SHIAM Conspiracy- Book 1

by Joseph Heck

  “Well do something about it,” Zak said, jerking his head toward the display screen.

  Aakil gave him a questioning look, hesitating for a moment before reaching up and turning the monitor off. When he turned to see Zak glaring at him, he simply shrugged and slowly sank back down on the chair he’d been sitting in.

  Zak shook his head in annoyance and turned to his companions. “Now I know this seems a little bizarre, but there’s nothing to be alarmed about. This is obviously nothing more than an error in the virtual program. It somehow recreated this scene of the security office.”

  “Did it?” Harry asked. His complexion was as drained as Officer Aakil’s. “How can you be sure? It seems pretty real to me!”

  “The whole point of the virtual experience is to appear real,” Zak replied patiently.

  “Yeah, well then how do you explain the office with us in it?” Megan asked. “Are you saying someone knew in advance that we would all be here and wrote a program that would bring us face to face with ourselves?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying.” In spite of trying, he couldn’t keep his eyes off their duplicates sitting across the room. He reached again for a logical explanation. “This virtual program obviously includes a routine that imports real time situations. It may be a part of some sort of training program. The security office is probably being recorded and the data is reproduced in virtuality.”

  “Then where are the cameras?” Mashkkha asked, looking around the room. “I don’t see any.”

  “The program was probably written to filter them out.”

  “Zak, we searched the room,” Megan said quietly. “There were no recording devices.”

  “So, what are you saying?” Harry asked Megan. “That our virtual selves have somehow been transferred into the real world?”

  “That’s impossible!” Zak insisted.

  “And yet, here we are.” Megan raised her eyebrows at him for effect.

  “We are not in the real world!” Zak immediately began looking for something that would verify his statement. He examined their surroundings more closely, fighting off a tug of doubt. He felt almost desperate to find a clue that would reassure him that the office they were now in was not the same office located in the real world, that it was merely some sort of a virtual rendition of it.

  Unfortunately, he could find nothing to verify it. The room appeared remarkably as it had when they had left. It was the same cramped and dingy space; an old Dwarf Brothers candy bar wrapper was still on the floor where Zak remembered seeing it earlier. The glass of the long window overlooking the warehouse had the same crack in the corner by the entrance. Everything looked the same. His other senses began to kick in. He became aware of the musty smell of the building, laced with the decay of death. Muffled sounds from the warehouse area below filtered through the thin walls of the upper office.

  Beyond the window he could see the activity on the main floor below them. The scene was pretty much as it had been when he passed through the area on his way to the security office. The forensic teams continued their work, dusting for prints, examining every little nook and cranny for evidence and bagging nearly anything that was not attached to the building. The small prefab office could be seen from the window as well, a faint line of dirty red energy pulsating up above it.

  Detective Sarkof stood nearby, fully animated as he shouted orders that Zak was unable to hear. Those police officers unfortunate enough to be under his direction stood cowering next to him like whipped puppies, before scurrying away to do his bidding. When Sarkof looked up and glared directly at him, Zak turned away from the window, becoming aware of a sick feeling that had settled in his stomach. This was impossible!

  Mashkkha had walked over to his own inert body and was now looking down at himself. “This is flat out creepy!”

  “Megan, you are an Elf,” Harry said. “Can you tell if this forest is real or not?”

  “I cannot,” Megan said. “During the early days of virtuality, Elves were able to distinguish the real world from the imagined. But the technology has evolved and the programs today are much more sophisticated. Virtuality now mimics the same harmonic vibrations as the real world. I am afraid I can no longer tell them apart.”

  “It’s not real!” Zak insisted.

  Megan was watching Aakil as he huddled in his chair. “This looks pretty real to me, Zak.”

  “I’m telling you, it is computer generated!” Zak insisted. “Look, the air has the same reddish tint to it as it did when we went into virtuality. This has to be some sort of real-time rendition of the security office. It’s the only explanation possible. We can’t be in the physical world!”

  “Hey, I am no rendition!” Aakil objected, still looking as though he had seen a ghost.

  “If it is as you say and this is a virtual simulation, then how did the computer program obtain the data to run such a detailed and accurate representation of what is currently going on in the warehouse? I’m telling you, there were no cameras or microphones in the office when we searched it!”

  Zak’s first impulse was to allow his frustration to turn to anger and point that anger in Megan’s direction. She was going out of her way to be argumentative with him. He gave her a hard look, forcing himself to remain silent. Logic was on his side...wasn’t it? Unfortunately, Megan was right. He hadn’t seen any recording devices in the office. The only logical explanation for that was that they had overlooked them. At least, he tried to convince himself that they had overlooked them.

  “There is a possible explanation of how this could be real.” Megan met his gaze evenly, returning his glare with a contentious smile. She bit her upper lip as she considered what she was about to say. “I think sorcery may have been used to somehow merge virtuality with reality.”

  “You’re not serious!” Zak was incredulous. “You actually think it is possible to merge virtuality and reality using magic? A virtual world is nothing more than a bunch of computer code and electronic circuits that have been cleverly designed to manipulate sensory data in our heads. There is nothing real about it!”

