Location: The jungle of Sacred House.
Ailanian Standard Time: 0900 Hours.
The trail snaked its way through the lush, green jungle. Every rocky step could be felt through the men’s’ thick soled boots as they hiked down the trail. The air was full of buzzing insects and the sounds of chirping birds. The fifteen Ailanian men wore modern outdoor clothing and carried expensive backpacks. They hiked slowly in a single file line. A man with a scarred face, who was walking at the back of the line, sighed with relief as the sounds of nature were interrupted by the sound of his com ringing.
“Hello…yeah, we’re about a kilometer away from you,” The man with the scarred face said as he looked at the GPS unit that was mounted on his wrist chrono. “I imagine we’ll be there soon, have the coffee ready for us…how’d we make out? Well, I estimate that everyone was able to pick up about fifty kilos of Makani each…it was a good crop for the last village we were in. Yeah, Makula should be happy…he’ll be able to make all the Cutz he wants with this year’s harvest…all right, talk to ya when we get there.”
The man with the scarred face did not care that he was the last one in the line. He also didn’t mind carrying the com since it was a very lightweight model. He hung up and put the com back into his breast pocket as he thought, “Hopefully we’ll be getting out of this hot hell-hole before the sun causes the humid air to heat up like a pressure cooker…to hell with this jungle shit.”
He slapped an insect that landed on his neck. He realized that he was already feeling moisture forming in his armpits. He looked down at his mud covered boots again, and tried to keep his balance. The last rain storm had soaked this place, but the trail was not too slippery yet.
“Hopefully all this goddamn hiking is going to pay off soon…”
His tranquil thoughts were interrupted and his eyes became wide with horror as his heartbeat began to race when he heard a noise that sounded like a laser rifle firing. He looked up and screamed when he saw that the man in front of him had blood gushing from the side of his neck.
“What in the hell?!” He exclaimed as the man in front of him began to gag and cough up blood. “Oh my gods! Help! Danno needs help!”
The birds stopped singing and began to flee the trees as laser bolts began to rain onto the group from high above the trail. One by one, the men fell to the ground, and rolled down the hill into the valley below. The man with the scarred face screamed as he saw a red mist bursting from his chest. He was not quite dead when he hit the ground. His heavy backpack gave his limp body the inertia it needed to roll down the hillside. He saw ferns and mushrooms rolling past him before everything went black.
The sniper sighed with relief, and allowed his tense body to relax a bit, as looked at the men he had just killed from his vantage point in the dense bushes above. He realized how much his hands were shaking when he began to consider the fact that this was only the second time he had ever done this.
The forest birds began singing moments later.
The young sniper reached up and pulled the green bandana off his head. His long, black hair fell about his dark, Kupano face. He looked at the gauge on the radiocarbide ammunition clip that supplied his rifle with the firepower necessary to do this job and swallowed nervously as he realized it was running low. He reached into the pocket on his sleeve and pulled out a dirty com. His hands were shaking as he dialed it. He inhaled nervously as he held it up to his face.
After a few moments, someone on the other side of the mountain range answered, “This is Kuhio.”
The sniper replied, “Greetings…this is Homano…I’m on the west ridge of Kololulua valley…where are you guys?”
“We’re falling behind schedule. We have someone with us, who is having trouble keeping up.”
“We need that stuff you guys have on your backs, and we need it now. More of these guys will be coming…and I heard that Mahuli actually got shot at by the group he took out.”
“We know…we’ll be there…don’t worry.”
The sniper put his com away and pulled out a Makani cigarette from a pocket on his jacket. He lit the joint with a silver lighter and enjoyed a quick drag. His hands stopped shaking. He stood up, slung his rifle over his shoulder and began walking down towards the trail. After a few minutes of carefully sliding down the slope, he came upon one of men he had just killed, lying face down on the ground. The man was dressed in some very nice outdoor clothes, which were now covered in dirt and blood.
He poked the man with the barrel of his rifle as he thought, “Gang members from the city, here to enslave us…and I will be part of the great movement that frees us from their tyranny!
After kicking the scarred faced man onto his back, the sniper discovered that the man’s com was ringing. The sniper picked it up and covered it with his bandana before pushing the answer button.
The voice on the other end seemed impatient and nearly irate. “What? Did you guys get lost or something? Where are you?”
“Where are you?” the sniper asked with a grin on his face.
“Just at the bottom of the trail, hurry up!” The voice on the other end then emphasized, “My dad is going to be pissed if we’re late!”
