Attrition of the Gods: Book 1 of the Mystery Thriller series Gods Toys.

by P. G. Burns

Recognising the hurt on her face he immediately feels guilty and a little ungrateful. He wants to trust her. He moves closer and lays his hands on her shoulders before saying. “Look, I’m not having a go at you or your dad but let me ask you one thing, and I want you to look me in the eye when you answer, is that okay?”

  Ember nods and holds her face close to Adam’s, enthusiastically staring into his eyes. Adam steps back, a little uncomfortable. He looks back into her eyes and feels entranced, noticing once more how mesmerising she is. A shake of his head brings him back to reality. He concentrates. Raphael has taught him more than just history; he has explained how to read a person’s face when asking a question, to know if they are telling the truth or not. He fixes his stare to hers before he asks, “Can I trust you?”

  “Yes,” she replies without hesitation.

  He doesn’t know if it’s Raphael’s teachings or Ember’s angelic face or perhaps her sincere tone but from deep in his gut he feels he can trust her. It’s as if he has known her all his life. If he is honest it has been like that since the moment they met.

  “My mum is throwing a party for me next week for my birthday. I was thinking of asking you anyway, so how about we kill two birds with one stone and you come to that?”

  Ember is slightly taken aback by the sudden change but also delighted. This is a true sign of trust. She knows when she has the advantage and pushes for one more act of trust and friendship.

  “That would be great. I was going to ask you something as well.” She pauses and shuffles in a cute, manipulative way before continuing. “Your mysterious tutor…..you mention him all the time but then when I ask about him you clam up. I mean, he sounds fascinating. Won’t you tell me more, please?” Her bottom lip is pushed out as she attempts to use the look that has never failed on her father.

  Adam looks at her unfazed; he’s grown up surrounded by girls. Ember admits defeat and pulls her shoulders back to regain her proud posture,

  “Okay, well, I’m fairly sure we can arrange some sort of information exchange instead,” she says, with one eyebrow raised. “I happen to be privy to some pretty interesting stuff, you know.”

  Adam sighs, relenting, and soon he is relaying things to her that he has not even shared with his own family.

  “Okay, so this guy, Raphael… he is a bit weird. A few years ago he offered to help me with my studies. He has a mind full of knowledge and he basically taught me everything I needed to know to pass the entrance exam. He never even charged me; he just asks for food and drink now and again, especially wine, but besides that he asks for very little. It’s unbelievable what he knows and it all just comes out of his head. I hardly ever even see him with a book or VLD.”

  “Why do you say he is weird?”

  “Well, quirky would probably be a better description. His clothes are strange, oddly old-fashioned and he almost always wears sort of greenish or bright blue…”

  “Turquoise?”

  “Yeah, that. And he’s always saying ‘holy moly’.”

  “Holy moly? Meaning what?”

  “I’ve got no idea! I told you he’s weird.”

  “Can I meet him?”

  Adam looks away, not sure how to reply.

  “He doesn’t exactly come into High Jinn. I’m not sure what race he is but he definitely isn’t Aryan.”

  “I guessed that! No, I mean when I come to Ravensdale with you.” Adam looks at her bemused, still not sure if she is serious about visiting his home.

  

  The following week Adam and Ember leave the RLT early and set off towards the loop, an overhead magno rail system that links the sections of the city. Ember’s excitement regarding visiting Adam’s home and going to a party is evident from her lively chit-chat but she soon approaches the other reason she is excited about this trip.

  “Will Raphael be there? Why don’t you call him and see if he will be there?” she asks impatiently as they approach the loop station.

  “Raphael doesn’t have any coms. He doesn’t even have a chip impla…” Adam stops himself, realising this may be a little bit too much information but Ember’s curiosity is already roused.

  “He doesn’t have a chip?” she whispers. “But that is impossible! Everyone has a chip. Even the favelas have chips. How does he live?”

  Ember looks at her wrist as she asks the question and Adam can clearly see she carries the latest version of an Aryan chip. Intrigued he reaches for her wrist to see the chip, his heart beating ever so slightly faster at the contact.

