The Justar Journal: An AOI Thriller

by Brandt Legg

  “Long enough that it’s Monday now,” Fye said.

  Grandyn laughed, assuming she was joking. She wasn’t.

  Soon, the light had grown so bright that Grandyn had to walk with his hands in front of his eyes until Fye reached into a concealed cabinet in one of the towers and produced two pairs of dark, mirrored glasses.

  “It’s not too much farther,” she said.

  “This place is incredible,” he said, realizing he was shouting. Until that moment he hadn’t been aware of it, but a white noise that sounded almost like crashing waves had been getting louder. Finally, some inestimable time later, they walked through the last of it; light so bright he could no longer see the towers, or anything else. The noise had also become so loud that he couldn’t even hear the sound of his own voice. He held on to Fye as she led him through the light.

  Then, suddenly, it all stopped. They were in a darkened room. The silence absolute.

  As Grandyn adjusted to the dramatic shift in his senses, he became aware of an old, black man surrounded by at least fifteen VMs. The man looked up and smiled.

  “Ah, Runit’s son,” the man said, standing, pushing his hands together as if in prayer, and bowing slightly. “I’m so happy to finally meet you. I’m Booker Lipton.”

  Grandyn looked over at Fye, and then back to the old man. “But . . . but you’re dead,” he stammered.

  “No, not really. Not yet,” he said, smiling broadly, as if he might laugh. “There were reports of my death, but they were greatly . . . Anyway, they never found my body.”

  “You faked your death?” Grandyn asked.

  “You might say that. I never died, just disappeared. There really wasn’t a choice, you know. The AOI wanted me dead.” He looked sad for a moment. “And it was the only way to hope to beat the prophecies.”

  “How old are you?”

  “One hundred and twenty-eight.”

  “Younger than Munna.”

  “Much.” He smiled. “Don’t believe her about only being one hundred and thirty-something. I’m sure she’s closer to one hundred and fifty.”

  “How have you lived so long?”

  “We discovered the secrets,” Booker said.

  “We?”

  “There was a group of us in the beginning. Fye’s grandparents, Rip and Gale, then there was Spencer Copeland, Nate Ryder, and Linh, leaders of the Inner Movement, and some others.”

  Grandyn looked back at Fye. “Your grandparents?”

  “They were the ones who uncovered the Eysen, the real one, that they based the INUs on.”

  “This one,” Booker said, pointing to an INU almost as big as a basketball glowing on a stand on the other side of the spacious room.

  “That’s a huge INU,” Grandyn said.

  “Yes, we’ve managed to keep shrinking them. Of course, the ones people buy are toys compared to this creation,” Booker said with a far-away smile. “The original Eysen has taught us things, unfathomable concepts, abilities, lessons that even today, after all the decades, I still can’t fully grasp.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  Booker shook his head. Grandyn wasn’t sure if Booker didn’t know, or didn’t want to say.

  “My grandparents found it in a cliff in Virginia,” Fye said. “He was an archaeologist. It all began with his Cosega theory‒‒”

  “Are your grandparents still alive?” Grandyn asked, overwhelmed with questions.

  “No. They decided not to stay.”

  “Stay?”

  “When you can live forever,” Booker began, “sometimes forever is too long.”

  “You can live forever?” Grandyn asked, astonished.

  “We don’t know for sure, but it seems possible, or at least as long as anyone would want to.”

  Grandyn was silent for a moment. It was all so unbelievable. “You’re talking about immortality?”

  “We’re talking about so much more than that,” Booker said. “But yes, it is possible for humans to rejuvenate their bodies. Contrary to what Darwin might have you believe, we are not just another animal in the food chain. Humans are special. We are truly masters of the universe. The things we can do are in the realm of star creation. Are you impressed with human accomplishment? Helicopters and Flo-wings, automobiles and LEVs, Apollo rockets and starships, one small step . . . and Mars bases? It is nothing. It is all babies drooling in a crib compared to what is possible. We know because we’ve seen it in the Eysen.”

  The VMs all around were showing images to match his words. He looked deeply into Grandyn’s eyes and said with exhilaration in his voice, “And because we’ve started doing it, most of the List Keepers are between one hundred and two hundred years old, amazingly energetic, and in perfect health. Look at this place.” He motioned around them. “Do you think we’ve built all this with basic knowledge? We record every second of existence. The tower hall you came through? There are hundreds more halls just like them. We have infinite power from the trees. We can, and will, teach whoever survives this Armageddon how to live for centuries, how to do so many remarkable things.”

  Booker sat and glanced at the VMs showing the modern world.

  “The promise of the human race has been squandered up until now. Wasted in a contest for so-called riches!”

  Grandyn wanted to hear everything, but he couldn’t help thinking about his mission; destroy the AOI, stop the war. All those people out there dying.

  “You figured out how to beat death, but you couldn’t prevent this war?” he asked.

  “As you see, we have no army. No weapons in the conventional sense anyway.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Good question. I formed the List Keepers before the Banoff,” Booker said. His jovial expression suddenly crashing as if he might cry. His wrinkles deepened, and for a split second, he seemed to be choking on sadness. “The names of the dead, we have them all. I wanted to read each of them, but there are billions!” His voice came out in a shouted whisper. “Billions,” he repeated more quietly.

