Jezebel's Ladder

by Scott Rhine

  When they arrived, she could see the backup van on the street corner and knew Benny would be listening to every word. That gave her the confidence to say, “So I show you mine, and you show me yours?”

  Robins led her inside, and bolted the door. Using a single, dim, hall lamp, he opened a floor safe that Oobie hadn’t noticed on recon. While he took out an envelope, Jez put on a pair of white, lady’s dress gloves. She pulled a piece of golden paper out of her purse, exactly the same dimensions as the other page.

  The profiler pulled a gun out of the safe as well and directed her to the next room. She let the listeners know where she was by saying, “You want to do the trade at the kitchen counter?”

  When they were both seated on stools next to each other, he gripped her hand. “I think this setup is way too convenient. We should do this at the same time.” The safety clicked off.

  Benny ordered the troops in.

  Her mouth went dry.

  “Unless this is a trap meant to kill me,” Robins said.

  “It’s safe,” she asserted, trying to steady her voice.

  “Then recite Simplification with me.”

  Pattern Simplification:

  The human mind is an advanced predictive processor. Imagine driving or catching a ball. This four-dimensional, predator-prey, motion algorithm in the brain can be generalized to filter noise from any abstract data.

  By the time the assault squad had battered down the door, both people in the kitchen had fallen to the floor. Jez made it to theta, mitigating the tsunami of data. She was breathing heavily. It sounded almost erotic.

  The former actor was first through the door. He grabbed the pages off the floor before anyone else could see them, and stuffed them into a metal lunchbox. Robins was convulsing and babbling incoherently. The troops tranquilized him, splinted his tongue, and hauled him out to the induction center.

  Then, Benny held Jez close in his lap and smelled her perfume. As he stroked the back of her neck, he whispered, “Good show, Jez.”

  Chapter 7 – Higher Truth

  Jez awoke in the same, private-hospital room again. This time it was dark, and a stuffed, nine-inch reindeer lay next to her on the pillow. The reindeer had a pink bow, big eyelashes, and a handwritten name tag that said, “Olive.” The sheer absurdity made her laugh out loud, even though her head was splitting.

  The sound woke Benny, who had been sleeping on the chair in the corner. “Don’t scare me like that again. Two pages in two weeks is a record.”

  When Jez tried to ask a question, the words and sounds fought with each other and slurred together. The former actor held up a hand. “Don’t try to speak. Simplification is probably the quickest-acting and most virulent page. Your brain is looking for something to organize. At this point, it will simplify anything you focus on, even language. If you talk too much, you’ll end up with another version of speed speech. Instead, we’d like you to focus on the pages. With your abilities, maybe you’ll find something we missed.”

  Benny tapped his phone open and said, “She’s awake. Bring the demonstration.”

  The head of the Hollywood branch of the project pulled his chair closer. “I made them keep you under until the CT scans came up clean with no brain swelling. You’ve been promoted to Talent Scout in the Mergers and Acquisitions department. It’s time to share the next layer of secrets.”

  Moments later, Elias Fortune strode into the room, smiling. “You found an excellent recruit, Ms. Johnson. You are to be commended! Already he’s inventing a new form of martial arts and correcting my guards’ protocols. It seems I have a new head of security. I want you to do more of this luring thing.”

  “People respond better to her invitation than to blackmail, sir,” Benny grumbled. “I think you’ll be impressed to see what else she can do. Why don’t you introduce her to the artifact?”

  The billionaire pulled out a softball-sized crystal ball, and pressed a button. Instantly, a star map filled the walls of the room. “This is a map of every known red giant in our galaxy, and some that astronomers don’t even suspect yet.”

  Jez stared in awe as Fortune narrated in a tone that grated on her spine. “This hand unit is just the projector. The prototype was the size of a football field. I gave this page to a former SETI lead manager. He saw his page as computer code, pure math logic. The man was secretive and totally obsessed. Unfortunately, he burned out before it was completed. The first replacement I picked flamed out in a week–humans can only take high-gamma state for so long. But if you try to open the cocoon for the butterfly, it won’t survive anyway.”

