Futura: Parallel Universes. Book 2

by Valerio Malvezzi

  “So, I’ll be here on the road, hidden in that door entrance hall on the corner, and I’ll check the traffic. From there, I can see both roads. We’ve already cracked the front door and the right door. The apartment on the third floor is open; you can close it with a latch. The car will be placed at the mid-point between the three exits,” the blonde will say. “And you tell us when to stop and which of the three to pick you up from. And if something goes wrong, give the order to leave.”

  The girl will put her backpack on her shoulder. “Only I decide whether to abandon, clear?”

  The two will watch the girl cross the street, heading to the dilapidated old building. The girl will open the door and enter the dark corridor, closing the door behind her. She will switch on the flashlight, checking the door to the courtyard. It will be open and the courtyard will be dark. A dog will bark in the distance. Arriving at the stairs, she will take the steps to the right, stopping near the railing on the ground floor, pull a small box out of the backpack, and place it on the ground, about a foot from the railing, to which it will attach with a magnet. Then she will climb the stairs in the dark, pass the first floor, checking that the doors of the two lodgings are closed.

  The woman will look at the bag in her hand and make the gesture of opening it.

  “Not now. Soon, when I tell you.”

  The blonde will look even thinner, numbed by the cold. “Why did you want to see me here?” she’ll ask. “There are surveillance cameras and also the law enforcement service.”

  “It’s evening, and there are a lot of people here. And they’re looking for a single man, dressed differently than me,” he will explain, taking her by the elbow. “Here, let me take your arm, and now we’ll look at the structure like a normal couple of tourists. Imagine that we’re husband and wife...”

  The woman will move closer and hesitantly take the man’s arm, moving the bag into her other hand.

  “Come, let’s look at it more closely,” he will say.

  The two, arm in arm, will observe the series of polished stainless steel slabs reflecting the skyline of the skyscrapers, distorting it and creating fascinating reflections in the evening light.

  “I checked everything you told me this afternoon. What I’ve read so far is incredible. It’s clear that the Medoc Company is just a cover. And I checked the RFPs you told me about, the Department assignments. I was speechless.”

  “And I haven’t told you anything yet. I haven’t told you about the books and essays that we were supposed to discuss yesterday. Yesterday. It seems like last century.”

  “And what do you expect me to see?”

  “Don’t rush, I need to think. First I want to check that there’s money, make a plan to disappear, and tomorrow morning we’ll start the research. If it’s what I think, it won’t take long.”

  The crowd around them, even in that season plagued by unfavorable weather, will enjoy a world to walk around, mirroring themselves, recovering. The skyscrapers, the park, the first stars in the sky will look even more beautiful reflected in the bean. The couple will pass under the large structure and the feeling will be almost disturbing. The man, however, will feel safe, protected by the play of lights and the crowd.

  The black figure will silently climb to the second floor and place the second box, again on the railing. She will go up to the third floor, verifying that the door is only pulled aside. She will enter the dark apartment, pass two rooms, entering the third, and laying a third, larger box on the floor. She will come out on the landing of the apartment, closing the door behind her, then go back down the entire staircase, and upon reaching the ground floor, will go up the stairs to the left. Arriving on the third floor, she will verify that the door is only pulled aside, and will enter, closing it behind her with the latch. The apartment will be dark and empty. She will pass through two rooms and place the backpack in the third. From it, she will extract the folding aluminum chair and the holographic projector, which she will lay on the ground, unrolling the green mat on the floor. Then she will turn off the flashlight and head to another room, going to the window and opening it. She will climb onto the long balcony, walk all along it, and place the metal roll on the ground in a corner. Then she will look at the courtyard in the dark, three floors down. It won’t seem difficult. Perimeter walls a couple meters long, a breeze. Beyond the garden and other courtyards, she will focus on the exit directions, open the personal display, minimizing the brightness, and in the darkness of the night will study the three extraction zones on the three-dimensional map, mentally storing the connection between the virtual map and reality. She will observe the sky, a moonless, cloudy, perfect night. She will return to the room, close the window on the balcony, head to the adjacent empty room, sit on the chair laid on the mat, and turn on the projector. Inhaling in the dark, she will close her eyes to better accustom them to darkness and empty her mind for a while, meditating. Finally, she will reopen her eyes and check the time.

  Twelve minutes to the appointment. I’m ready.

  The van will be stationary on the access ramp of a roof of a building with a dozen floors, in the center of Wroclaw, in the Silesia region. In the back compartment, six men in black combat suits will be seated with weapons between their legs, in silence. In the central compartment, the Polish Captain and the Italian Commissioner will watch holographic monitors, their luminescence shining in the dark.

  “Oh, how careless,” he will say, taking her bag. “You already have the bag. Let me help you.”

  “The money is all there. Tell me when we’ll start, and what we’ll do.”

  “I told you. In the morning.”

