The Children of Zegandaria - Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov (world best books to read txt) 📗

massive facility. He couldn't afford to linger here any longer, he had to get back and then he noticed that someone had called the elevator up. Now there was no flinch - either had to make a second attempt to call him or simply had to hide in anticipation of impending doom.

It wasn't long before the elevator began to descend and the signal irEnic lamps on it cast lazy glares. Father dared not come out of his hiding place, and it was not befitting a holy man to fight such battles.

- "I was sceptical at first," father murmured, "but soon all will be revealed."

The elevator kept going down. Father wondered why it was descending so slowly. It was as if it were an invisible boat moving on the waves of a lake. It was just coming time to say, "Enough!"

In the back of his mind, Father was sure that those who were coming had obviously overcome the guards, for they did not have his privilege of moving peacefully within the prison.

He recalled all this and mentally recited a verse from Holy Scripture:

"Blessed is the man that goeth not into the congregation of the wicked, and standeth not in the way of sinners, and sitteth not in the assembly of profligates: but his will is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he meditates day and night."

The elevator showed itself slowly on the top floor and thudded amid dust and ashes. If there were rats around, they would scurry away, but unfortunately there were none, for the prison guards insisted on special hygiene only here, while the filth in the rest of the facility was proverbial.

Father fixed his gaze on the closed door. As it slowly swung open, light streamed through, and he caught sight of a whole team of well-armed men, carefully surveying the place and in no hurry to leave.

One by one they slipped out of the well-insulated elevator car and began to look around.

The priest still had no intention of leaving his hiding place, but he soon realized that it was pointless to hide. He walked right out in front of them and raised his hands.

JONATHAN SACKLIN

 

"... Oh, there is so little faith in you... Faith does not save the drowning from death."

James Kristof

 

CHAPTER NINETY-NINE: JONATHAN SACKLIN

 

Jonathan Sacklin was like that famous man in the labyrinth who dared not come out of it and guarded his territory jealously. He was so obsessed with this idea that he finally, shut himself off and lost all awareness of the outside world. But he lived too well according to his own rules.

And he didn't let anyone know his secret. So he spent nearly fifty years in complete isolation.

Wunderkind understood and knew how to deal with various problems as he knew how.

Even at a young age, it was clear that he would not go the way of others, and the only thing left for him to do was to give his all to deal with his problems.

While Jonathan was robbing the scientific laurels, he had built his own illusory world and didn't want to leave it in any way.

Little by little this led to a rift with his brother. They both became estranged - too much so.

Herns was convinced that his brother was too strange even for his ideas, even abnormal. Gradually he also became aware of his dangerous perceptions of the surrounding reality, which in the past had made him a passive spectator of everything that happened.

After a while, however, Sacklin's progress became evident, and he defended a triple doctorate in cybernetics, quantum particle physics, and mathematics.

This didn't particularly impress Herns, who had long since stopped following exactly what was going on with Sacklin.

One night, Sacklin came home more mortified than usual and simply stopped sharing exactly what was going on with him.

No one noticed, but even if they had, it didn't matter. He went back to his room and was more thoughtful than ever.

He'd been working on his new theory of mind switching for a while, which had a lot of interesting premises that probably wouldn't have pleased the polis scientists.

Sacklin didn't want to show that he was doing experiments on himself in order to prove himself right, and that was usually enough for him to make sense of his own existence.

He didn't think he was a lost soul or anything, but an innovator who had taken it upon himself to research various options for a scientific breakthrough and patent it in his own name.

Naturally, whatever was going to happen was going to happen.

He had been given access to Emvor Na Hospital itself, where he had access to some cases, albeit very superficially. But he had gathered the necessary material for experiments from earlier.

Once he started working for the tech giant Esanron, which produced the peos chips in abundance, he also got a rough idea of the implantation process and what needed to be done in the shortest time possible.

One night he secretly snuck a patient out of the hospital with the blessing of one of the doctors and began doing the final tests.

It was this naked man that Om Gur Nal himself had seen when he had walked around the fifth level of the virtual reality.

