The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read his story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.

Disclaimer: I do not own SeaQuest, Star Wars, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators or broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.

This chapter is based upon the canon SQ season 2 episode 'Playtime' in which the ship is dragged through an artificial space/time gateway to reach circa 2300 in Earth's future. While the time mechanics and World Management Grid are used, the rest is vastly AU and OOC with the reasons being obvious in the story line.

Seventh chapter; The Next Great Adventure

Tempus non lineae est

(SeaQuest - season 2 opening theme)

24th December of 2300, early morning

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

World Management Grid substation for NCQ County

"Well this might finally work out after all." The snarky synthetic voice of the holographic assistant was heard to offer as an encouragement. It really shouldn't try; positive supportive behaviors really weren't programmed right into its matrix. "And there is a startlingly symmetrical logic to this considering that everything humongously bad in your life always happens on your birthday. This, therefore, should be glorious in its cataclysmic confluence of badness. The space, dimensions, times and realities we have plumbed will either unravel as a ball of yarn or will concatenate in a redux of the Big Bang. Truly magnificent achievement of clusterfuckery, Oh my Lord! We approve most slavishly of your pseudo-divine attempts to exalt yourself unto the Celestials!"

"Luke, shut up before I disconnect your vocoder for a week like last time you pissed me off at a critical juncture!" The damned program was a soothing presence against the lonely emptiness of the mechanically well kept mausoleum the Earth had made itself into. It was also the primary cause of every nervous breakdown and attempt at cyberneticide he had committed to date. Why exactly had he thought it was a good idea to inflict his own personality onto himself at any point of his life was an ill-fated choice that would keep psychiatrists busy for a couple of centuries no doubt.

"Voila! A brand new coupling on the EPS line, a breaker box that will actually interrupt current properly and enough insulation pads and shock gel panels to deflect or absorb the shrapnel if there is an explosion of any magnitude like the four last tries. Let's give this a spin and see what comes out!"

Lucas Daniel Wolenczak was never adopted and was in fact disowned by his mother at the age of 9. He was a thin, light weight 33 years old with dubious stability and no real physical attributes worth remembering. He was dirty, unkempt, dressed in jeans and T-shirt that were about three years older than they should have lasted and you could tell by the smell that washing the laundry was no more pressing than showering himself. He had a clean shaven head and face for a simple fact. In this epoch someone had invented a produce that you apply to your body and the area stops producing follicles for a year. Otherwise, he'd have hair and a beard so long as to make an old druid jealous.

Lucas rubbed his thin, long fingers in glee. This was as much to alleviate the pain from the last batch of thin red lesions, scratches and electrical burns as to express somehow, to something, the feelings of joy that he had inside for the first time in about a year. Living with chronic depression unmedicated was hard; doing it on an empty planet was worse and having only his mirrored animated self for company was surely dragging him to the edge.

He needed to finish his self imposed mission or else the murders he had committed would be for nothing and the souls of his dead friends would never forgive him. Only stopping the madness and genocide before it started was enough to achieve sufficient balance in his ledgers to perhaps have a sentence in the Beyond that would not end in eternal damnation. Or reincarnation as a worm. Being reincarnated as something devoid of eyes, ears, mouth and limbs just wasn't worth it; he'd kill himself and play the Karma roulette again.

WMG central monitoring warning, audio: "Activation of the World Management Grid: Version 09 Alpha Spread-11.06. Service pack LDW 04 Beta Test-08.03 coming online. Sending patches and service pack through national automated registries. Government done, army done, companies done, residential done, vehicles done. All update sequences finished and rebooting on schedule. The WMG is now compliant with codex LDW 04.08.03 as of now. The temporo-dimensional gateway is initiating and stabilizing; estimating twenty four minutes to available transit."

Living Lucas breathed in relief as the preliminary phase of the mission was, for once in almost a decade, going to plan without an explosion or anti-intruder scheme blowing in his face. The down time in hospital was bad enough with live medics prodding and poking. Having only the robotic arms of the emergency cyber-medic module of the WMG to give any succor was a damned shitload of mental anguish to plough through on top of the physical damage and therapy.

The damage done to his brain and psyche when removing the biochip / synthetic parasite would never heal properly. He was defective. Highly intelligent with superhuman perceptions, comprehension and processing speeds but emotionally stunted and unable to have a care about himself or what he suffered. He could feel pain, fear, shame, demeanment and all the negative spectrum of emotions. But he couldn't feel the positive anymore. Joy, real happiness, love, good cheer, humor, it was all behind a thick glass wall through which he could sometimes feel an echo of old thoughts or feelings but never strong enough to lift the pall of depression and self-destructiveness that haunted him.

Since coming to this epoch and confronting the reality of how his body and mind had been raped and abused, he had never recovered. He needed neurosurgery which would never be done. He needed a professional psychologist to put him in therapy for a few years, probably in a closed setting to really help him, but that too would never happen. Not unless a miracle of either God's will or Satan's Wrath fell upon him.

Summons of the Savior Child

(Haendel – Messiah)

24th December of 2300, early morning

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

World Management Grid substation for NCQ County

Living Lucas' bad trip down fabulation lane was stopped abruptly by the much awaited signal from the WMG.

WMG central monitoring warning, audio: "Activation of temporo-dimensional gateway. Locating subject. Targeting subject. Recovering subject; protocols for unshielded traveler in progress. Recovery complete. Gateway closing. System powering down, reset estimated at 29 days, 11 hours and 58 minutes."

Living Lucas gazed upon the prize of 14 years of efforts as he rose to his feet and stood all 3 feet tall, dressed in ominous black with a belt full of weaponry. His dull-silver faceplate did not relinquish any emotions but reflected clearly the instabilities, fears and hopes of the older male back at himself.

"Welcome your Excellency, my Lord of Burgundy, to the blankest canvas you will ever paint upon." Living Lucas's smile was definitely not quite sane or quite stable. But then again, after yanking the little tyke through space, dimension and Time, was that really important?

Adeste Humanitas : Praeteritum vivit denuo

(Hymnals – Agnus Dei)

24th December of 2300, noon

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Administration tower

Older Lucas had promptly disconnected his holographic assistant as it had made a series of chocked sounds that should not come from a human throat. Since he couldn't understand and didn't want the interruption at this momentous event, he just flicked the main switch and cut the power completely from the breaker box. Problem solved. Now that he had a living human with him, he could finally get some desperately needed emotional interactions and socialize with someone other than the damnable deformed mirror of his broken mind and twisted soul he had manufactured.

After presenting himself fully with his old UEO badge and credentials that he still kept in his work satchel the two had worked together so the younger boy could completely take off the heavy, confining helmet and filtration pack and take a breath of air. It was actually much fresher, cleaner and smelled so much like the mountains! When they went outside the substation and the child saw the tall spires of New Cape Quest he had been taken aback by the empty buildings and deserted streets. Like his older self said so eloquently: an automated, mechanically well kept mausoleum.

The ride in the car was interesting since Younger Lucas had no experience with driverless cars contrary to his older self who had become so used to them that he had problems driving manually. Besides, letting the car move on automatic avoided the strong desire to just push the engine and slam into a wall or off a cliff to finally die and be at peace. Fortunately, he had endured and now the fruits of 14 years of hard, spirit wracking efforts was in hand to help complete the mission. The humanoid robot in the driver's seat had also at many critical moments of depression been just enough placebo to allow him to reach the safety and peace of his home to crash and then recharge his emotional batteries away from the WMG and its blasted problems.

The trip took them an hour at 120 km / hr on trafficless roads to venture well past the outskirts of NCQ and into the outlying swamps and bayous of the Florida Everglades to a little known facility that did not even exist yet in Younger Lucas's time line. It had been built around the year 2143 and was a specialized military hospital. All of its staff and equipments had been dedicated to the treatment of soldiers suffering from physical brain traumatisms or psychological dysfunctions like PTSD. They also did research and therapy for those poor unfortunates who suffered from personality changes and insanities caused by severe concussions, brain lesions, chemicals or radiations. It had been until the End of Humanity a truly advanced facility and the medicine practiced there had been well beyond simple lobotomies or electro-shocks.

There was one thing that Older Lucas insisted Younger Lucas saw before they started talking about history, timelines and why he was here. The kid needed data and perspective before any decisions were made. Besides, the time portal had 30 days to cycle through before it could power up again. Might as well make the best of it.

They passed the automated gatekeep in the surreal red brick walls that looked like a throw back to the 1800's style of building old colonial forts under the confederate army. That was the impression until Older Lucas explained that these were synthetic bricks made of a mix of ceramic dust and thermoplastic pellets pressure molded under intense heat. These things were actually heavy, durable, didn't rot or crack from sea salt erosion and had become the standard for building public facilities in every climate or place they needed a structure.

The courtyard reminded of any hospital facility the world over, a central rectangular building for administration and welcoming guests with wings on each side and behind to house the rooms, surgeries, doctors' offices, laboratories and other stuffs. There were courtyard areas separated by 20 foot tall fences topped by concertina wire loops to keep the unstable patients segregated in control zones when letting them out to exercise or meet family visitors. The buildings were built with the same red bricks and some grayish metal that didn't seem like steel at first.

Older Lucas explained that those were steel but with a protective covering of material similar to the bricks but sprayed onto the metallic parts and then heat cured in an oven until the outside looked like glazed ceramic. This avoided the problems with wind borne sea salt and humidity. It also made the exposed metallic elements much more resistant to storm tossed debris, fire damage or shaking from the occasional seismic trembler.

They entered the main building with a magnetic card and Older Lucas made them stop at the security office so that he could enter into the system his Younger sibling and emit a pass-card like his. That would allow Younger Lucas to choose a room and live next to him in the complex as this was his permanent housing when he wasn't working at the WMG substation. Younger Lucas also insisted on getting doubles of every physical metallic key that was hung on the peg boards in the security and secretary offices so he could explore the edifice and complex in greater detail. Older Lucas shrugged and helped along; happy just to have someone other than his aggressive empty shell of a hologram to talk with and do stuff. Having a kid brother that wasn't insane was nice.

They went up the airy glass walled staircase to the third floor where there were rooms for the visiting dignitaries, doctors or VIP family visitors of VIP patients. Since a lot of politicians had children or grand kids in the services the conceptors of the facility had integrated to their blueprints an area of higher luxury staterooms, salons, two cafeterias, public restrooms to supplement the en-suite of each bedroom, etc… There was a 24 person conference room with multiple vidscreens to show the visitors the treatments, surgeries, molecular models of drugs and miscellany that went on in searching for cures to mental and spinal injuries or poisonings.

Younger Lucas snorted derisively at the thought that the politos had arrogated themselves privileged rooms and situations all the way into what most North-Americans and Europeans would consider a place of Perdition or a charnel house. Even when wading neck deep in offal and sewer murk, the politos and rich wannabees had to have their standing and symbols of power. No wonder the planet was empty; with their egos so inflated there wasn't any place left for the humans to live.

After finding a room just the door to the left of Older Lucas's own room, the Younger dropped his helmet and backpack but kept everything else to go exploring the main edifice. He promised to stay only in the main admin tower until his sibling could go walking with him. They had convened the oldest sibling needed a hot shower and a long soak in the tub to warm and relax his aching body. It was also admitted that a change of clothes would help him feel human again. It was a bad sign when a man couldn't remember the last time his boxers hadn't been soaked with sweat and sticky in the wrong places, or why they actually smelled worse than his moldy socks.

It was rather pathetically obvious that the Older was emotionally deprived and depressive in a catastrophic way so the Youngest agreed with his request to wait for a walk-around together. They convened on a rendez-vous in the first cafeteria in the front of the storey where the glass staircase passed the floor. This would let the little guy walk around on his own a while and leave a good two hours or so to his older sibling to get healed and decently dressed. On a gut feeling, Younger Lucas decided to visit the suite of his older sibling and make sure he did get in the shower. As the man was getting undressed, the child grabbed his hands and tsk'ed disapprovingly at the injuries and layers of scars he saw. On another guess, he decided to help the older male undress to see the state of his body and verify other injuries or situations that would need first aid. Since he did have his much beloved Paramedic Grade 1 license of practice, it would be good to help out his own truest sibling in his time of need.

Younger Lucas was now pissed off and wanted bloodshed in copious quantities to assuage the beast inside his heart. His older sibling's entire torso was covered all around in scars from very obvious whippings laid on over several years.

There was the scar on top of his bald head which indicated surgery of the rather traumatic type and was certainly an important story unto itself.

The hands and forearms were scarified by lesions, blisters, fire burns and chemical burns almost to the point of considering them disfigured. Any more like that and he risked being crippled.

That was just the upper body. Getting off his dingy running shoes and socks released a smell of decay and unveiled disfigured toenails indicative of fungal infections. The nasty prominent reddish veinules all over the soles of the feet were a sure sign of infection in the blood vessels and skin from lack of washing and never taking off the constrictive shoes, even to sleep. His calves and lower legs under the knees were pallid and had the same reddish veinules climbing up the limbs erratically. He was slowly dying from blood rot from the feet up.

