“This is archeology taken to another level,” Alex said. “So I assume Mark Houston studied Albert carefully.”
“I think you might’ve gotten the wrong impression,” Jules rebutted. “Mark was not that type of a person. Instead of studied, the better term would be learned from. He never made any contrived circumstances for Albert’s existence. He simply watched him like a caring uncle as he grew. Intrigued along the way by how he overcame challenges, negotiated through problems, and solved difficult situations, Mark gained an understanding of the original Julius Caeser’s personality and learned from Albert’s continued success.”
“Amazing!”
“However,” Jules continued, “my dear old uncle Albert took this cloning project to the next level after Mark Houston’s death.”
Alex suspected what was to come.
“As you know,” Jules said, “genetic cloning became much more sophisticated, and within 30 years, exact replicas of human beings could be successfully engineered. And that’s when my uncle stepped up the project.”
“So where are these clones now?” Alex asked.
“They were never meant for this world,” Jules said. “A whole New Reality virtual world was created specifically for each clone to live and flourish. They were placed in their natural historical setting. Whether it be in ancient Rome or along the Asian plateau, their world was catered specifically to their historical context.”
“Unlike Mark Houston,” Alex concluded, “who let the clones live a natural life, Albert decided to place them in this virtual world in order to study them like caged animals and learn from their thoughts and actions—sort of a macabre neuropsychological approach to exploring the past.”
“Exactly!”
“But aren’t The New Reality’s virtual worlds only able to accommodate adults?” Alex asked.
“Now you’re thinking! The New Reality suits we utilize do come with that limitation. And that’s why the Training Grounds were created. Albert used them until the clones came of age.”
“Let me guess—” interrupted Alex. “Albert used The New Reality virtual reality equipment in order to create a virtual, yet natural environment for these clones to live in until they were old enough to be allowed to enter an actual, uniquely designed New Reality virtual world.”
Jules lifted up his wine glass in cheers. “I knew I wouldn’t have to explain everything to you.”
“But where are these Training Grounds? And how do you manage to keep them such a secret?”
“It’s an extremely difficult task,” Jules said, “whose duties were bestowed on me upon the death of my uncle. In fact, only a handful of select people in The New Reality even know of the project.”
“How about Myra Keres?” Alex asked.
“God, no. I’ve tried my best to keep this completely out of her sphere of influence. Lord knows what she would do if she ever obtained the truth.”
“Alex,” William said over the intercom, “the ship’s not letting me fly to those coordinates Jules gave me. Somehow it’s being diverted.”
“Maybe it’s your flying skills,” Alex joked, hoping to rev up his friend.
“Maybe I should push the eject button,” William quipped.
Alex then turned to Jules. “I assume we’re approaching the Training Ground air space?”
“More importantly,” he responded, “we are approaching the lock.” He then walked into the cockpit as Alex followed behind him.
William turned to meet his guests, “You see. The wheel keeps on turning, and every time I punch in the coordinate, it puts me on a divert course.”
“Now that’s a nice bit of technology,” Alex commented.
“And it’s that bit of technology that will ensure our safety,” Jules responded. He then placed his hand on the navigation control panel and again typed in the coordinates above it. Remotely, his hand was scanned to authenticate his security clearance.
“Hey,” William responded. “We’re back on course.”
The wheel started to turn on its own, and the stratoskimmer suddenly seemed as if it were controlled by someone else. William futilely attempted to move the steering wheel, but the ship landed on its own accord. Upon touchdown, the stairs from the hull of the stratoskimmer glided to the ground.
William looked out into the landscape and was amazed by what he saw.
Alex, too, seemed mesmerized by the sight.
“William,” Jules said, “if you could just wait here for us while we go exploring.” He looked at William’s outfit, “And maybe you could change into something less egregious on the eyes or at least find yourself a bar of soap. My business here is with Alex and not with you.”
William stood up, and glowered at Jules. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a jackass? Maybe I should have left you back there in that lava pit.”
“I certainly would’ve made sure that I took that God-awful hat of yours with me to the grave.”
If this weren’t Alex’s guest, William would have thrown him back into the ship’s hull.
Alex interceded. “We don’t have time for this.” He then looked at Jules. “He’s coming with us.”
“Suit yourself then.” Jules then walked back into the ship’s hull. Not wanting to put up a fight, he decided that William might be of some future use to him.
As Alex and William began to descend the steps, Jules held out his hand to stop them. “Alex, before we exit I must inform you that the scene out there is completely computer-generated by one of our high-powered New Reality systems. There is one person, however, who is authentic.”
Alex and William followed Jules down the stairs and stepped into hell itself. Gasping at the wide-ranging scene of carnage surrounding him, Alex gazed in horror at all the bloodied bodies, dead horses, and scattered limbs littering the landscape. Even the slow-moving stream next to him was filled with bodies, which clumped together, impeding the flow of water.
At the bottom of the stairs a fallen soldier lay at their feet. The man seemed to have met his demise by a blunt blow to the head. Blood caked the soldier’s face, and his skull was deformed by the injury.
