Tripple Chronicles 1: Eternity Rising (6 page)

Camden faced
a group of six government men walking toward him. As they approached, he
nonchalantly leaned against his transport with his hands in his pockets.
  
He looked relaxed and genuinely
curious about the intent of his pursuers.
 
Inside, though, his nerves were stretching thin.
  
Ari was still grasping the
steering unit of the transport looking overly tense.
 
Camden hoped that his nervous looking driver would not create
suspicion.
 
Why does Ari look so nervous and guilty?
Camden thought as he gave
Ari a sideways glance.
He knows nothing
of the biomer sample.
He did know about the meeting with Colonel Ganesh,
however, and that made Camden a little uneasy.
 
He doubted Ari had ever been in an interrogatory situation
before.

“Professor
Camden Riles?”
 
The head official
of this small group spoke as they came within a few feet of him.
 

“Yes,
hello…officer…” He held out his hand and squinted his eyes a little as he
offered his best fake smile to this man.

“Oh, right
then… it’s Officer Aldretti.” Taken back, Aldretti certainly didn’t expect a
pleasant introduction session from this sudden encounter.
 
Aldretti looked to be in his
mid-forties. He had small, closely spaced brown eyes and a long nose.
 
His hair looked like a failed attempt
at proper grooming and his skin was more weathered than the average person his
age.
 
Camden figured he was some
kind of government version of a bounty hunter.
 
Aldretti reached out and shook Camden’s hand
cautiously.
 
Camden pulled back
from the man but Aldretti did not release his hand.
 

“Professor
Riles, we need you to come with us. And we need to search your transport.”
 
He leaned in forcefully and spoke
softer now, close to Camden’s ear.
 
He continued quickly,

“We don’t
need to make a scene here, but we will if necessary.”
 

Camden
recoiled and straightened his posture.
 
His eyes tightened and his smile became almost sinister.
 

“I will be
happy to accompany you gentleman this morning, but I assure you, searching my
transport is not necessary.”

He was not
worried about them finding his secret hiding place so much as he was concerned
that Ari would crack under the pressure of interrogation.
 
He didn’t know what Camden was
carrying, but Ari was sure to remember the rolling suitcase that entered the
transport with him this morning.
 
In fact, Camden was counting on that.
 
Ari must still get that suitcase to Lee; otherwise, the
future of the human race could be in trouble.
 
This last thought hit Camden like a rock and he felt selfish
for previously considering withholding his findings from Lee.

Aldretti
motioned for the other men to enter Camden’s transport.
 
Camden looked relaxed and smiled.
 

“I brought
nothing with me today.
 
Your men
are wasting their time.”
  

“Well, they
are going to your home next, so don’t worry, their efforts will not be in vein,
”
 
Aldretti
replied.
  

Camden
wasn’t concerned about them possibly finding the hidden lab in his flat. It was
foolproof. Aldretti seemed to gain pleasure from exerting his power over
Camden.
 
Camden did not gratify him
with a reaction of any kind, but was admittedly curious to know exactly what
these men knew.
  
However, he
would wait to ask his questions, until they were in the confines of the
government transport and out of audible range of Ari.
 
The less Ari knew, the safer he would be.
 
He had a family that relied on him,
after all, three little ones and a beautiful wife.
 
Getting picked up by the government would not benefit him in
the least. Camden glanced over at Ari, who surprisingly, looked slightly more
composed.
 
He had wiped the sweat
from his face and was a little less fidgety. Camden gave him a subtle nod with
serious eyes.
 
Ari sat up
straighter and made his mind up to protect his friend and employer, at all
costs.
 

Two of the
three men went to the back of the transport where Camden sat moments
earlier.
 
The third walked over to
Ari and asked him to exit the transport.
 
Ari smiled and said,

“Of course,
sir.”
   

Camden was
silently impressed at his drivers’ rapid recovery from panic, but then again,
Ari did not know about the stolen government sample from an alien world.
 

Just then,
Aldretti took Camden by the elbow and escorted him to the government transport
parked nearest to them.
 