  “And you actually think that the world, as we perceive it, is the only reality?” Megan’s tone resonated with contempt. “How can you be an Elf and not understand that it is the mind that constructs the world we perceive!”

  “Half Elf,” Zak reminded her. “And it doesn’t change the fact that virtuality is based upon sound scientific...Human scientific principles, not Elvish superstition!”

  “How can you all be here?” Agent Aakil broke in, looking back and forth between the two groups. He had obviously not recovered from the shock of seeing them suddenly appear in duplicate and was not following their conversation.

  “Virtuality is scientifically based upon the Principles of Perceptual Reality,” Zak said, ignoring the young agent.

  “For your information, Mr. Know-it-all, your precious Principles of Perceptual Reality is, in fact, a sterilized version of the Laws of Li’Era!

  “What is Li’Era?” Mashkkha asked.

  “Dragon shit!” Zak said, too caught up in his argument with Megan to acknowledge Mashkkha’s question. “You think you can explain everything with a bunch of Elvish mumbo-jumbo. I deal in scientific fact, lady. The virtual neural net is based in science, not some Elvish secrets of the Universe crap!”

  “Check your facts, buddy!” Megan’s voice grew louder. “Dr. Albert Sprokett, the Human who originally proposed the principles, did so after spending ten years studying at the University of Elenathra in Mythnol Forest. In his initial writings he even admitted that his principles were an interpretation of the Laws of Li’Era. His work was intended to help Humans better understand them. He never claimed his work to be original. It was the smug self-righteousness of his peers that discredited him. They then rewrote his principles, transforming them into a sanitized dissertation filled with their own cute little buzzwords and claimed them as their own!”

  What is Li’Era?” Mashkkha asked again, not t
hat Zak or Megan paid him any attention.

  “Typical Elvish smugness,” Zak said. “Always trying to claim responsibility for everything in existence. I suppose you’re going to tell me that God is an Elf!”

  “He sure in hell is not Human!” Megan spat back. She turned and began to walk away, just as suddenly she turned back toward him and said, “I do not understand how you can be an Elf!”

  “Half Elf. And not my better half!”

  “I doubt you have a better half.”

  “Time out boys and girls!” Mashkkha shouted. When they both turned to him in surprise he continued. “Now then, could someone please tell me what this Li’Era is? I’m sorry, Ms. Teranika, but I’m afraid that I am not a scientist, nor do I know much about your people’s beliefs.”

  “This is a waste of time...”

  “Harris! Allow the lady to explain.”

  Zak’s first impulse was to continue arguing with Megan, to make another degrading remark about Elves and the ostensible truth of their teachings, but he bit it back. Instead, he walked over to his duplicate self and began studying it as it sat quietly in the seat at the computer terminal. Seeing such a perfect duplication of himself was beyond eerie, but he refused to admit to any possibility that it was his physical body sitting there. His double’s breathing was quicker than normal and Zak could see that his eyes were moving rapidly behind closed lids. His body was obviously agitated. The more Zak fought with the possible implications of what he observed, the more agitated his other self-seemed to become.

  He suddenly felt the need to do something about the situation. As creepy as it felt, he reached across his other self and began working the keyboard, applying extra effort into making it obvious that he no longer was the least bit interested in continuing his conversation with Megan. If there was an answer to all this, he hoped to find it somewhere within the computer.

  For her part, Megan seemed perfectly fine with his sudden disinterest. She turned her full attention to Mashkkha. “Li’Era is the source of all that exists. It actually means One Source in your language. The Elvish Teleria Tribes in the North prefer to call it Li’Ente, which means One Mind. Some Humans refer to this as Universal Mind, although most of their theories deviate from Elvish beliefs. In any case, both your religious leaders and your scientists tend to reject the concept.”

  “That’s because it’s a half-baked notion that there’s some non-local, eternal hive mind that only Elves know how to access,” Zak blurted out, unable to resist the dig. He was now logged onto the warehouse network. As he began running diagnostics on the virtual space, he said to Mashkkha, “The idea is that reality doesn’t exist without the all-knowing Elves around to interpret it.”

  “That is not what it is at all!” Megan snapped at him. “You would know about Li’Era if you had bothered to study the paranormal sciences.”

  “That’s true,” Harry suddenly spoke up. “The Laws of Li’Era are as fundamental to paranormal science as the scientific laws are to tradition science. Every sorcerer must learn about Li’Era and its laws governing T’eh. It is the foundation of sorcery.”

  “It is the foundation of all that exists,” Megan corrected.

  “Give me a break!” Zak mumbled as he continued to work.

  “Harris!” Mashkkha said. “Would you keep quiet?”

  Zak snickered, but said nothing more.

  “The Laws of Li’Era are fundamental to all existence,” Megan continued. “Scientific law, the laws of physics, mathematics...everything else is dependent upon the Laws of Li’Era. They are what govern T’eh. They are also sometimes referred to as the Laws of T’eh.”

  “T’eh. I’ve heard of that before,” Mashkkha said. “It’s some kind of subatomic particle that the Elves discovered, right?”

