Prepare

Prepare

a Novel

by

Geoffrey Germann

Smashwords edition

Copyright 2012 Geoffrey Germann

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www.preparenovel.com

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Copyright 2011 by Geoffrey Germann. All rights reserved. CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that Prepare is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America and of all countries covered by the International Copyright Union (including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth), the Berne Convention, the Pan American Copyright Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention as well as all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights, including professional/amateur stage rights, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound recording, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as CD-ROM, CD-I, information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are strictly reserved. Particular emphasis is laid on the matter of photocopying and electronic reproduction, permission for which must be secured from the author or his agent in writing.

Dedication

To Kana,

an oasis of serenity and reason

in an all-too-often chaotic and irrational world.

Thank you for the gifts you’ve brought to my life,

in particular, the most recent. : )

INTRODUCTION

The very purpose of scientific technology has always been the augmentation of human capability. Scientific theories and machines are the very tools by which mankind strives to become more than his body and senses grant him. It is, and always has been, through the application of our understanding in the practical world that we aspire to Hamlet’s ironic characterization What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form, in moving, how express and admirable, in action, how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

History is full of examples of people, scientists, using technology to enhance all of man's senses, all of man’s aptitudes.

Sight: In the 17th century Galileo, through patient improvement of the lens grinding process, advanced the science of optics tenfold. The result was an absolutely stunning leap forward in the human sense of sight. Perched on the tower in Venice’s Piazza San Marco, Galileo demonstrated his telescope to potential investors. They were staggered to very clearly see ships on the horizon that were entirely beyond detection by the unaided eye. The applications were numerous. Galileo's funding was assured, and in an instant, the science of astronomy was born.

Sound: Man’s necessity to communicate over vast distances, well beyond the range of his hearing, has led to a string of innovations, from the drum, to the trumpet, to the radio transmitter, to the telephone. The technology of audio communication has evolved to such an extent that any person on Earth can speak with any other person in the world virtually instantly and with no loss of fidelity. Our augmented sense of hearing now serves us virtually without limit.

Touch: In the early 1990's development of the scanning tunneling and atomic force microscopes enabled scientists to feel individual atoms on an atomically flat surface. The instruments sense subatomic-scale topography by using atomically sharp stylii, a sort of mechanical finger, not light or sound. Subsequent advances made it possible to push atoms around at will. This represented a million fold improvement in the human tactile capacity. It is arguably the first instance of atomic scale micro-machining.

Taste and smell: Particularly with the advent of the laser in the 1960's, the field of atomic and molecular spectroscopy enjoyed burgeoning growth in the latter part of the 20th-century. Within a short span of decades, a plethora of spectroscopic techniques had been developed to detect atomic and/or molecular species down to the parts per billion. We could smell just a few atoms of a certain type buried in a complex soup of gases. This would be akin to detecting a single human face from among the population of the entire United States and accomplishing the task in just seconds.

There are other examples, transportation technology augmenting mankind's ability to perambulate; the advent of manufactured shelters to enable mankind to better survive changing climatic conditions. The history of man is that of our species using tools and technology to achieve an advantage over our challenges and improve our control over our environment.

Since prehistory, man has used technology for the purpose of progress, for the betterment of his circumstances and for the comfort and survival of his species.

By the 20th century, technology had advanced to such a degree from our forebears that, indeed, man enjoyed progress toward his aspirations. From eyeglasses, to hearing aids, to cellular phones, to hip replacements, to heart surgery, and in other innumerable ways, man had shaken the limitations of his birth and extended his own life in duration and quality.

In the early 21st century, as microelectronics and the products of material science shrank to atomic dimensions, the augmentations were becoming invisible to the observer, some examples being lasik surgery and diminutive hearing aids, but the differentiations they brought were incalculable. It is no surprise that, on the cusp of these advances, certain outliers that amplified man’s capabilities in vivid and striking fashion would appear nothing less than miraculous to the uninitiated and have a substantial influence on their local environment if applied correctly.

In the early 21st century, the events peppered throughout a few dozen city blocks in the LA basin barely registered on the consciousness of the majority of inhabitants. Most citizens are not victims of violent crimes. So for a short time when the violent crime rate in some areas dropped to approximately one-third its previous value, those unaffected by the change remained blissfully unaware.

Even if the phenomena had been a front-line story for the local media, in centuries to come, they would garner no greater mention than a footnote in an anthropological text. But for those more directly affected at that moment in time, the events had a profound impact.

