Forever Yours
46
Journey into Darkness
HENRY HAD NEVER been plagued with nightmares. He credited that to his ability to almost instantly recognize when he was dreaming. Nightmares were a result of believing you were experiencing something false. Usually, if he had an unpleasant dream, he could simply change channels or turn it off.
“God is punishing you!” Isobel said in his ear. He turned to see the Latina beauty standing naked beside his bed. Yes, this had to be a dream.
“God isn’t interested in me,” he responded. “Or anyone else, for that matter.” He started to turn the channel, but Rev. Daniel Reeves was standing behind Isobel in a long flowing robe with a bunch of stoles hung around his neck.
“The Sword of the Spirit has descended upon you. You will be judged for your sins. You have set an idol before the people to worship and adore. There is no god but God and he will not be satisfied until this idol is cast down and you have been thrown into the flames of judgment,” the preacher said.
“Is that why you hired Russian atheists to attack our servers?”
“God can use anyone to serve his purpose.”
“Maybe he’s using Pythia for his purpose,” Henry argued.
He turned back to Isobel. As long as she was in his dream and naked, he was going to enjoy her.
“Is that guy Catholic?” Henry asked.
Isobel looked at the preacher as if she’d just discovered him and tried to cover herself up with her hands. The robes fell away and Reeves stood there in a business suit with his Bible flopping around in one hand like a fish.
“You aren’t part of the Church!” Isobel declared. “You’re a false prophet.”
“It’s the Romans who have led the people astray for centuries. You are idol worshipers, too,” the preacher shot back.
“Your only god is money,” Isobel responded. “How can you demand that the poor and homeless give you what sustenance they need; and you turn around and spend their money on lavish homes and gluttony?”
Isobel and Reeves continued to argue and Henry lost interest in them. He slept until he was nudged awake by a naked girl in his bed. He turned to look into Lisa’s eyes.
“My love,” He whispered to her. “How I love you.”
“Did you kill him?” she demanded.
“Who?”
“The preacher. He caused all this, didn’t he?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. I don’t even know where he lives,” Henry told his wife while trying to kiss her.
“Didn’t stop you with me,” Tom Reynolds said.
Henry looked over Lisa’s shoulder. It was another dream then. Reynolds was dead.
“I didn’t kill you,” Henry said.
“I was as good as dead long before the bullets found me. My job gone. The girls gone. My money gone. Even my property up north was confiscated. I had nothing. All my hope was gone.”
“You killed yourself,” Henry said. “You had nothing to hope for. Hope is what makes men despair. Despair makes them die.”
“Right now, the preacher has hope,” Lisa whispered. Tom faded out of his dream. “Take away his hope.”
Henry pulled Lisa closer to him, but held only a wad of blanket in his arms.
“Partner, you need to build us a fortress,” Luke said from a chair by the window. Henry hadn’t remembered a window in his dreams, but the only thing that had remained constant was the bed he was sleeping in. Surely, it must be about time to get up.
“I’m no architect,” Henry said.
“A digital fortress. Of course, if you want to build Isobel and me a mansion, that would be nice, too. We’re getting married.”
Dreams. Luke and Isobel were married a long time ago.
“You just said I need to build a digital fortress.”
“Like a castle on a hill,” Luke said. “Where no one can successfully attack us. It’s not enough to have a counterattack. We need to prevent attacks before they occur.”
“It’s true,” Ryan said from a chair on the other side of the bed. The room was beginning to look familiar with Henry’s father in it. “The thing that’s been bothering me about my Forever Yours files is who will have access. Anyone could ask me a question and the AI me has to answer. I have no protection. No way to refuse to answer.”
“I’ll think about it. I’m getting tired. I need to sleep on it,” Henry said, burrowing under his covers.
“No need for that,” Sylvia said, sitting on the arm of his father’s chair. “You’ve been asleep for days. You haven’t even asked about your wives. It’s time for you to wake up, Henry.”
“Lisa! Chastity! What happened?”
“What did you do to my granddaughter?” Beau demanded, towering over the bed. “You said she’d be safe!”
“No! Where is she? Lisa! Chastity! Where are you?”
“Here, love,” the voices of his wife and her girlfriend spoke together.
“It’s time to wake up, Henry,” Chastity said. She pulled his right arm around her as she stood by the bed.
“Come back to us, Henry,” Lisa said. He tried to put his left arm around her, but it wouldn’t move. “We all want to go home now.”
“Lisa! My precious wife,” he gasped, opening his eyes. “You’re alive!”
