by White, Gwynn
“Well, we didn’t. Anyway, that’s what got me conscripted, and from what Winslow said today, maybe he had something to do with that. I never guessed.”
“And they made you a Warlock for that?”
“That got me in the door. Genealogy did the rest.”
“How so?”
“You see, it’s like this. Unlike Umbra, mortals are locked in place in the spectrum. So being human, they started to experiment. Sure, there was some limited success with the first resonators and DMT experiments that gave our species a glimpse across spectrums, but then we discovered the Bubbles and that changed everything. When they sent the first mortals through the first Bubble, the scientists used the only thing they had in their tool belt, DMT, and mortals were able to skip planes without the mods, though few could traverse without ramifications.”
“Ramifications?” Leta asked.
“Off the top, there was a ten to twenty percent chance the experience would be psychologically and physically horrific, even with the utmost fine-tuned dose of DMT. The war broke out almost immediately after we started to traverse the planes and in the first days of the war, cases of scarring and permanent damage were common. For those that didn’t break down during the shift, the acclimation could take hours or days. Friendly fire due to planar confusion kept most of the fight in the Homeland.”
“And then that changed.”
“Oh, yeah,” Abby said. “Then that changed, because our scientists discovered that there was less than one percent that could traverse seamlessly between planes. The soldiers at first appeared random, and they were. There’d been a global conscription from every vocation, race, gender, and geography. Then they discovered the gene.”
Leta bowed her head. “The dark gene?”
“The dark gene. Bureau scientists sequenced the genes on these random men and women that made up the less than one percent, the doctors and mechanics, dishwashers and engineers, and found they had a common gene. Those special mortals with the ability to travel with ease became an elite corps within the Bureau: the Warlocks.”
“That’s how you became a Warlock?”
“That’s right. It was in my blood. I didn’t mind at first. There was a war, it was an exciting time, and we were heroes. The Bureau Boys. The educated and the ambitious rose quickly. The Warlocks used their abilities to infiltrate other planes to procure interplanar technology and stir things up for the Maro and the Omni. Then things changed in the Homeland.”
“The culling?”
“The roundup. Mortals, Umbra, the other planar species. I should’ve seen that coming. The Bubbles, the Spectral War, everything began to change. In the first days of planar travel and war, paranoia took hold. Though the Umbra at first began to reveal themselves, a distrust of their millennia of deception led to accusations of their collaboration with the Maro. There’d been hundreds of nations in the Homeland, corporate states mostly. When the war broke out, the globe united to form the HUB, the Homeland Unified Bureau.” Abby snapped his fingers. “Just like that. I know history, and every time some people come together, some people gotta go. Homeland Security is based on commitment, effectiveness, and political reliability.”
“Sure,” Leta said. “Homeland first. We’re taught that in school.”
“Yeah. Well, the Warlocks took that to the next level. They stressed total loyalty and obedience to orders unto death and became a powerful tool used by the Bureau for political ends. The Warlock ideology and values of the organization were one of the main reasons why the Warlock division was entrusted with the execution of many Bureau atrocities and war crimes.”
“War crimes? I could arrest you for what you just said. To accuse the Bureau of atrocity is a treacherous offense.”
“Protect the innocent is a double entendre, but you know that. You’re an Umbra.”
“Yeah, it’s just hard for me to imagine a time when the species of the Homeland weren’t equal.”
“It was a political agenda. The main ideology of the Warlocks was to fight against ‘sub-mortals.’ The Bureau made the mission to protect and ensure that never again would the sub-mortals be able to be undermine either from within or through emissaries from outside the Homeland. But that wasn’t the only reason that the Umbra were rounded up, there was another that the public was never told about.”
“And what was that?”
“The need for the Bureau to persecute the Umbra wasn’t because they were a risk, it was merely to gain more control. With the assistance of planar technology, the Warlocks tracked and rounded up the Umbra. With the help of modified lenses, light beams, and fields, the Umbra couldn’t hide. Beings that were once glimpses in the peripherals of the few were out in the open. Portable resonators amplified pathways between minds so that even thoughts couldn’t be hidden. The Umbra were placed in camps and put through exhaustive, criminal experimentation.”
“To speak about this is forbidden,” she said.
“But you know why they call it the dark gene?”
“My grandmother told me. I didn’t know if it was true.”
“Like almost all great leaps forward, the gene was found through accident and war. One of the first things they did with the Umbra was gene sequencing, to try to figure out how you can…” He wobbled his head. “Well, you know, and voila. It’d been right in front of them all along. They discovered a commonality between the Umbra and those mortals that could travel through the Bubble with no side effects—the Warlocks. The Bureau underplayed it, you know, like mortals and Umbra both have tongues, eyes, that sort of thing. One of the scientists had the audacious idea to trace the genealogy of the Warlocks and there, boom. The Warlocks were all descendants of medicine men, gypsies, carnival folk, witch doctors, shaman, clairvoyants, and fortunetellers, the type of people that in their native land were said to be ‘open to the other side.’ Some were removed by only a single generation, others by three, five, or ten. It was a latent gene, a residual trace of past cross-species breeding. You see, the gene that gave the Warlocks their ability came from their kinship with the Umbra. As I remember, the original scientist was executed for treason, but the rest of them couldn’t dismiss the genealogical clues no matter how ridiculous it sounded. The rules had all changed, there really were red-horned creatures that looked like demons. There were people that lived in the shadows.” He nodded toward Leta. “That’s the big secret.”
