Following a gravity-assisted descent on her target from a flying leap, she pounded on him, beating him to a pulp. He opted to give no defense, hoping instead that someone would yank this mad woman off him. A circle was forming around them. Everyone was staring. Security officers pulled out their guns. So far, his strategy was proving better than she had first imagined. She was more accustomed to the stereotype of New Yorkers not getting involved. Finally, when he seemed not just unwilling, but unable to respond, she made a play for the briefcase.
She lunged at one of the guards aiming his gun at her, grabbed his arm, fired the gun in his hand at the lock on the suitcase. Then she yanked him to the floor so he was kneeling beside her. Using the guard’s body as a shield between herself and the two still standing with the guns, she waved the pistol at them absently, as she perused the suitcase.
Seeing enough to satisfy her, she grabbed the papers and stuffed them in the small of her back underneath her belt, and said, “This is a matter of national security. Stay out of it.” She held out her badge to them. She tagged the target with a tracking device while pretending to check through his pockets. Better than dragging him downtown and interrogating him. This guy was too much of a pro. Besides, this wasn’t exactly her jurisdiction. “European Underground Leader” wasn’t a heading that came with any cachet here in America, where she was supposed to be vacationing to get away from it all.
***
As Alexandra slinked out a window, and down the fire escape, she thought about what she had in the small of her back.
It was a design for a miniature rocket with an alternative propulsion unit that only made sense for outer space. An antimatter unit that size wouldn’t do much inside Earth’s gravity well, but out in space, could provide plenty of push. Someone sending out scouts to see what regions beyond the moon and Mars were ripe for mining? Or just a means for spying on the competition? Or of sabotaging them, perhaps? It wouldn’t take much of a payload to decommission a space vehicle, one capable of being fit on a miniature rocket, certainly.
She was still trying to get her head around the fact there was a covert space program underway, beyond the headlines being made by space hotels and space tourism, and limpid talks of possibly going to Mars thirty years out. Smokescreen to give the powers that be chance to get a foothold away from public scrutiny and the competition knowing what they were up to. Still, the number of alliances that would have to be in place at a very high level, at all levels, gave new meaning to “the black economy.” Apparently, it was no longer something just for the little guy, bootleg traffickers, and mafia types.
Crazier still was the notion there were multiple space programs, all working without any knowledge of one another. The “lifeboat” people just wanted a way off this world for the rich and famous in case the planet couldn’t duck the next careening asteroid. The space miners were profiteers of a different kind. And now this? Which faction did these miniature rocket designers belong to? Were they crusaders who believed in a savior out there, and with establishing contact with the alien race at all costs? There might be factions like the ones who set the Tesla device to split the planet in two, taking their world-ending psychology out to the stars in hopes of triggering some black hole possibly that would gobble up the entire solar system. Their strategy being: easier to get away with murder from afar, away from cameras, prying eyes, and the Big Brother net cast far and wide on this world.
Soon, robots and AI would catch the space race fever all on their own, perhaps taking the long view, setting their sights on the farthest reaches of spacetime which their minds alone could fathom, their synthetic neurons alone could reach, considering their life expectancy might be measured in millions of years, if they weren’t actually immortal with their self-mending, and self-replicating.
Alexandra was even beginning to question Robin Wakefield’s methods. Why go into a trance, why shift mindsets and neural nets from paranoid to schizophrenic to what-have-you just to get to the hidden truth of things, when brainstorming, simple free association and wild extrapolation beyond all reason, would suffice? She had no doubt she’d get back to the office to find her wildest suspicions were already being carried out by any number of groups who had colonized this mind space before her, each one latching on to the one idea like a true zealot.
Say one thing for zealots, they were, like her, people of action; they didn’t sit around waiting for someone else to pick up the torch. People like Robin Wakefield never got anything done because they could never get out of philosophy mode, of preferring deliberating the countless alternatives to taking any concrete action on any one of them, thus limiting themselves. Even her forays into aberrant psychologies were just more labyrinths of mind to get lost down, like turning her head into a Rubik’s Cube she could keep twisting into different configurations. The Robin Wakefields of the world lived to see the future remained open by blocking all paths to it, to keep it forever a potentiality rather than an actuality. To keep it pregnant and rich with possibilities, forestalling childbirth itself when they’d have to settle for one baby and its limited genetics over all the others that were part of the “ideal.”
It was doubtful Robin had even explored her own hidden motivations for chasing down these Renaissance types; it wasn’t to empower some and thwart others; it was to make sure no one did anything that compromised a future where all possible futures coexisted amicably, and no one took their ideas to the point where everyone else had to share their vision. The analogy would be a future where Microsoft Windows wasn’t on every laptop, but innumerable computing platforms remained available to all to choose from as suited them best.
It was up to Alexandra to chase after the bad guys, and the many co-existing views of reality they were erecting simultaneously, turning life into a kaleidoscopic rendition of itself.
