TWISTED DESTINATION - TRIMVIRATE
CHAPTER 12
SWITZERLAND
Five hours later Steve was in Stockholm, Sweden. He had said he wasn’t receiving the Nobel at the Stockholm City Hall for his safety was at stake so the event happened at the Auditorium of the University of Oslo, like it used to be held until 1989.
An old man went to the stage and said that Lotch had been the first man to win two prizes at the same time, the Physics Prize for creating the first AI, and a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the USA from using his creation against North Korea.
Steve wasn’t impressed with the second one and he didn’t accept it. He called the Nobel foundation and said he wasn’t going to Oslo, Norway, where the peace prizes are awarded.
Steve Lotch wasn’t the only one denying a Nobel Peace Prize. In 1923, Le Duc Tho became the first and only person to ever voluntarily refuse a Nobel Peace prize. He was a North Vietnamese politician and diplomat. Le Duc Tho and the US secretary of state Henry Kissinger negotiated a ceasefire in the Vietnamese war. Le Duc Tho said that he might reconsider it if peace were restored to his country. That didn’t happen. The war continued so his decision stood.
There had never been so much security in the Nobel Prize Ceremony. It was usually a secured event but this time the security was 5 times what it usually is because some presidents and prime ministers were present. Yang Li from China, Prince Yuan Ming from North Korea, Pierre Defoe from France, Viktor Kuznetzov from Russia, Klaus Wilhelm from Germany, all decided to personally thank the boy who had gone against the United States. They would take photos and videos with him to show to the media that whoever did the same, would have in them great allies so that more people betrayed the US.
The United States president Harvard, decided to go, not to do the same but to make people believe that ‘He did not try to bomb that country’, as he always stated in every single public interview. He always said that if that was indeed done, he would find out who did it and those persons would be severely punished. But everyone knew it was simply a customary political strategy since elections were ahead.
After all presidents and guests came in and sat in their rightful chairs, Steve entered the hall, walked to the stage, approached the microphone and started his speech: “The Nobel Peace Prize is a joke so I am just taking the Physics one.” He had activated multilingual software that allowed every single person in the room to not need interpreters. Everyone was listening to him in his most skilled language. Everyone was impressed.
The technology wasn’t Steve’s, it belonged to one peculiarly skilled student he had met at MIT while doing his PhD, and he just improved the code and made a few important adjustments and then gave it back to the student who auctioned it online for Steve’s total vexation.
Steve continued, aware of the chocking impact of his words, “Behind all this good mannerism and hypocrisy, you (pointing to the Russian Prime Minister) are just looking for a reason to bomb him (Pointing the USA President) and you (Pointing the USA President) have secretly been designing plans to bomb him (Pointing the prince of North Korea) while all of you (the rest of the countries) think that you can sit and watch comfortably. You will be dead, passive collateral damage. Mark my words, one day, the world will have to die in order to...”
While Steve was still speaking, someone interrupted him by shooting a gun inside the auditorium and everybody was in panic running over each other. The presidents’ bodyguards rushed to cover their assets and take them to a secure location, a sort of panic room where no one can breach, with bullet proof glass capable of withstanding an atomic bomb.
Everyone was wondering where the shot came from. It had been one shot only. Inside the panic room, the security detail started looking at the surveillance cameras to spot the shooter who was certainly inside the facilities. Steve ran outside but there lied the real threat.
Outside, exactly when he was almost out, Steve saw a very strong man who had a swinging weapon shooting at all the police cars and at anyone who dared not to run. In few minutes, every police cars were destroyed. Steve hid himself behind a big wall, still at the entrance of the auditorium, thinking about what to do.
“Come out Stevie,” The man kept saying, waiting for him to come out and meet his faith. Steve said to himself, “Now I am having a sudden realisation of what Jed meant with two bishops and I am also starting to understand Morpheus Law. He wasn’t sure who had sent that man. Was it the Alchemists who didn’t take his ‘No’ for an answer or was it the Americans? Or both?
In any case, he had to get out of there alive.
