* * *
Don’t ask me how it all happened. All I know is the deal went down fast, very fast. I disabled all but three generators in seconds by following the electrical fields to their source. Then: My first-ever jump was painless and easy, passing through time and space and solid matter while tightly holding Jill’s hand, scooping up Leela and taking another jump back to the first floor. Down in the sub-basement, Leela and I didn’t even have time for a hug, but we made up for it on the main floor.
In fact, the three of us had a hug in the atrium that could have fried the circuits of the remaining generators. Engulfed in the loving energy of these two sexpots, I grew a boner so invasive that it had to be calmed down with psychokinesis. Greta stood a few feet away, trying to look disinterested. Jill had freed her minutes earlier.
“Let’s get serious, guys,” said Leela, stepping out of the hot energy, looking almost glamorous in her orange prisoner jumpsuit, despite also looking thin, pale, and malnourished. “In about ninety seconds, my old friend Tanya is going to show up. She is very powerful and very crazy and probably has already sensed what’s going on here. So get ready.”
“Let’s hit her with some heavy psychic energy,” suggested Jill. “Marty, as soon as Tanya steps into the security threshold, we will create an electromagnetic energy field around her. But wait until you see her physical presence.”
Around these two very advanced psychics, you don’t ask why or how. You don’t think about it. You simply do. Somehow, the right thing always seemed to happen.
The massive front door of Black Swan Beta headquarters swung open and there was Tanya herself, a shocked look on her face. She was tall and thin, with high cheekbones and those penetrating eyes. She wore a wool cap and a white parka. We hit her with everything we had. She simply stood there, arms at her sides, her head lolling from side to side, her eyes wide and unfocused. Our energy field around her was firm and holding.
Leela waited about half a minute and then said to Jill and I, “Hey, guys, let’s drop the field for just a few seconds while I take care of some overdue business, okay?” We let go, and Tanya staggered around, as if lost or drunk. Then my wife stepped up to the woman and did something amazing. And totally out of character.
“You rotten, traitorous bitch,” Leela snarled. She wound up like a fastball pitcher, and delivered a fist directly to the other woman’s jaw. Tanya staggered backyard and fell to the frozen ground at the entrance to the building. She struggled to get up, finally falling, face first, into a dirty snowdrift near the entrance. Leela stood over her, reached down, and pressed a point near her jugular vein.
“Forget the energy field, folks,” said Leela. “This bitch will be in a semi-coma for about twenty-four hours. Gives the Special Ops boys a chance to get her immobilized, drugged, and harmless. Otherwise she would be in their heads, making them do weird stuff to each other.”
“Let’s go,” said Jill, grabbing Greta by the arm. “Our car is right over there. Let’s get out of here before all hell breaks loose.”
“An alarm has been set off in a nearby building,” said Leela. “I think some of those Brotherhood goons are on their way. Marty, how good are you at driving on icy mountain roads?”
“You know me, baby,” I said. “Remember those motorcycle trips in Oak Creek Canyon?” We piled into the Porsche and I fired up the powerful engine. Leela sat in front with me while Jill and Greta scrunched into the tiny back seat. We roared off and skidded onto the Promenade, then headed out of town. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw two vehicles about a hundred yards behind: a black SUV and an equally black Hummer. I felt their threatening energy crawl up my spine.
“The Brotherhood?” I asked of anyone who might have a clue.
“Yep,” said Leela, calmly.
“Step on it, Marty,” said Jill, with equal equanimity. “Be ready for anything. Maybe even a Black Swan event. You know, shit happens?”
“I know, Jill, I know,” I said shakily. I floored it; the Porsche responded like a lover who was ready for a long night of hot sex.
21 What’s the Anti-Matter?
My two psychic consorts seemed unshaken as I whipped around icy corners and downshifted like a crazed monkey. Greta, however, seemed to be frozen in a state of panic, her eyes wide, her arms encircling herself. She is a physically small person, pretty face but perpetually furrowed forehead. Basically, she was scared shitless; I didn’t blame her. The two black vehicles following closely behind us skidded dangerously around the switchbacks. Fortunately, the Porsche hugged the road like a jealous lover.
“Marty, can you coax a little more muscle out of this baby?” asked Leela. “Those monster cars are staying with us and the goons are just about to break out the guns. Whoops! There they go!”
