PROLOGUE

Eleven is an awkward age. I was no longer a boy and not yet a man. It should have been a time of carefree fun, but there was no joy in my life anymore, not since my parents were murdered. That was three months ago. Hearing Aunt Nina’s footsteps in the hallway, I stopped typing and quickly switched to a new browser tab that was logged into an online algebra course I was taking. It was imperative she not find out what I was really doing.

“Michael,” she said, poking her head in my bedroom door, “you need to stop playing with that darn computer and come eat your dinner. It’s getting cold.”

“Just five more minutes,” I pleaded, not in the least bit interested in food. “I promise. I just have to finish one more math problem before I take a break.”

“I swear I don’t know what I’m going to do with you,” she said, stepping inside, her apron splattered with what appeared to be pasta sauce. “All you do is study, which is good, but you don’t play anymore. You’re just so serious.”

“For good reason,” I shot back, immediately regretting my abrupt tone. “I can’t stop until I fix things. Then I’ll play.”

Her face softening, she crossed the room and gave me a hug. “I’m sorry honey, but they’re gone, and you live with us now.” Releasing me, she held my face in her hands. “Your parents are gone, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“How can you say that?” I asked, frustrated I couldn’t get anyone to see things from my perspective. “She was your sister. We have to make things right.”

“It was an accident, sweetie,” she said, kneeling down so that we were eye to eye. “The police and coroner all confirmed it and a judge approved it.”

“No,” I said, certain I had enough conclusive evidence to back up my claims, “that’s what they want us to think, but the facts tell a different story.”

“Michael,” she said, sighing heavily, “have you been going back out there and examining the spot where their car went off the road?”

“Maybe.”

“Michael …”

“Okay, yes, but it’s important to do it now before all traces of evidence are washed away.”

“The police already gathered all of the evidence. There can’t be anything left to find.”

“That’s not true,” I said, wondering just how far I could push things before she sent me to a psychiatrist, or worse, boarding school. “There are tire tracks, bits of broken glass and plastic, boulders with marks; it’s all slowly fading and changing.”

“For the sake of argument,” she said, deciding to humor me, “what is it exactly that you’re hoping to prove?”

I knew once I said it, I could never take it back, but I was positive I was right. “I’m going to prove that there was a second car present that night, and that it intentionally collided with the front of their BMW, pushing it over the embankment, right into the only part of the ravine where they couldn’t have survived.”

“Honey,” she said, insisting on treating me like a confused child, “the police already told us how it happened.” She hesitated, debating. “Your dad was driving a bit too fast for the corner, lost control, and they went over the side. It tears me up inside to think about it, but that’s how it happened.”

“They’re lying … to you, to me, and to everyone who was associated with mom and dad’s research. They’re just flat-out lying.”

Nina took a moment to collect herself. “It’s not healthy for you to be doing this,” she finally said, a tear breaking lose from the corner of her eye. “You need to be out having fun, playing with all of the other kids.”

“Kids don’t play outside anymore,” I said, which was mostly true. “It’s all about video games.”

“I know,” she said, nodding, “and your mom and dad wouldn’t let you play those games, especially the virtual-reality ones, but you’re living with me now, and I’m okay with it. You should join in with your friends, whatever they’re doing, and get back to enjoying your life.”

“No,” I said, vehemently shaking my head, “I have too much studying to do to waste my time like that. Besides, mom and dad were right about VR. It’s addictive.”

“Acting your age is not a waste of time,” she said, continually dismayed by her inability to fully comprehend the pint-sized genius who was now her adopted son. “Are you sure you want to go to MIT next year? It’s not too late to turn them down. You could take a couple of years and just be a kid.”

Now it was my turn to cup her face in my hands. “Don’t worry, Aunt Nina,” I said, smiling at her, knowing it was time for me to just do what I needed to do and keep everything to myself. It would be easier that way. And safer. “Really, I’m fine. I just can’t be a kid anymore. I have work to do.”

She nodded, accepting defeat. “You’re just like your dad, and that was one of the things your mom loved most about him. They were both brilliant and driven to find answers to theoretical questions that I could never even begin to understand.” She stood up, winking. “I’ll heat up your dinner and bring it in here so that you don’t have to break your concentration.”

As soon as the door had closed behind her, I went back to my real project. It was something I had been working on for over a month, having just breached the final layer of security that would give me unfettered access to the massive computers that were at the core of Globatron. As the largest multinational corporation on the planet, it dominated the tech world, becoming more powerful by the day. It had also been at the forefront of the opposition to my parent’s research.

