REVELATION: Book One of THE RECARN CHRONICLES

by Gregory N. Taylor

  “Don’t worry my love, I set the anti-bug sweeper to ‘seek and replace’ at five millisecond intervals. Only you can hear me. The last thing I want to happen is that I get dragged off during the night and disappear. If that were to happen we’d never be able to save our little girl”

  The anti-bug sweeper was a smart gadget that swept the home environment looking for listening devices. When it found one it would replace the offending bug with one of its own devices that broadcast innocuous conversations recorded earlier, so all the person who was listening would hear would be conversations about daily routine, television programmes and the like. As well as sweeping the house for listening devices it would change its own electronic signature at the same rate, making it extremely difficult for someone other than the homeowner to locate. It was expensive and could only be bought on the black market but it was a godsend to Maurice as he hid his true feelings well when outside the house but, when in the comfort of his own home, he was prone to display his true contempt for those in authority. He looked at the figures before him on the display screen.

  “If we borrowed seven hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds over ten years that would mean monthly repayments, at 20% interest (fixed rate) of over fifteen thousand pounds a month.”

  “Is that the lowest percentage rate we can get?”

  “Well, even if Stefansson had a heart – which I don’t believe he has – and dropped it to 15% the payments would still be about twelve and a half thousand pounds per month. Both of those figures are over ten years.”

  “What if we took a loan out over a longer period? We’re both in our mid-thirties. Maybe over twenty-five years?”

  “OK….. Let’s see what happens if I change the loan period to three hundred months. Just a few seconds. Thirteen thousand per month at 20% and ten thousand at 15%. We’re still screwed.”

  Selling the house wasn’t even an option. Once in power the government had decided to reduce everybody’s salary by fifty percent. Of course, the recession had been orchestrated by The Order, and the various world governments’ responses had been at the behest of The Order too. To reduce the inevitable protests the government had paid off everybody’s home mortgages. Those who didn’t already own a home were given a basic home. Most people were initially better off financially, no longer losing a large percentage of their salary to home repayments but this was short-lived. As prices rose, salary levels fell behind. But a clause had been inserted in the new agreement with the government that homes could not be sold. They could be passed on to sons and daughters when the parents died but selling a home to raise funds was prohibited. Nobody had found a loophole in this deal to date, although many had tried.

  Maurice wasn’t prepared to see his daughter suffer, or much worse, die. He was just as certain that he didn’t want his wife to suffer the loss of another child. Borrowing the money was a non-starter. He could see only one alternative… but he couldn’t tell Karen.

  Chapter 11

  8 p.m. Wednesday, 25th January, 2051

  Nathan Smith was tired. He wasn’t tired of life, but he was tired of this body. His knees creaked and clicked whenever he stood up. His fingers were visibly stiffening as arthritis took its steady toll and he hadn’t had a full night’s uninterrupted sleep for several years. Nathan usually chose to die in his eighties, unless he became afflicted with a debilitating illness, when he would bring forward the date of his death. He fully expected to extend this to ninety years, maybe even one hundred years in the near future. That is, unless his research projects were successful

  He was looking forward to the day when souls could be directed to specific new bodies. It was a real nuisance leaving this to chance. Several of his previous lives had started in less than perfect circumstances but he had always managed to find his way back to The Order. The most difficult journey had been when he had been born and abandoned in the middle of a field in India, an unwanted girl. Fortunately another young woman had found him and taken pity upon him. A British cavalry officer had subsequently fallen in love with her, had accepted her adopted daughter, and taken them both back to England with him. If this officer hadn’t been so strong of character and able to overcome the social distain with which 19th century London society looked upon him, Nathan’s ability to control The Order may have broken irrevocably.

  He went downstairs to the basement of the house, to a room that was always kept locked. Only he had the key to this room. The lock was a little stiff but not too difficult for him to unlock. The room was full of his favourite moments from this most recent life; mostly souvenirs from distant travels. He walked over to a reclining couch, lay down and spoke.

  “I’d like to see highlights of my trip to India.”

  The room had a domed ceiling which was actually a giant extremely high definition LED screen. It burst into life and began showing Nathan’s visit to the Taj Mahal. Holidays were far easier to record now, you just needed a pair of special glasses and the whole holiday experience could be recorded. They looked like regular sunglasses to the casual bystander but one of the arms contained 16,000 terabytes of memory and the other contained a high quality sound recording system. You could playback directly through the glasses but most people preferred to download their experiences directly to their home entertainment systems via Wi-Fi. Some people liked to record their entire lives in this way and had drawers full of memory cards. They used to say that when you die your life flashes past your eyes. That was now known to be untrue, but this technology provided the next best thing.

  Self-termination had advanced in leaps and bounds. Nathan thought back to the days when only the more primitive methods were available. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d hanged himself. He had slit his wrists once but, to be honest, he didn’t like the mess that it made. He didn’t know how Thomas had found the willpower to walk in front of that lorry in 1965, when he’d been ten-year-old Simon, Nathan much preferred the modern method; by lethal injection. Needles were a thing of the past, so there would be absolutely no pain whatsoever. The soon-to-be-departed can administer the dose themselves, or a member of medical staff can do so.

