Quantum Lens

by Douglas E. Richards

  The drug Alyssa had taken from the Lawrence lab was very potent, and even after it had been diluted tenfold, the dose needed was only two microliters, an amount that could be drawn up into the very tip of a calibrated plastic needle. Al Yad had a physician dose three of his followers with five times this amount, and hours later they were still in good health.

  During this six hour period, he also had several followers scour Syria, at the whore’s request, for something called a HeadRush game controller and skull cap, which were very hard to come by in this part of the world. But they had found two of them fairly quickly, and paid the owners four times their worth to acquire them.

  Apparently, Aronson also required specific viral software to modify the game system for her needs, but she had stored a copy in the cloud for safekeeping, which she could now access.

  Al Yad also had two of his construction workers drive steel rings into the wall studs near his bed, to which he anchored leg irons. Then he had a table brought in, on which he set up a computer, also firmly anchored to the wall, and selected a pair of specialty handcuffs with a length of chain in between the cuff bracelets.

  Finally, Al Yad had the Jew brought into the room once again. While she sat at the desk, ten feet from his bed, he had her handcuffed and placed in leg irons. He checked with her to make sure she had enough freedom of movement to do what she needed to do, and she assured him that while being restrained wasn’t ideal, she could still read the monitor and use the computer to pinpoint the electrical stimulations she would need.

  Al Yad thought the chances of her trying to attack him in some way were one in a million. Not only had she passed the lie detector test, but his threat to her family was real, and he was certain she believed him. Also, because of what the personification of Satan had told her, she believed that what she was doing might turn Al Yad back into the pathetic weakling of a man he had been before he had become a god. Something she badly wanted to see happen.

  But even if the chances were one in a million, why take any risk with his immortality when the simple expedient of chaining her could eliminate this entirely?

  Al Yad had also had a video system installed in the room, with the camera arranged to encompass both the desk and the bed. He would check the video to be sure Aronson had implanted the hypnotic suggestions she was supposed to implant, for the proper time lengths, and using the proper trigger words.

  Finally, Al Yad assembled his eighteen guards, and Tariq Bahar, and let it be known that for the next twenty-four hours his staff and all workers were to be cleared out of the palace, and word was to be spread that anyone coming within fifty yards of it would explode into flame. He explained he did not want to be disturbed under any circumstances, without exception.

  The guards were ordered to ensure no one stumbled near the palace, even by accident. Given that he had recently ended the lives of three randomly selected followers in truly horrible ways, in front of a large gathering, just to keep the rest appropriately awed by his power, he knew no one would dare challenge this edict.

  After the palace had been cleared, Al Yad had a brief conversation with Adam Turco. Turco reported that Brennan Craft had just left Costa Rica in one of Eben Martin’s Gulfstream jets, and was flying to a private airfield outside of San Diego, California. Craft had told Turco that his billionaire friend would not be accompanying him, but was staying behind in Costa Rica and would be out of touch until further notice.

  This had brought a smile to Al Yad’s face. Out of touch until further notice was a nice euphemism for recently deceased.

  Turco had been instructed to meet Craft in San Diego, and soon thereafter to shadow someone named Robert Freund, who worked at a lab there, and report on Freund’s daily movements and routine.

  Al Yad had to smile yet again at the audacity of Brennan Craft. He had killed his friend Martin, was wantonly using Martin’s private jet, and instead of wasting a moment mourning what he thought was the death of his Jewish whore, he had written her off entirely, and was about to abduct a man who was surely another expert in narco-hypnosis.

  But no matter how quickly Craft was able to recruit this Robert Freund, he would be far too late. Al Yad had beaten Craft to the punch.

  He blew out a satisfied breath. Brennan Craft, the incarnation of Satan on Earth, had absolutely no idea what was about to hit him.