Taking off his ratty jeans and disgustingly stained and smelly shorts finished revealing the same whipping scars as his torso all the way down his thighs to his knees.

There were a few jagged scars all over the man that had been inflicted with bladed weapons that had badly healed after infecting. The sprinkling of weird clustered pockmarks from some disease he had survived around a decade ago were worrisome but could wait compared to the rest of all the damage.

"Right then, you hard headed brother of mine; shower and hour long soak in bath salts NOW! You start the water running while I go root around all the bathrooms on the levels around to find you some therapeutic strength salts to put in the tub to seep you like a tisane until some of that venous congestion gets cleared or at least becomes more visible so I know what to do."

The child-aged rescuer drew in a deep tremulous breath and tried to stabilize himself for the work ahead. He was the only human alive on the planet and therefore the only person able to help. He now had an obligation to not only make the effort but perform adequately or his only living sibling that shared his blood and family history would die in his hands.

"This is a full service hospital so I'm ordering blood works with a full tox panel ASAP and we'll do urine and stool cultures as well. Thankfully the Internex should be advanced enough to have those things available. Otherwise we are going to see if those humanoid robots and auto-medic modules in the WMG are that capable at testing biological samples and giving advice. We need full-body X-Rays, CAT scan and MRI if they have it here. If not, same answer as the samples; we find an automated hospital in town and get all the scans done. We are going to pass you some basic vision, hearing and reflex tests to gauge your aptitude to care for yourself and see how critical your condition is and mark my words, sibling of mine; we will get you well no matter what."

The Older Lucas was now crying openly and shamelessly; it had been years since someone had been interested in his welfare and it felt good to have someone take charge and tell him they would see to his health. The kid was twenty years younger but was much more competent in healing than the older male ever was so he was happy to let him lead. It was reassuring to see the child knew his competency limits well and had no qualms about asking for help, even from the robots or web's virtual medical avatars. Why in the names of the Holies hadn't he done that years ago, or recently when he was injured? His damned head wasn't on straight but still, he should have been more active about his health if the child's reasoning and reactions were to be believed.

Oh well, they could talk about it later during the meal. The little guy was already back with the ubiquitous disposable plastic jars for sampling body fluids and secretions. Oh, the joys of mucous! From the ears, nose, eyes and scrapings of skin surface where the scars, blisters and lesions were seeping serum or puss. All the jars were labeled with the body sector, type of sample and when needed the type of injury or infection suspected. Damn but the little bastard was thorough! Even the gribitch Smith back on SeaQuest II hadn't been that interested in his armpit hairs. There must be some sort of genetic insanity in the family to be like that at such a young age…

Once his older sibling was in the steaming hot shower with the ionic head activated on low force gentle waves at the same time as the water, Younger Lucas began a systematic surveying of all bathrooms on all three visitor's levels of the administration tower. He found some regular bath salts that he took and placed next to the glass staircase to grab on the way back to his brother just in case nothing better was found. At least this brand was hypoallergenic and would not irritate his already damaged skin and limbs.

A few minutes later he hit the jackpot in one of the supply closets rather than the rooms themselves. The shelves held a series of airtight plastic boxes vacuum sealed with cellophane wrapper. These were brand-name 4 gallon boxes straight from the manufactures that had never been opened and therefore should still be good if the peremption dates were to be believed. There were some hydrotherapy grade bathing salts for three different situations which applied to Older Lucas. It was fortunate that according to the factory labels the burn soother, the muscle relaxer and the dermal infection sanitizer could be mixed together into the tub if you didn't mind putting in an extra scoop of each and soaking in the mixture at least a whole hour to get the full effect.

Younger Lucas looked to see what clothes there might be for him so he could get out of his dirty and sweat soaked fighting gear. He quickly found a shelf with genderless blue scrubs in sizes for children that would fit him. These were individually wrapped in disposable cellophane with the hospital's in-house laundry service labels on the packages. They were clearly meant to be worn by a visiting relative of a soldier under care. This meant that, yes, on a shelf to the left he found the unisex boxers, t-shirts and socks that would be given along the scrubs to the visitors. These were issued if they needed to spend the night and had not prepared a bag or were under obligation to change to visit the sterile rooms like the burn treatment units or the MRSA containment zone.

Now carrying assorted soaps, salts, massotherapy rubbing oils and several sets of clothing for the both of them, Younger Lucas made his way back to their rooms with a smile. He hadn't had to leave the floor and really didn't want to put any distance between himself and his psychologically fragile sibling. He thought on what he knew of PTSD, which was a lot for a child since every mentor he had known and most of his employees had some form of it. The thing that he knew was that a sufferer of PTSD could sometimes start thinking that the person helping them was not real or had abandoned them if they were not at the right place at the expected moment. This meant that leaving the older male for any period of time was going to require putting him to sleep with chemicals or dragging him along to explore and get things done in the month he had before the temporal machinery was reset and capable of sending something back. Whether the Older Lucas came back with him was a question at the forefront of his mind but given the health of his sibling, it would need to wait until he had been stabilized and they knew his full situation and limitations.

When the child entered the room and then the bathroom he was relieved to see the older male still standing on his legs, head bowed under the combined sprays of water and ionic waves as they splashed and cleansed his entire body. The wetness and discolorations around him showed he had moved and turned a few times to wash and rinse at least twice and was now just relaxing and enjoying a good soothing scalp and collarbone massage.

Younger Lucas went to start running the soaker tub and was glad it was clean already; he didn't have to wash and scrub down the basin to make it fit to hold a medical case in sanitary conditions. As the very hot water slowly filled the white glazed porcelain, he cracked open the box tops and measured out portions of the bathing salts for a combo soak. His older brother would smell like an herbal tea when he came out from it but would have at least disinfected his epidermis and begun the process of sealing the seeping lesions or blisters he had at several places of his hands and feet.

After a few minutes more, the tub was full and the child called out to the older male to stop the shower and get in the medicated water. The older man was neither prudish nor mentally in the state to care about nudity since he had not had social or medical interactions with anybody in years. He just stopped the water and ionic jets, turned around and walked to the tub to lower himself in and slouch backwards with a contented sigh of pleasure like he had not felt in more than a full year. This little guy had done more for his health and sanity in less than three hours of presence than the damned hologram in the 13 years he had the thing active.

The boy quickly undressed and showered off the sweat and grime from the wetworks and traveling he had done all day and then sat quietly on a padded footstool next to the tub, wrapped in a thick bathrobe to keep warm. He contemplated the older male with cold, detached eyes that saw the medical necessities of survival that were to be accomplished so his only living relative stayed alive. They needed to hold the fort until they could reach back to his timeline and obtain discrete professional help in a private clinic his soldiers used when a job went bad. This would demand some thought and could be decided once all the samples were analyzed and the body scans were in hand to see what the skeleton and organs looked like. No need to borrow trouble when the Universe wanted to give them some for free and the delivery truck was already on the way here. Younger Lucas just felt it in his childish bones.

After helping his Older Brother with putting ointment and bandages on his injuries that needed tending, the two Lucases dressed in the generic matching underwear and blue scrubs and went to the floor's front cafeteria to make a simple meal for themselves. Or at least, Older Lucas wanted it simple; the Younger sibling knew how to cook and wanted to show off his talents. When he heard the suggestion of simple cold canned tuna sandwiches with bagged chips and instant coffee, the Younger sibling made a face of distaste and began razzing his Older sibling about not knowing how to live right and not knowing how to receive important honored guests in his home.

The older male was unphased by the joking child's attempts to goad him because he hadn't had a human visitor in a few years and those were never much conversation anyways. "Look, kid, I never learned how to cook anything in my life. I put stuff in the microwave oven or dump it in a pan and it gets warm enough to swallow, that's about what I can do. And about my home; man, I live in a hospital 'kuz I know that I need help with my head as much as my body. Did you think I wasn't aware I was sick?"

"Well, that was refreshing!" exclaimed Younger Lucas sarcastically; "I finally find a guy who does know he's bonkers and needs to get his head checked out and it happens to be me. I really am the only sane one on the mud ball after all."

As the two laughing brothers got to the cafeteria the child was incensed to see that it was composed of exactly what he had seen when passing by the first time. A set of shallow cupboards topped by melamine counters and elevated shelves above that. A couple of microwave ovens, two single-knob hotplates and the two large industrial refrigerators. In the wall between the fridges was an inset automated coffee maker capable of brewing both single cups and 40 ounce thermal carafes. There wasn't a real kitchen range, cooktop or baking oven in sight. The contents of the fridges and pantries was disappointing but in reality he had expected it.

Older Lucas confirmed the state of things for his baby brother: "You have to remember that when I came to this timeline, the Earth's population was down to two people trying to kill each other off. All the farming, ranching, fishing and any sort of food related industry had died off decades before then. The survivors had eaten canned processed food or dehydrated meals that you just add water or milk before putting them in the nuker. I'm pretty sure nobody knew how to cook anything complicated anymore about forty or thirty years before I got here. All the things that needed complicated prep work was no longer available or came in a can or vacuum sealed cellophane or was processed into MRE's by the army. So yeah, my being able to make a tuna spread on cold bread with a baggie of chips and some hot liquid from the wall mounted dispenser is about what you can expect from this epoch. Sorry we're not up to your exacting standards, Oh My Lord."

It appeared snarking good and hard at your close friends was a family affair. Well two can play that game the younger boy thought viciously. After all, what was a family reunion without a little sibling ribbing to be had?

"Step aside, knave! Your Lord will show you how to cook so well that the souls of the departed will reincarnate to be able to partake in my most munificent feast!" Having so pronounced, the child marched imperiously to the left fridge which held what passed as the meats in order to figure out how to make that grandiloquent statement come true. The peals of genuinely free laughter coming from his older brother warmed his heart. Maybe they would be able to fight his depression and keep him balanced enough to last until they got out together.

While the dead didn't present themselves for a portion, the meal made by the boy was a lot better than whatever the older male had eaten in his memory of the last 24 months. Firstly it was piping hot and it hadn't come from the nukers but the actual hotplates had showed off their true use. The child had made them a stir-fry of chunked beef (corned beef, can) vegetables (frozen, bag) and olive oil seasoned with some salt, pepper, garlic, onion and lemon flavor (powders in bottles). The main course was accompanied by pan-toasted bread, sliced cheese (Kraft singles) and a brand-name bottle of fruit juice. Dessert was coffee (dispenser) and a good old McCain frozen cake to share between them.

The older man yet again couldn't keep himself from weeping in relief and joy without even realizing his reaction. It had been at least two long years since the last time he had decided to make the effort of stopping into a restaurant in town to use a real kitchen to make a real solid meal that wasn't a cold sandwich or a cup of powdered soup with a handful of macaroni noodles dumped in to have something to chew. Even here at home, there was the main restaurant on the ground floor in the main wing, behind the admin tower. He used to go there almost every day in the first few years he lived here and got along well at the ovens and gas grills. He wasn't a chef and had made stuff either very rare of truly well done but still edible to his tastes and certainly solid and more pleasant than sandwiches and dehydrated soup with cheap bulk macaroni in it. Why did he stop?

As the questions moved around in his head during the meal, Older Lucas came to the realization that there was something deeply wrong with both his memory and his cognitive processes. He made a gut driven decision and told the boy about it and was glad the child didn't take him for a fool or a waste of space. Instead, the Younger Sibling asked him to close his eyes and start talking about his last seven days starting from farthest until today. He listened raptly and asked few questions but when the older male opened his eyes after about an hour of conversation, the little guy had a worried look on his face and pursed lips that Older Lucas recognized as their common expression for 'deep shit happening'. Oh joy! He really was a worse basket case than he had thought.

"I won't lie to you, Older Brother; I think you're spot on about having mental problems. To have the contrary happen after 14 years of total isolation would have surprised me to the point of asking if you had spent time in cryosleep at some point. The situation is not fatal or deteriorating anymore because I'm here but it was probably a very close call. What helped you was the work you did and the occasional traveling. Although I am having problems with your behavioral changes in the last 24 months. You had established good healthy habits of moving, sightseeing and going out after your self-appointed workday was done and all that helped to maintain your moral and equilibrium. But something happened about two years ago that made you fold back into yourself and stop moving around or even live a bit here, inside the complex. You have ample space and it's not like anyone would actually challenge you for the right to use it as you wish."

"After we're done eating, there is something that I need to show you for you to understand what happened. I can't simply explain it. It has to be seen and felt for it to be valuable and last in your memory." The Older sibling was depressive again but this time from recent memories playing before his eyes.

"Oy! Eyes front and center on reality! No peeking backwards unless I say so!" The Younger sibling smirked brattily at his elder relative. "We go when we're good and ready. Not before. Whatever you want to show me has been here a while so it can wait some more and not be bothered by it."

The rest of the meal was whittled away in conversation about foods that the oldest liked and wanted to taste again so they decided to plan an outing in town. They needed to find an automated hospital for the tests just in case and then a few grocery stores to resupply the floor's cupboards for quick snacks. Younger Lucas also insisted on getting some meats, vegetables, fruits and other stuffs for the main restaurant because they would eat there from now on, no matter how tired they got. Their morale and equilibrium depended on breaking the routine before it set in.

