The World Game

by Allen Charles

  In the control room, Shaw jumped to shut and lock the door while Fuller directed the nano varnish to gradually make its way off the desk and move to the ceiling, changing color and texture as it encountered new surfaces. Zardooz was just in the picture as the varnish slid over the edge of the desk to move to the leg. He was head back and snoring from the vodka, papers scattered everywhere on the desk, his two cadet assistants and Arjmand in the annex, separated by a glass door.

  “What are you looking for Mr Zardooz?” said Fuller more to himself.

  “Nothing good for us I wager.” said the President.

  “He knows something or is looking for something that will give him an advantage. He’s pretending to cooperate and I don’t believe he is a suicidal fanatic like Arjmand. He knows that damaging what we have here will kill him too and he can’t threaten to blackmail us when he can’t follow through, so what can he do?” Fuller touched some dimage buttons and personnel files came up. He spoke out, “Find psychiatrist, psychologist, profiler.”

  Moments later two names appeared in a list. One was a Space City doctor from Sheila’s shuttle who listed psychiatry as a second discipline, and the other was one of the President’s Secret Service detail who was a former FBI agent specializing in criminal profiling.

  Fuller noted the locations of the individuals and sent Shaw and Felicity to bring them to the control room. He felt that the rule of four was unnecessary since the self destruct charges had been “vanished” from the complex before Arjmand had hit the button. He also had a gut feeling that something had changed with the alien interference. There had been no sign of them for days since the fragment had been taken into Dinkshif drive mode. He had personally felt a nagging anxiety that had been part of his life, and thus unnoticed, lift from him when the Dinkshif envelope was activated. He hadn’t quizzed any of the others about this feeling yet. He was waiting to see if any unsolicited comments revealed a similar feeling, and he had certainly noticed a lightening of spirits of many of the population.

  He did however notice, every so often and not at a regular interval, the feeling of anxiety trying to invade his mind anew, but now that he had identified this artificial emotion he was able to block it as soon as it manifested itself.

  He decided he would discuss this with the doctor of psychiatry after looking at Zardooz.

  Shaw was entering with a short, stocky, middle aged man, obviously well kept and fit, a twinkle in his eyes and a smile on his face. His youniform revealed well defined muscles and the edge of a receding hairline. “Doctor Peter Lewis, Colonel Fuller and the President.” introduced Shaw.

  The doctor shook hands with both and moved aside as Felicity ushered in the Secret Service agent. “Mr President,” she said,”you know David Lucas of course, David, this is Colonel Fuller.”

  The introductions done, Shaw and Felicity moved to the back of the room while doc Lewis and agent Lucas were seated in front of the dimage and monitor screen. Fuller did not waste any time and went into a full disclosure of everything that had occurred since first contact with Zardooz. He did not give any impressions or draw any conclusions, just straight fact.

  When he finished, he looked to the President and Shaw and asked them if he had missed any detail, or if they had anything to add. There was nothing.

  Fuller then brought in the first analysis of Zardooz that had even some remotely justifiable basis. Sheila’s view that Zardooz was lying about the snake venom on the bottle. Fuller connected the event with Zardooz later volunteering that he had killed such a snake and that there were snakes, rats and vermin in the complex.

  “Now gentlemen, I will play back all security auto recordings of our interactions with Zardooz.”

  Fuller hit the start button and the screen showed the first contact, from the episode with the repair bot, the interaction in the tunnel, right through to the present. Fuller hit fast forward in the static sections and the intelligent system stopped to play when the scene had any significant change.

  “Hold it there!” the doctor called.

  The scene was Zardooz speaking about the snake venom and rats.

  “Can we replay that part but slow it right down please?” the doctor asked, then looked at Lucas.

  “I see it.” said Lucas. “Sheila Johnson is good. She picked it up too.”

  The clip ran in slow motion showing Zardooz face on, looking up at the person he was speaking to, probably Fuller. While Zardooz spoke about the disappearance of the women he looked directly at his audience. The moment he started to talk about the snake venom, his eyes flicked down to his left momentarily, then he caught his physiological reaction to lying and he forced his eyes back up again, the small muscles of his face clearly tensed as he fought the lie reaction.

  “Can we bring up a still image from before the eye movement and set it beside an after image please?” Lewis asked.

  Fuller manipulated the controls and rolled back to an earlier frame, asking the doctor if it was suitable. He nodded affirmative. Then Fuller found the after frame and had the dimage put them side by side. Another command produced three dimensional dimages of Zardooz’s face that slowly rotated through ninety degrees, back and forth. The differences were subtle, but remarkably telling.

  Doctor Lewis bent closer to look at the small motor muscles. When Zardooz was speaking the truth, the muscles were smooth and relaxed. The moment he had to lie, they tensed up and caused bunching under his skin, especially at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Not having the comparison, or the training and knowledge, one would not see a difference. Here it was obvious.

  “Please continue, if that is OK by agent Lucas?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Fuller pressed play and the scene rolled on. The final part showed the recent capture from the nano-bot paint, that Zardooz certainly did not know about. This segment too was most telling, the very first part showing Zardooz relaxed before the sensation of being watched has taken hold, then his reaction to the “watched” feeling somehow caused by the nano-bot paint, followed by his disbelief and blaming it on the vodka.

