The Cupel Recruits (18 page)

“I think I’ll have to call Saraceni out of the project meeting,” Kyle said to Wood. Wood was assessing the situation when Juliet sat up, slowly reigning in her laughter, and responded amidst slowing giggles,

“Oh, calm down, Poppy. I’m fine. They can stay in their precious project meeting.” She looked at Wood to back her up and leaned toward him slightly. His training had replaced his feelings and he assessed her with the discipline with which he was trained.

“She’s fine,” he said to Kyle, helping her up of the floor. The rest of Molior relaxed slightly-Jack’s shoulders, David’s jaw, Gabriel’s fists, all relaxed. Jane stopped biting her lip. Juliet returned to a chair and tried to speak very authoritatively, directly to Kyle,

“Yes, and then what happened, Frankenstein? Continue!” she said very seriously, knitting her brow as if concentrating immensely, and then she giggled again. Gabriel rolled his eyes for lack of any other reaction, but then she sat quietly awaiting a response. As if stepping onto a frozen lake to test his weight on it, Kyle began,

“Well, we decided to build the quantum computer, an exact replica of our universe within it, and to create a series of tests for the souls there, so they could go through a gauntlet of trials preparing them to be worthy of being selected to come here.”

“Because here is so great!” Juliet, motioning grandly at the room, roared without a hint of sarcasm, and broke out in a brief laugh. She was clearly just entertaining herself at this point, but they were happy she wasn’t acting out.

“I always read that a quantum computer copy would be an exact match-size, shape, everything, how can it be a copy but not the same size?” Mr. Aquila asked. Juliet was genuinely interested in the answer and listened attentively.

“You were to the point of learning in The Cupel where we thought that was true, originally, but we eventually learned there are some ways around that rule that allow scale to be manipulated without interfering with the integrity of the environment,” he continued.

“It’s not an exact match, though, anyway. You said you created tests, and it’s clearly not the same as here,” Jack reflected.

“Right,” Kyle paused, collecting his thoughts, “Right, that’s where I was headed. So, we deliberately broke the system up into seven sub-pieces. Seven cultures, separate languages, separate religions, so we could execute some discreet testing but also to test the ability of the subjects to vertically and horizontally integrate information,” he said.

“Like Ruth mentioned,” Gabriel confirmed.

“Yes, she was mentioning how the goal is to process information. Well, to learn how to process information, you have to have a wide array of it to process,” he said.

“It’s like those block puzzles for babies,” Jack deduced,” First, you have to spread the blocks out all over the floor, far apart. Sure, you could just give ‘em to the kid, or put them close together, but what would he learn then, right?”

“Good analogy.” Kyle praised the man who towered over him. Juliet looked at Wood.

“Were you there? For this grand spreading out of the blocks, the breaking up of the totality of knowledge so us simpletons could evolve?” she grilled.

“No. I was born in The Cupel and moved through my lives there until I came here, just like you,” he replied, suddenly conscious of how much he wanted her trust and respect. “Just a few circles earlier, that’s all,” he added.

“What’s a circle?” Gabriel queried.

“Like Ruth mentioned earlier about the expansion and contraction of the universe. The time it takes for one occurrence of the universe expanding from a point to apogee where it’s fully expanded and then back to a point again is called one circle. We also use the term to reflect levels of progression.”

“There or here? Whose revolution time determines how long the circle is-I’m assuming they’re not the same length of time since you said before some years here is an aeon there?” Gabriel dug for deeper understanding.

“Um, both,” Wood responded reflexively, surprised by the question. It wasn’t really his role to teach, but nothing about this class had gone exactly as planned, or as needed, so he didn’t see the point in maintaining the false distinction now. “Each has their own respective cycle. Like a day on the earth, vs. a day on Mars, vs. a day on Saturn. They are all different lengths of time, but they all represent one revolution around the Sun for that entity and they are all called a ‘day’.”

“So when it shifts to a new circle, is it just like going to sleep on New Year’s or does something actually happen, like the world burns in fire each time or something?” Juliet asked.

“Nothing like that, but it is spectacular. It’s just like a gate that opens up to the next circle, and everything resets, and all the collective information from the prior circle is downloaded.”

“Wood!” Kyle boomed in a reprimanding tone.

