canvas into a hyperdimensional portal.
I am humble before the alchemists, and especially before that one with her paints and the hyperdimensional colors out of which they have been made. For those are not mere oil paints that she applies to that canvas.
I don’t know who mixed them or how, but I know this about those paints: they are a machine of the very highest order. The light reflected from the surface of paint she is applying not only penetrates this reality, it is visible in all realities.
I think one of those great physicists—was it Stephen Hawking, or possibly Roger Penrose?—said that a time machine would be the most visible thing in the world because it would necessarily exist in every moment. Well, that’s true, for this painting, as she paints it, at once takes on the appearance of an old master, an ancient encaustic, a cave painting, and in every respect of line, it is perfect.
It is not meant to save just an elite few. It is meant to save all who need saving. The elect are rising, the judged sinking into the dark center of the earth. But the rest of us, we have to escape and we have to do it in our physical bodies. Of course, many of us won’t make it. But many will, and I know this: when she is finished—when the moment is exactly right—this device will enter hyperspace and thus become visible to everybody with eyes to see it and the goodness of heart to use it.
It won’t save just a few hundred here at the clinic. No, it is part of a much larger plan. When it is finished, it will indeed be the most visible thing on earth.
This thing being shuffled onto that fragile canvas is nothing less than light in a very dark time, our great chance and great hope.
And now I know that I am here not only to use it and guide others through it but to protect it.
We are few around her, and the enemy is very many—in fact, so many that he is legion and will certainly destroy us if he can.
I can sense the edges of a great plan that surrounds us with love and hope, but also another plan, equally powerful, that seeks the ruin of the world.
18. GENERAL WYLIE
In Hancock, Virginia, the convoy stopped to refuel, then reroute around the Hagerstown, Maryland, area. Recce ahead had identified an active uprising in Hagerstown, so they were going to need to bypass in order to reach Raleigh and the Acton Clinic fast, and speed was probably essential.
General Wylie had a small muster consisting of his command vehicle, a Stryker Mobile Gun System, three squad Humvees, and a fuel truck. He did not see the light defenses at the clinic as being able to stand up against twenty-one soldiers and the MGS, which could deliver a pretty fair punch, and he intended to take the place out and obtain whatever of value his agent was signaling him was located there.
He had received an urgent and promising communication from Mack Graham, which had convinced him that immediate action was essential. It had said, “Device located and understood.”
That could not be more clear. There was a device and he knew where it was and he understood it.
So, fine. General Wylie was going to get it and take it back to Blue Ridge.
Over the past few days, one after another of the redoubts had reported over the fiberoptic network that the local situation was becoming critical. A number of them had since gone silent. Colonia Dignidad, with its reputation in Chile as having been founded by war-refugee Germans, had been an immediate target of the locals. Its last report was that the Chilean air force was overhead using deep-penetrating bunker buster bombs. The center in England had simply gone silent. Destroyed? Overrun? No way to know.
There were no longer any satellites operational so it wasn’t possible to get lookdowns. Also, there was no chance of deploying any sort of air power. That was all down due to electronics failures. How the Chilean air force had gotten up was anybody’s guess. Old planes, probably, without sensitive electronics. But that had been three days ago. Because of the tremendous electromagnetic loading of all wiring, not even the simplest aircraft were going to be viable now. The only reason his own vehicles were operational was that they were diesel and they had been started inside the redoubt. They’d keep going as long as they weren’t turned off and once again required their electronics.
General George Wylie sat in his command vehicle staring at an empty computer screen. He was back to Civil War–level intelligence. No eyes, no ears, except what a guy in a dusty diesel Jetta could bring back from his travels ahead.
“Device located and understood.” After that, no further reports. Probably, Mack the Cat was dead. Mack took the extreme chance, always.
They’d put Mack in the Acton Clinic last year because it had become clear that the group who, as children, had been taught Acton’s secrets by the son of his associate Bartholomew Light were assembling there.
A number of these children had been DNA profiled, and curious things were found, things that not even the most advanced genetics laboratories could decipher. Something—and it was extensive—had been added to their DNA. It was as if some sort of artificial evolution had been induced in them.
The redoubts around the world were full of members of important and very private societies, members of various fraternal orders and religious organizations, all of them devoted to the same thing: maintaining and increasing the wealth of those who had it and deserved it.
But not even the most secret of them was as well concealed as Acton’s group. They’d had their memories wiped, then experienced some kind of temporary psychotic induction process that was far in advance of any brainwashing technique ever developed. It had been this that had caused them to be so hard to find. Who would think to look among a bunch of psychotics? To all appearances, Mrs. Acton had left the estate to a favorite charity when she died, and it had used the money to found the clinic.
All very straightforward, and all a big, fat lie.
One of Mack’s messages from last week had said, “group leaders now present.”
So they were ready and whatever they were going to do, it was going to be going down pronto.
He tapped his driver’s shoulder. “Get under way.”
“Still fueling.”
They had to anticipate fuel needs carefully. If a vehicle were to stop running, it might never be able to be started again.
“Snap it up!”
“Yeah, okay.”
That sleazy response made his blood boil, but he sucked it in. The U.S. military had disintegrated. Who had ever imagined that regular soldiers like these would protect the redoubts effectively?
“We’re rolling,” his driver finally said as he increased power. Good. The sun was well up and that damn weird
The convoy moved on, turning onto a side road. To the north, he could see tall columns of smoke rising from Hagerstown. Here and there along the road were burned-out cars, stripped cars, some kind of a cattle truck with half-butchered carcasses and flies around it, and bodies, always bodies, bloating, hacked, shot, burned, you name it.
The United States was gone. Long gone. All countries were gone. That whole thing was over.
He drove on through the slow morning and afternoon, stopping far too frequently to clear the road, or, where that wasn’t possible, to do a slow workaround through the countryside.
At about two some asshole came running toward them with some kind of rifle in his hands. Before he could fire it, the general ordered him blown away. Then they moved on. The order of the day was, if it shows a gun it is hostile, and if it is hostile, kill it.
Here and there, you saw families on the road. Looked like Iraq during the invasion, or newsreel footage of World War II. Some of them even waved. Jerks. One time, incredibly, a Greyhound bus had passed going in the opposite direction. Now, that was amazing, but it was an old unit, looked like something from the sixties. No electronics, so all they needed was gas and they were in motion. There was a lot of gasoline around, too, if you could get to it. But pumps are electric and gas stations don’t have generators. A bus company, though, probably