  “That’s it.” said Fuller. He handed each man a slim file, and said, “This is everything we had on Zardooz before the Destruction Event. Do not remove these files from this room. It has been swept for spying devices and all Iranian communications have been cut off. Everything stays in here.

  Doctor Lewis, Agent Lucas, what is Zardooz looking for? What is his plan? That is why you are here.”

  The pair nodded agreement and put their heads down to read the file material, both adding to the notes they had already taken. Fuller withdrew with Shaw and Felicity to leave them undisturbed.

  “Nickle? What’s going on? Why don’t we have live feed? The audience is getting restless.” said Charonelle in a perturbed voice.

  “I’m not sure Miz Charonelle. I’ve tested all the circuits and checked antennas and transmitters. Everything is working OK. We are receiving from all galaxies throughout the universe. I zoomed in on the solar system and everything is in place there. I can see the fragment. It really is moving now and picking up speed. Uh oh!”

  “What is it Nickle? What is uh oh?” Charonelle was getting worried and agitated, very unlike her usually clam demeanor.

  “I can see a shape that is kinda like the fragment, but it is much bigger and smoother and it is leaving an ionic trail of... wait... of... gold particles behind it. Its like a huge egg flying through space. We can’t see inside the shell. Wow, at this rate it will hit light speed very soon.”

  “Light speed?” This was Howley, now back to normal, if he ever was in such a state. “How did they manage to go from firecrackers on sticks to beating light speed so fast?”

  “Who cares Howley! The problem is that we can’t see them!” shrieked Charonelle, losing it completely. “What are we going to do? We’ll go crazy with nothing to watch. There are no other acts left! Our audience will commit brainicide out of boredom. Howley we have to DO something!”

  “I can do a st
and-up comedy routine.”

  “Don’t you be a fool Howley!” exclaimed Nickle. “You cain’t do stand-up comedy! You ain’t got no legs to stand up on!”

  Nickle looked at the board and saw a faint green glow come from many of the nodes. The humor of his retort had not gone unnoticed by the audience. Thinking quickly, he announced to the network in his best recording voice, “We apologize for this break in transmission and ask you to be patient while we rectify the problem. Please enjoy the comedy routine from our very own funny man, Howley from the Mandelbrot quadrant, or replays of the goriest incidents in this edition of the World Game, featuring lions tearing apart and eating Roman prisoners and some wonderful footage of guillotine executions during the French revolution. If you do watch these replays, please pay particular attention to the heads bouncing off the cobblestones as they are chopped off and miss the catcher basket.

  Other violent atrocities are available through the channel index. Enjoy and we hope to be back on line very soon. This is Nickle Gannon your World Game compere.”

  CHAPTER 73

  The Dinkshif Drives performed as advertised and brought the envelope and contents up and past the speed of light in the universe. Inside the fragment life went on, with days, weeks and months passing as time within the fragment slowed to almost zero relative to the universe they were speeding through, as hundreds of relativistic years passed by in the first weeks of travel.

  As the Dinkshif drives accelerated them even faster, the theoretical limits were breached without notice and they entered multiple speed of light velocity, the time dilation effect changing to thousands of years passing in the universe to their months and single digit years.

  Inside the complex, the hydroponic garden team had nurtured the small seed stores into burgeoning crops of lush vegetables and fruits. There were no trees, but vines thrived in the low gravity effect and watermelons grew to three times their normal size. Strawberries were as big as a fist all the time. All the produce was huge, tasty and more importantly, nourishing.

  Protein came from varieties of beans and one other unexpected source. Fish.

  The water conservation team had detected unusual ultrasound reflections when they were surveying the reservoir and caverns still in use. The shadows that appeared in their scans resolved into goldfish and a few lively pike that had been native to the streams that fed the underground system. How these fish had got in was any ones guess, but they were here and the team learned about fish farming and algae control in the process.

  The offspring of the goldfish were growing larger than their forebears, whereas the pike stayed essentially the same size. These early generations were nurtured and not farmed at all, so the population increased rapidly, which produced a new problem. What to feed them. Fortunately they took to soy bean meal as an algae and weed substitute, so the closed ecology study group were able to balance their equations to account for this wonderful bonus and to preserve it.

  Within months of the discovery, there was sufficient fish population to start culling and delicious fish dinners began to appear on a frequent basis. Bones, offal and waste went back into the garden system as fertilizer which made a difference to the soil growth plants. Small fruit trees were sprouted and controlled using topiary to direct their growth in the enclosed spaces.

  The ecology equations were not identical to surface living, but were certainly panning out to be close to correct, with little loss from the total cycle.

  All in all, the fragment colony was in good shape.

