by Ken Kroes
“All about making that,” Diane said, pointing to the steak on Olivia’s plate.
“Making it? Don’t you mean raising animals for it?” Hope asked.
“No, I mean actually making it. There’s a small section set aside in the greenhouse next to the bug farm. It has machines that will be making synthetic meat.” She laughed at Hope’s horrified expression.
“I knew about the bug farm, but synthetic meat? Why?”
“There’s no livestock here, and this is another source of protein to provide variety. They’re also using it as one of the delivery mechanisms for the brain-booster drug—the one that’s supposed to make all of us psychic. All the ingredients for both the synthetic meat and the drug will be coming from Olivia’s lab.”
Olivia shrugged, “Yeah, we’re doing that. This synthetic meat actually tastes pretty good, but I don’t believe in the psychic stuff at all.”
Diane recalled several episodes in her life that she couldn’t explain, one as recently as the foreboding feeling she had the day she left Gwen’s. Another was just a week ago when she was working on laying out water and power lines to future building sites and ran a set to the wrong location, close to the town center. Though the plans did not call for it, the site was perfect to build on and Diane knew that someday it would be used.
“Haven’t either of you ever experienced déjà vu, or had a dream that later became a reality?” Diane finally asked.
Hope and Olivia looked at each other and shook their heads. “That kind of stuff isn’t possible, and people who claim it as truth are nuts,” Hope said unapologetically. Olivia nodded in agreement.
“I guess,” Diane said. She was reluctant to let them to think she was crazy. I know they’re wrong. I just can’t prove it.
14 - Tension
Spencer felt happy to be back in civilization though he was pretty sure that he would be planning another trip to Percipience soon to find out more about the virus from Olivia. He did feel slightly guilty for leading her on, but it was the best way for him to get more information. He had left there yesterday afternoon and then took a red-eye flight back to the East-Coast. After landing, he ran a few errands and then made his way to the DIR office.
“Well, look who’s here!” Sue said as he dropped his backpack beside his desk.
“You can lose the act. We’re not being monitored.”
“Who’s acting? And as I told you earlier, we are always being monitored. In fact, I got a call from our security team yesterday. They found out that you sent encrypted messages from your phone the other day. What’s that about?”
“Jeez! It was going to a few college friends who were worried about me. I sent them a text when I was being released at the foundation. Sorry—I did the encryption by accident.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured, and I vouched for you, but I won’t do it again. You may think you’ve had a rough time, but it’s nothing compared to the hours that this office has put in during the past few weeks.”
“Why? What’s been happening?”
She described the increasing tension among several countries. “Including our own. East versus West—and in the past few days a few of the smaller countries ruled by dictators have gotten into the fight. Everyone is blaming someone else for fudging the numbers that CURE is monitoring, or for supporting the CURE group.”
“How does this impact us?” he asked.
“Rising tensions demand closer control of information flow. We’ve been working around the clock adjusting data customs parameters and increasing our surveillance of rogue sites not following the IIPA rules. The whole thing is a bloody shame because the majority of the data flow is for personal use or for good, like the scientists working on global climate change research. But now, with increased restrictions, international cooperation is being shut down.”
“I’m sure you’ve left me some work to do on that,” Spencer said. “But I also need to tell you about the village that the Pleasant Belief Foundation is setting up. It’s vast—and there are three more of them around the world.”
“I’ve not had a chance yet to read the report that you sent last night. What do you think is so special about them?”
“Two things,” he said. “The first is that they’re getting ready to be self-contained. They’re running under the guise of experimental sustainable living. But I think there’s much more to it.” He handed her a metal cylinder, glass vial, and thumb drive. “I found these while I was there but didn’t mention them in my report because I wasn’t sure what they are. The data file on the thumb drive talks about a virus but then gets into a bunch of micro biology detail that I didn’t understand.”
She saw the hazardous-goods label on the cylinder and handled it carefully. “A virus?”
“From that label and the biohazard symbols, it looks like they’ve designed an exceptionally lethal virus, and I think the glass bottle holds the vaccine. There was a whole crate of them in a lab up there, and I grabbed a sample.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “Why would they do that? I’ll send this down to the Center for Disease Control lab and have them test it. Richard lied to me. He told me there was nothing sinister going on there. I need to have a long chat with him. By the way—good job, Spencer.”
She returned to her desk after arranging for the samples to be sent out, read Spencer’s report and then gave him the gaze until he looked up at her. “This report of yours on Percipience and the colonies isn’t too bad. I’ll forward it to a few departments. It’ll add fuel to the growing number of groups interested in seeing an end to this foundation. If we can confirm the cylinder contains what we think it does, that’ll be the nail in their coffin.”
She pulled out a folder from a stack of files. “Which brings me to your next assignment. You can start pulling your weight around here instead of gallivanting around the countryside.”
“Something to do with the data related to the CURE threat?”
