Reassemble
Book Four in the Singular Series
Larry Buenafe
Copyright © 2020 by Larry Buenafe.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
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Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars,
whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation who raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world by force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own,
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money,
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation—oh, pity the people
who allow their rights to erode,
and their freedoms be washed away…
―Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Contents
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
Epilogue
Other Books by Larry Buenafe
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Connect with Larry Buenafe
Prologue
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
MEETING WITH SVC/LFP GENERAL MEETING
121752 14:55
DIRECTOR’S NOTE TO TRANSCRIPT A.I.: To maintain anonymity, we will continue with the practice of using coded initials to identify the members of the LFP.
-Look, we can’t bring the kid here. When he finds out we’ve been pulling most of the strings, he’s liable to tear the place apart. We brainiacs need to figure out how to get the plan to him without outing ourselves, so it’ll have to come from a source he’ll believe in.
-(HB, from the UK) What about the bloody Bright Hand? Is there anyone amongst them he trusts?
-(SVC) I’ll take that. There are a few of them he has visited multiple times, so they would be likely candidates. Let’s see… he has known Zoey Perez the longest, and there may be a relationship between her and the father, so she would be a possible. Others include doctors Tom Engel, Barry Scharfman, and Suhanisa Bhat. He acquired most of his non-native tech from these Bright Handers and appears close to all of them.
-So, (WK), you’re in the best position to judge on this. First, though, would he listen to you? Maybe we can cut out the middleman, so to speak.
-(WK) Highly unlikely. It would be more likely that he would do the opposite of whatever I ask of him. Hard to blame him… he’s smart, and somehow seems to know that there are schemes all around him, and not just the machinations of the Americans, despite his tender age.
-Yes, I… oh, here comes (JR) online. Thanks for joining us, (JR), I know this is a trying time for you. We know a little about your son’s situation. Would you be willing to fill us in?
-(JR) Yes, thank you, hello all. As you might guess, I would not be here via hologram if the news were completely negative. Many of you know my son is highly skilled and talented, but can be just the slightest bit impetuous on occasion. He felt committed to helping our friend Lucas Taylor, and the truth is I did also, and I encouraged and allowed for Hassim to go. He would have paid the ultimate price for his participation if not for Lucas’ quick thinking and amazing abilities. I won’t go into extreme detail as it is too painful at the moment, but Hassim will recover, and knowing him it won’t take long at all. Lucas was also injured rather severely, but his recovery will undoubtedly be even faster. In fact, he seems already fully recovered. They shot the third member of their team, Ms. Kim, as well, and although her injury is less severe, since she doesn’t have the same… ah, advantages as the other two, her recuperation will take somewhat longer. They accomplished their mission, though, as you have undoubtedly heard.
-(General chatter from the group) (SF, from Australia) Ahh, that’s bloody splendid news, mate.
-(JR) Yes, thank you, my friends. I’m sorry, I imagine you were in the middle of something when I interrupted. Please, continue.
-Right… to get you up to speed, we were just discussing how to get word of our plan for extraction of the boy’s father to him. It seems logical that the info would need to come from someone he already knows and trusts. The point is, we need to coordinate so we aren’t stepping on one another. Our plan and his plan need to be the same.
-(JR) You might consider leaving that to me.
-Oh, I was hoping you would offer, but I didn’t want to impose at this difficult time. Would you mind if we adjourn, and then I fill you in on the plan afterward? The rest of the group have heard it, and there’s no sense in keeping them to hear it again.
-(JR) Of course. I look forward to knowing what this collection of brilliance has come up with.
-(Chuckling from the group)
-Okay, with that we are adjourned. Thank you all. (SVC), is everyone offline?
-Everyone but (JR), as you requested.
-(JR) Let me guess, please. Whatever elaborate plan you exposed the general group was to has nothing to do with the actual plan.
-You see, (SVC)? I told you (JR) is the smartest of the LFP. I assume you’ve seen some of the leaks?
-Yes, and I guessed they were a diversion.
-Right again. We actually plan on going in three days.
-You must have some details you would like to communicate with Lucas and his friends?
-(SVC) I’m transferring that to you now.
-(JR) Yes, I have it, thank you. Three days is very little time to pull things together. You believe this will work?
-I believe this is the only way it works. Oh, by the way, weren’t you involved on some level with the development of the halo protocol?
