Harvard was a different story. Most of the students came from wealthy Northeastern families, and they were contemptuous of Kelly. She still wore her purity ring; her dorm roommate ridiculed her for even having one. There were cute guys on campus, but when they found out how straitlaced she was, they would not even talk to her. Initially, she was invited to a couple of parties, but when she did not participate in the drinking and drug use, she was not invited back.
Then there was Professor Leeds. His freshman class, “Bioethics, Population Control, and the Future of the Human Race,” was a required course at Harvard. Leeds scoured each freshman class for students like Kelly—fresh-faced Bible-belters who had come to Harvard through the hard work and frugality of an ambitious parent. He made it his special mission to destroy the faith of each one so that when they returned home, their parents would hardly recognize them. This semester Kelly was his special project, and it seemed to her that he spent every class tormenting her. He frequently asked her questions; then he ridiculed her responses in front of the other students and made her feel like the most ignorant person who had ever dared to walk the corridors of the great old school.
Outwardly, Kelly stood up to him and defended her faith. She suffered through the C’s he gave her—her other grades were A’s. She handled the mocking and the ridicule and the ostracism with the same cheery disposition with which she had always met life. Inwardly, however, she was lonely and miserable, and she wished desperately that she could fit in and be more like the other students.
When an envelope arrived in the mail saying that Professor Leeds had recommended her for an all-expense paid, one-week stay at a castle in Switzerland where she would take part in a specially-selected bioethics student conference, Kelly was astounded—and flattered. Leeds appeared to hate her; why would he choose her for this opportunity over the students he clearly favored? Maybe he was, as he claimed in class daily, just a tough professor trying to get the very best out of his students—maybe he did not truly dislike her after all. She asked him about the recommendation when she passed him in the hall, and he told her that of all his students she was the best suited for this experience because it would allow her to gain a new perspective on bioethics and the future of the human race. As an added bonus, simply by attending, Kelly would receive extra credit which would bring her class grade point average up to an A-. A few days later Kelly was sitting at her gate at JFK waiting for the flight that would carry her to her new adventure.
ψ
On the same day that Kevin Leeds received his telephone call, His Majesty Luis Carlos of Spain also received a call on his PCD followed by a plain manila envelope with the same cryptic instructions. Luis Carlos did not even have to consider his choice. While he was in Dubai at Josef’s installation as secretary-general of the Club of Rome, Ines had announced her engagement to Eduardo Quiñones. She had privately assured Luis that the engagement was only to promote the movie she and Eduardo were making together. The lavish wedding would be no more than a publicity stunt to command the attention of the world’s tabloids. She and Eduardo were one of the world’s most beautiful couples, and the tabloid stories of their passionate off-screen romance, which was now culminating in a fairytale wedding, was the stuff that blockbuster ticket sales were made of. Luis Carlos’ vanity was almost enough to convince him that she was telling him the truth and that she did not care for Eduardo, but, inwardly, he was seething with jealousy. Eduardo and Ines would be photographed everywhere, from the tasteful church wedding to the racy honeymoon video that they already planned to post to the Internet. The thought of her cavorting openly with the handsome, often shirtless novella star was almost more than the aging monarch could bear.
Taking his PCD which he reserved specifically for communications with the Guardians, he input “Ines Jimenez” into the word processor. He wanted Ines to forget that she had ever met or known Eduardo Quiñones, and he wanted Eduardo Quiñones to forget that he had ever known her.
A few days later, Ines received a letter from a courier sealed with Luis Carlos’ personal crest. Inside was an invitation for her and Eduardo to visit a Swiss castle for a weekend as a pre-wedding getaway. The timing was not good since they were planning their wedding and all of the publicity surrounding it, but when Ines called Luis Carlos to thank him for his generosity and ask if she could postpone, he told her that this was his early wedding gift to her. He had commissioned the castle especially to provide her and Quiñones a place to de-stress before their big day, and he could not change the dates. He hoped that she would accept his gift.
Luis Carlos had been her patron and primary means of support for years; Ines could not refuse him. Besides, she was touched by his gift and imagined that it meant that he was finally accepting her marriage—he had been behaving like a petulant child ever since her engagement had been announced. When she explained to Eduardo that the invitation was really a summons, her fiancé readily accepted. It was, after all, an all-expense paid vacation—it would be romantic and fun, and Switzerland would provide a great backdrop for more impromptu photos that they could leak to the Internet.
ψ
The final invitations to Helmick’s Swiss hideaway went to Vasana and Ishan. When Hemraj Ambani received the message and the accompanying package, he lost no time recommending them both. Vasana was now actively working to force him out of his father’s company, and Ishan was supporting her fully in the coup. Since his vision in the crystal, Ambani had thought repeatedly about having them both killed—a successful assassination would solve many problems. The primary impediment to this plan was that Vasana and Ishan were both in London surrounded by bodyguards. He could not afford to have a failed attempt at an assassination because both his sister and his brother-in-law would immediately suspect that he was responsible, and they would redouble their efforts to eliminate his interest in the empire.
