As if in response to that thought a group of lawyers in suits left the building and started down the sidewalk, their precious briefcases in hands. Dupree shook his head glumly at the missed opportunity their unknowing escape from the McMillan Building represented. Bastards had lucked out, but Dupree took consolation in the fact that there would be plenty of other lawyer types still inside that misguided den of iniquity called a federal courthouse.
Dupree turned to look at his other screen which carried a feed from the trial. It looked like the judge was about to hand down his decision. He looked back at the first screen where the three lawyers were just about to walk unknowingly past the Angel of Death, the Angel who had been incarnated in Ellis Fallon and his truck-bomb. Dupree thought, those sorry bastards probably think they dispense justice. Today they’re going to see real justice bestowed, mostly on their own ilk!
Suddenly the screen showing the take from Ellis’ headset cameras blurred as his head turned violently to the right. Dupree’s eyes widened as he stared up at the screen. The window of the Toyota had just shattered and one of the lawyers leaned in through it pointing a gun.
Dupree unconsciously flinched away from the bore of the weapon on the screen, as it appeared to point right between his own eyes. With short-lived pride he saw Ellis’ own weapon rise into view.
Dupree only had a moment to think, Nooooo! Then the two weapons discharged simultaneously.
The view from Ellis’ HUD jerked up and back, then descended slowly past the agent who’d been knocked back from the window.
The view from the HUD slowly continued to sink forward and to the left, finally stopping with nothing but the carpet on the floorboards of the truck in its field. A moment later a red haze obscured the camera as blood dripped over it.
Dupree sat staring at the unmoving red image until the HUD was removed from Ellis’ head and cast aside. Minutes after that, in the screen from the camera mounted on the dash of the truck, he saw Ellis’ body being loaded unceremoniously into the back of an ambulance.
The sheet had been pulled up over Ellis’ head. Those bastards aren’t even trying to help him, Dupree thought as blackness descended over him. My only son! Those bastards will pay!
Those damned bastards will pay!
THOSE GOD DAMNED BASTARDS WILL PAY!!
***
Sheila Rhodes stepped into the office of the new Director of the FBI. The President had appointed Madison Arquette, one of Stockton’s buddies from the political sludge heap. The man was handsome and articulate, but very careful to keep his hands clean and his image spotless. Sheila liked him well enough but had a mild revulsion for his careful intent to keep any blame from sticking to him.
He came around his desk to greet her pleasantly enough, “What’s up?” He took in her unhappy look, “Did someone screw up?”
“No,” she said defensively, trying to protect her people, “no one on our team screwed up, but that damned SCDF is proving a really hard nut to crack.”
Arquette frowned, “Come on Sheila. The President told you guys to take those bastards down. If they’re still around, somebody’s screwed up.”
“Things aren’t that simple. We captured three of their members, but we think Fallon’s brainwashed or hypnotized them. We just aren’t able to get anything useful out of them using legal questioning.” She shrugged, “Though they all seem to have been from a single cell, so they may not know much about the rest of the SCDF. We’ve torn apart their homes, vehicles, yards and places of employment looking for physical clues and only come up with a couple scraps of paper and a memory chip that had to do with a plan to bomb the US District Courthouse in Florence South Carolina.”
“Oh Christ! You’re not going to tell me they just blew it up?”
“No, we did find a truck with a couple barrels of ANFO in the back. The agents tried to capture the driver who turned out to be Fallon’s kid. Unfortunately, the kid pulled a gun and then he and the arresting agent shot each other.”
Arquette closed his eyes, “Tell me you’ve got the Fallon kid in custody so we can use him as leverage on his dad.”
Rhodes narrowed her eyes, noting that her boss hadn’t asked about the condition of the agent who nominally worked for him, though pretty far down the chain, “No sir. Fallon’s dead, shot in the head.”
“Christ! In the head? Is that how you guys are trained? Shoot to kill? I thought you were supposed to just ‘wing’ important subjects?
