by Martha Carr
Daniel never let himself think about how much Clemente may have done to try and bring about a different conclusion. Somehow he had failed this time to silence a loose end in time.
It wasn’t easy for Eleanor to accomplish. She had given up her old life, creating her own form of witness protection, turning her back on her family, never contacting them again. It was all to keep Daniel safe.
His mother knew that her sudden absence would spark enough fear and anger in Clemente to get him to search for her, if only to prove that no one in his inner circle should try to make their own decisions.
But Eleanor had an advantage. Her mother had been a Circle operative and out of an abundance of caution had taught her a few lessons from a life spent always believing someone must be watching.
Eleanor was still able to identify who might be Circle members and she waited till the patterns were well established, and she could be sure she had tagged someone. One day, when she was ready to go and not come back, she walked out of the apartment, quickly dumping her phone and put herself in the path of a woman she had identified as the most likely operative to lend a hand.
She sat down at the woman’s table in McDonald’s, greeting her like they were old friends, and quickly started telling her parts of her story. The operative startled at first but quickly recovered and only briefly looked around for a manager, or maybe it was backup.
Daniel always loved this part of the story.
Just as the woman half rose out of her seat Eleanor said, “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind require that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
Eleanor said it as quickly as she could, bunching the words together, talking in a low voice. Her mother had taught her the universal distress call when she was little and said she was to use it if anything ever went terribly wrong.
She had no idea if the passage would still work but it was her only chance. Her eyes filled with tears as she waited to see what the operative would do next. The woman opposite her stayed half-standing for a moment, looking at Eleanor as Eleanor quickly wiped the tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand.
Then the woman slowly sat back down and took Eleanor’s hand in hers. “Are we safe here?” she asked Eleanor.
“No, not at all,” she had said, and the two had quietly gotten up and walked out the door together. Eleanor had no idea where they were going but she knew it had to be better than where she was running from. It was her only choice left and she was taking it.
Still, the Circle was a cautious organization after so much betrayal at the hands of Management in the past. They didn’t take her further than a safe house for days.
“We’re not going to exchange names,” they said to her. “We’re not going to talk about ourselves at all. We’re not building a friendship and we’re not getting to know each other. These questions are necessary if you want our help. Any resistance and we’ll take that as a no and drive you back to where you, frankly, found us. Understood?”
Eleanor said, “Yes,” as confidently as she could, trying to let them know she was willing to do whatever was necessary to start over and remain alive.
It took endless questions at meetings that were set up at revolving safe houses in Lincoln Square, a neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago where strollers outnumbered the cars. She saw the young mothers as she passed from the car to the three-flat and made herself look away. She still hadn’t told anyone about that part of her story.
Only a day later, she was moved again to Bucktown, only a few miles away, where she was questioned by a new set of operatives who also checked out her stories. She was still wearing the same clothes she had walked out in days ago. She didn’t dare ask for something else to wear. She wasn’t sure that something newer or tighter wouldn’t give away her most precious secret.
They had to be sure she wasn’t a Trojan horse sent there to infiltrate the Chicago operation. They were taking a risk just letting her into the safe houses.
Eleanor became worried that no one could see how desperately she needed their help. “I’m pregnant,” she blurted out on the third day. “It’s George Clemente’s child and he has no idea,” she said, her lip quivering and giving her away.
“I need to find a safe hole I can climb into where he will never find us.” The operatives traded awkward glances. “We’ll get back to you,” they had said.
The time seemed to tick by slowly and it was dark outside before the woman she had approached in the McDonalds came into the room and sat down next to her. “I think we have a solution,” she had said. “I want you to know the only reason we are trusting you with what you’re about to see is because of your mother. We tend to take care of our own, even when they get involved with such repugnant men.”
Eleanor nodded her head and didn’t say anything else.
When she told Daniel that part of the story she always said she was leaving nothing out because she wanted him to know a basic tenet of life. “Nature doesn’t know right or wrong, only consequences. The consequences of being anywhere near George Clemente are harsh, guaranteed. Never forget that.”
“These are yours,” said the woman, handing over a pile of used clothes. “Enough to get you started. I’m sorry, all I have is this old tote bag. It’ll have to do for now,” she said, handing Eleanor a brightly colored oversized plastic bag.
“We need to get on the road. The sooner you’re out of Cook County, the better. But once we leave here you will never be able to call anyone you’ve ever known in your life again. Your name will change, you’ll get a new background story and you’ll be taught a new profession. Something low key that will keep you out of the public eye. You can’t change your mind so we have to know you’re committed.”
“As long as I can stay with my child,” she said, instinctively pressing her hands against her growing middle.
