500 Million: Illuminati Uprising
Charles Philip Downing
Published by Charles Philip Downing
Copyright 2011 Charles Philip Downing
ISBN: 9781470000127
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License Notes
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“If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.” (Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Insiders Report, American Policy Center, December 1995).
Chapter 1: Grass
Grass…the smell of new mown grass…smells like sunshine and freedom…Charlie loved it, brought him back to his childhood, following his father mowing the lawn around the fig tree in the backyard. Playing with a stick, making up a rhyme, not a worry in the world. It brought him back to a world of security, play and sunshine…warmth on his back, long summer days, play with friends. Today was good, the future would be even better.
He breathed the smell in deeply. It smelled and felt sweet, green and alive, against his face and cheek. He could almost taste the sweet moisture of life in it. The sky was dark and raindrops were beginning to fall, a typical Colorado early spring afternoon. He rubbed his nose in the clippings, inhaled the fragrance one last time, and started to stand up.
He felt moisture dripping from his ear, across his cheek, over his lip and onto the grass. As he began to raise his head, he felt a sharp pain in the left side of his head. He got to his knees, wobbling a little.
He heard Lauren say, “Are you all right?” He lifted his head and looked up at Lauren. She screamed, “Omigod!!”
Charlie put his hand to his head. He felt warm liquid all over his face and neck. Blood? Then he remembered the shot that grazed his head, stumbled to his feet, looking at his clothes…blood, blood everywhere.
Lauren pulled at his arm, saying frantically, “Let’s get out of here!! They’re coming! They’ll be here any second!”
Chapter 2: Escape in the Taxi
Pulling him by the arm, she wheeled to the line of taxis. Among the others, at the front of the line was a Middle Eastern man standing and rolling up his prayer rug. A tall, dark man with a scraggly beard and turban, he jumped and grabbed her free arm.
In a thick Middle Eastern accent, as he opened the taxi door he said “Please get in my taxi. It is an honor to serve you.”
They jumped in the back seat and ducked down as the large manhole cover behind them began to open again and hands appeared at the edges, pulling the rest of the bodies out behind them. The driver started the engine quickly and pulled rapidly away from the line of taxis.
“So, where to, Boss?” he said, looking over his shoulder to see if they were being followed, “That’s the first time anyone’s made it up from down there.”
He had no accent anymore, he sounded like the five o’clock anchorman in Des Moines. “It’s like a Roach Motel; they check in, but they don’t check out.”
Charlie was confused, but in too much pain to think much about it.
“I don’t know where,” Charlie said, “Just away from here!” They pulled onto I-70 and headed west, chased at a distance by dark sedans. He heard sirens blaring.
“Who are you?” Lauren asked.
“CIA, Special Agent Matthews,” he replied, “At least, the part of the CIA that they don’t control, the part trying to stop these lunatics.”
“Are all of the taxi drivers agents?” Charlie asked.
“Some are ours, some are theirs,” Matthews said, “Some are actually just taxi drivers. One thing, though, working there has certainly improved my Arabic. What did you find out down there?”
Chapter 3: The Institute
Charlie looked out the window of the taxi, at the clear crisp dusk of Denver, trying to remember. Lights started to twink on around them as they drove west on I-70 toward Lookout Mountain. He rolled the window down a little and breathed in the cool air. His head was throbbing from the bullet; he had a vicious headache and Lauren was mopping blood from his face and neck.
A flood of images from his past came boiling to the surface, through the pain and the blood. He saw scenes from his childhood, adolescence and adulthood, all jumbled together. Life hadn’t always been the mess it was now, as a child he’d been a good kid, athletic, smart, the teacher’s favorite.
Then his parents divorced and he began getting into trouble. He was fighting with everyone, stealing…at first shoplifting, but graduating to bicycles, motorcycles and cars. He was ingenious and had his eye on a nice Learjet that he could steal, fly down to Mexico and sell. He’d cased the airport where it was hangared and made all the arrangements; bribed the guard and negotiated the Mexican sales price. That’s when they came for him…
They came for him in the middle of the night, five beefy men with a straitjacket. He kicked and spit at them, cursing and yelling for help until they put a ball gag in his mouth. He yelled at his parents for help, but they just watched and held open the door for the men. His mother was crying, holding on to his father as the men pulled Charlie out of the house and forced him into a waiting limousine and then drove off into the night.
They had driven for hours and were on a rural road when a car suddenly pulled out in front of them from a side road. The limo driver had no time to avoid the car, as he swerved and hit the brakes. The limo skidded in what seemed like slow motion toward the car, before crashing into it.
Charlie learned the meaning of helplessness that instant, bound in a seatbelt and straitjacket with a gag in his mouth, watching in wide-eyed terror as the limo windshield exploded and pieces of glass came flying at his head. His brain saw everything, as when your life flashes before you. He was taking it all in, in slow motion, as the shards of glass came flying at his face, gleaming in the reflected radiance of the twisted headlight. He was frozen in the spot as a tumbling sharp-edged crystal flew at his temple and casually, cruelly cut a long slow slice into his skin. Like an adolescent carving his name into a tree trunk, the shard left a memory of itself across the side of Charlie’s face
Then limo tumbled to the right and struck the car again. The roof collapsed in on itself and folded like a blade, slicing like a guillotine at Charlie’s forehead with a vicious knifing force, the sharp edge stopping only inches from lobotomizing him. Charlie sat eyes wide, not blinking, staring straight ahead. The only thing he was aware of was his heartbeat, until the conversation of the men on the two-way radio snapped him out of it.
A new limo arrived and drove them up a dark, winding country road to a towering stone castle…The Institute.
