With These Eyes (5 page)

Two of her office walls were completely
interactive. Each displayed numerous news reports as they came in
from all over the world. Despite the global variety of feeds, each
story would pass through the new-truth facility first. There, it
was edited by computers and personnel in any language delivered.
The lower third of each screen was occupied with closed-captioning
in the story's native text. Isabelle spoke many languages. Her
childhood afforded her this skill and she was able to read along on
many foreign feeds.

Isabelle was eager to continue her research
which had been disrupted by the missing file message earlier. She
plugged the thumb-drive into the computer and stood before her
interactive walls. The contents of the little device came up empty
on her screen. Thousands of pages of information were gone. This
wasn't enough to stump a seasoned journalist such as herself.
Isabelle searched for the
round-baskets
article again on the
Internet, but all her attempts failed. The file was nowhere to be
found. Isabelle didn't know it was Gene's new-truth silo who had
deleted the file from its own server and any other computers on the
net, but something seemed a bit suspicious to her. A knock on the
door. Isabelle answered and Ryan came into her office at the
perfect moment. He was on top of the world that morning. The new
computer system he managed was every programmer's dream. As
confident and clever as Ryan was when it came to technology, around
Isabelle he literally tripped over his own feet. Ryan’s
schoolboy-crush on Isabelle began the first day of his employ at
the media center.

Isabelle was very confident, smart and
without a doubt the most beautiful woman who had ever talked to
him. Ryan spent most of his time behind computers. He had the
looks, but his lack of social interaction had made attractive women
appear to him as all too elusive. Ryan just didn't know what to say
or how to act around members of the opposite sex when they were
more than mere digital simulations. Isabelle was glad to see Ryan;
who better to help with the computer problems she had
encountered.

"Hi Ryan, nice to see you."

"Really? I mean - nice to see you, too."

He responded while pushing his glasses up on
his nose. His nervousness showed. Perspiration kept causing his
glasses to slide down his nose. Isabelle smiled. She took it as
flattery that an intelligent man such as Ryan would become so
unraveled by her presence. He was convinced that Isabelle would be
attracted to the fact that he ran the world's most powerful
computer system. "How is the new system working for you?" he asked
with great anticipation. Ryan's bubble of pride was about to
pop.

"Not so well. I've been running into all
kinds of problems."

Ryan gulped, "What kind of problems?"

Isabelle's answer was short. "This."

She typed "ball lightning, folklore, energy"
into a search screen. Isabelle selected one of the results. A story
from Asia appeared:

Heavenly Phantom-Ships With
Lanterns
.

As quickly as it appeared, the text vanished.
An error message flashed across the length of both walls.

Invalid Account - Access Denied

This left even Ryan a bit dumbfounded. "That
shouldn't happen," was the best answer he could muster for the
moment.

Ryan had come to Isabelle's office to hear
how impressed she was with his new system but instead, it locked
her out completely. He felt like a knight who fell off the horse
before his fair maiden. Still, Isabelle had more problems to
report. "I've had trouble with the biometrics reader at the garage
this morning, too."

Suddenly Ryan saw a chance to regain
Isabelle's favor. With a triumphant smile, he pulled a little
device out of his pocket that looked a lot like a laser-pointer.
With pride back in his voice, he told Isabelle, "I have a way
around the retina scans for you." Ryan twisted the end of the
little silver cylinder in his hand. A holographic eyeball appeared
at its end. He handed the device to an amazed Isabelle and
continued.

"It's a skeleton key. You can have it, if you
like."

"Ryan, you're brilliant. Thank you."

"I came up with it because I got tired of
getting blinded by the scanners all day. This way you won't get
stuck outside."

Ryan could feel the blood rushing to his
face. He didn't want Isabelle to see him blush. Ryan hurriedly
assured her that he was going to look into the computer problems
right away and rushed out of her office.

6 ISABELLE AND DR. KENSHIN'S SECRET

At the
A
pophis
P
article
A
ccelerator
B
erlin
, a
luminous orb was racing through the facility’s circular tunnel at
speeds yet unmatched by man’s vehicles and projectiles. The ball of
light travelled in complete vacuum and was suspended by a blanket
of superconducting magnets that wrapped the tunnel in its entirety.
The structure’s functional part stretched under Berlin’s outskirts
in a ring thirteen kilometers in radius.

