* * *
Klaus Lieberman continued to stare at me after my floating teacup trick. His eyes, both curious and angry, demanded an answer. “How…”
“Elementary, my dear Lieberman,” I said. “As you may know, I have spent great amounts of time in Mexico and Central America and Peru and Brazil studying with Indian shamans. I have studied medicinal plants with native healers. I have ingested huge quantities of ayahuasca in the desert and seen God. I have…”
I rambled on and on, watching the man closely, while plagiarizing whole sections of Carlos Castaneda’s books about the mythical Don Juan and the narrator’s search for truth in Mexico, his psychedelic adventures with the Yaqui Indians. Klaus watched me talk, riveted. Meanwhile, I shifted my awareness to Jill, who was in a tiny enclosed office with Greta by her side, both hunched over the interface keyboard that linked them with the company’s huge server farm and AI app. Greta called it The Matrix.
How’s it going, Jill? We don’t have a lot of time, you know. I can only keep this rube entertained for a few more minutes.
Relax, Marty. I am inside the master computer and Greta is beautiful, feeding me all the data and keystrokes I need. There is definitely something very curious going on here. I suspect that we’re not dealing with artificial intelligence but sentient intelligence. Some kind of superbrain that is making this whole thing work. The attacks on the Internet, the infrastructure sabotage, the bank—
Jill, can’t you just drop the virus into that thing, whatever it is, put it out of its misery, so we can rescue Leela and get the fuck out of here? C’mon!
“Herr Raven! Herr Raven!” The somewhat whiny voice of Klaus Lieberman brought me back to reality number one. “Your story sounds vaguely familiar. It reminds me of a book I read once when I lived in Berkeley and hung out with hippies. But tell me: How did you learn to move objects with your mind? Presuming that you didn’t hypnotize me, of course.”
“Well, Herr Lieberman, it is a trick I learned from the Indians of Bolivia while under the influence of peyote. One scorching October day….”
I felt Jill knocking at the door of my consciousness. I tuned into her immediately, while on the other level I rambled on to Klaus Lieberman.
Marty, Marty, Marty! I have found something incredible! I’m looking at all these hacks to the main operating system, from servers all over the world, and I keep seeing a familiar digital signature. I think it’s Hacker! Right, our friend Hacker of Sedona! I think he’s the one who has been coordinating the sabotage of the Black Swan cyberterror campaign!
What? My friend—our friend—Hacker? Is behind all the sabotage of Black Swan Beta’s nasty business? Impossible. No, probable. Any other evidence?
One more thing. This…symbol…keeps showing up on his hacks. Almost like graffiti. Hacker is trying to tell us something. It looks like that Christian symbol for a fish, you know, Jesus, loaves and fishes and all that, but this fish looks more like a whale or a shark. No. Wait a minute: It’s a freakin’ dolphin, Marty! I get it! Their AI app really is sentient intelligence…a dolphin!
Okay, Jill, it sounds crazy, but then again it sounds right. See if you can get Greta to take you to the bottom level. Maybe that’s where it lives. Anything is possible right now. But please stand by, ’cuz I have a feeling our host is getting wise to our scam.
“…So that is how I learned to practice telekinesis, Herr Klaus. How to move objects with my mind. Just a little parlor trick, that’s all.”
“Computer!” ordered Klaus. A holographic image of a huge computer screen materialized out of nowhere. “Source of my guest’s story, bitte.” In about a nanosecond, a readout appeared. “Carlos Castaneda. Teachings of Don Juan. Separate Reality. Yaqui Way. Ixtlan.”
I was temporarily stunned. I did a quick scan of Herr Klaus’s speeding mind: He was emanating fear, suspicion, and paranoia, like steam from an overheated engine. This was dangerous.
Trying to mellow him out, I said calmly, “Herr Lieberman, allow me to explain. I have had many experiences similar to the narrator in the Don Juan books. Same territory, same drugs. Naturally there would be some overlap.”
Klaus was adjusting some tiny object in his ear, as if listening to something over earbuds. I froze. Scanned his mind. He knew.
Jill. I think Klaus knows our scam. Be prepared for anything. Maybe you should drop that virus on our fishy friend now before we run out of time.
“Herr Raven,” said Klaus Lieberman in an odd, flat voice. “We are onto you. We know who you are and why you are here. You are Martin Powers, a rabble-rousing journalist, and your so-called wife is Jill Appleton, a telepath from Sedona who works for the American State Department. The woman being held in our subterranean prison is your real wife, the dangerous psychic Leela Powers.”
