by Nancy Madore
“No,” said Poseidon. “I’m not familiar with it.”
“You’re kidding!” exclaimed Gordon. “Where have you been for the last thousand years?”
“I don’t know,” said Poseidon. “I wasn’t anywhere until Wessler awakened me.”
“You weren’t anywhere?” echoed Gordon. “How did Wessler awaken you?”
“I don’t know that either,” said Poseidon. “One minute I was in my homeland and the next it was almost as if I ceased to be. Except that I did still exist. Only I was nothing. And then suddenly I was here again, compelled to serve a fool.”
“It sounds as if you were trapped in a talisman,” said Gordon. “You don’t know who trapped you?”
“No,” said Poseidon, his expression darkening. “But when I find out who it was—” he didn’t finish the statement, but his fierce eyes left no doubt as to the retribution he would seek.
“Did Wessler say how he came to be in possession of the ring he used to control you?” asked Gordon.
“I know nothing of a ring,” said Poseidon. “I have no idea how Wessler controlled me. I assumed that he had discovered the power my father used to control me as a child.”
“You were bound to a talisman as a child?”
“Worse,” said Poseidon. “I was bound to my father. He took possession of all of our souls when we were still very young. We were made into warriors, and instructed to kill Nephilim.” He paused, thoughtful—and even his thoughts seemed dark. His mood appeared to have gone from raging to brooding. “It was the same with Wessler,” he continued, “and now, apparently, with you.” Though his distaste for the situation was apparent, a strange glow came to his eyes. It almost seemed as if his initial anger was slowly being replaced with a reluctant interest in this new master of his. “I do not see the same evil in you that I saw in Wessler,” he observed bluntly. “Yet I cannot perceive what it is that you want from me.”
Gordon ignored the latter part of his comment. “So…you went directly from the ancient world to working for Max Wessler,” he clarified.
“Yes,” said Poseidon. Though he was growing calmer, it was clear that his anger still simmered beneath the surface. He did not like being under Gordon’s control, but he seemed relieved to have been liberated from Wessler. “I was Wessler’s slave for twenty years,” he went on, “forced to exist in the disgusting body of a fermenting vegetable. I was not allowed any freedom whatsoever. Wessler had that idiot Ritter guarding my every move. They tracked my whereabouts with some kind of device on my ankle. I was never permitted to go outside, or allowed to know what was happening in the world. All I was told was what they wanted me to know in the course of carrying out their evil work.”
“Wait,” said Gordon. “You were only with Wessler for twenty years?”
“Or thereabouts,” replied Poseidon.
“But…that would put you here in the nineties!” Gordon glanced at Clive. “T.D.M.R. was already conducting this research by then. I thought this technology originated with you.”
“No,” said Poseidon. “Another god had been helping them before me. But something happened. I could sense that something had gone wrong. I was not their first choice, but now, they had no alternative but to use me.”
“They?” prompted Gordon.
“Wessler was not working alone,” said Poseidon. “When I was first brought here, we were in that same conference room that you were in. There were nine other men present besides Wessler. They joined us from that screen on the wall.”
“Who were the nine other men?” asked Gordon.
“I don’t know. Wessler didn’t tell me, and I’ve never seen any of them since that day.”
“Would you recognize them if you saw them again?”
“Yes,” said Poseidon. There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes as he said this.
Gordon glanced again at Clive.
“Can you give us any information about them?” asked Gordon. “Anything that might help us to identify them?”
“They were like a pack of hungry wolves,” said Poseidon. “Extremely greedy and drunk with power. They were insatiable monsters.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“They had more power than any mortal should have,” said Poseidon. “They each held positions of great authority.” He paused, thoughtful. “They all shared a common goal—which they needed me to help them achieve.”
“How did they know about you and your…abilities?” asked Gordon.
“I don’t know,” said Poseidon. “But I could tell that they knew a great deal about me. They told me what they wanted me to do and I had no choice but to do it. I was forced to remain in one building—even sleeping there. They had private quarters set up for me. They told me nothing except what was expected of me. I was not even permitted to know why I was doing it.”
“What was it that they wanted you to do?”
“They wanted me to help them manipulate the weather,” he said. “I found their technology extremely difficult to work with initially but, in time, I discovered that it was suitable for calling forth power from the atmosphere and directing it to other places. Yet it was hard to direct it with any precision. There were many mistakes.” Poseidon paused a moment, as if recalling some of the mistakes.
“Everything had to be calculated numerically,” he continued. “This world has become little more than a series of geographical anomalies for me. I have intimate knowledge of every fracture beneath the earth’s surface. As well, I’ve been kept up to date on all atmospheric activity—for they had discovered the link between the activity in the atmosphere and the energy that is constantly building beneath the earth’s crust. We now know that this pent up energy in the earth can be made extremely unstable by simply manipulating the atmosphere.”
“For what purpose?” asked Gordon.
