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Vanishing Act -- Chapter
27
1. Daniel felt his body free floating in the vastness of
space.
2. It was not his corporeal body, but his
energy-matter within.
3. In the distance was a layer of colorful rings
made of luminous material. As he approached the rings, he
realized that he had greatly underestimated their size.
4. At first, the rings seemed to be made of an
ever-shifting solid material; a fusion of light and metal held together
in an inexplicable fashion.
5. He thought he saw gemstones, then the stones
dissolved into liquid gold. The effect was God-like, and it
seemed strangely connected to his mind.
6. "Isn't 'everything' connected to my mind?" he
second-guessed rhetorically.
7. The rings spanned in excess of 1,000 miles in
diameter and within were billions of creatures dressed in loosely
fitted luminous robes.
8. "Is it really?..." Daniel lipped, barely
breathing in his energy form. Breathing isn't a spiritual
imperative but a hard-wired corporeal habit.
9. In the center was a throne made of crystal and
gold gently swirling on three axis. Upon the throne sat the
center of Universal attention.
10. The setting did not seem shapable by a
corporeal mind or understandable in corporeal terms.
11. Daniel never doubted the existence of
God. This setting was proof enough.
12. Daniel's movement stopped within 100 miles of
the center. He could see that the beings were giving the central
figure a 50 mile berth.
13. There was an indescribable music of creation;
sounds that can not be heard in corporeal form. Awareness of
those sounds caused a tingly sensation not unlike a spiritual
orgasm. Apart from the music, there was a reverent silence.
These other creatures were evidently accustomed to being here.
14. A streak of light sped from its vanishing
point straight to Daniel, who was holding fast at a predisposed point.
15. The being was marvelous beyond anything Daniel
had ever imagined; even beyond images that the Light Race had left
behind on Sunova.
16. A conversation took place between Daniel and
the being at an exabit pace that would take the rest of Daniel's
natural life to unzip.
17. Daniel guessed one keyword right:
Tetragammaton. Then he awoke on his sofa in his office in a
wonderfully mind-boggeling daze.
18. Coming into focus was B'jhon's face, who had
been standing there, waiting for Daniel to awake. There was an
unwritten code on Corlos: Never wake anybody up. Nobody
ever questioned it; probably because life on Corlos caused everyone to
question which side of consciousness reality was truly on.
19. "Yes?" Daniel asked B'jhon without so much as
twitching a muscle beyond his eyes.
20. "Dayton has returned to Earth." B'jhon
said rather flatly.
21. Daniel shot up, gave B'jhon a disturbing stare
and strolled over to his enormous wall-length window. He held his
hands behind his back in military fashion and slowly paced, his
thoughts well removed from God's throne at this point.
22. "I think this is the first time anyone has
ever done this," he said.
23.
It wasn't a simple matter of going back to Earth to retrieve him;
during the ten minutes that lapsed, a million different variables
changed. That's why deployments and redeployment were always
calculated in advance to reduce errors.
24. B'jhon knew the severity of Dayton's
infraction, but didn't want to be the one to pronounce
punishment.
25. "You know," Daniel said sincerely, "I've never
had to terminate an agent before... at least not for this reason."
26. "He made the choice for you," B'jhon
consoled.
27. "OK," Daniel resigned, "reassemble them."
28. The librarian had already retrieved the user
log from the simulator and sent it to the conference room. The
simulator was not networked on purpose.
29. Everyone watched Dayton toy with disaster,
struggle with morality and ultimately choose suicide. Everyone
had experienced the same temptation more than once. Everyone knew
the rules, but nobody had committed this particular infraction.
This was the unforgivable sin for a Corlos operative.
30. "I never thought this day would happen,"
Daniel said.
31. "Who was Dayton's recruiter?" Daniel asked.
32. "I-40," came a choral response. It
wasn't necessary to point out that I-40 was also a machine. That
sort of profiling was avoided on Sunova.
33. "I-40 is always dead pan accurate," Daniel
said introspectively. Everyone caught the unspoken, "What went
wrong?"
34. "We need a retrieval agent," Daniel
added. "What are the dynamics of extraction?"
35. The images of three extraction agents appeared
on both walls, since the room was somewhat elliptically
shaped.
36. Gryffyn was considered the official Corlos executioner.
His image was one of the three.
37. Everyone recognized the third image, who was currently on
assignment in the Alpha Centuri system near Earth. It was purely
his proximity to Earth that prompted his selection as a choice.
