusion that Dong E was right; the Boles had been playing God.

  But Dong E wasn’t finished with her surmising. ‘The problem is, Rivets, I don’t think the Boles have stopped. ParaDigm of 2019 is investing billions into plague-related research. Maybe Operation Attenuate was a failure. Maybe the Boles didn’t get to kill everyone they wanted to kill. Maybe they’re preparing to have another go. Maybe that’s what’s behind all the work I’ve been doing regarding delivery systems for noöPINC. After all, most of that has concentrated on using an attenuated Plague virus as an implant carrier.’

  ‘Shit, this gets worse every second.’

  ‘The question is, Rivets, what are we going to do about it?’

  ‘Stop the Boles doing it again … stop them doing it a third time.’ Rivets took a long swig of cognac. ‘Fuck it. We should never have agreed to work for that gang of crypto-fascists.’

  ‘You said “stop them doing it for a third time”. You mean, they did it again after this Operation Attenuate of yours?’

  ‘Sure,’ and here Rivets pointed to his Polly again, indicating TimeStream v.47. ‘I think the Boles are getting quite a taste for mass destruction. By my reckoning, ParaDigm’s fingerprints are all over 12/12, the dirty nuke attack on Edinburgh. The destruction of Edinburgh wasn’t a terrorist attack by American Christian fundamentalists, but rather the product of a Temporal Modulation.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I’ve a feeling that 12/12 was designed to persuade us Brits to embrace PINC, to sway public opinion in the UK. Destroying Edinburgh was a way of terrifying the electorate into voting “Yes” to the adoption of PINC in the referendum of 2015 … “Yes” to the noöPINC Project.’

  ‘Jesus,’ breathed Dong E as she pointed to the flowchart shown on the Polly screen, ‘and what about this final flurry of Temporal Modulations, the most recent ones?’

  ‘Believe it or not, they relate to the Demi-Monde.’

  ‘But why? What’s so important about the Demi-Monde that it would warrant a Temporal Modulation?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, but it seems the Demi-Monde is mighty important to the Boles of the future.’

  ‘Bloody weird. But that brings us back to my question, Rivets: how are we going to stop the Boles?’

  ‘The answer is, I don’t know.’ The words were hardly out of Rivets’ mouth when there was a beep from his Polly indicating that he’d received an eyeMail.

  2:08

  Las Vegas

  The Real World: 15 April 2019

  No … President Jim Frederick Kenton was not assassinated by the Mafia, by the FBI or by Americans exiled to Britain. Kenton was killed by a delusional lone gunman firing from the Book Depository. Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK. No … the Tunguska event was not caused by a crashing UFO or by a black hole passing through the Earth. It was caused by a meteor detonating in the Earth’s atmosphere. And no … the Plague that devastated the United States in 1947 was not an act of biological terrorism perpetrated by Great Britain. The Plague has a well-documented history; indeed the first recorded incidence was when it swept through Egypt in 1557 BCE. America was unlucky to be a victim of the Plague but lucky that Britain had stocks of a vaccine readily to hand to fight it.

>   Conspiracies: Things that Never Were: R.G. Robinson, ParaDigm PollyBooks

  ‘That’s one bloody big pyramid,’ commented Burl.

  And that, Ella decided, was a truly wonderful piece of understatement. To give her passengers a better view of the ‘bloody big pyramid’, she eased her foot off the gas and slowed the Austin Imperial pickup they’d commandeered from the Institute’s garage. The Monument was impressive, the huge green marble pyramid glinting in the evening sunshine, as iconic a piece of Americana as the Statue of Liberty or Lincoln’s Memorial … and probably the most visited. Every American made a pilgrimage to the Monument at some time during their life to remember those who died in the Great Plague of ’47.

  ‘It has to be big, Burl,’ explained Oddie, ‘the names of each and every one of the eighty million Americans lost to the Plague are engraved on it.’

  ‘But why did they build it in the middle ov a desert?’

  ‘The spot the Monument is standing on marks the easterly limit of the Containment Line, the cordon sanitaire imposed by Frank Kenton to limit the spread of the Plague.’ Oddie rubbed her sleeve against the window, trying to get a better view. ‘Every time I see it I get a catch in my throat. Eighty million names … so sad.’

