Not even if they realised that something was wrong.
Because whoever he was and wherever he was, Jack now knew one thing with an almost simplistic degree of clarity. The hacker had been working for Simon.
Then that same sense of clarity delivered its death blow.
When Jack realised that the hacker had not, in fact, been working for Simon. The hacker was Simon:
‘Security is dire, I broke through the wire. If it ain’t tight, I’ll ruin opening night. It’s simple,’ and “We’re nearing the hour, so I’ve stolen your power. If you close off your doors I’ll use those that aren’t yours. It’s simple.”
‘Simple’. Not a gesture of the ease with which the hacks had been performed, but a teasing signature. A contemptible hint at deducing a name: ‘Simple Simon’. Jack could almost picture the bastard smiling as he hit the ‘SEND’ button, knowing full well that Jack, searching for clues each and every day, would still ultimately bypass the most obvious.
It hurt to know just how accurately he had been tested. How accurately he had failed.
“Get Phoebe in Liaison on the line,” he barked, his anger directed at the situation as opposed to his employee. “Tell her I need her campus team to contact each and every one of the sites. Tell her to stop those kids racing. They must not be allowed to complete the final puzzle, understand? Tell her to start with Peru and then work backwards on the leader chart.”
“But what about the forty-five minute activate?” Eric asked.
“I’m thinking,” Jack said desperately.
Eric took a deep breath and picked up the phone. Jack rubbed his eyes when the answer to his final puzzle failed to materialise. He could stop the kids, but not the forty-five minute system time-out. And now, unless he found that answer, thousands of poisoned fireworks located within one hundred and thirty nine of the world’s major cities would be launching in... he checked his watch... less than twenty minutes.
taketh not warning
Ezekiel 33:4
Joaquim lingered on the precipice of solving the final puzzle; I.T.WorX. As he had travelled along the valley floor in his quest to find the answers to the other three gateways he had barely even paid attention to smaller items such as the statues. He had assumed that they were there only to offer a higher attention to detail, to make the valley seem more ‘real’. He never thought for one second that one of them might have had a small silver lever on the top, least of all one of the two that he had passed every time he had gone in and out of the circular building.
When he realised his mistake he cursed angrily, causing sniggers to echo through the room around him.
They guarded the door. A man and a woman recreated in an early Roman style. The woman stood on one foot. She may have been running or simply reaching toward the clouds, it was hard to tell. High above her head she held a plate of fruit and grapes, presumably as an offering to her emperor or one of her many gods. The man held a similar plate, but his was empty.
Except for the small model of the lever.
At the other end of the valley Joaquim had been to the base of the stilts and looked up at the platform. He had seen that it had a hole cut into it; an access hole. Now all he needed was a ladder with which to climb to the top. Embedded in a rock at the side of the stilts was another clicking system. But this one was alphanumeric containing three reels. Each reel had a button underneath which advanced the reel by one more letter or number. All he had to do was find the code, and he realised now that the statues might just offer it.
The carving of the woman was titled; ‘The Medicine of Woman - Ochoa 1959’ and that of the man; ‘The Physiology of Man - Kornberg 1959’. Whilst some children, choosing I.T.WorX as their first puzzle, had wasted many minutes travelling back down the path and advancing the letters on the reels to read ‘M.A.N’, Joaquim had realised that the date, ‘1959’ was probably his major clue. As all the other answers had been discovered within the round building, as opposed to just outside the door, he had gone back inside and started to scrutinise the shelves. There, in amongst the various objects, he had found a small statuette of two suited men, arms draped across each other’s shoulders as they held a prize aloft in victory. The title of the statuette said it all:
ARTHUR KORNBERG AND SEVERO OCHOA
Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine - 1959
What Joaquim did not know, however, was what the men had done in their field to deserve a Nobel Prize. Fortunately, he could think of a book that might be able to tell him.
When he had been removing the leather-bound volumes from the shelves to uncover the socket that powered the lava lamp, Joaquim had noticed that the third book along had been titled ‘Alfred Nobel - War and Peace’. It was a crude reference to Nobel’s transition from a pioneer of mines, torpedoes and dynamite to a benefactor who bequeathed $9 million dollars in his will to fund the various prizes that now bear his name.
He quickly found the book once more, focused and clicked. It appeared face-on in his centre of view and he double-clicked the cover to reveal a contents page. After searching the list he selected the final chapter; ‘Nobel Prize Winners 1901 to date’ and with a computer-generated flicking sound the pages turned accordingly. As the crowd watched with baited breath his view descended to 1959 and he saw the names he needed. In the same year as the unfortunately titled Salvatore Quasimodo had won the Literature Prize; Yaroslav Heyrovsky had won the Chemistry Prize; Segré, Chamberlain and Baker had won the Physics Prize; and Philip J. Noel-Baker had won the Peace Prize, Kornberg and Ochoa had indeed been the recipients of the Physiology or Medicine Prize. It had been awarded to them for their pioneering work in the artificial synthesis of DNA.
The Double-Helix.
The Ladder of Life.
