5, Page 2
Ripley King
Abracadabra Is Just A Word, Isn’t It?
“Even the most troubled epoch is worthy of respect, because it is the work not just of a few people, but of humanity.” - Walter Rathenau
“I intend to swallow alive and kicking from humanity’s womb the greatest minds and things history has ever produced. Tear them from the very bowels of obscurity. Why? Behind the visible is an excessively complicated invisible. Another reality, if you will. One the human mind cannot comprehend, much less encompass. That is, until now.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Of course you don’t. Never before in human history has there been a tool to do what the human mind cannot. This tool is at my leisure, and all I need are people like you to transform my wants into existence. I need people like you to program my desires. The frontier between the marvelous and the actual has scarcely been tickled, much less porked into orgasmic bliss.”
“Bliss. Sure.”
“Imagine, throughout history, mental warriors thinking they have touched upon something substantial, but one petal of a rose does not a flower make. Those to come after, disciples of ignorant messiahs.”
“Look, not to interrupt your rant, but this is a job offer, right?”
The pimply little turd had a point, other than the one marking the apex of his skull. He was one of ten young programming mavericks I was interested in, and it came down to concern in my enterprise, or my money. I didn’t care which as long as he performed.
I watched him scratch his nose; then pick it without ceremony or shame. For a moment I wondered if he was going to pop the little green tidbit into his mouth. Much to my disgust, he did.
“You want,” nerd boy said, “an interlocking series of viral search programs, with the ability to analyze, sort and determine, then suggest and promote theorem, fuzzy logic notwithstanding.”
“Correct,” I said.
“I can do that.”
“The dollar amount attached to your services is substantial.”
“You want an AI.”
Sometimes the smarter they are, the less they have in common sense.
I said, “I don’t think you understand. The last thing I want is an AI. I like to do my own thinking, thank you. I want the programming to search the world over, and if one search takes it down a whole new road, I want it to light a cigar and enjoy the stroll.”
“But you still want it to tie everything together, right?”
Now he uses a tissue.
“Martin, is it? Martin, I have ideas, and need certain conclusions drawn for me. Here’s the two-headed calf, Martin. I want the programming to piece together the greatest mystery mankind ever has, had, or ever will face. I want answers, but I don’t know the questions. I just know they exist. Yes? or no. I’m waiting.”
And I don’t wait patiently for booger-eating wicks like Martin.
“Two-hundred-fifty thousand each year,” Martin began, “with one year minimum under contract? I’m in. I have nothing to lose.”
Only your life, Martin, if you don’t deliver.
I had my lawyers deliver a contract this morning, and pulled it. Martin signed it in the three places specified.
“Report to me in one week,” I said, exchanging the contract for an envelope. “This, Martin, is a check for the first month. Tie whatever loose ends you have together, buy a car, and have your face scraped. I’ll provide the tissues.”
The year was 1622, and posters had encircled the city of Paris saying, “We, deputies of the principal college of the Brethren of the Rosy Cross—Rosicrucains—are amongst you, visibly and invisibly, through the grace of the Most High, to whom the hearts of all men are turned, in order to save our fellowmen from the error of death.”
A secret society. Not history’s first, and certainly not its last. I don’t care about my fellow man, and I’ll save my own ass. Their reputed knowledge was my sole concern. The transmutation of metals. Gifts of the purest gold when it was needed most have been attributed—actually documented, that is, to the Rosicrucains. I certainly wanted to be wealthier. And the prolongation of life? Who wouldn’t want to live a few decades or a century more?
Fantastic knowledge supposedly gained from a book called the Liber Mundi. It was this one story that got me to thinking. I began to search for other stories like it, not having much success until I ran across the story of Emperor Asoka.
From 270 B.C. on he was India. Ambitious, Asoka decided to conquer the then region of Kalinga. It was written a hundred thousand men were lost, and Emperor Asoka, so horrified by the sight, and I imagine the smell, renounced war. It was his wish that humanity never again put its intelligence to an evil use, and vowed all science to secrecy. Asoka founded the most powerful secret society of its day, possibly to this very day.
The Nine Unknown Men.
The Nine Unknown Men were said to have in their possession nine books, as I understood from what little I found, containing knowledge far in advance of what is known, even to this very day.
The first book was said to be devoted to propaganda and psychological warfare. Defeat your enemy without a single shot fired.
The second was on physiology. Like turning one’s body against itself.