“Late fourth century BC Greek?” Alex said aloud, recognizing the shields, helmets, and metal breastplates known as cuirasses on the ground. As a connoisseur of ancient Greek and Roman antiquity, he easily made the connection.
“You know your history,” Jules applauded
There were, however, other soldiers wearing brilliantly colored orange and purple tunics with silken headdresses covering their faces. The flamboyant nature of their military uniforms looked more decorative than functional. William made note of their unusual uniforms, “How about these other soldiers dressed for Halloween? They certainly don’t look Greek.”
“Persian,” Jules quipped, annoyed by the question. “Follow me, you two. I didn’t bring you here to gawk at the scenery.”
“Pleasant guy,” William grumbled.
Jules walked behind the ship and made his way into a large encampment of tents. There must have been a thousand of them scattered along the horizon. Each was similarly constructed from what appeared to be brown animal hides and supported by strings and sticks.
One tent was larger than the rest, and that was where Jules was headed. With Alex and William behind, the three walked up to its entrance.
“As I’ve said,” Jules commented with a sly smile upon his face, “there’s one thing completely authentic here in this computer-generated reality.”
Jules parted the draped animal-skin covering the tent’s entrance.
A single soldier was inside lying prone atop a few large orange-colored pillows. Fresh from battle, his white cape was soiled red while blood and dirt covered his uniform.
Jules bent down and placed his hands on the soldier’s shoulder. After a deep breath, he slowly pushed the man on his back to reveal his face.
“You see” Jules snidely remarked, “My uncle didn’t create all the clones to enter The New Reality virtual world.”
Chills ran up Alex’s spine, and he fell to his knees. His heart began to pound as he leaned forward to get a better look. It can’t be.
Chapter_18
Myra pranced into the grand security room of her Georgian New Reality Headquarters. Still fuming over her recent encounter with Samantha Mancini, her paranoia began to escalate. With both Alex and Jules on the loose and presumably with Albert’s key, her sense of security diminished by the minute.
“What’s the status of the search?” she belted, hoping the answer would be different than what Kevin had just told her a moment ago.
Numerous men and women worked behind semicircular glass tables all surrounding a massive holographic globe, slowly spiraling upon its axis. Different holographic images were projected above the tables and ever changing diagrams, pictures and digital readouts were prominently displayed along the walls in this circular-shaped room.
A gentleman wearing a green WOG suit with multiple stripes along the sleeve leaned over a balcony from which he was viewing the entire floor and said, “Ma’am, we’ve been scouring the globe for our two perpetrators. However, all visual and quantum traces of them are unidentifiable. Plus, they’ve deactivated their biotags somehow, making them completely invisible to our worldwide grid.”
She looked up to him. “Excuses and more excuses,” she exclaimed. “We have surveillance devices all over this whole damn planet, on the moon and in space. And you say that not one of those millions of devices can pick up Alex or Jules? I find that difficult to believe.”
“We’ve—” he began to say.
Myra ignored him as she walked over to a woman wearing a white lab coat with a New Reality symbol along the sleeve. “Karen,” she demanded. “Pull up the quantum signal from Alex Pella’s stratoskimmer.”
Kevin walked behind her, all the time still in contact with the ISA. They too had no viable leads and were searching just as diligently as the security team at The New Reality headquarters.
“President Keres,” she said, producing a holographic display of a blurry ship above the watery Yemen plateau. “This is the last visible and quantum contact we have of them. Their signal has been completely lost since that time.”
A man to her side turned to Myra and added, “It’s like they’re utilizing a technology completely foreign to our monitoring system.”
Alex Pella, Myra lamented, realizing the man’s genius. “What do we do now?” she asked both of them.
“We’ve continuously been searching…” Karen began to say.
Myra interrupted, “That’s not good enough.” She then reiterated a little more frantically, “That’s not good enough!”
Kevin placed his hands on her shoulders, and she began to feel the stress and the tension in her neck melt away with his gentle caress.
“We are doing everything we can,” Kevin whispered in her ear. “The ISA is working just as hard as our people in this very room. Plus, every WOG control station around the world is on high alert. It will only be a matter of time now. Patience.”
Kevin walked beside her, still with one arm around her shoulder. “Now,” he said, “why don’t we both go up to one of those rooms with a balcony overlooking the floor here so we can monitor the situation in privacy?”
Myra began to feel better. As the sense of fear subsided, clear thought returned. “We must also do something about Alex’s partner Samantha Mancini,” she then concluded. “If she’s even half as brilliant as he is, she will also prove a formidable foe. Plus, I can’t fully be assured that they’re not colluding at the moment.”
“I totally agree,” Kevin responded. “I’ll send in a full squad of WOGs to apprehend her.”
“And I want Neurono-Tek completely shut down and their power grid disconnected,” she added. “—just in case anyone else is helping.”
“Agreed.”
“And search the premises for that golden crown,” Myra insisted. “If you can’t find it, use whatever means necessary to coerce an answer from whomever you can.”
