Mind's Eye (50 page)

“I’m sure they will,” said Girdler. He paused for a moment and then changed the subject. “It looks like Alex will be the new CEO of Theia Labs now that Fyfe is gone.”

The colonel turned to Altschuler and raised his eyebrows. “You’ll be a multi-billionaire, Alex. One who secretly knows about top secret government research. More than that, since you are one of only six in the know, and a genius, we’d love to tap you as a consultant from time to time. You can be like Bruce Wayne. Mild-mannered billionaire CEO in the daytime—”

“Yeah,” interrupted Hall, cringing. “Please don’t go there. Fyfe made a reference to Batman earlier today that kind of pissed us all off.”

“Really?” said Girdler. “Two Batman references in a row?” He looked puzzled. “And what could piss anyone off about Batman, anyway?”

Seeing the expressions around the room, he decided to move on. “Okay, forget that I said that. But we would greatly appreciate your intellectual input, Alex. I think you know how important this is.”

“You’ve got it,” said Altschuler.

The colonel nodded his thanks. “Nick and Megan, I’m afraid you’re going to have to come work with me and Mike Campbell on a more full-time basis. I wish I could give you a choice in the matter, but I can’t. There’s only one acceptable answer in this case, and that is, ‘I’d love to cooperate with you, Colonel.”

Hall glanced at Megan. “I’d love to cooperate with you, Colonel,” they both said in unison.

“Outstanding,” said Girdler. “So here’s the way I see things going forward. We get out of here. Mike Campbell is on his way and will burn this place to the ground with Fyfe in it. We’ll also plant two corpses and change Nick’s and Megan’s dental records to match them, so it looks like they were caught in the blaze as well. Everyone but the five of us and Major Campbell need to believe this is true, including my boss, General Sobol. When Alex learns of the tragic loss of Nick Hall and Cameron Fyfe—and there’s no need for anyone to ever know Fyfe’s true identity, or his purpose, by the way—he assumes the CEO position. Even before this, he needs to cast doubt on the ESP story as best he can.” Girdler sighed. “Good luck with
that
, Alex. Not an easy assignment.”

“Thanks,” grumbled Altschuler.

“Alex, I’ll also want you, as CEO, to work with me to begin talks in Congress on how best to police the web surfing technology. Fyfe’s plans were pretty damn scary. I’m convinced there’s no way to stop the implants from happening. And I’m not convinced we would want to if we could. But we do need triple redundancy safeguards at every level of software and production. And a series of nested Firewalls will need to be designed to be just as foolproof and secure as this. We need to be absolutely certain that nothing like Fyfe had planned could ever happen.”

“Amen to that,” said Altschuler. “I would be honored to lead this charge.”

Girdler smiled. “Fantastic. I have to admit, it’s going to be fun secretly working with you when you’re the mightiest business titan in the world.” He paused. “But back to our plans for Nick and Megan. We’ll need to change Nick’s appearance and set up a facility in a desert somewhere for them. Isolated for more than ten miles so Nick won’t hear voices—unless we want him to. We’ll bring in support personnel that Nick can’t read. We can just line up candidates and Nick can tell us which ones he can’t read. We’ll hire them.”

“Are you going to at least pretend to conduct an interview?” asked Heather with a grin.

“Of course,” said Girdler, returning the smile. “Pretending is one of the very best things I do.”

Then, serious once again, he continued. “We’ll get everything up and running within a few weeks. And then we’ll get to work. We’ll learn everything we can about Nick’s abilities and how to block them. Nick, you know I’m doing this to stop ESP, not to use it, but there may be the odd time I need you for an interrogation. I’ll try to keep this to the bare minimum.”

Hall read that Girdler was sincere in this regard. If a terrorist knew the location of a nuke that was about to detonate, Girdler reserved the right to have Hall invade his mind for the information. Hall had no problem with this. In fact, given what he had come to know about the Abdullah brothers, he couldn’t wait to get in range of a man who had called himself Ed Cowan. “I understand,” said Nick.

“Thank you,” said Girdler. “Megan, you won’t be engaged full-time in these experiments, so we’ll give you a change of identity. You can still be the owner of a graphic design firm, just a different firm, under a different name, which you can locate in offices next to Nick. I’ll make sure you get as much graphic design work from the US military as you can handle. If you’re one-tenth as impressive a graphic designer as you are a fugitive, then we’ll be in great hands.”

“Sounds good,” said Megan, looking like a kid on Christmas morning. “Thanks.”

“But regardless,” continued Girdler, “the two of you will have to spend a lot of time together. In close quarters. A
lot
of time.” An amused smile came over his face. “Is that going to be a problem?”

Hall realized he was still holding Megan’s hand. He looked across at the opposite couch and noticed that Heather and Alex were holding hands as well. Megan had told him she thought there must be something in the water, and it was hard not to agree. Something that had turned four adults into giddy seventh graders. Holding hands?
Who did that anymore?

