Chapters:

It was almost as if he was the owner of a library who had suddenly discovered shelves of books he did not know he possessed.

Arthur C. Clarke, 3001: The Final Odyssey




It isn’t man or God. It’s something ... in the brain.

Stephen King, The Long Walk




Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.

Larry Niven, The Ringworld Throne




And was that the true greatness of the human race—that they could imagine something and in time it would be so?

Clifford Simak, So Bright the Vision




Who Made Who

AC/DC

-----------------------------------------

For Tedi.

-----------------------------------------

◦◦◦◦

Peter was a loner. It might have started when he was a child and his parents often left him alone at home, sometimes for long periods of time. It wasn’t that they didn’t love or care about him; his father Charles was in charge of a company, and his mother Flora was probably occupied with things that adults did and children didn’t understand.

Peter learned self-sufficiency from an early age, and even when they hired a babysitter for him, he entertained himself. He fantasized or took apart his toys (like any self-respecting boy). He wished to know how things worked. Oddly, despite his years, in most cases he managed to put them together again. Well, there was the occasional leftover piece, probably a spare.

And Peter read; he read a lot. He’d read everything in the children’s section before he turned ten, and the management of the city library, with the consent of Peter’s parents, issued him a card for all sections. That only made him pick up his reading pace. He wasn’t picky: a thriller or a book on ancient mysteries alternated with encyclopedias and technical manuals.

Consequently, Peter wasn’t the most popular boy in school. His classmates tended to see him as a weirdo rather than a loser. Losers got bullied. Peter’s athletic build made all potential bullies think twice. Yet, all in all, Peter was a loner.

Meanwhile, he got into languages. Using teach-yourself books, CDs and DVDs, he learned German first, then French, Spanish, Italian, and finally Bulgarian. He’d found his last choice rare and exotic: after all, it was spoken by a mere six or seven million people, roughly the population of New York. Besides, Martin Shields, Peter’s only true friend (except for his dog—which, being quite exceptional, didn’t deserve to be excepted), was half-Bulgarian. Hungarian tripped Peter up; he found no similarity to the languages he’d already mastered, or simply lost his interest. Much later, he was surprised to learn that Avitohol, the legendary figure whose name was the first in the Nominalia of the Bulgarian khans, was in fact Attila, the revered ruler of the Huns, Hungarians’ ancestors. Yet this didn’t bring the two languages any closer.

Peter graduated cum laude and without much effort. His father encouraged him to travel abroad, accumulate experience, and broaden his worldview—those were his exact words. Peter went to Europe, since he knew most languages spoken there. He traveled by plane or train, hitchhiking or even walking; he called it his beatnik phase. In the hostels, he made friends with people from various countries, genders, cultures, or social strata. He was surprised by the ease with which he left a group visiting La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and joined another, tempted by Jordanian cuisine. Then, with yet another company, he visited North Africa—except for Libia, of course.

His beatnik phase left a lasting impression. He did broaden his worldview. He learned to unbend and made contacts he’d never thought he’d be able to make. He was aware that he was a loner; he even suspected his asocial childhood might push him toward sociopathy. Yet that nomadic year changed him.

He visited Ukraine, following the suggestion of a Ukrainian veteran of the Soviet–Afghan War, who sought healing wandering around the world. Peter spoke neither Ukrainian nor Russian, yet in Tavria, the region beyond Odessa, he was amazed to find out he could understand the local archaic version of Bulgarian. Most of the population there were ethnic Bulgarians, descendants of refugees from the Ottoman invasion of the Balkans.

At last, Peter went to Bulgaria itself. That was where he stayed the longest. He paid a visit to Martin Shields, his friend from the US.

Martin’s parents were separated. By their incompatibility of characters and by thousands of miles. After their divorce, Mr. Shields remained in the US. Martin’s mother had a hard time, abandoned her current life, and went back to her homeland, Bulgaria. Martin grew up in the US. He was a promising MIT student. His asocial tendencies had turned him into a computer wiz; after all, computers did exactly what you told them to, unlike people.

However, the aftermath of the divorce and Martin’s skill to make computers do things drove him to actions that the federal government didn’t quite endorse. When his mother Maria, called Mary in the US, packed up and left, Martin left with her. Just when he was about to graduate. The US and Bulgaria had no extradition agreements, so the American authorities never managed to confirm their suspicion that Martin, whom they’d been sniffing around, and ;, whom they were after, were one and the same person.

It also happened that most information on the case merely disappeared from the FBI’s computers.


◦◦◦•

When you close your eyes, it doesn’t get completely dark. If you concentrate and move your eyeballs

as if you’re peering around your own personal darkness

incredible images appear. Peter had noticed it since he was a child, and whenever he closed his eyes for a minute or before falling asleep, he enjoyed the lightning storm accompanying the retreat of the navy blue spots before the inrush of the red. Or the gradual blending of pink and nearly-black, against an infinite and swift

Irish-like

dance of minuscule grains

like dots

with indistinct, fantastic shapes.

Science attributed this phenomenon to the flow of blood along the capillaries in the eyelids. Yet it did not account for the variety of colors: wasn’t blood just red? Nor did it explain why you could still see the spots in a pitch-dark room.

And the dots.

◦◦•◦

The world economic crisis didn’t spare Barton Dental: a small company founded by Charles Barton and nowadays

largely

owned by Peter. Its main production consisted of denture casting appliances using high-frequency currents. Bill Harknes, the CEO, regularly informed Peter about the drastically reduced sales and the attempts of local and international competitors to buy out or merge with Barton Dental.

German concern Greif were the most aggressive candidate. They offered similar products, and they wished to gain a foothold in the US.

The ongoing annual general meeting wasn’t turning well. Peter held the controlling interest, but it was not his style to simply force his way during a vote. Besides, certain specifics of the statutes wouldn’t let him do it. He had to listen to the stakeholders and calm them down, if possible. People desired a return on their investments. Some understood that still being in business was a success in itself; companies from other fields hadn’t had the same luck. Others demanded a restructuring, a merger, or even more exotic options. There were even voices clamoring for bankruptcy.

Peter pressed his thumb and forefinger against his forehead. His palm covered his eyes and the fact that they were closed. He was listening to the present speaker, but he also watched the dance of the shapes on the inner side of his eyelids. That somehow made him calmer and refined his thoughts.

"Over the past week, almost all of our free shares were bought anonymously. This is good news. Within the current economic situation,"

shareholders are scared of words like ’crisis’

"someone has chosen to invest their money in nobody but us. Rumors have it it’s Greif," Bill Harknes was saying.

Peter was already listening to him with half an ear. They had prepared this speech together, aiming to reassure their shareholders. A large part of Peter’s focus now shifted to the dots behind the competing veils in purple and claret. They stayed in the background, and he could hardly see them, yet they tugged at his curiosity.

If I could only bring them in front of the spots.

He pursued the idea for a while, and they seemed to reluctantly obey. They gradually passed through the colorful shrouds and grew more distinct.

Intriguing.

Bill flooded the shareholders with quarterly reports, inflation rates ...

numbers.

A part of Peter

ever tinier

kept following his words.

Numbers! The dots are numbers! At least most of them. I can make them out! Only they move too fast.

Peter rubbed his eyes, opened them, and assumed the expression his audience expected him to have. Then the meeting was over. His head hurt, and he vaguely realized the shareholders had extended him more time for the implementation of the rescue plan he hadn’t yet devised.

◦◦••

Peter tried to focus on the next report and the CEO’s suggestions. He had to find a way out. Ever since the general meeting, however, he’d often had headaches. Like now. He let the folder down, leaned back in his favorite armchair, and closed his eyes.

Think, save the company! You cannot disappoint your dad.

A part of him suspected it’d been the discovery of the dots-cum-numbers that had provoked the headaches. Once he started, he couldn’t stop watching them.

They’re there! Don’t other people see them?

He couldn’t ask anyone without raising doubts about his sanity. The dots were like a drug. There, they came into focus again: 45, 09, 1 ....

Was that a 1? It looked somehow ... crooked.

Peter blinked a few times, sighed, and sat with his eyes open. Most people think better when their eyes are closed, filtering out visual distractions. For Peter, it was more distracting to close his eyes; then curiosity got the better of him, and he watched the numbers. Now he looked around the room and forced himself to think about the company.

45, 09, 1 ....

At the general meeting, Bill Harknes had voiced his concern that Greif was buying out their shares.

One?

They needed innovation. But it entailed even more expenses.

One! But of course! It was indeed a one, only in Arabic. Why would I see it the way Arabs write it?

Then he remembered. During his trips across Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, and Jordan, he’d learned how they wrote numbers there. His natural affinity for foreign languages guided him. He didn’t learn Arabic, just their numbers and two dozen phrases. His French served him perfectly in Morocco and Tunisia, English, in Jordan. Perhaps he’d barred himself from learning more; it was enough his passport featured stamps from those countries. After all, he lived in the post-9/11 US.

Why don’t I just go and put on a keffieyeh, Yasser Arafat-style?

◦•◦◦

At 4:12 a.m., the phone quivered insistently. Then it started ringing. Peter opened his eyes. A private number.

"Hey Peter! It’s Martin. You sleeping?"

"Not any more .... Hi."

Of all the people Peter knew, Martin was the only one who could call him without considering the time difference.

Or even despite considering it.

"I think I have a good conjecture about the numbers. I’ve scoured the Net."

"When? Don’t you ever rest?"

"Oh, I have a tool. It can search closed networks, too—with a little help from me. It can even search ... never mind. Though fragmented, the data look very much like star coordinates."

Martin’s satisfaction all but materialized in the dim bedroom.

"That doesn’t make sense. I’ve never been interested in astronomy." Peter stifled a huge yawn.

Martin spoke a bit more quickly and eagerly. "I don’t know, I found the correspondence on a computer you definitely don’t have access to. It sounds crazy, yep, but it’s the only format fitting your—if you have more, uh, visions of the Matrix kind, you’ll send them to me, right? You’ve piqued my interest!"

"Of course, Martin. Thank you. Also ... you didn’t hack into NASA, did you?"

"Ciao."

Ciao. Why do Bulgarians use an Italian word to say "goodbye"? Why only "goodbye," and not "hello," like Italians? That is, if you can call Martin a Bulgarian.

Peter put his phone down and shuffled toward the bathroom. Sleep seemed a lost cause for today.

Star? Coordinates!

Also, he likely hacked them. NASA.

◦•◦•

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have a problem."

The Chair made a meaning-laden pause and looked at the lavish granite hall and its audience, summoned for an urgent secret assembly of the Fund. Earth’s richest, owing to the Grokking. Handsome, owing to their riches. Healthy, for the same reason and for the same purpose. Public celebrities and reclusive owners of mega-corporations, members and leaders of influential international institutions, heirs to notoriously wealthy lines, and a number of heads of state looked back at him with slight concern. The crème of old and new money gathered in one place.

"We have a new Player. He does not come from our circles, probably not from theirs either ... for now."

Those who had had a strong intuition already before the Grokking multiplied it seemed to have expected this information. They did not flinch. One of the rest, a rich heir, who had so far failed at Grokking, said, "But ... is that certain? There’ve been no incidents for, um, twelve years when that Ann—"

"It has been confirmed," said the Chair.

We have no choice. We must endure Non-grokkers too. After all, they hold nearly half of our resources.

"And we are here and now in order to prevent a second Ström accident. It was Ann Ström who confirmed it herself, by stealing him from under our noses."

Fortunately, now we lost only a single mercenary, rather than two teams, like that time.

"Until we have established contact, we can neither eliminate nor co-opt this Player. And we have reasons to believe he is, well, essential."

◦••◦

That’s the sweet part of outsourcing. You get to work from home. Whenever, as much as you want, a cup of coffee always in your hand. It’s life in slippers.

But it’s still work.

Not that Martin was officially working for anyone. Freelancing was more like it than outsourcing. There was a time when he’d considered opening his own software business here in Bulgaria. He’d been inspired by the software written and successfully sold by local companies. After trying to use it, and then decompiling it, Martin was dumbstruck. He’d never seen a more moronic product. There was an application, done by a big-shot

according to Bulgaria’s standards

company, that managed the sales of a chain of stores. If not for Oracle and MS Excel, it wouldn’t work for the world. It didn’t even offer keyboard shortcuts.

Martin also ran into applications that required regular

paid

updates. Said updates largely consisted of a loading screen in new colors.

He tested a tax filling application. It was mandatory for all Bulgarian companies. At least, it was free. But it freely frayed the nerves of dozens of thousands of owners of small businesses and of thousands of accountants. Not even Adam Smith could make head or tail of its queries. You switched from one cell to another by pressing now Enter, now Tab—depending on how hung-over the imbecile who’d coded it had been. The masterpiece in question ran on DOS. In the twenty-first century. Its later, Windows-based version barely functioned. And if you somehow managed to pass the exasperating trial, at last the invaluable info meant for the Bulgarian National Revenue Agency was written to ... a floppy disk! Martin hadn’t seen one of those since his childhood. To thoroughly enjoy that bush-league piece of software, he had to buy an external USB floppy drive plus disks. The companies obviously had to do the same. Bulgaria was among the countries with the highest percentages of people using the Net. Its chief attractions were its nature and the fast Internet, as tour operators joked. Here, cutting-edge hardware and software were released at the same time as their world debuts. Computer setups definitely didn’t come with a floppy drive.

All of that tickled Martin’s fancy about toying with the idea of founding a company. He could work on his own, writing programs way better than all that garbage masquerading as software. Yes, he could. But that would make him visibly rich by local standards and somewhat famous. That didn’t fit the purpose of his long stay in Bulgaria. Therefore he focused on what he did best. He took on online assignments by individuals or corporations. His digital den wasn’t even DarkNet, the sector inaccessible to mere mortals. He surfed mostly BlackNet: an invisible offshoot

or a parallel stem

with its own rules, protocols, and underground feel, whose existence remained unknown even to privileged DarkNet users. Savvier analysts believed the ostensibly endless information on the public Net made up in fact only 4 to 10% of the whole online info. The other, and more interesting, part, they claimed, was on DarkNet.

Some thirty percent of it. The rest’s on BlackNet.

Martin’s assignments had to do with ferreting out info. Tracing transactions. Corporate secrets. Establishing links between people and events. Information was the currency of the twenty-first century. Sometimes, Martin worked for governments, too. At least that was what he suspected, given the client’s anonymity and the nature of the task. And sometimes,

very rarely though

he balked at certain tasks. Or he eventually convinced himself that if it wasn’t him, somebody else would do it.

He turned a tidy profit. He’d regularly offered financial support to his mother, but she was too proud for that. She therefore lived and worked in the city, while he’d settled in the house where she’d been born, in the small village of Tserovo in the Iskar Gorge. He quickly got used to enjoying the place: the yard looked out on majestically steep, menacingly looming cliffs, whose bowels held a cave reservoir supplying the whole village with water. As they said in his other homeland, it was a million-dollar view. Well, it was better than skyscrapers and hurrying stockbrokers, their tie knots so flawless as if their life depended on it.

Or does it really? What they’re used to call life.

The clean air, kindhearted people, and organic food were all bonuses. The fast Internet, the location, and the lack of a decent cybercrime department completed the idyll.

Martin looked at the cliffs, still impressive after all those years, made his traditional afternoon coffee, grabbed a plate full of mekitsas—the local equivalent of doughnuts, only flatter

yeah, too lazy to cook a proper lunch

and sat down on the stairs in front of the summer kitchen. His new toy safely tucked under his arm.

It was a slim laptop without any logo, rounded and made of titanium. Martin had gotten the prototype as payment for his last assignment. Shock-proof, water-proof, EMP-resistant.

How did the Chinese do it? I doubt they used tubes.

But toughness wasn’t the main asset of the laptop. It held a sixteen-core processor running on a frequency that required the use of the titanium case as a radiator, besides the water cooling. There was an 8-terabyte hard drive, too. Actually, there wasn’t. Data was stored on built-in chips similar to USB flash memory, though faster than hard drives. The RAM was to your heart’s content. The crown jewel was the software, though. You could select any operating system—up-to-date and featuring no backdoors. Linux, Windows, MacOS, DOS. If he wanted to, Martin could turn the thing into an X-Box, Playstation, an archaic Commodore 64, or its Bulgarian contemporary, the 8-bit Pravetz 81. He had top-notch emulators for everything. The inbuilt automatic anonymizer was the best he’d ever seen and relieved Martin of half his chores. Even as yet unwritten viruses stood no chance against the antivirus program. The local AI could predict the consequences of running any code.

The whole shebang was likely developed for the military.

The week before, Martin had copied his favorite applications

using the staggering WiFi bandwidth

to the new machine, and after doing a double low-level formatting, donated his old laptop to the local library.

Smiles, handshakes, and thanks. Oh, and a donation certificate.

There was only one snag in the techno-pastoral idyll. Martin had nobody around to discuss his interest with. Ever since he’d gotten the Computer, there were hardly any tricks and tactics to discuss with other hackers, his virtual faceless pals. Now he was a step ahead of them.

It’s like having a nuclear weapon.

As for his analogous pastimes, there was only Peter. They often emailed each other, or Martin called him over the Net.

Last time, they’d talked about a theory, popular in various forums, that human beings used just 10% of their mental potential. If it was true, what did the other 90% do? The prevalent opinion held that a twentieth-century journalist misquoted Einstein, giving birth to the 10% urban legend. However, Martin dug deeper. He hacked into dozens of hospitals and labs around the world and copied records and scans of the brain activity of people who were awake, anesthetized, or even comatose. He was no doctor, but data was data. Especially if digital. For awake or comatose patients, outside the peaks in a given spectrum, there were frequencies where the monotonous graphs looked very similar.

As if they’re processing something.

Martin and Peter loved theorizing on such topics. Peter was more moderate in his conclusions, and more critical of Martin’s pet conspiracy theories. On the 10% issue, they almost reached a consensus it was more than an urban legend. People processed, and maybe even shared—given the similarities in the graphs—certain data.

The laptop was running under Windows now. Martin glanced at the lower right corner of the screen, calculated the time difference

for a change

and said, "Peter, voice mode."

A world map popped up. Multi-colored lines shot forth from Bulgaria. Following different routes, across different continents, the lines merged at a point in the US. The point made Peter’s phone ring.

Before connecting, Martin said, "No visualization."

The map obediently vanished.

◦•••

"What you’re telling me looks like SETI@home."

"Seti-at-what?"

Even though Peter couldn’t see him, Martin gave him geeks’ trademark grin at newcomers. "SETI at Home. A program. A screensaver. Looking for ET intelligence. The data from the Arecibo telescope gets recorded. It’s so bulky that even if they use a supercomputer, they’d need millions of years to filter out a signal that seems artificial, emitted by intelligent creatures."

"And?"

"And they figured out they could use the CPU time of your and my computer, along with thousands more, when they’re idle and turn on their—"

"Screensavers?"

"Right on. Any volunteer can install it. They receive, analyze and send back data packets—when they aren’t playing some MMORPG."

Peter, apparently to spare himself the grin from before, didn’t ask what that was. Instead he said, "And so they formed a supercomputer?"

"They formed a cluster, a hyper-super-duper computer, Peter! Later, other research organizations and NGOs embraced the idea and—"

"Right, I got the analogy. Ninety percent of our brains are busy doing something. Something we have no access to, unless we count the insight of ’star coordinates.’ You think we may be similar to those SETI computers?"

"Somebody’s planted data, a program in our heads. Why not? The interesting question is: what does it do, this ... something@brain?"

Another type of grin encapsulated Martin’s satisfaction with the name. The grin of an operator who’d managed to digitalize some analogous data after plenty of grunts and coffee.

"So who created it and placed it in our heads?"

"That would be ’wrote and installed it.’" A grin of the first type.

"That would be if we talked computers, Martin."

Wrote? Installed?... God?

•◦◦◦

When he entered the lobby of Zander Industries, Emil Zander was pleased to hear the background noise drop. The guards straightened up and put on the ghosts of smiles. "Good morning, sir!"

Employees huddled around the elevators, and even visitors grew quiet, sensing the change in the air.

You’re all lice. At least you’re aware of it.

Emil took his personal elevator to the senior management floor. His office was straight opposite the doors. He walked between the huge, monitor-cluttered desks of his assistants, Podolsky and Gorsky.

Ski 1 and Ski 2.

They were second or third-generation Americans, with Polish and Russian roots, respectively.

And cockroaches like the rest, but they’re loyal to me and work like robots. It’s almost scary, how good they are at tracking comm around the world.

"How do you do, sir!"

Emil nodded at them. "Anything new?"

Rick Podolsky, the bigger toady aiming for Employee of the Year, spoke up first. "A single email with a mess of numbers. Nevertheless, I and the colleagues decided they were star coordinates and placed the entire info on your desk, sir."

"Okay."

Emil entered his office, crossed half an acre of luxury, and sat down at his desk made of a single block of polished granite. Mahogany was for parvenus. He looked at Sky 1 and 2’s notes. An email from the US to Bulgaria.

Where the hell is that godforsaken place? Hah! Hell and God?

The mail said, Those numbers we talked about. What do you think they are?

Peter.

Then it listed said numbers. It seemed trivial.

A couple of kids, one in the US, the other in Bulgaria, playing riddles. Well, there’s universal Net access for you. Podolsky and Gorsky have overdone it again.

But that was what he paid them for: to overdo it. He crumpled the notes and dropped them into the cylindrical granite bin, whose contents went through a shredder twice a day before feeding the furnace. He leaned back into the non-eco leather chair, crossed his legs on the desk, took out a genuine Havana cigar, and let his eyes roam over the magnificent

in Emil’s view

panorama out the window.

•◦◦•

Ann О’Maly-Ström, a slender woman in her mid-thirties, was barely noticeable in the dim room. She stood very still and stared at her laptop screen. There wasn’t much there:

Those numbers we talked about. What do you think they are?

16, 42, 58, 06, 45, 09, 1, 9600, –1.45, 8,7

Cheers,

Peter.

Ann had intercepted this email from Zander’s network. The numbers piqued her interest. She closed her eyes and focused. The regular features of her face grew stern. The vast database stored in her brain fairly buzzed. Ann toyed with the numbers, looking for a pattern.

Data sets, comparison, analysis ....

A few minutes later, her eyes opened, her brain switched gears, and her symmetric features

We see symmetry as beauty, do we not? Or is beauty, particularly women’s beauty, merely a play of lights and shadows, emphasized by make-up? The one in charge of defining beauty is the observer, nor the observed. It’s the observer who looks at a face, posture, or neckline and perceives the promise of happiness, which:

a) may be there;

b) isn’t there at all

agreed to display her characteristic calm.

Star coordinates. Sirius A.

She’d have to pay a visit to this Peter fellow. Her fingers danced across the keyboard. The IP address in the email told her the physical address. She closed the laptop and stood up. She crossed the room, opened the wardrobe, and looked at the casual clothing section. This case might prove to be complicated, so she decided to keep the tight charcoal-black leotard, which doubled as a bulletproof vest and had saved her life several times. Its fabric was made of densely intertwined threads of elastin, Kevlar, carbon, and buckminsterfullerene.

Ann brought her palm to the back of the open wardrobe, and it split in two. The two parts slid into the walls with a soft hydraulic hum, revealing an arsenal which could make Basque separatists, Al Qaeda, or even Neo envious. Ann picked a Glock 18 with a silencer.

It was a modification of Glock 17, made for the Austrian EKO Cobra counter-terrorists. It featured semi-automatic and automatic fire, larger clips, and tritium sights.

Ann also picked up two extra clips.

She considered a Heckler & Koch MP5SD-N with an integrated silencer. The N letter revealed the name of the client who’d requested the modification: NAVY, the US one. This thing could shoot even underwater. But that was going too far already; even the Glock had more bullets than a Soviet border guard during the Cold War.

When her wardrobe looked like one again, she took out a black (eco-leather) cape coat, put it on, and glanced at the mirror. Once buttoned up, the wide coat perfectly concealed the combined length of the gun and silencer. As for the charcoal leotard, it could pass for a pair of leggings. It wasn’t clear if the tall black shoes—fairly lugged, but also subtly elegant—came from the fashion industry or the military one, but she put them on. She took her car keys and strode out.

•◦•◦

You know how it goes while surfing the Net? You’re looking for a specific item, a result catches your eye, you follow your curiosity, and a dozen hyperlinks later, you’re browsing a site that has nothing to do with the keywords you typed an hour ago.

Peter began with trends in dental medicine and technologies for denture manufacture. He was trying to devise a lifebelt for Barton Dental.

A side production line? A new product?

And now he replayed a Youtube video for the third time. How to make a CNC printer out of an old floppy drive. The video showed said hacked floppy drive, a felt-tip pen in place of the read-write head, whirring and writing the narrator’s name. The breaking off-screen voice explained what to use as a controller and said the software had been written in C++.

Peter had no idea why he stared at the video like mesmerized. Or why he then clicked on a link to videos about 3D printers; the first tab of his browser waited with the results of innovations in dental prosthetics. After three hours and dozens of videos and articles about printers, his head throbbed more distinctly than his heart.

He went to the kitchen, drank two aspirins, and sat down in his favorite leather armchair in the living room. He gazed at the TV screen. He wasn’t paying close attention to the documentary there. He simply worried about closing his eyes.

It isn’t green at all to sit at your computer while keeping the TV on.

On the screen, Morgan Freeman explained that light acted now as a wave, now as a particle—it all depended on the experiment observer. A gorgeous 3D animation complemented his words in the background.

3D. A 3D printer?

The dual nature of photons had been driving physicists crazy for more than a century. Peter had read about quantum mechanics in his teen years.

The result depends on the observer. On man. It all depends on us. On me. Barton Dental ....

Reluctantly, he closed his eyes. Yet he chose to not look for the numbers; he forced his thoughts elsewhere. To something pleasant, in the hope it would dispel the headache. To all those blissful summers spent with Granny Rose on her small ranch. It was there that she and Stephen, Martin’s granddad, introduced the boys to each other, almost by force. They must’ve noticed the two were odd, aloof. Martin and Peter had been nine or ten then. At first, they mistrusted one another. Then, slowly, there came acceptance, as if they’d sniffed they belonged to the same kind: smart, isolated, thirsty for more knowledge. However, one was a book addict, the other, a computer junkie. Then they became inseparable. Martin turned out to be the more jagged rock in the mill.

They slept now at Stephen’s ranch, now at Granny Rose’s. And now in the wigwam erected for their game of Indians. During the day, they played and ran and rode and made mischief. They spoke about the fascinating ideas in a book they’d found, or how to overclock a processor. They fished at the nearby stream under Steven’s skillful guidance. Granny Rose cooked for them. She also often grumbled,

never in Martin’s presence, though

"You’ll see the numbers alright, but will you arrange them?" She did it so often that Peter never asked what numbers those were; he thought them to be some idiosyncratic folklore. Until now!

He opened his eyes, expelled from the state between sleep and memories.

Oh Granny! You’ve seen them too! Arrange them?

Perhaps that was what was expected of him. Yet Granny Rose had passed away many years ago. He couldn’t ask her. How did the old joke go? "Oh, why didn’t I listen to my dad when he talked to me!" "Why, what did he say?" "Dunno. I wasn’t listening."

His dad. The numbers?

Rose was his dad’s mother. Shortly after her death and long after his divorce from Flora,

... Bermuda, her new husband the plastic surgeon, the gas explosion on his stupid yacht ... some yachts did disappear in that area. Not that one, though—it just blew up ...

Charles Barton transferred his shares and position to Peter and withdrew to the ranch. He never said why, and Peter never asked.

The ranch.

My family seemed to prefer it to Florida. Will I live my last years there too?

Peter picked up his phone and dialed long distance.

•◦••

"Dad, it’s Peter."

"Hi son. Is it Christmas already? Hadn’t noticed."

"Come on, I don’t call so rarely. How have you been?"

"Fine. I’m just trying, with variable success, to teach Collie what qualifies as a bathroom and what doesn’t."

Collie was a collie indeed, named by Charles in a burst of non-creativity. Peter laughed

in his mind

imagining the scene.

Then he recalled Percival, the collie from his childhood. The best and most loyal friend he’d ever had. Percy loved fetch-the-ball and nosed everyone to keep tossing. He might be reeling with exhaustion, but he’d still ferret the ball out of shrubs and pools. And make Peter’s shoulder hurt with all those pitches.

Looking back, Peter realized Percy had been extraordinary indeed. That he’d deferred to Peter as the pack leader was normal, an inborn part of dogs’ psychology. But how had Percy been able to pick, after a brief and obvious hesitation on his muzzle, between the simultaneous options of food or a stroll?

Or, for that matter, make sense of jokes? For instance, Percy knew Martin was a human as well as he knew cats were cats: small balls of fluff, good for chasing. If Peter told him to go to Martin, Percy did. He approached Martin as a friendly human. If Peter showed him a cat, Percy pursued it. Vigorously but not viciously. Enough to act his dog part and limber up.

However, much to everyone’s surprise, Percy also obeyed the combination of those two commands: "Go to Martin the cat!" He bore down on Martin, prowling and growling.

I’m scaring the cat but I’m not biting the friend.

And when Peter said, "Attaboy, Percy!", the dog instantly abandoned the act. Which meant he’d gotten the joke, it was over, and Martin was human again. Charles teased that Percy was so smart, they could teach him to use a computer with a bit of effort. Only if his paws were better fitted to the keyboard and mouse. Cesar Millan would probably offer all his assets to the Bartons to get his hands on that dog.

Percy could always sense when there was half an hour left till the arrival of the Pack Leader. No matter whether Peter came by car, on his bike, or on foot—as if an unseen, elastic cord linked their souls.

And what about certain psychologists’ claim that REM and its companion phase of paradoxical dreams were unique to humans? That they were a proof of intelligence? Percy dreamed too, going into REM. Peter felt a pang of regret that he’d always been too busy to introduce Percy to those psychologists.

"Company issues?" his dad said.

"Nothing I can’t deal with."

Jesus!

"So you’ve already picked the lady of your heart and are bringing her for an introduction?"

"Oh come on!"

"Just asking. No? What is it then?"

"I was thinking about Granny."

There was silence on the other end.

"Has she ever told you anything about numbers?"

"Numbers?"

"Yeah. I recalled she kept telling me I was going to see the numbers but would I be able to arrange them?" Peter said uneasily.

"Hmm. Yes, when I was a boy, she used to tell me something similar. Why though?"

"And did you see them?"

So far, Charles had been petting the head of the dog sitting next to his feet. Collie had lolled his tongue out and displayed the trademark collie "grin." Now Charles stopped stroking him, and Collie took back his grin. Charles’ titanium gaze softened briefly; he still had a soft spot for old Rose.

And now Peter asking about numbers?...

"I was in charge of a company, remember? And when I was in school, I also won a Math Olympiad. I’ve seen numbers aplenty."

I thought I was paying for business and management, not for numerology.

"Peter, is everything alright?"

"Yeah, don’t worry, just a passing thought. Later, Dad! Kiss Collie on that pointed muzzle from me."

"Later."

Six-month-old Collie had grown restless after such a long time of inaction. He growled softly and pulled Charles’s trouser leg with his teeth, but Charles paid him no mind. He held the receiver in front of his face and his steely eyes

which, just like Peter’s, could look silver in the right light

gazed through it at the horizon.

Peter hung up. He did feel uneasy. Asking Martin the Snarky about the numbers no longer seemed

for now

a good idea.

••◦◦

He was back home. He left his coat, sat down in the armchair, and turned on the TV. Morgan Freeman was on again.

Guy must own this channel.

Peter smiled inside. He headed for the kitchen to grab a beer.

Or an espresso?

He hadn’t made up his mind yet: he needed both. He noticed his computer was turned on. The screensaver (after talking with Martin, Peter had installed seti@home) drew graphs against a stellar sky.

It’s not exactly ecofriendly to keep your comp on 24/7.

Peter patted the mouse, and the video about the 3D printer popped up, on pause. He leaned forward, propped his arms on the desk, and stared at the monitor.

There’s a reason why this draws my curiosity.

He breathed in and closed his eyes, meaning to reflect on his interest in three-dimensional printers. Yet over the past few days, he’d learned to discover the numbers instantaneously. Never mind the emerging headache.

A meek form of masochism?

They were in "full-screen mode." Hundreds upon hundreds! Separated by small spaces. And they moved as if somebody was leaning on the Page Down key. Or perhaps Page Up; their speed made it hard to tell. Peter figured out a way to make them come to the foreground. So he could control them to some degree. He tried shuffling them. They moved too fast for that. Then he opted for a simple algorithm. Ones next to ones, twos next to twos, and ... he lost it. It was hard. He started from the beginning. And again. And again.

It took him hours before he got the hang of it.

It’s working!

I’m moving them.

And when he grouped the digits into pairs, they disappeared! Peter forgot about his beer

coffee?

or even breathing out. He couldn’t stop grouping them. He lost track of time but he didn’t dare open his eyes. Despite the growing headache.

At last, all that was left was: 192, 168, 10, 112, 80, 96.

Put the ones together, and again, the nines, the twos, the sixes, eights, zeroes.

The digits kept vanishing.

ONE.

There was a single one left, in the lower right corner of what he—despite his closed eyes—called his "field of vision." It had no pair partner. Peter focused all of his attention on it. It grew distinct, glowing in electric blue. Its shape shifted between 1, ١, and I. Roman or Arabic, it was still the number one. Peter mentally reached out; he could nearly see his hand. His organism prodded him to breathe out. He touched the one—and darkness swallowed everything. Then it gave way to utter blackness.

••◦•

He came to on the floor. He felt like new: no headache, no nothing. He stood up confidently, grasped the mouse, and never even glancing at the screen, closed the browser with the 3D printer video and shut down the computer. Now he knew why the printers had affected him. It was so elementary that he got angry at himself. He needed a new product to save the company. The appliances they sold cast dental crowns and bridges. One could say they manufactured three-dimensional products.

Like 3D printers!

Peter groped for his cellphone and called Barton Dental’s CEO. "Hello Bill."

"Greetings, boss."

"Listen, I want you to gather our engineers. Let them check the options for integrating a 3D digital scanner into the current dental chairs."

"Sounds innovative, and I’m listening carefully, but I’d like to note it’s Saturday. Saturday evening."

Saturday? I’ve been out for a day and a half!

It wasn’t like the conversation couldn’t wait till Monday. Yet the creative fever clutched Peter. It spurred him on. "Never mind that, make a conference call, pay them to go to the office, promise bonuses—you figure it out. Then they should find or design a 3D printer compatible with the dental chair files. Featuring cutting tools for plastics, metal, and ceramics—everything we use for crowns."

"I’m taking notes."

"And, uh, meanwhile call our lawyers. Hope there isn’t any similar application or patent at the Office and they’ll let us patent it."

Then Peter explained the specifics of the system he planned to patent, and hung up.

He also needed a specific 3D modeling software for the dental technicians. The company had an IT specialist, but he was unlikely to manage on his own.

Martin!

The problem with finding Martin was that he always called from a different number. Peter even suspected his friend didn’t have a cellphone but used some Internet

once he called them VoIP

channels. He tried the latest unfamiliar number in the memory. No response. The previous one had taken him to a polite recording of an operator in an unfamiliar

even for him!

language. Another one had yielded some modem noise. Peter wasn’t anywhere near Martin’s level, yet he was shocked modems still worked somewhere.

Now he heard a cheerful female voice: "Lufthansa, how may I help you?" Whatever. He had to wait for the results from the check at the Patent Office anyway.

I’m going to email him. That way, I can also send him the latest numbers I saw in that mad dance: 192, 168, 10, 112, 80, 96.

Peter could hear the street noise.

Is that normal? Across brick walls and several floors above the street? Perhaps I’d never paid it any mind before.

He was hungry, ravenous even. He headed for the kitchen. In passing, he turned off the TV, a second before the newscast started. Today, for a change from the usual rehashed topics, the news were going to report a meteorite crash over a faraway Russian town.

Peter touched the door of the fridge and froze. Suddenly, he was aware of everything inside. There was a can of beer on the door

Grolsch, Dutch, best before December 10,

a little Spanish cheese

217 grams,

a piece of pizza baked ...

three days, eight hours, seven minutes ago.

Dizzy with the information deluge, rather than the scant contents of his bachelor’s fridge

Samsung, 260 liters, Class A++

Peter decided to eat out.

•••◦

Peter’s favorite neighborhood eatery was two blocks away from his home. The owner was a Spaniard, who took an active part in the kitchen. His culinary skills had turned Peter into a regular.

His usual table was unoccupied. On a Saturday evening, there wasn’t much to see out the window: most people had painted the town red the night before, and now the street was all but empty. The lack of sights didn’t affect Peter’s appetite in the least. After a gazpacho, done by the original Andalusian recipe, he ordered lechazo and a paella valenciana, abundantly garnishing them with cabrales and jamón serrano. The jamón wasn’t ibérico, but that would’ve made the prices in the eatery skyrocket. It would’ve made the eatery itself more snobbish, and that apparently wasn’t on the proprietor’s agenda.

The newfound sense of details kept astounding Peter. He somehow knew bits about the history of the building, which the local historical society could only dream of. He also knew where each ingredient in his delicious dinner had come from.

If I order a coke, would I get to know its composition too? Much to the horror of the company.

Peter smirked. He put off analyzing cokes, drank up his San Miguel beer, and prepared to pay the bill. In the street, a gray

in the evening, all cats are gray

Mercedes G65 AMG SUV

5980 cubic centimeters, 612 horsepower.

passed slowly.

Was that its second time for the night?

This seems like a curse. I’ve turned into a mobile lab, an encyclopedia, and a security cam all at once. Throw in some paranoia, and it gets just peachy.

Peter suppressed the welling-up details about the SUV, laid down a fat tip, and said a polite goodbye

been polite since I was a kid

to the owner. He ambled back toward his place amid the cool evening air. After the ample dinner, a stroll would do him good.

The brain accounts for 3% of the body mass, but uses 20% of the energy.

Peter recalled that as he wondered why he’d ordered and devoured so much food. Was it a random association? The clarity and profundity of his thoughts after the numbers got arranged stirred his unease again. His senses had sharpened too. He was halfway back home, when the familiar noise of a car engine made him glance over his shoulder. The Mercedes.

The fact that you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out go get you.

The SUV stopped fifteen feet behind him, and two athletic figures slipped out into the dark street.

Eighteen feet, twenty

Peter kept walking. There was something disconcerting about these men.

twenty—

"Peter Barton, stop! FBI!"

—two, bull: FBI are suits, and these guys wear army boots. Besides, there’s something wrong with one’s outline. A gun? Also, the FBI drive US cars. Twenty-four feet.

"Be a good boy and don’t make us chase you. Come inside the car. We just want to talk."

Peter saw himself as a good boy—it was a matter of opinion anyway—so he sprinted off and swerved down an alley between two buildings. He had a thirty-foot head start, and the

FBI?

agents looked fit; their military training showed even in the dim light. Now their steps followed him, and the SUV engine revved up.

Three. There’re at least three of them.

When the duo reached the corner, Peter’s head start was twenty-seven feet. The SUV passed by the alley. It’d probably try to block him on the other side. A breechblock clicked.

"You nuts? We need him alive!"

A shot!

"Aim for the legs!"

Peter drew a long straw, and the bullet drew a few sparks out of the tarmac, whizzing

like in a Western movie?

three feet ahead of him.

Guy does aim low!

The thought didn’t comfort Peter. Right now, he held his legs dearer than most other body parts. They kept him away from the attackers, after all.

A second breechblock click!

Now both of them would try to maim him. The alley turned left to join the main street, but that was probably where the third attacker waited. Ahead, an eight-foot gate made of welded metal pipes and wire mesh barred the entrance to a construction site. Fast, borne on the adrenaline rush, Peter came up with a plan. He barely had time to fret that he’d seen such stunts only in the movies, and watching wasn’t learning. A large rectangular trash can stood six feet from the gate. Peter jumped onto it, as a bullet pinged off. Two strides later, he was flying at the gate. His belly smacked painfully into its upper edge. When the momentum threw his torso forward, one of his hands was on the frame, the other propped against the mesh on the other side. A bullet whizzed and drew some sparks

not like in a Western movie

from the metal mesh, as Peter’s legs drew an arc above the gate. He pushed with both hands and landed inside the construction site.

Chalk one up for me!

Peter was fairly surprised by his calmness. He held no illusions he was now sound and safe. Never slowing down, he leaped from the edge of the foundation pit onto the first floor. Concrete pillars and bullets whizzed by him in the dark. His pursuers would have no trouble copying his stunt over the gate, so Peter feverishly prayed for something to delay them. What could it be? His brain started visualizing a potential obstacle.

One pursuer—the ideologue of aiming at the legs—was already flying from the trash can to the gate, when he saw the spikes along its rim: a span apart each. He managed to get both his hands on safe segments. Then the inexorable combination of momentum and gravity brought his torso along. He screamed and thrashed on top of the gate, looking nonplussed.

Thug number two realized there was something wrong and veered toward the middle of the gate. He shot the padlock, nearly point-blank, and shouldered his way between the two wings. His fellow groaned after the shot and screamed at the shouldering. However, the other was a professional: he had his priorities straight. At top speed, he ran in the supposedly right direction.

At the other end of the construction site, Peter groped and found a tear in the mesh. He slipped out in the street. He was just about to congratulate himself on the two-nil result, when he saw the parked SUV

with angular outlines

and the figure bearing down on him. There was a predatory flash in its hand.

••••

The Land Cruiser roared out of nowhere. It braked in front of Peter, nearly sweeping him away. It definitely swept away—with a crunch—the driver of the Mercedes, who’d been rushing at Peter with a serrated

army

knife in hand. A woman sat at the wheel. She said across the lowered side window, "Peter Barton, are you getting in?"

Over the next quarter of a second, Peter’s mind flared with as many thoughts as could break through the staggering cocktail of adrenaline and testosterone.

I’ve grown exceptionally popular! Toyota Land Cruiser V8. Forceful, rough, and timely. Don’t know her. Knows my name. Another pursuer? A trap?

A glance revealed her face to be pretty and—if he had to pick a single word—alive.

Trust her.

He stepped inside, and the door slammed shut from the abrupt start. A machine gun roared behind them, the rear window turned into a fine web, something cracked under the wheels. The jolt of running over the mercenary brought down half the cracked window. The woman pointed her left hand over her right shoulder, holding a dark, cylindrical object. Never taking her eyes off the rearview mirror, she shot a

nearly

noiseless bullet

nothing like in a Western movie

across the rear window. Then, while assessing that she’d missed the shape crouching by the Mercedes, she took such a right ninety-degree turn that the Toyota’s inbuilt security systems shrieked with surprise and indignation. But they were already round the corner and beyond the line of fire.