With that, the sniper dropped the com, clenched his narcotic cigarette between his teeth, threw a lever on his gun forward, and began running down the trail as fast as he could. Moments later, the sound of laser blasts could be heard ringing through the jungle for kilometers.
Location: A warehouse next to the Malki Tribute manufacturing plant….Polynea.
Ailanian Standard Time: 0100 Hours.
Kenny took a long sip from his large, foam coffee cup and stretched his neck. He wasn’t used to working such long hours anymore, but the adrenaline rush, from knowing he was about to commit a crime, wouldn’t even allow him to blink nevertheless get sleepy. Kenny looked over at the large, Kupano man who was sitting behind the wheel of the hovercar and said, “You’re name is Charlie…am I correct? We’ve never met…I assume that you are the strong, quiet type?”
The large Kupano man didn’t make eye contact with him as he put the hovercar in park and powered it down. The large man took a sip of his own coffee and said, “Makula ordered me to be your driver and your bodyguard tonight…but the old man never said I was required to speak with you.”
Kenny felt his nerves tingling with fear as he realized how easily this man could crush him. Kenny took a quick breath and said with a nervous voice, “A bodyguard, huh? Wow, I feel important. Well, Charlie, the truth is I’m not going to be in any kind of danger, so this should be real easy for you. I’m just going into that building across the street over there…and I’m going to plug into a mainframe. Once I deactivate the security for the building over there…the guys with the truck will be able to drive up, open the doors and load everything in about ten minutes. By the time they are done, we’ll be long gone. So there is really no need for you to leave the car…in fact, it would be better if you just stayed here. You’d be more of a getaway driver…if that’s cool with you.”
The large, Kupano man didn’t even look at Kenny as he said, “Suit yourself, man.”
“Uh yeah…” Kenny said nervously as he checked his laptop carrying case one last time to make sure all the items he would need were with him. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Take your time…this coffee is pretty tasty. I’d love some time to enjoy it.”
Kenny opened the door, jumped out of the hovercar and quickly began walking over to a tall, gray building. He was able to open the front door easily with a pass key which was loaded with some codes he had previously stolen. Kenny smiled as the same key granted him access to the computer mainframe room without any trouble at all. Moments later, he was sitting at a terminal, plugging his laptop computer into three different ports and rapidly performing keystrokes like a musician playing a well-rehearsed symphony.
When he had broken through the first firewall, Kenny put on some dark goggles along with a pair of cyberkinetic gloves. He patched them into his laptop without even looking. Moments later, three dimensional images and endless green lines appeared before his eyes as he downloaded into the virtual file dimension. Icons and other data sources danced all around him as he stared with wide-eyed wonderment at a three dimensional world-wide web. Using quick and precise hand movements, Kenny was able to open up virtual files, press the dancing icons and scroll through stacks of virtual data logs nearly instantaneously. He pressed a few more keys on his keyboard, along with some virtual buttons and started streaming several gigabytes of his own information into the system in order mask what he was doing.
Kenny smiled and giggled to himself as he watched hundreds of words and images streaming into the system’s files and overloading them while he thought, “Sorry, Wallace… I only agreed to work with your little group so I could access all these wonderful media viruses ya’ all created. All that shit I helped you encode to tell the people about the need to shut down The Hydroplantations and start up a bunch of small, independently owned, organic farms…well, I never really believed in your cause. I like my Zoppy’s Chili too much there, buddy…and I could give a shit less who grows my lunch for me. All that stuff I helped you program, so that you could inform the people about all that government corruption, is now going to be corrupting this security program for me in about one, two, three more seconds… and there we go…”
Kenny exhaled a breath of relief and leaned back in the chair. His relief was short-lived as he heard the sound of metal blade being quickly pulled from a metal sheath. He closed his eyes and his heart dropped into his chest as he realized a long, shiny knife was being held to his throat.
“Damn it…” Kenny thought as he tried not to breath for fear that the blade would open an artery. He remained still, even though his mind was in a state of pure panic, “This shit can’t be happening…it’s him…it’s the guy they warned me about…the boogey man in black…”
Kenny realized that in the stillness around him, he could hear the sound of a lighter being flicked, and the sound of someone inhaling. Moments later, he smelled cigarette smoke, and heard a deep voice saying, “Thank you…that will be all. I will take it from here.”
He felt the blade as it was removed from his skin. The sensation was nerve wracking.
When Kenny removed his goggles, he realized that a white haired man, who was wearing a black business suit, with a gleaming white shirt and a finely tuned black tie, was smiling at him and smoking a cigarette.
