Myra pranced into the grand security room of her Georgian New Reality Headquarters. Still fuming over her recent encounter with Samantha Mancini, her paranoia began to escalate. With both Alex and Jules on the loose and presumably with Albert’s key, her sense of security diminished by the minute.
“What’s the status of the search?” she belted, hoping the answer would be different than what Kevin had just told her a moment ago.
Numerous men and women worked behind semicircular glass tables all surrounding a massive holographic globe, slowly spiraling upon its axis. Different holographic images were projected above the tables and ever changing diagrams, pictures and digital readouts were prominently displayed along the walls in this circular-shaped room.
A gentleman wearing a green WOG suit with multiple stripes along the sleeve leaned over a balcony from which he was viewing the entire floor and said, “Ma’am, we’ve been scouring the globe for our two perpetrators. However, all visual and quantum traces of them are unidentifiable. Plus, they’ve deactivated their biotags somehow, making them completely invisible to our worldwide grid.”
She looked up to him. “Excuses and more excuses,” she exclaimed. “We have surveillance devices all over this whole damn planet, on the moon and in space. And you say that not one of those millions of devices can pick up Alex or Jules? I find that difficult to believe.”
“We’ve—” he began to say.
Myra ignored him as she walked over to a woman wearing a white lab coat with a New Reality symbol along the sleeve. “Karen,” she demanded. “Pull up the quantum signal from Alex Pella’s stratoskimmer.”
Kevin walked behind her, all the time still in contact with the ISA. They too had no viable leads and were searching just as diligently as the security team at The New Reality headquarters.
“President Keres,” she said, producing a holographic display of a blurry ship above the watery Yemen plateau. “This is the last visible and quantum contact we have of them. Their signal has been completely lost since that time.”
A man to her side turned to Myra and added, “It’s like they’re utilizing a technology completely foreign to our monitoring system.”
Alex Pella, Myra lamented, realizing the man’s genius. “What do we do now?” she asked both of them.
“We’ve continuously been searching…” Karen began to say.
Myra interrupted, “That’s not good enough.” She then reiterated a little more frantically, “That’s not good enough!”
Kevin placed his hands on her shoulders, and she began to feel the stress and the tension in her neck melt away with his gentle caress.
“We are doing everything we can,” Kevin whispered in her ear. “The ISA is working just as hard as our people in this very room. Plus, every WOG control station around the world is on high alert. It will only be a matter of time now. Patience.”
Kevin walked beside her, still with one arm around her shoulder. “Now,” he said, “why don’t we both go up to one of those rooms with a balcony overlooking the floor here so we can monitor the situation in privacy?”
Myra began to feel better. As the sense of fear subsided, clear thought returned. “We must also do something about Alex’s partner Samantha Mancini,” she then concluded. “If she’s even half as brilliant as he is, she will also prove a formidable foe. Plus, I can’t fully be assured that they’re not colluding at the moment.”
“I totally agree,” Kevin responded. “I’ll send in a full squad of WOGs to apprehend her.”
“And I want Neurono-Tek completely shut down and their power grid disconnected,” she added. “—just in case anyone else is helping.”
“Agreed.”
“And search the premises for that golden crown,” Myra insisted. “If you can’t find it, use whatever means necessary to coerce an answer from whomever you can.”
“That is the Myra I love,” he then said to the surprise of the men and women working in the security room.
Myra could care less what the people thought of their relationship. Already embarrassed by her husband’s habitual infidelity, she certainly did not shun the rumors of her own affair.
She then looked out into the room, “Who oversees R and D?”
A diminutive man wearing a New Reality lab coat arose from his seat and sheepishly raised his hand. With a slightly stooped posture and goofy grin, he responded, somewhat bobbing while he talked, “I am ma’am.”
“Might I have a word with you?” she asked.
“Yes ma’am,” he answered and then scurried through the openings in the semicircular array of desks until he stood next to her. “How can I be of service?”
“Walk with me,” Myra said, as she escorted him without another word, up to one of the private rooms overlooking the floor. Equipped with multiple consoles and holographic projectors, it was well equipped for worldwide surveillance.
“What’s the status of the nanosplicers?” Myra said, turning to him as they entered the room.
He wrung his hands together and looked around as if he wasn’t supposed to talk about the project. He then said, poorly acting, “What’s a nanosplicer?”
