Make IT Real! - Sander R.B.E. Beals (self help books to read .txt) 📗

wakes up swiftly the moment we tell her that Jane is missing. She immediately thinks of one place that the two of us hadn't thought of looking: the kitchen. I very much doubt that we'll find her there, because Jane isn't such a midnight snacker. And indeed, we find nothing.

“Then we must alert Taquatl”, the hostess says. “He will know what to do!”. She calls for him, and about fifteen minutes later the tall citizen arrives. He listens to our story, and rubs his chin as he is thinking. He has a very expressive face, and you can just see the moment that he's come to a decision on what to do next. “We hardly ever need it, but the entire city is still being watched by a network of observation crystals” he tells us. I am not quite surprised, because that is what I must have seen stuck to the center stone of the city gate. Taquatl confirms my thought, and tells me and Valerie to follow him to the hub of that network, which is nearby. The others will completely overturn the hotel, in case Jane never left.

Taquatl leaves the hotel in a swift pace, almost daring the two of us to keep up. Luckily both me and Valerie have long legs (hers prettier than mine), so we do not lose sight of the robed figure. After a winding and turning route that takes us about five minutes, Taquatl stops at a heavy wooden door. He grabs a chain around his neck, and pulls out some sort of crystal. As he holds it up to the door, I spot a second crystal, embedded in the wood. Both light up in exactly the same shade of violet.

The door then silently opens for us, revealing a sober, round chamber, with a round table in the center. On top of it, a model of the city, like the model of Kayim's city, that we'd seen earlier. Our guide briefly looks around the model, and identifies the hotel where we are staying. He takes a wand from a hook on the wall, and taps on the roof of the hotel. The model rearranges itself, zooming in until the hotel takes up most of the space on the table. “When was the last time you have seen your daughter?” he asks me. I recollect having told her goodnight around eleven, but Valerie interrupts me: “We talked in bed until close to one, then we went to sleep”. Taquatl taps a short sequence into a pad on the edge of the table, and tells us to watch the hotel from all sides. We stand in such a way that we each can see one third of the hotel. I sometimes see figurines walking by the building, but nothing out of the ordinary. Valerie is the first to utter a muffled cry. “I see three people entering though the back door”, she tells us.

Taquatl presses another key, and the building becomes transparent, enabling us to follow the trio inside. They go up the main stairwell, straight for the girls bedroom. It is as if they knew who they were coming for, or as if they didn't care who they were coming for. One of them kneels beside Jane's bed, and pulls out a cloth of some kind. The big hand covers the girl's mouth, and soon she is even faster asleep then she was before. Or at least, that is what I assume from the smell in the hotel earlier on. The guy lifts her out of bed, tosses her over his shoulder, and the four of them go back the way they came, hardly making a sound.

“Who are these guys?”, I ask. From observing them I got the impression that they were military, or at least once were. And they've got guts, just walking in here to get somebody out. Taquatl sheds some light on the situation: “They call themselves Übermenschen, and they arrived here some sixty years ago.” I immediately remember having posted on my site, that part of the Nazi's that fled are said to have fled to Inner Earth, maybe these guys are part of that group? “If they are, then I know where their camp can be found.” Taquatl volunteers. I leave the building right before Taquatl closes the door, quickly thinking about the observation crystals. It seems like LIDAR which we use on Earth is a crude imitation of them.

As we've seen enough, we return to the hotel, to join the others. Under normal circumstances we would have left the city to continue our tour today, but now a rescue plan must be devised. Kayim has an idea on how to locate the missing girl: he heads out to the floater and returns with a small gizmo. “This is a DNA scanner”, he explains. “All we need is some of Jane's DNA, and a little luck to get us within half a mile of the girl” Valerie immediately goes to grab the hairbrush from the bedroom. She pulls out a long hair, and holds it up for Kayim: “Will this do?” Kayim takes it from her, gently rolls it up, and stuffs it into a compartment in the back of the scanner. He flips it over and turns it on, and the unit immediately begins to beep frantically. “This says she's here” Kayim concludes. “She should be standing right in your shoes”, he tells Valerie. Valerie laughs, and tells him to take the hair out. “It's probably one of mine, we both use that brush”. She pulls out another, and Kayim repeats the operation. Again, the alarm sounds. “Better turn off the sound” I tell him. He agrees that we do not want to alarm our opponents, and silences the gadget. The third retry yields a hair that does not immediately point to my eldest daughter. With the device ready to rock, we can get under way to find one of my dearest treasures.