  57

  Alyssa Aronson had spent over an hour mapping out what she called baseline pathways for Al Yad’s states of belief and disbelief, and then she had drugged him. He was then under her spell for another three hours, although it seemed instantaneous to him.

  He came awake and removed the skull cap from his head, lifting himself into the air to ensure he still had his divinity. He turned to the whore chained to a desk ten feet away.

  “How did it go?” he asked her.

  “It couldn’t have gone better,” she responded. “We can’t know until you try, but my experience tells me you should now be able to temporarily disengage from the field. Provided that this is something you truly wanted.”

  Al Yad smiled. This was something he had truly wanted. As much as he had ever wanted anything.

  He played back the video on the screen hanging on the wall in front of his bed. Most of it just showed the Jew studying her computer monitor. The actual part where she strengthened certain pathways, certain beliefs, or in this case, lack of beliefs, was fairly brief, and he fast-forwarded to these parts to ensure she hadn’t planted any suggestions she wasn’t supposed to have planted.

  But he found no hint of trickery or deceit. All that was required for him to trigger the response was to be viewing an accurate clock while saying the English words, mark one, out loud. This would sever his connection to the divine, both voluntary and involuntary, for five minutes exactly.

  If he confirmed that this worked as hoped, he could then view a clock and say the words, mark two, and this would have the same effect. But this time for eight hours.

  He had been concerned that he might happen to see a clock from a different time zone and regain his abilities before the full eight hours had passed, but Aronson had assured him his subconscious wouldn’t let him be fooled in this way. She had been certain that if he had wanted to be free for eight hours while undergoing hypnosis, and then later triggered this response, his connection with the zero point field could only be restored after this duration, as evidenced by an accurate clock in the proper time zone.

  Al Yad took a deep breath and stared at the digital time on the bottom of his plasma television screen. “Mark one,” he said aloud.

  He gasped!

  He had to steady himself on the side of the bed to keep from collapsing to the floor. His divinity rushed out of his body and mind with hurricane force.

  Al Yad felt weak and powerless. Human. It was debilitating. A nightmare.

  He tried to lift himself from the ground with his divinity and failed. He was unable to even lift a pillow. He stabbed himself gently in the arm with the tip of a knife, and bright red blood trickled out where he had poked a hole through his skin.

  He glanced at the time. He had three minutes left.

  He walked over and placed a heavy glass paperweight, in the shape of teardrop, on the desk, and freed the Jew’s hands. He backed away fifteen feet. “Throw this at my stomach,” he ordered.

  Aronson didn’t waste any time. She hurled the object toward him. It sailed through the air and hit him squarely in the gut. He had tightened his muscles, but it still hurt, and it still managed to knock the wind out of him.

  He smiled broadly. She had done it. Satan’s whore had done it!

  And not for Satan, but for him.

  The digital clock advanced, marking the end of the five minute period, and power surged back into Al Yad, like divine breath being pushed into the lungs of a suffocating swimmer. He rose effortlessly to the ceiling and crushed the glass paperweight into nothingness. He was restored. Exactly as he had been.

  “Satisfied?” said Alyssa. />
  Al Yad beamed. “Very.”

  “You heard my hypnotic instructions for the eight hour version,” she said. “They were identical to the five minute one. So do you have any doubt that I’ve accomplished what you wanted?”

  “No.”

  “Then call Tariq Bahar’s psychopathic friend off my family,” she said anxiously. “Like you promised. I’ve kept my part of the bargain.”

  Al Yad was tempted to have the merc kill off her entire family anyway, just to see her reaction, but he was ecstatic at the success of her techniques, and decided to honor his commitment. Not that it mattered. Her family would soon be dead anyway, along with billions of others, as he purged the world of infidels.

  He placed a video call to Tom Manning, and the man’s inhumanly proportioned body appeared on the screen above his bed. Al Yad noticed that the whore shrank back, involuntarily, even from the sight of Manning on the monitor.

