Utopia: A Dark Thriller: Complete Edition

by Adam Steel

  ‘He is one of the nine escapees from CURE Prison North.’

  A picture of Max appeared alongside Aya. It shimmered beside her, before both of the hovering images vanished, leaving nothing but the image of a spinning silver key.

  ‘Clearly, our biggest single problem is that there are individuals all over Utopia gathering information on the experiment, and sharing it. Ms. Kaleem has the highest public profile of all of them, which is why we believe she was leaked the information. We are fortunate she is not yet married. It will make her status as an unfortunate easier.’

  The room murmured in agreement.

  ‘If we do not regain control, phase two of the experiment will become exposed, and the public response will be impossible to suppress.’

  His piece finished, Deckler took his seat, and waited for the masons to digest the information.

  ‘If that truly is so…Then why have these people not tried releasing the information to the wider public?’ Katcher questioned.

  ‘Because they only have scant pieces of the whole. It proves nothing alone,’ Batide replied.

  Mason Royale leaned forward.

  ‘Who, has given her the information? Is it the foreigners again?’

  Henson shook her head, ‘Unlikely. Their agents are easily detected. Besides they are slowly coming on board. They no longer seek to supplant us. The oil crisis is forcing their hand. We can also expect the delegates from the other nations within three months.’

  Batide played thoughtfully with his hands.

  ‘We can only hope they will be more useful and conduct themselves better than Aarif. Involving him was a mistake. A true Mason would not have made that mistake. I wonder if perhaps another in his place would have made the same decision,’ Batide hissed, directing the comment at Katcher.

  Royale shrank back: considering her position in the carefully constructed web of power. The snide ‘jibe’ at Katcher was rare amongst the Circle of Eight. Katcher was the newest mason. He had only been in the position a brief, seven years. He had barely made the vote to grant him Ascension into their ranks. His bold move to approve Aarif, as the first delegate to be enlightened from a non-Utopian nation, had backfired and was dangerously exposing him. As her colleague (and consort) that made her vulnerable. ‘Vulnerable,’ was something that she had no intention of ever being.

  The latest Genie tour (in the search for potential ascendants) had singled out one of his Fin-Sen executives as a possible replacement, Katcher was brutally aware of the threat posed by the would-be Mason-Li. Katcher cleared this throat: preparing his defence.

  ‘Aarif was the logical choice. His nation is the first to run dry of oil. His wealth has allowed us to pursue interests that otherwise we would have been unable to do. Aarif has no choice but to join with us. A Reactor in Asia will solve all of our immediate problems.’

  Henson glared at him floundering in the face of his betters.

  ‘Interests like constructing palaces and filling them full of foreign imports, which we cannot explain? This is not our pledge or plan. You have squandered any of the resources Aarif had that could have been useful for us. The sooner we can construct the Asian reactor and be rid of him the better,’ Henson spat accusingly.

  Katcher opened his mouth to protest again, when Batide held a hand to silence them.

  ‘Enough…brothers and sisters. We must not fight amongst ourselves. As much as it irks me, we are forced to deal with the foreign nations. Our success has drawn much unwanted attention. As they run dry of fuel, they need our reactor and our process. We must not forget our grand designs. We need their co-operation.’

  Deckler shuffled his feet. He looked suddenly uncomfortable.

  ‘They know of the experiment. Their spies are everywhere. They could expose us,’ Deckler said.

  ‘Which is why we must work to bring them with us,’ Batide explained. ‘They will not expose us, because they know what we know. That they need the reactor. It is the only way they can survive the coming darkness. We are the last hope for humanity.’

  ‘The information leaks within our own borders? How bad is it?’ De-Barr queried, moving off the topic of the elusive phase three.

  Decker scowled as he hit a switch. A blur of images flashed across the hologram. Men and women of all ages, and walks of life, flashed before their eyes.