  He paused and walked to a screen which showed the outside world. A camera must be mounted up there in the woods somewhere, because Grandyn recognized it as a live view of the ridgeline they’d seen on their way to the City.

  “You knew about the Banoff before it happened?” Grandyn asked, knowing the answer.

  “Yes. I’d seen Clastier’s prophecies that predicted the Banoff. We had not uncovered the Justar Journal, but Clastier’s papers contained more than enough information. In the beginning, I thought the List Keepers, by knowing about the Banoff in advance, could stop it. But we didn’t understand enough then, and we ended up making it much worse . . . many more died than anyone expected.”

  “What happened?”

  “Not now,” Fye said, touching Grandyn’s arm.

  “We made mistakes,” Booker continued. “I’d spent my life searching for artifacts that had been lost to humanity, things I believed could help us change the world. Really radically change it. A way to the truth of who we are and why we exist. I discovered dozens of sacred objects and hidden texts. Many of which were very important, and yet you’ve never heard of them. Items like the Jadeo, the signs, the original Eysen ‒ and others that you do know about, Clastier’s papers and the Justar Journal. They were all pieces of a great puzzle . . . You see, I thought being armed with great knowledge from the past and hints of the future meant we could not only change the world and correct our course, but we could actually create what we wanted. Make the future of our dreams. But it is far more complex than that.”

  “But you had so much money already.”

  “I don’t mean a materialistic future. I mean a deep, meaningful future, different from anything we have ever attempted in the modern world. A true utopia where money doesn’t even exist.”

  “How do you get there?” Grandyn asked.

  “After our failure at stopping the Banoff, we went underground. We built the City and created new plans. Separate from the List Ke
epers, I backed the founders of PAWN and the TreeRunners, because we could see all of this coming. The Doneharvest, and what we call the New Plague and the Final War.”

  “And the books? You saw my father?” Grandyn asked.

  “I saw Runit. We tried to arrange things so that he would survive. We actually did get him more time. He was supposed to die that night when the AOI was going door-to-door, before the books were removed, and again the day they burned the remaining books in the library. So it wasn’t much, but those were precious days,” he said, looking warmly at Grandyn. “Your father was a great man. I named an island after him, and he’ll always be remembered. Runit gave us the last hope. He saved the books, and in those books was hidden the last known artifact I didn’t possess . . . the Justar Journal. And he gave us his son. He made you into a man that could solve the Journal and fight for the truth.”

  “And even with all that, you couldn’t prevent this nightmare?” Grandyn said, motioning up as if to mean the horrendous events occurring in the world above.

  “We didn’t have enough warning,” Booker said sadly.

  “You had seventy-five years!”

  “We’ve been working constantly. We’re exhausted. We’ve done everything imaginable, and even things that aren’t possible . . .” Booker took a deep breath. “This time, it earned the name the Final War because it was to be the last war. Not because everyone would love each other afterwards, but because there wouldn’t be an afterwards.”

  Chapter 78 - Book 3

  Grandyn stared at Booker, trying to find some point of reality to grab onto.

  “What about your grandson?”

  “Deuce doesn’t know I’m alive. It was too risky.”

  “Does Munna?”

  “Yes, Munna was one of my employees before the Banoff. She headed up the work we did with Spencer Copeland and others on the power of the mind.” Booker, realized he couldn’t explain everything at once, and got back to Grandyn’s question. “Munna had to stop Deuce from using the prophecies for war. We made that mistake during the Banoff. No matter what he thought, it would not have worked.”

  “Fye says you have all the information. That you know everything.”

  Booker nodded, smiling.

  “Will you tell me? Will you teach me?” Grandyn asked.

  Booker laughed. “Well, that may take a long time, but time we have. You see, time is a funny thing.”

  “But, if you know everything, why can’t you make it all work out?”

  “We may know everything but it is very different to understand everything.”

  “Why was the Justar Journal so important when it didn’t stop the war?”

  “Because even after studying the Eysen for all these years, there is so much we still don’t know about it. But we do know that the Justar Journal is the transcription of another Eysen.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Everything is possible,” Booker said. “Never doubt that. It’s just a matter of finding the way.”

  “Like how you did all this?” Grandyn asked, still trying to understand the point, trying to find a way to stop the horrors going on above them. “I guess what the List Keepers do is to make the impossible possible.”

  “This is painstaking, excruciatingly monotonous work,” Booker said. “So much of what has happened in the past has been erased. Did you know there were major demonstrations and riots in the early years of Aylantik rule? People were against the restrictions on bearing rights and the redistribution of lands, the elimination of cash, conversion to a single language, banning religions . . . People fought all those things, but the AOI clamped down and eliminated the dissenters. Then all those events were erased from the ‘public’ record, but the List Keepers have it all. One thing to remember is that you can never trust history – not even if you were there.”

  “It’s important for the future,” Fye said, “so that we know where we came from. So that we can learn from all that came before.”

  “Future?” Grandyn asked, as if that might be too optimistic a word.

