A Family War: The Oligarchy - Book 1

by Stewart Hotston

  “For eight decades a single team worked on the project within Euros, although more than three dozen other research groups existed worldwide at some point or another. Yet, whatever they tried, there was no breakthrough: no telepathy.

  “A number of the corporations abandoned their experiments, concluding such technology was unfeasible. Euros, Indexiv, Pharma-Klein and Mesoscape continued, although no one escaped the cut backs, as everyone moved onto space exploration and the race to colonise the Moon and Mars.

  “I don’t know the technicalities of it, but the breakthrough came when one of the researchers at Euros, whose Hound had become more than a tool to him, experimented with ways of allowing the creature to dream, even when denied sleep. Like many discoveries, this pet project,” David snorted at the unintentional pun. “resulted in the Hound being able to share his waking dreams with those who were emotionally close to him. It wasn’t telepathy, but the distant projection of feeling. Knowing exactly what he had done, this researcher and his team were able to derive a theory of the mind that permitted the sharing of thought, feeling and emotion. The team worked furiously for another decade, it simply wasn’t possible to replicate the results the team leader had produced in his Hound. Something was lacking in their thinking. However, they were close enough for Euros to give them leave to begin acquiring experimental material.” Helena knew she was listening to that experimental material.

  “The team was prevented from capitalising on their serendipity by the European Conflict, around the time of your birth I suspect. A number of them were seconded to work on the first of the genetic plagues used at the time.

  “That, and the gradual introduction of autonomous robotic units, spaced out the reconvening of the research team in Euros. I have no idea whether any further teams continued to work for other Companies but, given the lack of material evidence, it’s a moot consideration. The first generations of true telepaths were stunted, their link to one another rarely manifesting without some triggering trauma and, then, exclusively confined to the sharing of emotion alone: Empaths.

  “With the Cloud itself finally beginning to unfurl its incredibly vast wings, sharing a reality our flesh and blood was never intended to access without mediation, this was not what Euros was expecting its team to be spending their time and energy in producing. Empathy, whilst possibly useful at one time, had been rendered obsolete by in situ AIs working to analyse the responses of those encountered by the subject.” Isaac stopped talking as if he’d just realised something important. “Like yours, Ms Woolf.”

  “I have one too,” said David.

  “I’m sure you do,” said Isaac. “Anyway. The team leader managed to persuade the Company to let them continue working. After all, he reasoned, they had to be close.

  “The fifth generation were truly telepathic, but with this came two unforeseen problems. The first was that they were no sooner able to articulate their feelings than they almost drowned in the sea of voices crying out from the rest of humanity. Secondly, they were more than capable of influencing those they wished to manipulate. Most of them burned out before the critical incident, but enough were left, perhaps four or five, to create the conditions that led to the caveats designed into the final generation: Edward’s generation, and ours of course.

  “I’ve not been able to ferret out what happened; those who were left of the previous generation demanded, with some success, that they be set free and allowed to dictate the outcomes of their own lives; they were … persuasive. In the end, they were all put down.

  “After the incident, the team leader grew increasingly concerned that truly telepathic individuals posed too great a threat to the established order the Families had built around themselves, regardless of the technological advantage. However, Euros felt it deserved to gain from the centuries of research, whilst the team came to believe that three functions had to be bred into the next generation.” He held up fingers on which he counted off his points. “The first was to deny them fertility: no chance that they would overcome their creators. Second, they would be denied longevity. Mortality would be their lot, one advantage traded for another. Yet, even then, the memory of the rebellion of the preceding generation, who’d attempted to carve out rights for itself, drove the researchers to shape the telepaths in such a way that their minds were largely enclosed within their own kind.”

  Helena was stunned. She’d pursued information about her father’s disappearance ever since he’d gone. This was the first time anyone had been prepared to speak openly about it.

  “Your father, Ms Woolf, as well as the rest of his team, then delivered the results of their research to Euros. The Company demanded the full accounts, logs and journals, but the team refused to hand them over. I don’t understand why, there was a disagreement that it has been impossible to find records on. All I have been able to establish is that a number of the team were vanished, crude attempts by Euros, or even one of the other Companies, to get the information they desired.”

  Isaac laughed, a short rough bark of a chuckle.

  “People who have invested a hundred and eighty years of their lives in a project don’t let it slip easily from their grasp. Each team member necessarily worked on only a fraction of the project; the Company quickly realised it was futile interrogating individual members. They tried to round up the remaining researchers, but they’d gotten themselves lost, having prepared their plans well in advance. Your father believed Euros would attempt to prise the secrets of his research from his cold dead hands. His entire team must have worked out their bolt holes months before they disappeared.

  “What three people, including Edward, knew and passed onto us was that your grandfather’s Hound, the one your father became friends with, was given the key to the technology. All the files, all the research, could be decrypted with this key.”

  Isaac folded his hands, the twins listened like children.

  “Which brings history almost up to date; of the final generation, you see three before you. There were five more, who decided with us, to flee Euros and the uses they would have put us to. We age slowly, not immortal but not as other humans either. I’m one hundred and nine. Henry was a couple of years my senior.

