by Jacob Whaler
Backing out further, he follows the column of red text up with his eyes to the point where it’s green. As he gazes at the place names forming the list, they fade from red to green in slow motion, line by line down the list. Reaching his hand out to a line that had just switched to green, he brushes his fingers against it, reading the words.
Rio de Janeiro, Cristo Redentor. Detonation confirmed.
He presses the words with the fingers of his left hand, but the color doesn’t change back to red. Again and again he pushes on it with no change. His pulse quickens as the words on the next line below fade from red to green.
Havana, Plaza de Armas. Detonation confirmed.
A river of cold sweat runs between his shoulder blades. This time, both hands shoot out, caressing the words, willing them to change back to red.
Red is safe. Green is death.
But nothing happens. The words change to green, like a river of liquid concrete, slowly flowing down the list, hardening into stone with each step, unstoppable, immovable.
Miami, South Beach. Detonation Confirmed.
In desperation, he raises the Stone in both hands and brings the point of it down on the next line of text that is still red, willing it to stay red.
Graceland Mansion, Memphis.
A blue horizontal line shoots out from the tip of the Stone just above the text. Everything below the line falls away and disappears in the darkness below Matt. In its place, two words materialize, the color of sky blue.
Algorithm terminated.
CHAPTER 120
Kalani jumps to his feet, staring at the words on the bluescreen.
Algorithm terminated.
“What just happened?” Jing-wei says.
“I don’t know.” Kalani brushes his fingers on the screen again and again with no response. “It just ended, in the middle. The rest of the algorithm is gone. I don’t understand.” He looks around in desperation. “Ryzaard is going to kill us.”
The holo face of Ryzaard rises up out of a jax on the desk. “We were only halfway through the sequence when it stopped. Status report, please.”
Kalani’s face is almost as white as his teeth. “I don’t know. The algorithm was moving according to plan. Everything playing out perfectly until—”
“Until what?” Ryzaard’s eyebrows drop into a deep scowl.
Kalani’s fingers move back and forth on the screen, searching, frantic. “Someone broke through the encryption and gained internal access to the protocol. I’m trying to find who or what it was.” Sweat beads up on his forehead. Drops from his nose and chin darken the desk beneath his face.
Four sets of eyes stand behind him, watching every move.
“Well?” Ryzaard’s voice has an edge to it that scares them all.
Kalani’s voice drops to a whisper. “Impossible.” He looks up into Ryzaard’s eyes. “It says it was me.”
“Can’t you get it restarted?” Ryzaard says. “Skip through the list. Do whatever it takes.”
Kalani stares ahead and shakes his head. “It’s all gone. Destroyed. All the codes. The entire algorithm. Everything. Like it never existed.” He looks back at Jing-wei, disbelief in his eyes. “It’ll take a few days, maybe weeks, to reconstitute the process.” He closes his eyes and drops his head.
Ryzaard takes a deep breath. All the others hold theirs, waiting for him to exhale, watching him on the holo.
“How far down the chain did we get?” he says.
Jing-wei’s fingers are already dancing over her jax. “South Beach.”
Ryzaard nods. “That would mean how many detonations? There were a little over 200 in all, correct?”
“Yes,” Jing-wei says. “We were just finishing up the second wave, moving onto the third. South Beach was number ninety-six.” She anticipates his next question. “According to our models, that will result in approximately 9.3 million fatalities.”
“I hope it’s enough.” Ryzaard’s eyes focus on Jing-wei. “Are we prepared to move on to the next phase?”
Jing-wei shakes her head. “The sudden acceleration of plans presents certain difficulties. Nothing we can’t overcome. But we’ll need another thirty minutes.”
“You have ten,” Ryzaard says. “No more. We must strike while the fear is still fresh in the mind of every man, woman and child on the planet. Make sure the broadcast is streamed live to every corner of the Mesh on every Mesh-site. No one can be allowed to miss it. This is our hour of triumph. Now let’s act like it.”
