Unkillable (The Futurist Book 1)

by Dean C. Moore

  Veronica gasped as the pain in her head eased up. She hadn’t even reached a fully standing position yet before she had her iPhone out of her pants pocket.

  “If you’re ordering a beer from one of those waiters strolling the beach,” Adrian quipped, “I’ll take mine with a shot of whiskey.”

  “I’m scanning what’s in the vicinity—underwater. He’ll be headed straight for the nuclear sub masking its com trail. There are a couple other subs to choose from, smaller, closer to shore, even faster on the run, but why travel second class?”

  “You don’t think…?”

  “No, I don’t think he wants access to the nukes. He’s still learning about his world. So far, he’s a kid in a candy store. Why blow up all the candy?”

  “I’ll take your word for it. Though something tells me you think more alike than either of you cares to let on.”

  “Come on,” she said, after disassembling the rocket launcher, sticking it back in her carry case, and hoisting the bag over her shoulder. “Wherever he’s going from here, it’s not Russia. Can’t get too close to their coast with a sub like that without starting World War III, or at the very least, getting on everybody’s radar and making it even easier for us to track him.”

  “If you need any bright ideas just ask.”

  “Actually, I liked your last one. A beer with a whisky chaser sounds perfect.” She whistled for one of the guys running around in a speedo looking like a Playgirl cover.

  Adrian was sure the slight was unintended.

  The excitement of a plane exploding overhead had died down and people were returning to their lounge chairs and their martinis. Tractors were already shoveling up the debris that had landed on the beach, making more attractive sand dunes out of it. Some of the hotel concierges were even going so far as to decorate the dunes with seedlings.

  As to the boats fishing the still-floating wreckage out of the water, Adrian got the sense that they were hauling it to a less eye-catching location where the CSI team could go over it at their leisure—without disturbing the hotel’s guests. Who needed government conspiracies and cover-ups when you had a good hotel management crew working for you?

  Adrian and Veronica would be long gone before anyone asking any hard questions got to them in any case.

  The few people who had noticed where the shot came from before Veronica could stow her weapon were pointing from a distance at them and telling their stories to whoever would listen. For all the takers, none of them were interested in getting any closer to Adrian and Veronica.

  ***

  “What is it, Ed?” Klepsky said, reverting to his Ed-is-really-annoying-the-hell-out-of-me tone.

  Ed had just stepped into his glass-walled office where Klepsky had retreated. It had become the eye of the tornado of scientific activity going on around him in an effort to pinpoint the location of the unkillable man, what he might be up to, how he might be up to it, and what exactly it was they had to fear, besides the obvious. Klepsky could observe the outer bands of that rapidly whirling tornado about him even now through the polished-to-perfection glass walls of his office. Where were a few smudges when he needed them?

  Ed, evidently in the mood to entertain some ADHD, had already diverted his laser focus from Klepsky to his office. “Can’t believe I’ve never been in here before,” he said. “Reeks with old world charm. Sort of like you,” he said turning back to him and smiling.

  Klepsky did go in for heavy wood furniture that caused movers to seek an early retirement. From the vintage sailing ships in a bottle, and the ventriloquists’ puppets, to the hand-carved Native American Totems that also decorated the room, it all belonged to a bygone era, much like him. One of those bygone eras was his misspent youth chasing after artistic inclinations he had no real talent to go with, or not talent enough anyway to be one of the one or two percent of artists in those fields that ever had a chance of feeding themselves off their work.

  “Ah, I beg to report, sir,” Ed said, “I think we’re being played.”

  “What do you mean, played?”

  “Earlier, David and I chewed up much of the day inventing and field testing ray guns to save Adrian’s butt when facing down Tum—The Unkillable Man, get it?—only to find that Veronica had already seen to this need. Strange any communications from them on the subject never reached us. Then, Biyu goes all psycho on us. Turns out someone’s been messing with her meds for weeks. And now look.” Ed rotated three-hundred-sixty degrees and gestured to the outer whirl of the tornado in progress. “They’re all taking apart Biyu’s work over the last few years on Tum, featuring the union of synthetic biology, DNA-computing, and silicon-carbon hybridization processes. None of this frenetic activity would be needed if Biyu’s mind was actually back on line.”