"Peter Barton, as you obviously know." He tried to demonstrate self-control. That cylinder had been a silenced gun.

"Ann O’Malley-Ström, if you insist on formalities. Please call me Ann, glad to meet you. Give me your phone." She said it with a smile, as if they hadn’t just been shot at, she hadn’t run over an attacker, but had merely picked up a hitchhiker and was getting introduced. Peter realized this was nowhere near a come-on, and wordlessly handed over his cellphone.

Like in a movie.

"You came in the nick of time, thank you," he said. "That man ... did you kill him?"

"I thing I missed the second one."

And I never miss.

"The other guy, yeah. Jaywalking. Or would you rather he’d gutted you?" She casually tossed his phone out the side window.

Peter would rather not, so he kept silent. Despite her actions, she didn’t look like a cold-blooded murderer.

Because she saved my life? Or because of her aura? Her looking beautiful and dangerous?

He had no clue. But he hoped to live long enough to find out.

After about a mile of left and right turns, ignored red lights and fading sirens, the adrenaline slowly released the tortured needle of the hormone meter and gave way to more questions. "Really, how do you, Miss O’Maly, in my generally peaceful neighborhood, at this time of the day, run into a shootout and save me so ... resolutely? Have you been following me, Ann?"

Miss O’Maly, Ann, you retard ....

His head hurt again. A lot. But not the way it had before he’d arranged the numbers. Every migraine sufferer knows there’re nuances. Just like Scandinavians have

at least

seven words for "snow."

"It would’ve been a shootout if you’d returned fire, but yes, it so happened I was following you. And no, I’m not with them. I could’ve driven over you, right?" She smiled at him—indeed, only her eyes did. Then they noticed his harrowed looks. "Why don’t you try taking a nap? We still have a ways to go. We’ll have time for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire when we get to a safe place. I wanna drive for a while, make sure nobody tails us. Look ... I’ve been where you are. At first, everything exhausts you, you’re hungry and quite sleepy. And your head hurts."

Peter started to protest. Yet she had described the symptoms better than himself.

They shot at me. I don’t know who she is, where we’re going. She’s been following me? Drive over me? She drove over that guy! Didn’t look FBI, him. And she’s putting me to bed? It’s not bedtime. In my condition? What’s with my condition?

The instants of stupor and headache from the past few days and the rush from the past few minutes took their toll. Peter felt like an old, thrashed stray dog. Fatigue resolutely pushed questions away. He was surrendering, and in a strange way, he was grateful that someone else got to decide for him right now. Physical reality seemed to grow thinner around him. He felt nausea. Before closing his eyes, he summoned the strength to get surprised that he was really falling asleep

just falling.

Can’t be!

He closed his eyes and got a glimpse of the colorful veils. The numbers weren’t there. In their stead, the outlines of a row of shiny metal spikes with conical tips were fading away. He fell asleep.

He fell.

•◦◦◦◦

Peter woke up when the SUV stopped. The fragments of his dream slipped away. He remembered only the conclusion the dream had led him to: that he did not like the world he lived in, because it was ruled by resources. Coal, petrol, electricity, water ....

They stood opposite a bookstore in a quiet

and unknown

district, which the intimation of a dawn made even quieter. That gave him some idea how long he’d slept.

Books & Knowledge. Inconspicuous, squished between a Starbucks and a sleek boutique, both closed, the bookstore showcase could be used as the décor of a Victorian-era movie, given the proper painting. Like libraries, Peter loved bookstores.

"It’s here. Come on."

They got off the Toyota and approached the bookstore. Ann shot a glance over her shoulder, brought her palm to the door frame—first on the left, then on the right—like a hurried rite, grasped the knob, and walked in. Peter cast a final look back and followed her. Whether because he was still rubbing at his eyes or because recently reality could race a dream

a nightmare,

he couldn’t see the bright reflection of the street lights in the rear window of the Land Cruiser.

•◦◦◦•

The imbecile hasn’t assessed the data.

The Chair fumed. "Get me through to the COM, at once!"

The Computing Operations Manager was directly subordinate to the Chair. He was paid an annual salary of nine million US dollars. Outside his income from Zander Industries, the facade for his actual activities.

And when the COM, alias Emil Zander, looked at the screen of his ringing phone, he nearly dropped the cigar into his lap. The last time he’d seen that number had been twelve years ago.

Something’s messed up!

The Chair had the right to cut one of Emil’s salaries.

An annual one! Like that time!

That was the good news, though. If he could only get away with a single cut salary. Nobody fooled with these folks.

"I’m glad to hear you, sir!" Emil had stood up inadvertently.

"So why are you glad? Are you an idiot? Or should I find another idiot, who will be glad as well, though not so much, after binning info about a potentially valuable new Player? Fellow may come in cheaper."

The bin? What about the shredder? Or do they make copies? Cameras? God!

Emil squinted hatefully at the bin. Paranoia and terror gave him a double kick in the diaphragm. "I do not understand, Sir, I—"

"Peter Barton! And the other! Where was he from? Belarus!" The years since the Grokking had apparently automatized the slipping of errors and inaccuracies into the Chair’s speech.

The lies and half-lies are the same as ever, though.

"Bulgaria—"

"Are you correcting me?!"

"No, Sir! I just ...." Emil’s skin broke into beads of sweat. His short, receding hair along with his tiny darting eyes gave him a ratlike look.

"I want everything about them! And I want them! Alive! At once!"

"Of course, sir, I am personally going to ...." Emil realized he was talking to the disconnect tone. He put the receiver down and slumped. The corner of his mouth trembled, and his gaze showed he now had a fair idea how a trapped wild animal felt.

I wish I could work for two years without any salary but get away from this.

When he managed to master the tremor, he pressed a button on the intercom and barked, "Podolsky, Gorsky, in my office!"

Two seconds later, they were there. Gorsky said, "Sir?"

Podolsky, the dumpy epitome of a computer geek, was silent, staring at the desk top. There, next to the ashtray, a cigar stub smoked, without doing any harm to the granite. It wasn’t mahogany, after all.

•◦◦•◦

Hollywood excelled at creating an atmosphere. If it wrote Egypt, 1933 on a scene with overburdened and growling camels, a souq against rectangular flat-roofed buildings the color of the Sahara, and swarthy vendors in long white robes crying, "Yalla, yalla"

with a palatalized ’l’

you couldn’t help believing it was Egypt, 1933.

And if the magician sage

Priest? Druid?

out of a blockbuster fantasy flick looked like the man Anne and Peter faced in the room behind the bookstore, he’d fit right in.

Peter tried not to seem boorish, sweeping his eyes from the beard—nearly a span long, pearly white, and well trimmed—to the linen shirt under the long retro coat. The nose was slightly aquiline; the black shoes, as glossy as those of any Arab businessman. However, all similes took a break when Peter looked into those eyes. They were like embers: black, and yet radiating warm-colored energy, which scanned Peter deeper than any NMR. Their gaze made him feel it read straight into his brain.

The magician sensed Peter’s astonishment, smiled

probably enjoying what he’s reading in my mind,

and stepped forward, reaching out. Turned out he had a name, too. "Seymour King. That’s why it says Books & Knowledge on the front."

Peter considered that for a nanosecond.

Knowledge, KnowING, KING.

Seymour King ... Stephen King.

Once, he’d come across a short book by Stephen King: On Writing, or something like that. He never bothered to memorize the original title, because he liked the one he came up with: How I Transformed from Stephen King to King Stephen. Not that King would use it himself; it was too immodest.

Don’t get distracted.

"Peter Barton. King’s derived from ’one who knows.’"

"Attaboy! Seymour is the easy part. Our dearest Ann seems to have made no mistake about you."

"I have a few—"

"Questions? Of course you do. Only fools don’t. Please, let’s sit down. Will our dearest Ann be so kind to make tea for everyone?" Seymour smiled gently, probably trying to break the ice.

Or his is a generally gentle nature?

•◦◦••

After the briefing in Zander’s office, Podolsky and Gorsky set to work. That their usually haughty and sarcastic boss

which they’d gotten used to

now looked and acted like a tropical storm

which was new

disturbed them.

And they were good at their job. In less than twenty-four hours, taking no breaks, they knew everything about Peter Barton. Address, driver’s license, social security number, bank accounts, business status, registered office, share price, employee addresses—you name it. The printer kept spouting sheets.

They started eavesdropping on the comms of everyone around Peter. They intercepted a conversation between Barton Dental’s CEO and the company’s law firm. It was about a pending check in the Patent Office, due Monday.

With Martin Shields, they hit a snag. At least they wanted to present their failure to Zander as "a snag." Shields’s email told them he was somewhere in Bulgaria. When they tried to track down his IP address, it turned out his email used a Bulgarian domain, but had last been opened from Moldova. And before that, from China. They considered breaking into the Bulgarian government servers and looking for a person named Martin Shields, but they remembered all the information would be written in Cyrillic. They postponed the idea until finding someone who spoke Bulgarian. They conjectured Martin was related to the US, but they only found he held a dual citizenship. Nothing else.

People left gigabytes of electronic footprints. All the time. Transactions, fines, social security payments. Any such data about Martin was missing. As if it had been erased on purpose.

Gorsky called national and federal institutions, municipalities and police stations in every state and applied his social engineering skills. It led him to a different Martin Shields, or to nothing.

Podolsky stared at his screen in despair, his mind full of the smoking cigar on the granite desktop.

Nope, it won’t count as a snag.

Podolsky didn’t want to be the bearer of the news about untraceable Shields, so he made himself look busy. Gorsky sighed and knocked on Zander’s door.

"Yes!"

"We have everything on Peter Barton, sir. Here’s the folder."

"How about Shields?"

There we go.

"We found he holds an American and a Bulgarian citizenship. He’s probably in Bulgaria now. That’s what his father believes too, but they haven’t been in touch for years. We suspect that either Martin has computer skills comparable to our or he’s hired a hacker. Everything about his life in the US has been deleted. For more info from Bulgaria, we’re going to need a translator—"

"Probably?! Believes?! Either or?! You suspect?! Is that what you call your best shot? Skills ... what skills are you blabbering about?" Fear of the Chair transformed into fury. And the fury rose inside Emil Zander. Who should he pour it out on, if not his subordinates? He forced himself to calm down.

"Sir, we"—Gorsky emphasized the plural form, hoping to deflect some of Zander’s anger—"found everything about Peter. For Martin, we need more time and a translator."

Time?! They need time? At once! That’s what the Chair said: at once!

Emil was aware that Sky 1 and Sky 2 were his only potential saviors. He was glad he’d held back from calling them lice aloud. He leafed through the thick folder.

Barton Dental, Charles and Peter Barton, servers, in Cyrillic, eavesdropping, the Patent Office, hmm, it usually starts with a patent ....

He managed to soften his tone. "I’ll arrange a translator for you. Which teams are available?"

"All of them, sir. We haven’t had to interfere recently."

"Dispatch Delta to Peter. I need him alive!"

Six of the teams were in the US. Delta was the best. A former marine, Green Beret, and elite CIA agent. Emil wanted to play safe.

Is there such a thing as a former CIA agent?

"Right away, sir!" said Gorsky. He might still get away with it.

"Which one’s closest to Bulgaria?"

"Tango, sir. They’re in France." Elmore Gorski had done his homework. All of it: the fist-thick folder contained the names and contacts of several people who tended not to ask questions and knew Bulgarian. As well as the team locations.

All of it ... except for Martin Shields.

"Send them to Bulgaria. Tell them to be ready. And keep searching. Both I and Tango will be expecting intel within twenty-four hours!"

"Right away, sir!"

Gorsky closed the massive door behind himself, leaned against it, and heaved a sigh.

Right away, yeah. I just hope his "right away" matches the Chair’s "at once."

•◦•◦◦

The entrance to the underground parking of Zander Industries was at the back of the building. There was a barrier and a guard, whose stance barely betrayed his military training. With seemingly sluggish yet measured movements, he raised the barrier, let in the two gray Mercedeses G65 AMG and a huge van so they didn’t even have to slow down, and lowered it behind them.

The vehicles crossed the entire parking at a uniform speed. They approached the concrete wall at the end of the parking, showing no signs of decelerating. One after the other, they sank into the wall.

Zander operations required discretion. The hologram-based illusion of a wall, just like the joinery company ads covering the sides of the van, served that requirement.

The vehicles stopped in the middle of a spacious chamber with a polished concrete floor, brightly lit by luminescent lights. Their occupants walked out without any words or fuss. Army boots creaked against the glossy floor.

They opened the trunk of one of the SUV. There was a black synthetic sack with a zip inside, human-shaped. Then they took out the wing of a gate from the van and laid it on the ground. A gurney followed, carrying an unconscious hulk, his stomach bandaged, his arms attached to an IV. A small man with grizzled hair and round spectacles checked the IV. Above his shoulder, across the open back doors, one could ascertain that the van was indeed furnished as something between an ambulance and an operating room.

Rick Podolsky approached, glanced at the bloodied wing of the gate, and softly spoke to the single uninjured member of team Delta. Then he pulled out his cellphone, paced a few steps while he waited, and said in a measuredly mournful voice, "Sir, I believe you should see this. We’re down here, yes."

•◦•◦•

It turned out that

our dearest

Ann, besides driving like the Devil and shooting in the city boasting ever-decreasing crime rates, could also brew tea. She poured it in the manner characteristic of North Africa. She would gradually lift the silver

Morocco Sterling Silver

teapot above the glass, spilling not a drop. That way, the tea formed froth, which boosted its fragrance.

Ann set a silver sugar-bowl

same origin

and pushed the glasses towards the men. "Grandpa, Peter." Then she crossed her legs next to Seymour, glass in her lap. She stirred it innocently. Nothing in common with the Ann from a while ago. Peter watched her curiously.

Just curiously?

"Thank you, child."

"Thanks," said Peter too, looking between her and Seymour. He sought likenesses. He found none.

Is she his granddaughter?

They took a sip. Peter had drunk such tea only with the Berbers. In the Sahara. To be more precise, with Najm Hansuli, who gladly took him in, showed him the way, and eventually it turned out he’d robbed him too. Anyway, at least the memory of Najm’s tea evoked positive emotions.

Seymour brought him back to this continent. "Well, we’ve made ourselves comfortable, and now you have the right to ask. Don’t worry your questions may sound odd. The answers will be surprising too."

"Well, sir ...." King’s bearing

eyes

prevented Peter from addressing him on a first-name basis.

"Seymour!" The fiery eyes smiled at him.

"Right, Seymour. You and your granddaughter ... what are you?"

"I keep a bookstore. Ann, now? She’s not my granddaughter. She calls me like that out of respect, I guess. We’ve been together for too long. Or she just wishes to remind me of my age? Alright, look now ...."

Peter tensed slightly at all this circumlocution. It was an overture

to what? a secret? a harebrained scheme?

"The world is dualistic in nature," Seymour went on. "Yin and yang. Male and female. Light and darkness. Us and they. Now, before. I know you grasped the point, so feel free to stop me. Have you felt strange recently?"

"Yes, frequent headaches. I couldn’t focus on my everyday tasks. And I started receiving a little

a lot

more detailed knowledge about the surrounding objects. If we also bring in the shootout ...."

They weren’t so familiar that he could tell them about the numbers. He hadn’t let even Martin in on the details.

Seymour and Ann exchanged furtive glances. Peter took the opportunity to cast one of his own at Ann.

"When I said she wasn’t wrong about you, I didn’t mean you knew the etymology of the word ’king.’ Everybody with Google may learn that."

If they’re curious enough.

"So what’s the odd part about me?" Peter asked casually, trying to cover up his hope to find out the truth. In the context of the last couple of days, the notions of real, abnormal and odd badly needed redefining. Or at least a second opinion.

"The spikes," Seymour replied casually, and took an even more casual sip from his tea.

The spikes?

Peter recalled the image—or rather, the diagram of blurry steel spikes, which he’d seen just before falling asleep.

Can he really read minds, with those eyes of his? The spikes weren’t even a thought.

Tea in Murano glasses, odd-shaped as they are .... Ugh, let it go now.

They’d caught him unprepared. He didn’t know what to say.

"You’re probably aware that light can behave as both wave and particle?"

"Yeees?"

Change of topic?

Peter pictured himself

the spikes?!

sprawled in his leather chair, watching Morgan Freeman’s enthralling explanations of this duality. He wondered if the coincidences were random, or if everything

the books, Granny Rose, Martin, the company, the languages

prepared you for a turning point in your life. Peter wasn’t very religious, but he would not mind calling that a Revelation of sorts.

"Incidentally, the wave function of light refutes the currently prevalent scientific view that interstellar space is empty. A vacuum. Starlight reaches us, and waves need a carrier, something capable of undulations. In time, I believe we’ll find out that Tesla was right when he said we’re swimming inside an ocean of energy. Also, that space is full of an elusive substance: the ether, whose electromagnetic properties are gravity and magnetism. Then even the famous E=mc2 will have to be revised. Eh, I digress. And have you heard the phrase, ’As above, so below’?"

Digress, right. For the first time.

" ’Above,’ ’below’—that’s dualism again." Peter tried to follow the flow of the conversation. "It’s the hermetists’ principle. Same as ’Everything is dual.’"

"I’m impressed. Although this is googleable too. Both physicists and hermetists are right to an extent. Physicists believe that physics changes at the subatomic scale, because photons exhibit duality: they act now like waves, now like particles. Hermetists say, ’as above, so below.’ In other words, what holds for the large holds for the small. And those physicists and mathematicians who engage in quantum mechanics have noticed that the observer of an experiment affects the results.

"Why should that be only in the microworld? Alchemists, their disciples, and ardent admirers of hermetists think you can obtain gold from lead. The former are wrong in their conclusion that the micro and macroworld obey different rules. They’ve also misnamed the observer. The latter are wrong about the need to have a chemical reaction in order to enact the transformation."

Peter’s questions had drastically surpassed the healthy maximum,

Spikes? Lord!

but he’d seldom faced such a conversationalist. He let Seymour steer the discussion, skipped the spikes, and asked only two things. "So what should we name the observer? And what do we need if not a chemical reaction?"

"The answer to both your questions"—now Seymour took a sip of his tea—

an impeccable sense of dramatics

"is ’Creator.’"

Beat.

"Meaning ... God?" Peter was smart enough to know he wasn’t being steered that way, but he wanted to hear it spelled out loud.

"Not in the conventional sense." Seymour elegantly laid his glass on the low table

mahogany, at least 150 years old, carved in the style of— Not now!

Seymour flinched almost imperceptibly, stroked the table, smiled, and went on, "The so-called Observer doesn’t merely affect the result of the experiment: he predetermines it. He creates light-as-wave or light-as-particles. During the Schrödinger cat experiment, he creates a living or a dead cat. He acts as a Creator. As for the alchemists, rather than circling around the lead ingot with tubes and incantations, they only need to wish for a gold ingot. To act as Creators. That’s all.

"According to another principle of Hermes Trismegistus, ’The Universe is mental.’ Incidentally, the Bible says we were made in the image and likeness of God. In which aspect? We look like Him? Probably. He’d use a familiar design. That would account for the ’image’ aspect. But what if the ’likeness’ part means to tell us we’re capable of creating worlds with our thoughts?"

A longer pause.

Both Seymour and Ann gazed at Peter, unblinking, as if they were leading him to the tense finish line of a test. And if he shifted, or said something silly, they’d blink, and he’d be back to old Peter who thought arranging the numbers was part of Granny’s folklore?

I must ask him about the numbers! And the spikes!

Deep inside, Peter approved of Seymour’s mental construction.

Let’s temporarily ignore what we call normal.

Peter didn’t feel like arguing, or pointing out the prevalent notions of science. "So you and Ann are ... hermetists?"

Seymour blinked, Ann tucked back a lock, and Peter did not teleport to Granny Rose’s ranch.

"No, Peter. Ann and I are Creators. As are you, by the way."

Peter was getting used to minimizing his displays of surprise or his pauses. "And I’ve created ... what?"

"The spikes on the metal gate of that construction site. This being your first try, you did it unawares, naturally. It helped you neutralize one of the attackers. Ann neutralized the other. That’s how you ended up with us rather than with them."

Peter opened his mouth to ask ... and merely sighed.

So much for minimizing.

Over the next hours, the conversation meandered along its own, seldom trod paths. Peter desired to bring it back to the recent events where he’d taken center stage, but decided to play along Seymour’s rules.

"Now, what do you know about Sumer?"

"What everybody does. The civilization between the Tiger and the Euphrates, the cities, the writing, the clay tablets."

"Just that?"

"Well, my friends

namely, Martin, my dad, and ... that’s it

would tag me as a bibliophile, so I’ve read everything by Zecharia Sitchin. He championed a curious theory about the origin of man. He says we were created by the Anunnaki. By the way, I used to look forward to the screening of a movie called 1Anunnaki. Its trailer circulated around the Internet for a while. Its very first statement was that Darwin was wrong. And it promised to go on from there Sitchin-style. But apparently something happened, and the movie didn’t get filmed."

"Oh, it did. Some time I’ll play it for you. What happened to it was the furious resistance of the Church. Along with the Darwinists and everyone who nurtures their delusion."

"Are you saying Darwin was wrong and Sitchin was right?"

"Hmm. Let’s say they were both wrong."

Wrong! And he’s certain? As if someone appointed him as the keeper of the absolute truth, nine-to-five.

Peter already wondered if, after going through Eastern mysticism, forgotten Sumerian and Ancient Egyptian wisdom, alchemy, quantum mechanics, and even God

Gods,

the discussion could get any more tangled. Turned out it could. The new ingredients had to do with shamanic practices, creation myths, and to top it all, the Ark and the pyramids. There was a dessert, too: the possibility of a world government ruling from the shadows. Apparently, Seymour wanted to see the extent of Peter’s familiarity with these matters—and the extent of his willingness to accept a, let’s call it different, perspective on things.

Peter could no longer play a worthy partner.

Martin, with his interest in ancient mysteries and modern conspiracies, might have made a better match for Seymour. So is Seymour right, and our notions about the world have been distorted by millennia of civilizational sludge? Or is science right, and Seymour’s fiery eyes, a symptom of insanity?

Peter could argue both ways. The late hour and his resurrected headache did nothing to improve his sense of judgment.

The richly carved mahogany wall clock announced, with a surprisingly resonant chord, that it was five in the morning. The headache was penetrated by:

Fa sharp, with a dominant frequency of 438 Hertz.

"Actually, it’s 4:38. Grandpa never sets it. Still very late, though. Shall we ...."

"You’re right, Ann. Let’s get some sleep. Mornings are wiser than evenings." Seymour, contrary to his English manners, stretched out like an Angora cat and stood up.

•◦••◦

Emil Zander’s scowling face emerged from the hologram wall. It was followed by his impeccable French suit, whose cut tried—and failed—to make him seem taller and thinner. The Italian shoes succeeded modestly: by about an inch.

Emil approached the hushed group and exchanged a few quiet words with Sky 1. He scrutinized the Green Beret’s bandages and listened to the doctor’s brief report. The injured man was unconscious. He was likely lucky enough to have been stuffed full of painkillers.

Emil glanced at the sack in the trunk of the Mercedes.

The former CIA agent. Eh, he’s really former now.

The marine stood half a dozen feet from his dead mate.

"I’m gonna deal with you later!" Emil barked at him.

"Sir, those were spikes, really, and they hadn’t been there earlier. They ... took out Number Three. Then Barton got a ride and slipped away. Number One hadn’t left the keys on the dashboard. When I’d finished searching him, there was nobody left to pursue."

Emil shot him a look. "Number One and Three, huh? What are you? Number Two? You ain’t good enough for Number the Last! Jeez, that was supposed to be a routine op. Your target was a single goddamned civilian! I want a full written report! And I’m gonna inform the higher-ups about your grand fiasco. Phantom spikes!"

This one’s gonna get former, too, I guess.

"Sir, please have a look at Number Three’s wounds, I really—"

Emil crouched by the metal wing of the portal, no longer listening to the marine’s pathetic excuses. His attention was drawn by the spots on the metal tube. He touched them. They were about a span apart each. Neither protruding nor indented. Surrounded by blood. And looking glossy, spared by the nearby rust.

The marine fell silent. There was no point in going on. He glared at his boss’s back.

You spiteful scumbag! Should I blow a hole in your head? After gouging out your vile tiny eyes?

•◦•••

Poached eggs, bacon, sausages, and toast: an English breakfast. As Hercule Poirot said, the English do not have a cuisine, they have only food. However, an English breakfast was the reverse of the medal. Peter’s inner gastronome had no criticisms about it.

His appetite rivaled the one from the night before. Still, Peter strove not to seem uncouth. He heard no footsteps from the bookstore; probably it wasn’t open yet. There was only the soft hubbub from the nearby cafe.

It’s Sunday, after all.

"Now they’re not going to leave you alone." Seymour casually raised a glass of orange juice.

"They?" The memory of the

FBI

agents returned, and Peter lost some of his appetite.

"Yes, you know: us, they. And you in the middle." Seymour’s appetite seemed healthy enough; the old man used his knife to push around a chunk of bacon and a sliver of egg-white on top of his last piece of toast. Ann had already finished. She was pattering on the laptop in her lap. She could find out what she was looking for without the Internet, but that would strain and exhaust her.

"Right, so you’re Creators. What are they?"

"They’re the Fund."

"Fund?"

"That’s what they call themselves. And they aren’t happy we know about the Fund. Or thwart their plans for world domination. We’ve opposed them for as long as the world turns. Like light and darkness. If you ask them, they’re the light. Incidentally, I like that thought: No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first. Is it a witticism or a phenomenon worthy of scientific investigation?" Seymour grinned and dabbed at a droplet of juice in his beard.

It’s hard to keep up with this guy’s thoughts.

"So what’s the foundation of this antagonism?"

"I like your style, Peter. Back in the day, another fellow sitting on your chair said, ’Wut make yar mess so diffrant, mon?’" Now Seymour outright laughed. "The foundation is Enia. Or the ways different sides use it."

Peter switched to polyglot mode, failed at translation, and asked, "What’s Enia?"

"The Yoruba word for insight."

Peter hadn’t even suspected of the existence of the Yoruba language.

Revelation, Insight, Yoruba, Peter in Wonderland!

"The Fund calls it Grokking, but it’s basically the same thing. How did it come to you?" Seymour lifted slightly his right brow: a gesture Peter knew very well from the mirror. "The Dream Hackers? Lucid dreaming? An electric shock? Or you’ve arranged the numbers that Rose Barton hinted at."

And here I was, thinking I could follow this conversation without taking breaks.

All Peter managed to say out loud was, "Pardon me?"

"You’ve reached Enia. They know it, we know it, and you know it. The headaches, the new details in your perceptions—"

"You knew my gran?!"

"There’re different roads to Enia. I listed a small part of them. Yoga works too. Take me, for instance. I was born this way

a very long time ago.

"Ann was shot in the head during a robbery gone wrong when she was a child. She lost her parents too. When she came out of the coma, she realized she could do complex mathematical calculations and analysis in her head."

Shot? So he raised her. And I’m done with keeping mum.

"I arranged the numbers. So you knew Rose?" Peter demanded.

"I did. She was a remarkable person. She was on her way to Enia, but she followed my advice to give up and lived the rest of her life as ... hmm. The Fund calls them Computors."

"Calls whom?"

"Except for Ann and me, our several hundred associates around the world, and half the Fund, the rest are Computors. And now you should be excluded too. They call your kind Players. Because you haven’t taken a side yet." Seymour wisely scratched his beard. With his bearing, he’d look wise even if he scratched his ass.

"Computors, Creators, Players? You do understand that’s too much for me, right?" Peter rubbed at his temples.

Ann stopped pattering on the keyboard and said, "Why, you’re doing well."

Peter gave her an absent look over her laptop.

Laptop. Computer! 192, 168, 10, 112, 80, 96. An IP address: 192.168.10.112:8096. My address. My provider set the 8096 port for the HTTP protocol, rather than the usual 80 or 8080.

Peter won’t have to email Martin about those last numbers. Not even to brag he’d figured them out. He had more pressing matters.

Ann closed the laptop. "Grandpa, I can’t break into Zander Industries. They’ve likely found the backdoor and tightened their security. Pity." She looked back at Peter. "But I know how they think. And even if I don’t know their precise plans, I can tell Martin’s in danger. Your dad too, Peter. The odds they’ll try to use them to get you are too high."

Do these people know everything about me?

"I can’t let anything happen to them because of me. I’m going to call them and warn them."

"I don’t think that’s a sensible idea. You’re a wanted man. And they’re very persevering people. They can trace any communication you may try. That’s why I threw away your cellphone last night."

"Okay, then I’ll talk with the Fund. Find out what they want."

Seymour said, "It’s your choice, Peter. I can’t stop you. But didn’t you notice their tendency to shoot first? They’d rather have you dead, or at least become one of them. Here’s what I suggest we do: I’m going to take care of Charles Barton’s safety. You Peter, given you shouldn’t use your usual phones, call Martin with a burner phone. Or through Ann’s laptop. I don’t think they can track Martin. Warn him to lie low for a while. Ann will take care of your own safety."

Peter wavered.

They don’t know everything. Such as the fact Martin can’t be found by phone.

However, emailing him from Ann’s computer sounded good. Peter wanted to trust these people. And he needed time to make sense of everything. Besides, he liked the idea of spending a little more time around Ann.

Ann O’Malley-Ström.

O’Malley was a standard Irish surname. It was the hyphen and Ström that worried him.

There must be a Mr. Ström too.

"You sure dad is alright?"

"I am."

"Also, if you don’t mind, don’t tell him all you’ve told me. He, uh, he’ll get upset."

And think we’re all nuts.

"I don’t even intend to talk with him."

"But you can protect him, right?"

The fiery eyes bore into Peter with all the earnestness of the world. "I give you my word."

Peter allowed himself to alter Seymour’s plan a little. Never mind it might mean spending less time alone with Ann. "Good, but Martin should be alright too. I’m going to email him, and I plan to pay him a visit."

Seymour and Ann exchanged glances. They didn’t look surprised.

"He’s in a place which definitely counts as lying low. If I join him for a while, I’ll be safer myself."

Ann was the first to react. "Okay. Email him. Use my account." She turned the laptop toward him. "They read yours."

Peter entered Martin’s email address. As he searched for the proper words to warn him, he opened a new browser tab. He Googled 438 Hertz and pressed Enter. He wrote a message to Martin and sent it. He wrote another to Bill Harknes: I have to take a leave. Keep things on the course we settled for. We’ll keep in touch. Peter.

Then he glanced at the Google results. 438 Hertz seemed to be the resonance frequency of the sarcophagus in the Great Pyramid. Or the entire King’s Chamber.

Surprised, anyone?

Peter shut down the browser and pushed the laptop toward Ann.

"Clearly, Ann will have to accompany you to ... where in fact?" Seymour said.

"Bulgaria."

Most of Peter’s acquaintances would immediately ask where that was. Not Seymour King. Or Ann Ström, for that matter.

"I’m booking the tickets." She leaned over the keyboard.

"Seymour, when I come back, we must continue our conversation." Peter sweetened his demand with a smile.

"Certainly, son. Certainly."

••◦◦◦

Collie dropped the stick in front of Charles. He picked it up with a smile and once again tossed it across the meadow. Collie shot after it. He’d just gotten the hang of this game. They were both having fun.

Then Collie stopped dead in his tracks. He lowered his head, bared his teeth

like a big, scary dog

and started barking and snarling toward something invisible beyond his slobbered toy. Somewhere at the dusty road.

"Collie! Come on, boy! Gimme the stick."

The dog merely turned an ear toward Charles but didn’t stop.

"What’s wrong with you? There’s nothing there. Gimme the stick!"

••◦◦•

The gray Mercedes G65 AMG held three people. Team Gamma. They were near the end of their long journey, so they stirred. One kept his eyes on the navigation system in his lap. The driver and the third man surveyed their surroundings.

"Turn here," said the navigator.

"You sure?"

"Totally."

The SUV left the comfort of the tarmac behind and swerved along a dirt road. The dirt road didn’t reach far. Only until the middle of nowhere.

The trio got out and walked another dozen of yards forward. There were only fields, bushes, and dust settling on their army boots.

"Totally sure, eh? There ain’t no ranch here!"

With an offended look, the navigator turned around the screen of his device. The coordinates were there. Next to the glowing Destination reached.

The third man, whose features hinted at some Native American blood, crouched and studied the print of a dog’s paw in the dust. He thought he heard faraway fierce barking. He tossed his head and stood up. There really wasn’t anything here. They’d ended up in the middle of acres of arable land.

••◦•◦

Ann came back into the room. She carried the black passport with the eagle and stars.

But not the black Glock with the silencer. We’re taking the plane, after all.

Peter stared at the passport and muttered, "Darn."

"Why, where’s yours?" She’d followed his gaze.

"Back home."

"So let’s go take it. We don’t have time to get you another one. It’s not the best time either."

"Aren’t they waiting for me there?"

"They are. But we’ll figure it out."

They said goodbye to Seymour. He kissed Ann on the forehead

like a caring granddad,

clasped Peter’s right hand, and wished them luck.

Ann and Peter crossed the deserted bookstore and walked out. A few customers of the cafe had all but blocked the entrance to Books & Knowledge with their chairs. Ann and Peter squeezed by the chairs, beaming polite smiles left and right. When they approached Ann’s Toyota, the previous night’s events resurfaced in Peter’s mind. However, the rear glass was intact now. Just to make sure, Peter walked around to the front of the car. There were no traces of its collision with the mercenary.

Surprised, anyone?

Peter still raised his right brow a little before entering the SUV.

Ann’s driving showed none of the temperamental flavor from the previous night. She observed the speed limits and the road signs; she let pushier cars overtake her, even if they did not have the right of way.

Peter didn’t know where he was, but something told him they were in for a long ride. He had time enough to listen to her own version. "Create worlds with our thoughts? Does Seymour really believe it? How about you?"

"He does. I believe it too, because I can ... well, not quite worlds, but I can create little things. And calculate. So can you. Recall the spikes."

"What can you create?"

"Mostly trajectories. Of cars, objects. Like, the trajectory of a bullet. It goes where I want it to go.

Whatever happened to me last night? I never miss!

"Or a quick math analysis lets me run across a busy highway without having to look around."

"If we assume I’ve created some spikes, and your bullets always hit the target, those are ... yeah, they’re amazing, but tiny. Nothing like creating worlds."

"Grandpa has spent his entire life studying his predecessor’s heritage. He’s concluded that the universe is indeed mental. People keep it orderly with their thoughts. Things are where they are, the way they are, because we put them there. An idea that dawned on somebody will dawn on another or get shared, gather proponents, and eventually turn into reality."

"What do you mean?"

"Let’s take the debate about who invented the radio first: Tesla, Marconi, or Popov. It doesn’t matter who was first. What matters is, it happened. Enough people processed info about that idea, so it ripened and materialized. Same goes about cars, buildings, the universe itself. They’re there, because we process the info about their characteristics. And the technologies that lead to their creation are just the way we imagined them. Causation works because we believe in it."

"We? You and me? The Fund?"

"No. Everyone else. That’s why the Fund calls them Computors. You and me used to compute too. No longer, though. When you reach Enia, you gain control over the rest of the ninety percent or so of your mental capacity, which had previously been busy ... computing. Not just the ten percent you had access to. The ninety percent stops processing info about the nearby—and not so nearby—world."

Peter felt a surge of vertigo.

Wait till Martin hears about this!

"Now that you’ve reached Enia," Ann went on, "your brain works differently, so I can’t give you examples. Still, there’s one that works. Grandpa jokingly calls it ’reflex preservation of the effect of velocity on the observer." She made sure there were no cars behind them and braked abruptly. Meanwhile, she said, "Keep looking ahead, but pay attention to the buildings on the side. Are they moving?"

They are!

The buildings seemed to be coming from the rear and as soon as they caught up, they stood still! But Peter could see this only with his peripheral vision. When he tried to focus on a particular building, the magic was broken. The building just stood there, as if mocking him.

Peter met Ann’s smile with a quizzical look.

Can such a smile hide the promise of ....

"It holds for everyone, because people process info mostly about the environment immediately around them. The brain compensates for their location depending on their velocity. If we speed up, the brain gets confused, and we get tunnel vision. An abrupt stop confuses it too, for a short time—until the buildings catch up.

A fact worth knowing and taking into account if you shoot from a car. Or at a car.

"You and me no longer process info about these buildings. They’re there and look like that, because enough other people and animals still do it. Nevertheless, our brain automatically orders the buildings the way it used to before Enia. Grandpa thinks it has something to do with brain habits, the Coriolis effect, and certain peculiarities of eyesight. The world keeps sending us these signs. That it’s not what we think." Ann had resumed her law-abiding driving and innocently watched the road.

It sounded reasonable. In the still unreasonable world of Enia. Science probably had another reasonable explanation for this effect.

Like the one about the movement of blood in the capillaries of eyelids.

Peter said, "And what effect does Enia produce?"

"The positive effect? Well, you generally get smarter. You use not ten but a hundred percent of your brain. You used to be intuitive? Multiply that by ten. Used to be cunning and manipulative? Creative? Increase that tenfold too. Depends on your talents before. What were you? As a child, for instance."

Peter nodded.

The details. The inquisitive child who wished to know how things were made and how they functioned. It’s still me. Only, Enia-powered.

"Because of what I did to my toys, Dad joked I was best at creating and modifying stuff. Mom sometimes marveled at my polymath knowledge. Whenever I blurted out something smart, she asked me how I knew it, and I said, ’I don’t remember, I just know it.’ Um, so Enia has a negative effect too? Like what?"

Creating and modifying.

The words kept pulsing inside Ann’s mind, but she didn’t let the conversation veer in that direction. Instead, she said, "Don’t you listen to the news?" She reached out and turned the car radio on. Fiddling with it, she found the News channel.

"—over Chelyabinsk last night. At least 1,200 people were injured, primarily by shattered glass from the shockwave. At least forty-six of them remain hospitalized, including two in serious condition.

"The Russian Ministry of Emergencies said it is going to compensate all victims. After the meteorite explosion, the local police is in a state of alert. Operation Fortress had been launched, aiming to protect the affected buildings from marauders—"

Peter gave her a puzzled look. "You mean I caused this?"

"You didn’t know. And you didn’t wish for it. At least, you didn’t make people die. Or erase Sirius A—much to astronomers’ horror."

You could have, though. The numbers you sent to Martin are the coordinates of Sirius A.

"Whoever reaches Enia stops processing his packet of information about the universe. The balance is upset, and something goes wrong. Nearby or farther away. You can look it up online. Historically speaking, nearly any time just before one of the richest people made their first million, a disaster struck. A tsunami, an earthquake, a volcano eruption ...."

"They reach Enia to get richer?"

"They do. They Grok, and use it to get richer. Their greed and resourcefulness skyrocket. Along with their creativity. They invent something and patent it. Then they join the Fund, whose goal is to gain control over everything and everyone through money and manipulations. Because it would bring them more money. And more control."

Peter recalled the check in the Patent Office that was about to take place on the following day. He ordered the events in his mind: Enia, the meteorite, the patent, both sides’ interest in him.

What if the patent doesn’t just save the company but make me rich? Does it mean I’m ...? "Depends on your talents before," huh?

He was beginning to believe in a world that was unbelievable. But he couldn’t see his place in it. Still, he’d rather side with Seymour and Ann. Granny Rose too.

He said, "A Grokker causes a volcano. The volcano, say, kills people. Doesn’t the death of those people cause more disasters in turn? Don’t they stop processing their, uh, information packets?"

"No. To the universe, death is a natural process. Even violent or unexpected death. Information manages to get distributed among other people. Or it transfers to newborns, keeping the balance. People get born all the time, right? However, with Enia, some things mess up, because Enia isn’t anticipated by the system, as it were, and the info you used to process gets lost. Still, you’re not the only one who stored and processed that particular info. So the loss of your packet of info about the Earth can’t destroy the planet. When you reach Enia, you cause a small error, which may result in a volcano eruption. But a volcano or a meteorite is nothing against the vastness of the universe."

You can tell she’s spent long years around Seymour. The way she thinks and talks.

Peter caught himself getting as enthralled by the conversation as he was by Ann’s near-black eyes. The waves of her dark brown hair now hid, now showed various parts of the fair, impossibly smooth skin on her face. Ann had just a few freckles, barely visible

and barely enough to justify the "O" in her surname.

Peter was vaguely aware he liked her. She attracted him.

And her voice—

changed and brought him back to the purpose of their trip. "Here’s what we’ll do. See the ATM over there? Withdraw some money. Your place is two blocks away. Three, if you go down this street. After you get the money, walk the three blocks home as fast as possible. I’m gonna be there. Don’t stop by me but go up and get your passport, okay?"

"Okay." Peter didn’t question her plan. She sounded like she’d written The Art of War. He got off the car and headed for the ATM. The Toyota cruised on toward his place.

When it got there, it passed by the Mercedes G65 AMG parked outside and the three figures inside. Ann fixed her eyes on the rearview mirror. Presently, as expected, the Mercedes crew got a message that Peter had used his credit card somewhere very close. A merc got off and stood on the sidewalk. The Mercedes made a sharp U-turn and zipped for the ATM amid smoke and screeching tires.

Ann walked out and calmly approached Peter’s entrance. The merc had craned his neck after the receding Mercedes. She got quite close behind him. Peering around, she picked a moment when nobody looked. Her right leg shot up, its heel connected with the base of the merc’s skull

considerably taller than me

and came back down. Even if somebody had been watching, they’d hardly figure out the meaning of the haze that had momentarily appeared between the two.

The merc slumped at her feet. She crouched by him and cried, "Somebody call an ambulance! It looks like a heart attack!"

People poured in around them. Ann watched for Peter. She spotted him among the crowd’s legs, moving into his entrance. At least two guys were talking into their cellphones. A man leaned down and felt the merc’s pulse. Another started unbuttoning his shirt. "Step back," he said. "I’m a paramedic."

Ann elegantly made way for him, slipped across the crowd, and headed for her car. Nobody paid her any mind, unless she blocked their view. Ann stopped by the Toyota so she could see the entrance.

The seconds rolled by as usual, but to her, they felt cumbersome. She could already hear the ambulance siren.

Come on, Peter!

He strode out of the entrance and headed for Ann, who was looking around for the Mercedes. As he got into the car, he flashed the passport.

They joined the traffic, passed an ambulance, and drove on. Within the speed limit, straight for the airport.