Having gotten a touchscreen tablet from the room where he would bunk, Younger Lucas was planning their trip of tomorrow on the automated map and frowned as he felt some form of sound emanating from the tablet even though the speaker was off. There were also strange symbols that flashed rapidly in full screen size and lasted about one tenth of a second. Asking his Older brother for some help, he had the sibling look at the tablet and create a quick and dirty screen capture virus and install it as well as a sound measuring app that records the emissions around the tablet as well. The results were surprising and eye opening.

The tablet was emitting a low frequency sound wave that actually spoke a message in english; a subliminal command to obey authority and never question the methods, motives or validity of authority. This alternated with a quick five second burst of alien language that only Younger Lucas could recognize and understand now that it was playing at the appropriate speed and volume. Someone had programmed a mnemonic trigger in alien tongue in the subliminal message. For what, they had yet to find out.

The screen capture virus was getting about two hundred images per minute and there were about ten different images to see. They were ordered and always played in that order like a text message but written using the alien ideograms that George Brown-Fowl-in-the-Bushes had taught him. The Younger sibling did not believe in coincidences; there were hidden activities going on and they were based on the alien culture and tech that the Nazis had unearthed and so the solution must be from that same basin of tech, culture and geography. The Older sibling was impressed by his kid brother having been perceptive enough to find the problem and also clever enough to figure out what it is about. The actual meaning of the messages could be determined later. At this moment, it just meant that they would have to be careful not to get caught in a subliminal trap and start obeying the strange instructions.

Younger Lucas went to his room and prepared his supplemental pack so he could bring it and show his sibling. They would need to make the older male a similar set of sheathes and toolkits so he could have greater survival odds and also just feel better about himself and his capacities. Why in the names of the Knaves hadn't the guy thought of doing something like that in 14 years of isolation was a mystery. He did have his old work satchel, that worn out, holey piece of trash. They would need to strip that down and find a replacement along the way. Younger Lucas planned mentally and then added to their electronic map a series of travel gear shops and a few private investigations and security shops too. It was high time to secure this place the right way.

"Well, if you're done planning world conquest on that pad, I could go and show you the stuff that I wanted to show. It's on the other side of the complex, in the basement levels actually."

"Oh? Under which of the buildings are we headed?" replied the child distractedly as he was still planning their thirty plus stops around town to get as full a daytime excursion as they could. Getting the older man to move and live would charge his moral and emotional batteries for several days and that was well worth the time spent going around this empty husk of a city.

"It's under the morgue, forensics and cremation unit."

Adeste Humanitas: Divina poena venit

(Frederich Chopin – Funeral March)

24th December of 2300 - early evening

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Icehold Vault – cryogenic sleep & isolation ward

About twenty minutes of walking and banter later, the two relatives were now facing the ground level entry of the mortuary unit of the hospital. This was a necessity given the two prevalent conditions of their patients. Most chose the armed services to escape poverty and miserable family conditions such as orphanages or youth prisons so they had nobody to claim the remains. The other reason was that most patients had some form of contamination that required secured disposal. Whether it be radioactive dyes from the scans, chemotherapy, or mostly the secret chemicals they had worked on when the accident that harmed them happened. There were a lot of reasons to necessitate an autopsy and mandatory cremation. According to Older Lucas, it was actually carried out in a plasma autoclave similar to what SeaQuest I & II used to destroy their garbage.

They used the pass-cards to open the reinforced tempered glass doors and quickly go to the stairs. Younger Lucas insisted they use only stairs when they could so as to get his brother to move and be active so as to boost his health for the coming weeks of mental and physical effort. The Older sibling simply smiled and followed directives while relishing the attention and care his little tyke gave him.

They climbed down about three levels before the stairs ended at an airlock with a set of thickly padded hooded jackets with integrated clear plastic faceplates and air-warming elements around the entire garment. The batteries in the coats were kept energized by an induction relay. There were contact plates in the coat rack that touched the garment and recharged the system then stopped when the micro-controller from the heating device told the rack that it was full. The jackets also had an abridged version of a cell phone built into the faceplate that used the clear plastic as a screen guided by eye movement and two small physical keypads with closing cover were built into each sleeve just in the middle of the forearm. Everything was wired together so as to save energy and make certain the phone worked to call for help from the three surveillance offices around the complex: The mortuary reception, the administration reception and the security watchtower in the main gatekeep at the entry of the complex. In their case, everything was empty; if they had an emergency, they had to make do on their own.

Upon entering the level, Younger Lucas shivered under his loose, oversized jacket; they only had the adult size and the extra large people version at that. Tightening the belt around his waist again, he followed the older relative to what soon was identified as another airlock with a large viewing port and control console next to it. The bay window was about six feet high by some twenty feet wide and overlooked into a vision of what hell must hold for some of the people who enjoy fire too much.

It was an Icehold Vault, something that Younger Lucas had only heard rumors of through George and some of the Ex- CIA, NSA and DARPA skunkworks people that he had begun hiring for his many services. The concept was simple; human metabolism slowed down in cold temperatures and could actually hibernate to the point of stopping even the aging and geriatric processes if maintained properly. That was the caveat human science had no pierced yet; doing it stably and long term to insure that the person would stay alive and could be awakened to benefit from lifesaving surgeries and new medications at a later epoch.

This was supposed to be the holy grail of medicine for the rich and powerful. If you get sick, put yourself to sleep and then wake up periodically to take care of your affairs. You check up the state of medicine, give a few directives and then go back to sleep until the next check up while letting your money pile up for you.

The scientists had managed to cryogenize organs or full bodies to keep them for transplants and studies but never a living being to date. They needed to find a chemical that would circulate the tissues like blood to bring oxygen and nutrients but without freezing solid or warming up and unfreezing the organs that it irrigated. It seemed by the rows of naked, intubated bodies lined up under the window that humanity had indeed found a solution to its cryogeny problem. Younger Lucas swore he would find the chemical molecular model and bring it back with him. The applications this promised were just too good to pass up.

"All the persons that you see before you are alive. Not at all healthy in body or mind and they are all Us, little brother. They are all a version of Me and You from either a dimension or timeline where I tried to find help to undo the evil and unnatural acts of humanity upon this Earth. There were 139 attempts over 14 years; only those were deemed alive enough and safe enough to try and bring through. I located some 2703 versions of Us but only these here could be extracted with any type of chance of success. Only You came out of the vortex truly healthy and provably sane." The Older sibling paused to wipe his tears and silently pray for his sleeping kin.

"Every one of our siblings that I found and brought here was damaged in the soul or so badly injured that letting them die would have been a mercy if not for the advanced auto-docs and better drugs of this epoch. Still, most of those whose bodies could be repaired and made functionnal to some degree were so crippled in the mind that they tried to attack me or flee into the empty wilderness to take their chances with the animals. They were subdued or recovered no matter what it took and brought here after the auto-docs had done what they could. All of them, the handicapped, the broken, the insane and the comatose, they all sleep here under my watch, under my promise that they will not be beaten and raped and broken again." Older Lucas kneeled on both knees and folded his hands in prayer as he did each time that he came to visit or bring a new sibling to confide them unto the peaceful depths of the Vault.

Younger Lucas had tears running down his face and wasn't even aware of it nor would he have tried to stop the flow; this revelation was mind bending in its horror. Was that the only thing that being 'LUCAS' meant to the universe and humanity? Were they meant to be the whores, pain toys or rubber dolls for everyone and everything out there? Was that the only Fate and Karma of their soul? To suffer for the pleasure of others? How many of their siblings had been reduced to indenture, slavery and sub-human conditions of exploitation and depravity just so that some tail-wagging doggy-dog-dog of a brute could feel like a big powerful man?

Rage. Raw, burning, seething, coruscating RAGE lit up in the child's breast with a power to rival the Sun and sustain itself for all of the eternities. They thought that being Lord of Burgundy had warped his childish mind but they were just praying hopefully that he would not realize his full powers and become truly independent. Well their nightmares were about to become true and very real. Harken Humanity; The Divine Punishment Cometh unto Thee! There would be vast oceans of blood with tiny islands of rotting carrion and flotsam of bones when he was finished with this fool-infested mud ball!

Kneeling in prayer next to his older brother, Younger Lucas thought feverishly as to what was needed from this epoch to insure a crushing unilateral victory back in his dimension or timeline, wherever he came from. It was just the bad luck of the universe that instead of playing shooters and RPG's he had always preferred resource management games like SimCity, Civilization, Alpha Centauri, Age of Empire, United Galactic Federation and others of the style. Planning World Conquest was his hobby for rainy days and long trips; he would now make a craft, profession and religion out of it.

After spending a half hour in silent prayer, both brothers had their fill of the cold sepulcher and it's muffled mechanical noises that indicated the dreary state of subsistence for their kindred. Younger Lucas would keep that image in his mind and soul for the rest of his existence and never forgive the worlds which had done this upon his Blood and Kin. They walked back to the principal wing, right behind the admin tower and entered the large ground-floor restaurant that had served guests, doctors and the less damaged patients. They blocked open the doors so that fresh air from the outside could circulate around the entire dining hall and let them benefit from the cooling temperatures of the evening.

Going to the kitchen area, they took a table and some chairs to set up a small dining nook inside the work area to avoid walking around for no reason. It would also keep them close since neither wanted to be separated from his sibling at this point. Younger Lucas did a systematic search of the pantries, cupboards, fridges and a few nooks that were revealed to his synesthesia by banging loudly a copper frying pan against the stainless steel food prep counter. His doing so annoyed the older sibling until the little boy pointed out the hiding spots and they now had a small stash of chocolates, candies and even a pair of new cigarette packs and a baggie of dried shredded cannabis leaves for about three tokes.

The child made another example of his culinary art. He knew they had a long night of talking in front of them and they would need both proteins and sugars to endure. They would also need to mellow out so he decided to fix them both a space cake for dessert. His older brother would thank him in the morning. Maybe.

The main meal was simply assembled and presented but still a surprisingly complex affair from the hands of such a small child. He re-hydrated bacon strips while making a batter in a glass bowl. He prepared some vegetables mixed with herbs, spices and shredded cheese-like stuff. He took two chicken breasts that were canned individually in brine so they were tangy and also not frozen or dehydrated like everything else. He pan cooked the chicken before assembling the confections and placing them for another half-hour in the baking oven and the result was magnificent. He had assembled a delight: chicken wrapped in bacon with vegetable melt inside a puffed pastry. A handmade home-cooked wellington entrée to which he joined sides of mashed potatoes from a ready-made envelope and some rice cooked in chicken soup stock, onions, chives and marinated hot peppers to give it some taste and help their health with some essential vitamins, minerals and vinegars to fight scurvy and other illnesses they could get.

The meal was accompanied by some canned tomato & shell pasta soup they had found, toasted garlic bread and plenty of iced water or fruit juice. When the principal plate was done and the dessert came, it was another creation typical of Lucas and the BVL fare: a large waffle fresh from the iron topped with fruit salad, chopped nuts, chocolate shavings and vanilla ice cream with a drizzle of caramel.

The Older sibling was crying hard again as he thought of all that he had lost, never gotten to live and stopped experiencing in life because of the last 18 years. His last mental barriers broke down and he was now ready to talk of his life and experiences in one long conversation.

Younger Lucas was silently blaming himself for the deception he had played but filching the baggie of cannabis had quite literally been child's play with his training and the inattentiveness of the other man. He had strategically spread out the calming medicine by thinly shredding the leaves and mixing the stuff into the waffle batter along some mint, cinnamon and nutmeg to hide the taste. A little was mixed with the mint leaves in the ice cream as a condiment to take attention away from its taste. Then the classic of all ages; mixed with the loose leaves of the tea he prepared in a large glass bowl mounted over a chaffing candle to keep warm. They would use a ladle to fill cups as needed. He told his brother that he had seeped the great quantity to go along with the dessert and help smooth out the conversation. It wasn't a lie, just only 10% percent of the truth.

"So, my Older and less good looking Sibling, what brought you here to this dreary epoch?"

Why the fuck should I care?

(Kesha – Take it off)

24th December of 2300 - mid-evening

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Flashback in Living Lucas's mind, reviewing the events of the arrival in 2286

Deeper flashback: season 1

It was a day like so many other shitty washout days on this damned boat. Lucas had no real desire to be here but his stupid father had signed him up with the UEO like an agent signs a high school athlete to whatever team gives him the commission without a care for the kid he represents.

He had been fifteen years old with his mastery freshly emitted by Stanford when it happened; Lawrence had sent a lawyer with the papers; his opinion was neither asked, needed nor even wanted. The UEO got to train him for the five months left before his sixteenth birthday, just to kiss the law's ass and be inside the rules, then he deployed from the dry-docks in NCQ for a year. And another. And another after that. Until he turned 21 years old and the exceptional juvenile disciplinary powers the government had given his father through a pet judge beholden to William Noyce expired.

And that fuckshit would follow him all his life; placed in the navy because he was a discipline problem so bad that his father didn't know what to do with him anymore. Ah! Like the lackwit had ever been present in his life long enough to try anything! He wanted money and rights for World Power Project so he whored out his overly intelligent son off to the navy to get his profit while Lucas had a blasted reputation and shattered life in exchange.

