by Mazza, Ray
Table of Contents
Harbinger
1. When the World Opens Up
2. Two Weeks Earlier. November, 2012.
3. Dissemination
4. A Plea for Help
5. To Serve and Protect
6. Trucked Off
7. Fourteen Years
8. Heat
9. Incarcerated
10. Envelope
11. A Flash of Poetry
12. The Winters Estate
13. Paradigm Shift
14. Allison
15. Purge
16. Alone in The Sanctuary
17. Catastrophic Failure
18. The Delivery
19. Taken
20. Hidden In Between
21. Simulation 4049
22. While the World Sleeps
23. In the Belly of the Beast
24. Questions for the Universe
25. Allison in Wonderland
26. What the NSA Doesn’t Tell You
Acknowledgements
The Reborn
The Day Eight Series Part I
By Ray Mazza
Copyright © 2012 by Ray Mazza
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All the characters, events, and locations portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally.
Revision: 1.109
To my wife, Laura, and my wonderful
parents for endlessly nurturing my creativity.
And also to anyone who survives until the brink of the event
described within. May you have the foresight to see it coming
and the serenity to find meaning in its genesis.
Welcome to the First Release of Day Eight, Part I
Trevor and Ezra’s story has been an amazing adventure to piece together. I’ve spent many long nights writing and countless commutes to my day job as a video game Creative Director dreaming about how The Singularity might happen in the present day, and what that would mean. And more interestingly, daydreaming about what happens afterward. That is what really excited me about this story.
If you want to send comments, feedback, or cupcakes, please mail these things to [email protected]. I would love to hear from you!
Don’t forget this is only the first part of a three part novel. The other books aren’t sequels, they’re the rest of the novel! When you finish this book, you’ll probably want to get the next part.
Happy Reading!
PS – If you finish this book and thoroughly enjoy it, please recommend it to anyone you know who would also enjoy it. Additional copies can be found on the via this top secret link:
http://www.raymazza.com/novels.html
Dear Reader:
The future is coming. And it’s coming faster than any of us expect it to. We don’t see it approaching because the future is not a bunch of high-tech gizmos like 3D TVs, wireless electricity, and neuro-simulated sex suits. It’s not nanotech that brushes our teeth or cleans artery walls. It’s not global climate stability or even a cure for cancer. Sure, those things will be there. But the real future is marked by something different.
The real future will arrive with a single, incredible technology. It will be the turning point in the way we live our lives and it will utterly transform the means by which society operates. This technology will make us question our place in the universe. And yes, it will even make us question the very meaning of life itself.
We do not have this technology yet, though wondrous technology has a way of staying behind closed doors until it is unexpectedly unleashed upon us.
No, we don’t have this technology yet.
But soon, we will.
Prologue
Harbinger
Ezra, a lively girl with vibrant platinum hair and a glowing smile, was only five years old when she found out what she was. Her caretakers made certain she would grow up comfortable with her position in life, so they told her as early as possible.
“Some children are born to destitute families and starve their entire lives,” they explained. “Others are born with leukemia or genetic disorders, like cystic fibrosis, and die before they’re your age.”
Ezra simply nodded.
“You, Ezra, are fortunate enough not to have any of these problems. But, like them, you are different; you are challenged. If you are strong, you will be able to accept your uniqueness and grow alongside it. God has a plan for us all, including you, Ezra. Especially you. Will you learn to be strong enough?”
Ezra rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands, as if making sure she could see the world clearly. When she removed her hands, her sapphire eyes gleamed with a knowing certainty. “I am already strong enough,” she asserted.
She was old enough to understand, and to her caretakers’ delight, she had an intelligence unlike any they had witnessed.
By the age of seven, she had a working vocabulary of forty-eight thousand words, nearly double that of a typical college graduate and closing in on Shakespeare’s purported sixty-six thousand. Her favorite word was “ersatz,” although she never used big words around other kids because they made fun of her for it – she would simply pronounce it to herself when alone in a quiet room. She liked the way it sounded, and her name was hidden in its letters.
One day, Ezra made an inquiry of her caretakers with her usual straightforward demeanor. “Where are my mom and my dad?”
“It’s complicated,” they told her.
“I like complicated things,” she said.
They nodded. “You did have a mother and a father, but they are no longer part of this world. They are still part of you, and you are stronger for it.”
“Will I ever see them?” she said.
“No. What has left the world does not return.”
“Thank you for telling me.” Ezra accepted it. She had asked out of curiosity, not longing.
As Ezra grew up, she began to grasp the intricacies of life in ways that normal children could not, and she seemed to have an inherent understanding of the world around her.
