The Justar Journal: An AOI Thriller

by Brandt Legg

  “Do you have this under control Polis?” the Chief asked, knowing AOI policy granted regional heads great autonomy. They were like naval captains. They ran their regions as they saw fit, but still answered to a supreme leader. The Chief was that leader, and wanted to be sure this ship didn’t sink.

  “Things will look much different by Monday,” he assured her.

  “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “Keep me updated through the weekend. Peace prevails, always.”

  He took one more look at the fire, now under control, and then studied the images on another VM. These showed the bios and photos of the three people killed earlier on his orders. His was a job of conflicting realities: kill, keep the peace, and provide the appearance of safety while combating dangers from all sides. The complexities of his role were impossible to understand, even by him.

  The raid, in reaction to intelligence gathered in the search for the woman, had gone well until the fire strike. Their brain scans would be studied and their INUs downloaded into AOI super-processors. That information could prove invaluable, with or without Blaise’s assistance. A team would normally work all night, but with the damage to the AOI headquarters, that would have to be done out of Seattle. Which meant results might not be available until late Saturday.

  However, the fact that they were meeting proved PAWN was active, and the immediate retaliatory strike demonstrated something even more ominous. PAWN wasn’t hiding anymore. They felt bold enough to start hitting back.

  Times were changing. Drast knew he had to change them back to the way it had been, or at least change faster than PAWN, if he were to become World Premier, a job he would happily kill half the Aylantik population to get.

  The man actually responsible for the AOI firebombing, Deuce Lipton, stood surrounded by massive VMs displaying the incident, making him feel as if he were in the middle of the fire. The move had been regrettable, but he’d been left with an awful choice: lose the library or allow PAWN to be compromised. He knew they’d get the blame, but the library was obviously too important to let go.

  As he paced between the KEL and media footage of the fire, he knew he’d made the right choice, but the AOI would now move swiftly to kill what they saw as a sleeping tiger. PAWN, no longer a rumor, existed in unknown form, and Polis Drast would have to find out how large a threat this rogue group really was.

  Lipton looked like a crazed symphony conductor, his hands and arms moving wildly as he spun between VMs. The measures he implemented, from the top floor of his secret San Francisco office, would change history. His grandfather, Booker Lipton, had taken the first steps nearly a hundred years earlier, and now Deuce had been forced to do what his whole life he’d been hoping would not fall to him.

  In those few moments he had mobilized the BLAXERs, his private army. Tens of thousands of “security experts” around the globe would now be on stand-by. Assets were transferred and contingency plans, involving products his companies had already supplied or would soon be supplying to the AOI and Aylantik government, were initiated. Deuce glanced past the floating VMs to a far wall where portraits of his father and grandfather hung.

  “No turning back now, gentlemen,” he said out loud. “It has begun.”

  Chapter 37

  Saturday February 3

  Runit woke to the smell of coffee and toast. The familiar surroundings of his home on the outskirts of the city seemed suddenly strange. With all that had happened, it felt as if he’d been away for a long time. Nelson, who’d been too drunk to go home alone, had bunked at Runit’s. He looked much worse than he felt, judging by the way his fingers swiftly worked over the virtual keyboard.

  “Aren’t you hung-over? How can you write?” Runit asked.

  “Hangovers are for college kids,” Nelson said in a raspy voice. “If I don’t write every day, I’ll die. Not all at once, but a little at a time as the words clutter and clog my creative arteries until suddenly, in a quiet moment, I shall cease to breathe.”

  Runit knew the feeling, that part of his soul had been strangling him for years. “You missed some scary stuff last night.”

  “Oh?” Nelson asked, glancing back at his VM of words, realizing the rest of the day and part of his inspiration would be lost.

  “The AOI busted some people across the street.”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “Who?”

  “I have no idea. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m just a simple librarian.”

  “Of course,” Nelson said theatrically, “the last librarian.”

