End of The World: The Beginning

by Nesly Clerge

  “Stop the car!” It didn’t stop. “KATE! Tell this car to stop.”

  “That would be unwise, Gayle.”

  “Report this car as malfunctioning.”

  “That would be in error. Its instruction is to keep passengers safe. It did what it’s designed to do.”

  “I said stop this car. There are injured people back there. I can help.”

  “The proper officials have been notified. The protesters will be taken care of. What concerns me more is that you haven’t as yet placed your call to your children. Perhaps I should contact medical for a full evaluation.”

  I dropped my head into my hands. “I’m fine. Shaken at the moment because of what’s happened, but I’m fine. Please place the call.”

  ENTRY 13

  I said nothing to Sara or my girls about what had happened. No reason to upset them. But Sara expressed concern about how pale my face was when I arrived home. I hated to lie to her (I told her I missed lunch). She pretended to believe me and dropped the subject.

  From that moment on, it was a struggle to behave normally rather than as paranoid as I felt regarding KATE and whomever was on the receiving end of that surveillance. Equally distressing was there had been no hesitation to injure or kill the protesters. As though they didn’t matter.

  I watched the news after the girls and Sara went to bed. No mention of those specific protesters or reports about their injuries or deaths. However, it was reported that a number of similar protests had been held throughout the Provinces. Overseer Monroe stated, “Such uncivil disobedience will not be tolerated. Compliance is crucial to peace for all. Anyone non-compliant is the enemy and will be dealt with in an appropriate manner.” The announcer went on to say all protesters had been arrested and sent to Peacekeepers Intervention Center for reformation. Such reports were made from time to time, but never any follow-up on successful results. This led me to question exactly what was meant when KATE said the protesters would be taken care of.

  Also in question was Overseer Monroe’s actions. When she’d first taken office, most people felt confident about her in that role. She was adamant that her Christian faith would guide her to operate with fairness, which made some concerned that Monroe might infringe her beliefs on the populace. But that intrusion of her beliefs didn’t happen. She’d been in that role for several years by the time Karl made his public announcement. And each year, she mentioned her faith less and less. I hadn’t really thought about that until this moment.

  Still, I couldn’t understand how she could switch from being firm in her faith to agreeing with the Order’s plans for immortality through a process that required a person’s life be sacrificed for another. What had Karl said? Monroe had soon been converted once enlightened as to the ultimate outcome. It was all too easy to find a dubious double meaning in those well-chosen words.

  The earth is defiled by its people.

  I’d been suddenly thrust into the realization that my life had become a prison without bars, except the truth was it had been that way for a while. I’d just been unaware of it.

  That night, I lurched up from an unsound sleep. Heart pounding. Breaths rapid. I’d heard a voice, as though from only a few feet away.

  I ordered the lamp next to my bed to turn on. I was alone. But the words echoed in my mind:

  Wake up. It’s almost too late.

  ENTRY 14

  Karl had said he’d contact me in a week. Every night as I lay in bed, I thought about his proposal. Such research could take years and would have to be agreed to by the Work Approval Board. It might require I move, uprooting my girls and Sara from a place we loved and the only home my girls had known. It would require test subjects, first animals larger than the mice I’d always used, and then eventually humans. The research would inevitably require ending human life, which was in total opposition of my life’s work and my ethics.

  I could say no, but I doubted Karl would let me off so easily.

  I could say yes, but for my own reason. Karl had more advanced equipment than in my lab, and access to acquiring more. I could conduct research that would enhance my work on HIVm, while feigning progress toward his objective. Karl didn’t seem someone who could be hoodwinked for long. My deception would have an expiration date. For all I knew, since these people appeared to devalue lives not their own, so might I.

  Still, questions bubbled to the surface. Did it matter at what age the process—whatever that turned out to be—was implemented? If a fifty-year-old subject received the process, did the subject remain fifty in appearance, or would it be like the proverbial fountain of youth? If so, how far back in years would the transformation go? Could it be halted at the age of choice? If the subject was a child, would the person still experience natural physical maturation? Would the emotional maturity also progress, or would the subject remain a child in form and or behavior for eternity? Surely, unless in an extreme emergency, the process wouldn’t be used until a person was of age or could choose the age. I couldn’t be certain how Karl or the Order might use it.

  I thought of my daughters and shuddered at the thought of them never growing into adults mentally or physically.

  There was, of course, a flaw in Karl’s thinking. Even if immortality could be achieved in such a manner, a person could still be killed—by accident or by design. If a limb was lost, the person would travel eternity in that form, at least until someone found a way to regenerate or transplant that which had been destroyed, something other than the useful but electro-mechanical substitutes now used. Would the transplanted organ or appendage have to undergo the process or would the altered body do the adaptation work internally?

  I was thirty-five. If I found a way that worked without fail by the end of a decade, or sooner, I’d never have to age above forty-five. How easy it was to imagine looking young forever. How easy it was to imagine going through however many millennia or eternity with my daughters in my life.

