The Betrayal of Ka (The Transprophetics Book 1)

by Shea Oliver

  Inside the box were six small packages that could be peeled open to reveal a rectangular adhesive strip with a large bump in the middle. Kadamba had heard of these—project Rs, the rummbie dummbies, sweetum’s ride, and a host of other street names. It was rath, a relative newcomer to the underworld drug market. Stujorkian City, like everyplace else, had a thriving illegal drug scene. It was the same everywhere on Koranth: Some drugs were illegal, and some were legal and regulated.

  The box and its contents were a gift from Fuentes to Kadamba. He could simply enjoy them alone or with his friends. He could even sell them if he liked. There were no strings attached. They were just a gift. If he wanted more, he would have to buy them. Before he left, Fuentes told Kadamba where he could be found next week if he wanted more, but he would need to bring money. Each ride with sweetum would cost twelve Konnary.

  Kadamba began meeting regularly with Fuentes, always someplace different, but always in some out-of-the-way, very sketchy place in the sub-city.

  Almost like a bolt of lightning, Kadamba had gone from being just another face in the crowd at his school, to being a popular kid. He even made some new friends at other schools. He loved the popularity and relished the attention that those little adhesive strips were showering upon him.

  Only a week before, Fuentes instructed Kadamba to meet him in a very different location. The smell of seafood outside of the packaging plant was almost overwhelming, and that was before Fuentes had opened the nondescript, metal door. Struggling not to gag on the pungent odor in the air, Kadamba had followed Fuentes through a huge room, passing by long tables piled high with fish and other creatures that Kadamba couldn’t identify. The workers, dressed in blood-spattered white smocks, barely even seemed to notice the pair as they passed by, on their way to the offices, situated in the middle of the building.

  As they left the packaging plant and began to breathe the more palatable air, Fuentes praised Kadamba for how well he had handled this meeting. Although Kadamba didn’t completely understand, the man that they had just meet with, Vratar, saw potential in the young teen and set up this meeting with a man named Doctor Z.

  Kadamba cleared his throat. “Business is good, sir. It’s really good.”

  The smile on Doctor Z’s face spread even wider. He loved hearing that from any of the many teenagers that this branch of his organization had recruited. These kids were so easy to manipulate and use.

  “I need twenty more,” Kadamba declared, pulling a stack of Konnary from his backpack.

  “My dear young friend!” exclaimed Doctor Z. “You must be one very intelligent, smart, resourceful businessman. I am impressed.”

  “Thanks.”

  Doctor Z, having taken the stack of bills from Ka, thumbed through them quickly. When he was done, he smiled and held the bills up. One of the brutes from the back of the room came forward, took the stack, and returned to the back of the room. He waved his hand across the wall, and an opening appeared in it, revealing what looked like a bookshelf covered in large stacks of Konnary. He placed Kadamba’s payment on a stack, waved his hand, and the opening disappeared.

  “Yes, yes, my young friend. Business is good.” Doctor Z stared at Kadamba for a few moments and began rubbing his chin. A faint smile started and then spread across his face, as if he suddenly had a wonderfully insightful idea. “I see so much see potential in you and in our new relationship, Ka.”

  “Thank you, sir. I hope we can both keep making good money,” Kadamba answered, not knowing exactly what to say.

  “Oh, I know we will.” Doctor Z gestured again, and one of the other men in the back of the room walked forward with a box. He placed the box in Kadamba’s hands with a smile.

  “Thank you,” Kadamba told him, “I’ll let Fuentes know when I need more.”

  “Please. You need to open the box before you leave,” instructed Doctor Z. “You and I are at the beginning of new partnership.”

  Kadamba, looking at the box in his hands, sat back down. Opening the box, he looked inside. It was filled with rath, but it was obvious that it was more than twenty packets.

  “You’re looking at two hundred packages of rath,” explained the Doctor, smiling.

  “I only gave you one hundred and forty Konnary. I can’t buy this much.”

