Stones (Data)

by Jacob Whaler

  For tonight’s latest weird news, we turn to Japan where security video cameras caught an incident in a small town on the northern island of Hokkaido that has the experts scratching their heads.

  The man shakes his head back and forth, and then lets out a long sigh. “You should try to be a little more discreet. Drawing attention from the authorities isn’t the best idea for someone living off-grid. Wouldn’t you agree, Matt?”

  At the sound of his name, he leans forward in his chair, feeling his fingers curl into fists. “How do you know my name? Who are you? What do you want?”

  The man lights a cigarette with a match and leans back into the chair. “As for your name.” He chuckles and shakes his head. “It’s all over the stream of unencrypted video and text you constantly send to Jessica.” He put his lips to the cigarette, inhales deeply and sends a stream of blue smoke up to the ceiling. “As for my name, it’s Mikal Ryzaard. Dr. Mikal Ryzaard.”

  “Ryzaard,” Matt says. “Rhymes with lizard.”

  Ryzaard’s eyes narrow. “I prefer wizard.” The cigarette comes back to his lips. “As for what I want, that’s a very deep philosophical question which would take hours to cover.” The end of the cigarette glows red as he breathes in. “What I want most right now is for you to listen carefully. I can assure you it’s a matter of life and death. Yours.”

  Keep him talking.

  Matt relaxes his hands and leans back into the chair. “I’m listening.” He still holds the image of his mother in his mind and can hear the sound of the ocean.

  “Good. Very good.” Ryzaard blows another stream of blue smoke to the ceiling. “You are a smart young man. And extremely lucky. Do you have any idea what you have found?” Ryzaard motions with his eyes toward the two Stones on the table behind him.

  “A rock.”

  “Yes, but not just any rock.”

  “Tell me about it.” Matt curls and uncurls his fingers, trying to make sense of Ryzaard’s gentle demeanor and the power he holds over all of them.

  As Ryzaard squints his eyes, deep lines burst out from their corners. “Curious, aren’t you? I was too.” He takes another deep drag on the cigarette, turning his head to the side and expelling the smoke. “Let’s start with what you already know.”

  Matt holds his breath, afraid to breathe, suppressing the urge to cough. He has seen people smoking in old movies, but never up close in real life.

  Ryzaard looks at Matt, and then at the black cigarette. “My apologies. It truly is a filthy habit, but one I relish. Picked it up as a young man after the war and never stopped. These little instruments of pleasure are hard to find nowadays. But I assure you, it’s very relaxing. Conducive to deep thought and reflection.” The cigarette slips from his fingers to the floor where he tamps it out with the sole of his shoe.

  “I prefer to do my thinking without a crutch.”

  “I like that. An independent spirit. But let us speak of the Stones.” Ryzaard clears his throat, leans back and crosses his legs. “By now you understand that the Stone has bonded to you. You cannot lose it. It cannot be taken from you. As long as your heart continues to beat, it is part of you.”

  Matt can’t keep his dad’s voice out of his mind.

  In a dangerous situation, study your opponent.

  He starts with Ryzaard’s hands. Long fingers. Nails trimmed to perfection. Slightly weathered appearance. Veins clearly visible on the back. The hands of a mature man of experience, used to getting what he wants.

  Matt’s eyes drift up. “If my Stone is all you want, and if you can only take it by killing me, then the solution is obvious.”

  Ryzaard’s fingers wander over to the table and pick a black game piece off the board. “I will be honest, my young friend. That was my original intent. Kill you and take the Stone. It would be easy. But now that I have seen you, I have had a change of heart.” Ryzaard tosses the game piece into a garbage basket in the far corner. Then he stands on his feet and scoops up the two Stones in one hand. “I think we can work together.”

  “Work together?” Matt says. “What do you mean?”

  “I know you have questions. Let’s talk about your dreams.” Ryzaard begins to pace across the room, hands behind his back. “They’ve already begun, haven’t they?”

