The Past Read online

  The response is almost instant, ‘Kill Iris. Kill Seductress’. The words latch onto his mind as he mutters the same words hypnotically out loud to himself, ‘Kill Iris. Kill Seductress. Kill Iris. Kill Seductress’.

  VanWest turns into Horizon Drive, sitting low in his car’s seat as he surveys the buildings, doing his best not to be seen. Looking left and right, he soon locates Montgomery house, a yellow art-deco, four-storey high apartment block. Fortunately, it’s still early, the street is quiet. He parks his car a short distance away and walks cautiously up the sidewalk, trying not to make any noise. Taking a moment to tweak his bionic sensors in order to pick-up any signs that may identify them.

  On the ground floor, there is nothing that indicates the women are here. Continuing to the back, he finds an external concrete staircase with the gate unlocked. Remaining alert, he walks up to the next floor and steps onto a large terrace that stretches across two apartments. The Commissioner’s last instruction, still playing like a broken record in the back of his mind, Kill Iris. Kill Seductress’.

  His bionics now detect matching signatures of two human women and there’s a curious low grumbling sound - mmm - as if one has been muffled. Tiptoeing towards the window of the apartment, careful not to alert anyone within to his presence, he picks up even more human sounds of distress, including a fastening heartbeat and the grinding of teeth.

  Before he can peer through the window to confirm it is them, the door handle twists - squeak, forcing himself to step back, pressing his body against the wall. He was too loud, a circular-shaped silver proton gun protrudes out, held tightly by a slender female hand. Knowing he must react, he doesn’t hesitate, grabbing hold of the woman’s wrist and forcefully slamming it against the doorframe, throwing the gun to the floor. It’s the Seductress. Belying her slender and slight appearance is a trained fighter who returns a sharp kick to his ribs - crack - and then throws him down with a well-executed judo Naga-Waza move - thump.

  From the floor, he catches sight of a bound and gagged Iris. She mumbles - mmm. The Seductress does a forward roll and retrieves her proton gun. VanWest though reacts faster, using his Electroskeleton hand, he sends a shockwave - whoosh - that throws her into the railing, smashing the proton gun. The Seductress, realising the jig is up, unable to match this well-armed and trained Enforcer, leaps off the terrace with catlike agility. Hitting the ground feet first, she disappears into the shadows. Spotting the silver Quantum Accelerator rod on the table beside Iris, VanWest decides its best to secure it first and to kill Iris before giving chase. The Seductress now less of a risk.

  A seated and bound Iris stares at him, her wrists tied to the arms of a chair. VanWest’s mind still plays the same words over and over, Kill Iris. Kill Seductress. His hand trembles as he grabs a knife from the kitchen counter and points it towards her slender neck. He cannot disobey, he must follow the commandments of the Universal Council:

  1. To serve without question the Universal Council

  2. To work for the progression of man and the Universal

  3. To destroy all those who defy the Universal Council

  His mind and heart are conflicted, he does not know who or what to listen to. Moving the knife closer to Iris’s slender neck, he cannot help but notice her mesmerising electric blue eyes. She stares at him, hers filled with despair but also full of love. The same childlike look that she gave when kissing him under the stairs before the matron took her away. A solitary tear rolls down her cheek as VanWest struggles for control. With one hand he pulls the rag from her mouth, only for the other to press the knife against her neck, causing a drop of blood to trickle down.

  ‘My love… I love you’! She repeats to him.

  ‘You love me’? VanWest mutters back, still holding the knife firmly against her neck. No one has ever told him that they love him.

  ‘I do, my love! The Council are evil, do not listen to them, block them out. Defy them, I plead with you’!

  A sharp pain pierces through his head, dropping him onto his knees. His mind in flux, he thrusts the knife down into the chair’s arm, narrowly missing Iris’s wrist. The battle between his mind and heart overwhelming him. The commandments and message to ‘Kill’ now replaced by a vision of a place he has seen before; of him in an arena, the floor underneath covered with sand. His name being chanted, ‘VanWest’.

