by Martha Carr
“We could even do open source marketing. Ideas worth spreading around that we can post and let others test market,” said Daniel.
“Nice. It’s the next level of democracy that gives universal access to an idea,” said Ned, finally getting excited. That’s what really mattered to him most. The idea of finding a way to have a real democracy.
“Once an idea is solved by someone it doesn’t have to be done again because we shared that baseline out in the open. Well, our open market.”
“I’ve been meaning to tell all of you. Thanks for letting me even be part of the Butterfly Project. I’m not exactly a member,” said Ned.
“You are as far as we’re concerned,” said Daniel, fiercely. “You’ve had to fight to stay safe and be heard just as much as the rest of us. Maybe a little more. I know we’re all glad you’re here,” he had said.
Tears filled Ned’s eyes as he remembered that one late night talking to Daniel. It was the first time he really felt like he was a part of the Project and these were his brothers and sisters, his family.
He didn’t like keeping all of this to himself and not telling his parents or grandmother but he had made a promise to the Project and he planned to honor it. No exceptions. They had all agreed.
He looked out of the window as his mother made her way back toward the house.
Things had changed so much in the past year. Now, he only had an approximation of Daniel’s location. They had agreed he would get rid of his phone and anything else that could be tracked. He kept his laptop in a metal-lined box specifically designed to keep out any possible GPS signals.
A general itinerary was left with Ned to follow and check-in calls were set up. Daniel was to use a different disposable phone for each one and then promptly throw them away. The computer would come out for FaceTime only when absolutely necessary.
He had successfully made his first two check-ins, surprising Ned and calling from his laptop on the second call.
“I want you to see this,” Daniel had said, holding up the pile of notebooks. “He’s planning some kind of environmental warfare,” he said, his voice cracking. He was flipping through one of the small notebooks. Ned could see a pile of them in front of the screen.
“What?” Ned had said. He felt like his breath had been punched out of him. “What exactly does it say?”
“Something about aerosolized Japanese encephalitis. I looked it up. That shouldn’t even be possible. Why would he use that? It’s already got a vaccine and a cure,” said Daniel, a look of worry and shock on his face.
Ned had felt something hard in the middle of his chest. The feeling came back to him, sitting in his bedroom alone, thinking about what Clemente was up to, right now.
This was a lot worse than anything they had to deal with before. Even worse than kidnapping his father.
“About half of people who contract it die,” said Daniel, the last word dropping off into silence. It was a moment before either of them had spoken again. “He wants to commit mass murder,” said Daniel, the tears coming down his cheeks.
“No,” said Ned, starting to see a pattern. “Not mass murder. That would only be a side consequence. I don’t think he cares about that one way or another. You know he never has cared about the body count. Murder for murder’s sake has never interested him. I think it’s the vaccines, or rather the probable lack of enough of the vaccines. A workable supply. It’s another distraction. A mass, worldwide distraction that has the added benefit of causing a lot of fear,” said Ned.
“That’s his Plan B. His real aim is somewhere else that we’re not seeing. I’d bet anything the encephalitis is his leverage, just in case. Have you read all of the books yet? Thank God you took them all.”
“Clemente is way too paranoid not to notice one missing, despite what my mother said. He probably already knows by now, so watch your back because he’ll suspect you before he thinks of me. He doesn’t know I exist. He’ll see my face and think I’m working for you.”
“How far have you gotten?”
“Sorry, this is so much to take in. I’ve only read through a couple of them. The handwriting is pretty small and every line is taken up with something. Hang on, let me grab something,” said Daniel.
He moved away from the screen for a moment and Ned was left looking at the cheap headboard in a motel somewhere in the middle of the country, heading south. The next day, Daniel would be getting back on the road early, heading for a home deeper in the South.
“Okay,” said Daniel, sliding back into his seat in front of the screen. He was holding up another small notebook, this time in a dark green. “This other set that was in the box is different. Look,” he said holding up an open page in front of the computer. There were lists of names with dates and numbers and short descriptions.
“Hey, I recognize some of those names,” said Ned. “That’s a Senator from North Carolina and isn’t that the guy who was named head of some car company? What’s that stuff written underneath?” said Ned, squinting at the screen.
“It looks like dates and I’m thinking more safe deposit boxes my mother never knew about. There’s a short description underneath each one. Like that Senator, it says something about a deal he made for some law he pushed in his state. I think these green notebooks are all an outline to the dirty secrets he had on different people. From the looks of it my father has been collecting this information for decades. It explains a lot, like why there hasn’t been an army out to shoot him. They don’t know where the information is being kept.”
“The original low-tech guy,” said Ned. “His own air gap style of doing things. If it weren’t for your mother, we would have never known. It’s a pretty smart strategy. My parents are the same way. Except with them, I’m pretty sure it has more to do with confusion.”
They both laughed, easing some of the tension.
“Should we be telling someone else about this?” asked Daniel.
“Probably,” said Ned, “but I’m not sure who or how much just yet. We need to figure out the scope of what you’re holding, and get you someplace safe and secure, first. You matter more.”
