Episode 014
Jequon receives gruesome updates from the SOJ.
I'm wandering the streets of Manhattan, looking to passersby like an extremely well-fed homeless person. With my pants still damp with sewer runoff, and wearing the stench of human barbeque, I must smell the part, too; as invisible to any SOJ assassins still lingering in the city as I am to the suits and blouses streaming by oblivious.
I'm trying desperately to queue up the "bad men about to do damage" soundtrack that's been my frequent companion as of late. But for the first time in my life, the signal's weak, an AM station under a bridge of despair.
No more than one-hundred-fifty-eight of us 1 st -Gens left still breathe-hell-possibly fewer. The SOJ could've hit every single safe house, residence, and donor den in our database, simultaneously, 9-11 style.
I have failed my people. Again. And again and again, ten times over.
Still, I can't take all the blame for this. I'll take some responsibility for not trusting my instincts and actively defying the Council's reactive policies, but I can't shoulder the blame for creating them. The only thing I can do is learn from my mistakes.
Hide and seek isn't working. Noted. Maybe seek-and-destroy will.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Damn-straight, Dylan Thomas. I'm not dead yet.
#
I get online at one of the free computers in the New York Public Library's Mid-Manhattan branch. Install the security extension into the Mozilla firefox web browser from a USB drive. It feels almost pointless to use a key-logger detection tool, when everything I'm about to type will probably be read by the SOJ anyway. I'm not doing it for the secrecy, but because any spy-ware installed on this machine could also be used to pinpoint my location. And when I leave here, I don't want any tails.
The security app finishes installing and I install the next extension. This one remaps the keyboard so that the ‘Function' key acts kind of like a modified ‘Shift' key, giving access to letters of the angelic alphabet. This too would feel like wasted time-the SOJ have deciphered our language-except that if I don't post in our people's tongue, no Naphil on the receiving end is going to listen.
I login to the ‘announcements' section of our message board and start typing:
Jequon here, and let me assure you, this is not a joke.
If you're reading this, you're in danger. The entire Council has been assassinated today in New York. Mt. Hermon was fire-bombed. The SOJ have hacked our databases and deciphered our language. They know the location of every safe house, every donor, and everyone of us. I'm sure they're reading this message, too, which means they're coming for you if you're not dead already.
Please, disappear. Vacate your homes. Go somewhere no one knows you. Do not use this board. Do not rely on the databases. Find new donors not in the system. And if it comes to it, feed at will.
Revert to the Old Ways, this is The Great Flood all over again. The Codes no longer apply.
Throw away your cell phones. Trust no one. Keep your eyes and ears open, but for now, lay low and just stay alive.
I'm sorry. I've failed you all. But by the honor of our fathers in darkness, I swear, I will not rest until I avenge our loss.
Jequon out.
I hit ‘post' and I also cut-and-paste my warning into the email broadcast function of the message board and send it out. I wonder how many will check their email before it's too late, and try not to think about how much faster the SOJ will move now in response to my warning.
Unfortunately I don't have time for worry. I need to find these bastards. And the only thing I have to go on is that they must've had help translating our language. So I need to know how many first-rate linguists there are in the world?
Google knows…and as a quick search demonstrates, so does Wikipedia. The public-run online encyclopedia lists over four hundred linguists of note on their website. Too damn many. I need to trim down the list.
Eighty-two of these men and women are dead, and therefore unlikely to have helped the Sons Of Jared decipher my people's tongue. Fifty-three of the names listed refer to specific languages of expertise, so I cross them off my list of hopefuls, too-all except for the joker who specializes in the Klingon language. (Him, I might have to check out. He obviously has enough free time.) I can also eliminate linguists with narrow specialties that have nothing to do with deciphering languages. Doing so leaves me with a hundred or so possibilities. Still too many.
So I start fishing. I think about how the SOJ themselves were able to find a linguist good enough to crack our language. And how they found one willing to help them. Probably they didn't ask nicely, in fact, they might have had to kidnap him or her. It's not like a dyed-in-the-wool academic would agree to help a cult dedicated to eradicating ‘mythical' beings.
I type the words ‘missing' and ‘linguist' into the Google News search box and hit ‘Enter.'