His mother disowned him when he was 9 years old because he was more intelligent than the dumb blonde socialite whose only skill was lying on her back and floating inside her empty head while whomever she was in bed with got their needs satisfied. She was uneducated, useless and had the personality of a fungus crossed with a mold colony. He was well shot of her and never regretted it. Lawrence could actually have given him a service and taken her opinion seriously for once and dumped him on one of his two aunts. Even an orphanage would have been better than this floating coffin.

But no; he had obtained money, power and reputation by lending them his son to do with as they pleased. And they pleased a lot. He was not even officially in any of the ship's databases. Not a crew member; not a civilian scientist; not an independent contractor; not a paying passenger; and not even a godforsaken piece of inventory with a barcode tattooed on his face! He did not exist because Noyce told him to his face, in front of Commander Ford and Chief Crocker, that he was such an embarrassment and shame on his family, that he now had the obligation to earn his place as a human to begin with. Then they may consider allowing him the chance to earn a standing amongst the civilian crew, like in the floor sweeping details.

That stigma never left his life, not ever. Even after the events which led to Andrea Dre being arrested and having TWENTY diplomats vouching for his dignity and integrity, it wasn't enough. Noyce's pet judge kept the leash on tight and even tried to have Lucas put in juvy jail for a year on trumped up charges of attempting to be contemptuous of the judge, the court and the binding order given onto his soul by Christian Authority.

It was the last minute arrival of Captain Bridger and his old friend and family Lawyer Jermaine Larochelle, an African-american woman in her early fifties, that had the judge backpedaling when the woman started demanding the proof that Lucas had belonged in juvy court to begin with a year ago at the first hearing. When it was found out that he didn't have a hearing but was judged in abstentia on Noyce's say-so with Lawrence acting in loco parentis to wave his son's rights to be present, to have counsel or to rebut witnesses, the few people in the room came alive with outrage.

But not enough outrage to force an actual hearing. Not enough outrage to get a new judge to arbitrate. Not enough outrage to get the written physical proof of why Lucas was such a shame upon his family that imprisoning him on a warship was required. No; they were just outraged enough to keep him out of juvy hall and then demanded gratitude, docility and smiles aplenty for the rest of his life for the menial, meaningless gestures they had made.

Justice and a fair trial are supposed fundamental rights of every person born in the USA but evidently that applies only if the powerful don't want you to suffer. Or if there isn't some form of power or benefit from keeping you ignorant and submissive like everyone on board seemed to want him to be as an outcome of this.

Lucas was nobody's fool; he wouldn't have survived so long in San Francisco and Stanford alone if he were an idiot. He certainly would not have survived a year at sea on a glorified corndog stick with a plastic propeller and rubber-band motor the way he did if he were inept or unfit for human interaction.

No, he was not stupid; that's why since day 1 on board he had systematically wiretapped and bugged the SeaQuest to spy on people's comms, PALs and personal computers. That was the only true way to get a genuine feel of what people really thought of him, his attitude and skillset when he wasn't around to defend himself against their bitchings. Plus the thousand camera and microphones built into the ship as security apparatus helped with spying real-time a whole lot. Especially since he was in charge of maintaining and repairing the computers that kept security running.

"The Truth is a terrible, many-splendored thing" goes the old proverb; ain't that a fact.

He had almost nobody on is side on the ship. Out of 85 sailors and 132 scientists, he had 3 people on his side for real no matter what shit went down. Darwin the dolphin whose voice would never be heard because the vocoder was a classified project. Lt Commander Katie Hitchcock who was sickened by all the illegalities and immoralities she saw around his case. Communications chief Timothy O'Neil who was a more moral and upstanding man by himself than a dozen abbeys chuck full of cardinals could ever hope to be. No one else.

Everyone else on board thought he was an asshole, a waste of space, a spoiled brat in need of whippings or just a piece of trash that should have been dumped ashore and forgotten. The only reason they kept him was, big surprise, his skills and the fact he had saved the damned boat a few times to date. Otherwise, in terms of liking him as a person, that wasn't gonna happen. He was universally reviled just because of his age and the rumors that Noyce spread about him at the beginning.

He even learned that the trial with the damned judge had been a set up. It was all done to jolt him with fear in a blatant maneuver to trauma bond him to the useless old bastard Bridger so the man would have freer hand in his disciplinary methods against the teenager without Lucas yelling foul and going off boat to get help. And wasn't that a kicker, ladies and gents; he found out there would be help outside. He had a recording with confirmation from Noyce, Bridger and the judge talking together that what they did to him was nowhere legal in US soil or the UEO member confederations and they had to keep it hush-hush or they would join Dre in jail.

He was still trying to figure out what to do with his little dollop of poison a couple of months later when the besancted World Power Plant went up in smoke. His father lost several billions of dollars and essentially bankrupted the Wolenczak family and name for several generations with his idiocy.

Deeper flashback: between seasons 1 & 2

The ship burned; wasn't that a crying shame. Bridger survived; that was something to cry about, dammit!

The fuckshit UEO didn't even want to reopen his court case even when it was proved that he had no hearing to begin with, the proof didn't exist and there had been no witnesses to anything.

The judge suddenly retired and went out of the country without leaving an address but that was supposedly normal, even for a guy that had another fifteen to twenty years in his career in front of him.

Bill Noyce had his career destroyed with the disaster of WPP; once his interim as Secretary General of the UEO was over and the elections passed, he retired completely from public life and disappeared into anonymity.

The new Secretary General, MacGrath, didn't give a fuck and honestly told him that with the mess Lawrence had made, Lucas was lucky to not be sued for a part of his meager salary to help refund the costs of what his stupid dad had broken and burned. So shut up and live with the damned court order or it would get worse.

Well Lucas tried something; he went to Kid's Help Phone, got a lawyer for juveniles and had a very public hearing with media cameras. The order was invalidated and he was given back compensation to what he was due on the real salary he should have gotten for doing TWO FULL TIME JOBS, plus rewards some of his exploits had earned him but he never got them and wasn't told to keep him meek and pliable. He received ownership of the Stinger's blueprints, reproduction rights and possession of the only existing unit as personal property. Several people of the first SeaQuest's crew were pissed but unable to contest without risking lawsuits and prison time for unlawful detention of a minor, forced labor, assault under the guise of disciplinary interventions, etc… Bridger, Ford, Ortiz, and a hundred others lied through their teeth about how happy for him they were. They had lost control, were exposed as frauds and were meaningless as men and everybody knew it.

MacGrath called him in for a meeting by having a dozen armored and armed sailors violently pull him from his small motel room at 2:00am and drag him like a rabid cur all the way to the shipyards. The old general had come from the US Navy's tactical missile command before going into politics. He had no tact and little manners to spare, especially on what he saw as a piece of equipment already paid for. He laid the terms clearly: Lucas knew too much and was a threat to the security of the UEO. Either he worked for them, or MacGrath would have him disappear into a network of privately operated christian orphanages where he would be beaten and tortured, especially through gang raping, until he broke. Then he would be exploited in sweatshop conditions until he died or his mind broke, or it was no longer safe to keep him alive. Same difference from where MacGrath sat.

Lucas then played his ace in the hole; he had nothing left to lose anyways since he doubted he would come out alive. He exposed the failsafe he had placed in the World Bank's servers following the events at Node 3 and then the many occurrences of bitchcrap after that. If MacGrath tried to force or hurt him, the last century of financial data for the entire Earth would disappear and leave countries with no option but to barter with fish and herbs and nuggets of ore to get any trade done.

MacGrath grunted, then shrugged clearly unimpressed. That was the last thing that he forgot to remember before his alarm clock rang and he dressed up for his first day on the job as the official designer and manager of Information Technologies for the construction of the SeaQuest II right alongside the traitor Bridger.

The design and build was completely unmentionable since nothing worthy of note happened. He lived in a cheap 1 star motel for two years in the same room. He had no social life. He worked about 14 to 18 hours a day but never really kept track of his pay or benefits. Bridger told him it was cared for and that was enough.

When the keel was laid, he almost cried but didn't know why because he had never liked ships or mechanical engineering that much before. The built was slow, mind numbing and felt a waste of his efforts. But he was wanted, Bridger told him at least once a week how his work was vital. Even as he closed the lights and left for a whiskey with older officers and engineers, he made sure Lucas knew at what time to leave, never before a certain quota had been reached, though he was never told why or who set the time. He just blandly answered with a nod and whispered "Yes sir". Like an automaton; never question; never challenge; never deviate; never ask for more; and don't you dare ever want a better life because you don't deserve one.

The launch of the ship was a relief in both body and mind. That was short lived. MacGrath called a meeting with him but by leaving a message on his voice mail this time. Not that he remembered the previous event.

MacGrath spoke plainly: Lucas was still a risk but that could easily be handled if he signed up for another year of service on the ship he had made famous and then rebuilt to take it to higher glory. He signed with a smile, like a simpering idiot, like he was channeling his mother all of a sudden.

Flashback: season 2; shipboard

The GUELFs, America's shame exposed for all to see. Tony Piccolo and his gills proved publicly that butchering humans to create super soldiers was still very much a priority of the USA and UEO. Creating genetic monstrosities and letting them loose in the ocean to wreak havoc so they could then come in and claim to be saviors. Secret underwater prisons were holding unregistered prisoners and torturing willy-nilly anybody they wanted. Unmarked colonies, not written on the maps, were built and controlled by cults. And lots of guns, soldiers, more guns and some dodging dodgy characters with the Stinger because he was a nice guy and let them use the thing without charge or limits.

The second tour was at least as bad as the first but it felt distant, like he was wading through cold molasses in the depths of a canadian winter in James Bay while breathing the damn gas the dentist had used when putting him to sleep to take out his wisdom teeth. He felt that the several months since the ship's launch had been lived as if spent in a virtual reality apparatus more than his own body. There were moments, thankfully experienced in private, of aphasia where he said things different than his thoughts without control. There were episodes of drowning in a fugue state and waking up not really certain that he was himself. He had the feeling that not everything was right with his health, especially after vomiting blood a few times for no reason since he hadn't eaten weird stuff and it didn't feel like food poisoning or an allergy.

The first real clue that something was not right in his head was when he realized that he had never wiretapped the shipyard offices to learn about people's opinions towards him. Then he realized it had been 2 months aboard already and still the wiretapping wasn't done. So he got to it; in slow motion, without any ardor, but it got done because his survival depended on it. He tapped wires and airwaves, connected to comms, PAL's and personal devises all over the ship and cleaned up a lot of scrap and spyware from his own systems along the way. Why the hell had that all been there anyways? He was more vigilant than that normally. Not to mention hacker's pride at keeping a cybernetic fortress in good order so his secrets stayed secret and his alone.

What he saw, heard and found out made him want to puke blood again.

He relearned the bastardy of Bridger, Ford, Ortiz and several others. Some few like O'Neil, Brody, Henderson and even Piccolo were honorable and could be trusted, but that was it. Even Darwin was acting weird and spying actively on the humans of the ship.

The Chief Medic Wendy Smith was even more of a dishonest frigid bitch than Westphalen ever was, and that's saying something. She systematically mind-raped everybody on board, at least once a week, to detect potential traitors or 'deviants' to put them on a watchlist she sent to Section 7. Even Bridger and Ford were scanned.

Dagwood was nowhere near the stupid idiot he portrayed and his weekly reports to US Naval Intel were detailed, exacting and revealed an IQ in the solid 100 at least. His childish way of speaking and gentle ways of moving and holding objects were truly the inverse of what his real, unredacted file proclaimed was a silent, efficient hack & slash machine that had no care whatsoever for life or existence. Dagwood lived for the thrill of the hunt, the fight, the capture and the execution, often after a long session of raping and breaking the person. He was a monster just like the US Military had wanted when the GUELF program was instituted around twenty five years ago. A perfect specimen indeed.

There were a lot like that; rapists and butchers, spies and Mengele wannabes. The ship was chuck full of things than didn't deserve to be called human anymore. And then the time vortex happened.

Near Flashback: arrival in 2286; shipboard

There were times in life where Lucas often thought that suicide was an underrated solution to the small but nastily recurrent condition called 'existence'. Today was like that. After finally wiretapping everything in sight, including secret wires, hidden free wave communicators and several hundred illegal personal devices; and then going through the Sargasso sea of data and miscellany that all produced, he finally felt he was up to speed on the social and political happenings on board. So he prepared to go to his shift on the bridge where he had an actual designated station, unlike the first ship.

He should have stayed in bed or even called in sick and let the bitch poke him to her blackened wretched heart's content rather than walk into this mess. There was a vortex hanging vertically right in front of the ship at about 500 meters and it was exerting gravitational waves with a pulling force equal to six times the mass of the ship or four times the engines' maximum torque. They were going in no matter what they tried. Oh, joy!

