Wake Me In The Future (34 page)

‘Oh Richard, I’ve just been informed that my parents have been killed in an accident.’ She couldn’t control herself and I felt so helpless not being able to reach out and touch her as she struggled on. ‘Their ship went too near the Sun and it was caught in its gravitational pull. Nothing survived, everything’s gone. I can’t believe it; I’ll never have the chance to make them love me or Jane again.’ Sobbing overwhelmed her and all I could do, was stare at my heartbroken wife as she mourned the loss of the people she loved.

As she wiped the latest wave of tears from her eyes she looked out of the vid-screen and paused, ‘they weren’t alone Richard, Ankit was on the ship too.’ I went cold as she said this, ‘I didn’t know, I… I can’t even think why he’d be with them. They’re all gone Richard,’ she began to cry again and forcing herself to look at the screen, she said ‘I miss you so much, I wish we could be with you. Send me a message as soon as you can.’

When the screen went blank I frantically searched the Information System for news on the accident.

Deaths were so infrequent in this society, as only something that could breach the integrity of the Evantium Brain Pod could end a life. The accident was reported widely on all planets and a morbid interest was being shown in the story.

Maya and Mazood had been undertaking research on the Sun’s corona and the Mag-Grav shield protecting them and their ship had failed, tipping them helplessly into the fiery grasp of the star. Their aborted attempt to
jump
to the base on Mercury only succeeded in bringing their molten end to the attention of the station in orbit around Venus. Along with Maya and Mazood were Ankit and two other research assistants from the base on Mercury.

My heart was pounding as I continued to read the report, I couldn’t believe it, I didn’t have much love for Rachel’s parents but I cared about how she felt. And in my heart a suspicion began to grow about the real cause of the accident, and if it was true then it could mean my involvement with the protesters was in some way indirectly responsible for these deaths. How would I ever be able to face Rachel again if that proved to be true? The feeling of hatred for Ramoon began to grow stronger as every second passed.

My true sense of loss though, was for Ankit, my friend; the gentleman who, even though he had been forced to betray me, I knew really cared. Gone forever, forcibly separated from his wife, and dying knowing he’d never see her again. I could only imagine how terrible that would feel if it had been Helen or Rachel.

Ankit was the first person I’d seen in this world of immortals and yet in such a short time since then, he had been taken by death. The very thing I thought I’d seen the last of. It seemed death would claim its prize after all, for if life could last forever, that’s how long it was prepared to wait.

Then a thought struck me. With her parents out of the way Ramoon had no reason not to harm Rachel and Jane!
My god
I thought, as I began to run in the direction of Jon’s room,
they’re in deadly danger
.

We’d got to get Rachel and Jane to safety before Ramoon could get to them.

Jon didn’t say anything when I barged in and hurriedly explained what had happened and the increased danger I feared my family was now in.

‘Ok Richard, try to stay calm,’ Jon said, holding on to my shoulders, ‘this changes things again. I’ll get onto the techs straight away and tell them to focus entirely on the plan to get Rachel and Jane to safety.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You don’t have to thank me Richard. We’re all family, and this would be expected for any of us.’

‘If there’s anything I can do…’

‘What you can do,’ he said pushing me towards the exit, ‘is get back to your room, and try to get some sleep. You can’t afford to risk making the jump if you exhaust yourself.’

‘I doubt if Little God will let me rest tonight,’ I muttered under my breath.

‘Little God?’

‘Oh nothing,’ I said walking away, ‘perhaps another time.’

When I got back to my quarters I sat looking into the distant horizon through the vid-wall in my room and Little God offered up dark thoughts of what I should do to Ramoon’s body once I got possession of it…..

Chapter 37
– Safety

Every second seemed to pass slower than the last, as if the laws of physics were somehow affected by the application of mind; did time really slow down in relation to the concentration applied to it? Was it just an illusion? That's how it felt to me now, as the wait for the techs to gain access to Rachel’s parent’s house drew agonisingly longer. W
hy was it taking so long; there could be no hanging around - this had to be quick
. Especially if they were hoping to get away with using the same technique they'd used for me, it had to be done almost immediately.

