by Brandt Legg
Stellard, a member of powerful furtive organizations such as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group, was one of the few privy to the Aylantik Foundation’s entire scheme. He’d come from wealth, not the hard-working, create-a-great-idea kind of riches, but rather money that was so old and ran so deep it was contained in the fibers of the currency. Stellard knew two things to be absolute: that the Foundation’s plan could work, and that only one person and one thing could stop it.
Booker Lipton and the Eysen-Sphere.
—O—
The sound of the local police coming online with an update for Taz brought Stellard back to the present.
“There is a patient, a woman. She identified a photo of Gale Asher and claims to have witnessed Asher and the girl leaving the hospital,” the officer-in-charge reported from Fiji. “The patient told us Asher and the girl boarded a helicopter.”
“Was Gaines with her?” Taz asked.
“She said there was a man with them. We showed her a photo of Gaines, but the patient insisted it was not him. Her recollection was that the man appeared younger than Gaines, and might have been Asher’s brother, or even a bodyguard or something.”
Stellard muted all links except the one with Taz. “What do you think?” he asked.
“Gaines could have been disguised.”
“Yes, but wouldn’t they have had at least one of Booker’s agents with them?” Stellard asked, studying the images feeding through his INU.
“Perhaps they were meeting on the helicopter,” Taz said. “Wait, here comes security camera footage showing images of Asher and her daughter leaving the hospital. See the man? No way that’s Gaines.”
“Agreed. We’ll run him down, but that’s definitely one of Booker’s people,” Stellard said, suddenly distracted by an urgent text from Wattington. He read it twice, then said to Taz, “We need to change your flight plan. I know where Gaines is.”
Chapter 17
In all the years since the Eysen-Sphere first came to life, Crying Man had never spoken to them. Instead, he’d always conveyed meaning through his expression, hand gestures, and his eyes, yet Gale and Rip had hoped, even expected, that one day he might speak.
There were times when it seemed as if he were about to, or at least was thinking about it, but something between hesitation or loss seemed to stop him. Gale and Rip didn’t even know if the Cosegans were capable of speaking. After the first few years of studying the Sphere, Rip theorized that perhaps the vocal chords of the Cosegans had not yet evolved eleven million years ago because they didn’t need to speak verbally.
Crying Man looked at Rip with a sorrowful expression.
“Thank you,” were the first words that made it to Rip’s lips.
Crying Man’s stare was filled with concern.
“Please,” Rip said. “Can you please speak to me?”
Crying Man walked around the skyroom, staring out the windows, seemingly admiring the view, until a single tree caught his attention. It was the largest tree on the island, twisting up among the palms and other spindly, tropical trees. Its thick, smooth bark and broad trunk appeared to have emerged from a Tolkien realm, the only tree that reached above the skyroom, but it mostly curved around the southern corner of the tower as if purposely trying to avoid obstructing the view. Crying Man appeared to be concentrating intently on the tree.
Rip didn’t wish to interrupt him. It almost seemed as if the Cosegan was having a psychic conversation with the tree. If that were possible, and the Cosegans had already proven that almost anything was, what would that mean to be able to traverse into the secrets of the natural world? Gale believed that every living thing was connected in some way. Was this proof?
Crying Man’s expression changed repeatedly as he stared at the tree, then he abruptly turned to Rip and nodded.
Although Crying Man didn’t say anything, Rip had the sense that he was answering yes. He wanted to look at the Eysen to see if it was filled with yellow flowers, which early on in their research had seemed to indicate a positive response to questions posed to the Sphere. In this case, however, Crying Man held his gaze, and that was how the silent conversation began.
“How are you here?” Rip asked in his thoughts.
“The same as you. I am a resident of this moment,” Crying Man answered mentally.
“But you’re from eleven million years ago.”
Crying Man nodded. “In any form of measurement, so many rotations around the sun star are long in duration, impossible to imagine. But it is not as simple as that. Time becomes heavy when measured, and heavier still when experienced. Yet that is only because of human perceptions. In truth, time is in the eyes.” He pointed to his eyes. “That is where we see everything.”
“Yes vision, but—”
“No, not vision.” Crying Man shook his head. “Not looking out from the eyes, looking into them.”
“Into what?”
“The universe.”
“In the eyes?”
Crying Man nodded. “Without this,” he pointed to his eyes again, “time does not exist. Time is only something we made up. Understand?”
Rip wasn’t sure.
“I am alive eleven million circles ago, and yet I am here now with you, just like that.” Crying Man snapped his fingers.
“But how do you do it?”
“To understand the answer, you would need to come to my world. You may try to think of all those years compressed, forced into the Sphere so that we both may stand around that duration, gaze upon it, sample from it, consider its meaning, and be joined through it.”
“It’s hard for me to fathom.”
“You will understand this completely when you die.”
Rip wanted to ask about Cira and Gale, but another question suddenly overtook his thoughts. He tried to push it from his mind, forgetting that by even thinking it, he’d already asked it in their silent conversation.