“Banged my head pretty badly, but I’m alive. They say I was concussed. I’m still on concussion protocol but I should be fine.”
Henry turned to see Chastity looking down at him. He saw the purple and orange bruise on her face. She winced as he squeezed her.
“Chas! What happened? Are you okay? Where are we?” Henry was still confused. This wasn’t his bed. “You’re hurt!”
“Couple of broken ribs and bruises on my face and chest. I guess the airbags saved us all from more damage, but I’m sure they caused the bruises on my face.”
“We’re at the hospital,” Lisa said. “We refused to leave after they discharged us.”
“Why? I don’t remember. Why am I in bed? And you’re bruised and broken! Tell me this is all another dream!”
“The accident. You don’t remember any of it, do you?” Chastity asked. “I don’t blame you. It was nasty.”
“A car ran a red light and T-boned our car,” Lisa said. “You took the brunt of it.”
“I don’t remember. We fought off the cyberattack and went to dinner,” Henry said.
“I was curled up on the passenger side of the back seat,” Lisa said. “I mostly just banged my head through the window. They say I was lucky not to be cut up badly, too.”
“You were lucky the guy hit you just behind the driver’s seat,” Chastity said. “It still broke your arm and leg and gave you a severe concussion. I think it was your head hitting me that broke my ribs. We’ve been watching over you for five days.”
“Five days? I knew I was tired after we left the office, but I didn’t think I’d sleep five days,” Henry said, flinching when he drew a deep breath. His ribs were also either broken or bruised.
“No doubt exhaustion had something to do with it, too,” Lisa said. “I think part of the reason we all survived was because we were so tired and relaxed.”
“I’m so thankful you’re here and awake!” Chastity said, petting his forehead and hair.
Henry’s initial assumption that she was naked proved to be a dream memory rather than reality. She wore blue hospital scrubs, identical to Lisa’s. She reached for the button that would call a nurse. The nurse arrived within seconds.
“Ah, Mr. Pascal! You’re awake. We’ve all been waiting for you. Especially these young women. I’ll call the doctor on duty and he’ll be here to check on you.”
She turned her head to a lapel mike and gave instructions, then started checking Henry’s vitals. The whole time, Henry continued to stare at Chastity and Lisa as they stood nearby.
Henry was released from the hospital two days later, once the doctor was satisfied he wasn’t suffering any long-term damage from the concussion and had medications to keep the pain under control. Henry always considered himself to have a high pain threshold, but he was thankful for the prescription painkillers the doctor gave him. By the time each dose wore off, he was in pain again.
Lisa and Chastity called in help from their friends and had a hospital bed and recliner moved into the living room of the row house. It was definite Henry would be unable to negotiate the stairs for a while. His mother came to supervise the transition to the house and make sure he was settled. Having a medical professional in the house had always kept Henry on the straight and narrow when it came to following doctor’s orders and Sylvia promised she would be looking in on him regularly.
Henry found it intensely frustrating to be confined to the bed and needing help to even move to the chair nearby. They’d moved the reclining loveseat from their sitting room downstairs so either Lisa or Chastity could sit next to him when he was out of bed. Chastity went back to work the next week, but Lisa stayed home. She was no longer working for Open Cloak, but had to be in the office in their suite to set up working remotely for her father. Still, she came to sit beside Henry and to help him move whenever he needed her.
“Oh, no!” Henry said, soon after he’d settled at home.
“What’s wrong?” Lisa asked, alarmed.
“Our celebration. It was supposed to be the weekend after we got back from our honeymoon. I missed it!” Henry said.
“Not really, dear. We didn’t hold it without you,” Lisa laughed. “Everyone was very understanding and I simply told them we would hold the celebration after you were ambulatory again. We’re still married.”
“I’m so sorry, Lisa. There’s so much pain I’ve caused.”
“Do you need a pill?”
“Not that kind of pain. Or at least not just that kind. I never considered that we would actually become a physical target. It’s just computer code!” Henry was becoming even more frustrated by not being able to work. He could scarcely go to the office without being able to walk. What was it Luke had said about an ADA compliance notice they’d received?
“Honey, did you know that according to recent surveys, seventy percent of Americans use some form of generative AI or chat bot? Half of Americans say they use it daily. And get this: twenty-five percent of Americans say they have a personal AI friend. You and I know it’s just code. The majority of Americans have forgotten that.”
“Shit! I really need to get back to the office.”
“You really need to rest and recover,” his wife said.
