The Legend of Things Past (Beyond Pluto SciFi Futuristic Aventures Book 1)

by Phillip William Sheppard

  He held Tracee down. She struggled to maneuver out of his grip. Suddenly, she stopped and looked at him. Their faces were already mere inches away from each other. Tracee moved infinitesimally forward, her eyes drilling into his with curiosity, a blue steak of her hair plastered to her face.

  Donovan moved forward, too. At the last second, he moved his face to the right, never letting his skin make contact with hers, then whispered in her ear, “I win.”

  The wait continued. Donovan kept a physical distance from Tracee after their last encounter in the gym, but otherwise acted completely normally. He had to admit to himself that he had been sorely tempted to kiss her, and he couldn’t let that happen again. He didn’t want to give her any ideas either. Donovan had to think of his wife, his kids. They were the reason he was there in the first place.

  Finally, after a long week of waiting and very little sleep, Colonel McGregor stormed into one of their gatherings.

  “I’ve been looking for you guys everywhere!” he shouted. “How do expect anyone to deliver news at the first signs of progress if you hide away in a supply closet?!”

  “We were, uh…,” Jonathan said.

  “Where’s everyone’s watches?” Colonel McGregor asked. “I’ve been calling for hours.”

  They all spluttered for a moment, not wanting to admit that they’d silenced the watches so they could concentrate for a couple of hours. They hadn’t suspected that anything would happen this fast.

  “We were planning,” Tracee said quickly. “You know, a backup plan, in case you guys couldn’t figure it out.”

  “Well, no need for that anymore,” Colonel McGregor said. “It’s done.”

  “What?” Donovan asked. “So fast? How did…”

  “Do you want to sit here and question me or do you want to see it?”

  Donovan, Tracee, and Jonathan raced for the door.

  Colonel McGregor led them into the partition on the fifty-fourth floor. There was a single table in it and two chairs. On the table were piles and piles of papers covered in drawings. On top of the papers was a small black device.

  “How does it work?” Tracee asked.

  “You scan a person’s brain waves,” Captain Umar said, picking up the device and waving it in front of Tracee’s face. “Like so. Then you save the data.” Captain Umar pushed a button. “Then…” He pushed Tracee out of the door. “…you select the brain waves you want to track and hit the seek button.”

  Captain Umar pressed another button and the device started to hum in his hand, then it was beeping. He walked slowly up to Tracee. It beeped faster the closer he got. When he was within one foot of her, the device let out one last high pitched beep.

  “Target found,” it said.

  Chapter 10

  “Cloning will enable mankind to reach eternal life.”

  –Claude Vorilhon

  May 15, 2176

  Fort Belvoir, VA

  Donovan Knight

  They connected the device to the satellites on top of the building. It would give the device an infinitely wider range. They set it up to track any brain waves within a 2% similarity to Tobias’s. After another couple of days, it found what it was looking for.

  “It was a previously unknown planet,” Colonel McGregor was saying to General Umar. “We don’t know when Tobias discovered it, but the clone is definitely there. I have no doubt.”

  “Upon further investigation,” Captain Umar said, “we found that the planet is habitable. It’s nowhere near as flourishing with life as Earth, but it has water and breathable air.

  “In addition, when we looked through the pictures of Tobias’s lab we found one of this very planet with its coordinates. The location had been hiding under our noses the whole time. Tobias had placed a label on it. It said ‘Planet Lohiri.’ He’s named it. We have yet to find anything else.”

  “This is fabulous news,” General Umar said. “You guys did great work. Now it’s time to get a good night’s rest. Tomorrow, you’ll travel to this new planet to see if you can uncover more clues.”

  “Yes, sir.” They were dismissed.

  Donovan lay in bed that night wide awake, his mind still buzzing from all that had happened that day. It was late before his mind finally calmed down and allowed him to rest.

  The next day they set out for Lohiri. They suited up in space force uniforms. Even though tests had shown that the air was breathable, they wore oxygenated helmets just in case.