I heard several shots and instinctively ducked. “Jill, is your force field holding? Marty and Greta, Jill has put up one of her famous force fields just behind our car and the bullets will just seem to die and fall to the ground. Okay, sister?”
“The force field is holding, yeah, but Marty’s driving is making me nauseous,” Jill giggled. “I’m doing my best, guys.”
Five tense minutes went by, bullets flying and dying. Leela finally broke the silence: “They’ve given up on the gun-and-bullet thing, folks, and I think they’re gonna break out their new EMP weapons, you know, electromagnetic pulse? Like what happens when a nuke goes off. But these gadgets don’t involve nukes. They basically shut down anything electronic or mechanical. Like our car engine.”
“Like when those creeps tried to take out China?” I asked. “Using the power of the vortexes to generate an EMP? Yeah, I remember, sweetheart. You mean these Black Swan people have crammed all that power into some kind of handgun?”
“You got it, Marty. So in about ten seconds we’re gonna get hit with some very strong radio pulses that will look like bolts of lightning. Jill, our lives are in your hands!”
“Are we gonna die?” croaked Greta, scrunched down in her seat.
“No, not yet,” said Leela, just as the lightning bolts started hurtling our way, a truly frightening sight in my rear-view mirrors. “You okay, Jill? Is your force field holding? You look a little pale.”
“I’m st-starting to l-lose it, Leela,” said Jill, uncharacteristically shaken. Her facial muscles were straining, her teeth showing. “Can I get a little h-help?”
As she spoke, the car shuddered; I could see the blue bolts of lightning whipping toward us, then falling away as they struck Jill’s invisible (but vulnerable) force field. One bolt seemed to penetrate her shield and strike the back of the Porsche.
The engine died. I stomped feverishly on the gas pedal, but got no response. The car was hurtling around a sharp curve on a patch of black ice. I dared not use the brakes; they were power brakes and probably useless anyway. I slammed the gearshift into third and then second. We lurched around the curve.
From the back seat, Greta was wailing, keening, as if we were already toast. “I am calling in all of the angels, deities, and ascended masters for this one,” she moaned. “God is great. Allah Akbar. Praise the Lord. Hari Krishna. Shalom Aleichem. Mungu U mwema. Mazeltov. Amen! That should do it!” She sat up triumphantly, shook her shoulders, and observed the unfolding drama.
“I’ve got your back, Jill!” yelled Leela. “And your front! Hang in there, kiddo!”
With peripheral vision, I could see Leela kneeling in the front passenger seat, head thrown back, arms outstretched, fingers aimed at the menacing car right behind us, like some kind of Wiccan high priestess casting a spell.
“Jump start this beast, Marty!” said Leela. “The force field is holding! Jump start it, please!”
I did as she asked, popping the clutch and stomping on the accelerator. The Porsche sprang into action, the engine fired up and our powerful little speedster again charged down the winding, hazardous road at breakneck
speed.
“It is definitely holding, Leela,” said Jill. “Thanks for the help. Maybe you can take a break now and… whoops, there’s something new coming at us! Watch out!”
Leela hadn’t changed her position. Arms outstretched and fingers spread, she now appeared to be holding something back. “They’ve upped the stakes!” she announced with some alarm in her voice.
In the rear view mirror I could see red streaks zooming toward our car. “Leela!” I shouted. “What the hell are those?”
“I think those are missiles, my beloveds,” she said. “Mini-missiles with nuclear tips. Holy shit. They’re trying to nuke us right out of existence. What do you read, Jill?”
“I don’t think so, Leela,” argued Jill, her voice quavering as she held up her end of the protective magnetic field. “If they were nukes they would not only put us out of business, but cook their butts too. And when those missiles hit the ground they would probably detonate. I don’t get the feeling these bozos are suicidal types.”
Leela groaned from the strain of holding up her end of our protective shield, her energy obviously starting to ebb. “What is it then?” she said. “Let’s find out soon, cuz I’m getting tired. And I’m sensing there is something up ahead on this road that could change the course of history.”
“Okay, here’s what I get,” said Jill. “Somehow they are sending atoms of anti-matter at us. That’s right, anti-matter. If a single atom penetrates our field and hits the car, we would be vaporized. No evidence, no record of us, nothing.”