“Well, there’s not a lot we can do there though we’ve had several requests to try. CURE was smart and for its latest threat picked data points that are hard to be manipulated and are widely published. Things like new home sales, same store sales figures for major retail outlets, number of tons of coal mined and new car sales. But a side effect of this whole thing is a heightened awareness of environmental issues. One of the areas that we now have several requests for is information on subsidence of land due to the increased use of ground water.”
“Subsidence of land?”
“Underground reservoirs of water support the land above them. If these reservoirs are not constantly replenished, or have the water pumped out too quickly for city or irrigation use, the land above them sinks.”
“Sounds simple, but not that important. What’s the big push?”
“Two reasons that I’m told,” she said. “The first is that several major coastal cities apparently are sinking at a rate of a few inches per year. The second is that inland, especially where there’s significant irrigation, land has dropped in places by more than twenty feet. This all involves huge costs as underground sewers, water lines, overpasses, roadways and canals don’t handle sinking land well. Several government departments are pointing fingers at one another, and we need to figure out what the facts are, like how much water is pumped and what it’s used for.”
“I never realized that this was such a problem,” Spencer said. “I’ve heard about global climate change and the sea levels rising slowly, but this is much more dramatic for those coastal cities. Does this have to do with the recent draught back in 2020 and 2021 where some of the irrigation wells were running dry?”
“That’s part of it. The draught before that, from 2012 through 2015, was the one that caused major damage in several countries. Farmers were pretty much allowed to drill as many wells as they wanted, and there were no controls in place on how much water they could pump.”
Spencer promised to gain as much information as possible and to keep track of the cylin
ders that were on their way to the CDC.
******************
Mikhail watched Olivia on his security monitor as she put on her protective suit and entered the Biohazard Four area of the lab downstairs. What’s she doing in there? He did not like her away from Percipience but he hadn’t been able to find a reason to refuse her trip. So far however, she had done nothing unusual, but he could not think of a reason for her being in that area.
He walked briskly from his office to the lab. When he arrived there he leaned into the microphone.
“Olivia! What are you working on?”
She paused for a moment then lifted her head and looked in his direction. “I’m testing some of the vaccines we have in storage here. The lab technicians didn’t store them properly and I think that this batch is ruined.”
“Let me see.”
She hit the switch on the electron microscope to turn on the monitor outside the biohazard area. He studied the image and could see the vaccine cells were ruptured.
“You’re right—this is no good.”
“I’ll need to spend a few more weeks here to create a new batch. With the Virtuesh project over and all of my assistants gone now, I need to do it myself.”
She’s up to something, and I know just the way to keep a better eye on her. “Fine. With things slower now, there are plenty of suites available right here on the complex. Why don’t you stay in one of them instead of going to and from your apartment? It would surely save time.”
“Sure, I can do that,” she said realizing that this was not a suggestion She waited for several minutes after he left before removing the slide that was under the microscope. I’m glad I prepared this fake slide.
15 - Crisis
Richard was furious, “How could they have found out?” he bellowed into the phone.
“I’m trying to find out,” Mikhail said, hoping he sounded more assuring than he felt. “I called you as soon as I learned that the CDC possessed a Virtuesh sample.” He had been alerted by several hits from the DIR and the CDC on the fake Virtuesh website in the last few days.
“This was one of your highest priorities, Mikhail, to make sure this whole virus thing would be kept quiet. You assured me it wouldn’t be a problem.”
Mikhail insisted he had gone to extreme lengths to ensure that no word of Virtuesh could reach beyond a small group of people. “I don’t know how it happened, or how they got a sample. They don’t even know what it is yet, and it’ll take them several weeks to figure it out. During that time, I’ll deal with it.” He heard Richard’s grunting sound.
“Do whatever you need to do. If they figure out what it is, they’ll shut down everything. We’ve had enough problems this last month, and I don’t want anymore,” he said, then hung up the phone.
Mikhail heard the click and knew that Richard was very upset. And he should be. If only he knew that I’m even more worried than he is. He called Hope.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“We have a problem. It looks like our friends from both the DIR and CDC have somehow gotten hold of a sample of the virus.”
“How in the hell did that happen?”
“Not sure, but I suspect either Olivia or that DIR agent did it. I started to see hits on the dummy website a few days ago. Then I got in touch with a friend of mine at the CDC, and she confirmed they have a canister there that sure sounds like one of ours.”
“What a mess. What are we going to do?”
He said his first concern was calming Richard and delaying the lab findings. “After that, I really don’t care.”
She exhaled loudly with relief. “For a minute I thought you might ask me to break into the CDC lab and steal it back. That would be tough, but slowing their investigation should be simple. They need to be distracted by something more important.”
“Such as?”
“Test the original strain on random groups of people around the world, especially here in America. That will create public fear, and the CDC will drop everything to look into it, at least for a while.”