He didn’t have to say any more. I read the whole thing in his mind. It was like scanning a report of the most recent past, the previous hour or two, with mental video and jerky, urgent thoughtforms. Fortunately, his thoughts were in English.
Black Swan Beta’s supercomputer had analyzed DNA samples we left behind on the doorknob as we entered the building, on various objects we had handled, and on various hands we had shaken. The firm’s global computer network, working at lightning speed, had matched our DNA with our photos and our profiles out of billions of possibilities in a huge worldwide database. I had feared this very thing would happen. He had us. Or did he?
Klaus reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a small, deadly-looking pistol, and pointed it at my head. “Please do not move, Herr Raven—or should I say Herr Powers— or I shall be obliged to blow your fucking brains out.”
Jill, are you with me? Do something, will ya’?
Are you joking, Marty? There are six thugs in here with guns and tasers and some kind of high-tech weapons, all pointed at me. Greta has been handcuffed and hustled out of here. I’m not sure I have too many options. These guys are killers. I think they’re from that Russian Brotherhood that tried to take out you and Leela back in Sedona. Their minds are cursing in some kind of angry Baltic languages.
Stand by, sweetheart, I flashed back to Jill. I’ve got a plan.
Bearing down hard with my new supermind, I managed to slowly slowly move Herr Lieberman’s gun-wielding hand until the pistol muzzle was stuck in his ear. His eyes were wide with terror and rage.
“Now maybe we can see what your brains look like, you sick motherfucker,” I snarled, totally ready to engage the trigger.
“I wouldn’t try that, Herr Powers,” snarled Lieberman. “Two floors down—remember, your wife? She is in our cellar. In a cell. At my signal, my assistants have disabled the energy field that has kept her safely in our keep, and have now entered her cell. They will not hesitate to kill her if I give another signal or if I am suddenly terminated. Of course you are aware that this room is monitored with video cams.”
I sat back, took several deep breaths, scanned the man’s mind and knew that he meant what he said. I was aware of a cloud of insanity around his consciousness. The scope of his mania astounded me.
Jill. We are in deep shit here. Got any ideas?
Keep breathing, Marty. I’m thinking. I’m thinking.
20 The Om Protocol
“So. You two are probably wondering why we call our organization Black Swan, isn’t it?”
Jill and I sat in the enclosed outdoor patio with the madman Klaus Lieberman and watched dark clouds float slowly across the sun through the transparent roof. A chill entered the space and hung in the air like dense fog. Klaus had put his pistol away, but there was nothing we could do. Yet. I always had the option of calling in the Special Ops people with the push of a button on my bracelet, but that could have endangered Leela’s life.
Menacing thugs had ushered Jill into the patio at gunpoint. Greta’s whereabouts were unknown. Leela was being watched by gunmen somewhere in a sub-ba
sement. Her neighbor was possibly a dolphin held prisoner within concrete walls. Hold on a minute. If the electronic force field holding Leela captive had been disabled, maybe, just maybe.…
“Perhaps I should tell you a little about us, eh? Or perhaps Frau Appleton will simply read my mind and then tell you what she reads. Eh? Eh?” The German’s thin lips twisted into a sadistic smile which quickly morphed into a sneer.
Jill and I sat silently, watching him, both of us busily scanning the cesspool of thoughts, memories, fantasies, and real-time information that swirled about in his mind. Jill flashed to me that she was going to dive deeper into memory storage areas to gather more intel.
“The book The Black Swan, eh? Perhaps you have read it. About the impact of the highly improbable. A rare event, totally unexpected. The unpredictable. For example, the assassination of your President Kennedy. Your country’s nuclear bombs dropped on the innocent people of Japan. The 9/11 attacks…quite a black swan event, hmmm? Something happens with great impact that changes the world forever, hmmm? Or as an American friend of mine says, shit happens. Isn’t it?”
“What does the Black Swan book have to do with your firm’s malicious attacks on the Internet, which has totally fucked up our planet?” I asked with undisguised hostility.
“Because, Herr Raven, we are using the Internet—perhaps the greatest tool ever devised by man—as our ticket to the stars! Unpredictable, eh? Totally unexpected, eh? We will change the world! The world will never be the same!” He smirked at us and looked skyward.