“Anti-matter?” groaned Leela. “Doesn’t it cost, like, trillions of dollars to produce a single gram of the stuff?”
“I dunno,” said Jill. “I know these Black Swan creeps have practically the whole planet’s money in their Swiss bank accounts, so they can do just about anything they want. But my scans say that they are sending anti-matter atoms our way. And that we will be less than dust if one penetrates our shield.”
Leela: “Okay, listen, everybody, breaking news. Here is what I see clearly now.” What she meant by “see” was that her psychic sense was at play. My wife’s psi powers were greater than they had ever been before, many times greater. Scanning her real-time thought forms, I knew that something seriously life-threatening lay just ahead. I couldn’t see what it was, though. Danger in front, danger behind. How could we survive? I took a deep breath, consciously breathing in and out as deeply as possible.
“Less than half a mile up the road, around several curves, there is some kind of obstruction,” said Leela. “Some huge object is blocking the road. I can see some letters, some name, on the side of it. There is no way we get can around it. Unless we do something, we will have to stop the car and those hoods will have a clear shot at us.” She paused for several seconds and time seemed to expand, a kind of crystalline field of energy filled the car, a great stillness descended. We were on the cusp of something: a Black Swan event, or….?
“Marty, do you remember that motorcycle ride we took into Oak Creek Canyon last summer in Sedona? When those hoods tried to run your Harley off the road and into the canyon? Remember?”
“I remember, sweetheart. Just at the right moment, my Harley lifted off the ground and the guys chasing us went straight over the side of the canyon. I always kinda knew that you had saved our butts by lifting the bike off the ground before we went over the side. Yeah, I remember.”
“Okay, listen Marty, because this one is up to you. I can’t do it. All my energy has to go into helping Jill keep this magnetic field going. You’re gonna have to do what I did —that means lifting the freakin’ car off the ground, over the obstruction, and onto the road on the other side of it. With PK. With mind power.”
“Uh, Leela, I can’t even start to imagine how—” I protested, feeling like some kind of wimp.
Leela was kind, as usual. But firm. “All you have to do is focus real hard, set your intention, and know that you can do it. Got it? Okay, Marty? I know you got it in you to make this happen, sweetheart. Ready? Cuz time is short, real short. A few seconds, and…”
I rounded a sharp curve, and there it was: A huge semi, an 18-wheeler, was stretched across the road. The tractor section, where the driver sits, had broken through the guardrail and was hanging over the edge at a crazy angle. The narrow road was totally blocked. Again time seemed to slow down, and I clearly saw the letters on the side of the huge trailer section: BLACK SWAN GALACTIC ENTERPRISES. Under these were words in smaller letters: Danger: combustible.
No time to think about it. I focused, focused hard, visualized our car moving through the air, and basically willed our Porsche up and over the hopelessly marooned semi. It seemed to happen in slow motion. Leisurely, I took in the view of the snow-covered mountains, the valley below, the clouds, a hawk circling lazily in the sky. With pure thought, I brought our Porsche down easily on the icy road, a few feet beyond the semi. I hit the gas pedal hard, and squirreled us around a tight hairpin curve.
The explosion came a few seconds later—at first a whoosh, then an all-encompassing, violent shockwave of energy that rocked our little car and threatened to hurl it over the side of the cliff. The explosion seemed nuclear in scale. The sound was ear-shattering. I saw a huge fireball rising from what must have been terrible wreckage.
“Faster, Marty, let’s put some distance between us and that mess,” urged Jill. “There could be several explosions, especially if that stuff they fired at us was anti-matter. We don’t know what that truck was carrying, but I suspect it was some kind of rocket fuel. It’s probably very unstable. Please hurry.”
I put the pedal to the metal and the Porsche shot ahead. Multiple explosions were happening behind us. Then, silence. The ladies and I fell into our own quiet space. A minute later, a new sound emerged. It started as a low rumble, gradually growing in volume and intensity. I looked in the rear-view mirror.
“Avalanche!” I cried. “The whole friggin’ mountain is coming down behind us!”
Huge chunks of ice, snow, and rock were raining on the road that we had passed just a minute ago. The roar was deafening. It sounded and felt like an earthquake. The mountain, an ancient rock glacier, was disintegrating and falling into the valley below.
“Hurry, Marty, hurry!” said Jill. She seemed to be enjoying the thrill ride. “Hey, Leela, I guess I was right about the mini-nukes, eh? I hate to say I told you so, but….”