That’s right. They had been the leaders behind the push to destroy my parent’s reputations and negate their life’s work, work that had been on the verge of exposing all the ways in which science would be man’s undoing. Just as it had given all of humanity healthier, happier and longer lives, it would also be the force that erased mankind from existence. That’s the theory they had proven, and just days before the press conference where they intended to unveil their findings, they ended up dead. It was far too convenient for mere coincidence.

Easily working my way past the mainframe’s defenses, I went for the heart of the beast, the personal computer of the person at the top, a man I referred to as Satan. With the recent release of Globatron’s new VR platform, INF2, it would be introducing a whole new level of virtual-reality gaming, a world that would one day be expanded to include virtual living, the very thing my folks had been trying to prevent.

Once I was logged into Satan’s desktop, I grabbed the personal ID he used for snooping around inside of INF2, short for Infinity Squared, or as everyone had already nicknamed it, the Square. I had a treat for him, a little something I intended to embed into the code, using a technique that would make it exceedingly difficult to ever find or remove. The trick was to do it in a way that made it impossible to trace back to me, and for that, I would make it look like the code upgrade came from his private computer, the one securely locked inside of his office.

Without knowing what she was doing, Aunt Nina had taught me the necessity of going stealth, flying under the radar for the next ten-twenty years until I was ready to do what needed to be done. Until then, I would leave Satan an unsigned calling card, a billboard that would be displayed at the entrance to the Square, six words superimposed over his angular, bespectacled face …

“I MURDERED ROBERT AND JESSICA SANDS.”

CHAPTER ONE

The sprawling two-thousand-acre ranch lay nestled in a peaceful valley, the wildlife being the only fulltime inhabitants for miles in any direction. Owned by a single entity, there was only one way in or out, a private road leading down into a beautiful seaside community, as quaint and charming as any other locale on earth. With trespassing actively discouraged, the expansive property served as a buffer for a corporate retreat, a ten-acre compound situated in the heart of the valley, with all of the structures looking out over a tranquil river that lazily wound its way down to the sea. The whole area was the stuff of postcards, a distraction from reality.

For the small handful of people who knew the truth, the compound had been painstakingly designed as a technological dead zone, free from any prying eyes and ears that might try to get a digital fix on the guests’ whereabouts, and more importantly, their conversations. Even to someone stationed just outside the perimeter, the sights and sounds cast off by the high-tech hideaway were indistinguishable from the surrounding meadow. The five men, who had each traveled thousands of miles to be here today, were gathered around an outdoor firepit, their lively discussions and raucous laughter filling the early evening air with a sense of gayety. It was a festive farewell for one in their midst who had reached the end of his journey, a fact of which he was unaware.

“Gentlemen,” the leader of the group said, noting the time, “let me freshen your drinks for you.”

“Shouldn’t we be getting to that party?” another member asked, also checking his watch. “We need to be in place at just the right moment.”

“Don’t worry,” replied the leader, a man referred to only as One, “I have sources there, now, keeping me informed.” Without waiting for a response, he went to the wet bar to get his four colleagues another round. After serving up a generous pour from a rare vintage of a crisp, elegant sauvignon blanc, he reached into his pocket for a small vial of a clear, odorless and tasteless liquid. After a cursory peek over his shoulder, he unscrewed the cap and emptied the contents into one of the five glasses, then tossed the container into the garbage. It was time.

Hefting the tray with the drinks, he turned, all smiles, taking in the scene before him. From what had begun two hundred years ago as a secret society of fifty like-minded industrialists calling themselves the Titans, they had developed their creation, Globatron, into the world’s largest, wealthiest and most powerful entity, dwarfing all of their competition, including governments. Having long ago crushed their rivals, the Titans had virtual control over the entire planet, blanketing the globe with a satellite network that also gave them complete dominance of the skies, deep into outer space. They were a corporation government that controlled everything, and at the top was the Council, always five men who simply went by the names One through Five. With this additional power and wealth came one caveat; once you worked your way to the top, the only way out was death, by any means, and that seldom included natural causes.

Making his way over to his colleagues, One took care to offer the glasses in the proper sequence but in a way that made their selection seem random. “Don’t be shy,” he said, teasing the recipient of the doctored glass, “you’re not going to want to be too sober when we hit that party.”

“The whole lot of them are beneath us,” Three said, knocking back a third of his wine and sealing his fate, “a complete waste of our time.”

“I wouldn’t go saying that to the host.”

“Why are we even still tolerating that menace?” he asked, having become overly vocal on the topic. “He’s funding the rebels and supplying them with God knows what, and it’s time we reigned him in.”

“You know why,” Four chimed in, catching One’s slight tip of his head, acknowledging that the deed had been done, “and as long as we keep him occupied with chasing after unicorns, he’ll be manageable.”

