Spectre Lock

I



Timothy walked out of the IBM store and gazed down at his new computer. He stared avidly at his friend Micheal. He did not speak for a long time, and after what felt like 40 minutes Michael finally said:



“Let’s go”.

A simple response, thought Timothy, though not very interesting. The left side of his brain told him it was nothing to worry about. But something was pushing on the far wall.



Timothy screemed out in pain, though not in his head. Or was it? It didn’t matter. He slipped and fell onto the ground in an intentional manner, then dropped the computer onto the ground. Shattered glass was spread in all directions and they hadn’t even walked 5 feet out of the store. Timothy gazed up slowly and could see the light leave Michael’s eyes, leave his soul. He didn’t really say anything. Or did he? It didn’t matter.



“What the hell!”, a knee-jerk reaction, but an appropriate one. People looking at new Vistas started to notice the mess and looked down at him moving sluggishly. The entire scene appeared as if it had been jeered into slow motion. Timothy would have to endure a long-winded yet earned rant of anger and rage. His mind had shut off like he knew it would, like it was before they had even walked in. It was customary of him and he knew it, to make mistakes. They had reached the end of the conversation 34 years later. In reality in was only 34 minutes. To Timothy it felt much longer.



“TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW!” said Micheal in an assetive and non-negotiable glare. The people began to panic. By the time the supervisors arrived they were already in full retreat. Timothy got to his feet in a daze, extending his palm not even at arms length with bits of the excess glass, cut deeply by his own hand. He then fell back to the floor as if pulled by the strings of a marionnete, looked up to the ceiling and said softly:



“We’re all gonna die.”



II







April 27, 2047



The scientists gazed down at the Spectre Lock in a heightened array of both awe and shock. Adam Moore, the lead technician, would have to make an unplanned and informal presentation of the machine over 40 years in the making to a select group of 4 lead scientists who worked with N.A.S.A. on the GENISIS-7 rocket that began construction in August of 2042 and seemed to be shutdown in what they described as “our own version of ‘indefinite hiatus’”. These 4 scientists were Daniel Ryke, Alvin Carlson , Stan Guiney, and Jadis Smith. It was uncertain to Adam whether the reaction from his peers was equally on par with that of the N.A.S.A. team. Regardless of which it was most probably definite that all of them were aware of the fact that the entire division of scientists working on the Spectre Lock was built off of 6 underachievers who had all graduated from M.I.T. but didn’t own a legitimate business and a handful of lawyers and people standing around to manage any “patent negotiations” that they came across on the project that started as a re-evaluation of another scientists “failed and/or unfinished work”, in which its methods were said by all scientists who observed it to be impossible and a distortion of the laws of physics. It never worked for its intention on a full scale time frame or consistently. It did however manage to confuse and amaze the living hell out of every nonbeliever scientist (who were mostly leading M.I.T professors), workers for N.A.S.A., and apparently, (according to 2006 facts) one of the men who had involvement in the creation of the atomic bomb. Everyone who apparently said they saw it work claimed that it was proof that there were many nitpicky elements of Newton’s Laws of Physics that would have to be re-examined. The machine since then had been re-built and re-modified many times, but since its initial test before the scientists it had not been used for any of the purposes it was intended to serve. The only “proof” in the years it had been constructed in was on July 14th, 2008, when footage was shown of an oscilloscope reading negative with the numbers increasing, which according to the inventor meant that it was giving out more energy than it was taking in, which would entail that the machine itself was running off of its own energy, which would also entail that the use of such machinery in everyday appliances would eliminate the world’s dependency for oil, electricity, fossil fuels, or any other means of conventional energy. For civilians or new multi-generations and even for modern day scientists, the whereabouts on what the test footage shown was meant to imply on a larger scale was never explored or uncovered. The machine, Adam had concluded, was just another in a long line of experiments that never went anywhere. By April 27th, 2047 the consensus Adam Moore and Connor Elliot had considered on June 11, 2043, the day they had conceived what would eventually become Spectre Lock, was now proven to them, increasingly apparent as everyone began to contemplate what powers it would shed if proven effective.

