Renegade World: Future Past (13 page)

V
ice Presidential Aide James Lee paced back and forth in his
small office as he waited. Lee, who had started his career in the CIA and then
later moved to Homeland Security before being tapped by the Vice President, was
expecting a call. His boss had already called twice this morning, asking for
the report.
Where’s Jeffers?
The VP had skillfully promoted his image as
an expert on defense and intelligence issues, but Lee learned too late that he
was an arrogant, myopic, bumbler. That the VP’s cronies and most of the country
bought into his image was not a surprise to Lee, but that the President thought
the VP was brilliant was just plain scary.

Lee considered himself pretty good at managing upward, and
he tried to keep the Vice President out of trouble and working on behalf of the
country. While he was successful most of the time, about one out of three times
that he had an opinion contrary to the Vice President's, he had to resign
himself to say his piece, accept his loss, and do whatever the VP asked of him;
this was one of those times.

Against his better judgment, he had unofficially passed an
assignment to Homeland Security to investigate ANT and their consultants. A
huge corporation, at one point ANT had designed and supplied body armor to US
armed forces. Although they had spun off that business, they still sold
supercomputer technology to the defense department as well as NanoStimBots used
to help soldiers' bodies repair bones and other tissue.

He shook his head in frustration. When his boss had first
broached the subject, he had told the VP that ANT had a squeaky clean reputation
and that an investigation was a waste of time and money, but the VP could not
be dissuaded.
He’s on a witch hunt. I wonder who’s paying him off and how
.”
Shortly after accepting his position, which he now regretted, old contacts had
hinted that the VP was on the take. Initially, he tried to keep an open mind,
but the pattern of the VP’s requests lent credence to their hints. He couldn’t
prove anything; the VP was no bumbler in this regard.

There was a knock on his door.

“Come in.”

“Mr. Lee.” Special Agent John Jeffers shook his hand. “Sorry
about the delay.”

“Yeah. I heard that the bomb threat is tying things up a
bit.”

“More than a bit.”

“What have you got for me?”

“As requested, we performed a thorough investigation…” He
hesitated and smiled.  “And found no evidence of potential terrorist activities
or terrorist connections to employees or consultants. There is no evidence of
wrongdoing what so ever.”

Lee smiled to himself. “What about our side bet?”

“I owe you. Their buildings are sealed up tighter than a
drum. We captured some wireless traffic from the lobby and outdoors that our
supercomputers decrypted in less than a week.”

“And?”

“What we got was several renditions of patriotic songs
repeated over and over. Someone there has a sense of humor and
enjoys playing games. We also tried to pull audio off the windows of their
offices and several of their homes, but all we got was dead silence…or dialogue
of old cartoon characters. Ever heard of Bugs Bunny?”

Lee shook his head.  “What about ANT’s deep space probe?” A
year ago, ANT had announced that that they had leased lunar facilities from
LunarX. After months of speculation, ANT had put out a press release that said
they planned to launch a deep space probe from the moon within three years.

 “The public seems to have lost interest in ANT’s deep
space probe. The consensus of our analysts is that the probe will be powered by
a small fission reactor, but that’s based on the research that Geoffry Freeman
did years ago. We didn’t come up with anything new. ”

“And what about Geoffry Freeman and Miguel Rojas?”

“We were able to record lots of the public conversations,
arguments I should have said. Listening to them gave more than one analyst a
headache. They argued politics, but nothing suspicious. They argued about
mathematics and physics, including string theory, black holes, time travel and
the origin of the universe.”

“Anything unusual at all about them?”

“Other than the rumor that they cost your boss some money a
few years ago?”

“Yeah. I already heard that. There’s no proof.”

“Well, they did start up a new company.”

“What kind of company?”

“They formed an electric utility.”

“An electric utility?”

“Yeah. It’s called New Age Energy. They own another company
that has a bunch of patents on wind turbine components, and they license the
technology to other companies, but they have twelve windmills with their latest
technology on the farm that borders their lab building. They are able to
generate more power than their lab can use, so they formed another company to
sell the power to other utilities. They also have a bunch of kinetic energy
storage units, and by a bunch, I mean hundreds. They just finished installing
another thirty of them.”

“Huh. Everything above board?”

“Yes. As far as we know, but…”

“But what?”

“Their research building seems way over-engineered. It
literally might take a nuke to blow up that facility. We interviewed the only
construction worker we could find who worked on the building. He couldn’t
remember much, but he thought he remembered that an unusual amount of cement
went into the building. When we asked for records from the cement company who
had supplied the cement, they didn’t have any. Three years ago they were hacked,
and all of their invoices were destroyed.”

“OK. That’s a little weird. What do you think?”

“Probably just exaggeration and coincidence. The
construction worker has a reputation for embellishing, and the cement company
has reported five incidences of hacking. There are rumors that they are mobbed
up. They were hit with several IRS penalties, and the hacks could just be
cover-ups.”

Lee scratched head and planned his final comments. “Pass my
thanks to everyone. Like I said in our initial discussion, I had expressed my
opinion that there was a very low probability of finding a problem, but the
powers that be wanted to be absolutely sure that ANT was still squeaky clean. We
asked that the investigation be unofficial because, in the event of a leak, we
could deny such an investigation existed and not tarnish ANT's reputation.”

Special Agent Jeffers stood up and reached into his pocket.
“If you say so, Mr. Lee.” He held up a memory chip. “You’ll find a large number
of files on here. Read the main summary and other analysis documents if you
want, but you won’t learn anything new. For the record, this is everything. By
tomorrow, this investigation will no longer exist anywhere else.”

Lee took the chip. “Thanks for your help, Special Agent. No
offense, but I hope I won’t need your help again.”

