Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow (22 page)

“He disappeared
again, Chief.” One of the operators states the obvious. The Psych Eval officer had encouraged observational chatter. Not everyone in the trailer had been watching the moment the smartly-dressed man vanished from his position in the Pentagon courtyard. It was not the first such. During three days of standing motionless, the lone figure had abruptly vanished and reappeared eleven times for short periods. Each time, he had returned to the identical pose and location. He did not walk away. He disappeared like a movie effect.

Teams and consultants have spent hundreds of hours theorizing why the man leaves, and where he goes. Someone had fired a rifle into the courtyard during an interval when he was absent. Those projectiles like the others
now hang suspended in midair.

“Wide view.”

“Still not there.”

Jackson keys a mic. “All Incursion Team alert to channel 494. Playback of anomalous courtyard event.” His terse announcement will call a team of senior officers to follow his live incident report.

Excited voice of another technician. “Something is there! Definitely not human. Holding a woman.”

What
appears on their video monitors is no man, but a grotesque creature three times a man’s height. Leathery, talon-tipped wings project from the massive back. A collective gasp in the hushed compartment as the macabre creature grips huge clawed fingers around the delicate head of a small female. Activity in the trailer freezes as the girl struggles futilely to free herself. She screams something. The huge hand releases her. She collapses.

“That thing was talking chief.”

“We heard,” Jackson agrees. “What did it say?”

“Didn’t get it.”

“Don’t recognize the dialect.”

“Sorry,
missed it.”

Abruptly the massive creature shrinks, returns to human size, human
form. The smart clothing reappears, the man drops to one knee. Supports the limp female in his arms.

“Play it back again!”

“What are we seeing everybody?” The psychologist’s voice commands the room as the sequence repeats.

“We see a man vanish, reappear minutes later. Very large winged monster. Dragon. With a girl or woman. We hear him talking and her pleading.”

Other voices add and rephrase. “Wings with claws on their tips.” A chorus of assent ripples the shocked room.

“What’s that on her shirt?” Jackson wants to know.

“It says Goddess something.”

“Culture,” another adds. “Goddess Culture.”

“Goddess Culture? Is that a band? A movement? Is it a website? A deodorant? A Petri dish? Find out!”

“What are they doing now?” The Psych Eval officer asks. He knows damn well what they see.

“It’s holding her by the head.”

“She said something,” Jackson again. “Did we get that?”

Sounds in the courtyard come over the audio, sounds of a scuffle, heavy breathing. The girl screams something.

“What was that?”

“A name? Sounded like Leon.”

“Sounded like a woman’s name. Leanne.”

“Lion, maybe, and something else.”

“Isolate on her face,” Jackson orders. “Get that woman to FBI Face Recognition. I want her in front of every Federal and Police agency in the country. Tell them to search passports, northeast airport cameras, DMV. I want her name now!”

“DMV, yes sir. Of what states?”

“All of them. Run ethnicity analysis. We need to know who that is.”

“Damn, Chief, she’s gonna be dead in a second.”

“Either way, get me a damn name!”

Nine hours into the Whalesong
decoding at Next History. Carl’s machine sounds a tone. “Whalesong seventy-two is in.” He reads silently, then begins to summarize for the team.

“This is a kind of encyclopedia. The first part describes a storehouse of information,” Carl says. “It suggests that early peoples had access to the history of pre-creation. There’s a te
rm for it.
Akasha
, or primary substance.”

Sami perks up. “History of pre-creation?”

“I’d read the history of procreation,” Gary says with a grin. “Illustrated, of course.”

“Akasha is Sanskrit,” says Jerry, the team linguist. “Can mean sky or space.”

“Ah. So this primary substance, this akasha, holds a store of knowledge.” Carl reads silently as the group waits. “This says there is knowledge encoded in a non-physical plane of existence.”

“What!”

“Sounds like theosophy,” Sami puts in.

Everyone looks at Sami strangely although Jerry nods. “Sure, akasha can mean
divine wisdom. I’ve seen it used as the aggregate of knowledge that underlies the universe. Sometimes said to hold all past and future events.”

“Sanskrit wasn’t in your bio
.” Strand aims a
what the hey
look at Jerry.

“Came up in my Southeast Asian Languages group. It’s the language most used in comparative religion.”

“Wait a minute,” Sami says, “non-physical plane of existence?”

“All past
and
future events?”

“That’s what it’s getting at,” Gary says. “I can’t wrap my head around it. Let’s step back a second. We have one hundred and eight messages, and here’s one that
hints at a record supposedly of all knowledge in the universe? Did the whales get these messages from that record?”

Still reading from his screen, Carl breaks in. “This says that animals with a neocortex can directly access the akasha.”

“But let’s not forget the larger situation,” Strand reminds them. “We have seven thousand whales that show up with strings of numbers tattooed on their bodies. This scares the bejeezus out of me.”

Nervously, Gary cracks,
“Is bejeezus the technical term?”

Strand ignores him. “But if I stay focused on facts, ask myself where this information could have come from, I get one answer.”

“The whales…”

“I studied brain str
uctures in mammals,” Jerry says. “Carl’s Whalesong mentions the neocortex. It’s the latest part of the mammalian brain to develop. Responsible for the evolution of intelligence. In most mammals, including humans, the neocortex has six layers. A whale’s neocortex has only five, which some scientists use to claim that the whale brain is not as evolved as the human.”

“I differ with that not-
evolved bit,” Sami objects.

“But wait. Whale brains have silent parietal and frontal lobes. In humans, those areas of the brain are for a
ccessing the past and forecasting the future.”

“Accessing the past and future? What if…”

Silence. Looking from one to the other. Jerry stands, stretches his back, announces he’s going to eat. “Anyone coming with me?” Jerry gets no takers, but does get food requests from Carl and Gary.

