Kingdom Read online

  Yet, tonight, Morrison turned away from the desert he had created. Clenched in his right hand were the latest results from the labyrinth of labs buried so deep under the arcology that a direct nuclear blast would only rattle a few test beakers; his scientists again failed to replicate the Omega gene—that was the name his company had given to the final gene in the human genome whose function remained a mystery.

  Morrison had read the report twice, absorbing the graphs and numbers with preternatural speed, before feeding it into the cold blue flames dancing in the open hearth fireplace that was the center of the office. The time for his scientists, considered Morrison as he watched the flames devour the report, had passed.

  From the darkness swirling below Morrison’s window came a sudden explosion of light noise—steel scraping steel, followed seconds later by the unmistakable short bursts of automatic weapon fire. Morrison moved back toward the window, watching with vague interest as tracer rounds lit up the desert night. This was not the first time his private militia would have to repel an armed assault against the facility; speed freaks never seemed to learn. Every few months, another group of outgunned meth addicts, roaming the desert like nomads, borne by Harleys instead of dromedaries and looking for the cheapest way to stay high, assailed the outer perimeter, attempting to break into the laboratories Morrison had spent a lifetime creating as if they were no more than an upscale Rite Aid flush with pseudoephedrine. And despite the fact that the facility’s integrated defense systems rivaled that of some smaller European nations, still the border tribes came, flinging themselves upon Morrison’s corporate fortress, frothing like mad dogs.

  Usually these assaults lasted less than 30 seconds; tonight’s was no different: By the time the Benzedrine-fueled Bedouins had reached the perimeter of the arcology, the Electro-Optical High Energy Laser Systems were already online, strafing the sand and stone, cold blue light lashing out from the omnipotent eyes of Morrison Biotech’s defense systems turning flesh into ash until there was nothing but silence washing across the dunes. Frequently, Morrison’s Predator drones would be waiting in the poisoned atmosphere high above the Chihuahuan, beryllium birds of prey circling the landscape with infinite patience. On such nights, the desert junkies never even got close enough for their CCTV close-up; the only notice of their execution was a twinkle in the heavens. Morrison imagined women and children packed into one of the overcrowded refugee camps along the Rio Grande mistaking the deployment of a Predator missile for a shooting star, making a wish as a $40 million toy dealt death from impossible heights.

  Morrison’s defense systems fell silent and a stillness collapsed across the desert as the landscape settled back into itself, ancient sands digesting the still smoldering corpses. It was an almost holy rite, considered Morrison, the way in which the desert sand and wind could wipe away evidence of a civilization’s triumph as well as its failure, cleansing the path for the next rise and inevitable collapse. In the beginning, there was the nothingness of the desert. And in the end, there would be the nothingness of the desert.

  Two hours later Morrison was aboard his private jet, thundering away from the desert and toward the East Coast. He sat silently in the darkened coach as his plane cut across the sky, miles above the cities that sprawled infinite in every direction, a never-ending sea of blinking light patterns that created an artificial twilight as constant and tranquil as the tide. Staring down from 25,000 feet, Morrison observed as these light patterns danced across the land, consuming the fruited plan. Eventually, he knew, any remnants of America’s majestic solitude would vanish completely, leaving a single massive post-geographic network of light and information. No one would ever be alone and yet, everyone would be alone: So would be Morrison’s kingdom.

  However, before these things could come to pass, Michael Morrison needed to pay a visit to an old friend.

  Project Exodus Memorandum #25-98541-B

  Re: The Order of Neshamah

  Although little is known publicly about the Order of Neshamah (“Order”), Morrison Biotechnology operatives have been able to engage several purported members; the information contained in this report is the result of these engagements.

  Background

  The Order was originally founded by a group of 19th-century monks devoted to the cultivation of the human soul. But what made these monks so different, what distinguished them from other monastic organizations, was their quest to understand the soul’s function from a biological, scientific standpoint. The moniker “Neshamah” is a reference to the Hebrew word for the “soul” as the thing that allows for the awareness of the existence and presence of God. In its earliest incarnations, the Order’s search for the soul focused primarily on rudimentary mapping of the brain—neuroanatomy—as well observing and recording the phenomena of religious experiences. Much of this primitive neuroanatomy involved comparing the various sections of the human brain with those of other monks and holy men—priests, rabbis, shamans—trying to find some genetic distinction that would explain why some men are so readily able to experience the mystical, to commune with a dynamic external presence so often referred to as “God.”

  The Order maintains at least three separate “camps” in the United States. The purpose of these camps reflects the two-fold mission of the Order: to identify and cultivate the human soul. Advances in medical technology—brain scanning tools in particular—allowed the Order to make steady progress toward isolating the section of the brain responsible for producing the responses documented during religious experiences. While the brain scanning continues in these camps, the monks also serve as doctors to the legions of illegal immigrants and uninsured slum dwellers that make up the urban core of many American cities. By serving the suffering and dying, the members of the Order seek to submerge the self, thereby increasing their sensitivity to the divine. While the veracity of these fantastic claims is impossible to verify, the intelligence methods used to gather this information strongly suggest that our sources at least believe such “service” has a direct impact on the ability to experience religious or supernatural phenomena.

