by Jacob Whaler
They leave the hospital through an emergency exit on the bottom floor, triggering alarms and flashing lights. A black limousine is waiting at the curb with an opened back door. Ryzaard and Jing-wei slip inside.
The instant the door shuts, the car shoots forward.
“I’m afraid Matt got away, and Jessica too,” Jing-wei says. “We tried to follow the others, but—”
“Quiet,” Ryzaard says. “I need time to complete the bonding.” He takes both Stones out of his pocket and holds them in his bare palms, focusing intently. “And I never want to hear their names spoken in my presence again? Is that understood?”
“Perfectly.” Jing-wei rests her head against the back cushion and looks out the window at the buildings speeding past them. After a couple of seconds, her body relaxes into the seat and her eyelids drop down and close.
CHAPTER 2
Kent feels the bone-crunching bumps in his spine. He estimates he’s been riding for six hours, all of it in darkness in the back of some ancient cargo transport. Judging from the speed of the truck and the constant jarring of the floor, they are traversing a pothole-infested country road, far away from the city. The IR goggles have long since slipped from his face, and there is nothing but blackness around him.
The slow, relaxed breathing of other bodies floats in the silence of the dark. He wonders how they can sleep.
“Is it OK to have a light now?” He raises his voice and addresses the question to no one in particular.
“Sure.” A young voice pierces the void. “Just a micro, right?”
“Yep,” Kent says. “That’s all I’ve got.”
He reaches into his backpack, rummages around and feels for a thin metallic card at the bottom. As soon as he rests a thumb on it, the light comes on. It only takes a few seconds to make a quick inventory of the inside of the pack.
“Where’s the rest of the MEPPs? I thought I had two left.” He pulls the micro light out and shines it into the darkness around him.
A young man sitting directly across from him looks up. “We used one to blow up the entrance to the elevator shaft and threw the other one in the East River as we crossed the bridge. We don’t want to be caught with any evidence. And they’re too dangerous to have in here, anyway. It’d probably blow the whole transport sky high from all the shaking.”
“You read my mind.” Kent looks around at the inside of the transport. The sweet smell of fresh apples floats in the stale air. Dozens of large boxes sit heavy on pallets a few meters away, Fresh Produce printed on their sides. Five young people huddle on each side of the truck, backs up against the side. All but the young man across from him are asleep.
“Don’t worry. They’re used to it,” the youth says. “We spend a lot of time riding around the country like this.”
“Doing what?” Kent twists his back and tries to find a comfortable position.
“Whatever Little John wants. I guess you could say we are his elite corps, his shock troops. He turns to us for difficult jobs that require special skills.”
“Like scaling buildings and extracting hostages?” Kent sees the ropes and harnesses scattered around.
“Exactly.”
“Just one question. How did you guys know I was in the MX Global building?”
“Easy. The Children have been tracking you round the clock ever since you left the freedom camp on the Colorado plains. Little John’s orders.”
“The Children?”
“That’s what Little John calls us,” the youth says. “Even though most of us aren’t kids anymore. He says we are the future.”
“The future of what?”
“The human race, I suppose. After the Abomination is destroyed.”
Kent rolls his eyes. This was just what he needed, to be rescued by a bunch of religious fanatics. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere out in Iowa, I think. Only the driver knows for sure. Little John will be waiting for us. He says we have to take good care of you and keep you safe.”
“What about all my stuff?” Kent said. “I left a lot of equipment in my office back in New York.”
“We checked it out and destroyed most of it, except for what we might be able to use. Don’t worry. It’s just more Abomination. You won’t need it where we’re going.”
“Great,” Kent says. “Now I’m really off-grid.”
CHAPTER 3
Matt lays the chopsticks down on the table, leans back and pats his stomach. “Delicious, no?”
“Oishii yo,” Jessica says. “I never knew you were such a good cook.”
Matt has a stunned look on his face. “When did you learn Japanese?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Jessica looks up from her miso soup. “I know how to say delicious in at least ten languages. Don’t you?”
“Nope. But maybe you can teach me.” Matt walks around to the other side of the table and sits down on the tatami floor next to her. “The perfect end to a perfect day,” he says. “Skiing in the morning, swimming in the afternoon, sushi and a nice bonfire on the beach. And my mom’s gyoza for a midnight snack. All with you.” He leans his back against the wall and slips both arms around Jessica.
She lets her weight fall on him. “It’s incredible, all this. I keep asking myself how you do it.”
“Good question,” Matt says. “I ask myself the same thing.” He runs his fingers through Jessica’s hair and looks out the oversize window of the Japanese house at the thin sliver of the sun, crimson red and still hanging just above the watery horizon far off to the west where it’s been for the last several hours. “When we made the jump, I was thinking of a day on the beach with my mom and dad back when I was seven or eight. It’s burned into my memory as the most perfect day of my life. I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since, but it’s always just ahead of me, never quite in my grasp. After the jump, I opened my eyes and here we were, on the beach. Just like the one in my memory.”
“And that feeling,” Jessica says. “Have you found it here?”
Matt relaxes back on his elbows. “Yes. But it’s not because of the beach. It’s because you’re here.”
The Stone lies on the table between them, filled with a milky glow. Jessica holds it up in the fading pink light of the setting sun, turning its claw shape around in her fingers. “But what about the ultra gargantuan mountains here covered in snow, rising above a primeval forest that looks like the original Eden?” she says. “There are plants here that don’t exist back on Earth. Fist-sized grapes. Peanut butter-flavored bananas. And this charming little Japanese house on the beach. Where did all this come from?”
