A metallic head with large blue-lit eyes unexpectedly peered out and blinked once. Brant felt a surprised breath rush out of him. A forgotten companionship crept back from distant memory. “Three-of-Ten,” he muttered fondly. “You old metal-man.”
The robotic humanoid made a soft chirp and expanded its magnificent form in the doorway. The alloy figure turned this way and that, allowing a full canvass of its surroundings. It swept its view across the darkened area, then stopped suddenly, locking its vibrant eyes on Brant. At this, it suddenly lifted both arms in a wanting embrace and mounted the steps in a rushed descent. But before the android made the sandy ground, it was stopped by Jacob’s suppressing hand.
“No, Three-of-Ten,” the boy ordered, sadly. “It is not safe. You must return inside.”
The figure withered in a fashion so humanlike, it hurt Brant to witness it. The android turned and stepped solemnly back up the grade.
Jacob whirled and waved. “By the way,” he called out. “Your transport will start now. Sorry. I could not have you leaving before we could talk.” Then he chuckled, as if to himself, and hurried to join his metal companion. The two disappeared behind the swish of a sealed doorway. The Sandray slipped back into stealth and vanished from sight.
A sudden burst of hot air blew outward in large swirls of dancing sand, and Brant knew that he was once again, alone. For a long while he just stood motionless, staring down at the faded journal. He shook his head in quiet reflection. It was still quite dark and he considered just heading for home right there and then. But as Jacob’s words returned to him in a resounding prod to both conscience and soul, he felt his courage bubble up. In the next seconds Brant had grabbed out his flashlight and laid it across the seat. The bright beam fell upon the journal’s cover, its gold leaf lettering shimmered like amber diamonds in starlight. Brant’s hands caressed the cover until, finding the edge, he had gently opened the book. The pleasant smell of age, ink and parchment wafted up from the delicate pages. Gracie’s words were the first he saw, and Brant swallowed down a painful lump. His hand moved, unconsciously, to a thick gold chain dangling around his neck. The metal strand had become as much a part of him now as an arm, a leg, a hand—had he ever taken it off? At the base of the chain, his fingers soon caressed an ornately-cast key. Brant grinned wide, and his heart yearned. Had it been so long? It was all of Gracie he had left.
Brant took in one last breath of courage and opened the manuscript to page 522. His own page! Like a distant dream, he saw his words, his very own entry! And even in the stinging cold, he warmed.
There in that still spot below a vast sparkling dome, Brant Stephens began to read again of a great and fantastic epoch . . . and there he sat until the first rays of dawn fell upon his face.
Chapter 2:
In was the dead of winter in the warring year of 1941 when the small farming town of Essenitch first noticed something rising on the horizon from within a distant field—far from Berlin and the metropolis of probing eyes. The incongruent structure began as a thistle in the wheat-field, furtive and unnoticed. Then seemingly overnight, it awoke and towered from its secluded corner at the end of a long, winding road.
Upon completion, a painted sign at the end of the lane simply read: The German Genetic Research Clinic (GGRC). But it was not a clinic. Perhaps a more elegant description would involve words such as prison, torture-chamber or tomb. In truth, the building was a biological testing facility camouflaged as a genetic research clinic: an unthinkable Nazi conception, and a last attempt for Hitler to grow his genetically perfected.
Fifty Jewish children became the first patients imprisoned at the GGRC. In stealth of night, the ill-fated youths were brought in from local concentration camps—there were many to choose from. Treated as stock, they were trucked in, unloaded and locked away without any knowledge of what lay ahead. They were to be the expendable; a much needed catalyst for testing, observation and research. Theirs would be an unimaginable vicariate: laboratory rats.
History would record a pitiful attempt at a justification for the fated youths, a statement of tolerance by Nazi loyalists: at least they will be spared the depravity of the camps. But when fire is set to kindle, whether by the strike of a match or the flash of the torch, it bursts into flames and is consumed with equal voracity.