••◦••

Emil Zander smashed down the receiver with such force that plastic bits flew around and curious gazes fixed him.

"Duffers!" His gaze fixed the phone too. "Somebody replace this piece of trash!"

Rick Podolsky conjectured Zander meant the phone and headed for the door.

"You! Where’re you going?"

"To get another telephone, sir."

Emil turned his back to him, already talking to Gorsky. "They must go to Peter’s place again! Check the inventory for a missing item! It was obviously important to him. Did nobody figure out the ATM was a wild goose chase?"

Gorsky turned to relay the new commands. Emil tried to analyze this series of fiascoes.

Recently, there’ve been few new Players, so we’ve all slackened up.

Charles Barton’s ranch was gone. Emil had seen the pictures. Of a SUV and two morons in a field. He did a satellite check too. Nada.

But it’s there on the older sat pics!? Something’s gone totally haywire.

There isn’t any ranch, although the registers say there is. No Charles either. And now Peter’s making fun of us. To say nothing of Shields.

"Where’s Tango?"

"Already in Bulgaria. They’re waiting at—"

"Waiting for intel about Shields! The intel we still don’t have—right? You asked for a translator, and I gave you one!"

"The Bulgarians’ computers contain no data about anyone named Martin Shields. In any department. We’ll try seeking out his mother—"

"So go check everyone! Under any name! Check their fucking president, while you’re at it! Put satellites over Bulgaria! Do whatever, but I want results. A bunch of bunglers!" Emil slammed the door of the office behind himself.

He leaned against the opposite wall and pictured himself withdrawing all his money and leaving for a chill-out place with a nice weather. Away from the Fund, the Chair, and all those issues. A place with beaches and palm-trees, with umbrella-topped cocktails. He’d lounge all day in the company of some local tanned hunk, and at night ....

Nobody can hide from the Fund!

Nobody?

This Martin dude’s been doing pretty fine.

•••◦◦

The JFK International Airport couldn’t complain about its passenger flow rates. Ann and Peter barely affected them, as they passed across the glass gate. They were lugging a suitcase with wheels each, bought en route at Ann’s insistence. She’d justified them and their semi-redundant filling of clothes by saying that nobody traveled to Europe luggage-free if they didn’t want to stand out.

"You think Dad’s alright, Ann?"

She went to a public phone and made a short call. When she came back, she said, "He is. Grandpa has made sure they can’t find him. Also, please do me a favor. Call me Jane till we arrive in Bulgaria."

"Jane. Like Jane Doe?" teased Peter, buoyed by knowing that Charles was safe.

"Like Jane Dawson. That’s what my passport says."

"So mine saying Peter Barton means trouble, doesn’t it?"

"It does, and we’re gonna fix it." She led him to the middle of the hall, away from ATMs and security cams. They could perfectly read the departure screens from their new position. Ann consulted them, handed a ticket printout to Peter (purchased online in his name), and said, "Check in for the Mexico flight. It leaves in fifty minutes. I’m waiting for you here."

Trusting her without asking questions was turning into a habit. Peter headed for the desk that said Mexico City.

With his back to her, Peter couldn’t see the wrist flick, like throwing a shuriken. Only it was a coin. The coin whistled past a passenger’s ear, soared above a small clump of people, and hit smack in the middle of a security cam, three desks away from the one where Peter would check in. When it clinked on the floor, it rolled under the luggage scale and came to a stop against the shoe of the single passenger waiting at that particular desk. He felt the tap, leaned down, picked up the coin, and slipped it into his pocket. Ann smiled

that solves the issue of fingerprints too

and turned her attention elsewhere. The screen below the broken camera read, Heathrow, London.

Peter returned. He still held his passport, wondering how checking in for Mexico would help him get to Heathrow: the intermediate stop on their way to Bulgaria.

Ann flipped his passport to the identification page and said, "Need a little help here. Peter and Charles are fine. I want us to focus on Barton. It has to turn into Dawson. Mr and Mrs Dawson. Flying to good old England."

Peter’s mind was tickled by the idea of the Dawsons—

the Bartons?

Then he stared at her. Change his name in the passport? The word "Creator" reverberated in his thoughts, spoken by Seymour’s voice. Yet Peter kept staring.

"Come on, Peter. If I have to hit the check-in desk lady with a suitcase from here, that’s fine. Trajectories are my thing. But I can’t do the passport. Not on my own anyway. You too will have to focus on the name. Dawson." And she moved her head close to his, concentrating on the open passport.

Her proximity distracted him. He could feel her scent, her warmth. He lifted a brow, forced himself to focus. He recalled the feeling when he’d desperately wished for something to slow down his attackers at the construction site. He tried recreating it.

Creators—Jesus!

Peter memorized the passport page, the font, the position of the color stripes below the names. Then he closed his eyes.

Barton. Dawson. Dawson!

He half-opened his eyes, just to take a peek. Then he stared. In his hand lay the original passport of one Peter C. Dawson. Looking exactly the way they’d printed it in ... wherever they printed passports.

Peter looked at Ann. She smiled at him and the result. "See? Not so hard. Let’s go check in, Mr Dawson. I just heard the last call for London."

They print passports in GPO (Government Printing Office, 732 North Capitol St. NW Washington, D.C.). I know it from ... I don’t know. Someone please wake me up when it’s all over!

Peter trundled his suitcase with one arm after Ann’s. His other arm still held the passport in front of his eyes. He never blinked, lest he dispel the magic.

•••◦•

Podolsky wanted to bring Zander at least one nice piece of news. He rushed into the office and said, "He’s taken his passport, sir! Peter’s taken his passport!" In between the two sentences, he came to his senses, took a step back, and knocked on the already open door.

Zander pretended not to see the intrusion. "Where’s he going? Do we know?"

"Mexico. He just checked in, must already be up in the air. Luckily, we have a team in Mexico. I allowed myself to send them on your behalf to wait for him at the Benito Juarez Airport."

"Good! Anything else?"

"We’re done with checking Peter’s laptop. There’s nothing there. No patent notes, no emails to Martin. It’s like the operating system has just been installed."

Zander’s rising mood slumped into the minor scale again.

••••◦

Martin—now stressed on the ’i’ rather than the ’a’ and Shindarev instead of Shields—parked his Suzuki LJ80, tuned for off-road driving, in the underground parking of Terminal 2 at the Sofia Airport. He took the elevator to the Arrivals section, peeled off a bubblegum, and glanced at his mechanical watch. Recently, people used their smartphones as whatever, including watches. Not Martin. He found it crazy to carry around something with a battery, software and a mike

except for my laptop.

Especially when his ID was fake. That was totally alright in Tserovo. They welcomed him as one of their own there: he was Maria’s son, and nobody inquired any further. The village didn’t even have a cop.

The London flight arrived on time. Martin estimated Peter would need about a dozen minutes to deal with the formalities, so he leaned on the wall opposite the matte door marked Arrivals and waited. He did yet another mental scan of Peter’s alarming email and his own actions afterwards. The computers

with that joke of a firewall

at the Kennedy Airport had told him that Peter had checked in on a flight to Mexico but never boarded the plane. Martin figured out it’d been a ruse and lent a hand by adding Peter’s name to the passenger list. Then he downloaded the names of all passengers who had checked in within an hour of the Mexico flight. If he’d had to check them one by one, it would’ve taken

CPU

time, but a name caught his eye. Peter Charles Dawson, flight 4728 to London. With a ticket to Bulgaria. That was the only passenger Martin checked. The inconsistencies told him enough, so here he was, at the Arrivals section.

The matte glass door already let through the passengers from London. Their welcoming parties met them in smaller or larger groups. People laughed. There were bunches of flowers, name tags for VIPs, hugs, civilities, neck stretching and photo snapping

with smartphones.

And then there was Peter. Martin, arms spread wide, walked toward him, of course without letting the grubby backpack with the priceless laptop slip off his shoulder. "Peter, buddy!"

"Delighted to meet you, Martin!" Peter held him. "How did you find out I’m coming? Or it’s pointless to ask?"

"It’s pointless," said Martin, and only then did he notice the looker standing some three feet behind Peter. She was roughly their age. Her position was casual, as if she was making space for the two friends; in fact, she was surveying the surrounding security cams.

Peter quickly said, "May I introduce you to Ann Ström? Ann, this is my friend Martin Shields."

Ann and Martin shook hands and exchanged appraising looks, plus the typical American smiles.

For Ann’s sake, Martin switched to English. "I didn’t know you’d take a guest along, but I enjoy the surprise. Welcome, you both! If you’re ready, let’s go to the parking. I’ll take you home. There’s enough room there, and food, and hospitality, and a certain Martin who’s itching to know ev-ery-thing!" Martin tended to blabber, especially when he was impressed or delighted. And now he was both.

As they left the elevator on the minus two level, Ann moved ahead of them. Martin took the opportunity to whisper into Peter’s ear, eyes fixed on her, "You old fox!"

Both Peter and Ann pretended not to hear him. Ann had more pressing issues anyway. They were walking down a narrow corridor, and right opposite them was a camera. Ann bowed her head and beckoned for Peter to follow suit. That was all they could do right now.

Martin said, "Oh, that? I’m gonna delete the recording. Which reminds me, would you give me your passports for a sec please?"

They did. They’d already entered the underground parking and were beyond the cam’s field of view. Martin took out his Victorinox Swiss knife from the backpack, crouched by the concrete trash can near the door and summarily slit the back cover of one of the passports. He pulled out a miniature chip and held it up. Peter slightly lifted his eyebrow. Ann did nothing. After repeating the procedure, Martin gave them the passports back. He took the gum out of his mouth, pressed the chips into it, and stuck the gum under the lower ledge of the trash can. He stood up. "As far as I understand, you’re ... on an unofficial visit, and these things can help localize you. If you decide to leave the country with these passports, the lower chip is Peter’s."

•••••

Conchita Martinez had been an international flight attendant at Aeromexico for only two months. Yet she’d just managed to get into a fight with her senior on the flight to Mexico City. Now she fumed at herself and her explosive temperament, which could send her back to domestic flights, or even out of civil aviation. She sighed and started loading the cart with the passenger meals. She’d checked the list: she needed 86 boxes.

A little later, when she and her fellow stewardess gave away food and 85 practiced smiles, Conchita realized there was a surplus box left in the cart. Should she tell her senior? With the recent quarrel, she’d rather not.

Let the old hag handle it!

•◦◦◦◦◦

Despite the unprecedented financial injections for Greece

what do you expect from a people whose language has no word for "good morning"?

and the statistics showing Portugal to be at the economic tail end of the European Union, Martin was sure Bulgaria was the most broke country in the EU. Probably that was the reason for the rampant crime, corruption and—without mincing words—dehumanization. Or maybe it was the consequence. Martin noted the amazed expressions of his companions when they drove out of the airport and into a Gypsy ghetto. It looked like an inconsolable john at a Greek port. That was a good opportunity for Martin to indulge his borderline racist inclinations. Bulgarian gypsies, he said, were the equivalent of American Blacks. Only they irked him more. He explained that in the northwestern part of the country, there were villages with a predominantly Gypsy population. So far, so

not quite

good. However, all the people there, after a properly directed bribe, had started getting ill-health pensions. Entire villages! No pension system could withstand such a strain. And then politicians claimed there weren’t enough funds for the pensions of people who’d been paying their taxes and pension contributions all their life.

He told them about gypsies’ incredible ingenuity in finding loopholes toward their end goal: tapping into social security and healthcare funds. That

in a country that has never been a colonial power and doesn’t have any oil reserves or a developed economy

presented a huge financial and social issue.

"That’s why there’s no gypsy state. They need a state to steal from. They’re like parasites, like locusts—wherever they pass, they gobble everything up."

In a voice full of sad humor, he told them about a recent TV report. Groups of more inventive Romanies

the PC name for gypsies

from Bulgaria and Romania decided there was barely anything left to gnaw at in their home countries and left for Paris. They pitched their camps inside—wait for it—the Bois de Boulogne, then headed for the nearest bureau to sign up for unemployment benefits. The French were nonplussed by their new habitation and habits. They gathered them and sent them back with a recommendation

and some finger-wagging

that Bulgaria should integrate them into society. A politician from a small chauvinist Bulgarian party replied, "Well, how about you? Why didn’t you integrate them?"

Ann and Peter resumed their surprised looks when the car turned onto the main road, and other drivers, apparently interpreting the speed limits as recommendations only, started overtaking them both on the left and on the right. They only failed to do it from above.

Peter thought, The only missing part is the howl of horns and camels, and then we might’ve been in Marrakech. In fact, their traffic lights and traffic cop signals are recommendations, too.

And the travesty of music which poured out of the lowered side windows of most cars ... oh my. It was called chalga, Martin said. Only one car played rock-and-roll, but it remained a mystery if that was due to the driver or the music editor of the radio station. Peter’s previous visit to Bulgaria hadn’t been like that. Nothing had been. And none of the changes were for the better. Peter recalled a recent conversation with his dad. They’d talked about a similar trend in the US. Charles thought it was because of the easy access to information. That was why, he said, diamonds and gold were expensive. Because they were a limited resource, hard to obtain, and so we valued them. When he’d been young, information had been a limited resource too. Young people

at least the decent ones

had valued and hungered for it. They’d had only books, radio, television, and newspapers. All of those, censored and politically distorted. While nowadays, thanks to the Internet and the growing number of devices with online access, people lived in an ocean of information. You could learn everything, absolutely everything. As long as you wished to and were capable of sifting the garbage from the gems. The abundance and the easy access devalued information. Even information that could make you smarter. People stopped valuing and seeking it. For most of them, the Internet became a place where you could see which idiot wrote what idiocy on your idiotic wall.

Ann watched the prostitutes along Sofia’s ring road, but it wasn’t their presence that worried her. They had prostitutes back in the US too. What worried her was that the economic, cultural and social collapse which peeped out everywhere was an undeniable sign of one of the Fund’s plans in motion. A plan she was aware of, but it still stung when you saw it from up close.

The Bulgarian part of Martin thought, you ain’t seen nothing yet,

but the American part prevailed, and he told his companions

keep smiling,

that it wasn’t like that everywhere. In Tserovo, there were no gypsies. Once, years ago, a few tried to squat in a deserted house near the train station. However, the village men gathered and chased them away. They demolished the house, just in case. To avoid recidivism.

Then Martin told them Tserovo was full of vegetation and

mostly

good people. For instance, a lightning had struck and burned down the house of a poor man last month. The village mobilized enough money and manpower, and they rebuilt the house. There was barely any traffic. Crime was limited to small bumpkin tricks. At worse, they’d move your field border by a few feet or pick your plums to make rakia, the local brandy.

Do I sound reassuring enough?

Now they followed a road meandering along the Iskar River. Tserovo was some twenty-five miles downstream. Martin decided to act the guide later and instead asked, "Okay, are you gonna tell me what’s cooking? Why did you leave the States so fast? What danger should we guard against?"

Peter gave Ann a quizzical

imploring

look. "Martin’s like a brother to me. If I can tell everything to anyone without

much

worry, that would be Martin. We’ve dragged him in anyway. If he’s up to date, he’d take our side, not just because he’s my friend but of his own will. As long as he’s aware of the situation."

Our side. I’ve taken sides?

After a second’s pause, Ann nodded. Using her eyes rather than her head.

So Peter told Martin. About the numbers, the headache, the star coordinates, and his IP address. About Enia and the pending patent. About the increased resolution and the shootout. About Ann, Seymour, and the Fund.

When he reached the Fund, Martin looked as if Peter was trying to hack into his new computer, or worse.

What could be worse?!

The revelations affected Martin’s driving for the worse. So far, his off-road SUV ignored potholes the size of New Jersey. Those were promising potholes, majestic even. However, now it was about to start ignoring turns too. And the turns were solid. As were the precipices separating the road from the river. The locals said that the turns here belonged to the category The steering wheel has a limit, the turn does not.

A portion of Ann’s brain, automatically calculating probable and optimal car trajectories, took the upper hand, and she politely offered Martin to replace him. He refused, focused on the wheel, and Peter picked up his story.

He said that

he wasn’t an old fox but

Ann was something like their bodyguard. When he began to elaborate on accessing one’s full mental potential and the spikes, Ann was willing to concede anything, as long as somebody else took the wheel. For a while, there was a silent unanimity that it hadn’t been the best idea to fill in Martin while he drove.

They pulled over and got off to stretch their legs. Martin asked clarifying questions and struggled to assimilate the answers. His success was comparable to Peter’s two days earlier. Yet, as a fan of conspiracy theories, at least he was satisfied that his suspicions about a shadow world government were confirmed by the existence of the Fund.

Ann was satisfied to be merely outside the car. She relished the majestic slopes of the gorge and the pastorally huddled red tile roofs of the houses down by the river. She drank in the clear air. Everything was new and interesting, and for an instant she forgot to act the tough warrior. She was also trying to forget the catastrophically possible and surprisingly avoided trajectories of the Suzuki.

With the argument that his companions didn’t own Bulgarian driver’s licenses, Martin stuck to the wheel as they set off again. Tserovo was near, and the turns grew more manageable. After passing by a landfill sticking out like a boil among the surrounding beauty, they reached two surprisingly straight stretches.

"The Tserovo straight," Martin said. "Almost there."

The village didn’t throw them any welcome party. It lay there, on both banks of the Iskar, sprawled along the slopes around the local landmark: the Jugla rock formation. A bend of the river made it look as if Tserovo spanned more than two banks.

The streets were nearly deserted. People tended their business in their houses and yards. They’d long gotten used to the extravagant exterior of Martin’s car, so they barely reacted now. Martin waved at a few friends, sitting in front of the restaurant in the center. That was the only livelier spot.

"Let’s unpack, refresh ourselves, and then, if you feel like it, we’ll have a bite in the local restaurant." Martin nodded that way, and immediately regretted his words. The restaurant wasn’t a fitting place for concluding their conversation.

Never mind, we have time. Peter and Ann agreed to stay a while.

They unpacked. They refreshed themselves. The sleeping rooms and the bathroom were nothing special. No bells or whistles, just the necessities.

Meanwhile, Martin made good on his promise. He opened his titanium toy, broke into the security server of Sofia Airport, and erased all footage showing any of the three of them. The computer department of the airport seemed to have hired a smartass, recently graduated in Computer Science at the Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering

or is it called the Technical University now?

or at Sofia University, because Martin registered a timid attempt at counteraction.

Good.

So he would make them think it was a virus, not a hacker attack. He killed the server processes related to the antivirus program and released a tiny virus, which he’d quickly reprogrammed to turn the hard drive sections that held their faces into bad sectors. He left the security server as if he’d never been there. His ; was here messages were part of his youth: growth errors. Mistakes from the time when ego and vanity had been higher up on his list of personal characteristics.

Martin sent an encrypted request to the person who’d made his fake ID. The whole shebang took him four minutes or so, and he didn’t feel the usual thrill of outwitting a man or a machine. He acted out of habit: more fingers, less brain. His brain was desperately trying to assimilate what Peter had just told him.

I must’ve worked for that blasted Fund too! Okay, that’s that, but Peter—same guy I grew up with—making stuff out of nothing? Luke Skywalker and your telekinesis, move over!

•◦◦◦◦•

As per their instructions, the Mexico-based team waited at the Benito Juarez Airport. Dressed in plain clothes and sporting a tan, which made them

almost

blend in with the locals, the Sigma team members mixed with the welcoming parties of Flight 421. Their wide clothes largely concealed the guns. Even if a traitorous bulge formed now and then, no Sigma member worried about it. Nor did the locals: this was Mexico. Everybody carried a gun.

Each team member compared the arrivals with Peter’s photo. Then they did it again. Nobody found a likeness.

Soon, all passengers from the US drifted away, with or without a welcoming party. The mercs exchanged discreet glances. They were aware that three Gringos looking like lost children were bound to draw the attention of the security, so they filed toward the exit. Number One took out a cellphone, sighed, and double-tapped the green receiver icon.

•◦◦◦•◦

As per their agreement, they left for the restaurant. It was in the center of the village, two blocks away from Martin’s house. Of course, blocks in Tserovo had a different scale from the ones in, say, New York City. As much as his guests lingered to gaze at the new sights, Martin knew they’d reach the restaurant in seven or eight minutes. He therefore shared an idea related to their safety. "We all wanna remain unnoticed, so let’s stick to the following official version. Peter Barton—I mean, Dawson—can speak Bulgarian to the extent he can pass as a local. I already asked a buddy to prepare a passport in the name of Petar Bratanov." He grinned. "Closest to Barton I could think of. Petar will be a pal of mine from Vratsa—that’s a town some fifty miles away from here. As for you, lady, a Bulgarian ID won’t do. Guess we’d better introduce you as Jane Dawson, a friend of Peter’s. You met online, and now you’re paying a visit from ... England. The States sound more faraway and imaginary to the locals. Okay?"

They nodded. Peter

oops

Petar said, "Sounds reasonable."

"Even if they get desperate enough to ask around on the streets, they’ll be looking for a woman and one or two men, all of them native speakers," said Ann-oops-Jane.

"You haven’t forgotten I’m Martin Shindarev to everyone here, right?"

They had not.

The restaurant turned out to be pleasant, the food tasty, and the other customers cheery and tipsy. Peter and Martin had some trouble interpreting for Jane certain phrases exchanged by companies sitting at different tables. Like saying "mothered them" instead of "swore at them." Or "everyone is separately crazy" instead of "everyone’s their own flavor of crazy."

Not that the last expression makes much sense to non-Bulgarians anyway.


•◦◦◦••

To spare himself the embarrassment of constantly getting mekitsas, cake or banitsa from his multiple concerned aunts and cousins, most his mom’s age, Martin had long learned how to prepare these traditional Bulgarian breakfast meals. Not that it stopped his aunts from fattening him. Not that he protested too much, either.

This morning, Peter and Martin sat on the porch in front of the summer kitchen and garnished the mekitsas fried by Martin with yogurt and blueberry jam. They thought Ann hadn’t woken up yet, but they were wrong. She kept an eye on them from the window of her bedroom as she did her morning exercise routine. It was a heady mix of kung fu, tai chi, and muay Thai. Although she’d spent most of her conscious life with Seymour King and the accompanying share of theories and beliefs, she sometimes wondered why a mental universe still required her to stay fit with long, complex, and exhausting exercises. Her strongest trump as a fighter wasn’t the mastery of those martial artists. Nor was it aikido. And all these skills required a supreme physical shape. Nay, her forte was something called contactless combat. It was a counteracting technique nearly unfamiliar to the world. Only the Russians had a trainer who had dabbled in this new—or rather, well-forgotten old—martial art. He used it to instruct Spetsnaz, the Russian special forces. In fact, the YouTube videos demonstrating contactless combat often called it Spetsnaz. They had no way of knowing its real name. Or its age. Because the hermits who had taught it to Ann had no Internet, lived in isolation, and weren’t keen on sharing. The elder of that closed and ancient community had agreed to instruct an outsider only because of Seymour King’s plea. Ann never found out when Lil had gotten in touch with those people and what the nature of their relations was. She never asked either.

Now she put away the question of keeping fit in a mental universe for another time and headed for the bathroom.

Outside, Peter and Martin were finishing their breakfast.

"This whole thing’s real, right?" Martin said.

"I’m having a hard time making sense of it myself, but yes, it is. I didn’t see the spikes Ann and Seymour claim I created, but I saw ... an image of them, when I closed my eyes after the chase. And I saw the Toyota—not a scratch on it."

"Did Ann repair it?"

"I didn’t ask. Might’ve been Seymour. Ann is a specialist in calculations, math analysis, probabilities, and trajectories. The database in her head is enormous. Last but not least—probably a side effect of trajectories—she’s a first-class fighter. With or without weapons."

"And what happened to your visions of numbers?"

"The numbers are gone. Ever since I arranged them. Those two claim the numbers used to be my information packet about the universe. And ... I told you about the meteorite. Now that I’m in charge of my whole mental capacity, I seem to really be capable of manipulating stuff."

"You know me—between you and me, I’ve always been more ... like Mulder. ’I want to believe!’ And you’ve been the skeptic, like Scully. And now? My buddy Peter turning into a Yoda! You haven’t seen the spikes. Which part of that manipulated stuff have you seen? Argh, you do know me. I want to believe you. I just need a little push."

Peter considered that. He realized that convincing someone of something impossible made him convince himself better. At least better than just listening to Seymour.

He also realized he was still in his jeans from the previous day. He slipped his passport out of his back pocket and passed it to Martin. Martin leafed through it, studying the stamps and visas from the places he knew Peter had visited. Then he stared at the surname. Dawson.

So it’s his actual passport. But a bit manipulated.

That was the little push he’d needed. Perhaps not so little; Martin felt as if he’d been kicked out of his own notions of the limits of the possible. He kept his cool, though. He gave the passport back to Peter and said, "Don’t you go manipulating my laptop. I like it jes’ fine."

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw motion along the path. Ann fixed her wet hair as she approached them. Martin added conspiratorially, "I don’t see no need to change her either."

Ann greeted them. She sat down by the untouched cutlery. She accepted Martin’s offer of an espresso, and while he prepared it, she told Peter, "I know you’re worried, so I called Grandpa again. He’s made sure the Fund can’t find the ranch. He also assured me your dad is safe."

"How did he do that? I was led to believe the Fund has enough resources to find a ranch in the US. Did the ranch turn invisible?" Peter caught himself asking those questions by force of habit. Whatever answer they earned him, he’d take it as mere information. He didn’t think it’d surprise him.

"I don’t know the exact details. It isn’t invisible. I’ve asked him before, but he doesn’t quite understand the process himself. He just calls it Shifting. But don’t ask me where it’s been Shifted. In time, space, or dimensions. What matters is that the building, your dad and your dog are as good as gone."

Peter wasn’t surprised he believed her. He didn’t ask how she knew about Collie either. "Then why doesn’t he Shift this house too until we elaborate on a course of action, instead of making you our bodyguard?"

Not that I mind in the least.

"We aren’t going to hide forever, are we?"

She gave him a smile, then another at Martin, who handed her a cup of coffee with cream, of the type that would make an American scramble to get a selfie.

"He can’t. To Shift, he needs to know the place. He visited your ranch when Rose Barton lived there. But he’s powerless here." She looked at Martin. "We’re good here for now, but I’m sure the Fund’s gonna try to find Martin through his mother."

Martin made a very brief pause. "Mom ... she’s some seventy kilometers from here—that’s forty-five miles for you. We’ll hide her somewhere, but Dad’s in the US."

"They’ve already contacted him. He hasn’t seen you for years, and his only guess is you’re in Bulgaria. They can’t even kidnap him to make you come out. They’re aware that if they do, there’s no way for you to find out. He’s okay. Your mom, now ...."

"I can’t erase her data," said Martin. "I mean, I can, but she has a life, an address, friends, a job. I shouldn’t."

"What about calling her here? Can she take a leave?" said Peter.

"Nope. She’s intuitive, and even without mentioning Creators and Shifting in front of her, it’ll be ... awkward. But the leave thing gave me an idea. She told me recently she hadn’t gone on a proper vacation for years. I’m gonna call her. I’ll buy that vacation but I’m gonna say I’ve won some ...."

"TV game?" supplied Peter.

"Bingo! And since I’m a wanted man—by the FBI, probably Interpol, and now the Fund—"

"You don’t wanna wave your passport around customs, so you give the vacation to her," said Ann.

"And I’m sending her on a week-long trip to ...."

"Make that two weeks," said Ann.

"Okie, two. We’re sending her ... where? Must be a place with nice weather, palm-trees, and white, sandy beaches. Not too far either, else she’ll get worried."

In small countries, perceptions of distances change.

"The days between the spa sessions and the cocktail galas should roll like the waves ...."

Peter, the most experienced traveler of the three, listened to the requirements list and offered a smile saying, We have a winner! "That’d be Tunisia. Less than two hours by plane from here, and it has it all."

All three of them celebrated the end of this verbal Tetris with a burst of guffaws.

When Ann remembered to try the espresso with the impossible cream, she asked Martin, "What is it? I’ve never drunk a stronger and more fragrant coffee."

Martin was just completing the online reservation for his mom’s vacation. He’d also prepaid most optional trips during her stay in Tunisia. A three-day tour around the country by bus, jeep, and even camels. A visit to the Bardo Museum, a day among the ruins of ancient Carthage, a visit to the oldest synagogue in the world, the El Ghriba Synagogue on the island of Djerba, and whatever else sounded interesting. For her. For himself, he’d book a visit to the set of the old Star Wars.

Twice.

Now he looked up. "It’s Mollinari. Italian. Prepared by an Italian espresso machine. I’m a fan of strong and fragrant coffee. The stuff you drink in the US is called schwarz here. And it doesn’t get a lot of respect. After the Boston Tea Party, coffee gained the status of an American beverage. Drinking coffee rather than tea was seen as a declaration of being a good American. Italians never had any tea parties, but they did have enough time to practice. After all, the oldest European cafe is Florian in Venice—"

"It’s awesome," smiled Ann, interrupting his lecture.

Peter paid no attention to them. He gazed blankly at the cliffs visible from the yard. He barely saw them, in spite of their spectacular looks.

Dad’s fine. He’s been ... Shifted, ranch and all. But what will happen if he tries to leave the Shifted area? Martin and me are fine here too. Ann’s keeping us safe. She’s truly incredible, yet how does she protect us without any weapons? She couldn’t pass through airport security with the Glock ... I didn’t know I knew it was a Glock. How long are we going to hang around Martin’s house? Doesn’t sound like a plan. I need to get in touch with Bill.

"Peter."

I have more ideas about the system I’m trying to patent. But could I call Bill without getting detected? Ann calls Seymour, but they apparently don’t have their numbers. And they must be tapping Bill.

"Peter," repeated Ann.

"Yeah?" Peter focused on her.

"You looked distracted. What’s eating you?"

"Everything."

"That’s normal. And how are you coping with your higher need for sleep and food?"

"I am. I eat frequently, stock up on caffeine, and try not to look drowsy. But I wanted to call Bill Harknes and see how the company’s doing."

"You’re worried about the patent, right?" Ann said.

Is there a trace of reproach in her tone?

Peter gave her an almost apologetic look.

You make a discovery, patent it, get rich ....

"Look, lots of people depend on Barton Dental’s prosperity ... and Dad counts on me."

"True. The responsibility for others’ destinies is a heavy burden."

"Now she started speaking like Yoda," muttered Martin. "Peter, I can get you through to Bill. They’ll prolly tap you, but at least they won’t find out where you’re calling from."

"Sounds like a deal," Peter said.

Amazing how sometimes things work out on their own.

Ann merely shrugged.

•◦◦•◦◦

"Martin, do you have tools around?" said Ann.

"Of course, all sorts of hardware." He pointed at the garage.

"Mind if I take a look?"

"I’m not very good with anything other than keyboards, so it’s all yours."

"Thanks."

Ann walked into the garage and found the light switch. There were heaps of hardware indeed. And they were all covered in dust, except for Martin’s SUV. Like Peter, Ann was aware the absence of weapons made them more vulnerable. But she wasn’t worried. It made them this much more vulnerable. After all, when the Fund teams had come for her, she’d never touched a firearm or done any martial arts. But she still made short work of six trained killers.

Drive someone into a corner, and enjoy the emerging physical and psychological powers.

Besides, no matter what Peter and Martin believed, she wasn’t here

just

as their personal bodyguard. Seymour King had tasked her to encourage Peter in modifying and creating things, in developing his innate talent. And to keep an eye on his progress.

The society currently led by Seymour had always been looking for a more special specimen. They’d kept tabs on everyone who reached Enia over the centuries. They believed that one day, Duranki would appear. A person with no limits to the power of their will and thought. A true creator of worlds. And they’d been drawing plans for Duranki to choose Lil over the Fund.

Their belief wasn’t founded on a prophesy, like some religions. They believed that their very belief would one day forge such a person. That the idea of Duranki, expressed by one of their early leaders in ancient Sumer, would eventually mature and materialize. They’d been placing their hopes on everybody who’d reached Enia—so far to no avail. Ann, however, sensed that this time, Seymour was more excited than ever. His confused conversation with Peter had testified to that. She’d never heard Seymour bounce from topic to topic so enthusiastically or lose his direction like that. Unlike him, she was moderately skeptical. Yes, the very act of reaching Enia made Peter special. Yet so far, he hadn’t done anything unheard of.

While reflecting on Peter’s odds of being Duranki, Ann assessed the potential of various items in the garage to serve as weapons. When she saw the wooden box full of nails, she discarded the Duranki option, found a heavy hammer, scooped up some nails, and went to the solid anvil in the corner. She had an idea how to turn the nails into throwing knives.

Or an imitation that would do.

A nail was about four inches long. With a few powerful and well-aimed blows

Ann О’Malley-Ström and trajectories. Kinda like synonyms

she flattened the nail head and the adjacent inch of its body. The flat part should act as a flight stabilizer.

Ann picked a section of the wooden gate of the garage that featured a more distinct pattern, and set to test her new missile. With a thunk, the nail sank into the thick plank. Only the stabilizer remained gleaming in the middle of the selected patch. Ann was glad: she’d thrown the nail stabilizer-first, and aerodynamics had turned it into a proper throwing knife.

Drawn in by the hammering, Peter, who had finished instructing Bill Harknes, approached the door of the garage just in time to see the tip of the nail burst through the plank. He peered inside.

Is there going to be a second shot?

Ann was just picking up the hammer to make a new missile. Peter said, "Aren’t you going to take the first one out? You know, reduce and reuse?"

"No, you are." She gave him a look full of challenge.

Something about her tone told him he wasn’t supposed to use pliers or any other tool. Peter raised his a brow, looked at the nail, and closed his eyes. He gripped the stabilizer and as he pulled, he imagined the adhesion between the metal and the wood decrease. The relevant mathematical proof flitted across the inside of his eyelids. A formula, where friction decreased over time in a geometric progression. Peter opened his eyes, walked to Ann, and handed her the nail.

She thanked him, as if it was par for the course, and raised her hammer again.

"Wait," Peter said. "There must be a more elegant way."

He picked up a nail from the anvil and gazed at it. He closed his eyes, clenched his fist around the metal, and visualized a replica of the first nail, with certain modifications. The metal shifted, as if alive.

I’m gaining momentum!

After a few seconds, he opened his eyes and his palm. Ann took the result with an air of respect and gazed at him.

It was the same principle, but the execution was that of a jeweler. There were still a pair of stabilizers, to the back and side of the body, but they were so identical and well aligned they looked like a product of aircraft manufacture. Unlike their prototype, which had been Ann’s first dabbling at blacksmithing.

Ann noticed that the leading edge of the stabilizers was razor sharp. She looked at the tip of the nail. It was sharp too. She touched it to check how sharp. A drop of blood sprouted on her thumb.

"Wow."

"I rearranged the iron atoms so that the tip contains a single atom. The bluish tinge is due to the compressed crystalline structure. Sorry for the prick—shall I bring you the first aid kit?"

"No, I’m fine. A single atom? That would pierce Kevlar!"

"At least try stanching the blood. Saliva would do the trick too. It contains anti-inflammatory and styptic enzymes. Not so many as, say, a wolf’s saliva, but—"

"Peter, it’s really nothing. Don’t worry."

"Alright."

Ann was itching to try throwing knife version 2.0. She aimed at another spot on the door. The knife whizzed and reached its target. This time, the damage was far greater. A bulletlike hole opened in the thick door. Its shape was somewhat unusual, though. The passing of the stabilizers through the door had made it elliptical. Ann realized why Peter had sharpened the front edges of the stabilizers.

After such a successful test, Ann asked Peter to "forge" some three dozen perfect and perfectly identical knives. She watched from the side, wishing Seymour was here. He’d be glad. Peter had created the spikes automatically. He’d changed his passport and pulled the nail out after her request. Yet he designed, visualized, and made the knives all on his own. He seemed to be quickly overcoming the barriers in his mind.

Which makes my task easier.

He’d started believing in the power of thought, and applying it. She gave him a furtive look, searching but also admiring.

Duranki?

C’mon, cut it out.

Ann carefully put the knives away. She’d find room for them in the countless folds and pockets of her leotard. She followed Peter out of the garage. At the door, they nearly bumped into Martin.

"What’s up?" Martin spotted the hole. "Besides wrecking my door?" His charming grin undermined the reproach.

Peter placed his hand on the damaged spot and closed his eyes. A second later, he walked away, tossing over his shoulder, "Your door’s just fine."

It was indeed. The hole was gone. The smooth patterns flowed perfect, forming an old, ordinary oaken door.

•◦◦•◦•

Mountain folks are tough. Most lived in the villages and towns along the Iskar Gorge but some preferred the numerous adjacent hamlets scattered around Stara Planina. "Hamlets" was likely a title of honor. Those were single houses at least a mile away from one another. Their inhabitants were the toughest of the tough. They wouldn’t move to Svoge or Iskrets or Tserovo or Bov or anywhere for any of civilization’s conveniences. They preferred their old, sturdy houses, and they grew delicious potatoes and sturdy goats. In wintertime, snow reached six feet high around their houses, and their most frequent visitors were wolves or boars, but that did not seem to bother either party.

These folks went down to the villages at the river only to buy salt or flour. Of course, there were those who walked three to six miles every morning and boarded the train to Sofia where they worked. Sofia got most of its laborers from the Iskar Gorge or the town of Pernik. In the evenings, those same people got off the train and walked three to six miles back to their houses. This time, they were weary with work and had to go uphill. Yet they did not complain. They kept working; nobody would think of living on welfare. That was how they’d been raised.

In the winter, they would take a sip for warming up their way and even had the strength to joke. Whether their jokes were fueled by the spirits or by their natural spirit, no-one knew or bothered to ask. Climbing up to their houses, in between jokes and sips, they would shoo away the wolves. Then another day came, and the cycle restarted.

One such menial worker in Sofia was Kalina. She was a widow in her early forties, always smiling, though she’d never heard of the American "keep smiling" slogan. Kalina worked as a chambermaid in the Sylvie hotel. A descendant of an old mountain line, Kalina traveled to and from the capital almost every day, never complaining. What would she complain about anyway? Being a chambermaid sounded nearly aristocratic to her fellow travelers; some even envied her.

For Kalina, like most locals, socializing consisted of gatherings garnished with moderate amounts of alcohol and gossip exchange. Gossip was no patent of the gorge dwellers. Kalina exchanged it successfully with her workmate Ivanka, who pretended to be from Sofia.

Well, Ivanka’s pretensions are all over the place. It’s like she didn’t have thirteen F’s at the end of the school term.

Whenever Kalina and Ivanka shared a shift, parallel to changing bed linen and bathroom soaps, they exchanged intel about the new developments, most of which didn’t concern them in the least. They were now keen about it, now in just for the sport of it.

Are primate researchers right to say that mutual grooming, which used to bring the herd together, changed into gossip swapping with people?

Anyway, it made the shift pass faster.

During today’s shift, Ivanka had learned that the guests in Rooms 328, 330 and 332 were apparently Americans. They knew each other and had checked in together. One seemed to speak some Bulgarian, though. And they looked cold, organized, even scary. To do her part in the grooming, Kalina said that in Tserovo, which she passed through on her way home, a Dutchman had settled some two years ago. He’d bought a house and kept repairing and redecorating it, making it look more Western. He also kept getting rapt about the mountain landscape: such a contrast from his flat homeland.

Recently, an Englishwoman had arrived too. Along with her friend from Vratsa, a guy named Petar. The two had met online (maybe). They were staying with Martin. "I’ve told you about Martin, no? It’s that guy who ...."

Engrossed by cleaning and choice news, neither woman noticed the hotel guest who slowed down as he approached their open door. It was the man from Room 328. The American who (maybe) had a smattering of Bulgarian.

•◦◦••◦

Martin was trying to calmly accept the trick with the door he’d just witnessed. He couldn’t say if he was failing or not, so he decided to harness his thoughts into something familiar and useful. "This Fund ... where’s it based?" he asked, opening his laptop.

Ann stopped playing with one of Peter’s knives and looked at him. "In the US. Of course, it has branches all over the world. I don’t know where exactly in the US or who the head honcho is, but Zander Industries is their right hand. Led by Emil Zander."

Martin typed the name into the search field of an extravagant yet unmistakable search engine.

Ann cut him short. "New York City." She told him the address. And the IP address.

His thumb hovered about the titanium Enter key. His eyes rolled toward her with surprise and the germ of respect.

The IP, too? My kinda girl!

She said, "I know a bit about computers. I broke in there. They’d intercepted the emails you’d exchanged with Peter. But they seem to have found me out, so they tightened the security. It’d be useful to know what they’re planning." Now she rolled her eyes toward him.

Martin had nearly forgotten about the self-healing door. He was on home turf now, and he delved right in. Through an Ukrainian server, he started probing the IP of Zander,

Yeah, their firewall’s really ....

He couldn’t make up his mind: more of a fire or more of a wall? All incoming and outgoing data passed through a single machine. As secure as Fort Knox. Martin decided to leave it alone for now. It would be subtler to disguise himself as the Internet provider of Zander Industries. That would give him access to their entire traffic. It wouldn’t be easy—lots of slippery slopes in the process—but would it have been fun otherwise?

Martin anonymously asked around about their provider, and the answer didn’t make him happy. Podolsky Ltd was a properly licensed and legally registered Internet provider. Their only client was Zander Industries. To be precise, their server and their single client had the same IP.

Martin decided to check where Podolsky Ltd purchased their bandwidth. He launched a couple of innocuous connection speed tests from a few random computers around the world to the company server.

"Visualization on!" he ordered his computer.

Color lines crawled along the world map from different places and at different speeds towards New York City. Before reaching their goal, all of them passed through an orbital point, tagged as Orbica FF101. Martin didn’t really need to check but did anyway. It was just as he’d thought: a geostationary communications satellite over New York. Private. Martin could find no registers listing who had launched the satellite into orbit or who used the bandwidth.

Me, failing to find some info?

That irked and urged him on to almost equal degrees. He wasn’t aware he’d spoken aloud until he did. "Podolsky Limited?"

"What about him?"

He realized Ann had been peering over his shoulder. "Them! It’s a company. It’s gonna take me loads of time to find out who Podolsky is—if it’s not just a moniker—and then try—"

"It’s not a moniker. Rick Podolsky works for Emil Zander."

A spark of hope battled to transform Martin’s anger. "Rick? From Richard? Anyway, that does narrow down the circle." The spark prevailed. "Ann, I feel like kissing you!"

"Try resisting."

His smile shrank by an octave.

Was that completely serious? Did I cross a line with that phrase?

