Life: A Life Trilogy

by Travis Knoll

  "Дерьмо, you're so naive. Call it the banking system, the tax structure, a pile of sugar—hell, most of the monasteries that you see around in this area are built on it, call it the Devil, or something out of the Zohar. You could write a damn science fiction novel on this. It is all funneled to the same wealthy elite and the goal is the same, and that’s control," Alex said. She took long, passionate breaths between words, and looked at Talks and Signs.

  "Haven't you told him of the myth of the Mithra Man?" Alex asked. Talks and Signs both shook their heads.

  "I've heard rumors of something from the instapress. Who's Mithra exactly?" I asked.

  "In mythology, Mithra was said to be a mythical figure, with a double face of even a lion head. People in the Roman Empire worshipped him like he was their god," Alex said, and turned to Talks.

  "No one has ever seen him, but he is said to run the entire system and all the people in it. It's wicked hard to put into place someone you've never seen, or even know for sure is bad and exists. The Uprising continued against the oppressive governments’ system, but the instapress like you have seen has reported sightings of this mythological figure. Signs here started a rumor that the guy never fuken' shits, eats, or sleeps for that matter," Talks said, hitting Signs on the shoulder jovially. Signs took to signaling for him to fuck off.

  “He is said nowadays to be the spiritual counterpart of the Devil, as he knows both good and bad,” Signs signaled as Talks translated.

  We were all quiet sitting on the plush white leather couches that were strewn around the room. I was uncomfortable, as the answers weren't what I wanted and the tough questions were hard to ask in the first place. Alex was polite and could be a grand host. She walked to her wet bar that was lit where the liquor bottles rested by a lime green light illuminating a vignette around the bottles. She placed ingredients in the mixes and already knew apparently what we wanted to drink.

  "I remember the last job we did together. The Moscow mule back in 31. The effort to push the Uprising forward after the Red Square collapsed," Alex joked as she continued to make drinks.

  “Alex had passion enough to light the fire under people’s asses in D.C.; until that day, people were sitting on their hands. She is a legend in Uprising circles,” Signs signaled.

  "Yeah, Signs saved your ass from falling off the side of that building, and who—" Talks had his sentence cut short by Alex.

  "Who runs through the Red Square during the middle of the day in wartime. Hey, we're still in the fight, boys," Alex said.

  She took a sip of her Scotch. I had never met a woman that drank Scotch like a man, but resonated the demure elegance of a glamorous woman. She handed Talks and Signs each a Vodka tonic. It occurred to me that I thought that she was a brutal mix between James Bond and Angelina Jolie in their prime. I really didn't know how to place her in my mind. She could be a praying mantis waiting to eat me, but I didn't seem to care.

  "Where's your father, Tax?" Alex asked as she changed the subject and tried to create an emotional response.

  "He left when I was real young. My mother said he turned out to be some sort of businessman," I said, ashamed, as they were the Lifers oppressing us.

  "How does that make you feel?" Alex asked. She took an ice cube out of my drink and swirled it around her lips. The red, luscious lips melted the ice and myself as she handed my drink to me. She could work a room like James Bond and asked the right questions like a psychologist on a Freudian psychoanalytical treatment.

  "You know, I'm not marked. We could take advantage of this opportunity," Alex said. She spread her legs and straddled me on my lap and stared into my eyes. She didn't say anything, silence was her weapon, as she just looked clear inside me, toying with my thoughts. Her almost lime-green vibrant eyes mesmerized me, and I was under the spell of lust, and she knew how to get into a man’s head...

  "You're cute," she said. She played with my hair, twirling it with her right index finger. She spun her tongue around an ice cube in her mouth and pulled it out, licking her finger in slow motion. Talks and Signs tried to restrain from laughter, but I didn't even hear them, as for me our eyes were dancing together. She leaned closer to my ear, blowing soft whispers on my neck. I could smell the perfume, and the dark silky hair that caressed my neck made me think of Stephanie.

  "Did you build a back door in the application? You can tell me," Alex whispered.

  She locked eyes with me as she thrust her body further on me.

  "Yeah I did..." I said sheepishly.

  Alex immediately got off me and looked at the others stare at me in confusion.

  "That's how it's done, boys," Alex said.

  "You stinkin' Barney. Why didn't ya tell us when we asked you days ago, and you spilled it in thirty seconds," Talks said in a rant.

  "Power of the pussy, gentlemen," Alex said. She sipped her drink in an elegant fashion with her right pinky elongated off the glass, twirling it like a maestro conducting her orchestra, and walking away from playing me.

  "I didn't know if I could trust you guys. I'm sorry," I said.

  March 11, 2035

  Kiev, Ukraine

  Alex's -- Penthouse

  17:58

  Alex glanced at the clock on the wall and quickly went to the wet bar to grab a pair of ear plugs for each of us. She pointed outside, stating that the curfew bell was going to sound, and we instinctively stuffed them in our ears. I fumbled with one in a hurried fashion and it fell out of my right ear. I tried to cover my ear with my hand, but could still hear faint vibrations.