  “I’ve always had vivid dreams, ever since I was a kid.” Matt moves his gaze up Ryzaard’s arm past the shoulder and the bow tie, settling on the neck, too thickly muscled for an old man. “Nothing special about that.”

  “But be honest. Your dreams since finding the Stone are different.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve had them. They feel more real. You never forget them. And you feel an urge to write them down, to record them.”

  Matt says nothing, but he knows the silence tells Ryzaard everything he wants to know.

  Stay calm. He wants to talk. Keep it going.

  It should not be too hard. Ryzaard looks like the sort of man that enjoys hearing the sound of his own voice. It’s a trait of men that are used to giving orders and being obeyed.

  Ryzaard slips a jax out from his pocket. “But these are more than just dreams. You’ve had visions. There’s really no other word for it. Glimpses of other worlds, other beings, other realities. It is how all the major religions got started. Men and women with Stones, just like you.” He brushes the side of the jax with an index finger, turning the volume up loud enough for Matt to hear the voice.

  “Burning. Burning. Please, stop the burning.”

  Ryzaard turns his face to Matt. “That’s Yoshi, if I’m not mistaken. He followed you to the mountain. You saw them, didn’t you?”

  “Them?”

  “The Allehonen.” Ryzaard grimaces, as if the word has brought a bad taste to his mouth.

  Matt studies a bulging vein in Ryzaard neck. “I still don’t know what I saw.”

  Ryzaard sits down again in the chair across from Matt and speaks in a low voice. “No need to hide it from me. I have seen them myself. I have talked to them, listened to their words. They always come to a new Stone Holder. Beautiful, aren’t they?” He gazes for a moment at a bird hanging motionlessly in mid-air just outside the window, its wings spread out so that each individual feather is clearly visible. “But you need to know the truth. They are very seductive. What they offer is a lie. Do not be deceived.” Then he looks back at Matt. “There is much more I want to share with you. Things that only you, a Holder of a Stone, would understand. That’s why I’ve come.” He reaches a hand out and places it on Matt’s knee. “I need you to trust me.”

  When the right moment arrives, act without hesitation.

  Matt wiggles his fingers and toes. They feel mostly normal. Now is the chance he’s been waiting for. He reaches down into the reservoir of rage inside his chest and opens the floodgates. In less than a microsecond, it explodes like a match touched to a pile of gunpowder.

  “Trust you?” His hands come up and curl into fists. He lunges at Ryzaard.

  But Ryzaard simply moves out of the chair to the side, as if he were expecting the outburst.

  Matt passes by him, crashes into the empty chair and tumbles to the floor on his side with his own chair still lashed to his back and ankles. “How can I trust you? Look what you’ve done to them!” Matt stares up from the floor at Jessica and Yamamoto.

  For a moment, the sound of birds and cicadas comes back into his ears. He closes his eyes and frantically searches for the familiar image of his mother. With effort, he finds it, holds it, and brings it back. All goes silent again except for the far off surf.

  Ryzaard reaches down and grabs Matt’s shoulders. In one smooth motion, he pulls him upright in the chair. “As for your friends, I already told you they have not been harmed, and they will not be harmed as long as you hear me out. After that, what happens will be up to you.”

  “All right,” Matt says. “I’m all ears.”

  Wait for another opening.

  “Good.” Ryzaard hands him the Stone, sti
ll golden yellow. He sits down and leans back. “Where to start? There’s so much to tell you.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Alexa hears the pinging and looks for her jax. With one sweep of her arm, she knocks all the wine bottles off the table. As they crash to the floor and shatter, she finds the jax and scoops it up in her fingers.

  An unusually long message from Ryzaard scrolls on the holo screen in front of her eyes.

  The boy is lying on the floor unconscious for the moment. It should have been easy to overpower a novice like him, but it took intense exertion to counteract his natural defenses. Incredibly strong, he is completely oblivious to his strength. He is already channeling the Stone’s higher functions though he scarcely comprehends it. Utterly astonishing. In all my years of working with a Stone, I have never seen anything like it. Exhilarating and frightening.