“Kenny Matsumoto,” Van Dien said. “You were born twenty two years ago in Polynea to Hana and Macau Matsumoto. Your father was an accountant…a corrupt one at that…he cooked the books and laundered money for the Pilikoa family until he died of a heart attack five years ago. Your mother quit speaking to you once she realized you had followed in your father’s footsteps, and recently…you tried to get out of this business of hacking computers for criminals because you thought it would be neat to become a legitimate businessman…selling T-shirts was it? The good government of Ailana recently forced you to give up custody of your child because you decided to sell profanity instead of fashion, as I understand it.”
Kenny’s muscles twitched and his hands balled up into angry fists as he said, “Who are you? What do you want?”
Van Dien exhaled a cloud of smoke and said, “I’m the guy they warned you about during all those spooky campfire stories…and all I want, is for you to finish your job here…and then, when you are done…I want you to seriously consider doing a job for me. I understand you have some worries about money…well, Kenny…I can make those worries go away.”
Location: EMS Rousseau…Officers deck.
Standard Ship Time: 1500 Hours.
“How could you save your soul? Maybe you could say that you were just following orders…you were just along for the ride…you really didn’t want to do what they told you…you were coerced…you were tricked…you were forced…you were lied to…deceived…betrayed…you were, delivered unto evil.”
In the dream, the ape-faced drill sergeant was addressing them in a loud and stern manner, “We will not only teach you how to achieve the maximum power of these Battle Suits, but we will also teach you how to use these Battle Suits, to achieve the maximum power within yourselves. We will teach you to jump across canyons, off cliffs, fly through the sky and will even show you how to swim through the shit of a city sewer system in order to achieve the objective. And what is our objective? It is nothing more than the wielding of brute force to bring about the end of a war, or a situation that could potentially cause a war, by ending the enemy’s life, before he ends yours. That which does not live, cannot threaten us, and with the training you will receive here, you will learn thousands of ways in which to violently end life. You will learn to become invisible, you will learn to walk and run without being heard, learn how to move without being seen…you will learn the ways of deception in order to bring about destruction. You will learn to sneak up on your enemy and kill him, before he even realizes he is a threat to you…”
Without the medication, the memories became nightmares, which became hallucinations. The drill sergeant’s face became fuzzy and distorted, the room seemed to turn dark and fill with smoke. The voice became demonic, “Of course…at least one of you here, already knows how to end a life…you know what it means to kill out of egotistical spite, or hatred…some of you know what it means to kill for strategy…to silence a voice, that made a choice to become threatening…some people gotta learn that loose lips sink ships, and ya gotta serve somebody. Who did you serve, Harris? What did you do to prove your worth to your masters?”
In the dream, Harris remembered how the arms of his black, armored suit had been outfitted with sixteen centimeter long blades that could retract into the suit’s forearm plates. At the touch of a button, they would spring out, and act as dual swords for hand to hand combat. Soldiers on Terraxakor hunting missions rarely got to use such methods since most were trained to rely on guns and long range missiles to do their killing from a safe distance.
But for Harris and his teammates, this drop was different.
Their enemies looked completely helpless as they fled away on bare, scaly feet. The Terraxakor soldiers didn’t even have time to put their boots on and they ran directly into a dead end. His platoon’s orders were to take no prisoners and it soon became a slaughter. Harris remembered how he bounded after the lizard-like soldiers and used the rocket launchers in his boots to fly up and over them. He remembered the sensation from doing a flip in the air and landing in a battle stance right on front of the terrified enemy soldiers. Through the electronic displays in his visor, he could see their horror as he used the laser gun mounted on his right shoulder to cut the first three to ribbons.
“Die you bastard lizards die!” He remembered the thrill of seeing blood and guts being spilled by the simple work of his own hands.
“DIE!”
He launched a small rocket that was mounted on his left forearm, straight into the head of the Terraxakor soldier in the back of the group. He grabbed his pistol from his right thigh plate and shot two explosive rounds into the stomachs of the next in line. The feeling of the adrenaline rush was explosive. He holstered his pistol and looked at the last lizard standing, it growled and leapt at him. Harris delivered two solid punches with reinforced metal gloves to the alien’s midsection and let out a karate kick with hydraulically assisted, mechanical legs to the lizard’s jaw, breaking its face. It fell to its knees and that’s when Harris unsheathed the blades in his arms. The Terraxakor’s neck was like butter.
“And ya have to ask yourself…do ya like the killing? Did those who we sent into their next life have to die in the first place? But does any of that matter? Admit it boy…you like to kill…there is no escaping from what you are…a natural born killer!”