  ‘Don’t you have a memorial to the Plague back in Britain, Burl?’ asked Ella as, prompted by PINC, she hung a left onto the new State Route 6, the arrow-straight piece of two-lane blacktop built by ParaDigm to service all the Fun/Funs who would soon be streaming towards Las Vegas to attend the Gathering. With only fifty miles to go before they hit the town, they’d be in their motel in time for dinner, ready to visit the Kosy Korner Kafe at seven tomorrow morning. That was where the eyeMail she’d received from Vanka told her this mysterious ‘Robert’ would be waiting for her, the guy who would be able to help her defeat the Boles.

  ‘Nah. The Plague never really touched the Empire, so it’s not such a big deal for us Brits. But we’re taught abart it in school. I know that it started when you Yanks invaded Japan in 1946. Wasn’t the Plague a dormant disease or somefink?’

  ‘That’s right,’ confirmed Oddie. ‘It was a sleeper disease carried by an isolated group of Japanese fishermen living on the island of Kyushu. When they made contact with the GIs coming ashore as part of Operation Downfall, they passed on the disease and these infected servicemen brought the Plague back to the USA. It swept around the world in a matter of months. Almost half a billion people died.’

  ‘And it wos finally brought under control by a vaccine made by us Brits,’ Burl added proudly.

  ‘Yeah, by ParaDigm Rx, to be precise,’ noted Norma. ‘But the funny thing was that in the US the vaccine only seemed to work on Caucasians. The black population was decimated.’

  ‘My great-grandparents amongst them,’ noted Ella. ‘I’m only here because my grandmother was at school in the UK when the Plague struck.’

  ‘Yeah, I always thought the race bias of the Plague was strange,’ Norma agreed. ‘The Polly conspiracy sites say that the Plague wasn’t so much a plague as a biological weapon wielded by the Brits.’

  Burl gave a dismissive laugh. ‘That’s all just bollocks, Norma … anti-Brit bollocks.’

  Norma gave a rueful shake of her head. ‘It’s very persuasive bollocks, Burl.’

  ‘Oh, I think Burl’s right though, Norma,’ said Oddie. ‘When you examine the facts, all this conspiracy stuff just doesn’t hold up. ParaDigm Rx became involved when the Plague hit Zanzibar back in 1931 and as Zanzibar is part of the Empire, the British government asked them to search for a vaccine. And it’s lucky they did: when the Plague swept through the USA, the British government was in a position to help. Sure, eighty million Americans died but ParaDigm Rx helped save the lives of the other seventy million.’

  ‘The problem,’ mused Ella, as she floored the accelerator to power around a line of trucks, ‘is that I don’t trust anything which involves the Boles or ParaDigm. The unsettling thing is that the Plague wasn’t just a human tragedy, it was a political one too. The Plague was responsible for that piece of fundamentalist shit Frank Kenton being elected president and that precipitated sixty years of misery for the American people. The US went from being the world’s most powerful democracy to being an impoverished theocracy in a single decade. The 1950s were a bad time for America and a good one for ParaDigm and the British Empire.’

  Oddie gave Ella a sideways look. ‘You’re not saying that you believe all this conspiracy nonsense … that ParaDigm was behind the Great Plague?’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose I am,’ answered Ella, ‘especially after that little revelation we were given back in the Institute. Don’t you think it’s too much of a coincidence that Septimus Bole has arranged for research to be done in the Demi-Monde on plague weapons? I have the sneaking feeling that we haven’t seen the last of the Plague of ’47.’

  Oddie shook her head. ‘I think this is all too much of a stretch, Ella. I mean, what would be the point … what would the Boles achieve by bringing the Plague back?’

  ‘The Demi-Monde taught me a lot about how the Boles think. The guy running the DM on the Boles’ behalf is a racist lunatic called Reinhard Heydrich – the same maniac who masterminded the Holocaust – who was planning to rid the Demi-Monde of what he called “UnderMentionables”, those he deemed to be racially inferior to Aryans. I’m thinking that the Plague of ’47 was the Boles’ take on the Final Solution.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense, Ella,’ challenged Oddie. ‘If that was the Boles’ plan, why did they come forward with a vaccine? Why didn’t they just sit back and let the Plague run its course?’

