The Devil's Destiny - A Story Part 1

It was a monstrous construct.  On satellite images, the massive white line cut through the jungles of Borneo like a giant white scar, complete with cross-members that could be stitches.  Roughly two miles long, it was grossly out of place, sitting where it did, parallel to the equator in the wilds of Southeast Asia.

If you clicked on the 3-D button, the scene would swivel to the side showing an enormous ramp running west to east and terminating in a precarious drop of nearly one mile.  Around this ramp were the numbers 12, 3, 6, and 9 located at the cardinal compass points.  The satellite images were updated hourly, and being on the equator, this complex made a perfect sun dial, leading millions of people to use the images as backgrounds for their comm devices and notebooks.  It became a sensation as a giant sidereal clock.

Conspiracy theories abounded.  The net was abuzz with speculation and wild rumors.  What could this thing be?  Why would the Company go to such great expense to build this massive complex in such a remote location and move all of its global operations there?  And given that this project was the centerpiece of the flamboyant and incomprehensibly rich golden child Elton Mons, the underlying purpose could have been anything.  Indeed, some of the wild rumors and speculations seemed to fit all of the known facts.  The most favored theory at the moment was that Mons was attempting to take control of global weather for profit.  With Mons' background, it was certainly probable.

Elton Mons was a 40-something inventive genius.  At 20, he had devised a secure commerce system for the net called ObzOBM that had cornered the market and made him fabulously wealthy.  His next project was to create a high-speed train system that connected all of the major islands of the South Pacific with the mainland in a never-ending loop.  It used next generation mag-lev technology and never broke down or ran late.  It virtually killed air traffic in the region, since you could go from Jakarta to Bangkok in half the time and a fraction of the hassle of flying.

By the time anyone noticed this most recent project, it was nearly half complete.  People watching it develop noted that the numbers were actually buildings, and that a maze of roads ran between all the structures and the giant ramp.  The whole complex comprised a square that was three miles on a side.  The part that really got everyone's attantion, though, were the massive doors leading into a blister of earth at the western-most end of the ramp.

One afternoon in mid-July, the net caught fire.  A giant black triangular object had appeared at the base of the ramp.  Mons' satellite imaging site received over a billion hits within hours of the object's appearance.  Speculation was rampant.  Theories abounded.

Over the next year, the object would move up and down the ramp at various times of the day - and night.  Certain websites were making a fortune with photo enhancements and outrageous pronouncements about the object.  The neterati concensus was that the object was an Aurora-class craft designed for hypersonic flight around the world, taking people from London to Beijing in under an hour.

The nay-sayers pointed to the fact that the object had yet to leave the ramp in all that time, and certain physicists had analyzed the size, shape and dynamics of the object and concluded that it could not fly at all.

Still, radio talk shows devoted hundreds of hours to deconstructing the Object, the Project and Elton Mons himself.  They tore apart the Company's financial statements looking for clues, but the most suspicious thing they could find was that the Project was attached to three private entities for which no public information was available, except that they were registered in Brunei and operating under a special relationship with the Indonesian government.

One day, without warning of any kind, a website appeared for the Project.  It had a photo of the Ramp taken from the extreme eastern end looking back towards the Object in the far distance.  Under the photo was an announcement:

Elton Mons, founder and chairman of Hyper Dynamics, Inc., will hold a special press conference on March 2nd, at 2 p.m., at the media center located at the south entrance of the Borneo complex.  Attendance is by invitation only, but the event will be netcast live on this website.  The topics will include the public unveiling of the Company's latest project.

Hits on the website passed one billion in two hours.  The talkies, as the radio programs were known, scheduled every available 'expert', regardless of how shady their qualifications were.  Bloggers went berserk with prognostications and predictions.  Groups of neo-hippies camped out around the Project perimeters to chant and channel Gorlon, the supposed alien leader from e-Microscopium prime who had been consulting on the Project with Mons.  Everywhere, people planned 'Announcement' parties and bought subscriptions to various cablecasts that promised the cream of the crop in commentary.

Inside Building 6, Mons sank into his bio-chair and selected George Harrison's last album for his relaxation session.  On the wall, the screens were tracking hit counts and various net traffic across the planet.  He smiled as his eyes closed half-way. 

A portion of the wall behind the chair vanished and a beautiful Indonesian woman entered carrying a terminal.  She was five and a half feet tall, with long straight blue-black hair and impenetrable black eyes.
 Her oval face was emotionless as she glided smoothly up to the chair.

"Nila," Mons said without looking at her, "move Biji back inside the hangar at midnight and prepare for full operational mode.  We're gonna skip shakedown and go straight to plan alpha."

"Sir?" a shadow of surprise ran across Nila's face.

