Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow (47 page)

Every person exiting an Amtrak train in the city of Wichita, Kansas vomit
s uncontrollably. Many watching a popular TV soap opera begin to bleed from the eyes but instead of anxious concern, a blissful inner peace glides over them.

A young girl on a
school playground in Michigan grows to a height of nine feet and devours her best friend in three vicious bites. Two hours later, the friends are discovered in one’s bedroom at home, quietly reciting Rumi poetry which both understand. “Here’s what it means, Mom…” one explains, smiling and hugging her frantic mother.

In the afternoon, the Internet begins to creep toward normalcy. Pages other than Lian’s salvation
recipe reappear. And most definitely outside the realm of psychic phenomena, hundreds of new websites pop up asking the question of the era,
Will You Survive? Yes You Can!
And we accept VISA, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, PayPal. For only $99 you will receive a Downloadable Document that provides the True Recipe for your Family’s Salvation through the Looming End Times.

Similar websites are pitched via pricey email lists to movie stars, singers and songwriters, the ultra-rich, offering much the same
content although with considerably higher price tags and thicker frosting.

The blogger Carrion Gray is
never again seen, but a statue of him is found. The bizarre likeness, made of a metal no torch can cut, stands in the middle of an intersection not far from his home, which has burnt to a heap of fine black ash. In the sculptural rendering, the figure’s hands are removed at the wrist, poised beside the head, index fingers stuffed in his ears up to the second knuckle. In the statue’s wide-stretched mouth are crammed a laptop computer, a tablet, and several phones. His agonized eyes bug out toward the sky.

Carson Johnny
, just before his programmers switch him off, is asked where he would like to spend eternity. The simulated voice replies, “Surprise me.”

Some people begin selling everything they own. Many stop wearing clothes. The sale of illegal drugs drops to zilch, people are tripping for free. Inflation hits about a million percent, money is pointless.
In place of receipts, credit card machines begin printing excerpts from great philosophies. A fragmented barter system rises up. Looting takes over, but there is little to loot. All food is gone from stores. Many people sit in the streets, wolfing down anything edible they can find. A brief fad of cannibalism flares and wanes. It encourages many to select the Sleep option.

Several hundred college kids who remain standing near the end of an all-night outdoor rager see slender forms appear in the high corn which surrounds the area, motioning to those n
earby. Several hazed-out revelers walk into the tall green, others follow. Finally the band puts down its instruments and likewise vanishes into the obscuring curtain. The only two left behind are a young man passed out with a mild overdose and a crippled undergrad who cries piteously because her wheelchair battery is dead. She is the only one who can provide clues to the disappearance of eight hundred college students and assorted runaways. That, and the ornate crop circles cut into surrounding cornfields. These crop circles are unique, in that they are composed of lengthy numeric sequences.

People everywhere begin losing their appetite for marijuana, medicinal or recreational, nobody wants it any more. Crack cocaine stops working. This does not mean that the addicts are cured. The addicted
smoke pipe after pipe, while sinking helplessly into hallucinatory withdrawal. Many who won’t stop trying experience wracking coughs, heart attacks, and seizures.

Six women and four men emerge screaming from mid-morning choir practice at a church in suburban Tampa. Ripping at their clothing, they run from shop to shop through the business district, shaking people by the arms and yelling,
It’s an indoctrination. Don’t listen!

Of course, no military power on Earth will prepare to lie down and go to sleep at the dictates of some upstart web page, no matter how overwhelmingly
delivered by a supernatural being from another dimension. In spite of the calm reasoning of General Ralph Solberg, factions develop at the highest military levels, some pushing the notion that hackers are responsible. Several visible members of random groups are rounded up, Anonymous, The 2600, w00w00, LulzSec, TripleBlaze, others less well known.

But, other sides argue, who actually needs hackers to accomplish what was done? The information curtain has been so porous that many nations and stray billionaires with moderately-developed information technology, remote sensing satellites, spies, snoops, bugs
bots and wormlets, all have a reasonably clear idea of what is going on within the United States Pentagon.

At the United Nations, the Pentagon remains Topic Number One, although the building itself is evacuated and sessions are being held via Webex, Skype, and GoToMeeting from remote locations, where
consumption and fornication in mass quantities is visible in the background even as delegates address the assembly.

And of course, when Lian grew to his full height, it was clear to military observers
worldwide that American forces are well outside their operational effectiveness. Those same thinkers soon come to adopt the Pentagon presence as their own personal cross-to-bear no matter how far removed from Arlington, Virginia, as there appear the avatars of Lian at every political epicenter, capitol and major crossroads across the Earth, speaking with booming tones in local languages of the coming Sleep And What’s In It For You.

M
embers of the United States Congress naturally have a selection of cushy places to hang during the Sleep. Many swiftly remove to the famous Greenbrier hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, where a data storage company is hastily evicted so that 193 Senators and Representatives can move into the extensive underground facilities constructed there in the 1960s. While some bring families, many also have in tow a collection of curvy younger women, thinking that the best way for civilization to survive a worldwide calamity involves energetic and numerous procreation. Of only the best minds.

Many VIPs find their way to one of
several decommissioned Titan missile silos built during the Cold War of the 1960s, later converted into emergency living quarters for as many as 150 souls.

For Washington VIPs chary of venturing outside the Beltway, the obvious choice is the Capitol Visitor Center, located conveniently
beneath the East Front plaza of the U.S. Capitol at First Street and East Capitol Street. With its robust disaster plan, supposedly bombproof skylights, and a tunnel system large enough for heavy vehicles, the CVC is the premiere refuge for members of Congress and their families, and/or their retinue of hot, fertile interns.