Chapter 4: Cow Killer, Present Day
Something killed a cow on Charlie’s small pasture. He didn’t have many cows, and just kept them as a hobby, but money was really tight and the loss of even one hurt. The cow had been mutilated, as if something had killed it for sport rather than food.
The intestines were gone, tongue sliced out, udders removed and the eyes taken out, but none of the meat was gone. So he was keeping an eye out for anything unusual.
One evening, he had made his rounds, fed the cows and watched a magnificent sunset. The peaceful transition from dusk to night was soothing and he liked to have a cigar and quietly look and listen to the sounds around him. He didn’t usually smoke, but he did like his evening cigar and a nip of whisky.
He sat in an old chair made from cow horns that he’d picked up in a shop in town until it got completely dark. The crickets chirped and the fireflies flashed, all calling out in the darkness, looking for love.
Good for them, thought Charlie, they all have a better chance of finding love tonight than I do.
The last ashes of his cigar fell into the ashtray, also made out of cow horn, and he stood up and stretched, and started for his pickup truck parked on the other side of the corral. He was about 20 yards from the corral when he heard a rustling in the bush on the far side, sounding like something large. He picked up his rifle from the front seat of the truck through the open window and turned toward the sound.
“Who’s there?” he called, feeling a little silly speaking English to an animal, but he had to say something.
He started to walk in the sound of the direction, expecting whatever it was to run away. The bushes moved again, but this time toward him.
What the hell? he thought as he silently raised the rifle, pointing it at the bush that had moved. Suddenly something jumped from behind that bush to behind another one closer to him.
He fired into that bush and whatever it was jumped away and stayed quiet. Charlie didn’t think he had hit it, but he backed away, still facing the bushes, and got into his truck. He turned the ignition key and drove toward the bushes, pointing the headlights on high beam where he thought the thing might be.
Standing beside the truck, rifle raised, he said loudly, “Come out, now!”
The bushes started shaking, as if something was moving toward him quickly, he fired twice quickly and heard a guttural cry, then undergrowth moving as if the thing was running away toward the road. He got in the truck, pulled out and stopped on the road, headlights shining down the straight, dark highway.
Something large, man-sized but too far away to tell for certain, emerged 50 yards ahead on the left, ran into the road, turned and looked at the headlights then quickly ran away down the deserted highway. Charlie gave chase.
As he closed on the thing, almost close enough to tell what it was, it ducked into the woods on the right and ran parallel to the road. Charlie could see glimpses of it through trees. It appeared to run on two legs sometimes, on four others.
That can’t be right, he thought, it has to be bad light and shadow that makes it look like that.
But it was fast, and turned quickly to the right along a dirt road. Charlie turned onto the same road, following it to the sign that said ‘Veterinarian, Large and Small Animals.’ Pulling his truck over at the sign, he saw something move behind a tree in the distance He pulled his rifle to his shoulder and squeezed off two quick rounds. A rustling movement got quieter and quieter as the thing ran away through the underbrush.
A bright light high on a lamp post turned on, the front door of the house turned clinic opened and an attractive woman in jeans and a white lab coat stepped out.
“What’s going on?” she demanded, “Are you shooting on my property?”
Dr. Lauren Moore was the veterinarian and new County Extension Agent who had taken the job and moved in three months before.
“I apologize,” Charlie replied, “I’m really sorry to bother you, but something killed one of my cows and I was chasing it. I almost had him, but he ran off that way,” he said, pointing into the woods.
“Killed your cow?” she had heard reports of this happening in other areas, but not around here.
”This is the first I’ve heard about that around here.” She was about 30, with shoulder length brunette hair and was very attractive.
“Some people over in Elbert County think aliens butchered 200 of their cows, didn’t even take the good parts,” she said, “There’ve been about ten thousand cases around the world in the last thirty years. What do you think it was?”
“I’m not sure, couldn’t get a good look at it in the dark, but it was large. Could be a really big wolf, but I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure, just a feeling. But I’d keep my doors and windows locked if I were you, just to be safe.”
Chapter 5: Tom
Tom Pinemann had been a star student at Yale, graduating with honors in Biochemistry and lettering in varsity track. He had been a favorite of his professor, who recommended him to an old friend who had wrangled a fat government contract on anti-aging research.
The government agency was very secretive, but the grant money was no problem, coming in whenever he asked. Overruns were also no problem. He was a little unsettled that no one was able to contact the agency directly, but to wait for contact from them and respond by email.
It was a project on telomeres, very interesting, and they’d been making some really exciting progress; test animals had started living much, much longer and became much stronger, physically more active and scored better on rudimentary intelligence tests.
Telomeres are strings on the ends of DNA strands that are very long when we are born, and grow shorter as we age. They protect our genes in our DNA as the cell divides. Many scientists believe that they are responsible for aging, and if they could be lengthened, could be a key to a much longer human life span.
At the lab, they had a remarkable breakthrough of a procedure of stem cell, gene and protein manipulation, working on the telomeres and mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cells, where our energy is produced. The scientists had been able to formulate a serum which turned on the desirable genes and turned off the non-desirable ones, in order to manufacture proteins that extended telomeres, and greatly improved physical strength and vitality.
Tom came into the lab one morning and saw all the rats in a cage dead except one who was bleeding and limping.
“Aldous!” he called to the lab director.
“Yes, what is it Tom?” Dr. Aldous Nelson replied.
“Come look at this!”
Dr. Nelson came to the cage, “Oh my god! What happened?”
“I don’t know, I just got here.”
They looked at the other cages, all were in the same conditions, death and blood everywhere. In the last cage, the two rats left alive, were fighting viciously, hissing and biting. Then they both fell, dead.