“Kyle, they’d get this tomorrow anyway.”

“You don’t know that,” Kyle retorted.

“Well, I do know they need to sleep, and they need some answers in order to do that, or have you forgotten what it’s like to be human already?” Wood responded.

“May I remind you that you are a circle 2 and I do still outrank you. Quite considerably, in fact,” Kyle chided.

“Yes, sir,” Wood checked himself. Circle 2’s always had trouble forgetting the face in front of them and remembering the soul behind it. At this level, they weren’t able to read souls by sight yet, so it required a constant inner reminder to stay in check. Then Kyle surprised Wood, by continuing the explanation he began. In a tone that acknowledged that Wood was right, Kyle explained.

“So, the gate opens, the information collected downloads to the master plan, and everyone gets promoted to the next circle,” Kyle continued.

“Wait, I’m confused-here or there?” Jane asked.

“Both. So you guys are called circle 1’s, it’s your first revolution,” Kyle explained.

“Wait, but I thought we did a whole bunch of lives in The Cupel-how can I only be a circle 1 if I already did a bunch of circles there according to what Saraceni said?” Juliet asked.

“You’re a circle one
here
. You were some other circle in The Cupel. I don’t know them, I’m afraid,” Kyle said.

“I had observation duty for this class. She was a circle 28 in The Cupel,” Wood reported. Juliet crossed her arms uncomfortably at the thought that Wood had been observing her and the others for months, or years, and Wood looked down.

“What was I?” asked Running Wolf.

“You were circle 30,” Wood answered.

“And me? “ Gabriel asked.

“I can see where this is going. Gabriel, you were a 33, Jane a 26, Alexander a 32, Enam a 32, Chandra-”. He stopped abruptly realizing where he’d just led.

“What am I?” Chandra asked. Wood paused and looked at Kyle.

“Well, you can’t not tell them now.” Kyle said.

Stone resumed, “Chandra, you’re an 8, and Jack you’re a 19.” The team appeared confused.

Juliet replied: “Why did they get to come so much earlier? We had to do all these lifetimes we don’t remember.”

“There are many reasons someone might be brought early,” Wood attempted evading as he had seen Saraceni do many times. The recruits were wise to this move, though, and Wood learned why teaching assignments aren’t given out for many, many circles.

“Yes, but why were they specifically brought early?” Gabriel pressed. Wood opened his mouth as if to speak, but Kyle abruptly cut him off.

“They were needed. And that’s all we are permitted to say. Ruth and Saraceni will discuss this very soon, but we may not.” Kyle looked pointedly at Wood to reinforce his words. Wood remained silent.

“It’s the DNA matches, it’s got to be!” Running Wolf said to his fellow recruits.

“Hey Dad, I’m older than you!” Gabriel broke his first smile of the day and put his arm around his father’s shoulder.

“And I’m the same age as you, Alexander!” Enam added.

“Actually, Enam, you and Alexander are the same number of circles because you were brothers originally. In your first life, I mean. You’ve been tied together in many of them,” Wood advised.

“Is that common?” Jack asked. A gnawing feeling had been building within him and this just might explain it.

“Actually, yes,” Kyle continued, “To some extent it’s a natural occurrence. There’s a certain natural binding between some souls, like electron pairs, but we also learned to engineer that, so we will attach souls together if it suits the greater learning, or once we know you are being recruited. It helps to come here having formed workgroups already, to know how to work in established teams. It’s like the difference between a military unit that is freshly recruited and one that’s been together for three years. You operate better; You can read each other. It’s an advantage we cannot afford to forfeit.” Kyle expounded so matter-of-factly regarding the manipulation of their lives and souls that some of the recruits, Chandra in particular, were disturbed by it.

“Can we tell?” Jack continued, “I mean, can we feel the difference if it’s someone we’ve known before vs. not, natural vs. engineered?”

“Most people can. In The Cupel, only some can, though most everyone there can recognize their binary soul match. Here pretty much everyone can.” Kyle responded.

“Binary soul match? Is that like your detached way of saying a soul mate?” Jane queried.

“That’s a primitive view. The scientific relationship between the souls is much more complicated than that, but for ease of understanding, yes.” Kyle affirmed. Wood looked at Juliet, who registered and looked back at him, then casually stepped away slowly.