“Have a seat, Todd,” Kevin said, knowing the man’s identity and the basis of his research.
“If I may,” Todd insisted, “I’d rather stand.” Too nervous to stay still, he continued to bob as he talked.
“The nanosplicers,” Myra then reiterated.
“Ah, yes,” he said while darting his eyes side to side. “Those nanosplicers. The good news is that the nanosplicers work extremely effectively. The bad news is that they work too effectively and are somewhat nonspecific in nature.”
“Explain.”
Todd punched in a few things on the console next to him and placed his hand on it. Within less than a second a holographic image came into view of what appeared to be about 20 similarly appearing metallic millipede-looking devices.
“As you can see from his holograph,” he said, “we’ve produced an array of fully functional nanosplicers, each a thousand times smaller than the head of a pin. Plus, they are self-replicating and can perpetuate ad nauseam until we feel the need to deactivate them.”
“How many different strains have you made thus far?” Myra asked.
“A little over a hundred,” Todd answered. “As originally instructed, a strain was created for each of the top executives at The New Reality.”
“Very good,” Myra responded, pleased that her request had been so efficiently completed. Always seeking a backup plan to dispose of any executive at the New Reality that posed a threat to her position, she had commissioned the project herself. “So that means they are ready to be deployed?”
“Not exactly,” Todd responded, with an increased bob. “As I was saying, these nanosplicers are still very nonspecific. Though we designed these little critters to seek out a specific person’s DNA and destroy it, we haven’t reached the sophistication whereby they will identify and kill only the intended target.”
“So if we released the strain designed to terminate Jules Windsor,” Kevin then asked, “what would be the chance that the nanosplicers would find and kill him?”
“Well, a near 100 percent,” he answered. “But—” he attempted to say.
“I think we’ve found a solution to at least half our problem,” Myra happily concluded.
“But,” Todd pressed on, “they’re still very nonspecific and could unintentionally kill millions or even billions of other people in the process. You see, the project is still in its infancy and the sophistication is far from perfect.”
“But Kevin and I would not be harmed?” Myra asked.
“Well, no. That was part of the original stipulations,” he said. “Even so, up to a possible billion could die.”
Myra smiled, turning to Kevin. “Guidestone message number one.”
He nodded his head in agreement. He, too, fervently believed in the New World philosophy as written on the Guidestones in the center of The New Reality complex. Just like the ten commandments of the Judeo-Christian religion, these were the ten commandments of their world order.
The number one and foremost of all these commandments was to maintain humanity under 500 million in perpetual balance with nature. Though the world’s population now dropped to six billion after The Disease, this number still remained far too high to keep their New World Order running at its utmost efficiency. With computers and robots now performing most of the work on the planet, continued overpopulation was deemed an unnecessary inconvenience.
In the New World Order they were creating, only two classes of people were to remain in civilized society—the ultra-rich bankers, businessmen and politicians who financed, created, and ran the system, and the other lower working class who were meant to be kept at sufficient numbers to ensure that humanity both perpetuated and maintained The New World Order.
“When can we release the Jules Windsor strain?” Kevin asked.
“It can go at any moment,” Todd answered, “but I must again insist that more research is needed before we deploy a single one of these nanosplicers.”
“Release the Jules Windsor strain,” Myra ordered, smiling with her first sense of security for some time.
Kevin again placed his hand around her shoulder, hoping that her husband would be one of the casualties. Though Kevin had thought of having the ISA assassinate him in the past, the man retained too many influential connections, and any attempt on his life could prove counterproductive.
Sweat began to condense on Todd’s brow. Though he fervently didn’t want to comply with the request, he was not a man of enough fortitude or religious vigor to repudiate the order. After punching a few more buttons on the console, he placed both his hands upon it as his entire body underwent a quantum scan. He then looked up at Kevin and Myra and uttered, “It is done.”
Myra turned and walked out onto the balcony without saying another word. As she gazed upon the huge holographic globe in the center of the floor below her, she heard a thud as Todd’s dead body struck the floor. Fortunately, Kevin knew what must be done. There were to be no witnesses left alive.
Myra smiled while leaning over the balcony. A sense of relief suddenly filled her body. Got you, Jules Windsor! she thought, savoring her impending victory.