“We’d better call an emergency meeting.” Dr. Nelson said.
The first test animals had showed great strength and vitality for awhile, but started to turn very vicious. The researchers subsequently developed what they jokingly referred as the “secret antidote”. When injected periodically after the initial formulation, it allowed the test subjects to retain their youth, vigor and strength without descending into savagery.
The formulation was very complicated, and was being refined to eliminate the need for the antidote. Tom had been assigned the reporting task, and had not told anyone that he neglected to include the “complications” in the reports he sent back.
He was confident that this glitch would be ironed out, and the next phase of formulation would be perfect, and they would all make bundles of cash. Further funding would be easy to get if the results were good, he felt. He also wanted to be associated with a successful project, which would help him in the future, and immortality is the biggest project ever!
Tom had looked at the increase in strength, vigor and sexuality in the animals with a little jealousy because he’d always had some health problems. A little nerdy and socially reclusive, he dove into his school books as a way of compensating.
I’ll eventually be really successful, and that’ll even things out, he felt.
And now he was a researcher on a project that might be able to allow some people to live immensely longer. Immortality!
How much more successful could you be, he thought, than finding what men have sought in vain forever?
So now he was watching the experimental animals, rats and monkeys, grow stronger, live longer and mate more vigorously.
They are mammals, like us, he thought, they have similar neuronal and biochemical pathways to us and there is a very good chance that the formulation will have similar effects in humans.
He calculated that if a human took only a small dose, the effects would be only beneficial, without the drawbacks. He would really like to try some of that, to get stronger and more vigorous, and possibly to be the first person to live forever.
They were finishing the initial trials on the first formulation at the lab and working on the improved, final batch of formula when things got strange. Some people showed up at the lab and they went behind closed doors with the director, Dr. Nelson.
Tom had heard loud words exchanged between the project director and some of these men. Apparently they thought that the director was holding back some information from them, maybe trying to capitalize on it for his own profit later.
I hope they don’t know that it’s me who’s been been holding back, Tom thought.
He moved closer to the door to listen.
The men felt the test results were lacking some information. Dr. Nelson angrily denied it and the men eventually left, after inspecting everything in the lab and demanded to be injected with the formula.
Projects like these stopped on a dime when the funding ran out, and it looked like that was the situation shaping up here. And it was only a matter of time until the records were inspected closely enough to find the missing data.
Dr. Nelson called Tom into his after the men had left and said, “It’s probably time you should start looking for another job.”
Nelson had meant it as a friendly suggestion, that he didn’t know how much longer the lab would be in business, but Tom’s nerves were raw and he took it badly, his nascent paranoia starting to blossom.
They probably told Nelson to fire me, Tom thought, and Nelson, that spineless shit, didn’t have the backbone to stand up for me, to tell them how valuable I am!
They’ve never liked me here at the lab, they didn’t think I saw those glances between them about me.
I know that whispering around the office was about me, and the laughter too…
Late that night, the hall was black, pitch black, illuminated only by the faint red light of the fingerprint scanner. A man dressed in black pants, turtleneck sweater and ski mask moved with a cat-like grace to the scanner on the door and removed a plastic wrapper from his pocket. On it were the fingerprints of his employer, the man whose office he was breaking into.
At an office birthday party, the man in black had tossed a bag of Asian delicacies to his boss to look at, and then he kept the special plastic bag with the fingerprints on it when his boss had tossed the bag back to him. It worked; he heard the faint click of the door unlocking.
He walked across the room to the door of his employer’s office. In his pocket was a special recording device. He had recorded his employer giving a happy birthday speech, and computer-enhanced it to duplicate the man’s password, which was simply “open the door”. The door clicked open and the man in black quickly walked to the refrigerator, opened the door and emptied it of its contents of vials and ampoules, putting them into a black bag.
Then he turned and walked to the file cabinet. Opening it, he found a file marked John Wheeler, Confidential. In it was background information and a newspaper story about the man, a 66 year old Yale and Harvard graduate, author of a manual on biological and chemical weapons, who was found dead, apparently murdered, in a Delaware landfill. It had the notation 102.
Another file was marked Leonid Strachunsky.It contained information about a researcher who died from blunt trauma. He had created microbes resistant to biological weapons. Labeled 79.
And William T. McGuire, 53 He was a leading microbiologist and expert in biocontainment facilities. His body found in three suitcases floating in Chesapeake Bay.
The man in black heard the trill of the security alarm sounding, and quickly grabbed all of the files in the drawer. He rose, turned and quickly moved across the room, closing the door behind him as he left. When he got to the outer door, he turned back and scanned the office, then opened the door quickly and stepped out into the hall.
Shouts and shots rang out as he ran down the hall toward the window he had come in through. Wood in the window frame exploded next to his hand as a bullet blasted through it. The man in black jumped down onto the roof below, ran along the roof line, and then jumped to the ground as bullets whizzed by.
He picked up a long pole he had left earlier and ran with it toward the barbed wire-topped security fence. Planting the pole with the grace of a natural athlete, he felt the wind blowing through his hair and he was lifted up, flying, flying over the fence, away from danger and into a bold new life.
Chapter 6: Rehab
It was a rehab center the men took young Charlie to that night long ago when they abducted him, a tough-love institution where kids with big potential and big problems were taken. It was run by a man that Charlie knew only as David, a tall man with a slight accent. European? Mideastern? It was too subtle to tell, David would never talk about himself, and Charlie never felt comfortable enough to ask.