Henry had to return to the clinic for periodic x-rays and assessment of his healing. They called a non-emergency medical transportation company that arrived with a large van that could accommodate Henry’s wheelchair and extended left leg.
Lisa bought a new car and Henry was happy to see her take initiative. Not that she didn’t talk to him about it, but she made the final decision. It was a minivan. With the rear seats removed and a movable ramp, she and Chastity could move him out of the house and into the van. He could get his leg all the way inside, even though his head was near the roof. That reduced the number of calls for a medical cab.
“Are you sure you wanted to get a minivan?” Henry asked.
“Well, if we decide not to have children for a while, we can always sell it, but it is pretty comfortable for the three of us,” Lisa said.
“Children?” Henry asked.
“When we’re ready.”
Of course, Henry had thought about having children with Lisa, but it hadn’t soaked in that getting married was the first step in that process.
Several people came by to visit Henry, including almost daily visits by his mother. Luke and Isobel had visited the first week he was home and Henry pled with his friend to bring him his laptop from the office. He’d left it there after the cyberattack. He really wanted to do some research if nothing else.
It was the following Monday when Luke arrived bearing the equipment.
“Don’t try to work full-time from your bed,” Luke laughed. “It’s a long recovery process when you get banged up as much as you were.”
“Whatever happened to the guy who hit me?” Henry asked. “Seems we should be launching a personal injury lawsuit.”
“Your parents, Lisa’s parents, her grandparents and even my parents have an army of lawyers standing by. Lisa and Chastity talked to them to set things in motion with the insurance companies while you were still in the hospital. Doesn’t surprise me that they haven’t talked to you about it yet. Those are two stubborn and determined ladies,” Luke said. “The guy who rammed you is dead. The official report released to the insurance company said he was driving under the influence of heavy-duty drugs. No seatbelt. He went straight through the windshield like he was impaled on his own sword.”
“What sword?”
“It was painted or decaled or something on the hood of his car. In a newspaper interview with the guy’s wife, she asked first, ‘Where’s the money?’ Since he died, she expected someone to be bringing her a lot of money. Then you’ll love this. She said the Sword of the Spirit was supposed to protect him because he was doing the work of the Lord,” Luke said.
“Fuck! Are you telling me he was sent by that church?”
“Hmm. ‘Sent by’ might be too strong a phrase. Though, I’d guess he could have interpreted it that way. That preacher has been continuing to talk. He whips his followers into a frenzy and one takes a notion to carry out the will of God and put an end to the great Satan. The preacher and the church, of course, have denied all knowledge of who he was or why he did what he did. But in the next breath they called him a great Christian man, called by God, and resting in the bosom of Jesus.”
“Dog whistling. ‘I never said to kill him.’ People have been denying their culpability in everything for years. People said ‘8647’ but when someone made an attempt on the bastard, they acted all innocent and surprised. ‘We never said to kill him! That’s not what we meant.’ The preacher says the Great Satan must be eliminated, but then innocently claims he never said Henry Pascal needed to be killed. Son of a bitch.”
“Yeah. The preacher’s sermon about Pythia became so popular online that he started selling ceramic lapel pins of a flaming sword, changed the name of his church to The Sword of the Spirit, printed up decals to put on people’s cars, and stickers to put on briefcases, computers, and school books. There aren’t as many as wore MAGA hats, but they’re popular.”
“Religion trying to intimidate the rest of the world,” Henry sighed.
“Will it ever end?”
“I doubt it.”
There was a lot of information on Henry’s computer that he wanted access to. Luke had given him information that he suspected but had not yet been able to confirm or act upon. This Rev. Reeves fellow had made an enemy. He’d dreamed about it when he was in the hospital. Henry was determined to destroy the enemy of his company and his family.
He’d learned quite a bit from General Schwartz while they were countering the attack on the servers. Schwartz was decisive and definitely in command. He gave the orders and then acted to be sure his subordinate was protected from any backlash. He took care of his people. And Henry realized, he was one of the general’s people as well.
It was an example Henry determined to follow. He would protect his business and his people and his family. He simply needed to determine the appropriate level of response. Working on his laptop, even with one hand made the pain in his arm, leg, and side worse. He’d had periodic headaches ever since he woke up. Sometimes he took a painkiller before it was prescribed. “Every eight hours as needed.” Henry considered the last two words separate from the first three.
