| Chapter 22 | Chapter 24 |
Part III
23
Confrontation
Paris conurbation, September 6 2047
Her father had been right all along. Granddad was still alive.
Gwen's father had spent so much time in convincing Mars-One tactical of the potential importance of her granddad. If indeed the intel was correct, then she had positioned herself in a bit of a situation.
This brittle and skittish shadow of a man that she had found living in one of the illegal encampments in Bois du Boulogne was her granddad alright! And if Intel was correct, her grandfather's, mysterious disappearance in ninety-one and the subsequent fire in his science lab a few days later, were both linked to Quantum Slicing technology.
Her dad had only been seven years old when Wietse disappeared. Dad had always refused to believe his father was dead. Conversely, he had also refused to believe the rumors about his father. Wietse, her granddad, being a willing founder of what had become PUPR. PUPR's Quantum Slicing, in the end, was the reason why her people were living in exile on that horrid planet. Without PUPR there would still be order on this planet.
Gwen had been working as an Earth operative for Mars-One for a while now, setting up a modest infrastructure and finding supporters of her cause and that of the Mars-One government. Important work, yes, but family, that was even more important. Gwen could hardly believe she had actually found him.
Her father, as her grandfather before him, was a brilliant scientist. Duncan Ypke Willem Dijkstra has been credited with the creation of the technology that Mars-One media referred to as truth injection. Truth injection: the technology that might just end up being key in preparing the world for the return from chaos.
The idea was quite simple. Living in the primitive, overcrowded and ill-provisioned Mars colony, the aristocracy wasn't in a position to win any kind of propaganda war here on Earth. And then, even if they did, using propaganda on a population with the wrong mindset would take years if not decades and anyway, it often yielded unsatisfactory results. Injecting the truth into people's mind with a combination of chemicals and nanotechnology as devised by her father was so much quicker and so much more reliable.
The truth though was that truth injection was a bit more involved than that. As a truth injection operative, Gwen had used the technology more than once using data that wasn't exactly the truth, but that helped crucial players to work towards the mission's objectives.
Well, as long as it served the greater good of restoring order on Earth, all was OK as far as Gwen's sense of ethics was concerned. But this here was different. Gwen had found her long-lost grandfather who had been lost to his family for well over half a century.
This was family! Could she follow up on orders and use truth injection to question this so clearly gravely troubled, severely damaged individual? An individual who had been or should have been the daddy that had lacked so much in her father's life.
'Not yet!' Gwen thought, 'I'll observe for just a bit longer, no hurt in that.'
As Gwen watched the day's first light hit her raggedy granddad's camouflaged tent, she turned off the night vision on her ocular implant.
She knew from observation Granddad Wietse did not ever come out of his tent during daylight. Time to relax now.
"No!; What?" Gwen spoke out loud.
Gwen quickly yet inconspicuously retreated into her own tent as she saw a giant of a man walk in the general direction of her Granddad's tent. Gwen ran a diagnostic on her implant just to be sure. This guy was huge and his feline way of movement that looked particularly menacing for someone of his immense stature betrayed his training.
'New Zion! No no no, please not now!' Gwen thought as she almost panicked.
Then Gwen noticed a second, significantly smaller and much more slender man walking three paces behind the giant, moving in an even more distinctly feline fashion.
'Shit, they must be after Granddad too!'
Gwen knew the guidelines for engaging New Zion: "Don't"
But she couldn't just let New Zion capture Granddad. She had to do something.
She could probably manage to truth inject the smaller guy, but he wouldn't be of much use fighting off the big guy given their immense difference in size.
No, truth injecting the big guy would be her Granddad's only chance. But how? The guy was huge, almost inhumanly so.
My DNA-extracting mosquito-drones!
Gwen had used mosquito-drones to extract the DNA of all shabby looking old men at the encampment. Without any pictures, and with the prevalence of huge face covering beards amongst the old men in the encampment, Gwen had had to rely on DNA In order to test the surprisingly large population of old men living in this inner-city forest.
Need to repurpose the drones for injection!
As Gwen started to frantically program the nano's for a usable truth serum and the drones for delivering the injection, the two New Zion operatives footsteps in their slow approach were like a ticking clock to Gwen's nervous mind.
Need to finish this on time! I must!
As Gwen glimpsed the two menacing figures approaching in the morning twilight, a large bright light appeared in the sky, at an about 40 metres high position straight above a small tent, a mere 20 metres from her granddad's tent.
"What the?" Gwen murmured.
Then a warm and inexplicable feeling of comfort flooded Gwen's senses.
No!, Fuck! Impossible! Truth injection? New Zion has stolen truth injection! I need to keep focus!. Granddad, New Zion, protect Granddad!
As Gwen felt herself lose consciousness, she caught a glimpse of the startled face of the smaller of the two New Zion agents. Before losing full consciousness, one last thought formed in Gwen's mind: 'Who?'
….
'Where am I?'
As Gwen woke up she felt disoriented and drowsy.
A bright light, strange alien-looking faces. As the drowsiness slowly diminished, Gwen could make out the light-gray-colored, skinny, and naked upper torso of two strange figures. Their hairless heads large for the size of their bodies. Large eyes that were all black showing not a trace of white.
No way! There is no such thing as alien abductions! This is truth injection, it must be.
Then a friendly and comforting voice spoke to her:
"I believe my Hylobo friends have been a bit overzealous this time. This was meant to be a precision extraction that the two of you shouldn't have been part of. Don't worry, nothing will happen to you and your companion and rest assure that you won't remember any of this tomorrow."
As Gwen slowly slipped out of consciousness once more, the piercing eyes of the New Zion operative strapped to the table next to hers stared at her, expressing a mixture of hate and confusion.
| Chapter 22 | Chapter 24 |
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