“I don’t have a conventional job,” Alex answered.
She found his voice soothing. Something about his way made her feel at ease.
“He’s a therapist,” Kirby interjected.
Alex shot him a look.
“Sort of. I’m sorry. This is between you two. I won’t interrupt again. I promise.”
Alex looked back at Miriam.
“A therapist? How exciting. What kind? I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a therapist. Someone you could talk to, someone you could say anything to who could help you change things about yourself that you don’t like. Maybe you could give me some advice?” she asked, surprised at herself for asking, her tone half joking and half hoping Alex would say yes. She really did find his presence disarming.
Alex gave her a Cheshire grin. Little did Miriam know, but with that one question, her life was about to change forever.
“I just might be able to help you,” he said.
21
Contact
Rika Muranaka pulled her baseball cap low on her forehead when someone walking into the Starbucks. Sitting in the back of the store, she hunched low in her chair before daring a glance at the entrance.
She saw that the man who had just entered was in his early twenties, wearing a suit and tie. She noted that his eyes were glued to his cell phone. He paid her no mind as he got in line to order his coffee. Based on his mannerisms alone, the man did not strike Muranaka as the Coalition Assurance mercenary type.
Still, he was using an iPhone, which automatically scanned for and enabled WiFi, so she used the tracing software on her laptop to locate and tap into his phone. She quickly scanned his contacts and text messages and crossed referenced them with the Coalition personnel database. It came up empty. His current text message conversation was with his girlfriend, arguing over dinner plans.
Muranaka logged off his phone, the man having no idea she had just eavesdropped into his life. Muranaka shook her head at how easy it would be to turn his world upside down. All the passwords to his bank accounts, his social media accounts, his work files, all were extremely vulnerable, all through his phone. She could have easily emptied his bank accounts, catfished his social media, put his personal information out for the whole world to see, all while sipping a coffee at Starbucks.
People should be terrified, she thought to herself, at how easy it is to steal their information. That’s why Muranaka, and people like her, always used encryption programs to protect their devices and almost never used public WiFi.
She checked the other phones located in the coffee shop one more time to make sure there were no Coalition connected individuals in or near the store. There were none, at least none that were carrying electronic communication devices.
Sitting at the back of the coffee shop, she had positioned herself to have a good view of the front door. If Coalition Assurance hit men were wise enough to leave their phones at home and came in searching for her, she could simply claim to be working on her laptop. If they checked her laptop, they’d find nothing incriminating, other than the spy software, which was Coalition developed property that she helped create and was authorized to use.
Muranaka also had several burner laptops she kept ready to use in public places, just in case. And if Nicole Ellis actually did show up, they could move to a more secure location.
The email from Nicole Ellis had come to Muranaka as a complete surprise. Ellis, whom she had never met, reached out to her via an encrypted server and asked for the face-to-face meeting. Muranaka had been running an analysis on PHOEBE at the time in an attempt to find patterns in its recent behavior. Perhaps Ellis had detected the observation, or perhaps Ellis feared that Muranaka was getting too close.
It was in the middle of this search when Muranaka’s email pinged. It was a simple question from Ellis—“Would you like to meet?”
Through a brief encrypted email exchange, they had confirmed each other’s identities and agreed upon this particular Starbucks as their rendezvous point. The store’s free WiFi was the most leached WiFi in the area, which made cell phone and laptop surveillance relatively easy for both Muranaka and Ellis. This, oddly enough, allowed them to secure the location. If there were police, Immigration Customs Enforcement storm troopers, otherwise known as ICE, or Coalition Assurance hit men anywhere in the area, their cell phones would be a dead giveaway.
The front door opened again. This time a woman wearing a baseball cap—and with guarded mannerisms—entered the Starbucks coffee shop. Muranaka didn’t need to scan phones to recognize it was Nicole Ellis.
PHOEBE’s creator carefully scanned the seating area until she met eyes with Muranaka.
The two women shared a brief nod, and Ellis approached the table where Muranaka sat.
“So I’m here,” Nikki said as she sat down across from Rika Muranaka.
Nikki knew all about Rika Muranaka and her work at the Coalition with Black Widow, and she had fended off Muranaka’s efforts to hack into PHOEBE more than once. Nikki knew at some point, when things became more settled with the family, she would be forced to confront her rival. She had no idea it would happen this way.
Nikki took an instinctive look around the crowded coffee shop and pulled her baseball cap lower.
“I’ve been running ID checks on anyone within a fifty foot radius of that door,” Muranaka said, in response to Nikki’s movements.
“So have I,” Nikki replied. “But Coalition Assurance uses burners. So we can’t be here too long.”
There was an awkward silence between the women.
Muranaka finally broke it. “So I’m here.”
“So am I. You convinced me to meet you. Said I was in grave danger. So what is the Coalition up to now?” Ellis asked.