Adam after 10 short minutes stood up from his chair and while mentally blocking the image of his creation slowly began to mutter words, first sluggishly and then increasingly rapid.

“I…I can’t…”

Adam coughed lightly

“…can’t say much about…this”

The image started to re-focus by this point

“other than what’s already been said which is…”

Adam began to pant moderately. He could, as he anticipated, no longer utter any dialect or speech in a manner that for the occasion they were in would sum up why they had made it for use by other people. Instead he weakly (yet purposefully) pointed over to Connor. He most likely had supposed that in a normal situation the implication of his gesture would be ignored , however there was a slight jolt in his gut when we received the response he “wanted”.



When Connor got up to speak on behalf of everyone he was not really angry. He spoke in a tone that very much implied so, but the nonverbal connection with his colleague may perhaps have carried a train of thought amongst them, one that was neither ironic nor expectedly pleasant by any means.

“Well,” he said loudly and lacking a substantial level of dignity that deserved display in any presentation. He began to rush in thinking, though keeping the same vocal pace.

“Not to be too frank or bias, everyone, but on behalf of N.A.S.A. I think we all ****ing know why we’re here, so pleease can we--”



“Turn it on just fucc--just..just turn it on!” interjected Jadis (others seemed to be trying to speak while he did, but were incoherent anyhow).



Whether the answer was yes or the action was no, somebody would have to obey-and be judged by another. Daniel Ryke got up to speak on behalf of himself, seeing as no one else would speak for him.

“There’s only one way, gentlemen, for us to ensure that what we’re here for gets accomplished. For it to happen and matter it would only be appropriate for all of us to turn on the machine at the same time.”

Incessant booing spontaneously erupted from everywhere. It was not unwise for the idea to have been slated that it would be impossible for all 10 people to turn it on at the same time.



About 40 Earth-seconds later Alvin Carlson ran to the machine without consolation or critical thinking present, clenched his hand around the box-shaped lock system, ripped open the small door, nearly damaging the hinges, typed “SPLNTR-5521-HAWK” into the keypad in 4 seconds, then pulled a jagged blue key out of his vest pocket, jammed it into the revolving circular port, then froze cold in pre-ignition stance, and without tilting his head to address anyone to whom he was speaking to he said very rapidly: “this would be a good time to think about” then ended his sentence at what was apparently an intentional cliffhanger. Adam had given himself less than two seconds to think about his wife and the atomic bomb, before as if with the intensity of having his arm pulled through his chest he thought to reverse the intent and slammed his arm to the right as if he had been trying to beat God in an arm wrestle. While Alvin knew what the others were thinking about, they concentrated on thinking only about one thing. The only important thing to think about before chrysalis or death:









This is a mistake







III



April 28, 2008. 11:40 PM.

Timothy uncaringly and inharmoniously opened the door to his room, unbolted himself outwards, then felt a cool chill somewhere in his spine. The fact that he didn’t feel anything was not supplemental enough to replace his intention of simply going to the bathroom and washing his hands of the glass fragments buried in, so much as fear that he knew (but wouldn’t admit) he would do something wrong in his process. He allowed himself to be involuntarily numbed by his debate in reasoning, which though under normal circumstances would get in the way either fixated or further numbed him, (though he couldn’t tell the difference). He began to lightly obsess about using iodine on his hand , though he knew he had none and that if it could hurt it probably would (really he had no clue). He then panicked only slightly before limping down the small spiral stair-steps leading to his kitchen. He began to drift off about the game Clue, then quickly evaporated it and went to the pantry, which (although an unusual place to hold such items) had various metal appliances like screwdrivers, wrenches, and other non-metal obscure appliances like batteries and tweezers. He pulled out the tweezers and then instead of walking to some unknown location sat down in a manner resembling a collapse in body weight, and would spend the next 15 minutes wedging a piece of plastic into his hand. At 3:05 AM he gave up on this, then tried for 45 minutes to tell himself to lift his left hand. He knew that he could lift it but the pain of the situation would for some strange reason not allow it. After 45 minutes he began to stop his obsession and became more humane, so he pushed himself backwards against the coat hangers for his jackets and tilted his arm to the side, creating muscle tension that Timothy thought was a dislocation. Then he stretched out his arm as if it were dough and extended his palm to harness his right hand (he was, of course, right handed) and slid it back and forth against the hanger wall for 11 hours until the pieces came out.