  ‘Including the latest two unfortunates and the eight other escapees from Vigilance, and, excluding the ones we have neutralised, and those still incarcerated in Vigilance, we are currently tracking one hundred and thirty-six unfortunates.’

  Silence fell across the room.

  ‘Good grief. How will we ever…’ Katcher began to say.

  ‘Silence!’ Henson cut in. ‘Our brother can deal with it. Can’t you?’ she offered to Deckler.

  Deckler responded with a curt nod.

  Katcher shrank back shaking his head.

  ‘At least tell me that out of this debacle, that it has been worth it. Is the reactor stable?’

  Deckler turned to the two, motionless, Coney Twins.

  ‘Power output is currently optimum,’ they said in unison.

  Katcher sighed. ‘What generation are these two again? Apexir? Memorexen? Just how many of those re-programmed people regressed after Blair Ridge and had to be re-classed as unfortunate? 95%? How may combat soldiers did we lose to Apexir addiction? Two thirds?’

  Royale fixed him with a steely stare. Katcher was making a fool of himself and, more importantly, he was making a fool out of her. She knew that the twin’s achievements had far eclipsed their failures and to damn them meant his ultimate dismissal from the Circle of Eight.

  The twins offered no retaliation. There was no need. Katcher had sealed his own fate and everyone in the room knew it except for him.

  ‘So what is being done? Do we remove the girl?’ De-Barr queried, changing the subject.

  Henson shook her head, ‘There is no need. It will be taken care of. I have reigned in Aarif. He will handle this exposure.’

  Deckler scoffed back a laugh and kicked back in his seat.

  ‘Aarif is a fool. As is this strategy. We should deploy The Reckoning devices on the nations that threaten to expose us,’ he suggested.

  Batide shook his head, ‘No. Have you forgotten the path brother? Perhaps we all need to re-focus.’

  Batide hit a few keys on his control pad and inserted his key. It made a satisfying ‘click’ as it locked in place. The vault began to change. The walls drew backwards: sliding away into hidden gaps. Around the circumference of the circle, a blue screen appeared. It flickered into life from its dormancy behind the false walls. Underneath it, were hundreds of tiny, silver keys. Each one of them was identical to the ones that the masons were wearing around their necks.

  The message flashing on the screen said:

  PHASE III PROJECTIONS

  The screen flickered to reveal a rotating image of planet Earth. It hung in space (peaceful and serene) waiting for the computer to run the simulation.

  Batide got up slowly from his seat and gestured at the wavering image. The other masons looked at the image with reverence, except for Katcher, who seemed distracted.

  ‘Have you forgotten? We stand on the precipice of the new dawn, one of unity. Mankind’s future will extend to the very stars. Phase three is the path we are sworn to see through. The other nations do not act, because they fear The Reckoning Devices. They fear what they do not understand and, more importantly, they do not attack us because they know we are right.’

  Batide pressed a few keys on his console and the image across the wall changed. Without looking at the image he continued his lecture.

  ‘In seventy years, the Earth will become uninhabitable. Petroleum reserves will be exhausted. Coal and gas will be depleted and insufficient to keep up with demand.’

  The masons watched, as the graphs showed the projections. The sea of the holographic planet was slowly turning black as the simulated years ticked onwards: its grasslands transforming
into a poisoned, barren desert.

  Batide continued.

  ‘Carbon emissions will turn the atmosphere in a giant greenhouse, sea level will rise giving way to a polluted flood of toxic waste, that will drown what little land remains. Over-population and starvation will result in massive civil breakdown. We have seen this in history. It is coming to all the great nations.’

  The Coney Twins stared at the screen, emotionless.

  ‘The remaining humans will destroy each other in war over receded resources. We are already seeing the beginning of the end.’

  Behind Mason Batide, the tortured scorched orb, was flooded in a cloud of radioactive winds, transforming what little was left of the world into a hollow lifeless shell. The holographic globe cracked and disappeared in a wave of cataclysmic explosions. The masons watched in grim silence. Batide watched while the screen reverted back to the shimmering, blue-green globe, again.