Rhodes sighed, “Sir… of course we’d rather he hadn’t killed Fallon, but it’s just not that easy when the other guy is pointing a gun at you.”
A disgusted look crossed Arquette’s face, “Sounds like a training failure to me. Please tell me we have some other good leads to this SCDF.”
“No sir.”
“Christ,” Arquette said for the third time, this time with a sigh. “Edith asked me for a little good news she could use to float the midterm elections and you hand me this pile of crap!”
“Sir, we did prevent a bombing of a Federal Courthouse. That’s a success, no matter how you look at it. Fallon wounded our agent and I’m damned proud of him. I just can’t accept your comment about a ‘training failure.’”
Arquette rolled his eyes. “OK, I’ll try to sell that story to the President, but you’d better make some progress on those bastards, and soon.”
***
Gary entered the lab where Viveka normally worked. Since the disastrous ending of their date a few weeks earlier even their interactions at work had been very strained. He had repeatedly cursed himself for trying to kiss her and wondered if there was anything he could do to get things back to the way they had been before.
Despite a plethora of rehearsed apologies, he had not come up with one that sounded right to him. Besides, it was too late to apologize now; at this point it would sound ridiculous.
“Viveka?” he asked, somewhat apprehensively, “you wanted to see me?” He feared that she wanted to quit her job, return to India, or otherwise somehow physically distance herself from him.
She spun in her seat as if startled, “Oh!” she said rising to her feet, “Yes, Dr. Pace, I have the first results from our in situ graphene deposition tests. I thought you would want to see them.”
“Yes, yes I do,” he said feeling relieved that she wasn’t leaving, but again dismayed by her insistence on distancing herself by calling him doctor. “What have you got for me?”
Over the next 30 minutes she showed him the results of a number of test runs, initially unsuccessful, but then gradually honing in on a setup that produced high quality graphene in nice even layers with very few flaws. Gary blinked at the results. He had thought her proposed setup would likely work, but not this well. Additionally, he felt flustered by her close presence as she leaned in to point out various problem areas on her test piece. She even brushed against him while pointing out the quality of the coating in the depths of a corner. This sent tingles radiating through his skin from that spot.
Nonetheless her demeanor was completely professional at all times. If she harbored any personal feelings toward him, either good or bad, she certainly hid them well.
Taking a deep breath, he resolved to be completely professional himself. “This is truly excellent work Ms. Janu. Of course, that’s what we have come to expect from you by now.” He glanced around her exceptionally well organized workspace; then turned back to her, “I’ll ask Mr. Miller, our patent attorney, to set up a meeting with you the next time he is here at Allosci. You’ll need to help him draft a patent application based on this brilliant idea of yours. If you haven’t reviewed the terms of your employment as regards intellectual property, you should. You’re entitled to 40% of any royalties that proceed from this invention.”
Gary shook her hand in congratulations, and left the area. He didn’t see the single tear that trickled down Viveka’s cheek as he departed.
***
Washington D.C.—In her weekly radio address President Stockton complimented t
he FBI for their arrest of four members of the radical South Carolina Defense Force. The SCDF is a group with a number of extremist ideologies and a history of violent protest against abortion. In the takedown the FBI apprehended three members of the SCDF and then captured a truck-bomb the SCDF had allegedly intended to detonate under the McMillan Federal Building where the US District Court had just handed down a “pro-choice” decision. The driver of the truck, one Ellis Fallon, son of long time militant survivalist Dupree Fallon, was killed in the operation. One FBI agent was wounded, but is expected to recover…
Dupree learned of Stockton’s radio address by seeing mention of it on his newsfeed. That night he listened to her speech over and over, becoming more and more convinced that he heard a gloating tone in her voice when she spoke of the death of one Ellis Fallon, Dupree Fallon’s only son.
