With These Eyes

by Horst Steiner

  This time a single one of the fiery phenomenon appeared out of a lightning storm and descended on the imperial capitol. On its way through town it left a trail of fire and burning people until it crashed into a stone wall and shattered into hundreds of smaller pieces that eventually fizzled out.

  The image disappeared, Isabelle's vision returned to normal. By now she had figured out what she saw was ball lightning, the very mystery that had brought so much turmoil to her life. The influence of ball lightning on human history was becoming clear to her. She looked at Ralf.

  "Sodom and Gomorra, the Roman legend of the Chariots of Fire, they were all just ball lightning. Each time those who understood what was truly behind these calamities blamed divine intervention and kept the masses in fear. The results were wealth and power over those who lacked understanding."

  Ralf looked at her perplexed. "What's ball lightning?"

  Knowing the answer to that question was what would decide the fate of humanity. Isabelle's attention had shifted to the many doorways along the perimeter of the marble atrium. Most of them were large enough to fit a tractor, a few looked like office doors. Isabelle walked to one of the smaller ones. The stylized leaf-glyph was posted on a marker by the door jam. Ralf followed Isabelle inside where they found seed containers from various nations that looked exactly like the ones in the seed bank. Stacks of the green plastic crates filled one side of the area. Isabelle examined the many containers.

  "These look like the crates that have been coming through the port on their way to the seed bank," noticed Ralf.

  Isabelle wondered, "if you were shipping them to Spitsbergen, why are they here?"

  "If they're here, what went to Spitsbergen?" Ralf asked.

  Isabelle looked around. By another wall were several workstations with bags of grain. The bags contained cereal crops from corn to wheat and all were marked Genetically Enhanced.

  Ralf was looking at a clipboard with shipping manifests. "Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Angola. There are grains here from every nation on the planet."

  In a cupboard above the workstation, Isabelle found seals for the crates manufactured by Apophis. She added, "and the seals to repackage the crates."

  This made little sense to Ralf. He had to ask the obvious. "What if a nation withdraws their seeds because they need them after a disaster to rebuild their agriculture?"

  Isabelle saw the problem. "One season and the farmers would be left with nothing."

  "Sounds like a sure way to get caught robbing your own bank," said Ralf.

  "Unless you don't expect anyone to make a withdrawal." Eager to quench her thirst for knowledge, Isabelle exited the room, Ralf a few steps behind.

  In the marble atrium Isabelle noticed one particular doorway with a bright glow shining through its cracks. She walked towards it, Ralf followed hesitantly. Isabelle opened the door and revealed a stadium-size hall. Bright lights on the cavern's ceiling illuminated a huge wheat field that covered the ground. A few potted trees sat on pallets near the doorway. The field seemed to continue forever into the hollowed-out ground.

  "Looks like these walls were meant to withstand more than the pressure of the sea above," said Isabelle.

  Ralf walked over to the pallets of trees. A spicy-sweet smell, reminiscent of the winter holidays was in the air. He smelled one of the trees’ branches and commented, "These things smell like cloves."

  This was something Isabelle remembered from the past. She walked over to Ralf and looked at the trees. Isabelle rubbed one of the leaves between her thumb and index finger and took a whiff. "These are choji trees."

  "What?"

  "Cloves, Ralf. I remember this well. The jungle village where my mother worked had these growing throughout. Before it was destroyed by lightning."

  Without warning, the field's overhead irrigation system came to life with the force of fire sprinklers. Isabelle and Ralf were getting soaked to their skin as they rushed to the atrium.

  Meanwhile, Tasha's hovercraft continued its course to the Copenhagen seaport at the west bank of the bay. The Trooper had notified Danish authorities that Isabelle, the international terrorist and kidnapper, was expected to land shortly. Her Troopers were preparing to invade the town to assure Isabelle's capture. Tasha was basking in confidence. She saw no way out of her trap for Isabelle. In her smugness, Tasha thought it appropriate to finally take the tour of the craft that the Captain had been offering since their departure from the Arctic island. Together, they climbed down the metal stairs to the engineering deck. The Sea Captain acted like a child who was boasting to his friends about a new toy.

  "This ship is the first of its kind. No chemical or nuclear fuel."

  Tasha looked at him with an expression of disbelief. With a tone of condescension, she replied, "That's impossible. Even a kid knows you need fuel to make energy."

  "A kid raised in the current school system. Let me show you something."

  He opened the entrance to the hovercraft's generator room. The doorway passed through 50 cm of graphite. The entire room was shielded from the rest of the ship in this manner. The walls were mostly barren, aside from a few gauges and panels. Its center was occupied by a device approximately the size and shape of a large household refrigerator. A bindingly-bright light was shining from a circular window in the center of the device. Tasha looked surprised. She had been sure she knew about all technology employed in Apophis' fleet of surveillance vehicles. This was very intriguing to the young warrior.

  The Sea Captain boasted, "Powers everything - propulsion, navigation, your little room. It even provides an unlimited supply of hot and cold drinking water from the sea underneath us."

