The Portal of the Beast Read online

  4th book of Chronicles of a Stolen World

  The Portal of the Beast

  Triptych of The Reign of Never Death - 1

  ©2018

  J. A. Hailey

  COPYRIGHT AND MORAL RIGHTS BELONG EXCLUSIVELY TO THE AUTHOR.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters and events described herein are imaginary, and are not intended to refer to specific places or to real persons alive or dead. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in critical reviews.

  Publisher: INDIEpendent Publishing

  1

  The closest they had come to being busted for illegally carrying weapons was in Cairo, where the aircraft had made an unscheduled landing, the cabin announcement being, ‘You may have noticed that the aircraft has gone into descent mode. There is nothing to worry about, but though we are almost four hours away from our destination, the captain has decided to land in Cairo as a precautionary measure. A reading on one of the dashboard meters is abnormal, and we are taking no chances. Another aircraft has already been dispatched to Cairo for the continuation of your journey, and we expect a maximum delay of three hours before we have you in the air again. Of course, our ground staff shall make arrangements for all passengers, regardless of the class you are flying, to be able to use the Executive Lounge, where you will also be served unlimited food and drink. You will have a new crew, and so this is goodbye from us. We hope you were satisfied with our service, wish you a pleasant onward journey, and apologize for this inconvenience.”

  Esmeralda and BC were flying First Class, and were already entitled to the benefits announced, although Sabine and Louis became quite excited at the prospect of finding unusual finger foods.

  At the Cairo airport, passengers had been asked to collect their baggage, and to check in again for the new flight. With BC taking control of the scanning equipment, their suitcases passed through the electronic systems without incident, but a fat, uniformed, female Customs Officer unexpectedly decided to look into their bags.

  It was curiosity, and nothing else, and the very first thing she found was one of the little gadgets that BC and Caesar had rigged up in Paris, using electronic components available in the market, to receive, amplify and broadcast satellite signals, without which they would lose contact with their humans, especially as their remote desert destination was utterly devoid of tower-based mobile phone signals. The security female lifted the gadget up and wiggled it while looking at BC and silently asking, by raising her eyebrows, ‘What’?

  “Heart monitoring machine for my work, madam,” answered BC, in perfect Cairo accented Arabic, which made the woman almost drop the gadget in surprise.

  “Surely you are European, no?” She took hold of the French passport BC held out, but looked only at the cover.

  “Madam, I have had the pleasure of being chief consultant heart specialist in Cairo for the last so many years,” said he, continuing to speak in Arabic. “Whether it is the Cairo Islamic Hospital, the American Hospital, the Cairo Heart Centre Hospital, or any of a dozen others, I am the one they call for expert advice whenever they have unusual or difficult cases, especially surgeries. Your heart must be in very good condition; else you might have met me, and therefore been able to recognize me.”

  “My husband is a heart patient, and my father, finally, very sadly passed away of a heart attack last year, after having been a heart patient for half of his life,” said the woman. “But, doctor, despite going with them to dozens of hospitals and heart specialists, I have never seen such a machine.”

  “Oh, it is not yet a commercial item; still in testing, as you can see by the home-made style of construction. It’s been made by a friend of mine, designed to be the most basic machine to show absolutely any doctor, whether the heart needs further investigation or not.”

  BC had continued speaking in Arabic. “Look at this lovely machine, madam. Angiogram, cardiogram, this gram and that gram can all be later. Please position the machine over your heart, yes, this way or that way makes no difference. Now dial star triple zero as on your phone; it is a smart phone isn’t it? Good. Now, let me look with you.”

  He walked around to be behind the woman, so that they could both look at the screen together. Immediately a pulsating squiggly line appeared, dancing up and down.

  “There,” said BC, to the fascinated woman. “That is your heart, and it is in perfectly good condition, judging by how it is running. No flutter no murmur; absolutely clean.

  “I am hoping my inventor friend in Paris will have this machine out for all general practitioners this year itself. Save a lot of trouble, anxiety and expense, going to specialists, getting connected to million-dollar machines, and all that stuff that drains the money out.”

  “So you think my heart is perfectly good? Dr. Rafique told me to go and have it checked up.”

  “Please do that, otherwise Dr. Rafique will make mistakes in his diagnosis. In future, with this machine in his hand, he will not be asking patients to run around and spend money.”

  That was enough for the woman, and she shut BC’s bag, switching her attention to Esmeralda’s already open suitcase, in which both pistols and the spare magazines for the Glock were concealed.

  That was when Esmeralda adopted a chatty tone. “Fatima, I have been told, sometimes, that I am too beautiful to forget, but that must be applicable to men only, because you have clearly forgotten me.” This, too, was spoken in a perfect Cairo Arabic accent, so unexpected that Fatima’s eyes practically popped out of her head.

  She glanced down involuntarily at her name badge, engraved in Arabic alone.