“And that saved the Umbra?”
“That and discoveries in the planes that brought rapid advances to harmonic resonators, unified field modulation, and quantum tech. Jazz and I were part of the team—along with your boss—that discovered the planar tech that, combined with the Umbra gene, became the basis for all of the mortal mods after that. Not as good as a natural-born, but still close enough. The Bureau had the Koreans modularize the new tech with existing nano mods, and the Spectral Wars turned. Everything turned. The need for the Bureau to persecute the Umbra was merely to gain more control. Now, they have all of the control.”
22
The portrait hung upon the department wall among a field of faces. It could’ve easily been missed by anyone walking by, but not one as mindful as Leta Serene.
“That’s you,” she said.
Abby spun toward the wall and leaned forward, tilting his fedora to take in the old photo of himself. He smiled, then slowly said, “So it is.” He adjusted his collar as if the portrait were a mirror.
“Why is it up there?” she asked.
“Well, I am still a professor of this fine institution. Professor emeritus, technically. My status with the Bureau allows me full pay, access, and teaching privileges.”
“Status. You mean because you’re a Warlock.”
“I wish you would quit saying that, and by status, I mean rank. You do remember rank, don’t you, Captain?”
They exchanged smirks.
“You look the same, but different.”
“Well, I was a lot younger then,” he said. “Really younger,” he added via ch
in chip, “no mods.”
“Was this the Stanford University then?”
“Every university in the Meg was part of New York University back then. Harvard and Yale were still separate in name, but they’d already been acquired. Did you know the Stanford Silicon corporate syndicate started as a university? Two really, the first was Stanford, the other was called MIT.”
“I never knew that.”
“Oh yeah, before my time. That’s why they were keen to acquire the New York University, and all of the others, I guess.” He gestured down the hall. “Conrad’s office is over here. The original Stanford University,” he continued to say as they walked, “was near the Alcatraz Bubble. I mean, before the Omni sunk half the WestCo Meg into the Pacific.” He dropped his head. “Hmm.” He faded.
“Your office was here?”
“Uh, no. My department was near the Low. They didn’t care about us much then. That changed when they discovered the Bubble. They combined the archeology, history, and mythology departments into Planar Sciences then moved the offices to this premium MidHi real estate. Planar Physics and Chemistry are downstairs.”
Abby pulled a small black fob with his university credentials from his pocket then reached for the handle of a door that had Conrad Labreque’s name painted on the glass.
“I’m surprised no one is around,” Leta said.
“Well, this is a university,” he said, “and it’s late.”
The latch clicked and the door drifted open. He dropped the fob back into his pocket and entered the office. Leta followed, the black of her tight uniform instantly hiding her in the darkness of the unlit room. Across the office, Abby found Conrad’s desk and the lamp above. With a click, a shower of light revealed a desktop of scattered folders, the contents of which had been tossed haphazardly together.
“Someone’s been here,” he said.
“The Bureau, I’m sure.”
Abby wiped a pile of paper to the side, uncovering Conrad’s data point buried beneath.
“Why don’t you put these into one pile and I’ll see what’s in here?”
“Okay,” she said, compiling the mess of paper into a neat stack. Abby dropped into the chair, flipped up the lid, pulled the fob back out of his pocket, then placed the device on a small corner glass panel at the back of the keyboard. The lid display came to life, and an emblem of the university watermarking the back of the screen slowly morphed into the Department of Planar Sciences logo: an orb representing one of the Bubbles. From above the display, a laser fanned Abby’s eyes.
A voice from the data point console gently issued instructions. “Unable to read. Subject Blocked. Please authorize to match hardware key.”
“523 Homfly Skein,” he said.
Even with the assistance of his physical university key, the university console wasn’t as swift to respond to the keywords as the Arcadian gate. Abby expected this. The delay wasn’t due to the priority back to the Bureau servers to verify the signal his chin chip hid in the keywords. The embedded signal 523 initiated would be resident in any of the next two words he spoke and would trigger any corporate manufactured device, regardless of Meg or planar location. No, he knew the reason for the delay, if only by a minute. First, the Bureau trusted no one in the university. Stanford had too many people on payroll that were experts in counterfeiting and subterfuge. The second reason was pretty much the same as the first: the corporate syndicates ran the Bureau, so no one in the university was trusted on general principle of being a sole syndicate. Even Stanford was leery of their own employees for either selling planar info and tech to the black market or, worse, to the Koreans. After the Omni dumped the Stanford Silicon sector of the WestCo Meg into the sea, the Korean corporation became the leading tech syndicate in the world. Stanford never caught up. What they did do was to put a list of special priority protocols in place that were set in motion anytime a data point was initiated. But knowing the reason for the delay didn’t stop it from feeding into his paranoia. Anytime he logged onto a university, archive, or Bureau data point, he believed eyes and ears paid close attention. That was why, for years, he’d asked Orin to pull the records. He couldn’t ask Orin now. They expected Abby to investigate Conrad, so he was going to keep Orin out of their sight, at least for now.