38. The center image was Ireana, who was aboard an Elite
Destroyer enroute Earth to destroy it. There were pros and cons
surrounding each choice that did not require inordinate conversation to
navigate, however delicate.
39. "Well, Ireana is probably in the mood to kill somebody, so
why not send her?" The voice was at the other end of the
table, safely out of range.
40. Daniel allowed himself to quietly laugh at the
sentiment. The others were a little more reserved, since Dayton's
termination could one day be their own if they messed up as
badly.
41. "The intrigue is killing me," Daniel
replied. Whether or not he was being punny is debatable.
42. The same voice replied, "It's Onimex."
43. Another voice corrected, "No, it's Xanax!"
44. There was an unspoken, "Oh yeah -- I forgot"
on everyone's faces, including Daniels.
45. "You know what?" Daniel whispered, "We really
can't kill Dayton."
46. That was a revelation. Was it because of
Xanax?
47.
Xanax was an A.I. statement whose full potential had not even scratched
the surface; the closest thing to cybernetic alchemy ever
concocted. "We can't kill the inventor of such a thing," was the
silent conclusion.
48. The voice at the end of the table was right --
Ireana was the one.
49. "We've got to get her off Kor's ship," Daniel
prodded. What they heard was, 'we need to
secure the industrial vulnerability.'
50. Daniel touched a button on the onyx table
surface. "I need an analysis on moving Ireana from Kor's ship to
Earth."
51. "We're on it," came the immediate reply.
Daniel had called Operations. Two seconds later, Operations
called back. "Yes," Daniel answered.
52. "I didn't mention that four quantum
distortions will be focused on one point in time-space if we move
her."
53. "Xanax and Onimex can coordinate such a
transport, can't they?" Daniel asked.
54. "Yes, but it would help if they had some
notice first."
55. "Can't Ireana be briefed during transport?"
56. "If that's what you want done Sir, that's the
way we'll do it."
57. "Let me know when it can happen," Daniel
admonished. "I will immediately, Sir," came the reply.
58. The assistant librarian scurried into the room
somewhat flushed and clearly with something to report.
59. She set a hockey-puck shaped disc onto a
reader at Daniel's station. "You'll want to see this," she said.
60. A "Y" symbol, just like the alpha-numeric
"Y" appeared on every wall. It was the most serious event in the
known Universe and precisely what Corlos was chartered to
prevent.
61. "He messed up like you wouldn't believe,"
the librarian reported.
62. Daniel sat back down in his chair. This was the 2nd
instance in one day where he was tasked with terminating the same
person.
63. Before the alternate reality had a chance to play, Dayton
pushed the disk off the receiver.
64. "That reality will not happen," Daniel said sternly, "so we
might as well not watch it."
65. Daniel rose with an angry look on his face.
66. "Seek
and Terminate. Meeting adjourned."
67. Operations chimed back in, "We have a lock on Ireana
and we've calculated the right moment to transport her. It will
be momentarily."
68. "You picked the point when the conjoining waves are
oscillating at their widest?" Daniel interpreted. "Yes
Sir," operations replied.
69, "Just making sure," Daniel replied, "I know
you know what you're doing."
ABOARD THE DESTROYER
70. Sol
3 gradually enlarged on the main viewer as 30 Elite destroyers
decelerated and approached the quiet blue planet in stealth. Each
destroyer approached from a different angle.
71. The
ships remained well
outside Earth's detection range since Sol 3 possessed advanced
interstellar capability of its own. The destroyers' external wave
absorption technology kept them off of Earth's radar.
72. Sol 3 also had satellite detectors for early warning
that detected nothing. The destroyers also deployed redundant
field projectors to give the illusion that nothing was there. Any
low intensity signal would detect nothing.
73. By the time Earth realized that there was a
crack in their private little Universe -- the Earth would be in a
septillion bite-sized pieces.
74. A single firing mechanism aboard Kor's ship
would unleash the firepower of all 30 ships simultaneously --
disrupting the teutonic integrity of
Sol-3
and imploding the planet.
75. The death of a world was always a solemn
occasion for those on board. In their own self-righteous way, the
destruction of entire worlds was necessary to vanquish evil.
Because they were not evil in their own eyes.
76. Kor had invited Ireana to witness the morbid occasion from
his private observation deck.
77. The deck had been re-fitted to serve as Kor's official
audience chamber and throne room with monitors mounted in appropriate
places so that Kor could keep abreast of daily operations.
78. Dal
El's presence
aboard a military vessel was purely figurative: He was not
trained in combat operations, but wrote the SOP based on his tour of
duty in the Theotian Spaceforce as a young Outlander.
