Peripheral Visions: Written in Stone

"Peripheral Visions: You sense them from the corner of your eye or in the soft blur of darkest shadows. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late."

Written in Stone

"The General is here," Terry said, standing in the doorway to Ethan's tiny lab.

Ethan rose from his workstation, knowing the reference was to the goons of the General Accountability Office. GAO... as in the General Gao's Chicken, a popular selection from the Chinese takeout restaurant the people at the research facility favored.

"They want it, don't they?" Ethan asked.

"At all costs," Terry said grimly. "They already took out the guards at the front gate."

It was just as they had anticipated, but that didn't make it any less infuriating – or any less frightening. Ethan cursed, rummaging swiftly among the items on his desk. He opened a drawer, took out a ceramic handgun, then pressed his thumb to the touchpad of the desk's built-in security cabinet. The lock gave an electronic verification signal and the cabinet's door popped open. He reached in and grabbed the slate.

"Got your go bag?" Terry asked.

Ethan, already moving toward the door, reached down to where the computer bag rested against the wall. He stuffed the slate into the bag's most secure compartment and then zipped it up.

Sounds of voices and gunfire came to their ears despite the research wing's soundproofed walls. The hit team was getting closer. They'd be IntelliTech guys, rather than from any governmental agency. Zeron would only trust his own.

"This is what we drilled for. Janitor's closet," Terry said. "Now."

Ethan rushed out the door to the lab and into the shot, windowless corridor. He had no time for a goodbye. He didn't even think of it until later – he was in too much of a hurry. Terry was about to die... a lot of people, perhaps the facility's entire staff, were about to die. His one concern was to get himself to safety through the emergency exit, a tunnel that stretched for half a kilometer under the facility's campus.

Ethan opened the janitor's closet, plunged into the confined space, shouldered his way past the mop and broom and shelves of cleaning supplies, and pushed the false wall open. Each movement was precise; he'd practiced this very scenario for the past two weeks, ever since the new president took office.

They had hoped that Ryan Zeron, the head of IntelliTech and the president's ruthless "advisor," wouldn't know about the secret they harbored.

But of course he would. Once he took over every essential governmental department in the name of his dictatorial boss, he was sure to know everything about everyone. There was no secret of Church or State that Zeron didn't have at his fingertips – him and his crew of loyalists, the self-described Cyber Cabal.

Still, Project Maya was so sensitive that no mention of it was to be found in any government database. That should have given them some hope of slipping under Zeron's radar.

Except that it was the primary occupation of the Dominion Imperatus, a cavalate in the Church that comprised a self-contained body of overseers, investigators, and doctrinal operatives with their own isolated database and physical archive. If Zeron had accessed their files, he had gained almost limitless political power, the kind of power with global reach.

People feared a dictatorship. They didn't know how mild a mere dictatorship would be compared to the level of surveillance, punishment, and control Zeron and the president could impose. Both men were devils, with no guiding principle other than their own aggrandizement. Nether of them had any loyalty, either, but Ethan anticipated that Zeron would strike first – as soon as he had direct control over the levers of power, which didn't seem so far away now. Arancia being enough of a fool to let Zeron have that kind of power and access in the first place made his eventual overthrow a virtual certainty.

In any case, there was one thing the Dominion Imperatus had not entrusted to Ethan, and that was The Item itself. No one, not even Zeron... at least, not without a bloody battle to the death... would ever have that. If Zeron had access to the local databases and archives of the Dominion Imperatus, including the documentation and research pertaining to The Item, then he knew about the prototype built to copy The Item and its capabilities, and he would settle for that.

Driving Zeron's determination to possess the prototype would be the fact that The Item had been entrusted to The Trimble Consortium long enough for Ethan to copy its physical construction and its memory core. Such access, and such technological accomplishment, was sure to throw Zeron into an absolute frenzy. Trimble was the world's wealthiest man, a trillionaire several times over – even if he took pains to conceal that fact, it was something everyone at the top tier of privilege and power understood.

Zeron was Trimble's biggest rival in the tech sector, and his most serious challenger for the title of World's Richest Man. To Zeron, it was all about dominance – all about winning; he couldn't fathom the sacred mission the guardians of The Item believed God Himself had given them for the last six centuries. Zeron wanted the prototype for other secrets, material mysteries that ranked far below the divine revelations that true believers thought the copied contents of The Item's memory had yet to surrender.