Twice in his life, he had searched out all the personal information about individuals who had threatened them. The first was Tom Reynolds. He’d reported all the relevant information on Tom to the police and his employer, but not confident in their ability to protect Chastity, he’d also called Paul Riordan. He wasn’t sure what Paul did, or who he called, or even if he’d done anything, but a short while later, Tom was killed in a gun battle outside Chastity’s apartment building. Police said it was drug related. Maybe it was.
Then Kaitlyn Lau had attempted to force him to marry her in order to take control of his business. She’d claimed to be pregnant. Henry’s searches had revealed that she was being pressured by foreign interests to get control for them. Henry didn’t take it out on Kaitlyn. He rewrote specifications in her trust to give her control of the millions in it upon graduation from college. He hadn’t taken any other action against the other interests or her parents until the university AI lab and his own servers had been hacked. Then he blew them out of the water. He didn’t regret causing a ten percent outage of China’s internet capacity, but hadn’t known how close it came to causing a war.
Reeves was going to require both subtlety and permanence. What had he said to Tom in his dream? Loss of hope leads to despair. Despair leads to death. In his dream, Lisa had said, “Take away his hope.” He needed Reeves to experience a level of despair that would reduce him to the contemporary version of the Bible’s sackcloth and ashes. Preferably his ashes.
Henry worked for four days to instruct an AI on exactly how it was to destroy the minister and hopefully the entire Sword of the Spirit movement. He fine-tuned the parameters and even the timeline for when different aspects would be implemented.
When the pain was too much, he took another oxycodone. When the prescription ran out, rather than bother the doctor for a refill, he picked the code for the pharmacy and renewed it. The pills were delivered the next day.
He’d read the Bible once out of curiosity and was particularly struck by the story of Job. He was a man of God and God blessed him. Then Satan came along and challenged God. Thus began the tribulations of Job. He lost his flocks and herds. He lost his sons and daughters. He was afflicted with boils and disease. Yet Job stayed faithful to God. And how did God repay him? Health. More flocks and herds. More beautiful daughters and stronger sons.
Did that replace the pain and sorrow that Job felt at the loss of his first family? Was his wife all kind and understanding about his faith in God that led to having her first fourteen children raped and killed? Did those children ever forgive him? Was there ever a day in Job’s life that he didn’t mourn for the lives that had been lost for his faith?
Henry would see if Reeves had even a shred of Job’s faith and patience. He executed the command and sent his AI to destroy Rev. Daniel Reeves and the Sword of the Spirit Evangelical Church. Then he closed the computer.
When the time for his next doctor’s appointment arrived, Henry was surprised to find a nice cargo van arrive at his door. Luke was right behind it.
“What gives?” Henry asked.
“We’ve had the notion that we needed a company vehicle for some time,” Luke said. “We’ve been moving all kinds of things and your new employee that starts on Monday will need to have furniture and staff.”
“New employee?” Henry asked.
“You signed the papers to hire General Schwartz,” Luke said. “He starts Monday.”
“I almost forgot,” Henry said. “I made the offer while we were mopping up the servers after the attack. Before we went to dinner.”
“Chastity had it all down and Schwartz agreed to the August sixth start date,” Luke said. “And this is Germaine. She’s your driver.”
“Driver?”
“Happy to meet you, Mr. Pascal,” Germaine said in a lightly accented voice. Henry thought it might be Eastern European.
Germaine was blonde, slender, and tall. Her hair was cut short and rather boyishly. She also seemed to be quite muscular.
“You needn’t call me Mr. Pascal. I’m just Henry.”
“Yes, sir,” she answered. Henry and Luke both chuckled.
“Germaine emigrated from Ukraine with her parents soon after the war started about ten years ago. The whole family studied hard and were naturalized. Isobel was complaining that since Nancy has become so busy with the front desk and assisting Chastity, there was no one in the office to run errands. Chastity went to work and found Germaine.”
“I thought Isobel had a new assistant,” Henry said, remembering altercations nearly two months ago.
“Yes, but she would never ask a person with more experience than she has to run errands,” Luke laughed.
“Well, that’s great. Germaine, I’m glad to have you here, but I don’t think you need to drive me around.”
“Henry, we need you back in the office. Germaine will be your driver at least until you are out of those casts and able to get around on your own,” Luke concluded.
“I guess that’s great. I’d love to be back to the office.”
“Clinic first,” Chastity said coming downstairs. She was closely followed by Lisa. “Happy to see you, Germaine.”
Germaine beamed at her.
“Thank you, Chastity.”
“Let’s get this guy into the van and off to the clinic.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
