Famous (The Soul of the World Book 1) by David Skato (best book reader .txt) 📗

Calvin takes a seat opposite of him. “I couldn’t save her even if I'd tried.” The man states as he rubs his neck, which is now red with handprints.

The feeling of hands being around his neck was too familiar. He thought about it for a second and then realized that it had all come full circle. A long time ago, Calvin studied computer science at M.I.T. before anyone knew what computer science really was. Between the partying and the experiments, he graduated top of his class well rounded with experience in drugs, alcohol, and technology. It’s incredible how these things go together when the bigger picture is exposed. At the dawn of the computer age, Calvin became a hacker, mostly for financial gain but sometimes for fun. Oh, it was the excitement of the challenge. That’s what he was all about, the challenge. What could he break into next? He stumbled upon a three-word post on the dark web which read: “They are here.” This was laughable but very intriguing once he dug a little deeper into who posted it. It was from an IP address in Guatemala of all places. A country with little to no internet access, especially back in these early days. This piqued his interest, and the challenge made him dive deeper. He discovered that the person who wrote it, Mateo De Leon, went missing soon after.  Looking into who Mateo was, Calvin found that he had an instrumental hand at discovering what we now call social media, but he abruptly quit the project, stole the files, and ran back to Guatemala. This was the type of thing Calvin had been waiting for, a conspiracy. With a hot pocket in his mouth, he pecked away at the keyboard for hours, trying to find everything he could about this project now known as “Quest.”  He became obsessed with finding out who was behind this and what happened to Mateo until he received a knock at the door. Calvin, naive to the situation, casually opens the door to two men in suits claiming to be FBI.

“Where’s your badge?” he asked one of the gentlemen.

Suddenly, without saying a word, the man pushed him into the house, causing him to crash into the living room table.

“What’s going on? I know my rights!” He screamed.

One of the men waited by the door as the other one approached Calvin. He kneeled and began to choke him. Calvin blacked out.

Calvin awoke to complete darkness, intense heat, and the smell of burning. He panicked, kicking and flailing his arms until he realized he was in a bag. He calmed down for a second, took a key from his pocket, and sawed away at the fabric. He poked and rubbed until there was a glimmer of light, all while he felt heat intensifying around him. He poked his finger through the hole and tore the bag open. He rose to the sight of his entire apartment on fire. The flames rolled on this ceiling in balls as smoke filled every square inch. He looked at his computer station, which was now just a pile of rubble. He looked towards his bedroom, where he can see a small opening through the flames. He darted in that direction, landing on his bed, which is directly beside a window. He then opened the window and, without a second thought, jumped from the third floor, striking a parked car before planting on the cold asphalt. He managed to hop a few blocks away before ducking into an alley to take a break and digest what had just happened. What the fuck was going on? This couldn’t be happening to him. He was just playing. He didn’t believe any of this shit.

Now a much older Calvin Talbert was sitting across from this younger version of himself all over again. He knew the questions that were going through this guy’s mind. He had some answers, but he knew that there were some things that could never be explained.

“If they control everything, how are you here?” Dontae’ questions.

“I stumbled upon a very odd code while hacking into a secret communications project. You know it now as social media. The story about it being created at Harvard, all bullshit. The deeper I dug, the stranger things got. I discovered that it was to be used as an influence experiment. They found that I was on to them, so they tried to kill me. I’m sure they still think I’m dead.”

“The Carasaca?” Dontae’ asks.

“What?” Calvin said confused

“That tried to kill you?”

“Oh. No these were people. That thing started to appear a few weeks ago.”

“Where did it come from?”

“It’s the devil’s enforcer. It’s a sign that he’s coming. And soon.”

“I don’t believe in this voodoo bullshit. There has to be some other kind of explanation,” Dontae’ said as he rises out of the chair and begins to pace around the room.

“This existence is a much bigger place than what the eyes can see,” Calvin explained.

“They want me dead because I tried to find the truth about Rochelle. But she’s alive. Why was her hoax such a big deal? Big enough to try to kill me? Damn it; this doesn’t make sense!”

Calvin looks out of a small window staring into the woods just outside. “It wasn’t a hoax. Rochelle is dead.”

“No, she’s not. I just saw her on the fucking TV,” Dontae’ states rubbing his brow.

“Whatever that is, it's not Rochelle,” Calvin suggests.

“This is all about that video.”

“What video?” Dontae’ Asks.

“The viral video that was released this morning.”

“What does a stupid dance have to do with any of this?”

“It’s not the dance. It’s what she’s saying.”

“What is she saying? What does it mean?”

“She is chanting a ritual that opens a person to possession. Once those words are spoken, the person speaking has granted, for lack of a better word, access to their soul. For the demon knowns as Baphomet.”

Dontae’ sits. “Sandy said that name before-“He takes a