  Most people, whether rich or poor, normally went to Self-Termination Centres, or STCs as they were known, when they had had enough of this life. People used these facilities for many reasons; maybe they were physically or mentally ill and could no longer cope with life or maybe they had had a good life and just felt that it was time to go. Quit whilst you’re ahead. Some would self-terminate because their lives didn’t match up to their expectations and were in a hurry to start their next life, not considering that they could potentially be rushing towards a new life that was much worse than the one they were about to leave behind. Perhaps the saddest cases were those whose children were in financial difficulties and the parents chose to die so that their offspring could claim their inheritances earlier than expected.

  After about ten minutes of watching his memories unfurl in front of his eyes, Nathan reached down to a cushioned pad located on the right-hand side of the recliner. He placed his hand upon the pad and applied a little pressure. The pad registered his finger prints and took a tiny DNA sample. When the machine was satisfied that the person that it was about to terminate was indeed Nathan, he felt light pressure on the back of his neck. This was the machine injecting just the correct amount of deadly chemicals to kill him.

  Exactly five minutes later, the head of Nathan’s personal security team received an automated message from the machine. Nathan had trusted this team with his life, and was now trusting them with his death. It was done. Nathan was gone.

  There was to be no funeral, no memorial service. Everybody knew that Nathan would be coming back. They didn’t know exactly when, and they certainly had no idea who he would be, but they were in no doubt that he would return to lead The Order. The team knew exactly what it had to do. Two members placed Nathan’s body upon a trolley and his corpse was wheeled into the adjoining room containing a furnace that had been pre-
heated to over one thousand degrees Centigrade. Nathan was placed inside the cremation chamber, and the door to the oven closed.

  The team had been fully briefed as to the identity of his temporary replacement and were fully aware of their responsibilities should the incumbent refuse to relinquish his position upon the return of the now incinerated Pindar. The members of this elite group had passed the task down from father to son – and more recently to daughter as well – for centuries. Their unswerving loyalty was exceedingly well rewarded and their discretion was beyond refute.

  In the Great Chamber, as soon as Nathan Smith’s death had been confirmed, Thomas was sworn in as Pindar.

  The Pindarship was in good hands. Thomas McCann knew exactly what was expected of him and he would perform his duties to the letter and to the best of his ability. Nathan Smith would return in around twenty years’ time to find that The Order had been left in good hands…or so he thought.

  Chapter 12

  9:30 a.m. Thursday, 26th January, 2051

  Maurice Boone was an accountant. In fact he was a very good accountant. He used to make a reasonable living but the salary crash of the previous decade had hit him hard, just as it had hit everybody hard. The only people who were not affected detrimentally were the already privately rich, government officials, and employees of The Order, who were naturally looked after. As it was, the Boone family had been surviving well until now. There hadn’t been much money left for little luxuries or even to put aside as savings, but they had always been able to pay their bills. But crises such as Caitlin’s illness couldn’t be budgeted for. Health insurance would have solved the problem but the couple couldn’t afford that. Premiums had gone through the roof and, although the family had had private health insurance before the salary reduction, they had been forced to let it lapse in order to pay for day-to-day expenses such as electricity, clothing and food.

  Just after the salary crash, Maurice had been lucky enough to be offered some private work by a man simply known as ‘the Businessman’. Nobody knew what exactly the Businessman did or how he made his money. All that was known was that he was obscenely rich. Rumours were rife that he was perhaps a drugs dealer, or that he was some kind of gangster, maybe even a modern day Al Capone. Surely he had to be some kind of criminal; if not, then why did nobody seem to know his name? Why did he need an alias? Everybody was convinced that the Businessman’s dealings were shady, an opinion that was difficult for Maurice not to ignore. If he wasn’t operating outside the law why did he need to maintain a veil of anonymity? Maurice’s work for the Businessman required creative accounting to ‘lose’ a large sum of money. Maurice hadn’t told his wife about his work for the Businessman – as far as she knew, Maurice could have been doing private work for anybody - but by doing this work he had earned good money and the eternal gratitude of the man. It had helped for a while but sudden influxes of unexpected income, by their very nature don’t last forever. Bills are paid, some essentials are bought, and it’s soon back to square one. Although Maurice never met the Businessman face to face (very few had) he had been told that should he ever need help he should contact him. If the Businessman was in a position to help, he would. Being owed a favour by the Businessman was a good position to be in.

  Of course the Businessman could have lent Maurice the amount of money that he needed for Caitlin’s treatment – or even made a gift of it (it would have been a mere drop in the ocean to him) - but he didn’t want to set a precedent. It was, however, well within his power to help him in another way.