I must not be me anymore, thought Tim

If I am only controlling my body.

Surely I must be dead.


IV

By 4:07 AM on April 28th Timothy had gotten 4 band-aids onto his right hand and was driving while half-paralyzed over the 1-95 overpass just outside of a bridge. He had only driven 15 miles out of his apartment at this location. He began to daydream about conversations to himself thinking through the views of others, talking to therapists he had never met, and having back and forth conversations between his negative conscience and anything else that was left over from the positive one. He had nearly skid straight past the bridge’s end before coming to the end of the bridge and unintentionally skidding the car. In Tim’s opinion it was irrelevant whether or not anyone else had been driving by the bridge, seeing as the answer was no and he didn’t exactly have any opinion on it at all let alone a valid one. He unbuckled his seatbelt and attempted to open the door using his right hand. Though it was working as it reached the door, to Tim it was too painful to actually open (though it was of course possible). Though his left hand was unscathed for the entire 15-mile-trip, it for some reason or another wouldn’t work, and so Tim would proceed to do what he normally would do in these situations, which was to form an unproven explanation. This to Tim (if he had given it any thought) would only be different from a conjecture if he had given it any thought and logical reasoning, so naturally the fact that he hadn’t thought about the idea at all would logically classify his thought as a thought. Regardless of the fact that he wasn’t thinking about this and thereby possibly not even thinking about the act of thinking at all, his state of mind was considerably perplexing. He would vaguely recount the often quoted passage from Shakespeare “To be, or not to be. That is the question”. He didn’t so much as create an “original” response to this stimuli other than what he had already come up with 4 days prior to whatever he was intending to accomplish at the current time, though from a narrative viewpoint perhaps one would have to assume that there was a different reason for the same thing at the aforementioned time. And so to really remember it, he would have to come up with it again:

"To know or not to know, that is the answer",then quickly changed the end of his somewhat meaningless verse to "therein lies the answer". This naturally resulted in a chain-reaction of several other hyperboles and sentence fragments that as a whole bore no real connection to whatever the hell it was that he was trying to do.

I ****ing know what I’m supposed to do, I just can’t do it justice in this circumstance
To which he would recall the quote “I am a victim of circumstance” and become further frustrated with what appeared to be his own narrative.

Get out of the car, dammit, or go back, he thought to himself, to which the end line was customary and resulted in there is no going back. And to this he gave no other additional feedback, but instead with all his might knelt lightly and leapt sideways through the window, (which had only worked in accordance to dumb luck, for if he hadn’t left it so before ever reaching the car he most certainly would have died trying to see what would happen). He rolled haphazardly onto his back before his neck nearly snapped a few inches above the ground, then lost control and was forced to propel his weight to the left in a position that would cause him to land head first (seeing as this was better than if he had chosen to accept the fate of his neck snapping, thus resulting in a dislocation that for the sake of Tim’s light minded speculation could have lead to him having both a disconnected head and a disconnected life. Not that this isn’t what he wanted, it just didn’t happen to be what he thought he knew he thought he knew he wanted to do at the present moment). He would have to spend 2 fake-minutes and 14 real seconds to turn himself into a zombie and crawl up off the ground and lift the back trunk of his car to get the remains of his purchased computer upon which he would throw off of the bridge in an attempt to accomplish what needeth be accomplished for him (for whatever reason). The only “physical” problem with doing so would be that opening his trunk required the use of both his hands, to which one was severely injured and the other was his left and failed to work for some ****ing reason. Tim would have to believe not only in the impossible but of odds, logic, order, consistency, probability, and statistics (to which he knew nothing about in terms of the concept of its application, or the applications themselves). Since he only knew the vague concept (which didn’t account for much other than its title and the idea itself) then to Tim he would not have the will power to believe in the impossible without first believing in mathematics. And so in what he must have partially viewed as an attempt to emulate what any sensible human in his position of being unknowledgeable (or the more preferred term “stupid”) would do, Timothy didn’t do anything. He just lied down with his chest and head at the edge of the pavement, and waited until he could solve his own verse. It would be a long time.