Taquatl joins us, because he's been to the camp before. We walk to the floater, and the guide directs the silent machine to the south, keeping it between the foliage, so it is hardly noticeable. We touch down behind the tree line, out of sight of the guards at the camp. Even though it has been over sixty years since World War II, time seems to have stood still here: the barracks and the barbed wire fences look very much like the images of Dachau and Sobibór that I saw as a child in the books about the 2nd World War. There are however a few differences: the center of the compound has a sort of parking lot, where nine shuttle-like contraptions are arranged in a neat three by three square. They seem oddly out-of-time, like they belong in a 1930's comic book. I point them out to Kayim, but he shrugs: “There are far better flying saucers in Middle Earth. We will visit them later.” He pulls out the scanner, and flips open the lid. The device gives off a dry click, and the display shows a simple map of the environment, with a single blip indicating the whereabouts of my youngest. Fortunately I also see other, non-blinking dots, corresponding with our opponents out there. Again, we are in luck: the blinking white blip is shown to be inside the barrack that borders immediately on the fence. We only need to cross over from the bushes to the cover of the barrack's back wall, and nobody in the compound can see us anymore. The scanner reveals two guards at the door, and one person inside, besides Jane. For the moment we are safe here, so we decide to wait for the guy inside to leave. He isn't in a hurry, and we have to wait for over half an hour, but our patience is rewarded: finally, the red blip moves towards the door between the two guards, and leaves the building. Taquatl points at a handhold formed by what appears to be a ventilation opening. As I hold the wall steady, he pulls out some sort of pen-like device. “Molecular destabilizer”, he whispers, “completely silent, cuts through anything”. He starts at my left side, near the ground, and circles completely around my person. I feel the piece of wall standing free, but moving it is prohibited by resistance from below. In a low voice I tell him to cut it along the ground too, and ten seconds later I'm able to lift the entire section, and quietly lay it flat on the surface. A quick glance at the scanner reveals that the guards outside haven't moved, so I tiptoe inside, urging Jane to remain quiet. It's great seeing the look on her face, she's obviously delighted to see me. The simple ropes are no match for my untangling skills, and moments later we head for freedom.

Back at the floater, we quickly get into it. Just as we lift off, a siren starts to howl. Taquatl mentally kicks our transport into high gear, and we zoom away, concealed by the line of trees that also guarded our approach. Jane sits facing the encampment, and utters a muffled cry: “They've launched three of the saucers, I hope we can outrun them.” But for now it seems like the three haven't even spotted us, and the distance between us and the culprits is becoming ever greater. Unfortunately, the camp is in a valley, so at some point in time we will have to climb the hills. As we do, one of the three spots us, and starts the pursuit. Oddly enough, the others stay in their search pattern, which is indeed lucky for us. We make it into the next valley before the ancient contraption overtakes us. As it is flying above and behind us, Taquatl matches its speed and flies immediately underneath it. “They never thought of installing sensors on the belly”, he says. Looking up, I see that the machine doesn't even have cockpit windows below, so for now we are safe.

“Luckily I've seen the construction plans of these machines”, Taquatl laughs. He takes out his destabilizer, and punches a small hole in the underside of the beast. Immediately it starts leaking fluids, but other than that, nothing serious happens. We step on it again, and zoom out from under our opponents. They immediately throttle up to match our speed, but that only gets them so far. After chasing us for another two minutes, they suddenly lose altitude, and land flat on their belly on the sandy terrain.

We head back to the crystal city, delighted to have Jane back again. According to what she tells us, it was not a moment too soon. Apparently they where interested in using her DNA in the quest for their ever elusive “Übermensch”, and were going to take it tomorrow.

4444AD, Day 248, 22:22, Home

“Honey, can you tell me when you remember meeting me again as your past self?”, Selina asks. “Ah, you tweaking again?”, I smile at her. “Yup”, she goes, and tells me she's scripted a true soap opera scene between the two of us. She won't say just what is going to go down between us two in the past, but knowing her it's going to be a beauty.

“Remember the womb squad?”, she asks. Who could forget? A twin flame pair, who are addicted to the first stage of life, being in the womb. They've made a career out of doing miscarriages, stillbirths, and any variation on the theme. With the consent of the mother and father of my past self that was born in 1963, they doubled as his two older brothers, that both miscarried, making him the oldest of three instead of the youngest. “Well, they are in the plan, but I'm not telling anything else”, my lady teases.

I think back, but come up blank. Most likely she hasn't yet triggered the tweak, and our past selves know nothing of it yet, so neither do I.