by Jacob Whaler
“Don’t worry.” Matt spreads out his arms. A sphere of pink light envelopes the transport. Explosions of light break meters away as missiles impact against the bubble’s outer skin. “Hopefully, that will hold them for a few minutes. Let’s figure out what to do with Miyazawa.”
He walks back to the priest’s room. Tubes and lines are connected to Miyazawa’s arms and legs. An oval ventilator mask has dropped down and sealed against his entire face. His chest rises up and down at regular intervals. Blood flows in and out of an external device made of flexible clear plastic the size of a small watermelon.
They stare at the bluescreen and see the large words running across the top.
Life support system engaged.
Jessica bends down and lays a finger against Miyazawa’s neck. “No pulse. The ship must be keeping him alive.”
“You can’t get the implant out, can you?” Yarah drapes her arms around Matt’s waist.
Matt shakes his head. “Not without killing him.”
“Neither can I,” Yarah says. “It’s become part of him.”
Matt drops into a chair, sweat dripping, and takes a deep breath. “We’ll just have to leave it in, for now.”
He glances out the window. More combat ships hover around the white transport, each emptying its arsenal into the sides of the bubble around them. Ripples rip across its face, but it holds without weakening.
Matt looks up. “The question is, what do we do now? It would be easy to kill the soldiers on those combat ships, but I won’t do it. And Ryzaard knows it.” His eyes drift around the interior of the transport, past Jessica and Yarah. “Any ideas?”
“As long as he can track us, he won’t leave us alone.” Jessica sits in a chair beside Matt. “He’ll follow us wherever we go, kill anyone we talk to. We need to be invisible, untraceable.”
With explosions raging around them, Matt stares down through the transparent floor at the ocean. “We need a sphere around the transport that allows light to pass through it without distortion or refraction. Then we will be invisible.”
Jessica points at Miyazawa. “What about his implant? Ryzaard might be able to track our position through it. Maybe we can figure out how to shut it down.”
“Or cut it off from Ryzaard and the web.” Matt jumps to his feet. “That’s the answer. If we can’t extract the implant, maybe we can cut Ryzaard off from it.”
“How?” Yarah says.
“First things first.” Matt says. “Let’s make the ship so no one can see it.” He motions for Yarah to follow him and walks into the room next door with his Stone in his hand. “Look up at the sun. I want you to stare at it until you see the photons”
They both stare through the ceiling of the transport.
Yarah squints her eyes. “What are photons?”
“A fancy word for tiny pieces of light. They come from the sun, hit objects and bounce off into our eyes. That’s how we see.” Matt’s eyes narrow to slits. “If you stare long enough, you’ll see them.”
The explosions from dozens of buzzing combat ships are getting in the way.
“I’m guessing that combat troops assigned to ocean duty are equipped with water safety gear.” Matt closes his eyes and concentrates on the sphere around the transport. A flat disk of blue light bursts from its surface and expands outward in a perfect circle. As it passes through the attack ships, their metal hulls disintegrate into ash, and the human inhabitants drop into the water. Yellow flotation tubes grow around them. “Just as I thought. Let’s get out of here before the next wave arrives.”
The ocean disappears in a blur beneath them as white light fills the interior of the transport. When the light clears away, they are hovering thousands of meters in the air over a rectangular island.
“You jumped us to the Galapagos?” Jessica says.
Matt shakes his head. “That was our original heading, but I thought it’d be wise to switch. This is Pitcairn Island. The nearest major land mass is 5,000 kilometers away. It should give us at least a few minutes without any distractions from Ryzaard.” He turns back to Yarah. “Keep looking for photons.”
They both look up through the ceiling of the transport at the sun.
“No matter how much I stare, all is see is a big ball of fire,” Yarah says. “With little hairs flying off it.”
Dropping into a chair, Jessica leans the pulse rifle against the wall. “Maybe you’re trying too hard. Just hold out your hand and look at it. There should be photons coming off it.”