“You and your goddamn unicorns. Just call it what it is, misinformation, and I think tonight is the night we should lay it on the line with him.”

Stepping closer, One laid a steadying hand on the soon-to-be-deceased’s shoulder. “Which is why you’re not going to be making the trip with us, tonight,” he said, already seeing the loss of focus coming into his colleague’s eyes.

“What do you mean?” Three asked an instant before realizing what must have happened. “You poisoned me.”

“Don’t look so surprised. You had to have known we would eventually find out you had betrayed us, and this is a fitting punishment.”

“But I …” he said, his voice trailing off as his eyes glazed over. Desperate to remain upright, he stumbled about, finally grabbing onto a tall stool. Foaming at the mouth, he tried to speak, but no words came out.

Bored with the whole scene, Five reached out with his foot, hooking it around one of the stool’s legs. “You’ve been a pain in the butt since the day you joined us,” he said, giving it a good yank.

Eyes rolling back in his head, Three fell face down onto the cold sandstone decking. After several spastic twitches of his arms and legs, he went limp, leaving an abrupt vacancy on the Council.

Exchanging a knowing glance with each of the others, One recalled how all but the recently departed had spent at least twenty years at the pinnacle of Globatron’s power structure; the elite Titans whose word was law. Although it had never been a part of the society’s intent, in recent decades, their creation had begun taking on a life of its own, an existence where nothing was as it seemed. At first, it had only served to make them even more powerful, and wealthy, but now, there were other forces at work, and their supremacy was on the line. There was so much to consider, including the fact that one in their midst had turned out to be a traitor. Killing him had been a simple business decision, and none of them felt any remorse.

“Before we move forward with the night’s activities,” Four said, stepping away from his dead colleague, disgusted, “do the rebels know about this place?”

One shrugged. “Even if they know about it, aside from a serene meadow overlooking the river, what is there for them to see?”

“A car suddenly appearing and disappearing, when we come and go, and at those times, placing some of our men as patrols up on the ridges might be justified.”

“You know we can’t do that,” One said, annoyed at having to rehash this stale argument. “The only activity we can allow is underneath our ten-acre shield. Anything else would eventually be picked up by the satellites, and then we would be exposed.”

“However,” Five said, feeling similarly vulnerable, “when we’re hiding from Him, that’s when the physical danger posed by the rebels is at its peak.”

“I agree that it’s a double-edged sword, but I’ve got ten armed men strategically stationed around the inside perimeter, and that’s as safe as we can make it.”

“Then what about the other problems?” Four asked, unconvinced but deciding to refocus on the main reason for them being here. “Are we in control, yet?”

“As for the one beyond our reach,” One said, getting them moving into the massive main mansion, “without knowing precisely when or where he’s from, nor exactly when he intends to arrive, we’ve put up as many roadblocks as we can, and then we’ll just have to assume that he’s closing in on it.”

“Closing in, perhaps, but how close do you believe he is to achieving his goal?”

“He would have a number of goals, but I assume you’re referring to the Elevatrix.”

Four nodded.

“I’m guessing he’s close enough so that we need to get a plan in place to stop him, if and when he gets here.”

“Termination?”

Needing to wrap up this part of the conversation, One stopped at the front door. Once they left the compound, they would be back under the ever-present Globatron satellite network and its never-ending two-way transmissions. It was unavoidable, both the boon and the bane of their existence. “If possible,” he said, signaling for the driver to go warm up the limo, “but we’re still working on that.”

“What about his counterpart?”

“For tonight, our host is the only thing keeping us from our immediate objective, so forget about everything else. I’m told that he always keeps it in the same place, so all you have to do is find a way to get him into the house, and I’ll take care of it.”

“The VIDA … are you certain it’s the last one?”

“It damn well better be,” Two snapped. “That son of a bitch has been a thorn in our side for decades. It’s time we neuter him. I think Three was right on that point.”

“We’ve already discussed that,” One said, needing to restore order, “in a dozen different ways. It was a mistake then, and it would be a mistake now, an unforced error on our part.”

“But without him, it would alter the direction of the Portal, and then the other problem would likely resolve itself.”

“And produce an even bigger problem in the process. It would be a matter of cutting off our noses to spite our faces.”

“I would argue that we already did that,” Four said, voicing the dreaded words they all knew to be a painful fact of their own making, “years ago, the day the Titans created Him.”

CHAPTER TWO

What the fuck? Muttering incoherently, I strained to clear the mental fog. What just happened?

Struggling to get my bearings, I took stock of my surroundings. I was standing outside on a tiled patio in the midst of a large gathering of people who were talking, laughing, eating and drinking … it was a party … but something wasn’t quite right. Actually, a lot of things were terribly wrong.