One day shortly after her ninth birthday, Ezra lazed in the park with her only two friends, Michael and Liz. They looked for shapes in the clouds between giggling bouts of rubbing dandelions on each other, staining one another’s arms and faces.
Then Ezra stiffened. Her face turned grave, a sight that would have given any parent the shivers.
“We should move,” she said.
“Why?” asked Mike, already standing up, brushing off his pants.
“Don’t you feel it?” asked Ezra, closing her eyes briefly.
“I don’t feel anything except the grass,” said Liz, sweeping her foot back and forth through the annual ryegrass.
Ezra pointed to the shady tree towering above them.
“You don’t feel it? It feels hollow. The poor thing’s weak. It’s breaking.”
The others shook their heads and laughed, thinking she was playing a game. But when Ezra began running away, they followed.
Upon reaching the top of a gentle, sunny hill a few hundred feet away, Ezra sat down facing the tree. Michael and Liz plopped beside her and followed her gaze, staring intently at the mighty sycamore. Waiting.
And then, it happened. A gale erupted from the west, wildly stirring branches. With a thunderous crack, a massive bough that bore nearly a third of the tree’s weight splintered and tore from the trunk, crashing to the ground where they had been lying just moments before.
“See?” said Ezra, matter-of-factly. “Poor thing.”
~
As they
entered their pre-teens, Mike and Liz became used to Ezra’s premonitions, episodes reminiscent of the sycamore, although she insisted she was not seeing the future.
“I just know how things are right now,” she said, “I can feel them.”
Michael loved to play guessing games with her. He’d hide something behind his back, and if Ezra concentrated, she could usually tell him which hand it was in.
“It’s in your left hand,” she declared.
“Yup again,” said Mike.
“And you lied. It’s a button in your hand, not a quarter,” she said, without ever seeing his fists.
“How do you do that?” he said for the hundredth time, shaking his head.
“I told you, I just know. Kind of like you just know that an apple is green or red when you look at it… except I can look at it even if I can’t see it with my eyes. I don’t know how.”
Sometimes Michael would catch butterflies, cupping them in his hands, careful not to harm them. On one occasion, he brought one of his catches to Ezra.
“If you can tell me what color it is, I’ll let you see it,” he coaxed.
Ezra smiled. “It’s black and has sharp fangs!” she said, teasing.
“I know you know what it is, c’mon!”
“All right, it’s iridescent aqua with yellow and red wing tips, and it’s scared that you’re keeping it in the dark, so let go, before it sucks your blood!” Ezra clawed at his neck with fang-shaped fingers.
Michael laughed and opened his hands, letting the butterfly climb onto Ezra’s nose.
“There, much better,” he said. “It suits you.”
She wrinkled her face, “Thanks! I feel like it’s part of me. I can tell it likes me.”
“Everything likes you, Ezra,” he said.
~
In the coming years, Ezra, Liz, and Michael grew so close that they rarely sought the company of others, despite having some new faces around.
Ezra and Liz were now fifteen, and Michael sixteen. One night they sat on the fallen bough of the old tree and studied the stars in the clear night sky.
“That group, right there, that must be Orion,” said Liz, pointing to a vibrant chain of stars boxed in by three bright blue ones and another with a reddish hue.
“I’m telling you,” said Ezra, “it’s not. See that part that looks like his belt? You see how it’s got a bit of a curve upward in it? That doesn’t match the photos in the book. And it’s only supposed to have three stars, not four.”
“But it’s so close,” said Liz. “Are you sure those photos were right?”
“It doesn’t matter if they’re right,” said Ezra. “Pleiades, the Dippers, Cassiopeia, Lyra… there’s a reason we’ve never found any of them, Liz. We just don’t get those constellations here.”
Liz turned and lay back, resting her head on Michael’s thigh. He reflexively ran his hand through her hair. She gazed up at him.
“What do you think, Mikey?” said Liz. “Do you see it?”
Ezra slid off the bough in time to hide her hard scowl. “Ersatz,” she muttered, nearly inaudible. Ezra reached in her pocket and broke a small piece of chocolate off a bar between her fingers and slipped it in her mouth, letting it dissolve on her tongue. She focused on the delicious, bitter taste.
“Nah, Ezra’s right,” Michael said, which made Ezra smile to herself. “I’ve never seen any from the book. I just make up my own. Right there, that group of stars that looks like an ‘R’? Do you see it? That’s you brushing your hair.”
“Oh yeah, I do see it!” Liz said, giddy.
“And just to the right, the four in a row that splits in two at the end? That’s me lying in the grass with my arms behind my head.”
Ezra looked up and smiled when she recognized the constellation Michael described of himself.