A few days later Vasana received a hand-delivered sealed invitation at her hotel room in London. The handwritten note, inscribed clearly in her brother’s penmanship, was an invitation to meet him in Switzerland to discuss the terms of Hemraj’s “surrender”. Vasana was ecstatic—for all of her schemes, she and Ishan still did not have enough votes to depose him as chairman of the board, and they knew it. Still, she had worn him down with her persistence—she had never dreamed that it would be so easy. She and Ishan were practically dancing as they boarded their private jet to Switzerland.
ψ
At 8:00 Friday evening Kelly arrived at the castle where Heinz was waiting to greet her. In his left hand he held her description and the answers that Kevin Leeds had provided—what he wished her to remember and what he wished her to forget. He also had a copy of the cover story that had lured her to Switzerland. “Good evening, I am Heinz, your host for the conference this weekend. I am here to make your stay comfortable. You are the first of the students to arrive. We have prepared a special meal for you to welcome you to Switzerland. Allow me to show you to your room.”
As the remaining guests arrived, Heinz tailored his greetings to match the specific stories that they had been told. When Vasana and Ishan arrived, he informed them that Hemraj’s jet had been temporarily grounded for a mechanical malfunction and that his arrival had been delayed until the following morning. However, Hemraj had taken pains to have an exquisite meal prepared for them along with an exceptional vintage of wine.
Eduardo and Ines were the last to arrive. Heinz showed them to their rooms and informed them that His Majesty had ordered a bottle of Dom Pérignon White Gold to celebrate their upcoming wedding and that he would soon be delivering it to their rooms along with the feast that the king had requested in their honor.
Two hours later, the guests were served a sumptuous meal prepared by the enhanced Corteloni, and with it, their first tastes of Labyrinth.
ψ
By the end of the week, Heinz had completed all of his tests. The subjects were physically unharmed and unaware that they had been part of a science experiment. Through hea
vy dosing with Labyrinth and the use of visual and auditory stimuli, Heinz had attempted to erase the undesirable memories and replace them with memories that he had implanted. The experiment appeared to have succeeded; he had given each subject a polygraph as part of the “final exam”, and each had answered questions about his new identity with no detection of any trace of deception.
On the final day Heinz read over the criteria for each subject:
“Kelly Carpenter: I want her to forget everything that is important to her parents and ties her to them. I want her to remember everything that is important to her in her new life.”
“Vasana and Ishan Pai: I want them to forget everything about their previous lives. I want them to remember that they are work slaves from the lowest caste. They are less than dogs and are eternally grateful to Hemraj Ambani, who is like a god to them. They owe him their lives because he has allowed them to work as his servants, even though they do not deserve the honor of serving him.”
“Ines Jimenez and Eduardo Quiñones: I want Ines to forget that she was ever an actress or that she ever met Eduardo Quiñones. I want Eduardo Quiñones to forget that he ever loved Ines Jimenez. I want his memory of her to be so vague that if he were ever to meet her again, he would not recognize her. I want Ines to remember a life of total seclusion and her great love for the only man who was ever deserving of her. I want her to remember the passion and joy that only he could bring to her life. I want Eduardo Quiñones to remember that Ines Jimenez was killed in a plane crash shortly after they finished their last film together.”
The question for Heinz was whether the effects would last. On enhanced subjects similar experiments had produced permanent results, but since enhanced subjects often did not have a lifespan of more than eight or nine months, “permanent” was a very short time. Organic subjects were entirely different, and Heinz was not so sure that, over time, they did not have the capacity to reach deep into their own psyches and rediscover their true identities. To know the answer to that, he would have to rely on feedback from those who had submitted their names for the experiment in the first place.
ψ
Kelly Carpenter had returned to Harvard. Heinz had kept her family history exactly as it had been presented to him with one important difference—he had replaced Kelly’s memories of her work in church and her mission trip to India with memories of working for environmental causes and left-leaning atheist organizations. In her new memories her mission trip to India became an international conference for PETA, and her volunteer work had been for Planned Parenthood. She no longer wore her purity ring; Heinz had taken it from her when she was in Switzerland and had manipulated her memory so that she believed that she had abandoned purity at fifteen. She remembered that her parents were Baptists, but she no longer had any memories of having shared their faith.
She had not called her parents in more than a week. When she had first returned from Switzerland and they had argued with her about her new belief system, she had hung up on them. She was confused about why they both insisted that she had once embraced Christianity. She had never even pretended to share their faith, and she could not deal with their refusal to admit that. For the time being, it was easier not to have any contact with them.
Her conservative clothes had given way to shorter skirts and sexier, lower-cut tops. She was flirtatious, and her speech was peppered with profanity and suggestive comments. Professor Leeds noted the changes in her immediately, and he completely approved. Kelly was now his favorite student.
Now, Kelly constantly ridiculed Missy Mayfield, the only other student in the class from a Christian background. Missy was so irritating that Kelly could hardly bear to be in the same room with her. She hated everything about Missy, and she wanted to make her suffer for clinging to a faith that deprived its adherents of every pleasure life had to offer and for trying to force her beliefs on others. She had the odd feeling that a long time ago she had known Missy, or someone like her. It was not quite a memory; it was more of a fleeting glimpse of something from her past that she could never quite bring to the surface. She would sometimes feel it moving to the front of her brain, but before she could lock into it, it was gone.