"Run Biji just before I go out in front of the press.  Then on my cue, send the Package right behind it.  I've got 'em eating out of my hand now.  I want to keep the fever pitch going.  Go ahead and make your preparations," Mons ordered, as a half smile eased across his lips.

"Yes, sir," Nila responded.  "Should I alert the rest of the team?"

"Absolutely!  But remind them, no communications with anyone until after the conference.  There'll be plenty of time for goodbyes before we go."

"Yes, sir," Nila said, as she bowed ever so slightly.  She slid back through the hole in the wall, which then vanished again, replaced by a bookshelf.

Mons pushed deeper into the chair and let the other half of the smile loose just as Harrison's "When We Was Fab" came up.

"Look out world," he thought, "here it comes."

On The Seventh Day

Man emerges from the cave, blinking in awe of the Big Light.

He is happy for two days.  Everything is a discovery.  The world seems full of magic, and even sparkles and shines.  Everything is fascinating, to the smallest detail.  A blade of grass with a Lady Bug.  Tree bark.  A dirt clod.

Man examines and sniffs and tastes and feels.  His senses are hyper-transmitive.  There is adventure at every turn.  He lopes across fields and climbs mountains and drinks the water from the stream.  He discovers there is an Other.

The Other is magical, mystical.  To gaze upon the Other makes Man feel violently ill, yet crave for more.  The Other is rapturous, dazzling, hypnotizing.  Man feels himself drawn inexorably towards the Other.  Before long, they join on the third day.  As he stands at the mouth of the cave, the world is his and it swells his pride and his power.  As the Other joins to stare at the future, in all its endless possibilities, he touches the Other's swollen belly, and feels it move.

At the dawn of day four, Man has settled to his chores.  He busies himself with the tasks of Life, feeding, talking, transferring his Self into its future carriage.  The world is his.  He turns beauty into function with his hands.  He builds his empire of ideas, and he sculpts them with his tools.  He casts his eye upon the Land, and the Land bows in supplication.  The Man can do no wrong.

On the fifth day, he finds his mistakes.  The Man is crushed.  In his hubris, he skipped a detail, now the detail is a flaw, and the flaw becomes a crack.  He watches as it crumbles and morphs into shadowy perversions of what he had dreamed.  The tastes are blunted and the textures are all cold and hard.  He curses the Land, but the Land doesn't hear him.  It no longer seeks his gaze, nor bends to his command.  His tools lie in a jumbled heap.

The Other is no longer magical.  She has been distracted with her own fears and failings.  They stand together surveying the ruins, but they are miles apart.  There's no longer stirrings in her belly, and his power has long been tapped out and waning.  As the Big Light covers itself, they curse its warmth, and curse the darkness it leaves behind.

On the sixth day, the Man wakes up to find himself refreshed, renewed.  In his dreams he saw that failure is only a perspective, and there are many more to choose from.  His dreams told him that it was all illusion: the Big Light, the Other, the Land, the empire, and the future.  His mistake had been that he built with his hands, when all he needed was his thoughts.  It wasn't a matter of what he saw, it was how he saw it.  In his joy, he began again, but this time would be different.  This time, he knew what he had done wrong.

The Other, seeing light in his eyes, smiled at him, and his chest swelled once again.  He went to the mouth of the cave and cast his eye over the Land, and the Land looked back, now not out of fear, but of respect.  The Man cleared his mind and began to create again, only now his hands were idle and his tools untouched.  An empire rose before him, and this time is was one of beauty and function.  This time, he created for the sake of creation, because the alternative was unthinkable.  The Land rose up before him and gleamed in the face of the Big Light.  That night, the Man pulled the Other close to him and told her his secrets and dreams.  And they slept well.

On the seventh day, the Man was very tired.  His body hurt and refused to take commands.  The Man pushed himself and the Other came to help.  Together, they rose up to go and gaze at the Land once again.  It lay at their feet and they rested against each other.  It was a satisfying creation, and they both wished it would last forever, but they knew the Truth, that all things pass, and soon so would the creation.  But for a moment, it was a wonder to behold.  They were happy they had lived to see such a thing, if only for a moment.

The Other looked at him with pride and joy, and the Man looked back with a sly smile.  His eyes shone with light, but is was the light of dying embers.  The Other knew, and the Man knew, and it was the right thing.  She turned to enter the cave, and he followed with peace swelling his body like a fruit in season.

At the mouth of the cave, the Man placed a withered hand out to steady himself.  He turned over his shoulder and looked back at the empire.  There, near the base, was a fault becoming a crack.  He smiled and closed his eyes and the fault was no more.  The Other called to him from the Darkness, and he stepped into the cool air, his back fading from the Big Light until it vanished.

But the creation remained.