-I was in on some initial discussions, but the tech is beyond me at this point, I’m afraid. I understand that quantum entanglement is being manipulated as a control source, and I am not sure anyone understands that fully. You’re not thinking of attempting to use it in this extraction effort, are you? I thought it was purely theoretical. It almost seemed like a thought exercise, to be hone
st.
-Yeah, well, it appears there’s been some progress. Anyway, the boy goes in three days from now. It’s our best hope.
-Having seen first-hand what he can do, I must grudgingly agree. By the way, in three days it will be the twentieth of December, isn’t that right?
-I… yeah, that’s right. Why?
Why, director, I’m surprised you don’t know. That will be the boy’s birthday.
-No way. He will get either the best or the worst birthday present ever, depending on how this all goes down. Speaking of birthdays… (SVC), round up some cake, would you?
1
F lying is a weird experience, especially with no plane around you. You feel the wind, the air currents, and if you’re flying low enough, you have to watch out for bugs. For me, they don’t hurt, but they do make a mess.
Ava and I were winging our way back from Kalgoorlie to the nation’s cavern after making our latest, and hopefully last, call to the anonymous American at the other end of the cell phone given to me when they kidnapped my dad. Each call so far has resulted in another death-defying mission for us, and this last one was almost just plain death instead of death-defying. The chain-smoking man at the other end of the calls had promised me that successful completion of five missions would satisfy them and at that point they would release my dad, but there’s no way they will let him go. They’ll just use me up and torture him until he gives up his tech secrets or until… well, let’s not say what the other alternative is.
I have to give that gravelly voice on the phone credit, though; he kept one promise. I got to hear from my dad on the last call, and I know it was him. So, at least he’s alive. He told me, in the few seconds they let him talk, to refuse to do whatever they demand of me. Well, guess what? They want me to go to China, and I didn’t refuse, but I’m sure not going to do what they asked. They think they know what I can do, what my limits are, but they haven’t seen everything. I’m coming for you, dad, and soon…
But first, Ava, and I too, I guess, have to do a hard reboot of her system. The nano-machines have been steadily replacing my brain cells as they die, and we are so connected now that we have to make the choice of either merging or separating. We know what separating means: Ava will continue to control my system, keep everything working properly, and respond to commands, but we won’t be able to speak to one another anymore. What we don’t know is what merging will be like. Ava’s best guess is that it will be pretty similar to how things are now, where we can talk back and forth, but it could be something totally different. She just doesn’t know because it’s never happened before. And we only have about three hours and forty-five minutes to decide, because at that point the reboot will happen whether or not we’re ready.
So, we’re on our way back as fast as we can go, which at the moment is… four hundred and ninety kilometers per hour. We need to let our friends Benji, Mr. Harutyunyan, Ms. Houng, Tarni, and Cheri know that the reboot will happen, and that I may be different afterward. But as we flew, something else occurred to me: Ava, I have this feeling… I don’t know why or where it came from, but I think we have to do the reboot in front of Dr. Bhat. I… I don’t usually do things based on how I feel, but somehow this seems important. Like maybe she can guide us through it. I know, it seems kind of… what, mystical or something? I’m embarrassed even saying that word, but… what do you think?
“That’s an interesting question, sonny boy. Those kinds of complicated spiritual feelings speak to a connection between brain and body physiology that I just can’t experience. The old saying is that you feel it in your bones, but I don’t have any bones with which to feel it, whatever ‘it’ is. Either way, we’ll have to drastically accelerate our timeline: it’ll take us another thirty minutes to get to the nation’s cavern, then however long it takes to track down the rest of the group, have our discussion, then at best speed it will take ninety minutes to get to the Bright Hand cavern. That doesn’t leave us much time, and we don’t want to go into a reboot while we’re in the air. If we do, we’ll end up scattered all over the outback.”
Oh, that doesn’t sound good.
“It’s not. Hang on, sonny boy, I will see if I can coax any more out of this jet engine.”
I felt a bit of a lurch, and checked our speed in my heads-up display… Five hundred… five-ten… five-thirteen… whoa, that’s fast…
2
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
MEETING WITH SVC
121752 18:27
-Wait, you’re telling me he knows? How does he know? Practically everyone else in the entire world thinks the dad is at a naval base in Florida.