“None taken.”

The chip contained thousands of files, most of them
surveillance videos. He read all of the summary documents, dictated a message
to the VP, and saved it on the chip.

T
he Vice President listened to his assistant's summary
and then sent the entire contents of the chip to a secure anonymous computer.
He had complete faith that a certain foreign account would receive a nice
deposit by tomorrow even though the report was likely to disappoint the group
that commissioned it.

P
eter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew,
Jacobus, Thaddaeus, Simon, and Matthias had been meeting every month for almost
one hundred years.  The last foundering member of True Disciples had passed on
over fifty years ago. Their names were code names, and as far as Jacobus knew,
none of the members knew any of the other members' true identities. 

Jacobus put on the sensors and connected to the virtual
meeting. As he waved or nodded to each avatar, he noted that everyone was there
except Thaddaeus and Thomas.

As soon as Thaddaeus and Thomas appeared, the avatar Peter
gestured. “Let us begin with the Prayer.” The avatar bowed its head and put its
hands together. “God almighty, the one and only God, the one and only creator
of life, we ask for your guidance as we work to protect your children from
those who would tamper with the creation of life. Amen.”

Jacobus and the avatars echoed, “Amen.” The traditional
moment of silence followed.

This same prayer, with the exception of one word, had been
used since the first meetings had been held by the founding members. The
original version used the word interfere instead of tamper. The group's
original goal was to stop abortions.

In the beginning, the members knew each other, but this
changed when the group lost the original Peter, killed while bombing a clinic due to his faulty homemade timer. After the fiasco, the original Simon, Matthias, and Jacobus were arrested, tried and imprisoned as conspirators in the deaths of a doctor, a receptionist, and two patients, both newborns.

Over the years, the group had become much more secretive.
Using more subtle means than bombing, such as time and money supporting
sympathetic political candidates and for lobbying, which was all legal, and
bribery, blackmail, and assassination, which was obviously not legal, they had helped
pass the national law that now limited abortions to rape cases or the mother's
endangerment.

Since their initial success, they focused mainly on the
prevention of cloning and genetic engineering. They also opposed any type of
cyborg technologies and artificial intelligence. None of them had a splice of
any kind.

Their efforts had only slowed the adoption of many of the
technologies that they opposed.  The studies that they had sponsored had
delayed FDA approval of auditory splices by nearly a decade. So far they had succeeded
in delaying the approval for visual splices, but the lack of side effects on
test subjects had the public clamoring for approval.

The group had been even more successful in their opposition
to cloning, lobbying both UN members and US congressional members. The UN had
passed a resolution against reproductive human cloning and therapeutic human
cloning, but it was non-binding on its members. Laws banning reproductive human
cloning and therapeutic human cloning had been passed in the US. They had
bribed several senators and blackmailed several more to support the inclusion
of therapeutic cloning in the ban.

The success of their campaign against genetic engineering
was mixed. Huge multinational agribusiness companies continued to develop new
genetically modified seed, and additional laws requiring full disclosure of
genetically modified product on food labels had little impact. Genetic
engineering in viruses and bacteria, like plants, was also not prohibited in
most countries.

Although not so successful with plants, they had managed to
get laws passed in most countries to restrict genetic engineering in people and
animals. Laws prohibiting germline engineering that would result in inherited
genetics had been passed in most countries. However proposed laws prohibiting
human somatic cell engineering had largely been defeated in most countries.

Most of the group was also opposed to the use of
nanotechnology in humans. A few of them did not oppose the use of
nanotechnology to help the body repair itself, but they all opposed its use to
enhance the human body beyond that.

Peter's avatar held up his hand to begin. “The first
order of business is the report on ANT.”

John's avatar pounded his fist on the table. “Why bother?
We all know that ANT's leaders and their children are abominations. They have
been and will continue to attempt to usurp God as the almighty creator and
designer of life. If they have their way, no longer will a child be considered
a blessing from God, but rather a product manufactured by ANT. Man has been and
must always be a created being of God in His absolute love, glory and wisdom.”

Jacobus spoke up, “John, since we all agreed to commission
this report, let us at least discuss it. If I may begin?” He looked at the
avatar John, who remained motionless. “Thank you. Since I assume we have all
read the report, I will summarize the findings as I see them. First, we didn’t
learn anything new. The report confirms that ANT is continuing to develop
audio, video, and, reading between the lines, full neural splice technologies.
They are also developing nanotechnology for drug delivery and tissue repair.
Nothing that they have done in any of those areas violates any laws.”

“Bah! They violate the laws of God!” interrupted
John.

“Yes, well so do any number of other companies,
unfortunately. The report also confirms that they are performing genetic
engineering experiments with bacteria and viruses. Again, following all laws
and using testing safeguards well more stringent than their competition. The
same is true with their genetic engineering research on animals. There is no
evidence that they are engaged in germline engineering, and their somatic, non-inherited
cell engineering research is all legal. Bottom line. No evidence was uncovered
that might be used against them in a court of law.”

“Only because the agents couldn't break ANT's security to
uncover the real truth!” insisted John.

The discussion continued for another hour. Most of the
members saw the findings about the same way as Jacobus saw them, and a majority
felt that the priorities of the group should be directed elsewhere unless new
evidence came to light.

John, Thaddaeus, and Simon were in the minority, vehemently
arguing that ANT needed to be stopped now. As it became apparent that the other
members did not support them, John summarized their position. “We believe that
ANT needs to be stopped. We will be patient for a time. However, there will
come a time when we will take action.” He left little to the imagination as he
quoted, “And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every
man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the
camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every
man his neighbor.”