“I should check on George,” Wood said flatly and left the room.

“Typical guy,” Chandra muttered under her breath.

“So, we live all these lives learning all these lessons you have preselected for us, gathering this collective intelligence that who uses for what we don’t know, but why all the cloak and dagger? Why the monitoring of us, our families-do you monitor everyone?”

“We monitor those with promise. We monitor your families because they are tied to you and, as such, have been assigned as a future workgroup member. They will be recruited,” Kyle responded. His plain tone was really grating on Chandra.

“When?” asked Gabriel. He thought of Lela, Gretchen and Caleb.

“When they are ready. When they have completed their missions within the Cupel. When they are needed here, or, sometimes, if it’s otherwise necessary. ” Kyle responded.

“Otherwise necessary?” For what?” Gabriel asked

“Their protection.” Kyle conceded.

Molior assembled the next day, hoping to hear news of George and from the project briefing. They finally knew they were brought here for some very specific reasons and were eager to learn more-their fates, the fates of those they left behind, in particular. Ruth and Saraceni stood outside the door.

“I issued the collection order on George’s adjuvant as you instructed,” Saraceni reported to Ruth. She nodded briefly, still seemingly distracted by thoughts of George’s health. Her laser focus was what made Ruth, so Saraceni knew without it that she was less at ease than she was letting on.

“If he’s not up to par, the adjuvant may provide the extra boost to allow the mission to be completed,” she confirmed. “If we’re lucky.”

“Theoretically based on the other missions where we’ve used adjuvants as a booster, it should work.” Saraceni actually thought about patting her shoulder as he would with any other colleague in this situation, but withdrew his hand without detection, deciding better of it.

“When will she arrive?” Ruth asked.

“I just put in the order for her collection, but obviously the highest priority. Clara herself is doing it. There’s no way to tell whether it’s today or tomorrow though.” He paused and then added reflectively, “If it’s tomorrow it should be in the earlier part of the morning, however.”

“If George simply doesn’t wake up today, and we have to ship him to core medical, we could always try it with her in his place. It would be better than the otherwise gaping hole he will leave in the mission team. God, I wish we could just put an experienced operator in there.” Ruth grinded her teeth a bit as she spoke.

“I know, but if we could’ve done that, we wouldn’t have recruited about half this team at all yet. They have the Pheres configuration in their soul maps. No substitute,” he concluded as they walked into the room. The recruits did not scramble to their seats as they usually did, but instead merely shifted their attention to Saraceni and Ruth. Juliet looked calm, almost placid, as if the outburst had done her good.

‘Perhaps they all should try it’ Stone mused to himself, thinking if they could just get past this part and focused on the mission, everything would pull together. He’d worked many missions in his last years of Circle 2 training where things needed to gel just right in order to be effective. Monitoring in The Cupel showed that, too-it was all about timing. People would wait and wait for a breakthrough, frustrated because they are unable to force things forward, and then suddenly the breakthrough would come. Not always without assistance, he knew, but sometimes.

“How’s George?” Enam broke the silence.

“The same,” Saraceni confirmed. He looked at Ruth who again displayed the briefest flicker of a distant look in her deep blue eyes, so he added, “but we have reason to hope he may wake up today.” The recruits nodded in assent, welcoming what seemed like promising news. Thirty seconds of quasi-optimistic calm spread over the group, the gentle glow of the orb pulsating in rhythmic waves.

Suddenly, Wood raced into the room, knocking over a stool at the lab counter on the way. He was flicking all the monitors on as fast as he could, one after another, until every display was lit up. He tried to show formal courtesy to Ruth by looking at her, but interrupted with bursts of attention toward the monitors, this looked odd.

“Ma’am, they are after the adjuvant!” he shouted.

“How do they know?” Saraceni asked.

“They intercepted our communication to Clara,” he reported. “I don’t know how.”

Ruth knew the answer. She turned to Saraceni, “The decoherence. It must be compromising the encryption.” Next she turned her attention to the monitors.

“How long?” she asked.

“Five minutes, maybe ten,” Wood added. For the first time since his assignment had been split from Wood, Stone felt a pang of regret that he’d not been monitoring with him.