One thing she and Robin Wakefield did agree on: a cure-all approach to the future. A technique, that once mastered, would gain her access not just to this universe, but the multiverse, freedom to roam over the largest possible canvas, and to actively change history in all timelines. Why put on blinders with any one limited approach to life, one limited viewpoint, one limited ideology or philosophy, one set of rose-tinted glasses? If the world was becoming kaleidoscopic, she needed access to all the panels, not just one glass in the viewfinder. Let Robin play seer, the one who could glimpse life As-It-Is, as Zen masters would say, unfiltered by limited human agendas, by minds too small to take it all in without short circuiting. Let her be content to see it all, and do nothing about it. Save perhaps protect us from others like herself, big picture people, people with nearly as much farsightedness as she possessed, only not quite so much, and so, threatened to collapse reality into a more limited version of itself by acting prematurely.
Alexandra was rapidly formulating her own go-anywhere mind using the same brainstorming approach that had already opened her eyes to so much. She would clone herself so she could be a woman of action in as many parallel realities as she could wheedle her way into in her kaleidoscopic über-reality. Fending off world-killers wherever they popped up. She would use her team to extend her reach still further into cyberspace, send digital versions of herself, after killers stalking prey in cyberspace. She’d download this cyber-version of herself into robo-bodies as they became available, or as procured by her own people, in order to remain actionable in venues where even the upgraded human versions of herself were no longer enough.
While the others living in this new Renaissance age, born of the Dark Ages of a collapsed economy, were busy getting their acts together, milking all the opportunities amidst the crisis, she will have used the Renaissance to its fullest value: as a springboard to the multiverse; hatching herself ahead of the rest. Let the fools be enchanted by the glittering lights in an anything-goes era, party and fête with one another, celebrate how wonderful they were and how wonderful life could be. There had been other Renaissance ages in history. Why should she settle for one of them when she could have acces
s to all of them? Use them like black holes outside of space and time both, scattered across the multiverse, like doorways to any and all universes.
She remained conscious of the dangers inherent in her approach. She could be spreading her small-mindedness throughout the heavens, taking on antagonists that were only villains from the limited perspective in which she operated, from the vantage point of her outdated morality, her principles which belonged to another era. On the other hand, why shouldn’t she be all she could be, and let God, the master architect, offset her influences with all the others like her, form a complete rainbow from the one hue of color she contributed to the mix?
In a self-organizing universe, such as Brandon was forever going on about, they all had their place and, in fact, the multiverse could only self-organize, could only come into focus by this rabid insistence on her personal fulfillment, by following a sense of destiny and purpose with courage and conviction, and by surfing the passionate, turbulent sea of change by following her own heart. Anything else was a lie—was disempowerment, not empowerment—which left her to be acted upon by the powers that be that had no trouble getting in touch with their inner God, their activating principle, who could work the magic of the universe. They could tap the power of the Godhead itself by better understanding how to marry themselves to it, how to assume the covenant that God insisted needed to be taken up to make heaven on earth, to make people like her fully actionable in order to make the transition to a better world happen.
So let the critics be damned. She was not the eternal deliberator Robin Wakefield was, by her own admission. She was action figure Alexandra—only in ways her doll-likeness couldn’t possibly dream of.
What would be her niche, exactly? Going places even the men in black were afraid to go? Or just not savvy enough to go? Maybe.
She couldn’t wait to get back to headquarters to explain the team’s new mission to them. Speaking of empowering herself. She had chosen just the right people to open those portals to the netherworlds to which she needed access. And they loved sending her on missions, preferring their sterile worlds of understanding to taking actions themselves. Merely scaled down versions of the Robin Wakefield type, working on a much smaller, narrower scale. Lucky for her, not everyone thought big. Because she was only as good as the people surrounding her, and they were pretty damned good. It was their aptitudes, and knowing what she could count on them to do, that had allowed her to extrapolate so colorfully into the world of clones, robots, and self-evolving algorithms.
My, what a difference taking some time out to clear her head made. She should go for jogs more often.
TWENTY-TWO
Let Alexandra vacation with her runs through Central Park in New York; cities weren’t his thing. As to vacationing in Europe, some place a little more accessible to their base in England, Brandon had nixed the idea from the start. Way too crowded. He needed wilds extending for as far as the eye could see—and as few people in them as possible. He needed the Rocky Mountains, with their defiant peaks which treated mankind like insects, like quiet irrelevancies, with a boldness and conviction and vision of themselves that extended into eternity and could indefinitely stand up to all the clamoring to the contrary. He needed to have faith his au naturel lifestyle was going to win out. In the Pacific Northwest, he could bloody well believe that. Not only was his type common out here, but communing with nature just made sense. Nature didn’t get any bolder or more dramatic or upstaging than this. The Swiss Alps, maybe, but too civilized, too tamed, not wild enough for him.