  Blue light streaked across my room. Thunder crashed on the other side of the wall—the odor of ozone filled the air. Rain mixed with small hail pounded at my windows.

  I had to tell Karl no.

  ENTRY 15

  As promised, Karl called exactly one week later, almost to the minute. “I must decline,” I told him. Karl’s holographic image stared at me for several moments.

  “You must at least visit my lab, my dear.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “It’s a very good idea. At the very least, you’ll appreciate seeing the equipment. You can make note of it and put in a request for your own lab.”

  “You can tell me what it is.”

  “Not the same, and you know it. I’ll pick you up at nine thirty Saturday morning.”

  “My weekends are family time. We have plans. Appointments.”

  “They can spare you for a couple of hours, hours you’ll regret not using in this way. Nine thirty sharp. End call.”

  ***

  I glanced out my front window at nine thirty. The car was there. I kissed my girls goodbye, promising the rest of the weekend would be extra special to make up for my absence and change of plans. Sara gave me yet another curious look. I’d explained as much as I safely could to her about this appointment being work-related, but could see she didn’t believe it was as simple as that. After being with me since a month before my girls were born, Sara knew me better than anyone.

  Once I settled onto the backseat and the car moved forward, Karl said, “Such a beautiful morning for a lovely drive. I intend to enjoy it in silence, if that’s all right with you, my dear.”

  I got the message, shrugged, and kept my gaze fixed out the window for what turned out to be a twenty-minute drive.

  We left the urban center after half that amount of time and proceeded into a rural part of the province. Within a few minutes, we stopped at a secured gate flanked by military guards. The sign proclaimed the fenced area was off-limits to citizens, under Mandate 45 of the Environmental Preservation Agend
a.

  Karl faced me and said, “This location is to be kept more confidential than confidential, my dear.” I nodded and he looked away.

  Every month or so an announcement was made on the news about the latest area now in need of preservation. All national parks had been fitted into this category a number of years back. Those parks could now be seen solely through old documentaries and movies, old photographs, or new drone films the Order occasionally put out. Thanks to the realistic quality of three-dimensional holograms, it was almost like being there. Except for the absence of scents of pine and other aromatic trees, the fragrances of wild flowers, the feel of real earth and grass beneath your footsteps, and a breeze on your cheeks.

  More and more rural areas were claimed in this way, but the Order took care of those displaced. They built industrial apartment building after apartment building in the urban centers and moved the people into them. Protesters from these groups complained that two hundred square feet was no compensation for a farm house or home in the family for generations, not to mention loss of access to land and nature. The Order’s response was always the same: the land had to be preserved; the planet had to be saved from human ignorance and irresponsibility.

  We pulled up to the front door of Prometheus Laboratories. Obviously, I’d never heard of this place; though, the sixteen-storied building (I asked Karl) seemed to have been constructed within the last two decades, if it’s architecture was anything to go on. The interior had obviously been renovated within the last ten or so years so that it matched the uniform decorations of all official buildings: Red and black tile floors, and the ever-present artwork of equilateral triangles encompassing glittering representations of the constellations of Orion, Sirius, and the Pleiades, as well as our solar system, with Venus, Saturn, and Earth’s moon illuminated. I suppose it was more cost-effective to stick with one theme.

  Karl instructed KATE to have the car either wait or return in exactly one hour. The car drove away. We went inside.

  After getting my visitor’s pass, we made our way through a number of security checkpoints, until we entered a massive windowless room with waxed tiled floors and chrome and glass glinting everywhere. There was barely an empty space because of all the equipment in that area, none of which was familiar to me. A number of machines hummed as they performed whatever their specific task was, though we were the only two people in there.

  Karl said, “KATE can see everything we do, but not hear what we say. That was a clever bit of electronic trickery on my part. I had to allow visual or the Order would have gotten suspicious. I told them the sonic interference is a result of various, simultaneous electromagnetic waves emitted by the instruments and cannot be avoided. They accepted that explanation, especially since they know it’s mostly true. They’re also working to find a way to change that, but haven’t as yet.”

  It took the better part of thirty minutes to show me around the huge space, and at a fairly rapid pace. I made an effort not to demonstrate how impressed I was as he briefly mentioned what the function of this instrument and that was, but he could tell. Karl grinned and gestured for me to follow him.

  “This one, my dear, should interest you a great deal.”

  I ran my gaze over the gleaming instrument and the complex keyboard connected to it. “What is it?”

  “The Genesis Genome Activator.”

  “I’m surprised at the use of a biblical term.”

  Karl snorted. “We do like to amuse ourselves.” He patted the machine. “This little beauty will speed up your research. What might take years on that antiquated junk you’re using could take mere months here. For one thing, it has transamination capabilities, something lacking in what you currently use.”

  “As the Order knows this technology exists, why didn’t they provide it to me at the start of the outbreak?”

  “Let me show you something else of interest.”