The holo fades to gray and disintegrates.
CHAPTER 121
Jessica and Alexa are each pumping ten rounds a second onto the roof from above. A never ending supply of combat troops appears with small arms. The platform below them is littered with black corpses.
A blue pyramid inside a clear glass sphere appears below on the floor of the lab.
Alexa trains her sights on it with no effect other than sparks and ricochets. “They’re setting up the LP cannon. We have twenty seconds before they blast us to carbon atoms.” She throws her pulse rifle and runs to the front of the transport. “Keep shooting while I get us out of here.”
Matt and Yarah are both sitting in the cockpit seats, eyes closed, as still as rocks.
She slams her jax into the com. “Upload new sequence. Execute.”
“Unable to execute.” The calm female voice floods the interior. “Ship’s interface is currently locked.”
Alexa looks again, left to right, at Matt and Yarah. “Wake up!” She shakes them and screams into their ears. They don’t respond, sitting like wax figures in a museum.
“We have to go,” Yarah says. “They need us back at the surface.”
Matt hangs in the darkness, still staring ahead at the names of cities and landmarks across the world, all floating in green, all followed by the same two words.
Detonation confirmed.
How many had died because he was too slow in stopping the slaughter?
I didn’t save them all.
The words roll in his mind like a pair of dice on an empty table.
Yarah nudges him.
“OK. Let’s go.” Matt moves his gaze up and begins to move through the layers of the computer interface.
The ship’s voice booms. “Hull integrity breached. Navigation systems no longer functional. Human occupants will terminate in ten seconds.”
Opening his eyes, Matt finds his body bent over in a fit of coughing. Acrid black smoke fills the interior of the transport. The entire tail section of the ship has been blown away. Jagged edges of twisted metal and frayed pieces of titanium wire hang from the ceiling of the transport.
A hand reaches up from the floor through the smoke and grabs his thigh. “Get us out of here.”
Gripping his Stone, Matt’s eyelids drop. His hand reaches out to the com in front, and the shape of the ship flashes before his eyes, becoming part of him. Just as he is about to pull it all into his mind, there’s a burst of vein-like light outside the cockpit, brighter than the sun. Tongues of lightning press against the glass next to his head.
It bulges inward.
Then the outside world vanishes, replaced by silence. Focusing his eyes, Matt sees the outlines of the looming skyscrapers of Vancouver through the front of the cockpit. He stands up from the seat and looks to the cargo area behind him. A fine mist floats away from the ceiling of the transport, extinguishing the flames and clearing the smoke.
Two women sit on the floor, back to back.
“Didn’t think we were going to make it.” Jessica reaches up, and Matt pulls her to her feet. Her face and arms are blackened from the smoke, but that doesn’t stop him from slipping his arms around her for a long kiss.
Alexa rolls onto her back and opens her eyes. “When you’re done, could somebody please help me up?” Turning on her side, she launches into a fit of coughing. “We need to get out of here before the self-destruct mechanism is triggered.”
“The ship said it was about to blow up, so I told it t
o stop.” Yarah smiles at Alexa and helps her to her feet.
With Jessica under one arm, and Alexa under the other, Matt emerges from the back of the transport and steps onto a familiar cobblestone roundabout in the center of Vancouver. Yarah darts out in front of him.
“I thought you were jumping us to the old freedom camp outside of town,” Matt says.
“Sorry.” Yarah scrambles to the top of the lapis cube in the middle of the intersection in the middle of downtown Vancouver. “This was the first place I thought of.”
As they stand outside the half destroyed transport in the early morning darkness, a crowd gathers, their stares focused on the smoking hulk, minus the entire tail section, occupying the intersection.
Matt turns to Jessica. “I cut the list of cities in half.”
And then it hits him again.
I didn’t save them all.