  The only solution that Maurice could see was to steal the money from somebody who wouldn’t even feel the effects of its loss. He didn’t see how he could get such a large amount of money legally. He had felt very uncomfortable doing the work for the Businessman previously, not being sure which side of the judicial fence he had been standing, but he didn’t see any alternative. Not if he wanted to save the life of his daughter.

  He went over to the fridge, took out a chilled bottle of Fosters Ice lager, flipped off the cap, took a sip of the beer and sat back down at the kitchen table. Michelle was at netball practice and Karen was at the gym. Karen wouldn’t have approved of him drinking straight from the bottle but what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her and he allowed himself this small act of rebellion when she wasn’t around.

  The task at hand was to decide upon a suitable target and then work out how to execute the robbery. Of course he’d seen lots of robberies in the movies but he’d never done anything like this before and would need expert help; help that wouldn’t come cheap. Maybe the Businessman would be able to give him a few names of people who could help him; he must have some shady contacts.

  But, before that, having decided to steal the money, he had to think about how much he should steal as it would affect the choice of victim. Obviously he needed to steal more than just the sum required for Caitlin’s treatment; he couldn’t do the job on his own and his accomplices – whoever they were – wouldn’t help him out of the goodness of their hearts. They would need to be paid, and they wouldn’t come cheap. He had no doubt of that. Plus, there was the question of Caitlin’s aftercare. He tried to think of who he could target. Many very wealthy people lived in the city but they would also keep their money in the bank. However, a bank robbery was out of the question. It would be too public and far too dangerous. Many banks now were protected by sensors connected to automatic pulse guns. They were supposed to be set to ‘stun’ but there had been instances, whether by accident or design, when bank-robbers had been killed. The technology, although very good, was obviously not infallible; getting killed wouldn’t help Caitlin at all. He needed to think of something else.

  “I’ve got it!”

  Maurice gripped the edge of the table and uttered the name, Christian Parks.

  Christian Parks was a professional footballer who played for a mid-table Premier League club, Arsenal FC. He also had a pathological distrust of banks. Whilst everybody else was totally on board with online banking and electronic transfers, Christian couldn’t bring himself to leave his money in the bank. He had no choice but to receive his salary through interbank transfer but, as soon as the money was in his account, it would be withdrawn in cash and taken to his house, and kept there until it could be transported to a secure location. He had several luxurious properties and moved his money between each location at irregular intervals, each time in a heavily armed convoy. To add to the security of these transfers there would be nine other convoys dispatched simultaneously, so anyone wishing to rob such a convoy would have to attack all ten to be sure of success. This, of course, would be very expensive both in manpower and resources and there were easier ways to get hold of money – for professional criminals at least. Taking the money en route was a non-starter; Maurice had to steal Christian’s salary whilst it was sitting in his home, waiting for transfer.

  Christian Parks wasn’t even a regular first team player but he still earned one million pounds per week. The salary was paid monthly, so there would be four million pounds in cash for twenty-four hours at least, plenty enough to pay Caitlin’s medical bills. That would leave three million pounds to be shared between the accomplices. And there had to be others involved; that was a non-negotiable certainty. Maurice wouldn’t even get past the gate on his own.

  He still had an hour or so before Karen would return from the gym. Taking the Businessman’s card out of his wallet, he placed it on the kitchen table and pressed his right thumb down on the top right corner of the card. His thumbprint activated the ink on the card allowing a previously invisible telephone number to be seen printed on the front. The card automatically connected with Maurice’s computerized communications system and dialed the Businessman’s number, but not before engaging the scrambler so that the conversation couldn’t be heard or at least understood by others. Maurice picked up the business card and cradled it in the palm of his hand. The call was connected and a male silhouette was displayed on the LED screen on the wall.
<
br />   “Yes Mr. Boone. What can I do for you?”

  Maurice was a bit taken aback. It hadn’t occurred to him that since the business card had initiated the call, it had also identified him to the Businessman.

  “Um. Hello Sir. I wonder if you remember that I did some sensitive work for you a while back.”

  “I remember, Mr. Boone.”

  “Well… you said to contact you if I ever needed help. Help that probably only you could provide.”

  “I remember, Mr. Boone.”

  “Well… sorry to trouble you Sir, but I need to find a rather large sum of money quickly.”

  “To pay for your daughter’s kidney transplant, I assume?”

  Maurice was stunned. How did the Businessman know about Caitlin’s illness? The silhouette cupped its chin in one hand.

  “I can see you’re surprised that I know about your daughter’s tragic situation. There’s not much happens in this city without me knowing about it. So…”

  “So I was hoping that you could recommend two or three of your associates, experts in breaking and entering into high security establishments.”

  “Business premises or a private residence?”

  “A private home.”

  “And what would be the revenue from this endeavour?”

  “About four million pounds.”

  “Well… you need seven hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds for the treatment, so that would leave two hundred and seventeen thousand pounds for you. The rest of the spoils must be shared equally with the other team members, of course.”

  Again, how did the Businessman knew how much Caitlin’s treatment would cost?