“What happens when a person dies . . . ” Crying Man repeated Rip’s unspoken query. “When you die, the light of stars fills you again, the energy of all who have ever lived flows into your being, and you remember everything.”
“How do you know this?”
“We, whom you call the Cosegans, have mastered the restraints of human limitations.”
“But then, what happened to your society?”
He turned and looked back out to the ocean for a moment before returning his stare to Rip’s. “It is stable at this moment.”
“This moment? When is that exactly? I see the Cosegan world from afar, across the divide of more than ten thousand millennia. Where is this moment in all of that?”
“You must understand that when you see me, I am not coming to you in a linear way. The last time you saw me may not have happened ‘yet.’ When you next see me, it may be ‘before’ this occasion.” Crying Man grimaced, as if remembering something painful.
Rip tried to process the Cosegan concept of time. Assuming Crying Man was a sophisticated artificial Intelligence “guide” or interface into the Sphere’s “operating system,” then accessing “him” at various random out-of-sequence points made sense. Still, Rip wondered what had happened to them.
“So your civilization, or what we see as cities and call the Cosegan world, are as powerful and beautiful now as they were when we first saw them seven years ago?” Rip asked, then pushed, “What happened to your people?”
“I’m sorry. I must go now.”
“Wait,” Rip said, worried he may have offended Crying Man somehow and needing him to help.
“Cira and Gale,” Crying Man said, detecting Rip’s concern in his thoughts.
“Yes. I need help protecting Cira and Gale,” Rip said breathlessly as Crying Man projected their names. “Can you do something? Will you?”
“Do you see the Sphere that you call the Eysen?”
“Yes,” Rip said, turning toward it.
“And yet you question if I can protect your loved ones today?” Crying Man was suddenly
just a face inside the Sphere. “After all the days you have spent looking within the Sphere, you still have no idea what we are capable of.”
Chapter 18
Booker’s submarine, propelled by a Cosegan water-powered turbine, surged toward an unlikely destination. The propulsion system plans had been gleaned years earlier from the Sphere, and made the sub by far the fastest in the world. Equipped with the latest stealth technology, it was also almost completely undetectable. Even without the special attributes of the sub, Booker hardly thought the Americans would be looking for an underwater vessel. It was a guarded secret that Booker even possessed a fleet of such crafts, more advanced than the US Navy’s best, but Booker was preparing for more than just evacuations.
Along with the glimpses of the future they’d seen in the Eysen-Sphere, Booker had also spent more than a decade studying a long-hidden secret manuscript relating to the Sphere, known as the Clastier Papers. Clastier, a nineteenth century priest, had also found an Eysen, and had written extensively on what he learned.
His papers were divided into three sections: the Attestations, the Divinations, and the Inspirations. It was the second section which haunted Booker. The Divinations were Clastier’s prophecies, and the final four tormented all who had read them.
1. Global pandemics and super-viruses wipe out vast numbers of the world’s population.
2. A utopian period after a great plague.
3. Climate destabilization resulting in uncertain levels of mass destruction.
4. World War III, a conflict of such proportion that humanity might not survive.
Clastier had accurately foretold the rise of the United States, Hitler’s atrocities during World War II, the development and dropping of the atomic bomb, the moon landing, the fall of religions, and many other significant world events, long before they’d happened. Booker, Gale, and Rip had extensively debated on the order of the Divinations, specifically when the predicted events were expected to occur, and the actual impact of each. The three of them were somehow determined to stop them from happening.
Booker enlisted the help of the leaders of the Inner Movement. The Movement, or “IM,” as they were usually known, had begun years earlier, and had gained traction when a group of young people, who were reported to have supernatural gifts, exposed government corruption and demanded an end to war. Although the claims of extraordinary abilities had never been proven, many believed that the human mind had unlimited potential and could achieve remarkable things. Indeed, the discovery of the Eysen-Sphere and its seemingly endless stream of data emboldened those beliefs. Consequently, the Movement had grown.
The prophesized fall of the world’s religions had left a void which IM filled for many. The ranks of IM were full of people who could be categorized in one of three ways: those still seeking something bigger than themselves, those searching for answers to the great questions of life, and those who thought the world should find a way to avoid war and violence because humans were meant to live in a perpetual state of peace. Most fit into all three categories, but the IM had slowly and quietly become something of a force in the world. Not surprisingly, Booker secretly funded most of its operations, and he also knew that the Aylantik Foundation wanted to destroy the Movement.
The Foundation had three natural enemies who were preventing it from putting its Phoenix Initiative into action. Booker was one. The US government was another. The Aylantik Foundation could not put its plan into place while the United States remained the world’s sole superpower, but Booker knew from Gale and Rip’s Eysen research that the Foundation would soon find a way to circumvent the US government. That was the reason the Foundation’s third enemy, the Inner Movement, must be strengthened.
In one of his secret offices, Booker sat in front of a large bank of Eysen-INUs. He was about to contact Linh, the leader of the Inner Movement, to update her on the situation, when he noticed Gale and Kruse in a heated conversation. Booker had micro-cameras everywhere. It was another technology he’d discovered in the Eysen-Sphere, and it allowed him to instantly monitor people and events all over the globe.