  “Wow. It’s tiny, more like a tattoo,” he says.

  “Daddy bought it… I mean… my dad bought it for me when I graduated. It has total quadro coms, limitless cyber storage and carries 2,300 credits.” Ember looks up and sees Adam is not impressed. “What now?”

  Adam ponders on whether to reply. He really doesn’t want to get into another disagreement with her; still he can’t just say nothing.

  “Raphael says that chips became compulsory as a means to control people. They are just another form of segregation designed to empower the Aryans and enslave the proletariat.”

  Ember frowns. “But chips were developed long before the return of the Messiah and the Aryans were not even identified back when chips first were used. They are compulsory because they are needed. I mean, how would you propose people buy food or enter their homes safely? How would we travel or enter public buildings?” Ember swipes her wrist across the entrance to the loop, smiling as she proves her point. The door folds open and the noise from thousands of commuters cuts the conversation short. Ember points to a holo-screen showing the shuttle schedule.

  “Next one is in two minutes,” she mouths to Adam. “We’ll have to run,” he shouts back but she takes his arm and points at her wrist. “We just need a hover bullet.”

  Suddenly a tubular-shaped vehicle with two hollowed-out horizontal seats hovers next to them. Ember swipes her chip across a magnetic panel and with a sibilant sound the capsule opens. This time he is impressed. He has seen the local police riding around on these and witnessed a couple of Aryans riding them but he never dreamed he would ever get a go.

  “Quick! Jump on!” she says.

  The tube stands vertical, the transparent roof folded open and they fit alongside each other against its base. The roof folds back around them. The vehicle then tips up, hovering so they are face down but held by its gravity belt. Ember feels Adam trembling and is touched that he is scared, revelling in the opportunity to take him out of his comfort zone. Adam hopes Ember doesn’t realise the trembling is caused by being in such close proximity to her.

  Seconds later they are flying through the station.

  “Yeeeehaaaa” shouts Adam, unable to control his excitement.

  The hover bullet automatically dodges the throngs of people while negotiating the twists and turns effortlessly. Soon they are approaching the stairwell down to zone eight and the craft seems to hover for a split second before dropping like a stone, whizzing past the heads of others who are running for the Ravensdale shuttle. Adam prays someone he knows sees him as the drone comes to a stop, rights itself vertically and the two disembark gracefully next to the Ravensdale direct door.

  “Fucking hell,” is all he can manage to say.

  Ember laughs at his wide-eyed look. “Guessing you’re a speed tube virgin then.”

  She then leaps onto the first carriage, when she looks round at Adam, he is standing on the platform staring at her with knotted eyebrows. “Aren’t you getting on?” she asks.

  Adam points to the sign above her head.

  Aryans Only!

  Her face is flushed and she involuntarily chews her lip.

  “We seem to be encountering lots of these geo-social issues you always mention,” she remarks, exiting the carriage and, taking Adam’s hand, she makes her way to the middle of the shuttle. As she walks she notices the disdain on the faces of the occupants of seats in the Aryan-only compartments as they look out at this young couple. She loo
ks at Adam, hoping he is not too upset. She needn’t have worried, he is still on a high from the drone ride and the feel of her touch. The two sit in a mixed section and when Ember activates a Micro data streamer via her implant Adam resumes his protest concerning the chips.

  “Raphael told me that back in the day the chips were brought in under the guise of a convenient accessory to help people shop and stuff. He says they were like the latest must-have gadget – however, he believes the purpose was to make people so reliant on them that they would be helpless without one. You have to admit, people got on fine in the twentieth century without them. Now, as you say, we can’t shop, travel, and even take a piss without one.”

  Ember’s intense concentration is broken by this last remark.

  “Eh, gross!”

  “You know what I meant.”