Incessantly and repetitively until nearly dawn, Dupree continued to replay Stockton’s words. The next day, he not only knew every word by heart, but had attributed hidden meanings to every nuance and inflection. Others might think she was trying to puff up her administration for the midterm elections but Dupree knew she’d just declared war on the SCDF in general, and on the Fallons in particular.
A black rage filled Dupree’s heart. The lost feeling he’d had upon Ellis’ death now replaced itself with malignant hatred. A hatred focused almost entirely on Edith Stockton.
***
New York—The Journal Science today announced the publication of another stunning treatise carrying the name of Ell Donsaii. Shannon Kinrais, co-author of her fourth paper is once again the lead author of this, her eighth paper. This time a Gareth Pace is the second author with Donsaii the last author.
Donsaii’s first three publications, the first on quantum entanglement through the fifth dimension, the second on the two slit experiment, and a third on PGR communications were all solo authored and each shook the foundations of the world of physics. Her fourth paper on the effects of a 5th dimension on gravitation and redshift over great distances was her first co-authored paper, that time with Kinrais. That paper has revolutionized the world of astrophysics and become known as the “K-D paper.” Most people are already aware of the three co-authored papers that followed, these in the journal Science, regarding the Tau Ceti solar system, as well as the biosphere and the primitive but intelligent inhabitants of Tau Ceti’s third planet. Though those seven were the only papers she had published until now, any one of those papers would have established their authors as major players in the scientific pantheon (she won a Nobel Prize for the first one). The third paper shook the world’s economy as well.
There is no doubt that Donsaii could publish another paper on her ports that would also shake the scientific world. The only paper published on her ports has been the patent publication and it did not detail the specifics of the science behind them. Despite the efforts of thousands of bright people all over the world, Portal Tech, a subsidiary of D5R, the company Donsaii leads, has apparently been the only one to succeed in making functional ports. Of course, even if others did successfully build some ports, patent law would constrain them from doing it for profit.
This new eighth publication is the first one to stray into the realm of chemistry. This time she and her co-authors are publishing a graphic description of the optimization of conditions at which the formation of various carbon allotropes will reliably occur. These allotropes include diamond, graphene and lonsdaleite, a little known allotrope that is even harder than diamond!
If these claims are substantiated by other investigators, it is hard to imagine that she and her co-authors would not be up for another Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry. An amazing run of scientific discoveries for one person…
Stell sat nervously waiting for the doctor. The post-surgical bandage was due to come off her eye today and she felt terribly worried about what might or might not happen. Someone sat down next to her. “Hello Stell,” Dr. Keller’s voice said warmly, though she thought he sounded nervous too.
“Hi, Doctor Keller. I didn’t know you were coming today.”
“Well, I thought this would be a good time to find out from your doctor if it would be OK to try out your implant.”
“Oh! OK!” she said excitedly.
“If it’s OK with you I’d like your permission for my AI to communicate with yours? I need permission so your AI can send the video from your headband to the fancy AI that will deliver it back to your implant.”
Stell turned her face up toward her mother, “That’s OK, right Mommy?”
“Sure.”
Ryan spoke with his AI a moment, then had the video from Stell’s headband fed to his own HUD to be sure her camera was working. She of course had never been able to look at the feed from her cameras, just wearing them as many people did, to keep a record in case they were assaulted. The advent of AI video records of a person’s surroundings had markedly reduced the incidence of violent crimes. You were much less likely to attack someone when you knew that an AV record of the attack would be available to the courts. PGR connections had furthered this change because of the fact that now the AIs that stored the AV record were physically somewhere far away and the attacker could no longer hope to destroy the AV record by destroying the AI itself.
Ryan had just gotten a good feed off Stell’s cameras when they were called back into the doctor’s office. The three of them sat in the exam room, each nervous in their own way, then Dr. Willoughby leaned in the door of the room and said, “I’ll be another few minutes, has she been able to see anything through the port yet?”