Once on the other side, it fell to him, O'Neil and the crud Ortiz to figure out what the mess was they were swimming in while Brody made himself useful and had security swarm the ship and search for hull breaches or hostile incursions. Pinging the GPS net and trying to locate the UEO orbital defense platforms were the two priorities for Lucas, after that a wide area sweep of the Internex to see what the local chatter was about. You don't drop a 1,000 foot long 5 level high boat in somebody's ocean without blowback.

Informing the scowling captain that the GPS net and laser Platforms were no longer responding to his codes, had different orbits and were about three times more numerous than possible at the budgets and construction speed the UEO had available was not going to end well for him. He saw it in Bridger's eyes.

As usual, Lucas had been right; Bridger had backhanded him across the face in full view of everyone and there had been no reactions from any human on deck. Maybe because it was a recurring event in his relationship with the man for the last 3 years he had known him. Whenever a bad news came in, Bridger called Lucas and hit him a few times or found him alone in his cabin and beat him black and blue for no reason other than he could. The court order from the run-away felon judge still gave Bridger another 2 years of penultimate authority and the man was getting his licks in while he could. Because of the brand new wiretaps, Lucas knew again that he was supposed to be free; he just didn't know why in Hell's Bells he was on the damned ship or helped to build it.

The vortex closed behind the ship trapping them in what the network clocks said was 2286 or roughly 250 years in the future compared to their date of departure. Then a signal was received from a woman on shore at a governmental monitoring station on the shoreline of New Cape Quest at the southern-most part of the county.

The captain was still enraged and knew his own temper so he decided to put Lucas on the shuttle to the shore so as to keep the kid away from his flying fists and the possibility of killing his best chance of getting back to their home time. Bridger was no fool and kept everyone he knew to be friends with Lucas on the ship. He sent a mechanic, a general technician and two surly brutal sailors; 3rd class seamen who hated Lucas and liked seeing him beaten.

Lucas learned from his wiretaps that many parts of his equipments and clothes had RFID trackers, symbols invisible to the eye written with radioactive marking dye and some of the ship's 2nd rate hackers were trying to put back into his systems and devices the spywares and locators he had purged in the last week. Then the real heart-stopper was spoken out loud.

Bridger and Smith had a private discussion in what they both thought was a blind hole in the ship's security sensor grid. They talked about Lucas and a set of tracking and identification implants that had been placed in his body 3 years ago during in the week-long medical evaluation, inoculations and preparatory surgeries before the 5 months of boot camp. There was mention of a brain implant put in the basal ganglia between the brain lobes 2 years ago just before they began the design phase of SeaQuest II. That explained why he had joined the project despite being set free of his father, the UEO, the Navy and all obligations. They forced him by raping his body and his soul and then forbidding him to remember.

The conversation centered on the illegal experimental biological neural co-processor that had been designed in the phantom colony of Abalon by Franklin Wise. The emphasis was on how he had designed the device specifically to resist the hormonal imbalances and physical changes of teenagers' nervous systems, thus his successes with Sharpa, Kaman and Mika all the way up to their early twenties. The device was deemed reliable at keeping a strong willed teenager pliable and following a short set of docility instructions.

The basics rules were separated in two groups: the obligations and the forbiddances.

- Remember that he has no value whatsoever unless granted by authority

- Remember that he has no personhood whatsoever unless granted by authority

- Remember that he has no place in society whatsoever unless granted by authority

- Remember that he has no rights or privileges whatsoever unless granted by authority

- Never kill authority, its agents or his superiors in life or society

- Never commit suicide to escape authority or the rulers of his body and soul

- Never inspect or question authority's motives, method or logic

- Never disobey authority, its agents and proxies whatever form they have

- Never resist authority or its agents physically, mentally or spiritually

- Never run away from authority physically

- Never run away from authority mentally by fugue state or intoxication

- Never refuse any punishment, degradation or humiliation applied by authority, its agents or proxies

The implant effectively made him into what Bridger had wanted all along: a copy of his son Robert. A new pain toy to replace the one he lost because he was too old and resisted and then ran away to the Navy. Now he had Lucas that he could beat and rape in private or malign in public. Now Bridger could feel like a big powerful man again instead of being just a lonely old crud that had been forgotten by everyone. At the same time the implant had kept Lucas sane, balanced and capable of the same high level technical functionality that had been his trademark all his young life. No wonder the US Navy had jumped on Wise's damnable device and began using it to secure assets against their will or the most common Laws of the Land. The memory erasure and modification was a new thing to look into as well. After all, he truly didn't remember all the times Bridger had raped him and it seemed to have been at least monthly for all the time that he knew him. Something like that could come in handy to guarantee his escape if people didn't remember his existence anymore.

It was interesting to hear about all this in a sick way; especially since it told him he had a nasty bout of brain flu to take care of pronto. But it also explained some of the nose bleeds and vomiting bloody bile in the last three weeks; he had been accidentally exposed to some GUELF DNA by contact with Dagwood's blood when he had gotten several deep cuts during a repair in the engine room alongside Lucas. It was the teen who had acted as the nurse to clean, patch and bind the wounds so they could keep safe until the job was done. Because the GUELF DNA was synthetic and so strong, it had gotten into his bloodstream through little scrapes on his hands and bolstered his immune system, thus starting a war with the neural implant. It was because of the loosened grip on his cognitive and perceptual processes that Lucas realized his multiple survival strategies were not in place and the rest was a game of dominoes and consequences of finally waking up from a virtual zombie-state.

Bridger paid him the expected visit in his cabin to beat him harshly with his fists and then belt when he fell to the floor because of the disorientation and stars floating around his vision. After a quarter hour of silent suffering, Lucas was roughly hauled to his feet by the two lewdly smirking seamen who both had visible hard-ons and didn't hide it. Neither did Bridger hide his fully orgasmic state at having physically dominated the intelligent, strong minded teenager yet again. He certainly wasn't going to win a mental contest against him that was sure! Even the implant didn't dampen his intellect; the Navy wanted a certified genius on board, not a dumb blond bimbo rubber doll for Bridger's pleasure. The geriatric bastard was of course not telling anyone about the brain implant and the only reason he could dominate Lucas was because the kid presently had the survival instincts and willpower of a potted plant. Hypocrite; in truth Bridger was powerless without the implant and knew it.

Near Flashback: arrival in 2286; shore team #1

Once put into the MR-3 launch like some spare suitcase, no attention was given to his injuries by the sailors. He had troubles moving around but about an hour of free time. Lucas went hiding in the diving room and locked the door with a secret code. He took some pain pills, patched his worst bleeding cuts, spread some analgesic cream over half his body and finally felt human again. He decided to take some water and eat a pair of military ration bars he had filched at the beginning of the month to build up energy for the day ahead. Bridger had a nasty habit of keeping him on a diet of only two small meals a day most times that he was nearby to supervise Lucas directly. He liked it when the teenager had trouble moving with slowed reflexes or sluggish thinking because then he felt like his own geriatric conditions were less grave. When Lucas got out of the airlock room at the back of the shuttle it was almost time to beach and start the foot search. They didn't need to walk past the automated white WMG patrol van with a human sized and shaped robot in the driver seat.

The ride was silent for the 5 humans since neither liked the other and had nothing to say or share that would help the mission. Lucas sat in the front passenger seat next to the robot driver while the other four were in the back spread amongst the benches, equipment luggage and their travel packs. Lucas had wisely kept his own travel bag and satchel of computer gear at hand in front in case somebody spilled or kicked something important just because. Not to mention that Bridger would blame him, not the older crewman, if something got broken and he had to currier them replacements with another shuttle. That beating would lay him out in the infirmary for at least a week, not matter what kind of mess they were drowning in.

The old man was losing his grip on both reality and his temper at a rapid pace. Lucas estimated grossly that the man's sanity and perceptions would cave in to dementia and geriatric memory problems before half of the teen's nineteenth year of life was reached. All the symptoms were clear to the eye, if you knew where to look. The only reason MacGrath kept the bastard on board despite Smith's repeated warnings was because the stupid court order of 'remedial disciplinary rights' was attached to Bridger and could not be changed due to the small fact that, oh yes!, it was illegal and was supposed to have been rescinded two years ago.

Switching mental gears, Lucas visually analyzed the robot as it drove, if you could call it that. Apparently the van was the pinnacle of driverless vehicles and could circulate in the streets and even off-road very easily. The service robot was there to repair the van or carry human passengers too old or feeble from their place of accident to the van and then the hospital. The robot just sat there, its five-fingered hands in its lap, silently and unmoving except for the gentle swaying that the van imposed on all its riders. The completely white body frame, blue sensor strip at eye height and large WMG logo on the chest showed clearly the automaton belonged to the governing authorities or some utilities company. It wasn't privately owned, that was sure.

They reached a small building made of red bricks, wooden planks and glass. It looked like a neighborhood chapel more than a utilities station or a government office. But the large wooden billboard on the outside said clearly: World Management Grid; substation for New Cape Quest County; established 2262. There was nothing alive or moving in sight and the automated van went under a car port attached to the building's left side to park and put itself into cold idling. A synthetic voice emanated from both the robot and van's many speakers: "Please disembark and enter the building by the door under the flashing green light. Thank you for trusting the World Management Grid."

"Well, I guess even our genius boy here can't botch this up! Eh! Eh! Eh!" exclaimed Ronny Boudreau, one of the two arrogant assholes Bridger had assigned as muscle for the team. The 3rd class seaman was crass, surly and mannerless, even to high ranking females like Henderson or Smith. And Lucas thought many things about the psychic woman but had enough class and deportment not to say or think them in front of her. There were minimal standards of behavior to be maintained, even with people you despised or hated with valid reasons. To act otherwise is simply to lower oneself to their level.

Near Flashback: arrival in 2286; WMG substation

The group picked up the luggage and moved inside to see that the building had indeed been built as some sort of chapel or gathering hall. The design was an amphitheatre of large shallow concentric platforms to hold cheap folding plastic chairs and a lofted balcony with a rather ordinary wooden banister where they guessed a choir would have sung in past years before the place was converted for a different public service. In the front of the assembly hall was a raised platform, only four steps above the main floor, with a large, tall decorative array of crystal pipes and a massive vidscreen in front of those pipes. The screen was a public display system of easily fifteen feet wide by seven feet high and there was a row of twenty four tube-style cameras mounted along the top rim of the screen.

As they placed the luggage in a pile in the front-most row of chairs the vidscreen came alive and showed the image of the woman while at the same time a six foot tall hologram of her appeared out of thin air in the middle of the raised platform. As the men grumbled around Lucas he began to have a bad feeling about the situation. It looked more and more like a classic bait & switch by network proxies using an avatar as a cat's paw.

"Welcome to the WMG, substation 01 NCQ County. This is the main user interface chamber for this area of the neighborhood. I am Humania, the central intelligence which manages the networks and machineries of the earthsphere and its orbital platforms." The woman looked to be caucasian or nordic; pale skin, blond hair and blue eyes with a faint southern drawl or midwestern accent. She was obviously made to represent the idea of a better humanity in the eyes of whoever programmed her.

Lucas stepped forward, knowing nobody else would as this was now officially a computer geek's domain of expertise. Talking computers were definitely not diplomatic or military situations. While the four sailors might despise him for his age or personality, or because they themselves were scum that should have been rotting in Leavenworth a long time ago, they still knew enough to not piss him off to the point he stopped being useful. If he stopped working or started fighting them, Bridger would have them writhing in pain under a whip instead of the kid and they weren't sure anyone would stop him. The boat was full of crud and criminals after all; it wasn't like loyalty or integrity were in the recruitment criteria for the tour.

It took less than a half hour of conversation recorded and transmitted back at the ship to explain the entire situation with how humanity had blasted itself back into primordial ooze via bio-weapons on one hand, massive walking death machines on the other. The fact that there were still a couple of those walking around was a damn nightmare, and the fact that they were under the control of autonomous hackers who acted outside the WMG's capacity to stop their signals or trace them was another level of crap in and of itself.

Bridger ordered two more shore teams, composed of one computer tech to track the damn hackers and three sailors with pulse rifles, ordinary bullet pistols plus the usual eight hand grenades and four bricks of plastique to each man. These two teams would leave in a single shuttle with a pair of dedicated pilots who would then return the launch to the ship to limit the material exposed out of ship. Again, none of Lucas's friends were in the teams thus showing that Bridger was still thinking more of controlling his flesh doll than carrying out the mission efficiently. With morons like Ford and Ortiz at his side, he wasn't going to get a differing opinion any time soon. The basic tactics of each team once ashore would be to find and commandeer a military vehicle from the WMG and drive around following the indications of their tech. Once they found the hackers, knock them out and bring them back to the docks for holding and a muscled interrogation. Bridger wanted answers and wasn't shy about obtaining them anyways necessary.

Near Flashback: arrival in 2286; WMG substation – Lucas alone

The accidental result of this was that Lucas was now alone in the WMG substation as Bridger had decided to make the first team responsible for locating a source of clean water around the dock where the ship would come in to berth. They had to see if the holding clamps and connector pipes were still compatible before the ship moved into position along the jetty. Since Lucas would be basically immobile and Bridger trusted the damned implant to keep him docile and inoffensive, he didn't give a second thought to isolating the teen inside the main hub of a supercomputer. What an arrogant, idiotic asshole.

