“Kurt, you had that fever nearly a week ago now. Before you even met Bock.”
“That fever is a natural part of the process—”
“If I read Bock’s book, would it have the same effect on me?”
“Yes.”
“May I see it?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“If you know the idea is in you, why don’t you just eradicate it, exorcise it . . . vanquish it— whatever?”
“I’m not sure I can take his idea out of my mind any easier than I can take out the alien meme. Don’t you find it a little curious that he’s the only one on this island who’s not sick?”
She sighed and said, “But aliens? Really? Where are they? Why haven’t they come and taken ownership of the meme?”
“They’re long gone. They’ve moved on to a higher dimensional plane. The manuscript was put into the universe centuries ago.”
“So before they sauntered off to a higher spatial dimension, they left us directions on how to meet up with them as soon as we’re evolved enough?”
“Sounds silly when you put it that way, but yes.”
“Of course,” she said, mockingly. “You realize that all of the manuscripts are gone? The government destroyed them all. If only the evolved can get to Shangri La, then what’s going to happen to the rest of us? You’ll be alone!”
Kurt leaned back and allowed his weight to be supported by the sink counter. It all made sense. Bock was destroying the manuscripts and poisoning the infected so he would be the only one left, the smartest man on the planet. But if he wanted enhanced humans dead, why didn’t he just shoot them? Why an illness that kills them slowly? With his ties to Homeland Security, he could have easily wiped out all of them.
Her insight, however, didn’t go unnoticed. He felt lonelier than ever. Even if he found a way to eradicate Bock’s poisonous ideas from his mind, he would have to live a life without an equal. He would continue to evolve while everyone he cared about stayed the same. As far as he could tell, this was not what the alien race had intended, and certainly not what he wanted.
Ursula sighed heavily and went to sit on the lid of the toilet.
Kurt said, “Whether you believe me or not, I don’t think we’re safe here. There’s something amiss about this island. There’s no reason for you to be here. You haven’t been infected. Why don’t you return to New York?”
“I’m not going to leave you alone. I might be able to help you,” she said.
The pain in his stomach struck him like a gun shot and caused him to double over. He turned away from her, putting his hands on the bathroom counter. He felt like he was going to be sick.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
“I’m fine. Just a little nauseated.”
Kurt looked up into the mirror. His face had gone ashen.
“You don’t look so good, Kurt. I'm going to call Richard.”
“No. I’m fine.” He did his best to smile at her and then quickly left.
He shuffled his way toward the playground where Dana and the other little girl were playing on the swings. The nausea had gotten worse—the burning in his chest nearly unbearable. He had hoped fresh air would help, but now that he was out in the open he could smell the scent of death wafting off the other bungalows. The only reassurance came from the fact that some of the inhabitants of the island were still alive . . . some of them. However, like Ray, his fate was sealed. The ideas in his mind would continue to attack his body, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Kurt sat down on a bench and watched the girls play. He tried his best to take his mind off the pain. He was angry with himself. He should have seen this coming, been more cautious, but his insight was doomed to fail with someone like Bock. For the sociopathic mind there was no truth. He could lie without effect, without emotion, without remorse.
Kurt tried to collect some energy from within, to overcome the pain and find some inner reserve of strength. On the helicopter flight in, he had seen a white cliff house on the north side of the island. A strong energy was emanating from it and he had sensed that something important was going on there. It was a few miles from where he was, and there was the small problem of getting there undetected, so for now, he watched the girls.
Dana’s new friend had an unhealthy pallor to her face, and her hair appeared to be thinner than it should be. When Dana began to playfully chase the little girl around the jungle gym, the girl got winded and went into a fit of coughing.
Kurt rushed over to help.
“I’m fine,” the girl said. The coughing stopped, but she didn’t look fine. There were black circles under her eyes and her face had gone ghostly white.
“Where are your parents?” Kurt asked her.
“They’re not here.”
“Who’s looking after you?”
“No one. I don’t need anyone to look after me.”
Kurt began to cough, a raspy bass that boomed in his chest.
“It looks like you got it too, Mister.” She ran off to the swings, not yet fully recovered, but in rebellion against any sickness that would interfere with her playtime. Dana quickly followed her, taking the swing next to her.
Kurt walked down to the shore. For a moment he pretended to be taking in the view of the vast ocean before him. When he was sure no one was looking, he began to trek north.
When he was at least three miles away from the resort, the beach ended in a cliff side. He either had to climb it, swim around it, or go back. He decided to climb, though there were parts of it that he knew would be dangerous. The ascent started off with a steep trail, but that ended quickly in a vertical rock face. Were he feeling better physically, this would have been an easy climb, but every muscle in his body ached and his head was pounding. He went for it anyway. As far as he was concerned, there was no other choice.