As Camden
climbed in and sat down facing Aldretti, he looked to Ari once more and saw a
confused look on his face when the men, desperately searching the transport,
did not immediately pull a rolling suitcase out of the back.
 
Camden grinned in spite of
himself.
 

“Is
something amusing you, Professor?”
 
Aldretti asked him.
 
Camden
ignored the question and looked at him straight on.

“What is
this all about, really, Officer?”
 
He asked.

“That is not
for you and me to discuss,” answered Aldretti.

“Ahh, I see,
”
 
Camden
said,
“You have no idea why you have picked me up this morning, do you?”

“It is not
my job to know. I just deliver the goods, and today, you are the goods.”

Camden could
see that he had intimidated this unrefined looking officer and relaxed his
posture a little.
  

“And who am
I being delivered to?”
 
Camden
asked. “You at least know that much, I presume.”

“Of course I
know that,
”
 
Aldretti
snapped, looking offended.
 
“My orders came from General Pike.”
 
He held his head up higher as he spoke
this name.
 

“Well, if I
knew I would be meeting with a General this morning, I would have worn a better
suit.”
 
Camden said coolly,
crossing one leg over the other and folding his hands over his knee.

“Well, you
are in luck then because we are reporting only to a Major today,” Aldretti
snipped back with a slightly sinister grin emerging on his scruffy face.

“Oh?” Camden
asked. “Major who?”
 

“Major Mace
Magner, as a matter of fact, heads weapons division at TRU.”
 

Camden’s
brain kicked into gear.
 
He had
heard that name before…

Ganesh mentioned him at breakfast –
they know.
 

There was a
tap on the window.
 
Camden sat
upright again, realizing he had been twiddling his thumbs.
 
Aldretti pushed a button and his window
opened.
 
One of the other officers
leaned in.

“The
transport is clean sir, nothing there but some very nice scotch and a couple of
cigars.
 
Should we confiscate
it?”
 
He asked. Aldretti looked
annoyed and let out a short sigh.
 

“No, leave
it.
 
What did the driver
know?”
 

“Nothing,
sir.
 
He says this guy (he pointed
to Camden) is a real ass to work for and is lucky if he gets even a ‘hello’ or
‘good night’ from him.
 
Says if it
weren’t for the paycheck, he’d be long gone.”
 

“Do you
believe him?”

“He seemed
sincere enough, he has a large family to support, three children.
 
Saw a picture.”

“Wow. Three.
That’s rare,” muttered Aldretti.
 
“Let him go, but set up surveillance on him around the clock.
 
He may know something that he doesn’t
realize he knows.”

“Right away,
sir.” He gave a quick salute to Aldretti and turned on his heel and walked back
to let Ari go.
 
Camden was filled
with relief at this news.
 
Ari was
sharper than he gave him credit for.
 
Now all he has to do is escape government surveillance and get the
stolen government goods to Lee Tripple’s highly secured lab.
 

Camden’s
relief was short lived.
 
Maybe he
was an ass, setting Ari up for such an impossible task, putting him and his
family at risk…in the name of progress.
 
He wished they had confiscated his scotch.
 
He could use some right now.

Aldretti’s
transport lifted skyward and Camden stared straight ahead and folded his arms across
his chest.
 
He would use the next
several minutes thinking of what he should and should not say to Major Mace
Magner.

Lee awoke
with a start!
 
The ringing of his
phone pierced his ears unpleasantly.
 
He wiped the line of drool from the left corner of his mouth and
straightened his glasses.
 
His ash
brown hair was matted and sticking up and out on the left side.
 
He ran his fingers through it only
making it worse.
 
His expression
was startled and blank at the same time.
 

He picked up
the phone and looked at the clock.
 
12:25.

“Hello,” he
said in a gruff voice.
 
“
Mmm
Hmm, I see,” he said to the voice on the phone that had
just informed him that fourteen candidates for his assistant position would be
arriving at 2:00.
 
Lee hung up
without saying goodbye, sat up straight, and placed both hands on his
desk.
 
The images of this morning’s
failure were racing across his mind.
 