Since returning from Switzerland, Kelly had been bothered by strange dreams. She dreamed of a trip to India where she was standing before a Hindu temple with a group of students who were involved in street theater, and she was performing stories from the Bible. She dreamed that she was attending prayer and Bible study in her parents’ home. She dreamed that she was serving Thanksgiving dinner at a homeless shelter and handing out tracts to those who had come there to eat. She was determined that these dreams were not going to interfere with her life at Harvard, but they were frequent and worrisome, and she wondered how she could have such clear dreams about things she had never experienced.
Several weeks later Kelly was on her way to her dorm when she saw Missy walking toward her. When Missy was directly in front of her, she stopped and said, “Kelly, today I was praying for you, and the Lord told me to tell you that Jesus loves you.”
As soon as Kelly heard those words she knew that they were true. She knew, no she remembered, that Jesus loved her. She felt as if she were emerging from a deep fog, and all of those memories that had been floating just out of her reach began to come back. She remembered her childhood in the small East Texas towns where her father had worked. She remembered the country church they had attended when she was ten years old. She remembered Jill, the pastor’s wife who had been in charge of the children’s ministry and the love for Jesus that she had instilled in Kelly. She remembered what she had wanted most in life. She had wanted to go to Bible College and earn her degree in children’s ministry, and then she wanted to marry a pastor and work in the church with him. Jill had influenced her more than anyone except her own parents, and Kelly had wanted to spend her life helping children know Jesus the way Jill had helped her.
The leaves were turning, and the campus was alive with gorgeous color. Kelly walked to the nearest bench, sat down, and began to cry. Through her tears she looked at the beauty of God’s creation and thanked Him for reminding her of what she had most wanted from life.
That evening she called home, and Jack answered his PCD. “Daddy, it’s Kelly. I love you, and I want to come home. I don’t want to stay at Harvard. I want to go to Bible College and work in children’s ministry. Is that okay?”
The call lasted for two hours. It was the happiest conversation of Jack Carpenter’s life.
ψ
The week after their trip to Switzerland, Vasana and Ishan awoke on Hemraj’s estate—in the servant’s quarters. Vasana pulled on a ragged one-piece dress that she imagined she had worn for many years and went to the kitchen to begin preparing breakfast for the family. She remembered Hemraj as her master—remembered that she had been born into the Ambani household as a servant with few more rights than a slave. When she was twelve, her mother had arranged for her to marry Ishan Patel—the gardener’s son who was now the gardener himself.
Hemraj was in a state of ecstasy when he saw the transformation. He had long fantasized about killing Ishan and Vasana but this—this was a thousand times better. They were now his groveling slaves. He could beat them, starve them, and work them late into the night. They remembered him only as the heir to the property and their master, and they were very grateful that he allowed them, undeserving as they were, to serve him. This was the most intoxicating feeling he had ever experienced.
During the long days, Vasana labored in the kitchen and at the laundry and performed arduous household tasks, and at night she returned to the servants’ quarters to sleep on the floor next to her husband and the rest of the household staff. All through the night, she was tormented by dreams of luxury in which she was no longer the servant but the mistress of such an estate. In these nighttime fantasies she wore designer clothing instead of rags. Her skin, now dry and unwashed and lice-infested, was perfumed and soft and radiant. She was respected and admir
ed wherever she turned, but each morning, as the first light came over the horizon, she awoke to the awful reality of her new life.
As Vasana’s dreams became increasingly more vivid, they consumed her. During the day as she performed her tasks, she fantasized that she was a princess who had been kidnapped and sold to Hemraj. After a few weeks, she began to confuse her fantasies with reality. Deep depression set in as her glittering dreams of former grandeur clashed with her newfound grinding poverty and slavish labor. One day she did not rise at first light with the other servants. When she did not respond to their calls, they left her where she lay. Later that morning, when it was fully light, the manager of the household staff went to the servants’ quarters and found her lying in a pool of her own blood. She had been stabbed in the stomach and had bled to death where she lay—the wound appeared self-inflicted. Considering her tenuous mental state, no one was surprised that she had apparently taken her own life. Ishan had disappeared without a trace.
ψ
One week after the trip to Switzerland, Ines Jimenez awakened alone in her apartment in Barcelona. In her absence, Luis Carlos had removed every trace of Eduardo—his personal effects and pictures had all been disposed of, so when Ines awakened, there was nothing to remind her of her former lover. Carlitos, who had been in the care of an enhanced nanny who knew nothing about either Ines or Eduardo, was returned later that day.
The following morning the king’s private secretary released a statement to the press announcing that Ines Jimenez had been killed in a plane crash in the Swiss Alps. A few days later, Luis Carlos transported Ines and Carlitos to a beach-front home he kept in the quiet coastal town of Alicante where she was to live in virtual seclusion except for his frequent visits.
The Force (The Kingdom Chronicles) Page 15