Without a word, Matt relaxes into the Stone and gazes down into the air just inches above his palm. It makes an immediate difference. “There they are. Packets of light.” He kneels at Yarah’s level. “Jessica’s right. Don’t try too hard. Let your mind pass through your Stone and then search the air between your eyes and hand. The air will turn into grains of sand, and you’ll see little rivers flowing over them. That’s the photons.”
To his surprise, the photons react instantly to his thoughts. With minimal effort, he bends them and changes the direction of their flow. With concentration, he manages to bend them so they move around his hand and return to their prior course.
“Holy quantum mechanics. Look at this.” Matt smiles at Jessica. “No hand.”
“No hand, but I can still see a distortion where your hand should be.” She walks close to him and looks down at the mirage-like wrinkles in the air. “You’re on to something. Keep trying.”
Then he has an idea. There won’t be any distortion if the photons simply pass through his hand without ever colliding with the matter that makes up the skin, bones and muscle tissue.
“Yarah?”
“I’m here,” she says. “I think I might have . . .”
Jessica spins around and gazes in every direction, but the little girl is gone. Totally invisible. Then she pops back into view, like a holo being flipped on. Only this is Yarah in the flesh, not a holo.
“How did you do that?” Matt stares at her, stunned, and swallows. “How did you get the photons to pass through the atoms?”
Yarah looks at Matt like he’s speaking a foreign language she’s never heard before. “What do you mean?”
“I have a feeling Yarah has transcended your knowledge of particle physics.” Jessica kneels down next to the little girl. “You’re a genius. Now tell Matt how you made yourself disappear so he can be as smart as you are.”
Huge white teeth fill Yarah’s smile. “It’s easy. Just think about your body disappearing, and it will. Like this.”
As they look on, Yarah vanishes from view.
Matt sticks out his hand and runs his palm along the top of her head. “Incredible. Can you do it to the whole ship and everything in it?”
“Easy,” Yarah says. “Done.”
Matt and Jessica can still see each other and the interior of the transport, just as before.
The sound of a distant mechanical roar pulls their attention away from Yarah. A squadron of long-distance fighters in a V formation appears over the horizon and rockets toward them.
“Move the ship from our current position,” Jessica says. “Just a few hundred feet or so. Let’s see what happens.”
There is the usual flash of light, and the transport jumps.
The fighters are clearly visible now. Tiny orange explosions blossom along their wings. Seconds later, a blast of sound rocks the air as four missiles shoot into empty space where the transport had hung just moments before.
The fighters circle their position for five minutes and leave without firing another shot.
“I’d say she’s done it. The ship’s invisible. And I don’t think they picked it up on their scanners either.” Matt reaches out again and tries to pat Yarah’s head, but his hand falls through thin air and touches nothing. Swinging around, he looks for her small form. “Good job, Yarah. You can come back now.”
She jumps into view at the other end of the ship and giggles. “I can’t wait to play hide and seek with you. You’ll never be able to fi
nd me.”
Jessica walks to the priest’s room and checks the bluescreens. “His heart and lungs are still not functioning. Ryzaard has access through the implant. Our new-found invisibility hasn’t changed that.”
Matt puts a finger on the blue jewel. “There has to be a way to stop the signal from the implant.” Suddenly feeling exhausted, he walks to a chair and drops down into it. “Let me see if I have this right. We’re invisible and on the run with a priest on life support. Ryzaard can still track us through the priest’s implant, which is impossible to remove, at least for now. A couple more days and Ryzaard will execute the final stage of his plan.”
“That’s about right,” Jessica says.
“The question is, what do we do now?”
Jessica sits next to him. “Maybe we should make a few visits.”
“Visits? To who?”
“The Children. We need to prepare them for what is coming.”
CHAPTER 114
“Disappeared?” Ryzaard stares at Jing-wei’s holo face. “What do you mean, disappeared?”
