Near Future 1: Awakening (31 page)

"I need you to follow through on my work against the Organization. I fully expect my daughter will demand it too. After all, they killed her mother. Help her but protect her, too. I don't want her to do something that she will regret later."

"I just wanted to tell you thank you for everything you have done. You are the best brother any man could ask for."

Finally, he composed a second message to Julie, "To my precious daughter."

"Julie, I had hoped by this time to be able to spend time with you. I don't know your circumstances now and how much progress my brother has made with your case. I hope that you are doing well. I fervently desire to see you again, and if it can be done, between the brilliant people at Space Tech and the techs on this ship, we will make that possible. I could not risk your safety, but please know that I did watch over you when I could and that your Uncle Ted was there even more."

"I know you have figured a lot of it out by now, as smart as you have become. You were always smart, but now you are absolutely brilliant. I saw some of what you could do. Tell your uncle to listen to you. I think a lot of what you were looking at in your experiment is related to what happened to us. I really think it was working too, but we experienced some kind of feedback loop and lost control of it. I couldn't tell anyone here, but I am hoping that you can find a way to fix it and come to our rescue. Your uncle will have all the details of the design."

Looking straight at the VR camera, he smiled. "Listen my daughter, no matter what happens, make sure you become all that you can be. You would make a great CEO for Space Tech, and I suspect you have already had to do some of those duties. My biggest regret was, other than losing your mother and seeing you so desperately injured, I was not able to do those duties as well as I should have, and I had to depend so much on my brother. It was still worth it, as my last sight of you proved to me."

A little VR icon blinked, telling him he had less than a minute. "I'm nearly out of time so I will wrap up. I really believe I will see you again soon and I long for that. I love you very much."

Finally, Doctor Randolph saved his messages to the queue, returning to his duty station in the control center. He and the others anxiously waited while the Engineering group made the connections to the new improvised antenna. Finally, everything was ready, the communication system was booted, and everything came up with a green light. Doctor Randolph pressed the transmit button on the console and looked at everyone in the room.

"Attention! Attention! This is the Space Tech research vessel
The Annette
calling Earth. Please respond..."

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Aspirations: A Near Future Sci-Fi Thriller Book 2 (August 2016)

Julie Randolph stared in shock at the Virtual Reality (VR) file she had in front of her. She was equally horrified by what she had read and by her reaction. Her first thought had been,
How could my father have thought of such a horrible thing,
but it was quickly followed by,
I could do it! This is my chance to kill all of those terrible men in the Organization!
She quickly closed the file, but she couldn't make herself delete it.

Miranda would have deleted the file.
The thought came unbidden and unwelcome.
Yeah, but Miranda Summerlin didn't lose her family plus two years of her life to the Organization like Julie did
. Well, she really thought her father wasn't dead, just missing, and his disappearance didn't look like it was the Organization's fault, but it was the Organization terrorists that had killed her mother in the violent attack that had also left Julie in that coma.

When Julie thought of the last moments she and her mother had together, she felt her mother's love, but she still wanted to cry. Those men that had taken her mother away from her had been part of the evil Organization. She knew she would come back to look at that file again, and she suspected she would build the weapon too. Sooner and not later, even as terrible as it was.

Julie had a lot on her mind, which was why she had been using her VR to distract herself. It hadn't been working very well, and that had just finished her off. She shut her VR down, looking around to see if her Uncle Ted had seen any of that. She breathed a sigh of relief. He was busy looking at his own VR. Julie knew exactly how he would feel about the file she had just read.

Julie and her uncle were both on the Space Tech X-plane, en route to Hong Kong to meet with Uncle Ted's friend who was the head of a group of monks. Originally based in the mountains of Tibet, they now owned their own island off the coast of China. The group was Julie's best hope to learn the physical control she desperately needed. Control that could be gained by learning their meditation and techniques involving their version of the martial arts.

Everything had started when Julie awakened from a coma after being treated with tiny machines called nanites that had been programmed to repair her brain injury. They had succeeded beyond the dreams of even her father, who had created the nanites in order to treat her. Those nanites allowed Julie to exceed in mental and physical activities far beyond what she should have been able to do. She had put those abilities to use more than once over the last few weeks.

But the reason Julie was on the X-plane headed to Hong Kong was due to a more recent event. Julie had been caught in the explosion of a device that manipulated the subspace interface to generate power. Her nanites had somehow been affected by that explosion, giving her enhanced senses that were almost overwhelming at times. But she actually thought she could learn to deal with that. What she was really struggling with was how to control her movements. When she tried to move her hand, unless she concentrated on moving it in absolutely slow motion, it flew by in a blur. The same for any other movements, all enhanced by her nanites. She really had no idea what her limits were going to be, but right now, the challenge was to be able to do normal physical tasks. The monk order was her best hope and her uncle was convinced they could help her.
If they will accept me!

