EHuman Dawn

by Nicole Sallak Anderson

  “Welcome home,” Edgar Prince continued with a huge smile upon his handsome face. He turned from Adam and gazed upon Dawn with an intense look. After a moment he spoke.

  “Dawn, it is so good to see my original creation once more.”

  In response, Dawn stepped forward and offered an embrace to Edgar Prince. As her arms wrapped around him, she found herself flooded with memories of betrayal and pain. Unlike Adam, she could still recall the hurt and terror she had felt when she had discovered how Edgar Prince had used her to enslave the human population. The familiar feeling of guilt began to creep up into her mind and she pulled back to regain her composure. She wouldn’t let him get to her. Nothing mattered anymore except the mission’s objective—to plug Adam into Archion as soon as possible.

  Dawn turned from Edgar and noticed a young woman with milk-white skin and deep auburn hair descending the steps, wearing a beautiful black silk dress that clung to her overly voluptuous body. Dawn envied the gown, realizing that other than the green suit she now wore and the red sequined dress she’d purchased in order to meet Adam for the first time, she rarely wore anything except the utilitarian clothes of the Resistance.

  “Oksana, my dear. Please meet my long-lost son,” Edgar Prince suggested to the woman, who held out a slender pale arm upon which dangled seven golden bracelets. Adam shook her hand, gazing deeply into her brown eyes, noting a look of both passion and fear.

  “Pleased to meet you, Elijah,” she said demurely, “I’m Oksana Natarov. I have heard much about you.” Adam noticed that her red lips turned slightly downward, just like Edgar’s secretary had. His father seemed to have a thing for sexy, pouty women.

  “The pleasure’s mine,” Adam replied, instinctively charming the beautiful woman and ruefully noting his own appreciation for classically sexy women. Like father like son.

  “And you must be the Dawn,” Oksana said, eyeing Dawn suspiciously through narrowed eyes.

  “Yes,” Dawn remarked, shaking the woman’s hand, “I love your dress,” she added.

  “Do you?” Edgar Prince cried, “Then we shall have several just like it sent to your room. Consider it done. My staff accommodates me the moment I desire something. I love the instant satisfaction that comes from a networked civilization, don’t you?”

  He led them up the granite staircase to the solid gold gate that functioned as the front door of his home. Images of crosses and chubby winged-cherubs decorated the handles and bars. Like any networked door in the eHuman world, it opened quietly as they approached. Adam stared at it as they crossed the threshold and entered Edgar Prince’s house.

  “Do you like it?” Edgar Prince boasted, pointing to the golden gate, “I took it from a 16th century nunnery in Spain just before we burned the city to the ground. You’ll notice many artifacts in my estate that I saved before the fires. I now have the largest collection of pre-Great Shift art in the world! Most of my colleagues consider my estate to be the finest museum on the island.”

  “Interesting,” Dawn TeleSpoke to Adam, “He could burn the people of that time, but not their art.”

  Adam nodded cautiously to her as they entered the study off to the right of the entryway. Many of the pieces Edgar Prince had mentioned hung upon the mahogany walls. Dawn’s eyes were drawn to the painting titled “The Sistine Madonna” by an Italian Renaissance artist named Raphael. Adam also noticed it. The beautiful Virgin in the picture seemed to warn him, Get out of here before you too become part of his collection!

  “Well, what do you think of your new home?” Edgar asked after they had settled upon a set of green leather couches in the center of the study. He glanced at Adam and noticed how intently his son was taking in his surroundings. Obviously he was uncomfortable, which pleased Edgar to no end. He needed his guests to be uncertain about their fate—it would make discerning the true intent of their request to come to the island much less painful for everyone involved.

  “Your home is lovely,” Dawn answered.

  “Yes,” Adam agreed, “The art is especially intriguing. It must have been quite an effort to gather it all before the WG destroyed it.”

