The Unraveling

by James R. Clifford

  Before the agents turned the hall corner the elevator door binged then opened. He jumped in and pressed the button for the 6th floor. The deal was up. They knew something was going on, and the bomb better go off fast because he was certain the director was being ushered out of the room by now. The elevator stopped on the 6th floor and just as he stepped out an enormous explosion rocked the building. He lost his balance slightly as the entire building swayed.

  Sirens and bells started ringing everywhere. Sprays of water shot down from the fire sprinklers in the ceiling. People ran out of their offices in panic. West fought his way through the crowd down toward the office where Sam had told him to go. He found the office and barreled through the door.

  It was empty and West spotted the private elevator in the corner. He ran over and inserted the key Sam had given him into the security lock. He turned the lock and a light came on above the elevator. The door opened and West hit the basement button. The elevator headed down to the basement and West prayed it didn’t get stuck or stop. The door opened and West hurried through the parking garage.

  Sirens were blaring from every direction. He walked up the exit ramp into the street and mass chaos. Debris from the explosion filled the street and blood was splattered everywhere from the dead and injured who had been struck from falling glass and steel.

  He put his head down and walked down the street. People were running everywhere. He had to go six blocks to the rendezvous spot Sam had set up. The plan was she was going to leave him instructions in a PO Box and he would go from there. He couldn’t believe he was still alive but for how long? The clock was running with the poison inside of him.

  West hurried into the building, found the PO Box and opened it. Inside was a manila envelope. He pulled it out and looked around.

  He pulled out the note instead and started reading.

  Dear West,

  I’m sorry. I can’t change what I am. What’s happening is bigger than either you or me. There was never a plan to leave the country. I had to make you believe that so you would go ahead and plant the bomb.

  The plan was for you not to make it out alive but for reasons I can’t figure out, I couldn’t do that to you. The pill in the bottle I left will neutralize the neurotoxin. They think you’re dead anyway because that was the plan. I was never supposed to help you.

  I know you won’t understand and I don’t know if you will ever discover the truth but you have to try and leave the country if you can. When the dust settles DC and the LT’s will know you made it out alive and they’ll both be after you.

  Take Care,

  Sam

  West took the pill out of the bottle and quickly swallowed it. He walked outside and looked around. He was a dead man. He crumbled the letter from Sam and threw it on the ground. He started walking with no plan, oblivious to the world around him.

  “Then the shit hit the fan.”

  – John Gailbraith

  Chapter 28

  West spent the night curled up next to a dumpster in an alley with a bottle of vodka. The next day was spent walking the streets of New York in a quasi-drunken blur. The only thing he knew for certain was the antidote must have worked because he was still alive. But he knew DC had already determined he was responsible for the bombing and the LT’s and Tank probably knew he had survived. He had a price on his head from all sides but despite that he didn’t even think about running. There was nowhere to go, there was nowhere to hide. Anyway, he deserved whatever he got.

  Figuring his situation was so hopeless he used his DigiDollar card to buy drinks, food and to pay for a nasty hotel room where he slept for a few hours. When he awoke he was surprised his room had not been raided by DC agents or that he hadn’t been killed by one of Tank’s assassins.

  Since he was still alive and had nothing better to do he got up and left the hotel. It was late afternoon and the sun had fallen behind the buildings surrounding Times Square. The air had a smell that signaled fall was on the way and for perhaps the first time in his life he studied the people on the streets. Everything on the surface appeared to be normal but beneath that illusion West detected an underlying madness. It was like everyone knew the situation was hopeless and everyone was waiting for the shit to hit the fan.

  He walked down to Times Square and was swallowed by a sea of people and chaos. In his lifetime he had seen Times Square go from a rundown shithole with men in trench coats buying drugs and visiting sex shops to a tourist-filled Las Vegas spectacle to what it was now, a mini city filled with people who had no future and who gathered to drink, gamble and pass the time.

  A commotion stopped West and he watched as an inordinate amount of people began to gather underneath dozens of giant television screens lining the square.

  West walked across the street into the square. where he watched a reporter who was stationed underneath a giant radio telescope interviewing a SETI scientist.

  West watched as the reporter asked, “Has this signal been confirmed?”

  The scientist responded by saying, “Yes, we have received independent confirmation from agencies across the globe that the signal is not man-made and it is not a random occurrence of some natural event. This is the same WOW SIGNAL that was recorded at the precise moment 50 years ago.”

  “So what does this mean?” the reporter asked breathlessly.“It means there is intelligent life originating somewhere in the constellation of Sagittarius trying to communicate with us,” the scientist answered. “There can be no other explanation. This is the greatest discovery in the history of mankind. We finally know we are not alone in this universe.”