In the dream, he saw the darkness, and heard the blasts of laser fire as he ran forward; the Battle Suit was almost doing the thinking for him. He just remembered how his head hurt, and how his eyes felt as if they were melting. The voice in his earphone was saying, “You’ve fallen under heavy fire…just trust me and do as I say…run north…you’ll find a large concrete building, eight stories high…go inside, plant the bomb…and get out…we’ll have a bird waiting to pick you up and get you out of there.”
He remembered entering the building. He remembered planting the bomb, and the bodily injury he sustained when a man in a turban blasted him with an electron beam. The suit protected him from the blast, but it left a lot of internal bruises. Harris killed the man with a grenade blast and then ran. He remembered the shock of the explosion, and how he had not been far enough away when it happened. He flew through air, and tumbled for thirty meters in the sand. When he got up, his malfunctioning suit felt so heavy. He didn’t have to walk very far to see the small, burned bodies. There were hundreds of them. He felt himself chocking as everything went black.
“And soon…you’ll kill without question…do as your told…do what’s best for everybody, anytime you are asked to do so. Tell me, who did you serve, Harris? What was most terrible thing…that you have ever done…in order to prove your worth to your masters?”
In the dream, the fat Ailanian man, with the big cigar and fancy clothes, was speaking to him. His voice seemed happy as he said, “It’s a beautiful friendship we got going here. It’s a good symbiotic relationship, like the kind of thing ya see out there in the ocean, in those coral reefs…I’m the coral that builds the house, and you’re the algae that provides the energy, for me to keep building this pretty little empire…or something like that. At any rate, I provide the brains, and you provide the brawn…you do as I say, and everyone will benefit from it…that’s the way things outta be. But unfortunately, we live in rough waters…and there are lots of fish that want to pick away at our little home we have built…we have to protect our way of life…we have to protect each other…there is something you boys have to do for me…for all of us…” Harris remembered how the fat, Ailanian man smiled as he handed him the gun.
The gun felt cold in his hand for just a moment as its image melted into blackness. His dream changed with fluid memories about gunshots in the dark and the screams of helpless men.
Without warning, the dream changed again and Harris felt his head spinning. He felt helpless to control his thoughts. In the dream he saw his beautiful wife, Karen, and how she looked distressed.
Suddenly, he heard his wife speaking to him as if her voice was coming from a hazy fog. “Ron, I just think we should go to the hospital …for a weekend….maybe for a week.”
He remembered his voice saying, “why?”
She sounded shrill and nervous like a cat meowing around strangers, “Ron, will you please just stop talking about the past? You have to believe me when I say none of those horrible things you described ever happened! Look, I love you, Ron…but sometimes you start to talk about all this nonsense…trust me, Ron…you are NOT evil! You never have done anything wrong, you are not capable of being evil…trust me, Ron…you are simply having hallucinations…none of those things you keep trying to describe ever happened!”
In the foggy haze, he remembered how his voice had been just a little closer to anger and panic when he replied, “Do you really believe that I am not capable of evil? Well, let me show you what evil can be…” Harris felt his head hurting as he remembered how he forcefully opened the drawer, and took out a long, sharp knife as he said, “let me show you what evil is!”
The screaming was high pitched and frightening.
“RON!” A woman’s voice screamed to him from the mental fog. “RON!!”
Harris gasped as he woke up. He felt his head hurting as he looked over at Dr. Jori Wena, who had a scowl on her wrinkled face as she yelled, “RON! Wake up!”
The tranquilizers he had given her to help her sleep, had finally worn off, and it was time to get back to work. His break was now officially over.
“Yes?” He said calmly, his head still dizzy and hurting from the roller coaster ride of dreams and memories.
“I’m sick of your rudeness, your arrogance and your plain stupidity!”
Harris smirked and raised his eyebrows. “Really?” He said. He had gotten used to her mood swings. He knew that she might start acting nice as soon as her hormones switched. But right now, she was irritable.
He gave her a fake smile and said, “So, you think I’m acting rude?”
She said, “Yes, you sit there day after day and you refuse to talk to me.”
He replied in a dry tone of voice, “Well ma’am, it seemed that for a while, whenever I spoke, you felt the need to chew me out.”
As soon as Harris closed his mouth, she promptly opened hers, “oh for god’s sakes that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard!” She began swearing madly at him. He simply turned away from her and started staring off into space again. He had become distracted by another series of flashbacks, that included memories of burning buildings, screaming children, and how he once watched a man get beat to death by young men armed with baseball bats. He couldn’t place faces, or names with the voices, but he knew that he had heard them before, he just didn’t know when, or where he heard them. But the voices he kept hearing, kept uttering terrifying things. Without the medicine, the horrible memories were impossible to suppress, even when he was awake.