“Okay, I see Clara. She’s already en route.” She punched a few buttons and the screen magnified. A small girl of four years old was reading with a flashlight in her bed. Her mother was asleep in another room. Ruth pulled up a side-by-side view of the house layout next to the video. The girl’s room was at the front right corner of the house, and the mother’s room was at the back left corner of the house. On the video, an apparent burglar lurked outside her window, while a second worked near the power grid for the house.

“There they are. Damn, how’d their agents get there so fast?” Ruth muttered. She pulled up the implantation program and focused it on the tiny girl.

Phoebe Jacob was quietly reading “Geraldine Belinda”, a book her father had left her. She quietly whispered the words to herself as she read, not yet having mastered the art of reading silently. She was, after all, four years old.

“Her pigtails danced,” the small high voice whispered and Phoebe looked at the accompanying picture of Geraldine’s pigtails dancing in the air when she was instantly filled with dread. Inexplicably, the worst feeling she had ever known came over her and she was terrified. For a moment, she was so scared, she couldn’t even move. Ruth adjusted the controls downward slightly and typed some instructions into the command. Phoebe then had the idea she should turn off her flashlight. She did so, and slid out of bed and onto the floor. Her very first thought, her own, was to run to her mother’s room, but she suddenly had the idea she wouldn’t make it that far. Next she considered climbing under the bed, but knew that would be the first place they would look. She finally crawled as quietly as she could to her closet and opened it as slowly and quietly as she could. The burglar was now peering in her window, but he did not see the door close slowly as it was nestled against the corner most in his peripheral vision.

“How far is Clara? His guys are getting close.” Ruth shouted.

“Two minutes, maybe three still,” Saraceni responded, having taken up residence at the opposing bank of monitors, following the project architect as she raced to the scene.

“Thank God we sent the master soulweaver,” Saraceni confirmed, “can you imagine if that assignment had gone to someone else? They’d never make it.”

“She’ll make it,” Ruth muttered desperately, but her tone was less certain, “She has to.”

“What’s going on?” Juliet asked.

“No time,” Saraceni answered, “just wait.”

“Kyle, Stone, feel free to narrate but just don’t interrupt,” Ruth added, punching more buttons, changing the view on the display to the closet interior. Phoebe was there, breathing very fast and louder than she wanted, but she didn’t know how to keep herself quiet. She wanted to cry, but restrained, knowing this would not help. She thought if she stayed as quiet as possible, maybe they wouldn’t find her. The girl wriggled her small frame behind some of the hanging clothes, pulling an old bathrobe over herself for concealment.

Outside, the other emissary snipped the wires to the alarm system. True, it would trip an indicator at the alarm company, but the delay in time was all they needed to grab the girl. He nodded to the second man in black who then cut the window glass with a circular cutter and flipped the window lock as simply as a light switch. ‘Not even cube locks’ he thought to himself, amazed at the stupidity of these people in the suburbs. He knew who the family was, had read about them in the paper, and marveled at how it had never occurred to him before that day to nab the girl and hold her for ransom. ‘Easy money’ he thought. A career criminal, he frequently felt compelled to commit various crimes, some so violent he tried to forget them afterwards. His gloved hand slowly slid open the window.

“These are assignees of the dark forces.” Kyle whispered, “They don’t even know it wasn’t their idea, not really.”

“Why do they want her?” Juliet asked, concerned. Jane held her hand over her mouth as she watched the screen.

“We have to help her!” Jane squeaked.

“We are. We have our top architect on the way. THE master weaver. She’s almost there, see Saraceni’s screen.” He explained, “They want her because we need her and they found out about it.”

“Is she one of you returned?” Gabriel asked, assuming this small girl was a friend of theirs.

“No, she was to be a recruit, later on in this life, but now we had to issue a collection order for her, because of George,” Kyle answered hurriedly. The masked man climbed in the window and snatched back the covers to the bed that Phoebe had left in a rumpled mess when she gently slid out from beneath them. The bed was empty. He dropped to his knees and looked under the bed. The second man appeared at the window, standing just outside waiting to be handed the girl. The first man looked at him and shook his head. Gabriel’s monitor showed a ball of light racing to the location. It turned down the main street of the young girl’s town.

“Why does she need to be collected-because of George?” Juliet asked Stone as they watched.

