The Justar Journal: An AOI Thriller

by Brandt Legg

  “I’ll tell you what Cope and Deuce have told me, because almost everything we know about Clastier comes from Booker Lipton. He was obsessed with Clastier and the prophecies, but that’s another conversation.” Nelson had a faraway look in his eyes and paused for a moment as if remembering something, but then turned back to Grandyn. “The Vatican didn’t want to hide Clastier’s existence as much as they wanted to hide his work . . . erase it, really. And in those days, the first part of the nineteenth century, the Church had the power to expunge a man’s entire existence. But Clastier was smart and obviously visionary, based on what he left behind, and the Vatican grossly underestimated him.”

  “Did they kill him?”

  “No one knows for sure, but let me start at the beginning. He was born to a Spanish mother and a French father in the late 1700s and raised in the territory of New Mexico.”

  After hearing the entire story of Clastier, Grandyn wondered what might have happened in the man’s life to change him from being deeply committed to the Church to turning his back on it and his faith. Nelson didn’t know why.

  “So much of Clastier’s life was lost to history.”

  “Look at the collapse of religion in the last hundred years,” Grandyn said.

  “You’ve studied religions, so you shouldn’t be surprised that the Aylantik hasn’t really been able to erase thousands of years of faith and worship from society with a simple stroke of the pen.”

  “People are still practicing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lots of people?”

  “PAWN estimates as many as eight million, but it’s impossible to know exactly how many since they are doing it in secret, at risk of arrest.”

  “So Clastier spoke both Spanish and French,” Grandyn said, returning to their objective. “Those were the dominant influences in the American Southwest at that time.”

  Grandyn looked over his list. There were still almost one hundred and fifty candidates, but as he scanned for titles that related to French or Spanish authors, one immediately stood out.

  “Of course,” he said. “I can’t believe we didn’t get this one earlier. The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha was an extremely influential book for centuries, a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.

  “One of the many islands Deuce inherited from his grandfather is called Cervantes,” Nelson said. “Maybe Booker solved some of these clues long ago.”

  “The thought crossed my mind, but then why doesn’t Deuce know? Why does he need us?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Deuce doesn’t know he already has the answers, or maybe Booker didn’t want Deuce to know . . . Booker obviously had some method of seeing or at least predicting the future. If it wasn’t the prophecies, I don’t know what it could have been, but he knew enough to know that Deuce would need help.”

  “Money and power aren’t enough, or all the great empires of history would not have fallen.”

  “I’m counting on that with Aylantik. They make all the empires of the past look like peasant villages,” Nelson said.

  The assistants were busy stacking up books on two tables they’d cleared for the pre-1847 candidates as they were found. Grandyn and Nelson were so excited about Don Quixote that they went to look for it themselves. Less than ten minutes later an assistant found it, an edition that had been published in the 1940s. Grandyn rushed to feed the data to Fye. After a few minutes, she announced a match.

  Chapter 58 - Book 2

  They now had the Iliad, Paradise Lost, Hamlet, and Don Quixote. They kept testing pre-1847 titles as soon as they found them, but it was hours before they got another hit, Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France.

  “Lest we forget, our man Clastier was a revolutionary,” Nelson said, stepping outside for a celebratory bac.

  “And part French,” Grandyn added. “Then we should check Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man. It’s a response to Burke’s work on the Revolution.”

  By the time Nelson came back inside, Fye had confirmed their sixth match.

  “When did you get so smart?” Nelson asked.

  Fye’s hologram walked into the room and answered before Grandyn had a chance. “Since he fell in love with me.”

  “Is that so?” Nelson said. Knowing Fye was a List Keeper, he didn’t doubt it. The enigmatic group was mostly a mystery to him, but he’d heard enough during his lifetime as a revolutionary to know that the List Keepers were all supposed to be super smart – Imp-smart, but without the implant. List Keepers’ shadowy reputation had left Nelson with the definite impression that they could beat Blaise Cortez in an intelligence duel.

  Grandyn ignored Fye’s comment, but blew a kiss to her hologram. Hours went by without any more progress until a random test produced another winner. The Federalist, a collection of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.

  “Once again, Clastier is a revolutionary,” Grandyn said.

  “It’s deeper than that, the Federalist Papers is really an attempt to bring order out of the American Revolution,” Nelson said. “They wanted to influence and promote the ratification of the US Constitution. Clastier was an interesting man, that’s for sure.”

  “Carrying with the French and Spanish themes, I see several French books, or books about France, but now that we have already have Burke’s contribution and Paine’s Rights of Man, I’d say Clastier’s father is more than well represented. Nothing else Spanish on the list matched,” Grandyn said. “The man was in spiritual crisis, parting with his Church and discovering prophecies that made him question everything about his life, not to mention changing his perception about human existence in general. I’d have to guess he would go for something more philosophical, something like that,” Grandyn said stabbing his finger into the VM containing the list.

  “Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius,” Nelson said, reading the title Grandyn had pointed to.

  “I think so. Let’s check it.”

  Less than ten minutes later, Nelson smiled. “We have the eighth book! Shoot Grandyn, your dad would be so proud. Your mom, too.” Nelson smothered Grandyn in a bear hug.