  “It’s alright, Ka. I’m extending a line of credit to you.”

  Kadamba was stunned. He’d never seen this many rath in one place, and it was in his hands. Doctor Z smiled and continued, “You need to be back here in two weeks. Your line of credit is due then, Ka, and we’ll see where we are on continuing to expand our relationship.”

  Kadamba placed the box in his backpack and walked towards the wall with the mountain lake. The wall began to shimmer, turned semi-translucent, and the opening reappeared. Kadamba stepped through, and it reformed into a wall behind him. Once again, he was standing at the table with the two menacing-looking brutes. Kadamba, looking down at them, realized they both were grinning.

  “Seems the Doc likes you, boy. He’s a nice guy. Wouldn’t you say so?” asked one of the thugs.

  “Yes. He sure is,” replied Kadamba. He could feel his heart beginning to beat faster.

  “You understand the Doctor is almost always nice to everyone,” said the thug who continued to wear the dark glasses. Kadamba realized the brute was looking across the table at his grimacing partner. Then Kadamba realized why the two were so smug. The man without the glasses had drawn his laser gun, which was mostly hidden under the table, but Kadamba could see that it was pointed directly at him.

  The man began to remove his glasses once again. “See. Here’s how it works. In case you don’t quite get it. Doc gets to be nice, and if things don’t go his way, we make them go his way. Doctor Z always gets his. Do you get it now?”

  Kadamba nodded his head affirmatively, walking around the table quickly, trying as hard as he could not trip and end up sprawled out on the floor. He was trembling on the inside but didn’t dare show it. He simply walked out of Warwon’s Deli, more than eager to get out of the sub-city. He quickly made his way to ground level and took a shuttle train to the stop for the gigantic building known as Schmarlo Tower.

  The lobby of the building was enormous, stretching from the eighteenth to the twenty-fourth floor. Kadamba made his way to the bank of lifts and entered a large, crowded lift that zoomed directly to Schmarlo’s Landing.

  All the lift’s four walls and its door were transparent. “Oh my, oh my” exclaimed the woman next to Kadamba, as the lift reached its destination, emerging in the middle of Schmarlo’s Landing. They were surrounded by a grassy park, with children playing and people adorning the various benches in the park. The Landing covered half the surface area of the building, had three parks, a huge playground, and on both ends were numerous food vendors, along with a huge scattering of tables and chairs. The entire landing was contained by a nearly invisible force-field cover that protected visitors from the elements. The other half of the building continued to rise another fifty-eight stories into the wispy clouds that had formed on what was otherwise a beautiful day.

  “Hey, Ka, my man!” a nearby voice called.

  “What’s up on this fine day, my man Stelky?” Kadamba replied, still trying to shake off the fear of being entangled with Doctor Z and his brutes.

  “I got someone that wants to meet you. You know, a new potential friend.”

  “Stelky, my man, let us meet this person.”

  A serious look swept across Stelky’s face. “Ka, listen, I’m just making the introduction. Dude wouldn’t leave me alone until I brought him to you.”

  “Alright, we’ll just see how this goes down,” Kadamba assured him.

  Kadamba had only met Stelky a few weeks before. He went to another school, but “business” had made them “friends.” Stelky might not have been real smart, but he knew lots of people, and most kids knew Stelky could be trusted to be discrete. He wasn’t interested in handling any of the rath himself. He just wanted a li
ttle finder’s fee for each transaction that Kadamba made with his introductions.

  A young boy, about 10 years old, walked up to the two of them, obviously trying to act older than he really was. “Little dude! What the hell? Get back to the playground and ride the slide or something!” barked Kadamba when he saw the boy.

  “My money is as good as anyone’s,” the boy asserted.

  “It ain’t about money, kid. You’re just too damn young to be messing around with rath,” Kadamba explained firmly.

  “Am not! You want my money or not?”