  Klepsky was finally compelled to get up from his chair and go stand by Ed and revisit the view of the hurricane of human activity from the inside of the vortex, a little closer to the center of the room. While it was true Klepsky’s glass-walled office was one of many that framed a kind of inner courtyard hemming in his top people, about that outer rectangle of offices was a sea of additional futurists manning their scientific stations. All caught in the whirl.

  “Remember when the entire resources of this department was absorbed chasing down the wrong Golem Guy?” Ed said.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “He’s doing it again.”

  “But how?”

  “That’s the beauty of a DNA-supercomputing brain. It can handle countless tasks simultaneously. Each one of those thought processes devoted to stymying one or another of us. All while occupying an infinitesimally small part of his brain, while he stays focused on whatever it is he wants to devote the bulk of his mind power to.”

  “I don’t know, Ed. You’re definitely sending shivers up my spine, but there could still be more mundane explanations behind all of what you’re saying.”

  “Oh, that’s the beauty of it. We will spend even more time running down the more routine explanations first. When you see hoof prints, expect horses, not zebras. Kind of the modus operandi of FBI agents too, not just doctors. But you’re right, I can’t prove any of it.”

  Klepsky grabbed a big meaty chunk of Ed’s ass.

  “Ooooh!” Ed said excitedly.

  “Your explanation is good enough for me, Ed.” He pulled Ed towards him and nearly crushed him in his embrace as he French kissed him. By the time he let him go, the whirlwind of activity about the office had all but settled as the countless faces peered in at them through the glass walls.

  Ed was red in the face as he scurried out of the office acting all embarrassed but secretly quite thrilled, judging by his shifting expression. Say one thing for genius techies with bizarre quirks, Klepsky thought, they were all ridiculously low-maintenance. Biyu notwithstanding. All it took was someone good at manipulating people. Someone like him.

  All except for Tum. He wasn’t so easy to play.

  Klepsky went back to his desk and buried his head in his hands as the whirlwind picked up velocity around him again. There he would stay trying to figure out how he was going to deal with this new reality of a super-sentient being far better at getting inside their heads than they were at getting inside his.

  THIRTY

  Ed passed David in the lunchroom seated beside Biyu. She was spoon feeding him yogurt with whipped fruit so he could feed her in turn by sticking out his tongue and French kissing her. Ed stopped dead in his tracks, taking in the scene for several spoon feedings with his mouth held wide until he was literally catching flies coming at him from the cafeteria area.

  Maybe it was time to employ some of those esoteric practices he was getting so good at in the name of calming himself? He rifled through a succession of yoga poses that always left them gasping in yoga class. The shapes would have made great Egyptian hieroglyphs. Each one was accompanied by a power breath meant to relax his face. But the expressions accompanying each pose were undoubtedly morphing into that of a psycho killer. He’
d as of yet not learnt how to keep his thoughts from being mirrored outwardly.

  The yoga not cutting it, he switched to some tai chi stances. With the fingers out and splayed, the legs bent, going through the motions of the kata, always remembering the power breaths, he realized he felt even more like a tiger ready to pounce. So he stopped resisting the feeling. And lunged.

  He marched up to David and dragged him away by the ear while Biyu continued to give him a lost-in-love, dazed look from afar. Practically shout whispering at him, he said, “As if we hadn’t already scored the gold in the dysfunctional family Olympics. There is no platinum medal for going above and beyond, you get me? And little David is not having sex with mommy, and that’s that!” Ed was leveraging his 6’2” height to David’s 5’9” to help emphasize the word “little.”

