Claire, wallhere.com
“I don’t consider myself pessimistic” I thought to myself, “yet this degree of happiness does not subsist in any human affairs.” And in retrospect I was right. We spent the next hour tearing into a three-volume set called ‘The Limits of Art’. It was a collection of excerpts from western literature, from all the best works in the original languages and with English translations. So all the great poets and writers were included with their polished gems, from a few lines to half a page, or sometimes just one line that said it all.
We were once again ‘tete a tete’ at the large oak table in the middle of the room, and the amount of wisdom that passed from my head to hers was remarkable. She seemed to be able to grasp every concept like a sponge, without limits, and assimilate it all. There were also profound changes going on in my mind over the last week which I was carefully documenting. One of them was that I never needed to look at a clock or watch anymore. I always knew exactly what time it was. I was multitasking inordinately with one part of my brain working on one problem, another on another, all the while talking to someone while thinking what I’d like to have for dinner and what book I’d read next.
I’m sure that Scout was undergoing a similar expansion. I could see it in her darting eyes. I couldn’t see all of her mental activities when we were in telepathic communion, only what was apropos our shared conversation. But I could sense other thoughts going on, like dark shadows flashing by, a little girl’s thoughts, trying to grasp the deeper meanings of a world half understood. Or was she trying to tackle the mysteries of the adult mind, of secrets in the looks and slightest gestures of her mother or me, and I thought what a fragile and scary thing it must be to be a child.
It was precisely an hour and a half into our session that I noticed the chandelier high above our table flicker off and then on again. A rare power glitch I supposed. No matter, the daylight still streamed in through the windows. But it made me wonder why neither Mary nor Jane had returned yet. Then the doorbell chimed. I’d left the front gate open for their return and the door unlocked so I thought this very odd as I answered it.
A thin woman with straight red hair and the most intense gaze of green eyes I’d ever seen stood at the threshold, peering through my face. There was a dark Lincoln Mercury that looked to be from the eighties with a large middle-aged man sitting in the driver’s seat, also staring at me.
“I’m Claire” she said, “I think you know who I am since you’ve been talking to Frank and Eileen.”
“Yes I do know a little about you. Step inside. And who’s the fellow out there?”
“My driver. Don’t mind him. He’s not coming in unless I don’t come out.”
“Hello Scout” she said, as Scout was approaching us. Claire knelt on one knee, right inside the door, with open arms. She was elegantly dressed, with heels and lipstick, wearing a long, dark pleated skirt and matching vest over a white blouse. She even wore black silk gloves which were in stark contrast with her long pale white arms. She could only be described as drop-dead gorgeous. Scout hesitated before the stranger, until Claire said, “I’m one of us.”
Scout accepted her hug then looked directly at me for reassurance that she’d done the right thing. I couldn’t tell. Then Claire raised herself before me, inches away as if she wanted to kiss me, with a most confident, beaming smile and flashing white teeth. I felt like she was scanning my mind, so I tried to see into hers at which moment she quickly stepped back.
“I’ve come here with some information for you. In fact, I’ve come here to save your lives.”
“That’s a hard proposal to refuse” I replied reluctantly. “What’s your drift?”
“The world is on the verge of a crisis. Much of it is coming to an end. You have little time to get out. I know what’s in your head and that too is in imminent danger of being shut down.”
“Explain this to me.” I said. “Come, let’s sit in the living room.”
She did and began her story. Scout was sitting close next to me on the opposite couch.
“I’ll begin from the start. We have some time before the plane leaves. You know what experiment they performed upon me. I left Frank and Nancy’s house three weeks ago before dawn with three hundred dollars in my purse and a raging migraine. I knew I couldn’t go back to my apartment and didn’t want to. Bob would be lurking there. So I walked all the way to a cheap motel in Richmond, using I.D. I bought off a homeless woman for twenty dollars. There, in that squalid room it took me three days to regain my equilibrium and stop the screaming in my brain, or most of it, enough to be able to think again.”
“My sole mission at first was to eradicate this devil in my head. But as I thought about it, I realized I was up against the whole technology and if I didn’t destroy that I could easily be re-infected time and time again. I saw the entire human race about to be altered, impregnated as I was, going through the same agonies. Yet I was the first and in a unique position to stop it.”
“Now my goal widely expanded, and you don’t know what a huge wave of energy and motivation such a grand scheme can provide, especially with my new powers of intellect. I felt like Joan of Arc.”
“By the way” I interrupted, “my friends, why aren’t they back yet. What’s going on?”