“In the twenty or so years that I have been working for Wessler, I have created everything from thunder storms to earthquakes,” said Poseidon. “In the last five years, precision has become less of a problem—although the episodes we were creating were still relatively small. It wasn’t until recently that we began experimenting with the level of energy that you witnessed that day at T.D.M.R.”
“What changed?” asked Gordon.
Poseidon shrugged. “Suddenly it became imperative that I set off a specific fault.”
“Where?” demanded Gordon.
“I only know its numerical location,” Poseidon told him.
“Can you write it down?” asked Gordon. He approached Poseidon cautiously, to hand him the pad and pen that he had been using to take notes.
Poseidon wrote down a series of numbers. “The maps on their computer systems were constantly being updated,” he said. “But, by this time, I was well acquainted with this particular fault. It was already problematic, so it would not be hard to set it off. However, they weren’t just looking for a disturbance this time. They wanted a catastrophe.”
“What happened?” prompted Gordon. His tone had become anxious. Nadia knew exactly what he was feeling. She held her breath and waited to hear the firsthand account of a past disaster from the perspective of its creator.
“The formula I created was replaced with the one I sent your suspect,” said Poseidon.
There was a moment of stunned silence.
“Wait,” said Gordon. “This latest incident was the first earthquake Wessler had you create?”
“Yes and no,” said Poseidon. “There have been other earthquakes, but they were mostly accidents. This was the first time we attempted a large scale disruption in a specific place.”
“Okay…and you sent that email from Ethan Blevins?”
“Yes,” said Poseidon.
“How?”
“Although I was a prisoner at T.D.M.R., I did, from time to time, come in contact with people,” said Poseidon. “Ethan Blevins was a computer technician who kept me updated on the programs I used in the course of my work. We were always upgrading, so I saw him often. Of
course, Ritter kept an even sharper eye on me whenever anyone else was around, and as well, I was under strict orders not to speak unless it was to ask a question about the program. But the computer technician, Ethan Blevins, never stopped talking. He spoke mostly of trivial things but sometimes I would get bits of information about what was happening in the world, so I always kept an eager ear.
“And then one day—quite unexpectedly—Blevins delivered a message from the outside. It was obscure, to be sure, and I don’t think he knew its import—or even that it was intended for me. It was addressed to all employees using the new program. It was an email from one of the research sites that Blevins used. On the surface, it was simply offering a resource for help using the program. But as I glanced at the list of services the site provided, I saw something amazing. The first letters of each of the items as I went down the list spelled out ‘son of Cronus.’ I glanced at Ritter, to see if he saw it too. It seemed so blatant, nearly jumping off the page. But no one else appeared to notice it.
“Whoever sent that message was offering to help me,” said Poseidon. “However, I had no way of responding. Though T.D.M.R. had an internal email network, it was password protected. If I had an email address, I had no way of accessing it. And what’s more, although many of the programs I used were online, I was not allowed to venture beyond those programs to access the internet. Whenever I did—even accidentally—a little alarm would sound from my computer and, if I didn’t leave that page immediately, my computer would shut down in sixty seconds.
“But in the course of my training with Blevins, I had watched him sign into his email account a number of times. I discovered his password and memorized it.
“But my situation was bleak. My activities were monitored during the day and I had no access to the computer at night. Ritter would sometimes take little breaks during the day, but he usually called in Finbury to keep an eye on me during those times. I don’t think Finbury knew what I was, exactly, but he must have realized that I was a prisoner of sorts. I was very limited in what I was allowed to do. I was forbidden to leave my body. I was forbidden to speak to anyone about my work. But these were just formalities. Between keeping me in the dark and removing all access to the outside world, there was no one to reach out to anyway. It even occurred to me that, supposing I did get a moment alone to access Blevins’ email account, he would see the email and know that someone had broken into his account. Then he would change the password and the connection would be lost.
“Time passed. A new computer system was installed. Blevins and I began spending more time together. I wondered if maybe I could get him to help me. He was not of the same ilk as the others, and I’m certain he had no idea what they were planning to do. Of course, I was never alone with him and, as I said, I was limited to asking questions about the program that we were working on. I began trying to send messages to Blevins through my questions. I could see him growing curious about what we were doing. He seemed to sense that I couldn’t speak freely. Yet time was running out. My training was almost over. He was coming less and less. Desperate, I created a freeze in one of the programs so that Ritter would have to call Blevins in. Then I shut down my computer. I waited for Blevins to get there before I turned it back on and then I signed in very slowly—so slowly that I knew he had to have seen my password. Then I took him to where I had been before I caused the computer to freeze. Right there, on the screen, was Wessler’s objective, describing the massive earthquake that I was to create. Blevins would’ve had to have been blind not to see it. And he was looking right at it…studying it, in fact. At this point Ritter came over, so I immediately changed screens. Blevins didn’t say a word. But I knew he had seen enough to know what we were doing.
“With every day that passed it became more evident that Blevins wasn’t going to tell Ritter what I had done. But what was he doing about it?
“Then one day a man I had never seen before came in. He told me that he was our new computer technician. That was how I learned that Blevins had been killed. They said it was an accident, but I knew better. My situation seemed more hopeless than ever. I had no choice but to complete the assignment that Wessler had put before me.