For a few moments in the next flashing memory, Harris heard a woman sobbing, and an angry man yelling. Harris felt his guts twitch with fear and remorse as he realized he was experiencing a memory of his father beating his mother as he angrily shouted at her, “Get up off the floor Lauren! And quit crying! I didn’t hit you that hard! Get up woman! I’m sick and tired of this house being such a mess! I come home after a hard day of working for The Military, serving this great Alliance of ours, and you just sit around here drunk…all day long…watching the monitor, and letting the kid drool on himself! I’m sick of this shit Lauren! I’m sick of it!”
Harris closed his eyes and stopped breathing for a moment, as he remembered being a young boy, and how he saw his father hitting his mother across her face. He remembered how the blood looked on the tile floor.
He gasped and tried not to cry.
“Ron?”
He panted and wheezed. No matter how hard he tried, he just could not concentrate. Jori frowned and then proceeded to yell at him, “Now this is what I mean when I tell you that you’re being rude! You’re just sitting there, like a bump on a log, and ignoring me! Men just don’t get it! Men just don’t have a clue!”
Harris grabbed his aching head and tried to stop the barrage of horrible memories.
She changed her tone of voice and demeanor, and became cheerful as a new set of hormones began to build within her body, “Let’s talk about something already!”
He felt a nervous sweat pouring off his forehead and his hands shaking as he glanced over at the small table beside him. His mind was pouring out rage as he finally gave up and thought,
“Ah shit…I better not.”
He had been toying with the idea of giving her another dose of tranquilizers to shut her up so he could have some peace and quiet again. But he had noticed how the horrible memories stopped bothering him when she was awake and interacting with him. He decided to keep her awake for now, just to keep the flashbacks and unwanted memories at bay.
He looked at her and sighed, “What do you want to talk about?”
“Oh, I don’t know…we need to find something we have in common and talk about that. Aren’t we both going to Ailana?”
“Yes, and we still have a long ride ahead of us.” He regretted dumping those pills down the toilet, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
“Well then, you better stop acting like such as jackass,” she muttered.
Harris felt woozy, but he chuckled a bit. It had taken a while for him to get used to her grouchiness. But now, he didn’t mind the small talk, and decided that talking with her was better than having terrible dreams while she was passed out. Everything has a trade-off.
“Are you going to visit any friends while you’re on Ailana?” She said, trying to act civil.
“Friends?”
For a moment, Harris forgot that she was talking to him as he found himself hopelessly lost in another memory. He found himself walking through a room with dim lights and mirrors. The events in the memory must have taken place a long time ago since he noticed he had long hair as he walked past the mirrors. The other end of the room appeared to have a bar with lots of glass bottles behind it. Each bottle must have been filled with an exotic kind of liquor. In the front of the bar stood a young, Kupano man, who appeared to be smoking a cigarette. He kept a ridiculous grin on his face while he stared at him.
“Are you the new kid?” The young Ailanian asked with an almost feminine voice.
He remembered how he replied, “Yeah…your uncle sent me.”
“To do what?” The young man’s hair was nappy and wild. He was definitely Kupano, but didn’t appear to be dressed like any of the other young, Kupano men Harris had known in his life. This young man was very different.
“He told me to come here to pick something up and deliver it to him.”
The young man smiled and said, “my, my, my…mmm…mmm…you sure are a cute one. Ya don’t see too many yellow haired humans around these parts. What are you doing here?”
“I got sent here.”
“What do you mean ya got…sent here?” The young, Kupano man laughed as his wild hair bounced on the top of his head. “Ya mean the humans in the city didn’t want you no more? Boy, you must be a real bad apple if they sent you here.”
“And what about you?” Harris remembered asking with suspicion. “You look too smart to be hanging out in a place such as this.”
“Oh, this place?” The young man asked with a girlish giggle. “This is only temporary for me. I’m going places. Ya see, I’m just working for the man…until I get my own Ailanian dream off the ground. I may not be rich yet, but I am pretty. And I got an angle…someday, you’re going to be looking at the guy everyone comes to for a good time. I’m gonna have it all, the dance clubs, the girls, the boys…the sex, drugs and rock and roll. People are gonna know my name someday. You want a piece of my action, boy? I can make sure a good looking son-of-a-bitch like you doesn’t have to spend the rest of his life delivering my uncle’s baggage around.”
