RESTORATION (a science fiction novel) (RESTORATION (the science fiction trilogy))

by Utley, Todd

  It made perfect sense that when the victims lay down at night the hackers got into their LifeCorders and were able to influence them somehow, the next morning they controlled

  the victim causing them to transfer their wealth to the offshore accounts.

  That night when they laid down again the hackers would withdraw but they couldn’t erase their tracks completely. The next morning when the victim awoke they knew they had been railroaded but couldn’t prove it and few people would believe them.

  Some wealthy people had already stopped using their LifeCorders out of paranoia that it was this portal the criminals were using to get in. Other wealthy people wrote it off to some clever guy robbing himself and then claiming it on his insurance.

  Some were not using their Lifecorders as a precaution, but most just laughed it off and continued to trust the system. Dodge was now even more convinced that this must be the hacker’s motive, this is why they were killing people, those individuals that knew too much were getting snuffed out.

  But who were the culprits and why were they doing this? Was it just plain greed, or did they have some specific purpose for all that money? He looked at the clock, it was 11:45, he needed to go to bed soon so that he could function on a high level at work tomorrow.

  He met Linsey in the hall as they were both headed for the bedroom. They lay in bed fully aware of the listeners but in spite of that they had a great talk, they couldn’t talk about the things that were the heaviest on their minds so instead they distracted themselves by talking about everything else until they both fell asleep.

  Chapter 15 The next morning Dodge went to work as usual and tried to pretend his life was normal. He said hello to Steph with a smile, made his way to the break room and got a fresh cup of coffee and a yogurt and then headed for his office.

  He stopped for a brief chat with Tim in the hall and was reminded to attend a budgetary meeting on Friday. Tim also reminded him to go

  look at his stock because it was on the rise again. Even though that was good news, he really didn’t care to look at it. He had already cashed out half and was pretty much set for life. He was much more concerned about waking up one morning to discover that his brain was hijacked by some greedy loon that would force him to go to bank and sign it all away. That’s when it hit him that he had better move some of their money into different accounts that required two signatures in order to transfer funds, yes that was a good idea, he and Linsey would go do that one afternoon this week. Just before lunch he got a text from John. It was a grocery list of things he needed Dodge to poke around for at work.

  He wanted Dodge to look in his personal junkyard of parts to see if he had some items they needed to get the console back into working order. It seems the op team gave it a bumpy ride by wrapping a chain around it and dragging it out into the parking lot before tossing it into the back of their getaway van.

  Two of the boards inside had sustained damage and needed minor repairs. They needed to find three integrated circuit chips and four diodes to make the repairs and so he forwarded the list of parts to Dodge.

  Dodge waited until the end of the day and headed down to the lab while he knew he could still get in. He had the pass code to get in but didn’t want to use it. If he could walk in while his team was still in there and then stay until after they had all gone he could simply get the needed parts and then leave.

  If anyone was tracking his code in and out of areas they wouldn’t even know he was down there if he didn’t swipe his hand for entry. He milled around a little bit in the break room nearest to the lab and watched his team leaving one by one. He figured the fewer people that saw him the better just in case there was a mole in his team.

  He waited until only Jim Stanley was left in the lab. He was one of the oldest techs on staff at age 75 yet he refused to retire even though he must have been worth millions.

  If there ever was a guy that should go get restored it was Jim. He had both hips replaced in his late 50s and both knees replaced in his 60s and then had his neck fused a few years ago.

  People would kid him about it and he would just say, “nope, if it aint broke, don’t fix it.” He even had a bionic hand that he was always adjusting because it would malfunction frequently. He lost his left hand in a small explosion when he was young and had the bionic prosthetic installed years later when they became affordable.

  Now that Restoration was so prevalent, all the bionics’ companies that were so successful before, had all gone bankrupt. The guy could barely get around and still wouldn’t go get restored. But that was Jim. Everybody loved the old guy and probably didn’t want him to change anyway. He was like an icon.

  It looked like Jim was about to pack it up and so he started heading that way. He knew Jim was inquisitive so he grabbed the clock off the break room wall and removed the power cell and slipped it into his pocket. He headed for the lab.

  “Hey Jim how’s it going in here today, you working overtime?”

  “No way Boss, I’m just wrapping it up! What-cha need?”

  “Well, this clock in the break room over there wasn’t working so I took it down, seems someone has taken the power cell out of it.”

  “Huh, well let’s see here what size is it?”

  “Looks like a no. 7”

  “Okay, let me go back to the supply room there and see if we have any.” Jim started to the back and Dodge started looking through the chip inventory where he believed the items he needed could be found.

  Bingo, right where they should be. There were plenty of them too so they wouldn’t miss a few. He headed to the diode section just as Jim was coming back.

  “Well don’t have any back there, I’ll go next door here and see what they got.”

  He knew it would take Jim at least five minutes to hobble around the corner, do a hand swipe to get into the neighboring lab, turn on the lights and find a cell, because he didn’t get around very fast. He went back to searching for the diodes, a little harder to find, seems they were out of them in general stock but he knew there were some old cards in a drawer at the back of the lab where he and John used to work a lot.