“In determining where I would have to send all that energy to create the disturbance that Wessler was demanding, I first had to calculate the direction of the beam in relation to its point of origin. In this first critical step, I created a formula that would send all that energy back to T.D.M.R. From there, I simply had to adjust the direction of the beam until the correct angle was achieved to reach the desired target—which was that problematic fault I mentioned earlier. Before calculating these changes, I set aside the original formula—the one that would bring the energy back to its point of origin. You see, we too, were sitting on a fault. But there was no way for me to enter that original, incomplete formula into the computer myself. Somehow, I had to get it to that professor who had offered to help.
“I spent many hours wondering how I could manage it before I finally came up with an idea.
“I had a picture of the Northern Lights on my computer. The picture was special to me because that event represented one of the few nights that Ritter let me go outside. I had been delighted by the spectacle of the dancing lights, so much so that Ritter took a picture of it and, before he died, Blevins scanned it onto my computer as my desktop picture. Only the picture wasn’t exactly right when Blevins first uploaded it. In fact, about half of it was too dark to make out. Claiming that he could fix it for me, Blevins opened the picture with one of the programs on my computer. He made the picture so large that I could see all the little squares that made up the image as a whole. I asked Blevins what the squares were, and he explained that they were pixels. Using one of the tools on the program, he selected only the pixels that were too dark to see and then used another tool to brighten them. The picture was now perfect!
“I spent many hours thinking about how Blevins fixed that picture. One day, while Ritter was working on something at a desk across from mine, I dared to open the picture in that same program that Blevins had used. I zoomed in like he had done, until I could see each individual square pixel. Then I used the ‘select’ tool to single out one of the little squares.
“I had an idea. It was similar to something we used to do back in my homeland when we wanted to send out secret messages. We would hide the message in something else—often in carvings or tapestries. I worked on the picture for days, experimenting with it until I finally figured out how to insert a text box into the little square and type in a tiny black number. But then I worried that it would be too noticeable, so I went back and figured out how to change the color of the text from black to a shade that was just slightly lighter than the rest of the box. It was a tremendous amount of work for something that no one might ever see. But I had to try. So I incorporated the first formula—the one that would send the beam back to T.D.M.R.—into the picture.
“Then I waited. Every now and then, Ritter would step out without bothering to call in Finbury. It was never for more than a minute or two, but it did happen. I had everything ready to go, should the opportunity arise. When it finally did, I went online and immediately typed in the address of the email site that Blevins had used. Then I signed in as him, using the password that I had memorized. Everything seemed to take longer with the infernal beeping of the computer alarm, but fortunately, it was not loud enough for anyone outside the room to hear. I was never supposed to be alone, you see.
“Those seconds it took for Blevins’ account to pop up seemed like an eternity. I had no way of knowing if his account was even still active. Imagine my joy upon finding that it was. I immediately scrolled to the date of the message from that professor—his name was Edward something—hit the ‘reply’ button, and attached my photo of the Northern Lights. I typed some phrase or other in the subject box—something to attract his attention—and hit ‘send.’ Then I closed the window to the email site and the beeping stopped. I had done all of this in le
ss than a minute.
“I don’t know how much longer it was before Ritter returned, but by then I was back to work. He suspected nothing.
“My next opportunity came within a few weeks. The minute I was alone I went back into Blevins’ account in search of a reply. It was waiting there for me. At first glance, it appeared to be an advertisement for advanced security equipment, but I could tell that it was from him. In the subject box he had typed, ‘Who’s managing your security?’ He was asking for a name. We had just installed a new security system so I knew the person in charge. He was a buffoon, but he was definitely the man my contact was looking for. His name was Thomas Gerard.
“I didn’t have time to hide the information in another picture, so I took a chance and simply inserted the name into one of the links included in the advertisement.
“I didn’t hear back a second time. I waited, growing more distressed with every day that passed. And then suddenly, the day of the event had arrived. It seemed that Wessler was going to succeed—until your phone call that morning.
“I was desperate to get rid of you, but Ritter was watching my every move. And Wessler was checking in with him every few minutes. After your first phone message we immediately ran an internal check on the events of the night before. We scoured everything—the tapes, the computer logs—it really appeared as if nothing had happened. And yet the head of security—the one I had named in that email, Thomas Gerard—was missing. And then they brought Timmons in for questioning and I knew. One look in his eyes and I knew it had been done.”
“Had you seen Wayne Timmons before?” asked Gordon.
“No,” said Poseidon. “He worked the night shift, and I was always locked up for the night, so it would’ve been easy for him to avoid me.”
Gordon took a moment to absorb this version of the events on that fateful day when the San Andreas Fault was hit.
“If only you hadn’t come that day,” said Poseidon regretfully. “It would have been the best thing for everyone if T.D.M.R. had been destroyed. Of course, Wessler would still have controlled me. It’s possible that he would’ve just started all over again somewhere else. And yet, I had hopes that my contact would not let that happen.”