Leela was also bouncing in her seat with excitement. Only Greta, hunkered down in the back seat and looking nervously behind us, was, again, scared witless.
“You were right, Jill, spot on,” laughed Leela. “I guess I don’t know a nuke from a noogie. It must have been anti-matter. By the way, Marty, you did a great job back there, lifting our car up and over that truck. I knew you could do it.”
“Thanks, Leela. It was nothing.” The two psi ladies giggled; I laughed, and checked my trousers to make sure I hadn’t soiled myself. I checked the GPS display and saw that we were only a few kliks from St. Moritz. Fearless, I ran the speedo up to 130 kpm on a smooth straightaway. The mood in the Porsche had definitely lightened. We were still alive.
“You know, ladies, I’ll be expecting some sort of reward when we get back to the states. I still haven’t experienced that thing that Jill told me about that you two had going —uh, I call it Remote Screwing.”
I glanced into the back seat and saw that Greta was blushing. “Oh, you mean the Unified Psychic Energy Field of Universal Love,” piped up Jill. “The remote coupling experience.”
“Yeah, something like that. I’m ready to try it.”
“Count me in too,” said Greta, surprising everyone, including herself. She cleared her throat, blushed again. “Marty is my hero. I would do anything for you, Marty. You saved our lives.” She put a hand on my shoulder.
Jill gave Greta a sidelong glance that had jealousy written all over it. “Sorry, gir
l, but remote coupling is only for people with enhanced psi abilities. Maybe when this crisis is over….”
Leela came alive. “Marty, just how long is your chip supposed to last? I hope it holds until we get back to Sedona!”
“They told me two hundred hours, sweetheart. So far, so good. I wish it could go on forever. Maybe…maybe I’ll get lucky and my chip won’t dissolve.”
“I hope so. I love you even more with psi abilities. It’s like having a born-again husband!”
Just ahead, a road sign: St. Moritz 10 km. Did we dare check back into the hotel? Would the Brotherhood goons be waiting for us? Could we even fly safely back to Cyprus and catch a plane to the US? Lots of questions, and no answers. Wait….
“I have a couple of answers, Marty,” said Jill. She had been listening in to my thoughts. She had also been fiddling with her handset, the wonderful Psi-Fi device, which delivers data at lightning speed: audio, video, 3-D holo, and text. She had apparently been in contact with the Special Ops team back in Davos as well as with our contacts at the Palace Hotel.
“Here’s what I just learned,” said Jill. “We have probably destroyed their whole Internet sabotage operation, or at least seriously crippled it. Lots of people were arrested by the Special Ops guys. Including the bitch Tanya. And our friend Klaus. Operation Algorithm was a huge success. We got Leela back. We saved a dolphin. And I told our friends in St. Moritz that we’ll be there soon. They’ve got security people all over the place. Our hotel rooms are waiting and the Jacuzzis are heated up. Any more questions?” She wore a huge grin.
“Yeah, ” I said. “When is dinner? All this excitement really works up a man’s appetite!”
22 The Man in the Blue Parka
Icicles hung like silver daggers from the roof of our patio, accenting the luminous winter postcard scenery outside our cozy suite at the Palace Hotel in St. Moritz. A light snow was falling. I shook my head to clear the cobwebs and to make sure I wasn’t dreaming all this.
Yesterday….Ah, it had been quite a homecoming, returning to the relative security of the stately Palace. We were greeted by our friends from the State Department, Joe and Kate Jeffers, the young couple from Colorado who had rescued Jill and I from the frozen Lake St. Moritz just, what, twenty-four hours earlier? Forty-eight hours? Time seemed telescoped and meaningless in light of what we had just been through.
I was physically and mentally exhausted; it took a lot of energy to lift our Porsche, using psi power, over the semi truck and then driving us to safety over the icy road. I was hoping for an invigorating massage from my two psi lovers.
We had a debriefing session with Joe and Kate in our suite, and they delivered the news that our little group was to be picked up in St. Moritz by a special high-speed military helicopter and delivered to the American Embassy in Cyprus, where we would be given new orders before departing by military aircraft for the USA.