Aloud, he muttered, "I don’t think they’d buy a mobile operator."

Martin’s fingers danced along the titanium keyboard. There were no characters on the keys. As she watched him, Ann reflected on his remark about the mobile operator. She didn’t tell him they wouldn’t need to buy one. It had been theirs, in one form or another, to one degree or another, ever since the technology had been patented. Anything harmful, providing more control, profitable, or all three, was connected to the Fund.

After a few minutes, Martin had the names of all Ricks and Richards Podolsky who owned cellphones. With any US operator. The Ricks were only 116. So even the Polish avoided using pet names for their children. Now, Richard, teamed up with Podolsky, enjoyed an unpleasant popularity: a total of 26,512 people.

While figuring out how to lessen the crowd of Richards, Martin looked up all the Ricks. A couple of them caught his eye, but none was from New York or even close to an Internet provider. Martin sighed and started sorting the long list by various criteria. That reduced the candidates to a dozen. Then he noticed that a subscriber’s bill was paid from the same bank account listed in the registration of Podolsky Ltd.

Gotcha. Why didn’t I think to include this criterion earlier?

From then on, it was a breeze. Hacking a telecommunications satellite took a lot of time and effort. Hacking a server was risky. Hacking the user was the most logical and easy choice.

And that user’s prolly glued to his pet smartphone.

•◦◦•••

"Sir, I think we found them! In Bulgaria! With a high degree of probability, all three of them are in a settlement called Serovow!"

In two days, that had been Podolsky’s second bursting into Emil’s office, but the news warranted it. Still, Emil allowed himself a little malice. "Rick, please make up whole sentences. Which three? When? Where? How?"

Rick’s enthusiasm shriveled on his way from the door to the desk. He realized Gorsky and him had actually found nothing. This sharp turn in his expectations probably prevented him from noticing the gradual brightening of his smartphone display.

"I apologize. A member of Team Tango has just overheard a conversation in the hotel they’re staying at. Two Bulgarians got mentioned, Petar and Martin. Also an Englishwoman, Jane. Peter and Jane were visiting Martin in Serovow—that’s a village. I’m not sure about its pronunciation. However, in Bulgarian, Peter becomes Petar, and—"

"Bravo! Well done! You’re lucky chance works instead of you. If Tango had picked another hotel, we’d been at square one. And then you break in here, yelling, ’Sir, we found ’em!’" Emil carried on for a while, but he didn’t put a lot of heart into it—just enough to keep his inferiors in shape. While he ridiculed their professionalism, he thought of ways to prevent Peter and the rest from escaping this time.

If it’s them, that is.

"I want another two—no, all free teams to back up Tango, ASAP! Let them surround that Sirovow or whatever, and strike as one. Even if they aren’t sure these are our guys, let them strike. I’d rather get them alive, but ... mistakes do happen."

"On it, sir!" Podolsky looked visibly relieved to leave his office.

Gorsky seemed to have been eavesdropping too, because he was already calling team leaders and organizing express transportation to Bulgaria.

•◦•◦◦◦

Martin didn’t even have to write a program for Podolsky’s smartphone. He simply hacked his GSM operator and used the built-in eavesdropping protocol. All operators maintained that protocol at the insistence of the national security agencies. Just as all of them vehemently denied its existence. Martin activated it, and the three of them listened to the voices from his laptop.

"—Team Tango has just overheard a conversation in the hotel they’re staying at. Two Bulgarians got mentioned, Petar and Martin. Also an Englishwoman, Jane. Peter and Jane were visiting Martin in Serovow—that’s a village. I’m not sure about its pronunciation. However, in Bulgarian, Peter becomes Petar, and—"

"Bravo! Well done! You’re lucky chance works instead of you. If Tango had picked another hotel, we’d been at square one. And then you break in here, yelling, ’Sir, we found ’em!’"

Ann twitched and whispered—as if it had been a two-way connection—to Martin, "That’s Podolsky. The other guy is one of his bosses."

The laptop went on, "I want another two—no, all free teams to back up Tango, ASAP! Let them surround that Sirovow or whatever, and strike as one. Even if they aren’t sure these are our guys, let them strike. I’d rather get them alive, but ... mistakes do happen."

"On it, sir!"

There was a pause, some noise, dialing, and a new conversation. "Sofia, Tango, One, don’t move from the hotel! Within twelve hours, we’re sending back-up for an operation in Serovow. Until then, let Two and Three watch Departures at the airport. Stand by for instructions."

"It’s pronounced Tserovo, sir. Roger that."

Another pause, dialing, conversation. "Berlin, Epsilon, One. Drop tapping and immediately fly to Bulgaria! Details from Tango, on site."

"Roger!"

Another dialing—but Ann didn’t stay to listen. She already had the picture, so she went to tell Peter.

For a few seconds, Martin watched his laptop screen incredulously, head tilted like a curious dog. There wasn’t much to see, actually: all the info came from the loudspeakers.

Then he cast a glance at his watch. His mom had happily accepted the Tunisia trip (but he couldn’t tell if she’d bought the TV show story). Her flight would depart in half an hour. At whatever hotel those Tango dudes were staying, if she was lucky enough, she’d leave before Two and Three reached Sofia Airport. While listening to Podolsky’s instructions to the Greek alphabet, Martin entered the airport server through an American one. His mom had checked in. He swapped her name for another woman who’d be flying to Moscow at the same time. The imminent operation of the Fund didn’t cancel their search for Martin’s mom, so he did his best to cover up her tracks. He switched to the computer of the tour operator who organized the trip on the Bulgarian side. He erased everything related to her.

The Tunisian side gave him a bit of trouble. It wasn’t the Arabic characters; he didn’t have to break passwords in Arabic. Rather, he used a backdoor built into the OS. Most adepts wished to believe this backdoor existed only in the Arabian version of the OS, but Martin knew it was universal, so he used it anywhere in the world. No, the delay was due to the speed of the Tunisian servers. They were probably still using modems.

Or carrying the Net around in buckets.

There, he set up a program that would erase all data about his mother, after a three-hour waiting period. After all, they’d need to check her name on their list when she landed.

Alt+Tab brought him back to Sofia Airport. He shuffled the names of a few dozen passengers on different flights. That would sure ring some alarms.

Martin paused and slipped into the computer of the smartass

from the Technical or Sofia University

who was probably the local sysadmin. He released a harmless virus. It would merely nibble at the desktop wallpaper and write inside the black paths it left behind, Rick Podolsky was here!

A bit of publicity may slow you down. Or at least tick you off.


•◦•◦◦•

"We can’t leave for Sofia. Or Vratsa. Traffic cameras, ATMs ... those people can access them, and therefore find us."

"Here in Bulgaria?!" Martin asked, a little hopefully rather than skeptically.

Ann opened her mouth, but Peter beat her to it. "Everywhere. That’s not a Hollywood movie where you can pinpoint the usual enemy: Russians or Arabs or Nazis or Slavs or an ancient evil sect. The Fund can’t be a US invention. It’s too global and old. So yes, here in Bulgaria too. Have you wondered why things are going so bad? Why the transition here has lasted for more than twenty years, and still has taken you nowhere? A transition from what to what?" The bits of info stored during the years had fit together in Peter’s mind over the past few days, and his anger was seeking a vent. "A transition to the glorified, overpraised American lifestyle? Awesome! Almost anybody I know has one or even two mortgages they barely manage to cover, working two or even three jobs. So they can get their kids into college. Damn money’s getting harder to earn and faster to spend. We no longer own anything. Our houses were bought on credit, and so were our cars. We seem to own only the shirt on our back—unless we purchased it with a credit card and until we manage to pay it off. The American dream is dead—as is the Bulgarian one, by the way. Now that I know about Lil and the Fund, I’m positive it’s all the Fund’s doing. Here and in the US and everywhere."

His companions were surprised by this outburst. Ann felt as if she were listening to Seymour. Martin hadn’t expected Peter, of all people, to express some of his own anarchist views.

Peter noticed their reactions and said, "Sorry, I got carried away. Apparently, my Ph.D. in economics has stuff to say about liberty, fraternity, equality, and the model imposed on us." He recalled Barton Dental and the patent. "The worst part is, I’m playing this game myself. But that’s a long and sad story. Now we need to decide what to do. Any suggestions?"

As soon as he’d asked, Peter regretted sounding like the boss during a briefing. These people did not deserve that. They were his friends. One had gotten entangled in this thriller against his wishes—and along with his mother. The other had placed herself in danger in order to keep Peter alive. He felt very close to both; their world had been recently revolving around him, and he had no clue what he’d done to deserve it. What made him special.

However, neither of them reacted to the "boss" intrusion. At least not obviously. Ann regarded him with a searching look, as far as he could tell. Martin closed the laptop and put it into his backpack. "It’s not like we’re gonna live like wild animals, but it seems safest to stick to the mountain. We’re gonna avoid roads, the police, cities, and cams. I’ve taken the SUV for dozens of off-road trips to the ridges and plateaus around. When we get up there, we’ll work it out. From there, we can reach Sofia, Vratsa, and even the Serbian border.

Ann said, "We don’t know their exact arrival time. Or if they aren’t monitoring the roads already. We know it’ll be soon, and there’ll be lots of them. I can handle one or two teams even armed only with these." She spun one of Peter’s darts in front of her eyes. "I’m not bragging, I just calculated the probabilities. But we’re talking about at least four teams, and I don’t feel like facing a dozen thugs. So I agree with Martin."

Peter did too, for lack of better ideas. They split their tasks. Martin went around the neighbors. He mentioned, casually, that they were going to stay at a friend’s place in the town of Godech. He also asked them to keep an eye on his house, if they didn’t mind. Peter went to the nearest store to buy some provisions, while Ann stayed in the house to decide what might come in handy and put it inside the SUV. She figured she’d even have time to prepare a gift for Zander’s thugs. She poured some gasoline from the spare tube of the Suzuki, mixed it with detergent granules, some gelatin she found in the kitchen, and an ample amount of artificial fertilizer. She wrapped the pale paste in aluminum foil. She added a nine-volt battery borrowed from an alarm clock. Then she taped the do-it-yourself bomb to the box of nails. She didn’t want to damage the house or the summer kitchen, so she attached her creation to the inside of the garage door and extra carefully

the way hedgehogs have sex

closed it.

It took them less than an hour to get ready. Martin poured cat food into the bowls scattered around the yard. He didn’t have a cat he could call his own, but he took care of an infinite number of "guest performers," as he called them. The more regular ones, who stood out for their colors or character, had even earned nicknames: Pussilia, Pasha, Fluffy, Homely, Shorthair, and Tiger-Tiger.

Martin locked the house and headed for the driver’s seat in the Suzuki.

"Let her drive," said Peter, remembering Martin’s skills under stress. "I’ve seen her in action, and I assure you both of us can learn a lot just by watching."

"Do you know the Bulgarian saying that goes, If you could learn a craft by watching, the dog would be a butcher?" Martin couldn’t give up on his SUV just like that. It was nearly as dear to him as his laptop.

"Depends on who’s watching. Me and you are smarter than dogs."

"But my car isn’t automatic. I doubt Americans—"

"It surprised me too, but the Land Cruiser she used to make our escape wasn’t automatic either."

Ann kept silent, smiling at Martin—expectantly. He made a final half-hearted try. "Have you done off-road before?"

"I’ve done everything." Ann picked up the keys. Her smile was type one. The one children used. Most of her smiles had been type two: the facial muscles smiled, but the eyes spoke an infinite sorrow built over a lifetime of experiences. They resembled smiles only because their owner was aware that being able to smile after all those experiences was a divine gift of the utmost degree.

Ann’s response stirred a dreamy look in Martin’s eyes, as he visualized a particular shade of the word "everything." It also stirred a little ...

jealousy?

in Peter, who could visualize what Martin visualized.

They got in and started the car. As she pulled it out of the yard, Ann reflected on a peculiarity of men she’d noticed before: to steal glances at the way the charcoal leotard hugged her body. And find a sexual subtext

not that it wasn’t there

in her answer. All that at a time when they had only a few hours

or less

of head start before a dozen determined, trained and armed killers working for the most powerful, global and inhumane organization.

She smiled mentally

a type three smile: mixing types one and two

and drove toward the abandoned quarry above the village.

•◦•◦•◦

After Podolsky nearly became the self-appointed coordinator of team operations in Bulgaria, Gorsky had no choice but to monitor the usual information and communication channels for surprises. Shortly, he noticed the filtering program had highlighted a name in pulsing red.

Their filtering program? Most people take the Internet, cellphones, security cameras, plastic money, and social networks for granted. And so deeply integrated into their daily lives that they couldn’t be anything but safe. Yet they weren’t. Any doubter could send an email to his brother or, better even, to an address in Iran or Afghanistan, containing the word jihad. No, that was too obvious. Before uploading yet another superfluous selfie to your profile, you could open the picture. Not with an image editor, though. With a text one. Then you could type jihad somewhere inside, among the jumble of unintelligible characters. Then save it as a .jpg and upload. Then wait and watch. On the next day, burly men in full combat gear would break down your door, shouting, "FBI! Nobody move!" Or "Police!" Or maybe "National Defense Service!" It made no difference. Yet that was the hard version. The soft consequences could vary. You could spot a nondescript nonentity fold his newspaper quite authentically—as if he’d just read it—pay his bill, and leave the cafe five seconds after you. Or if it was quiet enough in your room and the laptop screensaver was on, you could suddenly hear the keen burr of the hard drive, betraying an unprovoked (by you) yet vigorous activity inside the electronic bowels. Or something completely different. Various folks might pay you a visit, depending on whose toes you’d stepped. On what you’ve typed inside the picture. Whether the government, the Fund, or a multinational, multi-billionaire corporation sent them, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that in the 21st century, comm channels were definitely not the private and protected space most people thought them to be.

If they bother to think at all.

Martin Shields wasn’t most people. Neither was Gorsky. That was why the filtering program of the Fund displayed to Gorsky what Martin had expected: the name of Rick Podolsky.

Gorsky wrote it down, printed it, and momentarily wondered if he should take it straight to Zander. The brownnoser pissed him off. Yet Podolsky was his closest workmate

or even the closest to a friend I’ve got.

So Gorsky showed it first to Podolsky. "It says here that Bulgarians suspect you, rather than a namesake of yours, for hacking into their Sofia Airport."

•◦•◦••

It was Friday. Like any Friday, Charles Barton was getting ready to drop by the nearby town of Woodenbridge, buy some stuff, and chat with a few childhood pals he’d inevitably run into. He took out the battered red Ford pickup he’d inherited from Rose.

Battered indeed. As if Rose inherited it from her greatgrandma Eva.

Then he and Collie settled their disagreements about who gets to go to Woodenbridge and who stays to keep the ranch safe. Usually, Charles took the dog along. Collie, despite his tender age, acted rather calm during his shopping.

That’s collies for you.

However, today Charles had promised to drive old James from the nearby ranch to the town. James’s pickup was broken, and the only repair shop in the area either acted high and mighty or was out of their depth. That left no room for Collie in the two-seat cabin.

"Stay and guard the house, boy!" Charles called, as he drove off in the jalopy.

Some two hundred yards later, almost at the intersection of the dirt road and the main one, Charles had an odd sensation. As if he’d passed through an unseen electric curtain. His eyes didn’t detect anything irregular, but a shudder ran through his body. It was not unpleasant, barely perceptible, but perceptible enough to make him uneasy and raise the fine hairs on his arms. It was there and gone in an instant. Charles smoothed his arm and smiled. Wisely and a bit sadly.

First the prostate, then the eyes, and now this. Growing old, Charlie.

As he drew near the byroad to James’s ranch, Charles slowed down and reached to give the turn signal. Then he saw it. James’s pickup. Featuring James and all. The old man gave him a friendly wave and, driving at a speed unsuitable for his age, zipped toward the town.

Must’ve fixed it then. Well, he could’ve called me.

In Woodenbridge, Charles parked in front of the main store. Same as usual. He walked in. Besides Sam, the owner, there were a couple of customers. Charles greeted them, swapped the usual pleasantries, and set to check off the items on his list. The place was part drugstore, part supermarket, and part hardware, so after buying food for dogs and humans, Charles got some sandpaper, paint and brushes. He meant to freshen up the ranch front. When he was done, he piled up everything in front of Sam and took out his credit card. While Sam chattered about the goddamn tax policies, rang up the purchases and arranged them, Charles nodded politely and absently watched the passersby outside. Probably expecting to see James or his pickup.

What he saw instead totally drove old James off the charts. Steve strode along the opposite sidewalk. Not that seeing Steve here was surprising: as far as Charles knew, he’d never been outside Woodenbridge. The unusual part was seeing him after having attended his funeral half a year ago.

Nah, I must’ve taken him for someone else.

"Hey, Sam. Is that Stevie?"

Sam followed his gaze above his glasses. "Yeah. Roving around, same as ever."

Something about his calm tone kept Charles from asking further or arguing.

I wager my right hand and the ranch along with the Ford and Collie, I used to comfort his widow! Everyone was there, Sam included!

Charles watched Steve until he disappeared round the corner. Charles wasn’t a sci-fi aficionado, yet he automatically glanced at today’s papers. They gave him the shivers. If this were a movie, the score would soar dramatically.

What?! But that’s ... a year ago!

Charles didn’t remember paying, loading his purchases, and starting the pickup. He wished to get away from the town ASAP. Go home, turn on the TV, listen to the news, call someone. Peter! But what was he supposed to tell him?

Hi, Peter, your old man’s gone nuts. That, or he’s gone time traveling and seeing dead men.

No, he wouldn’t say that.

Does the third person serve to give me some distance?

Charles recalled he’d talked with Peter about Steve’s death. Peter had expressed his regret about not being able to attend the funeral. Charles needed a confirmation from someone else that Steve was dead and buried. He was going to call Peter. Now. From his cellphone. He wouldn’t say he’d seen Steve; he’d just steer the talk toward him.

Lessee what Peter knows about it.

Charles drove by the sign saying You’re leaving Woodenbridge! We have everything. Please come again, and pulled over on the right. He got off the Ford, cell in hand. Allowing himself a minute to calm down his breathing, he dialed Peter. He got the ringback tone but before anyone picked up, James zipped by, in the pickup that was supposed to be under repair. Never slowing down, that old rascal James nodded, touched the brim of his hat, and covered Charles in a cloud of dust.

•◦••◦◦

Driving past the abandoned quarry, Ann qualified the road

let’s generously call it that

as okay. The SUV skipped along rocks of various sizes, which must have been leveled as far back as the socialist era by a bulldozer, which had long been retired and turned into scrap iron. Spring floods had done their best to restore the status quo. To the right, a bare foot away from the car, the quarry constituted a 150-foot precipice, whose bottom was peppered with stone blocks the size of tanks

of the bigger varieties,

like so many sugar lumps after the afternoon tea at the house of an unemployed Brit.



Ann showed no signs of having trouble with the wheel. She didn’t budge from her seat only because she had one more point of support than her companions: said wheel. She was probably even having fun. In secret.

The jolts were not conducive to conversation. Someone might well bite off their tongue if they tried talking. Only Martin, counting as a local, guided Ann whenever they reached

let’s generously call it

a fork.

Despite the company, Peter was left alone with his thoughts. His body rocked in tune with the motions of the Suzuki’s rigid suspension. His brain probed at various fragments in the vortex of thoughts, memories, questions, facts, analyses and allusions, looking for a correct course of action. It took apart causal relations, grounded and groundless assumptions at the rate at which they’d been brought together, then it moved to the next fragments.

Memories?

A memory caught his mental eye. It carried the recent high level of details, but it pretended to be old.

"Ann, about Shifting the ranch."

"Yes?"

"I must ask Seymour, but I think part of the Shifting principle has to do with time."

"It’s possible. Why?"

"I recalled a talk with Dad. An odd one. The odder part is, a few hours ago, I didn’t have that memory."

"I’m not sure you make sense," said Martin.

"According to that memory, Charles called me about a year ago. We mentioned a friend of ours in Woodenbridge: Steve. Steve died six months ago, and I couldn’t make it for the funeral. So, about a year ago, Dad asked me if I remembered missing a funeral that took place six months ago. I’d have remembered such a thing, and this memory has been around since today."

Ann dodged the large or slippery rocks without any extra mental effort and followed their talk. The car obediently climbed along ostensibly impossible trajectories she’d automatically calculated.

Martin grew totally confused and decided to harness some electronic power in solving the case. Even before he’d opened the screen of his priceless laptop completely, the OS had finished booting.

Why can’t other comps boot so fast?

"Hang on, what’s ... what was the name of this Steve?"

"Stephen Aldridge."

Martin found the town and the archive of the local newspaper. He typed in the name. In a few seconds—some of which he used to check for activity on Podolsky’s phone—he turned the screen to the other two. "There, Woodenbridge Weekly. Date’s six months ago ... a senseless death in an accident

like there’s a senseful death

... Stephen Aldridge. Guy really died six months ago. How did your father know he would?"

"No, he didn’t know Steve would die. He thought Steve had died a year earlier. But he was shocked to meet a living Steve a year ago, because he carries his memories from the present. He has his present memories in the past. I guess he left the ranch, which has been Shifted back about a year, and saw the living Steve in town. And then he called me. Despite the dates of our talk, I’m positive my memory is only a few hours old, not a year."

A fan of sci-fi flicks, Martin called on Back to the Future. "I’m baffled. If your father traveled to the past and called you a year ago, there’s no reason for your memory to be two hours old rather than a year. At least that’s what movies tell us. Also, if he likes sports, I’d suggest he place some bets. He should know the match outcomes a year down the road. Then again, maybe you’re wrong."

Peter decided to skip the sports scheme. "My brain works differently now. My old memories are ... well, compared to those after Enia, they’re like an old and damaged black-and-white tape, with a low resolution and low fidelity. Embellished, retouched and tuned to my emotional state at the time. The new ones, now, they’re High Definition, 3D, with a 5.1 sound, brimming with facts and details. You get the point, right? I can tell between an old and a new memory. Besides, screenwriters and directors might’ve gotten the fabric of time wrong." Peter recalled the dots-slash-numbers and said, "Scientists too."

Ann pretended to be more focused on driving than she actually had to. She compared her new and old memories. Whenever she touched an old one, pain always flared.

My parents, the shootout, the coma, the drills, the revenge, my marriage, its end ....

But Peter’s comparison was good. As was his logic.

Martin made a pause, letting Ann chip in, and when she didn’t, he said, "Okie, what with your recent Jedi stunts, I’ll buy that. Your brain can spot a difference if there’s an event outside the normal—what I and Hollywood call normal—time flow. But if I remember right, Ann said the ranch wasn’t there anymore. Physically. Yet it is there, both now and a year ago."

"That’s why I said I think part of the essence of Shifting has to do with time. The area around the ranch is inside some ... space-time niche, visible and accessible only to Charles—he can come and go, after all. But not to the Fund. We’d better ask Seymour, right, Ann?"

"Probably. He’s bound to want to explain it to you—and destined to fail."

"?"

"That’s the way he was born. He just can do it. He doesn’t fret about such details as time or space. I’ve seen him do a Shift. I’ve asked too. He stares at me and makes pathetic attempts to explain. As if I was born blind, and he’s trying to explain concepts such as colors and shapes. By the way, his being born with Enia made our fellows, including our previous leader, hold great hopes that he could be ...."

Yes, I feel them close, and they’re decent, but aren’t I saying too much? Ah, they’re in this anyway.

And even if Martin posted their talk online—the odds of which were minuscule—Lil wouldn’t even have to deny it. Because they stayed in the shadows, just like the Fund. They didn’t make any statements or seek outside help. A leak like that would look so insane it would slide right away into the conspiracy theories bin.

"Could be what?" asked both men almost as one.

Ann sighed. "Duranki."

"What?" said the impromptu male duo.

"A Sumerian word. Means ’the link between earth and heaven.’"

"Meaning?" said the faster-thinking half of the duo.

"It’s not a spaceport, as they usually translate it. Rather, it’s someone who has a detailed grasp of the mentality of the universe and can manipulate the heavens. Or model the universe. In other words, they can create worlds with their thought."

With a surprising smoothness, Ann negotiated a configuration of rocks that would have seemed impassable to a Dakar veteran. The men gripped their fingers around handles or the roll cage.

Depends on who’s watching, Martin thought.

There we are again, Peter thought.

"You think that’s possible?" Martin said.

"Indeed it is! We have eloquent—though incomplete, given the time gap—evidence that our civilization

and even our universe

is the product of the kind intentions of another, ancient Duranki. Then things went awry, and here we are."

"Please pull over, so I can peacefully get a heart attack, a stroke, and a violent fit of nausea. Not necessarily in that order." Martin sensed the new info wasn’t yet another fascinating theory or ancient gobbledygook. It came from a circle of people who knew

and could do

things. Things that would make science slit its wrists and diligently study the rate at which blood flowed out. That nearly brought a fit of nausea.

Peter considered him for a moment, wagered that none of the three options was viable enough, and turned to Ann. "But Seymour proved to be no Duranki?"

"No. As you said earlier in your spontaneous socioeconomic analysis of our present world, things are far from rosy. If Grandpa had been Duranki, he’d been capable of making the world a much better place. Bringing it back to the original design. It’s our goal. But that doesn’t detract from his wisdom, skills, or efforts. Because of his undeniable qualities, he was unanimously elected our new leader a long time ago. So now, just like the thousands of years the two fractions existed, we oppose the tyranny of the Fund as much as we can, and wait for Duranki’s arrival."

"What happened to your previous leader?"

"The Fund eliminated him. We don’t retire. Enia lets us keep ... all our marbles into old age. Well, maybe not to the full of our capacity—time and physiological changes spare no-one. But it’s one thing losing, say, half of ten percent, and another, losing half of a hundred percent."

Martin was having an increasingly hard time, but he arrived at the conclusion he’d swallow the news without hurling or dying, and he gazed at the forest that had succeeded the quarry.

Craziest off-road ever! And it’s not even me at the wheel. Now, I do know a Bulgarian with the surname of Durankiev ... guess I’ll tell her. Later. For now, let’s pour no more water in the madly spinning mill of ....

"By the by, you said something about thousands of years of history. You must surely have some ancient or exotic name? I mean no offense. Also, if it’s a secret ...." Martin tried to see whose mill it was.

"Lil. We’re Lil. It means wind, air, breath, spirit, or atmosphere."

"That’s Sumerian again, I guess?"

"Right. We’ve been opposing the Fund since the dawn of this civilization."

"But they call themselves the Fund. Sounds pretty modern to me?"

"They’ve called themselves many names. Now they’re the Fund, governed by the Chair."

"And Lil is led by ...?"

"Ummia Shidim."

"Sounds Arabic."

"Sumerian, literally: the wisest among the Creators. I don’t know if it means anything in Arabic, but Sumerian’s a very ancient language, so it’s naturally left a mark on other languages. When I learned the Sumerian names, I got curious. I looked for online dictionaries, and although I can speak only English, I found certain parallels. For instance, the Turkish word aga sounds like agal: a strong arm. And it means nearly the same: a ruler, a governor. Turkish baba means father. Sumerian ab-ba means elderly, wise, or father. The relation to papa in Roman languages is obvious. Then there’s the Sumerian word for the clay tablets they wrote on: dub. A tablet allows you to duplicate things, make copies. The Russian word for a ball or a sphere—the object with the most compact shape—is like the Sumerian word for whole, the whole: shar. English shepherd means the same as Sumerian sipad. Oh, and that one’s almost verbatim ... you speak Bulgarian, so you must’ve heard of disagi?

"Yep." Martin had crawled out of his information overload.

"What does it mean?"

"A pair of bags that have been sewn together. They hang on both sides of a horse or donkey. People used them to transport goods or belongings."

"It’s a Sumerian word—actually three words—and it means ’get ready to go.’ And while we’re on the topic of Bulgaria, there’s the word hala, sometimes pronounced as ala. Sumerian a-la means almost the same: a demon. Curious similarities, wouldn’t you say?"

"Yeah, curious," Martin muttered. The previous topic, which had favored conspiracies over linguistics, had tickled his curiosity better. Besides, he figured it was high time he found out what was cooking around Podolsky, so he fiddled with his laptop.

He had no way of knowing he’d picked a very bad time.

•◦••◦•

Podolsky and Gorsky knocked and this time waited for Zander’s explicit invitation before entering.

"Sir, shortly before we caught this," Gorsky put the memos about the Sofia Airport hack on the desk, "we’d been doing more checks on Martin. We got in touch with our sources in the Federal Bureau. Turns out Martin Shields is wanted for hacking attacks. The case is still pending, because they lost his tracks. We wondered if it was him who hacked into the airport and tried to implicate us. If our theory’s correct, he must be good. He knows we’re looking for him and also that Podolsky works for us. And now he’s trying to take countermeasures."

Podolsky couldn’t help butting in. "He’s good alright. We didn’t find any traces of his life here, and now this airport and my name. Even the intel on the Martin Shields case doesn’t come from the FBI computers. Those guys were nastily surprised to find everything’s been erased. The intel’s based on the memories of the agent who led the investigation at the time."

Emil Zander looked up from the printouts and was just about to say they could clear Rick Podolsky’s name easy as pie, and now that the teams were already hot on the heels of— Then he saw the gradual brightening of Podolsky’s smartphone display.

He put two and two together, motioned for his subordinates to keep quiet, took Podolsky’s phone with his other hand, strode into his automatized luxury bathroom, and dropped the device into the

granite, naturally

toilet bowl. Then he flushed.

•◦•••◦

"You said you’ve been opposing the Fund since the dawn of this civilization?" Peter asked, propping himself on both arms and legs to counter the effects of the terrain. "Have there been others?"

"Of course! All those tales of dragons, giants, gnomes and even gods who walked among us are distorted but genuine memories of earlier civilizations."

"Couldn’t they be just folklore?" Martin said, more invitingly than skeptically.

"No. But let’s assume they are. You’re asking for some material proof rather than fairy tales. You must’ve heard about artifacts discovered at various times and in various places in coal seams, rocks, or even quartz? Those coal seams turned out to hold plenty of artifacts that didn’t belong there. In time if not in space. Such as the small steel cube found in Austria in 1885. Or the gold chain in Illinois, 1891. Iron pot, Oklahoma, 1912. Bell, West Virginia, 1944. Silver vessel, Massachusetts, 1851.

"There’ve been odd finds inside rocks, too. In 1572, conquistadors discovered a nail. England, 1844: gold wire—"

Martin, who knew all about such finds from the Net, said, "But official science has shot down all of them as fakes or denies their existence. Never mind those online pics are quite a few. Quite convincing, too."

"Well, since we’re here anyway, I can get you to a place that’s big enough to give you some trouble if you try to call it nonexistent. You can make up your own minds if it can be a fake."

"What place?"

"The biggest artifact of the nail-in-a-chunk-of-coal variety you can imagine."

"Meaning?" Peter said.

"A building inside a coal seam."

"A building?! Come on! Where?" Martin opened his laptop, meaning to launch Google Earth and scan the surrounding area. Was it possible he’d mark various spots such as Atlantis—just where Plato had said it used to be—or a rectangle the size of Iceland, whose jagged walls made it look very much like an open pit, now lying under the bottom of the Caribbean basin—but miss a building inside a coal seem, right under his nose?

"Tsarichina."

•◦••••

"The Tsarichina Hole?" Martin asked incredulously.

"Sorry, where?" Peter wasn’t sure he’d ever heard of such a place.

"Peter, I haven’t told you about it, coz the info I’ve found is too contradictory. Hidden ancient hermaphrodites, a six-foot data crystal, the military looking for a mummy, a treasure, or an E.T. spaceship, with the help of psychics ... the whole works. Nothing specific though. The Bulgarian services seem to have hushed up the case quite successfully, spreading all those fake news. So I couldn’t make up my mind. But there’ve been excavations there. They’ve dug a spiral-shaped hole. Smack in the middle of the village, by the substation." Martin smirked. "Then they poured concrete over it and made everything top secret. But a whole building?"

Both men stared at Ann. She said, "The truth’s more mundane. And terrestrial." Then she told them about a group of geologists who’d discovered a coal seam near the village of Tsarichina. They’d taken samples. According to the type, depth and analyses done, the coal dated back 1,200,000 years. Shortly after beginning the extraction, miners ran into walls. A stone-walled tunnel. The masonry was embedded in the coal in such a manner as to leave no doubt that the structure was older than the coal.

The miners told their superiors. Their superiors told theirs. Finally, the military arrived. The mine stopped operating as a mine. It became a secret archaeological site under the umbrella of the military. The archaeologists did not dare announce their discovery of engineering activities of such antiquity. That would rewrite human history. Or earn them derision and ostracism. The government, going through an unstable period, was indecisive too. At that time, the Fund had set in motion a plan for the universal collapse of socialism: the socialist system had become obsolete, and the existence of the Iron Curtain no longer brought any dividends. Changes were taking place in Bulgaria, and the local Fund residents were too busy with them. They had no time to spare for Tsarichina. So they simply ordered that several truckloads of gravel and concrete be poured down the hole. The case was buried—in both senses of the word.

"How can you know all of this?" said Martin.

"Well, just like the Fund has its residents here, so does Lil. The head of the geologists’ team that found the coal meanwhile reached Enia. We managed to recruit him, and he told us the story."

"But you were talking about a whole building, and those miners, they found ... what? A wall? A tunnel?"

"The miners and the military, yes. They found a section of one of the building entrances. But the geologist didn’t give up. After the hole was blocked, the military left. The geologist could prowl around undisturbed. Whenever he met any of the locals, he’d pretend he was gathering herbs or mushrooms, but he was actually looking for the other entrance. And, being a geologist with some background in archaeology—plus Enia—he knew where to look. He found it. However, he just looked around and cleared the beginning of the tunnel. He didn’t examine the building itself. That’s what Seymour advised him."

"Incredible! Especially if true," Martin said.

"I can take you there. And I insist I do. What better hiding place than an underground complex more than a million years old, and known to no-one?"

Sounded reasonable. Besides, Peter itched with curiosity, and Martin fairly burned with it. They nodded vigorously.

"Good, off we go," Ann consented.

Yeah right, consented. It’d been her idea in the first place. Women are queens at making men think men have taken a particular decision. Or even going to war about it. Now, Ann was a queen enhanced by Enia.

"And Seymour’s advice, not to enter?" said Peter.

"Me, he advised to keep you alive in any way I see fit. We’re entering. But first let’s pass by the crashed plane."

"The what?!" Now Peter doubted even his augmented senses.

"On the plateau above, there’s a wrecked airplane," Martin supplied. "A US light bomber, shot down during World War Two. All locals know it. I’ve been there during my off-road trips."

Peter, despite his excellent grades in European history and his visits to most of those places, remained an American deep down. "Bulgarians have shot down one of our planes?"

"Why not?" said Martin, whose Bulgarian and American parts were always in a boxing match. He played the host now, so the Bulgarian part took the upper hand. "Haven’t the Vietnamese and the Afghan shot down our

huh, now "our" means American

helicopters? Why should we underrate the Bulgarian military anyway? They seem to have done a good job with spreading misinformation about Tsarichina. While everybody and their granny knows about Roswell and Area 51." Then someone seemed to press Alt+Tab in his head. "But, Ann, how do you know about the plane?"

"Our man in Bulgaria told me. He also told me its rough whereabouts."

"Well, I know the exact ones." Martin’s smug tone showed he wasn’t the useless link among the Jedi.

"Why should we go though?" Peter decided to skip the argument.

"He’s left something for me inside."

••◦◦◦◦

Using rented cars, the teams arrived in Tserovo. Due to the urgent nature of the operation, the local residents managed to provide them with their standard weaponry, but not with their favorite SUVs. They’d brought a single Nissan Patrol; the rest were lighter cars.

Team Epsilon took positions at the exit of the village in the direction of Vratsa. They chose a fork in the road; it let them cover also the byroad to the nearby village of Zasele. Team Gamma covered the exit to Svoge. They tried to look casual, lingering at a crossroad that offered a beautiful panorama of the whole village. They cared nothing for the view; instead, they kept a close watch on the passengers in the passing cars.

Teams Tango and Theta parked some distance from Martin’s house and approached it on foot. Theta split and surrounded the yard. Tango overcame the gate lock with enviable ease and entered the yard. Only now did they pull out their guns: short MP5, suitable for close-quarters combat and narrow spaces. They noiselessly unlocked the house and, covering one another, checked the rooms. There was nothing. The other building in the yard, the summer kitchen, turned out to be empty too. They found only the traces of three people who had stayed here.

That left the garage. Number One motioned to the others with his eyes and crouched straight opposite the entrance. The other two hugged the wings of the oaken gate. As he gave them an almost bored nod—what were the odds of their targets being inside?—Number One was already drafting a report in his mind.

Number Three opened one wing of the gate, One and Two aimed at the dark inside, and hell broke loose.

With an incredibly low thunder and a flash of light, the left wing turned into oak shrapnel. There was more than wood in that shrapnel: Number Three’s face bristled with so many nails that Hellraiser might run to whine about his paltry makeup to the production director.

Number One caught a few nails in his body armor, which did no harm. What did some harm was the piece of wood sticking from his shoulder.

Number Two drew the longest straw. The explosion had flipped open the right wing of the gate, making his nose jut less from his face.

Team Tango rushed into the yard to help their comrades. Faces appeared in the neighboring houses, showing various proportions of curiosity, concern, confusion, and fear. A few cellphones were already dialing the police or an ambulance.

The leader of Team Tango squatted and took out of a canvas bag something that clicked, unfolded, and turned into a drone. He stood up and threw the drone in the air. Its four blades instantly spun. Guided by the remote in the mercenary’s hands, the machine rose and carried its payload—a high-res camera—towards the quarry above the village.

Dragged by strong arms, Number One clasped the piece of wood protruding from his shoulder. He still didn’t have it in him to yank it out. Oddly enough, his last pre-explosion thought hadn’t left him. Now he only supplemented it: he’d have to report a major failure. Yeah, those last few days hadn’t been nice to him.

Nor to the old oaken door.

••◦◦◦•

The Suzuki passed by several old, abandoned houses. Where the plastering had surrendered to the years, one could see the construction techniques used by Martin’s ancestors. Thick wooden beams with roughly square cross-sections supported the second floor. Other beams connected the supporting beams diagonally, forming the skeleton of the walls. The resulting triangles had been filled with wire, and clay had been carefully plastered on top of all.

So that’s the famous wattle-and-daub technique.

Instead of roof tiles, there were slates made of some stone whose structure allowed it to be split into slabs one inch thick. That was the hamlet of Tsarvenyane, Martin explained.

Across the rumble of the engine and Martin’s lecture, some noise reached Peter’s sharpened hearing. It was soft and distant, yet it managed to distract him from his architectural ruminations.

It’s soft because it’s distant. Yet it bears a striking resemblance to launching an artillery shell. Ann concocted something just before we left ... I hope she hasn’t blown up his entire house.

Peter glanced at his friends: they didn’t look as if they’d heard anything. He decided not to inquire about the particularities of Bulgarian insurance companies. Especially not about real estate insurance.

Just then, Ann said, "Peter, you said your senses have grown better?"

"They have."

"Your hearing too?"

"Yes." He gave her a mistrustful look.

"So please listen up for anything unusual. Or have you heard it already?"

He told her. Ann stopped the car under a canopy of green and got off. She chose a rock the shape and size of an egg, then walked back some twenty yards down the road, staring at the sky.

Shortly, Peter heard what she was looking for. "A hundred yards ahead of you," he called. "At one o’clock."

She crouched and scanned the sky in that direction. There it was. She waited for the drone to enter her range and hurled the rock. It drew a nice parabola over the tree crowns. The noise of the blades stopped.

They got into the car and drove on.

"Remind me not to get into snowball fights with you," said Martin.

All that she gave him was a charming smile.

They had only a little left until the plateau. It still didn’t sport any roads, but at least it was more level. Their destination was at its distant edge. The journey seemed to shock—figuratively and literally—the two men more than Ann. Perhaps the stress of realizing half the breadth of the car’s right tires hung in the air most of the time lent its share to their fatigue.

Meanwhile, Martin told them he wasn’t able to tap Podolsky’s phone anymore. They nodded grimly.

Since reaching Enia, Peter enjoyed an enviable appetite. Now though, he was not enjoying it. After the light breakfast, he hadn’t put anything in his mouth, and the day was getting old.

For men, hunger goes hand in hand with anger. However smart we are.

"Martin, is the plane still far?" he asked, wrapping off a waffle. He offered some to the others, but they refused. On this terrain, the risk of sticking the waffle into your eye rather than your mouth was real.

"With the lady’s driving, no more than an hour."

Ann acknowledged the recognition in Martin’s answer.

"And what are you supposed to get there?" said Peter around a mouthful.

"A gun. It’ll make me feel safer. And better dressed."

"I see. So why the throwing knives then?"

"Haven’t you read Winnie the Pooh? ’The more, the more!’"

Martin had read it too. He felt compelled to add, "And then dude died of an overdose."

••◦◦•◦

They got away without an international scandal. Zander, who watched the Tserovo events in real time thanks to the mercenaries’ cameras, reluctantly called the Chair and reported. The Chair set the Fund’s connections in motion. The teams in Tserovo were presented as an Interpol team pursuing international terrorists. They did not elaborate whether Martin was among the terrorists. The Bulgarian police officers and officials flooding Tserovo were ordered to fully cooperate with Zander’s men. The injured were taken away to a hospital, where Number Three (Hellraiser) succumbed to his wounds.

••◦◦••

Martin guessed right. Fifty-five minutes later, the plane appeared. At least its remains did. Half-buried in a slope of rock and earth and almost fully overgrown with vegetation, its outline resembled a forgotten temple in a jungle.

It was getting dark: that brief and magical part of the day when eyes played pranks on you. Shapes blurred, contrast and illumination took a well-deserved break—just like an old CRT display with worn-out diodes. Colors playfully switched places. Thus, the formerly white wild flowers now looked neon blue. The red ones turned purple. In bare minutes, the mad dance of the night shadows would begin.

The right wing of the plane had been torn off from the engine, and the World War Two vet slightly tilted in that direction.

Ann steered the SUV towards the better wing and only now turned on the headlights to see if she’d be able to park underneath. She would. As she slowly meandered among the vines flowing down from the wing like a waterfall, she said to Peter’s quizzically lifted eyebrow, "Under the wing, we’re invisible to satellites."

"Smart," said Martin the technophile.

There was no shortage of satellites above them. Over the past few hours, the focus of two military ones, two that posed as research-oriented and a so-called communication one had wholly shifted to the mountains above the recently obscure Tserovo. They scoured the area visually.