And even though he wasn’t trying to pry, he couldn’t help but read that Heather and Alex were crazy for each other, and not on the superficial level on which Hall had once operated, but on the level he believed he had finally achieved with Megan.

No, spending time with Megan Emerson was not going to be a problem. The only problem would be his time away from her. “No. I think I can tolerate her for a little while,” he said with an impish smile. “You know, Neanderthal that she is.”

“Really?”
said Girdler. “
That’s
the way to a woman’s heart? Calling her a Neanderthal? That must be where I’ve been going wrong with women all these years.”

“Well, there is a back-story involved,” said Hall sheepishly.

“Good. You’ll have plenty of time to tell me all about it in the months and years ahead. But for now, let’s go figure out a way to safeguard the world from psionic monsters like you. Shall we?”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Thanks for reading
MIND’S EYE!
  I hope that you enjoyed it. When I self-published my first technothriller,
WIRED
, I expected that only a handful of people would ever read it. But when a word-of-mouth explosion led to the novel going viral, I gained firsthand knowledge of how much the world has changed. I discovered that in today’s world, readers, rather than just New York City publishers, have the power to determine a novel’s fate. Without a doubt, any success I have achieved in the writing realm is entirely due to the help and support of my readers, and I will never forget this. So if you would like to write to me at
[email protected]
, I would love to hear from you, and I will be sure to respond. And if you have any interest in staying current on my activities and new releases, please be sure to Friend me on Facebook at
Douglas E. Richards Author
.

The best way a reader can help put an indie book on the map, in addition to recommending it to friends through word-of-mouth and social media, is to write a review. The more reviews a book has—good or bad, short or long—the more chance those browsing for their next possible read will consider it, and that retailers will take notice as well. So, if you get a minute to write a sentence or two about this book, I would very much appreciate it, and you will be helping others decide if they might enjoy it.  

Click here to review MIND’S EYE

Finally, I have included a piece I wrote for
Publishers Weekly
below, about meeting the superstar writers of the thriller genre, and my astonishment that they turned out to be so friendly and unassuming. This is followed by an author biography and links to other books I’ve written.

Thanks again for reading MIND’S EYE!

— Doug

Why Superstar Thriller Writers are so Incredibly Nice

This summer I attended my first ThrillerFest, an annual conference of thriller writers in New York City, where you couldn’t take five steps without tripping over a superstar. Lee Child and Michael Connelly. Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Brad Meltzer and Anne Rice. Steve Berry, T. Jefferson Parker, R.L. Stine, Catherine Coulter, Heather Graham, John Lescroart, Philip Margolin, David Morrell, John Sandford and . . . well, you get the idea. 

As an aspiring writer, I found myself both intimidated and star-struck, at a level impossible to describe. I also expected that a good number of these people would be arrogant and pretentious. Cold and unapproachable. I found just the opposite. The conference, and the writers, shattered my every expectation. At the banquet, R.L. Stine, who has sold over 400 million books (
Goosebumps
and others) and has a dour, sinister air about him, introduced Anne Rice and spent fifteen minutes putting everyone in the room into stitches. He was funnier than most professional stand-up comedians I’ve seen.
R.L. Stine!
Really!
Talk about unexpected. And the nicest guy in the world. “I’m having a tough week,” he began. “This morning in the lobby, a woman came up to me and said, ‘Wow, has anyone ever told you that you look a lot like R.L. Stine. No offense.’”  I’m still laughing at this.

ThrillerFest was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. Because far from being prima donnas—and in addition to being funny, articulate, and fascinating—these superstar writers were friendly, generous, humble, helpful, and self-effacing.

But why? Why should this be? They were super-famous and worth tens of millions of dollars—yet when meeting them you would never guess it. The more of them I met, the more determined I was to figure out why they were all such wonderful people. And by the end of the conference, I think I did. But before I tell you, allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Douglas E. Richards, and I am a lottery winner, plain and simple. How so? Well, I was a biotech executive who quit the industry to pursue my dream of writing. I wrote several middle-grade science fiction thrillers that were originally published by a minor publisher, but which I later self-published after buying them back to regain full editorial control. The books were critically acclaimed, listed as “recommended literature” by the California Department of Education, and praised by kids, parents, educators, and in publications such as
Asimov’s Science-Fiction magazine
,
Kirkus
,
Publishers Weekly
, and so on.

Yet despite their success, due to the costs associated with self-publishing printed books at the time, not to mention distribution, I was making little more than minimum wage. So I decided to try my hand at writing for adults, penning a thriller called
WIRED
. Several major publishers loved it—but just not enough for them to take a financial risk with an unknown writer. So after years of fighting the good fight and watching my bank account dwindle, I threw the manuscript in a drawer, gave up on my dream, and returned to biotech.