  Ties to Jonathan Campbell

  Campbell has been in contact with the Order for the past several years. As previously discussed, he was recovered by the Order from an abandoned freight yard several miles away from the arcology. Since that time, Campbell has remained associated with, although not a member of, the Order. Through the Order’s not-inconsiderable “underground” associations, the monks were able to supply Campbell with an anti-aging serum, a crude approximation of the Treatment that has nevertheless proven to be effective enough. Despite his advanced age, Campbell remains in outstanding physical condition and has retained all of his considerable intellect. While it is unlikely that these injections will sustain his condition for any extended length of time, for now they have allowed Campbell to remain an active, albeit informal, member of the Order.

  Campbell’s exact role in the Order remains unclear: He works in the “field hospital” sections of the camps, tending to the sick and dying; his motivations for doing so, however, are difficult to discern. Some of those braced by our operatives believe Campbell to be little more than a mercenary, working to ensure himself continued access to black market medical materials. Others speculate that Campbell is providing Neshamah with assistance in its search for the biological soul, which, given his background in genetics, seems plausible.

  Conclusion

  Presently, the Order of Neshamah presents little, if any, threat to Morrison Biotechnology. Jonathan Campbell’s association with the Order will, however, continue to be monitored.

  Chapter 6

  Tiber City: Glimmer District

  Aug. 27, 2015

  1:18 a.m.

  As the limo drifted through the streets of Tiber City’s Glimmer district, Dylan stared out the window, watching as an abandoned Ferris wheel churned against the horizon. One of the passenger buckets was on fire, a solitary flame pressing against the blackened sky like a signal flare fro
m a dying land, an SOS that would never be answered.

  Dylan tried to remember if he had ever ridden the Ferris wheel as a child—or any Ferris wheel for that matter—but when he shut his eyes there were no original memories, just a series of images from popular culture, the collective understanding of childhood replacing his own.

  A panic washed over him and he opened his eyes and the Ferris wheel was still rotating but the flaming bucket had dipped back below the horizon and before it could resurface, the limo turned a corner and the landscape shifted: Skyscrapers rose out of the concrete like weeds made of steel and glass, some adorned with names Dylan knew in that dull, impassive way most recognize the public monikers of nebulous financial groups, subsidiaries, and international holding companies. Other towers went nameless, barely visible street numbers stenciled over the entrance the only means of differentiation.

  The limo turned another corner, past the hordes of glitterati, those Gucci-clad vampires ready to devour each other whole, held at bay only by the modern-day talismanic magic of the red velvet rope, then another, before turning onto Chiba Street: playground of Tiber City’s mega-elite, ground zero of which was the infamous Hotel Yorick—the same hotel in which his old man ate a bullet years ago.

  The limo was not supposed to take this route; there were other ways to go, other paths through the Glimmer district that could take the revelers to whatever destination they desired—any way but past the Yorick.

  And then Dylan saw it: Illuminated against the glow of the city, his father stared back at him from the side of one of the anonymous skyscrapers, the man’s face blown up and expanded to cover several stories, framed by reds and blues and whites, vague hints of Soviet-era realism and a single word spelled out underneath his face in bold lettering—PROGRESS. As the building drew closer, the face’s similarities to Dylan’s father blurred and then, as the limo sailed past, faded—except for the eyes: Those were his father’s eyes. Dylan swallowed hard and considered demanding the limo halt its march through the city, then ordering everyone to inspect the massive ad—was it for a movie? A band? A brand? Was it a misguided attempt at art? Was it some sort of, oh fuck, a statement for Christ’s sake?—and assure him that the man staring out across the horizon, staring in the direction of the Ferris wheel on fire, past the Hotel Yorick, was not his father, that the confusion, or was it a hallucination, was simply the result of having done too much coke and because tonight, after all, was not only his birthday but the anniversary of his father’s death although, depending on the exact time, the exact anniversary of those events—of Dylan’s birth and his father’s death—may have been yesterday but what the fuck was the difference? Ever since his old man had shoved the barrel of a Beretta into his mouth and pulled the trigger, Dylan’s birthday had nothing to do with celebration: only oblivion.

  The PROGRESS ad was receding into the distance and when Dylan turned his attention back to the limo, it was clear that no one had noticed. The limo turned off Chiba Street, heading down a poorly lit alleyway, and the Hotel Yorick vanished, obscured by the neon and the looming, terrible skyscrapers. He was still sweating though, his heart slamming into his rib cage with a frightening ferocity, and then he was trying to ask which club they had settled on—Void or Absolution—because he needed to say something, anything.