Hitler’s marriage of evil and political power engendered the Nazi regime, and Germany fell hypnotically into his grasp. His idealism was an insatiable thirst for global dominion; a future world for his elected people to thrive and proliferate—there would be no room for others. To achieve his sadistic paradigm of future conquerors, there would be a need for a cleansing, a breeding out of impure genetic characteristics. The price for this mad ideology, the culling of human souls, was the wasting of innocent children.
From Germany’s most genius, Hitler hand-picked those who would serve him in his tasks: genetic engineers, bio-technicians, medical PhD’s and scientists. Some were conscripted; others felt chosen; all were cursed . . . cursed to a dark legacy beyond human deeds.
For a time, the GGCR kept to itself with seemingly little activity. But when a healthy deployment of soldiers took up residence within an attached wing on the north side, the clinic could no longer keep her obscure cloak. The administrators soon realized that there would need to be a smokescreen—a disguise to explain away the Nazi SS presence—the locals would certainly question a garrison of such rank, especially stationed at a remote research facility. These curious eyes, after all, were salt-of-the-earth German patriots; the hardworking farm-folk who made up the very heart of the Fatherland. Theirs were the rustic homes festooned in Nazi flags, and whose sons were fighting, and dying, for their country.
Yes, Essenitch was a town rooted in patriotism, a town strong and ever loyal. Yet the Nazis feared what the truth might unleash. For even these, the hardened stalwarts, would never condone the real atrocities taking place behind those looming GGRC walls.
The Nazi SS exposure was handled, then, in a quick and effective manner.
It was a simple ruse, intentionally leaked to the town’s local paper by the SS and whispered about to those with reputations for rambling mouths. Soon the circulation of deceit had echoed in every home, shop and pub in the Essenitch community. The article had been deliberately published next to a section of paper where all eyes would be certain to view it: the Fallen Soldiers List. The glaring title read: Soldiers to Safeguard Essenitch from GGRC’s Deadly Germ-Warfare Infections.
In just one paragraph, the Nazis successfully conveyed their deception. The article explained that ‘. . . behind the clinic’s walls were infected soldiers, casualties of a ruthless and unorthodox germ-warfare attack by the enemy’. And that the garrison had been assigned to the clinic as a ‘precautionary move to safeguard the good folk of Essenitch in the event of a possible virus outbreak’.
The plan worked perfectly. The clinic, and her Nazi SS, were accepted without question.
For a time, all seemed well in Essenitch’s quiet corner. But this was not to last. Soon, the clinic’s exterior took on an ever-more sinister appearance, as twists of ominous wire mess—spiked and razor sharp—topped the thick-whitewashed concrete walls; and guards with leashed attack-dogs began to pace the yard day and night like mechanical robots. Something had changed within the concrete block, and again the townsfolk peered with cynical eyes and walked cautiously past the field at night, where loomed the lighted gates in the distance. And for two long years they walked.
--
There were seven . . . just seven adolescents left of the fifty original captives who had entered the GGRC, and these were rarely seen. Even those Nazis once tasked with guarding the elusive youths were eventually reassigned, without explanation, from the lower cells where the youths were kept to exterior areas, outside the clinic. Soon, only a handful of the clinic’s administrative mercenaries were allowed to interact with the remaining Jewish captives; and these—nearly all sanctioned Nazi officers—were the worst kind of humans.
To all else, the youths did not exist.
On rare occasions, the children could be viewed . . . glimpses of them anyway. Usually during an area relocation, when like contraband they were marched from one block to another.
They were each blindfolded. They didn’t need their eyesight. The barrel of a gun directed them down a dimly lit corridor. Eventually, the emaciated figures would find themselves in front of a cell as dark, rancid and austere as the former had been. Then, with a last kick that catapulted them headlong into their tank, as the Nazis called them, the terrifying ordeal would end. But it would be a short repose for their bruised and beaten bodies. As the clang of metal-on-metal echoed their absolute confinement, the psychological harrowing of their minds would begin—answers unknown. Did the new block mean different equipment, experiments, and processes? Would their bodies survive the onslaught of the next regimen of experiments?
Such questions should never come to the minds of children. Children whose inevitable end was death . . . death which cleaved to them like a reviled companion.