“Thank you, I mean that,” said Daniel.
“Does it say anything in that other notebook about when he’s going to try and release this poison spray?” asked Ned, rubbing his hands together, trying to hide how scared he felt.
“Not that I’ve found so far. It looks like he’s still in the testing phases but we can’t be sure. There’s no mention of a timeline.”
“So, we have to act as if it could be soon.”
“Until we can figure out what he’s really after. That would tell us when he would need to do it,” said Daniel, “of if he needed to do it. I need to get some sleep but I’ll try and read some more before I get back on the road. There’s isn’t much time for any of this.”
“Send me photos of as many pages as you can in Pastebin and I’ll take over some of the reading,” said Ned. “I can transfer the writing into copy so that it can be more easily shared. This may have to be our first test run of the crowd sourcing.”
“It’s like you’re a new kind of Keeper,” said Daniel. “More of an anti-Keeper. Share everything.”
“That’s what I’m hoping,” said Ned. “I just didn’t expect for it to be tried out on something so deadly.”
“That’s my dear old dad,” Daniel had said, the strain showing on his face. “Wish me luck.”
That last conversation was just yesterday and true to his word, Daniel had uploaded over a hundred pictures to Pastebin before he broke contact. By now, the computer was back in its metal box and Daniel was driving as fast as he could toward his final destination.
Ned skimmed the pages and fed them into a program, translating the handwriting into more readable copy. He then sent out a general alert to the Apollo network asking for help, uploading all of Clemente’s careful notes.
“Now or never,” said Ned, as he pushed the button to publish the notes on their secure network. He left
instructions that nothing be shared or copied on any other site or program unless the computer had no internet connection of any kind. Anyone who could build on what was in there with new information or theories were to add it in directly to the secure site for everyone to see.
No interlocking cells, no committee to run it by. Everything in the open. He chewed on a fingernail, hovering over the button to press that would release their second puzzle. The first had been to just locate each other and gain a better understanding of the two sides running the world.
Now, they needed the rest of the story on each of the scandals listed in the green moleskin notebooks so they could use the power against George Clemente.
It was a longshot but enough of the Butterfly members were out in different communities, sitting in influential positions. Some of them might know more about some of the scandals in the notebooks.
Ned pushed the button and held his breath. “Worth a try,” he said, “and at the least, an open democracy. We will not back up,” he said, determined to make it real. He looked back out the window at his mother just turning at the corner of the house, looking at something before she slipped it into her pocket.
“We will all have to start telling the truth,” he said.
Chapter 3
Helmut stood on the vast plain of the Tibetan Plateau, thirteen thousand feet above sea level, trying to catch his breath in the high altitude. It had taken him a week to acclimate enough to travel this high so he could meet with his source.
The Himalayas, which formed most of the southern boundary of the plateaus, rose up twice as high. Just the thought of going higher made his chest feel tighter. The altitude gave him a constant state of nausea and he hadn’t felt warm since he arrived. Even though he was wearing thick wool-lined gloves, his hands were still slowly going numb.
He tilted back his head, taking another sip of water from the bottle he’d been carrying with him for days, looking around at the open landscape of glaciers, alpine lakes, waterfalls and riverbeds. Helmut had been drinking as much water as he could hold, trying to ward off the headaches that usually came from traveling this high in the world in the Tibetan Highlands. He was standing alone along a road that passed for paved that ran between flat, empty fields, surrounded by frozen mountains in the distance with clouds shrouding their tops. Everything but the sky was shades of grey.
He had come all that way to listen to Ngawang, a director from the Tibetan Academy of Sciences explain to him the significance of where they were standing.
Helmut and Ngawang could hear the newly built railroad line the Chinese had recently finished across the plateaus, as it raced by along its seven-hundred-and-ten-mile course from central China, all the way to the Tibetan capital of Lhasa.
“You hear that sound?” asked Ngawang. “That is a part of the answer to your puzzle,” he said. He was a slight man, standing only as high as Helmut’s shoulder and despite the dire story he was telling, he seemed perfectly calm.
Helmut had been given his name by a source in Angola and was told to go and meet Ngawang in person if he wanted to find out anything. The man had learned to trust no one as a means to stay alive under the Chinese regime that had taken over Tibet and he was overly cautious. Helmut quickly learned he was willing to talk, though, when he could in order to tell the world what was happening.
“That sound is the train that brought the Chinese police to Tibet in numbers we cannot defeat. This plateau and the rivers that meet here is the reason why they spent billions of dollars to build those train tracks. Many who traffic out of greed for the wallet think it’s to gain control of Tibet’s vast reserves of copper, iron, lead and zinc but that’s only a happy coincidence that may help them eventually write off the cost of the train. This is all about water. This is a new kind of greed. The greed of survival,” he said, nodding his head.
Helmut looked down at the map Ngawang was showing him on an iPad. “This is the headwaters for many of Asia’s largest rivers, including the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Brahmaputra, Salween, and Sutlej, and then some. Almost half of the world’s population lives in the watersheds of the rivers whose sources lie on the Tibetan Plateau,” he said, holding out his arm to take in the view that surrounded them. “This is the source of the relationship between Mother Earth and her people. Human beings all over India and China and Pakistan depend on this water to live, to worship, and to build a life and for centuries they have been taking it for granted. There are thirty-seven rivers that flow into India that start their journey here. But there’s a problem.”