But almost immediately wasn't proving to be possible, because the hours seemed to pass ever slower, and brought with them a powerful and tense frustration. It bore down on me, like the talons of a great bird, being sunk into my shoulders and holding me in a vice-like grip.

So much so, that when they finally told me they were ready, I felt like a wound up coil had unravelled deep inside me. I began to develop one of those headaches you get after a period of tension, and I cursed the people who had decided it would be good idea to simulate those!

Now all I had to do was pray that Rachel followed the instructions to the letter. There was no time to wait for a reply to the message she’d been sent, and if anything went wrong now, it may be the last chance there was before Ramoon jumped to India Central.

I had a pretty good idea of how much my own escape must have angered Ramoon. In fact I suspected it had pushed him to the point where he'd arranged the deaths of Rachel’s parent’s and Ankit. But I was a million miles away from knowing just how furious and mad he actually was.

Because unknown to me, at that time, he was sitting in his office looking at a recording of Rachel in her parent’s living room. Totally illegal, he knew, but he was beyond all that. He’d taken full advantage of the override codes to the system that had been shared with just a handful of Manoorans. Proof, it seemed that emotional beings couldn’t be trusted with such power over others.

But Ramoon was convinced he was fighting for the survival of his race. He’d been having Rachel’s parent’s home watched more thoroughly than was legally allowed ever since he’d captured me, and now he definitely expected us to try to get them to safety. He’d even anticipated we'd try the same method that was used for me.

He acknowledged we had become a lot cleverer, but he was not just clever, he was devious as well. His initial instinct was to place as many of his men as he could spare, in and around the adjoining buildings, until he realised we'd probably expect him to do that, and it may discourage us from making any attempt at all. He needed to let us get close, after all, Rachel would have to meet someone, and Ramoon suspected, and hoped, that
someone
would be me.

So no guards would be present in the adjoining buildings, instead he decided to use the buildings themselves. He had the walls of Rachel’s parent’s house and those around it programmed, so if any interruption occurred, a check would be made to identify if Rachel and Jane were alone. If they were, the exits would function as normal; if not, the walls would be disabled, and the trap would be sprung.

This should allow Rachel to get to wherever she was going to meet her rescuers. Ramoon hoped it would be me, he wanted to deal with me personally; anyone else would be a bonus.

The instructions in the last vid-message had got through to Rachel, and as she’d listened she’d raised her eyebrows in response to a few of the instructions. Thankfully she was intelligent enough to know that she had to do exactly as instructed; there would be a logical reason for every move, however ludicrous it seemed when she'd first listened to it.

She explained the plan to Jane that evening, using their intimate mode, which was how they’d been communicating since her parent’s death. They’d both felt uncomfortable, as if being watched. Ridiculous she knew, but they both felt safer acting as if someone was present. ‘Hopefully, if this works, we should be with your father tomorrow.’

‘I hope so; this place is seriously starting to give me the creeps.’ Jane had responded.

Early the following morning, shortly before the time they’d been told to make their move, Rachel had one last thing to do. She stood at the information terminal in her parent’s private rooms and pressed her left hand against it. The matter in her fingers, palms, then wrist seemed to meld with the screen and it wasn’t long before it was not possible to see her hand or wrist, it was as if they'd merged seamlessly into the screen. This was the way her parents had set up the access to their private files, and since their death the Information System had passed on the access rights to their legal heir, Rachel.

Her instructions from Jon had been quite explicit, she was to wait until a few minutes before they were due to leave and transfer all her parent’s private files to an info-tablet and bring it with her. They were certain that this activity would be registered so speed was necessary and timing was critical.

As the download completed Jane stood anxiously waiting, with the small bag of personal possessions that she’d been told she could take, hanging off her shoulder, and a similar bag of her mothers, held up for her to grab as soon as she’d finished.

‘Hurry mum,’ she said nervously tapping her right foot as if counting out the seconds till they could escape. ‘I want this to be over.’

‘Finished ….quick, run.’