  The screen blinked and a new broadcast was picked up. A reporter was standing on the front lawn of the White House talking into a microphone, “… the LT’s had demanded the President and Homeland Security halt their micro-chip program and they have given the government 48 hours to accept their demands or they are threatening to detonate an atomic bomb above America resulting in an EMP pulse that would potentially destroy the electrical grid. The result would be catastrophic. Some government officials have claimed that tens of millions of Americans could perish in the first year.”

  The Dracun and the LT’s had pushed the envelope as far as it would go and it looked like things were ready to blow.

  The television screen then switched to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and West was able to hear the reporter screaming over the chaos, “We have breaking news. A perfect storm has hit the United States. After the nuclear threat issued by LT’s, the China-Russian Federacy and the United Countries of Europe have announced all debts, obligations, trade agreements and currency swaps with the United States have been cancelled null and void. Additionally, all United States assets held overseas have been frozen and the China-Russia Federation further announced that at midnight tonight they will cease to recognize the United States DigiDollar.”

  The broadcast switched to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange where sheer pandemonium had broken out. Another reporter shouted, “All commodities priced in DigiDollars from oil, corn, sugar, livestock, and wheat are locked limit to the upside. There is no telling when or at what price they will open back up at. In fact, I talked to one long-term trader who told me he doesn’t believe these essential commodities will ever open back up again in terms of U.S DigiDollars.”

  The reporter looked back over his shoulder at a bank of numbers and continued, “The trader went on to tell me the DigiDollar has almost ceased to trade on any exchange at any value and he believes the financial system of the United States as we know it has collapsed.”

  The screen went fuzzy, thendead black.

  Pandemonium broke out and West crossed back over the street and ducked into the corner of a building’s edifice. The scene in Times Square went from surreal to ballistic in a matter of minutes.

  The match that was going to blow the tinderbox sky high had finally been struck. All the television monitors suddenly went black and West tried to stay out of the way, watching the growing
mayhem.

  After a few minutes the screens came back on with an official-looking woman standing behind a lectern in a government facility. She announced that after the assassination of Homeland Security Director Napolitano a new acting Director of Homeland Security had been appointed by the President and he would be making a statement.

  West watched in disbelief as Larson Graham walked up to the podium.

  Graham stared into the camera and addressed the country, “Citizens, Patriots of the United States, war has been declared on this great nation by foreign enemies and traitors inside our own country. For your safety I am declaring a state of Martial Law and ordering all citizens to confine themselves to their homes for the next three days. Further instructions will be given via SmartLink and anyone in violation of the Homeland directive will be shot on sight.”

  West wasn’t sure what Graham thought would happen but the martial law declaration had an immediate impact. It sent the crowd into a rampage. Decades of pent up fury suddenly exploded.

  The policemen, Homeland agents and military personal patrolling the area seemed to be taken by surprise at either the announcement or the public’s reaction because the crowd turned their confusion, fear and anger toward them, and it was evident they were not prepared for it. Violence filled the streets. West watched in revulsion as a Homeland agent was cornered by a gang who proceeded to rip the poor bastard limb from limb.

  West cowered back against the building trying to make himself invisible as he watched the beginning of the second American Civil War.

  “My God-it’s full of stars.”

  – David Bowman, 2001

  Chapter 29

  West’s skin prickled as an electric charge filled the air around him. Had the government unleashed some type of crowd control weapon? West half expected to see people exploding when the air in front of him began to ripple.

  “What the hell is going on?” West mumbled forgetting the anarchy surrounding him.

  Byron materialized out of the disturbance. “Hello, West,” he said, motioning to a green door behind him. “Why don’t you join me? We’ll be able to talk more freely in there.”

  West turned and looked into the streets. It looked like a scene out of some apocalyptic zombie movie. Flames were shooting out of buildings, cars were overturned, and people were on a rampage looting stores, attacking Homeland agents and killing each other.

  “Are you responsible for this?” West asked.

  The green door cracked open and blackness spilled out. “We can talk in there.”

  Byron walked through the doorway and disappeared. Despite an overwhelming sense he was walking into some type of a trap, West stepped forward. He had absolutely nothing to lose by remaining in the chaos surrounding him.

  West approached the doorway, hesitated then walked through, letting the darkness consume him. He emerged from the black vacuum and found himself in an empty cafe. He had never been to Paris but the café was exactly how he envisioned Paris back in its glory days.

  Byron was seated at a table, drinking a glass of red wine. “Please have a seat,” he replied.

  West looked around the bar. The tables, the walls, the long oak bar, the bottles on the liquor shelf all appeared real but he had a strange feeling everything was just a little too perfect.

  There were no scratches or markings on the wall, no water marks on the bar or scrapes on the floor. Every liquor and wine bottle on the shelves had perfect labels and were unopened. Everything about the place was flawless and pristine, as if he had entered into an illusion.

  “Would you care for anything to drink?” Byron asked.