“Deforestation, mining and manufacturing,” said Helmut, ticking them off on his fingers. “I did some research.”
“Yes, you did and you are right. The rapid growth in China to become a first world country and build bigger and better cities has come at a price that is being felt even here. The cutting down of the trees has led to large-scale erosion and silt falling into the rivers. Water pollution has increased and is becoming a problem. But that is not the biggest concern.”
“How does all of this relate to George Clemente? My records show he only started visiting China in the past couple of years,” said Helmut.
“I’m getting to that,” said Ngawang. “Mr. Clemente is well known in this region, and like all of the other problems we face, is only a piece of it and not the entire picture. To understand his importance, you have to understand the bigger picture.”
“You’re talking about the glaciers, aren’t you?” asked Helmut.
“Very good,” said Ngawang, smiling, giving a slight nod. “It’s not often that someone comes so well prepared. This must matter a great deal to you.”
“More than I probably even know it should,” said Helmut, thinking about Clemente.
“The glaciers have stored more freshwater here than any other place on earth except the North and South poles. But the warming trend has caused the glaciers to recede at a rate of three feet per year. I know you’re German, it is point nine meters. That affects over forty-six thousand glaciers in China. That’s faster than anywhere else in the world and with darker consequences. At least five hundred million people in Asia and two hundred and fifty million people in China are at risk of having the equivalent of electrical brown-outs from declining glacial flows on the Tibetan Plateau,” he said.
“You’re saying a staggering number of people would have to go without water for parts of the day,” said Helmut.
“Or in India or Pakistan for an entire day or two,” said Ngawang.
“How far away is this future?”
“Not as far as you’d like. You are standing on the highest and largest plateau on Earth. It stretches one thousand, five hundred miles from east to west, and nine hundred miles north to south. To put it in terms that are easier to grasp, it’s an area that is equivalent in size to the entire area east of your Mississippi River in the United States.”
Helmut let out a low whistle.
“In thirty years these glaciers,” Ngawang said, pointing to the south, “could all be gone. A thing of the past. They are already melting into rocky and impassable mountain ranges. It’s why China is intent on controlling this region. You can see now why the train and these violent skirmishes are a small price to pay. To compound things, more than a quarter of China’s land could already be classified as desert. Dust storms rage in Beijing every spring and hundreds of square miles of Mongolia’s grasslands now return to desert each year. The Chinese government has tried to manage the problem by planting thousands of trees as a barrier but it’s not nearly enough. Many of their rivers have become so polluted from manufacturing or construction or filled with silt that they are already falling short of enough water for one point three billion people.”
“Already smells of desperation,” said Helmut, digging his hands into the pockets of his long down coat to try and warm them. The elderly man next to him didn’t seem bothered as he continued with his story.
Ngawang was wearing a heavy sheepskin blanket that had one sleeve a
nd was tied around the waist by a yellow and black embroidered sash that mirrored the embroidered edge of the blanket. Underneath appeared to be a long, white cotton shirt with a straight collar, and dark blue cotton pants. The only Western accommodation appeared to be the Timberland hiking boots.
“Oh, absolutely,” said Ngawang. “There are plans being pushed to build dams for hydropower and canals to move the freshwater as the Himalayas melt to hundreds of miles north and east to the farmlands and the cities.”
“Which will mean India and Pakistan could run out of water.”
“Exactly. How long will China’s neighbors put up with this before riots break out or worse, wars. Everyone will feel a ticking clock and as people start to die from a lack of water they will become increasingly willing to use even harsher methods, like dangerous bombs. Nothing will seem too drastic. Even China realizes this and would take an alternative solution to manage the water and reduce the tensions in the region, if they had one.”
“Why do I feel like we’re finally coming to George Clemente?” asked Helmut.
“I like you,” said Ngawang, smiling and pointing at Helmut. “But don’t get too far ahead of me. There are still some twists to this story. Oddly, no other researchers are looking into this problem. Part of that may be because of China’s dislike of outsiders, including me,” he said, smiling wryly.
“Part of it may be because this problem isn’t limited to Asia,” said Helmut.
“My friend insisted I meet with you,” said Ngawang, the wrinkles around his eyes deepening as he smiled, “because he believed you would actually offer some movement forward in our struggle. I am coming to the same conclusion.”
Helmut shifted his feet and paced a short distance as much to get the blood flowing in his frozen feet as it was to reduce the panic he was feeling at the size of the problem. It wasn’t helping that George Clemente was thrown into the mix.
“Seventy percent of Earth is already water,” said Ngawang, but only two and a half percent is freshwater and only one percent is accessible to living things to drink. If this problem is allowed to continue it will create an entire world of refugees. This is truly the first problem that will have to be faced by an entire race at the risk of losing most of earth’s inhabitants to a violent and sickening end.”