Muranaka sat back in her chair. “You’re the one who asked to meet,” Muranaka replied.
The tension between the women went up a notch.
“No, I didn’t ask you, you asked me,” Nikki replied. “I first got an email originating from an encrypted server saying who you were, that you needed to speak with me, and that my life was in danger.”
“I never sent any email like that,” Muranaka fired back. “I got an email from you, encrypted, asking if I wanted to meet and that my life was in danger. We went back and forth a couple of times, and you suggested here because of the consistent crowds and the free WiFi.”
“I never sent that email. I would have never sent that email.”
“Well I never would’ve sent you anything.”
“Yet here we are.”
“Here we are.”
It was beginning to dawn on both women what had happened. Muranaka spoke first. “Both of our conversations were entirely fabricated. The fact is that neither one of us reached out to the other. PHOEBE did this. She hacked into my personal info to confirm my ID as well as yours. She’s out of control. This could become catastrophic and you know it.”
“PHOEBE would never hurt anyone.”
“How do you know that? Was it you who programmed her to literally stop a robbery in progress? Or was that something else she did on her own?”
“No one got hurt.”
“This time.”
“The Coalition wants to weaponize PHOEBE. I’ll never let that happen,” Nikki shot back.
“Tell me how you code it. Maybe I can help you.”
“Not a chance. This is a set up.”
“It was your program, literally, that set up this meeting between us.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Well it sure as hell wasn’t Black Widow. PHOEBE destroyed her.”
“You used Black Widow to attack PHOEBE?”
“PHOEBE took down a classified military drone.”
“A drone that was trying to kill me and my partner. I’m not going to hand over PHOEBE to the Coalition. That’ll never happen.”
“The man behind that attack is in jail. Not everyone at Coalition Properties is a criminal. We do a lot of go
od work there, and we keep the world safe. Yes, there’s always politics when it comes to money. But you have to learn to work around that. We have to live in this reality, not the one we wish we had. We need the scope and structure of the Coalition to handle the complexity of the world’s problems. And, yes, there have been mistakes, but we have to change the culture from within, not tear it all down. If you destroy the Coalition, then what do you have? War? People going back to being hunter-gatherers?”
“They’ve been after me and my friends as well as many innocent people with their weapons for a long time now,” Nikki shot back. “There’s no more working around entities like the Coalition anymore. They’re a war machine by design. Their ideology embraces slavery. And at some point, you have to take a stand.”
“You take a high and mighty stand, and yet you use an iPhone, which was built with slave labor from China. I can’t believe you actually have the tits to sit there and lecture me.”
“I’m not lecturing you.”
“The Coalition is just a platform for me, that’s all. All that other stuff? That’s got nothing to do with the work that I do.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No. My relationship with the Coalition is no different than yours is with your iPhone.”
Nikki had to admit that Muranaka had a point. “I get what you’re saying, but what the Coalition does has everything to do with you. You can’t separate the two. Look, I used to be a commodities trader. I specialized in the energy sector. Oil. I convinced myself that energy connected us all, and I used that as a way to shield myself from the bad things my firm and my industry did.”
“I know you’re background. You lost a lot of money, and you quit.”
“I saw a terrorist attack on an oil refinery kill people and the only thing everyone in my office was concerned about was how much money we were losing. That’s why I left. At some point, you have to say enough is enough.”
“And yet you created your software program, which could literally bring the world to its knees.”
“It didn’t start that way.”
“Nothing ever does. Not even the Coalition. So why do you think your software program put you in front of me? The Coalition’s lead programmer?”
“I don’t know. How long have you been ghosting PHOEBE?”
“Six months. And admit it. I’ve gotten close.”
“Maybe too close. Maybe all it’s done is make her stronger. Maybe your efforts are the reason she’s beginning to think on her own.”
“What do you mean?”
“All the efforts of the Coalition managed to do was strengthen her defenses. And it’s reached the point where she had to finally put their best in front of me.”
“To what end?”
“Well, you’ve been attacking her constantly. Maybe she wants me to physically get rid of you.”
“Maybe it’s the other way around.”
Muranaka got to her feet. Nikki did the same. Nikki found herself instinctively flexing her hands in preparation for conflict.
Nikki had trained hard with Alex, and she knew that Muranaka would be no match for her. Then she shook off the insanity of that thought.
“This is fucking stupid,” Nikki said. “We’re women, and we don’t do this kind of shit. I don’t know why PHOEBE put us in the room together, but there had to be a reason, and one of us killing the other sure as hell isn’t it.”
“Agreed.”
Nikki suddenly had an idea. “Have you been followed?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Is your lap top bugged?”
“It’s a burner.”
“Your phone?”
“The same. You know this ain’t my first rodeo when it comes to tech security, right?”
“Fair enough, but we need to get out of here and go completely off grid. Are you in shape?”
“Don’t be a bitch.”
“We’re going to move fast on foot, and I need to know if you can keep up.”