V

THERE WAS a knock at the door. Tim opened it to find two police officers staring disapprovingly at him. “Are you Timothy James Gale? Son of Karen and David Gale?” one asked.

Tim was feeling a mix of shame and uncertainty. He knew what he did but it seemed so long ago, he was able to mentally block things quite easily. He didn’t know what they were going to mention anyway. Tim gulped.

“Yeah?”

“You’re in serious **** now.”

“What?”

Slam. They grabbed him forcefully and pushed his head into the police car.

“Congrats, kid, you’ve earned 4 years of juvenile detention!” he flinched. “Its dumb ignorant uneducated pieces of **** like you that make me so disgusted. You’re arrest was fate as far as I’m concerned”

“WHAT THE **** DID I DO? YOU ****ING *******S! TELL ME!”

He couldn’t control himself. Then he started acting like a madman, still screaming “TELL ME!” forcefully, and in different tones and voices.

“YOUR COMPUTER DAMMIT! KID IF I WERE YOU I’D REFRAIN MYSELF FROM TALKING! YOU KNOW DAMN WELL WHAT YOU DID! DON’T LIE! I CAN SEE IT IN YOUR FACE!”

Timothy tried to be polite as possible by admitting to what his gut fear was, still uncertain.

“I THREW THAT ****ING COMPUTER OF THE GODDAMN BRIDGE! YEAH, IS THAT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT?” he screamed.

“YOU KILLED AN ELDERLY MAN!”

Timothy’s heart was pounding. He passed out instantly.

When he awoke he was under the bridge on the I-95 overpass for which he threw the computer that his father, who worked for IBM, had bought him. He had dropped it while talking to his friend, Michael Corneal. So technically it was already broken. This was not why he threw it off of a bridge. And he certainly wasn’t trying to kill anyone either.

The computer was still there.

“That’s the ****ing computer you dropped. Now I don’t care if it was a goddamn accident. You severely injured and killed a local named Ben Gacy.

Gacy. Tim dazed back to the quote from John Gasey, a psychopathic clown who murdered young teenagers and drew violent images depicting death and rape. He had fallen into Tim’s subconscious while Tim was driving his car following his near paralysis of his arms.

“Ben was 64 years old. You’re set to testify to his family on April 3rd.”

“Testify this *******!” he’d have said; then he would have given him the finger. Tim didn’t say or do this though, instead he just stood awestruck.

“There was no one there when I threw it off!” said Tim.

“I’ve heard enough of you!” one officer pushed Tim’s head back into the car. Tim hated this more than anything.

Suddenly there were screeching noises, sounding synthetic rather than produced by a physical object. As the officer moved towards the computer the sound became more audible. He froze cold after seeing a red pentagram symbol appearing on the computer screen. Then it minimized to Microsoft word. Then the strangest thing happened. The computer had started typing by itself, with the keys pressing down by themselves.

Suddenly a word flashed on the screen in red ink:

“HELLO”

The officer blew at the computer to wipe off the dust and looked at the bottom of the screen, which read:

“Sceptre”.

The screeching noise became louder.

