The Prometheus Objective

8

Phoebe found her way to a back office on the floor, adjacent to the one Caleb had just commandeered for privacy. She needed space, needed isolation, and most of all — needed to be away from the windows. Didn’t want to be distracted or tempted to look down on the chaos below. Or to be a target. If they could fire RPGs at a helicopter, she guessed bulletproof windows might not be adequate protection.

A glance back through the window revealed a bustle of action around the main area, which made her uncomfortable. A lot of agent-type men in dark suits were setting up equipment, trying to reach others and coordinate mobile communications. A few others just stood around as security and seemed okay for now.

She hoped these guys were all, as Edgerrin said, with some sort of psychic ability that nullified the onslaught of full awareness. Otherwise…

She was glad she locked the door. Moving to the window, she hesitated but felt she should close the blinds in here. Didn’t want to be distracted while she went into her trance. She needed to be confident she wouldn’t be disturbed. However, she didn’t want to miss anything, and wasn’t sure Caleb was in the right mind to notice threats now. Not with the weight of all this on his shoulders. The ultimate guilt, and all this responsibility. He would do anything to atone, she knew, and would overlook the basic things around him in service of fixing it all.

He needed her to be aware. To support and protect him. To save him from himself — which she hadn’t been able to do on Long Island.

Hand on the blinds’ release, she hesitated, watching her brother in the next room. He disconnected the livestream to Edgerrin and walked to the window. Back to her, he looked out at the city, at the world.

A changed world. A world he had in part wanted to create, ever since that day emerging from under the Alexandrian harbor with the key to ultimate knowledge in his hand. He had wanted to release all that wisdom all to the world, but then he saw the wisdom in restraint.

Now, despite all those precautions, the dam had been broken.

But this, it wasn’t full knowledge, Phoebe knew.

It was chaos. It was anything but provident information carefully allocated and available for analysis. It was the absolute opposite of organization and method. This was a bombardment of the psyche of every living human not otherwise buffered by pre-existing constraints.

Or, she thought, whatever else might be blocking this ‘curse’. Some medicine people were taking that had an unintended side effect.

Focus, she thought. Let Victoria and the new recruits handle that part. You have your own objectives.

She did, and reluctantly she closed the blinds on her introspective brother, wishing she could alleviate his pain in some way, but knowing this might be a path he needed to tread alone.

It was time. Time to find Orlando.

As much as she ached for him, despite all his quirks and aggravating ticks, she loved the lug more than anything. Except maybe the two joys he had given her. What we did together, as he was so fond of describing their act of procreation.

She let her mind go free as she sat in the cushy leather office chair, sliding it away from the meeting table and releasing the lock so she could lean back and stare up at the perforated ceiling tiles.

Half-expecting to see a couple pencils stuck up there, as Orlando loved to spend his time perfecting the pencil-dart-in-the-ceiling trick, she let her eyes glaze over the tiles, allowing the lack of patterns to the indentations and marks create a map of sorts. Roads leading this way and that. Bridges from one land to another…

Focus slipped, shadows merged, darkness swirled, and she saw…

Him.

Orlando, but not Orlando.

A collection of numerical data, a binary blur of golden luminescence. He was here and yet gone. In a different place and time, a different…

Just. Different. Reading his location was like opening a book entirely written in a different language and not understanding one symbol.

Couldn’t find him, and then…

Change the question.

Where did they take him originally?

Two things were going on. One, she realized, was beyond her understanding now, beyond anyone’s. But what she had to be able to determine was Orlando’s physical location. Not the presence of his consciousness. That was the wrong question.

Body, not mind.

Where is ‘he’?

That was the key question.

The collection of biological material, water, bones and muscle, nerves and cells and molecules that made up her husband. That she could find.

And did.

The image came to mind quickly: A white room.

A table. Electrodes, monitors.

Where?

She backs up, retreating from the room. A stark, long hallway. Other doors, other… patients?

Someone — something down the hall. Behind another door.

She shivers.

It’s a woman, but… much more. She’s…

Familiar

A smell of ancient rock and jasmine, the sound of a subterranean waterfall, and kind, sad eyes…

Was this—?

Fingers press against the glass, leaving glowing fingerprints and—

She’s gone.

Blasting up, through more levels of hallways and experimental lab rooms, server stations, and then layers of rock and earth. Up — into the air, into the blue sky, looking down on a fenced in area, a collection of buildings, what looks like…

A plane.

And a signpost.

She knows this.

But doesn’t. It’s familiar, but she can’t quite place it.

One objective almost figured out. Regardless of the uncertainties and ambiguity surrounding Orlando and his… neighbor.

One down.

Now, check the twins…

Had to let her instincts take over and spy on them, but they had the sphere that blocked her sight. It was agonizing, and she had to peek around the edges to get a glimpse of anything at all. But it was there, and she found it.

She swooned, almost fell — and screamed.

Minutes later, images of impossible sights swirling in her head, she stumbled out of her office and made her to way to Caleb.

He may have been in his own deep session, remote viewing something, or preparing to address and calm the world as best he could, but when he saw her ashen face, he came to her.

“What is it? You saw something.”

“I might know where Orlando is. But the twins…”

She almost sobbed out the words.

“They’re in danger, I can feel that much, even though I don’t know from what, and I can’t see… not a damn thing that made any sense. I don’t know how to help them.”

“What could you see?”

She gasped for breath, still seeing images of smoke, fire and a towering man in red storming through burning wreckage. “More than just the physical danger. Somebody’s got them — or is about to. But before, they…”

“What?” His voice was soothing, his touch gentle but firm.

“They’re not like any of us. They…” She clenched her eyes and could see it again, just one sight, but it was like something out of a Michelangelo canvas sprinkled with faerie magic and illuminated by angelic finger-paint.

“I saw something else. I think it was a scene from Genesis.”

Caleb made a choking sound. “Genesis?” His eyes widened, like he saw it too. “The Tree?”

“They were floating or flying around it. Touching it with elastic beams of light, like they were consuming its branches. Drinking from its leaves, absorbing its sap.”

Caleb took a step back, and she knew his mind was whirling, interpreting, merging this data with a dozen myths and folk tales and modern science.

“The Akashic Record? Or maybe…”

“It’s the Biblical Tree of Wisdom itself.” She took a deep, deep breath. “They can open it up, read it all. No serpent or apple needed.”

Caleb thought for a moment, then swallowed hard. “I’m worried that whoever can control those children…”

“…can know everything?” Phoebe again saw the man in crimson, with his flowing cape, striding through the smoke and wreckage.

“He can become God.”