Brandon gazed through the sliding glass doors at the wooden deck outside, the backyard, and the wild overgrown garden. He let his attention drift up to Mt. Shasta in the distance, decompressing slowly before the big open spaces that were quite the stark contrast to headquarters. There, he was forever buried underground like a mole, living under artificial lights and proximate to posters of mountain peaks just like the one he was staring at now to relieve the claustrophobia. His big size-sixteen feet were meant to feel the earth beneath him like few other soles could. This was where he was most alive.
He put his face up to the terrarium, looking for Mia, his two-headed iguana. She stuck both her heads out to greet him. “There she is. There’s my girl.”
Despite the nice lady next door who came over to feed the animals in his absence, and the comfortable predictability of the two other neighbors he had imposed upon before her, Mia never seemed to cozy to anyone else. She remained hidden until he stuck his face up to the glass. The other one was bolder. The clone.
He’d decided to clone Mia the instant he stumbled onto her in the wild. He decided then and there he was never going to live without a two-headed iguana. He was a freak himself, with those huge feet, and his eerily high IQ. So he’d specialize in freaks of nature, maybe breed them into an entirely viable line capable of outcompeting “the normals.” He thought of it as X-Men for lesser animals.
But Mia Two was curiously distinct from Mia herself, already anticipating the branching-tree personalities of the other clones to follow in Mia Two’s wake.
Mia Two pushed off the mesh lid and jumped out of the aquarium to crawl up his arm and perch herself on his shoulder. This behavior alone, even in the absence of Mia, would have been deemed most irregular by fellow scientists. Usually, the most you could hope for from a lizard was casual indifference, not warmth. Mia Two enjoyed standing guard, able, with her two heads, to see in front and in back of him at the same time.
He stroked Mia under her chin, then picked her up and draped her over his opposite shoulder. Even with his broad swimmer’s shoulders, they interlaced their tails to steady themselves.
Brandon collected up some specimen jars in hopes of finding another lifeform as spectacular as Mia, dropped them hurriedly into his daypack along with some energy bars and energy drinks, a bag full of dried granola. He didn’t know how long he’d be out; sometimes it was for days at a time. He wrapped his tent and sleeping bag, strung end to end around his waist. They were compacted, only slightly cumbersome. They inflated themselves into shape just by throwing them on the ground.
Brandon gingerly peeled off the iguanas, strapped on the backpack, then hoisted them back on his shoulders. They could crawl inside the backpack if they got tired hanging out on his shoulders, where they could also snack on the dried fruit and berries of his granola mix, and the flowers and leaves he’d load up on en route.
He hit the trail leading out of his backyard clear to the top of Mt. Shasta.
***
Brandon hadn’t hiked far before he stumbled across a Clark's nutcracker, several blue grouse, a raven and varied thrush. He could hear the songbirds' mating calls, along with a chorus of frogs and other animals. But they didn’t move him.
He kept his eyes roving from the canopy above to the forest floor below, along the various tiers of shrubbery and tree-climbing vines in between.
Brandon paused just as he was about to squish some creature below his feet. It skittered back and forth in front of him as if it couldn’t make up its mind which way to move to escape.
He stooped to get a closer look and realized he was gazing at a two-headed salamander, with the second head where its tail should be. It ran first one direction, then another. Brandon scooped it up, taking advantage of its indecision, and added it to his specimen jar.
A find worth the whole rest of the walk.
Although it raised a damning question: What the hell was going on with the mutation rate in this specific area?
***
Brandon had hiked on for another hour or so before he stopped dead in his tracks.
Against the tree was an Attacus Atlas moth with a wingspan of over twenty-five centimeters. He coaxed it into his hand, and admired its sheer girth.
It was close to dead.
The females of the species were usually heavier and bigger than the males. In Hong Kong, this gigantic moth was also known as “snake’s head moth” because of its upper wing which had an ext
ension shaped as a snake’s head.
This amazing insect only survived for one to two weeks due to the fact that it didn’t have a fully developed mouth to enable it to feed itself, hence, it used up all of the fat accumulated as a larvae, and then died of starvation. Luckily, in the short time that the biggest moth in the world lived, it managed to mate, lay eggs, and assure the survival of its species.
It had no right being here.
Borne by some strange wind, perhaps, the way water spouts formed over oceans or tropical forests sometimes sent frogs and fish raining down from above in a part of the world they didn’t belong.
This species of moth got its name from Greek mythology: Atlas the Titan. There was no question as to why.
In India, Atlas moths were grown for the silk their larvae produced. As opposed to the silk produced by the related Silkworm moth (Bombyx mori), Atlas moth silk was a brown, wool-like silk, secreted as broken strands, not full linear silk.
Brandon supposed that might be one more explanation for it being perched on a tree along his path. Another butterfly and moth lover might be trying to introduce them to the area as part of an underground economy. Or it had simply escaped from a collector’s private live collection. Indoors, its precise habitat could be more readily duplicated.
Of even greater interest to Brandon was the fact that this creature too had two heads. This meant he could start up his own deviant strain, with some luck.
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 140