REVELATION: Book One of THE RECARN CHRONICLES (23 page)

“It’s alright. We don’t want
to hurt you. It’s not really an interrogation. It’s more of a
debriefing.” She stopped what she was saying, realizing that this
kind of language would be far too complicated for a two year old to
understand. No toddler had words such as ‘interrogation’ and
‘debriefing’ in its vocabulary. She started again.

My name is Michelle.
Michelle Boone. I’m the mummy of this little group. What’s your
name?”

One of her team members
interrupted.

“Mummy, please can I have a
glass of water?”

Michelle shot a dirty look
at him and he mouthed ‘sorry’.

The clone looked around her
at the others in the room. They seemed a lot friendlier now than
they had in the laboratory.

“Trudi 002.”

Michelle smiled.

“That’s good Trudi. Well
done. Good girl. May I call you Trudi? It’s a very pretty
name.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what – who you
are, Trudi.”

“Yes.”

“Who are you
Trudi?”

“A clone.”

“A clone. Yes, you’re a
clone. But that doesn’t mean you’re not a person, Trudi. Not to us
anyway. Do you know your birthday?”

“Yes.”

“When’s your birthday,
Trudi?”

“
6
^th
of May, 2058.”

“So, do you know hold old
you are?”

Michelle thought that this
might be a stretch for Trudi to answer. Bearing in mind her
obviously limited communication skills, her mathematical skills
should surely be almost nonexistent.

“I look forty years old,
maybe thirty-five on a good day, but I’m actually forty days old.
“

Michelle and her friends
looked at each other. Michelle took a deep breath and
spoke.

“So you can talk… I mean
talk intelligently… I mean the talking like a child was just an
act? The SIMP said that you had limited communication
skills.”

“Well, he or she would
wouldn’t they. I was hardly going to have a nice cosy chat with
them, considering how I’d been treated. I didn’t volunteer to be
put into this thing, you know. I’m a respected scientist, a
professor.”

“Would you mind answering a
few questions for us, Trudi?”

“I have two
conditions.”

“What
conditions?”

“Well, first I want
something to eat. I’m bloody starving. For real food. Not that crap
they gave me at the facility.”

Federico, who was also the
unelected chef of the group, muttered to himself.

“What does a clone
eat?”

Trudi turned her attention
to him.

“The same as you, dickhead.
My hearing’s pretty good too.”

Professor Ingram’s latent
rage was coming to the fore. Michelle thought she’d better try to
calm things down.

“You said you have two
conditions. What’s the other one?”

“The second condition is…
that when I’ve told you all you want to know… I want you kill me. I
don’t think I have the courage to do it myself.”

“Why on earth do you want us
to kill you?”

“Do I have to spell it out
to you? I age one year every twenty-four hours. I have at best
another forty days to go. Forty days during which I shall
deteriorate physically and become susceptible to all kinds of
illnesses and organ problems. I’ve seen others go through it and
it’s not a pretty sight. They haven’t got the process right yet. If
I had another forty years left then perhaps my life might be
bearable for the near future. I could wait and see if medical
advances could cure whatever ailments I’ll get. But knowing that
the clock isn’t ticking by but sprinting by - well, that’s
different. I don’t want to go through all that. I’d rather take my
chance and see where my soul ends up next. So, if you wouldn’t
mind. I’d like you to kill me. Quick like. Not a slow death. And no
drowning. I’ve always had a fear of drowning, no matter what life
I’m living.”

“I don’t know…”

“It’s not as if it’s the
final end. I’ll come back again – just in a different body. I can
do that. It doesn’t bother me. Preferable to what’s going to happen
to me otherwise, anyway.”

Michelle looked at her
colleagues, who one by one nodded their agreement to Trudi’s
request.

Trudi’s next hour or so was
spent eating her final meal of spaghetti bolognaise – Federico
wasn’t that great a cook - and giving the group all the information
that she knew or could remember about the research that was
happening at the laboratory. Michelle and her colleagues no longer
had to imagine the horrors that were taking place in the name of
the Illuminati’s clone research. Hearing about how pregnant women
and babies were arbitrarily slaughtered in the name of research
made Michelle feel physically sick. Trudi brought her disclosures
to a close.

“And that’s all I can tell
you really. The research has progressed to the point where the
scientists can create a clone, have it mature rapidly to adulthood
and can transfer a human soul into it. I’m the living proof of
that. However, they are still under the misconception that the
mental development of the clone is retarded, that is, it’s not
keeping up with the physical development of the clone. I saw no
reason to let them think otherwise. The day will come – probably
sooner rather than later – when the variables are correctly
calibrated and applied and they’ll have succeeded in creating a
fully functioning adult clone, one that isn’t racing towards its
death like I am. I have no idea why it’s so important to the
Pindar, but it is.”

Michelle thanked Trudi for
the information, pulled a hand-gun from where it was tucked into
the back of her jeans, set the pulse to kill in one swift movement,
and shot Trudi in the forehead. The chair stopped her from falling
backwards so the dead clone just slumped forward,
lifeless.

“Bloody hell Michelle. You
made me jump then, girl.”

“I had to make it quick, as
much for my sake as for hers. Flavio and Rachel… take her to the
local ST centre. Ask for Ali. Tell him we’ve got a Jane Doe to be
disposed of. He doesn’t need to know that she’s a clone. You can’t
tell just by looking at her.”

A large black plastic sheet
was brought in from one of the farm’s outbuildings and Trudi’s
lifeless body was wrapped up in it. Flavio and Rachel put her in
the boot of the SUV and drove off in the direction of the nearest
town. Michelle raised a hand and gave a discreet wave
goodbye.

“Bye Trudi. Better luck next
life.”