The third book was said to be a study on microbiology. The entire human genome and other pertinent data as it relates to our species, and other species?
The fourth book expounded the transmutation of elements. Lead into gold. Perhaps, Cold Fusion?
The fifth book dealt in communication, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, with references to intelligent life outside our solar system.
The sixth book was said to be a comprehensive study on the principles of gravitation, space and time. And it was my notion that when all was said and done, space, time and thought were not separate components. Patent offices around the globe noted the times and dates of all concepts submitted, and in many more instances than coincidence allows, many of the same, identical ideas were patented within minutes or days of each other.
Imagine the total universe mapped. The seventh book was said to have done that.
The eighth book: light, and all its many implications.
The ninth book was concerned with sociology. The ability to predict the rise and fall of any civilization.
I couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that there were more than these tender morsels in the world. But how to collect them? Use them? How to gather all the secret knowledge of the hidden and lost world in one place at one time?
“Martin,” I said, “you seem to have a problem.”
“I’ve been at this two years now,” Martin replied, “and each month to pass you add more to the list of requirements that these machines are supposed to do, find, or translate. Why is that?”
Roger stopped his exploration of last week’s excursion into the land of code, and turned to face me with his annoying perpetual grin. Donald didn’t want to get involved, and kept at his work with a diligence I bonused him for, handsomely.
Three out of the six geniuses I had hired, remained. The taskmaster in me drove the rest into more satisfying, yet less rewarding employment. Sometimes I missed them, but could live with what I had.
“What was in the library at Alexandria founded by Ptolemy Soter?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Martin said.
“What knowledge died in the ashes of the library at Pergamo, or when Emperor Chou-Hoang-Ti obliterated by flame thousands of books purely for political reasons?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then tell me what happened to the Pisistratus Collection in Athens, or the library of the Temple of Jerusalem, or the library in the sanctuary of Phtah at Memphis.”
“I don’t know,” Martin said for the third time.
“I want to know, Martin. I want all the knowledge this world has to offer. And if I want it, I’ll have to go get it.” I handed him a tissue before he mined his nose and dined like it was French cuisine.
Roger’s smile widened, but he felt it more prudent to tur
n back toward his monitor and at least pretend he was hard at work.
“For all of human history, Martin,” I began, “information and scientific discovery has been made, and then lost or ignored at such an astounding rate, I can only conclude two things with uncertainty. One: We are a stupid species. Or two: An organization of some sort has been running interference for thousands of years. I lean toward number one each time I interact with you.”
Donald spoke up with, “Sir, I have information.”
“‘Sir, I have information,’” Martin mimicked.
“You won’t see it coming, Martin,” I said. “But I’m going to kill you, and do it just for fun. Slowly. Painfully. I want you to know every moment of the horror I intend to inflict.”
Donald ignored the last exchange and continued. “It seems Pope Sylvester II had in his collection a bronze head which answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to questions deserving ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. A rudimentary binary computer?”
“Ones and zeros. When was that?” I asked.
“He was born in 920 A.D., and died 1003 A.D., maybe 975 A.D.?”
“This pushes my estimate up another five hundred years.”
“Estimate of what?” Martin asked. Not that he cared, he just liked pushing my buttons.
“See what else you can find, Donald,” I said. “Also, find out if any physical descriptions are available for the equipment found in the tomb of Christian Rosenkreutz.”
And left to do some deep thinking.
The information, the artifacts I had collected to date, I knew in my heart and soul it was all tied to some monumental conspiracy, but the answers were still camouflaged by history, and I couldn’t fathom the why of it all. Actually my suppositions were still in their infancy, but has an otherworldly alien influence been doing all they could to keep mankind naked, tilling dirt?
I had an increasingly paranoid thought that a self-contained bunker with cutting edge defensive systems was just what I needed.
“Unofficially I call it Abracadabra,” Donald said. “With a few modifications it can be voice activated.”
He was my only programmer left after six long years, and millions upon millions of lines of code checked thrice. Roger left the year before, six months after the Martin tragedy.
“I like you, Donald. Gathering the facts and artifacts was the easy part. With your help, even hiring the spies and thieves to document materials I was denied access to was . . . less complicated.”
“The Vatican’s archives. I imagine they were the hardest to retrieve.”
