Quantum Lens

by Douglas E. Richards

  This time Alyssa’s face crinkled up in skepticism. “I understand what you’re saying. But this still seems a little soft on cruelty and evil, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe. Again, Haisch explains it better and more thoroughly than I can.”

  Alyssa’s eyes widened as she recalled something else Craft had said at the waffle house in Kentucky. “When you were expressing your awe at the ability of your subconscious to harness the zero point field, you suggested the possibility you were tapping into the mind of God, as well. Is this part of the theory, also?”

  “Very good,” said Craft. “You’d be above average, even in Lake Wobegone. I’ll quote Haisch one last time: ‘Just as creation can be viewed as a process of subtraction from the infinite rather than as an event in which something pops out of nothing, your personal consciousness can be viewed as a brain-filtered remnant of infinite consciousness rather than as a chemical creation of the brain.’”

  “I have to admit,” said Alyssa, “it’s a very compelling theory. I’m not saying I’m prepared to jump on this bandwagon quite yet, but a lot of this makes sense to me. The part about tapping into the mind of God would normally seem especially hokey to me,” she admitted. “But knowing that your mind can draw enough energy from infinitesimally short-lived fluctuations in the vacuum, and use this to stop a bullet—or a pickup truck—from hitting you, does make this more believable.”

  “Like I said in the restaurant. There are miracles all around us. What’s one more?”

  “You struck me as Zen when I first met you. And I can see why you would be like this if you really believed in The God Theory.”

  “Well, I do try to take things in stride. But I usually fail. I’m still a slave to certain wiring that evolved on this fascinating world in this fascinating universe. I believe that evil is an important part of experience. But I’ll still do everything in my power to prevent it. I try to tell myself when I screw up that experience is experience, that contrast is important, that I wouldn’t appreciate my success without failure. But most of the time this doesn’t do any good. I can’t take a laissez-faire approach to life, even if my beliefs would suggest I could.”

  Alyssa nodded. She knew what a difficult prospect it was to attempt to exceed the bounds of one’s wiring.

  Craft sighed. “And just because intellectually I believe in the afterlife,” he added, “I still fear death. I’m still wired with a powerful survival instinct.”

  “Given all that’s happening,” said Alyssa. “That’s a good thing. That’s a very good thing.”

  41

  Alyssa found it strange to be back in Bloomington, Indiana. Bloomington was still the same, but she was decidedly not.

  It was difficult to even comprehend how much had changed in the short time since she had last been here, both with respect to her emotional life, and having her view of reality, and what was possible, turned upside down.

  Martin had needed the Boeing and had sent her and Craft to the Indianapolis airport on a Gulfstream. After the Boeing Business Jet 2, flying in the decadent Gulfstream G650 seemed like slumming.

  They waited in the bed-and-breakfast that had been their destination days earlier to get the go-ahead from Adam Turco. He had settled into his role as head of Eben Martin’s personal security detail quite nicely, although from the moment he had assumed this position, he had been on loan to Brennan Craft, and had been told that orders from him were the same as orders from Martin himself.

  Two days earlier, on Martin’s island, Turco had supplied Alyssa and Craft with clean, untraceable phones, capable of sending and receiving encrypted calls, e-mails, and text messages. Even if these messages were intercepted, they would be nothing but gibberish, unless one had the decryption key. She and Craft were each given their own keys, seven digit numbers that when entered would transform the gibberish into English.

  Turco had left the island two days earlier to perform reconnaissance on Alyssa’s lab. As usual, he did an impeccable job. He first was able to identify four well concealed and well placed cameras installed in surrounding trees, pointing to areas of ingress into the lab. He had simply determined where he would place such devices if he were conducting surveillance, and was able to locate them in less than three hours, being careful in his approach so he wouldn’t be caught by the very cameras he was trying to detect.

  Turco had then reasoned that whoever was watching these cameras would be within a mile or so of the lab. Far enough not to arouse suspicion and near enough that if the cameras did detect Craft or Alyssa, the watcher could mount an ambush or follow them, even if they were in and out of the lab in a hurry.

  A hotel or apartment would have been ideal, but the lab was outside of Bloomington, and there were no residences or hotels for nine or ten miles. Too far away to be certain that whoever was behind the surveillance could be roused from a sound sleep and make it to the lab in time for whatever they had planned.

  So Turco drove the streets within a mile of Alyssa’s lab building until he found what he was looking for. A blue industrial van marked Kate’s Florist & Gifts, which had no windows in the back compartment, and which had been parked on a random curb, with nothing worth visiting in its vicinity. This was almost certainly where those conducting the surveillance were waiting and watching monitors, and eventually sleeping, counting on alarms to alert them if anyone approached the lab in the wee hours of the night.

  Adam Turco camped out within binocular range, and sure enough, early in the morning, the van drove off. It had not been abandoned after all, which is precisely what he had expected.

  Turco made sure not to molest the van in any way. If he had made his presence known, or had taken the van out, reinforcements were sure to arrive. Reinforcements who would now know with certainty that the lab was in play, and who would come in greater numbers and with greater caution.