Then the officer stared down at the keyboard to see that the letter placement had switched around, and at the top row from left to right the letters were O-U-I-G and A. Ouija. The bottom of the keyboard read “Good Bye”

The box of the computer scraped until the inner components were visible. Then it slammed into the concrete wall under the bridge and sparks were produced. While on fire, the computer floated up in the air and shouted “Your messiah has fallen” in a deep sinister voice. Then, without warning, it flew down into the officer’s face, burning it off upon impact. When the second officer shockingly existed the car to assist him he was already dead, and he would be next. Timothy had fallen into a coma.

“Rest in pieces”



*SPOILER ALERT!!!*


the possessed Sceptre computer (see chapter 5)



VI



Wake up, Timothy

OH MY GOD! NO!

I always thought this was from an allegorical standpoint

The innateness is horrid

O what a rogue and peasant slave am I

O LORD, RELINQUISH ME!!!

“Timothy?”

In a haze, Timothy woke up in an asylum. Having been oblivious to what medicinal benefits he was receiving for almost a year, his eyes purged open. He fell out of the bed, rolling onto the floor. As he crawled up again, he saw the face of insanity. Criminals held in penitentiary cells, yet he wasn’t like them. He was living amongst murderers and rapists.



You knew this was coming to you

No, its just a dre—no it isn’t. This is real. This is your life

Let me go! No! Listen I don’t want this! WHAT AM I SAYING?



It is…over

As he looked out he saw nothing but grimy, black, gritty cellars, like a faded black-and-white film slide. This was the extremist of punishment, and he was innocent. But that didn’t mean anything in the eyes of the law.



As he lay in awe, his parents made a conversation with an officer. Having been in situations like this, and seeing the emotionless faces his parents seemed to have, the lack in just stimuli, it meant nothing and everything to him; in the midst of everything it didn’t impose the seriousness it was entitled to. These were the things he used to laugh at. But things quickly go from a joke to reality.



My humanity is being tested, but I am only friends with myself. Kill yourself. KILL YOURSELF!!! I should kill my—will he make it through the night SHUT UP EVERYONE DIE! SHUT UP!! NO!



Its over.

He knelt like a preacher, clutching his face in dismay. Everything he ever was, everything he ever knew had turned on him. He was dealt the wrong cards by people who were the dominators of sympathy. He was troubled and so they were superior; every explination, every skepticism and every challenge of authority went unexamined. All the little experiences finally came full circle.



Humanity. Ha. What is humanity you slave? You can watch rape and violence on your television. Every day. For free. But it isn’t real. It’s a pardody of itself placed in a different context. In the cartoons you take for granted. In the comedies, the satire that tries to coax you into laughter.

I’VE BEEN BRAINWASHED!!!

No. You simply only care about yourself, and there is no escape. You lose.

You’re only half the person you once were. And I am your subsistence. I’m the only thing that keeps you in control

WHO ARE YOU???


He crawled through the floor on his hands and legs and lunged at the officer, menace pulsating through his face and everything else like a demon animal. Like a creature.

And then. An open door. A chance for escape.



A white shimmering light in the distance illuminated the space between the asylum and the outer world. He ran through without any thought to his own safety, still binded by insanity. And he liked what he saw.



Jade





VII



It was the only word he could remember. Suddenly a white light shone in his face from above. He squinted and covered his eyes with his hands. He sat up. They looked larger than usual. He was in a dark shack. He saw a face in the distance.

“Hey…who are you?” Tim said.

The man lit a match and placed it on a candle on a desk in the center of the room. He was a tall, old man with a white beard.

“I am…Dr. Hayes” he said, confused. Tim got up. There was a mirror at the end of the room.

“Oh my god!”

Standing in the mirror was a young adult with some minor scars on his arms.

“What is it?” said Hayes.

“Where am I? What is this?”

“We are hiding, Timothy”

“From what? How do you know my name? Why am I…like this.”