“Don’t worry, I can keep up with you.”
“Good. We’ll do switch backs through some alleys, move through some building basements, then hit some lanes that I know the CCV cameras are down. We should be fine. But the phone and the laptop, even that iWatch, anything with an electronic signal on your person—it all has to go.”
“Why? Where are you taking me? To PHOEBE?”
“Not yet. Before we get to that, I need to know the real you. You need to know the real you.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“I’m going to do you a huge favor.”
“I don’t need any favors.”
“You’re going to have to trust me.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“Because if I’m right, everything will change for you. It’ll be a stunning moment of clarity—about who you really are, why you’re really here. I’m taking you to see Alex Luthecker.”
22
Courier Message
“That was unbelievable what you just did,” Kirby said to Luthecker as they exited Miriam’s apartment. Kirby could hardly contain his excitement. “I mean, you knew every detail about her life, from beginning to end. And not only that, you showed her. And she saw it. She really saw it. It changed everything for her. I could see it in her eyes. It was like a curtain had been lifted. Even her mannerisms were different after the fact. She’ll never be the same, Alex. Can I call you Alex?”
Luthecker scanned the hallway of the old apartment building. The two men were alone. They walked next to one another toward the stairwell that would lead them to the alley exit.
“So my theory is, when they swapped out your birth mom’s DNA string with Miriam’s, they altered your genetic memory—literally altered your genes’ ability to remember. It turned you into a super computer,” Kirby rattled.
“I want to thank you for taking me to meet her,” Luthecker replied. “It meant a lot to me. It was important, but not in the way you think it was. And no, your theory about DNA manipulation is not what happened.”
Both men stopped walking.
“Then what happened?”
“Nothing. Memory is not wisdom, doctor.”
“But what you do is not normal. Your genetic birth situation was not normal.”
“You are correct about that. I do have two mothers, and my situation is not normal. And for a long time I thought the same thing you did, that it’s what made me different. But now, after meeting Miriam, I know that that is not the case.”
“Everything has an explanation, and you’re not above that,” Kirby countered.
“I’m not saying I am above anything or anyone. No matter what kind of DNA swap was performed to make me who I am, I’m still flesh and blood like everyone else on this planet. I’m still subject to the cycle and mysteries of life, and like everyone else, I’ll get old and die. You’re missing the big picture.”
“Well then explain it to me. How is it that you can do what it is that you do?”
Luthecker took a moment to gather his thoughts. “Have you ever heard of the ancient Polynesian navigators?”
“No. But what do they have to do with you?”
“They have everything to do with me. Just listen. Hundreds of years ago, these Pacific Islanders navigated tens of thousands of miles of ocean with perfect precision in nothing but outrigger canoes. Europeans feared the oceans then, seeing them as menacing and something that must be conquered, but the people of the Pacific looked to the oceans in a very different way. They understood that they as a people were intimately tied to the waters.
“So they studied the oceans every nuance, from movement to sound. They knew the meaning of its every tide, its every wave. It seemed an infinite task, and it took generations. But eventually they understood the relationship of the stars, the moon, the Earth, and the water. They understood that it was all connected, and they sought to understand that connection, and they knew that they were part of that connecti
on.
“To them, being part of and not separate from the ocean was deeply rooted in their culture. And because of this, they never got lost in the waves. They could travel the oceans with no fear and complete mastery in only outrigger canoes. They handed down this knowledge from father and mother to son and daughter in the verbal tradition, and they understood that passing on that knowledge in that tradition was also part of the connection.
“But when western technology and Patriarchal beliefs separated us from the Earth, told us we were better than the land and the sea and viewed them as something to be conquered, this knowledge was lost.”
“So you’re saying you’re Polynesian now?”
“No. What I’m saying is the memory capacity I have that you think is only capable through some technical innovation with DNA is rooted in the concept of conquering the natural laws, not connecting with them. And that’s incorrect thinking. That’s incorrect being.
“What I can do is something that humans have been capable of since the dawn of time, but only when they worked together. That capacity has been in our DNA all the time. No augmentation is or was ever necessary. And what the oceans were to the Polynesian people, human beings are to me.
“It’s been that way since I was a boy. It’s just who I am, and I know that now. And I know that it’s not an aberration. That I’m not an aberration. And meeting Miriam served to confirm what I was already beginning to suspect. That what I can do is necessary and natural in order to help restore balance.”
“How did you suspect this?”
“Because I see it in another.”
“The girl in your apartment. The one you rescued in Mexico. That’s who you’re talking about, right?”
“Yes.”
“I knew it.”
“What I can do is not something new. It is not created by some scientific anomaly. Instead, it is something very old, and it exists in all of us on some level. It is an ability whose time was coming again, and that’s why it’s appearing. Nothing new is learned in this world, it is simply remembered.
Revolution: Luthecker, #3 Page 16