  With her restraints cut loose against the knife’s blade, stuck in the chair’s arm, Iris cradles him gently. His head on her lap, she repeats softly, ‘I love you’.

  Across them is a mirror. No longer does he look like the Californian Engineer D. Drake. Staring back is a dishevelled and exhausted version of himself, his eyes bloodshot and skin pale. They start to close.

  VanWest has seen this arena before but not so vividly. This time Alpha is laughing loudly as he stands triumphantly over the limp and lifeless body of Iris. Attempting to shout at her, he finds himself to be mute, left helplessly to watch as her blood slowly runs towards him, slithering through the sand as if it were a dark red snake in the desert. Above is Dr King nodding in approval, wearing the same toga and gold-leafed corona as in the Universal Red and Blue Games, his right fist clenched tightly and raised triumphantly towards the sky.

  Chapter 16 The Past

  VanWest wakes up in a bed, his body naked and the sun now setting. Looking across, he finds that Iris is not there. Calling out her name ‘Iris’, there is no reply.

  He searches for the silver Quantum Accelerator rod that he saw before on the table, but it is too nowhere to be found. He wonders how Iris could have left without waking him first. Maybe she couldn’t wake him, him being so out of it. His baggy shorts and flowery shirt, those of the pilot from Homestead, lay neatly folded at the end of the bed. And, on the breakfast counter, he finds a paper with the words of Emily Dickinson, a female poet from the 19th century:

  Success is counted sweetest

  By those who ne'er succeed.

  To comprehend a nectar

  Requires sorest need.

  Not one of all the purple Host

  Who took the Flag today

  Can tell the definition

  So clear of victory

  As he defeated – dying –

  On whose forbidden ear

  The distant strains of triumph

  Burst agonized and clear!

  Could it explain why she has left, is it her fear of failure? Her failure to complete her Utopian mission? He turns the page on the notepad to find not a poem but rather an instruction.

  My Love,

  Play the green chip. You will then understand the sacrifice I must make.

  Your sweet, Iris X.

  P.S. Try the Popping Tarts.

  VanWest moves his hand behind his ear and feels a tingling sensation. He had completely forgotten about the green hexagon chip he was given by Mad Newton. Amazingly, it has managed to survive his interrogation onboard the SCC-400. It must have been well disguised, the NEA-Utopians so skilled at espionage and hacking. Activating it, the chip jars, sending a high-pitched whistle through his mind. It interfaces with his cerebral cortex, which in turn stimulates his hippocampus, the place in the brain where long-term memory is stored.

  Long forgotten memories flood back. The first takes him back to the year 2980, his birth year, where he lies in a crib swaddled in a foil blanket, gazing at a hanging star and planet, which slowly rotates clockwise. The crib stands in a dimly lit room alongside two neighbouring cribs, though both are empty. Each has been marked with a red cross, and four large letters, T-E-S-T. His own crib bears no red cross. Instead, it has a name, Van der Westhuizen A1.

  Pacing nervously in front is a woman dressed in a white lab coat, she holds a Moggleapp tablet, using it to continuously check his vital signs. Her attention is diverted by the shouting of two men who are engaged in a heated argument. The redheaded man walks over and snatches the woman’s tablet. He looks familiar but in the low light it is difficult to make out just exactly who he is.

  ‘Nu
rse Ming! We are down to our last two test cases, this project has been a complete disaster. VonHelmann won’t be best pleased’! He berates her.

  ‘Sorry Doctor, we did not anticipate the mutations being so tricky. They don’t behave like humans, have many abnormalities’.

  A second memory comes through of him playing in a small white room with another child, most likely around nine years old. The boy looks familiar, with the same grey eyes. They throw a ball to one another, but he misses the last throw. Giving chase, the ball stops at the feet of a distressed-looking man, it looks a lot like Mad Newton. With a smile he picks up the ball and hands it to him, his palms though are sweaty and face very pale.

  He tells him in a calm but firm tone, ‘Dear, so very young, Van der Westhuizen. I have encoded memories of thy origins, to be reached at thy age of adulthood. I must use this needle to mask thy mind, or thy life will be endangered. Listen here… the Council must never know thy gift. Thy gift being even stronger than your source’!