Prior to becoming disoriented, I recall being at my home, sitting outside on a lounge chair and working on a sketch I was just completing, on a pad I was no longer holding. Just as I was applying the finishing touches with my pencil, I experienced a jarring sensation, like being shot out of a cannon. The powerful jolt seemed to propel me, feet first, for the longest time, like an insane twisting rollercoaster ride, ultimately bringing me to an abrupt halt.

The journey was all a blur, with one exception. A mesmerizing light show, thin bands of blue and white light tightly strung together in a tubular design that somehow pulled me forward without ever allowing me to touch the sides. Except for the start and finish, there had been no sense of movement, as if I was perfectly still and the light was moving at unimaginable speeds, giving the sensation that time had ceased to exist.

Seconds, hours or days, I had no concept of how much time had passed. Did I suffer some kind of stroke? At a physically fit thirty-one years old, I decided I was too young and too healthy for that prospect. Besides, someone would have noticed, and I would have woken up in a hospital. That realization did nothing to alleviate my confusion.

Determined to focus and remain calm, I did a slow, methodical 360-degree turn, taking in the entirety of the backside of a glass-walled house, the lavish furnishings, and the stellar ocean view. The futuristic place was intimately familiar, including the infinity pool cascading over the hillside. With the sun riding low on the horizon, it appeared to be early evening, balmy with a touch of night-blooming jasmine in the air. The entire scene was a very odd case of déjà vu. “Where am I?” I asked the stunning brunette standing next to me.

“What do you mean?” she responded, giving me a quizzical look. “You’re standing in your backyard.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head, “I’m not. It’s a spectacular place and all, but I definitely don’t live here.”

“Interesting,” she replied, a wry smile creasing her full lips, “because I live with you, and we live here.”

More mystified than concerned, I eyed her more closely. She was a solid eleven, everything I had ever wanted in a girl, including her ample breasts and firm, round ass. “I’ll admit I do recall designing this place,” I said, striving to dissect this bizarre circumstance, “but it was merely a product of my overactive imagination, one of my elaborate visualizations.”

“A what?”

“And I designed you, too. You’re my perfect girl, right down to your sexy red dress with the plunging neckline.”

“Michael,” Miss Perfect cautioned, “you’re really starting to upset me. What’s wrong with you?”

“I’ll even bet your name is Natalie,” I said, throwing out my favorite girl’s name, “isn’t it?”

“Of course, it is!” she countered, plainly displeased with this unorthodox line of questioning. “You’ve known me for five years!”

Continuing to survey the patio area, I honed in on several high-tech items I was relatively certain did not exist, yet, especially the thin rectangular device that bore a striking resemblance to something I’ve been designing and finetuning for years. “Natalie, sweetheart,” I finally said, “can you just answer me one question, without getting upset?”

“I’ll try.”

“It’s really important.”

“Okay … I promise, I won’t get upset.”

“Good,” I said, suspecting I was somehow trapped in one of my lucid dreams, “because I need to know exactly where I am and who’s throwing this party.” Usually having much better awareness and control in my dreams, this one had taken on a more detailed, lifelike and random quality than any I had experienced in the past.

“Michael,” Natalie said, eyes narrowing, “stop it! This isn’t funny anymore.”

“I’m not trying to be funny, honeybunch,” I said, amused that a figment of my imagination, literally the girl of my dreams, could be so argumentative, “honest. I just need to know whose house this is. That’s all.”

At the mention of a pet name, apparently the correct one, her demeanor softened. “This is your house; you’re at your own birthday party, and you’re my tall, dark and handsome fiancé. Now before you ask any more stupid questions, tell me why it was so important for me to tell you what you already knew.”

Having long ago developed the ability to simultaneously work on multiple complex projects, all in my head, I had been spending the afternoon drawing up hardcopy plans for an ultramodern home I’ve been envisioning for years–this place–while also working on one of my pet paradigms, harnessing and utilizing reality as a matter of self-designed perception. As was my practice, I was employing an extreme form of self-induced visualizations I refer to as Elevating, a way to observe and analyze every aspect of life from any angle, elevation or point of view, or as my friends refer to it … Michael’s spacing out. They weren’t entirely wrong, just mostly, but the mechanics of an elevated thought process are too “outside the norm” for most of them to even begin to comprehend. Or maybe they just think I’m crazy, ergo my nickname, Space Cadet.

Thinking of it in those terms brought perspective to my predicament. I had evidently fallen asleep and was dreaming, but was the dream set at a future point in my life, or had my imagination merely conjured up an alternate version of events? Beyond that, there remained one baffling question … how the heck was I supposed to get back to reality?