  So Turco chose to take out whoever was in this van just prior to the breach of the lab, so those behind this would have no time to regroup and recover. While Alyssa could have managed the breach herself, Craft had insisted on joining her. Given his ability to repel aggression, Alyssa decided she was glad that he had.

  So she and Craft sat in the quaint, rustic bedroom of a bed-and-breakfast. For the first time in many days, they spent hours together in the presence of a bed and remained fully clothed.

  Clothed, and anxiously awaiting Adam Turco’s signal to proceed.

  ***

  Turco parked his car several blocks away from where he had previously spotted the blue florist van and settled in behind a tight grouping of trees nearby, clutching a pair of high powered binoculars with a digital camera attachment. He arrived at seven p.m., expecting the van to return only after the last straggler in the lab had left for the night.

  Sure enough, at about eight, the van appeared, rolling slowly to a stop in the same place it had parked before. Turco had counted on the driver being a creature of habit, and had made the right call. The driver had a scar on his chin and an eagle, talons extended, tattooed on his neck. He looked around to be sure no one was watching and slid open the side door of the van.

  Turco was in perfect position to view the inside of the van, and he had been waiting for this precise moment. During the few seconds the side door was open he took over a dozen photos through the binoculars, which he sent to his phone for enlargement and study.

  The driver was alone. Perfect!

  The van contained a mattress, several monitors, a television, a thermos of coffee, and a bag with the words, Dunkin’ Donuts, printed proudly on the side. Hanging on a hook against the back inner wall of the van was a Tavor assault rifle. Compact and ergonometric, the Tavor was currently favored by the Israeli military, and could pump thirteen rounds a second into anything unlucky enough to be in its way. Turco had tested this weapon himself, and while it had a number of positive attributes, he found the trigger heavy and clumsy.

  Turco shrugged. To each his own, he thought.

  Turco returned to his
car and waited patiently. At just after midnight he cautiously approached the van on foot, cloaked in the darkness of a moonless night. He took a deep breath and rapped firmly on the sliding door. “This is the police!” he shouted. “Open up! Now!”

  He rapped again, even harder, and then immediately dropped to the pavement and scurried around to the other side of the van.

  Seconds later, as Turco had expected, a burst of machine gun fire screamed through the door where he would have been had he not repositioned himself.

  The man inside threw open the sliding door the moment he stopped firing and jumped to the pavement, crouching low, searching ahead for other cops and for an expected corpse that would surely resemble bloody Swiss cheese.

  As the driver looked to his right, Turco slid around the van to the left, his gun extended. “Freeze!” he barked. “Drop it!

  No one was likely to be around for miles, and Turco doubted that his shouting, or even the sound of machine gun fire, would bring any company.

  The man considered pivoting on Turco, but there was something about the assured way Turco had gotten the drop on him, and the utter confidence in his voice, that made him decide not to take this chance. He lowered the assault rifle to the pavement. Turco ordered him to kick it under the van, which he did.

  Turco then ordered him to peel back his clothing and had him carefully remove a knife and gun this exercise revealed.

  “Turn around!” ordered Turco. When the man was facing him he added, “Toss me your phone.”

  Once again, the driver did as instructed.

  “Who do you work for?” demanded Turco, snatching the phone from the air.

  The man hesitated for just a moment and Turco pulled the trigger. The slug missed the man’s head by inches. “Who do you work for?” he shouted.

  “I don’t know who he is,” came the immediate reply. “He contacts me and issues jobs. All I know is that he has a refined voice, maybe British, and pays very well.”

  “What instructions did he give you?”

  “Surveil a lab building that’s a mile or so from here until further notice. If a man named Brennan Craft, or a woman named Alyssa Aronson, try to enter, don’t interfere, but contact him immediately for further orders.

  “And you’re getting paid by the night?”

  The man nodded.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bobkoski. Carl Bobkoski.”

  “Okay, Carl,” said Turco. “This can go one of two ways from here. Option one, I shoot you in the head.” He let this hang in the air for several seconds. “Option two. You give me the contact information you have for your boss, and leave here now. Notice that in this option, you get to live.”

  “The contact information won’t do you any good. You can use it to contact him, but you can’t use it to find him.”

  “Good. Because I don’t have any interest in finding him. It’s useful to me to be able to contact men who need . . . professional help. And who pay well.” Turco paused. “I need you to show me on your phone the contact e-mail and phone number for this man. It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he added with a crooked smile. “It’s just that I don’t trust you.”

  Bobkoski considered.

  “There is nothing to think about here . . . Carl. It’s a win-win. You let my friends do their business in the lab without picking up a tail. So they win. I get potentially valuable contact information. So I win. And you can tell your boss that no one ever showed and keep doing this job until he tells you to stop. And since my clients will have already come and gone, you can find yourself a hotel nearby and take a vacation while collecting your paycheck.”

