Mind's Eye Page 15

  Nessie had recognized that this was a game-changer instantly, and that it was time for a human to be brought into the loop. It had been a good decision.

  For his part, Girdler had immediately instructed Maggie, his PDA, to send a message to law enforcement systems stating that the fingerprint results reported earlier had been in error. Had any investigator gotten to the point of realizing these were the fingerprints of what should have been a very wet corpse, which was unlikely, they would have no trouble believing that an error had been made. How could this not be an error?

  Shortly after this the colonel had used his considerable authority to call all other agencies off the Bakersfield murder investigation, putting this responsibility under his auspices, and giving himself the fictitious title for this purpose of Special Investigator, Transdepartmental Affairs. Most would know this was a bullshit title, but since word that he and his team were in charge of the investigation would come from on high, this wouldn’t be a problem.

  They had found an abandoned warehouse where Hall’s message had indicated it would be, and part of Girdler’s team was still collecting forensic evidence, but as yet the findings were inconclusive. It did appear that much had been taking place within the space until very recently, when the insides had been torched and the warehouse abandoned. The company who had rented the space turned out to be a shell company that led nowhere. Blood and other fluids were found at or near the scene, and were being analyzed.

  General Sobol had finally read Hall’s message, and after a brief text exchange during which Girdler had assured him he was following up vigorously, they had scheduled a call for late afternoon the next day to discuss the situation further.

  Girdler was well aware, of course, that there were explanations for the e-mail message and Hall’s fingerprints that were still more probable than the contents of the message being true. The Bakersfield killer could have had access somehow to Nick Hall’s fingerprints. He could have sent the e-mail and planted the fingerprints at the crime scene as a twisted practical joke, or to throw off the hunt, which it was doing.

  Perhaps the real Nick Hall had never voyaged with the Explorer on its fateful trip in the first place. He was supposed to have been on board, but there were no witnesses left who could say for sure, one way or another. Or maybe he had been the only one to miraculously make it to shore after the ship went down, and the resulting trauma had caused memory loss and psychosis.

  But Colonel Justin Girdler was now convinced the entire contents of the message were genuine, as preposterous as they were. And he was determined to find out for sure as quickly as he possibly could.

  23

  Kelvin Gray ended his phone conversation with John Delamater with mixed feelings. He should have been ecstatic beyond all measure.

  He was so close he could taste it. But he still had a few hurdles to go before he could celebrate the way he deserved. And knowing that these hurdles were keeping him from his just desserts was not only stripping him of the triumph and ecstasy he should be feeling, but actively pissing . . . him . . . off.

  He unclenched his locked jaw and took several cleansing breaths.

  Settle down, he told himself. He now had a clear handle on his two remaining problems, and it wasn’t time to be overeager, to let emotion and justified impatience cloud his judgment. He emerged from his home into the front yard, gazing up at the starry night sky for several minutes, letting the calm of the heavens seep into his being.

  Nature had bestowed tremendous gifts upon him. He didn’t believe in God, but at times he thought, in many ways, compared to the inconceivable stupidity that was the average human, he was one: a god among men. Some people had been gifted with mathematical, scientific, and technical genius, like Alex Altschuler. Some with verbal and linguistic genius. Some with physical superiority. And some with the ability to read and manipulate human beings like so many pre-programmed puppets. But he alone possessed all of these gifts in combination. And more.

  Even at a young age he had recognized his gifts and been thankful for them. He had known he had to give back. Give back to the pathetic species he had risen above. Help to transform society and lift it to a plane closer to his own.

  Men like Newton and Einstein had done this in their time on the pure science front. On the technology front, Bell had invented the telephone, and Martin Cooper the cell phone; both monumentally important advances. Tim Berners-Lee had devised the hypertext transfer protocol that would become the World Wide Web. Steve Jobs had been instrumental in ushering in revolutions in personal computing, computer animation, music, tablet computers, the use of the Cloud, and Siri, the prototype for modern PDAs.

  Gray had known from a young age he was destined to join these visionaries on the pantheon of the gods—to exceed them—someday. And that day was fast approaching.

  He would cure blindness and deafness. And that would just be his warm-up act. He would integrate the Internet into the human mind, expanding human memory, capacity, and capability to undreamed-of heights.

  This monumental feat had required him to decode and translate human thought, to turn it into a lexicon that was limitless. Precise. Perfect. The applications were so wide-ranging, even he couldn’t fathom them all as yet. He would transform the human race, propel it to summits it wouldn’t otherwise have reached for decades or even centuries.

  Gray fully expected to eventually be recognized as outshining all others who had come before. History would one day conclude, properly, that his profound contributions marked the tipping point in humanity’s transformation and ultimate transcendence.

  The untold billions of dollars that would come with this fame and adoration would be icing on the cake; but only that. He was far too altruistic to be concerned about money.

  Gray considered contacting Nick Hall, but decided he would make this the second of the two tasks before him. First things first.

  He returned inside, finished preparations he knew he needed to make right away, and then removed a bottle of expensive Merlot from his custom-built wine cellar, which he maintained at a temperature of fifty-seven degrees and a humidity of sixty-five percent.