“But be warned,” said Joe, with a sidelong glance at Kate, “that things have changed in only the last two days. The world is a more dangerous place than ever. Plus the Brotherhood boys are going to be looking for you. We’ve got security all over the hotel—even the head waiters and the concierge are working for us—but watch your backs anyway. The chopper will pick you up at thirteen hundred hours tomorrow. Please stay in the hotel until we call for you.”
They were a beautiful couple, late twenties, rosy-cheeked and healthy looking, rugged American outdoor types who had somehow gotten themselves involved in this very dangerous scenario. I saw some dark energy around the two of them, saw something sinister in their future that gave me a chill. I looked over at Leela and Jill; both nodded almost imperceptibly in agreement.
“And you two please be very careful too, okay?” I said, looking deeply into their eyes. A vision had come to me. “Watch out for a guy in a blue parka and ski boots who will be a threat to all of us. He is carrying a gun and he will be looking for us. He is very dangerous.” Now Jill and Leela nodded vigorously in agreement.
“What are you guys, psychic or something?” laughed Kate. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot: Leela here is a world-famous psychic. And husband Marty too, I s’pose?” I nodded modestly. “Well, don’t worry; Joe and I are armed and we have a nose for trouble.”
The two psychic ladies and I shared a two-room suite, while Greta had her own room. We all felt that would be the wisest arrangement. At first, it was a little awkward for me to share a space with my two lovers, although jealousy had never been a factor in our unusual relationship. How could it? Hanging out with telepaths, and being one yourself (if only temporarily), nothing is hidden—thoughts, feelings, fantasies, emotions, memories. One is basically naked.
And physically naked too, at least in our suite. Both ladies pranced around shamelessly nude. Leela was terribly thin after her weeks as a captive. She had lost at least twenty pounds, which brought her down to around one hundred. The Black Swan m’fuggers had fed her slop, and she had had virtually no exercise. Yet she still looked delicious, perfectly proportioned, with radiant skin and fine long hair.
Jill, by comparison, looked well-fed and filled out. She was a buxom lass anyway, with a big caboose and finely shaped legs. The two of them gossiped and tittered and laughed, occasionally giving each other high-fives. I was all but ignored, except when they paraded in front of me in the fine new clothes provided by Joe and Kate.
I had been watching the news on the giant screen TV in our living room. The big story was about a terrible explosion on the highway leading into St. Moritz. A large truck and two cars were apparently involved, but no bodies were found, only a few pieces of metal and plastic. The explosion had caused a terrible landslide, and the road would be closed for several weeks while huge chunks of granite were removed by bulldozers. No cause for the explosion was apparent, but Swiss police were on the case.
Dinner was at Le Bistro, the Palace’s trendy French restaurant, with prices to match the hotel’s upscale ambience. Our rooms alone cost more than four thousand US a day. Fortunately, the State Department was picking up our entire tab. The ladies, including Greta, wore high heels and low-cut, sexy dresses to dinner.
The restaurant was located right next to the hotel’s elegant disco, the King’s Club, the town’s major hot spot, which attracted the rich and famous who were visiting St. Moritz. Through a transparent red wall, we could watch the beautiful people writhing to the music.
“Isn’t that Madonna over there?” cried Greta.
“Sure looks like her—and moves like her,” I said. “And isn’t that Johnny Depp dancing with Beyonce? Where’s his wife, I wonder. And her husband, you know, Jay-Z.”
“Oh, let’s go there!” said Jill.
“How about after dinner?” said Leela. “I haven’t had a decent meal in weeks. Hope they got some tasty veggie food here.”
Leela and Jill scanned the area around our table for bugs, found no recording devices, and we all breathed easy. I scanned the room for video cams; it was clean.
In a low voice, Leela described her experiences as a prisoner of the Black Swan organization. It was a shocking, frightening story. They had planned to turn her into a double agent for Black Swan by implanting a device in her brain that would rearrange a few million of her neurons, turning her into a virtual slave of the organization. Fortunately, Jill and I had shown up just in time to snatch her away from the crazies.
They had taken a DNA sample from her body in the hopes of creating a genetic line of psychics who could be trained and conditioned to work for Black Swan Galactic. When early tests on the DNA sample failed, they had taken some of her eggs to create clones of Leela in a Petri dish. We gasped at this revelation.