  They arrived on the quiet rocky planet but didn’t disembark. They stayed on the ship and observed the land from above, looking for anything interesting.

  They used the brain wave tracker to lead them to Tobias’s clone. Tracee flew the vessel in the direction indicated by the device. Eventually, they spotted a building. It was odd, being on an alien planet and seeing a structure that could have been built on earth. The landed nearby.

  They were surprised when nothing happened. There were no attackers—no Tobias there to confront them.

  It was pretty anticlimactic.

  “Well, let’s get moving. Can’t sit here all day,” Donovan said.

  “But what if it’s a trap?” Captain Umar asked.

  “Then if we fall into it, we’ll run for it. But we have to try and explore at least a little.”

  Reluctantly, they all left the ship. The weight of the guns and e-guns in their holsters was of some comfort. If Tobias did show up, at least they all had two types of weapons—one of them had to work.

  The building was a lot bigger up close. It reached into the purple sky, towering above their heads. There were a set of glass double doors under a three-story archway.

  Donovan felt like an ant.

  The doors opened when they approached.

  Donovan was suspicious. It was just too easy, too inviting. They walked inside. Donovan became even more alert to his surroundings. He heard the footfall of every comrade behind him.

  They crept further and further into the lion’s den, finding nothing but large, white echoing rooms and chambers, all of them empty.

  “This can’t be it,” Colonel McGregor said. “We can’t have come here for an empty building.”

  They delved deeper and finally came upon metal science equipment stored in the rooms. None of it was in use, but at least it was something other than empty air.

  Donovan led them into the largest room yet. It was filled to the brim with stainless steel. There were hundreds of devices, all of them exactly the same, lined up in perfectly neat rows.

  They each resembled a dentist’s chair. There were large tables and contraptions that hung over them sporting hundreds of tools, most of which had sharp points. Underneath each chair was a storage cabinet.

  “What the hell is all this stuff?” Captain Umar asked.

  Donovan realized that he recognized the devices. He hadn’t really been paying attention at the time, but there was one of these things in the secret room in Tobias’s lab back on Earth.

  These machines were used for cloning.

  With these machines, Tobias could make hundreds of clones at once. Based on his last encounter with a clone, Donovan thought that one was enough. The sight of the lab—designed for the mass production of human clones—chilled Donovan to the bone. It was extremely eerie. The emptiness made it even more so.

  They crept around the place, finding nothing but sterile equipment.

  Then, from seemingly nowhere, a figure appeared. It was a hologram.

  Tracee whipped out her gun in less than a second and fired. The bullet only disrupted the surface of the image, sending pixels scattering for a moment then landing in the far wall.

  The hologram smiled.

  Donovan looked at it in the eyes. “What is it that you find so amusing, grandfather?”

  Tobias raised his eyebrows. “Grandfather? I have no grandchildren that I know of.” He chuckled then. “Well, of course. They found the virus then. And of course they would use my invention and send my own descendants against me. Fools.
Tell me boy, what time are you from?”

  “2258.” Donovan didn’t know what else to do but answer him. Maybe he was just in shock.

  “So it took them that long, did it?” Tobias chuckled again. “What do you all want from me?”

  “The cure to this crazy virus.” Tracee said.

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” Donovan asked.

  The hologram sighed. “None of you would understand. You haven’t done the things that I’ve done. Seen the things that I’ve seen. It would be difficult to explain.” Here Tobias took on a mournful look.

  “Well, try anyway,” Donovan said. He was suddenly very angry. This man wasn’t his grandfather. This man who spoke in such a cloying tone. This man didn’t even know Donovan. And apparently the future version of Tobias didn’t care if Donovan lived or died, either.

  Tobias looked at Donovan for a moment as if searching for something in his eyes. Finally, he nodded. “Very well.”