“Not as difficult as one might think, and the information was . . . unique, to say the least. Virtually every government, monarchy and organized church seems to have a secret unwritten doctrine to confiscate, conceal or destroy, unregulated or unauthorized scientific achievement. Our government too, even to this very day. Most technologies do eventually find their way back into society’s clutches, but decades if not centuries lie between discovery and rediscovery, and very little money is made in the transaction. Especially when one stops to consider the billions attached to each modern scientific brick, building monuments to greatness in greed. Why? And we deify these people when they are nothing more than tools. Toadies. Flunkies.”
“Sir, it looks more like happenstance—”
“No,” I interrupted. “This has been deliberate.”
Of that I was sure.
Donald poured me a drink, and himself a cup of coffee. He was skilled at kissing ass at just the right time.
“I should be living on the Moon,” I said, “vacationing Mars. Hell, I should own the Moon!”
Donald said, “The information genie is out of the bottle with the invention of the personal computer, and nobody can stuff the genie in again. Information can’t ever be controlled again, not in the same way.”
“Who would have ever thought that a bunch of dope smoking techno-geeks could have changed the world, but they did with the personal computer, and upped the ante.”
“You’re making monies. That new super-glue formula from the second century. The rediscovered Oregon gold fields.”
“Two weeks ago, Donald, my Dayton plant was destroyed by a fire so hot, nothing was recognizable, sifting through the ash. Ten of my workers died. I was experimenting with antigravity. I had a working prototype of a spacecraft, going through final testing. Nothing connected to the project or the building was flammable. The security I had in place failed.”
“You think someone set out to destroy the process?”
“Yes I do. Your services are no longer required. I’ll give you a year’s worth of wages as severance. Have your section cleared by tomorrow. I took the liberty of transferring all of our work to the protected systems. Call it proactive paranoia.”
“Yes, sir. Thanks, I think.”
He should do well to thank me. I may have saved his life.
My money came to me in a time-honored fashion. I inherited it upon my father’s passing, something I hastened. I, in turn, capitalized on every opportunity to pass my way, so much so I considered my personal motto to be devour all enemies.
Blood on my hands or not, I was certain knowledge had been systematically stripped, misdirected, even murdered out of humanity’s hands. Knowledge that could have advanced humanity by centuries. It was if some Faustian bargain-in-reverse had been struck, and I wondered how many rocks I would have to turn over before I found humanity’s secret keepers. What secret society claimed its title as warden? I spent months chasing my own tail.
Countless millennia living the status quo, and then humanity went from a modified version of the wheel to the Moon and back in less than two hundred years. A very serious breakdown of the mechanism our keepers employed. The only conclusion I could come up with, the founding of the new world had severed all ties to government and church based agents. The very act of free thinkers, emigrating to the United States had made the Moon possible.
Now the cogs of suppression were once again in place. No real breakthroughs evident in any of the sciences, just headway made on existing ideas.
The space program now hobbled for the most part, though novel ideas might bring it back from the brink of extinction. The personal computer and the Web was a freak accident for the better, now more a tool for commerce. I sometimes wondered if humanity itself unconsciously policed its own advances. It did, yet didn’t explain the rise of secret societies. Even so, from all my many investigations, none of those enigmatic organizations survived into the here and now with their power base and mission directives intact.
I could see nothing to prove my information vampirism alerted anyone, but that didn’t explain the fire, and though the equipment was gone, the schematics were not. Antigravity was as simple as generating an electromagnetic field, but it needed the fastest computer made to control the field’s influence, effectively negating Earth’s own constantly fluctuating gravitational field. Two magnets in opposition.
“You’re right about one thing, Byron Callis. Poke around long enough and someone gets worried.”
“Donald?” I was by the only door in or out, and it was secure.
“Don’t worry yourself. I got in. That’s what counts.”
“I thought you were too good to be true. But, like a fool, I ignored my instincts.”
“You have been deemed a danger to humanity as a whole, Byron Callis.”
“You won’t be leaving, Donald. At least, not in one piece.”
“One man means nothing to liberate humanity from its infancy. You have reached for a dangerous match, and we’re here to slap your hand. You, your species, you all seem to worship greed, nothing more, unable to realize how close to oblivion you truly are. Most of the marvels surrounding you, like television, might as well be magic for all you know or care. Abracadabra.”
“Naming the system a private joke on your part? Why don’t you tell me about the ‘we’ you shoved into the conversation.”
“You could help humanity, but you don’t. And Martin d
ied a needless death.”