  “And how do I know that you won’t disappear now and that I’ll never see you again?”

  “You don’t, but it won’t happen. We’re going to work together as a team. And if what we find is worth what I believe it is, I’ll ask you for the same amount of money so I can move on. My life here will be over, closed. I’m going to have to start somewhere else. The agreement I propose is this: I pass the information on to you, and you’ll investigate for both of us, based on what I reveal to you.”

  “And what will you reveal to me?”

  “There are essays written by several authors. And a science fiction novel, a kind of thriller about killing the pope, set in the future.”

  “Right,” she will say, and the man will grasp the hint of irony in her voice.

  “Yes. Then an essay on the evolution of renewable energies over the last thirty years. And maybe it also has something to do with an article on oncology by a Chinese doctor. Those three are the ones I selected. They’re recent and digital. And then we also have an old chapter of a book written at the beginning of the century, containing statistics on population growth on the planet.”

  The people around them will be attracted to the sculpture. Adults and children with personal displays and artificial lights will take photos of the structure, manipulating the effects of light, in search of the strangest and funniest effect. The shape above and around them will mold them into light, reflecting, converging, and exploding.

  The woman will let out a laugh.

  “Are you sure you’re not making fun of me?” she’ll ask aloud. “Should these things have any correlation? Come on, do you really think anyone would kill for those arguments? I’m starting to think I don’t have a great journalistic nose.”

  The man will stop, taking her by both arms. Their mirrored figures will blend with those of passers-by under the large silver structure.

  In the driving compartment next to the pilot, the holographic operator will be connected by the helmet on his head, maneuvering sheets in space.

  “They’re no longer here, Commissioner, it’s useless,” the Polish man will say tiredly. “It’s too late. We’ve been here listening for almost five hours.”

  The Italian will check the time, verifying the delay; the local time will be one forty.

  Three hours and forty minutes late. Something’s wrong.

/>   “They will come,” the Commissioner will say.

  The Pole, too tired to contradict the man with dark curls, will simply look at the clock again.

  Then the display light will break the darkness of the night. Cervetti will look instinctively at the time: two thirty-six.

  “Santilli, what’s up?” he’ll ask anxiously.

  “Commissioner, here we go!” We’ve hooked them for twenty seconds. “Same node. Tell the pilot to go north of your location. The signal is a few kilometers away. They’re surely broadcasting from the city.”

  Cervetti will insert the intercommunication device and Santilli’s voice will be translated into Polish in the headphones.

  “How long?”

  “With this signal, already knowing the starting node, maximum ten minutes. We’ll guide you.”

  “Tell De Santis to have his operative launch a program to slow communication. Drive us to the place, then we’ll track the exact spot with the portable helmet.”

  Cervetti will look at the Polish Captain in front of him. “Helmet range?”

  “Five hundred meters,” the Pole will answer, fastening his belt. “Margin of error from ten to twenty meters. Let’s go!”

  The pilot will put the flying car in a vertical position, and the large vehicle will shoot into the sky, lifting a cloud of exhaust gas and colored condensation from the flashing lights moving away in the darkness.

  “You’re late,” the bearded man will say.

  “Listen to me,” he will say, speaking in a low voice, “I don’t know if anyone would kill over these arguments. Personally, if you want to know my opinion, people shouldn’t be killed over any subject.”

  The woman will look him in the eye.

  “But it happened,” he will continue, his baritone voice just one in the crowd. “Yesterday morning, in my office, I found my colleagues in a bloodbath. It looked like a slaughterhouse, you know? And then, after talking to my best friend, I read the news of his death on a holographic space, as if it were something minor. Well, it’s not for me. And I want to understand.”

  The woman will look down.

  “I’m sorry,” she will murmur. “It’s that all this playing spies makes me a little nervous, that’s all.”

  He will let go of her arm.

  “And I want to know too,” she will add.

  The tourists will walk all around in the park, and some will take pictures of the sculpture while sitting in seats further away.

  “Who do you think it was?” she will ask suddenly.

  “I don’t know. But they made their first mistake yesterday.”

  “When?”

  “Leaving me for dead.”

  Under the structure, the city will change appearance, the faces will be deformed, and the people who pass under the structure next to them will create a fluid movement mirrored in the plays of light in the evening.

  “May I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “I think by now you’ve realized that this isn’t a joke. We’ll write a dossier, collaboratively. I’ll pass on information to you, but you’ll sign it. They’re going to go after you. They won’t easily let the truth come to light, and they’ll probably try to discredit your work, and therefore, you personally, your reputation. That’s one thing, but I don’t know how far they may go. I’m already in this game. But not you. You’re joining on your own initiative, you’re a volunteer.”

  He will be resting on the rough wooden bench in the large hall of the Black Lily Tavern in Tortuga, crowded with people and permeated by the smoke of pipes and the fireplace.

  “And you, you’re an asshole,” the 18th-century dandy will comment.

