With These Eyes (3 page)

Michael took Max's hat and placed it back on
the kid's head while commenting. "Sounds like a good concept in
theory but did your husband really think he had the expertise for
something like that? It seems if this were really possible,
everyone would be saving lightning in a bottle."

The audience broke into laughter.
Embarrassed, Betty inched closer towards her television idol.
"Well, Michael, you are a lot smarter than my husband."

On the studio monitors, a sharpened flagpole
could be seen protruding from the roof of the two-story house. With
a loud crash, the Caisson family-home was struck by an enormous
flash of lightning. Both floors of the house instantly filled with
thick smoke.

Betty's voice continued over the image. "I
warned him, but he thought he knew everything there is to know
about fire and electricity. All our documents and passports went up
in flames, along with the house. Now we live with his parents."

On the monitors, a blinding flash from the
basement shot through the house. In the blink of an eye, the entire
dwelling had turned into a blazing inferno. Instead of charging the
layers of graphite powder with electricity, the lightning strike
had ignited a fearsome fire storm. The expanding gases from the
fire had pushed the burning carbon powder through every nook and
cranny of the house. Betty continued: "Of course, he had to do it
right before
Ponytail
was going to be on. Good thing I was
out buying candy with Max. We just love to munch on things when we
watch your show."

Michael: "Good thing. So did your husband
learn anything from this?"

Betty: "Oh he did. He's leaving the energy
business to the big guys. I am having all our personal information
stored by Apophis, where it's safe from my husband's meddling."

Michael picked up the conversation from
there. "Allow me to explain in detail: In an unprecedented effort,
the friendly folks of Apophis have made it simple for all of us to
have access to his or her birth certificate, driver's license and
even immunization records. The firm's global network of hospitals,
schools and service providers will all be easily available. Access
to the data will be linked to the unique pattern of blood vessels
on the back of a person's eye."

Betty's excitement wouldn't stop. "Amazing,
the things they can do today."

It had become Max's turn at the scanner. The
kid before him stepped away and the man in the yellow chicken-suit
turned towards Betty's corpulent offspring with his wings spread in
an inviting pose. A booming voice emanated from inside the
chicken's hollow head.

"C'mon son, it'll barely hurt."

The chicken's large wing wrapped around the
boy's back and pushed him towards the machine with gentle pressure.
He guided Max's head to the front of the scan lamp. Next, he placed
the kid's index finger in the machine. Max winced a bit as the
machine pricked his finger and extracted a few drops of his
blood.

4 DARK GENE

While the chicken was drawing blood from the
boy, the head of the Apophis Corporation, Gene Soskyh, was arriving
at his downtown office. Gene's enormous twin-rotor helicopter
carried him high above the streets of Los Angeles to the top of the
city's tallest building. Gene was in his late 50s. A lifetime of
stress had worn on his face, but daily rituals of skin conditioning
left this obvious only to a close observer. His hair had turned
grey and was receding. He wore a suit that cost more than most
people's cars. The way Gene traveled, assured he would arrive by
the most expedient means and maintain distance from his many
foes.

A snow-white turtle dove had found its way to
the top of Gene's office tower. The bird had taken the previous day
to climb that high, resting on smaller buildings in the interim.
The dove was enjoying the magnificent view of the greater Los
Angeles basin with the rays of the morning sun warming its
feather-coat. The helipad was shaped like the world famous Apophis
sun-logo. Some form of this logo was featured prominently on
virtually every consumer product, much like on the retina scanner
currently retaining the head of young Max.

Like an iron bird of prey, Gene's helicopter
descended on the building. The strong rotor-wash from Gene's
helicopter caught the unsuspecting bird off-guard. In a storm of
feathers, it violently threw the animal off the landing pad and
slamming into one of the glass walls that enclosed the rooftop. It
was at this moment that the large craft came about to bring the
exit to the near side of Gene's elevator. This caused the dove to
bounce off the enclosure and get impaled on one of the spikes of
the sun logo. The once lively snow-white symbol of peace now hung
dead, soaked in dark-red blood by the side of the platform.