Harris remembered how the young man gave a black suitcase a shove with his foot and sent it towards him.
He remembered how the young man smiled at him and said, “Looks like you better be getting to work, boy. That case ain’t gonna deliver itself. Be sure to give my uncle my regards…and tell him that I’ll be heading to Polynea tonight to look for a good time, and…be sure to tell him that he might want to reconsider my offer.”
“And what would that be?”
The young man blew him a kiss and said, “To take you with me, sugar.”
There was darkness as the memory faded to black and was suddenly interrupted by another one that made his heart beat faster and faster. Harris remembered how his heart felt as if it was going to pound itself right out of his chest as he exhaled a long stream of smoke and handed the Makani joint to the young, Kupano man who was sitting in the passenger seat next to him.
As the young man took the joint and inhaled, Harris noticed how scared he looked as he said, “This is some really messed up shit we are about to do. We’ve done some really bad things lately…but this?”
Harris could hear the thumping sounds coming from behind the back seat of the hovercar as he said to the young man sitting next to him, “we gotta do it.”
The young Kupano man said, “what if we get caught?”
“That’s not what I’m worried about…if the boss says we gotta do something…and if we don’t do it…that is what I am scared of.”
The thumping sounds from behind the back seat became louder and louder as Harris felt his heart beating faster and faster.
The young Kupano man took another drag and said, “But he never did anything to us…I was beginning to like the guy, despite all the trash talk that comes out of his mouth.”
“I know…”
“Iki…do we have to do this?”
Harris remembered how he sighed and said to his Kupano friend, “Let’s just get it over with.”
He remembered how they exited the car and walked to the back of the hovercar. They both gave each other a painful look as they heard the pounding that was coming from inside the trunk. Harris gasped as he remembered opening the trunk, and seeing the young, Kupano man, with the wild hair, lying in the trunk, tied up and gagged. His eyes were pleading with them, “Don’t do this to me!”
“Iki…do we have to do this?”
“Yes…we do…”
There was darkness, and silence, followed by the sound of a gunshot.
Harris opened his eyes just as he heard Jori shouting at him, “Ron! Did you hear me? I said, are you going to visit any friends while you are on Ailana?”
“Yes,” Harris said as his eyes began to appear glossy. “Just one…but it’s gonna have to be a real quick visit.”
“Well, there ya go…we now have something else in common. I am also going to Ailana to visit someone…and hopefully, it will be real quick as well.”
Jori noticed how uncomfortable Harris appeared and began to feel a little more emotional about the situation.
“Ron?” She asked quietly as she noticed his hands shaking. “Are you all right?”
Harris noticed that his lower lip was trembling as he took a deep breath while trying to keep his inner turmoil private. “Uh, yeah…how rude of me. I never did answer that question you asked me yesterday Jori. After thinking long and hard about it, I’d have to say that I do have many, many regrets about the past…and because of that…I do worry a whole lot about the future.”
“Please, tell me about it…talking will make you feel better.”
“No…not now…I guess it’s something that’s hard for me to talk about,” Harris said as he began to rub his face with his hands. He felt so nervous and tired. “Can I ask you a question, Jori?”
“Yes…please do.”
Harris began to stutter; maybe actually talking to someone would be slightly therapeutic for him. He was willing to give anything a try. “W-w-well, it’s really not that big of a deal or anything, b-b-but I’ve been…having some problems lately… and I just wanted to know if anyone else felt this way.”
“Felt like what?”
“As if you’ve only been given half the story…and you know that there is another half to complete it, and allow it to make more sense. I just wanna know if is normal to feel angry…when ya think that people are telling you a lie.”
Jori became direct, “Who lied to you, Ron?”
“Everyone…s-s-sometimes, I think that everyone has been lying to me…because they told me that the things I remember…never even happened at all.”
Harris became silent for a moment as the monitor blared, “Tonight we have commentary from both Conservative and Liberal Moralist Groups, as to why the Ailanian economy went down the tubes. Was it because there was too much of a dependence on Military markets? Or was it the risky practice of loaning money to Ailana’s Immoral citizens that bankrupted the government? Is the concept of pseudo-capitalism just a scapegoat? Or is it the real reason for the planet’s economic woes? Should we allow the Ailanian people the independence to start their own business ventures, or should we force them to accept the newest terms The Alliance has recommended in order to bail them out of this recession? We’ll discuss this just as soon as we talk about how Ambassador Chezui Banka successfully negotiated a peace settlement between warring factions in North Africa…which, of course, leads us to wonder, can he pull off that same kind of magic in the tense political climate on Ailana? Join us on the Harry O’Neil Show at ten.”
