With These Eyes

by Horst Steiner

  "Accessing S.S. Galaska."

  The main viewer displayed a maintenance schematic of Lars' icebreaker. The readout confirmed the ship's two enormous propellers turning and the diesel plant running at ¾ speed. The Trooper typed a few keystrokes and one of the smaller displays on the video wall showed the ship's navigation system and the autopilot's plotted course to the Danish coast town of Copenhagen.

  A rumble spread across the hovercraft. The cabin began shaking back and forth at an increasing rate until reaching a constant roar. The hydrofoil's two gigantic rotors had spun up to their operating speed. Massive amounts of air rushed out below the craft's hover-skirt. Surrounded by a cloud of snow and ice, the amphibian spy-ship levitated on a cushion of air. The Sea Captain gave orders to the first mate and the ominous craft roared forward off the ice-covered dock onto the open waters of the ocean. The Captain maneuvered the hovercraft to a mile behind the traveling icebreaker and followed Isabelle and Lars just slightly off their port stern.

  "We're in wireless range, Commander," reported the Trooper to Tasha's left.

  A smaller screen showed a list of cordless and cellular devices aboard Lars’ vessel. Progress bars indicated Tasha's system was connecting to every cell phone, music player and computer on the ship. Audio and video feeds from various digital devices on board the Galaska populated the schematic of the ship at their respective locations. Video from web cams and cell phones made the entire ship transparent for Tasha. She had once again caught up with her prey.

  Isabelle's face was red from scrubbing. The Geiger counter had confirmed the radioactive isotopes were gone from her face and hands. Her heavily taxed skin welcomed the warmth from the insulated facemask Isabelle was wearing. One of the female scientists on board knew Isabelle's mother from her books and stories about Gemma’s work on the icebreaker in the past. She was about the same built as Isabelle and only too happy to lend her some clothes. Isabelle walked up the stairs to the deck, the freezing wind blew past her. A blue Arctic explorer parka covered much of her body. She felt warm, it seemed mostly from the hand-knitted sweater, yet the layers of thermal clothing beyond the pullover kept in much of Isabelle's heat. Atop layers of thermal underwear and a pair of jeans, yellow snow-pants kept Isabelle's legs warm. She wore the insulated hood of the jacket over her head. Isabelle spotted Lars standing by the port railing and walked over to him. He saw her out of the corner of his eye. Startled, the skipper swung his head around. "You're dressed just like your mother." A joyful smile spread across Lars' frost-covered face. Isabelle's hand clutched Gemma's beads in one of the pockets she used to keep her hands warm. Lars' words filled her heart with warmth. She was her mother's daughter, on a quest for the truth. "She would spend countless nights on deck, right where you are standing."

  Gemma had never talked to Isabelle much about her work in the Arctic. Isabelle knew the years they spent in the jungle, her mother worked on finding natural cures for some of the world's most devastating diseases. Gemma didn't know the virus had laid dormant in her body when she gave birth to Isabelle. Isabelle didn't think much of it, especially since Fuji had Gemma's formula for the injections. She did, however, wonder sometimes why Fuji was so secretive about the ingredients. She trusted him with it and had hopes for the day when she could stop her daily regimen. It was almost as if she could feel Gemma's presence.

  Isabelle looked across the railing. Polar bears were watching from ice floats as the enormous ship passed by. A herd of seals had found great entertainment in swimming in the icebreaker's trail of open water through the frozen sea. With a look of woe, Isabelle directed her view towards the hovercraft that was following in a whirl of snow and ice. Lars quickly defused Isabelle’s concern for her safety while on his ship.

  "They can't just board us. It would make them pirates and no nation in the world would let them land at her ports. There is a law of the sea."

  That was all she needed to hear. Isabelle's thoughts were on her mother again. The young seeker of truth looked at Lars, her eyes sparkling from between hood and facemask. "What did she do out here?"

  "Your mother?" Lars knew what was truly dear to Isabelle. He motioned towards the sky with his head. "She was always talking about the Northern Lights. After solar flares was when we'd head out. She said they caused ball lightning. That's what she was really after."

  Isabelle felt a chill, but not from the weather. "Ball lightning? That topic came up in my research and now I'm a wanted woman. Why would lightning be such a big deal?"

  Lars knew very little about the details of Gemma's work, but she did tell him a few things over hot spiced wine when they waited out snowstorms below deck. If there was another person with whom he could have shared this, it was Isabelle. "It's not lightning at all." The condensing water vapor from his breath puffed away in little clouds as he uttered his words. "Your mother called it a membrane to an anti-matter universe."

  Isabelle was gazing at the endless sky. Lars, too, was drawn in by the grace that surrounded them. Bands of Northern Lights in ever-changing colors were dancing elegantly across the sky. Their light and the orange glow of the sunrise illuminated the icy desert in an epic display of nature's beauty. Isabelle pushed her facemask down. Lars had never seen a sunrise quite as spectacular as this one. It was as if Mother Nature was matching Isabelle's beauty.