“Martin picked his nose and ate what he found. Don’t pretend to know my motives. You and your people let humanity have nuclear and biological weaponry, yet you want to slap my hands?”
“Children must grow up.” Donald said. “Yes, I can see into your mind, and know it better than you do. I can pick out your thoughts as you form them. Now, understand me. I’ve been watching your species screw it up, killing themselves, and that’s the shame of it, but they will learn, and they will grow up.”
“Are you armed, Donald?”
“Why would I be?”
“Good.” And shot him dead center in the chest.
The round passed through him to splinter the far wall.
“Magic,” he said. “Abracadabra.”
“So smug,” I countered. “One of the Nine Unknown Men?”
“Older. I’m an angel.”
“God? Just like television you’re here to tell me there is a God, and you want to save my black and twisted soul?”
“Even God couldn’t accomplish that miracle.”
“Then strike me down.”
“I do live with one wingtip forever dipped in blood, but I have never struck anyone down. I give them a choice.”
“And what is my choice?”
“The knowledge we shared here is too dangerous. Humanity is not ready for it. Your choice is slow suffocation, or a quick bullet. May the living universe transform your soul.”
Then, Donald vanished.
Angel or not, I don’t think Donald realized how vindictive I truly am when I don’t get my way. He may have designed the system and the shelter, but he didn’t supervise the construction. I had a panic button of sorts installed, and pushed it.
I decided long ago that the information I was digging up, someone meant it to stay lost. All that hard-fought information was mine, and if I couldn’t have it, everybody would. The moment I pushed the button thousands of newspapers, magazines, colleges and scientists from all over the globe were getting lots of e-mail with attachments, and my location. What else is a panic button for?
I was happy, and then my power grid crashed. The emergency lighting kicked in, but after an hour I realized the secondary generators wouldn’t. Nothing I could do. No way out of the hole I dug for myself.
I have no real working knowledge of this shelter. I did what rich people do all the time. I simply invoked its creation with the words “build it,” and it was so. If I wasn’t rescued within the next day . . .
Two days have passed, the air is getting thinner, and I still have the choice Donald and the God he serves bequeathed me.
Do people bother to open their e-mail attachments anymore?
“Choose, Byron,” I said aloud. “Choose.”
“Even the most troubled epoch is worthy of respect, because it is the work not just of a few people, but of humanity.” - Walter Rathenau
“I intend to swallow alive and kicking from humanity’s womb the greatest minds and things history has ever produced. Tear them from the very bowels of obscurity. Why? Behind the visible is an excessively complicated invisible. Another reality, if you will. One the human mind cannot comprehend, much less encompass. That is, until now.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Of course you don’t. Never before in human history has there been a tool to do what the human mind cannot. This tool is at my leisure, and all I need are people like you to transform my wants into existence. I need people like you to program my desires. The frontier between the marvelous and the actual has scarcely been tickled, much less porked into orgasmic bliss.”
“Bliss. Sure.”
“Imagine, throughout history, mental warriors thinking they have touched upon something substantial, but one petal of a rose does not a flower make. Those to come after, disciples of ignorant messiahs.”
“Look, not to interrupt your rant, but this is a job offer, right?”
The pimply little turd had a point, other than the one marking the apex of his skull. He was one of ten young programming mavericks I was interested in, and it came down to concern in my enterprise, or my money. I didn’t care which as long as he performed.
I watched him scratch his nose; then pick it without ceremony or shame. For a moment I wondered if he was going to pop the little green tidbit into his mouth. Much to my disgust, he did.
“You want,” nerd boy said, “an interlocking series of viral search programs, with the ability to analyze, sort and determine, then suggest and promote theorem, fuzzy logic notwithstanding.”
“Correct,” I said.
“I can do that.”
“The dollar amount attached to your services is substantial.”
“You want an AI.”
Sometimes the smarter they are, the less they have in common sense.
I said, “I don’t think you understand. The last thing I want is an AI. I like to do my own thinking, thank you. I want the programming to search the world over, and if one search takes it down a whole new road, I want it to light a cigar and enjoy the stroll.”
“But you still want it to tie everything together, right?”
Now he uses a tissue.
“Martin, is it? Martin, I have ideas, and need certain conclusions drawn for me. Here’s the two-headed calf, Martin. I want the programming to piece together the greatest mystery mankind ever has, had, or ever will face. I want answers, but I don’t know the questions. I just know they exist. Yes? or no. I’m waiting.”