  But she doesn’t. She doesn’t get it at all. To Ember the chip is pure luxury and convenience. “Well the way my father tells it is that when chips first appeared in 2014 they were a great idea, soon they were introduced by banks for contactless payment. Before long you could simply walk out of a shop with your shopping and not have to queue to pay. They were a revelation, no need to carry lots of bizarre plastic rectangles around anymore, did you know people had to do that back in the day?”

  Adam shakes his head despairingly and is about to demonstrate but Ember carries on with her explanation.

  “Also you would need to carry around tickets to go to music and theatre events, they couldn’t store their own medical records, documents like travel or vehicle insurance would be on bits of paper, now all these things are loaded on to the chips, never left behind and never lost.” She opens her arms out looks at him wide eyed, as if to emphasize how obvious her argument was.”

  Adam delays his response as he recollects Raphael’s version of the chips introduction into human live. He told him that the uses were limitless and the Western world fell for the chipping idea, hook, line and sinker (all except the crazy conspiracy theorists, that was, and no one listened to them). The chips really took off when a tracking device for children was added and, after several high-profile rescues of abducted children, it was soon judged irresponsible not to have your child implanted. Within a decade seventy per cent of adults and ninety per cent of children in the Western world had implants. Many retail outlets started to refuse any other types of payment.

  Then, what was known back then as the UK was the first country to input more official documents in the chip, like passports, visas and driving licences as a reaction to the horrendous Heathrow bombing by the Diabolicals. This eventually meant that everybody simply had to get a chip to function in society. Most people didn’t really have a problem with this, it was terribly convenient after all. The telecommuting companies were not slow to react either. Soon the chip became your sim card and a small earpiece was all you needed for a call.

  When Ben Starkey went on a killing spree in small-town America and then went into hiding, the LAPD tracked him down within minutes using the unique signal from his chip. A good thing really as he was a callous murdering bastard and everybody was greatly relieved, but when the same thing happened to a government whistle-blower, people became aware that each and every one of them was on the radar, so to speak. Some got their chips removed but they soon realised that it was very difficult to survive in society without one. Without a chip it was hard to buy food, impossible to travel, drive or even enter a public building.

  Then there was the luxury chip given to the rich and famous that allowed entry to areas that normal people could not go: exclusive clubs, expensive shops, VIP bars in nightclubs, Disneyland on special days. And thus a two-tier chipping system was born. And yet this was not the most sinister side of the chips, nor was the tracking application. Instead it was the sheer power of them.

  Gerry and Bridie Hoey, an elderly couple from Australia, refused to pay a bill sent to them by a car hire firm. The firm claimed that they had returned the car with a scratch on it and wanted three hundred dollars to cover the work. Gerry was sure that there was no such mark when he returned the car but the car hire firm took him to court and the court found in the company’s favour, ruling that if the Hoey’s didn’t pay the bill their chips would be deactivated. Gerry and Bridie still refused to pay. One week later, hungry, cold and scared, Gerry agreed to pay the bill plus five hundred dollars legal fees and a further two hundred dollars to have his chip reactivated. The chip was finally fulfilling its potential and most people conformed willingly.

  Still there was reasonable resistance. When Senator Dan Cloud supported a proposal from NATAS (North American Technology in Analogue Science) to upgrade the chips with a shock application, the motion was beaten, albeit narrowly. The upgrade would have enabled the chips to administer a painful pulse through the person’s body, thus allowing law enforcement agencies to subdue a suspect without pulling a gun. But then within twenty years this proposal was resurrected with bells on. Ultimately the chips would play a major part in the slaughter of billions of humans, an event known as the Tribulation.

  Adam looks at Ember and decides not to relay his version he just nods and with a smile agrees to disagree.

  On schedule, the train rolls into Ravensdale station and as they get off Adam is shocked to see a large group of people waving banners and flags at him. Ember is delighted.

  “They came to meet you!” she says, raising onto her toes, unable to hide her excitement on seeing the banners with Adam’s name written across them.