  In the control room, Fuller and the President were meeting with Lucas and Lewis. The observation of Zardooz had confirmed that he was lying but early in the piece, had not revealed what he was searching for. He had not made any overtly threatening moves and had in fact been keeping Arjmand under strict control since the amnesia drug administration. He had been spinning Arjmand a new reality to bring him up to the present, telling him that the world had faced a cataclysmic natural disaster and that Iran and America had teamed up to save some humanity. And that even though he had lost his memory after being struck by a falling rock, Arjmand had been regarded as one of the most important men on the earth and so had been included in the survival program.

  Fuller asked doc Lewis, “So do you think this will stick with Arjmand?”

  “One can never tell with drug induced amnesia. If we take him off the maintenance level of the drug it is possible his subconscious will restore some or all of his previous memory. His problem will be the confusion of the contradictions, because his current belief is as real to him as his former memories were actually real. He could go into total breakdown.”

  “We will continue to watch them. So far he has been rendered harmless which was the alternative to spacing him. We don’t have that option while in Dinkshif mode. What else can you tell me about Zardooz since we last met.”

  Lucas pulled out a sheet of precious paper. The notes on Zardooz could not be trusted to the electronic system in case Zardooz had compromised it in any way. Even personal tablet computers were not safe as they linked into the main system. He placed the sheet where all could see it as they moved in closer.

  “I have some slight indication that Zardooz has a more than passing interest in the small nuclear reactor that has been powering the complex. He seeks subject matter that skirts the reactor, or has some indirect association with it. Over the past months I have correlated all of his search parameters across dozens of apparently unrelated subjects. The only common thread has been these light touches on the reactor data, always in different areas of the data.

  I’m not a nuclear engineer or expert, so what I have done is to list each point where he touched the nuclear database and then afterwards I went in and found the subject matter for each touch. I have a sequential order of his searches, but I do not know if chronology is important. We need a nuclear expert to run over this.”

  “Doctor Lewis, in light of this information, can you add anything to your evaluation?”

  “I think I can Col. Fuller. Zardooz is a very complex personality. Much more than the average person. He has his private persona which he believes we do not see. The nano-paint has revealed the true nature of Zardooz’s character and it is this that is driving him. When we assess everything in his public record, and by that I mean your security records and profile right up to the nano-paint insertion by you, he is a walking contradiction. His public face is showing cooperation and withdrawal from the self destructive religious tenet. He appears to be most reasonable and helpful.

  His private persona, what I have seen and the little I have heard, seems to indicate that he is still deeply dedicated to his religious beliefs, a contradiction to his public presence, clearly in essence, the destruction of the Great Satan America, in the name of Allah at any cost. He does not believe in the seventy virgins nonsense as Arjmand apparently did but he does appear to have an element of self preservation that will override self destruction if there is even a minute chance of success and self survival.

  Other suicide terrorists in the past have had the same last minute reluctance, and therefore there has been some third party or fail-safe to ensure their destruction. If Zardooz was totally dedicated he would not have reacted as he did when he told you about Arjmand pressing the complex destruct button. I have viewed that recording several times and what I see is genuine relief that Arjmand did not succeed. This contra-indicates the total fanaticism required to self destruct.

  My feeling is that although Zardooz is looking to gain some control of the nuclear reactor, he will use it for blackmail purposes rather than self destructive. He will threaten to self destruct but will not follow through unless there is absolutely no way out.”

  “Mr Lucas?”

  “I agree with the doctor, Col. Fuller. Profiling is an inexact science because we only have the known parameters and I do not have access to the computer programs that used stochastic processes to perform the “most likely” analysis. However going back to profiling 101 at Quantico
I would agree that Zardooz was and still is a consummate actor and blackmailer. Whether he would self destruct or cave in at an ultimatum, I could not judge at this time.”

  “Stochastic processes? That is probability and distributions? I had to touch on it during my training.” said Fuller. “It just so happens that we have a doctoral graduate in Stochastic Processes who also happens to be an assistant cook and an excellent shuttle commander right here with us. I want you Mr Lucas, to get together with Doctor Sheila Johnson PhD and see if she can help you redevelop the software you need. We have several excellent programmers who can work with you.

  I do not want to terminate Zardooz or take any action until we are certain beyond reasonable doubt, the basis of our whole legal system, that he is planning our destruction or a mutiny of sorts. Maintain observation, but proceed as we have discussed with all urgency. I will find our nuclear engineering expert and run this by him, then get back to you. Our code word to meet back here without delay is...” he looked around the room for inspiration that would not result in confusion,”... our word will be elephant.” He had spied a small trade mark on the side of a filing cabinet that sported an elephant image, a word unlikely to come up in general conversation. “Use the term “I have an elephant size headache.” in some context. Thank you both gentlemen.”

  The pair shook hands with Fuller and went about their tasks as Fuller contacted Sheila Johnson and cryptically filled her in without any incriminating detail that Zardooz could interpret, if indeed he was listening in somehow. She understood that there was some urgency in what Fuller was implying and immediately set off to find Lucas.

  Fuller sat down to devise a simple code in order to pass on orders over comms in the matter. Elephants were the beginning. He sighed in frustration, thinking how the eons old historical, irrational, animosities were sticking to the fragile remains of humanity like superglue. “Will this never end?” he said to himself.