  “Really Elijah, we all know the WG does nothing without my permission,” Edgar admitted. Oksana shifted uncomfortably in her seat, causing a lock of her amber hair to fall into her face. Edgar reached over and slid the luxurious mane over her shoulder, exposing her long white neck. Her lips formed a pouty smile, but her cold gaze revealed not even a hint of emotion.

  “No need to pretend otherwise,” he continued in a lazy voice, “Nothing was destroyed unless I gave my approval. I’ve always loved art. Even as a child I would beg my mother to take me to the museums in Boston. Of course, the installations paled in comparison to what I collected during the Great Shift, but I still remember those days with mother quite fondly.”

  “How can you recall the days of your youth? You’re an eHuman, aren’t you?” Dawn demanded.

  “Yes, I Jumped like everyone else,” he admitted slyly. He was hiding something and both Dawn and Adam knew it.

  Adam glanced at Oksana, who sat silently at his father’s side. She shifted her eyes to the floor, avoiding his gaze.

  “Our memories of the flesh were lost when we Jumped, father—so how could an early exposure to art in your human life still inspire you?” Adam challenged him.

  Edgar Prince allowed a devious smile to slowly cross his face. Again he reveled in his position of knowing more than the couple. They were prey to his advantage, perched upon their seats, completely at his mercy.

  “You know, Elijah, you never should have left me,” he began, “While your eHuman body is attractive, you were much more handsome as Elijah. Had you remained at my side, you would have had an eHuman body created in your perfect image and likeness. The Princes have always been some of finest representations of humanity.”

  Adam remained silent. He wasn’t sure where his father was going with the conversation.

  But Edgar knew what he was doing. Like a cat, it was time for him to play with his prey a bit.

  “You’d love to recall what it was like to make love to her, wouldn’t you?” Edgar Prince taunted.

  “Make love to whom?” Adam queried, still unsure of the man’s intent.

  “Sophia, of course. Don’t you wonder what was it like to lose yourself in her embrace, to kiss her warm, soft human lips?”

  None of these images made sense to Adam, and Edgar reveled in his ignorance.

  “You’d also probably kill to know more about Neuro and how it came to be,” Edgar continued, “Life would make more sense, if only you could remember what drove you to Jump in the first place.”

  “We told you already,” Dawn cried out in frustration, “The Resistance forced him to Jump at my request!”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Edgar Prince snapped at her, “I know that both of you are driven by the longing to remember what life had been like before you became eHuman. The desire to know your past is overwhelming. You are powerless to the WG due to your forgetfulness. It makes you weak and unable to truly challenge the world I’ve created. Do you think I’d allow myself to experience such a vulnerability? No! I didn’t Jump until we had secured the MindScrape technology!”

  “MindScrape? What are you talking about?” Dawn had never heard of it. She’d been intimately involved in the Dawn Project for over fifty years before she left for the Resistance and she knew that Edgar Prince had Jumped before that.

  “The algorithmic science of MindScraping. The process of taking the memories of the flesh and reformatting them into a digital record that could be stored in the eHuman database.”

  Both Adam and Dawn were shocked.

  “What?” they cried in unison.

  Edgar stood and began to walk about the room, enjoying in their incredulity. He had his audience right in the palm of his hand. If anything would drive Elijah to reveal his intentions, it would be anger. Learning about the MindScrape procedure would certainly piss him off.

 
“It’s simple, really. You know that the first set of experiments during the Dawn Project proved that memory wouldn’t permanently follow the Lux as it Jumped from the flesh to the eHuman body. On one hand, this discovery was very useful, because it meant that the WG would be able to form a New World Order after the Great Shift—since the population wouldn’t be able to recall what had just happened to them.

  “But it also meant that those of us in charge would suffer the same fate of total memory loss. This simply couldn’t happen. How was my dear Ruth Donovan going to be a proper World Leader if she didn’t know our past?”

  Oksana winced and Edgar Prince smiled at her.