  He continues, ‘Recall these memories, thy source, Martian President Van der Westhuizen, the Council expunged thee from history and his species. Thy genes are special, with it they seek to create an Elite force, capable of foreseeing events and dangers. Van der Westhuizen was no normal man, his gift though unrefined, some say it a mutation, others a disease. Trust me, it is a gift’.

  Mad Newton pulls out a tablet and commences an interface. There is a 2D video of a man that looks remarkably like his present self, although a little chubbier, the same greyish blonde hair and grey eyes. Dressed in a tight-fitting white uniform, this man sits at a desk with a small flag, on it a red planet that must be Mars surrounded by its two moons, Phobos and Deimos. On his wrist, there are three numbers, 777.

  The interface continues, switching to an image of what appears to be a settlement, tagged Mars One, Cydonia. This settlement is made up of dozens of spherical pods bolted together, tightly packed into a rectangular shape.

  Remembering his Universal Council’s Wiki, he reads - this place was the brainchild of a Dutch Entrepreneur, who helped to bankroll and organise the building of Mars’s first privately funded manned outpost in Cydonia at the end of the 21st century, and was used for scientific research.

  This is where it starts to differ from the Wiki. The tag shows a much larger settlement with thousands of people; not a desolate sandy wasteland with few inhabitants, but green and prosperous like the Florida of 1998, with an area full of pod-like homes. He starts to remember what Mad Newton told him that the leaders on Earth at the end of the 25th century, then the Grand Council, decided that this planet was no longer insignificant. Seeing it now as a much-needed staging point and strategic base for its Spaceships and mining operations. The planet has many useful resources and technologies to exploit.

  The Grand Council had initially planned to take it by force alone, however the Martian’s defensive technology was too advanced to penetrate. Mad Newton, his actual name Dr VonHelmann, thought he had won the argument to seek peace and bargain for Mars’s green technology, putting the case forward that it could revitalise Earth. Unbeknownst to him, a group of high-ranking Elites led by Dr King had no interest in peace and its green technology. Dr VonHelmann was naïve to not realise that Earth’s ill health played to their advantage and that they wanted to keep it this way.

  They had hatched a most deceitful plot using Dr VonHelmann, then a junior interplanetary official, to broker an ‘alliance’ with the Martians including the signing of an agreement that would allow Mars to join the Grand Council and thereby creating the Universal Council. The Martians only saw honesty and warmness in Dr VonHelmann and could not foresee any deceit, just as he could not.

  This Grand Council did not share power though. The agreement invalidated longstanding space neutrality laws and gave ‘Universal’ precedence to sanction the building of a grand armada, called the Space Army. Van der Westhuizen was completely caught off guard, his psychic ability unrefined and raw, he never looked further than Dr VonHelmann. More than that, his personal mantra to believe the best in others, even non-Martians, suppressed any misgiving.

  Only after signing this agreement did President Van der Westhuizen foresee Mars’s impending destruction, alas now too late to stop it. Having given them the ability to pass through Mars’s defences with their newly formed armada, the Space Army, the Martians could only wait for their impending doom. President Van der Westhuizen’s body was taken by the Council to be studied. For the, now Universal, Council wanted to understand his genetics and purported Martian psychic ability, to harness its advantages for its forces. However, it is understood that after some time, research was put on hold and his brain cryogenically frozen. Too many tests had proven unsuccessful.

  The mid-millennia marked a watershed in Earth’s history. Ending a bloody and unstable period where many rebellions were quelled and the Council’s leadership was finally won by Dr King. VanWest remembers more, Mad Newton told him the real story of the rise of the Council and Dr King, it started with a powerful core of Oligarchs that exploited Antarctica’s refugees. Without a care for its human cost, many of these refugees were forced to work in mining operations, condemning them to a slow and painful death.