Érica should have been at
school, even though it was her seventh birthday, but she had woken
up that morning with a crippling headache. She liked school, so her
mother knew that it wasn’t just a childish ruse to spend the day at
home.

If the headaches had been
just simple headaches, Érica could probably have coped, but they
were accompanied by hallucinations of a past life. Her parents
thought that she just had an overactive imagination but as the days
passed, Érica realized that they were actually memories. At first
she only remembered being an old man, but the next time that she
had a headache, it was accompanied by visions of a symbol of an eye
encased in a triangle. She had no idea what it meant but she knew
that it was important. Day by day, headache by headache, she began
to remember more and more of her past life. After a fortnight had
passed she was fully aware of who she had been in a past life and
that she felt a duty, an unswerving determination, to return to
that life to take control of the Illuminati once more.

As always, the challenge lay
in getting back to England. She had always managed it before and
the reason for this is that she had always planned her return well
in advance. She may only be seven years old but the memories of her
past lives were very strong. Not all Recarns had strong
recollections of their past lives – some had only fleeting glimpses
of who they had once been – but many, like Érica had excellent
powers of recall. She remembered being Nathan Smith, just as Nathan
had remembered being Hans von Strohm, the son of a German
carpenter, who had in turn remembered a past life as Valli Kapoor,
the daughter of a poverty-stricken seamstress in Jaipur, India. No
matter how difficult it may seem to make her way back to the UK,
she had always managed to do so.

Érica knew that this time,
the key to her return to England was to study hard. This wouldn’t
be a chore; in all her previous lives she had always been a good
student.

Thomas was feeling stressed.
He could see the clock ticking away the years, months, weeks, days
until he could expect a challenge for the Pindar’s seat of power.
Nathan was out there somewhere, plotting his return to the throne
of the Illuminati. For generations Nathan had gone through the
process of abdication of his position of power and the installation
of an acting Pindar to hold the reins until he returned. For
generations Nathan had successfully retrieved his rightful place at
the head of the organisation. This time would be
different.

He had no idea where or who
Nathan was. But he was fully aware that he must be approaching his
seventh birthday if he had not already reached it. Nathan would
become a Recarn soon – if he were not already – and Thomas knew
that from that point on, Nathan’s sole purpose would be to plan his
successful return. He may be but a child at the moment, but he
should not be underestimated. He had experience, almost three
centuries of experience, of planning and dealing with similar
situations.

Thomas’s disease was
becoming more and more of an inconvenience too. His arm and leg
muscles had weakened to the point where it took real grit and
determination to move around, even with the help of crutches. By
resting the top of each crutch under his armpit and gripping the
crutch as tightly as he could between his arm and his torso, he had
found a way to move the crutch forward by thrusting his chest in a
diagonal direction, thus forcing the crutch to settle in a more
forward position. This was obviously very time consuming – indeed
exhausting – but Thomas wasn’t a quitter.

If he had been an ordinary
man, in an ordinary job, perhaps he would have taken the route of
self-termination and hopefully have been reincarnated into a new
healthy body to escape this torture. But he wasn’t an ordinary man,
he was the Pindar, and if he did so he would be throwing away
everything that he was working towards. He would – just as Nathan
had done – be born into unknown circumstances anywhere on the
planet and, more importantly, he would create a vacuum in the
leadership of the Illuminati that could cause untold chaos and
conflict. He did feel some pangs of loyalty to the Illuminati even
though he was mostly fuelled by personal ambition. The Order had
been good to him. And when Nathan returned – as he surely would –
it would be much easier for him to reclaim his position of Pindar,
if he hadn’t made too many enemies within The Order.

Thomas looked at the clock
on the wall of the hotel room. Time was advancing at the normal
rate although if it were in his power he would make time pass
quicker on this particular day. He decided to listen to some Pink
Floyd on his iPod. The music was almost ninety years old but had
lost none of its power. Other bands came and went, the members of
Pink Floyd were now memories but their music lived on, timeless.
Track six, ‘Us and Them’, had just started playing when Alison, his
highly efficient personal assistant knocked and entered the
room.

“Excuse me sir, but the
delivery you have been waiting for has arrived.”

Immediately Thomas’s stress
disappeared.

“Thank you Alison. Please
show them into the reception room. Tell them I’ll be there in a few
minutes.”

Thomas would have liked to
have been able to stride or even run to the reception room, but his
limbs were feeling particularly weak that day and his breathing
wasn’t all that he would have liked it to be either. He had fought
the disease long enough and had been foolhardy in that he wouldn’t
accept the use of a wheelchair, preferring to struggle with the
crutches. He had started the day, just as most other days, in poor
health but he wouldn’t finish it in the same condition.

A few minutes later he
dragged his body into the reception room where three people were
waiting for him; two installation engineers and one male nurse. On
the large table that stood in the middle of the room was an open
box, inside of which lay a battleship grey exoskeleton suit. This
is what he had been waiting for. This is what would release him
from the chains with which Muscular Dystrophy had bound him and
would allow him to fly again – metaphorically speaking, of
course.

The suit had the appearance
of very fine chain mail, and was designed to hug the skin tightly.
As one of the engineers explained, the suction cup feeling would
disappear after a couple of days, when the skin became used to
being constantly touched. The suit was also made up of thousands of
tiny receivers which received electrical impulses from the brain
via a wire-free implant to a micro-receiver situated at the back of
the collar. The collar was higher than Thomas would have liked but
this was necessary to discreetly hide the electrical inputs that
would assist the muscular movements of Thomas’s internal organs,
such as his lungs and throat muscles, making it easier to breathe,
speak, and swallow. It was this respiratory problem that had made
Thomas finally invest in the very expensive, state-of-the-art bio
suit, although it was an easily affordable option considering his
position in the Illuminati.