  Benny interrupted the coarse logic. “Evidently, it’s an intense page. While he was raving, the second person tore the page into strips. We found that any master of a page can will it to come apart into three, smaller units, supporting subsections we now refer to as paragraphs. Since then, we only give people a paragraph at a time.”

  Fortune, miffed at the mollycoddling, continued. “The third scientist wasn’t in the same league as the others but he got the unit working. It locates red giants everywhere. There’s a lot more to the code we haven’t penetrated yet, but we know this map will hold a key role in the future of human space travel.”

  Jez took the globe from his hand and stroked the surface. The star field slid sideways. She spread her fingers and the image zoomed in. Fortune blinked. “We didn’t know it could do that.”

  Benny smiled an unspoken, “I told you so.”

  Jerking a little, Jez stuttered, “Combine with anomalies.”

  “Crusader’s page?” Fortune asked. “What would that give us?”

  “The dark to the light,” Jez said cryptically.

  Benny watched her, trying to guess her meaning. “Anomalies in space? That would be black holes. That’s the counterpoint to the stars, yin and yang.”

  Fortune nodded slowly. “So we could map anything using those two extremes, like building any number on a computer from zeroes and ones?”

  She closed her eyes. “More. Missing. Tell about all pages.”

  Jez dropped the crystal ball onto the sheets as her hand twitched. She whimpered.

  Benny stroked her hand saying, “Easy, it’s just new pathways forming, new connections in unexpected places. It grazes the motor memory sometimes. Try not to move too much.”

  As her eyes stayed closed, Fortune turned off the projector and put it away. “We don’t even know how many pages there are. Someone obviously meant them to work together. Nonetheless, some, like the Russians, would rather kill their page holders than let anyone else know the secrets. The Russian Army had two paragraphs we call Deep Quantum and Zero Point Energy. Either paragraph eventually sent the reader into a coma. The Russian navy has algae-based acrylics. The US Air Force Midas project had Ice Nine, a stronger construction material than steel, but then they ran out of funding. Recently, they picked up some odd gravity equations from the dead professor that Eye Corps tracked.”

  Alarmed by the amount of negative input, Benny said, “Some pages are harmless. One, called Super Goo, was like the ultimate air bag.”

  Fortune was a realist in a familiar debate. “Almost all the pages represent power. Many, like the Override page, can be turned into weapons. Others, like gene design or biomass sustainability equations, give a corporation an edge on technology for the next century.

  “I found the first page in the Ladder Project. We call it Archetype. Simplification is just one paragraph of that page. I was a bioengineer trying to create new medicines. There are infinite combinations in nature, but only a few Archetypes a species will aspire to. They all try to converge there. The female will only mate with the male with certain traits. I learned that we don’t need to be concerned with all combinations, just the ones everyone is heading toward. In mathematics, there is something called a fixed-point iteration. Perform the same operation over and over till you reach a balance that no longer changes. In music, the chorus has many members, but when you listen, they combine into one message.�
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  The older man paced as he related his story. “But even with my advanced skill, I went broke over a period of thirteen years, waiting for FDA approval that would never come. Desperate to earn money to save my failing company, I found that the same Archetype principles applied to Hollywood stars. There are only about eighteen male lead morphologies and thirteen female leads. Using that knowledge, and a vast, film library of free pornography from the seventies, I could map body images from one actor to another. Thus, the X-Ray specs program was born. You could make the people in any film appear naked with perfect realism. It made me a millionaire overnight.”

  Jez wrinkled her nose at the concept. Benny said, “Jezebel, I agree with that assessment, having had it used against me. The only pattern immune was his wife Claudette. Fortune then made millions more selling the blocker techniques.”

  The billionaire sneered back, “I plowed those millions into the stock market and real estate to buy the hand of that wife.”