He went to open the door. As he looked outside, a clear white, hazy, wrinkled looking figure in what appeared to be a human shape flew towards him from the sky, screeching shrilly at him with its arms out. He ran ahead. He saw a slender, beautiful looking girl with silky brown hair, a white shirt and remarkable green eyes. She was firing a gun of some kind at the figure. It ran away, then vaporized.

“Hey, thanks!”

She walked and he ran after her.

“Hey, wait thanks!” He grabbed her smooth arm for a second. She pushed him forward a bit. “Who are you?”

“My name is Jade.”

Timothy’s eyes widened. More of the figures, about four of them, charged ahead.

“Get out of here!” she shouted, “Go!”

He ran back inside the shack and quickly closed the door behind him.

“What the hell were those things?” he shouted.

Hayes looked at him.

“You really don’t remember anything, do you?”

“No?” said Timothy.

“Sit down,” he said. He poured tea on the table but Timothy declined to drink any.

“The year is 2042. Alvin Carlson, Stan Guinney, Connor Elliot, Jadis Smith, and leader Daniel Ryke have created an energy machine, a machine that was said to run off an unending supply of its own natural energy, producing more than it took in.”

“That’s impossible,” said Timothy.

He continued, “In 2008, a man named Joseph Newman demonstrated the first energy machine on a video he posted online. This was a machine he claimed,”

“Could run off its own energy”

“Yes”

“Many people did not believe it worked. They said that the concept broke the laws of physics. But Newman showed it to a developer of the atomic bomb and several other skeptical scientists. They were amazed, claiming that it worked, just that it operated in an unconventional manner.”

“So what, then?”

“Still there were those who did not believe. But Newman had followers. His book, which explained the device, was discovered by Daniel Ryke, who had an interest in novelty and found it while searching information on the paranormal online. He did not know that the machine would later manifest itself into a design that would link to that subject. Newman’s model was designed to provide unlimited energy for free use by everyone. Everyone could own this machine, and it would provide the world’s energy without the need for fossil fuels or other alternative energy sources. Free, unlimited energy. But it was not good enough. It did not have the capacity to provide for all the world’s people. So Ryke and his team developed a larger, more powerful model. What resulted was one of the most catastrophic disasters ever withheld by mankind. The machine absorbed so much energy that it exploded. The shockwave was so powerful that it spread across the world, killing millions and leaving others comatose. But that isn’t all it did. It absorbed their essence, their souls, their spirits. Ghosts. In a final burst, it released the spirits back into the world, to roam and pray. The consciences of those fallen became infused in those comatose. You see, these people are no longer one entity. They contain the mind and conscience of other people within their brains and bodies. You must accept the fact that you can never be complete. You are no longer Timothy Gale. You are a part of him, but you are also connected to the minds of others. These people, they can speak, to you. Have you ever experienced thoughts that you could not trace? That were present, but did not seem to come from you?”



“That girl, Jade” Timothy said. “That name is all I can remember.”

“You have been chasing after a thought, a chain of conscience. This is not your own, it’s real. She is not complete. She is a part of you now. I can teach you to communicate with this part of her, telepathically. In, here.” He pointed his hand to the top of his forehead.

“And who are these other people inside of me?” said Timothy.

“This is for you to solve. But we believe, that one of the consciences inside of you, is Daniel Ryke.”

“What?”

“Timothy, I can teach you to learn from him. You have yet to realize. You are the key to humanities survival.”

“And this…machine, what did they call it after it consumed these people?”

“They called the machine…Spectre Lock.”

Hayes got up and put his arm on Timothy’s shoulder.

“I can train you to be ready. Timothy, collect your conscience”



Collect your conscience

It's rough but the premise is interesting.

VIII




He looked at himself in the mirror. “51,” he said. “I’m 51.”

He turned back to Hayes. Jade had just entered the room.

“Why do I look like I’m 25?”