“The electrical grid is slowly going down, not only here but across much of the globe. And I not only shut it down, but I also infected it with a type of malware so complicated that it’s going to take days to restore. But that’s beside the point. Call this phase ‘one.’ Anything not very small and local is not coming online anytime soon, not for months to come, if ever.”
“As we speak the net is melting down. Imagine a virus that infects every cell in a body secretly before it strikes. That’s what my little bug has been doing these past weeks, infecting every online computer in the world, every cloud, every repository and now it’s deploying itself beautifully, like a seed germinating, a flower blooming.”
“Your friends are, let’s say, temporarily detained. Now signals are starting to fail and most cars built within the last ten years are coming to a halt, their computer chips melting down, any vehicle with any form of Wi-Fi. All communications are failing, all cell phones and towers, so the police are having a little trouble responding, especially since their cars are disabled. But these are just minor inconveniences. Our worldwide banking system is about to fail. The paper records are all that’s left. My tiny asset, my bug, has been weaving its way like a bookworm for two weeks now through every air-gapped archive the world over. The rich have nothing left, only their tangible assets at hand. And the poor have no more debt, it’s all being erased and if they have a gun in their hand they are the new rich. The Russian revolution has nothing to boast to what I just did.’
“Claire, what’s the point of all this, why are you creating such mayhem?”
“At first, it was to get it out of my head, permanently, the flashing screens, the nonstop tinnitus, the seepage of endless useless information through my cranium. You’re the ones who put it there against my will, and it’s my right to remove it with any power I acquire. But as my scheme progressed so smoothly my mission widened, to free the world from the possibility of this fate, to set us back fifty years. This virus I created is part of a larger plan which is going to clear my brain like a clogged drain when I see it through, with phase ‘two’, as well as yours and all your friends. Your cell phones were compromised and let me and my friends listen in on all your lively conversations of yesterday and today.”
“This virus is everywhere, everywhere in the world, like dandelion dust. No more clouds, no more cells, no more anything in bytes. You don’t know what a good deed I’m doing for all humanity.”
“But what’s going to happen to us?”
“Not much, I expect. All the health issues that your wafer solved will still be fixed. You might feel some lights go out. But even there, in all the synaptic improvements the nanochips routed, you’ll enjoy the benefits. I’m guessing you’ll be smarter than average and healthier, all your long lives if you follow my instructions and do exactly as I say.”
“And what do you mean by that?”
“World War Three is about to start.”
“And how could you possibly know that?” I said heatedly.
“I started it. That’s phase ‘two’.
“But let me explain,’ she said in a calm voice. ‘We have a few more minutes left.’
‘When I first regained some functionality and came out of my motel den I went straight to the library and began to research how I might cure myself. Once my brain was hooked up to a terminal it took off in high gear. I was soon rifling through vast libraries of internet lore. I hardly needed to sleep or eat and began to feel almost superhuman in my abilities and my potential. But my goal was fixed, the complete eradication of modern technology, aided by that technology. My focus was malware.”
“I discovered the dark net and made numerous contacts, so many, so fast, I became sort of a celebrity, a legend. I was talking to dozens of the best hackers at the same time, showing off complex scripts and invited to join their groups. This drew the attention of my new, Russian partners. They came to me as I laid bare vulnerabilities in many security systems, particularly NORAD. I didn’t hesitate to give them my story and all the info I could about our little project on the hill. They’re so far ahead of us in hacking abilities that almost all of our systems were compromised but they had no deep research in this field, and as soon as they heard of it they were zealous, almost insanely crazy to get it, as they saw its potential. And I was their portal.”
“The man outside is Russian. There’s another man from our team sitting with your mother, Scout, and her company and another two with Jane and Naomi. But don’t worry, no one’s going to be hurt. We’re going to be taking all of you on a long trip tomorrow out of harm’s way. When my partners have seen you decommissioned, so to speak, you’ll be free to live as you please in Russia. I made them promise that. We’re special, you and I, kindred spirits and that’s why I came to visit you personally.”
“I’m afraid you won’t be seeing Eileen or Frank anymore. They’re leaving on another flight to Russia right about now. But they’re going to a place where they’ll be safe from the coming chaos. I’m saving their lives. I even had Nancy brought along, Frank’s wife, to keep him company. She was the only one kind to me in the beginning, and I remember that.”
“Your lab on the hill has been compromised. I was there myself an hour ago, to see the house of my enemy. We have all the wafers from the vault. Eileen was most cooperative at gunpoint. Explosives have been set and in an hour, kaboom. There won’t be any first responders either with all communications down, no more computerized humans for a long, long time.”
“What about Jaime.” I said.
“His loss” she said with a sigh.
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