An Armageddon Duology (62 page)
Read An Armageddon Duology Online
Authors: Erec Stebbins
T
he setting sun
burned a potent crimson through the glass, backlighting the explosions of spray from the massive waves pummeling the rocks below. Lightfoote stared out toward the craggy rocks and the expanse of the Pacific racing to the horizon. Her scalp was freshly shaved and gleaming, her bare arms like Greek marble against the dark fatigues she wore. One hand played with an eyebrow piercing while the other drummed along the thick glass. Around her, the floor-to-ceiling windows of the restaurant offered stunning panoramic views of the ocean, the Seal Rocks, Marin coastline, and the entry to the Golden Gate Bridge.
It had been a peaceful day, but she experienced it only as a bizarre and unnatural event in the context of the last six months. At dawn, she had begun at one end of the San Francisco Zoo, walking leisurely west toward the shore. No animal, no botanical arrangement was too inconsequential for her time. She lingered at each exhibit. Her eyes drank the miraculous life forms around her like balm poured over a burnt wound. By the time she reached the jutting outcrop of rocks thrusting the restaurant over the churning waves, the day had almost ended and the sun had begun to dive toward the water.
Her laptop was open on the table, an untouched plate of food and full cup of now cold coffee on either side of it. She refused to look at the screen again. Its contents were memorized, seared into her mind from hours of obsession. The final code was ready. Looking at it wouldn’t change anything. Her problem now wasn’t technical—it was moral, and she struggled to make a choice.
Press ENTER, and let loose a modified version of Fawkes’s code, one that would leapfrog over the duct-taped patches placed across the world’s computers to block it. Code that would take her still ranging immune worms weeks to recognize and erase. By then, the task would have been completed, every trace on the computers of the Bilderberg group wiped clean of the Nash equations. The power to scientifically model human populations and manipulate them would once again be relegated to science fiction, the can kicked down the road to some near future when the ideas were rediscovered. Gone would be that temptation to tyranny, to the godlike powers offered. Gone also would be the ability to correct societies that had gone wrong, to use reason to try and steer the mad human course on Earth toward something less self-destructive.
All she had to do was press a button.
Lightfoote had already erased the files Fawkes had sent to her, the images of the mad cork board she and Houston had reduced to ash. Gone too was the decoded text of Nash’s paper. With the murder of Nash and Kaplan, the last human beings able to resurrect that work had perished as well. All that remained were the computer servers of the scattered Bilderberg group. As Fawkes had shown, they hadn’t adapted to the new realities of the digital realm. Her code would hunt them down faster and more effectively than any governmental agency. It would complete the destruction of this terrible knowledge.
And all she had to do now was press a button.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, was there a problem with your meal?”
A young waitress looked down anxiously at Lightfoote and her plate, her bulging chest and tight clothing contrasting oddly with her customer’s militarized appearance.
“That’s all there are,” said Lightfoote. “Problems.”
The woman smiled weakly. “I can get the manager.”
Lightfoote stared through the woman, turning her head in a slow arc, taking in the restaurant, the clientele of tourists and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. She frowned.
“You know, we’re just not ready. It’s too soon.”
“If you want us to bring it out later, I can have another—”
“Not
mature
enough. Monkeys just knocked out of trees.”
The waitress took a step back, her eyes darting. “I’m sorry?”
Lightfoote raised her index finger and struck a key on her laptop. She stared at the screen, ignoring the waitress for several moments.
“There,” she said at last. “Yup. It’s all done.
Cleaned up
. We’ll be gods another day.” The waitress looked on in bewilderment. Lightfoote stuffed her laptop into a bag. “Can I have the check, please?”
“If Bilderberg meetings are just talking shops, why do the most powerful figures from around the world bother to attend? What other summit of world leaders in politics, finance and business would go completely unreported in the mainstream media such as the BBC? It’s impossible not to reach the conclusion that the non-reporting of these events is anything other than a conspiracy between the [Bilderberg] organizers and the media. It merely confirms the belief of many that the hidden agenda and purpose of the Bilderberg Group is to bring about undemocratic world government. It’s a disgrace that the European Commission is colluding in that.”
Gerard Joseph Batten, British representative to the European Parliament, 12 September 2011, at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France
“For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
David Rockefeller, Memoirs
“We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
David Rockefeller
[
purported remarks at the Bilderberg Group meeting in Baden-Baden, Germany in June 1991 (published in
Hilaire du Berrier Reports
), considered apocryphal despite widespread dissemination, as no written or audio evidence has been presented from this meeting.
]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
E
rec Stebbins is
a biomedical researcher who writes thrillers, science fiction, mysteries, and more.
He was born in the Midwest. His mother worked as a clinical psychologist, and his father was a professor of Romance languages at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. In fact, his father’s specialty, old Romance languages and their literature, is the source of the strange spelling of his middle name: "Erec." It is an Old French spelling, taken from an Arthurian romance by Chrétien de Troyes written around 1170:
Érec et Énide
.
He has pursued diverse interests over the course of his life, including science, music, drama, and writing. His academic path focused on science, and he received a degree in physics from Oberlin College in 1992, and a PhD in biochemistry from Cornell University in 1999. He completed postdoctoral studies at Yale University. He has worked for several decades studying the atomic structure of biological macromolecules involved in disease.
For more information:
CHOOSE YOUR ENEMY WISELY
"Outrageously entertaining: epic, explosive, subversive, engaged and compassionate, like a Michael Bay movie written by Aaron Sorkin."
Chris Brookmyre, author of
Where The Bodies Are Buried.
THE RAGNARÖK CONSPIRACY
Book 1 in the INTEL 1 Series
"Fortify your shelf of Armageddon thrillers with this promising newcomer."
-Library Journal
A
Western terrorist
organization targets Muslims around the world, and FBI agent John Savas must put aside the loss of his son and work with a man who symbolizes all he has come to hate. Both are drawn into a race against time to stop the plot of an American bin Laden and prevent a global catastrophe.
MURDER, TORTURE, AND VENGEANCE COLLIDE TO THREATEN THE HIGHEST ECHELONS OF POWER.
EXTRAORDINARY RETRIBUTION
Book 2 in the INTEL 1 Series
"Startlingly dark" -San Francisco Book Reviews
"A labyrinth of highly charged action" -Tome Tender
"A plot that never stops" -ForeWord Reviews
U
ncovering a shocking conspiracy
, a rogue CIA agent is followed by a killer bent on a terrible revenge. No one escapes unscathed, no beliefs go unchallenged, and no wrong eludes the terrible, final, and
extraordinary
retribution.
LEARN MORE.