  Lars continued. "Your mother and Fuji discovered this is not the only universe. There are things that exist just as real as all this in other dimensions. They found that for every particle in this universe there is a particle of anti-matter someplace else."

  A glimmer from the Northern Lights was reflected in Isabelle's eyes. She realized what that meant. "The two could never touch or they would turn back into pure energy."

  Lars nodded. "Ball lightning is a place in space and time where they do touch and you can find pure energy."

  Isabelle was contemplating the repercussions such knowledge would have for a world that was driven by the inequity of the energy trade. Her gaze wandered to the water below. Much of the ice had cleared away and a few seals had found their way to swimming alongside the ship. Tasha's hovercraft maintained its distance in a whirlwind of fog and ice.

  Isabelle felt for a moment like she was walking in her mother's footsteps.

  24 RYAN KENSINGTON, DRAGON SLAYER

  Back in Los Angeles, Ryan was still looking for the reason Isabelle's user accounts had vanished. It was unlikely that he would find the true reason, because Gene's covert staff had access into the code of the operating system where Ryan would never suspect.

  The walls in his octagonal office were streaming arrays of data. A single panel displayed video images from a faraway jungle. One of Isabelle's characteristics he found attractive was her ability to stay connected with nature, even in a metropolis like Los Angeles. Ryan had been a techie all his life and paid little attention to fields and forests. His appreciation for nature, however, had been growing ever since he met Isabelle when he began to work for Apophis. The video wall of nature scenes was his awkward attempt to integrate plants in his life. After all, he felt comfortable around computers. In his mind, computers were more predictable. He feared what he perceived as uncontrolled wilderness.

  It had been a busy couple of days for Ryan. Of all the people his new computer could have failed, it had to be Isabelle. The integration of Tefis' computer system had kept his inboxes full. Apophis executives around the globe wanted his personal assistance with the new system features. Every computer in the network was now required to authenticate its user via retina scan. A global flood of peripheral devices had been shipped to all branches in the weeks prior. Some of Apophis' management had hoped to be excluded from the procedure but soon chose regaining control over their files over their objections. Ryan was more bothered by the devices' blinding scanners than the inherent loss of privacy. Gene had offered him a position at Apophis after he had developed a new operating system for home and office. The revolutionary platform seamlessly integrated all devices that
were run by microprocessor.

  Most electronics already had some type of outside connection to function, such as wireless, internet or the coax of a cable box. His program was designed to run on any device and share information with any other appliance on the newly created network. It would revolutionize how people used their gadgets. The controls of every washing machine, digital assistant, cable box or robotic vacuum could be displayed on the screen of another device running the new program.

  Gene had offered Ryan to adopt his new system for the corporation's global array of electronic consumer products if Apophis was permitted to make code changes. Gene had argued Apophis needed to be able to develop their products without being limited by his restrictions. Ryan agreed. Gene saw a tremendous potential in such a fluid access to information, especially if that access was limited to a small group. If Gene would have such a platform running on all his products, he'd be able to predict people's actions based on their past routines. He saw no reason to sacrifice such a powerful tool to user convenience by sharing it with others.

  Ryan remembered the astronomical amount of money he received in his first check. He had been on a Pacific island, enjoying the fruits of his labor when Apophis' new-truth technicians implemented their changes to his universal computing platform. Gene's software specialists had isolated the subroutine that made the cross-device access possible and removed it from the new operating system's code. Gene had ordered an animated Apophis logo as the start-up screen on every device. His proprietary graphic had the easy-access routine hidden within its unnecessarily complex code, where no one would look. When Ryan returned from a month under the island sun, virtually every product on the market had been updated to run his software. Qickly, the new software had been cycled into the never-ending stream of disposable consumer products.

  Ryan had taken occupancy of his custom-built octagonal office and was surprised by a memo in his e-mail. The communication acknowledged the implementation of his software and briefly mentioning that Apophis did not feel the market warranted universal access. Ryan was told that part of the code had been written out of the software. The young programmer’s disappointment had quickly been pushed into the back of his mind when he saw the overwhelming workload of his new job. It had been Gene's plan to keep Ryan busy with mundane and repetitive tasks. The goal of encouraging him to go to the island had been to dispel any opportunity or desire he might have had to sift through thousands of pages of computer code and discover the true nature of Gene's meddling.

  Every mine, factory, television and store was running on the Apophis network with Ryan’s software. He figured such a feat would surely impress the woman of his desires. What an embarrassment to have failed her specifically. Ryan had made it a point to seek the answer to Isabelle's access problem over answering any more of the helpless messages from the company's brass. He hadn't seen Isabelle at work since her difficulties began, but had no idea of the true reason for her absence. Ryan was determined to solve the puzzle before their next encounter. It was late afternoon in Los Angeles. Ryan had lost track of time, the wall panel with the jungle scene was always at high-noon. Outside, the sun was low on the horizon. For hours, Ryan had been searching for the reason why. Isabelle wasn't able to access the digital world. All her user accounts had vanished. Phone, electric, the Apophis media center, not a single vendor had any record of their history with her. How was he going to repair her user accounts if there weren't any? Ryan's idea was to reconstruct what had happened from the data bits that must have remained after the records were struck from their respective directories. To do so, he programmed Isabelle's personal data into a global search-spider to include servers and hard drives' hidden and deleted sectors.