  He went to the back and began going through the drawers, sure enough there was a box of cards marked “salvage.” He opened it up and grabbed out a circuit board. It had at least ten of the diodes they needed but they were soldered in place and would be time consuming to remove. “Ah, what the heck.” He just shoved the whole assembly down the back of his pants as is was basically flat. It was a bit uncomfortable due to the square shape and the sharp corners on the thing. It was jabbing him in the butt and back every time he moved but he needed the blasted thing.

  He replaced the box and closed the drawer and headed back up front just as Jim was returning with the cell he had found.

  “Here ya go boss, give that a try.” Dodge thanked him and snapped the cell into the clock.

  “Hey look there, good as new. Thanks Jim,” he said, as he slapped him on the back and headed for the door.

  He went back to the break room there by the lab and placed the clock back up on the wall. He headed to his office, but the circuit card was jabbing him all the way. Several people said hello and he smiled and tried to act natural but that board was really digging in! He made it to the men’s room at the end of the hall and went into a stall. He took the board out, which now had little pieces of him on the corners.

  He wrapped it in several layers of toilet tissue and returned it to the back of his pants again. He got to his office at the other end of the building where he removed the card and put it into his brief case along with the chips from his pocket. He placed them into a static safe bag before tossing them into his case. “Mission accomplished, time to call it a day.”

  He called Linsey on the way home.

  “Hey Babe, are the kids eating dinner with us tonight?”

  “No, Sarah has a sleep over at Cousin Brenda’s and Bobby is eating dinner and going to the movies with Matt. He’ll probably wind up sleeping over
with him tonight, or at least that’s their plan.”

  “Well in that case would you mind if we went out for dinner with John and Alan?” Linsey figured there was a hidden agenda so of course she agreed. She liked cooking most of the time but it was nice to be waited on occasionally.

  “That would be great,” said Linsey.

  “Okay, I’ll call them, is six okay?”

  “Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll be ready,” she said.

  He hung up from her and called both John and Alan. They both agreed to come. He invited them to Red Lobster because not only was it very busy, it was also one of the noisiest places in town to eat. He wanted to have a meeting that couldn’t be overheard. They all agreed to meet at the restaurant at six.

  Dodge noticed that morning that one of the windows was unlocked in the kitchen at home. He observed that it was locked before going to bed the night before. He was getting very good at noticing minute details as he passed through any room. He knew immediately that someone must have been in the house that night.

  He scanned the kitchen before the kids came down and found a bug in the light over the table. Now they had to watch what they said in the kitchen area also. He knew he had to do something about it so he began working on a plan in his mind.

  Dodge and Linsey got to the restaurant first and put their name in for a table. A few minutes later John arrived and found them in the waiting area. About two minutes later Alan walked in. John spotted him and recognized him in spite of not seeing him since his restoration.

  John busted out laughing.

  “Oh my god! It’s the young and handsome Alan Kerrington!” He jumped up and gave Alan a big hug.

  “Wow, you look great!” He said.

  The hostess called their name. Their table was ready so they made their way back to a large booth and ordered some drinks and an appetizer. When their drinks arrived, Dodge sent a message to the team member tailing the hacker’s tail and asked for a report. The Ops team came back with a message.

  “Followed you to destination but remained outside. Will advise if any change.” Dodge knew that this meant there were no eyes or ears on them inside the restaurant.

  “Okay everyone, here’s the deal. We were followed but not inside. We can talk freely. This night out was mostly for fun but we do have a little business to discuss.”

  John wanted to hear all about Alan’s Restoration so they all told him about the experience. John shared how he and Amanda had concocted the made up argument over her wanting to redecorate every room in his house and throw all of his cool man stuff out to the curb. He told them how she had run off to her Mom’s house in rural Tennessee to hide out. They all agreed that it was better than her being a target.

  Near the end of the meal, Dodge gave John the parts he scavenged from the lab and he told the story of how he had to shove the board down his pants, everyone laughed when he got up and lifted the back of his shirt to reveal the scratches on his back where it dug into him as he walked. They had finished their meal but decided to order some desert and coffee because they still had some business to discuss.

  “I discovered this morning that we now have a new addition in our home,” said Dodge.

  “They have added a bug in the light over the kitchen table.”

  “I’ve been working on a plan in my mind to get rid of it and I’ve come up with one, but I would like you guys to weigh in on it. We could have some of the Black Ops guys watch the house. The next time the tail enters the house thinking he has circumvented the security system the team will trip it manually. The intruder will assume that he made a mistake by setting it off somehow. The system will call the police and when they show up we’ll make a big deal about the break in. We’ll ask John to hire the absolute best consultants to make the security system so good that nobody can get past it. The new security consultants will find the bugs during the system upgrade and get rid of them. That gives us our privacy back and the hackers will blame it all on their stooge that got sloppy and set off the alarm. We can do the dead battery trick on the bug in the kitchen instead of the ones up in the bedroom. It will be easier to get to and we won’t have the guy creeping around in our bedroom anymore.” Everyone agreed that this was a solid plan, and that they should go ahead with it in as soon as possible.