-A message just came in from Oakes. He has met with Dave Concannon. Concannon knew of the plan to house the boy’s father in Area 51, and it appears that he tipped the boy off before leaving the Bright Hand cavern. That means that the boy has known for quite some time.
-Longer than us, for sure. The only reason we know is because of our man on the inside. I’ll tell you what, the more time goes by, the more impressed I am by this kid. He knew his dad was there, but he waited it out, played it cool. So, we don’t have to convince him to go there at all, we just need to get him to do it on December twentieth, do I have it right?
-We may not even have to do that. We just received a secure message from (WK), and he seems to think the boy is planning on ignoring the next ‘labor’ placed on him by the Americans, and heading to Area 51 in the next day or two.
-How would (WK) know? The boy doesn’t trust him as far as he can throw him. Wait, that’s not a good analogy in his case, is it? He could probably throw (WK) quite a distance if he wanted, but you know what I mean.
-As always. He reports that the information came to him rather circuitously. He has an A.I. monitoring the communications of Jim Early, who heads up their communications and logistics center along with Zoey Perez.
-The looker.
-As you said. (WK) has been monitoring Early’s communications because his sister is a member of the aboriginal’s nation and is in the boy’s inner circle, so he thought it prudent to ‘eavesdrop’ in case some useful information passed between them. It appears that his hunch has paid off. Early’s sister has told him in the last few minutes that the boy has told them of his plan to head to the US ASA F’n P, as you like to say.
-All right, don’t get snarky. You say some dumb things too, you know. So, Early’s sister was tipping him off that the boy plans to head to Area 51 in the next day or two, and (WK) intercepted the message? That guy is as arrogant as they come, but he’s no dummy, that’s for sure. If we can get the boy’s time table and ours to line up, we have a win-win, eh?
-I think we have a long way to go before we can call this situation a win-win.
-All right, you know what I meant. Quit making with the negative waves, will you? Speaking of waves, though, do we have any of that microwave popcorn out there?
****
M y leg-wings retracted to normal legs as we approached the plateau above the nation’s cavern, and I came to a skidding stop. I dashed down the side of the hill and through the cleverly camouflaged passageway and sped down the ramp past Warrin and Monti, the two ‘oldies’ guarding the entrance. As I flew by, Monti clapped his hands, the light overhead glinting off his shiny bald head. “I say, that young man is quite something, isn’t he, Warrin? Always dashing to and fro; ah, to be young again.”
Stroking his carefully trimmed gray beard, Warrin chuckled. “I got news for you, Monti. You were never that young, mate.”
At the bottom of the ramp, and filling the interior space of the mammoth cavern, was a party in my honor, in full swing without me. I can’t blame them… I was the one who left the party… how am I going to find the rest of our group in this mass of people? Oh, boy…
I waded into the dancing, chanting crowd, not sure what to do, but as soon as the people nearby realized who I was, a great whoop went up, and soon everyone in the nation was whooping at the same time. Several men nearby picked me up
over their heads and began dance-walking toward the great fountain in the center of the cavern, and I thought that was as good a way as any to find my friends so I let them carry me, although having their hands on me made me uncomfortable. Plus, the spot on my back where I got shot during our job in Brazil was still a bit tender. As they shimmied toward the fountain, I noticed that many in the crowd had painted their faces in ancient ceremonial patterns, and along with the dancing and chanting, they were smacking sticks together, some even playing the didgeridoo. The celebration reminded me a lot of the dreamtime I had witnessed my first time at the nation’s cavern.
“To your left, sonny boy. Against the cavern wall, like a bunch of birds on a wire.”
Ava, what the heck does that mean? Oh, there they are…
In front of the apartment/cave of Benji’s family stood the entire group: Benji, his bush of black hair vibrating with excitement; Mr. Harutyunyan, his muscles so massive he had a hard time bringing his hands together to keep time with the chanting; Ms. Houng, her dark eyes shining as she smiled and waved; the gorgeous Tarni Early; and of course, Cheri, all clapping and whooping along with everyone else. Well, Cheri wasn’t clapping, having only one arm. Benji’s triplet brothers Wally and Harry were there too, along with Jedda, Benji’s pretty younger sister. She’s only one year older than me, and I have to admit I have a crush on her. Not just that, though; she’s nice to talk to and I feel comfortable with her, which isn’t easy for me.
Reassemble (Singular Book 4) Page 1