  “Edward is dead, so is Henry, that leaves six of us who need your help.”

  Calm now seemed to spread from Isaac, as if he had unloaded a heavy burden.

  Helena said, “Edward said he was dying.”

  “He was. We are,” said Isaac. “It isn’t simply that we don’t enjoy your longevity; in deciding to leave Euros we go to our deaths. The Company, in its wisdom, tried to preclude the actions we have taken. They thought that if we knew we were dependent on them for some supplement which would keep us alive we’d choose to stay with them, rather than die.

  “They were wrong. I’m sorry to say that your jaunt to find Edward was not what he would have wanted. He was searching for your grandfather’s Hound, for the key that would have allowed us to break the dependency Euros engineered into us. It would give us the chance to determine our own fates, away from all of you.”

  “I was told he was being kept there, stored for safe keeping.”

  Isaac laughed. “Trust me, when we wish to travel there are none who can stop us. If he was there it was because he chose to be.”

  “I was sent a key that only Edward could open. Could that be it?” asked Helena, referring to the package that had led her to Edward.

  “I suspect it was what it was, Euros could not risk Indexiv finding Edward, but they knew he would be dead pretty quickly without his medicine. The only option was for someone to bring him back. Coincidence dictated you be the carrier.”

  “It could have been someone else,” said Helena thoughtfully, thinking of what her Uncle had said, and done.

  “Perhaps, but he was not quite as creative as you,” said Isaac.

  “Whether Euros believed Edward had found the key, which was indeed what he’d set out to do, is another question.”

  “Excuse the
interruption,” said David, “but I’ve some questions.”

  Isaac looked irritated. “What you have to ask is irrelevant.”

  David grimaced, “Why don’t you wait till I’ve asked them before deciding.”

  The twins laughed.

  “Hey!” said David, “Stay out of here,” he tapped at his temple.

  “You don’t understand,” said Isaac, “It’s really a case of keeping you out of our heads. Your thoughts are so loud you’d wake us a kilometre away if we were waiting to hear from you.”

  “Hold on, you’re supposed to be the telepaths,” said David. Helena understood.

  “You’re more like transmitters. You receive and transmit in a focused fashion.”

  “Something like that. The truth is something different, a reflection of the deepest information theory has to say about reality given human form. Regardless, your thoughts are like static, a background that never goes away. We want it to go away. That’s why we left.”

  “No more scanning for intelligence,” said Remus.

  “That’s right,” echoed his brother.

  Seeing Helena’s puzzled look, Isaac answered the unspoken question, “It was what Euros had the twins doing before we left. Trawling the Cloud for information that might reveal advantages they could use against their competitors.”

  “And?” asked David.

  “And nothing. I don’t want to talk about what we were. It is finished with.”

  “Not yet it isn’t,” said David. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have dragged our rears across London to have this little chat.”

  Isaac looked blank. “We didn’t. You must really have been here before Ms Woolf.”

  David folded his arms in disbelief. Helena found it hard to accept that she had simply remembered the hotel at such a time as this.

  Somewhere at the back of her mind, her AI mumbled something. Not now, she told it through gritted teeth.

  Her AI flashed angrily inside her mind, they know I’m here. Somehow.

  Of course they do, said Helena.

  You don’t understand, it replied. They know I’m not a normal AI.

  “Will you help us?” asked Isaac.

  “I’m sorry but you still haven’t told me what you want,” said Helena. “Besides, now really isn’t the best time for me. People are searching for you, and thanks to Henry I’m implicated in your flight.”

  “Not to mention the dead body in my flat, oh, just did,” said David dryly. He looked angry and did not smile at his own joke.

  “What body?” asked Isaac. The twins had their heads cocked left and right, watching David with interest for the first time. He said nothing.

  Helena looked at him. Seeing he wasn’t going to elaborate she decided she would.

  “The reason we’re here is as we said, whoever believed Henry met with me also believes that he told me what I presume you’ve just done. They decided to make sure I wouldn’t tell anyone else. For my own reasons I left the flat last night and stayed with Detective Chalmers.”

  Isaac looked somewhat taken aback, David smiled; glad to have at least one surprise up his sleeve.

  “They found me anyway and attacked us at his home,” said Helena.

  “He was a telepath,” said David. “Indexiv wants you dead.”

  “You killed him?” asked Isaac slowly.

  “Don’t give up your day job,” said David.

  “It’s not that,” said Isaac defensively, “I am impressed. We can be most persuasive. Anyway, it wasn’t Indexiv; none of us have gone over to them.”

  “Can you be so sure that Indexiv don’t have their own?” asked David.

  Helena cut in, “I’m sure they don’t.” David glanced at her, but she wasn’t about to elaborate on the massacres she’d witnessed in Indexiv’s search for Edward.

  Isaac sighed in resignation, and changed the subject. “Be that as it may, your lives are not severed yet. You both have jobs to return to, you have lives that Euros will not publicly become involved in, still less any other Corporation. You have homes you can go to.”

  You’d only find me knocking on the door tomorrow morning, thought Helena.