The three got off the car. Ann headed for an oval hole in the hull: a memory of the airtight door. The door, of course was gone, as was everything movable or susceptible to dismantling: the local folks, famed for their thrift and orderliness, had taken care of that over the years.

"It’s almost dark, and we have a certain headstart. Shouldn’t we spend the night inside?" said Peter, in the hope of sating his now rapacious hunger soon.

"Just lemme have a look first." Ann stepped into the black belly of the bomber and probed around with the ray of a cheap Chinese flashlight.

"It’s okay. I got caught by a storm once, and made my shelter here for a few hours," Martin’s voice caught up with her.

"It isn’t five stars, but it’ll do," Ann called back from the cabin, groping under the surprisingly present pilot seat. She found what she looked for and pulled it out of its paper bag.

Apparently, a retired Bulgarian geologist would have a hard time finding an unregistered Glock, Beretta, or Walther. The piece in her hands would do just fine, though. It was a ТТ-30 with two spare magazines and a clumsily scratched-out serial number. The Russian equivalent of Colt 1911. Though she knew all about weapons, Ann allowed herself a slight surprise and even tenderness at the design of the bottle-shaped shells.

Luckily, it’s not a Makarov. I’d gladly let someone holding a Makarov to empty a magazine at me from twenty yards, before I take a single shot with a TT.

The model was almost an antique. A dozen years before Bulgaria joined NATO, the army had replaced their service guns, TT, with Makarovs. The TTs went for melting. At least on paper. If a geologist could find one after all this time, the rest had hardly ended their journey in a foundry.

After reaching a consensus on the subject of shelter, the men unloaded Martin’s laptop, their backpacks, a few blankets, a sleeping bag—they had just the one—and of course, Peter’s coveted sandwiches and cans of food. In that order. They lugged everything into the plane’s bomb bay. It was empty now, spacious enough for all three of them. The first stars peeked through the myriad of holes in the hull.

Must’ve been some serious shelling.

The Fund-controlled satellites tried to peek through those same holes, but the best they could make out were the remains of an old plane crash.

Ann joined the men sitting around the "campfire": a couple of flashlights piled on the floor. They could not afford making any smoke, and it wasn’t that cold yet. So high in the mountain, this would change drastically and dramatically as the night wore on, but they planned to rely on the blankets and the sleeping bag they’d ceded to the lady like true gentlemen.

And they’d be right again: after midnight, the temperatures would remind them of the beginning of a new ice age that meteorologists had failed to predict.

Peter was the first to reach for the sandwiches and cans. That Martin opted for his laptop instead did not surprise him. The hacker’s energy needs had never been high. Yet Ann, who’d reached Enia too, got busy taking apart her newfound gun instead of eating. That gave Peter hope that there’d come a time when he’d prevail over the constant hunger. His organism would adjust and ...

no, nothing will be as before. I can hear ants’ footsteps outside, I can see well enough without the flashlights, and nobody would want to know the details about the ingredients of this can. Especially not while eating.

Martin was a multitasking entity, like Windows. Almost without peeling his eyes off the screen, he said, "Hey, Ann, if, as your theory says, things are as the dominant views shape them, was Earth before Galileo flat indeed?"

Just your average talk around the campfire.

"Nope." Ann casually assembled the gun and put it away.

"Why? Didn’t everyone believe that, and the handful of dissenters got the stake treatment?"

"It wasn’t everyone. Most Christians did. That was Rome’s doctrine at the time. Plus they had the Inquisition. But Christians weren’t everyone, not by a long shot. Enough cultures believed Earth was spherical. The knowledge got passed down. And it kept Earth being a sphere. Even if the Pope promoted the idea of a flat Earth—and even if he believed it himself—some ninety percent of his brain was processing information about the shape and size of our spherical planet and its position in the Solar System, our galaxy, and the universe. Ironic, no?"

"Okie, I give. We’re talking here about nine tenths of the pope’s brain, my brain, computors’ brains ... it’s always humans. But nature’s sparing. It’s made my brain not much different from that of an elephant, a dog, or a mouse. Do they also process info about the universe with ninety percent of their brains?"

"An excellent question, Martin. Life exists in a symbiosis with the universe. In Lil, we think ... believe ... hmm, alright, we’re convinced the purpose of the universe, along with life, is to expand. The universe creates life, which is capable of observing it, maintaining the system, letting it exist—and create new life in turn. We’re in Bulgaria now, so I recalled what a Bulgarian scientist said. Kiril Chukov—you’ve heard of him? His work on free energy is promising. He spent some time in the US and Canada, but for his own safety, we convinced him to stay in China."

"Did he reach Enia?" Martin said.

"No. But just imagine what he’d have achieved if he had. With no Enia, he invented a generator with a 400% efficiency. So, Chukov thought that back during an indefinite beginning, the universe was created in a completely ready state. Then it created life. He also says the universe is the quantum union between living and nonliving matter, which can’t exist without each other. He’s independently arrived at an idea that Lil holds too.

"Intelligent life forms manage—rarely but still—to ... sublimate a Creator. As far as we know, our universe hasn’t been able to multiply yet. It’s only been expanding, which is the soft version.

"The Creator, or Duranki, is someone who can use their thought to create a new universe. That way, Duranki’s home universe achieves its goal, expansion, better. The universe creates Duranki, and Duranki creates a new universe. It’s like the chicken and egg paradox.

"Now back to your question, we believe that, yes, not just those mammals but life in all its diversity maintains the universe. And no: they don’t use ninety percent of their brains. After all, they don’t have to deal with language, technologies, religion, money, art, war, and all conventions of human society. Let’s say their percentage hovers around ninety-five. Sorry for giving such a vague picture, but Grandpa is the specialist on these things. In Lil, I’m just the analogue of a ... commando. Special forces."

Peter merely slowed the rate at which he chewed his sandwich. He said nothing. Fewer and fewer things surprised him these days. Ann’s words even made sense to him; he’d already sensed those notions but hadn’t bothered to express them explicitly.

Martin, judging from his hanging jaw, was more impressed, but even he was making progress. During the mini-lecture, he hadn’t stopped typing into his exotic search engine. "This theory—sorry, your belief—it’s like ’it from bit.’" He showed them the online results he’d find, mostly excerpts from a Michio Kaku’s book. "It’s an unorthodox theory that says information is at the bottom of all existence—and it first appeared when the universe started observing itself. At first, it began existing coz it was observed. In other words, ’it’—matter in the universe—appeared when a ’bit’—information—was observed by the universe. This universe is ’collaborative’: it adapts to us just like we adapt to it, and our very existence makes it possible. Well, there’s no consensus about the measurement problem in quantum mechanics, so most physicists haven’t commented on this theory yet."

Ann was delighted to learn there was another theory besides Chukov’s which gave veracity to Lil’s beliefs. There’d been a similar philosophical school for a long time: after all, it was people from Lil who’d helped idealism come into existence.

Martin went on, "Max Planck said, ’Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of Nature. And it is because in the last analysis we ourselves are part of the mystery we are trying to solve.’ Then there was Andrei Linde, one of the authors of the inflationary universe theory, who said, ’For me as a human being, I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers. We are together, the universe and us. The moment you say that the universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness. A recording device cannot play the role of an observer, because who will read what is written on this recording device. In order for us to see that something happens, and say to one another that something happens, you need to have a universe, you need to have a recording device, and you need to have us . . . In the absence of observers, our universe is dead.’

"And finally, in the 17th century, Bishop Berkeley wrote that objects exist only because there was someone to observe them. That philosophy’s called solipsism or idealism. Its followers say that if a tree falls in the forest when there’s nobody around, it hasn’t actually fallen."

••◦•◦◦

During the night, they stood watch in shifts. They didn’t quite believe Peter’s claim that even asleep, he could hear the sound of an approaching car

helicopter, drone, platoon ....

Peter got the last shift. He spent most of it pressing his hand against the airplane hull. He studied, analyzed, penetrated. In the end, he was nearly sure he would be capable of designing a plane if he needed to.

At six o’clock, the dimness in the belly of the plane gave way, and Peter reached out to Ann’s shoulder to wake her up. He wavered. For a second, he felt tempted to merely watch her.

He’d nearly touched her when one of her hands locked around his wrist. The other materialized her new gun, leveled point-blank at Peter’s right pupil. Over a quarter of a second, her expression went from sleepy to tense to apologetically smiling. She let go of his hand. She put the gun away, and they woke up Martin.

Outside, the clouds resembled the canvas of a Dutch master: low and gray. Part of them hovered even lower.

No, it’s we who are quite high.

The surrounding peaks looked like islands. The low clouds played the sea. And overhead, there was another layer of clouds, thick and dark. They played, well, the clouds.

In this part of the mountain, at this time of the year, water spouted as if it were made here. Carefree, ubiquitous. After finishing their breakfast, the three chose a small waterfall for their ablutions. Martin assured them no satellites could see past all those clouds. They used the waterfall as a shower—again in shifts, of course. Martin found the water temperature bonkers

I mean, it is,

so he just washed his hands, neck, and face. Ann, and then Peter, proved plucky enough to "take a shower."

••◦•◦•

Potential believers—currently, moderate skeptics—sometimes demanded a proof of God’s power, or even existence. Their thoughts ran along the lines of,

Please, Lord, I want now, at this very minute, my bastard of a boss to get a heart attack and kick the bucket! If you do that, I promise to obey all Your commands and attend Your Church every Sunday.

Or,

The lottery jackpot this week is 21 million bucks. Pray let me win it! In exchange, I vow never to cheat on my wife again. I’ll even stop watching porn! And drinking!

Fans of the superheroes who crowd comics and movies occasionally try something similar.

May the Universal Mind grant me a power. Aye! I’m going to watch this sheet of paper long and hard enough—until I burn a hole into it. And I swear, I’m not telling anyone I’m of the chosen ones!

Peter didn’t belong to either group. Yet things seemed to work out for him.

The spikes, his name in the passport, the throwing knives.

While they waited for Ann to come back from the waterfall, Martin devoted himself to his computers. He said their passports had likely been compromised, so he was going to order new ones. Peter sat down on a rock. Next to it was an anthill. He absently touched it with his index finger. Though automatic, the gesture was careful enough not to activate the alarms in the heads of the solider ants.

How could it be ninety percent of your minuscule brains look after the order in the universe?

Peter could sense the structure of the anthill. He saw the chaotic beauty of the tunnels. He felt the thousands of ants crawling along them, each with its own task. A three-dimensional model of the ant city appeared in his mind. It dawned on him he could rearrange it. He visualized its structure, no longer chaotic, but featuring floors. With horizontal and vertical orthogonal shafts and tunnels. The anthill in his vision was more of a skyscraper than an anthill.

It was a sluggish process. Peter was straightening tunnels containing living creatures, and he did not wish to harm them. The amounts of earth he moved weren’t large or backbreaking. It was just that Peter knew the original design, and for a while it seemed he didn’t possess enough calculating power, as Martin would say, to rearrange the tunnels without damaging their function or inhabitants.

So why are you doing it in the first place?

Yet it was working. Peter noticed he could switch between various modes: he could see the 3D image or the numerical value of the changing tunnels. All the while wondering whether the new interior would disserve the ants.

No, they don’t use landmarks like us. They steer by pheromones.

At last, Peter opened his eyes and removed his finger from the anthill. He’d done it. He couldn’t be sure without excavating half the anthill and seeing for himself. But he knew he’d done it.

Because I can. I can!

Ann came back just then, her hair still wet, and said, "Bathroom’s free."

Peter washed and dried himself. They gathered the makeshift bivouac and drove off to Tsarichina. Martin happily informed them Tsarichina was on their side of the river, so they wouldn’t have to cross a bridge—or get anywhere near an asphalt road. He closed his laptop.

Peter didn’t tell them about the ants.

••◦••◦

"Your elder, Seymour King ... is he white?"

"Ummia Shidim," Ann said.

"Whatever. Is he white?" Martin demanded.

"Yes he is. Why?"

"Just checking a theory. I didn’t picture him as a Negro. You’re white, Peter’s white, Ummia, um, Seymour’s white ...."

Peter raised an eyebrow. Martin and he didn’t see eye to eye on this subject, so he decided to go for a delicate approach. "Martin, how long haven’t you been in the US? Fifteen years or so? For quite a while, we haven’t—we haven’t called them Negroes. It’s not politically correct. The designation is African Americans."

"Not correct my ass! And what does politically mean anyway? Have you considered where PC speech will lead us? If we’re not allowed to talk plainly, we’re denied clear thinking. Such use of language can control and even change a man’s behavior, his worldview, if you will. We’re not dishonest: we’re morally disoriented. We’re not short: we’re anatomically compact. We’re not bald: we suffer from a follicular regression. And morons are people with specific educational challenges.

"Things have gotten to the point that Shakespeare will prolly be happy he’s not writing nowadays. The Merchant of Venice is antisemitic. Othello reeks with racism. Taming of the Shrew is sexism, loud and clear. And feminists would say Romeo and Juliet is a revolting display of heterosexuality.

"Car mechanics are now automobile internists. A second-hand car is a car with a new owner or with previous experience. What’s next? Cooking up synonyms for black and white?

We’ve already cooked one for black: African American!

"And then for good and evil?! Enough! We’re about to outdo Orwell’s newspeak! The champions of this nonsense don’t get the consequences of their actions. PC is part of social degradation.

"African Americans?!" Martin turned back to the main topic. "Americans who came from Africa? I haven’t hear any Boor descendants in South Africa demand we call them European Africans. And if those white South Africans immigrate to the US, are we gonna call them African Americans too?! Negro just means black in several Roman languages. It’s like me taking offense if somebody calls me white."

Peter sighed and shrugged. They’d already had that argument. Quite a few times.

Ann smiled at Martin’s irrefutable logic. However, she wanted to show him his prejudice was caused by a non-representative sample, as well as do justice to the truth, so she said. "There’re lost of ... African Americans. Both with the Fund and with us. The very word we use for the Grokking, Enia, is from Yoruba, an African language. We’ve used it for many centuries. That counts for something, doesn’t it?"

"Okie, okie," said Martin. "I don’t wanna fight with you guys. I’m not a KKK fan, but everyone has their prejudices. Or flaws, if you will. Please lemme have my own convictions."

They did.


••◦•••

Names never lie. Peter sensed that intuitively and had drafted a catalog in his mind. According to his personal observations, there were hardly any decent folks named John or Emil.

Or Flora.

It wasn’t like he knew a lot of Bulgarians, yet he’d have a very hard time finding common topics with those who bore the analogs of those names. A small portion of them he would outright call twerps.

Martin now, he’d elevated the name theory well nigh to the scientific rigor of linguistics. The villages above Tserovo

which came from tser, tsyar, a cure (at least for Martin’s soul)

were called Zasele

beyond the village, selo,

Zanoge

beyond legs, noge,

and Zagazhane

beyond, erm, the joint where the legs meet at the back.

Another village in the area was called Gubislav. When Martin heard the name, his first association was with an army that had lost (gubi) its combat glory (slava) here. After looking up the local history online, he proved right. So when they entered Tsarichina—a couple of houses, generously spread around the hills—Martin couldn’t stop wondering: what was so kingly about this place that people would name it after tsars, the supreme rulers in old Bulgaria? Obviously, it could hold a candle to Zasele or Zagazhane or—with a freer flight of fancy—with the Sofia district of Poduene, but it was just not in the same category as Preslav, Istanbul

which we used to call Tsarigrad: ’the tsar’s city’

or Königsberg. Or was it? In its own odd way? Hadn’t the military dug right here, in the middle of the village, looking for something mysterious they’d later wrapped in ever more secrecy?

And concrete.

"In the middle of the village" meant just that: they’d dug mere feet from the substation marking the center.

There’s another incompatibility for you: the middle of Rome is marked by the Coliseum, the middle of Tsarichina, by the substation.

Kingly or not, the substation in the dead center or a bit to the side, Ann claimed that underneath lay a structure so ancient it would made their heads swim. It was waiting for them.

Peter figured it had been waiting for a million years, so another half hour would not make a dent. So he asked them to replenish their diminishing

mostly because of me

provisions in the local convenience store.

Whether driven by an unconscious desire to make the number of tourist positive, by a nostalgia for majors with bulldozers, or simply by their sense of humor, the locals had hung a clumsily

or drunkenly

made board above the store, proudly announcing The Old Hole. Below, in a much more bashful font, it said, Convenience Store.

Any premises around the world with a rating within one star of that of The Old Hole

a pub and a store: two in one, gives one star at most

has its own particular regulars. The red noses. They are so regular you may take them for pieces of furniture and dust them as you clean the place.

When the three walked into the dusty dimness of the pub, they saw...

a wall calendar which used to be accurate a dozen years ago. But that beaut’s boobs still point at us quite accurately.

... three or four of the red noses: a glance wasn’t enough to ascertain their number.

Only one of those

if we ignore the clerk/barkeep/manager/owner

worked out that outsiders had defiled the peace of the sacred place. The nose, outfitted with a gaze as clear as a pig’s tear, long grizzled hair that hadn’t seen a wash in a long while, a respectable potbelly, and the general looks of a laid-off

lifelong

alcoholic, propped himself up on his elbows. The aging hippie grunted something at the intruders—unintelligible yet benign—sipped at his anisette, and huddled back on the table.

"Good afternoon," Martin tried to cheer everyone up.

"God bless," the barkeep said automatically.

Even the signboard outside shied from calling the place a convenience store. It was a pub through and through.

And a hole. Yet something mysterious and elusive about the barkeep’s bearing reminded Martin of Caesar’s, "I’d rather be first in a village than second in Rome."

The three hadn’t had the chance to score demerits with the burly barkeep. Otherwise, his greeting, as the less solvent part of his regulars knew, might have mutated to "Goddamn."

Martin spoke the best Bulgarian of the three, so he bore the brunt of the conversation. They exchanged the routine pleasantries. Martin inquired about the location of certain foodstuffs. He’d hardly be able to find them otherwise. Finally, they paid and walked out.

When the door slammed shut behind them, the clerk reverted to his barkeep’s role and told the more awake among his clientele, "Sofia folks. I betcha. The chick was a hottie, eh?"

The more awake part of the clientele nodded noncommitally.

•••◦◦◦

They walked inside. The rays of their flashlights crisscrossed the stale damp air. The corridor was approximately fifteen by fifteen feet, with an arch-shaped ceiling. Its height gave no hints whether the builders had been twelve feet tall or their three-foot bodies had had room enough for Napoleon complexes.

From the joints between the stones hung plant roots, twinging and vying for supremacy. The result resembled both the muscular system of an extraterrestrial predator made in Hollywood and of Angkor Wat, the great temple complex in Cambodia. The dampness of the background stones betrayed their chemical compositions. Yellow for sulfur, red for iron, green for copper. As if someone had taken a stroll around the periodic table. Or had taken the effort to haul some of these stones from Cappadocia, the others from Petra, and had then mixed them up.

The group advanced in silence. The darkness and the sense they’d entered a tomb weren’t conducive to conversations. Neither was squeezing under, over and around roots or stalagnates. The tunnel sloped slightly, but after an hour’s descent, they could only guess how deep in the mountain they’d reached.

Soon, the roots receded, but the negotiability didn’t improve. The signs of antiquity grew ever more patent. The walls increasingly featured holes occupied by the nearby rocks. And the lumps of coal mentioned by Ann.

At one point, the tunnel looked as if it had been cut off with a knife; the horizontal misalignment between the two sections was more than ten feet. Apparently, the strata had shifted here. The group managed to pass through.

There followed a structurally passable section which led the three—drenched in sweat and dirt—to the end of the road. It was a smooth, nearly black vertical stone slab, blocking the corridor. There was nothing else.

Nothing except for the almost fossilized humanoid skeleton in the corner.

•••◦◦•

"The sats? Any surveillance results?" Zander asked hopefully.

"Only this, sir." Podolsky showed him a picture of an SUV with a green front and an orange roof, passing through the quarry above Tserovo. "It was taken an hour before we redirected the other satellites above the area and before ... our teams invaded Shields’s house. Actually, we know it’s his house thanks to the Bulgarians’ cooperation. Or rather, it’s his mother’s house. She lives and works in Vratsa, a town some fifty miles to the north. One of the teams is on their way."

Invasion, operation ... fiasco’s more like it. To top it all, I need to explain myself to the FBI about the hacking attack of the Sofia Airport.

Zander barely heard Podolsky’s words. He rubbed at his balding temples and thought hard. "Any idea where they went after the quarry?"

"No, sir. Using the sat photos, we made a 3D model of the area and concluded there’re eight passable routes for an SUV of this kind. Excluding variations. Also, the clouds above the area have been dense, which obstructs sat surveillance. Most of our teams as well as—"

"Shut up. Carry on with the sat surveillance of the area and spread the teams along the most probable routes. Some neighbors said they left for the village of Godech. If there aren’t any clouds there, focus the satellites there. Keep me posted." Emil took his coat and headed for the exit. Hesitantly. He’d rather head for the bank and then for a third-world country with an impossible name and no extradition treaties. But he still chose his office. There, in the safe, lay a cellphone with a single number in its memory.

Legion’s number.

He’s the only one who can fix this mess.

•••◦•◦

Peter crouched and touched the skull. The details rushed to inform him it was indeed a human skeleton.

Almost.

A Neanderthal one. He told the others.

"So the tunnel’s real old? How could Neandethals build it?" Martin said.

"I don’t think our friend here is one of the builders. He was most likely a visitor—like us." Peter stood up.

"And the smooth slice across his spine tells me it’s not very safe here," Ann said.

"But what killed him? There’s just masonry here, and this smooth plate," Martin said.

"It’s not quite smooth." Ann scrutinized the slab, moving her flashlight so the ray illuminated it from various angles. "There’re certain figures ... or shapes."

The slab drew all of them in. Their flashlights traversed it in an attempt to get the whole picture. Martin held his open laptop in one hand, facing the slab. He was taking pictures.

Peter stepped forward and reached out to the stone, but Ann said, "Peter, no!"

His hand froze in the stale air. His eyes looked for hers quizzically.

"The signs may be a lock, a test—which our friend the Neanderthal failed."

Peter stepped back. "Right ... thank you."

They kept illuminating the figures for a few more seconds. Ann and Peter almost simultaneously made replicas of the slab in their minds. Martin needed another forty seconds—and Photoshop—for the same purpose. The resulting neuron/microchip image looked like that:

Martin was the first to speak up. "What the binary Ragnarök is that?"

"I’ve never seen David’s Star next to a swastika—if that’s what those are. Also, this thing is much more ancient," Ann mused aloud.

"They aren’t. There’s something else here."

Peter and Ann hovered over Martin’s shoulders and studied the laptop screen—for convenience, not that the symbols weren’t in their heads anyway.

"I guess if an intelligence wants to communicate with another, separated by time or space, it would use a universal language. And I can’t think of a more universal language than math," Peter said.

"Agreed. Think of the Pyramid of Cheops. Each side of its base is 365.342 Egyptian cubits long. Pretty close to the number of days in a year. Plus, the perimeter of its base divided by its doubled height gives Pi. Its geometry also encodes the number Phi. And Pi minus Phi gives exactly one Egyptian cubit."

Math, the language of numbers ... Numbers!

Peter kept studying the image, lending an ear to his companions’ surmises and theories.

"Those are digits. Decimal notation. Each contains a number of straight lines corresponding to the digit itself. One line for one. A cross for two, a triangle for three, and so on."

They counted.

"True. But if the fragmented circle above is the question, what’s the answer?"

That gave them pause. Was it a fragmented circle? Were those lines ones? An optical sight? An ornament? If it was a circle divided in four and then in eight, what was the answer? Four? Eight? Twelve?

Martin mentally browsed all the data about secrets, ratios and sacred geometries he’d amassed over the years. An old video about circles and degrees broke through the layers of his memory.

Gotcha! This time, I beat the Enia brainiacs!

"Unlike Douglas Adams, I reckon the answer ain’t 42. It’s nine."

"Why nine, of all things?"

"I’ve seen that before. A circles is 360 degrees. 3+6+0=9. If we divide it into two equal parts, we get 180 degrees. 1+8+0=9. Into four: 9+0=9. Into eight: 4+5=9. Even into sixteen: 22.5 degrees, or 2+2+5=9. 32 gives the same thing. However many equal parts we make, the sum of the degrees is always nine. It’s pretty obvious."

"Would you bet your life on it?" Peter raised a brow.

"Yep!" And Martin pressed the nine.

•••◦••

Others knew him as Legion. There weren’t many of them. And they could only conjecture where the nickname had come from. Was it due to his being more efficient than a whole legion, or had someone drawn a parallel to the ubiquitous, persistent demon, who had possessed that wretch from Gadarenes and had been driven out by Jesus? If that was the case, Legion had yet to meet his personal Jesus. Another rumor claimed he’d been enrolled in the French Foreign Legion.

Everything about his identity and past was as foggy as the banks of the Thames on early mornings. He wanted to keep it that way, so he accepted or refused assignments from a very small circle of people. When he’d been younger, war intoxicated him. He’d been in the army. Then a merc in Croatia, Herzegovina, Afghanistan, all over Africa. If he’d missed a particular military conflict, he’d merely been engaged in another.

With such a lifestyle, you might bet Legion was a bachelor. You would lose. Legion was divorced. There’d been a brief, happy time, when he was married. They had no children

much to everyone’s luck,

then they went their separate ways. He understood her decisions; sometimes, he too had a hard time living with himself. Yet he still loved her the same as ever. He loved her damn right!

Damn?

Later, he became an assassin: a career where he could apply his experience, and more profitable, as it turned out. He rose quickly, mercilessly and masterfully, becoming the top dog in the field. After removing a few rivals, that is.

His ingenuity was legendary among the few who could afford his fees. Eliminating someone directly or "suiciding" them was a piece of cake. Rumor had it that once, he offed his mark and made their house look like a tiny meteorite had struck it. He bought the rock from a website for meteorite seekers. He cast a hammer with the same shape and used it to smash the victim’s skull. He placed the meteorite, properly preheated, into the wound. Then he bore a hole into the ceiling and the roof with a high-temperature device, tracing a precisely calculated trajectory.

As he rose in business, he turned into a shadow—into Legion. A faceless name. No classmates, comrades-in-arms, colleagues or friends to exchange Christmas cards. He didn’t even send cards to her. He respected her choice.

Now Legion walked out of the bathroom, picked a towel and dabbed, slowly and methodically, the water droplets gleaming in the dim light. When he’d dried his flawless muscles, he faced a mirror with a richly carved wooden frame. The patterns on the frame combined Iranian geometry and Moroccan extravagance. A year earlier, he’d succumbed to the dance of the ornaments and paid an ungodly sum for the mirror in the crafts quarter. They delivered it on the very same day to his riyadh, here in the medina of Marrakech.

He examined his reflection in the mirror. It wasn’t a matter of vanity. Vanity, like most other human weaknesses, had been surgically removed from him. Like anything that might make him vulnerable or dependent, even indirectly. He was studying his face, trying to gauge the extent to which it permitted him to fit into human societies like a chameleon. His hair was definitely lighter than a black man’s and slightly wavy. His tannin skin, darker than the typical European, could pass as either inherited or gained by tanning. The color of his irises was murkier than Scandinavian ones and fairer than Mediterranean ones. His eyes protruded, but not as much as in a Jew, and slanted slightly, but definitely not so much as in an Asian. His nose was comparatively large, but not the way we picture an elderly Arab. Rather, it looked imperious.

Legion was pleased with his forgettable face and reached out for the discreet lighting switch. All at once, a galaxy seemed to rise in the dim room. The ultraviolet light brought to life countless dots on his body. If there’d been an observer in that room—which there emphatically was not—it would take them time and effort of both sight and imagination to grasp the logic and purpose of the light show. The dots, tattooed in UV ink and mostly forming circles, were in fact letters, words, dates. The assassin had annotated each scar on his body: when, where, how, from whom. The gunshot wounds were encircled by words, which made them look like seals. The stabbing scars were accompanied by two lines each, parallel to their individual shape. Very few of the people who had inflicted these well-healed wounds lived still. And the list was getting shorter.

Legion read the information on his body with an earnest expression. He believed this ritual prevented him from forgetting, slacking up, getting soft. From deciding he was the apex predator among his kind and making an error.

When he finished, he sighed and turned the UV light off. The tattoos vanished, the scars had been almost invisible in the first place, so now he looked

ordinary?

Legion put on his clothes with measured, unhurried movements. Like most evenings, he intended to eat outside. And why not? In Marrakech, like any Arabian city, heat kept the streets empty during the day. But as night fell, that changed drastically. The streets filled with cars, buses, camels, honks, taxis, locals, hullabaloo, tourists, music, bicycles, tricycles, and donkey teams. To begin with. In the evenings, the central square of Marrakech could compete in terms of congestion with San Marco in Venice during the annual carnival.

Calmly making his way through the multitudes, Legion walked along the millennial dust of the Medina towards Jemaa el-Fnaa, the square of chopped-off heads. It was the size of Red Square in Moscow and boasted a grim Medieval past. Nowadays, it had been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and consequently swarmed with tourists. Legion enjoyed the irony. He also enjoyed the culinary bacchanalia raging there at night. Along with storytellers, white-bearded interpreters of the Qur’an, monkey trainers, snake charmers, medicine men, and avid socializers, the square hosted countless cooks and waiters from near and faraway restaurants, each with their own portable awnings, grills, tables, and chairs.

Legion’s ultimate target

for tonight

was one of the mobile eateries. The hood of his burnoose hid most of his face and lent him the traditional look of a local. When he recalled the name a tourist had recently given this piece of clothing, his smile stretched into the nearest approximation of a smile he was capable of.

An Obi-Wan Kenobian. Nice shot.

When the owner of the Kenobian passed disturbingly close by the pets of a snake charmer, a king cobra shot its head at his leg. Legion did not twitch. He either knew it was just a warning or had calculated the range of the snake. There was no "imprudence" option.

••••◦◦

No blades, force fields or lasers leapt out of the walls to cut him. Apparently, the answer was nine. The image on the door confirmed that. Its upper half grew amorphous, and now the slab looked like this:

"Well done, Martin!" said Peter.

"A bit risky too," Ann sighed with relief.

Now that they knew how to turn the symbols into numbers, the second problem seemed easy as pie.

The topmost image was the question, and the answer options were listed below. Almost simultaneously, they found the right one: the first row. It showed a Fibonacci sequence. Or whatever the ancients had called their own discoverer of the sequence.

After Peter touched the right answer, the granite slab seemed to grow lighter. It turned more ethereal and transparent right in front of their eyes.

And they were shocked to find out they could now walk through it.

••••◦•

Beyond the

ethereal

granite door, there was nothing but greasy darkness. At least for the first second. Then, dozens of round spots, about a span in diameter and at regular intervals near the ceiling, started shining in milk-white all at once

like a synchronized swimming team.

The white had a slight bluish tint. The light wasn’t dazzling, merely unexpected, causing Peter and Martin to automatically shield their eyes.

Ann’s instinct apparently worked differently. The first thing her companions saw after their spontaneous squint was her standing ten feet ahead of them, a gun in her outstretched arms. Her body emanated tension, the muzzle briskly scanned all directions and corners. It most often lingered at the middle of the room and the single protrusion there.

When Ann decided the lonely stone cylinder meant no threat, she put the gun back almost as fast as she’d drawn it. Followed by Martin, she approached the cylinder. Peter lagged behind, touching the wall of the chamber.

Arabs have a saying: Everyone fears time, time fears the pyramids. Yet if they had known about the granite monolith under Tsarichina, the saying would have been different. The monolith had been built a very long time ago. No-one remembered when or by whom: the continuity between civilizations had been broken. Whether by a cataclysm or by complacency, it was hard to say. What did its creators look like? Hardly anything like us. The coal seam encompassing the Monolith had formed about a million and two hundred thousand years ago. And the Monolith had already been there. Such a long time ago, the planetary conditions must have been different, starting with the gas ratio in the atmosphere and ending with the geological, magnetic, and solar activity. Even the magnetic poles had swapped their places several times. These differences must have forged a different intelligent being, perhaps even a different kind of intelligence, which had constructed the engineering enigma of the Monolith.

Or perhaps not so different?

That the Monolith (as Peter dubbed it as soon as he touched it) was an engineering miracle, was obvious

glaringly.

In fact, as soon as Peter entered the chamber with its identical, thirty-three-foot sides, he took it

mistakenly, for a split second

to be a cube. Yet the high-res corrected him: it was a parallelepiped with a cubical hollow, cut from a single chunk of granite. Its dimensions far eclipsed even the trilithon embedded in the wall of the Temple of Jupiter in Baalbek, Lebanon. The trilithon was 21.5 by 4.8 by 4.2 meters and weighed around one thousand tonnes. In the early 1990s, a second, larger rock was found in the same quarry, weighing 1,242 tonnes. Compared in size and age, the Monolith outshone

damn outdid

everything.

The Monolith was black and hard and flawlessly polished, both on the inside and the outside. Girdled by a pair of parallel flat wires made of a dull silver-and-blue metal, which passed through two

polished

apertures and disappeared into the chamber, in the direction of the areas shining in milk white.

Titanium wires? With orichalcum, the mythical precious alloy from Atlantis? Showing no corrosion, after all this time? And its composition ....

It was homogeneous granite—except for the glowing areas. Peter sensed certain admixtures there.

A little mercury, magnesium ....

There was some admixture in the central object too. Ann and Martin had called it a cylinder when they headed for it, but Peter knew it was a spiral.

Its open end is on the other side. And even though it’s part of the Monolith, of the floor itself, its structure contains a significant fraction of aluminum.

"It ain’t no cylinder!" Martin shouted.

"A spiral, right?" Peter withdrew his hand from the wall.

"How did you—" Martin cut himself short. He was getting used to those miracles too. "This thing’s very much like a Kozyrev mirror."

"What mirror?" Of everyone present, Ann had the greatest difficulty in deciphering Slavic names.

"Kozyrev was a Russian, I mean, a Soviet scientist from the last century, who experimented with similarly curved surfaces. He concluded that such mirrors, as he called them, twist time and space, can cure people, work as telepathic phone booths, and whatnot. Like there’s this universal Internet all around us, and if you wanna go online, that’s your modem." Martin couldn’t resist the comparison. "Only, Kozyrev didn’t use granite but—"

"Aluminum," Peter said matter-of-factly.

"You ... you and your Jedi tricks." Martin pouted theatrically. "If this babe here is a Kozyrev mirror, it looks quite older than ole Kozyrev. Dude must’ve rediscovered it somehow."

They gathered in front of the mirror’s opening. Due to the location of the light sources, the inside of the spiral was practically dark. A dark that beckoned to them and worried them.

"Shall we? I see no skeletons with sliced spines around," Ann said.

"Or maybe we should think a bit first."

"No numbers here," Martin said as he kept circling around the spiral. "I guess we’ve already aced the entrance exam, and now they expect us to go inside?"

"There’re numbers everywhere," Peter said. "It was you who pointed me to the encoded numbers in the dimensions of the pyramid."

He gave them a summary of what he’d learned from touching the wall. He thus answered their unspoken question: how could they compare unknown values? Such as the external dimensions of the Monolith; after all, they were inside its belly, in a chamber ten by ten

by ten

meters.

"Come again?" said Martin, having already opened his laptop. "Isn’t that too much? You sure?"

Peter said nothing. Instead, he reached out and touched the corner of the invaluable laptop. "Sixteen-core 32-gigahertz processor, water cooled, an 8-terrabyte flash disk—"

"Okie, I got it. You’re sure. What are the Monolith’s outside dimensions?"

"60 by 97 by 157 feet."

Martin toyed with the numbers in an electronic table, grunted, and asked, "Can you give me a better precision? Guess it’ll matter for the ratios."

"I can." Peter sat down next to him, placed his hands on the floor, and dictated, "60.00072970; 97.08118065; 157.07735029. That’s feet. And this chamber here is a cube with a side of 32,809 feet."

Martin typed it in, did some math and some grunting, opened a few manuals

electronic ones,

copied some data, and some five minutes later turned the screen towards them. "I was damn right! Encoding numbers into a building wasn’t monopolized by the Egyptians or whoever build the Great Pyramid. Here! The sum of the lengths of the Monolith’s sides is 314.1592606. Divide by a hundred, and the result differs from 3,141592654 only after the sixth decimal place. By the way, that’s—"

"Pi!" said Peter and Ann in stereo.

"Fine, but we use feet too—which means ... the ancients’ ancients knew the imperial unit system?!"

"Or came up with it," Ann said.

"And as they say in commercials, but that’s not all!" Martin pointed at the screen:


"The side of this chamber is 32.809 feet. That’s 10.00030474 meters. Ten meters alright! And the Monolith’s dimensions, for granite’s density of 2.7 tonnes per square meter, give 69956.75161 tonnes.

"That’s really the largest chunk of hewn rock ever found!

"If we apply numerologists’ favorite Teosophical addition and reduction—you know, 123 = 1+2+3 = 6, then the mass of the Monolith gives 6+9+9+5+6+7 and so on, which gives 10. Even if we subtract the mass of this chamber, 2,700 tonnes, we get 67256.75161 tonnes. We do the same calculation—and get ten again! Same goes for the sum of the Monolith’s sides: 314.1592606. Ten meters, a total of ten, and the characters in the first problem on the door were ten, symbolizing the digits. Apparently, those guys knew the decimal system. Oh, and another thing. The shortest side of the Monolith multiplied by 1.618 gives the medium side. Multiply that by 1.618 and you get the longest side. 1.618 is Phi: the golden ratio. That’s my first-glance findings. There’s prolly more ratios."

"That’s highly interesting, convincing, enthralling and hardly coincidental, but it doesn’t help us decide if it’s safe to peer into the spiral," said Ann.

Spoken like a true mother protector!

Martin smiled inside, and looked at Ann like he’d never look at his mother.

Peter reached out and touched the spiral. He sensed nothing different from what he’d learned from the wall.

No danger either.

"I think it’s okay to go in."

"Are you certain?" said Ann.

He made a vague gesture, which Martin interpreted as certain enough.

"Fine, if Yoda says it’s okay, it’s okay. I’m going in." Martin put the laptop on the ground. "The door test was about knowledge, the math ratios we found in the Monolith’s dimensions are knowledge too—so it makes more sense for a Kozyrev mirror, and I’m sure that’s what this is, to offer knowledge than ruin."

And before anyone could stop him, Martin sank into the darkness of the spiral.

•••••◦

In front of each of the densely packed portable eateries in the square, teens

all of them male

shouted, grinned and waved menus, printed out in color. They competed for the tourists’ attention. The locals, if they chose to leave the comfort of a family dinner at all, had their favorite spots: at Cousin Ali’s or Uncle Waleed’s. And if worst came to worst—in the total absence of a food caterer in the family—at Neighbor Ahmed’s.

While their mothers taught their sisters the skills of running a populous household, the boys—future cooks, waiters, or even owners of the eateries whose "branches" sprouted around Jemaa el-Fnaa every evening—helped their fathers, brothers or uncles. They attracted customers and learned the ropes. In these parts, private business was mostly a family matter; so continuity and tradition mattered. So much so that a recent study had found Arabic was the slowest-evolving language. It barely changed or admitted foreignisms. Even the French, with their obstinate calling computers ordinateurs, could not hold a candle to Arabs’ traditionalism. No Arabian official in the ministry of education and no linguist would ever think to suggest a language reform—unlike most other countries. There was a simple reason for that: Arabs believed that the correct Arabic was fixed in the Qur’an. Centuries ago.

A boy who stood out among his competition drew Legion’s attention. He did not shout or wave. His face was as expressive as that of actors in black-and-white movies. He offered the menu list politely. If people passed him by, he didn’t display his disappointment in any way. If someone stopped, he quietly listed the advantages of the dishes. In immaculate Arabic, quite nice French, or decent English. Success made him kindly but not obsequiously usher the customer to a table.

Legion took the menu and listened to the eulogies

in Arabic.

They sounded nothing like the response of an answering machine. With the previous customer, the boy had praised the grilled lamb. For Legion, he ardently recommended "the tastiest and most stimulating baboush in all of Marrakesh—our wonderful snail soup." Legion let himself get ushered, which, judging from the boy’s look, was interpreted as a personal favor. The boy breathed, "Shukran jazilan," and returned to his station.

••••••

Ten minutes later

that’s what the Net calls a safe interval,

Martin walked out of the mirror, his face fixed in a smile. He looked high.

"Martin, are you okay?"

"Mmm? Oh yeah!"

"You sound like you’ve lost your marbles. Whatever happened inside?"

"Nah, I’m fine." His eyes shone like those of a small kid and seemed to stare through the others. "I didn’t get any ancient, forgotten lore, didn’t reach Enia like you guys

though I secretly wished for it

but I traveled along a tunnel. In my mind, I guess. A tunnel made of lights. They formed a helix. I flew past them at such a speed I couldn’t see any details. And I was consumed by love and kindness. I felt an affinity for all living beings. Everything that ever was, is, or will be. Actually, it didn’t matter if it used to be alive or will yet be. I felt I was part of life itself, transcending time and space."

"Please sit down. Take a break." Ann helped him.

He slumped obediently on the floor, the indelible smile stuck on his face. As if he were not merely high, but high on something grown with love and care.

Ann looked at Peter. He said quietly, "He’ll be alright. I mean, all-consuming love can’t be traumatic, can it? Let’s give him a little time."

"What about us? Are we going in?"

"Of course! Aren’t you curious about what you will see inside?"

Or me. As long as my high-res works there.

"So ... ladies first." Ann gave him a charming, don’t-you-dare-stop-me smile and dove into the spiral.

Peter sat down next to Martin and glanced at the clock on his laptop screen.

Ten minutes.

"It’s so lovely! It all can be much nicer with all that love ... peace ... care ... nothing like ...." Martin droned softly, seemingly in a trance.

Before the ten minutes had passed, Ann walked out. She didn’t look good. She propped one hand against the mirror and used the other to massage her temples.

"Ann, what’s wrong?" Peter rushed to her.

"Nothing. I’m fine. There were lights inside, as Martin said. I think they contain knowledge ... only I couldn’t get anything meaningful out of them." She slumped next to Martin. "Maybe it’s because my brain is already brimming with data sets, martial arts, and trajectory calculation algorithms. So when I touched the lights

tried to scoop something up from that information flood,

I failed. So much data in so little time ... I barely managed to figure out it was data. I got a

massive

headache and walked out. By the way, how long was I there?"

"Eight minutes," Peter said.

"Felt like hours."