  He’ll raise the edges of the burgundy suit with white lace before sitting down. “I had to shoot three and a half hours of unscheduled programming, after a shitty day, instead of eating a pizza and watching the game.”

  The dandy, with the rabbit face of a holographic cartoon, will move his hands and manipulate objects on the wooden board, as Janus’s loading program will confirm.

  Something is wrong.

  “Anyway, I’m done with your fucking job,” the rabbit will say. “It turned out awesome. I’m sending it in parts.”

  The bearded man will look at the signals of his own programs, checking the bright LEDs in the darkness of the abandoned apartment.

  That man at the table in the back of the tavern, by the fire, has been there for hours.

  “Why is it taking so long tonight?” the bearded man will ask, leaning against the tavern’s wooden table.

  “Line problems. Looks like there’s more traffic than usual. It’s normal.”

  It’s not normal for shit.

  “You’d better hurry.”

  The man by the fireplace seems to be looking this way every now and then.

  “I’m doing my best, and if it wasn’t for your fucking schedule change, by now I’d already be with my belly full of beer in my bed, damn it,” the rabbit will say, moving the pieces to the tavern table. “And don’t break my balls. It’s not me that’s slow, it’s this fucking line that won’t move!”

  The bearded man will look at the bright LEDs in the darkness of the apartment, observing the man at the back of the smoky hall near the fire.

  “Yes, but hurry.”

  The two will come out from under the structure, walking among the people stopping to gaze at the masterpiece of optics. The reflections, the views of the surrounding buildings, the perfection of the polished surface, perfectly clean, without ridges or cracks, will make people’s simple act of walking a fluid and irresistible work of art.

  “Why are you doing it?” Whiley will ask. “Aren’t you afraid?”

  The blonde will let go of his arm and shake her head, raising her chin again to look at him better.

  “You see, Mr. Whiley, I’m just a journalist. It’s a unique job because newspapers, in the technical sense, no longer exist. However, I have read a lot of the great masters of the past, and have come to the opinion that some journalists think they are telling the truth and others know that they are not.”

  The two will walk slowly. In the evening light, the illuminated buildings will reflect the lights of the bright windows on the surface of the bean.

  “Among those who think they are telling the truth, some are right, and others are not,” the woman will continue. “I don’t know if I’m right; however, I don’t care much about the distinction between those who are right and those who are wrong, but rather between those who say and write what they think and those who, regardless of the reasons, don’t.”

  Viewable, walkable, and passable inside, the cavity will produce infinite and multiple images that, distorted by the plays of light in the evening, will generate bizarre and swirling moving shapes, which, together with theirs, will contort them, inserting them into a fairytale landscape.

  “It is like in these mirrors, Mr. Whiley,” she will explain. “Even if we warp it, the reality is always reality. Those who simply tell of reality are passing on information; those who warp it, on the other hand, are not. I want to be among the first, Mr. Whiley, on the side of those who have the courage to express their ideas, to say what they see simply as they see it, without distorting lenses. Then the readers will look, read, form their own opinions, and choose whether what we have said corresponds to what they want to know.”

  The man will look at the images of their reflected and distorted selves in the evening light.

  “Commissioner, we’re very close now, a few blocks northwest!” Santilli’s voice will rasp in the intercom. “I’m sending the data to your operator in the van.”

  “So, when we’re in the area, we go to the real-time search with the helmet, and we identify the target!” the Captain will shout at his men over the jet’s vibrations. “Break in only at my word, and no one shoots, except in defense. In that case, just to injure the target; we need him alive! All clear?”

  “Captain, I remind you that your men must only
break in at the end of the transaction.”

  “Fine, stay behind me. We’ll getting to the target area soon. Get ready to go to manual search!”

  The operator in the driver’s seat will suddenly turn, the helmet on his head, the face covered by the light viewer.

  “Captain, I crossed the data. We hooked it!” he will shout, showing a signal on the holographic map with his gloved hand. “They’re calling from the Sky Tower!”

  The pilot will make a violent turn, quickly dropping in altitude. Cervetti will grasp the armrest, trying to suppress the sudden rise of nausea.

  “How long until we get there?” he will ask in a low voice.

  The Captain will look at the pilot questioningly.

  “Three minutes, sir!”

  The van will land on one of the Sky Tower’s access ramps, the position lights flashing in the night.

  “Out, out, out!” the leader will yell, and the five gunmen will precede him, running to the elevators. The last one will bring a heavy magnetic energy web to break through the doors.

  “So where are they calling from?” the Captain will shout as he rushes out to the courtyard, amid the clouds of steam and condensation. The operator with the holographic helmet will maneuver the portable screen in front of him and make some quick gestures with his gloved hands, leaving bright trails in space.

  “East staircase!” he will shout suddenly. “Twelfth floor!”

  The men will start at the elevators and Cervetti will run after the Captain behind his men.