  Benny started to argue. “Claudette put just as much into that studio as… Forgive me. You were saying?”

  Fortune stared at the actor for a moment. “You want to screw her, don’t you?”

  Benny struggled for a moment over which woman the billionaire was referring to. “Claudette was a friend before you hired me to collect more pages. Her request was the only reason I let you speak to me. And as lonely as she got when she was married to you, she never asked and I never offered.”

  Jez blurted out a single word. “Ternary.”

  The men stopped arguing. Benny asked, “Pardon?”

  “Page authors. Mindset base three.” Jez’s speech started like a car with square wheels, but she quickly gained momentum. “The document has three broad sections. The primer describes vocabulary we lack to understand the whole, like explaining microbiology to an ancient Sumerian. The second category is life science. The third category has to do with the practicalities of space construction.”

  Both men were too stunned to speak, so she continued. “I can’t prove this, but within each category, I expect nine ideas. The whole document, when you piece together all the complete pages, should contain twenty-seven. This is three to the third power.”

  Fortune muttered, “Outrageous.”

  Benny laughed. “I’d wager every dime in my bank account that you won’t find any way to disprove her. Borrowing from both of us, her IQ is probably over four hundred, but I think she’s proven her recruiting theory and risked enough for tonight.”

  Fortune blinked. “Butterfly, take a week off. Fly to Hawaii to find that surfer Oobie was tracking. I don’t care, but I want the list with your next ten proposed employees on my desk by next Friday. We shouldn’t all risk being in one place again. It could endanger the whole project.”

  With that, the older man departed brusquely.

  Benny was still chuckling. “That’s as close to a thank you as you’ll ever get from Dirt Bag.”

  “Why you… on project?” Jez stammered.

  Benny got serious. “I think of our Ladder like Jacob’s Ladder. He saw angels and a way to climb to Heaven. Later, he wrestled an angel so that he would be blessed by God. He did it because he was afraid his brother, Esau, was going to kill him as payback for earlier treachery. Fortune has committed a lot of evil deeds, and he’s trying to wipe that clean. However, there was a price for Jacob escaping his past sins: a limp, a name change, and some new rules. He got what he wanted, though, for himself and an entire people.”

  “I thought we were discussing Dirt Bag. Are you escaping something in your past?” Jez guessed.

  “Just like the song says, I’m building a ‘Stairway to Heaven.’”

  Chapter 8 – The Top Ten

  Jez never refused a trip to a tropical paradise.

  She lay on the white sand next to Daniel, basking in a bikini. Daniel, by contrast, was forced to wear shoes, war-paint sunscreen, and a big, floppy hat. “You were right about the fantastic view, but this gear you’re making me wear is birth control.”

  Jez laughed as she watched the surfers. “You’re a vampire. Too much sun will sear the flesh right off you. I, on the other hand, have a performance tan to maintain.”

  He grumbled and had more of his virgin colada. “What’s the word on our target?”

  “He is as normal as the day is long, but he’s got great muscle definition.” She winced as another one of the athletes wiped out in a tight curl. Daniel looked longingly at the unreachable girls all around. “Don’t sweat it. I’m still teaching you the ropes. When the time is right, you won’t find a better wingman. What did I tell you about presents?”

  Daniel sighed and recited, “Girls like presents, even little ones. Whenever they look at it, they think of you.”

  Jez nodded and held up her origami-butterfly necklace. “Most girls have a favorite animal. Find that, and you’re halfway home.”

  Jez didn’t say that the primary purpose of her advice was to get the boy to listen to a girl, and ask personal questions. “Then you find out what her secret, guilty pleasure is. We all have one: chocolates, books, exotic tea flavors, nail polish.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he asked, taking a bite of fresh pineapple from his tray. “What’s yours?”

  “Shoes. Learn the basic types and brands, and you’re in with about one in six hotties.”