They ran to the section of wall that they’d been told about. Rachel looked at Jane and nodded toward the wall as if to say, ‘you first’, then Jane disappeared and two seconds later so did Rachel.

Only minutes after that, Ramoon stood up from his desk after being told of the download of information at the Karr household, and banging the top of the desk with his clenched fist he almost shouted, ‘gotcha’.

He looked up at the guard who had bought the news and his beaming smile started to wither as he realised the guard wasn’t looking as pleased as he should be.

‘How many of them did we get?’ He demanded, and not giving the guard time to answer added, ‘Have them bought straight here.’

The guard didn’t move.

‘Well man,’ he barked, ‘what are you waiting for?’

The guard frowned sheepishly as if he was scared to tell Ramoon some terrible news.

‘Well,’ Ramoon bawled now, starting to wonder why this man standing in front of him wasn’t blurting out the good news, after all it would probably mean progression for him. ’I said how many did we catch?’

Then the guard timidly, and with a passivity that displayed a terrified subservience, said, ‘None, sir.’

And as the guard stood quaking in his boots, he had no idea that just a short while ago Rachel and Jane had stood up, finding their balance amongst the cleaning machines that were waiting silently for their next job. They’d effectively escaped through the rubbish shoot, although it was really only the access route for the cleaning machines. Once they’d manually pried the conventional door open and squeezed through it they’d had to slide down the steep ramp to the bottom where the machines that cleaned the house were stored.

I'd always loved the Star Wars Movies and had suggested the plan as I thought it was a little like Luke’s rescue of Princess Lea.

Rachel and Jane had seen me waiting for them a few feet away. ‘Quick’ I pointed to another of the service entrances, ‘we need to go through here.’ Then I whispered under my breath, almost to myself, ‘before the walls start moving in.’

They made their way over to me as quickly as they could and followed me through the maze of entrances in the underground basements. Through the conventional doorways that separated the rooms that only the cleaning machinery occupied; the machinery that no one took any notice of, or even cared where it lived or came from, not even those that had set the trap for Rachel and Jane.

‘Was it really essential to come down through the utility ramp Richard?’ Rachel said, ‘it was so undignified.’

‘I am afraid so. We had to avoid using the adjoining buildings if possible in case Ramoon had set a trap. It was the quickest way to get you far enough away for us to feel comfortable enough to open a virtual doorway,’ I smiled, ‘and it worked.’

When we reached the safety of the headquarters we went straight to meet Jon in his rooms. He looked on as the three of us, taking the first chance we’d had since seeing each other again, hugged and kissed.

He stood back to give us the chance to finish, then held out his hand towards Rachel, ‘May I?’ he asked nodding towards the info-tablet.’

‘Of course,’ Rachel said passing him the tablet that now stored the information from the system back on Earth.

‘I think you all ought to get some rest and freshen up. Why don’t you meet me back here in two hours?’ And holding up the info-tablet he said, ‘Then we can find out if there’s any relevant information in this thing.’

‘Not before I give you a big hug,’ Rachel said as she wrapped her arms around a startled Jon and said, ‘thank you, thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ he laughed as we left the room.

Walking away from Jon’s room, Rachel gestured to her body and said, 'isn't it strange how much you carry over when you jump from one body to another, I mean you'd think I'd be bright and fresh in this new body. But in actual fact I am still exhausted and feel like sleeping for a week. And even though this body I've jumped into is clean, I still feel as dirty as the body I left behind.’

I put my arm around her as we approached my rooms and squeezing her tightly said, ‘don’t worry, you'll feel as right as rain after you've had a long hot shower.’ then I winked.

When we entered Jon’s office two hours later he was at his desk with his chin in his hand, engrossed in the study of the information Rachel had bought from her parent’s.

‘Jon?’

‘Hmmm?’ he responded before looking up at us as if emerging from sleep. Then pointing at the info-tablet he said, ‘There’s some interesting stuff here, but nothing more than we already know.’ And addressing Rachel he said, ‘It covers your parent’s interest in joining the Community of humanity and giving up their memory of being Manooran. They obviously didn’t like us Cryogens and they were extremely close to Ramoon.’