  Killing him would be a colossal waste. Much better to persuade him to join me and take his power under my control. Voluntarily, if possible. By force, if necessary. Luckily, we brought the girl along in case he needs persuading.

  It is a shame we did not take him before his first contact with the Allehonen. Who could have predicted his progress would be so rapid?

  Through a haze of wine, Alexa reads and rereads the message, getting a sense of Ryzaard’s euphoria. At some point, the jax goes out of focus and she feels it slip through her fingers and clatter to the hardwood floors of her personal suite on the MX Global air transport.

  One thing is clear.

  Ryzaard is changing the plan.

  She stares out the window at a perfectly framed picture of green and blue. The lush mountains of Sapporo reach up to a turquoise sky. The view should be peaceful and serene, but her teeth are clenched tightly together beneath her lips. It takes effort and concentration to relax her jaw.

  When she has composed herself, she reaches down to the floor, picks up the jax, and looks out the window again as she takes in a deep breath, holds it and exhales. With trembling fingers, she plays a message back to Ryzaard.

  All the more reason to eliminate the boy and take the Stone now while we can, before he gets too strong.

  The very thing Alexa fears is about to happen.

  Ryzaard had insisted that they hire the girl with an offer to work in New York City for the summer. That was the first hint that he might change the plan. He knew she would be only too eager to go. Alexa tried to talk him out of it and still remembered his words.

  We need a weapon that will work against the boy, and she is the most powerful one we have.

  Then he insisted that they bring the girl with them to Japan.

  The final hint came when Ryzaard asked Alexa to stay aboard the transport while he went to find the boy with the Stone. He took the girl with him and left her behind.

  It’s all becoming very clear.

  Ryzaard intends to keep the boy alive and use the girl as leverage to force him to do as Ryzaard says. As long as the boy lives, the Stone will remain bonded to him.

  And Alexa will never get it.

  Ryzaard’s words play in her mind.

  When we find the first Holder, I will kill him at my first opportunity. Alexa, how would you like to be the first to take his Stone into your hands, the first to bond with it? I’ll teach you how to use it. We’ll work together. Be invincible.

  How easily Ryzaard made promises and then forgot them.

  Her jax gently vibrates in her fingers. Another message from Ryzaard.

  If he can be controlled, he is worth much more to us alive than dead. I am going to take him on a little trip to convince him of the power of the Stones. Unless he is a phenomenal idiot, it should work.

  She views the reply from Ryzaard and knows no one can change his mind.

  Now is not the time to resist him. Ryzaard has an uncanny sense about people. It may be the Stone that gives him insight into the thoughts and feelings of others, but whatever it is, he can tell when they are lying, when they are trying to hide information from him. If she isn’t careful, he will begin to sense her feelings of resentment and stop trusting her. And then it will all end. He has no toleration for anything other than strict, unquestioning loyalty.

  She remembers what happened to the others that came before her. All of them are dead now, victims of Ryzaard’s wrath, punished for questioning his genius.

  Reaching for another wine bottle, she tries to clear her mind.

  He’s a good man. He knows what he’s doing. He has a plan. A glorious plan for a new world, to end the suffering of all humanity. I trust him without question.

  She repeats it over and over as the warm liquid burns her throat.

  CHAPTER 57

  There is burning in his eyes, and Kent bolts upright. The morning sun stretches along the floor from the window to his bed. As usual, he did not set his jax alarm and slept longer than planned. And as usual, he reminds himself that it is worth the price of being late to face the day with a well-rested mind and body.

  He’s out the door in exercise pants and drops down fifty floors to pay a visit to a hot yoga studio he saw the previous night. Two hours later, he is back in the rented space with a light sweat on his brow and some groceries.

  He sits down for a quick bowl of fruit.