“Reverse cryogenic engineering” said Hayes. “If we could freeze you to keep you from dying we can freeze you and work on you to keep you from aging.”

“And how old were you before the blast?” he asked Jade.

“I was seventeen. The same age as you” she said.

Timothy pondered this. “Did I ever know you?”

“I don’t think so” said Jade. “There really is no way to tell”

“No way to tell?” he said. He muttered it to himself. No way to tell for sure.

“You’ve been experiencing quasi-perceived reality.” said Hayes, “One based on a pretext of information and occurrences you’ve actually been through.”

“What are you saying?” said Timothy, shocked.

“That everything you’ve been experiencing is a dream.”

“What?”

“Well, some of these dreams aren’t just random scenes playing in your head. By using these pretexts of information your dreams can recreate memories of what you once experienced” said Hayes.

“Well then how do I know what was a memory, and what was just a dream?”

“Sometimes they aren’t to different from each other”

“And so what about my Sceptre? And the bridge and being in jain and a voice. A voice that told me about subsistence and said it was Jade.”

Hayes thought about this; he couldn’t understand it.

“So what are you trying to lay on me? That I went to prison? For a small infraction without trial at only seventeen years of age? Just for trying to dispose of something I didn’t want anymore?”

God, he thought, was I ****ing out of it.

“I don’t know why you heard Jade. I’ve never known more than one Jade Constantine in this life.”

“Well what if she isn’t here?” said Timothy.

“What?” she said.

He walked around her, examining her.

“Yeah. If it’s this thought that has lead me to you…”

What a beautiful girl.

“…then maybe I created you. Maybe somehow, by high concentration I have manifested this thought into living, and I’m just seeing things.”

Just like old times.

“My existence transcends beyond the physical” said Jade.

She walked over to Tim and touched his shoulder. A warmth rose in him. But she is not complete, he thought. I need to complete her. Literally complete her. He heard that distinctive voice inside of him again. Just like it had been in a dream? Or was it? It didn’t matter. What did matter was that he had a home. And he had a bond with someone who had access to everything he ever knew. And he knew there was a long road ahead. Again the voice grew inside of him, but more audible and intense.

You know where to find me







IX



Hayes walked down to the basement. There was a large wooden desk built into a shelf. On it laid a Sceptre monitor, recently modified with a new screen. Its keyboard was refitted and rearranged. And, if you typed something in, it would actually type something back.

Hayes opened a document. “Hello”, he wrote.

There was a pause. “Hello” was written onto the document by the computer.

Another pause.

“Can you hear what I’m saying?” he said out loud. “Yes” typed the computer. Interesting.

“Who are you?” said Hayes.

The computer did not respond to this. Instead a faintly audible sound was heard and then a hoarse, mechanical wavy voice.

“Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable of my sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.”

Psalms 19:14.

“What?” The words were chilling and came from out of the speakers. As if there was someone, or something, trapped inside.

“All like sheep we have gone astray; we have turned everyone in his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all”

Isaiah 53:6.

He kept listening to this.

“I will lead the blind by a road they do not know, by paths they have not known I will guide them, I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I will do, I will not forsake them”

Isaiah 42:16.

Forsake who? He thought. He must be using parables to communicate some kind of message to me.

“Who are you? Where are you from?”

“My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would fight”

John 18:36.

“Of what kingdom are you from?” said Hayes, “Who are your servants?” Is this going anywhere? He thought. He decided to write down his responses from now on.

“I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me”

Philippians 43:13

“What kind of things?” asked Hayes. What’s the use?

“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unawares”

Hebrews 13:2

William Hayes was becoming impatient.

“I am not here to entertain you. I am here to get answers from you. Is there anything you can tell me with your parables? Why are you exercising them unto me?”

“So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead”

James 2:17.

“WHO ARE YOU?” shouted Hayes.

The computer did not answer.

Hayes tried to coax it by offering his own verse, something to answer that with.

“Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?”