He listened in on Gale and Kruse.
“How are we going to get to El Prison without the NSA, or who knows else, finding us?” Gale demanded.
“We’re going to put you on a commercial flight from Nadi Airport,” Kruse said.
“We’re going back to Fiji? And I’m going to just walk through security and board a regular plane?” Gale looked flabbergasted. “Am I at least flying first class so I’ll be comfortable when they shoot me?”
“We have a way to bypass security. We’ll get on while they’re prepping the plane,” Kruse said. “We’ll fly in the crew rest area, behind the cockpit. No one will see us. But US intelligence, if they’re still even checking flights out of Fiji, will assume security would pick you up trying to board. It’s actually the private planes they’ll be triple-checking.”
“Wait, if we’re going back to Fiji, I can see Cira,” Gale said, her face suddenly lighting up.
“No.”
“There must be a way.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Then you’re going to have to drug me again to stop me.”
“Fine.”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“Gale, if you went near that hospital, Cira would be doomed.”
“You’re right,” Gale said after a moment, staring into the distance, lost in thought, unknowingly looking right into one of Booker’s cameras. “Okay then.”
Booker spoke quietly into Kruse’s earpiece. “Drug her. She’s going to make a break for it at the airport.”
Kruse closed his eyes. He’d had the same hunch, but he knew if he drugged her again it would likely mean he’d have to be reassigned, because there’s no way in hell Gale would ever trust him again, and it’s impossible to protect someone who doesn’t trust you.
—O—
While trapped under trillions of gallons of water, Gale pondered the thing that had caused all of this, the thing that could fix it all.
The Sphere. It could show them any point in time across billions of years. Booker’s study of Universe Quantum Physics had begun prior to their discovery of the Sphere, almost in anticipation of it, and although they had never heard an actual voice from the Crying Man, they could feel his communication.
Somehow the Cosegans built a machine that could contain all the knowledge of the universe, she thought, as she had hundreds of times since they had first realized the power of the Eysen-Sphere. How did they accumulate that knowledge? How did they get it into a small, basketball-sized sphere that could withstand the passage of millions of years?
These questions had burned in her mind for seven years, and with each stunning view into the Sphere, they were more amazed, but seemingly no closer to the answers. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Sphere was that it had exact, and one-hundred-percent complete, detailed visual accounts of the eleven million years since its creation, continuing on indefinitely into the future.
Gale recalled the pivotal conversation she’d had with Rip after discovering she was pregnant with Cira.
“What do you want to do?” Rip asked somberly after first embracing Gale and telling her how much he loved her.
Gale took a deep breath. She understood his question and its implications, not because they didn’t want a child, but because they both knew too much about the future.
“This child could be important,” Gale said.
“A lot of parents believe that about their children.”
“But in our case it could be true. We have the Eysen-Sphere. We have the Clastier Papers. This child will be a descendent of the Builders.”
“The child will grow up here on El Perdido in hiding, and could lose her parents at anytime.”
“Her?” Gale asked, catching his reference to the yet unknown sex of the child.
“Just a guess.”
“Have you seen anything?” Gale asked, wonderin
g if the Sphere had revealed something about the child’s future.
“No, I would have told you.” Rip looked at her. The blue of her eyes had changed him as much as the Sphere had. He called them “magic eyes,” and often, when he struggled for an answer to some dilemma, he would find the solution in her eyes. “Gale, if we have this child, she may not live through the plague. She’ll be eight or nine when it starts, ten or twelve when it completely ravages the world. Could you take losing a child? Because I know I couldn’t.”
“What if she survives?” Gale asked. “She’ll grow up learning from the Sphere. She’ll inherit it one day.”
Rip nodded.
“Somehow we escaped,” Gale continued. “Clastier and the Sphere will protect her . . . as they’ve been protecting us.”
Not long after they made the decision to have Cira, the Sphere showed them a scene of the future so awful that they reconsidered, but by then it was too late to safely terminate the pregnancy. They wanted the baby, but could not imagine bringing her into the world that was coming. Plague and war, a pause, and then more war and another plague. It was one thing to read Clastier’s Divinations, they had committed their lives to preventing the Final Four, but to see them projected from the Sphere, as if they were watching footage of something that had already occurred, was horrifying. Viewing the world that their child would face made Gale and Rip more determined, desperate actually, to find a way to stop it.
—O—
Gale found herself wishing the Crying Man was real instead of just the face of an ancient computer. Maybe he could save Cira.
Why hadn’t they seen this coming? Even after seven years of seeing everything inside the Sphere, Rip didn’t completely buy Gale’s theory that the Eysen-Sphere was what many people called the Akashic Records. Akasha, an ancient word meaning sky, had been used to describe all the accumulated knowledge and experience that has ever occurred, or ever will exist. They were somehow stored, and could theoretically be accessed in the ethereal.