  His mouth—dry and numb, a bitterness lingering in the back of his throat, under his swollen, fat tongue—was moving and he was saying something, asking about where the limo was going but no one seemed to know; he mentioned something about the fight, trying to distance himself from the PROGRESS ad, from the Hotel Yorick sighting, but people were shaking their heads: What fight? It dawned on him he had no idea who he was speaking to: Chase and Mikey were on the other side of the cavernous car, miles of leather and mirrored glass slapped over wet bars illuminated by dozens of weak white lights separated them from Dylan, and there were other people in the car, people he had never met or maybe he had and their names were already forgotten and then a girl—blonde, beautiful in that way only American girls can be beautiful but wearing too much makeup, too much leather, too much silver—was whispering in his ear, asking if he had any more coke before confiding in him that she was afraid because she heard that in London the government was considering stacking corpses in graves because they were running out of space but that the whole situation might be OK because only abandoned graves dating back more than 100 years would be disturbed.

  Her hand was on his thigh as she was telling him this, her fingers—immaculately manicured, her nails adorned with a garish red—crawling toward his crotch but then the limo was stopping and people were getting out and the girl was trying to pull Dylan toward the door but he resisted, hanging back until the last possible second, until the point where if he waited any longer there would be concerned inquires, knowing looks exchanged followed by encouragement to bump another line because like, after all, everyone’s waiting.

  Not that another bump was a bad idea: He couldn’t shake the memory of the PROGRESS poster, of the man’s eyes boring a hole in the horizon, eyes that reminded him so much of his father. Reaching into the breast pocket of his suit jacket he produced a small glass vile half-filled with white powder, a little bit of which he proceeded to dump out on the faux granite surrounding the wet bar. He used a credit card to divide the coke into two fat lines, one for each nostril. Seconds later both lines were gone and the memories of those eyes staring back at him from that monstrous skyscraper? Fucking irrelevant.

  Laughing at nothing, his world suddenly very bright, tight, and shiny, Dylan kicked open the car door and launched himself into the street. A crowd had gathered outside the entrance to the club—there was no name anywhere on the building’s exterior, not even a symbol ripping off some long-forgotten culture, some kind of ancient totem turned marketing gimmick. There were velvet ropes running in every direction but each time Dylan approached one a voice crackled over a headset and an instant later a hand appeared from nowhere, removing the rope, allowing Dylan to continue past the crowds, past the voices shouting—he heard Spanish, English, Russian, Arabic—the different languages all conveying a single frenzied emotion: want. Several flashes went off, prompting Dylan to turn in the direction of the light. Someone was shouting his name and he was smiling at no one, at everyone, his jaw clenched tight from the coke.

  Dylan pushed forward into the club, confused, the coke racing through his nervous system. And then someone was welcoming him—not to any specific destination, simply “welcome”—offering to take the coat he wasn’t wearing before ushering him through the doorway and propelling him into a shadowy hallway, the only light coming from a chandelier hanging overheard, a security camera nestled between the fake candles. The hall was empty, serving only to funnel customers toward a staircase 30 or 40 feet beyond the entrance. Dylan proceeded down the hallway, one hand on the wall, tracing the bumps of plaster under the yellowed, peeling wallpaper—pre-aged for effect by an interior design company—imagining they were a new form of Braille, a secret language capable of providing an answer, some wisdom or guidance, if one knew how to interpret the patterns hidden behind the paper. But such divination was beyond Dylan and he began to climb the stairs, nodding at another bouncer stationed at the top of the flight.

  The main room of the club reminded Dylan of every other bar in Tiber City’s Glimmer district: dance floor in the middle of the room, with several tables and three bars framing the perimeter. On the far end of the dance floor, three or four steps off the floor, was the VIP area. The aesthetic was a schizophrenic mess, a victim of several ownership changes and desperate attempts to graft edginess and authenticity onto an otherwise nondescript building. Genuine was not a necessary trait however; illusion was the only requirement. Allow the 20-somethings, or even the Peter Pans pushing 40, to believe they were somewhere happening, somewhere hip: That was the goal. So, vague concepts were slapped together to procure capital and then half-heartedly implemented, the illusion of exclusivity manufactured, and�
��voila—you have Void or Absolution or No Exit or wherever the fuck Dylan now was.

  The current décor was Victorian mansion: low lighting with lots of plush, over-stuffed chairs and couches, chandeliers with electric candles, a fireplace, velvet drapes, several ancient London newspapers with giant headlines—Jack the Ripper had struck again; the dance area was smaller than usual, in order to make room for the couches. Ambient trance washed across the room as Dylan cut across the dance floor toward the VIP area, sliding between couples and groups of single women as he continued toward the back of the room. Someone was screaming “happy birthday” and then Dylan was doing a shot—piss-poor tequila that went down rough—but he was saying thank you anyway, nodding to someone he had never seen before in his life, smiling at beautiful girls writhing on the dance floor who were watching themselves in the mirrors over the bar, and then Chase and Mikey were there, asking where the fuck he had been, and for fuck’s sake guy—smile: It’s your birthday.

  The VIP section consisted of a dozen canopy beds stacked with pillows and serving trays: Some of the canopies’ dark silk covers were up; others were down, rendering the beds’ occupants mere shadows. Waiters buzzed from bed to bed, delivering orders to the open canopies, tactfully ignoring the moans and sniffling noises emanating from the others. In the far corner of this VIP wonderland a girl was crying hysterically, rolling around on one of the beds, gnawing on a pillow while everyone looked in another direction.