He would start resetting for the next trial of the experiment this
afternoon. An assistant’s help could keep him focused on the extreme science
behind the project rather than the mundane maintenance of it.
 
He needed the assistance, certainly,
but knowing that he would have to interact with someone new
and
share his lab space created deep
anxiety in the pit of his stomach.
 
It was twisting into knots.
 

He ignored
this feeling for a moment to concentrate on another feeling, also taking place
in his stomach… hunger.
 

“Camden,” he
said out loud as he remembered their lunch appointment.
 
He looked at the clock again…perhaps
expecting it to display a different hour than it did minutes earlier.
 
12:27.

Where is Cam?
he
thought to himself.
He should have
arrived over twenty minutes ago.
 
It wasn’t like him to be late.
 
This realization added more pain to the first discomfort in his stomach
and he frowned.
 
Two of Camden’s
best qualities, in Lee’s opinion, were his promptness and predictability.
 
And that was because it was easy for
his logical mind to deal with these traits.
 
Most people were irrational and emotional.
 
Lee wasn’t able to relate well to that,
which is why he chose a solitary life.
 

He sent an
electronic message to the lady at the desk in the front of the building; he did
not know her name.

I will be leaving for lunch in twenty minutes. Send the lab technicians
in twenty-three minutes to clean and reset my equipment.

Lee did not
like being there when the technicians worked so carefully to clean and maintain
his equipment.
 
He didn’t
understand the small talk they always inevitably attempted or why they cared
how his day was going.
 
He
certainly didn’t care about theirs.
 
The technicians, who were hired by Camden, did not know the full nature
of the projects that went on here, but they enjoyed sharing their theories with
one another as they worked.
 
Their
guesses ranged from chemical bombs to creating new animal species by sewing
together random parts of other animals.
 
Of course, they were way off, but the speculations gave them a laugh and
made their jobs less monotonous.

Lee spent
the next twenty minutes carefully removing all biological samples, solutions,
and data from the lab. He would lock them in one of the back rooms. He alone
had a key.
 
As he worked, he
wondered again about Camden.
 
He
made up his mind to call him after he secured his workspace.
 
Lee frowned again as he transferred the
lifeless embryos to special freeze chambers.
 
Most scientists would not save their failures, but Lee
assumed that he would one day figure out how to control life and death, so
these embryos were candidates for future re-animation.
 
Recycling
at its best
, he thought.
 
No
one else knew he did this, not even Camden.
 

Camden did
know, however, that Lee chose to work with human tissue, when possible and when
his experiments didn’t require an accelerated life cycle. And even then, he
worked with mostly just parts. When he did need a whole body, he called the
nearby prison, which was so far, discreet. When he worked with monkeys, rats,
and other animals, he went to his stock of small animals kept in a frozen
stasis or ordered them specific to an experiment. He used the bare minimum of
these stock animals simply because he did not enjoy the responsibility of
nurturing living beings.

“Each
animal’s physiology is different,” Lee would say, “If I am successful with a
rat, it was still just a rat and does not necessarily equate success with a
human.”
 

Now and
then, speculation of the inner workings of Lee’s lab would stir up political
debate, but with the complete secrecy in which Lee worked, it really
was
just speculation. The public at
large remained unaware of the extent of evil being performed in here.

Lee Tripple
was fortunate enough to operate with a special esoteric diplomacy, granted to
him by one of the Heads of Government, several years before.
 
Lee had devoted over a year of his life
developing a cure for a particularly stubborn type of brain tumor that plagued
the Director’s wife.
 
It was a
logical trade off for Lee, as diplomacy granted from the head of the government
was not to be revoked.
 
His cure,
of course, became a global phenomenon and major scientific breakthrough. More
importantly, it allowed Lee to conduct his experiments in peace without the
government’s eyes looking over his shoulders.
 
He had basically negotiated himself above the law,
untouchable from all forms of government.
 
Although this sometimes created conflict between other scientists and
politicians, it had more or less become accepted.
 
Lee was, after all, probably the smartest man alive and that
should count for something.
 