Jing-wei’s hand reaches up to a bluescreen and brushes across it. “We dispatched a squadron of long range attack fighters to harass Miyazawa’s transport at the coordinates you gave near Pitcairn Island. They shot off a few missiles and did a thorough reconnaissance of the area. It all came up empty.”
“But they’re still there.” Ryzaard turns his back to Jing-wei and closes his eyes, reaching out to Miyazawa’s implant. “I’m tracking them right now.”
“I know,” Jing-wei says. “But I’m telling you the attack fighters lost visual contact, and their sensors say there’s nothing there. I pulled a whole array of Diego’s sat-scans off his location algorithm and concentrated them at this point. They tell me there’s nothing there.” She lifts a slate off the desk and stares at a digitized display of the globe. “We’ll do a wide-band search of the area until you give us new coordinates.” Her face fades from the air.
Ryzaard drops onto his meditation cushion and jumps to the planetary network floating in space. His palm goes down onto the glossy sphere, and it instantly draws him into the network. Its vastness becomes an extension of his mind, and each implant occupies a unique place in its multidimensional space. For now, billions of lesser minds move freely through the network, unaware of its very existence. In just a few days, he will lock it down. All the minds will become part of him, subject to his control. Until then, he’s content with accessing only those minds that require special attention.
Locating Miyazawa is simple. With the effortlessness of a single thought, he’s drawn into the priest’s consciousness. He feels the tubes running into legs and arms, the soft foam mask sealed down over his face. The smell of metal and plastic reminds him of days spent with laboratory equipment. He hears the rhythmic hum of the respirator and senses the chest moving up and down. Muted voices, too soft for him to comprehend, rise and fall like the distant melodies of an ancient radio. Through it all, an oppressive heaviness, penetrates like a mist.
It’s the drugs.
Pushing through the darkness, he once again confirms Miyazawa’s heart is still and his diaphragm refuses to move on its own. He casts about for another way, anything that might kill the priest. But the implant only gives Ryzaard direct access to the priest’s mind, not his body. Muscle relaxers must be flowing through his veins, making it impossible for the brain to engage arms and legs. He has already tried to make Miyazawa bite through his tongue and bleed to death, but even the jaw refuses to budge.
But he can clearly see the location.
With effortless thought, he accesses the Mesh and pulls up a grid of the earth’s surface. Matching it to readings from the implant, one thing is clear. Miyazawa is still floating somewhere over Pitcairn Island. What a strange place to be.
And then the priest is gone.
CHAPTER 115
“How is this going to work?” Jessica stares down at the Siberian landmass below them.
“Simple,” Matt says. “Ryzaard can track Miyazawa, but not us. And Miyazawa has to stay with the life support system on the ship. We don’t. At least not all the time. We can go anywhere we want.”
“But if we leave the ship, won’t Ryzaard kill him?” Yarah walks over to the bed and puts her small hand on the priest’s moist forehead, a look of deep concern in her eyes.
“Only if he can find the ship.” Matt pulls the jax from his pocket and makes sure he still has the opened cloaking box with the Stones inside. “I’m not going to let that happen.”
Yarah turns and stares. “How?”
“By setting the ship up to jump randomly around the world, every few seconds. Ryzaard may be able to track it, but he’ll never be able to catch it. We can leave and jump back to the ship anytime.”
“Can you really do that?” Yarah tilts her head. “How?”
“It’s as simple as setting up a loop of instructions in my mind that access my Stone every few seconds and jump the ship to a random spot above the earth. Once I get the loop going, I no longer have to think about it. Like computer code. I’ve been doing it for the last couple of minutes, and it’s working fine.” Matt turns around where Jessica is dropping supplies into a couple of backpacks. “Where should we go first?”
“Back to Vancouver,” Jessica says. “Downtown. You remember the spot.”
“Got it.” Matt looks up the GPS coordinates on his jax. “I hope some of the Children are still around there.”
“We’ll find them.” Jessica stands and tosses one of the backpacks to Matt. “Ready.” She shoulders the other one, complete with a pulse rifle sticking out.