The men threw him into a cell to stay until he cooled off. It was 7’ by 10’ with concrete walls and floor. It had one small, high barred window and one barred light on the 10’ ceiling. There was a toilet, sink and metal mirror against an open wall, and the door was a solid, heavy wood with a small sliding food hatch in it. It looked like it was made to impress newcomers, to show them who was in control. Charlie kicked and spit at the door after it closed behind him. He called the men who had thrown him in there every foul word he could think of, until his anger tapered off and he laid on top of the single bunk, passing out.
He slept for 12 hours and woke up still mad.
What right do they have to take me here against my will? he thought, Bastards!
An orderly, a huge impassive black man, brought him a dinner of a cheese sandwich on white bread and a glass of water, sliding the tray through the food hatch.
“You hungry?” he asked. Charlie threw the tray against the door. The orderly just shrugged and slid the hatch door closed.
A similar routine followed for two more days, Charlie cursing and demanding to be released, until he finally calmed down, and thanked the orderly for the food.
“Thanks for the food,” he said, “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
Nate, the orderly, was a large man of about 40, who looked at Charlie dispassionately.
He scrutinized him for a few seconds, then said ’”David wants to see you…come on,” and opened the door.
They walked down an elegant hallway of marble and walnut, expensively furnished, to David’s office. Large windows opened to the outside. It was autumn and the leaves were turning colors and falling to the ground. Late afternoon sunlight slanted through the trees to the large expanse of grounds and in through the windows. It was a beautiful New England afternoon, the kind that could make you feel it should last forever.
The present seemed beautiful and never changing, the surroundings made you feel as if you belonged here in this bastion of refinement and gentle order.
Except that it was not never changing and you belonged there because of your bad behavior. It was a prison, and the only reason that you were there is because you couldn’t escape. Like other types of prisons in life, you are where you are because of the decisions you made, and you can’t escape because you keep thinking the same thoughts.
Nate motioned with his head for Charlie to go inside. Charlie put his hand on the elegantly turned door handle, pushed it open and walked in.
The office was large and beautifully furnished, with an eclectic group of souvenirs and mementos from a life rich with accomplishment. Photos on the wall depicted a distinguished, powerful man with many different dignitaries, sports stars and politicians, even the President of the US and the Queen of England.
At a large rosewood desk sat the man, his back to Charlie, apparently deep in thought, tapping a tune on the desk, gazing out of a large window at the lovely afternoon, as the sun played through the trees and across the grounds. It was the end of a day, at the end of a summer season as it turned to fall, a good time for reflection on the endings and beginnings in life.
David was the director of the institution, a tall, athletic man. Charlie came in and stood at his desk.
Without turning his chair around, David said simply, “Sit.” Not “How are you, won’t you have a seat please?” Just… “Sit.”
He seemed to be a man at ease with giving commands, assured that they would be followed, who knew exactly what he wanted. Charlie was nervous in his presence, and catching David’s steely-grey, unblinking and assessing eyes as he turned his chair around didn’t make him any calmer.
David had a penetrating gaze that seemed to linger a little too long, that made you feel transparent and junior to him, even if he was smiling, which he was not doing at the moment.
Charlie drew up as much bravado as a sixteen year old delinquent could and said, “How much are my parents paying you to keep me in this prison?”
David dryly looked him over, and then turned to gaze out the window again for a moment, not acknowledging the question. That complete silence rattled Charlie.
After a few seconds, David said, “Be quiet. I’m the one who will talk.”
“And if I’m not quiet?” Charlie asked.
“Did you like the cell?” David replied, “And the cuisine?”
Charlie felt the will power in this man, and felt that he would send him back to the cell for a month without a second thought. Charlie nodded that he understood.
David began, “In answer to your question, we ordinarily charge $100,000 per year for our educational program. Our students continue their studies while here and get a diploma from our accredited high school, or a certificate from one of our specialized programs. One hundred percent of our graduates continue on to college, mostly very good ones.”
“My parents don’t have that kind of money,” Charlie blurted out, then “I’m sorry to interrupt. Go ahead please.”
David smiled slightly, “Good.”
He continued, “We always have our eye out for…talent, and one of our friends in local law enforcement brought you to our attention. He thought that you might prove useful to, uh, society if you were redirected at an early age away from the destructive path that you were on.”
“You don’t realize it now, but you are a very lucky young man. We have a few scholarships available to promising young people who work diligently, and we will evaluate you over the next few months to see if you are worthy. Otherwise your parents will be paying us for years to come.”
“And don’t think that this is some sort of punishment,” David continued, “You were on the road to perdition, but are too young and stupid to realize it. You would have ended up in prison or dead, or at best a broken down old failure looking back at the mistakes of his life. You can’t go on forever with the energy of youth, especially the way you’ve been burning it up.
But at some point you get tired; you’ve burned up all your glowing energy, dissipated all your potential and alienated the people who care about you. Few options remain. But you are no longer young and no one sees any potential in you, because you don’t have any left.”
“No one cares about you, and you take some demeaning job that the younger you would have sneered at. Your boss is someone the younger you laughed at, but now you have to take his orders and insulting attitude. You take it because you’ve pissed away all of your opportunities.”
“The younger you would gladly die rather than live with this indignity, but the older failure you sees only his own cowardice. So you eat fistfuls of shit every day, and tell yourself that it doesn’t taste so bad.”
“Have you noticed?” David went on, “that all of your little criminal buddies are not really very bright? You’re the Einstein of your circle? But you’re still dead sure that you will be successful at anything you do. Because you’re soooo fucking smart!”
“Tell me, Mister Smartboy, who do you think owns that jet you were getting ready to boost?”
A jolt went through Charlie, but he didn’t say anything.
How did he know that I was going to steal that plane? he thought, could it have belonged to him?