Don’t mess with him, Marty, I’ve opened some memory folders in his cerebral cortex. See what you can pick up in his real-time ruminating. Then we’ll compare notes.
It was very weird, probing around in this man’s mind while Jill was in there too. There was nothing tangible, nothing to see, not much to really grok, except the scrambled images and memories of our host’s very busy mind; but I could feel Jill there too.
Marty, get this. It’s info from this dude’s short-term memory. The dolphin is the source of Black Swan’s Internet attacks and the superbrain behind their processing power. It is a conscious and aware being capable of incredible cognitive function. And it is constantly drugged! The clicks and whistles and groans and squeals that dolphins put out, this one is sending out binary code. Wow.
I took a deep breath while looking Herr Nutjob right in the eye. Amazing, Jill. A dolphin? Far friggin’ out. Now get this. Klaus is thinking about a rocket somewhere in the desert of…wait a minute…somewhere in southern New Mexico, must be the White Sands facility, a rocket on a launching pad…a rocket that is headed for an orbiting platform in the…wait a sec…a space station that is already launched and orbiting the earth! Could this just be a fantasy, or just wishful thinking? I can’t be sure.
All of this communication was happening at the speed of thought, faster than the speed of light. Meanwhile, Klaus droned on.
“You two have probably heard of the Eternal Flame, eh? The organization that guarantees its members eternal life? Good. You of course want to live forever, isn’t it, Herr Raven? As an expert on certain plant and chemical compounds, perhaps you should know about a chemical called EMC-2, eh? I take it every day, Herr Raven. I plan to live forever! Are you interested?”
It took a major effort to shift my focus from exploring this madman’s mind to actually conversing with him in real time. “Of course I am interested, Herr Lieberman. What exactly is in this drug? And who produces it?”
“Ah ha!” he said, enjoying a small triumph. “Perhaps Miss Appleton can tell you. Are you reading my mind now, Miss Appleton? Are you? What am I thinking? Answer Mr. Powers’ questions, otherwise I may have to kill you.”
“You give me too much credit, Herr Klaus,” said Jill smoothly. “I give psychic readings to clients in Sedona, Arizona, USA, at the Crystal Grotto, and to a few of my private clients by telephone. I cannot read your mind, or anybody’s mind. If I could, I certainly wouldn’t be interested in reading yours,” she said, turning angry. “Why are you holding us here? We are tourists, on a skiing vacation, who have accepted your invitation to help your firm solve a software problem.”
Easy, Jill, this dude is already on the edge….
“Ha ha ha!” he laughed, throwing his head back in an exaggerated gesture of hilarity. “You work for the American State Department. You are a spy. You know our prisoner, Leela Powers. You are traveling with Ms. Powers’ husband, Herr Raven. We have a complete dossier on you. We have big plans for you and your companions.”
Keep him talking, Marty. I have more exploring to do. See if you can find out what he’s got in mind for us for the next hour or two.
“So, Herr Lieberman,” I said, “tell me more about your Eternal Flame and this drug you are taking. You know of my interest in advanced pharmacology.”
“Ha! So. Everyone wants more of the precious life, eh? This special drug that I and my brothers and sisters take every day, EMC-2, it is composed of many enzymes and even a bacteria extracted from the DNA of extinct wooly mammoths and Siberian rhinos! Prehistoric Viagra! Get my point? Not only will we live forever, but the men among us will ‘keep it up’ forever! Ha ha ha ha ha!”
Marty. Tune in to me, please. It was Jill. Just in time; this whack-job was getting on my nerves. Jill, undisturbed, sitting next to me, was deep in the man’s head. Lieberman’s databases show that they are using the dolphin’s processing power and their hijack of the Internet to transfer huge amounts of money from banks and individual accounts into secret Swiss bank accounts. They have stolen billions of dollars and euros, maybe trillions. They are funneling most of that money into building their rockets and orbiting space station. This software operation with all of its branches is only a small part of an international conspiracy. Stay tuned, Marty. The plot thickens.
“…and each of us is made of cells that have been around since the dawn of life on this Earth, Herr Raven! Imagine that! We come from a cell lineage that has continued unbroken since life began! Now, listen, please. Why do our cells normally age and die? Why are they programmed to age so quickly and send us to an early grave? Eh? Eh? Do you know why? Of course you don’t.”