--
It was a strange phenomenon which first drew the children’s attention. It had a word: disorder. Something never seen before within the GGRC. A nemesis which happened in one day, wafting from the unknown and hovering elusively in the shadowy hallways and darkened corners of the clinic compound. Like an assaulting mist, the captive youths breathed it, tasted it and very nearly drowned in it as it plagued the Nazi schedules . . . whatever it was. Hints of something foreign and terrifying were revealed by muffled whispers and trembling cigarettes tucked between the tight lips of guards and administrators, and there were other oddities as well. Nazis were creatures of habit, like worker-bees in a hive, they never varied from their routines, never. Yet disorder had not only reared its ugly face, but exposed itself in full form, and it was time to find out why; time to find out what had infiltrated the GGRC’s thick walls and so terrified its hated Nazi occupants.
--
Zen blinked and pulled his head back from the bullet-hole in the door, just enough to allow a visual rescan of the narrow corridor. He opened his right eye wide and squinted hard. The gouge was a rusty, cancerous feed around a splayed circular tear with teeth-like fragments, a harsh reminder to keep his eye at a safe distance from the surface.
The teen drilled keenly through the opening with an alert, deep-set, amber eye. The gloomy, concrete passageway loomed off into the distance before narrowing into an intersection equally dark and forbidding. The walls could have been a cave had it not been for their square shape, smooth surface and burnt-gray color. There were no hangings, no windows, no paint or patterns, nothing adorned those thick, morbid barriers. They reeked of seclusion, and echoed the sound of hopelessness.
“Zenny. What do you see?” Ruthanne’s voice came as a mousy whisper. She approached as a skittish creature, frightened and cautious. She rested a small hand gently on her brother’s shoulder. “Is he coming yet? Can you see him down the corridor?”
“Yes,” Zen whispered back, his eyes turning tenderly to his sister. “He is nearly in range. I can give you his exact location. Just give me a few seconds more.”
“That is all I need, Zenny. Just his location. Tell me when you have it. And remember, brother: mitigate and modulate.”
Zen blew at the tuft of thick, black hair jetting over his eyes, and repositioned himself at the opening. As dark as the hallway was, there was just enough light for him to begin his calculations. He inhaled a long last breath of courage, then wrenched down in a jaw-locking vise. Immediately, the dimensions of the corridor began to pour into his head. Easy, easy, he told himself. Mitigate and modulate! He swallowed, blinked, then cautiously eased back on his mental barrier. Now, as his view swept across and down the passageway, the data began to flow: the height, width and length of each surface; the reflection of the light and the corresponding obtuse and acute angles; the nuances and discrepancies in the flooring and ceiling; the angles of the shadows and their geometric values, shapes and distances, even the slight drop of the wall on the right side due to settlement (it was off by .05 percent).
Zen suddenly jerked and made a strange sound deep in his throat.
Now at full force, the data let loose. It consumed his rudimentary impulse activity. He saw all solutions, all probabilities, and all scenarios coming at him at once. He grasped for order but found none. Mitigate and modulate! he reproached his self-conscience. In another fleeting second, he saw with perfect comprehension, every flaw in the architecture and design of the passageways; every incongruity, no matter how small or insignificant: each came glaringly at him like a sliver under his skin, the obviousness of it driving him to near madness! Surfaces uneven, intersections not perpendicular, angles not unified, pressure points stressed. “How could they have been so incompetent! So careless!” he shouted out the question, surprised by the anger in his voice.
“Get control, Zenny! Mitigate and modulate!” Ruthanne’s tone shook him, and he refocused.
Yes . . . mitigate . . . modulate. Slow it down . . . slow it down.
“Just his location. That is all I need,” she whispered at him. “You can do it!”
From down the shadowy corridor came the distant echo of approaching boots.
“Hurry Zenny!”