  For a few moments, Kadamba thought about the “credit” that Doctor Z had just extended. He had never had so much rath, and he HAD to sell it. But this kid was just way too young to be messing with the stuff. Wasn’t he? Rath was pretty tame compared to many of the drugs out there, or at least Ka thought so. It just mellowed you out, made you happy, and made lots of things seem really funny.

  “No way, dude. It ain’t happening,” proclaimed Kadamba.

  “I’ll pay thirty Konnary each for three of them,” stated the boy defiantly.

  “Ain’t no way you’re walking around with almost a hundred in your little pockets.”

  The boy looked around. No one was nearby. He reached his hand into his pocket and pulled out a stack of bills. Kadamba looked at the bills, obviously struggling with what to do. He usually sold each packet for twenty, maybe even eighteen, to consistent customers.

  Kadamba took a deep breath. “Alright, you win, but, little dude, you gotta be careful.”

  Chapter 2

  A Hidden Transprophetic

  Fifty-eight stories above Schmarlo’s Landing, Tomar Donovackia kicked his feet onto his desk. No one would question anything he did. In any event, he was alone in his palatial office. He’d sent one of his assistants down to the Landing to get him a Greolsch pastry. He liked those meat-filled, sweet pastries but had little use for mingling with the people on the Landing. He had servants and assistants to meet his needs. After all, he was the Chairman of the newly renamed Donovackia Corporation. He’d led the shareholder revolt, ousted the previous Chairman, and now had begun a campaign of becoming the biggest Corporation on the twin planets of Koranth and Zoranth.

  The two planets were in perfectly synchronized orbits, on absolutely opposite sides of their shared sun. In many respects, Koranth and Zoranth were very similar. Both had over a hundred separate countries, with a multitude of governments, and each had three dominate super-power countries that balanced each other and kept the entire planets from sinking into regional or global conflict. Despite all the differences in languages and skin colors and belief systems and so on, they were all pretty much the same. They were all human. In Tomar’s mind, there were simply billions and billions of customers waiting.

  He looked at the glass on his desk and began to stare intently at it. His focus became more and more concentrated. The glass began to vibrate, just barely perceptible. Tomar raised his hand, and the glass began to move upward. It hovered a few inches above the desk and then began to move across the room. Tomar focused, pushed his hand away from his body and then lowered it, gently setting the glass on the table across the room, using nothing but his mind. A smile spread across his face. He’d never let anyone see that he was a Transprophetic and doubted he ever would. In his mind, only charlatans and religious nut jobs ever revealed such a thing. It was nothing but a parlor trick, but it validated for him that he was more evolved and intelligent than those around him.

  Ironically, it was one of his ancestors that had validated the existence of what had been previously believed to be impossible. Over a thousand years ago, Koranth thought itself alone in the universe. The appearance of a young girl, unlike any other, changed everything. Tomar’s ancestor was a brilliant medical doctor with a passion for physics. The girl was brought to him for examination. She could move objects with nothing but the power of her will. The doctor validated that she truly could do this, but how? The next fifty years of Koranth’s development were beyond radical. Nearly every notion, theory, and “accepted fact” in physics, physiology, psychology, chemistry, and every other scientific discipline was upended.

  What had been discovered in this girl was not some superpower or god-like blessing; rather, it was a step in the evolution of the human species. For a very, very few, their minds could grasp concepts and gain experience from the world around them like no others. They simply learned to use the molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, and even sound and light waves around them. It appeared like magic but was no more than the mind and body doing things previously thought to be impossible.

  Within a few years of the discovery of that little girl, a second evolutionary capability of the human mind was discovered, when a mastermind of a thief was shot while he was stealing a priceless piece of art in a national museum. The security was beyond impenetrable, but he managed to get in somehow. As he was dying, he told a story few would believe. He could move from one place to another in the blink of an eye, including through the smallest of holes, such as a keyhole.