  The people look strange to her. She has not really seen Caucasians in their own environment before and it strikes her how jolly they appear as opposed to the glum images she’s used to, especially as they wave and cheer the arrival of their very own genius. Soon the crowd surrounds the two youths, friends slapping Adam on the back, women hugging and kissing him, men shaking his hand vigorously. Ember is very impressed. Adam not so much; he had pleaded with his mum to keep it low-key; he should have known he would have more success asking their dog to make the tea.

  “All these people here for you… Wow, you’re famous,” remarks Ember, grabbing his arm excitedly. “Not really, my mum just goes overboard on the celebrations.”

  Many of the other commuters randomly join in the cheering. Then, even amongst the commotion, one or two of the group start to nudge each other as they realise this strange blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryan among them is actually Ember Jones, the daughter of Procurator Conrad Jones. Whispers can be heard as the couple reach the centre of the group. Adam’s mum grabs her son, pride beaming across her face and Adam introduces Ember. After a slightly awkward moment Margareta Costello catches Ember off-guard with a warm hug.

  “You’re very welcome to our little neighbourhood,” she says and once more the crowd cheers.

  “Thank you,” says a startled Ember, unused to such affection; Aryans would never hug and kiss each other in the streets. She looks around at Adam’s Caucasian friends and family, noticing the warmth they show each other. She likes these people.

  “Which one is Raphael? Is he here?” she asks as they are propelled through the shuttle station.

  “Oh no,” says Adam. “He wouldn’t be out with Joe Public. Raphael is not that type. I gotta be honest, I doubt you will ever meet him. There’re people lived around here all their lives who haven’t even seen him some think I made him up, like an imaginary friend.” He laughs awkwardly and noticing the look on Embers face quickly adds “he’s not”

  Ember looks disappointed, she wonders if perhaps Raphael is actually a figment of Adams imagination, she decides to forget about meeting the enigma Adam has told her about and soon the fun and games of the celebration take her mind off it altogether.

  As the group exits the station none of them notice the guy in the turquoise suit who is watching from an upper platform. “Holy moly, Miss Jones,” he mutters. “You have come to us, just as the Antihost said you would.”

  STOKE PRISON PRESENT DAY

  “When a well-packaged
web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.”

  – Dresden James

  Shane Mills sits alone in the recreation room of D wing with his arms folded. He peruses the area, observing his fellow inmates. As a new arrival he is expecting the usual testing banter all inmates get on their first day in prison. Although this is Shane’s only stint in a civilian prison, he has plenty of experience in military prisons and expects this to be the same except full of pussy civilian-pretend-hard-men. Ready to establish his place in this shithole he purposely sits upright, his muscular frame tensed in a deliberate display of masculinity. Shane is aware that today he needs to make his mark. He is prepared to bust some heads if required but he doubts he will need to. “Stand your ground today and let the others know you’re not a pushover,” he drills into his subconscious. “After that the next four years should go swimmingly.”

  It’s not long before two inmates approach his table and stand either side of him. One speaks to him in a strong Geordie accent, “So you’re one of the newbies.”

  Shane looks at the guy in the eye and decides to ignore him. The second male sits close by his right side. He speaks in a similar accent.

  “Listen, we are just trying to be friendly.”

  Shane looks this wiry guy up and down. “I ain’t looking for friends, and if I was it wouldn’t be Ant and Dec.”

  “We all need friends in here,” pipes up the other shorter guy, unfazed by the remark.

  Shane studies a copy of yesterday’s newspaper, completely blanking him out.

  Undeterred, the guy continues, “Look, we really are trying to be friendly. Something is about to go down in here any minute and trust me, you don’t want to know about it.”

  Shane folds the paper and looks the man sitting opposite him in the face. Six years in the army has taught Shane a lot but it was growing up on the mean streets of Dublin and Manchester where he first learned to read people. Both these men would look intimidating to the average Joe. One was small but stocky with unfashionably long curly hair and a certain menacing look. The other was a tall and heavy looking character with prison tattoos on either side of his neck. Shane notices both men’s eyebrows flash as they talk and this plus their submissive stance leads him to deduce that neither of these men is a threat and he decides to hear them out.