In
addition, a whole new floodgate would open if a Supreme Leader’s lifetime
diplomacy guarantee were to be revoked.

Lee walked
around his lab, double-checking that he had removed everything he didn’t want
the technicians to see.
 
He decided
he was satisfied with this task, and pushed the rolling metal cart that held
his data and samples down a short hallway, to the right, then down a longer
hallway and into his most private locked room, Lab A.
 
He switched on the light and glanced around for an empty
shelf.
 
He needed more room, and
more freezers.
 
He made a quick
note to himself in his electronic notebook and then went to work organizing his
newest additions amongst the others.
 

A normal
person would be taken aback at the sight of this room.
 
It was raw and uncensored.
 
Different stages of life and death were
all around, ranging from cell clusters to embryos to fully-grown body parts and
organs.
 
Most of these things were
in freezers with clear doors. Jars and jars of preserved biological science
experiments also lined the shelves from floor to ceiling.
 
Lee checked the clock on the wall above
the door.
 
12:46. He quickly shut
off the light and locked the door behind him.
 
He would probably not have time to make his phone call to
Camden before the technicians arrived.
 

“Damn it,
Cam!” he said aloud as he brusquely walked back to his office.
 
Camden’s failure to arrive had upset
the usual timetable of exiting his lab.
 
Now he would now most likely be expected to engage in detestable small
talk.

Lee picked
up his phone and quickly dialed Cam’s number. “Ring…ring…ring… no answer.”
 
It was not in Lee’s nature to worry,
but when Cam didn’t pick up, he felt a little more than inconvenienced.
 
He gathered up his brown wool coat and
tweed hat, flung his satchel over his shoulder and left his office, closing the
door behind him.
 

Getting out
of Lee Tripple’s lab was almost as cumbersome as getting in.
 
He walked through his and Camden’s
private door, activating the unlock mechanism with a voice command, key card
and fingerprints.
 
At the main
entrance, three of the lab technicians on staff were already having body scans
performed on them and DNA samples taken.

Lee walked
out to the main reception of the building and right through the front doors
without acknowledging the “Have a nice lunch, sir.” coming from the lady at the
front desk.
 
He shoved his hands in
his jacket pockets and tramped forward with his head down to his and Camden’s
favorite meeting place, the private penthouse lounge.
 
It was only a few blocks from the lab and that suited Lee
nicely.
 
When he arrived at the
tall office building that held the penthouse lounge, he flashed his membership
card to the doorman who ushered him in to the lobby and toward the elevators.
 
Lee pressed the button on the furthest
carriage on the right and the doors opened right away.
 
A young man, whose job it was to know
the members of the lounge scrupulously, stepped out as Lee stepped in.
 
He usually rode up with the members,
took their coats and made them feel welcome; however, Lee was a special case
who preferred to ride up alone.
 
The young man would call the elevator back down after Lee got off.

The lounge
was dimly lit with a quiet atmosphere, no matter what time of day and Lee felt
more relaxed the instant he stepped off the elevator.
 
He unbuttoned his coat as the pretty owner, Enira, smiled
warmly at him and called for someone to get his table ready.
 
She was not intimidated by Lee’s
coldness. She walked right up to him and took the hat right off his head and
waited for him to hand her his coat.
 

“Thank you,
Dr. Tripple,” she said sweetly.
 
“Camden has not arrived yet, or called.
 
That is why your table was not set, but it will only take a
moment.”
 

“Okay,” he
replied in a low voice, caught off guard by this second rift in his
routine.
 
He stood there fidgeting,
not sure what to do with himself.
 
He never had to wait before and realized for the first time that Camden
must always call ahead.
 

That’s interesting,
he thought.
 
Enira walked back toward him from the
coatroom and took his arm to lead him to the table.
 
This was her usual way and Lee didn’t flinch too much from
the actual physical contact.
 
Today, with all the unexpected inconveniences piling up, he even found
it pleasant.
 

He sat down
at his table and straight away and a gentleman brought his favorite tea,
freshly brewed.
 
Lee breathed in
the hot stark steam and began mulling over the events of the morning again in
his head.