  He paused, collecting his thoughts. “I grew up learning about the marvels and miracles of science in the slums of West Haven. The human race had saved the planet from destruction by ending global warming, they had brought back extinct species and rebuilt natural habitats, and they cleaned up and eliminated all of the world’s trash. It would seem that humans should be living in a utopia. But that was not that case.

  “Humans still hoarded resources. Greed, murder, theft—all were rampant, not only in the slums but in the rich cities. In fact, it was the rich who had access to unlimited resources who withheld life-giving materials from the poor. They charged us double for water and food. Living in the slums was a day-to-day fight for survival.

  “I’ve seen men murdered over a loaf of bread. Children beaten and robbed for a single bottle of water. They pitted us against one another, waiting for us to kill each other off. Police were no help. They were all corrupt. They would only help if you had enough money to pay them, and no one did except for drug lords and food smugglers.

  “Yes, I’ve seen awful, terrible things. Things that should never have happened when there was unlimited clean water, power, and food just ten miles away in the next city. I went to school religiously, studied every day so that one day I could escape from that evil place. I learned the sciences and created new things—things that I’d hoped to use to help people in the slums.

  “However, whenever I tried to use my inventions to aid the poor, the government stopped me at every turn. There was always some law, some reason why my plans wouldn’t work. To think, mere words on paper holed up in some congressional library stopped me from saving real human lives with my advanced technology!

  “That’s when I began to defy the government. I work with them now, yes, but I have long since stopped working for them, like some blind dog sent to its master’s bidding. I wouldn’t be their slave anymore. I would create justice, whether they liked it or not.

  “For a while, that’s exactly what I did—I created justice. I fed people. I clothed them. All anonymously, of course. But then a day came where I lost hope in even the victimized people of the slums.”

  Tobias paused for a moment.

  “I was married once, you know.” The hologram toyed with a golden band on its finger. A look of longing came across Tobias’s face. Then the look turned to anger and disgust.

  “My wife, Deidra. Your grandmother, if you’re really my grandson. And you must be—you look so like me, so like your father, too. Your grandmother knew about everything I was doing. I had met her in school. She was a biology major. Smart, beautiful, funny. She was a remarkable woman. She was born and raised in a wealthy city, but she visited the slums quite often, giving out food and water to those who needed it. She believed in my cause and she helped me.

  “One day, we were touring the slums at night with food. The meals were free and we came to this particular area frequently. There was a boy. About seventeen. We saw him every time we went. He was always very polite, always giving, sharing with his two younger siblings. That day, his little brother and sister weren’t with him. When I asked where they were he looked nervous.

  “We were beginning to serve the food when he pulled out an e-gun. He aimed it at Deidra. Three other boys, all of them a few years older, came over and pulled out guns too. The young boy commanded us to give him all of the food. I tried to talk him down, to awaken his empathy—there was a line of people, many of them children and elderly. But he wouldn’t listen.

  “He grew impatient with what he called my ‘rambling.’ He said he didn’t care about everyone else—so long as he survived and found a way to make money, he was happy. The food smugglers had made him a deal. They’d wanted to teach Deidra and me a lesson—we’d been stealing their business by giving away food. So they bribed the boy to rob us.

  “For good measure, he shot my wife in the heart. She died instantly, but I had to watch her body writhe on the ground from the electric shocks.”

  Tobias was caught up in the memory. The hologram was so clear that Donovan could see the tears well up in Tobias’s eyes. Donovan almost began to feel sorry for him. Tobias collected himself and continued.

  “I never returned to the slums again. Deidra was everything to me. The boy whom we had fed for months, showing him nothing but caring and kindness, killed my wife for a couple thousand dollars.

  “When I looked at the world around me, all I could find was corruption. Visits outside the U.S. did nothing to dispel those findings. Genuine kindness was a rarity. Everyone pursued their own ends blindly, never giving thought to anyone else.

  “That’s when I made my decision.”

  “What decision?” Donovan asked.