That was why they were flying to Hong Kong. The negotiations by her uncle had failed so far, because they insisted they could only take men in their training. Julie was going there with her uncle to appeal directly to the head Master of the monks, who hopefully would agree to her training there. Uncle Ted was convinced he would be able to work it out with the Master, who had been his friend for many years, if he could just explain her situation.

Ted had laughed when he told her about calling his friend to arrange the meeting. He had answered the call audio only, obviously one of the few people in the world who still owned a cell phone instead of using a VR. The Master monk refused to move to modern technology, hence the cell phone. That was one of the reasons they had to meet him in person. Cell phones weren't in any way secure, unlike the secure VR systems they used at Space Tech. A secure VR couldn't be broken by even the world's most powerful AI in less than a number of years.

To Julie, that meant she was going to an interview with a lot at stake. If the Master wouldn't accept her, she had no idea what she was going to do. That would have been enough to make Julie nervous, but her stress was fed to near flames by all the other emotions she was struggling with. A lot had happened to her over the last several months, and especially the last couple of days.

Before those latest events, she had been living under the false identity Miranda Summerlin in the witness protection program, no clue of her real identity. All because when she had awakened from the two year coma with no memory, they didn't even try to see how she was, to see if she could "handle it"
--
they just lied to her and told her that was her name. To protect her.
They should have trusted me. I would have been able to handle it, even use the identity as they had intended to hide me from the Organization. But I would have known who I was.

Instead, I spent all those months believing I was Miranda, having to create a new identity with no help from my family.
She was still a little angry about that
-- w
ell, a lot angry about it. Because the man she had known only as a librarian at her school had really been her father, and she had not known it. Now he was missing.
I
could have had all that time with him. I have to believe he is alive, and I will find him. But, it's really, really hard.

She had learned her real identity from an agent of the evil Organization. He had intended to kidnap her to study her nanites and had almost succeeded. Only quick action by her boyfriend Zeke Caldwell had prevented that, but Zeke had paid a tremendous price. Julie had really thought she was going to lose him because of how badly he had been injured trying to protect her. He was now in a coma of his own, being treated by an extract of Julie's nanites in a desperate attempt to save him. A coma they expected to last six weeks while the nanites went through their basic programming. Julie was having to deal with the fear that the nanites wouldn't work on him, although her uncle insisted everything was ok.
I didn't really know what Zeke and I had until I thought I was going to lose him. I still can't help but worry.
 

She was still trying to deal with the shock of finding out her true identity. Julie Randolph was probably every American girl's dream, the All American girl. Looks, personality, and privilege. So it certainly had its upside. But, even though she had known it, after she first learned the truth, she really felt like she was still that other girl, Miranda, at least in her thoughts. Once when she dozed off, she had awakened certain that it was all a dream.

For Miranda, the responsibility was terrifying. Julie was expected to take the place of her father as CEO of Space Tech, at least temporarily. Space Tech was the largest company in the world and the only real company in space. While she was still struggling with all of that, her uncle had given her some of her things, including her treasured violin. When she saw the violin, she knew instantly it was hers.

As Miranda she had been drawn to the story surrounding Julie, not knowing why she had felt that way. That was when she had found the music, the song that as Julie she had played right before the attack that left her in a coma. The song had gone viral on the VR video sites, and it had struck a deep chord within her as Miranda. It had been a lot of help to her as she had to cope with the almost debilitating headaches she first experienced when she awakened from her coma. Headaches that she still was terrified would come back.

But last night, when she saw the violin, she had known instantly it was her violin and the music had started playing in her head. When she picked it up, she automatically started to tune it. Lifting the bow to the violin, she played that song, the one that had helped her so many times, and the tears streamed down her face as the memories came, all of them, of her family, of her friends, of who she had been. All of those things that she had lost.

So she now had all of her past, as Julie. But also, a few very intense months of memories as Miranda, and that time had changed her significantly. As a result, she was trying to somehow combine the partial memories of two different people, with two very different personalities. As Miranda she had not been very confident and had been very tentative, almost shy, in her actions with others. Julie had been almost the opposite. Very privileged due to her family and their money, and if anything, too overconfident when dealing with others. She was gradually merging it all together, but it was not easy. She was definitely a very different person from the Julie she used to be. Hopefully she would be a better person for all of it.
If I don't go crazy!
 

Worst of all, Julie was struggling with anger. Anger at her uncle and father for deceiving her, but more so, a burning anger at the Organization. With Julie's memories back, she now had to deal with the loss of her mother, a loss that seemed to her like it had happened only yesterday. The anger she felt for the terrorists that had taken her mother away was almost overwhelming, crying out for revenge.
I didn't even get to go to the funeral!
 

Julie knew she had already reached a decision.
Yeah, I'll come back to look at that file later. It's my chance to wipe them out, and I'm not going to pass it up. No mercy. They didn't give my family any or Zeke either.
Her flight was getting close to their destination, so she could at least give herself an excuse to put it off for a little while.