“She was his daughter, in The Cupel I mean, a complementary soul who we engineered into the daughter placement to further her learning. But he had to come back early, and now she’ll have to be recruited early, too,” Stone whispered to the recruits, who had moved to be almost huddled together.

“Phoebe Jacob,” Gabriel said loud enough for all to hear. “She was there with the Governor, I mean, George, at the Africa project kickoff.” The group was silenced as the intruder finished looking in the attached bathroom and made his way toward the closet. He took one step and heard a creek on the hardwood floor in the hall. He stopped in his tracks on the carpeted floor of Phoebe’s room. He heard another creek. He withdrew a gun and stared intently at the doorway. Jingles, the cat, appeared and hissed at the man. He closed the door silently and continued toward the closet. He opened it swiftly and saw nothing, but the involuntary draw of breath that Phoebe took was audible. She then remained silent, trying to trick him into thinking she wasn’t there. His eyes adjusted and he could tell where the silhouetted shape of the girl stood behind the bathrobe. He leaned in, knowing if he was fast enough, he could cover her mouth before she could scream. Tears began to stream down Phoebe’s tiny face, but she did not cry out loud. She didn’t think she could scream if she wanted to, but she had no time to find out. The man descended on her like a falcon, pressing his hand against her mouth, the bathrobe in between, in one swift motion.

As he dragged her out of the closet, her arms and legs flailed about, but were too short to really reach him or do any damage. Jingles the cat started meowing an eerie meow on the other side of the closed door, like a banshee call. In 5 seconds, he was handing the girl off to the man outside the window. The streak of light on Saraceni’s monitor turned down the street toward the Governor’s mansion, where Phoebe and her mother still lived until a permanent replacement would be named. The man ran across the lawn with the little girl still kicking and flailing, but he had her firmly in his grasp. As the second man exited the window and moved to catch up with him, a dark figure appeared by the truck in Saraceni’s monitor.

“What the hell is that?!?” Running Wolf exclaimed.

“Dark Janae,” Kyle answered, riveted on the screen. The ball of light appeared and passing right over the men and the little girl, the kicking and flailing suddenly stopped. Phoebe’s body went limp. The dark shadow figure retreated and the first man put Phoebe’s body in the truck and they both hopped in, crouched down out of sight.

“What did you do-suffocate her?” the first man barked.

“No, I didn’t, I mean,” the second man stuttered as he removed the tangled robe from Phoebe’s body to get a look at her, “She must’ve passed out or something.” They examined her body. It was lifeless.

“I swear. She was breathing. She must’ve had a heart attack or something.” The man felt a pang of guilt. This wasn’t even his type of job. He wasn’t sure why he even accepted it when it was changed from the originally-planned robbery, and now he really felt badly about it.

“Whatever, we were going to kill her anyway,” the other man responded without any hint of inflection in his voice, “let’s dump the body before dawn and then we can hit the Mom up for the ransom money.” Saraceni shut off the monitor.

“What happened?” Jane cried out. “That poor little girl! To die so horribly! She was terrified!”

“She won’t remember it,” Stone reassured her, “We won’t download that portion of her memory.”

“So we got her, that light-thing, it’s bringing her here?” Juliet asked.

“Sending her here,” Kyle corrected, “but yeah. We got her.” They breathed a collective sigh of relief. These dramatic outbursts were becoming more common. Wasn’t this supposed to be this peaceful, enlightened place? It didn’t feel like it. Ruth turned off the monitors and pushed herself back, pausing a full moment in silence before turning to the recruits.

“That was Clara,” she explained, “She is one of our three master weavers. No one else but her could’ve pulled that off. We are so lucky Phoebe is out of peril.”

“Is she human?” Chandra asked.

“Phoebe? Of course!” Ruth answered.

“No, the other one. The light-thing, Clara? Is she an angel?” Chandra pursued.

“No, not an angel, but she’s not human right now. She is just her soul, her energy alone, no body. We have an order of architects who can work in The Cupel without bodies due to their experience. The rest of our people need bodies when we are there, same as anyone,” Ruth explained.

“So, you have people that are there that are from here, going through to learn, and then you have these souls without bodies-do they all just impose their will on everyone else?” Chandra seemed concerned. Saraceni intervened.