“How did I know that?” David said, mocking what Charlie was thinking, “Pretty arrogant, aren’t you? Think you’re smarter than everyone else, don’t you? Most stupid people do.”
“That’s right, genius, it’s my jet. If you were older and of no use to me, I would have had you killed, like swatting a mosquito. I have close friends in high places and eliminating people is no problem at all.”
“Sometimes,” he said, a small smile crinkling his face, “it’s a pleasure.”
A cold chill went through Charlie’s body as he felt the presence of something he had never experienced, something cold, implacable and powerful. He stiffened, a little frightened and gauging things from a new perspective.
“Your version of reality,” David said, “Is a mash up of inexperience and media drivel, but you think that you’re the crown of creation.”
“The reason I am telling you this,” David continued, “is so that you will appreciate your own stupidity and also appreciate that there are people many, many steps ahead of you. But they didn’t follow that path that you are now on. They worked hard and learned the way the world truly works.”
“At this time you are damaged, angry. Go back to your cell and figure out which of your petty, childish expectations didn’t work out perfectly, and so you’re trying to be a big, tough man, mad at the world,” he said the last part sarcastically.
“Didn’t get a pony for Christmas? Parents divorced, so it’s their fault your life is ruined? Boo-fucking-hoo. You’ll show them, huh? You’ll be the bad son they can’t be proud of, can’t show off to their friends. Maybe a little time in jail will embarrass them, huh?”
Charlie was feeling small and stared at the floor.
“No one gives a rat’s ass about you. You are insignificant, important only to yourself. If you want to continue this stupid, self destructive pattern after your parents pay me $100,000 please be my guest.”
“Or if you want to take advantage of this opportunity to better yourself,” David said, “to really open your eyes, you will need to show me that you’re worthy of my time. Now go back to your cell and think about it.”
With that, David turned back to the window, ignored Charlie and started tapping his fingers on the desk again, to a tune in his mind.
I don’t want your fucking scholarship, Charlie thought, and my parents just sent me to a fucking prison. I just want the hell out of here.
But he said, simply, “Sir?”
“Yes?” David replied, still looking out the window.
“How long will I be here?” Charlie asked.
“That’s up to you,” David stated, “A minimum of six months. At that time we evaluate you. If we feel that you’ve improved, and if your parents want you back, and if you want to leave, you go. Now go to your cell.”
Charlie left the room. Nate was waiting for him outside and walked with him to the cell. They were silent, Charlie’s head swimming, trying to understand the implications of what had just happened. Nate opened the door and Charlie walked in to the cell.
He ran away at the first opportunity, and called his parents to come get him. They told him that they had agreed not to take him back until the treatment was finished, and he couldn’t come home. If he did, they would call the men from the treatment center again. It was for his own good, his father said. His mother was crying in the background.
My own good, my own ass, he thought, I’ll never forget this… never!
He called his a friend to see if he could stay there for a few days, but the boy said that his mother wouldn’t like it. So Charlie slept in a farmer’s field that night. The next morning, cold and hungry with no money and no place to go, he hitchhiked back to the Stone Castle. He slept in his cell for the rest of the day and night.
Chapter 7: Tom and the Needle
The next night, Tom used the wider needle with the syringe to suck up the liquid; then he switched to the thinner one to inject. He’d been feeling weak, nervous, and unable to cope, and wanted to try the formula.
A good scientist, he thought, needs to intimately understand the process.
Holding the syringe up to the light, he tapped on the barrel to release air bubbles. They floated languidly up to the hub, where they coalesced into one shimmering globe. It glistened as the light reflected off. He gently squeezed it up the needle and out.
I won’t let it get out of control, he thought, just enough to feel a little of what the animals felt. And I’ll keep the antidote close at hand…
His hand trembled slightly as he wiped an alcohol swab on his thigh. The needle stung a bit when it first broke the skin, but he had found that if he pushed it in very slowly, there was almost no pain.
I can control it, just a small, easy rush. Only half a dose of what my body weight should tolerate.
Reaching bottom, the needle all the way in, he pushed the plunger very slowly and deliberately all the way down. The formula felt warm, almost hot, as it poured into his muscle. He pulled the needle out quickly and wiped the site with another alcohol swab.
Yes…that beautiful liquid was in, and he slowly he began to feel…comfortable.
The world seemed a lot less threatening. He felt a little more confident, sure of himself, stronger.
Yes, stronger. And smarter, more awake.
Then a slow deeper awakening to things most people couldn’t fathom. He began to feel that he was one of the strongest people, emotionally and physically, that he knew.
And why wouldn’t I be? Twenty nine years old, PhD, varsity track in college and research fellow on one of the most exciting projects in history…
The formula allowed him to see and release the shackles that the world had put on him. Now he saw, at quickening speed, that he deserved much, much more than he was getting. He put his left hand on his right bicep. He was strong, as strong as three men. Amazing power, but he deserved it. He wasn’t like everyone else. He was stronger, smarter, better…
And who are they to say I couldn’t do this, or couldn’t do that, he thought, the hell with them! Nobody can tell me what to do!
He felt a hunger and power wash over him, and his aggression grew larger and stronger, irritation grew to rage.
Just who the hell are they to say I can’t complete this work on the project? I am smarter than them, mentally stronger. I have a goddamned PhD from goddamned Yale! Bastards…they deserve to die, the sons of bitches!! Die!!!
He felt smarter than ever, more superior than ever, now that the doors of perception were opening. He understood, just plain understood.
He felt his fingernails rearranging themselves, becoming thicker, stronger, claw-like. His genetic code was reaching backwards, to a more powerful apelike ancestor and crossing over and mixing to create a union of awesome animal strength and evolved cunning. Something never before seen on earth, elevated above mere mortals.