James 4:1

The computer became more confident sounding, but more hoarse and wavy, in its response.

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and a sound mind”

II Timothy 1:7

“Oh my god”

Hayes left the room. Then he turned around a final time before leaving. The computer was now clearly pained in its exhalation of words.

“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

Revelations 21:4

As he turned to go up the stairs, he heard another voice. This time it was one within him.

He wants you to know he is sorry.


X



Hayes got back up the stairs and talked to Timothy. He was asleep.

“Timothy, wake up”

He got up and squinted his eyes.

“Hey…what was that I heard earlier? It sounded like you were having an interrogation with Eltectro.”

“Actually it was your old computer. I fixed it.”

“Yeah? How’d you get it?”

“Someone gave it to me a long time ago.”

“So I guess it did happen” said Timothy, “A part of it. Well at least I’m back…wherever we are.”

“New York. What’s left of it anyway.”

“Oh.” He looked at him intently. “I didn’t kill that guy, you know. If it even happened.”

“Well, something happened, Timothy, because it can type on its own without me doing anything.”

“What?”

His mind flashed. The Illuminati, he thought. Yeah, that’s it. That’s the conspiracy someone laid on me once. That they placed a mod chip in the back of your keyboard to monitor and see if you were trying to take down their little club. It would take a hacker with extreme skills, he thought, to control a computer remotely and have it type on its own. If it were even possible.

“It also talks and spews bible verses”

Timothy didn’t know what to say to that.

“And theres something else. I think its you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I tried to get information out of it. When I aked who it was—“

“It’s just a computer.”

“No, its not . Its infected by something. A ghost. And when I aked its name it recited a verse from II Timothy”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means it told me its you. It’s the part of you that’s missing from the blast.”

This didn’t bring him comfort but confused him.

“I owned that thing back in 2008. So how can it have a part of me in it from something that didn’t happen yet?”

“I don’t know. And it wont tell me.”

“When I left,” Hayes said, “I heard something in my head. A voice appeared and said to me ‘he wants you to know he is sorry.’”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I think it was someone referring to you, but I don’t know who it is or what it means. Have you been able to hear anything? On the inside?”

“Last night.” He said. “I was going to rest and suddenly I heard this abrupt pant and then a breath of air that was almost like a gasp but not, and it sounded like it was about to tell me something. Then it left. But it was definitely female. I think it was Jade. It sounded like her.”

Hayes contemplated this.

“You cant always hear a voice, sometimes its just a foreign thought. So its hard to distinguish who its coming from.”

He got up.

“I want you to do something for me. You need to train your mind to allow the communications to break through. I want you to clear your mind of everything, make it completely blank. If you practice this you’ll be able to hear what you couldn’t normally access.”

“Alright.”

As he tried to concentrate there was a knock on the door. A man with black hair and green eyes was there holding a gun of some kind.

“I’m looking for Jade Constantine.” He said.

She arrived at the door.

“Hello, David” she said. It was obvious to Timothy they had some kind of relationship.

“There are more of them out their, bigger ones. There trying to take a building down.”

“Oh ****. Where?”

“33rd Street.”

“Alright, lets go. You too,” she said to Tim.

“Who is your friend here?” said David. He looked not unlike Timothy, though he was slightly taller.

“This is Timothy Gale,” she said.

“Its an honor to meet you”

Timothy was taken aback by this, but he shook his hand.

“This is David Thomas, he’s part of our resistance” said Jade.

“We’d better go, take this” she handed a gun to Timothy.

“This is an AR-15. Its fully automatic. Works the same as an M-16. It sends out a high intensity shockwave that penetrates the physicality of the spirit. See these things aren’t always transparent, so you can still do damage with any kind of weapon sometimes. Have you ever used an M-16?”

“No, but I’ve fired guns before”

“Alright. Put this on.” She handed him a suit of body armor.

When they arrived in a military jeep they saw that the building had serious structural damage to it. They could see several ghosts on the inside.