"Hmm, yeah ... it’s like trying to copy a two-terrabyte disk onto a four-gigabyte flash drive." Apparently, Martin was back to normal.

"Other than than, there was the sensation that Martin quite successfully described as all-consuming love. But there was something hidden, too. Something that made me anxious."

"You’re better now, right?" Peter gave her a searching

caring

look.

"I am." To prove her words, Ann stopped rubbing at her head. "Go. I’ll time your ten minutes."

Her insistent look contained some hope or anticipation—at least Peter thought so. Therefore he went.

•◦◦◦◦◦◦

Perhaps affected by the boy’s eloquence, Legion did order baboush. And grilled lamb. The meat was already sizzling and smoking on the grill, and the smoke mixed with that from hundreds of other eateries. Adding the street lamps, the effect was that, in the evenings, Jemaa el-Fnaa looked like Rome during the reign of unbalanced, naughty Nero.

The baboush itself had been prepared already; now it quietly simmered in its cauldron. Legion got his soup served at once. Moroccans believed those snails the size of a 50-eurocent coin, properly boiled in water and supplemented by some thirty-five spices, to be a powerful immunostimulator. They stimulated their immune system heartily and regularly. The soup was as popular as, say, popcorn in a US movie theater.

Legion tried a spoonful.

Yeah, it’s good. That boy with his suicidal aloofness didn’t lie.

He picked up a snail, deftly extracted its meat with a toothpick, and popped it into his mouth. He poured the remaining broth back into its bowl and set the shell aside. He reached for another snail.

His smartphone rang. It might’ve just as well waited for Legion to get both his hands greasy.

•◦◦◦◦◦•

Peter could see no floor. To get his bearings, he slid his fingers along the wall and looked upwards, towards the open, and thus illuminated, end of the mirror. Not that there was much space: the spiral did a bit more than a single turn. Driven by a great curiosity and hindered by a little fear

I may have Enia but I’m still human,

Peter perceived the distance to be longer than it was.

He reached the middle and sat down cross-legged. Closing his eyes, he relaxed and waited. He thought his wait went on for a very long time.

And what if in my case, nothing hap—

At first, he thought he’d made it up.

Vibration. Eight hertz.

The quivering crawled along his fingers and engulfed his limbs. Then it spread through his body

no—through my being.

He seemed to become one with the frequency.

Then he entered the tunnel. He saw the lights Martin had described, felt the all-consuming love. The feeling was so strong that tears welled under his eyelids.

Breaking free from this kind of harmony cost him a lot of effort. Yet he managed to step aside and focus on the helical lights. They did zip past him. Ann thought they held the information that was hard to scoop up. At this speed, Peter couldn’t concentrate on a single light. He tried touching them. It hurt. It was like watching a video consisting only of twenty-fifth frames—imperceptible yet battering your brain. However, unlike Ann, Peter had the high-res, which quadrupled

at least

the data surging through his fingers. Plus the pain. A moment before the agony could vaporize his brain, Peter let go of the cylinders.

When he recovered, he drew an analogy with the numbers.

They used to appear behind the color veils. To make them out, I drew them forward. Here, I can’t focus on a given cylinder—yes, the lights are cylinders—because of the speed. So I just need to reduce the speed.

He didn’t know how to do that. He didn’t even know whether it was him who flew among them, or they flashed past him. Whether it was an out-of-body experience, where his spirit had ended up among the cylinders, or everything happened in his head.

Am I going to become like Seymour, with his fiery eyes and questionable sanity?

Peter was getting desperate. The most he’d managed was to slow a little the dizzying rush of the lights. And then he saw her. Despite the speed. Out of a cylinder bearing down on him, Rose Barton smiled. And beckoned him with a motion that brooked no objections. The cylinder passed him by.

Granny! he managed to think.

"Granny!" he managed to breathe, perhaps a mile later.

Peter looked back, hoping to keep his eyes on the cylinder carrying Rose. Assuming he had eyes at all. He pinpointed the cylinder and focused on his yearning to obey Rose’s beckoning. It worked. The tunnel with the helical shining lights at first slowed down, then stopped. It even moved a little back, letting Peter draw level with the cylinder.

Rose was nowhere to be seen. Peter held out his fingers

assuming I have fingers

and touched the cylinder. The info was so much it nearly stung him. There was Rose, Peter’s dad, mom, their parents, their parents’ parents. Married couples: well-fed or worn-out, in America or in Europe, handsome or not so much, from the Mediterranean or the Middle East. Faces and features of familiar or strange ancestors fleeted by at a speed incompatible with the human capacity to remember or perceive in greater detail.

Above the spiral where Peter stood, he sensed another spiral made of lights. He picked one of its cylinders at random and touched it mentally. He nearly found himself on a strange beach. The limpid air provided such visibility that if the planet hadn’t been a sphere

and it is,

Peter could have probably seen the opposite continent. The water in the turquoise bay tried to outmatch the air, but it was still a denser medium. Its purity was equal, its transparency, naturally smaller.

The water and the air both teemed with life. As did the land beginning at the broad beach. Monkeys called to each other from the tops of the palms, ants scurried along the trunks, crabs tried to look purposeful but merely left funny tracks on the white sand with their sideways gaits. The sand itself was so white, it might have well been downloaded from the website of a five-star hotel in the Caribbean. But this was not the Caribbean. It was no place on Earth at all. The sun was slightly larger. Its light seemed to have a somewhat different hue.

Peter decided this holiday idyll would not provide him with what he’d come for. He focused back on "his" own spiral. He

tentatively speaking

looked the other way. There seemed to exist two different progression lines. In one, he was alone and as the years passed, looked more and more like ...

Seymour King?

In the other, he saw himself lifting somebody above his head ... teaching him how to ride a bike ... taking him to ....

A son? What else, with those gray eyes! A son? But ... where’s my wife?

He saw her silhouette, vaguely.

Yet why two lines? And why the family line was paler, flimsier? He didn’t want to know. Alright, he did, yet he feared falling into the trap of destiny. Ignoring the maelstrom of his feelings, he forced himself to look away. It didn’t seem right.

Just before he let go of the cylinder, he send a thought:

Granny, I arranged the numbers!

There was a response, soft and distant.

I know, sonny.

Peter needed quite a while before he regained his composure and became the Enia-enhanced version, Peter of the calm mind and high-res.

I needed an anchor to stop that madcap motion. And good old Rose acted the part.

He touched another cylinder at random. Now they obeyed him, moving at a decent speed and in the desired direction.

Another sting, now more bearable.

Chemistry. The periodic table ... reactions ....

It wasn’t Peter’s forte, yet this table seemed to hold quite a few more elements than the Mendeleev version. As for water .... Now Peter knew what one of the wires girdling the Monolith was made of. Water. Only subjected to enormous pressure and weak radiation. They had transformed it into something harder than titanium and with exotic electric properties.

He let go of the "chemistry."

Okay, Martin would say this info has been organized into folders. So far, I’ve browsed, mmm, let’s call them Family and Chemistry. Interesting, is there Fund? Or Lil?

He looked but found nothing.

Perhaps they’re part of ... Society?

The world spun again and stopped. Resolutely, Peter reached out and touched a nearby cylinder. The cylinder introduced itself with an unfamiliar vague concept, at once eclipsed by the nearest translation: Society.

I’m getting the hang of it. Would’ve been simpler though, if they’d included a search engine.

Analogous to Family, if Peter looked in one direction, he glimpsed parliaments, scaffolds, kings, wars, notions of polity, largely ending in -cracy or -ism. Princes, revolutions, marches, pharaohs, taxmen, hunters, chieftains, slaves. And a pair of shadowy, inimical forces, nowadays known as Lil and the Fund. Each of them had been steering the course of human history to a varying degree.

Before looking in the other direction, Peter studied the spot where he had started. A spot that should correspond to his present. Tentatively speaking. He sensed that everything he saw was somehow equal, in one piece. And extant. Yet, being human, with his habitual notion of time flow, he conveniently separated the data portions into past, present, and future. Or did the mirror took into account his humanness and served him everything in a digestible form? His new Lil friends might say time did flow like that merely because sufficiently many people believed it. Yet beliefs changed ....

Peter didn’t like the present. It fit in with his analysis about living on credit and the death of the American dream. Yet there was more. Deliberate concealment of knowledge, hushing up discoveries that would increase the length and improve the quality of life, downright robbing the vast majority of the population, eliminating any inconvenient elements, planned obsolescence, so we had to buy the same devices again and again. It was a long list. Hideous too.

Peter thought he was only mentally here, while his body kept sitting inside the granite mirror underneath Tsarichina, yet he was sure his queasiness was not just psychological, what with the filth and misanthropy passing across his view. He forced himself to move on.

If the present sparks such a reaction, will what I see in the future kill me? I’ll take the risk.

Total control, surveillance and wiretapping on a scale that would make us tenderly pet Orwell’s Big Brother on the head and croon about his innocent naughtiness. Control via all sorts of means: computers, media, cameras, nanobots, smartphones. The smartphones would start operating with bits of living human brain. Biophones, someone supplied the name to Peter. They’d be spread using the good old advertising trick of first creating a product—whether a fancier operating system or a razor with umpteen blades—and then persuading consumers that it was cool; in fact, it was imperative they should get it now. Implanting chips that enabled monitoring and even controlling people. Then came control of public opinion and awareness. Dissenters would be eradicated.

After all, those brain bits for the biophones had to come from somewhere, and volunteers would be unlikely.

Sporadic attempts at revolutions, all failures, all drowned in blood. Then, power shortages, leading to oil wars. Then, total destitution, deforestation, droughts, famine. Such famine that people would gradually let themselves be convinced that any biological source of food had to be utilized.

Cannibalism?!

A time of obliteration, befitting the appearance of a savior, a unifier. And then, after the fashion of the US, the Soviet or the European Union, the remnants of all countries readily agreed to unify under the aegis of a Federal Fund.

Peter was dizzy now, or whatever counted as dizziness in a mental voyage. He thought he’d seen everything. He hadn’t.

Then the Fund would get bored with that, too, and one of its protegees would promote the grand idea that, given how the elite owned all resources and governed all aspects of the plebes’ lives, they had nothing left but to make themselves into gods. Besides, he’d claim, the war-torn planet, with its depleted resources, could not sustain the uncontrollably increasing human population. So they would use nuclear, chemical and seismic weapons to bring about an apocalypse.

The few survivors, mutated, tortured and dehumanized, would go back to the stone age. Later, when the radiation and the poisons dissipated, the elite’s offspring would walk out of their subterranean, submarine or even suborbital bunkers and eagerly set about establishing new cities and new laws. Spreading around knowledge. Rebooting the world. Re-creating the civilization they’d destroyed. Reigning. Logically, they would be greeted as gods.

Peter!

Peter opened his eyes, and his tears overflowed.

"Peter! Peter!" Now he could hear his companions’ voices with his ears.

"Yeah, coming," he croaked when he eventually remembered where he was.

Leaning against the mirror, he shuffled to the exit.

Martin and Ann stared at him. Then they rushed, caught him, and sat him down, his back propped against the mirror.

"You don’t look good. What happened?" Ann said.

"Your hair, man .... You have a white streak," Martin said.

"Wish that was all," Peter panted out. "Ann ... you and Seymour kept hinting I should take sides, right? You hoped I’d pick Lil."

She nodded.

"I’ve made my choice long ago, but now I’m surer than ever: Lil!"

"Welcome," Ann said.

No self-respecting thriller would have it as easy as that, so Martin, who respected self-respecting thrillers, complained, "Is that it? No initiation rite, no chanting ceremony, no cowls, candles, altars, secret handshakes?"

Apparently not. Ann ignored him, completely focused on Peter. She wished to know what had wrecked him.

"The Fund is leading us to ...." And Peter told them.

When he was done, the three stood with their heads drooping for a long time. The silence was brilliantly polished. Perfect.

•◦◦◦◦•◦

"Fuuuu—" Martin pulverized the silence. "And now—what? Is everything predestined and doomed?"

"Perhaps not." Peter went on to describe the other line of reality he’d touched. It was more ephemeral. Yet it carried that sense of all-consuming love all three had experienced. How humanity was supposed to follow it, Peter did not know.

Heck, I barely managed to see it. It keeps eluding me even now. But I know it exists—so we can get there.

Ann stood erect, squeezing her cellphone. She itched to call Seymour, but she knew that with all those layers of earth and granite around them, the device was more useless than a convertible submarine.

Martin drummed his fingers on the only weapon he knew: his laptop.

"I need to get through to Ummia Shidim," Ann said gravely and glanced at her phone.

She didn’t call him Grandpa or Seymour. She wished to contact him in his capacity as the Wisest among the Creators.

"I’m going to inform Lil immediately, so we can gather and decide what to do," she insisted.

"Alright, hang on," said Peter. "All of that hasn’t happened yet. It will only if the world pursues the road it’s taken."

"So?" Ann demanded.

Martin stopped drumming.

Thank the Lord—it was getting on my nerves.

"You have—we have opposed the Fund for centuries. If my understanding is correct, they have the upper hand. How? Where can we strike to change that?"

"Besides holding most patents and money in a world they’ve managed to mercantilize, you mean? Well, they have a vast superiority in the pharmaceutical sector, the media, transportation. Let’s not forget civilization’s addiction to energy. Oil, gas, nuclear—"

Martin interrupted Ann. "And it might’ve been totally different if they hadn’t hushed up Nikola Tesla’s inventions: ether energy, wirelessly transmitted to every building from towers like Wardenclyffe, the Tesla electric car, and so many others."

"Or Doctor Rife . He was the one who came up with a device emitting waves that kill viruses. Including the cancer virus." Ann was transmitting on Martin’s favorite wavelength now.

"I’ve read about that. Is cancer really caused by a virus?"

"It is. After the Fund employed its usual methods to hush up Doctor Royal Raymond Rife’s work, Lil helped the doctor take the only surviving device out of the US into Mexico."

Peter seemed absent and distracted. Suddenly, he beamed. "That’s it! If we possess an energy source negating their monopoly? Or if we have the formula, the waves, the herbs—whatever—curing the worst diseases. We’ll give them to people—and clip the wings of pharmaceutical companies."

"There’s a lot of risks involved. In Lil, we keep ancient practices that can bring us closer—but not close enough—to implementing such ideas. Besides, that would involve endless patent lawsuits. Or an economic war, which can easily turn into a proper one. We can’t win that kind of war." Ann gritted her teeth.

"Oh, there’s a quicker way than lawsuits. The free sharing of information." Martin started drumming on his laptop again. "We’ll let recipes, designs and whatnot circulate on the Net."

"Good. But before we can give anything to the world, we have to have it first. Peter, where do you suggest we get an, I don’t know, perpetuum mobile? Or a panacea?" Ann demanded.

Peter, already up on his feet, lifted an eyebrow at her. With a deliberately casual, triumphant gesture, he stuck a thumb sideways at the stone mirror. "There."

•◦◦◦◦••

"Ann, if cancer is a virus, as Doctor Rife claimed, why doesn’t medicine treat it accordingly? And if your—Lil’s—beliefs are ... you know, the mental Universe, the world is as we shape it in our thoughts ... so why wouldn’t cancer be caused by a bacterium or a mutation?"

"I see what you’re getting at. It’s similar to that stage when we abandoned the notion of a flat Earth and visualized it as a sphere. The leap from an idea to an opposite idea has often been kickstarted by individuals. People with enormous charisma, researchers, dreamers. Some of them had reached Enia. Giordano Bruno, Leonardo, Rife, Tesla. Reality now, it’s elastic, but only within certain limits. The Earth is a sphere, cancer’s a virus. Deviations from that are admissible but they can’t change the limits.

"As for medicine and pharmacy, they’ve turned into a business. They wouldn’t accept Doctor Rife’s discoveries, because they go against their economic interests. If they accept them, they’d have to give up on the electronic microscope and the millions invested in it, and switch to Rife’s ultraviolet microscope, which is better. Or they’d have to put an end to radiotherapy and chemotherapy, two other businesses where investors have poured loads of money."

This is ... disgusting. Light years away from humane. Do they really let us die from perfectly curable diseases only to make more money?

Peter’s appearance disrupted the nearly universal consensus Martin and Ann had reached.

After his new ten minutes, he didn’t sport any new white streaks.

Is he getting better at it? Or he didn’t touch the dark future cylinder this time?

At any rate, he looked confident, so concern gave way to curiosity. "So?"

"When I touched—"

"The folder?" Martin supplied.

He does call them "folders," then.

Peter smiled on the inside, before going on. "The drugs folder yielded nothing. In the past, they used, um, generally speaking, water. Just water. Exposed to the beneficial influence of a sage’s pure mind or with certain crystals submerged inside, but still water. As for the future—not that future, the other one—we’re going to rediscover water and its endless properties, and there’s going to be a plethora of new elements and compounds, both organic and inorganic, that we simply can’t employ today."

"How about energy?"

Peter smiled slyly. "That’s where we can beat them."

He told them about a diversity of energy types and sources that would make even Tesla envious. Secretly or openly envious, Peter could not tell. He had no clue about the scientist’s temperament.

Then he suggested they settle for an efficient, environmentally friendly, and completely feasible power unit. Based on magnets.

•◦◦◦•◦◦

"It can really be built?"

"The mirror says yes."

"And you know how? You’ve brought the blueprints?"

"No. I merely touched a, let’s call it, a schematic diagram. A description. The details—materials, angles, dimensions, assembly instructions—weren’t there."

"So what do we do?" Impatience and worry struggled inside Martin.

"We must go to the prototype. Using my high-res, I’m going to learn everything we’re missing to build the unit."

"There’s a prototype?" Ann said.

"Mmm-hm."

"But how do you know it’s still there, after—I don’t know—a million years?"

"It is. It’s been safely tucked inside another large rock."

"Where?!" the chorus said.

"Baalbek, Lebanon."

•◦◦◦•◦•

When they walked out of the Monolith, the door behind tuned granite again and restored the symbols-cum-questions. They followed the same corridor back. In the opposite wall of the Monolith, there was another door, but they knew that the corridor behind, leading almost to Tsarichina’s center, had been buried under tonnes of cement years ago.

They passed the Neanderthal, the roots twined around the colorful rocks, and everything else. Sweatier, dirtier and wearier than ever, they approached the exit.

"Peter, those ancient things described in the folders .... Okie, the power unit has a prototype, in Lebanon. The crystals though? The ones turning water into a cure? Haven’t the ancients sealed some of those inside a rock?"

"They seem to have left prototypes or samples of most artifacts they’ve described. But the crystals aren’t accessible. They’ve been lost."

"Lost. In time, you mean?"

"No. They sank down with Atlantis."

"Why did I bother asking! And where’s Atlantis—"

Peter stopped dead and signaled for them to keep silent. He pointed at the exit. Although the door looked semitransparent from where they stood, they couldn’t see anyone outside. Only the slightly blurred outline of their SUV stood where they’d left it on the meadow. Yet Peter knew they were there. Three people. He could sense their breathing. Their heartbeats. He knew it was impossible, yet he also seemed to hear them seeing.

Impossible? What is, these days?

He held up three fingers on his other hand.

Ann propped her right arm, the one with the gun, on her left fist. Three throwing knives jutted out between the fingers of the fist. She slowly slunk towards the exit.

When she drew level with Peter, she seemed to reconsider. She handed the gun to him. "Can you shoot?" she whispered.

"Uh ... I guess."

"Then shoot. If someone other than me tries to enter."

He gave a vague nod.

Wish I could promise I would do it.

That seemed to satisfy Ann. Before moving away, she breathed, "If I fail, keep low for a while, then go to Seymour."

Peter tried imagining what it would mean for Martin and him if Ann failed. Then he tried not imagining.

Ann approached the exit and paused. The blurred shapes of the mercs appeared: they started examining and circling the SUV. Ann was aware of their body cams, so she waited for them to turn away. She couldn’t have them film the location of the entrance to the Monolith.

Then she walked out.

•◦◦◦••◦

Two of them squatted with their backs to her, quietly discussing some tracks in the grass. The third was on the other side of the SUV. Ann slunk towards the two with all the grace and patience of a black panther. And with as little noise. As she slowly transferred her weight onto her other leg, her charcoal leotard reinforced the likeness, emphasizing her taut, fit muscles. Her pose emanated tension. The scene emanated doom and destiny.

Before Ann could get as near as she would’ve liked, the man on the left turned his head. During the millisecond when his pupils dilated, sending the fight-or-flight signal to the brain, An thought, These guys aren’t random. Don’t underrate them!

Of course, the merc’s brain made the right choice: fight. Years of training had stifled the atavistic impulse screaming "Flee!" in similar situations. The man now turned his body, simultaneously standing up and pulling out his gun. He even managed to shout, "Danger!"

Although correct in the given situation, his brain’s decision turned out to be also its last one: a throwing knife had already halved the distance to the man’s forehead. Ann herself was busy halving the distance to mercenary number two.

Number two made a tiny error. He didn’t realize the enemy had already entered a completely different range, so he kept lifting the barrel of his gun, rather than switch to hand-to-hand. His hands on the weapon prevented him from stopping Ann from wringing his neck. It was a tiny, lethal error.

The third merc had used the time won by his comrades’ death to draw his gun and point it at Ann’s head. Grinning wryly, he said, "Don’t move," as his finger hugged the supple trigger of the Smith & Wesson.

"You sure you want what’s about to happen?" Ann said flatly, as she lifted her hands slowly in ostensible surrender.

"You’ve killed a lot of my mates, bitch! But now I got you. Just flinch and make my day. So ... yeah. Oh yeaaah!"

Before the vowel had died down, Ann twitched her fist towards him, her open palm pointing at his face. It was as if she’d let some object free from the cage of her ex-fist.

The merc’s finger almost managed to achieve the pressure needed to pull the trigger, when something semi-hard, bulky and invisible flew above the hood of the car and smashed into his face. It was like being struck by a bank safe wrapped in a blanket.

The man reeled and fell. His back hadn’t quite finished sliding on the dewy grass, when Ann curled her fingers, staring at his torso. He tried to train the gun on her, in vain. He dropped it and clutched at his chest. His last sensation—besides the searing pain around his heart—was dismay at the direct relation between the pain and the curling of Ann’s fingers. He stared at them, as his heels kicked at the grass. He’d never been trained, never had the chance to— Her fingers looked like claws. Ann had nearly flexed them into a fist now.

When she did, the mercenary let go of his chest and quieted down. In fact, he let go of everything that kept him among the living.

Ann mentally thanked the people who’d taught her contactless combat, and automatically wiped her palm against her leotard. The fight had lasted for exactly five seconds, but they felt like five hours. At least.

•◦◦◦•••

You didn’t have to be a military expert or a homicide inspector to grasp what Peter and Martin saw when they walked out of the camouflaged opening. The mercenaries hadn’t stood a chance.

What they could not grasp was how a woman of some hundred pounds had managed to surprise them, overpower them, and destroy their cameras. Ann’s motions, blurred by the holographic door, hadn’t helped much. However, the two men knew for a fact that one of their pursuers lay with his face pointing backwards. The other, with a knife sticking from his forehead. The third bore no obvious traces of her attack

unless we count those blue lips

but he was as dead as the rest.

Ann was just finishing her text report to Seymour. After all, she’d been in a hurry to leave the Monolith precisely so she could get coverage and update Seymour.

Peter was worried

but not too much

that he was getting used to seeing their pursuers dead or badly hurt.

Martin, on the other hand, had some catching up to do. His mind supplied, I feel like kissing you all over! / Try not to.

"Ann—you? They—are they dead?" Then he saw for himself, spun, and hurled.

Wuss.

Ann looked at him. Rather than saying anything, she put away her phone and set about the pressing matters. One by one, she dragged the bodies to the nearest ravine. She covered them with leaves and branches. She didn’t ask for help: the job was too specific. Ann didn’t want to watch Martin throw up again.

The men, still shocked, didn’t volunteer any help.

The forest creatures will do the rest.

Ann dusted her hands

guilt? scruples?

A recapitulation revealed that Ann O’Malley now possessed MP5 and Smith & Wesson, three sets. Oh, and the TT. She had to choose. She didn’t feel like lugging all that iron.

She picked up Peter’s TT and threw it across the holographic door. Two S&W and two MP5 followed it. She kept the MP5 with the silencer. She also kept all the cartridges.

"Martin, I suggest we leave your car and switch to theirs. There’s a dirt road over there, the one they came from. The terrain is only slightly rough, plus that will give us—"

"Not my Suzuki!" Martin groaned, still wiping gastric juices off the corners of his mouth.

"Okay."

Ann strode into the Suzuki and drove towards the tunnel leading to the Monolith.

The men looked after her incredulously. The sight of their trusty 4x4 gradually vanishing into the rock was a bit surreal, but then again, what wasn’t recently?

Then Ann re-materialized with some of their luggage on her shoulder. "Are you going to help me?" She headed for the mercenaries’ Opel. "The Suzuki’s going to be safe here. Later, you can pick it up, okay?"

Okay. Later. Like, when?

•◦◦•◦◦◦

There were napkins on the table, but Legion was now fully immersed in the part of a local slob, so he casually wiped his fingers on his burnoose, reached underneath for his phone, and rose, beckoning the waiter with a universal gesture. Be right back.

A dozen yards away, one of the many dusty alleys of the medina began. If you weren’t a local and turned down such an alley, you’d be irretrievably lost after a couple of turns.

Once there, Legion opened the encrypted MMS.

Three photos, three dossiers, one location: Bulgaria.

Legion smiled coldly.

Three birds with one stone. Only ... the woman’s photo looks blurry. Although....

He opened her dossier.

Ann O’Malley-Ström.

He dialed Zander’s number.

"Hello?"

The creep answered lightning-fast. It must be top priority.

"Mister Zander."

"Thank you for your immediate response! The usual VIP fee? Half a million per head, no?" The connection was flawlessly encrypted, so they had no reason to mince words.

"I’m afraid I’ll have to refuse."

"But ... w-why? We’ve always worked ... to our mutual benefit. Quite fruitfully, so to speak."

"I said no."

"Alright, I can double the fee. Um, using my own funds."

"No."

"But ... I don’t understand ... I mean, why?"

"Which part of ’no’ didn’t you get? And what the hell makes you think I owe you an explanation?" Legion was getting irritated. Something he himself would not think possible.

An irritated Legion ain’t healthy. Especially if you’re the stimulus, thought Zander. He softened his tone and backed down. "I see. I just wished to hire the top dog in this field. Now we’ll have to turn to someone less efficient. But at least cheaper."

We’ll have to.

Emil Zander subtly hinted that he wasn’t speaking for himself but for the powerhouse at his back.

Legion got the hint, but said in the same lukewarm voice, "Good luck."

What he thought was, I’d advise against that, too, but I can’t stop you from doing what you get paid to do.

He hung up.

•◦◦•◦◦•

North Africa fairly crashed on top of their senses. Anyone who hadn’t visited this part of the world had no way of knowing that the ubiquitous sweet (but not sickening) smell was a mix of sea, desert, spices with thirty-some ingredients, rotting citrus, dust from medinas that had never been swept, car exhausts, mint, fresh tanned leather, sweat carrying the smell of roasted lamb, camel dung, jasmine, and a whiff of sewage.

The exhaustive list was not available to any visitor, and perhaps not even to the locals.

The list of stimuli that assaulted the sight and hearing didn’t fall behind in length or exoticism. That was probably the reason why Arab perfumes had such a strong, rich fragrance. If you’d grown up in a similar environment and chose to put on a perfume, you’d definitely go for something that could shout louder than the background noise.

Ann, Peter and Martin sensed all of that, to a varying degree, when they finished with the formalities, brandishing their fake passports, and strolled out on the sun-baked tiles in front of the Habib Bourguiba International Airport in the Tunisian city of Monastir.

Heh, sounds just like our Bulgarian manastir, a monastery; means the same too.

The airport did its best to justify the international tag in its name. It was, truth be told, semi-international: it had a full domestic flight service, but only occasional charter flights with foreign tourists and a handful of regular flights to nearby destinations. Such as Sofia Airport or Istanbul Atatürk Airport.

Shuffling through airport names in his memory, Martin mused with a moderate-to-strong dose of sadness, Habib Bourguiba used only diplomacy, no wars, to take this colony away from France. Then he became the lifetime president of the new country. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the builder of modern Turkey, directed its evolution westwards rather than eastwards, and its gaze forward rather than back to the feudal past. He was another long-staning, loved and remembered president. Two men who made their countries into states. Now, I can think of a territory—"state" would be an overstatement—which never got this chance. Its whiners of citizens rarely call it by name—they’d rather go by "this frigging state"—but I still feel it to become more of my homeland by the day. Bulgaria ....

"Martin," said Peter, wrenching him out of his ruminations, "let’s go. There’s a car rental down the street."

For the police state Tunisia was regarded to be, renting a car proved easier than ordering a Coke. Or did that apply only to tourists? Anyway, the clerk wrote down Martin’s name (Shindarev), giving a listless glance at his fake passport. He didn’t even bother with the driver’s license. Damn it was hot! Despite the air conditioning in his office. However, he got a bit more agitated when he took the cash. It was in Tunisian dinars, withdrawn en route using Ann’s untraceable and nameless black card.

They loaded their sparse possessions

what with the airports, customs and scanners, no MP5, not even throwing knives

in the car from the brochure that Ann had stuck her finger at, silently, promptly and insistently. It was a seven-seater Toyota Land Cruiser—so far, no surprises; a 1997 model. It was as white as a vintage fridge and as mighty as the desert that began some fifty miles to the south. The clerk told them that all cars used for the vastly popular off-road trips to the Sahara were Toyotas. No other model could survive those conditions.

A shameless plug-in.

And they were all white, he added. The sun, you know.

"You want visit Star Wars site? Close, I can be guide."

They wanted not. Rather, Martin wanted very much but didn’t dare suggest a detour. They weren’t here on vacation.

The sun (you know) made them crank up the air conditioning to the max, as soon as Ann started the engine.

Tunisia turned out to be a suitable intermediate stop, because there were no direct flights from Bulgaria to Lebanon. Another

more direct

option would have been Istanbul, but Turks took security very seriously, so the trio decided not to push their luck with the fake passports. The Fund’s outreach might well have turned them into fugitives wanted by Interpol, their photos gracing the monitors of airport border controls. Now, Africa was another matter. A chill-out one.

Their choice turned out to be right.

They planned to travel northwest, parallel to the Mediterranean coast, and reach Tunisia, the eponymous capital. The airport there was hands-down international. From there, Martin had checked on the movingly slow-moving local Net, they could get a plane to Lebanon.

To prep them for the different culture and environment, Peter shared some of his local experience. In the Arab world, most shopkeepers were decent folks. In a way. Haggling was part of the purchasing ritual: it made the locals’ day, but if you let it drag on, it could break yours. If you as much as touched, pointed at, glanced at, or even thought about a certain item, you’d find yourself involved in an interminable conversation about its exquisite qualities, goading you towards a deal.

Another possible scenario would go like this:

"Hello! Where are you from?"

"Bulgaria. Or wherever."

"And how much does this cost in Bulgaria, or wherever?" And you would have a passable handmade ceramic ashtray, or whatever, shoved in front of you.

"Five or six leva," you would say.

"Oooh, and here you can buy it only for seventy dinars!"

Which would amount to seventy leva. You’d try explaining the exchange rates, then you would give up and go away—to no avail. The conversation had begun: the shopkeeper would pursue you, showering you with offers plummeting in a geometric progression. Occasionally, he would realize how low he’d gone compared to the original price and would cry in feigned alarm, "Sabotage!" Or, "Police!"

That would go on until you bought the earthenware ashtray, or whatever, for five to six leva.

You never refused any offered shay (tea); otherwise, you’d offend the offerer’s sensibilities. Arabs had a strong sense of dignity. They might fawn or play acts like the above in order to foist the ashtray even on a non-smoker, but even then they never gave up on their pride.

The more insightful tourists had figured out that if you showed respect and interest in Arabic culture, history or language, Arabs would go to any lengths to make you feel at home. And if you didn’t, you’d get nowhere. And if they sensed some scorn or arrogance on your part ... well.

Ann and the men passed the sea salt extraction facilities between Monastir and Sous, and their air conditioning grew more tangible. There were fewer mosquitoes splattering against the windshield too. A power plant popped up on the right. It was huge and absurdly located almost on the beach. Apparently, the Tunisians had built it before they’d worked out a hotel there would make them far more money.

Somewhere near Sous, Peter’s lecture reached a part obviously meant for Ann.

Arabs felt compelled to stare, court, and sometimes even molest Western women. Regardless of appearance or age. A little more discreetly, if the woman was with a man. A lot more intrusively if she was alone.

Peter hoped Ann wouldn’t beat anyone to death.

She wouldn’t, as long as they stuck together.

Peter also assured them that if you were a tourist in an Arab country, your passport drew barely any attention at airports, seaports, or land borders. Unless it featured an Israeli stamp. Or, God/Allah forbid it, if it was American. And while the former had millennia of history to back it up, God/Allah only knew how the American foreign policy had managed to make so many enemies in the short time since World War Two. Had it invented some conveyor-belt scheme?

Their passports were fake, yet Bulgarian. Peter was certain nobody would bother them about that, here or in Lebanon. Also, the zero odds of communicating with the locals in Bulgarian meant no-one would suspect Ana Maleeva, as Ann’s passport claimed, wasn’t a Bulgarian.

On entering Sous, Martin and Ann accepted Peter’s suggestion for a detour to the entrance of the medina, where, he said, there was a terrific, authentic cafe. They’d stay for half an hour: just to breathe in the medina’s exoticism and drink a cup of shay or qahua (coffee). And maybe sample the Arabian equivalent of McDonald’s offered nearby.

Martin earnestly considered countering the offer with his own detour to the Star Wars set. Agh, they were miles away to the south, in the Sahara. He gave up.

A little later, the taste of Arabian fast food made him forget all about sets and cult movies. Even about McDonald’s. He blurted out his impressions about the mighty burger, to which Peter, clasping two of the same, said, "Wait till you try Jordanian mansaf."

•◦◦•◦•◦

"As-salamu."

"As-salamu. Shay wahid, kwbyn qahuatan, thlatht Boga", Peter summarized their order.

The waiter nodded with an approving grin and moved away. True, there weren’t many customers, but the speed of taking their order was worthy of an entry in the Arabic edition of the Guinness Records. Also, as Peter had predicted, the drinks were accompanied by a small clay bowl full of nuts and figs, which they had not ordered.

You’ve learned a little of my language. Let me show you my appreciation.

The tea was for Ann, and when the waiter poured it from the teapot in a manner identical to hers—from high above—she smiled surprised.

"Shukran jazilan."Peter nodded his respect at the waiter. The nod and the phrase seemed to make them friends for life.

In the Arab world, chairs in cafes did not face the tables but the street. So you could eye passersby more comfortably. And while at it, do it with a charmingly infantile indiscretion. This way, passersby could eye them too. Especially Ann. With various degrees of explicitness. And not just explicitness: they managed to garnish their gazes with such longing and dreaminess that they left any tourist with the sense she was unique, the only one. Those gazes and what followed them could turn Africa and the Middle East into quite popular destinations for aging, yet still naughty European ladies.

The heat had made Ann put on a dress of the type worn by young farmer’s wives in the southern States: a sheer, flower-patterned fabric, with thin straps and plenty of flesh on display. Not that Peter disapproved of the sight. Still, wouldn’t her charcoal leotard be more appropriately conservative?

Conservative my eye. It emphasizes all her curves.

He couldn’t make up his mind about the relative gravitational effects of the dress versus the leotard; at any rate, the folks around them were busy ogling Ann’s clothes’ surroundings.

Martin, too, approved of the sight, but he’d never had the chance to confirm or reject certain long-standing hypothesis before meeting Ann. And now Ann was here.

"Say, you answered most of my questions about conspiracy theories, saying that ... well, mostly that it’s all about the Fund. So what about chemtrails? Conspiracy theory circles believe the rain they cause contains ... harmful stuff. Something that makes us docile. Or dumb. Or ... well, it’s nasty anyway. Which makes chemtrails into a perfect candidate for the Fund’s shebang. Are they—"

"No. They’re ours. Lil’s."

Martin struggled to come up with a meaningful justification. However, Ann chose that moment to casually cross her legs, so he gave up on the analysis. "You mean? What for?"

"It’d be too inefficient for the Fund to rely on rain to ... poison us. They could deliver the appropriate substances right to our bodies. Sadly, I know of such occasions. They’ve tried it with cosmetics, beverages, detergents. Even drugs or drinking water. When we find out, we expose them.

"So why does Lil create chemtrails? Over a billion people around the world starve. For various reasons. One is drought. A big one. Infertile soil combined with no rain and no irrigation would doom a whole Third World country to famine. In 1930, an Argentinian engineer of Basque origin, named Juan Velar, invented and demonstrated a ’rain machine.’ That almost solved the problem. Almost, because the machine was so efficient, the Fund got worried. And they got to him before we did. That’s why recently Lil assigned a few small private labs, which we control or own, to develop an additive to jet fuel. Once released by combustion, the additive acts as a catalyst in cloud formation. We’re just trying to fight drought and starvation."

Martin hadn’t considered such an option. In his world, seismic weapons, black helicopters, weather control and suchlike were generated by the evil genius of the shadowy world government. The one that had a name, as he’d learned: the Fund.

"Okie, but that means last year’s record rainfalls in come parts of Europe, Bulgaria included, were caused by your interference? There were flooded villages, destroyed houses and cars, drowned cattle, broken walls of small dams, even a few casualties."

"Mistakes happen. We can’t always predict the course of a batch of jet fuel containing our additive. You see, we must compare airways, fuel prices, fuel consumption for various companies, movement of air masses, and so on. Sometimes, some fuel which is supposed to burn above the Sahara, can burn above Bulgaria. Or the other way round. Mistakes do happen."

"I see. Mistakes."

So fix up your logistics. Before we all start growing rice. Everywhere.

Martin didn’t like rice. Not at all.

•◦◦•◦••

The road followed the coastline of the turquoise Mediterranean Sea. There was much to see, but Peter had already seen it, and his now-habitual drowsiness was getting the better of him. His habitual hunger had just been amply sated.

He left sightseeing to Martin, driving to Ann, and lounging on the back seat to himself. He’d take a nap. The road signs were both in Arabic and French: Ann could watch for the ones saying Tunis with no navigator.

Peter closed his eyes, and the good old color veils sprang up. The dots/numbers were gone, of course. He missed them somewhat. In their stead, in an osmosis with the veils, were questions, amazing events, conclusions, intentions. In the ethereal gray zone between deliberate thought and dreams, there swirled, Barton Dental, the patent ... I seem to care about it less and less. Charles? We need to resolve this sooner, so I can ask Seymour to bring him back—it’s unclear how he’s handling his stay there ... or then. My memory of our phone call ... he seems to sense something’s amiss: he tried calling me. Dad. Rose. Rose, who knew Seymour King. What kind of a name is Seymour King? An alias: "sees more and knows." Hardly his birth name. Ummia Shidim? Who turned out to be no Duranki. Ann said our civilization and universe are a product of a primeval Duranki’s kind intentions. Then things went astray, and here we are. How wouldn’t they? The Fund holds patents and finances, in a world where goddamn money is all that matters. Energy too. Let’s not forget our civilization’s addiction to energy. Coal, oil ....

Ridiculous, isn’t it? Burning your forefathers’ remnants to move around. Or wrapping your breakfast in another oil product. Or carrying your water inside a plastic bottle—a bottle made of carbohydrates, oil or coal again. As profitable as it may be, it’s ... it’s not right!

... Peter, Peter, you managed to stray even in a dream, man.

Nuclear power plants, electricity. Resources. Money. For our money, we get food, healthcare, traveling opportunities, entertainment ... life. Our life depends on resources. Resources, money, economies. Money equals life. Crazy stuff. What if ....

He couldn’t finish. Sleep claimed him.

•◦◦••◦◦

The airport in the capital was hands-down international. Half its flights were to or from Europe and Asia. The other cities on the information displays were somewhere in the heart of black Africa or even wilder places.

After handing back the keys of the Toyota in the appropriate office, Ann, Peter and Martin timidly entered the airport building. Timidly, because they were careful not to tread on anyone from the group that had decided to set up some sort of bivouac or a tribal council right on the floor in front of the entrance. The backs of their yellow T-shirts claimed they came from an Islamic republic with a mouthful of a name.

The trio somehow negotiated the obstacle and joined the check-in line. Ostensibly grown-up people around them jostled, hustled and bustled in a way that drew the attention of the entire hall. The monitor above the hellions said they were going to fly

eventually—if the check-in ever speeds up

to a small country in East Africa.

A young, athletic, and very Black fellow feinted the whole line. He’d stop here for a couple of words, pat somebody’s shoulder there; then having jumped everyone else, he stood at the front. Was he about to place his luggage on the scale and check in, though? Nah, not at all. His target turned out to be an abandoned empty luggage cart. He dropped his luggage and rode inside the cart in the direction from which he’d come—towards the end of the line.

At some point, Martin got tired of watching the eights drawn by the newly promoted cart and looked back at the check-in desk. Nobody checked in, as ever. The cluster of abandoned carts and unattended luggage made the place look like a barricade. A hardened Tunisian clerk crossed over the luggage belt and the scale. He started clearing the barricade, looking daggers at this object lesson in Brownian motion and muttering unintelligible but no doubt explicit phrases describing his present state of mind. The ladies in the line regarded him impassively. Apparently, there were no hairdressers in their home countries, so during their brief stay in Tunisia, all of them had tried to straighten their hair and dye it

perhaps

blonde. The result was a sea of ginger

definitely not blonde

straight hair, which looked relatively calm—more like a lake than a sea, in fact. The owners of those hairdos were determined to preserve them at least for a couple of hours after they landed back.

A large portion of the group’s luggage consisted of badly wrapped bolts of cloth with mostly floral motifs and in a color gamut that would inspire a certain

vanishingly small

minority of people to make them into curtains. It was obvious what these ladies had made. The actual making process couldn’t have been very long: their dresses looked like prodigal pieces of cloth. Wrapped around their bodies, they made the ladies look like boats with billowing sails. To be fair, Martin did appreciate the fine taste of some of the ladies—those whose hair was barely visible. It was hidden under traditional turbans or sumptuous ribbons matching the dresses.

Each bag, sack or suitcase sprouted at least three or four handles of Chinese mops. The industrious Chinese merchants must have failed to find the small African country on their maps yet. Now, what the buyers were going to do with so many handles in their homeland remained a universal mystery.

They’d likely sell them, Peter thought.