His eyes go to the pavement. Images of fire, burning concrete and the naked steel bones of buildings bring a bitter taste flooding over his tongue. Muscles go limp. He drops to his hands and knees as green liquid fills his mouth and flows out past his teeth. “Millions are dead because of me. I wasted too much time with Ryzaard.”
“You did what you could.” Jessica pulls Matt up. “You saved millions from death.”
Intense light bursts from a building across the street. The glass skin of its exterior glows like a massive bluescreen. Scenes of devastation flash across its surface and fade to nothing.
A solitary man dressed in the white attire of a Shinto priest fills the picture. He wears a long tunic with large, open sleeves and a tall black cap on his head. Shoulders and arms perfectly balanced, he kneels on a round zabuton cushion and stares straight ahead, hands stretched out on his knees, facial features relaxed and emotionless. The fingers of his right hand wrap the lower end of a flattened wooden stick that reminds Matt of a long shoehorn. Dark paneling on the wall behind him provides a rich contrast to the tatami floor beneath. He is middle-aged, perhaps forty years old.
Two elegant Japanese wall hangings, one of a tree with cherry blossoms in full bloom and the other of a white crane, frame his body between them. Japanese cursive script flows down the side of each wall hanging.
His lips part, and he speaks.
“Men and women of the world, my brothers and sisters.” He leans forward in a shallow bow, and slowly looks up.
“The unthinkable has happened.”
CHAPTER 122
A hush ripples through the crowd.
Still holding Jessica’s hand, Matt leans back against the lapis cube and stares up at the image of the Shinto priest.
“So that’s Miyazawa,” he says.
Miyazawa appears on the side of every building around the intersection of Burrard and Georgia Streets in downtown Vancouver. Through the narrow canyons running between skyscrapers in the city, the night sky lights up with the same video stream. Color holos of the Shinto priest hang above the palms of anyone holding a jax or slate.
A few meters from Matt, a frustrated teenager stares at the holo and brushes his fingers repeatedly along the side of his cylindrical jax, trying to find a Mesh-point not streaming the same image. But the holo doesn’t change.
The face on the massive glass screen relaxes. The lips part and begin to speak.
“Two hours ago, madness and lunacy unleashed its fury on this planet that we share. Chaos broke through the thin veneer of peace. The high probability that it would result in the total annihilation of the natural and human world has forced me and my peace-loving associates to step forward and reveal ourselves and our power to the world. For now, we have broken the chain reaction of destruction. We cannot guarantee that our efforts will hold for long.” Miyazawa’s words are clear and understandable, with just a hint of an accent.
“I ask for less than three minutes and humbly request that each of you listen carefully. At the end of my words, you will have a choice to make, a choice for life or death.”
As he looks at the dozens of holo images floating in the crowd, Matt hears identical words in Japanese, Chinese and Arabic. A multitude of other languages are scattered at the fringes and out of earshot.
“It’s quite a feat for Miyazawa’s words to be delivered in the default language of so many devices.” Alexa whispers loud enough for Matt and Jessica to hear. “Ryzaard must think it’s important. He wrote the speech. Should be good.”
All eyes go up to the massive image playing on the side of every building.
“My name is Tomoyuki Miyazawa. I am a native of Japan. But that is not important.” The man’s bow is delicate, almost imperceptive. “For thousands of years, our movement has labored in obscurity out of a simple desire for fulfillment and oneness with nature. That movement is Shinto.”
Leaning to the side, Alexa plays the role of a commentator at a sports event. “There’s an embedded trance sequence in the broadcast background. Helps everyone concentrate. By the end, they’ll be eating out of his hand, begging for more of whatever he offers. Works on almost anyone, unless you know about it.”
As if in proof of her words, the faces of the crowd turn upward, mouths open with a look of wonder and expectation.
“Modern society is built on the individual search for gratification and pleasure. It is at the core of all we do. Our economies, laws, media and communication are all constructed on the same shaky foundation. The worldwide events of the last hour have exposed the fatal flaw in this way of life.”
Through the crowd, arms that were folded in a posture of defensiveness begin to drop, heads nodding.