  “I’m countermanding your last order,” said Al Yad. “The people on your list are no longer to be harmed. Please acknowledge.”

  Manning looked disappointed. “Acknowledged,” he said.

  “You’ll be contacted if we ever need your services again.”

  Manning nodded and disappeared from the screen.

  Alyssa Aronson radiated such palpable relief, Al Yad almost regretted calling it off. But no matter. He would soon turn this relief back into despair.

  He could hardly wait to get started.

  58

  Alyssa had been holding her mental breath for hours. This procedure was the strongest she had in her arsenal, but the lives of people dear to her, of helpless children she loved, depended on the outcome. Given all she had witnessed since her fateful lunch date with a man who had called himself Theo Grant, she hadn’t had a single doubt that Al Yad would carry out his threat without a second thought.

  But it had worked!

  She couldn’t have asked for anything more. And Al Yad had done what he had promised. He had called off the grotesque psychopathic sadist she had called Tree Trunk.

  She had been resigned to her own fate since she was brought here. Al Yad would either kill her or keep her as a prisoner, and no cavalry would ever come for her. But at least she would have the solace of knowing her loved ones were safe.

  Her only hope now was that Bren had been right, and that a temporary reprieve from the zero point field would restore Al Yad’s mental health. If so, he might let her live, and even let her return to Bren, so she could do the same for him.

  It was unlikely this scenario would play out, but she seized on this tiny hope like a shipwrecked passenger clinging to a piece of debris in a raging ocean.

  “It’s a shame about Brennan Craft isn’t it?” said Al Yad, and there was an undercurrent of malevolence in his tone. He had been civilized with her when he needed her to help him, but his body language suddenly conveyed a heightened cruelty that made her skin crawl.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He is evil. He is the incarnation of Satan. And now you’ve seen his true colors.”

  “Maybe he can be cured,” she said. “Maybe giving your minds a break from the zero point field is all both of you need to . . . feel more like your old selves.”

  An icy smile came over Al Yad’s face. “You stupid, stupid whore,” he said. “Craft doesn’t want to be cured. You’ve finally begun to catch a glimpse of his true nature. But he hasn’t changed. He was playing you from the beginning. He was Satan from the beginning.”

  His invective and tone were getting increasingly hostile, and this reminded Alyssa of how quickly Craft had turned on her recently. But whereas Craft had once loved her and managed to take his rage out on inanimate objects, she doubted Al Yad would do the same.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “Did Craft ever tell you how he was stopping me from achieving my divine purpose? From purging the world of the impure?”

  “Yes. He warned you he knew a way to become even more powerful than you, and that if you did this he would kill you.”

  Al Yad shook his head, a look of contempt and pity on his face. “He lied to you. He played you for the fool you are. He simply wanted to seduce you into doing for him what you just did for me.”

  Alyssa had never been more confused. “What? That’s ridiculous. He wanted me to strengthen his abilities, not nullify them.”

  “You really are stupid, even for a diseased Jewish whore. He wanted you to do both. And if I hadn’t intercepted you, he would have succeeded.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Alyssa. She bristled from the raw hatred and bigotry of his words, but she didn’t have the luxury of taking offense. Al Yad seemed more out of touch with reality than ever. Perhaps his five minute stint isolated from the zero point field had made him worse rather than better.

  “Let me help you understand,” he spat. “First, you should know that your friend Eben Martin is now dead. At the hand of Brennan Craft.”

  Alyssa’s eyes widened in horror. Could this be true? Given the deterioration of Craft’s personality, Eben Martin had come to mean more to her than anyone else in the world.

  “You couldn’t know that,” she whispered. “You’re making it up.”

  “Am I?” he said.

  He walked over to where she was seated and handed her a phone. It was hers.

  “Take a look at this,” he said, pointing to a lengthy message that was already up on the display. “It’s from Eben Martin. It came in after Tariq confiscated your phone, so you never had the chance to read it.” Then with a humorless smile he added, “Don’t worry. I took the liberty of decrypting it.”