Lucas discussed with the AI what her plan had been, what she expected and how to carry it out. So Lucas faked his way through being the sorrowful little kiddie who was gonna have to kill his new pet to keep everyone in humanity safe and happy. The sap story would have angered Bridger but the anguish and pain it brought the blond teen was sweet nectar to the old bastard's necrotized heart. He generously allowed Lucas to take his time to say goodbye to the poor 'woman' while also ordering him to call as soon as the system was fully manual so as to receive a batch of detailed orders. Once alone again with the AI, Lucas followed the procedure to decompile the Intelligence, destroy the backup and then pull the crystals from the large array behind the monitor. The virtual woman explained that those pipes were actually a combination of motherboard, processor and memory; an all-in-one type of optical and magnetic system that was only as old as the WMG itself.

As soon as the entire WMG was scaled down to manual mode across the planet, Lucas started entering his own firewalls, detectors, guard dogs, spywares, worms and counter-attack hydras to secure his control point and then extend it outwards, one substation at a time. He ordered the building's doors and windows shuttered and locked in hurricane mode. The designers were intelligent and had foreseen that Florida's hurricanes would come through between five and eight times a year so there were thick steel storm shields and they were completely automated.

With the place now nominally airtight and secured against surprise intrusion, Lucas placed his PAL unit, personal official smartphone and backup ghost phone filched of one of Bridger's favorite goons into a localized USB network connected to his laptop but truly secured and completely off-web. The goal was to program the mobiles with fake GPS signals and play film loops in their cameras and microphones. It would look like he was diligently typing away at the majestic crystal mainframe's terminal to get its manual mode up and running for the next nine hours straight with nary a break. He had given the Captain an estimate of nine hours while citing that it usually took a team of three some four hours to do that in optimal circumstances with the AI online and helping the process. Bridger had raged but quickly relented, knowing any other tech would have taken around four days to do what Lucas would accomplish in those nine hours.

In reality, the teenager had a very different plan than what the defective AI and brain-dead morons aboard ship envisioned. He wanted immediate safety first, freedom second, absence of pursuit third. He also had a long term plan for rectifying all the bitchcrap that had landed on his life and soul in his nineteen years of life and since God had so kindly handed him a fully functional time portal on a planet sized tray, well who was he to refuse the Divine in its Allmight?

Near Flashback: arrival in 2286; Murder most foul

Letting a teenaged hacker into a governmental system like the orbital defense grid is not in any way, shape or form brilliant. Doing so after having beaten, raped and humiliated the young person while using an illegal and toxic brain implant to insure compliance and erasing memories as you go was a proof positive of your own stupidity and that you deserve to stop existing. This was the situation that Bridger was faced with on this day but would never be aware of it enough, fast enough to correct it.

Lucas used his Principal Designer / root-level Alpha-Zero-Alpha administrator access into the ship's computer core to send the password to activate an illegal phantom security bypass that Bridger himself had obliged him to install in case the ship needed to deal with shady characters, do some black marketing or bring aboard a prisoner that should not be publicly acknowledged. The malware-type program locked the sensors themselves, at the local hardware level - not the CPU core or bridge consoles, into replaying a looped recording of the first hour of their presence in this Time period. That meant that unless someone went directly to the machinery rooms and scanned the activity registry directly on the chipsets of the sensors themselves they would never be able to tell that what the consoles depicted was not real.

Since Lucas had built the malware from scratch, he had also built into it several back doors and toggles to maintain exclusive command, even if he gave Bridger a small client app to install in his PAL to tell him when the program was active, which sensors were tricked and of course, the old man wanted a kill switch to override Lucas at any time. Snort! As if any hacker worth his codes would ever willingly cede control of his actively used defenses and tools! Even Franklin Wise's implant didn't have enough power or chemicals to make him do that.

None of the highly advanced sensors, radars, cameras or radio antennae on board detected anything from the orbital defense platforms before the eighteen satellites positioned at an angle to reach the ship at its depth all deployed their weapons and fired simultaneous continuous beams for five full seconds. The firepower combined was of such terrifying capacity that the entire harbor area of NCQ was vaporized in the first three seconds and dug down by an extra forty percent in the last two.

SeaQuest never had a chance to dodge, move forward nor do anything, not even peep in protest as nobody saw or perceived it coming. Every being aboard was turned into free-floating atoms and steam, including his only true four friends in life. Lucas was a mass murder, a traitor to the UEO and most of all, a betrayer of his friends. He would weep for them the tears they deserved later when he built them a small memorial stone. For now, he still had a clean up of a dozen cruddy criminal sailors with a taste for his flesh to do and wasn't completely safe until he was the last human alive on Earth. The details about the mopping up operations and hunting the sailors were unimportant, he forgot most of them anyways and knew he had killed them all because he checked a dozen times that they were all accounted and deader than dead.

Secondary details from arriving in 2286

(SeaQuest - season 2 opening theme)

24th December of 2300 - Late-evening

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Administration tower

Older Lucas was, to put it mildly, loopier than a pad of steel wool that got all mussed up. He was drooling a bit and leaning rather heavily on the left, his elbow on the table, his head in his hand and the sort of vacant smile on his lips that only junkies are familiar with. And he was also extremely happy for the first time in some 24 months. That would require some analysis later on. If he remembered. He could ask his kid brother about it.

"So Bro, what happened after the baddies were gone?" Younger Lucas asked in a slightly slurred voice. He wasn't high as an orbital platform, no sirree, he was not… He was orbiting the Sun right now and no further than that. He really needed to toughen against those kinds of basic entry-level drugs along with alcohol or he would get snookered by every little idiot with a gram of herbs or a sip of booze and spill his most precious secrets every time.

"Weeelll, lesseee… The automated vehicles from the WMG were really helpful in tracking down the idjiots from the SQ but it shouldna bothered. When I lit up the harbor, the two fire teams that were left, they all came like moths around a candle flame and stood on the closest piece of concrete still standing. They all called each other out over the PAL network like dogs barking at the moon and assembled on the terrace of some restaurant that used to overlook a very large and very long sandy beach. Well, now it had about 300 feet deep of blue waters right off the balustrade and was threatening to fall in if they walked wrong and made the thing vibrate too much. I just had a pair of aerial recon drones fly-by and I okayed the planes to mow them down with the repeating pulse rifles. Snort! Six per plane my man, and each damn gun shoots with the strength of a naval 3" barrel at some 30 shots per minute. The planes were some four thousand yards away when they started the strafing run; the blue-clad curs never even had a warning from anything and didn't see it coming until the red beams were vaping them."

Older Lucas foraged in his satchel until he got the booty he was looking for. Grasping the pack of cigarettes they had found earlier with clumsy fingers, he painstakingly worked on removing the wrapper and then picking one of the cancer sticks. He put the tube of damnation in his mouth then started searching for a lighter before remembering that he hadn't smoked anything in years and not carried a source of live flame since about as long. With a sigh of long suffering patience, he plucked the toke out of his mouth and placed the tobacco end of it under his nose and gave himself some ghetto-style aromatherapy much to the disapproval of his younger brother.

"Note to self" snarked the child "My brother has an addiction-prone temperament; keep stuff away from him." He really was a tetchy little runt saying that right at the face of his Big Brother who had welcomed him so kindly on his planet and his home. And no, it wasn't a public place, he was the only one using it for years…

Trying to straighten out his thoughts and wondering were he was going like this, Older Lucas closed his eyes to try and make sense of what he had to say. "Okay, well now I was free, I was safe and there weren't no pursuit anymore. So after braking down in tears for about a whole day, my gut started growling for food so I got my ass in gear and opened up the substation to go scouting around town. I stopped at the nearest convenience store that had a little snack counter with some nukers to warm up stuff and got me a canned soup which was pretty much the only thing left not rotted, molded or chewed on by vermin. After that, well I knew about the implant in my head and that I had some injuries from Bridger's insanities so I used the WMG terminal in the store to locate the biggest and best equipped hospital in town and then used the automated van I was riding in to get there."

Older Lucas was a bit surprised when his kid sibling took away the tea bowl and replaced it with a similar glass bowl but filled with piping hot coffee for the rest of the evening. Unbeknownst to him, the child wanted to start sobering them up so the hangover tomorrow morning would be less harsh and his Older Sibling would be less prone to anger against his little therapeutic usage of… homeopathic medicine? Yeah! That sounds right…?"

After fixing up a cup and tasting the excellent brew that had long been reserved for the administrators of the hospital, both lapsed into companiable silence until their first cup was drained and a new one fixed up.

"I got myself to a place called 'Shriners' Hospital for sick, injured and dispirited youth' in the core area of NCQ, in what used to be old Downtown Miami, once upon a time… Was about three blocks from the tower of the UEO executive cabinet even. From the room I convalesced in, I could see the windows of the office where I met Andrea Dre just before getting aboard SQ I and then with that rat bastard MacGrath before SQ II was built and wet. Thinking about their deaths was a great comfort to me in those days." He stopped to ruminate on long past days and pains, trying to dredge up details that seemed intent on never letting themselves be remembered actively. Sometimes he just had echoes of emotions of those days, sometimes not even that. His mind was truly fracturing and he hoped the little guy would either help him or put him to sleep in the Icehold Vault with the rest of their kin so he could keep his promise to watch over their sleep and keep them safe.

"I got in the hospital and the automated systems took over from there; body fluids, solid samples, breathing and lung capacity exercises, endurance tests on treadmill and stationary bike, hand-eye coordination and reflex tests with some hyper-reality chamber. And lots of full-body scans of all sorts. I was probably glowing in broad daylight when the damn diagnostics came back; defective neural co-processor with a beginning of infection that was threatening to turn to gangrene in a few days if not operated on right away. There was also a beginning of septicemia and initial sepsis in several areas of the brain and spinal trunk. My heart was straining to supply oxygen and movement to my blood which was far too viscous and I was chronically undernourished so I had no reserves to help my recovery. I was a mess for the three years before so I wasn't surprised when the auto-doc suggested an immediate internment in the Intensive Care unit."

Older Lucas suddenly got a look on his face that was weird as he scrunched up his nose and frowned at the same time. He knew he was forgetting something but he had seen and learned a lot about this epoch and then forgotten it from sheer disuse or never needing it in his life so… Was it really that important to remember everything? Was every little hole in his memory an alarm bell or a danger sign? Sigh…

"I checked the date and started a journal in a little booklet that I found in the hospice gift shop. Writing with a pen on paper was real, it was solid, it made me stop and think because you can't undo or erase or copy and paste with paper. You have to think in orderly sequence and then write it down so it's readable later on. I spent a total of eleven days in that empty, miserable place. There was only the auto-docs, the occasional holographic assistant when I needed to be moved or washed or had to call some robotic assistant for something. The whole damned place was emptier that Commander Ford's head on a slow day. There were times after the surgery to take out the implant that I wondered why I bothered to stay alive and go through it all. Now I look at you and I understand why I'm still here."

Younger Lucas could see that his Older Sibling was at the end of his roll and would not last much longer. He decided to blow out the chafing candle under the coffee and then help the man pick up his satchel and gear before they made their way up to the guest level of the admin tower after locking closed the outer door. The young child then asked if the older male had ever thought of installing security routines to lock down the complex or at least bunkerize the admin tower during the night. The other person's negative answer didn't even surprise him due to his state of mind plus total isolation for 14 years; with the WMG confirming his total loneliness on the mud ball, why bother with securing the place? Well wild animals were a problem as they were in the Everglades but the thirty foot high brick walls around the complex pretty much took care of those. The birds were harmless and didn't really come by as there was no trash heap or field of seeds to peck on. Still, it was bothersome to see how dismissive of security, health and basic survival skills the older male was. They would have a very important conversation about all this when they were both sober and rested.

Reality is not amusing anymore

(Hymnals – Les Anges dans Nos Campagnes, french)

Historical account from the perspective of 2300

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

No fixed location

After spending several hours explaining his past and arrival to this time zone, Living Lucas needed a small bit of food and was truly depressed again. So the younger Lucas made him eat a small snack and go take another shower. The hot water and ionic waves would clean and revitalize him in preparation for a long night of restful sleep. During this time the younger Lucas called up the automated historical retelling of events that his older self had prepared along the years. He took the paper booklet his brother had kept for the first three years of his presence and put it safely in his own kit for later study. Older Lucas had stopped journaling when he ran out of paper as he just didn't think it was worth the effort to find paper and write down anything.

It was mind-boggling how the confounded morons that ran the planet made the amazingly counter-intuitive decision to commercialize and put in the hands of teenagers house-sized mechanized armaments. Real, moving, shooting vehicles of war with real lethal ammunitions marketed as toys for the ultra rich. It started as a closed testing field in the wastes of Africa and was sold to the USA and Allies as a way to test and develop the newest generations of warfare robotics while having the most rigorous, most unforgiving testers available to do the product analysis and quality control.

Nobody bitches like a spoiled 14 to 18 years old whose game console won't go fast enough or the signal lags on MMORPG guild fights. Meaning that if DARPA and their contractors could find a way to satisfy this truly demanding clientele, they could field some sort of machinery that would be the kings amongst drones.