The pinnacle of evolution, he thought, the way it should have gone.
His fingernails grew thicker, much thicker and stronger, and seemed to seat themselves much deeper and firmer in the nail bed and finger. They felt just like claws.
His body muscles grew tighter and seethed with strength. Shoulders became broader, chest more massive. He had never felt stronger, more complete, more alive… muscles grew larger in size, and felt amazingly robust and sinewy.
He was truly powerful, much, much stronger than he had been before. He put his hands around the heavy china cabinet and lifted. Although it weighed well over two hundred pounds, it felt as if it were made of styrofoam.
He felt an itching in his jaw, muscles strengthening, teeth holding tighter, stronger. His jaw was growing in size, and exponentially in power. He felt his teeth seating in his jaw with a strength he would have thought impossible a month ago. When he looked at his reflection in the mirror of the china cabinet he held, Tom was startled. His neck was thicker now and his jaw had grown. It was large, thick and muscular.
He felt something tucked inside his mouth, between his cheek and gums. He opened his mouth wide and four short fangs, like a baboon’s, pierced the air in front of his face. The fangs felt great, like he could pierce anything with them. He closed and opened his mouth, touched them with his finger, they were sharp, and stung his finger.
Some part of his brain wondered, how did they grow so fast?
But that thought passed quickly as the adrenaline pounded in his temples. He growled, a low, rumbling powerful growl that would have scared the Tom of thirty minutes ago. But he was the Tom of now, and it felt good…
He was now a magnificent evolutionary specimen, strong, powerful, able to take down any man or animal with his bare hands, claws or teeth. He had the cunning and strength of a powerful predator, but the intelligence of man. And he possessed the rage and burning vengeful fury of man. His mouth and jaw had become a magnificent weapon. His incisors and canines felt like they needed something to bite, something alive…
I’ll go back to the lab and get even with those bastards who fired me! he thought.
He opened his apartment door and started walking to his car...
Chapter 8: Gets His Mind Right
Young Charlie spent two more days in his rehab cell until he “got his mind right,” according to Nate. Then he woke up in the morning, showered and went to see his “guidance counselor” Jake, an affable, dark haired man in his thirties, who had a copy of Charlie’s high school transcript and showed him the courses he would be taking in order to finish his high school diploma. There were other courses as well, many applied science and computer courses.
“Well, that’s it,” Jake said “you’ll be a science and computer genius when we get finished with you.”
“What if I don’t study?” Charlie asked.
“While you’re here, that won’t be possible,” Jake replied, “you don’t have a choice.”
“What would happen?” Charlie pushed.
“You’ve been the one pushing people with no consequences so far,” Jake’s smile faded, “but here there are real, and just consequences for your actions. There is swift, fair and harsh punishment for any transgressions.”
“Transgressions?”
“ And not studying is a serious transgression. This will be a learning experience for you, my young friend.”
Charlie felt a chill and decided to not pursue the conversation any further. He’d heard screams, mostly at night, and right now didn’t want to know anything else.
When he realized there was no other option, he threw himself into his studies. If he behaved, everything went well. If he misbehaved, things got ugly quickly. These rules were simple. So he studied hard, all of his adolescent energy funneled into books and basketball. He was very bright and got mostly perfect marks on his tests.
He was periodically taken into a laboratory, for “enhancement,” as they called it. His memory was foggy immediately after these sessions, but he sometimes remembered screaming for a few minutes afterwards, and he couldn’t remember anything at all about the sessions after a day had passed. They lab technicians told him that they were using hypnosis, chemicals and some cutting edge subconscious programming techniques to make him happier and help his learning.
Charlie didn’t mind what they were doing, because it seemed to be working. It had been a long time since he had felt this good and was this productive. His voice was hoarse and muscles were sore after leaving, but he didn’t think much about it.
When six months were up, he saw David again. “You’ve made a remarkable recovery,” David said, “Your computer and science knowledge is exceptional.”
“Thank you, sir,” replied Charlie.
“And your scores on the personality tests corroborate what we’ve observed,” David continued, “that you’re a remarkable young man with great potential. We’ve discussed this with your parents and have decided to forgive their debt and offer you a year here free, if you wish.”
“That’s very generous of you,” Charlie said, “I would love to stay here.” He was totally changed from the wild animal thrown hissing and snarling into the cell a year before.
“There is one thing,” David said.
“Yes?” Charlie replied. It didn’t matter what David would have said, Charlie would have agreed to anything at this point.
“Someday, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day - accept this scholarship as a gift to you and your parents.”
“Thank you, sir.” Charlie felt that David had changed his life, and he would do anything David asked.
So Charlie studied hard for another year and thrived within the rigid walls and strict definitions of the Institute. He would occasionally wake up with a burning pain in his head or stomach and fleeting visions of…
What? Laboratory experiments? Being strapped on a table or in a chair and men in white coats standing over him? Screaming?
But these images faded quickly and he thought that they were just dreams, something that his mind had conjured up about the enhancements. Two boys died there that year, but they were told it was from an automobile accident, and nothing more was spoken of it.
When high school graduation day came, his parents drove up to attend. It was only the third time he’d seen them in two years. He hugged them, but felt strangely distant, as if the school was now his home and David his father.
Why don’t I feel as close to them as I used to? he thought, It must be because I haven’t seen them for awhile, it’ll be back to normal once I move back home.
With David, Charlie felt, it’s cut and dried, you know what the rules are and where you stand. You know the boundaries. You know he’s smarter than you, there’s no manipulation, no outsmarting, no playing on the heartstrings.