  “The war is over,” Booker said, looking at a VM behind them. “The Aylantik has been toppled and the AOI crushed.”

  “What?” Grandyn asked disbelievingly.

  “It’s over?” Fye asked. “We did it?”

  “We did it,” Booker confirmed. “Humanity has survived.”

  Booker closed his eyes and fell back into his chair. For almost an entire century he had been fighting to save the species from itself. Bit by bit, breath by breath, and somehow they had done it.

  “What do we do now?” she asked, crying. “With so few people left, a nasty flu epidemic could still finish us off.”

  “Possibly, if we were operating under the old ways,” Booker said. “But this is a new day. We’ll show the world the secrets of the List Keepers. This is our best chance ever to finally achieve a true utopian society.”

  “What makes this time any different?” Grandyn asked, still stunned.

  “Don’t you see? We’ve tried everything else and it never worked. A planet like this should not have so much misery and despair. We can do it differently this time.”

  “But how?”

  “That’s up to you Grandyn, and to a new generation of leaders,” Booker said.

  “Me?”

  “You and Twain, Fye, and a few others . . . that’s why you had to get here. It’s your role to continue to decipher the Justar Journal.”

  “But Munna won’t‒‒”

  “Munna couldn’t allow you, or anyone, to see the full view of the Journal once she saw that it showed how important you were.”

  “Why am I so important?” Grandyn asked.

  “Everyone is important, most just never realize it.”

  “But if the Justar Journalcould show that‒‒”

  “Remember that the Journal changes. After you decoded it, Munna continued to monitor it, and many times it showed your death. You had to get here safely. And, as predicted, the war ended. The closer you got to the City, the closer the war came to ending.”

  “But Munna could have told us.”

  “If anyone knew, even Deuce, or can you imagine Blaise? If you think they hunted you before . . . the Chief would have blown up the entire Pacyfik region if she had known what was at stake.”

  “So what am I supposed to do now?”

  “Study the Justar Journal,” Booker said. “We have a new kind of world to create. It will be unlike anything that has been before, and we’ll need all the wisdom we can uncover.”

  “Why will people want that kind of change?” Grandyn asked. “Why will they listen?”

  “Because they are tired of a world ruled by greed, hate, and fear,” Booker said. “We will teach them how to go within, and once they’ve learned it, the greatest fear faced by humanity will have been removed. The fear of death.”

  “They definitely know about death.”

  “Yes, death has always been the ultimate fear. It has governed everything. But once they can let go of that fear, they can let go of all fear. That means no greed, no hatred, no fear of anything. We’re free. We are finally free.”

  Epilogue

  Portland, Oregon, September 26, 2102

  It had been more than a year since the war ended. This was the first time Grandyn had seen Nelson in person since those terrible days. They shared a long hug, filled with silent remorse and questions that could never be answered. Grandyn wondered how long Nelson could go on, smoking and eating and drinking. The irony was that Nelson had within his grasp the ability to live another hundred years, or longer, but he wasn’t interested. Maybe he was like UC. He wanted to know what came next, or maybe he just didn’t want to see this place anymore. Too many tortured memories.

  “Oh how we torged it up,” Nelson often said. “But the stories are all in the torg-ups . . . there’s no drama in peace and happiness unless it’s pretend.”

  “You look good,” Grandyn lied.

  “Do I?” Nelson as
ked skeptically. “You’ve been spending too much time underground in the City then.” Nelson crushed out a bac.

  “Maybe,” Grandyn said. “It’s a hard place to leave.”

  “I bet, especially with Fye pregnant again. Congratulations.”

  Grandyn nodded, remembering the lava tubes, his parents, Vida, so many things. They went and found their assigned seats.

  “All those years ago, when you started this revolution,” Grandyn began in hushed tones. “On one of those days when Chelle, Drast, and you were sitting around some college coffee shop . . . if you’d known Chelle and Drast would end up dead, would you still have done everything you did? Marched forward into the‒‒”

  “First, we didn’t start the revolution. It began long before us. We just joined it. Truth be told, the damned Aylantik bastards are due all the responsibility. PAWN never would have existed without them.” He stared off into the distance. A brief smile collapsing before it found any lasting form. “And shoot yes, we would have done it. We were revolutionaries, Chelle and Drast most of all, and revolutionaries sometimes die for the cause. Sometimes that’s best, because they know only how to fight for change. Once they get it, they wander around lost.”

  Grandyn nodded. “How’s Deuce?”

  “I don’t see him much,” Nelson said. “He’s so busy changing the world. It’s funny. He was never meant to win the war.”

  “No, like Booker said, Deuce was meant to win what came after. And he seems to be doing it.”

  “Twain and Munna are helping with the transition. Strange having the world’s wealthiest man working to make the world run without money,” Nelson said. “Kind of like that woman who took over PharmaForce, Sarlo. She’s been leading the charge to get everyone off pharmaceuticals.”

  “But there have been thousands of healings,” Grandyn said.

  “Tens of thousands,” Nelson corrected. “I’m about to release a new book about why some are choosing to learn the ways of rejuvenation, and why some want to live and die the way we always have.”

  “Don’t you want to see what we can do with all the List Keepers’ knowledge?”