“Unbridled pleasure leads to selfishness. Selfishness leads to conflict, and conflict inexorably results in war. In ancient times, the strong made slaves of the weak. But in our age, when all have access to weapons of annihilation, war simply means the meaningless destruction of lives and property on all sides. Nothing more or less. There can be no victory. Not anymore.” Miyazawa stops speaking for a few seconds, his eyes sweeping from left to right, as if he is standing above the whole of humanity, looking down upon them, like a god dispensing mercy and wisdom to his people.
“This day, in the space of a few minutes, we have tasted, in a small degree, the beginnings of such a war, one that could result in a conflagration of greed and fear that would wipe out all that we know and cherish. Nearly 100 cities have been hit with nuclear detonations. The dead already number close to ten million.”
Looks of horror float in the sea of faces. People drop to their knees, fingers clasped close to their chests as if in prayer. Others seek out neighbors and friends, holding hands. Tears flow. Cries and moans ring out.
Alexa turns to Matt. “You realize what you did?”
“Nothing.” Matt shakes his head. “Ten million dead.”
“They planned for at least twenty,” she says. “It’s bad, but it was supposed to be much worse. I’m sure Ryzaard is seething right now, wondering if enough damage was inflicted to provide the shock he wants.”
Jessica grips Matt’s hand.
“So many deaths are beyond comprehension.” Miyazawa pauses, allowing his large eyelids to drop for a long blink. “If we had not acted when we did, snuffing out the conflagration before its momentum reached the point of no return, it would have been a thousand times worse. Every city would have been a target. Forgive us for unilaterally exercising our power.” He bows again. “We had no choice.”
“Here it comes,” whispers Alexa. “The turning point in the human race Ryzaard has been working so hard for. Watch it unfold in real time.”
“We ask for only one thing in return. Open your doors to Shinto. Learn our ways. Allow us to share our gifts with you. Keep all the truth you have, whether you believe in one god, in many, or none at all. Add to it what we have discovered from thousands of years of searching. Join us, my brothers and sisters. Become one with us.”
“Now, the punch line.” Alexa grins.
“If you reject our offer, we will withdraw and allow humankind to destroy it
self. If you accept, we will freely give of our peace and joy, without money and without price.” Miyazawa bows deeply, holds the bow, and then raises himself up. “My friends. The choice is yours.”
The image slowly fades to white.
End of Book Three
Keep reading for a preview of
STONES
(THEORY)
BOOK FOUR OF THE STONES SERIES
by
Jacob Whaler
CHAPTER 1
Ryzaard stares at Miyazawa on the white screen, mouth open, every word resonating like a drum in his chest.
He hasn’t taken a breath since Miyazawa started speaking. With conscious effort, Ryzaard’s lips part and fill his lungs with fresh air. Miyazawa’s speech is impressive. He changed a few words without permission, but even Ryzaard has to admit the effect is powerful.
And it’s working.
Like tectonic plates shifting below the surface of the ocean, the human race is changing. The nuclear holocaust has brought them to the edge of the precipice and given them a final glimpse of the old world. They hunger for something new.
Something only Ryzaard can give them.
Paradise.
Time to check in with the children. His finger slides along the surface of the jax in front of him.
A holo image of Jing-wei hops out of it. “I assume you would like a preliminary report,” she says.
“Go,” Ryzaard says.
“Here’s the bottom line. Mesh traffic is off the charts.” A relaxed look takes over her face, perhaps even the hint of a smile, like a weight has lifted from her shoulders. “Governments, corporations, the rich and famous. Europe is on fire. Everyone has suddenly discovered an urgent need for Shinto. Miyazawa’s going to be a busy man.”
“Good work.” A weight slides off Ryzaard’s back. “I’ve got a pressing matter of business of my own to take care of right now. It won’t take long.” As he stands up, his body is a black silhouette against the white screen. “I’ll meet with you all when I get back.”