  “Tsk, tsk, my dear,” he said with a sardonic sweetness, “You must mind your manners. Jealousy isn’t becoming for one of your kind.”

  Adam noted the tension between the two.

  “World Leader Donahi and Edgar have continued their affair after the Great Shift,” Dawn TeleSpoke to Adam, “And Oksana doesn’t like it.”

  Adam nodded to Dawn. Edgar Prince took this gesture as an indication that Adam wanted him to continue.

  “As the Dawn Project continued, a special research team was created to look into the mechanics of memory. At that time in history we all believed that memory resided either in the brain or the Lux. It turns out that something in the middle occurred: memory followed the Jump, but faded after three days. Thus, neither the physical body nor the light body held human memory. This left only one other body to explore: the etheric body.”

  “How could memory be stored in the etheric body? It has no physical form,” Dawn challenged him.

  “That had been our original thought. But consider this: the etheric body is an electromagnetic field that surrounds the flesh yes?”

  Adam was extremely glad he’d paid attention when Dawn and Origen had educated him on the human constitution during their first meeting.

  “We also know that information can be sent along electromagnetic fields—correct? For example, our voice and digital images are distributed as analog waves of information over the wireless network in order to make a TeleConnect call. For that matter, all wireless networks exchange data via various forms of electromagnetic wave fields. The etheric body is no different, it too is an electromagnetic field that can send and store data.

  “As the special ops team continued with its research, it was soon discovered that every action we took in the flesh, every bit of information we gathered while alive, every situation we had lived through, was recorded and stored, in the form of electromagnetic particles and wave sequences within the etheric body that surrounded us. And the brain of the physical body acted as a receiver, tuning the human being’s Lux to the various waves or channels, in order that data analysis and memory recall might take place.”

  Adam and Dawn stared at Edgar Prince, not quite understanding him. Edgar wasn’t surprised. He’d always been a man before his time, and no one had ever really understood him.

  “Consider it this way,” Edgar continued with a touch of delight, “The human brain was actually a radio, set to the correct channel frequency of the etheric body. In order to recall the information, it tuned in and transmitted the data waves to the Lux, which would then determine the day-to-day choices and actions that the human being would follow. When the brain was damaged and unable to tune into the etheric body, memory lapses and other forms of dementia would occur. When the brain was healthy, it kept the three-fold body in a state of harmonious communication.”

  “So the etheric body was not only responsible for attaching the Lux to the physical body, it also recorded the life lived while in the body?” Dawn asked.

  “Exactly! And when we discovered this, it was only a matter of time before we invented the MindScrape procedure, which is really very simple. Before I Jumped, an electromagnetic scanner read the contents of my etheric body. Since the data was stored in wave form it was analog in format, just like human voice. The data had to be digitized, which was done using a simple digital signaling processing algorithm. The results were transferred to my eHuman database and software was written for Neuro to decode this data and allow my Lux to access it as memory.”

  “And what about the fact that memory often lingered after the initial Jump?” Dawn asked.

  “The original etheric body of the human remained measurable for about three days after the heart of flesh body stopped. It would weaken at constant rate until it disappeared entirely. The eHuman body was able to tune into the frequency of the old etheric body, but usually with errors. No one was completely clear-headed after a Jump. And once the original etheric signal was gone, so were the memories written in that electromagnetic field,” Edgar Prince explained.

  “Who qualified for a MindScrape procedure before a Jump?” Adam challenged.

  “All of those who invested in the Dawn Project. Consider it a perk for those who joined our cause,” Edgar Prince explained, turning his gaze to Dawn, “Please don’t be mad at me, Dawn. The technology didn’t exist at the time of your Jump. Being first has it’s disadvantages, my dear.”

  “But once you had the technology, you didn’t share it with everyone?” Dawn cried.

  “No. Why would we want everyone to recall who they really were? Better to leave them in the dark, and program them to forget the entire 100,000 year experiment of carbon based humanity. Only those who needed to remember, got to remember.”