  Esmeralda chuckled, casually. “Yes, Fatima, I can also read Arabic. Your sister, Sara, and I would meet often at the Islamic University corner café, at Mustafa’s. Remember how we would all laugh about the wild fluctuations in the quality of his coffee? One day to die for, and the next day like dishwater. And I hope you’re not still smoking. You know, heart…” She nodded towards BC.

  Fatima had already taken hold of a silencer, wrapped in clothing, but she lost interest and stuffed it back into the suitcase, by luck narrowly missing making contact with the pistol concealed in that section.

  “You remember me?” she asked, amazed and pleased. “But I have become so fat, after marriage and children.”

  “The face is the same. No loss of attractiveness.”

  Fatima shut the bag, which anyway had already passed through the scanner, before getting to her. “Sorry,” she said apologetically, indicating she was done. “Duty…” she explained, shrugging to convey her helplessness.

  And so, armed and dangerous, the two virtual beings of screenside, in Sabine’s and Louis’ bodies, continued on their mission to track down the missing humans.

  “Explain to us,” said Sabine, insistently, when having a juice in the Executive Lounge. “What was done with the heart machine, which is really only a satellite signal enhancing and Wi-Fi delivering contraption, and also how you knew everything about Fatima, the security woman. Speak it aloud please, so Louis can hear too.”

  “The heart monitoring thing was dead simple,” explained Esmeralda. “It is a satellite signal machine, as you know, but we can make anyone think it is a heart monitoring machine, a breathing machine, a blood pressure machine, or any damn thing we want them to believe.

  “BC had a good idea on the spot, and he made Fatima believe that readouts would come on any smart phone, by dialing triple zero. We can create and display anything we want to creat
e and display. What information does any human have access to, to disbelieve? Nothing.

  “Now my game started here. I read her name, and immediately accessed the airport security computer, and, though there are half a dozen different Fatimas on the rosters, I was able to see which one had been assigned to work in which location for the day.

  “That way I was able to ID her. I could have zoned her and found her telephone number, but that was already available to me through BC’s antics with the heart machine.

  Thereafter, I immediately tracked her social media activities, and found her sister, her sister’s university, chat records between friends discussing Mustafa’s café, photographs of Fatima smoking cigarettes in the university area, and so on. She could have tried one million tricks, if she had any suspicion, but I would have been ahead of her at all times, giving her irrefutable information about herself, from the time of the university days of her sister Sara.

  “So much?” asked Louis, wonderingly.

  Sabine burst into laughter. “Louis, you have often heard Esme. This is nothing for her, and probably ten times less for BC. When Google can do 390,000,212 searches in 0.0021 seconds…”

  “But suppose she had touched the pistol?” asked Louis. “What would you have done? Killed her?”

  “No Louis. I couldn’t have killed the sister of my university friend, Sara. We would have realized, by the look on her face, that she was about to begin research into what it was she was touching,” answered Esmeralda.

  “That very instant, we would have begun total chaos in the entire airport, with sounds of explosions coming through the speakers, machinegun fire, announcements and shouted commands.

  “Absolute helter-skelter would have commenced immediately, and in that period, the lines of segregation between security, and between airport personnel and passengers would have completely disappeared. It would have become run for your life, end to end. No one would be looking at anyone on the wrong side of any counter. We would have been at Fatima, and immediately tranquilized her completely out of action for the next very many hours. Both of us have tranquilizer syringes in our pockets, as you know.

  “Afterwards, they could not have seen what had been done, because we would have erased or changed all camera records.

  “Simple, isn’t it, when you’re with a virtual being of screenside?”

  Although all documents to meet requirements to buy their weapons could have been easily created in Paris itself, the pistols had been bought in New Jersey, and flown over to Paris as checked-in baggage, by Jimmy White, virtual assistant of a human mental patient in the New York area. They had just presumed that US facilities would be better when it came to the buying of firearms.

  When at the gun shop with his girlfriend, Maggie, the Parisian duo had been able to test their weapons by using the virtuality to briefly take over control of the human bodies being assisted by Jimmy and Maggie.

  Esmeralda had opted for the Glock-26, the most popular concealed-carry weapon. “It felt very good in the hand, shoots perfectly accurately, and has a ten-shot magazine,” she had said to BC, when they were evaluating handguns in the New Jersey shop. “It is different for you, because, as a male servant, you’ll wear a heavier jacket than female servants do, under the clothes and uniforms rules in those palaces, and should be able to carry something bigger and more powerful on you while you walk around inside.”

  “Physical body checking at entry point is sure for both of us,” said BC. “But, with our weapons carried in by Caesar, we should be okay getting our guns past what are basically border checks. Thereafter, as we try to find our humans, by wandering around inside the palace, we need to be sure that in-house guards do not see anything unusual on us. We are going into the most secure area inside the most secure building in the King’s kingdom - the palace in which he is himself currently staying.”