And I don’t wait patiently for booger-eating wicks like Martin.
“Two-hundred-fifty thousand each year,” Martin began, “with one year minimum under contract? I’m in. I have nothing to lose.”
Only your life, Martin, if you don’t deliver.
I had my lawyers deliver a contract this morning, and pulled it. Martin signed it in the three places specified.
“Report to me in one week,” I said, exchanging the contract for an envelope. “This, Martin, is a check for the first month. Tie whatever loose ends you have together, buy a car, and have your face scraped. I’ll provide the tissues.”
The year was 1622, and posters had encircled the city of Paris saying, “We, deputies of the principal college of the Brethren of the Rosy Cross—Rosicrucains—are amongst you, visibly and invisibly, through the grace of the Most High, to whom the hearts of all men are turned, in order to save our fellowmen from the error of death.”
A secret society. Not history’s first, and certainly not its last. I don’t care about my fellow man, and I’ll save my own ass. Their reputed knowledge was my sole concern. The transmutation of metals. Gifts of the purest gold when it was needed most have been attributed—actually documented, that is, to the Rosicrucains. I certainly wanted to be wealthier. And the prolongation of life? Who wouldn’t want to live a few decades or a century more?
Fantastic knowledge supposedly gained from a book called the Liber Mundi. It was this one story that got me to thinking. I began to search for other stories like it, not having much success until I ran across the story of Emperor Asoka.
From 270 B.C. on he was India. Ambitious, Asoka decided to conquer the then region of Kalinga. It was written a hundred thousand men were lost, and Emperor Asoka, so horrified by the sight, and I imagine the smell, renounced war. It was his wish that humanity never again put its intelligence to an evil use, and vowed all science to secrecy. Asoka founded the most powerful secret society of its day, possibly to this very day.
The Nine Unknown Men.
The Nine Unknown Men were said to have in their possession nine books, as I understood from what little I found, containing knowledge far in advance of what is known, even to this very day.
The first book was said to be devoted to propaganda and psychological warfare. Defeat your enemy without a single shot fired.
The second was on physiology. Like turning one’s body against itself.
The third book was said to be a study on microbiology. The entire human genome and other pertinent data as it relates to our species, and other species?
The fourth book expounded the transmutation of elements. Lead into gold. Perhaps, Cold Fusion?
The fifth book dealt in communication, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, with references to intelligent life outside our solar system.
The sixth book was said to be a comprehensive study on the principles of gravitation, space and time. And it was my notion that when all was said and done, space, time and thought were not separate components. Patent offices around the globe noted the times and dates of all concepts submitted, and in many more instances than coincidence allows, many of the same, identical ideas were patented within minutes or days of each other.
Imagine the total universe mapped. The seventh book was said to have done that.
The eighth book: light, and all its many implications.
The ninth book was concerned with sociology. The ability to predict the rise and fall of any civilization.
I couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that there were more than these tender morsels in the world. But how to collect them? Use them? How to gather all the secret knowledge of the hidden and lost world in one place at one time?
“Martin,” I said, “you seem to have a problem.”
“I’ve been at this two years now,” Martin replied, “and each month to pass you add more to the list of requirements that these machines are supposed to do, find, or translate. Why is that?”
Roger stopped his exploration of last week’s excursion into the land of code, and turned to face me with his annoying perpetual grin. Donald didn’t want to get involved, and kept at his work with a diligence I bonused him for, handsomely.
Three out of the six geniuses I had hired, remained. The taskmaster in me drove the rest into more satisfying, yet less rewarding employment. Sometimes I missed them, but could live with what I had.
“What was in the library at Alexandria founded by Ptolemy Soter?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Martin said.
“What knowledge died in the ashes of the library at Pergamo, or when Emperor Chou-Hoang-Ti obliterated by flame thousands of books purely for political reasons?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then tell me what happened to the Pisistratus Collection in Athens, or the library of the Temple of Jerusalem, or the library in the sanctuary of Phtah at Memphis.”
“I don’t know,” Martin said for the third time.
“I want to know, Martin. I want all the knowledge this world has to offer. And if I want it, I’ll have to go get it.” I handed him a tissue before he mined his nose and dined like it was French cuisine.
Roger’s smile widened, but he felt it more prudent to tur
n back toward his monitor and at least pretend he was hard at work.