  He uncorked the Merlot and brought it, and a large wine goblet, into his living room, which had a vaulted ceiling and was filled with ultra-modern furniture, sculptures, and paintings. He sat in one of two chairs in the room, each with elegant brushed nickel frames and white leather seats, and closed his eyes, letting the first small mouthful of wine roll lazily over his taste buds. The Merlot had a black cherry bouquet with a touch of black licorice, along with oak, plum, black currant, and even a touch of spice mixed in.

  It was excellent. But it wasn’t his best. He had been saving that bottle for the ultimate celebration.

  A bottle that he would be uncorking very soon.

  He continued savoring the contents of his oversized goblet, willing himself into a profound state of relaxation. When he had finished three quarters of the glass, his doorbell rang, a short melody that was amplified throughout his five thousand-square-foot residence. He could have installed a wireless intercom system, but that would have been pretentious.

  Kelvin Gray opened the door to reveal the unimposing presence of Alex Altschuler. The kid was an off-the-charts genius, whose contributions to the project had been incalculable, although history would only record that it had been Gray who had had the impeccable judgment to recognize his full potential when others had not, elevating him at a young age to a prominent leadership position. Like Steve Jobs, he had gathered a strong team around him, and like Jobs, he would justly get the credit for being the visionary behind the breakthroughs his genius had made possible.

  On the scientific and technical side, Alex Altschuler was nearly as talented as Gray himself, although the kid was ridiculously inept on all the other dimensions on which Gray excelled. Still, someone capable of being his equal on even a single dimension deserved considerable respect.

  “Alex. Hi. What brings you here at this time of night?”
>
  “Can I come in?”

  Gray swung open the door and gestured toward the inside of his home. “By all means.”

  Altschuler entered, immediately removing his glasses and using the bottom of his shirt to clean them.

  “Are you okay?” asked Gray. “You look a little . . . ill.”

  Altschuler forced a smile. “I’m ah . . . fine.”

  Gray nodded. “Must just be the lighting in here,” he said, almost to himself. “Let’s get comfortable and you can tell me why you’re here,” he added, leading Altschuler to the living room he had just left. Gray gestured to the other brushed nickel leather chair facing his, and Altschuler sat, nodding his thanks.

  “Wine?” offered Gray, gesturing to the expensive bottle on the table. “It’s a 1991 French Merlot. Quite good.”

  Altschuler nodded, looking as though he wanted to rip the entire bottle from Gray’s hand and down it in one gulp. Gray removed a second goblet from a recessed alcove and poured Altschuler a glass, setting it on the mirrored table between them.

  Altschuler picked it up gratefully, but he had developed a palsy and was forced to take a big sip so the waves of wine he was generating wouldn’t crest over the lip of the glass. He shakily set it back down as Gray looked on with an amused half smile.

  “This is your first visit ever,” noted Gray. “To what do I owe the honor?”

  Altschuler removed his glasses once again and begin to fidget with them. His breathing was shallow and his face gaunt. “I want in,” he said simply, but while he had clearly intended on saying these words forcefully, he practically choked on them, and they were croaked from his mouth more than spoken.

  Gray smiled at him serenely. “Excuse me?”

  “I want in,” repeated the scrawny scientist. “I know what you’ve been up to. I should have figured it out long ago, but I’ve finally gotten there. And I want in.”

  Gray considered him for several long seconds, forcing him to twist under his hypnotic, rattlesnake stare. The only unknown in this blinking contest was how many times Altschuler would blink before Gray leisurely did so for the first time. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

  Altschuler swallowed hard. “You’ve been experimenting on humans. I know you have.”

  Gray didn’t respond.

  “It was the only way you could have had the insights you did,” continued Altschuler. “The only way you’d know to recommend trying to put four very specific nodes of the brain in play at once. There was no way to come to this insight from theory alone. It had to have come about empirically.”

  “If you say so,” said Gray calmly.

  “I, um . . . I do say so.”

  Altschuler removed the wine from the coaster, his hand shaking worse than before, and drained the remaining contents of the large goblet in a matter of seconds. “And I’ve confirmed it,” continued Altschuler. “I overheard a few conversations you’ve had over the past month,” he said, setting the glass back down. “Conversations that allowed me to piece together where you got your subjects.”

  Gray looked on, appearing only mildly interested.

  “You worked with an outside person or group to down the Scripps Explorer. And somehow, they removed everyone on board. And brought them to you for use as human subjects.”

  Gray swirled the wine in his glass, watching it absently, his hands as steady as a surgeon’s. “Ingenious, wouldn’t you say?” he responded finally, and Altschuler practically fell out of his chair at this relaxed admission. “The world is absolutely convinced they’re all dead. In Davy Jones’s locker, hundreds and hundreds of miles from me. Hell, I’ve even heard some lunatics are insisting the North American Trench is the new Bermuda Triangle. That the Triangle has shifted, presaging a shift in the Earth’s magnetic field.”

  Altschuler blinked stupidly, waiting for Gray to continue.

  “What’s so ingenious about this strategy, is that when everyone thinks you’re dead, no one comes looking for you. So I’m free to experiment however I like. And then, when I ah. . . incinerate the evidence, no one cares. You can’t be wanted for murder for killing what’s already presumed dead.”