  A loud alarm from the curfew bell rang throughout the city, and a man came on in English stating the thirty-minute curfew warning, and to keep your eyes on the prize; it was finished with a female's operatic rendition of "You're a slave for me." Alex took the earplugs out and the rest of us followed suit. The right side of my head felt numb, and Alex noticed an erratic squinting of my right eye. She pulled a pair of de-hypnotizing glasses from her purse and placed them over my eyes to relax the hypnotic tones out of my mind that entered my right ear.

  "Your mind was fighting it," Alex said.

  "It's the same speaker as in America," I stated.

  "It's the same speaker everywhere, it's their hypnotic trigger," Alex said.

  "The English is irrelevant, but the time and words are the triggers," Talks added as everyone glared at me.

  I stood and tried to conceal my emotional intelligence between my legs. The others were pacing back and forth in front of me, and I knew that they wanted answers.

  "Listen, you told me that I couldn't trust anyone, and yes, I placed some secret sauce as a backdoor into the application," I said. I reached down to my sneakers’ compartment, pulled out the flash drive, and showed it to them.

  "This is the only way to activate it, it's the copy of the algorithm, and only I know how to access both," I said.

  "Well, let's fire it up," Talks said excitedly.

  "It has to be done through a private location and secure server, as there are going to be threats this time," I said.

  "What is this backdoor meant to do that you built?" Talks asked.

  "The backdoor, once activated from within the running application, can peel off small amounts of money from their transactions, and place it into a third-party anonymous offshore account. It is similar to the project I did with the bags in California, but on a massive scale."

  "How is it activated?" Alex asked.

  "This is the problem, and I am going to need your help to set up bots to run and engage the application’s security, and their security for that matter. This will be to keep them away from the algorithm, then I can activate the new one. I need your help to make sure their security doesn't signal anything while we go in and activate it."

  Alex's attention turned to an incoming message on her phone from an instapress notification. She turned on the TV tube to the Kiev news station ICTV, showing three men and a dog that were wanted criminals.
The world news had pinned the rise in taxes on the stated criminals. Furthermore, the headline read that the stated criminals were armed and dangerous and thought to be in the Ukraine.

  "The KGB and the SBU are going to be coming after you. This means everyone in the world now thinks that you're the criminals," Alex said.

  "Listen, pal, what are you going to need?," Talks asked.

  "I need your help to make this happen together," I said.

  They all nodded their heads in the room, agreeing to change the software.

  "I don't shit where I sleep," Alex said as she looked around her penthouse suit.

  “Yeah, we're trapped here if anything happens,” Signs signaled to Talks.

  "I know a place, and a guy that owes me a favor," Alex said.

  Illusion...

  "We have the right to do anything," you say -- but not everything is beneficial.

  "We have the right to do anything," you say -- but will we be mastered by anything?

  Freedom..?

  March 11, 2035

  Kiev, Ukraine

  Dnieper River

  19:57

  In 2014, there was a revolt that was titled the Euromaidan Revolution, where the people of the Ukraine revolted against their oppressive government. It was a revolt that ousted their President, took close to one hundred lives and injured thousands in the process, all in the name of freedom. Alex talked about how her people were strong and could fight, but needed a leader. She took us along the square where some twenty thousand people locked arms and stood for their freedom that they were willing to die for.

  The Independence Monument glittered gold at the top of the spear, and drew my attention to the Freedom Square. There was a large banner that stated “Freedom is our religion” with linked chains being broken underneath. I thought perhaps freedom should be our religion, or what was freedom anyway...

  "Why are people allowed out past curfew here?" I asked.

  "It's actually a propaganda alarm we call it. The alarm is the same, but is followed later on by the news that spreads propaganda of Russian or American dealings in the world to induce fear. They want to control our minds, and use fear as a trigger," Alex said. We walked through the square toward the open air of the Dnieper River.

  "It's to create Unlifes here and try to break peoples’ will. In our country they want to create Lifers to do the same," Talks said.

  I glanced at the sunset as it danced its last rays of the day off the Dnieper River. The cold air dispersed as I exhaled vapor from the e-cig. We walked along the side of the river, and watched as the Ukrainians walked from their places gathering material to burn for fire in large barrels for cooking and warmth. They completely had the middle class cut off, and their last hope for anything was truly the Uprising. The people lived on small rations of potatoes and canned vegetables and assorted breads—like other parts of the world, they survived.

  "How is the economy here?" I asked Alex.

  "There is still fight in the Lifes, but it is hard to fight if there is no food, and a lot have moved underground with their families for warmth after the sun goes down. This is what is left of the country’s middle class, as the government doesn't support small business," Alex said.

  I blew out the vapor from my e-cig as I stared in the eyes of perceived Lifes that were pushed to the edge of the river. They gathered in their own communities, collecting together around fire barrels, telling stories to their families of their past, trying to pass along traditional beliefs. They each looked into my eyes as I passed by and I could tell that they didn't want a handout; not a single one asked me for food or money. They wanted to fight and they were waiting on something. They clung to books like they were water, using them as a weapon, sharpening their mental knife, and this was their calm before their storm.

  My tour ended as we approached the underground. Alex knocked on a large metal door with a sign that read in Ukrainian Exit. We were clearly in the back alley of some bar that resembled something out of a medieval time.