It’s the way a father is supposed to be.
The school had a simple, beautiful graduation ceremony under the magnificent maple trees, and afterwards Charlie said goodbye to his friends and teachers.
David came out of his office, greeted Charlie’s parents warmly and shook hands with Charlie, saying, “I’m sure we will see each other again in the future.”
Then the family got into their car and drove home. Within the week Charlie got a call from the Admissions Director at Dartmouth University and was told, that because of David’s recommendation, he had been accepted into the university without application and could start classes in the fall.
Chapter 9: Two Men Approach Tom
Wearing a hooded sweatshirt, Tom walked to his car in the parking lot in the late afternoon, near the edge of the woods. As he began to open the lock, two men in black suits and black turtlenecks came up quickly behind him.
“Tom Pinemann?”
“I don’t have time to talk right now,” he replied. He felt an urgent need to open his car and get to the lab. He saw the antidote through the window, lying on the front seat. “And I don’t need any Bibles, if that’s what you’re selling.”
“This is important, it’ll only take a minute,” said the closest man, the taller of the two.
Tom felt a flash of anger erupt inside him, but with his last bit of restraint, tried to keep his composure. He failed.
“What’s so god damned important?” he demanded, turning to face them.
“We need to ask you a few questions,” said the taller man, as the stockier one moved around back of Tom.
“I don’t like the tone in your voice,” Tom replied aggressively, “Why don’t you take your questions and stick ‘em up your…”
“Where’s the fucking serum you stole from the lab, punk?” the tall man growled, as he grabbed Tom’s sweatshirt and pulled a gun from his coat.
Tom’s eyes narrowed, “It’s in my car, just don’t shoot,” he said, pretending to be afraid, “be careful with that thing.”
“Well, get it now!” said the man with the gun.
Tom turned toward the car. The two men were behind him on his right and left. The tall man lowered his gun. Tom pretended to fumble with the keys, dropping them on the ground and he attempted to put them in the lock.
“Fucking clumsy idiot!” said the stockier man on his rear left, as he kicked Tom.
From his crouched position, Tom leaped up and in the same motion turned around and gashed deep trenches in the taller man’s face with his right hand. In one seamless move, he opened his jaws and came down on the side of the man’s neck and bit down, hard. His teeth passed through wet muscle and sinew. When they came together, he pulled his head back in a robust twisting motion and came away with a mouthful of blood and flesh.
Before the stockier man could say “What the f..” Tom pushed the taller man against him and they tumbled down in a heap. Tom saw the woods on the edge of the parking lot and made a run for them.
Running was a beautiful feeling, his body responded like a cheetah’s, the wind blew his hair, he felt his muscles respond, tight and strong, and he ran like a beautiful animal. Then he slowed a bit so the two men, one with a handkerchief wadded and held against his neck, could see him. They were running with guns pulled out.
Chapter 10: College Life
Somewhere during college the wheels fell off. Maybe it was the lack of structure or the lack of ‘enhancements’ he had received at the Institute. Maybe it was the temptations of college freedom to which he enthusiastically succumbed, but he reverted to coasting, to just getting by without putting forth much effort. He was sure that he’d always be successful, that things would always be bright and easy, that good fortune would be his just because he deserved it.
His grades suffered, he started to get severe migraine headaches and he dropped out for a semester, blaming the migraines on on partying too hard.
Get away from the temptation, he thought, get rested up and start again, ‘bright eyed and bushy tailed’, as Mom used to say.
The headaches didn’t go away, but became less frequent and manageable.
A lot of people have migraines. I’ll just have to deal with them.
But he always a bit preoccupied and had a nagging feeling that he was missing something, forgetting something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
He never did make it back to the university, even though they called each semester to tell him that he was welcome to come back. After a couple of semesters they quit calling. Jake, from the Institute, quit calling too because Charlie didn’t take his calls.
This lack of effort did not serve him well in his subsequent working life. He always felt that there was plenty of time to accomplish whatever he wanted, that he could change jobs anytime, that he was just plain potent and could do whatever he set his mind to. Trouble was, he never set his mind to anything for long. At base, he really didn’t want to do much, and always seemed a little distracted.
A series of career changes and poor romantic choices left him divorced repeatedly and adrift on the sea of penury.
He thought, No money, no career, no real job, no prospects, no wife…
Wait a minute, thank God for that last one, no wife… No matter how bad it gets, I’ll never have to see number three again. The first and second wives were great, but number three was the devil herself. She must have shapeshifted to hide the horns and cloven hooves, but I’m sure those furrows in the concrete were made by her great swollen tail dragging along, burning with the fires of hell…
That divorce had been the worst thing he’d ever gone through.
He wondered, as many men do after divorce and career failure, What the hell happened?
Ultimately, the divorce was just another ugly story, a human tragedy acted out before courts and judges that were numb from witnessing an endless parade of them.
But the anger and outrage kept eating at him. He knew he had to get rid of the negative emotions, or risk letting them eat him alive. He started reading about Buddhism.
Chapter 11: Into the Woods
Tom ran deeper and deeper into the woods, pausing periodically for these slow, weak, stupid humans to stay in the chase. The he ran out of sight and bounded up a tree, waiting for them to catch up. The rage inside him had calmed down, now he was fully focused on the kill…
The men had lost sight of him, so they split up, the stockier one pointing with his gun for the taller man to go to the left, and he went to the right…right under the tree where Tom lay in wait. The man looked left and right, surveying the land. On his right was a small pond in a clearing.
Probably not there, he thought.
Ahead stretched dense, dark forest.