Gene's helicopter touched down. With the
heavy rotors still spinning, its door opened and a set of stairs
extended to the ground. Several men in suits rushed in and flanked
the stairs. Shortly thereafter, the only passenger, Gene, emerged
from the door. Like the giant-king Gargantua, Gene looked down upon
his creation. Towers of steel and mirrors rose from the bustling
streets to the glorious sky. None reached as high as the tower of
the Apophis Corporation. The slanted mirrors that surrounded the
circular penthouse below reflected the sun’s rays back into the
heavens in a brilliant crest of light.

A metropolis of unmatched proportions, Los
Angeles was to Gene a true representation of how progress could
have improved life for all people. The men and women beneath his
feet failed to show the slightest bit of appreciation for his work.
Gene had suffered great hardships in his effort to motivate the
people of this world to build a better future through the
proliferation of technology and advanced medicine. The majority of
the populous chose to use their tools to become stagnant and live
sedentary lives, rather than better themselves and seek
enlightenment.

His eyes caught the gory mess that was the
mangled body of the turtle dove. Gene was disgusted, his sanctuary
had been invaded. With the confidence of a self-made world leader,
Gene descended the stairs towards the men in suits. In silence,
Troopers surrounded Gene like a cocoon on his short walk to the
waiting elevator. The tungsten doors slid open as he approached,
revealing an interior with walls of gold, encrusted in rare gems.
As Gene stepped in, the suited men took posts at the closing doors
and strategic places around the roof, keeping a constant scan of
the sky and other buildings below.

Gene was in the best mood of his life. With
the stroke of a pen, he had gained control over all the world's
production resources. Anyone who spoke on the phone, sent a letter
or electronic message would do so on his infrastructure. To most
leaders, that would have brought a tremendous amount of
responsibility to assure a proper flow of confidential information.
To Gene, however, this represented another unique opportunity.
Through the use of digital postage and credit card purchases, he
was able to develop profiles about people's mailing habits. Anyone
who was on his
Threat List
and exchanged packages or letters
with each other, would be elevated to a higher threat level.

Gene's
Threat List
was generated by
his automated system. The acquisition of Tefis' computer network
gave him a global web of super-computers. Gene had gained the
ability to monitor all the world's phone calls, faxes and e-mails
for anything he wanted to keep out of the public's pool of
knowledge. The system came online the day before and his systems
administrator, Ryan Kensington, had been compiling the first
results. What Gene didn't want him to know was how the disallowed
keywords could lead to greater knowledge, nor what would happen to
those who had made it onto his list. Gene wasn't concerned. Ryan
was busy crunching code and trying to think like a giant
computer.

No private entity ever before had the ability
to know what every person in the developed world was saying. For a
mind like Gene's, there was little limitation on how far he would
follow his darkness.

When the world was full of art, humanity
advanced. When fear dimmed the divine light, things of less than
beauty became abundant. The further the world was sinking into fear
and darkness, the more it was destroying itself. Darkness had
become so prevalent that it caused the protective forces to suffer
and retreat. Without the protection of higher consciousness, the
world’s downward spiral had become a free-fall into darkness.

Gene decided to leave the entire
ball-lightning phenomena to the U.F.O. hunters who had a natural
talent of giving even the credible no believability whatsoever.
With Ryan’s global search spider on-line, it would take little time
to remove all information on the phenomenon from the world stage.
Only a handful of books were ever written and the last library in
Los Angeles had just been replaced with a download kiosk. Gene had
discovered the powerful symbolism and life-giving energy of the sun
used by ancient civilizations. Gene thought it wise to appropriate
this symbol of power for his own needs. He understood the ways of
the civilizations that built this world.