“It wasn’t too bad,” said Leela softly. “I just surrendered to it. A lady came in while I was asleep, rolled me over, did the job with equipment that seemed sterile, and it was all over in a minute or two. Maybe they’ll name the cl
ones after me: Leela Two, Leela Three, Leela…”
She laughed, breaking the tension, and we all laughed with her. The best part of the story was her connection with the dolphin, and the data she got from the poor creature.
“She called herself Piscea. She was a very beautiful being.”
“The dolphin had a name?” said Greta.
“She had a name, she had a life once, she had a whole story. I only had a short time to communicate with her, but it happened telepathically and very fast. You know, dolphins are the most highly evolved creatures on this planet. Their intelligence and their capacity for learning are way ahead of humans.
“Anyway, she had lived at Sea World for a few years and was very happy there. She had a mate and she loved performing for people. A year ago she was kidnapped by Black Swan agents and flown to Davos, where she was drugged, programmed, and hooked into their computer system. She was connected to their servers, became a kind of dolphin cyborg, and with her vast brain power she could do computations faster than any known computer network. So Piscea was exploited to the max by these lowlifes. Unwillingly, she was the super-processor that caused all the trouble with the Internet.”
“Shhhhh!” whispered Jill. “Here comes our food. To be continued.”
After the dessert dishes were cleared away, Leela dropped a bombshell. “I was able to download some of the data from Piscea’s databases. You know, she had an incredible memory capacity, at least seven petabytes. Compare that to the human memory capacity of just over three petabytes.”
“How much is that?” I asked, not ashamed to display my high-tech ignorance. Greta jumped in.
“It’s like poetry,” she said. “Kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte, exabyte. A megabyte is about a thousand kilobytes. A gigabyte is about a thousand megabytes. And so on and so forth.”
“Huh?” I said. “I think I got it. Sorta.”
“Someone once said that five exabytes would be equal to all the words ever spoken by mankind,” continued Greta. “That’s a lot of memory.”
“No wonder the human mind is stuffed with so much useless garbage,” mused Jill. “Lot of room in there for junk. I wonder if humans can drag and drop useless material into their Trash bin.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Greta, feeling good that she was finally in her element. “But the computational capacity of the dolphin’s brain is three times faster than that of the human brain, and twice as fast as any computer known to man. Or woman.”
“Listen,” whispered Leela. “Listen to what I got out of my download. The names of the top players in Black Swan Galactic. All taking that EMC-2 drug, all members of the Eternal Flame cult, and all major players on the world stage. Listen to these names: Snitzer. Breedlove. Wilfong. Shestak. Nerdski. Von Trump. Harry Wong. Patel. Turkulu. Glinka, Chekhov. The list goes on and on. Heads of corporations. U.S. congressmen. Prime ministers. The World Bank. It is truly unbelievable.”
“How much data were you able to download, Leela?” asked Greta.
“Probably about a terabyte. That’s it. It’s all in my own deep memory, which I can access pretty easily, anytime I want. Still, there’s a lot left in that dolphin’s databases. I downloaded an index that lists files for all of their plans, all of their personnel around the world, the whole shoddy criminal enterprise. Plus their schematics for the space station and their rockets. I’d love to have another mind meld with that dolphin some day.”
Greta leaned in close and whispered, “I have a surprise for all of you. I was saving it for the plane trip to Cyprus, but there’s no time like the present.” She paused for effect and looked around the table at each of us. “While I was working at Black Swan Beta, I managed to download most of what was in the dolphin’s memory storage. I didn’t realize at the time that the processor was sentient! Anyway, it’s all on these little flash drives.”
She rummaged in her purse and pulled out a device that looked like a fat thumb with a USB plug at the end of it. “These just came out a few months ago. Each one holds about a hundred terabytes. I’ve got forty of these, not counting this one. This one’s blank.”
“Jesus H. Kee-rist!” exclaimed Leela, a little too loudly, drawing the attention of a number of uppity, white-haired patrons at nearby tables. “I mean, Greta, where are these things now? That’s our whole case against these people!”
“Well, uh, I, uh….” stammered Greta, red-faced. “They’re upstairs, in my suitcase, you know, in my, my, uh, room.”
Jill was exasperated. “Omigod. Greta, I don’t know how you could…Now listen to me. Let’s all stay calm, people. I’m sure no one could get into our rooms. We’ve got security everywhere. But Greta. Did you back up all of this priceless data, by any chance?”