The patient later had serious hallucinations which were caused by the fifth level virtual reality precisely, but he did not give up his experiments.

The man was hopelessly ill and had agreed to participate on the grounds that Sacklin would inject him with eromonium seritinide, which would in effect shorten his suffering shortly.

Sacklin was doing his best to make sure his frequent absences were not noticed at home, nor to bother his parents, who were then of advanced age.

Jonathan Herns had long since been exiled to Labor Colony 206, and he was left completely on his own to do as he pleased.

His days went by rather uneventfully and everything was just Hell for him. But Sacklin was not giving up his dream of learning what he thought would make a scientific revolution.

In time, he began to realize that switching consciousness from one level to another was not such a simple matter. Apart from the aforementioned IQ, which had to be particularly high for the upper levels of virtual reality, Sacklin discovered that a so-called protoplasmic state of mind was also necessary to unlock its unlimited potential.

But how this could happen was still a complete mystery to him! He spent hours proving various hypotheses, but something kept escaping his attention. But he knew it was too, too close!

THE INITIATION OF NAMURO

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED: THE INITIATION OF NAMURO

 

Namuro was known for his bloodlust, but on the other hand it was directed primarily towards school, making him somewhat unsuitable for the group's purposes. However, he had strong anallytical skills, could act independently under pressure, and most importantly, was mind-bogglingly violent.

After a while, they realized that they hadn't been wrong to choose him to coordinate the strike group's actions after all. They decided to have him draw up a plan to propose to Ames for approval, and to send Savage Ryan on the ground to negotiate with the syndicates and convince them that they were their proper and only protection against Om Gur Nal's outrages.

Namuro felt slightly strange in his new role as coordinator. He went around to all the known places and just gathered information. He had plenty of time on his hands and was eager to prove himself.

In a few weeks he was ready. Ames felt they were moving frankly a bit slow, but wished that delay would be offset by quality execution.

Namuro was learning fast and becoming more vindictive with each passing day. He had to keep up with all his problems. He then set about researching union leaders and guessing how much he could get out of whom. He knew that the strike force was going to be Savage Ryan, yet he was expected to prepare the ground more carefully before any action.

After he said the oath, the members of the brotherhood welcomed him as one of them.

After a while, he removed the blindfold from his eyes. It was very, very quiet around.

It was as if everyone had sunk into their deep sleep and no one cared. All eyes were on him because he was good at dealing with challenges.

Now there was one like it in front of him - he had to catch a snake with his bare hands and strangle it.

Namuro was swimming in sweat. Sparks were popping out of his eyes.

The snake writhed in his arms, relentlessly pinned in his death grip.

But he used his suit's pneumatic gauntlet and swatted it away.

- "This is no great heroics or some feat," Crazy Ames addressed him in a thoroughly friendly menner, "we just wanted to test your mettle. We wished to see if you could really kill without a care in the world, and when resisted. Next comes the hard part. Savage Ryan will go negotiate with the unions. But you have to convince their leader that it's a good idea. That is, be willing to cooperate early."

Namuro explained that he understood exactly what they wanted from him.

- And one more thing, it takes a lot more than just collecting dues from unions to exist. We have to fund ourselves from different places.

The shabby Ames laid out his plan for getting regular orders to liquidate certain individuals who were of interest to certain business circles.

- "Look, if we want the serious money, we've just got to do the real work - the rest is petty crumbs and nothing more," Ames continued, "there's no point in fooling around."

Namuro kept nodding. They agreed to settle things soon. That evening, when he got home, he realised he had already made his choice.

Late at night he heard some noise under his window. He opened the synth hatch and tried to breathe in the smell through his suit's filter.

- "I smell youth," the boy said as if to himself. "Maybe that's where the secret lies and everything will be all right in the end."

- "Come on, hurry up, we don't have that much time to waste. We definitely need to catch up with the schedule. More alive!," called Savage Ryan, who was about three years older than him.

Namuro slipped out cautiously and the two of them sank into the night.

The first thing they had to do was head to the farthest edge of Enzok Ra, where its very periphery was. The night was incredibly beautiful and full of mystery, and their young minds were thirsty for