Ryan said, “We haven’t tried it yet, would it be OK for me to give her a feed?”
“Sure, I’ll be right back.”
Ryan turned to Stell, “Are you ready to give it a try Stell?”
Trembling with excitement Stell nodded.
Ryan spoke to his AI, asking it to feed a very dim picture at first as it seemed to him that having sudden bright light after years in darkness might be painful. He said, “Start at five percent brightness now.”
Stell threw her head back!
“Off!” Ryan shouted, “Are you OK Stell?”
“Yes!” Stell said tremulously, “Oh! Turn it back on! It just scared me. Please! Turn it back on!”
Ryan gave her the video feed back and she exclaimed excitedly again, clapping her hands together. “What do you see?”
“Light!” she said, practically squirming in her chair, “I haven’t seen light since my transplants went bad.”
“Can you see me wave my hand around?” Ryan asked, waving his hand out in front of her AI’s camera.
“I see something moving, it’s really soft though.”
Ryan’s heart fell. “Soft” sounded to him like how a blind person might describe blurry. Though, he supposed, blurry sight was better than none at all. Then his mind hung up on the thought “blurry.” Eyes widening a second, he spoke to his AI, “Adjust the focus gradually, starting at the focal distance you’re at and moving toward the other end.” He turned to Stell, “Let us know if the image gets any better.”
Stell’s camera was actually feeding the image to a set of adjustable lenses back at D5R. Before the image was sent back to Stell it could be brightened or darkened or infrared light could be converted to visible. Then the light was fed to a set of lenses so they could focus it. The image needed to leave the port at the back of Stell’s lenses focused so that it formed a sharp image on her retina because she couldn’t focus it herself, her cataract laden lenses having been removed to put in the port. The motors controlling the focus slowly shifted and suddenly Stell shouted, “I can see your fingers!”
“Great! Are they sharp yet?”
“Sharp?”
“Yeah, if the image is in focus you should see abrupt or sharp edges to my fingers.”
Legs kicking back and forth, Stell exclaimed, “Sharp like a, like a knife’s edge! Yes! They’re getting sharper and sharper… Oh! Oh! Uh, now the edges are getting softer agai
n.”
Ryan turned over the focus to Stell’s AI so she could tell it directly how to adjust the focal length. A minute later she said, “Oh! That’s perfect!” She turned her head up toward her mother and said, “Mommy, I can see! I can see you!” She reached out a trembling hand to touch her mother’s face. It waved back and forth a moment as the little girl adjusted to seeing her own hand and controlling its motion by sight. Then it touched her mother’s cheek. She frowned, “Mommy? This is your cheek right?”
Her mother nodded microscopically.
“Why’s it wet? Are you crying?
“Tears of joy, Stell, tears of joy,” her mother croaked out.
Ryan wiped the back of his wrist at his own eyes. “Uh,” he rasped, then cleared his throat, “Can you see any colors?”
“I don’t know,” Stell said, turning her head to point her camera different directions, “Or, actually, I’m not sure I know what colors look like.”
“Oh,” Ryan stood and moved to a large poster picture of the anatomy of the eye on the wall behind the door. “This is pink,” he moved his finger, “and this is yellow.”
“Uh, I can hardly see that over there.”
Ryan blinked, looking at the chart, then back at Stell, heart back in his throat. Absently he pushed the door out away from the picture.
“Oh! I can see it better now!”
Roger’s eyes widened. “Stell, ask your AI to increase the image brightness,” he said eagerly. “You’re only at five percent. Try ten, then twenty.”
Stell spoke to her AI, saying, “Try ten percent brightness.” She exclaimed, “Oh! Oh! Oh! Try twenty!”
At seventy she frowned and asked it to go back down to sixty, then smiled, swinging her head around to look at the things in the room. “Dr. Keller! Show me pink and yellow again?”
Rescue (an Ell Donsaii story #11) Page 7