Using his feet and fingers to find purchase in the imperfections and cracks in the rock face, he began the ascent. He had always been adequately athletic, but before the alien meme this was something he never would have attempted without sufficient practice and training. Now he had an enhanced intuitive knowledge to help him. He could economize his body’s energy, coordinate his mind with his muscles in ways he never thought possible, and make decisions based on mathematical certainties. He could calculate the aspect of the rock face and the force needed to ascend it, predict a reasonable probability of failure, and assess the potential of a particular route to its conclusion. If not for the ideas in his mind poisoning his system, ascending this cliff face would have been a cakewalk.
About half way up he began to get tired, feeling that burning in his chest again, overcome with a need to cough. With only his fingertips and a sliver of his shoes connected to cracks in the rock face, a spasm of coughing could prove fatal. He was more than a hundred feet up and ocean waves were pounding into the jagged rocks below. But the pressure in his chest wasn’t going away. He fought it back with every bit of strength he had and climbed as quickly as he could.
Finally, he pulled himself up over the cliff’s edge. Collapsing on the ground, he covered his mouth to mute the sound and allowed himself to cough. It felt like razor blades were rattling around in his lungs. When he took away his hand, there was a splatter of blood coating his palm and fingers.
With the need to cough subsiding for now, he scanned the cliff side plateau. There was a white house, the design appearing to be several decades old. A pristine satellite dish the size of a barn stood off to the side. A golf cart was parked on the cement driveway with the word SECURITY emblazoned on the side. Behind the house, several hundred yards away, there was a yellow front loader truck situated before a large hole. Thousands of seagulls were circling the hole, the collective cawing nearly deafening.
Staying low, Kurt made his way over to the side of the house. He looked through a window. Two men were inside, playing cards on a foldout table.
A truck came barreling down a serpentine dirt road, clouds of dust spewing out
from the tires. A honk came from it as it pulled up to the house. The driver got out, slamming the door behind him.
Kurt immediately recognized the driver. The hair on his arms stood up and a cold chill enveloped his bones. It was the dark-skinned man who had been haunting him, the intruder that had been in his apartment in New York.
The man went to the back of the truck and opened the shell hatch and the bed door.
He whistled loudly. “Get out here!”
A man with a hood over his head and his wrists bound together was helped out of the back of the truck.
Two men came out the front door of the house, forcefully took the hooded man by the arms, and took him back inside the house.
Kurt peered through the window. They were taking the hooded man to a back room.
The burning in his chest came back with a vengeance and he couldn’t suppress the need to cough. He covered his mouth, terrified at the prospect of not only being detected, but of seeing more of his own blood.
The crackle of a radio from inside the truck masked his coughing: “Base to Cliffside, come in.”
A voice responded, “This is Cliffside, over.”
“Be advised. We have a runaway. Have you seen anyone in your sector?”
“That’s a negative, Base. All clear here. We just brought one in for treatment.”
“We need all available personnel to return to Base for assistance. Over.”
“What about the treatment?”
“Complete the treatment and return to Base, A-SAP.”
“Copy that.”
No more than ten minutes later, the three men came out the front door and climbed into the truck. After they drove off, Kurt stealthily made his way up to the front of the house. Cautiously, he pushed the front door open and went inside. The boards of the wooden floors creaked under his shoes. The layout reminded him of some of the post-World War II military housing that was riddled throughout Southern California. He made his way into the hall and up to the door of the first room. The door was open a sliver so he peered inside. There was a computer table with a multi-monitor display splayed out over it. The monitors were showing the brain scans of people undergoing electroshock therapy.
On a far wall, there was a map of the world with red pins pushed into various cities. Below that was a file cabinet. He pulled open the top drawer, A-F, and found hundreds of names labeling manila folders. He knelt down to get to the third drawer and went to R.
There was a file for Kurt Robbins.
Inside there was a picture of him pulled from his Facebook account, a medical history taken from the family doctor, a social security number, DMV records, and, under something labeled STATUS, it read: “Captured.” Under the sub-label MANUSCRIPT, it read: “CONFISCATED AND DESTROYED.”
Maybe coming to the island wasn’t as voluntary as he had been led to believe.
He opened the second drawer and went to the letter J. There was a file for Ray Jacobson. He opened it. A red stamp on the first page read: DECEASED. A hand written note on the bottom read: “Subject did not respond to treatment.”
He put the file back and went to S. William Snow’s file. It also had a DECEASED stamp on it with a note on the bottom explaining his unresponsiveness to treatment.
The hole dug in the field overrun by seagulls wasn’t a landfill, it was a mass grave.
A muted sound came through the walls. A moan.
Kurt put the file back into the file cabinet and shut the drawer.
He went back into the hall and listened again for the sound. There were two more rooms at the back of the house, both doors shut. He went up to a door and listened. Someone was definitely on the other side, moaning in pain.
Kurt slowly turned the door knob and pushed the door open.
A man in a white lab coat was hovering over a man in a dentist chair.
The curly hair and graying beard of the man in the chair immediately gave away his identity. It was Miles Cohen. While unconscious, someone was examining him—someone that Kurt knew intuitively did not have Miles’ best interest in mind.
A violent cough erupted from Kurt’s chest, causing the man in the lab coat to whip around. “Who are you?”