The man paused under the tree that Tom perched in, gun out, looking all around. Tom leapt. The man heard a twig snap above him and looked up just as Tom landed on him, knocking the gun from his hand with a dizzyingly fast slap from the back of Tom’s fist. The man felt a mighty punch to his mid-section, knocking his wind out and disorienting him.
I’ve never been hit nearly that hard, even in Golden Gloves, he thought, how did that guy get that strong?
Tom grabbed the man’s hair with his left hand to hold him up and steady, and said, “You asked me where the serum is?”
The man said nothing, petrified by the inhuman strength holding him up.
“Answer me, you pathetic fuck,” Tom growled, then menacingly said, “I asked you if you wanted to know where the serum is.”
The man nodded. Tom growled, “I didn’t ask for a nod, I want a fucking answer!” And Tom slapped him. It felt like a brick wielded by a jackhammer, and his knees buckled.
Tom pulled him back up, and the man said “Yes.”
“Louder!”
“Yes, where is the serum, please?”
“Well, now that you asked nicely,” Tom purred, reaching his right hand to his ear, “I think it’s right here, behind your ear.”
The man felt Tom’s hand close on his ear. Were those claws at the end of his fingers? The grip tightened slowly, stronger and stronger. Holy Mother of God, the man thought, I’ve never felt anything this strong! This guy is inhuman!
He felt Tom tug at his ear, pause and then all he felt was a searing, deafening pain as Tom ripped his ear off.
Tom looked at his closed fist, “Here’s the serum, in my hand.”
He opened his hand and looked at the bloody ear. “Oh, my mistake, it must have been behind your other ear…”
He opened his mouth wider to show his fangs. The man’s eyes widened in fear and he felt warm liquid running down his leg.
“No, no, please…”
Tom switched hands holding the hair. Now with his left hand he cupped the man’s ear, “While you can still hear, who were you calling ‘punk’?”
“I’m sorry, please let me go.”
Tom closed him fist and ripped the other ear off. The man screamed. Tom heard footsteps, so he squeezed the man’s neck with two hands and heard it pop, then lifted his entire body up as if it weighed nothing, and brought it down over his knee, breaking his back.
He turned and ran in the direction of the tall man and noticed drops of what appeared to be blood. The drops got closer and closer together, leading to the man, sitting back against a log, bleeding to death. He looked up at Tom and tried to point his gun at him, but Tom easily kicked it away.
“Who are you?” the man asked, “and what are you?”
Tom said nothing, just leaned over and snapped his neck. The fury was ebbing. He picked up the lifeless body like a rag doll and carried it back to where the stocky man was. He carried both bodies out into the pond and, weighting them with large rocks, let them sink, one by one, to the bottom.
Back in his apartment, Tom was coming down. He showered off the blood and wrapped his bloody clothes in a plastic trash bag.
That crazy old man down the road burns his trash in a 55 gallon drum, Tom thought, I’ll put these on the fire.
He was coming down hard, and his usual insecurity was compounded by right-out fear.
Who were those guys I killed?
They were probably sent by those people that funded us.
Those guys that came in for injections the other day looked like hard characters, hard characters with money and power, and they know who I am and where I live.
And they know I stole the formula and lied on the reports!
They have to be massively pissed off about the side effects that I didn’t tell them about.
Damn! Damn! Damn! I really screwed up this time. I’ve gotta get out of here…
He decided to pack up his clothes, the formula and antidote, and find a cheap hotel for awhile…
Chapter 12: Om
After the third divorce, Charlie needed relief. He liked the idea of relief by exerting control over a chattering mind. Buddhism teaches that suffering and dissatisfaction originate in the way your mind reacts to life's circumstances — not in the raw facts of life itself. Your mind causes you suffering by attaching to unhealthy things.
Learn to step back a little and see the whole process and your part in it, he thought, Just try and see things as they are, not as you want them to be.
And have some compassion; try to understand that everyone is having a tough time of it.
Buddha’s Four Noble Truths boil down to the fact that we all suffer to some degree, just by being alive and the way our minds desire things. Some people suffer greatly, others less. And there is a way to relieve the suffering; by following the Eightfold Path.
The Eightfold Path is about having wholesome thoughts and performing wholesome actions. It’s having the right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration. Do the right thing, understand that everyone is having a hard time, show a little compassion and don’t get so wrapped up in yourself.
Learn to let go…
Charlie read about Buddhist techniques and started meditating. He listened to recorded lectures and went to meditation groups. To him, it wasn’t a religion, but a psychology, a framework for looking at the world.
Learn to let go of regrets about the past and worries about the future. Live mainly in the present. If you can do that and step back from your troubles, look at the bigger picture and treat other people with kindness, then maybe some kindness might come back to you.
And it started to work after a while... he began to feel more peaceful, to understand that his ex-wife suffered from her childhood.
He learned to forgive himself, to understand that he was just some dumb guy standing near a biological clock as it counted down. He hadn’t realized that the biological clock was really a timer for a bomb…that faint ticking that grew louder and louder, that eventually erupted into an explosion of anger, recriminations, lawyers and legal documents. The shrapnel of failed marriage tearing through soft tissue…
He came to understand that he was just a dumb guy who believed the lie, that he wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last. That the lie and the gullibility involved was really life itself wending its way through our forms to beget itself anew. What we said or did didn’t really matter in the long run, as long as that double helix of DNA, that winding, twisted ladder was able to re-form itself and again and again, to keep going, no matter what.
On one hand we’re the product that needs to keep going, and on the other we’re just a vehicle, one of millions of species that life uses to keep itself going. Like a hand puppet manipulated by an invisible magician, we say, do and believe whatever it takes to create a new generation for the puppeteer.