“That’s brilliant!”
“Do you want me to take care of it?”
“No. You haven’t been given the vaccine yet and I don’t want you to take the risk. There are only a few people who have been vaccinated, and I’m one of them. I need to visit the other villages anyhow, so that will work as excellent cover for me travelling around. I’ll do it over the next few days.”
She expressed her concern about Richard’s reaction. “I’m assuming he’s going ballistic right now.”
“That sums it up well. I just got off of the phone with him and was thinking of saying we’d break into the lab and swap the sample with something not lethal.”
“Sounds credible enough.”
“I think so,” Mikhail said. “It’s the best that I can think of right now to assure him that I have this under control.” Following their conversation, thoughts crowded into his head. Now I just have to make sure that Richard holds it together. I can’t have him meddling around here. After this month, this last piece of news could break him.
********************
The last month had not gone well for the Pleasant Belief Foundation. Government officials outlined a list of laws and regulations that the colonies were breaking: child-labor laws, barter laws, discrimination laws, regulations on tracking and reporting guests, and using illegal surveillance equipment were some of the charges brought. Richard felt convinced there were several groups behind this concentrated effort to shut the colonies down. His legal team went through the list, and by the time they were done with their recommendations Richard realized that if he complied with all of then, he would be left running a cheap housing unit, which defeated the whole purpose. Seeing no practical solution to the problem, he gave the directive to start shutting down both colonies and to have them closed within the next six months.
Closure of the colonies seemed to create a domino effect in terms of bad luck. A week later, the Europe village was taken over by the government of the host country after hearing rumors of it being a front for a large spy operation originating in the west. Richard suspected that the rumors had been dropped by western governments themselves.
The last piece of bad news involved several of his television stations having a hard time getting content and other advertisers. This resulted in a big drain on his capital and ratings so low that left him wondering if he should sell his company shares.
Richard sat in his office chair after talking to Mikhail and getting the news on the CDC. This can’t all be a coincidence. Someone is trying to shut me down, and I need to find out who it is.
********************
Spencer rubbed his eyes, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes.
“Getting sleepy?” Sue asked.
He straightened up in his chair, “No, not at all. I live to work thirty-six hours straight.” It is amazing how things can change in just a few short days.
A week ago Spencer was looking forward to having a few well-deserved days off. Olivia was going to fly in to see him and they had talked about taking a driving tour around the coast and staying at a few B&B’s. Then she called and said that she would not be able to make it. Something about being required to stay at the foundation headquarters. Spencer was about to book a flight out to see her when wham, all of this happened.
“Well, you’d better be ready for at least another thirty-six.” Sue said, “The recovery from the CURE attack is taking much longer than I expected.”
The DIR had been struck by two emergencies within a week. The first was the outbreak of an advanced lethal flu virus never before seen, and several departments were demanding more information. The virus was suspected of killing a hundred people in ten cities, mostly in the U.S. Tensions among governments remained high and very little information about the casualty count, symptoms, or the virus itself was being shared.
The second issue was the attack by CURE directly on the DIR and its correspondi
ng agencies in nine other countries. True to their promise, CURE posted the results of consumption from the industrialized countries and punished the top ten by hacking into thousands of computers in these countries and changing the host-country codes. In the United States, for example, the DIR computers thought they were set for China and in France the host country code was set to Great Britain. When the data customs challenges were issued, every infected server within the ten countries failed, and a signal was sent to them to shut down. Almost immediately, the entire backbone of the Internet disappeared.
The shutdown was catastrophic to the countries impacted. Companies were left unable to operate. Social media, emails, and most phones ceased functioning; all electronic, debit, and charge-card transactions stopped working. People were unable to withdraw money from their banks. Even essential services like hospitals and the police were impacted due to their heavy reliance on the Internet to transmit their internal data.
The problem was diagnosed quickly but fixing it was laborious and time-consuming as each server had to be verified manually, and CURE had craftily put up hundreds of fake servers that prolonged the verification process.
“You win. I know that I’m a lot younger than you, but you’re a machine. I don’t know how you do it, but I can’t keep up and I need some sleep,” Spencer replied.
“I’ve endured many of these sleep-deprivation experiments. It’s all about conditioning and I am not a lot older than you. Why don’t you go home then and get some rest? Is there anything that you want me to follow up on?”
“You can yell at the CDC lab some more. I know they’re busy, but they seem to be dragging out that sample analysis. Hasn’t it been a few weeks since you sent it?”
She agreed it was taking too long but reminded him that the flu outbreak had added to the lab’s already constricted schedule. “They also want to be sure that the data is accurate. You would be surprised at how many phony leads they get. However, I don’t think this outbreak and what you found at Percipience are coincidental. I spoke to the director about this a few days ago, and I think I’ve convinced him as well. But even with him pressuring them, it all takes time, and it’ll be at least another few weeks before they’ve completed the analysis.”