  He’d been listening to the story in half amazement, half horror. He knew the things that went on in slums—both Tobias and Nona had grown up in them—but he’d never heard of starvation and murder in the streets. Nona had never mentioned it. Perhaps Tobias’s slum had been worse than any of the others. Or perhaps Nona decided to keep that darkness to herself.

  “Why did you never tell me about my grandmother? You told me she died in a skycar accident.”

  “I don’t know, dear boy. I haven’t withheld that information from you yet, have I?” Tobias suddenly lost the gloomy air with which he’d told his story and chuckled at Donovan’s momentary lack of common sense. “But I imagine I will keep all this from you in the hopes of keeping you pure. I’ve never told any of this to your father, either. I’m hoping that he will be the just and loving ruler over one of my new countries on earth. Maybe the future me saw the same potential in you. It’s perfect, really, my own blood taking up the major leadership positions.”

  They all stared at Tobias in angry shock.

  Tracee was the first to react. “What? What do you mean, ruler of new countries?”

  Donovan was about to ask the same thing despite the fact that he had a good idea of what his grandfather would say.

  “Oh, hadn’t I gotten to that part yet?” Tobias waited dramatically. “The virus is designed to destroy the human race from the inside out. I’m going to kill you all and start over with a new human race—all of whom will be descended from me.”

  “You’re insane.” Colonel McGregor spoke for the first time.

  Tobias laughed—Colonel McGregor seemed to particularly amuse him. “I thought the same thing once. I said to myself—why Tobias, how can you create a whole human race from your own genes? It would never last—not enough diversity.

  “But then I came up with a brilliant idea. Surely, out of all the billions of people on earth, there had to be at least, say, a couple thousand worth saving. I began to look for people. I found a few here and there—people doing kind deeds, not for gain but out of the goodness of their hearts. Those were the people that I would save. Those were the people worthy of breeding with my master race.”

  This time Jonathan was the first to recover. “This guy must be shitfaced. He can’t be serious.” He shook his head, looking back and forth between Donovan and
the hologram. “He isn’t really serious right now, is he?”

  “I think he is,” Tracee said.

  Donovan stood, frozen. His mind couldn’t fathom it. Flashes of heat ran up and down his body. This man wasn’t his grandfather. He couldn’t be.

  “How could I have not seen this?” Donovan said. “I knew you. You raised me. How could I have not seen this—this madness?”

  “I can actually answer that for you,” Tobias said. “You see, I never really raised you. If what you say is true and you’re really from the year 2258, then I will have transferred my consciousness by then.”

  Donovan stared blankly.

  “The clone?” Tobias continued. He spoke as if to someone who was very slow. “The one you found in my lab? I created it as a blank slate. It doesn’t have a mind of its own, like the others. Essentially it’s just an empty shell. When this body becomes too old, I’ll transfer my consciousness into that one. However, this body…” The hologram pointed to himself. “…will retain an imprint of some of my memory and personality. Perhaps the Tobias that raised you went soft. Or maybe, as I said earlier, that version of me found something in you worth saving and decided not to spoil your innocence.”

  Tobias shrugged. “Maybe he chose not to show you this—ah—‘madness,’ as you say.”

  “That’s why my grandfather got sick! That’s why his mind began to deteriorate. He—he forgot who he was.”

  “Did he?” Tobias leaned forward. “I was curious what would happen to this body once I left it behind. Thank you for telling me that, dear boy. You have deeply satisfied my curiosity.”

  That’s when it all clicked. This wasn’t the man who Donovan had known. This Tobias was wrong—the grandfather he knew didn’t see him as a pawn to be used in his plans—didn’t see him as a future ruler—he genuinely wanted to protect Donovan from the horrors of the world.

  Donovan had not noticed any insanity in his grandfather—except on those rare times, probably when the evil in him took over—because it was never there. Donovan was convinced—when Tobias switched over to his new body he took most of his evil nature with him, leaving the empty body with mostly goodness.