  ENTRY 16

  I noted Karl’s avoidance of answering my question and followed him to a vertical transparent cylinder large enough for a tall man to stand inside. “What’s this for?”

  “Teleportation.”

  “You’re not serious? You’re telling me you can teleport humans?”

  Karl shook his head. “We haven’t as yet worked out how to do it successfully with organic material. Inorganic, yes.”

  “What distance?”

  “So far, to the guard house at the gate. The Order is pushing for faster results.” He clenched his fists. “They have no comprehension as to what’s involved. Reconstituting animate organic cells into their original arrangement is no simple matter.”

  “Do I want to know what you’ve tested it on?”

  “Not if you’re squeamish. I will say the guards were not happy with us.”

  I shivered, looked away, and noticed a door at the far end of the room. There was a keypad under the handle. “Is that where the transplant was done?”

  “That procedure was performed on a different floor. The locked room houses a project I’ve been working on for three years.”

  “That’s a long time, especially in a lab equipped as this one is. What’s the project?”

  Karl faced me. “That’s classified as ultra top secret, my dear. But I will tell you it’s more spectacular than anyone outside these walls can imagine. However, it’s best if you contain your curiosity to your specific purpose here.

  “Now, I want to make something clear to you: I’ve told the Order that your skills and talents are invaluable to my work to fulfill what they desire. I made quite a pitch on your behalf, even upped your credits by five thousand a month.”

  “I haven’t said yes.”

  “The Order said it for you. And they won’t be happy if you don’t agree with their decision.”

  “Did part of your persuasion include how my own research will speed up? That I can begin to save lives sooner than later?”

  Karl waved a hand. “I told them it would be an incentive and a likely result, not that your finding a solution matters to them. They have other means to attain their objectives.”

  I turned sharply toward him. “What objectives?”

  “There’s something else I want to show you. Something quite clever. And top secret, just as everything within these walls is. You do understand that?”

  “Understood.” I was uneasy with how often he ignored certain questions.

  “Stay standing where you are.” He took himself and his self-amused expression to his desk, opened a drawer and took out a rectangular black object, small and flat enough to easily fit into a shirt pocket without creating much of a bulge. He pressed the front of it a few times then smiled at me. I realized it was a remote, but to control what? Seconds later, something flew over my head, near enough to move my hair as though a breeze had wafted my way. I ducked, especially when I heard what sounded like an insect. Whatever provided the muted buzzing hovered mere inches from my face. Karl laughed and said, “Don’t move.”

  “What is it? Where is it?”

  Karl pressed something on the remote and I found myself startled to see a drone instantly appear in front of me. He used the remote to move the drone to his desktop, where he landed it and shut it off. “It’s the prototype of a new generation of drones that come with stealth capabilities.”

  “That’s more than stealth. That’s full-on cloaking, and with no visible atmospheric distortion. If that’s the prototype, when will they go into production?”

  “They’re in production now.”

  “I imagine they’ll be quite useful to the military for getting information on enemies when it’s too risky to send intelligence agents into dangerous zones.”

  Karl shrugged. “They’ll be good for that, as well.”

  “If that’s not their primary purpose, what is?”

  “There are those closer to home the Order wants intel on.”

  “Protesters?”

  “And others. Our time’s nearly up. You have one week to settle details at your lab;
the transfer orders were filed yesterday. You start here Monday after next. If you wish to work extra hours, you must get approval from me and a minister from the Work Approval Board. A car will pick you up at eight thirty each morning and another will be here each day at five to take you home. We want to make this as comfortable a transition and experience as possible for you. The Order takes good care of its elite scientists. And that, my dear, is what you are about to become.”

  In ordinary circumstances this news would inspire me.

  Nothing about this was ordinary.

  ENTRY 17

  “Aren’t you getting in?” I said to Karl.

  “I’m going a different direction. My own taxi should be here soon.” He closed the car door and said loud enough for me to hear through the glass, “See you Monday week.”

  The car eased forward. I glanced back and saw Karl re-enter the building, my view of the front door soon blocked by the huge triangular sign with its flame logo at the end of the drive. Surely the appropriateness of the lab’s name had not been lost on Karl. Prometheus. Benefactor of mankind, according to Greek mythology. Prometheus. Chained to a rock for eternity by Zeus, where each day, an eagle ate his liver. And each night, as Prometheus was immortal, his liver was regenerated. This was the god’s punishment for giving fire and other gifts to humans to make their lives more bearable.

  One of the story versions was that Zeus then sent Pandora to Earth, where she released from a jar great evils, pain, and diseases to spread death among humans, sealing hope inside the jar before it could get out. At its essence, it was a story about the struggle between good and evil.

  What was it about power that drove those who should know better to such lengths?

  ***

  My outing with the girls and Sara had to be postponed. I’d only just stepped through the door of my home when the sky turned black. High winds and sporadic downpours kept us indoors watching movies while munching on bowls of buttered popcorn. Sara asked how the appointment went. I told her I’d learned about my promotion and gave her only the details safe for her to know.