Am I in control? Yes, I am! Then take the data and finish! Zen let out a slow, haggard breath. “Got him, Ruthy! Now it’s a walk in the park.” The kid’s forehead dripped in perspiration and his muscles quivered, but he had the data he needed. The speed of sound through air, compensating for the humidity, temperature and atmospheric pressure. The guard’s stride, calculated from determining time between clicks of the boot, gave a velocity accurate to two decimal places, and voila! The rest was simple arithmetic: velocity multiplied by time equals distance! “Ruthy. He is standing exactly—”
But then something unexpected happened. The guard dropped something heavy. His rifle? Helmet? A pack of some kind? Whatever it was, the object hit the ground with a loud bang, then continued to bounce across the floor in a pounding scrape. The empty corridor amplified the noise tenfold as its echo raced down the adjoining passageways.
Zen was not prepared for the additional variables which now slammed into his head like a data-tsunami. As the pulse engulfed him, he lost all control. Now there would be no stopping the onslaught; no means of filtering out the order from the disorder. The critical point of quantification, and his ability to differentiate what was needed and what was not, had just collapsed. Stop the input! he shouted a conceptual command. Stop! Stop! Stop! But the deluge kept coming, overwhelming and drowning him.
Very soon now, critical impulses between his brain and muscle functions would be lost in the flood. And if that happened, Zen could seizure . . . he could die! Words! his mind wreathed, his conscience groaned! Get control! Pull back! Zen winced abruptly and his eyes rolled back in an unnatural motion. “Get control!” he slurred through clenched teeth.
Ruthanne jumped into action. She reached and grasped his arm. It was time to intervene! She knew too well what was beginning to boil inside her brother’s subconscious. She had seen it before; this haunting déjà vu. She would have to act quickly.
“Listen to me!” she cried, her lips pushed to her brother’s ear. “Find the music, Zenny. Try Mozart’s Requiem.” She gently rubbed his arm and started to hum the tune softy. “Let it in. It is so lovely. Can you hear the music?” She began a slow sway, back and forth as if being cradled by an unseen force. Her tiny figure floated to the mellifluent rise and fall of pitch and tone. Soon, as though a conceptual link existed between sister and brother, Zen began a near hypnotic match to the girl’s motion . . . back and forth . . . back and forth. His expression of anguish began to abate, and his breathing steadied. Ruthanne felt her own tension ease as Zen’s heart-rate normalized and his tremors ceased.
She had done it. She had brought him back from the brink. But in so doing, she had been frightfully weakened. The emotional cost to her gaunt frame
was extreme. She would need time to rest and revitalize, and so would her brother. She leaned up against the wall and closed her eyes. She hated playing this game of roulette with these strange, unwanted abilities.
Zen had convinced her he was good to go. But obviously, he was not. And although her brother had made incredible progress, this little mishap was proof that there was still much work to be done. Complicacy, after all, always carries a consequence, and Zen had felt it. His previous drills would have to be modified, and more dutiful.
It wasn’t for lack of practice, make no mistake. Zen had been unyielding in his attempted mastery. He had even been able to mitigate and control the flood of data . . . to a degree. And with each meditation session, he had come closer to reaching his control factor. At least that’s what he called it. In quiet hours when the Nazi patrol was minimal, Zen had sat in a meditative-squat, eyes drilled ahead in a motionless, hypnotic stance as he worked to condition and train his mind.
At first, the peculiar exercises had frightened Ruthanne. More than once, her keen sense of hearing had lost the sound of her brother breathing. Panicked, she had hurried to his side and rested a forefinger under his nose. Only when the pressure of the warm moist air brushed across her finger did she sit back and exhale a long sigh of relief.
Then she would wait. In an exhausting sense of uncertainty, and with a silent prayer on her lips, Ruthanne would wait for her brother to return from his near zombie state. And luckily, he always had. Well . . . almost always. There was a time when Zen very nearly did not return. Even recalling the ugly memory made her sick at her stomach.
It had been nearly a month ago. A group of guards—Waffen-SS—had gathered near the entrance of their block; a rare opportunity, as they usually only patrolled the lower corridors in pairs. It had simply been too tempting for Zen. There was much to learn from the idle chitchat of such well-connected foes. But Zen had just completed a regimen of experimental injections. The toxic cocktail had left the boy weak. Ruthanne had been reluctant to attempt a session, seeing her brother’s degraded state. But he had so been insistent. I’m good to go, Ruthy, he had said. And so they had proceeded.
Of Salt and Sand Page 3