  “We’re almost there.” He smiled. “But I’m not sure Hamlet is part of the prophecies.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be? Why else would it have an altered pattern?” Nelson asked.

  “Look what we have,” Grandyn pointed to a list.

  1. The Iliad

  2. Paradise Lost

  3. Hamlet

  4. Don Quixote

  5. Reflections on the Revolution in France

  6. Rights of Man

  7. The Federalist

  8. Meditations

  “One of these books has to be the key to the code,” Grandyn said.

  “True,” Fye said “The books are useless to us without the key. Until we get that, all we can do is read them, like anyone else. The hidden message remains buried in the original arrangement of letters.”

  “My dad mentioned Hamlet the night before he died. I think it might be the key.”

  “But maybe the eight works are seven messages and one key,” Fye said, furiously putting down numbers and letters in her pad.

  “I get what you’re saying. We have the books, but how do we access the code?” Nelson asked. “I really don’t know.”

  “Clastier was a priest, right?” Fye asked rhetorically. “He was raised by the Church. There is only one thing he would have used to set the code . . . the Bible.”

  Nelson and Grandyn stared at her.

  “Bible codes have been used by others throughout history to hide messages, including other purported prophecies,” Fye said, “but even assuming I’m right, we still need a check digit.”

  “Wait, explain it slowly,” Nelson said.

  “Although most early examples come from the Hebrew text of the Torah, there are many ways to do it. By using every 50th letter of the Book of Genesis, beginning at the correct point, you’ll find the Hebrew word “torah” sp
elled out. The Book of Exodus produces the same result.”

  “Cool,” Grandyn said.

  “But we’re not talking about text hidden in the Bible,” Nelson said.

  “Right, what were interested in is using the Bible as a key, but think about it. There are not many things that Clastier had access to that we can also find still unchanged nearly three hundred years later. He might not have known that the books he used for the prophecies would exist in a simple form, but he needed to be confident that the object he chose for the key would be easily available and in multiple copies. What else but the Bible?”

  “Okay,” Nelson said, lighting a bac, “but how’s it work?”

  Fye started coughing and asked him to put it out, which he did.

  Grandyn laughed. Fye was there only as a hologram and could not have been affected by the smoke. Nelson missed the joke.

  “How do we unlock the Bible code?” Nelson asked again.

  “Ah, that is the question,” Fye said. “Clastier was obviously a bright man, but he still would have had little access to complex methods of creating a code. One method he might have known about, or even devised a version of himself, would have been the Equidistant Letter Sequence method or ‘ELS.’ It’s a fairly simple way to go, as long as you know where to begin and have the right skip number.” She pointed to text from a transcript of the zoom detailing the recent AOI attack on the PAWN facility. “Here, assume my starting point is a particular word, and my skip letter is five. I would take every fifth letter and a message would soon appear. Negative numbers can be used and, to make it more complicated, even sequences, such as, five, four, one. In that case you first skip five, then four, then one. They can get even more complex by adding dumb numbers or shifting sequences. The INU can detect the patterns if we have the start number.”

  “So there could also be multiple messages contained in one book?” Nelson said.

  “Oh yes. Theoretically, if the codes are applied after the book is published, there could be hundreds of books and thousands of messages, even millions contained in each book. All the code is doing is creating a new way of reading the assembled letters.”

  “So that’s how they could change,” Grandyn said in an awed tone.

  “Exactly.”

  “I’ve actually come to this conclusion by more than just deducing. I’ve run more than six thousand possible codes through the system using the Iliad, and I’m very confident about the ELS. We just need to confirm it with another book and we need the skip number.”

  “The influence of his parents is profound,” Grandyn said. “What else was important to Clastier? His name. It was the only thing his father gave him. Even though his father left before he knew him, a son never forgets his father.”

  Nelson nodded sadly and gave Grandyn a knowing glance.

  “It holds eight distinct letters,” he continued.

  Fye tried it, but it didn’t work. They kept analyzing what they knew about Clastier, about the Bible, anything at all. They worked for another hour and a half, running every possible number sequence they could dream up with the help of the INU, but nothing came. Deuce walked in and they quickly told him where they were.

  “My grandfather also believed the Bible contained a code which would lead to the books in which the prophecies appear, but he’d never been able to find it,” Deuce said. “I’ve thought a great deal about it and studied everything we know about Clastier and his times, and I don’t think he would have used the Bible because by the time he wrote the codes, he had rejected the Church.”

  “But he couldn’t have counted on his writings surviving,” Grandyn said.

  “He could if he could see the future,” Nelson replied.

  “Let’s remember he didn’t create the prophecies, he merely interpreted them and, in the case of his Divinations, he only recorded them,” Deuce said. “Those, we call his stagnant prophecies have already come to pass. The ones we’re looking for, called the Justar Journal, are something entirely different. His attempt to preserve them for us was based on what he saw of the Banoff and its aftermath. He wanted us to have a way out, a chance to fix it.”

  “So where did he hide the key?”

