Zeitgeist sat his desk, going through the latest digital information gathered by the Cabal. The Cabal’s livelihood was secrets, mainly technological secrets. It horded frightening new technology, waiting for the right buyer with a large Swiss Bank Account. Some could say this was a natural extension of capitalism. Others still insist that it was plain extortion. Perhaps, because of the latter, secrecy was of the utmost importance for members of the Cabal.
To Zeitgeist’s right, a wall of screens came to life. On each screen was a member of the Cabal, equally cloaked in shadows. Zeitgeist waved off his assistant, Ragdin, and waited until he left the room before speaking.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” spoke Zeitgeist with a gruff voice. “What an unexpected surprise. What’s on today’s agenda? I hear the Xians are designing a new propulsion system.”
“You know why we are calling,” insisted one of the members.
“It concerns your latest project,” said another.
“What of it?” asked an impatient Zeitgeist.
“It’s consuming a large margin of time and expense. We are beginning to worry that it will not be profitable for us to continue your endeavor.”
“Patience, gentlemen,” assured Zeitgeist. “The thrill is in the hunt, is it not? Why did we create this illustrious organization if not for the thrill of it all?”
“Spare us your romantic drivel,” retorted the first commenter.
“We have not been able to contact the expedition for ten cycles. We should write this off as a lost cause,” remarked a female member.
Zeitgeist got out of his seat and walked over to a table with a finely crafted chessboard on it. He picked one of the pieces, the white queen, and examined it. “I’ll have laid your fears to rest by the end of the week,” he said. “I have set into motion a chain of events that will bear us the fruit that I… we desire.”
Far from the shadowy dealings of Dr. Zeitgeist lay the planet Imitatia, home of the Imitatians. The Imitatians were known galaxy-wide for their dead-on impersonations. If anyone needed a body double or a celebrity impersonator, then they usually turned to an Imitatian. Even the cities they lived in were great duplicates of famous of cities across the universe. One such city was New New York City.
The Imitatians thought their cities lacked authenticity without actual participation from residence from those cities, and New New York City was no exception. Working in the faux arcade was a young woman named Zoey Walker, who had a special knack with technology. As a youth, she spent a lot of time in arcades such as this, and it wasn’t strange to find herself once again in one, albeit a copy of one. But this was not why she had such a bond with all things digital.
That occurred years prior, when, for a large sum of money, she and a group of others went to Mars for some human testing, unbeknownst that the “testing” involved among others, brain surgery. Being the sole survivor to these experiments, Zoey awoke from the experiments with the innate self-awareness of all electronic data around her. In simpler terms, she could mental communicate with computers and other digital units.
A woman named Sara helped with Zoey’s recovery, and for awhile, she traveled with Sara to see the universe outside of Earth and eventually found herself here, having not seen Sara for a year, though they still communicated with each other. But right now, Zoey had other things on her mind than her past, mainly the innards of one of the arcade machines lying on her lap. Kintu, one of the Imitatians that Zoey had befriended, looked over this with great curiosity.
“This is a barigunt,” explained Kintu, her stone head floating above her stocky shoulders. “Great conversationalist, rather lousy manners though.”
“Reminds me of a boyfriend I once dated,” said Zoey, not looking up from her work.
“And this is a recce,” continued Kintu, who now looked like a large statue with a fine marble finish. “Sentient rocks, you know.”
This did not elicit a response from Zoey. Kintu frowned at this. “And then there’s the elusive humans from the planet Earth. Known for being fat, rude, and lazy.” Recognizing the voice, Zoey looked up to see herself across the room. Kintu had done an amazing job replicating her right down to her messy, blond hair and dark brown eyes.
“Are you calling me fat?” asked Zoey.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” replied Kintu. Zoey took a closer look at “herself.”
“My mother probably couldn’t tell us apart,” said Zoey. “She’d probably not be happy if we were twins.”
“Why?”
“Twice the trouble.”
“For whom?” asked an uncertain Kintu. But a buzzing sound interrupted their conversation. Zoey scrounged around the mess of technological junk until she found what she was looking for. The compact holoprojector fit nicely in the palm of her hand. The device activated, in which a figure of light grew up and out of it. The figure sharpened to reveal a small, transparent version of Sara.
“Sara?” asked Zoey. “What’s up?”