  Data fragments of Isabelle's old library records were the first find of his complex search. Finally, an act of success. He programmed the computer to cross-reference any of the search results' data on Isabelle with all other records. Soon, his panels filled with reconstructions of Isabelle's utility bills, driving record and one much more curious item: The search engine had run the facial biometrics data from Isabelle's driver's license and produced the police drawing from the Spitsbergen news-report.

  Ryan couldn't believe his eyes. He knew Isabelle well enough to be certain she was no kidnapper. Behind such a grave accusation must have laid more than a simple misunderstanding. The answer was appearing before him. Isabelle's biometrics had turned up on a classified level of the network. Ryan was in an exceptional position because his access was system-wide and unhindered by clearances, a necessity when the company's leadership called on his support with their computer issues. Although there were areas of the network that were kept from him, his search from the systems-administrator level revealed the existence of Tasha's secret mainframe. Once the directory crawler had come across Tasha's digital lair, a volcano of spy data on Isabelle erupted across the walls of Ryan's domain. A satellite image of the S.S. Galaska on her way towards the Bering strait caught Ryan's attention. He tapped the image with his index finger and the ship's schematic from Tasha's surveillance room appeared.

  Wireless Devices in Range

  Green lettering at the top of the screen indicated Tasha was on the hunt. A multitude of icons and video signals from wireless devices onboard the ship populated an entire wall. The graphic interface was too familiar for Ryan. It was his design of the cross-platform operating system. At this point, he knew what to look for and it didn't take him long to filter through the files of Tasha's platoon from her secret mainframe to realize the sort of danger in which Isabelle had found herself. He saw the ship was bound for Copenhagen. Ryan tapped icons for cell phones on the ship. After a few tries, the tilted image of Isabelle and Lars drinking hot chocolate in the galley appeared from one of the phones. A slightly distorted feed of their conversation sounded from the speakers of Ryan’s office. He felt like a peeping-Tom. As happy as he was to have found Isabelle, a feeling of uneasiness made him pace nervously in circles around his office.

  After a few ambulations around the inside of his octagon, Ryan was ready to turn his attention to what he had found. Isabelle and Lars were discussing the hovercraft that had been following them since their departure from the Arctic island. After several hours of conversation about nature and the current state of the world, Ryan was finally hearing about Isabelle's plan.

  Lars: "Last time I saw your mother, she said Fuji and her had solved one of the great mysteries of the universe. All she could tell me was that ball lightning was the key and humanity would take its next evolutionary step with the understanding that came with their discovery. She said suspicious types had been following her for a few days and she was anxious to return to the jungle to work on publishing her findings. A week later, the entire village was destroyed by lightning. It was no ordinary storm that did that."

  Isabelle: "You mean..."

  Lars: "Someone started the storm deliberately."

  Isabelle: "Climate engineering is out of the scope of any government in South America. There is just one entity with resources like that."

  Lars: "Even if Apophis seeded the storm, they would not have been able to direct its lightning on such a concentrated area. My masters degree is in atmospheric sciences and I already looked into the possibilities. You would have to seed and area at least 75 square kilometers to get any sort of reactive cloud cover. It takes massive condensation to cause that much lightning.

  Isabelle: "The lightning from a large storm all concentrated in one spot could level a village."

  Lars: "You would have to litter the entire place with lightning rods."

  Isabelle: "Those huts didn't have lightning rods, I would remember. It wasn't the kind of place where people used things like that."

  A new still image came in from a cell phone in the icebreaker's physical sciences lab. Next to a set of gas bottles in every color of the rainbow was an agitated-looking Isabelle. One of her feet was forward, blurred in mid-stride. A mystical purple light shone from the night sky through
a port hole in the center of the frame. On the right-hand side of the frame, dressed in a woolen sweater and denims, was Lars with his hot cocoa.

  Ryan had experienced Gene's betrayal first hand and quickly understood the gravity of Isabelle's situation. He had to find a way to help Isabelle. Since she was under surveillance, he couldn't just call. He had to meet up with her somehow and help. Ryan continued to listen.

  Isabelle: "You know Apophis is behind this."

  Lars: "Can you believe they invited me to their ball in Berlin? The evening is really a coronation ceremony for their new emperor, Gene Soskyh."

  Isabelle: "I need to deal with the source of my problems not the symptoms. Do you still have your invitation?"

  Lars: "I wrote them back and said I had no interest in being seen there. That was a month ago and the moment I told them no, someone else took the spot."