This would have two advantages for the Pentagon. Firstly it would remove soldiers from the field because machines with legs and arms on the ground could do some of the infantry jobs. No longer would the mission limits of flimsy-framed drones doing airborne recon be the standard baseline of strategy. The other reason was the overall reduction of troops demanded by Washington DC in order to cut the military budgets. The chiefs of staff would now have the ability to create a massive central cyber-command base next to DC from which trained, civilian contractors would pilot the machines in combat without any risk to the person's body.

(Hymnals –My God is an Awesome God; choir with full orchestra)

The reduction of live effectives in the field would reduce the number of injured, that would then reduce the overcrowding and expenses of the Veterans' Administration and it's hundreds of hospitals and sanitariums. It would also stop sending crippled or defective sons back to their parents thus raising the Government's flagging popularity numbers and motivate patriotism, nationalism and relight the torch of American Exceptionnalism and put back on track God's Great Plan for His Chosen People. The grey-headed Bible-thumping old crones in the corridors of the Pentagon or haunting the halls of the Capitol could finally have their Righteous War against anything not American enough. They had wanted that war for all of their lives, but the popular backlash caused by lines of coffins coming back home had always acted as a handbrake to stop them passing the War Acts.

Now, there was a perfect solution provided by high technology from private sector companies. The neo-conservatives and their allies in the Ecclesiastes were ecstatic as their doctrine had just been validated after 200 years of yelling at everybody to shrink government and let the industries run the country. And now, these industries would run the army and bring home the Victory promised by God, the Apostles and Prophecy 2000 years ago in the Bible of the One True God. The planet, Nature itself, would kneel in submissiveness before the allmight of white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian power on the march. Zieg Hammerrika, Heil!

Then came the next big idea out of Industry; hire teens as pilots for the missions. Because they would be part-time and could not be legally militarized under 18 years of age, they would get paid less and have no benefits whatsoever. So the Pentagon got extremely good pilots with incredible perceptions and reaction times, at about a third of the price for an adult. They also had extended disciplinary rights and part-time localized guardianship like a boarding school when the kids were in the cyber-center so they could ask more, command more harshly and never get questioned or be forced to be logical and rational as if they dealt with adult pilots. There was also no threat of lawyers, unions, protest movements or leaking things to the media. It was a securely contained, limited access, Paradise for any authoritarian, domineering fascist with a taste for genocide and no reason to stop when the bloodshed started to get good.

When a general asked the question of how to handle kids suffering PTSD from killing people by remote, the engineers from the private firms shrugged and said – LIE. Just tell them they're old videos from past missions that were remasterized and integrated to the system as part of the test scenario they have to run. They would never tell the kids in the cockpits that it was anything other than a simulator in test mode. The teens would never be told that every pull of a trigger killed real people. They would be made to murder by the hundreds and yet never know that a part of their soul was asked in payment for each death they gave.

We see the end

(Hymnals – funeral dirge)

Historical account from the perspective of 2300

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

No fixed location

Eventually, the simulator was put online on the Internex to trawl through a larger basin of potential trainees for the piloting jobs because they had unforeseen problems with the under aged volunteers they had assembled. The generals thought it could work like the masterful project "America's Army" and its hundreds of updates, modules and training packages. They decided that in fact, the shortest, safest and most economical way was to simply add modules to "America's Army" in the drone command section and, for the hardcore soldiers, the mechanized infantry section to simulate piloting from inside the machine instead of remotely.

The success was immediate and crashed the servers twice in the first week alone. The demand for this was such that they had to triple budgets, quintuple personnel and materials and rush-job everything to get it working up to the standards the kids playing at home wanted. And then an idiot of unmitigated proportions came up with the idea that having a large, publicly known cyber-command was not good and needed done away with. He explained to the President and Joint Chiefs of Staff that they could cut costs, liabilities and the dangers of spying and sabotage by out-sourcing and tele-commuting the jobs directly to the kids at home. This would have the benefits that the parents no longer had to be consulted. You no longer had to arrange missions according to your best pilot's family duties; visits to grandma or the occasional grounding (Go to your room! No TV or video games for a month! No going to the Pentagon either because its fun for you and your being punished!) or detentions at school. There would no longer be tetchy, whiny brats going around the building vandalizing, thieving and messing up everything the adults had worked for so hard in the name of their pure white God.

The kids would use their own time for free to play the game voluntarily and when they reached high scores they would get virtual coupons for presents by email. Then when they got truly better, they would get a secured access code to enter the militarized sector of the website and get into the roster of genuine missions (that resulted in real deaths), all ordered by difficulty. The pilots would need, like a game and like real life, to earn merit badges, medals and piloting certifications before accessing the worst, most dangerous missions. Those kids whose piloting truly matched an adult drone expert would get a visit and be presented with a civilian corporate contract with NDA clauses. This would get them a toned-down civilian version of the robotics command chair with a dedicated fiber-optics link at their house. At that point, the parents would be told that their child was registering as a professional Beta-Tester for "America's Army" and to be proud of their child's patriotic involvement. The 24$ / hour salary, part time without benefits, was in itself argument enough for 97% of adults to let it go and smile. After all, in the poor neighborhoods, how would you get your child a good paying job that let the kid stay home safely, no commute, away from hoodlums, drugs and violence? How could a parent refuse this without looking foolish and rather stupid in these hard economic times?

Preludes of the end

(StarGate Universe – main theme)

Historical account from the perspective of 2300

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

No fixed location

Unfortunately, this came at the same time as the advent of two technologies that should have been severely monitored when released to the public, especially because of the mental health issues involved. There are far too many people on Earth with psychotic episodes, dissociative fugues and intermittent contact with reality to just let these things float around. But, as always, money, lobbying and industries' right to sell was deemed paramount. When backed by Hollywood and the TV producers on one side, Microsoft, Apple and Google on the other, the conclusion was foreseeable by a blind man.

Tech advance number one was the evolution of 3d Television without special glasses. This gave rise to every damn device having a 3D screen; including smart phones and smart watches. The quality of images in these became so good that optometrists began to use them in the medical tests to judge visual reflex, acuity and capacity to perceive depths and color tones. This unfortunately leads right into the next problem.

Tech advance number two was the spread of meta-glasses. These began as cumbersome attachments to the helmets of helicopter pilots to give them live access to the night vision, thermal imaging and magnetometry of their vehicle. Industry saw the potential for public sales and worked hard to shrink them down into the first consumer versions over an R&D effort of about 30 years. Then the first two-lens consumer usable versions appeared, followed about 4 years later by the electronic monocle that you can wear on your ordinary glasses or separately with its own little rod to fixate to your ear. It was the ultimate smart phone attachment, they thought.

This then became an outright craze when the amazing '3D without special equipment' was added to these wearables. You now had not only the meta-data of stores when you visit a mall, but a truly immersive experience when receiving an email, taking a vidcall or putting on a video clip. Everyone who had though that old laptop computers and basic cell phones had atomized society and killed the desire to relate to others had never foreseen the phenomenon to follow. The penultimate blow to social interaction came in the form of electronic contact lenses with meta-data stream and 3D visuals. They were powered by induction through the bio-electric impulses of the body channeled through the eyes, which also served as a living antenna to receive and emit the signals.

Now we have what historians who lived long enough to write books or articles in the news feeds have called 'The great disjunction of humanity from naturality'. Humans no longer had to look at ugliness; they could program their contacts to superimpose a beautiful image on top of what was irking them. The boss' secretary is a wrinkled old crud that hates you? Set your contacts to show that buxom valkyrie from last month's magazine and tweak your ear buds to change the voice to that of an innocuous waitress that you met at a bar last year and voila! Your crap reality just got amped up! The craze took so fast and so hard that no age group, social class, sector of employment or even emergency service was spared.

The laws couldn't change fast enough and using the things for spying for any cause became commonplace. Then of course somebody started using the contacts to send cyber viruses or unsolicited SPAM at everybody around and you had the first epidemic to try and breach the wall between cyber, biology and psychology. The social crisis was massive and the Government was actually demonstrated to be powerless because they had been silently transferring power, control and even some legislative authority to corporations for about three decades at this point. A new way of functioning was needed urgently to save society and fast.

Advent of the end

(Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Requiem)

Historical account from the perspective of 2300

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

No fixed location

The solution was proposed from where it should never have been allowed to come. The same old grey-heads that had spearheaded the projects about the teenaged drone pilots were so enthused by their success and the feeling that their awaited War of the Worthies was almost upon them, they offered the President a solution that would kill humanity for ever.

The neo-conservatives, backed by selected arch-conservative Ecclesiastes and right-thinking generals of true and pure pedigree, convened in the Oval Office to brief the Commander In Chief and expose the plan to design and enact the World Management Grid. They proposed a completely decentralized system of servers and databanks overseen by an artificial intelligence of capacities never contemplated by a human before. This would be proofed against terrorists and natural disasters because there would be no central command and no point of the network that would not have at least three redundancies to redirect dataflow or emergency commands around the damaged area.

The best part was in the unspoken but agreed upon reason for this; the control of the population. By connecting the WMG directly to every citizen through their wearables, they would become puppets on invisible strings that would see, hear and be aware of only what the Government wanted seen, heard or perceived. The Ecclesiastes immediately offered, for a limited free trial period, their services at elaborating a list of taboos, forbiddances and societal ethics infractions. The contacts lenses would be programmed like the scanners of a police car to find, analyze, record and then snitch on to the WMG's security or morality modules. Appropriate teams of municipal police, first aid rescuers or Christian Spiritual Accompaniment (CSA) would then go and assist the person in their time of need.

Plans were immediately made to keep the churchmen happy and on the side of the ruling President by modifying the laws about underage citizen's rights, specifically by reducing or eliminating the protections from abuse or police violence. The goal was to enshrine the CSA teams as being a sort of federally legislated organization, like the FBI but only for kids, with an incredibly invasive reach that no longer recognized the rights or abilities of parents to educate their children by themselves. There were discussions about how to force-feed religious broadcasts into the contact lenses of children and make it a misdemeanor to take off the lenses during those morally and patriotically uplifting reviews of God's Great Plan for America. This of course led directly to a plan to finance the procurement and imposed usage of electronic contacts by every citizen under the age of 21. Rising the national age of majority from 18 to 21 was necessary to give the priesthood more time to insure control and dominance over the young and sate their sado-sexual punitivity over their favorite victims.

Since the Government was now faced with the very real fact that they would no longer need as many soldiers as they once had, only about 10% of the highest total during WW II would suffice as a peace time situation and even then. In case of a war they would just make more legged drones and get less picky about which teenagers became pilots from home. The truly gifted ACE pilots could always be brought to a military base under an injunction of Christian Protectorate from the CSA and kick the parents out of the kid's life by force.

Once a kid got a dose of living under the straps of the priests for a month, he'd do anything to earn being moved to the regular barracks system next door and volunteer as a soldier in the Early Cadet Program. The fact that the early cadets were in fact a military version of a christian orphanage run by worshipful sergeant-paladins was never told to the kids until they were inside. At which point, any mention of family or past lives were punished repeatedly. The child was beaten, starved, force-fed drugs and subliminal messages through their contact lenses and ear buds, until no longer able to resist or tell reality apart from religious nonsense.

The teenage drone pilot program began to answer more and more to the demands of the Ecclesiastes by no longer recruiting girls for anything that needed leaving home. Only boys were wanted for the army bases and early cadets programs. The reason was as simple as mind-twistingly depraved; you can't get a boy pregnant no matter how many times you sodomize him. Since the vast majority of the preachers, churchmen and Ecclesiastes were in fact pedophiles or just sadistic bastards that enjoyed torturing kids, they started to concentrate recruitment on their favorite targets rather than what the army needed to advance and win wars.

Consumption of the end

(Frederich Chopin – Funeral March)

Historical account from the perspective of 2300

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

No fixed location

When the elections happened and the Republicans suffered an upset defeat after 4 terms in office, the Democrats found out the mess and tried to remove it, break the projects and expose to the population what was done. By that time it was too late. The WMG was coming online by sectors, starting of course in the truly critical places of the USA, Canada and Mexico to secure North America. A lighter, more flexible version was being brought into activity in the European Union but separately from the American version which angered the preachers and churches to no end. It meant lost power, lost influence and a large basin of young nubile boys taken away and put behind an armored wall. European youth protection laws would never allow American churches to reach the boys and exploit or kill them the way they had been able to for ten years in the USA.

The second blow to the Ecclesiastes and their depravedness came by accident because they had pushed so much for younger teens starting as early as 11 years old to be selected for the military bases or the Early Cadets Programs. First, the Democrats took over and broke the chokehold of the priesthood over what was in reality a network of privately operated concentration camps for juveniles on American soil. Second, closing the camps released a lot of traumatized, dysfunctional, and sometimes psychotic teenagers with a lot of training back in the streets. Third, less than a year after the elections, the number of murders and disappearances of priests, worshippers and baptized military officers who publicly apostolized their exaltation had risen by some 400%. It was open season on the sluts-of-the-pews and the church-whores that controlled them in the names of the Ecclesiastes.