CHAPTER 1

He had taken the bell off the door the first week.

That was 40 years ago.

Having a bell ring every time someone entered was not only ridiculously redundant it was distracting. Anyone not dead from the neck up could tell when someone entered without even looking, the slight change in pressure as the customer broke the weather seal, the street sounds that spilled in when the door came open, the rustle of clothing as they moved, the click or squeak of shoes walking on the bare tile floor.

That part was not only easy; it was as obvious as a baby crying on an overcrowded airplane.

You had to have two brain cells to infer more and even then you didn’t have to open your eyes. How many people entered? You could tell by the length of time the door remained open. What was the sex of each customer? That could be determined by the pitch and cadence of the footsteps. What time of day was it? That was revealed by the depth of noise outside and the temperature of the puff of air that entered when the door allowed it.

And there was more. What scents came along in the bubble of external atmosphere as the air swept through the store clinging to the new patron like a smoker’s aura? What was the weather like? Did they smell of sunblock or rain?

Yeah that was the easy part. After that, Nikolai Adaireux, had to actually wake up; to keep track of how many were in the space at any one time. Where were they? The magazine section? The refrigerator section? The candy aisle? And of course what were they stealing?

Everyone stole.

Whether it was a child pilfering a gumball too quickly for a parent to stop it, an adolescent stealing a glance at a forbidden magazine, a teen-ager stealing the latest peel-off raffle ticket from some product with a half-baked marketing scheme, or an adult overfilling a drinking cup to the point that it spilled.

Everyone stole.

The trick was to keep it to a minimum and of course, particularly, a monetary minimum. That required a modicum of vigilance, an overt glare in the direction of the periodicals, a shift in his body posture to give him a better vista of the candy aisle, an almost subconscious whistle that bounced off the far wall and filled the refrigerator corner giving just enough sense of presence to deter moral transgression. With the slightest gesture he could fill the 60 foot by 60 foot space and herd the parade of patrons to their best behavior.

Most of the time.

Most of the time, the subtle control worked because the targets weren't actively trying to avoid it. For most, a stop at the store wasn't an event to notice, it was a task to execute. Most didn't need to have their full focus on buying a pack of gum or picking up a six-pack of beer. For most, a stop at the store was an afterthought, a breeze passing through their day. It was beneath their notice and that was the way Nikolai liked it.

Sometimes, he even made a game of it: how many seconds would it take him to sum up the life of the next person and divine what aisle they would choose? A child gravitating to the comic book rack, a female with slightly unkempt hair and a stained sweatshirt darting to the baby food aisle, a slouching youth with clunky untied boots, greasy hair hanging in his eyes, and a cigarette dangling in his mouth drifting toward the liquor shelves for, not wine, but Jack Daniels.

It was a small store, a small job, but it gave a panoramic view of a revealing cross-section of humanity. It kept him closer to the pulse and flow of the Earth than any other job he could imagine. He had been here through boom and bust, through heady bull markets and desperate recessions, and he had watched the parade of humanity almost as a single organism respond and react to the world outside just as plainly as a child might react to light or dark, hot or cold, cruelty or kindness.

The store had been robbed only twice when Nikolai was on duty. The first time was within a month of his starting the job. A single man about five foot ten and weighing 130 lbs., wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and dark sunglasses walked in late at night when no one else was in the store. He put a long barreled 357 Magnum on the counter and said simply, Give me all the money.

Nikolai complied. The man took the money and left the store. Nikolai called police and the standard protocols ensued. Aside from Nikolai’s emotional upset, it had been a smooth transaction, but not one he ever wanted to repeat. It was his first lesson in increasing his vigilance.

The second time had been almost 25 years ago. His had been one of over a dozen stores on the street assaulted during a political riot. An indiscriminate rash of destruction had swept through the neighborhood smashing windows and grabbing anything within arm's reach. It had been a shameful episode in the city's history and, at the time, beyond Nikolai’s control.

He had been robbed only twice in 40 years.

The door opened ... make that three times.

In hindsight he should have seen this coming. It had been a horrible set of years in this part of the country. The district was feeling its decay. He could see it in his customers’ faces, the frustration, the fear, the resentment, the growing anger of caged animals. He could smell it in the air, like the rich mix of an old diesel truck driving over an ill patched stretch of reeking tarmac. He could hear it in the increasing length of time that motorists leaned on traffic horns and the lower, sadder, more timid voices of the store patrons. He could feel in the air as hope grew thinner and began to stretch like shrinking skin over emaciated bones.