The people involved in this scam, Marty, you wouldn’t believe. I can send you their images. Political bigshots and bankers and scientists and celebrities and.… Well, they all think they can live forever. They don’t care about what happens to planet Earth and its people. They just want to get away from it, away from our problems. And they are causing many of our problems. They want to set up a moon base and launch space flights through our solar system and beyond. All of this info is stored in this joker’s subconscious mind. And it just confirms what the Secretary told us back in Cyprus. The scope of this thing is unbelievable.
“…So it’s all about the cellular clock that limits the lifespan of our cells, Herr Raven. The DNA sequences at the end of each chromosome which get shorter and shorter and finally give you a ‘fatal error’ message. Verstehen, Herr Raven? The germ-line cells that reproduce forever? Do you get me? Ach. You are hopeless. Stupid American. You will never understand.”
Looking frustrated and resigned, he sank back into his overstuffed lounge chair. He looked at his watch and closed his eyes, falling into a silent reverie. I looked into his mind and what I saw shocked me. It was an image of a woman whose picture I had seen before, a woman who represented a potential disaster. Klaus was thinking about her imminent arrival.
Hey, Jill, check out what’s happening in our friend’s real-time ruminations. I know that woman from somewhere.
That is Tanya, Jill flashed, the bitch who used to work for our State Department, then got flipped and went to work for Black Swan and was responsible for Leela getting exposed and captured. Klaus is thinking about her arrival here in Davos, which will be in less than an hour. She is flying in via helicopter from Zurich, and if she gets anywhere
near this building, she will know there is a heavy psi presence here, namely you and me. Plus Leela. I know one thing for sure: this woman is very dangerous. She has tremendous powers.
Which means, I flashed back to Jill, that we had better get some escape plan going in the next few milliseconds or we are all going to be in deep doo-doo. Got any fresh ideas?
Hey, guys, what’s going on?
Jill, who’s that? I must reiterate something here: Thought transmissions have no voice. When telepaths communicate with each other, it happens on another level and in another realm: Call it the brainwave realm, the cognitive domain. There is no sound. There are ripples in the cerebral cortex; a kind of knowing occurs. And it happens at the speed of thought.
Jill: Leela! Leela! Marty, it’s Leela! She’s back with us!
Leela: Marty? You’re tuned in! How? When?
Sweetheart, it’s a long, long story. Are you okay? What’s happening down there?
Leela: When Klaus and his boys turned off the electromagnetic energy field, I got my mojo back. It took awhile, but these six goons guarding me are all in a theta state, ready for delta. Hypnotized and immobilized. Take a look.
I looked through Leela’s eyes. It was amazing. Six burly thugs armed to the teeth were seemingly frozen in place, their eyes glazed and staring into space.
Jill: Leela, we gotta get you out of there! Can you do a jump?
No, I’m too weak. Jill, Marty, have a look around this place and see what we’re up against. I’m accessing the central monitor panels for all the cams around the building. Have a quick look, guys.
I looked through Leela’s eyes. The ubiquitous surveillance cameras showed all of the employees in the building, save for the six goons and Klaus, in battle-ready positions, everyone, including the female secretaries, armed with pistols. Most of these people were computer nerds and geeks, but dangerous nevertheless. A monitor of the first floor showed tiny Greta, stuffed into a corner, handcuffed and helpless.
What about our dolphin friend, Leela? I asked.
I had to hypnotize and disable the poor creature. She’s not sending out binary code anymore. The dolphin has been drugged for months, floating around in a little salt water pond, programmed, and exploited. These creeps picked an innocent member of the most advanced species on the planet to do their dirty work. Despicable.
“What are you thinking about, Herr Raven?” came the raspy, lizard voice of Klaus Lieberman. “How to escape, isn’t it? See, I just read your mind. Maybe you can show me another one of your parlor tricks, eh? While we wait for a friend of mine. Perhaps you know her. She will help us decide what to do with you and how to chart the future of our enterprise.”
I scanned his real-time mind. A sharp, clear picture of Tanya emerged out of the mist. She was beautiful, with sinister eyes. Klaus visualized Tanya as a leather-clad dominatrix, bursting through the front door and attacking my two favorite ladies, smacking them with her fists then flattening them with yellow beams from her eyes.
Hey, Jill, Leela, this fruitcake is running some fantasy about Tanya as an evil Superwoman, messing you two guys up. Is this anything to be concerned about? Help me out here, I’m new at this.