  Within a decade, another person was found to have the same capabilities. Much like flexing a muscle, she had learned to flex her molecular structure. It was like turning herself into a gaseous state and directing herself to another location to reappear.

  Within a hundred years, a handful of corporations had arisen based on the new technologies that had been discovered. The two most significant inventions that came out of the advances and new scientific understandings were space travel and the portals. A twin planet on the exact opposite side of the sun was discovered, and, like separated human twins, Zoranth was experiencing the same changes as Koranth.

  A pop-psychology historian had coined the phrase “trans-prophetics,” and the name stuck. On both Koranth and Zoranth, the scientific validation of a next, even if rare, level of human evolution ushered in a new wave of human technology.

  A knock on the office door shook Tomar from his thoughts, and he placed his feet back on the floor, sitting up straight at his desk.

  “Mr. Donovackia, the board meeting will commence shortly,” disclosed the short, stout man wearing business attire. By the look and the nod that Tomar gave the man, it was apparent that he was simply one of Tomar’s small army of underlings.

  “Make sure all the board members are comfortably seated in the boardroom, and tell them I will be there shortly,” instructed Tomar.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Wait, tell them I have been detained by the Chief Executive Minster for Interplanetary Corporate Relations. Have them wait in the boardroom, and have lunch served.”

  Tomar smiled as the man nodded his head affirmatively and closed the door. “Let them sweat a little bit waiting for me,” thought Tomar. After all, he had just upended the previous board of directors, renamed the company, and personally held the controlling interest in the organization. He was now firmly in charge of the third largest corporation on Koranth and intended to make it the largest, regardless of who stood in his way.

  Chapter 3

  A Life Goes Dark

  Kadamba pocketed the cash from the little boy, looking around to make sure no one had seen the transaction. Stelky looked at Kadamba for a few moments. Kadamba reached into his pocket and counted out Stelky’s cut.

  “Here’s yours, man. But seriously, I can’t do that again. That kid was way too young,” Kadamba muttered.

  “I hear you, Ka. I figured you’d send him off with empty hands. But it’s all cool,” replied Stelky.

  “Stelky, I gotta move more product than before. Find me some more customers, but, dude, stay out of the daycare centers! They gotta be a lot older than that.”

  The two of them started walking towards one of the corners of the Landing. Unofficially, it was where the older teenagers hung out. It was one area of Schmarlo’s Landing that had the worst view, if such a thing could be said about a building on the edge of the central city, with stunning views of the suburbs, farmlands, and mountains, far
off in the distance. Of course, Kadamba wasn’t 118 stories up to look at the landscape.

  She was sitting on the edge of a table, chatting full speed with a few of her friends when Kadamba walked up. She looked at him, and there was a little giggle from the other girls around the table.

  “Jundana, girl, we’ll be seeing you later!” one of the girl announced in a sassy tone. “Hope you got a good story to tell us tonight!”

  Kadamba smiled, as his eyes met hers. “You wanna grab a pastry or drink or something?”

  “Sure,” Jundana replied softly.

  The two of them headed further into the tangle of teenagers that were milling about, meandering to a vendor selling sweet frozen concoctions called Freezies. The line was long, but neither Kadamba nor Jundana cared. They were just enjoying their first real opportunity to be together. As they began to chat, Kadamba realized that they had been followed.

  “Stelky, why are you standing behind us here in line?” Kadamba inquired in a slightly irritated voice.

  “Yo, seriously, Ka, I love these Freezies,” Stelky answered, defensively.

  Jundana gently placed her hand on Kadamba’s shoulder before he could reply. “It’s alright, Ka. Stelky’s cool.”

  Her touch was amazing. He felt the annoyance vaporize inside of him, and he couldn’t believe the effect she was having on him. Just standing near her was so incredible. He was relaxed as if he was floating on a double dose of rath, but as excited as a little kid getting a giant stick of candy. He’d had a few girlfriends, and he’d thought he’d been in love before, but this was different. This was so much more intense.