  A metal slide in the center of the door opened to a juggernaut-looking beast of a man. His red-veined eyes moved around as he looked at all of us, sizing us up through the metal partition.

  "No Americans," the man said, and closed the metal slide with a sense of anger.

  "I thought you said you knew this guy?" I asked.

  "Relax, it is Ukrainian custom... A greeting," Alex stated with an agitated smile.

  Alex politely knocked on the door again and the metal slide opened to the same mass of a man, but in a bit of an angry mood.

  "I said no Americans, Alex," he said. Alex thrust her vapor pen in the metal slide to keep it open as he tried to force it closed.

  "You owe me, and you know it, Rocko," Alex said, as they shared a glance. Alex cleared her voice and talked to him in Ukrainian, vouching for us Americans that we were here to help. She stated that we needed a place to do some work for a bit. She smiled seductively and all of us watched as Rocko's heart softened.

  "Are they the ones on the TV tube, a part of the Uprising?" Rocko asked. His voice bellowed in a gregarious Slavic tone as he pointed his finger, piercing us with his eyes.

  "Yes, we're here to help, Rocko," Alex stated.

  Rocko slid the metal slide closed and I heard multiple locks being opened, that turned as the door creaked open like the lowering of a drawbridge in an ancient castle. He exchanged a hug and kiss with Alex and grabbed us, giving us extremely manly hugs. I felt my bones cringe as he squeezed me.

  Rocko was what was called a Cossack. He had his hair shaved on the sides and back and let it grow long on top; that was coupled by a free-flowing handlebar mustache. Cossack literally meant "Free man," and they were courageous fighters. "Come in, my friends. What do you need?" Rocko's deep voice commanded attention.

  "We're going to need the basement for a while. Is everything still functional?" Alex asked.

  "Of course, this is Rocko's place!" Rocko said. He patted his heavy monster paw on my back with continued amiable laughter.

  He tied his long hair in the middle of his head, tightly bound together with a rubber band, making it resemble a ponytail that touched his tailbone.

  "We need security as well," Alex stated.

  "For the Uprising," Rocko stated, clenching his fist and raising his arm.

  March 11, 2035

  Kiev, Ukraine

  Deluxe Nightclub

  20:39

  A labyrinth of dark stairs led to a thumbprint and retinal scanner. Rocko scanned himself and opened another large cold metal door that gave an even more textured feel to the medieval period club. I had goosebumps from the temperature change as I walked into the basement, which felt like a meat locker without the meat hanging in it.

  Another door opened and a faint dimly lit green light on the wall partially illuminated the room. Rocko grunted and pushed the green light, making it turn red, and the rest of the basement revealed a plethora of desk space with a few high-end computers on them covered in plastic.

  Rocko took the plastic cover off the computers, and blew the dust off, showing everyone the equipment in the room.

  "We will need a few hours. Thanks, love," Alex said, and she kissed Rocko on the cheek.

  "I got you, just do what needs to be done," Rocko said in his masculine baritone voice as he nodded his head and walked toward the door.

  "Let Rocko know if you need anything," Rocko said as his voice softened.

  I wiped my index finger on the desk and accumulated enough dust to create a sinus infection and blew it off gently.

  "How long do you think we'll need?" Talks asked.

  "Until it's done," I said.

  Rocko came back in the room and greeted us with some Ukrainian Revo and Vodkas for the late night ahead as a condolence for what we were doing.

  "Ukrainian vitamins," Rocko stated as he toasted with us.

  "To the Uprising," he said, and we all took the shot. I felt a
bit of euphoria looking around as he patted us all on the back, and even took time to pet Odysseus.

  "Rocko will watch out for you."

  March 11, 2035

  Kiev, Ukraine

  Deluxe Nightclub Basement

  21:29

  Rocko brought everyone another Revo with a shot of Vodka for energy. I thought that I really didn't have a vitamin deficiency at all and these drinks were making me fearless.

  "Alright, boys and girls, we won't have much time at this point, as the authorities already know that we're somewhere in this fine country. We will need to transfer the new algorithm to preexisting code to make it run in our direction," I said.

  "There will be three barriers that we're going to need to cross, and the security is set up as a tripwire, being more extreme after each barrier is crossed. They will be alerted, and trust me they will be able to locate us fast with the government security that they have in place. We hopefully have an hour before they locate us."

  We each sat at different computers around the office-style desk. Alex was by a laptop and she started to create bots as decoys to talk to the security in the system and make sure the application didn’t sound an alarm, if it did they would be alerted.

  Talks and Signs sat at a larger desktop-style computer with a setup to track traffic of where it was coming from to monitor the infiltration strikes and the precise locations. The computer started running and they automatically noticed data being exchanged from Russia, US and China that was monitoring the software, and caused the server to increase its load.

  I didn't know what I was doing and sometimes we rarely did. My mother said I leaped before I looked and my life would be an eternal Sisyphean tale. This was another boulder that I had to push up the metaphorical hill. I now knew what she meant, as I placed the flash drive in the older-model desktop-style computer. I used my information to garner access and become an administrator into the backend of the application, and was in. That was easy, I thought.