  “The AOI executed people . . . a few hundred meters from where we were stealing books. They were going door-to-door . . . Nelson, the AOI was on the library steps last night heading for our torgon door!”

  “Who was executed?” he asked, a note of desperation in his voice.

  “I don’t know,” Runit repeated. “Could it be friends of yours?” Runit suddenly had that realization again that he was missing something. “Chelle said you should tell me about Belgium.”

  Nelson shot a quick, surprised glance, then stared into the adjoining room, wrapping both hands around his hot mug of coffee as if it were the only thing in the world keeping him warm, thawing his blood. The half-knowing of the world’s secrets had left him so cold and empty.

  “We live in a crime,” he mumbled to himself. After a long moment, he went to his coat and rummaged in its many large pockets until he found a pack of bacs.

  “You can’t smoke in here,” Runit said.

  “I torgon know ‒ damn torgon well ‒ I can’t smoke in here!” Nelson exclaimed as he contorted in such a way that could only be described as climbing into his coat, then headed for the back door. “But if I’m going to tell you about Belgium, I’m gonna smoke. So if you want to hear what I have to say, you’ll have to follow me out into the cold.”

  The patio was small, but the view was large. The Portland skyline guarded the distant horizon. The morning mist had danced crystal-like as the sun managed to find a few openings in the threatening clouds. Nelson sat on a bamboo-framed chair made from ecofabric and put his feet up on an old wicker chest that must have predated the Banoff by fifty years. Runit stood, still spreading jam on a bagel, and waited until his friend inhaled enough smoke to engage a reluctant section of his brain.

  “Belgium is no easy topic,” Nelson finally said in a bluish-gray exhale. “Are you sure you’re ready to hear it?”

  “Chelle thought I was.”

  “It’s my guess that she wanted me to tell you about Belgium because you were talking about quitting. Am I right?”

  “I watched those people die.”

  Nelson raised his eyebrows. “Tell me how you managed that and are still here talking to me. Unless you’re dead, in which case I am too and this is not at all what I expected.”

  “Are you making light of this!?”

  “What else would you have me do, Runit?”

  Nelson jumped out of his chair and threw an angry look at Runit, then walked the perimeter of the small, fenced yard. It had once been a glorious garden of vines, shrubs, and flowers, but since Harper’s death Runit had let it go wild. Even the two apple trees and a plum tree had become tangled in the weeds. But Runit loved it there, and it reminded him of Harper. The house sat slightly elevated above the sloping lawn, so a fine view of the beautiful city was always there, even over the weathered, slat-board fence.

  Nelson returned, satisfied that no neighbors could overhear them. He sat down again, pulled off his now-damp shoes, and lit another bac from the end of the spent one. “If I didn’t allow my humor to occasionally spare me from the insanity of this world, I would forget my place and either start giving suicidal speeches, or worse, I would become part of it.”

  “One of Deuce’s guys, the plumber, let me watch his INU. I watched them kill those people.” Runit shook his head. “Why shouldn’t I quit? They were coming for us. They were going to kill Grandyn and me the same way.”

  Nelson wanted to talk about what else Runit had seen. He�
��d already figured out that Deuce was tapped into the KEL system, and he’d seen enough similar AOI actions while visiting Deuce’s Seattle office to know how Runit felt. He needed to talk to the plumber. He needed to see the footage and confirm what he already believed. That the three people Runit had watched being executed were good friends of Nelson and Chelle’s. But all of that would have to wait, because he had to convince another friend not to give up. He had to shatter what was left of Runit’s world and tell him about Belgium.

  He dug into another pocket of his long black coat and found the flask.

  “The thing is,” Nelson said, pouring the last of the ‘tonic’ into his mug. “You and Grandyn are already dead.”

  Runit looked down at the disaster of a man. The old author appeared haunted by every character from every book he’d ever written, and probably even more by the ones yet to escape his head. “Explain it to me slowly,” he said, trying to contain his anger and unquenched fear.