  Alyssa began reading and her stomach tightened. She forgot to breathe, and soon felt a suffocating pressure on her chest.

  Her world began to shatter even more as she continued to read, finally managing to suck air into lungs that suddenly seemed paralyzed.

  It was true. Eben was almost certainly dead. And Brennan had gotten worse.

  Eben had designed the message so it would only be sent if he wasn’t around to stop it.

  The message described a weapon called the quantum mirror, and the lethal effect it would have on anyone tapping into the zero point field. Suddenly, everything became clear.

  Al Yad had been right! Bren had been playing her from the beginning.

  A tear formed in the corner of one eye. Brennan had never loved her. He had never cared about her in the least. It had all been a facade. So she could enhance his ability and also selectively strip it away. So he could kill the one man who could possibly stop him.

  Perhaps Brennan had always been as evil as Al Yad portrayed him to be. As evil as Al Yad himself.

  This information explained so much. Why Bren hadn’t wanted her to tell Eben she was stripping him of his connection to the field. Eben hadn’t known about her work on the nocebo side of the equation. But he had known about the quantum mirror.

  So if she had told Eben, he would have connected the dots. He would realize why Bren wanted her to perform this particular mental surgery. So Bren could activate the device, killing his Syrian nemesis instantly, and leaving him as the only omnipotent being in existence.

  Which is why, when she had finally texted Eben about this, he had been so adamant that she not perform this technique on Bren until they had spoken.

  And this message explained the charade that Al Yad had just put her through. Now that Al Yad could sever his connection to the field, he could activate the device and kill Bren. He had turned the tables brilliantly.

  The cult leader studied her carefully as she read Martin’s message and pondered its implications, and correctly guessed when the full light of comprehension had crushed her spirit.

  “So now you understand,” he hissed. “The depth of Craft’s deception. And your role in helping to change the world. All I have to do is trigger the eight hour period of dormancy you so helpfully programmed into me, and then phone Craft’s device. I enter the code and Craft is gone.


  “Now I know from our earlier discussion, when you were attached to a lie detector, that you now recognize his true nature and might even welcome his death.” Al Yad shook his head. “But not as much as I will,” he assured her icily. “Without him and the threat of his quantum mirror, I’ll finally be free to carry out my divine purpose.”

  Alyssa felt as though the room were closing in, and at the same time she was being repeatedly struck by a hammer.

  Eben dead. Brennan dead. The world at the mercy of a raving psychotic who was all but omnipotent. And the knowledge that she had been used ruthlessly, had been fooled into making it possible to end the stalemate.

  Al Yad glanced at the screen above his bed and checked the time. “I’m afraid Brennan Craft is down to his last hour or so.”

  Alyssa didn’t respond. Her head was down, and she looked utterly defeated.

  “While the effect of the device is almost immediate,” explained Al Yad, “Craft is a passenger on Martin’s Gulfstream jet right now, headed for a private airfield outside of San Diego, California. I’ve waited too long for this not to witness his death with my own eyes. I want the satisfaction of seeing it happen. And I want you to see it, too.” He shrugged. “But don’t worry. He’ll be landing soon.”

  The cult leader placed another video call, and this time Adam Turco appeared on the screen high on the wall. “Give me a status update,” he ordered Turco when the connection was made.

  “Craft is still in the air, and still on schedule. He should be landing in sixty-eight minutes.”

  “Good. I want to know the moment his plane touches down. And have you tied a video feed into your binoculars, as you suggested?”

  “I have,” said Turco.

  “Good. I shall see to it that Craft is struck down as soon as he steps onto the tarmac. Once you transmit video proof of his death, I shall have the final million wired into your account.”

  “If your hit team succeeds, you’ll have your footage. If not, I will get you footage of Craft leaving in a car. Either way, I should get paid. It isn’t my fault if your team fails.”