General Ralph Solberg, his immediate staff, and 30,000 troops make their way by heavily-armored caravan with close air support to Site R, the
Raven Rock Mountain Complex known as the underground Pentagon near Waynesboro, PA. Along with General Solberg, his wife and two sons in this caravan, ride the Secretary of Defense and the senior command of the Air National Guard. With them are fourteen generals from all military branches, some retired and now consultants, along with two dozen technical staff, assorted family members, attractive interns and assorted girlfriends. Solberg secretly plans to unveil the tactic he feels will get his people safely through the night, due in no small part to the Whalesong article Strand showed him. It seconds his strategist’s intuition.

Other locations of safety, including the High Point Special Facility at Virginia’s Mount Weather and Mount Pony facilities, NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain facility in Colorado, and numerous other Cold War relics are brought into service as hidey-holes for the rich, famous, and connected.

During the long night that ensues, Lian’s warnings bear out. What the worthy political and military leaders did not fully reckon is that every individual has brought into the shelters his or her own personal terrorist, undetectable, in the form of submerged emotional drives, deep unfulfilled needs, and impossible longings. Not all of them are ugly, but all are powerful. Those who are successful at falling asleep pass the night peacefully, each safe inside a force-field cocoon, the same taffy wall that protects Lian. The others, who felt that talking, drinking and carousing were the best ways to meet the apocalypse, found arising from their own instinctive drives the most amazingly itchy desires. Some wanted to eat every food they could get their hands on. Some wanted to be immaculately clean, and used up all the hot water. Many experienced such bouts of envy that they formed Jealousy Clubs and devised a points system. An offshoot of this group, calling themselves the Klepto Klub, tried stealing everything in sight. Some were shot by the armed guards still awake and rational. Most at some point in time desired random sex, massive food and drink, and dirty jokes. Everyone got some. Or at least a little. It was all most tasty and lascivious.

Chester Porterfield drives
a commandeered vehicle as close to Tharcia’s house as possible in the confusion, abandons it in a ditch, motor running. Runs as fast as aging lungs and legs can carry him up the dark winding roads. In the trees near Clay and Tharcia’s house, the dark form separates, hides itself to wait. Porterfield falls face down, heart ruptured in his chest. His body melts, soaks into the earth a foamy gray patch where nothing grows again for years and years.

Throughout
the massive military bunkers, groups of women quietly form. Thousands of them, wives and interns alike, walk out into the night, wearing their
Goddess Culture
shirts and sometimes little else. They have a purpose they do not disclose to any male.

It’s not the bomb Shackleford begged for that is targeted at the portal vortex, but it gets dropped anyway. The force field around the winged Pentagon intruder
naturally grew to envelop his full height. Not because they should and just because they can, a powerful manned strike fighter is directed by ranking officers to fire a one-ton missile at Lian. The missile halts a half mile from his head, a dozen feet of the smoke plume frozen behind it, the rest blown off over Arlington. The missile hangs inert as darkness gathers.

General Ralph Solberg
directs all under his command at Site R to follow to the letter his own classified plan to ensure the survival of his family, trusted friends, and 30,000 key men. He orders all to go to sleep.

“We need to talk.”

Lylit is in the form of a small barn owl, invisible in the night sky
. A thousand feet above Arlington she soars wings outstretched, tracing effortless arcs around Lian’s enormous head.

“
I am so grateful you killed those angels.”

A
round the far horizon, fires rage in towns and cities. On freeways in all directions nothing moves. There is nowhere to run.

Lian watches her
glide past, not the slightest sound from her wings. “It’s because of you I was allowed to come here. There is one remaining.”

“It’s because
of Tharcia you came here. I saw her intention and helped her carry through. Who is left?”

“
Moralos. But he is well hidden.”

“
You know there is still a problem with your bargain?”

“
I’m aware. An eternity of torment would be such a waste, with her. I do not think the vote will be in her favor.”

“
You think not? Are mortals so afraid?”

“
Most are afraid of change. This way of going about it is too shocking.”

“
Yes. The irony is, most of what she wants is available now.”

“
I had my own moment about that. They already have what she asked for. Everything there for the taking. They merely need to be told.”

“Or taught. Tharcia asked you for that repeatedly.”

“I am aware.”

“I had a terrible thought. Moralos threatens Tharcia.”

“You’re right. Your scent trail entwines throughout her life.”

“I need to be there tonight.”

“I so wanted to spend this night with you, my Lylit.”

“And we will
, my soul. I see three difficulties. Her mother. Outcome of the vote. And Moralos.”

“
I’m not yet decided.”

“Lian, t
hey love each other. It can change everything. You should see the way they stand together, each leaning in toward the other. Look at the future we will enjoy. They both long for the same.”

“
You need to give someone a little push.”

“Hah. It’s what I do.”

“Call if you need help.”

“There is something else we need to talk about.”
A different tone in her voice.

“Yes?”

“All these angels who pursued me. They were swept up in lies of the patriarchy.”

“
Yes. What is your point?”

“Lian, I was present on E
arth before time, before language, before human cultures. During all those millennia, women were honored for wisdom, courage, and sexuality. It wasn’t until Sumerian and Hebraic societies arose, that priests cast me as a demon. That was the beginning. But through millions of years of human evolution, I was loved and women were revered. Why the sudden change? You imagined me this way, Lian, an independent female. But many things are still conflicted. In the world, and between us.”