  “Are you going to get to the point of all this?” asked David in a weary voice.

  “Ms. Woolf, we want you to find your father’s Hound. He has the key. We believe he will help you; because you are his master’s daughter, and because he knows you.”

  “I’ve never met…” Helena stopped talking as she realised who it was. “Do you know his name?”

  “Rich, Red, something like that. We’re not certain.”

  “Rex?” asked Helena, dreading the look of recognition that came into Isaac’s eyes as she said it. The twins clapped their hands happily and smiled.

  “You’re right,” said David distractedly.

  “What?” asked Helena, pulling her gaze from Isaac.

  “Isaac. He’s right, we can go home. It doesn’t matter what we do, whether Isaac gets his key or not,” he spoke with his eyes fixed on the twins. “Regardless of your fates we can go home and carry on.”

  “No!” Shouted the twins in unison. “No! Stop it, you don’t mean it!” The look of fear shining from their faces showed just how doubtful they were of his intentions.

  “Then tell us WHY we should help you,” said David fiercely.

  Helena heard the sound of distant laughter; her AI was finding the whole situation hilarious.

  “Isaac, please give me a reason, otherwise I can’t help you; there is nothing to profit me in it, only loss.” Surely he’d understand that.

  For a moment Isaac looked saddened, then his features hardened into what Helena knew to be resolve.

  “If what we have told you does not provide reason sufficient to help us then you should leave.” He put his hands flat on the table and made a show of getting up.

  Helena looked at him in silence; she could go home, tidy up this mess, carry on.

  Who am I kidding, she thought. I’ll have to report this hotel and this group of refugees. In the final analysis, if they could stop a genocide she’d see them locked in a lab strapped to tables. She wouldn’t even have to be in the team that would raid the place in the next few hours. She didn’t ever have to meet them again.

  You won’t be free of this, said her AI acidly. You think you can do this and be free?

  I can’t live like this, said Helena.

  “I’ll help you,” said David forcefully.

  “You?” asked Helena and Isaac simultaneously.

  David looked at Helena with a tired look in his eyes. Helena had him chalked up as a cynic, but his expression was of someone weary of fighting over inconsequentialities.

  “My resources may not be as … rich as some, but I have ways and means of finding what you’re looking for. The least I can do is to try.”

  The twins sat back down, leaving Isaac stood by himself.

  “Tell us,” they said. “What will you do? How will you find him? Where will you start?”

  “I’ll answer the last part first: At work. I can’t give you undivided time, it would be too obvious. I have a terrorist cell to find. If you can wait for me to uncover what’s there, then I … well, I don’t know what I can give you, but I’ll try.”

  “He thinks he knows but he doesn’t,” said Romulus, seeing more than was visible.

  Helena was listening to this in a daze. She was trying to understand why David would offer to help these fugitives. They were dangerous; otherwise Euros would not be hunting them. It didn’t matter about their history; they could win the war for Euros.

  Her AI sneered, and that will redeem Noenieput will it?

  Helena could feel her AI’s emotional strength; it had feelings about her decision. It hit her again just how easily it had also taken complete control of her body less than twelve hours previously.

  “Helena?” asked David.

  “I’m here.” Helena shifted in her seat so she could see everyone at the same time. “David, do you support
Denholme?”

  He looked surprised but replied, “No, but just because I don’t support him doesn’t mean I don’t have sympathy with his position.”

  “But these,” she looked at them in turn. “Weapons, they could stop Indexiv. Their flight and actions threaten Euros’ profitability, its very survival. And, before you say anything, it’s more than profit and loss accounts I’m thinking about. If Euros goes down, the balance of power changes, hundreds of thousands of us will be affected.” Then the dots joined up. “If Euros goes down, Indexiv will be free to kill as they wish.”

  Isaac nodded his agreement and then asked, “Have you considered what would happen if Euros won through us? Or even what that victory would look like?”

  Helena stopped; she had not got that far. Denial, nothing changes. Euros is not even committed to stopping the program begun by Indexiv, said her AI. She knew it had used its time to think, to spot patterns and trends in events.

  It would surely buy me time, thought Helena.

  To do what? Asked her AI. It seems likely these telepaths were created for something more than fighting corporate wars.

  Helena sighed. They were her only leverage; if she handed them over she was back to embarrassing press conferences and hollow promotions.

  What if I help them? she asked it.

  Most likely? Euros win, the status quo prevails and Indexiv gets broken up. You win a temporary reprieve.

  What do you mean? She asked it

  There are reasons for this conflict that go deeper than what we know. I cannot solve for why telepaths might turn the war in Euros’ favour. The only conclusion can be that there are hidden variables.

  However, there is a small probability curve that, under a number of sets of circumstances, it will result in an overturning of the status quo. The potential realities are currently too numerous to assess.

  That was enough. Johannes’ voice reminded her that to find and return these telepaths would turn the war for Euros, but Helena knew her control of the situation would come to an end at that point. Helena knew she didn’t have all the facts.

  “It seems I have no choice.” She regretted saying it immediately. “I will help you as well.”