The results are intriguing. Aside from an Army linguist missing in Iraq, there don't appear to be any linguists of note reported missing. But there is a linguist wanted for questioning in an ongoing missing persons case out of San Diego. (Lucky for me, Google can't distinguish between a ‘missing linguist' and a linguist who might know something about someone else who's missing.) And this guy isn't just your garden variety linguist, either. He's also an eschatologist (someone who specializes in a particular branch of theological study that now escapes me). And not only that, but he was forced to change his name from ‘Harris Whiting' due to some kind of scandal in his past—and (this just keeps getting better every time I click on a link)—this former eschatologist is now an evangelical Christian pastor—one with controversial views concerning End Times prophecy.
What else, I ask myself, besides language ability, would a person need in order to translate an angelic language? Knowledge that such a language exists, for starters. And a very deep interest in religious texts—which any eschatologist would have. This ‘Henry Whitmore' (as he now calls himself) might just be the guy I'm looking for.
I look at the other names left over from Wikipedia that I haven't been able to eliminate. Harris Whiting is there, and except for the Klingon guy, no one else pops out. San Diego here I come.
I click the "log out" link on the message board and wait for the page to reload. Next I'll uninstall the security and keyboard mapping extensions from firefox. But the page won't reload. I should be getting a "you are now logged out" message on the screen.
I hit "refresh." OK. Good. The little progress meter is moving again. The page reloads.
But this isn't the log out screen message I'm used to:
You failed your people because you're stupid, Jequon. We own you. And by the way, thanks for the keyboard mapping tool. It'll come in handy.
Fuck!
I hit ‘Tab' to put the cursor into a field I can respond in and start typing threats. No words appear on the screen (at least not mine):
I said, WE OWN YOU, Jequon. Your half-breed brothers won't be getting your warning-not even the few who are still alive.
And BTW: you might want to check your messages, Jequon. We've been kind enough to send you digital photos of our progress.
The clamshell-style Motorola cell phone still in my pocket-is it on? I retrieve it. Fortunately, I'm not a complete moron and I've left it turned off. cell phone signals can be tracked much more accurately than the so-called limit of sixteen-miles surrounding the nearest tower. Fact is, the agencies in charge of finding bad guys don't want the public to know how advanced their tracking technology really is.
And speaking of government agencies… We own you. I'm starting to wonder who else besides the Sons Of Jared ‘we' includes. They've been outsourcing for awhile now: snipers, thugs, explosive experts-that sort of thing. But linguistic experts? Hackers good enough to crack our database? How are they finding that kind of talent? Where are they finding that kind of talent? And talent aside, how in the hell are they suddenly everywhere-all-at-once? The snipers, the hit-men, and Lucian in Sarajevo; the bomber back here in New York—all in less than forty-eight hours. That takes some serious manpower. And it takes someone pretty high up to coordinate it all.
As I'm contemplating all this, the damn cursor starts up again:
Really, Jequon. You should check your phone.
They're trying to bait me, obviously, so I don't bother with a response. I'm out the door and on my way to the airport. Only after we're sitting on the runway cleared for takeoff do I turn on the phone and check their ‘progress.' Now if they try to track me with the cell phone signal, all they'll know is that I'm at LaGuardia, which doesn't do them much good considering the one-hundred-plus flights that leave here every hour.
I navigate on the little color LCD screen to inbox (8) >> messages (8) >> photos (8).
Apparently the screen can only show groups of five text-links at a time, next to a scrollbar. I click the first link, labeled kokabel.jpg, with the little select-button above the phone keypad.
A pixilated, but unmistakable portrait of Kokabel appears on the screen. His forehead flaunts the updated version of the SOJ's sadistic brand. I can't look anymore. I hit the back-button on the phone:
abramak.jpg
david.jpg
thorbahn.jpg
ertael.jpg
...and a fat-fucking ellipses. A total of eight more cousins I've failed.
I turn off the phone before any more bad news can arrive, or my blatant FAA violation threatens to impede our ability to get airborne. Take out the battery just to be safe. Somehow resist the urge to grind the damn thing into a paste of plastic dust and lithium-ion battery juice.
"Flight attendants, prepare for takeoff."
The engines shove us down the runway. The woman behind me is mumbling pleas for Jesus to get us off the ground safely, as if we were a matchbox replica propelled by the big toddler in the clouds. I look out the window so no one can see me cry.
Author: Jeremy James
Shelved In: Episodes
Main Topic: hacked
Keywords: 9-11 • abramak • assassins • bomb • cell phone • Chapter 15 • Codes • Council • david • Dylan Thomas • ertael • FAA • fire • Great Flood • Henry • Jequon • Klingon • kokabel • LaGuardia • language • Manhattan • Mt. Hermon • New York • Old Ways • San Diego • SOJ • Sons Of Jared • thorbahn • Whitmore •
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