  “You mean that the global elite of the time were offered the chance to join you and remain powerful with their memories intact, or Jump with the masses and forget that they and their riches had ever even existed!” Adam accused.

  “Yes. Basically everyone on this island, as well as the seventy WG members.”

  Adam glared at his father through narrowed eyes. He felt the anger rising within him. How dare this man take human history away from the people? How dare he remove their link to their past, the very origin of their being?

  “Why?” he cried out, unable to fathom what greed and insanity would compel Edgar to play God in this way. “Why would you do such a thing? What gives you the power to take away everyone’s memories of life in the flesh but your own? Why should yours have been saved?”

  “Because my story is the only one that really matters, Elijah,” Edgar said, patiently, “I’m the one who created eHumanity. Therefore I’m the one who must know himself. The rest of you know yourselves through me. My gift of technology is your gift of immortality. Isn’t that enough?”

  “You greedy bastard!” Adam exclaimed, unable to stop the rant forming at his lips, “Your generosity? Ha!”

  Edgar looked at his son intently. A cruel smirk formed upon his lips.

  Adam knew he’d said too much.

  Adam, Dawn TeleSpoke, Stop now.

  But he’s cut us off from our source! Adam replied, All of us! And worse, it’s a game to him!

  Stop now! Dawn answered firmly.

  “Really Elijah, let it go,” Dawn said out loud, “Now isn’t the time to rehash decisions made two hundred years ago, is it? Sit back down and let’s enjoy your father’s company. I’m sure this isn’t how you intended our first family meeting to turn out, is it Edgar?”

  Edgar shook his head slightly at Dawn’s remark, but kept his gaze upon his son.

  “It really is a shame that you were so impudent with me, Elijah,” he said in a honeyed voice, “Your life would have been so much better as my son, the heir to a dynasty, rather than a lowly Newsreel reporter in a useless Province.”

  “No one can be an heir in an immortal world,” Adam snapped in spite of himself.

  Edgar Prince chose to ignore the outburst.

  “It matters not,” he said, “I’m a forgiving father, Elijah. Tonight we’ll celebrate your return home with dancing, music, and good company. You’ll come to the ballroom at 7 o’clock sharp to meet my friends and colleagues. Everyone of importance will be there. In the meantime, Chester,” he gestured his head to a bald eBot that stood in the doorway, “will bring you to your sui
te, where you’ll find many beautiful things to wear tonight.”

  Dawn and Adam rose from the couch while Edgar Prince and Oksana strode to the doorway and made to leave the room.

  “By the way,” Edgar called over his shoulder as he exited, “Feel free to leave your energy packs with Chester. I would like to take a peek at the technology. Besides, you won’t need them here in my home, which is your home now as well. You’ve been granted access to recharge on my private network.”

  He left the room, taking Oksana by the hand and leading her down the carpeted hall to his recharge room. After his successful reunion with his son, he needed a little pick-me-up of the sort that only Oksana could provide. Even the World Leader’s Pleasure Zone enhancements paled in comparison. Oksana was a very special member of his harem.

  “I think that went very well, didn’t it my dear?” he crooned.

  “I thought Elijah was a bit out of line,” she answered, trying to show disdain for the handsome guest and please her master.

  Edgar laughed, “His outburst was most telling.”

  “Why do you say that, Edgar?”

  “I now know the answer to why Dawn and Elijah have returned.”

  “And what’s that Edgar?”

  “Revenge.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “What the hell is that?” Origen hissed as he scanned the horizon with his enhanced vision application.

  The city of New Omaha had been built in the center of an enormous prairie, allowing him a clear view of the horizon in all directions, which was beginning to darken. No matter which direction Origen looked, a storm seemed to be brewing.

  At least Origen hoped it was a storm. Tornadoes were known to hit the area during hot summer nights. Yet something deep within Origen told him the approaching clouds signaled a different kind of doom.