No, they’ll use them as spear hafts, Martin corrected him mentally.

He was getting tired of this circus too, so he glanced at the nearby currency exchange. There, a tall elderly European had just reached his turn in the line, when a black youth

maybe the same who jumped the line a while ago

inserted himself between him and the desk. But the elderly European didn’t cave in just like that: he locked two fingers onto the saucebox’s collar and started talking. He garnished his lecture with pulling the collar in various directions. The youth seemed to grasp the gist of the matter and meekly walked back to the end of the line, and the white sahib got serviced.

Hm, this dude was far younger and stronger than the sahib, but he’s aware it’s normal for white folks to give him an earful now and then. Just to keep him in shape, Martin thought. Aloud, he told his companions, "So what were you saying about Negroes?"

•◦◦••◦•

The plane stopped. The flag with the cedar waved at them across the portholes.

Lebanon had a president. A Christian. Probably because half of the four-million population was Christian. The Lebanese Constitution stipulated that the president could only be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister, a Sunni Muslim, and the Speaker of the Parliament, a Shi’a Muslim. There were also Druze, Catholics, Franciscans and Jacobites. A smattering of others too.

Beirut’s streets sported the same kind of diversity. Night bars and cafes teemed with people, as did streets. On the beach, you could see local women wearing burqas rather than swimsuits. Side by side with tourists wearing swimsuits rather than burqas.

Fifty feet from them, there were rows of parked deluxe vehicles, their owners discreetly sipping drinks in tiny bars. Unless they were indiscreetly swigging drinks on their expensive yachts, anchored nearby. In front of the petite stores, mothers scolded their kids in Arabic garnished with French spices.

The relatively immobile drinkers, mothers, yachts, shopkeepers and loafers sitting on and around the benches turned into an alloy thanks to the incessant swarm of cars, pedestrians, and ne’er-do-wells rushing to and fro. There were shouts, laughs, horns. Babel.

The traces of the long war could be seen more readily outside Beirut. In the city, the sharp edges of destruction were getting smoothed, not by the passage of time, but by feverish construction. Gone were the bullet-ridden, missile-bitten walls so popular on TV news. At least the Hezbollah flags and T-shirs were still here. And the trade in metal detectors thrived in all districts: there were still vast areas all around the country, full of unexploded mines.

Now, the trade in beer and arrack, Lebanese brandy, thrived best in the Christian district. It had the highest supply and demand. Arrack tasted like Turkish rakı—a bit like anisette. Its name resembled both its Turkish counterpart and Bulgarian rakia. Peter was the only one who’d visited Turkey and tried its rakı, testifying to the gustatory similarities. Yet all three of them could smell the anise scent of arrack, as they sat at a table by a small eatery, maintaining a self-imposed isolation from its posher brethren and the posh cars parked in front of them.

Their path to this eatery had taken them across a luscious human throng. There, in the throng, a young, likely unmarried Arab dared anonymously sample the firmness of Ann’s rear parts. Having grown up in a conservative society and probably not having gathered the amount of gold

eight kilos

required to take a bride, he probably saw Ann as an accessible collective image of the sexual liberty denied to his culture and a vent, albeit poor, for his suppressed sexuality. Had they been in Tunisia, the young man would’ve probably resisted the temptation. There, prostitution was legal, controlled by the state and the healthcare system; ladies of the night were officially employed by the Ministry of the Interior. Their services cost a handful of dinars.

Eight.

Rather affordable. But they were not in Tunisia. Nor was Ann your average tourist. When the intruder’s hand had almost reached its destination, Ann caught his wrist and pressed a thumb against it, never even turning. It was a single press, abrupt and focused in a specific point. The man’s excitement crumpled into shock and pain. He quickly vanished in the throng, nursing the offending hand with his left one. It was numb all the way up to the elbow and would stay so for at least an hour.

Ann’s companions never learned about the failed sexual escapade.

•◦◦•••◦

Everything was in place. The guns, money and passports, inside the cache; the fuel, inside the Learjet’s tank; Legion, in the pilot seat. Unrecognizable in his expensive suit. A businessman who enjoyed being his own pilot. The "local slob" type had been abandoned somewhere along the dusty alleys around the medina.

He got cleared for take-off. He rose from the runway and retracted the landing gear. Then he made a broad arc and turned east. The autopilot would give him a few hours of quiet, so Legion sank into his thoughts.

He’d refused the assignment. He cared nothing for her companions—or indeed anyone else

... but Ann.

He took off for Lebanon because he had to find out what was going on. The Fund, his most influential employer, had never assigned such people to him. They were too insignificant.

A nerd and an MIT dropout, the boss of a small, sinking business—and Ann.

What linked the three? Where had their paths crossed with the Fund? He needed to know. Not just because of Ann. He’d learned that if he wanted to be up to speed with the world, he had to be aware of every activity of the Fund.

•◦◦••••

Ann squinted briefly: she scanned the data in her brain. Apparently, apart from everything else, it held a comprehensive directory, because she took out her phone and dialed a long number. The conversation was held in English. Peter heard some of the phrases on the other side; they belonged to a man with a strong Arabic accent.

Martin, however, heard only Ann’s words.

"It’s Ann."

"..."

"You too. Who controls the Baalbek area now? Jafar or Rifai?"

"..."

"Ali Jafar’s still an avid collector, right?"

"..."

"I’m going to need a small, suitable gift for him. A demonstration of respect and good will."

"..."

"On that scale? Around two. Three at most."

"..."

"A dagger? Will do."

"..."

"I’m ...." She looked up at the waiter passing by, beamed a winning smile, and said in English. "Can you please tell me the address of this restaurant?"

She repeated his answer into her phone and hung up.

Martin kept sampling arrack from the minuscule glass. Peter, who had heard most of the conversation, couldn’t help asking, "Ann, what’s going on?"

"Nothing. We’re going to wait for a man."

"A Jafar or a Rifai? Who are they actually?"

"Local families controlling everything in the Baalbek area. Thugs. The man we’re waiting for is from Lil."

"And why do you need a dagger from the Umayyad age? Scoring a three on a scale from one to ten?"

Ann gave him a curious look.

That’s some enhanced hearing.

"If we run into any difficulties. The dagger will buy us some peace."

"Three, you said. On that scale of yours, what would be ten?"

"Don’t know. The Ark?"

"Are you telling me you guys have the Ark? Or at least know its location?" Peter lifted an eyebrow.

"No. We don’t know. As far as I can remember, it was last seen next to Indiana Jones." Ann grinned. "But after evaluating our recent past, I’d give ten to the Monolith too."

•◦•◦◦◦◦

Hakim couldn’t afford the rental fees around the esplanade. Besides, he liked his neighborhood. He liked his craft too. His barber’s shop was on the first floor of an apartment building, a few blocks away from the esplanade. It bordered on a small fruit and vegetable store and a small, traditional Arabic cafe, which had to stand up for its traditionality: after all, it was located on the first floor of a new residential building.

The sign on the front said in Arabic, Hakim’s Razor Barber’s Shop. Below, a smaller print said nearly the same in English. There was a deliberate error in the English version, demonstrating that Hakim’s interests were not confined to Islamic philosophers; it actually read, Ockham’s Razor. The joke worked on one more level. All Arabic names have a meaning. Hakim meant wise.

Barber’s shops, much like cafes, acted as gentlemen’s clubs. Everything was subject to discussion here: from the weather forecast to politics. Sometimes, barbers or cafe keepers became the Eastern counterpart of bartenders’ role for the less affluent part of Western populations: shrinks. Hakim enjoyed that calling of his too. He encouraged conversation, listened, advised, and treated customers to tea. All in all, he was a sunny person who enjoyed everything.

Including the task Lil had assigned him: to gather information that often helped them to predict social, economic, or political changes in the area. And perhaps interfere. In the Arab world, casual chatter—or even gossip—provided more reliable information than news programs, news agencies, or the Internet.

Another task of Hakim’s was to store any ancient artifacts discovered in the Middle East. Sometimes, trusted couriers brought them to him. Sometimes, they took them away. The objects ended up in museums, universities, or other depots similar to Hakim’s. The point was, they should not end up in the Fund’s hands. Especially those bearing any writing: old books, scrolls, or clay tablets.

Hakim kept the small objects in a cache in the back room. He and other Lil members had unanimously decided that the place was safe enough. Who’d rob a barber’s shop? What loot would they be hoping for?

Hakim’s razor? Ockham?

Hakim’s phone rang. He glances at the display and peered around. There were no customers right now. Only a few local kibitzers, sitting at the low table in front. But even they were barely potential customers, engulfed in their idle talk as they were.

As he strode towards the back room, Hakim answered the call. It was Ann O’Malley. He’d never met her but he knew who she was. They’d talked a few times.

"..."

"Allah give you health, Ann O’Malley!" Hakim would never forsake the obligatory Arabian politeness.

"..."

"The Jafar family. Still headed by Ali."

"..."

"Oh yes. He’s tireless. The other day, he sent us a clay tablet from Sumer in exchange for a Roman coin."

"..."

"Very well. And how much should it score on our value scale?"

"..."

"I see. I think I have something suitable. A dagger from the Umayyad age. It’s exquisitely made: the steel is very good and well preserved, there is gold filigree and emeralds and rubies on the handle, but the dagger has no information value."

"..."

"Alright. I suspect you’re in the area, and I know you’re always in a hurry. Where shall we deliver the dagger?"

"..."

"No problem, Ann. It’ll be there in twenty minutes at most. I’m glad you called. May wisdom and goodness illuminate your path."

Hakim put down his phone and called his eldest son, Ismail. For ten years, Ismail had been his joy and pride, the light of his eyes, as Hakim liked saying. Ismail did more than help with the barber’s shop. He’d already learned the Qur’an by heart and, urged by Hakim, had read a number of philosophical and historical treatises. He was also one of Hakim’s trusted artifact couriers.

•◦•◦◦◦•

Ann was the only one who noticed the boy who delivered the dagger. He casually passed sideways—and rather close—by their table, before vanishing into the crowd. Peter was busy watching a yacht sail away that would have been a Bentley in the world of cars. Martin had raised his head to drink the last of the arrack.

When they looked back at the table, Ann was already unwrapping a piece of linen cloth. Inside sparkled emeralds and rubies. She quickly wrapped the dagger up again.

They paid their bill and left.

•◦•◦◦•◦

What if ....

Science fiction and fantasy stories, even thrillers start with this short question. Recently, it had often haunted Peter. Usually in the minutes before sleep took over. It was something like a rite, meant to convey him into Morpheus’s domain, perhaps not quicker but more smoothly.

What if ... civilization were constructed without relying on resources, money, economies. But ... food at least is a resource we merely can’t do without. Let’s imagine some beings ... despite their images, I’ll call them humans.

Humans who don’t eat food. They don’t need energy or resources for which to compete and fight. They don’t compete for resources; they just don’t need them. They don’t need even territory. And man is a territorial animal. The proof? Cities, states, and the fences of our houses.

Humans who are spiritual, pure. A collective intelligence, which .... Intelligence, yes. Collective, no. Collective doesn’t seem to have led us anywhere nice. Diversity, individuality, creativity, and altruism. Humans who abide by norms that we’re well aware of, yet we’ve turned our backs on them these days. Outdated, we call them at best.

And the ultimate goal of this gedankenexperiment is ... what? Picturing how such a utopian world would work? Is it viable? Do its humans need initial knowledge? Or, having been spared our worries, they’ll have sufficient time, all the time in the world, to amass knowledge. No, they’ll need at least the basics. Something to step on, a starting point.

They’ll need behavior norms too. The good guidelines provided by world religions would do the job. Provided as recommendations or commandments that we easily ignore. One more commandment, though: You shall not allow the emergence of a resource-dependent civilization. No economy, no money, no resources.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy put it greatly: "on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons."

Ignoring norms? They could avoid it, if norms are integrated into their minds from birth. Hmm, that’s why I enjoy reading science fiction but never try my hand at it. I’m theorizing about a kinder, different world, where people don’t depend on resources, and yet I’m stuck with the notion of birth. If they get born, they’ll need food and water. Then, it’s a matter of time before they ask for more. So they appear, get created, but they aren’t born. I need to fine-tune that.

What about their ultimate purpose? The meaning of existence for these imaginary humans of mine and their world ....

Peter recalled Ann’s voice, explaining Lil’s beliefs:

The universe creates life, which is capable of observing it, maintaining the system, letting it exist—and create new life in turn. Intelligent life forms manage—rarely but still—to sublimate a Creator. Our universe hasn’t been able to multiply yet. It’s only been expanding, which is the soft version.

The Creator, or Duranki, is someone who can use their thought to create a new universe. That way, Duranki’s home universe achieves its goal, expansion, better. The Universe creates intelligent beings. They create Duranki, and Duranki creates a new universe ....

•◦•◦◦••

To Ann’s displeasure, the rental car office had no available Toyotas. Therefore, they’d have to drive the fifty miles between Beirut and the ruins in the valley of the Litani River in a Mitsubishi Pajero.

The road, like the Litani, bisected a vast high plateau between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon Mountains. The winter resorts in the two mountains offered perfect conditions for winter sports. Their huts, combined with the Mediterranean beaches, created a unique mix. Tourists could enjoy a summer beach and do some skiing in the snowy mountains, all during the same vacation. Had it not been for the political volatility and the sporadic armed conflicts

none of which the tourist brochure mentions,

the region would be a tourist gem.

The fertile valley they were driving through seemed to sport only arable land. A sea of corn, oriental tobacco, vineyards

you have to get wine and arrack somewhere,

vegetables, and orchards slid by. Here and there discreetly cut by the dark green of cannabis. The valley was one of the international depots of raw materials for soft drugs. The government ran campaigns to eradicate the hemp fields with a frequency inversely proportional to their media ostentation. Then the bulldozers moved away, and the production of cannabis resumed its course.

The town, which was their destination, had become world-famous because of the nearby ruins. Although nowadays "town" was an exaggeration, it bore the name of its illustrious predecessor: Baalbek.

Checking in at the hotel was a nominal procedure. Peter proved right in his claim that any foreign passport—bar Israeli or American ones—would stir no interest in any Arab country offering any kind of tourism. The rooms Martin had booked in a small hotel—not that there were large hotels here—welcomed the three, looking and smelling clean.

The three decided—to Peter’s displeasure—to skip the dinner. Half an hour later, they met in the foyer. Although the day was nearly over, they didn’t plan to postpone their visit to the ruins, a stone’s throw away from their hotel. Their true destination was another stone’s throw away to the south of the complex entrance: inside the quarry where the giant rocks had been extracted. Incidentally, those wouldn’t look that giant anymore. After you’d been in the Monolith.

As a Bulgarian would say: Giant, giant—how giant’s giant anyway?

Yeah, Bulgarians love belittling.

The giant

let’s call them that anyway

ruins had witnessed many robberies over the previous centuries. By treasure-hunters, or by builders in need of stones, or by tourists looking for mementos. The government had therefore placed guards to make sure tourists would not scrawl their names along the walls or pillars. And certainly not break off bits as souvenirs. And after four of five in the afternoon, the guards did not let any tourists inside the complex.

Martin had looked all of this up on the Internet and had shared it with his companions. Yet they wished to believe the guards watched over the complex but not the quarry. Hopefully, they would be able to visit it this evening. They all felt the itches of impatience.

Martin had avidly watched countless videos about perpetuum mobiles and free energy. He’d read twice as many articles on the subject. Once, impressed by a video, he even bought an induction cooker and toyed with placing various Tesla coils on top of it. However, he failed to reproduce the Net results: a one-to-five ratio between input and output power.

A 500% efficiency?!

So the prospect of witnessing a real, working perpetuum mobile nagged at him.

Peter thought that, based on the information he’d obtained in the Monolith, he would be able to locate the rock where the prototype had been embedded. He couldn’t be completely certain, though. So he was in a hurry to find the perpetuum mobile, which would help him strike a crushing blow against the Fund’s energy monopoly. Not that a single day mattered to the billions of people who were used to paying their utility bills without protest, yet the idea seemed exhilarating. It goaded him on.

Ann was aware carrying out their task would be harder during the day, what with the tourists and cameras. Regardless of what Peter meant to do with the rock

destroy it, touch it, steal it? The last option seems unlikely—thing’s big,

she’d rather there were no witnesses. Even if the three didn’t draw anyone’s attention, it was enough to enter someone’s photo. They lived in an age of snowballing and swiftly-shared

and often senseless

info. There was a real risk the proud owner of a selfie featuring the three of them in the background would instantly upload it to his profile in one or more social networks. The Fund kept an eye on social networks too.

Indeed, all three of them had their reasons to hurry. Barely discussing them, they headed for the Mitsubishi as if on autopilot.

Peter was the first to realize the foolishness of their idea. He laughed and said, "We’re being dumb. The place is barely a mile away, and half of that is actually a track. Hardly suitable for a car."

The others laughed too. A little nervously. They passed by the SUV and walked on.

After about a quarter of a mile, passed in silence, they made out five or six men on the road ahead. Some were middle-aged and bearded: the kind you wouldn’t want to meet, especially in the dark. Others had barely started shaving regularly. Yet all held AK-47, so you wouldn’t want to meet the young ones either. Especially in the dark.

Now and then, one of these men shot a burst of rounds at the stars, cheered on by his buddies. This kind of evening shooting had turned into a tradition. It had forced hoteliers in the area to beg for or demand a little more moderation: it scared their guests, alright?

It wasn’t clear if the men were having fun or a fight. Arabic sounds—the emphatic ’ah’ and the guttural ’q’—left the unaccustomed ear with the impression that a scandal was in full force, or at least in the making. Peter mused that the Prophet must have known his job when he forbade his disciples to drink alcohol, despite the Arabic origin of the word: al-kuḥl. Their hot blood let them romp well enough without any alcohol. No matter if it came to dancing, driving, shooting, or piloting. Peter had once been on an airliner piloted by a Tunisian. The man must have forgotten he was no longer with the military.

The group saw them. A couple of rifles casually swayed in their direction. All eyes sparked smugly. We’re strong, we’re in control.

Or so they thought, completely unaware how vivid their faces looked in Legion’s optical sight despite the dim light.

Legion lay on a hill more than half a mile away. He watched their body language. He wished to make sure his bullet would blow up the head of the first Arab who tensed his muscles to raise his rifle. The face recognition software embedded in the optical/electronic sight supplied various names, but Legion did not as much as glance at that corner of the display. They could hardly be famous or important: just locals who had paid their modest dues to the Russian military industry by buying its guns and cartridges. Out to do some shooting and shouting, for lack of a better option.

Martin really hoped nobody would shout, "Allahu Akbar," opening the floodgates of a massacre.

•◦•◦•◦◦

The riflemen turned out to be five in all.

"Salamalaykum," said one of the older men, merging the words.

Peter was about to reply with the traditional Wa alaykumu s-salam, but he recalled some Muslims grew annoyed when "infidels" used their greeting. It didn’t seem a good time to annoy anyone. So Peter said in his own language, "Good evening. Do you speak English?"

"Little. From where are you?"

"Bulgaria."

The man considered for a moment. "Bulgaria ... Stoichkov! Good soccer, bad mouth." He laughed.

"Indeed."

"And where you go?" said the man. He seemed the informal leader of the group; the others had surreptitiously crowded behind him.

"To the ruins."

"The ruins?"

"Temples. Of Jupiter, Bacchus, Venus. Remains. Made of stone—do you understand?"

"Aah, yes. Now close. You can’t."

"We can’t? Can we simply have a glance at the quarry?"

"Qua-what?"

The linguistic barrier loomed taller. Yet Peter knew he could not afford to show his impatience. Let alone fear. Despite the rifles, he tried to shoehorn the situation into a casual conversation between curious tourists and equally curious locals.

"The quarry, yes. The place where they got the large rocks."

"You can’t. Now closed."

"Okay. Maybe tomorrow?" The question held an offer for the two groups to part ways and forget they’d ever met.

The offer was accepted, to a degree. "Maybe tomorrow."

But just to a degree. "And now talks with our chief."

"Why?"

"Talks with our chief!" the Arab said and took out an incongruously modern smartphone. He diddled with its display.

Talks with our chief? Who? They? Us?

Peter looked at his friends.

Martin stayed put. He silently enjoyed the absence of the carnage he’d imagined. For now. If someone had to empty the Arabs’ bank accounts or put them on a Most Wanted list, Martin was the man. But physical confrontation wasn’t his strong suit.

Ann didn’t look the Arabs in the eye, but rather stared somewhere around their knees. Peter realized her slightly tense muscles betrayed her readiness to attack. Following one of the several scenarios that she had no doubt played back in her mind. He caught her eye and gave a tiny nod: That is a bad idea.

Even if she succeeded, they’d have to come back on the next morning to see the quarry. They wouldn’t want to find the area ringed with police tape and swarming with officers. That was, if they survived at all. Peter had no idea about the men opposing them. Were their rifles a relic from the long-lasting war? Or did the men belong to Hezbollah? Would one of them turn out to be the police chief’s first cousin? Or were they part of a faction that disapproved of infidels traipsing about their homeland?

Her nod, almost with her eyes only, meant: Yes, you’re right. Yet her muscle tone modified it into, Yes, you’re right, but ....

The man with the beard, rifle and smartphone had almost found his boss’s number, when Ann said clearly, "Ali Jafar."

That got their attention. They shuffled around, whispering. Their leader pointed at the phone near his ear—he’d found the number, obviously—and smiled. "Ali Jafar, yes!" He added mistrustfully, "Knows Ali Jafar?"

He didn’t wait for her reply, because he got through. He talked quickly, yet respectfully. After a brief pause, he concluded his call with, "Na’am, na’am!" Then he turned to the foreigners. "Now waits."

Peter took a breath to say something, to offer ....

But we— Can’t we instead— It’s getting late, we’d better—

yet Ann gave him an insistent look and said, "Waits."

The Arab caught her glance and said, apparently to his men, although in English, "In Bulgaria, maybe woman rules."

They doubled up, as if they’d heard the funniest gag. Giggling, they echoed now in Arabic, now in English, "Woman rules!"

They looked at the ruling woman and guffawed again. Ann met them with a forced grin.

The youngest Arab couldn’t resist shooting a brief burst at the sky. That nearly signed his death sentence.

On his hill, lying in the dust, Legion had taken aim at the head of a young man, who flourished his rifle with less reserve than the rest. And when the barrel of the rifle spewed out a fiery tongue, Legion’s finger tightened on the supple trigger of his carbine. The Arab’s rifle pointed up. Legion released the pressure. Only then did the sound of the burst reach him.

Legion had followed the conversation between the Arabs and the Americans. At least he got the Arabs’ part: they were facing him. He could easily reconstruct the rest. His optical/electronic sight featured night and thermal vision. Face recognition software. And another application which turned lip movement into text. Into subtitles, like in the movies. It supported a variety of languages, including Arabic.

Legion knew fairly much about Ali Jafar. He could predict his reaction. For now, the Americans were safe. Legion stood up, deftly disassembled the carbine, and wrapped it in a piece of cloth, as tattered as his clothes. He made a half-hearted effort to dust his clothes. He got into a white battered pickup, as dusty as himself and of an unrecognizable make, model and year. After a brief bout of painful choking and sneezing, the engine started, and Legion slowly drove towards Ali Jafar’s house.

•◦•◦•◦•

Less than five minutes after the man had called Jafar, a huge slick landrover arrived. The driver got out and politely asked them in. The trio took the back seats. The leader of the merry shooters took the front one. When the landrover drove off, the other men trotted after it; apparently, they wished to know how things would turn out.

Ali Jafar’s house was exactly like the surrounding houses. Except perhaps for its size. Or for sporting the scariest assassin lying face-up on its flat roof, a silenced gun in each hand. Quiet and invisible like dark matter, Legion had easily gotten up there, despite the sentries. Considering the pleasant evening temperatures and the local customs, he was certain he’d be able to hear any conversations across the open windows.

The landrover stopped on a broad alley in front of the house; simultaneously, a man, fortyish, emerged in the rectangle of light formed by the open door. He was tall and dignified, with matte skin and shrewd eyes. The shape of his short black beard obviously required considerable effort to maintain. He looked both imperious and earthly.

Ali Jafar spread his arms wide, as if greeting childhood friends, and said in enviably fluent English, "Welcome, welcome! I’m Ali Jafar. Pleased to have you in my humble home!"

He shook hands with all three of them. They supplied the names in their fake Bulgarian passports.

As they went inside, they heard Ali speak to the man who had detained them. The monologue was in Arabic but it lasted just long enough to show Ali was scolding his subordinate. The man now looked like a dog which had realized it’d made a mess. Then the dog trotted home: tonight’s merrymaking had abruptly ended.

Inside, they were ushered into a spacious hall, perhaps a living room or a dining room. They settled down on thick cushions around a low wooden table. The size of the room and the area of the table suggested this was a rather large family. Led by a rather wealthy head. In these latitudes, poorer families frequently dined in shifts. The first one was the men, of course.

Tea appeared in front of everyone as if by magic. Ali sat down at the short side of the table. Behind him, at the gloomy end of the room, stood two men dressed in black. They’d crossed their arms, covered their faces, and looked as inscrutable as hashishin.

Bodyguards. And they like the part.

Ali caught Ann’s measuring look. "Yes, they’re bodyguards. No, I don’t think you pose a threat to me, my house, the valley, or the country. But I have to maintain appearances, you know." He laughed.

The guests grinned politely. Ann’s grin was the politest.

"First I’d like to apologize for the undeservedly rude attitude you’ve been subjected to. I am sincerely sorry. It’s just that in such a populous community, there’s always the occasional imbecile who decides to take the initiative."

"In fact, nothing much happened," Peter said.

"I’m glad to hear you don’t hold a grudge. We do not want a minor incident to cast a shadow over tourist safety. Baalbek and the region rely on agriculture. And on tourism. You are, as far as I understood, tourists? From Bulgaria?"

"That’s right," said Martin.

"Excellent. But why would tourists need to go to the ruins alone and in the dark? Or to the quarry? Your English, too—it’s somehow, how do I put it? It lacks the effort of softening the hard Bulgarian ’r’ I’ve noticed while speaking with my business partners from Bulgaria. You three sound too American."

That was what had always kept Peter on edge around Arabs. They might be hospitable, courteous, call you "friend" or "brother." Yet you could never tell what they thought.

Ann had a few second-hand impressions about Ali Jafar. Meeting him in the person confirmed them. He was a man not to be fooled with. Therefore, before the brief pause could turn into a fraught one, she took the initiative. "Actually, now it’s us who owe you an apology. We’re indeed Americans but didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention. You know, Americans in an Arab country."

Ali nodded.

Ann went on, "The proper course of action, and indeed what we intended to do, would’ve been to call you first before visiting the quarry. Our lack of tact stemmed from our lack of patience. We’re Hakim’s friends."

"Aah, Hakim. Allah give him health! It’s a pleasure working with him. Hakim’s friends are my friends too."

There we go again: friend, brother, Peter thought.

"But why in the dark? You aren’t treasure-hunters, are you? I’m joking: you don’t have the appropriate equipment."

"We are not. We just want to measure certain rocks to check a theory. And with all the tourists during the day, it’ll be harder," Ann lied without batting a lid.

"I see."

"Please allow me, as a token of our apologies and respect, to offer you a small gift." Ann reached out to Martin.

He opened his backpack and reached inside. The bodyguards’ hands dropped, their bodies tensed. Ali nodded at them and they resumed their previous stances. Martin slowly pulled out the linen-wrapped dagger, while Ali peered at the backpack. He was probably looking for the tape measure they were going to use for their professed purpose.

Ann unwrapped the dagger and set it on the table opposite Ali Jafar.

"Yeees, Hakim has made you thoroughly familiar with my interests. His name is well deserved, Allah give him health!" Ali spun the dagger in amazement, and the gems on the handle and sheath cast colorful reflections on his face. Like in a disco. That was exactly how a gifted illustrator of children’s books would depict Aladdin in that famous cave.

"However, I cannot accept." He put the dagger back on the table. There was a fleeting yet unmistakable expression on his face: that of a kid who’d been forbidden to unwrap his gift before Christmas Eve.

"But why? Isn’t it appropriate?"

"Quite the contrary! However, Ali Jafar would not enjoy his present position and universal respect if he merely took what he liked. I can purchase it from you, exchange it for another item, but I cannot simply take it. That would amount to racketeering. It’s too expensive for a gift."

"I see," said Ann. "It’s our general policy not to sell such objects. We donate them to museums around the world. Or swap them for other artifacts."

"Indeed, indeed," sighed Ali. "So here’s what I propose. For now, please keep it. Do not send it to any museums for a while. I hope I’ll soon be able to offer you an item fitting for an exchange in both your eyes and mine. I’m also going to provide you with unimpeded access to the quarry, where you can do your measurements. Tomorrow, though. It’s too late now. Please accept my help as a deposit for our future deal. The way I accepted your readiness to give me the dagger as a gift. Tomorrow, between eight and noon, the quarry’s going to be all yours. Is that fine with you?"

It was quite fine, and they didn’t seem to have other options. So Ann accepted.

"Then let us have dinner." Ali called something at the door.

Above, Legion decided he was unlikely to learn anything new for the night, except for the menu, and silently dissolved into the dark.

Ann, Peter and Martin could not afford to follow suit. Unless they wished to offend their host, rejecting his hospitality. They didn’t. Besides, the menu proved remarkable. So remarkable that the frequency of the exchanged phrases grew low even in outer space terms.

Well, all that delicious Jordanian cuisine did its apprenticeship in Lebanon, Peter mused between two bites.

•◦•◦••◦

At eight sharp, they were at the entrance of the quarry. In general, it didn’t have one, but today was an exception. Complete with a yellow plastic tape and an armed police officer. When they got near, he raised the tape. He said something in Arabic—the only part they got was the greeting plus "Jafar." They thanked him and entered the enclosure.

Small clumps of tourists stood beyond the tape and grudgingly shrugged before walking away to the ruins. Ali Jafar had kept his word: the whole perimeter of the quarry had been fenced off. The trio was all on their own with the stone blocks still jutting from the rock. There were a few of these that had been fully separated but hadn’t reached their destination for some reason.

"Which one’s ours?" Martin said.

Peter walked among the blocks, touching them one by one. "I don’t know yet."

Martin couldn’t see any way to make himself useful in this search, so he sat down on a stone. Sticking to the shadow, despite the early hour. Ann casually followed Peter, her eyes scanning the surroundings like a pair of radars. They were the only ones with access to the quarry, but that didn’t apply to lines of sight.

"Martin, please act as if you’re measuring the rocks. Or start measuring them for real. They may be watching us."

The hacker rose reluctantly, dusted himself, and took the fifteen-foot tape measure they’d bought after the lying spree the previous night. He set down to work. At a theatrically slow pace. Grunts and all.

A dozen minutes and a score of stones later, Peter stopped by a completely separate, half-buried rock. It was neither the largest there nor particularly small.

Five to six hundred tonnes.

There, under the surface, Peter could sense what he’d been looking for.


He checked the impulse to yell for his companions. He merely gave them an insistent look. Ann and Martin got it and nimbly, yet nowhere near at a run joined him.

"That’s it! Found it."

"Now what? We can’t blow it up. Nor can we gift wrap it and declare it as a memento at the border," said Martin.

"We won’t need to," Peter said calmly. "A while ago, I modified an anthill. Without harming the ants inside. Then ... other things too. I mean to extract the prototype in a similar way."

"But that’s not the crumbly earth of an anthill! Or, for that matter, that oaken door you restored in front of my eyes. That’s stone, man!"

"I think the substance doesn’t matter. The principle’s the same."

Seymour’s words sprang into Peter’s mind: rather than circling around the lead ingot with tubes and incantations, alchemists only need to wish for a gold ingot.

"We only need wish for the prototype to emerge. Have some faith."

"Faith, huh? Shall I look for a priest then? Or a mullah? It’d save some effort," Martin muttered.

Peter paid no mind to him. He’d already turned to the corner of the block, placed his hands on its smooth walls, and closed his eyes.

When he had first discovered he was capable of modifying matter, whenever his eyes were closed, blueprints, chemical formulae, or math equations flitted through his mind. Gradually, he’d found out he could do without them. They were merely a symbol, an essence, a justification, or a shadow of his actual desire. He realized desires and faith were all that mattered. With a few caveats: you had to be a creative type

I make and modify,

to have reached Enia, and to be convinced that the world was as you shaped it in your thoughts.

Peter—not smugly, but matter-of-factly—knew he was far from that beginning now, and those caveats had been fulfilled. He skipped the part with the formulae and the blueprints. They obediently didn’t turn up. All that he saw were the color veils.

When I figured out the dots were numbers, the veils used to cover them, obstructing my sight. Now that the numbers are gone, it seems I pay more attention to the color veils themselves. But what if I ignore the lightning-limned retreat of the crimson spots before the assault of the purple? And the fascinating diffusion of the yellow against the near-black? If I concentrate on a single frozen image out of this color mess, that image looks suspiciously like ... photos from the Hubble Telescope?! Galaxies? Ah, this will have to wait until another time.

Peter ignored the color spots and veils and saw-sensed the structure of the rock. The precise location of the prototype. It was inside a hollow at the geometric center of the rock. Peter had imagined the prototype to be as large as a car engine. He’d been mistaken.

Something metallic appeared first. As if the stone was some gel which helpfully slid away from the emerging engine. There came the axle. Part of the casing. The first disk along with something that looked like a connecting rod and a piston in an internal combustion engine. The second disk, the third ... as if the stone were giving birth to the engine. The fourth disk popped out. Just like the rest, shiny magnets adorned its periphery. The last part to appear was the ... flywheel. It couldn’t be anything else.

Peter held the prototype in his hands! Could such a tiny thing, the size of a cat

13 by 21 by 34 centimeters—there’s another Phi, supplied the high-res

—could it solve humanity’s energy issues?!

It can! The ancients wouldn’t provide something inefficient with such an efficient storage.

The thing was exquisitely made. A graceful floral decoration covered the bronze casing. In fact, everything was made of bronze, except for the magnets. Even the bearings around the central axle and at the end of the connecting rods.

Bronze. It does not attract the magnets.

The whole prototype looked, not so much as the product of engineering thought, but as a science-fictional prop. Some steampunk about the 18th or 19th century. But subtler. It looked as if the inventor of the internal combustion engine had seen it in his dreams but hadn’t figured out its principles. So he’d replaced the magnetic forces by combustible gasoline vapors.

The trio could well spend the whole day staring at the engine, but something broke their reverie. Yes ... they’d better hide it.

Martin

acting all on his own ... can you imagine?

took his priceless laptop out of its backpack and replaced it by the prototype. He gave the backpack to Peter and carried the laptop in one hand, like a tray. He used his other hand to draw the engine on a tissue.


Now almost at a run, but still slowly enough not to draw anyone’s attention, the three headed for their hotel.

•◦•◦•••

From the rooftop of the tallest building in the vicinity, Legion watched them through the optical sight. He’d picked a spot that would keep him out of sight. He could have mingled with the tourists and watched from close-by, yet:

a) he’d seen the police cordon off the area in the early morning,

and

b) he didn’t want them to notice him.

I don’t want her to notice me.

He watched the officer let them in—and stop everybody else. He watched them wandering around, trying to look busy. He watched them gather round a rock. He didn’t see what they took—the rock obstructed his line of sight—but afterwards, the backpack, which was their only piece of luggage, looked heavier and bulkier, and Martin carried his laptop in his hand.

The object mattered little to Legion, whether it was an archaeological discovery, a weapon, or a treasure. However, it would definitely matter if it could tell him why the Fund had tried to assign the group to him.

•◦••◦◦◦

Back in Martin’s room, they left the backpack on the bed. Peter opened it slowly and carefully—almost in awe. The engine did draw the eye. Design, proportions, decorations: it was all immaculate. A genuine display of long-lost craftsmanship. It also exuded a sense of subdued power.

Martin was the first to notice why the power seemed subdued. "But it ain’t rotating? If it’s a perpetuum mobile, it’s supposed to work, right?"

Indeed it did not.

Peter took it up and scrutinized it. The high-res solved the problem. He smiled and placed the engine on the hard surface of the hotel cupboard, by the TV set. Then he pointed at a pin, barely noticeable among the decorations. Ann pressed the pin. It sank a little, then popped up. The disks started spinning, at first slowly and uncertainly, pulling along the attached pistons. They got faster then. And faster. Their speed grew to the point where you couldn’t see the pistons’ reciprocating motion, only a bronze haze. It was accompanied by a surprisingly soft buzz.

Peter brushed the casing and said, "About 19,200 revs."

"Car engines don’t do more than five or six thousand," Martin said. "Is it powerful enough to move a car?"

"It has everything. Speed, power, elegance. You can attach a dynamo to the axle. A car clutch. A water pump. If you scale it up—mind this is just a model—you can put even plane or helicopter blades."

"Sounds like the days of the Fund’s energy monopoly are numbered," grinned Martin.

"Yes. As long as we can keep it long enough to upload detailed do-it-yourself blueprints online." Ann pressed the pin, and the engine obediently fell silent.

"Martin, you have 3D modeling software, don’t you?" Peter lifted the engine again.

"You bet! I even know how to use it."

"So let’s get down to it. The high-res will provide me with all dimensions, materials and angles, and I’ll list them for you. We’re going to draw the blueprints."

"Okie, Pete."

And they got down to it. Ann didn’t feel like being witness to the boys’ working, so she said she was going to survey the hotel area for anything suspicious. Besides, she had to report to Seymour. She left the room and headed for the foyer.

The foyer was properly air-conditioned, hence properly populated. Ann could sense no danger at first sight, but she knew she’d need a little more time to examine everyone. She chose a table and a seat that allowed her to see the whole room. When a waiter approached her with a welcoming and questioning expression, she used a phrase she’d learned from Peter. She didn’t feel like drinking coffee, but she needed an excuse to stay here, and she liked the sound of the words. "Wahid qahua qahila, qsyr."

Her pale skin and pronunciation couldn’t fool him she was Arabian, yet she made his day anyway. A foreign beauty who’d bothered to learn a little of his language. The young man laughed and fairly flew away to bring her order.

As she waited for the coffee, Ann absently held a tourist brochure in front of her face, surveying the customers above it. Later, she went on doing it above the rim of the cup she often raised to her lips. She found nobody dangerous. Or plain shady. She decided that despite the din, she could make one of the phone calls she’d had in mind.

"Hello? Hakim?"

"..."

"I didn’t have to use the gift. How can I bring it back to you? I’m at the Heliopolis Inn."

"..."

"Yes, he was impressed. He asked that you keep it for a while. He’s thinking about a barter."

"..."

"Thank you, Hakim, for everything. Later."

The receptionist had the right size of envelope: A3. A4 couldn’t quite fit the linen-wrapped dagger. Ann wrote Hakim’s name on the envelope and sealed the dagger inside. She explained to the receptionist that said Hakim would come and get the envelope. She handed him an extra twenty dollars.

Hakim said this is safe enough. Must be right: he is a local. He knows best. Maybe when I paid, I made a deal with the receptionist. Arabs, like their Jewish cousins, are traders.

Her talk with Ummia Shidim required certain privacy. She found enough outside, in the heat, in an alley in the hotel’s courtyard. She dialed the number. "Grandpa, we found it!"

The call veered into an unexpected direction. They seemed to have run out of luck. Ann hung up with a troubled face and walked back to their room, no spring in her step.

•◦••◦◦•

Charles had to find out. He’d made up his mind to go to the nearby town and buy a paper. Have a look at its date. Buy something else and check the date on the receipt.

He locked the house, leaving Collie inside, and drove the old pickup along the macadam. Some twenty yards before reaching the main, asphalt road, he felt a surge of anxiety. As if he’d sucked on a darn mighty, electric joint. The surge was so tangible, he automatically slowed down, all but pulled over. Just in time too: two black SUVs appeared mere yards away from him. He could swear they hadn’t been there a minute ago, and now they blocked his way, threatening and ruthless. He called on all of his driving experience, squeezed every last ounce of juice from the Ford’s brakes, and came to a halt inches away from the SUVs. His fright transformed into anger and popped him outside to ask the idiots what they thought they were. He saw them then, and he knew. The idiots thought they were the military, paramilitary, commandos, mercenaries, or another sort of cutthroats.

From behind the various barrels pointed at his face, a voice said, "Mister Barton, you’re coming with us."

It wasn’t a greeting, a question, or a suggestion. There was no exclamation point at the end. A mere fact.

Charles raised his hands in resignation and followed them.

This has anything to do with Peter? I hope he’s fine! Will I be able to come back and feed the dog, or at least let him out?

Ah, and what date’s today, dammit?

•◦••◦•◦

"Pete, we have an issue with these values."

"Which ones?"

"The magnets’ force of attraction/repulsion. The strongest rare earth magnet this size we can order has about two thirds the power of what you’ve told me. If we make a replica using the available weaker magnets, we may lose output. Or it won’t work at all."

"It may merely reach lower revs."

"I dunno. We won’t know until we’ve made a model. By the way, is that the only source of free energy you snatched from the Kozyrev mirror? Do we have plan B, if the magnets don’t work?"

"No, it wasn’t the only source. Thing is, this one’s mechanical. Simple and accessible. Now, in the mirror ...

Seymour said something about Tesla. That he’d been right to claim we’re swimming inside an ocean of energy. That space is full of ether, that elusive substance whose electromagnetic properties are gravitation and magnetism.

... I momentarily brushed against schematics of quaint coils, circuit breakers, and extravagant electronic elements. They draw unlimited amounts of electricity from, uh, space, vacuum, the ether, if you will. But they seemed too complex. Unfeasible."

"Pity Nikola Tesla’s dead and we can’t ask him! What you describe sounds awfully like his stuff."

"Pity indeed. Let’s focus on our engine, though. Give me a sec." Peter sat down next to Martin and gazed at the laptop screen, memorizing the blueprint. He picked up the ancient engine and closed his eyes.

Okay. I create and modify objects. Hmm. That intuition has never lied to me about the way things work. Two thirds? 66%. If we assume it’ll spin at all. 66 plus 66 gives 132. Percent. That’s not pure efficiency, though, just the magnetic force. Because the mass will increase too. We’ll double these. For more power. Add another shaft in the center? We’ll have to tie them with a strap or a chain to preserve the synchronization. We’ll also increase the mass of the flywheel. Some power will dissipate because of the greater friction. Ultimately, we should approach the parameters of the Prototype.

Peter opened his eyes and explained the new configuration to Martin. The hacker stared at him but obediently copied the elements. Then he coupled everything together. The two studied the model on the screen.