Ethan sped through the underground corridor. A car would be waiting, fully charged, in a hidden garage. He and Terry had spoken the night before of having a driver, and maybe a security man, on post in the garage, but they both felt the need for secrecy overrode such precautions.

Ethan knew where he needed to go, and he knew how to get there. What he wasn't sure of was whether he'd find safe harbor when he arrived, or if he was walking into another of Zeron's traps.

*** *** ***

"Reading the mail?"

Henry Darrow looked up as Jason Darius took a seat at his table. It was a lovely late spring day, and though Darrow usually forsook open spaces – he was still technically a fugitive, even six years after he had escaped from a death camp near the end of The Terror – but the café was tucked into a small plaza at the foot of a hill. He doubted anyone would see him here except for the ubiquitous security cameras, and his efforts at disguise had protected him so far.

Darrow was sitting in a chair facing away from the most probable location of the plaza's main camera, and also at an angle to the café's plate glass window. He felt reasonably sure he could speak with Darius freely without any risk of lip-reading, but eavesdropping tech might still pick up and record their word, so he was disinclined to say anything more he needed to. He hefted the rock in his hand, and Darius took it, then examined it minutely, turning it around and rubbing it with his fingers.

"Slate blue and smooth on one side," Darius said, seemingly unconcerned about eavesdroppers or lip readers. "Then a thin vein of white before the other side, which is rougher and grey. The art of choosing stones to convey information is ancient, but an art it is; you have to know the person sending the stone to discern what a rock's specific qualities symbolize to them. I'd say he's telling you that it's blue skies and smooth sailing for him, but he's worried about you. The impenetrable barrier between you is a need for secrecy and separation... and he's concerned that your status as a... a "former guest of the hostel"... could be making life problematic."

So, Darrow thought, even Darius didn't dare say certain things straight out.

"All that and more," Darrow told him. "Though he didn't really communicate through the qualities of the stone."

"Of course he didn't." Darius smiled. "The stone's composition and looks are an embellishment... a joke to amuse him, and you. And to show the depth of his focus, the fact that he's thinking of you."

"More or less."

The stone had been delivered by way of an elaborate network of resistance. Simply getting it to Darrow had been a huge risk, not just for them but for the entire network.

"What else?" Darius asked.

"He believes there's a way for us to be together. Safe. Somehow. He... he didn't specify."

"For security reasons? Or because he couldn't put anything more detailed into the stone?"

"Probably because there's only so much I can pick up on. And also, so many people will have handled the stone before it got to me."

Even if they wore gloves, the thoughts and feelings of the intermediaries would imprint on the stone, eroding the message Randall had impressed into its silicone matrix. Randall was clairvoyant, and that was a huge benefit in his line of work, but he had another skill, too: He could impress his own thoughts into objects of stone or metal, dense materials that would retain enough of the impressions that ordinary people could pick up on them. Darrow had once only been able to receive strong emotions that Randall impressed into items; with time and practice he had gained an ability to receive more abstract, subtler impressions. But he was still an ordinary person with no innate clairvoyant ability to receive information from inanimate objects. Only the strength of Randall's talents, and the bond between them, made it possible for Darrow to register the messages Randall out into stones like these.

"I can tell you this, though," Darrow said. "He has a plan, and that plan includes meeting me. I don't know how or when, but if he says he's gonna do it, I have faith he will."

Darius handed the stone back to him. "He's clever, your boy."

"But you're not here with any details about his plan, are you?" Darrow asked. "You're here about something completely different. A warning? Someone's getting close to me... or a problem, some supernatural or criminally bizarre situation you need help untangling?"

"More the latter," Darius said. "You know the new president's best buddy is a techno-fascist who wants to plunge us right back where we were a few years ago, before President Lucero's so-called 'benign coup.' You know that Lucero was trying to re-establish democracy, right? And Arancia has sworn to tear that all down, and promised that he's the one and only leader who can put the world right after the havoc and instability of the last half decade?"

"Of course I do," Darrow said.

"I don't know how current you keep these days. Just accessing the news can expose someone in your situation."

"That's why someone in my situation hangs out in places like this... cafes with minimal surveillance where people talk in murmurs to each other about all the fucked-up things Arancia and Zeron are putting us through."

Darius smiled at him. "Pretty soon they're gonna be muttering about how Zeron's raids on government offices are spilling over into civilian life. Like the mass shooting this morning at one of Trimble's research facilities." Darius offered a PCD.