Matt smiles. “My imagination. Naganuma told me that every Stone is connected to a planet in some random corner of the universe, and every Holder, when they’ve progressed enough, gets pulled there to create his own private world. Naganuma’s world had perfect Japanese gardens and groves of giant cedar trees. He had a house like this one. You saw Ryzaard’s world with its dark rivers and geometric cities. I guess this is mine. Right out of my imagination.”
“And these gyoza? Where did they come from?”
Matt slides closer to Jessica, his body fully against hers, and runs his fingers down her back, feeling the line of her spine. “Like everything else here, all I have to do is see it in my mind, really think about it, and then it’s just there, exactly as I picture it. I thought about the gyoza, the aroma of garlic and ginger, and there they were, ready to eat, just like my mom used to make them. Maybe that’s a small taste of what it’s like to be God.”
She turns to look him in the eye, a smirk on her face. “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”
“I don’t. But I believe in the Allehonen.”
Jessica’s eyes drift shut. “You told me about the Woman who came to you in your dreams. Who do you think she is?”
“All she said was We are the Allehonen, as if she’s not the only one.” Matt turns to gaze out the window. The Stone glows neon white, and he feels himself letting go of th
e last thin slice of the sun as it disappears below the ocean horizon, leaving an orange glow floating on its surface. “I’m not sure, exactly. All I know is that I saw her. Dressed in a robe, golden eyes, skin glowing like a plasma lamp.”
“Sounds like God to me,” Jessica says. “Or an angel.”
“She had a Stone, almost identical to this one.” Matt stretches out his fingers and touches Jessica’s arm. “She showed me the Universe, the Milky Way, the Earth, and everything on it. I saw how it was made. Now that I’ve seen it, I do believe. I can’t not believe.”
Matt realizes he’s been holding his breath, and lets it out in a long, slow stream. His fingers slip up Jessica’s arm to touch her fingers on the Stone.
“Do you believe me?” Matt keeps his eyes on the Stone, afraid of what she might say. “I wouldn’t believe it if I were you, sitting there, listening to this story. I’ve heard other stories about beings from other worlds with cosmic power and always thought they were crazy. But this is different, for me. I’m the one who saw it, the one who felt it with my whole body.”
Jessica turns and looks squarely at him. He can feel her eyes tracing lines across his face, between his eyes, down the bridge of his nose to his lips. “I do believe,” she says. “I don’t understand, but I believe. It feels right.”
“Thanks,” Matt says. “You’re a better man than I am.”
There’s a long moment of silence as Matt thinks about what he just said.
And then they both burst out laughing.
Uncurling her fingers, Jessica drops the Stone on the table with a loud thud. “Let’s go,” she says.
“Where?”
“For an evening swim.” She bounds across the table, runs down the steps in her bare feet to the outside and sprints across the sand to the ocean.
COMING SOON FROM
JACOB WHALER
STONES (HYPOTHESIS) – BOOK TWO OF THE STONES SERIES
STONES (EXPERIMENT) – BOOK THREE OF THE STONES SERIES
STONES (THEORY) – BOOK FOUR OF THE STONES SERIES
Please visit the author’s website at http://jacobwhaler.com where you can sign up for a newsletter to get advance notice of his new novels.
AFTERWORD
Congratulations for making it this far. I know it’s been a long read. And there’s still three novels to go!
I’m the type of person that watches movie credits to the end because I like to see the fine print and because there’s always a chance that a little scene of bonus material might pop up on the screen. Please consider this to be my version of such a scene.
I’ll tell you the true story of the genesis of the STONES novels.
As a six-year-old on a fishing trip with my dad and grandpa, I found an obsidian rock half buried in the mud, blunt on one end and pointed on the other, about the size of an adult fist. My grandpa, a lifelong rock hound, tried in vain to get it away from me. He begged, threatened and offered me money. He told me what a perfect addition it would make to his collection. But I refused to let it part from my fingers.
For some reason, I felt an immediate bond to that rock.
I took it home, washed it off and put it on the window ledge above my bed. (If you’re interested, there’s a photo of it on my website.)
Decades later, I still keep it close by and often pick it up to feel the way it naturally fits the curve of my palm. I like to stare into its glassy surface and daydream about where it came from and the secrets it might hold.
It was on such a day, as I looked into my Stone, the seed of an idea took shape in my mind. Little by little, that idea grew and sprouted tentacles until it got such a hold on my brain that I was left with no choice but to start writing it down.
The result was four long books.
In a way, I think of the STONES novels as keeping a promise to my six-year-old self, a promise to always keep room in my heart for child-like wonder. A promise to stay who I am.
I grew up to love words.
As a teenager, I read Ray Bradbury’s horror stories into the dark hours of the night, afraid to move for fear that I’d feel the pricking of my thumbs and stir up something evil. I consumed Alan Dean Foster’s Alien in one sitting, glued to the La-Z-Boy recliner in our family room, heart beating in unison with the characters on the page as they pursued, and were pursued by, the nightmare aboard their starship. I sat in a secret corner of our house with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat as I savored the end of The Lord of the Rings.
I’m a true believer in the power of words.
In my professional life, I’ve used words to build meaning into arcane corporate documents that control the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars around the globe.
But I’ve grown tired of using words to control something as mundane as money.
So I’ve become a writer of novels.
Back in high school, I learned to program computers. It’s a different kind of writing, a different kind of language, a different kind of control. But like any good writing, it’s a string of written instructions that has an effect on the real world.
I’d like to think that the words of my novels are like computer code for human brains.
I hope you’ll continue to plug in and enjoy.
Jacob Whaler
http://jacobwhaler.com
Copyright © 2013 by Jacob Whaler
Edited by Erica Orloff
Cover design by Rebecca Swift
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
For more information about the author and his novels, please visit http://jacobwhaler.com
ISBN-10: 0-9897044-0-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-9897044-0-3