IntelliSoft were very clever, he thought. They had deliberately avoided choosing Crick and Wilkins, the men who had discovered DNA because they must have realised that those two names might have been known to some of the brighter kids. That would have negated the children checking the books. Instead, for the opening of the door to the Science and Technology River, they had chosen Kornberg and Ochoa. The men who had been the first to synthesise DNA from off-the-shelf substances.
He retreated from the circular building and back down the path. When he reached the stone, he pressed the three buttons until the reels read ‘D.N.A’ and a glittering representation of the helical strands of deoxyribonucleic acids began to build from the ground up. As the ladder built toward the opening in the platform he watched in awe at the way in which the computer-graphic artists had excelled themselves. When it was complete, he began his ascent.
At the top of the ladder he pulled the silver lever and smiled broadly beneath his visor. A small screen embedded into the platform burst into life and read:
I/S I.T.WorX IS NOW ONLINE
PLEASE SELECT YOUR DESTINATION
Had Joaquim actually selected a destination then the valley below would have filled with water beneath his feet until the platform became a raft sitting on its gently rippling surface. He would have been floating down the ‘I.T.WorX River’ and being offered the option of alighting at numerous ‘banks of knowledge’. Instead of which the young boy was already at the base of the ladder and heading back toward the circular building. He knew that he was leading from the cheers echoing behind him as his hand pushed the chair’s control lever as far forward as it would go.
Throughout it all, Maria was praising him with patriotic spirit. It looked as if her boy might do her proud. Behind them both, the cheers grew louder and louder.
Consequently, not one person in the room noticed that both the direct-link IntelliSoft phone and Maria’s personal cellphone were now ringing. Blinded by the regular strobing of camera flashes, they did not even notice the tiny flashing lights on both systems which were attempting to announce the incoming calls.
prepare thy brethren
2 Chronicles 35:6
In the diminishing heat of a late Mediterranean afternoon, General Ke
rr ran the full length of the corridor of the main building until he reached the door which would offer him access to the main hangar. It was behind this door that most disciples were currently being held. Two armed Marine clones were standing outside and being assigned orders by their immediate superior, Captain Tim Hawke. Kerr overheard the command for all Marines to report for immediate duty. The two saluted their Captain and ran respectfully past the General, rifles held diagonally across their chests.
“What’s going on?” Kerr asked.
“Well Sir, I really couldn’t tell you. Because, if I’m honest, it kinda beats the shit outta me.” He shook his head. “You’d better take a look for yourself.”
Opening the door to the refectory, Kerr saw a line of armed Marines standing inside, their weapons lowered and trained toward five neat rows of disciples. Every one of the three hundred and twelve adults had moved into the centre of the room and all were kneeling down on the floor with their shaven heads bowed low. They had arranged themselves into five perfect lines of sixty eight disciples each. And now it seemed as though they were praying aloud.
“They’ve been like this for the last five minutes,” Hawke said. “I was in here when it started. I tell you; it was the weirdest thing I ever saw. They were all doing their own thing, all behavin’ themselves, and then...” he clicked his fingers, “..just like that, they all stand up and move into the middle of the room. At exactly the same time, like they’d just heard an order or somethin’. Never said a word to each other, never looked at each other, nothing. Then they just started mumbling.”
Kerr walked slowly through the line of Marines and between two rows of disciples, looking one by one at their shaven heads. Halfway down the line he crouched close to hear what they were saying. They all spoke the same words, repeating them over and over:
Into thy hands, into thy hands, into thy hands....
“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” he said quietly to himself. The last words spoken by Jesus on the cross before he died.
As he lifted himself to his feet and continued along the line, Kerr noticed that the second to last disciple on one of the inner lines had lifted his head, thereby breaking the symmetry. With his piercing blue eyes, #224 looked directly back at the General and smiled. The most mischievous, evil smile that the General had ever seen. Kerr stared for a moment, then shook his head gently, turned and walked back through the marines.
Captain Hawke shrugged. “It looks to me like they’re expecting something, Sir, but I’m darned if I know what. I’ve put all men on standby for a possible assault. If that’s what they’re planning then they can forget it. There ain’t nobody getting into or out of here.”
Kerr laughed quietly to himself. “I think I know what they’re waiting for,” he said with a knowing curl to his mouth. “They’re not waiting to be rescued..,” he offered, looking back to #224, the pale cobalt of his eyes still locked firmly onto his own. “...They’re waiting to be saved.”
at the time of the end,
many shall run to and fro,
and knowledge shall be increased
Daniel 12:4
Jack could barely conceive that this was happening. He had assumed that by stopping the leaders he would buy himself almost twenty minute’s leeway. It might not be enough, but it was a start. He never thought for one second that the personnel in Lima would fail to answer their phones. But they had, and all the while Joaquim Aldez was heading obliviously toward completion. The fireworks were still going to launch and it was still the Peruvian kid who was going to do it.
Another clap of thunder echoed across the campus, the lights in the subterranean hall flickering in synchronicity to the gentle gasps of the attendees.
Outside, Warner was the one worried face in a sea of excitement. The crowds, deliberately disregarding the storm and oblivious to the danger they were facing, could not wait for the young Peruvian to herald the eagerly anticipated launch. Most of those assembled were staff and this was their moment. It was the realisation of months of hard work and it was going to be nothing short of glorious.