Kurt’s instincts took over. Without thinking, he rushed the man. A right hook to the lower mandibular laid him out on the floor as easily as if he had flipped his power switch. It had happened so fast that Kurt stood over his victim barely understanding what he had just done. His conscience, however, was telling him that he had done the right thing.
He turned to Miles, hovering over him. Cathodes were attached to his temples and a digital EKG was measuring his brain activity. The lines were nearly flat. Miles’ brain was still alive, but his mind was gone.
Kurt went over to the sink and filled a paper cup with water. He drank from it, feeling it soothe his throat. He then refilled it and went to stand over the Doctor. He tipped the cup and caused a stream of water to descend onto the forehead of his victim.
The Doctor was jarred awake, but when he tried to sit up, Kurt put his boot to his neck and pinned him to the floor.
“What’s going on?” the Doctor asked.
“What did you do to this man?”
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
Kurt pushed harder, choking him.
Gasping for breath, the Doctor cried out, “ . . . Okay . . . I’ll tell . . . you.”
Kurt relented, but kept his foot resting on the man’s neck.
The Doctor finally said, “We used electroshock therapy to wipe his mind of the infection, but there are side effects with this procedure. We’ve been successful in eradicating most of the patients of the meme, but the therapy also rids the patients of their cognitive abilities.”
“Why don’t you just kill them? Why are you trying to take away the alien meme?”
“What are you talking about? Alien meme?” the doctor searched Kurt’s face, and then said, “You’ve been infected. You’re delusional. Get your foot off my neck and let me help you. I’ve discovered the right dosage. I can cure you!”
“We’re not sick, you fool,” Kurt said. “Bock is making us sick. And now I see what he’s doing here. He’s bringing people to the island, making them sick so they’ll come to you, and then he’s having you look for a way to extricate the meme so he’ll be the only one infected.”
“No. He wants to help people. There are still a lot of people out there that need our help.”
Kurt stepped on the man’s neck with a violent thrust, choking the bastard. “That hole behind the house. That’s a mass grave, isn’t it?! You’ve been erasing their minds and then euthanizing them!”
Though his face was going from white to blue, the scientist managed: “—We didn't have a choice! They would have died anyway!”
“You idiot!” Kurt released him, but only because he had to turn away to cough. When he was finished, he said, “For fuck's sake, there’s an entire race of people being murdered on this island and you think you’re helping mankind! Ha! Can’t you see this is about power for Richard Bock, plain and simple? What’s his end game?”
The Doctor opened his mouth to scream but not a sound came out. There was only an eek and the sight of his blood framed teeth.
Kurt relented. “Tell me!”
“Bock’s going to send out a pulse that’s going to rid the world of the meme!”
“But how will he protect himself from it?”
“Why would he do that? He wants to cure himself. You must believe me!”
Kurt kicked him in the face and sent him back to sleep.
He went back to the computer in the other room. He remembered Bock mentioning something about a shield that would encompass the island. After a global search on the computer, he found an encrypted file. He hacked it, and there was the evidence he needed. There were blueprints for a shield, one that would only protect against Electromagnetic pulses. The completion date was set for next week.
Another file contained plans to convert a sat
ellite dish into an EMP weapon, able to send out a pulse that would wipe the world of the infection.
Kurt had a decision to make. Because Bock had destroyed the manuscripts, there was no way for it to reach critical mass and infect the entire population. The alien race had intended it for everyone, not to be hoarded, used as a tool to manipulate others, or to give one group some type of superiority. But with all of the manuscripts gone, there was no way to ensure equality.
The only answer was to continue with Bock’s plan to rid the world of it. As far as Kurt was concerned it would be a tragic loss, but if Bock was allowed to continue, to use his superior intelligence to manipulate people and enslave them, in a few years the world would be plagued by death, disease, and poverty. If he acted now, he could stop him.
Kurt had been able to glimpse into the Omegasphere and he was beginning to understand its power and beauty. It was a place where all ideas existed simultaneously outside of time, an infinite well-spring of knowledge that also contained a basic truth about the universe, a truth he was on the verge of understanding. Now he had to give up that amazing discovery.
But the pulse would also cure him of the fatal meme Bock programmed in him, and in the minds of the enhanced humans on the island. If Kurt kept the meme to pursue the truth about the universe, he would be condemning himself and everyone else to death, not to mention allowing Bock to continue with his plans to enslave the world.
And Kurt would be alone. Without love. Without Ursula. What good was super intelligence without her?
He made his decision. He began to reprogram the computer. With a few hours’ work, and using the data the scientist had collected over the past few months, he could use the satellite dish in front of the house to send out the electromagnetic pulse that would erase the meme from the minds of the world.
He programmed the computer to begin a countdown. He would have sent out the pulse immediately, but he needed superior strength and intelligence to get himself and Ursula safely off the island. Hopefully, three hours was long enough.
He stripped the Doctor down to his underwear. He took the binds from Miles’ wrists and used them to restrain the Doctor. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do for his old boss. His mind was gone. Death was inevitable.
Omegasphere Page 8