Darrow hesitated. "Has that been treated?"

"Absolutely. It's sterile – no germs."

In other words, the device's camera and microphone had been disabled, along with its ability to transmit any signals – not even its location would show up. Moreover, when it received data, it wasn't through the public net, but in fragments gleaned from other devices nearby – fragments that its specialized AI operating system assembled back into text and video.

Darrow took the device and scrolled. "A lone gunman? All this?" He studied the images of carnage, the bullet-riddled walls and demolished workstations where workers had been annihilated in bloody barrages of bullets. "Not possible. There had to have been at least a dozen, all of them with high-capacity, high-powered assault weapons. And well-organized, too... just look at how many of these workstations are covered in gore. The workers didn't have time to run for cover." He looked up. "A military-style mass execution. That's what this was."

Darius nodded. "Private militia. IntelliTecch guys. Everyone at the Trimble facility is dead. All except for – "

"The supposed shooter," Darrow interrupted, scrolling to where Ethan's face appeared. "Ethan Raster, age 48. Senior programmer and leader of special projects in the dev department. Considered heavily armed and extremely dangerous." Darrow flicked back up to the images of the destroyed facility and the scores of corpses that littered its offices and corridors. "No kidding. Except I doubt he's ever fired a gun in his life."

"And he wasn't developing anything," Darius said. "He was... well, I guess reverse engineering is the best way to put it."

Darrow looked up at him. "You don't need me to help you find him. You already have him. You're helping him escape?"

"Not me. But people I know. Very well-connected people who are very pissed off. But we're talking about Arancia and Zeron here, so even they might not be able to stop them."

Darrow nodded slowly.

"I hate to ask you, especially if Randall is hatching some scheme to whisk you away to safety," Darius said. "But we need a safe house. And you still have some connections, don't you? People who can help us access someplace Raster can lie low while the... while his protectors work out where to send him, and how to get him there?"

"Him and his cargo, you mean," Darrow said. "They'd be looking for him quietly if he didn't have whatever it is they killed all these people to get hold of. But he has it, and they want it – they want it badly. And they want it now."

"Yes," Darius confirmed.

"What is it? What was he working on?"

Darius pressed his lips together.

"He was reverse engineering something? What, exactly? Alien technology?"

"Right," Darius laughed. "As if. You've been watching those old movies again."

"So?"

"So," Darius said, standing up, "I've got to get going. And if you happen to follow me, that's your business – and your choice. Entirely yours."

Darrow nodded. "Right. As if I'm not gonna want to see what the hell is going on here."

*** *** ***

They walked, which surprised Darrow. Perhaps Darius didn't want to drive since offline cars were not permitted on the road, and two pedestrians would attract less attention than an off-grid vehicle.

It took them a little more than forty minutes, but they eventually reached a church with a towering spire. "What's this?" Darrow asked. "Found God, have we?"

"Don't joke. For these guys, God really is the boss." Darius walked past the church to an adjoining building – the rectory, Darrow thought. Both structures were made of brick, but there was something compact and classic in the architecture of the rectory that spoke to Darrow of a time, a more than a century earlier, when America had been a place of peace and prosperity...

And repressive faith traditions that condemned people for being gay, repressed them for their skin tones, or curtailed their liberties because they were women, he thought. Then again, that described today's melding of Church and State, with its Theopublican misrule and its intrusive Faith and Family Laws.

The rectory door was unlocked. They walked right in. No one greeted them. Still, Darrow was certain they were being watched, and probably had been from blocks away.

Darius led him to a large kitchen where cupboards, countertops, a stove and oven, a sink, and a refrigerator took up one half of a long rectangular space, and a large table surrounded by chairs – a dining area – filled the other half.

Darrow recognized Ethan from the photo on Darius' PCD. He was sitting at the head of the table. Four priests – or at least, men dressed as priests, in traditional black garments with white clerical collars – sat at the table, too, a pair on either side. Darius gestured to the chairs and took one for himself. Darrow sat at the end of the table opposite from Ethan.

"You're the feebie?" one of the priests asked. He was sixtyish, older than the other three, who looked to be in their thirties.

"I was," Darrow said. "Before they closed the FBI and then purged HomeSec." In truth, he had resigned HomeSec before the purge, but that would be too complicated to explain; besides, the end result was the same, with Darrow sent to a concentration camp along with other queers, minorities, and so-called "dissidents" and "malcontents," most of them apolitical at best.