On the surface, the setting sun illuminated
helium tankers as they were unloading their cargo into storage
tanks at the engineering building. In one of APAB’s futuristic
office buildings, Quantum Physicist Dr. Kenshin, a man in his late
50s with grey, scruffy hair was talking to Isabelle via video link.
He sat before one of the many computers in his office. In his hand
was an oversized model of a helium atom. Isabelle was probing for a
hidden truth.

"Doctor, it defies logic that someone would
build a multi-billion dollar particle accelerator to prove a flawed
theory."

Kenshin responded. "The official position of
this company is that the standard model of the atom is absolute
truth."

"It was once said to be the truth that the
earth was flat."

Kenshin sighed and looked at a display case.
Inside, the medal from his Nobel-Prize hovered over a small
superconductor. He continued. "You can't use this, okay?"

"I promise."

Kenshin began to shed light on Isabelle's
hunch. "Everyone here knows that the old concept contradicts modern
findings. The firm built the collider anyhow, telling the public
they could find the particle that carries gravity. But there is no
such thing."

Isabelle's journalistic instinct was right.
She probed further. "Why was such an expensive machine built?"

"I really can't talk to you about this
anymore. You should look into weapons research."

The video link disconnected. A message
appeared in its place.

Call Disconnected - Subscriber Does Not
Exist.

7 VACCINE TROOPERS

A short distance away was Silverlake, one of
the older parts of town. The neighborhood was home to many families
and artists. The unique style of each dwelling set this quiet part
of Los Angeles apart from the track-housing that defined so many of
the city's suburbs. Silverlake was also where Isabelle's father,
Lionel de Fleur, had made his home.

Lionel lived in a modest house at the end of
a cul-de-sac. The swarm of parrots we know from Isabelle's house
was resting in the trees that lined the rotund dead-end. The street
was quiet on this sunny February day.

Suddenly, the 108 parrots of the tropical
swarm screeched and hastily flew off. What had startled them was
the sound of an approaching helicopter. In pace with the aircraft
above, a convoy of vehicles rolled into what, until moments ago,
had been a peaceful and serene neighborhood.

Two police cruisers comprised the spearhead
of an ominous convoy. What followed were as a dozen black sports
utility vehicles, a furniture truck and a tractor-trailer cattle
transport. A group of patrol cars at the end of the convoy stopped
to close off access to the neighborhood behind the vehicles.

The dark SUVs darted to the front of every
residence. In synchronized precision, all the vehicles' doors flew
open. Troopers in black jump-suits exited and rushed to the
entrance of each house. The noise of the low-flying helicopter
drowned out their heavy footsteps.

A detail of Troopers approached the door of
Lionel's neighbors, the Weavers. A heavily armed Trooper pounded on
the Weavers' front door, breaking the window in its center.

"What the hell is going on out there?"
shouted David, the very upset father of the family as he threw the
door open.

The Trooper wasn’t exactly impressed with
Weaver's demeanor and took an even more aggressive stance. Without
saying a word, the uniformed warrior held a scanner up to the man's
face. The device resembled the electronic clipboard of a delivery
service. It emitted a blinding light and left Mr. Weaver slightly
disoriented. A screen on the device displayed his driver's license
picture and a list of information for the Trooper to read. It
showed the family as independent business owners with considerable
assets. The readout listed David's wife and daughter as the only
other residents of the house. The Trooper barked at the very upset
family father before him.

"Sir, due to your unwillingness to get
vaccinated against the monkey flu, your family is posing a risk to
national health."

The Trooper struck a chord with David who
launched into a rant. "This is still a free country and it is my
choice whether or not I want to get vaccinated. You have no right
to even be on my property. Someone is going to pay for my
door!"

While David was going on in anger, the
Trooper briefly looked over his shoulder and motioned for one of
the policemen. The patrolman angrily came to join the group, a
couple of others from across the street followed suit.

"Is there a problem?" he asked.