“For all of human history, Martin,” I began, “information and scientific discovery has been made, and then lost or ignored at such an astounding rate, I can only conclude two things with uncertainty. One: We are a stupid species. Or two: An organization of some sort has been running interference for thousands of years. I lean toward number one each time I interact with you.”
Donald spoke up with, “Sir, I have information.”
“‘Sir, I have information,’” Martin mimicked.
“You won’t see it coming, Martin,” I said. “But I’m going to kill you, and do it just for fun. Slowly. Painfully. I want you to know every moment of the horror I intend to inflict.”
Donald ignored the last exchange and continued. “It seems Pope Sylvester II had in his collection a bronze head which answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to questions deserving ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. A rudimentary binary computer?”
“Ones and zeros. When was that?” I asked.
“He was born in 920 A.D., and died 1003 A.D., maybe 975 A.D.?”
“This pushes my estimate up another five hundred years.”
“Estimate of what?” Martin asked. Not that he cared, he just liked pushing my buttons.
“See what else you can find, Donald,” I said. “Also, find out if any physical descriptions are available for the equipment found in the tomb of Christian Rosenkreutz.”
And left to do some deep thinking.
The information, the artifacts I had collected to date, I knew in my heart and soul it was all tied to some monumental conspiracy, but the answers were still camouflaged by history, and I couldn’t fathom the why of it all. Actually my suppositions were still in their infancy, but has an otherworldly alien influence been doing all they could to keep mankind naked, tilling dirt?
I had an increasingly paranoid thought that a self-contained bunker with cutting edge defensive systems was just what I needed.
“Unofficially I call it Abracadabra,” Donald said. “With a few modifications it can be voice activated.”
He was my only programmer left after six long years, and millions upon millions of lines of code checked thrice. Roger left the year before, six months after the Martin tragedy.
“I like you, Donald. Gathering the facts and artifacts was the easy part. With your help, even hiring the spies and thieves to document materials I was denied access to was . . . less complicated.”
“The Vatican’s archives. I imagine they were the hardest to retrieve.”
“Not as difficult as one might think, and the information was . . . unique, to say the least. Virtually every government, monarchy and organized church seems to have a secret unwritten doctrine to confiscate, conceal or destroy, unregulated or unauthorized scientific achievement. Our government too, even to this very day. Most technologies do eventually find their way back into society’s clutches, but decades if not centuries lie between discovery and rediscovery, and very little money is made in the transaction. Especially when one stops to consider the billions attached to each modern scientific brick, building monuments to greatness in greed. Why? And we deify these people when they are nothing more than tools. Toadies. Flunkies.”
“Sir, it looks more like happenstance—”
“No,” I interrupted. “This has been deliberate.”
Of that I was sure.
Donald poured me a drink, and himself a cup of coffee. He was skilled at kissing ass at just the right time.
“I should be living on the Moon,” I said, “vacationing Mars. Hell, I should own the Moon!”
Donald said, “The information genie is out of the bottle with the invention of the personal computer, and nobody can stuff the genie in again. Information can’t ever be controlled again, not in the same way.”
“Who would have ever thought that a bunch of dope smoking techno-geeks could have changed the world, but they did with the personal computer, and upped the ante.”
“You’re making monies. That new super-glue formula from the second century. The rediscovered Oregon gold fields.”
“Two weeks ago, Donald, my Dayton plant was destroyed by a fire so hot, nothing was recognizable, sifting through the ash. Ten of my workers died. I was experimenting with antigravity. I had a working prototype of a spacecraft, going through final testing. Nothing connected to the project or the building was flammable. The security I had in place failed.”
“You think someone set out to destroy the process?”
“Yes I do. Your services are no longer required. I’ll give you a year’s worth of wages as severance. Have your section cleared by tomorrow. I took the liberty of transferring all of our work to the protected systems. Call it proactive paranoia.”
“Yes, sir. Thanks, I think.”
He should do well to thank me. I may have saved his life.
My money came to me in a time-honored fashion. I inherited it upon my father’s passing, something I hastened. I, in turn, capitalized on every opportunity to pass my way, so much so I considered my personal motto to be devour all enemies.
Blood on my hands or not, I was certain knowledge had been systematically stripped, misdirected, even murdered out of humanity’s hands. Knowledge that could have advanced humanity by centuries. It was if some Faustian bargain-in-reverse had been struck, and I wondered how many rocks I would have to turn over before I found humanity’s secret keepers. What secret society claimed its title as warden? I spent months chasing my own tail.