"You still have contacts? People on the inside, people who can help us?"

"A few. I use them sparingly." Darrow looked at Ethan. "I need a good reason to contact them. A very good reason."

The elder priest looked at Darius, who nodded. The elder priest looked at Ethan. "Show them."

There was a computer bag slung over the chair Ethan sat in. He pulled the bag around to himself, reached into a compartment, and pulled out an ordinary-looking slate. "This is what they want," he said, holding it out to Darrow.

Darrow didn't take it. "What's on it?" he asked.

"The wisdom of God," the elder priest said. "The word of God."

Darrow looked at the elder priest skeptically, then turned his gaze back to Ethan.

"This is a copy," Ethan said. "A prototype. It's a virtually exact duplicate of the original, which is... well, not exactly in pristine shape."

"So?" Darrow asked.

"I've found lots of information on the original, all of which is copied over onto on this duplicate. All of it was stored on the original item with standard digital coding. I never found any hidden messages or caches of data. Some of what's on here is..." He shrugged. "Politically sensitive."

Darrow grew impatient. "So you built a slate that copies the specifications of some other slate, and you cloned its OS and copied the files on its drive. Why does that make you a target? Is this a case of industrial espionage?"

The priests, one and all, laughed at that.

"The original item is the single most important divine artifact since the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments," the elder priest said.

"And the politically sensitive documents?" Darrow asked.

"They have nothing to do with anything," Ethan said. "The priests think there's some sort of hidden message..."

"If not on this copy, then on the original," the elder priest declared.

"But there's nothing on the original that's not on this," Ethan argued. "And this – not the information on it, but this unit, itself – this is what Zeron wants."

"Why?" Darrow asked.

"Because it's built using technology that could only have come from the future. And it's taken me almost fifteen years to reverse engineer it and build this... this prototype. Except, I guess, the original item is the real prototype."

"And where is the original?"

"Safely hidden," the elder priest said. "In deep catacombs."

"In Rome?"

The elder priest shrugged. "Perhaps."

"Why do you think the tech behind this slate is from the future?"

"Not this," Ethan corrected him. "The original. And the tech obviously from the future because not only is it several generations more sophisticated from anything we've developed so far, but the original item has been in the possession of the Alephs for more than six hundred years."

"Okay, now you're talking," Darrow said, wondering to himself: The Alephs?

"This slate," Ethan said, holding it as though it were a holy book, "is superior in every way to anything on the market right now. It's processing power is unbelievable. Its memory capacity... if it weren't for recent breakthroughs in transphasic metals, I could never have duplicated its capabilities."

"Trans-what?"

"A kind of crystalline matrix – metallic or silicone, either substance will do – that vibrates at multiple frequencies at once," Ethan said. "It's the basis for a whole new stratum in information technologies, but more than that for huge advances in energy production and storage, materials science... it's going to change the world."

"And you reverse engineered it? From a slate you say these guys... the A-list?... have had for more than half a millennium."

"Alephs," the elder priest said. "Yes. We're a very select, very secret team that the Church has used to safeguard and study The Item for all these centuries."

"Why? Where did it come from?" Darrow asked.

"The missionaries who first encountered the Mayans – " Ethan began.

"Stole it," Darius said.

"We claimed guardianship in the name of doing God's work," the elder priest said sharply.

"The Mayans called it the Popol Vuh," Ethan said. "They described it in their codices as a book that told the story of the entire universe, and of all time. The codices describe it as a book that could see any corner of the world, a book that contained all human and divine knowledge."

"A slate from our time, especially one with the memory capacity you're describing, might have seemed that way to the Mayans of six hundred years ago," Darrow said. "So, yes, I suppose the most reasonable explanation is that somehow a slate ended up in the distant past."

"A slate originating in the future, with technology a few years ahead of our own – but ready-made, ready to go to market once it's been duplicated," Ethan said.

"Catnip for someone like Zeron," Darrow said.

"He'll mass produce this slate, rush it to market, make... well, trillions. The trillions he needs to best Trimble," Darius said. "He'll enjoy that, and he'll also enjoy hurting Trimble's bottom line."

"And the real kicker is the original slate was probably... or, rather, probably will be... developed by Trimble's company," Ethan put in. "He's the one who's championed the development of transphasic technology. For Zeron to steal this tech from him..."