Many had noticed that Jack had run from the podium, but no-one seemed to be particularly concerned. He was a busy man who had probably been called to attend some kind of technical problem. Or, knowing Jack as they did, he had forgotten to bring the second part of his speech.
Warner knew otherwise. He was as aware of the danger as he was of the fact that there was nothing he could do about it. He was locked in a chair, helpless. On screen the kid’s own view showed that he had completed puzzle number four. All he had to do now, apparently, was go to the very top of the glass tower and pull a switch. A switch that would herald something catastrophic.
The earth started to shake. Violently.
Lying across the highly unstable San Andreas fault it was an occasional occurrence, but yet it chose to happen now. Los Angeles was suffering an earthquake. Usually they were quite small, nothing more than a tremor.
Not this one. This one was big.
Parts of the scaffolding started to break and fall into the rain-soaked grass as the poles holding the marquee buckled under the sudden pressures exerted. The crowd began to scream, their previously motionless bodies suddenly falling over each other to run toward whatever vision of safety they could perceive. Some of the press continued to shoot their cameras, capturing the panic as they saw only one thing; a collapsing launch adding thousands more sales to their morning issues.
Eventually even the bright, clean image on the plasma-screen flickered and died as the framework began to wrench under the strain. Watching the structure loom like a cloaked devil toward his chair, Warner pulled the lever hard, but the electrics had shorted in the rain. With every ounce of strength he could uncover he reached down to the wheels and began to manually push himself to safety. A split second later the screen fell, shattering in an explosion of orange-yellow sparks which bounced across the waterlogged tarmac behind him.
The trees started to strain in the heavy winds of the storm as the skies fell darker and the halogen lights began to fail in quick succession. With an eerie sense of structured timing, the entire campus was thrust into the gloom created by the blanket of dark cloud.
Warner looked to the firework module, saw that it was intact and knew that they could still be triggered at any moment. Unless Jack managed to halt the launch everyone was going to die. He was not even afforded the time, or the ability, to run around the Lake and make an attempt to disconnect them. Even if he had possessed either, he was still unaware that the precautions requested by Jack for launch day would have made the task impossible. With an almost uncharacteristic sense of serenity, he rested his elbows on the arms of his shuddering wheelchair, clasped his hands together in the falling rain and rested his chin across the triangle they formed.
“Come on, Jack,” he said quietly, as though praying to God himself. “Don’t let us down.”
* * * * *
In the gelatinous claustrophobia of the subterranean room the lights flashed on and off, struggling to reap enough power for life. The concrete flooring still shuddered with demonic violence and everyone, Jack and Eric included, was thrown unceremoniously to the floor. Fine lines began to spread through the glass of the control room windows, eventually meeting in a complex spider-web of refraction until they shattered the material they had steadily consumed. Because it was always designed to be housed in California, however, the Quotient system had been engineered from the outset to withstand such forces. Throughout the panic and confusion it swayed back and forth, the forces dissipated by four level rubber dampers, and continued to operate with one hundred percent efficiency. Even though this had steadily become the one day that Jack had actually wanted his prized system to fail.
In the instant before the tiny monitor screen fell to the floor and shattered, Jack saw the view from Joaquim Aldez’s system. The Peruvian was entering the elevator for the final time. Even if the phones were answered now, he would probably have reached
the gold lever already. He might even have pulled it.
It was too late; there was nothing he could do now except pray. But he no longer knew who to.
Then, as quickly as it had started, the earthquake stopped.
* * * * *
Joaquim went back inside the circular building, his practised hand now more than suited to dexterous operation of the controls, and entered the elevator. He turned, pressed the ‘UP’ button and watched as the beauty of the valley grew smaller beneath him. He stepped outside when the elevator reached the platform.
“Damn,” he said and he heard Maria sniggering. He had forgotten to go up to the top level.
He quickly turned around, went back into the elevator and pressed the ‘UP’ button for a second time. The arrow flashed green, his view was steadily lifted onto the roof of the platform and there, directly in front of him, was the gold lever.
His final goal.
* * * * *
Jack looked through the shattered glass to a much smaller monitor screen mounted on the wall of the main room and closed his eyes. “Don’t pull it,” he said quietly. “Please God, kid, don’t pull it.”
On the ground above, Warner took a deep breath. He wondered if it might be the last breath of clean, life-giving air that he would ever take.
4180 miles away, Joaquim Aldez stepped out of the elevator for a second time, focused the circle on the glistening gold of the lever and clicked the button on his chair with a victorious smile.
* * * * *
Each of the seven seals had systematically been broken down, each offering more and more information about the world in which the Lara Unit had been created. It had been a relatively easy task, if somewhat time consuming, for her high-power array of processors. The initial primer was the key to the first seal and the first seal had become the primer to the second. On and on it went, each seal unravelling the clue to the next. It was an extremely complex coding structure which might have taken a lesser system weeks to complete the task. Yet it had taken the Quotient which ran the Lara Suite less than five hours.
Codex Page 49