“Of course I did,” she said, obviously annoyed that anyone could doubt her intelligence or computer savvy. She reached into her purse and brought out a silver rectangular object about the size of a credit card. “It’s all backed up on this. All of it.”
“That’s a hard drive?” I asked. “How much memory?”
“Almost five petas. More than enough to handle the Black Swan files.”
Leela, Jill, and I all breathed a collective sigh of relief. “Oh, Greta, I could kiss you!” said Leela, and reached over to put her arms around our diminutive friend.
Suddenly, a sound like firecrackers filled the air. Gunshots? Women screamed. A cacophony of shouting and confused voices drifted into Le Bistro. It was coming from the disco in the next room. We all looked at the transparent red wall separating the two rooms, looked into the King’s Club, and saw a scene of utter chaos and terror.
On the small stage where the DJ had been working the crowd with sweaty techno and trance music, a man was waving a pistol in the air and shooting at the ceiling. He had his arm around the neck of a young woman. We could vaguely make out what he was shouting. The music had abruptly stopped. A long-haired young man, apparently the DJ, lay still on the floor in a pool of blood.
“It sounds like he’s saying, ‘Bring me Leela Powers or I will…’ and I can’t hear the rest,” I said. “He seems to have a strong Russian accent.”
We all pushed away from the table and stood up. “Let’s go!” said Leela.
“Waiter!” I shouted. “Charge this to our room! Add a thirty percent tip!”
We ran out of Le Bistro with Leela leading the way, barged into the King’s Club past the startled guardian of the door, and planted ourselves near the back of the club. About three hundred patrons stood motionless, like statues. On the stage was the man I had seen earlier in the vision—blue parka, ski boots—and he was waving his pistol around and screaming into the DJ’s microphone.
“Bring me Leela Powers now or this woman dies! Now! Now!” He punctuated this with three more shots into the crowd. One man in front fell to the floor. Blue Parka was holding Kate Jeffers securely with his arm around her neck. Occasionally he pointed his gun at her head. Then he fired two more shots into the crowd. A young woman in a white gown screamed and fell to the floor.
“Marty, Marty,” said Leela, grasping my arm, “we’ve got to move on this guy now. We gotta get his gun. Let’s see if we can lift it right out of his hand. I’ll help you. Go now. Go.”
No time to think about it. I focused on the gun, visualized it leaving the guy’s hand and moving through the air. Leela stood next to me; we were joined at the hip; I could feel her energy working in sync with mine. Focus, focus, focus. Bear down. It was working. The gun left the man’s hand and moved slowly through the air over the crowd. The gun came right into my hands. I looked at it with disgust and threw it into the shadows behind us.
On the stage, Blue Parka seemed to be in shock. He released Kate. She quickly kicked him in the crotch, and as the man bent over to protect his jewels, she nailed him in the jaw with an elbow. He crumpled to the floor. Six uniformed security cops wer
e on him in a flash. It was over.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Leela, starting to gather her posse.
“Wait just a second,” I said. I noticed a dude standing next to me who looked vaguely familiar. I felt like I needed to connect with him.
“That was quite a trick, pal,” said the guy, an American. He was an actor. I recognized his voice, his eyes. Right. Johnny Depp. “How’d you do that, anyway?”
“Magic,” I said. He grinned. “Hey,” I said, “I really liked you in…let’s see. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” It was the only movie of his I could think of in the moment. It was released in 1998.
“That film where I channeled Hunter Thompson? Right. I’ve made a few since then. Whadda ya want, my autograph?” he said, still grinning.
“No,” I said. “I would like you to look at my screenplay.”
“Sure. I’ve got a production company, you know. People are still making movies, crisis or no crisis. What’s the name of your movie?”
“I Married a Psychic. It’s kind of a sci-fi fantasy.”
“Bring it on, man,” he said, and handed me a card. “Send the script to my e-mail address. And come to visit me anytime. You know, I’ve got a place in the South of France, near St. Tropez. Pretty safe there, so far. You and your friends are always welcome.”
Leela and Jill stepped up, each one grabbing me by an arm, and hauled me away. “Hey, guys, that’s Johnny Depp!” I protested. “He invited us—”
“And I’m Martha Stewart,” said Jill. “Let’s go to our rooms, dudes. I’m exhausted.”