  ****

  That night at the pig roast, Daniel seemed eager for conversation. “Any luck on that list the boss wanted?”

  She nodded. “I found the first seven easily. I’ve got to do some heavy research reading for the rest. Then I may need to visit the observatory and borrow some expert brain power to finish my recommendations.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” Daniel offered.

  She shook her head. “Just enjoy your vacation and be ready to start that computer programming class on Monday.”

  “No other plans at all for this weekend?” he fished.

  She feigned ignorance and then signaled the staff to surprise Daniel with a cake that had sparklers in it. “Happy seventeenth birthday!” Jez shouted, as the whole luau sang to him.

  Daniel had a huge grin on his face. “It isn’t till Sunday.”

  Jez shook her head. “With the flight back and the time zone changes, you’ll miss the whole thing. I wanted to give you a chance to celebrate.”

  “You really are a great older sister,” he replied.

  “So does that mean I can take back the presents?”

  He punched her playfully in the shoulder.

  The first present, from her, was a watercolor set. “You need more color in your life.”

  He felt the paper, and commented, “The texture on this is great.”

  “It’s handmade,” she explained.

  The next gift, the smallest, had the code name “Uncle Buddy” written on the tag. “A blank DVD?” asked Daniel.

  “Read the note tucked inside.”

  The note was signed by a popular action star. The DVD was a copy of his latest film.

  Daniel exclaimed, “This isn’t even out yet!”

  Jez shrugged. “Your uncle knows some people on the Oscar committee. The last present is from Dirt Bag. I bought it. The money is a corporate bonus for the whole Crusader success, but it’s the thought that counts, right?”

  Daniel stared at the manila envelope. “I don’t need more money.”

  “I know; that’s why I put it to good use.”

  He opened it up, curious. Inside was a letter from a southwestern-US, horse-rescue society, thanking him effusively for saving the lives of ten horses, and giving them enough food till they could be adopted. Behind the letter were pictures of the horses he had saved, with the promise of more to come.

  Jez announced, “You saved them from the butchers at auction. It represents everything you do for a living, but no one knows about. I figured this way you could hang a plaque in your room.”

  “That’s kind of cool. Strange, but cool.”

  ****

  By t
he return trip Sunday night, she was ready for the teleconference aboard the jet. All three division managers were linked into her presentation. Daniel sat behind her to operate the PC and provide moral support. He already had the rescued horse pictures scanned in as screen savers.

  She led off with, “The trick for recruiting is not just to get friendly specialists, but to find people we can hire without raising suspicions.” She frontloaded the presentation with some no-brainer suggestions: two former astronauts, a mechanical engineer who specialized in eco-friendly projects, a Brazilian aerospace executive with experience as ground control, and a doctor who had invented better re-breathing devices.

  After showing photos and one-page bios of each, she added comments like, “The cosmonaut could be a Russian trade expert, or an international, private-jet pilot.”

  Fortune rubber-stamped the first set. “You have a good eye. Even with no pages, these will all be good additions to my staff. The Brazilian will present a little difficulty. I may have to acquire the whole company, something I’ve been meaning to do for a while.”

  Then she started phase two. She had carefully leaked a few of these to Benny in an effort to gain his support. “Number six, Swami Rama, is a master yoga instructor.” She gave her pitch about the benefits of meditation and preparation prior to reading a page.

  When Fortune scoffed at the idea, Benny explained, “I use a regimen of meditation myself, and teach it to the newcomers. You’ve seen how beneficial the theta conditioning has been, but it takes a lot of my time away from other, more important matters.”

  Baker, the British head of intelligence gathering, said, “Delegating this stuff is always more efficient. It can’t hurt to try.”

  Fortune grunted acceptance.

  “Number seven is actually an old acquaintance of mine, not someone from your list. Kyle Anderson is a freaking genius. He works for a computer animation company, one of your Hollywood rivals, but is bored out of his skull. He worships the ground Dirt Bag walks on, and has read all his computer-science papers.”