  ‘As you know. There is but one way we can stave off ruin and save mankind.’

  The masons bowed their heads and closed their eyes around the circle. They were all humbled into silence: thinking in unison.

  “The Utopia Experiment”

  The screen zoomed in to show Utopia in the present year: feeding off a glowing yellow dot, that represented the Genie Reactor.

  ‘Utopia is fully, self-sufficient and is infinitely sustainable on a natural resource that is renewable and does not generate undesirable emissions. It can survive forever. We only need keep social order through phase two, until we can truly deem the experiment a success.’

  The screen zoomed out, to show a second, blinking dot, in India. A solid yellow line joined the two dots. They were soon joined by more (scattered across the globe) all linked by glowing, yellow lines.

  ‘Our Genie Reactor network will (when it is established) be able to feed each other. There will be no more wars over resources. We will all live in equality. Finally. There will be peace. The essence of phase three. We will set mankind free. Unite our species forever in fellowship. The world Utopia is but a scant step away, that we can take if we have the courage to see it through,’ Batide finished proudly.

  Katcher cut in: much to the annoyance of the circle.

  ‘What stops them from stealing the technology and supplanting us once we build them the reactors?’ he asked stupidly.

  Batide smiled, ‘We have something they do not - and - will never have.’

  He nodded toward the Coney Twins.

  ‘No human mind will ever unravel Genie or its secrets. We will always hold the upper hand.’

  Katcher looked at the Coney Twins and shivered. He was already regretted his comments earlier.

  ‘You all know what you must do,’ Batide declared.

  They all nodded in agreement.

  Chapter 29: City Limits

  The Wastelands: East of Coney City

  Tuesday 24th July

  Aya sat beside Max in the passenger seat. She was staring ahead in a semi-hypnotic state. Occasionally her bottom lip trembled. Somewhere inside her head, terrible thoughts skittered around. Her face had a bluish swelling and her hair was matted with blood and ‘other things.’

  Max drove the stolen, pink van out of the underground car park of the Unicorn Hotel at breakneck speed. It was been difficult to keep the vehicle under control, as they raced through Sector Six – trying to put as much distance as possible between them, and the killing scene at the hotel. He had to keep ducking the Info-Coms that stared like all-seeing eyes on either side of the street. They narrowly missed colliding with several oncoming vehicles. Aya sat rigidly, in a state of shock, as the van’s movements threw her from left to right. She had been numbed into silence by the carnage at the hotel. The eye scanners flickered in her unreadable, green eyes.

  Max drove the van deep into the industrial centre of Sector Six. He knew where to go at first because it was his home sector. A lot of the heavy industry in Sector Six was fully automated. Max knew that there would be very few workers on the industrial sites. He anticipated that it would provide them with good cover.

  He didn’t attempt to go to his own pad, even though they had passed quite close to it. He realised that TALOS would have had it covered. He guessed that it had been the woman that he had left tied up in the chair, back at the Unicorn Hotel, that had alerted TALOS to them. They had no time to waste. He guessed that more TALOS would have followed Dillinger and Hawkins and this time there would be no conversations. He pictured the idiot in the pink negligee that he had snatched the van keys from and figured that he would also have reported that they had stolen his van.

  Max drove the van into a large glass recycling centre. The massive hangers on the site housed the machinery for sorting, crunching and melting the waste glass. He guessed the plant would be almost entirely automated and deserted. The giant loaders tirelessly emptied containers full of waste glass into the crushing machine. The sound of machinery and breaking glass was deafening. The machines ‘crunched’ and ‘groaned’ as they ate the tonnes of glass.

  It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. An electric Excelsior-Class car, was parked up on site. Max presumed that its owner had been needlessly checking the robotic factory. Probably to satisfy some useless Fin-Sen report, he thought dimly.

  The car was perfect. It was sleek, modern and fast. Nice, he thought.

  He ‘hot-wired’ it in minutes. He had experience.