"Will be a blasphemy," the elder priest broke in. "The Popol Vuh was guided by God to deliver us a message."

"If there's a message on here, it's in the data that documents future history," Ethan said. "The original was... will be... fabricated six years from now. And its database includes news articles and corporate reports that describe in detail how the current government destroyed the economic system we know now. Destroyed government itself. Created a new order of owners and... and slaves. Finished the work that the oligarchs and their sociopath in power started when they launched the Terror."

"And I thought we were past all this," Darrow sighed. "I thought we learned something from the last decade."

Darius laughed. "If there's anything to be learned from history, it's that history repeats – and it does so more and more rapidly. People used to talk about an 'arc of justice,' but there is no arc... just a tighter and tighter spiral that can only lead to ultimate, final extinction."

"But the wisdom on the book can guide us," the elder priest insisted. "That is God's plan. That is why He sent us the Popol Vuh. He doesn't want doomsday; he wants us to save ourselves... to finally open our eyes and see the light!"

"Yeah, well, while all that's happening, here on earth some nasty individuals are looking for Ethan, here. And you've done the right thing in seeking me out." Darrow looked at Darius. "I'm sure I can help you arrange for a safe place, maybe even for transport out of the country."

"Where on this whole grey earth is safe?" Ethan asked, his expression despairing.

"You leave that to me," Darrow said. There were places... and he had to assume one of those places was where Randall intended to take him. He addressed Darius again: "You have a secure PCD?"

"I have burner." Darius offered it to him.

*** *** ***

Darrow waited until after nightfall, then borrowed the elder priest's car to drive Ethan to a seedy part of town from which had and Ethan could walk to the safe house.

Darrow intended to make it a quick trip: Get Ethan squared away, then get back to the rectory. He was certain Zeron would find his way to the priests, but the clerics had rebuffed his offer of the safe house. "We're ready to fight," the elder priest had declared. "We're ready to die." The younger clerics had nodded in agreement.

Darrow's best bet was to return the car, walk back to the safe house, and do his best to expedite passage for Ethan and himself. Darius too, if he wanted – though he doubted Darius would. The man seemed to have ways and means that defied ordinary reality, and Darrow was confident he could take care of himself.

They walked for a score of blocks, following a zig-zagging route. Finally, they drew close: The safe house was another block and to the right. A full moon flooded the streets with a silver glow, useful and also potentially risky in a place like this, where working streetlights were few and far between. The two of them strolled from shadow to shadow, Darrow's hand on his gun and his eyes alert to anything that seemed suspect. Getting killed by IntelliTech goons seemed less likely than being mugged, given the time of night and where they were.

The safe house came into view, half a block ahead and on the other side of the street. Its porch light burned; its shaded windows glowed.

"What we're going to do is walk very casually up the street. When we're opposite the safe house we're going to cross the street and go right up the walk. Don't run, don't talk, just move with a purpose. My contact and his people will let us in, and you'll be safe."

Darrow listened for a verbal reply.

"Okay?" he prompted.

Ethan gave a choking gasp, and for a moment Darrow thought he might be having a panic attack. But then Ethan fell against him, clutched at him weakly for a moment, and then collapsed at his feet. Darrow was about to check to see if he had fainted when he realized he was covered with Ethan's blood.

Ethan was dead. The dark matting of blood that spread across his shirt was black in the moonlight, and a hole in his chest gleamed wetly.

Darrow instantly crouched, scuttled to the shadows, and brought his weapon to bear. He looked from side to side to spot the shooter, thinking it was probably futile; the assassin must have night vision goggles and a well-silenced gun. Darrow would be next, and no one would hear or know. Help was close by, but anything Darrow did to alert them would only give his position away – assuming the killer didn't already know exactly where he was.

And, of course, the killer would know exactly where he was.

"Will you put your gun down, Henry?"

The voice was Randall's. His tone was calm, conversational. He was speaking in a normal manner, as if face to face in a living room.

"There's no way you're walking out of this mess, so just – put your gun down."

Randall always had a way of sounding so confident, so in control.

"Don't yell. Don't make a fuss. Don't start shooting. Just do as I tell you," Randall said.

"Like hell," Darrow said.

"Okay," Randall said. His form was suddenly there on the sidewalk, a black cutout in the moon's silver light, the gleam of a gun in his hand.

"Let's talk," he said.

To Be Continued...