  Bobkoski frowned. It sounded good, but he knew there was a horrible catch. “When my boss finds out I played him, I’m dead. And so is my family. I don’t know who he is, or who he represents, but he has a reputation. Rumor has it that a merc crossed him six months ago, and they’re still finding pieces of this merc, along with his mother. The man who hired me is extreme. On the reward side, and on the punishment side.”

  “He’ll never find out. You know he’s not sure the people you’re watching for will ever strike the lab. That’s why he’s having you spend so much quality time out here.”

  “If you contact my employer, he’ll want to know where you got his contact information.”

  Turco shook his head. Could Bobkoski really be this stupid? “He can want to know all he likes. But I won’t tell him. True, I don’t give two shits about what happens to you. But if I tell him, he’ll know my clients visited the lab. I don’t want him to know this. It might influence his decisions and boomerang back on my clients. And they’re paying me quite well. Second, by not telling him, I look more impressive. Magicians never reveal how they do their tricks.” He shrugged. “Besides, I may choose not to contact him, after all. Who knows?”

  Turco had been more than patient, but his patience had now run out. “Look, you have three seconds to decide. When a man holding a gun at your head offers you two options, and the first one is instant death, you choose the second option. No need to even hear the second to decide.”

  Turco made a show of beginning to squeeze the trigger.

  “I accept,” said Bobkoski immediately.

  “Good call,” said Turco dryly.

  ***

  Alyssa’s phone vibrated and a short gibberish message appeared on the screen. She entered her seven digit decryption key and the message suddenly became readable. It was from Adam Turco, as expected. “Everything buttoned up. You have a green light.”

  Alyssa and Craft drove the twelve miles to the lab. Turco wouldn’t be accompanying them during the actual theft, but they were comforted in the knowledge that he would be there, behind the scenes, making sure they weren’t interrupted.

  Alyssa entered her code to get into the building, holding her breath. Craft had assured her that she could still get in, and that he had seen to it that this wouldn’t alert anyone, but it was still nerve-wracking.

  The bolts on the door released and they entered the foyer. Alyssa touched a panel on the wall to reveal a recessed biometric scanner. She put her thumb on the glass and her eye to the scanner and was rewarded by the sound of a second set of bolts being released from the inner door.

  They had made it!

  Alyssa surveyed her lab with mixed emotions. She had been so proud of her work. So proud that she had morphed the program from something ugly into something that could revolutionize medicine. But that had been a few weeks earlier. Before Brennan Craft had come into the picture. Before everything had changed.

  Now, if her placebo enhancing techniques resulted in unleashing the mind’s potential to make use of the zero point field, these techniques might one day help to turn humans into demigods. And if Brennan was right, dramatically extend human health, vitality, and longevity. These were big ifs, without a doubt. But if this proved possible, the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow was the size of Jupiter.

  She quietly led Craft through several rooms to what looked like a closet. Inside was the face of a walk-in steel vault, only slightly less robust than those found in banks. The drugs and protocols she needed were inside. She keyed in the combination, holding her breath one last time, and the thick steel bolts, the circumference of baseball bats, retracted smoothly with a loud thunk.

  They were in.

  Craft watched the door while she went to work, pipetting small aliquots of four different drugs into four separate plastic vials. She then added back water so no one would notice a volume change, so that their entry and theft would never be discovered. This would dilute the drugs a small amount, but all testing was surely being halted anyway in her absence.

  When this was completed, she downloaded software to a flash drive, specifically an algorithm entitled, Modified Headrush 188, which she would later also store in the cloud for safekeeping.

  They exited the lab without incident, leaving it exactly as they had found it, and met up with Adam Turco just outside the bed-and
-breakfast at which they were staying.

  “How many men were watching the lab,” Craft asked him when they had reunited.

  “Just one.”

  “Where is he?”

  Turco shook his head. “I know you wanted to interrogate whoever was stationed here,” he said. “I tried to capture him. But it didn’t work out. I’m afraid he took whatever secrets he had to the grave.”

  “Damn!” said Craft, looking even more upset about it than he sounded.

  “It could have been worse,” said Turco.

  “How?”

  “He could have killed me instead,” replied the mercenary dryly.

  “Adam has a good point,” said Alyssa, wanting to lift Craft’s spirits. In the scheme of things, this was a minor setback. They were all but certain the surveillance had been ordered by Al Yad, anyway, and almost as certain the man wouldn’t know anything else that was useful. “And you need to look on the bright side. We got what we came for. The mission couldn’t have gone better.”

  Craft’s mood visibly improved. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. I should focus on the big picture.” He turned to Turco. “And you’re positive we won’t be followed.”

  “Positive.”

  “Then I’d call this mission an unqualified success,” said Alyssa happily.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” said Adam Turco with a self-satisfied nod.

  42

  Three days later, Alyssa Aronson and Brennan Craft arrived at their new base of operations in Costa Rica. Martin’s personal island was exceptional, but it was still within the United States, and subject to heightened scrutiny when compared to Central America. And even though Martin had taken pains to ensure his island couldn’t be linked to him, there were people he had dealt with when he had acquired it who knew. And while these were people he trusted, the stakes were too high to rely on trust.