  His old superior at the docks (Price) had owned one. Back then, he and Falkner had boosted it and taken it for a spin to get their own back on the ‘slimy bastard’ for ‘lording’ his superiority over them. Max and Falkner had ended up at Dog’s Diner and the car had ended up at the bottom of the Conian River. Price had gone ballistic when he found out that his ‘pride and joy’ was not an amphibious model.

  The old memory gave Max some comfort. Falkner had been a good guy. Max’s face hardened when he thought that Falkner was now probably looking for him like all the others.

  Max backed the new car up and collected the shell-shocked Aya from the pink van, hauling her out along with any obvious possessions he had been able to find. He didn’t register what items he had hurled from one vehicle to another. One of the items was a bag that had split open, sending pink and white curlers flying across the floor. They looked like a plague of brightly coloured caterpillars. He tied a rough tourniquet around the wound in his shoulder with strips of a white shirt, which he found amongst the belongings. It helped to staunch the bleeding enough for him to be able to drive.

  Max was careful driving the Excelsior through Sector Six, and towards the border of Coney City. They had a new set of wheels and he didn’t want to alert any of the traffic monitor systems, or draw any unnecessary attention.

  He donned a pair of shades that he found on the dashboard of the Excelsior. It meant that he had been more or less able to drive upright, without ducking to avoid the Info-Coms every few minutes. He had torn the car’s navigation computer out prevent them being traced.

  That had all happened hours ago and now they were in the middle of a dense forest at night, with only the moon and the trees for company.

  Max thought that he heard Aya mumble something. He looked at her sitting next to him. She was still staring blankly. Her face was flecked with bloodspots and it was a stark contrast to her usual, flawless skin. He felt sorry for her, but he was wondering why he had got involved with her?

  What had started out as casual sex and fun had turned into chaos and murder.

  The bloody feathers that had filled Room 11, like a buck-shot pigeon, would only add to the night-mares that haunted his sleep. He cursed himself for being a fool. He told himself that he should have known that getting involved with him would turn her life into a train wreck.

  What was it she had said at the Hotel? he thought.

  “Something wrong with Utopia, they’re going to kill us?”

  She had also said something about a serial killer. He shook his head slightly. He was thinking
that he didn’t know anything about that, but he knew a ‘crock of shit’ when he heard it. He had seen the expressions on Dillinger and Hawkins’s faces, when she had shown them the strange device. Aya had been screaming that there was something wrong with Utopia when they had snatched it off her and stamped on it. He had realised that it went much deeper than the jail-break and the trouble that he had landed her in with Jack. She had been scared out of her mind. He frowned, as he thought about the reaction of the TALOS guards when she had been waving the device at them. He was thinking that it didn’t matter now. They had to get away.

  Retreat soldier. Retreat – evade escape, the phantom orders drilled through his mind.

  Max, the box-guard, had reverted to Max the killer. Max the soldier. He was alive again and it scared the hell out of him. He was thinking that they would be on the run for the rest of their lives. That was, if they were lucky enough to get far enough out into The Wastelands. What then? Where will we go? What’s out there in The Wastelands, beyond the forest, anyhow? he thought. He had heard rumours about deserted cities beyond Coney City. He had never believed any of it. No one ever went there and came back to talk about it. He wondered why that was.

  He thought back to their journey to The Wastelands.

  They had escaped from Sector Six without incident. The roads that had led out of Coney City had devolved into little more than broken paving and dirt tracks. The further they had travelled out from Coney City the more remote everything had become. They had crossed into the agricultural zone, of Sector Eight.

  Sector Eight surrounded the city on its eastern and northern sides. It was the ‘food factory’ for Coney City. There were miles and miles of mono-culture farms and hectares of glasshouses, interspersed with forests. Rows and rows of long buildings housed hundreds of thousands of chickens, each in their own chicken prison. They were like mini-cities of their own. Chicken cities. The farms were heavily automated and the few humans that did work there, were reformers.