“
So, I’m reduced to a gofer.” Jerry laughs as the door closes behind him.

The team works
on in silence. Jerry’s laptop utters a musical chime. Surprised at the swift completion, Strand reaches over to place Jerry’s machine in front of him. Whale message 5023, far along in the parade of blue whales, is complete. Strand frowns. While everyone else has been unpacking the number strings from groups of whales, Jerry has decoded the string from a single whale. Strand is irked at the digression from plan, but results matter. The message appears to be a technical article on the information-carrying capacity of certain molecules. Fascinated, head swimming with imponderable questions the team has raised, Strand begins to read from Jerry’s screen.

In a large beachside home 20 miles up Pacific Coast Highway from a Los Angeles ‘burb called Santa Monica, sandwiched in among other long n’skinnies on Malibu Colony Road, a striking woman in a shorty bathrobe looks through broad windows at the silver Porsche 911 Turbo S that pulls into her drive below. The tall security gate closes behind the car. She watches tensely as two people get out, the man from the driver’s seat, a rather taller goddess type with a dancer’s body from the passenger side. Dressed flamboyantly and with big hair, they step toward the door.

Katy relaxes, takes a deep breath. With the remote in her hand, unlocks the front door. In moments, the three are hugging at the top of the curved marble staircase. From this lofty perch, the south swell
curving in off the Pacific is a wide and peaceful vista. The dancer-goddess Alicia pulls back, looks from Katy to Aaron.

“What’s with the hyper hush-hush, is this for real?”

“OMG Alli,” Katy breathes, her glorious lips make breathy love to each uttered syllable. “It’s all over the news.”

“I’ve been in retreat with Swami Chamunanda-ji,” Alicia’s eyes dart from one to the other. “We’ve been in total silence. But tell me, Katy! Now you have me worried!”

“You didn’t hear about Annetka?”

“That flat-chested old hack. What has she done now?”

Katy leads both by the hand, hurrying them along the bright pristine corridor into her small theatre. They take plush lounge seats in the front. The shorty robe slides into Katy’s lap. “Evian?” Katy asks, flashing her tawny eyes, “Something stronger?”

“Fine,” Aaron says holding up a palm while eyeing Katy’s smooth thighs
, hoping for a shot of superstar bush.

“In a minute maybe,” Alicia says, “but what’s the deal with her?”

Katy lets herself feel a moment of resentment for the luscious-bodied dance legend, who has to realize their kind must be on guard at all times. “Lian is here. He killed her.”

“Dried-up old cunt.”
Alicia’s first pouty-lipped response. “About time he nailed her. She was used up anyway.” The goddess face changes as Alicia’s brain catches up.

Aaron sits up straight, expression serious. “Are you sure it’s Lian?
Here?
Why weren’t we told?”

“Nothing on the phone, we all agreed, no email no text. Had to get you here. Annetka and her songwriter and two friends were murdered two days ago. In her New York apartment.”

Alicia covers her chiseled features with both manicured hands, gets it now. “How awful. How? How was it done?”

“Oh you’ll know it’s him.”

“You better show us,” Aaron says, steeling himself. The fabulously rich music video producer and manager of a dozen top talents could be a throb himself, given his looks and his appetite for strange women. “We better see it.”

Alicia nods agreement. Fear distorts her perfect features. Lovely eyes cast downward, Katy fingers her remote. Images flood the wall-size screen, clips from news releases, links to blogs, web pages full of tweets, scores of horrific images. Photos of the Pentagon with the enormous shadow draped across half an acre, gruesome images of Annetka’s facial skin oozing blood down her living room wall, reports of mass hallucinations in Virginia, California, rumors of mass hypnosis in meetings of military brass.

Alicia shrieks, covers her mouth in terror. “It’s him! It is! Where is he? Where can we go?”

“The Water Spell,” Aaron says quickly. “Do you have it?”

“I have everything,” Katy gets up. The hot tub in my bathroom. Quickly.”

Katy tows them through her private suite,
past the enormous round bed, huge walk-in closets packed with expensive shoes and clothes, to a sculptured marble bath where a glorious circular tub holds center stage, filled with hot soapy water. Outside, the sun-glinted ocean.

“How about the others?”

“No time. We have to go now. I waited long enough for you two.” Katy drops her robe, tawny flesh revealed, perfect breasts bob as she busies herself collecting a silver tray of curious objects.

“Clothes off, you guys. You know the drill. In. Hurry!” Katy’s voice is shrill.

Soon all three are submerged in warm water, Katy handing them things to hold, candles and ritual objects.

She’s flustered. “It’s not here! I know I brought it in. Dammit maybe I left it…”

Katy leaps from the tub, glistening flanks as she rushes through her bedroom and out of view into the hallway. Aaron and Alicia, never the best of friends, nevertheless find themselves easing closer in Katy’s absence. Aaron puts a hand behind Alicia’s smooth neck and she throws both arms around him. Her full breasts sing a siren lullaby against his chest.

“Oh, Aaron tell me this isn’t happening. It’s not it’s not not not.”

“Hang tough, kid, we’ll get through this.” What Aaron is most focused on however is his stiffening penis, bobbing beneath the surface, ravenous shark rising to the scent. Eying the smooth curve of Alicia’s firm belly, the sensuous line that leads down to the join of her feminine thighs. It draws him in. He pulls her body closer. If Katy stays away for just a minute…

From beyond the bedroom a muted gagging noise,
ak-ak-ak
, then a sharp crack. Silence.

“
Ooooh, no,” Alicia breathes, trembling against Aaron. “Katy?” Her voice is not loud enough to carry, a torn whisper.