  “I’m fine,” West answered, looking back toward Byron. “I may see you and I may be talking with you but I think the more likely scenario is that I’ve completely lost my mind, or maybe I was killed out there. I don’t think this could be hell, so am I in heaven?”

  Byron smiled. “Heaven is an individual concept so I’ll pass on answering that one but you have not lost your mind and you have not been killed.”

  West stared at Byron. “Every time we talked in public. The waitress in the diner, Simon at the noodle bar, the cab driver, they never saw you, did they?”

  “No they didn’t, but I suspect you always knew that?”

  West thought for a second but even he didn’t know the answer to Byron’s statement. “So are you finally going to tell me who you are and what this is all about?”

  Bryon set his wine glass down. “I am the Keeper of the Records.”

  “And what is the Keeper of the Records?”

  “I guess the best way to think of it is that the Hall of Records is this universe’s library and I am its librarian.”

  “And what is in this library or Hall of Records?”

  “It contains all experiences, knowledge and consciousness of every being that has ever existed in your universe. It collects all that has ever happened, all that is currently happening and all that shall ever happen in space and time in the quantum field. All historical information about the past, all current information about the present, all future possibilities or probabilities that could exist are stored in the Hall.”

  “Okay and where is this so-called library?”

  Byron looked around and gestured with his arms. “It is everywhere in space and time in the Akashic Field. It is the missing dark matter and energy your leading scientists have been trying to find for decades. The Hall of Records is the missing mass that binds the universe together. It is the missing piece that completes the puzzle of the grand unified theory of everything.”

  What Byron said made something click in West’s memory. “You wrote me that letter just after Sloan died, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know this is hard for me to comprehend. Let’s say I accept your explanation for the moment. Where are you from and why did you come here?”

  “I guess the easiest thing to do is to think of your universe as a single soap bubble in an endless bathtub filled with infinite bubbles. Sometimes a single bubble can escape down the drain, similar to information falling into a black hole. And that bubble may fall into a whole new bathtub also full of an infinite amount of bubbles. This analogy represents the multiverse we inhabit. We can slip down the drain to newly-created universes to act as Liberians and to search.”

  “What are you searching for?”

  “The Creator. The Source of all.”

  “You mean God?”

  “If you like that term.”

  “Why do you look like us?” West asked.

  “Actually it is the other way around.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You look like us. How I appear before you is how our essence appears. But I am an energy being and do not possess a physical body as you do.”

  “Hold on, are you saying you created human beings?”

  “Yes and no. We are creators of life but we are more like your parents, not your God.”

  “But you still created us.”

  “The One who created us–and ultimately you-is unknown. You are entangled with us and we are entangled with The One. What we provided to you was our light. Light is made up of energy and information and we gave you a spark of our existence and from that light your consciousness was born. The body that holds your consciousness is just a function of the laws of biology, chemistry and physics in your universe.”

  West’s mind was racing and he knew he was just throwing out random and unrelated questions but he couldn’t help himself. “But then why is the universe so devoid of life? Why haven’t you created life everywhere?”

  “You are wrong about the universe being devoid of life. Your universe has certain physical laws that are constant and cannot be altered and for that reason interaction among conscious life forms is limited because of the great vastness of the system you inhabit. But I assure you even in your infinite universe, life is abundant even if interaction amongst those life forms is not.”

  “Okay, but if you c
reated us then fundamentally we are the same?”

  “If you mean essence then yes, fundamentally we are the same but structurally we are not. We are pure energy beings compared to your carbon based bodies. We do not succumb to the elements of this universe that would destroy you. We do not need oxygen, food, water. Nor would things like radiation, extreme heat, or cold harm us. Your bodies are fragile with very short physical life spans, as all carbon based species are. But I am only referring to your physical body because your light, which is nothing more than energy and information, lives on even when your body dies.”

  “You mean our soul?” West asked.

  “You could say that, yes.”

  “But what is the purpose of creating us?”

  “Why do you have children?” Byron answered. “One of the greatest gifts of any conscious being anywhere in the multiverse is to create, especially to create new life.”

  West thought for a couple of moments. “Obviously, you must know how hard this is for me to grasp. And I know this is going to be a dumb question but in light of everything you just told me don’t you have more exciting planets, universes or dimensions to go to? Surely being on this wretched planet for so long must not only be boring but pretty depressing by now. I mean to use your analogy of ‘parents’, you have to be damn disappointed in your offspring.”

  “I have never looked at it that way,” Byron answered.

  “So how do you look at it then? Are we like zoo animals to you? Some sort of a pet or entertainment or an experiment? I mean, if you haven’t noticed life pretty much sucks around here.”

  “That is your reality. I have intervened in a limited fashion to protect your species from destroying themselves but that dilemma is no different than most entities in this particular universe once a certain technology threshold is achieved.”