  John informed everyone that the farm was functional, the geneticist was now on site preparing clone growing chambers and there were now two Black Ops team members there to help Jason. Their main objective was security but during daylight hours there was no threat, anyone approaching could literally be seen coming a mile away. They took turns as lookout while the other assisted Jason with any heavy lifting or assembly work that he might need done in the lab to get it all set up. He also let everyone know that they still had to repair the upload console with the parts Dodge had gotten and that their DNA had to be obtained. He pulled several skin tag kits from his pocket and passed them around the table as they were having desert.

  They continued to have conversation as each of them gathered a skin sample from the back of their hand with the tiny scraper in the kit. John gave Linsey two extra kits to take home for Sarah and Bobby.

  “I’d just do it while they’re sleeping,” he said. “No need to have them asking lots of questions. Of course that’s your call.” She agreed to take care of it and put the kits in her purse for later.

  They discussed how they would manually set off the alarm system next time the tail entered the house. They agreed that it wouldn’t look suspicious at all to the watchers because it was quite certain that the hackers knew of Dodge’s new found wealth. It would be perfectly natural to upgrade your security system to the latest after a break in and when the cost is of no concern.

  Everyone passed the DNA kits back to John and he carefully checked them to make sure the name tags were in place and put them in his pocket. It was one more step in their efforts to insure their own immortality. Once this DNA was grown into their clones, the hackers would have a tough time of killing them off.

  It wouldn’t be so easy for them like it was with Ron Simpson and the others, this time the little people were fighting back. Just before they all said their good nights John sent a text message to the Black Ops team Captain and asked for an update, he came back with a message.

  “2X assets in place, facility attended until mission complete,” John translated for everyone. “There are two Ops team members watching your house around the clock. They have instructions to manually trip the alarm if the hackers break in again.”

  John told everyone that Black Ops team members had already successfully identified several watchers, listeners, and tails. They even knew some of their full names, backgrounds, and their home addresses. That was all they had so far but they were working continuously to put more of the puzzle together.

  “Don’t worry we’re making quick progress and you’re in less danger with each passing day.” Alan Kerrington made a fist with his right hand and pounded it into his left.

  “Let me at’em boys,” he said. Everyone knew exactly what he was thinking, because they wanted it too.

  “Yes Dad, but with brains not brawn,” okay?” Alan smiled.

  “It starts with brains but it always ends with brawn. Mark my words, before this is over with, there will be blood on our hands. In war it’s inevitable, and this is war, make no mistake about it.” Dodge hoped his Father was wrong, but feared that he was right.

  They all felt the same way but there were still too many unknowns. It was hard telling whether or not there was any dirty government agents involved. They were likely very intelligent, well funded, and well armed both with weapons and technology.

  They had to handle this like a game of chess, not an all out war. They had to infiltrate slowly and get to the main man, the king, the one person that it couldn’t survive without. Take him out and the whole thing should come tumbling down and all mysteries would be revealed in the end.

  They would only resort to violence in the end if they ha
d no other way. It was getting late and everyone was full and tired. They had managed to have a very productive meeting in a noisy environment where not even the people at the next table could have ease dropped even if they wanted to.

  They had full knowledge that the hackers were outside keeping tabs on them but they didn’t come in. It was futile to attempt audio surveillance in such a noisy place. They all said goodnight and went their separate ways without even looking around for the watchers. They knew the Ops team had their backs.

  John went home and prepared the DNA kits for shipping via his secret helper at the bank, an associate that he paid handsomely for a simple delivery service, no questions asked. The procedure was simple, he would go into the bank with a deposit pouch and make a “so called” deposit by giving the teller a bag with the contents and some cash for payment.

  The teller already knew where to take it per their standing agreement. The guy hadn’t let him down in more than ten years, and why would he? It was easy money!

  After Alan left Red Lobster, he went home and smoked a cigar. It was one of the Cubans that John smuggled in through his man at the bank. Dodge palmed it to him on his way out of the restaurant.

  “Don’t get caught, and for god sakes, don’t inhale it!” He whispered.

  Alan had no intentions of inhaling it. He wanted to keep his new body healthy. Besides, it was a cigar, not a cigarette. He stayed up late out on the porch until each of his neighbors turned off their lights and no one was about. He sat there and slowly smoked the outstandingly smooth and aromatic cigar. Just him and the crickets, and a frog or two. It seemed like the best one he’d ever had. Maybe it was just because it had been over twenty years since his last one, or maybe it was really that good. After all it was a Cuban.

  The next morning John went to the bank to make his deposit. One of the clever things about this system he had with his bank pal was that the contents of the bag were always in a little metal box. John had these tough little boxes made that could only be opened with magnets placed in just the right spots and with great accuracy.