  “Think about it,” David shout-whispered back. “You know how long I can keep her moaning and carrying on at night with my twenty-one-year-old dick? Five, six orgasms and counting! How long you think Klepsky can stand up to that before revenge sex sets in and he takes to jack-hammering your ass for a little payback and it’s a competition among the Hot and Horny society? Klepsky trying to make Biyu jealous to win mommy back.”

  Ed thought about it. Figuring he’d been manipulated enough for one day. First by Tum. And now by David. But David’s logic was unassailable. “Fine, carry on,” he said, releasing his ear.

  “Wait!” he shouted as David was about to get back into it with Biyu.

  Ed reached over the counter at the cafeteria deli, came away with a bottle of powdered cayenne pepper. Shoved it in David’s hand. “For later, in case she isn’t much of a moaner, or your dick isn’t big enough… just rub some of that over a greased condom or over your own unsheathed dick if you want to moan at the top of your lungs right along with her.”

  David smiled back. “Partners in crime?”

  “Well, in this one, anyway.”

  “Thanks,” David said, tucking the glass pepper shaker away in his pants pocket.

  “What are big brothers for?”

  Ed and David parted company. Ed mumbled to himself as he walked off, “Maybe I should send a letter to the Olympic committee recommending a platinum medal, come to think of it.”

  ***

  Tum let the nuclear-class submarine draw him to it using the same magnetic trick he’d used to reassemble himself after the RPG had knocked him out of the sky.

  He’d already hacked the computer systems of the entire submarine. It was surfacing now under his commands.

  ***

  “What the hell’s going on?” barked the captain of the USS Nautilus.

  “We’re surfacing, sir,” his XO replied.

  “Well, I can damn well see that, can’t I? I didn’t order us to surface so what’s going on?”

  “We’re looking into it, Sir.” The XO kept his voice calm and neutral. The captain was supplying enough emotion for these closed quarters for ten people. He didn’t need to add to it. Though he certainly wanted to. It was enough that the XO was black as the ace of spades, the captain as white as bleached binder paper. The XO was ripped with the kind of muscle definition usually reserved for professional bodybuilders, in the prime of life. The Captain was falling apart at the seams; any fatter around his waist and he wouldn’t need a flotation device when the sub started going down. Any less hair and those remaining strands on his head would never survive the comb-over. The XO was 6’2” and the captain was forced to look up at him from his 5’10”, losing any remaining sense of authority he might have left. You put the two of them next to one another, and people saw conflict even when there wasn’t any. No, he’d play this one cool before everyone was thinking they were going at one another for all the wrong reasons.

  He put on his headset. “One at a time,” he gritted out. After a few seconds he looked back at the captain. “We’re getting reports from all over the ship. We’ve lost control of everything. We couldn’t get a toilet to flush in here right now if we wanted to.”

  “The nukes?”

  “We’re locked out of nuclear as well. Though no one is messing with them beyond that.”

  “You should see this, sir,” one of the XO’s junior officers said. Both the XO and the captain made their way to the monitor. “That’s a human, in case you were wondering.”

  “Swimming at that speed?” The captain made a dismissive farting sound with his lips. “I don’t think so.”

  “More like gliding, sir,” the sonar mapping guy responded. “And he must have gills or one hell of a capacity to hold his breath. And at these depths, possibly he’s made out of steel too.”

  “You’re looking at a damn dolphin,” the captain balked.

  “I recommend countermeasures before he gets any closer. I wouldn’t take any chances with the state we’re in, sir,” the XO advised.

  “I thought you said we’d lost control of everything!” the captain blurted with impatience.

  “Shit, that’s right.”

  “Actually, countermeasures just went back on, sir,” said another lieutenant manning his console within earshot of the commander and the XO.

  “Well, fire, God damn it!” the commander yelled.

  “Firing countermeasures, sir.”

  Together they listened and watched.

  And they saw.

  The target was blown to hell and back again. Or rather, he disappeared briefly from the scope as the explosion obfuscated any chance of pinpointing their mark.

  And then he was just there as if they’d merely set off fireworks to celebrate his arrival and to point his way.