  ‘My theory is that the Plague ran out of the Boles’ control, that ParaDigm had to step in to stop it killing the wrong people.’

  ‘The wrong people?’

  ‘The Boles aren’t like us … they’re a different species … they’re Grigori—’

  ‘You mean like those vampire thingies we had a tussle wiv back in LA?’

  ‘Exactly, Burl. The Grigori are an ancient race of near-humans who have kept themselves very much to themselves for the last few millennia, but now it seems they’re intent on asserting themselves … making a takeover bid, if you like.’

  ‘How do you know this, Ella?’

  Ella laughed. ‘It’s a long story, Oddie, and I doubt that you’d believe me if I told you. Let’s just say that my time in the Demi-Monde was very … educational. Homo sapiens sapiens isn’t the only taxon of the genus Homo occupying our world and one of those other taxons is the Grigori. And now, under the leadership of the Boles, the Grigori are making a bid for world domination.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Oddie. ‘If they’ve been happily hiding away for thousands of years, why are they making their move now?’

  ‘I’m guessing that they’ve been waiting for the technology to catch up with their ambitions.’ Ella had meant this as a throwaway line, but even as she uttered the words she felt pieces of a puzzle starting to drop into place. ‘What they were waiting for was the Demi-Monde … that, as far as the Grigori are concerned, is the key to their taking control of the world.’

  ‘You’ve lost me, Ella,’ admitted Norma.

  ‘Think about it, Norma: if the Plague of ’47 did need perfecting – making it even more race-specific – what better place to do it than in a virtual world where there’d be no worries about an accidental release of the disease?’ Ella eased the pickup around a microbus. ‘But here’s another thought: what if they used the Demi-Monde not only to perfect the Plague but also to create a group of people who were immune to it?’

  ‘The Dupes,’ said Norma quietly.

  ‘More precisely, the UnFunDaMentalist Dupes.’

  ‘UnFunDaMentalists?’ asked Oddie.

  ‘The white fascists who make up two of the Sectors in the Demi-Monde. It’s amazing that I never thought of it before … never stopped to consider how ParaDigm chose the Dupes they used to populate the Demi-Monde.’ She frowned. ‘What did the Transfusion Booth say about the wor
k being carried out in the Heydrich Institute for Natural Sciences? That the virus they were developing had to be Fragile-specific, that it had to be harmless to Grigori and to those possessing the latent MAOA-Grigori gene. Maybe the UnFunDaMentalist Dupes in the ForthRight are doppelgängers of Real Worlders who carry the Grigori gene. Yeah, I’m sure of it: the Demi-Monde is just an elaborate trigger mechanism designed to awaken the Grigori hidden deep inside certain selected people.’

  ‘Trigger mechanism?’ asked Norma.

  ‘It’s not unusual for extreme experiences – childhood abuse, that sort of thing – to ignite a latent aspect of a man or woman’s personality … to act as a triggering mechanism. This is especially the case with psychotic predilections, and psychosis is a very Grigorian personality trait. That’s what the Demi-Monde was designed to do: to fire up the latent Grigori gene by subjecting Dupes living there to enormous stress and of course by feeding them blood and …’ Ella gave a doleful shake of her head. ‘I must be stupid. Slap-bang in the middle of the Demi-Monde, in a place called Terror Incognita, there’s a pyramid that’s a duplicate of the Monument. I’ve a feeling that it’s got something to do with the triggering of the Grigori aspect of the Dupes, especially as Heydrich is planning to hold a religious ceremony – the Ceremony of Purification – at the same time the Gathering is being held here in the Real World.’

  Oddie gave another, more emphatic shake of her head. ‘Look, Ella, this is all getting kinda out-there. I mean vampires and genetic alteration … this is weird worlds territory.’

  ‘Yus,’ agreed Burl. ‘And anyways, so wot that these Dupes of yours ’ave this Grigori gene? They’re stuck in the Demi-Monde.’

  ‘That, I think, is the purpose of the Gathering,’ answered Ella. ‘That’s when Bole’s going to transfer the newly revived genetic aspects of the Dupes attending the Ceremony of Purification in the Demi-Monde to their doppelgängers here in the Real World attending the Gathering.’