The elevator doors opened and Gene stepped
into his majestic office that overlooked Los Angeles in every
direction. Aside from the helicopter, his desk was the highest spot
in the city. Like an eagle, he overlooked the world below him. The
slanted windows formed a circle around his palace of mirrors.
Nested above, his twin-rotor helicopter remained on the ready to
send Gene swooping at a moment's notice. The circular elevator
shaft was encased in tungsten and made up one of the seven pillars
that supported roof and helipad. Gene's desk seated him at the
center of the room, able to see the entire city from his vantage
point. At least here, Gene was safe from those with a lesser
knowledge who were accusing him of engineering their demise. It
occurred to Gene that these were the very individuals who used
progress as a crutch to hobble along listlessly instead of
propelling themselves into evolution. Gene had offered humanity the
opportunity to live by compassion and the principle that the cosmos
resides within every human being. Instead, 90% of all people chose
to dip their food in liquid cheese and let the television set be
their window to a perversion of the world.

Gene wouldn't waste a moment. On the morning
following the merger, he was ready to move his latest tool of
control onto the public's most desired list. Michael's show was
doing a fine job laying the groundwork. A few good and bad
examples, and the masses would come pay the Apophis Corporation to
control another part of their lives. With the touch of a digital
pad in his desktop, one of Gene's office windows turned into a
television screen.
Pin the Ponytail
filled the view. Betty's
son Max was done with his scan and the giant chicken was applying a
yellow stick-on bandage to the site of the blood extraction.

When science developed treatments for the
symptoms of obesity and its unwelcome cousins diabetes and heart
disease, Gene had expected a different response. Most of his
customers flocked towards self- destructive lifestyles in a way
humanity had never experienced. The premise of a healthy mind in an
equally healthy body had been updated. Instead, a mind that
retrieved information from the palm of its hand in a body shaped by
liposuction and the contours of an easy-chair had become a
life-aspiration.

Gene had lost all respect for a group of
people who had such low opinions of themselves that they would
create a lesser environment for their peers just so their dim light
would still outshine one’s acquaintances. “If life was permitted to
progress in the same manner, humanity would surely regress to a
society that has lost its spirit and looks outside their neglected
selves for happiness,” he thought to himself, full of woe.

Gene wasn't going to sit through one of
Michael's shows. He quickly muted the sound. A few strikes of the
virtual keyboard and an adjacent window displayed the face of
computer genius Ryan Kensington. Ryan was excited to answer this
call. He had a lot of good news to share with Gene. Ryan's
clean-shaven skin showed the effects of his recent journey to the
tropics. Ryan glowed with his first tan since he finished school.
He generally lived his life indoors with computers. He was
Isabelle's age and, despite his lack of social life, extremely fit.
Ryan's nerdy attire and glasses disguised his natural
handsomeness.

While many at Apophis had spent the night
celebrating, Ryan had stayed late at work and came in early to
supervise the integration of Tefis' communication and information
systems. The merger of the two companies had presented Ryan with a
very unique opportunity. As head of the firm's I.T. system, he
found a computer network at his fingertips more powerful than any
spy organization or government's supercomputer. In Ryan's mind, the
combination of computing power and large amount of personal
information within the system presented an amazing potential to
improve the lives of the world population. He envisioned a future
in which everyone's life-condition would be elevated to their
highest potential. This morning was going to bring first proof of
his new tool's effectiveness. Ryan eagerly awaited the results of
the first DNA scans from Michael's show. Gene's call came at the
perfect moment, Ryan thought, as he addressed his all-powerful
employer, wasting no time on unnecessary hellos.

"The two systems have integrated even better
than expected."

Ryan manipulated the interactive screen with
his hand, sending the results of Max's DNA analysis to Gene. The
computer display appeared on another window in the industrialist's
office. Gene looked at the results with great interest. Just like
Ryan, he had great expectations for what laid ahead. Both men were
eagerly watching a double-helix assemble as the individual genes in
Max's DNA were decoded and recognized. Alongside the growing,
colorful spiral, a list assembled with Max's biological potential
for health, or better - lack thereof. The family's grocery-club
card revealed the Caissons as heavy consumers of chocolate,
preservative-ridden food, and a plethora of stomach remedies and
over-the-counter drugs.