  “T’eh is the most basic building block of existence,” Megan said. “T’eh, itself, does not exist in the physical universe. It is what Elves call mind-energy. Without Li’Era, the one mind, it exists in a latent state of being. It is the potential of physical existence. Through the one mind, that potential is realized as what we perceive as reality. Our minds are a part of Li’Era, and so we all play a part in creating the real world. Reality is as much subjective as it is objective. It is not something that I can explain in a few short minutes.

  “So, what does that have to do with virtuality and what’s going on here?”

  “Communication between Li’Era and T’eh is transmitted over the Transcendental Transference Frequency in order to create the universe as we perceive it,” Megan continued. “Science has learned to use that frequency to manipulate our minds into creating a virtual world through the use of computer generated code. The line between that computer code and the natural code used by the mind to communicate with T’eh is very thin. It is theoretically possible to combine the two in order to create an entirely new reality.”

  “And you’re saying that’s what happened here?”

  “I am saying it is a possibility.”

  “It’s still only theory!”

  “Shut up, Harris!” Mashkkha barked. His expression softened again as he looked back to Megan. “Hasn’t science already combined the two? What about computer magic?”

  “It is not exactly the same,” Megan provided Zak with another of her killer looks, as she said to Mashkkha, “Sorcery generated by computer is nothing more than simulated thought patterns reproduced by artificial intelligence. It is limited to very basic sorcery. Manipulating T’eh in order to actually combine reality with virtuality is way beyond any technology that currently exists. But, in spite of what Mr. Know-it-all thinks, that does not mean that it is not possible.”

  “Look, I’m getting just a little bit tired of...”

  They ran out of time and they were off again.

  22

  The sweet scent of Elvish Pine teased Zak’s senses even before his visual world came back into focus. As he regained more of his awareness, he detected the subtly sour odor of decayed leaves wafting just beneath the sweetness of the Pine.

  Insects suddenly buzzed about him as his vision returned and the trees that had initially provided him with their pleasant aroma gradually came into focus. As his surroundings continued to take shape, he could see that the Elvish Pine shared the forest with Red Oak and several other species of trees. Scatterings of young saplings and lush green undergrowth filled in the empty spaces between their boles and the forest floor was covered in a thick damp carpet of mildewed leaves.

  A variety of bird song descended from the branches above, individual melodies blending into a uniquely pleasing chorus. Somewhere high above those branches was a glowing sun, heating the still air to an uncomfortable degree in spite of being denied direct access to the forest floor. A thin veil of what Zak at first took to be fog stretched out into the distant corners of the forest. He soon realized that this was not normal woodland mist. It was the same reddish haze that had tainted everything since they had entered virtuality. The others stood next to him, appearing just as disoriented as he felt.

  “Is this the same forest we were in before?” Mashkkha asked.

  “That’s hard to say,” said Zak.

  “Shouldn’t we be in the same place we were before we left?” Harry asked. “I mean, how can we be somewhere else?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, virtuality doesn’t follow the same rules of space and time as the real world,” Zak told him. He really wasn’t in the mood for any further discussions about what was possible and what wasn’t, and so he kept his comments neutral and open-ended. “And that’s under normal circumstances. We really have no idea what’s going on here.”

  Megan seemed no more interested in continuing their argument than he was. She was busy investigating their new surroundings. Zak couldn’t resist the distraction of watching her, as she stepped carefully between the tall trees in an ever expanding circle, her head cocked to the side as though she were listening for some unheard sound. When she finished she said, “No, I cannot tell if it
is the same forest. The trees are different, though.”

  “Can you tell if this is real or not?”

  “No, I told you Harry, I am unable to tell the difference.”

  “Of course it’s virtual!” Zak’s irritation rose again.

  Megan gave him a harsh look, but said nothing.

  He decided to do something more productive than poking another verbal stick at Megan and so began searching for a network access point. After several minutes of futile searching, he told the group, “Well, whatever is causing this shifting, there is nothing we can do here. There doesn’t seem to be an access point in this location.”

  “You mean we’re trapped?” Once again, Harry looked horrified.

  “We will be fine, Harry,” Megan assured him without looking over at him. She cocked her head and listened again. Pointing off to her left she said, “There is some sort of disturbance in that direction. There is a path going in the same general direction.”

  Zak attempted to look down the narrow path, which trailed off into the trees where Megan indicated. It appeared to be nothing more than a dear trail and was quickly swallowed up by the forest as it veered off to the left not far from where they stood.

  He didn’t like the feel of it. “Everyone stay here. I’ll go check it out...”

  Megan beat him off the mark and was heading down the trail before he could stop her. “I will check it, you wait here. Be back in a flash.”

  “Damn that woman!” Zak’s anger came to a boil again as he watched her disappear around the bend in the trail. He rationalized his sudden rush of concern for her safety as being part of his normal sense of responsibility for all the members of his team. It would have been a good argument if not for the fact that it had sparked within him a sense of panic beyond any normal concern. Why could she not just follow his orders!

  “How can she tell there’s a disturbance?” Mashkkha asked. “I don’t feel or hear anything.”

  “Are you kidding...she’s a bloody Elf, isn’t she?” Zak answered, starting after her. “Stay here.”