“That is the Myra I love,” he then said to the surprise of the men and women working in the security room.
Myra could care less what the people thought of their relationship. Already embarrassed by her husband’s habitual infidelity, she certainly did not shun the rumors of her own affair.
She then looked out into the room, “Who oversees R and D?”
A diminutive man wearing a New Reality lab coat arose from his seat and sheepishly raised his hand. With a slightly stooped posture and goofy grin, he responded, somewhat bobbing while he talked, “I am ma’am.”
“Might I have a word with you?” she asked.
“Yes ma’am,” he answered and then scurried through the openings in the semicircular array of desks until he stood next to her. “How can I be of service?”
“Walk with me,” Myra said, as she escorted him without another word, up to one of the private rooms overlooking the floor. Equipped with multiple consoles and holographic projectors, it was well equipped for worldwide surveillance.
“What’s the status of the nanosplicers?” Myra said, turning to him as they entered the room.
He wrung his hands together and looked around as if he wasn’t supposed to talk about the project. He then said, poorly acting, “What’s a nanosplicer?”
“Have a seat, Todd,” Kevin said, knowing the man’s identity and the basis of his research.
“If I may,” Todd insisted, “I’d rather stand.” Too nervous to stay still, he continued to bob as he talked.
“The nanosplicers,” Myra then reiterated.
“Ah, yes,” he said while darting his eyes side to side. “Those nanosplicers. The good news is that the nanosplicers work extremely effectively. The bad news is that they work too effectively and are somewhat nonspecific in nature.”
“Explain.”
Todd punched in a few things on the console next to him and placed his hand on it. Within less than a second a holographic image came into view of what appeared to be about 20 similarly appearing metallic millipede-looking devices.
“As you can see from his holograph,” he said, “we’ve produced an array of fully functional nanosplicers, each a thousand times smaller than the head of a pin. Plus, they are self-replicating and can perpetuate ad nauseam until we feel the need to deactivate them.”
“How many different strains have you made thus far?” Myra asked.
“A little over a hundred,” Todd answered. “As originally instructed, a strain was created for each of the top executives at The New Reality.”
“Very good,” Myra responded, pleased that her request had been so efficiently completed. Always seeking a backup plan to dispose of any executive at the New Reality that posed a threat to her position, she had commissioned the project herself. “So that means they are ready to be deployed?”
“Not exactly,” Todd responded, with an increased bob. “As I was saying, these nanosplicers are still very nonspecific. Though we designed these little critters to seek out a specific person’s DNA and destroy it, we haven’t reached the sophistication whereby they will identify and kill only the intended target.”
“So if we released the strain designed to terminate Jules Windsor,” Kevin then asked, “what would be the chance that the nanosplicers would find and kill him?”
“Well, a near 100 percent,” he answered. “But—” he attempted to say.
“I think we’ve found a solution to at least half our problem,” Myra happily concluded.
“But,” Todd pressed on, “they’re still very nonspecific and could unintentionally kill millions or even billions of other people in the process. You see, the project is still in its infancy and the sophistication is far from perfect.”
“But Kevin and I would not be harmed?” Myra asked.
“Well, no. That was part of the original stipulations,” he said. “Even so, up to a possible billion could die.”
Myra smiled, turning to Kevin. “Guidestone message number one.”<
br />
He nodded his head in agreement. He, too, fervently believed in the New World philosophy as written on the Guidestones in the center of The New Reality complex. Just like the ten commandments of the Judeo-Christian religion, these were the ten commandments of their world order.
The number one and foremost of all these commandments was to maintain humanity under 500 million in perpetual balance with nature. Though the world’s population now dropped to six billion after The Disease, this number still remained far too high to keep their New World Order running at its utmost efficiency. With computers and robots now performing most of the work on the planet, continued overpopulation was deemed an unnecessary inconvenience.
In the New World Order they were creating, only two classes of people were to remain in civilized society—the ultra-rich bankers, businessmen and politicians who financed, created, and ran the system, and the other lower working class who were meant to be kept at sufficient numbers to ensure that humanity both perpetuated and maintained The New World Order.
“When can we release the Jules Windsor strain?” Kevin asked.
“It can go at any moment,” Todd answered, “but I must again insist that more research is needed before we deploy a single one of these nanosplicers.”
“Release the Jules Windsor strain,” Myra ordered, smiling with her first sense of security for some time.
Kevin again placed his hand around her shoulder, hoping that her husband would be one of the casualties. Though Kevin had thought of having the ISA assassinate him in the past, the man retained too many influential connections, and any attempt on his life could prove counterproductive.
Sweat began to condense on Todd’s brow. Though he fervently didn’t want to comply with the request, he was not a man of enough fortitude or religious vigor to repudiate the order. After punching a few more buttons on the console, he placed both his hands upon it as his entire body underwent a quantum scan. He then looked up at Kevin and Myra and uttered, “It is done.”
The Hidden Reality (Alex Pella, #2) Page 14