Countless millennia living the status quo, and then humanity went from a modified version of the wheel to the Moon and back in less than two hundred years. A very serious breakdown of the mechanism our keepers employed. The only conclusion I could come up with, the founding of the new world had severed all ties to government and church based agents. The very act of free thinkers, emigrating to the United States had made the Moon possible.
Now the cogs of suppression were once again in place. No real breakthroughs evident in any of the sciences, just headway made on existing ideas.
The space program now hobbled for the most part, though novel ideas might bring it back from the brink of extinction. The personal computer and the Web was a freak accident for the better, now more a tool for commerce. I sometimes wondered if humanity itself unconsciously policed its own advances. It did, yet didn’t explain the rise of secret societies. Even so, from all my many investigations, none of those enigmatic organizations survived into the here and now with their power base and mission directives intact.
I could see nothing to prove my information vampirism alerted anyone, but that didn’t explain the fire, and though the equipment was gone, the schematics were not. Antigravity was as simple as generating an electromagnetic field, but it needed the fastest computer made to control the field’s influence, effectively negating Earth’s own constantly fluctuating gravitational field. Two magnets in opposition.
“You’re right about one thing, Byron Callis. Poke around long enough and someone gets worried.”
“Donald?” I was by the only door in or out, and it was secure.
“Don’t worry yourself. I got in. That’s what counts.”
“I thought you were too good to be true. But, like a fool, I ignored my instincts.”
“You have been deemed a danger to humanity as a whole, Byron Callis.”
“You won’t be leaving, Donald. At least, not in one piece.”
“One man means nothing to liberate humanity from its infancy. You have reached for a dangerous match, and we’re here to slap your hand. You, your species, you all seem to worship greed, nothing more, unable to realize how close to oblivion you truly are. Most of the marvels surrounding you, like television, might as well be magic for all you know or care. Abracadabra.”
“Naming the system a private joke on your part? Why don’t you tell me about the ‘we’ you shoved into the conversation.”
“You could help humanity, but you don’t. And Martin d
ied a needless death.”
“Martin picked his nose and ate what he found. Don’t pretend to know my motives. You and your people let humanity have nuclear and biological weaponry, yet you want to slap my hands?”
“Children must grow up.” Donald said. “Yes, I can see into your mind, and know it better than you do. I can pick out your thoughts as you form them. Now, understand me. I’ve been watching your species screw it up, killing themselves, and that’s the shame of it, but they will learn, and they will grow up.”
“Are you armed, Donald?”
“Why would I be?”
“Good.” And shot him dead center in the chest.
The round passed through him to splinter the far wall.
“Magic,” he said. “Abracadabra.”
“So smug,” I countered. “One of the Nine Unknown Men?”
“Older. I’m an angel.”
“God? Just like television you’re here to tell me there is a God, and you want to save my black and twisted soul?”
“Even God couldn’t accomplish that miracle.”
“Then strike me down.”
“I do live with one wingtip forever dipped in blood, but I have never struck anyone down. I give them a choice.”
“And what is my choice?”
“The knowledge we shared here is too dangerous. Humanity is not ready for it. Your choice is slow suffocation, or a quick bullet. May the living universe transform your soul.”
Then, Donald vanished.
Angel or not, I don’t think Donald realized how vindictive I truly am when I don’t get my way. He may have designed the system and the shelter, but he didn’t supervise the construction. I had a panic button of sorts installed, and pushed it.
I decided long ago that the information I was digging up, someone meant it to stay lost. All that hard-fought information was mine, and if I couldn’t have it, everybody would. The moment I pushed the button thousands of newspapers, magazines, colleges and scientists from all over the globe were getting lots of e-mail with attachments, and my location. What else is a panic button for?
I was happy, and then my power grid crashed. The emergency lighting kicked in, but after an hour I realized the secondary generators wouldn’t. Nothing I could do. No way out of the hole I dug for myself.
I have no real working knowledge of this shelter. I did what rich people do all the time. I simply invoked its creation with the words “build it,” and it was so. If I wasn’t rescued within the next day . . .
Two days have passed, the air is getting thinner, and I still have the choice Donald and the God he serves bequeathed me.
Do people bother to open their e-mail attachments anymore?
“Choose, Byron,” I said aloud. “Choose.”