Jill: I caught a little of that fantasy. Nothing to be concerned about. Tanya is definitely on her way here. She could cause big trouble, so we have to be prepared. Right now we’ve gotta move fast. I set a software bomb in their computer network that will go off when someone hits the RETURN key. Marty, you could handle that, you’ve got a good touch on moving things around remotely. When that “bomb” goes off, it will bring down their entire global network. I got the code from Hacker.
Hacker! Isn’t he still in Sedona? Did he get a chip implant too? This was Leela, being mischievous. How did she know about my chip? Oh yeah, she scanned my “long, long story” less than five minutes ago. Leela sees all, knows all. Listen up, folks, I have an idea. We have to put the rest of the crew here out of commission. We have to shut this operation down, post haste. Marty, you can trigger Jill’s software “bomb” and call in the troops with your little magic button. Next we’ll have to deal with my old friend Tanya. And then slip out of here. Jill?
Here’s how we do it: the Schumann Resonances. Right, Leela?
The what? I said. This is no time for piano concertos by 19th Century German composers, ladies.
The frequency of the earth’s magnetic field, silly. (It was Leela, of course, my smarty-pants wife, staying in character even in the psi domain.) Dig: A continuous wave of sound that puts the brain into higher or lower states. Lower, like sleep. That’s what I used downstairs to render those big bozos helpless. All we have to do is tune in to that brainwave frequency. It’s around 7.8 Hertz. Hey Marty, listen to Jill and I and join in. It won’t take long to disable these people. I’ll turn on the P.A. system for the whole building. There are hidden microphones everywhere.
Whereupon the two ladies launched into a sweet, high-pitched sound that was like nothing I’d ever heard before. Klaus looked up, startled, jerkily tried to get to his feet, then crumpled to the floor and lay still. The girls wanted me to join in? I am a baritone, not a mezzo soprano.
Come on, Marty, we need you to make this work on everybody in the building. Just sing “om” in the lower registers of your lovely baritone voice. Then watch the video monitors through my eyes as everybody in this whole place goes into a delta state. Okay?
I sighed. Damn that Leela and her big ideas. Singing in public was never my thing; too shy, I guess. I closed my eyes and let go. The ladies started up their song again in perfect sync with me.
“Om. Om. Ommmmmmmmmmm.” Deep breath. “Ommmmmmmmmm.”
Our song, delivered in some weird kind of cosmic harmony that felt like it could throw the Earth off its axis, seemed to bounce off every surface and consume the whole building in a vibrating wall of sound. There were mics and vidcams everywhere, which helped to amplify our symphony. Through Leela’s eyes, I watched Black Swan employees on three floors slowly crumple to the floor, sound asleep, probably in a deep hypnotic state.
This was serious medicine, this Shumann business. In fact, I was feeling a strange, unfamiliar tingle behind my third eye, perhaps in the pineal gland area. Oh oh, I thought, maybe this resonance thing is triggering some kind of reaction around my chip implant and an unwanted, untimely DMT trip is imminent. If so, well….
Jill: Everyone’s asleep, guys. Including Greta. We’ll get her in a minute or two. Time for the next chapter. Marty, please remotely press that RETURN key at the main computer interface and trigger the software bomb. Know where that room is? Just follow my energy signature.
I did, without thinking. Just did it. The experience was something like astral travel or an out-of-body experience. I followed Jill’s energy trail; suddenly, there I was; there was the keyboard. I experienced my body in two places at the same time: weird. I pressed the RETURN key, using PK, psychokinesis, and lights started flashing and alarms went off all over the building.
You did it, Marty, congratulations! It was Leela. Now would you press that button on your bracelet and call in the Special Ops guys? Your short-term memory says they’ll be here in ten to fifteen minutes to clean up this mess. So let’s be gone when they get here.
“Marty, all the lights are blinking off. Part of the alarm system, I guess. The emergency generators are kicking in.” It was Jill, speaking out loud, which was a relief. She was standing next to me on the patio and holding my hand tightly.
“Think you can disable all but two or three of the generators? Remotely? Sure you can. Keep one going in the computer interface office. That’s so our software bomb will take out their worldwide network before they can patch it from another location. And one on the lower level so the dolphin can survive. And another one that controls the lights so we can see what’s going on here. Okay?”
“What about the frea
kin’ elevator, Jill? We’ve gotta get down to the lower level to get Leela out of there. We’ll need some juice for the elevator.”
“No we won’t. We’re gonna do a jump, Marty. But first, would you please take care of the generators? Oh, and don’t forget to press that button and call in the troops.”