“That will definitely not be a problem,” said the woman, smiling.
His mother was taken to a large campus in the Midwest filled with children of all ages. It was an orphanage created by the Circle to eventually fill their ranks with new recruits and recover from the devastation from Management in the 1940’s.
Daniel became a child in the Butterfly Project and seamlessly fit into the crowds of children. George Clemente never knew he was looking for a single mother. Eleanor gratefully told the Circle everything she knew, except for that one small detail. The notebooks.
They were something she was keeping for her son in case he ever needed a powerful leverage against George Clemente.
“No one ever believed what he was capable of, Daniel. They saw him as evil, but no more so than many others who sounded just like him. I knew they were wrong. Some day, everyone else will too. Make sure it’s not too late when they do. These keys,” she said, showing him where they were hidden, “may be the only thing there is that can help you figure out what is coming next, before it’s too late. I trust that you will know when it’s the right moment.”
He was only a teenager then, listening intently as his mother grasped his hands tightly as she made him repeat the last instruction.
“Wait until I’m sure there’s no other choice,” he said, as Eleanor nodded her head, tears filling her eyes, her face only inches from her son’s serious countenance. “And then take only the last notebook, the one farthest to the right. It will be the most recent one.”
“That way, you may have a little extra time before he realizes it’s gone. A head start. Then disappear again,” she said, “even from me. One chance, one notebook when there is no other way.”
He stood in the bank vault biting the inside of his cheek. It helped that his mother had passed away years ago. He would only be forced to leave the only home
he had ever known. That much he could bear.
He took the small tan notebook the farthest to the right and opened it, glancing at the careful, small handwriting. The notebook was small enough to fit into the palm of his hand.
The dates were all from earlier in the year. “Perfect,” he whispered.
He slid the notebook into his pocket and closed the box, hesitating before he opened the box again, grabbing as many of the little notebooks as he could, filling his pockets. He noticed that the shorter row had notebooks of a different color and he made sure to take as many of those as he could, as well. “Sorry Mom,” he whispered, trying to scoop up the last ones before closing the lid again and putting the box back in its place in the wall, leaving the empty box he rented where it sat on the counter.
As he left the bank he saw the bank clerk waiting on a customer and he ducked his head down as he quickly crossed the lobby before she could see him leave. Once he was out on the street he turned right and walked toward the El stop to the green line that would carry him out to the edge of the city. From there, the car he had left in a nearby parking lot would be waiting and he could drive on to the next stop.
The spider’s web of help was carefully crafted by someone he had never met face to face but he trusted him. Ned Weiskopf had helped him to set up a new network made up of children, now grown, who were raised inside of the Butterfly Project. They communicated within their own online system, even hidden from the handlers who had cared for them. They had taken to referring to themselves as Butterfly Operatives and gave themselves the name Apollo, after a translucent swallowtail butterfly. That had been another Apollo operative, named Juliette Beren’s idea.
Two brothers, Trey and Will Schaeffer, had shared a room with him and become like brothers. They were all like family to him.
They were also the only reason he was going to be able to disappear again, and this time from the Circle as well. It was the only way to keep everyone safe. He believed all the stories his mother had told him and after he heard what George Clemente had done to Ned’s uncle and then his father, he knew he wanted to try and make things right.
After all, that was his father who was trying to take over the world.
Daniel heard a train approaching the stop and took the stairs up to the platform two at a time.
Watchers were everywhere once he got to the top, looking for Circle operatives who were on a wanted list that changed daily according to a cell higher up the chain. They were walking back and forth along the long platform, trying not to arouse suspicion among the few bystanders who didn’t know a thing about the Circle or Management. Daniel always had a hard time believing that was even possible.
His entire world, for as long as he could remember was absorbed by the struggle between the two groups.
A young Watcher strolled by him slowly, practically staring at him. Daniel looked around, not making eye contact. Finally, he looked at the Watcher and said, “You need something?” He was trying to sound like any other annoyed city dweller. The Watcher moved on further down the platform.
Daniel had to trust that they had different objectives and wouldn’t know how valuable what he was carrying inside of his coat would be to them.
There were rumors that the Watchers were fomenting a revolt of their own, trading information about Circle operatives they had known in their neighborhood and collecting it in a national database. They were tired of showing restraint.
It was fortunate that October in Chicago brought a bitter cold and open train platforms were known to be particularly windy. Daniel pulled the knit hat down over his ears and hunched his shoulders making it harder for his face to be seen.
He got on the packed subway car and found a seat in the middle, sliding in quickly as a large woman in a puffy coat sat down next to him, busily picking her nose. He looked out the window, looking in the windows of the row houses that sat impossibly close to the train tracks.