“And just a bit further to the right, there’s a set of stars over a hazy patch of sky that forms a ‘T’ – see it? – and it’s got a cluster of reddish stars like a diamond over it with one in the very center?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s Ezra. She’s standing on the other side of a window, looking out through it, down to Earth. She’s watching over all of us.”
“I don’t really see that one,” Liz sighed.
Ezra took great selfish pleasure at being on Michael’s other side in the sky, immortalized in the cosmos.
She circled the tree under the guise of hunting fireflies, preoccupied. “Liz, we only have ten minutes to curfew, we need to head home.”
“I’m going to stick around here,” said Michael, “since I’ve got an extra hour on you both. I love being sixteen. Who knows, maybe I’ll see a supernova.”
“Uh, you go ahead, Ezra, I’ll catch up,” waved Liz.
“I’ll wait.” Ezra laid her sweater out on the ground like a blanket with dramatic movements.
“Fine, here I come,” Liz said with a huff, pushing herself off the branch.
The girls waved bye to Michael and marched off through the thicket. When they reached their street, they reciprocated goodnights and forced smiles, the tension between them not entirely forgotten along the path home.
Ezra paused on her doorstep and watched as Liz, illuminated by her porch light a few houses down, stepped inside. Liz slammed the door, its brass knocker clanking with an air of finality.
Ezra turned and stared in the direction where Michael lay right now – she could feel him there. She only had two minutes. None of them had ever been late. She’d never even entertained the thought. But tonight, she felt different – felt a welling-up of an emotion she couldn’t quite identify, and it ate at her.
She took a step forward, the toes of her sandals hanging over the edge of the doorstep, hesitating. Suspended.
Then, without looking back, Ezra began running. She ran with such speed that the air moving past her felt soft, like a cushion, and she was hyper-aware of it as it flowed over the contours of her face and neck and howled past her ears. Her sandals flipped off and her bare feet hurt on the rough path, but it didn’t matter.
She brimmed with excitement; for once in her life she didn’t know what to expect. She crashed out of the thicket and leaves from the disturbed underbrush fluttered to the ground. Michael jumped, nearly losing his balance on the bough.
“Oh, Ezra! You scared me!”
Ezra panted, catching her breath. Michael glanced at his watch.
“Hey… hey! You’re late! It’s three minutes past curfew! I can’t believe it… you’ve got to get back! Now!”
“I’m not going back. I’m skipping.”
“What? You can’t be serious,” said Michael.
“I said I’m ignoring curfew. I want to stay out here with you. I’ll go back in an hour when you do.”
Michael stuttered. “B-but… what’s going to happen? You don’t know what they’ll do. Nobody’s ever missed curfew before. They say we mustn’t! It’s important, Ezra!”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen. But… I want to find out.”
“What if they take you away?”
“That’s crazy.”
“But what if they do? Remember when that kid Donegan broke someone’s nose in a fight? They called for him to return, and after he went back inside, nobody ever saw him again?”
“Yeah, I know. And those rumors about him getting fed to alligators are ridiculous. They probably just transferred him. I’m not going to hurt anybody, Michael. You know that. It’s just that I would rather… I’d rather spend time here with you than back there, in bed. I’m not even tired.”
Michael looked away. “I just… I don’t know what I’d do if one day…”
Ezra reached up and grabbed Michael’s hand, pulling him down from his seat. She stared into his dark eyes, outlined by a soft complexion lit only by the moon.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here forever, I promise.”
She felt her skin tingle as she pulled him close to her and gently nuzzled him. He yielded in her arms,
melting at her soft touch. Eyes closed, Ezra leaned forward, and they kissed.
Rapture.
At that moment, Ezra, Michael, and their kiss were the only things that existed in the universe. She had known nothing more wonderful than this moment. He caressed Ezra’s cheek, held her delicate face in his hand as if she were a snow angel ready to melt in dawn’s light.
Paradise.
She was aware of her racing heartbeat, pounding against Michael’s chest. She felt powerful warmth radiating from his torso, his neck, his face to hers. She could feel his mind, could feel that this was his first kiss, too, that he was lost in it, too.
Bliss.
Their kiss was the sensation of all sensations. He was all she wanted. She ran her hands through his hair. Ezra pulled Michael closer, pressing their bodies into a hug of the purest emotions.
Ecstasy.
It wasn’t enough. She wanted to be closer to Michael, to experience his very being, closer than physical space would allow. Ezra’s arms wrapped around him, she wanted to hold on forever. She looked deep within his eyes and hugged him.
Love.
And then, he vanished.
~
Ezra fell forward; her arms flailed at emptiness.
She hit the ground and gasped. Lying there, she slowly propped herself up on one arm and brushed hair from her face, bits of leaves tangled in it. She looked around.