Inside the Panic Room, using the screens of the surveillance cameras, they were seeing the man outside causing destruction and chaos. He looked familiar. They had seen him before. In that moment, one of the United States president's bodyguards, took his gun and shot every single bodyguard in only one blast of bullets. Only presidents were left breathing and they were not comfortable with that.
They saw that the man shooting the police outside and the man inside the Panic Room had the same face, they were twins. They were Jill and Joel, two highly efficient assassins. Jill, inside the Panic Room, took a deep breath after killing all those men, he told the president of the United States to fetch him a chair and he sat on it. Then he said, “Come on guys, grab a chair. If I wanted you dead you would be dead already. You are presidents. You have a lot to offer. I am not killing you. My contract is very specific about that.”
Joel, outside the building approached Steve’s location. Steve talked to AIDI, “AIDI, who’s he?”
“Joel, no last name. He is along with his clone brother Jill, a very skilled assassin that was part of your Grandfather’s ‘Perfect Soldier Project’. Jill is smart and highly skilled but Joel is a bit damaged mentally. They have full alliance to Jed Henchman.”
“OK, call SARA and give me full control.”
SARA was Steve’s armour. It was robotic wearable armour that could also operate without anybody inside, using a 4D panel, like a video game player would do. SARA was acronym for Semi-Automatic Robotic Armour. Steve put on his glasses and SARA came out of the Ship running towards Joel and kicking all the damaged cars on the road. When Joel was 5 metres to find Steve, he looked behind and saw a huge robot. Steve saw Joel’s look of surprise from SARA’s point and he gave a satiric smile. Joel started to shoot at the robot but the bullets just bounced at its body. The robot came close to Joel and gave him a very strong and fast fist. Joel never lost a fight, not even with Jill, and it wasn’t going to be a hollow metallic robot that could defeat him. He took his gun and kept shooting. SARA shot straight at him and he dodged the bullets. They exploded a firemen car that was still coming to the location and the media and everybody watching was now confused, who was the good one and who was the bad one. Steve, to avoid another accident like that, through SARA he grabbed Joel by the torso and started to launch continuous fists in unhuman speed. Joel was bleeding. SARA suspended Joel in the air, hanging him by the neck and gave him a supersonic punch that took him 20 metres away. Joel hit a 40 cm wall and stuck there motionless.
At the panic room, Jill started typing on the computer and a few clicks later, Jed Henchman appeared on screen sitting on a majestic chair with a cup of tea on his left.
“Hey guys,” He said, “I imagine you are traumatised. I am sorry for the dramatic scene. It wasn’t my intention. I mean it was a bit. You are here and alive because I want you to do something for me. Someday in the future I will come and ask for a favour for saving your lives today and when I come, I want 100% alliance from you.”
The president of the United States who had been Jed’s boss in the project to activate the nukes inside North Korea said, “You are nothing. You are just a geek. Who do you think you are? I am the president of the United States of America. I don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
Jed made a brief angry face, nodded affirmatively to Jill and he shot the president in the leg. The rest of the presidents couldn’t believe it. If that ma
n wasn’t afraid of the United States, he was not afraid of anything so the president of France, Pierre Defoe, was the first to bend himself to Jed, “You can count on me.” The rest followed him in a second.
“What about Mr. we-don’t-negotiate-with-terrorists?”
“I will do whatever you want. Give me a medic please.” President Harvard said between sobs of pain. The corners of Jed’s lips twitched and he said finally, “You are all very smart men. Have a nice day,” And the screen turned itself off.
Jill went out of the Panic Room. He started running faster when Joel told him on their secure private line, “I am down”. When he got there, Joel was ready for another punch on the ground stretching his muscles like nothing had just happened, already on his feet after breaking a wall with his head. Steve had entered his Ship and lift off at the exactly moment Jill came out. And he could see the two twins looking at his ship, next to each other, Jill with a smile on his face and Joel with a very angry glance like the Terrible Hulk.
Steve, considered the smartest after Hawking, and a self-made billionaire, became in the eyes of the media, a terribly threatening mad science. Along with the fact that the presidents of the most powerful countries on Earth were against him, his life wouldn’t be easy. After that day, Steve was the most wanted criminal on earth so he learned to hide. He disappeared. President Harvard was about to go onto him with all his country got.