  "What is it - some kind of nuclear reactor?"

  "No, it's a quantum energy generator."

  The Captain grabbed two sets of goggles off the wall and handed one to Tasha. He put the other pair over his eyes. The old salt directed Tasha towards the glass on the machine. Behind the glass was the device's reaction chamber. Tasha's dark goggles allowed her to cut the bright glare inside and distinguish some of the details. A glowing sphere hovered in the chamber between two metal electrodes. A tungsten rod that lead to the chamber's wall was the only item in contact with the luminous orb which resembled what Isabelle had encountered in her visions.

  The Captain added, "It's ball lightning in a bottle."

  Tasha prided herself on her up to date knowledge of technology, but at that moment, she was looking at something completely alien to her.

  "Is it solid? Looks like an electric Mylar balloon."

  "It's hollow. Even the skin has practically no mass. It's basically a super-atom, comprised of millions of nuclei. The glowing skin is the electron cloud that surrounds any atom's nucleus."

  Tasha was clambering to understand. She remembered from chemistry class that every atom had a nucleus, then a lot of empty space and somewhere in that empty space was the other part, the electron. So she figured, the Captain's machine made a giant atom out of many normal-sized ones. This defied so many things she had learned.

  The Captain continued. "When we turn the machine off, everything returns to normal. The super-atom turns back into the nitrogen it took from the air. No dangerous waste, yet it's a billion times more powerful than any nuclear reaction."

  "Does that include Chernobyl?" asked Tasha.

  "And Hiroshima."

  The Captain's answer made Tasha realize this could be used for causes other than peace on earth. It would bring absolute power to those who possessed the knowledge. What she didn't realize, built as a bomb, a quantum device could destroy the entire solar system in a few minutes' time. With visions of swift wars on her mind, Tasha looked at the Captain.

  "The military has this?"

  The Captain shook his head. "No one has this. Imagine what they would do with it?"

  Tasha was doing exactly that.

  He continued. "It would also be the end of the Tefis Corporation. Who'd pay for energy if everyone knew they can power their cars and h
ouses on their own?"

  This conversation was interrupted when one of Tasha's Troopers rushed in. "Ma'am, the package has gained access to the Öresund facility."

  Tasha looked angry. To let her prey slip away was a blow for which she hadn't been prepared. Much worse though, was the fact that Isabelle had entered one of the company's secret installations. The firm had many across the globe, their respective functions were only known to the personnel of each site. Tasha didn't question the purpose of any of Apophis' underground structures. She was, however, sworn to protect their covert status at all cost. Gene would be extremely unpleasant unless she put an end to Isabelle, once and for all. As long as Isabelle was trespassing in secrecy, she would once again be easy to eliminate without a trace. Tasha's anger gave way to a burning blood-lust.

  "That's too bad for her. Shut her in, prepare for battle!"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  The Trooper rushed back to the control room. Tasha turned to the skipper, who was waiting to finish his speech on quantum energy and photon bombs.

  "Make way for the island at the tunnel entrance!"

  Disappointed, the Sea Captain stepped out of the shielded room to get to one of the ship's squawk boxes where he relayed Tasha's orders to the bridge. Within a moment's time, the heavy craft came about and forged across the bay, capsizing several smaller boats in its turbulent wake. The Trooper who had brought Tasha the news of Isabelle's advance, had returned to the ship's surveillance room. He repeated her new directive.

  "Close the door to the Öresund facility."

  "Aye, Aye," replied one of the Troopers at the console whose attempts to shut Isabelle and Ralf in were less than successful.

  "Sir, the door isn’t reacting."

  The other Trooper sat down in the room's center seat to try his luck with the main gate. Both were struggling with Ryan's override. The panel's screen showed a schematic of the atrium. The Trooper tried to slide the padlock-shaped icon back over the graphic of the entrance. After each attempt, the symbol would slide back into the corner of his touch-sensitive display. "Someone's overriding the system - find the source and neutralize it." All three of the Troopers in the control room were working feverishly to trace the reason, but remained unable to close the main entrance.

  The source of their difficulties was sitting in his seat onboard Apophis' elite jet. Ryan had his hands full with the digital pad. His systems administrator's screen mirrored the Trooper's display. Each time Tasha’s team moved the lock into place, Ryan pushed it back to the side. Ryan knew it wouldn't be long before the command was rerouted or he was discovered.

  Below the ocean floor, soaking wet Isabelle and Ralf continued to explore the secret farm. Isabelle's puzzle was beginning to form a grim picture of Gene's activities. "The wind farm across the bay is about the right size to light the field and heat the ground sufficiently for plant growth and to make the sea water outside suitable for irrigation."

  Curiously, Ralf opened another one of the doorways in the atrium. Beyond the gate laid a cavern, identical to the last one, except it was dark and the earthen ground laid cold and barren. Ralf and Isabelle opened several other doorways, all to vacant fields when he commented, "Each field could grow enough grain to fill an entire train load. If all these fields were in use, this farm could feed a small country."