  Dr King had started as an advisor to the Oligarch Bramsovica and over time his stature, as did his influence, grew. Together they purged their rivals in the Grand Council; accusing many of treason and other crimes, they sent most to penal colonies throughout the Solar System, never to be seen and heard of again. After that, Bramsovica went on to take a more discrete role, working behind the scenes as Dr King assumed the leading public-facing role as still seen nowadays in the Universal Red and Blue Games and Judgement Day.

  Over the next 500 years, they promoted their own key people into important positions, including Commissioner Ming to Head of the Police Forces, Colonel Mason, his one-time Elite guard, to Head Enforcer in ColaBeers, and Four-star General Vladimir to Head of the Space Army. More recently, the promotion of Master Jiang to lead professor at the Enforcer’s academy - only a century before was he an Elite guard to Dr King.

  VanWest remembers Mad Newton’s final words, his face still pale and hands sweaty, ‘I am so deeply sorry for what happened to thy kind, the Martians. It plays on my conscience every day. For you, of Van der Westhuizen’s genes, are more gifted than the Council knows. One day they will realise your gift but remember all I have shown. Resist them! And help me return Earth to its Utopian self, the start of a New Beginning’.

  With the interface ending, VanWest finds himself staring at his reflection in the mirror. Blood trickles down from his nose and his head pounds heavily, struggling to comprehend the deluge of memories that have flooded back. The truth of his and the Council’s dark origins are overwhelming. For the first time he clearly sees the Council for what it is, the Elites abuse of power and their virtual enslavement of the citizens. Their rule more styled on the Roman empire than he realised, not just copied for the benefit of majestic events like that of the Universal Red and Blue Games. They too had a Council and enslaved many innocent people during their quest for ultimate power and the building of their huge empire.

  ‘I am a Martian’! He struggles to grasp it as he says it out loud, more so that he is a genetically engineered replica of its last President. Disgusted with himself that he has been working for the murderer of his clone source and species, the Martians.

  VanWest also struggles to understand why Dr VonHelmann, stayed with this evil Council for so long, centuries more in fact. It seems he used his last decades with them to figure out time-travel; inventing the Quantum Accelerator rod; and hiding his own secret mission to return Earth to its late 20th-century self. This ‘New Beginning’, an indication that he saw it easier to change the past than to fix the present, that it is beyond repair. He asks himself, is the Utopian’s mission and actions in the past indeed so radical after all?

  As he steps away from the mirror, he accidentally treads on the television’s remote control, switch
ing on to a channel ‘CNN 6 o’clock News’. There’s a familiar image that of the astronauts tagged in the Priest’s photos there’s something very unexpected being reported. The Endeavour space shuttle, flight STS-88, is scheduled to launch today, Thursday the 3rd, close to 11pm!? The last photo tagged and list showed the 4th. This is a day earlier!?

  Alarmed, VanWest checks his Wiki file once again to confirm the launch date. Finding that an attempt was actually made a day earlier, this means the astronauts will already be at the Launchpad, preparing. Reading the details on what happened, the launch of Endeavour was called off on the 3rd after the master alarm had been set off with no time left to restart the countdown and launch.

  This was the first opportunity, in a small launch window of just a few days, for the launch of the Unity node to coincide with the passing of Zarya, the Russian built segment of the ISS. If the six astronauts are at Space Kennedy’s Launchpad 39A, then Iris is likely going there too. Furthermore, with the Seductress still on the loose, she is in danger. Likely lurking close behind, looking to retrieve the Quantum Accelerator rod from her.

  He foresaw this all in his vision at the end of Stage 3 of the Universal Red and Blue Games, the frizzy-haired woman and the wreck with the charred metal panel, ENDEA. This meant Endeavour. So very obvious now in hindsight. His mind returns to the likely scenario he thought of earlier, a popular NEA-Utopian tactic of blowing stuff up to kill all those inside. He must find Iris and convince her to find another way, convince her that they can build a bright future together, one built on trust and love.

  Chapter 17 The Failed Launch

  A sharp noise rings in his ears, a scrambled transmission coming through his Quantum Communicator, ‘Captain VanWest! Report status! Come in… VanWest! Report status… come in’!