A prompt appeared on the screen. The voice from the console said, “Welcome back, Doctor Squire. Your last logon to the Stanford University system was seven years, five months, twelve days, and four hours ago. You have eight thousand two hundred and forty-seven messages. Would you like to read them now?”
Leta and Abby shared a smile. “Mixers,” he said flatly. “Not right now. I would like access to Professor Labreque’s folders, please.”
“Professor Labreque’s folders have been erased.”
“Okay, show me his calendar.”
A calendar popped up on the screen. He perused the short notes on each of the days through the rest of the month then ran his finger across the top of the projected screen to cycle through the rest of the year.
“Anything?” Leta asked.
“No,” he said. “Not really. He has two digs scheduled through the rest of this year, one in the Maro, one in the Blue.” He tapped to expand a date. “Looks like he has appointments set up for the vaccination he needs for the Blue Plane.” He minimized the date then tapped another, then another. “He has several appointments, work and personal. If he was planning to skip, he didn’t slouch on appearances. How about you? Anything?”
“One minute,” she said. She pulled out the top drawer of a tall file cabinet near the desk, ruffled her fingers through some folders, then went back to the stack she’d compiled. “I don’t think the Bureau scattered these across the desk.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The papers on the desk date back over the last ten years. Everything in the cabinet is before that. These were pulled because of what they have in common.”
Abby slid his fedora toward the back of his head. “So all we have to do is find out what they have in common.”
“I think I know that already.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, like I said, they’re all dated within the last ten years, and they all have Winslow’s name on them.”
“You don’t say.” He slid the chair over and thumbed through the sheets. “Yeah, these seem to be from his digs.”
“Those are his notes?” she asked. “Shouldn’t there be a lot more?”
“Some of his notes, mostly work orders and requests. Or wish lists, if you ask me. All from Winslow, particularly in the line of blood cult-related items. Every folder is by year, then the two or three digs he did, all leading up to…” He opened the most recent folder to scan the paperwork in detail. “The Jasper.”
“So he really did believe the Jasper was real.”
“I don’t know. Winslow did, and over the course of ten years, Conrad led him to believe he was searching for the little troll.”
Leta pointed to the bottom of one of the requests. “Did you see the signature?”
“Huh,” he said. He fanned the folders out on the desk to inspect more of the sheets at once. “Same signature, every time.”
“Darya Bedrosian,” said Leta.
“Winslow did say she was his doctor.” Abby had shifted interest to the few notes in the folders. “She probably signs things for him on her trips to the Homeland.” He flipped over one of the papers. “Hmm.”
“What?”
Abby reached down by his foot, knocked twice against the bottom of the desk, then glanced at Leta and smiled. He pulled up a black notebook then reached down again and retrieved a bottle.
“Now this is an artifact,” he said, holding the bottle up in the air.
“Scotch?”
“Good eye,” he said. “Two-hundred-year-old scotch.” He set the bottle on the desk then opened the notebook. “Actually, Conrad rarely touched the stuff.”
“Then why have a two-hundred-year-old bottle?”
&n
bsp; “Hmm. Good question. Anyway,” he said, tapping the notebook with his index finger, “Conrad kept important leads separate. I taught him that.” He thumbed through the pages until he came to one with a series of bullet points, only the bullets were the symbol he’d seen throughout the day and the points were Labreque’s notes on the meaning. “Get a load of this,” he said. He pulled his vid card from inside his coat and brought up the picture he’d taken in the hidden gallery. “This is the same marking.”
“What did he say about it?”
“Something about the symbol being part of the Aztec calendar.”
“The Aztec?”
“Doesn’t matter. Let’s see, he keeps finding the same symbol in relation to his search for the Jasper. Here he says the blood symbol is derived from the hexagonal crystal, the central axis point, something about the mother rune of the old Norse runes. Wait, I do know this,” he said. Abby scanned the room for a book. He didn’t want to let on that he was already indexing his mind. Seeing no book, he typed the words ‘angel rune’ into the console.
“Yeah, you see? I shouldn’t have missed this. This is an old rune for the redeemer of all evil.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Depends on who you ask. Usually, somebody’s angel showing up on our plane is good for them and bad for everybody else. According to Conrad’s notes, this is also the symbol used by Arden Mortuus, so I’m guessing bad.”
“You think they were watching him?”
“Maybe,” he said. He tapped a few keys. “Please terminate my connection.”
“You have eight thousand two hundred and forty-seven messages. Would you like to read them now?”
He rolled his eyes toward Leta.
“No. Please remove the messages from my file then terminate the connection.”
“The provost has requested that all messages be reviewed prior to deletion.”
“I see. Do I still have a forwarding address listed in my file?”
“Yes, Doctor Squire. Would you like to forward your messages to the address on file?”