  The mist turned to a light rain, and Nelson was glad for the opaque Plantik sheets that covered the patio. Still, he was cold, and some of the wet from the grass had left his socks damp. “Let me smoke inside. I’ll sit next to the window.” His look, pleading and cranky at the same time, somehow convinced Runit.

  “Fine.”

  Nelson almost smiled as he grabbed his shoes and pushed inside. He pulled a wooden chair to the bay window that offered the same view of Portland and turned the crank to open the glass. He remained standing, put one foot up on the chair, took a long drag, and considered his words.

  “The last library in old Europe, as you know, was in Bruges, Belgium. The librarian, his wife, and their two daughters died seven weeks after the library was closed.”

  Runit’s mouth opened, but he couldn’t force anything out.

  “Australia too. And the nine before those. As near as we can tell, it has always happened. Within weeks of a library closing, the librarians and their families die. So you see, you really are the last librarian. The others are all dead.”

  “Is this true?” he whispered.

  “I’m sorry to say it is. But that’s not all. There was something different about Belgium. The part that Chelle wants me to tell you.”

  “How do you know all of this?”

  Nelson inhaled deeply, as if the smoke were life-sustaining. Then he regarded his bac lovingly, all the while thinking, How much to tell Runit? Nelson had been over these conversations dozens of times, scripted them in his author’s mind, but real life often brought surprises superior to those any writer could imagine. He didn’t want to tell him much more. Not until all the books were out.

  “You’re part of some kind of underground, aren’t you?” Runit pressed.

  “Deuce Lipton wasn’t the only person who tried to save the books in Belgium,” Nelson said, exhaling far less smoke than he’d taken in.

  “You’ve answered my question by ignoring it and by telling me someone else wanted the books. Was it you?”

  “Friends of mine. They had a few people on the staff helping.” Nelson shivered involuntarily. “That’s the thing. In Belgium, in the end, all the staff, volunteers, anyone associated with the library, were killed.” He noticed a photo of Runit, Harper, and Grandyn taken on Oregon Area’s coast. He recognized the cliffs and rock formations.

  “Torgon. And no one noticed?” Runit asked, dry mouthed. “How do they cover up a mass murder like that?”

  “You know how they do these things. People disappear, people die of ‘natural’ causes, and anyone left alive is consumed in fear.”

  “No, I don’t know how ‘these things’ work. Why would I know? I’m not a spy or a revolutionary, I’m a damned librarian!”

  “I guess you didn’t know . . . but now you do.”

  “You want to overthrow the Aylantik government, don’t you?”

  Nelson stared out the window.

  “Damn it, Nelson. When this started you said it was the books, but the books aren’t the real objective, they’re just a part of the game. I never would have gotten into this if you’d told me the truth in the beginning.”

  “I told you about the discrepancies and the manipulations. You knew I knew Blaise Cortez and Deuce Lipton. All the pieces were there for you, you just didn’t put it together . . . because you didn’t want to know.”

  “How dare you?” Runit grabbed the bac from Nelson’s hand and tossed it in a glass of water. “How dare you put Grandyn and me in this kind of danger!? And what are you thinking? Do you really want to end the longest run of peace in human history because you don’t like someone editing your damned books!?” Runit shouted.

  “Peace at gunpoint is not peace.”

  Chapter 38

  Lance Miner paused at the window of his penthouse office and gazed out at the old capital city of Washington DC. Its core skyline had remained almost unchanged for more than a hundred years, while Rosslyn, Alexandria, and Arlington, Virginia had merged into a major city of gleaming glass skyscrapers fused with solar-glass, laser electricity, and super alloys. Much of the land beyond had been returned to agriculture, and the rural populations levels were closer to those of the first part of the twentieth century. He continued walking the perimeter of the eighty-seventh floor, enjoying the three-hundred-sixty-degree view. Finally, he heard the voice he’d been waiting for.