  Isabelle looked at Ralf, there was an important factor he had overlooked. "It would take an enormous amount of energy to grow crops on all those fields."

  Isabelle's conversation was, once again, about to be cut short. Ryan's attempts to continually override Tasha's Troopers came to an end when his uplink to the company satellite was discovered. Tasha had returned to her surveillance room and was impatiently waiting for the farm's blast door to close. Her Trooper reported success. "Ma'am, the override came from somewhere over the Atlantic. We've shut it down."

  Isabelle and Ralf saw the heavy door gradually beginning to close. There was only a few seconds' time before the colossal slab of tungsten would seal the secret cavern off from the outside. The two ran towards the narrowing gap of the exit. With his shoes still wet from the sprinklers, Ralf slipped and fell flat on his face when his ankle gave. Isabelle, who had almost gotten to the door, heard his yelp and ran back to Ralf. She helped him off the ground and let him brace himself by putting his arm around her shoulder. Together, Isabelle and Ralf hobbled through at the very last moment, just before the enormous door slammed shut. The buzzing sound of the hydraulics echoed across the loading dock as thick steel cylinders extended into the rock.

  At this point, the hovercraft was nearing the artificial island's small port. In a whirlwind of water, the enormous ship thundered across the docks and onto the adjacent truck parking-lot. The rotor wash from the powerful craft equaled that of several helicopters landing. Seagulls scattered in all directions. A few garbage cans toppled and their contents were strewn across the cement square. The craft's pressure wave turned several empty beer bottles left there by infrequent dock-workers into projectiles. A nearby maintenance truck's window shattered in the blast of bottles and dirt. Tasha’s troops were assembled on the main deck. The hovercraft's gigantic rotors were spinning down. The amphibian ship set down and immediately, two dozen clandestine Troopers and their angry leader stormed the island. This time, the strike force was armed to their teeth, ready to kill. A Trooper nearing the fire ship called out. "Ma'am!"

  Tasha trotted to him to see what he had found. "That bitch!" she exclaimed when she saw the icebreaker's bright yellow submersible moored between the harbor's tug boat and the fire ship. The sight of the vessel Isabelle had used to evade her carefully laid out trap fueled Tasha's fury. The hunter felt like her prey was mocking her. The chase had become so much more than just another job. Isabelle had destroyed Tasha's success rate and she had now become a threat to the entire commando. Tasha's ability to dispose of undesirables relied heavily on the fact that many of her attacks were done in hiding. She had to finish Isabelle off to protect her own existence. The woman she sought had come back into reach. Tasha froze. For a split second, it was as if she could feel how close Isabelle was to her. Tasha glanced across the rail yard - there it was: The tunnel that would lead her to what she was seeking. Tasha didn't have the patience for an assault on foot. She had a better idea and headed towards the truck parking lot.

  Still in the farm's loading dock, Isabelle and her new friend climbed back into the train. Ralf was moving slowly because of his sprained ankle and took a seat next to the pilot's station already occupied by Isabelle. It dawned on him that the tunnel tube was about to open again to regular traffic.

  "We'll have to go anyway or we'll lose the track."

  Isabelle had already gotten busy powering up the train. "Way ahead of you," she said as she pushed the throttle forward. Isabelle noticed a lot of added torque because the crates had been offloaded. "What on earth was in those containers?"

  Ralf, who was busy trying to get his wet work boot off the swollen foot responded. "All I heard was that they were generators, must be for the other fields."

  "You'd need a nuclear power plant for that much energy. Generators would require a lot of fuel, and where would the exhaust go?"

  Ralf reached into his nearby gym-bag and handed Isabelle a towel. She noticed what a gentleman he was. Isabelle thanked him with a smile. At the same time at the beginning of the bridge on the east bay, a switch was directing a westbound passenger train onto the track Isabelle and Ralf were about to enter. At the other end of the bridge, Tasha was once again preparing to end Isabelle's quest for the truth. Isabelle would have to die at Tasha's own hands to restore her pride as a warrior. The road/rail maintenance truck gave the commander the perfect excuse to leave her troops behind. The all-wheel drive truck was parked about half-way down the far edge of the parking lot. Her Troopers had swarmed the rail yard and docks of the island. Tasha heard the voice of one of her Troopers over the earwig.

  "Port secure, Ma'am."

  She had reached the vehicl
e. The truck was an all-terrain type widely used by forest services and heavy-rescue crews in Europe. A set of telescoping rail support-wheels was positioned each in front and back to guide the heavy machine along railroad tracks. A work arm in the bed of the truck held a two-person basket for maintenance on overhead power lines. Tasha reached into a pocket on the outside of her left thigh and pulled out a device the size of a lighter. A row of round buttons and a tiny plasma display occupied the sides of the black plastic cylinder. Tasha turned the device on and within a second, it had read the vehicle's roadside assistance information and transmitted unlock and engine-start codes to its electronics. Tasha climbed into the cab and slammed the door shut. A few members of her platoon had found their way to her. At the touch of a button, she rolled down the window and barked.