“Turn it!” She shouted.
Harris snapped to attention and used his thumb to scroll through the channels until he found a channel devoted to nature shows. He sighed with relief as he noticed how she seemed pacified by this move.
“Well, then I guess we have something else in common now,” she said sharply. “I’ve been lied to as well, I know how you feel. It hurts when someone is deceptive for whatever reason they use to justify themselves.” She shuttered as she said, “And I know what you are thinking right now. You’re saying to yourself, ‘now I have to go to Ailana, and face the person who lied to me, and somehow try to not come unglued when I start to wonder if they are telling me the truth, or filling my defenseless heart and soul with more of their charming lies while my brain screams at me that I had better not fall for that again.’”
Harris seemed a bit stunned, and was careful as he said, “you have issues, don’t you?”
“Look, I’m sorry,” she wheezed as she said, “you met me at an odd time in my life…I’m not usually like this…normally, I’m out excavating a dig site, or lecturing at a University…but lately, things are different for me. Ya see, it’s like this, I got involved with the wrong person, and ended up saying some of the wrong things, to the wrong people…and I let my love for this person, get in the way of my better judgment…I got hurt real bad because of the decisions I made for their benefit…” She began sniffing and sobbing a bit.
Harris felt himself becoming sympathetic, and patted her hand gently, “I am sorry ma’am…you just relax, and we’ll get you through this. I know what you’re going through…sometimes, I would come back from battle in way worst shape than you are ma’am, and they’d but me through hell just to fix me up again. Believe me, I know how you feel.”
“But have you ever been through the pain of knowing how someone you loved, trusted and admired simply used you as a means to their own selfish ends and then sold you out? Do you know how it feels to come to the stark realization that someone you loved betrayed you, and abandoned the dreams you shared together, draining you financially, emotionally and spiritually…all because…they were weak, and morally corrupt?”
Harris sighed as his mind’s eye focused in on a familiar face, “yes…I have.”
“Do you ever feel angry because of it?”
Again, he remembered a familiar person’s face as he said, “yes…yes I do.”
“Do you ever wish you could destroy that person, thinking that if you did…the anger and hurt would stop, because those who caused it…won’t be around to hurt you anymore?”
Harris closed his eyes and remembered how the gun felt in his hands. He remembered what the Ailanian boy looked like. His heart raced as he heard the boy’s voice saying, “Iki…do we have to do this?”
“Yes, we do…”
He remembered the sound of gunshots.
A crashing noise came from the monitor, distracting Harris from his memory.
The monitor featured a nature program. “The vastness of the Ailanian Ocean has produced aquatic monsters like no one has ever seen before! This is an artist’s conception of what the Anagigantoliation looks like, it’s a fifty meter long, three hundred ton, armored whale with rows of enormous, razor sharp teeth that could cut any unsuspecting swimmer in half! Coming up next on MONSTERS OF THE AILANIAN SEAS! What else lurks in the unknown depths of the largest known ocean in the galaxy?”
Harris looked over at Jori and noticed that she was asleep. He looked at her face and noticed how she did appear healthier and a bit happier. He felt his mind became heavier with guilt and shame, it was almost as if there was nothing he could do to make the sadness he felt stop. He looked back at the monitor screen and saw the animation of a sea monster devour an artist’s conception of a large, Ailanian fish.
He said with a sad whisper, hoping that Jori would hear it in her sleep, “I’ll be honest with you, Jori. I know you just want to hear some honesty from another humanoid. Well… I’m going to Ailana to settle one last score. I’m going there to get some well-deserved revenge.”
He gazed at her smiling face and felt the salty taste of his tears on his lips, “I’m going to kill myself when I get to Ailana…I just don’t want to live anymore…not after all the horrible things I have done.”
Location: The Penitentiary….Hana Paloi FederalBuilding.
Ailanian Standard Time: 0700 Hours.
Van Dien gazed upon Andrea as her eyes pleaded with him, “please don’t do this to me…”
“My dear child…you got caught with an ounce of Cutz…and now I have the legal means to make sure that you are no longer a threat to me or my plan.”
Her eyes begged him for mercy as tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Do you know why you are here?” He asked as he produced a remote control device from his jacket and pressed a button that opened up two metal panels and made a monitor move into the room from behind the gray wall.