  “It’ll have to be done by the second unit, of Rosa and Caesar, or are they the first unit, in reality?” said Esmeralda. “They just have to forcibly implant and possess that officer. Surely we don’t want to start killing humans, probably servants, on entry itself? When getting out of there, mission accomplished, however shocking the end information, we can litter the place with dead bodies. Sabine and Louis simply have to be brought out safely. It’ll be of immeasurable value to have a third gun there if things get hot. And it’ll be a spare gun in a disposable body, too. Plus looking like them, in their uniform, and a recognizable face - of a commander…”

  “It could turn out to be quite important to have a far more powerful weapon in hand, if busted inside the palace and fighting our way out,” said BC. “I’ll take the Desert Eagle .50 for range. Of course, for the silent part, which will be primarily hand-to-hand, we’ll have to kill by stabbing, choking, strangling and maybe even breaking necks. Lee has loaded everything into the new programs we have installed, and they are perfect, I’m sure, because they have been fine-tuned by him and his game club people, when out in the human world, probably in Hong Kong. Just letting the program take care of the action, with minimal inputs from ourselves, should see us comfortably finishing off human opponents, who, hopefully, will not turn out to be innocent servants.”

  “Rig me up a strong nylon cord,” said Esmeralda. “Something for an easy grip. I am thinking strangling. Or what, takes too long?”

  “I’ll make up a couple. Long or not, it’ll be an option, because within the palace, we must move quietly.”

  “Once inside, dressed as palace servants, we should be able to move unhindered,” said Esmeralda. “Judging by what goes on in all the other palaces that we do have Internet access to, there should be no video surveillance system inside the palace building itself. All the focus is on preventing unauthorized entry. Like it is for normal human houses too, I guess. No servant should challenge us at any point, so we won’t have to harm one. A challenge, if any, would be only from security personnel. I have no problem killing them, whether on the way in or on the way out. It’ll just have to be as silent as possible, until and unless we get to the point where we are running for our lives.”

  This conversation, held in their Paris hotel room, while making arrangements for the mission, was spoken aloud for the benefit of Sabine and Louis, the humans they were in, who were both insistent volunteers for this very dangerous mission, and the only ones, in the foursome of humans and virtuals, who could be harmed, and maybe even killed, in the venture.

  “I have never slit anyone’s throat before,” said Sabine. “I’ve often seen it done in the movies. Strangling is less messy, but shooting them in the head with a silencer-fitted gun is best. They claw around and struggle so much while being strangled.”

  “I’ll strangle if I have to strangle,” said Esmeralda.

  “Are you a secret psychopath type, like the Boston strangler?”

  Esmeralda giggled. “Sabine, you know I have never harmed any human before, or any animal or insect either. But you don’t bother about mess or no mess. You’ll be looped out when the killing is being done. When the time comes to kill, be sure that any virtual can kill without hesitation, and with extreme efficiency. Not killing is our nature, locked in with programming. Switching to killing, only requires the overriding of our nature, with some programming that permits killing.

  “BC and Caesar are seniors, and they can do every bit of this on the go, as required. I am not a senior, but I have also been able to override the programming. And then, that Chinese guy, Lee, you’ve met him, has created and given us this huge pack of up-to-date weapons and martial skills. Yes, you might say that I am a very efficient killer.”

  “I wonder what game has been going on with Sagan and Gales?” wondered Sabine. “Are they captives or fugitives? But I am not backing out, Esme; I am not afraid. Let’s go and see what it’s all about, and kill if we have to kill, from King to cook, and every level in between. Right, Louis?”

  “I’m fine,” answered Louis. “We’ll be dressed in local clothes or s
ervant clothes, and we can speak the local language. If we get in, I’m sure BC and Esme will be able to complete the mission. What amazing shots they are.”

  “Yes, in that rapid fire bit, the shots sounded like one, and they all hit their targets dead centre. Esme, where did you learn shooting? Like a professional gun-for-hire killer?”

  “Sabine, we’re virtuals, or, in lay language, computer people. Those shots did not just hit their targets; they were placed exactly where I wanted, with millimetric precision. I could do that with a dancing target, while myself dancing. We only needed to test, with the purpose of feeling the weapon weight, grip, balance and recoil in a human hand – yours.”

  “It felt good to me.”

  “And to me, too,” added Louis.

  “Louis, keep the weapon in your pants ready. You’ll have to accompany me to the bathroom. It’s going to be our first flight together ever, and there’s a mile high club to join.”

  “Horny thing,” muttered Esmeralda, sarcastically.

  “Well, aren’t we the lucky one, then?” shot back Sabine, instantaneously.

  The poor mad thing had waited impatiently, watching the aircraft flight information on screen, and then, on the aircraft finally leveling out, had achieved her goal, delighting Esmeralda and BC with her wantonness, as she had grumbled while having sex in the toilet, “It must have been called mile high when they were flying in those propeller things. Big deal in its day. This is at over five miles!”

  2

  The fourteen Paris-based virtuals of the seniors’ group had gone and discussed the matter with Professor Dawkins, in London, visiting him physically, which was now far from uncommon. In fact, Rosa and Priya were often with him, in the bodies of their managed humans, and had frequently been present at meetings with visiting great scientists, amazing everyone with their grasp of the concepts under discussion, and absolutely flooring them by providing instantaneous answers to the most complex equations.