Veterans remember military customs and courtesies forever.
79. Kor met Ireana in the corridor leading to his chamber.
They entered. Dal
El rose in salute. His salute was accepted and Kor motioned
for him to sit back down.
80. Visible from the observation deck was the
destroyer's operations center down below. Operations was
tastefully sheik, elegant and technically elaborate. It had the
signature
of ‘death & destruction’ written stylishly everywhere -- a sinfully
glorious way to kill!
81.
Ireana had not yet abandoned her proverbial 'right'
mind, so she juxtaposed this glamorous presentation of death against
virtually
every moral principle that she claimed. The appeal was certainly
there, if you let yourself slip into its drug-like seduction. A
culture of death on steroids and loving every minute of it.
82. It perplexed Ireana how everyone coolly and
pretentiously played down their rapturous delight in killing.
83. "These people destroyed M'trol-1, my family and
everyone I knew... and they 'enjoyed' doing it. How can
Vejhonians..."
84. She perished the thought. How can
Vejhonians kill other Vejhonians? All so casually executed.
85. But to the Elite, it was part of their
alluring power. It did make more sense to Ireana now, however
much she disliked it.
86. That did pose a moral quandary: "They
think I'm one of them now... no... that I have 'always been' one of
them."
87. "The Secret Sorceress. The Elite Queen."
88. Ireana's eyes widened as she met Kor's
penetrating gaze. "Those weren't my words?" she questioned
psionically.
89. "No, they were your thoughts," Kor answered.
90. "This moment," Kor alluded to the lull in time
before destroying the planet, "is what we call the Black Mass."
91. His voice reflected reverence and solemnity for the dead.
92. Ireana didn't know what spontaneously compelled her to say
it, but the words poured from her heart, "You don't have to do
it. You can make a choice. You have the power to save this
world, by not destroying it. There are no Vejhonians there."
93. Kor was truly taken back. He even cocked his head
inquisitively toward her. "Are you trying to bargain with me..."
he asked, "for their lives?"
94. The question felt like an icicle penetrating her soul.
Somehow, she captured volumes of meaning that was not said.
95. Her breathing stiffened. She became conscious that Dal
El was in some other world, completely out of their psionic communion.
96. "Would you?" she asked. Kor captured the two
additional words that she didn't say, "for me?"
97. "I could give you worlds without end," Kor replied.
98. Ireana felt a tear trying to rip from her face. The
juxtaposition of emotions was intensely unbearable and extremely
dangerous.
99. "If I can only survive this one contradiction," she told
herself. She was weakening.
100. Dal El interrupted, "All ships are reporting 'GO.'"
101. Kor nodded toward a yeoman who stood invisibly by, in charge
of holding the main fire button until Kor required it.
102. Redundantly, the ships Captain called Kor and reported, "We
have a teutonic lock. All systems are synched. Waiting for
your order."
103. "Well Done, Captain, Kor acknowledged, "I'll fire from up
here."
104. Kor rose for the occasion, took the detonation switch from
the yeoman and approached the glass window for an unobstructed
view. How 10 yards made any difference in a planetary destruction
was somewhat mysterious, but dutifully done.
105. Monitors throughout the fleet were focused on Kor's every
move, as was customary. Whoever held the switch was the star for
the occasion, and sometimes that honor was bestowed upon someone who
had demonstrated great valiancy in the face of grave danger to protect
the Elite.
106. Kor motioned for Ireana to join him near the glass and
extended to her the remote detonator. It was the ultimate
criminal gesture that would solidify the most awkward partnership in
all of history.
107. He had offered her the remote as one might offer a drinking
buddy some pretzels.
108. Ireana thought that she was losing consciousness when in
reality she was fading out of existence, quite literally.
109. The last thing she saw was Kor returning his attention to
the window and the quickly fading sound of a single word, "FIRE!"
110. In the brief moment that it took the ships to activate their
weapons, Kor peripherally detected that Ireana had disappeared.
He spun around to see where she had went!
111. When he returned his gaze to the window, there was nothing
but miles and miles of empty space -- Sol 3 had vanished!
112. Completely stupefied, he let go of the remote. It was
the first time in his life that he had been this lost for words.
113. Stellar cartography confirmed that the other planets in the
10-planet system were unaffected. Sol was where it should
be. The Earth was gone.
114. Energy blasts from ships positioned 50,000 miles away were
beginning to streak past Kor's destroyer, having impacted no target at
all. The moon had been clipped by two disrupter beams, and
without Earth to hold it in orbit, drifted injured into space.
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