  “He’s still coming for us, sir,” the sonar guy said.

  “Well, I can see that, can’t I?” the captain crowed, wiping the sweat off his forehead with one downward stroke of his hand.

  “How long to the surface?” the captain asked after taking a few seconds to regroup.

  “Less than a minute, sir.” They could hear the ship groaning from surfacing this rapidly as it attempted to equalize pressures so the humans inside it wouldn’t have to.

  “Good, because the damn suspense is killing me.” The captain turned to the XO. “Arm everyone with weapons, in case this ‘dolphin’ decides to come aboard.”

  “No point, sir. The assault rifles and pistols are all chipped. They’ve all been hacked,” the XO explained.

  “Well, we have hackers, don’t we? Get them to counterhacking!”

  “Yes, sir,” the XO said, departing to see the order was carried out, and leaving the captain to stare at the monitor without anyone to vent his anxiety on. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe not. The ‘less than a minute’ that it was going to take them to surface was plenty of time to lose his mind in.

  By the time the sub surfaced they were at full speed.

  ***

  The captain popped the hatch. He wanted to be the first one out. And if need be, the first person to lose his mind. He considered it his duty. He was quickly followed by his XO and a complement of security guards equipped with jujitsu, mixed martial arts, and whatever the hell else they trained those guys with, considering weapons were a bust. Though they carried them too in case a minor miracle occurred and they suddenly activated again.

  Their merman was strolling along the top of the sub. He hadn’t bothered to clothe himself as if no one had briefed him on common decency when taking over and commandeering a sub. As if reading his mind, a form fitting body-suit grew over his groin area into what looked like a pair of scuba shorts. Barring the man being psychic, the captain thought, that was some damn fine facial recognition analysis to read his every expression and slightest eye movement to get inside his head to that degree.

  The security team had already gone out to meet the interloper. But the waves were blasting over the deck so violently at these speeds in these waters that two of them got knocked clear of the deck before even reaching him. The merman kept walking as if he couldn’t even feel the breeze far less the water. Magnetic soles? But he wasn
’t wearing any shoes. An android, perhaps? An android wouldn’t have trouble walking the deck if he could magnetize the soles of his feet at will, as one would think an android might be able to do. If that were the case, why didn’t this guy look Japanese or Chinese? They were the only ones with robots even close to this advanced. Then again, if they wanted to infiltrate a nuclear sub, they might go with the all-American look.

  As he got closer, the captain saw that the guy did indeed look Chinese. He had just misjudged him going by his height. He was a good six foot four inches. So much for his racist stereotypes regarding how tall Chinese people were.

  The guards were attacking their uninvited guest with their mixed martial arts.

  The whatever-the-hell-it-was didn’t even bother to respond. He couldn’t even be bothered to slow down, not even with three of those bastards hanging off him, one of them digging into his neck with his karate chops from behind his back. One guy, his legs wrapped around the intruder’s chest, was trying to sever the jugular vein on the right side of his neck with his teeth. Another one, hanging on upside down in front, was trying to bite off his balls. The one trying to pierce his jugular with his teeth, gave up with that, tried caving in his nose with his knee. The merman remained undaunted after three knees to the face. Knee-In-The-Face Guy was quickly running out of steam in the cold and the wet out here, and so far, had failed to even give the guy a bloody nose.

  Honestly, the captain would have been happy to hit the kill switch and blow them all the hell out of the water. A small sacrifice to pay to stop whatever the hell this thing was from going any further. But, as it turned out, The Thing had removed that option from the gaming table.

  “Stand down, people,” the captain said over the loudspeaker to the assault team on deck, before shouldering the mike in its sheath. The three sailors glommed on to Aqua Man leaped off. To his XO, the captain said, “I guess we should have known anything we could throw at him would be useless. I’m sure that was the reason behind the countermeasures suddenly turning active at that one decisive moment. To prevent all this. Only we’ve been too much in shock to process things logically.”