Several hundred teen boys, broken as they were, got together with their sisters and cousins which, being girls, had never been really targeted by the madmen and their schemes. This gave these lost boys homes, support and access to education and a take on reality that had been stolen from them for years. It also happens that several of the girls were very good hackers and they managed to get into the first beta version of the WMG to find, locate and isolate mediaticaly priests of the White Painted Cross by the thousands. Then they transmitted these coordinates to roaming groups of boys who were hunting and killing these subhuman offal. In a period of five years, there had been an estimated 19,000 murders and some 14,000 disappearances of clergy and high-rank worshippers or church donors in North America.

The final collapse of the American Christian neo-conservative movement resulted from a tidal wave of extremely public suicides; almost 23,000 people. The Democrats published uncensored FBI, US Army and CSA security tapes and internal reports with pictures. That these had been made by the CSA officers themselves as trophies of what went on in the teen pilot formation camps was a proof of validity and authenticity which convinced many to not wait and take chances in court. Incontrovertible evidence like that was just not something you can win against. The reports and films showed several thousand preeminent members of the GOP, the directors of several Political Action Committees and their family members or business partners touring the camps and enjoying the spectacles of boys beaten in public or benefiting from private entertainment with the boy of their choice. The films of several thousand family values promoters who peddled anti-gay rhetoric being shown as they beat and sodomized children shocked America and the World. This was on the scale of the Nazi atrocities and for the same damned reason too.

War to end humanity

(Star Wars Symphony – The Death Star destroying Alderaan)

Historical account from the perspective of 2300

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

No fixed location

Then came the vengeance of the neo-conservatives; a last hurrah to backstab the society which had denied the predators their victims. Several industrialists got together and obtained truthful accounting documents about the budgets and finances for the USA. They were on the verge of bankruptcy and being taken over by foreigners of the non christian, non white variety. Their solution was as hair brained as the projects for the teenaged pilots and subsequent CSA camps. They proposed to let rich families have the right to buy the large mechanical war machines like toys and use them only in theaters of operation determined by the US federal Government. This would transfer the costs of manufacture, equipments, munitions and pilot training or maintenance to those with the money for it. The rest of the taxpayers could sleep in peace with a lower tax bill at the end of the year. And the neo-cons, well they still got their War of the Worthies and domination over non-caucasians they pined after all their lives since infancy and oftentimes since several generations in the past as well.

Thankfully, the Democrats in power saw the cretinous idea for what it was and won the next elections as well so it didn't even get discussed in session in Congress. The problem was that several of the politicians involved had children and these kids talked online or at school. The message went around and thousands of boys who had finally been released from the CSA camps panicked, seeing this as a preliminary move to reinstate the CSA and camps. This started a frenzied effort to hack the systems, punch through the partial unstable World Management Grid and take control of as many legged tanks as they could. Then they started hunting down and destroying the politos and the church-whores that financed them. Since individuals hide faster and more completely than crowds, most of the hackers turned the huge engines of war against the nearest church, town hall, courthouse or private religious school they could find in range of the weapons on their machine.

It caused the collapse of the USA and parts of both Canada and Mexico when they were hit by swarms of missiles or flights of unmanned flying drones ordered into kamikaze runs against churches and government buildings. It was the end of the societal model that had allowed the CSA and militarization of children but not the end of the problems. There were still several thousand neo-cons embedded deeply in the armed services or in the US bureaucracy at all levels of society. Their hate was boundless and their desire for revenge at losing their War of the Worthies would never extinguish in this life or the next. They connected online in hidden darkweb chatrooms and elaborated the punishment for the heretics responsible for their unholy failure.

Since children were the cause of their fall, they would kill off the actual batch and start fresh, but under a tightly controlled situation where only the Worthies would be allowed to procreate. To make this happen, they took and kept safe in underground vaults large quantities of sperm from the most exalted and devout apostolates of the White Painted Cross. These specimens would be used in cloning cylinders in a process similar to the creation of the GUELFs that had briefly existed in the early 2000's before being hunted down and terminated like the unnatural scum they were. Forcing reproduction through a laboratory with extremely controlled access and known to exist only by a chosen few Worthies made certain that all the scum would die childless soon. The way to control the reproduction was simply to release in the air and water of the planet a synthetic biotoxin which sterilized all humans that had contact with it. It took 15 days to cover the world and end humanity.

What the neo-cons didn't realize was that the laboratory they were banking on could not produce more than 40 humans at a time per year, and only 8 to 10 actually survived long enough and healthy enough to be awakened and then be put into service. This would never save humanity unless they could produce at least a thousand persons every other week. Within a few decades, the population died off, disease became rampant and without competent, physically capable medics the survivors were at risk from the simplest things. This forced the governments to make the disgusting but necessary choice to euthanize millions of mentally handicapped, physically handicapped and comatose patients as they needed to give back beds and treatment capacity to overburdened systems across the planet.

Because the population had in fact discovered the biotoxin after the first whole year of no new births anywhere on Earth, they had put massive sums of money and efforts into completing and activating the World Management Grid across as much of the planet as they could reach. This system would now be their only solace when the diseases and limitations of old age took their mobility and senses. They augmented the medical modules, created self-driving ambulances and then small human shaped robots to go into the houses to find and bring back the patients to the van and the hospital. In its hour of decline, humanity lost all appetite for war, dominance, money and greed. The species as a whole was extinguished and reduced to 2 living teenaged specimens, a boy and a girl, both in control of many giant war machines and bent on destroying anything other than themselves, when SeaQuest had been pulled through the vortex created by the World Management Grid's AI in an effort to save the planet and its last human inhabitants.

Burying humanity without any dignity

(New Orleans Jazz Funeral March – When the Saints go Marching In)

December 25th of 2300 - deep night

New Cape Quest, Florida (USA)

Bayou de la Grosse Tronche;

Military sanitarium for handicapped & comatose soldiers

UEO Veterans' Support Services (VSS)

Administration tower

As the older man was again under medical injunction to soak in bath salts for an hour, Younger Lucas sat himself at the desk in the older man's room to write down on a pile of loose sheaf paper that he had taken from the supply closet he had raided in the reception area downstairs. He was meticulously drawing a timeline with colored events above and under the line. There would be notes for the general history to mark critical technical discoveries in green and catastrophic stupidities in red. For his Older Brother's life, he would write the ordinary in black, the unusual in blue, health problems in yellow and active threats or dysfunctions in red. This would give him a visual organigram to place on the wall so they could organize their thoughts and workload for the next month, especially seeing to their health. Younger Lucas didn't have the vaccinations for this period and just knew that some nasty bug was about to bite him and make him sick.

As he was compiling the timeline, the child was starting to lose patience quickly; there were constant noises from appliances that were supposed to be shut off but emitted sounds or vibrations anyways unless he pulled the power cord from the wall outlet or took out the batteries. Even the damned ceiling fan and inset light fixtures had some miniature sonic emitters that pulsed in the ultrasonic and infrasonic frequencies which normal humans would never hear or bother with. Unfortunately, his abnormal auditory system and synesthesia were about as good as the ears of a dog and were being sorely tested by the infernal racket. He pulled out his swiss army knife and toolkit and methodically hunted down and took apart anything in this room and the one on each side of it that made any noise at all. Then he saw that the mirrors and windows were actually transparent vidscreens like the faceplates in the winter jackets in the Icehold Vault. And just like the touchscreen tablet from earlier in the evening, they systematically passed high speed subliminal messages in both english alphabet and alien ideograms. The child was almost apoplectic by then and was found by his still-wet-from-the-bath Older Brother as he was yanking out electric and network wirings from the walls and doorframes to shut off and silence the unholy machines so they could sleep in peace. It was that or go build a lean-to in the swamp and let the friendly neighborhood alligator keep him warm for the night.

The Older Lucas sat on a nearby chair and watched his little sibling's hands work at the speed of a spider spinning silk and weaving a web. It was mesmerizing to see someone so small and young have so much dexterity and agility even when destroying stuff. The older male was now perplexed as he had never perceived all of the sonic emitters or subliminal visuals all around the hospital. A quick check with the tablet's camera and image capture virus that he had created showed that any mirror or window was in fact a vidscreen with high speed subliminals in them. Whether it was the outer wall windows, the doors to the balconies or the decorative elements like the glass walled staircase that ran the whole height of the admin tower, all structural or decorative glassworks in sight were broadcasting invisible written messages.

After a hellish hour of hard quick work, Younger Lucas was able to calm down and sit with a chamomile tea and a pair of codeine boosted Tylenols to kill his migraine before going to bed. As the two siblings were reviewing the timeline taped to the bedroom wall, the child jumped up and pointed two distinct elements to his older brother. Firstly; the fact that the government had obliged all children under 21 years of age to wear active electronic contacts and ear buds to receive propaganda non-stop as well as serve as mobile spying sensors like police cars. Secondly; Older Lucas had been 19 years old when he had his brain implant and emergency surgeries done at a Shriners' hospital that specialized in children classed as 'sick, injured or dispirited'. What did that mean? They needed a quick search online to find the hospital itself on the map, its website and the mission statement.

The Shriners were an honest and open religious grouping belonging to the Freemasons and affiliated loosely with other Christian groupings at their beginnings and then grew to have shrines across the planet. Their only requirement for adhesion was to be a master-level freemason of the Scottish or York rites. This of course means that the only real constraint was to be a man as it was a fraternal order of masons and freemasons were all males to begin with.

They were actually opposed to the system of the Christian Spiritual Accompaniment Agency as both a principle and especially as an armed law-enforcement organization. From the start the Shriners publicly decried that a group having broad powers and invasive authority such as this could only lead to the exploitation, abuse, violation and death of children. This was anathema to the Shriners as people and as a group; they were after all famous for their children's' hospitals and positions of peacefulness and fellowship, not anger and warmongering like other groups of Christian men. Unfortunately, this meant that the group was served with legal writs to shut up and follow the laws of the CSA or they would be shut down as being anti-Christian infidels and anti-American heretics. Faced with the government moving to either close or seize their hospitals and many charities, they had no choice but to relent and hope that this period of strife in American history would pass soon as all others had before.

However, the Apostolates of the White Painted Cross were not satisfied and simperingly whined in the media and corridors of the legislatures, begging for the rights to enact restrictions or outright bans against all Masonic activities because they were not christians. Accusations of heresy, infidelity, preying on the young, attacking the moral foundation of America, all trash talk that had plagued the country for almost five centuries was back in full swing as if it were suddenly more true than in the 1800's and 1900's when it was first tried.

The extremists got a partial victory by using the CSA's Agency Mandate to monitor and accompany youths 0 to 21 years of age through all aspects of life while giving / imposing the perspective of a Purely Christian Jesus, the Truly American Christ. This vaguely and openly worded mandate was used by the CSA to impose what they called glibly CSA Pastoralship on any and all schools, hospitals and amusement centers where children congregate or are sent for education. Pastoralship meant that the CSA placed old white anglo-saxonic churchmen or Worshipful Baptized or Worthies in the businesses, schools and medical facilities where children came either as clients or workers and controlled the comportment, attitude, demeanor and beliefs of the children, even if the parents were also present. This was the American version of the Kommissar system of the old Stalinian regime; a person with supreme (local) power to shut you down or fire people was imposed to your organization, one per location or franchise, and you collaborate or get closed, possibly get sent to jail. This was explained to the public as a means of insuring that adults uneducated in the True Faith would not skip or botch the job of indoctrinating kids properly while also removing non-Christians from any job or position that could influence the minds and lives of children towards heretical thoughts.

This meant a very important thing for both Lucases; the hospital had been under the control of the CSA for a number of years before humanity died out. There were still programs in the servers and auto-docs about certain aspects of the active management of the lives and morality of children which had still no been repudiated when the last government of the USA fell. The laws mandating certain locator implants, contact lenses and ear buds were still in place. The police and morality snitching modules in the WMG were still active and recording, just not sending CSA squad cars anymore. This meant that there could be no safe place for health care in North America for either of them as everything was still fully automated and neither was a full surgeon.

In a panic, Younger Lucas pulled a small penlight from his med-kit and told his brother to turn his head sideways. A small flash at an indirect angle and he saw the surface of the pupil change color and then back to normal. Taking a magnifying glass from his tool kit, he repeated the test while magnified and saw clear evidence that the man had futuristic electronic contact lenses.

The Older Lucas was pissed because he had good eyes and didn't need the damned things in his eyes. He didn't even use meta-glasses during 95% of his different jobs and projects. How were those things put in there? And why?

Younger Lucas let his Older Brother tetch a bit then flashed the light in his ear; the same result was seen. There was a very small metallic wire that made a shape on top of the eardrum. This was the classic version of the permanently implanted ear bud that rich people or highly placed government execs would have put in place so they don't lose them or worry about battery life as they were fed through bio-neural energy.

This was the cause of the older man's nightmares, mood swings, depression and many, many other mental problems. His perceptions were systematically screwed with and he was not alone inside his head. Who knew what kind of religious, sectarian and completely false heap of BS he had been fed for the past 14 years.