He changed trains twice, getting off and walking a few blocks to a different line, trying to shake the feeling that someone was following him. It wasn’t like he couldn’t spot a tail. He had been trained well as part of the Butterfly Project and had watched as his friends started moving out into the world.
Some ran for local school boards, moving their way up in politics, while others were placed into mid-management corporate roles, quietly making inroads, and still others joined powerful non-profit organizations that were more interested in forming public opinions.
They were taught that there was strength in assimilating and changing public opinion from the inside out.
Each of them had been trained in the basics of surveillance, weapons handling, codes, and anything else that could help them not only stay alive but thrive and give back.
But, Daniel had come across another opportunity.
It was noticed early on that he was particularly gifted at writing computer program code. It came easily to him and he spent hours trading ideas, building on code he found on the internet, or going on different community boards to find out what someone else was creating and throwing in the next layer to advance a project even further.
He started seeing occasional posts from different avatars he knew were in the Project. Bits and pieces they each gave away about themselves confirmed for him that they had to be part of the same system. It didn’t take him long to figure out they were growing up on residential education facilities, the name the Circle had come up with, and were careful to never talk about their past but were willing to say something about how they were doing in the present.
One night, Daniel hacked into the computer system where he was living and was able to find a more complete registry of homes in the Butterfly Project. That made it easier for him to look for even more people just like him.
He kept track of each of them, adding them to the list till he realized there were at least fifty others. His family was bigger than he had realized.
But, without a secure way to chat online he couldn’t let them know they all had something in common and could work together.
That’s when Trey introduced him to Ned Weiskopf and they were able to compare notes. Ned was just as skilled at writing code as Daniel and together they discovered the website, Pastebin that had its own internet relay chat, and was created to let programmers cut and paste large pieces of source code and configuration information in confidential surroundings.
“There’s something more we can do with this,” said Daniel during one of their late-night chats. “We can cut and paste text instead of code and send it securely not only to each other but to other Butterflies. We can create our own network. It’s a way we can stay connected and stop letting others dictate what our futures look like.”
Together, they started to connect the different members of the Butterfly Project who were already out in the world. Apollo came into creation.
The timing was crucial. The backgrounds of Butterfly members were routinely scrubbed before they headed out into the world so they would be seen as neutral high-achievers. Finding them all wasn’t easy. Ned had to write a program that would look for key details to sort the list at first down to the hundreds. From there, they were able to send out spam that had key words that only a Butterfly would recognize and open. Eventually, the network surpassed their expectations and grew into thousands of Butterflies, all sharing information but this time, without the power structure telling them the rules that always led to layers of secrecy, even in the Circle.
Information was shared into a common database and built on top of by someone else who knew another piece of the puzzle, till pictures of how the world really operated started to form. Daniel called it open source intelligence, something older Circle operatives would not have understood.
Older operatives accepted that conspiracy was necessary and it was necessary to limit breaches of trust. Daniel and Ned and their small group decided from the start they would take a completely different course. They would do as much as possible to kill off the conspirac
y by trusting each of their fellow Butterflies and using that trust to defy the odds.
The different strings of young men and women started to connect on Pastebin, and as time passed they were able to share about the pressure to join the ranks of Management or talk about the loneliness they sometimes felt.
Until the Apollo network was started, many of them had felt like they had lost the only family they had known. Ned and Daniel gave them back their family and added in thousands of others whose bonds were resilient and ran deep.
All of it right under the suspicious gaze of both Watchers and Circle operatives. Without meaning to, they became a third powerful force but this time one that operated in an entirely new fashion. Everyone was an equal participant and there was an unspoken agreement that everyone would be trusted with each other’s life. That was a necessity.
If their identities, their real connections and backgrounds were ever known there were too many people who would target them. It was a necessary all or nothing proposition.
Daniel got off at the Oak Park stop and walked the long block to the shops that ran along Lake Street where the car was parked and got in, finally letting himself relax and take a deep breath. Maybe this would work after all.
He took out one of the small notebooks and opened it, reading some of the more recent entries. He felt his head start to swim as he realized at least some of what his father was planning to do to the world. If it were anyone else, he’d have chalked it up to someone who was crazy and surely didn’t have the means for so elaborate a scheme.
But he knew George Clemente was capable of complex organization and cold-blooded mayhem and worse, and still manage to convince others to join him.
A sadness came over him. “Thank God, my mother will never know what a real monster you are,” he said, starting up the car. “But one way or another, I will stop you.”
He headed further out of Chicago getting onto Route 290 going west as fast as he could without risking too much attention. A new life awaited him but first, he was going to have to deal with the details from someone else’s past if he was ever going to let go of the shame he carried with him.