  Now that he’s taken care of his body and mind, the next priority is to secure his office from outside electromagnetic snooping, especially the routine robotic sweeps conducted by law enforcement that move through all buildings in Manhattan. He is a lawyer, not an anti-intel expert, but he has picked up a few tricks during the last twelve years. All he needs is an absorption field to soak up incoming signals, coupled with a ghost generator to spit out fake data. Any attempt to pierce the electronic perimeter will be repelled, and the snooper will get readings for a generic business office.

  The message will be simple, but effective.

  Nothing interesting here, move on.

  Kent pulls out the Chinese Long Dun units, twelve slender tubes of white plastic, from one of the packing crates on the floor. With the latest downloads, they should be impregnable, at least for local law enforcement. He spends the rest of the morning and the early afternoon calibrating and placing them in a precise geometric pattern around the floor, walls and ceiling of his office. To anyone on the outside looking in, he’s a simple one-man law firm with a specialty in overdue account collections. Just another blood-sucking lawyer in a town full of them.

  That is the easy part.

  The hard part is dealing with MX Global. Like all large corporations, it has a complex of defenses to protect its own data and communications. How can one man penetrate those defenses for data harvesting? The answer is technology. Find a robust tech-solution only available to the government or the military. Get the most recent upgrades. Learn to use it. Improve it. Repeat.

  But the problem is obvious. Kent’s target is in the tech warfare business already. If he’s right, it has hundreds, maybe thousands, of employees dedicated to spying on other corporations and governments. It has ample access to the latest anti-snoopware, some of it developed in-house and unknown on the outside. As one of the most profitable multinational corporations, it has a lot to protect and the will and means to protect it.

  It would be difficult or impossible to win a war of technology versus technology against such an adversary.

  The solution? Asymmetrical technology, something so far off the beaten path that it will be completely unexpected. A way into the core that will go undetected.

  At mid-afternoon, he finds himself standing at the window and looking across a void 750 meters high and 60 meters wide separating him from the skyscraper that is the home of MX Global world headquarters. He admires its surface, a single unbroken pane of opaque glass that moves through the full-color spectrum every twenty-four hours. All his information tells him that MX SciFin has its offices on the 175th floor. To spy on it, he needs a good idea of the layout of the entire floor, but the outside skin of the building betrays no hints. A thorough search of the Mesh
reveals no internal plans.

  His only choice is to penetrate the building’s outer skin and construct his own interior map.

  It takes the rest of the afternoon to fine-tune the thermal-imaging apparatus, a decades-old technology that few people care about anymore. He picked most of it up in Mexico from an old drug lord turned vigilante who spied on the cops who were spying on him. There are three deep-field scanners, each calibrated to read a different heat spectrum, each with upgraded stereo lenses. They sit near the window on tripods six feet apart and slowly sweep back and forth across the 175th floor of the MX Global building, providing a constant data feed to a single Turing Box processing unit. The hi-res scans will take forty-eight hours and should yield a detailed view of the interior.

  It is time to work on the delivery device.

  CHAPTER 58

  Ryzaard leans back in his chair. “So, you see, the Stones play a key role in moving history along. That seems to be their purpose, to be a catalyst. Providing a crucial advantage here and there to a lucky few, resulting in the rise and fall of empires and dynasties. Preventing stagnation.”

  Keep him talking, Matt thinks. Wait for another opportunity.

  “And causing an incredible amount of human misery and death along the way.” Matt toys with the Stone in his hand, holding it up to the light, peering into its translucent interior.

  “Yes,” Ryzaard says. “But you get the idea. A handful of Stones are scattered through a world. Centers of power rise here and there, endure for a time, and then fall. History progresses to the next level. Or not. Two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes three steps back. A rather messy business.”

  “But isn’t that exactly what you’re doing? Gathering power. Building an empire.” He looks down at the floor and lets his voice drop to a whisper. “More misery and death.”