And they thought simultaneously,

Seems it’ll work? It’s gotta work!

I believe it’s going to work.

•◦••◦••

The blueprints, the 3D model, and the description were ready. Martin uploaded them to a couple of online clouds and to a BlackNet site he used as a backup storage. He wanted to make sure there’d be more than one copy.

Ann entered the room. Her expression immediately drew the men’s attention.

"I talked with Seymour."

"And?"

"They have your father, Peter."

"But ... how?! Wasn’t he Shifted to a safe place .... He gave me his word!" Peter bowed his head and squeezed his temples.

"I don’t know how it happened. I’m sorry. Remember, the Fund’s also full of people with Enia. They want to meet you. They’ll probably want to exchange Charles for you. Given their persistence, you must be important to them. They left me alone, more or less, after their first try.

"Now ... it’s your choice. I’m ready to support you. Whatever you choose." Ann bowed her head too. She didn’t look like the energetic, self-confident Ann they knew. She was angry. Desperate. Embarrassed, ashamed. Ashamed that the man she trusted a hundred percent, the man she called "grandpa" had ... yeah, he’d botched it up. Now Peter could lose his father, and Lil could lose Peter.

Lil? What about me?

"What can we do?"

"You can go to them. They’ll try to recruit you. If they fail, they’ll kill you. Probably your father too."

"And what are our odds of freeing him?"

"Slim. Seymour wouldn’t approve my involvement in this sort of rescue op, but as I said, I’m going to support you regardless of his approval. We can’t rely on Lil reinforcements. I have colleagues with skills similar to mine, but I don’t think they’ll disobey Ummia Shidim’s word. The place where they keep Charles is an impregnable fortress. The Fund’s aware we may try to free him. So the fortress will be doubly impregnable. And there’s just two of us—"

"Three," Martin said. He recalled Ann’s look when he threw up at the sight of those dead bodies. Ann seemed to recall that too. So Martin added, "I’m no fighter, alright. But you wouldn’t mind a bit of tech support, would ya?"

Ann gave him a searching look. Then an admiring one. She nodded her thanks. "One more thing. Seymour King insisted we should postpone publishing the blueprints for the perpetuum mobile online. Martin, you haven’t told the whole world yet, right?"

"Nope. Peter and me think that after those dudes missed us in Bulgaria, it’ll be relatively safe to go back there now. I ordered the most powerful magnets I could find online. A small company will build the parts. A Bulgarian one. Peter and me wanna go back to Bulgaria and make our own engine. Make sure it works. Why the hell would Seymour want us to delay? Isn’t he Lil’s honcho? Wouldn’t he have a blast if the Fund loses its power monopoly?"

"He didn’t say. Perhaps he means to use it as a bargaining chip. I don’t know."

"When do they want to meet me?" asked Peter.

"In three days. In the US."

"So we have time to assemble the engine in Bulgaria and then go and free Charles."

"So we’re freeing him? That building is impregnable."

Over the past days, Peter had done plenty of experiments in transforming matter. Without any observers. He no longer limited himself to small things like the throwing knives, the anthill, or pulling the engine out of the stone. He’d been amazed to find that he’d grown very good at modifications.

"Ann, it’s just a building. I can transform it into a Faberge egg if I wish."

His look said that he really could.

•◦•••◦◦

Ann had told Seymour their location on the phone. In turn, he’d done his best to make their travel easier. At the Beirut International Airport, a brand-new Cessna waited for them. Along with their brand-new diplomatic passports—all fakes. Ann got worried it was a uniformed man from the airport security who delivered the passports.

Is he working for Lil too?

"You forgot them at the Information Desk," the officer said, handed them the passports, and ambled away. Like a true Lebanese.

While Ann struggled with her worry, her companions opened their passports and became aware of the advantages conferred by the word "diplomatic."

Without further ado or unwanted checks, they loaded their meager, yet invaluable luggage on the plane. When it took off, they told the pilot to change their destination. Not the US. Bulgaria.

•◦•••◦•

Charles couldn’t say they treated him ill. His room didn’t look much different from a hotel one. It had a bathroom with a shower, a tray full of sandwiches, coffee, water, and orange juice on the table. A TV and a bed. A phone that didn’t work: he’d checked. A door: locked. Windows: armored. He’d checked them too—with the chair. Probably it also had soundproof walls. Charles didn’t check that. He merely conjectured.

They’d brought him here with a black bag on his head. And with a panoply of images inside his head—those images, oh my. The sight outside the window consisted of a little well-kept lawn and a lot of woods.

Charles sat down on the edge of the bed, resolved to consider his situation calmly and soberly. There wasn’t much to consider: no-one had dropped a word since the ranch. He had nothing to build on. However, somehow he sensed that Peter was in danger too. Charles didn’t know what kind of danger. Nor did he care what was going to happen to him: his life had been interesting and satisfying. Now he could only pray for Peter.

•◦••••◦

They landed in Sofia. They asked the pilot to wait for them, offering him money for a hangar, fuel, his stay, or his time.

The large ruddy man, whose mustache was a hybrid between Bulgarian revolutionary Philip Totyu’s and Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot’s, just smiled at them. "No prob. The plane’s all yours. Until the day after tomorrow."

The passports spared them formalities again. The three rented a car. This time Ann didn’t even bother checking if the catalog offered any Land Cruisers. She was tense, constantly peering over her shoulder. She barely spoke.

Already back in Lebanon, they’d decided not to push their luck going to Tserovo. They went to Vratsa instead. The town was eighty miles to the north of Sofia. This time, they avoided the Iskar Gorge, so they didn’t even pass by Tserovo. They chose the highway to Botevgrad and then E79 to Vratsa. The trip took them an hour and a half. In Vratsa, Martin, under an assumed name, kept a furnished apartment. It would be their new abode.

At the door of the apartment, they found two stickers from a courier company, notifying them the magnets and the engine parts had arrived. Martin removed the stickers, unlocked, motioned for Ann and Peter to make themselves at home, and went to get the deliveries.

Ann went to take a shower, and Peter sprawled on the sofa in the living room. A nap snuck up on him. He was thirsty but chose to ignore the thirst; his tiredness was stronger.

•◦•••••

Water.

According to the Cherokee, rivers are the Earth’s circulatory system.

Rainmaking rites inform the culture of numerous tribal communities.

Water is the most refreshing drink if you’re thirsty.

Hindus worship the Ganges. All their legends link it to deities.

The Niles occupied a prominent position in ancient Egypt’s religion.

John used water to baptize Jesus. It’s also a common ritual for Shintoists, Confucians, and Hindus as a symbol of purification from sin.

In Orthodox Christianity, holy water plays a crucial role in rites and mysteries. In churches, it’s used to baptize and consecrate. Nearly all monasteries have their own healing miraculous spring.

One of the most sacred Islamic sites is the Zamzam Well in the center of Mecca.

Our bodies are made of 70-75% water.

Primitive Polynesian, tribal African, and developed Western communities—so different, and yet unified in their belief you shouldn’t gaze at running water, because it is like gazing into God’s eyes—or your own soul.

The ancients believed that the place where two rivers joined was sacred.

Sumerian creation myths tell of the land being born from the union of Apsu, fresh water, and Tiamat, salt water.

The water of life.

The Fountain of Youth.

The word "water" stood out like a totem.

••◦◦◦◦◦

Some forty minutes later, Martin came back with the packages. They woke up Peter and tore apart the boxes, eager as kids. When they cleared away the wrapping, the coffee table sported a row of shiny magnets. Next to them stood the bronze plates that made up the casing of the engine. There were also several disks with grooves for the magnets, a few shafts—all in all, everything they needed, smelling new and made to spec.

While the men assembled the engine, Ann paced around, rarely peeking over their shoulders

because that’s a male thing, isn’t it?

but often through the closed blinds at the street below.

"You know," said Peter, aiming for some small talk during the assembly process—hopefully, it would take his mind off Charles’s plight too, "I’ve been having one and the same dream lately. Well, not exactly. It’s more like a TV show. To be continued!" He grinned at them. "Martin, I’ve told you I’m not interested in astronomy, haven’t I? Well, my dream is explicitly astronomical."

He summarized the "TV show" for them. When he reached the part about the Earthlike planet, he noticed Ann had been holding the blinds open with two fingers for a while, but she was watching him. Searchingly? Quizzically? Tensely.

"So what do you two say to that?"

"That we must try it," said Martin, nodding at the assembled engine.

Ann looked away, withdrew her fingers, and only now realized they hurt.

"It works perfectly." Peter removed his hand from the casing. "The revs are slightly lower than the original ones, but it has enough power to meet the electricity needs of a household. Forever." He decided to spare them the exact numbers.

"We can try stress testing it. Like, I can take the motor from the washing machine and connect these guys into a generator." Martin sounded increasingly enthusiastic, his eyes glued to the haze caused by the mad speed of the pistons.

"Trust me, there’s no need. The blueprints and notes are on your laptop, right?"

"Yep."

"Then we only need Ann to lend us her phone so we can film the engine and upload the video."

"But Ummia Shidim asked—" Ann started.

"I know what he asked. However, this thing is more important than his request. Than my Lil membership! Than my patent! Yes, I’m worried about Dad and am going to do my best to free him. But we’re on the verge of destroying the Fund’s energy monopoly. We have to do it now. We won’t accomplish anything if, for example, we go outside before making the engine public—and run into five teams of cutthroats, who do us in and take both the prototype and our engine.

"Oh, by the by, Martin, would you put me through to Bill Harknes? We’re approaching our denouement, and it doesn’t matter if anybody taps us. I want to tell Bill to withdraw the patent docs. Or better even, patent the system but price the license at one cent. That’s what inventions are meant to be: affordable."

"Peter, my heart says you’re right. My mind says when the Fund sees the engine online, they may kill Charles. Out of spite."

"I don’t believe that. Not until the day after tomorrow. They’re businessmen, and they’ve arranged a business meeting with us then."

"It’s your choice." Ann gave him her smartphone.

He gave it to Martin. Martin made the video and gave the phone back to Ann.

Then he rushed to upload it. He muttered to himself, as if he were alone. "Okie, Youtube may ban it, but I’m gonna put it on a couple of other sites. Yeah, that one too! The Russian bros are gonna spread it like lo and behold. I haven’t sent the blueprints and the specs to the Ukrainian, Australian and Chinese servers yet. Plus this script that’s gonna send it to all file sharing machines I can think of. Forums, yep, forums matter. Lemme top-priority register it in the search engines. And an email with a zipped attachment to the addresses in my collection of private data. Gawd, must be half the emails in the world?! Ah, fine, only thirty percent ... thirtyish. With a tiny script that would resend them—twice. From a different sender, to keep ’em away from spam filters. DarkNet now. The depositories ... riiight. Hacker groups, each member’s personal email ...."

For every word of his, his fingers typed two or three.

"Finally, if they somehow get to hush up all of that— Nah, I don’t believe it. That’s not your average upload. It’s like a tidal wave! And I hope it spreads like mycosis. So, even if they erase everything and—God forbid it—get their hands on my comp, I’m gonna copy it to a pair of satellites I hacked as a child. Um ... that’s it, more or less," Martin said simply and leaned back. "Now what?"

"Now to the US. Let’s prepare for the business meeting."

They hadn’t noticed when Ann had left the room. They only saw her as she came back. She held her smartphone, which she’d used to give Seymour a summary of Peter’s dreams.

I may be disappointed with Ummia Shidim, but loyalty still takes precedence on my list of priorities.

••◦◦◦◦•

All the way back to Sofia, Martin didn’t say a word. He was engrossed in whatever he was doing on his laptop.

Near the end of the journey, he checked the traffic to his sites and forums and smugly said, "In two hours, some two million downloads! Our engine is the new e-VIP, baby!"

••◦◦◦•◦

"Two million?! Are you certain?"

"Positive, sir. We’re trying to limit the access to this ... engine. We’re shutting down sites, but it’s no use. We aren’t fast enough. While Gorsky and Podolsky’s department take one down, three more spring up."

"And is it certain that ... the thing works?"

"Our lab built an engine right away. It’s super efficient. Things are as serious as a brain hemorrhage, sir."

"Don’t play the smart aleck, Zander.

You dumbhead.

The instant I fire you, two thirds of out teams will form a line from here to Kathmandu, howling for your entrails. So—do you have any actual ideas?" the Chair said.

"Our only option left—and mind you, it’s quite radical—is to ... stop the Internet. Then I seek out those two million people, and their computers ...." Emil didn’t finish his sentence. He was thinking about the long line. He could fairly see them shove each other, trying to jump the line.

"Nonsense! That’s not radical—it’s ridiculous! Perhaps I should really fire you, Zander. Why, in the 21st century, when the international financial system so depends on the ones and zeros circulating from computer to computer .... I’m sure any loss of control over energy production will be more acceptable for us than the crash of all the stock exchanges, banks and everything else we own. We can appropriate and patent the blasted thing, or criminalize its construction or exploitation .... But then we would demolish the Computors’ notion they live in a democracy. The ragamuffins will rise. And we’re back to a financial meltdown. Indeed, it is a bit too late for that." The Chair seemed to be talking to himself now.

••◦◦◦••

When the narrow private road left the forest, they felt as if they’d ended up in England. A perfectly maintained lawn generously surrounded the house. Calling it a "house" would be an understatement’s understatement. There were three floors spanning at least twenty thousand square feet. The arches, the pillars, and the ivy did little to dampen the sense of a medieval granite fortress. A tall wall encircled everything, its only entrance just opposite the three: a closed double-winged ten-feet gate made of wrought iron. Plus a security booth.

The Toyota hauled up. Martin opened his laptop on the backseat. Peter and Ann got out and headed for the gate, which had slid ajar. A merc faced them, looking between Peter’s photo on the inner side of his sleeve and Peter’s face. The index finger of his other hand squeezed the submachine gun leveled at Ann. "Just him."

"You’re joking." Ann smiled at him, nothing smiling in her predatory expression.

"Hang on," Peter said, touching his shoulder.

The merc didn’t flinch. Nor did he turn the barrel away from Ann. He knew who she was. And he knew Peter was the honcho of some company. A pencil pusher the higher-ups wished to see.

"Is this what you’re going to stop us with?" Peter nodded at the gun.

The merc automatically looked down—and threw his hand open, staring as if a toon tattoo had appeared there after a bachelor party. Instead of a Beretta ARX 160, he saw himself holding a black mamba.

His gun clattered on the gravel

asphalt giving way to white gravel ... wouldn’t be stylish otherwise,

and his nose crunched under Ann’s right fist.

Ann glanced over her shoulder and called to Martin, "Now!"

Martin glanced at the "now" on his screen and pressed Enter.

Ann and Peter headed for the entrance of the manor just in time to see the two drones above the gate stop buzzing and almost simultaneously plunge into the grass.

The images on the monitors in the command room switched to white noise.

Which is a rather underrated spectacle. Certain astronomers think some of that "noise" is in fact an echo of the Big Bang.

Then the power went out. The echo of the Big Bang stayed on the monitors owing to the UPS. Podolsky and Gorsky exchanged glances and started clacking on their keyboards. They’d figured out

correctly

that when facing Shields, it made more sense not to look for someone with a hack-saw near the cables, but try to regain control over their video surveillance and power supply by electronic means. However, they had to do that online, where they quickly and disgruntlingly found out their comms were experiencing a DoS attack of an unprecedented fury. That was not the end of it, either. The unit in the basement should’ve started generating power a long time, but it kept an imperturbable silence. The mercs’ throat mikes and their body cams were self-powered and used encrypted frequencies, but they’d taken leave too. Sick leave.

Martin enjoyed a good rep in his circles. Something of a celeb status even. So, when he’d asked his hacker acquaintances for help, more than eighty percent agreed. The majority of the other twenty percent joined en route, when they found out Martin had been the uploader of "the Engine." The coordinated actions of that small yet elite army were transforming the Fund’s mercenaries and IT specialists into a tumbling, mechanical mix of individuals. Brownian particles.

Two such individuals leapt in front of Ann and Peter at the entrance of the manor, in the corridor. The glare of the merc opposite Peter made it clear the man was hardly inclined to escort Peter to the Chair. Peter yanked back and pressed his back to the wall. That let his palms touch the building, which led to a massive parallelepiped made of bricks, cement and stone cladding rumble out of the wall between him and the merc.

Poor guy did what he did best. He pulled the trigger. A bullet rebounded and found his eye.

His mate fell at the same time. Ann had shot him nearly point-blank.

She and Peter moved on. The corridor expanded into a marvelous vestibule spanning two floors. There were marble statues, columns, baroque balustrades, and even a small fountain.

Gosh!

Although no longer as coordinated as planned, the mercs still had no problem recognizing the intruders. Two of them saw Ann and Peter, shouted, and soon enough three more aimed their guns from the second floor of the vestibule. There was no time to look for cover; the two Glocks in Ann’s hands spewed fire and death, as Peter crouched and laid his hands on the floor.

The second floor now looked like a grotesque hybrid between a Lego and a poorly played game of Tetris. Columns and walls changed their places and sizes. Some of the priceless oil paintings—all originals—which adorned the Fund’s headquarters slid into the dust. Balustrades abruptly grew up, deflecting the mercs’ fire.

Peter didn’t see the sixth merc in time

and I should have—these guys always move in three.

It was Ann’s shout that alerted him to the new menace. Peter found the point where her guns focused—and his eyes found the merciless blackness inside the barrel aimed at his head. And the finger that was gleefully squeezing the soft trigger.

For a nanosecond, Peter got really scared. Then he understood why Ann’s guns were silent. Due to her different position, the merc had a clear line of sight to Peter, while Ann could see only part of his barrel. The third thing that happened in that fraction of a second was the merc pulling the trigger—and missing. Because while Ann was preparing for an impossible shot at the merc’s gun, Peter changed the visibility between her and the man. Some dozen feet of concrete disappeared beneath the merc’s feet. As he fell, he shot, but he only hit the high ceiling. While Ann’s Glocks hit him in mid-flight. A lot of times. The result was an uninjured Peter, a blood-splashed wall, and a body that had crashed quite a way back from the spot that gravity had readied for it.

While Ann reloaded, she and Peter exchanged looks, sympathy, stress, joy, belief and disbelief that could only pass between people who had just slipped death. They climbed the stairs to the second floor. Without any words. It seemed sensible enough to follow the positions of the eliminated enemies.

And they were right. However, at the next T-shaped juncture, their luck ran out. From each side, a team opened fire on them.

Ann paid them back plenty. Peter couldn’t tell what she did: most of the time, she moved so fast her body looked blurred

despite of my upgraded senses.

He tried to make a cover from the near walls, yet Ann changed her position too often. She’d leave behind a transforming wall, then a raising floor ....

Suddenly, Peter realized there were only two opponents left. One on the left, playing cat and mouse with Ann, and the other— Peter glanced over his right shoulder. He heard Ann’s Glock shoot once

there goes the left guy, I guess

and saw the gun pointed at his face. He directed all of his will into his hand pressed against the wall.

I won’t make it! End of the road.

The merc pulled the trigger, Peter abruptly crouched in a desperate attempt to avoid the bullet. Something

charcoal

obstructed his view at the same time as the gunshot.

Is that what death’s like?

Right after the chilling thought, Peter’s hand made contact with the floor, and he realized the charcoal thing had been Ann. Ann, who had taken the bullet. Ann, who was slowly sliding into his lap.

The concentration and the volume of his ire reached an unrivaled peak. Peter didn’t just throw part of the brick wall at the merc. He lowered the density of the man’s body by half. The density of the wall too. Then he jumbled them up and turned around.

Paying no heed to the inhuman sounds made by the mercenary/wall thing, Peter tenderly caught Ann and laid her on the floor. She’d been hit in the throat—just above the rim of her protective leotard.

"Ann! Ann!"

Lord, no, please! No!

"Aaaaann!!!"

He shook her, squeezed her. He could barely feel any life in her body.

You can! You can save her! If you desire it strongly enough!

One of his hands was on her forehead. The other tried to stop the blood from the wound. He felt the structure of her skin and muscles. The windpipe and the damaged vertebra. He started setting them. Joining each nerve, muscle fiber or capillary with its torn extension. Each bone pore and fragment ....

Let it work! It must work!

"What happened?" Ann said. Peter snapped his eyes open.

"They got you, but I guess they hit the leotard .... You’re okay. Lord, you’re okay!"

Ann sat up and probed around her throat. There was no wound, no scar, no blood. "I don’t think it was the leotard."

"Never mind that," Peter said. "I’m glad you’re alive ... and thank you for keeping me alive."

"Let’s go. Almost there," she said. Then she seemed to think better of it; she grabbed Peter by the labels as he tried to rise. Their lips met in a brief but savage kiss.

Both knew they would remember it for the rest of their lives.


***


Ten yards away, the Chair and Emil Zander stood in the large granite meeting room at the end of the corridor. When they’d realized things were getting out of hand, they’d taken Charles Barton from his confinement room, and now he sat in front of them on the chair usually reserved for the Chair. Barton was handcuffed to the chair armrests.

The Chair knelt, touched the floor, and softly said, "Incredible! Oh, Ann. Such facility in manipulating ... things. In my world?! Well done, Peter! Could you be ...."

Nobody got to hear the rest.

During the lull after the last Sturm und Drang in the corridor, the dozen mercenaries lined around the large granite table between the Chair and the door exchanged glances. Full of hope? Or worry?

••◦◦•◦◦

Shortly after they entered the corridor, they were met by intense fire. Fortunately, it was more intense than accurate. Apparently, the mercs at the other end, where the corridor took a ninety-degree turn, were already aware of Ann’s acumen. Only their guns peeked out and shot in their direction. Peter and Ann were forced to rely on the flimsy cover of a pair of door frames. Ann fired back, just for the sake of participation; both sides knew they were in a deadlock. Peter touched the floor and closed his eyes.

Ann’s voice stopped the architectural transformation he’d just visualized. "Hold on! I can deal with it."

She gripped one of her guns by the barrel. She waited for half a second until one of the merc’s guns peeked past the corner. Ann threw her Glock his way and jumped back.

What followed was so quick that nobody saw it clearly except for Ann. To see—and make sense of—it, you’d need to watch it slo-mo in an action flick. One of John Woo’s, for instance.

The Glock spun half the way, passing by the bullet shot by the merc. It had nearly reached the corner when it passed by the haze caused by the second shot. Then, thanks to Ann’s calculated trajectory and timing, its trigger guard slid around the Colt barrel, laid bare by the shot.

Yes, in slo-mo you would see the merc yielded a Colt.

The mass and momentum of the Glock managed to deflect the Colt. The direction of the Glock changed too: its barrel spun towards the merc. And the pressure of the Colt barrel on the Glock trigger caused a discharge. Smack into the merc’s face.

As the Colt fell from the dead merc’s hand, its slide moved forward, and the two reloaded guns clanged on the floor.

The other two team members didn’t understand how their mate had died. One took his place, and the other decided it was time for more drastic actions. He unhooked a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and hurled it at Ann and Peter.

Building on the surprise and tactical advantage she’d gained through her gun trick, Ann was sprinting down the corridor. Against the grenade. She saw it, caught it in mid-air, and flung it back. She hugged yet another door frame just in time. The grenade made short work of the two mercs. And their mate’s body.

Peter raised not one but both eyebrows. His wide eyes beamed with amazement and respect. He ran to Ann, who picked her gun from the floor. Side by side, they turned around the corner.

••◦◦•◦•

"Nobody shoot when this door opens!" the Chair said. "I’m certain that when Peter faces a dozen barrels, he’ll be more inclined to talk with me. Which has been our intent from the start."

The mercs nodded, and Emil reflected.

Yeah right! "Our intent." Piece of shit made one hell of a mess!

He gripped the handle of his gun and glanced at Charles Barton.

However, the door didn’t open. The whole wall did, rumbling. It disappeared, door and all. Ann and Peter faced the dozen barrels.

We did need an action plan for this setup, flashed across Ann’s mind.

The merc closest to the formerly unyielding wall broke down at the adrenaline conflagration in his brain. Shocked by the rumble, staring all but point-blank at Ann O’Malley’s Glocks, he automatically straightened his arm to get a better aim at her—and his head turned into a dull red fog. Almost everybody’s attention momentarily swayed to the noise of broken glass. There was a perfectly round hole in the window now.

Beyond the hole—quite far beyond—Legion impassively, yet swiftly shifted his crosshair to the next fidgety merc.

"Let us all calm down," the Chair said authoritatively and stepped forward, raising a palm.

Zander grasped Charles Barton’s collar and tried to hide behind him.

The guns kept pointing at Ann and Peter. Yet after the sniper’s intervention, the mercs’ desire to shoot plummeted. Perhaps to compensate for their soaring uncertainty.

Charles’s wide open eyes compensated for the tight line of his lips. He hadn’t pictured his son in a role like that.

Peter lowered his arms and stared at the Chair with eyes just as wide.

So did Ann. The Glocks in her hands trembled, and her eyes filled with astonishment, disbelief, and hurt of biblical proportions. And tears.

Outside, Legion, who had read the Chair’s appeal on the subtitles in his optical/electronic sight, was as calm as they came. He calmly moved the crosshair to the Chair’s head. Why shouldn’t he be calm? He’d starred in similar films time and time again. True, this one looked intriguing.

Even if Legion had figured out what Ann and Peter did, he’d stay calm anyway. The Chair’s being Ummia Shidim didn’t mean the world to him.

••◦◦••◦

"Seymour?!" Peter croaked.

"Grandpa?!" Ann almost cried.

"I can explain." Seymour King, dressed in the Chair’s impeccable black suit, stepped forward, his arms spread out placatingly.

"I don’t think so," Peter said sourly and crouched to bring his hand near the floor. He wasn’t sure what he meant to do. Cocoon the Chair in three feet of concrete? Open a hole under his feet? Spin the granite table so it would smash the ribs of the mercs around it?

"Son, please don’t! You’ll only make me take countermeasures."

"Don’t ’son’ me. I’m no son of yours. You vowed to take care of the man whose son I am, but you’ve been playing games with us, and now there’s a gun pointing at his head!" said Peter.

The Chair glanced over his shoulder and told Zander, "Put the gun down."

Zander’s ratlike eyes flashed madly. He took his time replying; there were lots of factors to consider.

The Chair’s given me an order. I can’t defy him. I can’t? He must know what he’s doing. He has a plan. A plan my ass! What about the dead teams outside? Why didn’t he save them? Why would he save me? After yelling at me for being a dumb bumbler. And this Ann, she doesn’t look, nah, doesn’t look calm at all. Peter, now. Peter, the one the Chair said could manipulate stuff? They know each other. What did they call him? Seymour. And Grandpa. Grandpa?! What the .... How many snipers do they have outside? No, I’m not letting daddy go—he’s my only insurance right now. Sorry, boss, but ...

"... nothing doing!" Emil leaned even lower over Charles Barton, swung his left arm around his throat, and pressed the gun in his right hand against his temple.

"Zander, last chance. Put the gun down. Now," the Chair said calmly.

"No!" Zander shrilled. Something was wrong with him. The events from the last few days were burning a hole in his rat’s mind. His eyes teemed with purest madness.

Ann, Peter ... they wrecked the HQ. I can’t ... mustn’t let go of my insurance.

He probably should have, though.

"Get rid of Zander. Now," the Chair said.

This might have taken most of the mercs by surprise—except for Number Two from team Delta. The man whom Zander had given an earful in the underground garage, after Ann had picked up Peter at the construction site. The man who had imagined this particular scene so many times, played it back in his mind over and over. He didn’t want any of his colleagues to rob him of the pleasure. His gun swiveled from Peter’s to Zander’s head in a jiffy and gave a loud crack. Zander’s skull burst. It didn’t look as spectacular as Legion’s shot. Still, enough blood spurted to reach even the Chair’s face.

The Chair turned back to Peter, slowly bringing his thumb up to wipe away the drops on his lips—and nowhere else. "No guns are pointing at your father’s head now. Let us calm down and talk."

Wow. That was cool, Legion thought impassively. It was an intriguing film. Occasionally, the subtitles failed, but that was nitpicking.

Peter quickly overcame his slight startlement. "Now free my dad. Why do you need him? I’m here, aren’t I?"

The Chair reacted instantly. "Correct. Let him go."

A merc saw to it.

"Dad, leave this house please. Go join Martin. He’s in an SUV at the manor entrance. If something here ... goes wrong, just drive away. Go ... anywhere. I don’t want to suggest anything aloud."

"No, Peter. I wanna stay and find out what you’ve gotten yourself into. What you’ve become." Charles recalled the rumbling and creaking of the house. Someone had said they were all Peter’s fault.

"Ah, Martin! A remarkable young man. You must introduce us, Peter," said the Chair. "I could probably recruit him—"

"You probably couldn’t! For whom, anyway? Lil? The Fund?" Peter said.

Watching the rage inside Peter’s eyes and the decreasing distance between his hand and the floor

it must help him change objects more easily,

the Chair figured out Peter was the greater threat at the moment. Greater than Ann. He didn’t think she’d shoot.

Although she looks ... broken. Which makes sense.

But he could clear up things with her, explain. After all, he’d raised her like his own child.

My own? You’re all my children. My naughty kids.

"Peter, Peter. When we met, I told you we’re Creators. I, for one, have created many things, including Lil and the Fund. I see nothing wrong in heading them from time to time. Officially, I mean. It’s one of my small vanities, I guess. And what’s wrong in seeking out people whose capabilities are similar to mine, and then recruiting them—for whichever side? It’s called equilibrium. It was the equilibrium that kept me from stopping you and Ann from reaching this room."

To Charles, it was all gobbledygook.

The mercs knew something about the Fund, but nothing about Lil.

Legion was no more than half a step ahead of them. However, his subtitles were incomplete. The speakers’ lips didn’t always face his sight clearly enough.

Ann and Peter’s astonishment reached new heights.

The whole confrontation thing has been a fat lie? A setup? But the history of both organizations can be traced back to the times of Sumer. At least. How old is Seymour King—the Chair—if he created them? Who the hell is he?!

The Chair glanced at the mercs and their guns. For the rest of his speech, he needed a more private environment. He said, "Boys, I think we’re done with shooting for today. You’re free. Please get on with your daily tasks." And before they could start for the exit, his face tensed imperceptibly. The mercs found themselves standing outside on the lawn.

The demonstration had been meant to convince Peter to remove his hand from the door. It worked. Peter stood up. He was aware that in the presence of someone who could Shift him to, say, Mars, it wasn’t very smart to try and shuffle the building.

Seymour, who didn’t indicate he’d noticed his dismay

and who had no way of noticing Legion’s dismay—now that was a sight worth seeing

went on, "At first, it was not like this. I hadn’t planned it this way. Those who reached Enia, I put in charge: chieftains, shamans, and kings. But they became presumptuous as the years went by.

Might have something to do with free will. Who knows.

In order to control them, I unified them in the Fund. Eventually, I found out I didn’t achieve much. Quite the contrary. Gradually, I let myself become convinced that their course of action encourages Computоrs to be more creative. Work harder, generate ideas, reflect as they struggle for a better spot in the system. Which in itself contributes to the main goal: the emergence of Duranki.

"As for the Fund’s actions, they were motivated mainly by greed. Then I recalled I’d made the word dualistic. Yin and yang. Male and female. Light and darkness."

Us and them?

"That’s why I founded Lil. An organization that anyone who’d reached Enia could Join. The Fund’s antagonist. The rivalry between the two was supposed to foster a more competitive environment and bring along some kind of equilibrium. And, yes, relieve me of some of my duties. I can’t be everywhere and control everything, can I? That way, I could concentrate on more important things. Like waiting till Duranki came."

Seymour went on for quite some time. Despite their increased capacity, Ann and Peter’s brains struggled with processing the information. They couldn’t decide how credible his scenario was. If they chose to believe it, it meant they stood opposite the One Who’d Made Heaven and Earth, the rules of the game, each and every player—and, for dessert, had given them free will?

Peter recalled Ann’s words. We have eloquent—though incomplete, given the time gap—evidence that our civilization is the product of the kind intentions of another, ancient Duranki. Then things went awry, and here we are.

The shocking tale had totally engrossed Ann. Well, not totally. A nook in her brain roiled with, But this is Grandpa! Who took me in after my coma. Who raised me. Who led me to the altar when I married Logan Ström. Hmm, the sniper’s outside can’t be anyone but Logan. He promised he’d keep out of my hair, but despite all my protests, he insisted to take care of my safety if I ever got in mortal danger. Logan, whose robotic lack of emotions drove me away. And that last straw—when I found out what he actually did for a living.

Ironic, isn’t it? What am I doing now?

And Grandpa? He held my hand and comforted me in those months after the divorce. Then, when I found out I had the gift, he supported my decision to train martial arts and military tactics. Though he said it made no sense to him: hadn’t Logan’s business been the reason why I left him?

Grandpa, who betrayed me .... Did he, though? Turns out, our Earth, the Universe—we’re all his project ....

Is Grandpa good or evil? Can the outcome of a project be the litmus test? Still, we’re here, and nine tenths of our brains manage to maintain the order in his universe. And, as he believes, our universe has achieved its destiny: it has multiplied. Thanks to Peter. During our last phone call, Grandpa did say he thinks Peter is the new Duranki.

"I’m impressed by the ease with which you model things in my world," said Seymour. "By the way, no-one’s going to attack you or my dearest Ann. And if you’re planning to attack me ...

You could’ve borrowed Axel Rose’s T-shirt from the live performance of "Use Your Illusion." The one with the crucifixion and the Kill your idol sign. Kidding, kiddo.

Peter, once I talked with you on behalf of Ummia Shidim, of Lil. I tried to tell you that all those improbable theories you’ve heard are in fact probable. To encourage you to find the limits of your thinking. And transcend them. To see if you’re Duranki.

"Then I wished to talk with you on behalf of the Fund. Well, not in person. I’d have likely sent late Mr. Zander here. Or another associate. To spare you the shock.

"Now I wish to talk with you like equals. I believe you’re the Duranki I’ve been waiting for. Please tell me: did you make it in your dreams entirely? Your universe? Did you name it? Is there another planet bearing intelligent life out there, besides— Wait, let me guess."

The glow inside the fiery eyes—those eyes no mortal could get used to or look into for long—now flared. Seymour stared at Peter’s eyes so insistently that the new Duranki nearly lost his breath. For a moment, Peter thought he really was going to get teleported to Mars and its nonexistent atmosphere. Seymour’s gaze extracted details buried so deeply inside Peter’s brain that Peter could vow he had never known about them. Yet now they rushed across his mind with crystal clarity.

"Anomaly? You called it Anomaly?" Seymour cast a glance at Ann, then back at Peter. He burst out laughing. "Oh, kids, kids."

In that moment, he looked exactly like the Seymour Peter remembered from their first meeting. Kind.

Ever since the start of the rescue op, Martin had rerouted all the mercs’ mikes to his laptop. Thus, he witnessed everything. And he shared in Ann and Peter’s sense that they were part of someone’s wild, bright dream.

Ann prolly does it best, though. She’s been in the longest.

Then Peter and Seymour talked. Like equals.

Later on, Peter regretted he forgot to ask Seymour about his home universe.

There must have been one, right? Where he "invented" our own.

••◦◦•••

The Engine did bring down the Fund’s energy monopoly. In fact, it brought down electricity generation and overhauled economy as we knew them.

On the third day after publishing the blueprints online, one percent of all netizens had them.

On the fourth day, thanks to the social networks Martin despised so much, it was twenty percent.

Soon afterwards, everyone knew about the Engine, and the nimbler types had put it together.

Certain grifters made some money off their less educated countrymen. They sold the engines they’d assembled. Yet before the prices could settle at reasonable levels, the entire business plunged. Because on every continent, in every state, city or village, there were good Samaritans who helped anyone still short of the Engine with parts, advice, or hands-on skills. People with no Internet access, the elderly, the visually impaired, and the plain dumb soon had a copy of the Engine each.

Millions of these copies droned in basements, garages, or attics. They illuminated, heated, moved, or cooled.

Briefly, the Chinese—the main producer of countless goods, including the rare earth magnets needed for assembling the Engine, inflated the prices, but that made no dent in the popularity of the Engine. People merely stopped paying their electricity bills. Everywhere. They produced electricity on their own now. The elimination of this item of expenditure more than covered the price of the magnets. Then the Chinese lowered those prices nearly back to their initial levels. They realized that the production expansion was profitable enough. They hired more workers, and they had a vast pool to choose from.

The news, where the Engine had taken a permanent spot, sporadically spoke of pogroms against bosses of energy supply companies. When the whacked bosses recovered enough, they hurried to install a do-it-yourself Engine in their houses. They used its power to start their computers and look online for a new job.

A few more million Engines got deftly embedded into cars, SUVs, and motorboats. A resourceful youth managed to scale down the Engine and mount it on a motorbike. Actually, the original would have fit on a moped or a lawn mower. It was small enough. However, it generated too much torque, and the frame sometimes broke. The scaled-down model aimed for lower power and hence sound frames.

An ingenious engineer went the other way: he scaled up the Engine and attached it to trucks, ships, or heavy excavation or road construction equipment.

Scrap dealers barely managed to buy the mountains of useless diesel and gasoline engines. Then, after the Great Power Lines Dismantling, the prices of metals hit rock bottom on the stock market. No power lines also meant prettier landscapes.

All businesses built on extracting, processing and distributing fossil fuels or their derivatives shrank into their shells. Their only option left was making plastics. Among oil sheikhs, sorrow surged like a ghibli, that most fearsome of sandstorms. Many employees in this field started looking elsewhere.

Even nuclear power plants were losing ground. Their only client now was the heavy industry. The superheavy part of it. Plus CERN. That was a temporary respite though. In time, the next rescaling of the Engine or connecting the generators using it in series would replace nuclear power too.

The world was changing. Not just in its power sources or economies. Billions of people who had received the Engine as a gift felt compelled to start sharing more with the others. The details of the various Engine modifications were instantly uploaded online. As were many other former secrets. Download for free!

••◦•◦◦◦

After a tete-a-tete with his son, Charles Barton got some answers to his questions. At first, it all seemed like a short espresso: you start with two thirds foam, but then the cream and the liquid get sorted out.

Charles learned about Lil and the Fund. He found out he’d been Shifted, ranch, dog and all. He learned about Enia. He understood the mental Universe. Or at least tried to convince himself he had. Please try to understand him: all that had heaped on him was really hard to understand.

Charles didn’t understand if Seymour King was indeed the One everybody prayed to but called by different names. Or if the fiery eyes were a sign of his madness; the mercs’ teleportation, some sleight of hand. He didn’t understand if Ann was the lady of Peter’s heart. But he suspected as much.

He didn’t understand if Peter was Seymour’s counterpart, though in a different universe.

Their conversation showed no signs of abating, yet Peter said he had to wrap up a few other things. Things that would steer the future away from the visions in the Mirror that had earned him his white streak. Charles recalled Collie was locked inside the ranch, waiting for someone to feed and walk him. The two embraced tight—tighter than anything in the recent years—and went their separate ways.

When Charles returned to his ranch, everything seemed somehow livelier. And greener. Like Ireland on Saint Patrick’s Day. Collie the collie was fine. He’d found and ripped apart the bag of dog food. He was just thirsty. And there was a scolding look in his eyes for being left gratuitously alone. Then the joy of being rejoined to his owner kicked away the scolding, and things got back to normal.

Charles got into the habit of spending late afternoons ensconced in his armchair on the porch, petting the dog lying at his feet. They watched the sunset until the day reached its subsistence. Sometimes, a glass of mature Irish whiskey kept them company. In such moments, it was hard to say what Collie thought. Or Charles, for that matter. As his blue-and-gray eyes seemed to peer past the sunset, his expression shifted from puzzled to worried to optimistic. Often, a smile would play in the corners of his mouth.

Occupied by his thoughts, by the things that made a ranch what it was, and by the dog, Charles largely withdrew from the world.

The days went on, nearing the number 365. He watched no news and rarely drove to the nearby town. He missed the announcement about astronomers discovering that the expansion rate of the universe had drastically dropped. What a sensation. Another team of astronomers claimed their calculations showed that the expansion had ground to a halt. Which was an even greater sensations, because it meant

Attention! Good news incoming!

that our universe might never perish. There’d be no Big Crunch and no Big Freeze.

Charles also missed the news that all diseases caused by viruses had been wiped out. Everyone could download (for free) the schematics of the Rife device from a certain Mexican server, struggling with the barrage of requests.

Two corporate mastodons, led by members of the Fund, filed lawsuits for the right to patent the miraculous device. In support of their claims, they produced older schematics, saying they’d purchased them from Doctor Rife himself. Unfortunately, they ran into a judge who appointed an expertise, and its results showed one set of documents was incomplete and inconclusive, while the other was an outright forgery. Besides, the Patent Office had rejected Doctor Rife’s proposal in the past. Why would it change its mind now? the judge inquired.

"Which means," he stipulated, "that information that has first appeared in the public domain, rather than in the Patent Office, must remain in the public domain. As is, incidentally, the explicit will of the people who have published the schematics on the Internet. This court does not consider the matter in question to be a subject of patent law."

Therefore, Charles Barton had no idea about the Rife device and no way of obtaining its schematics.

And God forbid he ever needs it!

Nor did he have the time or wish to download the Engine blueprints and make one for himself.

One day, he received a delivery. A parcel wrapped in paper and tied with a string. The usual size, yet surprisingly heavy. He saw Peter’s name on top and unwrapped it.

The thing inside was a feat of craftsmanship. Delicate floral ornaments covered the bronze casing. In fact, everything but the magnets was bronze. Even the bearings around the central axle and at the tips of the connecting rods. Charles’s inner engineer noted, Bronze. So as not to attract the magnets.

He also noted the Engine looked equal parts engineering ingenuity and science fiction. That kind about the 18th or 19th century ... what did they call it, steam-something? It looked delicate. Which made the contrast with the modern electric generator attached to it only greater.

When Charles realized what he held, he leaned down and picked up the discarded wrapping from the floor. Just in time too: Collie had been preparing to shred it into bits. The stamp showed a fat star cluster, a downright galaxy. The sender’s address read,

The Water Way

Anomaly

Ann and Peter Barton

Charles had no idea where that was. The Water Way? Something like the Milky Way? Venice? The Kursk Magnetic Anomaly?

But he’d prefer to think they were there for their honeymoon. Also, he’d prefer to parse the last line as (Ann and Peter) (Barton), rather than (Ann) and (Peter Barton).


possible

END

#1!

...

there are "Possible END #2" and "The END (for real)"

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