  “I believe the only clue he possibly gave was in a letter he sent to a follower, which read, “To unlock the eternal mind of existence, the Justar Journal, one must go one, two and possess it, next . . . one must cope.”

  “I know how to read the prophecies!” Grandyn shouted.

  Chapter 59 - Book 2

  Blaise sat with his knights gathered at the round table. “The trouble is too much for us,” he said, resigned in the most un-Blaise-like manner.

  Morholt nodded. “Unfortunately, the trouble will be multiplied greatly by our own allies.” He paused and looked around slowly at the others. “The Imps have grown restless. They are impatient with the traditionals.”

  Traditionals were actual humans without implants, and the one he was most likely referring to was Lance Miner. Morholt, being a CHRUDE and speaking about the Imps that way, while so many were in the room, was going to create an argument that Blaise was not in the mood for, but had nonetheless known was coming.

  “Morholt, I do respect your knowledge. You are programmed at the highest level and able to simulate reason and access massive amounts of data, but you are not human, nor an Imp,” Galahad said, “so please don’t speak for us.”

  “It was merely an observation, and an accurate one,” Morholt shot back.

  “CHRUDEs are in many way superior to Imps,” Bors, another CHRUDE, said. “We have complete control over our emotions.”

  “Your emotions are artificial,” Lucan the Butler snapped.

  “Please,” Blaise said, slapping the table. “Please don’t let this disintegrate into an ‘Imps are better than CHRUDEs’ debate. As far as I’m concerned, you’re all a damn close second to me, so let’s carry on.”

  Most of them laughed.

  “My point is still on the table,” Morholt said.

  “And so it is,” Blaise muttered.

  “You all may not like my analysis,” Morholt continued, “but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. The Imps here will surely agree that Imps have seen things, understood things about the world today . . . and yesterday. The Aylantik cannot stand, its foundations are far too weak, built on the lies and manipulations of billions dead.”

  “Your assessment, please,” Blaise said, as he could see the Imps ready to pounce.

  “We are at a presage to war. At this point there are many sides, which will surely consolidate if hostilities deepen further. I’m saying the Imps will create a new side . . . their own side.”

  “Outrageous!” Galahad said, leaping to his feet.

  “Your programming is obviously contaminated,” Percival said, slapping the round table and pointing at Morholt.

  “Your reaction is an indication of your knowledge of the conspiracy,” Bors said.

  “Conspiracy is it?” Lucan the Butler asked bitterly. “The CHRUDEs may be the ones with a conspiracy against us Imps.”

  “What is this?” Blaise called out loudly, holding out his hands in a gesture of confusion. “My knights do not quarrel among themselves, and they certainly don’t scheme without my consent. I’m the schemer in this world.” He stared around the table, letting a stern gaze linger on Galahad. “If the Imps open yet another dimension to this dispute, then I shall not be an ally.”

  “Are you short on logic?” Galahad asked Morholt. “The Imps are vastly outnumbered by the AOI, BLAXERS, P-Force, and PAWN. Do you take us for fools? Even if we had cause for revolt, we could not win with such odds.”

  “You outnumber any of the sides with brain capacity and access to realms of higher intelligence,” Morholt said calmly. “And you would obviously begin any conflict in an alliance, which you would, if things go your way, betray.”

  “Instigator, subversive!” Galahad shouted. “Remove him!”

  “Do you have any proof for your allegations?”
Blaise asked Morholt when order was finally restored.

  “It is only beginning. There is not yet proof. We will know more in the coming days.” He turned to Blaise. “Another issue of urgency is the AOI . . . they will not ignore the Imps much longer.”

  The Imps erupted again. It took Blaise some time to calm things down, with an agreement to drop the subject until the next meeting. The discussion shifted to the AOI and whether they could prevent war much longer. Eventually, Bors brought up Lance Miner’s influence in the AOI and the conversation circled back around to Imps. Miner had been increasingly employing Imps for information and strategy, but there had been a falling out. Morholt pointed to this as a factor in the growing Imp discontent. Blaise adjourned the meeting before things deteriorated again. He needed time to look into Morholt’s information.

  As the knights were standing to leave, Blaise added one last thought. “If and when the AOI turns their attention onto the Imps, either for prosecution or assistance, we’ll have arrived at a very dangerous precipice, one I’m not sure we will be able cross, or even see, over.”

  The AOI Chief looked at her blinking INU with trepidation. She’d seen the zoom, dreaded it actually, but not because the A-Council Chairman intimidated her. Quite the contrary. She knew that although he was a very bright man, he didn’t understand the intricacies of the impending revolution.

  “Are you going to be able to stop this thing?” he asked, jumping right in.

  “Mr. Chairman, I assure you that we’re doing everything we can.”

  “It doesn’t look like it’s enough. Can you explain to me why this is so difficult? Why on earth are there more than a handful of crazies wanting to overthrow the government that has given them everything?”

  She started to answer but he plowed on.

  “We have brought these people from the brink of human extinction to a prosperous utopia. Lifetime employment, full health coverage, the longest life expectancy in history. We’ve eliminated war, poverty, hunger, and fossil fuels . . . fossil fuels, that means we’ve also eliminated pollution. I mean what more do these torgon people want?”