It was coming.

Like a wrecking ball of despair and hatred, it was coming.

Like the four horsemen of the apocalypse, it was coming and today it walked into his life.

He was probably pushing 6 foot 8 or 6 foot 9 and Nikolai guessed 325 lbs. He wore a black tank top that clearly displayed his lean youthful muscles, the first tool of his trade: raw bone-crushing power. A black hair net and a pair of opaque glasses further protected his anonymity; another tactic to make sure his prey conceived him as a force, not a person.

It was working.

There were eight people in the store when he entered like some kind of revered gladiator into a combat ring. 30 seconds later there were none. Half the patrons consciously dropped whatever purchase they were pondering and moved for the door as inconspicuously as possible. The remainder did the same, but there was a lack of will to their movements, like they were just following the flow, emptying the store to make room for a presence that filled and over-pressurized the volume like hydraulic fluid in a trash compactor piston.

Then the others came in, three of them, like courtiers to the man mountain, accenting his malice, underlining his power, confirming his dominion.

He surveyed the scene like he owned it. Nikolai guessed, in his mind, he had. In his world, he owned every room he entered. The massive thing made a slow loop around the store, maybe to confirm the room was empty, maybe to heighten the sense of terror he was hoping to impose on Nikolai, the only remaining target.

Nikolai kept no weapons, no defensive tools whatsoever. In his experience, anyone who got past his passive vigilance only wanted money and, if they got that far, and they were that determined, he would give it to them and it would be done.

That was another miscalculation on his part.

Again he should've seen us coming. As the blackness, the malevolence, the hatred grew out in the streets, it was bound to come in here sooner or later. He just never imagined it would have been in such a pure form.

The thing picked up one of the more objectionable magazines and put it in his back pocket without a thought. He completed the loop, stopped about 3 feet from the door, then he twitched his head in Nikolai’s direction. The three other men approached Nikolai, two produced guns on the way, the other a barber's razor. Nikolai said nothing but raised his hands in a calming, submissive posture. He looked each man in the eye – or what he hoped was the eye, since he couldn't tell through the black glasses each wore.

The men rushed up like a surging black wave. The one with a razor took a swipe at Nikolai’s left hand. Nikolai was lucky enough to pull his hand back before the blade cut him to the bone, or worse severed his fingers completely. One of the thugs with a gun reached a hand over the counter and was ready to vault the barrier when it began.

It was a strange sound.

Nikolai would have guessed that no one else would've heard it. None of them was used to listening to the sounds of the street or was attuned to the signatures of the city from behind this particular front door. It sounded like footsteps but super accelerated, so the effect almost reminded Nikolai of a rattlesnake's warning. Something seemed to come in at the speed of a comet, then suddenly stop right at the front door, behind the man mountain. Nikolai looked in that direction and saw a man standing in the doorway.

That was impossible.

He had gotten used to hearing people come from 50 feet outside his door, even if they wore quiet shoes, the street outside just didn't lend itself to stealthy approach, but there he was. It almost felt like the new patron had winked in out of nowhere.

He wore a nondescript black rain hat with about a 6 inch brim and a lightweight but full length coat. In fact, all Nikolai could really see was the coat and the hat, just a dark shape in the doorway. The three men stopped their assault and looked back to the door, mostly in response to Nikolai noticing the patron. The man mountain looked at his three courtiers, confused for a moment before he realized they were looking not at him but behind him. The mountain of muscle spun around. His reaction was immediate. He drew a gun out of his oversized denim jeans with his left hand.

Fortunately, the patron was fast enough to block the gun with his right hand before the man pointed it at him.

Unfortunately, the gun had only been a distraction.

The mountain drew his right hand fully back to his shoulder. Nikolai saw the flash of brass knuckles before the hammer strike fell with the force of a 20 ton boat anchor dropped from high earth orbit. Nikolai couldn't even imagine the trauma that would be inflicted on the human body as the mountain leaned in with his hip and drove forward with his shoulder, throwing his full weight and strength down on this one man's unprepared an unsuspecting jaw.

Nikolai flinched and closed his eyes.