  “I think you should reconsider your choice for World Premier,” Blaise Cortez said through his INU as a VM opened, allowing a virtual Blaise to take the scenic stroll with him. “That is, assuming you still get to choose. Things sure have gotten messy fast.”

  “Blaise, you overestimate my enemies.”

  “Really? Are you sure?” He pushed his hair back out of his eyes. “Deuce Lipton is a formidable foe, but he’s overplayed his hand by forcing the Premier to resign. That action directly defied the Council and shows he’s scared, and if he’s scared, he’s vulnerable.”

  “Maybe, but being scared is not always a sign of weakness, it could be‒‒ ”

  “In my experience only two kinds of people show no fear. People who are crazy, and people with nothing to lose.”

  “Deuce is neither of those.”

  “Ah, maybe. But it depends on how you look at it. His perception of reality might be slightly different from ours, and that could fit any definition of crazy. A man who has everything may believe there is nothing to lose.” The virtual Blaise stopped, spun around, and smiled at Miner. “The thing is, my friend, Deuce may not be your greatest enemy.”

  “The woman.”

  Blaise nodded.

  “Then tell us how to find her . . . please.”

  “I was ready to do that this morning, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Nearly any accommodation can be made. I’m certain we can make an exchange that would prove most rewarding to you,” Miner said, looking past the translucent version of Blaise Cortez to the Washington Monument, currently celebrating two-hundred-fifty years since construction of the obelisk began.

  Oh, the world was so different then, but yet much the same, he thought, intrigue and profits colluding in the run-up to a civil war. That war actually delayed the opening of the five-hundred-fifty-five-foot monument, still the world’s tallest stone structure. It had been built to honor the leader of another revolution against the world’s greatest power. Can I avoid this revolution?

  “That’s just it,” Blaise said, breaking the silence. “You can’t give me what I want. Only by withholding the information can I hope to gain an advantage.”

  “And what is that?”

  “A shift.”

  “Hell, you mean a revolution.”

  “A shift can occur by many means.”

  “We’ll find her anyway.”

  “You haven’t so far, and you’ve had years.”

  “We didn’t know she was real before.”

  “And now you do? Then the question is . . . will you get her in time?”

  “Blaise, I’ve always valued our relationship, and I have t
he highest respect for your calculating mind, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t warn you. Do not wind up on the wrong side of this situation.”

  “I never do.”

  Miner zoomed Drast as soon as Blaise’s image faded out. “Cortez still isn’t willing to give us her location. Something else is happening. You need to request an immediate AOI troop buildup. Sweep your damned region! That woman is the tip of an iceberg, and I want it melted.”

  “That may give the appearance that I don’t have control of the region.”

  “So does a firebomb at AOI regional headquarters. So will a war starting in Oregon Area.”

  “Okay.” Drast’s frustration with the search for a single woman had grown complex. Everything could just slip away. His recent conversation with the AOI Chief echoed in his head. The region suddenly seemed to be a tinderbox, and the library was a problem. He’d take care of that, as soon as he finished with Miner.

  “Use my people, break legs, intimidate, rape, plunder, and pillage, I don’t care. But find that woman before she finds us.”

  Chapter 39

  The flash message felt like a kick in his gut. Runit looked up from his INU and saw Chelle. The two of them had been working the rare stacks on the upper floor. He had hoped to be in a different part of the building, away from her, yet wanting to be with her at the same time. The latter occurred when Nelson suggested they re-prioritize and all the adults moved to the section of the library housing most of the pre-Banoff books. Once there, Chelle just seemed to find him.

  He wanted to believe it was because she liked to be near him too, but part of him worried. About her knowledge of the surveillance systems, the AOI killing her husband, and all that had occurred in Belgium. He didn’t know if he could trust her. He didn’t know if he cared. Chelle Andreas might be very dangerous for him, but he hadn’t felt this alive since Harper died, and even then . . .