Her eyes opened wide. She held her breath as she saw a video in which she was speaking to a crowd of students at a University. She began sobbing as she heard her own voice saying, “The Hydroplantations are still operating on a form of nuclear power that is potentially dangerous to the Ailanian people, potentially destructive to the delicate ecosystems they border and is simply economically unsustainable. There is a better ‘mousetrap’ that we could be using, so to speak. This planet has a vast ocean. That ocean has strong currents and what we can refer to as layering within it. As you can see in this animation, much of the surface water near the planet’s equator is quite warm, while just a few hundred meters below this warm surface layer exists deep layers of ocean water that are substantially cooler.”
Her breathing became labored as she saw herself pointing to the multicolored map which showed how currents revolved within the Ailanian Ocean. She began to grind her teeth as she heard herself saying, “The Hydroplantations could easily be reconfigured to pump both this warm and cold water into their infrastructures. We could then use the temperature differences to drive turbines to create the electricity needed to power our cities as well as provide all the energy The Hydroplantations must have to grow crops.”
Van Dien marveled at the animations that showed what happened when the cold ocean water was pumped into a tank containing warm ocean water. He nodded his head as he saw how pumping a layer of cold water on top of a layer of warm water could create powerful micro-currents within the tank that could drive a high-tech generator without the use of nuclear fuel rods.
He bit his lower lip to keep it from trembling as he thought, “Just like the perpetual energy machine once described by a great prophet…how ingenious…oh how I wish there was no need to control such imagination…oh the things we could do…the things we could accomplish…such a waste…such a waste…”
Andrea whimpered as she saw herself pointing to an animation that showed how the cold water would then be diverted from these tanks into flexible, thin-walled pipes, which were several kilometers long and located underground in the fields that The Hydroplantations supported. A tear fell from her eye as she saw how this cold water, which had been pumped from the deep layers of the ocean would create condensation on the outside of the pipes, which would then provide the moisture needed to grow a vast array of organic vegetables fertilized by worms, which could all be harvested and sold to hungry Ailanians.
“The Hydroplantations we use today are obsolete and need to be reimagined and redesigned. The Hydroplantation food production system we use today is designed to grow a monocultured, genetically modified plant that provides a source of low quality protein which is must be chemically altered before it is processed into MEALS READY TO DIGEST and various fast food products, all of which are unhealthy. The systems we currently employ to grow our food and need a dangerous source of nuclear power, along with steady inputs of toxic chemical fertilizers, harmful pesticides and continuous genetic modification of the crops, which are expensive, economically unsustainable and environmentally hazardous. The system, which we use, at this point in our civilization’s history, produces vast amounts of low quality food items that help contribute to economic recession if investors start selling their stock as a toxic asset, because they fear they will not see a sizable return, due to the fact that this system has the ability to flood the market with products that cannot be sold if the demand for them suddenly becomes low. This inferior system, which we are forced to use right now, makes an elite group of investors, CEO’s and other people on the top rungs of huge, intergalactic corporations, very wealthy because The Hydroplantations, which we the people did not want, allow these Elites to make money from the sales of nuclear fuel, synthetic chemicals and unethical genetic engineering, all of which are not needed to feed the people of this planet.”
She closed her eyes when she realized how Van Dien was staring at her like an angry father figure.
She began crying harder when she heard herself saying, “The Hydroplantations that we want to rebuild will not operate in this fashion. The Hydroplantations we are proposing will work with nature and not against it. The Hydroplantations we want to operate will supply every person on this planet with good, nutritious food and a safe source of power. However, these new Hydroplantations will only be big enough and powerful enough to provide for every person’s need…but not every person’s greed…”
He looked at her with dark eyes as he said, “And believe me…I actually agree with you. I even sympathize with you. Do you think it brings me joy to have to do this to you? I hate the fact that I have to do this, but what you fail to recognize, is that there is something bigger and scarier in this universe than you can possibly imagine…and my plan is the only way to stop it…and that is why I must do this to you.”
“No please! You can’t!”
“Oh my precious child, but I must. In this cell you will be injected daily with brain altering chemicals…and will be watching this monitor so that we can retrain you to work at one of The Hydroplantations as the worker that I want you to be. If you want to save your people, Andrea…then you should become one of them…you will soon become a worker who performs one repetitive task daily, and does not have the need to ask any questions about why you are doing it. You were warned once, now the punishment begins.”
Van Dien took his com out of his pocket. He smiled as he realized that someone wanted to talk to him. He answered the com with a sincere voice, “Kenny…I am so glad to finally hear from you.”
The voice from the com was nervous as it said, “So…what is it you want me to do for you?”
Van Dien’s face became like stone as he said, “I want you to help me steal something, Kenny.”