He felt a welling of sorrow for this man who, while trying to help, had sacrificed his life in an instant to this wild animal and his tools of destruction. Nikolai heard the sickening sound of metal impacting what would next be the shattering of bone, the splash of blood on the windows and sidewalk, the collapse of a limp body, dead before it even hit the floor ... or so he thought. What he actually heard sounded more like a metal sledge hammer striking a concrete monolith and the man mountain howling like he'd just broken his arm.

Nikolai opened his eyes.

The patron was standing exactly, to Nikolai’s perception exactly, as he had before the hammer strike. Even his hat hadn’t moved.

The man mountain dropped the gun and clutched his right wrist with his left hand, cradling it like it was in a sling.

The next 60 seconds felt very much like an ongoing car accident. It went by so fast that Nikolai had no time to react, but each second seemed like hours of frenetic activity. The stranger, seemingly completely oblivious to the man mountain’s attack, bolted in Nikolai’s direction. He covered the distance in a fraction of a second, far faster than any Olympic sprinter could ever have cleared the starting blocks. He plowed into the three courtiers in a move that reminded Nikolai of a bowling ball scattering a set of pins. He swept away the thug closest to Nikolai and crashed into the two remaining men sending all four bodies tumbling toward the back of the store. They landed in a chaotic heap of limbs and torsos as rolls of paper towels and loaves of bread fell from the shelves on top of them.

One of the thugs began to scramble away from the pile, but stopped with a jolt and began convulsing. Nikolai had seen a taser in action before. This first man's reaction was unmistakable. His head vibrated until his glasses fell off. His eyes rolled back into his head and his eyelids fluttered in a half-closed position, like he’d completely lost control of his ocular apparatus. His hands clutched and clawed at the floor as the muscles in his arms strained at nothing, his every nerve ending driven to frenetic confusion.

When his body went limp, Nikolai guessed it would be five minutes before he began to stir.

One down.

Even before the first man had stopped twitching, Nikolai heard the loud report of two gunshots. He jumped at the sound and his heart nearly punched a hole through his chest. After the echo died away, he saw the second man standing over the stranger with a smoking gun pointed directly at the stranger’s chest. Nikolai’s protector was flat on his back with his hand still on the ankle of the first man. There was a breathless pause, a moment of haunting stillness before all hell broke loose.

The stranger reached up with his left hand, grabbed the second man's wrist, which still held the gun, and yanked. As the second man fell forward, the stranger released the first man’s ankle and brought his right fist up to meet the side of the second man's head. The punch didn't seem fast, in fact it seemed ponderously slow. The stranger swung at an odd angle and swooped around to contact the second man's left temple. Slow as the strike looked, the thug’s head responded like a soccer ball off a lineman’s foot. It bounced off at alarming speed, his body went limp, and he fell to the floor on top of the first man.

Two down.

The third man, the same one that had threatened Nikolai with the straight razor, scrambled to his knees. He drew a long knife and threw his full weight behind it as he plunged it into the stranger’s stomach.

At least that was the plan.

Nikolai heard a loud crack when his weight came down on the knife and the attacker started screaming. The man pulled himself back off the stranger, clearly in agony. His wrist hung at the end of his arm at an odd angle.

As the thug stared at his broken arm, the stranger grabbed him by the throat and the thug began to convulse, again a taser-like reaction. Five more seconds and his body went limp.

Three down.

The stranger still hadn't stood up.

Now the man mountain lumbered in the stranger’s direction. It hadn't been 15 seconds since he’d struck the stranger with his brass knuckles. He was clearly favoring his right hand, but that wasn't slowing his approach. He pointed his gun at the stranger and rang off six shots. Nikolai winced as the bullets ricocheted around the store.

The man mountain tossed the gun aside.

He picked up one of the heavy wood display barrels Nikolai used in the store. Occasionally, Nikolai had tried to move one of these barrels. He guessed it weighed almost 300 lbs. The man mountain hoisted it over his head and rushed toward the stranger. The stranger now scrambled to get to his feet, pushing the bodies aside and slipping on the waxed tile surface. He had just made it to all fours when the barrel came down on his back like a wrecking ball.

The container made a sound like a small explosion and shattered like an eggshell.

The man mountain stood up from the blow.

So did the stranger.

He brushed wooden planks and snack cakes from his shoulders and stood up to his full height, maybe 6 feet. Incomprehensibly, he still had his hat on.

The man mountain, now enraged and howling like a mad dog, rushed forward and grabbed the stranger by the throat. He whipped the stranger off the floor and slammed him against the back wall. He held the stranger two feet off the ground as the man's