“Zoey,” said Sara. “Sorry to interrupt, but something urgent’s come up, and I need your help. Take the next available departure to Alabastir. I’ll meet you at the station. I’ve downloaded any additional information you’ll need.”
“Slow down, Sara,” said Zoey. “I thought you were out of the skull-and-duggery politics-and-intrigue game. Weren’t you investigating those solid matter incidents?”
“It’s very important that you get here as soon as possible. It’s all very abrupt, I know, but please trust me. And hurry.” The signal kicked out and the image faded away.
“That was…” started Zoey. “Brief.” Zoey gave a brief shrug. Sara had at times come off a little eccentric, and in times of emergencies, she did tend to be a little curt with others.
“That was pretty good, not excellent, but pretty good.” Zoey gave Kintu a quizzical look.
“What, this?” Zoey asked indicating the holoprojector. “I thought everyone had one of these.”
“No, no. I meant the performance.”
Zoey was still unsure about what Kintu was talking about. “You mean Sara?”
“No, the person pretending to be Sara.”
“Wait a minute,” Zoey said. “‘Pretending?’”
“It wasn’t a bad likeness, but they got the posture all wrong.”
“And how would you know…?” Before Zoey could finish her sentence, she found herself staring at “Sara.”
“Sara used to be a very public figure. Her mere presence had helped smooth out many rough situations,” said Kintu in Sara’s soft voice. Zoey had to admit that Kintu was a remarkable Sara, capturing Sara’s uniquely aging hair and strangely beautiful green eyes.
“But if that’s not Sara, who was it?” asked Zoey.
“Who knows? But it’s best not to get involved.”
“Like hell, it’s not,” snapped Zoey. “If they were after me, they could also be after Sara. I’ve got to meet with this fake Sara and find out what this is all about.”
“Aren’t you going to warn Sara about all this?”
“Good idea,” admitted Zoey. “I’ll give Sara the same coordinates and if two Saras show up, one of them will have a lot of explaining to do.” Zoey paused, noticed a bemused look on Kintu’s face. “What?”
“You don’t really seem fazed by any of this,” explained Kintu.
“Are you kidding? I used to do this kind of thing all of the time with Sara,” replied Zoey.
Hours later, Zoey was feeling a little less confident sitting in her seat aboard the trans-planetary train. She had sprung for the first class cabin, though not sure why. She closed her eyes as they finished the preliminary work on the train. In her mind’s eye, she could feel the amount of raw data dancing around her like musical notes during a concert.
“Attention,” came a voice from the loudspeaker. “This is 10:30 trip to Fulmar with stops at Richmond, Alabastir, and Tylia. We will be traveling via wormhole, so be aware of the time deficit for your designation. We will start moving momentarily, so place remain seated.” There was a familiar jolt and the train started move away from the platform.
Zoey awoke sometime later, lulled by the train’s rhythmic movement. She looked out the window only to see the wormhole’s psychedelic swirls. She got out of her compartment and walked around, soon finding herself in the dining car. She sat down and ordered some food. She felt the unusual sensation of someone watching her. Glancing around, she could not identify anyone familiar or suspicious looking.
After finishing her meal, she got up and started to make her way back to her compartment. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a man get up and follow her. She cursed herself for making an amateurish mistake. She was so concerned about the trap before her that she hadn’t considered the idea that there may have been agents placed on the train to insure that she complied.
Zoey quickened her pace without trying to be too obvious about it. She slowed only to squeeze past a happy couple in the narrow hallway. A nervous smile spread across her lips as she finally reached her compartment. Now, she only had to lock herself within the cramp cabin until the train exited the wormhole.
Only the door opened of its own accord, and a large hand grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her into the compartment. Zoey was about to scream for help, but the other hand clamped over her mouth. The coarse hand smelled cigarette butts and gunpowder. The other hand twisted her arm behind her back. A second individual, just out of sight, closed and locked the door.
“So,” said the man watching all of this. “You’re Zoey Walker, huh?” He was a tall man with a muscular build hidden under a striped suit. His rough face featured a long scar going down his right cheek. He idly played with a switchblade. “And you’re going tell us everything you know about Sara?” The cold blade was pressed against her throat.
“Right?”
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Written by J M Emmons. The story and all characters are copyrighted by J M Emmons.
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