David was confident that the police would
come to his aid. "Damn right, there's a problem!" he bellowed. "I'm
not getting an injection and neither is my daughter."

Without saying another word, the policeman
took out his tazer, aimed it at David's heart and pulled the
trigger. In a flash, two wires with fish-hook ends shot through the
air and lodged themselves in the father's chest. Excruciating
voltage flowed through his body, causing him to collapse in a
seizure. The policeman continued discharging the gun into him while
the Trooper read on.

"In accordance with the emergency health
bill, you and your family are going to be quarantined and placed
under the care of the Apophis Corporation. Your assets hereby
become property of Apophis to offset the cost of your
treatment."

Several Troopers stormed the house and
dragged David's wife and daughter outside. When Mrs. Weaver saw her
husband twitching on the ground, she tried to break away from the
Trooper's hold.

"Better cooperate if you don't want to end up
like that!" proclaimed the cop, finally releasing the trigger of
his electric weapon. The family was dragged off the porch and lined
up on the front lawn.

Shoulder patches and ball cap of one of the
Troopers’ uniforms featured an image of the staff of Caduceus. In
this symbol of an ancient civilization, two snakes form a
double-helix around a staff that is topped with a winged
silver-circle. In modern times, most individuals only know this to
be the sign of a pharmacy but fail to understand its meaning or
relevance. The Vaccine Trooper carried a bag that contained several
injection guns. The handle of each was marked with colored tape. He
pulled out a gun with a red mark. Other guns in his bag were marked
with blue. Blue was reserved for those who Gene deemed suitable
cash crop. It contained a booster-shot of fluoride, a substance
found to suppress the need for individual thought. Without
sterilizing the injection site or even allowing time to roll up
their sleeves, the Trooper injected each of the Weavers. What they
didn't know was instead of a vaccine, they had each received a
lethal dose of a weaponized strain of the flu virus. The shot was
going to leave the entire family dead in a few days' time.

"You can't take us!" cried David's daughter,
"our dog can't stay home alone."

One of the Troopers laughed, "Don't you
worry, we'll get your little dog, too."

Two of the Troopers came out of the house
carrying valuables. One held a large zipper-bag full of cash and
jewelry. Another carried a box containing the family's camcorder
and their laptops. The sound of the family dog yelping out his last
breath as a Trooper snapped his neck emanated from the inside. The
daughter couldn't believe her ears. Tears welled up in her eyes and
shortly thereafter, a Trooper emerged with the animal's lifeless
carcass in a large plastic bag. The daughter screamed
hysterically.

"Shep! You bastards killed Shep!"

Her arms flailing, she broke free and made a
run towards her dead dog when the other two policemen drew their
stun guns and fired their high-voltage wires into her body. The
Troopers were laughing at the girl, who was now twitching on the
ground and screaming uncontrollably. Within a few moments’ time,
the current flowing through the teenager's body caused her to lose
consciousness. She twitched a little while longer under the force
of the current until the policemen released the triggers of their
taze guns. Each of them yanked the hooks out of her flesh before
they threw her bleeding and motionless body into the cattle
transporter.

"Go, look after your daughter!" shouted one
of the Troopers as he struck the mother in the back with the butt
of his machine gun.

"But, I've been vaccinated," sobbed the
woman.

The Trooper struck her again. "Go or be
shot," he replied as he raised his automatic weapon to aim at her
face. Both parents complied in agony.

Next door, Lionel was sitting in his living
room, smoking his pipe and reading a mystery novel. The deafening
sound of the helicopter had muffled the noise from the Weavers'
struggle. Lionel was used to the constant rumble of helicopters.
Television stations, the various secret and public police forces,
and Apophis security maintained an armada of aircraft that left the
city’s angels rarely a quiet moment. Isabelle’s father was a bit
surprised when a Trooper pounding on his door was the only thing
that could be heard over the helicopter's blades. Concerned that
his front door might give way to the heavy assault, Lionel set down
his book and pipe. He made for the door as quickly as could be
expected from a man in his late years. He was nearing the door and
shouted, "I'm on my way. There's no need to break down my door," to
little effect. The pounding continued and Lionel could hear the
Trooper shouting.