  Gray took another sip of wine. “Are you sure you want to be a part of this, Alex?” he asked in amusement. “You should see your face. You look horrified. Hardly the expression of someone who wants to roll up his sleeves and pitch in.”

  “Not true. There are a number of experiments I’m eager to try. With me intimately involved, our progress will accelerate significantly. We’ll both be richer than God.”

  “Pretty bold wanting to join me. I would have expected you to go to the authorities.”

  Altschuler shook his head adamantly, as if even the thought of turning Gray in was abhorrent to him. “Let me join you, Kelvin.”

  Gray frowned and opened the drawer of the table beside him. He removed the gun he had placed there in preparation for this meeting and pointed it at his underling. “Thanks for the interest, Alex. Really. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to say no.”

  Altschuler’s eyes bulged. “No? No! Do you have any idea what you’re passing up? My bandwidth added to yours—with human subjects—the sky’s the limit.”

  Gray noted with clinical detachment that now that the preliminary accusations were out of the way, Altschuler had developed more of a spine, even with a gun pointed at him. Interesting.

  “Ah, but it turns out I’ve already made the breakthroughs I need,” said Gray.

  During his phone conversation with John Delamater only an hour earlier, his partner had explained his reasons for believing that Nick Hall’s implants were working perfectly, after all. And these reasons were absolutely convincing. Which was why Gray had been so ecstatic. Or almost ecstatic, in any case.

  “The very last of the twenty-seven subjects from the Explorer was the key,” explained Gray. “A man named Nick Hall. We’ve now positioned the four implants in precisely the necessary locations, and the algorithms have been tuned to utter perfection. We damaged a number of inconsequential areas of Hall’s brain in the process, but he doesn’t seem to miss any of them.”

  Gray took another sip of wine, pausing to savor it before he continued, his grip on the gun never faltering. “I just found out before you got here that the program was an unqualified success. You see, I hadn’t known. It turns out that Hall lied to me. We were very close, he said. A minor adjustment and he was sure we’d be there. And then I made the adjustment, and perfected a system that will revolutionize the world. But instead of reporting this historic achievement, Hall reported the opposite. He said he had lost the signal entirely. That it had been a significant step backwards.”

  Gray raised his eyebrows. “Between you and me, Alex, I think this Hall got it into his head that if I finally perfected what I was after, he’d be killed. He was right, of course. But when he convinced me progress had halted, I decided it was time to kill him just the same. We’d already painted a bit much on his neuronal canvas, and it was best to take the ground we’d gained and start on a new batch of abductees. Maybe from the new Bermuda Triangle again. Fuel the crackpot theories.” He laughed, the gun vibrating in his hand as he did so. “Maybe that’s how the Bermuda Triangle thing got started in the first place. Wouldn’t that be ironic?”

  “You still need me for the implementation, Kelvin. To make sure this works with everyone, and not just your subject twenty-seven. And to improve it. This Hall is just a prototype. You and I both know there are still a lot of hurdles to jump before the system will be fully polished and scaled up for mass use. You need me. And if I’m in this with you, you can count on my silence. I have too much to gain, and too much to lose, to be stupid about this.”

  Gray laughed. He finished his wine, set it on the table, and laughed again. The gun was still in his right hand, but he was resting it in his lap, unconcerned that Altschuler would try anything. Even though the kid was toughening up, it was a miracle he hadn’t wet his pants.

  “That
would be true,” replied Gray finally. “If anything about your offer was genuine. But the funny thing is, I got a call from an associate of mine. Just before you arrived. The same guy who arranged for the unfortunate sinking of the good ship Explorer. He’s been keeping tabs on you, Alex. For a long time now. And do you know what he told me?”

  Altschuler shrank back, as if trying to hide behind his glasses.

  “No guesses, Alex? Surely someone as brilliant as you can figure this out. He said that you’d be coming over and professing your interest in joining forces with me. But that it would be total bullshit. He said you were trying to set me up.”

  Gray opened the same drawer from which he had taken the gun and this time removed a pair of handcuffs. He tossed them the short distance to Altschuler. “Cuff your right hand to the chair,” he ordered. “Never used these to handcuff a man before,” he added as Altschuler followed his instructions.” He shrugged. “I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

  Even without the tip-off from Delamater, Gray would have known Altschuler’s offer to join him was fake. There was no way his subordinate would have had the balls to get involved. And it wasn’t just Altschuler. Almost no one else would have. That was yet another dimension of Gray’s superiority. He alone had the steel to make the hard decisions. To make the brutally difficult tradeoffs; the very tradeoffs that begged to be made to move the species forward.

  Not that being the rare man capable of doing what was necessary didn’t come at a high cost. No one mourned the loss of twenty-seven good people—innocent people—more than Kelvin Gray did. It was a tragedy. But they were giving their lives for a much higher cause. Everyone died. But how many in the history of the world ever died to catapult the entire race forward to undreamed-of heights? There was no more honorable way to exit this existence. And twenty-seven heroes, or even twenty-seven thousand, was a small, small price to pay for what was being gained.