“Just one more thing.” Matt drops to Yarah’s level. “I need you to do your magic on all of us. Make us invisible.” He swings his arms around them and watches as their bodies, including his own, vanish. “This is going to take some getting used to. I can’t even see myself.”
White light engulfs them.
Opening his eyes, Matt is standing on top of the lapis stone monument in the center of the roundabout at the intersection of Burrard and Georgia Streets in Vancouver. It’s late evening, well after rush hour. The streets are still jammed with driverless cars, and pedestrians throng the sidewalks.
“Everyone has an implant.” Matt steps down from the monument and, relying on his sense of touch, helps Jessica and Yarah down.
“Hold hands,” Jessica says. “I don’t want to get separated.”
They run across the street when there’s a small break in traffic, and huddle in an indentation between buildings. That’s when they notice the combat troops stationed at every corner.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Ryzaard has his people looking for us,” Jessica says. “Good thing we have Yarah.”
“OK, now the hard part.” Matt pulls Jessica close. “How do we find the Children of the freedom camps.”
“Easy.” Jessica pulls Matt and Yarah out onto the sidewalk. “Find anyone that looks homeless and doesn’t have an implant. Then we follow them.”
They walk for half an hour before Yarah finds someone fitting the description. “Hey, look at that lady over there.” She points at an Asian woman bent with age and carrying a nylon bag in each hand. Every few seconds, she shoots a glance behind her, as if checking to make sure she isn’t being followed.
Matt stares as the woman passes under a streetlamp. “Old clothes. No implant behind her right ear. Carrying bags.” He squeezes the little girl’s hand. “Good eyes, Yarah. Let’s follow her.”
They cross the street and fall in line behind her. After two blocks, they pass by the large red pillars that mark the entrance to Chinatown. The cars thin out, and only a few people move on the sidewalks. The only sound is the distant din of traffic and two barking dogs up the road. In the middle of the block, the woman turns sharply to the left, opens a wooden door and disappears into a building.
Matt grabs the door and holds it open before it shuts. “Stay here. I’ll go in and have a look. Be back in a minute
.”
“No way,” Jessica says. We’re not getting separated.”
All three of them creep through the door into a dark hallway that disappears into the building. A faint light comes through an opening at the far end. Walking on warped wooden floors, they make their way to it.
Halfway there, voices filter out of the opening. A woman and a man.
Matt crosses into the light and stares in the room. In the middle, the old woman sits on a plastic chair and hands out pork buns to a group of twenty children on the floor. A toothless old man sits in the corner with a big grin.
Matt moves closer into the room and checks them, one by one.
No implants on any of them.
A small girl with a ripped T-shirt and black baggy pants bites into the bun and looks up. “When will it come?”
“Soon, my child.” The old woman points at the wall where a hand-drawn sketch of Matt, Jessica and Yarah hangs. “They promised to tell us.”
Matt reaches back and feels for Jessica and Yarah. “Now, Yarah.”
The three of them appear out of the darkness. Startled faces look up. The old woman turns, looks into Matt’s eyes and smiles.
“It’s time,” she says.
CHAPTER 116
The Children spend the night spreading the word around Vancouver.
At the appointed hour the next day, five hundred of them, less than one hundredth of one percent of the greater Vancouver metropolitan population, gather beneath the trees at Stanley Park and form a waiting circle. The crowd keeps silent as Jessica, Yarah and Matt appear, standing on a large boulder in the center.
“The time has come when your belief, your preparation and your patience is about to pay off.” Jessica grips the barrel of her pulse rifle and scans the lined faces of the Children. “You have refused the blue jewel offered so freely at the Shinto shrines. The world around you revels in its newfound freedom, in new worlds of opportunity and exploration opened up by the Mesh. Everywhere you go, they flaunt their ecstasy and wonder before your eyes. They tell stories of multisensory experience beyond anything imaginable. What they speak of is true. The Mesh is real. And the blue jewel is the gateway.”